Bilski: Almost the Big One

Those with good memories will recall a short post I wrote back in February about a case, generally known as “Bilski”, that was going before the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC). It was important, because it asked the court to rule on the patentability of business methods – something that, like software patents, have blossomed to absurd levels in the US. The judgment came through yesterday, and it's pretty good news for those who would like to see some sanity in this area. Here's what well-regarded the patent law blog PatentlyO wrote....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Open Enterprise Interview: Dirk Morris, Untangle

One of the reasons the open source development methodology is so powerful is because of the modularisation that lies at its heart. This allows those with a particular expertise to work on the module they are best able to improve, and for all such modules to be slotted together thanks to the clean interfaces between them. And at a higher level, the open source world is made up of many independent projects – unlike the world of Windows, say, where the ecosystem revolves around and is dependent on Microsoft's strategic decisions to a high degree - each able to proceed at a speed and in a direction that suits them best....

On Open Enterprise blog.

A Big Day for Fans of Archimedes

At 2pm on October 29th, 2008, ten years after the Archimedes Palimpsest was purchased by the present owner, the core data generated by the project to conserve, image and study the manuscript, will be released on the web. This will be the electronic product that Reviel Netz looked forward to, several years ago. Conceptually speaking, what we wanted to create then was a digital version of the Archimedes Palimpsest – and one that revealed the unique ancient texts in the manuscript that were scraped off and overwritten with a prayer book by Johannes Myronas in 1229AD.

That's the good news. The even better news is this:

1 Rights and Conditions of Use

The Archimedes Palimpsest data is released with license for use under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Access Rights. It is requested that copies of any published articles based on the information in this data set be sent to The Curator of Manuscripts, The Walters Art Museum, 600 North Charles Street, Baltimore MD 21201.

That's pretty incredible, and simply would not have been possible a few decades ago. Particular kudos goes to the present owner of the manuscript for making it available; for Larry Lessig and others for coming up with the Creative Commons licences; and for RMS for starting everything with his crazy GNU project.

Give a Convicted Monopolist Enough Rope...

... it will hang you.

Maybe there's some kind of lesson here.

Uncle Brucie Frightens Me

Eek:

Measures such as ID cards are a temporary measure before biometric technology becomes ubiquitous; That was the warning from security guru Bruce Schneier this week who claims that surveillance technology will get more sophisticated and, more importantly, smaller and harder to detect. "We live in a very unique time in our society. The cameras are everywhere and you can still see them," said Schneier, BT's chief security technology officer. "Five years ago they weren't everywhere, five years from now you are not going to see them."

...

Biometric technologies such as face recognition, or systems based on a particular type of mobile phone owned or even clothes, may also be used for identity checks. The increase in background ID checks means that the current debate around national ID cards in the UK is only a short-term issue, according to Schneier. "I know there are debates on ID cards everywhere but in a lot of ways, they are only very temporary. They are only a temporary solution till biometrics takes over," he said.

Eventually, even airports won't actually require people to show ID, as the checks will just happen in the background while you queue for check-in or move through the terminal. "When you walk into the airport they will know who you are. You won't have to show an ID – why bother? They can process you quicker," he said.

Jackboot Jacqui Strikes Again

Our dear Home Secretary decides to ignore what we proles think again:

His warning follows an admission yesterday by Jacqui Smith that the technical work on creating a giant centralised database of all email, text, phone and web traffic will go ahead, despite the fact that ministers have decided to delay the legislation needed to set it up and instead put the proposal out to consultation.

Democracy? I've heard of it.

Tim O'Reilly's Greatest Post

I don't always agree with Tim O'Reilly's views, but it seems clear to me that this is his best, and potentially most important post even though - or maybe because - it's about politics, rather than technology:

for those concerned about climate change, the most urgent case for the election of Barack Obama was made by John McCain. Despite being an early and thoughtful advocate on the threat of global warming, he lost all credibility with his selection of Governor Palin as his running mate. We can not afford to take the risk of a Vice-President (especially for a candidate as old as McCain) who is scornful of science, denies human involvement in creating climate change, and is completely unprepared to tackle this most urgent of problems.

Let's hope America is listening to him and all the others saying much the same. If they don't, this planet is in very serious trouble indeed.

Que la Bête Meure

The National Health Service's £12.7 billion computer system is in doubt after its managers acknowledged that there will be further delays.

Connecting for Health, the NHS agency responsible for the world's biggest civil IT project, said it didn't have a clue when hospitals in England will start using the software that is required to keep track of patients' medical files.

Come on, put the beast out of its misery.

Cloud Computing Dispels the Fog of FUD

One of the anomalies of the currently-fashionable cloud computing is that people tend not to talk about the underlying operating system – presumably because they tend to think the cloud *is* the operating system. The fact is that both of the main cloud computing systems – from Amazon and Google – have been running on GNU/Linux. In other words, not only is open source running vast swathes of the Internet, but now it's holding up nearly all the clouds, too....

On Open Enterprise blog.

La Bell'Italia

Italy is famous for its glorious art, fine food, and friendly people; maybe we should add “enlightened uptake of open source” to that list. Here are two more data points....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Haapy Birthday PLoS

The Public Library of Science did not invent open access, but there's no doubt it took it to the next level:

On the 13th of October in 2003, with the first issue of PLoS Biology, the Public Library of Science realized its transformation from a grassroots organization of scientists to a publisher. Our fledgling website received over a million hits within its first hour, and major international newspapers and news outlets ran stories about the journal, about science communication in general, and about our founders—working scientists who had the temerity to take on the traditional publishing world and who pledged to lead a revolution in scholarly communication (see, for example, [1,2]). It was not only scientists and publishers who wanted to see what this upstart start-up was doing; we had somehow captured the imagination of all sections of society. Not all of the reactions were positive, of course, especially from those in the scientific publishing sector with a vested interest in maintaining the subscription-based system of journal publishing. But thanks in no small part to the efforts of the founders—Pat Brown, Mike Eisen, and Harold Varmus—and an editorial team that included a former editor of Cell and several from Nature, our call for scientists to join the open-access revolution [3,4] did not go unheeded. Five years on, the publishing landscape has changed radically.

But what about the future?

The next challenge—for PLoS Biology, for PLoS and for all open-access publishers—is to demonstrate the utility of open access in advancing science beyond what can be gained from just making the information publicly available to read. The biggest misconception about open access is that it's only about putting online what was in print and removing any toll for access. It's not: it's about having the freedom to reuse that material without restriction [11]. Open-access publishing is therefore a crucial catalyst for a genuine shift in the way we use and mine the literature and integrate it with databases and other means of scientific communication. We are only just beginning to see the start of these: in video-based initiatives such as SciVee (Table 1); in knowledge discovery platforms such as Knewco, OSCAR, and the NeuroCommons (Table 1); with the increasing use of blogging in discourse about scientific research (see, for example, http://researchblogging.org/); and in the emergence of wiki projects in community-based knowledge curation [13,14].

I can't wait. Here's to the next five years.

Linus Up Close and Personal

Here's a brace of videos from the recent Linux Kernel Summit. Human nature being what it is, most interest will probably focus on the interview with Linus.

Truth to tell, there's nothing really dramatic there, but the video's definitely of interest because it's one of the highest quality offerings I've seen: if you've ever wondered what Linus *really* looks and sounds like, this is your chance.

The EPO's Reductio ad Absurdum

I've written a lot about the danger that software patents pose to open source. The problem is that intellectual monopolies like patents are fundamentally incompatible with the idea of unfettered exchange of ideas, and the possibility that software patents might be strengthened within the European Union is a serious concern....

On Open Enterprise blog.

More on Labour's Data Delusion

And so it goes on:

Every police force in the UK is to be equipped with mobile fingerprint scanners - handheld devices that allow police to carry out identity checks on people in the street.

The new technology, which ultimately may be able to receive pictures of suspects, is likely to be in widespread use within 18 months. Tens of thousands of sets - as compact as BlackBerry smartphones - are expected to be distributed.

The police claim the scheme, called Project Midas, will transform the speed of criminal investigations. A similar, heavier machine has been tested during limited trials with motorway patrols.

To address fears about mass surveillance and random searches, the police insist fingerprints taken by the scanners will not be stored or added to databases.

Yeah, pull the other one. The point is, given the current government's mentality that more is better, it is inevitable that these prints will be added. The irony is, this will actually make the system *less* useful.

To see why, consider what happens if there is a 1 in 100,000,000 chance of false positives using these new units. Suppose there are 1,000,000 fingerprints on the database: that means after 100 checks, there is likely to be a false match - bad enough. But now consider what happens when all these other fingerprints, obtained at random, are added, and the database increases to 10,000,000: a false positive will be obtained after every *10* checks on average. In other words, the more prints there are on the database, the worse the false positive rate becomes because of the unavoidable errors in biometrics.

This back of the envelope calculation also shows the way forward for biometric checks - of all kinds, since they are all subject to the same scaling problem. The government should aim to *reduce* the number of files it holds, but ensure that they are the ones that they are most interested in/concerned about. In other words, try to cut the database down to 100,000, say, but make sure they are *right* 100,000, not just random members of the public.

It's clear that the reason for Labour's data delusion is that it doesn't understood the technology that it is seeking to apply. In particular, it doesn't understand that the error rate sets a limit on the useful size of such databases. Super-duper databases are simply super stupid.

Hooray! The Wicked e-Voting Witch is Dead...

For the moment, at least:

Secretary of State for Justice Michael Wills was asked if the government planned to introduce e-voting before the local and European elections in 2009. He said last week: "The Government do not plan to introduce e-voting for the 2009 European or local elections ... The Government have no plans for further e-voting pilots in statutory elections at this stage."

AMQP's Long Spoon

Here's Red Hat blowing the trumpet for the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol, or rather for its latest supporter....

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Facebook Approach to Open Source

Here's an interesting sign of the times. Facebook is opening up a big wodge of code....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Libelling Larry Lessig

Wow, outrageous:

Although it is unclear at this point who Senators Obama and McCain might choose, AAP believes it essential that key officials who will deal with intellectual property issues in a new administration have a full understanding of the importance of intellectual property rights for those who hold these rights and for broader U.S. economic and trade interests. AAP is concerned, for example, that based on their past academic relationship, Senator Obama might choose among his appointments a divisive figure such as Larry Lessig - a law professor and leading proponent of diminished copyright rights.

Lessig has done more for *extending* the usefulness of copyright than anyone. The Association of American Publishers (AAP) are simply beneath contempt. (Via Arbeit 2.0.)

Verified by Visa - As Valueless

I, too, have noticed the insidious spread of Verified by Visa (VbyV), and thought it looked well dodgy, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Here's the problem:

Once obtained by fraudsters, either by direct phishing attack or through other more subtle forms of social engineering trickery, VbyV login credentials make it easier for crooks to make purchases online while simultaneously making it harder for consumers to deny responsibility for a fraudulent transaction.

The easiest way will be for a compromised site to push you to a false login and obtain your magic password. You won't be able to prove it, of course, and so the danger is that you will end up the bill for fraud.

This is a disaster waiting to happen, and lots of people are going to get burned if we don't manage to get some sense into the banks soon. The only way to do that is to get the story out - please pass it on.... (Via Kim Cameron's Identity Weblog.)

Microsoft's Future

This is something that I predicted would happen:

The company's Windows client business grew by half its anticipated target - two percent instead of four compared to last year. Microsoft said fewer traditional PCs and more netbooks had shipped than expected. Also, revenue from OEMs was down as they shifted to sell cheaper netbooks.

Netbooks running Windows mean growth but relatively low income as they do not run money spinning versions of Windows, like Windows Vista Premium Edition. Microsoft said it was too early to say how much netbooks are cannibalizing traditional sales.

It will be interesting to see how steep the dive is.

Labour's Data Delusion

There is a common misconception in Labour's love of super-duper databases: that more data is better. In fact, as any fule kno, what you want is the right data. Here's a great comment that unpicks that delusion in the context of its insane ContactPoint scheme:

There was no shortage of information about Victoria. There was a chronic lack of wisdom and judgement in interpreting the information that was already available. Victoria’s case demonstrates just how difficult it can be to pick up on abuse. It would be far better to concentrate the limited resources available on retention of experienced child and family practitioners and on thorough investigation of children already known to social services, rather than flooding an over-stretched system with low-level data about every child (up to 50% of the child population) who might need services.

The Mirror

Wo informieren sich Medienprofis? Dem Branchenblatt "journalist" zufolge vor allem bei SPIEGEL und SPIEGEL ONLINE.

[Where do media professionals get their information? Above all from Der Spiegel and Spiegel Online, according to the industry newspaper "journalist".]

Ja, that mirrors my experience...

Open Source Spaceships?

Apparently:

This is a privately funded suborbital space endeavor.
Our mission is to launch a human being into space.

We are currently developing a series of suborbital space vehicles - designed to pave the way for manned space flight on a micro size spacecraft.

...

We intend to share all our techninal information as much as possible, within the laws of EU-export control.

(Via BoingBoing.)

*All* Russian Schools to Use Free Software

I've often lamented how few schools in the UK use free software, and how difficult it is to break the lock that Microsoft has on the entire educational system. The pathetic state here is highlighted by contrast with Russia, which is making amazing strides in rolling out open source to schools.

It began with a few pilot projects, and apparently these have been so successful that the Russian government has now decided to make it the standard for *all* schools....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Andrew Keen is Right...

...when he writes:

The hungry and cold unemployed masses aren’t going to continue giving away their intellectual labor on the Internet in the speculative hope that they might get some "back end" revenue.

People aren't going to give away intellectual labour in that hope because...that's not why people contribute to Wikipedia, or Linux or any of the thousand other endeavours built around sharing, collaborating and giving.

As studies have shown, if you start paying people to do something that they are doing for the sheer pleasure of doing it, they suddenly lose much of the satisfaction they hitherto derived: people don't *want* to be paid for doing it - but they will want to be paid for doing something that do in order to get paid (aka "work").

And Mr Keen is absolutely spot-on again when he adds:

"Free" doesn’t fill anyone’s belly; it doesn’t warm anyone up.

Indeed not; but it does fill the *heart*, which has its own imperatives quite separate from the undeniable ones of the belly.... (Via Slashdot.)