A very happy Christmas to you! Oh, and: Here's my rule: if only Christians can say "Christmas" then only Vikings can say "Thursday"…— Mitch Benn (@MitchBenn) December 24, 2010
☆ Hope You Weren’t Too Naughty…
Posted on December 25, 2010 by Simon Phipps
☞ Betrayal
Posted on December 24, 2010 by Simon Phipps
What is Traitorware? Useful, clear explanation of the threat we all face from the trust we place in device (and software) suppliers who don’t trust us. JCP EC minutes (public): October 5-6, 2010 Well worth reading the full minutes of the discussion in which Oracle decided to push Apache out of the JCP. Note to [...]
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☞ Effects of Transparency
Posted on December 23, 2010 by Simon Phipps
Privacy Icons: Alpha Release I like this initiative to create symbols to represent the most relevant aspects of privacy policies, so that people don’t need to read all the detail on every site (always at least a page away anyway). I like much more the comments Aza makes at the end of the posting about [...]
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☝ The Typhoid Mary Of Three-Strikes
Posted on December 23, 2010 by Simon Phipps
Over the last year, we saw them spring up all over the world, notably in Australia and in France but also in many other countries. It seemed odd that so many legislatures should simultaneously feel the urge to create extrajudicial protection for mainly foreign – American – copyright holders, especially in a market where the [...]
Filed under: ACTA, ComputerWorldUK | Tagged: USTR, WikiLeaks | Comments Off
☆ FOSS is not “non-commercial”
Posted on December 22, 2010 by Simon Phipps
I keep seeing people contrasting “free/open source software” with “commercial software”. This is a really bad contrast, as in my experience almost all open source software is commercial. It’s just commercial in a different way. Open source software is not “non-commercial” – rather, it is software where, when commercial activity takes place, revenues are generated [...]
Filed under: Open Source | 4 Comments »
☞ Wednesday Tab Sweep
Posted on December 22, 2010 by Simon Phipps
Recording the Police “I think we need a law that explicitly makes it legal for people to record government officials when they are interacting with them in their official capacity. And this is doubly true for police officers and other law enforcement officials.” I completely agree. This is a great explanation of why government officials [...]
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☆ Bite-Size Privacy and Anonymity
Posted on December 21, 2010 by Simon Phipps
A discussion 1 2 3 4 broke out on Identi.ca recently where it became clear that the distinction between anonymity and privacy is not clear for some people. It led to the opportunity to discuss the nature of both concepts (albeit in 140-character bursts) with some smart people devoted to both, people I respect greatly. [...]
Filed under: Privacy | Tagged: Anonymity, Privacy, Security, Tor | 4 Comments »
☞ DF Acts To Protect LibreOffice
Posted on December 20, 2010 by Simon Phipps
The Document Foundation joins Open Invention Network Smart move here – by joining now, they gain access to all those patents belonging to Novell that will leave the pool and belong (among others) to Microsoft and Oracle when the acquisition by AttachMate closes. Given Novell’s software portfolio, there’s a chance some of those are highly [...]
Filed under: Links | 5 Comments »
☞ Kinds Of Trust
Posted on December 19, 2010 by Simon Phipps
USTR’s Request for Comments on ACTA Your holiday project: send USTR at least one comment on ACTA. If you need ideas, let me know… The Anonymous WikiLeaks protests are a mass demo against control Really excellent article by Richad Stallman points out that the individuals arriving en masse to protest about the treatment of Wikileaks [...]
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♫ Strange Communion
Posted on December 18, 2010 by Simon Phipps
I don’t think I’ll be able to get out to hear her performing live tomorrow evening in Winchester at The Tower, but I wanted to mention how much I have enjoyed Thea Gilmore‘s music this year and tell you about her wonderful winter album “Strange Communion”. If you didn’t listen to it when I recommended [...]
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