Posted on June 7, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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Here’s a view I’d not considered: “Just less than 3 years ago, Microsoft was still perceived as part of the “evil” empire. … But in a reversal of fortune, customers now worry about Google lock-in, fret over Oracle’s quest to dominate IT through M&A, wonder how hardware vendors will become software providers and vice versa, and remain in shock as Apple’s proprietary and closed approach over takes Microsoft’s market cap. … more than 74.6% (53/71) see Microsoft as the neutral and trusted supplier.”
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Written by Lawrence Livermore Laboratories.
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Can’t say this is a huge surprise. It co-incides with the final legal entity combination of many subsidiaries that have been left to wait for months to get integrated. Even now there are some Sun subsidiaries that aren’t actually legally combined into Oracle.
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Lovely historical footage.
Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Open Source and Muppets
Posted on June 7, 2010 by Simon Phipps
I just received notice of an Emergency General Meeting at the British Computer Society – some members think the current leadership want to subvert the BCS and turn it from the professional society for Alice and Dilbert into a mass-membership organisation serving the needs of the Pointy-Haired Boss and the corporations he serves.
Read more over on my ComputerWorldUK blog.
[Also in this thread: BCS EGM, this post, BCS Leadership Targets Member Rights, BCS Rebels Finally Get A Voice]
Filed under: Governance | Tagged: BCS | 1 Comment »
Posted on June 6, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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To be clear, MPEG-LA is a parasite using standards bodies as its host, whether they want it or not. This page makes it clear that the parasite is looking for new hosts. Patent reform is now way overdue.
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It’s my birthday and I want one of these to play to people who said I was crazy to fuss about stuff like ODF or the WebM license…
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The story of a hilarious and hard-hitting satirical account on Twitter which a massive number of people are now following.
Filed under: Links | 3 Comments »
Posted on June 4, 2010 by Simon Phipps
I’m delighted to say that Google has responded and fixed the licence for WebM so that they don’t need to submit it to OSI any more – they are now just using a BSD licence with a separate patent grant. Read more over on my ComputerWorldUK blog.
Filed under: Open Source | Tagged: Google, OSI, WebM | 2 Comments »
Posted on June 4, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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There are some very worrying phrases in this legislative push, suggesting that the lobbying by big corporations to get rules that favour them is working. Most worrying is the complaint in connection with the digital agenda that “getting patents is too hard”. No! It’s far, far too easy to get patents on digital technologies and the public commons suffers each time one is issued due to the extreme imbalance that allows them to ve treated as property instead of as responsibility. I smell advance work to clear the path for ACTA ratification…
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Once again “protecting children” is being used as the pretext to introduce a badly-considered stream of legislation that would result in web searches being retained and analysed – yes, more surveillance. Apparently MEPs are being told just that it’s for the children, without having the consequence that every search by every citizen will be archived and retained. Write to your MEP and ask them not to sign or to withdraw their signature.
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This is a very worrying development that looks like an abuse of power. It’s extending the law surely beyond where it was ever intended by lawmakers and then being supported by courts. One of these cases will need to make its way to the Supreme Counrt. There’s just as worrying a trend in the UK, of police using massively heavy photographic activity against the public while unjustly restricting photography by the publoc.
Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Mission Creep
Posted on June 2, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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“The VP8 patent situation is no different from the patent challenges that face any computing innovation, from search to social networking to user interfaces to browsers” — CNet adds little beyond my initial report.
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Not to mention putting on weight. More bad lifestyle news for geeks.
Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ FUD and Teeth
Posted on June 1, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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Perry sums up what I have been wanting to say for days about the BP oil disaster. “There but for the grace of God go I”.
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“On 1 May this year a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline in the state of Akwa Ibom spilled more than a million gallons into the delta over seven days before the leak was stopped. Local people demonstrated against the company but say they were attacked by security guards.”
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Good article about the value of open source in Africa.
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fMRI is a technique some people are suggesting can be used to read people’s minds. This article suggests it’s as accurate as a polygraph test (lie detector).
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I’m not sure I go along with this particular public beating of Google. In this example, if the author logged the output of kismet he may well have “inadvertently gathered personal data” if the names of the networks reflected information about the owner (as, for example, several of the networks on my street do). It’s quite possible to interpret Google’s confession as over-caution by lawyers rather than an admission of extreme guilt.
Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Where Justice Applies, And Elsewhere
Posted on June 1, 2010 by Simon Phipps
In an unusual move for such a significant news item, the UK government announced over the weekend that they were ordering all government departments to embark on a voyage of transparency. There were some very good ideas in the announcement, including a mandate to publish details of all ITC procurements. And there is no doubt that a mandate for open data is a fantastic move. The letter from the Prime Minister was pretty clear:
Given the importance of this agenda, the Deputy Prime Minister and I would be grateful if departments would take immediate action to meet this timetable for data transparency, and to ensure that any data published is made available in an open format so that it can be re-used by third parties. From July 2010, government departments and agencies should ensure that any information published includes the underlying data in an open standardised format.
Read on over on my ComputerWorldUK Blog…
Filed under: ODF, Open Data | Tagged: ComputerWorldUK, Transparency | 3 Comments »
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