Posted on January 2, 2011 by Simon Phipps
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The new “you’ve got no privacy, get over it” moves in. I wonder who will get my old offices, and whether they have someone on staff whose job it is to advocate for software freedom?
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If you were looking for a handy example to show how ridiculous the over-extension of copyright law has become, this one would be a leading candidate.
Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Unexpected
Posted on December 31, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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Groklaw has some useful extra information that helps cast light on the dynamics of the Novell patent sale.
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I’ve been watching the impressive progress that copyright reform has been taking in Brazil for a long time. I had strong hopes that it would provide a template for reforms elsewhere in emerging societies and set in train a global wave of reforms. This appointment seems a major setback and I hope it will turn out that the (very smart) people driving copyright reform in Brazil will prevail.
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I’m always very wary of new laws attempting to regulate the online world, as most of what happens there is just an analogue of what happens in atomspace and is thus well covered by existing law. However, it seems convictions have proved impossible in obviously unjust circumstances so maybe this one is justified. I hope California will be ready to tune it up when the bugs and unintended consequences emerge.
Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Changing Law
Posted on December 29, 2010 by Simon Phipps
Also:
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Cute Christmas story.
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It seems James Burke’s “Connections” series is available on YouTube – this page has links to the whole series.
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Just found the motherlode of UK Amazon MP3 free downloads – seems there are a large number of large sampler albums for “TuneCore” on there. Busy downloading them, there has to be something good in there somewhere 🙂
Filed under: Links | 3 Comments »
Posted on December 28, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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Whenever you see any claim to be respecting your privacy, this is what they actually mean.
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This is exactly the view I have taken so far. It’s been very interesting how many customers have told me that they prefer and trust a self-funded startup much more than a VC-funded startup.
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Interesting alternative economic system.
Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Honest Dealing
Posted on December 27, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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As well as being a fellow digital rights activist, Cory Doctorow is one of my favourite authors and an entrepreneur too. His latest book, “With A Little Help”, is self-published and he’s trying every approach possible to make it succeed in the ways we’re both advocating for the new meshed society. This link will let you download – for free – the entire audio book. I am really looking forward to his experience report of this whole venture.
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Back when he was my boss, Hal Stern expressed an interest in being introduced to Cory Doctorow. I arranged the introduction, and the result was a delicious blend of fandom and friendship that’s still persisting. Hal just took delivery of his limited edition copy of Cory’s new book, and the resulting book-porn makes a lovely read itself!
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Whereas my US friends used to look in envy on the Doctor Who Christmas Special, it seems the BBC has got wise to demand and made it available through Amazon US almost immediately for on-demand viewing or
DRM-ed-to-death offline viewing.
Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Delicious Fiction
Posted on December 26, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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Very interesting article (series of articles really) that asserts that the whole concept of using a “food pyramid” to direct nutrition is bad. Excellent proposal at the end.
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“The fact of the matter is that banks are not like any other business. They run the payments system. That is one of the main reasons that governments protect them from failure with explicit and implicit guarantees.”
Finally mainstream comment is realising that denying essential services without a court order is a problem, private company or not.
Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Debunking Conventional Wisdom
Posted on December 24, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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Useful, clear explanation of the threat we all face from the trust we place in device (and software) suppliers who don’t trust us.
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Well worth reading the full minutes of the discussion in which Oracle decided to push Apache out of the JCP. Note to self: Any question where a public answer would be awkward can be deflected with “I’m afraid I can’t answer legal questions”.
Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Betrayal
Posted on December 23, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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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 why it might work.
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Well worth reading this long piece from Bruce Sterling on Wikileaks. He sums up well my own mixed feelings about the case, from the lack of surprise (beyond how long it took to happen) to the uncertainty whether it’s actually a good thing and on to the conclusions about Assange and Manning. Very Sterling.
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Good to see the project continues to move ahead, but the most significant thing to note here is the huge list of contributors to the release. An independent project certainly encourages more, more significant contribution than a Stepford Wives-style project.
Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Effects of Transparency
Posted on December 22, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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“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 should expect scrutiny in the conduct of the official duties while private citizens should expect privacy.
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“Personally, I don’t want to sign Canonical’s agreement. I want to share my writing, not give it away. Other team members seem to feel the same. So where does this leave the Ubuntu docs team?”
In response to Phil’s question, Laura MacPhee explains that Canonical’s “contributor agreement” is actually giving away your work to depend on Canonical’s judgement. Whatever the comforting words surrounding that gift may say, the fact is that the agreement redefines “contribution” from “sharing” to “giving” and makes community members less than sharecroppers.
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I’m delighted to say that the first full release of the OpenDJ LDAP directory server from ForgeRock is now available. 100% Java, 100% open source.
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I sense a disturbance in The Force as protection from 800+ patents is about to be snuffed out by a consortium comprising some of the most important opponents of open source.
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“You wondered aloud how these people had managed to survive this long without drinking bleach by accident. As new clients came on, you hoped that the work you did with the first one would mean they would successfully use the system. No such luck. They were all stupid in subtly different ways.”
To be clear, this is not my vision for ForgeRock!
Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Wednesday Tab Sweep
Posted on December 20, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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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 relevant. Now OIN needs to update its software list to include LibreOffice.
Filed under: Links | 5 Comments »
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