Saturday November 28, 2009 links for 2009-11-28
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It's more than a "reshuffle" - Baroso has built an entirely new structure for the Commission, and Kroes is now in charge of all things digital, including (apparently) telecoms. That makes her Czar of Three Strikes and High Lord of FOSS. She's also one of the seven bearers of the rings of power, AKA Vice President of the Commission. I'd say things just got a whole lot more interesting in this area.
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When you create a system you create the game that plays it. The only way to prevent the system becoming the game is to change it. Obama has done the right thing.
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Another date for the diary
Posted by webmink
( Nov 28 2009, 04:05:27 AM PST )
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☝ Thanks For The Music
So you got through (or, if your not from the US, ignored) Thanksgiving and Black Friday, how about some free music? It's on my personal blog...
Posted by webmink
( Nov 28 2009, 03:31:31 AM PST )
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Friday November 27, 2009 ☞ Protecting Rights
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ACTA secrecy is in fact a cynical game being played by the analogue economy (great phrase) to defend itself against us - you and me - the beating heart of the new digital economy and the connected society. The attempt to build a meta-national treaty-based fait accomplis has to be secret because too many of us are now intelligent and informed enough to derail it if there was any transparency or honesty. What is "piracy" in this context? It is the attempt to steal the future of culture and democracy from every one of us. We have in our hands a true test of global democracy and we dare not fail.
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And that's hardly a surprise becuase AGPL is purely about license-derived software freedom. We're on beyond licenses now, and we need to condition people to consider all the degrees of freedom and not just one.
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In at number two is the OpenOffice.org community. Great work, everyone.
Posted by webmink
( Nov 27 2009, 04:05:38 AM PST )
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Thursday November 26, 2009 ☞ Adding Closures At Last
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"Revising a programming language that’s in active use by millions of developers is no small task. Sun neither can nor should do it alone, so I hereby invite everyone who participated in the earlier closures conversations—as well as anyone else with an informed opinion—to join us."
Posted by webmink
( Nov 26 2009, 04:05:41 AM PST )
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Wednesday November 25, 2009 ☞ Expressing Anger
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US senators, that is. I'm sure the Commission will completely ignore them.
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"Government is the unelected incubus which needs parliament only in order to cloak itself in its electoral legitimacy."
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From which we learn that it is in your health interests to engage now to protest about the secrecy behind ACTA and to its terms, and if you are in the UK to the proposed Digital Economy Bill. Just walking away from these outrages puts you at greater risk from a heart attack.
Posted by webmink
( Nov 25 2009, 04:08:33 AM PST )
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Tuesday November 24, 2009 ☞ Flaws In The System
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From Forbes, no less: "In 2009, 30 million people sit unemployed in America. Yet, the speculators have managed to lift the stock market up, and the media pretends that we're having a recovery." -- As I have said in every keynote for many years, when you create a system, you create the game that plays it and if the system remains unchanged it becomes the game.
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"It consists almost entirely of penalties for people who do things that upset the entertainment industry ... as well as a plan to beat the hell out of the video-game industry with a new, even dumber rating system. ... What isn't in there? Anything about stimulating the actual digital economy." -- Awful, shameful stuff. And the fact the Tories aren't speaking against it means we can expect no better from them.
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As if Europe's men needed more encouragement.
Posted by webmink
( Nov 24 2009, 04:08:52 AM PST )
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Saturday November 21, 2009 ☞ Time for Questions
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Until the end of January instead of the middle. At this point it's all just more blows to a bruised body.
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These are great questions which deserve (but won't receive) honest answers. By the way, I hate the name of this party and will not join or support it until it chooses a name which does not demean the victims of crimes at sea and give the pro-big-media lobby a perfect talking point with which to discredit these great arguments.
Posted by webmink
( Nov 21 2009, 04:06:46 AM PST )
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Friday November 20, 2009 ☞ Mistakes That Can't Be Admitted
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Paul Graham gets it spot on again. Apple's attitude is Google's biggest asset in the battle for the mobile market.
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Looks like non-US developers can now submit software for the Java Store, although they can't charge for it. Glacial, but the destination is worth heading for I think.
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This fits in with the populism-over-wisdom approach characterise by UK politics at the moment. Sugar is not the worst possible role model for today's connected society, but he has to come close. Another Mandelson decision, I am sure.
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I agree with (the ever remarkable) Quinn here. My children are now old enough to tell me if I lived up to this ideal, which is a bit scary.
Posted by webmink
( Nov 20 2009, 04:05:37 AM PST )
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Thursday November 19, 2009 ☞ Sometimes the Improbable is the Answer
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A bit of apocalyptic sci-fi, but no less plausible than the other scenarios.
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Closures still causing debate after all these years. As I understand it (and I'm not close to the situation so I may be wrong), work continues on JDK7 in OpenJDK. When the JCP gets unstuck, JSRs will get submitted, and the expert group will then be able to decide what to keep/add. Pragmatism, community, open source.
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"While the government and the music industry posture about illegal filesharing, smaller, smarter companies are simply out-competing it" -- Copyright abuse of most kinds is just a message to the market saying "business model available". We don't need new laws to protect the incumbents, we need entrepreneurs to outpace them.
Posted by webmink
( Nov 19 2009, 04:06:57 AM PST )
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Wednesday November 18, 2009 ☞ Getting A Clue
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While these proposed reforms of the US system are to be welcomed, they fail to address - or even acknowledge - the real issues, which are to do with the way patents are used to support demands for injunctive relief and demands from non-practicing patent holders. Both allow extortion of the "nice business you have there, shame if anything happened to it" kind and need urgent attention, especially in the ICT industry.
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Very worthy and very broad.
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Excellent news here - I hope they follow through fully and don't find a way to make it closed at the 11th hour.
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Great story about using a Googlewhack to monitor for researchers pursing a secret.
Posted by webmink
( Nov 18 2009, 04:07:53 AM PST )
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Saturday November 14, 2009 ☞ Inconvenient Truth
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Answer: Yes. So why do the labels want to kill it off? Because they don't. Translation: All this toxic law to cut people off the internet is all about protecting big businesses with tired business models and not about protecting music artists, art or culture. Shame on you, Lord Mandelson.
Posted by webmink
( Nov 14 2009, 04:05:37 AM PST )
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Friday November 13, 2009 A Software Freedom Scorecard
I spoke this morning at the South Tyrol Free Software Conference in Bolzano, Italy. My subject was the idea of a "software freedom scorecard", a list of indicators for the strength of software freedom in an open source project or product, about which I wrote recently. The slides are available for download.
I also refer to reptiles, and that's a reference to another blog post.
Posted by webmink
( Nov 13 2009, 02:44:41 PM PST )
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☝ Starting November With Some Free Music
I just posted this week's free music downloads list over on my personal blog.
Posted by webmink
( Nov 13 2009, 03:47:31 AM PST )
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Wednesday November 11, 2009 ☞ Three Kinds of Progress
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I do hope it's actually a hearing and not a kangaroo court. So far the EC spokespeople that have responded on the record seem to treat all counter-arguments with very little respect, which is probably what finally made Oracle snap on Monday.
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Very interesting language, even if it's yet another extension of Google's hegemony.
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While the sentiment is a common on, as Matt says it's a bit rich coming from SAP. I can't help thinking this is more to do with their frustration that the EU didn't include Java in their Statement of Objection despite SAP's best efforts to join in with the rest of the companies busily trying to advantage themselves in the name of "competition".
Posted by webmink
( Nov 11 2009, 04:08:07 AM PST )
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