Monday December 07, 2009 ☞ Your Freedom - In Safe Hands?
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The House of Lords debate uncovered the lack of accountability that has been caused by concentrating so many roles in a single department under Peter Mandelson. The Lords asked "Can so vast a department really be held to account effectively when its only Cabinet minister is here and not in the Commons?" but I'd go further and ask whether such a vast department can in any way be held accountable to Parliament. Lord Mandeson is clearly not a safe pair of hands for our liberty and he is using both of them to grasp it and reserve it to himself.
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Whether these are a good idea or not for their intended use, the article makes no mention at all of their use by the police to track vehicles for other uses. Everywhere you see the phrase "speed camera" or "safety camera" think "surveillance camera" becuase these are general-purpose video cameras whose use is dictated purely by software. They can be used with great ease for general surveillance, and the more we allow on the streets the less freedom we have as a society, no matter what benefits may be used to justify their initial introduction.
Posted by webmink
( Dec 07 2009, 04:04:53 AM PST )
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Saturday December 05, 2009 ☞ Open Insights
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The detailed letter linked from this news release is well worth reading in full. It gives more insight into the case than has been available from any source to date.
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Both. The question that remains is which is in control, and my sense from reading all the postings is that it's still the latter.
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Wish I'd been able to go see Imogen Heap's tour, but she didn't come to the south.
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Yes, there should. It's dirty bullying blackmail and the people doing it should be ashamed. The law needs reform to prevent it happening entirely and return copyright to its proper role policing the relationship between large corporations.
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It absolutely is, because as I have said over & over open source is nothing to do with business. Open source is what happens when developers align a fragment of their interests with a fragment of the interests of many other developers and collaborate around a free software commons. It is not pro-business, anti-business, right-wing, left-wing - it is just what happens to software development when the internet is pervasive. Any business model is entirely up to the people involved and is never inherent in the community. When you think it is, it's probably going to turn out to be broken & need mending.
Posted by webmink
( Dec 05 2009, 04:04:44 AM PST )
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Friday December 04, 2009 ☞ Stuff That Matters
Link posting has been offline for a few days while I have been fighting with delicious & Roller trying to work out why they wouldn't make nice. In the end I created completely new posting jobs (a few times) and it now seems to be working again. In other news: I have a huge number of tabs open in Firefox...
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Eben Moglen sends a critique to the European Commission.
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Worthwhile dissection of this outrageous assault on the future on behalf of the past.
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Calm and devastating analysis of the security procedures at US (and other international) airports by a former police leader with both the experience to know and the hard nose to not complain unless it was really relevant.
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More precisely, they take exception to section 17, the clause that would turn Mandelson and his successors into absolute monarchs of copyright enforcement. No-one in their right mind would think that clause was good and I can't help thinking it's there just to be removed as part of a compromise agreement that leaves the rest of the terrible ideas in this bill (like three-strikes disconnection) intact. Yes, I think the people behind this bill are that cynical.
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Rather skewed in the direction of corporate competition rules, but a useful short summary of an important but impenetrable European landmark treaty.
Posted by webmink
( Dec 04 2009, 08:10:16 AM PST )
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Monday November 30, 2009 ☞ More Than
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Repeat after me: open source means more than just the license. We need a scorecard. (And before you say, I am well aware of Sun's shortcomings, I am still working on them).
Posted by webmink
( Nov 30 2009, 04:06:57 AM PST )
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Sunday November 29, 2009 ☞ Hard To Find Links
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Seems the slow roll-out of fibre in the UK caused in no small part by an incredibly badly structured tax imposed at the start of the decade.
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"So the market is large, there seems to be vibrant competition, new entrants are disrupting it, and the established player's legacy is inhibiting its ability to compete."
Posted by webmink
( Nov 29 2009, 04:05:28 AM PST )
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Saturday November 28, 2009 ☞ Pushing & Shuffling
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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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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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