Thursday May 28, 2009 ☞ Semantics, Ancient and Modern
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Fascinating overview of the challenges deciphering ancient languages. At least there's no DRM or obsolete media to overcome.
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Great line-up of speakers for the 10th anniversary meeting of FISL in Porto Alegre, Brazil, at the end of June.
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Fascinating background on the thinking behind Topsy.
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"A search engine powered by tweets". Congratulations to Rishab Ghosh and his colleagues on their emergence from stealth mode with their social-graph-powered search engine. Inspired marketing to associate it with Twitter too!
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I'll be speaking at OSCON 2009 - using material from Tiki Dare's wonderful paper on open source communities and trademarks.
Posted by webmink
( May 28 2009, 07:39:36 AM PDT )
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Wednesday May 27, 2009 links for 2009-05-27
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Well worth reading this commentary from the sort of professional Cheney claims to be speaking for.
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Sensible advice in a digestible format delivered just when a load of us need it...
Posted by webmink
( May 27 2009, 07:30:49 AM PDT )
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Sunday May 24, 2009 ☞ An Eclectic Holiday Sunday Selection
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Unexpected trademark dispute. Is the noun "Allah" a trademark of Islam or a generic usable by any religion?
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I thought the best song in Eurovision was actually the Icelandic one. I discovered that Johanna, the Icelandic performer at Eurovision, has made the most of her appearance and released an album. It's pretty good, even if the is the anti-Bjork. (UK-only link)
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Fascinating analysis from CBS of the word frequency in last week's "Duelling Speeches" episode in the US suggests that while Obama's goal is protecting the interests of the American people by closing Guantanamo Bay, Cheney's interest is more in defending his record for history.
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"Some of the major US banks have warned the changes may reduce the amount of credit available to some card holders. They say this is because the new rules will make it more difficult for them to set rates based on the risk customers pose." Or, to put it another way, "we should be free to gouge the suckers".
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The results are in and it's a landslide in favour of adding CC-BY-SA in addition to GFDL. Excellent, and a wise decision by the crowd.
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I bet the police in the UK can't wait to get their hands on these. That guy staring at you is actually a surveillance device...
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I've been helping to negotiate this agreement for many months, very pleased to finally see it signed.
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France's dreadful new online copyright enforcement law, translated into english.
Posted by webmink
( May 24 2009, 07:33:44 AM PDT )
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Friday May 22, 2009 ☞ Unexpected Segway Usage
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Quite remarkable camera work used here.
Posted by webmink
( May 22 2009, 07:30:56 AM PDT )
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Thursday May 21, 2009 ☞ Slow Loris Operating System
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Here's how to keep your slow loris happy.
Posted by webmink
( May 21 2009, 07:35:00 AM PDT )
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Wednesday May 20, 2009 ☞ Exciting events and Interoperability news
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More local geek activity. Given the employment profile in the area I've been amazed this sort of thing hasn't shown up before - very welcome. Southampton is rapidly emerging as "Silicon Port".
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"The OpenDocument Format (ODF) Alliance today cautioned that serious deficiencies in Microsoft’s support for ODF needed to be addressed to ensure greater interoperability with other ODF-supporting software. "
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"Kernel Conference Australia is a Kernel-focused technical conference to be held in Brisbane, Australia, from July 15th to 17th, 2009. Any and all Open Source kernels and the technologies within those kernels are open for discussion. The only hard criteria is that the kernel must be covered by an OSI-approved license." -- Don't be put off by the fact this is Sun-sponsored, the organisers are creating a genuine and inclusive technical conference that looks very worthwhile.
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New site helps you see just how compatible office suites are with each other.
Posted by webmink
( May 20 2009, 07:30:50 AM PDT )
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Tuesday May 19, 2009 Fighting Fund for the Big WOBber
You'll remember my recent posting about the fine work journalist Brenno de Winter has been doing in his spare time, bringing a little healing daylight into local government in The Netherlands.
Brenno has been trying to get details of local government procurement published on the web, so that the resulting transparency can drive better decisions. Since most local authorities haven't wanted to do that, he's been filing bulk Freedom of Information requests (the Dutch abbreviation is apparently WOB) to get the data.
The local authorities haven't exactly been helpful. They have been slow, obstructive and have sent image PDFs instead of parseable data. Brenno knows his rights, however, and has pressed the point every time and has seen great results, posting data on his Big WOBber website.
I got a note from him yesterday telling me a new problem has come up. Despite the fact that the local authorities - like all in Europe - have a legal duty to provide the information, they have started sending Brenno big bills for the administrative work involved, in a kind of denial-of-service attack on his campaign.
He's pretty sure that if he takes all the claims to court he can get them struck down, but to do that he needs a fighting fund. There's an event in Amsterdam on June 11th where Scriptum Libre will be raising funds for him, and you can contribute by visiting their payment page and designating Brenno as the beneficiary of your donation. Worth supporting - pass it on.
Posted by webmink
( May 19 2009, 11:51:00 AM PDT )
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Monday May 18, 2009 ☞ My most popular link repost to date...
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A gift to fans, your for the download.
Posted by webmink
( May 18 2009, 07:30:35 AM PDT )
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Friday May 15, 2009 ☞ Excellent satire plus upcoming gigs
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"Yes, if banned from using print, some students will be unable to do their school work, some adults will face minor inconvenience in their daily lives, and a few troublemakers will not be allowed to participate in -- or even listen to -- political debate. Maybe they'll think more carefully the next time, before allowing themselves to be accused of copyright infringement."
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I'll be speaking at FISL 10 in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Wonderful, really looking forward to visiting again.
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All the stuff that's happening about OpenSolaris at CommunityOne West on Jun 1-3. NOte in particular that there's a special code to get free tickets to the "OpenSolaris Deep Dives" when you register, "OSDDT".
Posted by webmink
( May 15 2009, 07:30:40 AM PDT )
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Wednesday May 13, 2009 ☞ Maintaining a sense of peace
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Good move. I hope we don't have to have a blow-up like this for every bit of data we need for open government. And I hope it has an API and isn't just dead PDFs.
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Everything I know about this matter I have learned from the media.
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I love my FM3 Buddha Machine - this web site is a wonderful alternative.
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No recession in Switzerland, obviously.
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Write a review and get a nice new t-shirt your girlfriend will refuse to wear.
Posted by webmink
( May 13 2009, 07:30:48 AM PDT )
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Tuesday May 12, 2009 ☞ It's the people that make it work
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"OPS4J stands for Open Participation Software for Java, and this community is trying to build a new, more open model for Open Source development, where not only the usage is Open and Free, but the Participation is Open as well. Removal of barriers, let more people in, have more fun and less politics. I have also seen Open Development as a term to describe this. Think of it as Wiki brought to Coding." -- Open source succeeded by balancing opportunity and freedom, individual priority and community cohesion. Does this approach have that balance? We'll see.
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Spolsky is right, B&H is an incredible place to visit if you're in New York - a real one-of-a-kind experience. I have bought a variety of camera gear there and always been delighted both by the advice given (not always with a smile) and by the prices.
Posted by webmink
( May 12 2009, 07:30:25 AM PDT )
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Monday May 11, 2009 ☞ Results of Extreme Capitalism
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Excellent and encouraging analysis from Robin here. Scott McNealy has been saying for years that net-connected devices are the new world after Microsoft and the PC, and the time has come. Scott may have preferred other technologies to be involved, but the new world is a race between two systems based on Free software (one closed, one open).
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Far too close to the bone for comfort. [Dilbert cartoon; link will corrode in a few weeks as they have no respect for the web]
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Correct title; largely wrong-headed article. There's no doubt that some reform is needed of trademark law, and I've been raising the issue in conference addresses for several years, but this guy's suggestion that Mozilla, Canonical and Red Hat are doing something wrong doesn't bear much examination if you've spent any time understanding the minefield created by the various takes on trademark law around the world. The most common error: only considering the law for a single country.
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"Did you wake up this morning and say "I wish someone would figure out a way to let me do less with my computer"? You've come to the right place! "
Posted by webmink
( May 11 2009, 07:30:29 AM PDT )
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Sunday May 10, 2009 ☞ The Pattern in the Primes
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Fascinating, and now it's discovered so obvious you wonder why no-one else has observed it before. I wonder if this has any implications for prime-based cryptography?
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The rising profile of Free/Open Source software in American politics is reflected in this introductory article on the Huffington Post.
Posted by webmink
( May 10 2009, 07:30:18 AM PDT )
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Friday May 08, 2009 ☞ Freedoms, their use and abuse
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"In a speech to the NESTA / UNESCO Public Service Media 2009 Conference the Minister announced plans for an overhaul of Crown Copyright rules that will make it easier for citizens to re-use Government information" - sounds fantastic, looking forward to the chance to study the details.
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That's version 3.1. I've been running both the Mac and Linux versions since RC1, and I can confirm that it's good.
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If the direction of government is eGovernment, and the citizen interaction with government will be mainly over the internet (2-way interaction, not just reading information), it follows that access to the internet may not be prevented except in the most extreme circumstances where other basic rights are validly limited as well (such as during imprisonment). On that basis, it seems to me obvious that Reding is right and internet access is a fundamental right in Europe.
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When a law achieves zero success achieving its objective but provides a path for the substantial erosion of civil liberty, you know it needs repealing. Here's exhibit A in the UK.
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The only thing that surprises me is that anyone is surprised. It's what Stephe Walli talked about years ago as the "best" strategy for MSFT for whom "interoperability" generally means "can migrate into our product" (AKA "into-operability").
Posted by webmink
( May 08 2009, 07:30:28 AM PDT )
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