Wednesday May 06, 2009 ☞ Innovation vs Corporate Effects
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Great (if rather long) article from Gladwell reminding us that David beat Goliath by playing as David.
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US companies pay taxes equivalent to 3%, and while salaries have fallen profits have risen. This Telegraph article (note to non-UK readers: that's a right-wing daily newspaper in the UK) makes it abundantly clear that something has to give and that, as long as he doesn't get carried away, Obama is probably on the right track.
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The JCP Program Office would like to know what we think of these changes to the rules. So, freedom-lovers everywhere, get to it!
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While it's reasonable to have strong penalties for counterfeiting, it's just not safe to have penalties like this available for copyright infringement all the time the law fails to recognise the fact that all consumers are also copyists in a digital world. These increases should not go ahead until copyright law has been dragged kicking and screaming into the internet age of a meshed society.
Posted by webmink
( May 06 2009, 07:30:27 AM PDT )
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Tuesday May 05, 2009 ☞ Governance, Copyright Bullying and Making Things Work
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The most rational and useful summary of the Java-for-Cloud and GAE/J discussion that I've seen so far - nice work by IEEE Tech Talk.
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Ubuntu offered to update my EeePC to 9.04 and I foolishly succumbed to its siren call. My EePC is now irredeemably borked and needs an operating system to be installed from scratch. Ubuntu was great, but since it can't be trusted to perform a routine update I may as well try something else. Next on my list: OpenSolaris. Last time I tried it it wasn't really ready, let's see what everyone's work (not least Masafumi-san) have wrought.
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A visible reminder of the huge, global exercise of corporate influence through the willing offices of the US Department of Commerce that has led to governments globally acting against the interests of the culture, education and innovation of their own citizens rather than being blackmailed over their main sources of income.
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Not that I think it was done intentionally. Rather, the careless use of great power by Microsoft (who, having outsourced the Windows Update, presumably didn't feel it was their problem any more) and Akamai (who presumably made the content non-cachable for great reasons nothing to do with preventing other organizations disintermediating them) resulted in collateral damage to ordinary people.
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A necessary next step for the internet, presumably something that wasn't even worth asking the previous regime to consider. As long as it doesn't end up being even more manipulable as a tool of an easily-rigged majority like the Global Raciscm Conference became.
Posted by webmink
( May 05 2009, 07:30:23 AM PDT )
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Sunday May 03, 2009 ☞ The Music of the Spheres, and URI Integrity
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If it's fine to sing a rainbow, it's fine to sing a swine flue, too.
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I wonder where it will go to after Sun?
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All URIs pointing at BEA blogs and developer resources appear to have been vaped - the old domains don't even point at this page as advertised any more. Not a lot of respect for the integrity of the web round these parts, evidently.
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New acoustic line-up! At the end of the road! This week while I'm at home! Awesome.
Posted by webmink
( May 03 2009, 07:30:25 AM PDT )
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Saturday May 02, 2009 ☞ Eclipse, Privacy and Poetry
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Unrest in the Eclipse community. I wonder if the Board over there will entertain this sort of discussion? Good test.
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It takes stunts like this to show legislators and judges just how much we need our privacy protected. My preferred solution: make clear that all personal information is the copyright of the person involved and that all uses require a license under current, draconian copyright laws.
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Britain has a new Poet Laureate (the one we should have got last time) in Carol Ann Duffy. This collection of her poetry contains plenty that is dark and searing, but I'm in no doubt that she is Britain's greatest living poet. Try "Mrs Lazarus" for reflection on the end of a relationship, "Anne Hathaway" for a delicious yet wistful look at the depths of love. Essential addition to your collection if you read poetry.
Posted by webmink
( May 02 2009, 07:30:29 AM PDT )
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Friday May 01, 2009 ☞ ODF, Patents and Copyright in NZ & SF
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"The Copyright Act was written in the pre-internet age, and does not address any of the complexities surrounding file sharing, format shifting, and other modern issues such as DVD copying – problems the last government was attempting to fix in a piecemeal fashion." Necessary, but dangerous unless all concerned citizens watch like a hawk and engage vigorously - you can bet the copyright monopolists will.
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If you decide that the ODF support Microsoft has built in to the latest update of Office 2007 is actually too clunky for you (most notably becuase of the bad macro support), you can still use the ODF Plug-in to get decent ODF 1.2 support.
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New research shows that, despite a 500 year history of having ciopyright law (or maybe becuase of it?), the UK has law that is more hostile to consumers and more open to abuse by copyright owners than anywhere else. Time for reform.
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Proposed legislation in South Africa will make it mandatory to patent all outcomes of public-funded work and to sell the patents to the highest bidder. Seems to me this is the opposite of the direction the EU is taking. It will presumably make it impossible for open source to participate in South African government-funded projects. Wasn't this the same approach that India rejected?
Posted by webmink
( May 01 2009, 07:30:25 AM PDT )
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