10.06.09
Posted in Apple, Deception, Marketing, Microsoft, Vista 7, Windows at 10:21 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: “Free” as in “read the fine print” (or “How false marketing continues at Microsoft”)
SEVERAL Web sites are currently pointing out that Microsoft’s delusion known as Vista 7 uses people’s inability to read the fine print. People are led to believe that they receive a “free” upgrade, but free in this context means neither libre nor gratis. It’s a marketing trick.
Hidden Fees Discovered for “Free” Windows 7 Upgrades
Since June 26, retailers and computer manufacturers have urged shoppers to buy computers already on store shelves loaded with the much-maligned Windows Vista operating system because they would qualify for a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it was released in October. As it turns out, Mouse Print* has learned that some computer purchasers will be asked to pay shipping, handling and other junk fees that total between $11 and $17 to receive their “free” upgrade disks.
More at Tom’s Hardware:
Did you buy a new PC this past summer with the promise of a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it launches on October 22? Well, it turns out that the upgrade might not be completely free.
This seems like yet another case of false marketing. Remember the “Vista capable” lawsuits [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] .
Speaking of marketing zeal, watch what Apple is doing.
Apple has moved to prevent Oz retailer Woolworths from trademarking a logo – something which would allow it to “slap its branding and logo on every imaginable product”, as The Age puts it.
Put into perspective:
Do Morons In A Hurry Shop For iPhones At Woolworths Down Under?
[...]
Honestly, I have no idea how anyone can claim the two logos are similar in a way that might lead to even the slightest bit of confusion.
For marketing companies like Microsoft and Apple, focus on competition continues to neglect technical merit. They are distracted. █
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Posted in Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Standard at 10:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft uses Silverlight to overcome the ‘nuisance’ of Web standards while Novell helps it
OUR READER Goblin has written this short post about Microsoft’s decline in the Web search market — a subject which we wrote about some days ago. In order to survive on-line, Microsoft knows it must play dirty (or “aggressively”) and our reader Oiaohm brought to our attention the following fragment from last week’s interview with Microsoft’s CEO:
Mr. ARRINGTON: Is Silverlight essentially competing with Windows? I mean, the way you described some of this here, it’s like they’re competing with each other.
Mr. BALLMER: No, it depends on what the strategy is. IE only runs from Windows. Anybody who uses IE uses Windows. So does it compete with Windows? No it helps Windows.
On the other hand, when we tell people the right applications which are not unique to Windows that doesn’t particularly help Windows. And so we’ll continue to see and do things that are standard-based because that’s important. And you continue to see us encourage developers to do things that run uniquely on the Windows platform. You know, with the new Silverlight, you can build Silverlight applications that are flash-like in the sense that they run across platform. But you can also do things which are even nicer which really narrow down and run only on Windows. And given that Windows is a billion units, you can afford to make optimizations as long as they bring value and do your applications that are Windows unique.
Get it? And what would be better than replacing Web standards with proprietary Microsoft software? Microsoft has longed for it for well over a decade. Novell and Miguel de Icaza’s team are helping Windows by supporting Silver Lie as they do.
Microsoft will never support vector graphics in a standard way as long as it is pushing VML with Silver Lie as a substitute to already-established industry standards (OOXML has the same effect with VML). The creator of the World Wide Web has publicly denounced Microsoft for it and as IDG’s Paul Krill now puts it, “Google asks Microsoft to support vector graphics on browser.” From a separate IDG site we have this new report: [hat tip: Tony Manco)
Some seeds for overhauling web browser graphics were planted more than a decade ago, and Google believes now is the time for them to bear fruit.
The company is hosting the SVG Open 2009 conference that begins on Friday to dig into a standard called Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) that can bring the technology to the web. With growing support from browser makers, an appetite for vector graphics among web programmers, and new work under way to make SVG a routine part of the web, the technology has its best chance in years at becoming mainstream.
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Google and various allies are working to change that — its Chrome browser along with Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari and Opera support SVG — and judging by the arrival of Microsoft as a gold sponsor of the conference, things could be turning around.
“Gold sponsor,” eh?
Meaning they pay to stack it up…
The HTML Working Group at the W3C is already plagued by the influence of proprietary champions like Microsoft and Apple, who cause trouble to HTML using their software patents that they refuse to abolish, not to mention the lobbying against Ogg.
To Microsoft, no Web standards are allowed if they advance a network outside its control. For that reason, Microsoft and Novell will continue to promote Microsoft's substitute for HTML while pretending to support standards at the same time. █
“There has recently been an exchange on email with people in the Office group about Office and HTML.
“In one piece of mail people were suggesting that Office had to work equally well with all browsers and that we shouldn’t force Office users to use our browser. This Is wrong and I wanted to correct this.
“Another suggestion In this mail was that we can’t make our own unilateral extensions to HTML I was going to say this was wrong and correct this also.”
–Bill Gates [PDF]
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Posted in FSF, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Mono, Novell at 9:23 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Novell’s VP carries on spinning to discredit the father of Free(dom) software
THOSE who read Richard Stallman’s political blog will know that he is no friend of George Bush; in fact, Stallman is a truthful activist for peace. That peace, however, is constantly being disrupted by aggressors. In the technical world — like in politics — there are usually a bunch of thugs whose actions alone speak for themselves (see Comes vs Microsoft for example).
But following Stallman’s correct (and exceedingly polite) characterisation of Novell's Miguel de Icaza as a Microsoft apologist, Miguel comes up with this public daemonisation of Stallman:
Richard Stallman frequently conjures bogeymen to rally his base. Sometimes it is Microsoft, sometimes he makes up facts and sometimes he even attacks his own community [1]. His language is filled with simple, George W Bush-eque terms like Good vs Evil, Us vs Them.
Let’s examine this ludicrous claim. Just in the last month or so, Microsoft attacked GNU/Linux quite openly (or got exposed). Miguel de Icaza is being delusional if he is not paying attention to Microsoft’s patent attacks on GNU/Linux [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] (not always via third parties, as TomTom clearly shows). Perhaps he also refuses to see what goes on at Best Buy, Staples, and Office Depot [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. Why would de Icaza smear the father of the Free software movement and defend his colleagues at Microsoft instead? Well, the answer is contained therein.
In Twitter, Novell’s de Icaza is also calling Stallman “misinformed” instead of looking at the mirror. Who among those two is actually examining evidence and which one sticks his head in the sand? Watch this new coverage from LinuxCon (finally available to non-subscribers of LWN.net):
Keith Bergelt, CEO of the Open Invention Network (OIN), described the circumstances which led the company to recently purchase 22 Microsoft patents, as part of a talk at the first LinuxCon. While the circumstances surrounding that purchase were quite interesting—and indicative of Microsoft’s patent strategy—he also described the mission of OIN as a protector of Linux from patent trolls. Because patents are likely to be a threat to Linux for a long time to come, organizations like OIN are needed to allow Linux development to continue with as few patent impediments as possible.
Here is Heise’s coverage of the latest argument between Stallman and Novell’s VP.
In a posting on his FSF blog, Richard Stallman has attacked Microsoft’s creation of the CodePlex Foundation and dubbed Miguel de Icaza an “apologist” for Microsoft. De Icaza has responded in his own blog comparing Stallman’s language to that of George W Bush, and defending the foundation as “great way of helping steer Microsoft in the right direction”.
Jason at Mono-Nono has responded as well, defending Stallman of course. He rightly shows that Novell’s de Icaza is using straw man arguments and spin:
This is a bit of a funny point. Mr. de Icaza loves to imply or outright state that those people critical of Microsoft are afraid of Microsoft.
This is so foolish I can scarcely understand why Mr. de Icaza loves this line of argument so. Understand this, when I criticize Nickelback, it’s not because I am afraid of them. It is because they suck.
When people criticize Microsoft, it is not because of fear. It is because they are tired of vendor lock-in, overpriced and insecure software, hindering the industry, illegal behavior, lies and slander against projects they devote time and effort to, and so many — many — other offenses that Microsoft has committed, and continues to commit.
“Fear” is not even a factor.
But, I guess the desire to attack the opponent by hinting he is a coward (or fear-monger) is too strong to overcome.
“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything” – Mark Twain
One thing you will notice if you pay attention to Team Mono rhetoric like I do, is that it is rarely even logically consistent with itself.
For example, one of the big defense points that came out when the Microsoft CodePlex Foundation was announced is that it was an independent body, it was only because things needed to be set up so quickly that it was so heavily staffed by Microsoft people, and so forth.
A lot of Miguel de Icaza’s arguments sound not so much different from Microsoft’s party line. Maybe he spent too much time in the Redmond campus where he is a regular visitor. █
Keeping one’s head out of the sand
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Posted in News Roundup at 8:48 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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The idea of the radio adverts was to be able to increase the business of installing and supporting “Linux” based desktop computers in the Texas, Dallas area. This could then be considered a reasonable investment of money into advertising as radio ads are expensive for the average bloke on the street.
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Phatch offers batch processing capabilities; if you need to apply effects like sharpen, add border, etc. to many images at once, it would normally take hours if you had to do it manually. In contrast, Phatch can process entire directories at once in minutes. Alternatively, Phatch offers drag-and-drop processing. Phatch may not be a tool you use every day, but it is invaluable in the situations where you do need it.
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Instant-on
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DeviceVM Inc. is creating a new version of its instant-on Linux environment, Splashtop, aimed at laptop computers bought and managed by enterprise IT managers.
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DeviceVM is bringing its instant-on Linux platform to business computers. The new business version of Splashtop will include remote virtual desktop client software and support for syncing with Outlook.
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The key to ARM’s success is Dell’s plan to run Linux as a second rapid boot operating system on its Windows latptop.
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There are low-cost instant-on Linux-powered netbooks on the market, but this one is rather different.
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The BIOS is the first piece of code that a computer runs when it is powered on. Before Windows or Linux can start, the BIOS identifies, tests and gets system devices such as the video display card, the hard disk and other hardware up and running. But running the tests every time the machine powers on can be time consuming.
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Server
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The OpenBlockS 600 is powered by a 600MHz powerPC CPU and has 1GB of DDR2 SDRAM and a CompactFlash slot and three USB 2.0 ports for internal and external storage. It comes installed with Plat’Home’s own embedded SSD/Linux distribution by default. Customers can also request others such as Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Java SE for embedded and NetBSD.
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The LSE plans to migrate both itself and its Italian subsidiary, Borsa, to the new platform.
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Kernel Space
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Or not “entirely”. As too many people pointed out, I had been somewhat less than careful, and the 2.6.32-rc1 release actually called itself -rc2 in the Makefile. As a result, I don’t want to make a 2.6.32-rc2 release, since any bug-reports etc would then be met with the inevitable confusion: do you mean -rc2 as in the Makefile (ie really -rc1) or -rc2 as in the tagged release.
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Packet capture is a mechanism that copies packets received from the network and pushes them into user space making the frame available to an application for further analysis.
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# Linux: Ubuntu 8.10, 9.04
# Debian GNU/Linux 5.0
# RH Linux 3.0,4.0,5.0
# WS SuSE Linux 8.0, 9.0, 10.0
# SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 11
# SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11
# OpenSuSE 11.1
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Last week Plymouth had picked up a DRM renderer plug-in, but now this week it has picked up an X11 renderer plug-in.
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Browsers
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Firefox
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Do you like watching lots of videos at YouTube but are tired of the small video size and abundant background clutter? Now you can enjoy watching those videos in cinema style with a simple Firefox extension.
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Mozilla is pushing ahead with its open video support in the Firefox web browser. Current developer builds of Firefox 3.6, expected to arrive later this year, now include a fullscreen option for movies embedded using the HTML5 video tag.
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Google/Chrome
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Four months have gone by since Google announced their new, innovative communication solution, Wave. Last week was the beginning of its test phase.
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The Google Chrome browser is still available as a stable build only for Windows, but it turns out that you can get a dev build for Linux and also for Mac OSX. I’ve been curious about this browser for a while, so I tried out both.
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I’m please to report that they work fine in Google Chrome for Linux, so be sure to take a peek at the hard work that’s gone into them.
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The new Artist Themes are featured prominently in the Chrome Themes Gallery, and you just click an “Apply theme” button (from within Chrome) to get them going.
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We’re honored to have had the opportunity to work with artists including Jeff Koons, Jenny Holzer, Karim Rashid, Jonathan Adler, Oscar de la Renta, Anita Kunz, Tom Sachs, Kate Spade, Donna Karan, Kid Robot, Casey Reas, Dolce & Gabbana, Michael Graves, Todd Oldham, Yann Arthus-Bertrand and Mariah Carey (and that’s just to name a few!). We would like to extend our thanks to all the artists for lending their vision, imagination and hard work to this collaboration.
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KDE
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I absolutely love KDE 4. There is so much new, but everything that is different feels intuit. My very favorite feature is, this far, the device notifying plasmoid. Not having to show the desktop to mount, open or unmount my USB-stick is just – smart and intuit.
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Ultimately Dolphin is a preference, and some will still prefer the more powerful Konqueror. Others will appreciate have a file manager separate from their browser. There are many other features to try with Dolphin. Experiment and try new things. You might be pleasantly surprised.
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I think time has come when can try this fantastic distro which very stable and least risky to virus as comapred to windows any edition whether it is XP or windows 7.
My Rating : 4.5/5
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Slackware 13.0 remains very much old school Linux. Despite some clear improvements in the new version, particularly in the area of wireless support, Slackware is still best suited to advanced Linux users who know what they are doing and are comfortable at the command line – despite claims to the contrary on the official website. The only newcomers to Linux who should consider Slackware are those who wish to really learn how Linux works under the hood and are ready to roll up their sleeves. If that’s your goal, to learn how things work, then you’d be hard pressed to do better than Slackware.
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If all went well, you should be able to use Seamonkey and browse the web!
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New Releases
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Gentoo Family
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Sabayon Linux founder Fabio Erculiani has announced the availability of the GNOME and KDE variants of version 5.0 of his popular Linux distribution. Sabayon, named after an egg-yolk based dessert, is derived from Gentoo Linux and is intended to provide a “complete out-of-the-box experience” while being both stable and versatile. The major update includes a number of bug fixes, performance improvements and new features.
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The Gentoo developers have announced the availability of Gentoo Linux 10.0 as a special edition LiveDVD to celebrate their tenth anniversary. The project usually works with rolling updates: every few weeks, the developers release updated installation CDs that serve as a basis for new Gentoo installations. Users then keep their systems current by installing regular online updates.
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Debian Family
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Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud, or a new platform closely modelled on it, will emerge as the leading cloud standard, Canonical chief Mark Shuttleworth has predicted.
Shuttleworth told delegates at a BT open-source event on Monday that to emerge as a leader among the alternatives now on offer, a cloud platform must have open-source implementations. He gave the example of the Eucalyptus implementation of EC2, which the Canonical-sponsored Ubuntu Linux distribution has adopted for private and public cloud use.
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Ubuntu One certainly one-ups DropBox for simplicity. This tool will make using Ubuntu on the business level all the more easier. You will be able to easily sync all of your files between home and work. Give Ubuntu One a try.
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One word sums up this Karmic Koala Ubuntu incarnation: Super.
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Overall, I have to say that Ubuntu 9.10 looks like it will be a great release. A few technologies in this release are new, so it may give the system a rough edge. When the next LTS release comes around (10.04), it will probably refine those features to create the best release yet. I will definitely be giving this system a test run when it is released in 24 days!
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Other aesthetic improvements in Ubuntu 9.10 include new default wallpaper and icon themes. Stay tuned to WorksWithU for coverage of these and other new features in Karmic.
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Announced today the release of Breathe Icon Theme v0.51!. A new effort to create a set of icons mixing the modern style of KDEs “Oxygen” icons with Ubuntu’s “Human” set. This icon set has been crafted by the Ubuntu Artwork community and therefor has Ubuntu in mind for it’s intended use. “Because humans need Oxygen.”
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The open source community doesn’t generally get the niceties like balloons and napkins, but we do know how to celebrate a good thing. The above is from a release celebration for Ubuntu (9.10 is coming out later this month!).
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There are 3 different styles to choose from, 2 that use a java script and are animated, and one that is static for websites and blogs that don’t use java.
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The first question I hear Linux newbies ask is what is the best distribution to use? I think right now plenty of linux desktop options exist for newbies however a few things set Ubuntu ahead of the pack in my opinion.
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A lot has been said regarding the upcoming release of Ubuntu, that is Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, – its new looks, new features etc. However, understandably, its KDE counterpart, Kubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, has been largely ignored and not a great deal of noise has been made about it. Here, in this article, we look at seven features, good as well as bad, that will be available with Kubuntu Karmic, which in our opinion needs to be watched out for.
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Other specifications include a 1.3 megapixel web cameras in his head, and it can run Linux or Windows making it highly customizable, check out the video of him in action below.
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Vstone has announced a two-legged humanoid robot that sports an onboard, Intel Atom-based PC. The “Robovie-PC” can walk on joints that offer six degrees of freedom, offers an accelerometer and gyro sensors, includes a 1.3 megapixel webcam, and has a body padded with polyurethane foam, says the company.
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Caught yourself looking for a new Wi-Fi router here lately? Netgear’s new RangeMax Wireless-N Gigabit Router with USB (WNR3500L) is certainly worth a look, particularly if you value flexibility and have an inkling to make on your favorite USB peripherals go wireless. The router is built around a powerful open source Linux platform, giving developers and coding gurus the ability to make tweaks that would generally be disallowed.
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Netgear this morning challenged Cisco in customizable routers with a new Linux-based RangeMax model. The WNR3500L has the same 802.11n Wi-Fi, gigabit Ethernet and USB device sharing as the regular WNR3500 but runs on an open-source Linux platform and will take common unofficial router firmware like DD-WRT, OpenWRT and Tomato. These give it much more customization than the proprietary OS and can bring features that Netgear wouldn’t introduce itself.
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NetGear announced a Wireless-N (802.11n) router supported by its open source Linux development platform and “MyOpenRouter.com” community. The NetGear RangeMax Wireless-N Gigabit Router with USB (WNR3500L) offers an 802.11n WiFi access point, boasting up to 300Mbps bandwidth, five gigabit Ethernet ports and USB storage access, says the company.
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Both Nokia and Google have been much criticized for their dual-OS strategies, which many observers seem to find confusing, or a sign of indecision. A better question might be whether companies of such scale and ambition could realistically put all their eggs in a single OS basket – and that was certainly the view Nokia was presenting at its recent developers’ conference, Over The Air, where it continued to push its cross-platform software tools, Qt, towards center stage.
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Phones
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AdMob has issued a research report on mobile-phone data usage, claiming that the iPhone leads in mobile usage, but that the Linux-based Palm Pre and Android phones are rising fast, says eWEEK.. Meanwhile, Palm released a WebOS 1.2.1 upgrade that reconnects the Pre to Apple’s iTunes, says another eWEEK story.
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Wi-Fi performance-to the extent it’s possible to test it-is good. The current inability to use Wi-Fi for anything but Internet access is unfortunate, but we can hope that Palm or some third-party developer will deliver an app in the future that adds that capability.
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The Palm Pre is the first real competitor to the iPhone. Those who are Apple fanatics will still go with the iPhone, I’m sure, but this is definitely a great phone. And if you love how Palm approaches things, then you’ll love how they take things to the next level with this smart phone.
In the end, it really comes down to what you’re interested in and what functionality you need. For me? The Pre is the answer. Just ignore those awful, awful commercials.
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Sub-notebooks
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Linux is an ideal choice for netbooks for multiple reasons in addition to CPU architecture. Netbooks generally have lower specs than most full-size notebooks (not to mention desktops) so they are ideal for lightweight applications like web browsing, document preparation, etc. Linux does these tasks very well without the bloat that Windows systems have to deal with from anti-malware utilities. This primer will help you set up and optimize Linux for your netbook.
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For teachers, getting the subject that they are teaching their students to be fun should be the highest ideal possible, as it allows for the best learning experience; conveniently for teachers of computer literacy in third-world countries, they will find that teaching their subject using the OLPCs will be very easy.
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The Apache HTTP Server Project developers have announced the availability of version 2.2.14 of their open-source HTTP server. According to the projects developers, the release is considered to be the “best available version of Apache HTTP Server”.
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That’s about more than just licensing. It also includes factors such as diversity of copyright ownership, representative leadership, use of open standards, patent safety, control of trademarks, openness of governance and more. While measuring such “inputs” can never wholly identify the holistic concept which is software freedom, I am still convinced the next step for open source is to devise “open source definitions” for these other key attributes, so that we can get away from an undefined and loose understanding of an open source business and instead have a more nuanced approach.
What I would like to see is a move by OSI to create a suite of “open source definitions” against which a business could grade itself, and then indicate how many “stars” they score against the full suite. There would be very, very few businesses able to score a full set of stars, but the transparency of being able to see how companies rate in cultivating (rather just exploiting) software freedom would benefit us all in creating a strong, open market. We could set benchmarks in our procurement guidelines, requiring “no less than a five-star rating on the open source benchmark”, just as we require ISO9001 and similar ratings. OSI as an organisation is ready for this evolution of its role. Who wants to help make it happen? It’s time.
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I have lauded the release of vxVistA but I fear that as a FOSS project, it will be stillborn because of the EPL. Users will be forced to choose between vxVistA and the considerable menu of proprietary partners whose patent and proprietary interests are satisfied by the EPL, and a projects where VA VistA is being improved -as a platform-
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OW2, a European consortium dedicated to creating open source middleware, has acquired the Open Solutions Alliance, a two-year group dedicated to building reseller channels for open source.
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We’ve covered some of the many strong open source applications and platforms aimed at humanitarian efforts. They include tools for disaster relief management, earthquake research and management applications, and mobile healtchcare efforts aimed at developing countries.
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Open-source BI (business intelligence) vendor Pentaho has purchased technology from failed BI company LucidEra, it was announced Monday. Terms were not disclosed.
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According to a Red Hat study published in April this year, the Philippines ranked 67th out of 75 countries that had overall robust open source activity.
The Philippines, meanwhile, ranked 20th in terms of open source activity in the government sector, largely due to many government-related IT projects running on open source.
The Philippines, meanwhile, ranked 20th in terms of open source activity in the government sector, largely due to many government-related IT projects running on open source.
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According to Adobe, the new Flash version is the first runtime environment capable of rendering web applications and content as well as high definition (HD) videos across a variety of device types. It can reportedly utilise GPU performance to accelerate the rendering of video and graphics content while being economical with the resources, for instance the battery life, of a device. It also supports typical mobile device features like multi-touch, gestures and input switches for small displays.
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There is something uniquely depressing about the fact that the National Portrait Gallery’s version of the Barack Obama “Hope” poster previously belonged to a pair of lobbyists. Depressing because Mr. Obama’s Washington was not supposed to be the lobbyists’ Washington, the place we learned to despise during the last administration.
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As Copycense notes, it looks like DC lobbyists may be getting the celebrity treatment these days, similar to the hedge fund batch a few years ago. It’s as if the press gleefully looks for those who abuse the system for greed to celebrate. What a shame.
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My TARP sense is tingling and it tells me it might be time for the taxpayer to bend over. Again.
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The memo is touching in firm loyalty, surely a tribute to the all their hard work and well-known contributions towards rhe recovery of the US economy.
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1. The Fed is in fact not a government institution, but owned by private and corporate banking interests. The failure of self-regulation and regulators who have been ‘captured’ by the corporations they regulate is one of the great lessons of this crisis.
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Goldman Sachs spokesman Lucas Van Praag didn’t immediately return messages seeking comment.
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So what’s wrong with Goldman posting $3.44 billion in second-quarter profits, and so far earmarking $11.4 billion in compensation for its employees? What’s wrong is that this is not “free-market” earnings but an almost pure state subsidy.
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Every since the Corporations have bought up the media, the very idea of ‘honest journalism’ has been a joke in America.
I grew up with the likes of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite – I KNOW what real and honest journalism is all about.
The ‘propaganda’ corporate machine that rules the airwaves now, is nothing more than a tool to control the message/masses, and at all costs, whatever ‘they’ do ‘they’ will make certain that stories like the one on Sibel Edmonds (on the diary recommended list) never, ever see the light of day. God forbid, America should hear the ‘truth’ about America and England planning to divide up Iraq months prior to 9/11.
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Elliott Madison arrested by FBI and charged with using social networking site to help demonstrators evade Pittsburgh police
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Censorship/Web Abuse
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Without a doubt, society needs to ensure that police have the ability to deal with serious crime. Yet, public concern about lawful access comes directly from privacy fears and the absence of compelling evidence that the current system has created serious barriers to police investigations. The latest reliance on a case that did not even involve ISP records should only heighten skepticism about the government’s proposed lawful access reforms.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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RED-FACED GOOGLE claimed that an error caused its search engine to remove The Pirate Bay from its search pages.
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At some point it’s possible that CBS itself will put up an authorized clip on YouTube. But given that it hasn’t done so on its own “Late Show” site already and that the network tends to be reluctant to put its best stuff on the Web under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t hold my breath.
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The network did not post official copies of the segment on CBS.com or on YouTube, proving that while media companies are now generally eager to distribute their material on the Web, there are still some TV moments they would rather not spread widely.
In a remarkable 10-minute segment Thursday night, Mr. Letterman told viewers of a Connecticut man’s suspected $2 million extortion attempt, predicated on evidence of Mr. Letterman’s sexual relationships with female employees. The suspect, Robert Joel Halderman of CBS News, was arrested Thursday and released on bail Friday.
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Where to start? Well, how about that $200 billion number? It’s made up. Almost entirely. Both the GAO and the OECD looked into the numbers bandied about by the Chamber of Commerce and other lobbying groups and found (oops) that they were exaggerated, sometimes by an order of magnitude or more.
As for the claim that “foreign governments” are trying to “weaken IP laws?” Again, totally made up. Around the globe, almost all of the efforts have been for strengthening, not weakening IP laws. And, again, studies have shown that stronger IP laws do not correlate to greater innovation, and often the reverse.
Internet Video Celebrity Caitlin Hill 09 (2007)
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