Since my blogging habit have become more erratic of late I have forgotten to write about stuff that happens. Sorry about this. One important event is the release of the final draft of the GPLv3.
What follows is a brief period for commenting then the draft will get the final and official form and go live.
More info at: FSF official page or Ciaran’s blog (FSFE).
Thanks to Personal Notes for the reminder…
Good Copy Bad Copy is a documentary about copyright and culture, directed by Andreas Johnsen, Ralf Christensen, and Henrik Moltke. It features interviews with Danger Mouse, Girl Talk, Siva Vaidhyanathan, Lawrence Lessig, and many others with various perspectives on copyright.
Download the torrent for the XviD version of the whole movie at goodcopybadcopy.net.
The Register reports that by 2010 (only three more years) half of all British black males will be included in the police DNA database.
Government figures show there are 244,695 black British males on the DNA database, said the Libdems in a statement today. Using government estimates that there will be 4.5 million people on the DNA database in three years, official predictions of population growth and ethnicity, the Libdems have predicted that there will be 288,652 black males on the database.
That’s 51.9 per cent of black males and 68 per cent of black males of an “arrestable age”.
There is, already, 45 per cent of the black British male population on the DNA database, according to the Libdem numbers.
The fact that the technology is neutral (a questionable assertion at best) does not mean that the effects of the uses of technology will be fair and equitable.
The audio file from Stallman’s lecture in Göteborg. The file is in ogg vorbis (rms-speech-gbg-sweden-2007.ogg) its 78MB but is easy to download since there are quite a few of us seeding.
Click here to begin download via bit torrent.
Information about the free audio format ogg vorbis and about the file sharing system bittorrent.
Have you seen Bibme? It’s a cool application for creating, handling and saving bibliographies.
BibMe is your one-stop source for all your bibliography needs! Donâ??t remember all the information for the source you cited? No problem! BibMe allows you to search from a database of millions of entries to find your source and autofill in the information. Or, if you the source in front of you, you can enter your entries in manually. BibMe also offers resources to help you cite your work properly in the â??Citation Guideâ?? section.
In addition to this the bibliography can be exported into the different bibliographic formats. I thought this was a very cool application.
The Smoking Jacket by Fiona Carswell is part of a project “…exploring reflective design as it relates to the body, behavioral choices, and information displays.”
The idea is to remind the smoker about the consequences of smoking. The jacket “…has a built-in pair of lungs on the front. As the wearer smokes, the lungs fill up with the exhaled cigarette smoke and begin to gradually darken over time.”
At first I thought this was kind of creepy but now I think the jacket is a bit cool – maybe too cool? Instead of acting as a deterrent it may even encourage users?
(via Art Threat)
In Oliver Twist, after being told that the law supposes that a wife acts under the husbands direction Mr Bumble, states:
If the law supposes that,â?? said Mr. Bumble,â?¦ â??the law is a assâ??a idiot. If thatâ??s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experienceâ??by experience.â??
I don’t think thats it’s necessary for the law (and its representatives) actually need experience personally that which they are passing judgement upon – but a little experience may be a good thing.
Judge Peter Openshaw is trying a case where alleged Islamic radicals have used a website to post “violent Islamist material” unfortunately Judge Openshaw has had to interrupt the questioning of the witnesses to be taught what websites are. Not good, he should have done his homework in advance.
“The trouble is I don’t understand the language. I don’t really understand what a Web site is,” he told a London court during the trial of three men charged under anti-terrorism laws.
Prosecutor Mark Ellison briefly set aside his questioning to explain the terms “Web site” and “forum.” An exchange followed in which the 59-year-old judge acknowledged: “I haven’t quite grasped the concepts.” (yahoo)
Slightly scary…
Natalie Behring has a photo essay: Inside the Digital Dump on the remains of our technology in the recent issue of Foreign Policy. Behring’s pictures are good and the theme/topic is familiar. Third world nations risking environmental poisoning from the digital hardware we no longer desire or can use.
The images come from the world’s biggest digital dumping ground located in Guiyu, China. Locals work for $2 per day sorting, disassembling, and pulverizing hundreds of tons of digital hardware. The purpose of their work is to get at the valuable gold and copper. Computer waste contains 17 times more gold than gold ore, 40 times more copper than copper ore. But the detritus also leaches chemicals and metals into local water supplies.
Call me cynical but I believe that the profits will move out of Guiyu while the environmental damage will remain there.
According to Computer Sweden Göteborg is gripped by Stallman-fever well it might be a good headline but there is no real fever here. In our offices we are getting the final preparations done as I write the atmosphere is one of calm expectation. But we fully expect to have a great time when the event begins at 5pm.
To many users Google is understood as a neutral tool. A search engine without bias in any form. While Google has never made any such claim their attitudes and appearance do nothing to dispel this common misconception. It is easy to understand how the idea that technology in itself is neither good nor bad and may be seen as neutral comes about. But such an idea fails to take into account that technology is a man-made phenomenon and as such is the result of countless decisions and perceptions of right and wrong. Therefore while the technological thing may be neutral the choices behind its design, manufacture and use are not.
One of the implementations of Google that may be seen as less than neutral is the harvesting of user searches. Google has a long tradition of recording what people search for. This practice is not without its critics but until now Google has been silent about their purpose for harvesting this data. Last week Googleâ??s Global Privacy Counsel Peter Fleischer posted three reasons why Google captures and retains usersâ?? search queries. The reasons fall into three areas:
This has not passed uncommented. Micheal Zimmer and Seth Finkelstein are both critical to these explanations in two excellent commentaries they explain why Google’s reasons are mainly unsatisfactory and even misguided.