Technology and Society

Open letter to Obama: Uncle Sam should go open source - Ars Technica

2009-02-11T12:21:00.000+01:00

A group of prominent open source software vendors have written an open letter to the Obama administration encouraging broader adoption of open source software.

Read more Open letter to Obama: Uncle Sam should go open source - Ars Technica

Ubuntu desktop apparently scares Microsoft | The Open Road - CNET News

2009-02-07T23:58:00.000+01:00

Ubuntu must be giving Microsoft fits on the desktop. That's the only reason I can come up with for Microsoft's LinkedIn search for a new director of open-source strategy, with a focus on the desktop:

The Windows Competitive Strategy team is looking for a strong team member to lead Microsoft's global desktop competitive strategy as it relates to open source competitors.

Read more from Matt Asay at Ubuntu desktop apparently scares Microsoft | The Open Road - CNET News.

Promoting open government | Track my tax dollars | The Economist

2009-02-06T17:21:00.001+01:00

The taxpayers do their part, and faithfully fling their hard-earned treasure into the gaping public maw. Surely they should be allowed to know what happens to it. So why not put government spending online?

Read more at Promoting open government | Track my tax dollars | The Economist: "Open government"

Slashdot | Why Windows Must (and Will) Go Open Source

2009-02-05T08:05:00.000+01:00

Slashdot | Why Windows Must (and Will) Go Open Source

YouTube - 1981 primitive Internet report on KRON

2009-01-29T23:48:00.001+01:00

Long before anyone had heard of the Internet, early home computer users could read their morning newspapers online ... sort of. Steve Newman's 1981 story was broadcast on KRON San Francisco.

YouTube - 1981 primitive Internet report on KRON

How Obama Will Use Web Technology

2009-01-29T22:26:00.000+01:00

President Barack Obama was sworn into office this week as our nation’s 44th president. Despite running into a few technical challenges in the first few days at the White House, the Obama Administration will embrace technology in unprecedented ways. Led by forward thinking, web savvy technologists, President Obama’s new media team looks poised and ready to fulfill President Obama’s vision of open-source democracy.
Read more at How Obama Will Use Web Technology.

Changement à la Maison Blanche

2009-01-29T22:22:00.002+01:00

Au dela des vidéos et commentaires sur la cérémonie d'investiture
présidentielle américaine, il est intéressant de voir les informations
suivantes qui ont rapidement attiré l'attention sur le web:

Au niveau de l'esthétique: voir la photo "avant/après" sur http://www.flickr.com/photos/fimoculous/3213257378/sizes/o/

Au niveau de la communication: le premier message du blog de la Maison Blanche (Communication, Transparence, Participation) http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/change_has_come_to_whitehouse-gov/
Au niveau de la technologie: une comparaison du fichier qui règle l'indexation par les moteurs de recherche du site de la Maison Blanche http://www.kottke.org/09/01/the-countrys-new-robotstxt-file

Un autre clin d'oeil sur le sujet qui propose une synthèse partielle des discours des présidents grâce à une visualisation par tagcloud: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/tag_clouds_of_obamas_inaugural_speech_compared_to_bushs.php

Slashdot | UK Government Abandons Piracy Legislation

2009-01-29T21:37:00.001+01:00

"Following last year's reports of a scheme to 'ban' pirates from the Internet via ISPs in the UK, it looks as though the UK government has now decided to back down on the plan, saying that it hopes it won't have to apply 'the heavy hand of legislation'. The UK's Intellectual Property Minister, David Lammy, said that 'I'm not sure it's actually going to be possible,' as a result of the complexities of enforcing such legislation. Lammy also revealed that he had a different opinion on file sharers than many people in the music industry. He pointed out that there's a big difference between organized counterfeiting gangs and 'younger people not quite buying into the system'. He added that 'we can't have a system where we're talking about arresting teenagers in their bedrooms. People can rent a room in an hotel and leave with a bar of soap — there's a big difference between leaving with a bar of soap and leaving with the television.'"

Via Slashdot | UK Government Abandons Piracy Legislation

Official Gmail Blog: New in Labs: Offline Gmail

2009-01-29T21:35:00.000+01:00

Today we're starting to roll out an experimental feature in Gmail Labs that should help fill in those gaps: offline Gmail. So even if you're offline, you can open your web browser, go to gmail.com, and get to your mail just like you're used to.

Read more Official Gmail Blog: New in Labs: Offline Gmail

Hope Art - O'Reilly Radar

2009-01-29T21:24:00.000+01:00

Hope Art - O'Reilly Radar

Intel releases Linux-based Moblin 2 Alpha for Netbooks - Ars Technica

2009-01-29T21:22:00.000+01:00

Intel releases Linux-based Moblin 2 Alpha for Netbooks - Ars Technica

Fully Equipped: Time to ditch Windows Mobile? | Crave - CNET

2009-01-29T15:17:00.000+01:00

Fully Equipped: Time to ditch Windows Mobile? | Crave - CNET

Andrew Updegrove introduces "Civil ICT Standards"

2008-04-08T10:52:00.002+02:00

Andy Updegrove writes:

Much as a constitution or bill of rights establishes and balances the basic rights of an individual in civil society, standards codify the points where proprietary technologies touch each other, and where the passage of information is negotiated.

LA Times: Intellectual property’s social value may trump copyright law

2008-02-27T17:15:00.002+01:00

Copyright this

Intellectual property’s social value may trump copyright law.

By Dallas Weaver
February 20, 2008

Jon Healey correctly points out that the debate over intellectual-property theft is complex because we are often dealing with "non-real properties." These properties cost nearly nothing to produce, and an infinite number of people can use the same property at the same time. And yet, we still want to treat them as if they were "real" property.

Read more at LA Times

Are you locked-in or certified open?

2008-02-27T15:21:00.002+01:00

Certified Open® is designed to evaluate technical and commercial lock-in. It promotes fair competition and increases the ability of suppliers to compete effectively in the provision of software, hardware and services.

They publish an interesting evaluation framework available here.

Read more at http://www.certifiedopen.com/

Google supports ODF

2008-02-27T15:12:00.002+01:00

Posted by Zaheda Bhorat, Open Source Programs Manager

The subject of open document standards grows in importance not only for the technically- minded, but for anyone who uses a computer to work on editable documents. Across the board, standards are crucial. They ensure that the devices and technology you use today will continue to work tomorrow, that your DVDs will play in your player, that your calls will go through to any network, and that your documents will be accessible from whichever system you choose today and in the future.

Read more at Google Official Blog

Microsoft et Union Européenne

2008-02-27T14:57:00.001+01:00

Microsoft: l'UE impose une nouvelle amende record de 899 millions d'euros

Lire la dépêche sur AFP

BRUXELLES (AFP) — La Commission européenne a imposé mercredi au géant américain des logiciels Microsoft une nouvelle amende record de 899 millions d'euros, pour ne pas avoir rendu assez vite ses logiciels plus ouverts.

Ce montant, qui correspond à des astreintes journalières pour la période du 21 juin 2006 au 21 octobre 2007, est le plus élevé jamais réclamé à une seule entreprise par les services européens de la concurrence, toutes infractions confondues (abus de position dominante, participation à un cartel, etc...).
[...]
Microsoft n'est pas au bout de ses démêlés avec la Commission européenne. Bruxelles a en effet ouvert en janvier deux nouvelles enquêtes sur le groupe, concernant notamment la suite Office (qui contient les logiciels Word, Powerpoint ou Excel) et le navigateur Internet Explorer.

Mary Jo Foley on "OOXML vs. ODF: What’s happening this week"

2008-02-25T23:04:00.000+01:00

OOXML vs. ODF: What’s happening this week by ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley -- From February 25 to 29 in Geneva, the next step in the seemingly never-ending show-down over whether Microsoft's Office Open XML document format should be granted ISO standard status is taking place. Here's what to expect.

AFUL: Méfiance au sujet du changement de stratégie de Microsoft

2008-02-25T22:36:00.001+01:00

L'AFUL se félicite de ce que l'audience croissante des principes d'ouverture qu'elle promeut depuis dix ans ait forcé la décision de Microsoft de commencer à s'ouvrir à l'interopérabilité. Même avec un tel changement, souvent annoncé sans avoir de suite et qui serait une révision majeure de la politique de la société, il conviendrait de rester très prudent quant à la portée de cette ouverture. La nouveauté de cette annonce est que Microsoft reconnaît enfin que les brevets logiciels bloquent le développement du logiciel libre.

plus sur le site de l'AFUL

Microsoft Office Drops Support For Older File Formats

2008-01-03T10:41:00.000+01:00

You might not have noticed it yet, but the recent service pack 3 release for Microsoft Office 2003 contains a hidden "feature" — it disables support for older Microsoft Office formats.

read more at Wired

Survey Says That Linux Desktop Is Ever More Popular

2007-12-18T20:29:00.000+01:00

The first thing we can say about the Linux desktop in 2007 is that there are more users than ever. The Linux Foundation 2006 survey had fewer than 10,000 people signing in. This year more than 20,000 Linux desktop users reported in.

read more at DesktopLinux.com

An emerging understanding of Open Standards from FSFE

2007-10-07T23:32:00.000+02:00

" [...] five criteria that have emerged from dialog between stakeholders, and constitute a concise and balanced definition of what an Open Standard should be. Such a standard is

1. subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a manner equally available to all parties;
2. without any components or extensions that have dependencies on formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open Standard themselves;
3. free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by any party or in any business model;
4. managed and further developed independently of any single vendor in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third parties;
5. available in multiple complete implementations by competing vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all parties.

[...]"

Read the whole story from Georg Greve's blog.

Five Common Misconceptions About Linux

2007-10-01T00:13:00.000+02:00

Digg link
Original link http://www.mi80.com/node/1760

1. Linux is Behind the Times

2. Linux is Hard to Use

3. Linux isn't Compatible with Anything

4. Linux isn't Enterprise Ready / No One Uses Linux

5. Linux isn't Professionally Developed or Supported

AFP: Microsoft loses landmark EU antitrust case

2007-09-17T14:42:00.000+02:00

A top European court on Monday handed Microsoft a surprise defeat in its epic antitrust battles, backing the European Commission's 2004 record fine of 497 million euros (690 million dollars) against the software giant.

read more at Agence France Presse

ISO says no to OOXML

2007-09-05T09:40:00.000+02:00

The first round in the fierce battle of document standards has ended with a no to the fast track procedure to OOXMl pushed forward by Microsoft. The saga will probably continue since the normal procedure will probably go forward in 2008. Meanwhile the only office document standard recognized by ISO that has a real implementation is ODF Open Document Format.

See the official ISO press release.

Microsoft one vote short of fast-track OOXML ISO standardization

2007-08-13T11:21:00.000+02:00

Executive board members of the International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS), the organization that represents the United States in ISO standardization deliberations, recently held an internal poll to determine the position that the United States should take on Microsoft's request for Office Open XML (OOXML) approval. With eight votes in favor, seven against, and one abstention, the group was one vote short of the nine votes required for approving OOXML ISO standardization. This does not mean that OOXML is dead in the water, however.

read more at Arstechnica

Google To Join Group To Protect Linux From Possible Patent Challenge

2007-08-07T15:53:00.000+02:00

The Open Invention Network members share their Linux patents with each other and offer the prospect of a joint defense if Linux is confronted with a legal challenge.

read more at InformationWeek.com

Shuttleworth: Microsoft Fracturing the Open-Source Community

2007-08-07T15:51:00.000+02:00

Microsoft has succeeded in fracturing the Linux and open-source community with the patent indemnity agreements it has entered into with several prominent vendors, Ubuntu leader and Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth told eWEEK.

The strategy behind that was to drive a wedge into the open-source community and unsettle the marketplace, Shuttleworth said. He also took issue with the Redmond, Wash., software maker for not disclosing the 235 of its patents it claims are being violated by Linux and other open-source software.

"That's extortion and we should call it what it is," he said.

read more at eWeek. com

Lenovo Hops On The Linux Bandwagon

2007-08-06T18:06:00.000+02:00

Wired writes: "Lenovo, the third largest maker of PCs, announced this morning at the ongoing LinuxWorld conference in San Francisco, that it will start selling laptops preloaded with Linux instead of Windows."

read more at Wired

Microsoft to Submit Shared Source Licenses to OSI

2007-07-31T10:10:00.000+02:00

Tim O'Reilly writes: "In his keynote at OSCON, Microsoft General Manager of Platform Strategy Bill Hilf announced that Microsoft is submitting its shared source licenses to the Open Source Initiative. [...] Bill also announced that Microsoft has created a new top level link at microsoft.com, microsoft.com/opensource to bring together in one place all Microsoft's open source efforts.[...]"

Read more at O'Reilly Radar.

Six questions to national standardisation bodies

2007-06-29T17:06:00.000+02:00

The Free Software Foundation Europe asks 6 very to-the-point questions related to the OOXML / ODF debate:

Application independence?
Supporting pre-existing Open Standards?
Backward compatibility for all vendors?
Proprietary extensions?
Dual standards?
Legally safe?

Lifehack.org: Open Source Life - How the open movement will change everything

2007-06-18T23:17:00.000+02:00

Consider this: in just a few short years, the open-source encyclopedia Wikipedia has made closed-source encyclopedias obsolete — both the hard-bound kind and the CD-ROM or commercial online kind. Goodbye World Book and Brittanica.

This is but one example of how the concept of open source has changed our lives already. Over the next 10 years or so, we’ll be seeing many more examples, and the effects could change just about every aspect of our lives.

more

Dell unveils Feisty Fawn Ubuntu

2007-05-07T10:57:00.000+02:00

Computer giant makes second attempt to sell PCs running open source Linux in response to customer survey.

read more at the guardian

Check what Michael Dell's own computer is running!

Microsoft is dead

2007-04-09T09:42:00.000+02:00

Paul Graham says: "A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was dead. I was talking to a young startup founder about how Google was different from Yahoo. I said that Yahoo had been warped from the start by their fear of Microsoft. That was why they'd positioned themselves as a "media company" instead of a technology company. Then I looked at his face and realized he didn't understand. It was as if I'd told him how much girls liked Barry Manilow in the mid 80s. Barry who?"
More

Berners-Lee tells Congress why the Web succeeded: open standards

2007-03-03T12:56:00.000+01:00

Universality—the ability for disparate hardware, software, and languages to coexist in the same medium—has been one of the drivers of the Web's massive growth in the last decade, along with the availability of open and royalty-free standards that make such universality possible.

more

Firefox 3.0 opens door to Web apps, Mozilla says

2007-02-28T17:18:00.000+01:00

Perhaps most exciting could be Firefox's ability to support writing an e-mail in, for example, Gmail while offline, with the data sent later when a user is connected to the Internet again. Ultimately, Mozilla engineers are aiming for an integration between the browser and Web-based services that is as smooth-running as a desktop application.

more

Patenting Life

2007-02-14T11:05:00.000+01:00

Op-Ed New York Times contributor Michael Chrichton on Patenting Life:

YOU, or someone you love, may die because of a gene patent that should never have been granted in the first place. Sound far-fetched? Unfortunately, it’s only too real.

more

Vista successor "Vienna" planned for late 2009

2007-02-11T12:32:00.000+01:00

Now that Microsoft has freed Windows Vista from the shackles of a five year development process, the company is attempting to the wow starts now us by revealing that it plans to have its next major operating system ready within the next two-and-a-half years, giving Vista's successor an expected release date of late 2009.

more

LIFT 2007

2007-02-07T21:43:00.000+01:00

I am currently at LIFT 2007 a conference about the challenges and opportunities of technology in our society held 7-8-9 February 2007 Geneva, Switzerland. The 2006 version was great and the program for 2007 also looks enticing.

LIFT 2007

A great blog about standards

2007-02-07T21:26:00.000+01:00

Andy Updegrove is keeping an amazing blog about standards at http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/. If you are into the saga of ODF vs MS OOXML read more here.
A great read!

The Economist on Vista (II)

2007-01-19T14:25:00.000+01:00

The launch of a new version of Microsoft Windows, called Vista, is not quite the event it used to be. Has the software giant reached the pinnacle of its power?

more

The Economist on Vista and Office

2007-01-19T14:22:00.000+01:00

Microsoft's latest upgrades should make PC users happier. But users have little reason to upgrade immediately: the benefits are largely cosmetic. Besides, Vista requires so much computing power that most people will probably be able to run it only when they buy a new machine.

more

WIPO Creating New IP Rights Over Web Content

2007-01-18T22:42:00.000+01:00

The WIPO is currently engaged in negotiating a new treaty on digital IP rights, but they're having trouble agreeing on the particulars.

more

The Contradictory Nature of OOXML

2007-01-18T18:04:00.000+01:00

Andy Updegrove writes: "The Microsoft Office XML-based format specification, OOXML, is now in the adoption queue at ISO/IEC. That process takes six months, and has two steps. During the first one-month step, any member may submit 'contradictions,' which means aspects in which a proposed standard conflicts with already adopted ISO/IEC standards and Directives. Those contradictions must then be 'resolved' (which does not necessarily mean eliminated), and these resolutions are then presented back to the members to consider during the five-month voting stage that follows."

more

Daylight Sought For Data Mining

2007-01-12T09:37:00.000+01:00

Key senators introduced legislation yesterday that would require the government to disclose data-mining programs to Congress in an effort to protect Americans' privacy and prevent misuse of personal information.

more

OpenID and the Identity Systems of Yahoo, Google & MSN

2007-01-04T14:40:00.000+01:00

You may've heard of OpenID - it's a distributed identity management system, a.k.a. a decentralized single sign-on platform. We prepared a screencast to better explain the idea (see Flash movie below). After that we present a more detailed explanation, focusing particularly on Yahoo and Google.

more

Amsterdam and the Linux desktop

2007-01-04T14:36:00.000+01:00

Amsterdam has decided to give the Linux desktop and OpenOffice a try. In late December, the city -- previously a Microsoft-only operation -- announced plans to spend 300,000 Euros (roughly $400,000) on testing Linux and other open-source software in its housing department and in the Zeeburg borough office in 2007.

more

Librarians stake their future on open source

2006-12-22T21:07:00.000+01:00

A group of librarians at the Georgia Public Library Service has developed an open source, enterprise-class library management system that may revolutionize the way large-scale libraries are run.

More

CNet: Open Source Year 2006 in Review

2006-12-20T10:55:00.000+01:00

The world of open source is moving ever further from its unpaid volunteer roots. The past year saw the $420 million acquisition of JBoss, as well as a Microsoft-Novell deal that tested the legal limits of commercial open source.

With the momentum of a freight train, open-source technology spread more widely in the software industry in 2006. Upstart challengers, such as open-source database company MySQL and middleware maker JBoss, grew rapidly over the course of the year, while incumbent vendors dealt with the open-source effect in different ways.

Read more

Tech lessons learned from the wisdom of crowds

2006-12-20T10:51:00.000+01:00

Prediction markets have some smart things to say about everything from DRAM prices to when Microsoft software will be finished. At a micro-conference that Yahoo convened at its headquarters here on Wednesday evening, representatives from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard described their experiments with prediction markets.

read more | digg story

Experts Rate Wikipedia's Accuracy Higher Than Non-experts

2006-11-28T12:59:00.000+01:00

A new salvo has been fired in the perennial war over Wikipedia's accuracy. Thomas Chesney, a Lecturer in Information Systems at the Nottingham University Business School, published the results of his own Wikipedia study in the most recent edition of the online journal First Monday, and he came up with a surprising conclusion.

read more | digg story

Architectures of participation

2006-11-12T21:38:00.000+01:00

Well, it seems to be finally happening. The Web 2.0 sites are starting to bubble up...

read more

Sun to Open-Source Java Under GPL v2

2006-11-12T21:11:00.000+01:00

First, Sun Microsystems wouldn't do it. Then Sun teased us with it. Now, on Nov. 13, Linux-Watch has learned that Sun will finally open-source its implementations of Java under the GNU GPL v2. Sun will release the first pieces of source code for Sun's implementation of JSE (Java Platform Standard Edition) and a buildable implementation of JME.

read more | digg story

Microsoft to pay Novell $348 million under Linux pact

2006-11-08T14:36:00.000+01:00

Software maker Novell Corp. (Nasdaq:NOVL - news) said on Tuesday Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) will make two separate up-front payments totaling $348 million to the company under an agreement to allow Novell's open-source Linux software to work with Windows.

read more | digg story

Microsoft helping Novell sell Linux: WSJ

2006-11-03T11:51:00.000+01:00

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Microsoft Corp. and Novell Inc. are entering into a partnership that could help Novells Linux operating system, according to a media report Thursday. Under the agreement, which isnt final, Microsoft will offer sales support to Novells Suse Linux, the Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site, citing people famili

read more | digg story

Google Acquires Another One - JotSpot

2006-10-31T20:14:00.000+01:00

OK, I can finally blurt it out: JotSpot is now part of Google, and I couldn't be more excited. Three years ago my friend Graham Spencer and I set out to start a new company. We'd both recently left Excite, which we co-founded, and we had spent a few years starting a nonprofit together.

read more | digg story

Communautés de la connaissance et de l'innovation

2006-10-20T09:28:00.000+02:00

A l'initiative de la Commission européenne, ce pôle d'excellence rassemblerait les forces R&D de l'UE alliant universités, entreprises et secteur public. Un Institut européen de technologie pourrait émerger dès 2008.

plus

Swiss government tests VoIP bugging

2006-10-13T00:40:00.000+02:00

Swiss newspaper SonntagsZeitung , reports that the Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (UVEK) hired ERA IT Solutions some time ago to come up with a program capable of infecting PCs and tapping conversations without the need to crack VoIP PC-to-PC encryption.

read more | digg story

Its confirmed. Google buys youtube for $1.6 billion

2006-10-09T23:07:00.000+02:00

Google Inc. said Monday it's buying No. 1 Internet video sharing Web site YouTube Inc. for $1.65 billion in stock. The deal is regarded as a largely defensive one that leapfrogs Google into a leading role in a burgeoning Internet marketplace

read more | digg story

Register using a fake email address - then grab the emails from dodgeit.com

2006-10-09T22:33:00.000+02:00

To avoid spam, send your registration forms to *(anything)*@dodgeit.com, then go to dodgeit.com and type in *(anything)*. Your email will be available with complete anonymity. No prior setup or login required.

read more | digg story

GPL passes acid test in German court

2006-09-25T23:32:00.000+02:00

In a landmark victory for the GPL license, a civil court in Germany has ruled against D-Link Germany GmbH for violating the terms of the most popular free software license. The lawsuit was filed by Harald Welte, a respected Linux hacker who tracks and eliminates illegal use of software protected by the GPL through his gpl-violations.org project.

read more | digg story

Ubuntu releases evolution

2006-09-24T21:53:00.000+02:00

The various animals used in the names of the Ubuntu Linux releases.

read more | digg story

The complete list of Open Source Software for Windows

2006-09-24T09:06:00.000+02:00

Stuck with windows ? Sick of being a "software pirate" ? There`s a free / open-source alternative for every commercial application.

read more | digg story

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

2006-08-28T14:01:00.000+02:00

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.

Just as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) enables storage in the cloud, Amazon EC2 enables "compute" in the cloud. Amazon EC2's simple web service interface allows you to obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction. It provides you with complete control of your computing resources and lets you run on Amazon's proven computing environment. Amazon EC2 reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes, allowing you to quickly scale capacity, both up and down, as your computing requirements change. Amazon EC2 changes the economics of computing by allowing you to pay only for capacity that you actually use.

read more @ Amazon.com Amazon Web Services Store: Amazon EC2 / Amazon Web Services

Happy Birthday Linux

2006-08-26T22:10:00.000+02:00

I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work.

read more | digg story

Telco 2.0 Manifesto: How to make money in an IP-based world: STL Partners Ltd

2006-08-25T11:27:00.000+02:00

The hardest, but most important, part of reaching Telco 2.0 is a change in the culture and mindset of operators:

An assumption of abundance, rather than rationed scarcity.
Example: Share a hundred images in a picture-sharing service rather than sell one MMS.
A preference for openness, rather than hoarding of assets and information.
Example: How much brand value is lost locking down Bluetooth from reaching its full potential to users?
A change for most from a network-centric view in favour of focusing on customer data, billing, relationship, distribution and partnership assets.
Example: What is the real value of the call detail records in creating intelligent call routing services?
A desire to connect people above the promotion and consumption of media content or information services.
Example: Why invest so heavily in streaming video from media conglomerates when user preference and revenue consistently comes from the sharing of user content and experiences?
A willingness to learn from, and interact with, the broader world of Internet players.
Example: What are the lessons of Skype for telcos wishing to broaden the reach of their voice and messaging products to new platforms?
Agility and innovation in core messaging and voice products, in contrast to today’s stasis.
Example: Vonage’s troubles partly stem from having merely replicated POTS, rather than having innovated.
Getting away from the fear of “dumb pipes”. Utility businesses can be very profitable given the right cost base, and funding/pricing approach.

Patent Law Ruling Threatens Free and Open Source Software

2006-08-25T11:05:00.000+02:00

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has asked the United States Supreme Court to overturn a dangerous patent law ruling that could pose a serious threat to Free and Open Source Software projects.

read more | digg story

Mozilla officially accepts Microsoft's Offer

2006-08-25T11:02:00.000+02:00

"Mozilla has accepted Microsoft's offer of help towards ensuring interoperability between Firefox and the upcoming Vista operating system." If you can't beat em, join em

read more | digg story

Open Source: Designing a book with LyX

2006-08-25T10:42:00.000+02:00

If you've ever considered writing a book, you may have looked at the layout capabilities of OpenOffice.org Writer, AbiWord, KWrite, or other word processing programs. While these tools can produce adequate results for many types of documents, it's also worth considering LyX, an open source (GPL) desktop publishing application.

read more | digg story

The Business Model of Ubuntu

2006-07-31T18:31:00.000+02:00

Open-source software companies, such as Ubunutu (an open-source Linux distribution), are better able to respond to user request and bugs than traditional software companies, such as Microsoft. Simon Law, head of the Quality Assurance department at Ubuntu in a talk given to the UW Computer Science Club, explains why this is, and how Ubuntu is leveraging the open-source model. Simon explains how the QA department at Ubuntu differs from traditional QA departments, through its use of the open-source community at large. Most interesting is Simon's views on what motivates open-source developers to develop software, and how open-source oriented businesses (specifically Ubunutu) are making money.

read more @ slashdot

ODF support for Office

2006-07-06T22:01:00.000+02:00

It appears that Microsoft has finally caved. BetaNews is reporting that Microsoft is sponsoring an open source project to enable conversion between Open XML in Office 2007 and OpenDocument formats. The project, hosted on Sourceforge.net, made its initial release today. The Word 2007 conversion utility is expected to ship ship by the end of 2006, and similarly conversion utilities for Excel and PowerPoint are expected early next year.

read more @ BetaNews

read more @ Slashdot

Brian Jones: Open XML Formats

http://sourceforge.net/projects/odf-converter

Open Source diversity brings better security

2006-06-30T14:37:00.000+02:00

Open Source Software is diverse and therefore it is more secure, claims Trend Micro an antivirus software manufacturer. One reason for this belief is the variety of Linux distributions which makes the spread of a malicious virus more difficult, and containment easier.

"Open source is more secure. Period," says Raimund Genes, chief technical officer for anti-malware at Trend Micro.

via IDABC Open Source Observatory

Commission confirms unpatentability of software

2006-06-30T12:29:00.000+02:00

Europe’s long-standing debate over whether new software can be patented or not took a dramatic turn in late May when the European Commission confirmed its position on the unpatentability of new computer software and the right of courts to invalidate software patents granted by the European Patent Office (EPO).

via IDABC Open Source Observatory

Gates stepping down from full-time Microsoft role

2006-06-15T23:40:00.000+02:00

Bill Gates is transitioning out of his full-time role at Microsoft, the software giant that's been under pressure due to a sagging stock price, competition from Google and nagging delays in the Vista operating system.

In a press conference held Thursday after the stock markets had closed for regular trading, Gates announced that over the next two years he will gradually step away from his daily responsibilities at the company he co-founded some 30 years ago.

Gates stepping down from full-time Microsoft role @ CNET News.com

Microsoft press release

Sun promises to open-source Java

2006-06-15T23:26:00.000+02:00

Sun Microsystems will open-source Java--it just has to figure out how to do it, company executives said Tuesday.

Open-source advocates have urged Sun for years to open-source the Java programming language, but the company has resisted, citing compatibility concerns and fear of losing control. Now the company has promised that Java will become open source.

"At this point, it is not a question of whether, but it is a question of how" Sun will open-source Java, Rich Green, the company's new executive vice president of software, said at Sun's annual JavaOne developer conference here.

Sun promises to open-source Java @ CNET News.com

Connectedness

2006-06-14T23:40:00.000+02:00

Social network analysis to accelerate business results. Connectedness

Structural Holes and Collaborative Innovation

2006-06-14T23:22:00.000+02:00

As Tom Malone recently put it in The Future of Work, “As managers, we need to shift our thinking from command and control to coordinate and cultivate -- the best way to gain power is sometimes to give it away.” Coordination, cultivation, and collaboration are increasingly the mode of work at every level.

Leadership Development

World Cup Geek Style

2006-06-14T22:19:00.000+02:00

Instructions to watch the World Cup live in ASCII trough telnet at http://ascii-wm.net/
or simply try "telnet ascii-wm.net 2006" or "telnet diego.ascii-wm.net 2006"!

Football gets ASCII'd @ The Register

How IT projects really work

2006-06-14T21:58:00.000+02:00

How IT projects really work @ Scaryideas.com

Noobs Guide To Pandora's Rip Hack

2006-06-14T21:37:00.000+02:00

Hak.5 Noobs Guide To Pandora's Rip Hack

"this app can break"! Are there any other forbidden strings in Notepad?

2006-06-14T17:56:00.000+02:00

Do you know that some strings are not 'allowed' in Notepad in Windows?

read more | digg story

Microsoft Office 12 and PDF

2006-06-05T23:00:00.000+02:00

Microsoft, which last October announced it would support Adobe's PDF format in its upcoming Office upgrade, has reached an impasse after four months of talks, a Microsoft attorney said Friday. Adobe wants the software giant to remove the PDF "save as" feature from its beta version of Office 2007 or to charge a fee for it, whereas Microsoft wants to offer that feature for free, said Dave Heiner, the deputy general counsel who oversees Microsoft's antitrust cases.

read more @ CNet News.com

Slashdot: Not Your Daddy's IT Force Anymore

2006-06-05T16:51:00.000+02:00

The days of high-paying technology-based jobs right out of highschool are over. As writers for ACM report, the skill-sets required for jobs have grown over time. Academia has responded to the evolution with novel programs recruiting women and integrating IT into MBA programs. And as technology finds its way into every aspect of business life, the NSF is creating a grant program to fund service science, a blend of IT into other industries. Researchers at City University of NY are working on an NSF-funded project to infuse technology into Liberal Arts courses taken by students who are in primary tech-producer or tech-consumer majors. What are these crucial modern skills? Knowledge of laws like the DMCA? Interpersonal and group work skills? Experience with different technology platforms? The ability to discriminate between useful and useless information sources?

read more @ slashdot

Gates: We will crush Google just like we crushed Netscape!

2006-05-18T21:39:00.000+02:00

Bill Gates hinted the software giant will crush Google in the same way that it crushed Netscape -- by integrating enterprise search deeply into Windows Vista, Office 2007, Outlook 2007 and SharePoint 2007 and with the rest of the Windows platform and also with emerging web services from Microsoft.

read more | digg story

Linux, open-source, and control

2006-05-13T22:36:00.000+02:00

Could a Red Hat or Novell somehow take over Linux and become like Microsoft?

read more | digg story

InformationWeek: Ballmer says Microsoft To Focus On Linux Competition, Software-As-A-Service, Internet Advertising

2006-05-13T22:08:00.000+02:00

CEO Steve Ballmer said Linux has been outselling Microsoft in areas such as file services, E-mail security, and E-science, which demonstrates that Microsoft needs to innovate.

read more InformationWeek

OpenDocument Approved by ISO

2006-05-04T23:09:00.000+02:00

The six month voting window for ISO/IEC adoption of the OASIS OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard closed on May 1, and at midnight (Geneva time) last night it was announced internally that ODF had been approved by the ISO members eligible and interested in casting a vote. The vote passed with broad participation and no negative votes (there were a few abstentions), and ODF is now ISO/IEC 26300. While there are still some procedural steps internal to ISO/IEC that are required before the official text of the standard will be finalized and issued, these steps (described below) are formalities rather than gating factors.

read more

Open Source Quality

2006-05-04T21:40:00.000+02:00

Under a contract with the Department of Homeland Security, Coverity is establishing a new baseline for software quality and security in open source based on defects detected in dozens of the most critical and widely used open source projects in the world. See how the LAMP stack and other open source projects compare to each other and to your own code.

In collaboration with Stanford University, Coverity is establishing a new baseline for software quality and security in open source based on the analysis of over 30 of the most critical and widely used open source projects in the world. Under a contract with the Department of Homeland Security, we apply the latest innovation in automated defect detection to uncover some of the most critical types of bugs found in software.

read more

FOSS Is Not Free if It's Not Free From Complexity

2006-05-02T17:43:00.000+02:00

This article argues that freedom from complexity is an essential part of the first FOSS freedom - the freedom to run a program. Freedom to run means nothing if the exercise of such right excludes people who do not possess high technical knowledge or advanced skills sets. Without the guarantee of "ease of use", the freedom to run FOSS for most users is a hollow promise.

via Slashdot

Linux WiFi Leaps Forward

2006-05-01T22:54:00.000+02:00

Linux's wireless capabilities are poised to take a big step forward, with the release of an 'advanced' 802.11 driver stack to the open source community under the GPL.

read more | digg story

Pirated XP Users Will Be Constantly Bugged to go Genuine

2006-04-26T10:52:00.000+02:00

In a new round of updates, Microsoft plans to permanently bug users of Pirated Windows XP and place "tattoos" on the login screen telling them they have pirated Windows until they go Genuine.

read more | digg story

OpenBRR Launches Closed Open-Source Group

2006-04-26T10:51:00.000+02:00

eWeek is reporting that SpikeSource co-founder and CTO Murugan Pal and the Open Business Readiness rating have launched a new initiative designed to maximize open-source software knowledge across organizations. While they are targeting corporate and Wall Street CIOs and IT directors as members, the current plan is not to open membership of the new OpenBRR Corporate Community to all, but to offer it on an invitation-only basis 'to ensure that only trusted participants are coming into the system,' Pal said. This would allow members to discuss sensitive issues and share information without having to worry that it would be made widely public, he said.

read more through slashdot

The Mother of All Demos - Douglas Engelbart

2006-04-22T21:45:00.000+02:00

Douglas Engelbart December 9, 1968 demonstration at the Convention Center in San Francisco is often called The Mother of All Demos. The demo featured the first mouse the public had ever seen, as well as introducing the paper paradigm, video conferencing, teleconferencing, email and hypertext.

Wikipedia|Google video

Ubuntu Dapper +1 - The Edgy Eft

2006-04-19T22:00:00.000+02:00

Mark Shuttleworth and the Ubuntu Development team have announced what the codename of Dapper +1 will be, The Edgy Eft.

read more | digg story

Oracle and Linux: how about Ubuntu?

2006-04-19T21:35:00.000+02:00

Industry pundits mull over the possibilities following recent comments by Oracle's Larry Ellison that he might like to have a version of Linux all for his very own.

read more | digg story

Guess-The-Google

2006-04-19T20:14:00.000+02:00

Guess-The-Google with this game based on a google image search! How many can u guess?

read more | digg story

Goodbye, war on smoking. Hello, war on fat.

2006-04-16T19:56:00.000+02:00

"So, we've found a new enemy:obesity. 2 years ago, the government discovered that the targets of previous crusades booze, sex, guns & cigarettes were killing a smaller percentage of Americans than they used to.The one thing you're not allowed to do in a culture war is win it, so we searched the mortality data for the next big menace."

read more | digg story

Will U marry me?

2006-04-15T15:01:00.000+02:00

Thats what I found while browsing my neighborhood on google maps. Hope she said yes. (Zoom in and switch to satellite mode).

read more | digg story

FOSS Community Should Not Negotiate With Microsoft On Port 25

2006-04-14T00:47:00.000+02:00

In the wake of Microsoft launching their Port 25 blog in an effort to open the lines of communication with the Free and Open Source Software Community, a long line of FOSS proponents have voiced loud and clear their fears, doubts, and outright opposition. Indeed, one poster suggested that "there is nothing to discuss". And he has a point.

read more | digg story

One Red Paper Clip guy now has a year in Phoenix

2006-04-13T20:58:00.000+02:00

Remember the guy who started out with a paper clip and has been trading his way up to a house? He is now one step closer to his goal.

read more | digg story