The Musings of Chris Samuel

Update: Antony has kindly clarified his reasoning in a comment on this article, and so I have now sent a follow up query to the AEC based on this.

Update 2: After much too-ing and fro-ing (see the comments) with Antony Green and the AEC it appears that the AEC would rather obfuscate on the whole issue than bring clarity to it, and Antony makes a very convincing case about why it is valid to do both. What I’d love to see is a comment from someone involved in the voting process with one of the OIC guides to confirm that it says that those votes are handled as Antony says. I somehow doubt anyone would dare though.. After that enlightening discussion with Antony I’ve changed the title of this article from “Do Not Vote Both Above and Below the Line in the Senate! (Updated)” to “AEC Obfuscates on Voting Rules” as that seems to be fairer to both Antony and the AEC.

Update 3: Just found this on the AEC website describing how voting works:

However, if the elector completes both sections formally, the below the line section takes precedence.

So it is really valid, despite what the AEC have been telling me! Thanks to “GetUp!” for providing the link to that AEC page on their voting page.

(more…)

The Melbourne Free Software Interest Group (a group of Melbourne computer folks with an interest in software freedom) have put together an open letter to Senator the Hon Kim Carr, the Minister for Innovation, to request that software be excluded from patenting as part of the Australian governments review of patents in general.

We are currently collecting signatures to the letter and if you are in Australia and of a like mind we would really appreciate it if you would contribute your signature too! Just click on the link, read the letter and the form to sign it is at the bottom of the page. Please also pass this on to others you know who may be interested.

Does this sound familiar to you ?

A networked computer system provides various services for assisting users in locating, and establishing contact relationships with, other users. For example, in one embodiment, users can identify other users based on their affiliations with particular schools or other organizations. The system also provides a mechanism for a user to selectively establish contact relationships or connections with other users, and to grant permissions for such other users to view personal information of the user. The system may also include features for enabling users to identify contacts of their respective contacts. In addition, the system may automatically notify users of personal information updates made by their respective contacts.

It’s the introduction to a patent by Amazon for their obviously unique idea of a “Social Networking System” which includes such strikingly novel ideas such as:

wherein the service maintains relationship data representing contact relationships between users, and the method further comprises using the relationship data to detect, and to cause the first user to be notified that, a third user is a contact of a contact of the first user via the second user.

and:

wherein the personal data of the first user comprises an identification of a school attended by the first user and an associated date range of attendance, and the computer system is additionally programmed to use said personal data to identify, and to inform the first user of, other users of the service who attended said school in said date range.

None of which existed before the patent was filed in 2008, honest guv…

Hello USPTO ? Anyone in there ?

If you’re worried about spam and scams coming through the Internet Portal (thanks to Stephen Conroy for pointing that threat out) then get yourself a Kogan Portector! Here’s their advert for it on YouTube..

Of course you must be sure to read the disclaimer..

DISCLAIMER: The Kogan “Portector” Internet Filter is not a real product. This product is in no way affiliated with Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, The Australian Labor Party, or the Australian Government. Incorrect use may result in uncensored Internet content, freedom of speech, freedom of choice, freedom of thought, and protection of your civil liberties.

Phew, thanks Kogan for saving us!

So you’ve bought a nice new professional video camera and you want to shoot a video of a friends band so they can sell a couple of copies to buy a new guitar, simple eh ? Well not quite, you’ll probably want to check the license for the camera according to this article by Eugenia Loli-Queru:

You see, there is something very important, that the vast majority of both consumers and video professionals don’t know: ALL modern video cameras and camcorders that shoot in h.264 or mpeg2, come with a license agreement that says that you can only use that camera to shoot video for “personal use and non-commercial” purposes (go on, read your manuals).

Now, you may ask, this can’t be right, can it ? Surely a “professional” video camera should be able to be used for professional purposes ? Well yes, it should, but it can’t. The reason is (of course) software patents, according to Eugenia:

Apparently, MPEG-LA makes it difficult for camera manufacturers, or video editor software houses, to obtain a cheap-enough license that allows their users to use their codec any way they want!

So the camera manufacturers pass that onto the purchaser, if you buy one and want to use it professionally then you will have to get your own license from MPEG-LA and then pay them a royalty on every copy sold. Sadly you can’t even get away from this by transcoding your MPEG2 or H.264 video into a free format for two reasons, firstly the camera most likely uses it internally first (and that’s apparently enough) and secondly the MPEG-LA claim their patent portfolio is so broad that you cannot create a video codec these days without infringing one of their patents. So theoretically you’d need to pay no matter what you did.

Eugenia does offer one possible way out, the ancient MJPEG format:

Let me make one thing clear. MJPEG **sucks** as a codec. It’s very old and inefficient. OGV Theora looks like alien technology compared to it. But (all, if not most of) its patents have expired. And JPEG is old enough to predate MPEG-LA. Thankfully, there are still some MJPEG HD cameras in the market, although they are getting fewer and fewer: Nikon’s dSLRs, Pentax’s new dSLRs, and the previous generation of Panasonic’s HD digicams. Other cameras that might be more acceptable to use codec-wise are the Panasonic HVX-200 (DVCPro HD codec, $6000), the SILICON IMAGING SI-2K (using the intermediate format Cineform to record, costs $12,000), and the RED One (using the R3D intermediate format, costs $16,000+). Almost every other HD camera in the market is unsuitable, if you want to be in the clear 100%

Yet another reason why software patents need to be defeated, they stifle what we can do with the technology we have paid for.

Well another battle in the long war with SCO is over, a US court jury trial has confirmed that Novell do indeed own the UNIX copyrights and SCO do not. Of course SCO could appeal, but this would be the second time they’ve lost on this point.

In an interesting blog on patents, copying and litigation former Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz discloses that Bill Gates and Steve Balmer tried to put the frighteners on Sun over OpenOffice.org to try and protect their office application monopoly. Their attack went like this:

“Microsoft owns the office productivity market, and our patents read all over OpenOffice.” [...] “We’re happy to get you under license.”

Of course (as ever) they do not identify any patents, as that would let us fix any problems (if there are actually any), they would much rather weave their usual web of FUD on the matter than come clean. Jonathan’s response turned the issue on them on a different tact:

“We’ve looked at .NET, and you’re trampling all over a huge number of Java patents. So what will you pay us for every copy of Windows?”

That killed that angle of attack off..

Along with folks like the Samba project I’ve joined the Great Australian Internet Blackout, so the first time (and only the first time) you visit the site you’ll get the notice about the protest. Here’s why the proposed mandatory filtering is a bad idea from the Great Australian Internet Blackout website:

• It won’t protect children: The filter isn’t a “cyber safety” measure to stop kids seeing inappropriate content such as R and X rated websites. It is not even designed to prevent the spread of illegal material where it is most often found (chat rooms, peer-to-peer file sharing).
• We will all pay for this ineffective solution: Under this policy, ISPs will be forced to charge more for consumer and business broadband. Several hundred thousand dollars has already been spent to test the filter – without considering high-speed services such as the National Broadband Network!
• A dangerous precedent: We stand to join a small club of countries which impose centralised Internet censorship such as China, Iran and Saudi Arabia. The secret blacklist may be limited to “Refused Classification” content for now, but what might a future Australian Government choose to block?

If you’re using WordPress with a theme that supports widgets then participating is as easy as adding a text widget (or using one you already have) and add the single line of HTML to activate the blackout.

To paraphrase Kryten from Red Dwarf, it has just two minor flaws. One, it won’t work, and two, it won’t work. Now I realise that, technically speaking, that’s only one flaw but I thought it was such a big one it was worth mentioning twice.

OK, this is just nuts – police finally pull over someone after a 28 km chase of a driver going at 130km/h. The reason the chase went so long ? Well apparently..

told officers he had not noticed them because he was texting.

Wah..

Catching up on PLOA I noticed a posting from Greg Black bemoaning the lack of ZFS in Linux so I thought I should make a couple of quick points in response to it.

1. The CDDL/GPL thing is just down to the fact that their requirements are incompatible (Sun based the CDDL the MPL), so you can’t mix that code. Just have to live with that.
2. A major issue with ZFS is that there is ongoing patent litigation in the US between Sun and NetApp over it – it’ll be interesting to see what Oracle do when they finally take over Sun (assuming Sun doesn’t expire before the EU regulators comes to a decision on the takeover)
3. ZFS-FUSE isn’t dead! Whilst Ricardo has stopped work another group has taken up the challenge and there is a new home page for it – http://rudd-o.com/new-projects/zfs – complete with Git repository (no more Mercurial, huzzah!).
4. The ZFS-FUSE mailing list is active too, if you want to learn more.