The Musings of Chris Samuel

Announced via Groklaw:

[Groklaw] received a request from Tom Longley, Project Manager for Human Rights Information and Documentation Systems (HURIDOCS), a Geneva-based nonprofit. They’re looking for someone to help them reengineer their database software, WinEvsys, to be released under a Free Software license. That page has tons of info, including a fact sheet and a demo and the software for download. This software is used internationally by a lot of human rights organizations to keep track of human rights abuses, of which there seems to be a never-ending supply.

There is more information on the HURIDOCS website.

Just spreading the word..

Bruce Schneier has a great blog article on “The War on Photography” that is causing problems for photographers in formerly free countries around the world. If you are into photography (and/or freedom) it’s well worth a read. One part I will reproduce here is a paragraph with some useful links for us photographers (I’ve added the link for “photographers rights” which wasn’t in the original).

This is worth fighting. Search “photographer rights” on Google and download one of the several wallet documents that can help you if you get harassed; I found one for the UK, US, and Australia. Don’t cede your right to photograph in public. Don’t propagate the terrorist photographer story. Remind them that prohibiting photography was something we used to ridicule about the USSR. Eventually sanity will be restored, but it may take a while.

The Aussie version is already printed and in my camera bag, and remember that:

The 9/11 terrorists didn’t photograph anything. Nor did the London transport bombers, the Madrid subway bombers, or the liquid bombers arrested in 2006. Timothy McVeigh didn’t photograph the Oklahoma City Federal Building. The Unabomber didn’t photograph anything; neither did shoe-bomber Richard Reid.

It’s just security theatre..

Links to useful documents:

• http://www.sirimo.co.uk/ukpr.php
• http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm
• http://www.artslaw.com.au/_documents/files/StreetPhotographersRights.pdf

There’s a lot of panicy headlines going on at the moment about the ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) document leaked on Wikileaks, but if you’d like a more measured tone based on the actual content of the document then this Ars Technica article seems to cut through a lot of the random speculation that’s going on at the moment.

For those who’ve heard about the crazy news about the patent trolls that are invoicing people based on their claims to have invented image linking in 2000 (and patented it in 2002) there is a site that is gathering information about the patent itself (Republic of Singapore Patent No. 95940) and the Australian company behind it.

The site is at http://suevuestar.biz/ and includes the handy information that the Australian patent actually lapsed because they failed to pay the renewal fees!

As part of Adobe’s OpenScreen project to get Flash onto more devices they have just openly published the Flash 9 specification, with what appear to be no restrictions on their part (that I can see). The OpenScreen site seems to confirm it, listing their moves as:

• Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
• Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
• Publishing the Adobe Flash® Cast™ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
• Removing licensing fees – making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free

This is great news, suddenly Flash becomes an open standard and the projects to create open source viewers for it suddenly should have a lot of the information that they need. It doesn’t remove all the issues though, some of the codecs that can be employed are patented and can themselves attract licensing fees, but it does appear that they are not required (unlike OOXML, which requires MP3 for audio content for example). It also means that people wanting to implement open tools to create Flash content, or export to Flash, will have their job made a lot easier too.

Hats off to Adobe - better late than never!

Update: This also includes the FLV/F4V specification too!

Found via the ever excellent LWN..

From Techdirt:

Playsforsure was so bad that Microsoft didn’t even use it for its own Zune digital media device. Along with that, Microsoft shut down its failed online music store, and now for the kicker, it’s telling anyone who was suckered into buying that DRM’d content that it’s about to nuke the DRM approval servers that let you transfer the music to new machines. That means you need to authorize any songs you have on whatever machine you want — and that’s the only place they’ll be able to reside forever. And, of course, any upgrade to your operating system (say from XP to Vista) and you lose access to your music as well.

So now you find out that with DRM you don’t really own the music you bought, it can get taken away from you very easily, but you won’t get your money back I bet!

Back in 2006 Ross Anderson (Professor of Security Engineering at the Cambridge Computer Laboratory) announced on his blog that he had published the full contents of the first edition of his book “Security Engineering” in PDF format. The book covers a whole range of security issues from creating, managing, accrediting & breaking the mechanisms themselves through security politics and into topics like DRM.

Now the second edition of Security Engineering is about to arrive (published April 14th in the US, Amazon say stock expected in 1-4 weeks) and mine is on order already (along with a copy of Linus Torvalds Just for Fun)..

Erm, I don’t know quite what got into this person!

The purpose of this invention is to provide an improved method of proposing marriage to an individual. The method of proposing to an individual generally comprising the steps of meeting the individual; exchanging names with the individual; dating the individual (not necessary); drafting a government document having a proposal to marry the individual incorporated therein; and showing the government document to the individual. The government document may be a patent application. The patent application may claim the method by which the proposor will make a marriage proposal to the individual. The proposor could then use the method claimed in the patent application to propose to the individual. The patent application could be the actual marriage proposal.

Thankfully it’s rather restrictive on whom it applies to..

[0022] In the drawings, the method for a proposor to propose to an individual is generally referred to by the reference numeral 10. Method 10 generally comprises the steps of meeting an individual; exchanging names with the individual; drafting a government document having a proposal to marry the individual incorporated therein; and showing the government document to the individual. Preferably, the government document is a patent application. The patent application may claim the method by which the proposor will make a marriage proposal to the individual. The proposor could then use the method claimed in the patent application to propose to the individual. Furthermore, the individual is preferably named Ellen Renee Colyer (hereinafter “Ellie”) and the proposor is preferably named Ryan Thomas Grace (hereinafter “Ryan”). Ryan is more fully described as set forth hereinbelow. Ellie generally comprises a kind, loving individual who has not only been a large support for Ryan during many pressing times, but has also been a large influence on how Ryan approaches life (more so than Ellie will ever let herself realize).

…and the exact method is something that few people will (hopefully) try…

[0014] After drafting the government document, the government document is shown to the individual as generally defined by the showing step. The showing step may comprise placing the government document in a limousine where the individual can find the government document. The proposor could then arrange to have the limousine meet the proposor at a predetermined location where the proposor presents a diamond ring to the individual.

As geeky as the proposal may seem it appears to have worked!

[0045] In the ideal situation where Ellie accepts the diamond ring, Ryan should sign the patent application and deposit the patent application with the United States Postal Service. Preferably, the United States Patent and Trademark Office receives the patent application and, upon examination, issues a patent on the same.

The wedding reception will be a scream..

Dear Microsoft,

RE: OOXML

Due to massive irregularities in the voting process in ISO, the requirement to use patented media formats such as MP3 and the sheer inappropriateness of using the fast-track process for your massive XML document format OOXML I will not accept it as an agreed ISO standard, even though you managed to con enough people into voting for it.

Chris

Nokia and TrollTech (the people who write QT, the widget library that KDE uses, and who are a supporting sponsor of LCA 2008) are working out a purchase agreement (PDF joint letter).

Given that Nokia don’t seem to have a clue about open standards (Theora “proprietary” indeed) this doesn’t sound like a particularly promising deal to me.