Europe Adopts Data Retention

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Via LWN this morning, a disturbing FFII press release about new EU regulations requiring the retention of records about communications. To quote:


Jonas Maebe of the FFII says: “Among other harsh measures, the
directive mandates recording of the source and destination of all
emails you send and every call you make, and your location and
movement during mobile phone calls. Additionally, the directive says
nothing about who has to pay for all this logging, which will
significantly distort the internal telecommunications market.”

and, getting worse:


The gathered data can be made available without special warrants, and
without limit to certain types of crime. There will be no independent
evaluation, and no extra privacy and no specific security safeguards.
The data will be retained for periods ranging from 6 months up to any
duration a member state can convince the Commission of.

The FFII have a permanent link to their press release on their website.

SCO Moving the Goalposts Again ?

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From the summary by a couple of good people (Chris Brown and Frank Sorenson) who attended the latest hearing in the SCO versus IBM farce, reported on Groklaw in the story “1st Word From the Court Hearing – Under Advisement“.
Chris Brown writes:


He stated that the discovery sought is plainly relevent including white papers, interim version, notes, & etc. That in the discovery obtained on the 20 developers IBM has turned over already, SCO has found documents that will support its claims. That in the requested discovery SCO seeks evidence of admissions that the source of infringing code is from Sys-V, AIX, or Dynix. He said SCO is entitled to show how that code came from those other operating systems. That SCO is not limited to code-by-code comparisons, but may show how it’s developed.


(Note: In fact SCO was dismissive of what it called “code-by-code” comparisons around a half dozen times during the hearing. Could this be foreshadowing their admission that they have been unable to find any evidence of infringing copied code?)

Frank Sorenson writes:


Normand says that SCO expects to find admissions from IBM’s developers in the materials that the source code came from System V, AIX and Dynix.


Under SCO’s theory, SCO is not limited to demonstrating through a code comparison. They want to show in IBM’s own words, through the developers notes, emails, etc. They expect that they’ll show IBM’s developers see a deficiency in Linux, they’ll implement it using knowledge and code from System V, AIX, and Dynix, then contribute to Linux. The developer may even mention the importance and improvement to Linux. He talks about the insufficiency of doing a code comparison, and how SCO would like to demonstrate using the internal IBM development notes.

So what happened to this then ?


“We’re finding…cases where there is line-by-line code in the Linux kernel that is matching up to our UnixWare code,” McBride said in an interview.

SCO wouldn’t have been misrepresenting or just incompetent by some chance are now looking to cover their tracks ? 🙂

The Sydney Riots

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My wife wrote the following and has kindly given me permission to publish it here.

THE SYDNEY RIOTS

I don’t love a racist country
a land of sweeping hate
of rugged men with iron bars
who say they stand up for a mate
I don’t call that madness friendship
I don’t call that loyalty
A communion based on hatred,
That’s not Australian, not to me.

We are all from far horizons
For our beliefs we are to blame
We make choices for our actions
In a world that’s gone insane.

by Donna Williams
www.donnawilliams.net

Intelligent Design, Newspapers and TV

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Found an interesting Q/A from an interview with a journalist covering the Dover School Board Intelligent Design case in the US.


Has any one of these factors in particular—politics, religion, age—been an indicator for which side of the case Dover residents come down on?


Interestingly, the division didn’t conform neatly to any of these lines. One consistent division I noticed, and that I wrote about, was between people who read and trusted the very good local newspapers (nearby York has two, which is pretty unusual for a small American city these days) and those who just didn’t trust them. The plaintiffs were the newspaper readers; the pro-intelligent-design school-board people were the newspaper rejecters.

Sounds like another manifestation of the effect that was found in 2003 that those who relied on Fox News had incorrect perceptions on events surrounding the war in Iraq (PDF, see page 14), such as whether WMD’s were found in Iraq after the war.

Australia Pulls Funding from Film Festival, Objects to Australian Films

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So the government has pulled AU$20,000 of funding for the Jakarta International Film Festival because of the presence of 4 Australian films critical of the Australian or Indonesian governments, including a showing of the documentary The President Versus David Hicks, 24 hours before the festival was due to start.

The fims will still be shown, although a workshop by an Australian investigative journalist on documentary making has had to be cancelled.

If you can’t beat them, sue them..

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So yet another company is trying to use software patents for getting back at a competitor they’re losing to, this time it’s Creative sueing Apple. The article describes the patent thus:


In August, Creative won a patent in the US for the way music tracks are organised and navigated on a player through a hierarchical system using three or more screens.

Obviously a truly earthshatteringly inovative invention..