Links to interesting articles I found surfing the web.
In the West we take having clean, running water so much for granted that when we can’t drench our gardens in the stuff we complain like the world is about to end. And this is in the London area where most people don’t even have gardens!
Maybe it takes something like World Water Day to make us realise how lucky we are.
This is a big subject and one where I’m increasingly of the opinion that we’re going too far in the wrong direction. ID Cards and imprisonment without trial are bad enough but things seem to be going even worse on the other side of the Atlantic (or the UK Government is better at hiding their nefarious plans).
Last weekend I came across an article in the Washington Post that says that the Bush administration is trying to pass a law which would restrict the rights of the press. It would, for example, make it possible to prosecute reporters who found that the President did something illegal or to publish information about a wiretap.
Fortunately press freedom hasn’t been completely decimated yet. The University of Chicago recently held a panel discussion on Civil liberties vs. national security. This write-up on Artstechnica is scary in places — why are such senior legal experts willing to toe the party line based on such flawed logic?
Meanwhile, apparently missing out on the irony, Congress is investigating some big Internet companies activities in China to see whether they’re doing naughty things like helping suppress free speech and imprison dissidents.
This has been doing the rounds, but I still think it’s amusing.
Norwegians plumb in beer-dispensing kitchen sink | The Register
Having said that, if a strange brown liquid came out of my taps I’m not sure that my first instinct would be to drink it. Mind, Norwegian beer prices — about ?5 a pint last time I was there — probably skew your thinking somewhat!
I was sad to see the passing of Linda Smith. I never saw any of her stand up work but I heard her frequently on Just a Minute and The News Quiz, where she was always sharp and funny.
Jeremy Hardy called her “the wittiest and brightest person working on TV or radio panel games” which really isn’t very far from the mark.
Guardian Unlimited | Obituaries | Linda Smith (Jeremy Hardy)
Independent Online Edition > Media (Louise Jury)
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | ‘Her mind was extraordinary’ (Jeremy Hardy again!)
I came across this article in the dead-tree edition of Computer Weekly: it discusses how to avoid open source licensing pitfalls. It’s an interesting but flawed piece.
What did he get right? I think it’s fair to say that people should assess the risks of installing free software. Free software is still new to a lot of people making the details of these risk somewhat unknown. He’s right to say that many people do not understand what obligations using some of the various free software licences put them under. I work for a very technically-focused company yet even we have had some internal problems with this.
Given that this is the crux of the whole article, what is my objection?
Well, how is this any different to proprietary software? Are the T&C’s on commercial software really less onerous than free software? Are they any better known? Let’s put that another way: did you read the EULA that came with your copy of Microsoft Windows? I thought not.
He makes a big thing of liability (“The risk of third-party intellectual property rights infringement … is a noteworthy concern”), giving a big red flag to open source software. While he concedes that “such risk is not confined to open source,” he then loses credibility by saying that the risk “is often perceived to be greater [in free software].” I’m not interested in the perception, as an expert in the subject I expect him to tell me the facts.
But is that right? Did Microsoft not make a big noise about them protecting you against violating patents while using their software?
They did, but then I came across this other article on ZDNet which talks about a patent ruling forcing Office upgrades. Yes, you read that right. Because Microsoft violated a patent, you may have to suffer the time and expense of upgrading all your installations of Office in order to be protected from legal action by Carlos Armando Amada, the guy who holds the patent.
So you may not get sued but you do have to pay for Microsoft’s mistake. The risks of using free software are different to those of using commercial software but it’s difficult to say that they’re lower. You need to be aware of the risks in both cases.
Note: Where I use the term Free Software here I mean the GNU definition (i.e., freedom) rather than “no cost.”
Even when I disagree with him, I tend to like Paul Graham’s writing. I like this essay, “How to Do What You Love.” Spending forty or more hours a week at work it’s important to like what you do.
This paragraph rang especially true: “If your work is not your favourite thing to do, you’ll have terrible problems with procrastination. You’ll have to force yourself to work, and when you resort to that the results are distinctly inferior.” I’m procrastinating a lot these days…