Letters from the liberators

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Letters from the liberators

Lots of US soldiers serving in Iraq have been emailing Michael Moore.

“It’s hard”, writes one correspondent, “listening to my platoon sergeant saying, ‘If you decide you want to kill a civilian that looks threatening, shoot him. I’d rather fill out paperwork than get one of my soldiers killed by some raghead.'”

“I was guarding some Iraqi workers one day”, writes another. “Their task was to fill sandbags for our base. The temperature was at least 120. I had to sit there with full gear on and monitor them. I was sitting and drinking water, and I could barely tolerate the heat, so I directed the workers to go to the shade and sit and drink water. I let them rest for about 20 minutes. Then a staff sergeant told me that they didn’t need a break, and that they were to fill sandbags until the cows come home. He told the Iraqis to go back to work.

After 30 minutes, I let them have a break again, thus disobeying orders. If these were soldiers working, in this heat, those soldiers would be bound to a 10-minute work, 50-minute rest cycle, to prevent heat casualties. Again the staff sergeant came and sent the Iraqis back to work and told me I could sit in the shade. I told him no, I had to be out there with them so that when I started to need water, then they would definitely need water. He told me that wasn’t necessary, and that they live here, and that they are used to it.”

Lots more in the same vein in a Guardian excerpt from Moore’s collection of these dispiriting letters.

Creative Commons UK…

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Creative Commons UK…

… goes live today, launched with a lecture at UCL by Larry Lessig. I’d hoped to be there, but one of my kids is ill, so am stuck at home. Bah! Still, there are several pieces in the UK media about Larry and the project — here, for example, and here.

The Kodak patent decision — and its grim implications

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The Kodak patent decision — and its grim implications

Something truly terrible has happened. Groklaw summarises it thus:

“Kodak bought some patents from Wang in 1997. The patents cover a method by which a program can “ask for help” from another application to carry out certain functions, which is more or less what Java does. Kodak’s business is suffering from the digital revolution, so it decided to sue Sun for infringing its purchased patents. It claims that Sun pilfered its technology. The two companies worked on some joint projects together at one time that involved the same technology at issue in the lawsuit, which Sun argued was an indication of Kodak’s implied consent.

Friday, Kodak won, thanks to a patent system spinning out of control, one that is destroying creativity and innovation in the software industry.”

This could screw the entire software industry. And there’s a terrible danger that European legislators are going to adopt precisely the system that is causing the damage in the US. As Groklaw puts it:

“Europe. Are you watching? Is this system what you want where you live? If you think you can have a patent system and just work around US “excesses”, think again. If you read this history of patents in the US by Bitlaw, you will see that it started small here too, and everyone tried to make the kinds of distinctions you currently are trying to craft in Europe. But look at the results here. The same thing will happen to you, if you allow patents at all on software. The excesses are part of the system as it is eventually applied by greedy individuals and companies, and you can’t legislate against greedy gaming of a system. It happens.

Think about it carefully, because this is exactly what happens when you adopt a system that rewards the Kodaks of the world for such behavior and penalizes Sun for years and years of expense and sweat and toil and creativity by robbing them of their due reward, not to mention removing any motive to ever do such innovative things again as long as they live. What happens now to Sun’s Java Desktop? It was supposed to be a cost-saving alternative to Windows. I wasn’t planning on using it, for other reasons, but some would. Now what? What impact will this decision have on the costs of that system? I don’t even want to start to think about the implications of this decision for the rest of us. Can Java go open source now, before the patent runs out? That may be sooner than Sun intended to open source it anyway, but the point is, now their code is burdened with patents and the associated costs and restrictions, and Sun doesn’t even own or control the patents.”

Here we go — malware via IM

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Here we go — malware via IM

From The Inquirer:

“VIRUS WRITERS have released an Internet worm that propagates using instant messages and exploits the JPG flaw in Microsoft. Researchers at The SANS Institute’s Internet Storm Center (ISC) have had two reports of a worm being installed using AOL messenger. The victims complained that they received messages on America Online’s AOL Instant Messenger service that lured them to Web sites containing a JPEG that contained the malicious code. The messages told the users to “Check out my profile, click GET INFO!” But when they visited the site, the malicious code would attempt to install backdoor software.

Additionally, messages containing a link to the site would be sent out to all contacts on the victim’s instant messenger contacts list. The ISC said the attempts failed but showed that hackers were starting to build code using the JPEG vulnerability. ”