So why did WIPO cancel its meeting on Open Source software?

Good Editorial in The Register. Quote:

“WIPO is an international organisation dedicated to promoting the use and protection of works of the human spirit. These works – intellectual property – are expanding the bounds of science and technology and enriching the world of the arts. Through its work, WIPO plays an important role in enhancing the quality and enjoyment of life and helps create real wealth for nations.

Given its background and mandate it is surprising that it scrapped its first meeting on “open and collaborative” projects such as “open source software.” After all open source software does, indeed rely on intellectual property rights. It cannot exist without them. It is, therefore, bemusing that the US Director of International Relations for the US Patent and Trademark Office apparently opposed such a meeting, claiming that such a meeting would run against the mission of WIPO to promote intellectual property rights. At least one of the major US software companies, probably beginning with the letter “M”, is reported to have lobbied against the holding of such a meeting.

It is curious that WIPO should have acceded to such “requests”. It is even more surprising that a USA Government Agency should so manifestly promote such views, at least in such a clumsy and unsophisticated way. It is even more surprising that WIPO acceded to such demands, if, indeed, these were the reasons for “scrapping” such a meeting.

Leaving aside the demand by commercial organisations for so called “open source” software products, governments, government organisations and agencies are increasingly seeking open source software products as cheaper alternatives to commercial software products, ultimately to the benefit of nations’ taxpayers. So WIPO why did you scrap this meeting?”

Careless driving costs lives

Well, who have we here?

Photo from Mugshots.com.

Yes, it’s Bill Gates, co-founder of the Microsoft Corporation and the richest man in the world. He was pulled in by the cops in New Mexico in 1977 for reckless driving in his Porsche. Gates was 22 at the time — 20 years older than Microsoft. Nowadays, he drives a Lexus.

Another nail in the coffin of broadcast TV?

Fascinating piece by Michael Malone about how online gaming is changing adolescent males from couch potatoes into team players.

DIY Political Advertising

Steven Johnson mocked up this anti-Bush ad using just the web, and Apple KeyNote and iPhoto software. (Note: you need a QuickTime player to see it.) Startling illustration of what anyone can do with a little imagination and flair.

Surprise, surprise: 90 per cent of US kids use computers

According to an AP report, a major new survey has revealed that most American kids use computers and the Net.

Well I never… What will these youngsters get up to next? Seriously: I’m putting on a new ‘introductory’ course in my Open University Relevant Knowledge programme. It’s about helping adults to become comfortable with the Net, IM, online music, digital photography, online chat, etc. The working title for the course is “Catching Up With Your Kids”. I’m now wondering if it should be “Catching up with your Grandchildren”!

New York mobile phone user gets bogged down….

“A man riding a Metro-North train dropped his cell phone in a toilet and got his arm stuck trying to retrieve it Thursday, forcing the train to stop and delaying the evening commute for thousands of people,” reports AP. [From the Guardian‘s OnlineBlog.]

The perils of Search Inside

I’m still coming to terms with Amazon’s amazing ‘Search Inside’ technology. So is my friend and colleague Quentin, who did a ‘search inside’ on himself and found that he appears (as a hapless extra, I hasten to add) in Frederick S. Lane’s book Obscene Profits: Entrepreneurs of Pornography in the Cyber Age. Q should cheer up — there are worse fates. For example, I’ve discovered that I appear in Colin Jarman’s The Nasty Quote Book! [I described Radovan Karadzic, the infamous Serbian politician as “a rambling, inconsistent, sentimental, bouffanted crook”. Nasty, perhaps; but also true.]

Ten ways in which weblogs differ radically from conventional journalism

Very good insightful list by Jay Rosen. The ones I particularly like are:

5.) Whereas an item of news in a newspaper or broadcast seeks to add itself to the public record, an entry posted in a weblog engages the public record, because it pulls bits and pieces from it through the device of linking. In journalism the regular way, we imagine the public record accumulating with each day’s news– becoming longer. In journalism the weblog way, we imagine the public record “tightening,” its web becoming stronger, as links promotes linking, which produces more links.

6.) A weblog can “work” journalistically — it can be sustainable, enjoyable, meaningful, valuable, worth doing, and worth it to other people — if it reaches 50 or 100 or 160 souls who like it, use it, and communicate through it. Whereas in journalism the traditional way, such a small response would be seen as a failure, in journalism the weblog way the intensity of a small response can spell success.

7.) A weblog is like a column in a newspaper or magazine, sort of, but whereas a column written by twelve people makes little sense and wouldn’t work, a weblog written by twelve people makes perfect sense and does work.

Chinese government decides to invest in Linux

According to Reuters, “The Chinese government plans to throw its financial weight behind Linux-based computer systems that could rival Microsoft Corp.’s Windows in one of the world’s fastest-growing technology markets, an official said on Wednesday.

China would build a domestic software industry around Linux — a cheaper software standard that can copied and modified freely — said Gou Zhongwen, a vice minister at the powerful Ministry of Information Industry.

“Linux is an opportunity for us to make a breakthrough in developing software,” he was quoted as saying on the ministry Web site www.mii.gov.cn. “But the market cannot be developed on a large scale without government support.”

Gou did not give details on the amount of planned government investment in Linux.

China’s information technology market is growing at 20 percent a year, with software sales expected to reach $30.5 billion in 2005, according to research house International Data Corp.”

Microsoft goes into the bounty business

BBC Online story: “A $5m reward fund has been set up by Microsoft to help track down people who unleash damaging computer viruses.

The first rewards on offer will give payments of $250,000 to anyone with information about the creators of the MSBlast or Sobig viruses.

Both these viruses struck earlier this year and wrought havoc on home and business internet users.”

Er, shouldn’t that read “home and business internet users running Microsoft software”? Still, from Microsoft’s point of view, $5 million is a lot less than it would cost the company to write more secure software.