The Blog Formerly Known As SunMink
All the posts that used to be at blogs.sun.com/webmink

Special 301 is a nefarious mechanism that allows US corporations to request diplomatic action against foreign competitors on the flimsiest of grounds. It's anticompetitive, harms the rights of both US and foreign citizens in the digital age and it should go.

Sounds plausible, certainly. What the commentators I've seen so far (including Gruber) are mostly ignoring is that Apple would block Flash even if there were no technical issues (and most of them are probably soluble in some way) since their priority is control of the platform so they can control its monetisation.
It's business, not technology. That means no Flash, no Java, no virtualisation, no interpreted code. The very interesting question will be what they do with HTML5. My prediction: HTML 5 support will be complete but will lag native apps and be poorly integrated with the overall UI.

And quite right too. Whatever the political or news motivation, it was obviously wrong for a confidential helpline to in any way identify its clients or their employers to the news media. Worse, the woman involved is busily justifying herself instead of apologising to avoid damage to the charity she founded.

This is an interesting and useful article by a musician (from OK Go) whose work rose to great success through "viral" word-of-mouth video (the one with the people on running machines) but who now can't succeed with the same approach becuase their dinosaur record label EMI insists on "monetising video streams" and thus prevents them letting fans embed their new videos on fan web sites.
The failure of the music industry illustrated in cameo. Why would we want to let people who think like this shape our legislative future around the internet and copyright?

This is an interesting and promising (and open source) approach to data storage that could be built-in to consumer and SOHO devices to give them automatic data integrity by collaborating with other devices over the home or office LAN. It's still very raw as a technology but I'll be giving it a try at home this month.

I've always treated Myhrvold's company with the greatest scepticism (I call them "Intellectual Vultures") and this report is extremely believable. It fits in with the use of patents – especially software patents – by companies like IBM, who hide their patent shake-downs behind confidentiality, out-of-court settlement and fine language about their community credentials.

It's now Lent, and regardless of religious orientation I know many of us have the habit of reading a book for spiritual nourishment. This book by Marcus Borg casts a new light on the life and teaching of the apostle Paul and I would very much recommend it as a Lent book if you've moved on from evangelical christianity. If you read it and would like to discuss it maybe we can start a Buzz discussion? (This is the Amazon UK link)

"This issue is an embarrassment for all concerned, a naked bit of crony-capitalism that has so much more at stake than mere copyright. It needs to stop." — Great overview, read it.

All the arguments about "protecting rights" come to nothing when you realise that a ripped copy of a movie is far better to watch than the spam-laden version you can buy in a store. I have the same gripe about satellite TV in the UK – why should it be stuffed with advertising if I am paying to watch it?

"When asked about Obama's plan (without being given any details about what the legislation includes), 49 percent opposed it and 40 percent were in favor. But after hearing key features of the legislation described, 48 percent supported the plan and 43 percent remained opposed." — Why let the facts get in the way of knee-jerk rage, after all?

If anyone is left out there unaware that flying Ryanair is a false economy by now, they probably deserve what's coming to them.

A crucial and foundational legal finding that establishes violation of open source licenses is not acceptable and that penalties relate to the worth of the work and not the selling price or revenues of the author.

This is a very important finding indeed. VoIP applications are information services and thus not subject to the access charges that telecoms services have to pay in the US. Could have far reaching repercussions if upheld and repeated in other areas, even the demise of the telco industry as we know it.

I am speechless. Who could possibly have imagined this even two years ago, let alone a decade ago when we started the work that became ODF.

Not that this is terribly relevant to me, but the visualisations in this article are great (and perhaps a little surprising). Those sliders under the graphs are live, drag them.

It's bad enough to buy a product and be told by the manufacturer that you can't be trusted to have actually bought it so you must authenticate your purchase (usually with the surrender of your anonymity and privacy). To be told you are trusted so little you have to authenticate every three month is insulting. And to have the breakage installed silently by a mechanism you've been trusting to protect you is downright treacherous. I thought Microsoft was supposed to be changing for the better?

This is the sort of action that's open to a community when there's a decent trademark strategy in place. If you see other OpenOffice.org scams, report them on the community's marketing list.

Bravo.

Yet another illustration why the proposed three-strikes laws are unbalanced and unjust. The onus continues to be on the accused to prove innocence, usually at great cost and after summary judgment. This cannot be allowed to stand; we need to educate the general population about why it's their freedoms at risk and not those of anonymous abusers.

I've been highlighting this thread of thought (SJVN's post is just an example) to my counterpart at Oracle who tells me the information vacuum is not a guaranteed indicator of bad stuff. Moveover, some of these assertions aren't accurate. For example, Kenai is not being shut down – it is merely being reskinned and rebranded as Java.Net as an act of consolidation. So my advice continues to be to hold on and wait for news rather than assuming the worst.

Seems Amazon US has started providing a URL for the list of free tracks posted for the week. Very handy. I like all but one of these, well worth a visit.

Read this important discussion from the "IP" list, which explores the reasons why the insecure world Microsoft has built for us makes enforcement of laws related to credentialed (or identified) PC behaviour, such as music & movie downloads, spamming and child porn, subject to almost undetectable failure followed by almost unavoidable injustice.

The house is theirs, they can prove it, yet still the bank proceeds on the basis that it doesn't make mistakes. This is exactly the reason why lightweight, pro-business processes and laws (like three-strikes) are bad. When they go wrong, the victim is considered guilty until they can prove themselves innocent – usually at great effort and expense.

The problem here is that using law against individuals with rules – and penalties – that are designed to address behaviours of companies is sure to lead to injustice.
A friend just got a "three-strikes"-style e-mail from their ISP citing music I know they would never listen to as being in some way used in violation of copyright. What can my friend do? Presumed guilty, there's no recourse that is financially viable.
Among all the other reasons three-strikes cannot stand as law is the fact that it is beyond the means of any individual to defend themselves and thus justice is unavailable.

We live in a world that prefers persuasive stories to irritating facts.

Very interesting discussion suggesting how Buzz happened and sounding very plausible. You can't use the "eternal beta" approach with people's privacy.

Looks like an ideal job for several of my American friends…

I should think so too. Not all Netbook use-cases are online. Connectivity on the train to London is unusable, and giving presentations in most auditoria would be impossible if a reliable connection was mandatory. I was beginning to lose confidence in the judgment of the UNR developers, hope this is a sign they will listen to users a little more from now on.

On advertisements online, that is. Really not a surprise, but it does mean that Google falls into the same category as the lottery – a tax on the gullible to pay for benefits for the elite.

New world-saving invention from Lord Voldmhyr (no need even to mutter "abracadaver culicidae").

Great video showing the amazing musical automata Pat Metheny plays with on his new album.

And in case you had any doubts why they are so worried by OpenOffice.org and Google Docs that they are hiring staff to deal with them.