Democracy Now! reports (audio) that
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, one in eight Americans and almost one in four African Americans lived in poverty last year. It was the first year the poverty rate did not increase since President Bush took office. Just under sixteen percent of the population, or 46.6 million people, had no health insurance last year, up slightly from two years ago.
I’m willing to bet that those who go without health insurance also go without health care.
The RIAA’s latest attempt at convincing people to not illicitly share copies of music comes under fire. The RIAA’s educational video teaches nothing about fair use—exceptions to the restrictions in copyright law which allow people to make copies of copyrighted works for certain uses. According to CNet news, the video narrator claims
Making copies for your friends, or giving it to them to copy, or e-mailing it to anyone is just as illegal as free downloading
which contradicts language in their online FAQ, a copy of which accompanies the video. The online version of the RIAA “Campus Downloading” FAQ mentions fair use exceptions which is particularly interesting to campus users because scholarly examination of copyrighted works happens every day.
But CNet doesn’t mention the worst part of the FAQ which completely misrepresents theft and copyright infringement.
The EFF says another court refuses to dismiss NSA spying case and that’s always good news. Two things for you to do to help:
In what’s sure to be an ongoing series here about undemocratic control over institutions, I direct you to an article from MSNBC on Patricia Dunn, HP’s Board Chair, spying on her boardmembers home phone records in order to find out who’s been leaking info about HP’s plans to the press. One HP boardmember, Tom Perkins, says he was incensed about Dunn’s action so he packed up his suitcase and resigned from the board. Dunn reportedly acted alone in her decision:
It was classic data-mining: Dunn’s consultants weren’t actually listening in on the calls””all they had to do was look for a pattern of contacts. Dunn acted without informing the rest of the board. Her actions were now about to unleash a round of boardroom fury at one of America’s largest companies and a Silicon Valley icon. That corporate turmoil is now coming to light in documents obtained by NEWSWEEK that the Securities and Exchange Commission is currently deciding whether to make public. Dunn could not be reached for comment. An HP spokesman declined repeated requests for comment.
Update: Groklaw[1] reports that CNET reporter Dawn Kawamoto’s phone records were also a part of the operation for [writing] the article that angered HP’s chairwoman Patricia Dunn
.
One is reminded about what Eben Moglen said about what to read into Bill Gates leaving Microsoft (transcript):
The BBC reports that Sisvel is targetting SanDisk for not paying their MP3 licensing fee. It’s a warning to users as well; users can be sued for patent infringement too. Paul Heckel, a software developer who held patents which allegedly covered something which was done in Apple’s Hypercard program. When Apple wouldn’t license his patents straight away, Heckel told Apple he’d threaten Apple’s users with patent infringement lawsuits and then Apple was compelled to negotiate a license fee with Heckel. Heckel could have done what the RIAA is doing now, albeit with patent infringement instead of copyright infringement.
The trouble SanDisk has with patents that cover ideas used in software is hardly new. Microsoft was recently sued by Eolas, a firm whose chief “product” is a patent covering a method of using plugins with web browsers. Microsoft had the money to fight that lawsuit but this is an uncommon privilege (and one wonders how much of Microsoft’s money is ill-gotten gain being the loser of the US’ largest antitrust lawsuit). Talk to most software developers in countries that have so-called “software patents” and you’ll find out they retard innovation and narrow the field of competition to the giants (as Bill Gates put it years ago in a famous memo). Consumers are not well served by software patents and neither is science in general. One might wonder if the same problems exist in other fields in which patents are granted.
According to Richard Stallman
In the 1980’s the Australian Government commissioned a study of the patent system. The patent system in general, not software patents. This study concluded that Australia would be better off abolishing the patent system because it did very little good for society and cause a lot of trouble. The only reason they didn’t recommend [not establishing a patent regime] is that international pressure. So one of the things they cited was that patents which was supposed to disclose information so that they would no longer be secret or in fact useless, for that purpose, engineers never looked at patents to try and learn anything because it’s too hard to read them. In fact they quoted that an engineer saying “I can’t recognize my own inventions in patents”.
Had people looked more closely at MP3 early on and recognized the trouble with MP3 being patent-encumbered, they might have chosen a technically superior format that does the same job and is not encumbered by patents: Ogg Vorbis. The specifications are available for anyone to implement, even commercially, without fee and there are encoders and decoders licensed under remarkably generous terms so that the use of Ogg Vorbis will spread.
While it is too late to avoid this problem with MP3s, we can encourage people to switch to unencumbered codecs. We have a chance to avoid this problem for other kinds of files such as word processor, spreadsheet, and slideshow presentation files by encouraging the use of Open Document Format instead of the formats which will be used by upcoming versions of Microsoft Office. The easiest way to do this work is to encourage the use of free software office programs such as OpenOffice.org and KOffice.
Update: Sandisk fought the seizure order overturned so Sandisk was able to show their products on the last day of an electronics fair. While one can be sued for anything, one can take steps to avoid being sued—avoid the apparent buzzsaw that is MP3 licensing and go with something less risky.
CODEPINK’s latest essay on “bird-dogging” Sen. Hillary Clinton is worth reading; it exposes some of the little-known myths about Clinton’s record:
It turns out that Hillary has done a tremendous job””of getting New York Democrats to assume that because right-wing Republicans hate her she must oppose the war. Most New York Democratic voters also don’t realize that she co-sponsored an amendment to ban flag-burning, is against marriage equality for gays and lesbians, supports the death penalty, votes consistently for Star Wars appropriations and has served on the board of Wal-Mart for six years. Yet, she is consistently touted as the “liberal Democrat from New York.”
This essay also silently exposes another myth supported by many progressives—voting for someone based on their sex is sexism:
One woman reminded us that Hillary was a feminist who wore sandals in college and suggested that as women and feminists we should be supporting her.
Putting more women into office because they are women is a bad idea and dodges examination on the issues. It’s a good idea to put more women into office when their record or political past merits support, their campaign funds come from individuals (not corporations or PACs), and they currently support sound policy. The same applies to men as well, of course.
Why is Sen. Clinton’s career worth keeping tabs on if you’re not from New York? Because she’s widely considered to be a candidate for the Democratic party nominee for US President.
Andrew Rosenthal writes about the absence of political dissent in the New York Times. When I cross the quad of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign I am reminded of how there is no serious, organized, national opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Perhaps there are a few conversations amongst like-minded friends here and there, but locally the UIUC campus is like what Rosenthal describes. The local AWARE (anti-war, anti-racism effort) group protests regularly, but their efforts aren’t replicated across the country. It’s even hard to see anti-war footage on anti-war news reports (like Democracy Now!) that isn’t a repeat of old footage.
I wonder why that is, and I recall that the anti-war protests took a vacation to stump for pro-war candidate Sen. John Kerry in the last presidential election. The voters were told that his method to manage the war was better than the current war management under Pres. George W. Bush. So if Kerry voters won, they’d get a pro-war president. If Kerry voters lost, they’d be stuck with a pro-war president. With this kind of dichotomy, what do we have to look forward to?
Let’s hope the so-called anti-war Left doesn’t take another vacation to celebrate the achievements of the Democratic party—pro-war Sen. Hillary Clinton (who will probably win reelection because she has more money to spend than her anti-war challenger and plenty of media support from Time Warner’s NY1 in New York). It’s easy for anti-war supporters to say they won’t stump for any pro-war candidates when there are no candidates to consider and no election around the corner for most people’s radar (sadly, most Americans don’t vote in mid-term elections). We’ll see what happens when a presidential election draws near. I remember what happened last time (Wikipedia).
Former US Vice President Al Gore complains about the consolidation of the corporate media but no mention is made how this conflicts with his other loyalty: the Democratic Leadership Council.
First, check out this Gore quote from the Associated Press
Questions of fact that are threatening to wealth and power become questions of power,he said.And so the scientific evidence on global warming — an inconvenient truth for the largest polluters — becomes a question of power, and so they try to censor the information.
Yes, all fine and with the movie title namedrop as well, but when he was in power he was reluctant to challenge large-scale pollution. According to Joshua Frank and leading environmental muckraker Jeffrey St. Clair, Gore supported a free-market approach to handling pollution by supporting NAFTA which helped move big business polluters to Mexico where environmental law is weaker and less frequently enforced than in the US. Gore was placating the DLC, a group he conflicts with when he criticizes a monolithic media.
While Gore makes his claim, Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) is running for re-election and getting quite a boost from Time-Warner station NY1 financially—Time Warner has donated $100,000 to her campaign making that corporation the number 6 contributor to her campaign—and in the form of excluding her anti-Iraq-war competition, Jonathan Tasini, from televised debates by setting the bar for inclusion ridiculously high. NY1’s public relations manager, Edward Pachetti, says
The criteria are that a candidate must poll at least five percent (including margin of error) in a recognized independent poll and would need to have spent and/or raised $500,000.
Listen to Tasini and Ralph Nader, who also knows a thing or two about being excluded from televised would-be debates, as they talk about this development in depth on Democracy Now! on Wednesday, August 9, 2006 (Ogg Vorbis or FLAC format). Their discussion starts at 25m26s into the show. Nader points out that any ballot-qualified candidate should be able to participate in any debates. Any modern media player can play these files (scroll down a bit to see the list of operating systems and media players).
The Indian state of Kerala has chosen to migrate to GNU/Linux and it was a visit from Richard Stallman that put free software over the top.
Free software guru Richard Stallman’s visit last week had nudged the schools to discard the proprietary software altogether,state education minister MA Baby told FE [Financial Express].Stallman has inspired Kerala’s transition to free software on the lines of an exciting model of a Spanish province, which did the same,the minister said.
Local computer vendors will appreciate this sales opportunity, particularly after Microsoft’s recent sting operation executed there.
After much bad press about Apple’s hardware failing including causing two instances of minor burns to people handling the machines
, Apple has issued a recall on a bunch of bad batteries in their customer’s iBooks. Mike Pinkerton mentions a colleague’s Apple iBook battery won’t be recalled and asks
The odd thing is that all the tech notes tell you that to find the serial number on an iBook, you have to pry open the machine and look under the keyboard (ok, pry is exaggerating, but you get my drift). In reality, all you have to do is look in the System Profiler app; the serial number is listed on the main Hardware tab. I copied and pasted and it validated the serial number as an affected model, so I know it’s correct. Why wouldn’t Apple’s detailed tech notes mention this very simple alternative?
It would be a good idea to accomodate those that can get the serial number in software, just as Pinkerton says. However, not everyone using an Apple iBook runs MacOS X. Some run MacOS 9, some run free software operating systems including OpenBSD and GNU/Linux which have been ported to run on PPC hardware.
Bad batteries are a hardware issue; bad batteries will adversely affect all users regardless of operating system. If the hardware is warrantied without exception to one’s OS (as it should be), it makes sense to give directions that all iBook users can use, not just those running MacOS X. It would be unwise to exclusively list the software method for determining one’s serial number because this method would be vastly different in OSes and not available in some OSes.