who’s afraid of bill gates?

The Scientific American is reporting that Microsoft’s Bill Gates is at it again: he is attacking open source and says it is violating 235 icsoft patents [link]. This is of course in response to the way Linux has been gaining ground and taking away from Microsoft’s market share. Apparently Microsoft sent an email to reporters this past Monday detailing its position which it had previously written in Fortune Magazine.

According to another source, patent experts say that

Microsoft’s patent complaints don’t make a lot of sense from a legal standpoint. The complaints, while possibly driving some customers away from open-source software, may make Microsoft the target of lawsuits from open-source developers seeking to prove they have not infringed, some patent experts have said.

Among those,

open-source advocates, including Linux creator Linus Torvalds and long-time open-source advocate Eric S. Raymond, have said there’s a simpler explanation for Microsoft’s action: It’s trying to create fear, uncertainty and doubt about open-source software.[link]

So.. don’t be afraid of Microsoft’s threats.

portrayl: is there a story inside you?

Two new and interesting online tools that I found listed on techcrunch: Portrayl and Ficlets. Both allow you to create a collaborative story.

Portrayl , according ot their website “is a place where writers showcase their work. You can start a story and add a chapter at a time. When you decide you’re finished, you can create a pdf ebook and also rss feeds of your story. Here’s the cool part – other people can add chapters to your story – but your chapters stay intact. When someone adds to your story it branches off into a new direction.

Ficlets: according to their site “a ficlet is a short story that enables you to collaborate with the world. Once you’ve written and shared your ficlet, any other user can pick up the narrative thread by adding a prequel or sequel. In this manner, you may know where the story begins, but you’ll never guess where (or even if!) it ends.”

Cool huh?

the ghost in the browser

Google just released a study entitled The Ghost in the Browser: Analysis of web-based malware [pdf document] in which it claims that 10% of websites contain malicious malware. It conducted an “in-depth research on 4.5 million Web sites and found that about one in 10 Web pages could successfully “drive-by download” a Trojan horse virus onto a visitor’s computer. Such malicious software potentially enables hackers to access sensitive data stored on the computer or its network, or to install rogue applications.” [cnet news]

Not only that, but according to another article on cnet,

An average of 8,000 new URLs containing malicious software emerged each week during April, Cluley said, adding that the notion that such software resides only in the darker corners of the Internet is very outdated. Seventy percent of Web pages hosting rogue software are found on legitimate sites targeted by hackers, according to Sophos.

report: net censorship increases around the world

The BBC reports that the Open Net Initiative at Harvard University in the US has just released a report about internet censorship across the globe. It claims that net censorship has increased and that the problem about that is that net filtering always happens in the dark. There is no way one can find what is being filtered or what is being censored. Evidence of this censorship was found in the following countries: Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Burma/Myanmar, China, Ethiopia, India, Iran, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, UAE, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Yemen.

In particular, the report conducted research in the MENA region and it states:

ONI conducted in-country testing for Internet filtering in sixteen countries in the North Africa and Middle East region. .. eight of these countries broadly filter online content: Iran, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Another four—Bahrain, Jordan, Libya, and Morocco—carry out selective filtering of a smaller number of Web sites. ONI found no evidence of consistent technical filtering used to deny access to online content in Algiers, Egypt, Iraq, or Israel. [link]

attempted thinking

US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is proposing a new bill that would “increase criminal penalties for copyright infringement, including “attempts” to commit piracy.” [link]
Apparently the Bush administration is supporting the bill which is entitled  the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007 [link to pdf of the bill]. Naturally, the intellectual property laws are aimed at protecting big music and movie industries.

Here are some of the proposed measures in the law:

• Criminalize “attempting” to infringe copyright. Federal law currently punishes not-for-profit copyright infringement with between 1 and 10 years in prison, but there has to be actual infringement that takes place.
• Create a new crime of life imprisonment for using pirated software.
• Permit more wiretaps for piracy investigations.
• Allow computers to be seized more readily.

What’s next? criminialize ‘attempted thinking’?

cyber war

A three-week wave of massive cyber-attacks on the small Baltic country of Estonia, the first known incidence of such an assault on a state, is causing alarm across the western alliance, with Nato urgently examining the offensive and its implications. [The Guardian]

According to The Guardian, “Alarm over the unprecedented scale of cyber-warfare is to be raised tomorrow at a summit between Russian and European leaders outside Samara on the Volga.” If the Russians are proven to be behind the attacks, the Guardian says this would be considered the first officially known attack by a state on another.

Not really. In fact in the Frontline film Cyberwars, one Pentagon official acknowledges that the US conducted a cyberwar attack on Iraq during the first Gulf War in 1992. In addition, cyberwars have been very common between Israel and the Palestinians. In particular, Israel as a State, and Palestinians as individual computer-savvy people.

the twitter phenomenon

Does anyone remember FlashMob? It was just another crazy Internet phenomenon where a group of people who did not know each other met in a predetermined public place, did something unusual and then disappeared. They connected only through the Internet. Flashmobbing still exists [link], but I am not sure how many people out there still do it.

And now there is the Twitter phenomenon. I call it a phenomenon because it really makes no sense whatsoever. Twitter is “a global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing?” Everybody from all over the world responds to that single question. You do not write an essay, you do not write a paragraph; you only write one sentence that describes what you are doing right this minute.

Here is one answer:

Run out of tobacco, but can’t be bothered to go out in the wind and rain to get some more, could today be the day I stop smoking?

And here is another:

Moderate takes reins as France’s PM: French President Nicolas Sarkozy named a consensual, reform

The site keeps updating of course every second as people from all over the world keep posting what they are doing.

The creators of Twitter are a group called Obvious from California. They claim they like to create “interesting things that matter to the world”.

Matter to the world? Maybe. Perhaps there is something I am missing.

A few weeks ago NPR had a segment about Twitter on its program On Point:

Non-stop, instant communication from anywhere, all the time. Hyper-connectivity, always present, in a non-stop global mind-share of twittering micro-thoughts.

You may listen to the program here as its founders explain what they wanted out of Twitter. And here is the link to the Twitter pheonomenon.

are you sphered yet?

Sphere is one of the new Internet gadgets that allows you to provide related links on a specific topic on your site. When a visitor moves his/her mouse over a link on your site, a widget pops open with links related to that particular topic.

The Sphere Related Content Widget connects with an icon link at the end of your blog posts. When a reader clicks on the icon link, we find blog and media articles related to your blog posts…The Sphere Related Content plug-in works best on topics that are being actively discussed in the blogosphere and news media.

There is also a Mac widget for the Mac dashboard.

So go ahead, get sphered http://www.sphere.com/tools#getsphered

a heatmap? the new webcounter for your site

Heatmap is the new way to tell who is on your site or blog. The creators of heatmap claim that it would help webmasters ‘collect, analyze and show the click information our users give us.’ Everytime a user clicks, even in an empty space on our webpage, it is reflected on the heatmap. I think the only problem with it is the slightly complicated download and installation process.

Download code. Tar.gz file

shiira for the mac, better than safari?

A browser better than Safari for the Mac? The Shiira Project released version 2.0 of the Shiira browser. Their stated goal is “to create a browser that is better and more useful than [Apple’s] Safari. Click here and check it out.