Banning hands-free cell phone usage raises some other interesting questions... should we ban talking to others in the vehicle while driving? Listening to talk radio while driving? Listening to music? (Who else has caught modern music using sirens and cell phone noises as faint background attention getters?)

I suspect the default assumption made about people objecting to a ban would be that those people don't want to lose the convenience of talking to their friends/family while stuck in traffic, and in a lot of cases that's probably a fair assumption. However, personal convenience issues aside, there are a lot of professions (real estate agents come to mind) who do a LOT of their business while between one location and the next. Really clamping down on such a ban would play havoc with them. What about doctors - should they no longer be allowed to be notified about patient emergencies while behind the wheel? Should police cars have to pull over in order to use their communications gear?

Banning texting strikes me as a no brainer (I'm more astonished anyone would actually *try* that...) and hands-on usage banning I agree with, but banning hands OFF communication seems to invite some complications that deserve careful thought. I have heard claims that even hands-off cell phone usage causes a dangerous degree of driver distraction and that might be the case, but does anybody know of actual published peer reviewed studies demonstrating that and what the numbers are compared to radio, in-car discussions and other such distractions?

Looks like they're using a non-commercial Creative Commons license for the images:

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License (CC BY-NC 3.0)

That trend seems to be popular when it comes to such efforts, and by and large I'm OK with it - preserving early manuscripts is not a zero cost operation, and the NC license allows the data to be distributed and made available for scholarship while still giving the holding institution the chance to recover some of the (usually non-trivial) expense of digitzation. Hopefully if they don't want to publish printed bound versions themselves they'll be willing to negociate with someone who is intersted...

There have been a number of other notable manuscript digitization projects of late:

British Libraries Digitised Manuscripts
http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/

"Homer Multitext" - several manuscripts including Venetus A
http://www.homermultitext.org/

The Archimedes Palimpsest
http://www.archimedespalimpsest.org/

Personally I think such projects are absolutely vital to the long term preservation of these manuscripts. Modern technology makes possible the duplication of these source documents in high fidelity facsimile (Taschen in particular has published a number of fascinating editions, including Blaeu's Atlas Maior - another example would be The Book of Michael of Rhodes from MIT Press). So often works survive only as a copy of a copy of a copy, and we are left to peer through the murky glass of multiple interpertations at the far distant original author's intent. (The current definitive edition of Euclid, for example, is available to us only because of a single surviving early copy in the Vatican's library (which so far as I know has not been digitized, unfortunately, except for a couple images here: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/vatican/math.html).)

We should be scanning and then printing many copies of these early works and depositing them in libraries around the world in order to help these early glimpses into our history survive (at least in SOME form, even if the originals are lost). Of course, multiple copies of the digital data is also very important, but we have no way of knowing how well digital data will survive on thousand-year time scales. Fingers crossed that we will see multiple volume facsimilie copies of Newton's notebooks (one volume for the facsimile, one for a modern translation ) on Amazon in the next few years...

I'd pay extra for an open phone, provided it did two things reliably - make calls and receive calls.

I was excited by the OpenMoko project, and I am still grateful for what they have provided to the community (among other things, the Computer Aided Design models for their phone case are still the best open source CAD models I know of). I even got my hands on a Neo1973 as a physical example of (some of) those CAD files, for reference. I have never seriously considered trying to use it as my primary phone, however.

Personally, I'm less concerned with "smart phone" features - my main phone is still the "old school" style without a touch screen, internet, or all of the features we commonly associate with things like the IPhone. That makes me a fairly good candidate for an open phone, so long as it can do phone calls well - the stability/in-development status of the rest of the "smartphone pacakge" wouldn't bother me so much. But it *does* need to do phone calls. Decent charging behavior would also be a plus.

If they can focus on and deliver those key things for the "next" version of the OpenMoko, I'm definitely going to be interested. Fingers crossed...

Monitor isn't the *only* investment grade hardware around - what about a Model M keyboard? I think mine has outlived at least two machines since I owned it (got it used in 2002 or so and it's dated from the 80s, so lord only knows how many before I got it), and I'll be replacing it with a new Unicomp Model M for my next machine (already got it ahead of time) only because I can't get adapters for the old style plug any more. It's still working great and I'd keep using it if I could.

Now *that* is durable hardware :-)

P.S. - that reminds me, anybody know of a USB adapter for old style AT keyboard? I know there are problems with not enough power being supplied from a single USB slot...

OK, it's pretty well established that a lot of people don't like this new approach to Firefox versions (or lack thereof). Among (many) other issues, how are website developers supposed to test against various versions of the browser to make sure things work? (Uh, yeah, your website didn't work with Firefox version Tuesday and Thursday, but I didn't see the problem on Friday...)

If we don't like it, what options are available?

Fork it - difficult to do successfully; replacing the supported development currently done on the codebase is probably impractical unless all the support moved to the fork. Also total loss of brand name recognition, since the firefox name and logo couldn't move with a fork.

Use something else - Opera isn't open source, so while it's a good practical alternative to have around it's not something to bet the farm on. Chrome is at least based on Webkit, but it also isn't fully open and has similar versioning issues. Also, the Firefox plugin ecosystem would be hard for a lot of people to give up.

Negociate a truce - if the Mozilla devs don't want to maintain releases, perhaps the various Linux distributions and corporate users with an incentive to see stability return could pool some development and financial resources to maintain a stable version of Mozilla's web browser (my vote would be Mozilla Gibraltar) that would protect corporate users from the churn and ensure things like major/minor version API compatibility. Firefox can plow ahead at full speed, but have a team of developers taking Firefox's work and more carefully fitting it into a more traditional framework. If Mozilla were willing to "bless" such a browser while not having to constrain their Firefox development style to satisfy the requirements of corporate IT and more cautious users, perhaps it would be workable all around?

Backporting fixes to older software versions does take work and is usually less than exiting (wow that was crappy code, now how do I make it do this new thing without gutting it?) so perhaps it might be reasonable to set up a mechanism where those who want that work can vote with $$ to make it happen while still being an "official" Mozilla browser?

There seem to be some projects that actively resent the idea of version numbers having meaning. Maybe they don't want to be "constrained" by what they can and can't do based on major/minor version updates, or maybe they just don't want to keep track of it all - I'm not really sure.

To me, version numbers are a way to communicate something about a project to users. "Oh, it's a patch release? That should be relatively small fixes and fairly safe. A minor release? Cool, some new features or significant changes to look at. A major release? The file format changed and the GUI got rewritten - going to need some eval/retraining on this one."

There are reasons for this rational, structured approach - when you have users in the Real World, they need time to prepare for major changes. Your software is probably doing Real Work, and cannot be simply yanked and upgraded without first ensuring that it will continue to do what it needs to do.

Developers may resent this, but it is an utterly inescapable reality. Critical tools cannot be casually changed - there MUST be a testing and validation period. Patch releases with minor/security fixes allow for relatively quick and simple deployment of truly essential changes without the major upheaval of EVERYTHING changing. Eventually you do need to make the jump to the next major upgrade, but surely Debian stable is proof positive that users need controlled, gradual change? Relativly stable periods between major changes are ESSENTIAL for a controlled computer environment, and it's hard to blame those who are saying the new Firefox approach is automatically disqualifying it from their networks.

Of course, there's also the point that developers with limited resources don't want to have to keep backporting code to older versions of browsers and work around issues that should have long since been restructured away (and have, in newer versions.) This is actually one of the better cases for commercial support of FLOSS - a company being paid to ensure older versions work can do the grunt work that the open source volunteers aren't going to want to spend time on.

Perhaps Mozilla could think about offering a paid service that maintains and supports particularl version numbers of browsers and have their "unversioned" open source browser with all the latest changes be the default, if this is a resource constraint issue?

I'm seeing a lot of folks saying Chrome may be the big winner out of all of this, but not much comment about Opera making gains. I confess to being a bit out of the loop when it comes to browser alternatives, but my impression was that Chrome isn't entirely open source. It uses WebKit, but that licensing does not seem to cover the whole of the browser - wikipedia at least cites some sort of "Google Chrome Terms of Service".

Are the "GCTS" open source, or is the current sense of the community that Chrome is "open enough" to displace Firefox, despite not being fully open? If I were a business and needed to replace Firefox, and didn't care about open source, my first thought would have been Opera - is the recent management change there (along with the comments about "quarterly" focused management) enough to cast a shadow on Opera as well?

"All data provided by BLOODHOUND Programme Limited is proprietary to BLOODHOUND Programme Limited. All such data shall only be used for the purposes of education and shall not be used by any party for commercial gain."

The files are AVAILABLE, but that doesn't make them open source. There's an important distinction. Unless I'm missing it, they don't have any standard license (Creative Commons or otherwise) attached to it right now and they don't sound like they're going to encourage people to use this data as a basis for their own projects. If you can't "fork" the car design and work on your own car it's a bit tough to call it open source.

That said, this does look pretty cool and the educational aspects of it are legit enough (also would make a good set of test files for any open source project planning to support that JT file format.)

Does anybody know if they've put together/published a detailed set of drawings for this machine? Given how much work it was to create it and how cool/historically significant it is, it would be nice if the hardcore nerds among us could order copies of the detailed technical information.

"World Wonders" in this sense are things that have stood the test of time and often-times represent the peak of a civilization's achievements (or at least, the known peak of what has lasted from that civilization.) Wikipedia is useful for some things, but I hardly think it belongs in the same category as the historical/natural sites UNESCO's world heritage efforts work to preserve.

If they want to pick something "modern" to protect, IMHO it should be what remains of the US and Soviet systems/sites that participated in the space race. Ultimately human beings stepped foot on the moon as a consequence of those efforts. THAT's something worth preserving/remembering. And could probably use some help in the preservation department.

THIS. Universities should ban together and create some standard teaching materials that are CC licensed and suitable as a basis for course-work. If "standard texts" can't be used anymore, fine - put 100 smart guys on it from 80 universities and create something fresh and new. For basic subjects there should be plenty out-of-copyright material to use as a basis, if that is helpful.

Really, this should be happening at all levels of education. Kindergarden up through College. Make it as inexpensive as possible to give people a quality education, and for heavens sake take advantage of what computers and the internet have made possible.

I guess I'm a bit old school when it comes to libraries (nothing better than an old Carnige library building) so I'm a little dubious that televisions and video games should be there - they constitute a distraction from reading and research. On the other hand, it's heartening to hear that money is being put into libraries - they're an important resource. Technology for cataloging and checkout is certainly good, as a library full of books can be quite the resource management challenge.

I'm a little surprised they're unhappy about not seeing professionals - in my experience as people move to the young professional stage specialization means the local public library isn't likely to have what they need (specialized technical books tend to be a long shot, since only one in 1000 patrons will want it and that one probably would order a newer version through Amazon...). On the other hand, they're GREAT for young kids who will burn through a ton of books on a broad range of topics in short order. They're also good when you get towards retirement and don't need the intense focus demanded by professional careers - wandering into the library and picking up a random book for half a day is more practical then.

If they want young professionals(why?) they'd have to get a whole bunch of subscriptions (online, if nothing else) to paywall publications that people can't cheaply get at home via the internet. (One of the great things about universities - if you want a random scientific article you can often go online and download it, as opposed to coughing up $30...)

This is the commercial licensing side of Qt, *NOT* Qt. The major thing that will matter to the open source community is whether Qt will still be developed as a robust cross platform toolkit, not so much what happens to the commercial licensing business. Even Qt's future on phones doesn't concern me too much - the smart phone industry moving towards "app store" models and locked down platforms is a much bigger concern. (I'm just waiting for Apple to announce they're moving to an App Store model for all their desktop machines...)

Where Qt really shines is as a toolkit for graphical applications on the desktop. THAT's what ultimately concerns me - will the developers who have made Qt such an outstanding cross platform graphical toolkit will be allowed to continue their work as a paid, full time job? Never mind the phones, KDE and a vast array of non-KDE desktop applications that are important parts of the open source ecosystem rely on Qt (especially those that have to deploy on Windows). Would the commercial Linux vendors step in to keep the Qt devs programming, much as they have hired Linux kernel folk in the past? Libreoffice indicates they will act to protect key elements of open source, so fingers crossed. A statement along those lines would be reassuring, if they are in fact able and willing to fall back to that solution if necessary.

There needs to be a way for an inventor who does not want to file a patent ($$$) to prevent other people from using their idea to get a patent and then charge them for the use of their own invention (or prevent the inventor from letting others use their invention for no cost, if he so desires).

Not every idea or invention in the world is about commercial profit making, and the law needs to recognize that.

There needs to be some kind of filing that will block other patents but not grant exclusivity, which is much less expensive to file.