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The Almighty Buck

Economic Crisis Will Eliminate Open Source 753

Posted by CmdrTaco from the why-so-gloomy dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The economic crisis will ultimately eliminate open source projects and the 'Web 2.0 free economy,' says Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur. Along with the economic downturn and record job loss, he says, we will see the elimination of projects including Wikipedia, CNN's iReport, and much of the blogosphere. Instead of users offering their services 'for free,' he says, we're about to see a 'sharp cultural shift in our attitude toward the economic value of our labor' and a rise of online media businesses that reward their contributors with cash. Companies that will survive, he says, include Hulu, iTunes, and Mahalo. 'The hungry and cold unemployed masses aren't going to continue giving away their intellectual labor on the Internet in the speculative hope that they might get some "back end" revenue,' says Keen."
Sci-Fi

Are We Searching Google, Or Is Google Searching Us? 346

Posted by kdawson from the eye-to-eye dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The folks at the Edge have published a short story by George Dyson, Engineer's Dreams. It's a piece that fiction magazines wouldn't publish because it's too technical and technical publications wouldn't print because it's too fictional. It's the story of Google's attempt to map the web turning into something else, something that should interest us. The story contains some interesting observations such as, 'This was the paradox of artificial intelligence: any system simple enough to be understandable will not be complicated enough to behave intelligently; and any system complicated enough to behave intelligently will not be simple enough to understand.' After you read it, you'll be asking the same question the author does — 'Are we searching Google, or is Google searching us?'"
Music

Submission + - Prince DMCAs YouTube to block Radiohead song (cnn.com)

Submitted by Enigma2175
Enigma2175 writes: CNN is reporting that videos from the Coachella music festival showing Prince covering Radiohead's "Creep" have been removed by Prince's label, NPG records. Thom Yorke of Radiohead was quoted as saying "Well, tell him to unblock it. It's our ... song.". No comment from YouTube or Prince yet. Under the DMCA, YouTube is not required to verify the entity making a request is actually the copyright holder and this seems to be just another example of the DMCA being abused.
Windows

Submission + - Windows XP SP3 Due for Release April 29

Submitted by
spacefiddle
spacefiddle writes: "Service Pack 3 for XP is getting a bit of coverage, and the following dates seem to be widely agreed upon:

...Now, according to tech site Neowin, Microsoft's release schedule for XP SP3 is as follows: * April 14, 2008: Support is available for the release version of Service Pack 3 for Windows XP * April 21, 2008: Original Equipment Manufacturers, Volume License, Connect, and MSDN and TechNet subscribers * April 29, 2008: Microsoft Update, Windows Update, Download Center * June 10, 2008: Automatic Updates
Is this buying extra time to get things right with Vista? Or is Microsoft going to quietly close the gap between EOL for XP and the release of Windows 7?"
Windows

Submission + - Gartner Analysts warn Microsoft of Impending Doom

Submitted by spacefiddle
spacefiddle writes: Computerworld has an interesting article about a presentation in Vegas:

Calling the situation "untenable" and describing Windows as "collapsing," a pair of Gartner analysts this week said Microsoft must make radical changes to the operating system or risk becoming a has-been.
The presentation was called "Windows Is Collapsing: How What Comes Next Will Improve." The admittedly sensational title and subject matter provided an analysis of what went wrong with Vista, and what they feel Microsoft can and must do to correct issues.

As an interesting tangent to this, there's also an article from a few days prior about Ubuntu replacing Windows for a school's library kiosks, getting good performance out of older hardware. The latter article has a number of glowing quotes about Ubuntu and FOSS in general, such as:

Stefyn said he was "pleasantly surprised" to discover that the Kubuntu desktops ran some applications faster with Linux than when they ran on Windows. An additional benefit of Windows' departure from student library terminals saw the students cease "hacking the setup to install and play games or trash the operating system".
We've been batting the idea around for weeks now. Are these isolated, over-hyped events, or is this the beginning of a lasting trend? I, for one, welcome our new FOSS overlords...
Censorship

Submission + - Johns Hopkins Censors Public Health Search Engine 1

Submitted by deadtree9
deadtree9 writes: Sarah Lai Stirland writes:

"A U.S. government-funded medical information site that bills itself as the world's largest database on reproductive health has quietly begun to block searches on the word "abortion," concealing nearly 25,000 search results.

Called Popline, the search site is run by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland. It's funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, the federal office in charge of providing foreign aid, including health care funding, to developing nations.

The massive database indexes a broad range of reproductive health literature, including titles like "Previous abortion and the risk of low birth weight and preterm births," and "Abortion in the United States: Incidence and access to services, 2005."

But on Thursday, a search on "abortion" was producing only the message "No records found by latest query." "

Taken from Wired Blog: Threat Level
Popline's Website

"Hello, China (kettle). You're black." says the U.S. (pot).

Thoughts?
Privacy

Submission + - Making Big Brother work for you..?

Submitted by spacefiddle
spacefiddle writes: So here's an an article on philly.com about someone who recovered their stolen goods by essentially shouting "stop thief!" on the internet... and providing surveillance footage of one of the alleged perps... plus this is the best bit:


"A few days later, Comcast co-workers surprised McPherson with a new Xbox. When he logged on to its Internet connection, he was immediately contacted several times, via the unit's instant voice-message system, by a guy who identified himself as the thief who'd taken the original Xbox. He wanted McPherson to buy it back from him."

I'm very conflicted about this one, and i think the article does a decent job of raising the various sides of the issue (at least briefly...). There's the apparent initial apathy of the police, the spookiness of the thieves contacting him, the ease with which he inspired a crowd to mob up on his behalf, the posting of criminal evidence to the world at large, and lots more goodies.

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