If it's all the same to you I'd like to skip some parts... like for example their trips to the toilet.

I hope you realise that any such toilet exception would lead to the bulk of the G20 summit being conducted in the mens toilets. Leaving Germany, Brazil, Argentina and Australia to strike up a bizarre alliance in the women's toilet.

Aaah, so that's what all that writing was.

When a GPL'd project gets bought out, we can end up with one freerider: the purchaser.

With BSD/MIT/Apache licences, we get lumped with unlimited freeriders, no purchase necessary. That's why companies who aren't interested in freedom put so much work into advocating those licences.

Free software is about setting minimum levels of respect: the four freedoms.

Many projects go beyond this, by using copyleft, by assisting community participation, by being transparent, etc.

By abandoning this standard, Oracle shows itself as just another free software freerider, not to be trusted and not worthy of community support or good will.

We've all heard of the research showing that London taxi drivers have one part of their brain enlarged by their work.

More recently, research shows that this comes at the cost of reducing their memory for other things:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/sciencetoday/2011/0609/1224298636027.html

Becoming a super-specialist in a very narrow field, such as a Scrabble master, might have the same effect.

It's a real pity that Ghostery isn't free software.

It has a look-but-don't-touch licence for the source code. Being able to look is better than nothing, but if no one can modify or fork it, then it's unlikely that anyone's reading the source code at all. I wouldn't trust my privacy to something with no community or third-party oversight.

Here's gnu.org's list of free, mozilla-compatible add-ons:
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/addons.html

For privacy, there's only really Noscript and Requestpolicy.

We have made a very bad mistake. Anyone redistributing those versions is violating the GPL, through no fault of his own.

We need to fix those releases retroactively (or else delete them), and we need to do it right away.

I see two quick ways to fix them: to delete the compiled files, or to add the sources they are made from.

From the mail linked to in the story: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2011-07/msg01155.html

Some negative reviews of the project's concept:

* Richard Fontana: http://opensource.com/law/11/7/trouble-harmony-part-1
* Bradley Kuhn: http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2011/07/07/harmony-harmful.html
* David Neary: http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2011/07/06/harmony-agreements-reach-1-0/

(I just noticed that their licence notice doesn't make any sense. I presume they meant to write "with*out* written permission")

I just went looking for free alternatives but NoScript is all I found!

* https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/

TrackerBlock, BetterPrivacy, and Ghostery all seem to be proprietary software. What a disappointment.

FSF maintain a list of free mozilla-compatible plugins:
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/addons.html

I see one free plugin that I haven't tinkered with: https://www.requestpolicy.com/

Here's the entire licence file of the software they tell you to install to protect your privacy:

All source code, images and other intellectually property in this extension is owned by or licensed to privacychoice LLC. It may not be used in any way with written permission. Copyright © 2011 privacychoice LLC

If no one can modify it, that means it's unlikely that anyone will bother looking at the source code. There's no community verifying or improving the privacy of this software. There has to be free alternatives.

Download and upzip: http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/addons/247581/trackerblock-2.0.1-fx.xpi

Remember when amazon.ca displayed real names instead of logins for a day in 2004 due to a glitch?

The articles about it have a bad habit of disappearing, so I archived them here:

http://ciaran.compsoc.com/amazon-reviews-are-fake.html

I often look at Amazon reviews when deciding what books to get for language learning, but 80-90% of comments aren't credible. I still find it useful, but you have to know the limits of what you're looking at.

Poechenellekelder? (beside the manneken pis) That's a personal favourite in Brussels and has about 250 biers, plus specials of the week/month.

Delerium is a good place too, with two or three dozen very varied beers on tap on the ground level, not downstairs.

And once the taste buds are drunk, I leave quality behind and get my pints of Maes for â2 in Celtica :-)

(I don't know any good beer bars in Belgian cities other than Brussels, tips wanted!)

Filing a complaint at the US ITC is now part of the standard arsenal for software patent lawyers. Actual bans are very rare, a Qualcomm phone ban is the only one I remember, and the ITC has also said explicitly that bans are only possible at the request of product developers, not trolls.

That said, in terms of stock prices, market confidence etc. filing a complaint at the ITC is probably a win in itself in this legal system that encourages competitors to shoot each other rather than out-do each other.

http://en.swpat.org/wiki/United_States_International_Trade_Commission
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Phone_patent_litigation

No no no, the last option is for the proud whiskey drinkers :-)

A few weeks in Belgium would convert them.

I've added them to the list:

http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Software_distributors_paying_Microsoft_patent_tax

The costs being passed on is bad enough, but it's also worrying to note that these deals include an implied admission by the signees that they need MS's permission for the distribution of their products.

That means MS can cancel their business at any time, and it implies that no one else can develop for that platform without MS's permission.