Submission + - Amazon pulls out of Texas (dallasnews.com)
ralphart writes: Texas demands $269 million from Amazon in back sales tax. Amazon says "Uh...no thanks."
Software Now Un-Patentable In New Zealand 221
A few weeks ago New Zealand Software decided to grant software patents. But now
"Despite what appears to be a big-budget lobbying effort by the pro-patent fraternity, Hon Simon Power announced today that he wouldn't be modifying the proposed Patents Bill hence software will be un-patentable once the Bill passes into law.
This is significant. As we've previously pointed out software patents aren't black and white, and there are certainly pros and cons. However on balance, we believe they represent a far greater risk to smaller NZ-based software providers than opportunity, and there are many cases where they have significantly stifled innovation.
We believe it's near impossible for software to be developed without breaching some of the hundreds of thousands of software patents awarded around the world, hence many software companies in New Zealand, creating outstanding and innovative software, live a constant risk that their entire business will be wound up overnight due to litigious action by a patent holder.
This has led to many a 'patent troll' company, primarily in the US. These are non-software companies who exist only to buy up old patents with the sole intention of suing innovative software companies for apparent breach of these patents. The effects of this have been chilling."
Submission + - Is this a way around the GPL? 4
Malvineous writes: I have two devices, from two different companies (who shall remain nameless, but both are very large and well known) which run Linux-based firmware. The companies release all their source code to comply with the GPL, however neither of them include a build environment or firmware utilities with the code. This means that if you want to alter the free software on the device, you can't — there is no way to build a firmware image or install it on the devices in question, effectively rendering the source code useless.
I have approached the companies directly and while one of them acknowledges that they are not fully GPL compliant, due to other license restrictions they cannot make their build environment public, and they do not have the resources to rewrite it. I have approached the FSF but their limited resources are tied up pursuing more blatant violations (where no code at all is being released.)
Meanwhile I am stuck with two devices that only work with Internet Explorer, and although I have the skills to rewrite each web interface, I have no way of getting my code running on the devices themselves.
Have these companies found a convenient way to use GPL code, whilst preventing their customers from doing the same?
I have approached the companies directly and while one of them acknowledges that they are not fully GPL compliant, due to other license restrictions they cannot make their build environment public, and they do not have the resources to rewrite it. I have approached the FSF but their limited resources are tied up pursuing more blatant violations (where no code at all is being released.)
Meanwhile I am stuck with two devices that only work with Internet Explorer, and although I have the skills to rewrite each web interface, I have no way of getting my code running on the devices themselves.
Have these companies found a convenient way to use GPL code, whilst preventing their customers from doing the same?
Comment Re:Not reform, capitulation. (Score 1) 2424
So, since both mentioned examples do not involve health insurance, it would seem that you are suggesting to outlaw health insurance.
Berners-Lee Calls For Government Data Transparency 48
eldavojohn writes "Two months ago, Tim Berners-Lee unveiled a UK Government data project with the goal to make government data more useful for everyone. Today he is calling on the rest of the world's governments to become more transparent with their nonsensitive data. After only a few months, his project boasts around forty applications for using government data (screenshot example here). The BBC article notes the interesting uses of public data in India and Brazil that are disappointingly lacking in other countries — even the United States. Hopefully the US's data.gov will evolve to hosting apps instead of just data."
Comment Ubuntu (Score 1) 766
Because it works out of box for most hardware out there. Also, many things are very intuitive, such as app installation, system configuration and location of files and folders.
Eight PHP IDEs Compared 206
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Rick Grehen provides an in-depth comparative review of eight PHP IDEs: ActiveState's Komodo IDE, CodeLobster PHP Edition, Eclipse PHP Development Tools (PDT), MPSoftware's phpDesigner, NetBeans IDE for PHP, NuSphere's PhpED, WaterProof's PHPEdit, and Zend Studio. 'All of these PHP toolkits offer strong support for the other languages and environments (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL database) that a PHP developer encounters. The key differences we discovered were in the tools they provide (HTML inspector, SQL management system) for various tasks, the quality of their documentation, and general ease-of-use,' Grehen writes.'"
Drupal's Dries Buytaert On Drupal 7 55
itwbennett writes "The Drupal community has been working on Drupal 7 for two years, and there are 'hundreds of changes' to show for it, says Drupal creator Dries Buytaert in an interview with ITworld's Esther Schindler on the occasion of Drupal 7 going into Alpha test this week. Most notable for end users are 'some massive usability improvements,' says Buytaert, while site builders will see the greatest changes in the Drupal Content Construction Kit (CCK), which has been moved into the Drupal core. But one thing that hasn't changed is the not-so-easy upgrade path. 'The upgrade path for a Drupal site has never been really easy, to be honest,' Buytaert says. 'We do break backwards compatibility. It's a little bit painful because it requires all of the contributed modules — and there's 4,000-5,000 of them — to make changes.' But Buytaert doesn't think that's all bad. 'Innovation is key. Backwards compatibility limits innovation,' Buytaert contends. 'The rule we have is: We'll break the API if it makes a better API, and if it allows good innovation and progress to be made. Also: The second rule is that we'll never break people's data. We'll always provide an upgrade path for the data.'"
Comment Re:two ways to solve the tax "scam" (Score 1) 1505
Offshore companies pay 0% tax in places like Cayman Islands.
I don't see US lowering its corporate tax to 0% any time soon.
So, as long as there is any corporate tax in the US, it is more desirable for companies to register offshore branches.
Comment Re: indestructible tools for democracy (Score 1) 204
Democracy doesn't require the sort of anonymity you're promoting.
Yes, it does. It is called secret ballot. Without secret ballot government would know who to target. Citizens in democracies vote freely because they do not have the fear of persecution for their vote. And fear of persecution is as effective as persecution itself. For totalitarian states it only takes a few locked up activists/leaders in order to destroy entire popular movements.
Comment Who uses open source (Score 1) 227
One convincing argument for using FOSS is to name major companies/organizations using it.
For Drupal there is a nice list of sites at http://buytaert.net/tag/drupal-sites.
Among organizations are Google, Nokia, Symantec, NHL, Disney, Sun and Nike to name a few.
Collateral Damage as UK Censors Internet Archive 272
An anonymous reader noted the latest developments in the controversial censoring of the internet by UK ISPs. Apparently since some content of the Wayback Machine is bad, the whole thing needs to be blacklisted.
(Useful) Stupid BlackBerry Tricks? 238
Malaysia Frees "Anti-Islamic" Blogger 53
quarterbuck writes "The Malaysian blogger who was under arrest on sedition charges has been freed by the courts. Raja Petra Kamarudin's comments were interpreted by the government as being anti-Islam and anti-government; he was arrested under Malaysia's Internal Security Act. Now, a court has ruled that the government was overstepping its limits in what is being called a landmark ruling."
Submission + - Domains May Disappear After Search 1
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "A perfect domain name pops into your mind, a quick check at your registrar reveals that the domain is available, you put off the registration a few minutes and when you come back to register the domain, it's taken by someone else. How much time has elapsed between the search and the attempted registration — in one case, less than 90 seconds. Daily Domainer has an interesting story alleging that there may be a leak that allows domain tasters to intercept, analyze and register your domain ideas in minutes. "Every time you do a whois search with any service, you run a risk of losing your domain," says one industry insider. ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC ) has not been able to find hard evidence of Domain Name Front Running but they have issued an advisory (pdf) for people to come forward with hard evidence it is happening. Here is how domain name research theft crimes can occur and some tips to avoiding being a victim."
