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Submission + - Gopher's rise and fall shows how much we lost when monopolists stole the net (eff.org)

mouthbeef writes: EFF just published the latest instalment in my case histories of "adversarial interoperability" once the main force that kept tech competitive. Today, I tell the story of Gopher, the web’s immediate predecessor, which burrowed under the mainframe systems’ guardians and created a menu-driven interface to campus resources, then the whole internet.

Gopher ruled until browser vendors swallowed gopherspace whole, incorporating it by turning gopher:// into a way to access anything on any Gopher server. Gopher served as the booster rocket that helped the web attain a stable orbit. But the tools that Gopher used to crack open the silos, and the moves that the web pulled to crack open Gopher, are radioactively illegal today.

If you wanted do to Facebook what Gopher did to the mainframes, you would be pulverized by the relentless grinding of software patents, terms of service, anticircumvention law, bullshit theories about APIs being copyrightable. Big Tech blames “network effects” for its monopolies — but that's a counsel of despair. If impersonal forces (and not anticompetitive bullying) are what keeps tech big then there’s no point in trying to make it small. Big Tech’s critics swallow this line, demanding that Big Tech be given state-like duties to police user conduct — duties that require billions and total control to perform, guaranteeing tech monopolists perpetual dominance. But the lesson of Gopher is that adversarial interop is judo for network effects.

Submission + - Unauthorized Bread: Refugees versus IoT in a fight to the finish! (arstechnica.com)

mouthbeef writes: My novella Unauthorized Bread — originally published last year in Radicalized from Tor Books — has just been published on Ars Technica: it's an epic tale of jailbreaking refugees versus the disobedient IoT appliances they're forced to use, and it's being turned into a TV show by The Intercept's parent company and a graphic novel by First Second with help from Jennifer Doyle. Making the story open access was in honor of the book being shortlisted for Canada Reads, Canada's national book award. The story builds on the work I've done with EFF to legalize jailbreaking, including our lawsuit to overturn parts of the DMCA The story is part of a lineage with a long history of /. interest, starting with my 2002 Salon story 0wnz0red, and it only seemed fitting that I let you know about it!

Comment A clarification from Cory Doctorow (Score 3, Informative) 191

Hey folks! Just to clarify: I said that the UK would renegotiate its relationship to the EUCD (European Union Copyright Directive) and Iain (reasonably enough, given the noisy room) heard OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development). Just a minor clarification, but I'd appreciate an upvote so confused people see it.

DRM

Submission + - Secret BBC documents reveal flimsy case for DRM (guardian.co.uk)

mouthbeef writes: "The Guardian just published my investigative story on the BBC and Ofcom's abuse of secrecy laws to hide the reasons for granting permission for DRM on UK public broadcasts. The UK public overwhelmingly rejected the proposal, but Ofcom approved it anyway, saying they were convinced by secret BBC arguments that couldn't be published due to "commercial sensitivity." As the article shows, the material was neither sensitive nor convincing — a fact that Ofcom and the BBC tried to hide from the public."

Comment Screws up transatlantic business (Score 5, Insightful) 554

I'm a UK taxpayer and I conduct a lot of business with the US west coast. Presently, we're 8 hours apart for most of the year, and that means that I can *just barely* squeeze in a conference call with Californian colleagues (I'm co-owner of boingboing.net and all my partners are in LA and San Francisco) and still get out of the office in time to get my daughter from day-care and get home for dinner.

If the timezone difference goes to 9 hours, I'm buggered. The additional hour will have a direct, negative impact on my net income, as it will either require me to participate less in these transatlantic ventures (for example, it would probably mean no more freelance assignments for US editors, all of which generate UK taxes) or hire expensive babysitters to fetch the kid from day-care (something I also would rather not do for sentimental reasons having nothing to do with the economy).

Comment Why let facts get in the way of a good smearjob? (Score 5, Informative) 437

I'm the Boing Boing editor who posted the image that the OP claims violated the Creative Commons license.

Read the OP closely: he's not saying that it was *his* image I took -- rather, that he was affronted on behalf of the photographer.

Except that the photographer in this case is my friend and colleague Jennifer Trant, and I used the photo with her permission, and then reproduced the entire CC license so that other people would know what terms they could use it on.

So, anonymous poster: how about the next time you decide to smear someone for infringing Creative Commons in the name of defending someone's copyrights, you actually make sure that the creator hasn't authorized the use?

Submission + - Secret UK plan to appoint "Pirate Finder General"

mouthbeef writes: "A source very close to the UK Labour government just called me to leak the fact that Secretary of State Lord Mandelson is trying to sneak a revision into the Digital Economy Bill that would give him and his successors the power to create future copyright law without debate. Mandelson goes on to explain what he wants this for: so he can create private copyright militias with investigatory and enforcement powers, and so that he can create new copyright punishments as he sees fit (e.g., jail time, three strikes)."
Biotech

UV-Resistant Micro-Organisms Discovered In the Stratosphere 156

junglee_iitk writes "Three new species of bacteria, which are not found on earth and highly resistant to ultraviolet radiation, have been discovered in the upper stratosphere by some Indian scientists. These bacteria, which do not match any species on earth, were found in samples collected through a balloon sent up to the stratosphere in April 2005. The payload consisted of a cryosampler containing 16 evacuated and sterilised stainless steel probes. Throughout the flight, the probes remained immersed in the liquid neon to create a 'cryopump effect.' These cylinders after collecting air samples from different heights ranging from 20 to 41 km were parachuted down and safely retrieved, it said." Here's the Indian Space Research Organisation's press release on the discovery. Adds an anonymous reader: "This paper in International Journal of Astrobiology [PDF] speculates how microorganisms reach the stratosphere."
Operating Systems

MoBo Manufacturer Foxconn Refuses To Support Linux 696

Noodlenose notes a thread up on the Ubuntu forums, where a user is questioning the practices of hardware manufacturer Foxconn. The user describes how his new Foxconn motherboard caused his Linux install to freeze and fire off weird kernel errors. He disassembles the BIOS and concludes that a faulty DSDT table is responsible for the errors. Even though the user makes Foxconn aware of the problem, they refuse to correct it, as 'it doesn't support Linux' and is only 'Microsoft certified.' The user speculates darkly on Foxconn's motives. Read the forum, read the code, and come to your own conclusions. "I disassembled my BIOS to have a look around, and while I won't post the results here, I'll tell you what I did find. They have several different tables, a group for Windows XP and Vista, a group for 2000, a group for NT, Me, 95, 98, etc. that just errors out, and one for LINUX. The one for Linux points to a badly written table that does not correspond to the board's ACPI implementation.' The worst part is Foxconn's insistence that the product is ACPI compliant because their tables passed to Windows work, and that Microsoft gave the the magic WHQL certification."
Classic Games (Games)

Journal Journal: My collection

Man, haven't done anything with my collection in ages.
Think it's time I started selling all those I extras and get me a pinballmachine, it's due time.
Now if I only could decide which one I want (suggestions welcome).

User Journal

Journal Journal: Hmmm

The article comments started to get more interesting to read when I began browsing them with a -5 modifier on "Funny" posts.

Then again, I'd take an insightful comment over a wise crack any day.

User Journal

Journal Journal: Friends, fans, foes and freaks

Noticed today that not only have I fans (the feeling is mutual since they are IRL friends), but also a freak that consider me a foe.
Wonder what comment sparked that one off.
Ah well, can't be loved by everybody. =)

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