Group items tagged

[ Andy on June 25, 2015 C: 0 Breaking Trading standards officers and police are carrying out a crackdown across England, Wales and Northern Ireland against those who offer pirate and counterfeit products via Facebook. Interestingly, 'pirate' Android boxes have been targeted again, not only for streaming content illegally, but also for having "dangerous" chargers. ...]

from the because-that's-how-it-works dept This seems to happen every political season. When he was a Presidential candidate, John McCain got annoyed at YouTube taking down political videos based on copyright claims. During the last Presidential election, a...

From an Fight For the Future mailing: "Here's the deal: yesterday the Senate delayed its expected vote on CISA, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act that would let companies share your private information--like emails and medical records--with the government. "The delay is good news; but it's a delay, not a victory. "We just bought some precious extra time to fight CISA, but we need to use it to go big like we did with SOPA or this bill will still pass. Even if we stop it in September, they'll try again after that. "The truth is that right now, things are looking pretty grim. Democrats and Republicans have been holding closed-door meetings to work out a deal to pass CISA quickly when they return from recess. "Right before the expected Senate vote on CISA, the Obama Administration endorsed the bill, which means if Congress passes it, the White House will definitely sign it.  "We've stalled and delayed CISA and bills like it nearly half a dozen times, but this month could be our last chance to stop it for good." See also http://tumblr.fightforthefuture.org/post/125953876003/senate-fails-to-advance-cisa-before-recess-amid (;) http://www.cbsnews.com/news/activists-send-the-senate-6-million-faxes-to-oppose-cyber-bill/ (;) http://www.npr.org/2015/08/04/429386027/privacy-advocates-to-senate-cyber-security-bill (.)

" Ernesto on August 5, 2015 C: 156 News The High Court recently overturned private copying exceptions introduced last year by the UK Government, once again outlawing the habits of millions of citizens. The Intellectual Property Office today explains that ripping a CD in iTunes is no longer permitted, and neither is backing up your computer if it contains copyrighted content. "

a framework for JavaScript applications called ViewsHandler. ViewsHandler is not another JavaScript templating solution but works on the assumption that in most cases you'll have to create a lot of HTML initially but you'll only have to change the content of some elements dynamically as new information gets loaded or users interact with the app. So instead of creating a lot of HTML over and over again all I wanted to provide is a way to create all the needed HTML upfront and then have easy access to the parts of the HTML that need updating. The first thing you'll need to do to define your application is to create an object with the different views and pointers to the methods that populate the views:

The Post too says that DG Competition ordered the unbundling of MSIE from Windows. But again no attribution for the statement. They also leave the impression that Opera's complaint regarding the undermining of open web standards was upheld, something not stated in either the Microsoft or DG Competition announcements. So the questions of the day are: [i] did the Commission order the unbundling of MSIE from Windows; and [ii] did the Commission also rule on the undermining of open web standards. The latter question could be of critical importance in the still ongoing proceeding regarding the ECIS complaint in regard to the undermining of ODF by Microsoft pushing OOXML.

Microsoft opposes the stunning collection of EcmaScript standards improvements to JavaScript ES3 known as "ES4". Brendan Eich, author of JavaScript and lead Mozilla developer claims that Microsoft is stalling the advance of JavaScript to protect their proprietary advantages with Silverlight - WPF technologies. Opera developer "Haavard" asks the question, "Why would Microsoft do this?" Brendan Eich explains: Indeed Microsoft does not desire serious change to ES3, and we heard this inside TG1 in April. The words were (from my notes) more like this: "Microsoft does not think the web needs to change much". Except, of course, via Silverlight and WPF, which if not matched by evolution of the open web standards, will spread far and wide on the Web, as Flash already has. And that change to the Web is apparently just fine and dandy according to Microsoft. First, Microsoft does not think the Web needs to change much, but then they give us Silverlight and WPF? An amazing contradiction if I ever saw one. It is obvious that Microsoft wants to lock the Web to their proprietary technologies again. They want Silverlight, not some new open standard which further threatens their locked-in position. They will use dirty tricks - lies and deception - to convince people that they are in the right. Excellent discussion on how Microsoft participates in open standards groups to delay, stall and dumb down the Open Web formats, protocols and interfaces their competitors use. With their applications and services, Microsoft offers users a Hobbsian choice; use the stalled, limited and dumbed down Open Web standards, or, use rich, fully featured and advanced but proprietary Silverlight-WPF technologies. Some choice.

Great insight into Adobe AiR and the transition from browser based surfing to web application building.

Building the Dojo Toolbox allowed us to dive into Adobe® AIR™, and to create a blended toolchain of JavaScript, PHP, Python and Rhino (JavaScript on the Java Virtual Machine) for developing an amazing desktop application using open web technologies. One of the most noticeable things you'll see when moving from typical browser-based development to AIR is that you only have one browser to worry about. Dojo does a great job of masking browser JavaScript API differences, but there are still enough differences in CSS and other aspects of application development that it is somewhat refreshing to only have one platform to develop again. Also, since AIR includes WebKit, it has one of the fastest JavaScript implementations around and offers numerous useful experimental CSS properties that you can use in the AIR context. Apple has invested a lot in WebKit development, and AIR will naturally inherit those benefits when they next upgrade the included WebKit.

Response to two ZDNet articles about Google Chrome. The first article, "Who Wins with Google Chrome" is very positive, but for mostly all the wrong reasons. The second article, "Five reasons why Chrome will crash and burn" is very critical; again for all the wrong reasons. Clearly much of the world doesn't get RiA. Not do they have a clue as to why it's so important to the future of the Open Web.

S5 with CSS Slide Transitions in WebKit: Very cool use of WebKit - CSS transitions and animations to create a browser ready presentation. The presentation plays perfectly in Google Chrome! Once again proving the value of the widely deployed WebKit layout engine.

The author clearly missed that Sun is a full-fledged Microsoft partner and that StarOffice 9, of all OpenOffice.org clones, is the only one that has write support for both ODF v. 1.2 and ODF v. 1.1, the latter of which is the only ODF version being implemented by Microsoft. The other OOo clones write only to ODF 1.2, which is dramatically different from ODF 1.2. So StarOffice will almost certainly have better interop via ODF with MS Office 2007 than will OOo 3.x or Lotus Symphony. For $25 per seat in the enterprise, $34.95 retail. The author simply misses that "pretty much the same thing can [NOT] be had for nothing from OpenOffice.org." There is a method to the claimed Sun madness, methinks. IBM gets left standing at the altar again.

*History Repeating. [German music royalty collecting agency GEMA has once again stepped up to enforce their strict copyright regime. But this time they picked the wrong target. The group mistakenly demanded money from the nonprofit organization Musikpiraten for publishing five Creative Commons licensed tracks. Musikpiraten is baffled by the false claim and is considering filing a complaint for copyfraud. ...]

Javascript has a major advantage of being (likely) the most installed programming language in history. It's experiencing a renaissance lately where people actually learning it, not just copying code found on someone's website. ECMAScript Harmony will bring some much needed fixes to the language (although I think ECMAScript 4 would have been a true game-changer for the web). Regardless, until we have more mature tools for sever- and DB-side javascript, Javascript is really a browser language (and faces an army of entrenched programmers who'd rather use some other language). To the second argument, I say: Javascript is an amazing language, but you can't declare it off limits to people who prefer other languages. Programming is about choice. On the server we get to use whatever combinations of web server, database, programming language, and development environment we like. Not so for the browser. We're stuck with Javascript whether we like it or not. We can't stay away from it, we can't use something else. Everyone who dislikes working in Javascript is perfectly justified because he has no other avenue. When all browsers support and are prepackaged with VMs for many languages, I'll be the first to sound the clarion: if you don't like JS, get the hell away from it. Until then, you're stuck with us and we're stuck with you. To the third: again, it's really all about to choice. If you prefer Javascript keep using it, make it better, steal ideas from other languages, and seed the community with new ideas of your own. Nobody will complain about a better overall development community. If you'd like to see Red in Python, PHP, C#, or language X then steal Jesse's code. Red was a herculean effort on Jesse's part. I know he's worked on nothing else for two months and future ports of Red to other languages will benefit from this effort.

"Simone Cicero on 1 December 2014 Since its first edition in 2013, OuiShare Fest has been an experiment of collaborative event organization. With the aim to create an event that is inclusive and co-designed with our community, we invite you again this year to get involved and help us build the program for OuiShare Fest 15."

"In 2001, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II used the occasion of the annual "Queen's Speech" to unveil a new statutory proposal to regulate all media operating in her realm, one provision of which was the creation of the "Office of Communications" (Ofcom) to monitor and punish television outlets which exhibit "bias.""

"In 2001, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II used the occasion of the annual "Queen's Speech" to unveil a new statutory proposal to regulate all media operating in her realm, one provision of which was the creation of the "Office of Communications" (Ofcom) to monitor and punish television outlets which exhibit "bias.""

Remember all those NSA claims that no evidence of their misbehavior has emerged? That one should never take wing again. Monitoring call content without the involvement of any court? Without a warrant? Without probable cause?  Was there even any Congressional authorization?  Wiretapping unequivocally requires a judicially-approved search warrant. It's going to be very interesting to learn the government's argument for this misconduct's legality. 

"Sometimes, your Firefox preferences may not be saved after you change them. For example, you may change a setting in the Preferences window only to have it set back to its previous value when you open the Preferences window again"

[Think you can just plug a standard Linux live USB drive into your Mac and boot from it? Think again. You'll need to go out of your way to create a live Linux USB drive that will boot on a Mac. This can be quite a headache, but we've found a graphical utility that makes this easy. You'll be able to quickly boot Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Kali Linux, and other mainstream Linux distributions on your Mac.]

""For all the time I worked on all of these issues, this was a constant discussion," Olsen says. "How do we calibrate what we're trying to do for the country with how to protect civil liberties and privacy?""

NSA can't credibly claim surprise at how people reacted to the Snowden disclosures. NSA's spying on U.S. citizens was first uncovered by the Senate's Church Committee in about 1976. Congress enacted legslation unequivocally telling NSA and the Defense Department that spying on Americans was not to happen again (and that the CIA was to immediately cease spying within the territorial boundaries of the U.S.). Then came the Total Information Awareness scandal, when Congress discovered that DoD was right back at it again, this time operating from under the cover of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Congress responded by abolishing the program and eliminating the job position of its director, former Admiral John Poindexter of Iran/Contra scandal fame. But rather than complying with the abolition order, most of the TIA program's staff, hardware, software, and data was simply transferred to NSA. NSA, of course, persuaded the Justice Department to secretly reinterpret key provisions of the Patriot Act more broadly than a First Grade preschooler would allow to continue spying on U.S. citizens. Indeed, anyone whose college education included the assignment to read and discuss George Orwell's 1984 would have known that NSA's program had drastically outgrown the limits of what a free society would tolerate. So this is really about deliberate defiance of the limits established by the Constitution and Congressional enactments, not about anything even remotely legal or morally acceptable. The fact that Congress did not react strongly after the Snowden disclosures, as it had after the Church Committee's report and discovery of the TIA program raises a strong suspicion that members of Congress have been blackmailed into submission using information about them gathered via NSA surveillance. We know from whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Russell Tice that members of Congress were surveilled by NSA, yet not even that violation has been taken up by Congress. Instead