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One of the best ways to create that perception (and reality) is to get more mobile developers building for the Web instead of any specific platform. It's a win for developers looking to reach the broader market. It's a win for end-users who shouldn't be forced into picking a specific platform or network (eg: iPhone/AT&T) just to get access to certain applications. It's a win for Google. Who is it not good for? You don't have to look far.

"Discussion Papers > Internet and Security > Proposition PROPOSITION Bruce Schneier, Cryptographer and Computer Security Specialist and Author of Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust Society Needs to Thrive We're in the middle of an epic battle for power in cyberspace. On one side are the nimble, unorganized, distributed powers such as dissident groups, criminals, and hackers. On the other side are the traditional, organized, institutional powers such as governments and large multinational corporations. During its early days, the Internet gave coordination and efficiency to the powerless. It made them powerful, and seem unbeatable. But now the more traditional institutional powers are winning, and winning big. How these two fare long-term, and the fate of the majority of us that don't fall into either group, is an open question - and one vitally important to the future of the Internet."

A partial win for the public. The judge makes plain that he disagrees with pre-Snowden disclosure precedent and recommends that the Supreme Court adopt the reasoning of Judge Richard Leon's ruling that finds the NSA call-metadata violative of the Fourth Amendment. The judge says his hands are tied by prior decisions in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that gave an expansive reading to Smith v. Maryland.

"If there was ever any doubt about whether Microsoft or Google would win the war of office suites, there should be no longer. Within the last several weeks, Microsoft has pulled so far ahead that it's game over. Here's why. When it comes to which suite is more fully featured, there's never been any real debate: Microsoft Office wins hands down. Whether you're creating entire presentations, creating complicated word-processing documents, or even doing something as simple as handling text attributes, Office is a far better tool. Until the last few weeks, Google Docs had one significant advantage over Microsoft Office: It's available for Android and the iPad as well as PCs because it's Web-based. The same wasn't the case for Office. So if you wanted to use an office suite on all your mobile devices, Google Docs was the way to go. Google Docs lost that advantage when Microsoft released Office for the iPad. There's not yet a native version for Android tablets, but Microsoft is working on that, telling GeekWire, "Let me tell you conclusively: Yes, we are also building Android native applications for tablets for Word, Excel and PowerPoint." Google Docs is still superior to Office's Web-based version, but that's far less important than it used to be. There's no need to go with a Web-based office suite if a superior suite is available as a native apps on all platforms, mobile or otherwise. And Office's collaboration capabilities are quite considerable now. Of course, there's always the question of price. Google Docs is free. Microsoft Office isn't. But at $100 a year for up to five devices, or $70 a year for two, no one will be going broke paying for Microsoft Office. It's worth paying that relatively small price for a much better office suite. Google Docs won't die. It'll be around as second fiddle for a long time. But that's what it will always remain: a second fiddle to the better Microsoft Office."

Google acquired "Writely", a small company in Portola Valley that pioneered document editing in a browser. Writely was perhaps the first cloud computing editor to go beyond simple HTML; eventually crafting some really cool CSS-JavaScript-JSON document layout and editing methods. But it can't edit native MSOffice documents. It converts them. There are more than a few problems with the Google Docs approach to editing advanced "compound" documents, but two stick out and are certain to give pause to anyone making the great transition from local workgroup computing, to the highly mobile, always connected, cloud computing. The first problem certain to become a show stopper is that Google converts documents to their native on-line format for editing and collaboration. And then they convert back. To many this isn't a problem. But if the document is part of a workflow or business process, conversion is a killer. There is an old saw affectionately known as "Reuters Law", dating back to the ODF-OXML document wars, that emphatically states; "Conversion breaks documents." The breakage includes both the visual layout of the document, and, the "compound" aspects and data connections that are internal to the document. Think of this way. A business document that is part of a legacy Windows Workgroup workflow is opened up in gDocs. Google converts the document for editing purposes. The data and the workflow internals that bind the document to the local business system are broken on conversion. The look of the document is also visually shredded as the gDocs layout engine is applied. For all practical purposes, no matter what magic editing and collaboration value is added, a broken document means a broken business process. Let me say that again, with the emphasis of having witnessed this first hand during the year long ODF transition trials the Commonwealth of Massachusetts conducted in 2005 and 2006. The business process broke every time a conversion was conducted "on a busines

I posted a digg on Peter Glaskowsky's CNET article discussing the Intel - TSMC deal. In 1995, i somehow managed to get between Intel and TSMC regarding funding for Virtual Realty, a video conferencing based loan origination / real estate transaction processing company that used Intel ProShare. TSMC wanted to invest a ton of money in VRi, with the idea of providing a full graphical listing, brokerage and transaction service for all of Asia. Intel needed a business model proving the value of ProShare, and capable of putting down the basics of a wide bandwidth video conferencing communications-data network they could grow into a platform.

At first this seemed to me like a win-win for everyone. Then i found out how seriously pissed Intel was about TSMC's deal with ViA and the resulting "WinBook". Although this is not the time or place to tell the story, i was truly stunned and shocked when i saw the Intel-TSMC deal announcement. Wow!

My response to Peter focuses on his comments about how this deal will impact Nvidia. And then, how the Nvidia vision of an ION-Atom motherboard impacts WebKit and the future of the Open Web.

The race is on. Google will win the consumer Web. Microsoft will win the business Web. Sadly i don't think there is any way for Google to challenge Microsoft with regard for the privilege of transitioning existing MSOffice bound workgroup- workflow business processes to the Web. Even if Google Docs could match MSOffice feature to feature, cracking into existing MSOffice workgroups is impossibly hard. Anyone who doubts this ought to take a second look at the Massachusetts ODF Pilot Study, or the recently released Belgium Pilot results. Replacing MSOffice in a workgroup setting is simply too disruptive and costly because of the shared business process problem.

[In 2014, as the hype and newness die down, social media is increasingly something we take for granted in our daily lives. There's a big battle going on to keep our social attention: which of these two companies will prove dominant and win? ...]

[In 2014, as the hype and newness die down, social media is increasingly something we take for granted in our daily lives. There's a big battle going on to keep our social attention: which of these two companies will prove dominant and win? ...]

"Xnet y demás organizaciones tras la campaña SavetheInternet.eu celebran hoy la victoria de la neutralidad de la red. Con base en una primera lectura, las nuevas directrices del Organismo de Reguladores Europeos de Comunicaciones Electronicas (BEREC) confirman una protección fuerte para la neutralidad de la red, y para el internet abierto y libre, en la UE. Aquí el documento final de las directrices: http://berec.europa.eu/eng/document_register/subject_matter/berec/download/0/6160-berec-guidelines-on-the-implementation-b_0.pdf"

" Andy on February 28, 2014 C: 32 Breaking Law professor, Creative Commons co-founder and advocate for copyright reform Lawrence Lessig has agreed to receive damages from an Australian music label. Without considering fair use Liberation wrongly had some of Lessig's work removed from YouTube and threatened to sue - it didn't go well."

" Ernesto on April 29, 2014 C: 8 News Law firm Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver, pioneers of the BitTorrent copyright troll cases in the United States, have thrown in the towel. The law firm conceded defeat in a fraud and abuse case that was brought against them by an alleged pirate, and were ordered to pay nearly $40,000. "

"Nothing necessarily earth-shattering was said by anyone, but it did involve a series of high powered tech execs absolutely slamming the NSA and the intelligence community, and warning of the vast repercussions from that activity, up to and including potentially splintering or "breaking" the internet by causing people to so distrust the existing internet, that they set up separate networks on their own. The execs repeated the same basic points over and over again. They had been absolutely willing to work with law enforcement when and where appropriate based on actual court orders and review -- but that the government itself completely poisoned the well with its activities, including hacking into the transmission lines between overseas datacenters. Thus, as Eric Schmidt noted, if the NSA and other law enforcement folks are "upset" about Google and others suddenly ramping up their use of encryption and being less willing to cooperate with the government, they only have themselves to blame for completely obliterating any sense of trust. Microsoft's Brad Smith, towards the end, made quite an impassioned plea -- it sounded more like a politician's stump speech -- about the need for rebuilding trust in the internet. It's at about an hour and 3 minutes into the video. He points out that while people had expected Congress to pass the USA Freedom Act, the rise of ISIS and other claimed threats has some people scared, but, he notes: We need to look the world's dangers in the face. And we need to resolve that we will not allow the dangers of the world to freeze this country in its tracks. We need to recognize that antiquated laws will not keep the public safe. We need to recognize that laws that the rest of the world does not respect will ultimately undermine the fundamental ability of our own legal processes, law enforcement agencies and even the intelligence community itself. At the end of the day, we need to recognize... the one asset that the US has which is even stron

"Fifty years ago, an international legal system was created to protect the rights of foreign investors. Today, as companies win billions in damages, insiders say it has got dangerously out of control"

"Fifty years ago, an international legal system was created to protect the rights of foreign investors. Today, as companies win billions in damages, insiders say it has got dangerously out of control"

[WordPress has scored an important victory in court against a man who abused the DMCA to censor an article of a critical journalist. The court agreed that the takedown request was illegitimate and awarded WordPress roughly $25,000 in damages and attorneys fees. ...]

" Ernesto on February 19, 2016 C: 12 Breaking Popular file-hosting service 4shared has won a court case against the South Korean authorities who placed the site on a national piracy blocklist. While 4shared's users occasionally host pirated files, the court concludes that it can't be seen as a service that is setup specifically to facilitate copyright infringement."

[The struggle for the defense of the Internet and free culture grows stronger year after year, inseparable from the struggle to consolidate the paradigm change that goes hand in hand with the digital era. 2012 has seen civil society win great victories over the barbarians: ...]

" Ernesto on October 23, 2016 C: 59 News The Pirate Party in Iceland continues its shakeup of the local political arena. According to the latest polls the party now has a serious shot at taking part in the next Government coalition, with roughly 20 percent of all votes one week before the parliamentary elections."

" Ernesto on October 23, 2016 C: 59 News The Pirate Party in Iceland continues its shakeup of the local political arena. According to the latest polls the party now has a serious shot at taking part in the next Government coalition, with roughly 20 percent of all votes one week before the parliamentary elections."

" Andy on August 12, 2016 C: 54 Breaking Following a court win by its client BMG over Cox Communications this week, Rightscorp has issued an unprecedented warning to every ISP in the United States today. Boasting a five-year trove of infringement data against Internet users, Rightscorp warned ISPs that they can either cooperate or face the consequences."

Bruce Schneier pointing to a massive security hole in the Internet of Things ("IoT").

"In our society, the rule of law sets limits on what government can and cannot do, no matter how important its goals. "

It's not often that I disagree with EFF's positions, but on this one I do. The government should be prohibited from exploiting computer vulnerabilities and should be required to immediately report all vulnerabilities discovered to the relevant developers of hardware or software. It's been one long slippery slope since the Supreme Court first approved wiretapping in Olmstead v. United States, 277 US 438 (1928), https://goo.gl/NJevsr (.) Left undecided to this day is whether we have a right to whisper privately, a right that is undeniable. All communications intercept cases since Olmstead fly directly in the face of that right.