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Skeptical Debunker

Big Content condemns foreign governments that endorse FOSS - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...ernments-that-endorse-foss.ars

open source Special 301 USTR IIPA absurd recommendations self-serving

shared by Skeptical Debunker on 25 Feb 10 - Cached
  • University of Edinburgh law lecturer Andres Guadamuz wrote a blog entry this week highlighting some particularly troubling aspects of the IIPA's 301 recommendations. The organization has condemned Indonesia and several other countries for encouraging government adoption of open source software. According to the IIPA, official government endorsements of open source software create "trade barriers" and restrict "equitable market access" for software companies. The profound absurdity of this accusation is exacerbated by the fact that Indonesia's move towards open source software was almost entirely motivated by a desire to eliminate the use of pirated software within the government IT infrastructure. It's important to understand that Indonesia has not mandated the adoption of open source software or barred government agencies from purchasing proprietary commercial software. The Indonesian government issued a statement in 2009 informing municipal governments that they had to stop using pirated software. The statement said that government agencies must either purchase legally licensed commercial software or switch to free and open source alternatives in order to comply with copyright law. This attempt by Indonesia to promote legal software procurement processes by endorsing the viability of open source software has apparently angered the IIPA. In its 301 recommendations for Indonesia, the IIPA demands that the government rescind its 2009 statement. According to the IIPA, Indonesia's policy "weakens the software industry and undermines its long-term competitiveness" because open source software "encourages a mindset that does not give due consideration to the value to intellectual creations [and] fails to build respect for intellectual property rights." The number of ways in which the IIPA's statements regarding open source software are egregiously misleading and dishonest are too numerous to count. The IIPA seems to have completely missed the fact that there is a very robust ecosystem of commercial software vendors in the open source software market and that open source software is at the heart of some of the most popular consumer electronics products that are sold in the United States. It has clearly become an important part of the US software economy and increasingly serves as an enabler of innovation and technological progress. In light of the profitability of Red Hat and other open source leaders, it seems absurd to contend that open source software adoption will weaken the software industry or reduce its competitiveness. In fact, the emergence of open source software has contributed to creating a more competitive landscape in the software industry by offering alternative business models that enable smaller companies to gain traction against the dominant incumbent players. The IIPA's position is profoundly hypocritical, because many parts of the US government, including the Department of Defense, have issued their own memos endorsing open source software adoption. The IIPA's disingenuous move to equate open source software with piracy reeks of desperation. The BSA and other IIPA members are likely losing sleep over open source software because that development model and approach to licensing will empower developing countries to build their own domestic IT industries, eliminating the need for them to tithe to American software giants. It's another failing of the 301 review, which Big Content wants used to coerce other countries into adopting ever-more-stringent copyright laws.
  • Skeptical Debunker on 25 Feb 10
     
    In accordance with US trade law, the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) is required to conduct an annual review of the status of foreign intellectual property laws. This review, which is referred to as Special 301, is typically used to denounce countries that have less restrictive copyright policies than the United States. The review process is increasingly dominated by content industry lobbyists who want to subvert US trade policy and make it more favorable to their own interests. We have already noted the targeting of Canada for its supposedly lax copyright laws, but that is not the only nation drawing the ire of Big Content. One of the organizations that plays a key role in influencing the Special 301 review is the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), a powerful coalition that includes the RIAA, the MPAA, and the Business Software Alliance (BSA). The IIPA, which recently published its official recommendations to the USTR for the 2010 edition of the 301 review, has managed to achieve a whole new level of absurdity.
thinkahol *

Open proposal to US higher education: end oligarchy economics, save trillions with educ... - 0 views

www.examiner.com/rillions-with-education-3-of-4

economic government oligarchy corporate cartel fiat money wall street takeover

shared by thinkahol * on 29 May 10 - Cached
  • thinkahol * on 29 May 10
     
    Economics: I'm going to discuss trillions of dollars in a moment. As an economics teacher, I understand numbers this large are extremely difficult to imagine. If you are among the majority with this difficulty, I recommend that you follow the expert testimony that paints the picture, and know that success in this area of public education transformation that unleashes trillions of our dollars for human creative capacity in unimaginable power is sufficient to end the current economic crisis. This is the longest section of my briefing. If you tire in reading, please consider that at trillions of dollars of annual public benefits, you literally have nothing more valuable to do than understand the following facts and ideas. Harvard's Linda Bilmes co-authored a paper with Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz estimating the long-term costs of current US wars at now $3 to $5 trillion ($30-$50,000 per US household of $50,000/year income), with total debt increase since 2001 of over $10 trillion. Remember, as demonstrated by the evidence disclosed by our own government, all the reasons Americans were told to go to war were known to be lies as they were told and applicable law proves these wars Orwellian unlawful. Just down the Charles River from Harvard, MIT's Simon Johnson (and former Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund) describes our economy being lead by gambling oligarchs who have captured government as in banana republics (his words), and might plunge the US into an economy worse than the Great Depression. From his article under the telling title, The Quiet Coup: "Elite business interests-financiers, in the case of the U.S.-played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive. The govern
Skeptical Debunker

New health plan puts families 'in control' - UPI.com - 0 views

www.upi.com/...UPI-93561266841395

Obama healthcare plan announced

shared by Skeptical Debunker on 22 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Obama's proposal, posted on WhiteHouse.gov four days before a bipartisan meeting with congressional leaders, "puts American families and small-business owners in control of their own healthcare," the White House's explanation said. Among other things, the White House said the proposal would set up a new competitive health insurance market to give millions Americans the same insurance choices congressional members will have. Also, the White House said, the plan would bring greater accountability to the healthcare system by providing "common sense rules of the road" to keep premium costs down, prevent insurance industry abuses and denial of care and end denial of coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. It also includes middle-class tax cuts for healthcare, which the White House said would reduce premium costs for tens of millions of families and small-business owners. The tax breaks would provide affordable health coverage to about 31 million Americans who do not get it today, the explanation said. The White House said the plan would reduce the deficit by $100 billion over the next 10 year by cutting government overspending and reining in waste, fraud and abuse.
  • Skeptical Debunker on 22 Feb 10
     
    President Barack Obama Monday revealed his new U.S. healthcare reform proposal -- a blend of House and Senate plans along with his own recommendations.
Skeptical Debunker

The Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative | The White House - 0 views

www.whitehouse.gov/...ional-cybersecurity-initiative

President Obama cybersecurity initiative

shared by Skeptical Debunker on 03 Mar 10 - Cached
  • The CNCI consists of a number of mutually reinforcing initiatives with the following major goals designed to help secure the United States in cyberspace: To establish a front line of defense against today’s immediate threats by creating or enhancing shared situational awareness of network vulnerabilities, threats, and events within the Federal Government—and ultimately with state, local, and tribal governments and private sector partners—and the ability to act quickly to reduce our current vulnerabilities and prevent intrusions. To defend against the full spectrum of threats by enhancing U.S. counterintelligence capabilities and increasing the security of the supply chain for key information technologies. To strengthen the future cybersecurity environment by expanding cyber education; coordinating and redirecting research and development efforts across the Federal Government; and working to define and develop strategies to deter hostile or malicious activity in cyberspace.
  • Skeptical Debunker on 03 Mar 10
     
    President Obama has identified cybersecurity as one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation, but one that we as a government or as a country are not adequately prepared to counter. Shortly after taking office, the President therefore ordered a thorough review of federal efforts to defend the U.S. information and communications infrastructure and the development of a comprehensive approach to securing America's digital infrastructure. In May 2009, the President accepted the recommendations of the resulting Cyberspace Policy Review, including the selection of an Executive Branch Cybersecurity Coordinator who will have regular access to the President. The Executive Branch was also directed to work closely with all key players in U.S. cybersecurity, including state and local governments and the private sector, to ensure an organized and unified response to future cyber incidents; strengthen public/private partnerships to find technology solutions that ensure U.S. security and prosperity; invest in the cutting-edge research and development necessary for the innovation and discovery to meet the digital challenges of our time; and begin a campaign to promote cybersecurity awareness and digital literacy from our boardrooms to our classrooms and begin to build the digital workforce of the 21st century. Finally, the President directed that these activities be conducted in a way that is consistent with ensuring the privacy rights and civil liberties guaranteed in the Constitution and cherished by all Americans.
thinkahol *

A "Pledge of Resistance" to Defend Social Security (and Defund the Empire) - 0 views

www.truth-out.org/ecurity-and-defund-empire66591

A Pledge of Resistance to Defend Social Security (and Defund the Empire)

shared by thinkahol * on 07 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 07 Jan 11
     
    For the third time in the last 20 years, establishment voices with high-profile slots in traditional media are trying to convince the public to accept cuts to Social Security by endlessly claiming such cuts are necessary, without giving coherent evidence to justify the claim. Twice, under former presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, these voices were defeated - but they didn't give up. And now they are in striking distance of their goal: the fact that Republicans have taken over the House, combined with the fact that the president appointed a deficit reduction commission which nearly recommended a cut in Social Security benefits - and might well have done so if Representative Schakowsky hadn't worked to undermine the co-chairs' plan - means that one can't be complacent; some reports have suggested that the president may indicate support for cuts to Social Security in his State of the Union speech. Of the two principal Washington political actors who will shape the outcome - the Republican leadership and the president's team - one is a determined adversary of the public interest, the other a very uncertain ally. The most successful anti-poverty program in US history is again in grave danger.
thinkahol *

Obama's "bad negotiating" is actually shrewd negotiating - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com - 0 views

www.salon.com/...index.html

Obama's bad negotiating is actually shrewd negotiating - Glenn Greenwald Salon.com

shared by thinkahol * on 13 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 13 Apr 11
     
    In December, President Obama signed legislation to extend hundreds of billions of dollars in Bush tax cuts, benefiting the wealthiest Americans. Last week, Obama agreed to billions of dollars in cuts that will impose the greatest burden on the poorest Americans. And now, virtually everyone in Washington believes, the President is about to embark on a path that will ultimately lead to some type of reductions in Social Security, Medicare and/or Medicaid benefits under the banner of "reform." Tax cuts for the rich -- budget cuts for the poor -- "reform" of the Democratic Party's signature safety net programs -- a continuation of Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies and a new Middle East war launched without Congressional approval. That's quite a legacy combination for a Democratic President. All of that has led to a spate of negotiation advice from the liberal punditocracy advising the President how he can better defend progressive policy aims -- as though the Obama White House deeply wishes for different results but just can't figure out how to achieve them. Jon Chait, Josh Marshall, and Matt Yglesias all insist that the President is "losing" on these battles because of bad negotiating strategy, and will continue to lose unless it improves. Ezra Klein says "it makes absolutely no sense" that Democrats didn't just raise the debt ceiling in December, when they had the majority and could have done it with no budget cuts. Once it became clear that the White House was not following their recommended action of demanding a "clean" vote on raising the debt ceiling -- thus ensuring there will be another, probably larger round of budget cuts -- Yglesias lamented that the White House had "flunked bargaining 101." Their assumption is that Obama loathes these outcomes but is the victim of his own weak negotiating strategy. I don't understand that assumption at all. Does anyone believe that Obama and his army of veteran Washington advisers are incapable of discovering these tactics on th
thinkahol *

Parsing the Data and Ideology of the We Are 99% Tumblr | Rortybomb - 0 views

rortybomb.wordpress.com/...eology-of-the-we-are-99-tumblr

Parsing the Data and Ideology of We Are 99% Tumblr | Rortybomb

shared by thinkahol * on 20 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 20 Oct 11
     
    One of the most fascinating things to come out of the current We Are 99%/Occupy Wall Street protests is the We Are 99% Tumblr.  At the site, people hold up signs that explain their current circumstances, and it tells the story of a whole range of Americans struggling in the Lesser Depression.  It is highly recommended. DATA The site features pictures of individuals holding their signs, and occasionally the tumblr reproduces the text of the signs themselves underneath the image as html text.  Sometimes the text under the image is blank, sometimes it is a different message, but often it is the sign itself. In order to get a slightly better empirical handle on this important tumblr, I created a script designed to read all of the pages and parse out the html text on the site.  It doesn't read the images (can anyone in the audience automate calls to an OCR?), just the html text.  After collecting all the text on all the pages, the code then goes through it to try to find interesting points. It's a fun exercise, pointing out things I wouldn't have seen otherwise.  For instance, I found this adorable little rascal, pictured below, mucking up the algorithm, as the first version of the code assumed all the ages would have two digits.  I found that he, and the sign his mom made for him as a confessional to her son, hit me a ton harder than any of the more direct signs of despair in this economy:
Emilia Lamb

Mailing Machines for intelligent Mail Package Barcode - 0 views

www.mailingmethods.com/telligent-mail-package-barcode

mailing systems St Louis mailing machines postage machines enterprise solution addressing letteropeners

shared by Emilia Lamb on 06 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Emilia Lamb on 06 Feb 15
     
    Mailing Methods have an assortment of solutions to help implement this barcode tracking system in your business. Our top recommendation is the NeoPost machine.
Andrey Paxton

Best Speaker in Australia - 1 views

Working with Resultzcorp professional motivational speakers in Melbourne is the best and a life changing experience. They were great enough that they were able to uplift the interest of my employee...

started by Andrey Paxton on 15 Nov 12 no follow-up yet
Emilia Bell

Amazing Keynote Speaker - 1 views

I considered myself very lucky for having attended a conference recently. It was David Ferrier, the amazing keynote speaker that made the event truly unforgettable. His high level of speaking exper...

started by Emilia Bell on 08 Dec 12 no follow-up yet
Gerald Payton

Best Speaker in Australia - 1 views

started by Gerald Payton on 11 Dec 12 no follow-up yet
meheksharma

Hillary Clinton May Win US Presidential Election 2016 With Wide Margin - 0 views

manageyourinvestment.blogspot.in/...n-may-win-us-presidential.html

DONALD TRUMP MESSED IT UP WIN HILLARY CLINTON USA PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 2016

shared by meheksharma on 08 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • meheksharma on 08 Nov 16
     
    20 years plus industry veteran of domestic and international ICT domain with the expertise in Business, Technology, Strategy and Analysis. Specializes in forecasting impact analysis, trends and recommendations for Investments, Technology and Regulations.
Bakari Chavanu

Amazon.com: Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free eBook:... - 0 views

www.amazon.com/...ref=pd_sim_kinc_6

shared by Bakari Chavanu on 03 Oct 09 - No Cached
  • Question: What inspired, or should I say drove, you to write Idiot America? Charles P. Pierce: The germ of the idea came as I watched the extended coverage of the death of Terri Schiavo. I wondered how so many people could ally themselves with so much foolishness despite the fact that it was doing them no perceptible good, politically or otherwise.
  • Question: Is there a specific turning point where, as a country, we moved away from prizing experience to trusting the gut over intellect? Charles P. Pierce: I don't know if there's one point that you can point to and say, “This is when it happened.” The conflict between intellectual expertise and reflexive emotion—often characterized as “good old common sense,” when it is neither common nor sense—has been endemic to American culture and politics since the beginning. I do think that my profession, journalism, went off the tracks when it accepted as axiomatic the notion that “Perception is reality.”
  • Question: What is the most dangerous aspect of Idiot America? Charles P. Pierce: The most dangerous aspect of Idiot America is that it encourages us to abandon our birthright to be informed citizens of a self-governing republic. America cannot function on automatic pilot, and, too often, we don't notice that it has been until the damage has already been done.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • To this day, we have a political party—the Republicans—who, because it embraced a “movement of Conservatism” that celebrated anti-intellectualism is now incapable of conducting itself in any other way. That has profound political and cultural consequences, and the truly foul part about it was that so many people engaged in it knowing full well they were peddling poison.
  • Charles P. Pierce: Look at the political opposition to President Obama. “Socialist!” “Fascist!” “Coming to get your guns.” Hysteria from the hucksters of Idiot America is still at high-tide. People are killing other people and specifically attributing their action to imaginary oppression stoked by radio talk-show stars and television pundits. That Glenn Beck has achieved the prominence he has makes me wonder if there is a just god in heaven.
  • "Idiot America" is great, informative book about concepts we see everyday. Also, many of the 1-star reviews are likely biased because of some of the political and religious topics noted. I think this book is definitely a full, 5-star book.
  • The author notes "The 3 Great Premises: and applies them to many instances in this book: 1. Any theory is valid if it moves units (rating, and making money). 2. Anything can be true if it is said loudly enough. 3. Fact is what enough people believe (the Truth is what you believe).
  • POLITICAL TALK RADIO: One set of rules noted by a professor studying radio discourse: *Never Be Dull *Embrace willfully ignorant simplicity *The American public is stupid; treat them that way *Always ignore the fact and the public record when it's convenient
  • TELEVISION: "Television is an emotional medium. It's entertainment, not analysis or reasoned discourse."
  • But to someone willing to take the time to read it, this book tells people what practically everyone should know about American politics -- that the American people are being sold a sob story about how experts are an elite that is keeping them from being The Best Damn Nation In The World. (In that regard, one should definitely read "The Paranoid Style In American Politics" by Richard Hofstadter -- it's over four decades old, but saw from the very beginning what has come into full bloom now with the barking lunacy of the American Right.)
  • The main problem with this book is this: the people who are likely to read it already know most of the story, and are mostly getting background information, and the people who won't read it are like the six reviewers I mentioned in my intro -- determined to ignore its stories and insights as "bias" because their politics and faith won't let them look outside the cloister.
  • He lays the blame at the feet of various ideology-driven entities, with special attention given to the same corporate-media war cheerleaders who happily passed on Bush's lies about Iraqi weaponry to a somnolent public, and who, in the name of putting "balance" over reality, treat specious creationist nonsense and hard scientific fact as if both had equal validity. Highly recommended!
Levy Rivers

Tom Watson MP » Blog Archive » Power of Information: New taskforce and speech - 0 views

tom-watson.co.uk/index.php

data leadership phones coverage prime minister taskforce

shared by Levy Rivers on 02 Apr 08 - Cached
  • We commissioned Ed Mayo and Tom Steinberg to write the Power of Information report because we knew that information, presented in the right way, was a potent driver for improving public services and government.
  • Today I am going to offer two arguments that I think compliment the Prime Minister’s recent announcement on public service reform
  • Firstly, that freeing up data will allow us to unlock the talent British entrepreneurs. And secondly, engaging people - using the simple tools that bring them together - will allow the talents of all our people to be applied to the provision of public services.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • The difference of course is that today we contend with what Richard Saul Wurman describes as a ‘tsunami of data’
  • My job is to make sure that government can benefit from this new thinking too. When we were first elected in 1997 people had a recipient relationship with data, they got what they were given when they were given it. It was static.
  • In scale, the spread of social media is comparable to the spread of telephones in the 1930’s to the 1950’s. Yet it’s happened in two years not 20.
  • As Clay Shirky would say, we’ve reached a point where technology is simple and boring enough to be socially useful and interesting.
  • Over 7 million electronic signatures have been sent, electronically, to the Downing Street petition website. 1 in 10 citizens have emailed the Prime Minister about an issue. The next stage is to enable e-petitioners to connect with each other around particular issues and to link up with policy debates both on and off Government webspace.
  • Only last week, the Prime Minister became the first head of Government in Europe to launch his own channel on Twitter, which I can tell you from experience, is extremely useful to his ministers at least
  • Richard is here tonight and I hope that after the formal proceedings you might like to share some of your own ideas with him. Richard is also joined by a number of other taskforce members. They’re all people with remarkable track records in this field. We’re lucky. The UK has some of the world’s leading talent.
  • And today the PM announced an initiative that would allow you to find your community Bobbies using your postcode.
  • The taskforce will bring its expertise to bare on existing initiatives to see if we can what we already do better
  • I want the taskforce to ensure that the COI and Cabinet Office produce a set of guidelines that adheres to the letter of the law when it comes to the civil service code but also lives within the spirit of the age. I’ll be putting some very draft proposals to the taskforce to consider later this week.
  • By bringing people onto the taskforce with the skills and experiences of people like Sally Russell we can move further and faster in this area.
  • Two weeks ago the Prime Minister signalled that we were moving public services to the next stage of reform. He said that we were not only going to, further enhance choice but also empower both the users of services and all the professionals who deliver them - to drive up standards for all.
  • Transformational government is about wrapping services around the citizen, not citizens around the services.
  • Last month DirectGov had over 7 million visitors. Peter is seeing the aggregate desires of millions of UK public service using citizens. I had half an hour with him a fortnight ago and came away with a dozen ideas as to how we can improve our public services.
  • I’m the Member of Parliament for West Bromwich East and I didn’t know about an important recycling initiative going on in my own patch. This information now means that a bag load of clothing for a small child and a habitat sofa are about given a second chance to give pleasure.
  • And much of that information has the potential to be reused in data mashups. Some of it already is, like Hansard on theyworkforyou, or Google Maps using Ordnance Survey data.
  • The Power of Information Report recognised that, and made recommendations to the Treasury. The Treasury, with the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, published an independent economic study in the Budget and announced its intention to look at these issues during this spending review cycle.
  • It was this early open source approach that arguably fostered 500 years of Islamic scholarship in important fields like medicine, astronomy, lexicography, literature and science. In contrast, European data was stored in monasteries and did not foster easy knowledge transfer. As Gibbon wrote in the ‘Decline and fall of the Roman empire’ the ‘age of Arabian learning continued about five hundred years’ and was coeval with the darkest and most slothful period of European annals?
  • I believe in the power of mass collaboration. I believe that as James Surowiecki says the many are smarter than the few. I believe that the old hierarchies in which government policy is made are going to change for ever. I said that I don’t believe the post-bureaucratic age argument. It’s just old thinking, laissez faire ideas with a new badge. The future of government is to provide tools for empowerment, not to sit back and hope that laissez-faire adhocracy will suffice.
  • The irony that laying claim to the ownership of a policy on open source was lost to the poor researcher who had spent a day dissecting the speech. He’d been able to do so easily because it was freely available on my blog, a simple tool used for communicating information quickly and at nearly zero cost without the requirement to charge for access. The point is, who cares? It doesn’t matter who has the ideas. It’s what you do with them and how you improve on them that counts.
Kelly Bounce

Why I Like IgniteAV - 2 views

My team makes a living from organising high quality events. Our job would have been difficult without the help of IgniteAV. They, without a doubt, are the best AV hire and PA hire team we have ever...

AV hire the Obama and Glenn

started by Kelly Bounce on 31 May 11 no follow-up yet
funeral adelaide

Top Funeral Service in Adelaide - 1 views

Sensible Funerals handled the funeral of my late grandmother. It was really difficult for me and my family to say goodbye. That is why we wanted to give her the best funeral service though our fam...

Funeral Adelaide

started by funeral adelaide on 18 Oct 11 no follow-up yet
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