frouman.net

I predict that HTML 5 will be the great liberator of this decade. Robust enough to make real applications with, it's hard for me to imagine Java's relevance moving forward.

[PJ: I wonder if the damages experts in Oracle v. Google are factoring this in to their calculations?] - Dean Howell, The Powerbase

Under the aegis of their nonprofit, eHealth Nigeria, Castle and Thompson have built a digital records system meant to eventually serve healthcare facilities across the region, but it doesn't use the sort of specialized health care software in U.S. or even everyday database software. There's no Kaiser software. And no Microsoft. The system is based on OpenMRS, an open source health records system designed specifically for use in underdeveloped regions.

First created in 2004, OpenMRS is now used in countries across the globe, including Rwanda, Mozambique, Haiti, India, China, and the Phillipines. As Karlyn and others point out, the platform is hardly reinventing healthcare in the poorer parts of these countries, but it is having some success - eHealth Nigeria being a prime example. "It's really just a drop in the bucket - but that's important," Karlyn tells Wired. "But they're building confidence in the system, demonstrating how change can happen. That attracts resources, and eventually, that makes a difference." - Cade Metz, Wired

There was a time when the Internet was about a heterogeneous network, de-centralized, without a single point of failure. Why are all people running to a very few number of companies? The same question goes for sites like sourceforge. All the code hosted there subject to the good will of the hosting company. Subject to their financial stability, their intentions and their admin staff. They've had security breaches, as did apparently Google. Sure, self-hosted machines also have security breaches, but only the breakage of a very small set of accounts, not the breakage of thousands, hundred thousands or millions of users simultaneously.

Now hosting your own mailserver on your own machine might be a bit too much effort in terms of money or work for some people. I understand that. But then, there are several other options:

You team up with some friends, people you know and trust, and you share the administrative and financial effort

You look out for NGOs, societies, cooperatives or other non-for-profit groups that offer email and other services to their members. At least in Germany we traditionally have many of these.

You use a local, small Internet service company rather than one of the big entities.

While you still give up some control with those alternatives, you keep your data within your jurisdiction, and you still keep the spirit of de-centralization rather than those large concentrated single point of failures. - Harald Welte's blog, June 11, 2011

Federal prosecutors seized 16 websites and charged a 28-year-old Michigan man with making thousands of dollars by streaming live sports events over the Internet. Yonjo Quiroa aka Ronaldo Solano, of Comstock Park, Mich., was arrested Thursday and charged with criminal copyright infringement....

"The seized sites were popular 'linking' sites - a type of website that provides access, or links, to other websites that hosted pirated sporting and Pay-Per-View events," prosecutors said in announcing the arrest. - Courthouse News Service

During the brief proceedings, attorneys for the record labels damned the Internet file-sharing company in biblical terms - "Thou shalt not steal." The record labels called LimeWire's business "the biggest theft of music in the history of the world."

But Gorton's defense attorney Joseph Baio claims that behind closed doors, record label execs said that peer-to-peer downloading could benefit their businesses, if they adapted to changing times and technologies. - Adam Klasfeld, Courthouse News Service

The landmark ruling by the Federal Court, which found Optus did not breach copyright by broadcasting NRL and AFL matches via its new TV Now service, has cast a doubt over the financial viability of internet broadcast rights....

The court found that the TV Now service provides the same service as that of a personal video recorder, such as Tivo or Foxtel IQ. Currently, the Copyright Act allows individuals to record free-to-air television on their own video recorder to watch at a more convenient time.

"Significantly, Justice Rares found that the customer, not Optus, had made the recording, even though the recording was stored in Optus' servers," said Hamish Fraser, partner at law firm Truman Hoyle. "The Court rejected Telstra's argument that Optus had made the recording for its own commercial benefit." - Georgina Swan, ComputerWorld NZ

This week we'll talk about how to come up with the "right" price for your book in each of the formats in which you plan to make it available (eBook, soft, and/or hardcover). By "right" price, I mean a price that will make more, rather than fewer, people actually buy your book. My challenge will be to convince you that the title you see above makes sense.

But first, let's cover the basics - how the pricing process works, and the factors that may put a floor under your book price. - Andy Updegrove, Standards Blog

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Thursday ruled that it will not release video recordings from Perry v. Schwarzenegger, California's 2010 trial which declared Proposition 8, the state's same-sex marriage ban, to be unconstitutional. In reversing the opinion of the US District Court for the Northern District of California, the circuit court concluded that recordings from the landmark case could not be released without undermining the integrity of the judicial system....

Said the court:

"The integrity of our judicial system depends in no small part on the ability of litigants and members of the public to rely on a judge's word. The record compels the finding that the trial judge's representations to the parties were solemn commitments. ... We conclude ... that the integrity of the judicial process is a compelling interest that in these circumstances would be harmed by the nullification of the trial judge's express assurances, and that there are no alternatives to maintaining the recording under seal that would protect the compelling interest at issue." - JURIST

A later, two-hour conference was held at the USC Law School and is available for streaming....

Last year, versions of the TPP's US-written IP chapter leaked; its provisions went well beyond even ACTA, which was already the new high-water mark for IP enforcement. Where do things stand now? Are the other TPP countries on board with the US approach? Who knows! It's all secret. - Nate Anderson, ars technica

In recent decades, corporate tax revenue has plunged, falling from about 6 percent of gross domestic product in the 1950′s to less than 2 percent today, due to a proliferation of corporate tax breaks and the use of offshore tax havens. According to the Congressional Budget Office, in fact, corporate tax receipts as a share of corporate profits have hit their lowest point in 40 years.

[PJ: Then, according to some theorists, we should be swimming in jobs, no? So... where are they?] - ThinkProgress

Justice Sotomayor believes that every lawyer should do pro bono work - meaning giving your personal effort for the needs of someone else. And by pro bono she means free - doing work and not getting paid for it.

Access to justice also means bringing along those who care about the needs of others. For example, teaching young students how to be lawyers or even much more simple tasks. Knowledge is not intuitive and lawyers can teach basic skills like how to balance a checkbook.

Giving back to the community means helping avoid the problems rather than coming in at the back end after the problem has occurred. Attorneys should give back to inspire others to stay out of trouble. - Rebecca Copeland, Record on Appeal

Worse for the powerful Pileggi - his exercise in creative gerrymandering was rendered moot by a piano teacher from the Lehigh Valley, Amanda Holt. Holt, you see, was confused as to why her neighbor was in a different state house district than she was. And maybe a bit annoyed.

So, she came up with her own map .... It proved, at least to a majority of the Supreme Court, that there was no need to split so many municipalities and counties, something the state Constitution says can only be done "when absolutely necessary." It took her 15 months working be herself - without the giant LRC staff or resources - only about three times as long and at a tiny fraction of the cost....

But at the end of the day, it was a piano teacher from the Lehigh Valley that doomed the Pileggi/Turzai plan, Castille writes.

"The Holt plan is powerful evidence indeed," Castille wrote in his ruling, issued Friday. "This powerful evidence, challenging the Final Plan as a whole, suffices to show that the Final Plan is contrary to law." - Mike McGann, Unionville [Pa.] Times

As a Member of the European Parliament, I very much welcome the increased attention the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has received in the past weeks. It has taken a while for massive outcry to emerge, but we are seeing protest voices getting louder and louder....

The dangers and threats of the ACTA treaty are shared by free-speech advocates and access to medicine groups alike. ACTA is seeking to deal with a number of widely differing issues, and hence does not do a good job at any of them. Additionally, there are serious concerns about the collateral damage that ACTA would cause.

Regrettably, concerns by businesses, NGO's and politicians have not led to a better result. This is partly due to the intransparant way in which ACTA has been established and negotiated. As a democratically elected representative, I believe it is not the role of government to protect outdated business models, and I do believe it is our job to ensure democratic oversight....

Besides zooming in on the details of what ACTA will and will not do, taking a step back and looking at the broader picture is also important. As someone who advocates copyright reform, notably the harmonization of copyright laws in Europe, I do not believe stricter enforcement of outdated systems is helpful or relevant. Enforcement is not even possible in many cases, and not without violating people's fundamental rights. Yet there is a big push towards enforcing outdated legal structures of copyright by the entertainment industry. - Marietje Schaake, Member of EU Parliament, on TorrentFreak

Since the events of 2001, the intersection of law and terrorism has become one of the most volatile zones in the public square-a place where qualities of life and manners of death are deliberated against 225 years of the U.S. Constitution.

This month we are offering the first in a series of debates about some of the enduring constitutional issues that pit personal freedom, national security, political expression, human rights and institutional responsibilities-each against the other. - ABA Journal

Chicago Public Schools' is lifting a ban on YouTube as part of its efforts to expand digital learning in the classroom....To highlight the impact of online learning, CPS schools chief Jean-Claude Brizard taught a science lesson on gravity and the solar system to middle school students at Spencer Technology Academy with the help of an iPad. That lesson was then broadcast to nearly 400 additional middle school students in 19 other classrooms. Students then used iPad applications to narrate screencasts of what they had learned. - Chicago Tribune

The Document Foundation (TDF), which launched in 2010 to develop LibreOffice, has published statistics that illustrate the project's rapid growth. Approximately 400 total developers have contributed code to the project. The number of contributors who are active each month generally ranges from 50 to over 100....

LibreOffice is gaining lots of momentum among users, too. Last year, TDF estimated that the number of users who have tried the open source office suite is approximately 10 million. LibreOffice 3.5, a major update with lots of improvements, is expected to arrive next week.

After experiencing a considerable backlash in Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk has suspended ratification of the controversial agreement, acknowledging that the consultation surrounding it was inadequate and that he approached it from a "20th century perspective."

The ACTA agreement has been signed already by an EU representative and ambassadors from 22 of the EU's 27 member states. However, due to its potential influence on criminal law, it also needs ratification by the governments of each of those member states. If even a single member state does not ratify, the agreement will not enter into force anywhere in the EU.

Such a rejection is now a distinct possibility. - Peter Bright, ars technica

But what's clear is that legislation is not the answer. Piracy is already illegal in the US, and most places around the world, yet it persists underground, but more often in plain sight. Short of passing a law that allows the actual blacklisting of websites like China and Iran, there is no legislative solution. That's what SOPA and PIPA were attempting to do, but it so obviously trampled on the First Amendment, it was laughed out of existence as the entire internet protested it. The only other thing you could get the internet to agree on was if they tried to institute a ban on cat pictures.

So, what to do? Go the other direction. Realize piracy is a service problem. ...The movie and music industries' claim that each download is a lost sale is absurd.

The seven step, ten minute download process (which will be about ten seconds when US internet speeds catch up with the rest of the world) is the real enemy the studios should be trying to tackle. Right now, the industry is still stuck in the past, and is crawling oh-so-slowly into the future. They still believe people are going to want to buy DVDs or Blu-rays in five years, and that a movie ticket is well worth $15. Netflix is the closest thing they have to an advocate, but the studios are trying to drive them out of business as they see them as a threat, not a solution. It's mind boggling. The primary problem movie studios have to realize is that everything they charge for is massively overpriced....

I saw an image on reddit the other day that had a concept for an online movie distribution tool that would be the movie industry's greatest ally if they were to even consider it.... - Paul Tassi, Forbes

The smartphones are first being deployed to U.S. soldiers, people familiar with the project said. Later, federal agencies are expected to get phones for sending and receiving government cables while away from their offices, sources said. Eventually, local governments and corporations could give workers phones with similar software....

Federal officials have met with Apple, but they were told they could not have access to the core of the company's mobile operating system, said Angelos Stavrou, an information-security director at George Mason University who is working on the government project as a contractor, in a phone interview.

"Android was more cooperative in supporting some of the capabilities that we wanted to support in the operating system, whereas Apple was more averse," Stavrou told CNN. "They're shifting the strategy now." - Mark Milian, CNN

The suit also grew from Apple singling out just one device -- Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 -- as a patent infringer to a total of 10 devices that are allegedly breaking the law, according the news sites of The Australian and TheNextWeb.

The staggering expansion caught Samsung off guard, according to a spokesman for the South Korean electronics giant, who said Samsung was "only given days notice that Apple's legal bid against the company had been amended to include over 200 claims against smartphones and tablets that haven't even launched in the country," TheNextWeb said. "As a result Samsung said it would not be able to file a defence against the claim until mid-May." - Nathan Olivarez-Giles, LA Times