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Dear friends As I have previously announced, we are now “freezing” the blog. We are also making archives of the blog available for free download in various formats (see below).
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Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
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Judges Told to Avoid Saying ?Asylum Seekers? and ?Immigrants? Fri Jul 26, 2024 17:00 | Toby Young
A new edition of the Equal Treatment Bench Book instructs judges to avoid terms such as 'asylum seekers', 'immigrant' and 'gays', which it says can be 'dehumanising'.
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The Intersectional Feminist Rewriting the National Curriculum Fri Jul 26, 2024 15:00 | Toby Young
Labour has appointed Becky Francis, an intersectional feminist, to rewrite the national curriculum, which it will then force all schools to teach. Prepare for even more woke claptrap to be shoehorned into the classroom.
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Government Has Just Declared War on Free Speech Fri Jul 26, 2024 13:03 | Toby Young
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Come and See Nick Dixon and me Recording the Weekly Sceptic at the Hippodrome on Monday Fri Jul 26, 2024 09:00 | Toby Young
Tickets are still available to a live recording of the Weekly Sceptic, Britain's only podcast to break into the top five of Apple's podcast chart. It?s at Lola's, the downstairs bar of the Hippodrome on Monday July 29th.
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Monday February 28, 2005 23:24
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Comments (9 of 9)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9I presume you are using a windows machine??
Simply move to Linux or Mac.
I know it has its disadvantages, but moving to a patent system for software may actually benefit creativity more than it harms it. The term of protection for copyright lasts many, many decades longer than the 20 year protection period you get for a patent. To illustrate the difference, civilization itself will crumble before Disney's movies fall into the public domain but we'll legally be able to make bathtub Viagra in a year or so. In my opinion, the chance to have Microsoft's and Adobe's products become freeware well within my lifetime is too good to pass up.
Copyrights and patents have very different effects on our ability to innovate new ideas.
Bart Cormier writes "moving to a patent system": Bart, unfortunately for what I think is your opinion, that's not quite what's happening: if the law passes, software will be one of the few (only?) things covered by BOTH copyright and patents!
Apart from that, I'd much rather be able to legally use linux now than microsoft/adobe crapware in 20 years... Patents affect independent invention, not just copying, so even were it true that software was somehow switching to "patent only", it would suck compared to copyright, which at least lets me write my own OS with my friends if we don't feel like paying for Microsoft's!
Moving to a linux machine doesn't quite help - you can't just "opt out" of patent law's reach. Though perhaps you should be able to, say by agreeing never to hold any patents yourself.
And Apple ( manufacturers of Mac OS X) are among the worst people in using patents: they threatened to sue people that developed window-manager themes that looked similar in colour and style to "Aqua" (the default).
Apple may make nice hardware, but they're no different in their business tactics than Microsoft.
They don't cover applications, they don't end up in reward for good work / innovative work, they hamper progress.
Richard Stallman gave a really good talk on this last year
http://www.ifso.ie/documents/rms-2004-05-24.html
is the link - transcript and audio available.
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=65203
discussion of talk
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=67391
charlie macreevy
This wil continue to run thanks to the good work of the ifso here in Ireland and the ffii
http://wiki.ffii.org/SwpatcninoEn
Why not free as in beer?
I just found this text, on knoppix.org.
It should clear up any doubts about the difference between copyright and patent.
"This [patents] can lead to the termination of many software projects [....] because the holders of the over 30,000 already granted "software patents" can claim exclusive rights and collect license fees for trivial things like "progress bars", "mouseclicks on online order forms", "scrolling within a window" and similar. That way, software developers will have to pay the "software-patentholders" for using these features, even in their own, completely self-developed applications, ....
see full text at http://www.knoppix.org, which also links to http://swpat.ffii.org/index.en.html for more info
'The theme, or the background music, to both of these particular directives (the CII and Services Directives) you could see as part of, anti-globalisation, anti-Americanism, anti-big business protests -- in lots of senses, anti-the opening up of markets'
more links and info at
http://taint.org/2005/07/05/222906a.html