taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

Patents: So the Conference of Presidents has ratified the JURI decision to throw out the flawed software patents directive text. Phew! That’s a lot more pressure on the European Commission. Charlie McCreevy could still carry on his attempt to steamroller European democracy on this one, but it looks likely that he wouldn’t get away with it now — possibly facing sanctions as a result.

Found in a Slashdot comment — an amazing quote from Michel Rocard (former French Prime Minister, now European Deputy), recounting a meeting with Microsoft representatives on the software-patent issue:

“We never could (speak) a common language with the companies representatives we met - in particular those from Microsoft. Speaking about (the free circulation of ideas), free access to knowledge, was like speaking chinese to them. In their way of thinking, everything that is not usable for immediate profit ceases to be an engine of growth. They don’t seem to be able to understand that an invention which is a pure spirit creation (sic) can’t be patented. It’s simply terrifying. Many of us, at the Parliament, agree to say that they never have know such a pressure and such a verbal violence during their parliamentary work. It is a huge case.”

In addition, he takes aim at the Irish Presidency’s tactics:

“To adopt it formally, there is an expeditious procedure — the (A-item) at the Council of Ministers, where the it is adopted without discussion. The Irish and Dutch presidencies attempted this tactic three times, twice at meetings of the (Fisheries Council)! This is simply scandalous.”

Blimey, he’s really pissed off. Great! Go Rocard! ;)

See here for the original interview (in French), and here for a bad Babelfish translation.

In happier news — take a look at some pictures from the presentation of 30,000 verified signatures (and flowers!) from people around the world, thanking the Polish Government for their repeated stands against the flawed directive in December.

Tags: conference, council, decision, directive, european, microsoft, patents, phew, pressure, software, text

Music: … from CDWow selling us cheap CDs. Paddy forwards on the news — ‘CDWow.ie will now charge EUR 3 on every CD sold from their Irish site. And they wonder why people download music illegally…’

It seems that IRMA and the BPI both joined forces in this case against CDWow, hence this decision affects Ireland, too. The record industry are very happy — ‘it is not the consumer that will suffer, just CD Wow’s profit margins.’ Not entirely clear how the consumer doesn’t suffer due to a 3 Euro surcharge, but I’m sure they have it all worked out.

Globalisation where it suits the producers, rather than the consumers, is the name of the game here.

More at The Register.

(Thanks, Paddy!)

Tags: bpi, case, cdwow, consumer, decision, download, eur, music, news, site

A great insight into marketing software at the “enterprise” level. This explains a lot, IMHO:

“price it high enough and the decision making process is taken out of the hands who know enough to make a sensible decision”.

Forwarded from Cam and Phil Suh’s cms-list.

Date: Tue, 08 May 2001 06:51:07 -0700
From: Julian Harris (spam-protected)
To: “Huston, Virgil H.” (spam-protected) (spam-protected)
Subject: RE: Why Vignette?

Exactly why Vignette’s strategy works — price it high enough and the decision making process is taken out of the hands who know enough to make a sensible decision.

Lowering the price would be a fatal move.

— “Huston, Virgil H.” (spam-protected) wrote:
> My experience says that corporate IT people are not
> baffled by BS.
> Problem is, they do not make the final decisions, at
> least in middle sized
> companies that I am familiar with. For example, I am
> basically a nongeek
> (maybe semigeek) and I run a company external
> website & ecommerce system. IT
> supports the backend and helps me out when I get in
> over my head (like
> trying to make changes to asp pages that appear to
> be intentionally written
> to be very difficult to decode - even the
> programmers have problems). We
> went with a fairly high priced (but not the highest)
> ecommerce vendor. The
> brass made the decisions and we implemented it along
> with vendor
> “consultants.” We provided input, which is sometimes
> taken and often
> ignored. The in-house costs (mainly labor, but also
> hardware) were still
> very high even with the consultants, which is
> typical. But, don’t blame the
> IT guys/gals. In my case, the IT folks and I are on
> the same sheet of music
> and we both understand how and why things should be
> run (at least we think
> we do). The powers that be, however, have us doing
> other things. They are
> the boss, right or wrong. As when I was in the Army
> years ago, we have an
> obligation to tell the brass what we think, but when
> the decision is made,
> we have to salute the flagpole and charge the hill,
> no matter how many
> machine gun nests are on it.
>
> Virgil
>
> > Are
> > corporate IT people really that baffled by BS? Or
> do they see something I
> > cannot? That’s what’s troubling me here.
> >
> >
>
> ————————–
> Subscribe: http://www.camworld.com/cms/
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> Post: (spam-protected)
>

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Tags: decision, ecommerce, huston, insight, marketing, price, process, software, vendor, vignette