taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

Patents: A great outcome! The proposed Directive has been dropped, in the face of massive opposition. Coverage: /., FFII, FT.com, VNUnet, FSFE.

Unfortunately, Rocard’s proposed amendments which would have turned this directive into a major win for us, didn’t pass — but it’s still a good win. Software patents are not explicitly legal throughout Europe; although some jurisdictions do permit them, they’re in a legal grey area, and prosecution is therefore hard (and very expensive for patent holders). This is a much better situation than if the directive as proposed by the Council had passed, since that would have explicitly legalised them throughout the EU.

On top of this win, what I find significant is that we’ve now brought the issue from where it was a few years ago, as a minor concern known only to a few uber-geeks, to a major political issue that made headlines around the globe. Even my local NPR affiliate reported on this decision! That’s a far cry from the mid-90’s, when I had a hard time explaining the point of theLeague for Programming Freedom to my hacker friends in the TCD Maths Department.

A great quote from the VNUnet article:

‘This represents a clear victory for open source,’ said Simon Phipps, chief open source officer at Sun Microsystems. ‘It expresses Parliament’s clear desire to provide a balanced competitive market for software.’

Yes, that’s Sun saying that less software patenting is a good thing. Believe me, that’s a great leap forward. Or check out Irish MEP Kathy Sinnott’s amazing comments. She hits the nail right on the head; I’m very impressed by that speech.

Tags: directive, face, issue, opposition, outcome, patents, software, source, sun, vnunet, win

Health: On a lighter note, I’ve been getting through my last two weeks mail and RSS data, and came across this beauty.

It’s a truly venerable internet urban legend — the Nepalese Nose Leech story. Even given that I assumed it was more than likely a UL, I still took care not to drink from streams when I visited leech-infested areas, especially in Nepal!

Well, it appears it may not be a UL after all –

Doctors have removed a leech from the nose of a 55-year-old Hong Kong woman after she swam and washed her face in a stream, a medical journal reported.

The woman went to her doctor complaining of nose bleeds and an occasional sensation that something was blocking her left nostril, the Hong Kong Medical Journal said in its April issue. Her family doctor noticed a brownish mass in her nostril but couldn’t remove it because of heavy bleeding, the journal said.

The patient was taken to the emergency room, where doctors identified the problem as a bloodsucking leech. They had trouble pulling it out because the 2 inch invertebrate retracted into the nostril and disappeared, the journal said.

Part of the slimy leech was in a passage of her nasal cavity and a larger segment was in her sinus cavity, the article said.

Doctors used a nasal spray to anesthetize the dark brown leech that had a sucker on the front part of its body. After two minutes, the leech moved slowly out of the antrum (sinus) and was retrieved with forceps, the journal said.

The woman said that one month before her symptoms developed, she swam and washed her face in a stream while hiking. Doctors checked other members of her hiking group and found another leech in the nose of a man who washed his face in the stream, the journal said.

Link via jwz, AP wire story, abstract at Hong Kong Medical Journal site, MEDLINE abstract, including a line noting ‘this form of leech infestation has not been previously reported’ — except on teh internets!

Tags: doctor, face, health, journal, leech, nose, nostril, story, stream, swam, woman

Web: Flickr’s latest trend — using just an eye (or similar minimalist face part) as your avatar pic:

Tags: avatar, eye, face, flickr, part, trend, web

Spam: we’ve decided that SpamAssassin needs a logo update. If you’ve got the skills (and let’s face it, it wouldn’t be too hard to top my effort), please feel free to enter a logo in the contest!

Tags: contest, effort, face, logo, spam, spamassassin, update

Ben mails on this Yahoo! link: ‘U.S. Central Command released these digitally enhanced photographs of what former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein might look like’. As he notes, let’s face it, it’s crying out for the SomethingAwful Photoshop Phriday treatment. However, I’m too cheap to have an SA forum account. Anyone got one and care to suggest it?

Tags: central, command, dictator, face, hussein, link, photoshop, saddam, somethingawful, yahoo

New Scientist reports that ‘cosmetics manufacturers are keen to appear cutting edge, and often blind consumers with scientific jargon. But buzzwords like nanocapsules - currently one of their favourites - could be their undoing.’

Scare stories about nanotechnology turning the world to ‘grey goo’ have led Caroline Lucas, Green Party MEP for South East England, to call for new regulations - and one of the targets she has in her sights is the cosmetics industry. Her website claims that ‘thousands of women are acting as unwitting ‘guinea pigs’ for the cosmetics industry…with many products containing ingredients manufactured by ‘nanotechnology’.’

Famous facial products, such as L’Oreal Plenitude and Lancome’s Flash Bronzer Self Tanning Face Gel, do indeed contain billions of nanoscopic capsules designed to help the skin absorb the cream’s active ingredients. Though there’s not a goo-making nanobot in sight, Lucas claims to be ‘horrified to find nanotech products sitting innocently in my bathroom cabinet’.

We wonder what she expected them to do to her. Drain the colour from her face and make it go all mushy?

Tags: edge, face, industry, jargon, nanotechnology, new, scare, scientist, undoing, world

Well, despite the covert bugging of the European Council offices of 3 major EU delegations, the apparatus of some states, at least, is bringing a smile to my face. The German federal secret service, the Bundesnachrichendienstes (BND), has just published Topf Secret, their official cookbook. Really. The Guardian notes:

The book consists of recipes sent in from around the world by German spies in the field. Thus, there are two recipes from Iraq, several from central Africa, the Philippines and Scotland.

Again, more questions than answers. The Germans have spies in Scotland? Do they really eat haggis? (’Attention: fill only 2/3 of the stomach since the oat flour will expand. If the stomach is too full it can explode while cooking!’) Do the two recipes from Iraq - for fattousch and tabouleh - have to be so boring (use only crunchy lettuce leaves for the fattousch)? Why are there German agents in Iraq? What are they doing in the US as well, and do they like that nation’s recipe for pumpkin pie?

Tags: apparatus, bugging, bundesnachrichendienstes, council, european, face, fattousch, service, smile, stomach

Michael Jackson has a bad face day. Horrific.

Tags: day, face, horrific