taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

Patents: I’m just back from a fantastic holiday weekend, totally offline, hiking through Catalina Island. I’m a little bit sunburnt, my nose is peeling, but it was great fun. I got a fantastic picture of the sun setting over hundreds of boats bobbing at their moorings in Two Harbors, which I must upload at some stage.

Anyway, it seems that over the weekend, the EU software-patents debate has swung back heavily towards the anti-swpat side. Fingers crossed — the vote is this week.

Also, today, EUpolitix.com has an interview with Charlie McCreevy, quoting him as saying:

‘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’

This is standard practice for the Irish government — they did exactly the same thing with the e-voting issue, painting the ICTE as ‘linked to the anti-globalisation movement’. (I have a feeling they think that any group organised online must be ‘anti-globalisation’, at this stage.)

Of course, with these accusations of being anti-free-market, it’s important to remember that a patent is a government-issued monopoly on an invention (or in the software field, on an idea), in a particular local jurisdiction. If anything, being against software patenting is a pro-free-market position, one shared by prominent US libertarians; and nothing gets more pro-free-market than those guys. ;)

Tags: bit, fun, hiking, holiday, nose, offline, patents, software, stage, sunburnt, weekend

Life: I’m moving house — I’ve just filled about 20 boxes, now to get moving them! Sadly, there’s no wifi in range of my new house, so the upshot is I may be offline for a few days. Boo.

Tags: boo, house, life, offline, range, upshot, wifi

Marc Canter blogs about QuickThread, one of the new services at Steve Yost’s QuickTopic.

It’s a great concept. Want to take a thread offline, or share it as a dedicated forum of its own, without losing the concept flow? Just select all the context messages, forward as attachments by mail to the QT site, and it’ll create a new thread with that context intact. Totally simple. (see the Pictures).

Science: In this interview with Matt Ridley at edge.org, Matt notes:

… There’s another phenomenon going on too, which is equally important and which again people in these kinds of debates over human nature have missed. … behavior affects genes. It doesn’t change the code of the gene, and it doesn’t change the encoded genome … what I’m talking about is changing the expression of genes through things you do in your life.

(for example:) … When you’re under stress, the physiological result is that cortisol increases in your body and has a lot of effects. Cortisol is a transcription factor; it actually alters the expression of certain genes. It does so largely in the immune system, which results in the suppression of immune activity.

Wow. I never realised hormones could have that effect. Good article, as usual…

Tags: concept, context, cortisol, expression, forum, offline, quickthread, quicktopic, thread, want

man, this is sweet! BBC front page coverage for Ireland Offline…

“Eircom has cited congestion of the network and not enough demand as the arguments against unmetered (internet access),” said Mr (Dave) Long (IO chairman).

BT-owned ESAT is just one of the telecom operators challenging Eircom to offer a wholesale unmetered product.

“There is huge pent-up demand and our ears are sore from listening to our own customers. For Eircom to say there is no demand is condescending and naive,” said (Una) McGirr (of ESAT BT).

Maybe what Eircom mean, is that there’s not enough demand to outweigh the unfeasibly large revenues they make from metered internet calls…

Tags: bbc, coverage, demand, eircom, esat, internet, ireland, man, offline, page

Argh, so much mail to get through; I was away this weekend, then offline for most of today waiting for a new line to be installed. But I did get a new candidate for the bizarre spam award: Q: DOES YOUR FOREIGN ACCENT SIMPLY GET IN THE WAY? Simple answer: nope. next!

Tags: argh, award, candidate, does, line, mail, offline, spam, today, weekend