After nearly 10 years, I've now left Sun. Thanks to everyone for following my blog for all these years. Please follow my new blog, Wild Webmink, where I have posted a career retrospective.

Just a reminder that this blog has now moved to Wild Webmink where you will be most welcome to join me from now on.

I've now turned off the automatic posting to this blog from Delicious. Daily links will now only appear over on my new Wild Webmink blog, and I once again encourage you to subscribe to it!

• BBC blocks open source software from iPlayer video service
  This is a very sad development from the UK's public service broadcaster.
  (tags: Flash BBC DRM Adobe)
• Don't Know Much About History
  People have been wondering where I got all my strange ideas about American history. The answer: this great book, which I thoroughly recommend.
  (tags: Books History Amazon USA)

• U.K. bill would 'outlaw open Wi-Fi'
  At a recent debate in the House of Lords on the Digital Economy Bill, a number of amendments designed to ensure citizen rights (as opposed to most terms of the DEB that limit citizen rights in defence on corporate rights) were rejected by the UK governmnet on the basis they would upset the delicate balance of UK law. Yet here we see the very same Bill seriously disrupting the delicate balance of rights voters already enjoy. You'll no longer be able to offer your guests easy wifi access, ruining evolving and desirable modes of work and interaction in order to shore up the 20th century monopolies of Lord Mandelson's media friends. I've not heard nearly enough from the opposition parties on this stuff, making me fear they will just do more of the same - not a surprise, it's advance preparation for ACTA ratification. It's election time; we need to make sure the politicians know we care about this stuff.
  (tags: Rights Freedom Privacy UK DigitalEconomyBill Policy ACTA WiFi)
• Petition to: Make public the details and text of the ACTA agreement
  UK citizens can sign this petition to the UK government calling for transparency.
  (tags: UK ACTA Transparency Petition)
• The ACTA Transparency Scorecard
  Useful summary from Michael Geist - worth asking your representatives why your government hates transparency if you're in one of the countries opposing it.
  (tags: ACTA Transparency)
• Opening up some details of OpenSolaris under Oracle
  Peter Tribble documents some of the comments made by Oracle's representative in theOpenSolaris annual meeting. Net: Oracle intends to keep going with OpenSolaris.
  (tags: OpenSolaris Oracle Sun FOSS OpenSource)

A reminder: If you are following me here on blogs.sun.com, please change your bookmarks and feeds to read http://webmink.com instead, as I have moved all my blogging there. I'll be turning of the daily link posts early next week. There are several new posts on the new site, especially on ACTA, so you really do want to move!

• Europe 'will not accept' three strikes in Acta treaty
  While this is all good, it is not sufficient as ACTA will address far more than just "garduated response". This looks to me like a co-ordinated action by the Commissioners in response to obvious concern, to try to prevent the Parliament forcing their hand in the negotiations. It's still important to get MEPs to sign the opposition text.
  (tags: ACTA Europe Commission Freedom Rights)
• Tim Bray - Noracle
  Goodbye, Tim - it has been fantastic and a privilege to work with you.
  (tags: TimBray)
• New Life: Sounds of Liberation
  Decent free jazz track on Amazon.com (US customers only).
  (tags: Music MP3 Free Amazon)
• Big Content condemns foreign governments that endorse FOSS
  This is an excellent and on-target discussion on the ridiculous case where a lobbying organisation acting on behalf of BSA, RIAA, MPAA and others is able to direct the US government to discriminate against governments choosing to prefer open source software.
  (tags: Special301 FOSS OpenSource Politics Trade Capitalism technology)

• EU Data Protection Supervisor Warns Against ACTA, Calls 3 Strikes Disproportionate
  Very welcome - and beuatifully-constructed - from Europe's data protection supremo. While we should not let up pressure on transparency and on three-strikes, it may be time to start spotlighting some of the other evil in the leaked drafts, such as unlimited search powers at borders, criminalisation of infringements, internet access logging and international application of the DMCA.
  (tags: ACTA ThreeStrikes EU DMCA Legislation Freedom Rights)
• Plans to cut off internet connections of illegal filesharers dumped
  Various EU politicians have worked out that "three-strikes" arouses hatred in voters. All the same, the motivation in introducing the legislation is to clear the ground for ratification of ACTA, so we need to stay vigilant as this is almost certainly window-dressing.
  (tags: ACTA ThreeStrikes UK Policy Legislation)
• Reinventing the Sacred
  While I expect this will make a bunch of fundamentalists gag (including Dawkinians), I found this discussion interesting and timely. We have spent too long treating "spiritual" and "sacred" as words indicating a response to the passive, but everything I've ever admired in the inner life has related to creativity and creation. Worth reading even if just to disagree!
  (tags: Spirituality Sacred business Creativity Innovation)
• Oracle kills OpenSSO Express - ForgeRock steps in
  I am trying to investigate what is going on here - I do hope this is a mistake.
  (tags: OpenSSO Oracle OpenSource FOSS)