: Letter to the US Department of Commerce on Exporting Linux to Iraq. Why can you ship a proprietary OS from the US to Iraq, but we can't send Linux? The Silicon Valley Linux User Group asks for much-needed reform in the regulations, with the assistance of Roszel Thomsen and Toni Paytas of Thomsen and Burke LLP www.t-b.com. [Linux Journal]

=============

good questions as usual….

all in all, today has been a fairly good day. Around noon I got the email from the bank telling me that my car loan was approved. I already knew what i wanted to buy, so i gave them a call. it's a no haggle deal from enterprise, a 2002 GMC Sonoma SLS 4×4 with 35k miles. Like my current car, it is fully loaded and unlike my current car has all the modern safety features in that 'Loaded'. Since I've owned my last car for 10 years and put a total of 14000 miles on it and those during probably the most mechanically abusive period of a person's life, the 20's, I expect this one will last for a bit longer and besides in 10 years at the same pace it won't even be at 50k, though i admit I'll probably put 40 k on this one in the next 10 years, unless i take a job in europe, then I'll make the payments and loan this one to my parents for the duration.

In any case, now I have to get rid of my old car, found a place that will take it, but i still have to clean it out and get it ready to go, for a 20 year old car now averaging less than 6k miles a year, it has remarkably few problems and will make someone a good runner with a minimum investment. My new truck though, it will take a few long hauls I think, mainly because I think that is advisable for a 31 year old in america. I also have to do two winter trips this year, as my nephew thomas is new unto the world and the new uncle has certain determinable responsibilities, so the 4×4 on demand function could be handy for those trips.

all in all, i'm pretty happy that i have a newer vehicle. the last long trip in my older car wasn't well received by it, though the problem it caused has been repaired, but it doesn't like the winter so much as it needs new rings and has low compression, though the summer it loves, not that any vehicle does really like it. anyway, the nature of the beast is that the old car will be replaced by the new, and already has been replaced by the insurance agency and tomorrow will be replaced on the plates, so that as they say will be that.

overall, i do realize that cars are a ripoff for most people, but since i intend to own my new one for 10-15 years(barring incident), mine will not be a ripoff like most cars. payments to be mobile in this our unitied states are immensely prohibitive and i think somewhat immoral, but i could resist the system at end and then be stuck in blacksburg on many days when i need not be, the convenience tax, as such, weighs on me. I want to be able to go places and do things without being impeded unnecessarily, so i bought a vehicle that would suffice and i paid about about 2/3 of its new price but still under its blue book price, so all in all, i'm satiated.

Bloggers Converge on World Summit. Bloggers Converge on World Summit

DailySummit
http://www.dailysummit.net/

Highway Africa
http://www.highwayafrica.org.za/hana/

OneWorld TV
http://tv.oneworld.net/tapestry?cluster=21

Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth
http://www.edwebproject.org/andy/blog/

Last week's World Summit on the Information Society was covered by bloggers from around the world, using articles and streaming media to capture summit events. DailySummit.net, an online collaboration of British and Arab journalists, reported on the ins and outs of the summit almost in real time, with contributors blogging via Wi-Fi-enabled laptops during events and press conferences. Student journalists from sub-Saharan Africa, meanwhile, contributed articles and streaming video as part of the Highway Africa News Agency, a project of South Africa Broadcasting Corporation and Rhodes University. Similarly, OneWorld TV featured a team of young journalists from South America and Asia who created video diaries for distribution over the Internet. And Communications-Related Headlines' own Andy Carvin offered his own perspective on his Waste of Bandwidth blog, covering events and speeches ranging from Stanford University's Lawrence Lessig and Richard Stallman of the free software movement to Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and
Iranian President Mohammed Khatami.
[Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. Author/Speaker]

Open access plea at WSIS. David Dickson, WSIS hears plea for open access, SciDev.Net, December 11, 2003. Excerpt: “Delegates from 176 nations attending the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) have heard a strong plea that they should support campaigns to secure open access to scientific information….'It is clear that open access is going have a significant long-term positive impact on technological development everywhere,' said [Shu-Khun Lin, founder and director of the Swiss-Based Molecular Diversity Presentation International]. 'We expect that the summit recommendations will substantially accelerate this trend, over the whole spectrum of society, and over the whole world.'…The next step, said Lin, was to persuade all those who fund research that is reported in scientific journals –including governments, research agencies, philanthropic foundations, and private companies– to ensure that authors publish their results in open-access journals.” [Open Access News]

WSIS – better late than never.

First off, apologies that the guest blogger I’d promised, Gus Hosein, didn’t manage to post. Gus had trouble logging in from Geneva, and as he’s no slouch with IT, I put it down to the dodgy wireless connections at the conference. (and yes, it’s pretty wild that a World Summit on the Information Society couldn’t get this right.)

Anyway, I’ve been mulling over the world summit for days now, trying to decide for myself what, if anything it all meant. I’ve even checked out the world summit blog by several young journalists imaginatively sponsored by the British Council, and some other accounts of the event. But the disparate nature of all that went on there means attempts at synopsis keep slipping through my fingers.

The difficulty in pinning down a result may be because most parties to the summit went there with the aim of checking the moves of their opponents. And everyone pretty much succeeded.

(Warning; it’s a very long post. Maybe you had to be there…)

[Crooked Timber]

Range of opinion on OA at WSIS. David Dickson, The challenges of 'e-science', SciDev.Net, December 15, 2003. Excerpt:

Everyone, in his or her own way, is in favour of the widest possible access to scientific information; that is not in dispute. What is, however, is the terms and conditions on which such access should be permitted. In particular, should this be a market model, in which the cost of access is determined by the ability and willingness of individuals to pay? One based entirely on need, where the costs are covered by the provider (which, in the case of scientists, means the original funder of the research in question)? Or a combination of the two?

The ideal model…is that all scientific information should be made freely available to everyone. Many statements to this effect were heard in Geneva, not least from the current leaders of the international physics community, Luciano Maiani, the current director of CERN. Addressing the final session of the summit, he presented as a key conclusion emerging from a meeting held at his own laboratory earlier in the week that “fundamental scientific information must be made freely available”.

Others were more pragmatic. Speaking on behalf of ICSU, for example, the organisation's current president, Jane Lubchenco, spoke similarly of the need to ensure universal access to scientific data for research and education purposes. But at the same time, she added that this needed to be balanced with treating such data as “a commodity for short-term economic return”.

[Open Access News]

More on the WSIS endorsement of OA. Today's CORDIS News has an unsigned note on the WSIS endorsement of open access. [Open Access News]

WSIS – the road ahead. Ambassador David Gross, head of the US delegation to the recently concluded World Summit on the Information Society, expressed satisfaction with WSIS's outcome when IDG News Service interviewed him in Geneva. He was particularly pleased about the deflection of calls… [InternetPolicy.net]

waterhole dreaming. Good heavens. I have only just discovered Soul Food Cafe. Thanks to Bonyton What a fine site. What an innovative… [Junk for Code]

A history of the Internet. It's history night. Here's one version of the history of the Internet…. [IDblog]