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Need: freezer, plastic tubs, big pot.

I fill a five or a seven litre pot with loads of veg, spuds, a few steaks. Boil for half an hour, turn to pulp with a hand blender, and voilÃ:

http://ciaran.compsoc.com/vegetable-soup.html (scroll down for pics)

Or a few kilos of tomatoes, minced meat, carrots and red peppers, and that's spaghetti bolognaise (just add spaghetti).

Or spuds, carrots, leaks, onions, and two or three whole chickens.

Onions, garlic, and broccoli get added to pretty much everything.

All goes into tubs, into the freezer. Take out two tubs each night to thaw.

Point is, I spend a day cooking and I eat clean, non-processed food every day for a month.

Remember when amazon.ca displayed real names instead of logins for a day in 2004 due to a glitch?

The articles about it have a bad habit of disappearing, so I archived them here:

http://ciaran.compsoc.com/amazon-reviews-are-fake.html

I often look at Amazon reviews when deciding what books to get for language learning, but 80-90% of comments aren't credible. I still find it useful, but you have to know the limits of what you're looking at.

Irish talaga pero pilipina ang asawa ko.

http://ciaran.compsoc.com/learning-tagalog.html

> The text of their lawsuit isn't available

Yes it is. I put it here:

• 35811761-Oracle-s-complaint-against-Google-for-Java-patent-infringement.pdf

Other info:

• Phone patent litigation (this case is about Android)
• Oracle
• Google

The legislative approach is difficult, but I think it's the best option in the USA. Getting good legislation would be very difficult. Most legislation in the USA is dreadful, but there's a good constitution, so the judges have the job of reconciling the letter of the law with common sense. So I think this campaign is taking the right approach by working via the court system.

FWIW, my background is that I worked on the EU anti-swpat campaign.

Thanks, but this still doesn't make the license not copyleft. I had already considered the GCC exception, or the GPL exception for system and compiler libraries (if you compile your GPL program for Windows with Visual Studio, you can though you are linking against a whole lot of non-free code).

Anyway, this is moot because I just answered my own question! Yesterday I was just too wasted to look properly, and asking on Slashdot was a lazy way out. Thanks a lot for trying to help, and thanks for the good work in general. I just noticed your URL, and I think the work you FSF Europe guys are doing on the software patent issue is awesome. I often send friends over to your webpage for a laff at the BSA's gaffe when they defined "Computer-Implemented Inventions" as "software patents".

> FUD and misdirection I should think.

Surely, but I think there's more to it.

One goal is to divide the free software community. With the Novell deal, Novell no longer has an interest in helping the community to fight MS's patents. Worse, Novell now benefits from Microsoft's patents getting more and more dangerous. To fight the patent problem, we can't afford to lose any friends. ...not the Novell was much of a friend in the anti-swpat campaign, but if MS is allowed to buy on free software distributor, they can buy others.

And another motivation a little more base: extortion. Microsoft has been in stagnation for a long time and it now scrambling to slow everyone down to prevent their demise. It would be a clever long term strategy to find a way to profit from the free software operating system that will probably replace theirs.

If you are eligible ("a British citizen or resident"), sign the petition against software patents: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/softwarepatents/

And pass it on to everyone you know. It only has 1,800 signatures right now and the deadline is Feb 20th. And if you want to learn more about software patents, try:

• http://ciaran.compsoc.com/software-patents.html
• http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/swpat/swpat.en.h tml
• http://www.ifso.ie/documents/rms-2004-05-24.html
• http://ifso.ie/documents/ifso-2005-11-18.html

I remember Eben Moglen at a panel called "The DMCA and You" confidently asserting that the circumvention clause would be stuck down soon because it so obviously did not fit in with a free society.
audio, partial transcript

Here's my post directive review of that project. But there's more to do.

Something very important this year is GPLv3. Here's a transcript of RMS on GPLv3, and one of something I said.

Thanks for that.

I keep a list of transcripts here:
http://ciaran.compsoc.com/texts/

The FSFE Fellowship project has an advocacy section with a list of relevent videos:
http://fsfe.org/en/advocacy/videos

Here, actually seems more interesting than TFA (This is Slashdot; I didn't read TFA). To quote:

I work within the political system of the European Union to ensure that the development and use of free software is not hampered by new legislation. The best known example of a legislative project I worked on is the "Software Patents Directive".

Heh. That'll teach me to check my URLs. ...nah.

Here is a temporary copy of the transcript: http://ciaran.compsoc.com/texts/moglen-2006-oct-pl one.html

It will have a permanent link soon, and that will be listed at: http://ciaran.compsoc.com/texts/

Heh. That'll teach me to check my URLs. ...nah.

Here is a temporary copy of the transcript: http://ciaran.compsoc.com/texts/moglen-2006-oct-pl one.html

It will have a permanent link soon, and that will be listed at: http://ciaran.compsoc.com/texts/

Or, rather, at the risk of repeating Moglen:

"You don't know what the world you're living in is going to be like but you can guess some things about it: there will be no music companies in it. Now if you leave them alone to buy more congressmen, in this very corrupt time of ours, they will survive for a little while longer but all of this talk is about the technicalities of the adjustment of the terms of their demise. When we want to start talking about something that matters, we would do better to begin from some basic social propositions. Everybody is connected to everybody else, all data that can be shared will be shared: get used to it."

http://ciaran.compsoc.com/texts/eben-moglen-dmca-a nd-you.html [compsoc.com]

I'm almost ready to get the big bucket of popcorn and just watch.

I love this so much:

"You don't know what the world you're living in is going to be like but you can guess some things about it: there will be no music companies in it."

*also, with any luck, no -- or fewer -- TV companies

"Now if you leave them alone to buy more congressmen, in this very corrupt time of ours, they will survive for a little while longer but all of this talk is about the technicalities of the adjustment of the terms of their demise. When we want to start talking about something that matters, we would do better to begin from some basic social propositions. Everybody is connected to everybody else, all data that can be shared will be shared: get used to it."

http://ciaran.compsoc.com/texts/eben-moglen-dmca-a nd-you.html

Last weekend, I met the vice-president of the organisation I work for for the first time. I've been working there over a year. I think I've met my boss 5 times.

We try to go to free software conferences more than normal so that we all bump into each other.

Other than that, it's pretty much email all the way, with a little irc.

The next big free software conference in Europe is the 3rd international GPLv3 conference in Barcelona, June 22/23.

Before that, I saw my boss in Manchester, England, and before that we met in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

In the 60s and 70s, all software was free software. It was normal for people to pass on the source code with the binaries. In the 80s, some companies started a new proprietary approach, and they started using technical means (such as only distributing binaries) and legal means (applying copyright) to prevent people from helping themselves and each other.

I bet there was a army of people who posted to usenet with comments similar to your's. "Consumers will never accept that treatment" etc. etc. "there'll be a revolt, just you wait!"

Instead of waiting for everyone else to revolt, Stallman launched GNU - and the free software movement along with it. When freedom is at stake, sitting back and waiting for a revolt is never enough. This problem has to be tackled in every way we can. GPLv3 can't solve the DRM problem completely, but I'm glad that it will do all it can.

That says you can use it - for any purpose, and it's capable of being studied, modified, patched, forked, audited, etc.

People in Europe and Britain are kinda safe right now. Software patents are being granted, and are being used as the basis of litigation threats that the recipients can't afford to contest, but at least the courts are on our side, so far.

This situation is not stable. If China, India, and Latin America bring in software patents, then Europe will probably give in at a subsequent world trade agreement.

To keep people in Britain and Europe safe, people in Britain and Europe must take action - and one easy way to do this is to donate to competent, active groups such as FSFE. One way to do this is to join The Fellowship of FSFE, and also encourage others to join.

Here's a webpage about how and why to support FSFE's Fellowship campaign.

"The problematic parts are not the core technologies submitted to the ECMA or the Unix/Gnome-specific parts."

The problem (software patents) can affect any part. If MS have claimed they don't have patents on "core parts", you cannot trust them. If the Mono devs have claimed that MS don't have patents on "core parts", they are saying something they can't possibly know.

As well as including "according to the public statements of MS and the Mono devs", you should also read that sentence with the qualification: "for now anyway".

if you say something is not well thought out, also saying why

The reasons why their plan is not well though out are given in that article, in the last paragraph of that section, just after the list of the 3 strategies.

> preaching about open source software

I agree that preaching must be avoided, but not mentioning that it is free software is a false economy.

People who don't value their freedom will let it slip through their fingers. i.e. they will install a bunch of proprietary plug-ins, and over time, Firefox will become a platform for a set of non-free plug-ins for browsing the non-free WWW.

...but the preaching has to be removed. Freedom and community could be mentioned without an explanation, and at least the user would then have the option of investigating for themself.

In business terms, freedom is the software's "unique selling point".

Anyone interested in Blender should be aware of the Libre Graphic Meeting. The plan is to get developers of Blender in one place, plus get developers of other free software packages like GIMP, Inkscape, and Scribus together too.

19 March 2006 in Lyon, France

The languages page of my website is about my experiences in learning a few languages. I moved to a French-speaking country 18 months ago, and for my job it's useful for me to have a grasp of a few other languages. (I'm a lobbyist - working for free software and against software patents.)

There's also a nice, and very frank, quote about software patents being used for abusive purposes.

Heres a link just in case. Mirror

I had the opposite experience. Two years later I'm still finding new functionality in GNU Emacs.

Ah, now I get it. Diebold didn't fake any election results, the machines were just exercising their right to vote. That's okay then.

So are the thoughts of Electronic Americans covered by the DMCA?

The latest seems to be that they have reached a compromise (no details yet)
...apparently it's about money as much as anything

Here's an interesting story about GPS, but details aren't available yet, and it's not actually about GPS (but I've written the first half of the story submission, so I'll just click Submit anyway.)

table of contents

If people want to find out more about the copyright and patent politics & tricks of global trade, I highly recommend "Information Feudalism", by Peter Drahos with John Braithwaite.

"Information Rules!" has been recommended to me by the same person that recommened "Information Feudalism", so it's probably also very good.
"Globalisation and it's Discontents" is an okay book. It focuses on economics though, and the malpractice of the IMF and World Bank.
On my homepage, I keep a list of good books, and online sources of information. (and from working on the EU software patentability directive, and the EUCD, I know that educated individuals can make a difference.)

If people want to find out more about the copyright and patent politics & tricks of global trade, I highly recommend "Information Feudalism", by Peter Drahos with John Braithwaite.

"Information Rules!" has been recommended to me by the same person that recommened "Information Feudalism", so it's probably also very good.
"Globalisation and it's Discontents" is an okay book. It focuses on economics though, and the malpractice of the IMF and World Bank.
On my homepage, I keep a list of good books, and online sources of information. (and from working on the EU software patentability directive, and the EUCD, I know that educated individuals can make a difference.)

If we view Free Software only as a convenience, we won't progress. Sometimes it takes a lot of effort to develop a Free Software package, or to migrate a system to use Free Software. It makes no sense to put a lot of effort into seeking a convenience.

Idealism is a more long term motivator, and it's not unjustified when the focus of the idealism has already proved to be very practical.

This is party highlighted by the OpenSource Vs. Free Software terminology, but we are not enemies, it's just a choice of where you put the emphasis.

fight the DMCA and the EUCD.

I think that link should have pointed to:
http://www.compsoc.com/~coriordan/#eucd
(you forgot the anchor)

BTW, good site. Good luck with your work on software patents and the EUCD.

The EUCD, and DMCA, allow publishers to rent books for limited times, etc. If a work is encrypted, you can only access it with publisher-authorised software. Anything else is circumvention, which is a criminal offence. So the software can disable your access after 10 months.

Kids can't take the computer home, so they can't take the book home, they can't buy second hand books etc.

We have to fight the DMCA and the EUCD. Make technology safe before making it a standard part of school. Do we really want to create a new schooling system where the motto is "sharing is violating"?

The content industry has worked this pretty well. Make fair use of "e-books" impossible *before* e-books become popular. So when e-books become popular, the publishers already have complete control of the public.

1984 anyone?
"It was only an 'opeless fancy,
It passed like an Ipril dye,
But a look an' a word an' the dreams they stirred
They 'ave stolen my 'eart awye!"

Please help stop software patentability in the EU. (coz I want to write this program! okay, not really)

this article is yet another nail in the coffin of the patent system

Hopefully, but that is somewhere far off in the future. Right now we have to stop expansion of the patent system, like the way the EU is considering expanding it to cover all ideas implementable through software. How would patent examiners possibly get better by increasing their workload?

Plus it will be a lot harder to revise the patent system if it is embedded in every industry.

Hi,
At the moment I'm working to set up a Free Software organisation in my country. I, and others, have put a lot of work into it, looking around at other orgs to see how the goods ones are run, etc. One strange thing I've noticed is that in my search, I've found 14 active Free Software orgs in Europe, but not one active OpenSource group.

And now we have this article. The people that have decided to make the effort to turn up such as Stallman, and Loic Dachary are called "OSS advocates". Both are very clear that they do Free Software.

The two terms refer to the same set of licenses (pretty much), but they represent different movements. Freedom isn't a dirty word, and Richard and Loic are representatives of the Free Software movement. Both are busting their asses to give freedom to computer users. A bit of accurate recognition would be good.

I wonder if there was any input from Peruvian Congressman Dr. Edgar David Villanueva Nunez, the guy that wrote the letter to Microsoft, justifying the Free Software in Public Administration bill.

Also, coincidentally, Richard Stallman gave a video-talk in Brazil just 12 days ago.

Free Software and OpenSource are roughly the same thing, but there's no mention of freedom in that article. I just hope they understand the long term benefits of Software Libre.

This is of course great news. Maybe they should talk to Peruvian Congressman Dr. Edgar David Villanueva Nunez, the guy that wrote the letter to Microsoft about Peru using Free Software regarding Peru's new "Free Software in Public Administration bill".

Free Software is often better than proprietary software. The OpenSource movement bases it's whole argument on this point. The terms "Free Software" and "OpenSource" usually refer to the same thing, but if people don't value freedom, they won't see a reason not to switch back when a better (low-cost initially) proprietary alternative comes along.

I wonder if this has anything to do with Stallmans recent video talk at a brazillian Free Software conference.

> Emacs? *Everyone* knows that vi is the one true editor

You will out grow vi.

After 24 hours, hits are almost back to their normal rate. For the 24 hour period, here's the final totals:
1333 hits: homepage.
256 hits: photo of me.
62 hits: my FAQ.
56 hits: french translation.

> Emacs? *Everyone* knows that vi is the one true editor

You will out grow vi.

After 24 hours, hits are almost back to their normal rate. For the 24 hour period, here's the final totals:
1333 hits: homepage.
256 hits: photo of me.
62 hits: my FAQ.
56 hits: french translation.

> Emacs? *Everyone* knows that vi is the one true editor

You will out grow vi.

After 24 hours, hits are almost back to their normal rate. For the 24 hour period, here's the final totals:
1333 hits: homepage.
256 hits: photo of me.
62 hits: my FAQ.
56 hits: french translation.

> Emacs? *Everyone* knows that vi is the one true editor

You will out grow vi.

After 24 hours, hits are almost back to their normal rate. For the 24 hour period, here's the final totals:
1333 hits: homepage.
256 hits: photo of me.
62 hits: my FAQ.
56 hits: french translation.

> Emacs? *Everyone* knows that vi is the one true editor

You will out grow vi.

After 24 hours, hits are almost back to their normal rate. For the 24 hour period, here's the final totals:
1333 hits: homepage.
256 hits: photo of me.
62 hits: my FAQ.
56 hits: french translation.

Ok. It's exactly 8 hours since my original post. I've looked at the logs a bit more. First an update, then some funny things I've noticed.

I've now received 792 hits since my first post. Latest:
16:00 -> 17:00 : 54 hits
17:00 -> 18:00 : 109 hits
18:00 -> 18:46 : 75 hits

So hits are increasing again, not sure why. Might be because my post is now score:4.

I have three documents linked from near the top of my webpage. Of the 792 people that visited my site today:
110 people decided to look at my photo of me (which isn't a photo).
12 people looked at the french translation of my site (which isn't in french)
17 people looked at my FAQ (which doesn't contain any questions that are frequently asked).

I find the number of people looking at my photo pretty strange.

Anyway, I live in the GMT timezone and it's pint o'clock. So I'm out of here.

Ok. It's exactly 8 hours since my original post. I've looked at the logs a bit more. First an update, then some funny things I've noticed.

I've now received 792 hits since my first post. Latest:
16:00 -> 17:00 : 54 hits
17:00 -> 18:00 : 109 hits
18:00 -> 18:46 : 75 hits

So hits are increasing again, not sure why. Might be because my post is now score:4.

I have three documents linked from near the top of my webpage. Of the 792 people that visited my site today:
110 people decided to look at my photo of me (which isn't a photo).
12 people looked at the french translation of my site (which isn't in french)
17 people looked at my FAQ (which doesn't contain any questions that are frequently asked).

I find the number of people looking at my photo pretty strange.

Anyway, I live in the GMT timezone and it's pint o'clock. So I'm out of here.

Ok. It's exactly 8 hours since my original post. I've looked at the logs a bit more. First an update, then some funny things I've noticed.

I've now received 792 hits since my first post. Latest:
16:00 -> 17:00 : 54 hits
17:00 -> 18:00 : 109 hits
18:00 -> 18:46 : 75 hits

So hits are increasing again, not sure why. Might be because my post is now score:4.

I have three documents linked from near the top of my webpage. Of the 792 people that visited my site today:
110 people decided to look at my photo of me (which isn't a photo).
12 people looked at the french translation of my site (which isn't in french)
17 people looked at my FAQ (which doesn't contain any questions that are frequently asked).

I find the number of people looking at my photo pretty strange.

Anyway, I live in the GMT timezone and it's pint o'clock. So I'm out of here.

Personal homepages are fine, except when people feel the need to plug them at every available opertunity. Very annoying.

On the FSFE-IE list, we collaborated to produce a joint mail. We mailed it to all 102 MEPs from the UK and Ireland.

It's available here.

Ciaran O'Riordan