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Reminds me of the pledge for nouveau, the free-as-in-speech drivers for Nvidia graphics cards, which gathered at least around $14,000 — but was alas not fulfilled, on account of problems with finding an organisation to manage the money transfer ...

Provided that the business of the feasability of money transfer were handled beforehand, I could easily see such a pledge directed towards the development of GIMP reaching several dozen thousand dollars.

Over 2,500 people have so far pledged to support the project to build an analytical engine. Minimum pledge is $10. John Graham-Cumming is looking for 50,000 people to pledge to start the project. You can pledge at http://www.pledgebank.com/babbage and get further info at http://plan28.org/.

Facebook group against this
Pledgebank ISP boycott
Wikinews story

The technical press are swarming. Dunno if the national press are too as yet.

The IWF apparently sought the advice of police before blocking. Now, the police in the UK are notorious for trying it on with censorship cases, so that doesn't mean the image is illegal.

The album was released in 1976; child porn was illegalised in the UK in 1978. If the album was distributed in the UK since 1978 with that cover, it's probably legal.

The album cover has been reprinted in many books. Most of those books are in the Briitsh Library. Are those now obscene?

Question for all: Has this precise image ever come to court? In the UK, in the world?

The IWF had it pointed out that they were censoring encyclopedia text, which was clearly not illegal. The IWF responded that they needed to block the page to block the image effectively. This is of course utterly ludicrous bollocks, but apparently that's the advice the IWF have received.

They were also asked if they'd be censoring Amazon as well. They said they'd have to get back on that one.

It's the clbuttic error, but this time on a top-10 site for everyone.

Disclaimer: I do press for Wikipedia/Wikimedia in the UK as a volunteer (and I've been on my email and phone all last night to about 2am and today since 9am). However, I am not a WMF employee and cannot legally claim to speak for them, only as a volunteer editor.

My girlfriend made up a pledgebank issue on this topic, so I'd recommend you sign it if you agree that fingerprinting foreign tourists in the USA is wrong:

for non-US citizens: http://www.pledgebank.com/Fingerprints
for US citizens: http://www.pledgebank.com/FingerprintsUSA

I personally found it quite degrading when I travel with her to the US (she's German and I'm American living in Germany), so I go through the same line with her. I also found it degrading when I went to Japan, but unless we actually do something about it instead of just complaining, we're not going to make a difference!

My girlfriend made up a pledgebank issue on this topic, so I'd recommend you sign it if you agree that fingerprinting foreign tourists in the USA is wrong:

for non-US citizens: http://www.pledgebank.com/Fingerprints
for US citizens: http://www.pledgebank.com/FingerprintsUSA

I personally found it quite degrading when I travel with her to the US (she's German and I'm American living in Germany), so I go through the same line with her. I also found it degrading when I went to Japan, but unless we actually do something about it instead of just complaining, we're not going to make a difference!

You are failing to understand how the program works. Any government -- rich or poor -- can participate in the OLPC program. If your government participated in the program, you would not need to buy two laptops to get one; you would only have to pay for one to get one, but it would be mandatory, paid through taxes. The laptops would have technical support and your child's teacher would be trained to teach with it, again paid by taxes. If you think this is a good idea, you should lobby your government to participate in the program.

You should consider it a privilege to be able to get a laptop outside of the program, even unsupported and at a premium. The OLPC is not equipped for retail sales and didn't want to sell the laptop to consumers. But people begged and pleaded... "We'll pay three times as much, with no warranty or support -- just please let us have them." OLPC acceded, and now it is at least possible to get one. If you don't like the terms, tough. But don't go complaining about how other countries are getting preferential treatment. The Give-One-Get-One program is currently only helping in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti, Mongolia and Rwanda; other countries like Peru or Uruguay are paying for theirs outright -- which is what American states could do if they wanted to.

Why bother with this crap? Just get an Intel GMA X3000 integrated motherboard [wikipedia.org] and save time, power, money and hassle due to Intel "getting it" and releasing Open Source drivers and full specs. (You'll probably also be able to benefit from their free wireless drivers.

Looks like it's time to sign the pledge to support open, 3d graphics drivers http://www.pledgebank.com/open3d and put some pressure on graphics card manufacturers.

I heard they expected after mass production for it go from $100 down to $50. It'll get their eventually.

Will Sony be offering up kernel patches and an RSX optimized OpenGL library for PS3/Linux?

• when will you stop blocking Linux from accessing the RSX graphics chip (and the 256 Megs of memory it controls)
• when will you contract nVidia to port it's driver to PS3/Linux

how many of you would consider donating money to the researchers in order to have a patent-free drug? It could be done the same way as free nvidia pledge http://www.pledgebank.com/nouveaudriver/

One of the more interesting ideas that I have seen is to allow people to buy an OLPC for say, double the price, thus also buying one for a child oversees.

Did you sign the pledge?

When it was put out there, the response from Negraponte, IIRC, was "we're only interested in governments purchasing these units."

I started a pledge at pledgebank.com
http://www.pledgebank.com/buysealand
the goal is to collect 10.000$, if it works I'll donate and create a larger pledge maybe aiming at 100.000$.

If you like piratebay's idea and plan to donate then sign up the petition, please, pledges with less than 25 subscribers are not even shown on the website!

With regard to the Noveau thing, there's a pledge to help fund the Noveau project.

Not the best example, but a real example...

It's all about micropayments. If a ton of people want some feature, they won't mind chipping in a few bucks here and there. $10,000 for a feature is a pretty nice chunk to earn. These things are possible, the infrastructure just has to be built.

This article and the $$ of microbraniz PI**** me OFF! So i am willing to put my money where my mouth is in the defence of FREEDOM! http://www.pledgebank.com/MicrosoftVsLINUX What about you? SPREAD THE WORD!

http://www.pledgebank.com/olpchackers is a much more reasonable pledge, only asking 10 local hackers to but a laptop(and, from what I understand, provide 2 to needy kids somewhere with the extra 200$... I think...) in order to start a local olpc hacking group in your comunity, I'm more than willing to pay 300$ for a laptop that is provided, as a charity, for 100$, just so I have one, this is not a replacement for your laptop, its a new toy to hack. The 100$ price is not its retail price, its the cost this CHARITY can provide them for to kids in developing countries, asking to buy it for 100$ is like asking to buy your car at production cost, stop being alll ignant n'tshit bout dis. Only reason I didnt sign the other is that I didnt know it existed. 100,000 users is a bit much, but 10 power users abusing one of these in each city should help OLPC find at least one or two bugs to patch. Sign up for this one folks, I want one of those cool new green toys.

I'm part of the team that runs PledgeBank. You might be interested in this experimental Pledge I just put up for people who still want to be involved with OLPC, but on a more realistic and local level. http://www.pledgebank.com/olpchackers The Pledge is unique because it uses a new feature that isn't in general circulation on PledgeBank yet, cascading Pledges. These are global pledges which you sign up to locally, making a mini version of each pledge with a group of other people who live near you. Take a look, even if you don't sign up, and please give us feedback. This is very much an alpha feature, although the pledge is real.

Found this pledge/petition agains Earthlink's SiteFinder: http://www.pledgebank.com/earthlinksucks
If enough people sign it, Earthlink might change its tune.

http://www.pledgebank.com/100laptop, and you're right, that movement was external to the project.

Why can't I pay $200 for one and have $100 of that go towards subsidizing a laptop for some other kid?

You can't pay $200... but you can pay $300, AFAIK.

If you are seriously interested in this, it's well worth signing this pledge [pledgebank.com].

So... when can I order it for myself? I'd love to have such a nice little laptop.

There's a third-party pledge page to get one laptop for $300 which funds giving two more to needy people.

That's not official, it's just a pledge. I didn't hear anything about it turning official, but there may have been newer developments?

you can pledge to buy one here...

http://www.pledgebank.com/100laptop

Well, maybe you can own one, but your only chance of getting one in the US is probably to sign the pledge to convince everyone it's a viable solution.

The BBC has a cool website that encourages action that sounds a little like this the action network that used to be called iCan. I also like they work for you, a great resource for holding your MP to account. Pledgebank gets to the root of empowerment - getting people to amplify their efforts by working together.

I have to say though, just from the Mission Statement, this "Wikia" really doesn't sound like anything new at all. Diverse people have been talking about politics on the internet since before there was an internet! Of course, just because it's not anything new, doesn't mean it might not be useful or be the first to make a big impact. Still any resource that helps hold politicians to account and encourages participation is important in modern democracies. Good luck to him I say, even if I am a little cynical about the ideas value.

Hm, buy one for three times the price and give away two... What a great idea! Go here and promise to do just that.

Here's the page where you can pledge to buy one for triple the price, donating the other two.

In addition, there was a large rally at the NH State Capitol; here is that video.

Unfortunately, our State Senate pulled some extremely underhanded parlimentary tricks to kill HB1582; all the gory details (and sound bites from the Senate) are here. The good news is, we here in the "Live Free or Die" still actively resisting this intrusion into our privacy!

• One of our Senators (John Sununu) has come out publicly against Real-ID
• We are still actively working to reject the funding to implement Real-ID; see this forum
• If worst comes to worst, people are pledging not to comply with Real-ID should it comes into effect

From an earlier post: http://www.pledgebank.com/100laptop

It's hard to be certain because you can't zoom in, but this may be the coolest example of the /. effect ever.

Like us? (whilst not even daring to suggest that we - yet - face the same anything like the dangers the French Resistance or Anti-Apartheid campaigners faced during their respective struggles).

This isn't exactly related to the Canadian DRM issue, but please sign my pledgebank.com pledge against the PERFORM Act. This is a pledge for Californians who oppose the act, I plan to make Senator Feinstein's office aware of the pledge after we hit 500 signatories.

The link: http://www.pledgebank.com/No-to-DiFi-DRM

A few people felt the same way, and would pay $300 for it

I don't think we're going to see all that impressive games for linux anyway, they don't follow the usual open source rules, as has already been discussed to death. They will be small, they won't have really complex physics or enviroment calculations, or sophisticated AI anyway. So they might as well be written in Perl.

(They can still be fun, though. Two amusing games, mortal szombat and frozen bubble, were written in perl as I recall. But they are both clones of old games on other platforms)

There is a way high-quality open source games could be produced, though, that I intend to promote. The group auctions at http://fundable.org/ can at least be used to ransom games already developed, and that site shows promise. Perhaps it will be extended in such a way as to provide reliable up-front funding of FOSS games as well.

I'm trying out a promotion campaign through http://www.pledgebank.com/promotefundable (you can tell I like these sort of schemes, can't you? :-)

The scary thing about this is not the card itself, it is the database that will be set up.

The bill calls for an Identity Register that will contain not only all of the information that is provided at signup, along with biometric identifiers such as fingerprints and iris scans, but also a record of every access of that information. Think about this - the database will know that your identity was checked by the doctor, the hospital, leaving the country, maybe even your bank or your employer. A corrupt official with access to this information could build up one hell of a profile about you. Got nothing to hide? Are you sure? This database could unocover whatever it is that you don't think you have to hide.

Before this bill there were specific laws that prevented government departments from sharing information in their databases because of potential abuse of it by government or otherwise. The Identity Cards bill demolishes those laws and establishes a database containing all of the information that was previously scattered around and impossible to link, and it shares that database with every government department there is.

A few months ago I pledged that I would not sign up for an ID card and that I would give money to fight it in court. Given that Passports renewed after 2008 will be accompanied by an ID card, the question I now have to answer is whether I should renew my passport 5 years early to avoid registration, or if I should become one of the first cases to fight in court as far as I can.

Here's a list of sites that sell DRM-free music by independent artists:

UseFree.org/drm

Songbird works with most if not all of these sites, and thus makes it easier than ever to break our dependency on RIAA's music and the cancerous DRM technology that it is pushing.

A CRITICAL piece of this is whether they will also roll out free wifi access to the internet. Without that I'll go ahead and predict dismal failure right now. The only way this could become a world changing phenomenon if if they also come with free internet access.

It's been tried: http://www.pledgebank.com/boycottsony but looks like no one signed up :(

seriously, when's the last time you and your virtual friends got together and said "Hey, let's go wiki a road! The one to my house is inefficient, and I have a plan. By a magical confluence of pornography and EverQuest, we can more efficiently collect taxes and move hundreds of tons of pavement and dirt!"

Not quite.

I personally suspect that if the Internet replaces aspects of government, it'll be by facilitating assurance contracts between individuals. Sites like fundable.org and PledgeBank are some early implementations, allowing people to more effectively pool resources in pursuit of a common goal.

Couple good internet-based implementations of assurance contract brokerages with prediction markets and/or decision markets, and I suspect the results should be pretty formidable. Such a system would likely be able to accomplish much of what is currently delegated to government.

The Open Rights Group have been writing on this for a while.
Do join them in fighting this and other legislation that limits our digital freedoms.

The ORG are having a public meeting in London next week, so RSVP if you can make it.
The pledge drive is getting close to completion, so if you want to be one of the thousand founding donors, you need to hurry as there are 39 places left.

Check out the pledge to buy one. Although it's looking like the MIT lab won't have any problems getting enough orders to start production, it would be nice to see us comparatively rich /.'ers subsidize these- and maybe develop apps to run on them.

If you have not done so already, get in contact with your local branch of No2ID. Sign the I refuse pledge (or at least the I support pledge). Lobby your MP and your councillors: many councils across the UK are passing resolutions to forbid government services from requiring their users to have ID cards.

If you have not done so already, get in contact with your local branch of No2ID. Sign the I refuse pledge (or at least the I support pledge). Lobby your MP and your councillors: many councils across the UK are passing resolutions to forbid government services from requiring their users to have ID cards.

make the pledge official then:
http://www.pledgebank.com/BoycottSony

Stand up and be counted!

http://www.pledgebank.com/BoycottSony

I have have posted a "pledge" http://www.pledgebank.com/100laptop that would allow others to express their interest in supporting the project by purchasing one of the Laptops for ~$300 and letting the extra profits be used to subsidize the ones for developing companies.

If you think that this might be interesting, I suggest that you sign the pledge and also "forward" the link to others who might be interested also so that the media labs can gage the number of people who might support the project.

To repeat, the link to the fuller article on the $100 laptop is:

. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003707.html

and to the pledge site is:

. http://www.pledgebank.com/100laptop

I have have posted a "pledge" http://www.pledgebank.com/100laptop that would allow others to express their interest in supporting the project by purchasing one of the Laptops for ~$300 and letting the extra profits be used to subsidize the ones for developing companies.

If you think that this might be interesting, I suggest that you sign the pledge and also "forward" the link to others who might be interested also so that the media labs can gage the number of people who might support the project.

To repeat, the link to the fuller article on the $100 laptop is:

. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003707.html

and to the pledge site is:

. http://www.pledgebank.com/100laptop

For anyone who wants to get his/her hands on one of these little lappies (assuming they are produced), Mike Liveright has started a pledge bank where you can promise to buy one for $300, and the extra $$ helps to support the project. A pledge bank works by getting people to commit to a challenge as long as a certain number of people also do the same. In this case, you commit to buying a $100 laptop for $300 if 100,000 people do the same. http://www.pledgebank.com/100laptop