Author: Serkadis

This post is part of the IT Innovation series, sponsored by Sun & Intel. Read more at ITInnovation.com.
Of course, the content of this post consists entirely of the thoughts and opinions of the author.

Three years ago, after one of Microsoft’s regular bursts of FUD claiming that Linux violated all sorts of Microsoft patents, then CEO of Sun, Jonathan Schwartz, wrote up a brilliant post knocking Microsoft down a peg by repeating a line we’ve said many times here ourselves: real innovative companies innovate, not litigate. Now, following Apple’s patent offensive against HTC, and unencumbered of corporate responsibilities, Schwartz is sharing a bit more detail on his views over patents (found via Mathew Ingram).

Schwartz tells the story of Steve Jobs calling him and threatening Sun with a patent infringement lawsuit, to which Schwartz quickly warned Jobs that going down that path would lead to a patent nuclear war, as he pointed out how recent Apple products likely infringed on Sun patents. He then tells another story about a visit from Bill Gates, with a similar threat over patents — and a similar response, pointing out that Microsoft clearly copied certain Sun technology. In both cases, the counterweight made the threats go away. This is the whole “nuclear stockpiling” scenario — and, as such, it creates a ton of waste. You have to keep building up those stockpiles just to make sure the other side is too scared to sue you.

But the key point is made after this, where Schwartz again makes a statement quite similar to ones we’ve made when a big tech company suddenly goes on the patent offensive. It’s a canary-in-the-coalmine sign that something is wrong:

For a technology company, going on offense with software patents seems like an act of desperation, relying on the courts instead of the marketplace.

He also highlights how these lawsuits can backfire in a big, big way:

Having watched this movie play out many times, suing a competitor typically makes them more relevant, not less. Developers I know aren’t getting less interested in Google’s Android platform, they’re getting more interested — Apple’s actions are enhancing that interest.

Indeed. It’s a point that still seems missed by so many when discussing these patent lawsuits.

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Article Tags: Headline Story, IPCC Review, Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

InterAcademy Council Asked to Review Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — The InterAcademy Council (IAC), a multinational organization of the world’s science academies, has been requested to conduct an independent review of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) processes and procedures. The study comes at the invitation of the United Nations secretary-general and the chair of the IPCC, and will help guide the processes and procedures of the IPCC’s fifth report and future assessments of climate science.

The IAC has been asked to establish an ad hoc Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) of experts from relevant fields to conduct the review and to present recommendations on possible revisions of IPCC practices and procedures. In addition, the IEG is asked to recommend measures and actions to strengthen the IPCC’s capacity to respond to future challenges and ensure the ongoing quality of its reports.

Founded in 2000, the IAC was created to mobilize top scientists and engineers around the world to provide evidence-based advice to international bodies such as the United Nations and World Bank — including preparing expert, peer-reviewed studies upon request. The IAC Board is composed of the presidents of 15 academies of science and equivalent organizations — representing Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States, plus the African Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS) — and representatives of the InterAcademy Panel (IAP) of scientific academies, the International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences (CAETS), and the InterAcademy Medical Panel (IAMP) of medical academies. The IAC Secretariat is hosted by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in Amsterdam. The IAC Board has final approval authority over conducting and publishing IAC studies.

Source: interacademycouncil.net

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The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced on Monday key amendments to the regulation of United States sanctions against Cuba, Iran and Sudan.

The new provisions give a blanket license for the export of “certain services and software incident to the exchange of personal communications over the Internet, such as instant messaging, chat and email, social networking, sharing of photos and movies, web browsing, and blogging, provided that such services are publicly available at no cost to the user.”

This clarification is just what EFF called for last June, and will go a long way to allay concerns that online service providers based in the U.S. cannot offer their services in those countries. Previously, despite the well-known freedom-enhancing capabilities of services like Twitter and Facebook in repressive regimes like Iran, it was unclear whether those companies could even offer their services there without falling foul of the United State’s broad prohibition on the export of goods and services to these regimes.

This was not a hypothetical concern: other services that were useful for dissidents to communicate and organize, like Microsoft, and Google’s instant messaging clients had previously been blocked from being used in these very countries — not by the repressive states, but by companies themselves, cautious of violating sanctions.

While the change in the letter of the law is clearly positive, perhaps just as important is the signal this sends about the administration’s new guiding policy on global Internet freedom.

Previously, cautious companies, afraid of running afoul of OFAC, have frequently forbidden or blocked all use in sanctioned countries, even when the letter of the law did not require such draconian steps. You can see this institutionally paranoid language, and its inevitable results, in Bluehost’s terms of service, which pre-emptively prohibits all citizens of sanctioned countries from even applying to use their hosting facilities (a policy which lead them to shamefully throwing innocent Zimbabwean activists off their service last year).

Now we are moving (slowly) to a new, and better default, where technologists and their lawyers might assume that free Internet services that facilitate free expression and association need not be blocked pre-emptively for anyone, anywhere.

The Obama administration has shown with these changes that it would prefer to move toward that end. Have we got there yet? Is it what export law now says?

While we wait for export regulation experts to sweat the details, the answer is still far too hazy for comfort.  While the State and Treasury departments have fixed much that was wrong with Iranian, Cuban and Sudanese sanctions, there are still regulations on, for instance, Zimbabwe, Syria and North Korea for techies and their lawyers to worry about, and those sanctions still inhibit making software generally available. We also would like to see more clarity about collaborative software development locations, like Sourceforge.

We hope that this administration backs up these first steps with a continuing review of export rules, and pro-actively works to reassure Internet companies that they are free to build an open Internet for everyone, without expecting a knock on the door from their own government.

While Toyota’s recent issues might at first seem to be a reason for Ford, GM, and Chrysler to pop the champagne, there are those in Detroit who are privately in fury over what is perceived as calculated and misleading attempts by Toyota’s PR people at trashing the quality of records of the American manufacturers in order to deflect attention away from their own shortcomings.

Detroit’s automakers may be a bot hesitant however to start publicly bashing Toyota being that they lack credibility in Washington, and because it may seem like petty child’s play at this point. Behind the scenes however, many industry people are accusing Toyota of what is called lobbyist malpractice; as ToMoCo execs were getting ready to testify before Congress, company lobbyists sent out a set of charts titled Automotive Recalls in Perspective to the offices of many key congressional committee members, with one in particular showing Ford, GM, and Chrysler to be the overwhelming leaders in U.S. safety recalls during the past decade.

The reason these charts are so heavily criticized despite their information being correct, is that the information presented was totally irrelevant to the situation at hand. The hearings were called in order to investigate the expedience with which Toyota responded to knowing about the safety issues, not to compare issued recalls among automakers.

– By: Stephen Calogera

Source: Free Press

Filed under: SUV, Renault

By and large, the Geneva Motor Show isn’t like U.S. auto shows in that grandiose press conferences just don’t exist like they do here. Or, at least, like they used to here. Most vehicles just show up on the show floor and we snap photos at a fevered pace in an effort to get those pics to you as quickly as possible. The upside for us is that we can rip through posts at a fevered pitch for your enjoyment. The downside is that every once in a while we miss something, and this year we forgot to cover the Dacia Duster, though we did tell you about it in advance. Still, our bad.

Renault’s Romanian-bred SUV is built to be affordable, attractive and capable, with a 30 degree approach and a 36 degree departure for relatively some serious off-roading. The Duster even comes diesel-ready, with a 105 horsepower, 266 pound-feet of torque powerplant that we’d love to try for ourselves. And if an earlier report from The Wall Street Journal is correct, Renault is even pondering bringing the Duster to U.S. shores.

Until that happens, we have to make do with a couple of videos showing off just how capable the Duster is. The first spot shows us how the Dacia handles off-road chores and the second seeks to illustrate that it isn’t a dud on dry pavement, either. Hit the jump to watch the two videos for yourself.

[Source: Dacia via YouTube]

Continue reading Videos: Dacia Duster looks good in motion

Videos: Dacia Duster looks good in motion originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Here’s the AP report:

The Senate has passed legislation to give months of continued jobless checks to people who have been out of work for more than half a year and help the unemployed pay for health insurance.

The 62-36 vote Wednesday sends the measure into talks with the House, which passed companion legislation last year but is wary about some Senate provisions included to defray its impact on the deficit.

The bill also extends a variety of tax breaks for businesses and individuals that are popular with senators in both parties.

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See Also:

• Unemployment Insurance Initial Weekly Claims: Week Ending February 27, 2010
• There Are 37 States On The Brink Of Unemployment Solvency
• Unemployment Insurance Continuous Weekly Claims: Week Ending February 20, 2010

Metals are having a rough day.

Gold is down $13.50 or 1.2% to $1108.80 an ounce as it approaches the all-important $1100/ounce mark.

Silver is doing worse, down $0.23 or 1.3% to $17.11 an ounce.

Futures for every metal are down, too. Gold and silver are down 1.2% and 1.3%, respectively while copper and palladium are down around 1% each.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Goldman Sachs And JP Morgan Storage Investments Signal A Commodities Slump
• Rick Bookstaber: Hedge Funds Are Pumping The Gold Bubble And Luring Investors Off A Cliff
• Is Eric Sprott In The Market Trying To Buy 10 Tonnes Of Gold?

37signals is going to be at SXSW in full force. We’re showing up eight strong. Jason will be doing a reading from REWORK and a book signing on Saturday at 10AM on the Day Stage. Yours truly will be talking about Why You Aren’t Done Yet on Sunday at 11AM in Ballroom A with a book signing following that.

We hope to meet a ton of customers, readers, and anyone else who wants to chat at SXSW. If you see anyone at the conference with a 37signals badge, please walk up and say hi. And please do bring your copy of REWORK if you want it signed too.

Looking forward to seeing ya’all in Austin.

According to the most recent fund flow data from The Investment Company Institute (ICI), U.S. mutual fund investors came back to U.S. stocks in late February as the Eurozone was rocked with uncertainty.

While fund flows were only mildly positive in mid-January and most recently late February, as shown below, keep in mind that a massive $39 billion flowed out of U.S. stocks in 2009 according to ICI (not shown). That’s why the green tip-toes below are significant.

The average U.S. investor still remains highly skeptical of U.S. stocks, given the huge 2009 outflows that have yet to return… but… Europe’s travails or the prospect of a sustained U.S. recovery may have rekindled some faith in domestic equities, given that this is the second time in recent weeks that money has flowed into U.S. stocks.

This could be the beginning of a period where we see a portion of 2009’s outflows come back to U.S. stocks:

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See Also:

• Lessons To Learn From The Incredible 12-Month Rally
• Barton Biggs: Here’s Why Global Large-Cap Stocks Are The Cheapest They’ve Been In 30 Years
• Perma-Bear Bob Janjuah Makes A Bullish Call

Filed under: Aftermarket, Sedan, Performance, Japan, Marketing/Advertising, Hatchback, Mitsubishi

In a letter issued to its customers, Ralliart, a Japanese high-performance subsidiary of Mitsubishi, has announced that it is closing its doors. The company’s business case has apparently faded, a victim of the wilting domestic aftermarket scene as well as its lack of continued motorsports involvement.

Naturally, we wondered if and how the closure of the company responsible for its high-performance parts and related merchandise would impact the development, production and marketing of Mitsubishi vehicles sold here in the States – more specifically, the Lancer Ralliart and Sportback Ralliart models. To answer that question, we spoke with Mitsu spokesman Maurice Durand, and he informs us that the closure of Ralliart will not, in fact, have any affect on the availability or continued marketing of these models (or any future branded offerings), as Mitsubishi owns the rights to the name, logo, and so on. Furthermore, all licensing agreements in foreign countries remain intact.

So, while you may not be able to get a genuine JDM Ralliart strut-tower brace or shift knob, you can breath easy that the SportBack that you’ve been saving your lunch money for will still be at your local dealer by the time you’ve got enough scratch. Official press release after the jump.

Continue reading Ralliart announces it is closing its doors… so what does that mean for Mitsubishi?

Ralliart announces it is closing its doors… so what does that mean for Mitsubishi? originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s been barely half a year since Sony released the lightweight PS3 Slim, but according to a Japanese retailer an even lighter version of the console is on the way.

Miami was one of the ground zeroes of the US property bubble, and it seems that the Miami of China — Haikou — is experiencing the same.

As you can see here, it’s got a nice southern orientation and tropical climate.

So it’s no wonder that home prices — in this chart from Waverly Advisors — there are going parabolic even by China standards.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• China’s Car Sales Growth Is Absolutely Massive
• China’s Housing Bubble Is Inflating Faster Than Ever
• It Begins: China Cracks Down On The Shadow Banking System That Is Inflating Its Real Estate Bubble

While I don’t believe that the new Hadopi “three strikes” law in France has started being enforced yet (due to data privacy questions), it technically went into effect at the beginning of the year, and was widely promoted around France. Of course, our big question was why anyone thought that such laws would actually make anyone buy. The general reasoning that supporters of such laws gave is that it would decrease unauthorized file trading, and those people would magically want to start buying again. But, of course, as mentioned at the time, we already have empirical data that this wouldn’t work. After all, here in the US, thousands of people were threatened with millions of dollars in fines for file sharing — a punishment significantly more stringent than losing your internet connection. And, rather than decrease the amount of unauthorized file trading, it only increased (quite a bit), often moving to more underground resources.

So it should come as little (i.e., no) surprise that in the few months since the Hadopi law has technically been in effect in France, reports have found an increase in unauthorized file trading, along with a notable shift from BitTorrent to other, less trackable, solutions.

So what’s next? Suing doesn’t work. Kicking people off the internet doesn’t work. Can we hope that maybe next on the list is actually putting in place a good business model?

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We’re now un-officially 8 days away from the Obamacare drop dead date.

We know The President wants to have the whole healthcare debate wrapped up by the 18th (though there’s some talk, obviously, that Congress isn’t quite so beholden to that schedule).

Yesterday the talk was about the surging odds on InTrade that healthcare reform would pass, and it lead to a flurry of speculation that perhaps DC insiders were manipulating the market.

Today the contract is back down, on no particular news.

It certainly then seems plausible that the anti-healthcare reform folks are pulling out their bucks and trying to punch the contract back down.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Are Washington DC Insiders Manipulating InTrade To Manufacture Momentum For Healthcare Reform?
• Here’s Why You Should Take The Intrade Healthcare Betting Very Seriously
• The White House’s Blog Post On Healthcare Treats The American People As Idiots

Article Tags: Doug L. Hoffman

Click source to read FULL report by Doug L. Hoffman

Source: theresilientearth.com

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According to an analysis by Maritz Research, an automotive market research company, Cash for Clunkers was far more successful than previously estimated. Government records indicate a total of 677,000 vehicles moved under the program, and Maritz says that 542,000 of those sales were to consumers who would not have purchased but not for the program. They also say that an additional 223,000 individuals who were lured into showrooms as a result of the program and learned that they did not qualify, purchased anyway.

Maritz stands behind their analysis and says that it offers empirical evidence that CARS did not stifle future sales as had been widely claimed but instead, stimulated the sales of vehicles to those who would not have bought otherwise.

Edmunds.com, who had published a major study put the number of sales that would not have been made but for the program as low as 125,000. The difference between the two studies is that while Edmunds.com based their study on an analysis of sales figures, Maritz based theirs on a survey of 36,000 car buyers.

– By: Stephen Calogera

Source: CNNMoney

Filed under: Spy Photos, Sedan, Dodge

There’ve been no shortage of spy shots to be had showing the upcoming next-gen Dodge Charger, but to date we’ve yet to see the interior fully revealed. Our spy photogs have remedied this by finally capturing the big rear-wheel-drive sedan’s inner domicile. What’s plainly obvious is that Dodge designers have added some swoop to the Charger’s angular interior. Note the silvery dashboard piece that acts as a backdrop for the cluster gauge, driver and center air vents and the rather large navigation screen. This particular interior is two-tone with what appears to be light-colored leather seats and door inserts, with black plastic (soft touch, we’re hoping) everywhere else and some nickel-colored trim thrown in. There’s also a new three-spoke multifunction steering wheel and information display between the tach and speedo.

All in all, we see a big improvement over the current car’s aged interior, but a final verdict will have to wait until we can get our grubby paws all over it. We’ve also got some new spy shots of the exterior that don’t reveal much more than what we’ve seen before except a naked C-pillar. Have a look in the high-res gallery below.

Spy Shots: Next-gen Dodge Charger interior gets outed originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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China’s auto-industry is certainly not feeling the same hurt that other market’s auto-industries are feeling; February’s passenger car sales were 55 percent greater than a year previous. The Chinese car market has been booming, as China has overtaken the U.S. as the world’s largest. Aggressive consumer spending, and policy incentives have helped fuel the surge.

While the February figure is certainly an impressive one, let us not forget that in January, the Chinese car market saw a total of 1.32 million units sold. Industry insiders are not discouraged, however and expect a slower rate for the second half of the year. “February sales are still pretty solid given the circumstances. It’s unrealistic to expect a doubling of sales every month,” said John Zeng, an analyst with IHS Global Insight.

Beijing’s stimulus program is in large part responsible for the auto industry surge. These incentives include subsidies for consumers in rural areas, and tax incentives for the purchase of smaller vehicles. These policies have also helped American and Japanese automakers do well in the market as Ford, GM, and Toyota have also posted big gains versus last year.

– By: Stephen Calogera

Source: Automotive News (Subscription Required)

SPRINGFIELD– In one newspaper story after another, a grave issue came under the spotlight: thousands of frail seniors live in inappropriate conditions at dozens of

Illinois nursing homes – sharing living quarters with dangerous individuals, suffering abuse or neglect, and even receiving the wrong medications for their ailments.

In order to put a stop to abuses, and make sure older Illinoisans who live in institutional settings get the care and safety they need, a group of legislators and advocacy organizations convened by AARP came together today in Springfield to announce landmark legislation that will reform the way in which nursing homes operate in Illinois.