http://blog.internetnews.com/…

As my colleague Michelle Menga is reporting, Amazon is now making new source code available for its Amazon Kindle. Basically what it represents is, Amazon’s responsibility to make the GPL licenced source code that is used in the Kindle available to others.

That’s part of the GPL license and Amazon is doing its part.

Digging into the code that Amazon is now making available, provides some really interesting insight into the underlying structure of the Kindle.

For one, Kindle (at least the DX) is using a modified Linux 2.6.22 kernel. This is a kernel that originally was released by Linus Torvalds in 2007. Is it a surprise that the Kindle is Linux powered? (not really).

Where there is LInux there are always some key Linux tools. In the Kindle’s case that’s the GCC 4.1.2 release for code compilation. In GCC terms that’s now an older release (originally out in 2006), so I would hope that Amazon moves to the newer GCC 4.4 over time as it could yield some performance gains for them.

Amazon is also using BusyBox (how can you not if you’re running embedded?), so it’s a good thing they’ve released that code – BusyBox has been active in recent years by way of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) in making sure that vendors that use their code actually comply with the GPL.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that those that back the GPL are entirely thrilled with Amazon. In fact the Free Software Foundation (FSF), actually refers to the Kindle (somewhat less than politely) as the ‘Swindle’.

“It’s good that Amazon is complying with the licenses and not behaving illegally, but this is hardly something praiseworthy,” John Sullivan operations manager at the FSF blogged. “Amazon benefited from the freedoms passed on to them by other free software authors, and that benefit comes with an obligation to convey that same freedom to their users — to share alike.”

This isn’t about all supporters of FOSS but the many who are anti DRM.

For those of you… you are inconsistent. DRM is based on copyright laws. Intellectual property is both the justification for government enforced DRM (like the DMCA) and free and open source licenses. If you can use the government to force Amazon to abide by the usage rules set by authors of the Kindle’s software then Amazon can use the government to force you to obey the rules regarding the hardware and media they provide you.

People like Richard Stallman don’t understand freedom in a consistent way. They want the ability to do what they like with the physical and digital things in their possession but use the threat of violence to make others unable to do the same. Intellectual property is not actual property and can not be owned. It is inalienable. Nontransferable. Scarcity only applies to it’s ability to be transferred and not itself. To threat or actually aggress against someone in order to keep a monopoly on an idea is just as illegitimate and ridiculous as waging a war on a tactic.

Trying to have it both ways is intellectually dishonest and antithesis to the rule of law or a free society. If you use the guns of government to create this artificial monopoly power you will forever be fighting for control over it.

• Against Intelectual Property – Stephan Kinsella

Part 2, Part 3

It’s funny to listen to a guy who doesn’t understand computer and software technology (Alex Jones) talk to a guy who doesn’t understand or doesn’t agree with free market libertarianism (Richard Stallman).

Copyleft relies on government monopoly privilage known as copyright and intelectual property. That’s not freedom… nor is the GPL. Closed source software isn’t anti-freedom, IP and DMCA are.

http://arstechnica.com/...

Although the Obama administration is indicating that it will be more aggressive about enforcing antitrust regulations, the European Union has been pursuing high-profile cases for years, having levied a large fine against Microsoft back in 2004, and hitting the software giant again last year. The latest target of the EU’s Competition group is the chipmaker Intel and, this morning, the EU announced that it too would face a hefty fine: slightly over €1 billion, which comes in just shy of $1.5 billion. Intel is already promising to appeal but, in the meantime, it’s going to have to drop over half a year of its current profits into a bank account in case its appeal fails.

The full decision, which is over 500 pages long, hasn’t yet been released to the public, but a summary of the EU’s case is available. It focuses primarily on the company’s pricing practices during the years 2002-2005, when Intel was facing growing competition from AMD in the desktop and server space. The EU authorities also cite an instance of similar practices in the notebook space in 2007, a time when that market was rising in prominence.
Read More…

http://www.ft.com/…

The Federal Reserve has been hobbled by at least two major shortcomings that were primarily responsible for the current and several previous credit crises. Its failure to spot the importance of changing financial markets and its commitment to laisser faire economics were big mistakes and justify a fundamental overhaul of the Fed.

Bill Bonner puts it well over at FleetStreetInvest.co.uk:

How about that? America’s largest car company is going to be state-owned… nationalized… presided over by the federal bureaucrats.

It’s just a part of the shift away from the free market and towards an un-free market. Free market capitalism has failed, say the pundits. Let’s give the feds a chance.

Even Henry Kaufman, writing in today’s Financial Times, says that the Fed’s “libertarian dogma” prevented it from controlling the banks properly.

But the Fed is hardly a libertarian organization. It’s a banking cartel. As a cartel, it looks out for its member banks – and doesn’t hesitate to use state power to do so. There is nothing libertarian about it… and no dogma associated with it – except as Greenspan’s eyewash – that is even vaguely libertarian.

The Fed colluded with member banks to fix interest rates. In so doing, it helped create the biggest bubble in credit the world had ever seen. It was a terrible thing for the average fellow – who was lured deep into debt by rising house prices and cheap credit. But it was a great thing for the members of the Federal Reserve cartel. Profits in the financial sector – notably, the big Wall Street investment banks – soared.

But bankers are vulnerable to too much of a good thing – just like everyone else. Soon, they made the classic Wall Street mistake – they came to believe their own hype. Not only did they gin up trillions of dollars’ worth of preposterous financial instruments… they actually bought these debt bombs from each other.

This posed a grave danger to the nation’s economy… and to the banking system. Henry Kaufman claims the regulators dropped the ball because they put too much faith in the free market. But the regulators were little more than front men for the banks themselves. After Alan Greenspan came Henry Paulson as head of the Fed. He was probably still replying to messages at his old address when the crisis began. And the head of the New York Fed – now, US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner – was elected to his post by the very institutions he was supposed to be overseeing.

Neither of them was about to stop the party; they and their friends were having too much fun.

I agree it was inconsistency which helped lead to this. You can’t supercharge an industry and remove the governors (regulations) and not expect shit to hit the fan eventually.

Let’s be consistent. Remove the supercharger. Remove the governors. Stop tweaking with a system you can’t possibly control and leave it be. Get rid of the Federal Reserve and it’s monoply on interest rates and money and credit creation. Remove it’s monopoly on legal tender. Treat fractional reserve banking as the fraud it is (in its current form anyway). Allow the bubble created “too big to fail” failures to fail and go into bankruptcy. Oh and stop handing out our grandchildren’s future tax dollars on failed institutions.

Speaking of which… yesterday Obama said that the government should spend as much on R&D as on the military. On Slashdot someone asked why when we are already in debt would we be spending money on something that would help us but costs would be placed on our children. A response was that it would more likely help them because the advancements would come out later.

My question is… what moral authority does this guy have spending future generations money (which will be forcefully taken from them) regardless of who it will directly effect? Is that not taxation without representation? They have had no say in the matter. Why not let the bureaucrat tyrants of their own time decide how best to steal from them?

http://arstechnica.com/…

The Pirate Bay “spectrial” has ended in a guilty verdict, prison sentences for the defendants, and a shared 30 million kronor ($3.5 million) fine. According to the Swedish district court, the operators of the site were guilty of assisting copyright infringement even though The Pirate Bay hosted none of the files in question and even though other search engines like Google also provide direct access to illegal .torrent files.

These two points formed the basis of The Pirate Bay’s defense, but the court found them ultimately unpersuasive in its 107 page verdict. “By providing a site with, as the district court found, sophisticated search functions, easy upload and storage, and a website linked to the tracker,” the defendants were guilty of assistant copyright infringement, the court said.

In an Internet press conference this morning, defendant Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi compared the whole trial to (of all things) The Karate Kid, a movie in which the good guy is roughed up by bullies, goes through a long training process, learns to “wax on, wax off,” encounters his bully again in the final round of a karate tournament, and kicks him in the face with his “crane technique.” Kolmisoppi sees parallels. In the end, he insists, “we’ll kick their ass.”

Read More…

http://www.foliomag.com/…

John Potter, the head of the U.S. Postal Service, went before Congress today to deliver a 6,577-word statement on the state of the USPS, and, of course, to ask for help.

“The Postal Service, which has served America for 234 years, is experiencing a very serious financial crisis because of the downturn in the economy,” Potter told a Congressional subcommittee on Capitol Hill. “We are facing losses of historic proportions … Our situation is critical.”

Mail volume in 2009, he said, is down 12 percent, and the gap between revenue and costs “has become a chasm, widening each day.”

Potter also asked Congress to change the law to allow the USPS to change its delivery schedule to five days per week from its current six.

“Current law does not permit us to adapt our service offerings to a changing business environment,” he said.  The Postal Service, which does not receive taxpayer subsidies, “is required to operate like a business, but the law constrains us from taking the businesslike actions necessary to fully and properly align our institutional cost base with reduced and evolving customer demand. Having the flexibility to change delivery frequency will overcome one of our structural barriers.”

Assuming USPS achieves a planned $5.9 billion in savings, Potter said he still projects a loss of $6 billion in 2010.

This follows last year’s loss of $2.8 billion and a $5.1 billion loss in 2007, he said.

Give them $10b+, make them actually private, make them pay income and property taxes like everyone else and lets see how they compete.