Off you go... into the purple yonder! » Open Standards

NPR on ogg vorbis

ward — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 22:17:03 +0000

WBUR, one of the two NPR stations in Boston now streams in unencumbered and patent-free Ogg Vorbis!

Check out the WBUR listen page. Here’s the direct link to the m3u. Also see the FSF press release about this.

openid

ward — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 23:48:19 +0000

Thanks to the WP-OpenID plugin, this blog now supports OpenID. Woohoo!

javascript performance

ward — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 19:32:23 +0000

Jeff Atwood has a great analysis of javascript performance in the four main browsers. He used the new Sunspider benchmark that the webkit.org folks released recently.

I’m curious how Firefox 3 compares – Firefox 2′s numbers are only so-so.

more GPL’d chip designs from Sun

ward — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 23:37:03 +0000

After the T1, Sun has now also pledged to release the core design files and test suites for the UltraSPARC T2 chip under the GPL. Way to go Sun! The T2 specs are quite impressive – 8 cores with 8 threads each; dual 10Gb embedded NICs; PCI-E embedded; etc – and a power consumption of less than 95 watts!

I’d love to give Debian or Ubuntu’s UltraSPARC releases a go on one of these…

google and spectrum auctions

ward — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 15:22:22 +0000

Google is putting it’s money where it’s mouth is: it has pledged to bid $4.6 billion for the upcoming 700MHz spectrum auction if the FCC sets rules that require this spectrum to be used in a non-proprietary way: open applications, open devices, open services, and open networks.

Let’s hope the FCC will listen. We desperately need more competition in the US broadband market.

petition: the council of the european union – lack of open standards

ward — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 21:15:54 +0000

The Council of the European Union streams some of its meetings and press conferences online. Unfortunately, that streaming is done in Windows Media format. They barely support browsers other than IE, and then only on Windows and Mac OS X. If you don’t use IE on Windows, you get degraded functionality, and GNU/Linux is not supported because the people who run this service claim:

We cannot support Linux in a legal way.

Yeah, right. What a load of nonsense. I think they mean they don’t want to. There is a way for the Council to save a lot of money (licensing WMV for streaming is not cheap), and to be able to support any browser and any operating system for its viewers: switch to open standards. Ogg Theora for video and Ogg Vorbis for audio would do very nicely. If the 23rd Chaos Communication Conference can do it, I’m sure the Council could too.

There’s a petition doing the rounds to ask the Council to do the right thing. Please sign it!

bad start for Deval Patrick

ward — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 20:44:18 +0000

I was pretty excited that Deval Patrick won the elections here in MA. It was high time to get rid of our current narrow-minded governor.

However, Mr. Patrick has made his first bad decision. He’s basically put a wolf in charge of guarding the sheep. The sheep, in this case, is MA’s progression towards the Open Document Format (ODF). Adopting this format will break Microsofts near-monopoly on office software by levelling the playing field for competing products. This will drive prices down and software quality and innovation up. This can only be good for the people and the state.

So what did Mr. Patrick do? He appointed Brian Burke to the technology transition team. Mr Burke is a Microsoft lobbyist who has been fighting tooth and nail against ODF because it will hurt Microsoft’s near-monopoly on office software. The technology transition team is going to advise the state in matters to do with technology. Including, of course, the transition to ODF.

Sound fishy to you? It sure does to me. Can you say ‘conflict of interest’? Right. I suggest you let Mr. Patrick know at his Patrick-Murray transition website, like I did. Thanks!

Belgium jumps on the ODF bandwagon

ward — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 16:23:07 +0000

The Belgian federal government is switching to the ODF format for its office documents by September 2008. Here’s the press release (in Dutch and French only). Here’s an article in English describing the move, and here’s the Belgian government interoperability framework website with some related information.

I think we’re going to see an ODF plugin for MS Office real soon now.

Sony…

ward — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 17:35:37 +0000

A lot has been written about Sony’s delayed PS3. This article gives a good overview of one of the main reasons that I don’t buy Sony: they refuse to follow standards regarding storage media.

time to fight back

ward — Tue, 23 May 2006 17:02:10 +0000

I’ve had it. I’m sick of region encoding on DVDs and video games. I’m sick of crippled (‘copy-protected’) audio CDs. I’m sick of DRM’d music. I’m sick of the fact that I can’t legally use the DVDs I purchased on the computer I purchased because it runs GNU/Linux. I’m sick of the fact that I can’t exercise my fair-use rights with DVDs, copy-protected audio CDs and digital music I purchase online. I’m sick of the fact that the perfectly good DVI video interface is being replaced with HDMI, which is nothing but a DRM’d version of DVI – not compatible of course.

I’ve been boycotting for quite a while. I refuse to buy DVDs. I refuse to buy DRM’d music. I refuse to buy new audio CDs – just bought five second hand the other day…

But it’s time to fight back more actively. I’ve joined the Action Alert Network at Defective By Design. If you value your freedom please join us!