Where are we heading to?

Some interesting stuff lately:

The "Portuguese version of Google Summer of Code" is "Sapo Summerbits", with its 2009 version already going on with 10 approved projects. From those, two are quite interesting to me:

• "Erro de Sistema" (translated to "System Error") is going to be an Open Source 3D Animation Short Movie ("open content film"), made entirely with Open Source and about Open Source. The script is already published, and the team is getting more contributors. Work on the storyboard and concept art has already started. The project will use Open Source tools like Celtx, Blender, Pencil, Debian, Ubuntu, Ardour, Audacity, LMMS, Transverso DAW, Gimp, Inkscape, Cinelerra, Kdenlive and Farmerjoe. The student behind this project is João Alberto, which you might recall as being one of the two guys who made the 3D Animation Short Movie "Playground", which I've talked about here in the past since its soundtrack was made using Merankorii tracks.
• "Portucale" is going to be a Real Time Strategy Game about the History of Portuguese Conquests. It will be written in "C/C++" (maybe a mixture of the two?) and Javascript for user interaction with the game's interface. It will use NASM, SDL, Boost, zlib, libpng, libxml2, OpenGL, OpenAL, libogg, libvorbis, cryptopp, wxWidgets, gamin, BFD, enet and DevIL. I think it will be a fork of 0 A.D..

Facebook bought Friendfeed, supposedly to get its staff into their R&D. This is a huge blow to Friendfeed users, which - it's easy to see - aren't happy with the decision. The biggest question is wether (or, in fact, when) Friendfeed will just be shutted down. Facebook isn't a replacement for almost every Friendfeed user: there are the few of us that simply refuse to have a Facebook account (I'm in this group, as you already know if you're a regular reader of this blog), but for the others there's still the simple fact that they are two really distinct web apps with really distinct communities. Not only Friendfeed isn't replaceable by Facebook in terms of features - something that Facebook people might want to change - but specially the two services have different purposes. So, people are already planning "the future", their jump. From people asking for good methods to backup all their Friendfeed data (including their social graph), to people asking Facebook to just make Friendfeed's code Open Source, or people actually looking into alternatives. I've been looking into those alternatives myself, and the most convincing one for me was Identoo.com, because it lets you do almost everything that Friendfeed does (until now I only missed the "Hide" functionality), adaptation and migration is more or less quick, and it is mobile-friendly (heck, here it is better than Friendfeed: instead of using a fftogo-like mobile portal, I can use Identoo's website in the mobile without problems). I didn't considered in my tests one fact that makes Identoo even better: Identoo is nothing more than an installation of the Open Source platform NoseRub (similar to what Identi.ca is to Laconi.ca), which means that the development of NoseRub (thus Identoo) is transparent, and we can actually affect where is it heading to (even if not with code, just by making bug reports, suggestions, feature requests and such). Is it as good as Friendfeed? No, but it can turn out to be as good or even better, and it is good enough for when Friendfeed dies (if you, like me, won't believe that Facebook would open source Friendfeed's code). When I heard about FB buying FF I was worried, now I'm relaxed about it.

The WTF moment: Microsoft was told it can't sell "Microsoft Word" on the United Stated while it still has the ability to open XML, DOCX or DOCM files that have "custom XML" (and also pay a fine), thanks to a patent infringement. Ridiculous, like every other patent case... Of course, this being Microsoft, and them having the money they have, they'll appeal and try to rule the patent as invalid. And they'll do it again and again until they manage to win. The bad news is that they still don't see patents as bad (how could they, when they use their own patents to try to scare their competition?), just invalid (like every other patent against them would be, and neither of those patents owned by Microsoft are, for sure).

The RealDVD case is finally over, the making DVD copies program is now illegal in the United States. Yes, people can make copies of their DVDs, but they can't invent a way of doing that copy, nor use a tool to make that exact copy. Am I the only one seeing this as obviously stupid?

And the final rant of the day: two guys were convicted in UK of refusing to decrypt data. These are, as far as I know, the first two victims of 2007's law that gives authorities the power to force people to unscramble their data. "Privacy? Rights? Pfft, we can't have those if we want to take down the terrorists!"

Microsoft eats yet another Linux distro

Linspire was called Lindows, Microsft sued them. Now, following their moves with Novell and more recently Xandros, Microsoft made a patent deal with Linspire.

As for me, it's just yet another dead Linux distro.

Microsoft Windows Vienna

I'm not sure why, maybe it was because this will make people stop talking about how bad Windows Vista is. Microsoft filled a patent application, obviously describing what are they planning to release as the next version of Windows, formerly known as Blackcomb, now named as Windows Vienna, and scheduled to be released between 2009 and 2012.

I read it yesterday and almost choke on my dinner, and probably my humor got affected by it in the Lisbon.pm social meeting that happened after it.

What's all this fuss about it?

Imagine a world where you have a really limited choice of hardware to buy. The brand and manufacturer doesn't really matter, so you'll ignore those. You'll just have the "bad motherboard", the "good motherboard" and the "awsome motherboard". And they're expensive - more than now. After buying your computer (and by computer I mean - for the desktop market - a black box, a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse), you'll have to buy the operating system. No, listen to me, you have to pay for it: your hardware won't run anything else but this Operating System. Right. Now, you bought it (well, probably it came bundled with the machine you just bought as well), go home and turn it on. WELCOME TO MICROSOFT WINDOWS VIENNA! And there are those... err... four big buttons: "Install Software", "Install Hardware", "Suspend" and "Shutdown". They can even do something like the actual Nintendo Wii interface: you have a square for one of those things and free space for some more. Now, you want to buy a word processor, because you bought this computer to write some documents, and you want to do it online because you don't want to get out of home. So, you connect your USB modem on your computer and you're notified "ILLEGAL SOFTWARE DETECTION - THAT MODEM ISN'T VIENNA CERTIFIED". Yup, welcome to the Trusted Computer Era. So, you call to your retailer and ask for certidied Vienna modems, you reserve one and the next day you go to the store to buy it.

Now, I could continue this story (I have better things to do, sorry) for a big load of time, to show you how desparetedly bad this is. If hardware manufacturers want to sell hardware where Windows runs, they'll have to pay - a lot - to Microsoft. If a user wants one functionality - any functionality (yes, including minesweeper) - will have to pay - a lot - to Microsoft. This is valid to any 3rd-party software: it will only work on Windows if Microsoft DRM system accepts it: pay. It will limit your hardware usage: if you want to have high bandwith you'll have to start paying twice: still to your ISP and now to Microsoft so they unblocks your hardware and let's it use another well-defined bandwith. It will even act on your harddrive space and speed, your processor, your motherboard, your life. Every site you visit must be "trusted" - by them. Maybe this will stop the worries of Google and Yahoo! on censorship: Microsoft will do it for them. Of course that, in this scenario, both Google and Yahoo! are useless... but I digress.

If you think that this dystopian view is way to exagerated, please read about this issue from some people that are better explaining the issue than me, or from those that are good in giving your a legal interpretation of the patent.

I have to start to agree with Paula about all this thing going around the "social web" - services instead of products and the lack of privacy and ultimately freedom that comes with it. Microsoft is aiming it fiercily - maybe it's time to really act and actively do something to fix Ubuntu's bug #1... Before 2009.