I am a fervent believer in the principles of Free Software, and the principles of Freedom in general, but I don't necessarily support everything Stallman says or does. I am not Richard Stallman, I have my own opinions, and in my opinion Stallman's support of Microsoft technology via DotGNU is profoundly wrong. I understand his reasons: He merely wants to take something which is not entirely Free, and make it as Free as possible (whereas de Icaza's motive is to take something he considers "cool technology", and make it as interoperable as possible), but the use of this technology assists a deeply reprehensible company, and poisons Free Software with that disreputable company's Intellectual Monopoly.

The Vole sticks the knife in to yet another Halo "partner" ... oh my!

It's hard to believe that any developer making a game based on Halo could be shut down for financial reasons, but that's the fate awaiting Dallas-based Ensemble Studios.

Microsoft, which owns Ensemble, recently told the successful, well-regarded maker of strategy games that it will be shuttered after its newest game, Halo Wars, is finished in a few months.

Bruce Shelley, a high-profile designer at Ensemble, said on his official blog that when Microsoft delivered the bad news earlier this month, "Everyone at our studio was shocked."

First Microsoft mugs Bungie then kicks them out onto the street, and now this.

Maybe it would be a good idea for games devs to simply avoid Halo, since it seems to be as cursed as the infamous Xbox 360 itself, and its equally infamous Xbox Live service.

It hasn't exactly been a great year for the Vole, what with losing 90 Billion Dollars in the first half of the year, then another 24 Billion - in just 2 weeks - recently. Let's not even get started about their 40 Billion dollar stock buyback.

Of course, thanks to Microsoft, it's not exactly a great year for Halo developers either ... nor its fans.

But it may turn out to be the best year ever for those who want to see the end of Microsoft's reign of terror, as they pillaged and plundered their way through the IT industry, with their gangster mentality and racketeering operations. At this rate, the Vole's days of plundering may soon come to an abrupt end, and finally the industry can flourish with competition coexisting in relative harmony and parity, in a Free Market economy, rather than the Vole's current monopoly.

I live in hope.

Stopsoftwarepatents

World Day Against Software Patents - 24 September

Three years ago the European Parliament stopped the attempt to make software patents enforcable in Europe. An unprecedented community effort made it possible with a relative low awareness about the dangers among larger software companies. Since then litigation and patent traps have become a serious problem for the market and users of software. We need to reduce patent risks which impede innovation and investment.

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A couple of days ago I started getting these errors whenever I ran anything that scanned for logical volumes (Linux LVM2):

Buffer I/O error on device dm-6, logical block 0
Buffer I/O error on device dm-7, logical block 0
Buffer I/O error on device dm-8, logical block 0
Buffer I/O error on device dm-9, logical block 0

My first reaction was panic, as I initially believed my HDD was failing, but after some investigation I realised that the above devices simply didn't exist.

...with the government's hot and eager help, of course.
From the its-about-"terrorists"-not-copyrights...honest dept.

SSRN-The Rise and Fall of Invasive ISP Surveillance by Paul Ohm

The Rise and Fall of Invasive ISP Surveillance
Paul Ohm
University of Colorado Law School
August 30, 2008

Abstract:
Nothing in society poses as grave a threat to privacy as the Internet Service Provider (ISP). ISPs carry their users' conversations, secrets, relationships, acts, and omissions. Until the very recent past, they had left most of these alone because they had lacked the tools to spy invasively, but with recent advances in eavesdropping technology, they can now spy on people in unprecedented ways.

We're already starting to see this undemocratic violation of our privacy and civil-rights in the UK, with sinister initiatives like Phorm from BT (and their criminal partners, formerly known as the Spyware outfit 121Media), and more generally with the mere existence and subsequent overreaching implementation of insidious laws like the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, which are now being quite openly abused as a matter of routine investigation into non-terrorist activities.

And the impetus for this destruction of our democracy is ... paranoid and greedy media companies, a.k.a. the MAFIAA®, who "lobby" government to pervert our society for their own selfish ends. "Pervert" is very apt description of how the MAFIAA® gangsters operate, after all they are predisposed to stalking and making abusive phone calls to 10-year old girls.

In a society in which such thugs are not only tolerated, but actually supported by government, whilst that same government declares its entire population of ordinary citizens to be "guilty", and punishes them by revoking their privacy and other civil-rights, it's clear that democracy is well and truly dead.

Your ISP is at the front-line of that battle. It is the weapon the government uses to strike you down.

Don't let them.

Fight back.