mx’s grotto v5.2.5.1

Adobe CS could end up on Linux, the movie industry is dependent on Linux, and this would drive Linux uptake

Debian for OpenMoko for 2012 announced

Nokia helps port Firefox to Qt

http://identi.ca/markcross

If you can read this - it worked!

Excerpt from an SWRDA press release titled the same:

In outlining his skills vision Lord Leitch set some ambitious goals which included:
- 95 per cent of working age adults to achieve functional literacy and numeracy - up from 85 per cent literacy and 80 per cent numeracy today. This means 680,000 basic skills attainment per year against 110,000 today.
- More than 90 per cent of workforce adults qualified to at least Level 2 (equivalent to 5 GCSEs - grades A-C)) - up from 70 per cent today. Ninety-five per cent means 1.7 million more adults with Level 2 and 500,000 people achieving Level 2 each year against 280,000 today.

• What a load of bollocks – define what literacy is?!
• What does it really mean to be literate to a level that is useful for an individual to be useful to a business?

These two whilst being school kid targeted, if you don’t know the subject matter you’ll find them pretty enlightening - without the gift of hindsight!

Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire
by Stephen Dalziel (Author)

&

Kgb Cia
by Celina Bledowska (Author)

• Mozilla Weave the most important announcement for the (social?) web for 2008
• Providing you read history to choosen trusted parties, how disruptive will this become?
• Web directories are about to enter a new era
• Mainstream publishers be aware, the hub of the future is being a trend spotter

& http://labs.mozilla.com/2007/12/introducing-weave/

I jest you not, I received this today via a Micro$oft newsletter:

…”

Bill Gates was at the British Library in London on Tuesday to celebrate the launch and made some special announcements. Footage of this event can be viewed at www.windowsvista.co.uk. Earlier this month, at CES in Las Vegas, he labelled the launch as “by far the most important release of Windows ever” and “the highest quality release we’ve ever done”.
“…

The amazon plug:

After years of studying countless winners and losers, the author has come up with a simple idea that explains why some technologies - DVD players, iPods - become huge hits while others - video phones - crash and burn. His big idea is that people are only willing to change when the ‘pain’ of their current situation outweighs the perceived pain of trying something new. In other words, technology demands a change in habits. This simple fact is the main cause of failure for many fabulous inventions. Many companies fall for their own hype and believe that if they build something better, people will automatically beat a path to their door. This is not necessarily the case; as Coburn shows, most potential users are afraid of new technologies and need a really great reason to change. “The Change Function” looks at this trend across many industry sectors, from computers to mobile phone and digital TV recorders, and is invaluable for anyone who creates, invests in, or is interested in, new technologies. ‘every page is a tug at your lapels to see things his way. The world would be a better place if we did.’ - “Wall Street Journal.”

Things are mad out there.
But we are very lucky.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/10/1553242 

“What does Firefox have to do with social justice? How will the one laptop per child project discourage genocide? How soon will Microsoft collapse? Watch Eben Moglen’s inspiring keynote from the 2006 Plone Conference (Archive.org: mp3 or qt; or YouTube). The video presentation is ordinary, so the mp3 is an equally good format. ‘If we know that what we are trying to accomplish is the spread of justice and social equality through the universalization of access to knowledge; If we know that what we are trying to do is build an economy of sharing which will rival the economies of ownership at every point where they directly compete; If we know that we are doing this as an alternative to coercive redistribution, that we have a third way in our hands for dealing with long and deep problems of human injustice; If we are conscious of what we have and know what we are trying to accomplish, when this is the moment for the first time in lifetimes, we can get it done.’”

IR: …”Second reaction is the link with Mk1. Marxism which identified the condition of people as a consequence of their relationship to the ‘Means of production’.”

I’ve just read this at just gone midnight on the 26th of October 2006, I read the article I am link to about 10 minutes before making my entry in my blog. [the timing has gone weird on my blog!]

The link is here

But I’m going to copy a bit of text so you can get the gist of it if the New York Times end up pulling the article from the public domain.

October 26, 2006
A New Campaign Tactic: Manipulating Google Data
By TOM ZELLER Jr.

If things go as planned for liberal bloggers in the next few weeks, searching Google for “Jon Kyl,” the Republican senator from Arizona now running for re-election, will produce high among the returns a link to an April 13 article from The Phoenix New Times, an alternative weekly.

Mr. Kyl “has spent his time in Washington kowtowing to the Bush administration and the radical right,” the article suggests, “very often to the detriment of Arizonans.”

Searching Google for “Peter King,” the Republican congressman from Long Island, would bring up a link to a Newsday article headlined “King Endorses Ethnic Profiling.”

Fifty or so other Republican candidates have also been made targets in a sophisticated “Google bombing” campaign intended to game the search engine’s ranking algorithms. By flooding the Web with references to the candidates and repeatedly cross-linking to specific articles and sites on the Web, it is possible to take advantage of Google’s formula and force those articles to the top of the list of search results.

The project was originally aimed at 70 Republican candidates but was scaled back to roughly 50 because Chris Bowers, who conceived it, thought some of the negative articles too partisan.

The articles to be used “had to come from news sources that would be widely trusted in the given district,” said Mr. Bowers, a contributor at MyDD.com (Direct Democracy), a liberal group blog. “We wanted actual news reports so it would be clear that we weren’t making anything up.”