Mark takes a raincheck on the MicroBucket

Microsoft is rattling the patent sabre again. Software patents are not legal in the UK and nor should they be. Source code is a literary work, and like all other literary works, copyright is the appropriate legal protection. For the reasons for that, I will refer to a recent podcast featuring Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth, well worth tuning in.

It is in .ogg format, my favourite audio format. If you are on Windows then pick up VLC, it is free and possibly the best media player on Windows. Those of us on Linux/Mac should be able to play it out of the can.

The same old shi story

When the gramophone first came out, the sellers of printed sheet music were in an uproar, but recorded music soon became far more successful than sheet music. When the first VCRs came out Clint Eastwood and Jack Valenti, President of the Motion Picture Association of America, went over the the House of Representatives to try to get it banned, saying:

> I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.

Well they were wrong then too, the VCR and DVD saved Hollywood. Now the same entrenched industries of yesterday want to kill off the new technological age, this time they have more power than ever before as politicians both here and in America unashamedly take money from the dinosaurs trying to hold back against the mammals.

The way they want to kill the goose that lays the golden egg is with the new concept of 'Intellectual Property', i.e. castles in your own head. The difference this time is that there are other countries keen to enter the global economy that are not going to waste time playing this game.

While America leads the way in suing itself into irrelevance and their companies bribe British and EU politicians to force us to follow them, other countries will move full steam ahead to take our place, they will actually use the technology and actually make things, both physical and digital. If you are the last one here, please turn off the lights when you leave.

Tit for tat

The Chinese government are blocking Yahoo's Flickr photo service from being shown in China. So people still cannot see my comic

Why do these Western companies lie down and take it? If I was running Yahoo and the other search engines, I would decide in retaliation to block all Chinese businesses from being shown in the rest of the world? What would that do to the Chinese Economy? Hmmm, maybe its good that I'm not running Yahoo!

Free our bank account numbers

When lots of people have your phone number already then it is trouble to move mobile phone companies as you have to tell everyone your new number, even if you do then people forget that you tell them and try to use your old one anyway. In response, the government made it so that you can take your phone number with you, the mobile companies have to release it.

There is a similar problem now with bank account numbers. The BBC reports that Banks are slashing interest rates on current accounts. The banks are taking a gamble that it is too much bother to change accounts, after all these days we all have lots of standing orders and direct debits set up, as well as income coming in, that can be long-winded to change.

I think the time has come that we can control our own bank account number, and be able to move it between banks. Then direct debits and payroll systems can carry on regardless.