Today, Facebook co-founder and My.BarackObama.com alum Chris Hughes announced the soft launch of Jumo, his new philanthropic start-up that works to match do-gooders with appropriate causes.

Currently, the Jumo site is merely an elegantly designed homepage that announces Hughes’s mission to “bring together everyday individuals and organizations to speed the pace of global change. We connect people to the issues, organizations, and individuals relevant to them to foster lasting relationships and meaningful action.”

Hughes told us, however, that the site will later be organized much like a social network — with profiles for individual users that contain a collection of information that they have shared and used, pages for organizations created both by the orgs in question and others, and issue pages that serve as a kind of discussion of the topics at hand.

Hughes says that the idea is to make sure that Jumo can get the most relevant information possible to its users, so that they can foster on-going relationships with social organizations to do the most good.

As a result, the current homepage features a rather intriguing survey box that asks the site visitor an array of questions from, “If you had a daughter tomorrow, which would you name her?” to “Would you say the world is getting better or worse?” Upon answering these queries, you can also submit your e-mail address to get more information as it comes.

The site itself came about after a period of reflection on Hughes’s part. The Obama campaign came and went, and he started thinking about how he could apply social media principles gleaned from Facebook and My.BarackObama.com to have the maximum impact on the world.

While he was impressed by efforts following catastrophes like the earthquake in Haiti, Hughes thought we could be doing more. “I think watching what happened after Haiti was hard for everyone,” he says. “The fact that so much money was raised is just a testament to the fact that people really do care and help.”

Still, he applies the “don’t just give during the holidays — give all year round” principle to the situation. “I was frustrated to see that moment of engagement not functioning as part of a much larger process of supporting those organizations to help ensure that tragedies like Haiti not happen again,” he said.

Currently, Hughes is hiring a team to run the site from its Soho office. According to the job posting, he’s “looking to hire hard-working individuals who value intellectual challenge, appreciate the importance of online networking technology, and, most importantly, want to change the world.”

Tags: facebook, jumo, News, social media

Facebook may be denying any wrongdoing, but a California judge is disagreeing with the social networks' disagreement to the tune of a $9.5 million dollar settlement today.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the settlement comes in response to a class-action lawsuit over Facebook's Beacon program that published what users were buying.

Sponsor

The decision allocates $6 million of the settlement to a "digital trust fund" that will go to organizations that study online privacy, says the Times article. The Times explains the bit of controversy hovering around this final decision:

While some people are saying that the settlement is unfair in a few ways, Justin Brookman, a senior resident fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology, seemed to disagree. The general contention has been that Facebook will have one seat on the three-member board for the "digital trust fund" and that it was already required to pay money out to promote online privacy, as our own Sarah Perez discussed when the settlement was first announced last October.

Brookman said that today's decision is "a really good settlement for consumers", explaining that "there are really very few settlements that come up with that type of monetary figure."

He also contended that, while Facebook will have a seat on the board, it will be a minority member, as a majority vote requires two out of the three parties to agree. He said that the other two members, Hoofnagle and Magid, were both good choices who will act in the public's interest.

"We have a lot of confidence they'll make wise awards of the money," he said. "They both criticized Facebook when Beacon came out."

According to the Times, however, this may not be the end of the appeal process.

Brookman noted, however, that a settlement like this for privacy issues was relatively unprecedented.

While consumers have shown some early acceptance of paying for content on Amazon’s Kindle, the big question is whether publishers can charge enough to make money. The even bigger “if” implicit in that question is figuring what’s the right price. Our Staci D. Kramer moderated a late morning panel at the MPA’s 24/7 Digital Conference on the “e-reading revolution” and asked Maria Streshinsky, Deputy Managing Editor for The Atlantic, which is selling individual short stories and packaging it for Amazon’s Kindle. Kramer noted that she had downloaded Christopher Buckley’s 15,000-word Cynara for $3.99.

While it’s great to have the instant access to an original short story like this, wouldn’t consumers be hesitant to buy more because of the price, which is practically half that of an average e-book sold for the Kindle. Streshinsky: “We’re just getting started, but we are making money on this. As for the price, we have to start by valuing content. We believe a 15,000-word story by someone as notable as Christopher Buckley is at least equal to a Starbucks coffee.”

UK ISP O2, the “leading provider of mobile phones and broadband” in that country, has condemned the approach to illegal P2P taken by law firm ACS:Law in which it’s been ending thousands of “settlement letters” to suspected file-sharers.

It prefers a “win-win” approach to the problem that involves “encouraging the development of new business models that offer customers the content they want, how they want it, for a fair price.”

Even the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), hardly an advocate of developing new business models to combat illegal file-sharing, has criticized ACS:Law, though it prefers a “three-strikes” graduated response system instead.

ACS:Law announced an initial plan to target some 15,000 alleged illegal file-sharers across the UK last December as part of a “revolutionary business model that “generates revenue for rights holders and effectively decreases copyright infringement in a measurable and sustainable way” unlike what it says are “costly and ineffective” anti-piracy measures used by other companies.

After careful review it later decided to drop a number of those cases, limiting their lawsuits only to those it deemed “viable” or “beneficial to its clients.”

Soon thereafter Which?, the largest consumer body in the UK with over 650,000 members, reported it had received letters from more than 150 people claiming to have been wrongly accused, with even more now choosing to come forward after hearing they’re not alone.

Some of the P2P lawsuits were handed over by Davenport Lyons, the law firm which in many ways pioneered the controversial strategy. It’s worth noting that two of the law firm’s partners at the time, David Gore and Brian Miller, will soon face the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal over complaints they engaged in “bullying” and “excessive” conduct while acting on behalf of client copyright holders.

However, ACS:Law seems immune to any criticisms.

“Neither we nor our clients threaten or bully anyone,” said Andrew Crossley of ACS: Law. “We send out letters of claim to account holders of internet connections where those internet connections have been identified as being utilized for illegal file-sharing of our clients’ copyrighted works.”

Crossley emphasized that the real crime is not overzealous lawyers, but rather the fact that his clients are losing money to illegal P2P.

“My clients are losing money because of copyright infringement and they are equally upset that their copyright is being stolen,” he said. .

That may be so, but suing people en masse will never solve the problem. Crossley, apparently unaware of the failed history of the RIAA pursuing a similar approach for almost a decade, even chastises the BPI for not doing the same.

“I think the BPI is letting its members down. I think they are scared of alienating their customers,” he said. “My clients don’t have the same fear. They take the view that the people they target aren’t their customers because they are stealing from them.”

If that’s what his clients truly believe then their sadly mistaken. How many of you have downloaded a movie and then saw it later at the theater? How many of you have downloaded and album and then purchased it to support the band?

Furthermore, potential loses are not theft. One can’t suggest that simply because a person illegally downloaded a piece of content they would have otherwise purchased it.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

Continue reading Epix TV network to deliver real pilot based on a fake Steve Jobs

Epix TV network to deliver real pilot based on a fake Steve Jobs originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

While consumers have shown some early acceptance of paying for content on Amazon’s Kindle, the big question is whether publishers can charge enough to make money. The even bigger “if” implicit in that question is figuring what’s the right price. Our Staci D. Kramer moderated a late morning panel at the MPA’s 24/7 Digital Conference on the “e-reading revolution” and asked Maria Streshinsky, Deputy Managing Editor for The Atlantic, which is selling individual short stories and packaging it for Amazon’s Kindle. Kramer noted that she had downloaded Christopher Buckley’s 15,000-word Cynara for $3.99.

While it’s great to have the instant access to an original short story like this, wouldn’t consumers be hesitant to buy more because of the price, which is practically half that of an average e-book sold for the Kindle. Streshinsky: “We’re just getting started, but we are making money on this. As for the price, we have to start by valuing content. We believe a 15,000-word story by someone as notable as Christopher Buckley is at least equal to a Starbucks coffee.”

Jack Dorsey’s Square was unveiled last December as an innovative way to let people quickly and easily accept physical credit card payments from their mobile phone.

Since then, Square, which has been in limited beta, has been used in a variety of use cases. E.g. philanthopic organization charity:water recently used Square at the SXSW festival to collect donations.

A local flower cart in San Francisco is using Square to take payments from customers. Denim, a jeans store in New York is using Square to take payments from shoppers. We even used Square at this year’s Crunchies to raise money for the UCSF Foundation.

Here’s how Square works: A small device attaches to the phone via the headset/microphone jack. The device gets the power it needs to send data to the phone from the swipe of the card, and sends the information over the microphone connection. The device is compatible with both the iPhone and Android. It’s similar in some ways to PayPal, but anyone can now accept physical credit card payments, too. With no contracts or monthly fees. People are sent receipts by text and email. If you haven’t seen Square in action, check out this video.

And now, a new use case has popped up for Square: political fundraising.

Square is currently being used in two campaigns. Silicon Valley VC Josh Becker, who is running for state assembly in California’s 21st district, has been using Square at fundraising events. And lawyer Reshma Saujani, who is running for Congress in New York’s 14th district, is using Square at campaign fundraising events, including at an event in San Francisco on Friday.

Square is ideal for taking money at political fundraisers for several reasons.

Currently, if you want to donate money at a fundraising event, you often have to fill out a form and hand over a check or cash at the event. If you don’t have your checkbook or cash handy (which, many of us don’t), credit cards are the only option. You can write down your credit card number and info for fundraisers to charge at a later date, but you have to trust that the fundraiser keeps track of that information and paper.

With Square, there is both a convenience added for both the payee and fundraiser. The donation is instantly processed, and Square will send the receipt via SMS or email to the payee. Of course, political contributions and donations are a little more complicated because of the reporting requirements associated with donations.

For many types of donations, you need to take the donator’s name, occupation, address, and other information. Currently Square doesn’t allow users to input all of this information but Dorsey says that they are releasing Square’s API to allow fundraisers to build additional applications on top of Square, where they could input all of the necessary data. Once this is enabled, Square will allows fundraisers to eliminate paper collection and payments all together.

Dorsey says he’s already getting significant interest from politicians and political candidates across the country, but because Square is in limited beta, is being selective about how the service is distributed. Dorsey expects Square to be open to the public sometime in the next few months.

Valued at $40 million even before launch, Square is off to an impressive start. And technology’s most notable investors and leaders seem to think so as well.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, investor Ron Conway, Google’s Marissa Mayer, Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley, Digg creator Kevin Rose, investor Esther Dyson and a host of others have invested in Square. The company also raised funding from Khosla Ventures.

HotAir.com blogger Cassy Fiano criticized President Obama for standing by a provision in the health care bill that provides funding for states that have suffered natural disasters and stated, "I just don't see how disaster relief has anything to do with health care." In fact, the funding is tied to health care because it would fix gaps in federal Medicaid payments that some states -- such as Louisiana and Hawaii -- have experienced as a result of recent disasters.

From Fiano's March 17 HotAir.com post:

This moment, from Bret Baier's interview on Fox News with Obama, might just be one of the biggest "WTF?!" moments from Obama's presidency yet. Obama is either completely making things up, living in an alternate reality, or really, really confused.

Actually, my guess is that's it's probably a combination of all three.

OBAMA [video]: I'll give you some exceptions, though. Something that was called a special deal was for Louisiana. It was said that there were billions of dollars -- millions of dollars going to Louisiana, this was a special deal. Well, in fact, that provision, which I think should remain in, said that if a state has been affected by a natural catastrophe that has created a special health care emergency in that state, they should get help. Louisiana obviously went through Katrina, and they're still trying to deal with the enormous challenges that were faced because of that. ... That also -- well, I'm giving you an example of one that I consider important. It also affects Hawaii, which went through an earthquake. So that's not just a Louisiana provision. That is a provision that affects every state that is going through a natural catastrophe.

Apparently, there was a devastating earthquake in Hawaii that we all somehow missed.

Oh, wait, no. That's right. There was no earthquake, and Obama is just totally clueless, as usual. In fact, the last earthquake in Hawaii to cause any deaths at all was in 1975, and two people died.

In any case, why is he using this argument, anyways? He's turned this health care bill into a one-size-fits-all solution for everything. Not only will it fix our health care, but it will apparently create jobs and give disaster relief around the country!

Maybe I'm the only person who doesn't get it, but I just don't see how disaster relief has anything to do with health care. This is just more evidence that Obama is just talking out of his you-know-where now. He's become this desperate. And you know, I say good. That means we're getting to him, and now's the time to push even harder.

Funding would fix FMAP rates for "certain states recovering from a major disaster." The Senate bill as passed includes a provision -- often referred to as the "Louisiana Purchase" by conservative media -- that would adjust the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP) rate for "certain states recovering from a major disaster." The bill requires that it only applies to states "for which, at any time during the preceding 7 fiscal years, the President has declared a major disaster" and "determined as a result of such disaster that every county or parish in the State warrant individual and public assistance or public assistance from the Federal Government."

The Department of Health and Human Services states that FMAP is "used in determining the amount of Federal matching funds for State expenditures for assistance payments for certain social services, and State medical and medical insurance expenditures. The Social Security Act requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to calculate and publish the FMAPs each year."

Times-Picayune: Temporary post-Katrina spending "spiked" per capita income "long enough" to skew Medicaid funding formula, causing state Medicaid funding shortfall. The Times-Picayune reported on January 22 that "FMAP refers to the percentage of a state's payments under Medicaid that are covered by the federal government. Louisiana usually gets a higher match because of how poor the state is, but because of all the recovery and rebuilding money that poured in after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, state per capita income spiked long enough to throw the formula out of kilter and threaten to blow a hole [in] the state budget. [Sen. Mary] Landrieu's fix was, according to state officials, only the beginning of a solution for a huge Medicaid shortfall the state is facing." The article stated that Landrieu said "attaching the Medicaid provision to a health-care bill made sense, and there is no obvious and feasible legislative alternative."

Jindal: "If not corrected in Washington, D.C.," FMAP problem will cost $500 million a year. Louisiana Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal's fiscal year 2010-2011 budget proposal says that the "Louisiana state government faces significant, multi-year budget challenges, compounded by a faulty federal FMAP formula that, if not corrected in Washington, D.C., will cost the state approximately $500 million a year in Medicaid funding, impacting services for the poorest in our state, and often those who need care the most." The proposal also says that "[w]hile there is discussion in Washington about extending the enhanced federal Medicaid match rate for six months for all states, without a permanent fix to Louisiana's faulty FMAP calculation, combined with the loss of federal stimulus funding, Louisiana will still face a projected $1.7 billion shortfall for FY 12."

Hawaii was declared a disaster area following earthquake. During the Fox News interview cited by HotAir, Obama stated that Hawaii could benefit from the health care bill provision that helps Louisiana deal with the FMAP problem. The HotAir post responded: "Apparently, there was a devastating earthquake in Hawaii that we all somehow missed. Oh, wait, no. That's right. There was no earthquake, and Obama is just totally clueless, as usual." In fact, a magnitude 6.7 earthquake hit Hawaii on October 15, 2006, as Media Matters for America noted. At the time, President Bush "declared a major disaster exists in the State of Hawaii and ordered Federal aid to supplement State and local recovery efforts in the area struck by an earthquake." USA Today also reported that Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle also issued a disaster declaration for the state, after reports of damaged buildings, landslides, and power outages.

Times-Picayune: Hawaii might also be eligible for aid under health care reform. The Times-Picayune reported on February 23 that the provision "was intended as a one-time, partial fix for a sharp drop in federal Medicaid money coming to the state because of a temporary surge in per capita income in Louisiana as recovery dollars flooded into the state in the wake of Katrina and Rita." The article noted that Hawaii could also be eligible for aid under the Senate health care reform bill:

In order to qualify, a state would have to face an FMAP decline of a magnitude that would only include at this time three states: Louisiana, North Dakota and Hawaii. The legislation also requires the state be one that experienced a major disaster in the past seven years in which every county or parish in the state was eligible for FEMA public assistance. That would eliminate North Dakota, leaving only Louisiana and Hawaii, where all four of its counties were eligible for aid after the 2006 earthquake.

Hawaii officials reportedly pursuing FMAP funding. A March 11 Times-Picayune article quoted a Hawaii Department of Human Services spokeswoman as saying they are "optimistic we will find a way to get the FMAP provision," amid some confusion over whether Hawaii will ultimately qualify for the fix.

This post is supposed to make it clear why Kubuntu is what it is. Writing this down is necessary because people constantly get the wrong picture.

Let me start to explain the relationships of entities around Ubuntu.

First and foremost there is the Ubuntu project, it is this large monster that includes Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu and some other stuff. One could think of the Ubuntu project as an umbrella spanning across most (semi-)official activities surrounding Ubuntu. Packaging KDE software would be such an activity, so even as Kubuntu developer you are contributor to Ubuntu at large.

This relation is even publicly visible.

At Kubuntu we have a special membership status for people who have proved themselves valuable contributors to Kubuntu. With such a membership you get an @kubuntu.org email address and some other cool things. It might not be all that apparent, but this membership reflects the relationship between Kubuntu and Ubuntu. Once someone becomes Kubuntu member they also become Ubuntu member (technically speaking are Kubuntu members a subset of Ubuntu members). This is because a Kubuntu contributor is in the end also a contributor to Ubuntu (the project, not the distribution necessarily).

Now we know that Ubuntu is one big entity that consists of other entities (like Kubuntu), but at the same time Ubuntu is also the name of the GNOME featuring desktop distribution produced by Ubuntu the project.

Up until now I was talking about Ubuntu as a project, and simply put, this project is community driven. Sure, Kubuntu and Ubuntu have people working on them full time, but there are hundreds or possibly thousands of others, spending their spare time on contributing to Ubuntu. And here the whole thing gets a bit tricky to understand.

Kubuntu is by 5/1 controlled by the community, Ubuntu (the desktop distribution) is not. You might wonder how I ended up with 5/1. Well, the Kubuntu Council (pretty much in all cases the highest authority within Kubuntu) consists of 6 members, of which 5 are not working for Canonical.

Canonical, yet another entity. Canonical is a company trying to make money with Ubuntu products. Canonical is also the company that makes Ubuntu, the project, possible. Of course we easily forget about this, but without Canonical there were no *buntu websites, no launchpad, in consequence of that there would be no build daemon, no daily CD builds of consistent manner… in general there probably would not even be the computational infrastructure to run all those things. So just the infrastructural expenses (including maintenance etc.) must be of a quite considerable amount. Now I was not completely honest with you. Canonical is not only trying to make money with Ubuntu products, in fact Canonical is driving development of most of these products (to a certain degree at the very least).

So the Ubuntu project is driven by the community AND Canonical. Some parts more by the community, and others more by Canonical. As it usually works, this means that the community can focus on the fun parts while Canonical fills the gaps of the other work that needs to be done in a distribution creating project. And this is a good thing for the better part. Most of these free contributors are doing it because it is fun or because they want to achieve a personal target (say, make a system that boots within 2 seconds), but usually not all work of the distribution creation process is fun. I suppose it goes without saying that less people would contribute if they had to spend a substantial amount of their time on rather complex and boring stuff. Yet someone needs to do it, why not someone who gets paid for it?

Of course that is a much simplified picture, but the point I am trying to make is that there is a symbiosis of the activities within the Ubuntu project.

"With great power must also come great responsibility!" is it written in the first Spider-Man story. Very true words those are, in the context of Ubuntu too. Those who have the power to stir development, must also be responsible if the direction was wrong. And I would even go as far as saying that those that are responsible must deserve the power to stir development.

What does this mean for the Ubuntu project?

Canonical chose GNOME as their preferred desktop and Debian as their preferred distribution, so they made a new distribution based on those 2 existing software stacks. Canonical sells support contracts, in fact Canonical tries to only live off those and some associated activities within or around the Ubuntu universe. So to their customers and partners they are ultimately responsible for when something goes wrong in the product. So lets assume the product is Ubuntu, the distribution, and the wrongness is that GNOME is completely broken. The customer will not go complain to the community, even though they are to a certain degree contributing to the product. The customer will go complain to the one they got a contract with, which would then be Canonical. So Canonical is responsible and thus must at least have as much power to avoid situations where they would loose substantial amount of money due to problems in the product. What I am trying to say is not that Canonical does or must have absolute control over Ubuntu, the distribution or the project, but the amount of control that is necessary to secure their business and in consequence secure the future of Ubuntu as a whole.

The picture for Kubuntu is different. Kubuntu originated in a community effort to bring the KDE desktop on the Ubuntu base stack. Canonical decided to use GNOME for their desktop and some community members decided to create another version with KDE as the desktop. Canonical apparently thought of this as a good idea and incorporated Kubuntu into the Ubuntu project, thus providing infrastructure for package building and hosting and website hosting and CD building… But they only had little interest of exploiting the business potential that comes with a KDE featuring desktop based on Ubuntu, though there certainly was some potential and so they decided to take on a bit of responsibility. Namely employing one of Kubuntu’s founding fathers full time. The community however continued to be driving in just about any aspect, and so the community also had most power over the course of development, simply because they were responsible for the product and the development of the product.

This statement might seem incredibly obvious, and yet once in a while someone does not exactly understand on how many levels this applies.
Sure, on a technical level Kubuntu is not Ubuntu because it uses KDE, then again it uses the Ubuntu base stack… But more important than that are some other applications of the above statement. Kubuntu is not a large project like the Ubuntu project, it is part of the Ubuntu project and thus must obey its rules and regulations to some degree. This for example means that we cannot just stick some random non-free software on our CDs. It also means that Kubuntu is not the brand Canonical chose, but Ubuntu is, that is why the project is called Ubuntu and the distribution is called Ubuntu and associated products are somehow related to Ubuntu, possibly even reusing the brand (e.g. Ubuntu One).
Another important difference is that most changes in Kubuntu do not come from Canonical. They either originate in KDE or within the Kubuntu development community (and of that also only 2 people work for Canonical … go figure). One of the most interesting examples of wrong assumptions in this category, affecting me, was that apparently the Mozilla Firefox installer, that is available in Kubuntu 9.10 and later, was created by Canonical. At least various reviews claimed so, well, indeed it was me who created it, and I am not employee of Canonical, nor does Canonical own the code.
In general one might say that stuff going on in Kubuntu mostly does not have anything to do with Canonical, and if it does, then it is still approved or tolerated by the community.

Taking up on my above statement that those that have power must be responsible and those responsible must have power I’d like to make the following clear: the Kubuntu community has the most power and the most responsibility. Holding Canonical responsible for issues in Kubuntu, of which there are many, as within any software project, is just wrong. Because even if there was wrong doing on their part, the community still did not do anything about it.

Aforementioned statement also implies some things. First and foremost is that Kubuntu doesn’t need to receive the same attention from Canonical as Ubuntu, the distribution, gets. There is no particular point to it either. Not from Kubuntu’s perspective and neither from Canonical’s.

From a business point of view, Canonical would have to invest enough resources to make Kubuntu a viable business opportunity, that then directly competes with their other system, Ubuntu, which is the main brand carrier though. So that would be a bit of a problem, since from a perception point of view, Kubuntu is a different brand than Ubuntu (even though it might be associated, one way or another). Of course this is not exactly good for either brand because they then end up sharing volume of public attention instead of specifically trying to direct it at one particular brand.
At the same time this would mean that Canonical becomes more responsible (and thus needs more power, see above). So ultimately this would make Kubuntu less of a community effort and more of a Canonical one (to about the same degree as it is now with Ubuntu one can suppose). This then would lead to Kubuntu becoming much more derived from upstream KDE, because obviously a company would want to distinguish their product by all means from its competitors, and that involves heavy branding, special features etc.

So since Canonical does currently not exploit all business potential coming from Kubuntu, the community will probably be responsible for quite some time to come.

This ultimately means that the community will apply the rules and judgment of which they think it is the best available. Since the community is mostly consisting of people contributing in their spare time human time resource is rather limited and thus one must choose the battles carefully. In consequence this means that some things simply cannot be done. Like say Ubuntu One integration, of course it would be nice to have, but currently there are much more important things to work on. Same goes for porting Software Center. Finally it also means that the community gets to decide how much branding gets committed, and currently the opinion is to stick with KDE’s. Not only is their artwork of incredibly high quality, but also are they the biggest contributors to the Kubuntu desktop, so they deserve most credit.

On that last note I would also like to note that Kubuntu’s target was to make the best KDE distribution, not the best Ubuntu flavor, thus deriving from KDE’s artwork and color scheme would not only be in conflict with the fact that Kubuntu’s color palette is almost identical, but also with what Kubuntu is trying to achieve.

In short: Kubuntu is not Ubuntu. Occasionally blogs and news stories and bug reports assume Canonical is responsible for things they are not. In general, me and the other Kubuntu developers are responsible for Kubuntu, please keep this in mind when moaning or praising us.

Thank you.

• Net piracy puts 1.2m EU jobs in peril, study shows
• Internet piracy taking big toll on jobs
• Illegal-file sharing could 'cost billions' by 2015
• Piracy threatens Europe's creative industries
• EU must take 'urgent' action on piracy, report warns

• The report suggests that there's a direct correlation between Internet traffic growth and lost jobs. That is, the more traffic that is generated on the Internet, the more money will be lost. This correlation is 1 according to the report, which assumes that all growth in Internet traffic will increase piracy at the same rate.
• The report makes another bogus assumption by stating that more traffic will mean more piracy and thus more lost revenue. It does not account for the fact that people might consume higher quality files which are greater in file-size. All projections are based on bandwidth and not the number of pirated goods.
• The report cites some academic literature which suggests that piracy leads to a decrease in sales. Studies that reported the opposite or a null-effect were carefully left out. This bias defines the entire outcome of the report. If they used studies that found a positive effect they would have found that piracy would create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the years to come.
• The report uses fixed substitution rates. They assume that 10 downloaded albums results in one lost sale and this figure is not adjusted for the projected increase in piracy. One would think that the public's budget for entertainment is limited and that the substitution rate would go down as piracy goes up.
• Related to the previous point, if the industry did indeed lose over €240 billion in revenue by 2015, consumers would have a lot of extra cash to spend. Depending on where this money was spent it might create more jobs than the entertainment industry claims it is losing. As a report commissioned by the Dutch Government showed last year, the overall effect of piracy on the economy might actually be positive.
• It gets even more ridiculous when we take a closer look at the claims. In the UK consumers spent €6.3 on audiovisual products. If the projected trends continued, the 'lost' revenue because of piracy would exceed the actual revenue, meaning that the music and movie industries would end up having to pay people for pirating their products.
• Lastly, the researchers seem to have trouble putting a decent report together as they messed up the legend of one of the critical figures. In this figure the bars for "file-sharing" and "global Internet traffic" are switched around. This makes us skeptical about the other statistics that are published in the report.

• Museveni criticised for not signing bill into law
• Will new law impact on rural communities?

The Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, has been criticised for not signing a domestic violence bill into law.

Alice Alaso, the secretary general of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), the main opposition party in Uganda, said the president had yet to give the bill assent, despite it being passed by parliament. It was given the green light by the cabinet more than a year ago. Alaso said this meant women's rights were continuing to be undermined in Uganda.

"We have passed several laws which the president has assented to, except for the domestic violence law, yet women have continued to be abused," she said.

During celebrations to mark International Women's Day in Katine last week, the state minister for youth and children's affairs, Jessica Alupo, said the delay was because the president was still studying the bill. Apparently sections of the bill have been opposed, although she did not elaborate on which sections.

The bill will afford legal protection to people in abusive relationships for the first time.

Currently, most women have no say in affairs relating to their home life, and many have lost their lives through domestic violence.

The bill is intended to protect sufferers of domestic violence, punish perpetrators and set guidelines for courts on the protection and compensation of abused women.

The bill defines a domestic relationship as "a family relationship, a relationship akin to a family relationship or one in a domestic setting that exists or existed between a victim and a perpetrator". These relationships include those between spouses, relatives and between householders and domestic workers.

According to figures from the Uganda Bureau of Statistics in 2007, 68% of married women aged 15 to 49 had experienced some form of violence inflicted by their spouse or intimate partner.

According to the 2006 Uganda Law Reform Commission study, domestic violence is most common in northern Uganda, where it was reported to have occurred in 78% of homes. Most women do not report cases of domestic violence to authorities and police rarely intervene or investigate.

Often women are reluctant to file a complaint for fear of reprisal, embarrassment, poverty, ignorance of the law or not knowing where to report abuse.

A report published on the Refworld website, citing figures from various sources, found that 60% of men and 70% of women in Uganda condone "wife beating" if, for example a woman burns food or refuses sex.

In rural areas like Katine, where the African Medical and Research Foundation (Amref) is implementing a development project funded by Guardian readers and Barclays, cases of domestic violence are often handled among the community, rather than by the police. In most cases this means women are returned home to their partners. Often parish leaders are initially brought in to settle disputes between couples. More serious cases are passed on to sub-county leaders or the district gender officer, who may encourage police involvement.

Cases of domestic violence have hindered women's emancipation in Katine, said Christine Agwero, a women's representative on the Katine sub-county council. Often women do not attend meetings or take up leadership positions because they are threatened by their husbands, she said.

Speaking at International Women's Day, Agwero asked the government to protect women and provide them opportunities to empower themselves economically.

At the mid-term workshop held in Soroti last year to discuss progress in Katine, Agwero voiced her concerns about the lack of women in attendance and the threat of violence some face when they want to get involved.

"Seriously, we need to bring women on board to participate in committees. It needs both parties... we need to move together to bring development," she said.

She explained that a major obstacle to women taking a more active role was lack of education, which affected their confidence. "If not well educated, women fear answering questions [in meetings]."

She added: "Women are busy, but not so busy. Some men don't feel women should be at the meetings because they will have to take care of children if women go."

The workshop heard from other attendees that women had been beaten up by their husbands for attending village savings and loans associations, which have had a positive impact on women's lives in the sub-county, given them a means to save and invest money.

Alaso said that the longer the delay in implementing the law, the worse the situation will get for women in rural communities.

Once the law is passed, it will be up to local government officials to ensure it is interpreted correctly in their communities and that men and women know their rights.

• Women
• Governance
• Politics and history
• News
• Uganda

Security company 3Com TippingPoint has jacked up to $100,000 the prize money on offer to anyone able to hack a range of browsers and mobile devices at the forthcoming CanSecWest security conference.

Turns out that that letter from Google China partners demanding information and cash may have been a fake, says Bloomberg, which was presumably pleased to say so, given that hated competitor WSJ fell for it.

Still, fake or no, it's easy to imagine that Google's partners are annoyed with the company's abrupt refusal to do what it agreed to do when it entered the country several years ago--censor search results.

Read the rest of this story »

See Also:

• Google China Execs Will Start New China Search Engine If Google Quits -- Rumor
• Google Stops Censoring Some Searches On China Search Engine
• Here's Why Google Is Now Trying To Get Kicked Out Of China: Its Partners Are Demanding Money

Despite the dramatic advances in technology, The International Football Association Board (FIFA) has rejected the introduction of goal-line technology during World Cup 2010 in South Africa.

What has been the reaction from sports bloggers?

WorldCupBlog argues that errors in football, which can be prevented by technology, do cost clubs a lot of money:

European Football has grown into a 12bn Euro business, so these errors aren’t just about football narratives and mythology, but about costing clubs millions of Euros.

Another blogger believes that technology can make football “really fair”:

Why is it fine to contest decisions with technological aid in other sports while football/soccer referee decisions are only based on the limited capabilities of man? Sure we want to keep enjoying the game as it is but let’s make it really fair for both teams that enter the field for 90+ minutes. What do you say Irish fans? Do you have anything in particular to say to FIFA?

FIFA World Cup South Africa captures the anxieties over the FIFA decision:

If we start with goal-line technology then any part of the game and pitch will be a potential space where you could put in place technology to see if the ball was in or out, whether it was a penalty and then you end up with video replays. The door is closed

World markets shaken as Greek government says it could resort to IMF if EU leaders fail to spell out terms of rescue package

Greece's debt crisis shook world markets again today amid speculation that Athens will resort to the International Monetary Fund to resolve its financial woes if EU leaders fail to spell out the terms of a rescue package.

Greek recourse to the Washington-based fund would be a huge blow to eurozone pride. The currency took a pounding today and global stock markets fell sharply amid mounting concerns – reinforced by tough words from the German chancellor Angela Merkel – that the EU might not consent to giving the indebted country concrete financial support.

Greece upped the ante, saying it would have no choice but the IMF if its eurozone partners did not produce a firmer plan that would help lift market pressure and lower its borrowing costs.

In a speech before the European parliament, the Greek prime minister George Papandreou said it would be impossible for Greece to meet planned budget cuts to solve its debt crisis if it had to continue borrowing money at high interest rates.

The socialist leader said exorbitant borrowing costs were effectively extinguishing the gains Athens stood to make through spending cuts and tax hikes that have prompted protests, strikes and violent clashes in Greece.

"If we keep borrowing at very high rates, and this is the challenge we have, we cannot sustain the deficit reduction that these hard [austerity] measures aim to achieve," he told a committee of the EU legislature.

Speculators working financial markets were selling Greek taxpayers short, he said, as his government's efforts to reduce its deficit "cannot be executed as quickly as futures or credit defaults swaps".

In the absence of "some form of an instrument on the table" traders were taking "all the efforts that we are making and putting them into their pockets".

Greece needs to raise €54bn (£48.2bn) by the end of the year to service debt that amounts to more than 120% of GDP.

Greek officials estimate that for every €5bn raised on capital markets, Athens pays around €700m more in interest compared to other eurozone countries because of premiums on Greek bonds that earlier this month reached 6.5%.

The EU's lukewarm response to the crisis has infuriated Greeks who have been asked to endure the toughest economic austerity measures since the second world war. While the eurozone's 16 members states have agreed to a "mechanism of coordinated assistance" they have refused to divulge the hard figures that Greece says would ward off speculators.

"Nobody wants to go to the IMF but it will be a necessary option if there is no other proposal by then [next week's EU summit meeting]," said Greek government spokesman George Petalotis.

Papandreou, whose Pasok party inherited the crisis when it was voted to power last October, faces mounting opposition from unionists and irate workers. The government is due to announce a controversial overhaul of the tax system, which is bound to spark further ire, later today.

Germany's perceived hardline stance has also stoked anger. In a thinly disguised reference to Greece, Merkel yesterday told her parliament that there should in future be a mechanism to expel countries from the eurozone if "again and again" they broke its financial rules.

"We are disappointed ... we don't just want statements [from the eurozone] and rhetorical support but practical measures which will combat the phenomenon of speculators, lessen spreads and return interest rates to normal levels," Greece's minister for the protection of the citizen, Michalis Chrysohoidis, told guardian.co.uk.

"I don't like conspiracy theories. I don't believe we have enemies but I don't see friends or partners in a union which should have a basic solidarity," he said. "Present borrowing costs are having a catastrophic effect on our economy. If Greece falls others will start to fall too. There's still time for the decisions to be taken that will prevent us getting to the tragic point where we have to go to the IMF."

• Europe
• Global economy
• Greece
• IMF
• Euro

· Crozier guaranteed at least £3.2m in first three years
· Grade got £2.26m in last year, plus £400,000 from options

Michael Grade left ITV with £2.7m in his pocket at the end of last year, while incoming chief executive Adam Crozier is guaranteed to get £3.2m over the next three years and could trouser more than £16m by 2015 if he hits all his performance targets.

Grade picked up £2.126m in salary and annual bonus for his last year as executive chairman of the broadcaster, and also sold shares worth a further £401,567 under the company's share options scheme, according to ITV's 2009 annual report, published today.

The ITV board also awarded him a further £167,000 to cover the remainder of his contract – which expires next month – but calculated the payoff as if he were merely non-executive chairman of the firm.

Crozier, whose move to ITV from the Post Office was announced in late January, will receive a salary of £775,000 a year – £50,000 less than Grade got in his last year – and is being awarded a £200,000 cash sum as a "golden hello" for joining the company. He will also be awarded £420,000 worth of shares when he joins on 26 April, which he can collect over the next 18 months.

Coupled with his pension contributions and other benefits, Crozier will pick up about £860,000 a year – before any bonuses – on top of his golden hello, meaning he is guaranteed at least £3.2m over the next three years.

But he will also take part in the company's short-term cash bonus scheme – which could net him a further £1.16m a year – and is expected to spend £775,000 of his own money buying ITV shares.

ITV also outlined the long-term incentive plan it has designed for Crozier. He is being offered up to 4,115,044 shares in ITV – worth £2.26m at today's share price – that he can collect in 2013 "subject to delivering stretching outperformance". He will not have to buy the shares – they are what are termed in the City "nil cost options" – but they will be awarded depending on the firm's financial performance.

Up to 75% will vest only if ITV delivers better than average returns than a comparator group of companies including BSkyB and the Daily Mail & General Trust. He will get all the shares if ITV's performance is in the top 25% of its peer group and none if its performance is below average. The remaining options will vest "subject to the achievement of strategic measures", ITV said.

ITV insiders said that if he meets all the performance criteria – which would require a significant increase in ITV's share price performance – Crozier could pocket more than £16m over the next half decade.

Archie Norman, who took over from Grade as ITV non-executive chairman at the start of the year, is being paid a basic salary of £300,000 a year over his three-year term. Norman has also been awarded 400,000 ITV shares a year, and bought 380,000 when he was appointed in November last year.

· To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

· If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".

• Adam Crozier
• Michael Grade
• ITV
• Television industry
• Media business
• ITV

Here is the latest in our year-long look at one cool comic (whether it be a self-contained work, an ongoing comic or a run on a long-running title that featured multiple creative teams on it over the years) a day (in no particular order whatsoever)! Here's the archive of the moments posted so far!

Today we take a look at Super Human Resources, by Ken Marcus and Justin Bleep...

Enjoy!

Super Human Resources #1, from writer Ken Marcus and artist Justin Bleep is a delightfully funny comic book.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that it is a remarkable piece of work by Marcus, as he really shows an effortless mixture of amusing dialogue and character-based humor all while advancing the plot in a logical fashion that has a real pay-off at the end of the four-issue mini-series.

The plot behind the series is that a young would-be-accountant named Tim gets a temp job at Super Crises International, the company that bankrolls a bunch of superheroes (paying off damages from superhero fights and hopefully recouping the money from licensing fees). I doubt that the name of the company is unintentional, as if you liked the comedic stylings of Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis' similarly-named Justice League International, then this is the comic for you, as that particular brand of humor is almost exactly the style that Marcus goes for in this series, and remarkably for such a new work, pretty much achieves.

I sometimes felt that Bleep's unique art style did not exactly match Marcus' dialogue-driven, humanistic humor, but it surely did not HURT the comic at all. And Bleep's design sense is impeccable, and I imagine he designed a great deal of the characters who populate the comic, so in that regard, he does a great job.

Here are nine preview pages that the guys have made available on their ComicSpace page.

In just these sample pages, you already get a feel for the offbeat humor Marcus provides, as well as the nifty dialogue and comedic timing (as seen in the scene with the Bog). My personal favorite bit is where the robot makes himself NEARLY invisible so as to avoid paying the money he owes, but, well, nearly invisible is not nearly invisible enough! Classic.

It's also impressive how quickly Marcus establishes personalities for these characters, which is useful when he can then later play against the type he established himself.

As a whole, the series is really a fun read filled with engaging personalities and a lot of interesting comedic plotlines, and not nearly as many as you would think are the standard "making fun of superhero conventions" types.

At the heart of this comic, the humor comes from the offbeat personalities that Marcus establishes - it just so happens that at least half of the personalities are superheroes.

NOTE: This is basically what I said when these issues first came out - BC

Solar Roadways received a $100,000 grant by the Department of Transportation last year, and it is good to see all that money put to good use with a spanking new solar-powered road prototype. Currently, Solar Roadways is in the running for an award as a finalist (“Most Promising Renewable Energy Award”), and initial tests have shown that their pedestrian warning system with a couple of small kids worked like a charm – whenever one of the little ones step on the crosswalk panel, the Solar Road Panel lights up with a warning “SLOW DOWN” for drivers. This ought to help reduce the number of accidents on the road somewhat in the long run, don’t you think so? Solar Roadways hopes to see these solar-powered panels make their way to driveways, parking lots, walkways, playgrounds and even bike paths sometime down the road.

Source: Inventor Spot
Cool Gift Idea: Digital Picture Frames, check out our reviews.
[ Solar Roadways prototype now built copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Since leaving school to pursue writing at 16, Tim Pears has steered a quietly defiant course, standing up for provincial life in the face of metropolitan self-importance and refusing his readers easy consolations. Richard Lea meets him

For the novelist Tim Pears, brought up in a small village on the edge of Dartmoor and with a new novel rooted in the English landscape, his home town of Oxford still has something of the feel of the big city.

"I've lived here for 30 years and I still feel like I'm in exile, like an immigrant," Pears says. He himself cuts a reassuringly outdoorsy figure, from his wind-blown cheeks and fraying fleece down to his sturdy walking boots. "We all have an idea of where the authentic life resides. Most Londoners think 'This is it, this is the centre of England, this is where reality is'. Whereas I've never lost the idea that the authentic human experience is in between nature wild and nature tamed: that is, the rural. We still can't exist without it – it's where our food comes from and so on. And that's somehow real."

The low thrum of the nearby ring road wafts through the back door from the garden as he reflects on what it's like to be a writer in a country which is so relentlessly metropolitan in its outlook.

"It's a curious thing," he says, in his soft burr. "England is so metrocentric; it's so London-based. Ninety-nine percent of people who want to do something interesting culturally with their lives gravitate towards London. Most writers live in London, most film-makers, and people who live outside tend to be regarded by the metrocentrics, and indeed by themselves, as provincial – which is very different from America, for example. It's not like all American writers live in New York.

"In a way I resist that. Part of the reason I've never lived in London is as a small act of resistance – I'm not going to be drawn into that. I'll hold out for provincial life."

There's something organic about Tim Pears's latest novel, Landed. The first part lays down the roots of a tragic tale – an accident report, an occupational therapist's case study of a man who lost his hand, and an account of the making of an outdoorsman, Owen, carved in the image of a taciturn grandfather in the wilds of the Welsh borders. The second part blooms into a dream journey that Owen takes with his two small children, measuring out the losses that he has suffered and the happinesses he will never see in footpaths, tracks and stiles. It's a journey Pears has made himself, tramping in the footsteps of his own character like a "method writer" from the outskirts of Birmingham to the Welsh borders where his own grandfather used to live. "I couldn't have written that without doing it," he says. "I cheated a bit, because I stopped on the way. I slept one night rough, and then the next night I reached where my mother lives, so I got a nice warm bed."

Despite the heightened reality of his fiction – the occasional swerve into magic or mysticism – Pears describes himself as an "absolute realist". But even for a writer who aspires to celebrate the world around him, to chronicle life as he sees it, research is only the beginning. "The one novel that I've written which was explicitly set in Oxford was my last one, Blenheim Orchard," he says. "It was the toughest one to write. It should have been the easiest, because the research was on my doorstep, but actually it was very difficult. Doing the research is one thing, but then one wants to process it through a screen of one kind or another." And it's the imagination which powers the novelist's work, he continues. "In my first book, there's a scene of a ceasarean birth – a completely unqualified peasant helping a farmer's wife to give birth, and realising she needs to have a cesarean. It's magic realism, but it's one of the best scenes I've ever written, and I had no experience of anything like that at all. In a much later book there's a description of a woman giving birth, which is based on being present at my own first child's birth, and it's not as good."

Pears was born in 1956, and left school at 16 to become a writer. "Part of leaving school was that I thought, I'm going to learn more from reading the books in my father's study than I will from these crappy English teachers at school," he explains. His father, the village priest, tried to talk him out of it, but agreed in the end that Pears could make his own decisions, as long as he was prepared to live with the consequences. He spent the next 20 years writing "dreadful" poetry and working in a succession of temporary jobs – librarian, labourer, nurse in a mental hospital, pianist's bodyguard, college night porter, mail sorter – before his first novel was published. "Looking back, it seems like quite a funky thing to have done, different kinds of menial work, and I am really glad that I did it, but at the time they were just horrible jobs."

The transition came when a poem about the death of his grandfather metamorphosed into a short story, set in the vilage where Pears had grown up, and suddenly "this prose tumbled out, instead of the painful poetry which I'd scratched, line by line. I've never written another poem since." A clutch of short stories set in the village quickly followed, which in turn mutated into a novel. At the time he was studying direction at the National Film and Television School and dreaming of spending half the year making films and the other half writing. In the Place of Fallen Leaves was published in 1993, just as he graduated. "The novel did really well, got great reviews," he says. "There were obviously people waiting for the next one. The film ... " he trails off. His graduation film just "wasn't very good. I didn't have people queueing up to give me money to make a film." He says he's still in awe of people with the drive and commitment to take a film from script to distribution, to direct the efforts of hundreds of others and still maintain something of the personal vision which inspired them in the first place, but his time at film school cured him of the desire to be one of them.

Five novels later, Pears still revels in the ability to create something with just a pen and some sheets of paper, and has staked out a territory for his work to explore. "There are two great arenas for the novel," he says with the confidence of someone who has taught creative writing for more than a decade: "war and families. Since I have no experience of war, I write about the battle zone of family life." The dynamics of households, how relationships echo through the generations and how people respond when they are faced with stark choices are his subconscious preoccupations: the family is "the strings through which the tunes are played". As a father with two young children, the tragic relationships between Owen and his three children made Landed painful to write, but he hasn't thought at all about what his children will make of it when they come to read it. "Now you've brought it up, I'm kind of devastated," he laughs. "I'll have to hide all the copies."

Landed went through many drafts before it reached its final form. The cross-country walk that Owen takes in the second half of the book was the core of the early material – though at first he had no plans to take the children along for the trip – but the material in the first half, which throws light on Owen's despair through a series of invented official documents, was shuffled around from draft to draft. Pears says the technical material, including the seven-page accident report which boldly opens the book, was carefully managed to provide background information – according to Pears a little-remarked upon but very valuable aspect of fiction – while at the same time keeping the reader wanting to turn the page. "You can never get away from that as a writer ... " he trails off, and then hurries to contradict his own "glib answer" with the story of a painter called Clifford Pugh he used to work with on building sites in his 20s. When Pears would tell him about a short story he'd finished, Pugh would say that he didn't care about the work Pears was doing then; it was the work he would be doing when he was 50 that counted. "Now that I'm 53, I realise that what he meant was that it's the process," Pears says. "As you get older, you get more and more engaged with the process of putting words on paper." The idea that he is thinking at every turn about how to engage a fickle reader is missing the point.

With six novels published he's prepared to follow the material, to take a few more risks. "So much of what's on sale is [the type of thing where] the customer wants to know what they're getting," he says. "That's terrible in art – you shouldn't know what you're going to get. The whole point is that we're going to have our experience opened up and our sympathies widened. A book shouldn't be some kind of comfort blanket, where you're going to go into a world that you've already been to before. I find that very disquieting," he shudders. "Horrible."

It's an attitude which meant that Landed almost didn't get published. When he showed it to his editor at Bloomsbury, with whom he had worked closely on each of his five earlier novels, she "didn't like it".

"When my agent took it and said 'OK, I'll try to send it to other people'," Pears continues, "she sent it to six or seven publishers, and during this heartstopping week one after another said, 'We quite like it, but we don't want it'. We didn't get any offers apart from the one from William Heinemann." With the publishing industry in crisis, Pears is acutely conscious of other writers who are struggling to find publishers, profoundly aware of the luck he has enjoyed since he left school almost 40 years ago. "What I did, I certainly wouldn't recommend," he says. "I'm not going to let my son do it, I'll force him to go through university, because I was very, very lucky. I could easily not have been published. I'd still be painting houses now, and writing the odd short story, when I could find time, and that wouldn't be a great life."

• Fiction