hackademix.net

No matter our views about the Israeli bloody war* terrorism against the Palestinian people, Al Jazeera can teach us some lessons about openness and information democracy: its broadcast-quality video footage shot in Gaza is released under the least restrictive Attribution license.
Quoting the CC’ blog:

Each professionally recorded video has a detailed information page and is hosted on blip.tv allowing for easy downloads of the original files and integration into Miro. The value of this footage is best described by an International Herald Tribune/New York Times article describing the release:

In a conflict where the Western news media have been largely prevented from reporting from Gaza because of restrictions imposed by the Israeli military, Al Jazeera has had a distinct advantage. It was already there.

More importantly, the permissive CC-BY license means that the footage can be used by anyone including, rival broadcasters, documentary makers, and bloggers, so long as Al Jazeera is credited.

There’s more information over at Al Jazeera’s CC repository, and in our press release. You can also add the Al Jazeera repository to your Miro feeds by clicking here

So, rather than labeling its unique original footage as “exclusive”, the Arabian network is giving it away for anyone (competitors included) to watch, analyze, share and reuse, leveraging an open source (GPL) open media platform and hosting it on an open source (GPL) CMS.
What do you think?

SecTheory published a paper by Robert “RSnake” Hansen about Browser Power Consumption. Dan Goodin reports about it under the rather funny title Study spanks Adobe Flash for abuses of power (ehy Dan, why just Adobe? what about Microsoft and Sun?). PC World has an article as well, interviewing a Pacific Gas and Electric representative.

The green juice: you can reduce your PC’s power consumption by 25% when you browse the web using Firefox with NoScript and AdBlock Plus. Quite obvious, since JavaScript, Flash, Java, Silverlight and active content in general are major CPU-drainers, compared to static pages. By allowing them just when and where they’re needed, the way NoScript works, you do the equivalent of closing the tap when you’re brushing your teeth or turn off the light when you exit a room.

Of course it’s just a drop in the ocean, but I like to believe I’m helping Gaia a bit and enabling others to do the same :)

Update

Commenter Arthur reminded me that, even if you didn’t give a damn about environment health, as a mobile user you surely value your battery life and you’ve got yet another good reason for using NoScript. And did I mention you can use NoScript on the Fennec mobile browser now?

“Obama is young, handsome, and suntanned too.”

Silvio Berlusconi during today’s official Russia-Italy press conference in Moscow

In other news, I’m about to release first official NoScript version with Fennec support, so please wait a few hours before bombing Italy.

• Forbid fear.com
• Allow hope.org

You’ve done the right thing :)

History will tell that George W. Bush has been a great, very great President of the United States

Silvio Berlusconi, Italian Prime Minister, Columbus Day 2008

George, please, in November take Silvio with you.
Many thanks.