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The Great Giveaway
Good ideas are worth money. So why are hard headed operators giving them away for free? Join our experiment to
find out says Graham Lawton
IF YOU'VE BEEN to a computer show in recent months you might have seen it: a shiny silver drinks can with a ring-pull logo and the words "opencola" on the side. Inside is a fizzy drink that tastes very much like Coca-Cola. Or is it Pepsi?
There's something else written on the can, though, which sets the drink apart. It says "check out the source at opencola.com". Go to that Web address and you'll see something that's not available on Coca-Cola's website, or Pepsi's--the recipe for cola. For the first time ever, you can make the real thing in your own home.

OpenCola is the world's first "open source" consumer product. By calling it open source, its manufacturer is saying that instructions for making it are freely available. Anybody can make the drink, and anyone can modify and improve on the recipe as long as they, too, release their recipe into the public domain. As a way of doing business it's rather unusual--the Coca-Cola Company doesn't make a habit of giving away precious commercial secrets. But that's the point.
OpenCola is the most prominent sign yet that a long-running battle between rival philosophies in software development has spilt over into the rest of the world. What started as a technical debate over the best way to debug computer programs is developing into a political battle over the ownership of knowledge and how it is used, between those who put their faith in the free circulation of ideas and those who prefer to designate them "intellectual property". No one knows what the outcome will be. But in a world of growing opposition to corporate power, restrictive intellectual property rights and globalisation, open source is emerging as a possible alternative, a potentially potent means of fighting back. And you're helping to test its value right now.
The open source movement originated in 1984 when computer scientist Richard Stallman quit his job at MIT and set up the Free Software Foundation. His aim was to create high-quality software that was freely available to everybody. Stallman's beef was with commercial companies that smother their software with patents and copyrights and keep the source code--the original program, written in a computer language such as C++--a closely guarded secret. Stallman saw this as damaging. It generated poor-quality, bug-ridden software. And worse, it choked off the free flow of ideas. Stallman fretted that if computer scientists could no longer learn from one another's code, the art of programming would stagnate (New Scientist, 12 December 1998, p 42).
Stallman's move resonated round the computer science community and now there are thousands of similar projects. The star of the movement is Linux, an operating system created by Finnish student Linus Torvalds in the early 1990s and installed on around 18 million computers worldwide.
What sets open source software apart from commercial software is the fact that it's free, in both the political and the economic sense. If you want to use a commercial product such as Windows XP or Mac OS X you have to pay a fee and agree to abide by a licence that stops you from modifying or sharing the software. But if you want to run Linux or another open source package, you can do so without paying a penny--although several companies will sell you the software bundled with support services. You can also modify the software in any way you choose, copy it and share it without restrictions. This freedom acts as an open invitation--some say challenge--to its users to make improvements. As a result, thousands of volunteers are constantly working on Linux, adding new features and winkling out bugs. Their contributions are reviewed by a panel and the best ones are added to Linux. For programmers, the kudos of a successful contribution is its own reward. The result is a stable, powerful system that adapts rapidly to technological change. Linux is so successful that even IBM installs it on the computers it sells.
To maintain this benign state of affairs, open source software is covered by a special legal instrument called the General Public License. Instead of restricting how the software can be used, as a standard software license does, the GPL--often known as a "copyleft"--grants as much freedom as possible (see http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl.html). Software released under the GPL (or a similar copyleft licence) can be copied, modified and distributed by anyone, as long as they, too, release it under a copyleft. That restriction is crucial, because it prevents the material from being co-opted into later proprietary products. It also makes open source software different from programs that are merely distributed free of charge. In FSF's words, the GPL "makes it free and guarantees it remains free".
Open source has proved a very successful way of writing software. But it has also come to embody a political stand--one that values freedom of expression, mistrusts corporate power, and is uncomfortable with private ownership of knowledge. It's "a broadly libertarian view of the proper relationship between individuals and institutions", according to open source guru Eric Raymond.
But it's not just software companies that lock knowledge away and release it only to those prepared to pay. Every time you buy a CD, a book, a copy of New Scientist, even a can of Coca-Cola, you're forking out for access to someone else's intellectual property. Your money buys you the right to listen to, read or consume the contents, but not to rework them, or make copies and redistribute them. No surprise, then, that people within the open source movement have asked whether their methods would work on other products. As yet no one's sure--but plenty of people are trying it.
Take OpenCola. Although originally intended as a promotional tool to explain open source software, the drink has taken on a life of its own. The Toronto-based OpenCola company has become better known for the drink than the software it was supposed to promote. Laird Brown, the company's senior strategist, attributes its success to a widespread mistrust of big corporations and the "proprietary nature of almost everything". A website selling the stuff has shifted 150,000 cans. Politically minded students in the US have started mixing up the recipe for parties.
OpenCola is a happy accident and poses no real threat to Coke or Pepsi, but elsewhere people are deliberately using the open source model to challenge entrenched interests. One popular target is the music industry. At the forefront of the attack is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco group set up to defend civil liberties in the digital society. In April of last year, the EFF published a model copyleft called the Open Audio License (OAL). The idea is to let musicians take advantage of digital music's properties--ease of copying and distribution--rather than fighting against them. Musicians who release music under an OAL consent to their work being freely copied, performed, reworked and reissued, as long as these new products are released under the same licence. They can then rely on "viral distribution" to get heard. "If the people like the music, they will support the artist to ensure the artist can continue to make music," says Robin Gross of the EFF.
It's a little early to judge whether the OAL will capture imaginations in the same way as OpenCola. But it's already clear that some of the strengths of open source software simply don't apply to music. In computing, the open source method lets users improve software by eliminating errors and inefficient bits of code, but it's not obvious how that might happen with music. In fact, the music is not really "open source" at all. The files posted on the OAL music website http://www.openmusicregistry.org so far are all MP3s and Ogg Vorbises--formats which allow you to listen but not to modify.
It's also not clear why any mainstream artists would ever choose to release music under an OAL. Many bands objected to the way Napster members circulated their music behind their backs, so why would they now allow unrestricted distribution, or consent to strangers fiddling round with their music? Sure enough, you're unlikely to have heard of any of the 20 bands that have posted music on the registry. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Open Audio amounts to little more than an opportunity for obscure artists to put themselves in the shop window.
The problems with open music, however, haven't put people off trying open source methods elsewhere. Encyclopedias, for example, look like fertile ground. Like software, they're collaborative and modular, need regular upgrading, and improve with peer review. But the first attempt, a free online reference called Nupedia, hasn't exactly taken off. Two years on, only 25 of its target 60,000 articles have been completed. "At the current rate it will never be a large encyclopedia," says editor-in-chief Larry Sanger. The main problem is that the experts Sanger wants to recruit to write articles have little incentive to participate. They don't score academic brownie points in the same way software engineers do for upgrading Linux, and Nupedia can't pay them.
It's a problem that's inherent to most open source products: how do you get people to chip in? Sanger says he's exploring ways to make money out of Nupedia while preserving the freedom of its content. Banner adverts are a possibility. But his best hope is that academics start citing Nupedia articles so authors can earn academic credit.
There's another possibility: trust the collective goodwill of the open source community. A year ago, frustrated by the treacle-like progress of Nupedia, Sanger started another encyclopedia named Wikipedia (the name is taken from open source Web software called WikiWiki that allows pages to be edited by anyone on the Web). It's a lot less formal than Nupedia: anyone can write or edit an article on any topic, which probably explains the entries on beer and Star Trek. But it also explains its success. Wikipedia already contains 19,000 articles and is acquiring several thousand more each month. "People like the idea that knowledge can and should be freely distributed and developed," says Sanger. Over time, he reckons, thousands of dabblers should gradually fix any errors and fill in any gaps in the articles until Wikipedia evolves into an authoritative encyclopedia with hundreds of thousands of entries.
Another experiment that's proved its worth is the OpenLaw project at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. Berkman lawyers specialise in cyberlaw--hacking, copyright, encryption and so on--and the centre has strong ties with the EFF and the open source software community. In 1998 faculty member Lawrence Lessig, now at Stanford Law School, was asked by online publisher Eldritch Press to mount a legal challenge to US copyright law. Eldritch takes books whose copyright has expired and publishes them on the Web, but new legislation to extend copyright from 50 to 70 years after the author's death was cutting off its supply of new material. Lessig invited law students at Harvard and elsewhere to help craft legal arguments challenging the new law on an online forum, which evolved into OpenLaw.
Normal law firms write arguments the way commercial software companies write code. Lawyers discuss a case behind closed doors, and although their final product is released in court, the discussions or "source code" that produced it remain secret. In contrast, OpenLaw crafts its arguments in public and releases them under a copyleft. "We deliberately used free software as a model," says Wendy Selzer, who took over OpenLaw when Lessig moved to Stanford. Around 50 legal scholars now work on Eldritch's case, and OpenLaw has taken other cases, too.
"The gains are much the same as for software," Selzer says. "Hundreds of people scrutinise the 'code' for bugs, and make suggestions how to fix it. And people will take underdeveloped parts of the argument, work on them, then patch them in." Armed with arguments crafted in this way, OpenLaw has taken Eldritch's case--deemed unwinnable at the outset--right through the system and is now seeking a hearing in the Supreme Court.
There are drawbacks, though. The arguments are in the public domain right from the start, so OpenLaw can't spring a surprise in court. For the same reason, it can't take on cases where confidentiality is important. But where there's a strong public interest element, open sourcing has big advantages. Citizens' rights groups, for example, have taken parts of OpenLaw's legal arguments and used them elsewhere. "People use them on letters to Congress, or put them on flyers," Selzer says.
The open content movement is still at an early stage and it's hard to predict how far it will spread. "I'm not sure there are other areas where open source would work," says Sanger. "If there were, we might have started it ourselves." Eric Raymond has also expressed doubts. In his much-quoted 1997 essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, he warned against applying open source methods to other products. "Music and most books are not like software, because they don't generally need to be debugged or maintained," he wrote. Without that need, the products gain little from others' scrutiny and reworking, so there's little benefit in open sourcing. "I do not want to weaken the winning argument for open sourcing software by tying it to a potential loser," he wrote.
But Raymond's views have now shifted subtly. "I'm more willing to admit that I might talk about areas other than software someday," he told New Scientist. "But not now." The right time will be once open source software has won the battle of ideas, he says. He expects that to happen around 2005.
And so the experiment goes on. As a contribution to it, New Scientist has agreed to issue this article under a copyleft. That means you can copy it, redistribute it, reprint it in whole or in part, and generally play around with it as long as you, too, release your version under a copyleft and abide by the other terms and conditions in the licence. We also ask that you inform us of any use you make of the article, by e-mailing copyleft@newscientist.com.
One reason for doing so is that by releasing it under a copyleft, we can print the recipe for OpenCola without violating its copyleft. If nothing else, that demonstrates the power of the copyleft to spread itself. But there's another reason, too: to see what happens. To my knowledge this is the first magazine article published under a copyleft. Who knows what the outcome will be? Perhaps the article will disappear without a trace. Perhaps it will be photocopied, redistributed, re-edited, rewritten, cut and pasted onto websites, handbills and articles all over the world. I don't know--but that's the point. It's not up to me any more. The decision belongs to all of us.
Further reading:
For a selection of copylefts, see http://www.eff.org/IP/Open_licenses/open_alternatives.html
The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric Raymond is available at http://tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/
Editor's comment
THE INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE IS FREE. It may be copied, distributed and/or modified under the conditions set down in the Design Science License published by Michael Stutz at http://dsl.org/copyleft/dsl.txt

La fórmula e la Opencola es:
3,5 ml orange oil
1 ml lemon oil
1 ml nutmeg oil
1.25 ml cassia oil
0.25 ml coriander oil
0.25 ml neroli oil
2.75 ml lime oil
0.25 ml lavender oil
10 g gum arabic (gum arabic para comer no la industrial para pegar)
3 ml de agua

posted by Fabian 11:25 p. m.

Espias en nuestro computador

Cada vez hay más software "gratis" que hace cosas muy útiles para nosotros pero que simultáneamente nos está espiando.
Uno de ellos es Gator, una pequeña pieza de software que recuerda nuestras palabras clave, nuestra dirección, etc. y nos ayuda a rellenar formularios en Internet. Lamentablemente también va registrando nuestras costumbres, a qué páginas accedemos, qué solemos comprar... y esos datos los venden al mejor postor.

Si tenemos en cuenta lo pesados que se están poniendo los publicistas, ésta no es una buena noticia.
¿A quiuén no se le ha abierto, navegando en Internet, una ventana ofreciendo la webcam X-10? ¡Qué pesadez! ¡Qué aburrimiento! ¡Qué gasto de mi tiempo, del tiempo de mi ordenador, del tiempo de mis líneas!

Si quieres saber si en tu ordenador se ha colado alguno de esos programas espías, aquí tienes un programa que lo hace y que te ayuda a limpiarlo, se llama Ad-Aware.

.http://www.answersthatwork.com/downright.htm

Hay otro programita que en esa página se defiende que es muy útil como complemento del anterior, pero que yo no he sabido usarlo, se llama: Ad-search.
fabian.respighi@worldonline.es

posted by Fabian 5:15 a. m.

Música gratis completamente legal
Hace años se inició un movimiento de "software" gratis que ha conseguido que quien lo desee tenga muchas herramientas informáticas de alta calidad absolutamente gratis y que, además, puede copiar, modificar y distribuir siempre que las modificaciones continúen siendo gratis. El mayor exponente de este movimiento es el sistema operativo Linux que ya está instalado en más de 18 millones de ordenadores. Todavía no es el número de usuarios de Windows, pero ya no es una cifra nada despreciable.

Han surgido otros movimientos similares, por ejemplo es de música gratis. En este caso los autores ponen su música a disposición gratuita de quien la quiera. Se puede copiar y se puede enviar por Internet. Lo único que hay que hacer es enviar quién es el autor, a quién pertenecen los derechos, etc.; las normas pueden verse en: http://dsl.org/copyleft/dsl.txt.

Música de este movimiento puede descargarse en: http://dsl.org/music/

Les recuerdo que esa música puede copiarse y distribuirse y que la Sociedad General de Autores de España no puede inmiscuirse en lo más mínimo. Incluso puedes copiarlo en un CD.

Una reflexión final: recientemente un juzgado de Barcelona ha admitido a tramite una demanda de la SGAE contra una empresa de fabricación de CD vírgenes “porque en ellos se puede `piratear música” y pretenden cobrar 30 pesetas por CD virgen. ¡Cuándo se van a enterar los de la SGAE y los jueces de que los CD vírgenes se pueden utilizar para guardar tus propios textos, programas gratuitos e incluso música gratuita que se escapa de sus garras recaudatorias.

Otra reflexión: si a mi me obligan a pagar 30 pesetas por cada CD virgen que compro "porque puedo piratear música", ¿quién me puede decir algo si la pirateo?

Saludos

posted by Fabian 3:24 a. m.

2. PARARRAYOS DE AGUA.

Los rayos son sobrecogedores y bellos... pero tienen una cara oculta quizá no muy conocida: sólo en Estados Unidos mueren 600 personas al año debido a que “les cae un rayo”. Las compañías de seguros pagan (en USA) más de 5 000 millones de euros al año por daños producidos por los rayos. ¿Esos muertos y esos daños podrían evitarse, al menos en parte, con pararrayos de agua?

La mayor parte de los muertos por rayos ocurren en estadios deportivos o en campos de juegos. Las grandes extensiones de campo libre hacen difícil su protección con pararrayos normales.

En otras ocasiones, como por ejemplo cuando se trata de lanzar un cohete para poner satélites en órbita, el propio cohete actúa de pararrayos. Si tenemos en cuenta que van cargados con millones de litros de fuel, el que hagan de pararrayos no tiene ninguna gracia.

¿Hay algún medio de descargar las nubes, como hacen los pararrayos pero en campo abierto? Según Doug Palmer, que ha fundado la compañía BoltBlocker, piensa que sí se puede hacer. Su idea consiste en lanzar un fino chorro de agua de un centímetro de diámetro a 300 metros de altura. El agua es salada, para que conduzca la electricidad, y polímeros solubles para evitar que el chorro se rompa y con él la continuidad de camino eléctrico.

Piensan que podría lanzarse hacia las nubes cargadas y permitir que por el chorro de agua se descargara. Estiman que el chorro podría soportar una corriente de 10 000 amperios.

Suena más a deseos y buenas intenciones que a realidades; pero la verdad es que está dentro de lo razonable; incluso hay pruebas de que funciona. En 1960, la US Navy, al detonar una carga profunda experimental, produjo un enorme chorro de agua salada que se lanzó hacía el cielo. Segundos después los rayos caían hacía ese chorro. Es decir, el chorro estaba descargando las nubes y las hacía perder su peligrosidad.

Para proteger lugares como estadios deportivos se llevarían cañones de agua (salada con polímeros) portátiles. Se lanzaría el chorro y se descargaría la nube.

Esa es la teoría. ¡Ójala funcione!

Noticia publicada en New Scientist New Scientist issue: 2nd February 2002
PLEASE MENTION NEW SCIENTIST AS THE SOURCE OF THIS STORY AND, IF PUBLISHING ONLINE, PLEASE CARRY A HYPERLINK TO: http://www.newscientist.com

En Francia los rayos producen:
2 millones de descargas eléctricas/año
40 personas muertas y 20 000 animales muertos o heridos/año
17 000 incendios declarados
50 000 contadores eléctricos deteriorado
http://www.franklin-france.com/espagnol/protect.html

posted by Fabian 2:32 a. m.

lunes, febrero 04, 2002

Pero, ¿qué edad tiene esa merluza?

¿Cómo puede saberse la edad de los peces?

Para ciertas especies cuyo desarrollo es muy conocido, sin duda, algunos biólogos son capaces de estimar su edad. Por ejemplo, las truchas de una piscifactoría. Aunque todo ello con matices, pues como dice el refrán “ca uno es ca uno”.

Es decir , hay importantes variaciones individuales.

Pero más importante aún son las variaciones entre especies o entre variedades de una misma especie. Nos encontramos un pez de cinco kilos en alta mar; lo probamos y sabe muy bien. Pensamos en criarlo en piscifactorías. ¿Será domesticable? ¿Crecerá adecuadamente, sin muchas enfermedades? Y... ¿cuántos años tarda en alcanzar un tamaño razonable para la venta?

Tras haber superado las primeras preguntas, la última se vuelve fundamental. La rentabilidad de la especie dependerá de su velocidad de desarrollo. Dicho en “román paladino”: cuanto más rápido engorde y con menor consumo de alimento, mejor. Por tanto, se hace básico conocer la edad del animal. Con esto volvemos a la pregunta del principio: ¿cómo se conoce la edad de un pez?, ¿de una nueva variedad que los biólogos no tienen bien estudiada? (dicho sea de paso, no están bien estudiadas la mayoría de las especies y subespecies).

Para saber la edad de los peces hay un ciencia, actualmente en pleno auge que se llama esclerocronología que estudia las bandas de crecimiento anual de ciertas partes duras de animales. Es algo parecido a la dendrocronología que estudia los anillos de crecimiento de los árboles; en este caso se estudian varias cosas; por ejemplo, las bandas de crecimiento de los corales, o en los peces, los anillos que recubren los otolitos.

¿Que qué son los otolitos? Su nombre nos lo dice: piedras del oído. Todos los vertebrados poseen en su oído interno pequeñas bolitas de carbonato cálcico que se llaman otolitos. Están formados por diversas capas envolventes, como las cebollas. Concretamente los teleósteos tienen tres pares de otolitos; el más voluminoso es útil para determinar la edad del animal.

En las distintas capas de los otolitos, un ojo experto puede ver las distintas fases del crecimiento del animal, y en algunos casos, el transcurso de ls estaciones, e incluso de los días,... es decir, es capaz de determinar la edad del individuo y algunas de las vicisitudes por las que ha pasado a lo largo de la vida. Especialistas capaces de hacer eso hay pocos. El Laboratorios de Esclerocronología de Animales Acuáticos (LASAA), de Francia ha puesto a punto un programa para ir introduciendo datos de diferentes peces y luego poder hacer las comparaciones. La idea sería trocear el otolito el pez del que queremos saber la edad y detalles de su vida. Hacer una “foto” con microscopio electrónico y comprarla con la base de datos... De es modo se obtendrían los datos pedidos. El proyecto está en marcha y funcionando de forma satisfactoria. LASAA forma parte del Instituto IFREMER.

Más datos en: www.ifremer.fr/lasaa

Email: fabian.respighi@wordlonline.es

Observación: Lo aquí escrito son sólo notas para ayudarme en mis programas de radio y televisión. No es una redacción final para publicar. Si usted quiere publicarlas, por favor, dígamelo y le haré una versión más elaborada. Gracias.

posted by Fabian 12:39 p. m.