Pressepapiers.net

Babble promises free calls to landlines in the UK, USA Mainland (including Canada according to their number tester), Australia, New Zealand and Europe)

If the hype is true, I can’t understand why the self described Broadband VoIP Telephone Service with FREE calls! is not currently #1 on Google for Babble. Not that Rabble is not a worthy cause, especially with all the stories on Bush’s visit (plus, they work with OneWorld.ca, which works with Alternatives… But I disgress).

Could it be because I can’t seem to connect to the network with their client and I’m not alone? Or maybe it’s a firewall problem: Skype works fine from this network, but MSN file transfer does not. I don’t dare to probe around too much…

But I definitely want to get it to work though though, as free calls home is a sweet promise (Calling Grenadine at work from home, when were both reasonably awake! And calling her from home, without having to go to the payphone on the street corner a block away would be a bonus too). The promised MacOS X client will most likely make me more proactive, in the meantime, there is Skype and a bunch of other, with a clearer revenue stream.

But I still have to send my PowerBook back to the mechanics: they forgot to repair the sound-in port the first time around (on the other hand, I don’t get that gentle electrical tingle while my skin bridges my charging laptop with a grounded object anymore, and that’s a plus).

Maybe I should just bite the bullet and get pots, for which I might get more options soon.

[Babble knowledge is a courtesy of Om Malik and VoIP watch.]

Aggregator fodder:

The Top VoIP Bloggers of 2004: Updated: “Since I first posted my list of The Top VoIP Bloggers of 2004, I have been updating the list daily as additional people/resources are ‘discovered.’…”

[Via The Jeff Pulver Blog.]

It’s 18h40 and I can take a few minutes to read my news.

Boing Boing has a post titled Tis the season to STICK IT TO THE MAN which I would have skimmed over if not for the featured image, which seemed familiar:

[source]

Compare with future hooligan forwarded to me in an email titled “Why men shouldn’t baby sit”. A meme in the making? An obscure reference? A freak coincidence?

Disclaimer: I do not condone taping a kid’s fingers together to allow him to “stick it to the man” when he’s too young to have the coordination to fold his fingers correctly. I might have laughed if that was done to a friend’s son though…

Barkavin, c’est une soirée de dégustation des vins de Genève sur le Henry-Dunant; c’est pas l’Alsace pour la quantité, mais il y a des produits à découvrir, notamment le Gamaret, intéressant cépage très suisse, que je ne connaissait pas.

Très sympa tout ça et ça m’a en plus permis de me procurer les verres a vin qui faisaient défaut à ma cuisine (logement meublé mon oeil).

Cette semaine, c’est les JASP.

Grenadine va encore augmenter son Google rank.

Je laisse la parole a Grenadine, qui s’exprime ainsi pour décrire notre escapade en Alsace:

J’ai (enfin) déposé mon mémoire de maîtrise il y a quelques semaines, spécifiquement le 26 octobre.

Pour célébrer, j’ai pris une petite semaine de vacances qui a dégénérée en escapade Franco-Suisse où nous avons pu voir d’où viennent vraiment les bébés:

(Maintenant que ce grand mystère est dévoilé, permettez-moi de vous apprendre que semble-t-il que le sapin de Noël décoratif est aussi natif de l’Alsace…)

Pour ce faire, et surtout pour passer incognitos, nous avons loué une voiture TOTALEMENT discrète…

Dont la couleur du texte permet un camouflage très harmonisé avec les vignobles. C’est dans ce rutilant bolide que nous avons exploré une certaine portion de la route des vins, mon genou ne me permettant pas d’explorer les Vosges à pied. Notre principal exercice fût donc d’essayer de prononcer les noms des villages dans le genre de Niedermorschwir (et ça c’est un facile), la population locale ne pouvant nous aider dans cet effort de prononciation puisque distraits que nous sommes, nous avions oublié que le 11 novembre se fête en France, et il n’y avait, donc, aucune âme qui vive sur notre chemin… Par contre un festival de maisons sorties tout droit d’un compte de fées nous a accueilli partout où le regard se posait, ce qui a égaillé la grisaille qui régnait en permanence.

Et un chateau aussi, celui du Haut-Koenigsbourg, où la vue, totalement splendide, permet de voir jusqu’aux Alpes :

Mais la chose la plus intéressante à faire en Alsace quand on a mal au genou demeure profiter des vins locaux. Personnellement, je préfère les vendanges tardives:

Sur le point de faire une indigestion de foie gras/choucroute garnie/munster/tartes flambées/kougelhopf/foulards et sacoches motifs Burberry/vin blanc (surtout en dégustation à jeûn le samedi matin à 10h00… ) nous sommes rentrés bien gentiment à Genève. J’avais un avion à prendre aussi.

Sur ce, un chaleureux merci à tous et à toutes pour le support et les encouragements tout au long de ma maîtrise, je n’aurais pu le faire sans vous. Je lève donc un verre de marc de Gewurztraminer (comme on nous a répondu: “c’est de l’alcool monsieur”) à votre honneur.

Grosses bises

Dans un article, par ailleurs intéressant, Le Spam dans la ligne de mire de l’UIT portant sur les efforts de l’UIT pour susciter un consensus multilatéral sur le pourriel, on mentionne comme objectif la conclusion à terme d’un “MoU, un Memorandum of Understatement”.

Le terme habituellement utilisé est “Understanding”, on entend aussi parfois ironiquement “Declaration of mutual appreciation”. Over plus souvent que Under donc.

Geneva Intern Network: The GIN has inexcusably bad web design for a organisation launched in August 2004 (yeah, no such luxury when I was an intern…), yet it could be very useful if it was more well known.

Plus they have a party right by my place on Saturday…

Fido lance à Montréal un service de téléphone résidentiel par cellulaire: Cité Fido à Montréal tel que promis?

Copyright-sharing group delves into science, in CNET News.com. From the CC website, a Proposal to Explore a Science Commons:

Creative Commons is a disinterested party with remarkable experience in the formation and deployment of well-written, accessible, machine- and human-readable licenses that guarantee wider availability of material while preserving some selected intellectual property rights. Along with scientists, patent and university IP lawyers and scholars, we believe that this particular conjunction of features might encourage an enormously valuable thaw against the freeze-in of scientific data. We anticipate that there will be a major role for well-written, standard form, machine- and human-readable agreements:

• Between funders and grant recipients, requiring greater access to data.

• Between universities and researchers, prohibiting collectively the most toxic types of restrictions on data, and guaranteeing a level and open playing field of access to data.
• Between government agencies who are purchasing data from or providing data to, private commercial concerns, so as to develop standard terms that benefited the public and research as a whole.
• In any or all of these areas, a Science Commons division of Creative Commons could play an important role.

[via BNA's ILN]

In NTK:

Last year, Microsoft had 4,000 patents in total. This year, they applied for another 3,000. They are now planning at least twenty IP cross-licensing deals with other large corporations, and have made it clear that they are seeking similiar alliances with even their worst enemies. This April, they quietly offered a “Royalty Free Protocol License Agreement” on their site. It generously allows the license of “any intellectual property rights Microsoft may have in any or all of [the following] protocols”. The 130 protocols listed included Appletalk, most of TCP/IP - and everything else, from DNS to Zmodem, from DHCP to the port 9 discard service (whose sole function is to drop packets). Signing this license frees developers from being sued for IP infringements by Microsoft, but prevents you from working on GPL software (Samba already warns its contributors not to sign it). This week, Microsoft indemnified all their customers from the legal fallout of any court cases revolving around their IP. Which implies there is either about to be such a battle: or at least Microsoft wants everyone to think there’ll be one. Put this week in your diaries, ladies and gentlemen of the Internet: you don’t need Yoda to tell you that the Patent Wars have begun.

More context in Groklaw

[via IP]

Cogitateurs Agitateurs: Salon du livre libre: Le salon du livre libre est un salon du livre où l’on présentera des livres du domaine public et des livres libres et qui se déroulera en même temps que le Salon du Livre de Montreal pour tenter d’attirer l’attention des médias.

Ce sera l’occasion d’informer le public sur les abus des éditeurs, sur les effets néfastes de la concentration des médias, sur l’état actuel des lois sur le droit d’auteur et d’offrir des alternatives viables pour lutter contre ces problèmes. Nous y lancerons aussi un recueil de textes importants sur le mouvement libre.

[via BoingBoing]

Boing Boing: Save Canada’s Internet from WIPO

Canada is strongly considering ratifying the 1996 WIPO “Internet Treaties.” These are the treaties that caused the USA to implement the loathsome Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and they’ve wrought untold damage around the world.

In a Globe and Mail article

Does the Internet Need to be Governed?

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Things grow better with Coke: Indian farmers have come up with what they think is the real thing to keep crops free of bugs.
Instead of paying hefty fees to international chemical companies for patented pesticides, they are reportedly spraying their cotton and chilli fields with Coca-Cola.

Well, not so surprising if you believe the rumors of pesticides in Indian colas

[via IP]