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We’ve pointed to plenty of examples concerning how pharmaceutical patents actually do more to hold back life-saving cures, and here’s another example. It’s actually a continuation of a story we wrote about a year and a half ago, about Indonesia’s decision to stop supplying bird flu samples to the World Health Organization, claiming it was worried that a big pharma would patent a drug based off of it, and Indonesia wouldn’t receive any of the benefit. The country has something of a point: as pharma companies have made various cures incredibly expensive in the past.

However, Indonesia is now taking this a step further, claiming “viral sovereignty” over the bird flu. In other words, it’s claiming that since the virus samples are found in the country, Indonesia owns the virus — and it’s fighting pretty much every attempt by others to do anything with the virus, sometimes using questionable claims such as one about how a US medical research facility is trying to use the virus not to create a cure, but to create biological weapons. It’s basing this claim of “viral sovereignty” on the same ridiculous patent rules that allow a country to claim “ownership” and patents over indigenous plants.

While there’s obviously a huge political component to this dispute, at the heart of the trouble is this idea of “ownership” of something like a plant, virus or drug — and that’s an idea that the US has been a huge supporter of, so it can hardly complain about Indonesia taking it to the logical conclusion. And, of course, that logical conclusion is the exact opposite of what supporters of pharma patents insist the system is designed to encourage. That is, thanks to this hoarding and claims of ownership, not nearly enough research is being done to try to create vaccines for bird flu. And, to make this even worse, it appears other countries are starting to consider “viral sovereignty,” as well — meaning that research into curing various diseases may grind to halt while various countries argue over who owns what.

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Integrated home systems may include all or any of the following:-

Video sources to various rooms using display equipment from TFT, Plasma, Projection and PC connectivity.
Audio distribution of CD based music, digital radio, digital TV broadcasts from terrestrial and satellite broadcasters, cable and increasingly over the internet.
Data connections for the use of home networked computers access [...]

Washing machines made by Whirlpool, Sears, Kenmore and Kitchen Aid, these newer machines are called direct drive, the older machines used a belt and motor to drive the transmission. These direct drive machines use a coupling to drive the gearcase, this coupling is connected to the motor and the gearcase, the couplings sometimes break. When [...]

Want to know when someone is preparing to take away your First Amendment rights? It’s when they claim that they have a proposal that involves “balancing” those rights with other events (sent to us by Eric Goldman). In this case, the proposal comes from a professor from Brigham Young University, Cheryl B. Preston, who’s proposing the idea for an Internet Community Ports Act (ICPA), which would create special “zones” online where it would be okay for “adult” material to reside, and other zones that would be kid friendly. Apparently, this is needed to:

Find a reasonable balance among the values of the First Amendment, the appeal of an unfettered technological frontier, the right to be free of unwanted speech, and the right of parents to have the aid of the government in protecting children from age-inappropriate sexually explicit content online.

We’ve seen similar proposals in the past that haven’t gone very far. And, this proposal seems quite similar to that older proposal — except presented by a law professor in a law review, rather than a local business man. Like that last proposal, this one focuses on having all adult content be accessed over a specific port. As we noted when that earlier proposal came out, the problem isn’t with the idea of a “red light” district, but with determining what is and is not considered reasonable or “harmful.” Given how badly many online filtering services “over filter” content, this could be a real problem.

Yet Preston brushes this very big issue aside:

Much of the debate about regulating pornography has stymied
on the esoteric impossibility of drawing the line between acceptable
and unacceptable content. However, “definitions” is a diversionary
argument. Not only do we know it when we see it, we now have
codified the scope of it and relied for federal court purposes on the
ready identification of it by a range of observers.

Not quite. While it is, perhaps, possible to have courts judge these things for professional publications, when you’re talking about a communications medium where everyone is a publisher and decisions need to be made in real time, that “definition” problem is very, very real. Much of the rest of the argument in favor of this law, again, seems to miss out on this important factor, acting as if the rules that have been set up for traditional publishing systems can equally be applied to real-time communications. That’s simply not true.

But, of course, with the latest smack down against the COPA law, you can bet that politicians will eventually be looking for the next big “protect the children on the internet” law — so don’t be surprised if you see a version of this proposed law bubble up at some point.

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There’s no shortage of of remote controlled helicopters out there but how about something completely different.

This is the Draganflyer X6 helicopter, which uses six main horizontal rotor blades that allow it to hover efficiently and manoeuvre rapidly using differential thrust. All that lift means that it can be equipped with HD camcorders, night vision, still or thermal imaging cameras and because it has in-built GPS, it can be set to hover over a particular location while you go make a cuppa. Here’s what the makers say:

One of the issues that comes up when we discuss the economics of infinite goods is people too often falsely define the product that’s being sold as the market, rather than the benefit. As we mentioned the other day, that’s why the builders of horse carriages reacted the wrong way to the automobile. If they had realized they were in the transportation business, the automobile would have been as an opportunity to provide a better transportation experience. One of the side effects of properly recognizing the benefit is that it often shifts around the business model of the market you’re in. The money may end up coming from somewhere entirely differently than before. The music industry is discovering this today (painfully). The money isn’t in the product itself (music) but in the scarcities made valuable by the product (concerts, access to the artists, creating new works, etc.).

So, for folks struggling with these issues, one of the most important things to do after figuring out what your real market is, is to then figure out where all the scarcities are that are made more valuable by freeing up the infinite goods. The trick is to then position yourself to capture money in that market. But where this gets really tricky is those products may be surprising or appear to be in a totally different space (e.g., concerts rather than selling plastic discs) and that can be scary for those who are used to the old model.

I’ve had a few folks submit the GameIndustry.biz interview with Todd Hollenshead, the CEO of id Games, where he talks about the “hidden benefit” of piracy… but for computer makers, not video game producers. He’s correct, other than the fact that it’s not that hidden. There’s a very real and admitted benefit to computer manufacturers — but that doesn’t mean that there also isn’t a benefit for the video game makers themselves. Basically, when you look at the video game market, one of the big scarcities that benefits from free games is the computer makers.

But rather than somehow blaming them for not fighting piracy hard enough, why not take advantage of that? Get PC makers to finance new games, pointing out that if they give out the games for free it will help drive more people to buy the next generation of high powered PCs that are needed to run the games. In that way, everyone can benefit. The PC makers (or maybe even Intel or someone) can pay for the game, and then use that to turn in more sales of high powered computers. The video game developers get paid, the computer makers get a great tool to sell more new PCs and users get a free game with their PC. Everyone comes out better off and there’s no “problem” of piracy.

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As the French president Nicolas Sarkozy thrashed out a ceasefire between the Kremlin and Georgia this month, a Georgian Airways plane touched down in Tbilisi carrying a team of his fellow countrymen who have been among the first on the ground in disaster areas and war zones for the past decade.

The charity they work for has provided a vital service for bodies from the UN and World Health Organisation to Oxfam and Save the Children and has directly helped hundreds of thousands of people caught up in earthquakes, mud slides, famines and wars.

The French team were taking telecoms equipment into the Georgian capital. Télécoms Sans Frontières (TSF) has provided a vital link for aid agencies and a lifeline to friends and relatives from Iraq and Niger to Sri Lanka and Nicaragua.

TSF - which has no connection with the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières - is the brainchild of former caterer Jean-François Cazenave, whose only previous connection with the world of communications had been a brief stint with the French postal service that eventually split to form France Télécom.

Cazenave, transfixed by television news footage about the plight of the Kurds, got talking with a friend who worked for a British frozen foods company about how they could help.

Ten days later, with $10,000 and 40 volunteers, they were ready to ship out clothes and other supplies in two lorries, one bound for Iran and the other heading for the Turkish border. In unmistakably French style, that first consignment also included 100,000 pieces of cheese. The trip to Kurdistan was followed by mercy missions to the Balkans the following year. But what surprised Cazenave on every trip was the reaction of the people he had come to help when it came time for the trucks to roll out again.

“When we left the camp they all gave us pieces of paper with a telephone number on them saying ‘when you get back to France phone my friend, phone my father, phone my brother, say we are here, that their uncle is dead and that we are here and they have to help us’. That is how it began. During the war in Bosnia it was the same. In the 45 times I went there, every time we have come back from Mostar or Sarajevo and so on we had a list of people to call when we got home.”

He started to look into whether there were ways of setting up communications facilities into the refugee camps that had sprung up all over the Balkans and realised there was nothing.

“Every time we saw the same thing - there is a need for victims to be able to communicate. And all the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) also need telecommunications.”

So he went back to his local council with a proposal and the mayor bought Cazenave his first satellite phone.

Now 53, the doughty Cazenave would not look out of place running a vineyard. The early days of TSF, officially started in 1998, confirms his job is a lot harder than it first appears. On one of his first outings he was threatened by an angry Albanian who put a gun to his head and the following year was taken hostage by Bosnian Serbs.

“Part of the problem is that I have a big mouth,” he jokes in his heavily accented English. “Now I am more, not relaxed, but careful about what I say.”

His first trip, to Albania in 1998, proved him right. He had gone out there with one satellite phone to help refugees from Bosnia.

“We opened our little centre, in a village school, and a load of people came. What was fantastic was that a few days later I remember seeing people arriving in cars to take away their family and we thought ‘this idea is good’.”

When he got back, he founded TSF along with some of his former colleagues, including Monique Lanne-Petit, who remains a director.

On one mission the following year in Macedonia, TSF had 400 people turn up to make calls the first day. Two days later there were 25,000 and a queue a mile long and the media started to take notice of the Frenchman with a satellite phone. From there the team went to Kosovo. Cazenove had 6,000 francs (£700) in his pocket and plans to stay for two weeks. He ended up staying for more than a year and by the end of it, TSF was operating under a UN mandate.

TSF then became involved in disaster relief after the 1999 earthquake that struck Izmit in western Turkey. TSF volunteers took some of the kit from Kosovo to help out. “It was our first intervention for a natural disaster. We stayed there for 10 days.”

Since then TSF has been out on more than 70 missions to 50-odd countries. It has attracted the backing of the Vodafone Group Foundation, the United Nations Foundation, the European Commission Humanitarian Office (ECHO), satellite communications groups Inmarsat, Eutelsat and Vizada, telecoms companies AT&T and Cable & Wireless and the Regional Council of Aquitaine. It now has 20 full-time staff and twice that number of volunteers.

Only two countries have defeated TSF. It reluctantly pulled out of Iraq, because the queues of people waiting to use the phone could attract suicide bombers, and Burma, where the regime refused it access to the Irrawaddy delta after the cyclone hit the region this year.

TSF has expanded its operations in recent years, not just setting up communications hubs for NGOs, but also using the latest generation of satellite phones - which provide internet and send pictures - to put people in remote areas in touch with distant medical facilities.

In the west African state of Niger, ravaged by famine, TSF has put in place communication services in 37 locations to help the government’s national food crisis prevention system. In South America it trains people in impoverished areas to use the latest IT systems.

At its core TSF does exactly what it started out doing 10 years ago and is doing it right now in Georgia: providing vital communications to people who have lost absolutely everything.

During that 10 years, TSF has suffered only two accidents - give or take the odd kidnapping. One volunteer was injured in Iraq and more recently one of the team in Niger contracted malaria.

Cazenave says: “The most dangerous thing we do is use the local equipment, like cars and helicopters. We go to poor countries and the cars are old and we drive very fast because we have to arrive very quickly. The helicopters we have to use are sometimes helicopters that should not be made to fly but in an emergency you have no choice.”

tsfi.org

India’s second largest IT services business, Infosys Technologies, yesterday swooped on UK-based Axon Group with an all-cash offer of £407m as it attempts to strengthen its position in European markets. The deal will see the three men who founded Axon in 1994 walk away with nearly £70m.

Infosys employs more than 90,000 people, with the majority in India. IT consultancy Axon has 2,000 employees and works with firms that use business software from German developer SAP.

Infosys chief executive Kris Gopalakrishnan, one of the original team of seven who founded the company in 1981 with only $250 (£140), moved to assuage fears that the deal would lead to job losses and mass-outsourcing of Axon’s work to the subcontinent. He said there is little overlap between the clients of the two companies.

“It is very important to us that people stay and make the whole thing work,” he stressed. “We are doing this acquisition so we can leverage all the employees.”

The deal, which values Axon at 600p and is being funded from Infosys’s cash pile, has the backing of Axon’s management and its founders who hold just under 17.9% of the business.

The deal will crystallise the fortune of Mark Hunter, the Belfast-born IT expert who stepped down as chairman at the end of last year. He was part of the three-man team who founded Axon back in 1994, and brought it to the stock market five years later. He has been selling down his stake over the past few years and now holds just under 11.5% which is worth £44m.

Co-founder Donald Kirkwood will receive more than £14.4m for his remaining shares while the last of the original team, Paul Manweiler, will get about £10.4m.

Axon has expanded into the US over recent years, buying rival Feanix in 2005 and clinching three further deals the following year. It also has operations in Asia including a base in China.

In April at the company’s annual meeting chief executive Steve Cardell, who Infosys hopes will remain with the business, said “despite the uncertain macroeconomic environment, trading has been encouraging”.

Axon is due to report its half-year results this morning with analysts expecting revenues of about £120m and operating profits of about £20m.

Consider me to be in a state of shock. For nearly half a decade Diebold has always responded in the identical way to every single report of a problem or security vulnerability with its e-voting machines: attacking those who pointed out the problem and claiming it really wasn’t a problem at all. This has happened time and time again that I’m not even sure how to react when the company (renamed Premier to get away from the Diebold name stigma) has finally admitted that its machines have a flaw that drops votes. Oops. It’s warning 34 states that use the machines of the problem which was highlighted in the lawsuit Ohio filed against Premiere/Diebold. Not only that, but it’s admitting the flaw in the software has been in the software for the past decade.

So, uh, why was the company blaming anti-virus software just a couple months ago?

It should also make us question Premier/Diebold’s longstanding claim that independent outsiders should not be allowed to inspect its machines for problems. Of course, Diebold execs are already downplaying all of this, claiming that they were “confident” that this hadn’t actually impacted any elections, though they offer no proof of that. The company’s president admits he’s “distressed” that they were wrong in their previous analysis, but he fails to explain why the company is so against letting outsides inspect the machines to avoid such flaws. In the meantime, the company insists that the problem will be patched in time for the November election, and I’m sure we’re all confident that there won’t be any other problems with their machines, right?

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Wireless juice wasn’t the only thing Intel had to talk about at the recent IDF event, as chief technology officer Justin Rattner had some rather disturbing news about the future of artificial intelligence.

We’ve been following the gradual takeover of the machines here on Gizmodo recently so thought it fitting to showcase Rattner’s take on the future of our robot friends (read overlords as of 2050).