wtfm … I like it

Slashdot is reporting today that 27 Central Banks form the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group which was behind the alteration to Photoshop CS which prevents you from working on images on banknotes. The Irish Central Bank is a member of this organisation, and it is at least alleged that the EU is looking to bring in controls similar to this under a Directive. While it appears that initially the directive would be targetted at Hardware such as Scanners and Printers, it is another step towards EU mandated limitations on what computers can do. Will in criminalise Lego Mindstorms becuase you could use it to build a scanner? Would it criminalise SANE because it makes it easier for you to build your own scanner? I think someone with a better stomach for trying to piece together the sort of rubbish document they have put out needs to examine it more closely and summarise it to see if we have anything to start getting worried about. I think on principle I object to the idea though I wouldn’t want ILUG to be seen as defending Counterfeiters!

First blog!

about the only potentially interesting thing I have to say though is that I wonder if the windows source release that everyone is talking about will lead to another call to arms for linux.ie to defend the “community”? Why? Well the source was being held on a linux box, the company had the source because it had worked on porting IE and Media Player to unix (not Linux) and obviously this must all be the fault of anti-MS pro Open Source people who are either angry at MS for porting IE to unix, or angry at them for not porting it to linux or just plain terrorists!