Bill Gates: Free Culture advocates = Commies

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From BoingBoing.net

In an interview on news.com, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates described free culture advocates as a “modern-day sort of communists.”

Q: “In recent years, there's been a lot of people clamoring to reform and restrict intellectual-property rights. It started out with just a few people, but now there are a bunch of advocates saying, 'We've got to look at patents, we've got to look at copyrights.' What's driving this, and do you think intellectual-property laws need to be reformed?

A: “No, I'd say that of the world's economies, there's more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist.

And this debate will always be there. I'd be the first to say that the patent system can always be tuned–including the U.S. patent system. There are some goals to cap some reform elements. But the idea that the United States has led in creating companies, creating jobs, because we've had the best intellectual-property system–there's no doubt about that in my mind, and when people say they want to be the most competitive economy, they've got to have the incentive system. Intellectual property is the incentive system for the products of the future.”

Ok this damm right offensive, where does he get off saying the free-culture movement is sort of like the communists movement. I cant wait to hear what others say about this part of the interview. I'm glad the Bill Gates is worried about free-culture, but this kind of misunderstanding leads to fear and stupid reactions to something quite normal. I mean come on now, you seriously think having a flexable IP system which allows the long tail to be productive is some what anti-captist? Get real! Jon Udell discussed the propsal of the long tail, opensource, creative commons and free-culture in the case of audio recently. And i'm sorry but none of the thoughts sounded communistic in anyway. (some more on the longtail here)

Anyway, I hope Lessig reminds all of us that were so above these silly comments. And that free-culture, creative commons, archive.org, open-source, free software, the creative archive are all part of what makes the internet great and Bill Gates needs to get on now or catch up later.

Update, more views about Gates outburst, while the list grows in blogdigger
Gates Calls Patent Reformists “Communists” from of all places xbmc blogger
Gates brands IPR opponents Communists a link from planet Mozilla
More Gates “Creative Commies” propaganda from boingboing
And what I've been waiting for, lessig replies to Bill Gates. As expected, he takes the moral highground and reminds Bill that he should once in a while engage in a conversation with his own employees. Ow, what a stinger in the tail.

Ok last few comments on the topic now. This weeks Gillmor gang also covers Bill Gates comment but Robert Scoble is in the Hot and uncomfitable seat. Its well worth the listening to, I am suprised that Doc Searls doesnt take it too seriously, i mean I dont and do. Anyway whats really interesing is Miles comments. He pointed out that Bill Gates is surrounded by Yes people who wouldnt dare say anything out of turn (I mean listen to Robert Scoble when Dan asks for his view). And its not even Bill Gates talking, its Microsoft's Shareholders view of the free culture advocates… And in that we are done for now.

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Sanyo S750 is now with me

Sanyo S750

At last, I made the switch to the Sanyo S750. Generally, I'm quite impressed with the operating system and the phone. Its the first phone I've seen which has a decent copy and paste function. Email was a easy as pie to setup, i was tempted with using gmail but decided to stick to hotpop for now. The screen is so slick and beautiful that I cant bear to take off the plastic cover. I still cant believe it has the same rez as my ipaq! The T9 seems very good and allows for multiple languages. I'm glad to say it records all its movies in 3gp format and you can save pictures in either jpg or 24bit png which is amazing! By the way the camera quaity is great and puts my spv to shame. Sanyo really thought about the phone and included simple things like unlimited video recording on to the SD card, ringtones in many formats and unified inboxes for all messages.

However its not all good. First thing I'm having a huge a problem transfering my contacts via bluetooth and infrared from my spv2 and ipaq. It will do one contact at a time which sucks when you got 250 contacts needed to be synced. I really dont want to do it via my laptop but it looks like may have to export vcards from outlook or use the software on the cd. I also tried to hack the settings for orange network sync into the phone so I could use the orange sync option. But it simply refuses to work.
Another thing which is related to bluetooth contacts problems. It seems the Bluetooth only accepts one request then hangs up and kicks you back to the home screen. What this means is, if you want to sync multiple contacts it will simply hangup after the first one sent. The bluetooth also seems to be only on for a certain period of time (maybe to reserve battery life, which is pretty damm good so far). What this means is I need to tell the S750 to get ready to dialup or recieve a item before the event. This sucks big time when using my ipaq. I'm very use to just dialing up with my phone still in my pocket. There has got to be a way around this problem!

Anyhow, other things I've found. Mobile SVG support works but I need to explorer it more. The browser is a openwave xhtml and wap 2.0 browser and its pretty good, but I would rather have Opera thank you! There seems to be no way to have more than one email account on the phone, and I never saw an option for imap just pop3. USB storage mode is useful, because it turns the phone into a USB keychain, but only if you buy the optional usb cable. Not seen this option on any other phone, oh plus the phone does accept sd cards higher than 256meg, I put my 512meg in without any problems. You just got to create folders like a digital camera.

Formats supported by the phone out of the box
Documents [/Sanyo/Media Album/Documents] – SVG (.svg, .svgz), vCard (.vcf), vCalendar (.vcs), vNote (.vnt), Text (.txt).
Melody & Ringtones [/Sanyo/Media Album/Melody & Ringtones] – AAC (.3gp, .mp4), MIDI (.mid, .midi), Voice (.amr), MP3 (.mp3).
Videos [/Sanyo/Media Album/Video List] – Mpeg4 (.3gp, .mp4), H.263 (.3gp, .mp4)
Pictures [/Sanyo/Media Album/Picture] – PNG (.png), GIF (.gif), Bitmap (.bmp), Wireless bitmap (.wbmp), JPEG (.jpg, .jpeg, .jpe)

Generally its a good phone but needs alot of hacking to make it a great phone. I'm just worry if its actually quite hackable and if people will.

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PocketRSS 2.0 is out

Following on from my podcasting with only pocketrss 2.0 entry. Happyjackroad have released version 2.0.1.6 which is the gold version for anyone to listen to. Users of 1.42 can upgrade for free, which is good stuff. Enjoy!

PocketRSS 2.0 screenshots

Features
ability to use Today Screen plugin within PocketBreeze – not much use to me, but very cool today screen plugin none the less
database storage for faster feed viewing/searching/history archiving – yeah beats flat xml files for speed.
simple Feed content management – Yep simple but also advanced and fully featured
namespace/xml mapping feature for advanced users – Seriously crazy feature, which few desktop readers even do
custom view modes (including dynamic, keyword-based views) – yep nicely natrual aggregated views
Feed Wizard to easily add/find new RSS Feeds – includes feedster search and pulls opml files off the web, which few desktop readers do still
support for “stylus-free” viewing /images/emoticons/laugh.gif-pad optimized) – Ideal for reading in a crowded london train
feed item control (read,unread,locked,delete,etc.) – yep very cool
ability to download full article links for offline viewing – bit hit and miss but useful none the less
ability to download audio content (aka podcasting) – No other client does this on the pocketpc yet, enough said!
support for WM2003 SE landscape mode (and VGA) – I dont have a WM2003 SE device so I cant test it
improved network connections – Yep its good
overall new look-n-feel – Didnt like it at first, but love it now.

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