09 Mar 2006
Will spring migration bring bird flu to U.S.?

An educated guess: Alaska, perhaps. Canada, maybe. The contential US: probably not. This fall, or next year, however, is another story ...

The spring migration of birds from Asia to Alaska is expected to start next month, and this year it will encounter a beefed-up federal effort to look for bird flu.

(link) [CNN.com]

00:00 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

Bullshitis Commercialus

Visiting our local supermarket this evening, I happened across a display for a "new" yogurt - Dannon Activa. What caught my eye was the punchline below the main display: "with Bifidus Regularis™"

Now, I'm not a Latin scholar by any means, but I do know a bit about pseudo-Latin, and this was it beyond a doubt. The "regularis" was a dead giveaway, and the trademark was the icing on the cake. Judging from the trademark rather than a "patent pending" notice, I was pretty certain they'd not patented a bacterial yogurt culture (although in this crazy world that's entirely possible). Obviously a mere advertising ploy - they might as well have named it "Poopus Ontimeus".

A bit of investigation showed that they do indeed name this "proprietary culture" different things in their marketing materials depending on the target country: Bifidus Digestivum in most of Europe, Bifidus Regularis in the US, Bifidobacterium Lactis in Canada, Bifidus Activo in Spain and Digestivum Essensis in Germany and Austria.

I think this is a pretty clear case of an attempt to mislead the public with terminology that appears to be scientific, but it really just a trademarked advertising phrase. I believe that the trademark was put in place, at least in part, to discourage any discussion, as under trademark law any use (even on this humble blog) of the trademarked term requires permission of the trademark holder. Additionally, the use of the term "proprietary culture" implies a patented organism, which this is not.

And that, my friends, is Bullshitis Commercialus. Guess I need to get a trademark.

00:00 /Copywrongs | 1 comment | permanent link

Link & Cory

I've neglected to mention that Link has a new "crate-mate" - his brother, whom we named "Cory". They are, after all, cross bred Lincoln Longwools and Corridales. And these guys are gonna be great in the petting zoo - here are some pictures to give you an idea of what our mud porch has turned into: a playground for sheep!

Checking out the back door
Checking out the back door		Checking out the cat (Abby)Checking out the cat (Abby)
Leapin' Sheep!
Leapin' Sheep!

00:00 /Home | 4 comments | permanent link

GPL 3.0: A bonfire of the vanities?

I'm going to leave the discussion of whether or not the GPL (3 or any version) is a Good Thing for another day, because I think Mr. Zuck is missing the point here entirely. Of course RMS has a "religious stance" on software. In fact, that's the whole raison d'ętre for the Free Software Foundation and the GPL! Without this extreme posture, you have any number of other Open Source licenses - the GPL is designed this way, and quite purposefully. "Free as in Freedom" is what FSF and GPL are all about.

Secondly, I'd be willing to bet that Mr. Zuck has a "religious stance" on "intellectual property" issues of his very own, seeing as how he's the President of the Association for Competitive Technology. And I'll further wager that it's diametrically opposed to Stallman's. His group was founded in 1998 as a "grassroots" group to fight the Microsoft antitrust action (while being funded from Redmond), and widely acknowledged to be a Microsoft front organization. To extend the Renaissance analogies used in the article, this is like the Pope criticizing Dr. Luther for being too religious and impractical!

Jonathan Zuck says GPL advocates are adopting a religious stance on software development, rather than a practical one.

(link) [CNET News.com]

00:00 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link