The film is not only about the US and how only 4 companies control 80% of all available food. It is also not only the rich countries subsidizing companies that want to own the food and therefore all living things in the planet. Iti is not only about the fact this system created poverty and hunger. It is about much more.
We citizen from this planetI have given corporations the power to own and control species of the world. As I know every mother of familiy, every father and every citizen of every country, all basically want the same things: survive, be happy and see people we love be happy. When are we going to start to ask for transparency and consultation?

It is a big issue, but it is also made of small parts. I know one of the most popular supermarkets where in the Netherlands where I live, sells herbs with a modified gene that makes the plant grow only once, so you need to buy once and again the same herb. This is a tiny little thing of what is happening all over. The same cene in the herb the super market sells to me is sold to farmers so they cannot grow crops more than once because it make seeds that are sterile.

Behind closed doors, the European Union, United States, Japan and other trade partners are negotiating an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. ACTA will contain new international norms for the enforcement of copyrights, trade mark rights, patents and other exclusive rights.

Following the release of a draft ACTA text, the FFII updated its analysis of the effects ACTA may have on the software field. The software sector is plagued by patent thickets. Non-practicing entities (“trolls”) file frivolous lawsuits and demand high damages. In the U.S., even major software companies, owning huge patent portfolios, support patent reform. Depending on the outcome of the final text, ACTA may impose injunctions for all patent infringements and increase damages. This will render reform impossible. The FFII analysis shows ACTA may help holders of large patent portfolios to eliminate competition from start-ups, smaller sized companies and open source projects.

FFII analyst Ante Wessels: “The ACTA-problems are not limited to software. To win the fight against climate change, fast diffusion of green technology is needed. Policy makers know that, patent trolls know that. We will see the same problems that plague the software field, like trivial patents, amassing of patents, frivolous lawsuits, hampering of follow up innovation and high transaction costs. Especially since many modern products, like hybrid cars, contain software.”

In a podcast, Nikolaus Thumm, Chief Economist of the European Patent Office, said that the key facilitator of technology transfer is licensing. He mentions people giving away essential parts of their technologies.

Ante Wessels: “Making the fight against climate change dependant on charity from patent holders hardly seems advisable. Means to force patent owners to cooperate are needed too. ACTA may impose injunctions for all infringements, there will then be no way to force patent holders to cooperate. Even if this problem is solved, the high damages ACTA proposes will drive up the costs for diffusion of green technology. While the funds are already limited, for instance, the fight against AIDS seems lost, due to lack of money. The same may happen with diffusion of green technology.”

According to the FFII, there is no indication that the 1994 WTO TRIPS agreement provides inadequate protection for patent holders.

The next round of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiations is scheduled for later this month in Switzerland.

Links

FFII analysis:
http://action.ffii.org/acta/Analysis

European Patent Office Forum 2010 on Climate Change
http://www.epo.org/about-us/events/inventor-forum/forum/programme.html

European Patent Office podcast:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-en6m8etOYk

Permanent link to this press release:
http://press.ffii.org/Press%20releases/ACTA%20may%20hamper%20fight%20against%20climate%20change

About FFII

The FFII is a not-for-profit association registered in twenty European countries, dedicated to the development of information goods for the public benefit, based on copyright, free competition, open standards. More than 1000 members, 3,500 companies and 100,000 supporters have entrusted the FFII to act as their voice in public policy questions concerning exclusion rights (intellectual property) in data processing.

The voyage of the HMS Beagle has been described as the most important journey ever made. During his travels, Charles Darwin gathered information and knowledge that would drastically change the way we look at the world. With his book “On the Origin of Species” (1859) Darwin would be the first to explain that life on earth is not created by God, but rather developed by evolution.

To celebrate Charles Darwin’s 200th birth year, and the 150th anniversary of his publication of “On the Origin of Species”, VPRO is running a 35-part series called Beagle: On the future of species. Life on earth is under continual change. Is there reason to worry about the future? Can science offer us sufficient answers to some of our most compelling questions? Are we leaving behind an inhabitable world for future generations?

Our VPRO-Beagle ship the Clipper Stad Amsterdam is an experiment in itself. This three mast sailing ship is rigged with advanced scientific measurement equipment. Scientists from various disciplines and from all over the world execute experiments on board this sailing science lab. The ship also has a built-in TV studio from which parts of the series are produced and broadcast.

Beagle takes viewers on a journey across magnificent landscapes, vulnerable regions, endangered areas and adventurous locations, stretching from Patagonia to the South Pacific, and from Australia to St. Helena. En route one recurrent question will be asked: “Will the earth survive mankind?”

Beagle has strong interactive components. All scientific findings made during the journey can be closely watched on VPRO’s Beagle website, and are broadcast by both radio and television; personal journals and video logs about life on board are made by the producers, the sailing crew, and by guests on board. These are updated on a daily basis. The route of the entire voyage can be closely followed by viewers on the internet.

The TV experiment has finished but youtube channel remains there http://www.youtube.com/vprobeagle

The implementation of the proposed linkage between the economical and environmental spheres via the ECO currency will surely be far from trivial. Although we can be sure of one thing: The Amazon rain forest is of enormous value. It only remains to be seen whether we are willing and able to make this value explicit. The implementation of the ECO currency will require a substantial re-cultivation of our financial system, which will certainly not be welcomed by some of the current players. Tough decisions will have to made, both politically, economically as well as in the moral domain.

In order to find answers to the current questions and explore the feasibility of the ECO-currency further, the Next Nature Lab started a research project, which is run by Marcel van Heist, Billy Schonenberg & Jop Japenga and coached by Koert van Mensvoort & Luna Maurer.

Findings are reported on the website www.eco-currency.net.

The original idea for the ECO-Currency emerged during the Paralelo Conference 2009 at the MIS in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The conference brought together artists and designers working with media from three different countries – Brasil, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, to discuss different ways in which collaborations across disciplinary and cultural borders can enable research and new insights into global and local ecological problems. The ECO-Currency project is currently run in the Next Nature Lab by Marcel van Heist, Billy Schonenberg, Jop Japenga, coached by Koert van Mensvoort & Luna Maurer.

The thing is, brilliant ideas like Ushahidi only work because millions of unconnected users contribute, one at a time, to a mass goal. It’s internet terrorizing in reverse. When I read these two stories side by side, I keep getting stuck on the seemingly-intractable problem (the subject of chapter 9 of the book) of whether we can have the good without the bad, or whether they only come as a pair.

What is Ushahidi? from Ushahidi on Vimeo.

Met deze prijzen worden elk jaar personen, bedrijven, overheden en voorstellen te kijk gezet die de afgelopen jaren bij uitstek controle op burgers en inbreuken op privacy hebben bevorderd. Er was ook goed nieuws: Sophie in ‘t Veld (Europarlementariër D66) won de Winston Award, een positieve aanmoedigingsprijs.

Minister Ter Horst wint de prijs in de categorie Personen, vanwege haar gevaarlijke gebrek aan nuance in het privacydebat. Mede door haar
toedoen stevent Nederland in sneltreinvaart af op een controlemaatschappij, waar veiligheid altijd boven persoonlijke vrijheid gaat. De nieuwe vingerafdrukdatabank die Nederland aanlegt wint de prijs in de categorie Overheid, vanwege het risico op identiteitsfraude en omdat een hack van de database potentieel desastreuze gevolgen heeft.

Bovendien gaat de Nederlandse overheid hiermee veel verder dan de ons omringende landen. T-Mobile en Vodafone winnen de prijs in de categorie Bedrijven, omdat ze willens en wetens en in strijd met de wet maandenlang de volledige inhoud van smsjes hebben doorgesluisd naar opsporingsdiensten. Het voorstel van de politie om mobiele naaktscanners in openbare ruimtes in te zetten, wint de prijs in de categorie Voorstellen. De jury is van mening dat ‘function creep’ nog nooit zo snel plaatsgevonden: van een middel om terroristen te vangen, naar een middel dat in alledaags politiewerk kan worden ingezet.
De publieksprijs gaat dit jaar met een nipte overwinning naar de vingerafdrukdatabank, met Ter Horst als een goede runner-up. De Winston, een positieve privacyprijs, is uitgereikt aan Europarlementariër Sophie in ‘t Veld (D66).

Honderden geïnteresseerden waren aanwezig op het Awardsgala, waar ook hoogleraar Vincent Icke, slachtoffer van identiteitsfraude Renate Tromp en security expert Jeroen van Beek spraken. De winnaars zijn door een deskundige jury geselecteerd uit een recordaantal inzendingen van het Nederlandse publiek. De jury bestaat uit de publiciste Karin Spaink, Prof. dr. Bart Jacobs, Prof. dr. Nico van Eijk, Dr. Bart Schermer, Prof. dr. Valerie Frissen en journalist Bart de Koning. De jury heeft haar keuze volledig onafhankelijk gemaakt. De publieksprijs is uitgereikt aan de kandidaat die het meeste stemmen via de website www.bigbrotherawards.nl heeft gekregen.

De Nederlandse editie van de Big Brother Awards wordt georganiseerd door Bits of Freedom. De Big Brother Awards wordt mede mogelijk gemaakt door
De Balie, Brinkhof, Stichting NLnet en SURFnet.

Juryrapport nominaties:

http://www.bigbrotherawards.nl/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Juryrapport-Genomineerden-Big-Brother-Awards-2009-28-01-10.pdf

Será que a Amazonia ainda vai estar verde no ano que vem, ou vai estar devastada, cheia de bois brancos fazendo cocô e jogando gas metanol no ar?

2010 starts the year with the information technology that powers our daily lives in a state of extreme flux. Moore’s Law used to be the guiding principle to know what to expect from the next great wave based on faster and cheaper computing power every 18 months. However, the Cloud Tsunami is creating an unprecedented paradigm shift via the new Software-as-a-Service — SaaS — revolution that can rapidly scale up and scale down enterprise power like “Transformers” to make players extremely agile, very large or very small, highly cost efficient and with near zero response time. This is metamorphosing Moore’s Law into turbo acceleration mode! Those who embrace the Cloud Tsunami correctly are thriving via this new opportunity, and those who embrace it incorrectly or don’t embrace it at all, are weakening significantly only to perish over time. It is as simple as that!

Remember: in corporations, non-governmental organisations and government agencies, there may not just be legacy systems, but legacy people too with mind-sets from the previous century, or the century before that! Given their natural vested interests, resistance to change, and with that the rampant affliction of the “not invented here” syndrome, it is more likely that new players capitalise on the Cloud Tsunami to undermine completely “The Emperor with no Clothes” in a matter of months. Expect major players to be created from nothing in less than a year, and some established players to perish overnight. Self-assembling, trans-national, intelligently searchable, self-propagating and extremely dynamic community structures are unfolding before our eyes.

In plain English, socially responsible and forward-thinking organisations including companies can be set up quickly and cheaply — and these players have indefinite potential for earnings and localised, targeted, economic development in new areas and sectors, hitherto un-envisaged. The Cloud Tsunami can be compared to the effect of a large sharp blade that cuts both ways: it delivers competitive advantage yet it mercilessly levels the playing field rendering established brands with size and history obsolete in many cases.

What is the Cloud Tsunami’s result in a nutshell? It changes everything via faster innovations and rapid transitions: either a win-win or wipe-out! This in turn puts enormous pressure on leaders and their cabinets on the one hand, and chief executives and their boards on the other, because the old fashioned decision making lenses from the last few years have to be thrown out yet again! Further to your excellent feedback in regard to the “Cloud Tsunami” ATCA Briefings so far:

4. 2010’s Key Evolution: The Next Generation Web;
3. Innovation, Anthropology and Cultural Relativity;
2. Digital Capital and Cloud Computing’s Asymmetric Risks; and
1. Why There is Hope: Chrysalis to Butterfly

It is worth noting the following Cloud Tsunami observations before taking any major decisions in 2010:

All Digital World

Today almost all human generated content originates and remains in digital form as invaluable Digital Capital. Even physical objects we buy, touch, use and keep, are mostly mass produced replicas of digital blue-prints. The past ideas about content creation, control, ownership rights, patents, syndication, distribution, publishing, and access all need massive re-thinking in the wake of the Cloud Tsunami! Such a reorientation in strategy must be customised swiftly, whilst cruising at full speed, to retain the fast eroding competitive advantage as our society goes “All Digital” with a massive yet silent bang!

New Lifestyles

Increasingly our Digital Capital is managed on Cloud-powered Software-as-a-Service — SaaS — platforms. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr etc are all using some type of public or private Cloud to power the applications we utilise every day. These services have become part of our daily lifestyle, and increasingly part of our own or our stakeholders’ livelihood!

Small is Beautiful

With Cloud Computing it is now possible for a small, capital efficient start-up to solve a big problem for a big audience. Here lies the threat for large incumbents unless they redistribute themselves as small, highly competitive, autonomous clusters, with diffuse power. This means more solutions to choose from, but with choice comes the desire to make the optimum decisions within the moment. The key question is how to do this accurately and wisely? The answer lies in the following eight-fold path:

i. Dismantling vertical hierarchies and vertical integration solutions step-by-step;
ii. Not going for a flat hierarchy but autonomous clusters of hierarchies;
iii. Choosing virtual over physical solutions;
iv. Choosing pay-as-you-go over ownership solutions;
v. Establishing a synchronised yet distributed command and control structure that appears totally diffuse from the outside;
vi. Working with the competition and in partnership with smaller players as equals;
vii. Having Cloud-enabled infrastructure to service all stakeholders efficiently as well as to keep in touch with all contacts 24/7; and
viii. Being able to access the digital capital and work environment from anywhere in the world with total flexibility and security.

Cloud Architectures

No question about it: Clouds are creating global co-operation systems with collaborative processes. Anyone can tap into A given Cloud, but there is no such thing as The Cloud, yet! In an ideal Cloud architecture, the technical functionalities — processing, storage and transmission — need to be implemented on top of a more human orientated infrastructure. This focuses on human identity management, technical support for trust in human statements, and non-repudiated settlement of human transactions and exchange-of-ideas, with total confidentiality, integrity and authentication. There is a need for a solid base of trust between the people that are supposed to share their resources in order to get their computational, storage and data exchange needs satisfied.

Twelve Guiding Principles for Critical Cloud Computing Decisions

I. Deploying Cloud Computing in an organisation needs to be evaluated from multiple standpoints beginning with the unique and perspectives of key stakeholders;
II. There are many advantages and disadvantages to Cloud Computing and it is important to evaluate all the alternatives carefully;
III. Getting past the Cloud Computing initial pitch is essential to examine the real benefits and burdens, and how they apply practically to present and future needs;
IV. The individual user of Clouds has to determine what design suits their needs best for a specific application, ie, self-assembling bottom-up design and not centrally imposed top-down design;
V. Whenever possible open data formats and standards need to be chosen for Cloud Computing so that data is portable and “future” proof;
VI. It should be possible to take data away from a Cloud if one wishes to change providers;
VII. Multiple Backups for Clouds – at least one primary and one secondary are necessary. Look for SaaS offerings that can store data in multiple Clouds, where each environment is reliable enough, but gets extra protection with more than two separate systems;
VIII. Choose Cloud services that live by the theme: It is your data and we are trusted caretakers
IX. Look for strong encryption, when using the Cloud to store data. Privacy protection depends on encryption. This means the underlying Cloud storage provider cannot see the contents of private Digital Capital including intellectual property, emails, files, photos, audio and video tracks etc. because all data is encrypted to the Cloud provider;
X. The Cloud can only be secured by the architect of a specific Cloud, and many different security architectures have been presented by various architects;
XI. When Cloud Computing use is incorrect, this can swiftly damage or destroy an organisation or hold it to ransom; and
XII. Cloud Computing, when used correctly, offers much better return on investment in many mission critical scenarios where Digital Capital needs to be managed securely, reliably and cost effectively.

[ENDS]

We welcome your thoughts, observations and views. To reflect further on this, please respond within Twitter, Linked and Facebook’s ATCA Open and related Socratic dialogue platform of HQR.

All the best

DK Matai

Chairman and Founder: mi2g.net, ATCA, The Philanthropia, HQR, @G140

To connect directly with:

. DK Matai: http://twitter.com/DKMatai

. Open HQR: http://twitter.com/OpenHQR

. ATCA Open: http://twitter.com/ATCAOpen

. @G140: http://twitter.com/G140

. mi2g: http://twitter.com/intunit

- ATCA, The Philanthropia, mi2g, HQR, @G140 –

This is an “ATCA Open, Philanthropia and HQR Socratic Dialogue.”

The “ATCA Open” network on LinkedIn and Facebook is for professionals interested in ATCA’s original global aims, working with ATCA step-by-step across the world, or developing tools supporting ATCA’s objectives to build a better world.

The original ATCA — Asymmetric Threats Contingency Alliance — is a philanthropic expert initiative founded in 2001 to resolve complex global challenges through collective Socratic dialogue and joint executive action to build a wisdom based global economy. Adhering to the doctrine of non-violence, ATCA addresses asymmetric threats and social opportunities arising from climate chaos and the environment; radical poverty and microfinance; geo-politics and energy; organised crime & extremism; advanced technologies — bio, info, nano, robo & AI; demographic skews and resource shortages; pandemics; financial systems and systemic risk; as well as transhumanism and ethics. Present membership of the original ATCA network is by invitation only and has over 5,000 distinguished members from over 120 countries: including 1,000 Parliamentarians; 1,500 Chairmen and CEOs of corporations; 1,000 Heads of NGOs; 750 Directors at Academic Centres of Excellence; 500 Inventors and Original thinkers; as well as 250 Editors-in-Chief of major media.

The Philanthropia, founded in 2005, brings together over 1,000 leading individual and private philanthropists, family offices, foundations, private banks, non-governmental organisations and specialist advisors to address complex global challenges such as countering climate chaos, reducing radical poverty and developing global leadership for the younger generation through the appliance of science and technology, leveraging acumen and finance, as well as encouraging collaboration with a strong commitment to ethics. Philanthropia emphasises multi-faith spiritual values: introspection, healthy living and ecology. Philanthropia Targets: Countering climate chaos and carbon neutrality; Eliminating radical poverty — through micro-credit schemes, empowerment of women and more responsible capitalism; Leadership for the Younger Generation; and Corporate and social responsibility.

The onboard sensors monitor bike speed, distance traveled, direction, pollution levels, and proximity of friends, and the smart lock sends you a text message if someone tries to steal your bike.