links for 2009-11-20

"That’s not the way things are today. Sure, there are massive business markets where Windows remains essential. But the Web is a bigger platform than Windows. The Web is universal. Every computer is on the Web. The Web provides us with a core set of software and APIs that work everywhere. Supposedly, tomorrow Google is set to unveil the details of Chrome OS, but we already know one thing about it: it’s designed around the assumption that the Web is the most important software platform in the world today."

"Today the Free Software Foundation (FSF) filed an objection in court to the proposed Google Book Search settlement (The Authors Guild, Inc., et al. v. Google Inc.). The objection urges the court to reject the proposed settlement unless it incorporates terms that better address the needs of authors using free licenses like the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), and does not provide special competitive advantages to Google."

"Senator Charles E. Grassley wrote to 10 top medical schools Tuesday to ask what they are doing about professors who put their names on ghostwritten articles in medical journals — and why that practice was any different from plagiarism by students. Mr. Grassley, of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, sent the letters as part of his continuing investigation of so-called medical ghostwriting. The term refers to publication of medical journal articles in which an outside writer — sometimes paid by a drug or medical devices company whose product is being studied — has done extensive work on the article without being named on the publication. Instead, one or more academic researchers may receive author credit."

Just what it says.

The Imperial's plan for the ATTT.