http://thankpoland.info/
[snip]
The undersigned wish to express their sincere thanks to the Polish
government for their action to remove the “A-item” of adopting the
“Software Patent Directive” from the agenda of the Agricultural
Council meeting on December 21, 2004. It would have been a
horrible mistake for the European Union to adopt this “Software
Patent Directive”.
[snap]

Do add your name to the list!

The original story is here:
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=254

1. Go to http://mappoint.msn.com/DirectionsFind.aspx
2. For “Start” select “Address in: Norway”, “City: haugesund”
3. For “End” select “Address in: Norway”, “City: Trondheim”
4. Click “Get directions” and smile

Ahh, just returned from a little holiday in the Whitsunday Islands (tropical North Queensland) – very relaxing!
No computer, no phone… (be honest now, when did YOU last try that?) just hangin’ out on and around an island with nice weather and swimming pools.

http://www.ogc.gov.uk/oss/Report-v8c.htm

Looks like a pretty decent report… and yes it’s very positive but does note relevant issues for specific areas.
It also has quite a few interesting links to other studies and sites in various countries.

I just got my new IP phone, an SNOM 190. Looks nice! Ordered it locally from OzVOIP which had them in stock, charges a very reasonable price (pretty much straight the exchange rate from EUR), no postage, and delivered quickly without any hassles.

It’s now attached to our internal company VoIP network, but these phones can have upto 7 profiles so I can “attach” it to lots of SIP servers. One other I’ve already configured is FWD. That actually looks interesting as it has quite a few facilities (such as conferencing) as well as interconnectivity with other networks and gateways. So, good stuff. And it’s free.

I can configure and talk with the phone through a decent web interface. Best discovery: the phone runs Linux 2.4.18 on a PPC, and SNOM makes available the complete sources and cross compile toolkit on their site. Very good!

So, who said Linux wasn’t ready for the desktop?
These days you buy a phone, and it’s right there ;-)