With Semantic Journalism: Ideas, French media blogger Nicolas Kayser-Bril begins a series of posts in which he examines tools and ponders the future of semantic technologies applied to journalism. It looks to be well worth following, even if you're skeptical about the ability of machines to "understand" content.
So Bill Gates is retiring from Microsoft.
Well, some sort of change is needed there. Not satisfied with crushing all competition and making it nigh-on impossible to buy a PC that doesn't already come loaded with Windows, Microsoft inserted a bit of "anti-piracy" software on millions of computers this week. Apparently they need to stop the rampant copying of Windows onto machines that already come with Windows.
Here's the thing. Their antipiracy software is broken.
Greg Stein, chairman of the Apache Foundation, says the era of packaged commercial software is coming to an end, because open-source alternatives are wiping out the market: "All of your software will be free. It means that, over time, you aren't going to be paying for software anymore but will instead pay for assistance with it."
Several years ago, out of frustration with available options, I wrote my own blogging software. Writing your own solution gives you at least the promise of getting exactly what you asked for. But it's not cheap, even if you aren't paying somebody else to do it. Keeping up with a changing world is expensive.
