Petter Reinholdtsen: ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic

Kontant betaling, takk! @@ -1324,7 +1374,7 @@ dag.

@@ -1453,7 +1503,7 @@ dag.

@@ -1505,7 +1555,7 @@ dag.

diff --git a/blog/index.html b/blog/index.html index 5fcdfcae20..0c5a3ae71c 100644 --- a/blog/index.html +++ b/blog/index.html @@ -19,6 +19,50 @@ +

ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic

12th October 2012

Thanks to a blog post by +Eddy +PetriÈor, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine" +company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics. +According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure" +ColonHelp +and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions, the producer +sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information. To check if +the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind +wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is +seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic. However, we +don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this +matter".

+ +

The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific +foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and +reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the +health of its users. This caused the company behind the product, +Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence +the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation +to argue its side.

+ +

This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company +deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly. Lets hope the +Streisand +effect can make it rethink its strategy.

+ +

What is the harm, you might think. I suggest you take a look at +a list of +victims of detoxification.

+ + + Tags: english, skepsis. + + +

Kontant betaling, takk!

11th October 2012

@@ -1387,112 +1431,6 @@ politiet og sykehussammenslÃ¥inger kommer meg i hug.

Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda

17th September 2012

After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the -Debian Edu and Skolelinux -community, I finally found time to wrap up another. This time it is -Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of -this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time -administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was -conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.

- -

Who are you, and how do you spend your days?

- -

I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher -in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light" -university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning -Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with -IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I -got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry -labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in -the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self -training is anyway very important

- -

I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the -SPSE school (secondary) is a very -special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for -all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are -recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation. - -

How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu -project?

- -

Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it -already several years ago. But since the system was still not -Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't -use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the -next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security -hole.

- -

What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian -Edu?

- -

Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is -very generous for help and hints. Chat help is crucial, together with -the mailing list. Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well -engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC -and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I -can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard -platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the -head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much -hassle.

- -

What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian -Edu?

- -

The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less -flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but -there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the -need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some -devices that have specific software packages for another specific -distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only -Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient -and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)

- -

Which free software do you use daily?

- -

I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with -mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad -combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that -Perceus -has the same...

- -

For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good -only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if -something breaks. Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R -statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.

- -

Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to -get schools to use free software?

- -

I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is -cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability, -just because they are normally not open to change.

- -

Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able -to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers -don't.

- -

We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own -laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use; -we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20 -machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been -reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official -repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux. -Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.

- - - Tags: debian edu, english, intervju. - - -

@@ -1522,7 +1460,7 @@ Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.

+ Petter Reinholdtsen + +

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