08.19.08

Links 19/08/2008: Freescale Joins LiMo, Red Hat Expands

Posted in News Roundup at 4:43 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

GNU/Linux

Kernel

KDE

  • KDE Commit Digest: 3rd August 2008
  • Configuring the Plasma Panel

    One area that could use improvements in documentation is configuring panels in Plasma. Sebas did a good job but he only dedicated one paragraph to it in the documentation and it didn’t have any pretty pictures. Most people react to visuals more so I decided to supplement the documentation.

Artwork

Win32

  • 4 Ways To Play Windows Game On Linux

    Playing Windows games on Linux is not really a difficult task. Most gamers are reluctant to migrate to Linux because they have this misconception that Windows games cannot be played on Linux. How wrong they are. If you are one of those avid gamers that I mentioned above, here are 4 ways that you can play Windows games on Linux.

    1) Wine

    [...]

    2) PlayOnLinux

    [...]

    3) CrossOver Games

    [...]

    4) Cedega

  • Internet Explorer on Linux with Bordeaux

F/OSS

Rights

Leftovers

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

Richard Stallman – Part 15 (2004)

Ogg Theora

Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.

IPv6 Suffers from FUD and Lagging Because of Microsoft Windows

Posted in BSD, FUD, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Security, Vista, Windows at 12:52 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

One of our readers claims to have spotted a phenomenon, which he wishes to share and thereby warn about. Here is his input:

This post is particularly interesting for the reason that there are many reasons why IPv6 is needed and the canard about address spaces is always offered instead as a troll to distract from:

  • less overhead in routers, as the result of a more concise and modular header format
  • better addressing and routing infrastructure through a more efficient and hierarchical routing
  • Stateless and stateful address configuration, eliminating the need for the network security hole called DHCP
  • Built in IPsec
  • Better support for QOS (Quality of service) in the protocol fields
  • It’s extensible, the protocol itself allows more headers to be added
  • More flexible and efficient routing and handoff of mobile hosts

The main barrier seems to be that *one* software vendor’s products fail to support IPv6. MSIE has been holding back the WWW, Windows in general has been holding back the net.

Linux and BSD distros have supported full IPv6 out of the box for years now.

Here are some links I meant to add:

(Note the dates of the last pair.)

Some further readings are appended below. Be careful what you read about IPv6. Microsoft, having fallen behind, is likely to suppress or slow down its adoption using actions and words (FUD), just as it did with other advancements over the past two decades. Technical progress is risky and potentially disruptive if you are a monopoly. █

____

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Receives Department of Defense IPv6 Certification

The certification demonstrates Red Hat’s ongoing commitment to meeting the growing demands of government agencies and enterprises as they adapt to the next-generation Internet.

Varonis Extends DatAdvantage Support to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5 Environments

…availability of DatAdvantage version 3.7, which extends support to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5 and provides the foundation for Varonis to quickly add support for other Linux distributions such as SUSE, Ubuntu, etc.

NTT America and Internet Systems Consortium Advance IPv6 for Open Source Community and General Public

“The FreeBSD Project greatly appreciates the opportunity to use ISC’s high-performance IPv6 transit,” says Robert Watson, president of the FreeBSD Foundation and Hosted@ISC participant. He continued, “As early
adopters and implementers of IPv6 networking, this gives us the chance to exercise and improve IPv6 support in our operating system, as well as serve our current IPv6-ready users better.”

Vendors worried Vista IPv6 too slippery for managed networks

Researchers have raised new questions about the security of Vista’s IPv6 implementation. James Hoagland from Symantec and Suresh Krishnan from Ericsson wrote an Internet-Draft that calls attention to the Teredo protocol and the fact that many firewalls don’t understand this protocol, and therefore can’t inspect the packets embedded within it.

Vista’s IPv6: Not an easy upgrade

If you think migrating to IPv6 is as simple as upgrading to Microsoft Windows Vista, think again.

Vista not playing well with IPv6

Early adopters of Microsoft’s new Vista operating system are reporting problems with its implementation of IPv6, a long-anticipated upgrade to the Internet’s primary protocol.

Black Hat 2007: Vista users urged to beware of IPv6Black Hat 2007: Vista users urged to beware of IPv6

Hoagland noted that the Cupertino, Calif.-based Symantec has already discovered one Teredo/IPv6-related flaw in Vista, which Microsoft patched in the MS07-038 security update released last month. According to the researchers, the Teredo interface in Vista was not properly handling certain network traffic, allowing remote attackers to bypass firewall-blocking rules and obtain sensitive information via crafted IPv6 traffic.

The $200 Billion Lunch: We’re switching to IPv6, dontcha know, and it might be worth it.

To a certain extent, it is Sputnik all over again. Some people see this as a place where there will be a commercial disadvantage unless the U.S. keeps up. It is comparable to NTSC vs. PAL television standards (hint: PAL is better but we don’t have it).

[...]

And what is happening in the USA? Well we have Net Neutrality. We have a telco rebuilding a national monopoly. We have Cisco and Microsoft working together on Network Admission Control (NAC). I can see a time in the near future when they’ll try to charge me for every PC in my house. While China is building a national resource, our government is letting companies turn the public Internet into an expensive private toll road.

Embedded Linux vendor adds IPv4/IPv6 stack

In March of 2006, Wind River paid $20 million for Interpeak, a Swedish networking software vendor offering stacks for routers, access equipment, WiFi nodes, and small-footprint networked devices. Interpeak was noted for shipping the first TCP/IP stacks for Linux hosts and routers that were certified “IPv6-ready.”

Entire city of Vista users can’t access the internet

Lundis Energi blamed Microsoft because Vista has got a bug and it isn’t going to change the configuration of the server just to cope with the flaw.

FLOSS Weekly 14: Jeremy Allison of Samba

‘In the section of the interview from around 33m30s to 39m00 Jeremy Allison reports how he was told that the Microsoft team implementing SMB2 were ordered to “f**k with Samba”.’

Longhorn server and Ubuntu do they still play together?

There real question however is can linux boxes still join and authenticate against Active Directory domains running at Native Longhorn Server levels. Well the answer a non surprising NO!

OEM Tactics: Lessons to Learn from BeOS About GNU/Linux

Posted in Antitrust, Dell, GNU/Linux, Hardware, HP, IBM, Law, Microsoft, OLPC, Xandros at 12:41 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense — I deserve it.”

–Be’s CEO Jean-Louis Gassée

G

NU/Linux laptops continue to arrive, but Microsoft is working hard to end this. It ought to be emphasised that ASUS has already said that it is now “tied up” with Microsoft [1, 2, 3]. ASUS is not the only one to have come under such imprisonment a relationship, but it incidentally spoke out about it. It’s the usual pressure tactics, whose goal is to have distribution of Linux curtailed or neglected.

There’s lots more to to speculate about. ASUS picked Xandros, which has some iffy past with Microsoft, never mind under the Corel flag.

More worryingly, have people forgotten that Xandros is a patent ally of Microsoft? In simple terms, despite the claims from the CEO of the company, ASUS is carrying a liability which can then be passed to users in the form of burden/cost that’s brought as incentives to Microsoft. This is extortion. Software patents are void in this case as nothing was ever shown.

OEM pressure tactics were covered quite extensively before, but a reader has sent us a pointer to the following strong message from 1999. We reproduce it below. The anonymous reader added: “Here’s an interesting comment with first hand experience about how hard it is to overcome Microsoft.”

Jean-Louis Gassée on why PC manufacturers don’t sell non MS products

* To: info-policy-notes <info-policy-notes@essential.org>
* Subject: Jean-Louis Gassée on why PC manufacturers don’t sell non MS products
* From: James Love <love@cptech.org>
* Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1999 12:05:55 -0500
* Organization: http://www.cptech.org
* Sender: jamie@essential.org

This important essay by Jean-Louis Gassée is a devastating
critique of the 1995 DOJ/Microsoft consent agreement and
a clear explanation to the barriers facing MS competitors
in the OS market.
Jamie

http://www.be.com/aboutbe/benewsletter/volume_III/Issue8.html#Gassee

Be Newsletter
Volume III, Issue 8, February 24, 1999

Crack in the Wall
By Jean-Louis Gassée

You’re the CEO of a PC OEM, delivering some great news to Wall
Street: “In an effort to offer greater variety and performance
to the customer, our factory now installs three operating systems
on the hard disk — Windows, Linux, and the BeOS. The reaction
has been spectacular. Customers love having a choice of OS, and
the press — from John Dvorak in PC Magazine to John Markoff in
the New York Times to Walt Mossberg in the Wall Street Journal –
has heralded us for our bold move. This is a great step forward for
the consumer and for the industry. Oh, and by the way, we lost
$50 million since we no longer qualify for Windows rebates. But it’s
a sacrifice for the common good.”

You’re now the ex-CEO of a PC OEM.

We know that the Windows rebate scheme exists — but what *is* it,
exactly? And why are so many OEMs afraid of losing it? Windows
pricing practices are closely guarded secrets, so we don’t know
exactly how the rebate is structured, but we can assume that it works
something like this: The total cost of a Windows license consists
of a base price offset by a rebate. The base price is set; the
rebate is flexible, and contingent on the “dedication” of the licensee.
That is, the more you “advertise” the product — through
prominent positioning, expanded shelf space, and so on — the
greater your rebate. This quid pro quo rebate looks innocent enough,
and can be a useful tool in a competitive market.

But when you’re running a monopoly — and when it comes to
out-of-the-box, consumer-grade PC clones, Microsoft *is* a monopoly –
“prominent positioning” and “expanded shelf space” have little meaning.
Microsoft has no interest in getting “more” footage on the OS shelf,
because they’ve already got it all. What interests them — the only
useful advantage they can “buy” (to be kind) with
their rebate — is to ensure that no one else will get any.

So how is “dedication” measured? A real-life example: We’ve been
working with a PC OEM that graciously — and bravely — decided to
load the BeOS on certain configurations in its product line. However,
there’s a twist in their definition of “loading.” When the customer
takes the machine home and starts it up for the first time, the
Microsoft boot manager appears — but the BeOS is nowhere in sight.
It seems the OEM interpreted Microsoft’s licensing provisions to mean
that the boot manager
could not be modified to display non-Microsoft systems. Furthermore,
the icon for the BeOS launcher — a program that lets the user shut
down Windows and launch the BeOS — doesn’t appear on the Windows
desktop; again, the license agreement prohibits the display of
“unapproved” icons. To boot the “loaded” BeOS, the customer must read
the documentation, fish a floppy from the box and finish the
installation. Clever.

One suspects that Linux suffers from the same fealty to Microsoft’s
licensing strictures. Linux is the culmination of 30 years of
development by the Unix community. Surely an OEM can’t complain
about Linux’s quality or its price: It’s good, and it’s free. If
Microsoft licensees are as free to choose as Microsoft claims they
are, why isn’t Linux factory installed on *any* PC?
If you randomly purchase 1,000 PC clones, how many have any OS other
than Windows loaded at the factory? Zero.

But what about all these announcements from companies such as IBM,
Dell, and others? A few URLs are supplied here for your convenience:

<http://www.dell.com/products/workstat/ISV/linux.htm>
<http://www.compaq.com/isp/news_events/index.htm>
<http://www.compaq.com/newsroom/pr/1998/wa111298a.html>
<http://www.hp.com/pressrel/jan99/27jan99.htm>
<http://www.hp.com/pressrel/jan99/27jan99b.htm>
<http://www.software.ibm.com/data/db2/linux/>

If you parse the statements, Linux is offered and supported on servers,
not on PCs. Another IBM story is that installation is to be performed
by the reseller on some PCs or laptops, not by IBM at the factory.

As an industry insider gently explained to me, Microsoft abides by a
very simple principle: No cracks in the wall. Otherwise, water will
seep in and sooner or later the masonry will crumble.

Guarding against even the smallest crack is important to Microsoft,
because it prevents a competitor from taking advantage of a phenomenon
that economists call the “network effect.” The “network effect”
manifests itself as an exponential increase in the value of a product
or service when more people use it. Applied to a computer operating
system, the effect works like this: As more people install and use an
OS, the demand for applications increases. Developers respond to the
demand, which attracts the attention of OEMs and
resellers, who promote the OS in order to sell the apps, which attracts
more customers… The key to all this is distribution and visibility —
in other words, “shelf space.”

Bill Gates understands the network effect well — he once quoted it to
me, chapter and verse. In the Fall of 1983, when I was still running
Apple France, I met with Bill in Paris and we got into a conversation
regarding the market share limitations of DOS. No problem, he said, with
the wide distribution we enjoy, we’ll get the attention of third
parties, and the marketplace will fix these shortcomings.

This puts statements by senior Microsoft executive Paul Maritz in
perspective. In reaction to my claim that Be wants to co-exist with
Microsoft, Mr. Maritz said (as quoted by Joseph Nocera in Fortune
Magazine):

“[Gassee is] articulating his strategy for entry into the
operating system marketplace. But on the other hand, I
know that Be has built a full-featured operating system,
so what I believe he’s doing here is outlining his
strategy about how he will initially co-exist with Windows
and, over time, attract more applications to his
platform.”

Mr. Nocera interpreted Mr. Maritz’s interpretation thus:

“In other words, Gassee’s spiel is little more than a
trick intended to lull Microsoft. But Microsoft isn’t so
easily fooled! Microsoft will never ignore a potential
threat to its Windows fortress, no matter how slight. The
software giant may be in the middle of an antitrust trial,
but — as Andy Grove says — only the paranoid survive…”

[The entire article, part of a court house diary, can be found
at <http://www.pathfinder.com/fortune/1999/03/01/mic3.html>.]

Industry sages such as T.J. Rodgers, the CEO of Cypress Semiconductors,
as well as venture capitalists aligned with Microsoft, criticize the
Department of Justice’s intervention in the new Pax Romana we’re
supposed to enjoy under Microsoft’s tutelage. Don’t compete in court,
compete in the marketplace, they say.

I’m a free marketer myself; I left a statist environment for the level
playing field created by the rule of law in this, my adopted country. A
free market is *exactly* what we want. One where a PC OEM isn’t
threatened by financial death for daring to offer operating systems
that compete with the Windows monopoly.

We started with a thought experiment. We end with a real-life offer for
any PC OEM that’s willing to challenge the monopoly: Load the BeOS on
the hard disk so the user can see it when the computer is first booted,
and the license is free. Help us put a crack in the wall.

This is not a healthy state of trade, is it? Intel is constantly accused of using the same tricks and breaking the law. █

British Government Laughs at Digital Standards Organisation with a Straight Face

Posted in Deception, DRM, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft, Open XML, Standard at 12:15 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The Digistan electronic petition was posted a couple of months ago asking: “We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to adopt the Hague Declaration of the Digital Standards Organisation.” It was later accepted by Prime Minister’s Office.

For context and background about Digistan, see [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12].

The details of Petition were as follows:

“We call on the UK government to: (1) Procure only information technology that implements free and open standards; (2) Deliver e-government services based exclusively on free and open standards; (3) Use only free and open digital standards in their own activities. as adopted and proclaimed by the founders of the Digital Standards Organization in The Hague on 21 May 2008.”

Having signed the petition, I was among those who received a shocking response:

The UK Government champions open standards and interoperability through its eGovernment Interoperability Framework Version 6.0, 30th April 2004 (eGIF) and through the publication of its Open Source Software Policy which is available in the document “Open Source Software, Use within UK Government, Version 2.0, 28 October 2004”.

Were recipients of this statement rolling and laughing on the floor at the sight of the word “champions”, as in “UK Government champions open standards”? Were they furious? If not, perhaps they should have. When it comes to open source and open standards, the British government is abysmal and among the worst in the western world. What is it raving about?

Is it the iPlayer, which is a BBC project and thus government backed [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15]?

Is is the British Library, which seems to have been corrupted by Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]?

Is it the Newham fiasco [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]?

How about BECTA [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]?

The NHS fiasco [1, 2]?

BSI, which was pulled to court over OOXML? As a quick refresher:

Let’s now forget Alex Brown and his Microsoft mischiefs [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21].

A lot more could be written about the stories above, but this was covered before.

There is nothing whatsoever that the government does for standards (or the buzzword “inter-oh!-perability”). They just point people to pages with words on them. Words are cheap. Deeds are needed.

As we wrote some days ago, despite what some press audaciously says, the OOXML debacle is not over yet. Those 7,000+ pages of buggy proprietary rubbish specs could still be eliminated as a standard given further complaints that are taken to a higher level. Groklaw has the details and it concludes with:

I’d certainly love to hear about OOXML being applied in practice. So, even ignoring the creative possibilities of periodic review, defined so vaguely one could, I think, ask for one at any time, unless I’ve misunderstood what ISO has on its website, which is always possible, I see another possible step in the appeals process.

Perhaps it’s time for ISO to be replaced [1, 2]. These suggestions have come from several independent directions. ISO’s denial and vanity are beyond repair and it is not willing to acknowledge the corruption. As for Microsoft, that’s another story. █

“Microsoft corrupted many members of ISO in order to win approval for its phony ‘open’ document format, OOXML. This was so governments that keep their documents in a Microsoft-only format can pretend that they are using ‘open standards.’ The government of South Africa has filed an appeal against the decision, citing the irregularities in the process.”

–Richard Stallman, June 2008

Links 19/08/2008: More GNU/Linux Phones, Laptops Coming

Posted in Boycott Novell at 7:17 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

GNU/Linux

  • Strange Skype Network Activity – Even on Linux

    I have a few contacts with whom I still chat on Skype, so I still start it from time to time. Yesterday I started it in the morning, and then got distracted and forgot to stop it when the person I was looking for was not around (at least according to Skype’s totally unreliable presence reporting). When I went back upstairs in the evening, I noticed the that the 5GHz LED and the Internet LED on my shiny new Netgear WNDR 3300 Wireless Router were blinking like crazy, and I really mean like crazy. I knew that there shouldn’t be anything happening on my home network at that time, so I started investigating.

  • Ubuntu at Toyota

    I wiggle the mouse, and up pops the Ubuntu Heron! Wow!

  • IBM challenges Microsoft for the SME desktop

    Just last week it announced a single deal with an as-yet-unnamed Asian company that it says will add 300,000 new seats to its Lotus Notes business.

    [...]

    To further up the ante, IBM has announced that it has forged partnerships with major hardware and Linux vendors to ensure that installing IBM business software on Linux systems is as painless as possible. Soon, Linux users will be able to obtain versions of IBM’s Lotus Foundations software that have been specially packaged for installation on Novell Suse, Red Hat, or Ubuntu Linux.

  • Music Education With Linux Sound Tools, Redux

    I still love to teach. I find it hugely gratifying to work with my students, particularly when they’ve prepared for one of our student shows at Coffee Amici, a local coffee house that has a regular schedule of concerts with nationally-known and local performers. I also still have to work to keep up with the new technologies that have the potential to make both the teaching and learning processes more efficient, more effective, and more fun. As I noted, I expect to make more use of video and other technologies as basic components in my instructional arsenal, and of course I expect to do it all with Linux.

  • RidgeRun Announces Open Source Offerings for Texas Instruments OMAP35x and TMS320DM355 Processors
  • ArchLinux: My ultimate GNU/Linux distro of choice
  • BackTrack4 choose Ubuntu!

    I talked with Mati Aharoni about new release now in developement, and him say to me that has taken the decision to abandon slackware for choose Ubuntu in next BackTrack version (4).

  • Transparency is just as important
  • My first taste of XFCE…

    XFCE is a very nice DE that has made a good first impression on me. To be honest, going into it, I didn’t except very much because I thought a “lightweight” environment would mean clunky applications and little choice.

Looks

Myths

  • 9 Linux Myth Debunked
  • Linux Myth #2 – Linux is more difficult to install than Windows or OS X

    Before you are three discs – Leopard (OS X), Hardy Heron (Ubuntu 2008.4) and Windows XP each respectively in front of a whitebox desktop. For those not in the know, a “whitebox” computer is a clone, or generic computer; not a name brand model like Dell or HP. They are the systems you get a computer shows, have built by a local Mom and Pop shop, or build yourself. The task is to install each operating system onto each computer respectively. My point is to debunk the myth that Linux is harder to install than Windows or OS X. This is going to be a bit tough, because it presupposes a person who is going to perform the install already has some experience installing operating systems. Contrary to the first myth, that “Linux is not for the general user because it is too difficult for the general user to install;” we are now moving beyond the general user to a more technical person.

BusinessWeek’s Latest FUD

HPC

  • If it’s animation or special effects, it’s Linux

    Rowe’s not just being a Linux booster. It’s the Gospel truth. The animation and FX for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; Star Wars: The Clone Wars; WALL-E; 300; The Golden Compass; Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix; and I Am Legend, to name but a few recent movies, were all created using Pixar’s RenderMan and Autodesk Maya running on Linux clusters.

  • Rocks clusters make sense for educational environments

    When evaluating a clustering solution in an educational environment, it’s difficult to pass up the Rocks cluster distribution. This scalable computing solution allows you to use a limited amount of hardware or a large server farm to meet research needs.

Laptops

Mobile GNU/Linux and Google

Debian

Firefox

F/OSS

Open

Rights

Leftovers

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

Dirk-Willem van Gulik, road builder for the Information Super-highway 01 (2004)

Ogg Theora

Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.

Patents Roundup: Open Invention Network, Subpixel Hinting, and Patent Trolls

Posted in Apple, Courtroom, GNU/Linux, Google, IBM, Law, Microsoft, Novell, Patents at 6:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Keith Bergelt joined OIN a few months ago and there’s finally a video interview that serves as an introduction.

Ogg Theora

From Linux.com:

Linux.com correspondent R. Scott Belford caught up with Open Invention Network CEO Keith Bergelt at the 2008 LinuxWorld Expo and had a pleasant (on-camera) conversation with him.

OIN has been a rather low-profile establishment, whose function is unknown to many people. it was symbolised by Jerry Rosenthal, who is a former IBMer that decided to leave and there are changes coming up.

“OIN has been a rather low-profile establishment, whose function is unknown to many people.”They seem to have adopted a disappointing approach, whereby people just accept software patents and end up playing the same game in a way which does not neutralise patent trolls (unlike ESP). On the other hand, it serves as an effective deterrent that may suppress aggression from Microsoft, assuming it does not summon proxies [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]. LiMo has a similar effect which — if maximised — renders the patent system moot.

With or without OIN, the Free Desktop continues to be crippled and encumbered by the artificial limitations of intellectual monopolies. Here’s just one new example:

Also note that, while I hate the subpixel (RGB) hinting, there is no official statement that the subpixel algorithm is covered by patents (except for a developer’s comment in a source file). Officially, i.e. here, only Apple’s patents on the BCI are mentioned. So what is all the subpixel fuss about? Stupid lawyers?

This is neither the first time nor an isolated case where Apple's patents stifle Free software development. TrueType was also discussed in the past, the context being Novell and SUSE. Neither Novell nor Apple are friends of Free software and both are obliged to support Microsoft's OOXML. Yesterday from the news in India:

There has never been a more intense global industry debate over open standards. On the one hand is Microsoft’s OOXML file format backed by Apple, Novell, Wipro, Infosys, TCS, and Nasscom.

Isn’t it just beautiful to see Novell and Apple listed among Microsoft’s very close partners [1, 2, 3, 4]? They are on a similar boat.

Novell shares its patent pool with Microsoft, not just with OIN. Whose side is it on?

Monopolies or shared monopolies are ‘trusts’ and anti-trust laws were created to combat them. A free market gravitates towards predatory capitalism and it will further deteriorate without intervention. Regulation is often intercepted using political corruption. Why are no regulators stepping in? Why is it that the Asian authorities need to pressure the US Government to do something?

Patents harm developers while making solicitors rich. Watch the effect of intellectual monopolies on Qualcomm’s financial situation.

CEO Paul Jacobs, in his opening address to the collected mass ranks of US and European analysts, turned this image on its head – expressing his “palpable relief” that the Nokia patents dispute had been resolved – and on terms that will not wreck the greater part of Qualcomm’s profits – those through royalty payments, and talked about having been smashed around for the past three years, and that now that it was over, the settlement driving huge positive momentum for his company.

[...]

Jacobs added: “We are not quite so worried about that action since we have workarounds for the Broadcom patents which are already in chips, and that give us negotiating leverage. We have worked through multiple decision trees on the outcomes of that legal action and although we’d like to see it resolved, whichever way its goes it will not have as great an effect as the Nokia action.”

More on Qualcomm and Nokia in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17]. While on the subject of patent trolls and legal harassment, Google has been attacked again. As always, unsurprisingly, it takes place in the Eastern District of Texas.

Software maker GraphOn has filed suit against search giant Google, alleging that Google’s Base, AdWords, Blogger, Sites, and YouTube services violate GraphOn’s patents

GraphOn, based in Santa Cruz, Calif., acquired the patents through its acquisition of Network Engineering Software, a privately held network software company, in 2005. The suit was filed in United States District Court in the Eastern District of Texas.

In other news, Dell’s ridiculous attempt to obtains an intellectual monopoly on “cloud computing” has just been shot down.

Dell has lost its bid to trademark the widely-used term “cloud computing”.

The computer giant had filed an application to trademark the phrase with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in March 2007.

However, according to blogger Sam Johnston, Dell’s application was officially rejected by the USPTO late last week.

Can the USPTO restore patent sanity too? Ownership pertaining to thought, not just art (copyright) and objects, does not belong in civilization. Business method and software patents must end. The sooner, the better. █

IRC: #boycottnovell @ FreeNode: August 18th, 2008

Posted in IRC Logs at 5:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Enter the IRC channel now

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