Summary: SUSE (SLES/SLED) and Xandros have little to tell this week
THIS WEEK, just like the last, has been exceptionally quiet for SLE*. Novell’s SUSE was mentioned in a few places, but it really took quite a bit of a stretch to actually find them.
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Photo from Jenny Roll
Summary: News about OpenSUSE, of which there’s a moderate amount this week
THE LINUX Foundation’s Developer Network has published this new technical article about the OpenSUSE Build Service (OBS), which should not be too surprising given previous stories about the Linux Foundation and OBS. LWN has meanwhile made available to non-subscribers the following article about long-term support for OpenSUSE. It’s old news by now, but LWN has good articles in general.
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Summary: IBM as part of the problem at the USPTO despite opposing business method patents; opposition to patent trolls gets radically harassed; patent abuse carries on despite and because of obvious problems with the system — problems that get ignored
WHEN it comes to software patents, IBM is not a friend of Free software [1, 2]. When it comes to the patent system in general, IBM is part of the problem, not the solution. It may be opposing the Bilski patent, but the Bilski test which it created does not go far enough, probably by design. It has just gotten caught sending more of its wannabe ‘inventions’ over for the USPTO to process (the USPTO is now run by an ex-IBMer).
theodp writes “The first known use of a recorded laugh track is said to be in 1950, when the producers of the Hank McCune Show added canned laughter after the show’s taping. Almost 60 years later, IBM says it deserves a patent for ‘inventing’ adding canned laughter to conference calls. ‘A pre-selected stored sound (e.g., an interjection such as a laugh) may be generated if there is a period of silence on one of the telephone lines that exceeds a threshold,’ explains Big Blue in its just-published patent application for Enlivening Conference Calls to Make Conference Calls More Interesting for Participants. Eureka!”
More in The Register:
While tried and true, option b comes with certain drawbacks. For one, the effort could get a gentleman sued by International Business Machines one day, should the method of inserting said flatulence be mechanical.
You see, the folks at TechDirt have uncovered a rather compelling patent application from Big Blue that claims invention of delivering canned sounds over the telephone.
IBM, unlike patent trolls such as Acacia, is not attacking Free software, but it lays the foundations for patent trolls to exist, as an unfortunate side-effect, a symptom.
The Patent Troll Tracker, Rick Frenkel, called the Eastern District of Texas “Banana Republic” and he now gets grief for simply saying the truth. Obviously, the masters of that “Banana Republic” wanted to gag him using a frivolous lawsuit [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] that takes away his freedom of speech and harms his career.
Former patent blogger Rick Frenkel took the stand in the federal courthouse in Tyler, Texas, on Wednesday, and apologized for referring to the Eastern District of Texas as a “Banana Republic” in a post he published as the “Patent Troll Tracker.” But Frenkel insisted his blogging about a patent infringement suit against his then-employer, Cisco Systems, was not defamatory.
“You know, I think I was outraged over a situation … and I used words that were strong,” said Frenkel. “But I sure didn’t mean to hurt anyone by it.” Frenkel apologized for using the phrase, and noted that he took it off the blog after 24 hours. In October of 2007, about 500 people per day were accessing the Troll Tracker blog, he added.
The Boston press has some coverage of the patent aggressor known as Paltalk. We wrote about it in when it sued Microsoft [1, 2, 3] and now it proceeds to suing more companies.
Turbine Inc. of Westwood, a leading maker of Internet-based, multiplayer video games, has been named in a patent infringement lawsuit that targets several of the world’s largest online gaming firms.
The complaint was filed by Paltalk Holdings Inc. of Jericho, N.Y., in the US District Court in Marshall, Texas, one of the nation’s most popular venues for patent lawsuits. “The eastern district of Texas is considered a plaintiff-friendly jurisdiction,’’ said Christopher Donnelly, a partner at Donnelly Conroy & Gelhaar LLP in Boston.
Here is some more new coverage.
Paltalk, which recently settled a patent infringement tussle with Microsoft, has launched a new lawsuit against Turbine, Sony and other MMOG makers over their alleged infringement of the same technology.
Paltalk has filed suit against the makers of several popular MMOGs currently on the market, claiming the data-sharing technology employed in their games violates patents it purchased from the defunct company HearMe in 2002.
For future reference:
According to this report, the location is familiar. Guess where the lawsuit was filed? The “Banana Republic” Frenkel spoke about.
How is this beneficial to the market?
As Tim Lee stresses with the backing of the Coase Theorem, patents harm development.
One of the most famous essays in economics is Ronald Coase’s “The Problem of Social Cost.” Its key argument, which was later dubbed the Coase Theorem by George Stigler, says that in a world with zero transaction costs, the initial allocation of rights doesn’t matter because people will negotiate toward an allocation of rights that maximizes total social utility.
Coase illustrates this principle with an example involving a farmer and a rancher who occupy adjacent parcels. The rancher’s cattle sometimes stray onto the farmer’s land and damage his crops. Coase’s claim is that it doesn’t matter whether the law holds the rancher liable for the damage to the farmer’s crops or not: either way, the rancher and farmer will reach a bargain that maximizes the joint value of the rancher and farmer’s output.
Here is another new rebuttal to the fallacy (and propaganda) that the American economy owes its progress to patents.
Some asked me if this proved patents do encourage innovation. But of course it does not. This proves absolutely nothing, in fact, except that there can still be growth despite state intervention such as intellectual monopoly grants. Correlation is not causation. I hope Obama doesn’t see this–I’m sure he could whip up a similar chart correlating growth over the last two centuries with, say, increasing taxes, increasing federal spending, increasing federal size/employment, increasing military size, increasing efficiency at mass murder, and so on.
Even front groups of proprietary software companies seem to agree that patents are counter-productive, depending on the situation (whose side is the plaintiff). Those who disagree with patent abolishers are often lawyers and patent examiners, who primarily monetise this system for personal gain — a broken system they helped create and maintain in the first place. █
“Technology products typically consist of hundreds or thousands of patented components. It therefore is impossible for technology companies to investigate all of the patents, and pending patent applications that may be relevant to a new invention (product), notwithstanding their best efforts to do so.” —Business Software Alliance, Amicus Brief to the Supreme Court in eBay Vs MercExchange
Microsoft lays patents and eggs in competitors’ territory
Summary: Microsoft uses its analysts, lobbyists, freebies, and covert “think tanks” to put “Open Source” under its own fold
THE previous post showed how viciously GNU/Linux and Free software are attacked now that they make considerable gains and put in jeopardy the status quo.
One company that benefited a lot from the status quo is the Gartner Group, to whom Microsoft pays millions of dollars (and Bill Gates invests in it also). The Gartner Group has been exceptionally busy attacking Free software recently. It’s too easy to see and here is yet another rebuttal to the latest smear.
Cloud Computing Is Not Killing Open Source Anywhere – A Response To Gartner
[...]
To conclude, open source isn’t going anywhere, whether it is in the government or the enterprises. If we see open source as a philosophical platform instead of a business model (which it isn’t) or a developmental model (an oversimplification), it is quite easy to see that open source will continue to play its role irrespective of how we consume the computing resources.
Another example of an attack on Free software we last mentioned just a few days ago, having previously dissected it in:
Now that the documents are published, Glyn Moody cautions as follow:
Just over six months ago, I analysed a leaked early version of this, which was fascinating for the insight it gave into the manoeuvring going on by the different factions within that group. For alongside obvious supporters of free software, like the FSFE, there was also that well-known friend of Microsoft, the Association for Competitive Technology, and one of the biggest chums of software patents in Europe, SAP.
Moody proceeds to analysing the content of these documents.
In a gesture similar to the above, an event titled “Open Source Think Tank” is being organised. But watch the influence of the money at “Open Source Think Tank (Europe 2009)”:
The event will free of charge, thank to the core sponsorship of the event by Microsoft, Jaspersoft, Infobright, and Mindtouch.
Mindtouch are former Microsoft employees and watch the Web site of this event. Microsoft is like the father of the whole thing. Yes, Microsoft is to lead an “Open Source Think Tank”. Remember Alexis de Tocqueville? This is the trouble that the likes of Glyn Moody have warned about for years. Microsoft hijacks the voice of its competition and gets to say whatever it likes about what “Open Source” actually means.
By some people’s assessment, Matt Asay is a figure of authority in “Open Source” and watch what Microsoft is doing with him, by his own admission from a few days ago:
When I was working on my juris doctorate, I signed up to be a guinea pig for Microsoft. (It’s not as bad as it sounds.) The company would send people out to my house to observe me using my computer, and to ask me questions about changes I’d like to see in various product categories. In return, Microsoft gave me free software.
And following that familiar attempt to take the ‘L’ out of LAMP stacks [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], see what else Microsoft has just done:
GroundWork Open Source Announces Microsoft System Center Integration, Joins Microsoft System Center Alliance
GroundWork Open Source, Inc. (GWOS, www.gwos.com), the leader in commercial open source systems and network management software, today announced the availability of the GroundWork Connector for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager. GWOS is the first open source company to join Microsoft System Center Alliance as a member.
Good luck to them with Microsoft, whose vision of “open source” is Windows and software patents [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. █
“Open source is an intellectual-property destroyer [...] I can’t imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business. I’m an American; I believe in the American way, I worry if the government encourages open source, and I don’t think we’ve done enough education of policymakers to understand the threat.”
–Jim Allchin, President of Platforms & Services Division at Microsoft
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Summary: Failures of the commercial media are shown using five new examples, ranging from daemonisation of Microsoft competitors (including, notably, Free software) to news reports that are merely Microsoft advertisements
A LOT of incidents came to our attention yesterday and it would be best to tackle them one at a time because there are many.
One reader mailed us about yet another new example where mere collaboration on code has turned into aggressive anti-FOSS FUD. The “FUD injection,” tells us the reader, goes like this: “get malware, criminal and open source in the same text.”
This latest FUD comes from silicon.com, which is generally FOSS-hostile and it is owned by CBS, just like CNET and ZDNet. Here is one punch line:
According to Candid Wüest, threat researcher with security firm Symantec, around 10 per cent of the Trojan market is now open source.
This connotates open source with crime.
The headline which caught many people’s attention is this: “Internet radio exec: don’t mention Linux!”
Here are the details about this incident:
Speaking at the launch of the touchscreen Pure Sensia digital radio, director of marketing Colin Crawford was pressed for specifics of the new device’s software. But after his CEO reminded him that the new radio was based on a Linux OS, Crawford remarked: “I don’t like the using the word ‘Linux’ on a radio.”
Why did the Scot in the sharp suit go queasy at the very mention of Linux?
Microsoft poisons people’s minds against GNU/Linux using misleading literature that it spreads to employees at Best Buy, Staples, and Office Depot [1, 2, 3, 4]. A lot of hostility towards GNU/Linux comes from Redmond.
Here is another new reminder of what MSNBC is to Microsoft.
In God We Trust: the Story Microsoft-NBC will probably never run
[...]
You might have also noticed that I’m deliberately stressing the Microsoft NBC partnership here, rather than using the MSNBC shorthand Microsoft would much rather have consumers using. Many consumers still haven’t put together 2 and 2, and still don’t quite get Microsoft’s close relationship with the Liberal Democrats and the Democrat party.
The name “MSBBC” is a humourous twist on the name “MSNBC”. The BBC is run by so many former Microsoft employees that pro-Microsoft bias over there should not surprise anyone. They even promote shops that enable pre-orders of Vista 7 — all at taxpayers’ expense. Many reports are now suggesting that Sony is at a war of words with the BBC, which it believes to have slandered its important product, the PlayStation 3. The BBC uses its own platform to defend its actions (conflict of interests).
Sony has rebutted claims made by the BBC programme Watchdog that its PlayStation 3 (PS3) consoles suffer from a manufacturing fault.
This is hilarious.
The BBC investigated not the Xbox 360 but the PlayStation 3 for “manufacturing fault”. Microsoft’s error rate is an order of magnitude higher than that of Sony, but who does the BBC go after? Not Microsoft. Why didn’t the BBC go after Microsoft’s outrageously broken Xbox 360? Could it be because the BBC is run by former/prospective Microsoft employees, to whom Sony is a big competitor? Maybe. Maybe not.
Microsoft has apparently decided that it must capture the next generation of intellectuals, so just as usual, it is offering some discounts on an amateurish operating system. Why is this news? And why are Microsoft proponents who are disguised as journalists (yes, we recognise their names) making so much noise about it? It has become like a massive, Internet-wide advert masqueraded as “news”. Technical staff over here are even forced to wear shirts with massive Microsoft Office adverts (discounts) on their backs. How utterly direct is that?
Microsoft keeps changing prospective prices in order to generate headlines and thus free-of-charge buzz. Is the press really foolish enough to fall for it? Or does it really want to do this?
“Microsoft keeps changing prospective prices in order to generate headlines and thus free-of-charge buzz.”“What exactly in terms of usable applications do you get with your Windows 7,” remarks a reader who sent us this example advertisement (published as ‘news’). “Are there time limited disabled versions offered? If they do offer ‘free’ apps with the OS, how is anyone else going to make a buck?
“You need to do a ‘what you get for your money’ article. What exactly do you get for your £18.4. They must be really, really desperate to keep L**** off the desktop. How much of a financial are they prepared to take?”
Microsoft already suffers financially because of GNU/Linux. But to allow GNU/Linux to gain market share is something that’s inconceivable to Microsoft. People should keep track of the price of Windows (and number of giveaways), not just the growing market share of GNU/Linux on the desktop. Lack of profit will lead to implosion, eventually. As Microsoft put it (internally), “under NO circumstances lose against Linux.” This strategy won’t work forever.█
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Summary: Repetition of the accusations against Bill Gates’ impact on medical research, which he allegedly monopolises
FOR those who are not familiar with the facts, The Hindu and The New York Times have already covered this issue with Microsoft co-founder’s monopolisation of medical research. To quote the latter, “The chief of malaria for the World Health Organization has complained that the growing dominance of malaria research by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation risks stifling a diversity of views among scientists and wiping out the world health agency’s policy-making function.” We have many more details here, where Gates' use of disease against GNU/Linux is also criticised. Disease is used as a cause (or an excuse) to inject political agenda.
Adding to evidence that we have already gathered, there is this new publication with an “interesting section on the dangers of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation monoculture,” to quote Glyn Moody.
Earlier this year the Task Force commissioned studies about the R2D, including one involving the WHO IGWG process, which was done by Lisa Forman, and two other health programs, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (TGF), and the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR). I was the investigator for the TGF and TDR studies. The citation for my report is as follows:
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases and the right to development. Prepared for the UN Human Rights Council, Working Group on the Right to Development, High Level Task Force on the implementation of the right to development. A/HRC/12/WG.2/TF/CRP.4/Rev.1. 2009 June 18.
This subject of Gates’ role in health has already aroused great interest from more controversial and speculative types like Alex Jones, who believes that there is more than contraception/population control to it. He connects Gates to Eugenics. █
Summary: A batch of news on the subject of security
• Misdirected spyware infects Ohio hospital
He allegedly sent the spyware to the woman’s Yahoo e-mail address, hoping that it would give him a way to monitor what she was doing on her PC. But instead, she opened the spyware on a computer in the hospital’s pediatric cardiac surgery department, creating a regulatory nightmare for the hospital.
• World’s nastiest trojan fools AV software
One of the world’s nastiest password-stealing trojans evades detection by the majority PCs running anti-virus programs, according to a study that examined 10,000 machines.
• Bahama Botnet Discovered as Source of Click Fraud Surge
Click Forensics discovers a botnet behind a significant spike of click fraud traffic. As in the recent scam making use of NYTimes.com, attackers are using fake antivirus software to infect PCs.
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Summary: Microsoft at real risk of losing a most major client and Apple clients are given bad patches
A proprietary Microsoft failure at the London Stock Exchange (LSE) was one of epic proportions and it was important to us because LSE was used as Microsoft’s anti-GNU/Linux “role model”. Microsoft’s stranglehold on the UK government has its limits and the grip may be slipping now that the LSE is pressured to dump Microsoft altogether.
As news emerged of the LSE acquisition, IBM also waded into the fray. A spokesperson said there was a general “move to Linux” among stock exchanges, claiming that the LSE was one of the last large exchanges to use Microsoft .Net. But he declined to talk more specifically on the suitability of Microsoft systems in such environments.
Read the comments too. If Microsoft loses LSE, then there is little hope for Microsoft in anything which is mission critical.
As an additional note, Apple too is failing to deliver reliability. Just watch what happens to iPhones, based on the British technology press:
i. Apple sends iPhones into ‘Coma Mode’
Complaints about Apple’s new iPhone OS 3.1 are flooding the web, with one poster calling it “the buggiest update that Apple has yet released for the iPhone.”
The problems being reported are legion. They include iPhones becoming totally unresponsive, dropped calls, poor battery life, difficulties with Wi-Fi connections, failed Microsoft Exchange syncing, dead GPS service, loss of signal after syncing, tethering no longer working in “legally” unlocked phones outside the US, and more.
ii. Apple software sends Iphones into a coma
APPLE HAS BEEN avoiding questions recently about an alarming quirk with its new Iphone OS 3.1.
According to Apple’s own bulletin board, fanboys are claiming that Iphone OS 3.1 is “the buggiest update that Apple has yet released for the iPhone.”
As always — like Microsoft — Apple chooses to just hide the problem. Exploding iPhones are a door of opportunity to Linux, but Apple resorts to bullying with patents and sabotage of interoperability against Linux phones. █
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