Summary: Groklaw defends IBM and OIN very stubbornly (as well other initiatives that help legitimise software patents rather than immediately eradicate them), but Florian Müller from Germany disagrees with this approach
A COUPLE of days ago, Pamela Jones (PJ), the editor of Groklaw, started what we consider to be an unfair attack. PJ shoots the messenger (Florian Müller) once again in order to defend IBM/OIN (Groklaw always defends IBM, which is a software patents proponent and a monopolist for several decades). To quote the criticism:
Mueller calls OIN a scam 02:42AM June 06/13/10, 2010 Florian “Floyd” Mueller of Fosspatents has found a new windmill to tilt at — the Open Invention Network.
“There’s absolutely no evidence it has ever helped any FOSS company” he charges at his blog.
[PJ: As usual, Mueller is totally wrong. Blankenhorn says Mueller's nickname is "Floyd". It should be Florian "FUD" Mueller. OIN has helped every FOSS company by intercepting and buying up the patents Microsoft tried to shop around so that third parties could sue Linux. Where was he when that happened? Microsoft tried to auction off some patents that they claimed relate to Linux. Patent trolls could have bought them. Instead Open Invention Network (OIN) got them. And OIN also helped TomTom, who instead of paying Microsoft to use FAT, instead removed it. Here's one bit of what Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation said at the time about the case, and notice the credit given to OIN: "There is another silver lining here. We read the outcome of this case as a testament to the power of a concerted and well-coordinated effort by the Linux industry and organizations such as the Open Invention Network, the SFLC and the Linux Foundation. This was not merely a typical David vs. Goliath story. This time David aligned itself with the multiple slingshots of the Linux community. Microsoft relented as soon as TomTom showed they were aligned with that community and ready to fight. The system is working." So if Blankenhorn is thinking that Mueller is a FOSS person, he's mistaken. He's not even an Open Source person, I'd opine. If he were one, he's very much out of the loop, judging from his ignorance of the role OIN is playing. As for Blankenhorn's suggestion that Mueller should carry Richard Stallman's torch, that is laughable as well as creepy.] – Dana Blankenhorn
Dana Blankenhorn wrote about this little Groklaw controversy in a new ZDnet blog post yesterday. “He’s a character with his special sense of humor,” told us Müller, “and I try not to take things personal the way he writes them.”
Blankenhorn is not a proponent of Free software and neither is Groklaw (which spends a lot of time defending Apple, posting links about its products, and even Fog Computing sometimes). Blankenhorn ought to actually start using GNU/Linux in order to understand it. As mentioned in the comments and in here or here, “does the guy even know what he’s writing about? FreeBSD among “Linux outfits”? jeez.”
“IBM has an immense library of software patents, which give it a place at the table of every open source debate.” –Dana Blankenhorn Blankenhorn responds to Groklaw’s outburst and he correctly states: “When idealists are attacked from inside their party, it’s useful to note where the criticism is coming from, and why. Groklaw, for instance, has to my knowledge never set itself in opposition to IBM in any great open source debate. They are a player in all debates, but their word is never definitive.
“IBM has an immense library of software patents, which give it a place at the table of every open source debate. Through the Open Invention Network, it has created a commons with other open source players. But it is, as Mueller notes, a closed system, a poker table where your ante is your patent portfolio.”
We asked Müller to respond for quoting. Regarding the allegations posted in Groklaw, Müller sent us the following statement which he considers fine for quoting verbatim:
My nickname is neither “Floyd” (Dana confuses me intentionally with another person: http://floydmueller.com) nor “FUD”. Of course there are issues, including in the OIN context, where I personally have fears, uncertainty and doubts, and there are reasons for it. That does not make “FUD” my agenda. Instead, my agenda with the FOSS Patents blog is to provide information that (i) helps FOSS developers, distributors and users identify, avoid and deal with patent-related problems and (ii) puts a spotlight on ulterior motives
and hypocrisy on the part of false friends of Free and Open Source Software. A long time ago I thought Groklaw shared the first goal. But by writing that IBM is free to sue the pants off TurboHercules, PJ has unfortunately shown that her agenda is different.
Throughout all those years PJ has never criticized IBM for anything other than disagreeing with that company on software patents. By contrast, on my blog and in my speeches, including recently such as at LinuxTag, I have meanwhile criticized something about every major player in the industry who has something to do with FOSS and patents. Not sparing any company is also the TechRights approach as far as I can see. But it’s not the way Groklaw operates.
I don’t claim to be a community leader. It’s Dana Blankenhorn’s journalistic freedom to portray me as a future community leader but after the article came out I told him in an email that I’m focused on patent issues and not at all aspiring to be what he thinks.
The only source PJ has for her theory of OIN having helped TomTom (although TomTom only became a non-paying licensee like dozens of others) is the Linux Foundation. Jim Zemlin is His Master’s Voice when IBM, the Linux Foundation’s largest sponsor, is involved, and IBM is a driving force behind the OIN as well.
If the OIN could solve the problem,
- why did TomTom have to agree to rewrite its software over the next two years to work around Microsoft’s patents?
- why did TomTom have to agree to pay royalties to Microsoft?
- why is Apple suing HTC?
- why is HTC paying patent royalties to Microsoft?
- why can’t the OIN use its patents to obtain legally binding statements of
non-assertion from key MPEG LA members (especially given that MPEG LA recently announced the possible creation of a WebM-related patent pool and considering that Google is an OIN licensee just like TomTom)? And one could find countless other examples that indicate that the OIN isn’t the answer.
Also, PJ asked where I was when the OIN bought up patents that Microsoft auctioned off. Under the subhead “So what is the OIN good for”, I clearly mention OIN’s patent-buying activity and provide my view on it. I’ve copied
the passage here:
The OIN continues to buy patents at auctions that might otherwise be acquired by regular trolls. At first sight, that may sound good. But given the intransparent and arbitrary structure of the OIN, it’s not clear whether that’s actually the lesser or the greater evil than a conventional troll. In the end, the OIN is under the control of those six companies who could decide to use some of those patents against competitors, including FOSS competitors. By controlling the definition of what the OIN calls the “Linux System”, they can always ensure that their competitors don’t benefit from it, even if they were or became OIN licensees.
I wonder why PJ thinks it’s a good idea that the OIN has completely arbitrary definition of the “Linux System” (meaning the software that is protected) in place, without any objective criteria such as “software shipped with major GNU/Linux distributions”…
Finally, I would like to stress that I have a lot of hope for the Defensive Patent License (DPL), which has not yet been published but on which several media (though not Groklaw) have reported. When the DPL is finally available, and provided that it is as good as I hope it will be, it will be interesting to see how the OIN’s backers respond to it.
Hope this helps — please let me know if there’s any aspect that’s important to you but has not yet been addressed by me.
Müller then proceeded to claiming that ECIS is hypocritical and that “there are three companies who are members of both organizations [OFE and ECIS]: IBM, Oracle, Red Hat.” In another post he noted: “On Thursday and Friday of last week, I saw hypocrisy of the worst kind: two IBM vice presidents preaching open standards values to EU decision-makers and FOSS community members instead of practicing them at their own company, which would really need that kind of lecturing.”
“On Thursday and Friday of last week, I saw hypocrisy of the worst kind: two IBM vice presidents preaching open standards values to EU decision-makers and FOSS community members instead of practicing them at their own company, which would really need that kind of lecturing.” –Florian Müller Our criticism of IBM’s approach toward software patents goes about a year back (the attitude changed after FFII had helped show that IBM was lobbying for software patents). There are certain questions IBM ought to answer, but IBM is very discreet and it rarely speaks to the public about this taboo subject. It mostly speaks using press releases. Müller’s new posts also contain a word about Google’s “promise” not sue (not against Free/open source projects anyway). It’s similar to IBM’s strategy and we have criticised Google for it [1, 2]. We oppose certain behaviours, not certain brands.
Groklaw does not always stand up for software freedom. Florian Müller does not stand up for software freedom either, as his actions in Munich show quite clearly, but he did work hard to keep software patents out of Europe and for that he deserves credit. We ought to look at IBM sceptically as well as at others. We should view groups of people (companies) not just based on brands, but based on policy/behaviour. We should utilise a judgment/meter which is based on a moral compass, not a brand compass.
There might be a difference in perspective because here in Europe we generally don’t have software patents (that are formally legitimate). In the US they need to resort to civil disobedience and challenge existing laws which are lobbied for by companies like IBM which built vast portfolios of software patents with parasites like Marshall Phelps, who later did the same for Microsoft.
I personally view OIN as a temporary fix. It can be very effective sometimes [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], but it’s not a permanent solution. I know other people who have been feeling the same way for several years. The real solution is abolition of software patents. OIN is M.A.D., abolition is disarmament.
Florian Müller comes from Europe (where we don’t have software patents), so the difference in perspectives wrt Groklaw ought to make sense. Maybe it’s the geographical divide and diversity of opinions is always a good thing. Without it, no better solutions can ever be found. It’s like evolution. Techrights sidles with neither side in this argument and this post hopefully presented both sides fairly, leaving readers to draw their own conclusions. █
Summary: Another live example of Microsoft ‘security’ at work; debunking the latest Linux lies from Ed Bott
“SECURITY through obscurity” sounds like a good idea in theory. As we recently found out (and had confirmed by Microsoft), part of this obscurity is lack of disclosure. Microsoft is silently patching flaws that it never discloses, which is dishonest if not fraudulent when Microsoft issues security reports based on such oversight.
According to this new article, “tens of thousands of sites” running Microsoft’s software are paying the price for having ‘secret’ vulnerabilities:
There’s a large-scale attack underway that is targeting Web servers running Microsoft’s IIS software, injecting the sites with a specific malicious script. The attack has compromised tens of thousands of sites already, experts say, and there’s no clear indication of who’s behind the campaign right now.
The attack, which researchers first noticed earlier this week, already has affected a few high-profile sites, including those belonging to The Wall Street Journal and The Jerusalem Post. Some analyses of the IIS attack suggest that it is directed at a third-party ad management script found on these sites.
There is some bad FUD about Linux security at the moment (coming primarily from Ed Bott). SJVN has already responded to this FUD:
Here’s what really happened. UnrealIRCd, a rather obscure open-source IRC (Internet Relay Chat) server, wasn’t so much hacked as the program it was letting people download has been replaced by one with a built-in security hole. Or, as they explained on their site,
Microsoft boosters like Bott have been desperate to show that GNU/Linux is not more secure than Windows. As companies like Google dump Windows for security reasons, Microsoft will carry on with this FUD campaign but rely on peripherals/extensions (like Bott) to do the attacks]. That’s just how Microsoft operates when it needs FUD. See the “smoking gun” below. █
“As discussed in our PR meeting this morning. David & I have spoken with Maureen O’Gara (based on go ahead from BrianV) and planted the story. She has agreed to not attribute the story to us….
“[...] Inform Maureen O’ Gara (Senior Editor Client Server News/LinuxGram) or John Markoff (NYT) of announcement on Aug 28, 2000. Owner dougmil (Approval received from BrianV to proceed)
“Contact Eric Raymond, Tim O’Reilly or Bruce Perrins to solicit support for this going against the objectives of the Open Source movement. Owner: dougmil [Doug Miller]. Note that I will not be doing this. Maureen O’Gara said she was going to call them so it looks better coming from her.”
Summary: A quick analysis of office suites market share, a word about Microsoft’s semi-exclusion of GNU/Linux from Office, and a criticism/assessment of lack of value in the next release
PEOPLE love to claim that a lot of OpenOffice.org downloads are actually downloads for Windows, but how easy it must be to forget that GNU/Linux users in general rarely download as much software as Windows users. Distributions that are widely used come with vast amounts of software (typically over a thousand packages) and additional software gets installed through repositories, some of which are mirrored/cached locally, which makes it harder to count downloads just as it is hard to count downloads/installations of a GNU/Linux distribution. Beth Lynn Eicher continues to remind us that Fedora claims over 23 million users, which also means many OpenOffice.org users on GNU/Linux.
One download was done by someone with the Fedora project which packaged the OpenOffice.Org for 23 million users.
One reader of ours, Oiaohm, found it worthwhile to discuss the next version of Microsoft Office. The Washington Postcalls Office Web Apps “free but inadequate, limited”; from the opening paragraph:
Back when cellphones flipped open, the impending arrival of a new version of Microsoft Office would be stop-the-presses material. Now, even the debut of a free version of Microsoft’s flagship productivity suite can seem less exciting than temporary tweaks to Google’s home page.
It is worth reminding ourselves that Microsoft’s next Office (at least the Web-based version or Office Web Apps) is not for GNU/Linux users without a Microsoft Office licence. It’s ridiculous. They don’t understand the Web and they create artificial scarcities that ‘punish’ GNU/Linux users. “In the past it was an extra feature [if] OEM had to push products, i.e putting trial versions on,” remarked Oiaohm.
“Now it’s looking like it will become open to everyone. Next thing is fully operational trials makes pirating simpler… And safer for pirates. Basically I see it as desperate actions.” Office figures were down in Microsoft’s last financial report [1, 2, 3, 4]. █
Summary: The big decision that may impact software patents is imminent but not there yet; the ugly business of gene patenting is revealed; Microsoft becomes partner of a company that sued Free software; Microsoft’s booth is shown in a Linux conference in Europe, where Microsoft lobbied Neelie Kroes into accepting software patents inside standards
ANOTHER Monday comes to an end and still no decision regarding the Bilski case (for reasons we explained recently [1, 2, 3]). Red Hat’s Richard Fontana writes: “SCOTUS issues opinions in 4 argued cases but no Bilski!”
He also writes: “SCOTUS announces that they will issue more opinions on Thursday – next possibility for Bilski”
In Re Bilski is about business method patents, but there are other types of patents that ought to be excluded already, notably software patents and patents on genes. The latter are a subject that we write a lot about; it’s where patents harm life and delegitimise the patent system as a whole. The now-infamous cancer gene monopoly receives hard treatment but the problem is broader than that:
United States: Ground-breaking Federal District Court Ruling on Gene Patents
[...]
Editor: Do you see any of your larger clients selling off some of their patent portfolios?
Camacho: I see very few of my clients selling off patent assets except in connection with the sale of a portion of the business, which will typically include the portion of the patent portfolio to which it pertained. More often, my clients are finding strategic partnerships in which they can monetize their patent portfolio by licensing the technology in markets that are ancillary or orthogonal to the client’s primary market – i.e., they don’t want to license the technology to a competitor. However, when a client has a large number of overlapping patents on a particular product and the value of pushing through incremental advances on that particular product is marginal at best, I do see clients choosing to spend less of their IP budget on getting additional patent coverage.
Here is an update on the Rambus case [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]. Rambus trapped its competitors using patents inside industry standards. It’s a lesson for GNU/Linux users to learn because Microsoft’s strategy is like Rambus’ in some ways.
Court Reschedules Rambus Patent Hearing
Rambus on Wednesday said that a U.S. federal appeals court has rescheduled a hearing in the company’s patent infringement cases with rivals Hynix Semiconductor and Micron Technology.
One interesting item of news that we found is about NetApp partnering with Microsoft a few years after their lawsuitagainst Free/open source software from Sun (not to suggest a direct causal relationship/correlation). Here are some articles about those two love birds:
Here is the press release. NetApp is somewhat of a patent parasite and according to another new press release, it’s not the only storage-oriented company to sign up with Microsoft this month.
We did an informal workshop, where interested people discussed current matters on software patents, open standards and other FFII topics.
The president of the FFII links to this new statement from Neelie Kroes, who he claims to be “not against software patents in standards” (based on her speech).
“[T]his means she’s [Kroes] in favour of software patents” –Rui SeabraMicrosoft was lobbying to change her views [1, 2, 3] and Rui Seabra responds to the above by saying that “this means she’s in favour of software patents” (this is not news to us).
As BoingBoing reminds us, prior art is everywhere (sometimes not implemented in software form), so this whole idea of owning abstract ideas ought to be suppressed. █
Summary: Bill Gates’ latest lobbying in the United States, Nigeria and new ventures in Argentina too; this post covers many strands of operation where PR hides very simple facts (see the videos above for background)
SOME OF the conflicting interests in the Gates Foundation are amusingly obvious, but it’s not exactly amusing when lives are at stake. To give one recent example, Gates invests in tobacco and in tobacco prevention at the same time [1, 2]. Perhaps both sides can be profitable, but that’s just speculation.
“Gates has been investing in BP for several years and he invests in other large oil companies, so it’s not exactly an accident.”To give another more concrete and new example (new in the sense that it makes headlines right now), Bill Gates invests in BP [1, 2] while also investing in “green” energy. Which is it then? Can one invest in both sides? Like financiers who fund both sides in a war? Just because one invests in two conflicting sides does not make it any less profitable. The two sides do not necessarily cancel each other from an outsider’s point of view. In fact, it can become twice as valuable.
United States
We found it rather comical that Bill Gates himself was warning about oil spills. That’s the same guy who is investing in BP. He relies on the fact that many people do not know this. Gates has been investing in BP for several years and he invests in other large oil companies, so it’s not exactly an accident. Now, watch the latest words that are coming out of the mouth of this BP investor:
Gates, venture capitalist Doerr issue warning about America’s future
The ever expanding BP oil spill, in a sense, provides Bill Gates the perfect backdrop for selling Congress and the White House on a proposal to increase annual U.S. spending on clean energy research and development from $5 billion to $16 billion.
The report above — a news report from IDG — forgets or neglects to mention he’s a BP investor (still). We have looked around some more, surveying some articles from the past week. All other articles about BP and Gates neglect to mention their relationship, e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4].
Here is the article from AP, titled “US must invest in clean energy research: Bill Gates”
So what is he trying to say? That his government should invest in “clean energy research” (which he and his friend Nathan Myhrvold have a stake in because of patents they acquired) while he and his foundation continue to invest in “dirty energy” like BP?
If someone can find an article that points out the BP investment (and therefore Gates’ hypocrisy), please do let us know. We try to commend authors who properly investigate and have the guts to challenge the rich people’s foundations. It’s not just the modus operandi of Gates.
Here is Bill on TV, poised to talk about “clean energy”. Yes, Mr. BP Gates (also an Exxon Mobil investor) must be the perfect man to talk about “clean energy”, right? He’s rich, so he knows everything.
Microsoft’s founder and chairman talks oil and clean energy on “This Week.”
How can he talk about the subject with a straight face?
There are more TV appearances about this. The Gates Foundation is good at getting those spots. It is a well-greased PR machine, putting him on TV and instructing him on what to say and how to behave (as Microsoft admittedly did too) [1, 2].
“We find it rather ironic that Gates currently gives instructions to the government; his past experience in the government is being grilled in a chair for abuses he committed.”According to other reports, Gates is traveling around the world lobbying. We’ll start with the United States. Gates was lobbying the White House earlier this month. He is making many visits to the White House [1, 2, 3] as though he was actually elected in some way to run the country. What did he go to the White House for? Not to donate but to lobby the government to spend — i.e. pay on behalf of taxpayers — for something which Gates is trying to sell [1, 2]. We find it rather ironic that Gates currently gives instructions to the government; his past experience in the government is being grilled in a chair for abuses he committed. Years later they swap chairs as he rides a high horse.
This lobbying-fest is not over yet. According to another new report, “Mr Ballmer goes to Washington for China pirate gripe” (they mean counterfeiting, not “piracy”).
Big name bosses at 12 tech companies are meeting with US lawmakers and White House officials to complain about illegal software copying in China.
According to the Business Software Alliance lobby group, 79 per cent of China’s computers ran on counterfeit software in 2009.
Convicted lobbyist Abramoff set to leave jail this week or next
And what timing: Documentary on scandal begins Friday
Three and a half years has passed since the incarceration of onetime Washington power-broker Jack Abramoff.
And as soon as this week, or next, Abramoff will he on his way out the doors of a federal prison and into a halfway house, where he will reside until he’s formally released.
So far today we have shown that the top people from Microsoft are all lobbying heavily this month. But not only the United States is the victim here. They take it overseas, too (colonisation).
“Gates has gone lobbying in Nigeria where he invests in harmful oil operations that cause polio and kill/maim many Nigerian children…”Here you can see Bill Gates lobbying the Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan (who tells people to stop dropping his name). What have they got in common? Well, news reports say that it’s about polio [1, 2], but once again, rather than speak about how Gates’ investments cause polio (like his BP investments help destroy the environment), those two discuss the very opposite, pretending that Gates just cures polio. The “Nigerian leader lauds Bill Gates on polio,” according to local reports. Is that the same Bill Gates who helps cause polio with his investments in Nigerian oil that leaks into rivers and pollutes the air because it’s much cheaper to treat it this way and the Nigerian population is unable to properly sue companies like Shell? My Nigerian friends here in the UK have told me about this. It is an issue that a minority is aware of and those who campaign against this injustice are sometimes hired by the very same companies which they criticise (because it gags the critics, who receive money for their loyalty or silence). That’s just corruption.
Despite the issues raised here, Gates’ PR people seem to be pushing dishonest stuff (maybe ghostwritten because it’s in English) into local newspapers. They are sometimes advertising Microsoft in the process (as though polio and Microsoft are connected). Just watch what Microsoft does to Nigerian schools [1, 2].
The World Health Organization has suggested a budget of $2.6 billion for its polio eradication efforts in 2010-2012, but says it faces a shortfall of about half of funds for that period.
For those who do not know, the UN and WHO (people who hang out even in Gates’ private mansion) are publicly criticised for their ties with Gates’ foundation. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moo is particularly close to Gates and this new article reminds us of that (we have many prior examples and stories).
Behind the scenes at Women Deliver, whose speaking list included UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Melinda Gates of the Gates Foundation, Margaret Chan of the World Health Organization, politicians, policy makers, celebrities and others from around the world, people said they were perplexed by Canada’s policy on funding for maternal health.
Ban Ki-Moon is working alongside his friends from the Gates family and their agenda becomes one [1, 2]. This is widely criticised on occasions and the interests at play are seen as controversial.
Reports accuse WHO of exaggerating H1N1 threat, possible ties to drug makers”
European criticism of the World Health Organization’s handling of the H1N1 pandemic intensified Friday with the release of two reports that accused the agency of exaggerating the threat posed by the virus and failing to disclose possible influence by the pharmaceutical industry on its recommendations for how countries should respond.
That’s why we named both the UN and the WHO.
Here is a new video which is only days old. From the description: “How do foundations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation distort the public health agenda? Is there a nexus between big pharmaceutical companies, health foundations and NGO’s? What is state’s responsibility?
“Newsclick talks to Prof. Shree Mulay to get answers for all these questions.”
This video deserves a watch from those who want to understand why they make allegations that the foundations “distort” the health agenda and that “they tend to focus on [too] few things”.
Going back to Nigeria, Gates did find time for some shameless PR like this:
Gates signs soccer ball in Nigeria
Bill Gates, cochair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, added his support to the Kick Polio Out of Africa campaign this week, signing a soccer ball that is making its way through the continent before the 2010 World Cup.
This type of gesture is just so reminiscent of old-age charlatans who traveled the world as imperialists and gave gifts to buy the locals’ consent/trust. There are other examples of PR in Nigeria, but we won’t descend into that because this post is already too long. The gist of this story and the message to take away is that despite reports like this one (AFP), Gates is also investing in companies that cause polio. The mainstream press does not mention this because it stays in line with the rest (which is influenced by heavy PR). Here is a criticism of Gates’ lobbying (visit) in Nigeria:
Bill gets it right here when he says it is both good work and good luck leading to continued control. In the following story the author appears to have mixed up Bill’s work and the work of the Gates Foundation. Does the Foundation encourage this confusion?
In order to keep false allegations and straw man arguments out, we will separately post some other ideas which are brought up in light of “family planning” (contraception) funding and Eugenics conspiracy theorists who will probably make a big deal out of the fact that the “Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is connected to the Council on Foreign Relations and Melinda Gates is herself a Bilderberger.” To quote in full from this new post:
A quick Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) search revealed that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is connected to the Council on Foreign Relations and Melinda Gates is herself a Bilderberger.
World Bank health efforts failing in Africa: study
[...]
The survey funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said the international lender and its partners’ approach “is not achieving intended outcomes,” especially against diseases like tuberculosis.
We have already explained how Gates invests in the suppliers of those drugs which are priced out of reach.
Argentina
Bill Gates is taking this Africa-style programme to Argentina, which is abused a lot by Microsoft these days [1, 2, 3]. According to this last report, “Bill Gates [is going] to Finance Argentine Vaccine Development Program”
An Argentine scientist’s project to develop vaccines taken orally will receive funding from the foundation headed by Bill Gates, the Argentine government said Saturday.
Argentina learned the hard way (several decades ago) that rich people from the north are not exactly interested in the welfare of the Argentinian population. They ought to watch this with great caution. █
And that’s not the only place where desktop Linux makes sense. If you get right down to it, there are many instances where the only requirements of the desktop are to act as a portal to a Web-based application and possibly run an email client. With the push toward Web-based internal apps, there’s little reason to require Windows at all. Heck, there’s almost no requirement for a desktop or the ability to run anything other than a compatible browser.
The software store I describe is not science fiction. This is reality for Apple “App Store” for Ipad/Iphone, the “Ubuntu Software Center” for Canonical’s Linux-based desktop operating system, the Google “Android Market” for Android Linux-based phones, and Palm “PreWare” for WebOS Linux-based phones.
Ladies and Gentelmen, the platform-delivered software store is how distributed in the 21st century. Unfortunately for Microsoft, no such thing exists for Windows.
This distribution includes LAMP (LAMP stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) that is needed for developing or hosting PHP websites and all other major development tools. An award-winning Sugar desktop for children is also included in this media.
More details about Samsung’s new tablet have emerged courtesy of Tinh te and from what it claims is a highly reliable source. This time around, the Vietnamese site is claiming that Samsung’s 7-inch Tab will be running Anroid 2.2 (Froyo) on an A8 processor clocked to a peppy 1.2GHz. It’s all powered by a 4,000mAH battery that contributes to the tablet’s 370-gram weight with 16GB of on-board storage and up to 32GB of microSD expansion.
“I was asked to manage a number of Linux servers at work. I would like to use volume snapshots to improve my backup scripts and keep recent copies of data around for quick restore. I normally manage Windows servers and on those I would just use Microsoft’s Volume Shadow Copy for this. I tried Linux LVM snapshots, but most of the servers I manage run regular partitions with ext3 file systems, so LVM snapshots will not work. I found some versioning file systems out there like ext3cow and Tux3. Those look interesting, but I need something I can use on my existing ext3 file systems. I also found the R1Soft Hot Copy command-line utility, but it does not yet support my older 2.4 Linux servers. What are you using to make snapshots on Linux?”
Content control software, also commonly known as web filtering software, is software which is designed and optimised to determine what content can be viewed by the user. This software is particularly relevant to information supplied by a web browser.
Along with the removal of the docking bars a while back, the result is that GIMP has gotten a cleaner and more space efficient UI. There’s a lot of things that could be further improved of course, but this is what I wanted to do for 2.8. And the single-window mode. Speaking of, I haven’t had much time for that lately either, but I’m sure it’ll all be fine eventually.
Many of you already know that the free graph based library GEGL is still being integrated into GIMP currently. So what about some visions how GIMP could work or look like when integration is finished and new features are implemented?
When it comes to surf the Internet, most people simply does not care for the browser, for example Internet Explorer 6, which until recently remained as one of the most frequently used browser, even appearing to security breaches and slowdown evident. While Microsoft continues its dominance in the world of browsers, competitors weight as Firefox, Opera and most recently the Google Chrome occupy increasingly users.
[...]
While in HTML5 test, Mozilla has obtained a score higher on tests that examine the program’s compatibility with navigation in pages that use the HTML 5 (139 points against 129 of Opera, for a total of 300 possible). In addition to the 10 points do not represent any difference, the HTML 5 is still not something widespread and most sites do not work with this system.
The program is open-source (and won’t cost you a dime). If you’re a Linux user who also happens to own an Apple mobile device, I highly urge you to check out libimobiledevice. Let us know how your experience goes.
To get started get the minimal image here. Then burn the image to CD (USB method didn’t work for me). Make sure you are connected to the internet via a cable as this install will need to get some additional basic packages from the Ubuntu repository.
The Butterfly Effect is an open source physics puzzle game about cause and effect, which the developers state is not entirely unlike “The Incredible Machine“. There are 30 now fully playable levels.
AstroMenace is a modern 3D scrolling space shooter with ship upgrade possibilities. You can improve your ship configuration by installing new weapons, defensive systems, power stations and much more. To improve your ship, you must earn money by destroying throngs of enemies on every level.
Obviously, the move from beta 1 to beta 2 won’t bring any new features, however, as I continue to use the KDE SC 4.5 betas, I’m continuing to discover the small improvements that aren’t obvious at first blush. Whilst there aren’t a huge number of new features in this release, 4.5 is bringing a level of polish that will serve as a solid foundation for the next steps in the evolution of the KDE desktop.
We have already talked about a web-based collaborative editing tool today, Etherpad. So, after that I started looking for some native linux applications which do the same thing and came across Gobby and a new collaboration plugin for Gedit. We can talk about Gobby sometime later, I am more interested to tell you about this new plugin in Gedit .
There you have it, a close comparison between these three fabulous Linux distros, resulting in very evenly matched scores. I personally love all three, each having its own character, strengths, but also weaknesses. Having said so, looking strictly for which one offers the smoothest and most intuitive experience, I would probably have to say that Linux Mint 9 is the winner in my opinion.
Hopefully this comparison will help you make your choice based on your own needs and taste. I am pretty sure any of the choices is a sure winner.
Recommendations – Pardus 2009.2 is a light-weight desktop distribution. Light-weight because it does not support disk encryption, boot-loader password protection, and LVM and RAID. If those are features you can live without, then Pardus is worth at least a try. It is just like Linux Mint, but with fewer applications in its repository.
What I’m looking forward to in the next release is for the network interface and the graphical firewall manager to be configured out of the box. I’ll also love to see 3D desktop configuration as a step in Kaptan.
My friend ask to me to install linux to his notebook. And i install it with pclinuxos 2010 my custom remastered. The notebook is Acer Aspire 4730 ZG. This is the specification of Acer Aspire 4730 ZG (look at this pic).
Fedora Linux has found its way back into my heart. It will work alongside Ubuntu as my top two Linux distributions. We’ll see just how they place (1 or 2) with the next iteration.
Finally! The much discussed about F-Spot vs Shotwell battle is over. The new default image organizer app for Ubuntu Maverick 10.10 is going to be Shotwell. This is a much needed change and F-Spot was simply not enough. Most of the times when I tried F-Spot, it just keeps crashing on me. Shotwell on a other hand feels a lot more solid and is better integrated with GNOME desktop. Shotwell is also completely devoid of Mono.
“Finally! The much discussed about F-Spot vs. Shotwell battle is over. The new default image organizer app for Ubuntu Maverick 10.10 is going to be Shotwell. This is a much-needed change; F-Spot was simply not enough. Most of the times when I tried F-Spot, it just keeps crashing on me. Shotwell on the other hand feels a lot more solid and is better integrated with the GNOME desktop. Shotwell is also completely devoid of Mono.”
Word on the street is F-Spot is out and Shotwell is in for the next release of Ubuntu.
It’s always been obvious to me that the so-called “best-of-breed” Mono apps were anything but, and it’s nice to see that Team Apologista spin isn’t getting the job done any longer.
It’s always struck me as seventeen kinds of absurd that a simple note-taking application can justify bringing in a huge run-time framework – and the after-the-fact rationaliztion of adding more Mono apps “since we’ve already paid the price” was a PR dance worthy of Team Apologista’s Redmond Puppet Masters.
Of course, Mono infestation is not purely an Ubuntu problem – GNOME has deep shame staining its hands in this matter as well – but because Team Apologista has targeted Ubuntu so hard, it’s significant -and encouraging – to see their efforts fail.
Our favourite alternative to the main Ubuntu menu applet has received an update today which makes it easier to configure settings and also includes a new plugin to perform Google searches right from your desktop!
The definition for ‘Informed’ is: “To supply (oneself) with knowledge of a matter or subject.” How do you do this without coming to a consensus with the community? I don’t care who makes the decisions in the end, but to be informed you must listen to the community. And to “fix” a problem you must first understand the problem and know the best solution, the users must not still have a problem, otherwise it’s not a proper solution and the “decisionmaker” was not “informed.”
Mark Shuttleworth doesn’t make good decisions. As for Jono, the community manager job is NOT to make excuses for bad decisions, it is to represent the community (just as we in the U.S. elect each person to represent us, this is democracy, and this is how good software is developed.)
Last week an old discussion flared up once again when TildeHash published “Meritocracy vs. Democracy”, a long lament for.. the position of a few buttons!
I didn’t get to see Jono Bacon’s post Ubuntu: meritocracy not democracy until today. Shame I missed it, I like reading this stuff.
[...]
Of course scale that up to 12 million users and you suddenly see why some people want to start having democracy or at least hierarchy. Users can’t reasonable expect to be listened to, even though their input is vital to drag Ubuntu out of the programmer paradise and into the mainstream.
Motorola’s poppin’ out Android phones Kate Gosselin-style this month. Just days after announcing its new Motorola Flipout, Moto has taken the wraps off the Milestone XT720, dubbed as “one of the most powerful phones” in the company’s current Android lineup.
According to a statement from Sprint, Friday sales of the HTC EVO 4G topped the single day sales of any other phone in the company’s history — though the company didn’t give exact numbers. The previous record was held by both the Samsung Instinct and the Palm Pre.
Looking to put a little more “Minority Report” in your life? Or maybe you’re just tired of smudging the screen on your Android device? eyeSight Mobile Technologies may have the answer: Touchless gesture control.
Eyesight develops natural user interfaces for mobile phones. Its gesture technology allows Android devices to use the device’s built-in camera, advanced real-time image processing and machine vision algorithms to track the user’s hand motions and convert them into commands.
It’s official. China and Taiwan have signed an agreement to promote a number of telecommunications technologies, including Google’s Android mobile software and networking technologies for wireless cities.
Fresh off an announcement of a strategic investment from VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, mobile payments platform Boku is taking its mobile strategy one step further by launching an in-app mobile billing library for Android.
Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch may currently be the most popular mobile browsing devices in North America, but handsets using Google’s Android operating system are quickly eroding Apple’s lead. Over the past year, Android browser share on mobiles has increased 12.2 percent and is now used by one in five mobile web users in North America, according to Quantcast, a San Francisco-based web analytics firm. While browsing is down on nearly all other platforms, Apple’s drop is the steepest, down 8.1 percent in the last 12 months. But Android’s gain can really only take a bite out of Apple as everyone else is essentially sitting on the sidelines.
We all know OLPC as an amazing educational tool for primary school children in the developing world. But is it appropriate for high school students? Will teenagers flock to the XO’s kid-friendly design and child-centric Sugar OS?
When I said recently that we still need the Open Source Initiative (OSI), it started a flood of comment. There’s no doubt that we need OSI – but we need a better OSI. The one we have now is just too small to be effective and too mired in past successes; a renaissance is needed. You can help.
Yesterday and Today
OSI was formed in 1998 to solve a pressing problem. The founders embraced the ideals of software freedom, but saw that businesses – being non-persons – lacked any way to embrace a philosophical principle. To advance software freedom, it needed to be pragmatically “projected” onto the surface of the computer industry of 1998, creating rules that could be followed without demanding ideological “purity”. The result was a focus on a certain kind of advocacy, plus an enormously valuable effort to analyse, categorise and selectively endorse copyright licenses. OSI was the pragmatic projection of software freedom onto the computer industry of 1998.
Most of these questions are well understood within the free software community itself. But we generally communicate it poorly by focusing the discussion on license technicalities. I guess this is because we’re so used to working in this open manner that we take the it as a given. But users, especially in the public administration only see the licensing side of things because that is the only aspect we talk about and have definitions for.
A good exception for this is the Apache Software Foundation that has a well-defined set of rules that projects must follow before they can be adopted under the ASF umbrella. Maybe FSF and OSI should also publish some understandable guidelines and definitions for project openness?
I suggest that instead of these scapegoat tactics and acting as if they solve any real issue, efforts should be focused on encouraging manufacturers to publish open specifications for their chips and open the source code for their firmware, whether it lives inside the hardware or gets loaded by the kernel. And let’s commend those manufacturers that allow their binary firmware to be conveniently distributed with the Linux kernel instead of punishing them by blacklisting their devices. That could be a first step toward improved communication with hardware manufacturers, which in turn might make truly free firmware more likely in the future.
This is a suggestion that has come up before (Dave Neary’s post from 2008 springs to mind). As he stated: “Free software doesn’t get developed like proprietary software, why should the free software industry look like the proprietary software industry?”
It seemed barely credible that London’s evening paper would succeed as a giveaway. But the power of old-fashioned print advertising revenue has moved it to the brink of profitability
With digital technology and internet distribution, we are all producers. The outputs of our diverse cultural institutions are converging in the digital domain. Public funding policy needs to be reformed and converged to match.
Last week, a new open protocol called OExchange was released with the aim of simplifying sharing. Right out of the door, it had names like Google, Microsoft, and LinkedIn signed on. WebProNews spoke with Google’s Open Web advocate, Chris Messina about how the protocol could benefit businesses and site owners.
Recently, I had the pleasure of finally meeting Cameron Neylon, probably the leading – and certainly most articulate – exponent of open science. Talking with him about peer review helped crystallise something that I have been trying to articulate: why peer review should go.
[...]
For me what’s particularly interesting is the fact that peer review is unnecessary for the same reason that copyright and patents are unnecessary nowadays: because the Internet liberates creativity massively and provides a means for bringing that flood to a wider audience without the need for official gatekeepers to bless and control it.
Starting July 1st, Starbucks will finally begin to offer free and unrestricted Internet access over Wi-Fi in its stores. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz made this announced at Wired’s Disruptive by Design conference today. With this, Starbucks finally joins the ranks of neighborhood coffee stores all over the world that have long offered free and easy access to Wi-Fi. By Fall 2010, Starbucks also plans to give Internet users in its stores free access to paid sites, including the Wall Street Journal.
The following guest post is by Stefano Costa and Federico Morando. Stefano Costa is a researcher at the University of Siena and Coordinator of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Data in Archaeology. Federico Morando is Managing Director & Research Fellow at the NEXA Center for Internet & Society and a member of the Working Group on EU Open Data.
The Open University’s Martin Weller looks at the Peer Review Survey 2009′s numbers on free participation by UK academics in the peer review process for commercial science journals and concludes that 10.4m hours spent on this amounts to a £209,976,000 subsidy from publicly funded universities to private, for-profit journals, who then charge small fortunes to the same institutions for access to the journals.
Hewlett-Packard has blades on the brain for both “industry standard” and “mission critical” servers, but IT managers in the United Kingdom seem to be more worried about the cost of their mission critical platforms, generally Unix boxes, according to a report released by Coleman Parkes Research.
NEW forms of media have always caused moral panics: the printing press, newspapers, paperbacks and television were all once denounced as threats to their consumers’ brainpower and moral fiber.
Canadian boffins say they have discovered a strange form of microbe living in remote Arctic springs which would, if taken to some parts of Mars, be able to survive there.
A multi-million pound scheme to tackle passport fraud has been branded a failure after it was revealed that only eight people have been caught as a result of the project.
The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.
I have been wondering for a while just what we — the west in general — are doing in Afghanistan.
Iraq was pretty obvious: oil. (Don’t listen to the mouth, watch the hands.) It wasn’t anything as crude as grabbing the oil — stealing around ten billion tons of anything is pretty much impossible — but about exerting control over the manner in which it is sold in order to maintain a competitive advantage (a choke-hold on energy supplies) over economic competitors such as Germany and China. That was the core vision of the Project for the New American Century think tank in the late 1990s, and those folks later formed the top tier of the previous administration.
A botnet targeting Mexican surfers has been dismantled just weeks after it first appeared, apparently by the cybercrook who established it rather than by any action by the federales or ISPs.
A new Pew Internet survey of 900 Internet experts leads with a headline finding that will surprise few: the experts largely agree that, by 2020, we’ll all be computing in the cloud. But an even more interesting notion is buried in one corner of the report, and it’s an idea that came up in two of the three cloud interviews I did in the wake of Wired/Ars Smart Salon. This notion is that, at some point, there will be a massive data breach—a kind of cloud version of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, but pouring critical data out into the open instead of oil—and that this breach will cause everyone from private industry to government regulators to rethink what cloud computing can and cannot do.
The most intriguing part of his presentation was his exploration of ‘consumer emissions,’ which are not usually included in emissions reporting. His central question was, “Who’s responsible for emissions: the producers or the consumers?”
By now it ought to be obvious to anyone – if we want bluefin tuna tomorrow we need to stop catching them today. But despite the clear scientific evidence and predictions of the bluefin’s demise – our activists faced a 2 hour confrontation at sea today when they took action to ensure fish for the future.
A SUNDAY TIMES investigation has exposed Japan for bribing small nations with cash and prostitutes to gain their support for the mass slaughter of whales.
James Cameron offered to help BP find a solution to their leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico but the company turned him down. Now the Academy Award-winning director is taking his suggestions directly to the media.
Walker was eventually able to go over to the tent after an intervention from an official in the sheriff’s office, but none of the workers would talk to him, since the security official was telling them that they didn’t have to say anything.
More than 150,000 people get a few chuckles every day from @BPGlobalPR on Twitter, a satirical take on BP and the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. But BP, the company behind what has been called the biggest ecological disaster in U.S. history, isn’t laughing.
Supercomputers are good for more than just designing nuclear weapons or making doomsday predictions about climate change. They can depress us in other ways, like showing us the extent of the damage that could be done by BP’s Deepwater Horizon offshore rig spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
Congressional Democrats and the White House are toying with different ways to force BP to cover the costs of damages from the Gulf oil spill. But they face stiff opposition from industry…and it seems leading Republicans. In response to a question from TPMDC, House Minority Leader John Boehner said he believes taxpayers should help pick up the tab for the clean up.
When the World Bank and International Finance Corporation started the Lighting Africa program in 2007, it was estimated that Africans spent $17 billion (€12.5 billion) a year on lighting sources such as kerosene lamps that are inefficient, polluting and hazardous, and that 250 million people in sub-Saharan Africa had no access to power.
Congress’ final tinkering with Wall Street overhaul this month offers lobbyists a last-ditch shot to reshape the package on behalf of clients with billions at stake.
Even as the legislation gets tougher on banks by the week, agents of influence are hardly strangers on Capitol Hill. Many once worked for the lawmakers they’re lobbying.
Mike Konczal (who I had the pleasure of meeting at the America’s Future Now conference) has written a report outlining his dream scenario for the Wall Street reform conference committee, coming up with the best of both the House and Senate bills. He has four topic headings:
Making Resolution Authority Credible
Getting Our Banks Capitalized
Bringing Derivatives Into the Sunlight
Audit the Fed
Banks are likely to lose a key lobbying battle in the US over whether they will be forced to spin off their lucrative swaps desks, according to people familiar with financial reform negotiations in Congress.
A great deal of discretion would remain with the regulators, and of course this is a potential danger. But the heightened public awareness of the idea that “bailouts are bad” at least increases the chances that management and directors would be replaced in a failing megabank. Whether creditors would face any losses remains a more open question – but at least the Kanjorski amendment, if applied properly, would put that possibility firmly on the table.
Brown-Kaufman was turned back on the Senate floor, but the Kanjorski amendment is an integral part of the financial reform bill that passed the House. And Congressman Paul Kanjorski is a formidable member of the House conference delegation.
They are the sticking points that would gum up the Wall Street overhaul.
From big banks’ exotic trades to the plastic in people’s wallets, it only take a few of the most contentious issues to upend a careful political equilibrium as lawmakers try to blend House and Senate bills into a single rewrite of banking regulations.
For the financial crisis, it has become clear that many chief executives and corporate directors were not aware of the risks taken by their trading desks and partners. Recent accusations against Goldman Sachs suggest the potential for conflicts of interest among banks, investors, hedge funds and rating agencies. And it is clear that regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission, an agency staffed primarily with lawyers, are not well positioned to monitor the arcane trading strategies that helped produce the crisis.
Goldman Sachs (GS) has always had a reputation for being above the fray, aloof from the concerns of mere mortals. This reputation has served the bank splendidly as it fends off the pleas, hearings, and subpoenas of federal regulators. To the experienced (or simply jaded), it appeared that the 141-year-old Wall Street stalwart is just, well, being Goldman.
Just because you can do something, does that mean you should? It’s a question that might have saved us a lot of pain in recent months if both Goldman Sachs and British Petroleum had asked it of themselves during the last decade.
Following up on an earlier post about the uncloaking and arrest of Army Specialist Bradley Manning of Potomac, Maryland, who is believed to have leaked the “Collateral Murder” video to Wikileaks, Philip Shenon reports in the Daily Beast about anxiety over more sensitive material Manning may have downloaded and stored. At issue are some 260,000 diplomatic cables from government computer networks that, by some reports, he has admitted to have accessed and was planning to make public.
American officials are searching for Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks in an attempt to pressure him not to publish thousands of confidential and potentially hugely embarrassing diplomatic cables that offer unfiltered assessments of Middle East governments and leaders.
Specialist Bradley Manning, 22, of Potomac, Maryland, has reportedly been held in Kuwait for almost two weeks on suspicion of leaking a video of a helicopter attack in Baghdad in 2007 that killed civilians.
Ofcom is allowing the BBC to operate its Freeview HD multiplex in such a way that only TV receivers and set-top boxes with built-in digital rights management (DRM) can see programmes’ electronic programme guide (EPG) data.
Rather interestingly, this “consultation” closed almost as soon as it opened: it was hard to resist the impression that it was being railroaded through. Fortunately, due in part to the prompt actions of Computerworld UK readers in submitting critical responses, Ofcom was forced to extend the consultation period, and then carry out a completely new consultation.
[..]
If the decision is not overturned (which seems unlikely), it will give the content industry control over what people can do with the content they watch on the BBC. Shame on Oftel – and double shame on the BBC for betraying in this way the audience that has faithfully funded it for all these years.
One of the problems with the debate around copyright is that it is often fuelled more by feelings than facts. What is sorely lacking is a hard-nosed look at key areas like the economics of copyright. Enter “The Economics of Copyright and Digitisation: A Report on the Literature and the Need for Further Research” [.pdf].
As you can tell from the rather tentative title, this is just a first step, but it is an important one, and the UK’s Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property Policy (SABIP) is to be congratulated on commissioning it. This is exactly the kind of thing that it should be doing – not simply taking political positions, but establishing the basis for rational debate before then moving on to the framing of appropriate legislation.
The US Copyright Group, a District-based venture backed by attorneys from Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver, has sued in federal court at least 14,000 John Doe plaintiffs who allegedly downloaded independent movies from the peer-to-peer file-sharing site BitTorrent. The scope of the litigation, which if successful could generate upward of $20 million even if settled out of court, is expected to expand as action is taken on behalf of more film producers against additional groups of defendants.
In the fall of last year The Pirate Bay took its tracker offline. Luckily, for the stability of the BitTorrent ecosystem several new trackers emerged to take its place. Time for us to provide an overview of the largest public BitTorrent trackers currently around.
I don’t blame Google so much as I blame the Neanderthal book publishers who are breathing down Google’s neck. Or perhaps it’s Google’s wallet. Google will probably get to this kind of fine tuning eventually, but at the moment they are dealing with folks insisting on locking books up for fear non-payers will read them. But if you have a paper copy of the book, or go to the copyright page online, you’ll see that the book’s copyrighted by the editors, but it says right on the same page that the individual essays are licensed under a Creative Commons license, Attribution, NonCommercial, NoDerivs 2.5. That means that everyone in the world is free to read my essay, for starters. It also means they are free in a noncommercial context to copy and redistribute it with attribution, as long as they reproduce it accurately and without changing anything or adding anything. That is my intent. But ironically, I can’t even reproduce it for you here unless I want to type it all out by hand, because it won’t let me even see all the pages, let alone copy them. I’m mentioning it because it’s my hope that Google Books, and other such services, will make a note and tell the computers to look for Creative Commons licenses, and loosen up.
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I don’t think the process would work as well for a less, shall we say, inspiring case. Volunteers responded because they seriously cared about the outcome, not because they found learning to do legal research fascinating. I have gotten a lot of email about enjoying the learning, actually, but I also know that SCO was an inspiration. For some, watching an attack on Linux is like watching someone kick Dorothy’s dog, Toto: people get mad and want to do something about it. You don’t get the same response in all cases or by paying people. There isn’t enough money in the world to pay me for the amount of work I donated to Groklaw, the nights without sleep, the anxiety, or the jerks I had to deal with sometimes, if I may speak plainly.
If you’re one of the 14,000+ US citizens targeted by the US Copyright Group for allegedly sharing movies with BitTorrent, a letter has already arrived or will do so shortly. That letter will contain a polite request: pay us around $1,500 within the next few weeks or run of the risk of a federal copyright lawsuit, where lawyers will demand the maximum $150,000 penalty.
TorrentFreak asked independent film director Sam Bozzo to comment on his experiences having his two most recent films leaked to BitTorrent. The stories in both cases were different. The first film, Blue Gold: World Water Wars was released normally, and then leaked online. The second, his documentary Hackers Wanted was shelved after internal disputes — but has now leaked to BitTorrent. Originally it was an old cut that was leaked, but now Bozzo’s “directors’ cut” has been leaked, and Bozzo seems fine with it. In fact, he claims that if you make a good film, having it leaked to BitTorrent can only help. It’s only bad if your film isn’t very good:
In a nutshell, I believe the only films that are hurt by torrent sharing are mediocre and bad films. In contrast, the good films of any genre only benefit from file-sharing. Due to this, I feel the current file-sharing trend is a catalyst for a true evolution in filmmaking…
Only two weeks of plenary in Strasbourg are left for Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to have a chance to sign Written Declaration 12 (WD12) on ACTA. 150 signatures are still missing, mostly from Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, and Poland. Every EU citizen is encouraged to call Strasbourg offices of non-signatories MEPs until thursday, 12:00, to urge them to sign WD12.
Now, the Baltic sea neighbors Finland and Estonia have declared Internet access to be a legal right. So I’ve been wondering… What are the chances of Southeast European countries, for once, not being late to the show but actually leading the race? What do I mean by that? First of all, Croatia and its neighbours would be wise to take advantage of the situation. While the UK, for example, is being mired down with a disastrous “Digital Economy Act”, perhaps our country and maybe even our neighbors could go the other way.
Summary: Citizens of Haiti are not exactly grateful for Gates’ promotion of a long-term liability which he makes money from; other news coverage starts to unravel the Gates-GMO connection and we take a closer look at his latest Haitian giveaway
THE Gates Foundation, the world’s largest philanthrocapitalist player created by Bill Gates, faces criticism. Gates has been trying not to draw much attention to his relationship with GMO, based on a fairly recent report that we showed (after backlash he must have realised it’s bad for PR and his “brand name”). But victims of Monsanto are not as dumb as Monsanto needs them to be. Sooner or later they find out that Monsanto exploits the poor and the less educated — those who find it harder to refuse becoming Monsanto customers.
Monsanto is a “pusher”, much like Microsoft. First it gives something for “free” and later on, when it becomes hard to resist and to undo the dependencies, Monsanto charges a fortune and bullies those who do not or cannot pay. Monsanto criminalises many farmers in the same way that Microsoft criminalises computer users.
“Monsanto criminalises many farmers in the same way that Microsoft criminalises computer users.”To readers who wish to associate us with nutty conspiracy theorists, we are not arguing about the merits or harms of genetically-modified crops in terms of health. We only argue about the business model. It’s about patents (monopolies).
A few weeks ago it was made known that Monsanto intended to ‘inject’ (forceful connotation intended) its products into Haiti. It is a devastated nation whose catastrophe several greedy businesses are trying to exploit, even Microsoft. Fortunately for citizens of Haiti, there are some good people in the United States (to march in Seattle, no less!) who help Haitian farmers understand what Monsanto wants to do to them. There were even reports which said that Haitians would burn all seeds donated by Monsanto as a matter of principle and practicality (just laying seeds on the ground may help them grow and expand through dissemination). In short, they burn Monsanto’s so-called ‘IP’ rather than let it infect the nation. From the new article:
Groups around the U.S. Join Haitian Farmers in Protesting ‘Donation’ of Monsanto Seeds
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AGRA Watch in Seattle plans a march today which will end outside the Gates Foundation office. AGRA stands for A Green Revolution in Africa, which is a multinational corporation-driven, GMO-driven program now being launched in Africa. The Gates Foundation has been a key promoter of AGRA. The group says, “The dumping of toxic seeds in Haiti is the latest in a series of unsustainable solutions that Monsanto has pushed on farmers around the world. If the Gates Foundation wants to support a truly sustainable agricultural system in Africa, they must divorce themselves from Monsanto. Haitian farmers and African farmers have said NO! to corporate control of their food systems. The Gates Foundation and AGRA must say no to Monsanto.”
This article does mention the role of the Gates Foundation, but it is not focused on this one particular aspect. Here is a new and very detailed African article which covers AGRA Watch and a lot more about the Gates Foundation’s role. It is a long article which is worth a read. To quote parts of it:
AGRA Watch formed in 2008 to challenge the Gates Foundation’s participation in the problematic Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, and to support sustainable, agro-ecological alternatives already practiced in Africa.
[...]
The Gates Foundations, like other mega-philanthropies, use their financial power to push policies that they have decided are ‘needed.’ In this case, Gates has decided that GMOs are the solution for African agriculture. In 2009, the Gates Foundation gave US$5.4 million to the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, as part of its Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative.[10] This funding went to the creation and management of the BioSafety Resource Network (BRN), and to research under the Gates’ Grand Challenges #9 Project, which seeks to develop nutritionally ‘enhanced’ crop varieties of cassava, banana, sorghum and rice for subsistence farmers in the Global South. The Danforth Center states that the ‘Results of this research will help to reduce the burden of malnutrition and … will support the creation and management of a resource network that will help African scientists incorporate biotech advances into subsistence farming.’[11]
Among the key funders of The Danforth Center is the Monsanto Fund, the ‘philanthropic’ arm of the Monsanto Company.[12] One of the Fund’s main goals is ‘Nutritional Improvement through Agriculture: Working to implement sustainable agricultural improvements through education and research. Focus areas include field techniques, education in the areas of nutrition and vitamin deficiency and reducing the impact of pest and virus on subsistence crops’, and to do this philanthropic work in areas where the company has important interests. This means that, like most philanthropic organisations set up by corporations, their business interests are barely distinguishable from their charitable ones. Monsanto – like other agri-corporations – has re-branded genetic engineering with a softer touch. Namely, they have painted themselves as concerned with the welfare of the world’s poor. In truth, these corporations are concerned with social responsibility only to the extent that it allows them to maintain good public relations and their bottom-line. At a deeper level, corporate agendas and philanthropic agendas are linked to US policy, and are thereby granted legitimacy and enormous influence over global political systems.
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Given scientific data that discount the claims of genetic engineering, why would the ‘beneficent’ structures of food aid and philanthropy remain tied to claims of GE’s usefulness in the global South, particularly in Africa? According to numerous academics, policy observers, and activists, these structures are not about hunger. They are about capitalism and philanthro-capitalism: The opening of markets, the spending of wealth through tax-free foundations in order to surround wealthy principals with the aura of altruism, the expropriation of valuable resources at the lowest cost, the perpetuation of the myth that technology solves all problems, even social ones, and the intentional obfuscation of the exploitative roles of corporations.
The article mentions philanthrocapitalism, which is a notion we explained last month. It’s a form of self-advertising for someone who may make a lot of money in this process of glorification through investments with fairy tales and sob stories. The sad thing is that the Gates Foundation is investing a lot in PR-oriented employees, whose job is to counter truth-tellers (those who need to appeal to publications for dissenting points of view). The latest big PR from the Gates Foundation uses the image of “Women and Children” (even babies) for sentimental value. They are seemingly ‘injecting’ it into other articles which cover the same topic. In addition, the Gates Foundation approaches the poor people of Haiti with some telephones, as noted in MSBBC and other fan press of Microsoft and Gates. Yes, it’s the Seattle Times again. For those who don’t know why the Seattle Times is “fan press” of these adjacent entities, one need only spend some time watching other fanfare in this publication (and refusal to publish big stories that are negative to Microsoft and Gates, tax evasion for example). People who worked for Microsoft complain about this publication too. They live in an echo chamber and Brier Dudley from the Seattle Timesfinally shows that he having dinners with Microsoft. They are like a Seattle family.
“One very interesting thing is the involvement of USAID, whose administrator Rajiv Shah is from the Gates Foundation.”Anyway, going back to the Haiti gig, Gates’ people brag about it and control the message with a fabulous press release, leading to obedient coverage that lacks any additional research [1, 2, 3, 4]. Some of Gates’ own boosters are all over this news [1, 2, 3], but they merely repeat Gates’ message. They don’t explore beyond it. “Who are the companies that are going to implement the service,” asked us a reader who sent us an alert about the news. “Is there any connection to a Microsoft-affiliated company?” We were unable to find which companies receive this money. Either they are unnamed or we simply look at the wrong articles (which say too little, as we’ve already alleged). One very interesting thing is the involvement of USAID, whose administrator Rajiv Shah is from the Gates Foundation. We wrote about him in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]. They are closing a loop.
There are several important points to be made here: 1) the amount of this ‘donation’ is relatively small; 2) it’s not really a donation because the poor & hungry people don’t need banks and phones right now, they have more urgent needs. “Let them eat phones” is the headline chosen by one critic of this scheme:
Unless the situation is extremely well researched this is a very risky investment. ‘Leapfrogging’ may only be possible when there are already lots of cell phones being used.
Bill Gates’ investments in Haiti may seem more self-serving than charitable, especially the Monsanto part. It would be useful to find out who receives the money in Haiti and what companies (or hedge funds) benefit. █
