02.10.11
Posted in News Roundup at 8:43 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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But can a cracker do it?
Everything boils down to the level of security. From the ‘level of security’ point of view, GNU/Linux systems are secure by design so the vulnerability rate is million times lower than that of insecure by design systems like Windows. When it comes to core system, fixes don’t wait for Tuesdays, they come immediately.
After this background, I restate GNU/Linux systems are ‘almost’ immune to attacks. If Windows is like a bicycle, GNU/Linux is like an armored tank.
A Demo Of USB Vulnerability
IBM’s expert Jon Larimer recently gave a demo about a *previous* vulnerability in Evince, the document viewer for GNU/Linux systems, which could be used to compromize a system.
According to an Ubuntu vulnerability report published on January 5, 2011, “Jon Larimer discovered that Evince’s font parsers incorrectly handled certain buffer lengths when rendering a DVI file. By tricking a user into opening or previewing a DVI file that uses a specially crafted font file, an attacker could crash evince or execute arbitrary code with the user’s privileges. In the default installation of Ubuntu 9.10 and later, attackers would be isolated by the Evince AppArmor profile.”
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Desktop
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PCPro – a website and magazine purposed primarily around Windows – are to switch operations to Ubuntu for one day.
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Tomorrow PC Pro is going to put its money where its mouth is. To coincide with the release of the new edition of PC Pro – which features our Ultimate Guide to Ubuntu on the front cover – we’re going to attempt to run the magazine and website exclusively on Ubuntu-based PCs*.
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Server
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The London Stock Exchange’s Linux-based trading system is at the forefront of a proposed merger between the venue and Toronto Stock Exchange parent TMX, announced late last night.
The LSE immediately put its money where its mouth is, proposing 40 million of technology investment to put the two companies onto a common technology setup, led from London. Exact details of technology plans are expected to be announced shortly.
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Linux servers are the smart business choice; Windows servers are not. In this series we’ll look at how server and network admins can get started learning Linux, and in future installments learn about excellent Linux/FOSS servers and software for all business tasks.
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FOSS does not punish you for sharing ideas and implementations; quite the opposite.
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HP
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I attended HP’s press conference this morning and Linux again took center stage as a major technology leader revealed the details of its mobile device strategy. HP announced two new WebOS phones and more importantly an impressive new tablet that is a clear contender against the iPad. While I don’t for one second underestimate Apple, that was not the most interesting part of the event for me.
The most interesting part of the event came near the end when HP announced that it is going to ship WebOS not only in phones, tablets and printers, but in PC’s as well. In doing so, the worlds largest PC supplier is indicating that they are going to ship PC’s without Windows. For Microsoft – who was nowhere at this event – that has got to hurt. Perhaps this really IS the year of the Linux desktop.
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What I found most interesting though was that HP is planning on taking webOS 3.0 to laptops and desktops as well. What’s this!? HP wants to get into the Linux-based desktop operating system business!? As my buddy from the Washington Post, Rob Pegoraro put it, “‘We’re going to bring webOS to PCs’” almost two hours into a keynote raises the bar on burying the lede.”
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Kernel Space
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Instead of the old boring “here’s what drivers are being merged and deleted” and the like as I’ve posted in the past, I thought I’d just write about one specific project that has recently gone public that I think is a great indicator of how far the Linux Driver Project has come these days.
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Back in September there was the major victory for the open-source and Linux hardware support communities when Broadcom open-sourced an 802.11n Linux driver after years of their WiFi chipsets being notorious under Linux. There’s another wireless chipset vendor now getting more serious about open-source driver support too and that’s Ralink. They’ve now contributed patches to the rt2x00 driver project that enables their new RT5390 chipset family to be used by this open-source Linux wireless driver.
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A new version of the AMD driver from X.org improves support for modern Radeon graphics chips. An updated mdadm, initially only designed for developers, allows the RAID functions of modern Intel motherboard chip-sets to be used. After nine months, the ALSA project has published a new version.
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Graphics Stack
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NVIDIA’s Andy Ritger updated the thread their forum seeking a new Linux software engineer. Candidates for this position must have three or more years developing software for Linux/UNIX, be very strong in programming C, have three or more years experience in writing low-level software, have experience with OpenGL and be familiar with 3D concepts, experience in working on large/complex software components, be experienced in debugging, knowledge of the x86 architecture, graphics driver experience, and carry a BS degree or equivalent.
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Two weeks ago the hot discussion item being talked about by those interested in the Wayland Display Server was how to handle input with Wayland (e.g. using X Input, create a separate “Inland” input project, or designing something entirely different). The new subject now brought up on the Wayland mailing list is how to handle multiple monitor support. Fortunately, it looks like Kristian plans to implement multiple monitor/display support in a different — and better — way than how it’s dealt with by the X.Org Server.
The multi-monitor topic was brought up by Marty Jack after he wrote a patch that allocates the CRTCs to avoid black screens on multiple monitors. Up to this point, Kristian Høgsberg, the creator of Wayland, hasn’t really said how he would like support for multiple monitors to be implemented. That changed though this afternoon. In Marty’s email, he mentions, “I don’t know what Kristian’s ultimate vision of this is. Do we allow windows to move like they do now on a virtual desktop where you can slide one to a RightOf monitor by dragging it and it appears part on one and part on the other? A lot of the data structure and processing change for multiple monitors would depend on whether it is possible to have one pair of big FBs added to both CRTCs at the same time, with different (x,y,w,h) if it is tiled and the same (x,y) if it is cloned or how he would want to handle this case [moving the rbo, fb_id, image up to drm_compositor]. With some philosophical guidance I could get the underpinnings in place.”
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Applications
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Over the past few days I’ve been looking at bug 684843 “Switcher / Alt-Tab can be slow to appear”. It seemed like a rather odd bug to me since we actually do the majority of the drawing of the switcher (eg the thumbnails and the border) using OpenGL directly. However, it appeared that there was a catch to that.
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For those of you are interested, I have here a list of some of the best open-source remote desktop software (in no particular order) that you can download and use for free…
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Proprietary
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Instructionals/Technical
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Beautiful Conky configurations have always been an integral part of all kinds of Linux desktop eyecandy. With that in mind, we had featured here before an awesome collection of 13 Conky configs from around the web. Now, its time for a few more. Here are 6 more eyecandy conky configs for your Linux desktop that just works.
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Wine
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A new pre-release of Ubuntu-Wine integration tool ‘Vineyard’ has been made available for testing.
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Games
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id Software has updated Quake Live with 3 new arenas for premium subscribers, a resolution to the recent hitching that has occurred when leaving the game, improvements to the Duel experience (including persistent duel queues and scoreboard fixes), and adjustments to weapon balance within Team Deathmatch. Additional release notes can be found in the announcement.
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Desktop Environments
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)
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KDE has quite the array of web services, and the sysops team has done some pretty neat things in the last months. Recently Tom’s post on geoaware anongit DNS caught my eye. It made me wonder — what kinds of goodies in general is KDE hosting?
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GNOME Desktop
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Remember the Gnome Shell automatic workspaces mockup we’ve talked about a while back? It has just been added to the main Gnome Shell branch today.
However, the automatic workspace Gnome Shell implementation seems to have more in common with this Unity mockup than the initial Shell mockup: the Unity mockup proposed to always have an empty workspace so the user doesn’t have to create it while the Gnome Shell mockup proposed to never have an empty workspace. Either way, the idea seems very good so it doesn’t matter where it came from. Too bad this won’t be in Unity too – unfortunately Mark Shuttleworth turned it down.
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AriOS is a pleasant and unexpected surprise, showing a lot of careful attention to details and hard dedication. Well executed, on all levels, including a surprising touch for aesthetics, which typical geeks are not graced with. We can only hope the project will flourish.
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Red Hat Family
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Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced an expanded partnership with Fujitsu that extends the technology leaders’ collaboration to the cloud. Building on the companies’ long-term partnership, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is now available as a guest operating system on Fujitsu’s “On-Demand Virtual System Service” public cloud.
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Fedora
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For the year of 2010 by using Fedora on the computers that we reuse.
We have over doubled what we did last year at CrossBytes. We reused 6.4 tons of computers,
which is the equivalent of more than 6 million BTU’s of greenhouse gas emissions saved in one year.
This represents an annual savings of:
1056.46 barrels of oil
44104.61 gallons of gasoline
88.59 fewer cars on the road
440.92 tons in CO2 emissions
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While we have members of the Fedora community underhandedly criticising each other, I thought it would be important to point out a few things on the recent discussions about Fedora and if the project has an identity crisis as a distribution.
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There has recently been a bit of noise in the Fedora community around the general “feel” and direction of the community. Some folks are unhappy with some things and are voicing their displeasure. I thought I would collect a few links I found of note recently and my thoughts in general on this.
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Debian Family
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Otherwise I am quite satisfied with the result of the upgrade. A huge “thank you” to all people involved in the development of squeeze.
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So, all in all, SimplyMEPIS 11.0 is shaping up quite nicely. It appears it is going to be the familiar SimplyMEPIS we all know and love for its loyal users with nice appeal for new users.
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Project Bossanova, launched by Ohso wants to deliver the first ever 3D game that runs exclusively on Ubuntu/Linux to Ubuntu fans all over the world.
Ohso is no stranger to Ubuntu fans as they bring out trending news, opinions and tips for Ubuntu lovers through their websites like the all too famous OMG! Ubuntu, Ubuntu Gamer and OMG! SuSE! Ohso’s contributions to the Ubuntu world do not end here. Their new mobile applications for Ubuntu are in the production phase and the download links are expected to hit websites soon.
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With these difficulties in mind, Ubuntu developers and community members long ago developed the Ubuntu Packaging Guide to help software developers navigate the various intricacies of Debian packaging, so they can distribute their work more easily to Ubuntu users.
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Unity
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And lastly, Jason’s made it so that when you drag a certain file type into the launcher the application that launches it stays lit, but the rest “shut off”. So assuming you have say, GIMP and Shotwell in your launcher dragging a .png close to the launcher will keep those lit and the ones that don’t support .png will not be lit. Small, but slick.
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Cando’s been working on two fixes (which are under review). The first is being able to middle click on a maximized window title in the panel and have that be pushed to the background.
In case you didn’t know, you can middle click on window titlebars and they get pushed behind other windows. This can be a very handy window management technique, but now that we’ve welded the title bar with the top panel when a window is maximized this was missing. So thanks to Cando for preserving this bit of “UNIX Law that this feature must exist” on our desktops.
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We now have an API for applications to leave a progress meter and/or a number on their launcher. The wiki page is a bit sparse so expect more detail there over the coming week.
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A while back we mentioned that the Unity Launcher in Natty was to add support for badges/counts, transfer/progress bars and ‘quick lists’ on launcher icons, similar to that seen in use on Docky.
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Phones
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How could a non-Android device run software made specifically for Google’s Android platform? It sounds like a stretch. In reality, all apps that run on Android phones or tablets run in a virtual machine (VM), which Google calls Dalvik. The solution is much like the Java Virtual Machine on a desktop: it’s a constrained software implementation of a computer via software code. It brings greater security because apps in a VM are essentially walled off from other applications and from the device’s operating system. When the app in a VM crashes, it has no effect on other applications or on the operating system, ensuring stability. This video demo of Myriad’s solution on a Nokia N900 running MeeGo shows that it performs on a level equal to that of the same app running on a comparable Android device.
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Vendors shipped 100.9 million smartphones during the fourth quarter, according to Monday data, while IDC logged 92.1 million PC shipments during the same time period, according to IDC numbers from January.
The milestone was first noted by Fortune, which said that smartphones surpassed PC shipments much faster than expected. A Morgan Stanley analyst predicted it might happen in 2012.
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Nokia/MeeGo/Maemo
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Jusso Kosonen has written three puzzle games for the N900 using the Qt Web Runtime:
* Block Drop is a Tetris clone
* In RectBlock you should create rectangle shapes with four corner blocks
* In Color Line you reate lines with three same colored blocks in horizontal or vertical direction.
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The MeeGo project has updated its roadmap. The project will now release Meego 1.2 in April 2011 and plans to release MeeGo 1.3 in October, moving to a biannual release schedule. The six-monthly release schedule has been a target for the MeeGo developers as they establish their open development and release process.
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Android
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Teleca, maker of software solutions for the automotive and mobile industries is announcing today that they have created an Android platform for SiriusXM. This will allow manufacturers to embed SiriusXM on top of an Android build into say, vehicles, boomboxes and other things. (This is all assuming that people are going to want to still pay for satellite radio service).
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Munster notes that former CEO Eric Schmidt last summer said he though Android could be a $10 billion business if there were 1 billion users each generating $10 a year – and the analyst contends the company is well on the way to hitting the $10 per user level. Pointing out that Google has said it is on a $1 billion annual run-rate in mobile advertising, he estimates that the company had $850 million total mobile revenue in 2010, with Android generating about 16% of the total, or around $130 million, which would translate to $5.90 per Android user. (That implies about 22 million Android users for 2010.)
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As the movement becomes more structured and organised, people have stepped forward to volunteer their skills in various ways. One of the more exciting announcements yesterday was the launch of an Android app for the campaign called 乞讨儿童数据库, or the Beggar Children Database.
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Tablets
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It’s official: HP/Palm is releasing a new tablet called the Touchpad. Precentral has some hot news about this new 10-inch Palm slate. It is a touchscreen device running WebOS. It weighs 1.5 pounds and 13mm thick and has a front webcam as well as up to 64GB of storage.
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In the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin explains his theory of natural selection, and compares with man’s selection – or artificial selection – in the breeding process to produce a desired characteristic. Compare this with the single vendor model in which the vendor drives the development of a project to meet its commercial needs.
If we think about development models and processes then it is possible to the various potentially competing players in collaborative communities as having a similar impact on the development of a particular project as various potentially competing factors – climate, habitat, existence or dearth of predators etc – do in the evolutionary process.
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Well, I’ve been hanging out in the Blender community for the last 8 years and so I’ve encountered quite a lot of blender animatons. You’d be surprised at the quality of blender animations out there.
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Events
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Web Browsers
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Mozilla
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In this issue…
* Firefox in 2011
* Meet Mike Hommey
* Help teach girls the power of the Web!
* What’s up with Socorro?
* Results of the Firefox 4 FIXED Bugday
* Introducing Perf-O-Matic 2.0
* Mozilla and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation partner
* More on Do-not-track!
* Mozilla in Summer of Code 2011
* An Overview of the AMO Review Process
* Design Jam London #2
* It’s a wrap: FOSDEM
* Software updates
* Upcoming events
* Developer calendar
* About about:mozilla
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Mozilla has rolled out an eleventh beta release of Firefox 4, the next major version of the browser. In addition to the usual assortment of bugfixes and performance improvements, the new beta also adds support for a “Do Not Track” setting.
The implications of behavioral advertising are a growing source of concern among privacy advocates. In an effort to appease regulators, the most prominent Internet advertising companies voluntarily offer a cookie-based opt-out service that allows users to indicate to advertisers that they don’t want to be tracked. It’s a good start, but Mozilla sees a lot of room for improvement.
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For all the talk among among policymakers and the press about online privacy, it still isn’t clear how much average consumers are even aware of online ad tracking. Firefox, the browser of choice for a third of all internet users, is apparently looking to change that. The beta of the latest version of Firefox trumpets the new “Do Not Track” feature prominently—listing it, in large font, as the very first item on the “What’s New in Firefox 4” page. The move could increase the pressure on other browser companies as well as advertisers to beef up their own privacy options.
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There have been many add-ons to Firefox that help users organize their tabs to hide unwanted tabs. One approach is to automatically place newly opened tabs as children of a parent tab, and another is to let the user manually group tabs by dragging them over each other. Now with a group of tabs, the user can collapse the group to appear as a single item to give more space to the remaining tabs.
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Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
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If you’ve ever spent hours debugging your Java code, today’s blog post is for you.
Often bugs that are frustratingly elusive and hard to track down appear simple or even trivial once you have found their cause (the fault). Why are those bugs hard to track down? One possibility is that the fault is in a completely different part of the program than its symptom (the failure).
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LibreOffice is a cross-platform (Windows, Macintosh, Linux) OO.org derivative productivity suite that includes the six original OO.org applications: Writer, Calc, Base, Impress, Calc, and Draw. The LibreOffice project has also merged code, patches, and other resources from the now discontinued Go-oo project.
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Sure, LibreOffice 3.3 is basically a recolored OO.o, at this point.
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CMS
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Project Releases
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We are proud to present MuseScore 1.0, our best and most stable release to date. MuseScore 1.0 is free software available for Windows, Mac and Linux and translated in 35 languages. It is the ideal solution for creating beautiful sheet music.
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New version of Shutter, a somewhat underestimated screenshooting tool for Linux, is out with both internal and user visible changes.
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Government
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4. It’s true that Government expenditure on IT has been excessive in the last decade. It’s the highest per capita spend of any major European economy, approaching the very high per capita spend of Nordic countries which offer higher and far more e-enabled levels of social care. Reasons include large, unmanageable centralised systems, excessive supplier margins, inflexible contracts which exact punitive charges for essential changes. But above all the problem is a deeper and wider failure to ensure government IT is based on the right intentions.
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Openness/Sharing
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Getting students formal credit for their free and open education is a challenge, but groups and institutions are working around the world to come up with alternative pathways to recognition. The Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) is one such group that explored the topic in an assessment workshop last September and then co-designed virtual “badges” for recognition in real time at the Mozilla Drumbeat Festival in Barcelona. P2PU and Mozilla are piloting these badges via the P2PU School of Webcraft, and have solicited would-be developers for the skills and competencies that would best be reflected by a badge system. In collaboration with the MacArthur Foundation, they have drafted An Open Badge System Framework: A foundational piece on assessment and badges (Google doc).
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Community
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In short, if there’s a change you want made, and you aren’t participating in making it happen, then you aren’t doing it the open source way.
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Open Access/Content
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We’re proud to announce that the Open Knowledge Foundation is part of a new team which will take on the maintenance of ePSIplatform project for the next two years. As many of you will know ePSIplatform is a key resource for people interested in laws, policies and practices related to the reuse of European Public Sector Information (PSI).
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Finally the thing I felt most uncomfortable was the seeming dismissal of JISCs support of the ‘open’ agenda as being ‘controversial’. This smacked of publisher influence and made me a little sad.
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So many of my beliefs about the (open) web were founded during my time at JISC thanks to the opportunities I was given and the amount of doors that were opened up to me just by being a member of JISC that I’ll always be supportive of the organisation no matter what direction it goes in but I think my support would wane considerably if ‘open’ was off the table.
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Programming
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Today we are proud to unveil a brand new look, which will lay a clean, simple foundation for the rebirth of the entire SourceForge.net site.
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The Eclipse Foundation is making a move into content management, with Nuxeo donating Java-based content management repository services to the open source tools organization.
The Eclipse Enterprise Content Repository project is being unveiled Wednesday. It features such services as versioning, authentication, and document content management from the Nuxeo Enterprise Platform. The project, if it gains its expected approval, will build on the initial contribution to deliver a modular content repository leveraging the CMIS (OASIS Content Management Interoperability Services) standard, Nuxeo said. The company said it is spinning off the project in an effort to spur innovation in the content management space.
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Standards/Consortia
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Last year I published several posts about our efforts to establish a new vision for the W3C organization. I wanted to update you on how we have turned the results of the organizational vision task forces into specific plans and actions.
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Opposition parties have joined forces to demand that the Harper government reverse tax cuts for the largest, most profitable corporations.
A Liberal motion calling on the government to roll back the corporate tax rate to 18 per cent has passed by a vote of 149-134, with the support of the NDP and Bloc Quebecois.
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Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop was a classic of 80s action cinema. So why won’t the mayor of Detroit erect a statue in the law enforcer’s honour…?
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I’ve casually followed scandals regarding the C of S for decades, mostly out of curiousity about the “free personality tests” I’d see as a kid, and later, because of high-profile anti-anonymity/dirty tricks involving the Internet, starting with the outing of the users of the anon.penet.fi remailer. There wasn’t an enormous amount of new material in here, though Wright does a good job of spinning out Haggis’s remarkable life in Scientology and in the entertainment industry, and, towards the end, some damning material about physical abuse and financial malfeasance from the Church’s highest leaders.
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A panel discussion today at the New York University School of Law explored the touchy subject of whether business interests hold too much sway over federal judges.
Moderated by NYU’s Arthur Miller, a/k/a Mr. Federal Court and organized by the American Constitution Society, the discussion was a veritable who’s who of high-wattage thinkers from the worlds of academia (George Washington’s Jeffrey Rosen), public policy (Monica Youn of the Brennan Center for Justice) private practice (Latham & Watkins’s Maureen Mahoney and trial lawyer Stephen Susman), along with many, many more.
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It’s hard to fathom why Cisco hasn’t added IPv6 to its Linksys consumer routers yet, but the company has promised support will come this spring.
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We already know that Arianna Huffington is smart. She and her small team have built a media company from nothing in just a few years, and now they’re flipping it to AOL, where she’ll be content editor in chief. The price sounds bizarrely high to me at $315 million, but so do lots of prices these days in what looks like a new Internet bubble.
Others have commented at length on the synergy of the deal. If AOL is going after a link-driven community, the blend could work in the long run. The Huffington Post has been evolving from its origins, as the left-wing op-ed page of the Internet, into a blend of aggregation, curation, pandering — all of which have been done with some genuinely intriguing if not innovative technology initiatives — and some home-grown content. The first three of those are likely to be, in the end, much more important for the business than the original content.
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It’s because we write for HuffPo for free, and – because it’s Arianna – we do it without resentment. There’s value being extracted from our labour, for sure, by advertisers or whoever, but the sense was always that we were writing for Arianna – contributing to an empire that spent its winnings bussing people to watch Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert do their thing in Washington.
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As digital platforms grow and morph, it’s getting harder to understand who owns what rights. In the Publisher’s Weekly piece, Bloomsbury’s Richard Charkin said “Bloomsbury won’t do a deal that doesn’t include digital rights.” This concept of including digital rights will become even more important as publishers such as Harper Collins start packaging digital rights with audio rights.
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David Cameron’s speech in Munich on the failure of multiculturalism showed that the Prime Minister has not yet learnt to master nailing jelly to the wall either. There was little new in a speech, which emphasised the muddled thinking within the coalition on this sensitive issue.
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While there are as many variations on the EIR position as there are venture firms, there are two flavors, generally speaking: Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Executive-in-Residence. Most firms have some experience with Entrepreneur-in-Residence programs. Essentially, they give office space, coffee and food to a proven entrepreneur so he or she can spend a few months researching or prototyping a new product or service.
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Science
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This Saturday, Feb. 12, would have been Charles Darwin’s 202nd birthday. While his place in history is assured, the theory he popularized is misunderstood or disbelieved by a great number of Americans.
Recent polls have found that out of the world’s democracies, the United States ranks second to last (Turkey is last) in acceptance of evolution. This is disturbing, as it contributes to the decline of American power in the 21st century.
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But with Obama pushing for targeted increases in scientific research and other areas, consensus will not come easily.
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In the days when Eric Schmidt first starting getting excited by computers, the only way he could find directions to the next town would be by looking at a map. Printed on paper. In a book.
The only way he could find out what his friends thought of a restaurant in New York would be by ringing them, each individually, and asking them.
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People need language to fully understand numbers. This discovery – long suspected, and now backed by strong evidence – may shed light on the way children acquire their number sense.
Previous studies of Amazon tribes who lack words for numbers greater than three – or, in the case of the Pirahã, for any numbers at all – had shown that they struggle to understand precise quantities, when numbers are relatively large.
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Researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have come up with an idea to improve on an old standby of space exploration instruments and improve the odds of finding life, if any, on Mars.
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Last week the Kepler satellite released results indicating that the mission had discovered over 1200 planetary candidates (most of which are expected to be actual planets) orbiting stars in our neighborhood of the galaxy. In technical terms, that’s a “buttload.” A back-of-the-envelope calculation implies that there might be a million or so “Earth-like” planets in our Milky Way galaxy. A tiny fraction of the hundred billion stars we have, but still a healthy number.
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Health/Nutrition
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Liberal MPs teamed up with the Conservatives on Wednesday to kill legislation that would have required the government to take into account a Canadian farmer’s access to overseas markets when considering approval of new genetically modified seeds.
The private member’s bill, authored by the NDP’s agriculture critic, was voted down in the House of Commons 178 to 98, following an aggressive lobby campaign by the biotechnology industry’s group, BIOTECanada.
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Security
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Defence/Police/Aggression
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Israeli aircraft carried out a number of air raids on the Gaza Strip early on Wednesday 9 February, destroying a medical aid warehouse in Gaza City. The raids began shortly after midnight, hitting several places across the Strip, from Jabaliya in the north to the Rafah border with Egypt in the south.
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While a fifth of Egyptians live on less than $2 a day, Mubarak is worth somewhere between $40 billion and $75 billion, CNN’s Tom Foreman estimates. Egyptian law fixes the president’s income, and forbids any outside sources of money. Foreman reports that Mubarak’s wealth likely comes from his time in the military–he probably had a hand in military contracts and kept up his contacts over the years. That said, peruse at these photos, and you might also give credence to some of the other theories as to how Mubarak got quite so rich–contracts don’t really seem to explain this kind of opulence.
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The sickening, rapid click-click-clicking of the electrocuting device sounded like an angry rattlesnake as it passed within inches of my face. Then came a scream of agony, followed by a pitiful whimpering from the handcuffed, blindfolded victim as the force of the shock propelled him across the floor.
A hail of vicious punches and kicks rained down on the prone bodies next to me, creating loud thumps. The torturers screamed abuse all around me. Only later were their chilling words translated to me by an Arabic-speaking colleague: “In this hotel, there are only two items on the menu for those who don’t behave – electrocution and rape.”
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Before I wade into this, I should summarize my view of Reagan. I don’t think he was a great president. The main accomplishment which he’s credited, winning the Cold War, is one in which his policies contributed a very small amount. The most important cause of the fall of the Soviet Union by far was its failed, unsustainable political and economic system, which would have eventually collapsed regardless of American policy. (It’s interesting that conservatives’ mania for crediting Reagan with the fall of the USSR has required them to downplay the inherent faults of communism, which you’d think they’d naturally emphasize.) The second factor, a distant second, is the postwar containment architecture, created by Harry Truman and maintained by every president through George H.W. Bush, which including a military commitment to defend Western Europe, a series of anti-Soviet alliances, military support for governments threatened with communist invasion and occasional diplomatic or military support for anti-communist guerillas. A third factor, far less significant than the second, was Reagan’s incremental ratcheting up of the bipartisan containment policy, which may have slightly hastened the Soviet crackup.
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Mayer added to her piece: “Katherine Hawkins, a sharp-eyed human-rights lawyer who did legal research for my book, points out that, according to [author Ron] Suskind, Suleiman was the CIA’s liaison for the rendition of an Al Qaeda suspect known as Ibn Sheikh al-Libi. The Libi case is particularly controversial, in large part because it played a role in the building of the case for the American invasion of Iraq.”
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Since the landmark court ruling in June 2008, records show, more than 1,400 firearms have been registered with D.C. police, most in the western half of the District. Among those guns, nearly 300 are in the high-income, low-crime Georgetown, Palisades and Chevy Chase areas of Northwest.
In all of the neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River – a broad swath of the city with more than 52,000 households, many of them in areas beset by poverty and drug-related violence – about 240 guns have been registered.
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Ultimately, any information-sharing initiative like this should have, at its core, a set of outcomes that the initiative hopes to achieve. What do we want people to do with this information? Then, with these outcomes in mind, we must ask whether the initiative provides enough information, or the right type of information, to achieve them.
For instance, advocates of these measures usually say that they want the public to be able to see where the hot spots are and take steps to prevent their own victimization. So what information would a typical citizen need to prevent victimization?
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Business owners in Toronto have asked for more than $10-million in compensation in lost profits following last summer’s G20 Summit that shut down portions of the downtown core, the federal government has revealed.
There have been 371 applications for ex-gratia payments to the Summit Management Office that total $10,656,869.
As of Jan. 5, 44 claims had been rejected, according to documents tabled last week in response to written questions from NDP MP Olivia Chow.
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The only journalist known to have been killed during the Egyptian uprising was honored Monday in Cairo. Ahmed Mohamed Mahmoud was a reporter for the state-owned newspaper Al Ta’awun. He was shot on January 28 when he tried to use his phone to film riot police as they fired tear gas canisters at protesters.
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One man is an emotional 30-year-old protest leader and regional manager for the world’s largest Internet company who has become the reluctant face of a revolutionary movement.
The other man is a reserved 74-year-old former longtime head of the feared Egyptian General Intelligence Services who was appointed as a dictator’s first vice president in the midst of a national crisis.
Together, Wael Ghonim and Omar Suleiman have come to represent the two sides of the revolutionary unrest in Egypt. Each personify the struggle not just in their current statements and behavior, but also in their backgrounds and the manner in which were thrust from the shadows into the limelight as the protest movement took shape.
Suleiman could be described as not just a member of the establishment in Egypt – it’s also probably fair to give him a good bit of credit for having helped prop up Mubarak’s regime for nearly two decades. Often described as suave and collected, Suleiman has used his fluency in English and powerful position in the intelligence services to become an important go-between for Washington and Cairo.
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While some countries aim to stop revolution by cutting off access to services like Twitter and Facebook, others try to turn social media use on its ear and use these services to monitor its population. Late last month, the Egypt erupted in revolution and the government quickly shut off all social media, before shutting down the Internet entirely. China has taken a similar stance, banning sites like Twitter and Facebook for long periods of time, as an attempt to prevent protests, among other things.
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Cablegate
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Julian Assange could not be reached by the Swedish authorities who are investigating sex-crimes allegations against him because the WikiLeaks founder had become spooked by “death threats” issued by American politicians, including Sarah Palin, Assange’s Swedish lawyer told a British court on Tuesday.
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During the summer of 2008, Britain, France, and the United States discussed the possibility of delaying the Internatoinal Criminal Court (ICC) investigation into Sudanese President Omar Hussein al-Bashir — if Bashir’s government played ball in Darfur and Southern Sudan. According to a series of cables released by WikiLeaks on Tuesday, the three powers considered enticing Sudan’s president with an Article 16 deferral of his indictment — a U.N. Security Council resolution that could suspend the investigation for up to 12 months. According to an August 2008 cable, “If ‘played right,’ the UK [United Kingdom] assessed the leverage of an Article 16 deferral could provide an opportunity to ameliorate conditions in Darfur and possibly the [implementation of the] Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) [that ended conflict between northern and southern Sudan].”
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The death of former Chilean President Eduardo Frei Montalva is that country’s equivalent of the John F. Kennedy assassaination: a national mystery around which so much speculation circulates that no truth will probably ever be known. On a January day in 1982, Frei checked into the hospital in the capital, Santiago, for what should have been a routine operation. Hours later, he was dead. His family and supporters believe he was poisoned. A December 2009 cable released by WikiLeaks on Tuesday offers odd details about what happened next — including an in-hospital autopsy — that will only further stoke the conspiracy theories.
[...]
So in short, no resolution and lots more intrigue. As the December 2009 cable puts it: “the death of this emblematic president seems destined to be yet one more area [from the Pinochet years] in which the full truth may never be known.”
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The US Air Force has backed off of its puzzling threat to prosecute members of servicemembers’ families for “espionage” if they read WikiLeaks today, insisting that the “guidance” they released was actually not sanctions by headquarters and was not in keeping with official policy.
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A federal judge in Virginia has set a hearing for next week in a high-profile case that will decide whether the U.S. Justice Department can obtain records about the Twitter accounts used by WikiLeaks activists.
The hearing, scheduled for February 15 in Alexandra, Va., is expected to focus on whether the Justice Department has the legal justification for its request for the account details, and whether the almost-entirely-secret court records in this case should be made available for public viewing.
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The Obama White House’s latest effort to use this here Internet to connect members of the public with folks working inside the executive branch is a little project they’re calling “Advise the Advisor,” where-in an administration official frames what’s happening on the presidential front and then asks for feedback from anyone who cares to give it. Think of it as “Your Direct Line to the White House,” said the White House at the program’s launch yesterday, and in the first installment, David Plouffe, the Obama campaign manager who joined the administration in a formal capacity last month, asks for takes from the masses on what they’re seeing in the world of innovation, and in particular what seems to be stymieing it in the United States at the moment.
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The Australian Greens are demanding the Gillard government explain whether it privately supports uranium sales to India.
Leaked WikiLeaks cables reveal Resources Minister Martin Ferguson told US officials in 2009 a deal to supply India with nuclear fuel could be reached within years.
The stance contradicts the government’s public position of insisting that India sign up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty before being allowed to import Australian uranium.
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Ferguson also said that former prime minister and serving foreign affairs minister Kevin Rudd had been “careful to leave the door open” for uranium sales to India.
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Half a year later, Assange was no longer a relatively obscure Australian transparency activist. “CollateralMurder.com”–WikiLeaks’ publication at of a decrypted American military video showing two U.S. Apache helicopter gunships firing on and killing about a dozen Iraqi civilians, including two Reuters journalists–had vaulted him onto the global stage. And with our annual New York PdF conference around the corner in June, Andrew and I thought we had pulled off a coup: the first-ever face-to-face appearance of Assange with his hero Ellsberg, on stage together to talk about how the Internet was changing the power of whistleblowers.
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Mark Rollins, vice-president of BG Group in Kazakhstan, was overseeing negotiations about selling a stake in an oil field to Kazmunaigaz, the state-owned oil company.
In January the US ambassador in Kazakhstan had dinner with Maksat Idenov, former vice-president of Kazmunaigaz. As he arrived at the restaurant in Astana, the capital, Mr Idenov was apparently finishing a call to Mr Rollins.
According to the ambassador, he was angry because Mr Rollins had failed to deliver a letter about arbitration of the oil field to the energy minister.
The cable states: “When the Ambassador arrived, Idenov was barking into his cell phone, ‘Mark, Mark, stop the excuses! Mark, listen to me! Mark, shut up right now and do as I say! Bring the letter to my office at 10pm’.”
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After a tip from Crowdleaks.org, The Tech Herald has learned that HBGary Federal, as well as two other data intelligence firms, worked to develop a strategic plan of attack against WikiLeaks. The plan included pressing a journalist in order to disrupt his support of the organization, cyber attacks, disinformation, and other potential proactive tactics.
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According to a report at the tech news site Tech Herald, data intelligence firms including Palantir, Berico and HBGary were all recruited by the law firm Hunton & Williams to propose ways of subverting or sabotaging WikiLeaks on behalf of Bank of America. Those plans were found in the hacked email account of HBGary executive Aaron Barr, after he was targeted by the loose hacker group Anonymous in retaliation for what the group believed was an attempt to infiltrate its ranks and identify members to the FBI. (Forbes reporter Parmy Olson interviewed Barr about the ongoing incident Tuesday.)
Among the files pulled from those 50,000 stolen emails are what appear to be suggestions by the firm and its collaborators about how WikiLeaks could be weakened, sabotaged or shut down. The emails suggest the three security firms were pulled together at the request of the law firm Hunton & Williams. One month into the talks, Booz Allen Hamilton was also brought in as a consultant, as the New York Times reported in January.
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A senior adviser to Gordon Brown put pressure on the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan to play down the “bleak and deteriorating” situation to reduce criticism of his government, leaked documents disclose.
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The United States and Israel warned that Mohamed ElBaradei, a key leader of the Egyptian opposition, was soft on Iran and was becoming “part of the problem” in the Middle East, according to leaked diplomatic cables.
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In this Jan. 23 photo, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Il talks with Naguib Sawiris, executive chairman of Cairo-based Orascom Telecom, at an undisclosed place in North Korea. Kim held talks with the Egyptian telecoms magnate whose company set up and operates an advanced mobile phone network in the impoverished communist nation.
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By ignoring his advice and invading Iraq, Mr Mubarak warned that the Americans had managed to increase the threat posed by Iran.
Mr Mubarak made the comments during a breakfast meeting with US congressmen at the presidential palace in Cairo in December, 2008.
He told one of the delegation, Sen Byron Dorgan, that the US needed to ”listen to its friends” in the region.
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“’I told (Vice President) Cheney three or four times’ that Iraq needed a strong leader and that it would be unwise to remove Saddam Hussein; doing so would only ‘open the gate to Iran.’ Unfortunately, he said, the vice-president did not listen to his advice.”
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An Icelandic lawmaker and two other people associated with the website WikiLeaks are asking a federal judge not to force the social networking site Twitter to turn over data about whom they communicate with online.
The dispute cuts to the core of the question of whether WikiLeaks allies are part of a criminal conspiracy or a political discussion. It also challenges the Obama administration’s argument that it can demand to see computer data and read months’ worth of private messages, even if they have nothing to do with WikiLeaks.
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WikiLeaks’ massive “war logs” release on Iraq last October exposed Rumsfeld in this regard over and over, but were quickly forgotten by mainstream journalists — even though the material was not “political” or even from the media but rather from U.S. soldiers on the ground.
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This is something of an interesting twist in the larger WikiLeaks espionage debate, which is proceeding apace. Today in Alexandra, Virginia, WikiLeaks supporters are in court to try to prevent the U.S. government’s request to Twitter to reveal their private information. Ostensibly, tweeters who helped disseminate the leaked cables could be implicated in any eventual espionage case against the whistle-blower organization.
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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It’s getting more and more difficult to deny that an oil supply crunch is just a few years down the road, especially now that WikiLeaks has released cables revealing that Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves have been exaggerated by as much as 40%, or 300 billion barrels. Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest oil exporter.
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So let’s get this straight. There’s some huge conspiracy that exists to claim Climate Change is real, and it exists because there’s some huge economic benefit to scientists and certain companies.
And this benefit is so huge that it’s killing small businesses like Exxon, BP, etc. that are in the oil and coal businesses. It’s going to kill thousands of U.S. jobs, even though most of the jobs in the oil business are actually overseas, where the oil is actually pumped! Which doesn’t mention the thousands of workers required to build, install and maintain wind turbines, solar cells, etc.
When things don’t add up, you have to look carefully at the numbers. First let’s look at those small businesses which are under threat by the powerful Climate Change Lobby:
Exxon Mobil – Sales of $269 Billion for 3/4 year – from Jan. 2010 to Sept. 2010
BP – Sales of $239 Billion for 2009 – 2010 report not finished yet
OK, let’s take a step back. The rich Climate Change Bullies were pushing around a bunch of small businesses. At least that’s the impression we were given. But the numbers don’t make those look like small businesses. Not small at all. Hell, Microsoft often considered one of the most successful companies on the planet only managed sales of $62 Billion in fiscal year 2010.
These companies are big enough to look out for themselves. Why is everyone concerned about the Climate Change Bullies hurting them? Could the Climate Change Bullies even have any effect on them? Rather it would seem like the classical mouse-elephant confrontation.
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Finance
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Does the president really suffer from what House Speaker John Boehner calls a “spending illness”? Not according to an exclusive Newsweek-Daily Beast estimate of his outlays on new legislation since taking office.
Nothing unites Republicans quite like the unshakable belief that Barack Obama has become the Carrie Bradshaw of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, unable to stop himself from frittering away ridiculous sums of money on frivolous things. But what Republicans never mention when railing against Obama’s alleged fiscal recklessness is how much money he has spent, and what exactly he’s spent it on.
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A long-awaited agreement with the largest UK banks on lending, pay and bonuses has been announced.
Under Project Merlin, banks will lend about £190bn to businesses this year – including £76bn to small firms – curb bonuses and reveal some salary details of their top earners.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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Glenn Beck is walking toward a cliff — or running, or skipping. The question is, will Fox News go flying over the edge with him, or give him a push?
For years, Beck has pitched various conspiracy theories with a rather predictable thrust: The left is out to take over and/or destroy the United States. (The relationship between assuming control of the country and scheming its decimation has always been a bit fuzzy.) And his targets have been sinister lefty outfits that are not household names: the Tides Foundation, ACORN, and others. As long as Beck stuck to this classic tale — secret commies undermining this great land of ours — he wasn’t much of a problem to most conservatives and his patrons at Fox. Sure, some conservative commentators (such as David Frum) derided Beck. But Beck was more like the crazy uncle in the attic who could be ignored. And Fox News could bank the revenue Beck generated without worry. Good ratings forgive much.
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Keith Olbermann, the former MSNBC anchor, will host a prime time program for Current TV, the low-rated cable channel co-founded by Al Gore. The one-hour program will begin sometime in the spring.
Mr. Olbermann will also become the chief news officer for Current, the company said in a news release Tuesday.
“We are delighted to provide Keith with the independent platform and freedom that Current can, and does uniquely offer,” Mr. Gore said in a statement.
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Censorship
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Yesterday afternoon, the French Parliament voted the LOPPSI bill whose 4th article enables administrative censorship of the Internet, using child protection as a Trojan horse. Over time, such an extra-judiciary set-up will enable a generalized censorship of all Internet content. Consistent with Nicolas Sarkozy projects for a “Civilized Internet”, administrative censorship of the Internet opens the door to dangerous abuse while leaving pedophiles and pedo-pornography to prosper.
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In response to ongoing protests, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak ordered a shutdown of all Internet access for five whole days, from January 28 to February 2, but social media and news continued to flow in and out of the country thanks to a group of protagonists dedicated to supporting the flow of information.
EFF board member and co-founder John Gilmore once described the technical robustness of the Internet against censorship by saying: “The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” Egypt’s Internet blackout demonstrated an additional dimension to this adage: that the Internet’s anti-censorship features are enhanced by, and to some extent may depend upon, the willingness of individuals and companies to stand up for free expression.
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Inspired by Egypt’s ability to cut off internet access to almost all of its people, governments around the world are racing to develop the same kind of “internet kill switch.” As we saw in Egypt, information blackouts created by shutting off the internet, fundamentally deny people their freedom of speech, prevent them from doing business online, and stop them from communicating with their friends and family. The spectre of an internet kill switch is now facing people living in democracies and dictatorships alike — there is even an “internet kill switch” bill before the U.S. Congress!
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Civil Rights
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House Republicans Tuesday night got a harsh introduction to the majority, as more than two dozen rank-and-file GOP lawmakers voted against reauthorizing the Patriot Act.
And just hours before the vote on the Bush-era homeland security measure, GOP leaders yanked a trade bill from consideration as the Ways and Means Committee is “working through issues.”
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Internet/Net Neutrality/UBB
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Shaw Communications is suspending plans to charge customers for going over their Internet usage limits.
Company president Peter Bissonnette said one option that could be considered is a no-cap, unlimited Internet service.
Shaw made the move in response to consumer outrage that was fuelled by a crackdown on customers who exceed the bandwidth caps on their Internet plans — a crackdown that coincided with a CRTC decision that effectively put an end to unlimited Internet plans in Canada. “We’re putting everything on hold,” Bissonnette said.
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By giving telecom operators the possibility to sell prioritized access to the network, the government would put an end to equality among Internet users. Time after time, Nicolas Sarkozy’s vision of the “Civilized Internet” that he’s promoting at the G8/G20 level is coming to light: an Internet controlled by the State and by telecommunications and entertainment industries, while fundamental liberties are shunted to the side.
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Canada and the US have many similarities with respect to the makeup of the Internet market. Both countries’ Internet markets are largely controlled by a duopoly of cable and telephone companies. This ersatz competition between telephone and cable companies has given regulators and policy makers on both sides of the border the excuse that this supposed competitive market will solve all problems. More importantly both countries are also allowing major concentration of ownership between pipe and content providers. In the US it is the marriage of Comcast and NBC. In Canada it is Bell and CTV as well as Shaw and Global TV.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Large telecommunications companies, copyright stock owners and some content producers complain that large centralized content sites now concentrate a large share of Internet usage, creating unbalance in the traffic. These centralized sites are accused of free riding without contributing to financing infrastructures nor remunerating artists (read producers and distributors).
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Copyrights
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Via the BB Submitterator, reader GuidoDavid says, “Juan Gómez-Jurado, who wrote a great piece against criminalizing of downloads in Spain, was challenged by copyright troll, tax dodger and singer Alejandro Sanz to offer his novel for free. He did, and donated the resulting 4000 euros to the charity Save The Children.”
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ACS:Law and its client MediaCAT have failed to see 27 cases of alleged illegal filesharing discontinued, the London Patents Count Court heard today.
Judge Birss QC confirmed the cases have been stayed, saying the notices of discontinuance were an abuse of the court’s processes.
Earlier this month, it emerged both MediaCAT and ACS:Law had shut down and wanted the proceedings, which they initiated, to come to a close.
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The decision by the Press Complaints Commission follows a complaint from a government official whose tweets about being hungover at work were published in the Daily Mail and Independent on Sunday newspapers. The BBC reports that Sarah Baskerville claimed that she had a reasonable right to expect privacy on Twitter.
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The reality is that this is yet another case of the law not being able to keep up with technology. There simply is no intellectually honest rationale that says recording songs off the radio is legal, but recording songs off your computer is illegal. It’s a weak attempt by an industry that doesn’t want to deal with changing technology to put in place laws that prevent what the technology allows. Those never work.
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R.E.M.’s upcoming album Collapse Into Now is coming in March, but the band is already getting the buzz going with a little crowdsourcing experiment. A couple days ago, the album’s producer released some tracks from the song “It Happened Today” in files that can easily be imported into Garageband, the music mixing software that comes on new Macs. Fans are invited to remix the song and upload their new versions under Creative Commons license to SoundCloud.
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Back in November last year the UK’s Prime Minister said he was announcing a number of initiatives aimed at technology companies. Since then there have been a few periphery announcements from the various large tech companies (Google, Facebook et al) about what they would do to help. But one thing that was on the agenda was a review of the Intellectual Property rules. PM David Cameron confirmed a six month review into IP law that he hopes will help attract technology companies to the UK.
The US position on IP leans towards a ‘fair use’ environment, whereby IP can be used to a certain level without owner consent. This is very close the to Creative Commons licenses which aided the growth of startups like Flickr. In the UK copyrighted material is more highly restricted in use. Generally in Europe we rely too much on copyright and not enough on innovation. Witness Nokia’s suing of Apple for instance.
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IMPORTANT NOTICE: None of the information contained in this legal notice is to be transmitted and/or released to any third party, including but not limited to Chilling Effects (chillingeffects.org), without the express written permission of the the copyright owner and or his agent. As stated in Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and in the normal course of processing and notifying the infringing counter party, recipient must only include information specific to that counter party’s infringement and must not include this entire notice. Any re-transmission in whole or in part of this legal notice by the intended recipient will be a direct violation of U.S. and International Copyright Law and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law by the copyright owner.
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On behalf of U.S. movie studios, the MPAA filed the civil lawsuit against Hotfile and its operator, Anton Titov, in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Florida, for damages and injunctive relief for violations under the United States Copyright Act of 1976. Hotfile is based in Panama City, Panama.
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A senior court judge has pointed to severe problems with the way the Digital Economy Act enables copyright owners to prosecute people accused of illegal filesharing.
Judge Birss QC said on Tuesday that the process of connecting copyright infringement to a named individual based on their use of an internet address is fraught with difficulties because internet connections, or IP addresses, are often used by more than one person.
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Yes, that’s right. The company is claiming that the DMCA takedown notice itself is copyrighted and that passing it along will constitute infringement. Of course, this raises some questions. Assuming that such a notice is copyrightable (and I’d argue that, depending on the text, it might not be), who owns the copyright. The paragraph above appears to imply that it’s the copyright holder of the original content that the takedown notice is about, but that wouldn’t be true. It seems that the copyright, if there is one, would be held by whoever wrote the letter, which is the third party firm hired by the original copyright holder. Also, did whoever write this letter actually register it with the Copyright Office?
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Can someone — anyone — explain how getting people to stop downloading creates a profit anywhere? Getting people to stop downloading doesn’t magically make them start buying. And it’s not like EMI hasn’t been among the efforts by all the major record labels to get legislation changed for years, and all of that has done absolutely nothing to stop file sharing. It’s pure folly to suggest that there’s some sort of magical legislative move that will stop unauthorized file sharing and create “profits” at the same time.
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FTD, one of the largest Usenet communities on the Internet, has lost the legal proceedings it started against Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN. The case, through which FTD hoped to have its operations declared legal, today resulted in a verdict which prohibits community members from talking about ‘locations’ where copyright infringing material can be downloaded.
Founded in 2001, FTD is The Netherlands’ largest Usenet community with around 500,000 members. FTD and its associated software allows its members to ‘spot’ the location of material they find on Usenet, which could include the locations of copyrighted movies, music and TV shows.
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Hollywood opened up a new front in its war against piracy Tuesday by taking the Florida-based file host Hotfile.com to court. Hotfile facilitates copyright infringement “on a staggering scale,” the Motion Picture Association of America alleged, and “profits handsomely” from distributing unlicensed copies of major motion pictures and TV shows.
This is the first time the movie studios have taken a so-called one-click file host to court, and the legal arguments used in the lawsuit could spell trouble for sites like Megaupload and RapidShare, or even backup services like Dropbox.
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ACTA
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We’ve noted in the past how the US government (mainly via the USTR) has worked hard to try to play down the importance of ACTA to its critics (while, simultaneously, playing up how important it is to various lobbyists). For example, after years of promising that ACTA wouldn’t change any US laws, the fact that the US does not actually comply with everything in ACTA represents a problem. The USTR gets around this by saying that we can just ignore the parts that don’t match up with US law. Also, there’s the whole lie about how ACTA is not a treaty. Oh no no no. According to US officials, ACTA is merely an “executive agreement.” Of course, if you talk to legal experts, they’ll point out that the only real difference between a treaty and an executive agreement is whether or not the Senate has any say in approving it. Making it an executive agreement is just a ploy to avoid Senate hearings. It also raises serious constitutional questions, since the Executive branch of the US government has no mandate to approve such things.
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We’ve pointed out similar things before, but Oxfam has come out with a new report, claiming that the claims from developed nations about the need to fight “fake drugs,” is quite frequently really just an excuse to protect big pharma firms from generic competition. No one is denying that actual fake drugs can potentially be harmful. But, the problem is that the various efforts, including ACTA, to deal with the issue often lump together actual dangerous fake pharmaceuticals with drugs that are simply cheaper but perfectly safe. Oxfam would like to see a legitimate strategy for getting the real fake drugs out of the market, but says the current strategies are all about boosting patent protections, increasing prices for the poor and developing nations and better protecting big pharma against upstart competitors.
Chernobyl The Lost Film
Credit: TinyOgg
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Posted in Antitrust, Apple at 12:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Legal challenges affect Apple’s products
• Apple’s app store policies: What will they provoke?
So that’s a couple of years away. If, during that time, Android market remains open and these applications are allowed to buy direct from Amazon, Sony and Barnes and Noble and other eReader stores, and it comes to take considerable market share (more than half), then perhaps Apple won’t find itself on the end of an anti-trust mishap, but it will still have lost the App Store war. But right now, having seen this market develop for three years, it could be said to be sufficiently stable to bring a suit against Apple right now. That could be done as a commercial anti-trust suit, a public one from the US Justice Department or the European Commission or even a user class action might be brought.
• Class-action lawsuit hits AT&T over iPhone data
Moreover, the lawsuit claims that the mobile carrier regularly “bills for phantom data traffic when there is no actual data use initiated by the customer.” As an example, the independent consultants allegedly bought a new iPhone and disabled every possible source of data connectivity they could find. Within 10 days, their account said the phone had used 2,292 KB of data.
“This is like the rigged gas pump charging you when you never even pulled your car into the station,” condemns the complaint.
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02.09.11
Posted in News Roundup at 5:38 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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My deep thanks to Jeff Hoogland, Steve Rosenberg and the great folks at OMG Ubuntu.
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SCOny
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A government agency in Norway has reported Sony to the Consumer Ombudsman after floods of complaints over removal of “Other OS” functionality from PlayStation 3 consoles.
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Sony is having a rough time trying to keep the PlayStation 3 secure, and the company seems intent on policing the entirety of the Internet to stop the spread of the tools and information needed to hack the device. This can be hard to do when your own faux spokesperson decides to retweet one of the offending series of letters and numbers in their entirety online.
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Applications
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Streamie is a simple web based application for accessing and managing your Twitter account. It is real time just like Identi.Ca with updates flowing in as they are posted by your contacts.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Suspend/resume. Or in words that non-geeks can understand, sleeping/waking up. It’s one of those things that not just Linux but also BSD and even Windows have been trying to get right for years.
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Wine
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Wineskin 2.0 wrappers are made from Wineskin Winery, which is also being released in a 1.0 form today!
Download Wineskin Winery, and it will handle downloading updates, engines, and even let you use Wine source to make custom engines, as well as creating Wineskin 2.0 wrappers!
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Desktop Environments
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GNOME Desktop
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Activity Journal is a tool for browsing and finding files on your computer. I like the potential that the application has for tracking and opening files I use. It is certainly a better option than looking through a file manager window filtered by date. But the app fails in some key points that lead me to question its overall usefulness.
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Red Hat Family
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Fedora
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The North American Fedora User and Developer Conference (FUDCon) was held on Arizona State University campus in Tempe Arizona from January 29 -31, 2011 and proved to be the largest FUDCon to date with over 200 people pre-registered to attend and final attendance numbers estimated around 175 people.
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Debian Family
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Phones
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Android
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Viewsonic’s upcoming 4.1-inch ViewPad 4 smartphone will run Android 2.4, says an industry report. Due in April, this operating system upgrade will add dual-core support, and will have the same Gingerbread” nickname as the apparently short-lived Android 2.3, according to the U.K. website Pocket Lint.
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Tablets
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If you are looking for an Android tablet, you can get them for price points lower than the iPad’s, but take a look at PCMag’s hands-on tests before you buy. They give the Samsung Galaxy Tab the best marks among Android tablets, and that lines up with a lot of other hands-on reviews.
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First, what went wrong? Let’s rewind to 2009, when Synnex and Red Hat launched the Open Source Channel Alliance (OSCA) and Tech Data launched the Open Tech effort. The situation looked so darn promising, especially as open source ERP, CRM and groupware companies worked to promote their wares through the OSCA and Open Tech.
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Events
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Geoff Huston is the Chief Scientist at the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre. His frank linux.conf.au 2011 keynote took a rather different tack than Vint Cerf’s talk did the day before. According to Geoff, Vint is “a professional optimist.” Geoff was not even slightly optimistic; he sees a difficult period coming for the net; unless things happen impossibly quickly, the open net that we often take for granted may be gone forevermore.
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Kyle argued that the best first step is to immediately pull the plug on the box. Do not diagnose the situation and do not shut the machine down gracefully. We use journaling file systems for a reason and the machine will probably be rebuilt from scratch, so the danger of corrupted data from killing the power is small. Once the machine is off, you should image the compromised drive with something like ‘dd’ and make a copy of the image to do your work on to protect you from accidentally contaminating the evidence.
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Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
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I know bylaws are boring, but let me show you just a couple of highlights that, to me, show that while Oracle and IBM will be sharing leadership, albeit not equally weighted, the community isn’t inside the real loop, not yet anyway. This is draft 7 of the bylaws, so it’s not carved in stone. That doesn’t happen until March 3, after which it gets voted on by “OpenJDK Community members for ratification via an appropriate democratic process”, according to Mark Reinhold, the OpenJDK Lead. So please allow me to point out some bugs.
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I’m thinking what Oracle will argue at the hearing is that all Androids of necessity do infringe and that Google is guilty of “active and willful” inducement, and so for that reason it doesn’t have to point to a specific instance of direct infringement. In any case, this is what it looks like the hearing will be about on the topic of requirements for Oracle to disclose specific acts. Everything will depend, I would say, on whether Google can demonstrate that some Android products are so different from the others that they can’t possibly infringe or that if they do infringe, they do so in such a variety of different ways that they can’t prepare a defense unless Oracle gives them a map with at least some X’s on it, or that the patents represent an insignificant part of the products even if they are infringing and Androids have lots of noninfringing uses, that Oracle is, in effect, trying to shut down the wheels of commerce. And the one weakness that really could matter is whether Gingerbread doesn’t turn out to be like the others. If that is what Oracle determines, then its entire argument falls, I think. Then the 7 Android products are representative of nothing except Oracle’s need to get specific about all seven, distinguished from Gingerbread. All means all, and if Gingerbread doesn’t infringe, there is no ‘all’ in this picture.
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Oracle has agreed to share governance of the OpenJDK Java community with IBM, in a move that demonstrates considerable good will, according to one analyst.
The company has created a series of bylaws outlining the way the governance will be structured, with Oracle appointing itself chairman and the OpenJDK lead, and IBM taking the role of vice chairman.
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Nor is Java helped any by the political infighting that has plagued its development over the last few years. Sun had its share of detractors for its (mis)management of Java, but the ire reserved for Oracle’s manhandling of Java and its Java Community Process takes the criticism to a new level.
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Government
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Free Software Foundation Europe is asking the Members of the European Parliament to wait for legal advice before voting on a unitary patent for Europe. While a proposal is on the Parliament’s agenda for the coming week, a legal opinion by the European Court of Justice is expected later this month.
“Software patents hurt innovation and are an unnecessary burden on European software developers,” says Karsten Gerloff, President of the Free Software Foundation Europe. “Legislators need to take charge and make sure the patent system contributes to the public good. As the European Patent Organisation has acknowledged, this is a decision that cannot be left to bureaucrats and the judiciary.”
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Openness/Sharing
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The Commons Strategies Group with a little help from some friends has drafted an open letter to Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff to be signed by international organizations, academics and activists in support of the work of the Brazilian society and government for the cultural commons. The Open Letter is to be issued at the World Social Forum in Dakar, Senegal, this week.
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There’s a lot of talk in Ghana about the latest release by the nation’s most famous underground investigative reporter about massive corruption at the state port in Tema. Personally, I am not so much interested in the story as I am about why we allow such things to happen easily in this day and age.
A cursory look at procedures at the harbor, and indeed in almost all spheres of our public institutions, one thing that stands out is how lagging behind we are in terms of automation. Shuffling papers about, moving from office to office, signature after signature, all means one thing- more human involvement.
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Fifty-four years ago, Italy’s Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino produced a car the size of a large coffee table. It was three meters long, powered by a 479-cc engine and about as quick off the line as a riding lawnmower. It produced 13 horsepower, or roughly as much as a modern portable electric generator. America laughed — you could cram a 500 into the trunk of a ‘57 Cadillac, and crashing one was certain death — but the rest of the world just went ahead and bought the silly thing. Three-and-a-half million times.
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Silvio Berlusconi has raised the spectre of a full-scale constitutional showdown in Italy after prosecutors in Milan asked for him to be put on trial immediately, charged with sex-related offences.
Italy’s prime minister accused them of breaking the law and going against parliament. Soon afterwards his chief ally, Umberto Bossi of the Northern League, said the indictment request marked the start of a “total war” between Italy’s judiciary and its legislature.
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This is the final straw. This is the line in the sand. This is the year that companies have to wise up and realize that they’re destroying the experience of the very machines that they try to market so vigorously over their competitor’s products. We’re talking about bloatware, and it’s an issue that we simply cannot remain silent on any longer. It’s a very, very real problem, and it has been for years. But we always assumed that things would improve as the “fad” faded. Sadly, we assumed wrong. The fad hasn’t faded, and dare we say, things have become even less bearable over time.
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The non-profit organization that assigns IP addresses and related internet names, ICANN, will be rolling out a system offering new “top-level domains” over the course of 2011 and 2012. That means web sites could end in almost anything—from brand names like .coke or .ford to place names like .chicago or .nyc. And the Obama administration is pushing for giving the world’s governments veto powers over those new top-level domains which could create flash points over new domain names such as .gay. The proposal by the U.S. government, which comes as the Egyptian government was able to essentially shut off internet access for several days, has gotten some negative reaction.
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Science
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The Bush/Obama plan of blaming teachers and principals for economic injustice will not improve education.
As BuzzFlash has noted before, certainly there are public schoolteachers and principals who probably are not up to snuff. But we’ve also criticized the notion that public schools in poor urban and rural areas should miraculously be able to compensate for chronic conditions of communities with poverty and violence – and very few jobs.
Because, as we’ve observed, there is not a national educational crisis. There is a problem with schools that are located in areas of limited economic means.
Blaming principals and teachers in a war on public education in poor areas is a diversionary tactic from addressing the real problem: economic injustice and inequality.
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Starting as soon as 2013, after construction of a new external tank, the lead operator of NASA’s shuttle fleet proposes to fly twice a year with Atlantis and Endeavour at a cost of under $1.5 billion a year.
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When President Barack Obama canceled the Constellation space exploration program, it was thought the Ares 1, the much-maligned planned rocket that would have launched the Orion into low Earth orbit, was dead and gone.
However, it looks like ATK, the aerospace firm that manufactures solid rocket boosters for NASA, has entered into a joint venture with Astrium, the European firm that builds the Ariane V to build a commercial version of the Ares 1.
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Health/Nutrition
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idea that most cancer is caused by environmental factors is becoming mainstream.
A report by the President’s Cancer Panel, Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now was published in April 2010 This latest annual report, for 2008–2009, was written by Suzanne H. Reuben for the cancer panel and published by the National Cancer Institute.
The facts about cancer are dismal. As the report says, about 41 percent of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer at some time in their lives, and some 21 percent will die of it. In 2009 approximately 1.5 million new cases of cancer were diagnosed, and about 562,000 died of it.
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China’s history with food safety is a rocky one, but even in the annals of robbery and abuse, this will go down in infamy.
Various reports in Singapore media have said that Chinese companies are mass producing fake rice made, in part, out of plastic, according to one online publication Very Vietnam.
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Defence/Police/Aggression
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The Egyptian people have exposed the great myth that prevails in the sphere of United States’ foreign policy, namely that U.S. foreign policy elites are concerned with “spreading democracy.”
That is because, as Hampshire College’s Michael Klare has written, since 1945, the United States has maintained a foreign policy that is centered around “blood and oil.” The foreign policy establishment often uses “democracy spreading” as a public relations platitude because it sounds much better than saying, “We went to war for oil.” But caring about democracy goes out the window when one truly scrutinizes U.S. foreign policy through a critical lens. Sourcewatch calls this phenomenon Big Oil, Big Lies.
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In his new book, deftly titled Known and Unknown, former Defense Secreatry Donald Rumsfeld insists that he and the Bush-Cheney crew did not purposefully misrepresent the WMD case for the Iraq war: “The President did not lie. The Vice President did not lie. Tenet did not lie. Rice did not lie. I did not lie. The Congress did not lie. The far less dramatic truth is that we were wrong.” He does acknowledge that he made a “few misstatements,” referring specifically only to one: when he declared early in the war, “We know where they [the WMDs] are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.”
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President Nixon and Bob Haldeman∇ discuss Donald Rumsfeld, observing admiringly that he’s “tough enough” and a “ruthless little bastard.”
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The FBI has reportedly launched a sweeping probe into the controversial Church of Scientology for allegedly being involved in human trafficking.
The investigation includes the cult’s mysterious leader David Miscavige, a close friend of actor Tom Cruise who was also best man at his wedding.
The allegations are that Miscavige allegedly doled out regular beatings to members, The New Yorker reported in its current issue, which hit newsstands this morning.
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Many people forget that Reagan was divisive for the country and won almost no support among African-Americans. Conservatives also fail to acknowledge that Reagan raised taxes throughout his presidency, including one tax hike that at the time was the biggest in American history. Reagan’s legacy is one of unprecedented federal budget deficits fueled by tax cuts made at the same time the federal budget grew due to massive increases in military spending.
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We’ve already discussed how it appears that Congress is set to extend the Patriot Act with little debate yet again, despite the growing evidence of rather massive abuses of the law by law enforcement officials, with little to no evidence that the law has actually helped. As it stands now, in the Senate there are apparently three competing versions of the extension, and not a single proposal that would actually cut off the highly controversial sections that allow for spying on Americans with little to no oversight.
The three Senate bills kick off with one from Senator Patrick Leahy, which would extend the various provisions until the end of 2013, but would also include a tiny bit more oversight.
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Turns out the conventional wisdom was wrong. The House could not conjure up enough votes to pass the extension. While a majority did vote for it, the rules required a 2/3 vote to pass and supporters of the extension fell 13 votes short — getting 277 in favor and 148 against. You can check out the roll call for the 148 Reps who didn’t just roll over.
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“He was struggling,” DeLuca testified. “He kept saying, ‘I have a permit to carry.’ “
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Cablegate
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In October 1 and 2 meetings with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mullen, Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) Admiral Stavridis, and ISAF Commander General McChrystal, Prime Minister Brown, Foreign Secretary Miliband and other senior UK officials underscored HMG’s commitment to the allied mission in Afghanistan. They are eager for U.S. leadership to chart a clear course of future strategy in Afghanistan, including a desired end state, as soon as possible. In the British view, U.S. leadership is essential to keeping the coalition in place. Empowering the Afghan security forces to play a greater role is a top British priority. The British interlocutors stressed that continued willingness of the UK public to tolerate casualties depends upon the perception that the coalition has a strategy for success Afghanistan. They agreed that the fight against extremism in Pakistan is closely linked to the outcome in Afghanistan. In his meeting with McChrystal, Conservative Party leader David Cameron similarly stressed the importance of U.S. leadership and expressed support for continued, sustained effort.
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This is what the Chamber fears most of all, the FCIC’s planned release of those reckless, imprudent and downright ugly emails from the masters of the universe crowing about how well they do their jobs — fleecing America.
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New York Times executive editor Bill Keller may not regard Julian Assange as a journalistic peer, but he made clear Thursday that he doesn’t think the WikiLeaks founder should face criminal prosecution in the United States.
Keller joined his counterpart from Britain’s Guardian newspaper and a prominent Harvard Law School professor on a panel at Columbia University to discuss WikiLeaks, the secret-spilling website that has been publishing U.S. diplomatic cables and battlefield reports from Iraq and Afghanistan.
“It’s very hard to conceive of a prosecution of Julian Assange that wouldn’t stretch the law in a way that would be applicable to us,” said Keller. “Whatever one thinks of Julian Assange, certainly American journalists, and other journalists, should feel a sense of alarm at any legal action that tends to punish Assange for doing essentially what journalists do. That is to say, any use of the law to criminalize the publication of secrets.”
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The news is more evidence of the close ties between Israel, the United States and Mr Suleiman, who is tipped to replace Hosni Mubarak as Egypt’s president.
The close relationship has emerged from American diplomatic cables leaked to the WikiLeaks website and passed to The Daily Telegraph.
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The US provided officers from the Egyptian secret police with training at the FBI, despite allegations that they routinely tortured detainees and suppressed political opposition.
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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The European Parliament announced Thursday a proposal for stricter rules on regulating electronic waste, as it grapples with the problems its reliance on imported commodities presents to member economies.
Millions of tons of electronic devices are discarded each year, and many contain one or more of the 14 elements the European Union has said are in critical supply. Those elements include magnesium, graphite, cobalt, gallium and germanium.
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Chemical compounds from the oil dispersants applied to the Gulf of Mexico didn’t break down as expected, according to a study released this week. Scientists found the compounds lingering for months in the deep waters of the Gulf, long after BP’s oil had stopped spewing.
“The results indicate that an important component of the chemical dispersant injected into the oil in the deep ocean remained there, and resisted rapid biodegradation,” said scientist David Valentine of U.C. Santa Barbara, one of the investigators in the study.
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Drilling service companies have injected at least 32 million gallons of diesel fuel underground as part of a controversial drilling technique, a Democratic congressional investigation has found.
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A new drilling technique is opening up vast fields of previously out-of-reach oil in the western United States, helping reverse a two-decade decline in domestic production of crude.
Companies are investing billions of dollars to get at oil deposits scattered across North Dakota, Colorado, Texas and California. By 2015, oil executives and analysts say, the new fields could yield as much as 2 million barrels of oil a day – more than the entire Gulf of Mexico produces now.
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A network of bloggers, pundits, think tanks and foundations get funding from the Kochs, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has received over $700,000, and the libertarian Cato Institute, which has received $13 million from the Kochs since 1998. The Manhattan Institute received $1.5 million, Americans for Prosperity has gotten $5.5 million, the Pacific Research Institute has gotten $1.2 million and the Federalist Society $2 million.
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7.5 million hectares of natural forest will escape Indonesia’s planned moratorium on new forestry concessions, according to a new report from Greenomics Indonesia, an activist group.
Under its billion dollar forest conservation partnership with Norway, Indonesia committed to establish a moratorium on new concessions in forest areas and peatlands beginning January 1, 2011. But Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has yet to sign the decree due to debate over the details of what types of forest will be exempted. Presently two versions of the decree are circulating. The one drafted by the country’s REDD+ Taskforce, chaired by Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, is considerably stronger than one prepared by the Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Hatta Rajasa.
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Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves may have been grossly overestimated and its capacity to continue pumping at current capacity exaggerated, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable sent from the kingdom in 2007.
The cable, obtained by WikiLeaks and published in the British newspaper The Guardian, cited the views of Sadad al-Husseini, who had been in charge of exploration and production at the Saudi state-owned company Aramco for 12 years until 2004.
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With the rising of the morning sun on February 8, 2011, activists held what could be described as a ceremony of protection for the Beaver Pond Forest as they encircled the cutting machines that have been tearing into the South Marsh Highlands to protect the land from developers; and in turn, protecting we two-legged (humans) from having to commit such destruction.
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On Friday, December 19, 2008, Tim DeChristopher participated in a public auction. As the Bush administration moved to auction off 77 parcels of federal land totaling 150,000 acres for oil and gas drilling, DeChristopher, a student at the University of Utah at the time, bid $1.7 million for 14 parcels totaling 22,000 acres of land, although he did not have the funds to pay for it.
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Finance
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One year after the Supreme Court ruled in the Citizens United case that corporations have the same rights as people, movements are underway around the U.S. to reverse the new protections granted by the country’s highest court. Vermont State Senator Virginia Lyons has introduced the country’s first anti-corporate personhood resolution which proposes amending the U.S. Constitution to specify that “corporations are not persons under the laws of the United States.”
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Rumor has it that the 50-state attorneys general investigation into the Fraudclosure scandal is wrapping up. It’s time for a backbone check. Will the state attorneys general just ask the big banks and service providers to turn over a chunk of change from seemingly bottomless pockets? (This strategy was pursued by the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) with little impact). Or will Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller take the lead in wrestling a real settlement out of the banks, so that families hammered by unemployment and underemployment can stay in their homes?
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Earnings and bonus reports are rolling in and the big, bailed-out banks are back in the black. In 2010, total compensation and benefits at publicly traded Wall Street banks and securities firms hit a record of $135 billion — up almost six percent from 2009 according to the Wall Street Journal. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon may take home the biggest bonus check, an eye-popping $17 million.
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In the latest attempt to save the floundering Big Society, David Cameron announced today that “the big society bank will be taking £200m from Britain’s banks to put into the voluntary sector.”
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The greatest scam in history has been exposed — and has largely been ignored by the media. In fact, it’s still going on.
The specifics of a secret taxpayer funded “backdoor bailout” organized by unelected bankers have been revealed. The data release revealed “emergency lending programs” that doled out $12.3 trillion in taxpayer money ($16 trillion according to Dr. Ron Paul) — and Congress didn’t know any of the details.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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The year 2010 saw Indian journalists, their associations and unions hold more conferences and seminars on one professional issue than any other. And it wasn’t the Wage Board or the Radia tapes. Hundreds of journalists across the country attended these meetings. Dozens stood up and spoke of their own experiences of the subject. Of how it demoralized them and ruined their profession. Yet, the main topic of their discussion found no mention the next day in the very newspapers, magazines or channels they work for.
Sometimes, the fact of the meeting being held, perhaps as an event attended by a High Court judge, was reported. But the subject discussed was not. In newspapers and channels choking with stories on corruption, this is the one you’re least likely to see. The media are their own worst censors when it comes to reporting on ‘Paid News.’
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Back in 2006, an E.coli outbreak at Taco Bells sickened dozens of people in six states. Then, in early 2007, a videotape of rats running rampant at a Taco Bell/KFC in New York City went viral. It took Taco Bell months to recover from this one-two image punch.
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“We were profoundly shocked when we viewed the videotape,” Phyllis Kinsler, chief executive of the agency’s central New Jersey branch, said in a statement. Ms. Kinsler said the tape “depicted an employee of one of our health centers behaving in a repugnant manner that is inconsistent with our standards of care and is completely unacceptable.”
Stuart Schear, vice president for communications of the national federation, said in an interview on Wednesday that Planned Parenthood had “zero tolerance” for unethical behavior and that the behavior filmed in the video was “very isolated.”
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Unveiled by Toyota in November, the television commercial highlighted the carmaker’s decision to share crash research with scientists studying football concussions, and was an explicit reminder of football’s recent controversies regarding concussions.
So explicit, it turns out, that the N.F.L. demanded that Toyota alter the 30 second commercial, and Toyota promptly did.
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Censorship
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os-court-jury-pamphlet-ban-20110204
A court order signed this week prohibits the distribution of pamphlets or leaflets meant to influence jurors outside the Orange and Osceola courthouses.
The administrative order, signed by Chief Judge Belvin Perry on Monday, has sparked a fresh free-speech debate that could lead to legal challenges, questioning whether the order amounts to a “prior restraint” or a form of censorship.
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The King’s Speech may have a new speech impediment on its path to the Academy Awards.
The American Humane Association has contacted producers of the film and is threatening legal action over the use of phrase, “No animals were harmed,” in the end credits.
The public advocacy group has a trademark on this phrase and over the years, has leveraged its rights so as to be involved in film productions and certify that no “animal actors” get harmed or killed in studio films. The organization typically demands advanced copies of scripts and daily call sheets to review and also requires on-set access whenever animals are used.
The AHA says it was never invited to monitor The King’s Speech, however, and so it demands that The Weinstein Co., which is distributing the highly-praised film, remove the assurance to movie-goers that no animals were harmed during the production.
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Privacy
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A quarter-century after coming to the United States, Franz Werro still thinks like a European. The 54-year-old Georgetown law professor, born and raised in Switzerland, is troubled when ads in French automatically pop up on his American laptop. The computer assumes that’s what he wants. We live naked on the Internet, Werro knows, in a brave new world where our data lives forever. Google your name, and you’ll stumble onto drunken photos from college, a misguided quote given to a reporter five years ago, court records, ancient 1 a.m. blog comments, that outdated Friendster profile … the list goes on, a river of data creating a profile of who you are for anyone searching online: friend, merchant, or potential future employer. Werro’s American students rarely mind.
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Two Congressmen have sent a letter to Facebook requesting information about plans to share users’ mobile phone and address information with developers.
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Civil Rights
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Two civil liberties groups representing a former WikiLeaks associate have filed a motion challenging the government’s attempt to obtain her Twitter records, as well as the records of two others associated with the secret-spilling website. The groups also filed motions to unseal records in the case.
The case involves Birgitta Jonsdottir, a member of Iceland’s parliament, as well as WikiLeaks’ U.S. representative Jacob Appelbaum, and Dutch businessman and activist Rop Gonggrijp. Jonsdottir and Gonggrijp helped WikiLeaks prepare a classified U.S. Army video that the site published last April.
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Internet/Net Neutrality/UBB
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The Federal Communications Commission’s net-neutrality decision opens the FCC to “boundless authority to regulate the internet for whatever it sees fit,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation is warning.
The civil rights group says the FCC’s action in December, which was based on shaky legal authority, creates a paradox of epic proportions. The EFF favors net neutrality but worries whether the means justify the ends.
“We’re wholly in favor of net neutrality in practice, but a finding of ancillary jurisdiction here would give the FCC pretty much boundless authority to regulate the internet for whatever it sees fit. And that kind of unrestrained authority makes us nervous about follow-on initiatives like broadcast flags and indecency campaigns,” Abigail Phillips, an EFF staff attorney, wrote on the group’s blog Thursday.
And the paradox grows.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Today, balloon dogs everywhere can breathe a sigh of relief: SF’s Park Life store/gallery announced that artist Jeff Koons has dropped legal action against the sale of its balloon dog-shaped bookends.
In a story that migrated from The Bay Citizen to the New York Times, eventually reaching the San Francisco Chronicle, the NY-based artist, famous for his appropriation of pop culture, was roundly mocked for sending a cease-and-desist to the Richmond District store and the Toronto manufacturer of the bookends.
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Copyrights
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Over the last few months, Google has received more than 100 copyright infringement warnings from MPAA-affiliated movies studios: most are directed at users of Google’s public Wi-Fi service but others are meant for Google employees. The MPAA is thus warning the search giant that it might get disconnected from the Internet.
“Copyright infringement also violates your ISP’s terms of service and could lead to limitation or suspension of your Internet service. You should take immediate action to prevent your Internet account from being used for illegal activities,” the movie companies write in various letters, according to TorrentFreak. Although the copyright holders use strong language, these notices are nothing simply warnings, and typically do not lead to legal action.
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Apparently out of the blue, a copyright lawsuit filed in federal court in Dallas by a German pornographer against 670 anonymous Internet users, who were charged with infringing the copyright in the film by making it available for download, has been dismissed. The back story holds lessons for judges confronted with demands to discover the identify of anonymous Internet users.
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Rather than just suing those behind the Heavy’s song, Drive In has basically gone on a legal rampage. It sued pretty much everyone even loosely connected with the song. So, it sued the label… but also the ad agency that put together the ad, the NFL for having the commercial during the Super Bowl and CBS for airing the ad. Apparently that lawsuit was settled, which is too bad, as it seems like many of those parties could push back on the claims.
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Moe then asks Hayes if he links to a site that has infringing content from his Public Radio blog, will ICE shut down the site. And Hayes makes a really weird remark that makes no sense, sayings that if Moe “gets advertising funds from a site that provides unauthorized content” then he might have to shut them down. But that’s something new. We’ve seen no assertions or evidence that the sites that have been take down received ads from the other sites that were hosting the content. Is Hayes totally making stuff up now? It sounds like Hayes doesn’t even understand what he’s talking about.
Finally, Moe asks: if a site links and embeds to all the same content, but does not profit from it (i.e., does not have advertising), is it criminal? Hayes totally punts and says he’d have to check the law. Yes, really. So the guy is not an expert on the technology and admits he’s not an expert on the law in question. So what is he an expert in and why is he leading these questionable seizures?
On a separate note, it’s nice to see that Homeland Security is willing to chat with the press again after telling us that it will not speak about these issues because it’s an “ongoing investigation before court.” Apparently, Homeland Security was also lying to me (though, we knew that already).
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Evan Stone is not the devil; indeed, the antipiracy lawyer sees himself on the side of the angels. But his crusade against the Satanic forces of BitTorrent has been, by his own admission, a pitched battle in which he is vastly outnumbered. He describes his work as “charging hell with a bucket of water.”
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It’s been a little while since we covered what newspaper copyright troll Righthaven was up to, but Eric Goldman alerts us to one recent legal filing from the operation that raises some questions. Historically, Righthaven has been careful to avoid websites that have registered a DMCA agent, knowing that under the DMCA it’s supposed to issue a takedown notice before suing. However, this case, in going after the successful blog network Pajamas Media, appears to ignore the fact that Pajamas Media has registered.
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Although it pains me to say this, it’s the pirates who are on the right side of history. Empires built on barbed wire inevitably collapse, and the sooner the better; while this one reigns, it perpetuates yesterday’s regimes, and squelches innovation and progress. Is piracy wrong? Yes, but that’s the wrong question. The right question is, which is worse: widespread piracy, or the endless and futile attempt to preserve DRM everywhere? So long live the pirates. Those jerks. Please don’t make me say it again.
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File-hosting service Hotfile has made a business out of offering a stash box for people to store their pirated movies, the Motion Picture Association of America claims in its suit against Hotfile.
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Hotfile, one of a number of cyberlockers out there, has been in the news increasingly lately, as various entertainment industry firms have been attacking it as one of the more popular cyberlockers. It appears that the MPAA and its whole content protection staff finally decided to go beyond complaining and actually sue Hotfile, asking (of course) for the maximum $150,000 in statutory damages for each infringing file it found on Hotfile.
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We had serious questions from the beginning about Senator Patrick Leahy’s “ProIP” bill, which was pushed very strongly by the lobbying group, the US Chamber of Commerce, using widely debunked stats to claim that there needed to be an “IP Enforcement Coordinator” in the White House. Yet, as we explained, such a position makes absolutely no sense. Even “pro intellectual property” folks noted that the law was anything but “pro intellectual property.” Instead it was pro-legacy business structure. So giving a role in the White House to someone whose sole job is to protect legacy business models is the very definition of regulatory capture. And while the IP Enforcement Coordinator, Victoria Espinel, has been kind enough to personally reach out to us multiple times since taking on the job, in the end she still sees her role to be protecting legacy industry jobs, rather than (as the Constitution requires) making sure that intellectual property promotes the progress.
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Some good news out of Samara. As we’ve reported previously, trumped-up piracy accusations have been frequently used in Russia to intimidate independent media. Sergei Kurt-Adzhiyev, a Russian editor, has spent years fighting piracy prosecutions against himself and his publications in the region. This week, he was declared not guilty. Russia’s Finance Ministry was ordered to pay him 450,000 rubles or $15,200 for the false charge of using pirated software.
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The big idea: I’m spending 628% more time on copyrighted content that is being given away than content I’m paying for. Much of it is ad-supported, but much of that ad money never ends up in the pocket of the artist: most content creators on youtube, reddit, 9gag, devour, or blogs never profit off of their creations.
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Digital Economy (UK)/ACS:OutLaw
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Yesterday, Judge Birss QC at the Patents County Court delivered his judgment in the copyright infringement hearing which featured ACS:Law, copyright troll client MediaCAT and 27 alleged file-sharers. While Birss was damning of the process from start to finish, some of key issues he raised could have serious implications for the UK’s Digital Economy Act.
The battle against ACS:Law, MediaCAT and other companies previously involved in developing the so-called Speculative Invoicing model in the UK, has been fought on many fronts. A key group that has championed the rights of the innocent caught in the dragnet, and indeed introduced the term ‘Speculative Invoicing’ to the legal landscape, is BeingThreatened.com. This compact and highly resourceful team have worked tirelessly to protect innocent members of the public from the predatory tactics we have read so much about lately.
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It certainly looks like DGW has been a bit more careful with its strategy than ACS:Law (where it really seemed like Andrew Crossley got in way over his head), but it certainly should be a warning sign to all those law firms who think this sort of shakedown play is easy money.
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Yesterday afternoon saw the latest twist in the protracted story of ACS:Law. They have been engaged in a campaign to intimidate and extort money from thousands of people with little evidence and even less proper due process. Last week, with their flimsy cases facing scrutiny in court, ACS:Law wound themselves up, disappearing in a puff of smoke like cartoon villains. But Judge Birss, of the Patents County Court, insisted that the cases must continue.
And so the case drags on. But aside from one law firm’s nefarious practice, it offers us important lessons for the way copyright enforcement works. In particular there are implications for that flagship but very flawed legislation aimed at reducing file-sharing in the UK, the Digital Economy Act. It is important to say that these lessons have nothing to do with the rights and wrongs of copyright infringement. They have everything to do with basic principles of justice and due process. If you are accused of doing something wrong, you are presumed innocent until proven otherwise by sufficient evidence. You would expect there to be reasonable ways to defend yourself. Punishments should follow this kind of process.
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Now a judge had criticised the firm for its methods.
“I cannot imagine a system better designed to create disincentives to test the issues in court,” said Judge Colin Birss at the Patents County Court in London.
Debian 6 “Squeeze” First Look, Impressions and History Lesson
Credit: TinyOgg
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Intellectual Monopoly, Microsoft, Patents at 12:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Allies of Microsoft are still throwing bricks at the unstoppable platform which gradually takes over everything
LINUX is constantly under attack because it is winning (just look at all the anti-Android litigation). At Techrights we emphasise this all the time. As Linux goes very mainstream everywhere, malicious proprietary software companies like Apple, Microsoft, and SCO are certain and determined to attack Linux. All three companies already sue companies which sell Linux. They sue using intellectual monopolies, which are the weakest form of competition (all the other forms — including technical merit — have failed for them). The situation at Nokia is serious, but it is not fatal. Now, let us look at litigation — not entryism — which poses a risk and constitutes a factor that can slow down Linux and Free software’s triumph. Regarding the SCO sale to UnXis, Groklaw keeps an eye on it (as do we) and there is now a formal objection to the UnXis plan:
Novell has, as expected, filed an objection to SCO’s proposed sale of assets to UnXis. It’s terse in mood, but unless the judge is asleep, it should do the job.
The first basis for the objection is that SCO doesn’t have the “necessary consents” from Novell “for the assumption and assignment of agreements with Novell”. As Novell tells the court, “Original APA Section 9.5(c) expressly prohibits its assignment by SCO without Novell’s consent.” And Novell won’t consent this time either, just like last time.
Crossing over to the realms of patents, DistroWatch is advertising Centrify and Linux.com too has been advertising (for money) this pusher of Microsoft APIs and software patents. Such Microsoft proponents that are close to Microsoft are dangerous for the same reason Likewise is dangerous and based on this new press release about Tuxera joining the Linux Foundation [1, 2], the number of Microsoft pushers who promote Microsoft patents is growing inside the Linux Foundation (Linux.com is now owned by the Linux Foundation too). As a quick recap, Tuxera tries to extract/pass Microsoft patent tax from Android and Linux, using proprietary file systems that nobody wants or needs. Centrify promotes Microsoft protocols too and it is keen on software patents. One need not be baffled by the Linux Foundation’s admission because it’s hard to embrace exceptionalism at this type of open consortium and many of its most powerful members (with IBM's clear dominance) are proponents of software patents. Despite the use of the term “Foundation”, the Free Software Foundation differs enormously from the Linux Foundation and certainly the Gates Foundation, which loves patents more than the former two. That having been said, the Linux Foundation does a lot more than it should to endorse software patents, even with the OIN. The so-called ‘ecosystem’ it promotes involves a lot of patented and proprietary software, so the policies embraced by the Linux Foundation are at times incompatible with Linux itself. Carlo Piana, a respected lawyer specialising in Free/open source software, explained this problem to me last night.
I agree, and act, but how to achieve that? The lobbying is intense in the opposite direction.
Piana does not fully agree with Red Hat's stance on the subject (like the OIN, its legal team speaks of “bad patents” rather than “software patents” as needing to be abolished). Piana rightly insists that "the *only* solution is abolition NOW". Meanwhile, Microsoft Florian keeps tweeting me a lot about the subject. Last night he was still messaging me, trying to daemonise Red Hat’s stance. He generally daemonises Red Hat, GNU/Linux, and its business model in his blog, removing any pretences that he cares for “Linux” or “FOSS”. He hates OIN with a passion because OIN is a big deterrent/problem to companies like Microsoft and Mandriva in fact has just announced joining the OIN:
Open Invention Network (OIN), the company formed to enable and protect Linux, today extended its community with the signing of Mandriva as a licensee. By becoming a licensee, Mandriva has joined the growing list of organizations that recognize the importance of leveraging the Open Invention Network to further spur open source innovation.
Mandriva is located in a region where software patents are theoretically invalid; however, malicious monopolies and their lawyers try to change this. “Feel free to explain what the author got wrong,” wrote the FFII several hours ago about this new post about the “EU patent” (path for inserting software patents into Europe).
Keeping track of threats is not FUD, it’s vigilance. Linux will need a lot of vigilance as it enters phones and tablets, not just servers, routers, and several other non-desktop market segments that are actually expanding. █
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Hardware, Microsoft at 11:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“Where are we on this Jihad [against Linux at Intel]?”
–Bill Gates
Summary: The sociopaths from Microsoft seem to be harming Intel’s and Nokia’s main Linux push (MeeGo) by abolishing its development
THE SITUATION seems rather familiar. Big hardware companies are moving towards Linux and people from Microsoft soon intervene, trying to stifle further development of this kind. A few days ago we wrote about the Mono issue that the FSF recognises and explained how Microsoft/Novell put Mono inside everything Linux-powered, including MeeGo (which is planned for in-car systems, sub-notebooks, phones, and just about everything compact). A new interview which we linked to yesterday has Richard Stallman elaborating on Mono:
Question: Many see Mono with its patent issues as possibly a big problem for GNU/Linux and Free Software; do you think using, developing and contributing Free Software written in Mono is better or worse in the long run for a user’s freedom than using proprietary software?
Stallman: That’s a comparison between growing apples and eating oranges. Instead of responding in those artificial terms, I will explain the issues of C# and Mono.
Mono is a free implementation of C#. Programs can’t be “written in Mono”; they can be written in C#. If you have a program written in C#, it is better for you to run it using Mono (free software) than to run it using Microsoft .NET (proprietary software).
When you write a program, I recommend that you choose a language other than C#. If you write it in C#, then its use in the free world could be threatened by Microsoft’s patents. So write in some other language, and avoid the problem. This is true whether your program is meant for release as free software, or meant just for private use as private software. (If it is meant for release as proprietary software, you should refuse to participate regardless of the language used.)
MeeGo’s Mono problem is now the main issue right now. A lot has also been said about the role of Microsoft’s President, Mr. Elop, who is now the CEO of Nokia. See for example the following posts:
- If You Can’t Beat Them, Hijack Them (Microsoft Joins Nokia and It Already Shows)
- Linux Battle in Mobile Phones Becomes Primarily Legal, Not Technical, Due to Software Patents
- Taking Over Linux, by Proxy
- Microsoft Passes More of Its Executives to the MSBBC. What About Nokia?
- Microsoft President Quits, But is Nokia the Next Victim?
- Microsoft Insiders Galore: BBC, Nokia, Others Already Damaged by Microsoft Hires
- Linspire/Ballnux in Tablets; HP Possibly Experiments With Vista 7 in Slate After Abandoning It, Then Hiring From Microsoft
- New Article Says Nokia Might be Bought by Microsoft After Appointing Microsoft President as CEO
- Entryism Watch: Yahoo! Keeps Being Abducted by Microsoft Executives, HP Cancels Android Projects After CEO Appointment From SAP
- As Expected, Nokia and HP Betray Linux Under Microsoft-sympathetic New Leadership
- Head of Microsoft Romania Quits, Entryism Revisited
- Microsoft’s Favourite ‘Reporters’ Are Attacking Nokia, Pushing it Into Microsoft’s Arms
- Will Elop Choose the Future (Linux) or His Past (Microsoft) for Nokia?
- Analyst Wants Microsoft’s Elop (Now Nokia CEO) to Shoot Down Linux Programmes
According to yet another update, the ‘new Nokia’ (which is run by Elop) suddenly feels different about its crown jewels and its behaviour becomes suicidal. It sure seems like Yahooism (giving all traffic to the Google scraper called Bong [sic]). Will Elop adopt the rubbish Vista Phony 7 [sic] or will he carry on with the current direction, along with Intel? The former editor of Linux Today asks: “Nokia: Losing Faith in MeeGo?” Elop losing “faith”? Well, no. He has Microsoft “faith”. It’s a mindset system. The piece says:
Topping the rumor list: that Nokia may drop the MeeGo platform in favor of another operating system.
If true, this would be a huge blow to the MeeGo project, which has not enjoyed much progress in the mobile sector. Nokia contributed its Maemo platform to the MeeGo initiative, along with Intel’s Moblin operating system, so if effectively one-half of the founding team abandons MeeGo for another OS, that could spell the end for MeeGo’s future chances of success.
Fueling this rumor is Elop’s direct mention of MeeGo as one source of Nokia’s troubles.
“We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market,” Elop’s memo read.
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But if one of the project’s founders has lost faith in the platform, how can anyone else but their faith in MeeGo?
MeeGo is actually a wonderful, standards-based platform which could soon inherit all the applications from Android, so what’s the matter? MeeGo is a lot more compatible with desktop GNU/Linux than Android will ever be and hypePhone [sic] after Steve Jobs’ departure is starting to suffer from “fragmentation”, which is the term Apple and Microsoft used against Android. To quote the new allegations:
Today may be remembered as the day the iOS platform became fragmented like Android. The announcement today by Telenav that its GPS app has been released for the Verizon iPhone may carry unexpected ramifications for apps on the iOS line of products.
MeeGo can beat hypePhone and Android now that it can inherit all applications from Android and be a lot more free/open than both. Only a Linux-hostile CEO would conceivably depart from MeeGo now that there is a new announcement about the Android-to-MeeGo bridge (we posted links about it last night and today).
Meanwhile it turns out that Nokia is cancelling Linux/MeeGo phones while Wafaa says the netbook plans too are off:
Sound a bit morose? Well in a way it is. Basically by all accounts MeeGo is stopping all work on the Netbook UX. Yup, all our hard work is now almost for nothing 
Here is another article/post about it.
Well, that was fast. Nokia has reportedly killed the N9-00 MeeGo phone before most people even knew it existed.
It sure looks like our suspicion that Elop will ruin Linux at Nokia gradually becomes more substantiated. That’s how Microsoft’s sociopaths work: either they tilt the competitor towards Microsoft (e.g. Novell, Corel) or they simply take them out of business. Who benefits from such a behaviour? This is not capitalism, it’s entryism. █
Update: A Microsoft booster says that “Former Nokia Exec Claims CEO’s “Burning Platform” Memo a Hoax,” but this may not change some of the other references above. Here is another sceptic.
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Posted in Bill Gates, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Patents at 10:21 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The sociopaths who made Microsoft the harmful, deceptive, and destructive entity it has become are finding new areas from which to spread malice, this time disguised by massive PR
IT IS still evident that many of Microsoft’s top rivals rely on Free software and GNU/Linux, as we noted last year. The paradigm of collaboration and sharing is winning and even a Microsoft co-founder dropped hints of that in a recent interview while the other company’s co-founder became an active patent troll (that would be Traul Allen versus abundance and the Internet, but Bill Gates too has a patent-hoarding operation). By extension, Gates is also indirectly a patent troll; he is financing those who are, looking for dividend of course. The new pet monopolies are served in foundation ‘flavour’ and their patent monopolies are often marketed at the expense of taxpayers all around the world. And meanwhile, on the face of it, Gates puts aside what he views as a bad asset (Microsoft), focusing as always on what he knows best: how to loot and take more money from the public using a form of tax or rent (if not Windows then pharmaceuticals and patented seeds for other people). Guess who pays for it? Taxpayers. Guess who’s investing in the benefactors? Gates of course. Here is the latest report (among many) about Gates further distancing himself from Microsoft while he becomes a major nuisance in other areas whose annual taxpayers-based budget is an order of magnitude higher than anything he ever hoarded (combined sum).
The moves follow a year in which Gates aggressively pared back his Microsoft holdings. SEC records reviewed by InformationWeek show that, in the past 12 months, Gates has sold off a whopping 90 million shares—reducing his holdings of Microsoft common stock by 13%. Over the past two years, Gates has cut his interest in the company he co-founded by about 22% through more than a dozen separate transactions.
[...]
Reports Tuesday indicate Ballmer is set to shake up Microsoft’s management ranks in a big way, following his recent decision to relieve Bob Muglia from his duties heading the company’s highly profitable Server & Tools division. Bloomberg says Ballmer’s next move could be to elevate engineering and product specialists to senior positions in an effort to return Microsoft to its software engineering roots. It would also reduce the perception (or reality) that Redmond has become nothing more than a giant marketing shell for a portfolio of disparate and outdated technologies.
The problem with Microsoft has always been a social one. It’s not a problem with corporations — be it free market or greed — it’s the problem with the sociopaths who happen to run some of them. Techrights is not at all against corporations, it is against abuse of power. █
“He [Bill Gates] acted like a spoiled kid, which is what he was.”
–Ed Roberts, Gates’ employer at MITS in the 1970′s (Atlanta Journal-Costitution, 04-27-97)
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Posted in News Roundup at 9:37 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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Server Distribution of the Year – Debian (29.35%)
Desktop Distribution of the Year – Ubuntu (28.56%)
Security/Forensic/Rescue Distribution of the Year – BackTrack (36.87%)
Mobile Distribution of the Year – Android (76.82%)
Database of the Year – MySQL (51.76%)
NoSQL Database of the Year – Cassandra (27.40%)
Office Suite of the Year – OpenOffice.org (55.74%)
Browser of the Year – Firefox (55.52%)
Desktop Environment of the Year – Gnome (45.06%)
Window Manager of the Year – Compiz (26.43%)
Messaging App of the Year – Pidgin (43.85%)
Virtualization Product of the Year – VirtualBox (59.16%)
Audio Media Player Application of the Year – Amarok (28.34%)
Audio Authoring Application of the Year – Audacity (74.58%)
Video Media Player Application of the Year – VLC (58.79%)
Video Authoring Application of the Year – FFmpeg (26.70%)
Multimedia Utility of the Year – GStreamer (31.95%)
Graphics Application of the Year – GIMP (66.98%)
Network Security Application of the Year – Wireshark (32.90%)
Host Security Application of the Year – SELinux (38.46%)
Network Monitoring Application of the Year – Nagios (61.76%)
IDE/Web Development Editor of the Year – Eclipse (24.55%)
Text Editor of the Year – vim (35.88%)
File Manager of the Year – Nautilus (31.42%)
Open Source Game of the Year – Battle for Wesnoth (22.70%)
Programming Language of the Year – Python (26.56%)
Revision Control System of the Year – git (50.56%)
Backup Application of the Year – rsync (47.42%)
Open Source CMS/Blogging platform – WordPress (45.18%)
Configuration Management Tool of the Year – Puppet (46.67%)
Open Source Web Framework of the Year – Django (33.33%)
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When you plug the camera or insert the memory stick into the PC running GNU/Linux operating systems like Ubuntu, it gives you the option to open it with Shotwell, a built-in image viewer. You can also edit your images using powerful software like GIMP.
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Desktop
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LTSP is available in Debian GNU/Linux and several other distros.
X has limitations in video throughput and security but it is the lowest cost solution where these issues are minor as in many libraries and computer labs.
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Server
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The 10-petaflop performance far outstrips what is commonly thought of as today’s most powerful supercomputer, the recently built Tianjin National Supercomputer Center’s Tianhe-1A system, which benchmarked a performance of 2.67 petaflops for the last Top500 twice-annual ranking of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.
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Ballnux
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Sprint and Kyocera Communications are readying the first dual-touchscreen Android smartphone. Equipped with a 1GHz Snapdragon processor running Android 2.2, the Kyocera Echo offers dual 3.5-inch WVGA touchscreens that can be combined to form a single 4.7-inch display, or can be split — with apps running either independently or in an “optimized” mode with complementary functions.
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Kernel Space
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The Linux 2.6.38 kernel already has a lot of exciting new features and so far it appears to be in good shape.
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So there’s been times when it wasn’t as much fun, but never really a “walk away” moment, no.
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Jonathan Corbet also gave his traditional The Kernel Report presentation at LCA 2011. I’ve embedded it below in webm format using the HTML 5 video tag.
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Graphics Stack
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This is good news so it looks like we may see Radeon HD 6900 series open-source support land for the Linux 2.6.39 kernel with the DRM/KMS Radeon bits and then in Mesa 7.11 for the user-space Gallium3D driver support with OpenGL acceleration. The 3D support is expected to be tacked onto the “R600g” Mesa driver.
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Applications
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So, let’s explore the 6 dictionary tools at hand. For each application we have compiled its own portal page, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, screenshots, together with links to relevant resources and reviews.
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Unovyx, LLC would like to announce that it is currently on Kickstarter.com attempting to seek funding for the development and testing of a large software-based project. The project is called RapidDisk (abbreviated to rxdsk) and is currently trying to raise $2,500 to help purchase all necessary equipment to not only develop the device driver and management application but also to ensure that it has been tested and stabilized before releasing it to the world under the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2) open source license with the hopes of one day getting it integrated into the Linux kernel.
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Minitube is a native YouTube client for Linux (as well as Windows and Mac OS X) which you can use to watch videos without Flash Player. Further more, Minitube can also be used to download videos from YouTube.
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Minitube is a native Youtube client for Linux that can play and download Youtube videos without any use of Flash.
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Auteur is a new non-linear video editor for Linux. The application is currently in alpha but seems to advance pretty fast, with 6 releases in just one week (the first alpha preview release was published on 31 January 2011).
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Shutter, an amazing, dare I say “the best” Linux screenshot tool was updated to version 0.87 today…
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Add a donation option tab. This tab could be turned off in preferences, and should be unobtrusive, no asking or reminders to donate.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Games
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I’ve been involved with a fair share of open source activities, game-related and otherwise, and by and large I have thoroughly enjoyed the ride. It all started with an overly ambitious open source game. It never went anywhere, yet I treasure the time I spent working on it. This project sent me head first into the marvels of collaborative open source–and game development, without any training wheels. It’s an experience and an education that comes highly recommended, but is not without its hits and misses. Getting it right the first time ultimately comes down to chance, but if nothing else, sharing my experience might improve your odds.
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The game is a self-described naval real time strategy with stunning graphics and an interesting take on the original RTS feel with the majority of gameplay taking place over water.
The preview weighed in at around 250MB, but had most of the content there already. There are three missions in the preview campaign, two tutorials and one tower defense scenario that I will talk about later.
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Desktop Environments
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)
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One very good thing about the TrinityDE Kmail, trash compaction WORKS! For all the YEARS I have been using Kmail, I had to delete the /bob/Mail/trash file by hand, “touch trash” to recreate it, just because every time I would try “compact trash folder” Kmail would give the awful message, “for security reasons, compaction has been turned off for trash.”
Several months of spam, attachments, family photographs and Debian-User mailing list digests can create multi-hundred-megabyte trash files. The fact that compacting the trash file has been enabled is the first new thing in TrinityDE that I am exceedingly happy about.
Let’s hope that the continued development of TrinityDE, as shown by that seemingly small change, is on an evolutionary basis, rather than the revolutionary fervor that caused the need for TrinityDE to be founded in the first place.
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New for 4.6 is a window decoration called Oxygen-GTK, which is designed to make apps created using the GTK toolkit look better in the Qt-based KDE environment. Not something I’m likely to use, but a nice touch that a lot of folks have been waiting for.
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A lot of people has been asking me (or complaining) what is Kamoso and what we intend to do with it, so I’ve decided to use a blog post to explain it.
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GNOME Desktop
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In general, things are shaping up nicely. I was pleasantly surprised that I had no 3D driver issues any more on either of my two laptops (using the free intel and radeon drivers). Some things are not ready for prime time, such as dconf-editor that doesn’t provide a search option and doesn’t wrap long description labels, thereby forcing the window width to ridiculous proportions (bug 641292).
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New Releases
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After the release of Sabayon Linux 5.5, the development team proudly announced today, February 8th, the immediate availability for download of the CoreCDX and SpinBase editions of their popular Sabayon Linux operating system.
Sabayon Linux 5.5 SpinBase and CoreCDX editions are designed for Linux experts and advanced users that want to set up a home server or create their very own operating system, based on Sabayon.
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PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family
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Again, to my surprise, as Mandriva’s 2011 Alpha 1 release approaches, I find it to be remarkably stable, fluid, and capable from the KDE side.
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Red Hat Family
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Red Hat, Inc., a provider of open source solutions, announced that nominations are open for its fifth annual Red Hat Innovation awards, which will be presented at the Red Hat Summit and JBoss World, taking place May 3-6, in Boston.
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Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) shares have came off day’s low on Tuesday on rumors that the company could be an acquisition target. RHT calls are seeing interest following renewed M&A speculation. So far today 7.6K total calls have traded vs 220 total puts.
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Shares of Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT) are higher on the session by 1.16%, trading at $44.62.
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Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization made solid progress during 2010. We delivered Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 2.2 and the first release of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops. We announced that several enterprise clouds, such as IBM’s, would be built on our virtualization platform. And we announced a string of customer wins. Along with these advances came widespread acknowledgment from the press and analyst communities that Red Hat’s virtualization portfolio was becoming established as a potent force in the market. Now, keeping up the momentum, we’re kicking off 2011 with a pair of leading virtualization performance results.
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Fedora
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Debian Family
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The installation process for Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 has been improved in various ways, including easier selection of language and keyboard settings, and partitioning of logical volumes, RAID and encrypted systems. Support has also been added for the ext4 and Btrfs filesystems and — on the kFreeBSD architecture — the Zettabyte filesystem (ZFS). The installation system for Debian GNU/Linux is now available in 70 languages.
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One rather old laptop and one server were the test objects for this howto. Both systems do not have any RAID devices and use a simple partition scheme from a default basic Lenny install. If your setup deviates much from this, it’s highly recommended to read all details of the Debian Release Notes before you continue. Be warned. All commands are run as root and Debian recommends to use apt-get for the Squeeze upgrade process.
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Did you know that Debian supports diverse hardware ranging from Intel 32-bit and 64-bit architecture, Motorola/IBM PowerPC, Sun/Oracle Sparc, MIPS (big-endian & little-endian), Intel Itanium, IBM S/390, and ARM EABI ? That is a total of 9 architectures.
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With last Saturday’s “Squeeze” release, Debian took an important step towards being a fully free distribution and ensuring freedom for its users.
Most GNU/Linux distributions directly or virtually include proprietary software. To promote development and use of totally free distros, the FSF publishes precise criteria for GNU/Linux distributions to fully respect users’ freedom.
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Last week, we learned to remove useless configuration files. This week, we’re going to take care of obsolete packages.
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Squeeze is the nickname of the latest Debian release (version 6.0). A new release of the well known and widely used Linux distro is a big deal. Ubuntu fans may be used to installing a new version what seems like every few minutes, but Debian moves to an altogether slower beat. Everything in a new release is thoroughly tried and tested, which explains why the last version — Debian 5.0 “Lenny” — debuted almost exactly two years ago.
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Unless you have been living under a rock, you will almost certainly be aware that Debian 6 “Squeeze” was released over the weekend of the 5th & 6th of February ’11. This is great news for Debian and great news for CrunchBang.
CrunchBang 10 “Statler” has been in development since early last year. The first alpha release came out in March ’10 and several development builds have followed whilst Debian Squeeze remained in testing. Now that Squeeze has migrated from testing to stable, CrunchBang Statler will also adopt the stable moniker.
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Robert Roth announces this week’s Ubuntu Bug Day on the ubuntu-devel-announce mailing list. If you are interested in helping “squash” some LibreOffice and OpenOffice bugs in Ubuntu then you are invited to help the Ubuntu BugSquad.
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Once every 6 months the Ubuntu developers meet at a summit to discuss and plan the upcoming release of Ubuntu. The Ubuntu Developer Summit hence attracts a large number of developers, enthusiasts and users every time it is conducted.
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On April 2011 , Canonical is going to release the latest avatar of Ubuntu , 11.04,codenamed ‘Natty Narwhal’ .Last release of ubuntu was ubuntu 10.10,codenamed ‘Maverick Meerkat’.There are lots of visible improvement in ubuntu 11.04 Alpha I.Lets see the new changes which are going to happen in ubuntu 11.04.
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Flavours and Variants
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Ubuntu Studio Fun Fact #0:
Ubuntu Studio shares the same repository as vanilla Ubuntu. Crazy, huh?
Ubuntu Studio Fun Fact #1:
The Ubuntu Studio developers don’t general code much. This means you don’t have to have mad coding skills to help with Ubuntu Studio development; generally I suggest that tenacity, inquisitiveness, and initiative will serve you well.
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In this screencast I show metapackages in more detail and explain the differences between them and normal packages.
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Lubuntu 11.04 alpha 2 was released today with a bit of a delay due to some issues with the hardware on the computer that generates the ISO.
There aren’t major changes since alpha 1 except for two default packages which have been removed: Cheese is no longer in the default Lubuntu 11.04 install and Xarchive has been replaced with file-roller.
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Pros: Pinguy’s maker has scoured the open source world to find amazing apps and tweaks. It’s one of the sexiest and most functional desktops we’ve seen
Cons: The desktop and application drop-downs are ultra busy, which risks confounding the less tech-savvy user. The ISO is well over 1GB
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These days, if a desktop-focussed Linux distribution wants to stand out from the pack of Ubuntu-wannabes it either needs to be especially slick or offer something a little bit different to the norm. Peppermint Ice falls into the latter category: It’s a Debian-derived (via Ubuntu), lightweight Linux distro that’s designed for netbooks and has a strong focus on Web applications.
Peppermint Ice’s main claim to fame is its use of a ‘site-specific browser’ (SSB), dubbed Ice, which is based on Google’s Chromium browser. Peppermint One, a fraternal distro from the same developers, uses Mozilla’s Prism (a project that, according Mozilla Labs’ projects page, is now not being actively developed). An SSB is a stripped-down browser that lets Web-based applications and services be treated in a somewhat similar fashion to a standard application: instead of navigating to a site using your browser, you can simply click on an icon on your desktop/applications menu/taskbar and an independent browser session is launched for that application (with none of the usual toolbars and menus you find in a normal browser session).
[...]
Kernel: 2.6.35-22-generic
Window manager: Openbox
Desktop: LXDE
Based on: Ubuntu
System requirements: i386 or derivative processor; 192MB RAM, 4GB hard drive space
Package management: APT
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My overall experience with Linux Mint 10 continues to be positive.
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Phones
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Linux has taken off like crazy on smartphones in the form of Android.
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Nokia/MeeGo/Maemo
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Myriad Group AG today announced a Dalvik virtual machine claimed to let Android apps run on non-Android platforms. Myriad posted a video showing “Myriad Alien Dalvik” running Android apps on a Nokia N900, and said the software will be available for MeeGo later this year.
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I’ve already posted about what I think will and won’t be part of Intels activity at Mobile World Congress next week and a recent ‘media alert’ sent to me by email confirms my thoughts that this is largely a software event for Intel. It’s all about completing the MeeGo stack from hardware to app store and that means:
* Moorestown platform – Demonstrating MeeGo and battery life advances.
* MeeGo 1.2 – Demonstrating multi-touch and other core components.
* UI layers written in Qt – Compelling demonstrations (probably created by Wind River)
* AppUp store (probably Beta) launch.
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Taking a small break from coding TwimGo and adding some features to NewsFlow application. NewsFlow is a Google Reader client written in QML and JavaScript. It runs on Nokia N900 and Symbian^3 devices such as N8 or E7.
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Myriad this morning announced ‘Alien Dalvik’ bringing Android applications to non-Android devices, allowing OEMs, operators and application stores to leverage the Android eco-system across a much wider range of mobile devices. Android applications run completely unmodified and with no loss of performance on non- Android platforms. This launch opens up the Android experience to new audiences as it enables them to deploy Android applications across multiple device operating systems, all without compromising performance which is made possible by a very tight integration of the Android runtime and the use of Myriad Dalvik Turbo technology. Myriad is a member of the Open Handset Alliance.
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For the last few weeks we have been working on a comfortable way to expose raw touch data to QML. The solution we came up with is called TouchArea and is a QML plugin that should be usable from Qt 4.7. The TouchArea is useful whenever you want to track touch points directly in QML, either by using property bindings or trough javascript event functions. This might for example be useful for touch input based games and for recognizing very basic custom gestures directly in javascript.
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Linpus, a company that has been working on Linux distributions for netbooks for a number of years under their ‘Linpus Lite’ brand have been invited to MWC to demonstrate their current offering in the MeeGo and Qt booths. The solution is targeted at manufacturers of netbooks and tablets based on MeeGo. Like MeeGo, the Linpus solution will be a ‘base’ on which to build on through contractual work by Linpus. We’ve seen a tablet UI before but this is more than that.
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Android
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The Dalvik virtual machine is being ported to other platforms other than Android/Linux. This makes it trivial for Android apps to run on GNU/Linux and to spread to x86 systems. I love it.
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Dell’s seven-inch Dell Streak 7 tablet boasts a fairly affordable price, plus a powerful dual-core Tegra 2 processor that delivers zippy performance. However, it needs Android 3.0, better battery life, and an improved screen and camera to keep up with the fast-running competition, says this eWEEK review.
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Like most office workers, my day is generally split up into two phases. The second phase, where I spend 90% of my time, is spent switching between the 3 or 4 primary applications I need to use to get my work done.
For this kind of activity Linux (and indeed any GUI based OS created in the last decade) works well, because the focus of desktop operating systems is on allowing you simultaneously to run a small number of monolithic applications that perform a specific job.
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Sub-notebooks
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The original netbook concept was that of sub 100 laptop running Linux providing quick access to web apps. The Linux based 7-inch Asus Eee PC was the first mainstream of that type, which shot to fame in 2007. Subsequently Intel and Microsoft intervened with tailored processors and trimmed-down Windows, which blurred the distinction between a notebook and a netbook. Although manufacturers have added more features, the netbook has gradually lost its meaning, size, function and price point, and is now losing its popularity as well.
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Tablets
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Linpus has been developing light-weight Linux-based operating systems for netbooks and tablets for the last few years. Now the company is getting ready to show off its latest tablet solution at Mobile World Congress, and Chippy from CarryPad has posted a preview video.
The OS is based on MeeGo Linux, but this version has been optimized for touchscreen tablets, with a nice big on-screen keyboard, rather speedy screen rotation, and an Android-like home screen with support for animated desktop backgrounds, widgets, and easy access to an app launcher.
The software is designed to play well with low power Intel Atom chips, and in the demo video you can see the OS boot in just 14 seconds on a tablet with an Atom processor.
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While tablet hardware is capable of running a full desktop OS, the experience often leaves something to be desired. Most desktop OSes are still designed to be used with a keyboard and mouse, and you’re not likely to attach either to a tablet while you’re riding a bus to work.
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Both Aurora and Gardiner have been active in FOSS women’s groups for over a decade. However, the catalyst for the Ada Initiative was the hostile responses to Noirin Shirley’s account of being sexually assaulted at ApacheCon in November 2010. The incident led to Aurora, Gardiner, and other members of the Geek Feminism blog to draft sample anti-harassment policies for conferences, and eventually to Aurora quitting her work as a full-time kernel developer at Red Hat to focus on the issues involved.
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The Ada Initiative is a new non-profit organization dedicated to increasing participation of women in open technology and culture, which includes open source software, Wikipedia and other open data, and open social media. Co-founders Mary Gardiner and Valerie Aurora have 10 years experience in open source software, open social media, and women in computing activism with groups like Geek Feminism, Systers, and LinuxChix.
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I still regularly hear people asking about open source and security. The usual question goes along the lines of “surely if the source is out in the open bad guys can do bad things”. The implication is that keeping the source code secret aids security and having it public degrades security.
Now, I’d not suggest that open source possesses some form of magic that always delivers more security – Alec Muffett recently debunked that idea here on CWUK. But I’ve two stories I watched unfold that support the assertion it can help make security better, in the context of a properly-functioning community.
[...]
The world of open source is full of cases where openness of information and process allow properly-functioning open-by-rule communities to address security issues fast. This is the real meaning of the idea that open source is good for security; no magic, just symbiosis.
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Events
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Web Browsers
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Mozilla
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Newspapers and other traditional media outlets get a lot of flak for not being more forward-thinking when it comes to what they do on the web or on mobile devices. And it’s true that many are stuck in the past — happy to continue plastering their websites with content shoveled from their print or offline operations. But even those who would like to be more creative often don’t have the resources to do so, since they usually have few (if any) staff with the programming and technology chops. Now the Knight Foundation and the Mozilla Foundation have joined forces to try and give media outlets some help in that area, by creating a fellowship program that will “embed” data and web-oriented journalists and developers in newsrooms as a way of sparking some creativity.
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The Mozilla Developer Network web site has a ton of documentation. A lot of it is really good. However, we have a significant number of articles that could use some help from the experts. To that end, we’re introducing Wiki Wednesday. Each Wednesday, we’ll post a very short list of articles that need technical help. The list will be posted here on the Hacks blog, as well as to the relevant Mozilla developer mailing lists.
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The latest Firefox 4 Beta is now available to download and test. We’ve continued our work to improve performance and stability, while also implementing a “Do Not Track” privacy feature to provide more control over online behavioral tracking.
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SaaS
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Pending federal legislation called the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010, aka Senate bill 3480, would grant the president of the United States the power to cut Internet access in a declared emergency, including blocking the Web for as many as 30 days, through a new agency to be called the National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications. This concept was introduced last year, and it returned to the forefront this week when the S.3480 bill passed in its committee on the same day Egypt’s Internet connection was shut down to curtail widespread government protests.
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Providing a vital link between internal and external clouds, VMware plans to release in March an adapter for moving virtual machines between a hosted service offering and an organization’s own internal systems, the company announced Tuesday.
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Just about every person involved with Free, Libre, and Open Source Software (referred from here-on as FLOSS) recognizes the problems with Facebook: it’s a walled garden, sharing of personal information is opt-out (assuming you can find it), questionable practices regarding tracking for advertisements, questions of ownership of data, and so on. Even more folks recognize that Facebook is the 800lb gorilla in the room (What does an 800lb gorilla do? Anything it wants). What is less apparent is what the appropriate FLOSS response to Facebook should be.
Diaspora is one of those responses. They’re not necessarily the only response (there are others) but I think it’s indicative of the wrong sort of response to this problem. The biggest problem with Diaspora today is it solves the wrong problem. Diaspora is essentially a clone of Facebook with all of the privacy controls brought to the forefront. While this is indeed one of the problems with Facebook, the solution in Diaspora is misguided in thinking this is the only problem with Facebook. If Facebook were to adopt Diaspora’s privacy controls, there would still be problems with Facebook. Diaspora’s approach is fundamentally flawed. Unfortunately, they have enough mindshare from their campaign to get started that folks may think this is the best that the FLOSS community can do. They may settle for what Diaspora offers. That is absolutely not what FLOSS should do.
One thing that FLOSS gets right is open protocols. Identi.ca, for all of it’s warts as a community, gets that the problem with Twitter isn’t that we need to have access to the code (although that is one problem). The problem with Twitter is that it too is a walled garden. In order to communicate with anyone on Twitter, I must have an account on Twitter. Identi.ca (and the underlying software, Status.net) gets this right by allowing federation using OStatus. Federation via OStatus allows me to set up a Status.net instance wherever I choose, and allows me to follow folks on other Status.net instances. It’s a brilliant approach, and I hope it gains more momentum. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have enough momentum right now to make Twitter adopt it. And why should Twitter expend their energies to adopt OStatus? After all, they’re the ones with the larger community.
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Databases
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NoSQL specialists CouchOne and Membase Inc have announced that they are merging to create a company that offes a more comprehensive range of NoSQL technology, named Couchbase. CouchOne’s expertise lies in CouchDB, the database created by CouchOne’s founder, Damien Katz. CouchDB is a widely deployed open source distributed/synchronising document database used by the BBC, CERN and Apple. Membase’s speciality is the distributed key-value memory cached database of the same name which offers high throughput for many web applications; it is used by companies such as AOL and Zynga.
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Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
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Google has announced the open sourcing, under the LGPL, of Contracts for Java (cofoja), which implements a technique popularised by the Eiffel programming language. Design, or Programming, by Contract is a technique where the interfaces of software modules include contracts consisting of preconditions, postconditions and invariant expressions.
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Given the interest in my earlier article about a scorecard for open source and my own rough-and-ready benchmark proposal, I’d be interested in seeing how well the benchmark works at rating a variety of open source projects. If you’re familiar enough with a project to be willing to have your name associated with rating it, please complete the table below in the same style as my own evaluation of OpenJDK.
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Oracle has agreed to share governance of the OpenJDK Java community with IBM, in a move that demonstrates considerable good will, according to one analyst.
The company has created a series of bylaws outlining the way the governance will be structured, with Oracle appointing itself chairman and the OpenJDK lead, and IBM taking the role of vice chairman.
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CMS
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Tesla went public last year; it is the first American automaker to go public since Ford Motor’s IPO more than 50 years ago.
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Business
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Vendors of proprietary software are fond of warning potential customers that open source software isn’t ready for business, typically citing subpar features or a higher total cost of ownership (TCO).
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Semi-Open Source
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Having worked with many companies over the years on going open source (see our report “Going Open Source”), many of them are just not cognizant ahead of time of the missteps that can be made. There’s so much arm-chair lawyering in open source (trade mark, assigning IP, patents, etc.) that it’s easy to overlook or simply not realize how much legal-thinking going open source requires. And if you do something wrong there, then once someone wants to accuse you of not being “real open source,” they can go after that fine print. Of course, as Oracle’s recent trade mark based flap over Hudson shows, those fears can be real: just because you’re not paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you, as they say.
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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Stallman: To qualify as a free distribution, Debian would have to remove the references to its nonfree and contrib sections from its free packages and from its servers. (Many contrib packages serve solely to help install nonfree programs distributed separately from Debian.)
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Project Releases
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VMware has released the Zimbra Collaboration Server 7.0, the email and groupware solution spun out of the Zimbra Collaboration Suite after VMware took over Zimbra from Yahoo a year ago. This is the first product in the Zimbra 7 family; customers can now also download beta versions of Zimbra Desktop 7 and Zimbra Appliance 7.
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Openness/Sharing
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Open Data
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In the past few days, New Hampshire’s General Court, as the state legislature is officially known, started releasing data on legislation and legislators in nerd-friendly, “pipe-separated” files, uploaded daily. In non-geek speak, this means the data is presented in a way that any competent web developer can easily process for use in an application or a researcher can feed into a database system to explore.
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A California attorney representing a juror required to divulge the contents of his Facebook account says he will file an appeal of the court order tomorrow.
Ken Rosenfeld, a Sacramento criminal defense attorney, told CNET that forcing jurors to turn over private correspondence in the form of Facebook posts “would be catastrophic in terms of free speech, justice, and the jury system itself.”
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Networking rivals HP and Cisco have abandoned their common ground in data center switching, with HP accusing Cisco of diverting an IEEE standard and Cisco insisting that customers drove the change.
At issue are two as-yet unratified standards in the IEEE for data center switching that were being defined in concert but are now diverging. IEEE 802.1Qbg and 802.1Qbh were intended to work closely together to enable physical switches to offload much of the network-intensive processing from virtual switches on blade servers and NICs. A year ago, Cisco and HP were driving the effort in a rare show of unity.
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In all the interviews and conversations, it hadn’t come up. To the sisters, it was just a job they’d held a long time ago, when they were teens with a talent for numbers.
To filmmaker LeAnn Erickson, it was history rediscovered.
It was 2003 and Erickson was interviewing sisters Shirley Blumberg Melvin and Doris Blumberg Polsky for her documentary, “Neighbor Ladies,” about a woman-owned real estate agency that helped to peacefully integrate a Philadelphia neighborhood. The twins, long-retired by then, reluctantly mentioned a different sort of job they’d held during World War II: Female “computers.”
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It’s not exactly upheaval, but there are rumblings at The Huffington Post. Now that HuffPo bloggers know how much the liberal’s Drudge Report is worth—$315 M.—and how much cash their boss Arianna Huffington made off its sale to AOL—~$100 M.
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ReactOS is an effort to provide a Windows NT-like architecture that is compatible with existing drivers and applications. An easy way to look at it would be to say that it is a clone of the Windows OS (which is closed-source so it’s not possible to really clone it), when in reality, it’s an alternative to the Windows OS, with the difference that it’s a collaborative open-source project and it’s in its infancy. While the team behind ReactOS has been heavily developing this young operating system for over a decade, it is still in the alpha stage. However, there is a number of reasons that make ReactOS worth a look.
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numero cinco – I love MS Windows because it has more users than Charlie Sheen has drunken girlfriends; which serves to paint a LARGE target on it rather than on my actual operating system (Linux). Hackers and spammers are wise. They use Linux on their own systems and target the operating system that gives them the biggest bang for the byte. Thanks to Microsoft for being my shield.
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Science
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You’re not going to like this. I didn’t. Nobody I’ve shown it to has. But the designers who thought it up, James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau, are provocateurs, so they don’t mind if you hate what they’ve done.
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The final frontier smells a lot like a Nascar race—a bouquet of hot metal, diesel fumes and barbecue. The source? Dying stars, mostly.
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Hardware
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CHIPMAKER Texas Instruments (TI) has unveiled the OMAP 5 system that includes dual core ARM Cortex-A15 processors running at 2GHz.
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Health/Nutrition
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Cellphone Radiation – In our Middle Hour; a documentary called A Precautionary Tale.
We’ve all seen them, those ubiquitous cell phone towers atop, office buildings schools, apartments.
We know they emit a certain kind of radiation but are they dangerous?
In an apartment in the west end of Toronto, tenants living with the towers began complaining about health problems.
Were the towers to blame?
Producer John Chipman in a special one-hour report looks at both sides of a heated and controversial subject.
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Security
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Internet vigilante group Anonymous turned its sights on security firm HBGary on Sunday evening in an attempt to “teach [HBGary] a lesson you’ll never forget.” The firm had been working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to unmask members of Anonymous following the group’s pro-WikiLeaks attacks on financial services companies, and was prepared to release its findings next week.
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Defence/Police/Aggression
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Apparently possible foreign medical treatment may be involved in the end-game in Egypt, “What to do with Mubarak?”. The protestors want him out ASAP and medical treatment may be a good cover for exile. It is much less likely that a dictator can tweak the strings of power remotely. The end-game may morph into “What to do with the vice-president?”
Apparently, much of the leadership of the current regime are filthy-rich and have domiciles around the world. They may all leave one night and Egypt could wake up to an Animal Farm situation. In spite of the protestors’ apparent lack of a leader/point-man, the regime could implode if the current leadership leaves. Most opinions are that the military can ensure stability while Egypt reorganizes itself.
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#
# 20 lawyers have drawn up charges claiming corruption/conversion of money by Mubarak’s buddies ($billions),
# Mubarak has ordered a committee formed to revise the constitution he wrote,
# the Google guy who started a page on Facebook that may have been the catalyst for a lot of the protests was freed,
# the government has promised not to prosecute the millions of protestors, and
# the numbers and kinds of protestors keeps growing.
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The US Congress is moving to renew the USA PATRIOT Act, a controversial anti-terrorism law. The major provisions of the bill will expire soon, forcing the Congress to entertain the measure once again.
The US Senate is in a hurry extend the extension of the Act, so much so many want to dismiss any discuss and debate on the topic. Similarly, the US House is set to vote at any time to extend the law’s provisions until December 8, 2011.
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The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department today launched an internal investigation after Esther Lim, a jail monitor for the ACLU of Southern California, submitted a sworn statement in federal court yesterday recounting the details of a brutal beating she witnessed of an inmate in the Twin Towers Correctional Facility by a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy. Twin Towers is one of the several facilities that make up the Los Angeles County jail system.
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During last Tuesday’s ‘Million Man March’ and Friday’s ‘Day of Departure’ rallies, the swirling clamour of car horns, famously characteristic of Liberation Square’s soundscape, fell silent, as human cries for freedom, change and justice floated through the air.
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Developments in Egypt over the last two weeks brought Cuba to my mind. Why does a similar rebellion against five decades of repression there still appear to be a far-off dream? Part of the answer is in the relationship between the Castro brothers—Fidel and Raúl—and the generals. The rest is explained by the regime’s significantly more repressive model. In the art of dictatorship, Hosni Mubarak is a piker.
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This isn’t to reject or alienate those who, from abroad, across the internet and social networks are calling for a people’s uprising or a general strike in Cuba. It’s a question of reality.
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Cablegate
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The US fears that Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude oil exporter, may not have enough reserves to prevent oil prices escalating, confidential cables from its embassy in Riyadh show.
The cables, released by WikiLeaks, urge Washington to take seriously a warning from a senior Saudi government oil executive that the kingdom’s crude oil reserves may have been overstated by as much as 300bn barrels – nearly 40%.
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On Wednesday the 9th of February 2011 from 6.30pm GMT people from all around the world will commence dining with their friends in a unified effort to raise awareness of the importance of freedom of speech.
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Finance
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The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that “dangerous” imbalances have emerged that threaten to derail global recovery and stoke tensions that may ultimately set off civil wars in deeply unequal countries.
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Poland — which has been accused by Lukashenko of trying to topple him — announced it was doubling its aid to groups including the independent media, earmarking some 10 million euros.
The funds cover the operating costs of the Warsaw-based Belast TV, the only Belarussian-language station broadcasting in Belarus which is not controlled by the authorities there.
US officials said Washington was increasing aid by a third to 15 million dollars, Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt announced seven million euros for independent Belarussian media, and Germany pledged 6.6 million euros.
The Warsaw meeting came just days after the EU and United States slapped a new raft of sanctions — including a travel ban and asset freeze — on Lukashenko and 157 associates.
Belarus has been defiant, with its foreign ministry on Tuesday calling the moves against its leaders “unjustified” and threatening to take reciprocal steps.
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The U.S. media seems to have found a new language for the economy. There’s been talk of “solidarity” and even “class war,” and a focus on corruption and inequality like we haven’t seen in who knows how long.
The only problem? They’re talking about Egypt.
“It’s quite clear that entire domains in the economy were dominated by a few people,” a British professor of Middle Eastern Studies told the New York Times Monday. The reporter notes “Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt has long functioned as a state where wealth bought political power and political power bought great wealth.”
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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More than a hundred Romanian parliamentarians responded to an SMS invitation from a fake businessman from the United Arab Emirates who proposed them “a deal”. Only later did they realise they had been fooled by a journalist.
Daily newspaper ‘Romania Libera’, which set up the spoof, has published a full list of the greedy parliamentarians.
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Privacy
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Internet/Net Neutrality/UBB
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When Kohlberg Kravis and Roberts, a U.S. private equity firm, thought about buying Bell Canada a few years ago, someone – I can’t remember who – criticized the deal by saying he didn’t want decisions about Canadian telecom made in Manhattan board rooms. That’s about as dumb an argument as I’ve ever heard because when it comes to telecom companies, we’re talking about the pipes – whether they’re wires or wireless – that stuff travels through. It’s like complaining about how the decisions regarding the computers we use or the televisions we watch are being made in California and Tokyo board rooms. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter who owns the pipes the stuff goes through. All that’s important is that we get the stuff, preferably faster and cheaper.
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The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) today launched, of its own initiative, a proceeding to review its decisions on billing practices that would have applied to the residential customers of Small Internet service providers (Small ISPs).
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The current controversy over usage based billing, the CRTC, and Internet data caps has generated a wide range of commentary and articles over the past few days.
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The controversy around usage-based billing (UBB) continues to swirl, and at the centre are third-party wholesale Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who are driving the debate — and very often the myths as well.
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The NetIndex report ranks Canada 36th in the world for residential speed. Moreover, the shift away from the OECD to the G20 has the effect of excluding many developed countries with faster and cheaper broadband than Canada (while bringing in large, developing world economies that unsurprisingly rank below Canada on these issues). While there is probably a report somewhere that validates the claim, the consensus is that Canada is not a leader.
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Bell Canada has admitted to problems tracking Internet use for some customers.
This is embarrassing, given the company’s insistence on usage-based billing for its own clients and for other clients of other Internet service providers that rent its network.
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DRM
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Sony is threatening to sue anybody posting or “distributing” the first full-fledged jailbreak code for the 4-year-old PlayStation 3 gaming console.
What’s more, the company is demanding that a federal judge order Google to surrender the IP addresses and other identifying information (.pdf) of those who have viewed or commented about the jailbreak video on a private YouTube page. The game maker is also demanding that Twitter provide the identities of a host of hackers who first unveiled a limited version of the hack in December.
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Sony is threatening to sue anybody posting or “distributing” the first full-fledged jailbreak code for the 4-year-old PlayStation 3 gaming console.
What’s more, the company is demanding that a federal judge order Google to surrender the IP addresses and other identifying information (PDF) of those who have viewed or commented about the jailbreak video on a private YouTube page. The game maker is also demanding that Twitter provide the identities of a host of hackers who first unveiled a limited version of the hack in December.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Generics cost roughly 25 to 50 per cent of the equivalent brand-name drug.
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Sage Freehaven points us to an amusing, but telling, customer service chat between a guy in the UK who wanted to buy the latest version of RosettaStone’s Vietnamese language program, and a RosettaStone customer service rep. The guy’s main concern is that it appears an older version is available in the UK, but he wants the newer version, which the company refuses to ship to the UK, even though it’s been out elsewhere for a long time. He then asks if the company will give a free upgrade when it finally launches the newer version in the UK, and the customer service rep has no idea.
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Copyrights
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The Obama administration has drafted new proposals to curb Internet piracy and other forms of intellectual property infringement that it says it will send to the U.S. Congress “in the very near future.”
It’s also applauding a controversial copyright treaty known as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, saying it will “aid right-holders and the U.S. government to combat infringement” once it enters into effect.
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As you may have noticed, the topic of “IP” – “intellectual property” – seems increasingly to the fore these days. Actually, that’s not really a new trend: as this helpful ngram shows, there has been a really rapid uptake of the term since the 1980s. But promoting the supposed virtues and use of “IP” ever-more widely has turned into something of a bandwagon for politicians who want to be seen to be doing something, and for those who want to assert their intellectual monopolies more strongly.
On the patent front, there is a simplistic assumption that more of them being filed and granted means more innovation, so by increasing the number of patents, innovation, too, will magically be boosted and everyone will be better-off (the EU is the latest to espouse this Innovation for Idiots approach.)
But it’s not just patents where maximalists are pushing the “more is better” line. The term of copyright, too, has been extended again and again over the last few decades, even though there is no evidence that this massive withholding of content from the immediate public domain does anything to inspire greater production of new material (which is what copyright is supposed to encourage.)
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Music royalty outfits are experts at not only gathering funds from anyone who dares to play music in public, but also at generating adverse publicity. Known for pressurizing anyone from charities to the police, their activities are often viewed with disbelief. Now a Belgian TV show has had a closer look at one of them, and ended up paying royalties for a whole host of artists that don’t exist, bathroom equipment and chinese food.
If you play music in public, sometimes even if you play it in relative privacy, music royalty societies want you to pay them money. It’s big business. The UK’s Performing Right Society (PRS) collects around £650 million every year and isn’t scared to flex its muscles when people aren’t paying. Got a business where staff listen to radio and a passing member of the public hears it? You owe them money. PRS have even taken the police to court for playing music in police stations.
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Today, despite the apparent closure of both anti-piracy law firm ACS:Law and its copyright troll partner MediaCAT, the Patents Country Court began yet another hearing to announce how more than two dozen previously filed cases should be handled. Judge Birss QC slammed the scheme operated by the pair and denied them the opportunity to drop the cases.
In a statement read out in the Patents County Court earlier this month, ACS:Law owner Andrew Crossley announced that he had quit the file-sharing claims business. Last week TorrentFreak discovered that he had completely closed down his business, along with his client MediaCAT who had also ceased trading. Nevertheless, the companies still have unfinished business – they can’t run away that easily.
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It feels like we’ve been hearing the same song and dance regarding Spotify’s US launch for months now. It’s always just over the horizon. An email sent to All Things D is at least tacit confirmation that a launch is imminent. The message was sent to the few Us users of Spotify test accounts to let them know they’re going to have to start paying up. The email also said that a US launch was coming “over the coming months”. Well, at least they didn’t say years.
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ACTA
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ACTA is an international agreement hammered out by a handful of countries (led by the US, including Canada) that requires signatories to create civil and criminal law to give force and effect to ACTA.
ACTA is intended as a global standard to ‘protect’ against intellectual property and counterfeit products, containing very specific discussion about digital information.
James Randi’s Challenge to Homeopathy Manufacturers and Retail Pharmacies
Credit: TinyOgg
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