It was chunky, a hideous tan color, and, by today’s standards, ridiculously feeble.
It was limited to 64 kilobytes of memory — about the equivalent of one long e-mail.
And yet 25 years ago, almost everyone seemed to have one.
It was the Commodore 64, an 8-bit, mass-produced machine that brought personal computing into the home for millions of users in the early- and mid-1980s. People used their C64s, as they were known, for everything from basic office functions to primitive games like “Impossible Mission.”
Linux has indeed some important advantages compared to Windows operating systems. Here are two main advantages: both distribution and programs are free of charge and the security level is much better than that provided by Windows. Despite these facts, Linux products do not have a very large market share, but it is continually growing. Actually many laptop and desktop systems already have the preinstalled version on Linux.
Google has announced that Samsung and Acer will be making the first Chromebooks; instant-on, always-connected laptops that run the company’s open sourced and Linux-based Chrome OS. As well as being available for purchase, Google is offering companies a subscription plan at $28 a month per user, which includes a Chromebook and online services, and a $20 a month subscription offering for educational users. UK pricing for subscriptions will be announced closer to the 15 June launch. The machines are enhanced production versions of the CR-48 notebook which Google gave away to interested parties late last year.
On June 15, Samsung and Acer will release the first consumer-oriented Chrome OS laptops, or Chromebooks as Google likes to call them. Both hardware- and software-wise, these netbooks are nothing special: You can download Chrome OS’s open source brother, Chromium OS, for free — and at around $400 for a Chromebook, you would certainly expect some better hardware than what Samsung and Acer are offering.
Happy Birthday, Tux! Happy Birthday, Linux! Many of you might not know this but Linux is the underlying basis for many of today’s mobile platforms, Android being one of them. Also, Linux is considered to be as the most “potent” open-source system for PCs, acclaimed by developers and enthusiasts alike.
Everything started in 1983, as the GNU Project, engineered by Richard Stallman.
Interop is one of the largest non-vendor conferences still around.
All those conference goers connect over the Xirrus Wi-Fi array network that is deployed at the show.
Have you ever wondered what’s inside of a Xirrus Wi-Fi array?
Sure there are some Atheros chips, but there is also a grain of open source goodness. That’s right Interop’s Xirrus Wi-Fi deployment is based on a Linux 2.6.x kernel.
X Input 2.1 was originally talked about for X.Org Server 1.10 with its initial multi-touch implementation having been published back in late 2010.
After this version of the X Input extension missed the 1.10 cycle, it was getting back on track for a xorg-server 1.11 merge. The multi-touch work has already went through several revisions by Daniel Stone and Canonical.
This work was looking like it would finally land for X.Org Server 1.11 when it’s released in August, but it doesn’t look like it will make the merge window closing in a few weeks. One of the problems causing a delay in the merge deals with touchpads and where touch/mouse events are delivered to different windows.
After growing tired of slow response times I decided it was time to just run a personal domain name caching service. Bind seemed a bit overkill and it can be quite complicated. Other alternatives are much easier – such as DNSMasq. DNSMasq is available in just about every distro’s repository and is really easy to set up and use.
This is by no means the “launch of IPv6″ (IPv6 has been available for over a decade since the early days of the 6bone). Instead, this is the opportunity for some large-scale service and content providers to test their IPv6 readiness with a sizable audience over a 24 hours period. Although not the first of its kind, since this event is sponsored by the ISOC and supported by several core content and network providers (some of the participants are big names such as Google, Yahoo, Akamai and Facebook) it has a good chance of becoming the largest IPv6 awareness raising event in history. It is no coincidence that IANA has just allocated the last few available IPv4 blocks to the regional registries, marking the depletion of the IPv4 space (at least when it comes to global allocations, but regional allocation exhaustion will follow soon).
When you can’t access the Internet you can’t install software (unless you have your own local repository), so you should have these commands available on your computers:
If you have used a Unix operating system on a desktop computer for any extended period of time then odds are you have heard of Wine technology. In case you haven’t, Wine is an acronym that stands for “Wine Is Not an Emulator”. In actuality Wine is a “windows compatibility layer”. To put it in laymen’s terms it allows you to natively run Windows binaries in a Unix environment.
A couple of days ago Michael Meeks published a blog called ‘LibreOffice is the future of Free Software Office suites’. Michael is one of the lead developers of LibreOffice and also one of the founders of the Document Foundation, the organization behind LibreOffice. In that blog he makes a number of points that leads to his conclusion in the title:
* LibreOffice is vendor neutral
* LibreOffice is robust to participants leaving
* Linux distributions are safer with LibreOffice
* LibreOffice has a different, and better QA model
* Division is (sadly) sometimes necessary
* The Document Foundation champions ODF
* We are transparent about our contributors
Each of those points is a section in the text. If you haven’t read the blog already, you should probably do that now before continuing your reading here. It’s quite long but it’s a good read.
However…
What is obvious when reading that text is that Michael only compares LibreOffice to one other free office suite: OpenOffice.org. He probably has a good platform to stand on when saying that compared to OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice is more future secure.
Well the new gnome 3 has certainly polarised the community. I must say I generally really like it, but also I’m not yet running it on my default machine. Historically I’ve upgraded my primary laptop to the current development release of Fedora around the beta release. This time I’ve not. Why? Well there’s one major feature that has “Just Worked” for me for as long as I remember and I use it every day I’m in the office that isn’t yet working well in gnome 3 and it would cost me way too much time on an average work day.
[...]
There’s lots of other nice things about gnome 3 and I look forward to being able to run it properly to get access to those things.
Lets accept it, some users don’t like changes. There are always a subset of users in every DE who don’t like or need a change whatever merits the changes could bring to them. When gnome 3.0 was released and its new shell became the point of attraction, many users were disappointed. They did want their old Gnome 2.32 panels and nothing else.
Just last week, IBM and Red Hat dove head first into Enterprise virtualization, after their March 2010 initial team-up to create a development and test cloud built on IBM hardware and Red Hat’s KVM hypervisor software. So, according to the former press release, this Big Blue to Red Hat connection exists simply to “extend this partnership to include cloud computing broadening our reach and answering the strong customer demand for cloud computing services.”
The desktop version of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS has now officially reached its end of life as previously reported. From 12 May 2011 (yesterday), no new updates, including security updates and critical fixes, will be available. The server edition of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS will continue to be supported until May 2013. Code named “Hardy Heron”, version 8.04 of the Debian-derived Linux distribution was released on 24 April 2008. Hardy Heron users are advised to upgrade to a later release to continue receiving updates.
Canonical has announced that it is joining the GENIVI Alliance, the non-profit industry alliance which is creating an open source “In-Vehicle Infotainment” reference platform. Canonical is also creating a GENIVI-compliant Ubuntu IVI Remix, based on the Ubuntu Core subset of the Linux distribution, which supports Intel and ARM processors.
Talking to The H, Chris Kenyon, VP of OEM services at Canonical, said that automotive suppliers had been asking for something from Canonical in the IVI space for as much as eighteen months. The suppliers already used Ubuntu in their development systems and wanted to be able to use the same technology in the products they delivered. “This is more a pull by them than a push by us” said Kenyon though Ubuntu now had all the right elements for the automotive market. Companies wanted to get their product to market faster and were looking for a platform with a “proven cadence” which was “fundamentally cross architecture”. Ubuntu’s ARM support and Canonical’s work with Linaro along with its work with Qt, a core component in the in draft GENIVI specifications, puts Ubuntu IVI Remix in a strong position to be the “off the shelf” solution for GENIVI members.
There had been some really nice discussions on the last day of Ubuntu Developer Summit and some new changes are being introduced in Ubuntu 11.10.
But Google’s Blogger service had an outage for about 30 hours that not only deleted few past articles but also blocked me from posting any new content. Finally couple of hours back, the service has been restored.
Ubuntu 11.10 will use GNOME 3. The GNOME 3 Natty PPA will be maintained with bug fixes for GNOME 3.0 and there will probably be an GNOME 3.1 PPA for Oneiric until 3.1 is ready to be included by default.
Ubuntu is a great operating system and know tons of people who use it every day as their primary operating system, unity, however, is an entirely different matter. I was one of those people who was outraged when it was announced that 11.04 was going to have unity and by default, but what really did it in for me was when I found out unity cannot be removed, it just simply cannot be removed. It’s like cancer. Thinking back I know one other piece of software in a popular operating system that cannot be removed and starts with the letter I and ends with the letter R, and uses the abbreviation IE.
Even though in the beginning of the default email client session at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Budapest, it looked like it’s certain that Evolution will stay as default in Ubuntu 11.10, towards the end of the session things changed and it was decided to stay with Evolution for now BUT switch to Thunderbird as the default email client in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot as long as it integrates with the desktop.
A while ago, I was contacted by Darth Wound with regards to answering some questions for an interview about CrunchBang. Now, being asked to do interviews about CrunchBang is not unusual, I must receive several a month at the moment, but I know Darth Wound through the excellent work he is doing with the French CrunchBang forums, so I was more than happy to try and answer his questions.
A: I use Linux & FOSS in the classroom. I have Bodhi installed on my netbook, and I use it with the SMART Technologies interactive whiteboard every day. My favorite applications for teaching mathematics, which I use a fair amount are GeoGebra and KAlgebra.
It’s official: Lubuntu is an official Ubuntu derivative. In a UDS session in Budapest, Colin Watson and Mark Shuttleworth clarified the details with project member Julien Lavergne. There are still no ISO and packages on the official Ubuntu site, but Lavergne will announce on the Ubuntu project development mailing list when the application is in the official repositories and there is an installable image. Lubuntu 11.10 will be the first officially supported version of the derivate.
This entry was posted on Thursday, May 12th, 2011 at 11:32 AM and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
There is an elephant at the door of the Android ecosystem. Nobody quite wants to look at it or acknowledge the whispers, but Amazon may be set to become the leader in Android devices later this year.
Officially, Amazon has said nothing about creating its own Android devices. There has been talk of a tablet in the works for a while now but its specs and ship date is shrouded in mystery. But Amazon may have bigger ambitions than just a tablet. Rumors have come out today that not only is the online retail company looking at a slate, but an entire family of Android devices. If this happens, will the waves topple the balance of power of players in the Android ecosystem?
CRM is an application with a long history of open source development, with many projects written the PHP language. However, a Swiss developer has released one of the first open source CRM systems developed with the Django Python framework.
The brainchild of Aaron Riedener, Koalixcrm is aimed at taking the complexity out of CRM, particularly for small businesses and individuals.
O’Reilly Media announced a new Android Open Conference Oct. 9-11, in San Francisco, designed for anyone who creates, sells, or markets Android-related products. In other open source conference news, the Linux Foundation last week announced keynote speakers, including Linus Torvalds, for LinuxCon Japan, June 1-3, and Linux Expo of Southern California announced events for Software Freedom Day 2011 on Sept. 17.
Recently Context Information Security Limited gathered a lot of attention for a blog post on the state of WebGL security. For Mozilla, WebGL was first released in Firefox 4, and there are implementations in Chrome, Safari and Opera as well. The blog post outlines an abstract concern that WebGL is inherently insecure because it allows fairly direct access to the hardware, along with two specific attacks, a Denial of Service and a Cross-Domain Image Theft.
Security is an oft-debated topic in the ongoing browser wars, but there’s no denying that malware is a common problem for all of the leading contenders.
More to come on this subject, as our goal is to increase security and the time in which it would take in order to brute or dictionary the hash. Our goal is and always to provide better protection around authentication systems.
Firefox 4′s share shot up 11% the first day after Mozilla started offering users the upgrade last week, and climbed 30% in four days.
The boost moved a long-time Mozilla employee to compare the gains of Firefox and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) since the two browsers debuted last March.
BITES from mosquitoes carrying unidentified viruses might explain childhood leukaemia clusters around the town of Fallon in Nevada. And last week, a separate UK report found no link between nuclear power plants and childhood leukaemia.
The Nevada cluster is the largest in the US. Previous research failed to find a link between the cases and carcinogenic chemicals. The new study of the 14 Fallon cases that arose between 1997 and 2003 – a rate 12 times higher than normally expected in such a period – concludes that military personnel may have brought a virus to the area, which was then spread by mosquitoes. The cluster “fizzled out” once all vulnerable children had been infected.
GroundWork Inc., (www.groundworkopensource.com) the leading open platform for network, application and cloud monitoring, announced today that it has released GroundWork Cloud Connector for GroundWork Monitor Enterprise 6.4. An automatic, monitoring provisioning system, GroundWork Cloud Connector gives users the ability to monitor Amazon EC2 and Eucalyptus cloud instances right along side traditional data center infrastructures.
This week is the yearly Google I/O at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. It’s a meet and greet for lots of people and companies, a big dot-com over-the-top party, and most of all it’s geared towards “web, mobile, and enterprise developers building applications in the cloud with Google and open web technologies… Products and technologies to be featured at I/O include App Engine, Android, Google Web Toolkit, Google Chrome, HTML5, AJAX and Data APIs, Google TV, and more.” Maybe not so much Google TV or Google Wave this year but for open hardware and mobile folks, this was one of the most important weeks in history.
Long time readers will know that I have been reporting on the Semantic Web for many years – since June of 2005, in fact, when I dedicated an issue of my eJournal to The Future of the Web. The long interview I included with Tim Berners-Lee remains one of the most-read articles on this site of all time. Ever since then, I’ve periodically given an “attaboy” to the Semantic Web. And guess what? It’s that time again.
Why? Because the more the Web is capable of doing, the more we can get out of it. And given how much we now rely on the Internet and the Web, we can’t afford to allow either to be less than they are capable of being.
The co-founder of a group advocating for an Army private accused of leaking classified material to the antisecrecy Web site WikiLeaks is suing the U.S. government for unlawfully seizing his computer and copying its contents to aid a criminal investigation of the site.
Computer scientist David House’s laptop was taken in November at an international airport by two Department of Homeland Security agents without a hint that it contained evidence of wrongdoing, but rather because House was a vocal supporter of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the accused leaker, the American Civil Liberties Union alleged in a complaint to be filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Boston.
It was 3:48 p.m. on Friday April 29 and traders who had purchased Apple (AAPL) April 29 $350 “calls” — options that gave them the right to buy Apple shares in blocks of 100 for $350 per share — were sitting pretty. The stock was trading around $353.50 and those calls were worth more $350 apiece (the difference between the price of the stock and the so-called “strike price” of the option times 100).
Then, in an extraordinary burst of trading — exacerbated by the rebalancing of the NASDAQ-100 scheduled for the following Monday — more than 15 million shares changed hands and the stock dropped below the $350 strike price just before the closing bell. Result: The value of those calls disappeared like a puff of smoke.
A federal judge in Utah on Monday tossed Koch Industries’s lawsuit against the pranksters who set up a fake website and sent out a bogus press release saying the company had found religion on climate change.
In a case being watched for First Amendment implications, Judge Dale Kimball of the U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City also said Koch can’t disclose the identities of the “Youth for Climate Truth” members or use any other information obtained via subpoena from two Utah-based domain hosting companies.
I thought you’d enjoy to see the order, as text, that the Hon. Dale Kimball just issued in Koch Industries v. John Does 1-25, the case I told you about in April. Yes, it’s the same judge who handled both SCO v. IBM and SCO v. Novell through the first appeal. I admire him greatly, and when you read this order, so firmly upholding the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the right to anonymity, I think you are likely to join me.
FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker has been receiving a ton of criticism for taking a high level lobbying job at Comcast just months after approving its huge merger with NBC Universal. The response has been almost universally to condemn Baker in a move that smacks of the corruption of regulatory capture and the revolving door between corporations and the government that regulates them. I had been wondering if all of this publicity would lead to Baker backing down and no longer taking the job (only to take a similar job, more quietly, down the road). But, instead, it looks like she’s digging in her heels and insisting that nothing (nothing!) improper is going on here.
During the last few hours reports have been trickling in from Comcast subscribers who are unable to access The Pirate Bay website. Although there is no sign that Comcast is actively blocking user access to the largest BitTorrent site on the Internet, something is clearly not in order. The Pirate Bay team have confirmed that they are not the ones who are blocking, and they’re investigating the issue.
Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) has introduced a new “Do Not Track” bill to Congress that aims to hold companies accountable for collecting information on consumers after they’ve expressed a desire to opt out. Called the Do-Not-Track Online Act of 2011 (PDF), the bill would create a “universal legal obligation” for companies to honor users’ opt-out requests on the Internet and mobile devices, and would give the Federal Trade Commission the power to take action against companies that don’t comply.
“Recent reports of privacy invasions have made it imperative that we do more to put consumers in the driver’s seat when it comes to their personal information,” Rockefeller said in a statement. “I believe consumers have a right to decide whether their information can be collected and used online. This bill offers a simple, straightforward way for people to stop companies from tracking their movements online.”
Security researcher Aldo Cortesi last week published his discovery of a flaw in the unique device identifier (UDID) stored on each iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
The Intellectual Property Constituency has asked that, as a condition of Verisign’s ongoing management of the .NET top-level domain, that they should be required to act as private trademark cops.
Now, continuing the reforms it introduced last year, the BSA calls these numbers theft and piracy, but studiously avoids describing them as ‘losses’ to industry. That’s because very few people who pirate software would actually buy it at high legal prices, especially in developing countries where price-to-income ratios become astronomical. Instead, the BSA describes the number as the ‘commercial value of pirated software,’ which is technically correct and may even be roughly accurate. But they are no longer making any claims about actual industry losses.
University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist, however, said the numbers make a mockery of industry and American government suggestions that this country is some kind of haven for piracy.
Microsoft is jumping into the Apple AppStore battle overseas. On Thursday, Microsoft joined HTC, Nokia and Sony Ericsson in filing filed formal applications for declaration of invalidity in the Community Trade Mark office, the office that oversees trademarks in the Euro Zone.
Microsoft has already challenged the Apple App trademark in the U.S., the asking the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to refuse the iPhone maker’s registration request on the basis that it’s a generic name, not something to which Apple can lay exclusive claim.
The European Commission threatens to handbag* all speakers who go over 3-minutes at a public hearing on the IPR Enforcement directive (also known as IPRED). A key focus of the hearing will be Internet copyright enforcement and peer-to-peer file-sharing. What will the Commission’s new, ex-IFPI, head of copyright have to say?
As we confront numerous threats to innovation — ACTA, the PROTECT IP Act, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, the Obama Administration White Paper on IP enforcement — these are just some of the challenges that we face. Figuring out ways to refocus the debate on key issues in innovation, rather than in protectionist efforts, is going to be key.
Summary: Why the “Defensive Patent License” is not part of the solution to the problem Free software is having
“Fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria,” Richard Stallman famously alleged. This is why all those patents boosters who claim to be gathering “defensive” patents are totally missing the point or simply lying to everyone. Consider Novell for example. One year it claims to be “defending” Linux with OIN and the following year it sells those patents to Microsoft. Yes, that’s “defensive” for you. Take Sun as another example. Those so-called “defensive” patents it had on Java are now being used to sue Google, which happens to share a seat with Oracle inside the OIN. What a failure. And then there are the Microsoft scams, which the company uses to pretend that it’s safe to step in Microsoft patents. Nathan Willis helps promote Mono software from a Novell employee despite the fact that Microsoft's MCP leaves legal holes. Legal analyses of that show it to be useless.
There is yet another one of those “defensive” pools and it calls itself (or its proposition) the Defensive Patent License (DPL), which was mentioned here before [1, 2, 3]. It has just given the following talk, as expected.
I have listened to the entire talk and it still falls short of actually eliminating software patents. The speakers are lovable people, but they unhelpfully speak about “Intellectual Property” and parrot some pro-patents talking points. They do not address the issue, or hardly ever do. It’s more like a defensive pool, of which there are already several. They try to find legal mechanisms to reduce risk without actually questioning the status quo, instead just taking for granted software patents. They also do not propose much of a solution to patent trolls. As we noted last night, Yahoo! managed to beat one such troll (who targeted Linux), but this is not a sustainable strategy. Linux is already being taxed by some software patents and Red Hat, for example, hides this fact. So did Novell. Software patents need to be eliminated urgently, without exceptions. The FFII, the FSFE and the FSF got it right all along. █
In this episode: David Braben creates a low-cost Linux machine. Matt Zimmerman leaves Canonical while Mark Shuttleworth wants 200 million Ubuntu users within 4 years. Discover our discoveries, hear the latest conversion stories from TuxRadar and join us on IRC.
Skype has always been proprietary so those that prefer to use only Open Source have relied upon free alternatives. Now with Microsoft’s purchase of Skype, Linux users are already predicting the end for them and are looking for alternatives as well. It turns out that the Free Software Foundation has had “Free software replacement for Skype” on their High-Priority List for a while.
The FSF suggests that folks use one of the free programs available for Linux and help development by sending in bug reports. They cite China’s spying on Skype conversations as a good reason. Does anyone doubt Microsoft is capable of similar? So, even if Microsoft doesn’t give Linux (and Mac) users the kibosh, I wouldn’t trust them and proprietary software with my phone calls.
The compelling desire for software that was free of expensive licensing, over the past half century,lead to the development of open source software. However, open source in some of its popular forms such as Linux, Fedora, Ubuntu and the rest of the distros though based on the freely available platform , often comes with certain parts of code or source that are under license. Free Software Foundation the alma mater of all open source software, along with like-minded community volunteers chose to start the Linux-Libre Project, which is dedicated to editing the Linux Kernel to maintain it free of licensed open source software.
At first it was reported that Garshap is being developed by Fanafzar Game Studios, but now the developers are DeadMage.
Our longtime LGN news contributer Hamish Wilson made some research and put some light on the matter…
Given the various blog posts, and (somewhat unnecessary) hysteria over the news of Skype I felt like I should give an update on what’s going on in KDE Telepathy.
Pace over the past 5 months has been ace, we’ve got a lot done, and as mentioned by a few people already – we’re releasing “soon”! We don’t have a fixed date, but instead we will release when a set list of outstanding bugs are fixed. Probably about 4 weeks time. (unless I die of stress organising it all in the meantime)
[...]
We have a GSOC student that I’m mentoring over the summer to really nail bringing instant messaging into the core of the Plasma Workspace.
Martin Odersky – the man who created Scala, the Java-based programming language that now drives such big name web services as Twitter, Foursquare, and LinkedIn – has launched a company that provides service and support around an extensive open source application stack for the language.
Both the company and the stack are known as Typesafe. Officially unveiled on Thursday, the Typesafe stack includes the most recent releases of the Scala programming language, the open source Akka middleware, and various open source tools designed to facilitate the development of Scala applications. “We want to provide stable versions of the stack, stable supported versions where you can get backports of fixes and improvements”, Odersky tells The Register. “It’s very much the open source support model you see with Red Hat”.
May was here again, and it was time for our annual Greek Meetup. Fosscomm is the (now-standard) annual meetup of Greek foss communities, and this year it was Patras time to host it. My good friend Vasilis and the rest of his gang have done extraordinary good organizational job (arranging our accommodation, creating custom web apps for the conference, providing extensive info and material etc), and in overall I can say safely that it was the best Fosscomm so far.
I finally cleared enough time to upgrade my computer from Debian 5 “Lenny”, to the new Debian 6 “Squeeze”. Debian Linux 6 was actually released in February, but I wanted to have a few days of no commitments, just in case my computer would be down for an extended period. And a good thing, too.
The short version: I successfully upgraded my desktop from Debian 5 to 6. It was not trivial….though it was easier than my last upgrade, from Debian 4 to 5, two years ago.
The Debian Project is pleased to announce that its domains debian.org and debian.net are now secured by the DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC). The corresponding DNS records have recently been added in the .net and .org zones.
“This enables users with security aware DNS resolvers to securely retrieve information from the domain name system such as IP addresses, or for those who have shell accounts on debian.org machines, SSH host key fingerprints. Any tampering with DNS replies would be detected by a user’s resolver,” says Peter Palfrader, member of Debian’s System Administrator Team. “DNSSEC is an important step in securing the Internet’s name resolution infrastructure.”
OK, it’s not too surprising that Canonical, Ubuntu Linux’s parent company, has switched to OpenStack for its Ubuntu cloud foundation technology. After all, Canonical started flirting with OpenStack back in February. What is surprising is that Neil Levine, who as Canonical’s VP of corporate services, which included the cloud, has jumped ship to start a new company, Soba Labs.
Linux has been around for a long time, but people were waiting for it to be a mature solution. Large product companies would not consider open source, as they doubted its stability—but now, the research and development phase is over. Over the years, FOSS has proved its stability in the industry, and many organisations are switching to using open source solutions rather than conventional proprietary solutions, because of the high costs associated with the latter. FOSS is very mature now, and it is possible to run Linux on a variety of platforms, making it a favourable commercial solution. This has led to a demand for FOSS professionals, especially in organisations that deal with technology and products. With the Android explosion, Linux on hand-held or embedded devices is an upcoming area, and will see much more growth in the coming years, especially because over 50 per cent of smart-phones run on Android today. The main sectors driving this demand are industries like technology, semi-conductors, telecom companies and phone manufacturers.
OAKLAND, CA — The bedrock of capitalism based around innovation has for years been the idea that when someone invents a unique and in-demand product or service, it should be patented and protected at all costs.
But a growing number of companies are turning the concept of intellectual capital on its head in the name of sustainability. Count IBM, Nike and the Outdoor Industry Association among the growing list of business interests turning to open source models to lower costs and scale best practices and technologies.
The German government has given details of its reasons for migrating the German Foreign office from Linux and free software back to Windows and Microsoft software. The SPD (Social Democrats, the main German opposition party) submitted an initial question on “the use of open source software in the Foreign Office and other Government departments”, but, according to the Green parliamentary group, the German government’s response left various questions unanswered.
Scientists are alarmed by the discovery of unusual numbers of fish in the Gulf of Mexico and inland waterways with skin lesions, fin rot, spots, liver blood clots and other health problems.
For over a century, farmers in wealthy countries have been able to engage in a process where they protect themselves against risk. … When this process was tightly regulated and only companies with a direct interest in the field could get involved, it worked. Then, through the 1990s, Goldman Sachs and others lobbied hard and the regulations were abolished. Suddenly, these contracts were turned into “derivatives” … A market in “food speculation” was born.
In 2006, financial speculators like Goldmans pulled out of the collapsing US real estate market. They reckoned food prices would stay steady or rise while the rest of the economy tanked … some vital crops are not traded on the futures markets, including millet, cassava, and potatoes. Their price rose a little during this period – but only a fraction as much as the ones affected by speculation.
last year the private prison industry secured close to $5 billion through state and government elicited contracts of which an increasing percentage is attributed to migrant detention facilities and bed spaces. An NPR report outlined how CCA aims to translate the anti-immigrant rhetoric and political void into a long-lasting cash drive … CCA founder Tomas Beasly once called his scheme ‘more profitable’ than selling burgers or cars
It’s pretty clear what is going on here: get one or two EU countries to bring in repressive laws that can be cited as precedents, then “harmonise” EU laws so that all European countries do the same.
The Business Software Alliance released its annual Global Piracy Study yesterday and while the study is oft-criticized on methodological grounds (Glyn Moody, my 2009 criticisms that revealed no actual surveys in Canada that year), the trend is unmistakable. According to this annual study, Canada’s piracy rate has been on a steady decline as Michael Murphy, Chairman of the BSA Canada Committee, notes “at 28 per cent, Canada’s piracy rate is at an all time low, dropping six percentage points since 2006.”
Summary: Information about Altitude Capital Partners (patent troll), Intellectual Ventures, Microsoft, and Apple (who fund Intellectual Ventures to launch legal attacks using small patent trolls)
EARLIER this year (last month to be more precise) we were contacted by a nice gentleman who had interacted with Bill Gates and his mate Nathan, the world’s biggest patent troll. He provided insights. Prior posts about it contained just the gist. Today we will elaborate on it.
It all began when a post from Rick the Patent TrollTracker got the attention of someone who had been approached by the named troll. “I don’t have any info about “Altitude Capital Partners” being linked to Microsoft,” he explained, “that is why I wrote to ask you if you did. Altitude approached me within the past 2 weeks asking to represent me because my patent portfolio covers basic technologies. I have no idea how they found out about me, though.”
It certainly would be valuable to have someone help us understand what Altitude Capital Partners is really doing because its homepage says very little. This is fascinating as a lot of what the gentleman says helps expose anti-competitive conduct that we have been researching for years, e.g. about Intellectual Ventures, which reportedly uses over 1,000 satellite companies to do its manipulation for Nathan and Bill, the company’s key financier.
Going back to the smaller troll in question, it is hard to determine just what it really does and whether it serves another. This minimal site it maintains says a little more than sites of patent trolls, which are usually LLCs registered with some patents for waging wars on behalf of other companies. Rick the Patent TrollTracker, who used to work for Cisco, was aware of what Altitude Capital Partners was up to, but he got silenced by those whom he exposed, using SLAPP-type action and a scary bounty from the father of patent trolling. Cisco had been under siege from many patent trolls, including Intellectual Ventures. Even though Intellectual Ventures finally filed a lawsuit last year, it usually uses other companies to launch lawsuits against those who are unwilling to pay Nathan and Bill. A company the size of Cisco would typically needs to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to keep Intellectual Ventures at bay (otherwise, it passes patents around to fuel patent battles). A broad patent would be an asset for this reason. It affects many companies. Cisco has just released new information about its upcoming Linux-powered tablet. Gates et al. will probably try to tax that if they haven’t already.
One should add that this site’s (Techrights) interest in this area is motivated by lawsuits that Microsoft is launching against GNU/Linux (and Android, which is Linux-powered). These also involve companies or patent trolls which Microsoft appears to be incentivising to do what they do. The SCO case is an older example of copyrights being used to wage similar battles. This battle is broader than most people realise because Microsoft is losing the battle on newer form factors. Windows sales are declining because Apple and Android are growing like mushrooms in the new space of smartphones, sub-notebooks, and tablets. Last month Barnes and Noble (B&N) put out there documents which show how Microsoft uses patents to distort the market and impede the competition in e-Readers and other such devices, which are basically too underpowered to run Microsoft’s Windows.
Our source suggests that Microsoft has been pursuing this type of strategy for quite some as “between 1998-2001 Bill Gates became interested in things I was patenting,” he explained to us. “I wanted him to use them, actually. Except he didn’t want to acknowledge my work, and didn’t want to pay me even one penny. And it wasn’t about money, it was clearly about cheating people who create things he liked…in other words it was a rabid ego “thing”.”
The “Surface” is an example of a product Microsoft wanted to axe before arrival, but reportedly, Gates’ ego prevented that from being axed. It became a money drain. In general, Gates became fascinated with patents a very long time after he had criticised them and to this date he is doing a lot of work promoting them and collecting them like trophies. His good friend Nathan is lobbying the government and trying to warp the software industry.
“Intellectual property is the next software,” Nathan Myhrvold said not so long ago. This is their vision.
“Bill Gates hired my lawyers,” explained our source, “Weil Gotshal & Manges, who subsequently kicked me out to “test tablets” for Microsoft. You can google search it and confirm that Weil Gotshal was doing that around 2001 or so. The thing that got Gates so interested in the tablet form factor was his seeing the designs to what is now the iPad and iPhone…back in 1998-2001!”
At the moment, Microsoft seems to be exploring ways of making money out of other people’s products. Increasingly it views itself as a licensing company because it cannot quite create something compelling enough. It missed the train. With the axing of Courier, in addition to reports about related patents surfacing, We can only imagine that there will be more stories like the B&N one.
“I was dazed and confused by what happened and went around looking for help of any kind,” our source recalls. “I ultimately ran to Larry Ellison & his buddy Steve Jobs in the hope that they…being Gates’ enemies, would invite me to join them in creating a new tablet device…because I believed Microsoft was about to steal the whole thing. Instead what happened was Steve Jobs stole it, and because of Bill gates’ ego…he felt that only he had anything worth doing… Microsoft ended up stalled…making tablets with styluses and which were effectively chopped up laptop computers shoe-horned into tablet shape. Even as late as 2010 Steve Ballmer was telling people at the London School of Economics that people want tablets with styluses and keyboards — that despite the way the iPhone already demonstrated people’s willingness to use their finger.”
This insistence from Microsoft was foolish as it kept everything heavy and expensive. There was also none of the same promotion at the time, not to mention suitable hardware for 3-D effects and lightness. But as rightly pointed out, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs have this ego game with Gates and recently Ellison decided to go after Android with an outrageous lawsuit over Dalvik. More recently than that we saw Microsoft, Apple and Oracle creating and entering a patent pool from Novell’s patents (Novell was essentially sold last month). They called it CPTN and it was designed by Microsoft to help exclude or coerce until the US DOJ and the German anti-cartel office got involved. All of these companies increasingly use patents to ensure that they stay in power and the more they can accumulate, the better for them. Actually, Oracle once spoke against software patents, but things have changed since then.
Our guess is that in the eyes of such companies patents like those on tablet form factors are becoming a bargaining card that can help limit functionality of a competitor’s product. It is not uncommon for a company to try and get hold of patents using a third party. The OIN did that last year. And actually, B&N did say that Microsoft tried using patents to merely cripple its products. How does that promote innovation? This is yet more evidence supporting the claim that the patent system excludes small players, further empowered those who can amass many patents along with their patent trolls. If a small company sues a large one, it gets hit by an artillery of other patents. It’s an imbalanced game.
The source of the news was by no means trying to help the major companies, which merely approached him. “In the beginning I even went to non-profit organizations like Mozilla and the EFF and the W3C seeking to donate my patents to them,” he recalls, “but they all treated me like dirt.”
Mozilla, the EFF, and the W3C do not like patents. Mozilla openly denounces them, the EFF has a patent-busting project, and Tim Berners-Lee told me personally that he is adamant in his approach that the Web should have no patents in/on it. I think that the OIN would have been better to approach.
“Bill Gates’ friend Nathan Myhrvold was trying to buy my patents for years but later he decided to pay any lawyers I went to, to pretend they wanted to help me, when in reality they were just stalling for time, and trying to keep me from suing anybody,” we were told. “Nokia was interested in acquiring rights from me in August 2010, and Nokia was extremely nice and polite…but then Gates “installed” his man Stephen Elop as CEO of Nokia and gave Nokia some deal worth billions (according to the news), and Nokia suddenly didn’t want to have anything to do with me. And who are Nokia’s lawyers? “Conveniently” friends of the lawyers who filed my patents for me in the 1990′s which Apple copied to create the iPhone, and which represent Apple, MSFT and Nokia, and Nathan Myhrvold.”
Nokia was essentially taken over by Microsoft using an act of entryism. Recently, a senior figure at Nokia said: “This isn’t a deal between Nokia and Microsoft, this is a Microsoft take over.”
Nokia has already expressed intention to use patents as a tool that further affects the market and with Elop in charge we can only imagine (with concern) what they might do next. Elop has just remarked (in Twitter) about the Skype acquisition. Reading his tweet would give the impression that he is still working for Microsoft. █
Resumen: A pesar de todo la propaganda, Microsoft sigue atacando al pequeño, sobre todo con nuevos métodos como el concedido por el gobierno y USPTO-estampado monopolio.
Los que creen que el mítico “nuevo Microsoft” existe simplemente no están prestando atención. Pamela Jones de Groklaw recientemente escribió sobre defensa de la competencia/supervisión de Microsoft que vencen en el contexto de su extorsión de patentes[http://techrights.org/2011/05/05/attacking-the-market-with-swpats/]. Windows e Internet Explorer mientras tanto pierden su cuota de mercado, pero Microsoft está ocupada con las patentes de software como medio de atención en contra las plataformas de los competidores. ¿Cómo que no es abusivo? Es una distorsión del mercado. Irónicamente, dice IDG, “El Código Abierto frustó el caso antimonopolio contra Microsoft[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9216608/Open_source_foiled_Microsoft_antitrust_case]“, pero la afirmación no es convincente defendido en el artículo. Para citar una parte de ella:
Lo que se cernía sobre toda la sala del tribunal fue la enorme cuota de mercado de Microsoft en sistemas operativos de escritorio y aplicaciones de productividad, así como la disminución dramática del navegador web Netscape con la llegada de Internet Explorer.
Los economistas de Stanford, MIT y Berkeley presentaron escritos para asesorar al tribunal sobre los recursos, dando a Jackson los argumentos de una acción enérgica.
“El beneficio más importante para la sociedad que se creará con este remedio vendrá de una innovación más rápida”, escribió Paul Romer, profesor de economía en Stanford, en un breve de la corte acerca de una ruptura -de MS.
Para Jackson ordenó crear dos nuevas empresas y de gran alcance, uno para manejar el negocio del sistema operativo, y el otro, sus aplicaciones. Cada empresa tendría ingresos de más de $ 8 mil millones al año y las ganancias de más de $ 3 mil millones de dólares de 2000.
Huelga decir que Microsoft pichangueó el sistema legal y logró escaparse de la decisión de Jackson. Hemos escrito sobre esto antes[http://techrights.org/2009/06/15/2000-character-assassination-personal-attack/].
En general, la intervención del gobierno hasta ahora ha sido ineficaz. Microsoft sólo es necesario para mostrar algún tipo de compromiso mínimo para otras plataformas. Incluso que se está haciendo mal, porque, para usar este nuevo titular[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9216620/Microsoft_leaves_Mac_Office_users_in_the_lurch_says_researcher] , “Microsoft deja a los usuarios de Mac Office en estacados, dice la investigación” (no exactamente nuevas noticias, ¿verdad?)
Microsoft dijo ayer a los usuarios de Mac de Office no tiene aún una solución para un problema en PowerPoint que parchó para sus clientes de Windows.
“Las actualizaciones de seguridad para Microsoft Office 2004 para Mac, Microsoft Office 2008 para Mac, y Open XML File Format Converter para Mac están disponibles en este momento”, dijo la compañía MS11-036 boletín de seguridad. “Microsoft publicará actualizaciones para estos programas cuando se completa la prueba, para garantizar un alto grado de calidad para su liberación.”
MS11-036 forma parte de dos de mayo-día martes de parches, y cerró un par de agujeros sido calificado como “importante” en PowerPoint 2002, 2003 y 2007 en Windows. Sólo uno de los dos errores afecta a Office para Mac 2004 y Office para Mac 2008.
Las versiones más recientes, Office 2010 en Windows y Office para Mac 2011, no contienen la vulnerabilidad.
Esperar Microsoft se vuelva más y más viciosos dado que su deuda[http://techrights.org/wiki/index.php/Microsoft_-_Financials] crece. Sólo hay que ver lo que hizo Microsoft para OOXML[http://techrights.org/ooxml-abuse-index/] (abundancia de la corrupción). Microsoft no es sólo una empresa que está siendo demandado mucho por sus abusos, cada vez más, Microsoft ha demandado a otras empresas como parte de su modelo de negocio. El “nuevo Microsoft”, en caso de que este monstruo exista, es mucho peor de lo que ha sido. Los reguladores deberían iniciar una nueva acción antimonopolio en contra de la operación de chantaje llamada Microsoft Corporation[http://techrights.org/2011/04/27/bn-and-changing-the-patent-system/]. Ellos ya saben la dirección de su Don, que está ocupado invirtiendo sus miles de millones en impulsar las patentes y/o sus monopolios y la reescritura de su biografía (mediante la compra de la prensa).[http://techrights.org/wiki/index.php/Gates_Foundation_Critique] █
“Esta cosa antimonopolio golpeará más. No hemos cambiado nuestras prácticas de negocios en absoluto.” -Bill Gates, 1995
Resumen: El nuevo sistema operativo de Microsoft Windows recibe elogios de los organismos -opresivos- secretos, pero una tarjeta de informe negativo sobre la seguridad real.
LAS ANTIFEATURES son totalmente gratuitas y vienen con todas las ediciones del sistema operativo que la NSA está recomendando[http://techrights.org/2011/05/11/windows-vs-activists_es/], por razones particulares. Sí, Vista 7 no es seguro como lo hemos demostrado en las entradas más antiguas, tales como:
1. La ciberdelincuencia Aumenta y Vista 7 ya está abierto a Criminales[http://techrights.org/2009/01/01/vista-7-not-secure/]
2. Vista 7: Roto Antes de su Llegada[http://techrights.org/2009/02/01/windows-7-banned-insecure-uac/]
3. El Departamento de Seguridad Nacional ‘envenenado’ por parte de Microsoft, Vista 7 esta abierta a Secuestradores de nuevo[http://techrights.org/2009/03/12/phil-reitinger-in-dhs-vista7-awol/]
4. La Seguridad de Vista 7 “no puede ser arreglado. Es un problema de diseño.”[http://techrights.org/2009/04/23/vista-7-cannot-be-fixed/]
5. ¿Por qué Vista 7 Podría ser el sistema operativo menos seguro que nunca[http://techrights.org/2009/04/27/vista-7-least-secure-os/]
6. Periodistas Sugieren la prohibición de Microsoft Windows. Tal vez una demanda por los ataques DDoS[http://techrights.org/2009/08/09/ddos-attacks-and-microsoft/]
7. Vista 7 vulnerables a las últimas “Defectos Críticos”[http://techrights.org/2009/08/13/vista-7-rtm-was-vulnerable/]
8. Vista 7 Al parecer, afectado por varios de las más “críticas” fallos este mes[http://techrights.org/2009/09/09/flaw-paid-for-launch-parties/]
9. Razón # 1 para evitar la Vista 7: la inseguridad[http://techrights.org/2009/08/14/vista-7-insecurity/]
10. Vista 7 Hackeable Una vez más (casi una repetición mensual)[http://techrights.org/2009/10/09/vista-7-hijack-risk/]
11. Trend Micro: Vista 7 menos seguro que Vista[http://techrights.org/2009/12/11/vista-7-insecurity-2/]
12. Vista 7 menos seguro que sus predecesores? Remoto BSOD Ahora Posible![http://techrights.org/2009/09/08/vista-and-vista-7-bsod/]
13. Vista 7 inaceptable para las grandes empresas y Windows XP no es todavía seguro[http://techrights.org/2010/03/11/intel-and-win7/]
Un sitio Web de Windows dice que en “Windows 7, la tasa de infección de malware sube, mientras que cae la de XP[http://www.winbeta.org/?q=news/windows-7s-malware-infection-rate-climbs-xps-falls]” (muchas gracias a Willie por el enlace). Para citar a:
Microsoft publicó hoy los datos mostrando que Windows 7 es la tasa de infección de malware ha aumentado en más del 30% durante el segundo semestre de 2010, mientras que la tasa de infección para Windows XP se ha reducido en más del 20%.
Como los informes de ComputerWorld, durante el segundo semestre de 2010, los datos muestran que de 32 bits de Windows 7 computadoras fueron infectadas a una tasa promedio de 4 equipos por cada 1.000, en comparación con 3 equipos por cada 1.000 que tuvieron lugar durante el primer semestre de 2010. Se trata de un aumento del 33% en la tasa de infección. Los que ejecutan Windows 7 64 bits había más posibilidades de evitar problemas con una tasa de infección de 2,5 PC por cada 1.000.
¿El sistema operativo más seguro? Que se lo digan a la NSA, que en realidad tiene razones para tratar la inseguridad como algo bueno. La propia seguridad del gobierno depende de su capacidad para mantener el ojo en los equipos de sus ciudadanos y sabemos que ese poder está siendo mal utilizado[http://techrights.org/2009/04/21/cipav-and-microsoft-windows/].
Katherine Noyes tiene este buen artículo nuevo sobre el tema[http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/The-Linux-vs-Windows-Security-Mystery-72433.html]. Cita el Sr. Robert en los lugares:
“La NSA (Agencia de Seguridad Nacional) recomienda Vista para seguridad en el hogar no es más que un reflejo de la realidad del monopolio en el espacio al por menor,” que ofrece blogger Robert Pogson. “En el probablemente tan sólo 2 a 3 por ciento de los usuarios de EE.UU. el uso de GNU/Linux, así que una recomendación es casi inútil.”
Los que son serios acerca de la seguridad “ya son conscientes de SELinux, un producto de la NSA”, agregó Pogson. “La NSA se limita a recomendar que la gente pase de XP, un sistema operativo pobre con escaso apoyo por M$. La gente que hace caso a ese consejo, probablemente ni siquiera saben GNU/Linux existe.”
Recomendar algo cuyo funcionamiento es un secreto es siempre una mala idea. Nadie puede saber lo que está realmente hay en él.
La conclusión es, Vista 7 NO ES SEGURO, pero la “seguridad” en la seguridad nacional significa casi lo contrario de lo que la gente asume que signifique. La seguridad nacional es acerca de entrometerse encubiertamente en la vida de las personas, es decir, violación de la seguridad, no reforzarla. Cualquiera que sea lo que la NSA diga, considere hacer lo contrario, si usted se preocupa por la libertad. █
“Las relaciones del Gobierno es una prueba de cómo usted maneja la frustración” ~ Anónimo
Summary: Microsoft’s back door-friendly operating system receives praise from the secret agencies but a bad report card regarding actual security
THE ANTIFEATURES are totally free of charge and they come with all editions of the operating system which the NSA is recommending for peculiar reasons. Yes, Vista 7 is not secure as we showed in older posts such as:
Microsoft released data today showcasing that Windows 7′s malware infection rate has climbed by more than 30% during the second half of 2010, while the infection rate for Windows XP has dropped by more than 20%.
As ComputerWorld reports, during the second half of 2010, the data shows that 32bit Windows 7 computers were infected at an average rate of 4 PCs per 1,000, compared to 3 PCs per 1,000 that took place during the first half of 2010. This is a 33% increase in the infection rate. Those running Windows 7 64bit had better chances of avoiding problems with an infection rate of 2.5 PCs per 1,000.
Most secure operating system? Tell that to the NSA, which actually has reasons to treat insecurity as a good thing. The government’s own security depends on its ability to keep on eye on the citizens’ computers and we know that such power is being misused.
“NSA recommending Vista for home security is merely a reflection of the reality of monopoly in the retail space,” blogger Robert Pogson offered. “In the USA probably as few as 2 to 3 percent of users use GNU/Linux, so a recommendation is almost useless.”
Those who are serious about security “are already aware of SELinux, a product of the NSA,” Pogson added. “The NSA is merely recommending that folks move on from XP, a poor OS poorly supported by M$. Folks who would heed that advice probably do not even know GNU/Linux exists.”
Recommending something whose workings are a secret is always a bad idea. Nobody can tell what’s actually in it.
The bottom line is, Vista 7 is not secure, but the “security” in national security means almost the opposite of what people assume it to mean. National security is about intruding people’s lives, i.e. breaching security, not blostering it. Whatever the NSA says, consider doing the opposite if you care about freedom. █
“Government relations is a test of how you manage frustration” ~Anonymous
There may be only one place in America where Yahoo is outperforming Google: the Tyler, Texas, courtroom of federal district court judge Leonard Davis, where a patent holding company called Bedrock accused both companies of infringing a Linux software patent.
On Tuesday Yahoo and its lawyers from McDermott Will & Emery won a jury verdict that Yahoo does not infringe Bedrock’s patent, which involves code for removing expired records while the operating system performs other operations. On April 15, a separate Tyler jury reached a contrary conclusion in Bedrock’s case against Google, finding that Google infringed the same patent and awarding Bedrock $5 million in damages.
To be fair, the Google verdict was hardly the windfall Bedrock and its lawyers at McKool Smith were hoping for. McKool lead trial counsel Douglas Cawley told jurors that Google had saved half a billion dollars as a result of its infringement of Bedrock’s patent. He asked for an award of $183 million and got only $5 million. But given the success Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan has had in East Texas litigation for Google, it’s worth taking a look at why Yahoo got a flat-out defense win and Google didn’t — especially because McKool put on the same three Bedrock witnesses (the patent inventor, a damages expert, and a technical expert) in both trials.
First off, Bedrock had a stronger case against Google. Cawley put on evidence that Google used Bedrock’s Linux code on its servers (although Google got rid of the code before trial). Yahoo, on the other hand, used a different form of Linux, and its lead trial lawyer, Yar Chaikovsky and Fay Morisseau of McDermott Will, were able to argue that Yahoo never executed the Bedrock code.
Yahoo also benefited mightily from going to trial second. Chaikovsky and local counsel Jennifer Doan of Haltom and Doan were in the teeming throng of defense lawyers who sat through the Google trial in April, along with lawyers for co-defendants Amazon, AOL, MySpace, and SoftLayer. They got to preview Bedrock’s case and watch how Cawley of McKool Smith handled Google’s experts and its corporate witness, software engineer Lucas Pereira. That undoubtedly helped Chaikovsky prepare his witnesses. (McDermott was also smart to call Yahoo co-founder David Filo as his corporate witness — East Texas juries love hearing from top-level execs.)
For related posts about Bedrock, consider the following:
Soon we will find out how mobbyists will try to spin this after exaggerating the risk and pushing journalists to play along (following the preliminary Google ruling, whose outcome was dubious and can be overruled). █
but for open hardware and mobile folks, this was one of the most important weeks in history.
