08.16.11
Posted in Google, Patents at 9:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The argument against patent monopolies continues even though Google is buying its way into the patents club
WHAT Google did by buying a part of Motorola is far from ideal. Suddenly Google can be perceived as part of the problem, which is gigantic companies that amass many patents or need to pay a lot of money to join the racket that excludes small players. Regardless of Google’s decision, it is recognised by some big sites that =”The Patent System Is The World’s Biggest Threat To Innovation Today” and to quote the opening:
At the risk of stating the obvious, I’ll say this right up front: The patent system in both Europe and the United States is the biggest threat to innovation in the world today.
Rather than competing with each other on price and features, the biggest tech companies want to fight it out in court where some Luddite judge—rather than the market—can decide who wins and loses. By claiming that another company has violated some vague patent, one vendor can use the legal system to either block rival products from the market or demand hefty kickbacks (a.k.a. licensing fees) from their makers.
Glyn Moody says, “speaking as a mathematician, I certainly concur with the view that everything is “just maths” in a certain deep sense: that is, we believe that we can, *in theory*, use maths to describe anything that exists. But in practice, some bits are trickier than others.”
Here is a ket line: “This fundamental distinction between software patents and the other kinds is reflected in all the problems that are cited with the former: the fact that they are patents on knowledge, and the fact that you often can’t invent around such patents, because that’s like trying to invent around logic.”
Exactly.
What Google does quite correctly is that it tries to squash Lodsys’ software patents [1, 2, 3], but why did it not make an attempt to squash software patents as a whole? The third link there is the coverage from Groklaw, which is likely to be most accurate. It also speaks of reexamination of Paul Allen’s patents (another patent troll who also attacks Android using software patents).
Brian Kahin has this new piece which remarks on the patent situation in relation to Android. He begins thusly:
I recently wrote about the $4.5 billion auction for Nortel’s portfolio of 6,000 patents that went to a consortium that included Apple, Microsoft, and RIM (Blackberry) — three of four smartphone platforms. In the wake of this sale, Interdigital has contemplated monetizing its portfolio of 8,500 patents, perhaps even putting the company up for sale. Google announced that it has bought over 1,000 patents from IBM for defensive purposes. Perennial investor Carl Icahn suggested that Motorola cash in on some of its immense portfolio of 18000 patents. Analysts have noted that Kodak’s patents may be worth more than Kodak itself.
The value of these patents is not in the technology. These prices are being paid for the power to block others from using technology they have developed independently. Or for the power to block others from blocking you by threatening to block them from using their technology — “assertion” and “counter-assertion.”
The IT sector has learned to live with these practices at some cost, but the patent mania and litigation around smartphones is unprecedented. Nothing like this happened as the personal computer came of age. In Silicon Valley, suing for patent infringement was not part of the culture. Knowledge spread quickly and informally. Employees of rival firms socialized and exchanged ideas — and moved from company to company. The Valley’s unique form of social capital beat out the culture of control along Boston’s Route 128 and made Silicon Valley world famous.
Julian Sanchez also has this thoughtful piece titled, “When Are Patents Obvious?”
The more highly specialized professionals are in rapid communication with each other, the more likely it becomes that you’ll see innovations that are “obvious” because they involve combining various disparate kinds of incremental prior innovative steps, but which don’t have “prior art”—meaning nobody has taken that exact step before, because it required a bunch of other pieces to be in place before it was viable. So searching for “prior art”—if that means exactly the same preexisting invention—becomes a less reliable guide to what is “obvious” in the relevant sense. But as specialization increases, it also becomes vastly more difficult for a patent examiner with broadly relevant training (engineering and electronics, say) to use his own understanding and expertise as a guide to what is truly “obvious” to someone trained in the specifically relevant domain (say, engineering mobile cellular data networks). It’s increasingly unreasonable to expect even the smartest and most diligent examiner—even assuming away all the bureaucratic and institutional incentives to err on the side of granting patents—to judge the “obviousness” of innovations across an ever-proliferating array of subspecialties.
Timothy B. Lee goes even further by asking, ‘Are software patents the “scaffolding of the tech industry”?’
Quoting Lee’s conclusions: “Of course, it’s possible that the bankrupt company failed because its more successful competitors simply ripped off its technology and undersold it. But at least in software, this is not the common case. More often, many companies independently come up with similar ideas. The company that prevails is the one that executes best, not the one who came up with the idea first. Which means that the patent system simply transfers wealth from those who are good at building useful products to those who are good at navigating the patent system.
“Mace’s post is based on a similar fallacy. He argues that patents are good because they allow a small company like his to prevent a large company like Google or Apple from copying him. Obviously that’s valuable to him, but it’s not clear that it’s good for the economy as a whole.
“Companies have other ways to protect their innovations. They can use copyrights, trade secrets, and the head start that any inventor has over copycats. Mace objects that these protections aren’t adequate to guarantee that the original inventor will win in the marketplace. But that’s the point: consumers benefit from the robust competition that results when inventors have only a limited advantage over competitors. The first company to enter some market shouldn’t be able to simply rest on its laurels. Remember, Facebook was a “me-too competitor” in the social networking space; it’s a good thing that Friendster and MySpace weren’t able to stop Mark Zuckerberg from entering its market.
“The function of the patent system isn’t to maximize the profits of inventors. Rather, it’s to provide inventors with sufficient incentives to ensure they continue innovating. In software, the protections offered by copyrights and trade secrets are already more than adequate to produce a huge amount of innovation. As a bonus, these regimes are less cumbersome and less prone to frivolous litigation than patents.”
We rest assured that Google’s move might provide a short-term fix that assures the growth of Linux in mobile phones. In the long term, Google’s newly-acquired patents too need to be eliminated, along with all the rest. It’s the only way to serve justice that’s inclusive (includes small players and new entrants). █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 8:36 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Team Microsoft provides a distraction to take people’s attention away from the news about Android getting more solid legal basis
WELL, guess what? It seems as though we correctly predicted this sale of Motorola to Google even a day before it happened. “It’s all about the patents,” says ZDNet in the headline and it is probably true. Motorola also gives Google a chance to fight Microsoft and Apple in court, defending Android from some insidious allegations, using counter-attacks with Motorola patents (Google inherits these legal cases which were invoked separately by Microsoft and Apple). Google is buying them at above real value and Google’s CEO explains why. Here is Google’s official statement. A lot has been written about this already, so we need not say much except that it harms the efforts to fix the patent system but probably helps Linux in the short term.
Here is where it gets interesting. Apart from some dishonest ‘journalists’ who try to spin this against Google, there are some dishonest people, such as a lawyer previously employed by Microsoft (who later spread some lies about Android), who talk nonsense to distract from the above news. It is proposed by Microsoft’s buddy Naughton that Google’s Android has GPL problems. Well, just google “Naughton microsoft” and you will get “Lawyer behind Android infringement claim has Microsoft ties” (he hid his Microsoft ties by deletion and later got caught doing this). We covered this at the time while some reposted known lies. Anyway, his latest decoy spawned some headline trolling [1, 2, 3] and a storm over nothing, possibly promoted by Florian Müller's 'spamming' of journalists. He is debunked in Slashdot and other such sites (waste of space and focus), including Groklaw which writes:
Attorney Edward Naughton of Brown Rudnick has written [ Part II] more misinformation about the GPL in yet another false prediction of Android’s doom. Once again Mr. Naughton takes a non-story and blows it out of proportion, and of course, FOSSPatents does its part to blow hot air into the story as well.
If the idea is to scare off potential Android OEM’s or purchasers of Android-powered phones, this sort of scare tactic is just rubbish. It has failed in the past, and it will fail this time.
People who don’t understand the GPL probably shouldn’t write about it, including lawyers. I’ll show you the mistakes in the article, and please note that while I am a member of the board of directors of Software Freedom Law Center, which will factor into this story, I speak only for myself and Groklaw, not for SFLC in this article.
Bradley M. Kuhn too has responded to this:
Unfortunately, Edward Naughton is at it again, and everyone keeps emailing me about, including Brian Proffitt, who quoted my email response to him this morning in his article.
As I said in my response to Brian, I’ve written before on this issue and I have nothing much more to add. Naughton has not identified a GPL violation that actually occurred, at least with respect to Google’s own distribution of Android, and he has completely ignored my public call for him to make such a formal report to the copyright holders of GPL violations for which he has evidence (if any).
Here is a summary of some responses:
Even as Google announced their acquisition plans for Motorola Mobility today, vague legal accusations were re-hashed by IP attorney Edward J. Naughton that imply that all Android manufacturers are at risk of losing their rights to distribute Android because of they did not comply with the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). But the head of the Software Freedom Conservancy states there are still, despite the arm waving, no legitimate claims made on Android GPL violation.
Actually, Naughton doesn’t just imply problems for Android vendors, he just comes right out and says it: Android manufacturers have already lost their licenses to distribute GPLed code inside Android.
“Not long ago, open source advocates sued more than a dozen major consumer electronics manufacturers, claiming that the manufacturers had lost the right to use GPL’d software in their devices. It looks like the same could be said of Android: virtually every one is unlicensed,” Naughton wrote in his blog.
One of Naughton’s biggest cheerleaders, FOSSPatent author Florian Mueller, is also explicit in his own amplification of Naughton’s theories:
Nothing to see here then. Microsoft is still briefing its gang which includes lobbyists like Microsoft Florian, who occasionally communicates with Naughton as well. it’s just a coordinated attack on Android. You can only cry “Wolf!” twice. Why is anyone paying attention to those people rather than cover the real news, which is about Android gaining a patent shield against Apple’s and Microsoft’s patent cartel? █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Apple, Deception, GNU/Linux, Google at 8:06 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Apple caught lying in a way that can get Apple — not Android makers — deep in hot water for lying to the German judge
“‘Samsung vs Apple in Europe’ for dummies” is the headline of this analysis from LXer, which disappointingly enough cites a lobbyist against Android, Microsoft Florian. “For everybody who understands less about the current Apple/ Samsung battle in EU than I do,” writes the dutch author, “here’s my attempt to share the few things I understand with you. I’ll briefly discuss the situation in both Germany and the Netherlands. The article should be especially suited for those who cannot read Dutch / German and are not up to date with what has been happening the last few days.”
“This story is a good fit because the company is based on a marketing lie, a delusion, a distortion of reality.”Meanwhile, Dutch/German sources suggest that the whole ban was based on fabrication and that this battle remains to be played (the ban might get reversed). To quote Slashdot: “The Dutch site webwereld.nl has found incorrect evidence submitted by Apple (Google translation of Dutch original) in the EU design-right case against Samsung. In the ex-parte case, a German judge recently issued a temporary injunction against the sale of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the whole EU except the Netherlands. The faulty evidence is a side-by-side picture of an iPad 2 and the Galaxy Tab. The Tab is scaled to fit the iPad2, and the aspect ratio is changed from 1.46 to 1.36, which more closely matches the iPad 2 aspect ratio of 1.3, according to webwereld.nl.”
Here is what IDG has to say. “It’s just getting worse for Apple,” remarks the person who gave the link. “Apple Offers Flawed Evidence in Lawsuit against Samsung” is the headline and “it appears that Apple has failed to provide the German judge with accurate evidence. At least one of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 pictures that Apple provided as evidence in the German case is either wrong or manipulated. Photographic evidence submitted by Apple, found on page 28 of the German complaint, shows two pictures: the iPad 2 and the alleged Galaxy Tab 10.1, accompanied by Apple’s claim that the “overall appearance” of two products is “practically identical.”"
“Take a look at the pictures on the link — obviously the Galaxy picture was tampered with,” remarks the person who gave this link, “squashed down to make the Galaxy Tab 10.1 look to be shaped like an iPad2. What sleazy, lying assholes they have at Apple.” In our Wiki we have had a page titled “Apple Deception”. This story is a good fit because the company is based on a marketing lie, a delusion, a distortion of reality. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in FUD, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 7:51 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The “Linux is just a desktop” pattern of FUD gets used by Microsoft boosters (with a new hat) to rile up and ridicule supporters of GNU/Linux, which thrives in many areas and spawns new brands (like “Android”)
A Microsoft booster from Directions on Microsoft (Matt Rosoff, who left them last year only to promote Microsoft, as a seemingly-independent writer) started to spread some more GNU/Linux FUD last week. We have already given many examples, some of which well covered in this site, where he was advancing Microsoft agenda and this is just his latest (no links given as that would only feed a provocateur). Brian Proffitt, whose defence against this is weak (he helps validate the false allegations), neglects to mention the conflict of interest from this shameless Microsoft booster who now pretends to be a journalist. The only proper responses we have found so far help show that this FUD also got echoed by other Microsoft boosters such as Ed Bott. We were going to just ignore this FUD rather than give it any visibility. However, rebuttals have already been posted (around Monday), so we might as well give links to those:
-
Whereas said documents used to include Linux as a primary threat to Windows — alongside Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) — Redmond’s documents now reportedly don’t mention any competitive threat from desktop Linux at all, according to a recent article on Business Insider, which cites a tweet by Directions on Microsoft’s Wes Miller.
[...]
Of course, embedded Linux is still acknowledged as a problem in that arena — not to mention servers, of course — but author Matt Rosoff (formerly with Directions on Microsoft as well, it most certainly should be noted) comes to a very happy conclusion anyway: “So much for all those predictions that Linux would kill Windows,” he writes.
-
Sure, on the desktop, it’s a Windows world, but guess what Sherlock; the desktop is declining in importance. The mobile, server, Web and cloud worlds are where the twenty-teens’ billionaires will come from, not the desktop. And, guess, who’s already in all those spaces large and in charge? Yes, that’s right, Linux.
In IRC, Ryan explains this morning: “They declared victory on the desktop [...] how strange that this has nothing to do with their market share [...] and comes just as the DOJ oversight is going away and they don’t need to pretend they have credible competition there anymore”
“Also,” I added, “they have tablets challenging desktops now. Tablets run Linux”
“Microsoft revived Apple back in the 90s,” Ryan elaborates, “when they nearly bankrupted themselves after a long line of stupid business decisions [...] what’s going on with Novell is the same thing, just a different market” [...] (We have competition, they even compete using our technologies) [...] not on the desktop, that has always been a misleading truth, but the money is in servers and workstations and now phones and tablets so they’re the majority holder of a platform that is not growing and in fact, is starting to recede”
“Windows revenue has declined for quarters,” I noted (since 2009). █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in News Roundup at 6:52 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
-
We are fortunate enough to live at a time when many (if not most) phones run Linux and the overwhelming majority of Web servers do too. Those who say that GNU/Linux is “not ready for the desktop” hardly exist anymore. So for those who insist on running it on their desktop/s, there is rarely a major barrier. Videos work just fine (increasingly with HTML5 and free codecs, not Flash), a lot of applications are Web based, and some of the world’s best Web browsers are available for GNU/Linux, so how can one complain? Among developers and producers, there is no real pitfall associated with GNU/Linux (those that are brought up can easily be defended against, e.g. “fragmentation”).
-
Desktop
-
-
Access to the Linux desktop is incredibly simple to run with modern distributions. Yet many naysayers have grasped at a difficult to dispel excuse for not switching. They say that their workplaces require them to use Windows along with a number of other specific-to-Windows programs.
-
Where is the Linux desktop going, and where should it go? This is a hot topic, and an important one. Unfortunately the discussion usually starts from the wrong premise, that the Linux desktop has only recently achieved parity with its Mac OS X and Windows cousins. Not so! The Linux desktop has been superior since its early days, and would have to go backwards to achieve parity.
-
Server
-
When it comes to the fast-moving business of trading stocks, bonds and derivatives, the world’s financial exchanges are finding an ally in Linux, at least according to one Linux kernel developer working in that industry.
This week, at the annual LinuxCon conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, Linux kernel contributor Christoph Lameter will discuss how Linux became widely adopted by financial exchanges, those high-speed computerized trading posts for stocks, bonds, derivatives and other financial instruments.
-
Audiocasts/Shows
-
Kernel Space
-
Jim Zemlin, executive director of the non-profit Linux Foundation, has been using Linux for about as long as I have, which is roughly half the time that Linux has been around. I recently spoke with Jim about the Linux Foundation’s upcoming LinuxCon, the history of Linux, and what might be in store for the next twenty years.
If you look at the history of computing, we see big established players dominating in their respective spaces, and then slowly wither and in some cases die altogether. 40 years ago computing was all mainframes and UNIX. Then the personal computer era began and desktop operating systems like Microsoft Windows ruled the roost — UNIX and mainframes were still around, but failed to adapt to the sea change in the primary nature of computing. In the last decase, we’ve seen an absolute explosion in mobile computing — Microsoft is still a contender but there’s no denying that they’ve been slow to react to the change in how people use computing devices.
-
Applications
-
Instructionals/Technical
-
Games
-
The final common requirements in situation like these come from me: only games that run on Linux natively and are easily installable via binary packages are acceptable; when I visit these people, I never have the time to compile source code (assuming that their computer is powerful enough to compile anything in the first place), or deal with Wine.
-
-
Desktop Environments
-
Like a large number of Desktop Summit attendees, I made my way back home shortly after the end of the conference. I will spare you the details of my schedule, and will share a few things of note.
-
-
Overall I was disappointed with Kongoni. Granted, the project has its good points.
-
Businesses require reliability, stability and compatibility. It’s no wonder business owners prefer to stick with the status quo: It’s what works for them. Those entrepreneurs who take the time to research the possibilities outside that status quo find a treasure trove of free and low-cost alternatives. When it comes to software, Linux is at the top of that list. With more than 100 complete distributions from which to choose, Linux is far from a single entity.
Linux powers the majority of the world’s websites, data centers, and development efforts. Consider this list of 10 business-oriented Linux distributions an all-in-one-place collection of information on those possibilities. The list is in no particular order.
-
New Releases
-
-
-
-
-
Wary Puppy is built from a “Puppy builder” system named Woof (http://bkhome.org/woof), which can build a Puppy Linux distribution from the binary packages of any other distro. There are many “puppies” built with Woof, and this image gives an appreciation of some of them and how they fit into the Woof time-line:
-
The Frugalware Developer Team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Frugalware 1.5, our fifteenth stable release.
No new features have been added since 1.5rc2, but 86 changes have been made to fix minor bugs. If you didn’t follow the changes during the pre/rc releases, here are the most important changes since 1.4 in no particular order:
-
-
Red Hat Family
-
When it comes to being used as a desktop operating system, CentOS has several major advantages: it is super-stable and offers a very long-term support, which are a blessing for people seeking serious work. On the other hand, the rock-solidness comes with one possible flaw; you don’t always get the latest and greatest software.
[...]
There you go. Your perfect desktop just got perfecter.
-
Fedora
-
I’ve been trying Fedora 15 (and Gnome 3) from a Live USB. I’ve had a Live CD since the beta but my CD is failing and read errors mean programs fail to launch even if the OS does load. I’d tried a USB installation a year or so ago when I was distro hopping, but without luck. This time the USB boot worked, with only a minor hitch.
-
Debian Family
-
* Debian named “Best Linux Distribution of 2011″ and “Top Production Server Distro”
* Bits from the Release Team
* Recent improvements with Debian GNU/kFreeBSD
* FreedomBox activities at DebConf11
* New website for mentors.debian.net
* Debian s390x port
* Integrating Emdebian Grip into Debian
* Further interviews
* Other news
* New Debian Contributors
* Important Debian Security Advisories
* New and noteworthy packages
* Work-needing packages
* Want to continue reading DPN?
-
The Debian Project is pleased to mark the 18th anniversary of Ian Murdoch’s founding announcement. Quoting from the official project history: The Debian Project was officially founded by Ian Murdock on August 16th, 1993. At that time, the whole concept of a ‘distribution’ of Linux was new. Ian intended Debian to be a distribution which would be made openly, in the spirit of Linux and GNU
-
Derivatives
-
Canonical/Ubuntu
-
After reading a few articles about the Alpha 3 version of Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot and finding that it was available (though it’s a little hard to find — perhaps by design — on the Ubuntu site), I thought I’d give Oneiric Alpha 3 a try since I had a day to spare — actually a unusually slow day at work — and not much else to do with it. Such is my life on a Saturday.
-
-
A migration from Windows to Ubuntu is still a project that requires a lot of planning, analysis and hard work. But for most institutions, it’s realistic to be confident that 10-25% of the desktops can migrate smoothly if a professional team has that as their mission over a year or two. For large organisations, that might be 5,000-50,000 seats, and the resulting savings are tremendous given the increase in Windows licensing costs driven by Win 7.
-
What do Chianti wines, Organic foods, and Spanish Ham have in common with Ubuntu Certified? The simple answer is that they all stand for quality.
Chianti is an Italian standard (DOCG) for Tuscany wines that requires using defined methods, satisfying set quality standards.
-
Since I was gone for two weeks and there were quite a few changes in Ubuntu 11.10 during this period, I’ve made a video with all the new features / improvements:
-
ubuntu 11.10 oneiric ocelot (come on people…you could have come up with better that that…) alpha 3 has been released so i thought i’d give it a whirl. been using fedora 15 64 bit since its alpha stage and kind of miss a debian based distro. so i fired up virtualbox to give it a try. here’s a brief look with some screenshots (click any of them for a larger view).
-
-
Sub-notebooks/Tablets
-
Lately I’ve been playing around with my little Asus netbook, a 10-inch screen model that came with Windows loaded but now runs Ubuntu Linux and delivers all the computing I need in portable situations at a cost below $400. When netbooks were a true phenomenon – this was before the “tablet revolution” that has rewritten the tech roadmap thanks to the iPad – they took the market by storm not because the big manufacturers figured out how to create a niche for them. Rather, it was the consumer who demanded them, and the consumer whose taste had PC companies scrambling to come up with the wide variety of models that defined this category.
-
Since starting the DIY IT Guy column here on Techrepublic I have found that so many people have severely under-estimated the amount of open source software available. In fact, I would lay claim that the amount of quality open source software far outweighs the amount of quality proprietary software.
That’s a bold claim, I know … but it’s one I firmly believe in.
When I was tasked with DIY, I knew how it was going to wind up. Think about it; a blog focused on the DIY crowed with a “cut costs” take on all things IT. Where would you think that would lead? Microsoft? Apple? Proprietary software? Nah … it lead straight to open source and all it has to offer.
-
The open source industry will soon reach another milestone when Linux celebrates its 20th anniversary on Aug. 25. Advocates identify five misconceptions surrounding the technology and discuss how these have since been proven false with the emergence of a viable business model.
Traditionally, open source software (OSS) such as Linux was created and refined by a community of software enthusiasts working on it as a hobby or fueled by their personal passion. Linux founder Linus Torvalds, for example, was a computer science student at the University of Helsinki when he created the operating system (OS).
This has resulted in several commonly-held perceptions regarding OSS such as the lack of capabilities and support for deployment in the enterprise space, and an insufficient security foundation.
-
Events
-
Reading some stories recently, it would be easy to conclude that there was some sort of a decline in open source. I’ll not pretend to have new and objective data on the subject, but having just returned from OSCON in the USA I have to say rumours of the death of open source are premature.
-
I spent the week in humid, rainy Berlin for the Desktop Summit. I particularly enjoyed Sunday’s keynotes by Claire Rowland and Nick Richards, not to mention the many great talks and discussions. It’s always fun to catch up with old friends (not to mention my coworkers at Collabora, very few of whom I see regularly), and to meet some new (to me, at least) faces, including João Paulo, whose Summer of Code project—implementing OTR in Telepathy—I have the pleasure of mentoring. I gave a talk of my very own, which apparently is one of the few videos available so far. I haven’t dared watch it yet. 
I hope to make the promised new release of Bustle this coming week.
-
After a (fairly) successful event last year, the Open Science Summit will again happen this year, taking place in Mountain View, CA on October 22-23. Featuring multiple speakers from many different disciplines, the Open Science Summit focuses on how to adapt current scientific practices to ever changing technology, as well as how to open source scientific work and research.
-
Web Browsers
-
SaaS
-
Having open-sourced Node.js and seen the positive reception to Facebook’s Open Compute platform, Joyent is continuing in the open source tradition and releasing the source code of SmartOS, the operating system behind its cloud computing offerings.
-
SmartOS is a new Solaris/IllumOS-based distribution released by Joyent. “SmartOS incorporates the four most revolutionary OS technologies of the past decade – Zones, ZFS, DTrace and KVM – into a single operating system, providing an arbitrarily observable, highly multi-tenant environment built on a reliable, enterprise-grade storage stack.” Yes, they have ported the KVM virtualization facility from Linux to Solaris.
-
CMS
-
I started blogging about Linux, in 2007, it all started because I was writing almost daily in some Linux distribution lists, so I thought it could have made sense to put all my writings on line in a single place, so others can use them.
-
Business
-
Semi-Open Source
-
Changing sides again, if my system is open but anything I write in my word processor can’t be opened on another computer without spending lots of $$$ for another license, I won’t be too happy. An if the open core of my system has to meet the demands of the commercial software companies, it might not feel very open or work very well.
It’s all about control. Is the user in control or the software provider? Or in the cloud, the company who uses and maintains the cloud or the company that designed it.
-
FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
-
GCC 4.6 was released back in March with various Intel hardware optimizations, initial AVX (Advanced Vector Extensions) support, Google Go programming support, new optimization paths, and a number of other new features. While not yet ready for release, version 4.7 of the GNU Compiler Collection is also collecting a number of highlights. This is also good news seeing yesterday’s news about C++0x.
-
-
-
Project Releases
-
ingle-window mode has been a feature requested and planned for GIMP for quite a while. The work has been continuing for so long that many almost forgot its coming. But for those still hoping for this feature, their wait may soon be over. Martin Nordholts, Android engineer and Open Source developer, recently posted that the long awaited option is feature complete and on track for GIMP 2.8.
-
Openness/Sharing
-
Open Data
-
Personal data being information associated with you: your contacts, your photos, the web pages you’ve visited, the places you’ve been, the messages you’ve sent and received, and so on. In short, your stuff.
-
Programming
-
The ISO has unanimously approved C++0x, the next version of C++, to become an international standard. The International Organization for Standardization will now prepare the standards document for C++0x and release it in the coming months.
-
Standards/Consortia
-
Perhaps overlooked in all the excitement generated by the move of OpenOffice.org to Apache was the fact that a parallel move is occurring with the ODF Toolkit. A few weeks ago we submitted a proposal to Apache to start a new project based on the Java components that were until then hosted by the ODF Toolkit Union. This was done after consulting with ODF Toolkit community and getting approval from the ODF Toolkit Union’s Steering Committee. This proposal was recently reviewed, voted on and approved by Apache. So now we have the Apache ODF Toolkit project in the Apache Incubator.
-
-
Security
-
Defence/Police/Aggression
-
Burial of one’s problems is not the solution to these problems. Burial of a state’s problem is not the mass arrest of the symptom of this problem.
[...]
Those who write more objectively or at least attempt to assess the arguments of both sides are not apologists for looters. They are apologists for truth.
-
A man will appear before magistrates next month for allegedly trying to organise a mass water fight via his mobile phone.
-
Cablegate
-
Former WikiLeaks deputy Daniel Domscheit-Berg has been expelled from Germany’s top hacker group, the Chaos Computer Club. In an interview, the group’s spokesman Andy Müller-Maguhn told SPIEGEL how he lost faith in Domscheit-Berg and his new whistleblowing project OpenLeaks.
-
As far as anybody can tell, the release of the classified material by Wikileaks, despite the hyperbolic haranguing about Assange being a terrorist and about leaked documents harming our national security, has done no measurable harm to any individuals in the U.S. government. Nor is any damage to the safety and security of Americans as a whole at all perceivable. What the leaks have done is to give Americans a better idea of what their government does in their name. It’s possible even, as some have argued, that they’ve done much more good than just that. But sticking to the dangerous national security threat these leaks were promised to present by the apologists for shadow government, not even the government itself has pointed to any specific occurrences of danger or threats to safety or national security. Not even the Obama administration has made that charge.
-
What is wrong here is that an intermediate certificate is missing – we have a so-called transvalid certificate (the term “transvalid” has been used for it by the EFF SSL Observatory project). Firefox includes the root certificate from Go Daddy, but the certificate is signed by another certificate which itself is signed by the root certificate. To make this work, one has to ship the so-called intermediate certificate when opening an SSL connection.
-
ulia Gillard had criminal allegations made against her in 1995 when she was accused of helping her boyfriend steal over $1,000,000 from the Australian Workers Union (AWU) and helping him spend the money on such things as her personal home renovations and dresses.
-
Finance
-
Given the Federal Reserve’s abysmal regulatory record in the runup to the crisis (even the uber bank friendly Office of the Comptroller of the Currency was more aggressive in going after subprime abuses, for instance), it should be no surprise that some of its directors are utterly lacking in propriety and common sense when it comes to defending the rights of banks to profit at the expense of customers and society at large.
The only good news about the latest example is that it was so ineptly done that it appears to be backfiring.
-
Over the past ten years investors have been battered by the dotcom bubble(off over 50%), 9/11 (off over 25%), the credit crisis bubble(off 50%), the crash of commodities(down 25%) and now the government debt downgrade together with a dire European sovereign debt crisis(down 20-25%). Nor have we ever gotten back to the all-time peak of the Dow Jones industrial average of 1410, set in October, 2007. It’s no surprise that investors are fleeing equity mutual funds and shoved $50 billion of their savings in money market funds yielding zero laast week. Zero is once again again preferable to losing money.
-
That’s because the market is buzzing with rumors about Bank of America, and Goldman’s negative view might signal that the firm believes that Brian Moynihan is unable or limited in his ability to quash the concerns, now and in the future.
-
PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
-
Through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), corporations pay to bring state legislators to one place, sit them down for a sales pitch on policies that benefit the corporate bottom line, then push “model bills” for legislators to make law in their states. Corporations also vote behind closed doors alongside politicians on this wish-list legislation through ALEC task forces. Notably absent were the real people who would actually be affected by many of those bills and policies.
-
Civil Rights
-
On the campaign trail in Iowa last week, former corporate executive and Republican governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney shot back at hecklers who were challenging his stance that it would be unfair and unwise to raise taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations to reduce the deficit.
“Corporations are people, my friend,” Romney said. “Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to the people. Where do you think it goes? Whose pockets? People’s pockets! Human beings, my friend.”
Permalink
Send this to a friend
08.15.11
Posted in Site News at 10:03 pm by Guest Editorial Team
-
Environment/Energy/Wildlife
-
TEPCO announced that the accident probably released more radioactive material into the environment than Chernobyl, making it the worst nuclear accident on record. … It will be at least a year before it stops boiling, and until it stops boiling, it’s going to be cranking out radioactive steam and liquids.
-
Despite the alarm inside Japan and abroad, specific information about radiation levels and its range are still mostly unavailable. This lack of information is what Safecast is trying to overcome.
-
The contentions filed with the NRC address reactors at nuclear facilities nationwide, including 11 plants in the South … North Carolina regulators have dealt a blow to Duke Energy’s plans to build two new reactors at the Lee plant, citing concerns that Fukushima may require construction revisions that call into question the project’s costs and timeline.
According to the NYT “Green Blog”, new South Texas Project reactors have been taken few regulatory steps and the nuclear renaissance is in full swing. Perhaps Govenor Perry is praying for them but,
one of the partners in that venture was the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which was sidelined from participation by the Fukushima Daiichi accident in Japan. NRG itself cited the accident when it said it would not put more money into the project. Fukushima aside, the economics of the expensive nuclear project are far from clear because low natural gas prices have depressed electricity prices in Texas’s competitive market.
-
At 4 cents a kilowatt hour — roughly what natural gas is now going for — the coastal wind is about as cheap an electricity source, renewable or otherwise, as Austin Energy officials say they could find. The deal will not raise rates, according to an Austin Energy analysis. … By way of comparison, the operators of the South Texas Project nuclear facility had approached Austin earlier this year about investing in an expansion of that facility. But NRG Energy’s emissaries were floating a price around 8 cents per kilowatt hour. Austin Energy officials were skeptical, and the deal fell apart before negotiations could begin because one of the deal’s backers, Tokyo Electric Power Company , owns the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant that was hit by the tsunami earlier this year.
Good for Austin, perhaps there won’t be a Fukushima on the Gulf after all.
-
-
-
Ralph Nader, counts the cost of that cutting as nastier food, more dangerous workplaces and transportation, more pollution and a less stable economy.
-
Anti-Trust
-
Data in the letter undermines AT&T’s primary justification for the massive deal, while highlighting how AT&T is willing to pay a huge premium simply to reduce competition and keep T-Mobile out of Sprint’s hands.
-
PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
-
Microsoft’s “decision engine” more likely to lead users to a Web page than searches through rival Google, study finds.
This is what Microsoft has claimed all along, that their advertising engine was more effective at leading to advertisers. The problem with this study is population bias in the 10% of people who keep Bing around. These are people more likely to take what they are given and exert less effort, which is why they use Microsoft’s default search engine in the first place. Given that bias, the 13% difference in “success rate” probably indicates what we already know, that most users don’t want Bing because it does not work well. I hope this “success rate” is more a twist by Information Week than an indication that Hitwise has been taken into Microsoft orbit.
-
Censorship
-
I was set up like a bowling pin.
-
Civil Rights
-
Pretty soon only the community colleges — you know, the lowest level of the system — will be state-financed in any serious sense. And even they’re under attack. And analysts generally agree, I’m quoting, “The era of affordable four-year public universities heavily subsidized by the state may be over.” … Economist Doug Henwood points out that it would be quite easy to make higher education completely free. In the U.S., it accounts for less than 2 percent of gross domestic product.
-
Internet/Net Neutrality
-
5: Improper NXDOMAIN handling, 4: Clickstream Tracking, 3: Ad Swapping, 2: Affiliate Program Pumping, 1: Rolling Over … I’ve got more to say on this last topic, but there is a clock that must run out before I am permitted to write. Tick-tock, a couple days to go.
-
Intellectual Monopolies
Permalink
Send this to a friend
« Previous Page — « Previous entries « Previous Page · Next Page » Next entries » — Next Page »
