09.20.11
Posted in Antitrust, Microsoft, Patents, Search at 1:31 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Extortion company escapes untouched
Summary: Microsoft racketeering comes to Casio and the regulators are catching up with Microsoft’s older abuses of the market, which rely on elimination of choice rather than outright extortion of the competitors that won (with Linux)
Microsoft is bleeding billions in areas that are not reported or under-reported (the company has billions in debt to repay). According to this timely new article, the ‘hidden’ part keeps getting uglier, with Bing now losing at the pace of $4,000,000,000 per year. Surely Microsoft will need to come up with a new business model and the mafia-like business model is what Microsoft chose when it signed a deal with Novell, which is why we cannot ignore Microsoft. It uses patent trolls to attack Linux (an antitrust violation) and builds anti-Linux legal instruments/cartels (which are an antitrust violation too).
According to this one Microsoft booster, the list of Linux companies Microsoft is extorting has just increased somewhat. “On September 20,” writes the booster, “Microsoft officials said that Microsoft and Casio Computer Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of Casio Worldwide, had entered into a “a broad, multiyear patent cross-licensing agreement that, among other things, will provide Casio’s customers with patent coverage for their use of Linux in certain Casio devices.””
It is possibly only FAT but Microsoft states that it is “Linux” just to scare people. That’s based on what we recently learned from OIN. This whole thing is secret because if details were known, it would be easier to nail Microsoft for antitrust violations (see the Barnes & Nobel case). According to another one of today’s ZDNet blog pieces (masquerading as news), “Spain begins antitrust investigation into Microsoft,” but as we learned from Cablegate, US politicians are likely to help Microsoft dodge this. To quote the nature of this investigation:
Spain’s competition commission said on Tuesday it has opened an anti-trust investigation into Microsoft’s Spanish and Irish subsidiaries, on grounds that the company “blocked the sale by third parties” of PC software licences.
Though details at this stage are sketchy, it is thought that the watchdog believes that collected information could indicate a possible violation of Spanish competition regulations.
The investigation and ruling “must be completed within 18 months“, the Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch reports.
How about they start going after Microsoft for patent extortion? There are clearly laws relating to racketeering [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] and it’s a more urgent matter. █
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Servers, Windows at 1:05 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Acid3 results for Internet Explorer 8.0
Summary: Why Microsoft’s erosion in the server side (usage-wise, not revenue-wise) is likely to further motivate erosion on the desktop
HE WHO controls the back room will also dominate the client side, be it cellphones and desktops or whatever. It’s a well known fact and one that must really worry Microsoft.
Major Microsoft outages may lead to ASA intervention for false advertising. There is this new article about the Hotmail outage, sent to us yesterday by a reader. This whole downtime mess helps demonstrate what happens when one relies on Windows and other Microsoft products. Just watch how Microsoft fails to tackle ARM compatibility issues, even in the mythical Vista 8 which lacks support for browser plugins and is likely to suffer a backlash similar to Vista’s when it’s out in 2 or more years. It has been advertised since April 2009, 4+ years in advance (a time period throughout which a GNU/Linux distribution might have 8+ new versions released).
Going back to Web services, this is where GNU/Linux is clearly winning as we noted some days ago. The Inquirer has this to add:
Microsoft’s IIS webserver is the second most widely used webserver daemon after Apache. While it never occupied the top spot, at one point in 2007 it was starting to get close to Apache’s hugely popular webserver software. However since 2008, its market share plummeted and while it still manages to hold onto second place, there’s the best part of 50 percentage points difference between Apache and Microsoft’s IIS and the Vole’s IIS apparently is back to the level of market share that it saw in 1997.
Apache’s HTTPD webserver is popular for two reasons. It runs on just about every operating system out there, and it can be implemented in other products such as Oracle’s own application server products. Microsoft’s IIS, on the other hand, is closed source and runs only on Windows, so it’s no surprise that it lags behind Apache’s more robust and flexible sofware offering.
Microsoft failed so badly that it decided to just hijack Yahoo and eventually iinstalled a henchwoman there. Microsoft might be preparing to formally scoop up Yahoo! and maybe Nokia too, at least at a later stage (when it becomes cheap). Check out the news following Microsoft's passage of Nokia's patents to patent trolls (an antitrust issue):
Finnish mobile phone company Nokia has been deleted from the Stoxx Europe 50 index, a benchmark index owned by Deutsche Börse and the SIX Swiss Exchange Group that tallies the top 50 largest European corporations.
Late in August, Stoxx announced that Nokia would be delisted from the Stoxx 50 index, along with three banks: Intesa Sanpaolo and Unicredit from Italy, and GRP Societe Generale from France. Meaning the former powerhouse mobile phone maker is no longer big enough to be considered one of Europe’s biggest corporations.
Steve Ballmer keeps talking about Windows phones that don’t exist yet (see articles in the the previous post) and Microsoft is trying to make people think of about mythical versions of Windows rather than today’s version of Windows. What does that tell us? █
“In the face of strong competition, Evangelism’s focus may shift immediately to the next version of the same technology, however. Indeed, Phase 1 (Evangelism Starts) for version x+1 may start as soon as this Final Release of version X.”
–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]
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Posted in Microsoft, Novell, Patents at 12:24 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Why Microsoft matters less and why we must still keep track of Microsoft nonetheless (mainly due to patent lawsuits)
BACK when this site led a push against Novell, it was evident that Novell was a fairly strong company. In 2006 it had one of the best GNU/Linux distributions for the desktop, namely SLED 10 with XGL. Microsoft then stepped in and ruined it for Novell, harming the momentum and also ensuring that any of Novell’s momentum would become Microsoft’s (Mono, Linux tax, and so on). Microsoft’s parasitic nature capitalised on patents that year. It devoured whatever parts of Novell it found valuable and in 2009 Novell was already out of breath. So we started concentrating on Novell’s masters at Microsoft, spending the next year or two going through many of Microsoft’s behavioural patterns that recur in the news. We also documented selected Comes vs. Microsoft exhibits, which offer a look back in time. There came a time in late 2010 when almost any story we covered was deja vu-filled and even a case of repetition with new examples. So we started focusing on the mechanism which Microsoft was exploiting (by that stage, Apple had already joined Microsoft’s cartel-like efforts). Yes, we are talking about patents. I spent an hour talking to a friend today about how the Western system depends on so-called ‘IPR’ to ensure it gets paid without producing. Our recent Cablegate posts show the political process — including back-room deals and secret treaties — that are necessary to impose this system on producing nations which oughtn’t have interest in IPR. We hope that going deep into the core of the issue, even if this done by using secret communications/leaks, will help advance the Free software ideology. We never hid this ‘agenda’, which is mostly ethical as it promotes equality and freedom.
So getting to the main point, this site was never about Microsoft even though it covered a lot of Microsoft after Novell had become insignificant. Some detractors of this site did try to portray it as a case of “zealotry” against Microsoft, even though we criticise a wide range of companies large and small, from small FUD shops to giants like IBM and GE (we also praise many companies, including those that we criticise when they do something positive). They are far, far bigger than Microsoft. Based on this new report that a reader sent us yesterday, Microsoft has become the company that can’t grow (while Apple and IBM both pass it in terms of market cap). Quoting the opening part:
A rising tide of investor agitation over Microsoft Corp’s static share price and bulging cash hoard made no mark at the software company’s annual meeting with Wall Street analysts and fund managers on Wednesday.
Linux is a major part of Microsoft’s problems, but it is not being called “Linux”. As Pogson points out, Android has doubled while Ballmer is forced to admit failure:
Two major players are increasingly dominating the smartphone OS market: Apple with its iOS-based iPhones and Google’s army of Android devices. Microsoft wants a piece of the smartphone pie as well with Windows Phone 7 (WP7), but so far its efforts have fallen way short.
According to AllThingsD, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has stated at the Microsoft financial analyst meeting that, “We haven’t sold quite as many as I would have liked in the first year.” Ballmer did insist that the company is working hard to make the WP7 platform more appealing – the upcoming “Mango” release will help quite a bit on this front.
Microsoft is also trying to make a lot of money out of Android. It is regularly being reported that Microsoft makes more money from Android (through patent extortion) than from its own platform. This is why, despite the decline of Microsoft, Techrights simply cannot ignore this company. Keeping track of Microsoft is common sense, not an obsession. We will diversify a bit as time permits while priorities change; the goal is still to protect the freedom of software and thus empower software developers. It’s not about Microsoft. █
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Posted in News Roundup at 5:33 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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Desktop
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We get hands on with Samsung’s Series 5 3G, the first Chromebook on the market and the international role model for Google’s ambitious new PC landscape.
After a pilot program in December in which Google shipped out the first prototype Cr48 Chromebooks to beta testers in the United States, the first commercial Chromebooks started shipping in June to the United States and a handful of European countries.
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Server
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A2 Hosting says its MemHT hosting accounts include cPanel, free CloudFlare CDN service, free Server Rewind backups, the CloudLinux OS and Attracta tools to improve Google listing and rank.
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Once again IBM has done a fine job of making Power Systems all about Unix and Linux. It’s as interesting that this presentation is listed on the IBM i home page as it is that a presentation like this gets made with essentially no recognition that IBM i is part of the Power Systems equation. You can find it under the heading of “Special Offers,” where none of the four offers have anything to do with i.
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Audiocasts/Shows
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In this episode: Ubuntu should move to a monthly release, according to Scott Remnant. Bruce Perens has come up with a new scheme for copyright ownership and Linux Format turns 150. Hear how successful we are at discovering things, building mesh networks and thinking up excuses.
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Kernel Space
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Linux 3.1 contains all the necessary components for passing through PCI devices to Xen guests; KVM offers rudimentary nested virtualisation support for Intel CPUs. Supported CPU platforms now include the OpenRISC open source processor architecture.
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Graphics Stack
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Last month I alluded to a 40-way graphics card comparison being worked on at Phoronix. This comparison is to extensively compare the performance of the open and closed-source drivers for each graphics card and to comprehensively comment on other areas of the Linux graphics driver support. Not only is the OpenGL performance being evaluated, but the thermal performance, CPU utilization, and power consumption is being looked at too. Being published today to mark the beginning of the Oktoberfest 2011 articles are the ATI/AMD Radeon results. This includes 28 of the 40 graphics cards, with GPUs as old as the Radeon X800XL and as new as the AMD Radeon HD 6950.
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Applications
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Instructionals/Technical
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Games
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Desura has launched a new Alpha Funding initiative very similar to other crowdfunding projects like Kickstarter and 8 bit Funding. 5 Indie games have been selected as launch titles and out of which 3 will have Linux versions in future.
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For those into open-source real-time strategy games, there’s a new alpha release of the growingly-popular 0 A.D. game.
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The open source channel is known for a lot of things, but breathtaking games isn’t one of them. That may change soon, though, thanks to the people behind the open source game 0 A.D., which in its latest iteration brings gorgeous and elegant gaming to the free software world — and it’s still in alpha. Read on for a look at the amazing things these volunteer programmers have accomplished in recent months, and what they mean for the open source channel as a whole.
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Desura website has been updated and a whole lot of new Linux games have been added. The main page of Desura now features a nice Tux icon at the top. Users are taken to Linux games database once clicked.
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Deepak Fights Robots is a fun arcade and platform game for Linux by Tom Sennett. The game is highly inspired by Bubble Bobble, Donkey Kong, and Pac-Man.
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Desktop Environments
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Human beans of the two legged kind love variety. That is why we always are changing the drapes, moving the furniture and continuously buying new clothes. We like to show our individuality in the way we present our personal surroundings to other people.
Yet when it comes to compooters there is no such choice for many people. Because they use proprietary operating systems they are very limited in choice for what they can do to customise their “computer room” and have it look and work in a manner to suit their individuality.
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Two developments in the Linux world have spawned a hell of an amount of comment: Canonical’s decision to develop Unity for Ubuntu and the arrival of GNOME 3. While there have been many complaints about the changes made in both, there must be a fair few folk who are just getting on with using them without complaint. Maybe there are many who even quietly like the new interfaces. While I am not so sure about Unity, I surprised myself by taking to GNOME Shell so much that I installed it on Linux Mint. It remains a work in progress as does Unity but it’ll be very interesting to see it mature. Perhaps a good number of the growing collection of GNOME Shell plugins could make it into the main codebase. If that were to happen, I could see it being welcomed by a good few folk.
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)
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The last couple of weeks have been ridiculously busy. Or, if you prefer (and I do): ridicubusy. On the personal side of life, I managed to squeeze in a two day paddle-and-camping trip the other weekend, played dinner host to Lawrence Krauss (made some of my favourite dishes, and one new one (for me, anyways): egg yolk ravioli), co-hosted a “Ready, Steady, Cook!” evening at the house along with S. All of that was enjoyable, and great breaks between the long hours of working on Plasma and general KDE “stuff”.
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Linux fans, do you burn CDs for multiple distros and have to update those CDs when a new version comes out? As long as you have access to a wired internet connection you can download the latest versions of 7 distros directly from the disc.
A CD-ROM burned with NetbootCD allows you to download and install the latest versions of CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, OpenSUSE, Slackware, or Ubuntu.
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From the beginning the Salix OS developers made clear that they had no intention of competing with Ubuntu or Mandriva and they were not trying to create a newcomer-friendly distribution that would be easy for Windows or MacOS users. Rather, they described the target audience as “lazy Slackers.” I’ve always understood that to mean Linux users who want the reliability, stability and performance that Slackware consistently delivers but who also want modern conveniences and features like automated dependency resolution, automated notification when patches are available and a first class set of tools to administer their systems. If those are truly the goals then Salix OS meets them admirably.
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Nobody can argue there are 2 major Desktop Environments now in Linux world: GNOME and KDE take lion part in installed Linux desktop systems. Most Linux distributions are released with at least one of them available.
But since system requirements for resources of KDE and GNOME are rather high and growing, there is more and more space for lighter desktop environments like LXDE and XFCE.
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I am beginning to feel this curse with the choice of distributions available today. Let me start with a little background information. I have been a regular Linux user on desktops and servers since about 2006. In that time I have mostly worked with Debian, Ubuntu, and CentOS. I have had the pleasure of building a desktop from the ground up using a Debian net install CD. I have setup other users with Ubuntu and Fedora on desktops and netbooks. I have installed new servers and re-purposed retired ones. In short, I can be considered a semi power user, still not among the experts but a bit better than an average user. And this is where the curse strikes most often.
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The project I’ve been working on does require a bit of thought around enterprise Linux versions run by a community. There is the ever amazing CentOS, Scientific Linux and a few others who have been around the block a time or two. The work that they have done has been immense and very helpful to many, including me.
For my project, the work was about building a fully binary compatible, enterprise-ready, community version of Linux, very similar to what CentOS and others have done. The question always comes ‘why?’ which will be addressed later on in future posts. Suffice it to say, the work we’ve been doing has paid off in both a individual and community sense.
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New Releases
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Macpup is a small,light OS. The .Iso is only 164 MB.It runs in ram and is very fast. It is not a striped down,bare bones,basic core OS. Macpup is a full featured systemright out of the box with apps for office,graphics,multimedia,internetand much more.And it looks really cool.
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After countless years of development, the 2.0 release of GeeXboX (codename “Love It or Shove It”) finally has landed. The GeeXboX project was created in December 2002, 9 years ago, to become the major HTPC / MediaCenter dedicated Linux distribution. From a ridiculous 3 MB ISO image, using an ultra-simple customized version of MPlayer OSD, GeeXboX now has evolved into a much more mature system. Our objective always has been to provide you with a Linux distribution, so easy to use, that anyone, regardless of any computer skill, would be able to make use of it.
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PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family
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Yesterday, September 18, was Mageia’s first birthday. It was one year ago that a fork of Mandrake Linux was announced. From the start Mageia decided to take a new tack in distribution development. They synthesized the community and professional models of development in way no other had quite done before and it’s paying off. Mageia recently unleashed their inaugural release and received overwhelmingly positive reviews.
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Red Hat Family
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Red Hat, Inc. provides open source software solutions to enterprises worldwide. It also offers enterprise-ready open source operating system platforms. The company was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina.
* 52 Week High: $49.00
* 52 Week Low: $31.77
* Book Value: $6.88
* Float Short: 2.06%
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Fedora Community
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The global Software Freedom Day was held Saturday, September 17th. However, as with previous years, the SFD organizers landed their event on the same day as Fredericksburg’s downtown Oktoberfest celebration. We love a good party as much as anyone, but we found in previous years that even though we had more foot traffic our SFD event, most passersby were not interested in software as much as beer and bratwursts. (Go figure!)
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Debian Family
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The bottom line: I have been recommending Linux Mint for quite some time now – I happen to have gotten back an ASUS netbook from a friend over the weekend which was loaded with Linux Mint 8, and had been in daily use without a hiccup for a couple of years. The only change now is that I will be recommending the Mint Debian editions first, rather then the Mint Ubuntu editions. If you haven’t tried Linux Mint yet, this would be a very good time to do so.
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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The stunningly fast ability to install applications at a moments notice is one of the primary reasons Linux is so popular. Ubuntu systems by default comes with the Synaptic package manager or the Ubuntu software center, whichever you prefer. You can also install packages from the internet or from the command line. New items are downloaded through software repositories which store collections of applications that are bundled into packages. When you choose an item to install from the package manager all relevant packages required by an application will also be installed. When you install Ubuntu only the official application repositories are accessed but more can be added without too much trouble.
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I don’t recommend using Déjà Dup to hold your data when you upgrade distros (e.g. from Ubuntu 11.04 to 11.10) without understanding the risks.
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Flavours and Variants
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In what we can now call it a tradition, we celebrate the Software Freedom Day by publishing our latest release: Trisquel GNU/Linux 5.0 STS, codename Dagda.
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Ten days ago the Bodhi Team and I released our second update to Bodhi Linux 1.0.0 Today I am happy to let all of our users that have limited or no-internet access machines know that our service pack 2 is ready for download. For those that do not know our service packs allow for a single download upgrade of your Bodhi system from the previous stable release to the current (those still on Bodhi 1.0.0 will need to install service pack 1 followed by service pack 2).
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Canonical recently released its Beta version of Kubuntu 11.10, Oneiric Ocelot, with all eyes toward the final release scheduled for October 13. We take a look at this release and the new KDE 4.7 Desktop and Netbook Plasma Workspaces.
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Regular readers might remember my review of Pinguy OS 10.10.1 this past April.
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A friend of mine brought me his computer for fixing, a Compaq Presario with XP Home. It was in a reboot loop. I told him about Linux, and all its advantages, and he agreed to try it. I grabbed my PCLinuxOS CD and installed it in a matter minutes. Everything was working, but something about that particular hardware was not sitting well with it. It kept freezing. This is the first time I see this, as all other machines I have installed it on have been very stable. My guess is that it has to do with the graphics. The machine has and old built-in Intel graphics adapter. I did not have a proper graphics card laying around to give him, so I figured I wouldn’t fight it.
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I decided to install Linux Mint LXDE for one reason really – I use a Dell Vostro with 2gb RAM and a Core2Duo running at 2.2ghz. I simply wanted the fasted machine possible given the spec of the hardware.
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RoweBots announced that its minimalist, Linux- and POSIX-compatible “Unison” real-time operating system (RTOS) powers eSight’s Alivios Intelligent Eyewear. Currently in clinical trials, Alivios helps to improve vision in people with eye diseases such as macular degeneration, combining Unison OS 5.2, a Texas Instruments (TI) DaVinci processor, an HD video camera, and “near-to-eye” displays, says the company.
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Phones
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Android
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With 500,000 activations a day, Android is becoming the dominant player in the mobile eco-system…
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Back in 2008, the project initially began under the name of the “iPhone Linux Project.” This project aimed to boot a Linux kernel, and by the end of 2008, this aim had been achieved. The year after, the hacker behind the iPhone Linux Project surprised everybody by presenting a working first-generation iPhone running Android OS: The iDroid Project was born.
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According to data from Kantar Worldpanel Comtech, in the 12 weeks ended 7 August, Android had 47.1 per cent share of the UK smartphone market, compared with 22.9 per cent during the same period a year earlier.
Apple’s IOS however, has fallen by eight per cent to 20.8 per cent share from 28 per cent a year earlier, as Android surged in popularity.
RIM’s Blackberry OS was the second most popular with 21.5 per cent of the market, up four per cent from 17.4 per cent a year earlier.
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Prepaid phone provider Boost Mobile announced a mid-range Samsung smartphone with a QWERTY keyboard and a $230 no-contract price tag. The Samsung Transform Ultra runs Android 2.3 on a 1GHz processor, and offers 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS, a three-megapixel camera, a front-facing VGA webcam, and Android Market support, the mobile provider says.
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Samsung’s Galaxy S II, Epic 4G Touch is a mouthful to say and a handful to hold, but the 1.2GHz dual-core processor and Sprint’s 4G WiMAX network make it worth the $200 on contract, says this review. Battery life suffers on 4G, but from the 4.5-inch Super AMOLED Plus display to the responsive cameras, there’s a lot to like.
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If there ever was evidence that FLOSS is a better way to do IT, the smart phone is it:
* lots of choices for the consumer
* Android/Linux (FLOSS OS from Google) shipments at 47.1% of the market, up 105% over last year
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High context cultures value personal relationships over process. You have to know someone before you can trust them and work with them. They also tend to be less explicit and rely more on tone of voice, gestures and even status to communicate. Typically Asian countries are more high context than Western countries. Think Korea and Japan.
Low context cultures are process driven. They rely on facts and processes. Their communication style is much more direct and action-orientated. They are orientated towards the individual rather than the group. Western cultures like the US and Germany are considered low context.
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Generation Z is beginning to join the workforce. This age group–born between the early 1990s and early 2000s–has never really existed in a world without the web or lacking the widespread use of cell phones, laptops, and freely available wireless networks and digital media.
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Web Browsers
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Mozilla
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Firefox 7 beta is now the default web browser in Ubuntu 11.10 Onceric Ocelot beta and for the first time ever, Firefox scores a perfect 100 in Acid3 tests. Congratulations Mozilla!
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One of the big things that Mozilla’s Thunderbird has been missing for years is a calendar. It’s usually the number one thing I hear about whenever anyone compares Thunderbird against Outlook.
That’s where the Mozilla Lighting project is supposed to come – providing a Calendar plugin (based on Mozilla Sunbird) for Thunderbird.
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Databases
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If you haven’t heard about NoSQL by now, we contend that you’ve been in hiding for the past three years. The term NoSQL itself refers to a broad class of data management that is not based on the traditional relational tables in typical RDBMS. Examples include document-based data storage such as MongoDB, key-value pair such as Riak, or column-based storage such as HBase.
While assessing usage of NoSQL, we are often presented with the CAP model which is great from the theoretical perspective, but grasping its implications on real world enterprise systems is difficult.
In this post, we’ll explain some of the design factors and the associated implications of using NoSQL in the context of three data-centric enterprise applications: Portal, Reporting and Analytics. Enterprise transactional systems are not included for obvious reasons.
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Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
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LibreOffice in Ubuntu 11.10 will not come with global menu support enabled by default.
Announcing the minor change via his blog, Canonical’s Björn Michaelsen cited ‘stabiltiy concerns’ as the main reason for disabling the add-on by default.
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Business
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Funding
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Openness/Sharing
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Open Data
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In a curious way, then, I find myself overwhelmed by the consultation and the issues it raises.
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The latest salvo in Sony v World is that Sony wants users of its Playstation Network to agree not to sue. Imagine going into a “mom and pop” shop on the street and telling the clerk, “I’d like to buy that can of unhomogenized peanut butter.” only to be told, “Sorry, we don’t do business with people who might sue us…”. That should not be part of any model of business no matter the size. Businesses should compete on price/performance and let their quality of service fend off attacks. If people don’t hate you, they are unlikely to sue. That works for me. I have never been sued.
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Trolling
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Finance
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When it comes to government money, it’s always about insiders running circles around the government money and pocketing a piece. Don’t ever forget that. And usually, there is a crony investment banker as part of the program.
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Lloyd Blankfein retains Reid Weingarten amid the governments inquiry into the financial crisis. The move hints there could be new push to investigate the firm and its executives on criminal grounds.
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The FHFA’s massive bank lawsuit extravaganza is a reminder of the horrific behavior that took place inside the subprime mortgage machine: fraud.
In it’s lawsuit against Goldman Sachs, the FHFA claims that Goldman directly committed common law fraud, and particularly claims that Goldman “aided and abetted fraud.”
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Small investors, take note: The smart money isn’t sure what to make of the economy, either.
Some market strategists say the recent drop in stock prices means the market is expecting a recession. Banks like Goldman Sachs and others have lowered their year-end forecasts for the Standard & Poor’s 500 index. And Mark Zandi, the much-followed economist from Moody’s, says the chance that the economy will fall into another recession is 40 percent.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Copyrights
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File sharing lawsuits involving the movie the Hurt Locker have been big news in the United States for months as tens of thousands of lawsuits have been filed against individuals alleged to have illegally downloaded the movie. The lawsuits have now made their way into Canada as the Federal Court of Canada has ordered the identification of subscribers at Bell Canada, Cogeco, and Videotron who face similar copyright infringement claims.
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