10.16.11

Links – Microsoft Security Failure, Spyware, Pollution and Corruption

Posted in Site News at 5:13 pm by Guest Editorial Team

Reader’s Picks

• Security

  • bittorrent.com cracked

    Malware was put into Windows client software.

  • Germany admits to running malware to spy on citizens.

    The software is capable of spying on keystrokes, recording Skype and other desktop programs, recording from the microphone and planting evidence on victims computers. The software is also insecure. “Windows” is not mentioned but Bundestrojaner is a typical piece of Microsoft only Malware. Richard Stallman reminds us that Windows itself is malware[2]

  • USAF spills a few details about Windows malware infesting their killer drone base.

    They said it was first noticed on “a stand-alone mission support network using a Windows-based operating system.” And they called it “a credential stealer,” transmitted by portable hard drives. … didn’t say whether the clean-up process had been completed; insiders report that the infection has been particularly difficult to remove, requiring hard drives to be erased and rebuilt.

    The statement was released in OOXML format,do you feel lucky? It nonsensically says, “The malware in question is a credential stealer, not a keylogger,” and demonstrates a misplaced confidence in Windows security through anti-virus and other snake oil.

• Defence/Police/Aggression

  • 12 made up and selectively enforced laws used to harass the Occupy protests around the US

    Chicago, Dallas and New York seem the most odious. Responses like the human microphone have actually made the protests more effective

  • Meet the Guy Who Snitched on Occupy Wall Street to the FBI and NYPD

    An Open Web Application Security Project member acted as an informer for the FBI and NYPD by infiltrating a mail list. He unintentionally revealed this when sending archive to a smear campaign. This is what Aaron Barr, working for HB Garry proposed to do for the US Chamber of commerce, but we don’t yet have evidence that this infiltrator also engaged in impersonation or acted as a provocateur.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Global warming wrecks concrete.

    Higher temperatures will accelerate the action of salt water by 15 per cent but it is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that will do most damage. Later this century the extra acid produced in rainfall will attack concrete four times as fast as at present,

  • The European Commission voted to designate Canadian tar sand oil as particularly dirty for its high production of CO2.

    Transcandada prepares to build regardless of existing laws.

  • Koch pollution kills people in Arkansas

• Finance

  • Bush gave business a temporary tax break on “foreign profits”, which hurt the US treasury and did no good for the US economy. Now the same profiteers want it again.

    The usual villains, Apple Inc, Cisco Systems Inc, Oracle Corp and Microsoft Corp, are pushing for the tax breaks to bring home money stored in havens like Ireland. The last time they got their way, they put the money into bonuses and dividends rather than the promised investment and jobs.

  • Occupy Dublin Protests Grow in “Europe’s Next Greece”

    The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is hated in Ireland for their role last year in a major round of austerity measures that cut social services while bailing out Irish banks with over €85 billion. “The State has sold itself completely to the financial cartels,” a 42 year-old unemployed construction worker tells me. “They are transferring more wealth out of Ireland than British landlords ever did, and these are Irish people doing it!”

    Wall Street damage threatens more than Greece, Ireland and other smaller states.

  • The “rescuers” of Greece

    The “rescuers” of Greece say they will keep it from immediate default in exchange for additional painful cuts — and they will come back for more cuts next year. Greeks now plan to occupy government buildings. If they occupy Parliament quickly enough, they may prevent the current round of cuts from being passed, and force default now rather than later. The longer it is postponed, the more cuts.

• Anti-Trust

  • If DOJ Really Wants To Review Anticompetitive Patenting, Why Not Look At Intellectual Ventures?

  • Small rebuke for Apple in Australia

    An Australian judge has rejected Apple’s attempt to have Samsung forced to give the Cupertino company advance notice of new product launches, as well as have limitations placed on tablets other than the Galaxy Tab 10.1. Speaking of yesterday’s preliminary sales injunction ruling, Justice Annabelle Bennett told Apple that “it doesn’t apply to any other player in the marketplace,”

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Vulture capitalist smears Wall Street protesters through fake journalists
    

    Singer, manager of a $17 billion hedge fund, earned the moniker “vulture capitalist” for buying the debt of Third World countries for pennies on the dollar, then using his political and legal connections to extract massive judgments to force collection – even from nations suffering from starvation and violent conflicts. … Singer purchased near-bankrupt asbestos companies before his allies in Congress changed an asbestos-liability law to make his investment incredibly profitable.

• Privacy

  • That was fast. Facebook whent back to tracking everyone, not just facebook users, whether they like it or not.

    one of the tracking cookies used by Facebook, called “datr”, tracks users “even if the user had never been to the Facebook site, and even if they didn’t click a ‘like’ or share’ button”, Cubrilovic wrote. The cookie was previously disabled following revelations in The Wall Street Journal earlier this year but has since returned.

  • Automatic license plate recognition is being deployed in the US. It is not systematic and ubiquitous, as in the UK, but if there are enough recognizers the result could be the same.

  • Siri demands full data rape

    the things you say will be recorded and sent to Apple to process your requests. Your device will also send Apple other information, such as your first name and nickname; the names, nicknames, and relationship with you (e.g., ‘my dad’) of your address book contacts; and song names in your collection (collectively, your ‘User Data’). … you agree and consent to Apple’s and its subsidiaries’ and agents’ transmission, collection, maintenance, processing, and use of this information, including your voice input and User Data … If you have Location Services turned on, the location of your iOS Device at the time you make a request will also be sent to Apple

    The terms prove the practicality of all inclusive surveillance that privacy advocates have been warning us against for years. Non free phones can take the same with or without user consent.

• Education Watch

  • Voters in North Carolina turn out against Art Pope

  • The Washington state PTAs corrupted by Gates and Broad mostly represented rich schools in the first place.

  • Weekly Update for the Week of October 9, 2010

    Some weeks are just better than others when it comes to education news. This week was a great one in terms of outrages and atrocities

    Mark Zuckerberg takes over Newark schools with a modest, matched donation and arrogance, “letting the people have their say is not how professional philanthropy works.” There’s fraud in Florida charter schools. The US Secretary of Education walked on 1,000 parents at a LA meeting and spent more time with millionaires. A reporter was ejected from Jeb Bush’s Ed Summit in San Franscisco for asking about Rupert Murdoch. Charter schools in NY flunk DOE evaluations. California Gov. Jerry Brown wrote a tough indictment of testing based reform.

• Civil Rights

  • For the first time, the Israeli government has arrested someone for violence against Arabs.

  • Powerful resistance seems to be scuttling the Tories’ plans to destroy the UK National Health Service.

    People around the world should avoid becoming like the US.

  • Drug companies run sales campaigns disguised as research which kill patients and cost government and private insurance hundreds of billions.

  • New Free Trade Agreements Threaten to Kill Jobs and Labor Rights

    between 1993 and 2004, the US trade deficit with Mexico ballooned by $107 billion, which cost 1,015,290 US jobs, 123,000 in California. … Mexico lost a million jobs just in the first year the treaty took effect. Because the treaty allowed US grain companies to dump corn in Mexico, 1.3 million farmers lost their livelihood as well.

  • Rights of Return.

  • A brief or tortured US Supreme Court decisions that put big business interests ahead of everyone else and above the law.

  • Efforts to curb employment fraud.

    the US Department of Labor, the Internal Revenue Service, and 11 states announced that they were taking an important step toward stemming the practice of misclassifying workers as independent contractors, which robs workers of pay and benefits and puts those who follow the rules at a competitive disadvantage.

  • Turkey locks up student protesters using anti-terror laws.

  • Obama’s star chamber orders executions without audit.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Business method patent monopolies eat into biotech.

    some of the largest patent holders are showing signs that they are interested in the biotechnology sector. For example, Intellectual Ventures of Bellevue, Washington, founded by Nathan Myhrvold, a former Microsoft executive, owns hundreds of patents in the biotechnology industry.

  • Microsoft’s Subtle Knife Through the Heart of EU Software Industry

    What European politicians fail to understand is that bringing in software patents in this way will not benefit indigenous companies, but only the large US companies – since they are the ones with the money to patent in Europe every trivial idea they already claim in the US. Small European software houses that obtain them will either be forced to cross-license, or simply sued until they run out of money. Either way, software patents will bring them no advantages, and many disadvantages.

  • Copyrights

    • The hidden truth about astrology software

      After the shocking disappearance of the Olson time zone database … Robert Elz, an Australian computer scientist who has actively supported the tzinfo project throughout, has revived the time zone mailing list maintained at the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). My, but the list was active overnight, with dozens of people volunteering to host the database, move it to non-U.S. servers, and continue to research and develop it.

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Weekly Roundup: Microsoft EEE Strategy Against Software Freedom

Posted in FUD, GNU/Linux, Kernel, Microsoft at 11:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Threats by proximity and dependency, as covered in the news

Patents

Microsoft is attacking its competition with patents while IDG’s Microsoft boosters take a break from openwashing and whitewashing Microsoft, instead raving about the patents Microsoft gets with Skype. They also write about embrace & extend moves that put Microsoft nearer to the core of Linux, as we saw elsewhere recently.

Microsoft Linux

Mac Asay writes about Microsoft’s latest embrace and extend (for more proprietary lockin), which he comments on here (ignore the headline, Asay does not write the headlines). Microsoft exploits hooks even in the kernel, which is not new. We have explained Microsoft’s goals dozens of times before.

Black Duck

When releasing proprietary scareware is “Support[ing] Open Source” (news here too), then we know that Black Duck is lying again. But then again, Black Duck was created by a former marketing exectuive from Microsoft.

We already have a detailed idnex page about Black Duck. It explains what’s wrong with it, unlike newspapers that just repeat the deceitful press releases. █

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Google’s CEO Publicly Complains About Microsoft’s Legal Attacks on Android/Linux

Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 11:06 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Amid Google’s revelations about Microsoft funding for anti-Google lobbyists and trolls (who primarily use patent lawsuits and disinformation), the CEO too is complaining

MICROSOFT’S attacks on Linux have become more complicated and difficult to track. Some months ago Google validated our claims by saying that Apple was helping Microsoft fight against Android. A few days ago Google’s Matt Cutts showed that Microsoft Florian was in fact funded by Microsoft and in principle he is far from alone in it. There are many more examples, such as Edelman (the company too, by proxy). Then there are Microsoft patent trolls, such as Intellectual Ventures. It is getting hard not to see why Microsoft is detested, but at the same time it gets complicated to see the whole picture because Microsoft attacks from many directions at the same time. It’s not about competition but about subversion, litigation, harassment, defamation, etc. That’s Microsoft in a nutshell.

The software patents fans are cheering for Microsoft’s sponsorship of Microsoft Florian while others roll their eyes. “#FRAND licensing means a private tax on standards. #FFII prefers #open standards,” writes the FFII.

Following Microsoft’s Quanta deal that puts a Microsoft tax on Kindle Fire (Amazon already pays Microsoft for the older Kindle), this racketeering strategy is still a subject of discussion and Google’s CEO responds by explaining the impact on customers:

Google: Microsoft is Competing in Mobile by Harassing Customers

Google is continuing to grow its business even as the global economic recovery appears to be slowing down. Part of Google’s growth and future optimism comes from the success of its Android mobile operating system and new efforts like Google+.

For the third quarter of 2011, Google reported revenues of $9.72 billion which is a 33 percent year-over-year gain. Google’s own sites generated 69 percent of total revenues. Net Income was also on the rise, coming in at $2.73 billion up from $2.17 billion in 2010.

One of the key drivers for Google now and moving forward is its mobile strategy which is anchored by their Android operating system. During the company’s earnings call, Google CEO Larry Page stressed that his company was very excited about Android and the continued growth of the Android partner ecosystem.

Page also addressed the issue of how Microsoft is going after Android vendors. Multiple Android vendors including HTC and Samsung have signed agreements with Microsoft for patent issues related to Android. Both HTC and Samsung also work with Microsoft for Windows Phones.

“Rather than seeing, for example, Microsoft compete in the marketplace with their own smartphones, they’ve really continued resorting to legal measures to hassle their own customers, right? So it seems kind of odd,” Page said. “And we haven’t seen the details of those total agreements, and I suspect that our partners are making good deals for themselves there.”

Page added that Google has seen no signs that the attacks on Android have been successful. Google is also in the process of bolstering it own mobile patent portfolio with the pending acquisition of Motorola. Google announced its intention to acquire Motorola for $12.5 billion in August.

Google did the right thing by mentioning customers. This is not just an attack on Google.

In a sane industry, the constitution would take effect and actually defend the customers’ interests. But since the SCOTUS is deep in the mud with corporate interests covering its eyes [1, 2], we expect no such intervention to occur. In fact, there is this new video about how SCOTUS serves as a constitutional gateway (which is clearly shut). From C-SPAN:

Justices Breyer and Scalia testified on the role of judges in the American republic and democratic systems within the U.S. Question topics included the politicization of the judicial confirmation process…

The SCOTUS is not about justice and the courts are not about law. The constitution and various important acts like the RICO Act are mere relish when it’s corporations (rich people) — not people — who run the nation. Did the October 15^th protests make a change everyone can believe in? Is the two-party system listening to its people yet? Or just to its campaign’s funding sources (plutocrats)? We shall see. A response will need to be issued to this petition. █

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Novell is on Fire

Posted in Novell at 10:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Some new Novell videos about old products that are being destroyed under Attachmate’s reign, giving more business to Microsoft

WE HAVE clearly fallen behind when it comes to covering Novell, but then again, nothing major has happened except the recent conference. Novell’s accounts uploads some more videos to YouTube, including this one which was viewed more than the rest:

Novell’s business in Australia gets new oversight, but the clientbase is burning quite quickly because Attachmate is too passive. A couple of days ago people uploaded this burning of Novell:

“We finally converted 50 Terabytes and 44,000 users off of Novell Netware onto Windows,” says the video description. “This was our official Novell media burning celebration” (tough going).

Here is a lighter new video about Novell. Much of the rest is about BrainShare talks and products like Groupwise, which only has minor updates [1, 2] and no major new releases. But unusually (at these times), Novell issues a PR statement about BrainShare as well as a new video about a dead product, which gets published for no obvious reason.

Let’s face it. Novell is not going to see any resurgence. Attachmate’s job is to squeeze out what’s left of it. █

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10.15.11

IRC Proceedings: October 15th, 2011

Posted in IRC Logs at 7:56 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Enter the IRC channels now

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IRC Proceedings: October 14th, 2011

Posted in IRC Logs at 7:45 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Enter the IRC channels now

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Links 15/10/2011: Puppy Linux 5.2, Government of Paraguay Wants Software Freedom

Posted in News Roundup at 7:02 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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OpenSUSE Misuses or Overuses the Word Open

Posted in Microsoft, Novell, OpenSUSE at 2:42 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

An open trap

Summary: How OpenSUSE openwashes SUSE’s identity even when there is nothing open in this Microsoft-taxed GNU/Linux distribution

AS WE POINTED out the other day, SUSE keeps putting “open” in front of everything even though it’s merely the openwashing of Microsoft tax on GNU/Linux. This needs to be pointed out more often. Earlier today we spotted SUSE employees cursing (very rudely in response to this) and abusing SUSE sceptics, so we must be on the right subject.

“Replace that with “Microsoft” if it helps. MicrosoftQA, MicrosoftSUSE, Microsoft Build Service, etc.”First they used “openQA” to get free labour (they still promote this scheme) even though we know that they only give the illusion that it is community controlled. It is being called “Open” even though SUSE makes many decisions (like the Microsoft deal) without consulting the community for a second. To keep up appearance they hold some elections, they call everything “Open”, and then there is OBS, the Open Build spinola. The bottom line is, the word “open” is easily misleading here. Replace that with “Microsoft” if it helps. MicrosoftQA, MicrosoftSUSE, Microsoft Build Service, etc. SUSE is sponsored by Microsoft and it is hardly run by a community. All that openwashing is laughable at best. The person who advertises this whole “open” PR is an Attachmate employee, so he is not “community” or “open”, either. █

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