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11.06.12

Links 6/11/2012: OEMs Explore Linux (HP Included), Linux 3.7 RC4 is Out, Red Hat Explores China, GNOME 3.8 Features Outlined

Posted in News Roundup at 11:04 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • British have invaded nine out of ten countries – so look out Luxembourg

    Britain has invaded all but 22 countries in the world in its long and colourful history, new research has found.

  • Republicans target three Florida Supreme Court justices
  • Trial lawyers who frequent the Supreme Court also financing pro-justices ads

    The three Florida Supreme Court justices had angered lawmakers and voters, embarrassed the high court and faced uncertain futures.

    In 1975, Justices Joseph Boyd, Hal Dekle, and David McCain were accused of giving behind-the-scenes favors to friends and writing opinions to benefit campaign-contributors. Boyd eventually was reprimanded after lawmakers required he take and pass a mental exam. Dekle and McCain resigned before the Florida House of Representatives could impeach them.

  • Why Don’t We Know How Much “Dark Money” Groups Have Spent On the Election?
  • The next president of austerity

    THE PRESIDENTIAL election between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney is incredibly close.

    It’s close in the way you read about every day in the media: Opinion polls show the two candidates are neck and neck, with just days to go. But it’s also close in ways you never hear about–not from the press, nor the candidates, nor their supporters. On important political questions, Obama and Romney stand so close to each other that their similarities outweigh their differences.

  • Koch’s Americans for Prosperity Brings Ann Coulter to Madison in a Last-Minute Push to Stop “Obama’s Failing Agenda”
  • Cops Raid Free Poker Tournament, Because in Florida Gambling Does Not Require Betting

    For years the Nutz Poker League, along with several competitors, has been running free tournaments at bars and restaurants in the Tampa Bay area. It makes money by taking a cut of what players spend on food and drinks. The players accumulate points based on their spending as well as their poker performance and can ultimately win prizes such as vacations, cruises, laptops, cameras, and “various unique poker gifts.”

  • Woman Utterly Pillaged via Airbnb

    What was missing was nearly as disturbing as what was scattered; a Passport, credit card, cash and Emily’s grandmother’s jewelry were missing from the locked, smashed up closet; also missing were an external backup drive containing “my entire life,” and an iPod, camera and old laptop; Ugg boots and a Roots cap. Also creepy was how the vandal emailed her repeatedly during his or her week long stay, “thanking me for being such a great host, for respecting his/her privacy, telling me how much he/she was enjoying my beautiful apartment bathed in sunlight.”

    Emily has been working with the San Francisco police — they reportedly have a suspect — and with her banks and the credit bureaus. She says she hasn’t slept or eaten in days.

  • Do bans on texting while driving actually increase accidents?

  • Hardware

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • UK supreme court says rendition of Pakistani man was unlawful
    • Hillsborough survivors: police bullied us to change evidence
    • Teargas fired at protesters in Kuwait City

      Kuwaiti security forces have fired teargas to disperse a banned demonstration by about 2,000 opposition supporters against new voting rules for parliamentary elections due on 1 December.

      Kuwait, a US ally and member of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, has so far avoided the mass pro-democracy unrest that has toppled rulers in four other Arab countries since last year, but tension has mounted this year in a long-running power struggle between parliament and the government which is dominated by the ruling al-Sabah family.

    • Cop used Taser gun on 10-year-old boy
    • Supreme Court is asked to be skeptical of drug-sniffing dogs

      Aldo the German shepherd and Franky the chocolate Lab are drug-detecting dogs who have been retired to opposite ends of the ultimate retiree state.

      But their work is still being evaluated, and on Wednesday it will be before the Supreme Court. The justices must decide whether man’s best friend is an honest broker as blind to prejudice as Lady Justice, or as prone as the rest of us to a bad day at the office or the ma­nipu­la­tion of our partners.

    • Girl gets a year in jail, 100 lashes for adultery

      The District Court in Jeddah pronounced the verdict on Saturday after the girl confessed that she had a forced sexual intercourse with a man who had offered her a ride. The man, the girl confessed, took her to a rest house, east of Jeddah, where he and four of friends assaulted her all night long.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Censorship

    • Ridiculous: Vietnam Sentences Musicians To Jail For Songs That Protest Government Actions
    • Vietnam Sentences 2 Musicians to Prison Terms on Propaganda Charges

      A court in Vietnam has sentenced two musicians to prison for writing and distributing protest songs, a decision that drew fire from the United States and international human-rights groups, The Associated Press reported. The musicians, Vo Minh Tri and Tran Vu Anh Binh, were convicted on Tuesday of spreading propaganda against the state after a half-day trial in Ho Chi Minh City, a defense lawyer said. Mr. Tri received four years in prison, Mr. Binh six.

    • First Ever ‘Withheld’ Tweet Was Faked By F-Secure Researcher

      According to reports this morning, Twitter has withheld the first Tweet from one of its users on copyright grounds. Normally, disputed Tweets will simply disappear if there is a complaint, but one belonging to F-Secure’s Chief Research Officer Mikko Hypponen has now been replaced with a copyright notice. While Twitter has indeed introduced a welcome policy change that will lead to more transparency, the first ever “withheld” Twitter comment was faked by a rather mischievous F-Secure employee.

    • DMCA Censorship: ‘Revenge Porn’ Site Owner Tries To Censor Criticism With Bogus Takedown Notice

      Now, Craig Brittain, the owner of “revenge porn” site “Is Anybody Down” (whose first skirmishes with Marc Randazza were covered here) is trying to remove posts criticizing his site, his inability to keep his story straight, his likely extortionate “photo takedown service,” and, well, pretty much everything, actually. He’s sent a DMCA notice demanding the removal of three posts at Popehat, claiming that these posts contain copyrighted material.

  • Civil Rights

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trademarks

      • Stupid Lawyer Tricks (And How the PTO Could Help Stop Them)

        We’ve seen some absurd trademark threats in recent years, but this one sets the bar at a new low: The Village Voice is suing Yelp for trademark infringement based on Yelp’s creation of various “Best of” lists. Yes, that’s correct, the publisher behind the paper (as well as several other weeklies around the U.S.) has managed to register trademarks in the term “Best of ” in connection with several cities, including San Francisco, Miami, St. Louis and Phoenix. And it now claims that Yelp’s use of those terms infringes those trademarks and deceives consumers.

    • Copyrights

      • Dotcom lawyers move to dismiss charges, again

        Internet millionaire Kim Dotcom’s American lawyers have launched another bid to dismiss charges against his file storage company Megaupload.

        His lawyers today filed documents in the United States Federal Court in Virginia, arguing Megaupload is being denied due process by not having been granted a court hearing, ten months after Dotcom was arrested at his mansion in Auckland.

      • U.S. says Kim DotCom swore not to recreate MegaUpload

        Kim DotCom, the flamboyant founder of the now defunct MegaUpload, made news today by announcing the coming of Mega, a new cloud storage service that is similar to MegaUpload.

      • MPAA: No MegaUpload data access without safeguards

        The Motion Picture Association of America told a federal judge in Virginia today that any decision to allow users of the embattled file locker to access their own files risks “compound[ing] the massive infringing conduct already at issue in this criminal litigation” unless proper safeguards are taken to prevent the further dissemination of illegally copied material. (See the MPAA’s brief embedded below.)

      • DUPLICITY – Copyright parasites stay silent?

        There’s nothing like the smell of duplicity in the morning and maybe that stench is strongest around the annals of the copyright parasites that seek to lobby, legislate and fine, those “evil” people they call “Pirates”.

        Of course over the years there has been much pillaging and plundering, but I’d suggest thats more from the large corporatations selling you second rate entertainment products under the false promises of big budget advertising. ”Piracy” has a nasty habit of exposing the rubbish, whilst highlighting the good stuff (which seems to make healthy profits). So maybe Piracy is responsible for highlighting the poor, low quality products that people dump onto the market? No wonder some people in the industry are scared.

      • How to get your readers to love paywalls

        Okay, maybe “love” is too strong a word, but a new study suggests that newspapers enacting paywalls should emphasize financial need, not profit motives, when announcing them to readers.

        The study, “Paying for What Was Free: Lessons from the New York Times Paywall,” is by Columbia University associate research scientist Jonathan Cook and Indiana University assistant professor Shahzeen Attari. They surveyed 954 New York Times readers shortly after the paper announced, in March 2011, that it would enact a metered paywall, and then again 11 weeks after the paywall was implemented. In the post-paywall survey, participants read one of two “justification” paragraphs, one emphasizing a profit motive and one emphasizing financial need (that paragraph concluded, “if the NY Times does not implement digital subscriptions, the likelihood that it will go bankrupt seems high”).

      • The Public Apparently Isn’t Interested In Sound Economics

        So I hear there’s some sort of election happening this week (have you heard anything about it?). Earlier this year, we wrote about an awesome effort by the folks at NPR’s Planet Money to bring together a group of five different economists, from all over the political spectrum, and see if they could find points that all of them agreed upon. They came up with a list of six things that all of them agreed would be smart ideas for a President to implement — and what was striking about all six was that not a single one of them was anywhere near politically tenable. Every one of them would be argued down immediately.

      • Kim Dotcom now plans to give New Zealand free broadband pipe to US

        On the heels of the announcement of Megaupload’s pending resurrection as Me.ga, Kim Dotcom has come up with a yet another way to promote himself, annoy the US and New Zealand governments, and rally public support in his battle to stop his extradition and end the copyright infringement case against him: he wants to give everyone in New Zealand free broadband service.

      • Slovakia: Protesting SOZA’s Newest Copyright Fees

        Recently, the Slovak Performing and Mechanical Rights Society (SOZA) has once again tried to push the boundaries of what’s acceptable.

      • Biden Takes Part In MPAA Board Meeting; Suggests Studios Tell Paying Customers They’re Thieves

        For all their talk about piracy and yearly losses measured in billions, the big movie studios sure do seem to enjoy smacking their paying customers around with anti-piracy warnings and ads. Consider the poor sucker who actually went out and paid cash money for the latest shiny disc and now has to watch a multitude of eagle-laden logos and horrible analogies parade unskippably across his or her screen before finally being allowed to watch the unskippable trailers before finally being allowed to watch 15 seconds of unskippable animation before they can actually watch the movie they’re now regretting having shelled out actual retail price for.

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