02.14.13

Links 15/2/2013: PengPod Tablets Are Out, HelenOS Update

Posted in News Roundup at 9:36 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Palantir: An Open Source Development Success Story

    In late 2007 Palantir launched Gotham, a new geospatial and comprehensive analytics platform designed to meet the challenges of their vast array of customers. This article provides more information on Gotham that enables data integration, search and discovery, knowledge management, secure collaboration, and algorithmic analysis across a wide variety of data sources.

  • Kaltura Finds its Groove with Open Source Video Play
  • 5 Popular Open Source Test Management Tools
  • Robot Operating System heading to foundation

    ROS, the open source Robot Operating System created by Willow Garage, is now in the process of moving under the governance and ownership of the Open Source Robotics Foundation. The move comes after Willow Garage, which also manufactures the PR2 robot, announced it was pivoting into a “self-sustaining company” and looking for commercial opportunities.

  • HelenOS Micro-Kernel OS Still Marching On

    While not one of the most well known multi-server micro-kernel operating systems compared to GNU Hurd and others, HelenOS continues to move forward as a general purpose BSD-licensed operating system that dances to its own beat.

  • Events

    • Interview: Bob Reselman

      Tech documentation writer Bob Reselman will give a talk entitled “How to Make Technical Documentation Work in Your Organization” at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 24, in the LaJolla Room. The SCALE Team caught up with Bob for a brief interview.

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Chrome stops declaring Linux systems obsolete

        Badly chosen warning messages caused some consternation with Google recently as its Chrome browser began declaring supported Linux systems such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 obsolete. The problem was brought to public attention by Red Hat evangelist Jan Wildeboer in a Google+ posting when his browser announced “Google Chrome is no longer updating because your operating system is obsolete”.

    • Mozilla

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Databases

    • Database Integrity and Web Applications

      NoSQL, the catchall phrase for non-relational databases, is all the rage among Web developers. However, it’s somewhat unfair and unhelpful to use the term NoSQL to describe them, given the variety of technologies involved. Even so, there are some fundamental differences between traditional relational databases and their NoSQL counterparts. For one, as the name implies, NoSQL databases don’t use the standard SQL query language, and use either their own SQL-like language (for example, MongoDB) or an object-oriented API. Another difference is the lack of two-dimensional tables; whereas SQL databases operate solely with such tables, NoSQL databases eschew them in favor of name-value pairs or hash-like objects. And finally, NoSQL databases typically lack the features that led to the development of relational databases, namely transactions and data integrity.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Open source community heckles Oracle Linux update
    • LibreOffice 4.0 And The Power of Brands

      LibreOffice 4.0 was launched last week, and the news reports and activity on social media were massive, more than any release of LibreOffice or OpenOffice before, with better coverage than many of Microsoft’s well-funded introductions. There were numerous links sent around to the usual sites like LinuxToday.com, but also TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Time Magazine, etc. A fair amount of the chatter was people wondering what the difference is between the two versions. Some have basic questions like whether LibreOffice can import their OpenOffice documents.

    • Coming soon: Open source JavaFX for iOS, Android

      Oracle says it plans to open source the Android and iOS implementations of its JavaFX UI platform “over the next couple months,” which it says will allow Java developers to use the technology to write cross-platform smartphone apps for the first time.

    • Open source JavaFX coming for iOS and Android

  • CMS

  • Education

    • eScholar’s Mike Gargano: Nothing Can Stop Open Source

      “Even though the educational market is slow to adopt new things, I think it is inevitable that open source is going to work its way into education. There is no reason for the education field to stop it. There is really nothing wrong with it. People no longer see open source as a problem. I think as more people continue to use open source, it will work its way into the education field.”

  • Healthcare

    • ONC posts Connect 4.0 open source HIE tool

      Continuing to advance its health information exchange offerings, ONC posted Connect 4.0 on Monday and the latest iteration brings the HIE platform closer to a day when ONC might turn it over to the open source community.

      Connect is essentially gateway and adapter software designed, in conjunction with Direct and Exchange, to enable secure health information exchange.

  • Business

    • 6 Reasons to Pay for Open Source Software

      Last year, Red Hat announced that it plans to offer OpenStack on a subscription basis as a commercial, enterprise-grade product. OpenStack is an open source software project for building private and public clouds.

      Red Hat’s engineers contribute to the OpenStack project, and the company is an old-hand at productizing open source projects and offering them on a subscription basis. It is probably best known for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), a productized version of the open source Fedora Linux operating system, as well its JBoss Enterprise Middleware, based on JBoss community projects.

  • Project Releases

    • Chef 11 adds a serving of Erlang

      Opscode’s Chef, the open source, cloud-focused, configuration management framework, has received a major update in the recently announced Chef 11 and now sports a core API server written in Erlang. Erchef, as the new core API server is known, was created using the experiences Opscode had running its hosted Chef offerings. The company set out to make a server that was API-compatible with the Ruby version of the Chef server, but faster and more scalable. To that end, the developers have been working on API endpoints where they could get the most benefit from scaling and performance and have been deploying it with their private Chef customers. The Chef 11 release marks the point where the Erchef server is incorporated into Chef’s open source code base.

    • The Past, Present and Future of GIS: PostGIS 2.0 Is Here!
    • Slick 1.0 simplifies database access with Scala
    • Cairo 1.12.14 Fixes Various Issues
    • More Rails security fixes released

      The Ruby on Rails Developers have released updates to Rails 3.2, 3.1 and 2.3 and made users aware of an update to the JSON gem to close an important security flaw. Most notable of the problems is CVE-2013-0277, another problem with serialised attributes in YAML. The flaw, which only affects Rails 2.3 and 3.0, can be exploited so that a crafted request would deserialize arbitrary YAML inside the server with the risk of denial of service or remote code execution. The Rails developers have released a fix for Rails 2.3, 2.3.17, but there will be no fix for Rails 3.0 in line with maintenance policy. The advisory contains patches for various versions of Rails for use where users cannot upgrade easily.

    • Pidgin 2.10.7 Brings Numerous Fixes and Improvements

      Pidgin 2.10.7 has been released a few hours ago, February 13, and it brings numerous fixes, improvements, and a few new features, especially to MSN, Gadu-Gadu, MXit, Sametime, IRC and Yahoo! protocols.

  • Public Services/Government

    • City of Munich stands by its calculation: open source saves millions

      The City of Munich stands by its November 2012 cost estimates, which concluded that using free and open source software for desktops and office productivity for its 15,500 PCs is over 11 million euro cheaper, compared to the ubiquitous proprietary alternative. “There is no reason to correct this information”, the city’s IT department comments on 11 February to claims to the contrary.

    • Please explain prices: Parliament subpoenas Apple, Microsoft, Adobe

      Federal Parliament has issued documents formally compelling major technology vendors Apple, Microsoft and Adobe to compulsorily appear before its committee investigating price hikes on technology products sold in Australia, in a move that finally ends months of stalling by the vendors, who have proven unwilling to voluntary discuss their pricing strategies in public.

    • Bring openness to your local government with Code Across America

      Code Across America is scheduled for February 22-24. It will be a weekend of community building and moving the needle for more openness in local governments across the United States.

      Code Across America is a multi-day event that any municipality or community can join. Individuals and groups can participate through virtual and in-person activities around the country. The initiative is organized by Code for America and coincides with International Open Data Day on February 23.

    • Open Source Government & Engaged Citizens: Death Star Inspiration

  • Licensing

    • Creative Commons license liberates knowledge of ESIP community

      Erin Robinson, the Information and Virtual Community Director for the Foundation for Earth Science, the management arm of the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (@ESIPFed), says that earth science matters to all of us. For example, when Hurrican Sandy devastated areas of the country, responders needed information on flood zones and what hospitals were available.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • Why I Use Perl…and Will Continue to Do So

      It was alarming to read in the recent article The Rise and Fall of Languages in 2012 by Dr. Dobb’s editor, Andrew Binstock, that Perl was “continuing its long decline” and was in”an irretrievable tailspin,” based on statistics from Google searches. Nothing in the article discussed what was lacking feature-wise in the language that might be behind this decline. While I am not an authority on programming languages, I thought it was only appropriate to reflect on the strengths of Perl that I’ve relied on during my 14-year affair with the language.

    • Wine 1.6: This Year With These Interesting Features

      It’s going on two years since the release of PCC 1.0, but there hasn’t been any follow-on Portable C Compiler release nor is there much public-facing development activity happening.

      In writing recently about new GCC features, a new PathScale EKOPath compiler, and other compiler-related advancements, I was curious to see what was going on within the Portable C Compiler camp. I was also reminded of the compiler yesterday when seeing its being used within the HelenOS micro-kernel OS project.

    • Zend Server 6 puts Zend in DevOps movement

      Zend Enterprise, a company that has been among the main developers of PHP for many years, has released new versions of Zend Server and Zend Studio. New features in version 6 of Zend Server focus on handling the challenges that can arise in ensuring cooperation between developer teams and system operators.

      These new features position the company as a member of the DevOps movement, which aims to provide techniques and processes to improve communication, cooperation and integration between developers and system operators. These techniques are now more important than ever, as there is a trend towards companies having to release increasingly smaller changes more often and having to test their applications on an ongoing basis. To remain competitive, companies no longer focus on major annual releases, instead issuing updates and patches at short intervals.

Leftovers

  • Lawsuit: Student committed at St. Luke’s for 30 days after cursing at professor

    After cursing at a professor during a Spanish final, former Columbia-Juilliard student Oren Ungerleider was involuntarily committed to St. Luke’s Hospital and kept there against his will for 30 days, according to a lawsuit he filed against the University this month.

  • Security

    • When Security is Justice: Because the Bible Told Me So

      We humans constantly are telling ourselves stories about moral and immoral behavior. Many of the most memorable — if only because of repetition — are from the Bible. From them we learn about moral courage and cowardice, about wisdom and folly, about when to obey and when to rebel. And, of course, most Bible stories tell us to believe in God. But God — He/She/It — is so many things at once: God is Love, God is Nature, God is Truth. How can I believe in all these things at the same time? I’m more comfortable with each of those declarations about what God IS when the formula is reversed. For example, I prefer Nature is God. If that identifies me as a pagan, so be it. But the Bible stories still move me profoundly, especially when I try to apply them to the world around me.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • FAA seeks proposals to create 6 drone test sites
    • Obama: Americans need to know more about drone program
    • At Least We’re Not Measles: Rationalizing Drone Attacks Hits New Low
    • Giving president sole power to kill by drone is wrong
    • Drones of Death; Licensed to Kill With Apparent Impunity.
    • LIVE CHAT: THE ETHICS OF DRONE WARFARE
    • Hate Obama’s Drone War?
    • Would-Be Head of CIA Ready for War on All Fronts
    • Rand Paul threatens to hold nomination of CIA director over drone killings
    • Rand Paul Threatens To Block John Brennan’s CIA Nomination
    • Graphic: The Extraordinary Renditions – 54 Suspected Nations include Canada
    • Phuket: Panetta affirms ‘Tony Soprano’ as CIA boss
    • Unmanned killers: Details on drone strikes ‘incomplete’
    • PHC seeks details of collateral damage in drone attacks
    • Drone proponents promote blind faith in militarism

      In my years reporting on the intentional narrowing of political vernacular to guarantee specific outcomes, I have encountered no better example of Orwellian newspeak than that which now dominates the conversation about America’s drone war. Given that, it’s worth reviewing the situation because it is so illustrative of how militarist propaganda operates in the 21st century.

    • On The Execution of Christopher Dorner

      As we write, Christopher Dorner is most likely dying or dead, as the cabin in which he was trapped burns around him. A huge manhunt involving local, state and federal officials has culminated in what can only be described as an extrajudicial execution. We condemn Dorner’s murder at the hands of the state.

      People cheer Dorner because, whatever his motivations, he exposed the workings of a vicious white supremacist system that goes quietly unacknowledged most of the time. He declared war on a system that has waged an undeclared war on us, every day, for years; a system that holds millions of poor people and people of color in prisons, and guns them down in the street. He did what every young person of color in Los Angeles dreams of, when he or she comes home after getting fucked with by the cops, and starts a shootout on GTA V. He was celebrated for doing what many of us could not.

    • How Law Enforcement and Media Covered Up the Plan to Burn Christopher Dorner Alive

      At approximately 7 PM ET, I listened through a police scanner as San Bernardino Sheriffs gave the order to burn down the cabin where suspected murderer Christopher Dorner was allegedly hiding. Deputies were maneuvering a remote controlled demolition vehicle to the base of the cabin, using it to tear down the walls of the cabin where Dorner was hiding, and peering inside.

    • Israel assured Australia on prisoner’s rights, Carr says

      According to a statement on Wednesday from the Israel’s Justice Ministry, Ben Zygier’s Melbourne family was notified after he was detained. Zygier was reportedly known as ”prisoner X” in the high-security jail.

    • The Unending Gitmo Nightmare

      Conspicuously absent from Obama’s State of the Union was any mention of Guantanamo Bay or the 166 detainees still stuck there.

    • The ‘trust me’ administration
    • A READER’S WAR

      …C.I.A., and the Joint Special Operations Command have so far killed large numbers of people.

    • State of the Union Defends Targeted Killings

      The Senate and House armed services committees also receive briefings on drone strikes conducted by the U.S. military. However, the Senate foreign relations and House foreign affairs committees—who are supposed to provide oversight of all U.S. foreign policy—have repeatedly been refused general briefings about targeted killings by the White House, even though all relevant staffers have security clearances. As these committee members point out, it is impossible to exercise oversight over a country or region without insight into how the CIA or military conducts targeted killings. If President Obama wants to “continue to engage” with Congress, agreeing to hold closed-door briefings with these committees would be a good start.

    • Obama Still Clinging to 352,000 Afghan National Security Force Size Myth

      Before the outbreak of green on blue killings that eventually led to a significant interruption in the training of Afghan security forces last September, it was impossible to read a statement from the US military or NATO regarding future plans without encountering a reference to a required 352,000 force size for combined Afghan National Security Forces. It was our training of the ANSF that was touted as our primary reason for remaining in Afghanistan because we need those trained troops available to take over security responsibility as we withdraw. I have been insisting since the interruption that it will be impossible to continue to claim that a functional ANSF force size of 352,000 can be achieved, as the known high rate of attrition continued during the training interruption. No new troop size prediction has emerged, but it was significant to me that references to the 352,000 force size claim had seemed to disappear.

    • Obama’s State of the Union: Afghanistan Drawdown & the Covert Drone War

      President Barack Obama delivered his “State of the Union” address on Tuesday night. And though he suggested there may be minimal reductions to wartime spending, he jingoistically declared, “We will maintain the best military the world has ever known.”

      The speech renewed the US government’s commitment to a permanent war on terrorism. While it signaled the country would no longer be engaging in full-scale occupations or nation-building efforts while Obama was president, there was no indication that America’s dominance in the world would be reduced. America’s global military footprint of around 1,000 bases would be preserved.

    • New Al-Qaeda Generation May Be Deadliest One

      Despite Osama of bin Laden’s death, al-Qaeda has exploited the Arab Awakening to create is largest safe havens and operational bases in more than a decade across the Arab world. This may prove to be the most deadly al-Qaeda yet. And at the center of the new al-Qaeda remains the old al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri still hiding in Pakistan and still providing strategic direction to the global jihad.

    • The Iranians Are Coming – Aaaaargggh!

      The undertow of anti-Iranian fearmongering becomes stronger.

    • Kuwaiti report: Zygier took part in Mabhouh hit

      Western sources tell Kuwait’s Al-Jarida newspaper ‘Prisoner X’ took part in 2010 mission to kill top Hamas terrorist in Dubai. Attorney who met Zygier: There were no signs he was going to commit suicide

    • Congress Considers Special Drone Court; UN Investigates Deadly Drone Strikes

      During last week’s confirmation hearing for CIA director nominee John Brennan, senators discussed the establishment of a federal court with jurisdiction over the president’s death-by-drone program.

      As proposed by lawmakers, the so-called “drone court” would be tasked with approving the targeting (and, by extension, the assassination) of people on President Obama’s or the CIA’s respective kill lists.

    • Newsic Release: Think Humanity

      Siraj is currently rallying for a young man named Ziyad Yaghi who was taken away by U.S. authorities under the dreaded anti-American legislation known as the NDAA, or ‘National Defense Authorization Act’ which allows the United States to arbitrarily arrest and detain Americans without granting them due process, the NDAA is a torch hovering near our Constitution which guarantees protection from such diabolic actions.

    • The Appalling Sir Daniel Bethlehem

      Bethlehem first came to the attention of the general public as the man who advised the Israeli government that it was legal to build their “security” wall slicing through the West Bank and disrupting Palestinian communications and access to fields and water resources. Bethlehem was then the counsel to the Israeli government at the resulting case before the International Court of Justice.

      The International Court of Justice – along with the vast majority of reputable international lawyers – disagreed with Daniel Bethlehem, and Bethlehem and the Israeli government lost the case. The Israeli government however disregarded the court’s judgement and continued its illegal activity.

  • Cablegate

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • Waning Commitment to Government Transparency Evident in Obama’s ‘State of the Union’ Speeches

      In President Barack Obama’s first days as president, he pledged to have his administration create an “unprecedented level of openness in government.” His chief of staff, Jack Lew, has contended the administration is the “most transparent administration ever.” At a rally in 2010, he told the public, “We have put in place the toughest ethics laws and toughest transparency rules of any administration in history.”

      Despite the stated commitments and professions on transparency, the Sunlight Foundation found talk of “government integrity, transparency, and influence” was mostly absent in his “State of the Union” speech last night.

    • Are liberals being hypocrites about Obama’s wars?

      American liberalism has always been pro-intervention

    • The ACLU’s Pizza Video: 10 Years Later

      In 2004, the ACLU produced a satiric video called “Ordering Pizza in 2015” that has become the single most-downloaded piece of content we’ve ever produced (at least we believe in the absence of complete stats). I won’t describe it—you can watch it here if you haven’t seen it—but like many successful viral products, it combined humor with a biting commentary on an all-too-real set of trends. We got the idea from a humorous email someone sent us, and the voiceovers were performed by an entry-level ACLU staffer and a friend of our then-communications director.

    • As Obama Touts Pathway to Citizenship, Record Deportations Leave Undocumented Immigrants in Fear
    • NDAA resolution introduced in San Francisco, CA
    • More Guantanamo Hijinks: First Secret Censorship, Now Eavesdropping on Atty-Client Communications
    • Do You Live In The Constitution-Free Zone Of The US?

      Earlier this week, we wrote about the latest defense by Homeland Security of their laptop search policies that (they claim) give them broad coverage to search laptops within 100 miles of the border. The latest bit of news was that an internal review found that there was minimal benefits to one’s civil liberties in not searching their laptops, so it was okay (think about that sentence for a bit).

    • NDAA – A Young Man from Virginia Takes a Stand Against Autocracy in New York City
    • States Join the Fight to Nullify Indefinite Detention Under NDAA

      President Barack Obama signed the latest National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law on January 2, renewing the power to apprehend and detain Americans indefinitely granted in the previous year’s version.

      In order to protect their citizens from being grabbed and imprisoned under the provisions of the NDAA, many state lawmakers are standing up to the federal government, proposing resolutions nullifying this unconstitutional power at the state borders.

    • Words Don’t Matter, Actions Do

      In the not-too-distant future, Congress passes a draconian, UK-style ban on all weapons. Or, maybe the Senate does it through an international treaty. Or, instead of Congress, maybe the president follows in the footsteps of FDR, who whipped up an executive order requiring people to turn in their gold.

      The method wouldn’t really matter. The end result would easily be one of the greatest attacks on liberty in American history.

    • San Francisco Opposes Federal Indefinite Detention Law

      A resolution introduced Tuesday at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors stands in opposition to a federal defense law that many fear undermines constitutional rights by allowing the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without charge or trial.
      The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), passed by Congress in 2007 and renewed each year, contains provisions authorizing the U.S. military to indefinitely jail terrorist suspects and those aiding them.

    • Daniel Ellsberg: Obama committed ‘impeachable crimes’
    • Nonbinding Resolution Opposing Indefinite Detention Of Americans Introduced At Board Of Supes Meeting

      A resolution was introduced at today’s meeting of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors opposing provisions of a federal law that allows the indefinite detention of American citizens on U.S. soil without due process.

      The National Defense Authorization Act for 2013, signed by President Barack Obama in January after its approval by Congress, includes provisions that would permit indefinite military detentions without trial.

      Board of Supervisors president David Chiu, who authored the resolution against the NDAA, joined a few dozen people who gathered for a rally about the legislation outside City Hall prior to this afternoon’s board meeting.

    • Obama Continues War On Our Civil Liberties

      President Obama’s 2013 State of the Union address contained very few surprises in the realm of national security and merely marked the continuation of the Bush-era war on terror policies despite their extraordinary fiscal toll, even as the American economy faces incredible duress under the deficit and the threat of congressionally-imposed sequestration.

      Despite the fact that the U.S. spends almost as much on its military as every other country in the world combined, Obama stated that the cuts would “jeopardize our military readiness.” In fact, U.S. military spending has never been higher than in the post-9/11 era, which saw rises in spending greater than Vietnam and the entirety of the Cold War. Furthermore, the 31% in defense cuts would be less than the 43%, 36%, and 33% cuts that came with the end of the Korean, Cold, and Vietnam wars respectively. In this light, the defense sequestration cuts are perfectly reasonable, and indeed necessary to alleviate our country’s economic crisis.

    • Going too far?

      They voted for him, yet a growing number of American liberals are angry over President Barack Obama’s reliance on the use of drones and his support for the National Defense Authorization Act. They argue that the president’s embrace of these policies is even more extreme and conservative than that pursued by his predecessor, George W. Bush.

      “If Bush had done the same things as Obama, then more people would have been upset about it,” Daniel Ellsberg observed. “He is a Democrat, though, and to an extent can get away with it.”

      Ellsberg, who is famous (or notorious, depending on one’s political preferences) for having leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, is among the plaintiffs in a court case challenging the NDAA. He and others have accused the Obama administration of using the law to grant itself unconstitutional new powers.

    • Is Obama’s use of drones to kill Americans unconstitutional?

      The rationale behind the administration’s “assassination by drone” program sounds eerily reminiscent to former V.P. Dick Cheney’s “one-percent doctrine.”

    • If There’s a ‘War Against Boys,’ Why Are Men Still Winning?

      Sommers labels as “understandable but misguided” the attitude, “Isn’t it time for women and girls to enjoy the advantages?” A more pertinent question to ask Sommers, though, is what advantages are women enjoying that suggest boys deserve an extra boost?

      After all, women who work full-time still make only 81 percent of what men do. And women own only 36 percent as much wealth as men do.

      Only 4 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women, as are 17 percent of directors on Fortune 500 boards. Women are 18 percent of U.S. representatives and 20 percent of U.S. senators.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Bizarre ‘Attribution’ Troll Bullies Twitter Users Into Compliance With Baseless Legal Threats

      This post deals with a strange copyright troll, which bullies people into properly attributing a quoted poem. The troll runs across multiple social media platforms but does a bulk of its “work” at Twitter, where it can receive instantaneous feedback. Along the way, we’ll deal with the poet himself, a company called On Press Inc. and some other connections which seem to indicate the poet himself is behind the trolling, along with a threatened lawsuit against me for copyright infringement, defamation and false claims.

    • Copyrights

      • Obama Administration Sides With Music Industry In Seeking To Uphold Draconian Award Against Minnesota Mother For Sharing Songs

        We have previously discussed how President Obama has repeatedly yielded to the “copyright hawks” who have steadily increased the penalties for copyright and trademark violations, including criminal penalties. Despite the abuse of average citizens by thuggish law firms and prosecutors, the Obama Administration continues to support draconian measures against citizens. Even after the abuse and death of Aaron Swartz by the Justice Department, the Obama Administration has decided to double down in a case of a young mother in Northern Minnesota who was hit with grotesque penalties for simply sharing 24 songs. She was told to pay $222,000 — over 100 times the actual damages for the songs. The Obama Administration has intervened before the Supreme Court to ask for it to allow the penalty to stand as lawful and correct.

      • Keep the pressure on the White House and US Copyright Office to fix anti-circumvention provisions

        When the Copyright Office announced its updated DMCA exemptions list, we were saddened to find that the office had abdicated its duty on multiple fronts. While that sad result was announced back in October, the downgraded exemptions list has just now come into effect. We need your voice in this fight.

Software Patents Debate Manipulated by Spin

Posted in Deception, Patents at 4:29 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Recent examples from the news show disparity between what patent lawyers are saying and what others have to say

Jon Potter believes that “Software patent trolls can be stopped by U.S. Patent Office and Congress” as he writes about mobile app developers (small businesses or even indie) who fall prey to software patents and trolls (which are seemingly a rising phenomenon). He says that “[w]hile app developers are angry with the trolls, they are also frustrated, rightly, with their government. The patent system was created to promote innovation and protect entrepreneurs. But in the trenches of the app development industry, people are intimidated and angered. App developers and entrepreneurs, the very people whom the patent system should protect, now consider software patents as inhibiting — rather than promoting — innovation.”

Another writer from the same area writes about expansion of USPTO regime to another place:

As the US Patent and Trademark Office prepares to open a Silicon Valley office, intellectual property stakeholders gathered at Stanford to tackle a big reason for USPTO’s enhanced regional presence: Software patents.

For shame. Google has been working against software patents recently. Over at Wired, yet another lawyer, Christal Sheppard, keeps the rigged ‘debate’ going. Those rigged debates almost always exclude the most important component: developers.

Patents are often misunderstood and badly explained by propagandists. In an article by Mike Masnick he says: “Despite plenty of research showing that patents do not, in fact, lead to increased innovation (but rather increased patenting), many still assume that there’s a direct linkage. Of course, it is true that many successful industries see high rates of patents, but there is evidence that patents tend to lag the actual innovation, rather than predate it. That is, once an area or industry is innovative and successful then everyone rushes in to get patents and try to extract their piece of the pie, often slowing down the pace of innovation.

“So it’s fairly disappointing that the Brookings Institution, which normally does pretty good work on these kinds of things has put out a study about patents and innovation, and appears to be confusing correlation and causation in saying that patents lead to innovation and even (more ridiculously) that areas that aren’t doing enough patenting need to beef up their patents to increase innovation:”

Dennis Crouch gives his 50 cents, but he too is a law person, who in his post “Of Smart Phone Wars and Software Patents” helps justify the spread of software patents:

Stuart Graham (USPTO’s Chief Economist) and Saurabh Vishnubhakat recently published an interesting short paper entitled Of Smart Phone Wars and Software Patents. The paper largely defends the USPTO’s examination of software patenting by showing that its approach in the software arts is essentially the same as in other fields.

The two charts below come from the article. The first shows the percentage of first office actions that are first-action allowances. This is calculated for each fiscal year as the (# of first action allowances) / (# of first actions). The second chart looks at the first “final” action in a case. For their study, a final action is either (1) a final rejection or (2) an allowance. And, the first final is whichever one of those came first.

So basically, for lawyers and by extension the legal sphere it is okay to have mobile patent wars. Apple is meanwhile retrying a ban of leading Android devices:

Apple has now filed a normal appeal, after being turned down for en banc review by the entire Federal Circuit, regarding Judge Lucy Koh’s refusal to order an injunction against Samsung in the first Apple v. Samsung case, no. 11-CV-1846. That’s the one where Apple got a jury to order a billion plus in damages. Although I doubt that figure will stand. Anyway, Apple wants an injunction too, and here’s the brief [PDF] asking for it. The order [PDF] it’s appealing is found here as text. And I’ll work on a text version for you of this appeal brief next.

A lawyers-run blog speaks of a mobile patents thicket and CAFC, another lawyers-run institute, may soon get to legitmise software patents again. Reuters articles about it [1, 2] say:

Lawyers squared off on Friday over U.S. rules for granting patents for software, or if software should be patented at all, in arguments in a case closely watched by Google Inc, Facebook Inc and other technology companies.

The lawyers’ sites, unlike some news site, have a bias which is expected. Even the press in New Zealand covered it as follows:

Lawyers have squared off over US rules for granting patents for software, or if software should be patented at all, in arguments in a case closely watched by Google, Facebook and other technology companies.

The full US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit heard arguments in the case, which involves whether patents for a computerised system for exchanging financial obligations are valid. The case has drawn wide interest because it could help determine parameters for software patent protection.

Disagreement was apparent among the 10 judges on the panel, and experts said they expected a divided decision, which could land the case before the US Supreme Court.

The lawyers, as expected, try to interject themselves into analysis of this news, vying to marginalise more proper news sites. Developers, sadly, are quiet, which leaves them vulnerable. █

Dell Might Still Dodge Stealth Microsoft Takeover

Posted in Dell, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 3:31 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Dell monitor logo

Summary: Upset investors can still prevent Microsoft from ‘pulling a Novell’ on Dell

Ashlee Vance, formerly a FOSS-centric writer at The Register, has an interesting hypothesis about Microsoft Dell, which VAR Guy keeps opposing whilst identifying unhappy investors:

Done deal? Hardly. Dell’s (NASDAQ: DELL) $24.4 billion deal to go private apparently faces pushback from at least fo-.ur major shareholders, Reuters reported. And don’t forget: A special Dell committee is managing a 45-day “go-shop” period, during which the committee is actively soliciting alternative bids. So who will wind up owning Dell, and how will the current variables impact partners and the PC maker?

The VAR Guy is no fan of Microsoft and he believes that the abusive monopolist uses fake shortages (as hype generation strategy) for reasons he summarised here. Walt Mossberg is still unsatisfied with the latest hardware that has a Microsoft badge (the one with fake shortages) based on his article which is not a favourable review, again.

Nokia and Dell are deep in the mud unless they dump Microsoft. Already, the monopolist alienates mobile partners and soon it will be OEMs, too. There are other implications,. As Chris Hall puts it: “Let’s say it finally happens and the big OEMs get tired of dealing with Microsoft and decide to make Windows only one choice of several on new computers. Not a world like we have now, where the likes of Dell halfheartedly offer half baked and broken installs of Ubuntu, installs that need serious tweaking before they’ll work. Not that world, but a pretend world of Linux being offered across all models, with a choice between two or three distros. You know, OEMs giving Linux exactly the same treatment as they give Windows today.” █

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