05.28.13

Links 28/5/2013: Salix 14.0 (Live Xfce), Elive 2.1.42

Posted in News Roundup at 6:17 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux Top 3: Puppy, Backbox and Linux 3.10

    Linux continues to grow not just because of any one vendor or particular use case, but because Linux is applicable to so many different use cases.

    Two such very different use-cases were on display this past week, with new releases of Pupply Linux and Backbox Linux

  • Is Linux Still Short on Apps vs Windows? Reality Check

    Sometime this July will mark my seventh anniversary of becoming a desktop Linux user. While I may or may not bake a cake to celebrate the occasion, it has gotten me thinking about what has changed in the world of Linux since I entered it — and, especially, how much more usable my Linux PC has become then. And what better way to quantify those improvements than to take stock of just how many apps are now available for Linux users that were not seven years ago?

  • Desktop

    • DesktopLinux.com Finally Dies

      A while back DesktopLinux.com changed ownership when the corporation owning it was sold. Since then the site has been rudderless with no moderator/authour and gradually fewer contributors to the public forum.

  • Kernel Space

    • Did You Know? – 15 Less Known But Interesting Facts About Linux and Linus
    • Rustboot: A 32-Bit Kernel Written In Rust

      Rust, the general purpose programming language developed by Mozilla for being a safe, concurrent, and practical language, can even be used to write a system kernel.

    • Linux Foundation Adds New Members From Car Software and Gaming Industries

      The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that AllGo Embedded Systems, Suntec Software and Wargaming are joining the organization.

      The demand for devices to become more intelligent and connected in the gaming and automotive industries is driving more demand for interactive entertainment and embedded software in the Linux market. The newest Linux Foundation members are expanding investment in Linux in order to advance software in-vehicle systems and online gaming and leverage the collaborative development model. These and other topics will be discussed this week at the Automotive Linux Summit Spring 2013 in Japan on May 27-28 followed by LinuxCon Japan and CloudOpen JapThe Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that AllGo Embedded Systems, Suntec Software and Wargaming are joining the organization.

      The demand for devices to become more intelligent and connected in the gaming and automotive industries is driving more demand for interactive entertainment and embedded software in the Linux market. The newest Linux Foundation members are expanding investment in Linux in order to advance software in-vehicle systems and online gaming and leverage the collaborative development model. These and other topics will be discussed this week at the Automotive Linux Summit Spring 2013 in Japan on May 27-28 followed by LinuxCon Japan and CloudOpen Japan on May 29-31.an on May 29-31.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Replacing X With Wayland On The Raspberry Pi

        Last week I wrote about the emergence of a new Wayland Weston compositor renderer for the Raspberry Pi. There was a fair amount of discussion about it and since then additional details have emerged.

      • Intel 2.21.8 Driver Takes Care Of COW Regressions

        Just one week after the Intel X.Org driver was updated with support for all known Haswell variants and introducing some new copy-on-write support for cloning pixmaps, a new release has been warranted.

      • Raspberry Pi’s Raspbian Improves Its Performance

        The Debian-based “Raspbian” Linux distribution for the Rasperry Pi ARM development board is now a heck of a lot faster thanks to recent software improvements.

        Raspbian is the Debian Linux distribution optimized for the ARMv7 Raspberry Pi. Older versions of Raspbian are based upon Debian Linux 6.0 on the Linux 3.1 kernel and GCC 4.4.5. However, the latest Debian Linux 7.0 on the latest Raspbian package-set has the Linux 3.6.11 armv6l kernel and GC 4.6.

    • Benchmarks

      • Eight-Way BSD & Linux OS Comparison

        Being benchmarked today at Phoronix is a comparison of eight different BSD and Linux operating systems. The contenders for this performance roundabout include PC-BSD 9.1, DragonFlyBSD 3.4.1, Ubuntu 13.04, Linux Mint 15 RC, CentOS 6.4, Fedora 18, Mageia 3, and openSUSE 12.3. Which of these operating systems are the fastest and slowest for a variety of different workloads? Read on to find out.

      • CPU-Z for Linux?: 6 Free Linux System Profilers

        A system profiler is a utility that presents information about the hardware attached to a computer. Having access to hard information about your hardware can be indispensable when you need to establish exactly what hardware is installed in your machine. For example, the information will help a technical support individual diagnose problems, or help to evaluate whether a system will support certain software or hardware.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • Akademy-es 2013 schedule ready!

      As you probably know we are having Akademy-es 2013 just a few days earlier than Akademy in Bilbao, from 11th to 12th of July.

    • News in kdepim 4.11: Header theme (3/3) Grantlee theme generator (headerthemeeditor)

      For helping user to generate a KMail theme based on Grantlee, I created an application: “headerthemeeditor”.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • One serving of 53 amazing students please

        The accepted students for Google Summer of Code and the Outreach Program for Women have just been announced. I am so happy that we were able to accept 50 students for GSoC.

      • A Summer of Coding — and More!

        Google has just announced the 2013 Google Summer of Code students! And that means that the Outreach Program for Women list is also announced. It’s been some weeks of anxious waiting, not just for the students and interns involved, but also for the whole Krita community, developers and artists. But everyone can breathe again now!

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mageia 3 on the loose

        I’ve used Mageia 3 full time since its release and it’s not perfect – but it’s darn close. Nothing is perfect and that is so true for Linux. It’s a matter of what bugs bug you less. I used Mageia 1 for quite a while and I’ll probably hang around in Mageia 3 too. It performs well. It boots really quickly and the desktop as well as most applications are very responsive. Never underestimate the charm of instantaneous results. I have a nice fresh install of Sabayon Linux 13.04 just waiting, but it looks like I may end up not using it.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Debian Project News – May 27th, 2013

        The Debian GNU/Hurd team announced the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release. On the Debian Ports archive you can find the installation ISO images to download (netinst, CD or DVD), as well as a pre-installed disk image which makes it even easier to try Debian GNU/Hurd. Debian GNU/Hurd is currently available for the i386 architecture with more than 10,000 software packages available.

        Please make sure to read the configuration information, the FAQ, and the translator primer to get a grasp of the great features of GNU/Hurd.

      • Elive 2.1.42 development released

        This version includes some misc features like:

        Bug fixes in the automatic date and time configuration
        If you move to another country it is automatically detected and your time is updated to the new location
        Updated firmwares to support a wider range of wifi’s and other devices
        Automatic detection of lvm devices inside crypted filesystem
        Fixed a bug with thumblerd process, which can sometimes block devices from unmounting

      • Debian Linux 7.0 Wheezy: Hands on

        I’ve been experimenting with installing the new Debian release across a number of devices – here’s what I’ve found so far.

      • Derivatives

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • Another Reason Why Open Source Wins: Fairness

    I’ve written a number of posts looking at less-familiar advantages of open source over closed source, and here’s another one. Proprietary systems can’t be forked, which means that it’s not possible to change the underlying ethos, for example by tweaking the software or using code on a different platform. But you can with open source, as this interesting example shows.

    Fairphone is, as its name implies, built with fairness in mind. That contrasts with today’s smartphones which contain many minerals sourced in a variety of unsavoury ways, ranging from being “merely” exploitative to downright bloodstained. That’s not something we think about much as we play with our latest shiny toy, but Fairphone wants to change that. And of course, as part of its fairness, everything will be open (although it’s based on Android 4.2, so I wonder whether some elements will be closed nonetheless.)

  • Migrating to open source needs a plan

    Perhaps you’ve considered migrating your company to an open source desktop productivity suite? There are a host of good reasons for such a move. The most obvious one that comes to mind is to save on license fees, but don’t be fooled. For the migration process to be a success and the full benefits to be reaped, you must invest in the changeover itself. Don’t believe that because you want to save money long term you should skimp short-term. A look at the City of Freiburg’s attempted migration reveals the dangers of treating the new software as a drop-in replacement.

  • When It Comes To FOSS, Who Don’t You Trust?

    Probably the best corporate ownership of free and open source products comes from Red Hat, for reasons that should be obvious. Red Hat makes their living developing and supporting FOSS products, so they tend to be excellent FOSS players, obeying both the spirit and letter of the GPL. In addition, they defend the license, because what’s good for free and open source software is good for Red Hat.

    The other side of the coin, the bad players in the free software world, might be best represented by Oracle, who inherited a slew of important open source projects with their takeover of Sun Microsystems a few years back. As we’ve observed before, part of the problem with Oracle is that sharing and software freedom isn’t in the company’s genetic structure. Like many proprietary vendors, they believe in nurturing their clients by using the mushroom philosophy–that is by keeping them in the dark and feeding them plenty of malarkey.

    Oracle also obviously has some conflict-of-interest issues when it comes to one of their most important FOSS offerings, the MySQL database, which probably steers at least half of the worlds websites. Oracle, of course, became one of the biggest companies in tech by selling their own proprietary database. Although in most instances Oracle’s database doesn’t directly compete with MySQL, we know it gripes Larry Ellison’s arse to be giving a database away when he thinks he could be making money selling it.

  • BSA Study Demonstrates Open Source’s Economic Advantage

    I love the spring. Not, of course, because of the glorious weather, since we don’t have any. But because it’s time for the annual BSA report on piracy, which is guaranteed to provide me with hours of innocent fun as I go through finding its methodological errors and dodgy data.

  • One Small Step for NASA, One Giant Leap for Open Source

    “When you really need performance/weight as in the space program, who are you going to call: an OS designed by salesmen in secret and in league with hardware suppliers,” asked blogger Robert Pogson, “or an OS designed by computer geeks trying hard in the open to get the last bit of performance and reliability out of hardware?”

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Cloud Hosting For Static Sites

      GitHub Pages: GitHub is most well known as a popular source code repository, but they also offer free hosting as part of GitHub Pages. You can use a standard git repository to publish your site, which is how I managed my personal blog for years. For each new article, run the jekyll command line tool, and then push the site to GitHub. GitHub’s Pages takes care of the rest. There is also a web based tool with a few themes and an online markdown editor.

    • OpenStack Brings Open Source Cloud to CeBIT

      The OpenStack® community will take part in CeBIT Australia for the first time when the show opens in Sydney this week, bringing the promise of cost savings, speed of deployment and freedom from vendor lock­in to Australian enterprises. CeBIT will run from May 28th through 30th and will be held at the Sydney Exhibition Centre, Darling Harbour; OpenStack will be on stand O01 in the Cloud Ecosystem section in Hall 4.

  • CMS

    • Open Source Blogging Platform WordPress Turns Ten, And Its Community Gets To Blow The Candles Out

      Ten years ago today, WordPress, the open source blogging software, was born. It’s amazing to think that it’s been that long, but considering it had all of the elements that other startups and projects have tried to emulate over the past 10 years, then it makes sense.

      When speaking with WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg, you’d think that he was only a small part of the movement that attempted to empower anyone and everyone to self-publish. While that might be partially true, Mullenweg has taken all of his learnings over the years and poured them into the for-profit arm, Automattic.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open-Source House Building

      Think of a world where you could simply download the blueprints of your future home for free just like you download any open source software today. A team of British architects developed just that and they are hoping their project called WikiHouse will radically change the way we think about building homes.

    • Open Hardware

  • Programming

    • CGit Update Adds Exciting Features, Security Fix

      CGit, the widely-used replacement to GitWeb, has out a new release today. Besides incorporating some useful new functionality, it also takes care of a security fix where out-of-date CGit installations could allow arbitrary access to files from the system.

    • OCLint: Another Way For Clang Static Code Analysis

      For those looking at new static code analysis tools, OCLint is an open-source utility powered by LLVM’s Clang foundation to provide a variety of features when inspecting C, Objective-C, and C++ code-bases. In recent testing of OCLint for an internal C-based Phoronix code-base, OCLint proved to be quite useful.

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

    • This Pentagon Project Makes Cyberwar as Easy as Angry Birds

      For the last year, the Pentagon’s top technologists have been working on a program that will make cyberwarfare relatively easy. It’s called Plan X. And if this demo looks like a videogame or sci-fi movie or a sleek Silicon Valley production, that’s no accident. It was built by the designers behind some of Apple’s most famous computers — with assistance from the illustrators who helped bring Transformers to the silver screen.

    • PayPal denies teenager reward for finding website bug

      A 17-year-old German student contends PayPal has denied him a reward for finding a vulnerability in its website.

      Robert Kugler said he notified PayPal of the vulnerability on May 19. He said he was informed by email that because he is under 18 years old, he did not qualify for its Bug Bounty Program. He will turn 18 next March.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • F*ck You NRA! Principal Fires Guards, Expands Arts and Sees Test Scores Soar

      In defiance of societal trends, a K-8 principal fired all his public school’s security guards and reinvested in the arts, drastically improving grades and test scores in a school that once “had a prison feel,” NBC News reports.

      Orchard Gardens, of Roxbury, Massachusetts, was founded in 2003, but quickly fell to the bottom of public schools in the state. Of 800 students, “more than 90% qualify for free or reduced lunch, 25% are learning to speak English, and 25% require Individual Education Plans to meet special needs,” according to the pilot school’s website.

    • Did Obama’s Speech Really ‘Narrow’ the War?

      followed the coverage of President Barack Obama’s May 23 speech at the National Defense University, you would think something big happened to the “war on terror.” Specifically, its scope was narrowed, perhaps considerably, as the war as it is currently being waged winds down.

  • Cablegate

    • Statement from Jeremy Regarding His Plea

      Today I pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. This was a very difficult decision. I hope this statement will explain my reasoning. I believe in the power of the truth. In keeping with that, I do not want to hide what I did or to shy away from my actions. This non-cooperating plea agreement frees me to tell the world what I did and why, without exposing any tactics or information to the government and without jeopardizing the lives and well-being of other activists on and offline.

  • Finance

    • Is EVERY Market Rigged?

      Unless you live under a rock, you know about the Libor scandal.

    • Delinquent US student loans hit record high, with over $100 billion past due

      The number and value of overdue student loans has reached an all-time high in the US as nearly a third of 20- to 24-year-olds are currently unemployed, according to a report by the Department of Education.

      With continued concern regarding rising college costs, the amount of outstanding student loans has now reached $1 trillion, making that the largest category of consumer debt in the US aside from home mortgages.

    • UK courts face radical privatisation shake-up

      The idea would establish the courts service as a commercial enterprise, paying its way and freed from Treasury control, with court buildings and thousands of staff put in the hands of private companies. It would save the Ministry of Justice pound stg. 1 billion ($1.56bn) a year.

  • Censorship

    • Houston police shut down Kanye West screening at Rothko Chapel

      Houston singer Dominique attended the library screening and said it was shut down due to “technical difficulties.” It was rescheduled for later that night/morning, but police eventually shuttered that screening, too, after a tense back and forth.

  • Privacy

    • Labeling Reporters “Criminals,” or Just Complying With the Privacy Protection Act?

      There has been a lot of outrage expressed recently over the contents of an affidavit filed in support of a search warrant to search the e-mail accounts of reporter James Rosen. The government’s affidavit offered the view that Rosen violated the law by aiding and abetting the alleged violations of laws prohibiting the disclosure of classified national security information. Specifically, the affidavit stated, “there is probable cause to believe that the Reporter . . . has committed a violation of 18 U.S.C. 793(d) either as Mr. Kim’s co-conspirator and/or aider and abetter.” To some, the fact that the government would make this argument shows that the Obama Administration is engaging in a War on Journalism. According to this thinking, the Obama Administration is not only trampling on the rights of a free press by going after its sources. Incredibly, they even think of a reporter as a criminal — and are willing to say so in court.

    • Leakers, Recipients, and Conspirators

      Leaks to reporters — and investigations of the leaks that included subpoenas of reporters’ e-mail logs and searches of reporters’ e-mail — have been in the news; see this post by Orin about the AP story and this post by Conor Friedersdorf (The Atlantic) about the Fox News story. I thought I’d say a few things about the First Amendment issues involved in such matters, especially in response to the Friedersdorf post.

    • Yet more Communications Data Bill confusion

      During the debate about the Communications Data Bill, one of the points we repeatedly made was that while this bill was not about reading the contents of messages, but that the details of who you communicate with were still incredibly private information.

    • Snoopers’ Charter – How You Can Stop it Coming Back…Again

      The Snoopers’ Charter is back in the news. It’s come back sooner than any of us expected. We’ve stopped it twice already so we know we can win. What can you do to help stop a revived Snoopers’ Charter?

    • Metropolitan Police were offered access to mobile users’ individual personal information

      The reports suggested that the Metropolitan Police were offered access to mobile users’ individual personal information – including web history, location and spending patterns. The claims were subsequently rejected by Ipsos MORI and mobile operator EE.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Russia Warns Obama: Monsanto

    • Trademarks

      • Trademark Protection: Is Litigation Worth the Cost?

        Anybody who has any involvement with Intellectual Property (“IP”) knows full well that protecting IP means a multi-step process. Obviously, step one is the conception of the invention, idea, trademark, trade name, or other innovation where protection might be necessary. Step two is the decision about what to do with the “new” idea, etc. in terms of the need to try for exclusivity on it –or not. Many “new” things do not need IP protection – and other “new” things may not qualify for it. If the “new” idea fits into the area where protection is desirable and it qualifies, then the next step is to seek legal protection. Of course, such protection will have a cost – whether or not the protection is sought by the inventor/conceptualizer himself/herself or itself (in the case of an organization) or assistance of counsel is required.

    • Copyrights

      • US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits, spyware, ransomware and trojans to attack pirates!

        The hilariously named “Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property” has finally released its report, an 84-page tome that’s pretty bonkers. But amidst all that crazy, there’s a bit that stands out as particularly insane: a proposal to legalize the use of malware in order to punish people believed to be copying illegally. The report proposes that software would be loaded on computers that would somehow figure out if you were a pirate, and if you were, it would lock your computer up and take all your files hostage until you call the police and confess your crime. This is the mechanism that crooks use when they deploy ransomware.

      • Vine, hip-hop and the future of video sharing: old rap songs and new copyright rules

        What does video tool Vine have in common with iconic rappers like the Beastie Boys and the Notorious BIG? More than you think. Like hip-hop, Vine is a way to sample and collect culture — and it may have to run the same legal gambit that rappers did a decade ago.

      • Hollywood Studios Want Google to Censor Dotcom’s Mega

        Two major Hollywood studios have asked Google to remove the homepage of Kim Dotcom’s Mega from its search results. Warner Bros. and NBC Universal claim that their copyrighted content is hosted on the URL and want it taken down. Dotcom is disappointed by the news and points out that constant takedown abuse is restricting access to legitimate files. “This is in line with the unreasonable content industry behavior we have experienced for years,” he says in a response.

      • Commission suggests hacking and hijacking the computers of suspected IP pirates

        Should owners of intellectual property be allowed to attack anyone they suspect of pirating their goodies? That’s a question that was raised last week by the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property.

      • Five Undercover Police Cars Sent To Arrest Single Alleged Movie Pirate

        Police assisted by the Federation Against Copyright Theft showed up in large numbers to arrest an alleged movie pirate in the UK this week. Armed with an emergency search warrant issued out of hours by a judge, five undercover police vehicles containing detectives and FACT officers were deployed to arrest a 24-year-old said to have recorded the movie Fast and Furious 6.

      • Why Are UK Police Allowing Entertainment Industry Employees To Arrest And Interrogate People With Their Help?

        We’ve discussed in the past the oddity of how a UK anti-piracy group, FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft), which is a private organization set up and controlled by large entertainment industry players, being deeply involved in criminal investigations and cases against individuals. In the case against Surfthechannel, FACT was directly involved in seizing and keeping the computers involved and then in paying the police for the prosecution. Even if you can reasonably argue that they should be involved in helping with providing information for the investigation, you’d think most people would agree that that’s where the industry’s involvement should end. They shouldn’t be present on raids. They shouldn’t get to touch or keep the evidence. And they certainly shouldn’t be financing and pressing the criminal case.

The Economist Slams Vista 8

Posted in Microsoft, Vista 8, Windows at 3:30 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Grungy money

Summary: The business section of a large publication for businesspeople slams Vista 8 as well as Microsoft’s attempts to hide the truth; the author continues to allege worse times are ahead

THE living disaster known as Vista 8 has thrown Microsoft into a tailspin and a lot of media spin. A personal piece from a widely-read paper dismantles Microsoft by stating: “IT IS always fun to watch the mighty fall. It is even better when they try to break their fall with corporate waffle. This week Microsoft said it was rethinking “key aspects” of its new operating system, Windows 8. But then it began to obfuscate. A Microsoft executive insisted that “customer satisfaction” with the new offering “is strong” while also conceding that “the learning curve is definitely real”. (Translation: customers are tearing out their hair and scattering it on the keyboard.)”

“The above article is titled suitably, stating that Vista 8 is only the beginning of Microsoft’s problems.”The article is worth reading. It is quite good.

We recently showed that Microsoft goes down the same road as Enron (with Goldman Sachs lady as CFO). The above article is titled suitably, stating that Vista 8 is only the beginning of Microsoft’s problems. █

“Microsoft, the world’s most valuable company, declared a profit of $4.5 billion in 1998; when the cost of options awarded that year, plus the change in the value of outstanding options, is deducted, the firm made a loss of $18 billion, according to Smithers.”

–The Economist, 1999

US Congress Should Stop Targeting Symptoms and Instead Tackle the Real Problem, Patent Scope

Posted in America, Law, Patents at 3:17 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

And Schumer Should Focus on the Correct Target (Software Patents), Not Trolls

Scope

Summary: Alluding to the fact that politicians pursue a corporate ‘reform’ (benefiting large companies) rather than the obvious reform which the USPTO needs

Somebody called Steph Kennedy contacted me a few days ago. I had an amicable exchange with this person who runs the IP Troll Tracker site — a site which like us seems to realise that the Schumer 'reform' once again got derailed. He now speaks primarily about trolls rather than software patents/scope, which he focused on before. As Steph put it in her unique style, “I suppose on the one hand this is good news…all those software patents people don’t want issued? Well, they’ll languish forever now with the patent office reviewing cases for a living. It’s kind of like when Congress gets deadlocked: that’s a good thing because if they can’t agree? They can’t make more stupid laws.

“Throwing crazy-stupid legislation together so that you can tell your corporate constituents that you are trying to solve their problem? That’s what politicians do.”

“Motorola is a defence mechanism, not an offence mechanism to Google, but EU regulators are too misguided to see this.”She is throwing a wobbly Schumer’s way. He no longer proposes a good reform. Here is another misdirected reform coming from the US government. And another. Why the sudden focus only on trolls? As Masnick’s site puts it: “Of course, even before the law was officially on the books, it looks like Vermont’s Attorney General has already sued a patent troll under existing consumer protection laws (raising questions as to why the new law is necessary). In this case, the troll is one we’ve written about a few times. Remember the series of rotating shell companies that had
claimed that businesses who had a networked scanner need to pay $1,000 per employee? Yeah, that one.”

Here is another report about Congress targeting trolls in isolation. Politicians serve corporate interests, only going after trolls, the side effect of a rogue system. Trolls are, on occasions, a proxy for large corporations, but this is the exception rather than the norm. Microsoft seems to be doing it, Apple hardly ever does (there are a few examples where Apple does this, e.g. MPEG-LA). Google won’t use proxies like Microsoft and Apple do and it states this clearly, upfront.

Motorola is a defence mechanism, not an offence mechanism to Google, but EU regulators are too misguided to see this. completely missing the source of this issue and instead going after the victim which is trying to defend itself by expensive deterrence plan.

It is worth noting that Steph misunderstood some of the points I had made prior to the post in question, based on her response to me (posted some hours ago). Patent Troll Tracker was a lawyer, not her. The point I was making is that refocusing on trolls is often something that lawyers, politicians and lobbyists do, whereas bloggers often fall right into the same trap and lose sight of patent scope as the principal issue. The one point I disagree with Steph is that she says some companies are “actually selling off some of their patents to the trolls themselves (possibly and potentially Google and definitely Ericsson).”

Actually, while Ericsson is a good example which we covered before [1, 2, 3], she should mention Apple and Microsoft, not Google. Name even one troll which was fed by Google. None, right?

“Throwing crazy-stupid legislation together so that you can tell your corporate constituents that you are trying to solve their problem? That’s what politicians do.”
      –Steph KennedyA good example of an Apple- and Microsoft-backed patent troll is Intellectual Ventures, the world’s biggest patent troll. How come Congress does not tackle this extortion operation? Too big to jail or even address. As Steph put it a few weeks ago, this troll makes nothing except propaganda. She wrote: “What long-term positive PR that IV thought they were going to accomplish with this survey is anybody’s guess.”

As long as the USPTO is controlled by giants like software patents booster IBM, nothing will change for the better without a real fight.

Irving Wladawsky-Berger, an IBM veteran who endorses software patents, continues to post his pro-patents dross. These are the people who, sadly enough, control the politicians. A politicians who works for common interests is not a politicia but an activist. Strong action is needed to fix patent scope; Congress just isn’t doing it, █

Time for People to March Against Bill Gates, Not Just Monsanto

Posted in Africa, Bill Gates, Patents at 2:43 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Marching soldiers

Summary: Why Monsanto is a symptom of the world’s power/control being put in few private hands, notably Gates and his friends who invest in Monsanto and publicly lobby for it

Bill Gates, who uses the Gates Foundation for gains in money and power, is not a villain because he made an extra 7 billion dollars last year (while everyone in the world seems to be going broke), becoming the world's richest person again. It is because of how he makes money. By buying our media he lies about it constantly and continues investing (for profit) in some of the companies most harmful to humanity while also lobbying for them, directly or indirectly (e.g. through proxies like AGRA for GMO).

“Then there is GMO promotion; giving people patented pesticides/seeds is hardly “feeding the hungry” or doing charity.”Gates has been lobbying almost exclusively for his investments, using the disguise of “charity”. Let’s consider that he exploits the world’s poorest for marketing and experimentation. Take Africa for example. Gates has investments in the leaky oil industry there (for profit) which is actually responsible for poisoning and killing many Nigerians, sometimes indirectly (even causing polio, as opposed to fighting polio as Gates likes to claim in the Nigerian press that he buys).

Then there is GMO promotion; giving people patented pesticides/seeds is hardly “feeding the hungry” or doing charity. It is feeding Gates, a Monsanto shareholder. Days ago we all witnessed an international day of action against Monsanto. It received a lot of coverage, raising awareness and having a strong effect in alternative media; owing to the action being global (436 cities by some counts) the non-US government press covered it also. The US government actually lobbies for Monsanto based on cables from Wikileaks. The BBC, our own government press, was the same. The BBC Web site, a pro-GMO publication funded by Bill Gates, seems to have ignored the protests and Bloomberg, owned by the billionaire who loves to protect bankers from protesters, did the same for Monsanto. Going back to Monsanto in Africa, the subject was already explored here, in posts such as:

A few months ago Bill Gates invested $25 Million in “Controversial GM Crop Center”. Mind the term investment, that’s the simple fact. It’s far from the only such example. The report says: “The research center largely responsible for launching the “green revolution” of the 1960s that dramatically raised crop yields is getting support from the world’s richest men to develop genetically-modified seeds to help farmers in the developing world grow more grain in the face of a changing climatic conditions and increased demand.”

“It is an investment, not a charity.”There is no proper coverage of this in Africa. Gates already gagged the press there. It was not expensive to achieve, either. A Gates-bribed site (millions of dollars in bribe in exchange for favourable coverage and self-censorship) claims to be Africa’s leading news source (with investment from Gates) and one of its latest articles on GMO reads like a press release while health-washing a Gates investment (no disclosure there about Gates funding the site). The actual news is, Gates is selling debt to poor Africans, along with the controversial World Bank, a Gates partner [1, 2]. It says: “The International Finance Corporation, IFC, said on Tuesday that it is working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK’s Department for International Development to invest about $60 million (about N9.42billion) to help boost the coverage of priority health technologies and intervention services that benefit over one million poor Nigerians.”

It is an investment, not a charity. They want this money back with interest. Here are some new PR photos from the corporate press (yes, smile for the camera with black children, it’s good for your investments, Bill).

“In a way, Monsanto is a symptom of society being controlled by greedy plutocratic monopolists who control our media and politicians.”Hailed as a visionary by the Microsoft-affiliated sites (MSNBC) which print everything Gates says, Gates keeps lobbying in areas he does not grok. Gates grew up ultra-rich, he does not understand poverty. It’s not just him though. How perverse it must be for the world’s richest woman to speak ‘for’ the world’s poorest as seen here. It’s insane. “Melinda Gates stands before 5,000 Duke University graduates,” says this article. What is her achievement in education, other than marrying a college dropout who made money breaking the law? Money buys keynotes, still, allowing lobbying to take place even in graduation ceremonies. Such situations help lobbying in education (Gates wants privatisation) with inexpensive personal-themed stories planted in educational press.

If the world is looking for the enemy, Monsanto may not be it. In a way, Monsanto is a symptom of society being controlled by greedy plutocratic monopolists who control our media and politicians. They also control a vast proportion of the world’s wealth, owing in part to taxes like mortgages, inflation, and patent royalties imposed by the likes or Monsanto. █

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