09.14.19
Posted in Deception, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 10:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
From a brochure of the Linux Foundation (selling press coverage and even "tweets"):
Summary: The ‘media coup’ of corporate giants (that claim to be 'friends') means that history of GNU/Linux is being distorted and lied about; it also explains prevalent lies such as "Microsoft loves Linux" and denial of GNU/Free software
LINUX.COM is practically dead. The Linux Foundation killed it off as a news source. Linux Journal is also gone, but at least the site is still online (at least for now). It is getting harder and harder to find proper journalism about GNU/Linux (a rarity these days) and Microsoft is happy to fill the gap by Googlebombing "Linux" with Vista 10 'spam' — something to which the Linux Foundation actively contributes.
“It’s hardly surprising that we’re all being bombarded with lies such as “Microsoft loves Linux”…”Hours ago Slashdot promoted VMware/Linux Foundation puff pieces from a Linux Foundation-sponsored ‘news’ site. This is the kind of problem we wrote about a few days ago. The same large corporations that control today’s Linux Foundation also control the story/narrative of “Linux”. So in effect there has been a corporate coup not just in the Linux Foundation but also media that covers “Linux”. It’s hardly surprising that we’re all being bombarded with lies such as “Microsoft loves Linux”; yesterday we showed how Microsoft had approached writers and liaised with bloggers in order to dish out these lies. They’re basically trolling us all for a quick buck. █
Alexandre Oliva moments ago: “anyone seen recent articles critical of Richard Stallman, father of open source and main author of linux, as they used to write before they all suddenly came across free software, and some even about gnu some 48 hours ago?”
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Posted in Deception, Europe, Patents at 9:30 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
They now rely on EBA to ‘endorse’ such patents (again)
Summary: A calm interpretation of the latest wave of lobbying from litigation professionals, i.e. people who profit when there are lots of patent disputes and even expensive lawsuits which may be totally frivolous (for example, based upon fake patents that aren’t EPC-compliant)
IT OUGHT to come as no surprise that António Campinos — like his ‘handler’ — pushes hard for software patents to be granted by the European Patent Office (EPO). The law does not matter to these people; neither do constitutions. Today’s EPO is totally in the pockets of patent maximalists (just look at all the tweets from Friday; they're in cahoots).
Rather than moan and groan about this sad reality let’s take stock of the latest observations, which merit a rebuttal or two. We hope that by exposing facts we can at least enlighten some examiners; perhaps people in positions of authority can respond accordingly.
Just before the weekend Bristows’ Alan Johnson turned the Kool-Aid nozzle again (link for those curious enough to see it). When Bristows says “Poll indicates businesses’ support for UPC without UK” it refers to propaganda from a UPC think tank; it’s Managing IP's UPC propaganda machine — one that its staff pinged me about in Twitter (as if to impress me with their so-called ‘study’). Suffice to say, it’s a poll that only speaks to and for litigation firms. Bristows is a band of liars, so they spin that as “businesses’ support”; it’s not an independent poll (push polling likely) and it blindly follows that ludicrous idea that a corrupt institution that breaks the law internally would act better outwards. We’ve already written a great deal about the firm behind it; on Friday it spoke — in its very latest article — of “Rising Star Awards”. Paid-for, fake and corrupt awards. The lawyers’ ‘industry’ has been manufacturing these fake ‘endorsements’ for themselves. IAM does this for a living, so why not Managing IP as well? Under the guise of “IP STARS”…
“We hope that by exposing facts we can at least enlighten some examiners; perhaps people in positions of authority can respond accordingly.”It’s that same old business model of lying and calling people/sponsors “STARS”. It’s a common scam/fraud in other domains too; a firm comes with an offer of an award, in exchange for some payment of course; contrariwise, it can blackmail businesses with threat of negative publicity. From Managing IP: “The best rising stars lawyers from across the continent congregated at The Pierre Hotel last night to celebrate Euromoney Legal Media Group’s second annual Americas Rising Stars awards.”
So they booked some expensive hotel in which to give their bogus awards. In the same way they promote the UPC with bogus ‘polls’, after the EPO cooperates with them on UPC propaganda events. IAM does that too. They’re all connected and they fool nobody but themselves. They hope to mislead politicians however. Why?
Look no further than Friday’s post from Kluwer Patent Blog (in which Team UPC admits: “Czech Republic will not ratify UPCA any time soon”… or ever!).
So now they admit they’ve lied about remaining barriers. The opening paragraph states “it may violate the Czech Constitution.”
“So they booked some expensive hotel in which to give their bogus awards.”Not just the Czech Constitution; there are similar issues in Hungary and elsewhere (even the courts ruled accordingly).
Norice that Team UPC is nowadays writing anonymously, e.g. "Kluwer Patent blogger", in order to dodge accountability for lying. “Kluwer Patent blogger” is always or usually Bristows. It’s probably Alan Johnson. Here they go: “The Czech Republic will not ratify the Unified Patent Agreement in the near future, even if the Unitary Patent system takes the hurdles of the Brexit and the German constitutional complaint. According to a Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) report on the impact of the patent package, which was commissioned by the national IP office, the Unitary Patent system could have negative financial consequences for Czech SMEs; moreover it may violate the Czech Constitution. Kluwer IP Law interviewed Karel Sindelka, partner and IP expert of the Czech law firm Sindelka Lachmannova, about the PwC report.”
This is the same PwC which was paid by Battistelli a few years ago to lie about EPO staff.
Pressing on, however, who would actually want the UPC? Litigation firms for sure. It’s also pretty clear that UPC would usher in software patents — something that EPO management is still pushing for. It’s lobbying very hard for illegal software while attacking its own judges into approving that. Based on this new blog post: “It appears that the President is broadly in favour of the patentability of computer-implemented simulations…”
“Pressing on, however, who would actually want the UPC? Litigation firms for sure.”Of course!
IP Kat’s blogger adds: “Running a simulation on a computer in order to determine a technical parameter, the President argued, is also not equivalent to a mental act.”
Well, he never wrote a computer program! His sole skill is drinking wine with the ‘right’ people.
The blogger concludes with: “The EBA is independent of the President and is therefore not obliged to follow his opinion.”
“His sole skill is drinking wine with the ‘right’ people.”Lies from Rose Hughes? Probably not. Maybe she’s simply unaware of recent developments. Consider EBA's recent handling of the 'Haar question'. In this newer one, Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) referral G 1/19, the same issues arise. These are serious issues which we’ve mentioned here many times before, as did IP Kat (albeit it’s run by patent maximalists these days). It sometimes spreads lies for EPO management (and censors comments critical of it), so we shall assume good faith and strive to remain polite. Not an easy task when their latest roundup is full of patent maximalism — same as last week! Annsley Ward (Bristows) is dominant in this blog; she’s promoting patent trolls such as InterDigital (again) and also spent a long time promoting software patents in the past. Yes, in IP Kat! It’s also not easy to overlook the professional affiliation of the author of this article; it’s the litigation department of a pharmaceutical giant/monopoly (Rose Hughes works for one) and she constantly comments on the subject of her business. She has just done that again. So the blog lacks independence and it speaks for lawyers, not even scientists inside companies with patents. This wasn’t always the case!
Here’s what she wrote about G 1/19:
One of the more early awaiting referrals before the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA), is G 1/19, relating to the patentability of computer-simulated methods (IPKat post here). The referral has already attracted a large number of amicus curiae from interested parties, including CIPA, EPI and AIPPI. IPKat will review these observations shortly (once this Kat has had the chance to read them all). In the meantime, the EPO has recently announced that the EPO President himself, António Campinos, has taken the unusual move of submitting his own comments on the referral.
The President’s comments can be read in full here. It appears that the President is broadly in favour of the patentability of computer-implemented simulations (in contrast to his view on the patentability of products produced by essentially biological processes…IPKat post here). In summary, the President argues that the case law of the Boards of Appeal already provides that computer-implemented simulations, claimed as such, may be based on technical considerations. Furthermore, these technical considerations may confer inventiveness on the claim. Computer-simulated inventions may therefore be inventive, and thereby patentable.
[...]
Will the EBA agree with the President? The EBA is independent of the President and is therefore not obliged to follow his opinion. Furthermore, as mentioned above, there have already been a large number of observations from third parties submitted to the EBA, some in favour and some against the patentability of computer-simulated inventions (Article 10 RPEBA). Individuals with strong views on this issue [Merpel: such as certain hyperbolic bloggers...], are encouraged to submit their own!
That last remark might be a vague reference to us; I already submitted letters to the EBA a long time ago. That barely had an effect. It would be even less likely to have an effect now that these judges lack independence.
“Many of these patents are fake. Everyone knows it, even the examiners (or SUEPO which represents them), but there’s pressure to grant anyway and it’s expensive to challenge these in courts or even in formal appeals.”Will the judges feel comfortable going against the wishes of Campinos and guard the EPC instead? That’s a risky career choice. Many of these patents are fake. Everyone knows it, even the examiners (or SUEPO which represents them), but there’s pressure to grant anyway and it’s expensive to challenge these in courts or even in formal appeals. 35 U.S.C. § 101 in the US is proving that the USPTO granted far too many such bogus patents as well; Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) inter partes reviews (IPRs) aren’t so cheap, however, so most patents will reach their expiration date without proper scrutiny. █
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Posted in News Roundup at 6:50 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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Intel’s speedy Clear Linux distribution could be running under the hood of your car.
While we’re fascinated by the performance of Intel’s open-source Clear Linux distribution that it offers meaningful performance advantages over other distributions while still focused on security and offering a diverse package set, we often see it asked… who uses Clear Linux? Some argue that Clear Linux is just a toy or technology demo, but it’s actually more.
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Server
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IBM
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On the road to change, you’ll encounter fear and loathing. People will undoubtedly cling to old ways of working. Successfully making it to the other side will require commitment, passionate change agents, and unwavering leadership. You might wonder – is it really worth it?
Leaders who have made the switch to agile project management say that it has delivered benefits both large and small to their organizations, from the rituals that bring their team together – like daily stand-ups – to the results that make their business stronger – like better end products and happier customers.
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Audiocasts/Shows
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Mark M5BOP reports the complete set of amateur radio technical talks from this year’s Martlesham Microwave Round Table is now available to watch on YouTube
Videos of these MMRT 2019 talks are available:
• Practical GNUradio – Heather Lomond M0HMO
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On DL 138 Gnome 3.34 Drops This Week, Super Grub2 Disk 2.04s1 Released, Firefox 69 Released, Purism Librem 5 Shipping, Chromebooks Targeting The Enterprise, Phantom 3D Coming To Linux
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Kernel Space
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since the merge window is closing in and y'all are on a conference, I
thought I should take another stab at it. It being something which Ingo,
Linus and Peter have suggested in the past at least once.
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Borislav Petkov has taken to improve the Linux kernel’s memset function with it being an area previously criticzed by Linus Torvalds and other prominent developers.
Petkov this week published his initial patch for better optimizing the memset function that is used for filling memory with a constant byte.
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In addition to the work being led by DigitalOcean on core scheduling to make Hyper Threading safer in light of security vulnerabilities, IBM and Oracle engineers continue working on Kernel Address Space Isolation to help prevent data leaks during attacks.
Complementing the “Core Scheduling” work, Kernel Address Space Isolation was also talked about at this week’s Linux Plumbers Conference in Lisbon, Portugal. The address space isolation work for the kernel was RFC’ed a few months ago as a feature to prevent leaking sensitive data during attacks like L1 Terminal Fault and MDS. The focus on this Kernel ASI is for pairing with hypervisors like KVM as well as being a generic address space isolation framework.
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While Intel CPUs aren’t shipping with 5-level paging support, they are expected to be soon and distribution kernels are preparing to enable the kernel’s functionality for this feature to extend the addressable memory supported. With that, the mainline kernel is also looking at flipping on 5-level paging by default for its default kernel configuration.
Intel’s Linux developers have been working for several years on the 5-level paging support for increasing the virtual/physical address space for supporting large servers with vast amounts of RAM. The 5-level paging increases the virtual address space from 256 TiB to 128 PiB and the physical address space from 64 TiB to 4 PiB. Intel’s 5-level paging works by extending the size of virtual addresses to 57 bits from 48 bits.
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Linux Foundation
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In this interview, Chip Childers, the CTO of the Cloud Foundry Foundation talks about some hot topics.
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Using open source software is commonplace, with only a minority of companies preferring a proprietary-first software policy. Proponents of free and open source software (FOSS) have moved to the next phases of open source adoption, widening FOSS usage within the enterprise as well as gaining the “digital transformation” benefits associated with open source and cloud native best practices.
Companies, as well as FOSS advocates, are determining the best ways to promote these business goals, while at the same time keeping alive the spirit and ethos of the non-commercial communities that have embodied the open source movement for years.
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Graphics Stack
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Radeon ROCm 2.7.2 is now available as the newest update to AMD’s open-source GPU compute stack for Linux systems.
ROCm 2.7.2 is a small release that just fixes the upgrade path when moving from older ROCm releases, v2.7.2 should now be running correctly. This release comes after the recent ROCm 2.7.1 point release that had corrected some components from properly loading the ROC tracer library.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Wine or Emulation
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Based off yesterday’s release of Wine 4.16, the Wine-Staging 4.16 update out today is more prominent with a number of new patches introduced to this experimental/testing flavor of Wine for running Windows games/applications on Linux.
Wine-Staging 4.16 brings a tentative fix for this six year old bug report about Direct3D 9 rendering issues. The functionality can be enabled via a new “multiply_special” registry key to workaround issues with Final Fantasy XIV, The Witcher 2, Darkness II, Need for Speed Shift 2, Resident Evil 4, and other games.
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Games
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Developer Popcannibal (Make Sail, Girls Like Robots) just released an updated version of the Humble Original Kind Words with Linux support. Originally released in July’s Humble Monthly as an original game, Popcannibal did some tweaks and released it this week on Steam.
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Dead Rising 4 running through Steam play.
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Get ready for another weekend full of testing games, as Valve and CodeWeavers have put out a fresh official build of Steam Play Proton for your pleasure.
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Developer Raymond Doerr has announced their village building sim Rise to Ruins will leave Early Access on October 14th.
A game regular GamingOnLinux readers will most likely be familiar with, since I’ve written about it quite a few times when checking up on development. The progress on it and how it’s grown has been astonishing. Coming from such a basic village builder into a highly engrossing mix of village building, god sim and tower defense all in one it’s great. The current trailer is a little old but it gives you a reasonable idea:
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Just a quick one really on some excellent deals going on right now, including two games you can grab completely free to keep.
On Steam you can currently pick up DiRT Rally with 100% off, so if you don’t own it you can add it to your Steam Library and keep it forever. It’s really challenging but also incredibly fun, give it a go! Additionally, the THE GREAT GEOMETRIC MULTIVERSE TOUR, an indie FPS is also 100% off on Steam. Both deals should end on Monday, 16th at 5PM UTC.
Also a reminder about Deep Rock Galactic, it’s fantastic in Steam Play and it’s having a free weekend with a big sale.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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KDE Frameworks are over 70 addon libraries to Qt which provide a wide variety of commonly needed functionality in mature, peer reviewed and well tested libraries with friendly licensing terms. For an introduction see the KDE Frameworks web page.
This release is part of a series of planned monthly releases making improvements available to developers in a quick and predictable manner.
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KDE Frameworks 5.62 is out today as the latest monthly update to this collection of KDE libraries complementing the Qt5 tool-kit offerings.
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The last week I was in Milan with my wife Aiswarya to attend Akademy 2019, the yearly event of the KDE community. Once again it was a great experience, with lots of interesting conferences and productive BoF sessions (“Birds of a Feather”, a common name for a project meeting during a conference).
On Sunday, we presented our talk “GCompris in Kerala, part 2”. First, Aiswarya told some bits of Free-Software history in Kerala, gave examples of how GCompris is used there, and explained her work to localize the new version of GCompris in Malayalam (the language of this Indian state). Then I made a quick report of what happened in GCompris the last 2 years, and talked about the things to come for our next release.
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I attended my first ever Akademy! The event was held at the University of Milano-Bicocca in Milan, Italy this year. And the experience was splendid. During the 2 day conference, I had the opportunity to talk at the Student Showcase, where all of the SoC students presented their work to the community. There were about 8 students, and everyone gave a good briefing on their project.
My project this summer was with Kdenlive, the open source non linear professional video editor. I proposed to revamp one of the frequently used tools in the editor, called the Titler tool, which is used to create title clips. Title clips are video clips that contain text and/or images that are composited or appended to your video (eg: subtitles). The problem with the titler tool as it is, is that it uses QGraphicsView to describe a title clip and QGraphicsView was deprecated since the release of Qt5. This obviously leads to problems – upstream bugs crawling affecting the functionality of the tool and an overall degradation in the ease of maintenance of the codebase. Moreover, adding new features to the existing code base was no easy task and therefore, a complete revamp was something in sights of the developer community in Kdenlive for a long time now. I proposed to rework on the backend for the period of GSoC replacing the use of XML with QML and use a new rendering backend with QQuickRenderControl, along with a new MLT module to handle the QML frames. I was able to cover most of the proposed work, I seek to continue working on it and finish evolving the titler tool.
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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There’s an exciting patch set to GNOME Shell and Mutter now pending for finally wiring up the full-screen unredirected display / full-screen bypass compositing for helping the performance of full-screen games in particular on Wayland.
GNOME on X11 has long supported the full-screen compositing bypass so the window manager / compositor gets out of the way when running full-screen games/applications. That support under Wayland hasn’t been in place and thus there is a performance hit for full-screen Wayland-native software. But now thanks to Red Hat’s Jonas Ådahl, that infrastructure now appears to be ready.
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Slackware Family
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After a summer hiatus during which I only released new packages for KDE Frameworks because they addressed a serious security hole, I am now back in business and just released KDE-5_19.09 for Slackware-current.
The packages for KDE-5_19.09 are available for download from my ‘ktown‘ repository. As always, these packages are meant to be installed on a full installation of Slackware-current which has had its KDE4 removed first. These packages will not work on Slackware 14.2. On my laptop with slackware64-current, this new release of Plasma5 runs smooth.
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Debian Family
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New school year has started again and next version of Slax is here too 
this time it is 9.11.0. This release includes all bug fixes and security updates from Debian 9.11 (code name Jessie), and adds a boot parameter to disable console blanking (console blanking is disabled by default).
You can get the newest version at the project’s home page, there are options to purchase Slax on DVD or USB device, as well as links for free download.
Surprisingly for me we skipped 9.10, I am not sure why
I also experimented with the newly released series of Debian 10 (code name Buster) and noticed several differences which need addressing, so Slax based on Debian 10 is in progress, but not ready yet. Considering my current workload and other circumstances, it will take some more time to get it ready, few weeks at least.
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Slax 9.11 pulls in all the package updates and fixes from Debian 9.11. Meanwhile the lead developer is working on a presumably “Slax 10″ that is rebased against Debian 10. But there are a number of issues still needing to be addressed and as such that next major Slax release is still some time out from being released.
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Canonical/Ubuntu Family
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You probably already know a stack of keyboard shortcuts already because general actions like copy (ctrl + c), paste (ctrl + v), and undo are the same across all operating systems and throughout most (if not all) software.
So in this post we focus solely on a set of Ubuntu keyboard shortcuts you might not know about, as well as those that you might, but always forget to use!
Read all the way to the end for a bonus tip on how to create custom keyboard shortcuts in Ubuntu for your favourite apps and CLI tools — and to download our newbie-friendly Ubuntu keyboard shortcuts cheat sheet!
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Devices/Embedded
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After budget friendly Pine Tab, Pine Phone and Pine Notebook, PINE64 just revealed that it is working on a Linux based smartwatch called PineTime. It should cost around $25 when it is available.
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Pine64 is on a roll. The company recently launched its $199 PineBook Pro – a quality Linux laptop with all the trimmings (including privacy switches) – and it’s deep in development of the PinePhone. Now the company is breaking into the watch business with #PineTime, an affordable smartwatch companion for your Linux smartphone. How affordable? How does roughly $25 sound?
Pine64 announced the project via Twitter in a way that defies what we’ve come to expect from crowdfunded projects in the same arena such as the Purism Librem 5: they posted a photo of the actual device (not a render), and they’re not taking pre-orders or any kind of deposit until the device is finished.
A fair approach, since PineTime is waiting on FreeRTOS or ARM Mbed developers to breathe life into it.
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The folks at Pine64 have been selling inexpensive Linux laptops for a few years, and they’re getting ready to launch their first Linux smartphone.
But the team also has other products in the works, including new single-board computers, a tablet, and a previously unannounced smartwatch/smartphone companion called the PineTime.
The PineTime i:s interesting for a few reasons. First, it’s expected to be cheap: Pine64 says it’ll sell for around $25.
Second, it’s designed to run open source software, based on the based on the FreeRTOS kernel. The company describes the PineTime watch as a companion for Linux smartphones… you know, like the company’s upcoming $150 PinePhone.
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Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications
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After almost three years of research, planning and development we’re proud to present the first public version of Xabber Server. Server is licensed under GNU AGPL v3 license, source code is available on GitHub. It is a fork of superb open source source XMPP server ejabberd by ProcessOne, with many custom protocol improvements an an all-new management panel.
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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Richard Stallman is a noted alumnus of MIT who remains listed as a Visiting Scientist at the MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL). In the world of free software, he’s considered one of the earliest pioneers. He also helped develop the GNU Project, which has had a significant impact on the development of computers and technology.
Now for the bad part — and it’s really, really bad: Stallman has some very troubling opinions on the subject of Jeffrey Epstein, along with a host of related subjects. MIT graduate and engineer Selam Jie Gano was the first to raise the alarm about this, with a long post on Medium quoting an email Stallman recently sent to the CSAIL mailing list and exploring other deeply dodgy things he’s said and done in the past.
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Last week, Media Lab director Joi Ito resigned after admitting that he had also taken Epstein’s money to fund his personal investments. Both Ito and Reif insist that they simply thought Epstein was a convicted sex offender and didn’t know he was a sex trafficker. Meanwhile, over on the MIT email listserv, computer scientist Richard Stallman is asking if maybe Epstein’s victims aren’t to blame for all this.
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Stallman allegedly blasted the email out Thursday to a mailing list for MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, according to an MIT alumni who leaked the message, Selam Jie Gano.
Stallman was apparently responding to an email alerting students of an anti-Epstein protest at MIT.
The university has come under fire after Giuffre’s allegations and revelations its highly acclaimed Media Lab accepted donations from Epstein.
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Richard Stallman has once again managed to demonstrate incredible insensitivity[1]. There’s an argument that in a pure technical universe this is irrelevant and we should instead only consider what he does in free software[2], but free software isn’t a purely technical topic – the GNU Manifesto is nakedly political, and while free software may result in better technical outcomes it is fundamentally focused on individual freedom and will compromise on technical excellence if otherwise the result would be any compromise on those freedoms. And in a political movement, there is no way that we can ignore the behaviour and beliefs of that movement’s leader. Stallman is driving away our natural allies. It’s inappropriate for him to continue as the figurehead for free software.
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Bison 3.4.2 is a bug fix release of the 3.4 series. It fixes a number of
hard-to-find bugs, mostly discovered by fuzzing.
In Bison 3.4 a particular focus was put on improving the diagnostics, which
are now colored by default, and accurate with multibyte input. Their format
was also changed, and is now similar to GCC 9's diagnostics.
Users of the default backend (yacc.c) can use the new %define variable
api.header.include to avoid duplicating the content of the generated header
in the generated parser. There are two new examples installed, including a
reentrant calculator which supports recursive calls to the parser and
Flex-generated scanner.
See below for more details.
==================================================================
Bison is a general-purpose parser generator that converts an annotated
context-free grammar into a deterministic LR or generalized LR (GLR) parser
employing LALR(1) parser tables. Bison can also generate IELR(1) or
canonical LR(1) parser tables. Once you are proficient with Bison, you can
use it to develop a wide range of language parsers, from those used in
simple desk calculators to complex programming languages.
Bison is upward compatible with Yacc: all properly-written Yacc grammars
work with Bison with no change. Anyone familiar with Yacc should be able to
use Bison with little trouble. You need to be fluent in C, C++ or Java
programming in order to use Bison.
Here is the GNU Bison home page:
https://gnu.org/software/bison/
==================================================================
Here are the compressed sources:
https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bison/bison-3.4.2.tar.gz (4.1MB)
https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bison/bison-3.4.2.tar.xz (3.1MB)
Here are the GPG detached signatures[*]:
https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bison/bison-3.4.2.tar.gz.sig
https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bison/bison-3.4.2.tar.xz.sig
Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:
https://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html
[*] Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the
.sig suffix) is intact. First, be sure to download both the .sig file
and the corresponding tarball. Then, run a command like this:
gpg --verify bison-3.4.2.tar.gz.sig
If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
then run this command to import it:
gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 0DDCAA3278D5264E
and rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.
This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
Autoconf 2.69
Automake 1.16.1
Flex 2.6.4
Gettext 0.19.8.1
Gnulib v0.1-2844-g03add7eb9
==================================================================
NEWS
* Noteworthy changes in release 3.4.2 (2019-09-08) [stable]
** Bug fixes
In some cases, when warnings are disabled, bison could emit tons of white
spaces as diagnostics.
When running out of memory, bison could crash (found by fuzzing).
When defining twice the EOF token, bison would crash.
New warnings from recent compilers have been addressed in the generated
parsers (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc).
When lone carriage-return characters appeared in the input file,
diagnostics could hang forever.
* Noteworthy changes in release 3.4.1 (2019-05-22) [stable]
** Bug fixes
Portability fixes.
* Noteworthy changes in release 3.4 (2019-05-19) [stable]
** Deprecated features
The %pure-parser directive is deprecated in favor of '%define api.pure'
since Bison 2.3b (2008-05-27), but no warning was issued; there is one
now. Note that since Bison 2.7 you are strongly encouraged to use
'%define api.pure full' instead of '%define api.pure'.
** New features
*** Colored diagnostics
As an experimental feature, diagnostics are now colored, controlled by the
new options --color and --style.
To use them, install the libtextstyle library before configuring Bison.
It is available from
https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gettext/
for instance
https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gettext/libtextstyle-0.8.tar.gz
The option --color supports the following arguments:
- always, yes: Enable colors.
- never, no: Disable colors.
- auto, tty (default): Enable colors if the output device is a tty.
To customize the styles, create a CSS file similar to
/* bison-bw.css */
.warning { }
.error { font-weight: 800; text-decoration: underline; }
.note { }
then invoke bison with --style=bison-bw.css, or set the BISON_STYLE
environment variable to "bison-bw.css".
*** Disabling output
When given -fsyntax-only, the diagnostics are reported, but no output is
generated.
The name of this option is somewhat misleading as bison does more than
just checking the syntax: every stage is run (including checking for
conflicts for instance), except the generation of the output files.
*** Include the generated header (yacc.c)
Before, when --defines is used, bison generated a header, and pasted an
exact copy of it into the generated parser implementation file. If the
header name is not "y.tab.h", it is now #included instead of being
duplicated.
To use an '#include' even if the header name is "y.tab.h" (which is what
happens with --yacc, or when using the Autotools' ylwrap), define
api.header.include to the exact argument to pass to #include. For
instance:
%define api.header.include {"parse.h"}
or
%define api.header.include {<parser/parse.h>}
*** api.location.type is now supported in C (yacc.c, glr.c)
The %define variable api.location.type defines the name of the type to use
for locations. When defined, Bison no longer defines YYLTYPE.
This can be used in programs with several parsers to factor their
definition of locations: let one of them generate them, and the others
just use them.
** Changes
*** Graphviz output
In conformance with the recommendations of the Graphviz team, if %require
"3.4" (or better) is specified, the option --graph generates a *.gv file
by default, instead of *.dot.
*** Diagnostics overhaul
Column numbers were wrong with multibyte characters, which would also
result in skewed diagnostics with carets. Beside, because we were
indenting the quoted source with a single space, lines with tab characters
were incorrectly underlined.
To address these issues, and to be clearer, Bison now issues diagnostics
as GCC9 does. For instance it used to display (there's a tab before the
opening brace):
foo.y:3.37-38: error: $2 of ‘expr’ has no declared type
expr: expr '+' "number" { $$ = $1 + $2; }
^~
It now reports
foo.y:3.37-38: error: $2 of ‘expr’ has no declared type
3 | expr: expr '+' "number" { $$ = $1 + $2; }
| ^~
Other constructs now also have better locations, resulting in more precise
diagnostics.
*** Fix-it hints for %empty
Running Bison with -Wempty-rules and --update will remove incorrect %empty
annotations, and add the missing ones.
*** Generated reports
The format of the reports (parse.output) was improved for readability.
*** Better support for --no-line.
When --no-line is used, the generated files are now cleaner: no lines are
generated instead of empty lines. Together with using api.header.include,
that should help people saving the generated files into version control
systems get smaller diffs.
** Documentation
A new example in C shows an simple infix calculator with a hand-written
scanner (examples/c/calc).
A new example in C shows a reentrant parser (capable of recursive calls)
built with Flex and Bison (examples/c/reccalc).
There is a new section about the history of Yaccs and Bison.
** Bug fixes
A few obscure bugs were fixed, including the second oldest (known) bug in
Bison: it was there when Bison was entered in the RCS version control
system, in December 1987. See the NEWS of Bison 3.3 for the previous
oldest bug.
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Public Services/Government
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Amongst the many benefits of free and open source software, include the economic advantages of code reuse and the sharing of programming costs. For public institutions however, there are more fundamental reasons for embracing the open source model: [...]
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She says her mission is to save the “saberes y sabores” — the knowledge and flavors — of traditional Mexican food.
Climate change is just one of the threats facing the ingredients of Mexico’s renowned cuisine, which was named an essential part of the world’s cultural heritage by UNESCO in 2010.
[...]
According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which launched a campaign last month to save Mexico’s classic ingredients, six out of every 10 chiles consumed in the country today come from Chinese seeds.
But now some farmers and chefs are fighting back to save Mexico’s indigenous chiles, beans, tomatoes, gourds, maize and more.
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“Desperate Housewives” star Felicity Huffman was sentenced Friday to 14 days in prison for paying $15,000 to rig her daughter’s SAT scores in the college admissions scandal that ensnared dozens of wealthy and well-connected parents.
Huffman, 56, became the first of 34 parents to be sentenced in the case. She was also given a $30,000 fine, 250 hours of community service and a year of supervised release.
Before sentencing, she tearfully described her daughter asking why Huffman didn’t trust her.
“I can only say I am so sorry, Sophia,” Huffman said. “I was frightened. I was stupid, and I was so wrong. I am deeply ashamed of what I have done. I have inflicted more damage than I could ever imagine. I now see all the things that led me down this road, but ultimately none of the reasons matter because at the end of the day I had a choice. I could have said no.”
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Science
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Pew found that 95 percent of U.S. teens age 13 to 17 use a smartphone and 45 percent say they are online “almost constantly.” More than half said they spend too much time on their phones. Another survey found teens were on their phones nearly nine hours a day.
Almost a fourth in the Pew survey said social media had a “mostly negative effect” on their lives.
A third study, from the University of San Diego, concluded that students frequently on their cellphones were twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression or anxiety as low-level users of cellphones.
Some experts suspect that obsessive cellphone use may in fact be a physiological addiction, as the brain releases the chemical dopamine – part of the brain’s pleasure circuitry – with each digital notification.
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Now that my oldest is in ninth grade, it occurs to me that this decision not to buy him the one thing that every other kid has might be the most subversive, countercultural gesture of my entire life. I’m a total conformist. I follow the rules. I return my library books on time or pay the fine. My husband is a captain in the Navy—certainly not countercultural. As soon as the first baby came along, we bought a minivan. We’ve never been out there trying to make any bold statements. And yet, when it comes to allowing my teenagers access to smartphones, I am apparently a rebel. Is resisting this ubiquitous technology really worth it?
For me, it is. I believe that a smartphone too accessible, given too early, and in the wrong hands is at best an addictive distraction and at worst a handheld siphon draining away children’s youth one beep, one swipe, one notification at a time.
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Health/Nutrition
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The family that owns OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma used Swiss and other hidden accounts to transfer $1 billion to themselves, New York state’s attorney general contends in court papers filed Friday.
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She soon learned that the rumors held some truth. Medicaid, the government program that provides health care to more than 75 million low-income and disabled Americans, isn’t necessarily free. It’s the only major welfare program that can function like a loan. Medicaid recipients over the age of 55 are expected to repay the government for many medical expenses—and states will seize houses and other assets after those recipients die in order to satisfy the debt.
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Over the past few months, several hospitals have announced major changes to their financial assistance policies, including curtailing the number of lawsuits they file against low-income patients unable to pay their medical bills.
Investigative reports have spurred the moves, and they prompted criticism from a top federal official.
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Mississippi legislators — apparently guided by “threatened” cattle farmers — decided to rewrite its product-labeling laws. It enacted a statute forbidding producers of non-meat products from using meat-associated terms to describe their products. This unconstitutional requirement was put in place to supposedly reduce customer confusion, but the labels targeted made it clear their products — hamburgers, hot dogs, etc. — contained zero meat.
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Security (Confidentiality/Integrity/Availability)
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Later, the County official discovered that the two men were in fact, hired by the state court administration to try to “access” court records through “various means” to find out potential security vulnerabilities of the electronic court records.
The state court administration acknowledged that the two men had been hired, but said they were not supposed to physically break into the courthouse.
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Defence/Aggression
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The domains are associated with a group of Iranian cyberattackers collectively known as Cobalt Dickens or Silent Librarian. As Threatpost recently reported in a post on the group’s attack tactics, the attackers are looking to use fake, library-themed landing pages to steal students’ credentials, then use those to steal and resell intellectual property, move laterally within organizations, conduct internal phishing and more.
New details from Secureworks Counter Threat Unit (CTU) researchers this week show that in total, Cobalt Dickens is actively targeting at least 380 universities in more than 30 countries. Many universities have been targeted multiple times, the firm said.
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South Africa’s National Prosecution Authority has issued arrest warrants for two Rwandans accused of murdering Rwandan critic Colonel Patrick Karegeya, who was found dead in his hotel room in Johannesburg on January 1, 2014.
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New telecommunications and internet restrictions on Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh will disrupt critical humanitarian and emergency services.
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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Enter Finnish Public Broadcasting Company, Yle, which is hoping to harness the engagement power of gamification to accelerate awareness and understanding of troll tactics and help more people spot malicious internet fakes. It has put together an online game, called Troll Factory, that lets you play at being, well, a hateful troll. Literally.
The game begins with a trigger warning that it uses “authentic social media content” that viewers may find disturbing. If you continue to play you’ll see examples of Islamophobic slogans and memes that have actually been spread on social media. So the trigger warning is definitely merited.
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A film roll of the image was smuggled out of China and the photo later appeared on the front pages of global newspapers. In China, however, the image remains highly taboo and any information about the crackdown is heavily suppressed.
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Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange is to remain in prison when his jail term ends because of his “history of absconding”, a judge has ruled.
He was due to be released on 22 September after serving his sentence for breaching bail conditions.
But Westminster Magistrates’ Court heard there were “substantial grounds” for believing he would abscond again.
The Australian, 48, is fighting extradition to the US over allegations of leaking government secrets.
-
The press does not have the right to access the full set of documents on the Julian Assange case. That is what judge Edward Mitchell finally ruled in an appeal taken to the London Upper Tribunal by la Repubblica, after we have spent the last four years trying to access the full documentation to investigate the Assange case and factually reconstruct it.
In an extremely technical judgement just made public and which the judge himself characterises as “unusually long”, Mitchell rejects our legal arguments and states that he believed public knowledge of Mr Assange’s case would not have increased if it was known that the CPS held information from the US State Department or Department of Justice. A rather incredible argument considering that the entire Assange case revolves around the role of the United States authorities, who want to get their hands on the WikiLeaks founder, extradite him to the US and jail him for life: establishing whether the British and US authorities discussed this possibility from the very beginning is crucial.
Julian Assange is currently in the high-security prison in Belmarsh in London. He is in very precarious condition and in fact is still in Belmarsh’s health unit. Last July the UN Special Rapporteur on torture said he is “gravely concerned” about his situation. Assange is awaiting the extradition hearing, after US authorities indicted him for alleged violations of the US Espionage Act for the publication of secret US government documents. A crucial extradition hearing is supposed to be held in February 2020 in London. If the founder of WikiLeaks is extradited to the US, he risks 175 years in jail: it would be the first time in US history that a journalist has ended up in jail for his work.
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Environment
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“The area’s swamps feed rivers that extend throughout the region and feed into the White Sea,” he added, while declining to provide his last name for security reasons. “Poison Shiyes with garbage, and you poison the entire north.”
Antokha is just one of the many Russian northerners to join a hundreds-strong protest movement that’s spent the past year locked in a standoff with authorities over the landfill’s construction.
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On Thursday, The Ocean Cleanup released a study that offers an alternative explanation for why certain plastic items sit on the surface of the water while others go missing. Rather than quickly dissolving into microplastics, plastic objects get repeatedly pushed back toward land or disappear underneath the surface of the water, the team found.
“It is quite a contrarian view,” Slat told Business Insider. “I think we’ve been able to answer, or at least allude to, the biggest knowledge gap in the area of plastic pollution.”
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The EPA chief unveiled the shift in U.S. water policy Thursday during an event at the National Association of Manufacturers headquarters in Washington, D.C. Wheeler spoke alongside Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works R.D. James, who joined him in signing the repeal of the 2015 rule.
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It calls for rises to be limited to within a safer limit of 1.5 deg C – but the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change warned last year that at current levels of greenhouse gas emissions, we could pass this marker as early as 2030.
“If (forest fires) continue, the dream to limit global temperature rises to 1.5 deg C will remain just a dream,” said the WRI’s Wijaya.
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Officials temporarily suspended aid efforts and closed a couple of small airports in the Bahamas Saturday as Tropical Storm…
-
Alongside the flag-waving surge of right-wing and extreme right-wing groups, political parties concerned with environmental issues are on the rise.
-
While the world watches in horror as fires rage in the Amazon, activists are naming culprits.
-
Trees cool the world. They also cool themselves. Even moderate forest damage makes local temperatures soar.
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“We are calling on everyone to join us,” said strike organizer Jerome Foster II. “We need a truly diverse and multi-generational movement, made of people from all ages and backgrounds, not just the youth.”
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Maybe you haven’t heard, but we’re in some dire straits. Land grabbers are burning the edges of the Amazon rainforest to clear it for industrial agriculture. Greenland is melting at a historically unprecedented rate. This summer, Europe, Japan, and the eastern United States were scorched by epic heat waves. The capital of Indonesia is running out of water.
-
Final Environmental Impact Statement for drilling in coastal plain of refuge came on heels of House vote to block drilling in Alaska area
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A Greenpeace Brazil campaingner says the Bolsonaro government “makes efforts to deny the problems, not to face them.”
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Energy
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A lot has changed when it comes to power generation in the past 16 years. In 2003, if you flipped on a light switch most places in the U.S., odds were you were setting into motion the final link in a chain of events that started in a coal mine or a mountain-top removal project. The U.S. got more than half of its electricity from burning coal that year, followed distantly by nuclear and gas. Coal had a long-standing reputation for being a cheap, if dirty, way to get things done.
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Wildlife/Nature
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“It’s clear evidence these chemicals can affect populations.”
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Finance
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As someone who has been a union member since I was a Marine with the American Servicemen’s Union until I retired last year as a Teamster as well as a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, I have lived the reality of mistreatment of workers in the United States.
-
The first installment of Michael Heinrich’s three-volume biography of Karl Marx titled “Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society” is now available from Monthly Review Press. In keeping with MR’s long-time tradition as a movement rather than an academic press, the cloth edition is $34.95 and the eBook is only $19.95. Given the renewed attention to Karl Marx since the financial crisis of 2008, it will help us understand how his life and thought evolved. Heinrich is a consummate scholar of Marxism, best known until now for his 2012 “An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital”, also available from MR.
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The 19-country bloc is also united in pursuing a tough regulatory approach should Libra seek authorizations to operate in Europe. It is also considering a common set of rules for virtual currencies, which are currently largely unregulated.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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After reading a number of recent articles by Norman Solomon in which he seems to be chronically bristling under his democrat identity, his frustration with his party keeps reminding me why the democrats and republicans are both wastes of energy.
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On Tuesday two RCMP agents came to my house. Two large men in suits asked for me and when my partner said I wasn’t there they asked who she was.
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The tops often have intricate Chinese character designs detailing the brand or the filling inside.
But Suen’s mooncakes have different kinds of messages printed on them such as “Hong Kong People”, “No withdrawal, no dispersal” and “Be Water”.
All are chants heard on Hong Kong’s streets in the last three months, as huge crowds come out to protest eroding freedoms after two decades of rule by Beijing.
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Let’s clear things up: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says that she’s “not answering any more questions about a possible inquiry, investigation, and the rest” because “there is nothing different from one day to the next.”
But something new did happen on Thursday. The Judiciary Committee’s Democratic majority voted to open an “investigation to determine whether to recommend articles of impeachment with regard to President Donald J. Trump.” In so doing, they established guidelines for pursuing an inquiry—with committee chair Jerry Nadler noting, correctly, that “Some call this process an impeachment inquiry. Some call it an impeachment investigation. There is no legal difference between these terms.”
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Voters would back the creation of a temporary government of national unity to avoid a no-deal Brexit, according to a new poll.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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On this episode of Along the Line, Nolan Higdon and the director of Project Censored Mickey Huff discuss their new book United States of Distraction on The Project Censored Show! ATL’s Creative Director is Dylan Lazaga. Mickey Huff is ATL’s producer. ATL’s engineer is Janice Domingo. Adam Armstrong is ATL’s webmaster.
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Just a few months ago, as part of our ongoing “content moderation at scale is impossible” series, we wrote about how Facebook has spent over a decade now struggling with how to deal with naked female breasts. There are a lot more details in that post, but it initially had a “no nudity” policy, but that got difficult when someone would post famous artwork or breastfeeding mothers. Facebook’s policy keeps trying to change to adapt, but no matter what it does it keeps running into more and more edge cases.
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The Ninth Circuit Appeals Court has resuscitated a lawsuit against Malwarebytes filed by litigious software company Enigma. Enigma Software tends to sue people who say bad things about its antivirus offerings and since there’s a lot of people doing that, the company seems to spend a fair amount of time in court.
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Privacy/Surveillance
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There was no red ribbon, but a big blue button, as Facebook’s new 400 million kroner data centre officially opened in Odense yesterday – several months ahead of schedule.
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Microsoft is up to its old tricks again, sneaking in some cheeky telemetry software with an update.
Users of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 have once again been greeted this month with a ‘security only’ update rollup which actually hides some telemetry spyware within, designed to allow Microsoft to keep tabs on your usage.
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Up close, the result will be a steady stream of quotidian benefits. Some will arise from convenience. Microchipped clothes could tell washing machines how to treat them. Smart traffic systems will reduce waiting times at traffic lights and better distribute cars through a city. Some will be the sorts of productivity improvements that are the fundamental drivers of economic growth. Data from factory robots, for instance, will allow algorithms to predict when they will break down, and schedule maintenance to ensure that does not happen. Implanted sensors will spot early signs of illness in farm animals, and micromanage their feeding. Collectively, those benefits will add up to a more profound change: by gathering and processing vast quantities of data about itself, a computerised world will allow its inhabitants to quantify and analyse all manner of things that used to be intuitive and inexact.
One way to understand the IoT says Martin Garner at CCS Insight, a firm of analysts, is by analogy with another world-changing innovation. Over the past century electricity has allowed consumers and businesses at least in the rich world, access to a fundamental, universally useful good—energy—when and where they needed it. The IoT aims to do for information what electricity did for energy.
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Snowden: I hope not. But look, if I had wanted to live a safe life, I would still be sitting in Hawaii in paradise with the woman I love collecting a huge paycheck to do almost no work. But what makes a life? It’s not just who we think we are, it’s the choices we make. If I can’t return home to my country, I will at least know that I made it better. And no matter what happens, that’s something I can live with.
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So what’s changed since Snowden’s revelations?
The law, for one. In 2015, Congress passed the U.S.A. Freedom Act, which prohibits the bulk collection of the phone records of American citizens, addressing one of Snowden’s major complaints. Now the government must get a court warrant to look at individual phone records.
Also, ordinary citizens have become much more aware of how governments and private companies like Facebook, Amazon and Google may collect personal data. This has, in turn, has led to the much wider use of encryption.
“2016 was a landmark in tech history, the first year since the invention of the Internet that more Web traffic was encrypted than unencrypted,” writes Snowden.
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The press, he notes, mostly missed a story that was squatting right out in the open. Why else would the NSA build what was originally called the Massive Data Repository, a colossal data-storage facility in the Utah desert? He cites an unclassified presentation given by Ira Hunt, then the chief technologist at the CIA, in which he blithely told a crowd of conference attendees and journalists that “it is nearly within our grasp to compute on all human-generated information”, and that the spooks could eavesdrop on every one of their communications and track their smartphones even when they were switched off. Appalled by the power and intrusiveness of a mass-surveillance system that had been developed without public consent, Mr Snowden says, he began organising one of the largest leaks in the history of American spying.
This is Mr Snowden’s account of an episode that still provokes powerful emotions. He says mass surveillance directly contradicts both the spirit and letter of America’s constitution, which is designed to protect its citizens from an over-mighty government. His former employers decry him as a traitor. Western officials have alleged that China and Russia have managed to decrypt some of the cache of documents he took, something that, on Mr Snowden’s telling, should be impossible. For now at least, the truth remains unknowable.
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According to the report, the committee intends not only to examine how age verification works on gambling sites, but also to look specifically at the UK version from the Digital Economy Act 2017.
They’ll have to make do with looking at the Act, because the actual policy hasn’t been enacted yet, already missing two deadlines and last seen with the promise of a revised roll out before 2020. Our bet is closer to “the 1st of Never”, but trust whichever source you prefer.
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A few weeks ago, Techdirt wrote about Denmark reviewing 10,000 court verdicts because of errors in mobile phone tracking data that was offered as evidence in those cases. At that time, it wasn’t clear how many of the group were affected by the unreliable data. However, the Guardian reports that 32 people have already been freed. Given the large number of cases involved, it seems unlikely that many have been reviewed in such a short space of time. If that’s the case, it is possible that quite a few more verdicts will be overturned, and more people released. Companies providing mobile phone services in Denmark are naturally keen to distance themselves from this mess. Jakob Willer, speaking on behalf of the country’s telecoms industry association, said it was not their job to provide evidence:
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A few days ago, I tried and failed to install Google’s smart smoke detector — the Nest Protect — at the CNET Smart Home. After nearly two hours on the phone with the help desk, the Nest App and device still refused to connect. Why? Well, I finally discovered, a problem on the iOS version of the Nest App won’t allow a Nest Protect to be installed after a Nest Hub Max, Google’s shiny new smart display. Eventually, following a suggestion from Google, I had to dig up an old Android-based Galaxy Note 6 to properly install the smoke detector.
If Google’s own smart home products act like embarrassed step-siblings, many erstwhile Works with Nest gadgets seem like they won’t even visit for the holidays anymore. And it’s not their fault: It turns out Google is a terrible parent.
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Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press
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Court reporter Chris Klomp was threatened on Thursday night. A brick was thrown through his kitchen window, and a threatening note was stuck to his door. The note instructed Klomp to delete his social media accounts, “or we’ll be back”, according to photos he posted on Twitter.
-
An extradition hearing is scheduled for Feb. 25, and the judge ordered Assange held until then.
[...]
The 48-year-old Australian appeared in the courtroom through a video link from jail.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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Amazon purchased Whole Foods in 2017 for $13.7 billion, and the grocery chain currently employs roughly 95,000 people. Amazon, on the other hand, is worth nearly $910 billion, making it the third most valuable company on the planet behind Apple and Microsoft, both of which passed trillion-dollar market valuations over the past 12 months.
Despite running only the third most valuable company, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is the world’s richest person, with a net worth north of $115 billion, thanks to the sheer volume of Amazon shares he owns as the company’s sole CEO since its creation in 1994.
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Jolie King and Mark Firkin are being held in the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran, The Times of London, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and the Persian-language Manoto TV reported. Australia’s Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade declined to confirm the location.
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Political operatives are much more likely to seek deadlock and push the issues to Michigan courts, where Republicans have a majority on the state Supreme Court. Indeed, conservative law professor and former 10th Circuit judge Michael McConnell recently filed a petition in the Supreme Court arguing that the patronage cases do not apply to judges because judges are policymakers. McConnell is trying to get the Court to reinstate a rule requiring partisan balance on Delaware’s courts, which are appointed by the governor and approved by the state senate. The same reasoning applies to Michigan’s commission; the commissioners are policymakers and the state can decide to achieve balance and exclude party insiders.
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“No one becomes a whistleblower because they want to,” he said. “No one becomes a whistleblower because it has a happy ending.”
Snowden warned that wide-scale data collection continues. He recalled the moment the light clicked: He was in a Best Buy, looking at “smart” refrigerators and stoves, when it dawned on him that the manufacturers, not the purchasers and owners, were the ones ultimately in control.
“Where this data that your refrigerator was collecting, that your phone was collecting, that the government was collecting — where all of this data was going was intentionally hidden from us,” he said. “We are no longer partner to our technology, in large part, just as we are increasingly, unfortunately, no longer partner to our government, so much as subject to them. And this is a dangerous trend.”
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On listening to Alabama Shakes frontwoman and three-time Grammy winner Brittany Howard’s “Stay High,” an early release from her debut solo album Jamie due out next Friday, I thought of Matsuo Bansho’s sixteenth-century haiku: “Beginning of all art / a song when planting a rice field / in the country’s inmost part.” Perhaps implied in those three lines is the fulfillment of work done not just in the natural world, but in harmony with it. Bansho’s voice calls from a vanished time before our separation from that world.
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Hempress Sativa is one of the most dynamic and talented performers – male or woman – in reggae music today. Currently at work on her sophomore album following her extremely impressive debut “Unconquerebel” – and its dub version with legendary sound engineer Scientist (“Scientist Meets Hempress Sativa in Dub”) – Hempress Sativa is a spiritual, powerful, deeply conscious Rastafari singer. Born into a musical family, she grew up surrounded and nurtured by some of the biggest names in Jamaican music.
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This week, my NPR Illinois and ProPublica colleagues reported on a lawsuit filed by two former University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign students and a professor at another college against former Illinois professor Gary Gang Xu, alleging he assaulted, bullied and raped multiple students — and specifically targeted female Chinese students.
During the past decade, the flagship campus at Urbana-Champaign has become a destination for students from China and has enrolled more Chinese undergraduates during some years than any university in the U.S. There are 569 freshmen from China this year, about 7.4% of the class, according to university data released this week. Overall, there are 5,825 U. of I. students from China, including more than 3,000 undergraduates.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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Over the last few years, telecom giants have increasingly been trying to claim that pretty much any effort to hold them accountable for their terrible service (or anything else) is a violation of their First Amendment rights. Historically that hasn’t gone so well. For example, courts generally laughed off ISP lawyer claims that net neutrality violated their free speech rights, quite correctly highlighting that ISPs are simply conduits to information, not acting as editors of available speech through their blocking or filtering of available information.
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But while the two companies had long been intertwined at the helm, plans to launch competing streaming services were increasingly putting Apple and Disney at odds. Disney is set to launch its Disney Plus service on November 12, whereas Apple TV Plus will launch on November 1.
As the two companies enter the global streaming market, they aren’t just competing for consumer dollars, but also for programming rights. By some reports, Apple has allocated as much as $6 billion for Apple TV Plus content.
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Even with MoviePass’ evident demise, the service has spurred theater chains including AMC Theatres, Regal Entertainment and Cinemark to launch their own rival subscription plans. Last month, AMC said its Stubs A-List program, which lets subscribers see three movies weekly for $19.95 a month, had hit 900,000 subscribers.
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According to Helios and Matheson, MoviePass was too far gone to save. “On September 13, 2019, MoviePass notified its subscribers that it would be interrupting the MoviePass service for all its subscribers effective September 14, 2019, because its efforts to recapitalize MoviePass have not been successful to date,” reads the release.
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Monopolies
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Patents and Software Patents
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In today’s Curver v. Home Expressions decision, the Federal Circuit resolved several outstanding questions regarding design patents. In particular, the Federal Circuit rejected the notion that a design can be claimed, untethered from a specific article of manufacture to which it is applied. It also rejected the notion that the verbal portion of a design patent—the title and the claim, in particular—are irrelevant to analyzing the scope of the right.
Citing work from Prof. Sarah Burstein, one of the foremost scholars of design patents, the opinion stated that a design per se, untethered from any specific article, would create difficulties for the public in identifying the scope of what the design patent protects, as well as for the Patent Office in creating a reasonable scope within which to search for prior art. Again citing Prof. Burstein, the court also noted that a rule that ignores the title and claim language of a design patent makes those components meaningless—surplusage that “would provide no useful information at all.”
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Over at IPWatchdog they have a summary of this week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing (video recording) on the STRONGER Patents Act, a bill primarily (but not exclusively) put forward and promoted by Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.). They place a little more emphasis on quotes from those supporting the bill, but they do acknowledge a “sharp split on injunctive relief, IPR [PTAB inter partes reviews] fixes.”
The bill’s name stands for “Support Technology & Research for Our Nation’s Growth and Economic Resilience,” but there’s nothing positive to say about its content other than recognizing the creativity that went into the derivation of this marketing-friendly acronym and the fact that there is widespread consensus one should end USPTO fee diversion. While the tertiary item on “assisting small businesses in the U.S. patent system” sounds good, it’s useless and amounts to diversionary tactics.
Like many–if not most–legislative proposals, “STRONGER” is a misnomer, and those opposing the pillars of that reactionary and harmful proposal stressed that stronger enforceability of patents doesn’t mean a stronger innovation economy. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation accurately stated, that bill “would make bad patents stronger than ever.” In a Washington Examiner op-ed, the R Street Institute’s Charles Duan proposes that “Congress should look for solutions that enhance not the strength of patents, but the strength of patent correctness.”
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UMN sued LSI and Ericsson for infringing several of its semiconductor related patents. U.S. Patents 5,859,601, 7,251,768, RE45,230, 8,588,317, 8,718,185, and 8,774,309. Those two companies then petitioned the USPTO for inter partes review (IPR) of the asserted claims. The PTAB then dismissed the proceedings – holding that 11th Amendment sovereign immunity applied to IPR proceedings. On appeal, however, the Federal Circuit reversed – holding that sovereign immunity does not protect state-owned patents from being cancelled by the PTAB.
A key Supreme Court precedent on-point is Fed. Mar. Comm’n v. S.C. State Ports Auth., 535 U.S. 743 (2002) (FMC) (presumptive state immunity even in administrative adjudications). Here a major difference is that we have property-rights at stake that create special in rem jurisdiction potential and that UMN has already attacked the IPR petitioners by suing them for infringement, creating potential waiver.
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It has been pointed out that Japan is behind Singapore, China, South Korea and other countries in the adoption of IT for proceedings. In Japan, there is a saying “Knocking on a strong stone bridge before crossing it”. It means to be excessively cautious. Today’s Japan seems not to be able to cross the bridge before everyone else cross it.
My concern is that Japan may be not able to change its current situation until it recognize the fact that Japan is behind other countries, especially China and Korea. I’m afraid that innovative people around the world will not want to partner with a country or companies that have such a mindset.
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The Advocate General (AG) has issued his opinion in SPC Referrals C-650/17 (Royalty Pharma) and C‑114/18 (Sandoz). Both referrals seek clarification over whether an SPC may be granted to a specific, individualised, embodiment of the product claimed by the basic patent. The referrals particularly relate to the correct interpretation of Article 3(a) of the SPC Regulation (Regulation (EC) No. 469/2009). Article 3(a) states that an SPC shall be granted for a product “protected by a basic patent in force”. C-650/17 asks how Article 3(a) should be applied to functional claims, and C‑114/18 asks how Article 3(a) should be applied to claims specifying a Markush formula. In his opinion, the AG is clear that Article 3(a) should be interpreted for these types of claims according to the test provided in the CJEU decision C-121/17 (Teva).
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Trademarks
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It was only a few weeks back that we were discussing Liverpool FC, a soccer team playing in the UK Premier League, attempting to get a trademark for “Liverpool”, the city in which it plays. While the club has made a point of reminding the public that its application is quite narrow, limited specifically to products and services revolving around soccer, that same public has pointed out there are both other indpendent soccer clubs in the city that would technically be infringing on that applied-for mark and that there is a culture of independent retailers selling fan gear that would get caught up in this as well. Liverpool FC, meanwhile, maintains that it wouldn’t go after either group, but instead are interested only in protecting its fans from mass-makers of counterfeit apparel and the like.
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With several attempts to trade mark the name of the founder of the modern Olympic Games, Pierre de Coubertin, Dutch-based Tempting Brands is on track to clash with the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
[...]
In April every year, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the IP community celebrate ‘World Intellectual Property Day. This year’s theme was ‘Reach for Gold: IP and Sports’. The Director-General of WIPO, Dr Francis Gurry, emphasised that “Intellectual property rights underlie and empower the financial model of all sporting events worldwide.” As any observant Kat will know there is no better example of this than the Olympic Games.
The Olympic Games remains one of the most well-known sporting events in the world, which alternate every two years with the Summer games set for Tokyo in 2020 and the Winter games in Beijing in 2022. In order to protect its brand and reputation, the IOC relies on the Nairobi Treaty, as well as national legislation (in Australia: Olympic Insignia Protection Act 1987), to protect its Olympic marks and insignia.
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Copyrights
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A Danish court has ordered Internet provider Telenor to block access to the famous sports streaming site Rojadirecta. The order was requested by local anti-piracy group RettighedsAlliancen and Spanish football league La Liga. Rojadirecta, which filed its objections on paper without success, has yet to decide whether it will appeal.
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MG Premium, a company operated by adult giant Mindgeek, is attempting to find out who is pirating its Brazzers-branded content. In a DMCA subpoena application filed in Washington, the company wants Cloudflare to reveal who is behind thousands of ‘pirate’ uploads on YesPornPlease.com – one of the world’s largest porn sites – in some cases dating back to 2016.
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The saga of loot boxes continues. This time, it’s Parliament weighing in, with the UK’s governing body releasing a report from its Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee on the issue of loot boxes in games and how they should be handled by regulatory bodies.
The big takeaway? As many people have insisted for a while now, the report suggests that loot boxes—wherein you spend real money for the chance to get a thing you want—are gambling. And, specifically, as Rock Paper Shotgun explains, this committee thinks they should be regulated under UK gambling law since they are “games of chance played for money’s worth.” If this regulation happens, it could have pretty big ripples. We’ll be following this one.
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 11:06 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The European Patent Office keeps spitting on the laws which govern it (EPC)
Summary: Normalisation of invalid patents (granted by the EPO in defiance of the EPC) is a serious problem, but patent law firms continue to exploit that while this whole ‘patent bubble’ lasts (apparently the number of applications will continue to decrease because the perceived value of European Patents diminishes)
35 U.S.C. § 101 at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the EPC at the European Patent Office (EPO) ought to have prevented all sorts of crazy abstract patents or patents on things in nature; but António Campinos follows Battistelli‘s footsteps and only ever strives to increase so-called ‘production’ as measured by things like number of patents granted. This means that bogus European Patents are being granted.
“Too bad the EPO does not follow the rule of law, maybe the other German constitutional complaint about the EPO will end up declaring the EPC construction illegal…”
–Benjamin HenrionIn response to something we wrote some days ago about Koch v EPO [1, 2, 3, 4] Benjamin Henrion of FFII joked about the FCC (Germany’s Constitutional Court): “Too bad the EPO does not follow the rule of law, maybe the other German constitutional complaint about the EPO will end up declaring the EPC construction illegal…”
Given that the EPO already grants lots of software patents in Europe, one wonders if the EPO is bound by the EPC and Europe’s political system. As recently as days ago the EPO mentioned Fröhlich, a booster of illegal software patents. “Michael Fröhlich,” it said, “our Director European & International Legal Affairs, PCT, will be talking about the most efficient filing strategies at this event. It’s being held in various European cities…”
Michael Fröhlich typically offers tricks and loopholes for obtaining illegal patents. We’ve mentioned Fröhlich several times over the years, e.g. in relation to “blockchain” patents.
“Michael Fröhlich typically offers tricks and loopholes for obtaining illegal patents.”Lawlessness isn’t limited to the EPO itself. As we’ve shown here many times before, it extends to ILO — a subject we shall revisit some other day. They hide the lawlessness using all sorts of legal maneuvering. It would be good for all EPO staff to become familiar with these tricks. As Henrion put it just before the weekend: “Software patents are excluded from the EPC art52, but the EPO grants them anyway. And even if this case makes jurisprudence in Belgium on that topic, the EPO will ignore it and continue to pollute the market with those pesky patents.”
Henrion also took note of some more propaganda from Bardehle Pagenberg; they constantly promote these illegal patents — something they try to specialise in. Here’s Bardehle Pagenberg’s Bastian Best pushing their sales pitch into hubs right now. So does Kilburn & Strode LLP, which we wrote about earlier today (same hubs).
“Video games are software. Algorithms in computer games (as opposed to controllers etc.) are not patent-eligible, even if one calls them “AI” or whatever.”Misleading headlines can now be found in Lexology (original here by Kilburn & Strode LLP’s Thomas Hamer and Matthew Woodhill). It’s a marketing piece by which they try to advance/push fake patents into Europe (where these patent are illegal), riding hype waves and buzzwords such as “AI”. To quote: “A recent report by the Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE) puts the 2018 market size for the video game industry in Europe at €21bn, with a year-on-year growth of 15%. It’s therefore no wonder that the biggest players in the industry want to protect the next generation of hand-held controllers, software and consoles. By looking at publication and grant data for applications at the EPO over the last 10 years, we can observe the technological trends in this time and try to predict what the future might have in store for gamers. [...] The third patent trend: using AI and machine learning (ML) to dynamically improve gameplay.”
Video games are software. Algorithms in computer games (as opposed to controllers etc.) are not patent-eligible, even if one calls them “AI” or whatever. Surely they know this, but they just don’t care. Neither does the EPO, whose management actively encourages applicants to call all sorts of things “AI” and then pressures examiners to grant. █
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 10:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Monopolies on just about everything are being granted in defiance of the EPC and there are those looking to make this violation ‘unitary’, even worldwide if not just EU-wide
DAYS ago the European Patent Office (EPO) had a meeting with the litigation ‘industry’ instead of scientists. This is rather ‘normal’ these days; António Campinos — like Battistelli — always meets non-scientists like himself. He also puts them in management around him (it’s a lot worse than in the USPTO ). He refuses to face actual scientists except when they’re on stage to receive an award, whereupon it’s an opportunity to make the EPO seem less defunct… or a patent office for science (in the service of “Invention”). The EPO wrote about its latest meetings (warning: epo.org link) just two days ago. To quote: “The EPO also held bilateral meetings with the Swedish, Finnish and Danish national intellectual property offices to discuss how the EPO can further support them in strengthening the local innovation system. They discussed co-operation activities set out in the EPO’s Strategic Plan related to IT tools, knowledge sharing, quality and aligning practices. In addition, activities aimed at raising IP awareness among SMEs and researchers, as well as deploying measures that help bring inventions to market were addressed.”
“They don’t listen to actual scientists and no wonder they promote software patents in Europe even though programmers oppose these.”These NPOs (national patent offices) are mostly lawyers unless they speak to examiners, which of course they don’t. They don’t listen to actual scientists and no wonder they promote software patents in Europe even though programmers oppose these. Mirage News then published “Heads of IPO, EPO and USPTO discuss global patents system” (taking patent maximalism global). We wrote a lot about this roughly a decade ago, based on Wikileaks’ Cablegate. Here’s what these people have in mind:
The UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) Chief Executive Tim Moss hosted intellectual property (IP) leaders at a patent showcase event in London on 13 September.
Tim met with Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Andrei Iancu and European Patent Office (EPO) President, António Campinos.
Topics discussed included their visions for the future of the global patent system, the transformation taking place within IP offices and the cooperation between them. They also shared thoughts on how these developments will benefit users of the global patent system.
The heads of offices met a selection of the UK’s top IP professionals and groups representing the biggest users of the UK patent system.
Notice the role of Tim Moss and António Campinos, who manages the former colleague of Moss. They speak (in this article) of a “global patent system.” Pretty astounding considering the utter mess the EPO has become! European media may choose not to cover it anymore and IP Kat too was threatened into silence (it used to cover EPO scandals before censoring all comments about Campinos), but the cracks are on the surface and some of the latest comments at IP Kat bring up concerns, e.g.
To avoid that everyone is forced to apply the simple take home message from this case, we can ask the EPO to automatically include a sentence like “we intend to pay the fee code XXX mentioned above” in the generated 1038E sheet, when a specific fee code XXX is chosen. The EPO was capable introducing to automatically pre-tick the box “examination is hereby requested”….
That’s a pretty minor ‘scandal’ compared to many of the rest. Here’s a new comment by “Not everything feasible is to be done”; it’s about the EPO granting patents on life itself in defiance of instructions from the EU and irrespective of impact on public health:
That the CRISPR Scientist defends its position and wants to promote the technique is understandable. But not everything which is technically feasible should be done.
Look at the burden the present generation imposes on future ones when it comes to dealing with waste from atomic power plants. Energy generation in atomic plants might be CO2 neutral as such, but what about the waste? It is there for many many more generations!
As long as it is not demonstrated up to the hilt that using this gene editing tool is safe, any gene modification is to be equated with that obtained for GMO and has to be characterised as such.
From what one reads, even here by the CRIPR scientist himself, this is far of being the case, and the EU is right in not have wool pulled over its eyes.
That nature allows to obtain gene modifications by selection and or breeding is one thing. Simply wanting to accelerate the process by some magical tool is not correct as long as it is not possible to foresee the long term consequences of it.
When the likes of Bayer (Monsanto’s new handler, notorious for its role in genocide) have so many lobbyists in Europe it’s no surprise that their cancer-causing products are not just legal but also enshrined as monopolies through patents — those same patents that are then used to sue farmers who dare not use RoundUp (and merely get ‘contaminated’).
“When the likes of Bayer (Monsanto’s new handler, notorious for its role in genocide) have so many lobbyists in Europe it’s no surprise that their cancer-causing products are not just legal but also enshrined as monopolies through patents…”There’s too much ugly stuff on the surface and beneath it. As one person put it this morning, pointing to our recent article about EPO-Serco: “Internet Censorship. News. Irony. British prisons management company SERCO have been hired by the EU to censor unwanted political opinions and deplatform unwanted media sources. SERCO are also the arbiters and custodians of EU patents. Nothing to see here.” █
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Posted in Deception, Europe, Patents at 10:05 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
EPO revolving doors totally acceptable when you serve Team Battistelli
Summary: The EPO’s Albert Keyack (Team Battistelli) is now in Team UPC as Vice President of Kilburn & Strode LLP; he already fills the media with lies about the UPC, as one can expect
“REAL SOON NOW!”
That’s what Team UPC wants us to think of the Unified Patent Court (UPC). They keep telling me stuff like this in Twitter, but evidence suggests otherwise. I choose not to reply; they try to provoke for a response they can somehow take out of context. It’s an entrapment and opponents of the UPC call it that. They try to put UPC critics in a position wherein they seem ‘clueless’ about what they oppose.
“They try to put UPC critics in a position wherein they seem ‘clueless’ about what they oppose.”Unitary Patent (UP) rebuttals are necessary; there’s lots of propaganda to come shortly from Team UPC, i.e. from people whose entire career for about a decade was advocacy of UPC (for personal gain in the monetary sense). Lots of new FUD is afoot, no doubt about it, and it’s connected to corrupt EPO officials like António Campinos or like Benoît Battistelli. They stand to gain from the UPC, even if the people of Europe stand to lose. The European Patent Office is just some empty vessel for them — something with which to propel and boost interests of the litigation ‘industry’. If the Office dies in the process, so be it; they don’t really care. If European firms suffer? They couldn’t care any less. The only firms they care about is their own, i.e. law firms, unproductive firms.
“If European firms suffer? They couldn’t care any less. The only firms they care about is their own, i.e. law firms, unproductive firms.”As we shall explain in a later post, Lexology was recently bombarded with lots of shameless self-promotion by a firm with special EPO connections. Lexology is connected to IAM, the EPO’s prime propaganda machine.
Kilburn & Strode LLP’s Carrollanne Lindley wrote some days ago (to be boosted by Lexology) that UPC “would allow central revocation, enforcement and litigation throughout the EU [and] becomes more uncertain in the light of Brexit.”
“Uncertain” as in dead? Here is the whole paragraph which is relevant:
Patents. Clients should be reassured that the implication of Brexit for patents is less substantial as there is little post grant pan-European patent law (in fact the only post grant pan-European law is relatively rare and is at the level of the Court of Justice of the European Union). The European Patent Convention (EPC) is not an EU body. The future of an EU Unitary Patent (UP) and an EU Unitary Patent Court (UPC) that would allow central revocation, enforcement and litigation throughout the EU becomes more uncertain in the light of Brexit.
“Clients”…
This is news? This is what now counts as ‘news’ (in Google News, owing to Lexology as a gateway)?
Private firms’ promotional messages to “Clients” are not news. They’re sales pitch. It’s marketing.
But pressing on, around the same time we saw Kilburn & Strode LLP’s Albert Keyack with his own puff piece (apparently they’ve paid Lexology to promote their stuff, as it shows up everywhere lately).
“As we explained some months ago (after readers too had alerted us), this is a classic case of revolving doors with the EPO (something ordinary EPO staff, such as examiners, isn’t permitted to do; strictly).”Wait, did we say “Kilburn & Strode LLP’s Albert Keyack”?
Yes, that’s the EPO’s Albert Keyack.
As we explained some months ago (after readers too had alerted us), this is a classic case of revolving doors with the EPO (something ordinary EPO staff, such as examiners, isn’t permitted to do; strictly). Now comes UPC advocacy (i.e. lies) from what became the Vice President of Kilburn & Strode LLP. He wrote:
The UK is set to leave the European Union on 31 October 2019 (‘Exit Day’).
[...]
What about the Unitary Patent and the Unified Patent Court (the UPC Agreement)?
As of mid-2019, 16 EU member states (including the UK) have ratified the convention related to the new pan-European patent (Unitary Patent) and pan-European patent court (Unified Patent Court). The EPO, which is not an EU institution, would administer both the granting of these patents and the courts. All that remains for the new system to take effect is the required ratification by Germany (although ratification is currently under consideration by the German Constitutional Court). IP owners would not be able to use the Unitary Patent system to protect their inventions within the UK, and it is unclear whether post-Brexit rulings by the new court would or would not be enforceable within the UK. The UPC Agreement, once enacted, will be available to protect inventions within the 25 (of 28) EU member states that have joined, but rights holders will still be able to obtain equivalent UK patents (enforced in UK courts) to protect their inventions in the UK from either European patent applications designating the UK filed at the EPO, or UK national patent applications filed at the UK IPO – exactly the system in place today.
Notice that optimism. So he has basically already decided that UPC will come “real soon now” (not a direct quote) and somehow the UK leaving the EU would not be an issue at all. This is great propaganda from one of Battistelli’s own ‘chefs’…
“Our Prime Minister’s (not even elected!) own brother was recently “re-appointed as UK IP Minister” as well.”If the Vice President of Kilburn & Strode LLP is such a liar, how much better can their lawyers be? Probably the same ‘gene pool’ as Alan Johnson and Edward Nodder of Bristows LLP. They’ve been doing ‘damage control’ after the UK’s ‘IP Minister’ resigned again (that's four times in 3 years!) — revealing the extent of the chaos UPC hopefuls are facing. Just before the weekend Nodder wrote: “Chris Skidmore re-appointed as UK IP Minister [..]. Mr Skidmore was previously IP Minister between 5 December 2018 and 25 July 2019.”
Our Prime Minister’s (not even elected!) own brother was recently "re-appointed as UK IP Minister" as well. What a mess; it’s all nepotism and corruption. Over and over again. No consequences; no investigation, let alone punishment.
“Nothing “community” or “unitary” or “unified” to see here, except in name. United in greed — the law firms’!”As the FFII’s President has just put it (in reply to an EU chief): “The “rule of law”, but the EPO cannot be sued in court for maladministration. Can you explain how the Unitary Patent is compatible with the treaty then?”
It’s incompatible and unconstitutional. I also responded by saying: “At the same time the corrupt EPO threats to sue me, several times, for exposing its corruption…”
If this is what the EU boils down to under the EPO regime (remember that UPC — unlike the EPO — is an ‘EU thing’), then Team UPC liars and nepotists are becoming a credibility threat to the EU. They’re in effect fracturing Europe, not uniting it. Nothing “community” or “unitary” or “unified” to see here, except in name. United in greed — the law firms’! █
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Posted in Deception, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 6:48 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
If you can’t get them fired, ‘charm’ them
Summary: The ways Microsoft depresses GNU/Linux advocacy and discourages enthusiasm for Software Freedom is not hard to see; it’s worth considering and understanding some of these tactics (mostly assimilation-centric and love-themed), which can otherwise go unnoticed
Microsoft loves [to attack] Linux (usually by proxy, in ‘creative’ new ways, as internal Microsoft documents admit and have already revealed). A lot of people aren’t aware of it or in denial about it (especially those whose financial interests intersect with such a convenient denial).
This post explains three such strands of attacks, based on new articles which are only days old.
From Bought Seats to Misleading Media
“Congrats to Zemlin and the Golden Boys (money). They sell out to Microsoft so that you don’t have to (and they profit from it!).”So Microsoft bought some more seats from the Jim Zemlin-led Linux Foundation (this was announced just yesterday). Congrats to Zemlin and the Golden Boys (money). They sell out to Microsoft so that you don’t have to (and they profit from it!). As it turns out, handing over community-run projects to large corporations can be a very profitable activity. About $100,000,000 per year…
Who advocates such an activity? Over the years we’ve named some of the biggest culprits, including Mac Asay, who was turning his back on Open Source to promote proprietary software openwashing. When he worked as COO at Canonical he wasn’t even using GNU/Linux! Just like Jono Bacon…
“Remember that Asay applied for a job at Microsoft and went for interviews there, by his own admission (in his personal blog).”One reader sent us a pointer to this latest article from Asay, asking us: “How did that guy worm his way into regular publication?”
“Adobe paid the publishers,” I responded. “Follow the money.”
At times his articles are published with disclosure, literally stating that they’re sponsored by his employer (at the time), Adobe. He recently moved to AWS after he had repeatedly advocated their malicious exploitation of FOSS projects — causing these projects to become proprietary. One might joke that the job offer from Amazon was a “reward” for what he did. “The US Department of Defense isn’t turning its back on open source,” he now says, “it’s just getting smarter about it.”
No, it’s becoming more proprietary and this is nothing to be celebrated! Unless you work for AWS, in which case it’s very much in tune with the whole ‘cloud’ (Clown Computing) business model. DoD is now outsourcing a lot of stuff to AWS, Asay’s employer.
“Phipps is a tough nut for Microsoft to crack (or buy). We need more like him.”Remember that Asay applied for a job at Microsoft and went for interviews there, by his own admission (in his personal blog). He later brought Microsoft to OSI (after he had gotten a seat there — a seat he no longer has).
Influence from seats in key institutions is prerequisite/prelude to entryism, which is why we were glad to see Microsoft leaving the OSI's Board some time earlier this year. This relieving news may only be temporary; judging by what Simon Phipps tweeted the other day about Stallman, he still views Microsoft as a threat. Phipps has long been resisting entryism by Microsoft, viewing that as a “submarine”…
Phipps is a tough nut for Microsoft to crack (or buy). We need more like him.
From Hate to Fake ‘Love’
If no proprietary software is tolerated by people, then openwashing with ‘fake news’ will be attempted. People who value Software Freedom will be singled out and painted as “extremists” and “zealots” (unless/until they sell out). Microsoft knows these tactics; it’s not even novel as it’s done a lot in politics. Or in religion, which is what Microsoft has become.
“If no proprietary software is tolerated by people, then openwashing with ‘fake news’ will be attempted.”Don’t get us started on Swapnil’s site (not Linux.com but his personal site, which we prefer not to link to); it is a cesspool of marketing spam and lightly-edited press releases. Linux.com is now run by these types. Thanks, “Linux” Foundation… and thank you, Microsoft, for “loving” us.
We’re not sure how many of our readers are aware of/familiar with Jason from Forbes. He’s their only writer who covers GNU/Linux. He does a pretty good job. So now Microsoft targets him…
Yes, they contacted him. Who did? Not a “Linux advocate” as Jason puts it (in his headline) but someone who helps Microsoft, i.e. Windows, Azure etc.
“Microsoft knows these tactics; it’s not even novel as it’s done a lot in politics. Or in religion, which is what Microsoft has become.”We’ve never heard his name before. He merely talks/tells a bunch of lies to Jason, e.g.: “At Microsoft, we have many statements like ‘Microsoft ❤️ Linux’ and ‘Microsoft ❤️ Open Source’, but the one that resonates with me most right now is ‘Microsoft runs on trust,’” Scott tells me.”
Scott?
Not Guthrie?
I’ve been around for a very long time (reading GNU/Linux news all day long) and not even once did I stumble upon this name. Never. He’s a faker. Like a person who climbed a mountain once and then claims to be a “mountain climber”.
What does Scott promote through Jason at Forbes? Open Source? Nope. This is proprietary software. This is Microsoft. This is surveillance. The article — to make matters even worse — comes with a lie, manufactured by Microsoft, as a feature image. The lie is embedded in pixels that are passed around like that. “Microsoft loves Linux…”
“…the way Microsoft manipulates writers into it has been documented here for years. Sometimes these writers ‘blow the whistle’ — so to speak — instead of cooperating with Microsoft.”Yeah, right!
Jason, this time you messed up! You let them manipulate you. The link (URL)? Here. In case someone wants a dose of nonsense.
Jason’s example is one of many; the way Microsoft manipulates writers into it has been documented here for years. Sometimes these writers ‘blow the whistle’ — so to speak — instead of cooperating with Microsoft.
From Openwashing to Googlebombing
What would happen if people started to associate proprietary software with “Open”? Or Windows with “Linux”? What if the vocabulary we all use ceased to have a meaningful purpose and became so ambiguous and confusing that it’s an hopeless exercise in (mis)communication? Someone has just called the above (from Jason) openwashing [1, 2]. The term “openwashing” is catching on; it helps describe what we’re talking about. It’s an attack on language itself, it’s a lexical attack vector.
Here’s an example; so there’s this thing called WSL (or WSL2). Up until recently it was just Windows calling itself “Linux”. We explained the motivation. It is a Microsoft Trojan horse strategy, using “Linux” as a Windows/Azure ‘ramp’. Watch what was published two days ago about “Windows Subsystem for Linux 2″ (it’s part of the headline, which actually entered news feeds about Linux).
“Towards the end of this past week about a quarter of the search results for “Linux” were actually Microsoft something…”The day before we learned of “Cortana and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) improvements” (another headline) and last night “Windows 10 Preview Adds Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 on ARM64 Devices” (from Microsoft-connected media). Towards the end of this past week about a quarter of the search results for “Linux” were actually Microsoft something…
Sometimes it’s as much as a half! Like one week earlier.
Microsoft fights us with googlebombing techniques. And it may be winning. It’s working. Instead of seeing GNU/Linux wins (like the big news from Huawei) people see some Vista 10 ‘spam’. Microsoft has resorted to rather effective Trojan horse strategies. These are ‘side perks’; it’s at least partly intentional and they teach these things in marketing schools/colleges.
This is upsetting; “another spying app for Microsoft” is what my wife called this new thing (she covers Android at Tux Machines and is increasingly being presented with Microsoft proprietary surveillance stuff, which Microsoft ‘googlebombs’ Android with).
“Based on mails we’ve been receiving, there are reactionary movements in the making.”She also complained about this “Microsoft PlayReady DRM server on Linux.”
This is the type of stuff she finds when looking for “Linux” news. That’s just leveraged to promote and spread Microsoft malice and lock-in (DRM).
Understanding the game Microsoft plays is essential if we intend to tackle it. We’re merely explaining what we see. Based on mails we’ve been receiving, there are reactionary movements in the making. █
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Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 4:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The openwashing services of the so-called ‘Linux’ Foundation are working; companies that are inherently against Open Source are being called “Open” and some people are willing to swallow this bait (so-called ‘compromise’ which is actually surrender to proprietary software regimes)
“HOW did we get here?”
Many people ask us such questions…
Ask Jim Zemlin instead.
The “Registrant Contact” for Linux.com is “Jim Zemlin”. So a person who never uses GNU/Linux… owns Linux.com. Great!
A whois lookup shows that “Domain Name: LINUX.COM” has “Creation Date: 1994-06-02T04:00:00Z”
“The “Registrant Contact” for Linux.com is “Jim Zemlin”. So a person who never uses GNU/Linux… owns Linux.com.”So the site turned 25 only 2 months after Zemlin and the Golden Boys (gold, as in money) had fired all the staff. They ended up sacking all Linux.com journalists and editors — actual users of GNU/Linux — without prior notice (lack of funds was definitely not the problem!), only to be replaced by obedient openwashing pros, making the site more ‘in tune’ with the Openwashing as a Service (OaaS) business strategy of the so-called ‘Linux’ Foundation.
The Linux Foundation has been thoroughly and almost entirely captured by inherently-monopolistic corporate interests from the Board downwards, which means it cannot be salvaged or repair itself, only replaced. Entryism kills institution by undermining their goals. This is what happened here. The Linux Foundation’s chiefs (what’s left after many got removed) would likely tell us GPL is a “cancer” (if they could). We were shocked when someone recently told us, based on research he had done, that the last project released by the Foundation with a GPL-like licence was Xen. That was ages ago and since then the Foundation actively attacked the GPL, as we noted some days ago. This is the licence of Linux, which Torvalds loves. The “Linux Foundation” is against the license of Linux.
“The Linux Foundation has been thoroughly and almost entirely captured by inherently-monopolistic corporate interests from the Board downwards, which means it cannot be salvaged or repair itself, only replaced.”We’re meanwhile watching, with increasing levels of concern, SUSE’s retreat to its (or Novell’s) proprietary roots. It’s getting down on its knees again for Microsoft (Friday’s Azure promotion). It’s basically a Microsoft ad in SUSE’s official blog. “This blog was written based on the SUSECON 2019 presentation given by Stephen Mogg, Technical Strategist for SAP and Public Cloud and Mark Gonnelly, Senior Consultant for SUSE Consulting,” it says.
Notice SAP in there as well. SAP has too much control over SUSE these days and one must remember that SAP has long been close to Microsoft (it was almost bought by it) and it attacks Free software behind the scenes, sometimes even publicly. See old posts such as “Shai Agassi, SAP, and Open Source Software” or “Open-source community hits back against SAP“. The insults they threw at Open Source match those Microsoft had thrown before them. Cancer, socialism, you name it…
These companies are looking for ways to portray themselves as “open” without actually changing in any concrete way; same business models, same development paradigms.
“We’re meanwhile watching, with increasing levels of concern, SUSE’s retreat to its (or Novell’s) proprietary roots.”Swapnil made the openwashing image at the top. He actually made this phony nonsense. These liars for hire of the ‘Linux’ Foundation aren’t even using Linux. It’s all Microsoft and Apple stuff in his Twitter feed.
“The thing about the Linux Foundation is,” I wrote yesterday, “many have known for a while that it went awry, but 1) they didn’t say anything and 2) they didn’t understand just how bad it had become…”
One critic of the Foundation (for quite some time) responded: “Was when I was in Seattle on a Moodle gig… There was a foundation [Linux Foundation] event. There was a free pass to the security talks… So mysel+my gentoo friend went. They gave us full passes because they claimed there were no security passes left. Then I saw. Not community! And saw..and saw…”
“Saying that Linux needs Big Corporations to “succeed” is like saying that feminism needs financial support from wealthy white men who dominate the “rich lists” owing to the status quo feminists are looking to tackle…”She has been in the Linux community for decades and her site bemoans a corporate takeover disguised thinly as ‘social issues’. In her own words: “There is a poison spreading within our community. From my perspective, this is coming from people who do not code, who do not understand an inkling of what it is like to be a programmer, a maintainer, and put your heart and soul into a project.”
Some people saw that coming a long time ago. Remember that those looking to cause trouble aren’t critic of the Linux Foundation but of actual Linux developers (vastly different things). Saying that Linux needs Big Corporations to “succeed” is like saying that feminism needs financial support from wealthy white men who dominate the “rich lists” owing to the status quo feminists are looking to tackle…
What would GNU/Linux be if it was 100% dominated and controlled by the companies that compete against it technically and philosophically (as explained in our previous post)? █
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