Our Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) mission took to the stage at the linux.conf.au 2016 in Geelong last Friday, as Linux guru and Vulture 2 spaceplane autopilot wrangler Andrew Tridgell gave an entertaining speech on his currently UAV endeavours.
Tridge kicked off his presentation (video here) with a look at the two vehicles he and CanberraUAV are prepping for the 2016 UAV Challenge - a petrol-driven chopper and a VTOL quadplane.
This is a tricky, multi-layered question that needs to be asked. Before I dive into it, you must know that I have been using one form of Linux or another as my only OS since the late nineties. So, for me, the ability to use Linux is crucial. Why? Without Linux, getting my work done would not be nearly as easy, trouble-free, or cost effective.
That being said, let's take a look at this question.
Irritated by the telemetry and spying features in Windows 10, a Voat user decided to make the switch. After installing Linux Mint on his computer, he analyzed Windows 10 traffic and found that Microsoft’s latest OS continues to make calls to Redmond even with all telemetry options disabled.
A simple monetary figure cannot be tagged onto these such restrictions, nagging or tracking but for those using Windows 7 and Windows 8 on a daily basis (currently 65% of the world’s computers) the cost is extremely high.
Of course Microsoft has some marketing rhetoric here saying it allows users to roll back to Windows 7 or Windows 8 from Windows 10 if they don’t like the experience. But the roll back simply leaves them facing all the same hassles. Microsoft doesn’t switch them all off just because you ‘tried’ Windows 10.
Last week I brought up the Talos Secure Workstation as a $3100 USD system that's fully free and open down to the firmware and with an open-source friendly processor design while being high performance. Since then, I've had access to test out the hardware making up this POWER8-powered system to see how fast a fully-open system can be. Here is more information on the proposed Talos Workstation along with a few early Linux benchmarks.
Here are the stories of tech influencers, from Thomas Edison through Linus Torvalds, who shaped the present and future of technology. Some of these icons are less famous than others, but all have had a role in shaping and changing the way we live, work, and communicate.
Topi Pohjolainen of Intel posted a set of 23 patches today for providing compression of single-sampled color surfaces / lossless compression within the Intel Mesa driver for Skylake "Gen9" and newer.
The popular Git free, open-source and cross-platform distributed version control system was updated this past weekend to version 2.7.1, and it's now available for download from the usual channels.
Shotwell is a simple yet powerful program that comes installed with most flavors of Fedora, such as Fedora Workstation and the Cinnamon desktop spin. It’s also available for install on any other desktop or spin. You can use it as either a photo viewer and organizer, or an editor.
Stremio is an application built with Electron that streams and plays movies, TV shows, Youtube channels, and TV channels, from torrents. Sounds familiar?
A short public notice: mt-st project new homepage at https://github.com/iustin/mt-st. Feel free to forward your distribution-specific patches for upstream integration!
I'm using the reference letsencrypt client. While I've seen complaints that it has a lot of dependencies and is too complicated, it seemed to only need to pull in a few packages, and use only a few megabytes of disk space, and it has fewer options than ls does. So seems fine. (Although it would be nice to have some alternatives packaged in Debian.)
I’m not dead yet. And the project is still alive too. It’s been a while since the last release, so it’s time to do another. The biggest improvements were made to the rule language by introducing the rule conditions and to the CLI by introducing a new command, usbguard, for interacting with a running USBGuard daemon instance and for generating initial policies.
Matrox Imaging today announced a major update to Linux support with its core vision software product, Matrox Imaging Library (MIL). MIL 10 R2 for Linux gives users even more ready-made tools to solve 2D and 3D vision challenges from within the familiar and proven MIL API along with numerous productivity enhancements that will reduce time and effort required to bring solutions to market. This release also integrates support for the new Matrox Radient eV-CL frame grabber on Linux.
Gas Guzzlers Extreme has an interesting history, but it looks like the developers are once again trying to bring it to Linux.
A developer of Super Snow Fight, a multiplayer action indie game, claims in its Steam discussion forum that if they receive enough requests to release a Linux version, they will take it into consideration.
3.20 it’s approaching, and we have mostly all the changes we wanted in place.
I would like to explain them, so you are aware, and I would like you to test them and provide feedback before the UI freeze this week. So now it’s your time to change the way Nautilus will look and work for 3.20 and improve it for all us to enjoy it.
A Nautilus developer explained the good nature of the relations between the Ubuntu and GNOME and said that the apparent conflicts between the two projects exist only in the minds of people that are not involved in any of them.
Choosing an application to install is hard when there are lots of possible projects matching a specific search term. We already list applications based on the integration level and with useful metrics like “is it translated in my language” and this makes sure that high quality applications are listed near the top of the results. For more information about an application we often want a more balanced view than the PR speak or unfounded claims of the upstream project. This is where user-contributed reviews come in.
A new GNOME major upgrade is on its way, and it will ship with Nautilus 3.20. One of the developers working on it has presented some of the major features that will land.
This is where it starts to get a bit complicated… So to start from the end, EvolveOS and SolusOS are the same thing – we had to rebrand. I was living in the UK myself until last year, when I came back home [to Ireland]. So the problem I had is that I wanted to, ironically, protect the project from patent trolls, and in the process I had to apply for a trademark to protect the project. On April Fool’s day last year, of all days, I had a letter come through saying that I was going to be threatened with legal action, and I thought it might be about the name Evolve. It actually wasn’t – it was about the use of OS! Apparently the Ordnance Survey took a dislike to my using of it, as I was informed that the trademark was held by the Secretary of State – so I wasn’t allowed to use my name because of a map maker! When I was trying to explain it to people they were like, ‘Well what about Chrome OS? What about iOS?’ When I was in the UK at the time, Google was heavily invested with a lot of start-up companies and giving out Chromebooks and that, and that was through a partnership deal with the government. Apple had just furnished the House of Lords and the House of Commons with iPads. I imagine that the Secretary of State was quite happy to ignore the fact that they were using OS in their names… But the small fry like me? So I said, ‘Okay, we’ll change it.’ We went through a week trying to come up with a name, but in the end I decided to go back to the old name, which is where SolusOS comes in.
Over the years, I've had the opportunity to try a lot of different Linux releases. As the time passed, I found myself gravitating more toward the Ubuntu-based Long Term Release model. Obviously there are advantages and disadvantages to using an LTS distro release. That said, when it comes to current software packages, control and speed – rolling releases are a solid option.
Good options include Antergos, PCLinuxOS, Linux Mint Debian Edition, among others.
In this article, I'll offer a candid view between the two options by examining the core differences between running a rolling release and using an LTS type release distribution.
The newest 2.0 release of Tails brings many enhancements to the distribution. Tails is now based on Debian 8 (Jessie), so packages from the 1.x releases of Tails have been updated to much newer versions. The desktop environment is now GNOME 3.14 running in Classic mode, which is a major advancement over the GNOME 3.4. desktop used in Tails 1.x. However, there is one drawback to this update -- Tails' optional Windows 8 look-alike theme is no longer available. While I normally do not like look-alike themes, having the desktop look like Windows 8 was an understandable and helpful feature in Tails. GNOME 3's Classic mode is a nice, clean environment, but it does not look like Windows or Mac OS X, so using Tails in public is bound to attract some attention.
The firm set an $86.00 price target on the shares as well. The experts argued that the risk/reward profile is once again “compelling.” In a report issued Thursday, Cowen analysts Gregg Moskowitz, Matthew Broome and Michael Romanelli upgraded shares of Red Hat from Market Perform to Outperform, setting and $86.00 price target.
Yes, Golang is there.
Both implementations are available in Fedora repositories. Golang(Gc) since Fedora 17 initially packaged by Adam Goode in version 1.1 and gcc-go since Fedora 15 in version of gcc 4.6.0(pre go1.0?, definitely not used much back then) packaged as part of gcc by GCC maintainers. Currently as for F22/F23 as golang-1.5.3 and gcc-5 and for upcoming F24 as golang-1.6 and gcc-6 respectively. Both implementation can be installed in parallel thanks to the Fedora alternatives.
I am quite careful about protecting my files, which include images, videos, and various documents – mostly drafts of my science fiction novels – that I have been working on for years. Images and videos of family, including the birth of my son, his first smile, and other moments are way too valuable for me to lose. But, all sorts of things can lead to data corruption, and I would not be happy if that happened to any of my valuable files. That’s where filesystems like ZFS and Btrfs enter the picture.
In case you hadn't already stumbled upon sources.debian.net in the past, Debsources is a simple web application that allows to publish an unpacked Debian source mirror on the Web. On the live instance you can browse the contents of Debian source packages with syntax highlighting, search files matching a SHA-256 hash or a ctag, query its API, highlight lines, view accurate statistics and graphs. It was initially developped at IRILL by Stefano Zacchiroli and Matthieu Caneill.
Finally, the EFF and others put together Let's Encrypt with free, browser-recognized certificates and even a really solid automatic renewal system. That's perfect, and also eliminated my last excuse to go do the work, so now all of my personal web sites use TLS and HTTPS by default and redirect to the encrypted version of the web site. And better yet, all the certificates should just renew themselves automatically, meaning one less thing I have to keep track of and deal with periodically.
ConsenSys and BlockApps will deliver Nimbus uPort Biometric Digital Identity tools on Ubuntu phones and tablets.
New York City's decentralised apps studio ConsenSys is beginning its "Internet-of-People" campaign with Ethereum-based identity on Ubuntu phones and tablets.
ConsenSys and BlockApps are collaborating with the Ubuntu project's commercial sponsor, Canonical, to deliver web wallet and identity system uPort Biometric Identity tools on Ubuntu devices.
We've been informed today, February 8, by Mr. Ã Âukasz Zemczak of Canonical about the latest work done in preparation for the upcoming OTA software updates for Ubuntu Phone devices.
Wandboard.org launched a sandwich-style “HobbitBoard” that runs Brillo on an i.MX6 UltraLite, and offers Intel Edison, Wandboard, and MikroBus expansion.
The HobbitBoard, which is available for pre-order at $69 for March shipment, is the first hacker board to come out of Wandboard.org since the original i.MX6-based Wandboard debuted back in 2012. The Wandboard, which stepped up to a quad-core version in 2013, was one of the very first community-backed, open spec boards following the BeagleBoard. It came out about the same time as the original Raspberry Pi Model B.
The Arduino Yún- and Grove-compatible Seeeduino Cloud SBC has an AR9331 WiFi chipset that runs Linux via a Dragino HE COM, plus Ethernet and USB ports.
The Seeeduino Arduino clone from Seeed Studios has been around for years, adding three onboard Grove sensor interfaces to basic Arduino functionality. Now, Seeed Studios has launched a Seeeduino Cloud version that promises Arduino Yún compatibility, and which like the Yún, provides a Qualcomm Atheros AR9331 WiFi SoC running OpenWrt Linux on a MIPS processor.
The problem, from what we've heard, is that Apple will just tell you to buy a new phone.
The Android N operating system will still come several months away; however, there have been speculations circling around that this OS will support inclusion of styluses.
Android Studio 2.0 is one of the most awaited apps from Google for developers this early part of the year. It has been gaining momentum since the app was announced at the Android Developer’s Summit in November, and most developers have been excited at what the preview versions have brought to the table.
It’s no secret that Google is interested in virtual reality. Made out of paper, Google Cardboard is Google’s first foray into VR, but the Search giant apparently plans to release a more advanced product later this year, a “Nexus” of VR headsets, which might be running on its rumored VR-centric Android VR initiative.
Not wanting Facebook to have a monopoly on virtual reality, Google has lately been doubling down on the platform. Their new VR division is overseen by a longtime Google exec and is staffed with talent from around the company. The Financial Times is now reporting that Google is working on more than just a Gear VR-like headset, but rather Android VR.
Google’s recent moves are aimed at making sure Facebook and Oculus do not end up controlling what they consider to be a very important technology. VR head Clay Bavor recently said, “VR is too important and too powerful a medium to be accessible to only a few.”
OpsClarity's intelligent monitoring solution now provides monitoring for a growing and popular suite of open source data processing frameworks, including Apache Kafka, Apache Storm, Apache Spark as well as datastores such as Elasticsearch, Cassandra, MongoDB. The solution is intended to enable DevOps teams to gain visibility into how these technologies are dependent on each other and troubleshoot performance issues.
Network technology has changed considerably in the last 20 years, but most of the changes have been incremental – particularly as they relate the roles and responsibilities of network engineers and administrators.
This blog post is part of an assignment for my Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software Development course at the Rochester Institute of Technology. For this assignment, we are tasked with reading Chapter 3 of Steve Weber’s “The Success of Open Source“. The summary of the reading is found below.
Linux.Conf.Au 2016 ran last week from 1 to 5 February in Geelong, Australia. If you weren't able to go to this annual Linux conference down under, the videos from all of the presentations have now been uploaded.
Catalyst is delighted to announce the first two recipients of the Catalyst Open Source Scholarship. Recipients Liam Sharpe and Aleisha Amohia will receive $2000 towards study costs each year for the next three years, while they complete their Bachelor of Science degrees. Both are majoring in computer science.
coala was present at FOSDEM 2016 – it was a pleasure for us to be able to show you what we created at our stand and in the talk.
As well as being open, there are a couple of key features that make LowRISC stand out. According to Alex Bradbury, co-founder of the LowRISC project: “I guess the notable features that we’re looking at adding are tagged memory support and minion cores. Tagged memory gives you the ability to annotate memory locations to, say, limit access for security purposes, and minion cores are very small, simple RISC-V processor.”
I have also some notes to android mobile apps. First, I have received some negative comments. I must admit I am not Android user and I am not very familiar with Android UX practices. I can fix something, but you must give me detailed description of it.
The app required Internals privileges. I am sorry for that mistake, I must check AndroidManifest settings.
I will try to add some features for DevConf 2017. I hope, I will find some time for that.
A healthy interest is not a surprise. In Apache Spark's relatively short life, there's been much discussion of its ascendancy. In September, Databricks, the company behind Spark, released results from a survey showing that Spark is the most active open source project in big data with more than 600 contributors within the past year, which is up from 315 in 2014. Plus, Spark is in use not just in the IT industry, but areas like finance, retail, advertising, education, health care, and more. That survey also showed that 51% of Spark users are using three or more Spark components.
IBM has already made many big commitments to data analytics and the cloud. It is committing huge finanical resources to Apache Spark for example, and expanding its cloud portfolio. Now IBM has announced four new data services: Analytics Exchange, Compose Enterprise, Graph, and Predictive Analytics.
Eclipse Che, an open source cloud IDE with RESTful workspaces and Docker-based machines, is now available in beta.
Che offers a workspace that is composed of projects and its associated runtimes, making its state distributable, portable and versionable. The platform use VMs, containers, and Web services to bring repeatability, consistency, and performance to workspaces.
But if you said "it's a closure" -- well you're right in general I guess, like on a semantic what-does-it-mean level, but as far as how Guile represents this thing at run-time, hoo boy are there a number of possibilities, and a closure is just one of them. This article dives into the possibilities, with the goal being to help you update your mental model of "how much do things cost".
In Guile, a lambda expression can be one of the following things at run-time:
Gone
Inlined
Contified
Code pointer
Closure
Let's look into these one-by-one.
That free option does exist. openDCIM, an open source project born at one of the data centers supporting the US Department of Energy’s national labs. Its original creator, Scott Milliken, manages the Oak Ridge National Lab data center in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
Leaving Europe will make it harder for the U.K. to protect itself against terrorists, according to the director of the European law enforcement agency, Europol.
“I think it will make Britain’s job harder to fight crime and terrorism because it will not have the same access to very well-developed European cooperation mechanisms that it currently has today,” Rob Wainwright told the BBC in an interview.
I’d like to apologize to people using Amazon EC2 to visit this blog. Sadly, a few hundred of your peers decided to be abusive, so I was forced to block most of EC2 subnets from access.
Having hundreds of IPs in the EC2 IP range crawling this site constantly just cannot be allowed. It isn’t like we post articles more than once a day – sometimes not even once a month.
WE have been rightfully outraged by the lead poisoning of children in Flint, Mich. — an outrage that one health expert called “state-sponsored child abuse.”
But lead poisoning goes far beyond Flint, and in many parts of America seems to be even worse.
“Lead in Flint is the tip of the iceberg,” notes Dr. Richard J. Jackson, former director of the National Center for Environmental Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Flint is a teachable moment for America.”
In Flint, 4.9 percent of children tested for lead turned out to have elevated levels. That’s inexcusable. But in 2014 in New York State outside of New York City, the figure was 6.7 percent. In Pennsylvania, 8.5 percent. On the west side of Detroit, one-fifth of the children tested in 2014 had lead poisoning. In Iowa for 2012, the most recent year available, an astonishing 32 percent of children tested had elevated lead levels. (I calculated most of these numbers from C.D.C. data.)
Across America, 535,000 children ages 1 through 5 suffer lead poisoning, by C.D.C. estimates.
Working with residents of Flint, Mr. Edwards led a study that revealed that the elevated lead levels in people’s homes were not isolated incidents but a result of a systemic problem that had been ignored by state scientists. He has since been appointed to a task force to help fix those problems in Flint. In a vote of confidence, residents last month tagged a local landmark with a note to the powers that be: "You want our trust??? We want Va Tech!!!"
But being right in these cases has not made Mr. Edwards happy. Vindicated or not, the professor says his trials over the last decade and a half have cost him friends, professional networks, and thousands of dollars of his own money.
Enterprise systems need enterprise-grade security. With this in mind, Docker Inc. has updated its core container engine with some potentially powerful security measures.
Docker Inc. has described this release as “huge leap forward for container security.” The company also added a plethora of networking enhancements to Docker 1.10, released Thursday.
Security researchers have found vulnerabilities in Graphite, also known as Libgraphite font processing library, that affects a number of systems. The vulnerabilities, if exploited, allow an attacker to seed malicious fonts to a machine. The Libgraphite library is utilised by Linux, Thunderbird, WordPad, Firefox, OpenOffice, as well as several other major platforms and applications.
Security researchers from Cisco have posted an advisory to outline four vulnerabilities in the Libgraphite font processing library. One of the vulnerabilities allows the attackers to execute arbitrary code on the machine, and among other things, crash the system.
The former cabinet minister Jack Straw, who has been tasked with considering how to tighten up the Freedom of Information Act, led two of the Whitehall departments most likely to reject public requests for information.
Straw’s ministries never ranked higher than 15 out of 21 government departments in terms of releasing information in full, according to a Guardian analysis of government-wide figures.
In 2010, his final year as lord chancellor, the Ministry of Justice was the worst ranked government department, providing none of the information requested more often than any other ministry.
Guardian analysis of dozens of contracts revealed by hackers shows more than a third allow or require destruction of civilian complaint records
The intersection between the TPP and Canadian cultural policies is likely to emerge as one of the more controversial aspects of the TPP, particularly given the government’s emphasis on a stronger cultural policy in its election platform. Earlier in the Trouble with the TPP series, I wrote that the TPP fails to protect Canadian cultural policy. I pointed to U.S. lobby pressure to limit Canadian protection of cultural policies as well as provisions that restrict Canada’s ability to consider expanding Cancon contributions to entities currently exempt from payment. I have not been a supporter of mandating Cancon contributions to online video provides such as Netflix, but restricting Canada’s right to do so in a trade agreement is shortsighted, bad policy.
TTIP, the EU-US free trade deal, has secrecy written all over it. Those responsible for it live in dread of any public scrutiny. If it was up to me, I would give everyone who’s interested the chance to make up their own minds on the text of the agreement in its current form. Sigmar Gabriel, Minister for Economic Affairs and a top cheerleader for TTIP, has now set up a reading room in his ministry where since the beginning of February German MPs can each spend two hours looking at those texts on which consensus has already been reached.
How do you stop states and cities from forcing more disclosure of so-called dark money in politics? Get the debate to focus on an “average Joe,” not a wealthy person. Find examples of “inconsequential donation amounts.” Point out that naming donors would be a threat to “innocents,” including their children, families and co-workers.
And never call it dark money. “Private giving” sounds better.
These and other suggestions appear in internal documents from conservative groups that are coaching activists to fight state legislation that would impose more transparency on the secretive nonprofit groups reshaping U.S. campaign finance.
The documents obtained by ProPublica were prepared by the State Policy Network, which helps conservative think tanks in 50 states supply legislators with research friendly to their causes, and the Conservative Action Project (CAP), a Washington policy group founded by Edwin Meese, a Reagan-era attorney general.
Haasan, 61, in a "fireside chat" with students of Harvard University, said that the battle against censor is in a progressive state. "First I would like to clarify that the battle against censor is in a progressive state. That's why they are not called censor board any more. They are a certification board," the actor said, maintaining that the practice of censorship continues.
Chinese ambassador to Bangladesh, Ma Mingqiang, “exploded” at the sight of Tibetan art at the Dhaka Art Summit on Saturday, and demanded it be covered up with white sheets, The Indian Express reported.
Two Dharamshala-based filmmakers have accused China of “bullying” Dhaka Art Summit organisers to clamp down on their Tibetan exhibit at the prestigious event. The artwork, which was “covered up” after reported objection from China’s ambassador to Bangladesh, paid homage to 149 Tibetans, who self-immolated themselves to make their voices heard. It comprised letters drafted by five protesters just before they burned themselves.
The artwork featured letters of five Tibetans who set themselves on fire as a mark of protest against the Chinese rule in their region.
Just a few days ago, the denial of a visa to Anupam Kher to speak at the Karachi Literature Festival had raised questions over governments interfering to quell artistic freedom, across borders.
However, even as the internet is still divided over whether Kher was denied a visa for his pro-Narendra Modi stance, or because he had he not completed his paperwork, we are faced with another case of cross-border censorship.
It involves an Indian and a Tibetan filmmaker, who put up their installation on the Tibetan self-immolation movement protesting Chinese occupation of their land at the Dhaka Art Summit.
Houmansadr, an assistant professor in the College of Information and Computer Sciences at UMass Amherst, will use game theory, network science, and information theory, among other strategies, to analyze specific censorship resistance systems, categorize them and develop a theoretical model from which to mount new approaches. For example, he will identify parties in “the game,” assess their objectives, measure their capabilities and use game theory to evaluate what costs and benefits are involved.
It seems we've entered the next big moral panic: the fact that terrorists like ISIS use social media. It's a point of contention that keeps coming up, leading Presidential candidates to talk about stopping terrorists from using the internet. There was a whole big "summit" between White House officials and tech execs in which questions were raised about blocking ISIS from using social media. And, then, of course, you've even had some tech company execs support the idea.
Here's a fun free speech win from the 4th Circuit Appeals Court. Well, it's at least a fun read, especially when the judges go after the city of Norfolk's highly-questionable claim that its completely inconsistent zoning statute isn't loaded with content-based restrictions.
First, though, here's a bit of background. Norfolk's Central Radio Company's building was on the list of places to be destroyed by the city to make way for an expansion of Old Dominion University. To protest this plan, it hung a large sign on the side of its building stating its opposition to eminent domain abuse.
Truth will always be more powerful than lies. And ultimately, a lie can only be censored and can only exist for so long until it is uncovered, exposed, disbelieved and tossed away. Today, we live in an age of uncovering lies and promoting the truth as has never happened before.ââ¬â¹
McConnell is in good company. Former Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, international cyber security expert Bob Rose, former Chief Information Officer of the U.S. Intelligence Community Patrick Gorman, and former NSA Deputy Director Chris Inglis are also members of the Securonix Board of Advisors.
Because citizens are localized but their data isn't, things aren't going to get any less weird as time progresses. Or any less legally troublesome. Ellen Nakashima and Andrea Petersen of the Washington Post have seen a copy of a draft negotiating document between UK and US representatives that would allow MI5 (and presumably other agencies) to access data and communications held on US servers.
Gilberto Valle was dubbed the "Cannibal Cop:" an NYPD officer accused of planning to abduct, kill and cook a list of women, including his wife.
But his conviction was overturned, and this past December, a federal appeals court upheld the acquittal, making him a free man.
Valle, now 31, is speaking out to CBS New York station WCBS-TV about what happened and where he goes from here.
Media around the world had a field day with the headlines. So when did it all start?
Gilbert said his dark fantasies were deeply hidden.
Extremists also apply for jobs at prisons with radicalisation problem, according to officers association, as government launches review
A commuter has been cleared of sexually assaulting a well-known actress after a jury rejected claims the crime could have taken place in a brief half-second contact in a busy railway station.
India's telecoms regulator has blocked Facebook's Free Basics internet service as part of a ruling in favour of net neutrality.
The scheme offered free access to a limited number of websites.
However it was opposed by supporters of net neutrality who argued that data providers should not favour some online services over others.
The free content included selected local news and weather forecasts, the BBC, Wikipedia and some health sites.
Finally we have won. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has issued a press release some time ago telling that no one can charge different prices for different services on Internet. The fight was on in an epic scale, one side spent more than 100million in advertisements, and lobbying. The community fought back in the form of #SaveTheInternet, and it worked.
As expected, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has passed new net neutrality rules (pdf) that specifically ban the practice of zero rating. The rules are relatively clear in that they prevent either content companies or ISPs from striking deals that exempt select content from usage caps.
In 2010, Verizon successfully sued to demolish the FCC's original net neutrality rules. In 2015, Verizon joined the rest of the industry in helping launch a barrage of lawsuits to try kill and kill a more legally-sound and updated version of those same rules. While that case continues through the courts, Verizon has made it clear that 2016 will be the year the telco raises a giant middle finger to the FCC and net neutrality supporters alike.
The internet as we know it would be a very, very different place if 20 years ago today, President Clinton hadn't signed the Communications Decency Act. To be fair, nearly all of the CDA was a horrible mess that was actually a terrible idea for the internet. A key part of the bill was about "cleaning up" pornography on the internet. However, to "balance" that out, the bill included Section 230 -- added by two Congressmen in the House of Representatives: Ron Wyden and Chris Cox. They had pushed this clause as a separate bill, the Internet Freedom and Family Empowerment Act, but it didn't get enough traction. It was only when they attached it to the Communications Decency Act (which had passed the Senate without it), that it was able to move forward. And thus, 20 years ago today, when President Clinton signed the CDA, most of the attention was on the "stopping indecency" part, and very little on the "throw in" of Section 230. And yet, there's a strong argument that Section 230 may be one of the most important laws -- perhaps the most important -- passed in the past few decades.
When digital dystopians and critics of Internet libertarians need a rhetorical dart board, they often pull out a document written by John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, a former cattle rancher and Grateful Dead lyricist. On this day in 1996, Barlow sat down in front of a clunky Apple laptop and typed out one very controversial email, now known as the “Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace,” a manifesto with a simple message: Governments don’t—and can’t—govern the Internet.
Senior Swedish official Göran Marby today (8 February) was announced as the new president and CEO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, succeeding Fadi Chehade who leaves the ICANN to join the World Economic Forum in mid-March. Marby will be the first European to lead ICANN, the internet domain system technical oversight body founded in 1998.
When console games are ported to the PC platform, the end result is often merely adequate. Some ports are amazing because the software developer actually knows and cares about the platform their game is being ported to. Others are just quick cash-ins, relying on name recognition to bring in sales the end product hasn't earned.
Ikea has lost the right to use its name in Indonesia after a local furniture company was handed victory by the country’s Supreme Court.
The court said that the trademark belonged to PT Ratania Khatulistiwa, a company based in the city of Surabaya, which manufactures rattan furniture. Rattan is made from palm.
Although Ikea registered a trademark for its name in Indonesia in 2010, it did not open its first store until 2014.
Managing IP is rounding up important intellectual property decisions coming out of Canadian courts last year. Trade mark cases included a rare interlocutory injunction in a trade mark case and a ruling on the use of a competitor’s mark in metatags
But the Court has said it will hear further arguments on the question of whether the trade mark at issue is invalid on the ground that series trade marks are incompatible with EU law.
The decision, published today, is largely a victory for Comic Enterprises, which operates entertainment venues in the UK featuring comedy and music. It owns a UK trade mark for The Glee Club in class 41, which was registered in 2001 (pictured).