If you want a great Linux experience, we recommend getting a laptop that comes with a Linux OS pre-installed. That way your laptop's hardware and drivers will work without a hitch. Here are our recommendations to do just that.
In this video, I am going to show an overview of Archcraft 2021.09.25 and some of the applications pre-installed.
The past month we have started our testing of Ampere's Altra Max M128-30, the company's new 128 core server processor, and in this article today are our initial benchmarks of this promising chip for high core count servers in both 1P and 2P configurations tested.
At the end of 2020 we looked at Ampere Altra that offered up to 80 cores per socket using Neoverse N1 cores on a TSMC 7nm process, supporting eight channels of DDR4-3200 memory, 128 PCI Express Gen4 lanes, and other features that put it in line for competing with the latest AMD EPYC and Intel Xeon wares. Ampere is now shipping the Altra Max as a drop-in upgrade that offers up to 128 cores per socket.
In the new version, the “Line-to-Path” function has been improved so that it works again on text and the ID of an object is no longer lost when undoing. The Object-to-Path feature has been improved so that it acts on an object with a live path effect when undone without undoing the previous action. In addition, the screen has been improved so that it no longer blurs when the window is moved from a HiDPI display to a non-HiDPI display.
eSpeak NG is a command line, multi-lingual software speech synthesizer for English and many other languages. We can convert text to speech using eSpeak NG in Linux and Unix-like systems. eSpeak NG is an updated version of eSpeak engine created by Jonathan Duddington.
eSpeak NG will read aloud the given text for you! It can able to speak text either from standard input or from a file. So, you can directly give the phrase to speak as input for eSpeak NG or save the text in a file and then pass that text file as an input. It uses text-to-speech to speak through the default sound device.
OBS Studio 27.1 is here almost four months after OBS Studio 27.0 to add YouTube integration, a feature that helps users connect their YouTube account without using a stream key, create and manage YouTube streams through a new “Manage Broadcast” button, and easily set up settings for their streams, such as privacy settings, description, title, scheduling, etc.
In addition, the new YouTube integration comes with a read-only chat dock for public and unlisted broadcasts, as well as bandwidth testing support in the Auto-Configuration wizard, a feature that’s only available when you’re logged in to your YouTube account.
GPU-Viewer is graphical tool to show the detailed information about OpenGL, Vulkan, and/or OpenCL graphics libraries.
Without struggling with glxinfo, vulkaninfo and clinfo command line tools, the GTK+3 tool provides a graphical front-end that shows all the important details.
Port forwarding transfers network traffic from one network listener (called a "port") to another, either on the same computer or a different computer. Ports, in this context, are not physical objects but a software routine listening for network activity.
When traffic directed at a specific port arrives at a router or a firewall, or other networked application, the response it receives can be defined according to the port it's trying to communicate with. When you use port forwarding, you can catch communication coming in on port 8080, for instance, and forward it on to port 80 instead. The new destination port may be on the same device as the one receiving the signal or on a different device. There are many ways to forward ports, and there are different reasons for doing it. This article demonstrates the most common scenarios.
Ruby on Rails€® is an open-source web framework written in Ruby. It helps you create highly powerful web sites and appls.
Rails is released under MIT license.
Also Rails is a model–view–controller (MVC) framework, provide default structures for a database, a web service, and web pages.
So this guide will help you to install Ruby on Rails on CentOS / RHEL 8.
The KVM is defined as a Kernel-based Virtual Machine that is an excellent arrangement for running other operating systems on Linux. It uses the Hypervisor emulator for creating virtual machine environments. It requires the hardware level configuration. The KVM works with the machine’s processor, system memory, hard disk, network, and parameters of the host machine. In Linux, using is KVM is secure and safe. You can manage the storage management, RAM usages, and power. Even you can schedule virtual machines on Linux through the KVM. Now, the issue you might think when you want to migrate and use your Virtualbox hypervisor VMs to your KVM system is starting it all over again, which is time taking and complex.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Ngxtop on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Ngxtop is a free, open-source, flexible, and real-time monitoring tool for Nginx web servers. It can parse the Nginx access log and print the information about request count, requested URI, the number of requests by status code, and much more.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Ngxtop real-time metrics for the Nginx server on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to change the timezone on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, By default, when a server is provisioned a default timezone will get configured automatically with the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). It happens that sometimes your system may have the wrong time zone or want to change the time zone due to the nature of working or forgot to set the right time zone at the time of installing the Debian operating system.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of the set timezone on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).
With the rise of social media platforms such as Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, and online chat platforms such as discord, we have seen online bulletin forum communities dwindle. Personally, as I just mentioned, they are slowly making a comeback in specific niche communities over the newer additions. phpBB is one of the most extended open-source forum bulletin software on the market.
phpBB isn’t the only option. Others such as VBulletin, Nodebb, Xenforo, and so on, but most of these are paid with mixed reviews. VBulletin used to be a powerhouse, but now it’s a shadow of its former self. Xenforo is one of the best-paid bulletin pieces of software. However, that is just my personal opinion, but I will always choose phpBB first as it’s free, open-source, and has some great 3rd party open-source developers, both new devs and ones that have been around since the start.
Blue Recorder is a simple desktop recorder for Linux systems. An app built using Rust, GTK+ 3 and ffmpeg. In this tutorial, learn how to install Blue Recorder on Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, Debian and openSUSE Linux using Flatpak packages.
Delta Chat is a free and Open-Source messaging application that is similar to Whatsapp or Telegram without tracking and it doesn’t require any phone number for login.
Delta Chat doesn’t have any servers to store user data, instead, they are using the existing e-mail server network.
You can chat with anyone if you know their e-mail address by using Delta Chat instead of mobile no.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to create Symbolic Links on Linux. For those of you who didn’t know, A symbolic link, also known as a symlink or soft link is a type of file in Linux that points to another file or a folder on your computer. Symlinks are similar to shortcuts in Windows. By using symbolic links, you make it possible to more easily access other files that might reside in complicated directory paths or are required for certain services.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step create Symbolic Links with practice examples.
PHP Composer is basically a dependency management tool for PHP applications. It provides hassle-free installation of PHP modules for the applications. The composer keeps track of all the modules required for the application and installs them with a single command. It also allows users to keep modules updated. You can easily install all the required packages using Composer. The composer maintains a list of required packages in a JSON file called composer.json.
Composer is a similar tool to npm for Node.js, pip for Python, and bundler for ROR. Composer 2 is the latest available version for your system with enhanced performance. We will use that version to install on our system.
This tutorial helps you to install and use PHP composer on Debian 11 Bullseye Linux system.
Linux comes with a powerful tool named find to find a file (or files). It can recursively search into subdirectories for a file (or files) based on certain conditions.
In this tutorial, we learn how to find a file in Linux using the command line.
HA Proxy stands for High Availability Proxy written on C. It is a free and open source TCP/HTTP load balancer and proxy solution for TCP and HTTP based applications. HA Proxy allows you to balance incoming TCP / HTTP Traffic by distributing load across backend server using different criteria.
The use of HA Proxy is to provide fault tolerance and high availability in case when one node is getting too many concurrent requests. It is used by most famous web sites like GitHub, Stack Overflow and Tumbler.
HA Proxy allows an application to restart automatically or reroute work to another server in the event of a failure. HA Proxy is a powerful, high power, reliable and secure load balancer.
In his tutorial we will install and configure HA Proxy on CentOS 8.
Google’s UI toolkit Flutter is getting increasingly popular for creating cross-platform applications for the mobile, web and desktop.
Flutter is not a programming language but a software development kit. Dart is the programming language used underneath the Flutter SDK.
Flutter is the main framework behind Google’s open source Fuchsia OS, Google STADIA and many other software and mobile apps.
If you want to start developing with Flutter, this tutorial will help you to get your set-up ready on Ubuntu and hopefully other Linux distributions.
When you realize that your branch name in Git is not suitable while collaborating on a project, you can rename the branch name easily on your local and remote.
This guide explains how to change the name of the branch on your local and remote.
By releasing version 0.1, the GTK+3 file search tool FSearch finally goes stable after 5 years of development.
FSearch is a free and open-source file search utility, inspired by Everything Search Engine. It’s super fast that you get instant result as you type. The app supports wildcard and RegEx, so users can use * and a series of characters to define filters.
It by default uses traditional UI with menu bar. However, it provides option to enable client-side decorations so to look modern in GNOME desktop (Ubuntu, Fedora, etc). And “dark mode” is supported for those working at night.
The ext2, ext3 and ext4 filesystems are some of the most known and used filesystems specifically designed for Linux. The first one, ext2 (second extended filesystems) is, as its name suggests, the older of the three. It has no journal feature, which is the biggest advantage of its successor over him: ext3. Released in 2008, ext4 is the more recent, and currently the default filesystem on many Linux distributions.
A common set of utilities made to work with these filesystems are part of the e2fsprogs package. In this tutorial we see how to use two of them: dumpe2fs and tune2fs, respectively to retrieve information and tune its parameters.
The current popularity of cryptocurrencies also includes trading in them. Last year, I wrote an article How to automate your cryptocurrency trades with Python which covered the setup of a trading bot based on the graphical programming framework Pythonic, which I developed in my leisure. At that time, you still needed a desktop system based on x86 to run Pythonic. In the meantime, I have reconsidered the concept (web-based GUI). Today, it is possible to run Pythonic on a Raspberry Pi, which mainly benefits the power consumption because such a trading bot has to be constantly switched on.
That previous article is still valid. If you want to create a trading bot based on the old version of Pythonic (0.x), you can install it with pip3 install Pythonic==0.19.
This article covers the setup of a trading bot running on a Raspberry Pi and executing a trading algorithm based on the EMA crossover strategy.
Ready to run gun and explode some pixels? Zenovia Interactive and publisher Tribute Games have launched Steel Assault, a fresh retro inspired 16-bit 2D action platformer. Another great title ported to Linux with FNA by Ethan Lee.
"You are Taro Takahashi, a resistance soldier on a revenge mission against the dictator who lords over the ashes. You’ll punch enemies and zipline your way out of danger in a post-apocalyptic America beautifully rendered in 16-bit-style graphics."
Lonesome Village is an upcoming puzzle-solving adventure that also blends in a few life sim features from developer Ogre Pixel has been delayed until 2022. This is a game that was crowdfunded on Kickstarter back in October 2020 that gained around €£77,855 in backing.
Writing in a fresh announcement on Kickstarter, the team explained "we must sadly inform you that due to the amount of work needed to deliver Lonesome Village as polished as possible the release date has to be extended beyond what we had anticipated, and therefore the release of the game must be delayed to 2022".
A Gummy's Life might not be as well known as say Gang Beasts but it's a great wobbly-physics party game that really is a lot of fun to play and it just got a lot bigger. Honestly if you didn't like Gang Beasts but like the idea then I think you might find a home with A Gummy's Life.
Giving you a range of small areas to fight in, the game is all about comedy. Everything about it is silly and it's hard not to laugh at how ridiculous the characters are with them being based on sweets (or candy if you're American - whatever). . A big 1.1.0 update went out adding cross play with the various consoles, cosmetics you can add to your gummies, 3 new maps, a training map for local play, 2 new unlockable gummies, a new difficulty mode to unluck, a rework of the grabbing system, a better AI and lots more tweaks.
plitgate is the popular and free to play first-person shooter with portals from 1047 Games and a fresh upgrade is out to hopefully make the experience even better.
One of the big new gameplay features is Mantling, so you can grab a ledge to help you get up onto a platform. They've not done it as a first-person grabbing animation though, instead as if your jetpack is given a tiny boost so it won't get in the way of shooting. It's something that can be turned off too if you prefer.
One developer that has actually properly released a statement on updating Easy Anti-Cheat to support Linux and Proton for the Steam Deck is Fatshark for Warhammer: Vermintide 2.
Recently Epic Games announced that Easy Anti-Cheat support for Linux had expanded to offer full support for native games and on an opt-in basis for the Wine / Proton compatibility layers. Since it's opt-in, it does need developers to go and manually sort it out. Epic said it requires "just a few clicks" to enable but that's not quite the whole story. Developers still of course need to test it working.
OBS Studio is the free and open source recording and livestreaming app used by many content creators and a big new release is now available with YouTube integration.
This means you can now connect up with YouTube instead of supplying a streaming key, and it gives you a bunch of options to help manage YouTube livestreams. Much like the Twitch integration, for Linux you need to be using their official package otherwise you need to supply your own client keys for API interaction (source).
If you're just a GNOME user, there's a lot to like about the latest version of this popular Linux desktop interface. But, if you're a GNOME developer, there's more to love in it.
Firstly, as for the interface itself, it now boasts a new top utility for discovering and installing applications called Software. OK, so the name isn't anything to write home about, but it seems faster, and it's easy enough to use.
Fedora Linux 35 is the next major version of the popular GNU/Linux distribution sponsored by Red Hat and it’s now available for public beta testing one month ahead of the planned release on October 26th, 2021.
As expected, Fedora Linux 35 will pack all the latest and greatest GNU/Linux technologies and Open Source software. The beta version ships with the RC (Release Candidate) development version of the latest GNOME 41 desktop environment series, which brings some cool new features and improvements for the Fedora Workstation edition.
The Fedora Project is pleased to announce Fedora Linux 35 Beta. This release continues the Fedora Project's emphasis on delivering leading-edge open source technologies and includes updates spanning the Linux kernel to the desktop experience.
Fedora Linux 35 Beta is all about polish -- extending existing features and adding new features or support to level up the experience of using Fedora Linux. Whether you use Fedora on the desktop, as a cloud-based image, or as a Linux container image, you'll find improvements that make Fedora 35 a pleasant upgrade.
After seeing some initial release challenges, Fedora 35 Beta was released today across the Fedora Workstation, Fedora Server, and Fedora IoT flavors as well as their other versions.
Fedora 35 Beta Workstation is making use of the newly released GNOME 41 desktop environment to provide the very latest desktop enhancements there, many of which were developed by Red Hat engineers. Also on the desktop side, PipeWire continues to be used for all audio needs while WirePlumber has become the default session manager.
Self-healing infrastructure brings together monitoring, streaming, intelligence and automation so that organizations can respond more quickly to datacenter events, reducing operational toil and improving reliability while, to a reasonable degree, minimizing human intervention.
The trigger of events as well as the automation that is applied in response are both part of the story. In this post, we explore how Red Hat Insights and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform can be used as core components of a self-healing infrastructure.
This summer marked an important milestone for Red Hat and our partners: Two years ago we announced the closing of the IBM acquisition. This was not only a turning point for Red Hat and the industry as a whole, but also for our partners. We told partners that Red Hat would maintain our neutrality and commitment to supporting a collaborative, open partner ecosystem. Since then, we have seen a lot of change, from new leadership to product updates and a global pandemic, but one thing remains constant - Red Hat is still Red Hat.
Red Hat is firmly focused on building further capabilities into our portfolio of solutions to meet even more customer needs and anticipate future growth opportunities. This of course is rooted in open hybrid cloud - going beyond Red Hat Enterprise Linux and into emerging technologies out to the edge. To help customers reach the full potential of open hybrid cloud and address challenges along the way, Red Hat needs our partners.
With this in mind, here are a few key resources for our partners to navigate recent product updates and future opportunities:
An automation-first mentality is likely a significant transformation for any organization, typically starting with task automation, moving to complex workflow orchestration, and ultimately innovating intelligent operations and "push-button" end-user services. It represents a solid commitment for DevSecOps—acknowledging the competitive edge this type of cultural change can provide. But getting there, and finding and building the necessary support for it, are real challenges—even when there's been some initial success running automations in individual departments.
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Training and certification are critical to all aspects of adopting an automation-first mentality. Not only is it key to helping your team deploy automations confidently, but it also helps build momentum for broader automation adoption across your organization. You can benefit from a "train-the-trainer" approach that empowers other teams while ensuring compliance with established automation standards and governance.
Many organizations use strategic outside consulting engagements to help accelerate the automation adoption process. That can be unnerving to IT professionals within the organization—fearing this represents permanent outsourcing or job loss. But good consulting engagements have measurable, finite goals that enable and empower these teams through a mentoring relationship—leaving them with automation in production and the capabilities to continue work on increasingly complex projects and use cases.
While many years ago Fedora's Java support was in great shape with quickly integrating OpenJDK going back to IcedTea, these days Fedora's Java packages are barely maintained and largely fallen into disrepair.
Fabio Valentini who is apparently the only one left in the Java Maintainership SIG (Special Interest Group), started a mailing list thread on Sunday about the poor state of affairs.
Lightning talks are short presentations that focus on just a couple of key points. Done well, they are a great way to get your point across in a small amount of time. The time restriction forces speakers to edit their message to focus on the most important elements.
Scientists and technologists often use lightning talks to shift their approach from “look at everything I know” to “what is the most important thing for you to know right now?”
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For IT and business leaders, lightning talks can be a valuable tool to sharpen delivery and showcase the value of complex information. They can be particularly useful for introducing new topics, presenting a challenge or call to action, and sharing knowledge and experience. They can also be a refreshing way to provide status updates.
Agile leaders often use lightning talks to foster collaboration and enable their teams to share insights in a focused, “time-boxed” way. Teams can also use these occasions to offer feedback to the product owner and other stakeholders at the end of a sprint. Product owners can also use this format to share their vision or business needs with scrum team(s) for upcoming sprints.
Q4OS 4.6 is code-named Gemini and is based on Debian GNU / Linux 11. The version of the distribution that is now available is an LTS release that will be updated for at least 5 years.
As a desktop environment, either Plasma 5.20 or the Trinity Desktop from KDE 3 in version 14.0.10 can be used. The lightweight Trinity desktop in particular is very popular with the community, as it can be operated smoothly even on older hardware. This also explains that the distribution is not only available for 64bit / x64 and 32bit / i686pae computers, but a variant for older i386 systems without PAE extension is also available.
Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 702 for the week of September 19 – 25, 2021.
This hacker-friendly piece of horological hardware is the brainchild of Espruino developer Gordon Williams. Much like Williams’ earlier efforts in this area, the Bangle.js 2 runs on JavaScript.
Yup, JavaScript; it seems JS really can run everywhere!
Specifically the Bangle.js uses the open source Espruino JavaScript interpreter. This is custom designed software for devices with extremely low hardware resources, like microcontrollers.
Version 5.1 of pgFormatter, a free and reliable tool used to format SQL and PLPGSQL code, has been officially released and is publicly available for download. A demonstration site is available online at http://sqlformat.darold.net/
pgFormatter is the most advanced SQL and PlPgsql code formatter and beautifier dedicated to PostgreSQL. It is provided as a CLI or a CGI program.
Version 2.4.0 of the Foreign Data Wrapper for Oracle is out.
This release provides support for PostgreSQL v14.
Eleven years ago, on 28 September 2010, a new chapter in the history of free office suites started: the creation of the LibreOffice project and the start of The Document Foundation as independent entity. Thanks truly to everyone who made this amazing journey possible. <3 Happy birthday!
On September 28, 2010, LibreOffice was announced to the world. After 11 years, the project and its global community are amongst the largest in the FLOSS ecosystem, and LibreOffice Technology sets the development path for personal productivity.
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a charity that empowers users to control technology. To inspire the younger generation to software freedom, the FSFE is organising the coding competition ‘Youth Hacking 4 Freedom' (YH4F), where teenagers from all around Europe have the chance to compete in a fair and fun way. The winners receive a cash prize and a trip to Brussels with other young hackers.
The thin, atom-thick sheets of carbon called graphene are the thinnest and simultaneously the strongest material known to science. Graphene was discovered about twenty years ago, but so far had no real-world, large scale application, also because of very high production costs.
The only issue I have with those “findings” is the “we, Facebook” part of the second bullet. It should read _“We PARENTS make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” by letting them use, without any support. something they cannot obviously handle by themselves.
No way they are. They are YOUR fault.
What happens when journalism is done with a software program that becomes obsolete? Adobe ending support for the Flash multimedia player means that, among other things, some of the news coverage of the September 11th attacks and other major events from the early days of online journalism are no longer accessible. Only twenty years after the fact, that is.
Vaccine passports are here; but what are they? Are they as useful as government authorities are claiming them to be or are they another form of discrimination being digitalised? In this post, we will take a look at these questions and more to understand whether use of vaccine passports for international travel should be allowed.
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Issuance of digital vaccine passports, not just for international travel but also for accessing public places and benefits, will also open another can of worms as it would pave the way for the creation of another digital identity scheme that may end up being discriminatory and exclusionary while facilitating surveillance (case in point being Aadhaar where linking welfare schemes to Aadhaar and its biometric verification system has caused mass exclusions, and has even led to starvation deaths). The Electronic Frontier Foundation emphasises the need to be mindful of “the potential that today’s vaccine passport will act as a catalyst toward tomorrow’s system of national digital identification that can be used to systematically collect and store our personal information”. For example, even though the National Digital Health Mission’s Health Data Management Policy states that its guiding principle is ‘security and privacy by design’, the overarching concern of large scale processing of health data in the absence of a data protection legislation remains.
If vaccine passports are made mandatory and issued digitally, it would require the “ability to uniquely identify an individual and validate vaccination status (which) requires international cooperation, orchestration across complex systems and widespread adoption of open interoperability standards to support secure data access or exchange”. Thus, it would result in the creation of a new database containing important health information which would be open to function creep, especially since India lacks a personal data protection law. Function creep occurs when a technology or system gradually widens its scope from its original purpose to encompass and fulfil wider functions. For example, the Delhi Police acquired facial recognition technology for the purpose of finding missing children but now is using them for wider investigation purposes. Such “centralized systems (also) carry risks of surveillance, profiling, exclusion, privacy violations, and cybersecurity threats”. Thus, digital vaccine passports may end up violating not just the right to privacy but also the rights to freedom of movement and peaceful assembly.
I’ve frequently said that marketing departments are the most damaging appendage of any modern corporation. However, there is one example of this which really proves the point: corporate songs, and more recently, corporate music videos. These Lovecraftian horrors are usually created in order to raise employee morale, typically at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars and thousands of man-hours being wasted on meetings to compose the song by committee. But don’t take my word for it: here’s some examples.
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While I appreciate material where the jokes write themselves, these songs represent the worst of corporatism. Spend the money buying employees something they would actually appreciate, like a gift card or something instead of making these eldritch horrors. Dammit, I still have the PWC one stuck in my head. Gaaaaaaah!
Two years ago I explained why social media should NOT be instantaneous. Eight months ago I pointed out that the first to “slow down” should be [the most powerful “influencers”]. Now, it turns out that Facebook is doing EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE...
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At times XCheck has protected public figures whose posts contain harassment or incitement to violence, violations that would typically lead to sanctions for regular users. In 2019, it allowed international soccer star Neymar to show nude photos of a woman, who had accused him of rape, to tens of millions of his fans before the content was removed by Facebook.
In 1955, September was the holding of voting in selecting members of the DPR in the first general election in Indonesia, which was attended by 29 political parties and individuals. Where the election left a sad one, the general election committee was kidnapped and killed. The tragedy of the massacre in 1965-1966, the Tanjung Priok incident in 1984, the Semanggi II incident in 1999, the murder of Munir in 2004, to the brutality of the apparatus in the “Corruption Reformasi” action in 2019 yesterday caused one of my friends in the struggle who was a student at Halu Oleo University to be shot dead by the police. in action.
All of the above events took place in September, which the author calls “September Mourning”. The historical record has shown that from time to time the civilization of the Indonesian State has not yet ended with problems that pose a great risk, especially regarding the loss of life. This collection of tragedies in September demonstrates an understanding that what happened was an act of desertion.
This is a review of The Intellectual Property of Nations: Sociological and Historical Perspectives on a Modern Legal Institution by Laura R. Ford - Assistant Professor of Sociology at Bard College, New York.
In this book, Laura Ford draws on macro-historical sociological theories, to trace the development of intellectual property from antiquity to the modern nation-state system, showing how this infrastructure of power emerged. In doing so, using comparative and historical evidence, this groundbreaking work - representing nearly two decades of study - reflects on the role of intellectual property in our contemporary political communities and societies, on the close relationship between law and religion, and on the extent to which the law's obliging force depends on ancient, written traditions.
We are delighted to share the news with clients and contacts that the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) has launched its IP Access scheme providing SMEs with up to €£5,000 (including VAT) to help protect and commercialise their IP. The scheme is part of a new government initiative to support post-pandemic recovery.
On 22 September 2021, China released a 15-year plan to develop intellectual property rights (IPR): ‘The Outline of Building a Powerful Intellectual Property Nation’ (2021–2035). The full text in Chinese is accessible at the Xinhuanet. The official English version will be made available here in due course. This post serves as a quick briefing.
On 30 September 2019 the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office issued guidelines regarding the examination standards for trademark applications in terms of absolute grounds, which were the first of their kind under Turkish law. Recently, a new chapter concerning the substantive examination standards for the assessment of confusing similarity has also been published.
Optis continues its winning courtroom streak against Apple. After last month's $300M verdict in a Texas retrial, Optis has now obtained a favorable UK ruling: Apple faces a British sales ban unless it takes a license on FRAND terms yet to be determined by the London-based High Court of Justice.
I don't believe in reinventing the wheel, so for a thoughtful summary of the decision let me refer you to this write-up by Simmons & Simmons, which contains a link to the judgment (Word document). I just wanted to add my two cents regarding what's next, and to comment on just one remark by Justice Richard Meade, whose recent contribution to a Chinese conference was really great.
Justice Meade notes in his judgment that Apple doesn't deserve sympathy or strengthen its case by threatening to exit the UK market. In other words, he won't allow his court to be bullied. I actually understand both sides: I can see why Apple's counsel truthfully told the judge what her client might consider doing, but I can also see that a court can't be swayed that way. Some judges react sensitively to what they perceive to be corporate bullying. I remember Judge William Alsup in the Northern District of California noting that his court, unlike the plaintiff in the case before him at the time, was "not a wholly-owned subsidiary of Oracle Corporation."
I doubt that Apple can get this injunction overturned on appeal. The UK courts from the lowest level to the highest have had a consistent position for years, and it amounts to requiring implementers to take a (worldwide!) license "on whatever terms are in fact FRAND." Apple may not like the idea that it has to make a decision now, without knowing what terms will be set next year. But the UK courts are most likely going to continue to tell Apple that it has to trust them.
Can an artificial intelligence (“AI”) machine be an inventor and can the machine’s owner apply for a patent? These were two of the key questions which the Court of Appeal grappled with in Thaler v Comptroller General of Patents [2021] EWCA Civ 1374. The Court, by a 2-1 majority, answered both these questions, as well a third question, in the negative. The result was that the appeal was dismissed. The appeal, however, leaves unanswered question as to whether the UK law, in its current state, is fit for purpose when it comes to protecting AI inventions.
Germany has ratified the Protocol on the Provisional Application of UPC Agreement (PAP-Protocol) and paves the way for the Unified Patent Court (UPC).
On a day when Germany was more pre-occupied with the determination of its future president, the outgoing justice minister, Christine Lambrecht, made a somewhat surprising press announcement regarding Germany’s ratification of the Protocol on the Provisional Application of the UPC Agreement (PAP). This protocol is the springboard for full implementation of the Unified Patent Court (UPC), whereby the Unitary Patent System can enter into force.
The German Federal Government yesterday deposited Germany’s instrument of ratification of the Protocol on the Provisional Application (PPA) of the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA). The deposit with the General Secretariat of the Council of the EU, recorded here, was required for the ratification to be effective. As reported by the Federal Ministry of Justice, this is an important step towards the establishment of the UPC. Germany’s ratification now enables the PPA to come into force (and therefore the provisional application period to start) as soon as two more countries ratify the PPA or otherwise consent to be bound by the provisional application of certain UPCA provisions. One of those countries is very likely to be Slovenia (which is hosting in Ljubljana one of the seats of the UPC Mediation and Arbitration Centre). Slovenia’s legislation ratifying the PPA came into force on 24 September 2021 when it was published in Slovenia’s Official Gazette although the Council of the EU has not yet recorded the deposit of the instrument of ratification. Austria is also expected to ratify the PPA shortly.
As of September, Frédéric Portal (43) has joined Bird & Bird’s IP team in Paris as counsel. Previously, he was a partner at mixed law firm Lavoix for ten years. Portal is a patent attorney in chemistry, with a wealth of experience with life science clients. This expertise makes him a good addition to the practice.
In the case of Ferid Allani v. Union of India and Ors., the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (‘IPAB’) set aside the refusal order of the Indian Patent Office (‘IPO’) and allowed the appellant’s patent application.
After juggling the matter between the Delhi High Court, the IPO, and the IPAB, primarily over the issue of patent eligibility of computer-related inventions under Section 3(k) of the Patents Act, the claimed invention was acknowledged as patentable in view of the ‘technical effect’ and the ‘technical contribution’ of said invention. The silver line is that the courts and tribunal in India are aligned to the jurisprudence developed in the US and the EU in granting patents to computer program enabled inventions. However, like in any other jurisdiction, some examiners or controllers may exercise narrow view of granting patents for such subject matter. A huge credit goes to the applicant for his conviction in the merits of the invention and his faith in the Indian judicial system. After many battles, including twice in the IPO, twice in the IPAB, and twice in the Delhi HC, the applicant finally won the war and got a well-deserved relief. The decision also confirms the view that Indian IP jurisprudence is still developing and that interference by the Courts is not avoidable in all circumstances.
The write-up below provides the facts of the case, the timeline, a summary of the second leg of proceedings at the Delhi HC, the IPO and the IPAB, and conclusions.
On 21 September 2021, the UK Court of Appeal dismissed Dr Stephen Thaler’s appeal against the UK Intellectual Property Office’s decision to refuse two patent applications, in which Dr Thaler named his AI system (DABUS) as the sole inventor.
The outcome of the appeal will not come as a surprise to many. All three judges were aligned in their opinion that only a person, not a machine, can be an inventor for the purposes of the UK Patents Act 1977. However, there was a divergence of views amongst them as to whether this was fatal to Dr Thaler’s patent applications.
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Counsel highlight the notable changes and missed opportunities in the new act and their hopes for Australia’s expected joining of the Hague Convention
