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04.11.12

Links 11/4/2012: Linux 3.4 RC2, Red Hat Storage 2.0 Beta, Kubuntu Finds New Sponsor

Posted in News Roundup at 5:26 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • U.S. Government Files Antitrust Suit Against Apple and Five Publishers

    The U.S. took legal aim at Apple Inc. and five of America’s largest publishing firms on Wednesday, hitting them with an antitrust lawsuit for allegedly setting pricing patterns for eBooks that limit competition. The suit contends that Apple and the group of publishing companies cost consumers millions of dollars through an arrangement where publishers set the pricing of eBooks, eliminating variable costs for them that could have been set by retailers and distributors.

  • U.S. Suit Says Apple, Publishers Colluded on E-Book Prices

  • Security

    • Microsoft seals up Windows zero-day flaw in April Patch Tuesday

      Microsoft released six bulletins on Tuesday to fix a total of 11 vulnerabilities, one of which has become the target of active attacks against unpatched applications.

      One of the four critical patches in the batch – MS12-027 – addresses an Active X issue that impacts numerous application and creates a mechanism to drop malware onto vulnerable Windows systems.

      Microsoft warned of attacks in the wild against the zero-day flaw, which affects an unusually wide range of Microsoft products and Microsoft users. Applications affected include Office 2003 through 2010 on Windows; SQL Server 2000 through 2008 R2; BizTalk Server 2002; Commerce Server 2002 through 2009 R2; Visual FoxPro 8; and Visual Basic 6 Runtime.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • US Coal Exports at Highest Level in Twenty Years

      For the full year of 2011, the US exported 107,259 thousand short tons of coal. This was the highest level of coal exports since 1991. More impressive: exports recorded a more than 25% leap compared to the previous year, 2010. (see data here, opens to PDF). Additionally, this was also a dramatic breakout in volume from the previous decade, which ranged from 40,000 – 80,000 thousand short tons per annum. The below chart, from EIA Washington, does not capture the full year, though it certainly portrays the trend. Nota bene: this chart tracks the quarterly volumes of coal exports:

  • Finance

  • Censorship

    • Net Filtering Violates the Rule of Law

      Last year, in their decision regarding the controversial LOPPSI bill, French constitutional judges held that Article 4 of the bill, which allows the French government to censor the Internet under the pretext of fighting child pornography, is not contrary to the Constitution. In doing so, the French constitutional court failed to protect fundamental freedoms on the Internet, and in particular freedom of expression. Hope now lies with European institutions, the only ones with the power to prohibit such administrative website blocking and its inherent risks of abuse.

  • Privacy

    • When the cops subpoena your Facebook information, here’s what Facebook sends the cops

      This week’s Boston Phoenix cover story — Hunting the Craigslist Killer: An Untold Detective Story from the Digital Frontier — would not have been possible without access to a huge trove of case files released by the Boston Police Department. Many of those documents have never been made public — until now. As a kind of online appendix to the article, we’re publishing over a dozen documents from the file, ranging from transcripts of interviews to the subpoenas that investigators obtained from the tech companies that helped them track the killer’s digital fingerprints. We’ve also published the crime scene photos and uploaded recordings made by investigators as they interviewed the killer, Philip Markoff, and others involved in the case.

      One of the most fascinating documents we came across was the BPD’s subpoena of Philip Markoff’s Facebook information. It’s interesting for a number of reasons — for one thing, Facebook has been pretty tight-lipped about the subpoena process, even refusing to acknowledge how many subpoenas they’ve served. Social-networking data is a contested part of a complicated legal ecosystem — in some cases, courts have found that such data is protected by the Stored Communications Act.

  • Civil Rights

    • Uncivil Liberties: The Coalition’s Surveillance Chaos

      It has been a of week of chaos for Britain’s government on civil liberties. Theresa May signaling the intention to bring in legislation to allow law enforcement agencies to check email, web, social media and gaming forum traffic unleashed a wave of protest. It also unleashed contradiction in the government parties. The Conservatives were quick to exploit the “being tough on crime” angle in the Sun. LibDem president Tim Farron was fielded to promise to shoot down the proposals Nick Clegg was set up to defend just a few short days before.

      We have had leaks, briefings, interviews, spin and letters. Lots of letters. The whole debacle has been capped with Home Office and the Prime Minister’s websites being DDoSed by Anonymous.

    • The “99% Spring” to Train 100,000 Activists

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • ACTA

        • EU Parliament Must Stand Firm On Its Political Assessment of ACTA

          Paris, April 10th 2012 – The European Parliament has decided not to refer ACTA to the EU Court of Justice, and will normally hold its final vote this summer, as originally planned. This coming week marks a new opportunity for EU citizens to engage with their elected representatives in Brussels, calling on them to move swiftly toward a thorough political assessment of ACTA.

Apple Problems Can Accelerate Linux Domination in Tablets

Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Hardware at 12:30 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Capacitors

Summary: Reports suggest that there are systemic issues with the hypePad 3

APPLE QUALITY leaves much to be desired, but Apple uses its deep pockets to conceal evidence of this. Not every company is able to do so much marketing, co-opt the police forces, and shut down sites that it does not like. But that’s the side of Apple many people just don’t know about.

According to this new report, the hypePad 3 defects are probably real and widespread:

A tsunami of complaints about Apple’s “The new iPad” – aka the iPad 3 – are filling Cupertino’s discussion forums, claiming that the 3G and 4G connectivity of Apple’s überpopular fondleslab is bollixed.

“The new iPad has unstable 3G connection” is the title of one forum thread in which the thread-initiator reports: “3G icon is visible and signal is strong but safari tells no connection (other programs don’t have connection as well). Switching to airplane mode and back doesnt help and reset (off and on) always helps, but problem appears again after some period.”

Other users in the same thread agree. “I have the same issue,” says one. “Same here … [I] even resetted my network settings to no avail,” says another, joined by “Same problem” or some variant of the same grievance voiced by others.

What exactly is Apple going to do other than replace one unit with an identical one (as we showed before)? Evidence cannot be hidden forever. Apple tends to deny problems until some class action lawsuit is filed and Apple then settles. The bottom line is, when Apple suffers in this space it’s usually Android that gains. Good for Linux it sure is. █

Patent Threats to Linux

Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Patents at 12:21 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Moon

Summary: A quick look at patents that threaten Linux in servers and in mobile

SOMETIMES we write Amazon’s patents because they have become a real problem (and Amazon pays Microsoft for Linux).

Amazon’s S3 patent is a patent on distributed storage system with web services client interface and it can be found here, potentially to affect many Linux-based services. Does anyone find that benign? Oracle is meanwhile threatening mobile Linux, packaged in the form of Android. Groklaw writes about the jury:

First, it’s going to require an incredibly large jury pool. We know that because Judge Alsup previously told the parties to the dispute to limit their entourages during the jury selection process as the jury pool would require half the seating in the courtroom. From this pool the parties and the Court will select between six and 12 individuals (civil trials do not require a jury of 12).

Pamela Jones has some other details from this trial, including transcripts. Remember that Amazon can ‘pull an Oracle’ one day. Just because Amazon uses GNU/Linux (so does Oracle) doesn’t mean it’s harmless. Many former Microsoft managers work in Amazon now. █

Microsoft Misdirection From Germany Amid AOL Patents Snatch

Posted in Deception, Microsoft, Patents at 12:11 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

From a football club in Spain to a convicted monopolist from Redmond

Spain on EU map

Summary: How Microsoft uses some certain Germans to serve the Microsoft propaganda machine

THE Microsoft version of GNU/Linux is developed in Germany now (SUSE, not Novell). It claims to have just turned 20, but we have already explained why that’s technically not the case. It’s a bit of a deception. Generally speaking, SUSE’s purpose is now to help Microsoft tax GNU/Linux, especially in servers; that’s what Microsoft keeps SUSE going for. It deceives the public and traps ignorant managers.

There is another thing going on in Germany and it acts as a Microsoft proxy. Some journalists are citing a Microsoft lobbyist in articles about Microsoft (reports on patents quote a Microsoft patents lobbyist without disclosure). They don’t seem to understand that Florian Müller is paid directly by Microsoft to produce spin. Right now that AOL (filled with former Microsoft managers [1, 2, 3, 4]) gives its patents to Microsoft, IDG quotes the lobbyist:

Marking the latest escalation in the technology industry’s intellectual-property arms race, Microsoft is paying AOL a shade over $1 billion for 800 patents, the cream of which AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has described as “beachfront property in East Hampton.”

And the corporate press also quotes the Microsoft lobbyist, calling him “blogger”. Here is CNN:

AOL walks away with some much-needed cash for patents it was no longer using. Microsoft gets to take home some of the first social networking patents ever granted, and Facebook — a Microsoft partner — is insulated from the legal attacks those patents could have aided had they ended up in enemy hands.

The system enables passing patents around like weapons, to be used for litigation and deterrence. It is indicative of an inherently broken system. Fernando Cassia says:

How many FOSS/Linux projs will be at risk w Microsoft acquiring t entire AOL patent portfolio? (remember AOL incl Netscape)

I used to work for them, too (back while I was doing my Ph.D.). Soon I might be moving to London, but the days of AOL/Netscape are remembered fondly, going back to times when the company was not just a Microsoft puppet of sorts. It still had a Web browser back then. The news about AOL is not shocking because we wrote about AOL’s Microsoft leanings before. It seemed like entryism, too. █

SEC Versus Microsoft Financial Claims

Posted in Finance, Microsoft at 11:52 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Money on a dark desk

Summary: A recollection of the SEC’s correspondence with Microsoft regarding lack of clarity

THE MONOPOLIST from Redmond is not properly disclosing its money management schemes and practices of tax dodging. Some time ago the SEC contacted Microsoft. As Pogson sarcastically puts it:

That should inspire confidence in shareholders. Depending on the outcome of an appeals process to prop up the bottom line is not good business. If the taxation contingency is $7billion for the audit of 2006, what could be the size of the contingency for all those other years?

We covered this at the time. The CFO left the company and was paid to keep quiet. Just what exactly is going on at Microsoft and why is it taking loans? Much of the money might be stashed abroad, but how much really? Microsoft is shrinking and living on some borrowings. █

The Economist Throws FUD at OLPC Again

Posted in FUD, GNU/Linux, OLPC at 11:44 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“Fat operating systems spend most of their energy supporting their own fat.”

–Nicholas Negroponte, MIT Media Lab, rediff.com, Apr 2006

Nick Negroponte
Picture from Wikipedia

Summary: Another news item that describes a seemingly successful project as a “failure”

THERE is something quite rotten at The Economist and it’s not just fallacies-filled GNU/Linux-hostile articles (we mostly ignore them so as to not feed the provocatuers).

The OLPC, which runs Fedora, has been under continuous attacks, being the trailblazer that — just like Munich — Microsoft and its comrades must mock.

In The Economist, OLPC Is being called a “failure” in Peru — under the assumption that part of the problem is that students learn faster than many of their teachers. Here is a person from Fedora addressing the article:

OLPC a “failure” in Peru

According to the Economist. Ah, but here’s the rub. From the article:

Part of the problem is that students learn faster than many of their teachers, according to Lily Miranda, who runs a computer lab at a state school in San Borja, a middle-class area of Lima. Sandro Marcone, who is in charge of educational technologies at the ministry, agrees. “If teachers are telling kids to turn on computers and copy what is being written on the blackboard, then we have invested in expensive notebooks,” he said. It certainly looks like that.

Here is another rebuttal, this one from HP.com:

So, instead of a “disappointing return,” or “not accomplish[ing] anything in particular,” IDB did actually find a measurable benefit.
Could it be that the disparity between test scores and actual measured achievement means that it’s the tests that are lacking, rather than the laptops? It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that academic testing was shown to be seriously wanting.
And is it too much to ask for The Economist’s journalists and fact-checkers to actually get as far as the sixth sentence in the report’s abstract, before writing the story? I know that many of today’s workers exhibit short attention-spans, but really!

There seems to be a reporting failure, not an OLPC failure. If they start with the premise that everything is failing, then they can collect claims that support the hypothesis and disregard the rest. █

Microsoft Uses Marketing Tricks to Create Illusion of Windows (WP7) Demand

Posted in Microsoft, Windows at 11:28 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Dance

Summary: Another attempt by Microsoft to fake fanfare

THE MONOPOLIST from Redmond has already tried AstroTurfing to shore up sales of WP7. Here is one example we wrote about.

Having failed to gain even a respectable share, Microsoft then decided to game some numbers and now it gives little bribes. TechBytes’ host Tim writes:

“…Let’s face facts, Microsoft has gotten it’s hand into everything. Once there, they consistently become the 900lb gorilla in the room with a bad attitude that kills competition and is bad for consumers…. ”

Microsoft is gaming the ranks by offering little bribes or virtually no-cost presales — all just to create fake hype. We discussed this in the IRC channels when examples were given. Due to my connection being far worse than useless at the moment I may not be able to blog as usual (will keep everything short). █

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