Editors • About the Site • Comes vs. Microsoft • Using This Web Site • Site Archives • Credibility Index • OOXML • OpenDocument • Patents • Novell • News Digest • Site News • RSS

01.04.11

Microsoft Cannot Provide Security

Posted in Deception, Microsoft, Security, Windows at 5:43 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Indecision

Summary: A roundup of security news showing what an utterly poor job Microsoft is doing when it comes to securing customers’ systems and telling them the truth

WE HAVE not been covering these issues for several months now, but over the weekend there was time to catch up with about 2 months of security news. This post contains a concise summary of some key security problems Microsoft has been having, with fresh examples towards the end (a lot of bad news around the Christmas period).

Let us begin with the not-so-distant examples of DLL hijacking. “Most Microsoft DLL Hijacking Vulnerabilities Remain Unpatched” said this report which implied neglect and irresponsibility from Microsoft. They had not patched or addressed known problems, as usual.

Many new flaws were found in Windows, including one that evades Windows’ UAC pseudo-security. There was a privilege escalation exploit and an issue with buggy Internet Explorer [1, 2], whose low quality gives crackers many opportunities to hurt its users. Over Christmas there were many headlines about an Internet Explorer zero-day warning [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]. Microsoft just warned about it but did not patch it. Microsoft also said that there was no exploit and soon enough it dealt with a second zero-day vulnerability. It did not take long for exploits to surface and IDG said that researchers revealed attack code for new IE zero-day vulnerability. It’s important to remember that it’s terrible to leave people in this state over the holidays. It prevents some people from taking a break or be mentally peaceful. Microsoft produced only a workaround, a hack [1, 2]. It wasn’t a patch. Soon thereafter, on December 30th, it was announced that Microsoft was also warning about Microsoft Word attacks (which means that exploits exist too).

“The priority is reputation rather than the safety of systems. Microsoft’s financial security comes before real security.”Microsoft deserves mocking for this. When there was previously an IE vulnerability the company produced nothing for months, until December according to IDG (also see this other IDG report or this report which says that “Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday for November does not include a fix for a zero-day flaw in Internet Explorer”). Microsoft left users vulnerable for far too long simply because it could get away with it, under the assumption that many users are stuck with Windows. One must not allow Microsoft to fool the public by claiming its responses to be fastest because only a Microsoft spin site like Neowin would so conveniently ignore silent patches and recent studies on the subject. Neowin parrots Microsoft when it says that Microsoft patched 247 exploits in 2010. It’s inaccurate because those numbers are fake. Many more patches were applied silently, in order to give Microsoft bragging opportunities (hinged on falsehoods). For PR reasons, Microsoft just does not deliver patches sometimes. The priority is reputation rather than the safety of systems. Microsoft’s financial security comes before real security.

The matter of fact is, Microsoft can’t even secure Windows itself. “Hackers hijack Microsoft’s servers for fake-drug spam” said this recent headline and on the seventh of December Microsoft was warned of the “protected mode” flaws we mentioned earlier. This has not been addressed yet.

Security researchers have issued a warning to Microsoft that the much-vaunted Protected Mode introduced into Internet Explorer in recent releases offers little or no protection in its current form.

When it comes to patches, some people will reject them anyway, as yesterday's post about AP downtime ought to teach everyone.

Going about a month back, we also find reports relating to the handing of Windows sources code to Chinese hackers, which led to reports that we missed such as this one (“Chinese firm hired Blaster hacking group, says U.S. cable”), this one (“Leaked Cables: Chinese Hackers Used Microsoft Source Code To Attack Google & US Government”), or the redacted cable itself (“US embassy cables: China uses access to Microsoft source code to help plot cyber warfare, US fears”). How about this one (“China Used Microsoft Source Code To Hack Google — And You?”) which says:

A State Department cable released by WikiLeaks says the Chinese government used Microsoft source code in its attacks on Google and in its cyber warfare efforts in general. (Via The Guardian)

How did they get their hands on Microsoft’s closely guarded source code, you might ask?

Well, two Chinese IT security companies, Topsec and Cnitsec, are licensed to access and use Microsoft’s source code. In yet another example of incredibly blurred lines between the government and business in China, those companies gave the source code to the government.

Later in December, a Microsoft booster called Emil Protalinski spoke about Microsoft’s largest Patch Tuesday ever and so did some other sites [1, 2]. We covered this at the time, but the important point to be made is that invisible patches are not being named or counted by Microsoft, so the real numbers can be much greater.

From older reports we also learned about the effects of Zeus [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10], which in a world where one in two Windows PCs is said to be a zombie PC is doing a lot of damage despite a token of response from Microsoft [1, 2]. The headlines are “Microsoft: Botnet infection plague continues despite wins” and “Zeus Trojan defeats Microsoft security tool”. “Microsoft tool unable to detect new versions of Zeus” says another report.

Neil J. Rubenking writes to warn people that Passware found Bitlocker in Windows to be broken:

Password-recovery experts at Passware warned Friday that the security of Microsoft’s Bitlocker whole-disk encryption is seriously compromised on a computer configured to use sleep mode. The same is true of the open-source TrueCrypt whole-disk encryption tool.

Now we come to some of the latest news. “Microsoft ActiveX Security Bugs ‘Highly Critical’” said Ziff Davis some days ago:

Researchers at Secunia are warning users about ActiveX bugs the firm described as ‘highly critical.’ Microsoft is unaware of any attacks targeting the issues.

[...]

Besides the ActiveX bugs, the company is also investigating a denial-of-service issue impacting IIS FTP 7.5, which ships with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Proof of concept exploit code has already been made public, according to Nazim Lala, IIS security program manager at Microsoft.

It relates to an older report from the same publication:

With attack code public, Microsoft said it is investigating a report of a new vulnerability impacting Internet Explorer.

“Microsoft reports drop in data breaches” said this less-than-recent headline and shortly afterwards it turned out that Microsoft messed up in a major way. To name some headlines, “Microsoft Corporation Cloud Security Breached”, “BPOS: a data leak in Microsoft’s cloud”, “Microsoft BPOS cloud service hit with data breach”, and “Microsoft Cloud Data Breach Heralds Things to Come”. Quoting from that last one:

Microsoft announced that data contained within its Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) has been downloaded by non-authorized users, possibly making it the first major cloud-based data breach.

[...]

Encryption isn’t the final word. Even encrypted data has a history of being compromised, usually due to bugs in the encryption software.

All of this means that, if your business is going to put data into the cloud, you will have to factor in the very real possibility it will be made public at some point. It will happen. It’s just a matter of when, and what damage will be caused. It would be interesting to visit the offices of Microsoft, Google, and others to see if they eat their own dog food: Does Google rely on Google Docs for all of its hypersensitive business data? Somehow I suspect not, although I look forward to being proved wrong. There are laws in place covering data breaches, requiring companies to enforce reasonable security systems, but none of that amounts to a hill of beans once the data has escaped the cloud. And should stolen data be turned into a bit torrent, as appears to be the fashion at the moment, there’s absolutely no chance of discreetly cleaning up by getting the data back from those who stole it.

Wired has just taken a “Four-Day Dive Into Stuxnet’s Heart”, noting at least that it’s a Windows problem:

It is a mark of the extreme oddity of the Stuxnet computer worm that Microsoft’s Windows vulnerability team learned of it first from an obscure Belarusian security company that even the Redmond security honchos had never heard of.

The sophisticated worm, which many computer experts believe was created as a specific attempt to sabotage Iran’s nuclear power plant centrifuges, has written a new chapter in the history of computer security. Written to affect the very Siemens components used at Iran’s facilities, some analysts have even speculated it may have been the work of a state, rather than of traditional underground virus writers.

For more about Stuxnet’s damage see the posts below. █

  1. Ralph Langner Says Windows Malware Possibly Designed to Derail Iran’s Nuclear Programme
  2. Windows Viruses Can be Politically Motivated Sometimes
  3. Who Needs Windows Back Doors When It’s So Insecure?
  4. Windows Insecurity Becomes a Political Issue
  5. Windows, Stuxnet, and Public Stoning
  6. Stuxnet Grows Beyond Siemens-Windows Infections
  7. Has BP Already Abandoned Windows?
  8. Reports: Apple to Charge for (Security) Updates
  9. Windows Viruses Can be Politically Motivated Sometimes
  10. New Flaw in Windows Facilitates More DDOS Attacks
  11. Siemens is Bad for Industry, Partly Due to Microsoft
  12. Microsoft Security Issues in The British Press, Vista and Vista 7 No Panacea
  13. Microsoft’s Negligence in Patching (Worst Amongst All Companies) to Blame for Stuxnet
  14. Microsoft Software: a Darwin Test for Incompetence
  15. Bad September for Microsoft Security, Symantec Buyout Rumours
  16. Microsoft Claims Credit for Failing in Security
  17. Many Windows Servers Being Abandoned; Minnesota Goes the Opposite Direction by Giving Microsoft Its Data
  18. Windows Users Still Under Attack From Stuxnet, Halo, and Zeus
  19. Security Propaganda From Microsoft: Villains Become Heroes
  20. Security Problems in iOS and Windows
  21. Eye on Security: BBC Propaganda, Rootkits, and Stuxnet in Iran’s Nuclear Facilities
  22. Eye on Security: ClamAV Says Windows is a Virus, Microsoft Compromises Mac OS X, and Stuxnet Runs Wild
  23. Windows Kernel Vulnerability for Thanksgiving, Insecurity Used for Surveillance Again

Vista 7: The Illusion Finally Breaks

Posted in Deception, GNU/Linux, Google, Marketing, Microsoft, Vista 7, Vista 8, Windows at 2:19 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Vista 7

Summary: Bad news for Vista 7 and more new stories that resemble what happened to Windows Vista

THIS IS A SUBJECT THAT Techrights has dedicated nearly 100 posts to. The reality behind Vista 7 was never the same as perceived reality that PR had generated and spread. It was important for this Web site to present the facts rather than the advertisements/guerrilla marketing and also expose the machinations responsible for alteration of public perception.

Vista 7 was named “a year old” a small number of weeks ago. How has it done so far? It depends on who you ask. Microsoft is determined to push its latest version of anything, so to Microsoft it is extremely important that people follow the herd under the assumption that this herd is happy with the latest change. For the first time in many years Windows was advertised heavily on television and the phrase “I’m a PC” was a common one in use.

Based on this report, the Vista 7 “I’m a PC” man has quit Microsoft. Here are the details:

Microsoft’s “I’m a PC” bloke is reportedly leaving the software maker.

According to an email, seen by SeattlePI.com, Sean Siler has quit the company for personal reasons, after five years of service.

This was also covered by Microsoft blogs [1, 2] which contain departure messages. It’s quite a loss to no longer have somewhat of a mascot amid these Microsoft ads which pretend there are only two sides (Apple and Microsoft) and there’s plenty of humour about those ads, too.

What we are seeing here resembles what happened with Vista, which initially sold better than Vista 7 by the way. It took about a year for Vista’s top people — including key marketing people (the public figures who defended Vista) — to call it a day and run away from Microsoft. We covered these at the time.

“Sales of Vista 7 have been far from spectacular, but Microsoft keeps boasting some fake numbers…”What’s the deal with Vista anyway? Well, in our daily links last night we cited an example of people who got ‘burned’ by Vista and therefore are moving to GNU/Linux, rather than pay Microsoft again for a fix of Vista. The operating system known as Vista is a key factor in migrations to Vista 7. Many Vista users are migrating to Vista 7, whereas XP refuses to die because Vista 7 hardly has anything superior that’s of practical value. Ask any Microsoft booster what new features will be made available for Vista 7 and struggle to get a good answer. Not much has changed. As for Vista, we’ve looked at heaps of Microsoft news going back to October and amongst about 7,000 headlines from the past 2.5 months only one contained substring “Vista” and it’s about “enVista”. In other words, Vista is no longer in the news. It’s gone, it’s finished. But some people bought it at the time, foolishly thinking it would stay relevant and supported.

Sales of Vista 7 have been far from spectacular, but Microsoft keeps boasting some fake numbers (fake for reasons we explained before, including fake numbers at the SEC) and this one analyst says that GNU/Linux in the form of Chrome OS “will bury Windows”, to use the headline from The Inquirer which says: “He predicts that the free Chrome OS will displace the Vole’s Windows OS on netbooks. This implies that Microsoft will be forced to give away its flagship desktop operating system for free in order to support sales of its other products, like Office.”

Microsoft is reportedly engaging in patent racketeering [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] against Chrome OS. It uses threats of litigation against Taiwanese companies that plan to sell it. Hail the ‘free’ market, eh? The “invisible hand” is invisible because it does not exist. Here is one report about it — one that we have not referenced before:

Microsoft is apparently planning on using royalty fees on smartphone technologies in an attempt to persuade Acer, ASUS and other netbook manufacturers to stick with Windows and bypass Android and Google Chrome OS on netbooks and tablets, according to sources in Taipei. DigiTimes claims that Microsoft is threatening to charge manufacturers for using its patented tech – including email and multimedia systems – as with their agreement with HTC, with fees amounting to around $10-15 per handset.

“Microsoft accused of doing evil in Taiwan” says the headline from a British news site:

The first target for the Imperium is Acer and Asustek and the big idea is to stop them from adopting Android and Chrome OS for their netbook and tablet PCs, Digitimes claims.

So far only HTC has signed for licensed use of Microsoft patents, leaving Acer and Asustek the targets for the royalty charge.

In Korea itself (a neighbour of Taiwan, but much further south) it’s a mess for anybody who does not use Windows because of Microsoft ActiveX lock-in which we covered here before. “Microsoft monoculture hurts tablet users” says this headline from the Korea Times. The Inquirer alleges that Microsoft will charge royalty fees in Taiwan while trying to legitimise software patents in Korea, destabilising the region’s independence (Samsung and LG, which are based in Korea, already pay Microsoft for Linux, since 2007 in fact. In Japan, software patents are legal). The reports are being denied by ASUS, but there is no word from Acer.

Rumors continue to swirl about behind-the-scenes royalty agreements in the netbook and tablet PC industries that could have adverse effects on future product lineups. The latest: a new DigiTimes article says that Microsoft is planning to charge Taiwan-based vendors Acer and AsusTek royalty fees for devices that don’t run a Microsoft-based operating system. So far, AsusTek has already denied the charges.

The DigiTimes report says Microsoft is claiming the fees are for using its various e-mail and multimedia-related patents, but that the effective result would Acer and AsusTek shying away from adopting Google’s Android or Chrome OS on netbook and tablet PCs.

This is all relevant to Vista 7 because it’s notoriously ‘fat’ (resources-wise) and this is hurting it a lot in new form factors such as ultralight tablets. The Bangkok Post calls Microsoft “an unfamiliar underdog” in tablets, for example.

We both wanted to like the Windows 7 tablet, to cheer on the underdog and the little guy, even if he is from Redmond. I came away wondering. It was a case where the whole just did not add up to the sum of the parts.

Even CNN mocks/belittles Microsoft’s chances in this area. Don’t be fooled by CES hype.

Further on this subject, Microsoft’s notorious booster Rob Enderle (who is paid by Microsoft) already smears Chrome OS again, in order to advance Microsoft’s agenda. In his blog he keeps using the patent FUD, just as he used the SCO FUD for many years. And it turns out that ECT now accepts not just Enderle as a writer but also SCO booster Laura DiDio from the Yankee Group. She writes about Vista 7′s first birthday at times when Microsoft is preparing a fix for it (because it’s broken, of course).

“And it turns out that ECT now accepts not just Enderle as a writer but also SCO booster Laura DiDio from the Yankee Group.”Going back to the issue of poor Vista 7 adoption, IDG says that enterprises promise to run Windows XP even after its retirement. Yes, poor adoption of Vista 7 in business and in general is a subject that we covered here before and IE6 is part of the problem. “Companies Enslaved to IE6 in No Hurry to Upgrade to Windows 7″ says the headline of that latter article and “Microsoft’s ‘China problem’ means IE6 lives on” is the headline from IDG, which adds: “A Microsoft executive’s self-described job of driving Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) into extinction will be difficult unless he can move Chinese users off the aged browser.”

The other day we wrote about the “dipping” lawsuit which may questionably enter “class action” status. It’s a lawsuit against Vista 7, which has formally entered the courthouse and is now covered by some corporate media sites and tabloids like The Register.

A California woman whose lawsuit against Microsoft was dismissed earlier this year has again sued the company over “downgrade” rights to the nine-year-old Windows XP, according to federal court documents.

The complaint filed by Los Angeles resident Emma Alvarado last week accused Microsoft of breaking California’s unfair business practice and restraint of trade laws by requiring customers to purchase a copy of Windows Vista or Windows 7 if they want to downgrade to the older Windows XP.

Mr. Pogson had this to say about the lawsuit:

Emma Alvarado sued M$ in 2009 over the silly and costly XP “downgrades” for people buying PCs that came with Vista. The court disallowed class action and eventually ruled that M$ had not been shown to profit from the practice. Perhaps the dog ate the money but M$ and its partners never do anything without raking in huge amounts of cash.

She is tenacious and is suing again on more limited grounds, California law, which may better protect the consumer.

Finally, let us not be deceived by advertising in the form of press releases. Windows in general is collapsing based on different criteria and another trick for having one sale of Vista 7 count as several reached its end of life about 4 days ago [1, 2, 3], which ought to make it harder for Microsoft to manipulate future figures (expect Microsoft not to say much about it anymore). █

IRC Proceedings: January 4th, 2011

Posted in IRC Logs at 1:11 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME Gedit

GNOME Gedit

GNOME Gedit

#techrights log

#boycottnovell log

#boycottnovell-social log

Enter the IRC channels now

ES: Entrevista Exclusiva con la Revista Linux Format

Posted in Interview, Site News at 12:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Linux Format

(ODF | PDF | English/original)

Linux Format articleSummario del Articulo: entrevista a Techrights en diciembre 2010 de la revista Linux Format

PARA AQUELLOS que no lograrón comprar la edición de diciembre de Linux Format, hay una entrevista a mí no, como se señaló hace unos meses[http://techrights.org/2010/10/18/linux-format-coverage/]. He aquí el texto en bruto como es de esperar, explica un poco más sobre Techrights y su servidor.

* ¿Cómo te involucraste en Open Source?

Me hice consciente por primera vez de UNIX y Linux en algún tiempo en los años 90, cuando algunos amigos de la escuela lo utilizaban experimentalmente. En las clases de ciencias de la computación (mis mayores) había muchos de nosotros los geeks. No fue sino hasta hace diez años que me introducieron a Red Hat y se convirtí en un usuario de inmediato. Me encantarón muchas cosas al respecto. En 2001 estaba escribiendo y compartiendo todos mis programas como software libre y en 2002 conseguí un trabajo en el que escribía el código con la Licencia Pública General, GPL (en su mayoría programas basados en GTK). Esto entonces me introdujó a GNU y pronto aprendí más sobre su filosofía asociada. En ese momento yo no estaba usando el término “código abierto”, aunque era consciente de la palabra. No fue hasta mucho más tarde (alrededor de 2005)cuando me di cuenta de que el término debe ser utilizado con el fin de armonizar mejor con la gran prensa, que tienden a caracterizar como “Open Source” el código que todo el mundo comparte de esta manera. Para mí, el intercambio de código fue siempre natural y nunca escribí ningún software propietario en toda mi vida. No tengo la intención de hacerlo, tampoco. Es posible ser pagado por escribir código para que tu conserves todos los derechos sensibles. Es más gratificante y motivador, no sólo beneficioso para los compañeros. No hay sensación mejor que ayudar a aquellos que te ayudan. Este período de mi vida también me hizo participar como colaborador en varios proyectos libres y proyectos de código abierto, en particular, WordPress que he usado mucho.

En los casos en que el código de mis colegas no eran realmente licenciados (sólo con derechos de autor, naturalmente), trató de fomentar el intercambio de código porque como científico sé que nuestro trabajo conjunto tendría un mayor impacto si se ha adoptado y utilizado por otros. Por lo tanto, mi participación en “Open Source” era más que sobre el código, una forma de vida y yo todavía trato de promover los principios de software libre/código abierto en el contexto de los datos, del hardware, de la literatura, y las ciencias en general . La transparencia no es la ventaja clave en mis ojos, es más que ver con la promoción de la abundancia en vez de la escasez en que las limitaciones en el acceso sólo son artificiales. Restricciones que potencian mas a los que ya están en el poder y no tiene por qué ser de esa manera, sobre todo, no en el mundo digital.

* ¿Qué es TechRights?

TechRights es una plataforma en la que se expresan una cadena de ideas, prestandonos de los establecimientos influyentes e importantes como la Fundacón del Software Libre FSF sin embargo, actuando con absoluta independencia (no hay fuentes de financiación y por lo tanto no hay autocensura o prejuicio). TechRights puede considerarse como un complemento a algunos grupos, pero cualquier similitud tal es sólo la percepción como nunca hubo ninguna afiliación. TechRights tiene 3 nombres de dominio y una serie de actividades/componentes, tales como un blog, un wiki, y tres canales de comunicación en tiempo real (IRC), divididos por temas. Hace varios meses también hemos añadido las distinciones basadas en ángulo, clasificados bajo las banderas llamado “TechRights”, “TechWrongs”, y “TechChoices”. El enfoque del sitio es Novell, Microsoft, e incluso a veces Apple no porque son la única amenaza a las libertades de las personas y los derechos digitales, en el campo del software éstas son las áreas en las que tienen mayor interés, antes de material de apoyo, y la experiencia.

* ¿Cuál es la historia de TechRights?

TechRights es el nombre del sitio propuesto por Tracy, el que nos aloja el sitio Web. Necesitábamos un nombre nuevo al alcance del sitio se había expandido. Fue hace mucho tiempo. Esperamos que para invertir la connotación de la palabra “derechos”, que es cada vez más secuestrada por aquellos que se apropian de los derechos de las personas.

* TechRights se llamaba Boicot Novell, ¿por qué el cambio de nombre?

Sí, “Boycott Novell” fue creada por Shane pocos días después de Novell y Microsoft habían firmado su problemático acuerdo de patentes . El sitio se esperaba tenga un estrecho enfoque y tratamos precisamente este aspecto uno de los problemas que el software libre estaba teniendo. Según recuerdo, “Boicot Novell” era en realidad un nombre de categoría en el blog personal y técnica de Shane, pero se convirtió en su propio nombre de dominio y muchas personas muy pronto se subscribieron al sitio. Como sus lectores creció, la gama de temas fue ampliada. En el momento de unirse al sitio – muy poco después de su creación – Yo estaba trabajando en mi doctorado tesis y tenía un montón de tiempo libre que yo solía escribir un gran número de puestos para el sitio. Por el momento tenemos alrededor de 11.000 entradas del blog, un poco más de un centenar de megabytes de los registros de IRC, y varias otras páginas que ha editado activamente por la comunidad. Esperamos que la cantidad no ha comprometido la calidad.

* ¿Todavía siento que todos debemos Boicotear a Novell?

No estoy en condiciones de decirle a la gente lo qué va hacer, pero les aconsejo que la gente piense cuidadosamente acerca de las tácticas de venta de Novell *SLE (SUSE Linux Enterprise) con las patentes de software. Novell ha intentado cambiar las reglas al IMPONER a GNU/Linux, UNA RESTRICCION que no existía previamente. Novell se acerco a Microsoft y negocio por cerca de medio año lo que más tarde se convirtió en un acuerdo de patentes. Esto puso a Novell en una posición de percibida ventaja sobre Red Hat y otros. Desde entonces, Novell ha instado a las empresas a comprar SuSE basado en las patentes de software de Novell (Novell eufemísticamente llama “la tranquilidad de PAZ DE PROPIEDAD INTELECTUAL”), el cual Novell convirtió en un punto de venta en este campo de batalla donde las patentes de software son antitéticos.

El nombre de “Boicot Novell” nunca fue mi idea y siempre he sentido cierta inquietud acerca del nombre (que sonaba demasiado negativo y el 80% de mi impresiones fueron positivas), pero sí animo a la gente a votar con sus carteras y recompensar a las compañías que no están utilizando las patentes de software para vender sus productos. Para GNU/Linux que el mercado prosperen y que para las nuevas empresas que se derivan o sagan de ella, las patentes de software tendrá que ser detenidas. Novell no es única en ese sentido y TechRights intenta hacer frente a los problemas, no sólo a los jugadores individuales.

* TechRights ha sido un lugar controvertido, ¿cuál es su opinión sobre la controversia?

Cada persona o plataforma que se atreve a tocar temas delicados está destinado a ser etiquetados como “controvertido” o ser caracterizado como “irracionales” por sus adversarios. Esto es especialmente cierto cuando uno se aparta de los debates puramente técnico. Con los años hemos tenido personas que distorsionan o tergiversan nuestras opiniones, que son más difíciles de controlar o manejar cuando se trabaja dentro de un marco de participación de muchas personas o cuando la gente propaga falsos rumores (desinformación) desde el exterior. Por ejemplo, algunas personas empezaron a asociar el puntos vista formal del sitio con la gente que acaba de dejar comentarios en él, o entrar en el canal de IRC. Algunas personas erróneamente suponían que una protesta en la India – va bajo el lema “Boicot Novell” – fue de alguna manera organizada por el sitio Web.

Lo que encontramos alentador, es aunque que cuando la gente viene a hablar con nosotros directamente pronto se dan cuenta que somos gente decente y los estereotipos/caricaturas que a veces flotan por ahí son sólo demonizaciones diseñado para marginar a nuestros puntos de vista. Es evidente que hay algunas empresas por ahí que no está contento con nuestro trabajo. Pero la verdad duele a veces. Dado que estamos abiertos a comentarios, las empresas tienen la oportunidad de impugnar todas las demandas, no a traves de ataques ad hominem, sino de un debate racional. Ya hemos tenido anónimos empleados de Novell tirando barro a los mensajeros en el sitio y desde fuera del sitio. Por lo general, se exponen al final y luego se desvanecen.

* ¿Qué cambios le gustaría ver que suceda en el Open Source para aliviar algunas de sus preocupaciones?

Hay muchas cuestiones que deben corregir y por permanecer pasivos nunca nada va a mejorar, sino sólo va a empeorar. Una de las áreas en las que participamos activamente es la terminación de las patentes de software, que deben ser eliminados, incluso en el mundo Open Source (IBM, por ejemplo, deberían replantearse su política de patentes porque estan a favor de las patentes de software). El Open Source y la comunidad de software libre debe estar abiertos a la crítica desde dentro, incluso si esta crítica es un poco incómodo a veces. El objetivo final es permitir que más usuarios y desarrolladores, que con el tiempo parecen ser cada vez más draconianamente capturados por las entidades centralizadas, como tiendas de aplicaciones que censuran, los llamadas “nubes” que se gestionan desde lejos, y licencias restrictivas que ratificar y consolidar DRM -Digital Restrictions Management , matan a los aparatos, y invasiones y violaciónes a la vida privada de las personas.

* ¿Cuáles cree que es el futuro de TechRights?

TechRights es una plataforma que está en manos de muchas personas y si ayuda a los asuntos de fuera vista diferente, entonces sabemos que hicimos nuestra parte. La mayor parte de la actividad se lleva a cabo en el IRC, así que mientras nuestra comunidad conduce el programa en determinadas direcciones, que será el futuro de la plataforma.

En el futuro esperamos mantener los recursos de información por escrito en un idioma que es más defensiva que ofensiva. Cuando se trata de temas difíciles, donde los detractores de la libertad se maliciosamente activos, existe la tentación de perder la compostura. El objetivo final es educar más, menos de hacer campaña. Nosotros no organizamos campañas de difusión, pero a veces los memes cómicas que ayudan a advertir sobre los peligros de la etiqueta con el fin de crear conciencia. Por ejemplo, podemos escribir constantemente “Vista 7″, “Niebla de Informática”, y “hypePad”, todos los cuales son términos diseñados para transmitir las desventajas reales de las últimas amenazas a la libertad de software.

Si la gente tiene ideas que se quieren promover o problemas que quieren que se traten, son bienvenidos y alentó incluso, para que puedan entrar y conocer a nuestra comunidad, preferentemente en el IRC. Muchos de nuestros artículos de divulgación fueron posibles gracias a filtraciones de información (los denunciantes anónimos), que arrojan luz sobre actos ilícitos que habían presenciado. Si no hubiera sido por todas estas aportaciones, TechRights no estaría aquí. La plataforma es cada vez más crowdsourced en su mayor parte, lo que hace más eficaz y precisa. █

[Many thanks to Eduardo for his translation.]

01.03.11

Links 3/1/2011: KOffice 2.3.0 Released, New View for Activity Journal

Posted in News Roundup at 5:54 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Why I Use Linux

    Diversity: Don’t like something or anything about your computer? Change it.

  • Evangelistic Linux

  • Desktop

    • System76: Bringing Linux to the desktop, 1 stupid-fast computer at a time

      The netbooks were perfectly nice,and represented a solid choice for schools because of their abundant free software and competitive prices when compared to other netbooks with similar specs. However, System76 also sent me a high-performance, consumer-oriented laptop to evaluate in the broader context of desktop Linux.

    • How to choose the best Linux distro for laptops

      The smart mobile user shouldn’t overlook Linux. The question is, which distro should you pick?

      You’ll get a different answer depending who you ask. You’ll probably be pointed in the direction of Arch for performance, Debian for stability and Ubuntu if you want easy access to the biggest collection of apps.

  • Server

    • Excito B3 and Internet Freedom.

      As far as the power requirements go for this ARM-based Linux server, the power consumption ranges between 8 and 13 Watts, or as low as 5 Watts if using the SSD-equipped model.

    • Hackers obtain PS3 private cryptography key due to epic programming fail? (update)

      The group intends to generate a proof-of-concept video tomorrow, and release the tools sometime next month, which they claim should eventually enable the installation of Linux on every PS3 ever sold. Catch the whole presentation after the break in video form, or skip to 33:00 for the good stuff.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Thanks to You, Dan Will Be at FOSDEM 2011!

      So today, on a hunch, I set up a crowdfunding site to get Dan to FOSDEM. The site I used has a minimum target of $500, but I estimated $400 would suffice to fly Dan in, pay his accomodation, all the fees and fly him back again. I set the end of the campaign to January 20 and only advertised this on identi.ca and in less than twelve hours, we not only met our target, but well exceeded it. As I write this, the fund sits at an amazing $555. Once again, the absolutely unbelievable generosity of the LO community totally floors me! Even better, while all this happened, Dan was in studio with the band, totally oblivious to what was happening. I can only imagine he was pretty amazed as well when he eventually found out.

    • Linux Outlaws 183 – Darkfield Lasers (The Year 2010 in Review)

      In the longest Linux Outlaws episode ever (by far!), Dan, Fab and guest-host Ade Bradshaw discuss Linux and open source in the year 2010 and celebrate the move to the new year with loads of beer.

    • FLOSS Weekly 146: Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware

      Hosts: Randal Schwartz and Simon Phipps

      Tiki is a tool to build and maintain your Website/Wiki/Groupware/CMS/Forum/Blog/Bug Tracker or any other project you can run in a browser window.

    • Podcast 87 Openbox + Xorg 1.9 -hal

      In this Podcast an ozmart tip, dvtm, fun with openbox, and xorg 1.9 without hal.

    • Full Circle Side-Pod Episode Seven: The End of the Shortbread Biscuits

      This is an extra, irregular, short-form podcast, which is intended to be a side-branch of the main Full Circle Podcast. Somewhere to put all the general technology, non-Ubuntu news and opinions, hobby-horses and kruft that doesn’t fit anywhere else. Be prepared for a healthy dose of British sarcasm.

  • Google

    • Will Chrome OS fail or be the next big thing? Depends who you ask

      A quick scan of Google News this morning revealed alternating headlines about Chrome OS. Some pundits say “Google Chrome OS Faces Serious Risk of Failure.” Others say “Google’s Chrome notebook will succeed.” I’ve certainly had great impressions of the notebook in educational settings and it works well for a lot of what I do.

  • Ballnux

    • Samsung confirms Galaxy Player, will showcase at CES 2011

      Samsung has announced a new Android-based Galaxy Player that will be showcased next week at the CES 2011. Samsung says the new music player takes inspiration from its successful Galaxy S phone and is spec’d similarly sans the cellular connectivity.

  • Kernel Space

    • [kernel] Linux Kernel with BFS

      So, after reading all this, I downloaded the patch, spent some good 30 minutes playing with the kernel configuration (as always :p), enabling the BFS feature and compiling it into the kernel. The compilation took a little more than an hour, while sitting at FOSS.in, giving me the bzImage which I immediately put into my GRUB configuration. Rebooted and ta-da, it was BFS running on 2.6.35 vanilla.

    • The BeagleBoard [part 1]

      Execution of the ARM kernel begins in the inferred standard location of arch/arm/kernel/head.S, at the place very obvious labeled with “Kernel startup entry point”. At this point, the MMU must be off, the D-cache must be off, I-cache can be on or off, r0 must contain 0, r1 must contain the “machine number” (an ARM Linux standard assigned number, one per machine port, passed from the bootloader code), and r2 must contain the “ATAGS” pointer (a flexible data structure precursor to things like fdt and device trees that allows a bootloader to pass parameters). First, the processor mode is quickly set to ensure interrupts (FIQ and IRQ) are off, and that the processor is properly in Supervisor (SVC) mode. Then, MMU co-processor register c0 is copied into ARM register r9 to obtain the processor ID. This is followed by a call to __lookup_processor_type (contained within head-common.S, the common file for both MMU-enabled and non-MMU enabled ARM kernels – the latter are not covered by this document).

    • The differences between Linux IO Scheduler

      The Linux kernel input/output scheduler (IO Schedulers) controls the way the kernel handles read/write to disks. Different I/O schedulers may have different impact on certain workloads. Here are the list of available Linux I/O schedulers:

      1) Noop
      Noop scheduler is the simplest IO scheduler available in the kernel. It does not perform sorting or seek-prevention. It is intended for devices that has no mechanical parts or is capable of random access such as SSD or flash-disk.

      [...]

    • Graphics Stack

      • Happy New Year! A Big Linux GPU Comparison!

        This comparison is being done not only to satisfy requests from our Phoronix Premium subscribers, but to also test some of the new OpenBenchmarking.org features. [Yes, besides OpenBenchmarking.org tests causing a large FirePro driver comparison, it's also caused this large cross-GPU cross-driver comparison, new Amazon EC2 benchmarks (the new benchmarks of all Amazon cloud instances using the Amazon Linux AMI will be here by mid-January), and other yet-to-be-announced articles that are very exciting for early 2011.]

      • Broadcom CrystalHD Decoder support for FFmpeg and MPlayer

        At the end of last year, Broadcom released open-source drivers and a library for their CrystalHD hardware video decoder; You can read the details about that at Jarod Wilson’s blog if you’re interested.

        The hardware is particularly attractive because it’s low cost and can be added to any system, regardless of the GPU it uses. It provides MPEG1/2, H.264 and VC-1 decode capabilities in all hardware versions, and the latest 70015 part also adds MPEG4 Part 2 / DivX / XviD support – and, if you care about such things, it does so in a way that means all the infamous patent issues are handled in hardware.

      • Intel Sandy Bridge Linux Graphics? It’s A Challenge

        This week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (I’ll be there again looking out for Linux), Intel will officially launch their next-generation Sandy Bridge micro-architecture and CPUs. The NDA though expired at midnight on these first CPUs so there is now a stream of reviews coming out. Is there any Linux graphics test results for the Core i3 2100, Core i5 2400, Core i5 2500K, and Core i7 2600K? Unfortunately, there is not.

      • Sandy Bridge is the biggest disappointment of the year

        That said, what am I talking about? If you try to use Sandy Bridge under Linux, it is simply broken. We tried to test an Intel DH67BL (Bearup Lake) with 2GB of Kingston HyperX DDR3, an Intel 32GB SLC SSD, and a ThermalTake Toughpower 550W PSU. At first we tried to install vanilla Ubuntu 10.10/AMD64 from a Kingston Datatraveler Ultimate 32GB USB3 stick. The idea was that it would speed things up significantly on install.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • KOffice 2.3.0 Released

        The KOffice team is happy to announce the 2.3 release of KOffice. This release brings many small improvements to all the KOffice applications, but not as many large new features.

      • KDE SC 4.6 RC1 – Another Look

        Looking forward to the final release, which must be due out in a few weeks.

    • GNOME Desktop

    • Xfce

      • Xfce 4.8pre3 Released

        Today we are pleased to announce the third and hopefully final preview release of Xfce 4.8 which is set to be pushed out to the public on January 16th, 2011. Compared to Xfce 4.8pre2 this release mostly features translation updates and bug fixes.

  • Distributions

    • Updated: Ubuntu And Fedora Wallpaper Pack [Official Wallpapers]

      Ankur has updated the wallpaper collection we’ve mentioned a while back that includes all the Ubuntu and Fedora official wallpapers in the 4:3 and 16:10 formats. The update includes the Fedora 14 and Ubuntu 10.10 wallpapers along with 10 extra wallpapers (from Linux Mint, Mandriva and the latest KDE 4.6 wallpaper)…

    • Get Slack!

      How I started with Slackware?, Well I’m using Arch Linux for about two years now. In the Arch Linux Wiki, there is a comparison of Arch Linux with other distributions, one of them is Slackware.

    • Archie

      It has been over two years since I first switched from a mighty popular “Linux” distribution to ArchLinux. And two fine years it has been.

    • New Releases

      • Pardus Linux 2011 RC Overview/Review
      • Wary Puppy 5.0 Available For Download

        Wary Puppy is a project of the Puppy Linux developer, Barry Kauler, to develop a linux distro which provide support for older hardware. Puppy Linux is already a very light weight distro and runs well on many older systems. However, Puppy Linux is moving to a new software base and it may no longer run so well on the older hardware. To maintain the support for the older hardware Wary Puppy has been introduced.

        Wary Puppy uses the older Linux kernel 2.6.31.14 because it provides better support for older hardware. Other components in Wary are a mix of old and new software. X.org which comes in Wary is quite old, Mesa is also fairly old and GTK, gcc etc. are fairly new. Wary also includes the latest releases of applications like SeaMonkey, Abiword, Gnumeric etc. and the latest drivers for printers, scanner etc.

      • New applications land in Parted Magic 5.8

        Parted Magic 5.8 is released, this new release comes with new software and many bug fixes. The following programs have been updated:partedmagic clonezilla-1.2.6-40, plpbt-5.0.11, psensor-0.4.4, linux-2.6.36.2, busybox-1.17.4, nwipe-0.03, simpleburn-1.6.0, syslinux-4.03, clamav-0.96.5, e2fsprogs-1.41.14, gparted-0.7.1. These are the new programs that were added: zerofree-1.0.1, cmospwd-5.0 ( A password recovery tool), open-iscsi-2.0.871, hfsprescue-0.1, gscite223.

    • Debian Family

      • This Week in Debian Episode 13

        Interview with George Castro, discussing Ubuntu as a Debian derivative.

      • Debian: Force users to use more secure login password with pam_cracklib

        One of the factor that makes your system easily crackable is the weak password. PAM cracklib forces users to choose stronger password by analyzing the password strength, length and entropy.

        To enable pam_cracklib in Debian / Ubuntu operating system, you need to install libpam_cracklib:

        sudo apt-get install libpam_cracklib

      • Happy New Debian GNU/Linux Release

        Squeeze is not officially released yet but the bug-count is in the same ball-park as the last release, Lenny, and the bugs I have examined are pretty narrow. With the additional available manpower on the weekend I would not be surprised that Debian Squeeze could be released within a few days. That will start 2011 off right.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Official Ubuntu keyboard for sale… with a Windows key?

          A new officially branded waterproof keyboard has gone on sale in the Canonical store.

          Made from silicon, the keyboard is flexible and can roll up for easy travel.Waterproof too it can withstand most liquid spills (I.e. and not fry), weighs a relatively light 204 grams and, best of all, has a whacking great Ubuntu logo on it to scream out your OS of choice.

        • What we should really be working on December 30, 2010

          It’s hard to get new users when the new users can’t use what you’ve made to a effective degree. If Ubuntu is going to be competitive with the rest of the operating systems out there (mainly Windows and Mac OS), then we have to first ensure that it works on the user’s computer to the highest degree that we possibly can.

        • I Love Ubuntu – And Here Are the Reasons Why

          In the meantime, I will continue to love and support the development of Linux and Ubuntu, even if it doesn’t get the respect that I feel it does.

        • Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat Linux Desktop Edition Few Week Review

          In Summary, using Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat has been a great experience since it is fast, simple, and reliable to use as an everyday operating system for my web browsing, Linux gaming,watching video files on my computer or YouTube, listening to music and online radio, and office/school related tasks like e-mail, word processing, making slide presentations, and spreadsheets.

        • FCM#44 is HERE!

          This is it folks, the last issue of Full Circle…

          … last issue of 2010 that is!

        • Ubuntu Bug Fix Wishes for 2011

          Both are responsible for a disruptive desktop experience for many users. I also wish that the effort for the new “consistent user experience for desktop” does not keep or increase our current inability to fix such severe open source problems.

        • Ubuntu and the Boy Scouts of America

          In short, Eagle Scout candidate Raymond Westbrook of Boy Scout Troop 534 from Chicago, IL built a computer lab from 6 recycled PCs and running Ubuntu 10.04.

        • Ten worst things about Ubuntu
        • Why I use (and love) Ubuntu

          Since my inspiration to write has been rather dry the past couple of months, mostly due to work and work, I thought it would be cool to re-ignite my writing by sharing some reasons why I use (and love) Ubuntu. So here goes.

          There are many reasons why my partner, my son and I use Ubuntu but here is just a few.

        • Ubuntu Is The Rich Man’s OS X

          This is an awkward thing for me, because I do enjoy my expensive gadgets, and I’m not actually decided on Ubuntu – I might go for a Hackintosh instead – but there’s no question in my mind after reviewing the relevant research that choosing Ubuntu over OS X is the rich man’s (or woman’s) move.

        • Linux Ubuntu

          I am seriously thinking of making the switch from Windows to one of the Linux Operating Systems.

          [...]

          We got ripped off being forced to buy Vista, now Vistas flaws pressure us to spend more buying Windows 7. How much is Windows 7? Too freakin much.

        • Thinking About Ubuntu And 2011

          So here I am, and it is the night before I go back to work for my first day back in 2011. I have had some wonderful and frankly much needed time off work. Towards the end of 2010 I was pretty bushed and was ready to spend some time with my wife and family, my guitar, and my Playstation. The time off was worth every second and I am now rested and raring to go…raring to contribute to making Ubuntu a success in 2011.

        • Ubuntu’s fundamental flaw: Frozen full-screen apps
        • Ubuntu and the price of Unity

          Canonical’s decision to go with the Unity shell on GNOME may be a game changer for Ubuntu, but it doesn’t come without risk. Mark Shuttleworth’s declared aims are to unite design with free software. He hopes to blur the line between the web and the desktop, to create an intuitive Linux desktop that is a thing of beauty, and to make Ubuntu and free software popular among the kinds of user who have never heard of free software before.

        • Flavours and Variants

          • 5 reasons to try Zorin OS Linux

            One of the best features of the open source Linux operating system is that there are so many distributions to choose from.

            Ubuntu gets by far the lion’s share of the media’s attention, it’s true–largely by virtue of its top ranking at the top of DistroWatch’s popularity list–but there are hundreds of other options out there as well, many tailored to particular kinds of users and situations.

          • LMDE 201101 32-bit re-spin

            As re-spin of the LMDE 201012 32-bit ISO was made available under the name “201101″.

            The new ISO comes with an up-to-date live kernel which addresses the following issues:

            * “Black screen of death”, live session hanging with a black screen.
            * Installer hanging while configuring Grub.

          • Mint vs. LMDE: Sudden weight gain
          • Linux Mint vs Pinguy OS Review

            Linux Mint is one of the oldest, and arguably one of the best-developed, spin-offs of Ubuntu. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been seeing more articles talk about another similar spin-off of Ubuntu called Pinguy OS, and I thought, “Another Ubuntu derivative? How many more does the world need?” But then I saw that these articles were placing Pinguy OS on the same level of Linux Mint. I figured this warranted a full-on comparison test.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • The parable of the the PDA: predicting the smartphone’s future

        When reading the comments disputing the possible end of the voice-phone era I’m reminded of similar comments disputing the end of the PDA era.

        Although the Apple Newton pioneered the market in 1992 and John Sculley came up with the acronym, the Newton did not sell in significant volumes. It wasn’t until 1997 with the Palm Pilot that the PDA market took off. Microsoft quickly followed with a licensed OS based on Windows CE. In 2001 Microsoft launched the Pocket PC brand to cement its attack on the PDA market. The first phones using a Microsoft OS were using something called Pocket PC Phone Edition. The first Nokia smartphones (Communicators) were built like mobile PDAs.

      • Nokia/MeeGo

        • [maemo-developers] Qt Mobility 1.1 for Fremantle
        • The Rabbit Game for the N900
        • Team behind WebTab Tablet launches Widget Developer Tool; Now available for Download

          WebTab also features 11.6-inch display and a custom Linux operating system based on MeeGo Linux. The tablet features a custom user interface that offers a sidebar that lets you navigate through apps, web pages and widgets that are on the home screen.

        • MeeGo 1.0 Mobile Application Development Cookbook
        • Qt experts talking to you almost 50 hours on videos! Irresistible!

          In the year 2009 we started to spend dedicated effort in recording of Qt Developer Days and got very positive responses from Qt users. Surprisingly, even archived records from the years 2005-2008 found a large audience. People even voted against removing old videos! Sure, we will not do this!

        • MeeGo 1.1 running on HTC’s HD2

          While bored today, I decided to take a look at getting MeeGo running on the HTC HD2.

          The HD2 is very similar to the Nexus One hardware-wise, and MeeGo is already known to run on that, but as far as I know, nobody had ever got it running on the HD2. I set to work, and a few hours later we were up and running!

        • MeeGo-Harmattan Is Handling FreeDesktop.org X

          While Intel is looking to use Wayland on MeeGo Touch for their mobile/embedded purposes, the Nokia side is still focusing upon X for the time being. But rather than using X with KDrive, developing all of their X support out of the mainline trees, or going down any other messy paths, they are working towards using the mainline X.Org Server as found on FreeDesktop.org along with the other X libraries.

        • MeeGo’s Community Woes: Improvement in 2011?

          When one open source developer complains about corporate influence on a project, it’s not necessarily a danger sign. It’s a big community full of a diverse range of opinions, and some folks are easily agitated or provoked to anger when things don’t go entirely their way — and generally do a good job of broadcasting their displeasure. So I take it with an enormous grain of salt when one developer complains about a project.

          But in this case, the drumbeat is loud and coming from several projects. MeeGo has done a pretty good job of alienating most of the downstream projects that would re-package it and help MeeGo gain some traction in the developer and FOSS user community.

      • Android

    • Sub-notebooks

    • Tablets

      • Archos 101 Internet Tablet Review: Part 1 – hardware

        The Archos 101 Android based internet tablet is now available for $299 in the U.S.. I’ve had mine for about a week now and have some initial likes and dislikes. First I want to discuss the hardware. Can a sub $300 device compare well with an Apple i-Pad or Samsung Galaxy Tab? Surprisingly yes. Archos has been in the media player business for some time now and in general their devices are well thought out and ergonomic.

      • Notebook vendors seeing R&D delays for Android 3.0 tablets

        Notebook vendors have expressed concerns about the launch schedule of their Android 3.0 tablet PCs as Google is currently giving priority for Android 3.0 support mainly to smartphone players such as Motorola, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, High Tech Computer (HTC) and Nokia, leaving notebook vendors facing delays in their R&D schedules.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Free software seen as way to resolve many of Lebanon’s economic woes

    Free Open Source Software (FOSS) may seem to many to be more of a catchphrase than a reality, since it is not immediately clear why anyone would produce software without charging a price. But around the world, it is a widespread enterprise that saves consumers $60 billion a year in software expenditure, according to a 2008 study by Boston-based Information Technologies consulting group, Standish Group. It is also highly profitable, many proponents of free open source technologies have argued.

  • 6 Free Linux-Friendly Office Suites For Getting The Job Done

    Many people install Linux on their machines for its simplicity, believe it or not. Distributions like Ubuntu and Mint target the curious inexperienced user and provide a complete suite of free software to tackle most PC-related tasks.

  • Is Netflix a Friend or Foe to FOSS?

    “Like most businesses, [Netflix has} to struggle with the balance between contributing to open platforms and protecting their business models from upstart competition,” said Slashdot blogger Chris Travers. “Doing this in an all-FOSS manner is rather difficult, but it’s not impossible.” In any case, Netflix, “like Microsoft, should be complimented on the things they support, and encouraged to support more.”

  • Free Software: the road to a Universal bundle, a powerful app store, and world domination

    Apple is doing it again: they are releasing an app store for OS X on the 6th of January. Just like the iPhone app store, and the Android app store, this is going to be a hit: the OS X ecosystem will get a giant boost from it, and we are left — once again — with a lot to learn. Before you mention that GNU/Linux doesn’t need an app store because it’s free software, and before you even say that GNU/Linux already has an app store through one of the many software managers (Synaptics, Ubuntu Software Center, apt-get), please read this article.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Tsinghua University, Mozilla Launch Browser For IPv6

        Tsinghua University and Mozilla China have jointly developed a new Internet browser product that is specially designed for IPv6.

        Based on the core of Firefox, the widely-used browser by Mozilla, the new browser product, with the help of IPv6 tunnel technologies, enables smooth access to some IPv6, Facebook, and Google services, which are usually unstable. Facebook, at the present moment, is blocked in most areas of China. At present, this browser mainly targets the campus network of Tsinghua University with initial V1.0.6 version. It also has a “green download” edition which is about 16MB.

      • Mozilla Says Its Time To Create Firefox 4 Add-Ons Now

        Firefox 4 is nearing its final release date. Another milestone was reached when Mozilla confirmed that developers can now create add-ions for the new browser without having to be afraid that future Firefox 4 versions will bring further changes.

  • Oracle

    • And Then Along Comes Larry….

      I am not defending Oracle’s undermining of Open Source nor do I support it, but the company is at least being clear about its intentions and convictions. Customers like that.

    • The H Year: 2010′s Wins, Fails and Mehs

      Meh – Oracle took over Sun – With the completion of Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems, a new regime of Oracle’s “special” brand of communications took over from Sun’s bloggy, chatty style. The Oracle brand of communications mostly involves Oracle not saying anything or so little that the community is left to fill in the blanks.

  • CMS

    • Drupal 7.0 RC 4 Released
    • New Drupal 7.0 Book: Foundation Drupal 7

      The primary audience for this book is web site designers interested in using Drupal to build web sites. The audience may have previous experience using Drupal but do not consider themselves proficient. They are familiar with coding a basic HTML/CSS web site, although these skills are not required to benefit from the book.

  • Funding

    • Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free

      The Wikimedia Foundation announced this morning that it has reached its goal of $16 million in record time, more than doubling the $7.5 million the organization raised in 2009. The foundation, which is the non-profit parent organization of massively collaborative online encyclopedia Wikipedia and a multitude of other wikis, says that more than half a million people from all over the world donated to the effort this year.

  • BSD

    • Announced: FreeBSD 8.2-RC1 and 7.4-RC1
    • Considering FreeBSD Jails

      The jail does not boot its own kernel, and does not run a full version of the operating system. A jail is comprised of a filesystem, a hostname, an IP address, and an application. Jails can be seen as the logical successor to the older chroot environment, which restricted an applications access to the filesystem by providing the application it’s own root. Jails expand on this concept by further separating the host operating system and the application they are running. The difference between virtual machines and jails can be summed up by saying that virtual machines are for operating systems, jails are for applications.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Access/Content

      • 2010 Dramatic Growth of Open Access

        2010 was the strongest year for open access growth so far. In 2010, 1,401 journals were added to DOAJ for a total of 5,936 journals. The Electronic Journals Library now records over 27,000 journals that can be read free of charge; over 3,500 were added in 2010. 1,037 journals actively participate in PubMedCentral, an increase of 313 over the past year, and more than half of these journals contribute all articles as open access. PMC now provides access to over 3.2 million free articles, an increase of over 300,000 this year. OpenDOAR lists 1,817 repositories, having added 257 this year. A Scientific Commons search encompasses 38 million items, an increase of over 6 million since last year. There are 261 open access mandate policies, an increase of 83 this year.

  • Programming

    • Report on the Tel Aviv Perl Mongers Meeting

      In the meantime, other people arrived there, and we talked about how to get more people to contribute, about making use of CPAN modules in projects and about which versions of Perl are used in the enterprise. Then the talks began.

Leftovers

  • Anti-Corruption Officials Laud the Internet

    After another year in which prominent corruption scandals and embarrassing controversies were brought to widespread public attention on the Internet–despite an intensifying clampdown on information by the government–you might think the government isn’t a big fan of the Internet’s role in the corruption issue.

  • No category of digital content has attracted payments from more than 33% of American Net users

    Pew Internet reports that 65% of American Net users (75% of the people they contacted) have paid for online, digital content. Ever. And there’s no category of goods in which more than one third of the respondents have ever paid for content.

  • DVD touted by Glenn Beck stirs up archaeological spat

    But, Lepper said, “The evidence is overwhelmingly that they are a fraud. And the premise that the Smithsonian or anyone made an effort to cover this up is not factually based.”

  • How Much Copyright Infringement Can You Cram Into a Single Tweet?

    Chilling Effects says it received records of 11,500 total takedown notices in 2010, as of Dec. 15. Major contributors include Google, Yahoo and Digg.

  • Facebook Close To Naming Sun Microsystems Campus As New Headquarters

    It’s been less than two years since Facebook moved into its 150,000 square foot office space at 1601 South California Ave in Palo Alto, but the rapidly growing company is already itching for a new home. Now we’re hearing from multiple sources that Facebook has chosen the site for its new headquarters: the former Sun Microsystems/Oracle campus in Menlo Park CA, just off the Bayfront Expressway at 1601 Willow Road (map). The campus is around six miles from Facebook’s current home, and is bordered by Menlo Park and East Palo Alto.

  • Why waste money? Free software just as wonderful

  • Science

    • The Joy of Stats (Video)

      The Joy of Stats is an hour long BBC documentary by Professor Hans Rosling, in which he illustrates the beauty and importance of statistics as a means of understanding the world and society in which we live.

    • Top 10 Things Science Fiction Promised Us That DID Happen in 2010

      1. Walk through X-ray airport scanners — Who can forget the classic scene in Total Recall where Ahnuld walks through the scanner at the space port and we get a full x-ray of his body? Well, for some reason, people didn’t think this technology was quite as cool when it was brought to an airport security line near them this year. Maybe it was the the thought that someone in a dark room is looking at virtual nudie pictures of us. Maybe it was the increase in radiation bombarding our bodies. Whatever it was, many want to leave this advance behind in 2010.

    • Top 10 Things Science Fiction Promised Us That Didn’t Happen in 2010

  • Health/Nutrition

    • What Is in Fast Food? A Newly Discovered Reason to Avoid Fast Food

      According to Madbury, regulators who approved these chemicals for use with food and other products made three assumptions, which have now been proven wrong:

      1. The chemicals won’t migrate from paper into food.
      2. The chemicals won’t become available to your body.
      3. Your body won’t process these chemicals.

  • New Year

    • Federated Social Web: Top 10 of 2010

      Here are a few of the FSW developments that I think have been important in 2010. The list is in order from least important to most important, and all opinions come from yours truly only. My criteria for inclusion were influence on future uptake of federation technologies – positive and negative. I didn’t exclude events or developments that my company or I personally was involved in; it would be a pretty short list in that case.

    • Reasons to be Cheerful

      Our computers are about ten times faster in clock speed than they were circa 2000, but have vastly more (and faster) storage, are cheaper, and are crawling into everything from hotel room doorhandles to automobiles and TVs. My mobile phone today is significantly faster and more powerful — and has a higher resolution display and more storage! — than my PC in 2000. And my broadband today runs roughly 32 times as fast as it did in 2000. (Whether this is good or not is a matter of opinion, but at least it’s available if you want it.)

      There’s been enormous progress in genomics; we’re now on the threshold of truly understanding how little we understand. While the anticipated firehose of genome-based treatments hasn’t materialized, we now know why it hasn’t materialized, and it’s possible to start filling in the gaps in the map. Turns out that sequencing the human genome was merely the start. (It’s not a blueprint; it’s not even an algorithm for generating a human being. Rather, it’s like a snapshot of the static data structures embedded in an executing process. Debug that.) My bet is that we’re going to have to wait another decade. Then things are going to start to get very strange in medicine.

    • 2010 Trend Watch Update: Online Video
    • The Best Internet Memes Of The Decade: Chuck Norris, Rickroll, Lolcats And More From 2001-2010
    • A Road Less Traveled

      Amid the planes, trains and automobiles of the holiday season comes a surprising finding from transportation scientists: Passenger travel, which grew rapidly in the 20th century, appears to have peaked in much of the developed world.

    • A Dozen Copyright Predictions for 2011

      Here are a dozen copyright predictions for 2011, mostly but not solely of interest to Canadians…

    • Linux and open source prognostications for 2011

      So…what exactly is in store for Linux and open source in the upcoming year? Will it FINALLY be the “year of the Linux desktop”? We’ve been saying that for, what, three thousand years now? Let me don my Nostradamus cap and reach into the future and find out what is in store.

    • Geek&Poke’s Predictions For The Next 20 Years

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • Document – Belarus: Further information: Opposition activist tortured in detention

      Andrei Sannikau, an opposition activist in Belarus and presidential candidate in the 19 December presidential election, has been tortured while in detention. Andrei Sannikau’s lawyer reported that his legs appear to be broken and the way he speaks and holds himself indicates that he may have brain damage. He needs urgent medical attention.

    • China’s new netizens voice suspicions over death of village chief

      An activist decapitated, a journalist killed, a lawyer beaten, a magazine closed and an embarrassing legal case mysteriously settled out of court. In the past few days China’s netizens have dug their claws into a smorgasbord of crimes and controversies in which the only constant is a reluctance to believe the official version of events.

    • Labour moots using speed cameras to reward law-abiding drivers

      The new shadow transport minister has suggested that the country’s network of average speed cameras could be used to monitor and reward careful drivers with prizes, cheaper car tax, or by deducting penalty points from their licence.

      Conscious that her party was perceived as anti-motorist when in government, Angela Eagle suggested such uses for the cameras “might make people understand there is a point to [them]” she told The Daily Telegraph.

    • Revealed: The full shambles of the ID card trial in Greater Manchester

      Civil servants were urged to sign up their own families for ID cards as the controversial scheme flopped, it can be revealed today.

      Confidential reports into trials of the controversial £30 cards, obtained by the M.E.N., expose for the first time the chaos that surrounded their introduction.

      The £1bn scheme was launched in Greater Manchester in November last year but proved a hugely expensive failure, with only 13,200 people signing up.

    • Justice Department Refuses Cooperation With Polish Prosecutors Investigating Torture at CIA Black Site

      Polish prosecutors looking into the torture (including waterboarding) of prisoners held at the former CIA black site in northeastern Poland near Szymany air base turned to the U.S. Department of Justice with a request for help in collecting information relevant to the case.

    • Russian fifth-generation fighter: high hopes

      Under secrecy, Russia’s first fifth-generation PAK FA fighter jet has successfully completed a test flight. Its appearance has now been revealed by Sukhoi, the plane’s manufacturer, which released footage of the flight.

  • Cablegate

    • Wired.com: Lamo/Manning Wikileaks chat logs contain no unpublished references to Assange or private servers (Updated)

      Wired.com’s Kevin Poulsen and Evan Hansen have confirmed key details concerning unpublished chat logs between whistleblower Bradley Manning and informant Adrian Lamo. Responding to questions on Twitter, Poulsen wrote that the unpublished portion of the chats contain no further reference to ‘private’ upload servers for Manning, while Hansen indicated that they contain no further reference to the relationship between Manning and Wikileaks chief Julian Assange.

      U.S. Army Pvt. Manning, who allegedly sent 250,000 diplomatic cables and other secrets to Wikileaks, awaits trial in Quantico, Virginia. Wikileaks, working with newspapers in Europe, has so far published about 2,000 of the cables, with minor redactions.

    • Messenger refuses to be shot

      This highlights an issue that also came up with WikiLeaks. The US government used a system for holding its confidential communications that was intrinsically insecure (a unified database with something like two million officials authorised to use it). When its insecurity is finally revealed by Bradley Manning (and then WikiLeaks), the response is to rage against the breach whereas the rational thing to do is to rethink the security architecture. Governments are entitled to keep some secrets. But if those secrets are important, then they ought to be seriously protected, not put at risk in such a clueless way. So exposure fulfils a vital function, however annoying it may be at the time.

      One wonders, though, if anyone in the UK Cabinet Office is paying attention to all this. As far as I know, the Coalition is still committed to the computerisation of NHS medical records embarked upon by New Labour. This means that the UK is constructing the same kind of intrinsically-insecure system as that breached by WikiLeaks. If the NHS system is built, the UK will have a centralised database of highly confidential documents — the medical records of every citizen — to which upwards 100,000 people of different organisational grades will have routine rights of access. Imagine the fuss there will be when the News of the World pays some bent geek to access the medical records of Cabinet ministers, celebrities and the like.

    • Bankers fail to censor thesis exposing loophole in bank card security

      A powerful bankers’ association has failed in its attempt to censor a student thesis after complaining that it revealed a loophole in bank card security.

      The UK Cards Association, which represents major UK banks and building societies, asked Cambridge University to remove the thesis from its website, but the request was met with a blunt refusal.

    • From Wikileaks to OpenLeaks, Via the Knight News Challenge

      Back in 2009, Daniel Domscheit-Berg applied to the Knight News Challenge in the name of Wikileaks for $532,000 to fund a project to “improve the reach, use and impact of a platform that allows whistle-blowers and journalists to anonymously post source material.” At the time Domscheit-Berg was known to the world by the pseudonym “Daniel Schmitt” and made frequent appearances on behalf of Wikileaks alongside its editor-in-chief Julian Assange (including at the October 2009 Personal Democracy Forum Europe conference in Barcelona). Now, as is widely known, he and Assange have parted ways and Domscheit-Berg is part of a group organizing the launch of OpenLeaks.org, which is being described as more of a technological service provider to media organizations than as a central hub for leaks, and which is promising to roll out a detailed description of its organization and plans in January 2011.

    • Good Leak, Bad Leak: Why Wikileaks Matters

      There is more to fighting for freedom than simply picking up a gun.

    • Wikileaks: Crowdsourcing Cables and Coverage of the Cables. Nothing Else.
    • Assange: I’ve got the names of Arab officials spying on their own countries for the CIA

      The Internets are buzzing about an interview Julian Assange gave to Al Jazeera’s Arabic channel Wednesday, in which the WikiLeaks frontman reportedly threatened to release cables showing that various Arab officials were working with the CIA.

    • Rig owner refuses to honor oil spill subpoenas

      The owner of the rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico is refusing to honor subpoenas from a federal board that has challenged the company’s involvement in monitoring the testing of a key piece of equipment that failed to stop the oil spill disaster.

      Transocean said the U.S. Chemical Safety Board does not have jurisdiction in the probe, so it doesn’t have a right to the documents and other items it seeks. The board told The Associated Press late Wednesday that it does have jurisdiction and it has asked the Justice Department to intervene to enforce the subpoenas.

    • Just Weeks After Cutting Off Wikileaks, Amazon Brags About How US Federal Gov’t Is One Of Its Biggest AWS Customers?

      Again, no one is saying that Amazon has no right to deny service to whomever it wishes, but it does seem a bit odd from a PR standpoint, and raises questions about how much anyone should trust working with Amazon web services. I know it’s making me reconsider my own use of the platform for various projects.

    • 8 Smears and Misconceptions About WikiLeaks Spread By the Media

      As Glenn Greenwald has argued, mainstream news outlets are parroting smears and falsehoods about the whistleblower site and its founder Julian Assange, helping to perpetuate a number of “zombie lies” — misconceptions that refuse to die no matter how much they conflict with known reality, basic logic and well-publicized information.

    • Ministers must ‘wise up not clam up’ after WikiLeaks disclosures

      The government should take the WikiLeaks revelations as a lesson that civil servants and ministers can no longer assume they operate in private, and “wise up” to a world where any official communication could be made public, according to the information commissioner.

      Christopher Graham, the independent freedom of information watchdog, told the Guardian that the website’s disclosures had profoundly changed the relationship between state and public, in a way that could not be “un-invented”. But he warned against “clamming up,” saying the only response was for ministers to be more open.

    • WikiLeaks reveals State Department discord over U.S. support for Canadian tar sands oil pipeline

      A diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks has revealed that a U.S. diplomat warned the Obama administration about significant environmental impacts stemming from Canada’s controversial tar sands oil production program.

      The language in the cable contradicts recent statements by U.S. State Department officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, that underplay the environmental impacts of tar sands oil while defending a proposed pipeline that would bring the extremely polluting oil from Canada to the U.S.

    • WikiLeaks’ Assange: 2,000 sites now have all documents

      In the event of his untimely death or long-term incarceration, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange would make public all the leaked documents his group has, the activist reiterated Thursday in an interview with the broadcaster al Jazeera.

      “If I am forced, we could go to the extreme and expose each and every file that we have access to,” he said, according to media groups reporting on the interview.

    • One tip enough to put name on watch list

      A year after a Nigerian man allegedly tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner, officials say they have made it easier to add individuals’ names to a terrorist watch list and improved the government’s ability to thwart an attack in the United States.

      The failure to put Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on the watch list last year renewed concerns that the government’s system to screen out potential terrorists was flawed. Even though Abdulmutallab’s father had told U.S. officials of his son’s radicalization in Yemen, government rules dictated that a single-source tip was insufficient to include a person’s name on the watch list.

    • Bradley Manning/Wikileaks Timeline

      Private First Class Bradley E. Manning was arrested and charged with the unauthorized use and disclosure of U.S. diplomatic cables to Wikileaks. He has been held in solitary confinement at the Marine Corps Brig, Quantico since sometime in May 2010.

    • Half-formed thought on Wikileaks & Global Action

      It’s possible that the plain meaning of the Pentagon Papers case will clear Assange and Wikileaks, full stop, and the era of self-restraint of the press in response to extra-legal constraints is over, at least in the US context. It’s possible that the Pentagon Papers case will be re-adjudicated, and the press freedoms of the traditional press in the US will be dramatically constrained, relative to today. It’s possible that new laws will be written by Congress; it’s possible that those laws will be vetoed, or overturned, or amended. Whatever happens, though, this is new ground, and needs to be hashed out as an exemplar of the clash of basic principles that it is.

    • Julian Assange Given Press Freedom Award

      A Romanian online publication known for its editorial independence is honoring Wikileaks founder Julian Assange for his service to press freedom, which it warns is under threat in Eastern Europe.

      Cotidianul.ro said Saturday Assange was given the “Free Dacia” award for exposing the “duplicitous behavior of some democratic countries.”

      Wiklieaks has begun publishing some 250,000 classified U.S. State Department cables.

    • Wanted [IMG]

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Italian shops to bin plastic bags from New Year’s Day

      The window of New Market on Via Antonio Cantore in the Prati quarter of Rome was crammed with the delicacies that go into a traditional Italian New Year’s Eve feast – lentils, zamponi (stuffed pig’s trotters) and hyper-calorific cotechino sausages from Modena.

      Tomorrow’s cenone (literally, “big dinner”) will usher in not just a change of the year, but a revolution for shoppers and store owners. From 1 January Italy’s hundreds of thousands of retailers will be banned from giving their customers plastic bags.

  • Finance

    • Interview: How Bitcoin Created a Decentralized Crypto-Currency

      Bitcoin is an open source, peer-to-peer electronic currency created by Satoshi Nakamoto and maintained by a small team of developers. As part of what’s turning into an ongoing series on the distributed Web, I talked to contributor Gavin Andresen about how the software works. This is a technical overview. If you’re interested in an economic or political look at the software, you can read the Wikipedia entry or Niklas Blanchard’s essay on the project.

    • Vatican enacts laws on financial transparency

      The Vatican, whose bank is the focus of a money laundering investigation, enacted laws on Thursday to bring it in line with international standards on financial transparency and the fight against funding terrorism.

    • Support the Dominant Paradigm

      Democracy has been rendered a quaint exercise in which we are asked to select which robber baron will loot our resources, which moral entrepreneur will pander to us, and which corporate elitist will decide our fates.

    • Western Union: Stop the crippling fees!

      As the new year starts, millions of hard-working men and women gather the money they have saved throughout the year, go to a local Western Union office and wire it to their relatives throughout the developing world. But up to 20% of these savings are taken in transfer fees, allowing companies to make billions of dollars in profit on the backs of the world’s neediest.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Triangulating Murdoch

      UK media and political watchers and workers continue to be captivated by Rupert Murdoch’s every breath and word. Owning five newspapers that regularly boost or end politicians’ careers with editorial endorsements and slant as well as controlling a hugely successful television franchise News Corporation has undisputed clout. With zestful assurance News Corporation, through its subsidiary News International, announced its intention to acquire shares in pay-TV company BSkyB it doesn’t already own within minutes of Conservative Party leader David Cameron, endorsed by News Corporation newspapers, becoming UK Prime Minister after parliamentary elections.

      [...]

      Sky News, which operates under News International, drew heat from some quarters fearful it would morph into something like News Corporation’s veracity -challenged, teabagger-supporting US all (sort of) news channel Fox News.

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • Fidesz: The story so far

      FIDESZ, a right-wing party, was elected to government in Hungary in April with a stonking majority and a large popular mandate for change following what it saw as eight years of misrule and corruption under the Socialist Party. In office, Fidesz, led by the belligerent prime minister, Viktor Orban, has interpreted this mandate in a liberal fashion, extending state control over independent institutions and appointing party men to roles of authority. With Hungary about to take up the rotating presidency of the European Union, some observers are concerned about what they consider to be a growing trend of assaults on the country’s independent centres of power. Our interactive chart chronicles the events of the last eight months.

    • Boycott Amazon.com

      They removed another one of my books from their list and are still ignoring me.

    • 2010 Trend Watch Update: Global Internet Censorship

      At the beginning of this year EFF identified a dozen important trends in law, technology and business that we thought would play a significant role in shaping digital rights in 2010, with a promise to revisit our predictions at the end of the year. Now, as 2010 comes to a close, we’re going through each of our predictions one by one to see how accurate we were in our trend-spotting.

    • VoIP decision means Skype now illegal

      The Chinese regulator has declared Internet phone services other than those provided by China Telecom and China Unicom as illegal, which is expected to make services like Skype unavailable in the country.

      The decision was criticized as a measure to protect the duopoly of state-owned telecom carriers, media reports said yesterday.

    • Leaving Facebook

      Facebook is like a casino: garish, crowded, distracting, designed to lure you in and keep you there far longer than you ever intended. (The same is true of its predecessor, MySpace.) Status updates—not only by actual friends and acquaintances but also from companies, news outlets, celebrities, sports teams—jockey for space with videos, ads, games, chat windows, event calendars, and come-ons to find more people, make more connections, share more data.

    • YouTube Legally Considered a TV Station In Italy

      Italian newspaper La Repubblica reports that YouTube and similar websites based on user-generated content will be considered TV stations (Google translation of Italian original) in Italian law, and will be subject to the same obligations. Among these, a small tax (500 €), the obligation to publish corrections within 48 hours upon request of people who consider themselves slandered by published content, and the obligation not to broadcast content inappropriate for children in certain time slots.

    • Censorship In The United States – WARNING – Avoid U.S. Hosting And TLDs

      TorrentFreak obtained a copy of the affidavit filed by the DHS agent. It makes an interesting read.

    • The visionaries

      Tim Wu in the Meat Packing district in Manhattan, NY on December 19, 2010. Tim Wu specializes in telecommunications law, copyright, and international trade. He is the co-author of Who Controls the Internet?— Jimmy Jeong for The Globe and Mail

      ‘This is not about selling wristwatches or sweaters,” says Tim Wu, the Columbia Law School professor considered one of the world’s leading thinkers on technology policy. “This is information – information is power.”

      Raised in Toronto and a graduate of McGill University, he argues in The Master Switch, his new book, that information empires from radio to the modern Internet have a standard “cycle.” They begin with intense and extremely positive innovation but eventually lead to the rise of monopolistic entities that stray from their roots and, in some cases, stifle progress rather than foster it.

    • Websites Black-out as Drastic Internet Censorship is Introduced in Hungary

      A new media law in Hungary creates a powerful censorship authority without oversight and excessive powers under control of the governing party, which endangers the freedom of speech, the Internet and journalism as a whole. Citizens are called to black-out the Internet from the 5th January – when Hungary is taking over the EU presidency on the 6th January 2011.

    • Home Internet with Anonymity Built In

      Many political activists, nonprofits, and businesses use an anonymity system called Tor to encrypt and obscure what they do on the Internet. Now the U.S.-based nonprofit that distributes Tor is developing a low-cost home router with the same privacy protection built in.

      The Tor software masks Web traffic by encrypting network messages and passing them through a series of relays (each Tor client can also become a relay for other users’ messages). But using Tor has typically meant installing the software on a computer and then tweaking its operating system to ensure that all traffic is routed correctly through the program.

    • 2010 Trend Watch Update: Global Internet Censorship

      U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton staked out clear a position for the American Government in favor of global online freedom and against Internet censorship. But subsequent developments have been much less encouraging. In fact, as 2010 draws to an end, the United States has veered dangerously towards becoming a significant Internet censor itself.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

    • Intel’s Sandy Bridge sucks up to Hollywood with DRM

      CHIPMAKER Intel has cut a deal with Hollywood in its Sandy Bridge chips to put digital restrictions management (DRM) in them.

    • Amazon Kindle Now Lets You Loan Your E-Books (Sorta)
    • Hack turns Nook Color into Kindle

      As soon as Barnes & Noble released the Android-powered Nook Color, one question that many people were asking was would you be able to run the Kindle app for Android on the device. Of course, Barnes & Noble wasn’t going to authorize it, but it was only a matter of time before people started “rooting” the Nook Color to run a customized flavor of Android that would allow you to download Android apps, including the Kindle app.

    • The Struggle for Net Neutrality

      Will Net Neutrality fare better? As the last frontier of press freedom, it gives consumers access to any equipment, content, application and service, free from corporate control. Public interest groups want it preserved.

    • Net Neutrality 2011: What Storms May Come

      When the Federal Communications Commission passed its first binding network neutrality rules earlier this month, it brought a sort of closure to a long-running, raucous debate that had left nearly all participants exasperated, if not exhausted.

      But one would be hard pressed to find an observer who really thinks the FCC’s Dec. 21 order will be the final word in the net neutrality debate. So what happens next?

      FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski billed the rules as a compromise that would establish some baseline prohibitions against service providers blocking lawful content on their networks, while shielding them from the heavy-handed regulatory oversight cable and phone companies had long fought against.

  • Monopolies

    • Despite Promises That Franchise Reform Would Lower TV Rates, The Opposite Has Happened

      For years, the telcos pushed for cable franchise reform, which was sorely needed to some extent. Basically, for decades, various local municipalities would offer a “franchise” for cable TV providers, so that residents really only had a single choice. When I was growing up, if you wanted pay TV you had one option and one option only. The reason for this did make some sense at the time. Laying infrastructure for cable was disruptive and expensive, and towns didn’t want multiple providers to dig up everyone’s lawn or whatever. On top of that, with a single franchise managed by local government, that local government could put conditions on the franchise that helped local residents (for example, here in Silicon Valley some franchises required super high speed broadband connections between schools, government building and a few other facilities). However, with it also came the downsides of a monopoly.

      [...]

      I think the real turning point on pay TV prices (contrary to the claims of some) won’t come due to franchise reform, but as more people ditch pay TV altogether and cut that cord to go internet-only.

    • When Sending A Bogus TM C&D, Don’t Send It To A Lawyer Who Understands TM Law

      Of course, using a logo in such a manner is not trademark infringement in the slightest, but it doesn’t stop Olson from making claims that it is. The letter claims that this is “misappropriating Career Step’s goodwill… and confusing the public. This will damage and likely has damaged, Career Step.” Of course, I’d argue that having its lawyer send out such a cease & desist would likely do more damage than the original post.

    • New Year’s Message: From Pessimism To Optimism… And The Power Of Innovation

      A couple months back, I had a really fascinating experience. I had two meetings in a row, each with incredibly successful content creators — people who have embraced new business models and new technologies to amazing results, both creatively and monetarily. We were discussing the state of the entertainment industry today, as well as additional strategies for navigating what’s coming next. What I found amusing, however, was how at some point, in the middle of each of those meetings, the person I was talking to sat back, laughed, and said “you’re such an optimist about these things!” I was amused, since both of these individuals had already shown an ability to thrive in these new, often unchartered waters, but they still weren’t completely convinced of their own success.

      But the part that really struck me, was that immediately following these two meetings, I went to check on Techdirt, and was reading a series of comments about how reading Techdirt each day was making people more and more pessimistic — what with new, more draconian copyright laws, domain name seizures, free speech violations and the like happening. And the juxtaposition of the two things struck me as odd. Yet, it seems to happen quite frequently.

    • Firms fight move to obtain cheap anti-blindness drug Avastin

      The NHS has moved a step closer to obtaining a cheap drug to prevent the leading cause of blindness, in spite of attempts by drug companies to block it.

      The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), which decides which drugs may be prescribed on the NHS, has decided to move towards an official appraisal of a drug, Avastin, that has been widely and cheaply used to prevent wet age-related macular degeneration – even though the drug companies that make and market it refuse to seek a licence. They have a licensed version which is many times more expensive.

    • Copyrights

      • Dilma announced new minister of culture – and the end of the copyright reform?

        In the media interviews so far, the new minister, who is not a member of the PT, points out that she had been approached about ten days earlier and received the invitation to head the ministry only two days before her appointment. Nevertheless, as a professional artist and someone who has worked in the public culture administration, her initial statements are astonishingly clueless. The direction in which she is set to go, however, seems to be already clear. One of the first interviews, published by O Globo (in a DRM format that prohibits copying of the text) is headlined “Culture Minister will review the new Law on Copyright” (Ministra da Cultura vai rever a nova Lei do Direto Autoral, André Miranda, O Globo, 23.12.2010)

      • Radiohead Charity Pay-What-You-Want DVD On BitTorrent

        In January 2010, in response to the emerging tragedy from the earthquake in Haiti, Radiohead performed before a limited audience at a charity concert in the United States. Since that performance, footage of the event has been painstakingly compiled by fans and now a twin DVD has been released, endorsed by the band. All proceeds are going to charity and the fastest way of acquiring it? BitTorrent of course.

      • Only one of over 7,000 Batman XXX P2P defendants remains

        Holy downloads, Caped Crusader—the judge that has been kneecapping copyright troll suits right and left has done it again. This time, West Virginia United States District Court Judge John Preston Bailey has “severed” 7,097 out of 7,098 Joe Doe defendant subpoenas in a lawsuit alleging that they illegally downloaded copies of Batman XXX: A Porn Parody.

        Bailey’s reason for the dismissal? Same as the massive smackdown he dealt to a host of porn movie infringement suits earlier this month. Bunching them all together in one big case made no sense, since the defendant’s actions weren’t related to each other.

      • ‘Tis the season… to sign petitions

        But the card also comes with an inserted petition, urging people to sign to protest Bill C-32, the Harper government’s proposed copyright legislation. The petition says the legislation would tamper with existing copyright protection for artists and musicians.

      • China’s Ministry Of Culture To Clear Illegal Music Websites

        China’s Ministry of Culture has published a notice stating that it will further clear the Chinese online music market and shut down irregular and illegal music websites.

      • Waiting for ‘Waiting for Godot’

        Current US law extends copyright protections for 70 years from the date of the author’s death. (Corporate “works-for-hire” are copyrighted for 95 years.) But prior to the 1976 Copyright Act (which became effective in 1978), the maximum copyright term was 56 years (an initial term of 28 years, renewable for another 28 years). Under those laws, works published in 1954 would be passing into the public domain on January 1, 2011.

      • Pirate Party Leader Rick Falkvinge Resigns on 5th Anniversary

        Five years ago the first Pirate Party was founded in Sweden. In the years that followed the Party shook up the political climate in its home country and the European Parliament where it holds two seats. Now, five years later, founder and chief architect Rickard Falkvinge is stepping down as leader. He will focus on promoting the Pirate position internationally, while Party deputy Anna Troberg will take over the reins.

      • 5 Anti-Piracy Strategies Designed to Hurt Torrent Sites in 2011

        In 2011 the war against BitTorrent and other file-sharing sites will reach a new level. Since sites such as The Pirate Bay have proven that no amount of litigation or criminal sanctions against their operators can take them down, the focus will switch to undermining their infrastructure. Companies and organizations providing file-sharing sites with essential services are set to face the glare of the spotlight and attempts to hold them accountable for the actions of their customers’ users.

Clip of the Day

Google Demo Slam: Streetview Road Race


Credit: TinyOgg

Eye on Apple: hypePad Disappoints Publishers, Blackberry PlayBook Attacked by “Apple Fanbois”, hypePhone is Buggy

Posted in Apple at 9:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Apples ready for the press

Summary: Stories from the past weekend, particularly those which Apple does not want people to know about

  • iPad Magazine Sales Tank
  • RIM hassled by Apple fanbois tendency

    A few days ago there was a splash in the press which wrote off RIM’s forthcoming tablet claiming that it would eat up a lot of battery.

    The reports were based on comments from Kaufman Bros analyst Shaw Wu who quoted unnamed sources saying the PlayBook’s battery lasts “a few hours” compared with six hours for Samsung’s Galaxy Tab and 10 hours for Apple’s iPad.

    Wu is quite close to Apple’s supply chain and has been very good on his predictions about things Applish. Although he refused to say where he got his evidence from, assuming that he was not talking out of his bottom, he can only have talked to someone who actually has tested one of the prototypes.

    But his comments about Jobs’ rival company’s product were seized by the tame Apple press® as proof that the Blackberry PlayBook tablet was doomed.

  • New ARM Chips Cause Internet Forum Wars – Could Hurt Intel Badly

    Don’t forget. Apple is a corporation. Corporations aren’t loyal. Corporations aren’t moral. Think of a sociopath on steroids. That’s Apple.

  • New Year’s 2011 breaks non-recurring iPhone alarm clocks (update: auto-fixes)

    According to multiple users expressing their frustration through Twitter, come New Years 2011 (where ever you are) your iPhone alarm clock won’t function correctly. You may recall a similar bug in iOS when daylight savings time switched on but this is exactly the opposite. This New Year’s 2011 iPhone alarm clock bug shows its face to users without recurring alarms.

    This means that anybody who sets an alarm just for tomorrow won’t be woken up by the iPhone’s built-in alarm clock application. To avoid this issue you need to set a recurring alarm by tapping repeat to select the days you want the alarm to go off on. Apple is yet to say anything and it is still unknown whether this is iOS 4.2.1 only or if it affects past system versions too. Be sure to tell everyone you know with iPhones! (via Engadget)

  • iPhone Glitch Temporarily Kills Alarms in 2011

    Happy New Year! Here’s hoping you’ll wake up in time to enjoy the first morning of 2011, as multiple users are reporting that alarms set within the iPhone’s default clock application aren’t going off as expected come January 1, 2011.

    However, the apparent alarm bug only affects those who go about setting their alarms in a very specific fashion on their phones. For starters, though, the bug in question only affects those running iOS 4—specifically, versions 4.2.1, 4.1, and 4.0.2 of the OS so far. And the bug doesn’t affect alarms that have been previously set up to run as recurring elements on the phone. You’ll have to set a single alarm specifically for tomorrow or January 2 in order for your iPhone to completely ignore it.

Associated Press Service Down for 5 Hours Because of Microsoft

Posted in Microsoft, Security at 4:11 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Error screenshot

Summary: Associated Press is blaming Microsoft for bad patches that led to loss of business

USERS of Windows are afraid of patches and reluctant to update their software, which can sometimes contribute to the whole of Skype going down for everyone (it previously happened due to Windows Update too). Microsoft’s lack of security and unreliable patches sure harm businesses and there is a recent story that we have not covered yet about Associated Press blaming Microsoft’s patch for a 5-hour glitch:

Citing an effort to try and install a Microsoft Corp. computer patch, the Associated Press blamed the Redmond computer giant for a five-hour outage that prevented the news cooperative’s stories from being distributed on Monday.

The AP said that it was trying to install the patch in advance of next week’s elections around 3 p.m. Eastern time on Monday.

This was also covered in [1, 2]. Do not rely on Microsoft for business. The London Stock Exchange learned this the hard way, but that’s another mysterious story. Patches are far from the only issue. █

Disk check canceled

Microsoft’s Favourite ‘Reporters’ Are Attacking Nokia, Pushing it Into Microsoft’s Arms

Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Patents at 3:50 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Bronze statue

Summary: Pressure is being applied and investor weight put on Nokia amidst its proximity to Microsoft

While there are rumours that Microsoft would either buy Nokia or make Nokia a 'carrier' of its platform (rumours we mentioned last month still resonate [1, 2, 3, 4]), we think it is extremely unlikely for practical reasons, despite a former Microsoft President being appointed to run Nokia, as already covered in:

Elop’s appointment is already proving handy to Microsoft as “Microsoft and Nokia ally over Office in cloud” according to a recent report. Is anybody surprised by this? Remember which part of Microsoft Elop was heading… Office.

The Microsoft-paid 'press' says that Elop is also chopping close to 2,000 jobs in Nokia, which harms Symbian:

Talk about a tough assignment. Just a month after Stephen Elop took over the top post at Nokia, the former Microsoft executive has instituted job cuts at the Finland-based mobile phone giant. Nokia is chopping 1,800 positions as part of a reorganization in the Symbian Smartphone group, a move which the company said will “accelerate its transformation and increase effectiveness.” Fierce Wireless calls it the first major action since Elop joined as CEO.

The same Microsoft-paid ‘press’ entertains the possibility that “Microsoft will buy Nokia” in 2011, essentially forming a sort of cartel. Well, the reality of the situation is that Microsoft is dying in the mobile space and just turning into a patent bully in it (not a long-term business plan, which is simply unsustainable). By buying Nokia Microsoft could in theory bully its way into a leading position. RIM is not as attractive as an acquisition target for all sorts of reasons.

Apple and Microsoft both use patents to eliminate common mobile threats like Linux, which made the article “How Apple Could Use Microsoft To Kill Netbooks” rather curious. A lot of people falsely believe that Apple and Microsoft purely compete despite evidence to the contrary. Not only are these companies patent partners but they also had praises publicly shared when one sued Linux (first attack on Android/Google, via HTC).

“In fact, just making these headlines enter news feeds does a lot of damage to Nokia. Maybe that’s the intention.”Matt Rosoff, the professional Microsoft booster who recently changed platforms, already daemonises Google and feeds known Microsoft boosters amongst others with invalid ‘dirt’ (this is an example from the same Microsoft-paid ‘press’ carrying water for Rosoff and Microsoft). How appalling. Everyone including Nokia and Apple is turning against Android because it is winning and other than patents they hardly have any ammunition left. And without specifying abuses (Microsoft has heaps of these), the Microsoft boosters who make money by promoting and advancing the monopoly of Microsoft try to portray Google as the almighty danger to the industry. Here is the same shameless booster saying that “Microsoft Should Buy Nokia Instead Of RIM”. That was just a few days ago. What Rosoff suggests would eliminate MeeGo (one of the freest GNU/Linux operating systems for phones) instead of some proprietary OS from RIM. Another person, from IDG, asks, “Should Microsoft buy Nokia?”

No, it should not. It would do nothing for Nokia. In fact, just making these headlines enter news feeds does a lot of damage to Nokia. Maybe that’s the intention. They are taking turns now and it’s the wrong debate to have. Scoble has just done something similar to FUD Nokia. Similar tactics were
used to weaken and soften Yahoo before Microsoft took over. For Nokia, nothing would be achieved here and whatever Microsoft touches will falter (see Danger for example) as Microsoft cannot catch up with hypePhone or Android and it can buy neither Apple nor Google (only to use Linux on a flagship product).

At this stage, various companies try their luck with patents in the mobile space — the most notorious arena when it comes to patents these days. See the December report “Nokia, Apple, Microsoft: Intellectual Property” for example:

Nokia Oyj and HTC Corp. said they persuaded a court to void parts of a mobile-phone patent that intellectual property holding company IPCom GmbH & Co. claimed the two device makers infringed.

In some later posts we are going to expand on Microsoft’s collapse in the mobile space, which it never truly dominated and even ignored to an extent. In the news we learn about Microsoft’s offering of antifeatures rather than features, e.g.:

i. icrosoft confirms Windows Phone 7 kill switch

ii. Microsoft confirms ‘kill switch’ in Windows Phone 7 apps

iii. Windows Phone 7 has an app kill switch, too

iv. Windows Phone 7: Microsoft kill switch revealed

Well, that’s a real killer feature, eh? What is Microsoft aiming for?

In summary, FUD slinging and patent litigation are all that remains for Microsoft to do in this area, accompanied of course by the obligatory spin from the ‘Microsoft press’, starting for example with a provocative headline: “New Formats Threaten Microsoft’s Way of Life”

We read (and write) it all the time: Microsoft is behind the curve in developing for new technology formats. Redmond’s smartphone operating system is an also-ran. Microsoft has no tablet strategy. Google, Apple and RIM are just killing the old dinosaur in those areas.

That’s how it starts, but watch how it ends. Wishful thinking and cheerleading for a patent bully is hard to defend when one claims to be a journalist. █

Microsoft dirty tactics

« Previous Page — « Previous entries « Previous Page · Next Page » Next entries » — Next Page »

RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channels: Come and chat with us in real time

New to This Site? Here Are Some Introductory Resources

No

Mono

ODF

Samba logo






We support

End software patents

GPLv3

GNU project

BLAG

EFF bloggers

Comcast is Blocktastic? SavetheInternet.com



Recent Posts