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

12.05.15

Decreased Focus on Microsoft

Posted in Microsoft at 6:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

In focus

Summary: Why we are writing less about Microsoft these days and some recent news regarding Microsoft’s dysfunctional business

BACK in the days, more than half a decade ago, we wrote a great deal about Microsoft, after we had focused on Novell. Microsoft was a big threat to software freedom. It still is, but there are now other threats, some of which more potent than others. Microsoft is now buying back its own shares to artificially elevate the share/stock price (fewer stocks available for the public to buy means higher price per share). Microsoft also lays off a lot of employees and moves into small offices. We know this based on insiders. There’s a serious cost-cutting process inside Microsoft. Some people may then say, Microsoft is now a “cloud” company (or “cloud first”). These are just marketing-oriented buzzwords for servers/hosting. Microsoft servers are going down [1] and Microsoft is jacking up the price of servers with Windows on them, according to Microsoft Peter [2]. It’s a poor strategy which will most likely drive away customers even more quickly (quicker migration) to GNU/Linux, in the form of AWS, Red Hat, IBM, Rackspace and so on.

Microsoft is in a free fall.

“Focusing on issues rather than brands ensures we will stay on target all along, even when companies like Novell die.”Vista 10, the common carrier, is reportedly a massive failure (growth already flattens) despite Microsoft’s many dirty tricks, which included force-feeding Vista 10 (to further be escalated next year). The trends matter, not the absolute numbers, as media reports typically cite Microsoft-linked firms’ figures (like Net Applications), not legitimate or independent figures. The fact remains though, not only on the server but on the desktop too (not to mention mobile) Microsoft is struggling. We are therefore not as interested as before in Microsoft’s business. We shall focus more on patents in the coming months or years. Focusing on issues rather than brands ensures we will stay on target all along, even when companies like Novell die. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. Exchange email bounces back as Microsoft resolves Office 365 issues

    MICROSOFT HAS CONFIRMED that Office 365 is back up and running after suffering downtime across Europe on Thursday.

    The downtime left users, including us here at The INQUIRER, unable to access their Exchange email account via a web browser.

    At the time, Down Detector showed that Microsoft’s cloud service has been stuttering since 9.17am on Thursday, and confirmed that the outage is affecting users across Europe.

  2. Windows Server 2016 moving to per core, not per socket, licensing

    Windows Server 2016, not likely to arrive until the second half of next year, is going to shake up the way Microsoft licenses its server operating system, moving away from per socket licensing to per core. The change was first spotted by Wes Miller who is, for his sins, an expert on Microsoft licensing policies.

    Windows Server 2012 introduced a great rationalization in the way Microsoft licensed its server operating system. The two main editions, Standard and Datacenter, had identical features, and differed only in terms of the number of virtual operating system instances they supported. Standard supported two VMs (in addition to the host OS); Datacenter was unlimited. Beyond that, they were identical. The licenses for both editions were sold in two socket units; one license was needed for each pair of sockets a system contained.

Links 6/12/2015: CoreOS News, MediaTek Development Platform

Posted in News Roundup at 5:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Science

    • The dawn of the Digital Dark Age threatens us with ‘bit rot’

      Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the Internet and the vice president of Google, is now warning of a new type of degradation threat: “bit rot.”

      Bit rot is basically created by a sort of planned obsolescence in software, and the formats associated with that software. As an example, Microsoft phased out Windows XP officially in 2014, which now won’t install on most newer computers.

  • Hardware

    • Plummeting SSD prices are quickly closing in on traditional hard drives

      The decision between solid state and hard disk drives should become a lot less agonizing over the next couple years as consumer SSD prices plummet.

      Research firm DRAMeXchange projects average SSD prices to hit $0.24 per gigabyte in 2016, down from $0.39 per gigabyte this year, Computerworld reports. Those prices will see another dramatic drop to $0.17 per gigabyte in 2017. Meanwhile, HDD prices are projected to stagnate at $0.06 per gigabyte over the next few years.

    • SSDs aren’t as cheap as hard drives yet, but they’re getting there

      CPUs, GPUs, chipsets, motherboards, RAM, Wi-Fi, and all the other components you think of when you think about a PC have all been getting continuously faster over the last five years, but so far this decade nothing has offered the performance boost of a solid-state drive. Putting an SSD in a five-year-old computer is enough to make it feel like a new machine even if every other component stays the same, and at this point you’re really doing yourself a disservice if you’re buying a new machine without one.

    • Seagate and Newisys Demonstrate 1 TB/s Flash Architecture

      Today Seagate and Newisys announced a new flash storage architecture capable or 1 Terabyte/sec performance. Designed for HPC applications, the “industry’s fastest flash storage design” comprises 21 Newisys NSS-2601 with dual NSS-HWxEA Storage Server Modules deployed with Seagate’s newest SAS 1200.2 SSD drives. These devices can be combined in a single 42U rack to achieve block I/O performance of 1TB/s with 5PB of storage. Each Newisys 2U server with 60 Seagate SSDs is capable of achieving bandwidth of 49GB/s.

  • Security

    • OpenSSL Affected By Four More Security Vulnerabilities
    • Let’s encrypt all the things

      Now that letsencrypt is more widely released, I took the opportunity to generate the certificates and install them manual on my hosting. In the future I will flip the switch to force HTTPS here. For now I made sure to avoid mixed-content as much as I could.

    • I jumped on the SSL-bandwagon
    • Friday’s security updates
    • Security updates for Thursday
    • Let’s Encrypt Enters Public Beta
    • SSH SHA-2 support in Twisted

      Launchpad operates a few SSH endpoints: bazaar.launchpad.net and git.launchpad.net for code hosting, and upload.ubuntu.com and ppa.launchpad.net for uploading packages. None of these are straightforward OpenSSH servers, because they don’t give ordinary shell access and they authenticate against users’ SSH keys recorded in Launchpad; both of these are much easier to do with SSH server code that we can use in library form as part of another service. We use Twisted for several other tasks where we need event-based networking code, and its conch package is a good fit for this.

    • Can you keep Linux-based ransomware from attacking your servers? [Ed: this isn’t a Linux issue but an unpatched CMS issue. Lazy sysadmins.]
    • Elasticsearch Servers Targeted by Linux-Based Botnet Operators

      A honeypot experiment ran by AlientVault has shown that the recent security vulnerabilities discovered in Elasticsearch servers over the summer are now actively being used by botnet operators.

    • Researchers Found Another Malware Targeting Linux Users

      Many analysts believe Rebooke is a harmless Trojan which is true, but its simple design allows the attacker to maneuver the type of attacks which can allow them to deliver powerful payloads on the systems.

    • Let’s Encrypt May Improve Security for Regular People More Than Any Other Initiative This Decade

      Secure websites have always been standard for ecommerce companies like Amazon or Shopify, and in recent years companies that handle private communications like Google and Facebook have invested millions of dollars in enabling encryption for all users. But what about everyone else?

    • Public Beta: December 3, 2015

      Let’s Encrypt will enter Public Beta on December 3, 2015. Once we’ve entered Public Beta our systems will be open to anyone who would like to request a certificate. There will no longer be a requirement to sign up and wait for an invitation.

      Our Limited Beta started on September 12, 2015. We’ve issued over 11,000 certificates since then, and this operational experience has given us confidence that our systems are ready for an open Public Beta.

      It’s time for the Web to take a big step forward in terms of security and privacy. We want to see HTTPS become the default. Let’s Encrypt was built to enable that by making it as easy as possible to get and manage certificates.

    • Let’s encrypt automation on Debian
    • DHS to Silicon Valley: Tell us how to secure this “Internet of Things”

      The US Department of Homeland Security has announced that its Silicon Valley Office (SVO)—the agency’s liaison point with the technology industry—will hold an event on December 10 to kick off a recruiting drive for startups and “non-traditional small businesses” interested in latching onto government funding. The Industry Day, being held at the Menlo Park, California, offices of SRI International, will be focused on the current leading source of worry for DHS officials: the “Internet of Things” (IoT).

    • Millions of smart TVs, phones and routers at risk from old vulnerability

      There’s growing concern over how manufacturers of devices such as routers and smart TVs deal with security vulnerabilities that emerge in their products. Their patching regimes are not nearly as rigorous as those from major software manufacturers, which could expose consumers to attacks as the products age.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Is Turkey Really Benefiting From Oil Trade With ISIS?

      Relations between Russia and Turkey hit a new low this week after Moscow doubled down on its claims that Turkey shot a Russian warplane in order to protect its supply of oil with the militant group ISIS.

    • War Porn

      Scotland is being dragged into a war it voted near unanimously against. 96.5% of Scotland’s MPs voted against the airstrikes in Syra. On platforms all up and down this country, I argued that I do not care a damn about how strong powers are given to Scotland’s parliament in domestic affairs, it we are not a sovereign nation and can still be taken to war against our will. I was proud of Alex Salmond last night for expressing contempt at the notion that civilians are not killed in British airstrikes, a big lie nobody else directly challenged.

    • Deselection is Essential to Democracy

      This goes to the heart of the Blairite cause. It is apparently not “undemocratic” for them to take legal advice on whether they can keep Jeremy Corbyn’s name off the ballot in a future membership ballot. It is not “undemocratic” to discuss deselecting the Leader, but it is a heinous offence against democracy to consider deselecting an MP. The odious Blairites are the most self-centred, selfish and indeed sociopathic group ever to have a serious presence in the UK parliament.

    • Zionist Benn’s Grab For Power

      It is worth reading the next article BICOM published. Brigadier General Michael Herzog, head of strategy for the Israeli defence Force, sets out a strategy for Israeli interests in Syria which dovetails precisely with what Benn and Cameron were pushing in the Commons. Note that Herzog says an overall diplomatic solution is not realistic and rather de facto partitioning of Syria suits Israel’s interests. Therefore there should be no waiting for diplomatic progress before western military action.

    • Emily Benn and Alex Salmond
    • O’Reilly And NYPD’s Ray Kelly Hype NYPD’s Failed Muslim Surveillance Program To Combat Terrorism

      Bill O’Reilly and former NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly defended the NYPD’s now defunct surveillance program called, “The Demographics Unit” in response to the deadly attacks in San Bernadino, California. Kelly argued that the program foiled sixteen terror plots in New York City, but a report found that the program never produced one viable lead since being adopted.

    • CNN’s New Day Explains How “Ease Of Access” To Guns Is Linked To High Levels Of Gun Violence

      CNN Analyst: “It’s Easier To Buy A Gun In The United States … Than Most Comparable Countries”

    • Murdoch Trails Behind Murray

      Eight days ago I published a leak from an MOD source that the MOD’s Defence Intelligence Service fundamentally disagreed with Cameron’s “70,000 moderate rebels claim” and were incensed about. Today the Murdoch Press – the Times and the Sun – publish as massive front page exclusives exactly what I published eight days ago.

      Interesting isn’t it that they didn’t publish it before the parliamentary debate on Syria?

    • Guns killed more Americans in 12 years than AIDS, war, and illegal drug overdoses combined

      At least 14 people were shot and killed at Wednesday afternoon’s mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. It’s a shocking number, one that will contribute to a rolling national tragedy: roughly 33,000 Americans every year are killed with firearms (homicides, suicides, and accidents).

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Seeing Through the Smoky Pall: Observations from a Grim Indonesian Fire Season

      In September and October 2015, tens of thousands of fires sent clouds of toxic gas and particulate matter into the air over Indonesia. Despite the moist climate of tropical Asia, fire is not unusual at this time of year. For the past few decades, people have used fire to clear land for farming and to burn away leftover crop debris. What was unusual in 2015 was how many fires burned and how many escaped their handlers and went uncontrolled for weeks and even months.

    • Manslaughter charges dropped in BP spill case—nobody from BP will go to prison

      In April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and began spewing oil into the US Gulf Coast. In all, this released some 134 million gallons of crude over a span of almost three months. Eleven workers were killed in the nation’s worst offshore oil spill.

      Today, federal prosecutors moved—and a judge agreed—to drop manslaughter charges against two supervisors aboard the Deepwater Horizon when it exploded. This development, in which prosecutors said they believed they no longer could meet the legal threshold for a conviction, means that nobody will go to prison for the disaster that soiled coastlines from Texas to Florida, killed nearly a dozen people, and was an environmental disaster that perhaps brings with it never-before-seen longterm consequences.

    • Facebook Has Activated Safety Check in India for the Chennai Floods [iophk: "making money off of disasters"]

      The website activated its Safety Check feature early Thursday, allowing people to mark themselves as “safe” from the floods. The feature, which debuted in October 2014, has now been deployed on several occasions, the most recent — somewhat controversially — being last month’s terrorist attacks in Paris.

    • The High Cost of Indonesia’s Fires

      Enormous fires have been burning for several months on the Indonesian side of Borneo, and on Sumatra. The resulting haze has been a catastrophe for the region, with severe impacts for human health and wildlife. The fires are also a climate disaster, resulting in 1.62 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions so far this year — triple Indonesia’s normal annual output.

      [...]

      Indonesia, is the global leader in terms of palm oil, pulpwood, and timber production, and fires are used to clear the land and make way for agricultural produftion. The driving force behind this destructive system is foreign demand. In the United States, palm oil is being used by companies including PepsiCo, Nissin, and Frito Lay as an alternative to hydrogenated oils. In Europe, it is used as a biofuel. Today, the biggest markets for palm are China and India.

      Of course, there are other ways to clear forest, but fire is often cheaper — set a fire and then nature takes over. Fires also provide an opportunity for land grabs in Indonesia, adding an additional incentive for those who want land. Due to restrictions on deforestation, pristine forests are more difficult to legally convert into palm oil or pulp plantations. But recently burned forest and peat? It becomes “degraded land” that is ripe for agricultural production. Greenpeace has already observed this pattern of land grabbing on recently-burned land in Borneo.

  • Finance

    • JPMorgan Wrote Complaints After Firing a Whistle-Blower

      Mr. Burris complained in 2013 that JPMorgan was pressuring brokers like him to sell the bank’s own mutual funds even when the offerings from competitors were more suitable. A few weeks after an article in The New York Times about Mr. Burris’s concerns appeared, complaints from some of his former clients in Arizona began showing up on his disciplinary records that are maintained by a regulatory agency and publicly available.

    • Six Key Flaws In The EU’s Proposed ‘New’ Corporate Sovereignty Court

      A few months back, Techdirt wrote about the European Commission’s proposal to replace the traditional corporate sovereignty system — generally known as “investor-state dispute settlement ” (ISDS) — with what it called the “Investment Court System” (ICS). That seemed to us little more than a re-branding exercise; now an international investment law scholar has weighed in on the issue with his own, rather more expert opinion. Gus Van Harten is Associate Professor at York University in Canada.

    • Facebook shares: what’s behind Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘hacker philanthropy’?

      Whatever motivates them, these new philanthropists aren’t happy with the model for altruism that they’ve inherited. In his WSJ article, Parker, dismissing traditional philanthropy as “largely antiquated” and motivated by “safe” gifts that result in the chance to “name buildings”, described a new approach that would be at ease with failure, agile, and sceptical of received wisdom – just as its proponents had been in tech. “They’re much more comfortable with risk,” says Breeze. “This is not an easy area: trying to do something about intense social problems outside of the state and outside of the market. If they take a risk and they learn from it, that’s held up as a success. The willingness to talk about failure is another part of their gift.”

    • Imagining a World Without Growth

      Could the world order survive without growing?

      [...]

      Economic growth took off consistently around the world only some 200 years ago. Two things powered it: innovation and lots and lots of carbon-based energy, most of it derived from fossil fuels like coal and petroleum. Staring at climactic upheaval approaching down the decades, environmental advocates, scientists and even some political leaders have put the proposal on the table: World consumption must stop growing.

    • Zuckerberg Responds To Critics, Explains How He’s Spending $45B

      The revelation generated a lot of attention, much of it due to the sheer volume of Zuckerberg’s net worth — $45 billion!

    • Mark Zuckerberg explains why he didn’t give his Facebook billions to charity

      Earlier this week, Mark Zuckerberg made the surprise announcement that he, along with his wife Priscilla Chan, would be donating 99 percent of their Facebook shares — worth around $45 billion — to the causes of “advancing human potential” and “promoting equality.” The gesture appeared altruistic, but some have criticized the way Zuckerberg is using the money, giving it to a limited liability company rather than a charitable foundation. Now Zuckerberg has responded to those complaints, posting another message that attempts to explain why he set up the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and what he and his wife want to do with the money.

    • Justice Department Collects More Than $23 Billion in Civil and Criminal Cases in Fiscal Year 2015

      Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch announced today that the Justice Department collected $23.1 billion in civil and criminal actions in the fiscal year (FY) ending Sept. 30, 2015. Collections in FY 2015 represent more than seven and a half times the approximately $2.93 billion of the Justice Department’s combined appropriations for the 94 U.S. Attorneys’ offices and the main litigating divisions in that same period.

      “The Department of Justice is committed to upholding the rule of law, safeguarding taxpayer resources and protecting the American people from exploitation and abuse,” said Attorney General Lynch. “The collections we are announcing today demonstrate not only the strength of that commitment, but also the significant return on public investment that our actions deliver. I want to thank the prosecutors and trial attorneys who made this achievement possible, and to reiterate our dedication to this ongoing work.”

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Trump wins because he lies: Truthiness, Fox News, and why the right likes a fact-free zone

      Conservatives decided years ago, as a matter of strategy, to attack the mainstream media as hopelessly liberal. There’s a kernel of truth to this, in that there are likely more liberals than conservatives working in media. But the coverage, if it’s biased at all, isn’t biased in favor of liberals. If anything, the media favors the sensational and the attention-grabbing – this is what drives ratings and clicks.

      The media, after all, is a commercial enterprise, and so its biases are financial, not political.

    • Donald Trump Praises Leading Conspiracy Theorist Alex Jones And His “Amazing” Reputation

      Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump appeared on Alex Jones’ program, where Trump praised Jones as having an “amazing” reputation and promised, “I will not let you down.” Jones is America’s leading conspiracy theorist — he believes the government was behind 9-11 and several other catastrophes.

    • Neo-Con YouGov At It Again With Leading Questions

      There is no need to mention the RAF in this question – it is not their decision and the impression is subtly conveyed that the RAF want to do it. The question is carefully designed to tap in to the public’s well-documented inclination to support the armed forces in any conflict situation.

      [...]

      Nevertheless, there are two very interesting facts. Even on this biased question opinion is swinging very fast against airstrikes. Secondly, yet again there is a very real divergence of opinion between England and Scotland.

    • In “Extraordinary” Move, WI Supreme Court Fires Scott Walker Prosecutor to Stave-Off SCOTUS Review

      “What a mess this court has wrought!” Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Shirley Abrahamson declared in the latest chapter in the state’s John Doe legal saga.

      On Wednesday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s majority contorted itself to find a new way to protect both Scott Walker and the Court’s biggest supporters–not to mention itself–following its decision in July rewriting the state’s limits on money in politics and ending the “John Doe” investigation into Walker’s campaign coordinating with dark money groups.

      Wednesday’s ruling was supposed to be a straightforward decision on a motion to reconsider, in light of additional evidence that Walker and his allies had violated the campaign finance laws that the Court upheld in July.

    • Conservative Media React To San Bernardino Mass Shooting With Evidence-Free Solution Of More Concealed Guns

      Conservative media are using the mass shooting that claimed 14 lives in San Bernardino, California, to once again push the carrying of concealed guns as a deterrent for mass shootings. There is no evidence that concealed guns are a real-life solution to mass shootings; according to an analysis of public mass shootings over a 30-year period, not a single one was stopped by an armed civilian with a concealed carry permit.

  • Censorship

    • After Illegally Censoring Websites For Five Years On Bogus Copyright Charges, US Gov’t Quietly ‘Returns’ Two Domains

      One of the craziest stories of outright censorship by the US government isn’t getting any attention at all. Five years ago, ICE — Immigrations and Customs Enforcement — a part of the Department of Homeland Security, illegally seized a group of domain names, claiming that they were violating copyright law. As we noted soon after this, the affidavit that ICE used to get a court to sign off on the seizures was particularly ridiculous, showing a near total lack of understanding of both the law and how the internet worked.

    • It’s time to smash the cosy Question Time chumocracy

      Not every white person thinks the same: Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn, Nicola Sturgeon and Nick Griffin share not much more than a skin colour. There are class, gender, cultural, political, national and religious differences that are far more powerful than ethnic similarities.

      Everyone, of course, realises this – not least the media. Watch a programme such as Question Time and you will see a wide range of white panellists representing the wide range of views that white people in the UK hold.

      Why, then, is the same civility not extended to Britain’s ethnic minorities? Instead, the select few BAME (Black Asian minority ethnic) “representatives” are wheeled out again and again as if somehow they alone who speak for Britain’s 8.1 million ethnic minority citizens.

      Here’s an open secret: they don’t. Political views are just as broad and diverse among people of colour as they are among white citizens. It is worrying that this still needs pointing out.

    • If Any Kind of “Shaming” Can Be Called Legitimate and Useful, It Must Be Prayer Shaming

      I would go a step further to suggest that prayer is not just insufficient but harmful—not only in crisis situations (when it is just empirically ineffectual), but every single day. Every prayer is a tacit and/or explicit affirmation that the navigation of human life, human interaction, and human interdependence are somehow not the responsibility of humans. This can obviously take much more malign significance in the minds of the deeply faithful, but even in those little “god, give me strength”/”wow, the universe is really looking out for me today” moments, all of humankind is subtly diminished by the suggestion that there is a deity whose plan is being served by our suffering, and, more to the point, other people’s suffering.

  • Privacy

    • Facebook to stop tracking people without Facebook accounts in Belgium after privacy ruling

      Facebook will stop tracking browsers of Facebook pages in Belgium who are not signed into a Facebook account, seeking to comply with a court ruling last month ordering it to do so or face daily fines.

      The company’s action means Belgians will have to log into Facebook before they can see Facebook pages, forcing them to create and sign into an account if they want to view the pages or related content.

      Previously non-users could view public Facebook pages from sports teams, celebrities, tourist attractions and businesses without needing to log into Facebook. As a result of the changes registered Facebook users in Belgium who attempt to log in from an unrecognised web browser will be forced to comply with some added security steps, the company said.

    • Google Cloud Vision API Could Revolutionize Machine Vision

      You can currently call the API by embedding an image as part of the request. In future phases, Google will add support for integrating with Google Cloud Storage. The Vision API enables you to request one or more annotation types per image.

    • Amazon wants to fill your living room with sensors and cameras to bring you augmented reality

      We’ve had a couple virtual reality headsets in the Digital Trends office, and whether or not they’re comfortable to sport on your face, they make the wearer look kind of ridiculous. If your living room was one big augmented reality space, though, that would mean you’re not constantly hunting for your headset. That’s Amazon’s idea, away, according to a couple new patents the retailer recently filed.

    • Submission to Science and Technology Committee on Investigatory Powers Bill

      Parliamentary committees have started examining the draft Snooper’s Charter, so it is important to engage and explain what is wrong with the bill. In this submission we decided to focus on the provisions to create “internet connection records”. We ask for these to be scrapped as they are disproportionate and technically unworkable without the excessive and intrusive collection of everything we do online. There are alternatives that should be explored.

    • The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work

      Cryptography rearranges power: it configures who can do what, from what. This makes cryptography an inherently political tool, and it confers on the field an intrinsically moral dimension. The Snowden revelations motivate a reassessment of the political and moral positioning of cryptography. They lead one to ask if our inability to effectively address mass surveillance constitutes a failure of our field. I believe that it does. I call for a community-wide effort to develop more effective means to resist mass surveillance. I plea for a reinvention of our disciplinary culture to attend not only to puzzles and math, but, also, to the societal implications of our work.

    • Is Google spying on students who use Chromebooks?

      I’ll let you make up your own mind about Google’s response. To me it doesn’t carry much weight, but I’ve become somewhat cynical regarding Google’s motives and behavior over the years. So you’ll have to decide for yourself if the company’s explanation trumps the EFF’s report.

    • After Safe Harbour ruling, legal moves to force Facebook to stop sending data to US

      The Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems has sent complaints to the data protection agencies in three EU countries—Ireland, Germany, and Belgium—asking them to suspend the flow of personal data from Facebook’s operations in Ireland to the US. This follows his earlier success at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which ruled that the Safe Harbour framework under which personal data was being transferred was no longer valid because of mass surveillance of EU citizens by the NSA. Subsequently, the Irish High Court said that the Irish data protection commissioner (DPC) was obliged to investigate Schrems’ earlier complaints.

      His letter to the authorities in Ireland, where Facebook has its European headquarters, asks the Irish data protection agency “to suspend all data flows from ‘Facebook Ireland Ltd’ to ‘Facebook Inc’.” Schrems makes the same request to the data protection agencies in Germany and Belgium. In a release accompanying his complaints, Schrems explains why he has taken this unusual approach of involving several data protection agencies (DPAs): “My personal experience with the Irish DPC are rather mixed, which is why I felt involving more active DPAs make proper enforcement actions more likely. I hope the DPAs will cooperate in this case.”

    • LinkedIn’s revised Android app emulates Facebook
    • Why Electronic Health Records aren’t more usable

      Federal government incentives worth about $30 billion have persuaded the majority of physicians and hospitals to adopt electronic health record (EHR) systems over the past few years. However, most physicians do not find EHRs easy to use.

      Physicians often have difficulty entering structured data in EHRs, especially during patient encounters. The records are hard to read because they’re full of irrelevant boilerplates generated by the software and lack individualized information about the patient.

      Alerts frequently fire for inconsequential reasons, leading to alert fatigue. EHRs from different vendors are not interoperable with each other, making it impossible to exchange information without expensive interfaces or the use of secure messaging systems.

  • Civil Rights

    • The Police Were Right That Someone Could Abduct Her Son

      Video here. Check out how close the playground is to the houses. This is like my parents allowing us to play in our backyard, except apartment dwellers don’t have their own yard.

    • University Islamic Society students ‘make death threats’ as they disrupt controversial blasphemy lecture by human rights activist who they said ‘violated their safe space’

      One student switched off the projector after the speaker showed a cartoon of Muhammad, while a member of the audience claimed that an activist pointed his fingers at his head in the shape of a gun and said ‘boom’ in a bid to intimidate him.

      The Islamic Society spoke out in advance of the talk – titled ‘Apostasy, blasphemy and free expression in the age of ISIS’ – insisting Ms Namazie should not be allowed to speak because of her ‘bigoted views’.

    • Islamic students pull plug on talk by atheist who ‘violated safe space’

      A secular campaigner has told how she was heckled and shouted down by members of a student Islamic society who said that she was violating their “safe space”.

      Maryam Namazie claimed that the Islamic society at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she was addressing the institution’s atheist group, tried to stop her talk going ahead by invoking a “no platform policy”.

    • Goldsmiths’ Islamic Society students disrupt human rights activist’s speech

      A renowned human rights campaigner has told how she was “intimidated” by Muslim students at a London university during a talk on radical Islam.

      Members of the Goldsmiths University Students Union’s Islamic Society switched off a projector and heckled as Maryam Namazie delivered a lecture on Monday evening.

      The students disrupted the speech, entitled ‘Apostasy, blasphemy and free expression in the age of Isis’, because they claimed it “violated their safe space”.

    • Pakistan Aims To Take Home ‘Worst Cybercrime Legislation In The World’ Trophy With Prevention Of Electronic Crimes Bill

      Pakistan is pushing forward its version of CISPA/CISA, the PECB (Prevention of Electronic Crime Bill). Much like here in the US, legislators have put this together without the input of legal or technical experts and, to make matters worse, this one is being pushed under a regime already notorious for censorious actions and intrusive surveillance.

    • Gitmo Prisoner Held For 13 Years Was Victim Of ‘Mistaken Identity’

      He’s been held without charge at Guantánamo Bay for 13 years. Believed to be an al-Qaeda courier or trainer, he was deemed dangerous enough to be held for an “indefinite” amount of time at the prison camp.

      But on Tuesday, in documents released at a Guantánamo hearing, U.S. officials admitted that the man — a Yemeni named Mustafa al-Aziz al-Shamiri — was not who they thought he was. His arrest, they conceded, had been partly a case of “mistaken identity.”

      Al-Shamiri, the documents revealed, had been a low-level Islamic fighter — and not a significant member of al-Qaeda as had previously been suspected.

      “It was previously assessed that YM-434 (al-Shamiri) also was an al-Qaeda facilitator or courier, as well as a trainer, but we now judge these activities were carried out by other known extremists with names or aliases similar to YM-434’s,” officials said.

    • Saudi woman seeks asylum in UK after death threats from her family

      A Saudi woman who fled to the UK with her young son after leaving her husband has told a court how she received death threats from relatives – one of whom told her they would “cut off your head like we do to the sheep” for bringing shame upon their family.

      The woman, who is in her 30s but has not been named, is claiming asylum in Britain after her decision to separate from her husband angered her family. In one incident recounted to the court, her father attacked her with a piece of furniture and her brother tried to strangle her.

    • Will Ukip break up? These bookmakers think Ukip could disband and Nigel Farage could step down
    • Massive Collapse in Tory Vote Share in Oldham

      The Tory vote in Oldham West was not tiny and statistically insignificant. In 2010 it was 23%. The national media has been plugging a narrative about the political dominance of the Tories for months, which bears no relationship to people’s experience in real life. Tens of thousands of words of utter bilge have been written about the Conservatives “Northern powerhouse” strategy and how it will enable them to win in the North, and especially in precisely this Greater Manchester region. This is revealed as complete and utter nonsense. This by-election shows the Tories are deeply unpopular.

    • The mask slips: Oldham result brings out the real Nigel Farage

      Now before I get into the substance of Farage’s argument, it’s worth actually taking a look at the article he referred to in all his interviews this morning.

      The Guardian’s Northern editor is a journalist called Helen Pidd. You can read the article she wrote about the Oldham by-election last Saturday in full here.

      As you can see, there is absolutely no mention of a street where “nobody spoke English, nobody had ever heard go Jeremy Corbyn, but they were all voting Labour.”

      There is one woman quoted who had not heard of Corbyn and another man quoted who had heard of him, didn’t like him, but was still voting Labour because of the local candidate.

    • Ken Livingstone: ‘After Oldham, all those MPs who think we can’t win with Jeremy Corbyn might start to rethink’

      Ken Livingstone gazes out of his kitchen door, where the autumn leaves are floating gently down towards his cherished pond. “The garden wouldn’t be such a mess,” he says laconically, “if Jeremy hadn’t won.”

      At 70, he was meant to be retired by now, devoting himself to domesticity. When he lost his last mayoral election three years ago, he swapped roles with his wife, Emma, who had previously put her career on hold to support his; she has now retrained as a teacher while he became a househusband, running around after 12-year-old Thomas and Mia, 11. (He also has three grownup children by previous partners.)

    • Oldham may be the end for UKIP

      In 1997, Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling threatened the very existence of Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Federation. The WWF was being beaten in television ratings, pay-per-view buy rates, merchandise sales and all the other pecuniary methods of measuring success in professional wrestling. McMahon, however, is a canny operator and managed to turn around his company the following year, destroying the insurgent organisation and eventually buying it out for a paltry $2.5 million.

      Fast forward to December 2015 and another McMahon, Labour’s Candidate Jim in the Oldham West and Royton by-election, may also prove to be a canny operator who spells doom for an insurgency. UKIP, who had high hopes of causing another by-election headache for the increasingly desperate Labour party, have been held off in a distant second place. McMahon stormed home with a 10,722-vote majority, smaller than predecessor the late Michael Meacher’s due to turnout but with an increased share of the vote over the General Election result.

    • Death Mob Bays For Blood of MPs

      It is astonishing that Tom Watson says that anybody in that video should be expelled from the Labour Party, and that the entire mainstream media has described it as “intimidation”. There really is a genuine attempt to delegitimise even the concept of dissent from the neo-con war agenda.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Can We Save Wireless from Regulators?

      Linux was born and grew within an ecosystem of norms, not laws. Those norms were those of programming (C), operating systems (*NIX), command shells (bash, etc.), e-mail (SMTP, etc.) licenses (GPL, etc.) and Internet protocols (TCP/IP and the rest).

    • NetworkManager and privacy in the IPv6 internet

      The other problem (privacy) is a bit harder to solve. An IP address (be it IPv4 or IPv6) address consists of a network part and the host part. The host discovers the relevant network parts and is supposed generate the host part. Traditionally it just uses an Interface Identifier derived from the network hardware’s (MAC) address. The MAC address is set at manufacturing time and can uniquely identify the machine. This guarantees the address is stable and unique. That’s a good thing for address collision avoidance but a bad thing for privacy. The host part remaining constant in different network means that the machine can be uniquely identified as it enters different networks. This seemed like non-issue at the time the protocol was designed, but the privacy concerns arose as the IPv6 gained popularity. Fortunately, there’s a solution to this problem.

  • DRM

    • I Can’t Let You Do That, Dave

      DMCA 1201 prohibits breaking “digital locks” that restrict access to copyrighted works. Though it was originally conceived as a means of preventing piracy, it has proved most useful at preventing competition and the creation of legitimate, otherwise legal technologies. Copyright law has many flexibilities and exclusions that product designers, developers, and users can freely exercise, without any permission from the copyright holder. But under 1201, you can only make these uses if you do not have to break a lock.

    • Adobe Renaming Flash Software To “Animate CC”

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • University: ‘Pirating’ Students Being Deliberately Targeted

        Data published by Central Michigan University has revealed a worrying trend in copyright complaints. Out of 1,912 received so far in 2015, more than 80% were from Rightscorp, a company that demands cash to settle. The university’s chief information officer believes that campuses like his are being deliberately targeted.

      • Popcorn Time Developers Poke MPAA with A New Fork

        A new group of Popcorn Time developers has officially launched a “Community Edition” of the popular application. What started as a relatively simple fix to get the most used fork working again has turned into a fork of its own, challenging the MPAA’s efforts to bring Popcorn Time down.
        s

12.04.15

EPO Does Not Seem to Have Investigators, Only Accusers and Prosecutors (Loyal to the President)

Posted in Europe, Patents at 10:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Digression to Napoleonic times

The Christian Martyrs' Last Prayer
The Christian Martyrs’ Last Prayer by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904)

Summary: The nature of the Disciplinary Committee at the EPO explained, as it’s not quite what it seems on the surface

THE EPO‘s extrajudicial staff purge (not fatal, but dismissal under such circumstances can destroy entire careers) is starting to look a lot worse, and it is rapidly broadening in terms of scale.

Several months ago we showed how one staff representative, a three-decade EPO veteran, was harassed by Team Battistelli. Someone has just leaked to us documents which we believe should be shared publicly (after long and careful consideration). The vicious witch-hunt against staff representatives clearly goes on unabated, in spite of many protests.

The following message has just been leaked to us:

Dear [Anonymised],

A Disciplinary Committee consists of four members, two selected by the Administration and two selected by the Staff Committee. If a case comes up, the Members of responsible Disciplinary Committee are determined by the drawing of lots out of a pool of potential nominees. The rules for nominating for these pools are, however, very restrictive and have become even more so under Mr Battistelli. The result is that in the Disciplinary Committee that will treat my case three out of the four members, including both members selected by the Staff Committee, are Principal Directors whose normal role it is to represent management rather than to represent staff. Note furthermore that Principal Directors are appointed on 5-year renewable contracts to be renewed – or not – by the President.

I have objected against the Principal Director appointed to my committee who was drawn from the pool selected by the Administration. Albeit a former Chairman of SUEPO, he is known to have strong anti-SUEPO feelings, as I experienced on more than one occasion.

Attached you will find my letter to the Chairman of the Disciplinary
Committee and the answer.

Elizabeth Hardon

More interesting, however, are the following redacted documents:

Elizabeth Hardon letter - page 1

Elizabeth Hardon letter - page 2

Elizabeth Hardon letter - page 3

And then there’s this:

Elizabeth Hardon letter - page 4

The harder the EPO tries to crush staff and its representatives, the more it delegitimises itself. When will this insanity end? There are legitimiate criticisms which must be tackled, but the EPO’s management prefers to just shoot the messengers. █

“There is a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.”

–Oscar Levant

The Media is Already Flooded With EPO Propaganda, Some Likely Paid for With €73,000-Per-Month ‘Special’ New Budget

Posted in Europe, Patents at 9:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Posted by what seems to be an EPO patent examiner (or some other EPO staff)

Joff Wild of IAM

Summary: The EPO’s rotten influence over the media is having unintended consequences, detrimental to a high degree not just to the EPO’s management but also to its media partners

THE Battistelli-led EPO waltzes and dances from one scandal to the next, now shaming Apple in EurActiv despite Apple being a prolific applicant. Apple‘s patent wars against Samsung (or Android/Linux), covered by EPO critic Florian Müller, seems to have just culminated in over half a billion dollars (reluctant payment). At the same time, over at Texas (the trolls' docker), Apple is said to have been sued by a “two-month-old company,” to quote WIPR‘s headline. As the author framed it: “A company that was formed nearly two months ago has sued multinational business Apple for allegedly infringing a patent covering mobile phones.

“Anything one sees in the media regarding the EPO one must suspect could be part of the EPO’s €73,000-per-month reputation laundering campaign (leaked here a week ago).”“In a lawsuit filed at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas on Wednesday, December 2, Iris Connex claimed Apple’s iPhone 5 model and all models produced since then have infringed the patent.”

This serves to show just how broken the US patent system that Battistelli increasingly emulates really is, despite growing efforts to thwart software patents there*. This is the type of mess that the unitary patent, or UPC, promises to bring to Europe (a subject we increasingly cover these days). Now that the EPO muddies the media (or pays the media) for positive coverage it is easier to fall for the brainwash (from the likes of IAM) and not get the facts. Google News deems the EPO’s own site a credible source of news (see result number 2 below) and this site is, for the most part, also flooding search results for other EPO-related searches.

UPC news

Anything one sees in the media regarding the EPO one must suspect could be part of the EPO’s €73,000-per-month reputation laundering campaign (leaked here a week ago). █
___________
* According to Patent Buddy, “US Pat 7,756,855, Asserted Against Google; Killed by Alice/101;” The Docket Report says: “The magistrate judge recommended denying without prejudice defendants’ motion to dismiss the asserted claims of plaintiff’s data compression patents because claim construction had not occurred and defendant failed to establish that the claims were directed toward an abstract idea.”

EurActiv’s Puff Piece for EPO (Amid High-Budget Media Blitz) Reveals Just How Clueless and Tactless the EPO’s President Really is

Posted in Apple, Deception, Europe, Patents at 6:40 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

EurActiv logoSummary: A bunch of EPO puff pieces served through the Web this week, and they don’t stand up to basic scrutiny based on facts

ALTHOUGH Wikipedia calls EurActiv “independent”, we oftentimes wonder why it promotes corporate interests and all sorts of villainous ‘trade’ deals. Over the years it has also been a platform for Microsoft lobbyists in Europe. In our humble assessment, there was always something dubious if not odious about EurActiv‘s agenda.

“In our humble assessment, there was always something dubious if not odious about EurActiv‘s agenda.”Yesterday we noticed this article (puff piece, EPO-sponsored?) from EurActiv, complete with softball questions for Battistelli, almost staged. Why not just make it a “guest post” of Battistelli, as if he was a journalist using this platform? Questions include loaded ones like: “Will the first unitary patents be granted in 2016?”

Well, UPC is not even a reality yet. Talk about jumping the gun…

The title of the piece is click-bait (probably for more hits/traffic) and a response to it has just been posted in IP Kat, saying:

Have you seen this?

Battistelli: Many Apple patents would not have been granted in Europe

In response to a question regarding “patent war” litigation between tech companies such as Samsung (a closer-contact-with-major-applicants-pilot-project member) and Apple (NOT a closer-contact-with-major-applicants-pilot-project member), Battistelli states that the reason this ‘patent war’ is “happening mainly in the US and not Europe” is “because there are many patents in the US granted to Apple which would have not been granted in Europe because we are more rigorous and more selective than in the US. In my [Battistelli's] view, this ‘patent war’ is largely due to dysfunction of the US system.”

What a remarkable statement!

Battistelli manages – in fewer than 50 words – to appear not only to defame Apple’s patent portfolio, but also manages to pooh-pooh the US system as “dysfunctional”!

I guess Battistelli doesn’t remember that the infamous “slide to unlock” patent (EP1964022) was granted by the EPO, and only later invalidated by the German Bundesgerichtshof…
(http://ipkitten.blogspot.fr/2015/09/apples-european-slide-to-unlock-patent.html)

He probably also doesn’t recall that the reason the Apple-Samsung ‘patent war’ is fought mainly in the US is because Apple and Samsung have agreed to end all patent lawsuits outside the US between themselves.

I wonder if Battistelli would be willing to identify individual Apple patents granted in the US that would-not-be or were-not granted in Europe?

How should Apple feel about such statements..?
How should Apple investors feel about such statements?

We too were surprised that Battistelli can pretend Apple is in no way abusive in Europe (we wrote a lot about it). Has he lived up a tree for the past 3-4 years? Is he willfully misleading or just misinformed? We don’t know what’s worse…

“The whole piece was basically constructed to be a megaphone for Battistelli and be some kind of positive “media presence” for the EPO.”The whole piece was basically constructed to be a megaphone for Battistelli and be some kind of positive “media presence” for the EPO. We kindly ask readers to recall that the EPO is 'planting' puff pieces in the media and spends obscene amounts of money doing so right now (newly-leaked contract), so we can only make guesses about EurActiv‘s motivations. We are seeing some other pro-UPC pieces right now, in lawyers’ Web sites (no mainstream reach though). One of them has just parroted the EPO: “According to a publication on the website of the European Patent Office (www.epo.org), significant progress has recently been made towards the unitary patent. The Select Committee, which was set up by the original 25 member states participating in the unitary patent, has agreed on the distribution of income generated by the payment of the uniform renewal fees to the European Patent Office (EPO).”

We don’t know what motivated the writers to just repeat the EPO’s claims. The EPO has a very poor record on accuracy and honesty. Remember what it told The Register earlier this week about freedom of the press. It was almost hilarious.

Meanwhile, the EPO-sponsored bloggers from IAM are shaming Germany into accepting the EPO’s ambition of making UPC a reality (more injunctions, damages, patent scope), but this does not exactly surprise us. We have come to expect this from IAM, which has written virtually nothing about EPO scandals (lies by omission). It mostly did ‘damage control’ for the EPO amid these scandals.

“The EPO has a very poor record on accuracy and honesty.”Looking at IP Kat for a moment, one new article speaks about a new topic and states that “The Technical Board wanted to know whether a notice of appeal that was filed after the time limit according to art. 108 EPC was to be deemed inadmissibleor not filed (note that this question is different from the one in G2/14, where the notice was filed timely, but the fee was paid late. G2/14 was terminated because the patent in question lapsed for non-payment of the annual fee).”

Another new article speaks about the big scandal regarding discriminatory treatment of applicants. “Merpel is also a bit annoyed,” she said, “because she has heard of European attorneys being asked about the new PACE provisions by applicants in Japan, who apparently heard it from visiting Examiners well before this announcement. Merpel is not against Examiners visiting applicants, but it is unhelpful to say the least to announce changes to users of the European patent system who require representation without representatives having been given the chance to inform themselves.”

Well, imagine what would happen if everyone applied for PACE. This whole system is a sham. It’s designed to eliminate patent neutrality while maintaining the illusion that it doesn’t.

Watch this new comment that says: “Not only letters to applicants are changed.

“Nowadays, Eponia is more concerned about generating, artificially, positive media coverage, not actually correcting its many ills.”“I was involved in a case where the division had decided to grant, and all members had signed. The director went to the second examiner and the chairman and stated that he did not agree, and that they should have consideration for their staff reports.

“He then went to the entrusted examiner and said that the grant would not go out and a refusal should be written.

“When the first examiner went to consult with the other two members they said that the director had already been to see them and please do the refusal (obviously in fear of reprisals).

“So what does the poor first examiner do? Write a refusal (keeping the original signed and dated grant, since Mr. Director was swiftly before pension and the examiner feared a rebuke from DG3 if the file would be appealed). Yes, strange happenings in EPONIA.”

Nowadays, Eponia is more concerned about generating, artificially, positive media coverage, not actually correcting its many ills. Do these people wonder why even politicians took an interest in this wasteful media manipulation?

The protest in Munich is going on right now. We hope to find some press coverage about it as early as Monday, if not in Sunday newspapers (Germany has several of those).

Colonel Battistelli must be feeling like there’s a dire need to brainwash his staff right now. █

“Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.”

–Napoleon Bonaparte

US Patent Lawyers Stressed, Still Complaining About Alice Case and the Potential Sunset on Software Patents

Posted in America, Courtroom, Patents at 5:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Sunset

Summary: As the dawn of a new, post-software patents era is upon us, those who were making money from conflict are bemoaning the state of affairs

In order to salvage whatever reputation it has left, the USPTO must follow the example of SCOTUS (US Supreme Court) and limit the granting of patents on software. This doesn’t mean that software patents are already dead, but little by little we may be getting there. It’s only bad news for society’s richest people.

“This doesn’t mean that software patents are already dead, but little by little we may be getting there.”According to the bankers’ media, Goldman Sachs now uses patents versus competition from the likes of Bitcoin. “Goldman Sachs,” explains this article, “has made a patent application for a cryptocurrency settlement system in a move that underlines bank hopes that the architecture behind bitcoin can revolutionise global payments.

“The application for a new virtual currency, dubbed “SETLcoin” by the bank, said it would offer “nearly instantaneous execution and settlement” of trades involving assets including stocks and bonds.”

“They are abstract and are therefore not suitable or worthy of patent grants.”We previously wrote many articles here about patents which relate to electronic payments. The challenges are being tackled not with innovation but with patent monopolies. Remember that the famous Alice case too involved a bank (CLS Bank). Patent lawyers are incidentally whining again, alleging that the sky is falling because the Supreme Court did its job and told the public the truth about software patents. They are abstract and are therefore not suitable or worthy of patent grants.

“”Innovators” is what the lawyers basically call monopolists, for the most part.”Here we have another legal firm, Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner LLP, calling the possible end of software patents (or the beginning of the end) “wreaking havoc” as if it’s the most terrible thing to even happen (to them at least). To quote their new article: “The Alice Corp. decision and its progeny have been wreaking havoc at the USPTO. In addition to increasing costs, it has cast a shadow on our patent system. Innovators are seemingly unable to get patents without jumping through the ill‑defined “abstract idea/significantly more” hoop. Worse still, if your application ends up classified as a Business Method application, you could face a never‑ending string of § 101 rejections for the time being. Clearly, new approaches are needed to get past perfunctory rejections that dismiss claims as mere abstractions.”

“Innovators” is what the lawyers basically call monopolists, for the most part. In their minds, more patents absolutely imply more innovation. It’s nonsense. By lowering the bar (and the accompanying fees) every patent office can increase the number of patents. This does nothing for innovation. In many cases, innovation can only be retarded by this.

So, after this dramatic opening they say: “Rejections under § 101 generally contain a statement about what “abstract idea” the claims represent, along with a statement that any “additional elements” do not constitute “significantly more” than that idea. It’s quite difficult to get over this first hurdle. The Interim Eligibility Guidance from July asserts that abstract ideas “need not be old or long‑prevalent.” Combined with the Supreme Court’s statement in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank, 134 S.Ct. 2347, 2354 (2014), that “all inventions . . . embody, use, reflect, rest upon, or apply laws of nature, natural phenomena, or abstract ideas,” it is clear that the USPTO considers very few claims to not include some abstract idea.”

And rightly so. USPTO is doing what’s long overdue because it must become more harmonious with courts’ decisions, otherwise confidence in patents will decline and almost every patent granted by the USPTO will be viewed as bogus, invalid, incapable of withstanding scrutiny in court.

“Some articles in the media are overwhelmingly dominated by views of profiteers to whom terms like ‘innovation’ mean nothing; they never innovated anything in their lives, they just engineered disputes, threats, and lawsuits, often on behalf of some large and powerful institutions.”At the end, watch how the lawyers are selling themselves to help confuse examiners and get around the rules: “request an interview with the examiner to get clarification as to which elements are abstract. In your next response, argue that the technological elements of the claims are outside of that abstract idea. This will force the examiner to more clearly explain the rejection, which will prepare your application for appeal or – better yet – result in the withdrawal of the rejection.”

Meaning, pay a patent lawyer (i.e. a parasite) to see how you can patent software despite increasingly hostile rules (examination guidelines).

Yesterday at a Christmas party I had a chat with a retired MSP from London (he used to work as a programmer with Fortran before becoming a manager). When I explained to him some of these issues he ended up saying that if patent lawyers end up dried of income, he would very much applaud it. Some articles in the media are overwhelmingly dominated by views of profiteers to whom terms like ‘innovation’ mean nothing; they never innovated anything in their lives, they just engineered disputes, threats, and lawsuits, often on behalf of some large and powerful institutions. Litigation is not production.█

“Never confuse motion with action.”

–Benjamin Franklin

Microsoft’s Patent Troll Intellectual Ventures Extorts Money Out of Canon Despite a Recent Microsoft Patent Deal

Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Patents at 5:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

‘Peace’ with Microsoft does not ensure peace with its satellites

Green troll

Summary: An update regarding Canon’s débâcle with Intellectual Ventures, the world’s largest and most abusive patent troll, created and funded by Microsoft and Bill Gates

TECHRIGHTS has been writing about the world’s largest patent troll, Intellectual Ventures, for many years. The strong links to Microsoft are impossible to ignore and the attacks on Linux are not at all surprising.

“…Microsoft continues to attack Linux using software patents, often via its patent troll, Intellectual Ventures.”Last month we wrote about this troll's attacks on Canon (which uses a lot of Linux in its products). We used that to make the case that even with a Microsoft patent deal, one cannot be defended from Microsoft’s trolls. Well, the Microsoft patent troll is said to have just ‘settled’ (means extortion money extracted after Canon thought it had peace with Microsoft). As IP Hawk put it: “Looks like IV and Canon have settled. Seeing stay pending dismissals on the dockets.”

Does anyone other than parasites actually believe that Intellectual Ventures is worth existing?

According to the EFF (as of this week): “It’s easy to file a patent complaint. All a patent owner has to do is say that they own a patent and that the defendant infringed it. The patent holder doesn’t even need to identify which product of the defendant’s they believe infringe the patent, or specify which claims of the patent they’re asserting. It’s an absurdly simple process, and unscrupulous patent tolls routinely take advantage of that fact.

“That might have changed this week—the Judicial Conference of the United States has instituted a rule change that includes eliminating the form that’s been used for patent complaints for decades. We hope that the change makes it harder for patent trolls to hit defendants with information-free complaints, but we’re not breaking out the Champagne yet.”

Well, as we have shown here before, Microsoft continues to attack Linux using software patents, often via its patent troll, Intellectual Ventures. Companies are even sued in bulk, in conjunction, with very broad claims. Anyone capable and eager to defend this status quo with a straight face is either working for Microsoft (if not a similar patent aggressor) or some patent lawyer who profits from patent lawsuits. Monopolising the market by abusing the system is still Microsoft’s expertise. █

“Children are often taught “computer skills” that are really “Microsoft Windows skills” – how to use Microsoft’s operating system and its Office suite (its two monopolies) – rather than the possibilities of making computers do what you want. As such, children are being equipped to be uncreative office workers, just as those at the end of the 19th century were equipped for the routine of adding up huge lists of numbers in the accounts departments of big companies.”

–The Guardian

Amid EPO Exodus/Brain Drain, Two Options: ‘Gestapo’ Staff and Assistant to Battistelli Have Quit or Battistelli’s Praetorian Guard is Expanding

Posted in Europe, Patents at 4:44 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Praetorian guard

Summary: Misplaced priorities at the EPO and more evidence either of more exits (resignations) or an expansion to further empower tyranny, not patent examination

SEVERAL sources have independently told us about EPO brain drain. People hand in their resignations in relatively high numbers. The President’s Praetorian Guard, nonetheless, isn’t being shrunk. The EPO’s Napoleonic ‘president’ (fancy job title, more so than in the USPTO) already surrounds himself with bodyguards, some say he wants to have a limousine (we haven’t been able to verify this claim), and even if all talented examiners were to leave the EPO, lavish lifestyle and obscene expenditure for the almighty ‘president’ mustn’t and wouldn’t be compromised.

“They ought to say something about the high suicide levels, the abuse of staff, and violations of European law, human rights, privacy etc.”According to this new job ad (location being Munich and The Hague), there are many vacancies expected, perhaps because many people are leaving. “In 2016,” says this ad, “the European Patent Office plans to recruit more than 200 engineers and scientists to work as patent examiners. Are you interested in joining an international team at the forefront of technology?”

They ought to say something about the high suicide levels, the abuse of staff, and violations of European law, human rights, privacy etc. They should inform applicants also about the ‘gestapo’ (as staff calls it) [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. As this new comment in IP Kat put it yesterday:

The problem at the EPO is the general lack of respect for it employees contrary to the managments [sic] professions to the contrary.

At a meeting of the president with a group of employees, he was questioned on the wisdom of introducing the fully electronic file and paperless office. First of all there are frequent disruptions in the working of the EPOs computer systems at present. This hinders examiners in the processing of files. At present an examiner can pick up on another file, and continue the other file later. With a paperless office the examiner would be fully dependent on the computer systems working. If these were to fail then the examiner would be hindered from working. This would impede production (which would result is a negative personal report) unless the examiner would work overtime to make up for the lost time. Secondly the ergonomics guidelines state that an employee should not work more that 6 hours on a PC (a tool was introduced by the EPO to advise examiners to stop after 6 hours) or risk health issues. Introducing the fully electronic file would mean examiners will be expected to work on a PC for on average 8 hours per day (considering examiners have a fixed 40 hour week). To this Mr Batistelli replied that new computer screens (which do not yet exist) would solve the problem (this would maybe solve eye problems but not RSI risks). He then continued that he would be happy if examiners would really work 8 hours per days. Thank you Mr. Batistelli! So much for respect for employees.

Furthemore [sic], the Head of the Investigation Unit, during a meeting where the workings of this Unit were introduced, was questioned. First of all he was asked whether it was true that an employee being investigated was not allowed legal council. He stated that this was correct. He was then asked if the information would be used in disciplinary proceedings. To this he stated that it was merely to see if a disciplinary proceedings should be conducted, suggesting that the information would not be used. It was then stated that if the information obtained during the investigation were to be used would this information not be illegally obtained evidence because of the lack of legal representation. To this he replied in an agressive [sic] manner that if the employees of the EPO didn´t like it the [sic] could leave, at which [point] a large group left the room. This felt a lot like intimidation. Where do you go to request an investigation of the head of the investigation unit for intimidation? So much for respect.

To then expect EPO employees to treat the management [sic]with respect is maybe a little too much, although it would have maybe been better not to stoop down to come closer to the low level management exemplifies.

The EPO is now hiring even more people for its 'gestapo'. That is perhaps the EPO’s ‘growth area’ right now. More of the above.

Someone has notified us of a curious new vacancy at the EPO — a vacancy which suggests that either Battistelli lost his assistant or is looking to recruit more. Here are the details from the EPO’s site (screenshots shown below to reduce the chances of tracking by the EPO’s ‘gestapo’).

Below is an opening for a personal assistant to Monsieur le Président (http://www.epo.org/about-us/jobs/vacancies/other/int-ext-5918.html):

Battistelli protege

Just as a bit of complementary reference material from the public EPO site: Two separate openings for an investigator are advertised, one in the Hague and the other in Munich (http://www.epo.org/about-us/jobs/vacancies/other.html)

But both entries point to the same URL ( http://www.epo.org/about-us/jobs/vacancies/other/int-ext-5918.html)

This is probably the reason why the Central Staff Committee document states that it isn’t clear how many two investigators are sought. Here is the ad for the ‘gestapo’ career:

Gestapo career

These are, for now, the only jobs publicly advertised in “other” (not in outside Web sites but by the EPO itself):

EPO job openings

Patent examiners? Not in this section, but either way, this isn’t really the focus of the EPO. Not interested. The EPO isn’t about patent examination anymore. It is rubber-stamping at a higher PACE [pun intended] for large corporations because they bring more income. █

“History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.”

–Thomas Jefferson

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

Further Recent Posts

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