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02.18.16

La Universidad de Harvard se Vuelve un Vasallo de Microsoft y Maquilla a Famosos Criminales

Posted in Bill Gates, Microsoft at 11:04 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

English/Original

Publicado en Bill Gates, Microsoft at 7:06 am por Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Parte de un ampli esquema implicado a Microsoft en CORRUPCIÓN SISTEMÁTICA, transformando escuelas y universidades en puestos de Microsoft a cuesta de los contribuyentes

Harvard Wreath

Sumario: La universidad de elección de Gates sobre la cuál todavía saca ventaja, se vuelve una agencia personal de Microsoft para INDOCTRINAR, convirtiéndose parte de su asistida por el gobierno conquista de la educación de Ciencias de la Computacion en los Estados Unidos.

BILL GATES nunca se graduó de Harvard (grados honorarios en realidad no cuentán para nada, virtualmente están a la venta). Abandonó su educación. Sin embargo Gates tomó control de Harvard así como otras universidades en los Estados Unidos (y en un menor grado en el extranjero también). Al ´donar´ dinero bajo falsas pretensiones SECUESTRÓ la agenda/curricula de su Ciencias de la Computación (echándola a su favor) e incluso nombró instalaciones como a sí mismo. Algo realmente anti-academico de hacer. Es lo anti-ético a la noción de educación.

Después de sobornar oficiales para asegurarse contratos SOBREVALORADOS (como cubrimos anoche)) Microsoft ahora se apodera de universidades, no sólo escuelas. Como lo puso Slashdot ayer:

¨¿Supo usted que Microsoft ha apoyado a Harvard en crear una nueva versión (de su muy popular CS50 curso) llamado CS50 AP, designado especialmente para educadores de secundaria?¨ preguntó una publicación Aprenda a Blogear Microsoft. Si le gustaría enseñar CS50 AP (y en turno Principios de AP CS) en su salón de clases este año,¨ Harvard informa a posibles profesores, ¨estan cordialmente invitados a unirse a nosotros en uno de nuestros entrenamientos para profesores workshops a llevarse a cabo en varias partes alrededor del país y el mundo!¨ Pero antes de matricularse están requeridos a responder a lo siguiente y Harvard no aceptará un NO como respuesta: ¨Nuestros AMIGOS en Microsoft nos están ayudando a distribuir materiales de apoyo para los profesores para esta versión de CS50 para profesores y estudiantes de educación secundaria. Al chequear la cajita de abajo, ustedes están de acuerdo que podamos ´compartir´ los datos que usted sometió a traves de esta forma como parte del proceso de planificación.¨ Microsoft esta DIRIGIENDO a la educación secundaria estos días – carajo, la Casa Blanca incluso deja al presidente de Microsoft Brad Smith reunir a periodistas y relatarles sus planes de gastar $4 B de impuestos en una nueva CS para toda iniciativa secundaria antes de que el Presidente lo anuncie a los contribuyentes. A propósito, la CS50 AP Wiki contiene una forma de autorización y deslindación por la cual, entre otras cosas, requiere a estudiantes tímidos estar sentados en una zona de ¨no cámaras/film¨ sin protestar si no quieren sus fotos o videos usados por Harvard para promover un curso promovido por Microsoft.¨

Cubrimos la nata acerca de Brad Smith a principios de mes.

Para citar las palabras nauseabundas: ¨Nuestros amigos de Microsoft nos están ´ayudando´ a distribuir los materiales para apoyo del maestro de esta versiond de CS50 para profesores y estudiantes de secundaria. Al chequear la cajita de abajo, ustedes están de acuerdo que podamos ´compartir´ los datos que usted sometió a traves de esta forma como parte del proceso de planificación. [...] Esto es requerido, por favor entre un valor.¨

“Harvard ahora es MIERDA,” nos dijo un lector que solía trabajar para una univesidad grande estadounidense. “Que VERGUENZA para ellos y para los Estados Unidos en general.”

“Esto parece sembrar un montón de preguntas,” una persona me dijo esta mañana en Twitter, “ética, legalmente, y acerca de integridad – en los Estados Unidos, Microsoft, UE, Romania etc.”

Microsoft es todavía un cáncer en la educación. Sobre todo es acerca de convertir a la gente joven DEPENDIENTE (encerrádo dentro) de código secreto con puertas traseras. Harvard debería avergonzarse de sí misma. Ocasionalmente invitaba a un famoso CRIMINAL, Bill Gates, a dar discursos allí, como si esto fuese un ejemplo a seguir por los estudiantes. UCLA también hace lo mismo con el más grande TROLL DE PATENTES [1, 2], quien es amigo personal de la rata Bill Gates. Todo se resume a corrupcción y política podrida. █

De Nuevo Es Confirmado: Microsoft Esta Sobornando a Oficiales

Posted in Fraud, Microsoft at 10:53 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

English/Original

Publicado in Fraude, Microsoft at 1:53 pm por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Pero no esperen que alguien de Microsoft sea sentenciado a pasar unos años en prisión (alas, es notorio)

Rumanian flag

Sumario: La epidemia de CORRUPCIÓN DE Microsoft es resaltada en una corte de leyes, pero ya que Microsoft es un moustrou bien conectado políticamente no esperamos castigo por tal comportamiento CRIMINAL

EL año pasado Microsoft fue atrapado chantajeando políticos Británicos [1, 2] y días atras escribimos acerca de su extorsión y chantaje (con patentes) contra Android OEMs.

El último fin de semana un lector nos hizo enterar de un viejo artículo que sobrepasamos al momento. Después de reportajes acerca de muchos casos de SOBORNO por parte de Microsoft (lo que lo trajo bajo una prueba en los Estados Unidos) escuchamos muy poco, como sí la investigación no era más investigada. Recuerden que el Presidente Obama fue ya pagado (algunos dicen sobornado) por Microsoft, which rápidamente uno de sus más altos contribuyentes antes de las elecciónes, como bien dijo Bill Gates, su esposa, Steve Ballmer y su esposa también. Haciéndo su influencia en le gobierno estadounidense pegajosa (vea nuestra página Wiki titulada ¨La influencia de Microsoft sobre el gobierno Estadounidense¨) seguramente que vale la pena.

Aquí esta el reporte de noticias titulado ¨Antiguo Ministro Rumano admite haber recibido un soborno de €4mn bribe in un caso de Microsoft” (recordándonos que Microsoft todavía es una COMPAÑÍA CRIMINAL). Dice:

El previo Ministro de Comunicaciones Rumano Gabriel Sandu admitió en una audiencia ante una corte el pasado Octubre 12 que recibió un soborno de €4mn en el llamado caso de Microsoft. Otros ocho previos ministros también estan bajo investigación en el caso, pero Sandu es el único en haber sido acusado por el momento.

Las implicaciones del caso permanecen inpredecibles, ya que envuelve ministros de tres gobiernos de varias orientaciones políticas. Fue instigada por el Primer Ministro Victor Ponta del Partido de Centro-Izquierda de Social Demócratas (PSD) quienes desearon una investigación sobre los contratos firmados bajo su predecesor y rival político Emil Boc durante el 2009-2012. Pero abrió la puerta a una más ancho escándalo que ha arrastrado a políticos de ambos partidos.

El Directorado Nacional Anticorrupción (DNA) empezó investigaciones sobre la venta de licensias de software para las escuelas Rumanas en Septiembre del 2014. Los nueve antiguos ministros son sospechosos de RECIBIR SOBORNOS A CAMBIO DE FIRMAR Y LUEGO EXTENDER CONTRATOS PARA LICENCIAR SOFTWARE DE mICROSOFT A PRECIOS MÁS ALTOS QUE EN EL MERCADO.

Sandu fué el primer previos ministro en dar su testimonio delante de la corte. Afirmó haber contribuído los €4mn de soborno que recibió al Partido de Centro-Derecha Demócratico Liberal (PNL) para su campaña electoral y la de Traian Basescu, el exitóso candidateo de las elecciones presidenciales del 2009.

“Eso es Rumania,” nos dijo un lector, ¨¿qué acerca de Rusia y los otros? ¿Cuál es el status?¨ Bueno, previamente escribimos acerca de Rumania en:

Todavía esperamos por el resultado de las investigación de los Estados Unidos contra Microsoft (por corrupcción), pero permanecemos escépticos hasta que veamos la luz del dia. Microsoft tiene a MUCHOS CABILDEADORES E INCLUSOS POLÍTICOS EN SUS BOLSILLOS, como hemos cubierto a traves de los años extensivamente.

Rumania es simplemente uno de varios países donde Microsoft debería someterse a una extensiva examinación, incluso la EVASION DE IMPUESTOS que esperamos que el IRS finalmente lo tome más seriamente. En algunos de los articulos de arriba ya hemos discutido los trucos de contabilidad de Microsoft en Rumania.

Cuando leemos algo de lo de arriba se hace más evidente que Microsoft está básicamente ARRIBA DE LA LEY, rodeado de POLÍTICOS CORRUPTOS quienes están muy asustados (or envaselinados) para realmente hacer algo al respecto, sin mencionar sus socios que hacen mucho de su trabajo sucio (como fue el caso en los días de OOXML con elecciones ARREGLADAS). ¿Cuál es el ruido acerca de este ´nuevo´ Microsoft de todas maneras? Nada más que una sobreusada campaña de mercadeo y relaciones públicas, alrededor de las lineas: ¨Microsoft ama a Linux.¨

A la gente no le gusta Microsoft porque es bueno. A la gente típicamente le disgusta Microsoft por que ellos entienden la historia y saben que Microsoft es… bien, especial. █

Links 18/2/2016: New Ubuntu Phone, Go 1.6

Posted in News Roundup at 10:34 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • 7 Reasons Why Open Source Code is Better Than Proprietary

    I’m always surprised when users wish that Microsoft Office or PhotoShop would be ported to Linux. Probably, some just want to be able to use standard industry software on their favorite operating system. But so far as I am concerned, applications like LibreOffice Writer or Krita are not just substitutions — even without my ideals, I would choose them as the highest quality software available for my needs.

  • Top 4 open source issue tracking tools

    So let’s take a look at four excellent choices for managing bugs and issues, all open source and all easy to download and host yourself. To be clear, there’s no way we could possibly list every issue tracking tool here; instead, these are four of our favorites, based on feature richness and the size of the community behind the project. There are others, to be sure, and if you’ve got a good case for your favorite not listed here, be sure to let us know which is your favorite tool and what makes it stand out to you, in the comments below.

  • How to make sense of any open source mess

    Open source development and collaboration takes place online, in places made of information. From individual commit messages to project websites and even larger digital structures, each piece of information we create is part of a mess. This is not a slight against open source; all human endeavors are messy, because that is just the way we are as human beings. We all bring our own strengths and failings, wisdom and ignorance, to everything we do.

  • ONF Offers OpenDaylight Support in Latest Atrium SDN Stack

    The embrace of the OpenDaylight SDN controller follows the support of the ONOS controller in the first release of the Atrium software last year.
    Open Networking Foundation officials are hoping to accelerate the adoption of network virtualization by including support for the OpenDaylight SDN controller in the latest release of its open-source Atrium software distribution.

  • Wikimedia: We’re Building Something, But It’s Not A Search Engine To Challenge Google

    The Wikimedia Foundation has rejected the media reports that claimed that the non-profit is working on some search engine that will be a one-click replacement of Google.

  • ReactOS 0.4.0 Released
  • Open source Windows-clone ReactOS hits version 0.4 (ten years after 0.3)

    The developers of ReactOS have been working to develop an open source operating system capable of running Windows software since 1998.

    It’s been slow going: version 0.3.0 was released in 2006. Nearly 10 years later, ReactOS 0.4.0 is available for download.

  • Skytap Supports the Modern Developer Toolchain with Vagrant, Open Source Contributions
  • Here’s why Bottle Rocket is contributing open-source code

    Bottle Rocket has stepped out from behind its proprietary code and expanded its reach into the open-source market.

    The Addison-based company, which creates custom mobile applications for business customers, has released its first few pieces of code for Android and plans to build on the code it has shared with the development community.

  • IBM Contributes Thousands of Lines of Code to Blockchain Efforts
  • IBM Goes Open-Source For Better IoT Apps

    Putting limits on what the Internet of Things can do to transform everything from in-store retail operations to multinational logistics is a great way to hamstring a potentially revolutionary technology. So too is keeping the way IoT apps and services are developed locked away behind the closed doors of intellectual property laws.

    Fortunately, IBM has seen the light of publicly supported solutions and is releasing a new open-source IoT development tool by the name of Quarks. Supported by the IBM Streams platform that specializes in compiling and analyzing gigabytes of live data in real time, Quarks might be used alternatively by hospitals to share designs for vitals monitoring apps that can be used with wearables and by industrial companies outfitting their workers’ uniforms with safety sensors, TechCrunch reported.

  • IBM’s Open Source Quarks Pushes IoT Analytics to the Edge

    IBM has open sourced new technology called Quarks to push Internet of Things (IoT) analytics from centralized systems out to the actual edge devices that are collecting and spewing out vast amounts of data.

  • The Grid: Web Design by Artificial Intelligence

    Flow-Based Programming (FBP) is a software development paradigm where applications are built by “wiring together” various reusable components inside a graph.

    Since running into the concept in 2011, I’ve built the NoFlo environment, which brings Flow-Based Programming to the universal runtime of JavaScript, allowing flows to be run on both Node.js and the browser.

  • Google’s TensorFlow Serving Goes Open-Source
  • Google ups the ante in the machine learning wars
  • Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google Introduces TensorFlow Serving
  • Google Delivers TensorFlow Serving, Advancing Machine Learning
  • Google’s TensorFlow Serving goes open source for large scale machine learning model creation

    Google has released TensorFlow Serving to the open-source community, a fresh addition to computer learning software for large-scale modeling projects.

  • Events

    • Devconf – Amazing place for a developer

      As a fresh start of 2016, I got a chance to be part of Devconf – an annual conference which takes place in the beautiful Brno city of Czech Republic. From past three years, its been happening in February month’s first Friday to Sunday and hence this year it was from 5th to 7th February.

    • Get ready to Fork the System at LibrePlanet

      Hundreds of people from around the world will meet at LibrePlanet 2016: Fork the System, March 19-20, 2016 at MIT in Cambridge, MA. This year’s conference program will examine how free software creates the opportunity of a new path for its users, allows developers to fight the restrictions of a system dominated by proprietary software by creating free replacements, and is the foundation of a philosophy of freedom, sharing, and change. Sessions like “Yes, the FCC might ban your operating system” and “GNU/Linux and Chill: Free software on a college campus” will offer insights about how to resist the dominance of proprietary software, which is often built in to university policies and government regulations.

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice 5.1 Offers Reorganized User Interface for Its Apps

      The Document Foundation (TDF) released LibreOffice 5.1 on Feb. 10, providing users with a new milestone update of the popular open-source office suite. LibreOffice originated as a fork of the open-source OpenOffice suite in 2011 and has been downloaded more than 120 million times since then. LibreOffice includes Writer document, Calc spreadsheet, Impress presentation, Base database and Draw drawing programs as part of the integrated suite. In the LibreOffice 5.1 update, a key area of improvement is the user interface throughout the suite’s programs, which all benefit from a reorganization as well as menu additions. With the 5.1 update, the office suite’s integrated programs can now load and save files from remote locations directly through menu dialog box. LibreOffice is the default standard office suite in many mainstream Linux distributions, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE and Ubuntu. LibreOffice is also available for both Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X. In this slide show, eWEEK takes a look at some of the highlights of the new LibreOffice 5.1 release.

    • LibreOffice Is Getting Better GTK3 Support

      Last year LibreOffice made much progress in receiving GTK3 support that it also began running on Wayland. The battle though is not over and more GTK3 improvements are still forthcoming.

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • Public Services/Government

    • Tallinn schools piloting open source software

      Schools in the city of Tallinn (Estonia) are gradually moving to PC workstations running on free and open source software. A pilot in March 2014 switched 3 schools and 2 kindergartens. Students, teachers, school administration and kindergartens’ staff members are using LibreOffice, Ubuntu-Linux and other open source tools.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • 2016 Open Source Awards Finalists Named

      The Benjamin Franklin Award is a humanitarian/bioethics award presented annually by Bioinformatis.org to an individual who has, in his or her practice, promoted free and open access to the materials and methods used in the life sciences.

    • Open Data

      • Geography students bring open-source mapping group to State College

        Two geography students have started a Maptime chapter in State College to support community cartography and teach people how to use and create maps. The endeavor is co-sponsored by The Peter R. Gould Center for Geography Education and Outreach in Penn State’s Department of Geography.

        “I really want to put State College on the map—literally,” geography graduate student Carolyn Fish said. “So much open-source mapping is centered in large cities, such as New York, Washington and San Francisco.”

    • Open Access/Content

    • Open Hardware

      • Open Source CowTech Ciclop 3D Scanner Kit Available on Kickstarter for $99

        Montana-based startup CowTech launched an affordable 3D scanner kit on Kickstarter and they easily breezed past their funding goal in the first 24 hours. The CowTech Ciclop is a $99 3D laser scanner kit that was designed specifically with owners of 3D printers in mind. The buyer can print most of the scanner parts out on their own 3D printer and the parts were designed to fit on virtually any desktop 3D printer with a print bed volume of 115 x 110 x 65 mm (4.5 x 4.3 x 2.6 in) or higher. Once all of the components have been printed, the assembly process is quick and simple, and the Ciclop can start scanning in less than 30 minutes.

  • Programming

    • Go 1.6 is released

      Today we release Go version 1.6, the seventh major stable release of Go. You can grab it right now from the download page. Although the release of Go 1.5 six months ago contained dramatic implementation changes, this release is more incremental.

      The most significant change is support for HTTP/2 in the net/http package. HTTP/2 is a new protocol, a follow-on to HTTP that has already seen widespread adoption by browser vendors and major websites. In Go 1.6, support for HTTP/2 is enabled by default for both servers and clients when using HTTPS, bringing the benefits of the new protocol to a wide range of Go projects, such as the popular Caddy web server.

    • Go 1.6 Released
    • Women write better open source code on GitHub than men [Ed: conveniently (and wrongly) concludes from that it’s FOSS (not CS) that discriminates against women]

      Woman may be more competent than men at writing code but still there is evidence that they are discriminated against in open source communities because they are women.

    • A New Study Suggests That Women Write Better Code Than Men

      A recent study conducted by researchers from the computer science departments at Cal Poly, San Luis, Obispo and North Carolina State University reports that women write better code than men.

    • If Women Are Better at Coding, It’s Because They Have to Be

Leftovers

02.17.16

A Short Visit to Pro-Patents (or Patent Maximalism) Sites of Patent Lawyers and Patent Predators

Posted in Patents at 9:16 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

When your income comes from (in)famous patent trolls

NPE 2015

Summary: Critique of the ‘content’ and angle from sites for (and by) patent maximalists, notably IAM ‘magazine’

THE EPO and EPO-funded media are not a source of information but they are often the target of criticism or ridicule. Now that the EPO promotes monopolies on plants (to increase the number of granted patents, irrespective of the overall impact on society) we wish to highlight CEVA et al with their pro-GMO (i.e. patent monopoly) agenda, as covered in IP Watch the other day [1]. This is a fantastic example of the harms of patent maximalism — something that EPO-funded sites sure love and even take pride in. Let’s look at IAM ‘magazine’, based on the past few days’ articles.

“It glorifies what the site profits from, but at whose expense?”“IP Hall of Fame” is a term like that’s being used by IAM right now. Like “Monopoly of fame” or “Protectionism of the year”, one has to be pretty brainwashed to really ‘dig’ into that. Then again, what can be expected from a site which targets ‘IP’ lawyers? It glorifies what the site profits from, but at whose expense?

According to this article, the patent troll of Ericsson still attacks Android OEMs (impacting Linux, by extension). To quote: “The IPKat has been aware for some time that the Patents Court, in the person of Mr Justice Birss, has been devoting considerable time to a series of cases concerning mobile phone technology (Unwired Planet v Huawei and Samsung).”

“BlackBerry, despite its embrace of Android, will quite likely troll other Android OEMs with patents.”According to IAM, BlackBerry is now acting somewhat like a troll, much as we foresaw and predicted. But IAM uses terms like “monetisation”, which are effectively euphemisms (how about “corporate foodchain” as a euphemism?). To quote: “When BlackBerry concluded a cross-licensing agreement with Cisco last June, with a provision for the Californian company to pay an on-going royalty, this blog stated that the deal could mark the start of the Canadian telecoms and wireless business becoming a major player in the patent monetisation space.”

BlackBerry, despite its embrace of Android, will quite likely troll other Android OEMs with patents. Microsoft, according to this IAM report, is hoarding LG patents that it can later use to extort (or tax) Android devices more than it already does. To quote IAM, “20 US assets covering mobile telecoms assigned to Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC; also 44 assets on 9th April.”

“…there is already patent trolling in China, but the opaque court system changes all the risk equations…”
      – James SalsmanThe euphemism “monetisation” again appeared in IAM around the same time, in relation to China’s SIPO. The lenient patent system in China (like USPTO in the US) could bring in the trolls; maybe that’s what what “monetisation” now means in IAM (if not NPE). As Jack Ellis put it, in order to sell the “monetisation” (trolls) agenda in China (shaming tactics): “Protectionist, biased, anti-foreigner: those are kinds of labels that are often attached to China’s IP enforcement system by rights holders from outside of the country.”

As James Salsman ‏put it when asked, “there is already patent trolling in China, but the opaque court system changes all the risk equations [...] I lived in Shanghai working at @EFLabs where patents prevented pronunciation intelligibility remediation software improvements” (the latter, with context, can be found here).

The bottom line is, the Web continues to be saturated with coverage about patent matters composed by people who profit from it. Some even receive money from patent offices. Therein exists a real, profound problem. Public interests are ignored at best and habitually trampled. It’s everyone’s ethical imperative to change that, or else very few people will hoard all the wealth and many productive human activities (such as sharing, trade, invention and manufacturing) will effectively be banned except when permitted by those few wealth hoarders. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. FAO Symposium On Agricultural Biotech Raises Lobbying Concerns

    At issue, according to a joint press release (Via Campesina, Grain, and ETC Group), is the agenda, which they find unbalanced as it includes speakers from industry such as, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, CropLife International, and CEVA among others, which they say are promoting GMOs, while they found only one speaker openly critical of GMOs.

Lexmark Demonstrates Patents Against Public Interests and Against Competition

Posted in America, Patents at 8:37 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Ink
See original article

Summary: A review of press coverage regarding the Lexmark patent case, where gross overpricing of ink was defended by the Federal Circuit

THE news has been dominated, to some degree, by reports about the Federal Circuit doing a disservice to society (yet again).

As the EFF put it this week: “The Federal Circuit’s rule privileges patent owners over consumers, and helps ensure even less competition in the resale market. We hope the Supreme Court takes a hard look at this case, and restores consumers’ rights in products they purchase.”

“The Federal Circuit’s rule privileges patent owners over consumers, and helps ensure even less competition in the resale market.”
      –EFFWithout a doubt, many lawyers’ firms and lawyers’ sites are writing about it right now, e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14].

Worth noting is the fact that legal sites wrote like 10 times more articles than general news sites (or technology sites) about this case, e.g. [1, 2]. A lot of people don’t ‘get’ patents; neither do journalists. They’d use silly phrases like “invent patents” or “make patents”. The propaganda worked on them.

“Here, the court held that this type of restriction is enforceable for Lexmark, but only because Lexmark’s product is covered by patent rights.”
      –Dennis CrouchHere is the best report we’ve found on this subject (so far). TechDirt, which has covered this subject for over a decade (going back to 2004 if not earlier), wrote: “if you fail to block competition with one kind, apparently you can try, try again with another kind — and eventually you’ll end up in the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, who will mess everything up and kill off the competition. Printer company Lexmark has been at war with alternative suppliers of ink for well over a decade. As you may be aware, printer ink is sold at a ridiculously high markup, such that one estimate (from over a decade ago) noted that in order to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool with printer ink, it would cost you $5.9 billion (yes, with a “b”) at the checkout counter of your local office-supply retailer. The printer makers have notably taken a “give away cheap crappy printers at a low cost, and make it up in seriously overpricing the ink” strategy to their businesses. This kind of thing works great until someone tries to step in and sell competing ink.”

Suffice to say, this case is about keeping the prices artificially high (higher by several orders of magnitude than the production cost). A response posted by Dennis Crouch said: “I was surprised at the en banc Federal Circuit’s decision in Lexmark to re-affirm Mallinckrodt — giving a seller power to block future resale and reuse of a patented product. My surprise is grounded in the longstanding tradition in American property law of promoting the free-flow of commerce by refusing to enforce servitudes that limit the alienation or use of goods. To be clear, courts have often enforced contracts between willing parties to this end, but those same courts have refused to allow restrictive covenants to cling to the good and bind any subsequent purchaser. Here, the court held that this type of restriction is enforceable for Lexmark, but only because Lexmark’s product is covered by patent rights.”

“Remember that CAFC is responsible for many other equally tactless decisions.”It was not the first time that Crouch’s blog covered this case in recent days (we mentioned this a few times in last week’s posts). Basically, Lexmark twists and bends the law for price-fixing/price hikes. Other companies, such as HP, would no doubt benefit from this, at the expense of the public. To quote Crouch’s blog: “The presumptions are of some importance for those operating on the ground. Here, the US court will presume that foreign sales of a product do not exhaust the US patent right. Thus, an importer must obtain a release/license of those rights to avoid liability (assuming a valid and otherwise infringed patent). Of course, that license right may be implied based upon providing notice of the importation intent. In addition, depending upon the location of sale, UCC 2-312 (or its foreign equivalent) may create a presumption of license depending upon the situation.”

When laws are being passed to protect the business models or large corporations at the expense of the public, are the laws at all legitimate? Should we not feel free to challenge them or better yet, engage in civil disobedience? Remember that CAFC is responsible for many other equally tactless decisions. It was also CAFC that got software patents started, not just in the US but in the whole world. In the past we showed evidence of institutional corruption inside CAFC. █

“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

–Oscar Wilde

Patent Lawyers and EPO Officials Are Parading the Unitary Patent (UPC) in, Despite Lack of Democratic Process

Posted in Europe, Patents at 8:03 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The UPC is a Trojan horse of patent profiteers

Trojan horse

Summary: The Unitary Patent Court (UPC), the latest name of a decade-long effort to increase litigation, damages, injunctions, trolling etc. inside Europe, is being railroaded through the system like a Trojan horse, relying on public apathy (as the public does not know anything about its existence and the harsh reality)

THE UPC, which we wrote about 4 days ago, is a very big deal for the EPO‘s management. It even sponsored a pro-UPC propaganda event in the US, to take place just days from now with help from patent lawyers and patent lawyers' media. This isn’t democracy, it’s a coup d’état which merely serves to discredit European democracy.

Amerikat (Ward) from IP Kat continues her push for UPC as if it’s already a done deal (it’s not) and some “IP & Technology lawyer” promotes this UPC coup which European citizens never got to vote on. It’s not just women doing this, but it’s almost always patent lawyers, which is quite revealing, is it not? “ADR is also part of the new European #patent framework. Draft #UPC mediation rules now published,” the latter wrote.

Benjamin Henrion (FFII) responded by saying: “Rules cannot be written by an administrative committee.”

“…in the worst case, they will just copy/paste the rules and ask parliaments to rubberstamp.”
      –Benjamin Henrion (FFII)“Unitary Patent Court rules and laws cannot be made by an administrative committee,” he later added, “only by elected parliaments” (“don’t worry,” I said, “they can always just bribe some politicians to sign off the rules they pass to them for signing”).

A pro-patents account then jumped in to say: “It is supposed to be monitored by EU Council whose members are supposed to be monitored by elected parliaments, monitored by people.”

“When was the UPC ever monitored by people other than patent lawyers [and] other profiteers,” I responded, comparing them to foxes in the hen house. At this stage Henrion said “that’s stealing democracy. There are clear ECHR rulings on this.”

“Well, it’s not like the patent lawyers always honestly cared about law,” I responded, “they game it!” That’s what they do for a living, that is what people pay them a lot of money for.

As Henrion put it, “in the worst case, they will just copy/paste the rules and ask parliaments to rubberstamp.”

Then, “patentlyGerman” (his occupation isn’t hard to guess) said: “The Munich local div of the #UPC will be housed in a boring, but centrally located building” (patent lawyers and propagandists say “will”, not “would”, as if UPC is already unstoppable and inevitable).

“UPC is a Trojan horse that European citizens neither want nor need (at least those who even know it exists and understand what it’s for).”Thankfully, as some people come to realise, Spain is doing the right thing by rejecting the UPC, in spite of political blackmail.

Show us anyone other than patent lawyers (or the EPO) promoting the UPC and we shall award with a prize. All we have here is a coup d’état. UPC is a Trojan horse that European citizens neither want nor need (at least those who even know it exists and understand what it’s for).

UPC is a spit in the face of European democracy. It’s time for more sites (not sites of patent lawyers) to openly talk about it and properly inform the public. █

Links 17/2/2016: Vulkan 1.0, GNU C Library Vulnerability

Posted in News Roundup at 7:35 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • What’s in the Box? Interrogate Your Linux Machine’s Hardware

    I recently had a problem trying to install the NVIDIA driver for my machine. It seemed the latest driver had stopped supporting my graphics card, and after updating my kernel, I was out of a driver. The question, obviously, was “which card did I have?” But, I didn’t remember. If you have to name the chipset of your motherboard, specify the CPU in your box or get any other kind of hardware-related information, Linux provides several utilities to help you. In my case, I quickly could get the full ID of my graphics card, confirm that it really was getting a bit long in the tooth and decide that a newer one wasn’t such a bad idea.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Endless and GNOME

        As you may have heard, Endless joined the GNOME Foundation Advisory Board last week. We appreciate all the kind words of welcome we have received and are looking forward to strengthening our ties with this community. This has been a coming for a bit, and I’m looking forward for us to contribute more over the coming year!

        [...]

        We can’t do this alone. We are looking for some great engineers to join our team. If this mission sounds great and you’re interested in working with us, let us know! We are looking for people who are passionate about bringing a great desktop to the rest of the world while developing some high-quality Free Software.

      • You Can Now Edit OpenStreetMap Info In GNOME Maps

        OpenStreetMap is a free, collaborative project to create an easily editable map of the world — the Wikipedia of maps, if you will.

        Version 3.20 of the desktop mapping tool will see other improvements too, including improved translation behaviour and support for custom geo-json map layers.

      • GNOME Maps 3.20 Now Available for Beta Testing with OpenStreetMap Editing

        The GNOME Project is about to come up with the first Beta build of the upcoming major release of the open source desktop environment for GNU/Linux operating systems, GNOME 3.20, so they’re updating most of the core apps and components.

  • Distributions

    • Four Linux Distributions For Chromebook Lovers

      Chromebooks have been generated quite some buzz in the last couple of years. The main advantage for Chromebooks is that these are inexpensive laptops with modest hardware and are good looking as well.

      Chromebooks are based on Google’s web-oriented Chrome OS. While Chrome OS itself is based on the Linux kernel, it is not really the same experience as full desktop Linux. There are ways to install Linux on Chromebook, but I am not going to talk about those today. Instead, I am going to list four Linux distributions which are either meant for Chromebooks or they imitate the looks of Chrome OS.

    • Lay down a beat with LMMS

      One thing that confuses some new Linux users is just how modular Linux can be, and on nearly every level. It turns out to be liberating in the end, but it can be overwhelming at first. That’s why it’s nice, sometimes, to come across a project that brings a bunch of modular technology and binds them together nice and neatly for users. In the world of digital audio workstations, the project that does this most profoundly is the Linux Multimedia Studio, better known as LMMS.

    • Reviews

      • Top 5 Best Security-Centric Linux Distributions Of 2016

        Staying anonymous on the Internet might not necessarily mean the same as surfing the web safely but rather keeping yourself safe from prying eyes that may otherwise take advantage of the vulnerability of your system thereby exposing you and your data for whomever might just be up for the grabbing – especially some hacker snooping around for sensitive data to hoard (particularly if you’re being targeted) and use for otherwise evil purposes that can have some serious effects on the violated individual.

    • New Releases

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

      • PCLinuxOS: the walking dead

        If you thought that this review would continue with the usual sections like keyboard setup, list of applications, network drive connectivity and so on, I must disappoint you.

        My time with PCLinuxOS KDE 2014.12 finished at that point. I see no reason to test a distribution that is so narrow-minded that it cannot allow users outside of the US to use it out of the box, and that does not bother with updating their core ISO image. There are plenty of distributions that work much better than PCLinuxOS.

      • PCLOS Rebuttal, Live Long and Game, TDF@4

        The big story today in Linux news was the release of the long awaited Vulkan graphics API. The news was carried by just about everyone. Elsewhere, blogger DarkDuck said PCLinuxOS is “the walking dead” and a critical vulnerability in glibc has experts warning to upgrade immediately. SUSE announced SUSECon today and Charles-H. Schulz blogged about the “unusual” LibreOffice 5.1 release on this The Document Foundation’s fourth birthday.

    • Ballnux/SUSE

    • Red Hat Family

      • Rackspace Adds Hosted Red Hat OpenStack to Cloud Services

        Rackspace has added a new OpenStack-as-a-Service option in partnership with Red Hat (RHT), whose enterprise Linux distribution powers the new cloud platform.

        Rackspace announced the platform Thursday. It’s pitching it as a key step in the “company’s strategy to deliver the most reliable and easy-to-use OpenStack private and hybrid clouds in the world.”

      • Tech Stocks to Focus: Intuit Inc. (INTU), Red Hat Inc (RHT)
      • Red Hat Inc (RHT) Cut to “Hold” at TheStreet

        TheStreet lowered shares of Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) from a buy rating to a hold rating in a research report report published on Thursday morning, Marketbeat reports.

      • What Analysts say about Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT)?

      • Fedora

        • Neville Cross: How do you Fedora?

          Neville Cross is a Nicaraguan hotel manager who has a passion for technology. He has an Amateur Radio license, and was doing stuff with packet radio (ax.25 protocol) in 2008. That made him look for help in the local Linux community. As he used Red Hat Linux for a while in 2000, it was natural for him to take a look at Fedora. Instead of getting help, he got involved in the local FOSS community, especially in the Fedora local group. At that moment, others Linux distributions had strong support from the international community, but Fedora did not. So he took on the challenge to close the gap. That is how Cross originally showed up in Fedora landscape many years ago.

    • Debian Family

      • FOSSASIA 2016, pgDay Asia 2016 and MiniDebConf Singapore

        The FOSSASIA 2016 conference is taking place next month, 18-20 March at the Science Centre Singapore. The FOSSASIA community has also offered to host a MiniDebConf Singapore 2016 and pgDay Asia 2016. With sufficient interest from volunteers and participants, these events could do a lot to raise the profile of free software in the region.

      • Open Source Maru OS Promises Debian Linux for Smartphones and Tablets

        The open source ecosystem for mobile devices has grown larger with the announcement of a new Linux-based operating system for smartphones in the form of Maru OS, which is now open source.

        Maru is a Debian-based operating system that lets you run a complete desktop environment from a smartphone. By connecting it to an external display, you get what looks like a traditional, full-blown Debian GNU/Linux system, while still having access to your Android phone.

      • Emmabuntüs 8 Debian Based Beta Released

        Emmabuntüs is a desktop GNU/Linux distribution based on Xubuntu 12.04 and 14.04 LTS (Long Term Support) made specifically for refurbished computers destined for humanitarian organisationsand to promote the discovery of GNU/Linux by beginners, as well as to extend the lifespan of hardware and to reduce over consumption & waste in electronics. Emmabuntus 8 Beta is the first distro based on Debian in the memory of Ian Murdock, the founder of the Debian Project.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • FairPhone 2 with Ubuntu Touch Is Making Progress

            FairPhone 2 is just one of the phones that are betting on Ubuntu Touch community ports, and it looks like the project is coming along.

            The ability to port Ubuntu Touch for various devices has been promoted by Canonical ever since the start of the project, more than three years ago but little has come of it. The community tries to make this happen, but it’s not like making Android run on other devices. It’s a complex problem that usually revolves around device drivers.

            The main problem that developers face when trying to make Ubuntu Touch run on various devices is the lack of driver support. We’ve seen many popular phones running Ubuntu over the years, but most projects stop when having to implement GSM or Bluetooth support. For example, one of the first phones to get Ubuntu Touch was a Samsung Galaxy S3, but nothing came of it.

          • ZFS Will Be Baked Directly into Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Supported by Canonical

            We are only a couple of months away from the next major release of the world’s most popular free operating system, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), and some of its neat new features are yet to be revealed.

            Canonical’s Dustin Kirkland writes today about one of the awesome things that will be implemented by default in the upcoming Linux-based distribution, ZFS, the robust file system that everyone talks about these days, which Canonical will bake directly into Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

          • Ubuntu Touch OTA-9.1 Hotfix Still in the Works, Dekko Might Come with OTA-10

            Łukasz Zemczak of Canonical informs us earlier about the latest work done by the Ubuntu Touch development team in preparation for the soon-to-be-released OTA software updates for Ubuntu-powered devices.

          • Canonical Patches Severe Glibc DNS Vulnerability in All Supported Ubuntu OSes

            If you’ve been reading the news lately, you may know that Google Security Team and Red Hat have disclosed a severe Glibc (GNU C Library) vulnerability, which could affect a huge number of devices and computers.

          • ConsenSys, BlockApps, Canonical partner to deliver biometric digital identity tools on Ubuntu phones

            ConsenSys and BlockApps announced they have partnered with Canonical to deliver Nimbus uPort biometric digital identity tools on Ubuntu mobile phones and tablets.

            Canonical is the commercial sponsor of the Ubuntu project and the leading provider of support services for Ubuntu deployments in the enterprise.

          • Canonical’s ZFS Plans Are Lining Up For Ubuntu 16.04

            Ubuntu developers have been working on ZFS support for Ubuntu 16.04 and all of that file-system support is getting squared away.

          • [Older] New Ubuntu tablet claimed to serve as PC too

  • Devices/Embedded

    • How to build a $200 smart drone with the Pi Zero

      Erle Robotics, which I mentioned in last week’s piece about the increasingly important role of Linux in robotics, supplies cheap components for DIY Raspberry Pi projects. I got in touch with the makers at Erle this week to come up with a great tutorial for our readers.

    • Add a battery pack to your Raspberry Pi

      Your Raspberry Pi’s mobility is usually restricted by the length of the power lead. Rather than limiting it to your desk or living room, however, you can use it for mobile projects as diverse as launching it into near-Earth orbit or monitoring and automating your garden.

      Of course, to do this you will need batteries, but adding battery power to your Raspberry Pi is simpler than you might have imagined. All that is required are six rechargeable AA batteries (or single-charge alkaline), a battery box with space for the batteries and a UBEC. The latter is a Universal Battery Elimination Circuit, a voltage regulator that will regulate the power supply and prevent damage to the Raspberry Pi, and can be bought for under £10.

    • Reference platform simplifies wearable security camera designs

      Intrinsyc announced a reference design for wearable law enforcement and security cameras, featuring a Snapdragon 410 SoC running Android and a 13-MP camera.

    • Online dev tool adds DIY baseboard for RPi Compute Module

      Gumstix has added a Raspberry Pi Compute Module baseboard design to its online DIY board dev tool, and is selling working units based on the design for $49.

      Back in November, Gumstix opened up its Geppetto online DIY design tool and quick-turn prototype manufacturing service to the development of carrier boards for third-party SBCs and COMs based on TI Sitara AM335x SoCs. Supported non-Gumstix processor boards initially included BeagleBoard.org’s BeagleBone Black single-board computer, as well as Critical Link’s MitySOM-335x, and DAVE’s Diva AM335x computer-on-modules.

    • Phones

      • Tizen

        • Tizen smartphone sold 3 million units in 2015

          Samsung’s strategy of making its initial Tizen smartphones fall under the budget category seems to be working out quite well, as a recent report from market research agency Strategy Analytics claims that Samsung sold over 3 million Tizen smartphones in 2015! While the numbers may look huge, Samsung’s very own android devices from the J series proved to be a problem for the sales of Tizen based Z3 and Z1 launched in India.

      • Android

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

02.16.16

How the European Patent Office (EPO) is Crushing Staff Unions and Why EPO Staff Has a Moral Duty to Protest

Posted in Europe, Patents at 6:33 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

EPO Three Stooges

Summary: The attacks on staff unions at the EPO are explained with broader context, highlighting the severe abuses which come from above, so to speak, from people who shamelessly disregard the rule of law

TECHRIGHTS has written a great deal about the EPO‘s management, more so as a result of its unprecedented crushing of well-educated (and at times opinionated) staff. Critical or sceptical thinking should be a job requirement at the EPO, but apparently not under Battistelli. People are reduced to obedient peons who work like machines and never fall ill. Standards or procedures typically applicable to examination are out the door, depending on the size of the applicant (or “client”/”customer”). This is just wrong.

Instead of going after truly dangerous people such as Željko Topić (see our latest report about him), the EPO’s managers, who hired this incredible liability, is stubbornly fighting more aggressively, convinced that it should only be going after — ever more relentlessly and at growing doses — those whom management believes can lead to a revolt and perhaps a mass exodus, mass resignation/dismissal at the management level, or European raids at the Office (some members there, Topić included, already face many criminal charges). The last thing Battistelli et al want right now is Europol or Interpol showing up at the gate (Munich).

“I still have some hope for tomorrow,” wrote one particular reader to us regarding the Board 28 meeting (tomorrow in Germany). SUEPO said that “The Board 28 is the ultra-secretive think-tank of the Administrative Council.”

“You probably know about the rumours,” added this reader, “that they are negotiating his [Battistelli's] departure; but the rumour is not confirmed.”

While we generally have a good understanding of what happened, how, when and so on (too early to take all of this public), we cannot ever sympathise with what Battistelli and his goons have been doing. It’s them who should be facing a trial/s (or face the music as the saying goes), not mere messengers (the voice of the staff) like SUEPO. Topić is himself already embroiled in legal battles, but Battistelli and his clique try pretty hard to hide this from the staff. They even actively mislead the staff regarding the status of Topić’s court battles.

Ahead of tomorrow’s protest in Munich let’s just remind readers or explain once again (with additional details) what has been going on at the EPO.

“Read about cleansing of staff representatives and union leaders at EPO,” urged one person in a message to us. We have a lot of this documented with an index of articles in the Wiki. They not only went after staff representatives and union leaders. They even went after a judge. His alleged ‘crime’ is that he anonymously (for his own safety) spoke about the behaviour of Željko Topić. People who cannot understand the importance of such an (alleged) act surely don’t know what Željko Topić has done. There’s a reason why people in Croatia hate Topić so much. They’re up in arm and they cannot quite grasp the EPO’s decision to recruit him. Maybe a language barrier prevented the H.R. folks from doing their homework.

“There’s a reason why people in Croatia hate Topić so much. They’re up in arm and they cannot quite grasp the EPO’s decision to recruit him.”“The EPO conducts secretive investigations against them [staff representatives],” told us a person, “in which they cannot bring a lawyer, do not know the charges in advance, lack the right to remain silent, and cannot even disclose that they are being investigated. During the investigations, they are bullied into confessions about themselves and others. If they are not cooperative, charges are trumped up against them, followed by mock trials in a disciplinary committee. EPO confiscates their personal belongings like cell phones and PCs, so that evidence can later be “found” on them, in the absence of the accused.”

Go ahead and hypothesise/theorise about what may be on a USB drive (or stick) of someone who wants to access the Web anonymously. Such drives swap/change hands (different people sharing the same media). They may, among other things, include anonymity software, and some people who desperately require such software may wish to disseminate material which the State deems hateful. All we are trying to say is, when you seize vast troves of data (like complete PCs) you can spend months constructing a false story about a person (or scapegoat). The same goes for mass surveillance in general and as Edward Snowden once put it (to paraphrase from memory), given enough data one can frame it (by omission or ambiguity) to support some imaginary story about one’s life. It wouldn’t be hard, in retrospect (with access to extensive piles of personal data), to smear a person or even justify a lethal drone strike against a person. This is one of the many known dangers (to a democratic society) that mass surveillance poses. Just look what the Stasi did in Germany.

“If they are not cooperative, charges are trumped up against them, followed by mock trials in a disciplinary committee. EPO confiscates their personal belongings like cell phones and PCs, so that evidence can later be “found” on them, in the absence of the accused.”
      –Anonymous“No wonder they get ill,” wrote a person to us, alluding to staff representatives. “Find below some staff representatives who got punished recently. This list is not complete.”

  • Annete K exposed human right breaches of EPO. She is a lawyer. As soon as she left the staff committee, and thus lost protection, she was expelled into early retirement against her will.
  • Also Aurélien P and Mikael L got suspended and downgraded as their mandate with the appeals committee ended. This happened after years of loyal service in the appeals committee.
  • Els H is SUEPO’s chairperson. She was first downgraded and then fired based on false charges. Against the advice of the disciplinary committee, her pension was cut by 20%, a pension for which she paid for 30 years.
  • Ion B is SUEPO’s former chair. In the same week, also he was fired based on false charges. The disciplinary committee explicitly advised against his dismissal. Ion B has 5 children. His colleagues now support him financially.
  • Still in the same week, Malika W got downgraded. Coincidence, huh?
  • Laurent P occupies leading positions for staff representation and SUEPO. After being pressurized and summoned by the investigative unit on 13 November 2015, he is on sick leave as certified by his doctor. The EPO refuses to pay his salary, and pressurizes him even while ill. His colleagues now support him financially.

“Other staff representatives are targeted,” we’ve learned, but we already knew that. We named some of them earlier today and we are aware of even more. It’s clearly a witch-hunt. The pattern cannot be mistaken for a “coincidence”. Willy Minnoye was lying on national television.

“This intimidation must stop,” the person told us, “and Battistelli should be told to leave.”

“Just for the record,” I responded, “I am aware of more people who have been targeted. This situation must be addressed as a matter of urgency to prevent more suicides and other irreparable damages.”

Speaking to another person we learned that Battistelli “is creating transparency” not by means of intentional transparency but rather by upsetting everyone and thus creating whistleblowers. By alienating everyone he himself made a lot more enemies. Even Directors now attend protests. The damage is irreversible for Battistelli. His days are probably numbered now. “It seems that you are becoming an expert even for EPO-internal matters,” this one person told us, but that’s probably because the EPO never figured out who we speak to (based on internal documents we saw). They’re clueless. In a sense, Minnoye’s nightmare is becoming a reality. Months ago Minnoye complained that documents had been leaking to blogs (he must have meant Techrights) and now it’s him who’s receiving a lot of unwanted attention. This is a sort of nonviolent blowback that they experience after viciously attacking their staff. They also targeted yours truly, as if suddenly the courts suit them.

By going to the protest tomorrow (or joining the imminent strike) staff will hit Battistelli, Topić, and Minnoye where it hurts. It helps demonstrate how terrible they are as managers, in spite of the high salaries. No doubt EPO management will continue to exercise what’s wrongly perceived as omnipotence, but without standing up to these machinations European society is assured to descend onto further oppressions. A German guy called Adolf once famously said, “demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination.” The suicides epidemic isn’t assassination per se, but it serves a similar role, alongside union decapitation. █

“Corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy, as they undoubtedly are today…”

–Mahatma Gandhi quotes (Indian Philosopher, internationally esteemed for his doctrine of nonviolent protest, 1869-1948)

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