06.07.13
Posted in Bill Gates, Finance at 10:10 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“The chief of malaria for the World Health Organization has complained that the growing dominance of malaria research by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation risks stifling a diversity of views among scientists and wiping out the world health agency’s policy-making function.”
–New York Times, 2008
Summary: How Bill Gates’ monopolistic business model is expanding to the public sector, i.e. the sector which taxpayers are funding in the interest of taxpayers (Gates does not pay tax because the money gets laundered as “charity”)
The Gates Foundation wants to profit not only from the private sector but also the public sector. One example of it is the schools system. According to this piece, Gates has just gotten another lobbying group whose name is deceiving. To quote the piece: “The standards could easily reflect the political left leanings of its funders (Bill Gates), its creator (Marc Tucker), and the testing consortia (Linda Darling-Hammond). Proponents David Patti and Joan Benso, who wrote a recent Patriot News pro-Common Core guest commentary, failed to reveal that their organizations accepted huge amounts of money from the Gates Foundation to promote Common Core.
“The Gates Foundation wants to profit not only from the private sector but also the public sector.”“Teachers did not like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top because they were “teaching to the tests.” What profound differences will Common Core make in our educational system? Nothing, except that it will change education for the worse.”
So there we have another lobby among hundreds which Gates is using to get his way in school politics (we covered other such lobbies before, primarily the large ones). This is accompanied by buyout of scientists and the appropriate medium/media that they access. One new example of this comes from pro-Microsoft news sites which show the corrupting influence of Gates not just over individual journals (e.g. Lancet [1, 2, 3]) but an entire gateway like PubMed. Bill would love to gain control over many publications in one fell swoop, claiming the right to have become ResearchGates in ResearchGate.
“What matters is that those in power get served.”Here is the Gates Foundation hailed by a Microsoft booster with some “Nobel” flavouring amidst a hostile bid. It says: “On Monday, ResearchGate announced its third round of funding, $35 million, led by Bill Gates and Tenaya Capital.”
iophk says “Bill continues his attack on science” because he seems to already know what Gates is trying to achieve here. You can count on Bill’s fan press openwashing it. Well, it’s clearly not Open Source, but in Forbes, the billionaires’ fan press, facts don’t matter much. What matters is that those in power get served. “They’ve found that the name has positive connotations so they are abusing it to promote Bill,” iophk added.
“This can potentially make Gates a gatekeeper, pushing the agenda of his investments by giving funds selectively to those who write things in favour of the companies he derives profit from, in a sense monopolising by money distribution, as always.”So what is this move all about? It is about grabbing other people’s academic work (which they rarely get paid for) and trying to hoard the data, storing data locally, and even claiming credit for it and having control over what’s more visible (e.g. in search results). This can potentially make Gates a gatekeeper, pushing the agenda of his investments by giving funds selectively to those who write things in favour of the companies he derives profit from, in a sense monopolising by money distribution, as always. It’s about money and power, masqueraded as science. The grants are routinely allocated based on personal agenda of Gates. We gave a lot of examples of this and the quote at the top is telling.
Here is a new story of a teacher who was turned away because he did not comply with Gates’ will. To quote:
The first thing you need to know reader, is that there is no job security at a charter school. Even excellent veteran educators, like the three physical education teachers who were fired one year ago, are vulnerable.
We have already seen teachers suspended/expelled for not obeying Bill's orders. Here is a new protest Web site which introduces itself as “I AM AN EDUCATOR”. To quote the Washington-based teachers: “Well-funded but non-accountable organizations, such as the Broad Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, have invested their wealth to promote the policies of “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top”. These policies that purport to demand teacher accountability but ultimately reduce students and teachers to test scores–data points used to fire teachers, narrow the curriculum, keep students from graduating, privatize education, and close down scores of schools (primarily those that serve Black, Latino and students of color) across the nation.”
“Seattle-based blogs are among those which protest Gates’ agenda in education. Some of the rest have been bribed by Gates to counter those protests.”Seattle-based blogs are among those which protest Gates’ agenda in education. Some of the rest have been bribed by Gates to counter those protests. Gates has funding the lobby by paying Washington-based news sites and the outcome is clear to see (just see the comments). The Bill Gates-funded [1, 2] Seattle Times does its lobbying for Gates, failing to describe this as a politically-motivated (or for-profit) bribe. It is described as “aid” by the corporate press (also published here) as Gates is trying to generate PR by using slush funds, removing attention from actual teachers and instead generating puff pieces like [1, 2, 3]. See the report bearing the headline “More Gates dollars aim to bring charters to WA”.
“The short story is, Gates is paying for bogus studies and then bribes blogs and news sites to disseminate the resultant message for political change resulting in financial gain (privatisation).”The lobbying attempt is using bribed-for ‘studies’ which fail on many levels, as we showed here before. There is yet another new post breaking apart the latest propaganda from Gates. “This is from the Gates Foundation,” says this post which concludes as follows: “We’ve got a muddled middle, suggesting these predictions aren’t very good for 9 out of 10 teachers. One last point: Condensing the whole data set down to these 5% average points further “cleans” the data. To see what I mean, check out this post by Gary Rubinstein.”
The short story is, Gates is paying for bogus studies and then bribes blogs and news sites to disseminate the resultant message for political change resulting in financial gain (privatisation). Everyone including teachers seems too know it already, but Gates keep trying to gag his critics by overriding them or encumbering those who are still not enlightened with his PR. █
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Posted in Free/Libre Software at 10:07 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
This is what tomorrow’s ‘terrorists’ may look like to the ruling class…
Summary: Why software freedom is not enough for freedom as a whole and why technology rights in the age of ever-increasing Western oppression necessitate privacy, free speech, competition (e.g. forks, multiple trajectories), collaboration and other libertarian practices
Journalists, activists, protesters, dissenting online voices, whistleblowers (i.e. truth-tellers) and alternatives to the current economic system have come under attacks using laws that were passed to tackle terrorism. “Terrorism” as a label is nearly becoming synonymous with dissent when even Wikileaks gets called “terrorists” by some politicians and Occupy protests (against crimes of banks) get called “low-level terrorism”, then crushed by the FBI. It’s all about maintaining a status quo of profound economic disparity and a perpetual atmosphere of tension or bloody wars (motivated at times by greed, ideology, and racism). Many who engage in preserving or restoring justice are now literally terrorised. Let the press around the world go wild over the latest NSA scandal, knowing that they now have the hard evidence they needed. This is all over the British news today, including the radio. An old friend whom I’ve just had a long lunch with was taken by surprise by these latest revelations (to him it’s new and he is a businessman in his sixties). The debate about privacy is being transformed rapidly and radically right now. Imperialism and the accompanying oppression rear their ugly head for everybody to witness in shock and awe.
This is a good time to pause and ask ourselves, how can we defend ourselves from this tyrannical anarchy of pseudo accountability? First of all, pass the latest news reports to friends and loved ones. Make sure that everything they do over the wire and wireless (Internet and phone calls) they do with full knowledge that they may be recorded, even if they do nothing controversial and have never set foot on the United States (there is actually a worldwide conspiracy among fusion centres, just like ECHELON, so it’s not just a US issue). But this is just the first step. Tell them about free/libre software, putting aside the economic arguments. Free as in freedom-respecting software is a prerequisite, but it is not enough, not quite anyway. Now is a good time to equip friends and loved ones with freedom- and privacy-respecting software (non-free/libre software cannot be trusted for privacy unless it never ever in its entire lifetime gets access to an Internet connection or external media/peripherals). Make sure they know that everything they do online they should always be happy to make public to everyone (marking something private or “deleted” on the so-called ‘cloud’ has insufficient effect due to weak data retention regulations).
“”Terrorism” as a label is nearly becoming synonymous with dissent when even Wikileaks gets called “terrorists” by some politicians and Occupy protests (against crimes of banks) get called “low-level terrorism”, then crushed by the FBI.”If you are involved in a business which uses so-called ‘cloud’ services, put nothing personal there and, if possible, insist on internal-only use (self-hosted and firewalled with reputable encryption method at endpoints, e.g. Jabber). Changing for the better corporate choices of software, such as ‘clouds’, ought to be somewhat easier now that we know how the NSA and its international allies operate behind a veil of secrecy and documents do exist to prove it.
If you are using a third-party E-mail service, don’t. Self-hosted or domestically-hosted mail is not expensive and help can be sought when it comes to setup. Invite other people to drop US-based mail hosts like GMail, Yahoo Mail, and Microsoft’s brand du jour for E-mail. My wife and I only ever pass mail through localhost with strong encryption at the end-points. If you must buy a phone, buy it anonymously using cash and top it up as you go, using cash. Keep names off conversations and remove the battery when the phone is not used (we know for a fact that some phones can track and also record remotely when turned off; some got backdoored and turned into listening devices). Think this is paranoid? Then read Aaron Swartz’s full story. Think this is impractical? Then fine, it sure makes life a little harder — a sacrifice that many campaigners (however benign) must make. The Swartz fiasco hardly even started to make mainstream news until after he had committed suicide (watch how his Wikipedia article/biography has exploded in length since the day he died), whereupon the extremely unjust allegations and charges got dropped. Swartz was an effective advocate/campaigner in the field of copyright (not anti-war) and those who hounded him reached out for things he had written to prove intent to commit a non-crime which he never even committed. Secret agents, for a verified fact, were ‘assigned’ to him. Bradley Manning is currently being smeared in the corporate media for helping to expose war crimes; he had reached out to the Washington Post and New York Time (got ignored and turned away) before he came to Wikileaks. Notice the pattern; you hardly need to do anything but threaten those in power (or with a lot of money) to get hounded and spied on retroactively.
“If you surf controversial sites (not illegal, just controversial, which in some nations is illegal), be sure to use privacy-assuring VPN or Tor.”Don’t use cash machines with nearby phone/s switched on (suffice to say, with the exception of monthly billings which are banal anyway, do not make transaction with a credit/debit card as they all phone home to the NSA in the post-SWIFT era). The ATM (cash machine) is an identity checkpoint. One’s house can be roughly identified if the phone is used there too often. CCTV does not register one’s ID.
If you surf controversial sites (not illegal, just controversial, which in some nations is illegal), be sure to use privacy-assuring VPN or Tor. Better yet, consider setting up Tor nodes for those in the world whose authoritarianism is more trigger-happy and censorship-leaning. Judging by current trends, online censorship is only ever getting worse — not better — as this new thing called the Web grows, expanding to more nations and to more underprivileged people who find a voice or a source.
“Do not underestimate the extent of the surveillance industrial complex; it is embedded in society, possibly even in societies and clubs you are a part of.”Use SIP clients on the phone. Linphone has a good Android app which works well for me with video. Do not use Skype for video, voice, or even text. Microsoft recently confirmed that it is reading what you write. Assume all mobile and landline communication to be recorded, if not by you or the other participant/s, then by a corporation or a shadowy government contractor (as suggested in the UK years ago). Don’t share password over the phone and definitely not by E-mail. Don’t over-re-use passwords. Where possible, I always give people their passwords on a piece of paper, having handwritten it with a pen. You cannot have your mind read for the password and the US is currently breaking the Constitution by demanding that a man gives his decryption passphrase or go to prison. He is used as a witness against himself, but the Constitution defends his right for now (while prosecutors try to brute-force crack his hard drive and succeed to extent). Crypto-cracking is the NSA’s lesser-advertised role. Cryptology is disabled by default (if available at all) in many proprietary software applications where integrity of encryption algorithms (i.e. no back doors) cannot be verified and free(dom) software downloads of crypto packages is banned in some nations whose interests are seen as West-hostile (this controversy goes several years back and they label download “export” to make embargo rules applicable). Two relatives of two people I know were approached by spooks who tried to recruit them, one as a cracker and another as an informant (de facto infiltration); they both declined (and those who don’t decline cannot talk about it). Do not underestimate the extent of the surveillance industrial complex; it is embedded in society, possibly even in societies and clubs you are a part of. You would not know if you spoke to a secret agent unless s/he unmasked him/herself (at which point s/he was no longer secret). I only found myself speaking to a spook once (knowingly, there may be more), but I was warned in advance, so it already restricted the conversation. Be careful of Internet trolls or sources of provocation, or those who ask for more access into your privacy without first earning deep trust. Some provocation is indeed to incite and incriminate; same with the latter — it is to demonise, ‘expose’, destroy reputation or derail popular action against notorious rulers.
“Be careful of Internet trolls or sources of provocation, or those who ask for more access into your privacy without first earning deep trust.”Secret agencies are very relevant to software freedom and decentralisation because they help show us that free/libre software is essential. They can’t suppress it when people recognise what’s at stake. I may live a harder life because I choose to challenge some zealous forms of authority, but it sure feels rewarding. Recycling one’s trash and enjoying a life without materialism is a gift money can’t buy. Switch off public broadcast (government-endorsed programming), neglect and dismiss consumerism as a time-consuming distraction, pick up some digital tools that come in source code form and help fix what has become a corrupt society — one where the biggest criminals usually wear suits, loot everyone, and sneer at all those ‘smelly peasants’ from whom they derive all of their power. █
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Posted in Microsoft, Patents at 3:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The Red Room is still dominated by corporate guests like Gates and Ballmer
Summary: A summary of thoughts and analysis amid White House statements regarding the patent system
There is good news but also bad news, as we noted earlier this week. For quite some time now, US politicians have been pushing for reform involving trolls but not software patents, or scale rather than scope [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7].
“…fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria.”
–Richard StallmanA high-tier court decision regarding software patents sure had the potential to change the consensus about patentability of software in the US. It didn’t happen though. The patent lawyers are littering 'legal' sites (designed for patent lawyers’ interests, suiting the target sudience) with yet more promotion of software patents, characterising the latest CAFC ruling as providing “limited guidance”. The problem is, the news feeds on the subject of software patents are filled to the rim with software patents promotion like this. By this point, those who claimed that many software patents had died in the US have been mostly washed away by the stampede of overzealous patent lawyers. It was the same after the Bilski case. Life goes on, the status quo is hardly challenged.
The EFF has lost its sting because it recently started focusing on patent trolls again (like this one), instead of software patents. Here is the alleged troll:
The “inventor,” Jim Logan, started a completely failed business around delivering audio news on cassettes. And now he claims to have invented podcasting and wants a cut. Once again, it’s an example of everything that’s wrong with the patent system.
Dr. Richard Stallman, whom I habitually chat with, famously said that “fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria.”
Likewise, going after one particular segment is hardly the solution to the problem.
A lot of reports about Obama’s attention to patent trolls can be found out there, including weird intervention by a SCOTUS judge. As one reporter put it:
Given the timeliness of the issue, it’s no shock to see an op-ed about the issue in today’s New York Times, suggesting a solution to “[t]he onslaught of litigation brought by ‘patent trolls.’” But the missive comes from a surprising and influential source—Randall Rader, the Chief Judge for the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which hears all patent appeals.
Here is the original. Just like Judge Posner [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], Rader turns into some kind of columnist, which is inappropriate and unprofessional. Rader responds to the White House’s move, showing himself to be another politician in a robe. Here is the original fact sheet accompanying this blog post, request for feedback, and social media posts. Well, we’ll spare unneeded repetition of the news and concentrate on EFF posts from Julie Samuels, who targets not software patents but patent trolls (loss of focus at the EFF). Gérald Sédrati-Dinet (of April) tells Samuels “go go go for a clear exclusion and/or exception for #SoftwarePatents” while Andy Updegrove, a “good lawyer”, has this analysis which says:
Yesterday, the Obama administration announced a new effort to curb baseless patent lawsuits, which it believes are stifling innovation and economic activity. The new initiative would take five actions under the President’s Executive authority, and also makes seven legislative recommendations intended, “to protect innovators from frivolous litigation and ensure the highest-quality patents in our system.”
Steph Kennedy, the person behind That Patent Tool and a funny blog about patent trolls, wrote about this also. Matthew Rimmer thinks aloud: “Given Obama’s US initiatives, why doesn’t the Trans-Pacific Partnership have proper safeguards against “patent trolls”?” Good question and probably a rhetorical one, too.
Press coverage [1, 2] and blog coverage [1, 2], including coverage from the Gates-funded ‘Guardian’, has not been great. It was shallow and it didn’t add much, unlike Masnick’s great site which noted:
We’d already discussed President Obama’s proposals for patent reform, but now that the announcement is official, it’s worth also looking at the report about the broken patent system that was released at the same time from the White House, put together by the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, the National Economic Council, and the Office of Science & Technology Policy. It’s a quick read, but does cover many of the high points of just how broken the system remains.
Will Obama put an end to Intellectual Ventures (IV), by far the world’s biggest patent troll which was was recently exposed as having around 2,000 proxies? It’s a pyramid scheme that should be pursued with criminal charges, not a mere reform in the patent system. Watch the “Cult of Gates” as iophk calls it. The pro-Microsoft site which does damage control like this as the CIO of Microsoft quits, is still trying to portray IV as anything but a troll. Bishop, a longtime friend of Microsoft who has whitewashed the Gates Foundation with its patent troll partner (IV) and continues to do so, is at it again, responding to the facts about IV by saying “Microsoft chief technology officer, who still works regularly with Bill Gates on a variety of businesses and projects.”
“Google knows how to fight, and if you look at their record, they tend to win in the end. As for Microsoft, is their motto, Always do Evil?”
–Pamela JonesYes, Gates is well connected to this troll and he too should come under Obama’s hammer, but will he?
Here is the original piece (transcript) and a timely reminder that trolls are not the sole issue. Obama should also go after companies like Monsanto and Microsoft,
Simon Phipps, OSI President, says about the damage control from the pyramid scheme that “Intellectual Ventures recognises we all think their business stinks and promises to do a better job hiding it” (IV is quite secretive indeed, and the thousands of proxies help obfuscate its modus operadi).
Pamela Jones helps remind us of how Microsoft uses trolls as proxies in its battles. Regarding Vringo Jones wrote: “A couple of things about this Vringo affair. First, Mark Cuban bought a 7% interest. Blech. Speaking of stupid patents, Google has asked for reexamination of the patents, and some of the claims were already preliminarily rejected. And with Google’s record in patent cases, these greedy folks may just end up put out of the Vringo lawsuit business. Hence Microsoft transferring to them some patents? You think? You can find directions to find the USPTO office action on the two patents in suit — 6,314,420 and 6,775,664 — here if you’d like to track it, and if you know of any prior art, sing out. Vringo investors stated that their goal was multiple billions in both damages and royalties from Google, and that dream has died, and they also predicted that they’d send Google’s stock to zero. What kind of malevolent dream is that? They imagined Google would settle. Good luck with that, bullies. Google knows how to fight, and if you look at their record, they tend to win in the end. As for Microsoft, is their motto, Always do Evil?”
On a separate occasion she wrote regarding MOSAID, another troll which Microsoft uses as a proxy. Correctly, in light of this article she wrote: “Good! People are noticing what I’m noticing. Have I not been telling you this for a long time? And may I please point out a smarmy irony? Microsoft is complaining with tears and loud outcries to courts about Motorola asking its usual price for FRAND patents, and meanwhile, it joins with Nokia to transfer FRAND patents to a troll, with the explicit hope of being able to avoid the FRAND commitment, as the article points out: “Nokia could not assert these 2,000 patents without breaking patent peace and risking counter-suits for patent infringement. MOSAID can use these patents without fear because MOSAID does not practice in the industry and immune to countersuits. The transfer also allows Nokia to evade a FRAND commitment not to charge more than 2% total royalty for all the wireless SEPs in Nokia’s portfolio.” Priceless. 2% is very close to what Motorola was asking. How amazing Microsoft’s gall is. Nokia… what can I say? It’s pitiful. Doesn’t Microsoft know how to compete without antitrust issues coming to stage front, center? They should put some of this wonderful energy into making better phones and tablets, methinks, instead. And if they can’t, they should step back and leave others alone instead working for destruction of others whose products people actually do want to buy. Patent litigation is what dying companies resort to. The article doesn’t seem to have a link to the article it says we should all read, so I looked around, and I think this is probably the one [PDF], an article titled “Patent Assertion Entities and Antitrust: Operating Company Patent Transfers” from April, available on the Antitrust Source website.”
“MOSAID can use these patents without fear because MOSAID does not practice in the industry and immune to countersuits.”
–Pamela JonesAnd what about IV? This is Microsoft’s largest troll proxy. It feeds companies that act as second-tier proxies, e.g, Lodsys, to attack Android and Apple’s iOS developers, essentially extorting them.
Jones had this to say about Apple: “Here’s what I think folks are missing. They keep writing that Samsung hasn’t done well in the US against Apple, as if Apple keeps winning. It won once, damages, but it failed to win an injunction. As for the Motorola case, Motorola won an injunction against Microsoft in Germany, but Microsoft then got a home-team judge in Seattle to block it. Samsung also won several rulings against Apple in the UK and in Europe. It prevailed in a Dutch ruling just this week, which found that it had not infringed Apple’s design patents. The UK not only ruled the same; if force Apple to publicly apologize for claiming that Samsung was a copycat.
“What is significant about this win for Samsung is this: It is the first time either Samsung or Apple has won an injunction against the other. The second huge win is because Samsung won at the ITC with FRAND patents, which both Apple and Microsoft have been claiming should never be allowed to even ask for an injunction. If we analyze the whole picture, then, I’d have to say Samsung is now doing better than Apple. I hate software patents, personally, and I don’t believe they are valid, and watching this all play out makes me hate them more, but if you are analyzing events, there is no question Apple’s thermonuclear war against Android is fizzling out, and after the President’s trim-the-trolls announcement, I think extremist patent strategies will be less and less successful, precisely because we are all sick of it and the President is now sick of it too, evidently. He may be focusing specifically on trolls, but all the fighting is exhausting and unappealing to watch play out. Nobody, other than the parties,
wants either company’s products banned. There. I said it. We hate patent law for even making all this possible.”
“…after the President’s trim-the-trolls announcement, I think extremist patent strategies will be less and less successful, precisely because we are all sick of it and the President is now sick of it too, evidently.”
–Pamela JonesAndroid is not under attacks only by trolls but also Apple, Microsoft and Oracle (CPTN), which faces growing opposition as documented by Groklaw over the past week or so. Tackling the trolls won’t be enough. Jones too said this several times before, so why cheer so much over Obama’s latest move?
Microsoft’s chief patent terrorist, Horacio Gutierrez, says “Devil’s in the details: Proposal to expand business method rules to software patents could harm innovation and jobs” (link to Microsoft’s lobbying blog where extortion legalisation is constantly advocated by Gutierrez). At least we see reaffirmation of Microsoft’s strong anti-Linux and anti-FOSS position. How convenient software patents must be for them now that they have a monopoly and a pocket deep enough to engage in SLAPP-based (strategic lawsuit against public participation) racketeering. █
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Posted in Microsoft at 3:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The NSA Mafia Don, Keith B. Alexander
Summary: What the newest NSA leaks teach us and why Microsoft is the most dangerous company in the food chain of this secret establishment of international surveillance
THE surveillance industrial complex is expanding very fast, with new datacentres and recruits being added to a secretive legion of almost 50,000 staff, plus the staff of data-hoarding technology corporations, notably in the United States (Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and beyond). Microsoft is a big component of it, especially with recent acquisitions like Skype and privacy-violating, living room-intruding spatial camera technology. This is not a theory but an established fact, although the corporate media often turns a blind eye (journalists are under war by the administration), which means that so-called ‘reporters’ omit details upon request, avoid covering some topics due to “national security”, and even plant disinformation, as we recently saw Murdoch’s press (Fox) doing for the NSA (more on that later).
“It is worth noting that the NSA is outsourcing the development of illegal spying software”It is worth noting that the NSA is outsourcing the development of illegal spying software. It should also be noted upfront that Microsoft is not alone in this, but Microsoft is worst when it comes to violations because on many computers Microsoft has its system running, and routinely (more often than not) the machine is left open to remote intrusion while connected to the Internet. We covered some examples before (see CIPAV for instance). People’s rights when put in the hands of companies like Microsoft are always bound to erode. Recently we explained how Xbox One removes people's control over games that they purchase (the computer will phone mother ship Microsoft routinely for no practical purpose as far as the user is concerned) and Tim Cushing speaks of this sacrifice of rights as follows: “As Microsoft stumbles towards the eventual release of the Xbox One (an all-in-one console apparently aimed at replacing all of your entertainment devices with a sleek black box equipped with eyes, ears and a frustrating inability to fire up a secondhand game without tossing some cash Points into the tollbooth), gamers (for the most part) have expressed their irritation and disbelief, even going so far as to call on Sony to not eff up the next Playstation with the same sort of purposefully limited feature set.”
This whole experiment known as Xbox has been a failed attempt to reposition Microsoft as an appliances company. Microsoft just lost billions of dollars and took a toll to its name when many people suffered from technical problems in the Xbox 360 (not just Red Rings of Death).
“That is why Microsoft feels like it needs to feed some patent trolls, extort numerous companies using patent terrorism, and bribe those among them which complain, notably B & N.”Based on a CBS article which cites another, things are not working for Microsoft at present, with Google and Android taking the lion’s share of the market. That is why Microsoft feels like it needs to feed some patent trolls, extort numerous companies using patent terrorism, and bribe those among them which complain, notably B & N.
The Microsoft-affiliated press engages in revisionism that misportrays computing history and helps boost software patents, showing a rather embarrassing disregard for facts. What Microsoft became better known for in recent years is censorship and surveillance, demonstrating the importance of software freedom. Here is some new example of Windows leaving the users open for intrusion by anyone:
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Google security expert Tavis Ormandy has discovered a security vulnerability in Windows which can be exploited by any user on the system to obtain administrator privileges. Rather than reporting the vulnerability to Microsoft, he posted details to the Full Disclosure security mailing list in mid-May and has now published an exploit to the same mailing list.
Ormandy is a familiar figure in the security world. In recent years, the security expert has discovered many different vulnerabilities. He has also been known to take the shortest route when it comes to sharing information on vulnerabilities he has discovered: full disclosure, meaning rapid publication without informing the organisation behind the vulnerable software beforehand.
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Sigh. Here we go again, a billion PCs with little or no security simply because they run M$’s OS. Even if you love M$’s software for other reason, no sane person should let all their IT rest on M$. They are an unreliable “partner”. With all the money they have they are not able to secure their OS because it is defective by design.
The NSA can now intrude any Windows-running PC, with impunity.
There are two types of controversy right now, both linked to the NSA and some new leaks. One is about Verizon phone records and another is about Fog Computing surveillance.
The FSF links to this report from The Guardian (I spoke to Richard Stallman about it last year), whereas the EFF focuses on another aspect of it. The good news is that the public all around the world is starting to catch up with the illegalities of the NSA (this is not news for many, but probably for most), which just like the CIA should be de-funded for engaging in criminal activities against whatever it perceives to be threat to “national interest”. Before he got assassinated President John Kennedy was quoted as saying he wanted to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.” Here is the latest news:
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The U.S. government has obtained a top secret court order that requires Verizon to turn over the telephone records of millions of Americans to the National Security Agency on an “ongoing daily basis,” the UK-based Guardian newspaper reported.
The four-page order, which The Guardian published on its website Wednesday, requires the communications giant to turn over “originating and terminating” telephone numbers as well as the location, time and duration of the calls — and demands that the order be kept secret.
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Top secret court order requiring Verizon to hand over all call data shows scale of domestic surveillance under Obama
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The Obama administration called government review of complete phone records of U.S. customers a “critical tool” in protecting the public from terrorists.
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It’s worse than we thought.
Just one day after disclosing the existence of a secret court order between the National Security Agency (NSA) and Verizon, The Guardian and The Washington Post both published secret presentation slides revealing the existence of a previously undisclosed massive surveillance program called PRISM. The program has the capability to collect data “directly from the servers” of major American tech companies, including Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook and Yahoo. (Dropbox is said to be “coming soon.”)
The newspapers describe the system as one giving the National Security Agency and the FBI direct access to a huge number of online commercial services, capable of “extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time.”
To quote a key paragraph: “The Post describes the source who sent the slides as a “career intelligence officer” who had firsthand experience with PRISM and expressed “horror” at what it could do. “They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type,” the officer said.”
This is still being covered by very large publications at this very moment, finally making a major public debate over issues we have covered here for a long time (in daily links I have included nearly one thousand news links about the NSA). When people realise they’re under constant surveillance they’re rather outraged. It’s no longer just those “terrorists”, it’s everyone. Everyone is treated like a terrorist.
“It’s no longer just those “terrorists”, it’s everyone. Everyone is treated like a terrorist.”As shown above, even CNN and Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal (WSJ) covered the Verizon news, so it is no longer as secretive as it used to be. They have no point hiding it, as it would damage their credibility now that it’s major worldwide news (one of our readers says it may all be a non-news distraction to move attention away from imminent US intervention in Syria). Funnily enough, it was Murdoch’s other press, Fox ‘news’, which helped the NSA deny the allegations that it was spying on Americans. Fox ran a story back in April, receiving many links from hundreds of resultant articles that helped whitewash the NSA. What does it feel like to have lied to the public at such a large scale, at great expense to civil liberties and dignity? The mistake of Binney and Drake is that they didn’t leak enough hard documents to support their claims, leaving Murdoch et al. (plutocrats-run press) to exploit the benefit of the doubt and resort to plausible deniability (“a term coined by the CIA”). The latest NSA leaks change that. █
“But rather than a search engine or even a “decision engine”, Bing also appears to be a spin engine, in that it provides partisan answers to controversial topics, such as Steve Ballmer’s propensity to throw chairs to blow off stress.”
–Christian Einfeldt
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06.06.13
Posted in News Roundup at 4:11 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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Not only is GNU/Linux dominating web sites, it is running a lot of routers, DNS, DHCP servers and other gadgets that make it all work. In Netcraft’s latest Web-hosting survey, of 42 hosters:
28 run GNU/Linux
7 run FreeBSD and
only 5 run M$’s OS.
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PC vendors have started bringing Intel’s 4th generation Haswell powered devices to the market. Fujitusi has announced LIFEBOOK UH90/L, which it calls the world’s thinnest Ultrabook. This Ultrabook has quite a lot to talk about. UH90 is powered by energy efficient 1.6GHz Haswell Core i5–4200U processor.
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AMD, the chip maker which was making chips exclusively for Microsoft’s Windows platform is now considering designing chips for Google’s open source Android and Chrome OS.
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I have been a faithful user of the Microsoft Windows operating systems for over two decades, starting with Windows 3.1 back in the early 1990s. Over the years, I upgraded to Windows 95, 98, Millennium, 2000, XP, Vista, and finally Windows 7. When I started using GNU/Linux in about 2004, I happily used GNU/Linux and Windows side-by-side, effortlessly switching between the two operating systems. However, Windows 8 would take me along a path that I cannot follow. It is time for me to finally get off of the Windows train.
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Audiocasts/Shows
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Kernel Space
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The Tiny Parallel Proportion Scheduler (TPPS) is a new I/O scheduler for Linux to appear on the kernel mailing list.
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Applications
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In the past, when I had to manage my images (pictures) I used GQview (which started back in 2008). But the application doesn’t get many updates, and if an application does not get many updates, it either means it is no longer maintained or that it does its job perfectly. Sadly, for GQview, it is the unmaintained reason (even though the application seems to work pretty well for most tasks). Enter Geeqie, a fork of GQview to keep evolution on the application up to speed.
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Proprietary
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I’m a child of the 1980s. Miami Vice! Skinny ties! Big hair! Honest, I had hair then…and every town had at least one good video game arcade.
Thanks to the super affordable Raspberry Pi and some clever software, anyone can re-create the classic arcade experience at home. Adafruit brings the genuine “clicky” arcade controls, you bring the game files and a little crafting skill to build it.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Games
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Aurelien Regard, co-founder of now-defunct Pix’n Love Rush developer Arkedo Studios, announced the upcoming release of Poöf vs. The Cursed Kitty, an arcade-style action game developed in collaboration with Neko Entertainment.
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Available for Windows PC and Xbox 360 since September 2012, Gateways will be launched for Mac and Linux on July 16th, 2013, Smudged Cat Games announced. Gateways for OSX and Linux will be priced at $5, the same as the current Windows version. It will be available through Steam and directly from the Smudged Cat Games website which also includes a free Steam key.
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Your job as immigration inspector is to control the flow of people entering the Arstotzkan side of Grestin from Kolechia. Among the throngs of immigrants and visitors looking for work are hidden smugglers, spies, and terrorists. Using only the documents provided by travelers and the Ministry of Admission’s primitive inspect, search, and fingerprint systems you must decide who can enter Arstotzka and who will be turned away or arrested.
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All four are also available now through Steam individually and on the ubuntu software center. You’ve got about a week left to order the bundle at any price, but you’ll have to pay more than the average price (at the time of writing is a little under $6 USD) to get these four new games. If you’ve already bought the bundle at more than the average price the new games are on your receipt page or in your account.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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So, I have good news about Day Five. I have nothing negative to report whatsoever. I’m over the hurdles of the adjustment period and I find myself able to operate very well in GNOME Classic.
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The GNOME Project announced a few days ago the immediate availability for download and testing of the second development release of the upcoming GNOME Shell 3.10 user interface.
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There are plenty of free Linux flavours to choose from: we help you pick the right one
Linux has never been more popular. Free operating systems based on the open-source kernel and applications are a great way to take control of your PC, or breathe new life into old hardware.
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First, I agree with Andy that this is a good way to use Fedora instances. With so many ways to spin up quickly a instance that does just exactly what you need it to these days, this should work great for a number of use cases. Lennart points out that containers is a even quicker/more minimal way to do things for some use cases ( https://plus.google.com/115547683951727699051/posts/G1DTXebUGGN ). Tie this to a CM like ansible and it’s easy to fire up and test your app in the next Fedora and move to it when you are ready, or even in an updated Fedora of the same version you are currently running.
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New Releases
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The Alpine Linux project is pleased to announce the immediate availablity of version 2.6.1 of its Alpine Linux operating system.
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Red Hat Family
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Legendary investor Warren Buffett advises to be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. One way we can try to measure the level of fear in a given stock is through a technical analysis indicator called the Relative Strength Index, or RSI, which measures momentum on a scale of zero to 100. A stock is considered to be oversold if the RSI reading falls below 30.
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The beta release of Red Hat developer toolset 2.0 arrives this month with new features to develop applications for deployment on both Red Hat Enterprise Linux and on OpenShift. This latest version is designed to enable C and C++ developers to compile once and deploy to multiple versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux on physical, virtual, and cloud environments.
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Fedora
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Debian Family
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Here is the monthly report for my first full month as the Debian Project
Leader.
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Flavours and Variants
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So, In this video I look over the install process and a quick look at the three launchers that Kubuntu 13.10 ships. Application Launcher, Application Launcher Menu and Homerun.
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Meshcom Technologies, Inc. today announced its new brand name – EmbedOne – for its new embedded Linux line of business. At the same time, new publicly available suite of software and services for the embedded Linux community was announced.
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Why I bought Raspberry PI? Well, first because I was curious about it and second to gift it to one of my friends. Unfortunately she had been robbed (her laptop was gone!) and she also recently has been added to the 27% (probably more) of un-employment people in Greece.
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Phones
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Ballnux
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It’s raining smartphones these days, and Samsung has made it sure theirs doesn’t break when the rain hits the ground. Today Samsung announced a new flavor of their flagship Galaxy S4 — Active — that is, in their own words, “the perfect companion for exploration, activity and adventure”. In short, Galaxy S4 Active is the rugged version of the soft and delicate S4.
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Android
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At the Google I/O Conference, the company announced new APIs that every developer should know about – especially those who care about location services, cloud messaging and Bluetooth.
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Sub-notebooks/Tablets
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I apologize for the confusion. The Plasma Active and, what’s being referred to here as the “Ubuntu Tablet”, are two different tablets – two different Linux builds. The Ubuntu tablet is of course going to run Ubuntu and the Plasma Active will run Mer Linux and KDE. Thank you to those who pointed this out! I appreciate your input and keeping me straight.
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Up to this point, the only expectation of a future Linux tablet has been embedded in the rumors (and hopes) of an Ubuntu tablet.
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In case you have any doubts that Mozilla is going to release a Firefox OS tablet in the future, we’re here to tell you that you shouldn’t be entertaining those kinds of thoughts at all. And why? Because the Firefox OS tablet is real, and it’s here, at least in pre-retail form as seen in the Foxconn booth at this year’s Computex expo in Taipei, Taiwan.
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A goal of Open Source is that the model allows alliances to be built among randomly distributed remote developers. The theory goes that the collective ingenuity of many remote contributors can focus together on improving and creating a much more rich product than what can be created by a single individual or small closed group. The success of Linux springs to mind immediately as an example of Open Source collaboration work well and what many people would consider to be even better than the traditional process of closed development.
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The edX learning platform has now completed its transition to open source and is available under an AGPL licence. The core of the system is the edx-platform which includes both the LMS (Learning Management System) and Studio, a tool for creating courses. Other parts of the system, such as the XBlock component architecture for courseware, machine-learning-based grading such as EASE, the discern tool, deployment tools, interfaces to external grading systems and Python execution utilities, can all be found on the new code.edx.org.
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If open-source software and technology was a brand in its own right, it might borrow the popular 1968 tagline for Virginia Slims: You’ve come a long way, baby.
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Rockchip’s RK3188 processor is one of the fastest ARM Cortex-A9 chips around. The 28nm quad-core processor outperforms the chips found in the Samsung Galaxy S III and Google Nexus 7, for instance. And it’s a relatively inexpensive chip, which explains why it’s proven popular with Chinese tablet and TV box makers.
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Web Browsers
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Mozilla
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French Mozillux may look a lot like LXDE-based Lubuntu Linux, but don’t be fooled. This portable Linux distro, which targets both beginners and intermediate users, offers a surprisingly comprehensive selection of installed software for users with a wide range of interests. It’s easily as flexible and usable as Puppy and Knoppix; just make sure you follow the developers’ download instructions.
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It’s been a few months since I last checked in on the progress of Australis, the new Firefox interface coming to Windows, Mac and, of course, Linux.
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SaaS/Big Data
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Databases
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Salesforce has been increasingly looking into PostgreSQL, an open source database, and hiring people who could provide some alternative to Oracle. The rationale is clear: Salesforce needs to diversify away from Oracle’s databases and potentially rearchitect for the future.
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Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
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In an earlier post (http://lodahl.blogspot.dk/2013/05/exiting-new-design-initiative.html) I wrote about the new design features that will be exposed as experimental feature in LibreOffice 4.1.
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Semi-Open Source
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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Licensing
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It is often said that open source and open standards are different, because in open source, a diversity of forks is accepted/encouraged, while “forked” standards are confusing/inefficient since they don’t provide “stable reference points” for the people who have to implement the spec.
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Openness/Sharing
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When Formlabs raised $2,945,885 on Kickstarter for its high resolution 3-D printer in October 2012, neither company was expecting a lawsuit. Still, 3D Systems, one of the biggest names in 3-D printing, sued both companies, accusing them of patent infringement. Debate swept the maker community — a 3-D printed Kickstarter project boycotted 3D Systems, and Formlabs ended up shipping their printers, undaunted by the legal threat.
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The annual Black Hat USA security conference is coming up at the end of July and the hype around big attacks has already started. One of the early hyped talks is about hacking Apple power chargers to infect IOS (iPad,iPhone) devices.
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OpenDaylight got started in April of this year as a multi-stakeholder open source group run under the auspices of the Linux Foundation. The initial group of members included Arista Networks, Big Switch Networks, Brocade, Cisco, Citrix, Dell, Ericsson, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Intel, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, NEC, Nuage Networks, PLUMgrid, Red Hat, and VMware. Now, after not getting its way in a technical discussion, Big Switch is pulling out.
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Programming
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Want to build an Android app but don’t want to bother with the backend nuts and bolts that keep it running properly? Google has got you covered. The Android maker has released a cloud-based backend kit which handles some of the nitty-gritty work of creating an app which requires authentication, cloud storage, server queries and push notifications. This offering also operates on Google’s App Engine cloud service which offers server scaling and a host of Google APIs, all manageable through a web-based dashboard. In essence, Google wants developers to not to just write apps for Android, but to write apps using their APIs and standards, and they’re willing to give away the keys to do it.
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Standards/Consortia
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Actually, WebRTC is the biggest change we face today. The full impact is probably 2 years out–but it’s coming. Here are the critical issues still to be resolved.
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Google has reversed its previous decision to restrict access to CalDAV API to only select and large partners. The decision raised questions over Google’s commitment to open standard and open source. Google says that the decision was based on impression that “almost all the API usage was driven by a few large developers,” says Piotr Stanczyk, the Tech Lead of the Google Calendar APIs group.
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Science
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Coveted by exotic pet dealers and handbag-makers, colorful monitor lizards in Southeast Asia may be facing more serious conservation threats than thought, researchers say.
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Health/Nutrition
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Ice cream manufacturer Ben & Jerry’s has committed to switching to all non-GMO ingredients in its ice cream products by the end of this year.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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In a courtroom base near Tacoma, Washington, Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales will plead guilty today to killing 16 civilians–most of them women and children–in an Afghan village on March 11, 2012. Bales will give his first account of the attack under oath as part of the hearing, in order to avoid the death penalty (New York Times, 6/05/13). The incident remains one of the most shocking slaughters of civilians in the Afghan War. The massacre received some media attention at the time, though much of that discussion was about the problems it would pose for the U.S. war there.
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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The Illinois legislature has passed a fracking regulatory bill, expected to be signed into law by the governor, hailed by some environmental groups as the “toughest in the country.” But other groups are highly critical, both of the bill and of the way some big environmental groups worked with legislators and industry to pass it into law.
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Finance
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Much attention has been paid lately to Goldman Sachs’ decision to “help” average folks (a.k.a. the 99% crowd) access the kind of high-stakes hedge funds once available only to the superrich (a.k.a. the 1%). And while all sorts of pundits and investor advocates have noted the folly of this and similar ideas, there’s a case to be made that the opposite is true — that average investors might do well by throwing some money Goldman’s way. In fact, there are two cases to be made. Allow me to explain.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin are fast-tracking a controversial bill to keep political donors secret, enact voter ID, and limit early voting, among other measures, with a vote scheduled for next week. The only public hearing on the bill was held Tuesday, where a representative of the business lobby made several misleading assertions about the bill’s disclosure provisions.
“Our main message today to the committee is to please slow down,” Jonathan Becker and Mike Haas of the state Government Accountability Board told the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections.
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Censorship
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Today, along with the Open Rights Group, English PEN and Index on Censorship, we have signed a letter to Culture Secretary Maria Miller highlighting our concerns about the current debate around ‘blocking’ internet content.
It is absolutely right to pursue the removal of illegal content from the internet, but moving to a system where legal content is blocked poses a clear and significant risk to freedom of speech. The triviality of circumventing blocks aside, such a policy risks blocking legitimate websites and setting a dangerous international precedent. After all, who gets to decide what legal content is deemed to be unfit for the British public?
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Privacy
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Facebook is on the defensive again. Members of the social networking site sued the company for co-opting their identities in online ads, and Facebook agreed to revise its “Statement of Rights and Responsibilities” and offer a $20 million settlement. The case has drawn less attention than the dorm disputes portrayed in The Social Network, but the impact is far wider. An underpublicized aspect of the dispute concerns the power of online contracts, and ultimately, whether users or corporations have more control over life online.
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Civil Rights
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A federal judge today halted an order that a Wisconsin man decrypt 16 computer drives the authorities suspect contain child pornography downloaded from the peer-to-peer file-sharing site e-Donkey.
The brief ruling (.pdf) by U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa of Milwaukee came a day after the suspect’s attorney urged Randa to halt a magistrate’s earlier order that Jeffrey Feldman decrypt the drives by today or potentially face indefinite detention until he complied.
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Hundreds of Rana Plaza workers and their families take to the streets to demand back pay and compensation
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DRM
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Apple Inc goes to trial Monday over allegations by federal and state authorities that it conspired with publishers to raise the price of e-books.
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft at 9:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Ballmer to Myanmar: what’s in your wallet?
Summary: Microsoft is seeding a culture of begging — begging for middle- and low-classed people to pay Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates in exchange for rights-violating binaries
THIS news about Microsoft greed is nothing illegal like EDGI, but it sure shows how desperate Microsoft is becoming. The Microsoft boosting site (a tabloid called ZDNet) is quoting Microsoft talking points and “[k]icking a country when it’s already down,” to quote iophk, who brought this despicable PR to our attention. What it’s all about is trying to derive revenue from some of the world’s poorest people while of course elbowing Free/libre software.
“…it looks like Microsoft is scared of chromebooks showing up at the universities and dorms in September.”
–iophkBut wait, there’s more from the Microsoft boosters. Microsoft-funded folks from GeekWire (previous employers had received money from Microsoft) kept doing their Microsoft advocacy, noting that in order to stop Chromebooks/Linux in education Microsoft is trying a new strategy similar but not identical to the infamous laptop bribes (expensive gifts in exchange for positive reviews). Here is how Slashdot put it: “Q. What do Chris Brown and Steve Ballmer have in common? A. They both want you to Beg for It. GeekWire reports that Microsoft is touting its new Chip In program, a crowdfunding platform that allows students to ‘beg’ for select Windows 8 PCs and tablets that they can’t afford on their own. Blair Hanley Frank explains, ‘Students go to the Chip In website and choose one of the 20 computers and tablets that have been pre-selected by Microsoft. Microsoft chips in 10% of the price right off the bat, and then students are given a link to a “giving page” to send out to anyone they think might give them money. Once their computer is fully funded, Microsoft ships it to them.’ Hey, what could go wrong?”
iophk adds: “About the Slashdot link, it looks like Microsoft is scared of chromebooks showing up at the universities and dorms in September. I haven’t looked but figure the ‘approved’ models might be quite locked down. However, there is a risk for the students not only do they look bad spamming their contact list if things go wrong they could end up with a Vista8 laptop.”
Changing the subject a bit, it could be even worse. Maybe they could end up with a Microsoft-taxed Dell laptop running Ubuntu (legitimising Microsoft’s patent tax on GNU/Linux). Not too long ago Ubuntu’s community leader/manager was given a gift by Microsoft (which had tried to hire him), buying itself some valuable PR. He has a long history of visits to Microsoft, e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11]. After apparent entryism Ubuntu is no longer competing with Microsoft on the desktop, Its new bug #1 is Android having majority market share.
If this is the appalling company that Ubuntu/Canonical is liaising with, then it oughtn’t get away with excusing itself based on claims that Microsoft has changed. Microsoft and Canonical are partners now. █
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Kernel, Security at 9:10 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Corporate insecurity for Insyde Software, corporate security for Microsoft
Summary: Promotion of bad ideas by Insyde Software merits another discussion about what UEFI actually means to ordinary GNU/Linux users
The main problem with UEFI is its effect on freedom. It’s not just about restricted boot but also patents and other issues covered in the criticism section in Wikipedia.
A new press release from Taiwan describes UEFI as a security mechanism, but this is utter fiction. Last month I spoke for over an hour with the president of the UEFI Forum, covering in length the aspect of security. He too was led to agreeing with me that security is hardly improved by UEFI, which can have its barriers bypassed and ignored. The press release says something like this:
Insyde Software, a leading provider of Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) BIOS, today announced the availability of new UEFI security features including Secure Boot and secure firmware update for leading Linux distributions.
No, thanks. Linux does not need UEFI for security. Even Torvalds rejects the 'security' claim (he dislikes ‘secure’ boot in general [1, 2]). So the above is a marketing gimmick, that’s all. Insyde Software will boost flawed claims of ‘security’, so we should all be prepared to rebut.
Dr. Garrett, an expert in this field and occasional apologist, demonstrated that UEFI with Linux can brick hardware [1, 2, 3]. So much for security, eh? He is supporting it, sadly enough, based on very weak grounds. He should have antagonised it instead. Earlier this week he posted an update on the bricking issue:
Meanwhile, Samsung got back to us and let us know that their systems didn’t require more than 5KB of nvram space to be available, which meant we could get rid of the 50% value and replace it with 5KB. The hope was that any system that booted with only 5KB of space available in nvram would trigger a garbage collection run. Unfortunately, it turned out that that wasn’t true – some systems will only trigger garbage collection if the OS actually makes an attempt to write a variable that won’t otherwise fit.
So the search for a solution goes on under the false pretences that buggy, experimental UEFI sometimes adds something for GNU/Linux users to enjoy. The practical benefits of UEFI are very minor to ordinary desktop users. UEFI is good for two monopolies: the Intel/x86 monopoly and the Windows monopoly. █
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06.05.13
Posted in News Roundup at 3:31 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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Linux currently has probably the largest selection of desktop environment options that any OS has ever had in their entire life. ZorinOS is yet another derivative of the popular Ubuntu Distro and is currently in Version 7. It is based on Ubuntu 13.04 thus offering the latest of what Ubuntu has to offer to the Linux community. But the look and feel is classic Windows 7.
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Linux is not an OS, but it is the kernel, GNU Linux is the OS
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Desktop
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It’s pretty clear they have given up trying to sell “8″ on the low end. There’s a lot of */Linux on the low-end to the middle, I would say.
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Server
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This ease of use was especially appreciated when the Banner student system was being deployed. No real standardised configuration and provisioning methodology exists for Oracle Real application Clusters (RaC) nodes. “as a team, we had to come up with a design that we could repeat for all RaC clusters within the infrastructure,” said Swaminathan.
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Kernel Space
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PulseAudio is a sound server that’s become quite popular in Linux distributions and has, in fact, replaced most other sound systems in recent years. It was a rough transition there for a while, but most of all that is over now. And today, PulseAudio 4.0 was released, a version which will soon begin to appear on our desktops. Arun Raghavan, PulseAudio developer and Collabora employee, in his announcement said, “this release brings a bunch of Bluetooth stability updates, better low latency handling, performance improvements, and a whole lot more.”
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For potential merging in an upcoming Linux kernel release are new patches that allow storing small files as inline data for F2FS.
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Graphics Stack
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Wayland’s Weston system compositor has been hooked up to systemd so it can be used for client notification support.
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Benchmarks
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This past weekend I shared the first experiences of running Intel’s new Haswell CPU on Linux. While Intel Haswell is a beast and brings many new features and innovations to the new Core CPUs succeeding Ivy Bridge, there were a few shortcomings with the initial Linux support. It still appears that the Core i7 4770K is still being finicky at times for both the processor and graphics, but in this article are the first benchmarks. Up today are benchmarks of the Intel Core i7 4770K when running Ubuntu 13.04 with the Linux 3.10 kernel.
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Applications
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Docker is the most interesting container project I’ve looked at, but unfortunately it also seems to be the least stable. In the few hours I was testing it, I managed to generate three kernel panics. One which was easily reproducible by running a docker command as root, and two which popped up at seemingly random times when interacting with the docker command line tools. I do not know if it is due to Docker, or the underlying lxc tools, but something has gone seriously wrong. To be fair, it could have something to do with running in VMware too, but that seems less likely.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Games
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Last last week was Humble Indie Bundle 8 with an already lengthy list of titles, but four new games have now been added. The original HIB #8 games included in Humble Indie Bundle 8 are Dear Esther, Capsized, Awesomenauts, Thomas Was Alone, and Little Inferno. If paying more than the floating average price, Hotline Miami and Proteus are also included.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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I’ve been watching a great set of threads roll by in my email related to a re-boot to the human interface guidelines used by the KDE community. The blog posts by Thomas and Björn explaining what they are up to are great reading and it gives those of us who are developers a really good reminder about user interface fit and finish. ( .. and therefore the above ironic memegif 
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Today KDE released updates for its Workspaces, Applications and Development Platform. These updates continue the series of monthly stabilization updates to the 4.10 series. 4.10.4 updates bring many bugfixes and translation updates on top of the 4.10 release and are recommended updates for everyone running the 4.10 release series. As this release only contains bugfixes and translation updates, it will be a safe and pleasant update for everyone.
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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Today’s update is going to be fairly brief. GNOME and I have come to an accord and now we’re mostly getting out of each other’s way. After my initial impressions, I adapted the way that I do a few things and I’ve come to appreciate certain aspects of the system.
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The developers of Snowlinux have announced the latest release the Ubuntu-based version of their Linux distribution. Snowlinux 4 “Frosty” is based on Ubuntu 13.04 and is available with both MATE and Cinnamon desktops. The latest release of the distribution introduces Cinnamon 1.8, which debuted in the recently released Linux Mint 15, with features such as a new screen locking application and a redesigned control centre. Users who prefer the MATE environment can take advantage of the latest version of this desktop, MATE 1.6 from April.
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New Releases
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Screenshots
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Arch Family
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The Arch Linux developers are warning users of problems they might encounter when updating their systems. The Arch maintainers are staging a merge of the distribution’s /bin, /sbin and /lib directories into the /usr directory that has already been undertaken in distributions such as Mageia and Fedora; openSUSE also moved its directories in a similar way with version 12.2 of its distribution last year. In contrast with these distributions, Arch operates on a rolling release system, which means that there is no “full release” in which the developers can make these changes. The developers therefore have to make the change in a regular update.
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Red Hat Family
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Other equities research analysts have also recently issued reports about the stock. Analysts at TheStreet reiterated a “buy” rating on shares of Red Hat in a research note to investors on Tuesday, May 28th. Separately, analysts at BMO Capital Markets downgraded shares of Red Hat from an “outperform” rating to a “market perform” rating in a research note to investors on Monday, May 20th. They now have a $54.00 price target on the stock, up previously from $52.57. They noted that the move was a valuation call.
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Fedora
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The development team behind the GNOME Boxes project announced a few days ago the second unstable release of the upcoming GNOME Boxes 3.10 application, a GNOME utility that allows users to manage remote or virtual systems.
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Debian Family
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When it comes to setup web servers, or Internet servers (web, email and ftp) there is usually two GNU/Linux distributions that comes to mind, Debian and CentOS. Some people are starting to use Ubuntu server, but let’s focus on CentOS and Debian, as Ubuntu is a Debian derivative.
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Installing Debian may be a trivial task for someone.
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Derivatives
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It has been a while since my last English Debian Edu and Skolelinux interview last November. But the developers and translators are still pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators in the project, Cédric Boutillier.
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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And here we go again. Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail was released almost a month ago and unlike previous releases, this has been more of a silent affair. Mainstream blogs and news websites didn’t cover much about the release. Ubuntu 13.04 is mostly an incrementally updated release and that could be the reason. But from a user-perspective, “Raring Ringtail” has a number of very important qualities, significant performance improvement being one of them. Leaving all that aside for now, lets discuss what all can be done to further enhance Ubuntu 13.04 for every-day use. 30 things to do after installing Ubuntu 13.04 raring Ringtail.
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In a move that shouldn’t be much of a surprise, given the close collaboration between Canonical and Inktank—not to mention Mark Shuttleworth personally—around the open source Ceph storage system for Big Data and the cloud, the two companies on Monday announced a deal to provide full support for Ceph on Ubuntu. Here are the details, and what they mean for the channel.
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We brought readers news about the Ubuntu operating system for mobiles back in January, developed by Canonical. Ubuntu for phones prompted the possibility of a Ubuntu superphone, and we heard that new Ubuntu smartphones could become available by October this year. Now we have a look at one such possible device with the Ubuntu Eon Superphone envisioned, and we reckon that if this phone ever came to fruition it could win fans.
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This is a story of how a botched Windows 8 upgrade on an older Windows 7 notebook led me to try and discover the free Ubuntu OS.
Like many users faced with an opportunity to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8 with an early adopter discount, I jumped at the opportunity to move to the latest and greatest OS.
My mistake was not backing up my Windows 7 system, which proved to be fatal when various errors led to a crashed system sometime after the OS was upgraded to Windows 8.
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Ubuntu is a free operating system available for desktops, notebooks, phones, tablets, servers and even TVs. For the individual, it offers a simple, intuitive interface that can be customised on many levels. For the business user, Ubuntu offers access to legacy applications, remote management, and, with a full office suite, it eliminates the need for costly software licences. For a support fee, businesses can manage thousands of devices. Furthermore, it’s certified for hardware including Lenovo, Dell, Toshiba and HP, and for software including Centrify, Likewise and LibreOffice, among others.
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Flavours and Variants
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Linux Mint is a GNU/Linux distribution to which I have witnessed a great deal of respect. It is a solid operating system that comes with a desktop environment of its own (though it is based on Gnome Shell & its applications) and when it comes to usability & control, it really puts the users at the top.
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Lars Torben Kremer proudly announced last evening, June 3, the immediate availability for download of the stable release of his popular Snowlinux 4 operating system.
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The most ambitious Linux Mint yet is one of the best desktop distros ever made
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Phones
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Ballnux
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Android
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The latest statistics on Android usage show that Google is steadily moving devices to Android “Jelly Bean” 4.1 and 4.2. 33% of Android devices are now running the most recent version of the mobile operating system with 29% running 4.1 and 4% running 4.2. Adding in Android 4.0, “Ice Cream Sandwich”, and its 25.6% share means that Android 4.x is now running on 58.6% of devices.
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Android is a lot more free than iOS, but there are limits. We need to break through those.
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It’s that time of year. The weather is warming, summer is upon us, the school year is at its end—and many folks are celebrating graduation from their university. If you’re one of those people, congratulations! Now that you’ve completed your studies, you’re probably looking forward to the next big challenge: choosing a career path.
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New York City Comptroller John Liu is about to do something we need to see more often in government. This week, his office is open sourcing the code behind Checkbook NYC, the citywide financial transparency site—but the open-sourcing itself is not what I’m referring to. After all, lots of governments open source code these days.
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Events
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The organisers of FOSDEM, Europe’s biggest open source and free software oriented conference, have announced the dates for the next instalment of the event. FOSDEM 2014 will take place over the weekend of 1 and 2 February 2014 at the Université Libre in Brussels. The organisers say that attendees “may also safely assume that there will be a beer event on Friday 31 January.”
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Web Browsers
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The Epiphany development team announced a few days ago that the unstable version 3.9.2 of the Epiphany web browser for the GNOME desktop environment is available for testing.
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Mozilla
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The Chinese electronics manufacturer plans multiple devices, including tablets and phones, as part of a strategy to supply software and services along with hardware.
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The Firefox OS and browser are creating “an ecosystem where you truly can have anybody and everybody chip in,” said analyst Jeff Orr. The value of HTML5 devices brought out by organizations such as the Mozilla Foundation and the Linux Foundation is “not to overthrow Apple or Google; it’s in promoting interface standards that the larger companies may be holding back.”
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esterday, The Foxconn Technology Group announced at a press event in Taipei a wide-ranging partnership with Mozilla to develop devices based on the Firefox OS open platform, which has until now been primarily emphasized for use on phones (as shown here). We had reported on the likely of this partnership last week, and it does indeed look like Foxconn will produce tablets based on Firefox OS, although there aren’t many specifics about them. What’s really notable is that this partnership is one that could carry Mozilla forward into the next chapter of its evolution.
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A Firefox redesign project is currently underway at Mozilla, titled Australis. Firefox release channels should see the results of this new and exciting project starting with Nightly once it hits version 25 shortly. Then the usual release channels will be employed, but the stable channel will be held off on until the Mozilla team knows that everything is working smoothly – the stable channel probably won’t see Australis before October. A version of Firefox can be installed from Mozilla’s UX branch, available for testing in its current condition, but there is a risk of crashing and hard-drive depletion, according to TechCrunch.
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SaaS/Big Data
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(Sacramento, CA, USA: June 4, 2013) The Linux Professional Institute, the world’s premier Linux certification organization, announced a partnership initiative with Big Data Cloud (http://www.bigdatacloud.com/) — a not-for-profit organization evangelizing the new technology movement regarding Big Data and the Cloud. The partnership initiative will promote events and other educational resources for LPI alumni on topics related to Big Data and the Cloud. Big Data Cloud hosts annual events and monthly meetups and has over 2700+ members. It is founded and operated by Third Eye Consulting Services & Solutions LLC (http://thirdeyecss.com/).
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Java virtualization and cloud specialists Waratek announced today the release of the Java Virtualization Interface (JVI) empowering developers to deliver customized Java virtualization solutions for their applications.
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There are a lot of different metrics to validate the health of an open source project. In my opinion, one of the most critical is the number of different code authors.
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On June 4th, the 4.1.0 release of the Apache CloudStack Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud orchestration platform arrived. This is the first major CloudStack release since its March 20th graduation from the Apache Incubator.
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With API discovery service and a new event framework the latest version of Apache CloudStack, version 4.1, is expanding its capabilities in managing and coordinating cloud infrastructures. The IaaS platform has, in its first release since the project graduated from the Apache Incubator in March, added a service which allows end points in the infrastructure to describe the APIs they support and their associated details. According to the documentation there are over 300 APIs in CloudStack and the discovery service is used by the CLI to generate up a DSL on demand for controlling nodes. Future plans include using it to orchestrate API deployment on the cloud.
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Databases
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There may be no part of the channel in which open source is better positioned to dominate than Big Data. Not only are open source solutions such as Hadoop and Ceph enjoying huge popularity for building Big Data infrastructure, but open source relational database technologies are also proliferating among enterprises looking to cut software costs. Survey results released Tuesday by EnterpriseDB on PostgreSQL adoption show just how much that’s the case.
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Patrik Sallner, CEO of SkySQL, has told The H that Michael “Monty” Widenius’s “Business Source” is not part of SkySQL’s plans for MariaDB. “It is by no means something that has been or will be applied to MariaDB, especially not the server”, Sallner told The H. SkySQL and Widenius’s Monty Program recently merged.
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Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
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The LibreOffice 4.1 Beta has been available for one week now ahead of the official release coming by the end of July. For those curious about the features of this next major OpenOffice.org-fork successor, there are early release notes on the DocumentFoundation.org Wiki. To point out at this time is also a new blog post by Charles-H. Schulz, a LibreOffice developer, about the upcoming features.
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CMS
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A couple of years back we ran a series of articles on plugins we considered useful for running websites on the free and open source WordPress platform. Times change. Some of those plugins we still use. Some are no longer being developed. Others, we’ve had problems with and replaced. Along the way, we found some other plugins that offer new features as well. Anyway, we thought it was time to update you–especially those of you who might be contemplating cranking-up your first WordPress site.
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Project Releases
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Symfony 2.3.0 is the first long-term-support (LTS) release of the PHP framework for web applications since the introduction of a formal release process. Version 2.3 will be maintained for the next three years through to May 2016, after which a new LTS version will be released. There will also be standard releases with new features every six months and these will be maintained for eight months.
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Openness/Sharing
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Given the massive universe of both biological and human physiological data that needs to be processed as part of cancer research, this is a surely unquestionable issue that needs to be addressed.
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Open Tech Forever wants to take the idea of freedom of information into the physical realm, by creating a real factory to create open source items like kilns and wheelchairs.
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Open Hardware
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Programming
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For those who missed it, the widely-used SDL library among commercial and open-source games is finally up to its version 2.0 release candidate. SDL2 has long been in development and as of last week the release is quite near.
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Standards/Consortia
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Although Google continues to support a variety of open projects and people, Glyn Moody notes that, following recent changes to Google Code and Google Talk, concern is growing that something fundamental has changed.
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Instead, Sandberg focused on Facebook’s growing user base and engagement, pointing to Facebook’s growth from 845 million to 1.1 billion users in the last year and the fact that 60% of those users return to Facebook each day as opposed to 58% one year ago.
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This post isn’t exactly about math, but it is technical in nature, so I figured I’d get it out there. As part of my regular data-backup process, I routinely download my information archives from whatever online presences I can, such as Facebook (which I’ve been on since early 2010), Google Blogger (this blog you’re reading right now), etc. Obviously on Facebook the thing that I’m most interested in is what I actually write, which are usually called “wall posts” (as opposed to photos or media, which I retain locally anyway). Once in a while I’ve found it very useful to pull up the downloaded posts file and search it for some particular bit of info, contact, or date. What I seem to have discovered is that sometime in the last few months, Facebook silently and completely removed our ability to download that “wall posts” information.
This first dawned on me the other day when I used the Facebook “Download Info” process (Gear icon > Account Settings > Download a copy of your Facebook data), and tried to search for a particular post. Well, the normal file was just entirely missing. You can see the difference below in the downloaded archive from March 2013 versus the download from June 2013. The file “wall.html” — which actually contains all of my posts and is by far the largest data file in the old archive — is missing from the new archive.
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Science
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The Japanese central government has ordered Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) to freeze the contaminated soil that surrounds the damaged No.1 nuclear power station in Fukushima in an attempt to stop groundwater entering the reactor. The nuclear plant was damaged in the earthquake and tsunami of 2011 and has since suffered problems with groundwater becoming contaminated with radioactive substances when it enters the damaged reactor.
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Security
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Back in 2012, after my article on Linux ELF Virus was published in Linux Journal, I was curious to come up with a trigger point for this virus. I mean what would compel a Linux user to execute it for the very first time? I thought about it many times but could not come up with something in a working state.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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The British and French governments have said that medical samples smuggled out of Syria have tested positive for the nerve agent sarin, and added that they have shown the evidence to a UN investigation.
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Over the past few weeks I’ve been examining the evidence of chemical weapon use in Syria, and one key piece of evidence in at least two of the attacks, Saraqeb, Idlib, and Sheikh Maghsoud, Aleppo, has been the presence of what seems to be a unknown type of gas grenade at both attacks, later spotted with a Jabhat al-Nusra member
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Over the past five days Turkey’s government has unleashed thousands of canisters, cartridges and helicopter drums of tear gas onto its people. This has resulted in hundreds of tear gas-related injuries. Protesters have been repeatedly shot directly and intentionally in the face with canisters, and in at least one instance this has caused permanent damage to the eye. On May 31, two journalists were hospitalized for head wounds from tear gas projectiles. Tear gas has also been fired into enclosed locations, a practice designed to torture and able to kill.
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Thousands of protesters have controlled Istanbul’s main square once more after two days of violent clashes with rampaging riot police, as Turkey’s prime minister vowed to press on with the controversial redevelopment that provoked the clashes.
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Turkey’s prime minister on Sunday rejected claims that he is a “dictator,” dismissing protesters as an extremist fringe, even as thousands returned to the landmark Istanbul square that has become the site of the fiercest anti-government outburst in years.
Over the past three days, protesters around the country have unleashed pent-up resentment against Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who after 10 years in office many Turks see as an uncompromising figure with undue influence in every part of life.
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New evidence shows that the Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda may have been murdered by a CIA double agent, according to the Associated Press. The American agent was working for the CIA in Chile when he was recruited by DINA, Augusto Pinochet’s secret police.
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Unofficial Intelligence Community Views on Assassinations, James Angleton’s ‘Monster Plot,’ Agent Protection, and More
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AN academic study claims to have proof prisoners were flown to destinations, via a number of Scottish airports, before allegedly being tortured.
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An draft internal Pentagon report suggests that Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers revealed to filmmakers the name of a special operations planner who participated in the raid that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden even though the head of the Special Operations Command, Adm. Eric Olson, had specifically asked that the man’s name and the fact of his participation in the raid not be revealed.
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The Obama administration may be shifting control of the country’s drone program from the Central Intelligence Agency to the Pentagon, but robots can still find jobs at Langley — as writers, apparently.
The CIA’s venture capital wing, In-Q-Tel, has invested an unknown amount in a company called Narrative Science, which codes software capable of turning massive data sets into easy-to-read written prose, according to All Things D.
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Waliur Rehman was one of the few TTP leaders who supported the idea of negotiating with Islamabad to bring an end to the civil-war like situation in the country. And he is not the only supporter of the dialogue process with the Pakistan army whom Washington has assassinated with drone strikes. Many of his like-minded contemporaries were killed in the same manner during the last nine years, shortly after they had struck some kind of peace deal with Pakistan’s army and government.
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Footage apparently recorded by a German drone shows what looks like a terrifying near-collision between the unmanned craft and an Afghan passenger plane.
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In the letter, Mr. Holder said that the U.S. “specifically targeted” Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born preacher, during strikes in Yemen and listed the three other Americans who he said had been accidentally killed in the strikes: Samir Khan, Jude Kenan Mohammed and Abderrahman Anwar al-Awlaki, the targeted man’s son.
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Obama and the US government have consistently downplayed the use of drones and the havoc they cause, but in truth their use has grown exponentially during his presidency. It is yet to be seen if Obama’s most recent speech is any more genuine.
Afghanistan is undoubtedly the epicentre of unmanned drone attacks, with 506 incidents in 2012 and no way to verify the number of civilian casualties accurately.
In Pakistan there have been 369 since 2004, and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that between 2,541 and 3,540 people have been killed, and that between 411 and 884 of those have been civilians.
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In sum, after years of ideologically driven effort, Mr. Obama has failed to produce a practical — or politically viable — alternative to the Bush paradigm of the “global war on terrorism.” Instead, the tribunal system goes unused, indefinite detention continues, and suspected terrorists — even American ones — are killed without due process, or even the benefits of interrogation, enhanced or otherwise. Verbal acrobatics aside, suspending the use of the term hasn’t brought an end to the reality.
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Six peace activists, representing the group Disarm the Drones, have become the first in Britain to be arrested and charged for anti-drones related offences.
The nonviolent peace activists managed to breach security at Britain’s top security drone control base in Lincoln.
The six, who are Christian peace campaigners, planted a peace garden in RAF Waddington yesterday morning (3 June 2013).
They also displayed images of the victims of drone attacks and may have located the precise place where UK attacks are programmed.
The campaigners were detained for 24 hours overnight at Lincoln police station and held incommunicado for eight hours. Some of their homes have been raided by the police, with computers and other personal effects seized.
There was an attempt to charge the anti-drone activists with Conspiracy and Intent to Trespass and Cause Criminal Damage. Due to a failure of process, the charge of Criminal Damage was levied instead.
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On Tuesday May 14th, the US military succeeded in launching a drone from an aircraft carrier off the coast of Virginia, marking a historical first. The aircraft, an “X-47B” produced by Northrop Grumman, is considered to be the first unmanned aircraft that is able to be launched from a ship. The prototype had a successful flight of around 65 minutes, and ultimately landed at a base in Maryland. This event represents another step towards the mass production of drones, which will considerably boost US military capabilities.
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Could a president order drone strikes against journalists? I’m not worried. No, really. Not much.
The broad sweep of our government’s counterterrorism policy on targeted killings by unmanned drones, coupled with the Justice Department’s new aggressiveness against media leaks, makes me wonder whether we journalists should watch our step.
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THIS MORNING six peace activists, representing “Disarm the Drones” will become the first activists in Britain to be arrested and charged for anti-drones related offences, they were kept over-night at Lincoln police station after they planted a peace garden in RAF Waddington yesterday morning, they’ve been charged with Conspiracy and Intent to Trespass and Cause Criminal Damage.
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Pick an X below and imagine a person. Then kill him. It is your right.
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Cablegate
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So “trial of bin Laden accomplice begins” is really how they’re framing it?
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But giving classified information to the public is something that news outlets–including NBC News–routinely do, and each time they do it they too could be accused of “aiding the enemy.” For example, NBC’s Michael Isikoff reported on February 4 that a “confidential memo” produced by the Justice Department held that “the U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be ‘senior operational leaders’ of Al-Qaeda or ‘an associated force’–even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S.”
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I know that some people have pre-convicted Manning, but the charges here are simply crazy. He’s already pled guilty to certain charges, but this trial focuses on whether or not he was “aiding the enemy,” which would require to show that he did this knowing that it would help Al-Qaida and [classified enemy]. The supposed “proof” of this is going to be the fact that Osama bin Laden apparently had Wikileaks documents in his compound in Pakistan. But that’s ridiculous. Under that theory, anyone reporting information that terrorists found useful would be guilty of violating the Espionage Act and could face the death penalty. As others in the article note, this would create a tremendous chill on investigative reporting.
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About a month ago, Freedom of the Press Foundation launched a campaign to crowd-fund a court stenographer to provide transcripts of the unclassified portions of the Bradley Manning court martial, given that the military refuses to release transcripts of their own. On Thursday, we learned that all three of our media partners – the Guardian, the Verge, and Forbes – were denied the media passes they requested in order to allow court stenographers to accompany their reporters into the media tent. Each organization asked for a press pass for their reporter and a second press pass for a stenographer to accompany their reporter. Each was issued only one press pass.
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There were 109,032 “violent deaths” recorded in Iraq between 2004 and 2009, including 66,081 civilians.
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It is an outrage that soldiers who killed innocents remain free but the man who exposed them is accused of ‘aiding the enemy’
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The publisher’s attorney says a sealed indictment is possible, as the government war on leaks drives on
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WIKILEAKS founder, Julian Assange has described the trial of Bradley Manning which began today as “a show of wasteful vengeance; a theatrical warning to people of conscience”.
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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Finance
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One-in-four children in Britain, about 3.4 million, is forecast to be in relative poverty by the end of the decade
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Relax: thanks to Goldman Sachs and other ‘donors’, this year’s conference will be cost-neutral for Hertfordshire – despite the construction of the Great Wall of Watford
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During the world’s most secretive gathering the Bilderberg Group is set to discuss topics including cyber warfare, US foreign policy, “developments in the Middle East” and “Africa’s challenges” despite the glaring absence of regional representatives.
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Six are identified as Canadians:
TD Bank CEO Edmund Clark;
Brookfield Asset Management chairman Frank McKenna, a former New Brunswick premier and ambassador to the U.S., who is also deputy chairman at TD Bank Group;
Robert Prichard, the chairman of the Torys law firm;
Indigo Books CEO Heather Reisman;
Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall;
Loblaws CEO Galen Weston.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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A federal court hearing a challenge to Wisconsin’s Republican-led redistricting sharply criticized the expensive, secretive, and “peculiarly furtive process” employed by the GOP in drawing and defending the maps, but announced a close to “this unfortunate chapter in Wisconsin political history.”
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The official at the center of the IRS mess, Lois Lerner, gave indications months ago that she was refusing to provide meaningful guidance about how to interpret and apply ambiguous rules for nonprofit political activity.
Lerner was the head of the IRS’ division on tax-exempt organizations, and was recently suspended after declining to testify before a House Committee investigation into the IRS singling-out Tea Party groups for scrutiny based only on their names or political views.
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Censorship
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UK Internet provider Sky Broadband has quietly started to restrict access to a wide range of proxy sites through which subscribers could reach The Pirate Bay, Kat.ph, Movie2k and other blocked sites. The new blockades go beyond the initial court orders and appear to adjust automatically to IP-address changes. TorrentFreak talked to several proxy site operators who are determined to bypass the new measures.
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Violence and violent video games still remain connected in the eyes of many despite a lack of supporting evidence. When an act of violence occurs, the more horrific it is, the more certain it is that people will try to connect the two. We’ve seen it happen time and time again.
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A man who murdered an entire family with a tire iron in 2009 in their Beason, Ill. home tried to use video games as part of his defense earlier this week. After one day of deliberations a jury delivered a stinging verdict.
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Privacy
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O2, Vodafone and EE have all replied to their customers to say that they provide analytics on aggregated and anonymised data sets of their customers to third party companies. Their privacy policies have sections to this effect.
Virgin Media say that they don’t sell their customers’ data and their privacy policy says they may pass on aggregate information about their customers’ mobile use to third parties.
EE have told us that all customers have agreed to their Privacy Policy and implied that this counts as customers giving consent. O2 and EE argue in their responses to customer emails that because they are aggregating and anonymising data, the law does not require them to ask customers to opt-in or opt-out.
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A Democratic group is under sharp criticism for controversial online messages about Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s wife.
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Curtis Morrison, the guy behind the recording of a Mitch McConnell campaign strategy session, has confessed to the deed in a lengthy post at Salon. The wisdom of doing so while the FBI convenes a grand jury on the matter is one thing. Morrison’s somewhat deluded overestimation of his actions is another thing entirely.
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My effort to expose the Senate minority leader’s ugly campaign upended my life. Here’s what happened
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Earlier court order requiring a Wisconsin suspect in underage porn case to decrypt his hard drives for the FBI by the end of the day Tuesday — or face contempt of court — has been lifted.
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They won’t be trained for espionage, but about 20 University of Utah students will learn how to run the National Security Agency’s new data collection center in Bluffdale.
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Nations swiping intellectual property from rival states and corporations are a much greater threat to economies than private cyber-criminals, America’s spymaster reckons.
General Keith Alexander, National Security Agency (NSA) director and commander of US Cyber Command, made his comments during the NATO-organised CyCon conference in Estonia today.
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The source said that Kang also has a long history of aiding in the activities of the security forces in the area, by both reporting on the “anti-socialist” acts of others and seeking out new informants for the NSA.
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Civil Rights
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Despite the astonishing, far-reaching changes that Turkey has undergone in recent years, clouds of anxiety are gathering over the country.
The apprehension has little to do with the economy. The negative energy emanating from Syria has a partial impact. The jitters in public sentiment stem essentially from increasingly pronounced links between politics and religion, interventions in lifestyles and the demands of various social groups going unheeded.
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On Tuesday May 28, 72 Indian nations in the United States and 10 Indian and Hawaiian Native organizations — speaking at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues — jointly proposed action be taken to give indigenous peoples, especially indigenous constitutional and customary governments, a dignified and appropriate status for participating regularly in UN activities. As a problem that has already been studied and examined within the UN system, they noted, “it is time to take action at last so that indigenous peoples do not have to call themselves NGOs or depend upon ad hoc resolutions to be able to participate in UN meetings, processes, and events.”
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Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation – is designed to slow climate change by preventing the destruction of the world’s most vulnerable forests. It is a key part of the UN’s attempts to tackle a warming climate, and failure in Panama will have impacts much further afield.
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Media executives and editors are divided over whether to attend an off-the-record meeting this week with Attorney General Eric Holder to discuss guidelines for dealing with journalists in leak investigations, an issue that’s gotten a lot of attention amid controversies involving the AP and Fox News.
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I had a busy day on Monday, so it took a bit of time for me to finally get around to reading the full Supreme Court ruling in the Maryland v. King case, in which the court ridiculously ruled that law enforcement can take DNA samples from everyone arrested for a “serious” new crime in the hopes that it might help solve old crimes. We’ve discussed this issue in the past, but the reasoning of the majority ruling in the Supreme Court is rather horrifying. It’s interesting to see that the court did not split along its “traditional” lines. Scalia split with Alito, Thomas and Roberts — who often form a single voting block, while Breyer also was on the other side of his more natural allies, Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan. Kennedy is the usual “swing” vote, and wrote the decision here, decimating the basics of the 4th amendment. I mean absolutely decimating it.
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Representing The John Birch Society, this reporter spoke during the fourth segment, describing threats to liberty posed by the indefinite detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and the effectiveness of state measures refusing to enforce those provisions inside state borders.
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…NDAA was passed and FBI escalated infiltration of peaceful activists and prosecution of environmentalists under the pretext of terrorism….
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Leaders of conservative groups targeted for extra scrutiny by the Internal Revenue Service testified Tuesday on Capitol Hill about the “chilling” demands from the agency as they sought tax exempt status over the last several years.
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Some of President Barack Obama’s political appointees are using secret government email accounts to conduct official business, The Associated Press found, a practice that complicates agencies’ legal responsibilities to find and turn over emails under public records requests and congressional inquiries.
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The acting head of the IRS told congressional investigators Monday morning that his agency has “betrayed the trust of the American people.”
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Thousands of people of all ages gathered Wednesday evening in Ugur Mumcu square in Antakya, a picturesque town in the Hatay province of Turkey.
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Internet/Net Neutrality
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My speech yesterday where I set out how the EU plans to safeguard the open internet for all.Watch below, orcomment on the text here.
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If you remember, about five years ago, a bunch of astroturfing and front groups for the broadband companies started spreading this myth that the internet was facing a catastrophe known as the the exaflood, in which internet traffic would swamp capacity and the internet would sputter to a crawl. They talked about things like “brown outs” where so much traffic would make the internet difficult to navigate. Of course, it was all FUD and scare tactics to hide the real intent: to allow the telcos to put more tollbooths on the internet, to double charge some popular internet companies, and to generally try to avoid investing in basic infrastructure. Of course, it was easy to debunk those claims, but five years later, Broadband Reports takes a look at some of the latest data to note that the feared exaflood never showed up, and the predictions of clogged pipes never appeared — and the data on internet growth shows little likelihood of that ever happening.
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We live in a nation of wondrous technological advancement, where our average broadband speed and super low prices are the envy of the world, And if Google shows up to throw fiber around, the local citizenry simply shrugs its shoulders in indifference. Life is good… especially if you’re paid to believe it is.
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In an editorial in the Philadelphia inquirer last week, Comcast’s top lobbyist and policy man David Cohen proudly proclaimed that the U.S. is “the leader” globally in broadband.
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According to recent statistics by Google and Cisco, Switzerland has aced the IPv6 adoption charts by leapfrogging Romania, which topped the charts for nearly a year.
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The European Union wants network neutrality enshrined in law, with guaranteed access to the full and open internet in order to ensure future innovation and strengthen democracy.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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When the handful of corporations set on owning, controlling and über-profiting from our common seed heritage — Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, Dow, BASF and Bayer — began experimenting with their proprietary chemicals and genetically engineered crops in Hawaii in the 1990s, barely a peep was made. Two decades later, we can’t even convince our Hawaii state government to pass a law making these companies release basic information about the pesticides they spray next to primary schools. Children are sent home vomiting and with nose bleeds.
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The fact that the public is still charged fees to access public records already seems rather questionable. After all, the creation of these documents is paid for by taxpayers. Keeping them locked up behind a governmental paywall often seems like double-dipping.
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Trademarks
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We recently wrote about how the band Twisted Sister was acting as a trademark bully and threatening a small coffee shop in Kansas, called Twisted Sisters. As we noted, the coffee shop name had nothing to do with the band, but actually was named after (you guessed it) a pair of sisters who had been called that by their brother decades ago (long before the band existed). The coffee shop had indicated at the time that it was going to change its name, but it looks like it’s now decided to fight back. jupiterkansas lets us know that a lawyer agreed to represent them pro bono and is trying to explain trademark law basics to the band’s lawyer. In the meantime, the coffee shop’s owner sent a friendly letter to the band, saying that the shop’s name has nothing to do with the band and that she really can’t think of a better name, so she’d like to keep it.
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Copyrights
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We’ve pointed out over and over and over again for years that for many people (certainly not all, but enough to make a huge difference) convenience trumps free when it comes to getting content. The latest example of this in action is the fact that way fewer people downloaded the new Arrested Development from unauthorized sources than other similarly hyped TV shows. As you probably know, the new Arrested Development was released via Netflix, rather than TV, and all episodes were immediately available. Unlike other TV shows that are tied to cable and hardly available online at all, Arrested Development was easy to watch online for those who had a Netflix account (which also doesn’t require additional fees to watch the show if you already have a subscription).
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It’s amazing how frequently we still hear from entertainment industry folks or politicians pointing to Hadopi as an example of “success” in a three strikes program. Of course, the reality is that it has been a colossal failure by nearly every measure possible. The industry has had to seriously massage the statistics, but they can’t deny the simple fact that it hasn’t helped drive sales, which really seems like the key metric. In fact, the latest reports show that music sales — including digital sales — have continued to drop. Even more telling: the decline in sales in France has outpaced the decline elsewhere. In other words, nothing about Hadopi worked.
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If you thought Graham Syfert was done with taking on John Steele and Prenda law with the closing of the Sunlust case in Florida, you’d be wrong. Today he’s filed an incredible filing not just hitting back at Prenda in another case, First Time Videos vs. Paul Oppold, and asking for attorney’s fees, but also including an affidavit from an actual expert (i.e., not a Prenda-style “forensic” expert) named Delvan Neville, who lays out in astounding detail how it’s almost certain that John Steele himself uploaded the various videos to BitTorrent that were then used to sue various defendants for either “hacking” or copyright infringement. Oh, and in doing so, Steele appears to have made some choices that are pretty damning, including suggesting that he set up the file to effectively broadcast that it was free for the taking. In other words, there’s an incredibly strong argument that the release of the file on BitTorrent was very authorized.
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As the MPAA and other copyright maximalist organizations continue to try to block the WIPO copyright treaty for the blind, which will make it easier for blind people around the globe to be able to access creative works, I was touched by this incredible video from Ron McCallum, the former dean at the University of Sydney Law School, where he is now an Emeritus Professor. McCallum has been blind since birth, and in the video he talks about how technology changed his life and allowed him to do so much — and how important the treaty in question is, to allow that same revolution to help others, especially in less developed countries.
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So it appears that late last week, the MPAA realized that their whole stance on trying to block the approval of an important copyright treaty for helping the visually impaired and the blind gain more access to works was a PR nightmare, and decided to put out a joint statement with the National Federation for the Blind. Apparently, Chris Dodd’s initial weak attempt at claiming that it loved helping the blind, despite working hard to stop the treaty, wasn’t enough. Of course, the new “joint statement” is really more of the same when you peel back the basics.
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Here’s one that touches on both patents and copyrights. Last year, we wrote about how some academic journals were ridiculously claiming that law firms, who made copies of journal articles to submit to the US Patent and Trademark Office to show examples of prior art, were infringing on their copyrights. Yes, they were arguing that you couldn’t use their journals as examples of prior art without paying them for the privilege. Thankfully, the USPTO stepped up and issued a memo explaining why they believed such usage was clearly protected as fair use. Still, the American Institute of Physics and Blackwell Publishing decided to sue a law firm, Winstead PC, and patent filers over the matter. The USPTO then stepped in as an “intervening defendant.” Over the course of the case, the publishers finally admitted that articles submitted with patent filings themselves probably weren’t infringing and dropped that claim. However, they still argued that other copies made “during the process of evaluating and
selecting” material to be submitted to the USPTO were infringing (in other words, the clients and the lawyers sharing copies of the articles back and forth — and later copies of the articles associated with patent files).
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The EU trade Commissioner, Karel De Gucht, was a driving force behind ACTA, and apparently he’s learned nothing about why ACTA failed so spectacularly in Europe. MEP Christian Engstrom pointed out to De Gucht that a big part of the reason why ACTA failed was the lack of transparency, and asked him to be more transparent with TAFTA (the Trans Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, but which many are calling TTIP — for Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership).
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The new TTIP agreement between the EU and the US will be negotiated in the same secrecy as the ACTA agreement was, EU trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht told the European Parliament on Wednesday evening.
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City of London Police inform TorrentFreak that they have begun targeting sites that provide access to unauthorized content for “criminal gain.” The initiative is part of a collaboration with Hollywood studios represented by FACT and the major recording labels of the BPI. In letters being sent out now, police accuse site operators of committing offenses under the Serious Crime Act. The National Fraud Intelligence Bureau further warns that the crimes carry a jail sentence of 10 years.
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