08.27.13
Posted in Patents at 2:19 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Net worth of $27 billion
Summary: ‘Intellectual property’ boosters like Bloomberg and proponents of the notion of “bad software patents” (implying some are “good”) may still be rewriting the record while patents continue to limit competition, the real driver of innovation
The recent GAO study showed that Obama's patent reform is rather misguided. Bloomberg’s press apparatus continues to misrepresent it. GAO speaks of “Software Patents”, not “Questionable Software Patents” (which can mean a subset of them) and this is something that we see a lot of when it comes to sites that favour software patents. Here is how it’s put in this case:
Questionable Software Patents Lead to More Lawsuits: GAO
Software patents are the biggest reason behind a rise in litigation over inventions, especially against companies that use the technology, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found.
So why the headline? It’s clearly software patents that were blamed, so why rephrase it? Why not preserve the original message? Other lawyers too tried to paint the culprit as “bad patents”, as we showed the other day. It is unlikely to be a coincidence, as some are funded by investors of trolls like Vringo.
Here is another new article from lawyers-friendy press. Citing an old ruling from CAFC, it once again tries to dismiss interpretations that said many software patents had died. The headline said that the Federal court is ‘foggy’ on patent software issues, even though — as we showed at the time — this is not quite the case. Patent lawyers’ sites tried to control — and successfully did so — the corporate press. They made it seem like consensus said nothing had changed, even though a precedent was made that can invalidate hundreds of thousands of software patents, including some of the latest spooky ideas from Google (tracking users for ‘security’).
It is being noted right now that it is becoming hard to enter the market because of abundance of patents. As Against Monopoly put it:
The other day, the New York Times published instructions for aspiring inventors on how to take their inventions through the patent granting process and on to the retailers’ shelves link here. The examples are a couple of aspiring inventors and describes the pitfalls, the costs, and a rough estimate of the likelihood of success.
Patent laws in the US — like its Draconian copyright laws (see new example below) — are certainly not helping the US economy. But it helps the ecosystem of lawyers, that’s for sure. The problem is that they control the press on these matters and distort public opinion.
It is not unusual for patent law to be misrepresented by opportunists, exploiting ambiguity such as the phrase “as such” (in New Zealand and Europe) to make software patents possible while officially denying that’s the case. Right now in India we see that happening, as a room for misinterpretation is left to legitimise software patents in India. Murdoch’s press makes it look like software patents are now possible in India. To quote a new WSJ report (another billionaire’s press):
Could the simple Latin phrase, per se, which translates as “in itself”, lead to confusion in verifying whether a computer-related invention deserves a patent or not? Some members of the $108 billion Indian information technology industry, intellectual property (IP) law firms and anti-patent lobby groups say it can.
The inclusion of some terms that are not defined by local laws in the government’s draft guidelines on patents for computer-related inventions (CRIs) leaves room for ambiguity and misinterpretation when examiners grant or reject such a patent, they say. The guidelines were released in early August.
The terms include ‘per se’, algorithm, hardware, firmware —and CRI itself.
CRI “has not been defined in any of the Indian statutes and is construed to mean, for the purpose of these guidelines, any invention which involves the use of computers, computer networks or other programmable apparatus and includes such inventions, one or more features of which are realized wholly or partially by means of a computer programme/programmes”, the Indian Patent Office (IPO) acknowledged in the draft guidelines, and called for feedback from industry stakeholders by 8 August.
Actually, India has been very clear on this subject. Software patents are not allowed. █
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If you read Techdirt, you’re almost certainly familiar with Larry Lessig, the law professor at Harvard who (among many other things) has been an avid advocate for copyright reform and campaign finance reform, an author of many books about copyright and creativity, a well-known public speaker whose presentations are stunningly compelling, entertaining and informative, and the founder of some important organizations including Creative Commons. Of course, as an expert on copyright and creativity, and someone who’s actually been involved in some of the key copyright legal fights over the past decade (tragically, on the losing side), you might think that a record label would think twice before issuing a clearly bogus threat to sue him over copyright infringement. Well, apparently Liberation Music was either unaware of Lessig’s reputation and knowledge, or just didn’t care.
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08.26.13
Posted in GNU/Linux, Novell, Red Hat at 4:02 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Disparity in pay (volunteer versus staff) and difference between perception and reality when it comes to GNU/Linux vendors, especially publicly-traded ones
Zonker was recently welcomed by Red Hat, which he used to compete against over at Novell. He was paid a salary by Novell to 'manage' a community (which is a bit of a contradiction) before he moved on to speaking for another community (which later crumbled somewhat). Canonical and Ubuntu make analogous stories of staff-run community (the company manages the community). At Canonical, the ‘community’ part has become a notable farce over the past couple of years.
Zonker came from a company that we criticised for having its community managed by staff. He is now acting was a bit of a spokesperson [1] as the company has been rather quiet, with only some chatter about Fedora names and Wall Street-driven discussions about the company’s monetary nature [2-4].
Red Hat actually has a decent community. Some of the writers at Red Hat’s OpenSource.com are not Red Hat employees and Fedora is open to many outside of Red Hat. Let’s not lose sight of the importance of community autonomy. Ubuntu (especially in the past 6 months or less) became an excellent example of how not to run a community. █
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Bug 1,000,000 was filed today by Anton Arapov in Red Hat’s Bugzilla. The bug, an improvement request for the automatic bug detection and reporting tool (abrt), is a nice milestone just a few weeks ahead of the 15th anniversary of Bugzilla’s first release.
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Another reason market capitalization is important is where it places a company in terms of its size tier in relation to peers — much like the way a mid-size sedan is typically compared to other mid-size sedans (and not SUV’s). This can have a direct impact on which indices will include the stock, and which mutual funds and ETFs are willing to own the stock. For instance, a mutual fund that is focused solely on Large Cap stocks may for example only be interested in those companies sized $10 billion or larger. Another illustrative example is the S&P MidCap index which essentially takes the S&P 500 index and “tosses out” the biggest 100 companies so as to focus solely on the 400 smaller “up-and-comers” (which in the right environment can outperform their larger rivals). And ETFs that directly follow an index like the S&P 500 will only own the underlying component of that index, selling companies that lose their status as an S&P 500 company, and buying companies when they are added to the index. So a
company’s market cap, especially in relation to other companies, carries great importance, and for this reason we at The Online Investor find value to putting together these looks at comparative market capitalization daily.
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Investors in Red Hat Inc (NYSE: RHT) saw new options become available this week, for the October 19th expiration. At Stock Options Channel, our YieldBoost formula has looked up and down the RHT options chain for the new October 19th contracts and identified one put and one call contract of particular interest.
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Red Hat at 3:43 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
KDE gives credibility to my recommendations to users, but the names do not
Summary: Fedora considers names for its next release and many are likely to make it seem like it doesn’t take itself seriously
HAVING USED many versions of Fedora over the years (rarely on a long-term basis such as years at a time) and installed it for others (more versions and more times than I can remember), I feel like I know enough about this project, which I’ve followed closely since its first release. I am not trying to have a cheap shot at Fedora. Red Hat was actually my first distro (before Fedora) and that’s how I was introduced to GNU/Linux.
Once upon a time release names were simple to remember and not controversial. Look at early names of Fedora releases.
Coverage about Fedora has increased somewhat in recent days, especially because of codename selection. Android has some tasty codenames and Ubuntu plays with animal names and the alphabet, so why not Fedora? Well, the two-word convention is being adopted again and some final candidates are awkward, to say the least.
Fedora continues to lead on innovation, or terms of freedom with compromise (thanks to Red Hat). Unlike counterparts, it has conferences (which Ubuntu no longer has, just virtual ones). Some hardware components come with Fedora preinstalled and sold over the shelf/bulk ordered (see below), so why not choose ‘professional’-sounding names? As one who covers news about GNU/Linux I must say that writing about a distribution called “cow” (“Spherical Cow”) is unlikely to attract new users. Help me out here, guys. I am trying to ‘recruit’ new users. I understand that Fedora wants to be fun and playful, but this is probably costing them more than they realise. █
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You may have noticed I started out tweetin’ and bloggin’ up a storm, and then disappeared for a while. This is because, after attending some useful and interesting (and sometimes even both!) presentations for a couple of days, I discovered the glory and magnificence that is Badges.
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It’s time to vote for another Fedora codename, this time for Fedora 20, and it’s likely to be yet another weird/goofy codename to succeed recent names like Beefy Miracle and Spherical Cow.
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Eric (a fellow Fedora board member) has a post describing his vision for what Fedora as an end goal should look like. It’s essentially an assertion that since we have no idea who our users are or what they want, we should offer them everything on an equal footing.
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Acromag announced a ruggedized COM Express module based on Intel’s 4th Generation Core i7/i5 (Haswell) CPUs, clocked at 1.6 or 2.4 GHz. The COM Express Type 6 module runs Fedora Linux, supports up to 16GB onboard RAM, and boasts thickened PCBs, SODIMM lock-downs, and heat dissipation solutions to protect against shock, vibration, and temperature extremes.
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Fedora had some interesting names in the past and others have been completely uninspired, but now it’s time to vote for the name of the next version.
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Kernel at 3:28 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A look at some news about Linux-powered devices and the areas they now occupy
Linux is everywhere. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. But with brands like Android, TomTom or TiVo it might take some effort to see it and especially to show this to others.
In the past few days we saw Android’s role (or the role of Linux) in various mundane areas of the industry [1-3]. Other uses include drones (not just the lethal ones), rugged computers, telepresence, and hackable devices like the Raspberry Pi.
The desktop is not everything, it was the emerging market when mainframes declined and now we have devices that do to the desktop the same thing it did to mainframes (vendors use ‘cloud’ hype in an attempt to drive data back to their datacentres, despite storage being cheap). █
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Bad news for all ChromeCast users who were thinking of being able to stream local content to their HD TVs. Google has pushed an update for ChromeCast which has broken support for 3rd party apps like AirCast (AllCast) which allow users to ‘stream’ local files from their devices to ChromeCast connected TV sets.
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Omate’s $199 TruSmart watch has already garnered more than twice its funding goal on Kickstarter, and there’s almost a month still to go for the device, which comes with a 5 MP camera and cellular modem. “A lot of these crowdfunded smartwatches are being seen as the drizzle before the thunderstorm of the major players coming in,” noted Reticle Research principal analyst Ross Rubin.
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IDC and App Annie’s study suggests that iOS and Android combined now generate four times the revenues of dedicated gaming handhelds
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The use of Android in embedded devices is heating up and along with that comes demand for developers skilled in embedded Android, say analysts and service providers within the embedded industry.
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Micronet announced the availability of a ruggedized, Android 4.x-based touchscreen fleet computer. The A-307 runs on the ARM Cortex-A8-based TI Sitara AM3715 SoC, and offers a 7-inch resistive WVGA touchscreen, USB and serial connections, and numerous wireless options including WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, and 3G radios.
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Suitable Technologies has absorbed a majority of the employees of Willow Garage, the research lab that created Texai technology central to Suitable Tech’s “Beam” mobile telepresence robot. The remotely-piloted Beam bot, which can be controlled via a WiFi or 4G LTE cellular connection, runs Robot Operating System plus low-latency Skype-like video conferencing software on top of an Ubuntu-based embedded OS.
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Last week my family went on a summer holiday to Menorca leaving me at home with just the cats for company.
Half way through the week I realised that 5 cats had become 4 and that I hadn’t seen one for a good couple of days.
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I remember my first colocated server rather fondly. It was a 1U Supermicro that had been decommissioned from my employer after a few years’ service. Although it was too old and slow for my company, the 800MHz CPU, 1GB RAM and 36GB SCSI storage was perfect for my needs back in 2005. A friend was kind enough to allow me to colocate the server at his facility for free. So, after a lot of planning, I installed and configured Debian, generated SSH keys and set IPs so I could manage this machine remotely. Once it was colocated, it became my primary server for Web, DNS, SMTP and my perpetual Irssi-in-a-screen session. The machine served me for more than five years until I ultimately replaced it with newer hardware.
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A startup called Pleiades is over a third the way to its Kickstarter goal for funding a hackable Linux quadrocopter that starts at $520. Spiri, which runs Ubuntu Linux with Robot Operating System (ROS) extensions on a dual-core Freescale ARM SoC, is an airborne craft that uses three cameras and a variety of sensors to navigate autonomously.
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A $209 Linux-powered home automation and security system aimed at apartment dwellers is off to a strong crowdfunding start on Indiegogo. BlackSumac’s Piper features motion, sound, and temperature detectors, and offers a 180-degree fisheye HD camera with pan and zoom viewable and controllable via smartphone apps.
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Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 3:18 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The elusive fight for the desktop crown no longer the only route to breaking the illegal monopoly
Microsoft is trying to enter the market of portable devices, alas without success. Apple tried this years ago and had limited success (it is losing to Linux/Android now). What these two companies have in common is that they both recognise that the desktop is not enough.
One GNU/Linux pundit alleged [1] that we should aspire to dominate the desktop with GNU/Linux. He is right and there are many others who still try to encourage others to switch to GNU/Linux. My experience with this is different. Judging from the experience of my wife, the way to go about is to first get them hooked on Android (smartphones/tablets) which makes them less sceptical or hostile towards Linux (the wife never resisted, she has a Computer Science degree and can cope). Later on they welcome GNU/Linux on the desktop and laptop. Windows is seen as one of many, not the only option, and this is generally why I view advocacy of Linux on mobile devices as constructive. Microsoft suffers badly from this and Apple too, to a lesser degree. █
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This week, something dawned on me. It wasn’t life-changing, problem solving, or (if I’m being completely honest with myself) truly profound. However, it really smacked me upside the head with a Harley Quinn-sized hammer and brought to light what Linux really needs to make serious noise on the desktop.
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About a month ago, I came to the sad realization that my six-year-old white plastic MacBook was not going to see me to the end of my dissertation. Among the more serious of its ailments, its hard disk was about to fail, and doing any task took at least thirty seconds of waiting. (Going through the metal detector at an archives last summer, one of the security guards said, “I remember you; you’re the guy with the old laptop.”) Fortunately the funds for a replacement were at hand, and I needed to decide which computer to buy.
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For the ones who are not aware of Linux, switching from Windows to the open source technology could be challenging. However, some simple tips can wade you through smoothly. Here are the top 20 things you need to consider while making your transition…
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Have you been contemplating moving to Linux from Windows? Well, if you are scared of the complexities involved, we will make it easy for you. We bring to you top things that you must know…
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Posted in Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 3:07 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The ‘open core’ (meaning proprietary mixed with free) Web server product from Russia is toppling Microsoft, but is this cause for celebration really?
There is a great deal of news about open core (proprietary) Web server software Nginx, which is beating Microsoft. Some links below shed light on what’s new and iophk corrects one article by saying “I thought nginx already passed Microsoft” (true).
“In the last chart,” he says, “nginx is ahead of Microsoft” (see latest links below or this page).
“Earlier this year ‘other’ was ahead of Microsoft,” iophk says, “putting them temporarily in 4th place.”
He correctly adds that “nginx has been moving to open core for a while now, it looks like a problem.” It would have been better if Apache got all this share. █
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Battle-Hardened Open-Source Based Product Combines Advanced Functionality, Support and Services for Commercial Customers
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The fast, popular—and open-source—NGINX web server is now available as a commercial product for high-traffic sites.
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The ‘Industrial Erlang User Group’ will allow enterprise users of the Erlang/OTP programming language to collaborate with Ericsson and complement their work while spreading awareness and increasing adoption and commercial usage of Erlang.
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Following in the footsteps of open-source companies like Red Hat and SUSE, Nginx’s developers are offering a commercial version of its flagship open-source program, the popular Nginx Web server.
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Posted in Courtroom at 3:00 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, censorship officer at Daily Kos
Summary: Not only governments but also those who pretend to be against governments’ abuse of power are engaged in censorship
The Web is becoming hostile to free speech and not only governments [1] are to blame. Some feeble-minded people call posters whom they don’t agree with trolls and then delete their words while insisting that they support free speech [2,3]. Freedom and censorship cannot co-exist. The latter example, Daily Kos, deleted many accounts of someone who hangs out in our IRC channels because he vigorously opposed war crimes and wanted Bush arrested. Even in a ‘leftist’ site like Daily Kos this is apparently not allowed. Comments oughtn’t be there to worship or decorate one’s own message (article’s author), they should be there to present a diversity of views, including disagreement. Anything else would be a farce in disguise, like Linux ‘Advocates’ (if Dietrich does not agree, the comment gets deleted). Below are two new examples of this trend getting worse and worse, with restrictions increased and regulations tightening.
Techrights never deleted any comments and it never will. Free speech is all about defending the speech of those whose views you may find objectionable and even untrue. Liberalism is allowing others whom we don’t agree with voice their opinions (which we are then free to ridicule, not suppress). Those who don’t want to deal with opposing views are not — irrespective of what they say — anti-censorship, they are hypocrites at best. █
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A website with the aim of addressing flaws in Finland’s secretive child porn filter has ending up on the same list. The Finnish Supreme Court has ruled that censoring the website is justified as it lists domain names of sites that are currently blocked. While the site itself doesn’t host or link to illegal content, the court argues that society’s obligation ‘to protect the children’ trumps freedom of speech in this case.
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The days of anonymous commenting on The Huffington Post are numbered. Founder Arianna Huffington said in a question-and-answer session with reporters in Boston Wednesday that the online news site plans to require users to comment on stories under their real names, beginning next month.
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Also, before we get into the rules, I saw Bob Johnson’s diary about the problems with the new instant posting. When we first added the waiting period, the idea was to weed out ideological trolls. When we eliminated that waiting period, our fear was that we’d be swamped with conservatives or third-party trolls. Instead, we’ve been hit hard with commercial spam. Who knew commercial spammers were being weeded out with a one-day waiting period?
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Posted in Cablegate at 2:38 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
A public show of violence
Summary: Some news about the leaking counterculture and what can be done about it
Private Manning got punished [1] for doing what many anti-war activists could not or would not. Society has debt to him. War is not a sport and blindly supporting one’s “team” is a foolish thing to do; it’s what typically supports and excuses war crimes. Here in the UK intimidation tactics against acts like Manning’s expand to relatives of those who report on leaks like Manning’s (see the latest on Miranda [2,3]) and the US military machine now calls the Founding Fathers extremists by attributing to them “extremist ideologies.” [4]
The US has been preparing for internment without charges for US citizens (c/f NDAA), having ‘trailed’ the idea in Guantanamo [5]. Those who are not worried by all this (and more, much beyond the scope of this post) are arguably complicit in serious abuses; apathy was not a defence, based on history’s lessons.
The war on dissent may successfully be crushing some Web sites and movements, but out response will be proportional in the opposite direction. █
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Anyone reporting on or connected with a journalist writing articles about the NSA surveillance is now considered a threat.
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The detention of David Miranda — partner of the Guardian journalist involved in the NSA revelations — and the destruction of hard drives in the British newspaper’s basement reveal one thing: Governments do not want their citizens to be informed when it comes to the topic of surveillance.
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A Department of Defense training manual obtained by a conservative watchdog group pointed to the original American colonists as examples of an extremist movement, comments that have sparked fear of a broader crackdown on dissent in America.
The training manual provides information that describes, among other things, “common themes in extremist ideologies.”
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One reason the White House drafted the document, sources tell me, was to beat back criticism from some members of Congress who have said the reason they have not taken any action on Guantanamo since 2009 is because the White House did not have a comprehensive plan for shutting down the facility.
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