10.26.11
Links
Reader’s Picks
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Impressive demonstration of HTML5
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Hardware
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Finance
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Social networking tools turned on transnational companies show that OWS is right about the blindingly obvious concentration of power.
From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs and the share ownerships linking them. … [this revealed] a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships … they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world’s large blue chip and manufacturing firms – the “real” economy – representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues. … it tracked back to a “super-entity” of 147 even more tightly knit companies – all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity – that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. “In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,” says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.
The article’s authors think that 147 owners is enough for everyone. The paper is here. People with Adobe Trash can play with the NNDB Mapper.
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Iceland’s shining example
The belief that citizens had to pay for the mistakes of a financial monopoly, that an entire nation must be taxed to pay off private debts was shattered, transforming the relationship between citizens and their political institutions and eventually driving Iceland’s leaders to the side of their constituents. … Today, that country is recovering from its financial collapse in ways just the opposite of those generally considered unavoidable, as confirmed yesterday by the new head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde to Fareed Zakaria. The people of Greece have been told that the privatization of their public sector is the only solution. And those of Italy, Spain and Portugal are facing the same threat.
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Anti-Trust
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Microsoft Corruption in Poland
Poland’s government’s use of proprietary formats is making it difficult for local public administrations to rid themselves of software vendor lock-in. The national government is relying on proprietary solutions for financial reporting, obstructing for instance the move by the municipality of Goleniów to gradually increase its use of free and open source alternatives.
See also, how the same corrupt government is also harming the EU
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Of Open Source, Microsoft, India and Paraguay
One of the recurrent recent themes of IT in the UK has been how moves to open source by local and central government have been stymied by Microsoft – the most famous example being the Newham Council saga. Of course, that’s not a problem unique to the UK: it’s a pattern repeated around the world, as some recent stories highlight.
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Half of all Android Vendors pay Microsoft Troll Tax for bogus Software Patents
The agreements are secret, so we don’t really know how much money is being paid but each deal is a judicial extortion. In the Novel case, Microsoft actually paid Novel to betray the free software world.
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Microsoft partners start to figure out where Secure Boot will leave them.
That’s a lot of firms suddenly finding Steve Ballmer’s boot on their jugular.
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EU Politician Wants Internet Surveillance Built Into Every Operating System
The only way to stop that [removing the malicious feature from free software] happening would be to forbid people from installing “unauthorised” versions or from making “unauthorised” changes to the system code once installed – which would effectively make open source operating systems illegal in Europe.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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American Spectator Editor Admits to Being Agent Provocateur at D.C. Museum
An editor for the magazine American Spectator infiltrated the Occupy Wall Street protests to discredit the movement. He created a violent confrontation at the National Air and Space Museum that got dozens of innocent people pepper sprayed and the museum shut down, then bragged about it on Facebook and in his magazine. It’s not apparent that the started to brag before or after Open News recognized his photograph from scenes of his intended riot.
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PROTECT IP Renamed E-PARASITES Act; Would Create The Great Firewall Of America
If you thought Protect IP could not get worse, you were wrong. New anti-circumvention laws, DMCA style, attempt to end the ability to route around damage.
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Privacy
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Transparency? [US] Government says no can do on medical record breaches
OCR claims all of the records I’ve requested are “the subject of an open investigation” and so, since a FOIA provision “permits the withholding of open investigatory records . . . when disclosure could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings,” he’s denying my FOIA request in its entirety.
The breaches requested only cover accidents and cracking. Routine sell outs and the access non free software grants companies like Microsoft are larger concerns not considered by the author.
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Skype on hypePhone flaw hands out address books.
Skype also makes it easier to track people online, even if you are not logged in. Both of these are Register stories and should be taken with a grain of salt, but all non free software exposes users to privacy violation by the software’s owners and the owners often sell people to interested third parties.
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The Sins of Flash
That’s right — code on a remote computer somewhere decides whether or not random web sites can spy on you. If someone changes that code, accidentally or deliberately, your own computer has just been turned into a bug, without any need for them to attack your machine. … No wonder the NSA’s Mac OS X Security Configuration guide says to disable the camera and microphone functions, by physically removing the devices if necessary.
Only free software will respect your privacy and freedom.
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Civil Rights
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Florida Universities cruelly punish US Citizens who’s parents are undocumented.
The residency status required should be as easy as producing utility bills and the example cited has more than that for herself.
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Trademarks
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Apple sues small cafe owner for Apple Child logo
To make sure there’s no confusion, the cafe should provide stickers to cover all Apple laptop logos and have an expert on hand to pave over OSX with free software. Covering should be mandatory.
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Copyrights
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US Senators introduce a bill to criminalize common violations of copyright and set the penalty as 5 years in jail.
The article worries about popular music sharing, but the penalty would apply equally to more serious works such as journal articles.
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How much more expensive paywalled journals really are.
… the money that Elsevier alone takes out of academia – not its turnover but its profits, which are given to shareholders who have nothing to do with scholarly work – is enough to fund every research article in every field in the world as open access at PLoS ONE’s rate. … closed access means people die.
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ACTA
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TPP to maximize drug prices in developing world
it even argues for blatant price fixing to avoid market pricing when governments are buying. That is, this section — which is being pushed by the USTR — basically takes the big pharmaceutical’s position that foreign governments should not be allowed to bargain for discounts on drugs to keep their own citizens healthy. It mandates, instead, that governments have to buy at a much higher fixed prices, and actually is even more pro-big pharma than the previous administration, which sought to make it easier for developing nations to access necessary drugs.
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