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12.30.09

Pedro Valesco-Martins Explains the ACTA Conspiracy

Posted in Intellectual Monopoly, Videos at 8:48 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“Boycott Bing” Revisited, Google Makes It Obsolete Anyway

Posted in Asia, Google, Microsoft, Search at 8:31 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Boycott Novell note

Summary: The New York Times’ (NY Times) call for a Bing boycott worth another look now that Microsoft strategises on China

About a month ago, the NY Times took an unusual stance when one of its writers called for a Bing boycott, noting that it provided a biased/warped reality that happens to exclude not only Microsoft competitors but also competitors of its partners, who include the notorious Chinese regime. The short story is that Microsoft was censoring for the Chinese government, leading to calls for a boycott. Later on, Microsoft acknowledged the problem (when calls for a boycott became too widespread) and blamed it on a “bug”.

Microsoft has problems in China. It has already lost Lee (so has Google) and a prior manager (mentioned here). Rather recently it fired 300 employees over there but it is still moving to cheaper labour and hiring from the outside, which leads to blunders [1, 2, 3, 4]. According to Reuters and Microsoft Nick, Microsoft wants more control and favouritism in China. Playing along with the suppressive government is maybe their strategy.

The posting from the NY Times by no means mean that the publication is against Microsoft; it’s usually the opposite because NY Times works for its clients, who are advertisers, not subscribers [1, 2]. That’s where all the big money is.

TechDirt accuses the NY Times of “Running A Ridiculous, Conflicted Op-Ed Against Google”:

It makes you wonder why the NY Times would allow such an OpEd to go forward. Kedrosky has his opinion: “apparently NY Times OpEds over the holidays are vetted by malnourished monkeys.”

It’s about this article, calling for “search neutrality”.

Today, search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’s new Bing have become the Internet’s gatekeepers, and the crucial role they play in directing users to Web sites means they are now as essential a component of its infrastructure as the physical network itself. The F.C.C. needs to look beyond network neutrality and include “search neutrality”: the principle that search engines should have no editorial policies other than that their results be comprehensive, impartial and based solely on relevance.

While it is true that Google needs to be watched carefully (not just for privacy reasons but also for its occasional misuse of Free software), to pretend that Microsoft is better than Google when it come to ethics is totally laughable. See Verizon for example. On the issue of privacy, there is this new article:

Government data, our data, now held by Google

[...]

You see Google has been running a bit of an advertising campaign built around the fact that over 60% of the United States state governments are using part or all of Google’s Apps. I realized that the open source and freetard brigade will argue that this is a great thing given that it boost the whole idea of free and open source software in the public eye but stop and think for a minute.

60% plus. That’s 60% or better of states who are storing supposedly private and extremely personal data of ours on a third party server of a company thats sole purpose is to index all the information in the world.

It is better to have this data in Google’s datacentres than in Microsoft’s. But ideally, as we said before, no public institution should ever outsource data like this, specially to foreign entities. If private businesses choose to do it, then the matter is altogether different in nature. When it comes to Web-based software, Google is also said to be ahead of Microsoft. As someone from Fonality has put it this month:

I just took a moment to re-read what I have written. Sounds like I work for Google. I don’t. But this blog is about what works for business and I feel that Google made a bold move to make businesses work better. I actually am not a Microsoft Hater anymore. Outgrew that when I put away the code. I just think they are an old and overpriced model. It will be interesting to see how good their response to Google Docs is: Office Web Apps. I bet MSFT isn’t used to playing catch-up on one of their core businesses!

Google will hopefully turn out the lights for Microsoft. █

Nokia Expands Patent Strike Against Apple

Posted in Apple, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Patents at 7:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Nokia logo with Apple

Summary: Nokia seemingly wants sanctions against Apple products (or big payments); Mono and patents revisited

THE Nokia-Apple patent fight is not exactly news [1, 2, 3], but Nokia is said to be taking it further to the ITC (sometimes the “embargo department”). Apart from this report from IDG we also have some reports in the English press, notably BBC and The Register:

Nokia has ramped up its legal fight against Apple, arguing that almost all of its products infringe Nokia patents.

 

Nokia has upped the ante in its patent-infringement battle against Apple by extending its accusations to cover “virtually all of [Apple's] mobile phones, portable music players, and computers,” according to a statement by the fiesty Finns.

Patents are certainly still somewhat of a disease, but the above is not about software (or not only about software). It is worth adding that for Mono, patent are not the main issue (although they too are an issue); it has always been a question of control. “Way More Than Just Patents,” says one person who explains why Mono needs to be avoided.

I hope everyone who has voiced concern over patent issues with Mono will read this article. It does an excellent job of explaining why the danger to Free software in Microsoft’s control of .Net technology is far more than just the patent threat. It is about who is in the driver’s seat of the technology – who is calling the shots. They can dictate the standards and the direction of the technology – all to the benefit of Microsoft and to the detriment of their competition (including FOSS).

The Linux Today crowd generally distrusts Mono, to say the least (see comments). █

Microsoft’s EDGI Still Alive, Under “Linux and Open Office Compete”

Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Marketing, Microsoft, OpenOffice at 7:03 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Microsoft does not compete but rather it is attempting to simply squash or eliminate known deployments of the competition, as a new job posting confirms

Microsoft has a division called “Linux Compete Squad”, which is part of EDGI. It is a dumping programme whose purpose is to block adoption of GNU/Linux and StarOffice (or OpenOffice.org).

According to this new job offer, Microsoft is now extending what it calls “Linux and Open Office Compete”, where “Compete” is capitalised, as usual. This almost confirms that it is the same thing as “Linux Compete Squad”, which is a ruthless and possibly illegal tactic. We wrote all about it almost a year ago, so there is no point repeating the explanations.

At the beginning of the year we saw that Microsoft was recruiting more anti-GNU/Linux staff and one year ago we saw that Robert Duffner was among those thugs, joining the ranks of people like Sam Ramji and Orlando Ayala [1, 2], who still seems to be going on “anti-FOSS” expeditions, e.g. in Kazakhstan.

“Compete” sounds innocent, but it’s an internal Microsoft code better described as “Attack” (making it somewhat of a euphemism). Glyn Moody shows that it’s still going on and that it’s even tied to Steve Ballmer. Bribery might not be out of the question.

One of the unusual aspects of open source is the fact that the software development philosophy spills over into the way that the project is run. This means that how and why things are done, and by whom, is plain for all to see. Contrast that with Microsoft’s approach, which mimics the black box of its software: mostly, all we ever get to view are the results, and rarely the cogs and gears behind those results.

Sometimes, though, some apparently obscure document grants us a rare insight into what is happening deep in the bowels of the Microsoft machine. Here’s an example, a delightfully jargon-ridden job advertisement for the “Linux and Open Office Compete Lead, US Subsidiary (CSI Lead)”:

If you’re looking for a new role where you’ll focus on one of the biggest issues that is top of mind for KT and Steve B in “Compete”, build a complete left to right understanding of the subsidiary, have a large amount of executive exposure, build and manage the activities of a v-team of 13 district Linux& Open Office Compete Leads, and develop a broad set of marketing skills and report to a management team committed to development and recognized for high WHI this is the position for you!

Once you’ve got past the entertaining “top of mind” and “complete left to right understanding” phraseology, this reveals something incredibly important about the current thinking at Microsoft: that OpenOffice.org now figures almost as largely in the competitive landscape as does GNU/Linux, and the fact there are no less than *13* “district Linux and Open Office Compete Leads” focussing on what is described as “one of the biggest issues” for no less a person than Steve Ballmer.

[...]

Free software projects need to bear this in mind when Redmond comes knocking on their doors, and tries to suggest that it would be mutually beneficial for them to work together. The intent is for that benefit to flow one way, and one way only, as this job advertisement makes clear.

Moody takes a particularly gentle angle on that, choosing to show that Microsoft is afraid of OpenOffice.org. Well, of course it’s afraid. It was almost a decade ago that Bill Gates considered using patents against it and recently we saw Microsoft leaning on Sun [1, 2], potentially in order to step on this important asset. Microsoft is a highly monopolistic company and the fact that it assigns teams for the single task of attacking the very existence of competition (as opposed to improving its own products) is not news.

“Ballmer, Gates and other seniors like Ayala should be brought to trial over this; they are violating competition rules and are thus breaking the law.”Let us remember how Microsoft created a whole "taskforce" to take GNU/Linux off the shelves at Wal-Mart. Ballmer, Gates and other seniors like Ayala should be brought to trial over this; they are violating competition rules and are thus breaking the law. The European Commission has already looked into it (cursory glance), but didn’t go far enough. Finding out who “steps out of line” and then attacking instances of the competition is like a Stalinist totality; it is with this type of approach that industry can end up as groups of thugs rather than innovators. Last week we saw allegations that Microsoft had paid $500,000,000 for Verizon to remove Google. That’s not competition.

Last night we found the following message, titled “Paid evangelism” (euphemism for shilling). It says:

I know several Microsoft paid evangelists. They always find a time to talk about how good is Windows 7 and so on. Taking a beer with their friends is also a good time.

They are very happy of being paid to do such tasks, because it is hard to measure productivity :) They selves laugh :)

I would love have a job as that! Easy money :)

“Sad world we live in where people are wanting to be paid for spreading lies,” said our reader Goblin last night. Cubezzz said that “it’s really just ignorance.” Apple by the way is not much better. One of the people there who is behind “evangelism” recently admitted that he pays people to use Twitter on his behalf (pretending that it’s him). Ethics are not a priority to these people. █

Thugs

12.29.09

Links 29/12/2009: GNU/Linux for Kerala Legislators, Monty Still Rushes Against Oracle

Posted in News Roundup at 9:08 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • 141 Kerala legislators get a laptop

    Thiruvananthapuram: All 141 legislators of the state assembly were Tuesday given a brand new HCL laptop each.
    Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan handed over one laptop to Leader of the Opposition Oommen Chandy at the banquet hall of the state assembly.

    It is yet to be decided if the legislators would be charged for the computers, speaker of the assembly K. Radhakrishnan told.

  • Labs Outlook 2010: Oracle/Sun, Microsoft Azure, Office, Ubuntu and Chrome OS Will Make Big Waves

    Ubuntu 10.04, a.k.a. the Lucid Lynx, is set to hit the Web in April. Lucid will be Canonical’s third Long Term Support release, and I expect it to break new ground for the organization in the server space, owing in large part to its Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud functionality.

    Toward the end of the year, I expect to see devices shipping with Google’s Web-centric Chrome OS, which may well set the stage for a new batch of rich Web applications in 2011 and beyond.

  • How to Troubleshoot and Repair Your PC

    Diagnosing With Linux

    One last bit of advice. Sometimes you might suspect that a piece of hardware is defective but, you don’t have a utility available to actually test the device. For example, I had a client complaining that the network adapter on an HP workstation had gone bad. I replaced the motherboard (which had an integrated network adapter).

    When I got back into Windows I tried to access the Internet, but the network adapter still wouldn’t work. So I reloaded drivers, verified IP settings and performed numerous other tests. Still, I could not get this PC online. I concluded that something inside of Windows was causing the problem, and the only thing left to do was to reinstall Windows. The client wasn’t willing to redo a system based on a hunch, so to test my hypothesis I booted the system using an Ubuntu Live CD.

    Ubuntu Live CD is a version of the Linux-based Ubuntu operating system that runs completely off of a CD without having to install it to the PC. This let me boot into a completely different operating system on the same PC, without modifying the current Windows configuration.

  • How to get the Windows 7 look in Linux

    Getting the Windows look is only another step in the same direction. We’re going to try and ape the current generation of Windows – the newly released Windows 7 – and merge some of its features into the Linux desktop, and we’ve decided to use KDE to do it.

  • 2009: A Linux year in review

    Was 2009 the year of the Linux desktop? It’s a rather silly question, honestly, and a Google search will show that for the last number of years, there have been constant predictions that that year was the year of the Linux desktop. And, guaranteed, in January there will be more predictions that 2010 will be “the year of the Linux desktop!”

    But why this focus on a particular point in time? Recent distributions already prove that Linux is more than capable for the desktop, and this has been true for years. 2009 brought about GNOME 2.28 and KDE 4.3, both forward-progressing desktop environments. Are they perfect? Of course not. But let me pose this question: Is Windows on the desktop perfect?

    Linux on the desktop is entirely subjective: For some, the year of their Linux desktop was 2009, or last year, or the year before that. For others, Linux won’t be good enough until 2010, or 2011, or even further.

  • Why is separation between data and system files not a standard OS feature

    I’ve been wondering about this particular issue for a few years now. I’m secretly hoping that Chrome with it’s cloud based storage will finally push OS developers in the right direction and will make them start thinking about finally separating system and data files by default. Or maybe not.

  • A Bit of Welcomed Scumm on Your Linux Machine

    This might make me sound like an old fogey, but I really do miss the old games like Space Quest, The Curse of Monkey Island and Return to Zork. The problem isn’t that I don’t have the games anymore, but rather that they were designed for my 386 computer running DOS. Thankfully, I’m not alone in my fits of nostalgia. The developers over at www.scummvm.org have reproduced the “Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion” developed by Lucas Arts and packaged it into a virtual machine (thus, ScummVM). That virtual machine is open source and available for just about any platform you can imagine.

  • Server

  • Applications

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • Browser Linux: if you thought Google Chrome was good

        BrowserLinux is a relatively new distro and has good features but not a good developer community as of yet.

      • SystemRescueCd 1.3.4 Released, Now with Linux Kernel 2.6.31.9

        François Dupoux announced on December 28th the immediate availability of the SystemRescueCd 1.3.4 operating system. The new release is powered by Linux kernel 2.6.31.9, with an updated Btrfs filesystem from Linux kernel 2.6.32 and Xorg Server 1.6.5.

      • Super OS 9.10 – Karmic Koala with Muscles

        Hacktolive.org announced today, December 29th, yet another version of their Ubuntu-based Linux distribution… with “super powers.” Super OS 9.10 (formerly known as Super Ubuntu) includes patches, tools and technologies that are missing from a standard Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) default installation.

    • Debian Family

      • Karmic Koala: What’s New in Ubuntu

        The new Karmic Koala contains more updates than any Ubuntu release in some time. Users will certainly notice one thing from the start: The system boots up much more quickly. The reworked design also stands out. While it still features the brown tones for which Ubuntu is known, it also reminds one a bit of the Mac OS interface.

      • Ubuntu Lucid Lynx: Will You Upgrade?

        At the moment Canonical seem set to release the next version of their OS in late April 2010, this latest version will be version 10.04 and is named Lucid Lynx, this is their first major release since Karmic Koala which was released in late October 2009.

      • mintCast Wallpaper Challenge [1st&2nd Place win IBM Laptop]

        I wanted to detail the the wallpaper challenge that Charles and I announced in the latest http://mintcast.org (episode 28). Please post here or email the podcast with any questions. Good Luck!

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Igaware All-In-One Small Business Server

      We hooked up the appliance’s LAN and WAN ports, and from the tidy web interface set up the firewall to perform NAT on the WAN port. A failing of many competing products has been their inability to hide the underlying Linux kernel for management, but Igaware has made a good job of this, so Windows users don’t need to know about Linux.

    • Android

      • Android Phones to Challenge iPhone Supremacy

        Now bitter industry rival SK Telecom is looking to generate just as much buzz by getting out of the gate early on premium phones powered by the Google-backed Android operating system.

        SK Telecom, the country’s biggest mobile telephony operator, currently plans to release its first Android phone, produced by Motorola, sometime around mid-January, industry sources said.

      • T-Mobile G1 To Get Android OS Upgrade?

        AndroidSpin, an Android focused news site, has reported that the very first Android based smartphone, the T-Mobile G1, will be getting an over-the-air update.

        This will upgrade its software with Android 2.0 or possibly Android 2.1, which incidentally is the operating system of soon-to-launch Nexus One also know as the Google Phone.

      • First android-based tablet pc for india

        Notion Ink, a Hyderabad-based technology start-up, has developed the first touchscreen tablet which uses Google’s open source operating system Android, Nvidia’s yet-to-be launched Tegra processor chips and a power-saving display screen from the US-based fabless developer Pixel Qi.

      • Notion Ink develops India’s first touchscreen Tablet PC

        Breaking News! Notion Ink, a Hyderabad-based company, has developed the first touchscreen Tablet PC, which uses Google’s Android Open Source Operating system. The tablet PC was developed by six IITians and an MBA. It will be displayed at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show in January 2010.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open Source Versions of Five Games You Loved as a Kid

    If you’ve got some free time on your hands this holiday season, check out these open source versions of popular games you grew up playing. They’re loads of fun, but don’t blame us if they make you a little nostalgic.

  • 26C3: GSM hacking made easy

    On Sunday 27th of December at the 26th Chaos Communication Congress (26C3) in Berlin, security researchers published open source instructions for cracking the A5/1 mobile telephony encryption algorithm and for building an IMSI catcher that intercepts mobile phone communication.

  • Open Source E-Commerce: Winners and Losers in 2009

    For the last year we have compiled monthly statistics on the top Open Source eCommerce programs, including several free or nearly-free proprietary programs that are sold for less than some OSC programs. “Open Source” means free to look at and to modify, not free of cost: about half of the top OSC programs reviewed are sold for a fee.

  • MyYearbook Speeds Web Responses

    McObject’s eXtremeDB is based on its open source system, Perst. Perst is designed to be embedded in Java, Java ME, and Microsoft .Net applications. The ExtremeDB commercial version of Perst comes in a high availability version that includes transaction logging.

    MyYearbook.com, an early user of eXtremeDB, was launched in 2005. It is also a user of the open source PostgreSQL system for relational database work, Harris said.

  • 5 ways to misunderstand Free and Open Source Software.

    2. Innovation is killed in free software.
    The common perception is that if everyone can copy ideas, innovation will be stifled. In fact, freedom is often the key to innovative and successful software.

    * Anyone is allowed and encouraged to work upon it;
    * Many people are willing to participate;
    * There is no need to re-invent everything, ideas can be improved upon directly.

    Non-proprietary software stands out in many areas: consider, to name just a few:

    * Applications: Firefox (web browser), Inkscape (vector drawing).
    * Complete systems: Apache (web server), OpenBSD (os), and of course, GNU/Linux.
    * Formats and protocols: HTML (web pages), BitTorrent (file sharing), ODF (office documents).
    * Server applications: Drupal (Content Management System), WordPress (blog).

  • Mozilla

    • Firefox 3.6 hits ice – won’t show up till Spring

      Mozilla has delayed the release of Firefox 3.6 until the first quarter of 2010.

    • Firefox Roadmap: A Look at Versions 3.6 to 4.0

      About two weeks ago, it became clear the final version of Firefox 3.6 would be pushed back to early 2010 . And we’ve known since September that Firefox 4.0 wouldn’t ship until late 2010 — although according to Mozilla’s most recent meeting notes 4.0 may be pushed back to early 2011. But while we wait for the official versions of these browsers to come out, let’s take a look at what’s in store for the world’s second-most popular browser.

  • Fog Computing

    • How the cloud could conquer the world in 2010

      Technologies such as virtualization that underlie Amazon EC2, along with open source software like MemcacheD used heavily by Facebook and other large web-shops, have been important enablers of cloud services.

    • Sun Microsystems opts for open source security for the cloud

      Rather than offer the applications to clients and leaving them to get on with the task of integrating them with cloud services, however, Sun is customising the software to work with mainstream cloud service providers such as Amazon and Eucalyptus.

  • Databases

    • Monty launches last-ditch bid to block Oracle deal

      MySQL co-creator Michael “Monty” Widenius has launched a web campaign to try and prevent Oracle from gaining ownership of the open source database which is part of the properties it acquired along with Sun Microsystems in April.

    • Monty launches frantic ‘save MySQL’ web campaign

      In a desperate last gasp bid to stop Oracle buying Sun Microsystems and its precious MySQL kit and kaboodle, the database’s co-creator – Michael ‘Monty’ Widenius – has launched a campaign to “help keep the internet free.”

    • The Quandary over Open Source Support

      If you’re like a lot of IT organizations, you’ve got servers from Hewlett-Packard, routers from Cisco, operating systems from Red Hat and Microsoft – and you may even have Solaris from Sun somewhere. For good measure let’s throw in a few databases from MySQL that occasionally take a virtual table or two from your SQL Server farms – and let’s not forget to mention the Oracle database that runs your CRM software. To top things off you’re running a slew of other open and closed source software that all together keeps your business running.

  • CMS

  • BSD

    • Why security gets no love

      There are other reasons to doubt the importance of a graphical installer as the big reason BSD Unix systems do not get the “love” that is heaped on Linux. The answer to why Linux gets more hype and attention is much more complex than that, and includes such concerns as marketing power — in large part because its community is full of people who will talk about how great it is without even understanding half of what they are saying. That is true of anything popular, and says nothing bad about Linux itself, of course.

  • Openness

    • What would my ideal school look like? Part 2

      Speaking of electronic texts, we’re talking open source here. If they don’t exist as Flexbooks or some other format that my teachers and students could easily use, then I want my teachers to be subject-matter experts who can generate open content. There, of course, is another dividend of corporate sponsorship: contribution to a growing store of high-quality educational content.

    • GENIVI Alliance to Demonstrate First Open Source-Based IVI Platform at International CES 2010

      The GENIVI Alliance, an automotive industry association driving the development and adoption of an open in-vehicle Infotainment (IVI) reference platform, will be demonstrating the initial implementation of the GENIVI 1.0 platform in Las Vegas during International CES 2010, January 7th – 10th.

Leftovers

  • Five Critical Flaws in the Senate Health Care Bill

    Of course, these aren’t the only problems with the bill. Most glaringly, both the Senate and House bill would leave millions uninsured,6 a far cry from the vision of universal coverage so many of us have fought for. That remains a long-term goal.

  • Technology Predictions Are Mostly Bunk

    ‘Tis the season for predictions, so “Information Age” bravely goes out on this limb: Most technology predictions for 2010 won’t come true. The more we learn about how innovation happens, the less straight the lines of advance look.

    “Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further developments,” said Roman engineer Julius Sextus Frontinus in 10 A.D. This end-of-progress view has been echoed many times, including by Charles Duell, commissioner for the U.S. Patent Office, who in 1899 said, “Everything that can be invented has already been invented.”

  • The Future of Unix Standards: Unix 10?

    For the last 40 years, Unix operating systems have helped to power mission-critical IT operations around the globe. Now, as Unix enters middle age, its backers are busily developing the new specifications that they hope will carry the OS forward into the next age of computing.

  • How Facebook is struggling to lay out Zuckerberg’s vision

    I spoke to a number of people quoted in the article, but I thought it was also worth sharing at length what Chris Messina, a designer and open source advocate, told me.

  • Security

    • U.S. Intelligence Found Iran Nuke Document Was Forged

      U.S. intelligence has concluded that the document published recently by the Times of London, which purportedly describes an Iranian plan to do experiments on what the newspaper described as a “neutron initiator” for an atomic weapon, is a fabrication, according to a former Central Intelligence Agency official.

  • Environment

    • Blame Denmark, not China, for Copenhagen failure

      It’s been several days since the chaotic end to the Copenhagen climate conference but the aftershocks from its failure are still reverberating. As John Prescott points out in his letter to the Guardian, the pointing of fingers in the blame game does not help the regaining of trust needed for the positive resumption of talks early next year and to complete them by December 2010, the new deadline agreed to in Copenhagen.

    • We cannot change the world by changing our buying habits

      The researchers call this the “licensing effect”. Buying green can establish the moral credentials that license subsequent bad behaviour: the rosier your view of yourself, the more likely you are to hoard your money and do down other people.

      Then they took another bunch of students, gave them the same purchasing choices, then introduced them to a game in which they made money by describing a pattern of dots on a computer screen. If there were more dots on the right than the left they made more money. Afterwards they were asked to count the money they had earned out of an envelope.

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf

    • Immaculate deception, part 2: Chemical industry front group calls for ban on bisphenol A

      Listen, and you’ll hear a spokesperson for the new Helena, MT, chapter of the Coalition for Chemical Safety being interviewed while handing out Coalition literature in the state capitol rotunda during an event organized by the chapter. She describes her concern as a mom over the use of BPA in kids’ products, and even criticizes the Food and Drug Administration’s past reliance only on industry studies to conclude BPA is safe. You’ll also hear the reporter note that the Coalition wants to “ban BPA and other chemicals that could be harmful.”

    • FutureGen lobbying efforts continuing in Springfield

      Building an experimental power plant in Illinois isn’t just about finding land, erecting a facility and flipping a switch.

      Just as Illinois taxpayers were billed more than $450,000 for Washington D.C.-based lobbying efforts to bring the high-tech, coal-fired FutureGen facility to Mattoon, the FutureGen Alliance is now spending money to lobby state lawmakers and the Quinn administration in Springfield.

      Their task: Convince the state to buy all the electricity the plant produces. Such a move would help FutureGen secure federal funding needed to build the near zero-emissions plant.

    • Health Lobby Takes Fight to the States

      Like about a dozen other states, Florida is debating a proposed amendment to its state constitution that would try to block, at least symbolically, much of the proposed federal health care overhaul on the grounds that it tramples individual liberty.

  • Censorship/Civil Rights

    • Canada Successfully Destroys Parody Websites

      The government of Canada has used strong-arm tactics to shut down two parody websites criticizing Canada’s poor environmental policy, taking down 4500 other websites in the process.

      The two websites, “enviro-canada.ca” and “ec-gc.ca”, are “directly connected to a hoax which misleads people into believing that the Government of Canada will take certain actions in relation to environmental matters,” wrote Mike Landreville from Environment Canada in an email to the German Internet Service Provider (ISP) Serverloft. “We trust you appreciate the importance of avoiding confusion among the public concerning Canadian governmental affairs and that you will assist us in preventing this hoax from spreading further.”

    • Court orders three H-1B sites disabled

      A New Jersey judge has ordered the shutdown of three H-1B opposition Web sites and seeks information about the identity of anonymous posters.

      On Dec. 23, Middlesex County Superior Court Judge James Hurley ordered firms that register domains and provide hosting services — GoDaddy Inc., Network Solutions, Comcast Cable Communications Inc. and DiscountASP.Net, to disable the three sites, ITgrunt.com, Endh1b.com, and Guestworkerfraud.com. Facebook Inc. was also ordered to disable ITgrunt’s Facebook page.

    • Wikileaks suspends ops to launch pledge drive

      The whistle blowing site is taking time out until 6 January to ask for support in many forms, not just donations. Wikileaks is appealing for help from volunteer coders, offers of free legal assistance and hosting support as well as cash donations. The site has promised not to accept corporate or government finance in order to protect its integrity.

    • Russia to prosecute YouTube police whistleblower

      A former policeman who accused senior officers of corruption in a series of video blogs will himself face prosecution for abuse of office, Russian investigators said on Monday.

      Former police major Alexei Dymovsky became a household name in Russia earlier this year when he used YouTube to appeal to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to tackle corruption in the police force.

      A criminal case will be brought against Dymovsky for “fraud committed by a person using his official position,” the Prosecutor-General’s investigative committee said in a statement. It gave no further details.

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

Joerg Heilig, Sun Microsystems Senior Engineering Director talks about OpenOffice.org 15 (2004)


Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.

IRC: #boycottnovell @ FreeNode: December 29th, 2009

Posted in IRC Logs at 8:05 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME Gedit

Read the log

Enter the IRC channel now

To use your own IRC client, join channel #boycottnovell in FreeNode.

Microsoft’s Racketeering with Patents and Abolition of Software Patents Reexamined

Posted in Asia, Free/Libre Software, FSF, GNU/Linux, IBM, Kernel, Law, Microsoft, OIN, Patents, TomTom at 4:47 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“That’s extortion and we should call it what it is. To say, as Ballmer did, that there is undisclosed balance sheet liability, that’s just extortion and we should refuse to get drawn into that game.”

–Mark Shuttleworth

Ballmer on patents

Summary: Why Microsoft’s “extortion” is a serious offence that mustn’t be overlooked; How Free software deals with software patents at present

CHIN Wong from the Philippines is an excellent journalist, but in his latest column he seems to have gotten soft on Microsoft. In writing about Steve Ballmer's potential departure he asserts the following about software patents:

Would you fire Steve Ballmer?

[...]

A US federal appeals court upheld a $290-million judgment against Microsoft Corp. and ordered it to stop selling MS Word unless it removed code that violated the software patent of an obscure Canadian company, i4i, that sued it in Texas and won.

The ruling is ironic, given Microsoft’s use of software patents earlier this year to bludgeon TomTom, a Dutch maker of car navigation systems, into settling over its use of the Linux kernel. Ballmer has bellicosely proclaimed that the kernel violates several Microsoft’s patents and has threatened to sue developers and users alike over its use. The company’s suit against TomTom in February was the first time it tried to enforce these patents against the Linux platform.

The author focuses on the TomTom case but misses the more important point about Microsoft using racketeering tactics, which ought to send people like Steve Ballmer to prison (and bring Bill Gates back to court for crimes that he too had helped commit and initiate).

Over in India, a new article from Shree Lahiri makes the decent proposition that “Freedom of software [should be treated as] our birthright” and he also acknowledges Richard Stallman, crediting him in part for the protests against software patents. Lahiri writes:

Freedom of software is our birthright

[...]

Tracing the history of free software, Abhijit said, “In 1984, Richard Stallman started the Free Software Foundation and spent most of his time advocating for free software, as well as campaigning against both software patents and what he sees as excessive extension of copyright laws.”

Speaking of Stallman’s contribution to saner law, where are OIN, Linux Foundation and other IBM fronts when it comes to just abolishing software patents? They have other strategies in mind. The FSF and FFII seem to be among very few who are actively committed to the cause. The EFF’s squashing strategy and Peer2Patent’s gardening or voluntary peer review process are still considered somewhat controversial. Here is a new article from The Register that in some way legitimises software patents for the same reason; by labeling them “good” and “bad” (mostly bad) it tacitly claims that some of these patents are acceptable. OIN very explicitly takes this point of view, whereas for Peer2Patent it is still just implicit.

The best (of the worst) patent claims of 2009

[...]

El Reg is always eager to lap up the sad, eerie, and unusual of the bunch as they fall into our sights. We’ve gathered up a few of our 2009 favorites published in honor of the year’s end.

A patent is a monopoly, based on the words of the head of the USPTO. Schools rhetorically teach that monopolies are harmful to capitalism, so what gives? More importantly, why is there no police involvement when these monopolies are (mis)used for racketeering [1, 2]? To ignore this is to accept that Microsoft is above the law. █

“IP is often compared to physical property rights but knowledge is fundamentally different.”

–IP Watch on Professor Joseph Stiglitz

Seattle-based PCC Natural Markets Slams the Gates Foundation for Its Monsanto Agenda

Posted in Bill Gates, Deception, Microsoft at 4:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Baphomet

Summary: Latest dissenting perspectives on the acts of the Gates Foundation, which is looking to exploit the world’s poor

FOR those requiring background, Gates and Rockefeller are promoting the monopolisation of African agriculture (Gates is also pushing this in India right now) under the euphemistic banner “Green Revolution”. With very large investments in a brutal monopolist called Monsanto, those super-affluent families advance an agenda whereby they will make a nice profit. It is another nice monopoly for them, but this one is disguised as charity and those to take the blame are over at Monsanto — robbing and extorting the world’s poorest farmers. We have provided proof for these claims in some of the posts listed at the bottom.

Adding to the protests against the Gates Foundation for its promotion and financing of Monsanto, we now have PCC. The Seattle Times quotes PCC’s complaint as follows:

The Gates Foundation is getting some criticism from a local food co-op for supporting research into genetically modified crops to increase production in Africa.

PCC Natural Markets, the Seattle-based food co-operative, published a letter and editor’s note this month taking a strong stance against genetic engineering of food.

“I caution the organic community to be watchful of this NEW Green Revolution, especially since The Gates Foundation science and technology efforts are led by a former Monsanto researcher,”
Dennis L. Weaver wrote in PCC’s Sound Consumer.

“The Gates Foundation apparently is pushing genetically modified crops on African farmers,” PCC editor Trudy Bialic added. She cited a $42 million Gates grant to a project involving Monsanto to produce corn resistant to drought “even though genetic engineering has failed to increase crop yields significantly, despite 20 years of research.”

[...]

But the local reaction reveals ongoing skepticism, even among an audience generally not at odds with Gates philanthropy.

“The organic community cannot buy into Bill’s call to ‘Let’s just all hold hands, sing kumbaya, hug, air-kiss and “‘get over” past “ideological” divides,’ ” Weaver wrote to PCC.

“I don’t know exactly what is motivating the Gates Foundation to buy into the propaganda,” Bialic said. “I think it’s an ideology that technology can save the world.”

As GatesKeepers put it, “Gates Foundation’s hometown newspaper [is] continuing to publish dissenting news and views on the activities of the local Leviathan.” █

  1. With Microsoft Monopoly in Check, Bill Gates Proceeds to Creating More Monopolies
  2. Gates-Backed Company Accused of Monopoly Abuse and Investigated
  3. How the Gates Foundation Privatises Africa
  4. Reader’s Article: The Gates Foundation and Genetically-Modified Foods
  5. Monsanto: The Microsoft of Food
  6. Seeds of Doubt in Bill Gates Investments
  7. Gates Foundation Accused of Faking/Fabricating Data to Advance Political Goals
  8. More Dubious Practices from the Gates Foundation
  9. Video Transcript of Vandana Shiva on Insane Patents
  10. Explanation of What Bill Gates’ Patent Investments Do to Developing World
  11. Black Friday Film: What the Bill Gates-Backed Monsanto Does to Animals, Farmers, Food, and Patent Systems
  12. Gates Foundation Looking to Destroy Kenya with Intellectual Monopolies
  13. Young Napoleon Comes to Africa and Told Off
  14. Bill Gates Takes His GMO Patent Investments/Experiments to India
  15. Gates/Microsoft Tax Dodge and Agriculture Monopoly Revisited
  16. Beyond the ‘Public Relations’
  17. UK Intellectual Monopoly Office (UK-IPO) May be Breaking the Law
  18. “Boycott Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in China”
  19. Patents Roundup: Software Patents and ACTA at STOA, Gates-backed Monsanto Wants to Own Mexico’s Food Supply
  20. Gates Foundation Funds Literature Supportive of Its Objectives
  21. Bill Gates Tightens Information/Agriculture Grip on Africa by Funding African Journalists, Expanding to India
  22. The Gates Foundation Extends Control Over Communication with Oxfam Relationship

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