02.23.16
Posted in America, Europe, Patents at 8:36 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Original/English
Publicado in America, Europe, Patents at 11:16 am por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Ye esta sucediendo aquí en el Reino Unido…
Sumario: El rol jugado por las patentes cada vez más promovido por sus beneficiaros maximalistas de patentes, pesan más que creación, innovación y producción, las que patentes en principio supuestamente debian promover
TROLLES de patentes son un gran problema pero los medios corporativos, cuyos dueños son/o son influenciados por grandes corporaciones, no prestan atención a la realidad de que los trolles de patentes casi siempre usan patentes de softwared. Aquí es donde el problema es mayor. Es el núcleo del problema. Patentes de software nunca debieron haber existido en primer lugar, como la evidencia siempre lo muestra que son contra productivas.
Aquí vemos un nuevo artículo de los medios masivos Británicos, que fue sumarizado esta semana (un par de días atras) como sigue: ¨Apple ha sido ordenado a pagar un gran multa a una pequeña compañía por infringimiento de patentes. Así que ¿porqué estamos celebrando esta victoria de un ´David´? Por que el pequeño tipo es un ´troll de patentes´, impidiendo innovación al abusar del sistema, dice Rhodri Marsden¨ (no dice nada acerca de la naturaleza de la agresión de patentes de Apple, incluso de sus 6 años de guerra de patentes contra Linux/Android).
Como lo pusimos a principios del mes, ¨el caso VirtnetX contra Apple nos Muestra NO el problema con los Trolles de Patentes Pero con Las Patentes de Sofware.¨
En otras noticias, como notamos ayer, ¨Fondo de Invenciones de IV (Intelectual Ventures) se Une a Fraunofer en Europa¨ (Fraunhofer es un notorio actor cuando se trata de patentes de software en Europe).
Los bloguers financiados por la OEP escribieron una articulillo para Intellectual Ventures, EL TROLL DE PATENTES MÁS GRANDE DEL MUNDO. Estos bocas financiadas por trolles (también reciben dinereo de la OEP) fueron con el titular ¨El Fondo de Invenciones de Intellectual Ventures se une a Fraunhofer en una jugada mayor en Europa¨. La UPC ayudaríá a estos trolles a joder más a Europa, DANDO TRABAJO A ABOGADOS DE PATENTES QUIENES GANAN CON MAYORES LITIGACIONES o como el presidente de la FFII lo llama ¨calentamiento de patentes¨.
¿Quién se ´conformaría´ con los trolles de patentes? Estoy usando ´conformaríá´ como en resignacion bajo sufrimiento al no encontrar una mejor traducción. Adivine. Son las PYMEs Europeas, que conforman la mayoría de la industria aquí (no tenemos Googles e IBMs aqui exceptos ramas de esas firmas). Convierte a las PYMEs un atractivo objetivo para los trolles de patentes especialmente en Europa. RECUERDEN EL OBJETIVO DE LA UPC CON AYUDA DE LA OEP ES SUBJUGAR A TODAS LA PYMEs EUROPEAS. Para citar a Unidos por Una Reforma de Patentes (de el otro día): ¨Sabía usted que los trolles de patentes están desproporcionadamente dañándo a pequeñas compañías, más vulnerables firmas?¨ Hay una valuable referencia allí con información adicional y hace link a este documento (publicado menos de un año atrás por James Bessen et al). Wall Street, i. e. las grandes corporaciones traspasan sus IPOs (lease patentes de software) (y con ello sus masivos departamentos legales) promueve y por lo meno defiende a los trolles de patentes en su prensa. ¿Está alguien sorprendido por ello?
“Las Patentes de Software nunca deberían haver existido en primer lugar, como la evidencia siempre sirvio para demostrar que ellas son contra-productivas.”La Asociación Industrial de Computadoras y Comunicaciones, financiada por grandes negocios, ahora se enfoca en las universidades – no AGRESORES como Microsoft o Apple como el problema.
“‘Innovación’”, escribio en respuesta esta persona, “¿Es una pieza de papel con la cual tu puedes enjuciar a otros?”
“Mentalidad retorcida,” añadió esta persona anónima.
El contexto de esta maldirectiva deben ser reportajes acerca de CMU, los cuales no sólo atacaron el anonimato (socavando Tor para el gobierno de los Estados Unidos) pero también atacan compañías practicantes usando patentes. Como WIPR lo puso: ¨Carnegie enjuició Marvell en la Corte del Distrito Oeste de Pensilvaniaia en los Estados Unidos el 2009, clamando que la compañía ha vendido billones de chips usando ´su´ tecnología.¨
Esto probablemente se va a convertir en una suerte de ¨impuesto¨ a productos que todo el mundo compra. Vean partes de la discución con Patent Buddy acerca del financiamento de las universidades en los Estados Unidos y de como se relaciona con tales batallas legales de patentes. ¨Carnegie Mellon,¨ como fue puesto en una etapa, ¨ha convertido a las Universidades de los Estados Unidos en trolles de patentes¨ (link a CMU).
¨En estos días en los Estados Unidos,¨ Patent Buddy me dijo, ¨los abogados de patentes están haciendo tanto o más dinero que los ingenieros.¨
¿Qué acerca de las externalidades? Todos estan excepto abogados de patentes.
“Convierte a las PYMEs un atractivo objetivo para los trolles de patentes especialmente en Europa.”La respuesta a el fue eso ¨en un mundo mejor deberían hacer un mejor trabajo.¨ Y en ello sigue (detalles en Twitter)…
Mirando algun cubrimiento de prensa encontramos eso, basado en una declaración formal, ¨Mrvel Technology Group LTD. (NASDAQ: MRVL), un silicon integrador global y Carnegie Mellon University, una universidad de investigación privada, anunciaron hoy haber arreglado su jucio de infringimiento de patentes. Las partes han resuelto el caso en terminos aceptables a ambos, incluso un acuerdo de pagos de Marvell to CMU de $750 millones, sin continuos pagos de regalías.¨
Aquí esta lo que los maximalistas de patentes escribieron: ¨La mediación ordenada por la corte finaliza con un acuerdo de pagos de $750 m para arreglar el juicio de siete años por infringimiento de patentes entre Marvell Technology Group y Carnegie Mellon University” (vean el pasado de CMU).
“CMU no produce nada actualmente.”Esto no es una patente de software, pero el problema aquí es diferente. CMU no produce nada actualmente. La fuente de dinero de CMU como es notada arriba, es también relevante a esto. De un punto de vista económico, el único que pierde es el público.
Incidentalmente, como lo señalo el presidente del FFII el otro día, “Olimex [esta] obligada a aplicar por patentes de software en order de obtener financiamento de la UE,” lo que es un gran ¨desperdicio del dinero público¨ (también puede ser usado para obligar a pagar al público despues).
Aquí esta el relevante bid de un blog post publicado hace dos días:
Esto da asombrosas oportunidades a compañías Bulgaras para convertirse competitivas globalmente.
Desafortunadamente la más interesante area de la innovación es cargada con mas papeleo y algunas cosas que son consideradas totalmente inaceptables con nuestra Fuente Abierta manera de pensar. Por instancia uno de los requisitos es aplicar por patentes para la innovación, para proteger la inversión de la UE en tu compañíá. Suena lógico pero, efectivamente serrucha el piso a todas las compañías que trabajan con Tecnología de Código Abierto.
¿A qué esta llegando la UE? ¿Esta tratando de impedir el espíritu FOSS y la cultura de compartir al urgir a la gente a patentar su software, a pesar de las reglas (como las de la EPC) que no las permiten? Seguro que hay algo podrido en la OEP, que necesita urgentemente ser arreglado. █
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Posted in News Roundup at 8:34 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Contents
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The open-source software operating system Linux is a free-of-charge substitute to proprietary systems like Microsoft Windows. By using a cross-country data set, this paper finds evidence that increased piracy of proprietary software has a negative impact on adoption of desktop versions of Linux. The interpretation of this result is that the availability of pirated versions of Windows, as well as pirated applications compatible with Windows and OS-X, lead to fewer individuals installing a Linux operating system on their desktop computers. Thus, in the absence of software piracy, Linux would be a more widely used operating system.
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Desktop
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Along with my plan to delete Intel as well as M$ from my LAN I’ve been looking for a Network Addressable Storage (NAS) unit. Of course Western Digital makes a bunch but their latest and greatest have exactly zero mention of GNU/Linux. So, I was put off.
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Android phones have reached the point where they have similar specifications in terms of CPU and Ram than most budget laptops, but are held back for phone centric tasks. The truth is, your phone is ready to replace your laptop or desktop if you give it a chance.
I am no stranger to the ideal of using a phone to replace most computing requirements, I love my Galaxy S5 and every chance I get to hook it to a screen and keyboard I do, but the Android UI is not great for larger screens.
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Server
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Like many open source projects, Docker gained a strong following among developers first, but as it grew in popularity, the companies these developers were working for wanted a straight-forward way to track and manage them.
That’s exactly what DDC is designed to do. It gives developers the agility they need to create containerized applications, while providing operations with the tools they need to bring order to the process.
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The Linux Foundation is announcing new areas of focus for its Open Mainframe Project. The Open Mainframe Project is a collaborative effort launched six months ago as a focal point for the deployment and use of the Linux OS on the mainframe.
The new areas of focus were determined by the project’s technical steering committee, and they emphasize compatibility and support for growing technologies.
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Kernel Space
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Robin Systems, a Silicon Valley-based provider of containerized data platform software, today announced its membership in The Linux Foundation’s Open Container Initiative.
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As I had picked up the Trion 150 for a test system rather than being a free review sample, I had bought the Trion 150 120GB model, which set me back just about $50 USD at Amazon.com and puts it in line with other SSDs of a similar capacity.
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Graphics Stack
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The X.Org Foundation is set to hold elections beginning next month for four new board of directors as well as the adoption of changes to the foundation’s by-laws for allowing it to become part of SPI.
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Libinput 1.2.0 was officially released this morning by Red Hat’s Peter Hutterer for improving the Linux input support on X.Org, Wayland, and Mir systems.
Libinput 1.2 features graphics tablet support, three-finger pinch gesture support on capable hardware, motion hysteresis has been deactivated by default, fixes for disable-while-typing, and other changes.
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An in-memory shader cache landed for the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver on Sunday and made it in time for the Mesa 11.2 branching.
Marek Olšák pushed a number of code commits to Mesa on Sunday that ended with support for binary shaders and shader cache in memory.
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The newly-opened Mesa 11.3-devel code-base already has support for another OpenGL ES 3.2 extension.
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Benchmarks
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From an AMD A10-7850K Kaveri system I did a clean install of a daily Ubuntu 16.04 x86_64 development snapshot. First I tested the closed-source driver as packaged right now in Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial Xerus (fglrx 15.20.3). Following that, was the test of the current out-of-the-box open-source RadeonSI stack with the Linux 4.4 kernel and Mesa 11.1 built against LLVM 3.8. Following that I did a run of the same open driver stack but having manually enabled DRI3 rather than using the default DRI2. Following that was then an upgrade to the Linux 4.5 Git kernel for an extra run and then lastly was a run of the Linux 4.5 Git kernel paired with Mesa 11.2 and DRI3 enabled.
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For those curious about the performance impact between the CPUFreq and P-State scaling drivers and the different scaling governors when using an Intel Core i5 “Skylake” CPU with the latest Linux 4.5 kernel, here are some fresh benchmarks.
Over the weekend on a Core i5 6600K Skylake system running Linux 4.5 Git I compared P-State powersave, P-State performance, CPUFreq ondemand, CPUFreq performance, CPUFreq powersave, and CPUFreq conservative options.
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Applications
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So, here goes the new screenshots of PlaybackPopover…
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Samba is a tool that seamlessly integrates Linux/Unix servers and desktops into Active Directory environments using the winbind daemon, and developers have just released a sizable update for it.
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Proprietary
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Instructionals/Technical
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Games
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Valve has released a new update for the Steam beta client and it comes with a couple of fixes for XCOM: Enemy Unknown and GRID Autosport.
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Ethan Lee talked about the process of Linux game porting, a few gripes he has from the few years he’s been porting (Windows) games to Linux, and more.
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Valve today announced the release of a free program for measuring the performance potential of your system for SteamVR to see if your system can handle the number of emerging VR products. Unfortunately, for now at least, the test is Windows-only.
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Godot, the cross-platform game engine that was open-sourced two years ago, is up to version 2.0.
Godot 1.0 was released just over one year ago while out today is the big 2.0 release. Godot 2.0 features improved scene instancing, a new text-based scene format, Opus audio format support, improved gamepad support, new editor features, and other improvements.
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Insurgency: Sandstorm is a new title being developed by New World Interactive for release in 2017 on Linux, OS X, Windows, and the game consoles.
NWI is known for their Insurgency game, which has been supported on Linux since last year. Insurgency: Sandstorm is their next title and is powered by Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4.
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You guys love Insurgency right, the awesome FPS game that came to Linux last year? Well Insurgency: Sandstorm is coming with some Unreal Engine 4 goodness, and Linux is confirmed.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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We’ve been working hard at KDE neon HQ to get the project going and today I’m pleased to say the Developer Unstable package archive is up and running. This gives daily packages of KDE Frameworks and Plasma desktop built direct from Git master branches. Expect some breakage, it’s called unstable for a reason. Ideal for testers and contributors to these two projects. To install it you’ll need an install of *buntu 15.10 (wily) and follow the Package Upgrade instructions.
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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In part 1 we created a very small application. All it did was print to stdout. Such a program is very easy to sandbox. In fact, since we didn’t specify any permissions for it this application already runs in a very tight sandbox.
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Reviews
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The latest edition of Antergos features support for the ZFS file system during installation, which makes it the first (desktop) Linux distribution that I am aware of with ZFS as a file system option during installation.
Antergos is a Linux distribution that’s based on Arch Linux. ZFS is an advanced file system with built-in volume management that originated from Oracle Solaris operating system (formerly Sun Solaris).
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Screenshots/Screencasts
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Arch Family
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The Manjaro community is proud to announce a new stable release of the Cinnamon Edition.
In addition to the full edition with office suite, graphics software and mailclient included, Manjaro Cinnamon 16.02 is also available as a minimal-ISO of 1GB download size, with users in mind who prefer to setup their own set of software.
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Red Hat Family
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Jim Whitehurst, president and CEO of Raleigh, North Carolina-based Red Hat, helped turn the open source software solutions business into what Forbes called “one of the world’s most innovative companies,” in 2012, 2014 and 2015. His book The Open Organization: Igniting Passion and Performance was published last year. Whitehurst took over the top job at Red Hat in 2008. Prior to that, he spent six years at Delta Air Lines, where he worked his way up to the chief operating officer position. He played an instrumental role in the airline’s financial turnaround. Before that, he worked with the Boston Consulting Group. A Columbus, Georgia native, Whitehurst earned a bachelor degree in economics and computer science from Rice University in 1989, and his master’s in business administration from Harvard University in 1994. He lives in Durham with his wife and their two children, who are twins. He spoke with Craig Dowden.
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Red Hat, a provider of open source systems, has signed Spectrami DMCC as a specialist distributor in the Middle East for the Red Hat JBoss Middleware portfolio and Red Hat Mobile Application Platform. Spectrami DMCC is a value added distributor for security, storage, and mobility products.
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Red Hat Ansible IT automation and DevOps platform has added new functionality and now includes native agentless support for automating heterogeneous network infrastructure. The update to Ansible networking capabilities expands the platform’s functionality to orchestrate entire application infrastructures, including network devices, with one automation tool.
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I remember Bill vaguely from my early days at Red Hat. When I’d bumped into him in the hall and introduced myself, I’d learned it was Bill’s first week on the job as a partner relationship manager. He’d just left a similar role at a major enterprise hardware company. Bill looked like what I would call a traditional business person; he was wearing a suit and making copies at the Xerox machine (two things I didn’t see many people do at Red Hat in those days). He looked slightly uncomfortable, but I didn’t think too much of it. A week later, I heard he’d quit—went back to the giant enterprise hardware company.
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Fedora
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Thanks to Alvaro and Martin, guys that belong to Hackspace Peru for the support of the outstanding camp event that will promote the use of FEDORA 23 and GNOME 3.18.
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IndiaHacks 2016, HackerEarth’s annual flagship event, aims to be the largest global gathering of developers. The event comprises of a series of hackathons and algorithmic challenges across nine different tracks.
Open Source is one of the tracks and aims to encourage open source contributions to various participating organizations. The track follows a model similar to Hacktoberfest, where contributions are measured by accepted pull requests and commits to open source software projects.
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After much trial and error and fighting with permissions, I’ve managed to create a much more simpler way of getting a Fedora 23 chroot running on a non-rooted Android phone.
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The past few days Red Hat / Fedora developers have been rebuilding Fedora Rawhide packages with the GCC 6 compiler. Out of the 17,741 packages, 577 packages ran into issues relating to GCC 6 (~3% of the packages).
Having problems with 577 packages due to the new version of the GNU Compiler Collection is much more than usual with Red Hat’s Marek Polacek pointing out last year with the GCC 5 rebuild they had problems with half as many — 236 problematic packages.
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Debian Family
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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The Meizu PRO 5 Ubuntu Edition will be showcased for the very first time at Mobile World Congress 2016 in Barcelona, drop by the Ubuntu stand in Hall 3 (booth 3J30) to get a hands-on experience of the device. The device being demonstrated at MWC will be running on demo version software, which will be updated with improved features through the next OTA update.
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A new Ubuntu OTA update is on its way and it should land tomorrow. Here are the fixes and improvements that will be released to the public.
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A new Beta for Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) is in the works, and we now know what flavors are going to participate.
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The Mobile World Congress 2016 in Barcelona is not only about IoT, Ubuntu Touch or the cloud for Canonical. It’s also about a small little robot powered by Snappy Ubuntu Core that seems to be gathering a lot of attention.
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A couple of libssh vulnerabilities have been found and fixed in Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS operating systems.
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Let’s face it, modern interfaces are all really easy to use. So let’s call it like it is…a matter of taste. You either like Unity or you don’t. You either like Windows 10 or you don’t. Both, however, are user-friendly, intuitive, and do their jobs well.
If, however, you do find Unity (or Linux, for that matter) challenging…you might want to rethink your career of choice. Harsh words? Maybe. But if you’re in IT, a user interface should be the last thing to confound you.
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The last 12 months have been disastrous for the minor league of mobile operating systems. Jolla’s Sailfish OS has started to capsize, while Blackberry has all but abandoned BlackBerry 10 for Android. Firefox OS, at least on phones, is but a few dying embers and Windows 10 Mobile has arrived with a muffled thud. Does Canonical and Ubuntu share the same fate? Perhaps, although the pair are fighting defiantly this month with a new flagship phone, courtesy of the Chinese manufacturer Meizu.
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ARM’s Cortex CPU core designs are widely used by all kinds of chipmakers who don’t want to create their own ARM CPU designs from scratch, so it’s important to pay attention when the company announces a new one. The ones we see the most often around here are the mainstream 64-bit cores for smartphones and tablets—the high-end Cortex A72 and A57 and the mid-end Cortex A53—but ARM produces a variety of smaller designs for ultra-low-power and embedded applications, too.
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The announcement of the ARM® Cortex®-A35 processor marked the beginning of a new family of ultra high efficiency application processors from ARM. Today, ARM announced the second member of that family, the Cortex-A32, a new 32-bit processor. Highlights of the Cortex-A32 include:
ARM’s smallest, lowest power ARMv8-A processor, optimized for 32-bit processing (supports the A32/T32 instruction set, and is fully compatible with ARMv7-A)
Provides ultra efficient 32-bit compute for the next generation of embedded products including consumer, wearable and IoT applications.
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Phones
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Android
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Intel is showing what it calls “Big Screen Experience” at Mobile World Congress, an Android smartphone which runs a full Linux desktop when plugged into an external display.
The concept is broadly similar to Microsoft’s Continuum for Windows 10 Mobile, but whereas Continuum devices are towards the high end, Intel’s project is aimed, it says, at budget smartphones and emerging markets.
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Mobile World Congress, the biggest smartphone trade show of the year, is this week, and companies like Samsung and LG are there showing off the hot new handsets they want you to buy. All of this gives us a glimpse into how Android phones will evolve in 2016, and what you should look for before you go shopping for your next smartphone.
Every year, major smartphone manufacturers like Samsung, LG, and HTC release a new batch of phones that set the bar for the entire Android ecosystem. We looked at the top, most anticipated phones from each to see where the industry is going, and to help you pick your next device.
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While browsing the many acres of Mobile World Congress 2016, I was lucky enough to stumble upon what has to be the most normcore smartphone at the show. Naturally, I found it at the booth of Chinese company Reeko, a specialist in the area of yesteryear-themed clamshell phones.
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Today ThinkParQ announced that the complete BeeGFS parallel file system is now available as open source. Developed specifically for performance-critical environments, the BeeGFS parallel file system was developed with a strong focus on easy installation and high flexibility, including converged setups where storage servers are also used for compute jobs. By increasing the number of servers and disks in the system, performance and capacity of the file system can simply be scaled out to the desired level, seamlessly from small clusters up to enterprise-class systems with thousands of nodes.
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The Open Network Operating System (ONOS), a Software Defined Networking (SDN) OS had another name added to its list of collaborators as NoviFlow Inc. joined the project. This was publicized in an announcement made by NoviFlow Inc. which is a leading provider of high-performance OpenFlow-based switching solutions.
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The new Beryllium follows the Lithium release that debuted in 2015, and adds performance, and stability to the platform
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When you’re collaborating with other people who may be at disparate locations around the world, sometimes you need collaboration software to manage projects and keep workflows humming along. Open source project managers can be just the ticket for these needs. Collabtive is one tool that we’ve covered in this area, and an increasingly popular one is OpenProject. These have several features that make them competitive with proprietary alternatives.
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Events
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The morning sessions were dominated by database topics including MariaDB, RocksDB and MammothDB. The MariaDB talk was particularly strong while the rest were with average attendance.
In the afternoon we switched to DevOps and Docker and the room exploded. There were people sitting on the ground and standing around the walls. There was not enough oxygen for everyone in the room.
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Web Browsers
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For the past two years WebKit has had an LLVM JIT back-end for its JavaScript engine, but now with the latest upstream code, Mac x86_64 users of WebKit have a new compiler implementation not based on LLVM.
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SaaS/Big Data
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MapR Technologies, which we’ve reported on extensively as it has focused on Hadoop and the Big Data space, has gained a powerful and experienced partner. It has formed a partnership with Ericsson, and the two companies are working together to advance adoption of the MapR Converged Data Platform. The platform integrates file, database, stream processing and analytics, and is gaining attention at enterprises. It’s also interesting because it marries Hadoop and Spark, which are probably the hottest open technologies in the Big Data space.
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Databases
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As the flow of incoming bugs for upcoming 4.6.0 has slowed down a bit it was more time for code cleanups and related tasks. But it’s also time where potential Google Summer of Code students come to our organization and want to get involved.
On the cleanup side the biggest was change to remove embedded PHP libraries which are available on Packagist from our Git and use Composer to manage the dependencies. This change will happen in 4.7.0, so it’s still some time ahead, but it’s already in our master branch. There still some third party libraries which we use and can not be installed using Composer, so we keep these for now.
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Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)
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IBM held a press conference at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to update the world on its MobileFirst offering, which supports enterprise applications on Apple iOS devices.
A couple of things were notable about the event. Although IBM presents MobileFirst as a partnership with Apple, nobody from Apple bothered to turn up. Second, the assembled press had to endure a panel of no doubt worthy but hardly notable app demos from various customers, and a number of journalists headed for the exit before IBM got around to delivering its actual news: that it was supporting Swift on the server with a new web framework.
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Open source became huge in 2015 with more consumers adapting it like never before. Though to a layman the quick adaptability will be credited to the ‘free’ aspect of it all, a survey done by Infosys actually contradicts this and brings the real picture forward.
[...]
Talking about the main strategy to target the open source market in India, he said Infosys doesn’t really go and sell Open Source. “We are there as the customer demand is there.”
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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The GCC project has traditionally made major releases yearly in the March/April timeframe. March is rapidly approaching and the GCC project’s engineers are busy polishing things up for the GCC 6 release. I’m going to take a short break from my own release efforts to briefly talk about some of the new features.
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Public Services/Government
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The European Research Council (ERC) is funding several open source software research projects, including code audits, security testing an on cryptography. Each of four projects in Austria, France and Germany received just under EUR 2 million in so-called Consolidator Grants.
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Openness/Sharing
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Open Data
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On Saturday 5 March 2016, the third International Open Data Hackathon will be organised. That day in cities all over the world, local communities will host hackathons where people from civil society, government and companies collaboratively work on applications, analyses and visualisations based on open data.
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Open Hardware
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If you are in the market for a smart router and are looking for an open source solution which provides a wealth of more up-to-date features than the current routine you are using in your home or office, you may be interested in the Lylo which has been created by Oneby based in Brussels, Belgium.
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Programming
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For those shops that want to migrate their existing enterprise Java workloads to the cloud, IBM has released IBM WebSphere Cloud Connect. This connector provides an easy way to bridge server side Java applications to the cloud for the 100,000 enterprise users that run the IBM WebSphere Java Enterprise Edition server.
IBM has estimated there are approximately 13 million Java programmers worldwide.
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With the advent of new online opportunities, learning how to code is easier than ever. Read more to know why everyone should learn to code and grab the best courses to kickstart your coding career.
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Security
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Countless wireless mice and keyboards can be hacked from 100 yards away leaving their host machines and the networks they are attached to open to malware, Bastille has discovered.
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After my last blog post Change direction, increase speed! (or why glibc changes nothing) it really got me thinking about how can we start to fix some of this. The sad conclusion is that nothing can be fixed in the short term. Rather than trying to make up some nonsense about how to fix this, I want to explain what’s happening and why this can’t be fixed anytime soon.
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Information security experts warn enterprises to patch the serious “glibc” domain name system flaw now, with one likening it to a “skeleton key” that could be used to remotely take control of any system or device that runs the software.
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As organizations race to acquire the means to capture, store and mine vast quantities of data, there’s another big data imperative emerging – protecting the enterprise and its data assets.
As the “Insight Economy” continues to flourish, and computing velocity and transaction throughput grows, more data is generated, and more business models dependent on information emerge, the need for new tools to scale and streamline security becomes paramount.
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Finance
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Britain’s referendum on its membership in the European Union isn’t just a threat to the pound. It’s raising currency-market risks across the continent.
While the pound led declines among major currencies on Monday with its biggest slide since 2010, the euro had the second-largest drop, weighed down by signs of slowing growth. The cost of options protecting against losses on Europe’s 19-nation currency also jumped. The U.K.’s potential exit may damage trade and encourage other members to renegotiate their relationship with the EU, signaling scope for further losses in the euro in the run-up to Britain’s June 23 referendum.
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London Stock Exchange (LSE) has confirmed merger talks with Germany’s Deutsche Boerse.
Shares in the LSE soared 17% after it said it was in “detailed discussions” with the German company about a “merger of equals”.
Both companies said all their key businesses would continue to operate under their current brand names.
It is the third time the LSE and Deutsche Boerse have tried to strike a deal, first in 2000 then in 2004-5.
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The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and an international coalition of groups representing Internet users, consumers, and scholars are calling for reform of the negotiation of global trade agreements in order to protect Internet and other digital rights for communities around the world.
The “Brussels Declaration on Trade and the Internet” was signed by 20 groups and individuals concerned about secretive and closed trade negotiations, like the ones that were behind the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP). The TPP is now awaiting ratification from 12 countries but was under development for seven years before the completed text was released for the public to see. However, advisors for big corporations were allowed to view and comment on draft texts. As a result, TPP includes restrictive copyright enforcement regulations that will hurt free expression, innovation, and privacy on the Internet and elsewhere.
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Censorship
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Privacy
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Former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden said Tuesday the government would be giving intelligence services one more entryway into Americans’ data should it prevail in the dispute with Apple over unlocking an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists.
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So basically, it seems that (once again) everyone is a bit confused about this. Gates’ initial answer was a bit wishy-washy and doesn’t actually get at the actual issue. He focuses on the question of the precedent — and he’s just flat out wrong on that. He’s right that the DOJ in this case is asking for a very specific thing, but setting the precedent that they can get that very specific thing will mean that similar things will be asked for in other cases — and he is wrong that it won’t put overall security at risk. The precedent here is everything, because once in place similar rulings can be used to proactively undermine security systems. That’s a big deal, even if Gates doesn’t recognize it.
Gates also totally misrepresents the issue by talking about how law enforcement needs to enforce the law and stop crime. That’s a tautology. Everyone knows that. But that does not mean it needs to force companies to build systems to hack their customers. It’s a completely different question. Meanwhile, his “backing off” of the FT’s headline is still confused. No one’s saying that the government is completely blind. They have a ton of other information. Gates is, unfortunately, buying into the myth that the FBI needs everything. But that’s never been the way that the law works. We have a 4th amendment (and hell, a number of other amendments, including the 5th) for good reasons: and one of those reasons is that we expect the job of law enforcement to be hard. And that’s because convicting someone of a crime shouldn’t be easy. And we do that on the belief that if we make the job hard, we’re a lot less likely to convict innocent people.
It’s too bad that Gates doesn’t appear to fully understand the issue, and is allowing yet more misinformation into this debate.
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In our last post we noted that while FBI Director James Comey insists that it wasn’t trying to set a precedent, and this move was just about getting access to a single phone, law enforcement around the country was eagerly lining up behind the FBI to make similar requests. And… then last night it came out that even the DOJ is making similar requests in 12 other cases.
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Yeah, except that’s clearly bullshit. They absolutely want the precedent, and if the FBI’s PR strategy is to now insist this precedent won’t be useful beyond this case, perhaps it should have coordinated those talking points with others in law enforcement. Because if you talk to them, they’re happy to tell everyone just how badly they want this precedent so they, too, can demand Apple build hacking tools into iPhones. Jenna McLaughlin at The Intercept has put together examples of law enforcement people practically drooling over the possibilities that will be opened up should the FBI win.
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California State Representative Jim Cooper (D-Elk Grove) is touting a bill that would force mobile devices to come with encryption off by default starting January 1, 2017. Any phone sold after that date would also have to be “capable of being decrypted and unlocked by its manufacturer or its operating system provider.”
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Civil Rights
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I’ve previously wondered what horrors I might uncover were I able to see what the Arabic speaking world were saying about atheists on Twitter. Well, thanks to the good work of Twitter user @Ahmedaa1k, I need wonder no more. And it’s not good news. Please note, Ahmed is not the individual making these statements, but the one translating them. Here are some Arabic responses to the hash tag ‘atheism is not a crime’…
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Internet/Net Neutrality
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While Google Fiber was originally seen as an adorable little experiment primarily designed to bring PR attention to a lack of broadband competition, over the last six months Wall Street has woken up to the fact that Google Fiber isn’t playing around. While the number of customers that can actually sign up for Google Fiber remains in the several hundred thousand range, Google’s announcements to tackle sprawling areas like Atlanta, San Antonio, Chicago, and Los Angeles has many Wall Street analysts changing their tune.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Copyrights
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Remember The Hurt Locker? Yes, the film that perhaps became best known for resulting in all kinds of legal action against those who pirated it also faced a legal challenge of its own. Jeffrey Sarver is a veteran of the Iraq War who claimed in California court that The Hurt Locker was totally about his own life, for which he wanted compensation, but also that it portrayed him in a falsely negative light, for which he also wanted compensation. In other words, it was a portrayal of him and also not, now gimme some money. That initial battle was decided on First Amendment grounds, with the court affirming the film as a transformative work protected as speech and, without any actual evidence that there was a false portrayal specifically of Sarver, who is not named in the film, there was no grounds for the suit.
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 12:09 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A document from Jesper Kongstad (Administrative Council’s Chairman) assertively calls for corrective actions inside the Office, as the Organisation as a whole now fears the mess it has succumbed to
TECHRIGHTS has a lot of stuff to publish regarding the EPO. It will come out gradually in the coming days as some of it is time-sensitive, there’s rather explosive stuff among it, but still not enough time to publish it all (I work full time and my wife’s illness, apparently a flu, is not helping either). We do, however, want to put out there the following text from Jesper Kongstad as soon as possible, as later remarks and rumours will depend on it.
To Heads of Delegation of the Administrative Council
11 February 2016
Update on B28
Dear colleagues,
At its meetings of 2 and 17 February, B28 concentrated on the issue of the social unrest within the EPOffice. In addition, a meeting took place on the 10 February between the Administrative Council Chairman, Deputy Chairman and the Chairman of the BFC, and the President, VP5 and the President’s Chef de Cabinet. The aim was to explore the possibility of the cooperation between the President and the Council to address various social issues, and in particular the disciplinary cases involving SUEPO leaders.
The Council members of B28 reiterated what the Council has stated repeatedly, not least that the handling of disciplinary cases was one of the major obstacles to reaching consensus with the trade unions on an MOU. We also made clear that these disciplinary cases had triggered very serious concerns as the political level about the proper functioning of the organisation.
Unfortunately, we have not been able to engage in a meaningful dialogue with the President. We therefore saw it as unavoidable to translate the serious concerns of the Council members into a formal request to be addressed to the President. A copy of B28′s draft document setting out this request is attached. Its aim is to give a fresh and strong impetus to solving the most important and urgent problems currently facing the organisation.
At the B28 meeting on 17 February, the President rejected the document, in particular questioning the legal basis of the first and second requests. On the question of legality, it is obvious to us that there is no obstacle whatever to the Council making requests to the EPoffice President. It is then for the President to respond positively to such requests. We are convinced that there are solutions which are legally possible, the more so as no one is likely to challenge the requested external review and parallel suspension of pending cases.
It is intended to submit the attached proposal to the Council, for a decision at its March meeting, making a formal request to the President. Unfortunately, it was not possible to discuss the March Council agenda as a whole before the President left the B28 meeting. Nevertheless, you will receive the agenda for the March meeting in due time.
On behalf of B28 Colleagues,
Best regards,
Jesper
DRAFT
DECISION
The AC, in its capacity as supreme organ of the EPOrg -
having repeatedly expressed its deep concerns about the social unrest within the EPOffice;
having repeatedly urged the EPOffice President and the trade unions to reach
consensus on an MOU which would establish a framework for negotiation between
social partners;
noting that disciplinary sanctions and proceedings against SUEPO leaders have,
among other reasons, jeopardised such consensus;
noting without taking position on the justification of these disciplinary sanctions and proceedings, that they are widely questioned;
recalling the importance and urgency of the structural reform of the BOA;
recognising the important institutional role of the AC and its dependence on a well-resourced
and independent secretariat;
Request the EFOffice President -
to agree to an external review of the disciplinary sanctions and proceedings against SUEPO leaders;
to suspend these disciplinary proceedings pending the outcome of the review;
to submit to the AC a draft revision of the Staff Regulations which incorporates investigation guidelines (including the investigation unit) and disciplinary procedures which have been reviewed and amended;
to achieve, within the framework of the tripartite negotiations, an MOU simultaneously with both trade unions, which would have no pre-conditions or exclude any topics from future discussions;
submit proposals to the AC at its June 2016 meeting, after discussion in B28, for immediate implementation of the structural reform of the BOA, on the lines of the 5 points agreed by the AC at its December 2015 meeting and of the legal advice given by Prof. Sarooshi, and taking into account comments from the Presidium of the BOA;
to submit proposals to the AC at its June 2016 meeting, after discussion in B28, for reinforcement of the AC secretariat and a clarification of its position in terms of governance.
Those who have additional input can securely drop it within our reach. We already have a backlog of material, but at the end we cover everything that is suitable for publication, as soon as no sources are at risk. Tomorrow there will be a guest appearance from Željko Topić. █
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Posted in News Roundup at 7:09 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
![GNOME bluefish](/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/120px-Gartoon-Bluefish-icon.png)
Contents
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Over the years, I’ve heard some people claim that Linux is finally ready for the masses. I would suggest that outside of a completely locked down OS such as ChromeOS (which is Linux powered), no OS is genuinely ready for the masses. Instead, it has been my experience that the masses should stick to tablets and Chromebooks.
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Reglue has presented disadvantaged kids with Linux-based computers since 2005, and we see the same thing over and over. This next generation will accomplish things that our last three generations could not. In 2016 alone, we have delivered machines to four kids with their eyes on the stars, wanting a career in aerospace or astro-physics, seven kids who want to be educators, two who will strive for degrees in computer science and eight who want to pursue the field of bio and robo-technology.
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But in other areas, Microsoft has been left behind. Apple took over the smartphone market in 2007, and Google followed up with an open source mobile operating system that would be even more widely proliferated. Microsoft still makes a mobile version of Windows, but relatively few people care.
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Server
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IBM has released over 40 thousand lines of Blockchain code to help developers build ledgers for the distributed technology that underpins Bitcoin
IBM has provided 44,000 open source lines of blockchain code to help developers incorporate the technology into their work.
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Kernel Space
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Although some companies have embraced the world of free software with open arms, there are many who haven’t. NVIDIA is one name that comes to mind. Its reputation in the Linux world is far from stellar, but maybe its recent actions will help mend some bridges.
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A chunk of code added to the Linux kernel to help inter-container communication turned out to mess up checksum handling on Ethernet networks.
Described here, the bug was in veth (Virtual Ethernet).
As the description notes, the coding error allowed corrupt packets to get passed to a veth device for delivery to the application. Vijay Pandurangan, engineering site lead at Twitter’s New York City offices, writes that applications at Twitter were receiving corrupt data “when network hardware was corrupting packets” (that is, for example, if there was a failing hardware device).
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Twenty-five years after its inception, Linux remains the poster child for open source. And yet, ironically, Linux was never really intended to be open source, according to a recent TED interview with its creator, Linus Torvalds.
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Graphics Stack
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The first release candidate of Mesa 11.2 is now available and this also signifies the branching of 11.2 from Mesa Git master.
Emil Velikov of Collabora continues as the Mesa release manager. Emil issued the 11.2 RC1 announcement a few minutes ago.
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Collabora’s Emil Velikov announced on February 22, 2016, the release and immediate availability for download and testing of the first RC (Release Candidate) build of the forthcoming Mesa 3D Graphics Library 11.2.
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Applications
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MKVToolNix developer Moritz Bunkus has recently released a new version of his popular MKVToolNix open-source and cross-platform MKV (Matroska) manipulation tool for all supported operating systems.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Games
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Ethan Lee, porter behind quite a few decent Linux titles recently did a talk at MAGFest and his slides can now be downloaded.
The slides are pretty nice, but I hope there is a video of it to show off too as you can miss a lot going by just the slides. He has some major gripes with middleware, which isn’t surprising to me. The amount of times a Linux port has been held up due to middleware not being on Linux is annoying.
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For those who like a bit of emulation in their lives, PPSSPP has release a major update to their open source emulator recently.
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Epic Games has just revealed that Unreal Engine 4 is the first one to provide official support for the new Vulkan API, and a demo has been presented at the Mobile World Congress 2016, but only for the mobile platform.
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Stainless Games have announced Carmageddon: Max Damage for consoles (PC comes later), but they still haven’t put out promises left over from the Carmageddon: Reincarnation Kickstarter. Promises like a Linux version, a Mac version and others.
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Originally due for release a few days ago, but the developer delayed it due to the big Steam sale. NeonXSZ has been worked on by the developer for four years!
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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It’s that time of the year when I return with some of the most exciting desktop environments to look forward to. The Linux world is extremely dynamic; a lot can happen within a year so it’s interesting to see where these desktop environments stand today. For the sake of this story I tried out all these desktop environments in a virtual machine so that you don’t have to.
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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The last semester was quite crazy for me as I had to work restlessly for my studies, which let me very little time to work on GNOME Games. That being said that doesn’t mean nothing happened in Games land! Here is what to expect in the next versions of Games.
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I quit my job. I’m freelancing. And I’m founding an IT startup. I’m enjoying my freetime writing even more free software, especially coala. Want to get some free software related IT work done?
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It’s been a little long, since I updated you all with the project progress. I feel immensely happy to tell that the Print Route feature has finally landed with the release of version 3.19.90(first beta release). Kudos to all the contributors (Gnomies) who have put in a lot of efforts to make this release successful. Gnome has got quite awesome stuff added to it.
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Plans are afoot to have Java 9 accommodate the GTK 3 GUI toolkit on Linux systems. The move would bring Java current with the latest version of the toolkit and prevent application failure due to mixing of versions.
The intention, according to a Java enhancement proposal on openjdk.net, would be to support GTK (GIMP Toolkit) 2 by default, with GTK 3 used when indicated by a system property. Java graphical applications based on JavaFX, Swing, or AWT (Advanced Window Toolkit) would be accommodated under the plan, and existing applications could run on Linux without modification with either GTK 2 or 3.
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Red Hat Family
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After 10 years spent studying open source, for ZDNet and now Seeking Alpha, I have finally come up with a comprehensible analogy for it.
Open source is an iceberg.
The benefits of open source do not primarily go to “open source companies.” Even Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) CEO Jim Whitehurst freely admits that, comparing open source to the standardized nuts, bolts and screws of 200 years ago. Those standards enabled the real glories of the Industrial Revolution – trains, planes, automobiles – to be created. The whole age of mass-market invention flowed from it.
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The stock of Red Hat Incorporated (NYSE:RHT) registered an increase of 3.38% in short interest. RHT’s total short interest was 6.12M shares in February as published by FINRA. Its up 3.38% from 5.92 million shares, reported previously. With 2.19M shares average volume, it will take short sellers 3 days to cover their RHT’s short positions. The short interest to Red Hat Incorporated’s float is 3.37%. The stock increased 0.84% or $0.55 on February 19, hitting $65.9. About 1.76M shares traded hands. Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) has declined 18.23% since July 16, 2015 and is downtrending. It has underperformed by 8.51% the S&P500.
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Frontier Capital Management Co. LLC increased its position in Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) by 7.6% during the fourth quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the SEC. The firm owned 964,085 shares of the open-source software company’s stock after buying an additional 67,688 shares during the period. Frontier Capital Management Co. LLC owned about 0.53% of Red Hat worth $79,836,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC.
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Fedora
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It’s an untouched Fedora minimal ARM image rootfs tarball, with some stuff removed (like kernel, boot partition etc.). You can follow the old tutorial with this file and it will install a new Fedora 23 chroot on your Android phone. The CLI stuff works pretty much the same as Fedora 22 did. However in the meantime, the X server application by pelya (which you can find on the Play Store) got massively improved (huge props to their team!).
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Debian Family
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Canonical has just revealed that Meizu PRO 5 Ubuntu Edition is now available for pre-order at the measly price of $369.99 (€335).
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The Snappy Ubuntu Core is now also working on the Dragonboards, which are single-board computers powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon processors.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon processors are now considered to be the best on the market, so any single board powered by them is not going to be a bad one. There are a few models already available and a new one coming down the line.
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Canonical and its Linux-based Ubuntu OS have recently received some attention via the announcement of the rather intriguing bq Aquaris M10 tablet. And it seems that the open source company isn’t immune to the call of MWC 2016. Just in time for the start of the mobile madness, Ubuntu reveals that two community efforts have brought the “converged” mobile experience to rather older smartphones, the Sony Xperia Z1 and OnePlus One. Unofficially, however, there might be even more in the works that could be revealed at MWC this week.
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Canonical has just revealed that a couple of GNU cpio vulnerabilities were found and fixed in Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS operating systems.
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As you may know, today, February 22, was the first day of the MWC (Mobile World Congress) 2016 event, which takes place these days in Barcelona, Spain, on Thursday, February 25.
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PLUMgrid is a company that equips OpenStack clouds with dependable Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) solutions. Through its solutions, the firm allows data centers to manage workloads systematically across virtual machines. At the Mobile World Congress to be held in Barcelona from March 22nd – 25th, the organization plans to exhibit its Open Networking Suite (ONS) on Ubuntu OpenStack Cloud.
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Canonical and Meizu have announced that the Meizu PRO 5 Ubuntu edition is now available for pre-order, priced at $369.99. The phone has the highest specs amongst all the phones currently available which run the open source operating system (OS) and is competitive when compared against top of the range Android offerings.
The specifications given for the device include: a 5.7″ 1080p AMOLED screen, 21.16 MP rear-facing camera, 5 MP front-facing camera, 32 GB storage, 3 GB RAM, 8 core Exynos 7420 processor with MALI T760 GPU, dual micro-SIM, and Corning Gorilla Glass 3.
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Just a few days ago, we reported on the fact that the official Ubuntu flavors were having their first Beta release as part of the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) cycle this Thursday, February 25, 2016.
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We’ve reported earlier that Canonical published several Ubuntu Security Notices on its website about the availability of new kernel updates for the Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) operating systems.
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At the request of our readers, we’re publishing some more details about what’s going on with the development of the OTA-9.1 hotfix update, which promises to patch the infamous incoming call issue reported by numerous Ubuntu Phone users.
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Ubuntu Linux firm Canonical is starting an interoperability lab to allow telecoms service providers to validate the capabilities of virtual network function appliances ahead of any deployment in a production environment. The move is intended to smooth the adoption of such technologies in the telecoms industry.
Canonical’s VNF Performance Interoperability Lab (V-PIL) was announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and aims to provide independent performance testing, interoperability and validation of software appliances developed for network function virtualisation (NFV) deployments.
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If there’s one thing tech enthusiasts love more than an underdog, it’s an underdog with high specs. The Meizu Pro 5 Ubuntu Edition is just such a device. It’s powered by the same 14nm Samsung Exynos processor as the flagship Galaxy S6. It has a 21-megapixel camera with laser-assisted phase-detect autofocus and a Hi-Fi DAC from ESS. Clad in an aluminum unibody shell and sporting an AMOLED display, it’s as modern and good looking as any smartphone out here at Mobile World Congress. But it runs Ubuntu, and that makes it too much of an underdog.
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“We’ve seen a lot of activity on the Ubuntu front in anticipation of the Mobile World Congress 2016, and now it’s finally starting. There is a lot of exciting news going to be shared with the community in the coming days, and the company wanted to make an impression”, said a Softpedia statement. Many of the Ubuntu developers and members of Canonical have said that the new Expo is really impressive, and it’s easy to see why that’s the case from the pictures that have been shared until now. The company also shared its schedule and demos for the entire duration of the congress. “Ubuntu at Mobile World Congress 2016″ The Mobile World Congress 2016 is one of the biggest events of the year, so Canonical couldn’t miss the opportunity of promoting its products, especially the mobile devices and the Ubuntu operating system. The demos will cover pretty much everything that’s done by Canonical, including OpenStack, LXD, Ubuntu Core on switches, cloud benchmarking, robots and drones, home gateways, industrial IOT, and much more.
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With Canonical heavily promoting ZFS for Ubuntu 16.04 with the file-system support being added to their default kernel, their latest work is on creating an Ubuntu ZFS guide for those wanting to play with this advanced file-system.
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Flavours and Variants
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On Sunday 21st February a message was posted to the Linux Mint blog stating that the website has been hacked and the intruder managed to post a link to an unofficial ISO version of Linux Mint.
For more information about what has happened visit http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2994.
The Linux Mint blog tells you how to check whether you have downloaded a dodgy version of Linux Mint.
Now this post is a little bit like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted because not once in any of my guides have I told you to check the MD5/SHA256 checksums for the downloaded ISO files of any distribution to make sure you have a legitimate copy.
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Silk Labs has won KickStarter funding for its “Sense” home surveillance camera and automation hub, which features voice, face, and gesture recognition, and AI.
Silk Labs has found Kickstarter success for its first home automation product. The Linux-based Sense smart camera is available through Mar. 17 starting at $249, and will ship in December. The startup was formed last year by former Mozilla CTO Andreas Gal, along with Chris Jones, who co-developed Firefox OS with Gal, and Michael Vines, a former senior director of technology at Qualcomm.
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Variscite unveiled a 43 x 23mm “DART-SD410” COM that runs Linux or Android on a 64-bit Snapdragon 410 with 2GB RAM, 16GB eMMC, and -25 to 85°C support.
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Phones
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Tizen
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For 2016 we were hoping for Samsung to continue the Tizen Smartphone momentum and it looks like they will not disappoint with evidence that a newer Tizen Smartphone is being imported to India for testing. Rear metal assembly parts for a mobile phone have been imported for a model number SM-Z510FD, and looking at previous naming conventions means it should be called the Samsung Z5 on release.
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There has been lots of Interest in the Tizen 2.4 Z130HDDU0CPB1 software updates for the Samsung Z1 in both India and Bangladesh. Now we see the updates have also gone live in both Nepal and Sri Lanka. The update will be delivered Over the Air (OTA), so will either use your WiFi or network providers cellular data. It is advised to use WiFi as the update is pretty big measuring in at ~262MB.
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Android
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Hardware manufacturer Nvidia has updated its Shield Android TV system software, putting the platform one step ahead of competing microconsoles with support for Android 6.0 Marshmallow, among other significant features and additions.
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Cheetah Mobile and Cubot have partnered up to introduce a co-branded smartphone called the CheetahPhone. It’s an Android-powered device that is priced at €199 (approximately $220) and is available to everyone in the European Union through Amazon starting in April with pre-orders beginning on March 20.
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The two most hotly anticipated Android smartphones of 2016 are now both official. LG took the wraps off of its new LG G5 bright and early on Sunday morning, and Samsung followed closely behind when it unveiled the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge soon after.
It goes without saying that these new Android phones outclass anything and everything that has come before them — when’s the last time you saw a flagship Android phone that wasn’t better than its predecessors? With Samsung and LG now set to do battle in the coming months though, the real question is which new flagship phone came out on top.
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Last we heard of Android One, Google was reportedly loosening hardware restrictions placed on manufacturers and planning a re-launch in the coming months. At MWC, General Mobile is releasing a GM 5 Plus Android One device that costs nearly $300 and has high-end specs like USB Type-C and fast charging.
The device has a 5.5-inch full HD Gorilla Glass 4-covered display and is powered by a Snapdragon 617 processor, 3GB of RAM, and 32GB of storage with micro SD card expansion. It has a large 3100mAh battery that can be charged via a USB Type-C connector that supports Qualcommn’s Quick Charge 3.0.
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Earlier this year at CES we were introduced to Remix OS — an Android variant from Jide that turns Google’s mobile operating system into a desktop OS. Remix takes basic Android and adds all the elements you’d expect on a PC or Mac: there’s support for mice and keyboards, a windowed interface, a file manager, system bar, and a dock at the bottom of the screen for your apps. And because its based on Android, it already has a load of apps ready to use — from Facebook and Microsoft Word to Clash of Clans and Candy Crush Saga.
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Last year, Google marked its return to public exhibition at Mobile World Congress, but with a whole new twist: it wasn’t really exhibiting any of its own or any of its partner’s products, it was all just in the name of fun. You see, at trade shows like MWC, business is the predominant subject of conversation, and while quite a few consumer product announcements may occur, they’re often secondary to the whole issue of “things which cause money to change hands.” MWC isn’t open to the public, either, and so attendees are largely in the mobile business in one form or another, or members of the media. As such, things can get a bit… stuffy.
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The Android-x86 open-source project is partnering up with Jide Technology, the company behind Remix OS.
If you are unfamiliar with Jide’s Remix OS, it’s based on Android and is an operating system designed for PCs and laptops. It’s been getting a lot of attention as of recently and the Remix OS 2.0 release is shaping up to be quite interesting.
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The leader of the Android-x86 project has just announced that he has entered a partnership with Jide Technology, the creators of the already famous Remix OS.
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Jide Technology, the makers of Remix OS, have just announced that the first Beta version of their operating system will be released on March 1, and it’s packing a ton of new features.
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Using the Wercker Command Line Interface (CLI), developers can spin up Docker containers on their desktop, automate their build and deploy processes and then deploy them to various cloud providers, like AWS, and scheduler and orchestration platforms, such as Mesosphere and Kubernetes.
The Wercker Command Line Interface is available as an open source project on GitHub and runs on both OSX and Linux machines.
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Docker 1.10.2 was released a few hours ago, February 23, 2016, bringing all sorts of improvements and bugfixes to the latest and most advanced stable branch of the open-source and cross-platform application container engine.
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Trying to track a complex project without drowning in too much information is still a challenge for many of us. To solve this, we developed OpenProject, a web-based open source project management tool that supports teams throughout the entire project life cycle. It is licensed under GNU GPLv3 and written in Ruby on Rails and AngularJS.
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One would think that with the popularity and success of free and open source software (FOSS) in recent years, there would also be an emerging model for contributor engagement and retention. One might even imagine a participation standard exists—improved through an ongoing collaboration of projects invested in sharing best practices over years. Yeah no.
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Talk about customer relationship management (CRM) software and you’ll probably be thinking about on-premise software packages or software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings from big companies like Salesforce.com, SAP, Oracle or Microsoft.
But there are plenty of viable open source CRM solutions in addition to these commercial CRM offerings.
Like other variants of open source software, many open source CRM apps come in free “community” editions as well as commercial open source editions that include additional features and support.
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Events
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Web Browsers
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Mozilla
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Today, the Internet we love and treasure is facing serious threats. Issues like mass surveillance and walled gardens, along with calls to weaken online security, increasingly endanger the Internet’s openness. Most recently, we saw the FBI ask Apple to circumvent their own devices’ security protections, setting a dangerous precedent that threatens consumers’ security. And in many parts of the world, especially emerging markets, inclusion and equality online aren’t guaranteed.
To address these threats, the Internet needs a new breed of advocate: individuals with both a technologist’s savvy and an activist’s zeal. We need advocates who can stand up for critical issues like privacy, inclusion, and literacy online, and ensure the Internet remains a public resource.
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SaaS/Big Data
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OpenStack vendor Mirantis today is announcing a new deal that will bring OpenStack Public cloud technology to the Middle East and Africa (MEA). Mirantis is partnering with the Saudi Telecom Company (STC), which is the largest telecom provider in MEA, to provide services to over 100 million customers across nine countries.
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As we’ve been reporting, The Apache Software Foundation, which incubates more than 350 open source projects and initiatives, has squarely turned its focus to Big Data tools in 2015. The foundation has also made clear that you can expect more on this front in 2016, as a number of incubated projects graduate to Top-Level Status at Apache, which helps them get both advanced stewardship and certainly far more contributions.
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Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)
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Google last week introduced EarlGrey, a functional user interface testing framework for Apple iOS apps.
YouTube, Google Calendar, Google Photos, Google Translate and Google Play Music have successfully adopted the framework, the company said.
EarlGrey has been open sourced under the Apache license, according to Google’s Siddartha Janga. The company has provided app developers with a start guide and the ability to add EarlGrey to their projects using CocoaPods or to add it manually to Xcode project files.
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At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Facebook announced the launch of a new open source hardware effort to extend cellular wireless service and hopefully accelerate the scaling up of telecommunications infrastructure and the development of new wireless broadband technologies, including 5G wireless. The program, called the Telecom Infra Project (TIP), is also working on providing currently unserved rural communities with wireless network efforts. A pilot 4G network is already underway in the Philippines, and Facebook has a project in planning for the Scottish Highlands.
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While IBM once had a public image of a virtually monolithic corporate entity, that image has softened in recent times, in part due to its support of and interest in open-source technologies. At the IBM InterConnect event taking place in Las Vegas, the open-source projects being fostered and developed by IBM are a significant part of the conversations between the company and its clientele.
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IBM today announced new services available from its public cloud, thanks to deeper partnerships with Apple, GitHub, and VMware. IBM is also launching a new cloud service called Bluemix OpenWhisk that represents an answer to Lambda event-driven computing service from public cloud market leader Amazon Web Services (AWS).
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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The GNU C Library version 2.23 is now available.
The GNU C Library is used as *the* C library in the GNU system and
in GNU/Linux systems, as well as many other systems that use Linux
as the kernel.
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No new functionality was introduced so this is a good candidate for a stable release.
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Public Services/Government
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EUSurvey, the multilingual online survey management tool, has released its OSS v1.3 that comes up with newly implemented features, performance improvements as well as several bug fixes.
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Openness/Sharing
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Open Access/Content
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Recent studies from the Campus Computing Project have asked chief information officers and faculty what they think about digital and open educational resources when it comes to course materials. While CIOs believe they create more effective and efficient learning opportunities for students, faculty are still skeptical about the benefits of them, besides cost. Most faculty do consider cost as one of the main factors in choosing textbooks, along with quality, so high-quality OER should continue to gain in popularity among instructors.
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Open Hardware
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Rice University bioengineering researchers have modified a commercial-grade CO2 laser cutter to create OpenSLS, an open-source, selective laser sintering platform that can print intricate 3-D objects from powdered plastics and biomaterials. The system costs at least 40 times less than its commercial counterparts and allows researchers to work with their own specialized powdered materials.
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1970 was a year that marked a significant event for rock and roll music lovers around world – Jimi Hendrix, one of the greatest guitarists the world has ever seen, died. While many technically accomplished guitarists have since come and gone, Jimi redefined what the guitar could be. A couple of years before his death, Jimi recorded the classic song “Voodoo Child (Slight Return).” The intro has a classic Hendrix riff that used a wah-wah (or waa-waa) pedal.
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Programming
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LDC 0.17.0 was released this past week as the newest version of this LLVM-based compiler for the D programming language.
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Standards/Consortia
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The event is intended to explore open source and its impact on the standards community and beyond. It will be hosted by ANSI, coordinator of the U.S. voluntary standardization system, in partnership with American University and the George Washington University School of Law.
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Office 365 is experiencing a European outage, marking the second time in three months that Microsoft’s critical enterprise systems are unavailable for a sustained period.
The company has been quoted as attributing the problems to “high resource utilisation”.
Many users are unable to log into Office 365 through its front-end portal, resulting in perpetual lag, while the website promising that technicians are “working on it”. If users are able to log in to services – for example Outlook – they are experiencing further lag inside the service environment when trying to open emails.
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Hardware
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Additionally, the LS1012A is the first processor designed specifically for an emerging new storage solution, dubbed object-based storage. Object-based storage relies on a smart hard disk drive that is directly connected to the data center’s Ethernet network. The processor must be small enough to be integrated directly on the circuit board for a hard disk drive.
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Security
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TL;DR: The glibc DNS bug (CVE-2015-7547) is unusually bad. Even Shellshock and Heartbleed tended to affect things we knew were on the network and knew we had to defend. This affects a universally used library (glibc) at a universally used protocol (DNS). Generic tools that we didn’t even know had network surface (sudo) are thus exposed, as is software written in programming languages designed explicitly to be safe. Who can exploit this vulnerability? We know unambiguously that an attacker directly on our networks can take over many systems running Linux. What we are unsure of is whether an attacker anywhere on the Internet is similarly empowered, given only the trivial capacity to cause our systems to look up addresses inside their malicious domains.
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Michael Tremer, a developer working on the open source IPFire Linux firewall project, announced on February 22, 2016, the availability of a new Core Update for the distribution.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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I don’t really know where to start with Michael Hayden’s piece in the New York Times defending drone strikes. Perhaps with the report last fall from the Intercept that shows that the very data we use to characterize the results of drone strikes is cooked “by categorizing unidentified people killed in a strike as enemies, even if they were not the intended targets.” Drone strikes are automatically effective if you assume they are effective, and you can do that by the casual us versus them analysis that says “If you live in one of these areas, or are walking near particular people, you’re probably a terrorist.” The only (ironic) way in which this might be true is that, if you didn’t hate the United States before indiscriminate drone killings, you’re much more likely to afterwards, when someone you know was killed. Not that the targets are necessarily well-chosen, either. One analyst has described these methods as “completely bullshit.”
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It should be acknowledged that it is difficult to evaluate Hayden’s op-ed, because he refers to intelligence reports that the American public will never see. Moreover, it is impossible to know whether everything Hayden wanted to reveal is included in the published Times piece, since the content of the op-ed must have been approved by the CIA Publications Review Board, whether as a stand-alone piece or an excerpt from his forthcoming book. Nevertheless, there are a few troubling aspects to the op-ed, which are consistent with all U.S. government officials’ arguments in support of drone strikes: how the program is framed and what complicating bits of information that are left out.
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The U.S. National Security Agency could be relying on a seriously flawed machine-learning model to target drone strikes in Pakistan, according to a new analysis of slides uncovered last year by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Published last May by The Intercept, the slides detail the NSA’s so-called Skynet program, in which machine learning is apparently used to identify likely terrorists in Pakistan. While it’s unclear if the machine-learning model has been used in the NSA’s real-world efforts, it has serious problems that could put lives at risk if it were, according to Patrick Ball, director of research at the Human Rights Data Analysis Group.
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Transparency Reporting
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Browser maker Mozilla, digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Creative Commons have called for more openness in global trade agreements.
The trio—alongside a variety of expert “stakeholders representing Internet users, consumers, innovative businesses, cultural institutions, and scholars”—released a “Brussels Declaration on Trade and the Internet,” which was launched on Monday to coincide with the start of the 12th round of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations in Brussels.
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Finance
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EFF has spent years battling the undemocratic Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP); not because we are against free trade, but because we fear that the undue influence that vested interests have over the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In turn, the USTR exercises its own influence over foreign policymakers, ultimately resulting in punishingly strict copyright rules and ham-fisted digital policies sweeping the globe. These concerns have been fully validated with the belated release of the final text of the agreement.
In fact, even we have been surprised at some of the new Internet-related policies that have now been subsumed into these closed trade negotiations—such as rules dictating how countries have to manage their country-code domain names, and limiting their flexibility to mandate the review of source code in consumer technology, or to require private data of their citizens to be hosted locally. It would be fair to say that until recently nobody ever expected such rules to be the subject of closed door negotiations between trade negotiators, rather than being openly debated in national parliaments, or in more transparent international bodies such as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), or even the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
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Censorship
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The DA said it will fight clauses in the new FPB amendment bill which can result in a fine of up to R150,000 for Facebook or Twitter posts.
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The DA says it will object to a number of ‘problematic clauses’ in a new bill intended to give the Films and Publications Board (FPB) wide-sweeping powers to censor the Internet.
The Films and Publications Amendment Bill is scheduled to be engaged in Tuesday’s sitting on the Communications Portfolio Committee.
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He said: “We’re trying to get a message out on a fraction of the resources available. When the State broadcaster is essentially engaged in censorship of four of the eight political parties three days before the debate, it makes it very difficult.
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Social networking giant vKontakte is facing the prospect of being blocked by ISPs in Russia after copyright holders took a complaint to court. According to a local anti-piracy outfit, vKontakte – which has dozens of millions of daily users – is not doing enough to take down unauthorized content.
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People Before Profit says the debate does not represent the many people who will not be voting for the main parties
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The Social Democrats have accused RTÉ of State censorship ahead of tomorrow’s debate.
RTÉ are excluding four of the eight political parties from the leader’s debate.
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The Social Democrats have lodged a formal complaint with RTE over the party’s exclusion from the final TV leaders’ debate tonight, accusing the broadcaster of “state censorship”.
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Privacy
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A picture of Mark Zuckerberg brandishing a slightly evil smile on his face, walking past thousands of people wearing VR headsets, has caused a havoc online. It happened at this year’s Mobile World Congress, during Samsung’s Galaxy S7 launch event in Barcelona.
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Utah is being hit with up to 300 million security incidents a day, the state’s public safety commissioner says.
He complains that the undefined “incidents”, the bulk of which are likely automated scans, have skyrocketed since 2010 when the number of incidents peaked at 80,000 a day.
Commissioner Keith Squires told local broadcaster KUTV he suspected the increase is thanks to construction of the National Security Agency’s major data centre in the state.
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Wikileaks released tonight a new cache of documents, showing that the United States’ National Security Administration bugged private meetings between major world leaders, including the United Nations Secretary General.
The N.S.A. bugged meetings between U.N.S.G. Ban Ki-Moon, German chancellor Angela Merkel, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and several representatives from other major world governments, listening in on their conversations on climate change, global economics, and even “how to deal with Obama,” according to the new documents.
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Jewel v. NSA is the EFF’s big case against the NSA over its surveillance efforts. It predates the Snowden revelations (from a lot), and stems from that time an AT&T technician, Mark Klein, just walked through the doors of the EFF to provide the organization with evidence that AT&T basically routes a bunch of data through NSA filters for “upstream” collection (part of the NSA’s “702″ collection program). The case has gone through a bunch of permutations and procedural issues, many of which have not gone the EFF’s way, unfortunately.
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For the first time, mass surveillance opponents can dig into evidence on the National Security Agency’s phone and Internet spying programs, a federal judge ruled Friday.
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Keith Alexander, former director of the National Security Agency (NSA) and newly minted startup founder, filed a motion asking a federal court to quash a lawsuit that named him personally violating Americans’ constitutional rights through the NSA’s bulk metadata telephone surveillance program.
The lawsuit – which resulted in the groundbreaking ruling by Judge Richard Leon that the bulk metadata collection program “likely violates the Constitution” – also named President Obama, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey, and others.
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WarGames is an ’80s classic and, for many people, their first introduction to the concept of hacking. Matthew Broderick plays a hacker who thinks he’s found a fun war simulation, but is in fact talking to a NORAD supercomputer that controls the nukes, and nearly starts World War III. And believe it or not, it not only had a basis in reality, it set up how the government perceives, and deals with, cybersecurity.
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A small town library in New Hampshire that went to war with the DHS over a Tor relay has become the unlikely impetus for new legislation aimed at protecting public libraries from government overreach.
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There are companies – such as CloudFlare – which are effectively now Global Active Adversaries. Using CF as an example – they do not appear open to working together in open dialog, they actively make it nearly impossible to browse to certain websites, they collude with larger surveillance companies (like Google), their CAPTCHAs are awful, they block members of our community on social media rather than engaging with them and frankly, they run untrusted code in millions of browsers on the web for questionable security gains.
It would be great if they allowed GET requests – for example – such requests should not and generally do not modify server side content. They do not do this – this breaks the web in so many ways, it is incredible. Using wget with Tor on a website hosted by CF is… a disaster. Using Tor Browser with it – much the same. These requests should be idempotent according to spec, I believe.
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Finnish authorities are moving ahead with plans to give security and intelligence officials web surveillance powers, says Yle’s investigative journalism programme. According to MOT the move follows revelations by US whistleblower Edward Snowden, who revealed extensive global intelligence programmes involving governments and telecoms companies, but in which Finland was not involved.
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In an interview with the Financial Times published late Monday night, Gates dismissed the idea that granting the FBI access would set a meaningful legal precedent, arguing that the FBI is “not asking for some general thing, [it is] asking for a particular case.”
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The tech industry has been generally supportive of Apple in its fight against the FBI’s demand to unlock an iPhone linked to the San Bernardino shootings, but one big name is on the FBI’s side: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who seems unswayed by fears of compromised security and a potential legal precedent.
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The war between Apple and the FBI over the iPhone used by Syed Farook, one of the San Bernardino shooters, hinges mostly on one major question: Is the court order telling Apple to help the FBI unlock Farook’s iPhone an isolated case, or is it just the start of a new method for the government to guarantee access to anyone’s device?
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Over and over again as people keep talking about the Apple / FBI encryption stuff, I keep seeing the same line pop up. It’s something along the lines of “but the FBI needs to know what’s on that phone, so if Apple can help, why shouldn’t it.” Let’s debunk that myth. The FBI absolutely does not need to know what’s on that phone. It might not even care very much about what’s on that phone. As the Grugq ably explained last week, there’s almost certainly nothing of interest on the phone. As he notes, Farook destroyed his and his wife’s personal phones, indicating that if there were anything truly important, he would have destroyed the last phone too.
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Look, let’s face facts here. For all the talk coming from the law enforcement community that they need backdoors into encryption to stop crime, they absolutely know that the reverse is true: strong encryption prevents crime. Lots of it. Strong encryption on phones makes stealing those phones a lot less worthwhile, because all the information on them is locked up.
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As the standoff between the Department of Justice and Apple Inc. continues over an iPhone used by one of the suspects in the San Bernardino terrorist attacks, 51% say Apple should unlock the iPhone to assist the ongoing FBI investigation. Fewer Americans (38%) say Apple should not unlock the phone to ensure the security of its other users’ information; 11% do not offer an opinion on the question.
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Two can play at the “pull on the heart strings about losses due to terror” game apparently. While the FBI has rolled out the “but the poor victims of San Bernardino” argument for why it wants to force Apple into hacking the security of its own customers, Apple has countered with a big gun of its own: it has hired former Solicitor General Ted Olson to defend the company against the FBI in this case. Olson is a mega-star in legal circles. He’s argued tons of cases before the Supreme Court, and of course, was Solicitor General under George W. Bush (whose election he helped ensure in representing him in Bush v. Gore).
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In order to prevent unauthorised firmware being installed on a device, Apple (and most other vendors) verify that any firmware updates are signed with a trusted key. The FBI don’t have access to Apple’s firmware signing keys, and as a result they’re unable to simply replace the software themselves. That’s why they’re asking Apple to build a new firmware image, sign it with their private key and provide it to the FBI.
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A powerful intelligence insider is weighing in on Apple’s standoff with the FBI over unlocking the San Bernardino terrorist’s iPhone. Retired Gen. Michael Hayden says Apple is right in principle, but the government has a point. The former director of the National Security Agency and the CIA created and oversaw controversial programs designed to keep Americans safe. Hayden joins “CBS This Morning” to discuss his new book, “Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror.”
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On Friday, we noted that one of the reasons that the FBI was unable to get access to the data on the remaining iPhone from Syed Farook was because after the shooting and after the phone was in the hands of the government, Farook’s employer, the San Bernardino Health Department, initiated a password change on his iCloud account. That apparently messed stuff up, because without that, it would have been possible to force the phone to backup data to the associated iCloud account, where it would have been available to the FBI. But, after we published that article, a rather salient point came out: the Health Department only did this because the FBI asked it to do so.
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Over the weekend the narrative the FBI has been trying to spread around the legal effort to get Apple to build a system that lets the FBI hack Apple customers began to crumble, as it was revealed that the FBI’s own actions were largely responsible for the fact that the information on Syed Farook’s phone was no longer accessible. That gave more and more weight to the argument that the whole reason that the FBI did this was to set a precedent that judges can force companies to hack their own customers, should the FBI want them to do so. Again, it seems fairly obvious that the FBI chose this case in particular, because basically everyone agrees that Farook and his wife were bad people who murdered a bunch of Farook’s co-workers. That obviously makes the FBI’s case more sympathetic for setting a precedent. But with the shady actions that resulted in the data being locked up, that nice story was starting to slip away.
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The NSA (National Security Agency) is in the midst of a two-year-old lawsuit with the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) for the right to keep its zero-day handling process secret from the prying eyes of the outside world.
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Civil Rights
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EFF was dismayed to learn last week that the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks (USDB) at Fort Leavenworth has refused to provide inmate Chelsea Manning with printouts of EFF blog posts and other materials related to prisoner censorship. Worse yet, it appears that the reason is ostensibly to protect EFF’s copyrights.
Manning is serving a 35-year sentence for her role in the release of military and diplomatic documents to Wikileaks. A volunteer from her support network attempted to send her a series of articles EFF wrote last year about our work defending the rights of inmates to maintain an online presence. This included articles about severe punishments leveled at inmates with Facebook profiles and our views on how prison telecommunications systems should be regulated. Also attached were relevant public records from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, EFF’s comments to the Federal Communications Commission, and articles from Buzzfeed and the Harvard Business Review.
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Officials at Ft. Leavenworth prison, where Chelsea Manning is confined has apparently become super interested in protecting EFF’s copyright. Or so they claim. Manning has been blocked from reading printouts of EFF blog posts, and the US Disciplinary Barracks (USDB) insists it’s just about the copyright and not because they might disapprove of the EFF’s message.
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The private Muslim school Iqra Privatskole, located in Copenhagen’s Nørrebro district, received 18.5 million kroner in state-funded support in 2015. But the school’s outlook on dating may put future funding in jeopardy.
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In an interview with EUROPP’s editor Stuart Brown, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis discusses the launch of his new ‘Democracy in Europe’ movement (DiEM25), the UK’s upcoming referendum on EU membership, and why a surge of democracy is needed to prevent the EU from sliding toward disintegration.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Brown was brought in as a high-level adviser to Gurry, a fellow Australian, at the start of his first term in 2008, but she soon balked at what she saw as unacceptable practices by Gurry and later left the organisation as a whistleblower.
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Copyrights
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It was evident when the “three strikes” or “graduated response” was first proposed in France back in 2009 that it was a really bad idea. After all, in its crudest form, it cuts people off from what has become a necessity for modern life — the Internet — simply because they are accused of copyright infringement, an area of law that is notoriously full of uncertainties. Given that inauspicious start, it’s no surprise that over the years, the three strikes system has failed everywhere, with some of the early adopters either dropping it, or putting it on hold.
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Posted in America, Patents at 3:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
As if patents are a matter of national security
Summary: A couple of news stories and what they serve to highlight with respect to the theory and practice of patents
THE USPTO is probably the world’s most aggressive patent system. Rather than foster innovation it does a lot to harm it, usually benefiting (enriching) just a few large corporations that receive the lion’s share of patents and deter/suppress competition this way.
As a new example of the USPTO’s aggression consider Joe Mullin’s article which says that an “Archery company sues LARPer over patents, then files gag motion to silence him” (suppression of information about aggressive action is something that the EPO did to me several months ago). To quote Mullin:
When Jordan Gwyther started Larping.org, a website that promotes his favorite hobby, he didn’t expect it would lead to him being sued for patent infringement over foam arrows. And when he spoke out about the lawsuit, neither he nor his attorney saw what was coming next: the patent-owner filed papers in court last week asking for a temporary restraining order (TRO) that would keep Gwyther quiet.
Curiously, almost on the same day (as the above article), the EFF published “EFF Defends Live Action Role Players’ Right to Criticize Patent Suit,” where it said: “The First Amendment guarantees that even patent owners are subject to the slings and arrows of public criticism. Today EFF has submitted a motion and amicus brief asking the court to reject a patent owner’s attempt to silence criticism of its lawsuit.”
Another new article by Joe Mullin speaks of the “hoverboard” raid that we covered here some days ago because after the raid the litigation got mysteriously dropped. “The Chinese defendant lawyered up, defended itself—and wants attorneys’ fees,” according to Mullin’s summary.
The original idea behind patents was very different from this. Had the founders of patents foreseen the above, would they have created such new laws? █
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Posted in Apple, Courtroom, Patents, Samsung at 3:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The arrogant Apple is so certain that it invented everything
Summary: Apple’s relentless patent war on Android shows no signs of stopping, even several years after Steve Jobs, who had started this mess, died
Half a decade ago, after shamelessly suing HTC, Apple started suing Samsung, which was already a leading Android OEM, using software patents and design patents that are often indistinguishable from software patents. Remember who started this war. Always remember that it wasn’t Samsung reaching out to patents. It was Apple under Steve Jobs' megalomania. This case might soon reach the Supreme Court, SCOTUS, but there’s no confirmation yet.
“The final section of Samsung’s petition [to SCOTUS],” Florian Müller wrote the other day, “stresses the “enormous national importance” of the petition. This sounds to me like “this should be reviewed, but at the very, very, very least there should be a call for views of the Solicitor General (CVSG).” Or maybe I tend to read too much between the lines.”
“I appreciate that both Samsung and Apple are willing to fight this to the bitter end,” wrote this one person. “The process is as important as the result” (and very expensive thus far).
Apple has been drawn rather heavily into PTAB as of late; we wrote about PTAB earlier this month on numerous occasions. According to this new blog post, a biotechnology patent is about to be reviewed. Remember that quite a few Apple patents, including some in Europe, got invalidated in the process. “One-fifth of all IPR petitions denied institution according to 2015 PTAB report,” says IP Watchdog. To quote the former post, the said patent family “is likely the most famous patent family in biotechnology. With claims that cover basic steps in generating therapeutic antibodies, these patents are gatekeepers in an industry that has shown unprecedented growth—currently, half of the 10 top-selling drugs in the world by sales are therapeutic antibodies. Through licensing to antibody manufacturers, Genentech—one of the owners of the Cabilly patents—is expected to reach a billion dollars in royalties from this patent family by 2018.”
Well, it sure seems like Apple is hoping to make billions, not just a billion dollars, out of patent royalties alone. Apple is hoping to become a patents firm, as Android keeps growing and it’s hard to stop it without artificially elevating prices of Android devices. █
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Posted in Asia, Law, Patents at 3:05 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
English/Original
Publicado en Asia, Law, Patents at 7:42 am por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz
No población cuerda (i.e. gente insuficentemente indoctrinada por maximalistas) deberían tolerar patentes de software
Sumario: India una vez más ha logrado dirigir la política pública en la dirección correcta, pero sólo después de una imensa presión del público
MUCHOS meses atras hubieron nuevos y bien fundados temores que el cabildeo de patentes de software (Microsoft, IBM y los demás) estaba de nuevo logrando avances en India. Casi logran sus objetivos de nuevo, pero el público despertó, las ONG hablaron, y el gobierno vino bajo presión que pronto después temporariamente bloqueo esta estúpida iniciativa (similar a los esfuerzos recientes de la ¨madre¨ ¨Teresa¨ Zuckerberg de India queriendo ¨ayudar¨ a los pobres de India -Facebook). Si esto no es el Poder del Pueblo trabajando, entonces es algo que las poblaciones de los países Occidentales deberían aprender y emular, e.g, cuando se movilizen contra TPP, TTIP, UPC, etc. Para aquellos que no hán estado siguiendo estos eventos, esta página de Wiki puede ayudar (lista cronológica de articulos en la materia).
“Las patentes de software en india siempre han sido como un zombie que continua tratando de regresar a vida por que las megacorporaciones (usualmente extranjeras) cabildean por ello.”Esta mañana encontramos el artículo en Ingles “La Ofician de Patentes de India dice no a las patentes de software de nuevo”. Clama que la más alta oficina de patentes de la India ha dicho NO a las patentes de software en los guias para examinar invenciones relacionadas con computadoras, que fueron publicadas el pasado 19 de Febrero.¨
Otro artículo, esta vez viniendo de un sitio legal, dice: ¨El Controlador General de Patentes, Diseños y Marcas ha emitido una Ordenanza fechade este Febrero 19, 2016 publicando guías revisadas para invenciones relacionadas con computadoras. Las presentes guías estan en tono con las provisiones el el Acta de Patentes de 1970 (como revisadas).¨
Eto son buenas noticias. Las patentes de software en india siempre han sido como un zombie que continua tratando de regresar a vida por que las megacorporaciones (usualmente extranjeras) cabildean por ello. Ellas todavía no pueden colonizar el país por legislación. Anivar, un viejo apoyo nuestro (casi una década) de India escribe: ¨Las nuevas guias de patentes para software siguen el espíritu de la ley India de patentes claúsula 3(k).¨ (Más aún links al PDF original que esta en Ingles). Mientras tanto en los Estados Unidos, las patentes de software están debilitándose. Europa y Nueva Zelanda están bajo suficientemente presión pública para evitarlas – por lo menos ahora – de formalmente tolerar patentes de software (más de ello más tarde hoy).
Esta semana ha comenzado con muchas buenas noticias en el frente de patentes. Esten sintonizados. █
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Posted in America, Patents at 2:55 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Original/English
Publicado en America, Patents at 8:37 am por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz
![Ink](http://techrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/ink-price.jpg)
“Si fuera a llenar el tanque de su coche con tinta de Hewlett-Packard o Lexmark, le costaría $ 100,000,” dijo Gerald Chamales, presidente de Rhinotek Computer Products, un fabricante de cartuchos de tinta y tóner de Carson (Los Angeles County), que son compatibles con las impresoras de marca. “Si llenase una piscina olímpica con tinta de los cartuchos de inyección de tinta HP o Lexmark, le costaría $ 5.9 mil millones con B.” – See original article
Sumario: Revisión del cubrimiento de prensa acerca del caso de patentes de Lexmark, donde el grotesco SOBREPRECIO de la tinta fue defendido por el Circuito Federal
LAS noticias han sido dominadas hasta cierto grado por reportajes acerca del Circuito Federan haciendo un deservicio a la sociedad (de nuevo).
Como la EFF (Fundación De Frontera Electrónica) lo puso esta semana: “El Dictámen del Circuito Federal da privilegios a los dueños de patentes en vez de a los consumidores en los productos que ellos compran¨
“El Dictámen del Circuito Federal da privilegios a los dueños de patentes en vez de a los consumidores, y asegura incluso menos competencia en el mercado de reventas.”
–EFFSin duda, muchas firmas y sitios de abogados estan escribiendo acerca de esto ahora mismo, e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14].
Vale la pena notar el hecho que firmas de abogados escribieron 10 veces más artículos que otros sitios de noticias generales (o sitios de tecnología) acerca de este caso, e.g. [1, 2]. Mucha gente no entiende patentes tampoco los reporteros. Ellos usarían frases como ¨patentes de inventos¨ o ¨hacer patentes¨. La propaganda trabaja para ellos y no piensan fuera de ella.
“En este caso, el tribunal sostuvo que este tipo de restricción es aplicable para Lexmark, pero sólo porque el producto de Lexmark está protegida por derechos de patentes.”
–Dennis CrouchAquí esta el mejor reportaje que hemos encontrado en esta materia (hasta ahora). TechDirt, que ha cubierto esta materia por más de una década (yendo atras hasta 2004 si no antes), escribió: ¨si tu fallas bloquear la competencia de una manera, aparentemente tu puedes hacerlo de otra -y enventualmentee terminarás en la Corte de Apelaciones del Distrito Federal, quienes enredarán todo y matarán a la competencia por tí. La compañía de printers Lexmark ha estado en guerra contra distribuidores alternativos de tinta por más de una década. Como estarán enterados tinta para impresoras es vergonzósamente CARÍSIMA, con tal estimado (de hace más de una década) de que en order de llenar una píscina olimpica con ella, te costaría $5.9 BILLIONS (si con ¨b¨) en la caja registradora de tu tienda local. Los fabricantes de impresoras notablemente han tomado un ¨regalo de impresora y ´baratísimas´ de bajo costo, y compensarla con seriamente sobretasados precios por tinta en su negocio. Esta clase de negocio trabaja hasta que alguién sale y trata de vender tinta más barata.¨
Suficientemente decir este caso es acerca de coservar los precios artificialmente CAROS (muchísimos mas altos en magnitud que los costos de producción). Una respuesta publicada por Dennis Crouch dijo: ¨Me sorprendió la plena decisión del Circuito Federal en el caso Lexmark de re-afirmar Mallingckrodt – DAR AL VENDEDOR EL PODER DE BLOQUEAR LA FUTURA REVENTA Y REUSO DE UN PRODUCTO PATENTADO. Mi sorpresa se basa en la larga tradición de la ley de propiedad Americana de promover el flujo libre de comercio al rechazar servidumbres que limitan la alienación e reuso de bienes. Para ser claro, las cortes han enforzado contractos entre partidos voluntarios para este fin, pero esas mismas cortes han rechazado permitir convenios restrictivos para aferrarse al bien y bloquear cualquier subsequente comprador. Aqui, la corte sostuvo que este tipo de restricción es enforzable por Lexmark, pero sólo por que es un producto Lexmark cubierto por derechos de patentes.
“Recuerde que CAFC es responsable de muchas otras decisiones igualmente sin tacto.”No fue la primera vez que el blog de Crouch cubrió este caso en días reciéntes (mencionamos esto unas pocas veces en los posts de la semana pasada). Básicamente, Lexmark TUERCE Y DOBLA LA LAY POR PRECIO ARREGLADO/ALZA DE PRECIOS. Otras compañías como HP, sin duda se beneficiarían de esto a expensas del público. Para citar el blog de Crouch: ¨Las presumpciones son de alguna importancia para aquellos operando en el terreno. Aquí la Corte de los Estados Unidos presumirá que las ventas de un producto no acaban con los derechos de una patente estadounidense. Esto para un importador significa que debe obtener un permiso/licensia de esos derechos para evitar querellas (asumiendo un válida así como una patente infringida). Por supuesto, que la licensia puede ser implícita de esos derechos para evitar querellas proveyendo noticias del intento importador. En adición, dependiendo del lugar de ventas, UCC 2-312 (o su equivalente foránea) puede crear un presumpución de licensia dependiendo de la situación.¨
Cuando leyes son promulgadas para protejer modelos de ventas o a largas corporaciones a expensas del público, ¿Son esas leyes legítimas? ¿No deberíamos sentirnos libres de desafiarlas o mejor aún, ponernos en desobediencia civil? Recuérden que la CAFC es responsable por muchas otras decisiones sin tacto. También fue la CAFC LA QUE COMENZÓ LAS PATENTES DE SOFTWARE, NO SÓLO EN LOS eSTADOS uNIDOS SINO EN TODO EL MUNDO. En el pasado hemos mostrado evidencia de corrupción institucional dentro de la CAFC. █
“Cínico es el hombre que conoce el precio de todo y el valor de nada.”
–Oscar Wilde
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