08.21.11
IRC Proceedings: August 20th, 2011
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08.20.11
Links – More on the Demise of webOS, SpyPhone and Facebook Busted
Reader’s Picks
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Health/Nutrition
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Boycott Violence.
It is interesting that people are so afraid of sex toys and drawings some kinds sexual fantasies that possession is outlawed but a whole industry exits to glorify violence as fun and normal. The same industry glamorizes a kind of narcissistic, and often violent sex too. There are healthier things to watch and do.
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Security
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BART falls to novice hacker
she figured out how to get into BART’s website by a one-page PDF tutorial and googling “site:bartpoa.com inurl:.asp?”. She said she “exploited a gaping hole” in the site’s security to find all the BART officers’ names, e-mails, and addresses. … I’m satisfied because it really shows how bad the cyber defense of the enemies of free speech and free movement is.
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
- While Fukushima is still spewing,
the TVA has decided to resurrect the abandoned Bellefonte plant in Alabama.
The TVA board of directors — which approved the $4.9 billion project Thursday night … The TVA board also approved a 2 percent rate increase starting on October 1 to pay for “nuclear safety modifications as a result of Fukushima” as well as cybersecurity measures and clean-air initiatives, it said.
It will probably be more expensive to finish these half done plants than it would be to build new ones but both options are bad bets. The Belefonte plants have not been properly maintained, with key parts salvaged by untrained personnel. The projected cost is $8 billion. Other, current Alabama energy projects involve burning coal, ick.
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- While Fukushima is still spewing,
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Finance
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Massive fraud by banks: 92% of foreclosures in New York City lack proper documents.
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Fannie Mae, a semi-government mortgage lender, has been pushing banks to foreclose rather than give borrowers some slack.
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700 people have been imprisoned for the riots in the UK.
How many bankster have been imprisoned for looting billions? None.
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Anti-Trust
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PJ, in a news link about the demise of WebOS notes:
Let’s see. Android, which is Linux, is being sued every which way. Then Nokia terminates MeeGO, which is Linux, and partners with Microsoft. Now HP terminates webOS, which is Linux, and exits the hardware business. This isn’t, by any chance, in some Machiavellian alternate universe, about shutting down Linux in the mobile marketplace, is it? Yes, I bought a Touchpad today. I was going to anyway. I’ve heard good things about the webOS community, and I know FOSS can do things to keep it improving, and I am thinking, if HP exits the business, who will be around to track me?
She would do better paving it over with really free software because HP can sell the tracking and advertising rights to another company.
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HP’s Carly Fiorina era is finally over…good riddance
Walter Hewlett was right. Walter Hewlett, you may remember, was the low-key, cello-playing scion of the Hewlett family who fought HP’s then-CEO, Carly Fiorina, over her planned $25 billion merger with Compaq, which was announced 10 years ago next month. Hewlett’s point was simple: Just maybe it’s a really bad idea to double down on a low-margin business like PCs.
… Hewlett’s opposition was no match for the publicity-savvy Fiorina and her team of brass-knuckled marketers, who seemed a better fit for politics than the high-tech industry.The top down, employees in the dark, rock star executive way webOS decisions were made show that Carly’s management style and spin control is alive and well. HP might be out of the Microsoft PC business but they are also out of their instrumentation business, the DEC Aplpha business and many other things the world is worse off without.
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Oppose the ATT TMobile merger.
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Patent troll targets Apple’s Disk Utility over alleged patent violation
Lest you think Apple was Software Restore Solutions’ only target, however, the company unsuccessfully sued 26 software vendors last year over the ’511 patent, including Apple, Adobe, Autodesk, Capcom, Citrix, Corel, Intuit, Sega, Skype, and THQ, among others. The case was closed after all the defendants were dismissed, some with prejudice. Software Restore Solutions acquired the ’511 patent from Acacia, another apparent patent troll, which acquired the patent from original inventor Beck Systems. Litigating the ’511 patent appears to be Software Restore Solutions’ only business activity.
Here you see a proxy train which ultimately leads back to Microsoft.s
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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Nym shift
An executive of Goldman Sachs changed his name and went to work for Rep. Issa, blocking regulations that might reduce the company’s profits.
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An unconvincing Microsoft FUD wave rolls on, HTC Unlocks Phone To Upset Google, May Join Microsoft?
Google wants users to unlock, root their phones and do what they want to do on it. Google phones allow users to use what ever sources they want to install apps, you can just drag and drop and install any (trusted) app. … the deal was needed to offer Android playes with the much needed ammunition to ward off trolls. This was the reason why Google bought Motorola. Every other theory is just an attempt to divert our attention.
The author also insightfully frames the demise of webOS as an issue of HP CEO inaction and one of software patent threats. Though anyone can make their own OS with free software, only a community the size of Google’s Android can stand the threat of US judicial extortion.
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More Murdoch, A whistle blower has been bankrupted by lawsuits and prevented from approaching regulators against his former employer, News America Advertising
The company is the leading US provider of in-store advertising services, helping to bring products from firms such as Coca-Cola, Kraft and Nabisco to the attention of supermarket shoppers. Headed by Paul Carlucci, who now publishes Murdoch’s tabloid the New York Post, it enjoys annual revenues of more than $1bn and has a 90% stranglehold on the market.
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Censorship
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Privacy
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South Koreans sue Apple over SpyPhone
Earlier this month, the government of South Korea imposed a fine of three 3 million won ($2,855) on Apple’s division in the country after the controversy that became known as Locationgate, in which any device running iOS 4.0 or higher was tracking the user’s every move and location.
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Apple locks SpyPhone developers out of device identifiers.
No one has privacy with non free software but this move makes that clear.
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Facebook’s ‘Like’ button illegal in German state
The state of Schleswig-Holstein has ordered all government offices to remove the button from their Web presence and shut down any Facebook “fan” pages, on the grounds that these things violate German and European data privacy laws. A release from the Independent Centre for Privacy Protection in the German state claims that information collected from German users’ “liking” and other activities is sent back to the United States where Facebook uses it to create a profile, all of which runs afoul of Germany’s uberstrict privacy laws. Sites that don’t comply with the take-down order could face a 50,000 Euro fine
It has been shown elsewhere that the “Like” button tracks people whether they like it or not, and Facebook collects data on people who are not members.
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Civil Rights
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How America’s safety net has become a dragnet
In defiance of all reason and compassion, the criminalization of poverty has actually intensified as the weakened economy generates ever more poverty. … Perhaps the constant suspicions of drug use and theft that I encountered in low-wage workplaces should have alerted me to the fact that, when you leave the relative safety of the middle class, you might as well have given up your citizenship and taken residence in a hostile nation.
Ordinances preventing people from sharing food with their neighbors are particularly mean but other terrible examples of cruelty are detailed.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Copyrights
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Poking More Holes in the First Sale Doctrine
a graduate student lawfully acquired foreign editions of textbooks abroad and then resold them in the United States. The student was subsequently sued by the U.S. textbook owner for copyright infringement. Looking at the statutory language of the first sale provision together with another provision of the Copyright Act concerning importation of copyrighted works, the court concluded that the first sale doctrine applies only to copies that are manufactured domestically, and not to copies manufactured abroad.
People should quit contributing to these textbooks and publish open access to be sure that their work will go to all markets, free of physical and legal restraints that only serve to gouge everyone as fully as possible.
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The Era of Software Patents May be Ending Gradually. It Was Terrible Whilst It Lasted, Agree ‘Mainstream’ Sources.
The USPTO is choking its own country
Summary: The corporate press and even US courts gradually start accepting that thought processes should not be patentable and this classification may include a lot of software patents
NEWS SITES are abuzz with reports and more formal documents that all provide an assessment of news we last touched on yesterday.
To quote Law.com, an authority in its field despite the obvious bias (lawyers): “As we’ve reported, the Supreme Court’s decision in Bilski v. Kappos left many in the patent bar unsatisfied. Rather than resolving the hotly contested question of whether “business methods” are patentable, the justices issued a narrow opinion. Those hoping for a more forceful ruling than Bilski got their wish on Tuesday, in the form of a unanimous Federal Circuit decision that could be used to invalidate both method patents and patents for related software.”
Timothy B. Lee says that “Specialist Patent Courts Are Part Of The Problem”, noting (in page 2) that: “The creation of the Federal Circuit had another unintended consequence, too. The Supreme Court relies on disagreements among appeals courts—known as “circuit splits”—to help it figure out which issues require its attention. And when the Supreme Court takes a case, the existence of multiple, conflicting precedents gives the justices more raw material from which to fashion their own decisions.
“In the Chief Justice’s first three terms, the high court heard five different patent cases, and all of them resulted in unanimous or near-unanimous reversals of pro-patent decisions by the Federal Circuit.”
–Timothy B. Lee“But when the Federal Circuit became the only court ruling on patent cases, there were no more circuit splits and no more competing legal precedents. That might be why the Supreme Court seems to have barely noticed that the Federal Circuit was dramatically reshaping patent law in the 1990s. The high court reviewed only about a dozen Federal Circuit decisions between 1982 and 2004, and the ones it did review tended to be on narrow, technical issues. The Supreme Court finally began to give the Federal Circuit’s handiwork some serious scrutiny when Chief Justice John Roberts took the bench. And the justices did not like what they saw. In the Chief Justice’s first three terms, the high court heard five different patent cases, and all of them resulted in unanimous or near-unanimous reversals of pro-patent decisions by the Federal Circuit.”
Might we see the next steps in a reform within weeks? Months? Years? Either way, it is a step in the right direction. Katherine Noyes’ good piece on why software patents need to go was mentioned by TechDirt, which also notes that: “There’s been a lot of attention lately to the massive problems with the patent system. Finally the problem has gone mainstream, in part thanks to the excellent This American Life episode on problems with the patent system. That seems to have emboldened other mainstream publications to finally run articles pointing out problems with the patent system, including the NY Times, the Huffington Post and PC World.
“Then there’s the Economist, who actually was one of the first mainstream publications to highlight problems with the patent system…”
Masnick writes this very long post (with a list of prominent critics of software patents) and he then makes a very detailed list of suggestions. Add to his list of critics the Washington Post, which has just published the article titled “The Terrible Cost Of Patents”, noting:
The cost of patents is going up, and that is not a good thing. After all, Google is paying $12.5 billion for Motorola largely for its huge mobile patent portfolio. In July, an anti-Google consortium ponied up $4.5 billion Nortel’s patents (and they overpayed). Interdigital, Kodak, and others are looking to sell their patent portfolios. We are in the middle of a patent bubble.
If you think about the cost of these patents, technology companies are spending billions of dollars on assets which they need primarily to defend themselves against the rising tide of patent litigation. Those are billions of dollars that Google, Apple, Microsoft and others won’t invest in new products, new jobs, new facilities or other economically productive activities. And by and large, they will not use these patents to create new products. Google is doing it just to protect Android from rival patent claims.
Here is another article which touches the subject:
Patents are a big draw these days and there’s no doubt that HP has a huge portfolio of patents that could bring in billions of dollars.
And guess what? the public pays for it. There is this grave misconception that it all comes at the expense of large corporations like Google and those who run such companies. But no… it’s the public which bears the burden of this “tax” on innovation (thought). Time for reform, no? At the very least limiting patents to what’s physical and demonstrable to a patent examiner. That’s what patent used to be once upon a time. Patents used to correspond to devices, not thought processes. █
Apple Caught Lying to Judges Again, Using Fabricated Evidence. Time to Fine/Ban Apple?
Jobs image licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (version 1.2 or any later versions); Ellison patch By Thomas Hawk
Summary: Steve Jobs’ mob is systematically manipulating images that his lawyers submit as ‘evidence’ with which to ban Linux-based devices
LAST YEAR a Microsoft Lawyer said that Microsoft “covers up alleged misconduct, mischaracterizes evidence [...] protects the perpetrators and retaliates against victims.” A few days ago we saw that Apple too is perturbing the legal system with potential illegalities like Microsoft's. According to another report from Holland/USA [via], “In a court filing, Apple resized a photo of the Galaxy S smartphone to match the dimensions of an iPhone 3G” (not just its hypePad).
Microsoft got fined $40,000,000 for trial misconduct. Will Apple be filed for submitting evidence which it knew was fake? How about banning Apple rather than devices Apple wants banned, using fake evidence as an instrument that deceives/manipulates judges?
Apple: where gullibility is the business model. █
SUSE Wants Credit After Selling Out to Microsoft and Legitimising Patent Extortion
Summary: Poor reporting on the subject of SUSE and Microsoft’s promotion of SUSE, which helps Microsoft turn GNU/Linux into its own cash cow
Sean Kerner has published a valuable article where he quotes SUSE as saying that they “Don’t Get the Credit [They] Deserve”. Funny, eh?
Have a look at this piece where Kerner does not neglect to mention the Microsoft ties (the incidental case of good journalism from him):
According to Clark, Attachmate didn’t buy Novell just to ‘milk’ the SUSE business, it bought it with the intention of aggressively growing the business. To that end, at the LinuxCon event, SUSE hung out a ‘we’re hiring’ sign. Clark said SUSE is hiring approximately 20 people to help staff various parts of the business.
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SUSE has also recently extended its deal with Microsoft to the tune of an additional $100 million. As part of the deal, Microsoft resells SUSE Linux and works with SUSE on interoperability issues. Microsoft also provides SUSE with a patent covenant that it promises not to sue SUSE users over any alleged infringement of Microsoft’s intellectual property that might be in open source software.
Microsoft is funding SUSE to harm free distributions. Nothing has changed since 2006. Now, watch this weird new blog post from the 451 Group. Well, in an amazingly whitewashy piece, it is Jay (of all people) who neglects to see the bigger picture (Microsoft trying to injure Red Hat, for example, while turning GNU/Linux into its own cash cow). Jay lets it seem like Microsoft is the “world’s broadest supporter of Linux” (trollish headline). But to quote:
Despite the concerns about Microsoft’s control over SUSE Linux or Linux in general, the fact of the matter is Microsoft’s investment of both dollars, including its SUSE deals worth a few hundred million, and investment of of resources, such as the interoperability work with Novell/SUSE, the kernel contribution, the cross-OS and hypervisor support work with Red Hat and the support of CentOS, Microsoft is significantly supporting Linux development and use in the enterprise.
I wrote last year about the uncertainty around Novell/SUSE kernel contribution given the Attachmate acquisition.
Microsoft is still turning GNU/Linux into its own cash cow, which at the same time makes it harder for GNU/Linux to compete. It is the same strategy it uses to attack Android. How can anyone not see this?
As we pointed out yesterday, there are those who play the role of “apologist” for SUSE for purely technical reasons. There is that component called “OpenSUSE” (which organises events and contests), but its goal is to help sell Microsoft-taxed SLE* at the expense of Red Hat and Debian GNU/Linux, for example. Who benefits from this? We are not arguing that OpenSUSE is technically broken; in fact, based on this new review “[t]he only real sore point in the whole [OpenSUSE] experience was the perceived slight slowness of the system, though the numbers in the system monitor somehow did not bear that out. Otherwise, it’s stable, relatively user-friendly, quite professional, and reminds me of my favorite distribution, Linux Mint.”
But it’s not about the technical nature of the distro. Vulnerabilities too aside [1, 2], the main issue is that Microsoft is exploiting SUSE — OpenSUSE included — to make Free software a Microsoft cash cow. To give SUSE credit or to say that Microsoft is “world’s broadest supporter of Linux” is worse than stupid; it’s possibly dishonest, depending on intent. █
The ‘Licensing’ FUD Against Android (Leading Back to Microsoft)
Summary: The new trend of copyrights-related Android FUD and the expected commonality shared by sources of this FUD
IT IS not unusual to see Bradley Kuhn complaining about Black Duck and OpenLogic, which both have strong ties linking them to Microsoft and a business model of spreading Free software fear. OpenLogic recently got a shot in the arm to help it promote ‘cloud’ computing (or “Fog Computing”, to avoid the euphemisms) [1, 2]. Black Duck is meanwhile releasing more proprietary stuff (may be patent-encumbered too) just while it’s seen issuing new FUD, this time against Android. We have seen that before, even from OpenLogic, and of course it comes from Microsoft’s booster Jon Brodkin who gives exposure to this FUD in IDG. Going under the daunting headline “Android developers face legal hurdles in license compliance”:
While Google’s Android is offered under the Apache and GPL licenses, the mobile operating system has components referencing 19 open source licenses overall, Black Duck Software executive Peter Vescuso told an audience at LinuxCon here.
Just like former Microsoft lawyers, the FUD against Android licensing just doesn’t stop. The FUD against Android comes from several directions and behind them we usually find the same suspect, Microsoft. There is also obligatory Android FUD from iPhone fan Mac Asay, who almost accepted a job at Microsoft (by his own admission). █
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