TechrightsSearch results for 'contraire' (page 1 of 2) http://techrights.org Free Software Sentry – watching and reporting maneuvers of those threatened by software freedom Wed, 11 Jan 2017 01:18:36 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.9.14 When EPO Vice-President, Who Will Resign Soon, Made a Mockery of the EPO http://techrights.org/2017/01/01/reversing-epo-roles/ http://techrights.org/2017/01/01/reversing-epo-roles/#comments Sun, 01 Jan 2017 17:00:29 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=98117 This great search was powered by Search Unleashed.
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… operations effectively now and in the future. [Ed: the AC never asked for unions to be crushed; au contraire]

We fully support the Organisation’s mission and its fundamental values [Ed: except when violating the EPC and national laws? Then ignoring court orders?]. Therefore we urge the Administrative Council, before taking any decision on the matter to give careful consideration to this letter:

- to remain firm on ethics and not tolerate misconduct [Ed: i.e. they should fire Battistelli …

]]> http://techrights.org/2017/01/01/reversing-epo-roles/feed/ 0 The Linux Foundation Gives Microsoft (Paid-for) Keynote Position While Microsoft Extorts (With Patents) Lenovo and Motorola Over Linux Use http://techrights.org/2016/08/23/microsoft-extorts-lenovo-and-motorola/ http://techrights.org/2016/08/23/microsoft-extorts-lenovo-and-motorola/#comments Tue, 23 Aug 2016 09:45:59 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=95049 Another outrageous patent settlement that requires Microsoft bundling, but the Linux Foundation is too bribed by Microsoft to actually antagonise it any longer

“I’ve killed at least two Mac conferences. [...] by injecting Microsoft content into the conference, the conference got shut down. The guy who ran it said, why am I doing this?”

–Microsoft's chief evangelist

Summary: This morning’s reminder that Nadella is just another Ballmer (with a different face); Motorola and Lenovo surrender to Microsoft’s patent demands and will soon put Microsoft spyware/malware on their Linux-powered products to avert costly legal battles

MICROSOFT is not a friend. It’s a predator. It just changed the logo, the PR, and the CEO. It also started paying more and more money to its critics, including Linux OEMs, to keep them quiet. “Microsoft Keynoting LinuxCon,” said a headline from Phoronix yesterday. What it failed to say is that Microsoft actually pays the Linux Foundation to infiltrate it. This has gone on for a while. Earlier this month the Linux Foundation posted a Microsoft puff piece paid for by Microsoft. We mentioned it this worrisome development the other day (to their credit, the Linux Foundation did add a disclosure to this). The payment was made under the pretense of supporting a conference (i.e. interjecting Microsoft stuff into it).

Is Microsoft becoming more open? No, it’s spying more and more. All the core products are proprietary. What is PowerShell all about? Openwashing. “Embrace and extend” of wget and curl (soon to have Mono as well) while claiming to be “opening up” a part of Windows, which is proprietary spyware that defies law (and had Microsoft lose cases in court).

But never mind all the above. Has Microsoft actually made peace with GNU/Linux? Hardly. Au contraire. Microsoft is still attacking GNU/Linux. If “Microsoft loves Linux,” then it sure shows it like an abusive spouse that beats up the wife (to borrow the analogy from Simon Phipps). Microsoft extorts Linux again, but it has bamboozled the media like it first did when it attacked Acer. It did this several times more thereafter and we covered it earlier this year, e.g. in:

Remember what happened to Samsung when it said “No!”

Microsoft took it to court and Samsung later settled with bundling (early 2015). That’s like racketeering, but Microsoft is far too politically-connected to face charges under the RICO Act.

In the past, Microsoft was offering payments for bundling; right now, instead, it’s a patent settlement. A patent settlement over what? Linux. The media is calling it all sorts of things other than patent settlement (after threats), which is what it really is. Here is the coverage we see right now (misleading):

The following two articles suggest that Motorola too (already sued by Microsoft over patents) is a victim of this strategy:

All that Microsoft is trying to achieve here is control over Linux-powered mobile (or Android) users, e.g. using Skype malware. People who actually think that Microsoft has changed need to reassess their trust in corporate media (much of the above is Microsoft-connected media and Microsoft advocacy sites that help mislead other media). █

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/08/23/microsoft-extorts-lenovo-and-motorola/feed/ 0 EPO Investigative Unit Causes “Trauma, Will Ruin the Health or Even the Family” http://techrights.org/2016/06/15/epo-investigative-unit-damage/ http://techrights.org/2016/06/15/epo-investigative-unit-damage/#comments Wed, 15 Jun 2016 23:12:09 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=93575 Ion Brumme’s alleged ‘crime’ is that he invited people to join the staff union

A photo of Ion Brumme

Summary: Staff representative gives details in an intervention, offering a personal testimony about the work of the “investigation/investigative unit” (IU) at the EPO

THE EPO, or Eponia which acts as though it’s a state with ‘intelligence agencies’, ‘courts’ and ‘security’ personnel (private bodyguards who are grossly overpaid), operates a secretive (mental) torture chamber called the Investigative Unit. We wrote about it last year [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] and explained how it had come into existence before Battistelli turned it into something to be expected from East Germany under Soviet occupation.

Here is a recent statement about what happens inside the Investigative Unit and what it did to Ion Brumme (above) among others because they ‘dared’ to sign people up for SUEPO, the Staff Union of the EPO. In French (original):

« Je ne cesse d’entendre que nous ne sommes pas là aujourd’hui pour discuter de cas individuels. Les cas de Ion Brumme et Malika Weaver sont pourtant exemplaires. Ce sont des représentants du personnel, sanctionnés dans l’exercice de leurs fonctions de représentants du personnel. Cela concerne tout le personnel. Le personnel a le droit de savoir. Si je suis dans cette salle aujourd’hui, ce n’est que contraint et forcé. Mon collègue Ion Brumme a été licencié et, ma collègue Malika Weaver ne pouvait être là aujourd’hui. Elle est fortement atteinte pas sa sanction de rétrogradation. Je la remplace.

La plupart d’entre vous assis en face de moi n’ont jamais vu comment se déroule un interrogatoire de l’unité d’investigation. Vous ne savez pas. Nous, à la représentation du personnel, on a vu, on a subi, on sait. C’est un traumatisme. Cela ruine la santé, voire la famille également. Le texte des Circulaires 341 et 342 qui est sous nos yeux aujourd’hui donne encore plus de pouvoir à cette unité d’investigation. Plus de pouvoir, ne veut pas dire, plus d’indépendance, bien au contraire. A l’heure où le Board 28 cherche à calmer la situation sociale, l’administration de l’office propose un texte aujourd’hui encore plus répressif.

J’aimerais attirer votre attention sur l’article 2 définissant le misconduct. Je vois que l’élément (n) qualifie de misconduct le fait d’enfreindre de manière manifestement intentionelle ou négligente une loi nationale. Je ne peux m’empêcher de penser à un membre du personnel de l’office, qui, sans doute avec la collusion de plusieurs, a ignoré un jugement de la Cour d’Appel de La Haye – l’intéressé allant jusqu’à dire que “les juges ont commis une erreur”. Naturellement, l’intéressé bénéficie de l’immunité de l’office et de plus, c’est maintenant écrit, ne peut faire l’objet d’une enquête par l’unité d’investigation. Cette caractéristique du texte symbolise en somme tout le cynisme de la démarche de l’administration de l’office. Cynisme qui s’est encore manifesté vendredi dernier.

Le Board 28 avait pourtant demandé à l’administration de l’office de calmer la situation sociale. Et vendredi dernier, on apprend que mon collègue Ion Brumme voit son licenciement confirmé, et ma collègue Malika Weaver, reste rétrogradée.

Je pense à eux. Je pense beaucoup à eux. Et aujourd’hui c’est le lieu pour en parler. »

Here is an automated translation:

“I keep hearing that we’re not here today to discuss individual cases. The case of Ion Brumme and Malika Weaver are copies. They are representatives, sanctioned in the performance of their duties staff representatives. This concerns all staff. The staff has the right to know. If I am in this room today, it is only under duress. My colleague Ion Brumme was dismissed and my colleague Malika Weaver could not be here today. It is strongly not reached his demotion penalty. I replaced.

Most of you sitting in front of me have never seen what happens during an examination of the investigative unit. You do not know. We, the staff representation, we saw, we suffered, we know. It’s trauma. This will ruin the health or even the family. The text Circulars 341 and 342 that is before us today still gives more power to the investigative unit. More power, not to say, more independence, quite the contrary. At a time when the Board 28 seeks to ease the social situation, the administration of the office offers a text even more repressive today.

I would like to draw your attention to Article 2 defines the misconduct. I see that the element (n) refers to the fact misconduct violate grossly negligent or intentional way a national law. I cannot help thinking of a member of the office staff, which, no doubt with many of collusion, ignored a judgment of the Court of Appeal Hague – the person up to say that “the judges made a mistake.” Naturally, the person enjoys immunity from office and more, it is now written, cannot be investigated by the investigation unit. This feature of the text symbolizes in short all the cynicism of the process of the administration of the office. Cynicism that has yet appeared last Friday.

The Board 28 had however asked the administration of the office to calm the social situation. And last Friday, we learned that my colleague Ion Brumme confirmed sees his dismissal, and my colleague Malika Weaver, left demoted.

I think of them. I think a lot of them. And today it is the place to discuss it.”

Accompanying text described the above as: “Intervention made by an elected Staff representative during the GCC of the 13.06.2106, dealing with Review of the disciplinary procedures framework and of Articles 52 and 53 ServRegs and the Revision of Investigation framework called Standards of conduct and administrative “fact findings” – while a spontaneous Staff Demonstration was taking place simultaneously outside against the President decision to confirm the disciplinary measures against Malika Weaver and Ion Brumme, former high ranking officials from SUEPO Munich.”

“Battistelli fancies himself a judge (and accuser, jury, and executioner) against a real judge, making up a ‘legal’ process (never-ending series of tiring show ‘trials’) and fabricating evidence to defame a judge who actually used legitimate evidence and is being punished for it.”It is worth noting that we have heard about the impact on the judge’s wife (the one who is on ‘house ban’) and we previously wrote about the spouse of Jesus getting affected (in relation to the attack on staff representatives at The Hague). This is totally unacceptable. It’s quite obviously a breach of human rights (though a human rights lawyer would be needed to lay out the specifics). It’s outrageous, but the EPO (or Eponia) does not care what the law says. It would even disregard the highest courts at The Hague (not obeying judges’ orders), by its very own admission. A later article will deal with the judge’s case.

Battistelli fancies himself a judge (and accuser, jury, and executioner) against a real judge, making up a ‘legal’ process (never-ending series of tiring show 'trials') and fabricating evidence to defame a judge who actually used legitimate evidence and is being punished for it. █

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/06/15/epo-investigative-unit-damage/feed/ 0 [ES] Nuevo Reporte Acerca de la UPC Explica Por Que est Tán Mala Para Los Pequeños- y Medianos Negocios Europeos http://techrights.org/2016/05/07/analisis-de-la-upc-y-su-falsa-premisa/ http://techrights.org/2016/05/07/analisis-de-la-upc-y-su-falsa-premisa/#comments Sun, 08 May 2016 00:37:29 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=92388 English/Original

Article as ODF

Publicado en Europe, Patents at 5:19 am por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz

El último Reporte del Dr. Ingve Björn Stjerna

Ingve paper

Sumario: Un detallado análisis académico de la Corte Unitaria de Patentes (o Unificada) de Europa revela/concluye/afirma que esta siéndo mercadéada o promovida usando una engañosa premisa y promesa

La patente unitaria “y el sistema judicial – Un Regalo Envenenado para las PYMES es el título de un nuevo libro del Dr. Björn Ingve Stjerna, a quien nosotroshemos mencionado aquíantes, porque estudió de muy cerca la UPC durante mucho tiempo (incluso antes de sea conocida como “UPC”). Basado en el PDF del reportaje (permiso otorgado a nosotros para exibir una copia), existe una gran brecha entre la verdad/realidad y demandas de su promoción (publicidad). Las PYME a menudo son explotadas por los defensores de la UPC, que “secuestran” la voz de las PYMEs y dicen hablar en su nombre cuando dicen que la UPC serviría mejor a las PYME, y no las grandes corporaciones que a menudo vienen de fuera de Europa.

Como el reporte afirma en relación a Europa, “Las PYMEs son por mucho los empleadores más grande en Europa, sus problemas ar los problemas de sus empleados y por consecuencia de un gran número de ciudadanos Europeos. Por esta simple razón, esta materia merece una discusión amplia en los Parlamentos Nacionales de los estados miembros afectados de la EU. De los 25 estados miembros que han firmado la UPCA, hasta ahora sólo 9 – de los 13 necesarios para su establecimiénto –, 16 ratificaciónes todavía están pendientes. En la medida que, cualquier ciudadano interesado debería traer la materia a la atención de sus MEP de su constituency y demandar que prior a su ratificación, una ampli discusión Parlamentaria de los pros y cons del “paquete de patentes” debería tener lugar. Si va a entrar en fuerza es su versión presente, las PYMEs especialmente tendrán que vivir con ella y ello no será de ningúnam manera para su ventaja.”

Ya escribimos varios posts acerca del por qué la UPC no tiene nada que ofrecer a las PYMEsEuropeas y por lo tanto debe ser rechazada. No hay ventajas que podamos ver, lo único que hay son desventajas. Es una estafa. Cuando los abogados de patentes y sus medios de comunicación afirman que la UPC servirían a las PYMEs uno tiene que parar y preguntarse qué tipo de clientes tienen (seguro que potenciales trolles de patentes o de sus pobres víctimas).

Para citar el resumen de la ponencia:

El 16 de febrero de 2016, el Ministerio de Justicia y Protección del Consumidor de Alemania presentó dos piezas de un proyecto de ley para la ratificación del Convenio internacional sobre el Tribunal Unificado de Patentes. Después de que los honorarios para la “patente unitaria” se han fijado y una propuesta de las tasas judiciales y los límites de gastos de representación reembolsables en el tribunal de patentes unificado ha sido proporcionadas, la promesa política que el nuevo sistema podría apoyar a las pequeñas y medianas empresas (PYME) podrán ser evaluadas de conformidad con la realidad. No es una sorpresa que no se este cumpliendo. Más recientemente, incluso la Comisión Europea declaró que el riesgo de costo sería tan significativa que las PYMEs requerirían un seguro para cubrirlas, admitiendo al mismo tiempo que actualmente carecen de seguro disponible. Una visión general sobre el deseo y la realidad en cuanto a los costos de la “patente unitaria” y el Tribunal Unificado de Patentes.

Frente al cabildeo de la EPO por la UPC (incluso hace un mes atrás en el Reino Unido) es importante para los ciudadanos Europeos levantar su voz para ayudar a detener a la UPC, la cual es una injusticia sin precedente tales como la TTIP y la TPP. De ninguna manera es por los intereses de los Europeos; au contraire.

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/05/07/analisis-de-la-upc-y-su-falsa-premisa/feed/ 0 Links 4/5/2016: Wine Staging 1.9.9, ImageMagick Bug Fixes http://techrights.org/2016/05/04/imagemagick-bug-fixes/ http://techrights.org/2016/05/04/imagemagick-bug-fixes/#comments Wed, 04 May 2016 15:19:05 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=92344

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open Source is Good for Business

    The technology industry is changing fast – much faster than we’ve seen in the past – due to the proliferation of high quality, free and open source software, said Stephen O’Grady, co-founder and principal analyst at RedMonk, in his keynote talk at Collaboration Summit in March. Developers have access to open source technologies without asking for permission.

  • Planned Death [Ed: Pieter Hintjens has terminal cancer]

    A planned death is not a moment in time, like a car accident or a fatal stroke. It is a process. A social process that involves hundreds of people, each doing their part, grieving their loss, accepting their own mortality.

  • Zebra Technologies’ RhoMobile App Development Platform Goes Open Source

    …its enterprise and consumer mobile app development platform, is now released to open source under the MIT License.

  • What makes React so special?

  • Events

    • How to identify small problems for big team wins

      Every software project has moments where they have “a bit of spinach in their teeth”—that is, a simple problem that they just can’t see.

      To address this, Deb Nicholson started SpinachCon, an informal workshop that brings free and open source software projects and volunteers together to identify and fix little problems that can pose big obstacles.

  • SaaS/Back End

  • Databases

    • NoSQL Databases, Explained: How They Help Solve the Data Storage Deluge

      NoSQL databases have emerged as a key tool for organizations battling the data deluge. What does NoSQL actually mean, and which advantages does it deliver for data storage needs? Here’s everything you need to know about NoSQL.

      For starters, let’s make clear that NoSQL is not a specific database product. It’s a term that refers to a general category of database, which different vendors have implemented in different ways.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Document Foundation Kicks Off Month of LibreOffice Campaign, Awards Contributors

      Softpedia has been informed by The Document Foundation’s Mike Saunders about a new campaign which aims to credit every single contributor to the open-source LibreOffice office suite.

      Dubbed Month of LibreOffice, the new campaign kicks off on the first day of May 2016, awarding some of the LibreOffice contributors with a barnstar via a special wiki page. The campaign has just started, so you won’t see many entries there, as they need to be added by members of The Document Foundation in time, depending on the task they did.

  • CMS

    • Workflow and efficiency geek talks Drush and Drupal

      Meet Greg Anderson, an open source contributor at Pantheon and co-maintainer of Drush. If you’ve used Drush before, you’ve probably saved a bunch of time on repetitive tasks. If you haven’t used it yet, what are you waiting for?

      Greg Anderson is all about boosting productivity and improving development workflows. He shared some of his insights in this interview. We also found out how he got involved with Drupal and got a preview of his session at DrupalCon NOLA on command line tools for Drupal 8 modules.

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

    • OpenBSD Foundation Announces Gold Sponsor

      Not only is it great to hear that companies are giving back to the project, but also that OpenBSD was nominated by DDG users. A big thanks to them and their community!

  • Public Services/Government

    • After three years of Linux, Munich reveals draft of crunch report that could decide its open source future

      As for the implications of this interim report, Matthias Kirschner, president of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), said its assessment of Accenture’s findings is that the problems don’t lie with the PC clients themselves but with the way they are managed and their associated backend infrastructure.

      “The study does not mention any concrete problems with the PC clients (neither GNU/Linux nor proprietary). It highlights, that IT security, especially at the client level, is perceived as bad for getting things done.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Hardware/Modding

Leftovers

  • Leicester City: ‘Every bookmaker is crying out in pain’

    “In the history of betting, certainly since it was legalised in 1961, a [single event] winner with odds of 5,000-1 has never happened,” says Simon Clare from the betting firm Coral. “Every bookmaker is crying out in pain.

    “That’s a barometer of what Leicester have done and just how amazing this win is.”

    Jessica Bridges from rival Ladbrokes agrees.

  • Science

    • Your Brain Warps People’s Faces To Match Stereotypes, New Research Shows

      Implicit biases are incredibly powerful. Unconscious stereotypes affect how we evaluate who is running for political office, who we promote at work, who we encourage academically, and, perhaps most devastatingly, who we regard and react to as threats.

      A huge body of research shows that black Americans are perceived to be more threatening than white Americans, and are stereotyped as more likely to be involved in criminal behavior. During split-second decisions, those biases can have devastating consequences — particularly when it comes to policing and the justice system. In 2015, young black men were nine times as likely to be killed by the police as other Americans, even though about 25 percent of them were unarmed, according to reporting by the Guardian.

    • Death by GPS

      One early morning in March 2011, Albert Chretien and his wife, Rita, loaded their Chevrolet Astro van and drove away from their home in Penticton, British Columbia. Their destination was Las Vegas, where Albert planned to attend a trade show. They crossed the border and, somewhere in northern Oregon, they picked up Interstate 84.

      The straightest route would be to take I-84 to Twin Falls, Idaho, near the Nevada border, and then follow US Route 93 all the way to Vegas. Although US 93 would take them through Jackpot, Nevada, the town near the Idaho state line where they planned to spend the first night, they looked at a roadmap and decided to exit I-84 before that junction. They would choose a scenic road less traveled, Idaho State Highway 51, which heads due south away from the I-84 corridor, crossing the border several miles to the west. The Chretiens figured there had to be a turnoff from Idaho 51 that would lead them east to US 93.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Medical Errors Are Leading Killer After Heart Disease and Cancer, Study Finds

      After heart disease and cancer, medical errors kill more Americans than anything else, claiming a quarter of a million lives a year, according to a study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University.

      If bungles and safety lapses in the hospital were accounted for as deaths from disease and injury are, they would be the third most common cause of death in the U.S., leading to more fatalities than respiratory disease, the report in the British Medical Journal argues.

    • America’s Pill Popping Is Making Our Fish Anxious and Possibly Getting Into Our Vegetables

      In America’s never-ending pursuit to be number one in all things, it has achieved top billing in a number of troubling areas, including where overmedication is concerned. We are the most pill-popping country on earth, with an astounding 70 percent of us regularly taking one prescription drug and about half of us taking two. A quarter of us take five or more prescription medications, according to the Mayo Clinic, which for the record, is a whole lot.

      What goes into our bodies ultimately must come out, and that’s as true for meds as it is for anything else. Without getting into the elephant in the room (what does it mean when a good portion of the population is taking enough drugs to kill said elephant?), let’s turn to another issue. That is, when some of those pharmaceuticals are excreted—meaning peed out by users—they generally end up in our toilet water. From there, they enter our waterways and recycled water supplies, the latter of which are used to irrigate food crops. Ultimately, new research finds, those drugs can unwittingly be re-absorbed both by humans and by fish who never signed up for a prescription.

    • How limiting women’s access to birth control and abortions hurts the economy

      As a consequence, the right to control their reproductive health has become increasingly illusory for many women, particularly the poor.

    • The contradictory reasons cancer-drug prices are going up

      The $10,000-a-month cancer drug has become the new normal, to the dismay of physicians and patients who increasingly face the burden of financial toxicity. A pair of new studies illustrate just how recently that pricing model has come into vogue and pull back the curtain on the strange market forces that push prices steadily higher in the years after the treatments are launched.

      The first study, published in JAMA Oncology, examined 32 cancer medications given in pill form and found that their initial launch list prices have steadily increased over the years — even after adjusting for inflation. The average monthly amount insurers and patients paid for a new cancer drug was less than $2,000 in the year 2000 but soared to $11,325 in 2014.

    • As Flint was slowly poisoned, Snyder’s inner circle failed to act

      A year ago, Gov. Rick Snyder was stoking rumors of a presidential bid as a metrics-driven Republican whose ability to run government like a business transformed a troubled state.

    • BREAKING NEWS: CJEU says Tobacco Products Directive is valid

      According to the press release, the CJEU ruled that Article 13, as well as the other provisions regarding “the integrity of health warnings after the packet has been opened, to the position and minimum dimensions of the health warnings and to the shape of unit packets of cigarettes, the minimum number of cigarettes per unit packet” and “health warnings covering 65% of the external front and back surface of each unit packet” are proportionate and well-compliant with the principle of subsidiarity, due to the overriding interest of public-health protection that the Directive intends to pursue.

    • Don’t Send Flint Down the Drain: Fix It!

      The Flint water crisis is now two years old — and the water still isn’t safe to drink. There have been civil and criminal investigations, two congressional hearings and extensive reporting, particularly during the presidential primary in Michigan. Gov. Rick Snyder appointed a special task force. Yet only 33 pipes — 3 of every thousand — have been replaced.

    • Feds Agree to Tolerate the Country’s Largest Medical Marijuana Dispensary

      The Justice Department, which has been trying to shut down Oakland’s Harborside Health Center, the largest medical marijuana dispensary in the country, since 2012, is backing down. Yesterday Oakland officials, who have supported the dispensary all along, announced that the feds had agreed to let it stay open.

      “We celebrate the release from federal prosecution,” said Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf. “We believe in compassion. We believe in health.”

      The announcement comes a few weeks after the DOJ abandoned its efforts to enforce an injunction against another California dispensary, the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana (MAMM). In allowing MAMM to reopen, the feds let stand a ruling that said such enforcement actions against state-legal dispensaries violate a spending rider known as the Rohrabacher/Farr amendment, which prohibits the DOJ from using appropriated funds to prevent states from implementing their medical marijuana laws.

    • Detroit to begin water shutoffs Tuesday

      Detroit’s Water and Sewerage Department is set to begin Tuesday shutting off service to customers who haven’t paid their bills.

      Linda Clark, a spokeswoman for the department, said they initially planned to begin the process Monday, but the water department’s director, Gary Brown, delayed it one day.

      “We want to give our customers every opportunity to schedule arrangements,” Clark said. “We wanted to give them another day.”

  • Security

    • Open Source ImageMagick Security Bug Puts Sites at Risk

      ImageMagick, an open source suite of tools for working with graphic images used by a large number of websites, has been found to contain a serious security vulnerability that puts sites using the software at risk for malicious code to be executed onsite. Security experts consider exploitation to be so easy they’re calling it “trivial,” and exploits are already circulating in the wild. The biggest risk is to sites that allows users to upload their own image files.

      Information about the vulnerability was made public Tuesday afternoon by Ryan Huber, a developer and security researcher, who wrote that he had little choice but to post about the exploit.

    • Huge number of sites imperiled by critical image-processing vulnerability

      A large number of websites are vulnerable to a simple attack that allows hackers to execute malicious code hidden inside booby-trapped images.

      The vulnerability resides in ImageMagick, a widely used image-processing library that’s supported by PHP, Ruby, NodeJS, Python, and about a dozen other languages. Many social media and blogging sites, as well as a large number of content management systems, directly or indirectly rely on ImageMagick-based processing so they can resize images uploaded by end users.

    • Extreme photo-bombing: Bad ImageMagick bug puts countless websites at risk of hijacking

      A wildly popular software tool used by websites to process people’s photos can be exploited to execute malicious code on servers and leak server-side files.

      Security bugs in the software are apparently being exploited in the wild right now to compromise at-risk systems. Patches to address the vulnerabilities are available in the latest source code – but are incomplete and have not been officially released, we’re told.

    • Server-jacking exploits for ImageMagick are so trivial, you’ll scream

      Samples of booby-trapped image files that exploit ImageMagick to compromise servers and other computers are well and truly out in the open now.

    • Every Now And Then The World Of FLOSS Messes UP

      Yep. This is one of those widely used FLOSS tools that has big holes in security. It’s again one of those vulnerabilities where images are treated as code with no checking/sanitizing.

    • CII’s Best Practices badge program is making open source projects more secure
    • Linux Foundation Badge Program to Boost Open Source Security

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Terrorism: From the Irish Dynamite War to the Islamic State

      How many Western leaders are honestly interested in terrorists’ motives?

    • Lessons from Iraq’s Green Zone Protests

      The temporary takeover of the Iraqi parliament building and other facilities in the fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad by followers of Muqtada al-Sadr was a demonstration not only of current fractures in Iraqi politics but also of a recurring American misconception about the application of military force on behalf of political objectives.

    • What Is the US Military Doing in the Baltics?

      Get ready for the new cold war, which will no doubt turn hot if Hillary Clinton gets into the White House: NATO has just announced it is “considering” the addition of 4,000 more troops to be stationed in Poland and the Baltic states, i.e. right on Russia’s western border. The Washington Post helpfully informs us that this is being done “to deter future Russian aggression” – as if there’s any real possibility that Putin will order the Russian army to take Warsaw or march on Estonia.

      What this is is another NATO provocation aimed at showing Putin who’s really in charge in the former Soviet Union’s sphere of influence. They’re hoping the Russian leader will respond in kind. But he’s too smart for that: instead, Putin will retaliate in a different theater, perhaps in Syria or Armenia, where the fight with Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh is in full swing.

    • Turkish Parliament Members Brawl Over Potential Constitutional Amendment

      The next time you get fed up with the partisan politics of the United States Congress, take a look back at the Turkish parliamentary session on Monday night, which ended in a huge fight.

      A committee within the Turkish Parliament passed a bill that, if approved, would remove legislators’ immunity and potentially trigger investigations of certain Parliament members. Members of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party believe the bill “is designed to target them and suppress dissent,” Reuters reports.

      Shortly before the bill was approved by the committee, a fight broke out between members of the Peoples’ Democratic Party and the AK Party, which currently holds power.

    • Working for US Gov Means Never Saying Sorry

      Breaking his pledge, Obama issued the monsters a “get out of jail free” card. There wouldn’t even be an investigation, much less indictments. “We need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards,” he said. The new president traveled to Langley to reassure the torturers everything would be cool. (“I will be as vigorous in protecting you as you are vigorous in protecting the American people.”) He even cooperated with the Republicans who approved of torture to pressure other countries not to file charges against U.S. torturers.

    • Sanctions and Defiance in North Korea

      Sanctions on North Korea have failed.

      [...]

      Foremost among the obstacles to an effective North Korea sanctions regime is smuggling along the China-DPRK (North Korea) border. Military items disguised as ordinary goods seem easily able to evade detection thanks to inconsistent inspection by border guards, bribery, false declarations, and North Korean firms based in China that actually belong to military-run trading companies. Since these practices are surely well known to the Chinese authorities, it seems fair to assume they have no strong interest in preventing or at least substantially reducing it—something they could accomplish with a more intensive border inspection process. That China is not doing so no doubt reflects its oft-stated position that the North Korean nuclear issue is the result of other countries’ policies, not China’s, hence that resolving it is others’ responsibility, mainly the US.

    • The Myths and Secret Lives of the Men and Companies That Make Our Millions of Guns

      The gun business, as a business, remains invisible, a secret in the closet of the gun culture.

    • Is Washington Preparing for War Against Russia?

      There were corporate benefits for the US along the way, of course. Eight NATO countries bought hundreds of F-16s and all the add-ons, for example, and “NATO Standardization” was military code for “Buy American.” The State Department is barefaced about this. Its head of the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, Andrew J Shapiro, proudly declared that “We view the American defense industry as an integral part of our efforts to advance US national security and foreign policy.” You can’t be more open than that.

    • The Canadian / Saudi Arms Deal: More Than Meets the Eye?

      It is difficult to predict what kind of government misstep can seriously tarnish a government’s reputation. Some mistakes have legs and others, inexplicably, seem not to. But the stunningly stupid decision to go ahead with a $15 billion sale of light armoured vehicles (LAVs) to Saudi Arabia has the potential to expose Justin ‘Canada is back’ Trudeau as a phony. Indeed you could hardly design an issue so perfectly fitted to reveal a government with a progressive public face contradicted by a ruthless disregard for human rights. It begs the question as to whether the spin doctors simply misjudged how widespread the public revulsion would be or whether there is something deeper going on. Is it really just about jobs or is there a hard-nosed commitment, inherited from the Conservatives, to a backward Middle East foreign policy?

    • New Risks from Brussels’ ‘Security’

      After a terror attack, Western governments react – or overreact – to show they’re doing something, but often make matters worse, as Belgium’s new layer of security outside Zaventem airport shows, writes Gilbert Doctorow.

    • David Cameron keeps accusing this British citizen of supporting ISIS – but did he?

      David Cameron has been accused of misleading MPs, breaking the ministerial code and smearing a British Muslim by accusing him of supporting Islamic State.

      The Prime Minister accused Imam Suliman Gani of being a supporter of Islamic State during PMQs last month.

      He used the claim to launch a crude and blistering attack on Sadiq Khan , whom he said “shared a platform with him” on nine occasions.

    • Jeremy Corbyn just slated David Cameron over his awful football knowledge
    • David Cameron tried to congratulate Leicester City and people have relentlessly mocked him

      David Cameron has struggled with football teams, historically.

    • A Tale of Two Cities: Muslim Rebels strike back at Hospital in Gov’t held West

      Muslim fundamentalist rebels, including al-Qaeda, took revenge Tuesday on West Aleppo for the heavy government bombardment of East Aleppo that has killed dozens in the past week, including at a hospital run by Doctors without Borders. At the same time that the government was bombarding the slums of the east into yet more rubble, the rebels were lobbing mortar shells over on to the upscale West, also killing dozens over the past week (though probably fewer dozens than the government did).

    • Baiting the Bear: Russia and NATO

      Is Russia really a military threat to the United States and its neighbors? Is it seriously trying to “revenge” itself for the 1989 collapse of the Soviet Union? Is it actively trying to rebuild the old Soviet empire? The answers to these questions are critical, because, for the first time since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, several nuclear-armed powers are on the edge of a military conflict with fewer safeguards than existed 50 years ago.

    • Ending the silence around German colonialism

      Perhaps you have never heard of German colonialism; it is less commonly spoken about than other colonialisms. The most common reasoning for this is that Germany lost its colonies too early for them to be of any significance (by 1918). It is often argued that the empire was short lived, and that it detracts attention from the crimes of the Second World War to discuss it.

    • Hillary Clinton and Wall Street’s Neoliberal War on Latin America

      By now it is old news that there is a coup afoot in Brazil and that the right-wing is using extraordinary political measures to overthrow of Dilma Rousseff.

    • The Story of Jill Stein: Putting People, Peace and the Planet Before Profits

      Even with support from the thousands that pack his speaking engagements, pundits continue to count Bernie Sanders out once the 2016 Democratic National Convention rolls around in July. This rhetoric should not be taken lightly. History reveals how candidates, who are unpopular with their own establishment, have been taken down by the powers-at-be even as they gained popularity in the polls. Green Party presidential frontrunner Dr. Jill Stein noted how this occurred with Dennis Kucinich, who was redistricted out of an election, with Jessie Jackson, who was branded an anti-Semite, and with Howard Dean, who was taken down by a public relations campaign. Despite the back talking, Sanders’ delegate count is the primary predictor of his success in the 2016 primary races. Sanders is trailing in pledged delegates and he must win nearly 95 percent of the remaining delegates to get the democratic nomination. Despite these nail biting odds, Sanders’ supporters have an alternative choice if he falters.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • The Economic Value of Yellowstone National Park

      Recently it was reported in the Livingston Enterprise that visitors to Yellowstone National Park contributed $493.6 million in spending in communities near the park. That spending supported 7,737 jobs.

      And this research does not include all the jobs and income resulting from those with footloose businesses and/or retirement that they bring to communities like Livingston, in part, because people want to live near protected lands like Yellowstone.

    • Celebrity ape selfies harming efforts to curb wildlife trafficking, UN body warns

      Instagram snaps of celebrities including Paris Hilton and James Rodriguez posing with apes in the Gulf are damaging efforts to clamp down on wildlife trafficking and endangering the survival of some species, a UN body has warned.

      New research by the UN’s great apes survival partnership (Grasp) points to an alarming rise in trafficking of orangutans, chimpanzees, gorillas and bonobos stolen from the wild, mostly to feed demand from a boom in macabre Chinese circuses.

    • Is Your Governor Or Attorney General A Climate Denier?

      After sweating through the second straight year that earned the title of hottest year on record, new research from the Center for American Progress Action Fund finds that 24 governors and attorneys general publicly deny the reality of climate change. It also gives a comprehensive summary of their records and public views on climate change and energy issues. The 21 governors publicly confirmed as climate deniers is an increase from previous years.

    • Dead zones devour oceans’ oxygen

      Scientists in the US have identified a new hazard in a world in which the climates change and the oceans warm: measurable stretches of the seas could become sapped of oxygen.

      They say that parts of the southern Indian Ocean, the eastern tropical Pacific and the Atlantic are already less oxygen-rich because of global warming. And oxygen deprivation could become increasingly widespread across large regions of ocean between 2030 and 2040.

    • Hanford’s Leaky Nuke Tanks and Sick Workers, A Never-Ending Saga

      The original Hanford Project, which manufactured plutonium for the world’s first atomic bomb and over its forty years of operation produced 63 short tons of plutonium, is now home to the largest environmental clean-up in the country. The place is literally steaming with radioactivity. 56 million gallons of nuclear sludge currently sit in double-walled underground tanks built in the 1970s. This waste is awaiting a plant to be built, known as the Hanford Vit Plant, that can turn the nasty gunk into glass rods. The Vit Plant, to be constructed by Bechtel, continues to run way over its initial budget estimates and keeps being delayed. The plant, if it’s ever completed, will end up costing taxpayers over $30 billion. Meanwhile, those old holding tanks aren’t fail-safe. They continue to be a colossal problem for the environment and workers alike.

    • Reconsider The Almond: California’s Most Infamous Crop Is Trying To Win Back The Public

      When things go wrong — especially if they go really, historically wrong — people tend to look for answers. So when California entered the fourth year of one of the worst droughts the state had ever seen, everyone — the media, politicians, scientists — wanted to know what had gone wrong.

      In the process, a number of things were set upon the altar of public opinion as scapegoats for the drought: lawns, golf courses, wealthy Californians taking more than their fair share of the state’s dwindling resources, climate change. But none provoked the maelstrom that surrounded the almond, which seemingly transformed overnight from a healthy snack to the evil source of California’s water woes.

  • Finance

    • Accounting giant KPMG defends Isle of Man tax practices before House committee

      A senior partner in the global accounting giant KPMG, which has been accused of being behind a tax avoidance scheme in the Isle of Man, says a lot of international tax rules “are broken” — and they need to be fixed.

      Gregory Wiebe, speaking before the House of Commons finance committee on Tuesday, addressed concerns about the “disconnects” between Canada’s tax system and those Canadians may encounter elsewhere. Speaking in the wake of both the Isle of Man reports and the “Panama Papers” revelations, Wiebe said the public has come to question the fairness of global tax systems.

    • Who Says Crime Doesn’t Pay?

      For example, the deal calls for the felonious bank to put a quarter-billion dollars into affordable housing, but generous federal negotiators put incentives and credits in the fine print that will let Goldman escape with paying out less than a third of that. Also, about $2.5 billion of the settlement is to be paid to consumers hurt by the financial crisis. But the deal lets the bank deduct almost a billion of this payout from its corporate taxes – meaning you and I will subsidize Goldman’s payment. As a bank reform advocate puts it, the problem with these settlements “is that they are carefully crafted more to conceal than to reveal to the American public what really happened here.”

      Also, notice that the $5 billion punishment is applied to Goldman Sachs, not the “Goldman Sackers.” The bank’s shareholders have to cough up the penalty, rather than the executives who did the bad deeds. Goldman Sachs’ CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, just awarded himself a $23 million paycheck for his work last year. That work essentially amounted to negotiating the deal with the government that makes shareholders pay for the bankers’ wrongdoings — while he and other top executives keep their jobs and pocket millions. Remember, banks don’t commit crimes — bankers do.

      One more reason Wall Street bankers privately wink and grin at these seemingly huge punishments is that even paying the full $5 billion would only be relatively painful. To you and me, that sounds like a crushing number — but Goldman Sachs raked in $33 billion in revenue last year, so it’s a reasonable cost of doing business. After all, Goldman sold tens of billions of dollars in the fraudulent investment packages leading to the settlement, so the bottom line is that crime can actually pay — if it’s big enough.

    • TTIP’s Looking a Lot Less Likely, But We’re Still Not Safe from Toxic Trade Deals

      Could things get any worse for TTIP? On Monday the hugely damaging leak of consolidated texts confirmed exactly what everyone had feared about the deal, with all its massively pro-corporate provisions on display for everyone to see. And then the following day the French government launched one of the most high profile attacks on TTIP that’s ever been seen.

      Whether TTIP survives these body blows is debateable, but it is almost fatally wounded.

      Francois Hollande, the French president, is lagging in the polls and his threat to block TTIP could be seen as a gambit to shore up some votes. But it is a reflection of the popular mood in the country, where the media’s negative reporting on TTIP has soared in the past fortnight. Hollande said at a conference that he could not accept “the undermining of the essential principles of our agriculture, our culture, of mutual access to public markets.”

    • TTIP expected to fail after US demands revealed in unprecedented leak

      Bernd Lange, the chairman of the European Parliament’s important trade committee, has indicated that he now expects the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations will probably fail, following a major leak of confidential documents from the talks.

      Greenpeace Netherlands has released half of the entire TTIP draft text as of April 2016, prior to the start of the 13th round of TTIP negotiations between the EU and the US, which reveal US demands in detail for the first time.

      Although the EU has improved transparency recently, and routinely publishes its offers for each TTIP chapter, the US has consistently refused to do so. Even MEPs and MPs have faced extreme restrictions on what they are allowed to look at, copy, or even say when it comes to the US position. The new leak by an unknown whistleblower represents a major blow to US attempts to keep its negotiating demands confidential, and provides important information to the both the EU and US public for the first time.

    • Greenpeace Publishes Leaked TTIP Documents… Show How Backroom Deals Are Driven By Lobbyists

      We’ve written plenty of stories about the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership) agreement being worked on between the US and the EU. Think of it as the companion to the TPP, which covers the US and a variety of countries around the Pacific ocean. Like the TPP, the US has demanded extreme levels of secrecy around the negotiations (in the past, the US negotiating body, the USTR, has admitted that the more the public is aware of the details, the less likely they are to support the agreement). And while there have been reports out of the EU arguing that negotiators there are more willing to be more open about the negotiations, so far, the US has not allowed it. This has resulted in some crazy situations including secretive “reading rooms” where politicians are carefully guarded if they look at the current drafts — and where they’re not allowed to bring any device or copy anything from the documents.

    • TTIP—American Economic Imperialism

      Greenpeace has done that part of the world whose representatives are so corrupt or so stupid as to sign on to the Trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic “partnerships” a great service. Greenpeace secured and leaked the secret TTIP documents that Washington and global corporations are pushing on Europe. The official documents prove that my description of these “partnerships” when they first appeared in the news is totally correct.

      These so-called “free trade agreements” are not trade agreements. The purpose of the “partnerships,” which were drafted by global corporations, is to make corporations immune to the laws of soverign countries in which they do business. Any country’s sovereign law whether social, environmental, food safety, labor protections—any law or regulation—that impacts a corporation’s profits is labeled a “restraint on trade.” The “partnerships” permit corporations to file a suit that overturns the law or regulation and also awards the corporation damages paid by the taxpayers of the country that tried to protect its environment or the safety of its food and workers.

    • McDonald’s, the Corporate Welfare Moocher

      But the Times noted another interesting and crucial point, one that is seldom discussed: Namely, the issue of what is often called corporate welfare.

      While the conservative right is content to shame poor mothers for receiving federal assistance, rarely do they dare call, say, General Electric or Walmart “welfare queens,” despite the fact that they receive enormous direct and indirect taxpayer subsidies year after year.

      This is true for McDonald’s, as well: The Times observes, “Through it all, taxpayers continue to pick up the difference between what fast-food workers earn and what they need to survive. An estimated $1.2 billion a year in taxpayer dollars goes toward public aid to help people who work at McDonald’s.”

    • Time for an Accountable Federal Reserve

      Andrew Levin, professor at Dartmouth College and former special adviser to former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke and then-Vice Chair Janet Yellen, released a proposal for reform of the Federal Reserve Board’s governing structure in a press call sponsored by the Fed Up campaign. The proposal has a number of important features, but the main point is to make the Fed more accountable to democratically elected officials and to reduce the power of the banking industry in monetary policy.

    • Economist Paul Craig Roberts: Greece Must Leave the Eurozone to Regain Its Sovereignty

      In Greece, the Syriza-led coalition government is now set to agree to new rounds of cuts and privatizations demanded by the country’s lenders. Prior to its initial election in January 2015, Syriza had promised to abolish the country’s loan agreements and austerity policies. Now, unemployment remains at record levels, and the young and educated continue to leave the country, while recent large-scale privatizations such as the sell-off of the port of Piraeus have been pushed through.

      Paul Craig Roberts, a former undersecretary of the US Treasury and former Wall Street Journal editor, agreed to share his thoughts on the recent developments in Greece. The author of over a dozen books and numerous journal articles, Roberts regularly analyzes global economic conditions and geopolitics in his writing. In this interview, which has been lightly edited, he discusses how countries are indebted and forced to accept austerity, as well as current US economic conditions and the presidential election.

    • Is the US Economy Heading for Recession?

      Has the U.S. economy therefore come to a halt the past three months? If so, what are the consequences for a global economy already progressively slowing? What will an apparently stagnating US economy mean for Japan, already experiencing its fifth recession since 2008? For Europe, stuck in a long term chronic stagnation? And for emerging market economies, struggling with collapsing commodity prices and currencies, rising unemployment, and long term capital flight trends? Once heralded as the only bright spot in the global economy, the US economy now appears to have joined the slowing global trend.

    • What Good Are Hedge Funds?

      Hedge funds make big returns by manipulating markets in ways that are illegal for small investors. Remind us: Why are they permitted?

    • Wall Street Stock Loans Drain $1 Billion a Year From German Taxpayers

      German companies are known for paying some of the heftiest dividends among world stocks, one reason U.S. investment giants such as BlackRock and Vanguard are among the biggest holders of German shares.

      But Wall Street has figured out a way to squeeze some extra income from these stocks. And German taxpayers pay for it.

      A cache of confidential documents obtained by ProPublica and analyzed in collaboration with The Washington Post, German broadcaster ARD and the Handelsblatt newspaper in Düsseldorf details how Wall Street puts together complex stock-lending deals that drain an estimated $1 billion a year from the German treasury.

      Similar deals extend beyond Germany, siphoning revenue from at least 20 other countries across four continents, according to the documents, which show how “dividend-arbitrage” transactions — known in the trade as “div-arb” — are structured and marketed as tax-avoidance vehicles.

    • Trickle-Down Economics Has Ruined the Kansas Economy

      Republicans have long sung the praises of trickle-down economics: Just cut taxes, and the economy will flourish as companies and individuals use the windfall to boost investment and create jobs. But a grand experiment in implementing those policies at the state level has revealed a far less rosy reality—and the consequences are threatening to spark a civil war among Republicans.

    • Crying Rape: Trump’s Slurs Against China

      Describing China as “raping” the US economy embraces inaccuracy and distaste. This has not bothered him before and it is unlikely that he will lose any sleep over it. But shrugging our shoulders and rolling our eyes upward at yet another example of his crassness seems a totally inadequate response.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Twitter erupts as BBC struggle to keep Tory Election Fraud under wraps until after May elections

      Despite the furore that Channel 4’s investigation has created, there has been virtually no other coverage from the mainstream media of this deeply undemocratic scandal. And Twitter was rightly outraged at the lack of coverage.

    • Tories accused of trying to fix next election as millions disappear from electoral register

      The Tories have been accused of trying to “fix” the next election after new figures show millions of people have fallen off the electoral register.

      In some constituencies, nearly half those eligible to vote are no longer on the electoral roll, the House of Commons Library has found.

      But the Government is pushing through boundary changes as it cuts the number of MPs from 650 to 600 based on the number on the register, not those eligible to vote.

      The library figures show the majority of those who have fallen off the electoral roll are in Labour areas.

    • Conservatives alleged election overspend: the full documents

      Notts Police ask to see records of Tory by-election expenses declaration & returns following our investigation into undisclosed spending across three by-elections and a key General Election marginal.

      Evidence obtained by Channel 4 News appears to show that the Conservatives racked up tens of thousands of pounds in undisclosed spending across three by-elections in 2014.

    • BREAKING: Ted Cruz Drops Out, Handing Nomination To Trump

      Ted Cruz dropped out of the presidential race today after badly losing Indiana, a state that he staked his campaign on, to Donald Trump.

    • President Trump
    • Bernie Sanders wins Indiana primary in an upset

      Sanders continues to run strong with younger voters — 72 percent of 17 to 29 year olds support him. Clinton performs well among older voters — 60 percent of people over the age of 65.

    • Sanders upsets Clinton in Indiana
    • Sanders Upsets Clinton in Indiana

      But Tuesday’s win means Sanders is likely to keep trekking on, at least until California votes on June 7. His campaign has outpaced Clinton in donations in recent months, so he has the funds to keep things going until the end of the process. The longer he sticks around, the more leverage he might gain for extracting concessions from Clinton to include his pet policies in the party platform at this summer’s Democratic convention.

    • This CNN Exchange Demonstrates The Absurdly Low Standards For Donald Trump

      During previous primary night speeches, Donald Trump called the media “disgusting,” was flanked by fringe right-wing figures who are mostly remembered for saying ridiculous and offensive things, and broadsided Hillary Clinton with sexist attacks.

      But on Tuesday, fresh off a dominating victory in Indiana that prompted Ted Cruz to suspend his campaign and all but sealed that Trump will be the Republican nominee for president, the billionaire toned things down a bit.

      While he did make up the word “bigly” and elicited groans by saying, “I love winning with women,” for the most part Trump steered clear of controversy and attempted to portray himself as a magnanimous winner. For instance, just hours after calling Ted Cruz a “wacko” on Twitter, Trump had kind words for his defeated rival, describing him as “one hell of a competitor” who has a “beautiful family.” (In March, Trump retweeted a meme suggesting Cruz’s wife Heidi isn’t attractive.)

    • After Indiana Win Sanders Declares: ‘I Say We Keep Fighting. Are You with Me?’

      Proving that U.S. voters are still energenized to go to the polls to voice their support for “political revolution,” Bernie Sanders won the Indiana primary on Tuesday night – besting rival Hillary Clinton and notching a much-needed victory as the corporate media and political class continues to discount his chances and downplay the accomplishments of the campaign.

    • 5 Reasons Bernie Sanders Wins Big With Cruz Dropout

      Sanders was already looking strong in Oregon, West Virginia, Montana, South Dakota, Kentucky, North Dakota, and California, but given that he’s within single digits in New Jersey (where Trump is very popular) and performed incredibly well with nonwhite voters in Indiana (meaning New Mexico could be in play), it’s not unthinkable that Hillary Clinton could lose all of the remaining primaries and caucuses and therefore as many as thirteen or fourteen contests in a row to finish the Democratic primary season.

    • Bukit Batok by-election: Highlights for May 3

      “They jailed me, sued me, made me a bankrupt, but I’m still standing,” he said.

      Before ending the speech, he told the crowd he had walked with his head held high, and that he had grown stronger with every attack.

    • This isn’t public policy: the prelude to the BBC White Paper

      Debate about the BBC’s Charter Review has been dominated by leaks and rumours that ultimately play into the hands of commercial lobbyists. Where are the voices of licence-fee payers?

    • Need a Fix of Tanta-Rants? Andrea Tantaros’ 8 Stupidest Moments
    • Let’s Open Up the Democratic Party to Public Participation

      Sometime between now and the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Philadelphia, there will almost certainly be a deal between the Sanders forces and the Clinton forces. The $64,000 question is: What are the forces of progress going to get out of the deal?

      Here’s what I hope will be in the deal: a set of agreements to make the Democratic Party more democratic — in particular, to make the party more transparent and accountable to the public.

    • Help Bernie Keep His Halo

      The main victim is the Republican Party; Hillary Clinton expects a blowout victory. Her husband won against a fractured Republican Party with 43% of the votes in 1992 and 68% of the Electoral College. Ross Perot had 19,743,821 votes—18.91% and NO electoral votes. Having Bernie Sanders run as a Green Party candidate would represent a radical change. Suddenly, the Democrats would be the party in trouble.

    • Trump aide: Cameron should apologize for Trump comments

      British Prime Minister David Cameron should apologize for his description of Donald Trump as “divisive, stupid and wrong,” said an adviser to the presidential hopeful.

      The call came as the billionaire businessman all but clinched the Republican U.S. presidential nomination after Texas Sen. Ted Cruz bowed out of the race after a defeat in Indiana.

    • It’s Not About Bernie: Why We Can’t Let Our Revolution Die in Philadelphia

      Unfortunately, the pundits are right about the mathematics. Sanders would need more than 64% of remaining delegates to take the lead. It would require a political bombshell to turn things around, especially with so many closed primaries where independents are shut out of this rigged process. And even with a majority, Bernie would still face the undemocratic brick wall of the establishment’s hand-picked crew of superdelegates.

    • Hillary to Bernie Supporters: Don’t Vote for Me!

      Confident that she has the Democratic nomination pretty much locked down and turning toward a general election contest against Donald Trump, Secretary Clinton’s surrogates and paid Internet trolls are targeting Sanders devotees via email and seeding comment threads on political websites with a low-key sales pitch.

    • Bernie Sanders Wins Indiana – And The Political Debate

      Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist insurgent, won Indiana convincingly Tuesday night – 52.5 percent to 47.5 percent – over Hillary Clinton, the establishment moderate. This is a remarkable victory, a statement of the extent and scope of the Sanders surge.

    • Building the Greens Into a Mass Party: Interview with Bruce Dixon

      Bernie Sanders’ defeats in the East Coast primaries have triggered a flurry of conversation about what the 25 to 35% of Sanders supporters who’ve told pollsters they will not vote for Hillary Clinton will do instead. Socialist Alternative, led by Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant, and others have called for Sanders to found an independent left party for the 99% and run as an independent, or to appeal to Jill Stein and the Green Party to join their ticket, despite his oft repeated promise to endorse the Democrats’ nominee.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Censorship And Self-Censorship In Times Of Crisis

      Whether it’s about Syrian refugees, Syria or Iraq, the truth is sometimes better left unsaid. It all depends on the country in which it is said. One thing is certain: In these troubled times, censorship and self-censorship are thriving.

    • It was a great year for censorship

      Newsrooms attacked with grenades in Burundi, journalists getting fired over a tweet in Turkey, heavy propaganda in China, Russia, Eritrea, a blogger sentenced to prison and whipping in a public place in Saudi Arabia, and there’s even some being sent to military camps for journalists in Thailand. Scary stuff. We need more awareness like this, but we also need a way to do something about it. What this campaign has going for it is the fact it was created in France where they have the freedom. The question becomes how do you make sure people in the oppressed countries also see it. Solidarity is sometimes as important as awareness. I also think it could be a better idea if you managed to get people in the countries where press is restricted to actually see something like this.

    • Why The Growing Unpredictability Of China’s Censorship Is A Feature, Not A Bug

      China’s vaguely-defined web content rules and inconsistent censorship enforcement work the same way as the fog near a cliff: since people can’t see exactly where the edge is, they’re more likely to stay far away from it, just in case. There’s no toeing the line, because nobody knows exactly where the line is. So instead of pushing the envelope, many people choose to censor themselves.

      In order to ensure that margin of safety, people will tend to censor themselves more than is necessary according to the stated rules. If the line in the sand were well defined, they could step right up to it, fairly secure that they will be safe provided they don’t cross. In effect, by introducing an unnerving element of uncertainty into its actions, China obtains a more stringent self-censorship on the part of its citizens than it would from formally applying well-defined rules through official channels.

    • Malinauskas: Censoring profanity is ineffective at purifying content

      Self-censorship is the most effective route to protecting youthful innocence. Content makers are aware of their audiences; they should have the decency to keep content clean if it is likely to be seen or heard by children. However, content dealing with mature subject matter shouldn’t be cleansed of curse words while still retaining information on adult subjects. It’s a half-measure which ultimately is ineffective.

    • Artist/Internet Troll BeigeType Talks Disgust, Cyberbullying And Censorship

      Artist/self-proclaimed troll Karim Boumjimar is the creative force behind the BeigeType Instagram, a bizarrely beautiful collection of off-kilter, visceral visuals and digitally-altered nudes that take the practice of self-portraiture to a whole new level. Exploring the union between the mind and the body through the use of materials as disparate as blood oranges to used cigarette butts, we were instantly enamored with his eccentric, polarizing approach to depictions of the body on such a public platform. As such, we spoke to Boumjimar himself about everything from Internet narcissism to Instagram censorship, and, of course, how hater drama makes everything a little more interesting.

    • ERR: Trolls, hate speech and crowd censorship seminar takes place in Tallinn

      Themes of the seminar included the impact of aggressive online discussion on press freedom, the impact of internet “trolling” on targeted journalists, and the spread of crowd censorship and the potential threat it poses to freedom of speech and democracy.

      Jessikka Aro discussed how her investigation into the phenomenon of pro-Russian online trolling quickly found her a target of online attacks and abuse herself, including international harassment, smear campaigns, and dissemination of her personal information.

    • There’s No Room for Censorship in a Democracy
    • Censors should not be allowed to cut scenes in films: Shyam Benegal
    • Benegal panel’s suggestion to allow CBFC to take last call on films on state security leaves scope for misuse: Filmmakers

  • Privacy/Surveillance

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • When Traffic Cops Become Part of Immigration Enforcement, Civil Rights Violations Are Almost Inevitable

      Whether they like it or not, state and local police do not have the authority to enforce immigration law. And that’s a good thing, because when cops try to act like Border Patrol agents, civil rights violations are almost inevitable. An ever expanding number of lawsuits across the country bear that out.

      This issue gained national notoriety in 2007 in Maricopa County, Arizona, where Sheriff Joe Arpaio instructed police officers to conduct immigration checks during traffic stops, specifically targeting Latinos. The ACLU sued, and Arpaio’s department was found liable for widespread rights violations.

    • Forced Arbitration Is a Bad Deal

      What are you really agreeing to when you select “I agree” on a click-through contract? Whether you know it or not, you’re often agreeing to waive a host of fundamental rights. Want to buy a new mobile device? Click on an agreement that says you won’t modify the software on it. Going to the dentist? Sign a contract waiving your right to leave negative reviews online.

      While these contracts are unfair to customers in virtually any context, they’re particularly appalling when we’re talking about basic needs like Internet access. You shouldn’t have to waive your rights just to get online, but virtually every telecommunications provider includes a clause in its customer agreement forbidding you from exercising one of the most basic constitutional rights: the right to take them to court.

    • Why Activists Today Should Still Care About the 40-Year-Old Church Committee Report

      The Church Committee Report reveals the lengths the government was willing to go in order to crush grassroots activism and spy on American citizens.

    • Writing as an Act of Generosity

      Every now and then, I teach a class to young would-be journalists and one of the first things I talk about is why I consider writing an act of generosity. As they are usually just beginning to stretch their writerly wings, their task, as I see it, is to enter the world we’re already in (it’s generally the only place they can afford to go) and somehow decode it for us, make us see it in a new way. And who can deny that doing so is indeed an act of generosity? But for the foreign correspondent, especially in war zones, the generosity lies in the very act of entering a world filled with dangers, a world that the rest of us might not be capable of entering, or for that matter brave enough to enter, and somehow bringing us along with them.

    • Telling the Truth Is Not A Crime
    • Hunger Strikers at Mission Police Station: “Stop the execution of our people”

      Five hunger strikers – angered by new police murders of Black and brown people – have been occupying half the sidewalk in front of Mission Police Station since April 21. It’s Day 11 of their liquid-only fast and they’re losing weight, but they vow to keep it up until SF Police Chief Greg Suhr resigns or is fired.

    • Racists Flip Out About Malia Obama and Interracial Couple—Internet Responds Spectacularly

      The internet has always been a place where racists can go to register their hatred while bravely hiding behind a cloak of digital anonymity. That’s been extra true over the last 48 hours, as racist trolls—self-loathing sacks of shit who live in perpetual fear of their own inferiority—have logged on to share their reactions to news and images involving black people. Unsurprisingly, Fox News is involved.

    • Brickbat: Cool, Clear Water

      The city council of San Antonio on the island of Ibiza has banned all drinking on the street. Council members say the move is aimed at deterring people from drinking alcohol and causing problems. But the ban applies to all liquids, since authorities say police can’t just look at a glass and tell what’s in it.

    • Boycott Is the Only Way to Stop the Israeli Occupation

      Aluf Benn’s proposal for Israel’s left to establish a base of domestic support for its positions is hopeless considering the brainwashing and increasing extremism of our society.

    • The Cruel and Pointless Push to Get Preschoolers ‘College and Career Ready’

      In case you missed it, April 21 was officially Kindergarten Day. This obscure holiday honors the birth of Friedrich Frobel, who started the first Children’s Garden in Germany in 1837. Of course, life has changed tremendously in the 179 years since Frobel created his play-based, socialization program to transition young children from home to school — and so, too, has school itself. But what hasn’t changed in all this time, not one iota, is the developmental trajectory of the preschoolers Frobel was thinking about when he created what we now call kindergarten.

      Frobel, a German teacher, strongly believed that children learn through play and by using open-ended materials like blocks, which he called “gifts.” His approach was a radical departure from the way children were viewed and taught at the time. Prior to Frobel, children were thought of as mini-adults who were educated through lectures and rote recitation. How ironic that today kindergarteners, and even preschoolers, are once again being subjected to these inappropriate methods of instruction. This despite all we have learned about child development in the 20th and 21st centuries.

    • Remembering Nonviolent History: Freedom Rides

      The Freedom Riders drew inspiration from the Journey of Reconciliation in 1947, led by Bayard Rustin and George Houser. The Freedom Rides campaigns followed on the heels of the highly visible lunch counter sit-in campaigns that began in 1960. Diane Nash, a veteran of the Nashville, Tennessee, campaign, was one of the lead organizers of the Freedom Rides, and it was at her urging that the demonstrators persevered through the extreme violence, carrying on to success despite life-threatening situations.

    • Suspect Held in Solitary for Seven Months for Forgetting Hard Drive Passwords

      Innocent until proven guilty? Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination? Hah! Not if you forget your passwords, in Post-Constitutional America.

      Former Philadelphia Police Sergeant Francis Rawls, above, has spent the past seven months in solitary confinement without conviction because passwords he entered for investigators failed to decrypt his hard drives, seized in connection with a child porn investigation. Rawls says he’s forgotten the correct passwords and so can’t decrypt the drives and provide the cops with evidence that he possessed child porn.

    • Angela Davis and asha bandele: Getting People out of Prison Is Just the Start to Solving America’s Incarceration Crisis

      The United States is locking up and dehumanizing its people at extraordinary rates. Just over 4 percent of the world’s population lives in the U.S., yet we hold captive within our borders a whopping 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. This gives the U.S. the largest prisoner population in the world. And that population is growing, though not for any noble reason, like “crime is on the rise” (au contraire). It’s growing because of the same sleaze that’s behind most of our country’s problems: giant corporations are incentivizing, and profiting from the expansion of the prisons industry.

    • Louisiana May Stop Funneling Teenagers Into Adult Prisons

      In 2007, after white students hung nooses on a tree the day after a black student sat beneath it, racial tensions boiled over at Jena High School in Louisiana. Soon after the incident, a white student was beaten by a group of black students dubbed the Jena 6 — all of whom were arrested and charged with attempted murder instead of assault.

      Theodore Shaw was one of the Jena 6, but he always maintained his innocence. As a 17-year-old at the time, he was locked up with adult criminals for seven months because his family couldn’t afford his bail. And throughout the duration of his incarceration, he fought hard to convince himself that he wasn’t a criminal.

    • Who’s behind unpaid prison labor in Texas?

      Several of the officials charged with regulating Texas’s prison labor program, wherein thousands of workers behind bars are compelled to produce goods and provide services for free, are connected to some of the richest and most powerful institutions and people in the state.

      The Texas Board of Criminal Justice, which oversees Texas Correctional Industries (TCI), the prison industry division within the state’s Department of Criminal Justice, has authority over how much compensation inmates working for the state receive for their labor. Currently, inmates working for TCI are not paid for the work done while serving their time; the only inmates who are paid anything are the small fraction who are employed by TCI’s private sector prison industries program.

    • Catching a Flight? Budget Hours, Not Minutes, for Security

      Security lines at airports are getting longer — much longer — and wait times could reach epidemic levels when air travel peaks this summer, according to airlines, airports and federal officials.

      A combination of fewer Transportation Security Administration screeners, tighter budgets, new checkpoint procedures and growing numbers of passengers is already creating a mess at airports around the country.

      While federal security officials say they are hiring and training hundreds of additional screening officers, matters are not expected to improve anytime soon.

      Airline and airport officials have said they fear that the current slowdown will last through the year, and could cause a summer travel meltdown when more than 220 million passengers are expected to fly during the peak travel months of July and August.

      “This is going to be a rough summer; there is no doubt about it,” said Gary Rasicot, who was recently appointed to a newly created position as the T.S.A.’s chief of operations. “We are probably not at the staffing level we would like to be to address the volume. This is why we are talking about people getting to the airport a little earlier than planned.”

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Web accessibility to be law in Europe—deal struck after lengthy talks

      A political deal to make public sector websites more accessible—particularly to those with disabilities—was agreed by the three European Union institutions on Tuesday.

      In a late night deal, the parliament, council, and commission backed Europe-wide rules to make public bodies’ websites and mobile apps more user-friendly for the blind, the deaf, and the hard of hearing.

      At present, around 80 million people in the EU are affected by a disability, according to the commission. But that figure is expected to rise to 120 million by 2020 due to an ageing population.

      The Internet has become an essential method of communication, so the deal aims to make sure that citizens of all capabilities can access public administrations, including courts, police departments, public hospitals, universities, schools, and libraries.

    • Congress Has No Idea How The FCC’s Cable Box Reform Plan Works, Conyers, Goodlatte Compare Effort To ‘Popcorn Time’

      As we’ve been discussing, the FCC is cooking up a plan to bring much-needed competition to the cable set top box market. As a fact sheet being circulated by the agency (pdf) notes, the FCC hopes to force cable operators to offer their existing cable lineups to third party hardware — without the need of a pesky CableCARD. This would obviously disrupt the $21 billion in annual, captive set top rental fees enjoyed by the industry, and the competitive set top box market that emerges would likely drive more users than ever to alternative streaming options.

      As such, the cable industry has been having a monumental hissy fit. This has ranged from threatening lawsuits to publishing an absolute ocean of misleading editorials in news outets nationwide, claiming the FCC’s plan would destroy consumer privacy, increase piracy, hurt programming diversity, and make little children cry.

  • DRM

    • Yes, All DRM

      Everybody knows that the digital locks of DRM on the digital media you own is a big problem. If you’ve bought a digital book, album, or movie, you should be able to do what you want with it—whether that’s enjoying it wherever you want to, or making it more accessible by changing the font size or adding subtitles, or loaning or giving it to a friend when you’re done. We intuitively recognize that digital media should be more flexible than its analog forebears, not less, and that DRM shouldn’t take away rights that copyright was never intended to restrict.

      But while it may not be as intuitive yet, DRM on digital media that you don’t own is also a major threat. Whether it’s books from the public library, streaming songs from Spotify, or TV shows from Netflix, wrapping media in DRM software—especially when it brings with it a cloud of legal uncertainty—is not just a bad way to enforce license contracts; it’s also a danger to our rights and our security.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • The Recent Federal Circuit Decision in Acorda Therapeutics v. Mylan Pharmaceuticals May Not be the Last Word on Personal Jurisdiction in ANDA Cases

      Mylan filed two separate ANDAs with the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (“FDA”) seeking permission to market generic versions of unrelated pharmaceutical products marketed by Acorda Therapeutics, Inc. and AstraZeneca AB under the statutory scheme outlined in the Hatch-Waxman Act (the “Act”). As permitted under the Act, Mylan certified that the patents of the brand name drug companies listed in the FDA’s Approved Drug Products with Therapeutic Equivalence Evaluations (“the Orange Book”) were either invalid or would not be infringed by Mylan’s marketing of its proposed generic versions of the drugs. Each certification is deemed an artificial act of infringement under the Act, and permits the brand name drug companies to sue the generic drug company. Acorda and AstraZeneca sued Mylan for patent infringement in separate lawsuits filed in Delaware. Mylan moved to dismiss in both cases, arguing that it was not subject to either general or specific personal jurisdiction.[4]

      [...]

      Regardless of the Federal Circuit’s final ruling, the losing party may very well file a petition for certiorari with the Supreme Court seeking review of the Federal Circuit’s decision. That Acorda and Mylan were represented at the Federal Circuit by former Solicitor Generals (Theodore Olson for Acorda and Paul Clement for Mylan), while AstraZeneca was represented by another Supreme Court veteran (Kannon Shanmugam), shows that each party considers this case to be important and that they are likely preparing to ask the Supreme Court to consider the matter. So the panel decision in Acorda appears to be merely the beginning of the appellate proceedings. Given these expected actions it will be interesting to see if the brand name drug companies continue to file suits in both the brand name drug company’s preferred jurisdiction as well as where the generic drug company is incorporated or has its principal place of business until all the Acorda appellate proceedings are concluded.

    • Citing “Toxic” Environment, US Congress Members Urge Secretary Kerry To Get UN Report On Gurry

      WIPO Director General Francis Gurry was investigated after charges were levelled by a deputy director that he wrongfully ordered DNA samples to be taken from several unknowing staff members, and that he improperly influenced a WIPO contract to steer it toward a particular businessman. The congressional members said Gurry is “engaging in a lobbying effort to prevent disclosure of the report or to have the report heavily redacted.” Redacted means sections are blacked out.

    • Trademarks

      • Appeals Court Says Trademark Bully/HIV Denialist Must Pay Defendant’s Legal Fees

        Almost three years ago, a team of pro bono attorneys (D. Gill Sperlein, Paul Alan Levy, Gary Krupkin and Neal Hoffman) took up the defense of Jeffrey DeShong, an HIV-positive blogger who had been served a bogus trademark infringement lawsuit by Clark Baker, a retired LAPD officer who spends his free time defending people who have hidden their HIV-positive status from sexual partners.

        Baker had no legal basis for his claims, but was obviously hoping airy claims of Lanham Act violations based on URL similarities would be all that was needed to shut up a vocal critic. He was wrong. The lawsuit was tossed in the pleading stages by the district court and that decision was upheld by the Fifth Circuit Court.

    • Copyrights

      • Pirate Bay Founder Aims to Disrupt Online Advertising Industry

        After disrupting the entertainment industry with The Pirate Bay, Peter Sunde now hopes to do the same with the advertisement business. Today, Sunde’s micropayment service Flattr teamed up with Adblock Plus, offering publishers a way to get paid without having to show annoying ads.

      • French National Assembly Votes (Sorta) To Finally Kill Its Three Strikes Hadopi Program

        Remember Hadopi? Back when the legacy copyright players were totally focused on kicking individuals off the internet via a “three strikes” program, France and its former President Nicolas Sarkozy, married to a musician, was the first to embrace the idea of kicking casual file sharers off the internet (we’ll leave aside the fact that Sarkozy was a mass infringer himslef). The program that was built up around the plan was eventually called Hadopi, and created a big bureaucracy to send out threat notices. The program turned out to be a complete disaster. It issued many notices, but really had to massage the numbers to make its activities look reasonable. Even when people did lose their internet access, there were problems. A detailed academic study of Hadopi found that it was a miserable failure that actually resulted in an increase in infringement.

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/05/04/imagemagick-bug-fixes/feed/ 0 New Paper About the UPC Explains Why It is Bad for Small- and Medium-sized European Businesses http://techrights.org/2016/05/03/upc-analysis-false-promise/ http://techrights.org/2016/05/03/upc-analysis-false-promise/#comments Tue, 03 May 2016 10:19:20 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=92338 Dr. Ingve Björn Stjerna’s latest paper

Ingve paper

Summary: A detailed academic analysis of the Unitary (or Unified) Patent Court reveals/concludes/asserts that it is being marketed or promoted using a misleading premise and promise

“Unitary patent” and court system – A poisoned gift for SMEs is the title of a new paper from Dr. Ingve Björn Stjerna, whom we mentioned here before because he closely studied the UPC for a long time (even before it was known as “UPC”). Based on the paper’s PDF (permission granted for us to host a copy), there is a big gap between truth/reality and promotional claims (advertising). The SMEs are often being exploited by proponents of the UPC, who sort of ‘hijack’ the voice and SMEs and claim to speak on their behalf when they say that the UPC would better serve SMEs, not large corporations that often come from outside Europe.

Dr. Ingve Björn StjernaAs the paper states in relation to Europe, “SME are by far the largest employers, their problems are always the problems of their employees and thus of a large number of European citizens. For this reason alone, this matter deserves a broad discussion in the national Parliaments of the affected EU member states. Of the 25 member states having signed the UPCA, so far nine have ratified – of 13 necessary for its entry into force –, 16 ratifications are still open. Insofar, any interested citizen should bring the matter to the attention of the MEP competent for his/her constituency and demand that, prior to its ratification, a broad Parliamentary discussion on pros and cons of the “patent package” should be held. If it is to enter into force in the present form, especially SMEs will have to live with it, this will usually not be to their advantage.”

We already wrote several posts here on why the UPC has nothing to offer to European SMEs and should thus be rejected. There are no pros that we can see, only cons. It’s a con. When patent lawyers and their media assert that UPC would serve SMEs one needs to stop and wonder what kind of clients they have (maybe potential patent trolls or their victims).

To quote the abstract of the paper:

On 16 February 2016, the German Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection presented two pieces of draft legislation for the ratification of the international Agreement on the Unified Patent Court. After the fees for the “unitary patent” have been fixed and a proposal for the court fees and the limits of reimbursable representation costs at the Unified Patent Court has been provided, the political promise that the new system would support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can be judged against the realities. It does not come as a surprise that it is not being fulfilled. Most recently, even the European Commission declared that cost risk would be so significant that SMEs required an insurance to cover it, while admitting at the same time that currently no such insurance is available. An overview on desire and reality as to the costs of the “unitary patent” and the Unified Patent Court.

In the face of EPO lobbying for the UPC (even a month ago in the UK) it is important for European citizens to speak out and to help stop the UPC, which is an unprecedented injustice much like TTIP and TPP. It’s not at all for the interests of European; au contraire. █

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/05/03/upc-analysis-false-promise/feed/ 0 Benoît Battistelli Once Again Threatens EPO Staff That ‘Dares’ to Protest, Battistelli Exploits Terror Attacks to Pretend to Respect Free Speech http://techrights.org/2015/02/20/benoit-battistelli-terrorises-staff/ http://techrights.org/2015/02/20/benoit-battistelli-terrorises-staff/#comments Sat, 21 Feb 2015 01:43:38 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=81794 Terrorising his own staff

Benoit Battistelli

Summary: The European Patent Office (EPO) President, Benoît Battistelli, reportedly started threatening — as before — staff that decides to exercise the right to assemble and protest against abuses, including the abuses of President Battistelli himself

AS just about everyone in the EPO ought know by now, the British Consulate is about to find itself besieged by EPO staff (potentially thousands of staff) who will be there to protest an attack by non-scientists on the great scientists who work as examiners for the most part [1, 2]. These people are highly skilled (many have doctorate degrees and a long track record in their field), so they shouldn’t be taken for fools or radicals. Au contraire — these people can very easily recognise tyranny and injustice. They are eager to react to that even at personal cost or high risk. Greed does not motivate them to the degree that it motivates empty suits like Battistelli, who now surrounds himself in a crowd of bodyguards and other 'protection'/thugs (this so-called ‘security’ is costing taxpayers a lot of money and speaks volumes about paranoia or megalomania). Battistelli acts like a politician, not a manager. He leads by wielding fear and censorship, not charisma. It’s no wonder given his right-hand man. No wonder top staff is leaving over time. It is a long charade of embarrassments that only gets worse as time goes by, whilst managers get labeled “Putin” because they show arrogance and run a witch-hunt against staff, not vice versa.

“It is a long charade of embarrassments that only gets worse as time goes by, whilst managers get labeled “Putin” because they show arrogance and run a witch-hunt against staff, not vice versa.”According to some of these latest comments, Battistelli “had just issued a letter/threat to staff, directed at SUEPO Munich committee, that if there is a march to the British consulate next week, the organisers will be disciplined. So much for free speech. Is this his response to the Dutch court?”

This is a reference to the Dutch court's decision that we covered a couple of days ago. Quote from the message: “Those who take an active role in its organisation must know they ate infringing the standards of conduct expected from international civil servants. Should the planned demo actually take place, this would constitute a breach of the applicable legal framework and those concerned will be held liable for the beach of their obligations under the EPC and the Service Regulations.”

Actually, the rights of workers include the right to protest. In the face of tyranny, as in this case, protest is very much necessary. The rules imposed by Battistelli are seen as illegitimate at this stage. They’re designed to sustain his power, nothing else. It’s essential to demonstrate for justice and democracy — of which Battistelli is a sworn opponents, based on both actions and vain words.

“Well,” said one anonymous person, “I had been pondering whether or not to participate in the demonstration on 25 February, midday. BB [Benoît Battistelli] has just made up my mind for me: I’ll definitely be there to exercise my democratic rights (even in the unlikely event that I should be the only one there!)”

Another quote-worthy comment: “BB announces that any employee involved in organising a demonstration outside the UK Consulate in Munich will be “disciplined”. Do I see it right, that it is the act of organising that requires discipline (rather than the act of demonstrating)?

“I recall another regime that began its reign of discipline by going after union organisers. I wonder, how long is the AC going to continue to sit on its hands.”

Benoît Battistelli is digging himself deeper in the thin ice, to reuse a metaphor which was used the other day.

Battistelli has become a horrible pretender because only days ago, following the protest against an outpost of Denmark in Munich (targeting the AC, headed by Battistelli's mate) [1, 2, 3, 4], Battistelli published this in the EPO Web site:

Last week-end was marked by yet another tragic event in Europe as Denmark has been the victim of terrorist attacks in the centre of Copenhagen.

I am joined by the staff of the European Patent Office in expressing full solidarity with the Danish people. Europe is based on values among which freedom of expression and liberty are the most essential.

We must not be afraid, assume our responsibilities and stay united to reject these attempts against the basis of our plural society.

Benoît Battistelli

Well, what an unbelievable hypocrite, attacking free speech while claiming to defend it and squeezing terror attacks for his own spin.

“If 1000 staff members show up for that demonstration,” writes one person, “it will be very difficult to apply diciplinary [sic] actions. This situation is not sustainable, Examiners get on the baricades [sic] and walk for a more democratic organisation.”

Another person writes: “There must be a huge turnout at the GB consulate. As many staff, and Munich based attorneys, as possible. Strength in numbers. Enough with this authoritarian rubbish.”

Finally, said another person several hours ago: “I don’t live in Munich but this attempt to stop a fully democratic demonstration is so mind-bogglingly unacceptable that I think I shall take the day off and travel to Munich to be at the demo. Time for a strong signal, methinks.”

The more people attend to protest, the more trouble the tyrant will be in, not the staff. It’s collective strength. █

“Staff at the European Patent Office went on strike accusing the organization of corruption: specifically, stretching the standards for patents in order to make more money.

“One of the ways that the EPO has done this is by issuing software patents in defiance of the treaty that set it up.”

–Richard Stallman amid 2008 EPO protests

]]> http://techrights.org/2015/02/20/benoit-battistelli-terrorises-staff/feed/ 0 Copyright and Patent Laws Have Nothing in Common, Developers Should Stick With Copyrights Alone http://techrights.org/2013/06/04/code-is-not-a-machine/ http://techrights.org/2013/06/04/code-is-not-a-machine/#comments Tue, 04 Jun 2013 13:02:28 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=69195 Code is not a machine

Sewing machine

Summary: Input from one of our Australian readers motivates writing a simple essay on why software patents are unnecessary

Our reader from Australia wrote to say: “Remember my attempt in Feb to get Software Patents abolished? Well, it’s at the final stage. I need some supporting material, that is less than 300 words. Is that something you can help me with? If you can write about why software patents should be abolished, that would be great.”

There was a similar request in Groklaw some days ago, as Reddit invited people to submit text for reading by a movie celebrity (with the same length limitation) and Pamela Jones suggested writing about software patents.

Essays about why software patents are bad would not be unique. They have been written for years in many sites (the facts have hardly changed for decades) and they use technical, economic and philosophical arguments (or a combination of these). I will do this today in Techrights using the angle of a developer, not a customer — a person to whom patents in general are of no value. It is written in terms that even politicians (usually lawyers) can grasp.

Software Developers Need No Patents

When a developer writes software, he or she uses a computer (or even a piece of paper) to outline instructions to be run in sequence, a bit like solving an equation. These instructions are reducible to pure mathematics, but computers nowadays offer high-level abstractions, which make development more rapid and render instructions readable by a compiler rather than a computer processor. This technology is many decades old.

A lot of programs these days are built by providing a user-facing layer, a GUI, which reuses off-the-shelf graphical toolkits, as well as a back-end logical unit, typically accessible through callback functions. This is where the clever bits of a program usually exist. There is rarely something very innovative or novel in the GUI, which is less science-based in nature.

Assuming that something unprecedented (i.e. no prior art) can be found in callback functions, it is covered by default by copyright law, enabling the programmer to tackle plagiarism. When the program is compiled, plagiarism is impeded anyway. The code turns into binary data. This means that copying of programs is hard and where it occurs there are already laws in place to tackle that, at no cost to the developer.

Patents are an unnecessary complication at two levels; first, the developer needs to waste time filing a verbal description of the program’s instructions (distracting from further development of potentially innovative programs) and then pay someone for the infeasible task of identifying prior art; secondly, and quite inadvertently, by introducing this level of protectionism into the system, we render any programmer “potentially infringing”, which further impedes development and contributes to uncertainty. Both aspects reduce innovation and productivity. In an age when writing programs is possible by everyone, this creates no incentive to write more programs; au contraire.

Programmers need copyrights, not patents. That is their consensus. For anyone other than programmers to weigh in on this subject would be rather inappropriate and usually opportunistic. █

]]> http://techrights.org/2013/06/04/code-is-not-a-machine/feed/ 0 Links 13/5/2012: Xfce 4.10, KDE 4.8.3, GNOME 3.5.1, GIMP 2.8 http://techrights.org/2012/05/13/gnome-3-5-1-gimp-2-8/ http://techrights.org/2012/05/13/gnome-3-5-1-gimp-2-8/#comments Sun, 13 May 2012 16:28:12 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=60222

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Nagios Vs. Icinga: the real story of one of the most heated forks in free software

    In March 14, 1999 Ethan Galstad released the first version of Nagios. Then, nearly exactly 10 years later (May 2009), Icinga (a fork of Nagios) was born. What happened there? Why a fork? In this article, I will shed some light about what made the Icinga developers decide to fork (although they still send patches to Nagios). In this article, I will talk to both Ethan Galstad himself, and Michael Lübben (one of the founding Icinga team members and Nagios addon developer). I will quote Michael and Ethan in the article. You get to read their points of view here.

  • Guidelines for Starting Your Very Own Open Source Project
  • Forrester: Hire software developers who take part in open source projects

    Analyst firm Forrester has encouraged businesses to recruit software developers who take part in open source projects, as it shows they are keeping their skills current.

  • Open source has become mainstream but still drives innovation

    At that time, most open source vendors were trying to replicate what proprietary vendors were doing, or what they had failed to do. The value proposition was simple: vendors would say they were like X, but more open, more extensible, and less expensive. Take a few of the successes of the late 2000s and who they were compared to: MySQL (Oracle), JBoss (WebSphere), Jaspersoft (BusinessObjects), Talend (Informatica), SugarCRM (Siebel).

    By and large, these vendors were successful. The first “billion dollar baby” of open source was MySQL, when Sun bought the company for $1 billion. At that time, Techcrunch headline was: “Sun Picks Up MySQL For $1 Billion; Open Source Is A Legitimate Business Model.” And indeed, 2008 marked a turning point for open source: more and more enterprise deployments; acquisitions, like in the “real” corporate world; more and more funding. The 451 Group tracks the history of VC funding in open source – the graph in this post shows that investment in 2008 was at an all-time high, which would only be matched again in 2011.

  • Inktank launches to change the face of open-source storage

    The lead developers behind open-source storage system Ceph have launched a company, called Inktank, to commercialize the software. The company describes Ceph as a “fully open source, distributed object store, network block device, and POSIX-compatible distributed file system designed for reliability, performance, and scalability.” It’s uniqueness comes in part because Ceph does all these things within a unified platform.

  • Open source enables high-volume searches

    Twitter, Facebook, the Library of Congress — all of these institutions have mind-numbing amounts of structured and unstructured data that must be indexed and searched quickly. In Twitter’s case, that’s about 300 million new pieces of information to index every day.

  • Open Source: Homeschool Computing

    Many parents in recent years have chosen to homeschool their children. The reasons for this vary, but most include some measure of the understanding that to truly pass on one’s values to one’s children one needs to be the primary source of information for that child. To place one’s child in a school, public or private, is to give up at least part of one’s responsibility to and for that child. There is usually also a desire to have more control over what that immature mind is experiencing as it grows. Some life events should be shielded from a growing mind until that mind is mature enough to handle such events in the context of the desired values imparted by the parents.

  • GNU Octave for the Life Scientist: An Interview with biochemist and author Heino Prinz

    I have studied Physics in Bonn, did my PhD in Biochemistry at a Max-Planck Institute in Göttingen and got my habilitation (In Germany and Austria you need such a licence to teach) at Innsbruck University in the Pharmacology department. I worked most of the time at the Max-Planck-Institute for molecular physiology in Dortmund. It always was somewhat strange, being a physicist working in biochemistry, chemistry and pharmacology. For a physicist, an equation or a reaction scheme is easy, because it is logical and precise. For a chemist, reaction schemes often seem to be incomprehensible and equations may lead to immediate paralysis when used in lectures. In contrast, chemists can perform complex chemical reactions which are admired (not really conceived) by physicists. I have spent most of my scientific life trying to help life scientists to bridge that gap.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • CMS

    • Why Big Sites Run Drupal

      For the Georgia Technology Authority (GTA), the decision to dump its aging content management system (CMS) was easy. Running 65 state government websites on two different versions of proprietary software — Vignette 6 and 7, one of which is no longer supported — had become cumbersome and costly. And moving all sites to Vignette 8 was too much of a “force fit,” said state CTO Steve Nichols.

    • WordPress is suddenly big business

      All Things Digital reported last week week that the company behind WordPress could generate almost $50 million in revenue this year.

      If you blog at all, you know WordPress is a big deal, but fewer people are aware that there is a company behind the platform called Automattic. The public face of Automattic and WordPress is Matt Mullenweg.

      Recently we published a story that WordPress was the platform of choice on 48 of the world’s top 100 blogs. According to Mullenweg’s “about” page on the Automattic site, it accounts for 15 percent of the world’s websites.

  • Business

    • Open Source Ceph Storage Filesystem Goes Commercial

      When open source software gets used in production grade environments, commercial support businesses tend to show up. That’s exactly what is now happening with the open source Ceph distributed storage filesystem.

      Ceph is now backed by Inktank, a commercial venture led by Sage Weil, founder of Ceph. The company had originally incorporated under the name Ceph Inc, but it decided to take a different route to help preserve the integrity of the open source project.

    • Open Source Business: How to Support A Family of 5 By Running An Open Source Project

      Lately, I’ve been recording music in my spare time. Since I try to use as much Free and Open Source software as possible, I found the free digital audio workstation Ardour. When I went to download the software, I was asked for a donation before I could download it. Intriguing!

    • Semi-Open Source

      • Survey data: nginx poised to become number 2 web server

        If current trends hold, then sometime late this summer, Microsoft’s Internet Information Services will fall to the number three web server position in global domains, behind two open source web server platforms: Apache and nginx.

      • Pentaho 4.5 Visualizes Big Data Analytics
      • Oh Certified Asterisk, Where Do You Come From?

        A couple of days ago, Malcolm Davenport posted here about Certified Asterisk, a new series of Open Source Asterisk releases being produced by Digium. Since that post went out, there’s been some discussion (almost confusion) in the Asterisk community about exactly where the Certified Asterisk releases are coming from, and what they contain. In order to try to help describe how this whole process works, I’ve created this page on the Asterisk Wiki which includes a diagram showing how all the current development and releases branches relate to each other, where tags (and releases) are made, and most importantly, how the Certified Asterisk branches are produced.

      • IBM ditches Siebel for SugarCRM

        Technology giant IBM is replacing CRM vendor Siebel and replacing its CRM systems with cloud-based SaaS provider SugarCRM.

        According to reports in the Wall Street Journal, SugarCRM is set to snap up the contract to manage sales, marketing and customer relationships for Big Blue. The contract sees Oracle-owned 67,000 Siebel seats swapped out for the open-source vendor.

  • Funding

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government

  • Openness/Sharing

    • MIT and Harvard Team Up on Open Source-Driven Online Education

      The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University have teamed up to deliver online learning to millions of people around the world, through their new edX initiative. “Through this partnership, the institutions aim to extend their collective reach to build a global community of online learners and to improve education for everyone,” the edX site reports. (If you’re familiar with MITx, it is now a part of edX.)

  • Programming

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Support for ODF from the Hungarian government

      The Hungarian government has committed to invest just over a million pounds (370 million HUF) in the development of applications that use the open document format (ODF), according to a report on the European Union’s Joinup web site. Two organisations will benefit from the funding: the Department of Software Engineering at the University of Szeged and the open source development company, Multiráció. In December of last year, the Hungarian government announced that from April 2012 all official documents would need to be prepared in internationally recognised open-standards-based formats.

    • The conflict between video on the web and open standards

      Few web video standards are truly open or free, and the major players have no interest in pushing them, says Richard Hillesley…

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • America’s Mad Cow Crisis

      Americans might remember that when the first mad cow was confirmed in the United States in December, 2003, it was major news. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had been petitioned for years by lawyers from farm and consumer groups I worked with to stop the cannibal feeding practices that transmit this horrible, always fatal, human and animal dementia. When the first cow was found in Washington state, the government said it would stop such feeding, and the media went away. But once the cameras were off and the reporters were gone nothing substantial changed.

    • Syngenta Celebrates Earth Day by Ladling on the Pesticides

      Herbicide manufacturer Syngenta had an interesting way of celebrating Earth Day this year, touting the joys of pesticides.

    • Syngenta Hired Guns Attack New Documentary

      As a new film highlights water contamination throughout the U.S. Midwest from Syngenta’s flagship herbicide atrazine, the world’s largest pesticide company has mounted a PR counter-attack downplaying the human and environmental health risks of a chemical linked to birth defects, low birth weight and certain cancers. Atrazine was banned in the EU in 2003, leaving the U.S. market as one of Syngenta’s most profitable and vigorously guarded markets.

  • Security

    • Buyer’s Guide to Full Disk Encryption

      When a corporate laptop goes missing, do you worry about the risk of a data breach? There is good reason for concern: According to recent research by Symantec, 34 percent of data breaches are the result of lost or stolen devices such as laptops.

      The good news is that this is a preventable issue. A Full Disk Encryption (FDE) solution can ensure that sensitive information isn’t exposed in the event that one of your organization’s laptops is lost or stolen.

    • PHP patch quick but inadequate

      The updates to PHP versions 5.3.12 and 5.4.2 released on Thursday do not fully resolve the vulnerability that was accidentally disclosed on Reddit, according to the discoverer of the flaw. The bug in the way CGI and PHP interact with each other leads to a situation where attackers can execute code on affected servers. The issue remained undiscovered for eight years.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • ‘Cornucopians in Space’ Deliver a Dangerously Misguided Message

      In some sense, TED is the techno-innovators’ version of the faith expressed by neo-liberal economics, in which the market solves nearly all of its own problems. The enduring posture at TED, therefore, is one that acknowledges serious world problems, ranging from war to famine, water and food availability, but which nearly always concludes that amazing and ingenious people – geniuses – are working to solve the problem. The Great Man theory of history would find each TED conference a comfortable place to be.

  • Finance

    • The Inflation’s In The Poverty
    • American Houses and the Oil Denominator
    • The Washington Post Continues Its Love Affair With NAFTA and Disdain for Facts

      The Washington Post was a strong supporter of NAFTA at the time the deal was approved. It continues to be a strong defender of the pact nearly two decades later. It has repeatedly shown itself willing to make up facts or just ignore them to push its pro-NAFTA line.

    • Weaker US 1st Q GDP

      To avoid social discontent and, in addition to stimulate the economy, China has embarked on a (serious?) policy of building cheap housing for the urban poor. A total of 5mn homes are expected to be built this year, with goal of reaching 36mn by 2015. However, the financing for this proposed rapid build out is questionable. The Government has increased central funding for low income housing by +23% to 212 Yuan this year, though the expected bill for the 36mn homes comes in at Yuan 5tr !!!. Local Governments, however, are not keen on spending on social housing. In addition, corruption has, in the past, meant that affordable homes have been sold to relatives/friends etc, etc – estimated at near 80% !!!! (Source GK Dragonomics) and authorities classify certain building programmes as social housing, when they are clearly not. As a result, I remain totally sceptical of this programme;

    • Money won’t decide the next president. But it may decide the next Congress.

      President Obama’s reelection campaign is likely to have more money than any presidential campaign in history. Republican Mitt Romney’s campaign, when you factor in the super PACs supporting him, could have even more money than that.

    • Muppets Protest at Goldman Sachs
    • Mirabile Dictu! Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein Makes Case for Breaking Up Big Banks

      Goldman seems to be making a renewed effort at PR in the wake of the letter by derivatives staffer Greg Smith accusing the firm of caring only about profits and treating customers as stuffees (“muppets” was revealed to be the new term of art). That observation probably came as no surprise to anyone save Goldman staffers, most of whom probably thought they had conned their clients into believing otherwise, and a few like Smith who believed the party line.

    • Goldman Sachs pays £4.1m tax on £1.9bn profit

      The London arm of Goldman Sachs paid only £4.1m in corporation tax to the Treasury last year despite making pre-tax profits of £1.92bn, annual accounts have revealed.

      Goldman Sachs International (GSI) had a corporation tax bill of £422.3m but it deferred £418.2m – or more than 99 per cent of the amount – that it had to pay immediately in “current tax”. The Wall Street giant, presided over by Lloyd Blankfein, was able to postpone payment because of “timing differences”, according to the accounts.

    • Frontline’s Astonishing Whitewash of the Crisis

      Several of my savviest readers wrote expressing disappointment and consternation with the Frontline series on the crisis, “Money, Power, and Wall Street.” The first two parts of the four part series have been released, and it’s probably safe to say that this program is far enough along to be beyond redemption.

    • Goldman Sachs Closes Canadian Dark Pool Seven Months After Open

      Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) (GS) closed Sigma X Canada today, shutting down the dark pool for equities seven months after starting it.

      The stock trading venue stopped taking orders, according to a statement from the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada. Since all orders expire daily on Sigma X Canada, none will be open after it closes, the agency said.

    • Goldman’s O’Neill tipped to join Bank governor race

      In theory the post of next Governor of the Bank of England won’t even be advertised for several months.

      In reality, the scheming and jostling for position are already in full flow. A new name in the frame today is Jim O’Neill, the affable Goldman Sachs economist now chairing the bank’s asset management division.

    • Goldman Looks to Hire Social Media Strategist

      Goldman Sachs may dominate financial markets, but there is one frontier it has not yet conquered: social media.

      So the Wall Street firm that many on the Internet love to hate plans to hire a “social media community manager,” according to a posting on its Web site. The position involves overseeing the firm’s online communities and developing a “positive online presence.”

    • Memo to Schneiderman Mortgage Task Force: When You are in a Hole, Quit Digging

      So we have yet to be completed incremental staffing of a grand total of 15? 65 people pursuing to the biggest consumer fraud in American history, when the savings & loan crisis had 1000 FBI agents tasked to it?

      The worst is the insulting five financial analysts. Tell me how “financial analysts” are supposed to get up to speed on securitization. There aren’t that many people who are experts who are willing to educate people going against the banks, and I’d bet big money that the Feds won’t be able to hire anyone of that caliber (they’d make more doing expert witness gigs).

    • Goldman Sachs Wins Dismissal of Some Claims in CIFG Suit

      Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) (GS) won dismissal of some claims in a lawsuit brought by CIFG Assurance North America Inc. over $275 million in residential mortgage-backed securities.

      The insurer sued Goldman Sachs in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan in August, accusing the investment bank of making misrepresentations in connection with the securitization of a portfolio of 6,204 mortgage loans.

    • Lack of Trust – Caused by Institutional Corruption – Is Killing the Economy

      Perhaps because we don’t trust our government, our big corporations or our other institutions to do anything very helpful for the country. Indeed, we don’t trust our government, big corporations and other institutions to even allow a fair playing field where we have a chance of competing fairly to get ahead on our own initiative.

    • Wrangling over anti-bribery law rages on, with top firms facing investigation

      The U.S. anti-bribery law that Wal-Mart may have violated in Mexico has ensnared leading companies from virtually every sector of the economy as federal prosecutors increasingly crack down on a wide range of transgressions, from improper accounting to giving foreign officials computers and bags of cash.

    • Councilmembers discuss ways to get out of bond debt deal with Goldman Sachs

      The City of Oakland should find a way to get out of its interest rate swap agreement with Goldman Sachs, a deal that costs the city $4 million annually, according to a city staff report. The problem before the city council now is figuring out the best way to do that without costing the city more money.

    • Want to stop banks gambling on food prices? Try closing the casino

      Recent price spikes in global food commodities – most notably the bubbles of 2008 and 2010-11 – have exposed a fundamental fault of economic analysis: although speculation in the world’s food supply has long been suspected, no one has been able to prove it. The world’s most precious resources may have been transformed into a casino for high rollers such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Barclays and Deutsche Bank, but it’s nearly impossible to figure out who is betting how much.

  • Censorship

    • German Ministry Advises Developing Countries Not To Sign ACTA

      Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) advises developing countries against signing the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, BMZ official Frank Schmiedchen said during a meeting of the Committee of Petitions of the German Parliament yesterday.

      The committee discussed a petition signed by over 60,000 German citizens calling for a stop to the ratification of ACTA by the German Parliament.

  • Privacy

    • Privacy concerns over popular ShowIP Firefox add-on

      A popular Firefox add-on appears to have started leaking private information about every website that users visit to a third-party server, including sensitive data which could identify individuals or reduce their security.

  • Civil Rights

    • Press Freedom Day – the world looks to Azerbaijan

      Today, 3 May, is United Nations World Press Freedom Day. For me this is a chance to remember the fundamental rights, including to self-expression, that are safeguarded for all of us in the European Union – whether you’re a journalist, blogger or ordinary citizen.

      And a chance to remember those people around the world who don’t have those protections, and are often restricted in what they can say or investigate.

      In places without human rights safeguards, the right to express oneself is all the more important. People who struggle for democracy must have a voice. People like Eynulla Fatullayev: Azerbaijani journalist, human rights activist and winner of the 2012 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize. He dared to speak up to defend freedom of expression — and was for a time imprisoned for having done so. I salute his brave work.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • How and How NOT to Re-License your Work for Free Culture

        The last week has been terrific for “Lunatics”. We’ve cleared the licenses on almost all of the music — and certainly the most important pieces. However, for a moment, I want to focus on the little problem with the one minute of music we probably won’t get to use, and the right and wrong way to relicense your art if you are ever in that situation.

      • Dutch Judge Who Ordered Pirate Bay Links Censored Found To Be Corrupt
      • Programming languages not copyrightable, rules highest EU court

        The European Court of Justice ruled this morning that the functionality of a computer program and the programming language it is written in cannot be protected by copyright.

        Europe’s highest court made the decision in relation to a case brought by SAS Institute against World Programming Limited (WPL), effectively leaving the door open for software companies to “reverse engineer” programs without fear of infringing copyright.

      • What’s at stake in Oracle v. Google

        Traditionally, application programming interfaces (APIs) have been presumed to be non-copyrightable, because unlike other elements of a software, which involve creativity, APIs are typically comprised of facts that enable one specific task: how does my software program talk to your software program and vice versa?

      • TLWIR 36: Why Hollywood MUST Embrace Free Software Concepts To Survive

        Google’s ultra high speed Internet project aims to bring Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri Internet speeds 100 times the current U.S. average. This has Hollywood petrified. Will users with gigabit connections pirate enough movies to decimate the movie industry’s revenue? Will piracy crush Hollywood in the way that it crushed the music industry? Not if Hollywood is smart: they need to CAREFULLY study how the Linux kernel is developed, and how Free Software is developed in general.

      • ACTA

]]> http://techrights.org/2012/05/13/gnome-3-5-1-gimp-2-8/feed/ 0 Expecting and Preparing for Microsoft’s Last Stand http://techrights.org/2011/04/28/last-chance-to-save-cash-cows/ http://techrights.org/2011/04/28/last-chance-to-save-cash-cows/#comments Thu, 28 Apr 2011 14:22:51 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=47784 Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj

Summary: The importance of eliminating software patents, which may be Microsoft’s last chance to save cash cows

TODAY I’ve been corresponding with someone who had spoken to Gates and Jobs about patents. Behind the scenes there is an interesting battle going on and it all revolves around patents, not products. In addition, patent trolls play a role in it. They appear to be working at the behest of larger companies and hopefully we’ll be permitted to name some of the involved parties very soon.

It has occurred to me that not many people in the Free/Open Source software world even realise just how serious an issue this is. For all I can see (with great concern), pundits and journalists often berate Groklaw for doing exactly what any responsible and competent reporter ought to have done. I see the same daemonisations directed against myself, even though anyone who objectively checked my record would find no justification for such characterisations. They are usually based on falsehoods and deliberate libel. In fact, many people who used to smear us came to IRC and after a while became our allies; they came to realised that we were on their side, not against them. Just because Techrights writes extensively on the subject of patents does not mean that it seeks to legitimise them; au contraire — we raise the issue so that more and more people pick a bone and join the fight against software patents. We are going to dedicate the entire coming week to this issue. A “software patent could threaten open source” says this one respected blogger, who emphasises that without software patents the situation would be entirely different. Currently, it is mostly a US problem:

The only good news is that this patent only applies in the U.S. A worldwide patent search of the inventor only produced 2 applications and 2 full patents. While it is perfectly possible for an international firm to be sued in the U.S. for patent infringement (RIM springs to mind), it is unlikely that smaller international developers will be subject to suits. Undoubtedly these broad patents have an effect in the rest of the world, but thankfully it is limited.

Mr. Pogson gives us some selected quotes from Barnes and Noble and Mary Jo Microsoft at least mentions it (see yesterday's coverage). Microsoft has become sort of organised crime syndicate simply because it cannot compete. To reuse the words of Steve Ballmer (about Google), Microsoft is a “house of cards”. That house is mostly built on foundations which are anything but concrete; they are Windows. Like any window, that too can be easy to smash and once the windows are smashed, break-in becomes trivial. Microsoft is feeling very threatened right not because it cannot even sell operating systems — the common carrier of its whole portfolio — to OEMs (it never really sold them to customers, it just used the OEMs to force people to get it all bundled). We have already written about the decline of Windows sales and one of the latest pundits to show this comes from IDG [1, 2], which is rather unusual.

The bottom line is, Techrights believes that Windows is already being dethroned and newer evidence further solidifies this claim. Right now we just need to ensure that Microsoft does not turn into a cash cow other companies’ operating systems, using software patents. Let us leave the mediocre operating system behind and the abusive monopolist in the gutter; both have caused tremendous damage to society for over 2 decades (or my entire life as I’m in my twenties) and to give just one examples of that damage, consider this new rant. It says: “Our company web log, web site, shopping site and forum get hit by varying degrees with SPAM bots, or in some cases possibly paid SPAM shills, signing up for accounts, posting “comments” and sending “track-backs” that aren’t. Constant administration oversight is needed to keep these cleaned up, which is one reason why all comments and track-backs here at The ERACC Web Log are moderated. We see the SPAM so you don’t have to. I also see the occasional SPAM in my e-mail. Even though I have measures in place to mitigate the problem in all these locations, nothing completely stops these annoying SPAM-ing jerks. Invariably, when I trace back the IP addresses of these SPAM attempts with nmap and check the running OS I see something like this:

Running: Microsoft Windows 2003
OS details: Microsoft Windows Server 2003 SP2, Microsoft Windows XP SP2

“It seems another technically ignorant Microsoft user, or dare I say “administrator”, has zero clue how to secure an internet facing operating system.”

Imagine a world without Windows — a world where a spammer cannot just recruit strangers’ machines by the thousands/millions to hammer on other machines and cause trillions in damages to the economy. We are almost there now (servers and devices usually do not run Windows) and a lot of what remains to be cleaned is hinged on the patent question. Will the law permit Microsoft to extort Android? Fight against software patents today. GNU/Linux advocacy (which is where I come from) in a world where sharing code is antithetical will not be enough. Larry Lessig put aside Create Commons because he knew that corrupt(ible) politicians will always marginalise copyright reform and impede sharing of culture. “Finally, someone talks about the kind of patent extortion that has been going on against Samba for years,” wrote Jeremy Allison yesterday regarding the revelations from Barnes and Noble. Allison went to work for Google after he quit Novell in protest, due to its patent deal with Microsoft. █

]]> http://techrights.org/2011/04/28/last-chance-to-save-cash-cows/feed/ 2 Links 27/10/2010: Red Hat CEO on Growth, Fedora 14 Preview http://techrights.org/2010/10/27/red-hat-ceo-on-growth/ http://techrights.org/2010/10/27/red-hat-ceo-on-growth/#comments Wed, 27 Oct 2010 14:41:24 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=41151

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • The $100.00 (USD) Coolest Linux Workspace Contest Winner

    The month-long voting is over so it is about time to announce the winner of our $100.00 (USD) coolest Linux workspace contest. The people have spoken, and from our five finalists only one has emerged victorious.

  • Less is More

    • Old hardware a handicap? Au contraire!

      Whoa, waitaminute. A 1.7Ghz machine with a healthy 256Mb will be a handicap to learning Linux? A handicap? Even when armed with lightweight applications?

      [...]

      But I can also say that I learned a lot more about Linux from a wildly unpredictable 100Mhz machine, and even more from a rancid little K6-2, than I ever did from a dual core Thinkpad. I enjoy having it, but I don’t count it among my educational treasures.

    • More reasons to learn from old computers

      I’m still a bit wired over the post from a day or two ago, insisting that a 1.7Ghz machine with a healthy amount of RAM and a decent-sized hard drive would be a detriment to anyone learning Linux.

      More and more that strikes me as completely counterintuitive, and for plenty of reasons. I already explained that an older machine is a challenge, whereas a newer machine is a luxury.

      But honestly, when someone wants to learn Linux, or at least try it out, I don’t recommend they go buy a new computer. I suggest they find a 4- or 5-year-old laptop, and learn the ropes that way.

      And aside from three reasons to buy old machines instead of new ones — power demands, noise levels and Linux compatibility — there are other good reasons to use an old computer to learn about penguins.

    • Minimalist Distros are the Way to Go (Not Ubuntu)

      Ubuntu, the most user-friendly of the Linux distributions; Ubuntu, the harbinger of the day of the Linux desktop to the world; Ubuntu, the crowned king of all distributions; Ubuntu — the Operating System that has now killed my desktop for the third consecutive upgrade in a row. This is ridiculous. I have been an Ubuntu user and supporter since the seventh grade, when I first started using Linux, but this is just too much. I know I’ve denounced Ubuntu and then reconsidered at least once in the past, but this is different, this is intolerable.

      My final unfortunate experience with Ubuntu began last week. I had just run the upgrade to the new release, version 10.10. When turning the computer on in the morning, I had expected to be greeted by my customary desktop with maybe a new theme at the most. However, I was welcomed by a bleak login prompt on tty1 — the command line. The new upgrade had ruined my configuration so that the X server would no longer start the graphical display. Fail. Ubuntu has ruined my desktop three times in the last two years, not coincidentally in the wake of each six-month release. That makes its record of stability in my experience worse than both Gentoo and Arch, each of which are supposed to be horribly difficult to use.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Ballnux

    • Samsung Galaxy Tab review

      Overall though, the Galaxy Tab is the best non-Apple tablet to date, and it plays well against Apple’s impressive iPad. As the Android OS and app developers catch up with the new form factor, the gap is certain to narrow further.

  • Kernel Space

    • What is the Linux Kernel and What Does It Do?

      With over 13 million lines of code, the Linux kernel is one of the largest open source projects in the world, but what is a kernel and what is it used for?

    • The kernel column #93 by Jon Masters

      Linux averages 5.5 changes per hour, every hour of every day, and is perhaps one of the most active software projects in human history. Jon Masters charts these changes every month in quite possibly the best technical column in human history…

    • What’s The Fastest Linux Filesystem On Cheap Flash Media?

      Flash drives and SD Cards are getting bigger, faster and cheaper. They’re not just for sucking down snaps from your pocket camera any more: they’re backup storage, portable homedirs, netbook expansion … you name it.

      Most arrive with a VFAT filesystem, and usually stay that way. But for a lot of applications, this is not ideal. Curious if the filesystem made any difference, we did what Feynman would have done: tested some.

      For once, testing gave a pretty clear answer. So what is the fastest filesystem linux folks can use on their flash media?

      Ext4.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • KSnapshot gains free-region capture

        From time to time I need to take a screenshot of some application or a part of my desktop. The obvious solution in KDE is KSnapshot, which is perfect if you want a rectangularly-shaped picture.

      • becoming a cog

        One more example is how the Git services for the KDE community keep improving, from Git integration in KDevelop to the rapidly maturing infrastructure the sysamdin team have been tooling up for us for some time now. projects.kde.org continues to get better and better and Tom is doing an awesome job of keeping everyone informed about that process.
        V

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Fun facts

        Percentage of gnome-shell code written by Red Hat by lines [:] 91%

  • Distributions

    • 3 Nice Live Linux CDs to Try

      1. Mepis

      [...]

      2. Kubuntu

      [...]

      3. PCLinuxOS

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat CEO: Growth demands more space

        “In all honesty, we’re out of space,” Whitehurst said following a Harvard Alumni Association panel discussion Tuesday night that brought four area CEOs to Cisco’s campus. “We’ve rented all they have around us.”

      • Marico reduces costs and increases performance with Red Hat Solutions

        Red Hat announced that leading Indian FMCG major, Marico, is powering its SAP-based mission-critical ERP system on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

      • Fedora

        • Fedora 15: Lovelock, Pushcart, Sturgis, Asturias?

          Earlier this month the Fedora community began proposing names for Fedora 15 with the proposals ranging from names like Malmstrom to Fortaleza and Gutzwiller. The list, however, has now been narrowed down to five potential candidates for the Fedora 15 codename.

        • Fedora 14 preview

          You may have noticed that Fedora 14 makes its release next week. Curious to see what was going to be in the new version, and on a suggestion from pyxie, I grabbed a copy and installed it on my USB flash drive.

    • Debian Family

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Attention Mark Shuttleworth: Don’t forget most important feature for Ubuntu 11.04

          That “feature” is marketing. Let me explain.

        • 10 things I would like to see in the upcoming Ubuntu 11.04 release

          It amazes me how quickly Canonical releases Ubuntu. Every six weeks, like clockwork, a new release is out in the wild. And every new release brings with it a host of improvements, squashes bugs, and introduces new features. But there are some features and improvements I have yet to see. So I thought I would take this opportunity to spell out a few things I’d like to see come along for Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal).

        • Ubuntu Needs Unity To Fight Mac, Windows
        • Unity on the Desktop

          Firstly, it’s good to mention that it’s actually “Unity as the default desktop if your graphics card and drivers support it”. We’ve learnt a harsh lesson this cycle about where Unity works well, where it should work but doesn’t and finally where we just can’t expect it to work.

          Therefore, it is going to be a primary focus this cycle to enable Unity on as many chipsets as possible. We will be much more lenient about what OpenGL features are required (allowing runtime fallbacks through detection and through quirks files for those chipsets that lie about their capabilities).

        • A bright new future for Compiz

          So, I was expecting this to be announced at Mark’s keynote this morning, but it looks like good ol’ Jono Bacon beat me to it :) Nevertheless, I won’t let him steal my thunder.

        • Compiz Brings New Eye Candy to You and Ubuntu

          A mere four months since the 0.9.0 release, which was the first release in quite a while, Compiz developers brought out version 0.9.2. Sam Spilsbury, developer of Compiz, announced this release on the Compiz mailing list as well as his personal blog on Sunday, October 24.

          This release brought a few new features and lots of stability and performance fixes. Splisbury says it should be ready for general usage.

        • Zeitgeist’s bright future in Unity

          This post will be about Unity stuff I am interested (and maybe start working on), I am not a designer but I can give it a bit of a kick off by implementing zeitgeist-powered backends.

        • Ubuntu getting a new icon theme

          Whilst the big news in Mark Shuttleworth’s opening address at the Ubuntu Developer Summit was regarding Unity he also touched upon the creation of a new Ubuntu icon theme – one that will be in keeping with the Ambiance and Radiance GTK themes.

        • Ubuntu Unity Sucks

          It started harmless. I saw a message about a new release being available (10.10 instead of 10.4). I’m used to smooth updates in Linux, so I clicked the upgrade button without further thinking.

          All went smooth indeed. About 2 hours later my netbook was ready to reboot. After doing so I was greeted with a new wallpaper behind the login screen. So far so good. I logged in and…

          ..was surprised. What was that? Not the UI I was used to and which was the main cause to install UNE in the first place.

        • General Disillusionment with Ubuntu

          I’m not going to say anything about Unity for myself because I haven’t tried it (and it will likely not happen). What I will say is that it isn’t surprising to me that more and more distributions today are switching from an Ubuntu base to a Debian base, because Debian is entirely community-driven and is usually more stable. That’s why my Fresh OS respins are based off of Linux Mint “Debian”, that’s why #! moved to a Debian base, and that’s why Manhattan OS (which was based on Ubuntu not too long ago) moved to a Debian testing base (along with rebranding itself to Jupiter OS). Folks, expect to see a lot more of these types of base shifts happening in the near future, as Ubuntu starts to really chart its own course.

        • Unity and the Community

          As Susan wrote earlier, Mark Shuttleworth made the announcement of Unity’s promotion to the big time at the Ubuntu Developer Summit. Much of the early criticisms of this move are from developers who claim that Canonical is more interested in pushing the Ubuntu brand than working together with the community.

        • A modest proposal re. Unity

          Having slept on it since writing my initial reactions yesterday I now have a proposal for Canonical & GNOME, which I hope the people concerned will consider.

          Yesterday, I said “the best possible outcome I can see is that one of the two projects will become an obvious choice within a year or so”. So my proposal is this: let’s have a bake-off, Unity vs GNOME Shell, under the big tent of the GNOME project.

        • Install and use Ubuntu Unity before it’s released
        • Is Unity the Right Interface for Desktop Ubuntu?

          Canonical shook the Linux world yesterday when it announced that the next version of Ubuntu — “Natty Narwhal,” or version 11.04 — will no longer use the GNOME interface by default. Instead, Natty will feature Unity, the multitouch and 3D-enabled interface that made its debut earlier this month in the distribution’s netbook edition of Maverick Meerkat, or Ubuntu 10.10.

        • Has Ubuntu exceeded the Ben & Jerry’s hippie threshold?

          Is this the end of Canonical and Ubuntu’s Free Software ideals? Hardly. But the company has come to the realization that in order for Linux to have a chance on the desktop, it has to make some hard choices and compromise. It can’t sit and wait for the GNOME Foundation to twiddle its thumbs and lag behind in desktop innovation from Windows, Mac OS, or even KDE.

        • More Ubuntu tweaks

          Ubuntu Tweak (now on Version 0.5.7) has evolved quite a bit since the early days, adding more functionality along the way.

        • The United Colours of Ubuntu
        • Ubuntu 10.10 (“Maverick Meerkat”) Netbook Edition

          The biggest mistake you can make with Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition is to directly equate it with the new Ubuntu 10.10 Desktop Edition of the same distro.

        • Meet Ian Booth

          Ian: I only recently started working on Launchpad. I work on the “Code” team, reporting to Tim Penhey.

          We deliver functionality associated with managing and importing branches, merge proposals, code reviews; Bazaar-Launchpad integration; the XML-RPC and web services API etc.

          Personally, I’ve also done some work on improving the menu rendering performance and other infrastructure type things.

        • UDS-N Day 1

          The idea of Ubuntu Developer Summit if you’re not sure what it’s all about just yet is “Getting face time together is really important” it helps us to get to know one another, puts the faces to the names/nicks which will help folks become more productive for the coming cycle.
          There track have been re organised to get more cross-pollination:

          * Application Developers

          * Package Selection and System Defaults

          * Performance

          * Multimedia

          * ununtu the project

          * hardware compatibility

          * cloud infrastructure

        • UDS Narwhal – Tuesday
        • What’s Next for Ubuntu?

          At the Natty UDS currently underway in Florida, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth has provided a new desktop direction with a move to the Unity shell, instead of the GNOME Shell. Moving beyond just the user interface, Shuttleworth has also shared some insight into where he sees Ubuntu headed in the next five years.

        • How relevant is Ubuntu?

          Even Microsoft knows the desktop is dying. It’s not going to disappear, any more than the TV is going to disappear. But the excitement in technology lies elsewhere, and it’s not coming back. (Might as well wait for the Fugees to get back together.)

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Linux Mint 10 Review

            Linux Mint 10 is a good release that builds upon great features from both Ubuntu 10.10 and Linux Mint 9. The new features are not an example of aggressive development, but still provide enough enhancements to justify an upgrade/installation. In fact, I would still recommend Linux Mint 10 to those Mint users who can’t be bothered to upgrade, if only to enjoy the latest Ubuntu, Kernel and GNOME updates and features.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Sub-notebooks

      • Linux Netbook Review: ZaReason Terra HD Netbook

        It’s been a couple of years since I reviewed a laptop from ZaReason, the UltraLap SR. Now I’m reviewing something a bit smaller — the ZaReason Terra HD.

        [...]

        What I liked: Nice big screen for a Netbook; great looks and construction for something in a Netbook class machine

      • Nicholas Negroponte

        Nicholas Negroponte wants to give laptop computers to children in third-world countries so they can communicate with the rest of the world. (05:21)

Free Software/Open Source

  • 5 (More) Free and Open Source CRM Software

    5 (More) Free and Open Source CRM Software: We have already featured here several free and open-source CRM software but due to popular demand, we will showcase five more CRM tools. As I’ve already explained before, CRM software is used for effectively managing a company’s interactions with clients and possible customers by organizing, automating, and synchronizing business processes.

  • Be Open To Open Source

    Looking at the evolving scenario, it will become imperative for solutions providers to have an open source play. Many solutions providers we spoke to said that the lack of skill sets and non-availability of applications have been the key reasons for not providing open source solutions.

    This partner perception was probably correct a couple of years ago. Today, the availability of open source professionals has considerably improved, and the overall open source ecosystem has matured. Vendors such as Red Hat have built a portfolio of end-to-end offerings, including virtualization.

  • 50 Awesome Open Source Apps You’ve (Probably) Never Heard Of

    Experts estimate that the number of open source apps available doubles every fourteen months. Sourceforge alone has more than 260,000 projects, and with so many open source apps now available from so many different repositories, it can be hard to keep up.

    For this list, we’ve highlighted some newer open source tools you might have missed. We also included some gems from obscure categories, like Mandelbulbs, gene sequencing, and knitting, to name just a few. Other open source tools on the list are good projects that are overshadowed by older, better-known projects, and at least one is an old favorite that has a new name.

  • Open-Source Software in the Enterprise

    The topic of open-source software has been steeped in debate since the development and licensing took root in the 1980s and picked up steam with the proliferation of the Internet in the decade that followed.

  • Annual awards source of pride

    It’s time for the annual New Zealand Open Source Awards, and the 31 finalists show an extraordinary range of innovation and collaboration.

    Among the three nominations for best open source project are: SilverStripe, a New Zealand-made content management system that has been downloaded more than 325,000 times globally in less than four years; Kete, a digital library project, and R, a programming language and software environment that has become the lingua franca for statistical computing and graphics.

  • Events

    • Open Source Think Tank Paris: Summary

      We had a great time in Paris at our Third Open Source Think Tank this year! We had over 120 attendees, primarily from Europe http://thinktankeu.olliancegroup.com/index.php.

      The two case studies were very different and illuminated the range of the open source market: Airbus and the Danish Government. The Airbus discussion was particularly fascinating as they described a product development cycle of twenty years with a product life cycle of forty years. Software has become critical to their planes, but given these time periods, proprietary software has significant disadvantages: (1) most proprietary software companies are likely to be acquired or go out of business during such a long period and (2) even if the proprietary software company still exists, the technology will be dated and the company may be reluctant to invest in maintaining it. An open source approach overcomes many of these problems.

    • GPL compliance workshop on December 2nd in Taipei, Taiwan

      The OSSF at Academia Sinica in Taiwan has kindly organized a full-day GPL compliance workshop on December 2nd in Taipei, Taiwan.

  • Oracle

    • OpenOffice.org Council members resign – Update

      During an Internat Relay Chat (IRC) meeting of the council on the 14th of October, Louis Suárez-Potts, Community manager of OpenOffice.org for Oracle, called for members of The Document Foundation to resign from the OpenOffice.org Council. Christoph Noack, former OpenOffice.org Product Development Representative, and Florian Effenberger, former OpenOffice.org marketing project lead and German marketing contact, have responded with formal resignation emails.

    • New: OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 Release Candidate 2 (build OOO330m12) available

      OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 Release Candidate 2 is now available on the download website.

    • OpenOffice.org and the Unnecessary Ultimatum

      Last week, the OpenOffice.org Community Council requested the resignation of members who supported The Document Foundation, the recent fork of the OpenOffice.org project. This week, the results are revealed: resignations of key people, and a growing tendency to choose sides in the community. And the tragedy is that none of this angst seems necessary.

      The request follows the recent creation of The Document Foundation (TDF), to provide an independent governing body for the development of the OpenOffice.org (OOo) code, and the announcement of LibreOffice, The Document Foundation’s fork of the OpenOffice.org code.

  • CMS

    • The commercialization of a volunteer-driven Open Source project

      Within the Drupal project, we don’t have a paid staff to advance the core software. However, many of the developers who contribute to critical parts of the Drupal code base make their living by building complex Drupal websites. Some Drupal developers are paid by customers to contribute their expertise to the Drupal project or are employed by companies ‘sponsoring’ Drupal development. Tens of thousands of developers are working with Drupal today, and many of them contribute back to the project. Albeit different, neither Joomla or Drupal are exclusively a volunteer run project, and that is one of the reasons we’ve grown so big. Ditto for WordPress that gets a lot of help from Automattic.

    • A Tour of the Redesigned Drupal.org

      Last month Drupal.org had over 2 million unique visitors, many of them coming to the home page to learn about and evaluate Drupal. The home page was designed with these visitors in mind. Our UX research revealed that Drupal.org is primarily a searching site, so the home page features a large search box with optional search filters. The rest of the home page focuses on the needs of Drupal evaluators, including a section showcasing the newest and best Drupal sites.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Master’s In Free Software and Free Standards

      The Free Technology Academy (FTA) and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) announced today their partnership in the FTA’s Associate Partner Network. The Network aims to expand the availability of professional educational courses and materials covering the concepts and applications of Free Software and free standards (http://ftacademy.org/standards).

      The FTA consists of an advanced virtual campus with course modules which can be followed entirely on-line. The learning materials are all published under a free license and can be accessed by anyone, but learners enrolled in the FTA will be guided by professional teaching staff from one of the three participating universities. The FTA aims to enable IT professionals, students, teachers and decision makers to undertake accredited professional education modules in free software studies.

Leftovers

  • Science

    • Top 10 tech tricks we’re sick of seeing in movies

      Think how awesome it was the first time you saw a lightsaber in action. Or how your mind was officially shredded when Neo mastered the Matrix. Technology in movies is cool. When artfully filmed, gadgets, gizmos, robots, and computers can captivate and amaze audiences.

      But for every thrilling example of cool-ass tech, Hollywood seems to produce a tired, dated cliche. There’s the obligatory no-cell-phone-service scene in horror flicks. There are robots with ATTITUDE in science fiction. There are impossible user interfaces in action films. The list goes on and on.

  • Security

    • UK should not put up with US airport security – BA chairman

      Britain should stop “kowtowing” to US demands over airport security, the chairman of British Airways, Martin Broughton, said yesterday, adding that American airports did not implement some checks on their own internal flights.

      He suggested the practice of forcing passengers on US-bound flights to take off their shoes and to have their laptops checked separately in security lines should be dropped, during a conference of UK airport operators in London.

  • Finance

    • Shrinking Bank Revenue Signals Worst Decade of Growth

      Shrinking revenue at U.S. banks, led by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Citigroup Inc., may continue to fall as the industry heads into what could be its slowest period of growth since the Great Depression.

      After the six largest U.S. banks posted record revenue in 2009, combined net revenue fell by an average of 8 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier and 16.3 percent over the last two quarters, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Revenue so far this year is down by 4.1 percent, driven by declines in everything from trading at Goldman Sachs to home lending at Bank of America Corp. New laws restricting account and credit-card fees, as well as derivatives and capital rules, are also squeezing lenders.

    • Double whammy hits big local real-estate portfolio

      When investment-banking giant Goldman Sachs bought 11 Seattle and Eastside office buildings and complexes in 2007 — overnight becoming one of the market’s largest landlords — there wasn’t much talk of risk.

    • Homeowners Protest HAMP: ‘It’s Just A Scam And The Banks Are Getting Everything’

      Judy Stratton said she and her husband Harry have tried since January 2009 to modify the mortgage on their home in Stayton, Ore. after a drop-off in demand for Harry’s floor maintenance services. In August, Stratton said, they received a rejection letter from their bank saying they did not qualify for help per the Obama administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

    • Nook Deletes All Your Files, Barnes & Nobles Shrugs

      If you own a Nook, you better make sure you regularly update its software, otherwise you might lose all your files that are not B&N books. That’s what happened to Michael, and customer service told him that it can happen if the device hasn’t been updated recently. The updates are too much for it to handle so it has to spontaneously jettison all foreign objects! Or something like that.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trade deal would include increased protection for brand-name drugs

      Canada’s pharmaceutical industry and the European Union have been quietly lobbying for changes that could give brand-name drugs several years more patent protection here — and potentially add hundreds of millions of dollars to Canadian medication costs annually.

    • Copyrights

      • Facts and Figures on Copyright Three-Strike Rule in Korea

        The legislation was passed on April 22, 2009 and came into force on July 24, 2009. By the end of July 2010, there has been no suspension against an individual user or a web site by the order of the Minister. However, the Copyright Commission has recommended ISPs to suspend accounts of copyright infringing users in thirty-one cases, and all of the individual users have been disconnected to the corresponding ISPs for less than one month.

      • Predicting the fate of Bill C-32 is like predicting the next election, says Geist

        Michael Geist isn’t shy about engaging in a “copyfight.”

        The very title of his new book alludes to his last public fight—waged on Twitter, blogs, and in the news media—with Heritage Minister James Moore.

Clip of the Day

The Digital Prism Screencast – MintUpload


Credit: TinyOgg

]]> http://techrights.org/2010/10/27/red-hat-ceo-on-growth/feed/ 0 “Only Idiots Want to Pay for Novell” (Corrected) http://techrights.org/2010/09/03/wildeboer-on-ballnux/ http://techrights.org/2010/09/03/wildeboer-on-ballnux/#comments Fri, 03 Sep 2010 09:23:55 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=38122 Correction: the quote above goes from Rui Seabra to Red Hat’s Wildeboer

Mad Magazine cover

Summary: Strong words from Rui Seabra to Red Hat’s Wildeboer, who criticises people’s willingness to pay Microsoft for GNU/Linux

WHENEVER we discuss the problem with 'Linux tax' in Android phones from HTC, Samsung, and LG there is no intention to spread FUD; au contraire — there’s an attempt to end Microsoft’s patent FUD which had some vendors/distributors of Android sell out. It has become rather difficult to cover Android in this Web site because many of the phones we come across are what we call “Ballnux”, namely Linux phones from which Microsoft (Ballmer) extracts money for patents it never even named. Fortunately for everyone, Android phones approach 100 different models and many separate manufacturers stand behind them. It should not be hard to avoid Samsung, for example, just as it’s possible to avoid SUSE and choose Debian/Ubuntu/Mandriva instead.

The importance of choice here is that it prevents a single point of failure from permanently existing (many — such as Linspire or Turbolinux — actually evaporate). Now that HTC Wildfire is out, avoid it. Choose a different Android phone. It’s the only way to tell HTC and Microsoft that Linux is not and never will be the property of Microsoft. The same goes for Samsung and LG (there is little of Kyocera Mita in the Western market). Here is an example of OpenBallnux on Ballnux (Samsung) hardware and here is a Ballnux tablet. This, unlike the hypePad, pays Microsoft:

Samsung has launched the first ‘true’ contender of the iPad, and it’s called Samsung GALAXY Tab. Unlike the iPad, Galaxy Tab allows you to not only ‘consume’ content, but also create it.

This tablet is also taxed by Microsoft and thus it is better off avoided. There are many other Linux-based tablets and they — unlike the Galaxy Tab — do not legitimise Microsoft’s demands of a payment for every Linux device that one ships. The goal here is to reward the many companies that gave a cold shoulder to Microsoft’s extortionists rather than collaborated with them.

“After the coupon deal with MSFT has ended, NOVL found a new “sponsor” – VMWare.”
      –Jan WildeboerThis brings us to Novell and how to stop its Microsoft invasion (including Mono and Moonlight). Does VMware offer SUSE? Avoid it. There are other options. A few days ago in VMware’s event there were mindless repetitions about their relationship in a press release that added almost nothing. As Jan Wildeboer (Red Hat) put it last night: “After the coupon deal with MSFT has ended, NOVL found a new “sponsor” – VMWare. [...] How much did VMWare pay to NOVL? [...] And how high is the renewal rate on the MSFT sponsored subscriptions?”

With takeover speculations abound (VMware a high candidate [1, 2]), one has to wonder why Novell can be seen as a safe bet in the long term. “Only idiots want to pay for Novell,” said Rui Seabra in response to Wildeboer.

Wildeboer’s concern must be that Novell is selling Ballnux, not GNU/Linux. Novell is trying to cause patent trouble to Red Hat, as evidenced by its "IP peace of mind" marketing pitch.

To Microsoft, this tactic is nothing news; Microsoft attempted to do by giving money to SCO, which despite disinformation from Bloomberg, is a company without a case. It’s just supposed to bully and muddy the water around Linux as long as possible:

SCO’s request to sell off its software business has been approved by the bankruptcy courts.

The Delaware court approved the motion to sell SCO’s software business leaving a rump company to pursue what’s left of its Linux legal action.

This action was, to a high degree, funded by Microsoft. Microsoft is doing the same thing with Novell right now and OpenSUSE is stuck in the middle. This new review of OpenSUSE 11.3 says: “I would have to say that this release is really solid and provides a really clean user interface.” 11.4 is also on its way, but will Novell still be there as an independent company by the time this thing ships?

openSUSE 11.4 Milestone 1 is available today, Thursday, September 2 for developers, testers and community members to test and participate in the development of openSUSE 11.4.

OpenSUSE is stuck in the hands of a company which pays Microsoft for GNU/Linux. Why are those “community members” still contributing to Novell (through OpenSUSE)? They will be better off buying not from Novell and contributing not to SUSE but to other distributions of GNU/Linux — ones that respect freedom, not those which respect Ballmer’s demands. █

]]> http://techrights.org/2010/09/03/wildeboer-on-ballnux/feed/ 0 The Real Debate About OIN http://techrights.org/2010/06/23/strawman-argument-re-oin/ http://techrights.org/2010/06/23/strawman-argument-re-oin/#comments Wed, 23 Jun 2010 12:57:37 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=33939 Scarecrow

Summary: The main downside of the OIN is not its secrecy but its function as endorser of software patents; Groklaw and Müller carry on arguing

YESTERDAY we wrote about Canonical joining the OIN. This reopened the debate about OIN, mostly comprising OIN sceptics and OIN proponents (the debate about how OIN should be operated from within is a minor one*). As expected, the legal side from Groklaw defends OIN, which is also aligned with the interests of IBM. Pamela Jones portrayed Florian Müller’s criticism as one that refers to secrecy (the minor debate, not the real debate) by writing:

Bergelt is highly respected in the FOSS community, as is OIN, as you can verify by looking at the lists of those signed on as licensees. I see Florian Mueller immediately attacked OIN. Yes, again. He’s wrong again, of course, and all I ever see from him is attacks on those working hard to protect FOSS from the patent threat. His complaint this time is that OIN isn’t transparent enough.

You know who I think would *really* love OIN to be transparent? Microsoft. Then it could avoid getting checkmated by OIN next time. Remember, it was OIN who blocked Microsoft’s attempted sale of antiLinux patents to patent trolls last year. Florian didn’t do that. I didn’t do it. You didn’t do it. OIN did it. And he thereby protected Linux from an evil machination designed to tie Linux to the railroad tracks, as I wrote at the time. For this one act alone, the community owes OIN our thanks to time indefinite. Yes. Really. I’m guessing that is why OIN is now a target for FUD attacks.

Jones is right about the latter point. The OIN did well on that occasion [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], but it’s hard to find other examples. A lot of effort could instead be spent explaining to legislators why US patent law is the black sheep when it comes to software patents. The US ought to be brought into alignment with global patent law, not the other way around. The same goes for copyright law, but that’s another story we generally don’t cover at Techrights.

In response to Groklaw’s post, Müller had this to tell us:

The thing PJ gets wrong intentionally is that I never said they should be transparent about everything they do with those patents. Of course they can have a confidential strategy every time they use those patents, just like everyone else would. My original blog posting on OIN made it absolutely clear that there’s simply no transparency about how they define what “the Linux System” is, and that’s the scope of protection of the entire license agreement. They can boost or disadvantage certain GNU/Linux-based software by including or excluding it, and they can do so at a moment’s notice if they want.

I also think it’s quite weak that the OIN announces the new category of Associate Members and provides no explanation of what rights and obligations those Associate Members have (as compared to Licensees). Usually someone who wants to generate publicity for a new initiative wants to provide at least a minimum level of substance. All they talked about was protecting the Linux ecosystem, which would apply to Licensees just as well. So the difference isn’t specified in the slightest.

Finally, PJ’s claim that I don’t deal with where the threat is coming from is preposterous given the diversity of topics covered (and companies criticized) on my blog. It’s actually PJ who doesn’t want to deal with threats coming from IBM and its allies.

Let’s emphasise that software patents ought to be abolished (including IBM's). OIN does nothing to get us there; au contraire — the OIN only legitimises them. The OIN is to patent law what crutches are to foreign policy and war. A more transparent OIN would also respond to these reasonable criticisms. █
___
* It is a common debating strategy to shift attention off one debate and onto a non-existent one, e.g. claiming that scientists in one field disagree among themselves not about minor points but about substantial theories as a whole. Strawman arguments are related to it in the sense that they rely on falsehoods or distortions. Another technique is the use of emotionally-charged words like “believer” or “denier” (connotation with religion or with the Holocaust, respectively) to make one side of a debate look irrational and sometimes dangerous.

]]> http://techrights.org/2010/06/23/strawman-argument-re-oin/feed/ 2 Apple’s Legal Attack on GNU/Linux and Mistreatment of Developers Already Costing it Business http://techrights.org/2010/03/10/apple-upsets-market/ http://techrights.org/2010/03/10/apple-upsets-market/#comments Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:54:20 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=28294 Steve Ballmer

Steve Jobs
Original photo by Matthew Yohe, modified by Boycott Novell

Summary: Apple upsets some of the very same people who made the company what it is today, including some of the inspirers

Apple is likely to learn the hard way what Microsoft is still learning. Attacking developers is not a wise step to take. First of all, according to this bit of news from the EFF, “All Your Apps Belong to Apple” [if you develop for Apple platforms].

The entire family of devices built on the iPhone OS (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) have been designed to run only software that is approved by Apple—a major shift from the norms of the personal computer market. Software developers who want Apple’s approval must first agree to the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement.

So today we’re posting the “iPhone Developer Program License Agreement”—the contract that every developer who writes software for the iTunes App Store must “sign.” Though more than 100,000 app developers have clicked “I agree,” public copies of the agreement are scarce, perhaps thanks to the prohibition on making any “public statements regarding this Agreement, its terms and conditions, or the relationship of the parties without Apple’s express prior written approval.” But when we saw the NASA App for iPhone, we used the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to ask NASA for a copy, so that the general public could see what rules controlled the technology they could use with their phones. NASA responded with the Rev. 3-17-09 version of the agreement.

Here is another new post that’s titled “Why I don’t use Apple products”

1. Apple’s software is not open-source.

[...]

2. Apple is not open-anything.

[...]

3. They are even closed about other software you can install.

[...]

4. The final straw. Not only does Apple control exactly how you can use any Apple device, they now want to take away your choice to use any other device as well. This week they brought a lawsuit against HTC, the developer of the majority of Android phones, alleging 20 Apple patent violations. Many of these patents seem to be comprised of trivial ideas that should be non-patentable and/or ideas Apple itself stole from other companies. It is clear that Apple is scared of the consumer choice that competition brings and is scared of the innovation that is possible within the open Android framework. Patents were intended to promote independent innovation by protecting small inventors from being scooped by large established corporations. Apple is hijacking the patent system to protect the interests of their large corporation against any competition at all. This is an incredibly dangerous precedent to set that could stifle innovation for many years to come.

[...]

In the important realm of science, technology and ideas, I believe that the continual conversion of ideas and development effort into the private property of companies like Apple is a great threat to continued free innovation.

Apple is attacking Linux at this moment [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. It’s using software patents. Earlier today (or yesterday) it turned out that Apple was also bullying Sun (patent extortion) over innovative software that Sun was offering to GNU/Linux users, so this aggression is nothing new. Here is some more information about that:

Former Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz has a nice insider take on the latest patent craze including how he sent Apple’s Steve Jobs and Microsoft’s Bill Gates packing when they came looking for a fight.

[...]

In the case of Bill Gates, Schwartz said Gates tried to extract a licensing royalty for OpenOffice, a free productivity suite developed by Sun, because Gates said it copied Microsoft Office.

Schwartz responded by drawing comparisons between Microsoft’s .NET platform and Sun’s Java technology, which he believed was some of the inspiration for .NET. “We’ve looked at .NET, and you’re trampling all over a huge number of Java patents. So what will you pay us for every copy of Windows?” Schwartz asked. That brought the meeting to a hasty close, he said.

The president of the FFII also found the following news gem this morning:

Apple talks tough to handset makers

[...]

Citing “industry checks,” Reiner writes that:

“Starting in January, Apple launched a series of C-Level discussions with tier-1 handset makers to underscore its growing displeasure at seeing its iPhone-related IP [intellectual property] infringed. The lawsuit filed against HTC thus appears to be Apple’s way of putting a public, lawyered-up exclamation point on a series of blunt conversations that have been occurring behind closed doors.

“Our checks also suggest that these warning shots are meaningfully disrupting the development roadmaps for would-be iPhone killers. Rival software and hardware teams are going back to the drawing board to look for work-arounds. Lawyers are redoubling efforts to gauge potential defensive and offensive responses. And strategy teams are working to chart OS strategies that are better hedged.”

[...]

Why pick on HTC? Reiner speculates that as the earliest and most aggressive user of Android, HTC was the perfect proxy for Apple’s real target: Google (GOOG). It helped that Apple and HTC didn’t have any supplier relationships that could be disrupted by a protracted legal battle.

Apple continues to show that it’s not cool and gentle. Au contraire — Apple is becoming quite a bully, maybe because of arrogance. It is indicated above that Apple’s behaviour has begun turning developers and potential customers away. █

“Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D.”

–Steve Jobs, Apple CEO

]]> http://techrights.org/2010/03/10/apple-upsets-market/feed/ 0 Freedom and the Fallacy of Market Share http://techrights.org/2009/09/30/freedom-and-real-goals/ http://techrights.org/2009/09/30/freedom-and-real-goals/#comments Wed, 30 Sep 2009 07:54:28 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=19205 Headline on F/OSS

Summary: Discussion about a misunderstanding of the real goals, especially in light of the latest news

FREE SOFTWARE is a different game from most. Its purpose is to cater for those in need of a free (libre) operating system that they truly control, unlike Android for example. A victory is defined in those market-agnostic terms, not in terms of how many people use a variant that makes considerable concessions.

It is understandable that various people who work for commercial companies see the success of F/OSS as measured in terms like “money” or “market share”; there is a fundamental difference here due to indoctrinators of a “takers” mentality and the likes of them. Free software is about sharing (giving) and thus it may clash with profit through scarcity; Free software thrives in abundant, independent markets. That is how revenue gets generated and savings made through autonomy.

The biggest threat to Freedom (the “F” in F/OSS) is arguably not proprietary software but people who lose sight of what’s achievable. To make so many compromises is to end up with another Mac OS X, to kiss freedom goodbye, and to wonder what the heck F/OSS [sic] was trying to achieve in the first place.

Richard Stallman has just published a short new essay to remind people of the many problems with Mac OS X.

In 2005, Apple made users install version 4.7 of iTunes in order to continue using the iTunes music store. This “upgrade” was billed by Apple as fixing a “security hole.” What the update actually did was change the iTunes system of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) to make PyMusique stop working. PyMusique was free software that allowed GNU/Linux users to access the iTunes store. (See http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-03/22/content_2728356.htm and http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/22/apple_blocks_pymusique/.)

Apple similarly imposed other incompatible iTunes changes later in 2005, and in 2006: users could not play music purchased using newer versions of iTunes in older versions of iTunes. So users had to update iTunes on all of their computers that they wanted to play their own music on, not just on the computer that they used to actually purchase the DRM-afflicted music. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairPlay.)

In 2008, Apple snuck a new DRM malfeature into Quicktime in an update advertised as adding a feature for renting movies. This malfeature stopped users from playing video files they themselves had made. (See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/26/quicktime_drm_cripples_adobe_programs/.)

If Mac OS X does not have a backdoor to forcibly install changes, that does not make it ethical. It has other malicious features, such as Digital Restrictions Management (see http://defectivebydesign.org/apple).

Some reporters concentrate on a retraction from Stallman, but that is not the point of the essay/blog post, which was followed by an update to Stallman’s article on Microsoft [via Bruno Miguel]. From Heise:

He also criticises the proprietary nature of Mac OS X. Stallman refers to various updates of iTunes and QuickTime, where security updates were used to close holes that allowed the DRM system to be overridden or where a bug was introduced in the process of updating the software to support new DRM functions. He ends saying “I don’t withdraw my condemnation of Mac OS. But I do withdraw the claim it has a known backdoor”. Stallman does not say in his message what prompted this withdrawal.

Wired Magazine has this new article which continues to show Apple’s misuse of power and control of people’s expression:

Developer: Apple Denied Health Care App for Political Reasons

Apple rejected a free iPhone application that advocated a single-payer health system, calling the application “politically charged,” according to the app’s developer.

This application may indeed be “political”, but what’s wrong with that? Is technology now limiting people’s freedom of expression rather than facilitating it? Is technology truly respectful when it is hindering instead of advancing and empowering? As in tiered Web, DRM, and kill switches?

“This philosophy did not prevent GNU from attaining commercial acceptance.”Michael Gratton, for instance prefers to ignore more political issues, whereas others realise that ignoring these issues is not an option. Problems will not go away if they are ignored; au contraire — things would typically exacerbate lacking vigilance.

Is GNU politically charged? Well, it has always been the case. The GNU philosophy is intrinsically political in that sense that it is rather libertarian. This philosophy did not prevent GNU from attaining commercial acceptance. When it comes to market share, traditional analysts can often be ignored. The Gartner Group, for example, counts only preinstalls, knowing damn well that these figures will not be representative of the real share of GNU/Linux on a worldwide basis. The numbers are also based on a sample from just a few large vendors like HP and IBM. It is prone to considerable error in judgment, and possibly by design. That in its own right is a political and ethical issue that should not be ignored. █

“Forty percent of servers run Windows, 60 percent run Linux…”

–Steve Ballmer (September 2008)

]]> http://techrights.org/2009/09/30/freedom-and-real-goals/feed/ 3 GPL and Stallman FUD Now Arriving from the Freedom-apathetic or Freedom-hostile http://techrights.org/2009/07/17/microsoft-apologists-vs-rms/ http://techrights.org/2009/07/17/microsoft-apologists-vs-rms/#comments Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:02:21 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=15011 Richard Stallman young
Richard Stallman (younger days)

Summary: Microsoft, Novell and Apple fanfare proves challenging to GNU/FSF; the OSI may also face a new hurdle

MOMENTS ago we posted an important statement from the FSF, which was long coming. The FSF still advises against C# and Mono. Other new posts about Mono reveal that attack on messengers is the preferred tactic of Microsoft or Mono proponents. Some of them cannot defend what they advocate or do, not on a technical level anyway, let alone the legal. Just watch how Stallman gets attacked [1, 2] following a tactless remark that occupied less than 10 seconds in a 2-hour talk (or thereabouts). People who wish to eliminate Stallman from the discussion would simply accentuate, exaggerate, spin, take out of context, fail to interpret humour (it was a Cult of the Virgin Mary parody), etc. it’s intended to incite against him and capitalise on lack on research. This is not to justify poor stage act from Stallman; au contraire, but to either quote-mine or to ignore a track record of advocacy for women’s rights from Richard Stallman would be foolish at best, if not altogether dishonest.

This post is not so much about the above incident, which was blown out of all reasonable proportions though. It is actually to do with longtime critics of Stallman, who include Apple fans (e.g. Matt Asay — one who ignores the fact that Apple is still attacking Linux phones, harming GNU/Linux desktops and deliberately stifling interoperability with Linux, quite repeatedly in fact) or those who sometimes seek to ‘proprietarise’ GNU and/or Linux. Stallman stands in their way, so by illegitimatising him — along with his message and establishments of course — they can proceed more easily with personal agenda of gain.

First of all, for the record and for those who have no heard yet, Apple is once again attacking Linux devices.

The pettiness of Apple continues… Last month, Apple warned potential buyers of the Palm Pre that it might break that phone’s ability to sync with iTunes. It didn’t take long for Apple to follow through. In an upgrade to iTunes, which Apple claims was for “bug fix” but also to handle “verification” issues, it has blocked the Palm Pre from accessing iTunes.

This rogue behaviour from Apple has even gotten attention from the KDE news site.

One of the things that was touched upon was the recent release of the Palm Pre smartphone which relies on Apple’s iTunes software for synchronising music with a computer. An interesting question asked was what would happen if Apple decided to block the Pre from using iTunes. Now, just over a week later, this is exactly what happened. Apple has indeed blocked the Pre from using iTunes with its latest update.

Unfortunately, this is just business as usual in the world of proprietary software. In the end, Palm will surely find a way around this, but in the meantime, the users are being held hostage. Adding insult to injury, many Palm Pre owners have likely been purchasing music from iTunes to put on their new smartphones, thus becoming Apple customers as well, so in the end this move hurts Apple’s music sales too.

It is with that it mind that people must remember that Apple is hardly a friend of GNU/Linux. Sure, it has its dealings with and handle on CUPS, WebKit and some other projects, but Apple likes harmony and sharing as long as competition like GNU/Linux stays out of the way. Apple too is using patents against Linux and for that matter, FFII’s president told us yesterday that “IBM is the biggest patent troll. They use software patents as a competitive advantage [as in] ‘Come to us, you will be protected.’” We addressed this critical issue before.

Michael TiemannMany people fail to remember that the vast majority of IBM’s and Apple’s application layer is as proprietary as it gets. This includes even Lotus Symphony and Apple’s Web browser, which exploited the work of KDE (KHTML).

It is with great regret that we find Matt Asay, the man who some regard as the reason for Microsoft’s infiltration into the OSI, more or less inviting more of Microsoft into the OSI. This is atrociously naive and fortunately he is no longer in the OSI, but neither is Bruce Perens. At the same time, Asay is dismissing (almost mocking) those who are aware of Microsoft's endless malice, writing them off as extremists. Jason has already responded to this in length.

In the first article Mr. Asay asserts that the Open Source community is “stagnant”, “insular”, full of “group-think”, and the tent needs widening. He also suggests that the community rejects “anything that fails to discuss knighthood and/or sainthood for Richard Stallman”

His solution: include representatives from Microsoft and Oracle on the OSI board.

A better solution would be for Michael Tiemann and the OSI to improve their relationship with the FSF. Now more than ever we know that Microsoft is attacking “open source” by attempting to change it and exploit it for revenue (FOSS hoarding), just like it did with ISO. As Steve Ballmer put it, “I would love to see all open source innovation happen on top of Windows.”

As Jason points out, Asay’s convictions are systematic.

Well, I came for the Stallman/Open Source talk, but I stayed for the stupid. I just thought it a bit of interest that the man relases two articles in two days each with a bit of anti-GPL / anti-Free Software / anti-Stallman angle in them.

Here is an excellent long comment from GreyGeek:

EVERYBODY is, or will become, an “extremist” by that logic. Those who attend a specific church or social group. Those who are members of a specific organization. Democrats. Republicans. Independents. Americans. Chinese. The dead, although they keep their opinions to themselves, if psychics are lying.

Matt Asay’s “solution” is what Microsoft is already working as hard as possible to achieve, and it sponsors the most extremist group (in computers) that I am aware of: Technical Evangelists. James Plamondon’s children.

Microsoft also has created or funded several front organizations, which are similar to James Plamondon’s “stacked panel”, because while they appear in public to be neutral they actually work on Microsoft’s behalf and in Microsoft’s interest behind the scenes. The ACT is an example. ACT was created to lobby congress during the DOJ trial in order to paint the DOJ as “punishing success” or “being against” capitalism. When Microsoft ran into trouble in Eruope the ACT suddenly found it necessary to open an office in Switzerland in order to lobby the EU in Microsoft’s behalf. When other computer related US companies had problems in Europe the ACT didn’t find it necessary to lobby the EU on their behalf. Only for Microsoft.

Another Microsoft front organization is the “Initiative for Software Choice”, which always seems to favor proprietary lock-ins over Open Source applications, except for the lip-service.

[...]

According to Asay, they qualify as extremists because they always associate with Microsoft and adopt Microsoft’s attitude and position on each and every topic that would affect Microsoft’s bottom line. Actions by people or government that would be unfavorable to Microsoft’s bottom line would be unfavorable to these proxy organizations — their CEO’s, their sales, their existence DEPENDS on their selling Microsoft’s products. Failing to broaden their market reach they have become part of the most extremist organization ever to infect the computer world.

Using Asay’s definition Microsoft and its proxies are extremists. In fact, they are by any definition. Just be careful you don’t run afoul of another Microsoft front organization, the BSA.

It is astounding to see the same themes recurring. Those who are criticised by Free software folks (people like the above) would often ask, “why don’t they like me?”

“Only by imposing ignorance upon them will they tolerate or even defend such abuse.”The answer is simple: because those companies are taking away people’s freedom and stomping on people’s rights, so no wonder those people don’t like it. What else can be expected? Only by imposing ignorance upon them will they tolerate or even defend such abuse. This includes Apple/Mac enthusiasts at times.

The context of Asay’s remark ought to be understood. He is hoping to change how people perceive open source by weakening the definition and giving up on more essential rights in the process (what Stallman might call “ruinous compromises”). It is further distancing from libre software, so to paraphrase and slightly change something Stallman said about Linus Torvalds, if you care about Freedom in software, don’t follow Asay. This is intended to be said politely, not abrasively. From Asay alone, Stallman bashing or at least critique goes a long way back (before his time in CNET). We found an impressive string of posts criticising the GPL after posting Stallman-hostile essays for several years. Eric Raymond was among the recent inspirers.

Examples of other attacks on the GPL include Black Duck's black box surveys (mentioned briefly in [1, 2]) and a variety of posts that are innocently taking “open source” just where Microsoft wants it to be. Maybe it is not innocent, but these sources will be given the benefit of the doubt.

Microsoft is not trying to hijack only “open source” by the way. We repeatedly warn that Microsoft is trying to control the virtual gateway to servers and in the process it hijacks the virtualisation market leader, apparently by initially colluding with EMC. Here is the latest addition:

VMware bulks up on former Microsoft exec

VMware is starting to look a lot like the good old days at Microsoft, at least in terms of its executive ranks. The Palo Alto, Calif. virtualization company — led by former Microsoft exec Paul Maritz — recently recruited former Google and Microsoft big shot Mark Lucovsky to an unnamed position.

Does the OSI want to end up like VMware? Once you get Microsoft inside the village, experience suggest that it will open up the gates for more Microsoft to enter and occupy what used to a rival. █

Dog with a sign

“That would be because we believe in Free Software and doing the right thing (a practice you appear to have given up on). Maybe it is time the term ‘open source’ also did the decent thing and died out with you.”

–Alan Cox to Eric Raymond

]]> http://techrights.org/2009/07/17/microsoft-apologists-vs-rms/feed/ 223 Links 12/06/2009: Hadopi Down http://techrights.org/2009/06/12/hadopi-down/ http://techrights.org/2009/06/12/hadopi-down/#comments Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:13:14 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=12920

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Native Multi-Touch Support On Linux

    Mohamed-Ikbel Boulabiar has written in to report that he and his team at the Interactive Computing Lab in ENAC, Toulouse have been successful in bringing native multi-touch support to Linux. While there is Multi-Pointer X in the mainlinue X.Org server (to be released with X.Org 7.5 / X Server 1.7), there is now multi-touch support to be able to handle gestures and other actions.

  • Fight Windows tax with a penguin stick

    During CompuTex I found a possible answer to this at the side of my own netbook, where I hung a 32 GByte Corsair Flash to make up for the fact that my HP Mini came with just 2 Gbytes of main storage. (Shown is the 64 GByte version.)

    Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin, whom I met for the first time at the show, did not need a Corsair on his HP Mini, and noted it came with Ubuntu installed, from the HP online store.

  • SkyOS’s Linux Experiment

    SkyOS — a desktop OS platform, albeit a closed-source one — had been under development for a while now. It looked quite nice, although it was only available to a limited selection of alpha-testers. Then as of January, things ground to a halt. “The speed at which new hardware and technology gets developed has increased dramatically in the last few years,” wrote SkyOS’s main developer, Robert Szeleney. “Trying to catch up with development of frameworks, drivers, applications, test, etc. got way more complicated than years ago.”

  • Linux Netbook Bundled With Norton 360

    Reader Mark Scott submitted this interesting variation on Linux OEM netbooks: this one is bundled with Symantec’s Norton 360.

    Symantec’s Norton 360 is an all-in-one anti-virus anti-phishing anti-spyware anti-botnet pro-firewall, backup and restore, the kitchen sink, and much more. Annual subscriptions cost $79.99.

    Comet sells a nice-looking Toshiba NB100-11R netbook that comes with “Linux”. It does not say which Linux, but the customer reviews reveal that it is Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

  • Cuba places its bets on open-source software

    In an attempt to reach technological independence Cuba has placed its bets on open-source software, a fact evidenced at the presentation of the Nova Operating System 2.0 during the 2009 International Convention of Informatics.

    This application, based on the GNU/Linux open-source software, allows users to do their office work, play music and video files as well as web browsing among other features, and will be improved before its release.

  • Revive your old Mac G3, G4, or G5 with Linux

    Do you have an old Mac G3 or G4 lying around doing nothing? Did you know that old dinosaur could make a great server or desktop with the help of everyone’s favorite open source operating system Linux? Most people don’t realize there are Linux ports for PPC. There are, and they will make that old machine seem like it’s younger and snappier than it ever did.

  • Audio

    • Podcast Season 1 Episode 10

      In this episode: Unix is 40 years old, Google releases an alpha Linux version of its Chrome browser and ARM-powered laptops are spotted at Computex. Is Linux a difficult development platform and should we thin the licensing herd?

    • Linux Outlaws 96 – Screw You!

      This week Dan and Fab interview Stuart “Aq” Langridge of Canonical and formerly LugRadio about Ubuntu One, talk about the Pirate Party boarding the EU, Snowy, Bing and all the Linux news from Computex.

  • Desktop

    • A big week for Linux: is user friendliness finally in sight?

      The “I upgraded to the latest version and now sound doesn’t work” type of regression.

      With Linux now settled in a nice and predictable 2.6.x series the future looks promising.

      Let’s hope the distributors learn from past mistakes and put reliability and usability above the urge to rush new – and often quite high end – features to their consumers.

  • Server

    • Cisco Developer Contest: the ten finalists

      Mick Scully, Cisco Vice President at the Access Routing Technology group put out a VoD announcing the finalists.

    • Free EventTracker Pulse Logs Impressive Capabilities

      In a space where custom-built Linux or Unix syslog servers still reign supreme, and the acquisition of new equipment is on hold for many organizations, these minimum requirements might scare off some potential users.

    • Economic Conditions Accelerate Consolidation’s Dampening of Server Hardware Demand — New Research From TheInfoPro

      “With server budgets flat or declining for 2009, there seems to be little good news or growth areas to highlight in this latest study,” said Bob Gill, TheInfoPro’s Managing Director of Server Research. “One exception, though, can be seen in the deployment of Linux-based servers, which, while not dominant from the perspective of total OSs installed, continues to maintain growth year over year. With Linux every bit as robust as Unix in interviewees’ minds, the growing ISV base and the inescapable economics of advancing x86 technology paint a rosy picture for Linux in the coming years. There seems to be little conflict between Linux and Windows Server in most enterprises because the OSs are serving different application bases.”

    • Ten of the coolest and most powerful supercomputers of all time

      For decades, supercomputers have helped scientists perform calculations that would not have been possible on regular computers of that time. Not only has the construction of supercomputers helped push the envolope of what is possible within the computing field, but the calculations supercomputers have performed for us have helped further both science and technology, and ultimately our lives.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux 2.6.30 gets new filesystems

      The new NILFS2 treats the whole disk as a consecutive list of blocks (or “log”), and never rewrites blocks. As a result, all modifications and creations are converted into sequential operations, which are said to be faster. Other NILFS2 improvements are said to include the ability to offer a more coherent historical view of operations, called “continuus snapshotting,” enabling users to restore files that have been mistakenly destroyed only a few seconds previously.

    • Torvalds proclaims ‘new world order’ with Linux 2.6.30

      Linux kernel 2.6.30 has been released with hundreds of changes from the previous version, including a new architecture for suspend and resume which Linus Torvalds says switches the kernel to a “new world order”.

    • Open Letter to Logitech – Secure Your Spot as the Premier Linux Devices Provider

      As an IT Professional, electronics consumer, and GNU/Linux user, I am continuously looking for Peripherals providers that support the “Universal Operating System” (GNU/Linux).

      I’m the guy that you’ll find in the nearby BestBuy store, or Walmart, or even Office Depot, hunkered down in the electronics aisle, flipping over boxes looking at “System Requirements” to see if there’s any indication of vendors doing the right thing and printing “Works with GNU/Linux”(or perhaps even affixing the Tux Penguin emblem) on their packaging. And although a great number of peripherals and hardware work with GNU/Linux, sometimes it’s still a bit difficult to be absolutely positive. With your help, I aim to change that.

    • ffA releases SEA 3D Pro for Linux

      On June 12, Foster Findlay Associates (ffA) plans to release SEA 3D Pro 2009.1, the latest version of its desktop 3D seismic analysis and volume interpretation software, on the Linux platform.

    • DisplayLink Linux Driver Continues To Mature

      It was just one week ago that there was an update released to the DisplayLink X.Org driver and its kernel frame-buffer module, but there is now yet another update available. This time around the xf86-video-displaylink driver is at version 0.3 and it adds preliminary support for RandR and eliminates its ShadowFB support.

    • 2.6.30 Kernel and Sidux

      Sidux Linux, based on Debian Sid (the ‘unstable’ branch) and touted as being ‘Debian Hot & Spicy!’, has released their 2.6.30 kernel with a huge surprise.

      If you read around the web about the release of this new kernel, nearly every article discusses increased performance and a large number of new drivers for the 2.6.30 kernel release. But within Sidux, the kernel developer slh has decided to remove all non-Free (Libre) firmware from the Sidux kernels. The result is poor hardware performance within Sidux 2.6.30 kernels, at least thus far according to rants on the OFTC irc network on the #sidux and #smxi channels.

    • Linux 2.6.30 Gets Faster Boot

      The second Linux kernel of 2009 is now out, sporting a long list of improvements — and at least one regression.

      New filesystem support, security and driver improvements are all part of the new Linux 2.6.30 kernel release, although one of the most noticeable elements in the new release is the kernel inclusion of fastboot, an enhancement designed to speed startup for Linux-based systems.

    • Ubuntu 9.04: New Intel Graphics Drivers

      There is hope for Ubuntu users with Intel graphics. As it appears, the current 2D drivers solve most of the recent graphics problems with Intel chips, according to Ubuntu developer Bryce Harrington in a developer mailing list. Jaunty users should profit it from them as well.

  • Applications

    • Linux Gaming: 20,000 Light-Years Into Space

      We all need a break from our daily routine, and many PC users like that break to be in the form of a game. This is where most people say Linux doesn’t have any games. Au contraire mon ami. Linux does have games. Not your modern full-on 3D games that require more computing power than your average Beowulf cluster, but it does have a large amount of solid games that can serve to get your game-break on.

    • Yum, It’s Starting to Get Tasty

      The release of Fedora 11 promises numerous new improvements. One such improvement is an updated and more efficient package manager. How does it compare to the previous release, version 10?

  • KDE

    • Network Manager Sprint In Oslo

      A small but intense code sprint took place in Oslo last weekend. Peder Osevoll Midthjell, Sveinung Dalatun and Anders Sandven, who work on mobile broadband connections for Linux as their thesis project, met with Darío Freddi, Will Stephenson and Frederik Gladhorn of KDE. Knut Yrvin spent his weekend with us to make us feel comfortable at Qt Software.

    • Stallman, Bender, Lefkowitz and Pavelek To Hold Keynotes at Gran Canaria Desktop Summit

      The GNOME Foundation and KDE e.V. are excited to announce the keynotes for the first ever co-located Akademy and GUADEC, over 100 talks as well as BOFs, keynote sessions, lightning talks and many opportunities to meet other developers and begin collaborating between projects.
      Current confirmed keynotes are:

      * Richard Stallman, Free Software Foundation
      * Walter Bender, Executive Director, Sugar Labs
      * Robert Lefkowitz, Distinguished Engineer of the ACM
      * Jakub Pavelek, Nokia

  • Distributions

    • Macpup – Puppy on steroids

      Puppy is more than just a distro. It’s a whole family of colorful editions, each catering its own special, unique motto. If the official release cannot satisfy your needs, one of the Puplets surely will. The possibilities are endless, limited only by your time and bandwidth.

      Exploring the world of Linux live CD experience has never been more fun. Download your favorite Puppy and start playing. Macpup is definitely one of the finer breeds out there, but who knows what you might find?

    • Ubuntu 9.04 vs. Fedora 11 Performance

      Fedora 11 was released earlier this week so we have set out to see how its desktop performance compares to that of Ubuntu 9.04, which was released back in April. Using the Phoronix Test Suite we compared these two leading Linux distributions in tasks like code compilation, Apache web server performance, audio/video encoding, multi-processing, ray-tracing, computational biology, various disk tasks, graphics manipulation, encryption, chess AI, image conversion, database, and other tests.

    • Blue Caress Theme Added.

      New Blue Caress theme for PCLinuxOS designed by community member geminiguy

  • Red Hat

  • Ubuntu

    • Interactive notifications mockup

      I’ve read about morphing windows on the Wiki but I think that they would undermine consistency a bit. I’m attaching a mockup to this mail, but I’m so bad at using Gimp that much of what I’m proposing will be left to your ability of understanding me. :-)

    • Ubuntu One Beta Finally Kicks Off

      Ubuntu One Beta, the Dropbox type of service by Canonical has finally kicked off, bt not for all. When my invitation arrived I quickly moved on to test it.

    • Ubuntu aims for ten-second boot time with 10.04

      The developers behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution aim to significantly improve boot performance. Their ambitious goal for 2010 is to reduce total boot time to 10 seconds.

    • Ubuntu user magazine

      I spotted a new magazine in WHSmiths today. Its was called Ubuntu-User and was made by the same people that make Linux-Magazine.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • MIPS to release Android source code by August

      MIPS Technologies announced that source code for the Android port to MIPS released by Embedded Alley last week would be made publicly available within 60 days. MIPS also joined the Open Embedded Software Foundation consortium supporting Android, and announced that VioSoft will support the MIPS/Android platform with its Arriba tools.

    • ARM9 workhorse cranks it up

      Atmel is sampling a faster version of its low-power ARM926EJ-S-based processor, offered with a free Linux BSP. The SAM9G10 ramps up to a 266MHz clock rate compared to the SAM9261-S’s 188MHz, boosts bus frequency to 133MHz, up from 94MHz, and consumes only 100mW in full-power mode, claims the company.

    • Navigation SoC combines GPS and Galileo tracking

      SiRF Technology is shipping a Linux-compatible navigation system-on-chip (SoC) that integrates a application processor and a “location engine” equipped with both GPS and Galileo satellite tracking. The “SiRFatlasIV” is billed as a lower-cost version of SiRF’s SiRFprima SoC, offering the same 500MHz ARM11 core and hardware-accelerated 3D graphics, says SiRF.

    • Low-cost, High-resolution IP Camera Runs Linux

      US embedded hardware OEM KwikByte is shipping a low-cost, tiny embedded Linux system designed for surveillance and machine vision. KwikByte demonstrated the system running open-source packages providing features such as streaming video server and computer vision.

    • FPGA-based server parallelism

      Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines! Mitrionics already introduced the world to hybrid server performance based on parallel FPGAs. Now, the company is hoping to make the programming of such unique platforms more palatable through a Linux software development kit.

    • Palm Pre

      I’m impressed. There’s a few rough edges and some obvious short-term hacks, but overall the Pre has the appearance of being a well-engineered distribution. It’s recognisably Linux in a way the Android isn’t. Since it seems to be possible to gain root by entering the developer mode, I suspect that modifying the firmware image isn’t especially difficult. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when GSM ones appear.

    • Sub-notebooks

      • Atomic Warfare

        And with Netbooks retailing under $400, compared to Microsoft Intel makes hardly any profit at all. So Microsoft has to die.

        This is a huge change for Intel, which has for decades acted as Microsoft’s bitch, doing pretty much whatever Redmond demanded for fear of being written-out of the next Windows PC hardware spec in favor of AMD or even IBM. But that was the old Microsoft. The Microsoft of today isn’t nearly as powerful, whether they yet know it or not.

      • Attendance falls but Android dazzles
      • Small but disruptive

        At Computex, Acer announced that it would use Android together with an Intel chip. Other firms are expected to follow suit. Intel is also pushing another version of Linux, called Moblin. Its long partnership with Microsoft notwithstanding, Intel does not seem to care what operating system netbooks use, provided they contain the firm’s chips.

        Linux may also prove popular for tablets, a market that Apple is likely to energise when it finally launches its much-awaited new device (though any Apple tablet will run its own operating system). The reason it did not happen this week, some say, was that either the tablet or Mr Jobs, who would like to present it personally, is not yet ready for action. Unlike Godot, Mr Jobs and the new gadget are likely to appear eventually—probably in time for the holiday season.

      • Google’s Android to run laptops, challenge Microsoft

        ARM, based in Cambridge, England, is a potential beneficiary of Android’s success because Microsoft’s Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 don’t run on ARM-based computers.

        “Microsoft going forward may have to work on an ARM-based solution,” said Daiwa’s Huang. “If Microsoft doesn’t want to see Google Android get into the PC market, they will have to support ARM; otherwise, ARM will go perfectly with Android.”

      • Interview with Intel’s Pankaj Kedia @ Computex 2009

        All those devices are based on the Android or Linux operation systems because of cost-efficiency issues but also because of lack of support from Microsoft. (This was also confirmed by Steve Guggenheimer, Microsoft’s corporate VP for original equipment manufacturers during his interview at Computex). Intel seems to have let those challenges emerge even though it has enough of a shield to have avoided this competition from the starting point.

      • Android will chip away at Windows’ PC dominance

        Some of the Android usage agreements also allow the Google logo to be used; a netbook or notebook with a Google logo on it would be more recognizable to consumers than a notebook running another Linux variant like Ubuntu.

      • HP replaces Mini 1000 with Mini 110

        The Linux version starts at $279 and can be upgraded from an Intel N270 Atom CPU to the slightly-faster N280 CPU and the RAM can be bumped from 1GB to 2GB. The XP version starts at $329 and features the same CPU upgrade option, although the RAM is stuck at 1GB thanks to Microsoft’s weird netbook rules.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Help reddit celebrate 1 year of open source by helping your favorite open source project!

    Wow, on June 17, 2009, it’ll be an entire year since reddit went open source. If you weren’t around, or missed the hacky stop-motion video announcing it, reddit has been open source for a year now. See for yourself at code.reddit.

  • Jitterbit 3 expands open source data integration

    In a perfect world, data would all be easily transportable and consumable. The world is not perfect, and that’s why the work that open source data integration vendor Jitterbit does, is valuable to many organizations. I first wrote about Jitterbit around the time of their 1.0 release in 2006 ,and now they’re gearing up with their 3.0 release.

  • Open Source sensing initiative launched

    A new open source-style project to promote Open Source Sensing has been started, with the goal of bringing the benefits of a bottom-up, decentralized approach to sensing for security and environmental purposes.

  • Sri Lanka open source firm starts free ‘summer school’

    WSO2, a Sri Lankan software firm, is starting a free ‘summer school’ this month on open source software and service oriented architecture (SOA), the company said.
    The eight week program will help at enterprise IT architects and developers to become more familiar with SOA concepts, technologies and best practices, the company said.

    WSO2 says the developer community has been hit by the global economic downturn.

  • Top in his field

    Open-source experts are a rare breed in the country and we found one in the unlikeliest place — a farm.

  • EC software law could divide open source

    The world of open-source development could be divided if the European Commission succeeds in passing a law extending consumer protection rules to software, according to experts.

    The Commission proposes software companies be held liable in the EU for the security and efficacy of their products.

    David Mitchell, senior vice president of IT Research at Ovum, thinks this may lead to a situation boosting current open-source vendors’ business models, but making it more difficult for independent developers to thrive.

  • Introducing Gloss

    Everyone knows Pygame is a super-fast way to produce cross-platform games. But its one major flaw is that it’s very slow to do simple operations such as scaling, rotating and recoloring. In fact, even making extensive use of transparency can be a bit slow, so I’ve produced a new graphics toolkit that makes all those things extremely fast, and I’ve called it Gloss.

  • Building native mobile applications with open source mobile platforms

    Three open source products are aiming to reduce the barrier to entry for customers wishing to build native mobile applications using Web development skills alone. These products are PhoneGap, Rhomobile, and Appcelerator’s Titanium Mobile.

  • Events

    • Blog Your Way to OSCON

      Ultimately, our development team will be putting a spam-removal system in where spam should not get through at all, and if it does, volunteer moderators will be able to remove it and block the offending spammer regardless of the time of day. This system will also be put in place for the direct messaging system and the forums, too.

    • OpenSource World Offering Free Admission

      Organizers of the upcoming OpenSource World conference broadened the event program and are offering free admission, hoping to attract more attendees in a time of slashed travel budgets and increased competition from similar shows.

  • Fog Computing

    • At Hadoop Summit, Yahoo! Announces its Tested Distribution

      Mike Olson, CEO of Cloudera, a well-funded startup that provides commercial support for Hadoop, also weighed in on how it will make use of Yahoo!’s distribution:

      “The general availability of Yahoo!’s Hadoop source code helps make Cloudera’s Distribution for Hadoop even more robust and scalable, and we will continue to collaborate with Yahoo! to include their tested source code in our commercial distribution,” said Mike Olson, CEO of Cloudera. “Cloudera’s Distribution for Hadoop is a complete, enterprise-ready distribution inclusive of key tools, utilities, and full service and support, to help enterprises deploy and manage the Hadoop platform for large-scale data processing and management.”

    • Hadoop Gets the SQOOP from Cloudera

      The Apache Hadoop project offers the promise of being able to manage and process large volumes of data quickly. It’s a project that is used by big Web titans like Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO), Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Facebook, and it’s about to get a critical new tool to help it ingest even more data.

  • CMS

    • Reviewed: New Book on Selecting an Open Source CMS

      People who are new to content management systems find it a little overwhelming as they try to figure out which CMS is right for them. Packt Publishing (news, site) has released a book that hopes to help people make some sense out of so many choices.

    • click2try(TM) Adds Sakai CLE to Open Source Catalog

      click2try (http://www.click2try.com), a community site that makes it easy to try and use Open Source software, today announced it has added Sakai CLE to its online catalog of Open Source applications.

    • Simplifying Life With MediaWiki and Ubuntu

      After several years of trying to find a good note-taking solution, I’ve finally settled on a local installation of MediaWiki on my Ubuntu laptop for managing information relevant to my academic and personal pursuits. Below, I outline my experiences with the software, and explain why the ease of deploying it and similar packages on Ubuntu is one of the platform’s greatest, and perhaps most under-appreciated, strengths.

      Since college, I’ve tried at least half-a-dozen different approaches to taking notes, and until now was less than satisfied with each of them. Handwritten notes are difficult to store and search through. OpenOffice is bulky for notetaking, while plain text files offer little opportunity for mark-up. The various note-taking applications that I tried, like Tomboy, were decent, but none offered exactly what I wanted.

  • Mozilla

    • Mozilla Add-on Collections for Firefox

      Mozilla has announced the release of Add-on Collections, groups of add-ons that all relate to a particular topic.

    • Introducing Add-on Collections

      The ability to completely customize your browser with thousands of add-ons is one of the best features of Firefox, and highlights the talent, dedication, and innovation of our great community. With thousands of add-ons and close to 1.5 billion downloads, Mozilla has been working hard this year to provide a great experience for both add-on users and developers.

    • Mozilla Introduces Add-on Collections
    • Battleground Firefox: The Extension Wars

      As was recently demonstrated by Microsoft, Iwin Games and a number of other companies, anybody can install an extension into Firefox, and those extensions are not limited in what they can do.

      Now this really isn’t a knock against Firefox. The extensions system is a dream come true. However, in it’s current form it’s also a timebomb waiting to happen. All you need is one creative virus maker, or malicious corporation, and boom! Firefox ceases to be the secure juggernaut it is and becomes the prostitute of whomever wants to take it over.

      As Microsoft’s .Net extension proves, it’s not that hard to use the extensions system to take Firefox and turn it into the same kind of virus magnet that Internet Explorer is, only much worse. Now I’m not saying we need to abandon Firefox, but rather that two key things need to happen.

  • Business

    • Open source will never do that…

      Years ago I proclaimed open source would never be relevant in the application market. Now I work for an open-source applications company.

  • Government

    • The Source Code of Power

      Tom Watson is that rare thing: a net-savvy MP. So his decision to step down as minister means that our loss is all the greater.

    • Ex-government CIO favours publishing Gateway reviews
    • About Reusing Open Source in Italian Public Administrations

      During the Public Administrations Innovator barcamp I have been interviewed by Cogo Gigi, one of the organizers, to talk about sustainable innovation in software for public administrations.

    • Vancouver becomes role model for open source in government

      Open source activists are praising the Open Data, Open Standards and Open Source motion passed by the City of Vancouver last month. City Councillor Andrea Reimer provides an update on what to expect next.

    • IBM eyes opportunity in G2009 failure

      A spokesman for IBM’s open-source effort in the Asia-Pacific region says he is excited at the new opportunity opened up for open-source products by the collapse of the G2009 bulk agreement with Microsoft.

    • DHS project aims to bring open-source software to state and local agencies

      The Homeland Security Department is funding a program that will help federal, state and local agencies better understand their options for using open-source software.

      DHS’ Science and Technology Directorate will fund the Homeland Open Security Technology (HOST) project, which will start with a one-year, $1.5 million contract and possible additional years to follow. The University of Southern Mississippi and the Open Source Software Institute (OSSI) will conduct the work, and the Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command will handle the contracting and help with guidance for the program.

    • New Jersey to make open source EMRs illegal

      Editor’s note: it actually does not appear to specifically make open source illegal but the side effect may be that. Unless they are CCHIT certified.

    • CCHIT Slates Web Seminars

      The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology will present two free Web conferences June 16 and 17 to gather comments on plans to refine its certification of electronic health records software.

  • Openness

    • The argument for gold OA support

      Are green and gold open access independent of each other? In particular, is worry about gold OA a waste of time, and are expenditures on it a waste of money? Stevan Harnad has brought up this issue in response to a recent talk I gave at Cal Tech, and in particular my remarks about a potential “open access compact”. I will take this opportunity to explain why I think that the answer to both questions is “no”.

    • ETD2009: The Semantic Scientific Thesis

      My arguments will be that almost all theses are created with the “book” or “journal” metaphor and based on flat text, flat images and little if any linking or semantics. This is an increasingly outdated way of communicating to humans in today’s pervasive web where we learn to interact with information from the cradle upwards.

    • Ecology, Economics, Sharing

      One of the things that interests me at the moment is the way open source ideas are proving hugely useful when considering areas like economics and environmentalism

    • Inspiration Information

      Villarreal has access to the Bluestone interview and several others like it through the Open Source Teaching Project, a Tennessee-based program that helps students make real-life connections to academic content. The program sends interviewers to speak faceto- face with experts in a range of fields who share their passion for their work, explain what they do on a daily basis, and suggest steps students can take to achieve similar careers. The interviews are then posted online, free for anyone to access, accompanied by teacher resources, including lesson plans and blogs.

    • The new paradigm for public service.

      The Open Source Teaching Project (OST) mobilizes students to interview successful professionals so that they can inspire and inform the education and career decisions of other students. This free, digital media platform is provided for the benefit of the public, with a particular focus on reaching middle, high school, and post-secondary learners.

    • Nanotechnology Council Launches Open-source Wiki

      The Rice University-based International Council on Nanotechnology (ICON) on June 1 introduced the GoodNanoGuide, an online, community-driven wiki for information about the safe handling of nanomaterials.

    • Are Commercial Buildings Ready for Open-Source Energy Management?

      Picture the lighting and chillers of commercial buildings being controlled by a system designed in the same way as Mozilla’s Firefox — through open source, the collaborative method of developing software source code. While we’ve covered open source-based home area energy management systems, the OpenLynx project, started by Anno Scholten, vice president of business development for NovusEdge, is looking to tackle the underlying software that controls the energy consumption of massive commercial buildings.

    • Writer Illuminates The World Through Kindle, And The Great Open Source Writing Experiment

      So here is the Great Open Source experiment:

      The original versions of “Crystal Earth” scripts and “The War for Truth” are available for purchase and download through the Kindle bookstore AND the open source version can be attained by any writers willing to undertake the project.

  • Programming

    • NetBeans 6.7 Community Acceptance Survey launched

      The NetBeans developers have announced the start of the NetBeans 6.7 Community Acceptance Survey and are asking users to provide feedback on the current release candidate.

    • If PHP then goto is the future

      Few things can spark more religious fervour amongst programmers than the mention of a goto statement. PHP has stepped into the middle of the firefight by announcing that it will be implementing goto functionality in version 5.3.

  • Applications

    • Ooo4Kids: Open Office for the XO Laptop

      Do you like your office automation software to be a free and Open Source as your Sugar Learning Platform? Then rejoice now that Eric Bachard has helped create OOo4Kids, an Open Office customized for 7-12 year old children that works on the XO laptop…

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Running code as part of an open standards policy

      Governments around the world are considering implementing or even mandating open standards policies. They believe these policies will provide economic, socio–political, and technical benefits. In this article, we analyze the failure of the Massachusetts’s open standards policy as applied to document formats. We argue it failed due to the lack of running code. Running code refers to multiple independent, interoperable implementations of an open standard. With running code, users have choice in their adoption of a software product and consequently economic and technological benefits. We urge governments to incorporate a “running code” requirement when adopting an open standards policy.

Leftovers

  • Elsevier Reveals More Details About Its Fake Journal Division

    Remember how Elsevier and Merck were caught putting out a fake journal that had articles favoring Merck drugs, implying peer reviewed articles that weren’t? Soon afterwards, it came out that Elsevier had a whole division for such things. However, following an internal investigation, it looks like Elsevier is backtracking a bit and saying that, while the group’s practices were problematic, most weren’t as egregious as the “Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine (AJBJM)” that was created by Merck and Elsevier.

  • Censorship/Web Abuse

    • Supreme Court Won’t Hear Case Over Computer Tech’s Right To Search Your Computer

      The guy appealed to the Supreme Court, who has declined to hear the case, meaning that the ruling stands for the time being. So, basically, if you hand your computer over to someone else for repairs, at least in some jurisdictions, they may have pretty free rein in terms of what they’re allowed to access on your computer.

    • Commission steps up pressure on Telecoms Package

      The European Commission is putting pressure on the Council and the new European Parliament for the swift adoption of the Telecoms Package. Such adoption would mean that Internet access could legally be restricted by broadband providers and would not allow for proper scrutiny of the law or any consideration of the implications of Amendment 138.

    • The Big Broadband Bluff

      This is precisely what net neutrality is all about. It doesn’t matter what the bits are, you pay purely on the basis of quantity or speed you want. Attempts by BT and Virgin to pretend that high-quality video streaming services are somehow different are just a pathetic attempt to try it on with authorities and users that don’t know any better. We do, so we need to call their bluff.

  • Copyrights

    • UK government or IFPI – whose figures are dodgy?

      According to an article in The Guardian. a recent UK government research report on downloading and copyright enforcement contained some ‘dodgy figures’. Interestingly, the report claims far heavier ‘losses’ from downloading than the music industry’s own figures. And some quietly released figures from the BPI show digital music sales going up, and only a small recessionary downturn in overall revenue.

    • Hadopi : le Conseil constitutionnel censure la riposte graduée
    • Can Scraping Non-Infringing Content Become Copyright Infringement… Because Of How Scrapers Work?

      Earlier this year, we couldn’t figure out how Facebook’s lawsuit against Power.com made any sense. Power.com tried to aggregate various social networking accounts in a single place, so you could manage them all at once through a single interface. Yet Facebook charged the company with all sorts of complaints, including copyright and trademark infringement, unlawful competition and violation of the computer fraud and abuse act.

    • Copyleft Is Not Enough

      Freedom is not about having power over someone else (or what someone else has), it’s about oneself (and one’s possessions) being free of someone else’s power.

      Copyright and patent are privileges that give holders power over others (and what they may or may not do with their possessions). Copyleft is about restoring the individual’s freedoms suspended by these privileges. Copyleft is not about giving the author, recipient or user of software, power over others or others’ computers.

    • Student challenges prof, wins right to post source code he wrote for course

      Kyle Brady writes, “Thanks to some perseverance and asking the right questions, SJSU professors are now prohibited from barring students from posting their code solutions online, as well as penalizing their students for doing so. A win for students, programmers, and copyfighters nationwide!”

    • ISPs and Copyright Holders Set Up ‘Pirate Review Board’

      ISPs and the entertainment industries are in negotiations to set up a so-called ‘pirate review board’ in Denmark. The body will oversee and mediate in cases of copyright infringement by alleged online pirates and try to stop large organizations ending up in court, such as in The Pirate Bay and AllofMP3 domain blocking cases.

    • What do the EU results and Pirate Party mean for digital rights?

      Stand back from the media frenzy concentrating on Labour’s woes for a moment, and ask yourself what these elections mean for digital rights.

      Several parties that broadly supported digital rights concerns did well in this election, including, in the UK, UKIP and the Greens. The Liberal Democrats also had a fair showing.

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

Digital Tipping Point: Gerry Singleton, OpenOffice.org documentation lead 01 (2007)

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

]]> http://techrights.org/2009/06/12/hadopi-down/feed/ 0 Unruly Media: AstroTurfers http://techrights.org/2009/03/03/unruly-media-astroturfers/ http://techrights.org/2009/03/03/unruly-media-astroturfers/#comments Tue, 03 Mar 2009 17:45:34 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/2009/03/03/unruly-media-astroturfers/ Error: wrong address for guerrilla marketing

Hi Roy,

Hope you don’t mind me introducing myself! I’m from Unruly Media, a viral seeding company in London, and we’re currently running a campaign for Barclaycard, which I think would go down really well on Boycott Novell. It’s a spoof ad, promoting Barclaycard’s competition to see who can create the best spoof of their Waterslide ad, and since you liked the Specsavers spoof, I thought this might be up your street!

You can see the spoof video and find out more about the Waterslide competition here: http://www.youtube.com/barclaycardcreate

We’re also looking for interesting sites and blogs to run the clip on a commercial basis. If you’re interested, we can give you a video player to embed and pay you for every US view of the clip. You can pick up the video and see the commercial terms for running the campaign, here: http://console.unrulymedia.com/publisher/video/signup?apid=798&xname=BoycottNovell

(I’ve pre-approved your application, so once you’ve chosen a username and password you’ll have immediate access to the system and be able to put the campaign up straight away if you choose to).

Our videos are clearly marked as commercially sponsored and we adhere to a strict code of ethics, which you can read here: http://www.unrulymedia.com/ethics-code

If you want to check us out, take a look at www.unrulymedia.com and please drop me a line if you have any questions.

I’ve no idea what the “Specsavers spoof” is (maybe it’s made up), but either way, we at Boycott Novell don’t do that spiel. Au contraire — we strive to expose those type of campaigns which Microsoft too is organising behind the scenes, typically using agencies. For details see:

“I’m a huge fan of guerrilla marketing.”

–Joe Wilcox, Microsoft Fan

]]> http://techrights.org/2009/03/03/unruly-media-astroturfers/feed/ 0 Doomsday Part II: Microsoft Officially Kills Another Product, Cringely on 50,000 Microsoft Layoffs http://techrights.org/2009/02/19/microsoft-doomsday-status/ http://techrights.org/2009/02/19/microsoft-doomsday-status/#comments Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:24:10 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/2009/02/19/microsoft-doomsday-status/ SOME PEOPLE saw this coming a couple of weeks ago and the word is finally out.

Microsoft has told Equipt customers that the subscription software package will be killed off on 30 April 2009.

This was also covered by IDG News Service. It is one among many products and divisions that Microsoft ended over the past year. Microsoft also ended its contracts with many employees and contractors, leading Cringley to suggest that Microsoft should sack about half of its workforce. He is finally giving a detailed breakdown.

And there you go – 30,000-50,000 heads later Microsoft would be smaller but stronger, more focused, agile, and better able to compete on a level playing field. Call it the Cringely Plan. Ballmer can implement it, drive Microsoft stock to $150 and then retire a gazillionaire, leaving the Bentonville Mafia to spend the next decade doing what they do best, optimizing processes.

Mr. Lawrence is meanwhile foreseeing or at least agreeing that Windows domination is ending, partly due to GNU/Linux.

Windows could die soon! Isn’t life GRAND?

[...]

Linux chomping at the Netbook market that caught the brilliant Microsoft folks by surprise (anything with “net” in it catches Microsoft by surprise), there’s the wonderful gift of Vista.. and the Great Beast stumbles around shedding employees.

Combine this with the news from Part I and it soon becomes abundantly clear that Microsoft is not invincible at all. Au contraire — it’s enormously fragile at the moment because it relies on very few products that generate profit and are under tremendous, constant threat from SaaS and Free software, including GNU/Linux. █

GNU and Linux

]]> http://techrights.org/2009/02/19/microsoft-doomsday-status/feed/ 1 Novell is Losing the Few Supporters It Had Left http://techrights.org/2008/11/15/novell-black-widow/ http://techrights.org/2008/11/15/novell-black-widow/#comments Sat, 15 Nov 2008 14:13:35 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/2008/11/15/novell-black-widow/ Novell’s desperate actions speak louder than promises and commitments

Novell must realise that death of public trust can sooner or later result in the death of a company. There is a lot of choice in GNU/Linux and too little lock-in. Novell is stepping in quicksand if it believes that stomping on Red Hat (and ‘small’ guys like CentOS) using Microsoft’s budget is going to get its SUSE brochures anywhere but the wastebasket.

It is typically techies who choose what distribution to deploy. Judging by previous articles [1, 2, 3, 4], Novell’s strategy earns it no friends. Au contraire — it buys Novell new enemies.

Tectonic, a notable South African publication specialising in GNU/Linux and FOSS, has routinely commended Novell over the years, but its latest article about Novell receives a lot of responses because it represents a change in attitude.

Novell makes itself even harder to trust

[..]

Novell seems determined to weaken the same Linux world by forcing it to fight with itself. This couldn’t be better news for competitors such as Microsoft.

A software patent agreement with Microsoft was also the first hint that Novell was just after a quick buck. This most recent plan pretty much seals that reputation.

It also suggests that Novell is struggling; struggling to convince users to deploy its software and struggling to get migration deals signed. So it turns on the community that helped it avoid an untimely death and devises new ways to destroy it.

Looking elsewhere, it’s a lot of the same. The first few comments (without omissions) on the IDG article bear the headings:

“Another Novell failure in the making”

“Fail !”

“Why would anyone do that ?”

One hour ago in Tectonic, the following comment showed up:

“Novell can give me all the free SuSE they want….

“… and it will remain in the wrapping and quickly find itself in /dev/bin. I hate it with a passion.”

Over in Free Software Magazine, which commented on Novell’s strategy even before Tuesday’s announcement, skepticism was voiced due to Novell’s mixed-source identity [1, 2, 3, 4] (Novell is still a largely-proprietary software company, not just a Microsoft partner).

As I said, the idea that software stacks will become a mixture of free and proprietary products is nothing new. Indeed lots of people are already using such stacks. Personally I believe that once freedom is introduced into a “market place” it will become harder to suppress until eventually it becomes the dominant licencing strategy. This is evident in the fact that a company like Novell not only bought a free software company (SuSE), but bought into the free software philosophy — well partly anyway. So while proprietary software may not entirely die out (more’s the pity) I feel (and hope) it will become the de-facto NON-standard way of licencing software.

“Mixed source” is a bad name for this — er — mix though. The source or openness of it is largely irrelevant if you ask me. When you mix free and proprietary systems in one application stack — like it or not — the entire stack has a proprietary effect. Obviously the degree of that proprietary effect will depend on how vital the proprietary software is to the stack. Use a free software database back-end with a proprietary front-end and your stack is largely subject to the whim of front-end’s vendor.

ComputerWorld credits Boycott Novell for the opposition.

Joint Windows/Linux support is something that a lot of businesses need. That said, Novell working hand-in-glove with Microsoft doesn’t go over at all well with many Linux users. Boycott Novell, after all, which serves as the lightning rod for resentment against Novell and Microsoft working together, is a very popular site.

Novell closed offices in Europe over a week ago, so its clock its definitely ticking. The English-speaking press was rather mute on this important development, perhaps — just perhaps — because it affects only the workforce in Europe (which will work from home).

Novell is desperate for growth (it’s on;y faking success), but it could offer technical help and incentives to move from Windows and UNIX to GNU/Linux. What they do at the moment just weakens their collaborators at Red Hat — those who also help the development of SLED and SLERT because efforts are being pooled and code always shared. They cannibalise GNU/Linux and harm their own breed in the process. █

Black widow
Novell: the black widow of Linux

“This is a general misconception, as the name seems to suggest that the males are invariably consumed after mating.”

–Black widow spider

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