Summary: A daily news roundup with special focus on an easy-to-debunk GNU/Linux ‘article’ from The Economist
THIS is the seventh episode, which Tim and Roy keep short to obey requests from regular listeners of the show. Our leading story today is a fun FUD piece from The Economist, which is talked about for the first 10 minutes or so. Tim’s site, OpenBytes, will share some links about that.
Today we play no special song and instead revert back to our default one from Tom Smith. We hope you will join us for next week’s shows, which will be more packed with stories.
“A Stanford researcher, Philip Guo, has developed a tool called CDE to automatically package up a Linux program and all its dependencies (including system-level libraries, fonts, etc!) so that it can be run out of the box on another Linux machine without a lot of complicated work setting up libraries and program versions or dealing with dependency version hell. He’s got binaries, source code, and a screencast up. Looks to be really useful for large cluster/cloud deployments as well as program sharing. Says Guo, ‘CDE is a tool that automatically packages up the Code, Data, and Environment involved in running any Linux command so that it can execute identically on another computer without any installation or configuration. The only requirement is that the other computer have the same hardware architecture (e.g., x86) and major kernel version (e.g., 2.6.X) as yours. CDE allows you to easily run programs without the dependency hell that inevitably occurs when attempting to install software or libraries. You can use CDE to allow your colleagues to reproduce and build upon your computational experiments, to quickly deploy prototype software to a compute cluster, and to submit executable bug reports.’”
Canonical’s Chase Douglas has corralled Daniel Stone’s X Input 2.1 Multi-Touch patches and have readied them for integration into the X.Org Server and related software components.
The patches for the xorg-server, protocol, and input drivers are now available on the mailing list. There’s also an X Input 2.1 Multi-Touch PPA for Ubuntu users seeing as all of the interest Canonical has had in multi-touch (with their own multi-touch framework and proposing an X Gesture Extension) and their plans to ship greater multi-touch support in Ubuntu 11.04 regardless of what’s pushed upstream in time.
Have you ever had a machine get compromised? What did you do? Did you run rootkit checkers and reboot? Did you restore from backups or wipe and reinstall the machines, to remove any potential backdoors?
In some cases, that may not be enough. In this blog post, we’re going to describe how we can gain full control of someone’s machine by giving them a piece of hardware which they install into their computer. The backdoor won’t leave any trace on the disk, so it won’t be eliminated even if the operating system is reinstalled. It’s important to note that our ability to do this does not depend on exploiting any bugs in the operating system or other software; our hardware-based backdoor would work even if all the software on the system worked perfectly as designed.
YaRock is a new Qt4 music player designed to provide a nice overview of your music by allowing you to browse your music collection based on the album cover art. And this isn’t just about the visuals because YaRock allows you to browse your music in such a way (multiple ways actually) that you won’t need to use the search feature anymore (though it has that too).
Linux users, regardless which distro you are using, it bound to come with a default PDF reader that you can use to read PDF files. In Ubuntu, that software is Evince. In most instances, Evince works well for me. It can remember the page where I last stopped and allows me to print without any problem. However, when it comes to big complex PDF files, this is where Evince starts to stutter.
Last week when I wrote about Canonical’s decision to go with Unity on Wayland I mentioned traditional desktop interfaces are mostly unsuitable for more mobile computers, including tablets, phones and netbooks. I should have been more specific about the interfaces themselves and not the software used to build them and, as the KDE developers pointed out to me, the Plasma Netbook workspace is an alternative for today’s smaller screens.
The popular open source and commercial desktops of Windows 7, Mac OS X and GNOME and KDE are well suited to the opulent widescreen monitors that plant themselves on computer desks like the one I’m sitting in front of now.
Eugeni Dodonov, newly appointed Mandriva Cooker Manager, has posted the details of the next two Mandriva releases as well as announced the new release schedule policy. One of these release comes as a Christmas surprise, something seen from the Mandriva project before.
Dodonov posted to the Cooker mailing list that Mandriva will be releasing two releases in the coming months. The first will be seen around December 22, as a Christmas present for all Mandriva users. Mandriva 2010.2 is a freshly updated version of 2010.1, or Mandriva 2010 Spring, with all the security and bugs fixes that have been implemented since 2010.1 was released, “plus also lots of improvements, stability and performance fixes in many, many packages.”
Red Hat released Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6 earlier this week. The new operating system, filled with technical innovations, performance enhancements, and customer-requested improvements, has met with positive press, as well as solid customer and partner response. However, how it’s being marketed could be much more important — to customers and to open source vendors in general.
Former Red Hat Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Matthew Szulik is not surprised at all that the company he helped build into a global technology success story is contemplating moving from its Raleigh home.
Szulik, who retired earlier this year as chairman after stepping aside as CEO two years earlier to care for his ailing father and late father-in-law, says he faced constant questions from Red Hat’s board about whether to move the Linux software firm to Silicon Valley.
“It never stopped, Rick. It never stopped,” Szulik said in an interview.
I was meaning to write this yesterday and before you know, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0 final is out. But that doesn’t mean we can’t post a quick look at this one.
As most of you will know, Scientific Linux is a free clone of RHEL compiled from the original source rpm’s, and with the upstream branding removed. As such it is almost identical to the Red Hat product, but in contrast to the CentOS project the SL team are adding and tweaking a few packages to make it better suit their needs, the needs of CERN. It is cool to know that the people responsible behind the Large Hadron Collider are putting this together, and it makes me feel that on top of the proven reliability of the enterprise grade Red Hat product there is another layer of hugely competent folk that cross check and add their own finishing touches. As this distribution is used across many scientific sites and labs it has to have a sane base, be usable on laptops, and easily customizable for different sites and different spins. I imagine the labs will have somewhat different requirements from laptop users and admin staff. Scientific Linux has added wireless firmware and tools and a few packages that make life easier to the official Red Hat, and that’s a point in its favor for the user who would like to take advantage of the power of an enterprise product.
Red Hat has released Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, the first major update for RHEL in over three years.
RHEL 5 debuted in March 2007 and used the Linux 2.6.18 kernel. Although incremental updates have added a number of kernel updates and new features, RHEL5 is starting to look aged. Of course much of the appeal of an enterprise distro is precisely that it ages well – ten years in RHEL’s case.
A couple of days back I decided a week was plenty long enough to be running a boring, stable OS like Fedora 14 on my desktop and decided to upgrade it to Rawhide instead. I’ve never gone to Rawhide this early in a Fedora cycle before (though I used to run Cooker permanently when I ran Mandriva), so it’s been an interesting ride. I’ve spent the last couple of days poking at various little issues and fixing some small things. Now I’ve got a pretty usable system going, at least for my purposes.
Before I could upgrade at all, I patched xchat-gnome to build against libnotify 0.7 and sent the patch upstream. Don’t be too impressed; it’s not exactly a complicated patch. There’s quite a lot of apps that haven’t been patched and rebuilt against libnotify 0.7 yet in Rawhide, but xchat-gnome was the only one I actually need.
Debian 5 is perfect for those who want a very stable system that provides a great deal of control to the user. It is not well suited for those looking for the latest & greatest of everything. If you bear that in mind and proceed accordingly, you might find Debian 5 to be a very useful desktop distro.
Those who want things to be a bit more up-to-date should really consider Linux Mint Debian instead. Bear in mind that LMDE is based on the testing branch (also known as Squeeze) rather than on the stable branch (Lenny). So you may not have the same sort of rock-solid stability that you get in Debian 5. It’s a bit of a trade-off, to a certain degree and it’s something you should know when you consider choosing between the two.
My experience with Debian 5 was overwhelmingly positive. I’ll be keeping it around to use regularly, though I suspect I will still lean a bit toward Linux Mint Debian a fair amount of the time.
Debian 5 is probably best suited to intermediate and advanced Linux users.
However, there are still some issues with the Compiz based Unity (that’s why it’s only available in a PPA for now): Dash doesn’t work so to launch applications you can only use the Unity launcher (“dock”). Also, the icons in the upper panel are aligned to the left for some reason.
Simply speaking, Unity is another visual representation to allow easy access to your installed programs. Compared to launching an application by using a keyboard shortcut, a menu entry, a docky/cairo/… dock icon or a graphical shortcut on the desktop, Unity uses a launchbar glued to left side of the screen plus a graphical menu where all applications are displayed as icons. Gone are the classic menus. Is this something to be afraid of? No, so technically speaking I see no reason to utter something negative about this way of representing an access method to launch applications.
Linux Mint 10 (“Julia”) has been released, based on Ubuntu 10.10 (“Maverick Meerkat”). I’ve been running Ubuntu for about 4 years now and for the past couple of years have been running the spin off distribution “Mint“. Mint is Ubuntu with a lot of GNU GPL software added in such as Adobe flash and multimedia codecs, so it adds some functionality that isn’t possible under Ubuntu’s strict open source licenses. This moves away from the philosophy of Ubuntu but provides an even more functional distribution right out of the box. Many hardened linux users can’t stand the site of Ubuntu as it moves more into the Windows world of armchair computing and presents users with a computer they again don’t need to understand the workings of. I’ve flirted with Mandriva, Arch, Fedora, Suse, and Slackware but keep coming back to Ubuntu just for the ease of setup and the canonical repositories. My available time means I often just don’t have the time to go through some of the problems encountered when compiling from source code and hunting down dependencies. This isn’t a distrubution or linux fault – it’s just I don’t have enough understanding to race off and sort everything out, and I don’t have the time to learn more at the moment.
I am really excited about some recent work by Marcin on starting a u-boot and Linux kernel port to the Mediatek MT6235 baseband processor.
Among GSM baseband processors, the MT6235 is a very unusual device. Unlike classic GSM baseband chips, it is not based on an MMU-less ARM7TDMI/ARM7EJS but on an ARM926EJS core. This is a full-blown ARMv5 core on which a standard Linux kernel could run.
Continuing with our cookery theme this morning, we now have a full tray of scrumptious-looking gingerbread Android men, courtesy of Google Mobile’s Twitter account. The whole world and his poodle already know that Gingerbread, Android’s next iterative update that’s presently expected to be given the numerical identifier of 2.3, is coming some time soon, but now Google’s taken to fanning the flames of anticipation with some home cooking.
Come early 2011, Netflix will appear on “select Android devices,” according to the company’s official blog, which also promises a “standard, platform-wide solution” for Android in the unspecified future.
Lenovo led us to believe that that our LePad chances weren’t terribly good, but CEO Yang Yuanqing recently told the Wall Street Journal that the Android tablet is indeed slated for a 2011 US launch.
We’ve recently covered the fact that Google may have dragged its feet on delivering its cloud-focused Chrome OS operating system for too long now, but could another cloud-focused OS–backed by a startup far smaller than Google–represent another roadblock to widespread adoption of Chrome OS? Jolicluoud has a freely downloadable operating system that is completely designed to make working with cloud-based applications, ranging from Facebook to Google’s own apps, easy. I’ve used it extensively, and written about how it may have a strong future as a secondary operating system–one you use in addition to your primary one. Now, the first netbooks based on Jolicloud are coming to market, ahead of Chrome OS-based ones.
UNR 10.04 Lucid Lynx is fast, sexy and useful. It plays popular media, suspends and resumes in a blink, has an eon of battery life, interfaces smoothly with all kinds of network shares, printers, gadgets, and whatnot, allows full customization, allows decent multi-tasking, and does not play any foul games.
UNR 10.10 does none of this except being sexy. You may eventually get it to do all kinds of pretty things, but you will be isolated in a virtual world, where your entirely experience is limited to online. Why plug in a USB drive or connect to your second box via Samba when you have Ubuntu One to share files? Why delete anything, after all, we’re in the era of information. Why bother where your stuff goes, use the inline search? Right? Wrong.
I wholeheartedly recommend Lucid Lynx for your netbooks. And it will be fully supported until 2013. But UNR 10.10 Maverick Meerkat is a flop. It may be a revolution, but I’m one of the victims, left bleeding in the ditch, covered with an old newspaper.
It’s amazing how good the desktop edition is compared to this. Really stunning. I really wonder where all the decisions come from and how they all blend. Using the distro name alongside the UNR badge does the autumn release a disgrace. Purrty and evil.
Stay away from UNR 10.10. If and when I miraculously discover how to tame this beast, I might update you, but the first impression is one of impotence and despair. Don’t touch this. Dedoimedo out.
These are frugal times for business, and an organization starting out might have very little money to spend on IT. Even if you’re part of an established business, you’re probably feeling the pinch.
Here are five extremely useful computing resources that are free of charge for small business users–unlike some “free” services you might see that are only for home users. These choices have few if any restrictions, and are established services unlikely to shut up shop anytime soon.
Mozilla Labs is back with an all new Design Challenge! We’re calling on all data visualization wizards to participate and help the Test Pilot & Mozilla Metrics teams create visual answers to the question: “How do people use Firefox?”
As a longtime Firefox user, I’m understandably jazzed about version 4, the first major update of the browser since 3.5 dropped in June, 2009. Firefox 4 is due to arrive in early 2011, and with it a host of new features.
Launched by MySQL creator Michael “Monty” Widenius, the MariaDB MySQL fork has been released for downloading as version 5.2. The open source database is based on MySQL 5.1.51, although MariaDB contains additional functions. The release notes say that all commands, interfaces, libraries, and APIs from MySQL also run in MariaDB so it’s a drop in replacement for current installations. No innovations were added following the Release Candidate; instead, the developers concentrated on troubleshooting.
The litigation battle between Google and Oracle continues to heat up. The search giant fired the latest volley with a filing that outlines twenty separate defenses against Oracle’s claim that Google’s Android mobile platform infringes intellectual property that Oracle obtained from Sun. Google argues that no infringement has transpired, and that it isn’t responsible even if evidence of actual infringement is found.
This dispute erupted in August when Oracle sued Google over its use of the Java programming language in Android, even though Java is ostensibly an open language and Google uses its own clean-room implementation. Oracle grants a license to the necessary intellectual property to developers who can demonstrate their Java implementations conform with Java standards. Oracle has, however, refused to provide the requisite compatibility test suite under terms that are acceptable to third-party Java implementors—including the Harmony project, which Google relies on for its Java library stack.
In July we launched the idea on the mailing list to setup a Nooku Incubator where developers can collaborate on building new an innovative Nooku Components. Over the past few months we have been making steady progress. The Nooku Incubator is being setup as we speak and will open it’s doors in the coming weeks.
In order to ensure that everyone has the same understanding of and commitment to Nooku when they choose to participate in the Nooku Incubator we have created a Nooku Contributor Agreement.
In simple terms, the Nooku Contributor Agreement states that:
* You retain the ownership of the Contribution
* You grant us a copyright license under the terms of the GNU LGPLv3/GNU GPLv3/GNU AGPLv3.
* You warrant that your Contribution doesn’t violate the rights of any third parties.
Where do conservative urbanists, liberal activists, and free culture advocates congregate? Last week it was in Berlin at the first ever International Commons Conference (ICC) held by the Commons Strategies Group and the Heinrich Boll Foundation. The combination of traditional and digital commons was explored as a transformational paradigm for the first time through an international conference in keynote addresses, conference tracks, breakout groups, and plenary sessions over two days.
Ahead of the EU-US summit on 20 November, MEPs agreed their recommendations on positions the Council should take regarding key transatlantic issues such as economic co-operation, personal data protection, the introduction of a US travel fee and recent leaks of US classified military documents on Iraq.
How hard would it be to go a week without Google? Or, to up the ante, without Facebook, Amazon, Skype, Twitter, Apple, eBay and Google? It wouldn’t be impossible, but for even a moderate Internet user, it would be a real pain. Forgoing Google and Amazon is just inconvenient; forgoing Facebook or Twitter means giving up whole categories of activity. For most of us, avoiding the Internet’s dominant firms would be a lot harder than bypassing Starbucks, Wal-Mart or other companies that dominate some corner of what was once called the real world.
If you want to realize just how amazing the level of progress has been with the internet, realize this: it was just 20 years ago, today, that Tim Berners-Lee proposed the web…
There’s a science behind the comments on websites.
It’s actually quite predictable how much chatter a post on Slashdot or Wikipedia will attract, according to a new study of several websites with large user bases. And the thread of an online conversation — whether it sticks to the original topic or users comment on each other’s comments — can be modeled as a tree with discussions veering off on branches, researchers report online November 2 at arXiv.org.
The findings give hope to social scientists trying to understand broader phenomena, like how rumors about a candidate spread during a campaign or how information about street protests flows out of a country with state-controlled media.
Now a 29-year-old engineer and business owner, Lemire-Elmore has found himself among the vanguard of a thriving online counterculture. This group rejects traditional bicycles, and chooses to make their own bikes propelled by battery-powered electric motors. Many of them believe they’re helping to create future communities that will have fewer polluting vehicles and less traffic congestion.
A U.S.-developed video game that lets players try to kill Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro sparked an angry reaction from Cuba on Wednesday, the latest charge in the long history of bitter U.S.-Cuba ties.
“What the United States government did not achieve in more than 50 years, it now tries to do virtually,” said a story on government-run website www.cubadebate.cu.
David Kernell, the former Tennessee student convicted of hacking into Sarah Palin’s personal e-mail account, was sentenced on Friday to one year in custody.
Kernell, 22, was convicted earlier this year of misdemeanor computer intrusion and a felony count of obstruction of justice. The jury found him not guilty of a wire-fraud charge and hung on a fourth charge for identity theft, after four days of deliberating.
Former Tennessee student David Kernell, who was convicted of hacking into Sarah Palin’s personal e-mail account, was sentenced today to one year in custody.
A former Secret Service agent says in his new book that he nearly shot President Lyndon B. Johnson hours after John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
In “The Kennedy Detail,” Gerald Blaine recalls standing guard outside the Washington home of newly sworn-in President Johnson in the early hours of Nov. 23, 1963.
Blaine heard footsteps approaching. He picked up his submachine gun and, in the darkness, pointed it at the chest of a man who turned out to be Johnson.
Sports, in its most profound sense, can be cathartic in ways beyond our comprehension. In times of turmoil and anguish, sports’ therapeutic abilities can lead us out of the darkness and toward a better place — if not tangibly, then in the recesses of our minds.
On a planet hosting 6.7 billion human beings, having proof you’re unique is of tantamount importance. The ear, it turns out, may be the best identification yet.
This morning, I tried to fly out of San Diego International Airport but was refused by the TSA. I had been somewhat prepared for this eventuality. I have been reading about the millimeter wave and backscatter x-ray machines and the possible harm to health as well as the vivid pictures they create of people’s naked bodies. Not wanting to go through them, I had done my research on the TSA’s website prior to traveling to see if SAN had them. From all indications, they did not. When I arrived at the security line, I found that the TSA’s website was out of date. SAN does in fact utilize backscatter x-ray machines.
I made my way through the line toward the first line of “defense”: the TSA ID checker. This agent looked over my boarding pass, looked over my ID, looked at me and then back at my ID. After that, he waved me through. SAN is still operating metal detectors, so I walked over to one of the lines for them. After removing my shoes and making my way toward the metal detector, the person in front of me in line was pulled out to go through the backscatter machine. After asking what it was and being told, he opted out. This left the machine free, and before I could go through the metal detector, I was pulled out of line to go through the backscatter machine. When asked, I half-chuckled and said, “I don’t think so.” At this point, I was informed that I would be subject to a pat down, and I waited for another agent.
Investment bankers and traders in Britain will have their mobile phone conversations recorded in the latest step by the country’s financial regulator to crack down on insider trading and market abuse.
It is the biggest rummage sale in Wall Street history — what one investment company calls “the Great Liquidation.”
Two years after Washington rescued Wall Street, hundreds of billions of dollars of bad investments — in many cases, the same ones that poisoned banks and then the economy — are going up for sale.
Leaders of 20 major economies on Friday refused to back a U.S. push to make China boost its currency’s value, keeping alive a dispute that raises fears of a global trade war amid criticism that cheap Chinese exports are costing American jobs.
A joint statement issued by the leaders including President Barack Obama and China’s Hu Jintao tried to recreate the unity that was evident when the Group of 20 rich and developing nations held its first summit two years ago during the global financial meltdown.
The Group of 20 summit for heads of government this weekend will apparently “hail bank reform,” particularly as manifest in the Basel III process that has resulted in higher capital requirements for banks. According to leading authorities on the issue, however, the Basel process is closer to a disaster than a success.
President Barack Obama, capping a far-flung Asian trip of mixed results, assured Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Sunday that getting the Senate to ratify the START nuclear weapons treaty is a “top priority” of his administration.
The harsh aftermath of the global financial crisis of two years ago still weighed on corporate chiefs and political leaders as they gathered on Thursday in closed-door discussions on the sidelines of the two-day meeting of the Group of 20 economic powers.
President Obama’s inability to secure a free-trade agreement with South Korea reveals in sharp relief the limits of his leverage overseas after a devastating midterm election.
Obama’s visit to four Asian democracies is aimed at promoting trade and other economic partnerships to boost long-term job creation in the United States, where voters pounded his Democratic Party this month over a moribund employment market.
Can you remember when the Federal Reserve was above criticism? When politicians vied for Alan Greenspan’s favor and fell all over themselves praising his wisdom?
Voters who demanded Washington rein in the nation’s spiraling debt are getting a message from President Barack Obama and leaders of his deficit commission: It’ll hurt.
A proposal released Wednesday by the bipartisan leaders of the commission suggested cuts to Social Security benefits, deep reductions in federal spending and higher taxes for millions of Americans to stem the flood of red ink that they say threatens the nation’s very future. The popular child tax credit and mortgage interest deduction would be eliminated.
In a politically incendiary plan, the bipartisan leaders of President Barack Obama’s deficit commission proposed curbs in Social Security benefits, deep reductions in federal spending and higher taxes for millions of Americans Wednesday to stem a flood of red ink that they said threatens the nation’s very future.
The White House responded coolly, some leading lawmakers less so to proposals that target government programs long considered all but sacred. Besides Social Security, Medicare spending would be curtailed. Tax breaks for many health care plans, too. And the Pentagon’s budget, as well, in a plan designed to cut total deficits by as much as $4 trillion over the next decade.
President Obama and President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea failed to reach an agreement Thursday on a long-awaited free-trade agreement, saying they had decided instead to give their negotiators more time to work out differences, which revolved around Korean imports of American autos and beef.
Janet Tavakoli, Tavakoli Structured finance, and I discuss bank and forclosure fraud via Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Countrywide, Bank of America, Citigroup etc. in the video commentary above.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) faces a class action lawsuit over two collateralized debt obligations it packaged and sold in 2006 and 2007, according to its latest quarterly regulatory filing.
The Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs learned in mid-2009 that one of its traders had been formally notified by the Securities and Exchange Commission that he was the subject of an investigation. But Goldman did not tell other regulators about the inquiry for about seven months, a violation of securities regulations.
Ben Bernanke in from of Congress stated: “The Federal Reserve will not Monetize the debt.” Audio can be found here.
Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher said this past Monday: “The Federal Reserve will buy $110 billion a month in Treasuries, an amount that, annualized, represents the projected deficit of the federal government for next year. For the next eight months, the nation’s central bank will be monetizing the federal debt.”
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Natixis SA are in settlement talks to resolve a lawsuit over the termination of credit-default swaps that was scheduled to go to trial today.
Judge Elizabeth Gloster of the High Court of Justice in London agreed to postpone the start of trial until 2 p.m. today after Anthony Grabiner, a lawyer for Goldman Sachs, said the parties were likely to resolve the dispute “around lunchtime.”
Leading economists and financial experts say that our economy cannot recover until the too big to fails are broken up. See this and this. The giant banks have been sucking money out of the real economy and making us all poorer. But the government is refusing to even rein in the mega-banks, let alone break them up.
One of the too big to fails – JP Morgan – manipulates the silver market. See this, this, this, this and this.
According to the National Inflation Association, JP Morgan is “short 30,000 silver contracts representing 150 million ounces of silver. This is one of the largest concentrated short positions in the history of all commodities, representing 31% of all open COMEX silver contracts.” This could leave JP Morgan exposed if people go out and buy physical silver in large numbers.
The CBC is reporting that an important government website had a significant security glitch that led to the disclosure of sensitive personal information of about 75 people.
People who use the internet may have greater protection from electronic eavesdroppers following a consultation on changes to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).
The Home Office recommendations include an explicit opt-in for information exchanged between a sender and receiver to be intercepted by a third party, and a civil sanction for “unintentional” breaches.
The changes arise from complaints that Phorm, which makes web advertisement-serving technology, bases its selection of ads on the illegal tracking of web browsers’ online behaviour. BT was condemned for testing Phorm twice without first telling its internet customers.
Complaints were escalated to the European Commission, which said that the UK’s implementations of the EU’s data protection and e-privacy directives were flawed.
An official with Saudi Arabia’s communications authority says it has blocked Facebook because the popular social networking website doesn’t conform with the kingdom’s conservative values.
The official says Saudi’s Communications and Information Technology Commission blocked the site Saturday and an error message shows up when Internet users try to access it.
Report on “EU Summit on ‘The Open Internet and Net Neutrality in Europe” Brussels, 11 November 2010
An Internet slow lane of best efforts and a fast-lane of telco-surcharged managed services is being pushed by Europe’s telecoms industry. Will the EU resist it and support the needs of citizens? This was a key question arising out of the EU summit on Net Neutrality.’
I’m currently in the process of writing my second novel for NaNoWriMo and getting ready to self publish my first novel, so this is a very busy month for me. So to start with, during November when I have any time at all, I thought I’d start answering some of the questions Canadians have asked about Usage based Billing (UBB) BB in the CBC comments section of a couple of the online articles they have published since the CRTC approval this terrible policy.
Politicians like simple stories and simple solutions even when the issues are complex as with net neutrality. I get it. So they get told simple stories by lobbyists to get them to behave in a way that is beneficial to certain commercial interests. I get that. Complaints that the debates on net neutrality are dominated by extremes are legitimate. But the logical leap then to the argument that net neutrality purists should be dismissed and commercial interests prevail – i.e. saying one end of the spectrum is right and the other wrong – is a leap too far.
Jean-Jacques Sahels of Skype and La Quadrature du net’s Jérémie Zimmermann, for example, were very badly treated by the first afternoon session chair, Malcolm Harbour, who insisted in intervening in their contributions to the debate and disagreeing with them. At the same time Mr Harbour both explicitly and implicitly praised the contributions of those selling the anti net neutrality message. Mr Harbour’s duty as an MEP is to look to the public interest and undermining those who are attempting to speaking up for the public interest should not be part of his remit.
Howard Knopf has another post on Access Copyright and its effort to exclude 99 objectors to its tariff and to convince the Copyright Board of Canada to issue an “interim tariff” so that an important source of revenue continues to flow even as the collective demands a massive increase in fees. Knopf points to the many legal reasons why the interim request should be rejected in his post, which comes just as Access Copyright posts a open letter to the post-secondary education community. The letter claims that many in the education community are confused and frustrated by the current situation and professes to remain “open to negotiation so that we may continue to play a role in helping your institution reach its teaching and learning objectives.”
Professor Lessig is right. His call for global copyright reform is welcome and timely. However, past WIPO led efforts in this area have rather been unsuccessful. New reform initiatives should draw lessons from previous attempts in order to increase their prospects for success.
Tim Lee recently had an excellent post that deserves even greater attention. It kicks off by talking about how a series of groups that purported to be “free market” think tanks have, over the past few years, tried to become active in debates over copyright and patent law, often promoting stronger IP laws — which seems a bit odd for supposedly “free market” operations, since intellectual property is a government-granted monopoly on an abundant resource — or the very antithesis of a free market ideal. What Lee noted, is that these newer groups weren’t really intellectually honest “think tanks,” but rather were operations funded by certain business interests, set up to look like independent think tanks, and then trying to ride on the good reputation of the think tanks out there who are intellectually honest…
To give just one example, consider the Yahoo hijack and watch this new infographic of Yahoo. In particular, it is worth seeing how Microsoft’s arrival at the scene destroyed the company and made it Microsoft’s vassal. It helps show just how destructive Microsoft can be inside in the industry, ruining and breaking things (eliminating rivals) rather than creating new things (actual productivity).
Another of the trends underlying the supposed death of the web is the shift from web standards to proprietary languages for developing networked applications. This is exemplified by the iPhone app ecosystem, which is inhabited largely by apps that could be websites but have been implemented instead using Apple’s Cocoa Touch API. I touched on most of the justifications for taking this approach in my previous post. Basically, it was the shortest path for Apple to get to where they wanted to be in terms of features and tools. Conspiracy theorists might claim that they also wanted to maximize lock-in by making it harder to port apps to other platforms, doubtless citing Apple’s decision to ban third-party development environments for iOS. There’s probably some truth to that as well, despite the fact that they ended up relaxing these restrictions.
Some people have been trying to give credit to Apple for Flash abolishment, but almost no company restricts cross-platform portability as much as Apple. It totally ignores all the Free operating systems (with Free software at their core) for sure, based on the fact that Apple ignores their existence. The GPL too is still disliked or dishonoured by Apple. When the W3C tells us that MPEG-LA patents have room in HTML5-compliant documents, one must remember the note about “fake authority”. Given what the W3C does to ISO at the moment we have plenty of reasons to just label the W3C a compromised (as in hijacked) ‘think tank’. We warned about it when Novell's Jaffe was appointed as its head. Jaffe’s history, which includes the Novell-Microsoft patent deal he co-architected, speaks for itself.
Techrights believed that it’s time for Berners-Lee to come back to steering/heading the W3C and restoring sanity to it. Berners-Lee, a longtime follower of figures like Richard Stallman, has left his ‘baby’ in the hands of the very same people whose work is antithetical to Stallman’s. For instance, all the chairs at the W3C are occupied by companies whose policy is pro software patents, which Berners-Lee called “a terrible thing” at the end of last year. █
Summary: Reader’s research and some thoughts about Microsoft’s futuristic products (or rather lack thereof)
“Hello everyone,” wrote Chips B. Malroy a day or so ago. “Remember what happened to Microsoft’s Kin when it did not sell? That’s right, they cut the selling price. Here is WP7 having the same treatment.”
“In efforts to flog off what probably turned out to be the wrong products to stock,” quotes Malroy from TechEye, “Amazon has slashed the prices of two of its Windows Phone 7 smartphones, the HTC Surround and LG Quantum, to a dirt cheap $0.01.”
“Also,” adds Malroy, “the Microsoft strategy of saying WP7 is sold out because of high demand is false. As many shops only had 5 phones of various manufacturers at launch. This can be proven by various first hand comments on the web. So MS is trying to pertend that WP7 is selling out due to high demand when the truth is in many cases some manufacturers simply did not want to get stuck with high levels of stock they thought could not sell.”
Onward goes and quotes Malroy: “The deal is also only available for this weekend, but at that price they may be out of stock long before the weekend is over.”
Malroy then asks, “So why would you dump a product that is supposedly selling well?
“Is this just another case of Microsoft fudging the numbers and trying to create a bandwagon effect for sales of WP7?”
Malroy has found two more items in the news [1, 2] (“Will Ballmer bail after banking big bucks?”) from which he quotes: “All of this selling has triggered wide-eyed speculation that SteveB may be getting ready to jump ship.
“I thought this all sounded vaguely familiar, so I took a trip back down memory lane and discovered that Bill Gates went through much the same process when he was preparing to leave Microsoft. Bill’s exit strategy extended over a period of years, but he officially handed over the titular role of CEO to SteveB in January 2000, stepping out of the limelight to become the newly christened Chief Software Architect. He gradually cut back his direct involvement, transferred the Chief Software Architect mantle to Ray Ozzie in 2006, and definitively left in 2008.”
Malroy also quotes: “In 1999, the year before SteveB became CEO, Bill sold $2.5 billion in Microsoft stock. There were assurances all around that Bill was still firmly in control and would run Microsoft forever. Microsoft stock had soared and, the story went, Bill was pulling out funds to diversify his portfolio.”
And finally: “While that’s certainly true, it’s also obvious that Gates launched his departure strategy with a significant sell-off of Microsoft stock.”
Please bear in mind that Techrights no longer tracks Microsoft quite as closely as it used to for reasons that were given last month and it’s news like the above which convinces us that Microsoft’s time is running out, just like Novell’s. Patent bulling is Microsoft’s bet for the future and this is definitely a topic Techrights will cover thoroughly.
We rely on people such as Malroy accumulating links and compiling summaries which we will happily publish, so please consider getting involved. Come and join us at the IRC channels for example. Personally I’m always there paying attention unless I’m at work or asleep. Others are also willing to help and provide feedback. █
Summary: Microsoft’s extortion tactics summarised in Spanish
“Here it goes — the Chronology of Microsoft’s attacks against GNU/Linux in Spanish,” wrote to us Eduardo Landaveri, who kindly provides Spanish translations for us (on an occasional basis).
Landaveri added: “The text version [below] has the hyperlinks between square brackets, so sometimes it’s hard to read when you put them on a web page. I’m also sending it to you as an ODT & PDF so readers can download them.” For cleaner versions with working hyperlinks use the following:
These documents are being distributed in south America to better inform the people there. Below is the simplified text version of the above.
“He aquí una breve cronología de Microsoft extorsión de patentes contra GNU/Linux. Debe ser visto como parte de un ataque mucho más grande en contra GNU/Linux que continúa hasta nuestros días. La imagen que emerge es una llovizna constante de FUD (Miedo, Incertidumbre y Duda)y detrás de las escenas Microsoft se sigue armado. Voy a señalar las principales refutaciones en esta lista, pero el sistema de los EE.UU. Tribunal de Justicia tiene la última palabra y no es a favor de Microsoft[http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/24/1713259]. Las leyes todavía han de disuadir Microsoft para que sus patentes, derechos de autor y sus ataques al software libre hasta que ela compañía colapse. Microsoft se ve obligado a esto, porque nadie quiere que su tecnología de segunda categoría y fallan catastroficamente en los mercados libres.
Microsoft entiende que las patentes de software son un fraude[http://www.fsf.org/news/end-soft-patents], pero los ha utilizado contra la competencia desde finales de los años 90 y ahora es un innovador en el fraude. Bill Gates, ordenó a la empresa para iniciar el almacenamiento de patentes en 1991 y claramente los veían como una herramienta de extorsión judicial[http://www.std.com/obi/Bill.Gates/Challenges.and.Strategy]:
“Si la gente hubiera entendido cómo las patentes se concede cuando la mayoría de las ideas de hoy fueron inventadas, y había sacado las patentes, la industria estaría hoy en un punto muerto. Estoy seguro de que si alguna empresa grande patenta algo obvio relacionado con el modo de comunicación, la orientación a objetos, el algoritmo, la extensión o aplicación técnica u otra técnica crucial. Si asumimos que esta empresa no tiene ninguna necesidad de cualquiera de nuestras patentes entonces esta empresa tiene el derecho de 17 años para tener la mayor cantidad de nuestras ganancias a medida que desee. La solución a esto es el intercambio de patente con otras grandes empresas y patentar más que podamos.”
Microsoft considero patentes un arma anti-competitiva frente a Open Office desde 1998[http://techrights.org/2009/02/10/bill-gates-patents-vs-free-office/] y trató de imponer impuestos a Sun[http://techrights.org/2010/03/10/bill-gates-racketeering-revealed/]. En 2003 Bill Gates planea encaje descubrimiento de metadatos y dispositivos con patentes para excluir a Apple[http://boycottnovell.com/2009/07/31/bill-gates-wants-patented-stuff/]. Ahora, Microsoft ha tomado el fraude de patentes un paso más allá, al no decirle a la gente lo que “sus” patentes violan amenazando a los usuarios finales, al igual que lo hizo SCO con su falsas extorsión de derecho de autor. Sí, Microsoft fue responsable del ataque de SCO también[http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20061009152706664]. Microsoft ha lanzado una campaña publicitaria fuerte para extorsionar a empresas que no tienen nada que ver con su propiedad. Como si estuvieran en condiciones de cobrar el alquiler del software libre. Así pues, aquí los seis años de los que reclaman la propiedad de todo el software libre y exigir dinero por protección por cosas no especificadas.
2002 – la planificación de alto nivel.
* 25/09 – Jim Alchin en una reunión de proveedores[http://boycottnovell.com/2009/01/21/patent-lawsuit-on-linux/], “será simple, ‘Hey, estos chicos se apropiaron de propiedad intelectual.” Y si la demanda proviene de Wind River o en X, Y, Z, tiene que haber una. Garantizado ”
* 09/27 -. Jim Alchin escribe[http://boycottnovell.com/wiki/index.php?title=GNU/Linux]: “Necesitamos a alguien para derribar la indemnización ofrecida por Red Hat e IBM para sus clientes. Tenemos que entender exactamente el riesgo que un cliente se encuentra, si una demanda de patentes es exitosa y Linux es desafiado …. DEBE haber riesgos para los clientes que se transmite. “Este correo electrónico es probablemente lo que conducen a la estafa conjunto. Véase también el pdf de Comes vs Microsoft[http://boycottnovell.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/px07168.pdf].
El Consejero delegado de Wind River declaró ante el Congreso de los EE.UU. en enero de 1994, “Mi perspectiva sobre las patentes de software es simple: dejar de emitir las patentes de software Las patentes de software no deberían existir.”.
2003 – Microsoft financia el ataque de SCO sobre derechos de autor[http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20061009152706664].
2004 – Un fraude desde el primer día, el ataque de patentes se inicia.
* 02/08 – La mentira puesta en marcha por Dan Lyons[http://www.forbes.com/2004/08/02/cz_dl_0802linux.html] en el día que Ravicher de OSRM(Open Source Risk Management) publica un estudio de las amenazas de patentes a todo software. Él impulsa reivindicaciones de la patente y los ataques de “fanáticos de Linux” y la reputación de Ravicher. “Un informe que será dado a conocer hoy dice que Linux podría violar cerca de 300 patentes, incluyendo 27 en manos de Microsoft, y advierte que las empresas que utilizan Linux podrían convertirse en blancos de las demandas de varios millones de dólares. … La OSRM de 12 empleados quiere cobrar a las empresas . 150.000 dólares al año por $ 5 millones en la cobertura legal que se activa si es demandado por utilizar programas de código abierto como Linux … (esto podría asustar a) clientes y hacerlos deshacerse de Linux y volver a Unix o Windows de Microsoft – productos que no pueden ser demandados por utilizar. … El informe OSRM representa un nuevo capítulo en (la historia de SCO). ” Su compañero de pluma venenosa autor Robert Enderle[http://slashdot.org/~twitter/journal/206959]-Tecnólogo Analysta de Dataquest, GiGa Information Group, Forrester Research, el Grupo Enderle, todas bajo la nómina de pago de Microsoft- es citado diciendo las mismas cosas, haciendo ver la OSRM y toda la historia como orquestrada por Microsoft desde el principio. Hay tantas mentiras en este artículo que es imposible saber quién es inocente, todos los involucrados estan manchados.
* 11/18 – Amenaza gobiernos usuarios de GNU/Linux[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/18/ballmer_linux_lawsuits/print.html], Ballmer dijo en el Forum Microsoft Government Leaders de Asia que Linux viola más de 228 patentes. … “Algún día”, continuó, “para todos los países que están entrando en la OMC (Organización Mundial del Comercio), alguien vendrá a buscar dinero a causa de los derechos de esa propiedad intelectual.”
* 11/19 – Autor repudia el uso de Ballmer de su estudio[http://boycottnovell.com/2007/05/13/war-on-free-software/#comment-44880], “Microsoft esta a la altura de su habitual FUD (el miedo, la incertidumbre y la duda),” dijo Dan Ravicher, autor del estudio de Microsoft cita. “El código abierto no se enfrenta a más, si no menos, el riesgo legal que el software propietario. El mercado tiene que entender que el estudio que Microsoft está citando en realidad demuestra lo contrario de lo que dicen que hace.”
* Desconocido – Mucho tiempo después del hecho, consejero general de Microsoft Smith reveló extorsiones de sus clientes[http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/28/100033867/index2.htm]. Dado que bajo la GPL (Licencia Publica General) cubre sólo distribuidores de Linux, no dejó que Smith búsqueda pago de regalías directamente a los usuarios finales – muchos de los cuales son empresas de Fortune 500 (y los principales clientes de Microsoft). [Que hizo arreglos con ellos] “las grandes empresas de marca” en los servicios financieros, cuidado de la salud, de seguros y de tecnología de la información. (Dice que no quisieron ser identificado, presumiblemente por temor a enojar a la comunidad de software libre.) [http://boycottnovell.com/2007/05/15/linux-money-for-ms/]
2005 Más del mismo cansado FUD (Miedo, Incertedumbre y Duda).
* 07/10 – Socios FUDS Ballmer de Microsoft en todo el mundo[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/10/ballmer_partners/], Ballmer – inexactamente una vez más – citó una Open Source Risk Management (OSRM) encuesta a partir del verano pasado que puso de relieve la existencia de 287 patentes en el kernel de Linux. “Se rumorea Linux viola 286 patentes.” Microsoft considera que la más amplia aplicación de -las favorables a las corporaciones- derecho de propiedad intelectual, que es parte del billete de entrada a la Organización Mundial de Comercio como un arma que puede ser utilizado contra sus rivales de software.
2006 Novell se vende por $ 400 millones. FUDsters se regocijan.
* 03/26 – Steve Ballmer amenaza a todos los GNU/Linux en Forbes[http://www.forbes.com/home/enterprisetech/2006/03/22/ballmer-microsoft-linux-cz_df_0322microsoft.html], “hay expertos que afirman que Linux viola nuestra propiedad intelectual. No voy a comentar. Pero en la medida en que ese sea el caso, por supuesto, le debemos a nuestros accionistas contar con una estrategia”
* 11/02 – Microsoft y Novell tratado de Patentes.
* 11/03 – Dan Lyons(editor mayor en la revista Forbes magazine luego escritor en Newsweek) arroja acuerdo Novell como la insuficiencia de software libre[http://www.forbes.com/2006/11/03/linux-microsoft-novell-tech-cz_dl_1103linux.html] y clama que el acuerdo condena tanto a competidores como Novell y Red Hat. El jueves por la noche, le pregunté a Jeff Jaffe, CTO de Novell, si podía pensar en una empresa que se había asociado con Microsoft y haber tenido exito como resultado. … Su respuesta fue: “Creo que esta asociación está abriendo nuevos caminos.” … los nuevos caminos que son de última hora son, probablemente, la tumba de Novell. Red Hat creció, Novell se contrajo y ahora esta buscando un comprador.
* 11/03 – Más FUD de Steve Ballmer[http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/Ballmer-Invites-Patent-Talks-with-Competing-Linux-Vendors/], “Si un cliente dice: Mira, ¿tenemos responsabilidad por el uso de su trabajo patentado? Básicamente, si usted no está utilizando SUSE Linux, entonces yo diría que la respuesta? es “sí” Van a pensar dos veces [antes de descargar GNU/Linux] Hay una gran cantidad de distribuidores de Linux ahora (consideren una tratado como Novell). De repente usted tiene Oracle en el juego,… tienes Red Hat en el juego. ” Red Hat no cedió y no pasó nada. Tanto Ballmer y Ron Hoverspan de Novell, hicierón hincapié en los convertidores de OOXML para Open Office, pero admitieron que estos traductores no iba a funcionar al 100%. No creo que siquiera han llegado al 10% “interoperabilidad” todavía.
* 11/12 – El equipo de Samba pide a Novell reconsiderar su acuerdo de patentes con Microsoft[http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20061112171106871] . Muchos están disgustados que Novell no consulto con la FSF (Fundación de Software Libre)[http://www.linux.com/articles/114196], “El Equipo de Samba desaprueba firmemente las medidas adoptadas por Novell el 2 de noviembre. Una de las diferencias fundamentales entre el mundo del software propietario y el mundo del software libre es que el mundo del software propietario divide a los usuarios al obligarlos a que de acuerdo con los acuerdos de licencia coercitivos que restringen su derecho a compartir con los demás, mientras que el mundo del software libre anima a los usuarios a unirse y compartir los beneficios del software. El acuerdo sobre patentes alcanzado entre Novell y Microsoft es un acuerdo de división. … El Uso de las patentes como herramientas competitivas en el mundo del software libre no es aceptable “. – De la carta del equipo de Samba[http://news.samba.org/announcements/team_to_novell/]. el abogado de la FSF, explica, “si (Microsoft) tiene éxito en conseguir una distribución pague regalías por la distribución de software libre, otras distribuciones lo harán. … Que a continuación, tendrá éxito en la marcha del sector comercial fuera de la no- sector comercial, y Microsoft será capaz de usar sus patentes para demandar y bloquear el desarrollo de software en el sector no comercial, sin el temor de demandar a sus propios clientes, que es la fuerza que ahora los mantiene a raya de mala conducta con su cartera de patentes. ” Es una buena cosa que Red Hat y otros no mordieran el anzuelo y que la GPL3 (Licencia Publica General 3) haya frustrado la operación.
* 11/16 – Steve Ballmer explica el acuerdo entre Novell y Microsoft, donde Microsoft dio a Novell 400 millones dólares[http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9005171&intsrc=it_blogwatch], Microsoft firmó el acuerdo porque Linux “usa nuestra propiedad intelectual” y que quería “conseguir el retorno económico adecuado para nuestros accionistas por nuestra innovación. Novell nos paga dinero por el derecho a decir a sus clientes que cualquiera que use SUSE Linux está apropiadamente cubierto. Esto es importante para nosotros, porque creemos que cada cliente Linux tiene, básicamente, un pasivo del balance no revelada hacia nosotros. Sólo los clientes que utilizan SUSE han pagado correctamente por propiedad intelectual de Microsoft. ”
* 11/20 – Roger Levy, vicepresidente de soluciones de plataforma abierta de Novell, dijo en una conferencia de prensa en París[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/20/microsoft_claims_linux_code/], “los clientes tuvieron miedo de que ser demandado si cruzó plataformas y esto significaba que estaban dudando en decisiones de compra Como parte. del acuerdo, Microsoft se compromete a no demandar a nuestros clientes y nosotros (Novell) nos pusimos de acuerdo en no demandar a sus clientes “.
* 11/27 – Dan Lyons informa del acuerdo entre Microsoft y Novell como insuficiencia de software libre que condena a Novell y el resto de GNU/Linux vendedores[http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/1127/044b.html]. el movimiento es también tratada y verdadera estrategia de Microsoft: abrazar, extender – y exterminar. Funciona así: Asociarse con un jugador débil, desesperada. … Desarrollar nuevas características que te ayudan, pero hiere a otros (en este caso, Red Hat). Debilitar a todos en el mercado, a continuación, sigue adelante. Sí, él mismo lo dijo el tres de noviembre.
* 12/21 – Desarrollador de SAMBA, Jeremy Allison, renuncia a Novell por el acuerdo con Microsoft.
2007 – “Respetar la propiedad intelectual” significa pagar a Microsoft por cosas que no les pertenecen. Los proxy ataques lanzado demuestran que la venta a Microsoft no da tranquilidad a nadie.
* 05/07 – Dell se vende [http://boycottnovell.com/2007/05/07/dell-microsoft-novell/] y promete promover SLED (SUSE LinuxEnterprise Server). Los clientes mayoritariamente se oponen a la compra de cupones de Microsoft SLED [http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/archive/2007/05/07/14120.aspx] Esto tendrá un costo de ventas y cuota de mercado de Dell.
* 5 / 14 – Otro ataque de Forbes[http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/28/100033867/index.htm]. Las citas son increíbles, pero Forbes se las arregla para superar a todas los bichos de Microsoft que entrevista. “Vivimos en un mundo donde el honor, y apoyamos el cumplimiento de, la propiedad intelectual”, dijo Ballmer en una entrevista. los usuarios de software libre van a tener que “jugar con las mismas reglas que el resto de las empresas”, insiste. “Lo justo es justo.” El Consejero general de Microsoft Brad Smith y el Jefe de Licencias Horacio Gutiérrez son citados. Revelar la cifra exacta, por primera vez, afirman que el software libre viola no menos de 235 patentes de Microsoft. [Kernel de Linux 42, 65 interfaz gráfica de usuario, Open Office 45, los programas de E-mail 15, 68 no especificados y no existe una patente en la lista. Resulta que estas cifras provienen de un estudio que concluye que el software libre infringe menos que los no libres hace y el autor rechaza las afirmaciones de Ballmer [http://techrights.org/2007/05/13/war-on-free-software/#comment-44880], la fuente[http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/Author-of-Linux-Patent-Study-Says-Ballmer-Got-It-Wrong/] … “Esto no es un caso de alguna infracción accidental, sin saberlo”, afirma Gutiérrez. “Hay una enorme cantidad de patentes que se ha infringido”. Para colmo, todos los usuarios de GNU/Linux están en peligro de nuevo, ¿Microsoft podría demandar a sus clientes por concepto de regalías, la forma en que la industria discográfica? “Ese no es un puente que hemos atravesado”, dice el CEO Ballmer, “y no un puente que quiero cruzar hoy por teléfono con usted.” [2 shilled por Ina Fried [http://news.cnet.com/Report-Microsoft-says-open-source-violates-235-patents/2100-1014_3-6183437.html] antes que la revista Fortune publique, “Última modificación: 13 de mayo de 2007″]
* 5 / 17 -.. Bill Hilf, Director General de Estrategia de Plataforma[http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/05/17/microsoft-wont-sue-over-Linux_1.html], “Así que no tenemos planes para litigar Nunca se puede decir que nunca vamos a hacer nada en el futuro, pero eso no es nuestra estrategia … Esto no es como una invención trivial. Hay un par de cientos de patentes importantes aquí. ”
* 5 / 24 – Microsoft se niega a listar las patentes violadas por razones de papeleo y amenaza de Red Hat[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/24/microsoft_novell_patents/], el abogado de patentes de Microsoft, Jim Markwith dijo en la OSBC (Open Source Business Conference), “La respuesta a eso sería administrativamente imposible de seguir.” … el Director de Microsoft de Estrategia de Plataforma Sam Ramji dijo: “Como una compañía que pone 7 billones de dólares al año en Investigación y Desarrollo, tenemos una responsabilidad financiera con nuestros accionistas No tenemos ningún deseo de litigar -. gastamos 100 millones de dólares año defendernos contra demandas por patentes . Seguimos ofreciendo acuerdos de licencia a los distribuidores de piezas específicas de software especificados en el artículo [de la revista Forbes]. Red Hat es bienvenido a venir a la mesa, al igual que cualquier otro distribuidor. ”
* 06/04 – Brian Caulfield de Forbes incluye la oferta de Xandros[http://www.forbes.com/2007/06/04/linux-software-microsoft-tech-cx_bc_0604linux.html]. Los ejecutivos de Microsoft están dando a entender que el problema podría estar gestándose – El mes pasado alegando que los productos de código abierto violan 235 patentes de la compañía. … Aparte de tener que soportar conseguir flameado en algunos foros de uso geek , sin embargo, es difícil ver una desventaja para el Xandros de 80 empleados. Por el lado negativo, leer acerca de la destrucción de la EEPC de ASUS[http://boycottnovell.com/2008/11/04/xandros-microsoft-teched/] y reflexionar sobre lo que el proyectado de $ 25 millones de dólares de las licencias que han hecho Xandros ($ 5 x 25 millones de unidades, una estimación del precio lowball).
* 04/10 – Steve Ballmer dice usuarios de Red Hat le debe dinero[http://boycottnovell.com/2007/10/21/ballmer-talk-red-hat/], “creo que es genial la forma de Novell se enfrentó a los asuntos de propiedad intelectual Cuando las personas usan Red Hat [encogiéndose de hombros], por lo menos en lo que respecta a nuestra propiedad intelectual. en cierto sentido, tienen la obligación de compensnos. ”
* 10/21 – Microsoft proxy Acacia Research lanza una demanda de patentes contra Red Hat y Novell[http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071011205044141] sobre una patente multi-monitor. Según Groklaw, esta es la primera patente demanda presentada contra GNU/Linux. Tres años más tarde, Acacia pierde. Acacia van a presentar más demandas.
* 11/15 – Bill Hilf, Director General de plataforma de estrategia “. Nos gustaría llegar a acuerdos similares de patentes con todos los vendedores de Linux, pero teníamos que empezar por algún sitio”
2008 – Los Juicios Son Buenos Para los Negocios
* 02/27 – El Grupo Garner advierte al mundo sobre la Microsoft “trampa de las patentes.”[http://boycottnovell.com/2008/02/28/patent-pill-is-in-openness-pledge/], “No utilizar la documentación de Microsoft a menos que haya procesos rigurosos para hacer un seguimiento de las patentes aplicables.” [http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206900525]
* 10/17 – Horacio Gutiérrez, abogado principal de Microsoft de propiedad imaginaria amenaza a Red Hat[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10068367-56.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20], “Si los esfuerzos por licenciar no resultaran fructíferos, en última instancia, tenemos la responsabilidad para los clientes que si tienen licencias y para nuestros accionistas de asegurar que nuestra propiedad intelectual se respete . ” Lo mismo de siempre, pero tiene el nervio para que apunte a el acuerdo con Novell como un ejemplo de cómo trabajar con un rival en última instancia, pueden beneficiar a ambas compañías, “Es realmente un mecanismo de negocios para iniciar las discusiones que antes no eran posibles”. Un cinismo increíble. [Control de daños[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10070008-16.html]], [perspectiva 1[http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20081018165715723], 2[http://boycottnovell.com/2008/10/24/threat-seeded-by-microsoft/], 3[http://boycottnovell.com/2008/10/18/microsoft-fud-red-hat/], 4[http://boycottnovell.com/2008/10/21/is-horacio-gutierrez-lying/]]
* 11/24 – La mayoría de la gente piensa sentencia Biski es el fin de las patentes de software[http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/24/1713259].
2009 – Microsoft no puede competir en los dispositivos móviles y de almacenamiento masivo. Microsoft lanza sus propios juicios y más ataques proxy en contra del software libre. La sentencia Biski ha terminado el juego, pero Microsft y otros titulares de patentes pretende lo contrario.
* 23/01 – Matt Assay adivina su juego[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10148928-16.html], pero erróneamente o deliberadamente piensa que Microsoft se ha convertido en “menos estridente”.
* 1 / 31 – FUD en pocas palabras[http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1489-IBM,-Microsoft,-and-the-patent-mess---how-to-protect-yourself]. En este artículo se hace un trabajo notable sobre todas las patentes FUD en temas de conversación como si Bilski nunca hubiera sucedido.
* 06/02 – El fabricante de equipos de Brother firma un acuerdo de patentes como Novell[http://boycottnovell.com/2009/02/06/the-novell-sellout-model/].
* 2 / 25 – Microsoft demanda a TomTom[http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/25/232212], sobre más supuestas de una GNU/Linux infracción de patentes. La FAT patente de nombres largos y otros patentes de porquería se citan. El farol que se ha encendido va a terminar mal para Microsoft a pesar de que ganaron.
* 03/09 – Microsoft proxy Acacia Research (también conocido como software de árbol LLC) pone en marcha otra demanda en contra de GNU/Linux[http://dockets.justia.com/docket/texas/txedce/6:2009cv00097/114766/]. Este apunta a Red Hat, HP, Dell y Genuitec, sobre un administrador relacional de objetos. Red Hat llega a un acuerdo más tarde[http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Red-Hat-settles-with-Software-Tree-1101646.html] y muchos de los detalles se mantienen en secreto[http://techrights.org/2010/10/03/software-tree-llc-and-red-hat/].
* 30/03 – TomTom es parcialmente derrotado[http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090330130655372]. Es difícil decir quien perdio que sin saber más detalles.
* 7 / 15 – GNU/Linux fabricante NAS es agravado por Microsoft[http://slashdot.org/submission/1039369/GNULinux-NAS-Company-Taxed-by-M-Patents] Una vez más, el acuerdo es secreto.
* 23/07 – Aún tratando de extorsionar a Red Hat[http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3831226/Microsoft+Red+Hat+Renew+Linux+Patent+Spat.htm].
* 09/09 – Microsoft trata de lanzar más ataques proxy, pero fracasa su plan[http://boycottnovell.com/2009/09/11/linux-foundation-vs-ms-trolls/]. Se celebró una invitación subasta para vender las patentes a los trolls de patentes, pero el “ganador” se dio la vuelta y los vendió a la OIN (Open Invention Network). Microsoft hace lo mejor de todo por pretender la venta fue una donación y continuar exagerando el valor de las patentes y FUD.
2010 Software Armagedon de Patentes. Los trolls de Microsoft lanzan todo tipo de ataques en contra de Android de Google, y todo el mundo demanda a todos los demás. Demostrando una vez por todas que los arsenales de “defensivas” patentes sólo sirve para arruinar a la industria.
* 10/27 – Austec y Asus[http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20101025PD218.html] demandan Microsoft niveles “derechos de patentes” para bloquear el uso de Android en tabletas.
* 10/20 – Pamela Jones declara el ataque de Oracle en Google SCO II[http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20101028111354436]. Es difícil decir si Microsoft movió las cuerdas de Oracle, pero son sin duda van a afectar sus propios valiosos recursos.
Cabos Sueltos y Otros Recursos.
02.07 – Xandros devorado por Microsoft[http://boycottnovell.com/2008/07/02/xandros-linspire-microsoft/]. [2[http://boycottnovell.com/2008/07/01/linspire-information/]].
08.09 – Linspire destruido[http://boycottnovell.com/2008/08/09/linspire-ends/] y demandado de todos modos[http://boycottnovell.com/2008/10/19/linspire-deep-in-lawsuits/]. Más[http://boycottnovell.com/2008/07/01/linspire-information/].
- Corel[http://boycottnovell.com/2008/08/22/selling-out-fail/] destruido por Microsoft, pero su uso de la plataforma Windows dio a Microsoft una asa mucho más grande que las patentes en si.
- Este litigio constante[http://boycottnovell.com/2008/12/18/microsoft-intellectual-welfare-etc/] que revela su respeto real de los bienes imaginarios y desmiente las declaraciones públicas de nunca litigar. Ellos violan las patentes de otras personas a su antojo y se niegan a pagar cuando se pierde en los tribunales, pero siempre se apresuran a hacer amenazas contra el software libre, demandan dinero de otras compañías y utilizar los tribunales para conseguirlo.
- Nuevas empresas troll de patentes, como Intellectual Ventures, vienen siendo creado por Microsoft y sus empleados.
Groklaw Microsoft acuerdo con Novell página de recurso[http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=20061218045851480].
Descripción del Boicot Novell acerca del acuerdo Novell-Microsoft[http://boycottnovell.com/no-to-novell/]. █
“Un paisano entre dos abogados es como un pez entre dos gatos.” -Benjamín Franklin
Summary: A weekly roundup with special focus on hands-on experience and impressions of the latest major release of GNU/Linux, namely Fedora 14
THIS is the sixth episode, which has just been recorded by Tim and Roy. This was done right after today’s testing of Fedora and Fusion 14. I installed it permanently on 2 boxes, whereas Tim tried Fusion on his side and, as usual, his site OpenByteshas some show notes. As we’ve both had a chance to test it on some machines, we may also post detailed reviews soon (c.f. our first show, which was a Fedora 14 special that covered Fusion too).
“Plasma-desktop in KDE (4.5) is very pleasant and it provides a good-looking desktop and brilliant experience.”To summarise my experience in textual form, it was a KDE-only experience and an especially wonderful one. Having just installed Fedora 14 on another box and encountered very few difficulties (ClaudioM and other people who spoke back to me were generally happy with it as well, only with minor pet peeves). I spent many hours on it, getting a feel for what’s installed, what works, and what is harder to use. Among the installations, the first, on a desktop, went smoothly, but the second, a notebook, had the same issue as Mandriva had with it (built-in microphone not detected, so external one needed). There is a lot to be said about the startup speed and about Plasma, which has nonetheless given me a hard time today. Plasma-desktop in KDE (4.5) is very pleasant and it provides a good-looking desktop and brilliant experience. Unfortunately it decided to repeatedly crash on the laptop and it’s possibly simple to resolve (will retry tomorrow).
As time goes on, TechBytes manages to become more focused, concise, and also incorporate a logical structure which makes it easier to follow. We also intend to end every show with a song from now on. This show closes with “On My Kees” from Aqualung (freely obtainable via SXSW 2009 Showcasing Artists).
If you wish to be on the show or know someone who ought to be on the show, please let us know. Marti spoke with us for a long time today, but we are trying to sort out recording difficulties which will hopefully be overcome soon. We are eager to have him on a future show.
Ubuntu-dedicated hardware company System76 have announced plans to begin shipping internationally.
The announcement, which will see orders sent to the UK from the end of this month onwards, is fantastic news to everybody everywhere. The more easily-accessible channels for people to acquire solid and well-designed Linux-running machines the better.
This week on the show: Telstra violating the GPL, Ubuntu wants to move away from X, FSFLA says the Linux kernel is open core, Google sues the US government, Apple finally kills the Xserve and much more…
The much-anticipated Samsung Galaxy Tab has arrived, giving the Apple iPad a high-profile rival with which to compete. How do the two devices measure up to each other? The Galaxy’s smaller screen has its advantages and drawbacks. Galaxy trumps iPad in terms of Flash video support, but will consumers care? And how long will Galaxy’s advantages in areas like cameras and multitasking really last?
There’s a new Wine development release out this Friday afternoon that incorporates a few new features that have been brewing within the development community over the past two weeks. This release is Wine 1.3.7.
A month ago there was the 1.0 beta release of the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries, which are the software libraries created to help in the development of the E17 desktop. EFL 1.0 also marks a point of API/ABI stability and is being used by projects outside of E17 proper, such as with Samsung’s Enlightenment usage. Today the second beta of the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries is now available.
In the Ubuntu Desktop team we’re currently packaging GNOME 3 components for Ubuntu as per the blueprint decided at the last Ubuntu Developer Summit.
If you’re already brave enough to be running Natty, then you can additionally try some new GNOME 3 applications by adding the GNOME3 builds PPA into your sources. Expect the usual – the packages may not work perfectly, and it’s non-trivial to downgrade, so be warned!
These days some people have started to ask about the current GNOME Shell accessibility status, probably a collateral effect of the Boston Summit, as Joanmarie Diggs and Alejandro Leiva (Orca maintainers) were talking there with GNOME Shell developers, mainly about the current Universal Access UI and how fit Orca on the new ui experience.
Easily configure the GDM, ‘login manager’ to the rest of us, with ‘Change GDM GUI’ – a simple script for changing various aspects of the login interface.
Linux Mint 10 “Julia” has been released today. “Julia” is based on Ubuntu 10.10 and among the significant changes in this version, are:
New version of the Mint Menu (available in the MintMenu WebUpd8 PPA for Ubuntu users) that highlights newly installed applications, finds and installs software from the repositories, includes search engines, now supports GTK themes and more.
As has been previously announced OLPC is planning on moving to an ARM processor to advance the XO platform. The major advantage is similar computing power while having a massive reduction in power usage so as to maximise runtime.
Just as with nature, we have cyclical changes within the Fedora Project as well. I think it’s both useful and healthy to point out a few of those changes, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I want to point out that every person in the Fedora community is a potential leader. Our policies of rotating leadership help ensure that everyone who is so inclined has a chance to lead and serve. Second, I’d like to personally thank those people who have diligently served the Fedora community, and wish them success as they move on to other endeavors.
In recent days we have been talking a lot about Ubuntu’s plans to deploy the Wayland Display Server and the new Wayland activity, NVIDIA’s plans to not support Wayland, and John Carmack’s interests to support Wayland, but that isn’t the only solution in the world. Red Hat’s Adam Jackson has addressed the Fedora plans to support Wayland.
We started officially the process of BoxGrinder inclusion into Fedora. I created a BoxGrinder feature page. Check it out and tell me what you think about it! We hope to have BoxGrinder included in Fedora 15 as a feature. This means that after Fedora 15 will be release BoxGrinder will be highlighted in release notes and therefore more visible to users.
Fedora, a Linux-based operating system, is sponsored by Red Hat (News – Alert), the world’s most trusted provider of open source technology, and the Fedora Project, is a worldwide community of people who use and build free software from all over the world. They want to encourage the creation and spread of free code and content by collaborating together.
Fedora’s refusal to accept the SQLninja tool into its repositories has met with considerable criticism. The tool attempts to penetrate Microsoft SQL Server-based systems via SQL injection attacks in order to open a back door on these systems. What is an evil hacker tool for hijacking computers to some, is a useful tool for testing their own servers to others. The Fedora project leaders chose the former point of view and unanimously voted against adding the tool in a (virtual) board meeting.
However, the issue was discussed at length, and various pros and cons were considered. In the end, the Fedora board decided against the tool to prevent potential legal claims against Fedora – even the sharing of hacker tools is an offence in some countries.
Flame wars are a part of open source development and communities. A new effort called openrespect.org wants to try and change the tone of cross-distribution name-calling, but I think they’ve really gotten off on the wrong foot.
Openrespect.org is founded by Ubuntu Linux community manager Jono Bacon, as a way to encourage mutual respect across Linux distributions. Apparently though that mutual respect didn’t fully extend to Red Hat’s community Fedora Linux distribution.
You may have noticed the heated discussions on Ubuntu and Canonical lately. The decision to move to Unity as the main desktop shell for Ubuntu 11.04 and Canonical insisting on developers assigning their copyright to them hasn’t made them many new friends. Whether you agree with Canonical or not some people seem to speak very harshly of their latest actions and deviate from a well-mannered debate. There seems to be an increase of rudeness in the open source / free software debate. To counter these tendencies Ubuntu’s community manager Jono Bacon launched openrespect.org.
Ubuntu 11.04 a.k.a. Natty Narwhal alpha is scheduled to be released on December 2nd: (see the complete release schedule, here).Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal daily ISO files are available to download (Note:Don’t install it on production machine), but you can test in VirtualBox.
The following idea on creating an by Daniel Planas was posted to the Ayatana mailing list. I think it’s quite a novel idea so thought I’d share it here.
Calling for ‘intelligent indicators’ Daniel’s idea proposes that the ‘Sound Menu’ panel icon changes to that of ‘headphones’ when, you guessed it, headphones are plugged in.
This page summarizes many of the outcomes of the event, and for each track there is a link to further detailed notes. Please note: these are proceedings and plans, and some of these things may not get completed as planned for whatever reason. As such, please read this list as a set of goals, and not a promise of what Ubuntu 11.04 will include.
Want to show off your Ubuntu desktop in the cloud ? Perhaps you want to demo it to some Windows or OSX friends. Perhaps new users at your loco event want to play with Ubuntu for a bit. Well, look no further. In this article I will create an Ubuntu maverick 10.10 desktop in the Amazon ec2 cloud, connect to it using the x2go terminal server, which leverages the excellent NX remote display libraries
Yesterday in the ARM world there was not only a major milestone in that of unveiling the ARM Mali T-604 GPU for embedded devices with much faster graphics and even OpenCL GPGPU capabilities, but it was also marked by the first Linaro release. Linaro was formed less than a year ago but out now is their first engineering release, a.k.a. Linaro 10.11.
Linaro 10.11 marks the completion of their first engineering cycle and consists of tools and software for the latest ARM Cortex-A9 / Cortex-A8 processors. Celebrating this milestone was a press release that indicates there are now 70 open-source developers on Linaro’s engineering team (a collection of Canonical employees and from other ARM stakeholders), and signals there is momentum gaining for the Linaro 11.05 as their second engineering release.
Not-for-profit engineering firm Linaro has released a 10.11 version of its open source Linux code and tools for ARM Cortex processors. Meanwhile, Samsung, ST-Ericsson, and Texas Instruments are showcasing multiple Linux distros — including MeeGo and Ubuntu, running on Cortex-A9 SoCs — using Linaro-related code or tools.
Linaro, a nonprofit organization that aims to accelerate embedded Linux development for the ARM architecture, has announced its first software release. Version 10.11 of the group’s software stack quietly debuted this week. The group appears to be attracting interest and making steady progress.
French citizens have been enjoying webOS 2.0 with their morning baguette for over two weeks, but it’s one step closer to home today — Pocket-lint reports that the Palm Pre 2 will launch in the United Kingdom this Friday.
One app I’ve been wishing for on my Palm Pre is Skype — since I don’t have a cellular plan on it, being able to place calls via Wi-Fi would be pretty handy.
Despite the fact that the Nokia N9 was supposed to be the first MeeGo handset to be launched by the Finnish phone maker, it appears that the new mobile platform might be first appearing on the Nokia N900.
Intel is pushing their apps market for Atom based devices (called the AppUp) which targets netbooks and now developers have been approached to push development on the new SDK for MeeGo app development for mobiles that Intel has outed. The Intel SDK is in association with Nokia and allows “using Qt* development framework from Nokia to create MeeGo application”. This would take off the constraint of building apps only for netbooks and bring smartphone app makers to the platform.
Getting a Qt app into the Ovi store has always been a bit hairy – especially as the list of supported devices was amazingly short when the distribution started!
Linpus , one of the leading Linux installations on open source solutions across platforms will be bringing out a Multi Touch edition of the popular OS with its basis in the MeeGo OS. Linpus announced today a full Meego-based multi-touch solution which is not just an operating system, but also includes a comprehensive suite of key applications including: an ereader, browser, media player, photo viewer, virtual keyboard and webcam.
I would like to document my process for getting Meego Handset to run in a Maemo chroot on the N900 using Easy Debian, so you don’t have to multi-boot your phone.
But I can’t document everything in one post, and I’m documenting as I go, so this first post will be the just first steps: how to get an Easy Debian compatible image out of the raw Meego images that the Meego project is posting.
MeeGo has been created by Nokia and Intel together to begin a shining new era in mobile computing.They created MeeGo, a Linux-based open software platform with a vision that all kinds of hardware devices viz. Mobile computers, PC tablets, media-based phones, Tvs and infotainment systems of vehicle. MeeGo is an open platform and can be used in new Nokia phones. Nokia N10 and Nokia E5x are those mobile phone which will launch in later 2010 or 2011 with Meego operating system.Thus, applications developed for this OS would easily sell Nokia’s Ovi Store.
The browser wars have extended to mobile devices, and that’s good news for consumers.
Last week, Mozilla released a second Firefox beta for Android. Yesterday, Opera released its first Opera Mobile beta for Android. Neither is ready for prime time, much less used on more than a tiny fraction of phones, but already I see them as a step forward.
Why? Because now there’s an important new front in the browser wars.
And while that means more stress for browser makers and more testing for Web developers, it holds the potential to dramatically improve browsing for the rest of us.
Today marks the 6th birthday of the popular Mozilla Firefox internet browser. Taken up from the source code of the Netscape browser, Firefox powers on through today to serve more than 400 million (and 45% of The PC Report’s readers) in performing just what it’s built for.
Throughout its run, Firefox has aimed to come first in the browser wars by providing unique features such as browser tabs, anti phishing technologies and of course, the several themes and extensions created by third parties.
Firefox 4 will come with better support for HTML5 forms. In the latest beta we are experimenting with a set of new features: more inputs types (email, url, tel, search), new attributes (placeholder, autofocus, list), decoupled forms and different validation mechanisms. This is thanks mostly to the hard work of Mounir Lamouri.
A Lego Mindstorms robotics kit controlled by an HTC Nexus One smartphone successfully untangled a Rubik’s Cube puzzle in 12.5 seconds at this week’s ARM developer conference in Silicon Valley.
With the release of Firefox 4 Beta 7, Mozilla returned to near the top spot in browser performance rankings.
According to tests run by Computerworld, the new browser is about three times faster than the current production version of Firefox in rendering JavaScript, and lags behind only Opera among the top five browser makers.
On Wednesday, Mozilla launched Firefox 4 Beta 7, a preview that includes all the features slated to make it into the final, polished version next year.
One of the most significant changes to the user interface for Firefox 4 was the rolling of the old menu items into one button, something we have called on this blog the “combined menu.” We’ve addressed the impact of this change in other posts, such as this one. We thought of one obvious follow-up: how often do people ‘bounce away’ from the combined menu before clicking something in it?
We define the bounce rate as this: given a user clicking the combined menu button, what is the proportion of instances where users do not click on one of the menu items? We built a small NumPy library to help us analyze the sequence of user-browser interactions.
Just a few weeks ago, we got word (by way of a few Tweets) that Jolicloud was seemingly — if the images were any indication — in the final stages of developing a netbook of its own. Well, we’ve just gotten some official news on just that topic.
Jolicloud – the company behind the Ubuntu-derived netbook operating system of the same name- are to launch their very own net/notebook dubbed the ‘Jolibook’.
As we reported earlier today, Cloud OS startup Jolicloud has confirmed the “Jolibook” Netbook is coming this month, although we don’t know the price. Well, we may not know the price, but strolling round the Monaco Media Forum today I button-holed founder Tariq Krim, and got him to reveal where the Jolibook will appear first: the UK.
Global Pulse, the UN agency devoted to monitoring “the impact of compound crises on vulnerable populations” is turning to real-time data and open-source development to stay on top of challenges.
A European Commission study found that “The existing base of quality FLOSS applications… would cost firms almost Euro 12 billion to reproduce internally.” That study was in 2006 and estimated the code base doubles every 18 to 24 months. There may not be much in the way of a knowledge economy right now, but there’s no reason to start from where everyone else did.
“Defined broadly, FLOSS-related services (in the EU) could reach a 32% share of all IT services by 2010,” continues the EC study. Not every line of code has to be monetized as strictly a line of code; KAUST could early on work with others to demonstrate that open source can be a viable business model option.
To facilitate this means some basic investments in connectivity. ITU data shows Saudi Arabia with 31.3 Internet users per 100 people, whereas the US has 75.8. By encouraging open standards and understanding the birth of the Internet as a platform for innovation, we start to find some ways to guide investments and policy.
In the past, Microsoft used to be willing to admit that unauthorized copies helped the company, as it helped establish its software as a near-monopoly in certain areas, and kept competitors out. But, in the past few years, the company has become more adamant, not just about denying any possible “benefits” to unauthorized copies, but in trying to crack down on them at any cost. The NY Times has an article highlighting Microsoft’s “fight” against unauthorized copies, and does so with dramatic (and cinematic) claims about how organized crime groups are turning to software copying, as an alternative to drugs.
One of the conferences was FSCONS 2010 – the Free Society and Nordic Summit. Despite its rather vague name, this was actually a meeting of a decent proportion of the free software world in the Scandinavian, Finnish and Icelandic worlds, with a goodly dollop of free content people thrown in for good measure.
* Careening toward feature completion.
* Please file bugs for string changes ASAP so we can get the new strings on Verbatim.
* Please keep testing and filing bugs.
* Test Day on Friday.
* Michael to file a bug that all articles are marked as “for Firefox 4″ when imported
Firefox 4 beta 7 is out, and now is the best time to evaluate your add-on’s compatibility with the next major Firefox release. This is the first “feature frozen” release, meaning that there will be no more major changes performed to the UI, APIs or features in Firefox. Other than bug fixes and stability improvements, this the Firefox that will make it to the public, and you should be able to upgrade your add-on to work for this beta without having to worry about something being broken in the following betas and release candidates. Firefox 4 is coming! If you want your add-on to be compatible, the time is now.
This project seeks to develop an application programming interface (API) for publishing Open Education Resources (OER) to remixable repositories. An API will provide developers a roadmap for navigating the education highway of OER repositories and and make it possible for the wider community to create services and tools to support wide-scale adoption and production of OER.
Look at this, though. Google also says Oracle’s Exhibit J [PDF] attached to its amended complaint, Oracle’s side-by-side comparison of Java (J2SE) and “Android versions of PolicyNodeImpl.java” that seemed to establish copying, isn’t accurate, in that Oracle “has redacted or deleted from the materials shown in Exhibit J both expressive material and copyright headers that appear in the actual materials, which are significant elements and features of the files in question.” Wow and double wow. If that proves true, it reminds me of the 300 lines of code “proof” from SCO in the SCO v. IBM case, when IBM showed the judge at a hearing that Sandeep Gupta’s exhibit to a declaration he’d filed for SCO had “juxtaposed” code in such a way as to “give the appearance of similarity when, in fact, no similarity exists.”
But there’s more. Lots more, including a defense of misuse, alleging that Oracle, and Sun before it, has “impermissibly expand[ed] the scope of the Patents-in-Suit by requiring licensees to license items not covered by Oracle’s alleged intellectual property in order to receive a license to Oracle’s alleged intellectual property.”
One of the most shocking aspects of Oracle’s lawsuit against Google alleging patent and copyright infringement was its unexpected nature. The assumption had been that Google was a big company with lots of lawyers and engineers, and had presumably checked out everything before proceeding with the Android project. And then suddenly it looked as if it had made the kind of elementary mistakes a newbie startup might commit.
According to golem.de, a German IT news magazine, the Document Foundation has announced its first goals for the office suite LibreOffice. The dependency of Java shall be reduced and a general refactoring of all components is in the plans.
The number of developers has risen to over 90, which is far more than OpenOffice had.
According to the Small Business Administration, small businesses account for 99.7 percent of all U.S. businesses and employ about half of all private sector employees. This makes sense, since the definition of a “small” business is pretty big: “an independent business having fewer than 500 employees.” Have you ever been in a crowd of 500 people? Living in NYC all my life, I have, and I can tell you it’s pretty nerve wracking at times (think crammed train during rush hour).
So how do you get your “big” small business working effectively together? Well, with enterprise technology, of course. But although small businesses may have strength in numbers, their IT budgets usually fall short on the financial spectrum. The technologists in these companies, usually a one to two man crew, look for bargain-basement-priced technologies that have the punch of their larger-priced cousins.
Yuvi tasked one student with creating a release of GTKJFileChooser, a file chooser dialog that has contributed to OpenJDK. The student created a patch to bump the version number, wrote some release notes, and created distribution files.
Four other students were unsure what project to work on, so I suggested Firefox. I pointed them at a Mozilla Education wiki page with a tutorial on altering Firefox’s XUL code. One of the attendees already knew Mercurial; he worked quickly, and was the first to discover that the article pointed at a revision that does not compile.
My original motivation was to support annotation of texts in http://openshakespeare.org/ so we can collaboratively build up critical notes but since then I’ve seen this need again and again — in drafting new open data licenses, with scholars working on medieval canon law, when taking my own notes on academic papers.
Burg Manager is an application to easily install Burg (along with the default Burg themes and a Burg emulator) and change most of the Burg settings such as the timeout, download and install new themes, remove Burg and restore Grub 2, set the default operating system and many advanced options.
As some of our regular followers know, Fusion Garage has been asked to release the portion of our joojoo OS that falls under GPL guidelines, and we are in the process of finalizing the software for public distribution. This is not a case of avoiding the issue. We will be releasing the GPL-related portion of our original OS shortly Given the size of our code base and given that we are still a small team working on several things at once, we are still in the process of filtering the Fusion Garage code components from the open source components, but we have every intention of following through on our commitments in this area.
This white paper, It Will Be Awesome if They Don’t Screw it Up: 3D Printing, Intellectual Property, and the Fight Over the Next Great Disruptive Technology, examines how intellectual property (IP) law impacts the rapidly maturing technology of 3D printing, and how incumbents who feel threatened by its growth might try to use IP law to stop it.
3D printing means turning images into solid objects.
Not too long ago, the idea was the stuff of sci-fi writers. But in the digital 21st century, 3D printers exist. And since they’re open source, anyone with the right skills and knowledge can make one.
When mixed with just the precise amount of moisture and deposited appropriately by a 3D printer, you’ll get yourself a near-rock-hard mold suitable for sloshing in a hot metallic liquid of your choice. What will your first cast be? We know what Open3DP’s will be (see image above).
Last week, while unloading my dishwasher, I had a “eureka!” moment in which I suddenly understood why the machine had not been adequately cleaning up the cups and baby bottles in the upper rack: a small rubber tube had split open, and much of the water meant for the upper rack was spilling over the plates below instead.
In the dark ages before the Internet, this might have meant an expensive house call from an appliance repair company. Today, it means going to the manufacturer’s website, digging up the complete parts list for a decade-old appliance, and then placing an online order for the small rubber part, which will arrive in a box on your doorstep within the week. Magical!
Sharing becomes a slippery slope when it comes to genomics: we need massive amounts of data in order to understand the human genome, but issues of privacy, abuse, and the distrust of institutions stand in the way. So how do we resolve this?
We talked to Robert Cook-Deegan, the director of the Center for Genomics, Ethics, Law & Policy at Duke University, about how the field of genomics is poised for takeoff, the challenges it faces as it scales, and how CC can step in as a neutral institution that will save the day.
My interpretation is this. “We are a commercial company who wishes to decrease our costs/increase our profits by getting rid of traditional copy editors (whose job is to improve the language and style of papers). We have outsourced almost all our production to companies who are not in a position to do copy-editing. We are therefore trying to get graduates to do this job for free so we can maximise our profits. By the way if you wish to publish in some Open Access Springer journals it can cost thousands of pounds.”
I would like to feel that publishers are part of the value added to scholarship. However it is becoming clear day by day that many (not all, but many) publishers are only in it for money and their primary effect is to restrict and cripple the publication process.
I am at a RLUK meeting where some of the keynotes have addressed the impossibility of continuing with the current publication process. I hope that people actually DO something instead of talking. “Reclaim our scholarship”.
A year or so ago, we invited DIY enthusiasts from Instructables , Ravelry , Adafruit , Craftster , Dorkbot , and Etsy to fill out our survey on DIY communities, projects, and cultures. We received 2600+ responses in just a few weeks. Many many thanks to everyone who contributed!!
In this ‘Instructable’, we share some of our findings. We explore DIY as a broad cultural movement, spanning many domains and materials. This is just one way- and one starting point- for understanding DIY communities, motivations and practices. We would love to hear your feedback!
I Recently was working on building some Selenium tests and needed to compare a string after being saved to a database and returned to the user interface.
ODFDiff is an OpenOffice extension for comparing ODF documents. It supports text documents, spreadsheets and presentations. The differences are show using tracked changes, except for presentations. It also comes as stand-alone Java program for those that want to try it without installing OpenOffice. ODFDiff is fast and accurate.
On Tuesday the Center for Public Integrity, a non-profit research organization based in Washington, D.C., debuted its first HTML5 project, designed to make lengthier stories more palatable for readers using desktop and mobile browsers.
This post is about expanding some thoughts and discussions I’ve been having on Identi.ca this morning around the epub format and the new Amazon Kindle 3. Calibre does convert a great many formats, it also optionally manages your collection, lets you edit metatags, transfer ebooks to and from your device. Converting epubs to a format the device accepts is no problem. It’s about registering a preference for me.
When I buy an mp3 player, I want it to play ogg, as much as converting it from ogg to mp3 is very easy, I’d rather it plays ogg natively. I make a point of checking reviews, comments etc on devices for ogg compatibility, and all else being equal, I use my choice as a user and consumer to buy the player which plays ogg natively. Why? I want my preference for ogg to be counted. It’s really that simple.
The European Commission has launched a public consultation on the successor to the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme 2007-2013 (CIP). The CIP is the main EU budgetary instrument targeting competitiveness outside the research and skills areas. Its main priorities are SMEs, access to finance, innovation (including eco-innovation), take-up and use of information and communication technologies (ICT), energy efficiency and renewables. Through the consultation, the public is invited to have its say on what the priorities of future competitiveness and innovation EU funding should be. The consultation will remain open until 4 February 2011.
Blekko, a well-funded new search engine that aims to be No. 3 behind Google and Bing, reports that it averaged about 1 million queries a day in its first week of being open to the public.
Jimmy Wales likes to describes himself as a “pathological optimist”, so it’s no surprise that he’s extremely enthusiastic about the longevity of wikis, the group publishing tool epitomised by the mighty Wikipedia, which he founded in 2001.
Dennis sent over an interesting story by a guy who helped Sal buy the dot com from the cybersquatter. It’s an interesting story of how buying domains works (with a lot of questionable things happening in the background). In the end, they were able to purchase the domain for $2,988. They actually paid $5,000 initially, but the company running the auction later said it detected fraudulent bidding, and lowered the price.
The reason copyright management was a “solved problem with Xanadu” was because of something called “transclusion”, which basically meant that when you quoted or copied a piece of text from elsewhere, it wasn’t actually a copy, but the real thing *embedded* in your Xanadu document. This meant that it was easy to track who was doing what with your work – which made copyright management a “solved problem”, as Pesce says.
I already knew this, but Pesce’s juxtaposition with the sloppy, Web made me realise what a narrow escape we had. If Xanadu had been good enough to release, and if it had caught on sufficiently to establish itself before the Web had arrived, we would probably be living in a very different world.
During one lengthy study they painstakingly monitored the falling survival rates and breeding patterns of the highly endangered black grouse.
But after reporting their findings, the couple were stunned to be told by the RSPB that rather than helping the species, their research could have actually contributed to its decline.
Now feathers are flying at the High Court in London after the couple sued the organisation accusing it of defamation.
Many entrepreneurs idolize Steve Jobs. He’s such a perfectionist, they say. Nothing leaves the doors of 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino without a polish and finish that makes geeks everywhere drool. No compromise!
“HTML5 provides good reason to believe that the Web will remain the main platform for new services, while apps remain secondary. And this matters because the health of the Web is vital for creativity and entrepreneurialism.”
Bill Gates didn’t invent the PC. Steve Jobs didn’t invent graphic operating systems. Marc Andreessen didn’t invent the web browser. Permanent link to this item in the archive.
Mail lists existed long before Craig Newmark started Craig’s List. Ward Cunningham implemented the first wiki, but Jimmy Wales built it up to world scale with Wikipedia. Permanent link to this item in the archive.
Remember in March when we shared with you that more than 24 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute? Well, you continue to amaze us: you’ve increased the amount of video uploaded to YouTube to 35 hours per minute. That breaks out to 2,100 hours uploaded every 60 minutes, or 50,400 hours uploaded to YouTube every day.
Many CEOs have admirers. Robin Li—the 41-year-old, American-educated chief executive officer of the Chinese search engine Baidu—has a fan club. And each year at the Baidu (BIDU) World conference in Beijing, the members of the Robin Li fan club come out to get close to the object of their worship.
Gerald Marzorati, the New York Times’ assistant managing editor for new media and strategic initiatives, doesn’t know why people pay for subscriptions to his paper.
Marzorati made the surprising claim during a panel discussion at the Digital Hollywood New York conference. He pointed to the fact that only 0.01 percent of subscribers canceled home delivery after the paper hiked prices five percent during the recession as evidence that his readership doesn’t realize that they’re overpaying for news that’s available for free online.
“We have north of 800,000 subscribers paying north of $700 a year for home delivery … I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that they’re literally not understanding what they’re paying … That’s the beauty of the credit card,” said Marzorati.
“What we see are two gamma-ray-emitting bubbles that extend 25,000 light-years north and south of the galactic center,” said the phenomenon’s discoverer, Doug Finkbeiner, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “We don’t fully understand their nature or origin.”
Everything from industrial equipment to the human body loses some of the energy it uses to things like heat and vibrations. The ability to harvest some of this energy is usually pretty limited, as small heat differences and weak movements are difficult to concentrate into significant amounts of useful energy. But even an inefficient conversion can be sufficient to provide power for small energy-efficient devices, such as medical implants and short-range transmitters, so researchers are working on developing materials that can convert environmental noise into small amounts of useful energy. In a recent example of this work, researchers have demonstrated that they can print a bio-compatible device that can harvest the stress created when it’s flexed to produce over 10 nanoAmps of current.
Street lights are an important part of our urban infrastructure — they light our way home and make the roads safe at night. But what if we could create natural street lights that don’t need electricity to power them? A group of scientists in Taiwan recently discovered that placing gold nanoparticles within the leaves of trees, causes them to give off a luminous reddish glow. The idea of using trees to replace street lights is an ingenious one – not only would it save on electricity costs and cut CO2 emissions, but it could also greatly reduce light pollution in major cities.
Alcohol, like caffeine, has an enormous reputation but loose understanding in popular culture. Learn how it’s absorbed and how fast, why it’s essential to reality TV altercations, its paradoxical sexual effects, and its life-lengthening potential, whether red wine or Bud Light.
In the march towards Total World Domination, with the recovery of its stock and explosion of Android, Google seems to be in the driver’s seat. But what captures this march? If Microsoft is the Beast of Redmond or the Borg, then what is Google? For two years I’ve called it the Monster of Mountain View, but it is only rarely used.
Perhaps the “Borg” metaphor is more appropriate nowadays: not because it’s relentlessly crushing enemies, but the way that it’s inhaling raw talent. Particularly over the last two years, Google has the pick of Silicon Valley when it comes to recruiting as most IT companies are fighting the relentless march of commoditization. It’s #4 on the latest Fortune list of best places to work — the only Silicon Valley firm in the top 10 and one of three in California (the others being DreamWorks and Qualcomm.)
In 1972, after a month of deliberation, Congress launched the nation’s most ambitious experiment in universal health care: a change to the Social Security Act that granted comprehensive coverage under Medicare to virtually anyone diagnosed with kidney failure, regardless of age or income.
It was a supremely hopeful moment. Although the technology to keep kidney patients alive through dialysis had arrived, it was still unattainable for all but a lucky few. At one hospital, a death panel — or “God committee” in the parlance of the time — was deciding who got it and who didn’t. The new program would help about 11,000 Americans, just for starters. For a modest initial price tag of $135 million, it would cover not only their dialysis and transplants, but all of their medical needs. Some consider it the closest that the United States has come to socialized medicine.
In the era of instant blogging, microblogging and social networks we can share our ideas and thoughts of the day will millions at the click of a mouse, but what do we do for our private thoughts of the day? Before the internet, many people would have private diaries where they’d share their inner thoughts knowing nobody would ever read them. This is where you can be truly honest and write without being judged.
Looks like we’re about to see lots more ENTIRELY FICTIONAL news stories about malware and virus attacks on Android, thanks to a deal between popular PC anti-virus maker AVG and a company called DroidSecurity.
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Presumably AVG think there’s some merit in the product, probably because people are happily paying $9.99 for it.
Despite its reputation for secrecy and technical expertise, the National Security Agency doesn’t have a set of secret coding practices or testing methods that magically make their applications and systems bulletproof. In fact, one of the agency’s top technical experts said that virtually all of the methods the NSA uses for development and information assurance are publicly known.
How often should you change your password? I get asked that question a lot, usually by people annoyed at their employer’s or bank’s password expiration policy: people who finally memorized their current password and are realizing they’ll have to write down their new password. How could that possibly be more secure, they want to know.
The answer depends on what the password is used for.
The total volume of spam hitting our collective inboxes continues to decline. According to the latest data from Symantec, the global spam volume in October declined by 22% month-over-month and over 47% since August. This reduction can be attributed to the shutdown of major spam networks like spamit.com and the Bredolab botnet. Even with this decline, though, spam still made up 86.6% of all emails in October. This is the lowest number Symantec has reported since September 2009.
On Thursday night, the Fox News host asked, as part of a show that would be seen by 5.5 million people: “Does sharia law say we can behead Dana Milbank?” He then added, “That was a joke.”
Hilarious! Decapitation jokes just slay me, and this one had all the more hilarity because the topic of journalist beheadings brings to mind my late friend and colleague Danny Pearl, who replaced me in the Wall Street Journal’s London bureau and later was murdered in Pakistan by people who thought sharia justified it.
Glenn Beck has railed many times against George Soros, a Hungarian-American financier and liberal philanthropist whom the conservative host dubs the “progressive puppet master.”
But Beck ramped up his criticism this week on Fox News and his radio show, making comments about how Soros survived in Nazi-occupied Hungary that have provoked denunciations from Jewish organizations.
Fox has begun blocking the availability of its TV programming from Google (NSDQ: GOOG) TV, joining ABC (NYSE: DIS), CBS (NYSE: CBS), NBC (NYSE: GE) and Hulu.
A source at the network confirmed the move late Wednesday, but declined comment. The blog GTVHub first noted Fox.com’s disappearance from Google TV.
The ACLU of Pennsylvania recently filed a civil rights lawsuit on behalf of a couple whose newborn baby was kidnapped by Lawrence County Children and Youth Services (LCCYS) because her mother recklessly consumed an “everything” bagel from Dunkin’ Donuts the day before the birth.
Sen. John Ensign, a Nevada Republican, has proposed amending the Espionage Act specifically to target WikiLeaks and other media organizations that “publish the name” of anyone “helping in our efforts against terrorism.”
The man convicted of “menace” for threatening to blow up an airport in a Twitter joke has lost his appeal.
Paul Chambers, a 27-year-old accountant whose online courtship with another user of the microblogging site led to the “foolish prank”, had hoped that a crown court would dismiss his conviction and £1,000 fine without a full hearing.
But Judge Jacqueline Davies instead handed down a devastating finding at Doncaster which dismissed Chambers’s appeal on every count. After reading out his comment from the site – “Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!” – she found that it contained menace and Chambers must have known that it might be taken seriously.
The question of freedom of speech online has been doubly in the news this week, with the parallel case of Tory councillor Gareth Compton, who posted a joke tweet suggesting that the world would be a better place without columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in it. It was an offensive joke with upsetting sexist and racist overtones, and the Tory party were arguably justified in suspending him from office – public figures are always required to be more careful with their language than private citizens. But this wasn’t just a party matter: police arrested Compton under the Communications Act 2003.
A European Union prosecutor has named seven suspects in connection with an international organ trafficking network, BETA, EurActiv’s partner in Serbia, reported today (12 November). According to press reports, at least one of them held a high position in Kosovo’s health ministry.
And yet, it must necessarily overcome an entrenched group of powerful leaders in corporations / politics / government organizations on the local, state, and national level / non-profit and advocacy groups / labor unions whose power and wealth depends on keeping individuals, families, and small, locally-owned businesses subservient to and dependent on the big guys who run the system.
We made some good choices in the late 1700s. For example, we sided with debtors against foreign creditors in a way that did not repudiate foreign-held debt, but made it uncollectable. We allowed people who got into financial problems or wanted adventure to disappear and take up new lives in the untamed West. We tried a national bank (twice, if I recall) and gave it up as a failure, leaving nearly all our banking in the hands of smaller local banks. And we (for the most part) expected that parents would take a leading role in directing their children’s education.
A Rikers Island visitor trying to put money into an inmate’s account on Thursday was beaten by a correction officer and arrested after he angrily complained about the system.
The 49-year-old man was slammed to the wall, punched and knocked to the ground inside a waiting area after an argument with the officer.
Jail officials said Thursday they are investigating the incident – which was witnessed by a Daily News reporter.
Between 1994 and 2006, European fishing vessels were paid €3.4 billion in subsidies under the EU’s Financial instrument for Fisheries Guidance (FIFG). €2.3 billion of this was from the EU budget, and a further €1.1 billion was paid from national budgets under the FIFG’s co-financing rules. 48 per cent of the money was spent on building or modernising vessels. 40 per cent was spent on scrapping vessels. A total of 39,174 subsidy payments were made.
A few weeks ago, Nik Garkusha, Microsoft’s Open Source Strategy Lead and an open data advocate asked me: “are there any cool apps you could imagine developing using Canadian federal government open data?”
To spread the word about Koch Industries and its long history of working to deceive the American people about climate change, we’ve launched a new website: www.KochIndustriesFacts.com.
Three weeks ago, we asked our members to nominate the worst corporate polluters of 2010. Our goal was to identify organizations that have hijacked our democracy, devastated our environment and denied the science of climate change — all while reaping massive profits. The response was overwhelming. In just a few days, more than 4,000 people submitted their nominations, many of which were passionate and articulate. The next week, we introduced the top four nominees: Koch Industries, the American Petroleum Institute, BP and Massey Energy. A few days and 13,000 votes later we had our winner: Koch Industries.
Glenn Beck spent the past week denouncing the liberal billionaire and philanthropist George Soros as a “puppet master” who is orchestrating a coup “to bring America to her knees.”
Given Soros’ alleged role plotting to destroy the United States, Beck and his Fox viewership might be surprised to learn that one of Sarah Palin’s top aides has been on Soros’ payroll for years.
Secret internal company documents from the oil giant Shell show that in the immediate aftermath of the execution of the Nigerian activist and writer Ken Saro-Wiwa it adopted a PR strategy of cosying up to key BBC editors and singling out NGOs that it hoped to “sway”.
The documents offer a previously hidden insight into efforts by the company to deflect the PR storm that engulfed it after the Nigerian activist was hanged by the country’s military government. Shell faced accusations that it had colluded with the government over the activists’ deaths.
The Home Office has been forced to take action to change UK law, following the Phorm case, to ensure that citizens are properly protected against private interception.
Phorm attempted to sell technology to BT and other ISPs that intercepted web traffic and digested it to find keywords to create advertising “channels”. When complaints were made, citizens found there was had no official body that would investigate.
The Home Office have this week published a consultation to change RIPA to take account of the EU’s complaints.
The Federal Communications Commission is investigating whether Google Inc. broke federal laws when its street-mapping service collected consumers’ personal information, joining a lengthy list of regulators and lawmakers probing what Google says was the inadvertent harvesting of private data sent over wireless networks.
Key Republicans and Democrats in Congress have indicated that the privacy issues raised by Google’s Street View data collection could be a factor when lawmakers consider new Internet privacy legislation next year.
Since its incorporation just over five years ago, Facebook has undergone a remarkable transformation. When it started, it was a private space for communication with a group of your choice. Soon, it transformed into a platform where much of your information is public by default. Today, it has become a platform where you have no choice but to make certain information public, and this public information may be shared by Facebook with its partner websites and used to target ads.
Back in February we wrote about Facebook’s secret Project Titan — a web-based email client that we hear is unofficially referred to internally as its “Gmail killer”. Now we’ve heard from sources that this is indeed what’s coming on Monday during Facebook’s special event, alongside personal @facebook.com email addresses for users.
At the beginning of 2007, “Abdel Kareem Nabil (right), 22, the Egyptian blogger convicted of insulting Islam and president Hosni Mubarak, has been sentenced to four years in jail, says the Free Kareem! site”, said p2pnet.
He also blogged about discrimination against women ” and the Sunni University of Al-Azhar where he studied law until he was expelled and sued by his professors”, says Reporters Without Borders. noting he was also arrested for the same thing in 2005.
As Industry Minister Tony Clement prepares to provide an update on Canada’s digital economy strategy later this month, the state of competition within the Canadian wireless sector promises to play a prominent role. Consumers have bemoaned the dominance of the big three carriers for years, leading to complaints about limited choice and high prices.
BT and TalkTalk have won a judicial review of the Digital Economy Act after the telecoms companies voiced concerns over measures to tackle illegal file sharing.
Today, Jérémie Zimmermann, spokesperson of La Quadrature du Net, participates in the Net neutrality summit co-organized by the European Commission and the European Parliament in Brussels.
I had the privilege of being an invited delegate at the EU Summit on ‘The Open Internet and Net Neutrality in Europe’ in Brussels yesterday. The morning sessions were held at the Commission’s Charlemagne building and the afternnoon sessions at the EU parliament.
[...]
The sad thing about the simple “there is no problem, do not regulate” corporate message is that they are selling such a simple story to keep the policymakers out of their hair, yet the devil is in the details and the Jean-Jacques Sahels and Robert Peppers of the world know this. But when the debate is dominated by the stories being told yesterday I reserve the right to maintain my concerns about the direction of travel on the whole notion of net neutrality in the EU.
Screwball uses of the patent and copyright system are occurring with increasing frequency both at home and abroad. Here is today’s link here. The South Korean Army has applied for a patent on “the camouflage pattern on its newly developed combat fatigue, which would ban unauthorized use and sales of the same-patterned civilian attires and accessories. The military has been developing the new combat uniform since 2008. It will be distributed from next July to replace the current uniform within three years.” The army with its political clout in the South has every reason to believe the patent will be granted.
Artist Gwenn Seemel’s post, “How I make sure my art doesn’t get ripped off on the Internet” is a wonderfully calm, sensible and practical approach to living as a 21st century artist in an age where reproduction is a given.
In the university phase, the Braille books disappeared totally and were not available at all. The only way to access knowledge for a blind person was to get someone to read to him, as all the university text books were printed in the normal way. Even in the printed exams, I had to get someone that I dictated my answer to and he would write it. It was very difficult to find someone to read who would be available whenever I needed to study. Another problem was that the curriculum was extensive, with many books to read.
So this is why other blind students and I used to use a tape recorder to record the person who was reading for us so we could listen to those tapes later.
Thank God I passed this phase (the undergraduate) successfully so I could go on to another phase and fulfil my ambitions. I got an LLB [a law degree], and went on to my PhD.
In the PhD phase it was very difficult and very complicated, because how could I read and review the material I needed for my PhD in and endless amount reference books in different languages.
Negotiators from GRULAC and other supporters of a treaty for the visually impaired wanted to see movement on the project as fast as possible, fearing the loss of momentum that often happens in complex WIPO negotiations. In May of 2009, Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay submitted to the SCCR a proposal of the World Blind Union for a Treaty for Improved Access for Blind, Visually Impaired and other Reading Disabled Persons [pdf], and this was later supported by India and then other developing countries.
European Commissioner for Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes has warned copyright middlemen and content gatekeepers that they risk being sidelined. The restrictive systems they have set up irritate the public and leave “a vacuum which is served by illegal content,” said Kroes, who added that a new approach to copyright is the answer. One which looks beyond “corporatist self-interest”.
While I definitely disagree with how Charlie Nesson conducted Joel Tenenbaum’s defense in his file sharing case, Nesson has been posting some rather interesting posts on his blog lately, including his recent post highlighting the history of statutory awards for copyright infringement, as written by Pamela Samuelson and Tara Wheatland. While he (oddly) does not say where the writeup is from, you can find the full 2009 paper if you’d like.
The “first sale” doctrine in copyright law limits the rights of copyright holders to sue for infringement after they’ve sold their work—it allows for used and re-sale markets in books and DVDs, as well as library lending. In Costco v. Omega, a Supreme Court case argued earlier this week, the high court will decide whether the first sale doctrine applies to copyrighted goods sold abroad. So why is a case involving a retailer’s re-sale of luxury watches getting the attention of book publishers, the recording industry, and Hollywood? Because the case has everything to do with whether content industries will be able to control their international pricing.
In the past year, news agencies have grown accustomed to re-broadcasting content posted on Twitter to help cover breaking news. But a lawsuit over photos of the Haiti earthquake may prove to be an early test of what kind of rights users of Twitter and related services retain to their content. The Agence France-Presse wire service has insisted that it has the rights to use Daniel Morel’s photos of the Haiti earthquake without Morel’s approval—all because the photographer used the TwitPic and Twitter services to try and sell his work.
Clearly, Whitacre has no qualms about people being able to hear his music for free, since he knows that this is by far the best way to get the message out about it and to encourage people to perform it for themselves. The countless comments on these pages are testimony to the success of that approach: time and again people speak of being entranced when they heard the music on his web site – and then badgering local choirs to sing the pieces themselves.
“The Arthur Rubinstein Collection is a 94-CD set containing 106 hours of music documenting this seminal pianist’s entire recording history. Rubinstein was one of the pivotal pianists of the 20th century, with his life spanning from 1887 through 1982. This collection will be central to the teaching and scholarly examination of the development of piano performance, the piano repertoire and Rubinstein’s own musical idiom. This Collection features includes all studio recordings made by Rubinstein, four previously unreleased recordings and over 200 recordings on compact disc, and also includes two live recitals and two special discs, which contain unreleased recordings and interviews.” – introduction from musicweb
Regardless of what else the Recording Industry Association of America has done, most of us know them for fighting illegal music downloads by suing college students and sometimes grandmothers into bankruptcy. That made us wonder what the world would be like if other industries cared as much about money, and as little about horrifically bad PR.
Once a year, the US government engages in an odd exercise: calling out the world’s “notorious markets” for copyright infringement and counterfeiting, often without any evidence that the markets in question are breaking either local or US law. Instead, the list is compiled from rightsholder complaints, and the US government then puts its imprimatur on them. And this year, the “notorious markets” list will be more prominent than ever.
Georgia’s Valdosta State University has updated its network with software that can pinpoint students who use P2P software. The university is committed to stop file-sharing on its network even if that results in prison sentences for students. Offenders will be disciplined by the school and then handed over to the police, the university has announced.
The largest copyright pirates are the large corporations, particularly in the content distribution business. Yes, those companies who scream the loudest that their customers are ‘pirating’ movies, songs, books, etc. In this series, we are going to look at cases where these companies have engaged in large scale copyright infringement, or in other ways have been ripping off artists.
In all cases I will be working with published information. It is possible that this information may not be up to date, or may not accurately reflect the current status of the situation. If I am supplied documentary evidence which shows a different status, I will publish an update. In cases where a lawsuit ensued, and the settlement was sealed, I will not update the published information, unless I am provided with:
1) A copy of the settlement
2) Permission to publish the settlement
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) criminalises ordinary companies and individuals, according to the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII). In an open letter to the European Parliament, the FFII urges the Parliament to obtain the opinion of the Court of Justice as to whether ACTA is compatible with the EU Treaties.
As the negotiations on ACTA come to a close, it is important to stress once more time the basic flaws of this dangerous anti-counterfeiting agreement, which compiles outdated and very controversial provisions from the United Stated and the European Union in the field of “intellectual property rights” (IPR). ACTA’s bias and lack of legitimacy should compel the legislative bodies of the negotiating countries to strongly oppose its ratification and acknowledge the necessity to reform patent and copyright law.
New revelations on ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a secretive global copyright being privately negotiated by rich countries away from the UN: ACTA will require ISPs to police trademarks the way they currently police copyright. That means that if someone accuses you of violating a trademark with a web-page, blog-post, video, tweet, etc, your ISP will be required to nuke your material without any further proof, or be found to be responsible for any trademark violations along with you. And of course, trademark violations are much harder to verify than copyright violations, since they often hinge on complex, fact-intensive components like tarnishment, dilution and genericization. Meaning that ISPs are that much more likely to simply take all complaints at face-value, leading to even more easy censorship of the Internet with nothing more than a trumped-up trademark claim.
The most nauseating aspect of the Digital Economy Act for me is the responsibility shifted onto ISP subscribers (essentially, the person who pays the bill) for any copyright infringement that occurs via their internet connection.
To the layman this might make some sense – it’s often impossible to trace infringement to the actual person copying the film or song, and we live in a civil society where someone must take responsibility, right? Not quite, as I’ve explained in the past.
Obvious issues arise in any household with 3 or more occupants – notwithstanding the security of WiFi – and these problems are magnified many times over when considering larger organisations offering casual internet access to members of the public.
Intermediaries – organisations who are not ISPs but offer internet access to multiple persons; eg employers, schools, universities, libraries, café owners, etc will soon be forced to consider the consequences of what people do with this internet access.
Three Wednesday announcements mean the UK’s approach to digital copyright infringement may be majorly halted and started over, despite months of wrangling over controversial legislation.
BT and TalkTalk today won the right to a judicial review of the Digital Economy Act, throwing controversial government proposals to tackle illegal filesharing into uncertainty.
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