10.28.10
Posted in Site News at 1:00 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Recommendation of Identi.ca as a Free software-based network in which to meet fellow supporters of freedom, Techrights included
OF ALL the sites that challenge Twitter, Identi.ca is the only one which offers a cushion to software freedom supporters (Free Software Daily is good for news). Identi.ca is mostly occupied by the Free software community, which is friendly, polite, and extremely informative (that’s where Techrights gets many of its links nowadays). If you are willing to join the site or have already joined, consider subscribing to the groups Techrights and TechBytes (a new one for when we start the audiocast next month). █
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Posted in Microsoft, Security, Windows at 12:39 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Anxiety levels on the Internet are still high and the latest news reports about Microsoft flaws are therefore worth listing
“Vietnam is a malware quagmire” says this news headline of an article citing McAfee:
INSECURITY VENDOR McAfee has produced a list of the most dangerous domains in the world and found that the Vietnamese .vn domain is the worst of all.
Here’s more:
“What’s the ‘balance sheet liability’ caused by Microsoft to other companies,” asked the reader who sent us that last link. We recently covered Zeus in posts such as [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]. █
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Posted in News Roundup at 11:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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It is a common argument that Linux will never make it mainstream because everybody already knows windows. It has been said that because everybody knows windows that there is nobody to teach them Linux. Ipso facto, nobody will learn Linux because there is nobody around to show them how to use Linux. What a load of bovine back end fertiliser. What people are referring to is that the uptake of Linux is a chicken and egg problem.
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This introductory period only went so far. After that time I bet that you started exploring for yourself and only asked questions when you became stuck. Or you learned enough to do what you needed and stayed at that level. This is exactly the same for any operating system, be it Macs, Linux or windows.
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But a large number of Microsoft’s customers aren’t customers because Microsoft makes good products, but because Microsoft products are default and a lot of people are afraid to delete those apps and OSes and try something different.
If there is someone in your life who uses computers, but is not very computer literate, you can help wean them off of Microsoft’s bloated OSes and change-resistant user apps.
The open source and Linux communities appeal to techies who are opinionated about computer technology, and want to have the best of everything.
But the GUIs with Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu and Kubuntu, are no less user friendly than recent Microsoft OS GUIs.
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Audiocasts/Shows
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In this episode: The London Stock Exchange is super fast, thanks to Linux, while Android celebrates its 100,000th app submission. We discover things and talk about tiling window managers, while our listeners talk about Ubuntu’s Unity.
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Ballnux
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Out of the four major U.S. carriers, AT&T was the most in need of a solid Android smartphone, and it’s finally got one in the Samsung Captivate. Part of the Galaxy S series, the Captivate is by far AT&T’s most powerful and feature-rich Android device, boasting a gorgeous Super AMOLED touch screen, a 1GHz Hummingbird processor, and some great multimedia features. It won’t win any beauty contests, and we wish AT&T would stop restricting app access, but overall, the Captivate delivers and is a great alternative to the iPhone 4. The Samsung Captivate for AT&T will be available starting July 18 for $199.99 with a two-year contract (voice plan and minimum $15 data plan required).
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Kernel Space
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Graphics Stack
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Christopher Bergström of PathScale has passed along a note detailing some of the recent progress made by the Nouveau team and their developers working on PSCNV, their Nouveau driver fork. This includes 2D beginning to work on the GeForce 400 “Fermi” graphics hardware, open-source 3D for Fermi still being worked on, and a pool of documentation is beginning to form for the NVIDIA hardware by the open-source community. Here’s the details in full.
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Along with the benefits of being easier to develop and maintain a driver within the Gallium3D architecture than a classic Mesa DRI driver and being able to extend its features and capabilities in a somewhat generic manner by state trackers, it’s also commonly said that Gallium3D drivers will be faster than the old Mesa drivers. We have looked at the R300 Gallium3D driver (R300g) performance a few times comparing it to classic Mesa, results showing R300g is still catching up to the proprietary AMD Catalyst driver, and that the rate of changes it was going through this summer was quite impressive.
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Just over a week ago we reported on Pixmain gaining improved gradients and is rendering much faster in the project’s latest development release. Now this free software project that provides pixel manipulation capabilities for the X Server and Cairo, has reached its version 0.20.0 stable milestone.
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Applications
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But two cool Linux apps give you a the ability to record directly to a file whatever’s being shown on your computer’s monitor. RecordMyDesktop and Istanbul both record screen sessions into an Ogg Theora video file.
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I decided to go with Final Fantasy for now because, as Dan knows, they hold a special place in my nostalgic heart. But I think I’ll probably end up going with pushpin. So, are any of these compelling reasons to switch to Empathy? So far I haven’t found one. Right now they’re more or less equivalent. So just use whatever your distro has as the default. Right now the important use cases for Pidgin are if you need off the record or the other encryption plugin, if you don’t want chat logging, or if you also use it on Windows and want a consistent experience. I’m going to use Empathy for a while and see if I end up pining for something from Pidgin or just stick with it.
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I went looking for a replacement and found Remmina – which bills itself as the GTK+ Remote Desktop Client.
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So what have I been up to lately? Well, I have recently got a nice new job with a local ex-ISP turned “cloud services” provider so I’m looking forward to jumping into the new role which, I hope, will be far more interesting as it will unleash my passion for Linux in a commercial environment. I’ve been a bit less active on the Sabayon front because of the job hunting and such but should increase again soon.
One of the things I’ve been working on is the Sabayon website design, the plan is to provide the whole portal and services with a uniform clean look that is more accessible and easy to use. I’ve attached a screenshot of the homepage draft design, feedback as always is encouraged.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Games
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To play the game, you’ll need a client with which you can connect to any of the available servers. Alternatively, you install the game on your own server which you can then add to the metaserver list so others can connect to yours.
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Desktop Environments
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Seeing a lot of user-submitted artwork and animations via Blender, GIMP, and Inkscape enthusiasts (some of which you can see in 10+ Amazing Short Films Made With Free Software) has made me really appreciate images illustrated by hand, which includes wallpapers. Given the season, illustrated wallpapers shouldn’t be too difficult to find, and it might even get you excited for Halloween!
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)
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GNOME Desktop
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A few month ago I already blogged about “the end of the (Linux) desktop as we know it.” I will not blatantly repost this entry but draw some conclusions linked to the recent adoption of Unity for the default Ubuntu desktop.
My conclusion was the following : “At a certain level, one can say that the battle is already lost : the current desktop environments can not really fight this war as they don’t own the key technology : the browser. As a consequence, the risk, for them (Gnome, KDE, etc.) is to be a tool that will launch a browser. A (relatively) simple tool that can be easily changed with almost no user impact…”
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[T]here is a list of problems that are severe enough to cause Canonical & Co. to think it’s worth paying developers to work on a fifth desktop interface contender for Linux rather than use any of the available ones, including the Shell — an undertaking that Dave Neary quite presciently calls “really hard” (more on that later).
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At the Ubuntu Devloper Summit on Monday, it was announced that Ubuntu 11.04 will ship with Unity as its default shell. It will still focus on Gnome applications, and depend heavily on the Gnome libraries — but the default interface will be Unity. For those unfamiliar with Unity, it’s the default shell for the Netbook Edition of Ubuntu.
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If you can’t exploit it, you can’t secure it. I don’t know if that quote has been said before, but if you are deeply interested about computer security or ethical hacking, that should be your main mantra. To fully learn how to secure a computer program, you must know how to break it and find vulnerabilities. In relation to this, there is a unique Linux distribution that is primarily created to help teach you about software security, its name is Damn Vulnerable Linux (DVL).
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For those not familiar with the project, it is a type of installation published in a book (freely available in PDF form) for someone to be able to read through and build their own Linux distribution straight from source. If you want to learn more about a Linux-based operating system and if you have some time to kill, this is a great start. My earliest of experiments were all successfully built in a virtual guest under VirtualBox. I was able to customize it the way I desired by installing only the packages that mattered to me and ran with it. Immediately after my first build, I went to the Beyond Linux From Scratch (BLFS) project page, to install additional applications not documented in the LFS book. As dorky as this sounds, it was all part of an exciting experience.
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New Releases
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Finnix 100 comes over a year since its previous release, Finnix 93.0, and introduces a new version scheme, with future versions incrementing numerically.
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PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family
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I hadn’t noticed, but there are Mandriva 2010 Spring packages for KDE 4.5.2 available since some days now on KDE FTP. I currently don’t know whom to thank but thank you !! (neoclust maybe ??) Packages for both i586 and x86_64 are available.
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Red Hat Family
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Wall Street analyst Katherine Egbert of Jefferies & Co. came to red Hat’s headquarters for some on-site research at the Linux software and services firm. To the relief of the Hatters, she was impressed.
In an extensive research note written after the visit, Egbert upped the target price for Red Hat shares $3 to $48 while maintaining her “Buy” rating.
Red Hat shares traded up slightly Wednesday morning at $41.61.
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Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Barceló Viajes, a leading Spanish travel operator, has chosen Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization to consolidate its datacenters that support the company’s mission-critical business platforms. By virtualizing its systems, Barceló aims to reduce its server farm by half. With Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, Barceló has enhanced the ease of management of its systems and has experienced improved flexibility, scalability and performance.
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LTN’s Pattern Recognition Analyst, Paul A. Ebeling, Jnr, today ID’d the start of a New Bullish Trend (NBT) for Red Hat, Inc.
Red Hat closed at US$41.08 on Monday and opened Tuesday at US$40.72.
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Fedora
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There is a running instance to look at, and we could get a similar instance running on a Fedora Infrastructure public test server. We have a ways to go for it to be fully hosted by the Fedora Project, but why not try using it for the next session?
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Debian Family
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Ubuntu has released a new video ad which tells about some of the core markets of Ubuntu — desktop, servers and cloud. The ad also says that Ubuntu will always be free.
The ad is undoubtedly good, but if it is targeted to be shown at business meets, conferences its good. If the ad is targeted at the home users, it is nowhere close to what it should have been. What do I mean? Just think if Apple iPad ad. It was all about what ‘you’ can do with the device and not what all an operating system can do, because you know what? No one cares.
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Another interesting question asked is “Will Unity become themeable?”, however it seems no decision regarding this has been made so far.
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Overall I am rather happy-ish with Unity. There are some issues that I will explore as the days go on.
Overall it feels quicker than regular Gnome, but there are moments when it really seems to wait for something when responding, like when you open the menu.
Tomorrow I will be looking at how much resources it uses compared to Gnome2, and a few other things.
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I’ve had the pleasure of trying out plenty of netbook hardware. Just about every form factor and operating system combination available. These netbooks range from the hardly usable, to the might-as-well-be-a-laptop, and everything in between. It’s that “everything in between” space that appeals to the majority of users on the planet and that’s exactly where the Starling lands – but it does so while leaving quite a solid impression on the user.
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Jolicloud 1.1 will be provided as an upgrade for existing Jolicloud 1.0 users. It will be based on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx), and supported until April 2013. But, the good news is that future patches from Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) will also be added in the new Jolicloud 1.1 release.
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Flavours and Variants
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Released 09/06/2010, The Fluxbox edition of the ultra-popular Mint Linux OS is hailed as a newer Fluxbuntu type of derivative based on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. So I’ll take it for a spin and see how it runs.
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On October 10, Canonical released its latest installment of Ubuntu, codenamed “Maverick Meerkat”. Like previous iterations, Maverick also includes variations from the standard Ubuntu Gnome interface. Kubuntu is the KDE variation of Ubuntu, and last week, I decided to upgrade from 10.04 and give 10.10 a try.
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Earlier this week I wrote a quick look over on EOL about Super OS 10.10. Super OS…well…it didn’t exactly live up to its name, though it does have its place among the many Ubuntu remasters out there. I ran into another distro though that does a more credible job of living up to its name. Ultimate Edition 2.8 is the latest release of yet another Ubuntu-based distro.
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Want to go on an ebook-reading marathon for two weeks? You don’t need an iPad. All you need is a decent touch screen ebook reader. They can last more than 10 days (not just 10 hours) and, thanks to e-ink technology, so will your eyes.
E-ink displays, which most of these ebook readers use, consume less power, are less susceptible to glare, are less strenuous to the eyes, and most of all, cost much less than even the most basic iPad.
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US bookstore giant Barnes & Noble unveiled a color electronic book reader on Tuesday, getting the jump on rivals Amazon and Sony.
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Barnes & Noble said customers could immediately purchase the Nook Color, which is powered by Google’s Android software and has eight gigabytes of memory, through the bookseller’s website with shipping beginning around November 19.
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Digi-key is shipping a 1080p-ready development board based on Texas Instruments’ Cortex-A9-based, dual-core, 1GHz OMAP4430 system-on-chip (SoC). The $174 “PandaBoard” offers 1GB of DRAM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB, DVI, and HDMI connections, and targets smartphone and mobile device development using open source Linux distributions such as Android, Angstrom, Chrome, MeeGo, and Ubuntu.
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Sub-notebooks
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There were six people who flew from Boston to SF for the OLPC summit this past weekend, three of them work for OLPC, one for SugarLabs, one for public media non-profit and myself. It was a beehive of a weekend, as everyone felt like a bee taking active part in presenting, learning and collaborating! The opening reception took place on Friday evening at the Market st location of SF State University, kindly arranged by Sameer Verma and SF OLPC community. It was great to hear Carol’s announcement of San Fran Mayor’s decision to proclaim Sat, Oct 23 of 2010 as One Laptop Per Child Day in San Francisco.
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It wasn’t that long ago that open source computing was more a dreamy ideal than a working proposition. But as attested by the strength of the two-day government open source conference that kicks off in Portland today, it’s become a practical, problem-solving movement.
Open source computing may be defined broadly as software that is developed, maintained and used in a collaborative way, across organizational boundaries, rather than software that is developed in-house and presented as a proprietary, commercial product. It’s the difference between the Microsoft Office suite of applications, for example, and OpenOffice, which provides free and broadly supported software applications. Open source can also apply to operating systems, servers, browsers and other software.
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Skip Newberry: I look forward to learning about some of the innovative open source and open data initiatives underway in other cities. In particular, I am interested in exploring opportunities for collaboration.
Mark Greinke: Open Source is a platform that effectively enables collaboration and interactive communities. Attending GOSCON allows us to collectively share our tremendous experiences and talents in solving problems that benefit all our communities. I am extremely excited to learn how our peers are leveraging open source solutions and to share with the community some of the innovative things Portland is doing around Open Source and Open Data.
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Counting your blessings is good for the soul — not to mention for convincing yourself and any investors that your project will succeed. Free culture is highly conservative, because it’s possible to simply reuse ideas (and sometimes actual artifacts) with little to no cost. Here’s seven things I’m really glad I don’t have to worry about in designing the production model for our free culture animated series Lunatics.
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Web Browsers
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Mozilla
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Firefox 4 is all over over the news and the funny thing is, Firefox 4 final release has not even happened yet. Firefox 4 beta 6 was released recently and it boasts of key performance improvements and a number of new and useful features like Tab Candy. Let’s do a quick look at the latest Firefox 4 in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat.
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According to a just-revised timetable, Firefox 4 will now shift to release candidate status sometime in early 2011. Release candidate, often simply dubbed “RC,” is the final stage of development before a software maker gives the green light for a final version.
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Not long ago I was still defending Firefox as a good browser that never, or only very rarely like every few months, crashed on me. That may in retrospect have had something to do with hosts file and all sorts of nasties blockers, because once I disabled these for a while for a little test it suddenly kept crashing, like in abnormally exiting, at least once a day.
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Oracle
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Oracle has updated its lawsuit against Google to allege that parts of its Android mobile phone software “directly copied” Oracle’s Java code.
Oracle filed a surprise lawsuit against Google in August, claiming portions of Google’s mobile OS platform infringe Java-related copyrights that Oracle acquired when it bought Sun Microsystems.
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CMS
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The site is based on Drupal. Web design firm BrightLemon London was chosen to build the online community.
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Government
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The European Commission published version 1.0 of Open e-Prior, its open source electronic procurement solution for member states, in late September. The new version allows users to import and view catalogues of services, submit purchase orders and credit notes, and exchange invoices.
The software is made available on the OSOR.eu.
Open E-Prior version is developed by the Directorate-General for Informatics (Digit) of the European Commission. The tool is Digit’s contribution to the Pan European Procurement Online (Peppol) project. Peppol intends to simplify the cross-border electronic exchange of information between public administrations and their suppliers.
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The Texas Supreme Court when writing their opinion in Robinson v. Crown Cork and Seal cited Mr. Spock, effectively making him a legal authority for interpreting the Texas Constitution.
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NPR specifically banned journalists from participating while the Washington Post similarly warned reporters, that they could “observe,” but “cannot in any way put themselves in a position that could be construed as supporting (or opposing) that cause.” Yes, how dare reporters be seen supporting sanity!
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Multnomah County officials have decided to dump Microsoft in favor of Google, expecting to shave as much as $600,000 a year from the county budget.
The government agency said that 3,500 county employees — excluding staff in the sheriff’s and district attorney’s offices — will be using Google Apps for Government for e-mail, calendars and contacts Monday. Previously, they relied on Microsoft Outlook for the same functions.
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Security
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A communications malfunction at a Wyoming Air Force base knocked 50 intercontinental ballistic missiles offline for 45 minutes last weekend as technicians scrambled to diagnose the problem, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.
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Officials stressed that there was no possibility the missiles could have launched accidentally, nor was there any indication that foreign governments or terrorists had hacked into the system. If the U.S. had needed to fire the Minuteman III missiles in the affected squadron during the outage Saturday, officials said, backup systems could have been used.
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Defence/Police/Aggression
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Privacy advocates worried about x-ray scanners making their way around U.S. airports may be surprised to know the technology is also making its way onto America’s streets.
The Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. military and even local law enforcement agencies are buying and deploying mobile X-ray vans that can see into the interior of vehicles around them.
The Z Backscatter Van (ZBV), manufactured by American Science and Engineering (AS&E), can be used to detect contraband such as car bombs, drugs and people in hiding.
But the vans, which can also see through clothing and into some buildings, are raising privacy concerns as well as questions about health risks — and what might happen if the technology gets into the wrong hands.
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The introduction of body scanners at international airports followed the case of Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up a flight to Detroit on which he was a passenger. He had flown from Yemen via Lagos and Holland’s Schipol Airport. There are real questions about whether the scanners work. Furthermore, they’re not needed; they invade privacy; and they’re potentially unsafe. In evidence before the Canadian parliamentary group investigating scanners, Rafi Sela, a leading Israeli security expert, derided them as ‘useless.’ His experience is acquired in a country which really knows something about security, and has no plan to introduce scanners. The scanners seem unable to penetrate beneath skin. So hiding material in body cavities or in implants conceals them.
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Mr Broughton said some “completely redundant” security checks should go.
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Enough already with the security theatre
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Reference the article in the Birmingham Mail on Thursday 21 October entitled “Masked Robbers Preyed on Women”.
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A Bristol company that has launched a hotel guest blacklist website has prompted a privacy watchdog to call for a government enquiry.
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He was touting a bonkers new scheme by which drinkers in London who fall foul of the law would be breathalysed or otherwise tested for booze twice a day for prolonged periods of time and, if they failed said tests, could be sent to jail. “It is not just punitive but corrective,” he said. For which, read, nannying and bullying.
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In an paper published in 2009, HP identifies six cloud computing privacy issues when developing for the cloud. They are:
1. Minimise personal information sent to and stored in the cloud
2. Protect personal information in the cloud
3. Maximise user control
4. Allow user choice
5. Specify and limit the purpose of data usage
6. Provide feedback
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The shifting formation is aimed at confusing potential attackers, a concern that reached a fever pitch after 9/11. It could just as easily apply to the corporations jockeying to replace the aging Marine One fleet — a boondoggle that’s wasted billions and fattened politicians’ war chests for years, as a short list of well-connected players maneuver to build a custom rotary aircraft deemed safe enough to fly the president through almost any crisis, even a nuclear blast.
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Bear with me, as I try to connect a few different thoughts that are coming together in my mind in this particular post. My thought process kicked off with this monumentally clueless opinion piece by former state department official Christian Whiton, complaining that President Obama and Congress have failed us by not killing the folks behind Wikileaks. I’m not kidding.
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Finance
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Are you still unsure whether we’re in the midst of a giant bond bubble?
Well, Goldman Sachs sure isn’t. Today, it is selling $1.25 billion in 50-year bonds to retail buyers at a yield of 6.125%.
Do you believe that Goldman would be selling these bonds a week before the Fed meets if it thought interest rates were heading much lower?
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In other words, this is nothing less than prop trading masking as flow. Period. The problem is that as this does nothing to address the issue that the TBTFs are once again taking on massive risk in the form of huge principal inventory accumulation. Furthermore, due to the quirks of VaR reporting, this will actually have an impact of reducing reported VaR, even at a time when Morgan Stanley recently reported its highest blended VaR in history. In other words, the TBTFs, in their avoidance of Donk, have become even greater timebombs than ever imagined. And that banks will crash is certain…
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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The “Government intrusion” argument is a powerful propaganda theme that has been around for a long time, and one that big businesses often use to manipulate public opinion. As with so many other corporate-derived propaganda tools, the anti-government theme originated largely with the tobacco industry, which has relied on it for decades to get its way in public policy.
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A few hours before I left my room for the opening plenary of a two-day conference on abortion, a friend sent me the link to Personhood USA’s latest ad. It was playing in the back of my head as I listened to academics debate, politely but forcefully, about selective abortion and fetal personhood, the right of conscientious objection and the issue of fetal pain. And although I thoroughly enjoyed the conference, and left with a more nuanced view of several issues, I’m still terrified for the state of discourse on abortion in this country – in large part because of this ad.
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It’s difficult to watch almost any TV without being bombarded with repetitive ads “paid for” by some group that claims to be just like you, or like someone you want to be, like “Americans for Prosperity” and its so-called “Prosperity Network.” But you can help fight back.
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An activist group called SpeechNow.Org is running ads against Senator Russ Feingold. It blames him for the deficit and claims that clean election laws he spearheaded are “attacking free speech.” But who’s really behind SpeechNow’s folksy, cartoon attack ads?
The Money Bags: One funder is multi-millionaire Fred Young, the heir of the Young Radiator fortune in Racine. He sold his Wisconsin company for over $70 million in 1998 to a group that quickly merged with Wabtec Corporation, a multinational with a history of outsourcing jobs to make goods in China and elsewhere.
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Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights
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We already had mentioned his bizarre idea that kids might change their names upon becoming adults in the future, but Schmidt just keeps on making rather creepy statements about privacy that suggests someone totally out of touch with what people are actually complaining about.
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Internationally, the EU, OECD and Canada have all taken steps to address privacy concerns while strengthening their current practices. Canada, in particular, recently launched their Privacy by Design campaign that advocates privacy through the principles of IT, technical development, and best business practices. Additionally, US industry groups are taking the issues into their own hands in order to develop industry standard practice through self regulatory programs. In particular, the Interactive Advertising Bureau recently launched their new program.
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Late European time on Friday (22 October 2010) Google slipped out a blog confirming that, contrary to previous public assurances, its global Wi-Fi privacy breach had resulted in the widespread collection of consumer data which was more than merely fragments of emails. This included the unauthorised interception of entire emails and passwords.
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In a victory for the free speech and privacy rights of Amazon.com customers, a federal judge ruled today that the company would not have to turn over detailed records on nearly 50 million purchases to North Carolina tax collectors.
The state had demanded sensitive information including names and addresses of North Carolina customers–and information about exactly what they had purchased between 2003 and 2010.
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Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM
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The price tag for closing the digital divide between urban and rural Canadians is about $7-billion, says Winnipeg-based telecom provider MTS Allstream Inc.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Now that Marvel has again decided to revitalize its comic icon the Incredible Hulk with a new TV series, the company is bulking up to protect its “Hulk” trademark.
In Marvel’s line of sight is an Ohio-based power tool manufacturer, Airbase Industries, that’s introducing a new line of industrial and home equipment under a “Hulk” brand. The company’s marketing tagline for these tools is “Unleash the Power.”
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Of course, this actually applies to developed countries as well, but we’ll skip over that for now. Still, it’s nice to see at least some folks recognizing that intellectual property creates competing incentives, and that the only way to judge whether or not it’s a net benefit involves looking at both impacts.
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Tens of thousands of South Koreans have had their websites censored or been kicked off the Internet by their ISPs on the strength of a single, unsubstantiated accusation of copyright infringement, in a process that has no right of appeal, no right to face your accuser, and no right to see or contest the evidence against you.
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Copyrights
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I recently posted on how Access Copyright (“AC”) is trying to eliminate all but two of the 101 timely objectors to its proposed tariff hearing that would seek to increase its per student rate by about 1,300% for university and college students. AC is also seeking to charge for linking to and displaying digital content from the internet, which is interesting since no permission is required to do either.
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Although the RIAA and MPAA have stopped suing P2P users for piracy, the porn industry has decided to take on the task of ridding the Web of file swappers. To show how committed they are the purveyors of porn have set a goal to stop P2P porn piracy within 15 months. That’s a pretty tall order considering that the RIAA and MPAA failed.
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A third trial is set to begin in a bitter, closely watched legal battle between Minnesota native Jammie Thomas-Rasset and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
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One of the world’s largest distributors of Filesharing software, LimeWire, has been placed under permanent injunction by the US District Court in the Southern District of New York, to cease distributing and supporting its software. The injunction, requested by multiple parties including Bertlesmann Music Group, Motown, Capitol Records and Sony Entertainment, was filed and approved 26th October and was issued under Title 17 U.S.C §502, covering infringement of copyright.
Giver (more here)
Credit: TinyOgg
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Posted in Europe, GNU/Linux, Novell, SLES/SLED, VMware at 5:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Collaboration Summit/ELC Joint Reception. Markus Rex is on the right.
Summary: New interviews from the OpenSUSE Conference reveal some interesting thoughts on the subject OpenSUSE would rather avoid discussing
There is an OpenSUSE Conference (OSC) going on [1, 2, 3]. Emerging from the meetup we have this group photo (Andreas Jaeger, who was in OSC, published it) and some other stuff like this:
Before and during the openSUSE conference, some nice people (Jens-Daniel, Jürgen, Darix) created the following site for you:
http://rtfm.opensuse.org
Gareth Halfacree spoke to Henne Vogelsang, the project manager of the “OpenSUSE Boosters” and he also spoke to Markus Rex, who preferred not to speak about the EMC/VMB_ware takeover, which still seems inevitable (latest reports suggest only price is being negotiated). From the interview:
Markus Rex, Novell’s general manager for open platform solutions, was first to the plate and told us clearly that the company had no new comments to make about its somewhat uncertain future. Discussing what he called “the big elephant in the room,” which is to say the rumours of a planned buyout of Novell, Rex explained that Novell’s board of directors, “is evaluating its various options, and that has not changed – and had that changed, you would know.”
In other news from OpenSUSE (there is not much anymore), OpenSUSE 11.1 already reaches its end of life, Project Bretzn is conceived, and there is this OpenSUSE “Cheat Cube”. Too bad the OpenSUSE community is too reluctant to ‘cheat’ on Novell by forking and becoming independent.
Groklaw continues to organise material from the Novell vs SCO case [1, 2] and it is important to know what happens to Novell because UNIX rights too are expected to be sold. █
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Posted in Europe, FSF, Microsoft, Patents at 4:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The zero-cost advantage of Android is harmed by the advancement of software patents courtesy of patent aggressors like Microsoft and the patent troll-led MPEG-LA
THE OIN grows rapidly, but its expansion as of late included more controversial companies whose policies are in conflict with Free software but not with OIN’s perspective. Here is Fluendo joining:
Fluendo, the leading multimedia software development company and GStreamer expert, today announced its decision to join OIN as a licensee and to adhere to its obligations under the OIN licensing agreement.
Being an active part in the development of multimedia software based on open source technologies, and also as one of the most important contributors to GStreamer, the de-facto open source multimedia framework for Unix/Linux operating systems, Fluendo decided to join Open Source Network’s efforts to create a supportive ecosystem that ensures the growth and adoption of Linux.
GStreamer could become obsolete if dependence on MPEG-LA was to be ceased [1, 2, 3]. We are slowly getting there as more companies (including Google) override or circumvent MPEG-LA, which is headed by a patent troll [1, 2, 3, 4]. OIN may still be necessary as a temporary fallback.
Fluendo’s relationship with software patents makes its place at the OIN rather unique and according to the GPL violations guru, there is already an Android patent fee injection:
It is always surprising what kind of things the industry is coming up with 
Here at ELCE, ST-Ericsson has just presented how they replaced OpenCore with gstreamer as the supplier/provider of multimedia encoding/decoding to the Android software stack.
This is definitely an interesting technical solution – probably one that makes sense if you have existing gstreamer modules/drivers.
These companies are damaging the zero cost of Free software-based platforms and this cost issue is often an essential ingredient of redistribution rights (which the GPL depends on, although it depends what the payments are made for). But by far the biggest elephant in this room is Microsoft, which is still trying to claim other people’s code to be its own, using dubious and/or unnamed software patents. In Techrights — under the “Boycott Novell” banner — we have warned about this since 2006 when Novell opened those floodgates after it had voluntarily approached Microsoft with its warchest of software patents.
Microsoft to charge royalty fees to prevent Acer, Asustek from using Android in netbooks, say Taiwan makers
Microsoft plans to impose royalty fees on Taiwan-based vendors of Android handsets for using its patents in e-mail, multimedia and other functions, with Acer and Asustek Computer being targets in an actual attempt to prevent the two vendors from adopting Android and Chrome OS for their netbook and tablet PCs, according to Taiwan-based makers.
Microsoft already uses that as FUD at the very least. This type of racketeering [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] has led Red Hat’s Jan Wildeboer to saying quite provocatively: “Microsoft – from SW company to Patent Troll?”
Technically, Microsoft will become a patent troll when it just kills Vista Phony 7 [sic] like it killed “KIN”. Then, at least in the mobile space (not as a whole), Microsoft would be seen as non-practising entity.
Our reader David, who hopes to spread freedom in his country by developing Free software (GNU Telephony), wrote yesterday: “Some say Microsoft doesn’t innovate. In fact Microsoft has innovated plagiarism by patenting other people’s ideas.”
“This amounts to strong admission by Microsoft they can no longer compete on product, quality or service,” writes Georg Greve in response to the report above. Greve is the founder of the FSFE (Free Software Foundation Europe) and his successor, Karsten Gerloff, writes:
welfare-to-work for lawyers?
Georg Greve has told me about the FSFE’s work to stop software patents: “You’ll find some information on FSFE’s home page … Much work in early years was done through FFII though.”
Yes, the FFII is still doing a fantastic job and it is the main force in Europe that battles against software patents and thus protects both proprietary and freedom-respecting software makers in Europe. In general, software patents hurt software developers, not just Free/libre open source software developers.
Mobbyists still lobby for software patents over at Identi.ca, only to be smacked down by Georg Greve and others who are at least partly affiliated with the FSFE (which the mobbyist paid to be seen as associated with). As Greve puts it, “Software patenting fails the economic criteria for patenting defined by WIPO. So a economic rationale, not pro-monopoly dogma.” This whole discussion over there is amusing and the side which favours software patents comes from a company that fed Acacia with software patents. It is worse than what Samsung has been doing. No wonder quite a few people in Identi.ca have publicly and vocally blocked this mobbyist, whom they call “a troll”. █
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Posted in Apple, Microsoft at 3:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft is moving rapidly into its IBM-like demise, but this does not mean that software freedom wins just yet; Apple too is a company to keep our eyes on
In the previous post we showed Microsoft losing ground on the Web. This is true not just when it comes to deployed technology; it’s also true when it comes to Web news coverage, which is why Techrights decided to de-emphasise Microsoft, just as it de-emphasised Novell when it was put up for sale and then stopped doing anything of significance.
Microsoft hardly appears in the media anymore and its cash cows too are suffering (showing declines). The company can only try to approach children now. It tries getting them addicted to the #1 cash cow, Microsoft Office, with the help of state schools, which the Gates Foundation is meanwhile putting under its thumb. Anyway, that monopoly too is said to be at risk in schools, according to assessments like this new one, which also gives historical perspective:
Office 2010 won me back as a power user after Office 2003 stunk, Office 2007 was good but not great, and both OpenOffice and Google Apps had become quite compelling. Office 2010 was just so powerful and feature-rich that it was hard to ignore.
More schools may gradually realise that they don’t need Office anymore, so Microsoft will just dump it free of charge (long-term investment). This is also an area where the Gates Foundation helps Microsoft getting children stuck with Microsoft, much to their parents’ or teachers’ regret sometimes. Anyway, a recent downgrade of Microsoft said explicitly that school children moving to other operating systems was a reason to believe that Microsoft’s future was not promising. All children are tomorrow’s adults after all.
As if the many recent downgrades of Microsoft were not strong enough an indicator of Microsoft’s demise, the corporate media calls Microsoft “a dying consumer brand”. Mind the CNN headline “Microsoft is a dying consumer brand” (an article that made waves yesterday, e.g. [1, 2]). It tries to be reasonable:
Consumers have turned their backs on Microsoft. A company that once symbolized the future is now living in the past.
Microsoft has been late to the game in crucial modern technologies like mobile, search, media, gaming and tablets. It has even fallen behind in Web browsing, a market it once ruled with an iron fist.
[...]
A rundown of Microsoft’s major consumer projects finds trouble in almost all of them.
Internet Explorer’s popularity has been waning for years, and one recent study showed that for the first time in more than a decade, more people are using alternative browsers. The browser is becoming the single most critical piece of software on a device — potentially eclipsing the operating system — but all of the major innovations of the past few years, like tabbed browsing and add-on extensions, came from outside Microsoft.
Windows Phone 7 has promise, but Microsoft dug itself an enormous hole with the subpar Windows Mobile platform. With its market share currently sitting below 5%, developers are taking a “wait and see” approach.
The article itself may not be as harsh on Microsoft as the headline. As our reader “Twitter” put it last night:
I did not have to wait long for perfection. Laura Didio is quoted in this CNN puff piece about the death of Microsoft as a “consumer brand”.
“In this age, the race really is to the swift. You cannot afford to be an hour late or a dollar short,” says Laura DiDio, principal analyst at ITIC. “Now the biggest question is: Can they make it in the 21st century and compete with Google and Apple?” Some influential analysts think not.
The rest of the article is devoted to downplaying the obvious irrelevance and reduced profitability of the company. They run through the littiny of failures, Zune, IE, Vista but pump up supposed business purchases of Windows 7 as evidence of hope for the company. They do point out that people prefer other program when given the choice at work, but GNU/Linux and other free software is not mentioned.
Laura Didio’s revival as an analyst is a little less surprising than the revival of O’Gara. Didio was a principle promoter of the Amitiville Horror fraud back in the 1970s. Her Wikipedia article suffered a ghostly deletion but most of the info is still in the wikibin and the fun parts are:
While still in collage and working as a News Assistant and News Writer at Channel 5 News in NYC, DiDio contacted Kathy and Lee Lutz who agreed to let the then Metromedia (now Fox News) news outlet have exclusive access to film a seance in the house. The seance was organized by Connecticut based paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. The Warrens invited a number of other psychics to the seance including representatives from Duke University’s School of Parapsychology. DiDio served as a producer for the evening’s events and assisted reporter Marvin Scott in his reporting of the seance, which was televised on the Channel 5 10 O’Clock News broadcast. She later also accompanied well-known paranormal investigator Hans Holzer into the house to document a follow-up seance he did using trance medium Ethel Myers-Johnson. The events surrounding the alleged haunting at 112 Ocean Ave, Amityville, NY served as the basis for a book “The Amityville Horror” by Jay Anson and several movies. The topic remains one of intense interest to this day. DiDio has been interviewed frequently on the subject, but she herself has never published any articles or reports on “The Amityville Horror.” DiDio believes that something extraordinary did happen to the Lutzes to cause them to flee 112 Ocean Ave, Amityville after only 30 days.
A true story! After that, she went on to her career as a Microsoft booster, which was crowned by pretending the SCO case had merit. Seven years after signing the SCO NDA and claiming the now failed copyright extortion was on solid ground, it seems she may rise from the discredited and promote again. A happy Halloween, indeed.
Joab from IDG has meanwhile passed along this “Special Report” about Microsoft. It is one heck of a puff piece from ABC News (also corporate press). Does the site disclosure the fact that Bill Gates has just paid it millions of dollars (see last month’s news [1, 2)? Of course not.
One must also remember the connection between ABC and The Walt Disney Company, which is in turn connected to Apple (corporate press is typically like that). We must not take our eyes off Apple, either. This post which is titled “The Shark” was sent by a reader yesterday to remind us that Apple is no better than Microsoft and although the post is slightly old by now, it does raise a key point in a timely fashion (because Apple has begun attacking “openness” [1, 2], where its meaning is almost analogous to that of freedom):
Apple has jumped the shark.
Yes, I’m willing to say it—and yes, now, when Apple is poised to revolutionize computing again, making everything touchable, mobile, and user-unservicable. I imagine, Gruber’s going to mock me, and big Steve is going to order my phone remotely bricked. I don’t care, because I get the distinctive evil vibe that I remember all-too-well from before. Back in the early days. Back before Microsoft destroyed the software business.
This pointer was sent to us by someone who bought a computer from Apple and regretted it later because OS X went the wrong way.
Android/Linux are the rising stars at the moment, especially in this ever-growing space. Did Apple and/or Microsoft contribute to the latest lawsuit from Gemalto [1, 2]? Both Apple and Microsoft have already sued using software patents directly. It’s all they have left, but that’s a subject we’ll reserve for another post. Apple is the company which is named after a fruit (not to be confused with the United Fruit Company even though its digital impact may one day become similar), but it does not make it any softer than Micro-Soft. █
By Bertha Worms (1868–1937)
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Posted in Antitrust, Europe, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Servers at 2:41 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Source: Netcraft
Summary: Web server and Web browser surveys show a continued decline for Microsoft in recent months; even Bill Gates’ successor at Microsoft is now running his Web site on top of GNU/Linux with Free/libre open source software
Ozzie has dealt Microsoft a blow as he suddenly left [1, 2] and according to Netcraft, he also moved from Microsoft Windows/IIS (assuming he was the owner of this domain at the time) to WordPress, which is of course all Free/libre open source software. As Netcraft puts it:
Linux nginx 17-Oct-2010 76.74.254.120 automattic
Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 8-Oct-2003 207.244.116.225 Rhythmix, Inc.
Identi.ca’s mjjzf wrote: “You want to see something funny about Ray Ozzie’s blog?”
Well, additionally, our reader Oiaohm points to this page and writes: “Really if I was a MS share holder I would not be happy by the way these numbers are lookin”
Microsoft keeps declining in Web hosts of course. The absolute numbers in Netcraft may not be meaningful though (for reasons we covered before). It’s the trends that usually count. The same goes for surveys that claim to measure browser market share; it’s the overall trend one should mind. And while unbundling is sought there is no reliable way to measure operating systems market share, either. Well, operating systems — unlike Web browsers or Web servers — need not be accessible via the Web and many GNU/Linux clusters are in fact isolated from the Internet because they are custom-built for specific tasks which exclude Web surfing.
Speaking of browser market share, “statistics show European Microsoft Windows browser ballot screen to be useless,” says DownloadSquad right now:
The browser ballot screen that Windows users in the EU have started to see since March, which was supposed to lessen the monopolistic stronghold that Internet Explorer has on browser market share, has proved to be quite useless. New data shows that the differences in browser use trends between the EU and the world from January to October are within the error margin. This is despite Opera’s past claims that the browser ballot screen at one point made downloads of its browser in the EU skyrocket.
Let’s take a look at the numbers (seen in the table above). IE use dropped 5.25% in Europe between January and October, and 5.92% worldwide. Firefox market share went down 1.23% in Europe and 0.14% worldwide. Chrome jumped 6.4% in Europe and 6.24% worldwide. Safari went up 0.05% in Europe and 0.8% worldwide. And so on.
We wrote about this last week (after The New York Times report) and about this ballot in general we wrote about in:
- Browser Ballot Critique
- Microsoft’s Fake “Choice” Campaign is Back
- Microsoft Claimed to be Cheating in Web Browsers Ballot
- Microsoft Loses Impact in the Web Despite Unfair Ballot Placements
- Given Choice, Customers Reject Microsoft
- Microsoft is Still Cheating in Browser Ballot — Claim
- Microsoft’s Browser Ballot is Broken Again and Internet Explorer 8 is Critically Flawed
- The Microsoft Who Cried “Wolf!”
One thing nobody can argue about is: Microsoft’s market share is eroding. █
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Posted in Deception, Microsoft at 2:09 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Translated and expanded by Eduardo Landaveri (see original in English)
Resumen: Las tácticas que nos muestran que empresas monopólicas de tecnología como Microsoft están podridos hasta la médula, al igual que las corporaciones petroleras que patrocinan la negación del calentamiento global causado por el hombre o acelerada por el hombre.
El término “mobbyist” se define por urbandictionary.com como: “lemmings, por lo general sin educación, que tratan a toda costa de influir en las políticas públicas en nombre de un interés especial al actuar como perturbadores en los ayuntamientos u otros eventos públicos. Mobbyists dicen representar los intereses populares, pero en realidad son soldados de a pie de estos intereses, de las corporaciones que los financian.”
Lo conveniente de este término es que suena como una fusión de las palabras “Microsoft” y “grupo de presión”. Mobbyists se puede comparar a los extremistas utilizado por los intereses corporativos de la extrema derecha. Por citar el ejemplo de urbandictionary.com, “El Ayuntamiento de salud se vio interrumpido por un grupo marginal pequeño cuando mobbyists llegaron en un autobús del Partido del Te y no paraban de gritar” socialista “cada vez que el congresista Smith trató de responder a una pregunta.”
En Español lo podriamos definir como:
Mob = Turba, muchedumbre + lobbyists = grupos de presion
Recordemos que no podemos traducir algunas cosas literalmente, pues perderian su sentido. Por eso que a traves del tiempo muchas palabras han venido del Ingles al Español, lo que conocemos como anglicanismos. Mobbyist debe ser una de estas palabras. Mob en Ingles tiene un sentido mafioso, ilegal al igual que las acciones de estos individuos y grupos.
Esto le da un sentido como grupos de presion ilegales. Ilegales, amorales incluso criminales por las tacticas que usan en contra de todos los que se opongan a su agenda. Los ejemplos abundan en la historia de como Microsoft ha acosado, de toda manera posible a sus oponentes. La manera como empresas transnacionales se han opuesto a los gremios y organizaciones populares el siglo pasado en Latino America. Para muestra basta un boton: el acoso de Coca Cola a dirigentes gremiales en Colombia los ultimos años [http://movimiento-social-colombiano.over-blog.es/article-acoso-en-coca-cola--39425190.html].
El avance del Colonialismo Digital nos ha dado otros ejemplos como la manera amoral de los socios de Microsoft impulsaron a toda costa la estandarizacion del OXML en Colombia y Sudafrica. El fin justifica los medios, su interes fue hacer que su formato fuera declarado “standard”, “norma”, aunque NUNCA lo implementaron o lo implementaran.
El avance del Free Software a nivel mundial, tambien esta provocando similares actitudes en todos los paises del mundo. Ya vemos como personas que lo promueven son tildadas comunistas, anticristianos y acosados de toda manera. Aqui deberiamos mencionar como estos grupos estan tratando de evitar y estorbar el camino de independencia digital del Brazil. Nuestros paises Latino Americanos y Africa debemos de mirar a Brazil y seguir su ejemplo.
“Es una cosa cuando una persona critica a una corporación enorme, pero otra cosa para las corporaciones atentar contra las personas simples.”
Comenzamos a utilizar el mobbyists palabra después de la FFII (Fundacion por la Libre Infraestructura Informatic) la había utilizado y nuestro post anterior esperamos arrojar luz sobre algunos actos de intimidación de los mobbyists aunque Techrights rara vez habla de ello. Hablar contra una gran corporación poco ética como Microsoft es imposible sin algún tipo de represalia (hemos oído que lo mismo se aplica a IBM), como mucha gente aprendió la manera dura. De nuevo ejemplos abundan en la historia de Microsoft, aunque muchos de sus chacales y “mobbyists” copan Wikipedia y el Internet tratando de reescribir la historia.
Si tu persona, tu sitio Web, u otras de tus obras o tu empresa ha sido vilipendiada, atacada por Microsoft o por sus mobbyists, te rogamos hacernoslo saber, porque estamos construyendo un índice de ejemplos. Es bueno para las personas que son el objetivo de Microsoft descubrir que no están solos y que siempre hay la posibilidad de demandas colectivas. Es una cosa para una persona para criticar a una corporación enorme, pero otra cosa para las empresas grandes para atentar contra las personas simples. empresas amorfos no tienen derechos, los individuos los tienen.
“He perdido mi sueño y la tranquilidad los dos últimos meses por estas actividades de mal gusto por parte de Microsoft.”
-Profesor Phatak Deepak
PS – la imagen en la parte superior es de Christine O’Donell, uno de los símbolos del Partido del Te que dijo que las cosas estupidas como:
1. “Empresas del los Estadus Unidos experimentan con seres humanos y los cruzan con animales y dan a ratones cerebros humanos.”
2. “Dios elige para sanar a alguien de cáncer, sin embargo, esa persona todavía tiene una gran cantidad de cuentas médicas. Los proyectos de ley pendientes no determinan si el paciente ha sido curado por Dios. ”
3. “He incursionado en la brujería. Nunca me uni a una secta. “/” Una de mis primeras citas con una bruja fue en un altar satánico “.
4. “Sacamos la Biblia y de oración de las escuelas públicas. Ahora estamos teniendo tiroteos semanales. Tuvimos la revolución sexual de los años 60, y ahora la gente está muriendo de SIDA.”
Estos grupos como el Partido del Te que supuestamente “luchan” por el “pueblo” se dicen cristianos, y cuando ven que tu como cristiano no compartes sus ideas te estigmatizan de la peor manera. Su unico interes es volver a unos Estados Unidos “blanco” y a la situacion de apartheid que se vivio decadas atras en contra de Africanos-Americanos y Estado Unidenses de origen Latino. De ahi sus ataques a Obama e inmigrantes de origen Latino y todo intento de promover justicia social.
Aunque citamos estas quotas como ejemplo de la ignorancia de estos individuos, en Techrights.org no estamos en contra de los principios biblicos o encasillamos a todos los cristianos en el mismo cajon. Son decisiones personales, por el contrario ser autenticamente cristianos nos llama a luchar contra toda injusticia, no tolerarla o trabajar por dinero fomentandolas:
“Vuestras riquezas están podridas; vuestras ropas están comidas de polilla. Vuestro oro, y plata están corrompidos de orín, y su orín os será testimonio en contra, y comerá del todo vuestras carnes, como fuego. Habéis allegado tesoro para los postreros días. He aquí, el jornal de los obreros que han segado vuestras tierras (el cual por engaño no les ha sido pagado de vosotros) clama, y los clamores de los que habían segado, han entrado en los oídos del Señor de los ejércitos. Habéis vivido en deleites sobre la tierra, y sido disolutos, y habéis recreado vuestros corazones como en el día de matar sacrificios . Habéis condenado y muerto al justo, y él no os resiste.” Santiago 5: 2-6 █
“Software propietario es una injusticia y queremos ayudarte a escapar de el”. –Richard Stallman
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