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07.07.14

Despite SCOTUS Ruling, Microsoft Still Extorts Companies and Product Buyers Using FAT Software Patents, Latest Victim is Canon

Posted in GNU/Linux, Kernel, Microsoft, Patents at 4:50 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The FAT police is at it again

Steve Ballmer FAT

Summary: Canon and Microsoft sign a patent deal which relates to patents on FAT file systems and impacts some of Canon’s products, potentially Linux products as well (Canon makes drivers for Linux but does not develop products with Android or GNU/Linux just yet)

While we are unaware of any Android- or Linux-based products from Canon, the company does deliver drivers for FOSS platforms, especially since under a decade ago (we covered this quite often at the time of a turnaround). Therefore it is regretful to learn about FAT patents, which were disgraced by entities and people including Torvalds (there is prior art and TomTom never pushed the case to the end), are used to tax Canon products or legitimise FAT patents.

Linux-centric sites hardly paid attention to it last week, but someone in IRC told us about it. Looking it up very quickly we found Microsoft’s booster Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet saying: “Today’s patent agreement isn’t the first forged by the two companies. Canon previously licensed Microsoft exFAT file system technology for an undisclosed amount.”

Sometimes companies pay for it via Microsoft partners such as Tuxera, but sometimes there are deals like this one. The OIN’s CEO told us over the telephone that Microsoft has been using FAT patents while calling them “Linux-related” or something along those line in the case of LG and maybe Samsung also (Samsung’s deal seems to have been broader than that the second time around).

Nikon's deal with Microsoft was quite different and the booster correctly pointed out: “Today’s agreement also is not part of Microsoft’s ongoing campaign to convince companies using Linux, Android and ChromeOS to license its patents. Nikon announced an Android-related patent licensing deal with Microsoft in February 2013.”

This is not entirely true because the deal practically serves to legitimise exFAT, which is a common attack vector on embedded Linux. The post from the booster (hogwash of sorts) attracts comments from Microsoft sceptics, who know a lot better what Microsoft has been up to. There are comments such as: “Do we need a repeat of FAT? If I see a product’s filesystem using exFAT I will return it.”

Another person says: “The fact the the US Supreme Court recently re-addressed software patents is a move in the positive direction, even though it was not a large move. While much damage has already been done since these huge giants like Microsoft and IBM already have an enormous software patent portfolio, at least there is hope in future software patent releases. Eventually, technology will advance forward and the current software patent portfolios will probably start to become stale, at which point I can see the general public begin to feel the advantages if we make the right decisions today moving forward. But, we must end the monopolies that this huge companies get with their enormous patent portfolios. The trend in software patents granted within the past 30 years or so is staggering, just do some searches on this subject as it is well worth the reads. My hope is that we don’t continue to make the same mistakes moving forward.”

Canon has many patents on physical and mechanical or optical things like lenses. Microsoft has mostly software patents, which may be utterly worthless in the eyes of SCOTUS, as opposed to the USPTO that granted them without scrutiny. The USPTO has just become even more zealous about patents and it approves almost every patent application, even though SCOTUS deems many of those patents too abstract to be patentable (patent lawyers don't quite agree).

Carl Erickson, the “co-founder and president of Atomic Object, a software design and development company founded in 2001,” (based on his introduction) says that “Investors in software startups need to understand that such companies are unlikely to have strong IP protection through patents. Instead, investors should look for evidence of engaged, delighted users, significant market share or the potential for rapid growth, exclusive relationships or special market channels. For a software startup and their investors, these will beat patent pending, any day.”

His whole analysis, however, sometimes (in the text) claims that patents too are needed, with phrases such as:

As I wrote in my last post, protecting your intellectual property isn’t just about patents. It’s important for companies to ensure they own the copyright on their software.

Copyright protects a particular expression, patents protect an idea. The nature of software is such that an idea can be implemented in many different ways, in many different languages, and therefore patent protection on an idea is potentially legitimate and important. So when should you worry about a software patent?

If you’re confused by software patents, you’re not alone. While our legal and business structures will eventually adapt, technology, as usual, is moving faster, and the results aren’t always good or predictable. A recent Supreme Court decision didn’t radically alter the status quo, but reinforced a trend away from some of the sillier past decisions.

Software patents should be dragged to courts and defeated there. There is a valuable precedent now. All these FAT patent deals (Microsoft has been signing them for years) may be as valuable as estate on the Mars. █

Links 7/7/2014: CentOS 7 Released, Linux 3.16 RC4

Posted in News Roundup at 4:17 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Lamassu Brings Rakía, a Brand-spanking-new Open Source Back-end System for their ATMs

    Lamassu which has revolutionized the in-person acquisition of Bitcoin via a streamlined thirty-second process earlier introduced a modular two-Bitcoin ATM system; has now brought in Rakía, a brand-spanking-new open source back-end system for its ATMs. The decision is aimed to continue providing A better experience for its clients.

  • Out in the Open: The Crusade To Bring More Women to Open Source

    Recent reports from Facebook and Google confirmed what we’ve known all along: the giants of tech have a diversity problem. But in the world of open source, the problem is even worse.

    According to a survey conducted last year, only about 11 percent of open source contributors are women. Meanwhile, women account for 23 percent of all computer programmers and 39.5 percent of web developers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

  • Oculus Acquires RakNet Middleware & Open-Sources It
  • Announcing Oculus Connect, RakNet Open Source, and E3 2014 Awards

    We’re thrilled to announce Oculus Connect, a developer conference that brings together engineers, designers, and creatives from around the world to share and collaborate in the interest of creating the best virtual reality experiences possible.

  • Oculus VR acquires game-networking engine RakNet — and makes it open-source

    The company announced today that it is acquiring RakNet, which specializes in a software-development engine for connecting games across an online network. RakNet, which is also the name of the technology, enables studios to quickly add voice chat, network patching, and secure connections to their products. Oculus VR, which is building its Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset, notes that thousands of indie developers and major companies like Everquest developer Sony Online Entertainment and Minecraft studio Mojang licensed the tech for their games. Oculus isn’t just purchasing RakNet, it is also making it open source, which means other developers can see the code, add to it, and use it for free.

  • Mellanox Contributes the World’s First Open Source Ethernet Switch MLAG Implementation

    Mellanox® Technologies, Ltd. (NASDAQ:MLNX), a leading supplier of high-performance, end-to-end interconnect solutions for data center servers and storage systems, today announced that Ethernet Switch MLAG functionality is now available as open source as part of the community driven Open Ethernet program. MLAG provides the ability for a host to connect to two standalone switches with a pair of load balanced bonded interfaces. Now open and freely available, the MLAG functionality allows for faster failure recovery. The open source code is available at https://github.com/open-ethernet/mlag and can be installed and run on a Linux host.

  • Open Xchange: The internet wouldn’t have happened without Linux

    Open Xchange acts as an open-source rival to Microsoft’s Office 365. With more companies moving to open source, we ask Mr Laguna if he believes that Microsoft’s proprietary system is viable.

  • Open source tool could sniff out most heavily censored websites

    Georgia Tech researchers enlist owners of websites — and website users — via Encore project

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox’s Share Falls as Chrome’s Continues to Rise

        While Mozilla was mostly in the headlines during the early part of this year for news related to Brendan Eich and for the company’s newfound focus on smartphones and Firefox OS, another piece of meaningful news regarding the company is largely being ignored: In April, Google Chrome moved past Firefox to take second place in desktop browser market share, according to web traffic stats from Net Applications.

  • Funding

    • From zero to Spark Core in two years

      As for open source, I think that the electronics world has been proprietary for a very long time, but open source is taking its hold, and will eventually play a huge role, just like it does in software. The Internet is built on open source underpinnings like GNU/Linux, and I hope that soon the hardware world will be too.

  • BSD

    • FreeBSD 9.3-RC3 Now Available

      The third RC build of the 9.3-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures.

      This is expected to be the final RC build of the 9.3-RELEASE cycle.

    • FreeBSD 9.3 RC3 Released
    • FreeBSD 9.3 RC3 Released with Several Bug Fixes

      Glen Barber has announced the immediate availability for download of the third and probably the last RC (Release Candidate) version of the upcoming FreeBSD 9.3 operating system.

    • The Linux Kernel Might Use FreeBSD’s Capsicum Security Framework

      A Linux kernel developer is working on porting FreeBSD’s CAPSICUM security framework over to the Linux kernel.

      In announcing his work at the end of June that’s now being discussed amongst kernel stakeholders, David Drysdale wrote, “The last couple of versions of FreeBSD (9.x/10.x) have included the Capsicum security framework, which allows security-aware applications to sandbox themselves in a very fine-grained way. For example, OpenSSH now uses Capsicum in its FreeBSD version to restrict sshd’s credentials checking process, to reduce the chances of credential leakage. It would be good to have equivalent functionality in Linux, so I’ve been working on getting the Capsicum framework running in the kernel, and I’d appreciate some feedback/opinions on the general design approach.”

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Unifont 7.0 Update Covers The Unicode 7.0 Basic Multilingual Plane

      Following last month’s release of Unicode 7.0, the GNU Unifont project is out with an open-source glyph for each printable code point in the Unicode 7.0 Plane 0 standard.

    • Unifont 7.0.03 Released
    • Wanted: A Purpose for Open Source

      Free and open source software is a way of life for thousands of people. Yet, as we trudge the endless treadmill of release upon release, there’s one question you don’t hear much any more: where is open source heading? Or, perhaps, should it have a purpose at all?

      Not too long ago, the answer to either question was obvious. The goal was to provide a free alternative to proprietary systems. But progress got stalled at a good-enough ninety percent or so, and looks likely to stay there for the foreseeable future.

  • Licensing

    • Open source’s identity crisis

      For Karen Sandler, software freedom isn’t simply a technical matter. Nor is it a purely ideological one.

      It’s a matter of life and death.

      Sandler, Executive Director of the non-profit Software Freedom Conservancy, says software freedom became personal when she realized her pacemaker/defibrillator was running code she couldn’t analyze. For nearly a decade—first at the Software Feedom Law Center, then at the GNOME Foundation before Conservancy—she’s been an advocate for the right to examine the software on which our lives depend.

    • IRS: Yorba Open Source Software Project Must Pay Taxes

      Should open source software projects that give their products away freely have to pay taxes? Although the answer to that question traditionally has been “no,” the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) may be changing its mind, if the case of the Yorba desktop Linux software project is an indication.

    • The IRS wages war on open source nonprofits

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Why OpenStack matters, celebrating four years, and more

      Interested in keeping track of what’s happening in the open source cloud? Opensource.com is your source for what’s happening right now in OpenStack, the open source cloud infrastructure project.

    • Intel Wants Open-Source Analytics

      Intel wants to drive big-data analytics toward open-source software accelerated on its processors.

      In a first step in that direction, it is working on an upgrade of its version of Hadoop that blends in features from the distribution provided by Cloudera, a leading open-source supplier of the code. Meanwhile it has already started working with customers to determine what sort of analytics apps they want on top of Hadoop and how to accelerate them on x86 chips.

    • Secure Bitcoin Hardware Wallet With Open Source Smart Card: PRISMicide Crowdfunding Campaign

      PRISMicide, the first security solution based on open source smart cards, protects the privacy of its users… starting with their Bitcoin wallet.

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • North Korean and North American tensions could create the Cold War II

      These statements are reminiscent of Cold War propaganda and show how North Korea is neutralized in American eyes: North American media interprets their responses as madness.

      Even if the republic’s response to this film is threatening, they haven’t threatened war, something which The Huffington Post and several other prominent media outlets reported. The Huffington Post even quotes The Christian Science Monitor, saying that Kim himself threatens “all-out war” upon release of the movie, though there aren’t any sources cited to prove this.

    • DHS’s Risky Airport Alerts

      When DHS releases details to the worried public, it also releases them to jihadists.

    • Blackwater’s Death Machine

      I’m sorry Moniem and fellow Iraqis participate in this farce. They are hoodwinked. There will be no justice, merely damage control. And what of countless other unjustified killings, which will not even see the semblance of prosecution? Blackwater on one hand, Obama, with his hit list and targeted assassination on the other, and in between, CIA-JSOC paramilitary operations geared to regime change, together constitute the package of Obama’s liberal humanitarianism, bringing democracy to the ignorant at gunpoint.

    • UK Trains Nigerian Security Forces on Crisis Response Strategies

      The United Kingdom Cabinet Office Briefing Room (COBR) has trained the Nigerian security forces on crisis response strategies.

    • Editorial:New rules needed for use of drones

      Thirteen months ago, during a speech at the National Defense University, President Barack Obama promised greater transparency and new guidelines for drone use as part of his counterterrorism strategy.

      So much for promises.

      An authoritative, bipartisan report released recently by the Stimson Center charged that the U.S. use of drones threatens to destabilize legal and moral norms worldwide. It also chastised the Obama administration’s failure to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of drone use and questioned drones’ effectiveness.

    • Reining In the Drones

      Targeted killings by drones may be justified at times against terrorist threats to the United States, but the “blow back” from unintended civilian killings in places like Pakistan and Yemen is becoming “a potent recruiting tool for terrorist organizations,” the report noted. The panel, which had experienced specialists from the George W. Bush and Clinton administrations, concluded that there was no indication that drone attacks on suspected terrorists had advanced “long-term U.S. security interests.”

    • Israel Air Strikes Kill Seven Gaza Militants
    • Five Gaza militants killed by Israel drones: medics
    • Six Israelis held over ‘revenge’ killing of Palestinian teen

      Israel has arrested a group of Jewish extremists suspected of kidnapping and murdering a Palestinian teenager in a revenge killing, triggering violent clashes spreading from east Jerusalem throughout Israel.

      Tensions were already peaking early Monday in the south after two Israeli strikes on Gaza left five militants dead, following continuous mortar and rocket fire at southern Israel.

    • Two Palestinians killed by Israeli drone in Gaza
    • Another two Gazans killed by Israeli drone
    • Israel launches deadly airstrikes in Gaza
    • Nine Palestinian killed after Israeli deadly attacks
    • Israel’s Lieberman and Netanyahu to end political deal: Reports

      Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is gearing up to dissolve the Likud-Beitrinu ruling partnership in Israel, local media reported on Monday.

      Lieberman is scheduled to hold a press conference at 12pm local time (10am GMT) at which he is widely expected to officially terminate the political deal.

  • Transparency Reporting

    • WikiLeaks, Bringing The First Amendment To The World
    • Two Years Later, WikiLeaks’ Assange Still Pushing For Freedom, Transparency

      While Americans celebrated the adoption of the Declaration of Independence over the weekend, there were people around the globe, including in the United States, celebrating the birth of a man who is fighting for his freedom and the freedom of information: Julian Assange, who turned 43 years old on July 3.

      Widely known for his roles as co-founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, Assange sought to create an organization that aligns with his belief that a transparent government reduces corruption and in turn creates a stronger democracy, which explains why WikiLeaks has released more classified intelligence documents than all other media organizations around the world combined.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Censorship

    • The Right to Be Forgotten

      The “right to be forgotten” in European law has now taken the place of what people in the past used to call “the forgiveness of sins”. Formerly it was believed that old offenses, especially when these did not result in prosecution or suit, were somehow effaced by the passage of time. “Long dormant claims have often more of cruelty than of justice in them”, says Halsbury’s Laws of England.

    • Google Restores Some Links To Articles Removed In ‘Right To Be Forgotten’ Mess

      Last week, of course, there was a lot of attention around Google alerting publications that some of their stories had been removed from its index over “right to be forgotten” requests, following a dangerous European Court of Justice ruling. Various publications in the UK complained about some of the removals, and requested if there was any sort of appeals process. The BBC was initially told that there was no such process, though the Guardian claimed it was looking for ways to appeal.

    • Hollywood Studios Tried To Add File Sharing Sites To New Zealand’s Child Porn Blacklist

      We just wrote about the UK’s filtering systems blocking access to 20% of the world’s top 100,000 sites, even though only about 4% of those host the porn Prime Minister David Cameron seems so obsessed with blocking. Also noted in that story was the fact that many “pirate sites” are being blocked at ISP level via secret court orders.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • Rulebook needed for U.S. drone strikes

      To understand why U.S. drone strikes outside traditional battlefields make so many people so uneasy, look to the past and look to the future.

      Start with the past. In 1976, exiled Chilean dissident Orlando Letelier was driving to work in Washington when a car bomb planted by Chilean agents ripped through his vehicle, killing Letelier and his young American assistant. From the viewpoint of Chile’s ruling military junta, the killing was justifiable: Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s regime considered itself at war with leftist insurgents and viewed Letelier as a security threat.

      U.S. authorities saw things differently, of course: They condemned the bombing as an assassination. The FBI opened a murder investigation, and a Senate committee launched an inquiry into illegal foreign intelligence activities on U.S. soil.

    • Sri Lanka: Hate verses in Islam’s religious text is the main cause of global Islamic issues

      Muslims the world over must introspect. There were no Americans, US State Department or CIA when the spread of Islam took place violently with the core mission to ‘kill infidels” or non-believers. Islam via sword cut across entire continents and destroyed entire civilizations. These natives did not even have time to defend against the attacks. Undeniably, the acts were not in self-defense and the use of sword were inspired by the Quran. It is these factors that raise the existential fears of non-Muslims once more. The fear of history repeating itself prevails when 95% of violent conflicts around the world involve Muslims even if these conflicts are mischievously ignited by Western Christian countries. These conflicts are drawn using Koranic verses by numerous Islamic groups. That Islamic groups/Islamic leaders uses verses from the Koran to instill mayhem and draw Muslims into their fold raises the question of how far Islam is being manipulated by Islamic leaders as well as how far the West is manipulating this weakness. That these groups have no shortage of followers and these groups are heavily funded and are able to easily manipulate moderate Muslims makes any to wonder how many Muslims are able to go against the tide without submitting themselves to their religion and those who are leading them. What needs to be said is that Muslims leaders and the West are manipulating Islam’s Koranic verses because there are verses that can be manipulated. Herein lies the core issue and root cause for the violence. With no central authority to control doctrine in Islam, a proliferation of bizarre religious edicts has resulted in chaos the world over.

    • UK airport terror measures: Passengers warned to keep mobile phones and laptops charged or lose them at security for US-bound flights

      Passengers hoping to fly to the US this summer will be turned away at airport security checkpoints if they have forgotten to put their mobile phone on to charge the night before.

    • TSA will not allow passengers with discharged cellphones onboard
    • Devices with flat batteries banned from transatlantic flights

      THE UNITED STATES Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has announced security measures that might cause serious problems for air travellers who forget their chargers.

    • Foreign airport scrutiny focuses on electronic devices

      Don’t bring dead phones or laptops to those overseas airports for flights heading to the USA.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Pew Report: 65 percent believe Internet will be more open in the future

      A research report published by the Pew Research Center revealed that among 1,400 experts, 65 percent believe that the Internet will be more open by the year 2025.

      The respondents hope that, more than 10 years from now, there will be no major changes that will negatively affect how people obtain and share content on the Internet.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Our single market is crying out for copyright reform

        Our duty as lawmakers is to find a balance between creators and the justified interests of society. Yet that balance is changing. Transforming technology is changing how people use and re-use information. And disrupting a longstanding legal framework.

      • Tough New Piracy Law Sees No Takers in More Than a Year

        For years Norway was pressured to do something drastic against pirates and 12 months ago this week the country introduced tough new legislation. But one year on and not a single file-sharer has been inquired about nor has a single site blocking request been filed. What’s going on in Scandinavia?

07.06.14

Links 6/7/2014: Deepin 2014, Calligra 2.8.5

Posted in News Roundup at 7:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Build the best Linux desktop

      Like all things Linux and open source, users are spoilt for choice when it comes to selecting a desktop environment (or DE). But this choice that many perceive as freedom, others may also see as a little bewildering and confusing.

      Right after making the soul-shaking decision of switching operating systems and installing an unknown system – by hand no less – a new Linux user is then greeted with weird sounding desktops to choose from with names like Gnome (a mini-desktop perhaps?), KDE (Isn’t that a double-glazing firm?) and Xfce (No idea). What veteran users herald as Linux’s crown jewels, to the innocent newcomer it’s like stumbling into a sci-fi convention where everyone is discussing a new TV series that you’ve never heard of but apparently it’s been around for years.

  • Kernel Space

    • Graphics Stack

      • Pixman 0.32.6 Finally Updated

        The last Pixman stable release happened in November of 2013 while out this weekend is finally a new Pixman release.

        While it’s been more than a half-year since the last stable Pixman release, the changes for the new v0.32.6 release aren’t particularly compelling but still worth pointing out.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • NetworkManagerQt 0.9.8.2 is out

        Plasma NM is going to be part of kde-workspace and as you may know NMQt is a dependency for Plasma NM. Plasma 5 release is approaching and since we may not get NMQt ready for KF5 in time we decided to ship a snapshort of NMQt with kde-workspace so that Plasma NM compiles. In the future we will remove the snapshot and rely on the NMQt in KF5.

      • Final updates to section implementation
      • Calligra 2.8.5 Released

        This is the last but one update to the 2.8 series of the Calligra Suite, and Calligra Active released to fix recently found issues. The Calligra team recommends everybody to update.

        Why is 2.8.4 skipped? Shortly before 2.8.4 release we discovered bug that sneaked in 2.8.2 version and decided to skip the 2.8.4 entirely and quickly release 2.8.5 instead with a proper fix. The bug is related to not showing file formats in Save dialogs.

      • Calligra 2.8.5 Released

        The KDE Community has announced the release of Calligra 2.8.5. “This is the last (and last but one) update to the 2.8 series of the Calligra Suite, and Calligra Active released to fix recently found issues. The Calligra team recommends everybody to update,” says Jarosław Staniek of Calligra community.

      • opportunities presented by multi-process architectures

  • Distributions

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Challenge technology competition

        Students from tertiary institutions in seven Asian Pacific countries are invited to attend the 4th Regional Red Hat Challenge – a knowledge-based technology competition.

    • Debian Family

      • I love my MacBookAir with Debian

        I can set the display backlight to zero via software, which saves me a lot of battery life and also offers a bit of anti-spy-acroos-my-shoulder support. WLAN and bluetooth work nicely.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Linux Mint 17 KDE Overview & Screenshots

              Linux Mint 17 ‘Qiana’ KDE and Xfce editions were released late last month, just a few weeks after the main editions (Cinnamon and MATE) were put out. This release will have the same lifespan as the distribution which is based on, Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr, so it will be supported until 2019, for no less than five years.

            • Deepin 2014 Release——Hold Your Dream and Move Forward

              Linux Deepin Project has been officially renamed as “Deepin Project”.

            • Deepin 2014 Linux Distribution Released

              Deepin Linux 2014 is now available as the popular Chinese-developed derivative to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS that features its own lightweight desktop powered using HTML5 and Go with Compiz. The updated desktop in Deepin 2014 is called Deepin Desktop Environment 2.0.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Linux Foundation introduces Linux for cars

      The connected car is shifting into high gear, and the Linux Foundation wants an open-source platform in the pole position. The non-profit consortium recently announced the debut of Automotive Grade Linux (AGL), a customizable, open-source automotive software stack with Linux at its core.

    • Linux OS Gets New In-Car Interface: ‘Automotive Grade Linux’ Launched

      A common, Linux-based software platform for the ‘connected car’ is one step closer, with the release of Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) this week.

      AGL claims to be the industry’s only ‘fully open’ automotive platform, allowing carmakers to use a standardised single base upon which to build their own user experiences.

    • Phones

      • Android

        • Build Android, Chrome apps from the Chromebook

          The app allows you to code through HTML, JavaScript and Dart – Google’s JavaScript-like language, so there is no Java at this time, but you do get Git support.

        • Google Now Is The Killer App For Android Wear

          In the next few months, Google will get some competition from Microsoft, Apple and a few startups in this space. For better or worse, none of them know as much about you as Google does, so it’ll be hard for them to replicate the Google Now experience. That should give Google a bit of an edge against the competition — unless the iWatch turns out to be so amazing that people will buy it even if it just shows the time and phone notifications.

        • Android Circuit: Samsung’s New Galaxy Smartphones, Android Is The Top OS In The US, And The Home Screen On The Front Line

          Taking a look back at the week in news across the Android world, this week’s Android Circuit focuses on Samsung’s new Galaxy handsets; Android tops the US market share; the Android ‘L’ changes; Google Play Services’ update for Android Wear support; Android Wear apps arrive in the Play Store; the battle for the home screen continues with Aviate; and what happens next in the smartphone world.

Leftovers

  • Science

    • The AI boss that deploys Hong Kong’s subway engineers

      Hong Kong has one of the world’s best subway systems. It has a 99.9 per cent on time record – far better than London Underground or New York’s subway. It is owned and run by MTR Corporation, which also runs systems in Stockholm, Melbourne, London and Beijing. MTR is now planning to roll out its AI overseer to the other networks it manages.

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • VIDEO: Calif. officer beating woman on roadside

      A cellphone video depicting a California Highway Patrol office punching a woman along the side of a freeway Tuesday evening has the agency investigating accusations of excessive force.

    • CIA interrupts info about secret overseas nuclear project

      The Washington Post has published an exclusive report about the US National Security Agency’s surveillance activities, but withheld information of “considerable intelligence value,” including a secret overseas nuclear project.

    • Communication breakdown
    • Extend NATO’s umbrella to Montenegro and Macedonia

      In reacting to Moscow’s aggression in Ukraine, President Obama has reassured exposed NATO members Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia of firm U.S. support. But he has shown little inclination to show needed leadership by putting another integral element of NATO policy on the agenda of September’s Cardiff summit — enlargement of the alliance.

    • The Cost of Iraq War Immunity

      If Official Washington were not the corrupt and dangerous place that it is, the architects and apologists for the Iraq War would have faced stern accountability. Instead, they are still around – holding down influential jobs, making excuses and guiding the world into more wars, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar notes.

    • Ukraine’s ‘Terrorists’ Talk.

      A 41-minute documentary has been produced and is online, “Ukraine Crisis Today,” interviewing “terrorists” (as our side calls them) who have been bombed by the Ukrainian Government. We — that is, the United States — installed this Ukrainian government, on February 22nd, in a coup (falsely presented as a democracy movement, but run actually by the U.S. CIA and two Ukrainian fascist parties) against Ukraine’s democratically elected President, Viktor Yanukovych. The government that we installed is now bombing the areas of Ukraine where the voters had voted overwhelmingly for Yanukovych, in Ukraine’s last national election, which took place during February 2010. Our side calls the residents of the Yanukovich-supporting areas “terrorists.” Those are the people our Ukrainian regime bombs.

    • Kiev promises war against Russia?
    • NYT Dishes More Ukraine Propaganda

      The mainstream U.S. media continues to sell the American people a one-sided storyline on the Ukraine crisis as the Kiev regime celebrates a key military victory at Slovyansk, an eastern city at the center of ethnic Russian resistance to last February’s violent coup that ousted elected President Yanukovych.

    • The world’s most dangerous ideology

      Halliburton, which offers a myriad of services, including oil field work, plus construction work, benefits when countries are “bombed to the stone age,” since those same countries need to be rebuilt. Angelo Young describes the war-profiteering in Cheney’s Halliburton Made $39.5 Billion On Iraq War…

  • Transparency Reporting

  • Finance

    • 2014 Job Creation Faster in States that Raised the Minimum Wage

      At the beginning of 2014, 13 states increased their minimum wage. Of these 13 states, four passed legislation raising their minimum wage (Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island). In the other nine, their minimum wage automatically increased in line with inflation at the beginning of the year (Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington state).

    • It’s time to revive public ownership and the common good

      It might sound like an oxymoron, but this is a positive article about public services. So effectively has the coalition rebranded an economic crisis caused by private greed as the consequence of public ownership, that nationalisation has come to be seen as a universally discredited hangover from bad old Labour. So while current Labour is considering taking back parts of the rail network into public ownership the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, last weekend was intoning the neoliberal catechism: “I don’t want to go back to the nationalisation of the 1970s.”

  • Censorship

    • Keith Vaz criticises Home Office for losing sex abuse files

      Files which may be linked to child abuse claims seem to have been lost “on an industrial scale” at the Home Office, the chairman of the Commons home affairs select committee has said.

      The Home Office has said its own review last year found that 114 potentially relevant files could not be located.

      Keith Vaz MP said it was “a huge surprise” that so much potential evidence had gone missing.

      Lord Tebbit said he hoped any review would be conducted quickly.

      Number 10 has rejected calls for an over-arching public inquiry into historical child abuse claims.

    • What Google isn’t doing with requests for search redaction

      Newspapers are now accusing Google of censoring their articles every time that a search result is being removed in relation to one of their articles. However, what the very lazy journalists are not doing is testing the search results to see if any of the key figures are likely to have gained the redaction, at least not before telling the world about it.

    • Being an annoying person is a crime now, as it should be

      A law against being annoying in public was recently approved by the British House of Commons and sent to the House of Lords, which vetoed it. This was no surprise since Lords themselves are horribly annoying, with their castles and silly titles. (For example, does “Lord Privy Seal” means what it says, which is “Lord Toilet Sea-Mammal”?)

    • Colleges are slowly taking away your First Amendment rights
    • The right to be forgotten will turn the internet into a work of fiction

      We will all die, and we will all be forgotten, in the end. I’m still unsophisticated enough to find that sad. But society seems fairly stoical about it, to say the least. These days thousands are campaigning for “the right to die” and “the right to be forgotten” as if they’re genuinely worried it might otherwise not happen.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

Bill Gates Pushed Out of States by Better Informed Teachers

Posted in Bill Gates at 6:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Ravitch's book

Summary: Bill Gates’ private (for-profit) coup against public education is being impeded by people whom it negatively affects

SOME time ago it was reported in local media that Indiana had been getting out of the Bill Gates-imposed Common Core regime. Bill Gates apparently bribed not enough lawmakers, politicians, newspapers and non-profit origanisations over there. Passing taxpayers’ money to private pockets didn’t work as smoothly as expected.

According to new backlash against Gates, led by more public figures like Professor Diane Ravitch who wants Bill Gates investigated, it is “Good Riddance to Common Core Testing”, at least in some states:

Bill Gates’ money helped foist Common Core on Indiana

Indiana is no longer alone in abandoning the Common Core academic standards.

Oklahoma and South Carolina are pulling out, and North Carolina is headed for the door as well. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is taking his state out of the national standards, provoking a conflict with the state’s education superintendent and causing uncertainty about state testing in the fall.

Bill Gates is hardly any different from the Kochs. He has better marketing and he buys more media outlets than the Kochs, at the cost of around one million dollars per day. He does all this abusive lobbying while he keeps pretending to do charity (he hoards billions of additional dollars at times of recession), using heavy PR and bribed press. For people among world’s top 10 for wealth, the cost of bribing lots of papers and officials is by far outweighed by the profit this generates and Gates has been an incredibly useful example of this.

Here is a new and rather long article that covers some of the angles we have talked about before (although we may not agree with everything it says):

COMMON CORE WILL MAKE BILL GATES RICHER

[...]

Common Core will be used for “data mining.” In May 2012 Charles Scaliger wrote in The New American that “in the sagebrush desert of Bluffdale, Utah, in the shadow of the Wasatch mountains, a vast new federal surveillance and intelligence processing center is being erected. The so-called Utah Data Center, operated by the National Security Agency, will occupy more than a million square feet when it becomes operational sometimes next year.

Coincidentally this Data Center was completed in 2013 about the same time Common Core was being promoted by such organizations as the National Governors Association (which helps state governments get federal grants) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (which claims to provide leadership, advocacy and technical assistance on major educational issues) – started work on a common set of curriculum standards in English language arts and mathematics while using such deceitful words as “state led” and “voluntary.”

Thankfully, a lot of people now realise that not only in the education sector is Gates doing great harm. Former managers from Microsoft link to our articles about Gates, perhaps realising what was inconvenient to believe when Microsoft paid their salary. █

Microsoft Struggling to Make Sales and More Future Products Axed

Posted in Microsoft, Vista 8, Windows at 5:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Lack of demand

End of season

Summary: The software bully which manipulates its financial reports is said to be unable to sell the latest Windows and a new Microsoft product running this version of Windows is axed before arrival

Microsoft’s criminal behaviour does not work quite so well in hardware, where bribes are harder to get budget for (unlike with software, which can be copied infinitely). Microsoft was already forced to kill many products and divisions and it has many famous failures in hardware, including Kin, Windows Mobile, and Xbox (which lost money). Now we learn that Microsoft has ditched yet another product. This article uses promotional language which fails to explain what a colossal failure Surface has been (the big table as well as the tablets with the same brand name).

Based on other reports like this one from ZDNet (citing the Microsoft-funded Net Applications), right after China banned Vista 8 and various countries/businesses rejected it for technical reasons:

Net Applications has found that Windows 8.x actually lost user share in June 2014, while Windows 7 has really been the operating system to gain from XP’s end of support.

This is not good for Microsoft’s financial bottom line. It’s also embarrassing because it shows systematic pushback.

Another ZDNet report says that Microsoft enables XP to still receive patches (a month ago IDG reported inaction from XP users). The NSA is going to benefit from this as more PCs have lots of back doors piling up. The NSA flags GNU/Linux users (or people who read GNU/Linux sites) for extra surveillance, based on leaked source code. Those who want security (e.g. Russia, China, Korea) will surely move to GNU/Linux very soon. █

Internet of Things Alliance Now Has a Mole, Microsoft

Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 5:31 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Squirrel

Summary: The Internet of Things Alliance has just let the mole, Microsoft, dip its finger in the competition, as it so often does in order to derail the competition

The poorly-named “AllSeen Alliance” (or Internet of Things Alliance) is about to find out that it doesn’t pay off to welcome Microsoft. Resistance and antagonism are defence mechanisms here.

OpenStack learned that Microsoft involvement is trouble, as it had ushered in a proprietary culture (secrecy, neglect, technical incompatibilities, and distrust-inducing NSA back doors). The same goes for OpenDaylight, which is another way Microsoft got its foot inside the Linux Foundation (directly, not through Nokia or Novell).

While there is propaganda from Microsoft-bribed circles (e.g. Om Malik, who received Microsoft money and apparently still receives money from Microsoft to publicly openwash them as well as whitewash Nadella) it is clear that Microsoft is not an Open Source friend but a foe. Microsoft is doing so much to harm FOSS, as we shall continue to show perhaps for years to come (if Microsoft is still around).

IDG said that “Microsoft backs open source for the Internet of Things” (widely cited article), but it’s not clear what the word “backs” should be taken as. Microsoft competes with FOSS and Linux in this area, so Microsoft probably “backs” the Internet of Things in the same way that Microsoft “backs” ODF or the NSA “backs” Germany (see related news which fall outside the scope of this one particular post).

Having proprietary software inside a supposedly open initiative, just like in OpenDaylight, is a very dumb idea. In past years we covered examples where Microsoft was revealed to have pressured groups (rival groups) to let them in. Some successfully resisted and some admittedly perished after they had caved in for Microsoft’s manipulative mind game (e.g. complaining about exclusion and intolerance).

“Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” is what one of our readers immediately called the above news. One pro-GNU/Linux pundit stated: “Microsoft, like most companies, does what it is in its own interests, and I think joining the AllSeen Alliance is truly a marriage of convenience. So you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t interpret this move by Microsoft as marking some new attitude toward open source. It seems to be something that is clearly rooted in Microsoft’s self-interest rather than any shared open source vision.”

The Linux Foundation has once again let a malicious mole in. It will be interesting to see how long it takes before there are complaints from within. It always happens sooner or later.

The more moles the Linux Foundation brings in (Microsoft or its allies), the harder it will become for it to prevent entryism. Just look what happened to Nokia. █

Links 6/7/2014: Korea’s Domestic GNU/Linux Plans

Posted in News Roundup at 2:01 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • CMS

    • How Card.com Is Securing Itself and Its Users With Open Source

      “We’re heavily involved in Drupal. I’m a member of the Drupal security team and the former lead of the team for over two years,” Knaddison said. “So it’s an area where we have a fair amount of expertise and depth, and we feel that our situation is best served by fixing vulnerabilities directly in the software itself.”

  • Public Services/Government

    • Open source to help Wales protect environment

      Using open source software solutions is helping a Welsh pilot project to manage flood risks and provide a stepping stone for future research. The Citizen Observatory Web (Cobweb) project involves citizens using their smartphone or tablets, to submit data observations within the Dyfi area in Wales, to help collect environmental data for use in evidence based policy.

    • S Korea to break away from Windows by 2020

      South Korea said that it will move away from Windows in the future to avoid dependency on the Microsoft operating system, citing the fact that Windows XP is no longer supported.

    • Korean govt to turn its back on Microsoft… and use what instead, Hangul?

      Usage of idiosyncratic software could push the Korean government away from Microsoft’s offerings and into open-source OSes like Linux

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • INTERVIEW: DAMIAN CONWAY

      Damian Conway is one of the Guardians of Perl (our term) and one of Perl 6′s chief architects. But he’s chiefly a computer scientist, a brilliant communicator and an educator. His presentations are often worth crossing continents for. He was the Adjunct Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information Technology at Melbourne’s Monash University between 2001 and 2010, and has run courses on everything from Regular Expressions for Bioinformatics to Presentation Aikido (and of course, lots of Perl). Which is why, when we discovered he was making a keynote at this year’s QCon conference in London in March, we braved train delays and the sardine travelling classes of the London Underground to meet him opposite Westminster Abbey.

Leftovers

07.05.14

Microsoft Sabotaging No-IP Rather Than Admitting Its Own Failures, Time for Class Action Seems Right as List of Affected Domains Collected

Posted in Microsoft at 7:21 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Microsoft control over the Internet (control that should never have been granted) is used to shut down millions of legitimate services

THIS is an incident that has infuriated many people, companies, organisations, etc. It’s widely publicised by now. Microsoft is above the law, apparently, or rather, Microsoft is the law in the United States (see our page about “Microsoft influence in the United States government”).

Tux Machines, our near-real-time news site, relied on No-IP until some months ago. Millions of people use the site every month. Millions of services and sites use No-IP every month. It means that billions of people are dependent on No-IP . It is a critical service for perhaps tens of millions of Web sites and other services (such as LDAP, E-mail, and so on). Well, Microsoft’s outrageous demands have ruined the services. It is Microsoft’s fault (due to its own sabotage like back doors and incompetence that makes many insecurities). Do Microsoft’s demands now supersede the rest of us? Can Microsoft knock offline millions of services all around the world and if so, where did Microsoft acquire such an infitinite power? Here is an explanation and roundup of the past few days’ responses, which resulted in Microsoft relinquishing control of No-IP (when it was already too late and huge damage had been done).

“Can Microsoft knock offline millions of services all around the world and if so, where did Microsoft acquire such an infitinite power?”Let’s start by stating that Microsoft has back doors and much of the blame for SPAM, DDOS etc. should be put on Microsoft Windows, which is insecure by design. Microsoft cannot claim to be pursuing better Internet security (ever!) while it does what it does for the NSA. For Microsoft to take a whole network to court is like the FBI and USDOJ going after MegaUpload; however, Microsoft, unlike the FBI and USDOJ, is not a Federal agency. So what the heck is going on here? And how can Microsoft get away with it? Surely there should be a class action lawsuit, but will victims be capable of finding each other, then organising? Here is the response from No-IP and an article about it which says:

Millions of legitimate servers that rely on dynamic domain name services from No-IP.com suffered outages on Monday after Microsoft seized 22 domain names it said were being abused in malware-related crimes against Windows users.

“Apparently,” it says, “the Microsoft infrastructure is not able to handle the billions of queries from our customers. Millions of innocent users are experiencing outages to their services because of Microsoft’s attempt” (Microsoft is probably arrogant enough to not even apologise).

“Microsoft now claims that it just wants to get us to clean up our act, but its draconian actions have affected millions of innocent Internet users,” says the above.

They should organise for class action lawsuit. Perhaps No-IP should sue Microsoft for loss of many customers and the customers too should sue Microsoft for the damage caused by its overreach and abuse. No-IP ought to help its clients organise for a class action lawsuit.

Two days ago I drafted a post about this, calling for class action against Microsoft over this whole overreach. I did not publish it at the time as I was waiting to see how much damage was done overall. The services had not been restored by that time. Some services were down for several days. Now, let’s try to estimate the damage. If we assume $1000 compensation for 1.8 milion servers, then that’s $1.8 billion, which Microsoft can probably borrow from one of its offshore havens to pay in reparations. Microsoft should be sued in an organised fashion and prepare to pay billions of dollars in compensation, just as they were forced to pay fines after browser-related crimes.

“So, to go after 2,000 or so bad sites, [Microsoft] has taken down four million,” Gogun said. Gogun is a senior employee at NoIP.

Here is some press coverage of interest and feedback from victims, including:

  • “The dynamic DNS free domains from NoIp are working again. Thank @mictosoft for suspending 4mil honest users due to a “technical error”.” (Source)
  • “No-Ip.com categorically claims microsoft did not talk or consult with them before hijacking their networks! Disrupted millions!” (Source)
  • “Good to see that in the “land of the free” the bully with the money can take down the small guy” (Source)
  • “Dear Microsoft, please stop breaking the domains relied on by everyone who doesn’t have a static IP – surely compensation due? #noip” (Source)

How can Microsoft gain the power to just shut down parts of the Web without an open legal process? Watch IDG’s (partly Microsoft-funded) coverage of the No-IP fiasco (tilted in favour of Microsoft to make it look like innocent “error”).

Tux Machines, which used to be No-IP-managed, went down around the same time that I repeatedly protested about this online. Interestingly enough (and that’s a fact), DDOS attacks on Tux Machines (by Windows-running PCs) began just a few minutes after I repeatedly ranted about Microsoft’s sabotage of No-IP. I can’t prove the correlation, but it was curious enough to note. The botmaster/s attacking Tux Machines was not stupid. There was hammering on different parts of the site each time one was blocked/denied (I had to manually block huge chunks of IPs and addresses). Following Microsoft’s logic, many of its back-doored (for NSA) Windows PCs attack Web sites, so it’s fine to just shut down Windows PCs universally.

Here is some other and later coverage of developments and an official response from Microsoft (face-saving lies). 1.8 million customers are said to be affected and “Microsoft Insists That No-IP ‘Outage’ Was Due To A ‘Technical Error’ Rather Than Gross Abuse Of Legal Process,” says TechDirt:

Microsoft Insists That No-IP ‘Outage’ Was Due To A ‘Technical Error’ Rather Than Gross Abuse Of Legal Process

Earlier today, we wrote about a ridiculous situation in which Microsoft was able to convince a judge to let it seize a bunch of popular domains from No-IP.com, the popular dynamic DNS provider, routing all their traffic through Microsoft servers, which were unable to handle the load, taking down a whole bunch of websites. Microsoft claimed that this was all part of a process of going after a few malware providers, though No-IP points out that Microsoft could have easily contacted them and the company’s fraud and abuse team would have cut off those malware providers.

To quote the conclusion: “That’s not a “technical error.” That’s Microsoft blatantly making an extreme claim that convinced a judge to hand over a whole bunch of domain names without any kind of due process or adversarial hearing. While Microsoft may have then had a technical error on top of that, what kicked this off was a very, very big legal error.”

Microsoft probably knows that it’s about to be sued, so it is making up stories about “errors” while Microsoft-funded press repeats the lies. Here is AOL coverage:

Microsoft seized 23 domains this week from No-IP, a provider of dynamic DNS services, after filing a civil suit alleging that the domains in question were used to distribute malware.

The domains, according to Microsoft, were used 93 percent of the time for distributing the Bladabindi and Jenxcus malware families. A court granted Microsoft custodianship — DNS authority — of the digital properties so that it could “identify and route all known bad traffic to the Microsoft sinkhole and classify the identified threats.”

This was an abuse of the Court. Microsoft deceived the Court to take over what one writer called “universe” (millions of domains). Microsoft broke the Internet for several days, having abused or bamboozled a court.

To quote one of our readers, Microsoft “is getting the heat for the attack against No-IP. Yes, they failed by trying to run Microsoft products in a production situation but the actual anger needs to be directed at the court which handed, ex parte, No-IP’s business over to Microsoft. How on earth was that allowed? That’s the real question and one that Microsoft appears to what to distract from with stupid side tracks on ‘technical issues’ to bring the attention away from legal issues. Fraud. There was no accidents involved: Microsoft took over the domain on purpose after a lot of work manipulating the court.

“Then underneath the technical side is Microsoft inherent, built-in vulnerability. Without Microsoft there would be no botnets.” █

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