03.26.13
Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Google, Patents at 6:53 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Android, Google, and various related patent-centric news as seen by bloggers and reporters
Nokia has been attacking Linux-powered platforms after Microsoft took over, making it evident that patents were on the table. It is becoming more transparent now. Amid patent stacking with FRAND by the likes of Microsoft/Nokia and Apple we also see a lot of Galaxy S4 FUD (targeting by far the best selling Android phones series). Pranesh Prakash says “Samsung might be violating the GPL with it’s Galaxy 4″ based on this report, but it seems like an angle previously played up by Microsoft lobbyists. Now that Nokia won a patent case against Android we also see Microsoft allies acting lustily and trying to bring Google down, not just on the search front (a lot of the heat Google gets over privacy recently comes after orchestration by Microsoft allies).
Using the British equivalent of “jerkoffs”, Alan Lord slams Nokia when he writes: “#Nokia playing nasty with #swpats to try & invalidate the #Google / #MPEG-LA deal: Wankers… ”
Well, more people are calling for a Nokia boycott and some look for ways to defang Nokia:
It’s time to do a little prior art searching, don’t you think? Can you help?
Nokia just disclosed a list of patents that it claims VP8, the video compression format used by the WebM Project, infringes, and the way they filled in the form, the list looks as long and scary as it could possibly look, and just as the IETF was trying to reach consensus on VP8. But when you break the Nokia list down, country by country and then by patent, it’s not so impressive after all. As it turns out, there are just a few patents repeated over and over. I think it’s short enough that we can sensibly try to find prior art.
By the way, did you know that anyone, individual people I mean, can join the IETF mailing list and participate in the conversation? It’s free, and while individuals may have affiliations and most do, it’s not the kind of thing where companies or countries can dominate the way we watched happen in the OOXML affair, because unlike ISO or ITU, there are no national bodies to bribe influence, just individuals expressing their own opinions. The IETF is a completely open standards body. If you’d like to and feel you understand the technology, you can join the mailing list and contribute to the decision-making process. It works by consensus. No need to bring your wallet.
Don’t read on unless you are free to read patents, as usual.
Google said at an IETF conference the other day that sublicenses will be royalty-free, thanks to the agreement it just signed with MPEG LA, when up stands a Nokia representative to say MPEG LA isn’t the whole story and Nokia isn’t a member. Nokia believes it has patents that are infringed by VP8, and it’s not in the mood to license them. Here’s the video of the event. And here’s another talk at the same IETF conference, a slide talk on VP8-MTI by a Google guy. Notice the rude interruptions, by the way, if you are one of those who think Google is the evil one.
Here is one news report that we found about it:
Nokia said on Monday it is not prepared to license any of its patented technologies that might be essential to the VP8 video codec that is backed by Google.
Here is the latest Slashdot discussion about it. The discussion is titled “Free Software Camps Wading Into VP8 Patent Fight” and here is a notable essay. There’s more coming on this subject for sure.
Microsoft is meanwhile pushing pro-Microsoft and Android-hostile points of view in biased media circles. It’s more anti-Google FUD regarding codecs. Microsoft sued Motorola and sought action in the ITC, exploiting a Seattle court stacked with Microsoft boosters. Microsoft’s booster at the ‘Microsoft press’ (Kurt Mackie) covers the good news for Microsoft while — as usual — ignoring the rest. He says:
The case involves U.S. Patent No. 6,069,896, held by Motorola Mobility, a company that Google acquired in May. The patent specifies a peer-to-peer wireless invention, and it was the sole remaining complaint of five alleged infringements. The “final initial remand determination” by David P. Shaw, an administrative law judge acting on behalf of the ITC, was the result of an appeal.
We wrote about this case before. Microsoft is desperate,y trying to tax Google’s Android devices, using patents. MPEG has been one track. Motorola is merely defending itself by deterrence.
For those of us who just want to develop and buy products in peace without patent fees, here is an event to attend in the US:
If You’re An App Developer And Concerned About Patents (You Should Be), Here’s An Event For You
There are tons of app developers out there who are quickly discovering that there’s a major risk they face today: if your app gets even remotely popular, you’re a likely target for a bunch of patent trolls who are feeding off of the greater app developer ecosystem with incredibly broad patents for obvious concepts (even things like charging for your app). There’s a relatively new group called the App Developers Alliance that is putting on a series of patent summits across the US to discuss issues related to patents and app developers. I’ve had a few conversations with the folks putting these events together, and they look like they should be fantastic resources for those who can attend.
The Android ‘ecosystem’ of development has been hit hard by patent aggressors, not just trolls*. But some thing, such as de facto multimedia codecs, are universal and we must fight the likes of Nokia for trying to make life very expensive for everyone, even those just wishing to watch family videos. █
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* Not much of that receives press coverage. Some apps just die or settle quietly.
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Posted in Dell, Microsoft at 6:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft’s ruthless proxy fighter seems to be doing to Michael Dell what he already did to Yang
We recently called for a Dell boycott because the company was becoming a Microsoft pawn, just like Yahoo after Icahn got involved and let Microsoft abduct it from the inside (Yahoo is no longer independent).
According to some reports, Microsoft’s pals show up on the scene again:
Blackstone Group LP (BX) and activist investor Carl Icahn submitted proposals to buy Dell Inc. (DELL) that would rival a $24.4 billion buyout offer from Silver Lake Management LLC and company founder Michael Dell, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Blackstone, the world’s biggest private-equity firm, outlined an offer valued at $13.65 to $14.50 a share, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the process is private. Icahn said he’d pay $15 a share, with a cap on the amount of cash used in the deal, two people said.
As one site put it, “Carl Icahn Poses Serious Problem for Michael Dell”. This is like Jerry Yang all over again.
Short-suffering Dell (DELL) shareholder Carl Icahn is not going to take this lying down — this being what he says is a weak, unacceptable bid for the Round Rock, Texas, computer maker.
Where did he come from, you might ask? It turns out he now owns a large stake in Dell, and he’s telling founder Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners, who are trying to lead a buyout of the company, that it won’t be happening the way they expect if he has anything to say about it.
Here is more:
There has been another twist in the story of Dell CEO Michael Dell’s quest to take the company he founded private. Already facing a backlash from Dell’s biggest stockholders over the terms of the bid that he and private equity firm Silver Lake have made for the company, there are now two rival bids to contend with. The first comes from a group led by infamous corporate raider Carl Icahn with another led by asset management company Blackstone Group. And both, at least on the surface, appear to be better deals for Dell shareholders—-especially those who want to bet long on the company and keep their stake.
In a press release issued this morning, the “special committee” formed by Dell Inc.’s board to handle negotiations for the company’s sale acknowledged the offers from the Blackstone and Icahn groups. “Both proposals could reasonably be expected to result in superior proposals” to the Michael Dell/Silver Lake offer, the committee said in its written statement on the offers. The committee will now enter into further negotiations with both to hash out the details of each offer and weigh them against the plan to go private.
If Mr. Dell wants to save the company he should escape Microsoft and not become the next Nokia. It’s not too late; not yet. █
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Posted in Antitrust, GNU/Linux at 5:40 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The ludicrous notion of “Windows 8 PCs” to be peeled off like a sticker
Summary: UEFI antitrust action is on its way if a group gets its way
The Web abuses of Microsoft got Microsoft fined in Europe very recently. In fact, a Microsoft fan site tells us that Microsoft’s Web abuses are causing trouble to Microsoft itself and Mr. Pogson says that Microsoft hacks the Web again. Internet Explorer pretends to be Firefox now, so Pogson writes:
I think this is tantamount to false advertising or besmirching the brands of the competition. It’s just another dirty trick of M$, the purveyor of the worst malware on Earth.
Internet Explorer, which Microsoft illegally embedded in Windows, is malware on top of malware. And now there is another layer of malware being put at the bottom of Windows, specifically Vista 8 with perpetually garbage interface that nobody needs, wants, or likes (the Microsoft boosters try to do it PR). The latest malware is Restricted Boot. It kicks in when a machine is powered on.
Short of the possibility of banning Restricted Boot in Europe or the requirement that it must always be switched off by default (hence enabled only by those who drink the Microsoft Kool-Aid) OEMs may be required to explicitly state the existence of Vista 8 malware on the hardware (Microsoft control) or provide clear instructions on a leaflet to show how this can be disabled (an option they would have to facilitate and test).
Here is then latest news about action against what Microsoft is doing:
Spanish Linux group Hispalinux has filed a competition complaint with the European Commission over the implementation of UEFI Secure Boot for Windows 8.
IDG, with its promotional, pro-UEFI tone all along, continues to describe Restricted Boot UEFI as a feature, even in Linux (Torvalds would beg to differ). “Hackers can easily ‘brick’ computers with malicious firmware. UEFI effectively blocks that attack vector and costs nothing,” Roger A. Grimes writes. That’s overrated. Germany banned this in government because it is actually a national security threat. At IDG, Microsoft’s more shameless boosters come out from the woodwork (evoking ridiculous notions such as “Windows 8 PCs” as if the hardware is part of the software). IDG also gave a platform to UEFI officials. For shame.
Here what seems to be the original report. Here is another report about the latest news:
A Spanish association representing open-source software users has filed a complaint against Microsoft Corp to the European Commission, in a new challenge to the Windows developer following a hefty fine earlier this month.
The 8,000 member-strong Hispalinux, which represents users and developers of the Linux operating system in Spain, said Microsoft had made it difficult for users of computers sold with its Windows 8 platform to switch to Linux and other operating systems.
This looks serious; they have got lawyers and everything, as stated here:
A Spanish association representing open-source software users has filed a complaint against Microsoft Corp to the European Commission, in a new challenge to the Windows developer following a hefty fine earlier this month.
The 8,000 member-strong Hispalinux, which represents users and developers of the Linux operating system in Spain, said Microsoft had made it difficult for users of computers sold with its Windows 8 platform to switch to Linux and other operating systems.
Lawyer and Hispalinux head Jose Maria Lancho said he delivered the complaint to the Madrid office of the European Commission at 0900 GMT on Tuesday.
Red Hat and Canonical with their cowardly complicity will stand in the way of this action and potential lawsuit. SUSE. which is more or less just a Microsoft-funded proxy now, clearly played a role too, including a role of implementation (former Novell staff). █
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Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 4:58 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft is insulting the intelligence of people who live near the equator and are inarguably vulnerable or disenfranchised due to former colonialism
THERE is almost nothing nastier than exploitation of the innocence of people. It is commonly done for money or at least power. Occupied lands were casually greeted by people who held gifts in one hand and a whip (or equivalent) in the other. Software companies and their ringleaders work similarly, especially those to whom lock-in with proprietary software is the core business model. Monsanto does this in agriculture using patents and marketing organisations like the Gates Foundation and Rockefeller.
Microsoft has some Orwellian marketing whitewash at the top of this corporate site/blog (see head banner), passing off a criminal company as some kind of charity. Mr. Pogson called Microsoft “cancer” over it and it says quite blatantly in the article: “However, this solution with little education relevance (all 20 student laptops as well as the teacher one) was a complete Linex solution at the time of launch. Working together with Reza Bardien, our Education Lead, we managed to turn this into an end to end Windows solution by the end of the week, including the PIL Learning Suite and the Windows-based NETOP Classroom Management solution.”
Pogson’s response to this greenwashing and whitewashing piece does not cite EDGI tactics but instead chastises Microsoft’s partner, Samsung. The EDGI strategy came under fire from European regulators. It is like a bribe essentially. We saw a lot of this done by Microsoft in the Philippines, where under some ‘Openness Night’ PR the monopolist is now trying to openwash itself in the most despicable way. Here is just a portion from the puff piece in the Manila Standard:
Local open source communities, together with Microsoft Philippines, recently held their first monthly meet up to facilitate discussions on emerging technologies with the end goal of giving back to the public. Dubbed as Openness Nights, the regular forum aims to push for the development of local projects on Microsoft plus open source technologies, enabling developers to contribute back to their communities.
Who are those so-called ‘open source communities’? Microsoft boosters masquerading as FOSS? The article does not say, but many times before we saw Microsoft bribing to infiltrate FOSS events where it then whitewashed/openwashed itself to the press. Microsoft even hired some journalists to achieve this deceptive propaganda (after yet more ODF FUD). The article above is just repeating Microsoft talking points to deceive the population in one of the nation’s most read newspapers. FOSS is clearly still facing a long battle against a propaganda machine. And it loses this battle when it stays silent. █
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03.25.13
Posted in News Roundup at 12:27 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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Campus fees just keep rising, like our ever-mysterious “educational operations fee,” which really is just tuition under another name. Parking fees, health insurance fees (if you opt for UMass Boston’s Aetna plan). This gets all the more frustrating with the knowledge that we can make smart choices which would drop costs without sacrificing the quality of education.
I propose we first equip our UMass Boston computers with Linux: a free, enterprise-level, secure operating system perfectly suited for a large educational institution like ours, and replace costly, slow software like Microsoft Word with free, comprehensive office suites like OpenOffice.
First–Linux? What?
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I consider money paid to M$ for permission to run the computers owned by the government a huge waste since GNU/Linux is available to manage resources on computers for $0 + the cost of installation. Really, the default software should be GNU/Linux just for the savings. $millions is a lot of money to waste. I expect if I had a complete picture the total would be closer to many hundreds of millions annually and then there are licences for the non-free applications on top of that. It’s all a waste considering the government could hire a few developers to keep all computers up to date using GNU/Linux for a fraction of the cost.
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Desktop
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Applications
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Keeping a diary of your daily life is an activity that is held dear by many people. It represents a good way of storing personal or business information on a day-to-day-basis. Keep track of notes and thoughts through the day, organize and secure memories, ideas, business transactions, emails, accounts, future plans, contact lists, and even secret information.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Games
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Numantian Games have announced Lord of Xulima, a turn-based rpg in the good old 2D isometric style. It will appear on Windows first and after that on Mac & Linux.
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Plethea Games are currently seeking $100000 on Kickstarter to help fund this unique voxel based sandbox, adventure rpg. This one looks to be pretty damn exciting with crafting, building etc kinda like Minecraft on steroids. They plan to release on Windows, Mac and Linux.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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I almost feel tempted to start with a quote from the Wheel of Time series, something like there are no beginnings and ends, but it was a beginning. Indeed, the guys behind the elementary OS have created their own version of what the next, future desktop for Linux ought to be.
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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KDE’s Calligra Office team has been working on the Android port of the app for a while. There were test builds available in .apk format which can be installed on the Android devices, now the app in available in the Google Play store as Coffice.
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KDE will be participating in Gnome’s “Outreach Program for Women (OPW)” this year. Women participation in the FLOSS development has always been a major concern and Gnome Foundation started the program to encourage more women developers to participate in the open source development.
The OPW is inspired by Google Summer of Code and offers internship to those female developers who are newcomers and or are relatively new to the FOSS community.
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KDE will – for the first time this year – participate in the “Outreach Program for Women”. This was originally started by GNOME, but has also other participating organisations like Wikimedia, Mozilla, Fedora and others.
With KDAB as our sponsor we will be offering one internship. This is in no way only limited to coding, but includes user experience design, graphic design, documentation, web development, marketing, translation and other types of tasks needed to sustain a Free Software project.
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Ignoring that it doesn’t actually hold up to scrutiny (there have been many “truly free software operating systems”), this brought to mind a spectacular feature of freedom: it abhors singularity. Indeed, monopoly positions are exceedingly rare in free systems.
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Free software intrinsically exists in a free society: it is mandated in the licenses. The only ways around this are to artificially create singularities by monopolizing the talent pool (hiring all the developers) or keeping all decision making power in one central place that is guarded by veils of inscrutability and a lack of accountability. People who think this way are not the sort of people I would like to see directing free software; it is a recipe to curb the intrinsic freedom brought by free software.
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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Looking, testing, discussing and analyzing Gnome-Shell 3.8 new features is fun for everyone, but apart from what you see and use directly there are many improvements and new things that happen in the infrastructure of Gnome that is GTK and GLib.
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So I will keep this short… I assembled a task force to work on GNOME Music based on https://live.gnome.org/Design/Apps/Music. Development is really coming along nicely.
Cesar Garcia Tapia had started a Vala development of it. We used lots of it in the new re-implementation which is in JS, this is due to the fact that.
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New Releases
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Screenshots
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PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family
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Slackware Family
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Red Hat Family
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In preparation for this year, a total of 25 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of -14% from one quarter earlier. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes meaningfully.
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Due to the fact that Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) has witnessed a declination in interest from the smart money, we can see that there was a specific group of fund managers who sold off their full holdings in Q4. Interestingly, Brett Barakett’s Tremblant Capital dropped the biggest investment of all the hedgies we key on, worth an estimated $40 million in call options. Daniel Benton’s fund, Andor Capital Management, also sold off its stock, about $28 million worth. These moves are important to note, as total hedge fund interest fell by 4 funds in Q4.
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Fedora
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Rawhide is the development version of Fedora which includes the latest upstream packages. At some point in the Fedora release schedule a fork (called branched release) is created to become the next stable Fedora and the rawhide version continues on its own.
As of today Fedora Rawhide contains packages that will be part of both Fedora 19 and Fedora 20. If you want to take a peek at the next Fedora version, Rawhide is what you need, but bare in mind though that it can be unstable so in the event of a system crash you should know what to do to recover it.
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Debian Family
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Derivatives
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Tails, The Amnesic Incognito Live System, version 0.17.1, is out.
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One thing I really like about Linux Mint is the refinement and completeness they render to each and every release. I have been using Linux Mint since 2009 and except for the repetitive art-work, I have never been disappointed so far. Normally Linux Mint releases mimic Ubuntu and mostly require fresh installation. I tried upgrading a few but with no luck and hence, had to do a fresh installation to make things work. However, in 2012, Linux Mint deviated from convention and brought a semi-rolling release LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition). LMDE is based on Debian testing and doesn’t require ever to re-install the OS. I tried the Mate version in 2012 and was highly impressed with aesthetics as well as performance.
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Non-LTS releases to get only nine months after version 2014′s 13.04
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Canonical today through software engineer Robert Bruce Park confirmed plans to cancel the Twitter app for Ubuntu Touch.
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Let’s face it, Ubuntu cops a lot of criticism. From beginners, Linux veterans, developers and even Ubuntu enthusiasts. We’ve all been critical to Ubuntu Linux at some point. Whether the Ubuntu Developers pump out a good, bad or average release; the online criticism comes in thick and fast from all angles of the internet. With the current release of Ubuntu 12.10, the overall consensus seems to be negative. I have to admit, this shocks me a little. I found 12.10 to be a fast, clean and very good release.
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Phones
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Android
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MiiPC has taken to Kickstarter in an effort to gain backing for what it describes as an $89 Android-powered family computer.
Designed by Young Song, the founder of eMachines, the MiiPC is hoping to redefine the PC market by launching the first (mainstream) family computer on Android, which will supposedly allow parents to give their young children access to the Internet under their supervision from a companion mobile app.
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It’s what science fiction dreams are made of: brightly colored, sphere-shaped robots that float above the ground, controlled by a tiny computer brain. But it isn’t fiction: it’s the SPHERES satellite, and its brain is an Android smartphone.
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Web Browsers
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Mozilla
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operating systems based on the open-source platforms Linux and Mozilla’s Firefox will be hitting the market this year, challenging the stranglehold of the two market leaders, Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS.
Android and Apple account for more than 90 percent of the surging smartphone market, and third place is being contested by BlackBerry and Microsoft’s Windows Phone, reports the Herald Sun.
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SaaS/Big Data
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Business
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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Free Software Foundation president Richard M. Stallman announced the winners of the FSF’s annual Free Software Awards at a ceremony on Saturday, March 23rd, held during the LibrePlanet 2013 conference at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Two awards were given: the Award for the Advancement of Free Software, and the Award for Projects of Social Benefit.
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Project Releases
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Select Identify is now vastly improved. Supporting multiple columns and LIMIT, coupled together with the other improvements of this release, makes it an invaluable tool during support and maintenance of a Salesforce org. How else could you check the status of a lot of objects, say Cases or Accounts?
The object inspector is always handy too.
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Openness/Sharing
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Open Access/Content
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Microsoft said the Federal Bureau of Investigation is secretly spying on its customers with so-called National Security Letters that don’t require a judge’s approval, a revelation Thursday that mirrors one Google announced two weeks ago.
Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft announced that the type of accounts the feds are targeting with National Security Letters, warrants or court orders include Hotmail/Outlook.com, SkyDrive, Xbox LIVE, Microsoft Account, Messenger and Office 365.
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Programming
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Hardware
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Some years ago, we had (one may say) good, classic brands of computers, and others not so good. The price of ones and others vary. An original IBM PC was very expensive (all computers were, at the beginning), but clones came cheaper.
Quality was also quite well divided by boundaries, and followed the quality and durability of the equipment. A Toshiba, or HP, Compaq, etc., machine was considered of good (hardware) quality, and last as long as what you expected for the money you had paid. Maybe some of you still have one of those running a minimal GNU/Linux distribution today because the hardware lasted. (Image Credit: http://www.whitesettlement.lib.tx.us)
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Health/Nutrition
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What if the agricultural revolution has already happened and we didn’t realize it? Essentially, that’s the idea in this report from the Guardian about a group of poverty-stricken Indian rice and potato farmers who harvested confirmed world-record yields of rice and potatoes. Best of all: They did it completely sans-GMOs or even chemicals of any kind.
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Security
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Revelation of the early public key cryptography work of James Ellis, Malcolm Williamson and Cliff Cocks at GCHQ occurred in 1997, eleven years after this secret 1986 review cites them. Whitfield Diffie, one of the inventors or PKC, commented in 1999 on the British precursors:
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Some time ago, while I was having lunch with the Director of Security of one of our NATO allies and we were discussing the rash of books on intelligence agencies such as the CIA and Britain’s MI-5 and MI-6 that were flooding bookstores, he asked, “Why aren’t there more best selling books on INFOSEC?” I replied, “It’s because the best days we have in INFOSEC are when nothing exciting happens in the outside world. When we are successful, which we are most ofthe time, the result is a non-event.”
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…participants must reverse engineer, break, hack, decrypt, or do whatever it takes to solve the challenge.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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Citing classified security authority documents, the Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported on Sunday that 129 members of the far-right scene aided the so-called National Socialist Underground (NSU) over the years.
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According to a report in the Bild newspaper on Sunday, security officials have compiled a list of 129 people who are suspected of helping the group, accused of murdering eight ethnic Turks, a Greek and a policewoman between 2000 and 2007.
The existence of the cell, which called itself the Nationalist Socialist Underground (NSU), only came to light by chance in late 2011 after two members committed suicide in the aftermath of a botched bank robbery and a female accomplice set fire to an apartment used by the gang.
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The Hammered Music Festival, organised by an Australian white supremacist group called the Southern Cross Hammerskins, will be held at a secret, private location in Carrara on May 4.
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‘What is your idea about Iran?’ friendly Iranians are heard to ask the few foreign visitors who still come their way. One is never quite sure whether by ‘idea’ they mean ‘impression’, ‘opinion’ or ‘theory’. Inspiring landscapes, fine cuisine and a tradition of hospitality make the first category easy ground. The second pertains to politics, and may lead the traveller into the most illuminating, entertaining and disturbing conversations he has ever had. The third, be warned, is dragon country.
British theories are infamous. A 1951 Foreign Office document identified Iranians as a people keen on poetry and abstract ideas, but emotional and lacking common sense. It claimed they were best understood as ‘unwilling to subordinate personal interests to communal ones’, ‘ready to do most things for money’ and ‘ready to blame other people’. A memorandum entitled ‘The Persian Character’, issued by the Persian Oil Working Company the same year, defined Iranians as dishonest, vain, unprincipled and motivated by personal gain.
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A new interactive graphic, which uses the Bureau’s drone data, has brought a fresh perspective to the CIA’s nine-year drone campaign in Pakistan.
A team of developers has pulled together every known drone strike and casualty from data provided by the Bureau and New America Foundation. This data has been represented in an interactive timeline which allows the viewer to see how the campaign builds over time, as well as the number of people killed.
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In January 2012 officials from Fairfax County, Va., proposed that the FBI move it’s headquarters to “a half-empty warehouse” in the area.
The government-owned site, which lies just outside of Washington D.C., could handle a planned $1.2 billion complex and would bring nearly 12,000 jobs to the area. But the plan has hit a snag: the CIA already lives there.
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Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn unsealed an indictment Wednesday charging Ibrahim Suleiman Adnan Adam Harun with six terrorism-related counts.
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Holding up his own CIA smartphone, he reminded the audience that “Even if you turn off your cell phone you can be tracked.”
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Cablegate
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Sydney, Mar 25 (ANI): Former American military analyst and Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg has backed US Army private accused Bradley Manning for spilling secrets to website WikiLeaks.
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PENTAGON Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg waited decades for someone like Bradley Manning to follow in his footsteps.
He hails the US Army private accused of spilling secrets to website WikiLeaks as a champion of truth and not a betrayer of his country.
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Just over one year ago, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) sent a letter to the military judge presiding over Pfc. Bradley Manning’s court martial that decried the “lack of openness” in proceedings. It condemned the fact that “documents and information filed in the case” were “not available to the public anywhere.” It complained about the failure to give the public proper “notice of issues to be litigated in the case.”
The US Army did not respond appropriately to the letter. The military court at Fort Meade rebuffed an attempt by a CCR attorney to make a statement on press and public access to proceedings on April 24. The same day the military judge, Army Col. Denise Lind, issued a ruling that invoked Nixon v. Time Warner, a case involving press access to the Watergate tapes, to justify secrecy in the proceedings, and she said the Freedom of Information Act was available to the press if they wanted records. CCR filed a lawsuit in May about a month later (which I signed on to as a plaintiff).
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Finance
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Just your ordinary run of the mill Russian billionaire oligarch in exile who had so much money he was terminally depressed… or just the opposite, and the first tragic casualty of the Cyprus capital controls which are about to eviscerate a whole lot of Russian wealth (and ultraluxury Manhattan real estate prices)?
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JILL MOUNTFORD: Lucy, can you explain to us what is going on right now? The Health and Social Care Act has been law now for almost a year, and we thought surely that’s all going to go ahead. All of a sudden there is a lot of movement, a lot of anxiety and a lot of agitation around something that’s happening in parliament that’s going to have a big effect on the National Health Service. What is it and why?
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Goldman Sachs won a huge victory yesterday. A federal court ruled that Lisa Parisi, a former managing director, must take her gender-discrimination lawsuit against the firm to arbitration.
With the ruling, Parisi — who had sued Goldman in 2010, along with two other women — can kiss her chances of victory goodbye. Arbitration is where plaintiffs’ dreams go to die, which is probably why it was in her Goldman Sachs employment contract.
These plaintiffs aren’t renegade feminists. They’re mainstream financial types who played by the rules and hoped to reap the rewards. The men who fought them are simply corporate types who prefer to keep Wall Street an old boys’ club.
Some of the allegations in the suit are straight out of “Mad Men.” During their work at Goldman Sachs, the women were subject to sexual banter, which is what passes for conversation among traders, as well as to come-ons and sexual assaults. They were passed over for promotions and bonuses, excluded from some male outings and included in others designed to embarrass them. A celebration for new managing directors was held at a topless bar. Afterwards, a married male colleague pinned one of the plaintiffs to a wall and sexually assaulted her.
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Goldman Sachs has been granted approval to build a new “banking factory” in the City, ending a protracted bid to develop the site that was held up by protected murals on the existing building.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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And like other giant corporations it already has personhood.
What makes Google so all-powerful? So Visible? So very Google?
Are various administrations and Yes, I’m thinking Obama’s, simply afraid of it and the people who run it?
Is it grandiose?
Is it a part of the Gobal Elite?
If Google was Good …
Google could be everything it touts itself as being — a good company providing genuine services, constantly trying to improve the ‘user experience’.
It could revolutionise the world of business by being completely transparent in all respects, completely open in its dealings with the people it depends on — you and I — and completely up-front about what it does and how it does it.
It certainly has enough in the way of hard cash and other reso
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Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly (O’Reilly Factor, 3/21/13), claiming victory in the “War on Christmas,” declares that the new battle is the “War on Easter.”
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Censorship
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The Leveson Inquiry was set up to address “the culture, practices and ethics of the press, including contacts between the press and politicians and the press and the police”. Our views diverge on whether the outcome of the Leveson process — and the plans for a new regulator — are the best way forward. But where we all agree is that current attempts at regulating blogs and other small independent news websites are critically flawed.
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Privacy
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Under CEO Larry Page, Google has made a practice of “spring cleaning” throughout all the seasons so it can narrow its focus. Reader was just a another bullet point on the latest closure list.
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Civil Rights
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We’re told that politicians are concerned, exempting small and medium size businesses from the Bill could lead to “gaming”. That is, a large publisher could create small subsidiaries to avoid the Leveson sticks applying to them. We believe this can be avoided. The Companies Act anticipates “gaming”, and includes protections against it.
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The American Civil Liberties Union describe the 2012 NDAA as “codifying indefinite military detention without charge or trial into law for the first time in American history. The NDAA’s dangerous detention provisions would authorize the president – and all future presidents – to order the military to pick up and indefinitely imprison people captured anywhere in the world, far from any battlefield,” it continues. “The ACLU will fight worldwide detention authority wherever we can, be it in court, in Congress, or internationally.”
Quiggle made it a written policy last May that he would not cooperate with this portion of the NDAA in his position as constable.
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Even the U.S. secretary of defense has expressed misgivings about the NDAA.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Trademarks
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It seems suing for trademark infringement is really a prevalent game in the business world. Oko International, the maker of a wide range of watches and timepieces sold under the brand name ‘Android,’ is suing the giant Google for trademark infringement.
A recent rumor in many tech sites is that Google is reportedly building a smartwatch to compete with Apple and Samsung.
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Copyrights
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While Spain actually has a fairly vibrant culture and entertainment industry, Hollywood has really had it in for the country for some time, in part because Spanish courts had a more evolved recognition of secondary liability protections, such that they ruled that linking is not infringement, and that neither was basic file sharing. Hollywood flipped out, said all sorts of nasty things about Spain, and US diplomats basically handed the Spanish government a new copyright law. The first few attempts to pass the bill failed, after the public spoke out, economists explained how it would hurt the economy rather than help and even the head of the Spanish Film Academy noted that the American movie industry seemed to be fighting the internet and the public.
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Posted in Patents at 9:46 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Patents as sector-centric monopoly instrument
Summary: Patent stories of interest show systemic flaws that harm everyone for the benefit of few
ABOUT a decade ago I became cynical about the patent system that I was previously apathetic towards as I had never learned its true nature, except from corporate media which likes to glorify patents, making them synonymous with innovation, progress, genius, and national pride. Today it is easier to find the media expressing dissatisfaction with patents — more so than when this Web site was first popular (2007) or when it was launched (2006). We need to amplify opposition to the status quo if we are ever to achieve progress.
This post has a collection of last week’s articles, all critical of the framework of litigation which enforces patents and reduces competition. The patent systems around the world are connected but separable. Their power is derived from multinational corporations. Apple and Microsoft, for instance, use patent stacking to suppress a rival, Linux/Android. The Philips-backed Intermedia is meanwhile suing Apple (Philips competes with Apple in media devices), which itself is suing Android and wants secrecy. This secrecy is being fought against:
Abraham Lincoln advised lawyers that the best thing they could do for a client was to keep him out of litigation. Steve Jobs should have listened to that excellent advice, from one genius to another, so to speak. But he didn’t, and he decided to start thermonuclear war to try to destroy Android, using litigation as the weapon of choice.
After Steve Jobs died, I read an article that quoted his widow as saying something to the effect that just because someone is a genius in one area, it didn’t mean he was a genius in all areas. I found that a charmingly honest statement that all wives for sure would understand, with all its overtones and undertones reverberating in the air. One thing that watching Jobs’ plan to destroy Android play out in courtrooms has made obvious: he was not a genius at the law. Unquestionably, the Apple brand has been damaged by the litigation against Samsung.
And it may be about to get worse. Here’s what is threatening to happen next: The parties were in agreement that the district court was unsealing too many company secrets and both are appealing to the Federal Circuit to keep things sealed. They agreed that they don’t want to stand naked before the world, with all their trade secrets exposed. Unfortunately for them, they happened to draw two judges who believe litigants have to endure more of a spotlight than they might enjoy if they choose to litigate, because the public has rights too. Who knew that would happen? Clearly not Apple, a company that is known for its secretiveness. And the appeals court has just ruled that an eager band of journalists will be allowed to argue against sealing of the parties’ relevant documents at the upcoming oral argument on the point on March 26.
Here is a news report about it:
A coalition of media advocacy groups and news organizations will be allowed to argue at an upcoming federal appeals court hearing over document secrecy in Apple Inc’s high-stakes patent litigation against Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.
Samsung is no angel either. It pays Microsoft for Linux and it is said to be going after a company which, while using Android in its devices, also sues Android players using patents. To quote some patent lawyers, “Samsung not only accuses Ericsson of breaching its FRAND obligations (an accusation it has previously made), but also asserts additional patents against Ericsson — including patents already being asserted in the ITC.”
The ITC does nothing for customers. For the most part it has been used by Microsoft and Apple to block competition. Europe is becoming increasingly worried about Apple’s behaviour:
Apple put under Europe’s microscope after iPhone antitrust complaints
There’s no formal investigation yet, but Europe’s competition watchdog is looking at Apple’s iPhone deals with the continent’s mobile carriers.
CAFC, another legal instrument with pro-patents bias, is rapidly losing respect:
Federal judges “get no respect” in patent appeals—but that may change
No court has more power over patent laws than the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which handles all patent appeals. In an order released Friday, that court stated its intention to revisit one of the most controversial legal principles in patent law: the “de novo” review of all claim construction decisions.
As Adrienne Kendrick notes another examples of patents costing a fortune Steve Forbes slams the USPTO et al. by writing the following about the Microsoft- and Apple-backed MPEG-LA in particular:
America’s patent system is all wrong for today’s high-tech world
It’s no secret that the Obama administration is looking for excuses to regulate and intervene in the free market, whether it is telecommunications, energy, homeland security or everything else.
And unfortunately, there are “bad actors” in the technology community that are inviting increased scrutiny of their business practices and abuses. Patent pooling – or agreements between two or more companies to collectively license patents for specific technologies – is a fairly common practice among device companies.
These for-profit pools are formed only following a business review by the Department of Justice, which agrees not to initiate antitrust enforcement against them if they operate fairly and adhere to a set of mutually agreed upon terms for operation. When structured and operated in accordance to the guidelines under which pools were formed, these organizations reduce the amount of intellectual property investment by the companies who use them, benefiting consumers with lower prices and helping to spur innovation.
[...]
These are companies you’ve never heard of – companies like MPEG LA and Mobile Media – which license technologies to innovators in the form of patent pools. Technologies like the MPEG 2 video format – which is likely used in the very device you have in your back pocket – should be offered at a fair and reasonable fee.
Yet, these unscrupulous patent pools lock in licensors for extraordinarily long terms at rates which don’t reflect their near-valueless expired patents. MPEG LA has absolute power over the MPEG 2 technology, and innovators are forced to accept MPEG LA’s license fees and terms regardless of actual patent value.
Think of it this way: The Motorola RAZR has evolved from a simple flip phone to a dynamic touch screen smart phone in the last decade. While the technologies that made this evolution possible certainly build off each other, consumers would no longer pay the same price for a Motorola RAZR V3 today as they would have when it was first released. But this is what MPEG LA is asking of companies – to pay full price for patents that are expiring, rather than reflecting the current marketplace.
These license fees erect barriers to entry for small and medium sized tech startup companies, and these companies cannot afford to sink millions in IP like many larger corporations.
This is especially harmful to those small business startups that are most reliant on gaining access to patent pool technologies, the very startups that create jobs and fuel innovation here in America. MPEG LA’s manipulative price structures are not only standing in the way of consumers being afforded access to these new innovations, they are also driving up prices on devices that are currently available.
[...]
If companies like MPEG LA and Mobile Media do not amend these unscrupulous business practices, the Department of Justice will have no choice but to intervene, inevitably slowing down innovation and creating even more barriers for a fast-moving marketplace.
We are encouraged to see more mainstream publications, even right-wing propaganda sites like Fox, publicly criticising patent systems and pools. █
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03.24.13
Posted in IRC Logs at 11:40 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
IRC Proceedings: March 17th, 2013
IRC Proceedings: March 18th, 2013
IRC Proceedings: March 19th, 2013
IRC Proceedings: March 20th, 2013
IRC Proceedings: March 21st, 2013
IRC Proceedings: March 22nd, 2013
IRC Proceedings: March 23rd, 2013
Enter the IRC channels now
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Posted in Asia, Europe, RAND at 11:10 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Negotiations over laws which can spread patent policy to more continents (other than America and to a lesser degree Australia)
We have been tracking the globalisation of the patent system for quite some time (this subject was covered here many times before) and also discussed in a high level of detail what was being done in Europe. Perhaps being a European-centric site is the outcome of yours truly being European, but in any event, the problem is global.
The USPTO, an instrument of US corporations of large size, wishes to expand its scope of monopolies not just in terms of how abstract a patent can be but also what geographical locations (scope) the patent becomes applicable in.
There is a lot of OS news from China these days, notably Microsoft bribery and a Ubuntu-based national operating system. But recently we wrote about China following the wrong path on patents and this page says that China is now talking about patents in standards, i.e. something like FRAND. To quote:
On March 7th, USITO and representatives of local and foreign trade organizations and companies attended a meeting co-organized by the Standardization Administration of China (SAC) and the China National Institute of Standardization (CNIS) to discuss comment submissions on the Regulatory Measures on National Standards Involving Patents (Measures).
Standards should involve no patents. It is as simple as that. To require patents to merely implement standards is to be anticompetitive. FRAND-type policies also tend to serve as opportunity for software patenting where such patents are not legal. There are other such loopholes, the unitary patent in Europe for instance. Glyn Moody wrote about it just the other day, complaining about lack of proper analysis of the impact on Europe.
In other words, despite all the grand talk about how wonderful the Unitary Patent would be for Europe, that’s only potentially true if most patents are issued to European companies. As the latest EPO report makes clear, it’s companies outside the EU that are increasingly being granted patents here. That means the EU has just created a powerful new rod for its own back that will allow US and Asian multinationals to gain patents more cheaply and sue local companies more easily. And given the US experience, we can be sure they will.
But those at the EPO needn’t worry: they’ll probably still get their patent inflation bonuses next year, regardless of the knock-on consequences for European businesses. Whether that will be much comfort if your company gets sued under the Unitary Patent scheme in the years to come is another matter….
The pursuit of software parents everywhere (through FRAND and other means of globalising patent tax) is definitely noteworthy. A lot of money flows in the direction of very few people and new, small companies are not permitted to compete in the market unless they can overcome patent thickets. █
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