05.16.11
Posted in Hardware, Microsoft, Patents, Rumour at 8:49 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Rumours that Nokia is selling its mobile unit to Microsoft begin to surface
A senior figure at Nokia was quoted as saying that the Microsoft/Nokia deal “isn’t a deal between Nokia and Microsoft, this is a Microsoft take over.”
Well, with this “takeover” in mind, how about this rumour?
Straight out of the rumor mill, comes news on the possibility that Nokia would be considering selling its mobile unit to Microsoft, and that the meeting to discuss the deal might go down as soon as next week.
While this might turn out to be nothing more than just a big rumor, there is also the possibility that it would pan out, and that Microsoft and Nokia would announce the largest acquisition of all times in the near future.
The news comes from Eldar Murtazin, who has a record of being right about various aspects regarding Nokia’s business, and who claims that Nokia and Microsoft are getting ready to sit at the table and discuss the potential merger during the week of May 23rd.
That would mean patents too. Microsoft already has Skype patents that can help it impede VoIP competitors.
Has Ballmer just 'pulled a Belluzzo? █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Finance, Microsoft, Steve Ballmer at 9:49 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Anger within Microsoft and the community of its shareholders is likely to increase pressure on Steve Ballmer, as it already does
SKYPE being bought was a great deal for its developers, but a total waste of money for Microsoft. “Angry Microsoft stock holder admits to a lot of thing we already know about Microsoft in the Free Software community,” says this person to the FSF group, pointing to this piece which was titled “The Ballmer Days Are Over”
I think it is appropriate at this time to start the countdown of how long Ballmer has left until he “steps down”. 1 This Skype deal should be the final nail in the coffin for the Ballmer era at Microsoft, yet I fear that employee number 30 may get a reprieve. Let’s take a stroll down Ballmer memory lane:
$8.5 BILLION
Ballmer’s acquisition of Skype for $8.5 billion dollars is not only a gross overpay, but a complete waste of money for Microsoft. Ballmer has yet to lay out a clear reason why Microsoft wanted Skype. He has only stated the obvious: integration in Microsoft products — which could have been done in a partnership instead of an acquisition. In fact, the acquisition by most accounts sounded more like a move by Ballmer to buy something that others 2 may have wanted to own — just for the sake of others not owning it.
Beyond that is the fact that Microsoft has 89,000 employees — are you telling me that the company that put a computer in every home couldn’t create a Skype clone?
Microsoft employees too are unhappy about this deal. While the company lays off a lot of employees and pays less to the rest (e.g. by offshoring), here we have a major waste of money.
My co-host Tim predicted that Ballmer would leave Microsoft some time around the middle of this year. Is the board about to take action? Ballmer sure hasn’t helped Microsoft’s attempts to paint itself as a friend of “Open Source”. People are already abandoning Skype and using just SIP clients. Earlier today we ran a successful test recording with just free software and getting good results. Our interview with Richard Stallman is coming soon. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Patents at 9:27 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Patent news from the past few days
• iOS developers receive legal threats over in-app purchasing (as noted before, even back in February)
• Lodsys v. Apple Devs: FUD for the App Store Era?
• Lodsys Speaks Out About iOS In-App Purchase Threats
• Lodsys Claims Patent To ‘Upgrade’ Button, Sues App Store Developers
As reported earlier, multiple developers have received demand letters from Lodsys over US7,222,078. One of the developers is James Thomson, developer of DragThing and PCalc. Thomson reports, “In the claim against pCalc, it was the 59p “Theme Pack” they used in their example. This isn’t just about ‘upgrade to full version’”.
• Odom v. Microsoft: Using Your Own Patents as Prior Art (as mentioned last week)
An interesting aspect of this set-up is the way that Microsoft used its patent as a priority document to help establish its freedom to operate rather than as intellectual property per se. Microsoft could have achieved the same results by simply publishing its prior invention. Likewise, in the US, Microsoft could have relied on its prior-inventor rights under 35 U.S.C. 102(g). However, the patent-as-prior-art approach has a number of advantages over these alternatives. Of course, alternative approaches are not mutually exclusive and instead can each be part of a layered strategy of protection.
• Versata wins $345M in patent lawsuit (mentioned some days ago)
• The Rambus Opinions: CAFC rules on the ‘reasonable forseeability’ of litigation (we wrote about Rambus submarine patents in posts such as [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9])
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Law, Novell, Patents, Red Hat, SCO at 8:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
[Update: Mark Webbink has asked to clarify that he is no longer associated with Red Hat]
Excellent appointment
Summary: Groklaw 2.0 will be managed by Professor Webbink, who is affiliated with the Software Freedom Law Center and Red Hat
Pamela Jones is retiring after 8 long years in Groklaw and we thank her for all the hard work. Here is her last post (most likely) about SCO. It shows that even after 8 years in the courtroom SCO is not dead. This objectionable company is still counting the pennies and getting some more from mysterious sources. Pamela writes:
So, let’s see. That’s fifteen, carry the one…. wow. Blank Rome says it is owed a total of $652,612.55, if my math is right, and they would like now 80% of the fees and all the expenses paid, for a total of $523,695.85. That’s not even counting the bills from Ocean Park. What does SCO still have to left to pay its bills? God only knows, but here are the last monthly operating reports SCO filed as of the end of February, where SCO Operations listed $779,827 in cash in the bank at the end of that month.
I’m thinking after SCO pays Blank Rome and Ocean Park, what will there be left over for Yarro and LeapTide or anyone else? Without all the figures, who can say, but I suspect this might explain their sudden appearance on the scene. I’m thinking this could get interesting.
Wait. You mean… Yarro and the gang did all this for nothing?
We look forward to interacting with Professor Webbink, whose role will apparently be to keep track of the patent cases and provide sound analysis. To quote Pamela’s last post:
So I thought about who would be the right person. Now that the battlefield has shifted from SCO attacking Linux to Microsoft using patents against it and from servers to mobiles, I realized that Groklaw needs a lawyer at the helm. So I asked Mark Webbink if he would take on this role, and I’m thrilled to tell you that he has accepted. He is the new editor of Groklaw as of today. Mark was General Counsel at Red Hat, as you know, and he is on the board of the Software Freedom Law Center. He is also a law professor, which as I’ll explain is a vital piece of what he has planned. Mark is a visiting professor at New York Law School where he runs the Center for Patent Innovations, oversees the Peer To Patent project run with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, has been active in seeking reform of the U.S. patent system, and teaches patent licensing. In addition, Mark is a senior lecturing fellow at Duke University School of Law where he teaches intellectual property (patent, copyright, trademark and trade secret) licensing. Mark has access to law students at those law schools and many others. In addition, Mark has remained interested and involved in free and open source software and related intellectual property issues and he is the author of the chapter on U.S. technology law included in a soon to be released book on free and open source software law.
What about SCO?
Professor Webbink is against software patents and he is no friend of Novell. With the now-deceased Novell uploading few videos and OpenSUSE flinging hardly any posts, it remains to be seen what actually will happen in the SCO/Novell case. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in News Roundup at 7:41 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
-
It won’t go away. That other OS fools its users about the identification of files causing what looks like text or other innocent files to be executable… If ever there was a flaw in the design of an OS this is it. Use Debian GNU/Linux, which actually examines the file to determine its type. The latest malware exploiting this “feature” of that other OS romps through Vista and “7″. Use Debian GNU/Linux, a real OS, working for the end-user and not criminals.
-
Chromebook is a brand name for range of hardware from the likes of Acer and Samsung that will run Chrome OS. Both the Samsung and the Acer machines sport a 12-inch screen, a 1.6GHz dual core processor and either 3G or combination 3G-WiFi connections. The selling point for many is that the Chromebooks will be available on a subscription basis at US$28 a month over three years. However, there are pros and cons to the Chromebooks.
-
…Linux and open source purists who cringe at the sheer mention of terms like “marketing” or “public relations”…
-
Desktop
-
Compare these numbers showing global acceptance at around 1% with Wikipedia Stats that show 2.53%, and that’s only in the English-speaking world.
Really, StatCounter does not cover the globe in a neutral way. Give us the list of sites covered, please. We know Wikipedia is a neutral site because anyone can post articles and anyone can read them but it is biased towards English, so it will be undercounting most countries of the world. It shows MacOS at 7.73% but we know from Apple’s own numbers that it is less than 4%.
-
In case you are a new TNW reader, I am a card-carrying Windows fanboy.
[...]
I accepted shipment of the laptop, a fine, if slightly low-end ThinkPad, and opened to the gate to the land of Linux bristling with uncertainty as to what I was about to experience.
-
Kernel Space
-
Phoronix.com, a great site with an even better preformance test suite, has a nice write up about the often talked about BRTFS(commonly pronounced Butter FS). They mention that Fedora seems to be releasing it with GRUB extenstions to allow for file system snapshot roll-backs by the end of the year and Ubuntu by the 12.04 release next April.
-
Applications
-
-
Recently we talked about some of the problems encountered by The HeliOS Project concerning the name GIMP within our custom respin. This is the distro we put on our computers going to disadvantaged kids.
-
Proprietary
-
(Before I start, I’d like to apologize for the lack of a “Featured Comments” post this week. I saw that there were comments on my article about Mozilla and the DHS, but I didn’t have time to thoroughly read and respond to them immediately; by the time I did have time again, Blogger had temporarily shut down, and all the comments got erased. Once again, I apologize to all those who commented on that article and to those who wanted to read it but couldn’t because of Blogger issues.)
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that Microsoft has just bought Skype for $8.5 billion. That’s a lot of money! But the bigger issue is that it’s Microsoft, and we know how Microsoft and interoperability go together (hint: they don’t).
-
-
Instructionals/Technical
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Emacs, a supremely powerful command line tool, is one of those programs that takes “ten minutes to learn, a lifetime to master.” For my own part, I greatly enjoy messing around with it and finding out more about how it works. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a big fan of desktop programs like TextWrangler and Fetch, but I love that such an unadorned piece of software running from the command line can be made to do nearly everything you’d expect of a desktop environment, from checking email to word processing to browsing the Web, and in many cases far more. I think it’s beautiful, not to mention insanely useful. It’s available for, if not pre-installed on, pretty much every computer since the late 1980s, and as far as I can tell, will continue to be until the end of time. That means that once you know it, you can sit down to nearly any machine and be ready to work. I think this is why people joke that Emacs is not just software, but a lifestyle or a religion—”In the beginning, and in the end there was Emacs. Amen.”
-
Games
-
If you loved the legendary game Lemmings (or the FOSS version Pingus), then you would be happy to learn that a new game named Caveman is being ported to GNU/Linux.
-
The plethora of free games available for Linux makes it time-consuming for gamers to randomly try even more than a small fraction of them. A good proportion of these titles are entertaining, highly addictive, offer captivating gameplay, and are challenging. Whilst there are a variety of both printed publications and online resources which point gamers to the hottest Linux gaming titles, there are still many free games that receive little or no promotion but which exhibit real promise and merit publicity.
-
Desktop Environments
-
K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)
-
This version will have regressions compared to KDE PIM 4.4. There was never a goal to create a Kontact2 with zero regressions. The only goal was to create a working release. After that the work on making it perfect can begin. Division of resources between maintaining the 4.4 series and attempts to perfect the Kontact2 release was causing demotivation in the community. Making the release is the act that allows us to cross the starting line towards fixing the smaller issues.
-
So, somewhat miraculously, I’ve been doing a little KDE hacking again this week for the first time since, oh, 2006 or so (aside from TagLib, which recently moved to GitHub).
Being as I’m all a startupy web weenie these days, some of the design sins of my youth have been haunting me. I wanted to give JuK a little bit of a fixer-upper. Almost all of the 20 commits that cia.vc says that I’ve done this week stem from either polishing the interface some or improving the initial experience on startup.
[...]
I’d love to someday have time to go all OCD and just spend like a couple weeks fixing things like text alignment and margins all over KDE.
-
Every year the Kubuntu community gets to elect 3 new members for the Kubuntu council.
-
Readers who already purchased the book will receive the new version free of charge. If you haven’t received your copy, please send your order confirmation as proof of purchase to dmpop@linux.com, and I’ll email you the latest version of the book.
-
Now, it’s clear that Qt is moving toward an open governance model, and Lars Knoll reports that it will be relatively easy for developers to move applications from Qt 4 to Qt 5…
-
GNOME Desktop
-
a quick post for people who want the GNOME 3 promo DVD iso image (it is based on 1.1.0 image, combining both x86 and x86-64 images and some demo video and music).
-
It could happen to anyone to have being using Gnome many years on Ubuntu or SuSE without knowing they are gnome users, and it did to me. I somehow get to know gnome by working on Beijing Gnome User Group community events, because many my other friends joined and asked me to. When I got a dim picture of what gnome is, I had been using it for years. Until now I still not so clear which application belongs to Gnome. I know Inkscape is of gnome, but a few month ago I thought (wrongly) SmartSVN in my toolbox is also of Gnome. I guess with this level of background knowledge I am the most clueless of all. I knows something about web building, graphical works and so like,Marina Zhurakhinskaya and Andreas Nilsson (my mentor) somehow thought I might be of use. “Get on-board”, they say, so here I am. I’ll try to be useful:)
-
-
New Releases
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Salix Xfce 13.37 is finally here, shortly after Slackware 13.37 was released, on which Salix 13.37 is based. Salix Xfce 13.37 includes numerous changes and improvements, both Salix specific and also inherited from Slackware. With Salix being fully backwards compatible with Slackware, the Salix repositories for 13.37, for both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures, are already the largest 3rd party binary package repositories available for Slackware users.
This release comes with linux kernel 2.6.37.6, the Xfce 4.6.2 desktop environment, Firefox 4.0.1 and Claws-mail 3.7.8. Libreoffice 3.3.2 is included by default in full mode installations, replacing OpenOffice.org and localization packages for it for more than a hundred languages are available through the package management tools.
[...]
There is also a full source tree in the Salix 13.37 repositories, for all software packaged by Salix.
-
-
PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family
-
The PCLinuxOS Magazine staff is pleased to announce the release of the Enlightenment Special Edition of the PCLinuxOS Magazine. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is a product of the PCLinuxOS community, published by volunteers from the community. The magazine is lead by Paul Arnote, Chief Editor, and Assistant Editors Andrew Strick and Meemaw. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license, and some rights are reserved.
-
I’ve been avoiding kernel 2-6.38.4 and 2-6.38.6-1 in Mandriva because last time I found them in an update and installed them, my netbook lost its wi-fi capabilities. Yes, it would not pick any signal or start wireless connections at all. It would tell me that I needed some b43 files from a web site and the installation was beyond my understanding.
Well, I decided that I wanted to install Mageia 1 in my netbook. I will spare you the story of my mistake of installing beta1 and my consequential sadness because iBus would not work. However, when I corrected my mistake and installed beta2, my happiness upon seeing iBus working flawessly quickly faded away because I discovered that the dreadful kernel 2-6.38.4 was what Mageia uses and, therefore, my wi-fi was gone!
[...]
It worked. Now, I’m posting this entry using the wi-fi in Mageia beta2.
-
There has been a recent discussion on the Mageia mailing list on the mondo package which is one of the last having a non-coherent version schema with the one in Mandriva, thus blocking the update.
[...]
Note that it just affect the mondo package. All the others are already sane.
-
Gentoo Family
-
Quick summary, please read as it is important! If you’re running a 64-bit arch such as amd64, then you’re safe and you can read this simply as future reference. The same goes if you have never used sys-devel/crossdev (even better if you have no idea what that is. But if you’re cross-compiling to a 32-bit architecture such as ARM, you probably want to read this as you might have to restart from scratch or you’re using a 32-bit architecture and have sys-devel/crossdev installed you really want to read this post.
-
Red Hat Family
-
Back in 2006, LWN looked at the rather complicated story around the maintainership of the RPM package manager. Given the importance of this tool for any RPM-based distribution, the lack of a clear story on how it was being maintained was somewhat discouraging. Later that year, the Fedora project announced the creation of a new, community-oriented project around RPM. Since then, things have been on the quiet side, but recent events show that the RPM story has not yet run its course.
The above-mentioned RPM project lives on at rpm.org; the 4.9.0 release was announced at the beginning of March. The code is actively maintained and sees the addition of some small features, but the project does not show any real signs of having big plans for the future. Only a handful of committers show up in the repository; almost all of them work for Red Hat. By all appearances, RPM is at least halfway into maintenance mode.
[...]
That has changed, though, in recent months; the Mandriva 2011 plans include a switch to rpm5.
-
Debian Family
-
Having got Debian 6 “Squeeze” running, the next project was to reconfigure my desktop environment, KDE, the way I like it. I’ve used KDE for years, and really liked KDE 3.5 on Debian 5 “Lenny.” Alas, Debian 6 has moved on to KDE 4, and the developers couldn’t leave well enough alone.
[...]
I must say, even before adding Xinerama, the desktop display seemed slower to me. And I see that Xorg is consuming 18% of my available RAM. Oink!
-
This year the Debian Project again invites “newbies” and non-regular attendees to join the annual Debian Conference (DebConf). As a special incentive an extra travel fund has been set up, which is only available to new or non-regular DebConf attendees. Every Debian Developer or Maintainer who has never been to a Debian Conference or who last attended in 2007 (Scotland) or before is invited to participate.
-
Derivatives
-
Canonical/Ubuntu
-
Last week Eucalyptus participated in the Red Hat Summit in Boston. This week we are at the Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) in Budapest. At UDS Canonical formalized the decision to make OpenStack what they call foundation technology in Ubuntu Cloud. What are the likely impacts of this decision?
-
Ubuntu 11.04 has been released, and I’m very happy about it. I gave the news to many (Italian) media, I wrote the (Italian) press releases, I did several talks (Ubuntu parties, Universities, simple events) about the Unity allure. I said it’s new and fantastic. What else should a good promoter do?
Probably use it. But I’m sorry i will not use Unity. For many reason.
-
The door to Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 is never closed, but there’re still a lot of bugs have to fixed. Here’s Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.13.
After the release of Natty, the desktop environment of Ubuntu has never been so complex before: Unity, GNOME classical, GNOME 3(Through PPA), LXDE, KDE…
-
Ubuntu gnome remix or UGR got serious attention partially because of the disappointment on the latest iteration of the Ubuntu desktop and its Unity shell. The Unity although a good idea, falls short of meeting the expectations of many users. Since Ubuntu uses the gnome 2.32 desktop the gnome 3.0 ppa had real issues working well in Natty (11.04). There came UGR with lot of promises to provide a stable ubuntu remix with a vanilla gnome 3.0 and its shell. So, where do they stand now?
-
Canonical has announced that Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud will adopt the OpenStack cloud platform over Eucalyptus. In other Ubuntu-related news, an Ubuntu 11.04-based Linux Mint 11 release candidate (RC) was announced that opts for the GNOME 2.32.1 desktop environment over both Canonical’s Unity and GNOME 3.0.
-
Last month was a big one for Ubuntu and Ubuntu One. For Ubuntu One, in addition to all the improvements we made in Ubuntu 11.04, we also released substantial improvements to contacts on the web, including Facebook import. Our attention now turns to contacts sync for mobile devices.
We’re working on completely revamping contacts sync for mobile to give you an overall better experience. The new service will work with mobile devices running iOS or Android operating systems. We decided to focus on these two operating systems so we can deliver the best user experience without having to limit functionality to the lowest common denominator. The new service will be free and available later this year. If you are interested in testing the new service, please add your email address to this form and we will provide you with more info once the service is ready for testing.
-
Flavours and Variants
-
Pinguy OS is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution that comes with a lot of applications installed by default, trying to cover everyones needs. But it’s not the default application selection what makes Pinguy OS so interesting and easy to use (though it’s a plus if you use most of the default applications in Pinguy OS) but Pinguy’s attention to detail: every single aspect of the desktop is carefully customized to provide a great out of the box experience. From drivers (and Compiz enabled by default) to pre-installed Firefox addons, themes and so much more from both the Ubuntu and Linux Mint worlds.
-
In another sign Canonical’s Unity desktop environment is not resonating well with the wider Ubuntu community, multimedia-centric Ubuntu derivative, Ubuntu Studio, will move from the GNOME to the Xfce desktop for its next release.
-
PinguyOS 11.04 is released, Based on ubuntu 11.04 natty Narwhal, this new release is an optimise build of Ubuntu 11.04 Minimal CD with added repositories, tweaks and enhancements that can run as a Live DVD or be installed. It has all the added packages needed for video, music and web content e.g. flash and java, plus a few fixes as well. Like fixing the wireless problems, gwibber’s Facebook problem and flash videos in full-screen.
-
-
-
McObject announced a design win for its in-memory ExtremeDB database management system, which will be integrated across dozens of Linux-based IPLink IP routers and SmartNode voice-over-IP (VoIP) routers from Patton Electronics. Patton is adopting ExtremeDB as a component of its Linux-based Trinity AE distribution to manage configuration data on the routers, says the company.
-
Globalscale Technologies announced a $249, mini-PC hardware/software development kit based on the Marvell PXA510 — a new ARMv7, 1GHz processor capable of 1080p video. The D2Plug clocks the PXA510 at 800MHz, and offers 1GB DDR3 RAM, 8GB flash, a full set of peripherals including 802.11n and Bluetooth 3.0, plus Ubuntu Linux and Android 2.2 support, says the company.
-
Phones
-
Android
-
Roma De, from Netflix’s product team, has announced that the company has released an Android Netflix app, which he says eventually will support a “large majority” of Android phones. Five devices, four from HTC and one from Samsung, are initially supported.
-
-
This collection of software fills an important gap in free software support for different archives.
Free software to support the RARv3 archive format has been listed on our High Priority Projects list for some time now. We’ve always had ways to create and extract free archive formats, using tools like GNU tar and Info-ZIP. The RARv3 format is proprietary, so we don’t want it to replace these tools, but it’s not uncommon to see it used for distributing multimedia files over the Internet. That means the lack of free software to extract RARv3 files has been sorely felt.
-
More and more I realize that there is a misconception about free software. Many people tend to believe that free software actually means software that should not cost any money. They somehow find natural and fair the fact that some people may work voluntarily in order to produce software, which the rest can use to make money without having any legal obligation to contribute either money or effort back upstream.
-
Events
-
Yesterday I’ve attended the Nagios World Conference Europe hosted in Bozen (Italy) by Wurth-Phoenix, so as first thing thanks to Wurst-Phoenix for the organization this meeting, for the free access provided to the event , and for the good meal that we have enjoyed.
-
Next Monday, May 16, I will be hosting session at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco focused on NoSQL, NewSQL and Beyond.
-
Web Browsers
-
Mozilla
-
Since activating the Firefox Update system and alerting Firefox 3.5 and 3.6 users to the availability of Firefox 4, the line has really picked up some speed.
-
SaaS
-
EMC (NYSE: EMC) says the company has a new strategy for distributing, integrating and supporting the Apache Hadoop open-source software that is emerging as the preferred solution for Big Data analytics across unstructured data in enterprises.
Announced at EMC World 2011 in Las Vegas, the EMC Greenplum HD Data Computing Appliance is a purpose-built data co-processing Hadoop appliance that integrates Hadoop with the EMC Greenplum Database.
-
Oracle isn’t the biggest enterprise software vendor, but in 2010 it grew faster than its big-enterprise peers, including Microsoft and IBM, to claim third place. Being ever so ambitious, it’s unlikely that Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison will be content to take the bronze. But it’s equally unlikely that relational databases will be enough to power Oracle to the top of the enterprise heap.
-
CMS
-
Word Press team has announced the release of version 3.2 Beta 1 or the popular blogging platform. The team expects that Word Press 3.2 will be released by the end of June, 2011.
-
Education
-
The Free Technology Academy is pleased to announce the inclusion of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH) in the FTA Partner network.
The Aristotle University will participate through its Programming Language and Software Engineering Lab and will contribute to the FTA curriculum by co-developing new courses in the fields of Mobile Development, Data Analysis, Intelligent Systems, Reuse Methods and others.
-
Business
-
-
Openbravo, the Agile ERP company, today announced its flagship enterprise resource planning (ERP) software has been downloaded over two million times – making it the most popular open source ERP software in the world. Openbravo’s agile ERP solution is modular and extensible so can be ‘right-sized’ for any organization, in any industry, in any country with over 325 modules from which to choose. The download milestone underscores the growing momentum of open source adoption in the ERP software category.
-
Funding
-
FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
-
While a number of Linux distributions are already shipping “GRUB2″, version 2.0 of the GRUB boot-loader has in fact not been officially released. The proper GNU GRUB 2.0 release though is slowly nearing and yesterday marked the release of GRUB 1.99.
-
-
May 14, 2011 (Bayonne, NJ). We are distributing today a 1.0 release of the GNU SIP protocol provisioning and peer-to-peer call server, GNU SIP Witch. GNU SIP Witch is developed within GNU Telephony and has been selected for use in the GNU Free Call project. This will provide a stable release that we will support for existing applications while we actively develop GNU Free Call services.
-
-
Openness/Sharing
-
Open Data
-
Math majors, rejoice. Businesses are going to need tens of thousands of you in the coming years as companies grapple with a growing mountain of data.
Data is a vital raw material of the information economy, much as coal and iron ore were in the Industrial Revolution. But the business world is just beginning to learn how to process it all.
The current data surge is coming from sophisticated computer tracking of shipments, sales, suppliers and customers, as well as e-mail, Web traffic and social network comments. The quantity of business data doubles every 1.2 years, by one estimate.
-
Today I want to to draw your attention to the Open Data Challenge that has started a while ago. I am grateful to the Share PSI initiative and its partners for organising such a competition at the European level. The jury features the World Wide Web’s inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, no less. Here you can really show how creative, innovative and successful you are with getting data out into the open, visualising it in new ways and building apps on top.
-
Open Access/Content
-
10 years ago in April 2001, Charles M. Vest, the MIT President at the time, announced that the university would make its materials for all its courses freely available on the Internet. This initiative, found at OpenCourseWare, has enabled other teachers and lifelong learners around the world to listen and read what is being taught at MIT. 5 years later, in April 2006, UC Berkeley announced its plan to put complete academic courses on Apple’s iTunes U, beginning what is now one of the biggest collections of recorded classroom lectures in the world. One year later, in October 2007, the school launched UC Berkeley on YouTube. According to Benjamin Hubbard the Manager of Webcast at UC Berkeley, the school has had well over 120 million downloads since first sharing videos online, which they began doing in 2001.
-
Open Hardware
-
Aldebaran Robotics has just announced that it’s going to open the source code of its popular humanoid robot Nao.
The French firm has been developing Nao over the past five years, turning an initially obscure robot with a quirky name into a widely adopted research and education platform used to study human-robot communication, help treat hospitalized children, and play soccer.
-
Standards/Consortia
-
Today, the Free Software Foundation Europe’s UK team calls on BT to not forget free software users when launching its upcoming service, and to build the system using web standards like HTML5 and CSS3, rather than proprietary and invasive software such as Flash.
-
-
Science
-
Since at least the mid-1990s, the standard estimate of the long-term human impact of the Chernobyl catastrophe is that there would be between 20,000 and 30,000 premature deaths from leukemia and other cancers, almost entirely in the greater European region. So how have the New York Times’s editorial writers got the idea that Chernobyl’s impact was minimal?
-
Health/Nutrition
-
You will be shocked at all the loop-holes given by the government to industrial chemicals to avoid safety regulation and accurate labeling.
-
In the aftermath of the earthquake in Japan, Twitter is proving “an excellent system” for communicating with chronically-ill patients, say doctors.
In letters written to The Lancet, Japanese doctors say social networking sites have been vital in notifying patients where to get medication.
-
Security
-
In the wake of Sony’s admission that information for millions of accounts was stolen, Reuters has tallied no less than 25 federal lawsuits. That number shows a very active bar of plaintiffs’ lawyers who believe that they’ll be able to turn companies’ privacy snafus and data breaches into serious cash payouts.
-
It discovered that a second network, Sony Online Entertainment, had also been hacked, and then had to admit that bank card numbers had indeed been stolen, contrary to its earlier assessment.
-
Defence/Police/Aggression
-
Environment/Energy/Wildlife
-
-
Dr. Kevin Trenberth, a leading climate scientist, said he believes it’s “irresponsible not to mention climate change” when talking about the recent extreme tornadoes
-
the Class of 2011, will not give [the Exxon CEO] the honor of imparting … his well-wishes … for our futures … when he is largely responsible for undermining them.
-
-
Finance
-
They weren’t murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye. But then they went one step further. They came to Washington, took an oath before Congress, and lied about it.
-
What would Eliot Spitzer do if he were handed the Senate Subcomittee’s report on what caused the financial crisis?
“Once the steam stopped coming out of my ears, I’d be dropping so many subpoenas,” Spitzer told Taibbi in this month’s Rolling Stone.
“And I would parse every potential inconsistency between the testimony they gave to Congress and the facts as we now understand them.”
-
The Vickers report came out in Britain identifying areas where Britain’s banking system needed to alter its regulatory structure. Simon Johnson talked to Bloomberg about this report and banking regulation in general. His view is that first and foremost large globe-spanning banks are too large. Using Goldman Sachs as an example, he notes that Goldman had a $1 trillion balance sheet when the panic hit in 2008, 4 times as many assets as it did just a decade earlier. Meanwhile most studies show no significant economies of scale or scope above the $300 billion range.
-
This essay shows the pervasive influence of Goldman Sachs and its units (like the Goldman-Robert Rubin-funded Hamilton Project embedded in the Brookings Institution) in the Obama government. These names are in addition to those compiled on an older such list and published here at FDL. In the future, I will combine the names here and those on the earlier article but I urge readers to look at the earlier list too (links below). Combined, this is the largest and most comprehensive list of such ties yet published.
For readability and clarity, I have NOT included many of the details and links that are found in the earlier article so as to make this one less repetitive and easier to read. So, if you want more documentation, please look at my earlier diary here at Firedoglake called “A List of Goldman Sachs People in the Obama Government: Names Attached To The Giant Squid’s Tentacles” published on April 27, 2010.
-
Every few days during the trial of Raj Rajaratnam, the Galleon Group’s co-founder, Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, would quietly enter the courtroom and take a seat in the last row of the gallery.
From that unassuming vantage point, Mr. Bharara watched his colleagues try to persuade a jury to convict the former hedge fund titan of securities fraud and conspiracy.
-
Then came the 2008 financial crisis, the worst since the Great Depression. Many believe that the crisis was the direct result of the prevailing anti-regulation ideology of the past few decades, which once more led to a reckless, largely unregulated behavior by financial institutions.
Our system of checks and balances has started to react to the crisis. The pendulum is now swinging in the other direction, with the Financial Reform law signed by President Obama in July of 2010. It is too early to tell whether this law will make the US financial system transparent and accountable enough to avoid another major economic crisis, as well as ensure that individuals are protected against the excesses of large financial institutions. There continues to be strong opposition to the bill, by many who are still holding on to their anti-government ideological position despite our recent experiences. These include not only politicians but also academics and economists who by now should know better.
-
PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
-
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate the conflict of interest of the FCC commissioner who voted to approve the Comcast-NBC merger, then quit to become a lobbyist for the merged company.
-
Censorship
-
The Protect IP bill gives government and copyright holders tools to stop Americans reaching illegal material.
-
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has waded into the debate over super-injunctions, saying current privacy laws are a “human rights violation”.
The online encyclopaedia has fallen foul of UK privacy law in recent weeks, with details about those using super-injunctions appearing on the site.
Mr Wales told the BBC that such information would be removed because it did not come from a reliable source.
-
Privacy
-
-
-
A judge yesterday threw out most of the claims made in a lawsuit against Facebook, in which two California individuals, David Gould and Mike Robertson, accused the social networking giant of sharing their names and other private information with some advertisers in direct violation of its own privacy policy.
That said, the judge also ruled the lawsuit will not be dismissed in its entirety either, as Facebook had pleaded.
-
TalkTalk today announced their plans for their website malware software, which has been criticised for opening up potential interception issues under RIPA.
We met with TalkTalk and Richard Clayton has produced a technical note on the software. Nick Bohm, below, outlines the potential legal issues. Linked is Talktalk’s legal analysis.
ORG believes an opt-in system should avoid both technical problems and legal breaches.
-
The company are attempting to acquire permits to fly the Scout in America, and have already spoken to a variety of law enforcement and security agencies who are interested in it’s versatility and ease of use. Due to the fact it can be fitted into a small, covert suitcase, it can be deployed almost anywhere instantaneously without attracting attention. Pictures from the attached gyroscopic camera can be beamed to any sort of electronic device, from a central computer to something as small as an iPhone.
-
Civil Rights
-
-
-
-
Will Potter explores how environmental and animal rights activists concerned with civil disobedience and property destruction are labeled domestic terrorists.
-
the ACLU called for the immediate closure of all Communications Management Units (CMUs), which were ostensibly created to house and control the communications activities of prisoners with suspected terrorist ties. But because the criteria for placement in a CMU are so vague and overbroad, and because those criteria are applied by prison officials with no outside review or accountability, CMUs in fact house prisoners who have never been convicted or even accused of any terrorism-related crime.
-
Intellectual Monopolies
-
In response, David and I submitted the following letter to the editor:
“The assumption of your editorial (Patently Absurd, May 5) that patents foster innovation is wrong. All the constantly growing evidence shows that patents hurt rather than help innovation. To be sure, in the US patents are required by law to be original, useful, and not obvious. When hundreds of thousands are being issued each year, that beggars credibility. Instead, the patent system fosters endless efforts to hijack the profits of successful innovators, generates endless time consuming costly litigation and worse, leads to monopolization with the concomitant expensive products – and indeed discourages real innovators.
“This isn’t merely a matter of theory, nor yet one of empirical studies – although both are in plentiful supply: you might take a look at the many references in Against Intellectual Monopoly by Boldrin and Levine. But more to the point: why don’t you talk to engineers and venture capitalists – or even patent examiners? Or at least read the comments they left on your website? You will find that they too view patents as time-wasting defensive operations that provide little protection to real innovators and instead serve merely to protect entrenched monopolists and encourage patent trolls. You are right that the present patent system is broken, but your proposed cures will only make matters worse.”
-
Trademarks
-
“By definition, intellectual property includes the words, images, and sounds that we use to communicate, and the courts are strongly admonished not to ‘indulge in the facile assumption that one can forbid particular words without also running a substantial risk of suppressing ideas in the process’.”
-
A small UK based NGO, EcoLabs, using the domain eco-labs.org, is being taken to the .org arbitration process by the US cleaning company Ecolab. The corporation claims that the NGO EcoLabs is infringing their trademark by using the name “Eco labs” and the domain should therefore be withdrawn from the NGO.
-
Copyrights
-
During the most recent election campaign, there was no shortage of debate over the so-called iPod Tax, a proposed levy on iPods and similar devices to compensate for copies of sound recordings. While the prospect of an iPod tax in Canada died with the Conservative majority, the existing private copying system remains unchanged. Canadians currently pay levies on blank CDs (and cassettes) and now the Canadian Private Copying Collective, which collects the private copying revenues, would like to establish a new levy on blank memory cards used in a wide range of devices such as smartphones and digital cameras.
[...]
There are many problems with the current private copying system, but this latest attempt to extend the levy should serve as a wake-up call to the government. While there may have been a sense that the private copying levy would gradually diminish in importance, the CPCC (which has been sharply critical of the Conservatives in the past) has made it clear that it will work to extend the levy within the full extent of the current law. Even without iPod levies, there is still room for the collective to expand the levy system, despite the weak linkages to actual copying of music. If the government is broadly against iPod taxes, it may be forced to take legislative action to stop extensions that can still occur within the current legal framework.
-
-
Man Beaten By Durham Regional Police Tells His Story at Toronto Freedom Festival May 7 11
Credit: TinyOgg
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Patents at 4:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
(ODF | PDF | English/original)
Resumen: Más pruebas de que la USPTO en su forma actual está ayudando a los personas incorrectas, como a los moribundos monopolios, los trolls de patentes, y a varios otros parásitos.
Mientas peor es la situación de las patentes y es más deprimente los medios hagan que parezca, es más probable que se vea una reforma real y con ella la abolición tardía de las patentes de software.
He aquí algunas noticias de interés[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20062574-17.html] sobre una cuestión prejudicial que puede ayudar a prohibir los productos bombo* de Apple:
Un juez de la Comisión de Comercio Internacional se ha alineado con Eastman Kodak en la batalla de la compañía de patentes en curso con Apple.
El juez Robert Rogers rechazó ayer las reclamaciones de Apple que dos de sus patentes de fotografía digital son violados por Kodak. En declaraciones a CNET hoy, Kodak dijo que estaba “satisfecho por esta decisión.”
No se equivoquen. Apple no es una víctima y, de hecho, es en realidad el delincuente también. Apple todavía recoge las patentes [1[http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/05/12/apple_shows_interest_in_adding_camera_games_to_multi_touch_ipod_nano.html], 2[http://www.itproportal.com/2011/05/13/8th-generation-ipod-nano-includes-camera-motion-sensors-games/], 3[http://gizmodo.com/5801522/next-ipod-nano-to-run-new-software-with-games], 4[http://www.tgdaily.com/mobility-features/55917-apple-patent-reveals-future-ipod-nano-specs], 5[http://www.powerpage.org/2011/05/13/recently-published-patent-shows-apples-interest-in-adding-camera-games-to-ipod-nano/]] y luego las utiliza para atacar a los dispositivos basados en Linux de HTC y Samsung. Escribimos todo acerca de ello antes, especialmente después de que Apple había demandado sin necesidad HTC[http://techrights.org/wiki/index.php/Apple_vs_HTC] y trató de embargare los dispositivos Android. Apple está lejos de ser un amigo de Software Libre, no contribuye nada a el, tampoco cuando se trata de código ni política. Eso también es un tema acerca del cual hemos escrito antes muchas veces.
Las políticas impulsado por los de la talla de Apple y Microsoft están destruyendo a todos los que no forma parte de su cartel colosal es así como los “trolls de patentes empiezan a ir contra los desarrolladores poco conocidos … no muy amable”, dice Glyn Moody[http://twitter.com/glynmoody/statuses/69074749405396992] sobre esta noticia:
Ayer se recibió la noticia de que Rob Gloess de Informática LogicX, la compañía detrás del Mix & Mash y aplicaciones Mix & Mash LITE para IOS, que había recibido los documentos legales amenazando con una demanda de patentes sobre el uso de un botón de “actualización” en la lite versión de su solicitud para vincular sus usuarios a la App Store, donde puede comprar la versión completa.
El trístemente célebre Microsoft Florian[http://techrights.org/wiki/index.php/Florian_M%C3%BCller] ya está escupiendo veneno en contra de Android[http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/05/what-will-apple-do-second-patent-attack.html] (que se centra en hacer parecer a Android peligrosos). Habla acerca de desviación. Sus mensajes termina así: “Una vez que tenemos una situación similar de los pequeños desarrolladores siendo atacados por sus aplicaciones para Android, será interesante ver lo que hace Google. Google ni siquiera indemniza a sus fabricantes de dispositivos, así que es poco probable que ofrecen demasiada protección a los desarrolladores de aplicaciónes para su plataforma. “También dice[http://twitter.com/FOSSpatents/statuses/69135527558905856] a la gente FFII (Fundación para una Infraestructura de Información Libre) que” por lo menos 2 de los desarrolladores de aplicaciones amenazadas son Europeos”. Ha estado tratando por mientras de insinuar que las patentes de software son legales en Europa. Florian todavía desacredita a la FFII[http://twitter.com/FOSSpatents/statuses/69142676573929472] y fue enfrenado por éllo por Jan Wildeboer. Pero eso es otra historia.
Las grandes empresas también se ven afectadas a veces, como este nuevo fallo ayuda a mostrar[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-13/sap-told-to-pay-345-million-for-infringing-versata-patent-2-.html]:
SAP AG (SAP), el mayor fabricante mundial de software de aplicaciones de negocios-, fue dijo por un jurado a pagar 345 millones dólares por infringir una patente Versata Software Inc..
El jurado federal en Marshall, Texas, dijo hoy que a Versata se le debía una indemnización por las ventas de determinadas empresas SAP de software de gestión de relaciones con sus clientes vendidos antes de mayo de 2010. El jurado le otorgó $ 260 millones para el lucro cesante y $ 85 millones como una regalía razonable.
Los daños son más que los 138,6 millones dólares en Walldorf, SAP basado en Alemania, fue condenado a pagar Versata en un veredicto de 2009 que fue anulado. EE.UU. juez federal Charles Everingham ha ordenado un nuevo juicio debido a fallos de un tribunal de apelaciones que se especializa en derecho de patentes que establecen nuevas normas sobre cómo las sanciones pecuniarias debe calcularse.
Eso es una suma increíble para algunas patentes de mala muerte sólo son – esencialmente un pedazo de papel[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/05/13/bloomberg1376-LL5FR96S972J01-4I4KK9CFJAO4RV6L6JKP01ADJO.DTL], similar a una nota de su madre, que tu le entregas al director de la escuela/Principal.
Brian Proffitt escribe sobre el impacto de las patentes de software en Linux, citando a más tardar a partir Bedrock, un molesto troll de patentes. Brian señala[http://www.itworld.com/open-source/164853/yahoo-wins-verdict-bedrock-patent-trial] que “[el] expediente judicial indica que el 29 de abril, Bedrock pagó a MySpace y AOL, y luego el 9 de mayo, justo un día antes de que el veredicto Yahoo! salga, también pagó a Amazon.com y Tecnologías de SOFTLAYER. Match.com ya se habían establecido con Bedrock 28 de marzo. Por mi tarjeta de puntuación, entonces, que deja sólo PayPal, CME, y CitiWare aún la defensa contra las reclamaciones de Bedrock. ”
Esto es por supuesto de las noticias malas. Se trata de un impuesto sobre Linux. Mientras tanto, el equipo de Mono quiere poner más de las patentes de Microsoft dentro de todo[http://techrights.org/2009/07/17/fsf-vs-microsoft-community-promises/] y algunos sitios ayudan a este agenda[http://www.devx.com/opensource/Article/46936], que da miedo. No aprenden, ¿Verdad?
La conclusión es, a todas las empresas reales parecen ser afectados negativamente por las patentes. Las empresas no practicantes (o casi prácticantes empresas como Kodak) ganan, mientras que compañías como SAP y Apple (a los que le gusta las patentes de software) son penalizados, junto con las pequeñas empresas y el software que es desarrollado por voluntarios con el fin de ser compartido como bienes comunes. Tiempo para un cambio en la ley, ¿no? Para promover la innovación en realidad, no matarla. █
Translation produced by Eduardo Landaveri, the esteemed administrator of the Spanish portal of Techrights.
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in FUD, Google, Microsoft at 4:23 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
(ODF | PDF | English/original)
Resumen: ¿Por qué los que comparan a los defensores del Software Libre con los teóricos de la conspiración como Alex Jones totalmente perdieron el tren?
Hay personas venenosas que tratan de disuadir a la libertad de pensamiento, alegando que nada malo sucede en la industria. Es una ilusión muy práctica para ser sumergida en, como la realidad implica muchos cabilderos -lobbyists- que dirigen el espectáculo. Los que hablan al respecto o lo denuncian no son el problema, los grupos de presión y sus financiadores lo son.
Durante los últimos dos años hemos visto muchos apologistas de Microsoft que intentaron de caracterizar a Groklaw como un “teórico de la conspiración”, incluso mucho antes de que el sitio tratase con cualquier cosa que se le parezca. Y ahora, ante el cierre del lugar, estamos viendo más de la misma sophistería[http://techrights.org/2011/05/12/facebook-astroturfing/]. Es similar a las extensiones que se utilizaron contra Boicot Novell y Techrights, por lo que vale la pena hacer frente a esto como un fenómeno general.
Allá por el 2007 y 2008, escribimos un puñado de blogs que explican cómo etiquetas tales como “enemigos” y “teóricos” se están utilizando para distraer la atención de los verdaderos problemas. Incluso ahora que descubrimos como Facebook contrató a los grupos de presión después de las inversiones de Microsoft[http://techrights.org/2011/05/15/facebook-astroturfing_es/] hay quienes lo llaman un exagerado acto de fe. Bueno, en primer lugar, Facebook finalmente ADMITE que lo hizo[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9216656/Caught_Facebook_admits_running_anti_Google_campaign?taxonomyId=71]. Groklaw comenta en esta admisión de la siguiente manera: “Por lo tanto, debo señalar que Facebook y Microsoft son socios y Microsoft ha invertido en Facebook? ¿No les dije que todo esto era una campaña de desprestigio, en mi opinión?”
Groklaw también cita este informe[http://searchengineland.com/how-facebook-enables-the-google-social-scraping-its-upset-about-76979] en el que Facebook daeminises Google de forma más directa, de alguna forma exonerando a Microsoft. ¿Qué superficial. En cuanto a la audiencia del congreso, Groklaw tiene algo que decir así. En palabras del informe:
Pero en general, los senadores en la audiencia parecía querer insistir en una amplia gama de quejas contra Apple y Google sólo algunas de las cuales estaban relacionadas con los teléfonos inteligentes o privacidad en absoluto.
El senador Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) se adelantó y golpeó a Google por su colección privada accidental de datos Wi-Fi, un escándalo de privacidad de ahora más de dos años de edad. En realidad se retiró una solicitud de patente de Google y parecía estar diciendo que Google demostró la intención de tirar de la privada “carga” de datos como parte de su plan para construir mejores servicios de mapas. Davidson se puso en el lugar, pues, ninguna sorpresa, no había visto antes de la solicitud de patente, ya que Google archiva centenares de patentes cada año. Hizo hincapié en que la empresa no fue nunca fuera a utilizar los datos que había recogido accidentalmente. “Tenemos la intención de disponer de él en cualquier forma los reguladores nos dicen que”, dijo. Ashkani y otro investigador independiente de la privacidad tanto declaró que los datos de carga no sería útil en el mapa de capacidad.
Actualización: Un portavoz de Google en breve en contacto conmigo después de esta entrada se ha publicado, ofrece la siguiente afirmación: “La tecnología en que la patente no tiene nada que ver con la recogida y almacenamiento de los datos de carga útil y es totalmente sin relación con el código de software utilizado para recoger información con WiFi Vista de la calle los coches.”
“Estos son las personas que escriben la ley de patentes”, escribe Groklaw. “Y es posible que alguien compruebe y vea a quién Microsoft le da dinero en el Congreso? Hay algo muy extraño en esto, teniendo en cuenta las políticas de privacidad de Microsoft. ¿Por qué sólo Apple y Google fueron citados? En serio. Se siente como una campaña de desprestigio para mí. ¿Y puedes ver porqué Groklaw importa? La gente toma decisiones importantes sobre tecnología, no entiende de tecnología, y dejar que las patentes solas. Esto da miedo.”
En relación con este otro artículo[http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/05/11/doj_probe_could_cost_google_500m_apple_receives_patent_for_horizontal_docking_ipad.html] acerca de la participación federal, observaciones Groklaw citando lo siguiente:
En un informe trimestral a la SEC, Google retroactivamente bajó sus ganancias del primer trimestre de 500 millones de dólares en previsión de un acuerdo con el Departamento de Justicia, lo informa Associated Press.
“Creo que puede estar exagerando las cosas,” afirma Groklaw, “Prefiero decir que este es el límite exterior de lo que podría costar a Google, lo que están dejando a un lado por si acaso. Puede ser que no deben nada, después de todo. Ni siquiera es una investigación oficial todavía. Esto es lo que Google escribe en el formulario 10-Q: “En mayo de 2011, en relación con una posible resolución de una investigación por el Departamento de Justicia sobre el uso de publicidad de Google por determinados anunciantes, hemos acumulado $ 500 millones para el período de tres meses 31 de marzo de 2011. Aunque no podemos predecir el resultado final de este asunto, creemos que no tendrá un efecto material adverso en nuestro negocio, situación financiera consolidada, resultados de operación o flujos de efectivo. “Ahora, cuando usted lee toda la FUD volando alrededor, por lo menos usted sabrá mejor. ”
“Ahora, cuando usted lee toda la FUD volando por ahí, por lo menos usted sabrá mejor.”
—Pamela Jones, GroklawGroklaw no está solo cuando se trata de defender a Google, que de ninguna manera es totalmente inocente. Es sólo que mucho de ello es actuación, hipocrecía, mucho de ello se pone en escena por los grupos de presión e incluso presentadores de programas de radio como Alex Jones. Resultó que no hace mucho tiempo cuando Fox/Glenn Beck realizó una campaña de desprestigio en contra de Google, Rupert Murdoch, estaba en realidad en la cama con Microsoft. Esto es lo que Pamela cita GigaOM como diciendo[http://gigaom.com/2011/05/12/facebook-smear-campaign-takes-war-against-google-to-defcon-2/], “este es un caso muy evidente de la paja en el ojo ajeno. Si bien la echada de Facebook PR (Relaciones Públicas) trata de pintar a Google como la compañía que ha sido sitiada por los críticos de privacidad y los reguladores, cuando en la realidad es que Facebook ha sido mucho más expuesto a las críticas del gobierno y las sanciones – y la regulación de potencial – como resultado de su enfoque a la vida privada y su manejo de datos personales. La red social puede haber estado tratando de desviar la atención de la prensa y los reguladores lejos de sí mismo hacia Google, pero toda esta campaña ha hecho realmente es que Facebook luzca incompetente, desesperado, y con miedo. “Necesitamos tener más sitios como Groklaw para hacer frente a estas cuestiones.” █
Translation produced by Eduardo Landaveri, the esteemed administrator of the Spanish portal of Techrights.
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Content is available under CC-BY-SA