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12.11.14

Ubuntu Core Announcement is Not About Microsoft and Hosting Ubuntu on Azure is Worse Than Stupid

Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft, Security, Servers, Ubuntu at 12:44 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: The power of media spin makes the idea of hosting Free software under the control of an NSA PRISM and back doors partner seem alluring

IN the spirit of tackling FUD we thought it would be worthwhile to tackle spin regarding the news of Ubuntu Core (news that already appears in our daily links).

Microsoft boosters such as Microsoft Gavin try to frame it as Microsoft news, saying: “A smartphone-inspired version of Ubuntu Server for Docker minimalists has been revealed with initial backing from Microsoft.” The headline is even worse. It’s deceiving for the sake of drama.

The news is not about Microsoft. This is what is called bias by omission or selection — similar to this lousy piece from Lance Whitney, former staff of Microsoft media whose latest propaganda is now omitting an old disclosure saying that he is Microsoft’s ‘former’ staff and uses US-only spin to make Android look bad (the US is not the whole world and economic advantage favours overpriced phones).

Several readers have told us that the article “Canonical restructures Ubuntu in mobile mode; Microsoft is first partner” had been removed (we searched the site to verify this) before it was reinstated. How odd. No explanation was given and while it was gone we made a copy from the Google cache of the article, very shortly after it had been deleted, then created permanent archive of the removed version. We wrote publicly at around noon yesterday about how this article vanished after it had been posted (just shortly before we made copies from Google cache and also used archive.is). We later compared the version we had archived with what was reinstated and found no obvious differences in the text. Well, maybe the problem was purely technical, but the content of the article from Paul Gillin was curious, not just the angle. A reader of ours explained: “Below is the text of an article which just disappeared. It was online for only a few hours but contains some very incriminating statements. More might show up later, but for now this is all I have. It sure explains why the Ubuntu forums moderators/staff have been slamming RMS and censoring critique of Microsoft and His Billness – in any context.”

“The situation is bad,” explained our reader. “The previous article was not a mistake” because there is other coverage although it does not provide the Microsoft spin, including phrases such as those highlighted in Diaspora. The factual part is this:

Ubuntu Core is now available on Microsoft’s Azure cloud.

This, however, is not the main news. A lot of effort was put into injecting some pro-Microsoft angle. Here is where promotional spin got injected (apart from the headline):

“Ubuntu Core is the smallest, leanest Ubuntu ever, perfect for ultra-dense computing in cloud container farms,” the company said in a press release. In a twist that’s sure to prompt a double-take from many industry veterans, Canonical chose the Azure cloud from longtime Linux foe Microsoft as its first deployment platform. “Microsoft loves Linux,” said Bob Kelly, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft, in a prepared statement.

“Microsoft has been a terrific steward of Ubuntu,” said Dustin Kirkland, product manager for Ubuntu Core, in an interview. “We have a very tight relationship.” The deal with Microsoft is exclusive for ”a couple of weeks,” after which Ubuntu Core is expected to be available on all public clouds that currently support the operating system.

So ‘“Microsoft loves Linux,” said Bob Kelly, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft, in a prepared statement.’

This is part of the new lie which we wrote about in articles such as:

The problem with articles like the above is the pursuit for talking points to lull the victim into passivity, pretending that Microsoft is now like a “best friend” of GNU/Linux. All that Microsoft does with Ubuntu Core is put it under surveillance and back door control. That’s what Azure is about, as NSA leaks serve to demonstrate.

We could of course tackle some other propaganda if we had more time for writing (I am working full time myself). Consider this new UBM spin which pretends TrueCrypt is FOSS (it’s definitely not) and cites one bug (in OpenSSL) to pretend FOSS as a whole is less secure than proprietary software blobs. There is another ugly story making the rounds about a so-called attack on GNU/Linux machines (attributing it to a government, possibly Russia’s); all the stories we have found (over a dozen so far) neglect to say that the victim must install the rogue code himself or herself, it cannot really propagate except by the user’s stupidity or recklessness. Finally, there is another batch of stories about DCOS, which is backed by a Microsoft thug who boasted about “tilting into a death spiral” competitors of Microsoft and bankrolled Microsoft proxies. DCOS — like Azure — is attempting to control GNU/Linux guests at a higher level. IDG called it a “data center OS” that “allows single-source command for Linux servers”, potentially providing a back door. I have personally seen companies that manage hundreds of GNU/Linux servers from VSphere (proprietary from EMC, which is connected to RSA and hence NSA back doors) on top of Microsoft Windows (also back doors). Can EMC be trusted to not allow intrusion? Can Microsoft? These are rhetorical questions.

Anyone who is reckless enough to put a Ubuntu machine under Microsoft hosting sure has not been keeping up with news. Canonical too would be reckless to recommend such a thing, but perhaps it has short-term thinking, pursuing Microsoft dollars at the expense of customers’ security. █

France Gets Involved in Battistelli’s Abuses in the EPO – Part XII (Updated)

Posted in Europe, Patents at 11:32 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Berlin views

Summary: The EPO scandal has officially spilled over to France, where a French Senator got involved and starts asking serious questions

ONE of our sources for the EPO stories handed to us this letter in French. If any of our French-speaking readers could kindly provide us with an English translation, that would greatly help raise awareness.

Our source says that our dozens of articles “may even be causing some ripples in the outside world. According to our information, the French Senator Jean-Yves Leconte wrote a letter to the French Ministry in charge of the INPI on 14 October.

“He doesn’t mention the Topić affair, but he refers to the INPI-cronyism in a lot of senior EPO appointments and he requests that the Minister exercise more control over France’s delegate to the AC (the current Director of the INPI and Battistelli’s successor in that position).” █

Update: We now have a translation of the letter into English. It states:

Mr Minister,

I hereby confirm that I have read your letter dated September 15th 2014 relating to the social climate currently prevailing within the European Patent Office (EPO). I note as well that you support the idea of setting up a social audit within the Office and that you have notified this to our representative in the Administrative council.

Nevertheless, you certainly know that both the President Mr. Benoit Battistelli and our representative in the Administrative Council (AC), Mr. Yves Lapierre, come from the French National Institue of Industrial Property (INPI), and that one of the topics which make the atmosphere extremely tense at EPO is that former members of INPI are taking over the direction of this organism in a disproportionate manner.

For this reason, it seems legitimate that, regarding the mandate exercised by Mr Lapierre for the INPI, the former should effectively and regularly be framed by instructions issued by your services, notably in order to spare us situations where we would end up at odds with the management of his President, being noted that certain members of the AC insistently refer to his French citizenship.

Rolling of Heads Likely Imminent at EPO

Posted in Europe, Patents at 11:16 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

French revolution

Summary: The European patent system is shaking as management breaks the rules, staff is protesting against the management every week, and charges of corruption resurface

OUR sources inside the EPO are telling us that tensions run high inside the institution. Earlier this week we wrote about Battistelli's violation of the rules as highlighted by the Enlarged Board of Appeals (full text was later appended) and we also wrote about popular staff actions, which include marching in the streets. The technical staff at the EPO should carry on protesting and even going on strike in a public showing of unity and solidarity to colleagues. This is essential because sooner or later Battistelli will come to them, unless they dethrone him first. Battistelli borrowed his standards from corrupt regimes. He discredits the EPO as a whole.

“Heads Will Roll” is a phrase quite common in popular culture and songs. but “heads will roll” might as well be a phrase that relates to a French decapitation device, used extensively during the French Revolution (and remember that there is a French President at the EPO, much worse than his British predecessor).

One blog of the protesters at the EPO reveals an interesting Administrative Council letter. The conclusions are as follows:

Mr Battistelli as President has shown a profound lack of respect for staff and their rights, including fundamental rights such as the right of due process. This has led to a massive yet still escalating social conflict. Any worsening of the situation risks impacting the external image and good-functioning of the Office.

It would appear that the Administrative Council has not been fully informed by the President of the EPO either of the underlying reasons of the current social unrest or of the possible risks that several of the changes that have been implemented under his presidency will ultimately be considered illegal. The Staff Committee has tried to make the Administrative Council aware that there are serious problems: the Administrative Council must have noticed the demonstrations of staff in front of its meetings.

However, simply being badly informed about the changes taking place in the EPO and the risks they engender does not take away the responsibility of the delegations in the Administrative Council vis à vis staff at the EPO and vis à vis their national governments.

The Staff Committee strongly urges the Administrative Council to become better informed of the decisions which have been or are being taken in its name, in particular any decisions that affect the rights of staff, some of which already seem to be in disaccord with commonly accepted legal principles, if not European law. The potential consequences of doing nothing may be grave for the functioning, governance and overall reputation of the Organisation.

The Staff Committee also requests the Administrative Council to take its responsibility and arrange mediation between the President and EPO staff in order to avoid further escalation of the situation.

“In 2013,” quotes a source of ours from the EPO’s Web site [PDF]: “There were two mass appeals against Investigation Guidelines (Circular 341, 342). One mass appeal with 89 appellants, the second with 61.” Right now the Enlarged Board of Appeal privately complains about Battistelli, so he seems to have gotten himself surrounded not by an angry mob but by his own colleagues, both internal and external. Together they can oust both Battistelli and his cronies, whom he uses for ‘protection’ from colleagues who are not loyal to him.

Expect some major changes.

Battistelli cannot last long. A lot is going on and the public cannot always see it (Battistelli and others try to save face). It is going to explode sooner or later.

“A lot is going on and the public cannot always see it (Battistelli and others try to save face). It is going to explode sooner or later.”Our coverage about the complaint against Battistelli was simultaneously mentioned in some other blogs which say that “under Article 23 EPC, only the AC can remove a Board Member from office, on a proposal from the Enlarged Board. In this case, the President bypassed that safeguard and imposed a “house ban” using his general disciplinary powers over all staff members.”

As one blog of a lobbyist for hire put it: “From what I hear, one can see a printout of this webpage, on which the patent firm of Zimmermann & Partner (known for work on behalf of blue-chip clients in multiple fields of technology) expresses its support for the EPO staff, on many doors at the EPO’s different locations (Munich, The Hague, Vienna, Berlin). And I venture to guess that an English translation of an email sent by one of Germany’s leading patent litigators, Bardehle Pagenberg’s Dr. Tilman Mueller-Stoy (“Müller-Stoy” in German), whose work on behalf of Microsoft I’ve mentioned various times (and whose other clients include, inter alia, Amazon and a major automotive company) to German Federal Ministry of Justice official and EPO Advisory Council member Christoph Ernst will also rise to tremendous popularity in the corridors of the EPO (this post continues below the document)”

“I keep my fingers crossed,” he wrote, “that a tipping point has been reached now or will be reached over the next few days, and that even wider parts of the European IP community will stand up in support of fundamental rights, due process, patent quality, and judicial independence. But this is not just about a few individuals at the top of that organization. There are serious structural deficiencies that have led to the current situation, and they must be addressed as soon as possible.”

He then alluded to Željko Topić‘s corruption charges as well: “IPKat has published and commented on “a letter which is unprecedented in the 40 year history of the European Patent Organisation”: a reqest by the members of the Enlarged Board of Appeal (the highest in-house judiciary body) of the EPO that the Administrative Council act against President Battistelli’s “clear challenge to the judicial independence of the Boards of Appeal.” The letter also mentions that the suspended judge’s “computer was confiscated by the [President's] investigation unit, which has given them access to possibly confidential information regarding the preparation and deliberation of cases by the member’s board, without proper, legally sound guarantees.” I’m speechless. There’s a banana republic-style enclave in the heart of Munich (notably with a vice president facing multiple corruption charges in his own country but having stayed in power nevertheless), and so far this banana republic has been condoned and supported by governments that constantly preach human rights and democracy to countries like China and Russia. But it’s not a banana republic at all levels (as the Enlarged Board’s letter shows, there’s plenty of principled people at work). Only at the very top. [/Update]”

Topić and Battistelli, as we have stated before (but elsewhere), will hopefully both be gone by Easter. It’s probably too close to Christmas now for them to be abruptly discharged from service or even for legal action to be launched against them (there are ground for such an action). We are hoping to see Topić and Battistelli both facing “house bans” quite soon and we are pretty certain that their time is running out. In the coming months we will share with readers more of their dirty laundry. We urge our readers from EPO to disseminate information (acquired internally) within the EPO in order to raise awareness. The only reason Topić and Battistelli get to keep their job (for now) is that they keep staff ignorant and ban staff which they deem a threat to their job. █

Links 11/12/2014: systemd 218, Empire Total War

Posted in News Roundup at 12:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Review: 6 business-class Chromebooks test their mettle

      I’ve spent the last three weeks taking six business-oriented Chromebooks through their paces. I started out as a skeptical Windows-rules-them-all kind of guy: I’ve been using Windows since the early days, and I’ve rarely strayed from the ghosts of my Windows masters. By the end of my Chromebook experiment, however, my old biases were shaken.

  • Kernel Space

    • F2FS On Linux 3.19 To Support Faster Boot Times

      The Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) will see another round of improvements with the now in-development Linux 3.19 kernel.

      The F2FS file-system this time around features several bug-fixes and other changes. The noteworthy work for this kernel cycle is less than previous cycles but includes better memory and I/O control when under memory pressure, support for the dirsync mount option, and a fastboot mount option to yield reduced boot times.

    • AMDKFD — AMD HSA On Linux — Will Not Support 32-Bit Linux

      This really shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, but AMD won’t support HSA on 32-bit Linux.

    • Hardkernel Launches $35 Development Board That Can Smash The RPi

      Hardkernel has announced the latest ODROID ARM development board. The ODROID-C1 is a $35 single-board computer that is similar in size to the Raspberry Pi but with much greater hardware specifications.

    • systemd 218 Released With More Additions

      The latest Linux excitement of today, which earlier seemed like an early Christmas, is the release of systemd 218.

    • Multi-Layer Support Coming To OverlayFS In Linux 3.19

      OverlayFS was finally merged in Linux 3.18 and now for the Linux 3.19 merge window it’s picking up another feature.

    • Linux 3.19 Kernel Adds Intel MPX Support For Skylake

      We’ve been talking about Intel MPX support in the kernel for one year and with the upcoming Linux 3.19 kernel that support is finally being realized.

    • Optimizations & Performance Improvements For DM In Linux 3.19

      Another one of the interesting early pull requests for the Linux 3.19 kernel is the Device Mapper changes.

    • Graphics Stack

    • Benchmarks

      • 6-Way Winter 2014 Linux Distribution Comparison

        With this week’s launch of Fedora 21, here’s a performance comparison of the new Fedora Linux release compared to the Arch-based Antergos rolling-release distribution, Debian GNU/Linux Jessie, openSUSE Tumbleweed, CentOS Linux 7, and Ubuntu 14.10.

        These six Linux distributions were all tested with the same hardware that came down to an MSI X99S SLI PLUS motherboard with Intel Xeon E5-2687W v3 ten-core processor plus Hyper Threading. The system also had 16GB of quad-channel DDR4 memory, 80GB Intel SSD, and Radeon HD 7850 graphics.

        All six Linux distributions were tested with their default installation settings and packages.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Qt 5.4 released

        I am happy to announce that Qt 5.4 has been released today and is available for download from qt.io. Together with Qt 5.4, we have also released Qt Creator 3.3 and an update to Qt for device creation on embedded Linux and embedded Android.

        But let’s start with Qt 5.4. One of the main focus areas of this Qt release has been around Web technologies and we have a lot of cool new things to offer there.

      • Qt 5.4 Officially Released
      • Meeting C++ and fantastic people

        I got back from Meeting C++ and I must say I loved every second of it. At first, it was a bit strange – I’m accustomed to KDE/Qt conferences where I know a lot of people. Here, it was not the case. It is a bit sad to see that barely anyone from the Qt community was there (apart from a few KDAB people), but that is a separate topic.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Distributions

    • Linux Distros: What’s in a Name?

      Yesterday, the Fedora Project released Fedora 21, and with it the tech media got on its proverbial horse and started reports and reviews of the latest release. While it’s a good release and we won’t be reviewing it here — I already gave it a shakedown during the alpha and found it to be fantastic and completely worth the wait — there’s one thing that’s missing from Fedora 21 that I find rather disheartening.

    • New Releases

      • Alpine 3.1.0 released

        We are pleased to announce Alpine Linux 3.1.0, the first release in v3.1 stable series.

        This release is built with musl libc and is not compatible with v2.x and earlier, so special care needs to be taken when upgrading.

      • OpenELEC 5.0 RC2 Is Out, It’s an Awesome OS for Embedded Devices Already

        The embedded operating system built specifically to run the famous KODI (XBMC) media player solution, OpenELEC, has been upgraded to version 5.0 RC2 and a new image is now ready for testing and download.

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

      • Lamborghini Tauri 88: The $6,000 Android phone

        Times are tough for a lot of us but apparently not for everybody according to Android Authority. They reported today on a new Android phone called the Lamborghini Tauri 88 that will be made by…you guessed it…the same folks that make Lamborghini cars. And it will sell for a measly $6000!

    • Red Hat Family

      • Analysis of the CVE-2013-6435 Flaw in RPM

        The RPM Package Manager (RPM) is a powerful command-line driven package management system capable of installing, uninstalling, verifying, querying, and updating software packages. RPM was originally written in 1997 by Erik Troan and Marc Ewing. Since then RPM has been successfully used in all versions of Red Hat Linux and currently in Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

      • Breaking down the Red Hat QA process

        Quality assurance (QA) is a critical aspect of software development, and Red Hat shares its best practices for testing Linux, KVM and OpenShift.

      • Fedora

        • Upgrading to Fedora 21 Workstation from Fedora 20

          Fedora 21 was released yesterday, and if you are running Fedora 20 as a desktop, you will probably want to upgrade to the latest and greatest version of Fedora. Luckily, there is a tool called FedUp that is the most simple way to upgrade to Fedora 21 Workstation.

        • Cubietruck: QEMU, KVM and Fedora

          Rich Jones previoulsy wrote here on how he got KVM working on Cubietruck — it was Fedora-19 timeframe. It wasn’t quite straight forwad then: you had to build a custom Kernel, custom U-Boot (Universal-Boot), etc.

        • Fedora 21 released…and websites too!
        • A Big Fedora Server SIG Welcome

          At today’s Fedora Server SIG Meeting, the present Fedora Server Working Group members elected to fill the seat recently-vacated by David Strauss. As of today, Dan Mossor (danofsatx on IRC) becomes a full member of the Fedora Server Working Group.

        • 11 Things to Do After You Install Fedora 21

          Fedora 21 was announced yesterday and it turned out to be a great release. Fedora comes pre-installed with a lot of applications. Users can start working as soon as they boot into Fedora. However, like most operating systems Fedora also needs some work to prepare it to handle your workload.

        • Fedora 21 KDE Screenshot Tour
        • Fedora 21 LXDE Screenshot Tour
        • Fedora Infrastructure release day retrospective

          Then, release day: proxy02 (a server in england) started being unable to cope with load and we removed it from DNS. Then, proxy01 started having problems. Since most services were slow in any case, we updated our status page that it was release day and to expect slowdowns. Most services (aside bodhi) were actually up and fine, just slower than normal. Some folks took this to mean we were completely down, but this was not the case. Next release we probibly will make a special banner telling people it’s release day and to expect things to be slow, but up and all working.

        • Fedora 21 MATE Screenshot Tour
        • Fedora 21 Linux Distro Tuned for Desktop, Server, Cloud

          The open-source Fedora 21 Linux distribution, launched Dec. 9, provides the first new edition of Red Hat’s community Linux distribution since the release of Fedora 20 in December 2013. Much has happened in the Fedora Linux community in the past year, and the Fedora 21 release marks a departure for the project from the way releases were built over the past decade. Instead of a single monolithic release that can be tailored for multiple use cases, Fedora 21 offers three distinct products intended for specific deployments. A Fedora Workstation release, intended for use as a desktop, includes a new set of tools to help developers use Fedora to build applications.

        • Fedora 21 greatest hits: non-Server non-live installs, fedup product behaviour

          So here’s a couple of things I’ve seen popping up multiple times with the Fedora 21 release. I thought I’d note them down here for my readers, Planet Fedora, and also as a handy link target for answering them in future.

        • Fedora 21 has Been Released!

          Here is the good news for you. The most anticipated Fedora 21 final is now made available for download.

        • Congratulations to the Fedora community on F21.

          This release has been a long time coming. It has been about a year since F20 release, and the pause we took as a community to embark upon the first steps of Fedora.next. I know many people have been anxious for the pause to be over. Finally the day has come and gone, and the release seems to be hitting on all cylinders!

        • Want to give BPG / libbpg a try? Here’s a repo for you.

          By now, most people will have heard about libbpg. Or maybe rather about the new BPG (better portable graphics) image format that was created by Fabrice Bellard, creator of qemu and ffmpeg, to possibly hopefully replace JPEG (and maybe even PNG) image formats one day.

        • Fedora 21 is here — Linux fans get an early Christmas gift

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu Core to bring Snappy and transactional updates to the Cloud

            Mark Shuttleworth has announced a beta release of Ubuntu Core, a version of Ubuntu server for the Cloud that does not use debs or apt-get for system and software management.

          • Ubuntu Core Targets Container Deployment
          • Ubuntu Wants To Run Containers, Too

            Snappy, a lean Linux Ubuntu optimized for container operation, promises stronger security for Linux containers.

          • Ubuntu Team Launches Snappy Ubuntu Core for Container, Cloud Deployments

            The team at Canonical is even going so far as to call Snappy the “biggest revolution in Ubuntu since we launched our mobile initiative.” You can try the snappy Ubuntu Core alpha today, first on the Microsoft Azure cloud. Linux users can also try the snappy Ubuntu Core locally with KVM.

          • Can your computer run Ubuntu Core?

            Ubuntu Core beta, a version of Ubuntu for Cloud deployment that comes with snappy a system and application management utility with support for transaction updates, was released just a few hours ago.

            Though it was made available for testing on Microsoft’s Azure Cloud platform, Mark Shuttleworth said in a blog post that you can download a KVM image of Ubuntu Core that “you can run on any Linux machine.”

          • This Modular Smartphone Wants to Offer Ubuntu, SailfishOS

            Google’s Project Ara may soon have some competition in the modular smartphone stakes, with a Finnish startup — co-founded by a former Nokia Android X employee — pitching in.

          • Future Modular Phone Might Be Powered by Ubuntu Touch

            Everyone is talking about Ubuntu Touch on Meizu phones and that will happen in the next few months, but other less conventional hardware makers might be interested in the Ubuntu experience. At least, this is what the newly formed company Vsenn says it wants.

          • Ubuntu says it will make cloud server updates as simple as phone updates

            Canonical yesterday unveiled a new version of Ubuntu that’s designed for the cloud, saying it ditches the traditional apt-get system in favor of “transactional updates” that mimic the simplicity of phone updates.

            Ubuntu Core, the new version, “is a minimal server image with the same libraries as today’s Ubuntu, but applications are provided through a simpler mechanism,” Canonical said. Applications are more secure because they’re isolated from each other within containers, the company explained. Ubuntu Core is in beta on Microsoft Azure and can be run locally on the KVM hypervisor. It’s optimized to run in conjunction with Docker, software that automates the deployment of applications within containers.

          • Canonical Announces Snappy Ubuntu Core, A Transactionally Updated Flavor For The Cloud
          • Ubuntu 15.04 Gets Linux Kernel 3.18

            Ubuntu 15.04 (Vidid Vervet) is now under development and this is a time when new features and components are added to the distribution. The same is true for the Linux kernel, which has been updated to version 3.18.

          • Ubuntu 15.04 To Soon Land The Linux 3.18 Kernel

            Now that the Linux 3.18 kernel has been officially released, the Ubuntu kernel team will soon be landing the update inside the Ubuntu 15.04 archive.

          • Ubuntu Developer Tools Center Gets Renamed To Ubuntu Make

            Ubuntu Developer Tools Center / Ubuntu Make is a way to easily setup common developer tools on an Ubuntu Linux desktop installation. Right now this utility is just designed about easing Android application development but Ubuntu developers have plans for allowing Ubuntu Make to provide the tooling for other languages and environments.

          • Snappy Ubuntu Core Announced

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Top 10 Semi-Autonomous Robots That Run Linux
    • Top 10 Semi-Autonomous Robots That Run Linux (With Slideshow)

      many Linux-based robots for under $1,000, except for a handful of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), but we’re definitely heading in that direction. Like last year’s robot slide show, this year’s top 10 list is not a definitive compendium or a shopping guide. However, it may help show how Linux is enabling new capabilities in terrestrial robots, as well UAVs and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), which are essentially robots that fly or swim. (Click on Gallery to see the robot slide show.)

    • Intel extends its Internet-of-Things ecosystem

      Intel introduced a new IoT “end-to-end reference model” that includes a Linux-ready edge management platform, security, services, and ecosystem partners.

      The new reference platform, called the “Intel IoT Platform,” helps fill in the gaps in Intel’s growing ecosystem of Internet of Things gateways, cloud-based services, and endpoint devices like the Linux-based Intel Galileo SBC and Intel Edison module.

    • ODROID-C1 is a $35 quad-core, single-board Android/Linux PC

      When the Raspberry Pi team launched a tiny, low power computer priced at just $35, it was pretty remarkable. But that was 2 years ago, and while the Raspberry Pi has seen a few updates in that time, it’s still powered by the same single-core 700 MHz Broadcomm BCM2835 ARM11 processor.

    • Phones

      • Tizen

        • GENIVI Lifecycle Subsystem – Webinar Session 2 @ 9AM PST

          The Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) is a collaborative open source project developing a common Linux-based software stack for the connected car. GENIVI Alliance is a non-profit industry alliance committed to driving the broad adoption of an In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) open-source development platform. If you are interested in these two organisations work then there is a webinar on the GENIVI Lifecycle Subsystem, taking place at 9am PST.

        • MinnowBoard MAX Unboxing and Booting of Tizen:Common

          MinnowBoard MAX is an excellent open source embedded hardware platform based on Intel Atom E38xx 64-Bit Bay Trail System on Chips (SoC), which is quite versatile to our Tizen developer community. Our friend Leon Anavi got a MinnowBoard MAX board during the recent Tizen Developer Summit in Shanghai earlier this year and the first thing he did was port Tizen over to it !!!!

        • Tizen OS For Smart Life, Carsten Heitzler, Samsung #Slush2014

          Carsten Heitzler, who is the Principal Engineer at Samsung was onstage at Slush 2014 presenting Tizen OS for Smart Life. Slush is one of the biggest startup events of the year with over 13,000 attendees. Carsten discusses what is an Operating System and how Tizen is similar to other Linux distributions that are typically designed for server or the desktop environment, but in the case of Tizen it is much much more, with having the flexibility of being able to be used in things like Smart watches, Smart Cameras, TVs, Mobile Phones, Cars, IoT and anything that you can or want to fit an Operating System into, we have Tizen.

        • No release for the Tizen Samsung Z1 today, but over $1.7m worth of SM-Z130H parts imported to India

          All eyes have been looking towards the east for Samsung to launch the first Tizen based Smartphone, the Samsung Z1 (SM-Z130H), but the Smartphone failed to materialise. We are disappointed and saddened that their is an Information vacuum that will now be filled with speculation. Insiders close to the situation still feel there should be a release soon, but can not stipulate when that exactly could be.

        • Application Big Neon Clock for Samsung Gear 2 and Gear Neo

      • Android

        • A first look at Google’s Android Studio 1.0: Climbing out of the Eclipse kitchen sink

          Google has released version 1.0 of Android Studio, now the official IDE for Android.

          The development tool has been in preview since its announcement at the Google I/O conference in May 2013, and in beta since June this year. There are a variety of Android development tools available, but until now the official bundle has been based on the open source Eclipse project.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open source for sensitive email

    We often discuss the many benefits of open source software. The single most important factor, the one that all benefits emerge from, is open. This is actually at the heart of what the software is, a community-driven software package with full transparency into the code base. Governments care about open source because it provides three powerful benefits: monetary savings, improved quality, and better security and privacy. This last benefit is often less-than-obvious, but equally important.

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla and Telenor Announce WebRTC Competency Center to Advance WebRTC and Help Standardization

        Web Real-Time Communications (WebRTC) is changing the way people communicate over the Web by enabling developers to more easily integrate real-time communications on websites, mobile Web apps or video conferencing systems. WebRTC makes complex real-time communications technology available to everyone, driving a wave of new communications services that significantly improves user choice.

      • Mozilla Developer Experimenting With Firefox UI In HTML

        Paul Rouget of Mozilla has gone public with his experimental, proof-of-concept work to rebuild the Firefox user-interface within HTML.

        Rouget is hoping to one day replace the Firefox UI currently written in XUL with an HTML implementation. However, first the HTML needs to be made faster and enriched for constructing the entire Firefox UI. This would also allow for the Firefox UI to be eventually rendered by their next-generation Servo Engine rather than Gecko.

      • Firefox 35 Beta Arrives with Conference Call Features for Hello

        Mozilla has just released the Beta branch of the upcoming Firefox 35.x and it looks that they don’t plan anything out of the ordinary for it, although there are some improvements and various other changes ready.

  • BSD

    • OpenBSD Laptop

      I have been meaning to give OpenBSD a try for a while now. What has been attracting me to this operating system was: the big emphasis on security while still being functional, the urge to try another unix-like operating system that is not Linux, and of course Puffy. Here I will be going through the steps I took towards learning about OpenBSD and getting it running on my laptop. I hope that you can take bits and pieces out of this post to help you with your learning experience when you decide it is your time to venture off into the BSD world.

  • Project Releases

    • QEMU 2.2 Released With Its Many Changes

      Today is certainly a very exciting day for nearly all Linux users as covered in the Phoronix articles today. The latest good news is for server and virtualization users with the release of the slightly delayed QEMU 2.2.

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Europe Softens on GM Crops

      A new agreement in the European Union allows genetically engineered crops to be approved without member-state votes, likely allowing several GMO foods to enter the market.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Magical thinking on terrorism

      But who’s doing the sloppy thinking here? Where is the evidence that more than a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan has brought us any closer to political solutions that can be sustained beyond the departure of U.S. forces? After spending over $1 trillion and deploying over 100,000 troops, are we any safer now?

  • Finance

  • Censorship

    • Web founder: Europe’s ‘right to be forgotten’ rule is dangerous

      Tim Berners-Lee thinks scrubbing false information off the Web is fine, but the truth should be preserved for reasons of free speech and history. Also: the robots are already here.

    • Russia’s Creeping Descent Into Internet Censorship

      When staffers at GitHub first saw the email from a Russian agency claiming dominion over the internet last month, they didn’t take it seriously. GitHub operates an enormously popular site where computer programmers share and collaborate on code, and to the Silicon Valley startup, an email requesting the removal of a list of suicide techniques from the site just didn’t seem believable.

  • Privacy

    • Let’s Encrypt – and Fix HTTPS While We’re At It

      A few weeks ago I wrote about the need for encryption – and the growing attacks against it by surveillance agencies worried about its efficacity. But how exactly can we implement that?

      One way is to adopt it at a personal level. That means using things likes PGP with Thunderbird, say. There are also a range of new email services that are aiming to offer easy-to-use encrypted email – something that cannot, alas, be claimed for the PGP+Thunderbird combo.

    • GCHQ Follows NSA Into Paranoia — Just As Julian Assange Predicted

      One of the knock-on effects of Snowden’s leaks is that the NSA is terrified there might be more whistleblowers, and has taken extreme action in an attempt to reduce the risk of that happening by stripping 100,000 people of their security clearances.

    • GCHQ sponsors ways to catch disgruntled ‘insiders about to go rogue’

      GCHQ is sponsoring ways of identifying disgruntled employees and those who might go on to be a security threat through their use of language in things like office emails.

      The Signals Intelligence organisation based on the outskirts of Cheltenham is financing a PhD research post, to the tune of £22,000 a year, at Lancaster University.

    • Facebook’s ‘emotional experiment’ is most shared academic research

      A paper revealing Facebook’s secret experiments on users received more online attention than any other scientific paper published this year, a new study finds.

    • Facebook is making employees read Chinese propaganda to impress Beijing

      To say Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is on a China charm offensive would be a bit of an understatement. After speaking decent Mandarin during a thirty-minute Q&A in October and opening an office in Beijing (despite being blocked in China) in May, Zuckerberg is not only reading president Xi Jinping’s recently-released book, “The Governance of China,” he is reportedly buying it for Facebook employees.

    • Ho ho no! While you shop this season, beacons will spam you

      Marketers have found a new channel to abuse, but it doesn’t have to be this way

    • NSA Hacking of Cell Phone Networks

      For example, the US company Verint sells cell phone tracking systems to both corporations and governments worldwide. The company’s website says that it’s “a global leader in Actionable Intelligence solutions for customer engagement optimization, security intelligence, and fraud, risk and compliance,” with clients in “more than 10,000 organizations in over 180 countries.” The UK company Cobham sells a system that allows someone to send a “blind” call to a phone — one that doesn’t ring, and isn’t detectable. The blind call forces the phone to transmit on a certain frequency, allowing the sender to track that phone to within one meter. The company boasts government customers in Algeria, Brunei, Ghana, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and the United States. Defentek, a company mysteriously registered in Panama, sells a system that can “locate and track any phone number in the world…undetected and unknown by the network, carrier, or the target.” It’s not an idle boast; telecommunications researcher Tobias Engel demonstrated the same capability at a hacker conference in 2008. Criminals can purchase illicit products to let them do the same today.

    • No One Has Privacy Now, Thanks to Super Cookies

      Our private information is being catalogued and used by government and private industry, both with and without our knowledge. There was no consequence, fine or penalty, for example, following the revelation late in 2011 that Carrier IQ collected massive amounts of data from millions of cell users. Why? Probably because cell users allowed that information to be collected.

  • Civil Rights

    • Savaged By Rotting Sheep

      It is quite a feat by the Scotsman, on the day when CIA torture is the headline news of the entire world, that the Scotsman runs a story about me that leaves out the fact I was sacked as Ambassador for being the first whistleblower on CIA torture and extraordinary rendition. Particularly given that I pointed that out to them when they called me.

    • Ex-ambassador Craig Murray to be SNP candidate

      Craig Murray was withdrawn as UK ambassador to Uzbekistan after the Foreign Office lost patience with his criticism of human rights abuses.

      [...]

      He was withdrawn as the UK ambassador to Uzbekistan in 2004 after the Foreign Office became frustrated with his vociferous criticism of human rights abuses in the former Soviet country.

    • Jack Straw – The Guilty Man Lies

      …Jack Straw is lying about his personal complicity in torture.

    • Equal Time for Torturers?

      But then NBC aired a long interview–nearly as long as the report on the Senate’s findings–with former CIA (and NSA) director Michael Hayden, who even disputes that the tactics in the report were torture. Anchor Brian Williams told viewers that Hayden was “accused in today’s report of providing misleading information in the past.”

      That’s a mild characterization; in fact, as the Washington Post (12/9/14) showed, Hayden’s 2007 Senate testimony about CIA torture was revealed to be full of distortions and evasions–from the number of prisoners held by the CIA to his claims that “punches and kicks…have never been employed” and that the “most serious injury” was bruising.

    • The man who did the most to fight CIA torture is still in prison

      The Senate Intelligence Committee released its report on CIA torture today, and the news is as bad as it could be. Of the 119 prisoners detained by the CIA, more than one in five were wrongfully imprisoned, while CIA interrogators ran through a host of barbaric tactics including Russian roulette, shoving hummus up a detainee’s rectum, and simply leaving targets to freeze to death in an unheated cell. And while all of it was happening, many officials within the agency harbored real doubts about whether the program was working at all.

    • How the CIA tortured its detainees

      A detainee at Guantanamo Bay in 2009. A detainee at Guantanamo Bay in 2009. Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images

      The CIA, and the Senate intelligence committee, would rather avoid the word “torture,” preferring euphemisms like “enhanced interrogation techniques” and “rendition, detention and interrogation program”. Many of the techniques employed by the CIA after capturing high-value targets have been documented in CIA memos released by the Obama administration, and in numerous leaks, including a report written by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

    • CIA Program Tortured Dozens To Produce Nearly Nothing In The Way Of Useful Intelligence

      Perhaps the most disheartening aspect of the Torture Report [pdf link] is the fact that the CIA clearly knew the methods weren’t producing usable intelligence but continued to use them anyway, all the while hiding the extent of its abuses from the rest of the goverment.

    • 5 Telling Dick Cheney Appearances in the CIA Torture Report

      It may come as little surprise that former Vice President Dick Cheney’s name crops up 41 times in the Senate report on the CIA’s use of “enhanced interrogation.”

    • Broken Windows And Broken Lives

      Apparently we’ve decided that we won’t tolerate broken windows any more. But we haven’t found the fortitude to do something about broken people. To put it plainly: just as neighborhood thugs could once break windows with impunity, police officers can generally kill with impunity. They can shoot unarmed men and lie about it. They can roll up and execute a child with a toy as casually as one might in Grand Theft Auto. They can bumble around opening doors with their gun hand and kill bystanders, like a character in a dark farce, with little fear of serious consequences. They can choke you to death for getting a little mouthy about selling loose cigarettes. They can shoot you because they aren’t clear on who the bad guy is, and they can shoot you because they’re terrible shots, and they can shoot you because they saw something that might be a weapon in your hand — something that can be, frankly, any fucking thing at all, including nothing.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • The Broadband Industry Pretends To Be Worried About Your Soaring Bill In Attempt To Undermine Net Neutrality

      On the heels of Obama’s surprise support of Title II-based net neutrality rules last month, we noted that the broadband industry’s anti-Title II talking points (primarily that it will kill network investment and sector innovation) not only were just plain wrong, they were getting more than a little stale. That’s a problem for the industry given the increasingly bi-partisan support of real net neutrality rules and the groundswell of SOPA-esque activism in support of Title II. As such, the industry’s vast think tank apparatus quickly got to work on new talking points to combat net neutrality rules that actually might do something.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

12.10.14

Links 10/12/2014: Fedora 21, Ubuntu Core

Posted in News Roundup at 12:28 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Databases

    • MariaDB Enterprise adds Suse Linux and IBM Power8 support

      MARIADB LAUNCHED the latest release of MariaDB Enterprise on Tuesday with support for tailored software configuration notifications and IBM Power8 hardware systems as well as Suse Linux distributions.

      “MariaDB Enterprise’s new Notification Service means that crawling through lengthy change logs and wondering if the latest security vulnerability will affect database performance are in the past,” the firm said.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Making good and solid templates

      Well this is exactly one of the most common mistakes. Making templates for Writer is NOT converting Word templates. Its building new templates from scratch using the best tool for it: LibreOffice. If you choose the short cut and converts Word templates to LibreOffice templates, you will get into trouble. Big trouble.

  • Funding

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

    • Taking A Stick To Flouters of EU Procurement Policies

      he EU has pretty strongly emphasized that government procurement should not prop up monopoly, yet the practice continues.

    • Report: 15 percent of IT tenders ask for brand instead of solution

      Each year 15 per cent of public administrations flout procurement rules by requesting specific brands and trademarks that prevent competition, shows a European study into 12.808 ICT procurement requests published over the past five years. Nearly a quarter of all awarded ICT requests got one single offer, also indicating there is a lack of competition when it comes to government ICT solutions.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • The New York Times R&D Lab releases Hive, an open-source crowdsourcing tool

      Today the R&D Lab is opening up the platform that powers the whole thing. Hive is an open-source framework that lets anyone build their own crowdsourcing project. The code responsible for Hive is now available on GitHub. With Hive, a developer can create assignments for users, define what they need to do, and keep track of their progress in helping to solve problems.

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Congress relaxes whole grain standards for schools

      Congress is taking some whole grains off the school lunch line.

      A massive year-end spending bill released Tuesday doesn’t allow schools to opt out of healthier school meal standards championed by first lady Michelle Obama, as House Republicans had sought. But it would ease standards that require more whole grains in school foods.

      The bill also would put off rules to lower sodium in school meals. Those rules were supposed to kick in by 2017.

  • Security

    • Tuesday’s security updates
    • Using IT Shouldn’t Be Like Hand-carrying Bags Of Money Through Gang-territory But It Is Thanks To M$ And Adobe

      “bugs that allow hackers to hijack PCs via Internet Explorer, Word and Excel files, and Visual Basic scripts.

      Everyone is urged to install the fixes, as well as a batch of updates from Adobe: a flaw in the Flash plugin is already being exploited by hackers to take over victims’ computers via the web.” It would be tedious if it weren’t terrifying but just about every month we learn what the malware-industry already knows, non-FREE software stinks. Just using it to do ordinary things the way they were intended to be used exposes one’s IT to all kinds of criminals. Don’t blame the victims. Blame the purveyors of this garbage, M$ and Adobe, who force the world to use their stuff only to be victimized.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • World Oil Politics

      If you wish to see a target of Saudi inaction, it is the United States, not Russia.

  • Finance

    • The Wages of Global Capitalism

      In the “developed world” wage growth in 2012 was 0.1 percent, and in 2013 it was 0.2 percent. Far from portending any economic “recovery,” that level of wage “growth” is rather called “wage stagnation.” In stunning contrast, wage growth in the major emerging growth economies was much better: 6.7 percent in 2012 and 5.9 percent in 2013.

    • Professor Wolff on The Real News Network: “The State of Workers’ Wages around the World”

      Economist Richard Wolff compares the stagnation of wages in the U.S. for the past 30 years to the increase in wages in emerging markets and explains why capital left America.

  • Civil Rights

    • “Rectal Feeding,” Threats to Children, and More: 16 Awful Abuses From the CIA Torture Report

      On Tuesday morning, the Senate intelligence committee released an executive summary of its years-long investigation into the CIA’s detention and interrogation program. President George W. Bush authorized the so-called “enhanced interrogation” program after the 9/11 attacks. The United States government this week has warned personnel in facilities abroad, including US embassies, to be ready in case protests erupt in response.

    • The Bush Administration Homicides

      The Justice Department may not be prosecuting the torture-memo writers, but John Sifton asks, what about those who killed an estimated 100 detainees during interrogations?

    • Hayden’s testimony vs. the Senate report

      A look at then-CIA Director Michael V. Hayden’s testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on April 12, 2007, compared with the extensive summary on the CIA’s interrogation and detention program, released on Tuesday.

    • Senate Report on Torture

      Can I just say how pleasant it is to be vindicated ten years after being sacked by Jack Straw for opposing the torture and extraordinary rendition programme – which Blair and Straw claimed I was inventing.

    • Washington Post Does Not Call It Torture When We Torture

      The early report at the Washington Post website about the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation of CIA torture is gripping, well-documented and sickening. But one thing jumps out: The paper doesn’t use the word “torture” to describe the CIA’s torture program. And that’s not an accident.

    • Conservative Media’s Celebration Of Torture

      Conservative media celebrated the effectiveness of torture in response to news that the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee would release its report on the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) detention and interrogation program, attacking the Senate for releasing the report and disputing the report’s findings. Military and interrogation experts have emphasized that torture is an ineffective interrogation technique, and human rights groups support the release of the report.

    • Inside the CIA’s Sadistic Dungeon

      The CIA was alerted of allegations that anal exams at Cobalt were conducted with “excessive force.” An attorney was asked to follow up, but no records indicate what happened next. Agency records said that one of the detainees housed at Cobalt, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, was later diagnosed with chronic hemorrhoids, an anal fissure, and symptomatic rectal prolapse.

    • David Hicks heckles George Brandis and claims government knew about his torture

      Former Australian detainee at Guantanamo Bay makes claims after damning report into CIA torture methods revealed

    • Architects Of CIA Torture Program Raked In $81 Million, Report Reveals

      Two psychologists were paid $81 million by the CIA to advise on and help implement its brutal interrogation program targeting detainees in the war on terror, according to the Senate torture report summary released Tuesday.

      The contract psychologists are identified with pseudonyms — Grayson Swigert and Hammond Dunbar — like most of the individuals named in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA program. Published reports dating back to 2007, however, identify the two men as James Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, both former members of the military.

    • 17 Disgraceful Facts Buried In The Senate’s 600 Page Torture Report

      “In 2006, the value of the CIA’s base contract with the company formed by the psychologists with all options exercised was in excess of $180 million; the contractors received $81 million prior to the contract’s termination in 2009. In 2007, the CIA provided a multi-year indemnification agreement to protect the company and its employees from legal liability arising out of the program. The CIA has since paid out more than $1 million pursuant to the agreement.” [Page 11]

    • CIA torture: Fox News says ‘the US is awesome’ – and torture report is just ‘one last shot at Bush’

      Fox News has condemned the release of a damning report into the CIA’s use of torture as a political manoeuvre designed to show Americans “how we’re not awesome”.

      The broadcaster’s National Security Analyst K.T. McFarland argued that the techniques were both “legal and justified” by the 9/11 terror attacks.

      And she denounced the publication of the Senate Intelligence Committee report as a move made by Democrats to “do harm” to the country by angering terrorists.

12.09.14

Links 9/12/2014: Fedora 21 and Torture Report Are Out

Posted in News Roundup at 12:28 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Xojo: A Linux development suite that doesn’t really support Linux

    If a company is going to support Linux… it needs to actually freaking support Linux.

    In one of my past lives, I was a software developer. And even though I no longer code for a living, I still find tinkering with various languages, IDEs, and frameworks more fun than I probably should. Truth be told, I consider playing with a new development environment to be a bit of a hoot. (Yes. I just wrote “bit of a hoot.” That’s how confident I am in my own masculinity.)

    I’m also not the kind of guy to be prejudiced for – or against – any particular language. Python? Awesome. C++? Tons of fun (in an “I-like-to-hurt-myself” kind of way). Pascal, BASIC, Smalltalk and JavaScript? All delightful. I like ‘em all… for the most part.

  • Do you need programming skills to learn Linux?

    A few months ago I took the Introduction to Linux course offered through edX. It’s an 18 chapter course with lots of reading, some videos, and a casual level of testing your knowledge. I wrote about the first six chapters and how the course works in, What happens when a non-coder tries to learn Linux.

    My main goal in taking the course was to get a better, high level understanding of Linux. I didn’t have to install Linux but wanted to, so before I started chapter 7, I did. I wanted to test out some of the things I was learning, and ‘learning is doing’ to a large extent.

  • New Linux Trojan Found, Part of Turla

    The top story today is the discovery of a new Linux trojan that experts say could have been in place for years. Kaspersky Lab is saying this newly discovered Linux malware is part of the Turla campaign indicating that the culprits aren’t limiting themselves to Windows. And that’s not all that’s unusual about this code.

  • The ‘Penquin’ Turla
  • Breaking: Stealth “Turla” Malware Infects Unknown Number of Linux Systems

    The Linux Turla is a new piece of malware designed to infect only Linux computers, which has managed to remain relatively hidden until now and has the potential of doing a lot of harm. Unfortunately, very little is known about it or how to fix it.

  • Powerful, highly stealthy Linux trojan may have infected victims for years

  • Server

    • Intel Becomes Newest OpenDaylight SDN/NFV Project Member
    • Intel Ups Investment in OpenDaylight SDN, NFV Effort

      The chip maker, which sees SDN and NFV as growth areas in the data center, is now a Platinum member of the vendor-based consortium it helped found.
      Intel, one of the founding members of the OpenDaylight Project, is increasing its commitment to the software-defined networking standards body.

      Intel is joining such tech vendors as IBM, Cisco Systems, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Juniper Networks as a Platinum member of OpenDaylight, a move that increases the chip maker’s financial backing of the group and includes the adding of an Intel official on the board of directors.

    • Rocket vs Docker and The Myth of the “Simple, Lightweight Enterprise Platform”

      With seemingly everyone who’s ever written an app or booted a VM jumping on the cargo ship at the moment, it’s hardly surprising to see the launch this week of Rocket; a credible challenger to Docker in the container space.

    • New data center OS allows single-source command for Linux servers

      Mesosphere, a startup that provides commercial support for the Apache Mesos cluster management system, has debuted a “data center operating system.”

      Mesosphere DCOS uses the Mesos project to gang together machines running Linux, whether hosted in any number of clouds (Amazon, Google, Microsoft) or running on nearly any kind of infrastructure (bare metal, OpenStack, VMware).

      Widely deployed at scale by companies like Twitter and Airbnb, Mesos has a proven track record. However, Mesosphere DCOS is designed to manage not only the applications but also the systems they run on.

    • Mesosphere Raises $36M for Application Data Center OS

      Lead commercial sponsor behind Apache Mesos project announces new commercial effort that leverages open source components as well as its own ‘secret sauce.’

    • Mesosphere Grabs $36M in Funding for Data Center OS Built on Apache Mesos

      The B round brings Mesosphere’s total funding to approximately $50 million and the company says it plans to accelerate investment in global growth.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • The Pillars of KDE “Now”

        Oxygen, Sonnet (remember that?), Solid, Plasma, Akonadi and Decibel… This list in one way or another might be wrong. Not so cool. But you know what is cool? People remembered the Pillars of KDE 4 existed and the effect they had.

  • Distributions

    • Ask Slashdot: Paying For Linux Support vs. Rolling Your Own?

    • Reviews

      • Linux Mint 17.1 review—less change is good change

        While most of what’s new in Mint 17.1 will be seen in the updated desktops, there are some common components to both Cinnamon and MATE. While accessing some of these new tools varies slightly by desktop, the results are the same in both. Right away, you’ll notice the login screen is among these new and improved elements.

      • ​Best Linux Desktop of 2014: Linux Mint 17.1

        Personally, I prefer Cinnamon — so that is what I used. With Cinnamon 2.4, you get a few minor new features. For instance, you can set directories to different colors to make them more visible in Nemo, the Cinnamon file manager. Cinnamon has also been tightened and cleaned up. The result is a faster, more memory efficient desktop. The one bug I’ve seen to date is that some desktop icons, such as the computer, can’t have their names changed. So, for example, I can’t rename “Computer” to “Blitz,” my Dell desktop’s real name.

        Over all, though, that’s like complaining about a scratch on a 1955 Mercedes 300 SLR Racer: Mint’s still the best available desktop today.

    • Screenshots

    • Red Hat Family

      • Fedora

        • Fedora 21 Release Review: An Impressive Developer Workstation

          Fedora is among the most respected Linux-based distributions. Known as a bleeding edge operating system it offers the latest technologies at the earliest stages. It’s also known for working with upstream projects instead of patching things downstream.

          Fedora displays both qualities due to the fact that Fedora/Red Hat developers are among the leading contributors to many major open source projects, including the Linux kernel; they work for everyone and not just for their own distribution.

          Fedora 21 has just been released and I have been playing with the beta for a while. There are now three editions of Fedora: server, workstation and cloud. Since I am using it for my desktop I downloaded and installed the Workstation.

        • Fedora 21 Officially Released

          One year after the introduction of Fedora 20 and going through many changes this year with the Fedora.Next initiative (and going through multiple delays in delivering F21), Fedora 21 finally greets the world today. Fedora 21 features all of the latest GNOME 3.14 software, is powered by the Linux 3.17 kernel, and has a ton of other improvements and changes as noted in dozens of Phoronix articles. Fedora 21 Server users also have Docker improvements, cloud computing enhancements, and the new Cockpit console.

        • Announcing Fedora 21!
        • Fedora 21 Now Available, Delivers the Flexibility of Fedora.next

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu Developer Tools Center Renamed To Ubuntu Make, Sees New Release

            Ubuntu Developer Tools Center, a project to allow easy installation of common developer tools, has reached version 0.2. With this release, the project was renamed to Ubuntu Make, based on name proposals from the community.

          • Ubuntu Core Changes The Game For Container Operating Systems

            This last couple of weeks has seen some tension within the Linux Container world as CoreOS launched its Rocket container and questioned Docker’s longer term motives. Adding fuel to the fire today comes Canonical with its new “snappy” Ubuntu core. The new rendition of of Ubuntu is a minimal server image that shares the same libraries as today’s Ubuntu but via a simpler mechanism. Most importantly, the snappy approach allows Ubuntu to provide stronger security guarantees for applications. Snappy apps and Ubuntu Core itself can be upgraded atomically and rolled back if needed – an approach to systems management that lends itself to container deployments.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • TI expands IoT cloud ecosystem and simplifies code development with open-source Energia support

      DALLAS, Dec. 9, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — Texas Instruments (TI) (NASDAQ: TXN) is expanding its third party ecosystem of Internet of Things (IoT) cloud service providers. With 10 new members since launching in April 2014, the TI IoT cloud ecosystem supports multiple cloud options with a total of 18 companies. Ecosystem members deliver solutions to help customers get their TI-based IoT solutions connected to the cloud quickly. The new members include Intamac/Kynesim, Keen IO/Technical Machine, Micrium, Octoblu, PTC, PubNub, Temboo and Weaved.

    • Phones

      • Tizen

        • To Leak or Not to Leak? That is the Question ….. Samsung Z1 Tizen SM-Z130H

          The reasoning of no reveal is that Samsung’s launch strategy is secret, like many companies, but it looks like they will do a “soft launch” ie a press event and a URL to where you can buy this product in India, and I don’t know how the Samsung marketing machine will position the Tizen phone and how they will convey some of the Information in our possession, so in an effort to not damage the Samsung marketing strategy for Tizen we have chosen NOT to reveal anything. It is hoped that Samsung appreciate this move.

      • Android

        • Google pushes ‘go’ on Android Studio

          Worried Oompa-Loompas are questioning security guards and combing the wilds of Mountain View after it was discovered that Google has allowed a product, the Android Studio IDE, to escape from the Chocolate Factory’s near-impenetrable Beta compound.

        • Google Launches Android Studio 1.0, Offers Migration Path from Eclipse

          At the 2013 Google I/O conference, the company announced Android Studio, and characterized it as a new development environment that would make it much easier for Android developers to build apps. Today, Google has announced the official version of Android Studio 1.0. It’s available now for download as a stable release on the Android Developer site. Here are more details on how this will provide big benefits for developers.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open source all over the world

    Phil Shapiro. “I administrate 28 Linux work stations at a small library in D.C. I consider these folks my coworkers and colleagues. And it’s wonderful to know that we can all feed into the energy and share ideas. My main interests are how FOSS intersects with dignity, and enhancing dignity.

  • A look back at open source in 2014

    The year 2014 will be marked as one where open source changed for me. It didn’t change overnight or even very rapidly, but in July I noticed that the open source of today was not what I imagined it would be.

    And this can be a good thing.

    When I starting working full time with open source, back in 2001, the idea was to build a lot of free software. It reminded me of when I got my first computer back in 1978 (a TRS-80) and the environment encouraged a lot of code sharing. In those days, it was easy to differentiate open source from commercial software, and the thought was to replace the expensive walled gardens of proprietary code with better, freer, alternatives. But from a business perspective we were still in search of a business model.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Bill Rowan, VMware’s New US Federal Lead, on Open Source’s Evolution and Data Analytics Collaborations

      There is a great place for the OpenStack solutions, even though it may not be a fit for everybody. In my opinion, the item for greater consideration is that the government will need to acquire and retain talent who can help them with the programming aspects of OpenStack. But we will continue to contribute to the OpenStack initiatives as we have in the past and allow customers to leverage our solutions inside those OpenStack environments.

  • Funding

    • Nginx gets $20M, because an open-source web server is just the beginning

      Developers know Nginx as a popular open-source web server they can use to run websites. But some of the people behind Nginx, at the startup by the same name, aren’t content with that achievement on its own. They want to build a big company around the technology.

      Which is why investors are now giving the startup $20 million, Nginx announced in a statement today.

  • BSD

    • FreeNAS 9.3 Released

      Here’s an early Christmas present for you all: FreeNAS 9.3!

      This FreeNAS update is a significant evolutionary step from previous FreeNAS releases, featuring a simplified and reorganized Web User Interface, support for Microsoft ODX and Windows 2012 clustering, better VMWare integration, including VAAI support, a new and more secure update system with roll-back functionality, and hundreds of other technology enhancements. We’re quite proud of it and excited to make it publicly available.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

    • Home Office Locked Into £330m Oracle Contract

      The Home Office is obliged to continue paying Oracle for ERP services until 2016, even as it signs a cost-cutting shared services ERP deal

      The Home Office has disclosed that it is locked into a £330 million contract with Oracle for enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, which may conflict with government efforts to cut back-office IT costs by shifting to shared services centres.

      The contract, signed in 2009 under the previous Labour government, provides 29, 518 users with access to Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS), and is set to expire in January 2016, according to a statement published in response to a Freedom of Information (FoI) request.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Is Google coming back to the open community on document formats?

      At the ODF Plugfest in London, Google’s head of open source told the audience that work once once again in progress extending OpenDocument support in Google’s products.

      At the opening of the event, Magnus Falk, deputy CTO for HM Government, told the audience that the decision to adopt ODF (alongside HTML and PDF) as the government’s required document format is now well in hand. When asked by an audience member about various government agencies that currently require submissions from the public in Microsoft-only formats, Falk said that all such departments must make a migration plan now for how they will achieve use of the required formats.

Leftovers

  • Video-game pioneer Ralph Baer dies

    Video-game pioneer Ralph Baer has died at the age of 92.

    Mr Baer is widely seen as the “father of video games” for his pioneering work that led to the creation of the Odyssey games console.

    The Odyssey, licensed to TV-maker Magnavox, went on sale in 1972 and inspired many other firms to make their own consoles.

  • Atari’s Co-Founder Explains Why Pong’s Ball Wasn’t Round

    I really have some concerns, though, about privacy. Every kid has the right to have their teenage years forgotten. And I think we’re losing that. I can honestly say that I’m glad that my teenage years are mostly forgotten.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • “Dead bodies and wasted money”: How I learned firsthand the worst lesson of war

      Westerners like to dignify war as we can with the resources that we have, to make it sound like a chess game or science project with ascertainable goals, well-delineated procedures and verifiable conclusions. We actually have war colleges and war diplomas. People study military science and take war-leadership classes. Yet what a country actually does while at war – whether that country is an advanced nation or medieval relic – is try to survive; and if the war is truly about survival they throw everything in their possession at the enemy, flailing arms desperately, chucking money, bullets, grenades and prayers in the hope that they hit something. And you know what? Sometimes they do. But it takes a peculiar leap of faith to take this for knowledge or expertise. It takes an even more precious naiveté to pay people for the wisdom derived from collective stupidity.

    • Wrong-on-Iraq Pundit Gives Lessons in Media Accountability

      It’s helpful that Lowry brought up white male privilege on ABC. It’s hard to know what else you might call a system that enables people like Lowry to continue to appear on television as some sort of expert. Not everyone gets to be so lucky.

    • Establishment Media’s Illusion of Debate Supports US Strikes against Islamic State

      A new study authored by Peter Hart at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) found that in the lead up to the decision to increase military action against ISIL, there were very few anti-war voices in the television and the media in general. The FAIR study found that during a crucial two-week period in September 2014, only six out of the 205 interviewed sources opposed the U.S. intervening to stop the advance of ISIL. On well-known Sunday talk shows only 1 out of 89 guests was against the US going to war to stop ISIL. On television, there were many debates involving the advance of ISIL and the position of the United States. All of the debates revolved around the mechanics of the war, such as drone strikes and how many troops to send, not specifically that the war should not be happening. In defense of the media, after several beheadings, public opinion turned positive toward US involvement.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • North Carolina Newspapers Mostly Silent As ALEC And Koch Brothers Rewrite History

      North Carolina newspapers have largely missed the connection between a Koch-funded education non-profit organization contracted to help shape new statewide history curriculum materials, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the conservative model legislation mill that wrote the bill mandating the new course work.

      In 2011, the North Carolina legislature passed a bill known as the “Founding Principles Act,” which would require high school students to pass a course on “Founding Philosophy and the Founding Principles of government for a free people.” The bill was generated as a piece of model legislation by ALEC, a conservative group that brings corporations and politicians together to vote on and construct bills to be used in multiple states. According to the Huffington Post, North Carolina’s Department of Public Instruction, which has been tasked with drawing up the curriculum required by the Founding Principles Act, proposed on December 3 to “‘highly recommend’ social studies material from the Bill of Rights Institute,” an organization which “receives funding from the billionaire Koch brothers.”

  • Privacy

    • Press release: Permission granted for judicial review of DRIPA

      A judicial review of the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act (DRIPA) has been granted permission by Mr Justice Lewis in the High Court today. Open Rights Group (ORG) and Privacy International (PI) intervened in the case, which was brought by Tom Watson MP and David Davis MP, represented by Liberty. ORG and PI have now been given permission to make further submissions in advance of the next hearing.

  • Civil Rights

    • The victim-blaming hypocrisy of Rep. Peter King

      In case you have been living under a rock this week, a grand jury in New York City borough of Staten Island declined to return an indictment this week against a police officer who put a chokehold on a man who was allegedly committing the crime of selling untaxed cigarettes. This chokehold resulted in the man’s death. The man’s name was Eric Garner, and the chokehold and subsequent application of pressure to his head and neck by the same officer directly led to Garner’s death.

      There is full video of the incident. None of the facts are in dispute. The officer in question had three colleagues with him. Garner was unarmed. Unlike the case in Ferguson where officer Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown with no indictment, there is no way that Daniel Pantaleo, the New York City police officer in question, could have claimed that he felt his life was in danger. The chokehold he used was banned as a tactic by the NYPD. Even worse, Garner complained no fewer than 11 times that he was unable to breathe because of Pantaleo’s actions. And yet no indictment was returned against the officer who committed an unequivocal homicide.

    • And Now, to Discuss Police Killings: Rush Limbaugh?
    • Torture Enablers Spin Unreleased Senate Report

      The fact that former CIA officials might object to a report critical of the CIA isn’t that surprising. But these accounts, along with the stories stoking fears about attacks on US facilities as payback for the Senate report, serve to obscure the more important findings about CIA torture and deception: As Marcy Wheeler (Emptywheel, 4/2/14) has noted, there is plenty of evidence of the CIA lying to Congress about torture. Wheeler (2/22/10) has also shown that Michael Hayden has lied to Congress too, which is something to keep in mind as journalists bring him on television to discuss whether or not the agency ever misled anyone.

    • The Most Gruesome Moments in the CIA ‘Torture Report’

      Interrogations that lasted for days on end. Detainees forced to stand on broken legs, or go 180 hours in a row without sleep. A prison so cold, one suspect essentially froze to death. The Senate Intelligence Committee is finally releasing its review of the CIA’s detention and interrogation programs. And it is brutal.

    • Here are the names of the 119 prisoners who were detained in the CIA’s secret prisons program

      The Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA’s interrogation and detention program for the first time released the names of all the prisoners who were detained in secret prisons around the world. Of the 119, 20 names were previously unknown.

    • The Debate about Torture We’re Not Having: Exploitation

      Partly by design, the debate about torture that has already started in advance of tomorrow’s Torture Report release is focused on efficacy, with efficacy defined as obtaining valuable intelligence. Torture apologists say torture provided intelligence that helped to find Osama bin Laden. Torture critics refute this, noting that any intelligence CIA got from those who were tortured either preceded or long post-dated the torture.

      Even setting aside my belief that, even if torture “worked” to elicit valuable intelligence, it still wouldn’t justify it, there’s a big problem with pitching the debate in those terms.

    • Senate report: CIA misled public on torture
    • Live Coverage of the Senate Torture Report

      One of the worst myths official Washington and its establishment media have told itself about the torture debate is that the controversy is limited to three cases of waterboarding at Guantánamo and a handful of bad Republican actors. In fact, a wide array of torture techniques were approved at the highest levels of the U.S. Government and then systematically employed in lawless US prisons around the world – at Bagram (including during the Obama presidency), CIA black sites, even to US citizens on US soil. So systematic was the torture regime that a 2008 Senate report concluded that the criminal abuses at Abu Ghraib were the direct result of the torture mentality imposed by official Washington.

    • CIA torture report released: latest news

      • CIA lied to Senate and White House on torture methods: report

    • Obama Would Not — Cannot — Deem Any Activities Authorized by Gloves Come Off Finding Illegal

      Just 3 days after he assumed the Presidency, a drone strike Obama authorized killed as many as 11 civilians, including one child, and gravely injured a 14 year old boy, Farim Qureshi. And several years into his Administration, Obama ordered the CIA to kill American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki with no due process. As far as we know, both of those things were done using that very same Finding, the Finding that Romero would like Obama to declare authorized war crimes.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • We’re Back at the World Intellectual Property Organization to Fight For Users’ Rights at the UN

      EFF is in Geneva this week at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), where the organization’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights is gathered to debate proposals for a treaty to give new legal rights to broadcasters, and for instruments that would standardize copyright limitations and exceptions for libraries, archives, educators and researchers.

    • The True Cost Of Corporate Sovereignty For The EU: €3.5bn Already Paid, €30bn Demanded – Even Before TAFTA/TTIP

      While the debate about the inclusion of a corporate sovereignty chapter in TAFTA/TTIP continues to rage in the EU, the European Commission insists there’s nothing to worry about here. In a recent article published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (original in German), the new European Commissioner for Trade, Cecilia Malmström, wrote that EU member states have signed 1400 agreements with other nations that included corporate sovereignty provisions — implying that such investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) elements are perfectly normal, don’t cause problems, and won’t cause problems.

    • Copyrights

      • Copyright Hub Goes Public: Where’s the Public Domain?

        It’s certainly hugely welcome that the technology behind the Hub will be open sourced. Unfortunately, that’s about the most open part of the new site: the rest of it is all about asking “permission”, a word that figures frequently throughout the site. Of course, given that this is a copyright hub, and that it has been funded by the creative industries, that’s perhaps understandable. But it is also rather retrogressive – unlike the open-sourcing of the code – and unbalanced.

        One of the most important shifts in the creative world in recent years has been to open licensing, encouraging a *permissionless* approach to building on the work of others, which of course is what has taken place for most of human history. Indeed, the Copyright Hub tends to treat copyright as if it were the eternal background of creativity, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. For most of human history (and prehistory), nothing like copyright existed or was felt necessary. Copyright is not natural, but a modern aberration when viewed in the larger historical context.

        This skewed view of the world makes itself felt throughout the site. For example, in the Discover section, where we “find out all about copyright”, there is not a single mention of the fact that copyright is temporary, or that the ultimate state of creativity is as part of the great commons known as the public domain. Indeed, I couldn’t find any reference to the public domain anywhere in my quick look through most of the Web pages.

      • UK Users Need 27 Services to Get Most Popular Films, Report Finds

        If UK Internet users want access to most recent popular film content they’ll need to remember a lot of passwords. A new survey from KPMG has found that while overall availability is good, users wanting the best will have to use a patience-challenging 27 services.

Exclusive: The Enlarged Board of Appeal Complains About Battistelli’s Corrupt Management to the Administrative Council (Updated)

Posted in Europe, Patents at 9:48 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

That was then…

Software patents protest against EPO

Summary: Text of the complaint from the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBoA) reaches Techrights, demonstrating just how rampant the abuse in Battistelli’s EPO has become

FIVE YEARS ago the EPO was in a state of turmoil and the Enlarged Board of Appeal got involved after important changes and a continual battle for restoration of the EPO’s integrity. Unrest at the EPO is not exceptionally novel, but it does help show the systemic presence of dissent, which emanates from genuine concerns. There is often a battle within and outside the EPO; the greedy parties want to prey on and exploit the EPO, whereas the smart people inside the organisation just wish to do their job with professional integrity. Patent examiners are not to be confused with patent lawyers; in fact, patent examiners are scientists, not lawyers.

“It sure looks like Battistelli and his cronies have begun attacking the Enlarged Board of Appeal…”A new article has been published by IPKat, where one of the bloggers has been covering the EPO scandals for a while. Titled “Enlarged Board appeals – direct to the Administrative Council,” the article speaks of a curious “suspension of a Board of Appeal member by the EPO President, under the guise of a “house ban” [which] has generated enormous disquiet, not only among bloggers, attorneys and EPO union officials, but now also within the Enlarged Board of Appeal.”

It sure looks like Battistelli and his cronies have begun attacking the Enlarged Board of Appeal as well, having shut down some other departments whose purpose was to oversee them. It’s like some kind of slow-motion coup d’état. Sooner or later there will be nobody left to topple or even investigate Battistelli. He is systemically eradicating dissent, hopefully not quickly enough to eradicate many hundreds of his staff who march against him in numerous streets in Europe.

The IPKat blogger “cannot remember any such internal EPO dispute spilling out into the public domain with such vehemence. The letter from the Enlarged Board should dispel any preconceptions that the current troubles at the EPO and the complaints about Mr Battistelli are confined to a few disgruntled examiners looking to protect their cushy jobs (a view she has heard from several quarters).”

Anyone who claims it was a grudge “confined to a few disgruntled examiners” (or anything along those lines) was either the editor of the Establishment media in Europe or someone from within Battistelli’s circles. Techrights has been in contact with numerous people from the EPO (people who work at high levels too) and there is no denying that there is a massive issue. It’s shocking that Battistelli still keeps his job. His dismissal or resignation should be imminent and sources tell us that he already resorts to desperate “damage control” measures.

Someone has just passed to us a copy of a new letter from the Enlarged Board of Appeal. It highlights what has been going on at the EPO and it comes from a high authority. Many people added their signatures to it. We are working to get a textual (plain text) version of it, but in the mean time we present the scanned pages below. Updates likely to follow. █

Update: Here is the full letter as text.

CONFIDENTIAL

Members of the Enlarged Board of Appeal
of the European Patent Office
c/o Secretariat Room 206

Munich, 8 December 2014

To the Representatives of the Delegations to the Administrative Council of the European Patent Organization

And

To the External Members of the Enlarged Board of Appeal.

On December 2014, a member of the Boards of Appeal was escorted out of the Office by the Investigation Unit (0.6.1.1), a unit operating directly under the responsibility of the President. As the other members of staff wer informed by Communique 64 on the Internet on the same day, the President has imposed a “house ban” on him. It appears from this communique that the staff member is accused of having disseminated defamatory material.

A house ban may very well be considered a de facto suspension, because the Board member can no longer perform his duties.

The provisions unde which the above action has been taken, namely the Investigation Guidelines, do not – and cannot – provide a legal basis for such actions. According to Part 1, their purpose is to establish, in cases of possible misconduct, the underlying facts on the basis of which the President can come to a reasoned assessment regarding the initiation of disciplinary proceedings.

Article 95 of Service Regulations provides that if an allegation of serious misconduct is made against a permanent employee and if the misconduct alleged is of its nature incompatible with his continuing in service, the “appointing authority” may decide to suspend him forthwith.

The appointing authority for this purpose is the Administrative Council (Article 11 (3) EPC). The President may propose such a disciplinary measure to the Administrative Council (Article 10(2)(h) EPC). It is however the Administrative Council as the disciplinary authority who has to decide on it (Article 11(4) EPC).

This specific distribution of roles is part of the concept of separation of powers and the independence of the Board of members as enshrined in Article 23 EPC. However, in the present case, the President decided in lieu of the Administrative Council, for which no provision appears to exist.

To this is added the fact that his computer was confiscated by the investigation unit, which has given them access to possibly confidential information regarding the preparation and deliberation of cases by the member’s board, without proper legally sound guarantees.

The undersigned members of the Enlarged Board of Appeal are deeply concerned about this conduct which could affect the validity of the whole proceedings if the results of the enquiry were in fact to lead to disciplinary proceedings. They are aware that independence does not imply impunity.

The actions of the investigation unit on the orders of the President also appear to be a clear challenge to the judicial independence of the Boards of Appeal.

It is therefore urgently requested that the Administrative Council in its capacity as appointing and disciplinary authority ensures the independence of the Boards of Appeal, one of the pillars of the European patent system. What is needed is a clear limitation on the executive power, as far as the Boards of Appeal are concerned, in situations like the present, so as to avoid any impression of undue influence on their judicial work, contrary to the independence requirements of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Yours sincerely,
Gabriele Alt
Graham Ashley
Gianni Assi
Ingo Beckedorf
Fritz Blumer
Tamas Bokor
Brnhard Czech
Albert de Vires
Eugene Dufrasne
Franz Edilinger
Gunnar Eiasson
Kevin Garnett
Pascal Gryozka
Andre Klein
Thomas Kriner
Albert Linder
Hugo Meinders
Rainer Moufang
Ulrich Oswald
Michael Poock
Giovanni Pricolo
Gaston Raths
Joseph Riolo
Marco Ruggiu
Werner Sieber
Fred van der Voort
Bianca ter Laan
Claude Vallet
Martin Vogel
Gerard Weiss
Stefan Wibergh
Manfred Wieser
Michael Harrison
Marie-Bernadette Tardo-Dino
Wolfgang Seretaruk

cc Mr. Benoit Battistelli
annex: Circular 342 with the Investigation Guidelines

EBoA letter regarding EPO

EBoA letter regarding EPO

EBoA letter regarding EPO

Update: Here are the enclosed rules (part of the EBoA letter regarding EPO) which show how Battistelli et al. are breaking the law in an attempt to silence their critics.

EPO rules

EPO rules

EPO rules

EPO rules

EPO rules

EPO rules

EPO rules

EPO rules

EPO rules

EPO rules

EPO rules

EPO rules

Protests Against EPO Corruption Approach 1,000 in Attendance

Posted in Europe, Patents at 8:59 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Protest in one location among several

EPO protest
Protest image via IPKat (click image for a larger version)

Summary: EPO staff at all levels is revolting against the management of the EPO, whose dismissal seems to be only a matter of time

IT NEED not be emphasised that EPO staff can be free-thinking and suitably educated. Many inside the institution (except management perhaps) have doctoral degrees and/or extensive experience in very specialised fields. Nobody who is serious would dare label EPO staff a herd, a mob, or a bunch of hooligans with vengeance. These people are barely nationalists either, so using the race card (or xenophobia) won’t work here. Management is not being witch-hunted by so-called ‘disgruntled’ staff because of their nationality/ies. The EPO’s staff (many thousands of people) has legitimate concerns and these are widely shared across the institution, albeit individuals dread identifying themselves as they are very much fearful; a thug’s tactic (or the Mob’s modus operandi) involves aggressively and publicly punishing people (like public hanging) to earn a sort of bogus “respect”, earned through fear alone. This is where the EPO stands at the moment, due to a large degree to President Battistelli and his cronies (with a notorious track record, preceding their time at the EPO and involving bullying too).

Techrights has covered EPO staff revolts for about 7 years and intensified coverage in recent years, got involved by writing letters to regulators, and identified the culprits who have stooped far lower (very low!) than Brimelow ever did. The EPO has become a laughing stock and the corporate/establishment press is finally covering this, perhaps motivated by some reporting in smaller, independent sites. The recklessness of the media can be characterised by its longstanding pattern of dismissal, i.e. ignoring the genuine grievances of European citizens, EPO staff included. This ought to change.

At Techrights we going to accelerate our coverage of the EPO fiasco, as material leaked to us is piling up faster than we can publish it and the EPO is now in state of rapid collapse (especially the management), based on several separate sources inside the EPO.

Microsoft Florian, who lives in the area of the EPO, wrote about the protests which we covered yesterday (pro-actively). IPKat has done a decent job covering parts of these protests and preceding ones (there are several simultaneous ones and it’s a recurrent event), which are long overdue given the long series of serious abuses inside the EPO (especially its management). According to this other post from IPKat, there is a lot going on very fast. To give some recent figures, “600 participants joined the peaceful demonstration organised yesterday by SUEPO in front of the French and the Danish Embassies.”

“The recklessness of the media can be characterised by its longstanding pattern of dismissal, i.e. ignoring the genuine grievances of European citizens, EPO staff included.”There’s a lot going on in Munich and The Hague. It is spreading. Staff in large numbers becomes better equipped and better able to defend itself from identification, singling out, etc. thereby shielding itself against retribution. SUEPO did a good job. It’s growing to be somewhat of a revolution and we are being contacted by more and more people from the EPO — people who put at risk their career because they are so eager to cause changes at the institution, at the very least toppling the corrupt management (that alone would not be enough, albeit a good start).

Quoting IPKat again: “The suspension of a patent examiner who was also a former member of the Internal Appeals Committee (IAC) that handles internal disputes, working in Munich, that apparently happened in October.”

There is also this: “The reported suspension of another former IAC member, who worked in The Hague office, and was allegedly suspended last month.”

Finally they add “[t]he departure of the head of communications Oswald Schröder in October.” We covered that at the time. Oswald Schröder has been in touch with IPKat, but he is now being gagged. That’s what these surprise suspensions seem to be all about. As one activist site puts it, “a whistle-blower informed me that if following a specific link on the Intranet, one could observe and possible record the EPO’s promises and the surrounding public traffic at their branch in Rijswijk, 24/7, via the EPO’s security cameras! Is the Dutch governement and public informed about those practices?”

Be sure to also read the anonymous comments in this article (EPO staff is afraid to be identified, hence the anonymity).

To quote just one comment: “President Battistelli likes to eliminate free thinkers. For example in 2011 he got rid of the Principal Director responsible for the Internal Audit, in 2012 of the Principal Director responsible for Quality Management and in 2014 of the Principal Director responsible for Communication. He also destroyed the appeal system, weakened the staff representation and now is attacking the Boards of Appeals. The administrative council is silent and thus is not fulfilling its role. What else should happen before somebody in the council wakes up and stops Battistelli?”

In the next post we are going to show one of the latest debacles. We are, in general, going to write a lot more about the EPO in weeks to come, so anyone who is interested in the topic is advised to subscribe and where applicable contact us with information. We have a 100% track record of protecting our sources in 8+ years of existence. █

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