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11.15.10

Links 15/11/2010: GNU/Linux in Indian Desktops, China Has World’s Top Supercomputer (With GNU/Linux)

Posted in News Roundup at 4:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • FUD^2

    FUD just will not go away. People must be paid to manufacture it. I will not post a link to the latest FUD article I read but it has a bunch of points:

    * GNU/Linux is faster and has more drivers out of the box
    * GNU/Linux is faster to install and brings more apps to the table

    which sounds great. GNU/Linux is a winner… Then TFA goes on to recount that

    * GNU/Linux lacks “special drivers” for “special devices”, the Achilles’ Heel and
    * GNU/Linux crashes a lot, especially when tweaking it

  • Logic and Reason

    Another piece of FUD caught my eye: “Linux vs. Windows: Suspending logic and reason for blind faith“. The authour, Donovan Colbert, expresses outrage/amazement at the unreasoning adherents of operating systems in the security debate. He compares the “many eyes” of FLOSS versus the “security through obscurity” of non-free software. This is an old story but he dredges it up anyway.

    His argument is that the many eyes feature is also a vulnerability since the bad guys can also see the code, not just the good guys. This is nonsense.

    [...]

    So stuff from 1995 in X applications crashed 24% of the time in fuzz-testing but 100% of GUI apps in Lose 2000 crashed. Does being closed make you more secure? Nope.

  • Kinect Hacker Hector Shows Redmond Who’s Daddy

    The events of this week reminded me why I love GNU, Linux, and free software so much. We leverage the power of communities of independent people better than any organization on the planet. It is simply a fact that gets proven over and over again. Discussions over the last several months have revolved around several interesting GNU/Linux and free software facts:

    * If GNU/Linux were created solely by paid developers, it would have cost over 1 BILLION dollars to develop using conventional proprietary means. 1.
    * Open source and free software are saving a lot of people in the real world a substantial amount of money, including government agencies. 2.

  • Sometimes We Grow Up

    It was no surprise when Jono’s announcement of the OpenRespect project was met with the usual mix of positive and negative responses.

    [...]

    Maybe Jono is a hypocrite who wants it all ways. I don’t think so, but so what if he is? We’re all imperfect, we all have pasts full of mistakes, and if all we do is focus a critical, judgmental lens on everything we’ll never accomplish anything. I think a reasonable baseline is to expect everyone to try, even a little, to get along with their fellow humans.

  • Rant: Linux Wars

    And each year one “Linux” becomes more different than the next “Linux”. Some want compatibility and standards based development (even if it’s lousy at times). Others want “OMG, not some lame standard, pah! we’re the best! just do it!” and for Linux to do its own thing entirely. Neither approach is entirely correct, nor entirely wrong. But we’re not learning from UNIX either.

  • Desktop

    • GNU/Linux on the Desktop in India

      It’s estimated that this year in India OEMs will ship close to 4,00,000 desktops with a Linux subscription or with preloaded Linux.

    • Help Find out the Real Desktop Linux Market Share

      The same page also features a break down of the figures with some really interesting stats. Ubuntu as usual, has a whooping 61% of the figures tallied so far, with Poland having a staggering 26% of the boxes?

  • Server

    • China Officially Overtakes U.S. in Supercomputer Performance

      It’s been rumored, but now it’s official. The Chinese Tianhe-1A system at the National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin has achieved a performance level of 2.57 petaflop/s (quadrillions of calculations per second). This puts it in the number one spot on the 36th edition of the TOP500′s world’s most powerful supercomputer list, the organization said Sunday.

      As a result, the prior winner on the list—the Cray XT5 “Jaguar” system at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility in Tennessee—is now ranked in second place, with a score of 1.75 petaflop/s.

  • Ballnux

    • Nexus Two aka Nexus S, Images-Details Leaked

      It’s about time Nexus One gets its successor. Engadget has been fueling rumors about the next Nexus phone; it’s not HTC. Two Samsung phones are believed to be the next Nexus phones.

  • Kernel Space

    • Graphics Stack

      • Going down the programmable pipeline road

        As you might know OpenGL comes in two flavors: fixed functionality and programmable pipeline. With the fixed functionality you have to use API calls to influence the execution of each stage of the rendering pipeline. It is a very powerful API allowing you to do most of the stuff we use in KWin. The programmable pipeline allows to directly execute code (called a “Shader”) to do vertex and fragment processing. For example we are able to saturate a complete window as a whole with fixed functionality, but we need a fragment shader to be able to change the color of each pixel depending on the input color. This is for example used in the invert effect. A vertex shader can be used to influence the geometry. E.g. we could use it to transform a cube into a sphere. OpenGL 1.x is completely fixed functionality, in OpenGL 2 the programmable pipeline was introduced to exchange parts of the rendering stack, but fixed functionality was still around. With OpenGL 3 everyone expected the fixed functionality to be removed, but it was only deprecated and you can still use it. All the modern calls have been moved into a “core profile”.

  • Applications

  • Distributions

    • Reviews

      • Pinguy E-17 remix

        This build is a livedvd showcasing the newly beta EFL libraries for the E-17 window manager. It was built on the 10.04 Ubuntu core and follows PinguyOS, in being a working out of the box operating system.

      • Review: GNU/Linux Utopia 12112010 (Idea by Manuel)

        …GNU IceCat, Liferea, and Seamonkey. IceCat is a rebranded version of Mozilla Firefox, similar to Iceweasel. I was happy to see that most codecs are included out-of-the-box.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6 Beta Available for Download

        Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, announced on November 9th the immediate availability of the first beta version of the upcoming Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6 operating system.

      • 3 Triangle titans, $3 billion: How will they deploy it all?

        Cree, Red Hat and SAS, three of the Triangle’s most successful home-grown technology companies, are members of an exclusive club.

      • Fedora

        • Fedora, like Ubuntu, to dump X for Wayland

          Fedora, Red Hat’s community distribution, has also decided to start to move to Wayland too.

          [...]

          Personally, I don’t see any Linux distribution using Wayland as its default graphical interface until well into 2012. I also think it’s possible that a cleaned-up and revised X server may yet keep X as Linux’s dominant graphical interface. For now, though, Wayland’s star is in the ascendent and the venerable X Window’s star is descending.

        • I’m running the latest Fedora 13 kernel, 2.6.34.7-61, and I have ATI video and Conexant sound playing nicely

          I’ve been sitting on old kernels for too long in Fedora 13. First I kept 2.6.33.8-149 because I could use the open-source ati video driver, but then I moved to 2.6.34.7-56, where I had working and speedy video with the fglrx driver direct from ATI/AMD as well as the ability to mute the speakers fed by my Lenovo G555′s Conexant 5069 sound chip.

    • Debian Family

      • SimplyMEPIS 11.0 Goes Alpha

        The first Alpha of SimplyMEPIS 11.0 has been released and uploaded to the MEPIS master site. If you are an MEPIS subscriber you can download the file immediately. The global ISO mirrors should make the files available to the general public within 24 hours.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Get New Radio Tray Mono Icons For Ubuntu

          Eriq Jaffe has uploaded a new set of Radio Tray Mono Icons on Gnome Looks. The icons add more style and polish to your Radio Tray.

        • No unity in Ubuntu’s decision

          In a post on her blog Story Peters, executive director of the Gnome Foundation, says as much:

          “We’ve put a lot of work into Gnome Shell, our next big thing, and Canonical is saying that it’s not the best thing for their users. It’s disappointing because we are excited about our new plans and expect lots of users to enjoy them. And we rely on our distribution partners to get Gnome into the hands of users, so we were expecting Canonical to help us in that.”

          Disappointment aside there are a couple of potentially good reasons for Canonical to switch to Unity.

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Distro Hoppin`: Dream Studio 10.10

            If you are dreaming of a free software suite to run your studio, then stop dreaming and download a copy of this distro and install it on your machine and be happy, your dream has finally come true.

          • Warning, server downtime, switch your repositories

            The German datacenter we’re using is moving to France and this impacts two of our dedicated servers:

            * The www.linuxmint.com website
            * The packages.linuxmint.com repositories

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Nokia/MeeGo

        • MeeGo 1.1 SDK Beta Released!

          Intel, Nokia lead MeeGo project has announced the release of MeeGo 1.1 SDK Beta. MeeGo 1.1 SDK release enables application developers to develop, install, and debug applications, as well as run applications on N900, Netbook, and Aava devices with MeeGo.

      • Android

        • Android Powered Motorola CITRUS Only For $49

          Motorola CITRUS is now available in Verizon Wireless Communications Stores and online at www.verizonwireless.com tomorrow for $49.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement.

    • Sub-notebooks

      • JoliBook May Beat Chrome OS As The First Cloud-Linux Netbook

        Jolicloud is set to launch its own netbook preloaded with Jolicloud. The launch would beat Google Chrome which is expected to be launched soon. JoliBook seems to follow Apple’s strategy of bundling hardware and software.

      • Jolibook: The Jolicloud Powered Netbook

        Today we’ve received in our mailbox a black envelope from Jolicloud, announcing the powerful and amazing Jolibook netbook device!

        This month, according to the Jolicloud developers, something big is going to happen in the world of little computers. Jolibook, will be a netbook device powered by the Jolicloud 1.1 operating system, it will have a next-generation N550 CPU, a 250GB hard disk, and a LED LCD monitor.

Free Software/Open Source

  • The Great Blender Survey Results: The News Behind The News

    So getting back to the Great Blender Survey, scrolling to the end, what’s the first action plan proposed by the survey-taker? They hold up their Don-Norman-blessed edition of Don’t Make Me Think and start chattering about changing the interface on the website, as if the whole survey just went through them like chili through a cat.

  • Chamba Swathanthra Cinema – India’s First Open Movie Project Slowly Coming Alive

    It seems Blender open movies have inspired quite a number of people. Chamba Swathanthra Cinema is an open movie project by a bunch of free software enthusiasts from Kerala, India. Chamba Swathanthra Cinema is probably first of its kind open movie project ever initiated by anyone other than Blender foundation.

  • What can all managers learn from Free, Open Source Software?

    The 2010 edition of the Free/Open Source Software in Academia Conference (fOSSa) was an interesting event, (here’s my final report about fOSSa2010). In this page I intend to present something I found in common among several fOSSa talks. Something that is relevant for everybody who cares about effective business and human resources management in any sector, not just in the software industry.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox 4 Beta 8 Scheduled, Beta 7 GPU Acceleration Detailed

        Firefox 4 Beta 7 was a big release for Mozilla, but Beta 8 is already scheduled for release at the end of the month. The company also detailed improvements to its hardware acceleration engine for Windows XP – 7, as well as changes to HTML 5 support.

  • Programming

    • Oracle comments on JVM strategy

      Oracle‘s Java ambassador Henrik Ståhl has reacted to reports from various media outlets about a dual license for the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) based on a merger of the JRockit and HotSpot virtual machines. As presented at JavaOne in September, this “united” JVM is to consist of the best features of the two JVMs. The result is to be incrementally implemented in OpenJDK, although a number of components – such as Sun’s Java for Business and Oracle’s JRockit Mission Control, JRockit Real Time and JRockit Virtual Edition – will continue to be sold as proprietary, commercial premium extensions.

    • Launching code.mozy.com

      Since my start at Mozy in September, 2009, one of the internal programs in which I quickly took interest was Mozy Labs. Labs’ main champion was a former Google intern named JT Olds, who had witnessed directly the power of allowing engineers free time for innovation and wanted that for Mozy.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • When and How to Launch a Standards Consortium

      In this article, I will review the situations where a new consortium should and — as importantly — should not, be formed. I will also provide a decision tree for determining what activities a new consortium should undertake to increase the likelihood of its success, a description of the infrastructural elements needed to support these activities, and an indication of the stage of an organization’s maturity at which the addition of each activity becomes advisable.

Leftovers

  • Natural History Museum expedition ‘poses genocide threat’ to Paraguay tribes

    Anthropologists and indigenous leaders have warned that a Natural History Museum expedition to Paraguay could lead to “genocide” and are calling for it to be abandoned. They fear that the scientists and their teams of assistants are likely to make accidental contact with isolated indigenous groups in the remote region they are planning to visit and could pass on infectious diseases.

  • Is Facebook A Threat To The Free & Open Web?

    Google has refused Facebook to automatically ‘import’ Gmail data from a user’s account by changing its terms of service. I see it as Google standing up to fight an abusive, monopolistic forces rising in the Internet world.

  • Has Google Become Too Stagnant?

    The last time Google released something really groundbreaking was Gmail, if I remember right. Of course since then, they’ve cobbled up other small companies to add their own midas touch to make those companies hugely successful Google products, Youtube readily comes to mind here. However, even that strategy does not look to have worked for Mountain View this year given the 23 or so acquisitions.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • San Francisco Moving Toward Ban Of Toys From Most McDonald’s Happy Meals

      In an 8-3 vote, the board passed a preliminary version of a new rule that forbids toy freebies with meals that don’t meet minimum nutritional standards.

    • Despite 2006 “Pledge,” Fast Food Companies Target Kids More Than Ever

      In response to growing pressure about promoting unhealthy food to kids and contributing to the obesity epidemic, the fast food industry did what every industry that produces a harmful product does: it pledged to voluntarily end the harmful practices that started drawing scrutiny to the industry. Accordingly, in 2006 the Council of Better Business Bureaus launched its Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI), a voluntary code of conduct under which fast food purveyors pledged to promote healthier food choices in their advertising, and to use messages encouraging good nutrition in ads aimed at kids.

    • Why I Will Stay Far Away From Cliffs From Now on

      I set fire to a lot of bridges when I accepted Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s invitation to testify as part of his investigation into health insurance company practices that for years have been swelling the ranks of the uninsured and the underinsured in the United States. With the publication of my book — the subtitle of which is, “An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out On How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans” — I am torching a few more.

      I describe in the book how a huge share of Americans’ health-care premiums bankrolls relentless propaganda and lobbying efforts focused on protecting one thing: profits. I also describe how the industry’s PR onslaught drastically weakened health-care reform and how it plays an insidious and often invisible role in our political process anywhere that corporate profits are at stake, from climate change to defense policy.

      They’re going to kill you, Wendell,” a former CIGNA colleague warned in an email after reading a couple of chapters this morning. “If I were you, I wouldn’t get anywhere near a cliff.”

    • Potter’s “Deadly Spin” Exposes Damaging Insurance Industry PR Activities

      In his new book, former insurance industry insider Wendell Potter says insurance companies spend a huge portion of Americans’ health insurance premiums on relentless propaganda and lobbying efforts that are focused on one thing: profits. He describes how the insurance industry’s PR onslaught drastically weakened the new health reform law, and how it plays an insidious but often invisible role in politics any time corporate profits are threatened, on subjects ranging from climate change to defense policy.

    • FDA to Require New, Graphic Cigarette Health Warning Labels

      The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has unveiled hard-hitting, graphic new cigarette warning labels that will be required on cigarette packs after October 22, 2012. The labels show corpses, a man smoking through a tracheostomy, pictures of diseased lungs, a bedridden man suffering from end-stage cancer, rotten teeth, a man in the throes of a heart attack, a woman blowing smoke in a baby’s face and similar depictions meant to show the actual physical effects of smoking.

    • U.S. Cigarette Warning Labels Are About to Get Graphic

      Cigarette packages currently come with a tidy black-bordered warning label, reminding users that smoking causes lung cancer, birth defects and heart disease. Dutiful, yes, and easily disregarded. On Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) unveiled 36 proposed new warning labels designed to grab smokers’ attention. The new labels will cover half of a cigarette pack with graphic warnings — think dead bodies and cancer-ridden lungs — about the risks of smoking.

    • Natural Gas and Money, a “Bacteria that Ills the American System”

      Things aren’t looking good on the most important issue of them all: environmental justice, or, in more stark terms, the future of the world as we know it.

    • Market Watch: Farmers market cheating alleged

      The largest operator of Southern California farmers markets has protected a vendor who buys produce wholesale and misrepresents it as his own, alleged one of the company’s managers, who made the claim at a listening session held by the California Department of Food and Agriculture last week in Santa Monica. The operator has denied the allegation, but the repercussions seem likely to reverberate in the farmers market world.

    • What the FDA doesn’t want you to know about GE salmon

      One of the arguments against expanding the FDA’s powers over food safety is that the agency has repeatedly shown an unwillingness to enforce existing laws and to regulate aggressively in the face of corporate lobbying.

      Unfortunately, we now have more evidence that the FDA may indeed be a bad-faith regulator.

      The Center for Food Safety has unearthed convincing evidence that the FDA is attempting to freeze out marine and fisheries experts from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in its rush to approve biotech company AquaBounty’s genetically modified salmon for human consumption.

  • Security

    • Explaining Security Concepts to ZDNet Bloggers Is Like Teaching Physics to a Pig

      Once a proprietary software hole is found, it stays open for years. We’ve literally seen the case happen, here’s the 17-year-old Windows hole that just got patched this year. (…and the Register still says ‘hacker’ when they mean ‘cracker.’ See what we’re up against?)

      Conversely, the same strategy doesn’t work against Linux, BSD, and other open source systems. Yes, true, you can penetration-test Linux and BSD. There’s plenty of tools out there to do that, too. There’s even distros like “Damn Vulnerable Linux” specifically built to be weak and demonstrate points of failure. But when you go to all that trouble to find a security hole in Linux and exploit it, you know what’s going to happen?

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • Omar Khadr Jury Hammers the Final Nail into the Coffin of American Justice

      On Sunday, a military jury at Guantánamo handed down a 40-year sentence to Omar Khadr, the Canadian citizen who was just 15 years old when he was seized after a firefight in Afghanistan. The decision brought to an end a week of hearings that began when Khadr, now 24, accepted a plea deal giving him an eight-year sentence in exchange for agreeing that he was guilty of murder in violation of the laws of war, spying, conspiracy, providing material support to terrorism, and attempted murder, with one year to be served in Guantánamo, and the remaining seven in Canada.

    • Abuse claims lift cloak of secrecy over Britain’s Iraq interrogation base
    • The many faces of an Iranian Cindy Sherman

      Tara Inanloo has taken a series of self-portraits ‘to represent the different Iranian women inside myself’. Now she is in grave danger if she goes back to her country

    • Toronto officers face G20 discipline over name tag removal

      Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair announced that 90 officers are facing disciplinary action after it was learned that they removed their name tags during the G20 Summit weekend. They will most likely lose a day’s pay.
      On Wednesday, Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair testified before the Commons public safety committee where he discussed police officers’ various controversial actions during the G20 Summit in June.

    • British couple kidnapped by Somali pirates freed after ransom payment

      A British couple kidnapped from their yacht by Somali pirates more than a year ago have been freed after a ransom was paid.

      Paul and Rachel Chandler, 61 and 56, from Tunbridge Wells, were handed over by the pirates to officials in Adado, central Somalia, early this morning.

    • Burma election observers report voter intimidation
    • Russian journalist beaten unconscious outside office

      Two young men beat a Russian journalist unconscious outside his office today, 48 hours after another reporter was attacked with an iron bar.

    • Tell the TSA: Hands Off!
    • PG&E SmartMeter exec tries to infiltrate activists

      A Pacific Gas and Electric Co. executive in charge of the utility’s SmartMeter program admitted Monday that he used a fake name in an effort to join an Internet discussion group of SmartMeter opponents.

      William Devereaux, senior director of the $2.2 billion SmartMeter program, used the name “Ralph” when he sent an e-mail to the moderator of a discussion group for people trying to block deployment of the new, wireless electricity and gas meters. But his real name appeared next to his e-mail address.

    • Utility Exec Busted Trying to Spy on Consumers

      Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s executive in charge of its “SmartMeter” program got caught using a fake name to try and join an Internet talk list operated by people who are fighting installation of the new meters.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • The view from beneath the waves: climate change in the Solomon Islands

      The smaller outer islands in the Solomon Islands are already seeing devastating impacts of the rising sea level. The impact of climate change is already affecting the rural population of Solomon Islands, an archipelago of eight bigger islands and hundreds of small, mostly uninhabited islands.

    • US oil spill inquiry chief slams BP’s ‘culture of complacency’

      BP and the other companies involved in the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster were operating under a “culture of complacency” and need top-to-bottom reform, the head of the presidential investigation into the oil spill said today.

      A day after releasing preliminary findings on the causes of the fatal explosion on the Deepwater Horizon – the first of multiple inquiries – William Reilly, co-chair of the commission, was scathing about the safety regime on board the Deepwater Horizon.

    • One last chance: can we save the tiger?
    • US researchers fight to reclaim climate science message

      Hundreds of scientists have signed up to two new campaigns that seek to regain control of the message about climate science.

    • Crude Oil Production Forecast to 2015

      With fresh data out from EIA Washington just this afternoon, and, on the heels yesterday of IEA Paris’ long-overdue admission of Peak Oil, I thought I would release a crude oil forecast. This is a production chart that I’ve been working on over the past few weeks. I use rough estimates of future world GDP, the recent mix of primary energy use with special attention paid to coal vs oil use, and then finally decline rates in global oil production. Despite these efforts, any forecast of this nature is at best general in nature. That said, the trajectory here is worth paying attention to.

  • Finance

    • Infighting, legislative gridlock, open warfare in Congress – just what Wall Street wanted

      A ticker-tape parade along Wall Street might appear crass in this era of austerity. But the victorious Republican leadership in the US House of Representatives can expect a warm, heartfelt welcome from America’s financial elite, who watched last week’s conservative electoral landslide with quiet satisfaction.

      In the eyes of top US financiers, Barack Obama’s hammering in the midterm elections means the White House’s war on Wall Street is over. They feel, as one hedge fund manager told the president at a town hall meeting in September, like piñatas, constantly whacked with a political stick by Democrats keen to cast them as economic villains.

    • Take Action! Tell Elizabeth Warren about Your Top Priorities for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

      The sweeping Wall Street reform bill that was signed into law this summer calls for the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Just like other consumer regulators work to keep dangerous products off the market, the CFPB’s job is to make sure financial products and services don’t harm consumers or our economy.

    • Pillage and Plunder Alert – Deficit Commission Gets Underway

      The two chairmen of the deficit commission, former Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and former Republican Senator Alan Simpson, surprised Washington Wednesday with the release of their own draft recommendations on federal debt reduction. They were supposed to issue a report December 1, after the full 18-member panel had been given a chance to vote on each item. Knowing that it would be next to impossible to achieve a high level of support on the commission for their recommendations, the raiders decided to go it alone. Their package appears to be about three-fourths cuts and one-fourth revenue raisers.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Media Misreading Midterms

      For months, the problem for Democrats was correctly identified as the “enthusiasm gap”–the idea that the progressive base of the party was not excited about voting. The exit polls from Tuesday’s vote confirm that many Democratic-tending voters failed to show up. How, then, does one square this fact with the idea that Obama and Democrats were pushing policies that were considered too left-wing? If that were the case, then presumably more of those base voters would have voted to support that agenda. It is difficult to fathom how both things could be true.

    • Stauber Lectures on the Public Relations World

      The field of public relations is essentially dark, covert operations carried out by skilled propaganda professionals. That was the message delivered by Center for Media and Democracy founder and investigative journalist John Stauber in a lecture at the University of Northern Iowa November 8. Stauber said he first encountered the field of PR and its effects in 1990 when he started working with a group of small dairy farmers who where upset after finding out that some dairies were injecting bovine growth hormone into cows to increase their milk production.

    • John Stauber gives UNI an inside look at the public relations world

      On Nov. 8, John Stauber presented his lecture, “Toxic Sludge is Good for You,” to University of Northern Iowa students, faculty and staff.

      Stauber, an investigative journalist and New York Times best-selling author, wasn’t really trying to sell the crowd on the benefits of toxic sludge. In fact, his first book, titled “Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry,” explains how to promote critical thinking in the public relations profession.

      “After decades of working as a public interest activist and organizer, I realized that there existed in the United States, especially, an institution devoted to propaganda and we call that institution a profession, the public relations industry,” said Stauber.

    • Amazon’s PR Disaster

      The book, essentially a guide for pedophiles, drew massive media attention and a barrage of public scorn. At first, Amazon defended the author’s free speech rights and issued a statement saying it doesn’t condone censorship…

      [...]

      Soon after, though, Amazon yielded to complaints and threats of a boycott and pulled the book entirely. Amazon’s content guidelines for authors, including prohibitions on pornography or offensive material, could have prevented the e-book from being listed on its site to begin with, but the company’s confused handling of the situation left it facing even more controversy, including questions about its commitment to quality control and whether the company did, in fact, infringe on the author’s free speech rights.

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • Tibet spring

      Logging on the Internet successfully at my hotel, but discovering that while Gmail, The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal were all easily accessible, Twitter and Facebook were not. Social media more threatening to the censors than the high gatekeepers of Western media? (And if any of my readers has advice on how to connect to Twitter from China, please e-mail me.)

    • Silvio Berlusconi’s media reach

      Silvio Berlusconi’s standard response, whenever he is challenged about his media power, is to exclaim indignantly that the Italian press is as free as any in the world. That, of course, misses the point that he either controls or influences six of the seven main terrestrial channels (the sole exception being La7, owned by Telecom Italia). The effects can be seen clearly in TV coverage of the latest wave of sex scandals to wash over Italy’s prime minister. Corriere della Sera’s TV critic, Aldo Grasso, called it “a triumph of reticence”. He added: “if you followed the Italian television news bulletins, you would understand very little”.

    • Google stands up for your data

      If technology had its own version of People magazine, this week’s cover story would involve pictures of Google and Facebook in opposing bubbles, looking angrily in each other’s direction.

      The battle is now over data portability. To summarize, about a week ago, Google said Facebook wasn’t allowed to come over and play anymore. That is, because Facebook wouldn’t let users take their data back out of Facebook, Google blocked them from importing the data to begin with, which they could in the past.

    • Supreme Court Considers Corporate Right to Mandatory Arbitration

      The U.S. Supreme Court may continue its march towards permitting greater corporate “rights” in the case AT&T Mobility vs. Concepcion, scheduled for oral argument on Tuesday. If the Court sides with the telecom giant, it will greatly weaken rules regarding an individual’s right to join class-action lawsuits, one of the most powerful legal tools available to citizens and consumers.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • 3D Printing May Bring Legal Challenges, Group Says

      A coming revolution in 3D printing, with average consumers able to copy and create new three-dimensional objects at home, may lead to attempts by patent holders to expand their legal protections, a new paper says.

    • How long will innovation continue in internet software?

      Monopolies and the internet are the subject of articles by kdawson at Slashdot link here and Tim Wu at the Wall Street Journal link here. They note that the monopolies are innovative, but that they will not always remain so.

      Actually, they are not real monopolies, but rather collectively they make up an oligopoly where the companies compete at the margins, mainly in the form of product differentiation, They are successful as long as they innovate. Why would they not continue to do so? On first thought, because they run out of innovations. But is that likely?

    • Copyrights

      • Once Again, the Copyright/Trademark Tail Tries to Wag the Internet Dog

        Congress is set to once again consider the Sen Leahy’s Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeit Act, a truly awful bill (with the appropriately awful acronym “COICA” — which sounds a little too much to my ears like “cloaca,” and if you don’t know what “cloaca” means, you can look it up here . . .). I have written a (relatively brief) “Law Professors’ Letter in Opposition,” which now has about 35 signatories, which you can read here. [There’s a summary of the bill’s provisions in the Letter — and the full text of the current version is posted here]

        The bill would allow the Attorney General to institute an in rem action against the domain name of any Internet site “dedicated to infringing activities” — defined to include any site that “engages in” copyright or trademark-infringing activities where those activities, “taken together,” are “central to the activity” of the site. The court would then be authorized to issue injunctions — not against the offending website, but against “the domain name” itself — ordering the domain name registrar where the target site’s domain name was registered, and the domain name registry responsible for maintaining the authoritative database of names for the target site’s top-level domain, to “lock out” the domain name (and therefore prevent access to the site through use of the domain name).

Clip of the Day

Dell on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6


Credit: TinyOgg

Links 15/11/2010: Plans for Xfce 4.8, Preview of Debian 6, Linux Mint Has High Demand

Posted in News Roundup at 12:41 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Audiocasts/Shows

    • CAOS Theory Podcast 2010.11.12

      Topics for this podcast:

      *Our latest CAOS Special Report – Control and Community
      *Red Hat releases RHEL 6
      *Symbian and Oracle highlight community challenges
      *The latest on government adoption of OSS from GOSCON
      *Open core issue continues, now with Linux and evil twins

  • Kernel Space

    • What’s The Fastest Partition Scheme On Cheap Flash Media?

      You read the Fastest Flash article so you already know Ext4 can turbocharge your thumb drive. But you run Linux, so of course want even more! Is there anything else to do?

    • Graphics Stack

      • X.Org 7.6 Release Candidate 1 Is Finally Here

        Alan Coopersmith has announced the first release candidate of X.Org 7.6. Originally the X.Org 7.6 release was supposed to come in October, but that didn’t happen and now into November we are finally seeing the first test katamari.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

    • Red Hat Family

      • RHEL 6 has Nothing Noteworthy for Home Desktops

        Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Final shows up on 10th November 2010, almost 44 months after its previous major release (RHEL 5 was released on 14th March 2007). But at the time it came, it’s already bit obsolete for desktop use. Of course, desktop has never been a sweetpot for Red Hat. But was it really tarnishing it’s rock-stability by riding a few versions up on some packages? What was holding RH back from appropriating KDE 4.5 series, or for that matter jumping to GNOME 2.32? Sure, it must have backported some goodies from Fedora 13 and 14, but they work underneath, the worry is that it’ll put on these DEs till, say, 7 to 10 years. Moreover, KDE has undergone many improvements from its 4.3 to 4.5 versions.

    • Debian Family

      • Preview: Debian 6 “Squeeze” (Part 4: Standard)

        It was a nice experience being able to have this much control over my system. Maybe this is why Arch is supposed to be so good. Stay tuned for a final[ish, but not really] report on the state of Debian-based Oxidized Trinity!

      • SimplyMEPIS Version 11 Alpha 1 (10.9.70) and antiX core

        That was the only issue that I ran into with the very first Alpha Build for the next SimplyMEPIS release. A lot of people reported a similar issue, so it is certain to get fixed in the very next Alpha Build, which will probably be available in a week or two.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • 8 Beautiful Linux/Ubuntu Wallpaper Packs You Should Take a Look

          We have featured a number of wallpaper collections here before which includes the likes of beautiful Ubuntu Maverick wallpapers, awesome Android desktop wallpapers etc. Now, here is a bunch of Linux/Ubuntu wallpaper packs among others you might like.

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Linux Mint 10 Download Links

            The release of Linux Mint 10 has brought more traffic than we’ve ever seen before, and sadly also much more than our server is able to cope with. We’ve got dedicated servers for the website, the blog, the forums and the seeding of the torrents, and even with that, we’re not able to face the traffic!

          • How to install Linux Mint 10 on a btrfs file system

            Linux Mint 10 is the first version of Linux Mint with built-in support for the B-tree File System (btrfs). Btrfs is one of the newest file systems in the Linux kernel. It is a copy on write file system with the following features: snapshotting and writtable snapshots, object-level mirroring and stripping, file system compression, multi-device support, online and offline file system checking, etc.

          • Linux Mint 10 Reviewed

            Linux Mint is arguably the front-runner when it comes to Linux distributions that target Windows users looking to migrate to linux. Now Mint has released a new version named “Julia”. Mint claims to be a user-friendly OS that just works for the average user; its forte being elegance, ease of installation and usability. It began in 2006, based on Ubuntu, and basically follows Ubuntu except in some important areas which we will discuss after installation.

          • Linux Mint 10: A beautiful rescue distro

            This is certainly a great rescue distro: easy to use, responsive, elegant, and functional. The only flaw I found is that it does not fit a CD…which is the same case of the alpha release of SimplyMEPIS 11. Is Linux moving to Live DVDs instead of Live CDs?

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Hacked Kinect Handles Photos, Minority Report Style

      With the open source driver for the Kinect released, it didn’t take long for some Kinect hacks to surface. Now someone out there has used the open source Kinect driver to turn the device into a gesture-based multi-touch control device, allowing it to identify gestures that can be used to manipulate photos, similar to how it’s done in the Minority Report film. Check out a video of it in action after the jump, and a clip from the Minority Report film to remind you of what we’re talking about.

    • Mini PC touted for upgradeable design

      Xi3 Corporation announced a compact PC it claims will be readily upgradeable, thanks to the use of one board containing the processor and memory, along with two separate I/O boards. The Xi3 Modular Computer offers a choice of AMD processors, SSD (solid state disk) storage, 1080p video output, two eSATA ports, and an “Xm3dia” expansion port, the company says.

    • Sub-notebooks

      • Volunteers Report: OLPC Samoa School Deployments

        In May 2010, XO laptops from OLPC were deployed into two primary schools in Samoa – 48 XO-1.0 laptops to Laumoli Primary School children plus additional laptops to teachers and 27 XO-1.0 laptops to Paia Primary school children plus additional laptops to teachers. These schools are located on Savaii Island.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Monitoring with Nagios: New Online Training from the Linux Magazine Academy
  • Help me start a FOSS Tithing movement

    A tithe is a voluntary tax (often 10% of income), usually paid yearly to a religious organization. I’d like to adopt this concept for free and open source software (FOSS), which in many ways is like a religion.

    Please help me start a FOSS tithing movement. I’ve set up FOSSTithe.org to keep track of company pledges and amounts donated. I also set up a Google group for discussion.

    I’ll go first: DuckDuckGo hereby pledges to tithe 10% of its income to free and open source software projects. I plan to keep this up indefinitely, i.e. as long as I’m in charge.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox Elementary Theme is Quite a Revelation

        We have seen other elementary based works before like Nautilus Elementary and the Elementary 2.0 GTK theme itself, but the elementary version of Firefox here quite stand apart. The latest update brings in a name change as well. From now on, it will be called as ‘eFirefox’.

      • Firefox 4, How To Undo The Changes

        I have been working with the latest builds of Firefox 4 for the last two months. The browser has changed tremendously, both interface wise but also under the hood. The interface changes will likely split the Firefox user base. This article is for users who prefer the “old” interface and way of working the web browser. It looks at each change and offers alternatives or options to undo it. That obviously depends on the change at hand, and there may be changes that cannot be undone at all.

  • Databases

  • Oracle

    • LibreOffice Logo

      The LibreOffice project has a preliminary logo. The symbol aside, I see some issues with the type. The combination of the top of the 2nd f and the dot of the i is a little unfortunate. The b and r might work for body text, but not here. Setting Libre in bold only emphasises the unfortunate proportion of the 2 words (close to, but not quite the same width).

    • Apache’s Java threats aren’t new

      The Apache Software Foundation isn’t very happy with Oracle leadership of the Java Community Process. They’ve gone so far as to issue a lengthy statement saying that if certain items and conditions don’t change that they’ll leave the JCP.

  • Project Releases

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

  • Finance

    • Ireland’s young flee abroad as economic meltdown looms

      Now he is forecasting mass mortgage defaults and an ugly popular uprising. The first stirrings are already visible, he says, with “anxiety giving way to the first upwellings of an inchoate rage and despair that will transform Irish politics along the lines of the Tea Party in America”, giving rise to a new “hard-right, anti-Europe, anti-traveller party”.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • The Tea Party is not new, or coherent. It’s merely old whine in new bottles

      Lectures about fiscal responsibility from the occupants of a plush suite on the 20th floor of one of the fanciest hotels in Las Vegas stick in the craw like a slice of cantaloupe swallowed sideways. Appropriately, the Tea Party Express’s open bar, trays of fruit and skyline view at the Aria hotel on election night smacked more of a corporate event than a political, let alone a populist, one.

      At one stage I turned to a man standing next to me and asked if he was a Tea Party supporter. “No,” he said. “I was hoping you were.” He was a state department official who had brought some foreign journalists in the hope of meeting some real Tea Party supporters to interview. But they couldn’t find any. There is a reason for that.

Clip of the Day

Symantec on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6


Credit: TinyOgg

11.14.10

TechBytes Episode 7: FUD From The Economist, New Releases, and Linux Eureka Moment at Netflix

Posted in TechBytes at 3:10 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

TechBytes

Direct download as Ogg (39:59, 15.3 MB) | Direct download as MP3 (18.3 MB)

Summary: A daily news roundup with special focus on an easy-to-debunk GNU/Linux ‘article’ from The Economist

THIS is the seventh episode, which Tim and Roy keep short to obey requests from regular listeners of the show. Our leading story today is a fun FUD piece from The Economist, which is talked about for the first 10 minutes or so. Tim’s site, OpenBytes, will share some links about that.

Today we play no special song and instead revert back to our default one from Tom Smith. We hope you will join us for next week’s shows, which will be more packed with stories.

RSS 64x64As always, if you enjoy this show, please consider recommending it to others and consider subscribing to the show via the RSS feed. If you have an Identi.ca account, consider subscribing to TechBytes in order to keep up to date. █

As embedded (HTML5):

Download:

Ogg Theora
(There is also an MP3 version)

Our past shows

Episode 1: Brandon from Fedora TechBytes Episode 1: Apple, Microsoft, Bundling, and Fedora 14 (With Special Guest Brandon Lozza) 1/11/2010
Episode 2: No guests TechBytes Episode 2: Ubuntu’s One Way, Silverlight Goes Dark, and GNU Octave Discovered 7/11/2010
Episode 3: No guests TechBytes Episode 3: Games, Wayland, Xfce, Restrictive Application Stores, and Office Suites 8/11/2010
Episode 4: No guests TechBytes Episode 4: Fedora 14 Impressions, MPAA et al. Payday, and Emma Lee’s Magic 9/11/2010
Episode 5: No guests TechBytes Episode 5: Windows Loses to Linux in Phones, GNU/Linux Desktop Market Share Estimations, and Much More 12/11/2010
Episode 6: No guests TechBytes Episode 6: KINect a Cheapo Gadget, Sharing Perceptually Criminalised, Fedora and Fusion 14 in Review 13/11/2010

Links 14/11/2010: Scientific Linux 6.0 Alpha, Fedora and Wayland

Posted in News Roundup at 1:59 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • CDE — Making Linux Portability Easy

    “A Stanford researcher, Philip Guo, has developed a tool called CDE to automatically package up a Linux program and all its dependencies (including system-level libraries, fonts, etc!) so that it can be run out of the box on another Linux machine without a lot of complicated work setting up libraries and program versions or dealing with dependency version hell. He’s got binaries, source code, and a screencast up. Looks to be really useful for large cluster/cloud deployments as well as program sharing. Says Guo, ‘CDE is a tool that automatically packages up the Code, Data, and Environment involved in running any Linux command so that it can execute identically on another computer without any installation or configuration. The only requirement is that the other computer have the same hardware architecture (e.g., x86) and major kernel version (e.g., 2.6.X) as yours. CDE allows you to easily run programs without the dependency hell that inevitably occurs when attempting to install software or libraries. You can use CDE to allow your colleagues to reproduce and build upon your computational experiments, to quickly deploy prototype software to a compute cluster, and to submit executable bug reports.’”

  • Kernel Space

    • Graphics Stack

      • The X Input 2.1 Multi-Touch Implementation Is Here

        Canonical’s Chase Douglas has corralled Daniel Stone’s X Input 2.1 Multi-Touch patches and have readied them for integration into the X.Org Server and related software components.

        The patches for the xorg-server, protocol, and input drivers are now available on the mailing list. There’s also an X Input 2.1 Multi-Touch PPA for Ubuntu users seeing as all of the interest Canonical has had in multi-touch (with their own multi-touch framework and proposing an X Gesture Extension) and their plans to ship greater multi-touch support in Ubuntu 11.04 regardless of what’s pushed upstream in time.

      • Hosting backdoors in hardware

        Have you ever had a machine get compromised? What did you do? Did you run rootkit checkers and reboot? Did you restore from backups or wipe and reinstall the machines, to remove any potential backdoors?

        In some cases, that may not be enough. In this blog post, we’re going to describe how we can gain full control of someone’s machine by giving them a piece of hardware which they install into their computer. The backdoor won’t leave any trace on the disk, so it won’t be eliminated even if the operating system is reinstalled. It’s important to note that our ability to do this does not depend on exploiting any bugs in the operating system or other software; our hardware-based backdoor would work even if all the software on the system worked perfectly as designed.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • Keeping up with the Unitys: KDE’s Plasma Netbook

        Last week when I wrote about Canonical’s decision to go with Unity on Wayland I mentioned traditional desktop interfaces are mostly unsuitable for more mobile computers, including tablets, phones and netbooks. I should have been more specific about the interfaces themselves and not the software used to build them and, as the KDE developers pointed out to me, the Plasma Netbook workspace is an alternative for today’s smaller screens.

        The popular open source and commercial desktops of Windows 7, Mac OS X and GNOME and KDE are well suited to the opulent widescreen monitors that plant themselves on computer desks like the one I’m sitting in front of now.

      • KDEPIM 4.5 is Dead — Here’s to KDEPIM 4.6

        Well, the ramp-up for KDE SC 4.6 has begun now, with soft freezes taking effect yesterday and the first beta due in about 1 week.

        So… we have decided that there is no point to putting any more effort into the long-awaited KDEPIM 4.5.

  • Distributions

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mandriva Christmas Present and Beyond

        Eugeni Dodonov, newly appointed Mandriva Cooker Manager, has posted the details of the next two Mandriva releases as well as announced the new release schedule policy. One of these release comes as a Christmas surprise, something seen from the Mandriva project before.

        Dodonov posted to the Cooker mailing list that Mandriva will be releasing two releases in the coming months. The first will be seen around December 22, as a Christmas present for all Mandriva users. Mandriva 2010.2 is a freshly updated version of 2010.1, or Mandriva 2010 Spring, with all the security and bugs fixes that have been implemented since 2010.1 was released, “plus also lots of improvements, stability and performance fixes in many, many packages.”

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat tries the value argument for open source

        Red Hat released Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6 earlier this week. The new operating system, filled with technical innovations, performance enhancements, and customer-requested improvements, has met with positive press, as well as solid customer and partner response. However, how it’s being marketed could be much more important — to customers and to open source vendors in general.

      • Keeping Red Hat in Raleigh a constant fight – Szulik

        Former Red Hat Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Matthew Szulik is not surprised at all that the company he helped build into a global technology success story is contemplating moving from its Raleigh home.

        Szulik, who retired earlier this year as chairman after stepping aside as CEO two years earlier to care for his ailing father and late father-in-law, says he faced constant questions from Red Hat’s board about whether to move the Linux software firm to Silicon Valley.

        “It never stopped, Rick. It never stopped,” Szulik said in an interview.

      • Quick look at Scientific Linux 6.0 Alpha

        I was meaning to write this yesterday and before you know, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0 final is out. But that doesn’t mean we can’t post a quick look at this one.
        As most of you will know, Scientific Linux is a free clone of RHEL compiled from the original source rpm’s, and with the upstream branding removed. As such it is almost identical to the Red Hat product, but in contrast to the CentOS project the SL team are adding and tweaking a few packages to make it better suit their needs, the needs of CERN. It is cool to know that the people responsible behind the Large Hadron Collider are putting this together, and it makes me feel that on top of the proven reliability of the enterprise grade Red Hat product there is another layer of hugely competent folk that cross check and add their own finishing touches. As this distribution is used across many scientific sites and labs it has to have a sane base, be usable on laptops, and easily customizable for different sites and different spins. I imagine the labs will have somewhat different requirements from laptop users and admin staff. Scientific Linux has added wireless firmware and tools and a few packages that make life easier to the official Red Hat, and that’s a point in its favor for the user who would like to take advantage of the power of an enterprise product.

      • RHEL 6: serious Linux built for growth

        Red Hat has released Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, the first major update for RHEL in over three years.

        RHEL 5 debuted in March 2007 and used the Linux 2.6.18 kernel. Although incremental updates have added a number of kernel updates and new features, RHEL5 is starting to look aged. Of course much of the appeal of an enterprise distro is precisely that it ages well – ten years in RHEL’s case.

      • Fedora

        • Cyrille Blag // FEDORA 14 repository
        • The Fedora Plans For Wayland

          So eventually, Fedora will switch to the Wayland Display Server.

        • Exodus to a new land?

          Looks like it is actually happening . I might actually have to try and make it work

        • Raaaaaaawwwhide! (rolling rolling rolling)

          A couple of days back I decided a week was plenty long enough to be running a boring, stable OS like Fedora 14 on my desktop and decided to upgrade it to Rawhide instead. I’ve never gone to Rawhide this early in a Fedora cycle before (though I used to run Cooker permanently when I ran Mandriva), so it’s been an interesting ride. I’ve spent the last couple of days poking at various little issues and fixing some small things. Now I’ve got a pretty usable system going, at least for my purposes.

          Before I could upgrade at all, I patched xchat-gnome to build against libnotify 0.7 and sent the patch upstream. Don’t be too impressed; it’s not exactly a complicated patch. There’s quite a lot of apps that haven’t been patched and rebuilt against libnotify 0.7 yet in Rawhide, but xchat-gnome was the only one I actually need.

    • Debian Family

      • Debian 5

        Debian 5 is perfect for those who want a very stable system that provides a great deal of control to the user. It is not well suited for those looking for the latest & greatest of everything. If you bear that in mind and proceed accordingly, you might find Debian 5 to be a very useful desktop distro.

        Those who want things to be a bit more up-to-date should really consider Linux Mint Debian instead. Bear in mind that LMDE is based on the testing branch (also known as Squeeze) rather than on the stable branch (Lenny). So you may not have the same sort of rock-solid stability that you get in Debian 5. It’s a bit of a trade-off, to a certain degree and it’s something you should know when you consider choosing between the two.

        My experience with Debian 5 was overwhelmingly positive. I’ll be keeping it around to use regularly, though I suspect I will still lean a bit toward Linux Mint Debian a fair amount of the time.

        Debian 5 is probably best suited to intermediate and advanced Linux users.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • First Compiz Based Unity Screenshots [Ubuntu Natty PPA]

          However, there are still some issues with the Compiz based Unity (that’s why it’s only available in a PPA for now): Dash doesn’t work so to launch applications you can only use the Unity launcher (“dock”). Also, the icons in the upper panel are aligned to the left for some reason.

        • Unity, the next generation desktop?

          Simply speaking, Unity is another visual representation to allow easy access to your installed programs. Compared to launching an application by using a keyboard shortcut, a menu entry, a docky/cairo/… dock icon or a graphical shortcut on the desktop, Unity uses a launchbar glued to left side of the screen plus a graphical menu where all applications are displayed as icons. Gone are the classic menus. Is this something to be afraid of? No, so technically speaking I see no reason to utter something negative about this way of representing an access method to launch applications.

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Mint 10

            Linux Mint 10 (“Julia”) has been released, based on Ubuntu 10.10 (“Maverick Meerkat”). I’ve been running Ubuntu for about 4 years now and for the past couple of years have been running the spin off distribution “Mint“. Mint is Ubuntu with a lot of GNU GPL software added in such as Adobe flash and multimedia codecs, so it adds some functionality that isn’t possible under Ubuntu’s strict open source licenses. This moves away from the philosophy of Ubuntu but provides an even more functional distribution right out of the box. Many hardened linux users can’t stand the site of Ubuntu as it moves more into the Windows world of armchair computing and presents users with a computer they again don’t need to understand the workings of. I’ve flirted with Mandriva, Arch, Fedora, Suse, and Slackware but keep coming back to Ubuntu just for the ease of setup and the canonical repositories. My available time means I often just don’t have the time to go through some of the problems encountered when compiling from source code and hunting down dependencies. This isn’t a distrubution or linux fault – it’s just I don’t have enough understanding to race off and sort everything out, and I don’t have the time to learn more at the moment.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • u-boot + Linux kernel port to Mediatek MT6235 baseband processor under way

      I am really excited about some recent work by Marcin on starting a u-boot and Linux kernel port to the Mediatek MT6235 baseband processor.

      Among GSM baseband processors, the MT6235 is a very unusual device. Unlike classic GSM baseband chips, it is not based on an MMU-less ARM7TDMI/ARM7EJS but on an ARM926EJS core. This is a full-blown ARMv5 core on which a standard Linux kernel could run.

    • Phones

      • Android

        • Google’s gingerbread Androids are fully baked, can the OS be far behind?

          Continuing with our cookery theme this morning, we now have a full tray of scrumptious-looking gingerbread Android men, courtesy of Google Mobile’s Twitter account. The whole world and his poodle already know that Gingerbread, Android’s next iterative update that’s presently expected to be given the numerical identifier of 2.3, is coming some time soon, but now Google’s taken to fanning the flames of anticipation with some home cooking.

        • Netflix headed to ‘select Android devices’ early next year

          Come early 2011, Netflix will appear on “select Android devices,” according to the company’s official blog, which also promises a “standard, platform-wide solution” for Android in the unspecified future.

        • Confirmed: Lenovo LePad headed to US in 2011

          Lenovo led us to believe that that our LePad chances weren’t terribly good, but CEO Yang Yuanqing recently told the Wall Street Journal that the Android tablet is indeed slated for a 2011 US launch.

    • Sub-notebooks

      • Jolicloud’s OS Isn’t Just Similar to Chrome OS–Looks Like It Will Run With It

        We’ve recently covered the fact that Google may have dragged its feet on delivering its cloud-focused Chrome OS operating system for too long now, but could another cloud-focused OS–backed by a startup far smaller than Google–represent another roadblock to widespread adoption of Chrome OS? Jolicluoud has a freely downloadable operating system that is completely designed to make working with cloud-based applications, ranging from Facebook to Google’s own apps, easy. I’ve used it extensively, and written about how it may have a strong future as a secondary operating system–one you use in addition to your primary one. Now, the first netbooks based on Jolicloud are coming to market, ahead of Chrome OS-based ones.

      • UNR 10.10 Maverick Meerkat – Don’t touch this!

        UNR 10.04 Lucid Lynx is fast, sexy and useful. It plays popular media, suspends and resumes in a blink, has an eon of battery life, interfaces smoothly with all kinds of network shares, printers, gadgets, and whatnot, allows full customization, allows decent multi-tasking, and does not play any foul games.

        UNR 10.10 does none of this except being sexy. You may eventually get it to do all kinds of pretty things, but you will be isolated in a virtual world, where your entirely experience is limited to online. Why plug in a USB drive or connect to your second box via Samba when you have Ubuntu One to share files? Why delete anything, after all, we’re in the era of information. Why bother where your stuff goes, use the inline search? Right? Wrong.

        I wholeheartedly recommend Lucid Lynx for your netbooks. And it will be fully supported until 2013. But UNR 10.10 Maverick Meerkat is a flop. It may be a revolution, but I’m one of the victims, left bleeding in the ditch, covered with an old newspaper.

        It’s amazing how good the desktop edition is compared to this. Really stunning. I really wonder where all the decisions come from and how they all blend. Using the distro name alongside the UNR badge does the autumn release a disgrace. Purrty and evil.

        Stay away from UNR 10.10. If and when I miraculously discover how to tame this beast, I might update you, but the first impression is one of impotence and despair. Don’t touch this. Dedoimedo out.

Free Software/Open Source

  • 5 Awesome Free Tools For Small Businesses

    These are frugal times for business, and an organization starting out might have very little money to spend on IT. Even if you’re part of an established business, you’re probably feeling the pinch.

    Here are five extremely useful computing resources that are free of charge for small business users–unlike some “free” services you might see that are only for home users. These choices have few if any restrictions, and are established services unlikely to shut up shop anytime soon.

  • Web Browsers

  • Databases

    • MariaDB 5.2 now faster and with alternative authentication

      Launched by MySQL creator Michael “Monty” Widenius, the MariaDB MySQL fork has been released for downloading as version 5.2. The open source database is based on MySQL 5.1.51, although MariaDB contains additional functions. The release notes say that all commands, interfaces, libraries, and APIs from MySQL also run in MariaDB so it’s a drop in replacement for current installations. No innovations were added following the Release Candidate; instead, the developers concentrated on troubleshooting.

  • Oracle

    • Google: Android doesn’t infringe Oracle’s copyrights

      The litigation battle between Google and Oracle continues to heat up. The search giant fired the latest volley with a filing that outlines twenty separate defenses against Oracle’s claim that Google’s Android mobile platform infringes intellectual property that Oracle obtained from Sun. Google argues that no infringement has transpired, and that it isn’t responsible even if evidence of actual infringement is found.

      This dispute erupted in August when Oracle sued Google over its use of the Java programming language in Android, even though Java is ostensibly an open language and Google uses its own clean-room implementation. Oracle grants a license to the necessary intellectual property to developers who can demonstrate their Java implementations conform with Java standards. Oracle has, however, refused to provide the requisite compatibility test suite under terms that are acceptable to third-party Java implementors—including the Harmony project, which Google relies on for its Java library stack.

  • Licensing

    • Nooku Contributor Agreement

      In July we launched the idea on the mailing list to setup a Nooku Incubator where developers can collaborate on building new an innovative Nooku Components. Over the past few months we have been making steady progress. The Nooku Incubator is being setup as we speak and will open it’s doors in the coming weeks.

      In order to ensure that everyone has the same understanding of and commitment to Nooku when they choose to participate in the Nooku Incubator we have created a Nooku Contributor Agreement.

      In simple terms, the Nooku Contributor Agreement states that:

      * You retain the ownership of the Contribution
      * You grant us a copyright license under the terms of the GNU LGPLv3/GNU GPLv3/GNU AGPLv3.
      * You warrant that your Contribution doesn’t violate the rights of any third parties.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Notes from the International Commons Conference

      Where do conservative urbanists, liberal activists, and free culture advocates congregate? Last week it was in Berlin at the first ever International Commons Conference (ICC) held by the Commons Strategies Group and the Heinrich Boll Foundation. The combination of traditional and digital commons was explored as a transformational paradigm for the first time through an international conference in keynote addresses, conference tracks, breakout groups, and plenary sessions over two days.

Leftovers

  • Parliament signals its priorities for EU-US summit

    Ahead of the EU-US summit on 20 November, MEPs agreed their recommendations on positions the Council should take regarding key transatlantic issues such as economic co-operation, personal data protection, the introduction of a US travel fee and recent leaks of US classified military documents on Iraq.

  • In the Grip of the New Monopolists

    How hard would it be to go a week without Google? Or, to up the ante, without Facebook, Amazon, Skype, Twitter, Apple, eBay and Google? It wouldn’t be impossible, but for even a moderate Internet user, it would be a real pain. Forgoing Google and Amazon is just inconvenient; forgoing Facebook or Twitter means giving up whole categories of activity. For most of us, avoiding the Internet’s dominant firms would be a lot harder than bypassing Starbucks, Wal-Mart or other companies that dominate some corner of what was once called the real world.

  • 20 Years Ago Today: The Web Was Proposed

    If you want to realize just how amazing the level of progress has been with the internet, realize this: it was just 20 years ago, today, that Tim Berners-Lee proposed the web…

  • 20 Years Ago, The Web’s Founders Ask for Funding
  • Web celebrates one of its 20th birthdays

  • Science

    • Online comments maybe not total waste of time

      There’s a science behind the comments on websites.

      It’s actually quite predictable how much chatter a post on Slashdot or Wikipedia will attract, according to a new study of several websites with­ large user bases. And the thread of an online conversation — whether it sticks to the original topic or users comment on each other’s comments — can be modeled as a tree with discussions veering off on branches, researchers report online November 2 at arXiv.org.

      The findings give hope to social scientists trying to understand broader phenomena, like how rumors about a candidate spread during a campaign or how information about street protests flows out of a country with state-controlled media.

    • How Computer Chess Changed Programming

      It changed how we program and think about the human brain

    • From bomb maker wannabe to e-bike revolutionary

      Now a 29-year-old engineer and business owner, Lemire-Elmore has found himself among the vanguard of a thriving online counterculture. This group rejects traditional bicycles, and chooses to make their own bikes propelled by battery-powered electric motors. Many of them believe they’re helping to create future communities that will have fewer polluting vehicles and less traffic congestion.

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • ‘Kill Fidel Castro’ part of Call of Duty video game angers Cuba

      A U.S.-developed video game that lets players try to kill Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro sparked an angry reaction from Cuba on Wednesday, the latest charge in the long history of bitter U.S.-Cuba ties.

      “What the United States government did not achieve in more than 50 years, it now tries to do virtually,” said a story on government-run website www.cubadebate.cu.

    • Sarah Palin E-mail Hacker Sentenced to 1 Year in Custody

      David Kernell, the former Tennessee student convicted of hacking into Sarah Palin’s personal e-mail account, was sentenced on Friday to one year in custody.

      Kernell, 22, was convicted earlier this year of misdemeanor computer intrusion and a felony count of obstruction of justice. The jury found him not guilty of a wire-fraud charge and hung on a fourth charge for identity theft, after four days of deliberating.

    • Sarah Palin email hacker sentenced to one year in prison

      Former Tennessee student David Kernell, who was convicted of hacking into Sarah Palin’s personal e-mail account, was sentenced today to one year in custody.

    • Ex-agent: I almost shot LBJ hours after JFK murder

      A former Secret Service agent says in his new book that he nearly shot President Lyndon B. Johnson hours after John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

      In “The Kennedy Detail,” Gerald Blaine recalls standing guard outside the Washington home of newly sworn-in President Johnson in the early hours of Nov. 23, 1963.

      Blaine heard footsteps approaching. He picked up his submachine gun and, in the darkness, pointed it at the chest of a man who turned out to be Johnson.

    • Video: Skateistan Examines Struggles of Young Afghan Skateboarders

      Sports, in its most profound sense, can be cathartic in ways beyond our comprehension. In times of turmoil and anguish, sports’ therapeutic abilities can lead us out of the darkness and toward a better place — if not tangibly, then in the recesses of our minds.

    • Ears Could Make Better Unique IDs Than Fingerprints

      On a planet hosting 6.7 billion human beings, having proof you’re unique is of tantamount importance. The ear, it turns out, may be the best identification yet.

    • TSA encounter at SAN

      This morning, I tried to fly out of San Diego International Airport but was refused by the TSA. I had been somewhat prepared for this eventuality. I have been reading about the millimeter wave and backscatter x-ray machines and the possible harm to health as well as the vivid pictures they create of people’s naked bodies. Not wanting to go through them, I had done my research on the TSA’s website prior to traveling to see if SAN had them. From all indications, they did not. When I arrived at the security line, I found that the TSA’s website was out of date. SAN does in fact utilize backscatter x-ray machines.

      I made my way through the line toward the first line of “defense”: the TSA ID checker. This agent looked over my boarding pass, looked over my ID, looked at me and then back at my ID. After that, he waved me through. SAN is still operating metal detectors, so I walked over to one of the lines for them. After removing my shoes and making my way toward the metal detector, the person in front of me in line was pulled out to go through the backscatter machine. After asking what it was and being told, he opted out. This left the machine free, and before I could go through the metal detector, I was pulled out of line to go through the backscatter machine. When asked, I half-chuckled and said, “I don’t think so.” At this point, I was informed that I would be subject to a pat down, and I waited for another agent.

    • Venezuelan police arrest 33 people in metro protest

      Police have arrested 33 people during protests on the metro system in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas.

      They said they were protesting about the poor service of the underground network, which commuter groups say has deteriorated rapidly in recent months.

      Police said the passengers prevented a train from leaving a station, and accused them of sabotage.

    • The US and its ‘Friendly’ Dictator

  • Finance

    • Britain to Tape Traders’ Cell Phones to Fight Fraud

      Investment bankers and traders in Britain will have their mobile phone conversations recorded in the latest step by the country’s financial regulator to crack down on insider trading and market abuse.

    • Bernard Madoff’s belongings up for auction

      Personal belongings seized from jailed financier Bernard Madoff will be auctioned off in New York on Saturday.

      All of the proceeds will go to compensate the Ponzi schemer’s investors.

    • The Haggling Begins for Troubled Assets

      It is the biggest rummage sale in Wall Street history — what one investment company calls “the Great Liquidation.”

      Two years after Washington rescued Wall Street, hundreds of billions of dollars of bad investments — in many cases, the same ones that poisoned banks and then the economy — are going up for sale.

    • G-20 refuses to back US push on China’s currency

      Leaders of 20 major economies on Friday refused to back a U.S. push to make China boost its currency’s value, keeping alive a dispute that raises fears of a global trade war amid criticism that cheap Chinese exports are costing American jobs.

      A joint statement issued by the leaders including President Barack Obama and China’s Hu Jintao tried to recreate the unity that was evident when the Group of 20 rich and developing nations held its first summit two years ago during the global financial meltdown.

    • Top Finance Experts To G20: The Basel III Process Is A Disaster

      The Group of 20 summit for heads of government this weekend will apparently “hail bank reform,” particularly as manifest in the Basel III process that has resulted in higher capital requirements for banks. According to leading authorities on the issue, however, the Basel process is closer to a disaster than a success.

    • Obama says START treaty remains ‘top priority’

      President Barack Obama, capping a far-flung Asian trip of mixed results, assured Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Sunday that getting the Senate to ratify the START nuclear weapons treaty is a “top priority” of his administration.

    • Wall St. Brings Its Misgivings to the World

      The harsh aftermath of the global financial crisis of two years ago still weighed on corporate chiefs and political leaders as they gathered on Thursday in closed-door discussions on the sidelines of the two-day meeting of the Group of 20 economic powers.

    • Obama, weakened after midterms, reveals limited leverage in failed S. Korea deal

      President Obama’s inability to secure a free-trade agreement with South Korea reveals in sharp relief the limits of his leverage overseas after a devastating midterm election.

      Obama’s visit to four Asian democracies is aimed at promoting trade and other economic partnerships to boost long-term job creation in the United States, where voters pounded his Democratic Party this month over a moribund employment market.

    • Fed Efforts to Revive Economy Find Critics

      Can you remember when the Federal Reserve was above criticism? When politicians vied for Alan Greenspan’s favor and fell all over themselves praising his wisdom?

    • Big ideas for cutting deficit, but they’d hurt

      Voters who demanded Washington rein in the nation’s spiraling debt are getting a message from President Barack Obama and leaders of his deficit commission: It’ll hurt.

      A proposal released Wednesday by the bipartisan leaders of the commission suggested cuts to Social Security benefits, deep reductions in federal spending and higher taxes for millions of Americans to stem the flood of red ink that they say threatens the nation’s very future. The popular child tax credit and mortgage interest deduction would be eliminated.

    • Deficit targets: Social Security, mortgage breaks

      In a politically incendiary plan, the bipartisan leaders of President Barack Obama’s deficit commission proposed curbs in Social Security benefits, deep reductions in federal spending and higher taxes for millions of Americans Wednesday to stem a flood of red ink that they said threatens the nation’s very future.

      The White House responded coolly, some leading lawmakers less so to proposals that target government programs long considered all but sacred. Besides Social Security, Medicare spending would be curtailed. Tax breaks for many health care plans, too. And the Pentagon’s budget, as well, in a plan designed to cut total deficits by as much as $4 trillion over the next decade.

    • U.S. and South Korea Fail to Agree on Trade

      President Obama and President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea failed to reach an agreement Thursday on a long-awaited free-trade agreement, saying they had decided instead to give their negotiators more time to work out differences, which revolved around Korean imports of American autos and beef.

    • Janet Tavakoli on Bank & Foreclosure Fraud

      Janet Tavakoli, Tavakoli Structured finance, and I discuss bank and forclosure fraud via Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Countrywide, Bank of America, Citigroup etc. in the video commentary above.

    • Goldman Faces Lawsuit Over $1.2 Bln Hudson CDO Deals -Filing

      Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) faces a class action lawsuit over two collateralized debt obligations it packaged and sold in 2006 and 2007, according to its latest quarterly regulatory filing.

    • Goldman Fined $650,000 for Lack of Disclosure

      The Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs learned in mid-2009 that one of its traders had been formally notified by the Securities and Exchange Commission that he was the subject of an investigation. But Goldman did not tell other regulators about the inquiry for about seven months, a violation of securities regulations.

    • Guest Post: The Giant Cover Up

      Ben Bernanke in from of Congress stated: “The Federal Reserve will not Monetize the debt.” Audio can be found here.

      Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher said this past Monday: “The Federal Reserve will buy $110 billion a month in Treasuries, an amount that, annualized, represents the projected deficit of the federal government for next year. For the next eight months, the nation’s central bank will be monetizing the federal debt.”

    • Goldman, Natixis in Talks to Settle U.K. Default Swaps Fight

      Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Natixis SA are in settlement talks to resolve a lawsuit over the termination of credit-default swaps that was scheduled to go to trial today.

      Judge Elizabeth Gloster of the High Court of Justice in London agreed to postpone the start of trial until 2 p.m. today after Anthony Grabiner, a lawyer for Goldman Sachs, said the parties were likely to resolve the dispute “around lunchtime.”

    • Goldman Sachs Only Wants Clients With More Than $5 Million

      Goldman Sachs has limited its clearing services to accounts that manage more than $5 million, says Bloomberg.

      Until now, the bank has cleared trades for anyone managing $1 million or more.

    • Here’s How to Stop Market Manipulation and Show Too Big To Fail Banks Like JP Morgan Who Is Boss

      Leading economists and financial experts say that our economy cannot recover until the too big to fails are broken up. See this and this. The giant banks have been sucking money out of the real economy and making us all poorer. But the government is refusing to even rein in the mega-banks, let alone break them up.

      One of the too big to fails – JP Morgan – manipulates the silver market. See this, this, this, this and this.

      According to the National Inflation Association, JP Morgan is “short 30,000 silver contracts representing 150 million ounces of silver. This is one of the largest concentrated short positions in the history of all commodities, representing 31% of all open COMEX silver contracts.” This could leave JP Morgan exposed if people go out and buy physical silver in large numbers.

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • Federal website leaked personal information

      The CBC is reporting that an important government website had a significant security glitch that led to the disclosure of sensitive personal information of about 75 people.

    • EU legal threat stirs Home Office on interception opt-ins

      People who use the internet may have greater protection from electronic eavesdroppers following a consultation on changes to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).

      The Home Office recommendations include an explicit opt-in for information exchanged between a sender and receiver to be intercepted by a third party, and a civil sanction for “unintentional” breaches.

      The changes arise from complaints that Phorm, which makes web advertisement-serving technology, bases its selection of ads on the illegal tracking of web browsers’ online behaviour. BT was condemned for testing Phorm twice without first telling its internet customers.

      Complaints were escalated to the European Commission, which said that the UK’s implementations of the EU’s data protection and e-privacy directives were flawed.

    • Saudi Arabia blocks Facebook over moral concerns

      An official with Saudi Arabia’s communications authority says it has blocked Facebook because the popular social networking website doesn’t conform with the kingdom’s conservative values.

      The official says Saudi’s Communications and Information Technology Commission blocked the site Saturday and an error message shows up when Internet users try to access it.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

    • Will the EU permit a slow-lane Internet?

      Report on “EU Summit on ‘The Open Internet and Net Neutrality in Europe” Brussels, 11 November 2010

      An Internet slow lane of best efforts and a fast-lane of telco-surcharged managed services is being pushed by Europe’s telecoms industry. Will the EU resist it and support the needs of citizens? This was a key question arising out of the EU summit on Net Neutrality.’

    • UBB Q&A: the Facts #1

      I’m currently in the process of writing my second novel for NaNoWriMo and getting ready to self publish my first novel, so this is a very busy month for me. So to start with, during November when I have any time at all, I thought I’d start answering some of the questions Canadians have asked about Usage based Billing (UBB) BB in the CBC comments section of a couple of the online articles they have published since the CRTC approval this terrible policy.

    • Further thoughts on net neutrality summit

      Politicians like simple stories and simple solutions even when the issues are complex as with net neutrality. I get it. So they get told simple stories by lobbyists to get them to behave in a way that is beneficial to certain commercial interests. I get that. Complaints that the debates on net neutrality are dominated by extremes are legitimate. But the logical leap then to the argument that net neutrality purists should be dismissed and commercial interests prevail – i.e. saying one end of the spectrum is right and the other wrong – is a leap too far.

      Jean-Jacques Sahels of Skype and La Quadrature du net’s Jérémie Zimmermann, for example, were very badly treated by the first afternoon session chair, Malcolm Harbour, who insisted in intervening in their contributions to the debate and disagreeing with them. At the same time Mr Harbour both explicitly and implicitly praised the contributions of those selling the anti net neutrality message. Mr Harbour’s duty as an MEP is to look to the public interest and undermining those who are attempting to speaking up for the public interest should not be part of his remit.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Access Copyright Plea to Negotiate Too Little, Too Late

        Howard Knopf has another post on Access Copyright and its effort to exclude 99 objectors to its tariff and to convince the Copyright Board of Canada to issue an “interim tariff” so that an important source of revenue continues to flow even as the collective demands a massive increase in fees. Knopf points to the many legal reasons why the interim request should be rejected in his post, which comes just as Access Copyright posts a open letter to the post-secondary education community. The letter claims that many in the education community are confused and frustrated by the current situation and professes to remain “open to negotiation so that we may continue to play a role in helping your institution reach its teaching and learning objectives.”

      • Global Copyright Reform: A View From The South In Response To Lessig

        Professor Lessig is right. His call for global copyright reform is welcome and timely. However, past WIPO led efforts in this area have rather been unsuccessful. New reform initiatives should draw lessons from previous attempts in order to increase their prospects for success.

      • ACTA

Clip of the Day

HP on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6


Credit: TinyOgg

IRC Proceedings: November 13th, 2010

Posted in IRC Logs at 11:07 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME Gedit

GNOME Gedit

GNOME Gedit

#techrights log

#boycottnovell log

#boycottnovell-social log

Enter the IRC channels now

The W3C and Fake Authority

Posted in Apple, Deception, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Novell, Patents at 10:56 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Microsoft Shill - TE

Summary: Why the W3C is losing its way now that it is motored by Microsoft, Apple, and IBM (and headed by Novell’s former CTO)

Timothy B. Lee (not Berners-Lee), a personal favourite as a writer on the issue of intellectual monopolies (whose opinions are similar to those of Berners-Lee), has published “Reputational Arbitrage” where he refers to “The Fine Line Between Legitimate Think Tank And Industry Shills” as Mike Masnick put it:

Tim Lee recently had an excellent post that deserves even greater attention. It kicks off by talking about how a series of groups that purported to be “free market” think tanks have, over the past few years, tried to become active in debates over copyright and patent law, often promoting stronger IP laws — which seems a bit odd for supposedly “free market” operations, since intellectual property is a government-granted monopoly on an abundant resource — or the very antithesis of a free market ideal. What Lee noted, is that these newer groups weren’t really intellectually honest “think tanks,” but rather were operations funded by certain business interests, set up to look like independent think tanks, and then trying to ride on the good reputation of the think tanks out there who are intellectually honest…

We have already written about Microsoft's (mis)use of so-called "think tanks". Even days ago we saw somewhat of an upcoming example. Basically, people in the IT sector must always remember that Microsoft admits stuffing panels [PDF] and even bribing to get its way. It’s all part of entryism at large. There is nothing too far fetched about it as it’s done in many other fields by other companies too (Monsanto for example).

To give just one example, consider the Yahoo hijack and watch this new infographic of Yahoo. In particular, it is worth seeing how Microsoft’s arrival at the scene destroyed the company and made it Microsoft’s vassal. It helps show just how destructive Microsoft can be inside in the industry, ruining and breaking things (eliminating rivals) rather than creating new things (actual productivity).

To give a more recent example of apparent entryism, see this recent story about the W3C. Apple and Microsoft both have too much power in there and it causes problems on the Web. A few days ago we found this Microsoft and Apple apologist bashing web standards and defending proprietary extensions like Microsoft’s and Apple’s. Quoting just a portion:

Another of the trends underlying the supposed death of the web is the shift from web standards to proprietary languages for developing networked applications. This is exemplified by the iPhone app ecosystem, which is inhabited largely by apps that could be websites but have been implemented instead using Apple’s Cocoa Touch API. I touched on most of the justifications for taking this approach in my previous post. Basically, it was the shortest path for Apple to get to where they wanted to be in terms of features and tools. Conspiracy theorists might claim that they also wanted to maximize lock-in by making it harder to port apps to other platforms, doubtless citing Apple’s decision to ban third-party development environments for iOS. There’s probably some truth to that as well, despite the fact that they ended up relaxing these restrictions.

Some people have been trying to give credit to Apple for Flash abolishment, but almost no company restricts cross-platform portability as much as Apple. It totally ignores all the Free operating systems (with Free software at their core) for sure, based on the fact that Apple ignores their existence. The GPL too is still disliked or dishonoured by Apple. When the W3C tells us that MPEG-LA patents have room in HTML5-compliant documents, one must remember the note about “fake authority”. Given what the W3C does to ISO at the moment we have plenty of reasons to just label the W3C a compromised (as in hijacked) ‘think tank’. We warned about it when Novell's Jaffe was appointed as its head. Jaffe’s history, which includes the Novell-Microsoft patent deal he co-architected, speaks for itself.

Techrights believed that it’s time for Berners-Lee to come back to steering/heading the W3C and restoring sanity to it. Berners-Lee, a longtime follower of figures like Richard Stallman, has left his ‘baby’ in the hands of the very same people whose work is antithetical to Stallman’s. For instance, all the chairs at the W3C are occupied by companies whose policy is pro software patents, which Berners-Lee called “a terrible thing” at the end of last year. █

Tim Berners-Lee

Image from Wikimedia

Microsoft Starts Treating Vista Phony 7 (WP7) like “KIN” and Ballmer Said to be Possibly Preparing to Elope

Posted in Microsoft, Windows at 10:20 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Old border sign

Summary: Reader’s research and some thoughts about Microsoft’s futuristic products (or rather lack thereof)

“Hello everyone,” wrote Chips B. Malroy a day or so ago. “Remember what happened to Microsoft’s Kin when it did not sell? That’s right, they cut the selling price. Here is WP7 having the same treatment.”

“In efforts to flog off what probably turned out to be the wrong products to stock,” quotes Malroy from TechEye, “Amazon has slashed the prices of two of its Windows Phone 7 smartphones, the HTC Surround and LG Quantum, to a dirt cheap $0.01.”

“Also,” adds Malroy, “the Microsoft strategy of saying WP7 is sold out because of high demand is false. As many shops only had 5 phones of various manufacturers at launch. This can be proven by various first hand comments on the web. So MS is trying to pertend that WP7 is selling out due to high demand when the truth is in many cases some manufacturers simply did not want to get stuck with high levels of stock they thought could not sell.”

Onward goes and quotes Malroy: “The deal is also only available for this weekend, but at that price they may be out of stock long before the weekend is over.”

Malroy then asks, “So why would you dump a product that is supposedly selling well?

“Is this just another case of Microsoft fudging the numbers and trying to create a bandwagon effect for sales of WP7?”

Malroy has found two more items in the news [1, 2] (“Will Ballmer bail after banking big bucks?”) from which he quotes: “All of this selling has triggered wide-eyed speculation that SteveB may be getting ready to jump ship.

“I thought this all sounded vaguely familiar, so I took a trip back down memory lane and discovered that Bill Gates went through much the same process when he was preparing to leave Microsoft. Bill’s exit strategy extended over a period of years, but he officially handed over the titular role of CEO to SteveB in January 2000, stepping out of the limelight to become the newly christened Chief Software Architect. He gradually cut back his direct involvement, transferred the Chief Software Architect mantle to Ray Ozzie in 2006, and definitively left in 2008.”

Malroy also quotes: “In 1999, the year before SteveB became CEO, Bill sold $2.5 billion in Microsoft stock. There were assurances all around that Bill was still firmly in control and would run Microsoft forever. Microsoft stock had soared and, the story went, Bill was pulling out funds to diversify his portfolio.”

And finally: “While that’s certainly true, it’s also obvious that Gates launched his departure strategy with a significant sell-off of Microsoft stock.”

Please bear in mind that Techrights no longer tracks Microsoft quite as closely as it used to for reasons that were given last month and it’s news like the above which convinces us that Microsoft’s time is running out, just like Novell’s. Patent bulling is Microsoft’s bet for the future and this is definitely a topic Techrights will cover thoroughly.

We rely on people such as Malroy accumulating links and compiling summaries which we will happily publish, so please consider getting involved. Come and join us at the IRC channels for example. Personally I’m always there paying attention unless I’m at work or asleep. Others are also willing to help and provide feedback. █

Cronología de Microsoft Extorsión de Patentes Contra GNU/Linux

Posted in America, Microsoft, Patents at 9:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Bogota

Summary: Microsoft’s extortion tactics summarised in Spanish

“Here it goes — the Chronology of Microsoft’s attacks against GNU/Linux in Spanish,” wrote to us Eduardo Landaveri, who kindly provides Spanish translations for us (on an occasional basis).

Landaveri added: “The text version [below] has the hyperlinks between square brackets, so sometimes it’s hard to read when you put them on a web page. I’m also sending it to you as an ODT & PDF so readers can download them.” For cleaner versions with working hyperlinks use the following:

These documents are being distributed in south America to better inform the people there. Below is the simplified text version of the above.

“He aquí una breve cronología de Microsoft extorsión de patentes contra GNU/Linux. Debe ser visto como parte de un ataque mucho más grande en contra GNU/Linux que continúa hasta nuestros días. La imagen que emerge es una llovizna constante de FUD (Miedo, Incertidumbre y Duda)y detrás de las escenas Microsoft se sigue armado. Voy a señalar las principales refutaciones en esta lista, pero el sistema de los EE.UU. Tribunal de Justicia tiene la última palabra y no es a favor de Microsoft[http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/24/1713259]. Las leyes todavía han de disuadir Microsoft para que sus patentes, derechos de autor y sus ataques al software libre hasta que ela compañía colapse. Microsoft se ve obligado a esto, porque nadie quiere que su tecnología de segunda categoría y fallan catastroficamente en los mercados libres.

Microsoft entiende que las patentes de software son un fraude[http://www.fsf.org/news/end-soft-patents], pero los ha utilizado contra la competencia desde finales de los años 90 y ahora es un innovador en el fraude. Bill Gates, ordenó a la empresa para iniciar el almacenamiento de patentes en 1991 y claramente los veían como una herramienta de extorsión judicial[http://www.std.com/obi/Bill.Gates/Challenges.and.Strategy]:

“Si la gente hubiera entendido cómo las patentes se concede cuando la mayoría de las ideas de hoy fueron inventadas, y había sacado las patentes, la industria estaría hoy en un punto muerto. Estoy seguro de que si alguna empresa grande patenta algo obvio relacionado con el modo de comunicación, la orientación a objetos, el algoritmo, la extensión o aplicación técnica u otra técnica crucial. Si asumimos que esta empresa no tiene ninguna necesidad de cualquiera de nuestras patentes entonces esta empresa tiene el derecho de 17 años para tener la mayor cantidad de nuestras ganancias a medida que desee. La solución a esto es el intercambio de patente con otras grandes empresas y patentar más que podamos.”

Microsoft considero patentes un arma anti-competitiva frente a Open Office desde 1998[http://techrights.org/2009/02/10/bill-gates-patents-vs-free-office/] y trató de imponer impuestos a Sun[http://techrights.org/2010/03/10/bill-gates-racketeering-revealed/]. En 2003 Bill Gates planea encaje descubrimiento de metadatos y dispositivos con patentes para excluir a Apple[http://boycottnovell.com/2009/07/31/bill-gates-wants-patented-stuff/]. Ahora, Microsoft ha tomado el fraude de patentes un paso más allá, al no decirle a la gente lo que “sus” patentes violan amenazando a los usuarios finales, al igual que lo hizo SCO con su falsas extorsión de derecho de autor. Sí, Microsoft fue responsable del ataque de SCO también[http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20061009152706664]. Microsoft ha lanzado una campaña publicitaria fuerte para extorsionar a empresas que no tienen nada que ver con su propiedad. Como si estuvieran en condiciones de cobrar el alquiler del software libre. Así pues, aquí los seis años de los que reclaman la propiedad de todo el software libre y exigir dinero por protección por cosas no especificadas.

2002 – la planificación de alto nivel.

* 25/09 – Jim Alchin en una reunión de proveedores[http://boycottnovell.com/2009/01/21/patent-lawsuit-on-linux/], “será simple, ‘Hey, estos chicos se apropiaron de propiedad intelectual.” Y si la demanda proviene de Wind River o en X, Y, Z, tiene que haber una. Garantizado ”
* 09/27 -. Jim Alchin escribe[http://boycottnovell.com/wiki/index.php?title=GNU/Linux]: “Necesitamos a alguien para derribar la indemnización ofrecida por Red Hat e IBM para sus clientes. Tenemos que entender exactamente el riesgo que un cliente se encuentra, si una demanda de patentes es exitosa y Linux es desafiado …. DEBE haber riesgos para los clientes que se transmite. “Este correo electrónico es probablemente lo que conducen a la estafa conjunto. Véase también el pdf de Comes vs Microsoft[http://boycottnovell.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/px07168.pdf].

El Consejero delegado de Wind River declaró ante el Congreso de los EE.UU. en enero de 1994, “Mi perspectiva sobre las patentes de software es simple: dejar de emitir las patentes de software Las patentes de software no deberían existir.”.

2003 – Microsoft financia el ataque de SCO sobre derechos de autor[http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20061009152706664].

2004 – Un fraude desde el primer día, el ataque de patentes se inicia.

* 02/08 – La mentira puesta en marcha por Dan Lyons[http://www.forbes.com/2004/08/02/cz_dl_0802linux.html] en el día que Ravicher de OSRM(Open Source Risk Management) publica un estudio de las amenazas de patentes a todo software. Él impulsa reivindicaciones de la patente y los ataques de “fanáticos de Linux” y la reputación de Ravicher. “Un informe que será dado a conocer hoy dice que Linux podría violar cerca de 300 patentes, incluyendo 27 en manos de Microsoft, y advierte que las empresas que utilizan Linux podrían convertirse en blancos de las demandas de varios millones de dólares. … La OSRM de 12 empleados quiere cobrar a las empresas . 150.000 dólares al año por $ 5 millones en la cobertura legal que se activa si es demandado por utilizar programas de código abierto como Linux … (esto podría asustar a) clientes y hacerlos deshacerse de Linux y volver a Unix o Windows de Microsoft – productos que no pueden ser demandados por utilizar. … El informe OSRM representa un nuevo capítulo en (la historia de SCO). ” Su compañero de pluma venenosa autor Robert Enderle[http://slashdot.org/~twitter/journal/206959]-Tecnólogo Analysta de Dataquest, GiGa Information Group, Forrester Research, el Grupo Enderle, todas bajo la nómina de pago de Microsoft- es citado diciendo las mismas cosas, haciendo ver la OSRM y toda la historia como orquestrada por Microsoft desde el principio. Hay tantas mentiras en este artículo que es imposible saber quién es inocente, todos los involucrados estan manchados.
* 11/18 – Amenaza gobiernos usuarios de GNU/Linux[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/18/ballmer_linux_lawsuits/print.html], Ballmer dijo en el Forum Microsoft Government Leaders de Asia que Linux viola más de 228 patentes. … “Algún día”, continuó, “para todos los países que están entrando en la OMC (Organización Mundial del Comercio), alguien vendrá a buscar dinero a causa de los derechos de esa propiedad intelectual.”
* 11/19 – Autor repudia el uso de Ballmer de su estudio[http://boycottnovell.com/2007/05/13/war-on-free-software/#comment-44880], “Microsoft esta a la altura de su habitual FUD (el miedo, la incertidumbre y la duda),” dijo Dan Ravicher, autor del estudio de Microsoft cita. “El código abierto no se enfrenta a más, si no menos, el riesgo legal que el software propietario. El mercado tiene que entender que el estudio que Microsoft está citando en realidad demuestra lo contrario de lo que dicen que hace.”
* Desconocido – Mucho tiempo después del hecho, consejero general de Microsoft Smith reveló extorsiones de sus clientes[http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/28/100033867/index2.htm]. Dado que bajo la GPL (Licencia Publica General) cubre sólo distribuidores de Linux, no dejó que Smith búsqueda pago de regalías directamente a los usuarios finales – muchos de los cuales son empresas de Fortune 500 (y los principales clientes de Microsoft). [Que hizo arreglos con ellos] “las grandes empresas de marca” en los servicios financieros, cuidado de la salud, de seguros y de tecnología de la información. (Dice que no quisieron ser identificado, presumiblemente por temor a enojar a la comunidad de software libre.) [http://boycottnovell.com/2007/05/15/linux-money-for-ms/]

2005 Más del mismo cansado FUD (Miedo, Incertedumbre y Duda).

* 07/10 – Socios FUDS Ballmer de Microsoft en todo el mundo[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/10/ballmer_partners/], Ballmer – inexactamente una vez más – citó una Open Source Risk Management (OSRM) encuesta a partir del verano pasado que puso de relieve la existencia de 287 patentes en el kernel de Linux. “Se rumorea Linux viola 286 patentes.” Microsoft considera que la más amplia aplicación de -las favorables a las corporaciones- derecho de propiedad intelectual, que es parte del billete de entrada a la Organización Mundial de Comercio como un arma que puede ser utilizado contra sus rivales de software.

2006 Novell se vende por $ 400 millones. FUDsters se regocijan.

* 03/26 – Steve Ballmer amenaza a todos los GNU/Linux en Forbes[http://www.forbes.com/home/enterprisetech/2006/03/22/ballmer-microsoft-linux-cz_df_0322microsoft.html], “hay expertos que afirman que Linux viola nuestra propiedad intelectual. No voy a comentar. Pero en la medida en que ese sea el caso, por supuesto, le debemos a nuestros accionistas contar con una estrategia”
* 11/02 – Microsoft y Novell tratado de Patentes.
* 11/03 – Dan Lyons(editor mayor en la revista Forbes magazine luego escritor en Newsweek) arroja acuerdo Novell como la insuficiencia de software libre[http://www.forbes.com/2006/11/03/linux-microsoft-novell-tech-cz_dl_1103linux.html] y clama que el acuerdo condena tanto a competidores como Novell y Red Hat. El jueves por la noche, le pregunté a Jeff Jaffe, CTO de Novell, si podía pensar en una empresa que se había asociado con Microsoft y haber tenido exito como resultado. … Su respuesta fue: “Creo que esta asociación está abriendo nuevos caminos.” … los nuevos caminos que son de última hora son, probablemente, la tumba de Novell. Red Hat creció, Novell se contrajo y ahora esta buscando un comprador.
* 11/03 – Más FUD de Steve Ballmer[http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/Ballmer-Invites-Patent-Talks-with-Competing-Linux-Vendors/], “Si un cliente dice: Mira, ¿tenemos responsabilidad por el uso de su trabajo patentado? Básicamente, si usted no está utilizando SUSE Linux, entonces yo diría que la respuesta? es “sí” Van a pensar dos veces [antes de descargar GNU/Linux] Hay una gran cantidad de distribuidores de Linux ahora (consideren una tratado como Novell). De repente usted tiene Oracle en el juego,… tienes Red Hat en el juego. ” Red Hat no cedió y no pasó nada. Tanto Ballmer y Ron Hoverspan de Novell, hicierón hincapié en los convertidores de OOXML para Open Office, pero admitieron que estos traductores no iba a funcionar al 100%. No creo que siquiera han llegado al 10% “interoperabilidad” todavía.
* 11/12 – El equipo de Samba pide a Novell reconsiderar su acuerdo de patentes con Microsoft[http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20061112171106871] . Muchos están disgustados que Novell no consulto con la FSF (Fundación de Software Libre)[http://www.linux.com/articles/114196], “El Equipo de Samba desaprueba firmemente las medidas adoptadas por Novell el 2 de noviembre. Una de las diferencias fundamentales entre el mundo del software propietario y el mundo del software libre es que el mundo del software propietario divide a los usuarios al obligarlos a que de acuerdo con los acuerdos de licencia coercitivos que restringen su derecho a compartir con los demás, mientras que el mundo del software libre anima a los usuarios a unirse y compartir los beneficios del software. El acuerdo sobre patentes alcanzado entre Novell y Microsoft es un acuerdo de división. … El Uso de las patentes como herramientas competitivas en el mundo del software libre no es aceptable “. – De la carta del equipo de Samba[http://news.samba.org/announcements/team_to_novell/]. el abogado de la FSF, explica, “si (Microsoft) tiene éxito en conseguir una distribución pague regalías por la distribución de software libre, otras distribuciones lo harán. … Que a continuación, tendrá éxito en la marcha del sector comercial fuera de la no- sector comercial, y Microsoft será capaz de usar sus patentes para demandar y bloquear el desarrollo de software en el sector no comercial, sin el temor de demandar a sus propios clientes, que es la fuerza que ahora los mantiene a raya de mala conducta con su cartera de patentes. ” Es una buena cosa que Red Hat y otros no mordieran el anzuelo y que la GPL3 (Licencia Publica General 3) haya frustrado la operación.
* 11/16 – Steve Ballmer explica el acuerdo entre Novell y Microsoft, donde Microsoft dio a Novell 400 millones dólares[http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9005171&intsrc=it_blogwatch], Microsoft firmó el acuerdo porque Linux “usa nuestra propiedad intelectual” y que quería “conseguir el retorno económico adecuado para nuestros accionistas por nuestra innovación. Novell nos paga dinero por el derecho a decir a sus clientes que cualquiera que use SUSE Linux está apropiadamente cubierto. Esto es importante para nosotros, porque creemos que cada cliente Linux tiene, básicamente, un pasivo del balance no revelada hacia nosotros. Sólo los clientes que utilizan SUSE han pagado correctamente por propiedad intelectual de Microsoft. ”
* 11/20 – Roger Levy, vicepresidente de soluciones de plataforma abierta de Novell, dijo en una conferencia de prensa en París[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/20/microsoft_claims_linux_code/], “los clientes tuvieron miedo de que ser demandado si cruzó plataformas y esto significaba que estaban dudando en decisiones de compra Como parte. del acuerdo, Microsoft se compromete a no demandar a nuestros clientes y nosotros (Novell) nos pusimos de acuerdo en no demandar a sus clientes “.
* 11/27 – Dan Lyons informa del acuerdo entre Microsoft y Novell como insuficiencia de software libre que condena a Novell y el resto de GNU/Linux vendedores[http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/1127/044b.html]. el movimiento es también tratada y verdadera estrategia de Microsoft: abrazar, extender – y exterminar. Funciona así: Asociarse con un jugador débil, desesperada. … Desarrollar nuevas características que te ayudan, pero hiere a otros (en este caso, Red Hat). Debilitar a todos en el mercado, a continuación, sigue adelante. Sí, él mismo lo dijo el tres de noviembre.
* 12/21 – Desarrollador de SAMBA, Jeremy Allison, renuncia a Novell por el acuerdo con Microsoft.

2007 – “Respetar la propiedad intelectual” significa pagar a Microsoft por cosas que no les pertenecen. Los proxy ataques lanzado demuestran que la venta a Microsoft no da tranquilidad a nadie.

* 05/07 – Dell se vende [http://boycottnovell.com/2007/05/07/dell-microsoft-novell/] y promete promover SLED (SUSE LinuxEnterprise Server). Los clientes mayoritariamente se oponen a la compra de cupones de Microsoft SLED [http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/archive/2007/05/07/14120.aspx] Esto tendrá un costo de ventas y cuota de mercado de Dell.
* 5 / 14 – Otro ataque de Forbes[http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/28/100033867/index.htm]. Las citas son increíbles, pero Forbes se las arregla para superar a todas los bichos de Microsoft que entrevista. “Vivimos en un mundo donde el honor, y apoyamos el cumplimiento de, la propiedad intelectual”, dijo Ballmer en una entrevista. los usuarios de software libre van a tener que “jugar con las mismas reglas que el resto de las empresas”, insiste. “Lo justo es justo.” El Consejero general de Microsoft Brad Smith y el Jefe de Licencias Horacio Gutiérrez son citados. Revelar la cifra exacta, por primera vez, afirman que el software libre viola no menos de 235 patentes de Microsoft. [Kernel de Linux 42, 65 interfaz gráfica de usuario, Open Office 45, los programas de E-mail 15, 68 no especificados y no existe una patente en la lista. Resulta que estas cifras provienen de un estudio que concluye que el software libre infringe menos que los no libres hace y el autor rechaza las afirmaciones de Ballmer [http://techrights.org/2007/05/13/war-on-free-software/#comment-44880], la fuente[http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/Author-of-Linux-Patent-Study-Says-Ballmer-Got-It-Wrong/] … “Esto no es un caso de alguna infracción accidental, sin saberlo”, afirma Gutiérrez. “Hay una enorme cantidad de patentes que se ha infringido”. Para colmo, todos los usuarios de GNU/Linux están en peligro de nuevo, ¿Microsoft podría demandar a sus clientes por concepto de regalías, la forma en que la industria discográfica? “Ese no es un puente que hemos atravesado”, dice el CEO Ballmer, “y no un puente que quiero cruzar hoy por teléfono con usted.” [2 shilled por Ina Fried [http://news.cnet.com/Report-Microsoft-says-open-source-violates-235-patents/2100-1014_3-6183437.html] antes que la revista Fortune publique, “Última modificación: 13 de mayo de 2007″]
* 5 / 17 -.. Bill Hilf, Director General de Estrategia de Plataforma[http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/05/17/microsoft-wont-sue-over-Linux_1.html], “Así que no tenemos planes para litigar Nunca se puede decir que nunca vamos a hacer nada en el futuro, pero eso no es nuestra estrategia … Esto no es como una invención trivial. Hay un par de cientos de patentes importantes aquí. ”
* 5 / 24 – Microsoft se niega a listar las patentes violadas por razones de papeleo y amenaza de Red Hat[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/24/microsoft_novell_patents/], el abogado de patentes de Microsoft, Jim Markwith dijo en la OSBC (Open Source Business Conference), “La respuesta a eso sería administrativamente imposible de seguir.” … el Director de Microsoft de Estrategia de Plataforma Sam Ramji dijo: “Como una compañía que pone 7 billones de dólares al año en Investigación y Desarrollo, tenemos una responsabilidad financiera con nuestros accionistas No tenemos ningún deseo de litigar -. gastamos 100 millones de dólares año defendernos contra demandas por patentes . Seguimos ofreciendo acuerdos de licencia a los distribuidores de piezas específicas de software especificados en el artículo [de la revista Forbes]. Red Hat es bienvenido a venir a la mesa, al igual que cualquier otro distribuidor. ”
* 06/04 – Brian Caulfield de Forbes incluye la oferta de Xandros[http://www.forbes.com/2007/06/04/linux-software-microsoft-tech-cx_bc_0604linux.html]. Los ejecutivos de Microsoft están dando a entender que el problema podría estar gestándose – El mes pasado alegando que los productos de código abierto violan 235 patentes de la compañía. … Aparte de tener que soportar conseguir flameado en algunos foros de uso geek , sin embargo, es difícil ver una desventaja para el Xandros de 80 empleados. Por el lado negativo, leer acerca de la destrucción de la EEPC de ASUS[http://boycottnovell.com/2008/11/04/xandros-microsoft-teched/] y reflexionar sobre lo que el proyectado de $ 25 millones de dólares de las licencias que han hecho Xandros ($ 5 x 25 millones de unidades, una estimación del precio lowball).
* 04/10 – Steve Ballmer dice usuarios de Red Hat le debe dinero[http://boycottnovell.com/2007/10/21/ballmer-talk-red-hat/], “creo que es genial la forma de Novell se enfrentó a los asuntos de propiedad intelectual Cuando las personas usan Red Hat [encogiéndose de hombros], por lo menos en lo que respecta a nuestra propiedad intelectual. en cierto sentido, tienen la obligación de compensnos. ”
* 10/21 – Microsoft proxy Acacia Research lanza una demanda de patentes contra Red Hat y Novell[http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071011205044141] sobre una patente multi-monitor. Según Groklaw, esta es la primera patente demanda presentada contra GNU/Linux. Tres años más tarde, Acacia pierde. Acacia van a presentar más demandas.
* 11/15 – Bill Hilf, Director General de plataforma de estrategia “. Nos gustaría llegar a acuerdos similares de patentes con todos los vendedores de Linux, pero teníamos que empezar por algún sitio”

2008 – Los Juicios Son Buenos Para los Negocios

* 02/27 – El Grupo Garner advierte al mundo sobre la Microsoft “trampa de las patentes.”[http://boycottnovell.com/2008/02/28/patent-pill-is-in-openness-pledge/], “No utilizar la documentación de Microsoft a menos que haya procesos rigurosos para hacer un seguimiento de las patentes aplicables.” [http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206900525]
* 10/17 – Horacio Gutiérrez, abogado principal de Microsoft de propiedad imaginaria amenaza a Red Hat[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10068367-56.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20], “Si los esfuerzos por licenciar no resultaran fructíferos, en última instancia, tenemos la responsabilidad para los clientes que si tienen licencias y para nuestros accionistas de asegurar que nuestra propiedad intelectual se respete . ” Lo mismo de siempre, pero tiene el nervio para que apunte a el acuerdo con Novell como un ejemplo de cómo trabajar con un rival en última instancia, pueden beneficiar a ambas compañías, “Es realmente un mecanismo de negocios para iniciar las discusiones que antes no eran posibles”. Un cinismo increíble. [Control de daños[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10070008-16.html]], [perspectiva 1[http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20081018165715723], 2[http://boycottnovell.com/2008/10/24/threat-seeded-by-microsoft/], 3[http://boycottnovell.com/2008/10/18/microsoft-fud-red-hat/], 4[http://boycottnovell.com/2008/10/21/is-horacio-gutierrez-lying/]]
* 11/24 – La mayoría de la gente piensa sentencia Biski es el fin de las patentes de software[http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/24/1713259].

2009 – Microsoft no puede competir en los dispositivos móviles y de almacenamiento masivo. Microsoft lanza sus propios juicios y más ataques proxy en contra del software libre. La sentencia Biski ha terminado el juego, pero Microsft y otros titulares de patentes pretende lo contrario.

* 23/01 – Matt Assay adivina su juego[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10148928-16.html], pero erróneamente o deliberadamente piensa que Microsoft se ha convertido en “menos estridente”.
* 1 / 31 – FUD en pocas palabras[http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1489-IBM,-Microsoft,-and-the-patent-mess---how-to-protect-yourself]. En este artículo se hace un trabajo notable sobre todas las patentes FUD en temas de conversación como si Bilski nunca hubiera sucedido.
* 06/02 – El fabricante de equipos de Brother firma un acuerdo de patentes como Novell[http://boycottnovell.com/2009/02/06/the-novell-sellout-model/].
* 2 / 25 – Microsoft demanda a TomTom[http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/25/232212], sobre más supuestas de una GNU/Linux infracción de patentes. La FAT patente de nombres largos y otros patentes de porquería se citan. El farol que se ha encendido va a terminar mal para Microsoft a pesar de que ganaron.
* 03/09 – Microsoft proxy Acacia Research (también conocido como software de árbol LLC) pone en marcha otra demanda en contra de GNU/Linux[http://dockets.justia.com/docket/texas/txedce/6:2009cv00097/114766/]. Este apunta a Red Hat, HP, Dell y Genuitec, sobre un administrador relacional de objetos. Red Hat llega a un acuerdo más tarde[http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Red-Hat-settles-with-Software-Tree-1101646.html] y muchos de los detalles se mantienen en secreto[http://techrights.org/2010/10/03/software-tree-llc-and-red-hat/].
* 30/03 – TomTom es parcialmente derrotado[http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090330130655372]. Es difícil decir quien perdio que sin saber más detalles.
* 7 / 15 – GNU/Linux fabricante NAS es agravado por Microsoft[http://slashdot.org/submission/1039369/GNULinux-NAS-Company-Taxed-by-M-Patents] Una vez más, el acuerdo es secreto.
* 23/07 – Aún tratando de extorsionar a Red Hat[http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3831226/Microsoft+Red+Hat+Renew+Linux+Patent+Spat.htm].
* 09/09 – Microsoft trata de lanzar más ataques proxy, pero fracasa su plan[http://boycottnovell.com/2009/09/11/linux-foundation-vs-ms-trolls/]. Se celebró una invitación subasta para vender las patentes a los trolls de patentes, pero el “ganador” se dio la vuelta y los vendió a la OIN (Open Invention Network). Microsoft hace lo mejor de todo por pretender la venta fue una donación y continuar exagerando el valor de las patentes y FUD.

2010 Software Armagedon de Patentes. Los trolls de Microsoft lanzan todo tipo de ataques en contra de Android de Google, y todo el mundo demanda a todos los demás. Demostrando una vez por todas que los arsenales de “defensivas” patentes sólo sirve para arruinar a la industria.

* 10/27 – Austec y Asus[http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20101025PD218.html] demandan Microsoft niveles “derechos de patentes” para bloquear el uso de Android en tabletas.
* 10/20 – Pamela Jones declara el ataque de Oracle en Google SCO II[http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20101028111354436]. Es difícil decir si Microsoft movió las cuerdas de Oracle, pero son sin duda van a afectar sus propios valiosos recursos.

Cabos Sueltos y Otros Recursos.

02.07 – Xandros devorado por Microsoft[http://boycottnovell.com/2008/07/02/xandros-linspire-microsoft/]. [2[http://boycottnovell.com/2008/07/01/linspire-information/]].

08.09 – Linspire destruido[http://boycottnovell.com/2008/08/09/linspire-ends/] y demandado de todos modos[http://boycottnovell.com/2008/10/19/linspire-deep-in-lawsuits/]. Más[http://boycottnovell.com/2008/07/01/linspire-information/].

- Corel[http://boycottnovell.com/2008/08/22/selling-out-fail/] destruido por Microsoft, pero su uso de la plataforma Windows dio a Microsoft una asa mucho más grande que las patentes en si.

- Este litigio constante[http://boycottnovell.com/2008/12/18/microsoft-intellectual-welfare-etc/] que revela su respeto real de los bienes imaginarios y desmiente las declaraciones públicas de nunca litigar. Ellos violan las patentes de otras personas a su antojo y se niegan a pagar cuando se pierde en los tribunales, pero siempre se apresuran a hacer amenazas contra el software libre, demandan dinero de otras compañías y utilizar los tribunales para conseguirlo.

- Nuevas empresas troll de patentes, como Intellectual Ventures, vienen siendo creado por Microsoft y sus empleados.

Groklaw Microsoft acuerdo con Novell página de recurso[http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=20061218045851480].

Descripción del Boicot Novell acerca del acuerdo Novell-Microsoft[http://boycottnovell.com/no-to-novell/]. █

“Un paisano entre dos abogados es como un pez entre dos gatos.” -Benjamín Franklin

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