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01.26.11

Links 26/1/2011: KDE 4.6.0 Arrives, Red Hat Upgraded

Posted in News Roundup at 3:31 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Technicolor Uses Blackmagic Design`s DaVinci Resolve for Color Grading on “The Fighter”

    Blackmagic Design today announced that colorist Tony Dustin of Hollywood-based Technicolor used the DaVinci Resolve Linux non-linear color correction system for color grading work done on Paramount Pictures/Relativity Media?s critically acclaimed feature film ?The Fighter,? directed by David O. Russell. The film stars actor/producer Mark Wahlberg, Amy Adams, and recent Golden Globe® winners Christian Bale and Melissa Leo, and is currently in theaters nationwide.

  • Server/Routing

    • Cisco Updates Small Business Networking Gear

      Cisco is expanding its push to attract more small business professionals to its networking gear. This week Cisco announced a new set of 200-series switches and a new router platform that adds several big-business features tailored for the needs of small business.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • kdeexamples moves to git!

        My KDE hero of the day is Nicolás ‘PovAddict’ Alvarez who dove into the KDE Examples module and turned it into a git module, complete with history even of the examples that existed prior to the creation of the KDE Examples module intact! When I queried Ian Monroe the other day about how much work it would be to migrate this module over, Nicolás simply jumped in and attacked the problem with the usual KDE gleam in the eye.

      • How a “Welded-to KDE3.5 User” Began a Move to KDE4.4 Part III “Konquering the Dolphin”

        In this extension of his two part guest editorial and tutorial Dr. Tony Young (an Australian Mycologist by trade) goes into detail comparing the functions of Konquerer and Dolphin and along the way discovers that he might actually keep Dolphin as his file manager.

      • KDE 4.6.0 Has Arrived

  • Distributions

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Debian Project at several conferences and trade fairs

        The Debian Project is pleased to announce that it will be present at several events in the coming weeks, ranging from developer oriented conferences to user oriented trade fairs. As usual, upcoming events are also listed on our website.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Natty Narwhal Ditches OpenOffice for LibreOffice

          Future versions of Ubuntu will ship with LibreOffice, the fork of OpenOffice created by developers disillusioned with Oracle’s lukewarm — at best — relationship with the open source community. “Oracle is probably the prototypical vendor of commercial software, and its vision of open doesn’t include a lot of open source,” said Jonathan Eunice, principal IT analyst at Illuminata.

        • Ubuntu Unity Plays a Frustrating Shell Game

          Ubuntu Natty Narwhal will usher in a major change to the distro’s desktop appearance. The new Unity shell design will present a new appearance, a version of which I’ve been using on netbooks and laptops. I realize that my displeasure with Unity is based on my personal preferences for how I compute. But I subscribe to the theory that if something isn’t broken, don’t try to fix it. I think the Unity design goes too far.

        • Deja Vu: IBM Pushes Virtual Desktops With Virtual Bridges (Again)

          IBM today launched a Virtual Desktop for Smart Business push — which allows Windows or Linux desktops to be hosted and managed centrally. The VAR Guy is intrigued. But the Big Blue effort sounds suspiciously like a previous initiative called the IBM Client for Smart Work package, launched in 2009 with Virtual Bridges and Canonical (the Ubuntu Linux advocate). So how does IBM’s latest virtual desktop push differ from earlier efforts? Here’s the update.

        • The Other Side of the Road: Ubuntu Linux

          I’ve been a Mac user since 2006, and for good reason – nothing compares to the build quality and attention to detail Apple puts into its products. Still, I’m beginning to get this half-sinking/half-exhilarating feeling that the next big thing is Ubuntu (pronounced oo-boon-too) Linux. And why not? After all, “Bunt” is free, yet it offers much more functionality than a stock install of Windows – and with none of the malware troubles. It’s not quite Mac OS X, but it’s slowly getting there.

          [...]

          Ubuntu is great. Rakarrack is great. That old PC, with a few tweaks and a few upcoming upgrades, will be really great.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Wind River teams with BMW and Magneti Marelli on infotainment system

      Wind River and automotive component manufacturer Magneti Marelli announced they’re collaborating on the first in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) solution based on the open source Genivi Alliance spec. Based on Linux (and MeeGo, most likely), the system will first be brought to market by BMW, says Wind River.

    • Fanless 3-watt PC with Dual Core ARM CPU, HDMI and Linux

      Now, Intel’s Atom also has competition from ARM in the desktop PC arena. Israel’s CompuLab has presented the Trim-Slice, a tiny, fanless PC using NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 platform. The System-on-Chip (SoC) has two ARM Cortex-A9 CPU cores with clock rates up to 1 GHz, offering roughly the same computing power as an Intel Atom. But the multimedia equipment is even better. Two HDMI ports are provided, and Tegra 2 also includes an HD video accelerator.

    • Tablets

      • 2011: The Year of the Linux Tablet

        For what seems like forever, we’ve been hearing the Linux fanboys of the world proclaiming that the coming year will be the “Year of the Linux Desktop.” It’s has become somewhat of a joke amongst Linux naysayers and even with the Linux faithful. I don’t know if we’ll ever see the year of the Linux Desktop or not, but it looks like 2011 is going to be the year of the Linux Tablet. The future success of Linux as a tablet and phone platform might not look as open and utopian as many supporters of free software would like, but it seems that it’s inevitable none the less.

        [...]

        Will it really be “The Year of the Linux Tablet”

        Linux based OSes have the clear advantage when it comes to competing for market share against the iPad. If Microsoft had its act together and if Apple was the type of company to license operating systems, I might not have much hope for Linux’s success. But looking at the current market demand for tablets and the lack of a solid OS from Microsoft, I think this will truly be the year of the Linux Tablet.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox 4 stumbling along

        The Firefox 4 browser is edging closer to final release but still faces hurdles

        Once the darling of the Internet digerati, the Firefox browser is still battling problems to issue a new release. Version 4 of the browser has suffered multiple setbacks and although it now looks likely to be released in February, the delays have caused Firefox to lose some of its shine.

      • “Do not track” – Mozilla advocates new data protection standard

        Online advertising networks use cookies to recognise internet users and serve them tailored advertising. Users can defend against this practice by deleting cookies, not accepting cookies, or setting an opt-out cookie, which declares that they do not want their online activity to be tracked.

  • Project Releases

    • VideoLAN updates open source VLC 1.1.6 video for security, VP8

      VLC is among the most popular open source video players. According to the VideoLAN project, the 1.1.5 release has had 58 million downloads.

      Now it’s time for those 58 million downloaders to update to VLC 1.1.6, for some security, bug and stability fixes.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Filmaster unveils movie recommendation API

      It’s ready and it’s hot. First totally open and free (as in beer and as in freedom) film recommendations API is here for you as a gift from Filmaster. The API enables external programmers to create independent services or apps using our data and algorithms, it allows to easily integrate any website with Filmaster by presenting our content like reviews and film recommendations. Sounds interesting? Read on!

  • Standards/Consortia

    • HTML5 drops the 5 to become an evolving standard

      Oh, the ever evolving nature of the web. Just a few days after the W3C unveiled its shiny new branding for HTML5, WHATWG has announced that it will stop using numbered versions to better represent the evolving nature of the standard.

      According to WHATWG’s Ian Hickson, HTML5 was supposed to be finalised in 2012, but the rapidly changing nature of technology and the demands of the people who actually use it mean that new features would have to be added on a near continuous basis. For that reason, it makes a lot more sense to have the standard as a “living document” that can more easily be added to and updated.

    • Google documents VP8 at standards group IETF

      The VP8 encoding technology at the heart of Google’s effort to spread royalty-free video across the computing industry now has a home at the Internet Engineering Task Force–but not so Google can standardize it.

Leftovers

  • More Tales of Terrible IT Managers
  • Lee Harvey Oswald’s Brother Sues Funeral Home and Auction House for Selling the Assassin’s Casket

    Lee Harvey Oswald’s brother has sued a funeral home and an auction house, claiming they sold the assassin’s original coffin, embalming table and records, and their mother’s funeral records, for more than $160,000, invading his privacy and breaching contract. Robert Edward Lee Oswald sued the Baumgardner Funeral Home, Allen Baumgardner Sr. and Nate D. Sanders Inc. – the Los Angeles auction house – in Tarrant County Court, Fort Worth.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Playing for health

      Binge eating, chronic pain, and addiction. Three very different medical conditions, all hard to treat. Could the virtual exploration of an island be part of the solution for these three patients?

      Some European scientists are convinced it is. So this is the story of how research has managed to develop a serious videogame, for a serious purpose.

    • The Overuse of Antibiotics

      Reading a recent issue of Public Citizen’s excellent Health Letter titled “Know When Antibiotics Work,” I recalled the recent tragic loss of a healthy history professor who was rushed to a fine urban hospital, with a leading infectious disease specialist by his side. No antibiotics could treat his mysterious “superbug.” He died in 36 hours.

      Wrongful or overuse of antibiotics has a perverse effect—causing the kinds of bacteria that these drugs can no longer destroy. The World Health Organization has cited antibiotic resistance as one of the three most serious public health threats of the 21st century.

      The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) notes that just in hospitals, where between 5 and 10 percent of all patients develop an infection, about 90,000 of these patients die each year as a result of their infection. This toll is up from 13,300 patient deaths in 1992. Some percentage of these people have problems because of antibiotic resistance.

  • Security

    • Facebook defends security strategy
    • Top WordPress themes on Google riddled with spamlinks and obfuscated code
    • Tunisia plants country-wide keystroke logger on Facebook

      Malicious code injected into Tunisian versions of Facebook, Gmail, and Yahoo! stole login credentials of users critical of the North African nation’s authoritarian government, according to security experts and news reports.

      The rogue JavaScript, which was individually customized to steal passwords for each site, worked when users tried to login without availing themselves of the secure sockets layer protection designed to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks. It was found injected into Tunisian versions of Facebook, Gmail, and Yahoo! in late December, around the same time that protestors began demanding the ouster of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the president who ruled the country from 1987 until his ouster 10 days ago.

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • I Have Been Summoned to Appear Before a Grand Jury

      I have been summoned to appear before a federal grand jury in Chicago on January 25. But I will not testify, even at the risk of being put in jail for contempt of court, because I believe that our most fundamental rights as citizens are at stake.

      I am one of 23 anti-war, labor and solidarity activists in Chicago and throughout the Midwest who are facing a grand jury as part of an investigation into “material support for foreign terrorist organizations.” No crime has been identified. No arrests have been made. And when it raided several prominent organizers’ homes and offices on Sept. 24, the FBI acknowledged that there is no immediate threat to the American public. So what is this investigation really about?

      The activists who have been ensnared in this fishing net with different groups to end the US wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, to end US military aid for Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land and US military aid to Colombia, which has a shocking record of repression and human rights abuses. All of us have publicly and peacefully dedicated our lives to social justice and advocating for more just and less deadly US foreign policy.

    • Report Condemns Widespread Tolerance for Torturers

      The international community – from Western authorities to Southern powers – lacks courage and hides behind “soft diplomacy” in confronting human rights abusers, a leading rights group accuses in a 649-page world report released Monday.

    • Two Toronto Police Officers Guilty Of Assaulting A Disabled Man

      Two Toronto police officers were found guilty Tuesday of assaulting a mentally challenged man they thought was drunk.

      Richard Moore, 58, was headed home to his Gerrard St. East rooming house when he passed by two officers dealing with another situation on April 24, 2009.

    • Palestine papers: MI6 plan proposed internment – and hotline to Israelis

      Evidence in leaked documents highlights role British officials played in creating and bolstering PA administration

    • Palestinian Papers: What The Al Jazeera Blockbuster Means

      Al Jazeera`s stunning revelations about Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have different meanings for Israelis, Americans and for Palestinians.

      The bottom line is that, despite the assurances it gave to the Palestinian people that it was driving a hard bargain with the Israelis, the Palestinian Authority accepted Israel`s position on every key point: borders, Jerusalem, settlements, refugees.

      On no major issue did the PA hold the line. None.

      The Palestinians offered Israel everything Israel wants and Israel still said `no` with the backing of the United States.

      So what does it mean?

    • Cairo protesters in violent clashes with police

      Egyptian police used teargas and rubber bullets and beat protesters in a bid to clear thousands of demonstrators from a central Cairo square late last night after people had taken to the streets earlier today demanding the end of President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule in mass demonstrations inspired by the toppling of the government in Tunisia.

    • Flier beats TSA video recording charge in court

      Phil Mocek knows he isn’t required to show ID to fly, and that it’s perfectly legal to record video in publicly accessible areas of an airport. A jury agreed with him earlier this week, acquitting him of trumped-up charges brought against him by TSA and police officers who demanded obedience. He didn’t need to call any witnesses or testify himself; he was acquitted based on the evidence entered against him.

    • Passenger cleared after TSA checkpoint stare-down
    • Another Illinois Resident Charged for Recording Police

      The New York Times reports on the Illinois eavesdropping law, which allows for a felony charge and up to 15 years of prison for people who record police officers on the job. In addition to artist Christopher Drew—whom I’ve written about before and who goes to trial in April—the article finds another person currently being charged under the law. Tiawanda Moore, 20, goes to trial next month. She too could face 15 years in prison, in her case for using her Blackberry to record her conversation with internal affairs officers at Chicago PD about an alleged sexual assault by a police officer. Moore recorded her interview after feeling her initial attempt to report the incident wasn’t taken seriously.

    • Artist Could Face 15 Years In Prison For Recording His Own Arrest

      Chris Drew was finally ready to get arrested. An artist and activist, Drew had spent years protesting a Chicago ordinance that puts tight restrictions on where and how people can sell their art on the street. He was downtown, on State Street, selling silk-screened patches for $1 and defying the city to stop him.

      He’d tried his act of civil disobedience three times before — a First Amendment lawyer on hand to argue his case, a team of videographers ready to film the arrest — but the police simply let it slide. When, on December 2, 2009, he finally succeeded in getting booked, Drew was ready for a few hours in lock-up on a misdemeanor, and a lengthy court battle. He was in no way prepared for what he would actually face.

  • Cablegate

    • “The New York Times” May Start Its Own Version of WikiLeaks

      The New York Times is considering developing a system that will let anonymous leakers easily submit large and confidential files directly to the newspaper. Sound familiar?

      While nothing is concrete yet, NYT executive editor Bill Keller says that it could be similar to Al Jazeera‘s Transparency Unit, a system launched earlier this year that encrypts file submissions from anonymous leakers.

    • No proof WikiLeaks breaking law, inquiry finds

      A company asked by Visa to investigate WikiLeaks’ finances found no proof the group’s fundraising arm is breaking the law in its home base of Iceland, according to a document obtained by The Associated Press.

      But Visa Europe Ltd. said Wednesday it would continue blocking donations to the secret-spilling site until it completes its own investigation. Company spokeswoman Amanda Kamin said she couldn’t say when Visa’s inquiry, now stretching into its eighth week, would be finished.

    • Despite WikiLeaks drama, State Dept promotes documentary celebrating Pentagon Papers leaker

      Even as prosecutors build a case against the U.S. Army private suspected of passing hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks, the State Department is promoting a documentary film that celebrates Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg.

      Amid its struggle to contain damage from the WikiLeaks revelations, the State Department announced Saturday that “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers” has been selected as one of 18 films that will tour the world this year as part of its “American Documentary Showcase” program.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Climate sceptic ‘misled Congress over funding from oil industry’

      A leading climate sceptic patronised by the oil billionaire Koch brothers faced a potential investigation today on charges that he misled Congress on the extent of his funding from the oil industry.

      Patrick Michaels, a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute, a thinktank founded by Charles and David Koch to promote their libertarian, anti-government views, appeared before the house energy and commerce committee in February 2009.

  • Censorship

    • Kroes gives Hungary an ultimatum on media law

      The EU commissioner in charge of media issues, Neelie Kroes, has raised “serious doubts” about Hungary’s new media law in a letter to Budapest and given the country a two-week ultimatum to the government to explain itself. Hungarian leader Viktor Orban however said the law was intended to combat racism.

    • Some pols say Twitter ban for the birds

      The social media phenom Twitter may be sweeping America, but it’s banned in the Massachusetts Legislature, which has blocked lawmakers and staffers from tweeting from their office computers.

      The Twitter ban is frustrating some Web-savvy legislators, who say they use the popular Web site to communicate with constituents.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • Why Is Civil Discourse So Important – Yet So Difficult

      In his remarks at the memorial service for the victims of the Tucson shooting, President Obama urged us to be more civil in our dealings with each other:

      “The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better. To be better in our private lives, to be better friends and neighbors and coworkers and parents. And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their death helps usher in more civility in our public discourse, let us remember it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy – it did not – but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to the challenges of our nation in a way that would make them proud.”

    • US wants Internet, cell records held longer

      The US Justice Department wants Internet service providers and cell phone companies to be required to hold on to records for longer to help with criminal prosecutions.

      “Data retention is fundamental to the department’s work in investigating and prosecuting almost every type of crime,” US deputy assistant attorney general Jason Weinstein told a congressional subcommittee on Tuesday.

    • Civil liberty campaigners fear ‘control orders lite’ regime

      Leading civil liberty campaigners tonight voiced fears that the reform of counter-terror laws to be detailed tomorrowwill amount to little more than “control orders lite”.

    • The Voter ID Tap Dance

      The incidence of actual voter fraud at the polls in America is indistinguishable from zero.

    • Germany urges drug companies to boycott US executions

      Berlin has asked pharmaceutical companies not to supply the United States with a drug used in executions for prisoners on death row, after the sole US manufacturer announced it would pull out of the market.

    • AT&T says it’s a person under the law and should enjoy the right to personal privacy. What’s wrong with this picture?

      AT&T wants us to believe that corporations are people, just like you and me, and that just like us, they have a constitutional right to privacy. Their case, argued before the Supreme Court last week, hinges in part on the relationship between an adjective and the noun it derives from. To prove their point, AT&T wants us to look both at the law and at the dictionary.

    • Domestic use of aerial drones by law enforcement likely to prompt privacy debate

      The suspect’s house, just west of this city, sat on a hilltop at the end of a steep, exposed driveway. Agents with the Texas Department of Public Safety believed the man inside had a large stash of drugs and a cache of weapons, including high-caliber rifles.

      As dawn broke, a SWAT team waiting to execute a search warrant wanted a last-minute aerial sweep of the property, in part to check for unseen dangers. But there was a problem: The department’s aircraft section feared that if it put up a helicopter, the suspect might try to shoot it down.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Canada: Where Innovation Comes To Die

      Aside from how outraged I am about that news, I’m going to say something rather bold: Rogers, Bell, and Telus are killing innovation in Canada.

      Every single year, we are gouged to the bone by these three gigantic corporations by receiving less service for more money. They treat us poorly, and they know they can get away with it because we have no choice. They don’t need to improve a damn thing because we are stuck.

    • Canada regulator OKs metered Internet billing

      Smaller Canadian Internet service providers, who operate via networks owned by bigger telecom firms such as BCE Inc, will soon have to pass along the bulk of their host’s charges for extra bandwidth use, the federal telecom regulator said on Tuesday.

      The move limits the independent ISPs’ ability to offer unlimited data plans, just months after Netflix opened for business in Canada, and gives greater pricing power to large carriers such as BCE’s Bell unit and Telus.

    • Obama may get power to shut down Internet without court oversight

      A bill giving the president an Internet “kill switch” during times of emergency that failed to pass Congress last year will return this year, but with a revision that has many civil liberties advocates concerned: It will give the president the ability to shut down parts of the Internet without any court oversight.

      The Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act was introduced last year by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins (R-ME) in an effort to combat cyber-crime and the threat of online warfare and terrorism.

    • Internet ‘kill switch’ bill will return

      A controversial bill handing President Obama power over privately owned computer systems during a “national cyberemergency,” and prohibiting any review by the court system, will return this year.

  • DRM

    • Just What No One Needs Or Wants: Web Images With DRM And An Expiration Date

      The BBC is reporting on a new project to create web images that “expire” after a certain period of time. The thinking is that people who put photos up on social networking profiles may be embarrassed by them later, so, this way, the photo can only stay up for a set period of time and then no longer be viewable.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Twisted Pixel CEO: We won’t pursue legal action over Capcom’s MaXplosion

      Twisted Pixel CEO Michael Wilford says his comparatively tiny team won’t be suing mega-publisher Capcom for its blatant attempt to rip off the studio’s Splosion Man with iOS clone MaXplosion (pictured). “We’re definitely not going to pursue legal action,” Wilford told Joystiq. “While I think the similarities are pretty nauseating, we’re too small to take on a company like Capcom. That, and we owe them one for inventing Mega Man, so we’ll let them slide.”

    • How I Beat a Competitor Who Stole My Ideas

      Once I realized we were wasting valuable time, resources and money in court, I decided to focus all of that energy on outdoing our competitor instead. We vowed to differentiate ourselves by focusing closely on our clients’ needs. Innovation became very important. When we started out we only offered a single software option. Now we have six tailor-made modules to meet the varying needs of companies of different sizes and industries. We might not have worked so hard to build out new tools if we hadn’t had a competitor biting at our heels.

    • Trademarks

    • Copyrights

      • IFPI’s Annual Attack On Piracy Once Again Riddled With Errors And Bogus Claims

        IFPI boss Frances Moore apparently claimed that this is “a crisis affecting not just an industry – but artists, musicians, jobs, consumers, and the wider creative sector.” Except that’s not true. There are more people making music today than ever before. It’s cheaper than ever before to make, distribute and promote music. If you’re a musician, there are more ways than ever before to build a fanbase and to build a business model to make a living. It’s a great time to be a musician. It’s also a fantastic time to be a consumer. It’s hard to see how Moore can make such a claim that is obviously false, and no one calls her on the obviously false nature of her claims. When Moore took over last year for John Kennedy, I had hoped that maybe she’d bring some sense to the IFPI. Instead, she seems to be spreading the same propaganda as her predecessor.

      • USCG Refiles Several P2P Lawsuits – in Minnesota

        US Copyright Group makes good on its promise to target settlement holdouts in courts with proper jurisdiction, targeting two BitTorrent users, one for “Call of the Wild” and one for an unnamed movie.

        For almost a year now the US Copyright Group has been trying to hold tens of thousands of BitTorrent users responsible for illegally distributing either of the less than stellar independent movies “Steam Experiment,” “Far Cry,” “Uncross the Stars,” “Gray Man,” or “Call of the Wild 3D.”

      • Obama Nominates RIAA Lawyer for Solicitor General

        Verrilli is best known for leading the recording industry’s legal charge against music- and movie-sharing site Grokster. That 2003 case ultimately led to Grokster’s demise, when the U.S. Supreme Court sided with a lower court’s pro-RIAA verdict.

      • Piracy Doubled My App Sales

        What were the stat changes?

        - Period 2 had 38.6X more Pirates than Period 1

        - Period 2 had 2.3X more Sales than Period 1

        - (For every 15 or so Pirates, I received an extra Sale)

      • MPAA urges action against campus piracy

        The Motion Picture Association of America published an open letter in December discussing the contents of the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, which require universities’ participation in preventing illegal downloading.

        The act requires schools to implement a plan to stop the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material by users of the institution’s network, MPAA chief content protection officer Daniel Mandil said in the letter.

      • This unwanted interruption is brought to you by the RIAA.

        By RADIOGIRL [from Comments to Stephen Hough's blog post on Liszt, Daily Telegraph] – Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has now in place guidelines with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), that any qualified public broadcasting station that wishes to broadcast sound recordings over the Internet must not only register for agreement for those rights but must comply with the new rules. (BTW, this does not apply to commercial webcasters such as WQXR nor does it apply to recordings of live performances made for broadcast purposes.)

        [...]

        The influences that shape new musical trends are diffuse, complex, and impossible to codify, but if one person can be credited as being the fountainhead of modern music it is Franz Liszt … in three, totally different stylistic directions. Whether we like his own compositions or not, we cannot avoid contact with Liszt if we have contact with music from the late-19th or 20th centuries. Firstly, the heady combination of bel canto with chromaticism, a Lisztian fingerprint formed early in his life, was a major influence on Wagner and on to the latter’s progeny. It has been claimed that Liszt invented the ‘Tristan chord’. Even if such a ‘patent’ is open to discussion, the febrile harmonic instability of Tristan und Isolde is heard in Liszt before it is heard in his son-in-law. On rare occasions of collegial generosity Wagner even admitted this debt.

      • German Mass Copyright Letter Sender Using Debt Collectors To Pressure People To Pay Up

        We’ve seen the various mass copyright infringement factories popping up all over the world, often using similar strategies: suing or threatening to sue thousands of individuals based solely on an IP address. The whole “business model” is based not on traditional copyright infringement statutory awards, but on convincing people to pay up beforehand to avoid being sued. The model feels quite similar to what’s normally considered extortion (“pay up or we harm you”). Someone recently sent us a copy of what’s alleged to be a contract being used by a German law firm, Schutt, Waetke Rechtsanwalte, which has been involved in such mass threats for many years. You can find references online going back to at least 2005 of this law firm sending out such pre-settlement letters to thousands of Germans. I contacted the firm to see if they would confirm or deny the legitimacy of the contract, and they would not respond. So, perhaps take the details with a grain of salt, even though the firm has been connected to these sorts of pre-settlement jobs for a while.

Clip of the Day

GNOME Shell + Zeitgeist


Credit: TinyOgg

From UNIX Battles to .NET Battles

Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Patents, Red Hat, Ubuntu, UNIX at 11:16 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Looking for reasons to sue Linux…

Garden gnome

Summary: Wayne Gray’s case against Novell proceeds and opinions about Mono continue to come

Novell’s disputes over the UNIX trademark/copyrights withstanding (Gray vs Novell*, not just SCO), there are many questions arising because of Novell’s passage of nearly 1,000 patents to CPTN, which Microsoft is heading [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7].

The key question is no longer just who gets UNIX copyrights. There is another question about patents now, as Novell helps feed the direct competition of GNU/Linux. It even puts this competition right inside the body of GNU/Linux (e.g. Mono) and the leader in this area, Red Hat, repels it continually. “Mono Vs Fedora: More Facts, less opinions” is a new post worth reading. To quote some bits:

I, and looks like many of Fedora’s contributors too, think like Free Software Foundation. Make a system Mono dependent is a gratuitous risk, because it’s based in Microsoft tecnology, who have patents over this tecnology. Must I say any thing else?

If you said yes, very well, I’ll say more. Why will you use your enemies’ pencil if you have yours? Why will you eat the apple of your neighbor, if in your yard there’s a lot of them? You’ll assume the risk of being without the pencil some day or hungry, this is a fact. You have no control about your enemies’ pencil or about the apples of your neighbors. If you begin to write better than your enemie, you’re using theirs pencil, and he’s able to stop you from writing. If you eat much of the yours neighbor’s apple, he’ll not give it to you anymore.

I’m trying to say that we lose many applications like Banshee, Tomboy and many others if Microsoft simply use the power of the patents it acquires. And can you imagine the size of the problem if in this day your system is stuck with that language.

We recently mentioned how Fedora drove away Mono boosters. Canonical ought to do the same because the next release comes with at least 3 Mono-based applications. █
_____
* This was covered by Groklaw before (e.g. here), but it is still going on.

Doubts in OpenSUSE

Posted in GNU/Linux, Novell, OpenSUSE at 10:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Question everything

Summary: Things are getting somewhat messy and anarchic inside OpenSUSE, which loses members and momentum

NOBODY denies that OpenSUSE is going through a tough time. It has a lot to do with Novell, maybe even everything to do with Novell (which is steered by Microsoft to an extent). As Tom Jowitt put it the other week:

Concerns are being raised over the future of the openSUSE.org project, with reports that Novell is pushing for some sort of spin out of the project.

Earlier this month, Groklaw reported that Novell has decided to fund a new foundation to oversee OpenSUSE, and act as a major stakeholder. Elsewhere Novell’s newly appointed openSUSE board chair, Alan Clark, has been said to be actively helping with the spin out.

“This news has caused concern,” wrote Andy Updegrove, a founding partner at the law-firm, Gesmer Updegrove. “Over the last few months, I’ve frequently pointed out the vulnerability of important open source projects that are supported and controlled by corporate sponsors, rather than hosted by independent foundations funded by corporate sponsors.”

J.A. Watson has just asked, “What’s Up with openSuSE?” It’s the title of his blog post that questions the project’s development and adds:

There has been quite a bit of commentary and speculation about the Novell takeover and the possible impact on the SuSE/openSuSE products and development. (Note that I am avoiding the patent controversy here, intentionally.) The official statements from Novell and SuSE have been basically that there should be little or no impact, product development and releases should continue as normal. However, I have been following the openSuSE 11.4 (factory) pre-release development pretty closely because some of the newest things being developed are important to my Lenovo S10-3s netbook (Broadcom brcm, and Synaptics ClickPad). What I have seen and experienced since the sale/takeover was announced has been troubling – or else I am doing something wrong.

Edmundo Carmona, a Venezuelan Computer Engineer living in Colombia, says that “Novell crumbled” and he is right. There is less than a year left before the Microsoft patent deal expires and then what? Will Microsoft resort to legal action and extortion? Novell is a foolish, foolish company, run by foolish people who give themselves massive bonuses they do not deserve.

Do you remember when you opened your browser to get the latest news on Nov 3rd 2006? I do. I just couldn’t believed my eyes when I learned that Novell had signed this deal with Microsoft….. and if that’s not enough, how about bad mouth developers of FLOSS everywhere (the same guys who largely develop the product Novell was trying to get money from) saying that if you (we… I still do a little FLOSS development as personal side projects) didn’t want to get into trouble you better do your work for free? Ain’t that lovely? As a summary, it was a very deceptive turn of events.

Regarding the OpenSUSE unrest which we recently mentioned in relation to Pascal, Fab from Linux Outlaws writes:

The OpenSuse board has announced that it has evicted a person from the community for violating the Guiding Principles of the project. They don’t, however, name the person or explain what the cause for the decision was which makes the whole announcement rather pointless. While one has to respect the board’s decision to keep the person anonymous, one can not help thinking that this way of handling the situation is neither very open nor transparent.

In other OpenSUSE news (there is not so much, although “Weekly News” remains alive and there are few new HOWTOs [1, 2]), OpenSUSE 11.1 is being killed: “Announced by the openSUSE developers a little over two years ago, the openSUSE 11.1 operating system has reached end of life (EOL) on January 13th, 2011.” LWN shares some security problems and says that “openSUSE 11.1 has reached end of Novell support – 11.1 Evergreen goes on”. Wolfgang Rosenauer, speaking for the Evergreen Project, can be found in this new interview:

Having a distribution that gives you a two year support for ALL editions is another fascinating aspect of the openSUSE distribution. Being in a community that allows you to say that you think that this is not enough and that you want to do something with it is another one. Wolfgang Rosenauer believed that something like that would be useful to users and gave birth to Project Evergreen.

Perhaps the only recent news as of late was around OBS and Qt. “As part of my Openismus training, I was recently tasked with packaging a Qt application using the OpenSUSE Build Service (OBS),” wrote this one person. Talented dancer Knut Yrvin from Nokia wrote about their Qt Creator build service plug-in:

Based on feedback from several community groups we agreed to sponsor the creation of a plugin that connected Qt Creator with the OBS, and we are pleased to announce that we are releasing this into beta today.

Novell’s Untz has some more thoughts about installers and LibreOffice 3.3 gets packaged for OpenSUSE. To quote Untz:

The App Installer meeting is over since Friday, and I must say I’ve been very pleased with the results of this meeting. During three days (rather two days and a half), we managed to explore the topic, investigate some pre-existing technologies, define an architecture to handle the creation and the communication of the metadata, write a plan to move forward, etc. And we managed to all agree on this!

There is some more information that may be of interest in this magazine’s column with Jos Poortvliet, who is now the community manager:

Since the openSUSE Conference in Nuremberg in October, the openSUSE community has been extremely active. New projects announced there have progressed, and others have emerged. One example of the latter would be the announcement of Project Tumbleweed by kernel hacker and openSUSE contributor Greg Kroah-Hartman. The goal of this project is to create a ‘rolling-release’ version of openSUSE. A rolling-release distribution (like Arch Linux or Gentoo) always offers the latest stable versions of a package in updates so that when a new release surfaces, users actually don’t have to do an upgrade!

So that’s about all from OpenSUSE. Not much so far this year, except gloomy speculations about the project. That latter part added some balance to show we never ignore positive news, either. █

Windows and SUSE a Pair

Posted in Dell, Microsoft, Novell, Patents, SLES/SLED, Windows at 10:16 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Novell’s continued servitude to Microsoft’s empire of abuse of restrictions

IT has been shown here for years that Novell promotes Microsoft Windows and it is still helping Windows in all sorts of new ways. Maybe it’s just because of Novell’s legacy, however there are cases where Novell promotes Windows even when it need not do so. One must bear in mind that Microsoft paid Novell a lot of money to bend over. This money had many strings attached to it.

According to this new press release and its various copies or derivative articles, SUSE-Windows duality persists partly because Novell — now paid by Microsoft — helps Windows in HPC.

Penguin Computing, experts in high-performance computing (HPC), today announced the immediate availability of Penguin Computing’s Cluster Management suite Scyld ClusterWare with support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell.

Novell is also sharing space with Windows in the POS market (press release more properly covered by Jonathan Angel) and following Dell's joining the Novell/Microsoft deal (applicable since 2007) there is also a new press release about addition of Ballnux appliances (taxed by Microsoft):

Novell today announced Dell has joined the SUSE® Appliance Program to build, deploy and maintain a wide range of Dell-branded software appliances. This agreement will enable Dell to deliver applications as ready-to-deploy virtual or hardware appliances powered by SUSE Linux Enterprise.

Opsview says it is adding “native SUSE Linux support”, but who needs Ballnux when there are already so many GNU/Linux distributions (which are not taxed by Microsoft)?

Opsview has announced that the latest open source version of the network and application monitoring application, Opsview Community 3.11, now has native support for SUSE Linux. Opsview consider that SUSE Linux’ future has been assured by the acquisition of Novell by Attachmate and believes demand for SUSE Linux support in 2011 “will be stronger than ever before”. Opsview’s Product Manager, James Peel, said “SUSE Linux has significant share in the enterprise and its support was increasingly requested by our customers and community so we are delighted to respond to this demand”.

The bottom line is, Novell helps Microsoft and Windows. Even when someone buys SUSE it ought to be apparent that Novell pays Microsoft for it, so no matter which operating system one chooses, Microsoft gets paid. That’s Novell’s vision after being paid hundreds of millions of dollars by Microsoft. Novell is now passing about half of all its patents to a Microsoft-organised cartel named CPTN.

Those who care about GNU/Linux won’t buy from Novell. █

Kick me Novell

Patent Cartels Galore: RPX IPO, Acacia Moves Racketeering Operation to Texas

Posted in Patents at 9:32 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Sam Houston

Summary: New evidence that today’s rising powers under USPTO reign produce nothing but push a lot of legal papers around

An entity called RPX — unlike the OIN — operates very privately and it is called a “Patent Risk Advisory Firm” in the following news about its filing for an IPO:

“Defensive patent aggregator” RPX (Rational Patent) filed an S-1 form with the SEC on Friday, stating its intention to go public. According to the form, RPX is looking to sell up to $100 million of its shares in an IPO underwritten by Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Allen & Company LLC and others.

Microsoft is also among the subscribers of RPX, but not the OIN’s, obviously. We found coverage of this news also in:

RPX may seem rather benign for now, but just like other cartel of its kind, there is no guarantee that it will stay this way. Then we have blatantly hostile cartel-type pseudo-businesses such as Acacia, which attacked Linux several times using litigation. Acacia seems to be migrating close to where patents litigation galore takes place. The improper headline is “Acacia Moves Licensing Business to Texas” which falsely implies that Acacia actually does “business” rather than just extort and litigate.

Newport Beach-based Acacia Research Corp. said Tuesday it moved its patent licensing unit to Texas.

The unit, dubbed Acacia Research Group LLC, has relocated its headquarters to Frisco, Texas.

The group does “business development and licensing activities of patent portfolios in a wide range of technology disciplines,” the company said.

The company makes money by acquiring patents, striking licensing deals and collecting a cut of royalties from companies that appear to be infringing on them.

Aggregators/hoarders such as CPTN, Intellectual Ventures, RPX, and Acacia help show that the USPTO has gone all wrong. This ‘cartelisation’ of the industry prevents many new companies from emerging and thus impedes competition, along with innovation. █

Michael McLoughlin, Kevin McBride, and Florian Müller

Posted in FUD, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, SCO at 9:11 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Common fiends, common goals

Meeting

Summary: Some loose connection claimed to have been found between SCO’s boosters, Microsoft’s staff, and Microsoft Florian

Microsoft cannot compete against Linux, so it is trying to destroy Linux instead. Microsoft Florian helps ‘pull a SCO’ using lies right now [1, 2, 3] and somebody helps show a connection between him, Microsoft, and Darl McBride’s lawyer brother, who some months ago also helped ‘pull a SCO’ by making false claims [1, 2]. Anyway, here is the comment of relevance:

Mueller: what is your relationship with M. McLoughlin

Direct question for F. Mueller, will you describe your relationship with MSFT’s M. McLoughlin:

I did a screen cap in Feb. 2010 of twitter friends of Kevin McBride (the lawyer brother of SCO’s Darl McBride).

He had 2 friends: you (Florian Mueller) and Microsoft’s McLoughlin.

McLoughlin’s bio is:

Michael McLoughlin. McLoughlin is

* Director, Enterprise Markets, Office of Strategic Relations at Microsoft

* Board Member atOpen Computing Alliance

It is curious to say the least. Pamela Jones also lays out a theory in Groklaw:

So is it not at least possible that a Microsoft
operative deliberately tried to poison the well?

If I were Florian, I’d put out an over the top
article about it, but being me, thank heaven,
I’ll just note that we should be alert for such
tricks.

Incidentally, I see Florian has posted a request
for info from the community on any infringement
they notice in their projects, promising them
anonymity. First of all, NOBODY from the
community will respond to his request, I’m sure.
I suspect he knows that too, just from reading the
comments on Slashdot and here. So, I have a
suspicion that this is just a cover for future
“revelations” by Florian, and he will refuse
to identify by source with the excuse that he is
protecting them. But in reality, would that not
be a perfect cover to feed the media insider info
actually handed him by proprietary parties who
wish to kill Android?

Just asking. I noticed that he claimed it was
some guy on Twitter who told him about the German
filing showing who make up CPTN. But the person
disappeared that very day from Twitter. But on
the internet, you leave breadcrumbs. So I followed
them. The person who allegedly handed him the
information had an online persona as a guy who
wrote about only one topic online that I could
find, a particular football team in Florida.

Now, you tell me. How likely is it that this is
the guy who found an esoteric legal
filing in Germany and then told Florian about it?

I find that story impossible to accept, particularly
because I tried to track the guy in real space, and
it was impossible.

So here’s my working theory: someone thought it
would be a great idea, since parties to lawsuits
can’t normally safely discuss litigation in public,
to have a “son of Groklaw” — an imitation of what
we did, but for the proprietary side, and just as
those dudes assumed, incorrectly, that Groklaw was
paid to be a public mouthpiece, they hired Florian
to pretend to be just some blogger who just
happens to be interested in
these topics.

It’s a funny theory, if true. And if true, it will
eventually become known as to whether or not it’s
true.

But Florian, as we see in this recent event, is in
over his head. Plus, as the song says, ain’t nothing
like the real thing. And he doesn’t have the benefit of
a community of coders to help him, as we do. Even
the media won’t find his oeuvre helpful over time,
if any of them still believe a word he says, because
he will make mistakes over and over. He won’t be
able to help it. And his malice shines through
everything he writes. He clearly is no expert on US
law, for starters. And if he suddenly seems to
understand it, we’ll all know he has a lawyer
advising him behind the scenes. This mistake he
made will have lasting effects, in other words.
The community had him pegged
already. Now the media
is learning. He should, in my view, tell who he
is working for, because he’s ruining his reputation
this way. And it can only get worse. Look at what
happened to Enderle and MOG and Lyons.

Watch the followups. █

Good News for Linux: Apple Annoys Everyone and Microsoft Cannot Catch up With Apple

Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Windows at 9:03 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Bugle call

Summary: The software oligarchs fight each other to see who’s more capable at restriction and pollution while Linux quietly emerges victoriously

MORE AND more people come to grips with the threats posed by Apple. The company was never truly committed to freedom or openness; the thing about Apple is, it’s not Microsoft. One might say that Apple is the “anti Microsoft” choice, whereas GNU/Linux and BSD are the “anti slavery” choice. In any event, witness yet another new report about antitrust threat that Apple comes under in Europe at the same time Steve Jobs is leaving:

Apple’s iPad tablet computer may be the perfect vehicle to view glossy magazines, but the iTunes subscription model has some publishers ready to turn the page.

On both sides of the Atlantic, publishers are grumbling about Apple’s iTunes store. Some popular US publications, including the New York Times and Playboy, recently announced web-based subscriptions that will offer more flexible options and control over content than iTunes. But in Europe, Apple faces a probe by Belgian antitrust authorities over whether it is abusing its market position by requiring that publishers only sell subscriptions through iTunes.

It gets worse for Apple, which sank following the departure of Jobs. As longtime watchers of Apple already know, Greenpeace has called Apple one of the worst companies when it comes to polluting and poisoning (Microsoft is around the bottom too) and a new report reaffirms this position:

Apple comes joint last among IT firms in a transparency study drawn up by leading Chinese environment groups

Apple’s hardware (it’s actually just Apple-branded hardware) is very hostile towards just about anything, and as we noted some days ago, Apple screws customers when it comes to screws. Here is TechDirt‘s take on the subject:

One of the interesting questions we’ve been looking at for years is whether or not a business is an enabler or a gatekeeper. Being in the gatekeeper business can work for a period of time, but it’s often difficult to sustain. Apple is an interesting company in that it certainly has elements of both, enabling in some areas, but being a very strict gatekeeper in other areas. As if to reinforce this point, Apple is apparently changing the screws on iPhones to make them much harder to open.

Thistleweb (Gordon) wrote in relation to the above: “Apple invents fool proof screws, to prevent fools …erm…owners from getting inside their own devices”

“Apple invents fool proof screws, to prevent fools …erm…owners from getting inside their own devices”
      –GordonDr. Glyn Moody went even further by remarking: “whaddya say to that, #Apple fanbois?” (risking alienation of his Mac-using followers there)

Our reader A* wrote: “Oh, Chinese are already selling screw drivers for those screws. I believe the chinese screwed crApple. ;-D”

All these silly policies will surely help drive some people to Linux (Android, MeeGo, etc.), yet Woody Leonhard from IDG is conveniently forgetting the Linux option and making it seem like a pseudo-two-party competition between Microsoft and Apple. From his new summary regarding tablets:

Microsoft’s marketing strategy for selling Windows 7 tablets to iPad-leaning enterprises proves, once again, Redmond doesn’t get it

Watch Microsoft’s pathetic PR/advertising in response to hypePad (still ignoring Linux). They are trying to persuade people to choose the dud called Vista 7 and apart from some kitsch, there is nothing there to compel people to leave XP/Mac OS/BSD/GNU/Linux. As Mr. Pogson puts it:

I don’t see anything in there that is new or worth the cost of migrating from XP to “7″. These are all minor tweaks that could mostly be obtained by reconfiguration of existing systems. Renaming something is not usually considered innovation or worth tons of money but M$ needs customers to believe this is innovation. I am surprised SJVN uses this as support for his thesis that “7″ is somehow so much better than XP for networking that a migration requiring replacement of almost every PC and server and a new set of paid software licences is justified.

It increasingly looks like tomorrow’s competition will be between proprietary UNIX-like DRM traps from Apple and something more liberal such as Android, MeeGo, and CyanogenMod. The more restrictive Apple becomes, the more fanfare it will get from the old press (like Murdoch’s scarce channels of distribution) and the less fanfare it will get from actual customers, who in turn will find Linux and software freedom. █

“Open Collaboration” Symposium Hosted by Microsoft

Posted in Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 8:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Conference room

Summary: The company which impedes collaboration on software development and sharing gets to run things this time around (seventh International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration)

ALARM bells ought to be rung when proprietary software vendors control the message of their principle and principal competition, namely “open source”. They already control the "open source" think tank and Dr. Dirk Riehle informs his readers that the International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration will be hosted by Microsoft, helping Microsoft to set the agenda regarding “Open Collaboration” — whatever this actually means (it’s a vague term with conceptual repetition):

In 2011, WikiSym celebrates its 7th year of scholarly, technical and community innovation in Mountain View, California at the Microsoft Research Campus in Silicon Valley.

Thanks to Dr. Glyn Moody for spotting this. As Wayne rightly told him, “Does Microsoft know what a wiki is?”

Suffice to say, Microsoft never properly embraced the ideas of open participation (a PR campaign with the “my idea” motto says it all really… the people in these adverts are paid by Microsoft, whose idea it was all along). Recall what happened when Microsoft hosted plenary meetings of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34. █

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