Resumen: Australia decreta el propietario Microsoft Office Open XML como formato de documentos officiales, los reportes informan.
El Gobierno de Australia ha reforzado el monopolio de Microsoft al decidir que los ciudadanos deben usar productos caros, propietarios, y con errores de Microsoft para comunicarse con los servidores públicos. Aquí el crítico informe de Australia [http://www.itnews.com.au/News/245276,australia-mandates-microsofts-open-office-xml.aspx](un ejemplo de buen periodismo):
La particular OOXML norma fue rechazada por la Organización Internacional de Normalización (ISO) por que estaba llena de dependencias de la plataforma Windows, de acuerdo a sus oponentes.
La Alianza del Formato de Documentos Abierto ODF, respaldado por IBM y Google, ha advertido sobre la adopción del estándar ECMA-376 por los gobiernos.
“El uso de ECMA-376, esencialmente ENCADENA al adoptante a Microsoft Office”, advirtió el grupo de presión en octubre del año pasado en un documento titulado “¿Qué necesitan los Gobiernos Saber?”
Esa norma, señaló, “contiene dependencias de la plataforma Windows” que Microsoft se vio obligado a “eliminar” en el marco del proceso de la ISO con el fin de conseguir su aprobación como norma ISO-29500 – una norma que hasta la fecha el Microsoft Office 2010 ha incumplido.
Para citar el resumen de Slashdot[http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=11/01/19/0059209]:
“El Gobierno de Australia ha lanzado un entorno común de operación política de escritorio – Entre los controles de “seguridad”, destinadas a “reducir” el potencial de fugas de datos del Gobierno – los mandatos de la ECMA-376 versión de Microsoft Office Open XML (OOXML) estándar y suites de productividad que pueden “leer y escribir” el formato docx., efectivamente esclavizando a los servidores públicos del país al uso de Microsoft Office. La política [PDF] Cung parece limitar los sistemas operativos de escritorio a las ofertas de grandes, comerciales disponibles en el mercado a expensas de las pequeñas distribuciones”.
Para repetir algunas historias acerca de Australia y OOXML (hay más):
* Si Usted Vive en Australia, la Justicia Necesita su Ayuda [http://techrights.org/2008/02/20/australia-geneva-brm-ooxml/]
* OOXML: Exclusión de Apilamiento, y Snubbing en los EE.UU., Australia y Nueva Zelanda [http://techrights.org/2008/03/10/moox-stacking-exclusion-snubbing/]
* Australia Potencialmente Dañada por Microsoft (OOXML “Sí” Voto) [http://techrights.org/2008/02/15/rick-jelliffe-for-aussie/]
Vamos a recordar a la gente en Australia que Microsoft pagó a ejercer presión para OOXML y a escondidas editar Wikipedia [1[http://techrights.org/2008/03/22/ooxml-spec-mess-custom/], 2[http://techrights.org/2008/02/26/standards-australia-rick-jelliffe/], 3[http://techrights.org/2010/04/06/ibm-on-withdrawing-microsofts-ooxml/]]. █
____ * Lock-in – Tiene no directa traduccion al Español. -Consideremoslo un Anglicanismo del finales del siglo XX y principios del XXI- Sonaría muy tonto e incomprensible algo como “candado”, pero mucho mas claro como “PRISION”.
-Esta palabra viene a significar literalmente la forzosa sumisión a formatos electrónicos que hacen muy difícil escaparse de ellos.
-Por ejemplo una persona u organización que ha usado Microsoft Office durante mucho tiempo. Cuando sale una nueva versión es FORZADO a PAGA
R por ella por que Microsoft SIEMPRE ha creado y creará incompatibilidades artificiales, y echarle la culpa a la competencia. -Lease los Co
mes vs Microsoft para ver como esto ha sido, es, y será una de sus tácticas para crear dependencia en sus productos. Por ello viene a ser un instrumento de dominación. El Colonialismo Digital, del que debemos romper cadenas AHORA para bienestar de las nuestro y las fúturas generaciones.
But it’s looking like there is some light at the end of the tunnel, at least in the industry in which we all work and play. According to Dice.com, a career website for IT and engineering professionals, job postings on its site are up 40 percent year-over-year. What’s better? Dice.com says that postings asking for Linux knowledge are up 47 percent over last year, while Windows-related postings are only up 40 percent.
Looks like it’s not just the iPhone 4 that’s capable of making professionally-made movies. Korean director Kim Dae-Woo is poised to show off his filmmaking skills by shooting an entire movie using a Samsung Galaxy S, the first ever, titled “Age of Milk.”
Mobile news site PocketNow has secured an EARTH-SHATTERING trio of exclusives today, with rendered images of three possible new HTC Android phones currently up on the site.
In short, Newsbeuter can be configured every which way from Sunday. The color scheme, how feeds are displayed, how articles are bookmarked or saved for later — it’s one of the most flexible feed readers that you’ll encounter. It’s also one that requires a certain amount of dedication — configuring Newsbeuter to work just right can take quite a lot of experimentation. Like Mutt, this pays heavy dividends for users who spend a great deal of time skimming feeds. For casual users, Newsbeuter is probably overkill.
Recently the wife wanted to go to JoAnne’s so I went to Borders and the latest issue of Linux Format Magazine (which I used to be subscribed to) had a QT programming example. I bought the issue solely for that. It had this neat tutorial on QT Quick which is this semi-new prototyping language based on Javascript. In just a few lines of code (less than 100 for sure), Graham Chapman showed how to create a program that would take a geo feed from flickr and map the photos onto Google.
We want Qt to have the best possible JavaScript technology. To make this happen, we need the ability to make drastic changes to the implementation — even replacing it — underneath our public APIs. If an API exposes implementation details, that will cause us to limp.
The Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) project is happy to announce the release of EPEL 6 today!
EPEL 6 is a collection of add-on packages available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6 and other compatible systems, maintained by the community under the umbrella of the Fedora Project. EPEL 6 is designed to supplement RHEL 6 by providing additional functionality and does not replace any RHEL 6 packages. As a community project, EPEL is maintained and supported by volunteers via Bugzilla and
mailing lists. EPEL is not commercially supported by Red Hat, Inc.
Cobbler, a linux installation server originally developer by Red Hat’s Emerging Technologies group to accelerate setup of network installation environments, has been accepted into the Ubuntu Archive according to Chuck Short on his blog earlier today.
For the 11.04 Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase we (the attendees at the UDS session) thought it would be really good to set a theme. The decision was made in order to encourage people to create content with wider artistic merit.
The Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase is designed to help all of us show off the beauty of our creative work. We want the brief to inspire people to explore and celebrate their interpretation of Freedom.
The Brief: To create photography, illustration, music and video which express Freedom.
The Ubuntu Artwork team has been going through a revival over the last few months, which is great, they now offer services to other Ubuntu teams in a structured way.
We took them up on their offer and requested a wallpaper for the next release that we can also use to base the rest of the artwork on.
As you know, MeeGo isn’t just for phones and tablets, it’s pretty much for everything that has a screen or can be viewed on a screen. Here’s the first generation of Intel and Nokia’s MeeGo for the TV on the Amino Freedom OTT Hybrid Media Centre box, brought to you by the MeeGo Experts folks who went to CES 2011. (Cheers for the tip Jim!)
The GNOME Foundation Board is happy to announce that following the call for bids for MeeGo/GTK+ integration work, Igalia was selected as the preferred bidder to perform the work set out.
We received a number of very interesting bids for the project, but Igalia’s bid was the one that focused the most on integrating elements of Hildon into GTK+ upstream. This should mean easier porting of older Hildon/Maemo applications to the new MeeGo Handset platform, as well as easier porting of existing desktop GTK+ applications to the handset.
Who, after hearing about Android, the Linux-based smartphone and tablet operating system for the first time decided that Google didn’t want to just support it, but buy Android and keep it open? That was Page.
When I spoke with Chris DiBona, Google’s open-source program manager, a few years back when Google was big but not yet Google, DiBona told me, that Page was “passionate about open source.” DiBona added, that Google also supported its engineers working on “open-source and Linux,” and that “many of them use part of their time to work on open-source projects.”
Some people seem to be confused about the Chromium release management, the weird x.y.z.t versions, the channels, the PPAs… I often receive questions about those subjects from end-users, but also from fellow Ubuntu developers. In this post, I will try to explain and demystify a few things. In order to do that, I also need to cover Google Chrome.
Tech Drive-in has covered several posts on useful Google Chrome extensions before, the most prominent being the one where we featured useful Chrome extensions for a more secure browsing experience. But this one is special. A Last.fm music player extension for Google Chrome that does exactly what you expect it to.
The Skype Toolbar for Firefox is an extension that detects phone numbers in web pages, and re-renders them as a clickable button that can be used to dial the number using the Skype desktop application. This extension is bundled with the Skype application, and is installed into Firefox by default when Skype is installed or, in some circumstances, updated. As a result, a large number of Firefox users who have installed Skype have also installed the Skype Toolbar, knowingly or unknowingly.
This release contains translation and branding updates, bug fixes and general performance improvements. The full list of changes since RC3 can be found online here.
On behalf of the Parrot team and an enthusiastic but undiscriminating dachshund that followed me home last week, I’m proud to announce Parrot 3.0.0, also known as “Beef Stew”, or at the insistence of a shadowy government organization, “Snowflake”. Parrot is a virtual machine that dreams about running all dynamic languages everywhere, even the one you’re think about right now. Parrot has big plans, even if needs a haircut and sometimes goes outside with its shoes untied.
It just occurred to me that both sides of the political arena should be supporting and promoting FOSS (Free & Open Source Software) software for different reasons.
Several European countries have set very ambitious digitization goals. The National Library of the Netherlands has committed to digitizing everything – all Dutch books, newspapers and periodicals dating back to 1470. The National Library of Norway set a similar goal in 2005, setting in motion plans to digitize its entire collection that now includes 170,000 books, 250,000 newspapers, 610,000 hours of radio broadcasts, 200,000 hours of television and 500,000 photographs.
I began to understand something about the nature of this gap when Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation made a comment about the place of knowledge workers (programmers, architects, designers, writers, salespeople, managers) in the commons movement. To paraphrase, he said they have a different world view than common activists on the left or right but share a similar vision. I thought that this might explain the reception of my ideas on the listserv. It also resonated with what I learned about the differences between the social organization of moderates and those at the political extremes while writing white papers for a political consultancy.
Bram Cohen, the inventor of the BitTorrent protocol that revolutionized file-sharing, is finalizing the code for his new P2P-live streaming protocol. With his efforts he aims to develop a piece of code superior to all other streaming solutions on the market today. The release of the application is still a few months away, but Cohen has shown a demo exclusively to TorrentFreak.
The Department of Labor in partnership with the Department of Education announced two billion dollars in grants to support educational and career training programs for workers. Known as the “Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grant” – or TAA CCCT inside the Beltway – the program is precedent setting in its magnitude of support for 21st century job skill training and for making the default-setting in grantmaking much more open.
Belarus today accused EU members Poland and Germany of seeking to topple President Alyaksandr Lukashenka by organizing the December mass protests against his reelection.
“Sovyetskaya Belorussia,” the official newspaper of the presidential administration, today said that the German and Polish secret services had devised the plot and Poland had even trained opposition activists.
Giving dedicated people permission to do whatever it takes, and resources, then holding their feet to the fire to demonstrate performance. Letting dedicated people learn from their successes, and failures, and move fast to keep the business in the fast moving water. There is no manager, leader or management team that can predict, plan and execute as well as a team that has its ears close to the market, and the flexibility to react quickly, willing to make mistakes (and learn from them even faster) without bias for a predetermined plan.
Euro-sceptics have had great fun in recent weeks tracking the bond markets’ onslaught on the euro in European Union countries. Some, more excitable, bond market vigilantes and euro-sceptic ideologues have predicted the eventual break up of the 17-member euro-area. Others have even suggested that the disintegration of the euro might undermine the economic and then the political foundations of the European Union itself.
There is no denying the shock the euro-area has received as a result of the crises first in Greece, then in Ireland and more recently in Portugal and Spain. Even the most dedicated supporters of “the European project” have warned that a combination of political indolence at the highest level of euro-area governments and antiquated ideas about how to respond to the bank generated crises could put the entire Union at risk.
The emergence of the right-wing Tea Party movement and the general rightward shift in political discourse created an urgent need to articulate a left alternative. Thus far, the left has largely been unable to capitalise on the widespread confusion and anger that working people feel.
This very advanced process seems unique to i.Materialise, and involves a powder based process. Powedered titanium metal is laid in a very thin layer. An extremely powerful laser then traces the solid portions by melting the powder. A second layer of titanium powder is deployed and the process repeats, gradually building up a whole object.
The strength of titanium is legendary, of course – but this means that the minimum wall thickness can be quite small. In this case, i.Materialise is able to print with a minimum wall thickness of 0.2mm, enabling very fine structures to be printed.
Few areas of science are more controversial than cold fusion, the hypothetical near-room-temperature reaction in which two smaller nuclei join together to form a single larger nucleus while releasing large amounts of energy. In the 1980s, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleishmann claimed to have demonstrated cold fusion – which could potentially provide the world with a cheap, clean energy source – but their experiment could not be reproduced. Since then, all other claims of cold fusion have been illegitimate, and studies have shown that cold fusion is theoretically implausible, causing mainstream science to become highly speculative of the field in general.
The Metropolitan police was forced to admit today that one of its senior commanders gave false information to MPs when he denied having plain-clothes officers in the crowd at the G20 demonstrations in London in 2009.
Giving evidence to the House of Commons home affairs committee a month after the protest – in which thousands of demonstrators clashed with police – Commander Bob Broadhurst insisted there were no plain-clothes officers among the crowd, saying it would have been too dangerous to do so.
There’s been rumors going the rounds that the ‘Block Bloc’ protestors who trashed parts of downtown Toronto were actually police officers. For example, why, exactly was a police cruiser left unattended where protestors could destroy it?
Every single technology except one: explosives. Explosives do have limited beneficial uses: mining, quarrying and demolition come to mind. However, the principal use of explosives is the opposite of beneficial – it is killing. What’s more, virtually every machine that we make for killing relies on explosives. These machines range from those such as the suicide vest or the nuclear bomb that have killed comparatively few people, to viscously lethal weapons of mass destruction such as the assault rifle.
[...]
What has the selective breeding of microbes to do with alleviating the misery caused by explosives? Well – explosives are organic molecules with a lot of energy locked up in their chemical bonds. In other words they are an ideal potential food source for yeasts, bacteria and archaea. But explosives haven’t been around for long enough for such explosive-eating microbes to evolve by natural selection.
An American-led military unit pulverized an Afghan village in Kandahar’s Arghandab River Valley in October, after it became overrun with Taliban insurgents. It’s hard to understand how turning an entire village into dust fits into America’s counterinsurgency strategy — which supposedly prizes the local people’s loyalty above all else.
In the project’s own words, the EU has tasked scientists with creating a system which will allow for the “registration and exchange of operational data, acquisition of multimedia content, intelligent processing of all information” accessed online in the EU in order to detect terrorists operating online.
A former Swiss banker who said he gave Wikileaks details of rich tax evaders has been found guilty of breaching Switzerland’s strict bank secrecy laws.
A judge in Zurich did so even though the leaked documents referred to accounts in the Cayman Islands.
Judge Sebastian Aeppli fined Rudolf Elmer, 55, more than 6,000 Swiss francs ($6,250; £4,000).
Music and movie pirates may not be the only ones trolling peer-to-peer networks for booty. The secret-spilling site WikiLeaks may also have used file sharing networks to obtain some of the documents it has published, according to a computer-security firm.
The allegations come from Tiversa, a Pennsylvania peer-to-peer investigations firm, that claims it passed information of WikiLeaks’ file sharing activity to U.S. government officials, according to Bloomberg.
Via WarIsACrime.org, here’s a powerful letter to General James F. Amos, Commandant of the Marine Corps, by retired Marine Corps captain David C. MacMichael, the former commander of Headquarters Company at Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Virginia, where Pfc Bradley Manning, the young soldier accused of providing a trove of classified US government documents to WikiLeaks, is being held in conditions that amount to prolonged solitary confinement, as I explained in a recent article, Is Bradley Manning Being Held as Some Sort of “Enemy Combatant”?
Capt. MacMichael makes a number of valid and powerful points, in particular asking why Manning is being held for so long before trial (in violation of his Sixth Amendment rights), and also questioning his conditions of confinement. On the first point, he states, “I question the length of confinement prior to conduct of court-martial. The sixth amendment to the US Constitution, guaranteeing to the accused in all criminal prosecutions the right to a speedy and public trial, extends to those being prosecuted in the military justice system.” On the second, he notes, “I seriously doubt that the conditions of his confinement — solitary confinement, sleep interruption, denial of all but minimal physical exercise, etc. — are necessary, customary, or in accordance with law, US or international.”
The Obama administration has issued new guidance on use of the Miranda warning in interrogations of terrorism suspects, potentially chipping away at the rule that bars the government from using information in court if it was gathered before a suspect was informed of his right to remain silent and to an attorney.
But the Department of Justice is refusing to publicly release the guidance, with a spokesman describing it in an interview as an “internal document.” So we don’t know the administration’s exact interpretation of Miranda, even though it may have significantly reshaped the way terrorism interrogations are conducted.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s decision to scuttle a sale of Facebook Inc. shares to U.S. investors shows the bank miscalculated by trying to privately offer stock in a company with more than 600 million users.
In a statement yesterday, New York-based Goldman Sachs said the sale, first reported Jan. 2, will be restricted to non-U.S. investors because “the level of media attention might not be consistent with the proper completion of a U.S. private placement under U.S. law.” The firm planned to sell as much as $1.5 billion of closely held Facebook to clients of its private wealth unit.
The same banks that supplied money — and in some cases now own — suspect mortgage lenders also packaged up and sold those loans to investors. These banks also own or owned “servicers” that are supposed to act as stewards for investors. But if servicers cannot recover foreclosure costs combined with the costs of maintaining and reselling the house, they often abandon the property. After pumping up appraisals and falsifying borrowers’ income on applications, banks are walking away. Once again, American taxpayers will foot the bill…
Goldman Sachs’ former Asset Management CIO, Eileen Rominger, just got a new job as the head of the SEC division that oversees asset managers and hedge funds, Dow Jones reports (via FoxBusiness).
Rominger managed equity funds at Goldman before she was made chief investment officer for its global portfolio management teams.
Even back in “the good ‘ole” days of Wall Street — before the 2008 collapse — we, the people, suffered from the Goldman Sachs ethos. Wall Street has been the financial engine behind the unwinding of the American Dream. It financed leveraged buyouts and corporate takeovers based heavily on debt — which resulted in the shedding of millions of good-paying jobs and will continue to create the same sick dynamic in the financial system whereby the “health of a company” is measured by its stock price, not by how well the workers are doing.
The federal Conservatives are rejecting a demand by the CBC to withdraw file footage from the national broadcaster that appears in new Tory ads targeting their political opponents.
The Conservatives did not seek permission to use CBC content in three ads that were posted online and broadcast on TV on Monday, said CBC spokesman Marco Dube said.
Particularly interesting in light of (1) past results from PIPA/WorldOpinion.org showing Fox most misinforms and PBS least misinforms their respective viewers and (2) conservatives’ resurgence in desire to defund PBS/NPR for firing Juan Williams.
A suspicious package and a rash of phone calls threatening protests shut down the planned screening of an anti-Iran documentary at Library and Archives Canada Tuesday night.
Iran’s embassy in Ottawa had tried to censor the film, Iranium, by complaining to the national library, which cancelled it until Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore stepped in.
There are few successful authors who have jumped in and embraced what the online world allows you to do more than Paulo Coelho. Three years ago, we wrote about his efforts to “pirate” his own books and how he found that it only served to help his sales. He’s also talked up the importance for authors of setting ideas free to help them spread. He’s also gone even further than that with cool experiments like having his fans make a movie out of one of his books, via a sort of crowdsourcing methodology.
DuckDuckGo, a one-man-band search engine based out of Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, is aiming at Google’s privacy practices with an unusual tactic: a billboard in San Francisco that proclaims “Google Tracks You. We Don’t.”
This month, we were reminded how important it is that social media companies do what they can to protect the sensitive data they hold from the prying eyes of the government. As many news outlets have reported, the US Department of Justice recently obtained a court order for records from Twitter on several of its users related to the WikiLeaks disclosures. Instead of just turning over this information, Twitter “beta-tested a spine” and notified its users of the court order, thus giving them the opportunity to challenge it in court.
We have been investigating how the government seeks information from social networking sites such as Twitter and how the sites respond to these requests in our ongoing social networking Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, filed with the help of UC Berkeley’s Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic. As part of our request to the Department of Justice and other federal agencies, we asked for copies of the guides the sites themselves send out to law enforcement explaining how agents can obtain information about a site’s users and what kinds of information are available. The information we got back enabled us to make an unprecedented comparison of these critical documents, as most of the information was not available publicly before now.
The two parties – then in opposition, now in government – seemed to find common ground in defending the rights of the individual against the increasingly shrill demands of the agencies charged with upholding our safety and security. Whether it was the introduction of national identity cards, and the gargantuan accompanying database, or three months detention without trial for terror suspects, Cameron’s and Clegg’s parliamentary troops seemed conjoined in civil libertarianism.
But has entering government changed them? We have seen in the past how politicians can change in government. Back in 1994, Michael Howard, then Home Secretary, proclaimed the merits of ID cards. Labour railed against the plans. But seven years later – in the wake of the 9/11 outrage – senior Labour figures, by then in government, found merit in the proposals.
CRTC concerns with Rogers and its response to net neutrality complaints escalated this week when the Commission sent a letter to the company advising that it has received a growing number of complaints and that its public disclosures have not been compliant with CRTC Internet traffic management policy requirements. The case began last fall when the CRTC received a complaint over changes to Rogers’ practices that affected downstream P2P traffic.
iDOS, a repackaged version of the open source DOSBox emulator, is back on the App Store after getting rid of the ability to load games and other software using iTunes file syncing. While that might make the emulator seem far less useful, users have discovered a simple, no-jailbreak-required hack to load any old DOS software they want to run.
For years, EFF has been warning that the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act can be used to chill speech, particularly security research, because legitimate researchers will be afraid to publish their results lest they be accused of circumventing a technological protection measure. We’ve also been concerned that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act could be abused to try to make alleged contract violations into crimes.
Since Napster exploded into the public consciousness when it was founded 12 years ago, the world of digital piracy has been associated with a particular type of software—“peer-to-peer” download services. (Sometimes fairly, sometimes not.) Either way, 2011 is likely to be the year when P2P is finally eclipsed by “cyberlockers,” a wildly popular type of site that many in the entertainment industry see as a new threat that could be even bigger than P2P. So what are cyberlockers, anyway? Why are they so popular—and so alarming to those who fight against piracy?
Call for comments on amendments to the Radio Regulations, 1986, Television Broadcasting Regulations, 1987, Pay Television Regulations, 1990, Specialty Services Regulations, 1990, and the Broadcasting Information Regulations, 1993
Sister of acclaimed composer and singer Chico Buarque de Hollanda, Ms. Ana de Hollanda is herself a singer and composer as well. As soon as Brazil’s new president Mrs. Dilma Rousseff nominated Ms. Ana de Hollanda for the Ministry of Culture, which is responsible for Brazil’s copyright agenda, several academics, activists and civil society have been voicing concerns against the twist of policy that she might implement from now on.
Over 1,000 signatures have been gathered thus far on an Open Letter from the Brazilian civil society that is concerned that “the broad and open participation by society might be replaced by “commissions of notables” or “lawyers” giving their biased views on the subject”.
While digital music revenue has grown 1,000% over the past seven years, the entire music industry has lost a third of its value over that same time period. And while digital music seems to represent both the best hopes and the worst fears of the industry, even its growth is slowing – only 6% last year, down from 9.2% growth in 2009. Digital sales comprise about a third of the industry’s total revenue.
Where is the “detailled response” to Marietje Schaake’s question? The Dutch MEP is not aware of it. Does De Gucht have something to hide? Will Pedro Velasco-Martins carry along a printed copy of the answer for participants of his stakeholder meeting on ACTA to demonstrate their unprecedented openness?
A group of prominent European academics has released today an opinion on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). The opinion identifies the most critical aspects of ACTA and invites European and national institutions to carefully consider the opinion before ratifying the Agreement or withholding consent.
Contrary to what De Gucht said, whether border officials can do something or not is not part of material law, but is part of procedural (enforcement) law. The EU IPR Customs Regulation and ACTA both are about enforcement law. By saying that the EU law is in another field, De Gucht wrongly created the impression ACTA can not touch upon EU law. De Gucht mixed up basic legal concepts. The Parliament copied this misconception.
Conflicting with its earlier statement, the resolution later on acknowledges the existence of EU enforcement legislation. The resolution emphasises that ACTA will not change present EU laws in terms of IPR enforcement, because EU law is already considerably more advanced than the current international standards – following another Commission statement.
Some excellent news: ORG has been given permission to intervene in the Judicial Review of the Digital Economy Act. The review was granted to BT and Talk Talk late last year on four specific points (there’s a good roundup of the background here). Having permission to intervene means that we’ll be able to put forward our case, in court, in clear terms, to outline why we think the Act is so badly flawed. Across all four points we will be making arguments that the Act threatens to curtail people’s rights to freedom of expression, endangers their privacy, and will have a disproportionate impact not only only the public but on businesses too.
Resumen: Las guerras de patentes y la burocracia frenan la producción, crean burbujas financieras, y en última instancia, pueden dar lugar a un aumento de la deuda.
NO es este tipo famoso de broma que termina con “a continuación, los terroristas ganan!” Eso es básicamente la idea detrás del título de arriba (no es que los chinos sean terroristas, yo personalmente admiro a los chinos). Lo peor que puede hacer Occidente es abandonar la producción y asumir erróneamente que los vendedores de papel en una época de los llamados “trabajadores del conocimiento” ayuden a pagar la enorme deuda a China. La realidad es, China ya se inmuniza contra las patentes occidentales y al mismo tiempo la pérdida de tiempo y energía Occidental en el pleito, las solicitudes de patentes, la revisión de patentes, y la mutilación de productos como medio de evitar ser demandados, las exportaciones de China está creciendo exponencialmente. Esto es INNEGABLE.
Wayne Borean hace eco del análisis que hemos visto un montón a finales de 2008, cuando los mercados mundiales se derrumbaron [http://madhatter.ca/2010/10/31/the-intellectual-property-bubble-the-next-danger-to-the-world-economy/]. Dice que “la propiedad intelectual” es una burbuja que infla artificialmente la valoración de muchas cosas sin valor. Y además, para citar a:
“Intelectual Ventures es una de las muchas empresas que está invirtiendo en la innovación de acuerdo a su sus comunicados de prensa. Otra es la Acacia Technologies. Estas compañías están comprando las patentes, y tratar de conceder sus “licencias”.”
Como si el “negocio” de la patente no es ya bastante malo, los abogados de IAM dicen que en Gran Bretaña hay esta noción de “incentivo fiscal de patentes [http://www.iam-magazine.com/blog/detail.aspx?g=cd9304ef-1c63-4fa3-9940-998393dcb26d]” en la tubería. Ridículo! Ya lo hemos mencionado anteriormente.
El Instituto de Estudios Fiscales – una altamente respetada, organización de investigación independiente que examina la política fiscal y económica en el Reino Unido – ha publicado un documento que cuestiona la eficacia de la introducción de un llamado cuadro de patentes. Según las propuestas, que se anunció por primera vez por el gobierno anterior, y ahora han sido sellada con caucho por el actual gobierno, derivada de las patentes en el Reino Unido estarían sujetos a una tasa del Impuesto sobre Sociedades de un sólo 10%.
Para competir en este siglo (incluso en diez años) y como medio para mantener o recuperar su dominio, Occidente tendrá que eliminar el “impuesto de innovación” – los gastos ocultos relacionados con las patentes y la mega industria que se cierne sobre ella como un grupo de buitres o satélites optimizados para misiles guiados. Hagan productos no la guerra (de patentes). █
Summary: Guy Van Sanden releases Monofree to help address the ‘Microsoftification’ of GNU/Linux
Mono boosters have been agitating this Web site (and your truly) quite a lot recently. They must be worried or scared. It is with great pleasure that we announce the release of Monofree, going back just a few hours:
A while back, I wrote a post on how to clean mono from your system, my information was gathered from blogs arround the net.
But that information was quite outdated and a lot of it did not apply to mono 2.0 which is in Ubuntu now. I also recommended mononono to prevent mono from being pushed back on your system, but that too is outdated.
That’s why I used the list of low-level packages Jo Shields pointed out to create my own version of mononono called monofree that will clean Mono 2.0 and it’s applicaions from your system.
This is the type of software that Ubuntu should have installed by default in 11.04. It’s what Jeremy Allison has suggested. █
Summary: Now that Novell is circling down the drain, many clients may move to Red Hat and Novell responds with biased ‘surveys’ (sponsored)
NOVELL. What do people think when they hear about “Novell” the company? And what does the Free/open source community think about in relation to Novell? Well, people generally know that Novell is being sold because it’s on TV. It’s not just technologists who know this. Here are 5 examples that we found in the end of November in order to show video coverage of the AttachMSFT [sic] deal:
Novell is basically hanging. Who would want to buy GNU/Linux with a support contract from some company whose future is so uncertain? The answer is, numbers have shown that fewer and fewer companies chose to go that way, even before Novell announced that it would be sold*. Novell is now going back to the firm it cooperated with some years ago, Lighthouse, in order to make up another self-promotional press release.
The study by Lighthouse R&D published in 2010 gathered the opinions of technical personnel at companies who have used Linux support services provided by Novell, Oracle or Red Hat within the past 12 months.
This press release belittles Red Hat based on output of a so-called ‘research’ firm which Novell funded. Novell is just ‘pulling a Microsoft’ again and to exacerbate matters, Mono is now being used as a tool of leverage at Ubuntu’s and others’ expense because only Novell (plus few others) is supported by the preview of Mono 2.10, which Microsoft MVP de Icaza promoted along with other Microsoft-oriented junk.
Andrew has just released the packages for our first preview of Mono 2.10, we published sources and packages for SLES, OpenSUSE, RHEL, Windows and MacOS X here
Windows and Mac OS X come well before a lot of GNU/Linux distributions. One has to remember that Mono is about advancing C#/.NET, it's not about GNU/Linux. That is how pathetic Novell has become and “OMG!”-branded sites cannot do enough to give an impression that Novell is committed to software freedom. As long as Microsoft pays Novell, it is obvious whose agenda gets served. █
___ * GroupWise customers also move away (we gave quite a few examples recently, as many seem to be migrating to Microsoft or to Google). Some instructional videos about GroupWise seem like a waste of time and the Teaming/Vibe promotion in YouTube is too optimistic given the imminent passage of keys to AttachMSFT. This recent French video (Novell partner SUPINFO) is a token of how things used to be before Novell bit the dust and executives fled the company.
Summary: Fake sorts of coverage and spin come from people whose career is not reporting but lobbying
IN THE PREVIOUS post we showed that Microsoft funds books which are favourable to its agenda. News sites too are becoming filled with Windows book authors (sellers) who pretend to provide unbiased coverage. Examples include Mary Jo Foley and Ed Bott from ZDNet, even Preston Gralla from IDG. Some people do not know these authors’ relationship with Microsoft and that’s fine. They might learn over time and we still have this out-of-date “Credibility Index” for those who wish not to memorise.
Earlier today some reader from Europe sent us this link which says that Vista Phony 7 [sic] is a huge, huge disaster for some gullible buyers who actually opted for it (there are not many such buyers).
Some customers’ phones were downloading 50 GB per day, leaving them stuck with $10,000+ bills
For those to whom this is new, we have a decent old post about it. Like the MSBBC did at the time, Peter Bright is spinning it in Fox Technica (Peter and Emil are the principal Microsoft boosters in Fox Technica). Peter is blaming “unnamed 3rd party” along with Microsoft as he gives visibility to Microsoft’s damage control without at all being sceptical as any reporter should be. It is also means of diversion, where the entity all blame gets diverted to is not named and therefore cannot and need not defend itself, or bounce back blame at Microsoft. In summary, this is classic spin that took weeks to prepare and it resembles what Microsoft did when Zune froze at the end of a year due to a major bug. It’s all just a strategy for averting a bad name and spreading a fairy tale to stick — one that Microsoft can point the finger at later and pretend innocence. We gave some examples in the past, but none which involved Vista Phony 7 [sic]. It was released prematurely and it shows.
“Peter is blaming “unnamed 3rd party” along with Microsoft as he gives visibility to Microsoft’s damage control without at all being sceptical as any reporter should be.”Speaking of phones, Microsoft Florian pushes his anti-Android/Linux venom not by promoting Vista Phony 7 (which he did to a degree) but by advancing Microsoft’s more major competition to Android, which is patent lawsuits. This includes lawsuits from friends of Microsoft. And having sucked up to the technology editor for a while (in Twitter and perhaps privately too), Microsoft Florian managed to spread his rhetoric outside his tiny blog. Since he is consistently promoting Microsoft’s agenda and always refusing to deny being paid by Microsoft, many people just assume he is a Microsoft lobbyist right now (a one-word answer would confirm/deny it, but he chooses to decline to answer). He is also pushing his anti-OIN and pro-CPTN views these days, which leaves too little to the imagination and since sites in many languages discuss the CPTN situation [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], he strives to warp the coverage, mostly by mass-mailing journalists.
OSI and FSF argue that there is not enough public information surrounding the deal, and that, given the influence of the companies, such secrecy could hide “nefarious intentions,” the statement charges.
“Given the potential for collusion between these competitors to reduce competition amongst them and to harm competition that exists in the marketplace today, competition would be better served by the Department of Justice thoroughly investigating the facts and evidence concerning this transaction, rather than giving them the benefit of the commercial doubt,” the statement reads.
Earlier this week, the European Union expressed no opposition to the deal. OSI and the FSF had also filed a request with the German Federal Cartel Office last month.
Can the German Federal Cartel Office also investigate Microsoft’s relationship with Microsoft Florian, since the subject is so suspiciously secretive? █
Summary: Many factual errors found in the Microsoft-funded book that belittles “open source” and helps Microsoft lobby governments
The unethical bunch from Redmond is back to bribing professors, as part of a business model so notorious that we thought it had been buried. We already know that the Gates Foundation keeps buying the news to make coverage more favourable towards its goals (and in order to silence the many vocal critics). Microsoft is more or less the same (but more subtle) and just like the Gates Foundation, it funds professors who will become its front men.
To repeat the points made in the previous two posts on this subject [1, 2], Microsoft had paid Josh Lerner and Mark Schankerman, who in turn produced literature which echoes Microsoft lobbyists and gives those lobbyists something academic to cite later. Microsoft’s model might go something like, pay some professors to put their names behind some particular text with particular bias, then assure buying some copies of that text for a considerable price and mail copies to CIOs or whoever needs to be persuaded by a report which only seemingly comes from independent experts. There is nothing that a corrupt monopoly abuser won’t do to secure its monopoly and the evidence of this little abuse is hard to obtain. Dr. Glyn Moody shows why it’s like hiding it behind a paywall:
Since I’ve not read the book – and I’d rather not shell out £25.95 for the dubious pleasure of discovering where the errors originate – I’ll limit myself to addressing the arguments outlined in the Economist review rather than worrying about where they originated.
Microsoft is not a charity that funds books to be more “objective”, it is obliged to serve its shareholders, i.e. to further its agenda with its money. Therefore, Moody’s detailed rebuttal (titled “There’s No FUD Like an Old FUD”) is necessary and to give just a taste of it:
But my main concern here is with the follow section:
Yet the finding that open-source advocates will like least is that free programs are not always cheaper. To be sure, the upfront cost of proprietary software is higher (although open-source programs are not always free). But companies that use such programs spend more on such things as learning to use them and making them work with other software.
Yes, it’s a variant on that old FUD that free software is not actually free (gosh, really?) that Microsoft tried about ten years ago and gave up when it realised that nobody said it was when you took into account all the factors like paying wages. But leaving aside that this, too, is hardly news to anyone, let’s just look at the central claim of the current incarnation of that FUD:
companies that use such programs spend more on such things as learning to use them and making them work with other software
So does the first part mean that learning to use a new piece of open source software is inherently harder than learning to use a new piece of proprietary software? I’ve not seen a single piece of research that suggests that. What I have seen documented is that people who are currently using Microsoft Office, say, find it harder to learn to use OpenOffice, say, than to continue using Microsoft Office. Which is, of course, a piece of wisdom that is once again firmly located at the very heart of the Land of the Bleedin’ Obvious.
So, passing swiftly on in the hope that there might be a more substantive issue here, we have the second claim: that companies spend more on making open source work with “other software”. But wait, what could that “other software” refer to? Since it’s not open source (because it’s “other”, not open source) it is clearly proprietary; so the problem comes down to making open source work with proprietary software. And why might that be?
The good news is that more and more people become aware of what Microsoft did here. “I weep for Slashdot,” wrote Gordon, “when this is considered worthy to report…”
Gordon refers to this item which shows that Slashdot caught this too and did not leave out the connection to Microsoft. As I said in my reply to Gordon, “to be fair to Slashdot, they made it very clear in the title and summary that Microsoft paid for this FUD. It harms their relationship with FOSS.”
Microsoft is trying to tell everyone (by proxy) that “open source” is bad. So why would anyone defend Microsoft’s excursions in “open source”? █
“On the day of the sentencing, the gang members [Microsoft executives] maintained that they had done nothing wrong, saying that the whole case was a conspiracy by the white power structure to destroy them. I am now under no illusions that miscreants will realize that other parts of society view them that way.”
Firms that are profiting from patents (without actually producing or inventing anything) want us to obsess over and think about the rare and few cases (some very old) where judges deny Alice and honour patents on software
The issues associated with the UPC, especially in light of ongoing negotiations of Britain's exit from the EU, remain too big a barrier to any implementation this year (and probably future years too)
India's resilience in the face of incredible pressure to allow software patents is essential for the success of India's growing software industry and more effort is needed to thwart corporate colonisation through patents in India itself
A look at some of the latest spin and the latest shaming courtesy of the patent microcosm, which behaves so poorly that one has to wonder if its objective is to alienate everyone
In defiance of common sense and everything that public officials or academics keep saying (European, Australian, American), China's SIPO and Europe's EPO want us to believe that when it comes to patents it's "the more, the merrier"
The problem associated with Battistelli's strategy of increasing so-called 'production' by granting in haste everything on the shelf is quickly being grasped by patent professionals (outside EPO), not just patent examiners (inside EPO)
Free/Open Source software in the currency and trading world promised to emancipate us from the yoke of banking conglomerates, but a gold rush for software patents threatens to jeopardise any meaningful change or progress
To nobody's surprise, the past half a decade saw accelerating demise in quality of European Patents (EPs) and it is the fault of Battistelli's notorious policies
New trouble for Željko Topić in Strasbourg, making it yet another EPO Vice-President who is on shaky grounds and paving the way to managerial collapse/avalanche at the EPO
The utter lack of participation, involvement or even intervention by German authorities serve to confirm that the government of Germany is very much complicit in the EPO's abuses, by refusing to do anything to stop them
Another example of UPC promotion from within the EPO (a committee dedicated to UPC promotion), in spite of everything we know about opposition to the UPC from small businesses (not the imaginary ones which Team UPC claims to speak 'on behalf' of)
Uploaded by SUEPO earlier today was the above video, which shows how last year's party (actually 2015) was spoiled for Battistelli by the French State Secretary for Digital Economy, Axelle Lemaire, echoing the French government's concern about union busting etc. at the EPO (only to be rudely censored by Battistelli's 'media partner')
In violation of international labour laws, Team Battistelli marches on and engages in a union-busting race against the clock, relying on immunity to keep this gravy train rolling before an inevitable crash
A new year's reminder that the EPO has only one legitimate union, the Staff Union of the EPO (SUEPO), whereas FFPE-EPO serves virtually no purpose other than to attack SUEPO, more so after signing a deal with the devil (Battistelli)
Orwellian misuse of terms by the EPO, which keeps using the term "social democracy" whilst actually pushing further and further towards a totalitarian regime led by 'King' Battistelli
The paradigm of totalitarian control, inability to admit mistakes and tendency to lie all the time is backfiring on the EPO rather than making it stronger
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