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09.03.14

Linus Torvalds DebConf Talk

Posted in Kernel, Videos at 2:11 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Torvalds’ latest talk which got media attention earlier this month


Microsoft Should Not be Considered Too Big to Jail

Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft at 10:32 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Jailed cats

Summary: Microsoft continues to use dumping as a strategy which revolves around starving the competition, not beating the competition

OVER THE years we have covered very many examples of Microsoft crimes; it was rare to see Microsoft executives going to prison and when they were sent to prison — which did occasionally happen — it usually wasn’t for their activities inside Microsoft. It is abundantly clear that the company attracts anti-social people who are knowingly and consciously applying for a job in a company that's widely recognised for crimes and abuses.

Techrights is not unique with its views regarding Microsoft. We often agree with people like Robert Pogson who now says that “Admits Defeat” and shows that, based on this report, “Microsoft has recently reduced the number of chassis suppliers for its Surface tablets and is now outsourcing all the orders to Ju Teng. Microsoft stopped placing chassis orders with its China-based supplier in August, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.”

These products have been an utter failure in the market. Microsoft loses a lot of money on them. Microsoft would even sell them at a loss just to ensure that it can somehow impede the competition’s growth. Known as negative pricing, this strategy is illegal, especially for monopolists. Microsoft even resorted to bribes and technical sabotage, licensing restrictions (anti-competitive) and other means. Microsoft is more focused on destroying the competition itself than actually producing decent products.

We are saddened to see that a lot of the corporate press, which is often funded by Microsoft one way or another, continues blaming GNU/Linux for lack of growth (or for very slow growth) on the desktop. This biased media would conveniently ignore explosive leaks about Microsoft’s abuses — leaks which are publicly available. The corporate press likes blaming GNU/Linux itself, pretending that Free software has inherent technical issues or usability issues. As GNU/Linux does not have a vast marketing budget like Apple’s, the media can actually get away with it, too. Repetition leads almost to a complete acceptance, even by the victimised (learned hopelessness). It becomes challenging to challenge. Journalists in corporate press will therefore carry on bashing GNU/Linux rather than discussing all the sabotage directed against its adoption, including the latest in Munich.

Pogson has just put together a compact list of Microsoft’s abuses against GNU/Linux adoption and the adoption of competition in general, starting with:

M[icrosoft] has deliberately violated the laws of competition in USA and elsewhere repeatedly, systematically and with malice. They are out to get us. At first they got an exclusive deal with IBM to get their foot in the door, piggybacking on IBM’s branding with business, then they demanded exclusive deals with ISVs and manufacturers, then they punished any manufacturer who stepped out of line and installed competing products, then they created an endless chain of incompatible file-format changes and created whole industries based on the existence of overly complex secret protocols and finally forced the world to accept a closed standard as an open standard… That whole burden has served to render IT more expensive to own and to operate and much more fragile than it should be just on technical merits.

Based on this new article by Swapnil Bhartiya, dumping (selling at a loss) continues to be somewhat of a strategy at Microsoft. As he puts it: “Microsoft is taking a page from its history to counter Chromebooks, an increasing threat to Microsoft’s PC market. They are getting their hardware partners to flood the market with ‘cheap‘ netbooks to combat Google’s Chromebooks. We earlier reported HP’s plans to bring really cheap netbook and now ASUS is also joining the rag-race.”

The funny thing is that Microsoft spent so much time and money on negative advertising, slinging mud at Chromebooks for being too cheap to be workable. Here we have Microsoft putting itself in the same cage it used to rattle, as if it chalked around some carcass and is now laying itself right within the chalk’s boundaries.

One day, one can only hope, Microsoft will get sued severely for its anti-Google tactics and its anti-GNU/Linux tactics. For now it still seems like Microsoft has greased up (i.e. bribed) enough politicians to make itself immune to much-deserved prosecution. █

Pro-Software Patents Voices Finally Acknowledge the Demise of Software Patents in the United States

Posted in America, Patents at 9:49 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Bulb

Summary: A milestone is reached as even the most zealous supporters of patents on algorithms (or computer-implemented inventions, or software patents) are admitting that the era of software patents may be over

PATENT layers are running scared and trying to figure out how to still patent software in the United States (this is just the latest of many such articles).

After the decision from SCOTUS (a decision against many software patents) law firms tried to fight this decision using words and using corrupt courts like CAFC. On the face of it, patent lawyers are not really succeeding. They can’t overturn what was decided.

Looking at the plutocrats’ press, it seems evident that the consequences are already being realised:

Last month, Apple and Samsung called off all their non-U.S. legal jousting over smartphone patents. With up to 40 different Apple-v.-Samsung cases being contended around the world, this was no small matter. Apple had already settled most of its smartphone fights with Google and Motorola. Then last week Intellectual Ventures, the litigious patent holding company founded and run by Nathan Myhrvold, said it would lay off nearly one-fifth of its 700 employees. Is the accumulate-and-sue patent strategy wearing thin?

Even CAFC seems to be giving up on its pro-software patents Jihad. A pro-software patents site cites the corrupt judge Rader (pro-software patents for years) to explain the demise of software patents in the United States. To quote some bits: “Former Federal Circuit chief judge Randall Rader has claimed that the prospects for software patent protection have fundamentally shifted following the Supreme Court’s decision in Alice v CLS Bank. In an exclusive interview with IAM, Rader, who stood down as the head of the CAFC in May and then left the court in June, admitted that he had hoped for more clarity.”

Funny how they neglect to say why he ‘left’. That’s what one ought to expect from a pro-software patents site.

Yet another pro-software patents site cites USPTO‘s new rules to acknowledge that software patents are now in trouble in the US. Quoting a relevant portion:

Just six days following the Alice opinion, on June 25, the PTO issued the USPTO Preliminary Examination Instructions In View Of The Supreme Court Decision in Alice Corporation Pty Ltd v CLS Bank International, et al. These Preliminary Instructions interpreted Alice to suggest that all claims directed to laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas, regardless of the technology or the category of invention, should be analysed for patent eligibility using the two-step Mayo analysis. Some public commentary asserted to the PTO following the Preliminary Instructions report that many pending business method and software claims, which under the previous USPTO guidance may have been patent eligible, are now being rejected as patent ineligible.

The significance of the above items should be clear; even the most ardent supporters of software patents are gradually weakening and are willing to admit that software patents are in trouble. They may not say much about corruption in courts that supported software patents, but they do spot the trend.

Techrights is going to provide exclusive coverage with some major leaks about the EPO later this month. There is corruption here in the European patent system as well. We intend to expose it. █

New Lies About Microsoft ‘Privacy’ and New FUD Against the GPL Comes From ‘Former’ Microsoft Staff at Black Duck

Posted in Deception, Microsoft at 9:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: More AstroTurfing by sites that are run by Microsoft MVPs and firms which were created by people from Microsoft

Microsoft is a propaganda and lobbying company. It is highly reliant on AstroTurfing through numerous proxies and this week is no exception.

A few days ago we saw Microsoft propaganda seeking to portray Microsoft as a privacy proponent; a lot of this came from familiar people. We studied where it came from and we were not alone. A lot of this recent propaganda about Microsoft privacy comes from ‘former’ Microsoft staff (now working as ‘journalists’) and ‘news’ sites run by Microsoft MVPs. They were manipulating the media into lying for Microsoft and acting like a PR machine, inadvertently or not. Everyone should know by now that the simple truth is that Microsoft is in bed with the NSA (too much evidence for one to dismiss this) but as TechDirt pointed out: “A site called WindowsITPro wrote up that Microsoft was now “defying” a court order and this somehow proved it was a heroic company, fighting for its customers…”

The title of TechDirt‘s post is “No, Microsoft Is Not Suddenly ‘Defying’ A Court Order To Turn Over Emails”. If only it pointed out that WindowsITPro is not a news site but a Microsoft propaganda site…

WindowsITPro is not the only site which is run by Microsoft MVPs and other allies of Microsoft; we exposed other such sites over the years and many were also involved in spreading the familiar Munich FUD. Microsoft does this every year and it did it again last month.

Our second example of Microsoft-linked propaganda comes from Phil Johnson at IDG. He cites ‘former’ Microsoft staff (Ohloh) and their latest boss which was created by Microsoft marketing man and continues to smear GPL (and by association GNU). Usually they try to claim that the GPL is dying (self-fulfilling prophecy) using their dubious proprietary/secret data but now they try another approach by alleging that GPL is killing participation and impedes success of FOSS projects. To understand why this is likely wrong one need to remember what Ohloh is; it came from Microsoft (like Black Duck) and it has an incomplete database stuffed with Microsoft data (since 2009 when Black Duck made a pact/partnership with Microsoft).

Black Duck claims to have just netted more funds. Not bad for a proprietary software-wielding, software patent-hoarding propaganda apparatus, eh? The sad thing is that Microsoft has successfully infiltrated the media and all sorts of “think tanks” that Black Duck and others organise. It is a form of AstroTurfing. This is chronic and systemic. █

“Mind Control: To control mental output you have to control mental input. Take control of the channels by which developers receive information, then they can only think about the things you tell them. Thus, you control mindshare!”

–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]

09.02.14

Links 2/9/2014: GNU/Linux in BBC, Calls Against systemd

Posted in News Roundup at 7:14 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux @ About.com

    During the past month I have been in discussions with a number of people at about.com.

    I have been provided with the opportunity of writing articles on the linux.about.com subsite and I am in full control of all the content that will appear on that site.

  • Best Linux and Web-Based Alternatives to Final Draft

    As far as writing screenplays is concerned, Hollywood has only one standard: Final Draft. For years, much like Microsoft’s monopoly with Windows, the software had no big competitors. From big Hollywood directors like Spielberg to small independent studios, everyone considered Final Draft the gold standard of screenwriting software. In many ways, it still enjoys the same monopoly; however, the stronghold it had over the screenwriting industry isn’t the same as before. With its high price, clunky UI, and lots of persistent bugs, Final Draft is slowly being taken over by lesser-known tools in this huge shift that is happening in the screenwriting industry.

  • Mindshare-Momentum For FLOSS

    That’s the reason I got away 15 years ago. It’s too bad the world has endured so much harm all these years before coming to its senses. The world now sees that FLOSS works. Just about everyone has used Android/Linux and knows it works. Just about everyone has used web applications running on GNU/Linux and knows it works. The poor souls still using that other OS are locked in miserable dark damp cells peering at a vibrant world outside.

  • You have your Windows in my Linux

    Although there are those who think the systemd debate has been decided in favor of systemd, the exceedingly loud protests on message boards, forums, and the posts I wrote over the past two weeks would indicate otherwise. I’ve seen many declarations of victory for systemd, now that Red Hat has forced it into the enterprise with the release of RHEL 7. I don’t think it’s that easy.

  • Windows XP: Your upgrade experiences

    I think more media attention needs to be brought to Linux [an open-source operating system] nowadays. I’ve tried many platforms and have found Lubuntu in particular to be a very sophisticated and extremely lightweight operating system. Even on computers with as little as 512MB of RAM the system boots, runs programs and shuts down like a bullet.

  • Eventually Revolution Is the Easier Route To Escape An Oppressive System

    The FUD doesn’t work. The world sees M$ as the cancer, not GNU/Linux and FLOSS. The world sees Android/Linux systems working smoothly for more folks and at lower cost and complexity. The world sees that depending on M$ for anything in IT is difficult, expensive and a nightmare waiting to happen.

    The result is that consumers are switching to Android/Linux and governments, businesses and large organizations are switching to GNU/Linux, in droves. Governments are banning M$’s standards and protocols. The OS itself is next. Already huge segments of humanity know that a web browser and the Internet will do a lot of what they want done. There’s just no need for a lot of what M$ offers and it’s more efficient to go elsewhere for software. Enter FLOSS, the most efficient means of creating and distributing software. It’s time is now.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux kernel developer Dmitry Monakhov arrested for protesting Ukraine invasion

      Linux kernel developer Dmitry Monakhov was detained for 15 days for disobeying a police officer on Saturday. The debacle came about when Monakhov decided to protest the recent invasion into Ukraine by Russian armed forces.

      This was not the first incident of aggression towards Monakhov. During a rally in July of 2013 he was reported to have been beaten in one of the police vans most likely for participating in expressing his discontent with Putin’s policies regarding human rights.

      According to Monakhov’s tweet the day before his most recent run in with the authorities, he announced, “I am a Russian. Not cattle. Not a killer. And it is not the occupier. I am ashamed that my president Putin. At 9.00 I go to Manezhku [Manezh Square] against the war.” after this tweet, pictures surfaced a day later of four Russian policeman arresting him.

    • Overturning The Distro

      One idea is that they will choose a single file-system, btrfs, and use some of its features/complexity to standardize the GNU/Linux file-system, versioning of software, production, distribution and installation of software. They seem to want to turn the GNU/Linux PC into something more like Android so that developers will have a standard target and more control over the run-time environment.

    • boycott systemd

      systemd0 is a replacement for the sysvinit daemon used in GNU/Linux and Unix systems, originally authored by Lennart Poettering of Red Hat. It represents a monumental increase in complexity, an abhorrent and violent slap in the face to the Unix philosophy, and its inherent domineering and viral nature turns it into something akin to a “second kernel” that is spreading all across the Linux ecosystem.

    • The Companies That Support Linux: SanDisk Advances Storage Industry

      A growing dependency on digital data has spurred new interest in flash storage technologies along with cloud-based services and storage. With the broadest portfolio of flash-memory based solutions in the industry, SanDisk is on the leading edge of this transformation, with Linux and open source at the heart of its innovation. By working with hundreds of open source projects in compute, storage, and networking, SanDisk can help enable software stacks to take advantage of flash’s behavior and performance, says Nithya Ruff, director of the SanDisk Open Source Strategy Office.

    • Sony Joins AllSeen Internet of Things Alliance

      The Linux Foundation’s Allseen Alliance has a new member today. Sony has announced that it is joining AllSeen in a bid to bolster its Internet of Things (IoT) presence.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Marek Lands Radeon Gallium3D HyperZ Improvements

        Well known open-source Radeon driver developer Marek Olšák has landed a number of commits today inside mainline Mesa Git for improving the state of HyperZ for AMD hardware, a feature that remains disabled by default for the open-source Radeon Linux driver due to stability and artifact issues.

    • Benchmarks

      • Ondemand vs. Performance CPU Governing For AMD FX CPUs On Linux 3.17

        In the tests shared yesterday of looking at the AMD FX-9590 CPU on Linux and other CPU benchmarks from this weekend, some Phoronix readers raised concerns about the CPU scaling governor differences between the AMD and Intel hardware. The AMD FX CPUs continue to use the CPUfreq driver by default to handle their scaling while modern Intel CPUs have the new Intel P-State driver. Beyond the Intel-specific P-State vs. CPUfreq, the AMD CPUs generally default to using the “ondemand” governor while with Intel desktop CPUs on P-State it generally ends up with the “performance” mode. Some Phoronix readers found performance vs. ondemand differences to be unfair, but for AMD FX CPUs, there isn’t much of a difference in our common CPU torture test benchmarks found in the Phoronix Test Suite.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Thank You Akademy 2014 Sponsors

        Akademy is a non-commercial event, free of charge for all who want to attend. Generous sponsor support helps make Akademy possible. Most of the Akademy budget goes towards travel support for KDE community members from all over the world, contributors who would not be able to attend the conference otherwise. The wide diversity of attendees is essential to the success of the annual in-person Akademy conference. Many thanks to Akademy 2014 sponsors.

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • Neptune 4.1 Release

        We are proud to announce the first maintenance release of version 4 Neptune 4.1.

        This release fixes some bugs in the installer, bluetooth, plasma & systemd and also provides updated software.

        KDE Applications & Platform 4.14 was packed in with a new kernel 3.14.13. We added the bfq (budget fair) I/O scheduler to improve desktop responsiveness even on heavy disk I/O usage.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Camera Pi – How Raspberry Pi can see

      Robots provided with autonomous operation capabilities and, particularly, those sporting sense organs similar to the human ones, have always tickled the fancy of science fiction writers and screenwriters.

      As always happens, from a certain point in history, even official science has started to deal with the subject, at first with the so-called “strong theses”, whose objective was to reproduce, to substitute, the capabilities that are typical of humans.

    • Phones

      • Who’s to blame when products fail?

        Recently a major publication house published an article about how the Tizen smartphone “flopped – and open source is to blame” [1]. If you did read the article, however, you found that even the author did not really believe open source was “to blame.” The author blamed the companies behind the projects for a lack of commitment to the use of Open Source, which created a lack of follow-through and (given the number of alternative closed and partially open operating systems they could use) the final use of either Android or Microsoft instead. Of course, this headline particularly infuriated me because even iOS is based on FreeBSD, and both Android and Firefox OS use kernels “based on” Linux. So, “Open Source Failed”?

      • Android

        • Google Sends Invites for September 15 India Event; Android One Launch Likely
        • 7 Things You Can Do With The Xposed Framework on a Rooted Android Phone or Tablet

          The Xposed Framework is a way to make system-level changes to your Android operating system without installing a custom ROM. All you need is root access. Here’s a look at what you can actually do with the Xposed Framework.

          You’ll find all of these modules listed in the Xposed Framework itself. Install the Xposed Framework, open it, and use the Modules search to browse, search, and install modules.

        • Make Firefox for Android Yours: Switch Languages Easily, Customize Home Screens and Clear History

          Now, you can make Firefox for Android your own in any of 55 languages, regardless of the language you originally downloaded your favorite browser in. With the new language switching feature, you can easily choose between and set a language without restarting your browser. You can switch between all of the languages Firefox for Android offers regardless of the locales supported by your Android device. Today, we have added Armenian, Basque, Fulah, Icelandic, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh language support to the languages Firefox for Android offered before.

        • Android 4.4 mini-PC packs 64-bit quad-core Atom punch

          Minix is prepping a sub-$150 mini-PC running Android 4.4 on a quad-core Intel Atom Z3735F and featuring WiFi, Bluetooth, IR, Ethernet, and USB connectivity.

          Intel’s Atom Z37x5 system-on-chip, the second generation of its 22nm Z3000 (Bay-Trail-T) family, is beginning to appear in Android- and Windows-ready tablets such as the Toshiba Excite Go, as well as a “Sharks Cove” single board computer from Intel and Microsoft. Now we’re starting to see mini-PCs built on the tablet-focused SoC. Last week Zotac unveiled a tiny Zbox P1320 Pico computer that ships with Windows 8.1, and now Minix is prepping a Minix “Neo Z64″ miniPC for those who would prefer to run Android 4.4.

        • Google’s sub-$100 ‘Android One’ devices said to be unveiled on September 15

          Devices will land in the sub-$100 price range, making them highly desirable in the emerging markets, not limited to Brazil, India, China, and Russia — so-called BRIC nations.

        • Google plans multiple Android Wear updates as Apple’s wearable looms

          Google’s first update to Android Wear is coming this week, and several more will follow it before the end of the year as Google moves to quickly iterate on its new wearable software platform. In an interview with CNET, two leading Android engineers lay out what we should expect to see in some future updates. This first one sounds as though it may not be much — just some navigation and voice control improvements — but a few useful features are coming down the road. That includes Google officially beginning to support custom watch faces from third-party developers: some developers have already figured out how to build them, but Google is working on a toolkit for developers that will allow watch faces to easily be made. Google previously teased details of this in a Google+ post.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open source for slow food and small farms

    Looking at the challenges—and opportunities—of FarmBot, I’m reminded a bit of the factors that played into the origin of the world’s first open source company, Cygnus. That history traces back to 1987, the year that Richard Stallman released version 1.0 of the GNU C compiler. At that time, compiler ports cost millions of dollars and took years to deliver. I was very interested in writing compilers, but I saw no prospect for doing so because (1) there were very few compiler companies in the world, and (2) they employed a very small number of people—most of whom were famous for having written the few compilers I’d ever heard of. Who would hire somebody with no commercial compiler experience to work on something so rare and valuable?

  • Top 4 open source invoicing tools for freelancers and small businesses

    Small business owners and freelancers put a lot of work into their businesses. They do that not only because they’re passionate about what they do, but they also have the goal of getting paid.

  • Healthdirect Australia sees value in open source for security solution

    Commonwealth and state/territory government funded public company, Healthdirect Australia, has used open source software to build an identity and access management (IAM) solution.

    The IAM solution allows users to have one identity across all of its websites and applications. For example, users can sign in using their Facebook, LinkedIn or Gmail account.

  • For 50 percent of developers, open source is a 9-to-5 job

    As much as we may like the myth of the hobbyist developer, no one codes for free anymore. Well, not quite “no one,” but according to Dirk Riehle’s recent academic research, at least half of all open-source software is written by paid developers during work hours. And if Linux is any indicator, the percentage of 9-to-5 open-source development is only going to increase over time.

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Some Mac Users to Be Boxed Out By Chrome

        As we’ve been reporting, Google is embracing the 64-bit future with its Chrome browser, having just elevated the 64-bit version of Chrome for Windows to its stable Beta distribution channel, while also elevating Chrome for Mac OS X’s 64-bit version to Canary and Dev builds. In some ways, 64-bit versions of Chrome represent a game of catch-up for Google, because Mozilla has offered 64-bit versions of Firefox for Mac OS X and Linux for a long time.

      • Opera 24 Released With Tab Preview for Linux, Mac and Windows

        Opera Software on Tuesday announced the latest version of its browser for Linux, Mac and Windows – Opera 24. The browser introduces the tab preview feature, and the company alongside announced the milestone support for 1,000 extensions for the first time since it shifted to the Chromium engine.

        With Opera 24, the company introduced tab previews – aimed at helping users figure out what a tab contains just by hovering their mouse over it. The new feature gives an inside preview of the opened tab upfront in the form of the most recent snapshot of the site.

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla Firefox 32 Surfaces With HTML5, Developer Changes

        If you checkout the Mozilla FTP servers tonight the official 32.0 builds have surfaced for the Firefox web-browser.

      • Firefox 32 Stable Has Been Released + Installation Instructions For The Most Popular Linux Systems

        Among others, Firefox 32 comes with an improved generational garbage collection, HTTP caching v2 has been enabled by default, the login metadata viewable is now viewable in the password manager, public key pinning support has been added, the number of found items in the find toolbar is now displayed, just like in Chrome, Scratchpad has received code completion and inline documentation, support for connectiong to the HTTP proxy over HTTPS has been implemented and both the Password Manager and Add-on manager have received improvements and a big number of security and bug-fixes have been implemented.

      • Mozilla’s $33 Firefox OS Phone Draws Notice in India

        Mozilla recently announced that the first smartphone running its Firefox OS mobile operating system is now on sale in India, following earlier reports that a low-cost phone would arrive there in July. One of the big surprises with the Cloud FX phones is that, while the rumor mill had set the price at $50, these phones are actually priced at a rock-bottom $33. In India’s fast-growing mobile market, that could put phones in the hands of many new users and help Firefox OS become entrenched.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • OpenStack Manila project Approved for Incubation

      The first time I ever heard of the Manila project was at the recent OpenStack Atlanta summit. I had planned to sit in on the Manila session, but the room was overflowing and I wasn’t allowed in, which was very disappointing.

  • BSD

    • GhostBSD 4 preview

      GhostBSD is a desktop distribution that’s based on FreeBSD. The project started out with support for several desktop environments (Gnome, Mate, XFCE, LXDE, and Openbox), but has since become a MATE-only distribution.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GNU Folks Still Working On Their “FreeDink” Game

      GNU FreeDink is still going on as an GPL-licensed portable and improved upon version of the Dink Smallwood game engine.

      Dink Smallwood is the Zelda-like RPG game title from the late 90′s that still has a small following of gamers. GNU FreeDink meanwhile is an official GNU project that frees up the title to more platforms. The GNU FreeDink engine runs the original game and its mods while supporting multiple platforms and supporting newer technologies like SDL from what was originally available when the game was originally developed. This GNU project also frees up the sound/music replacements with other assets via the freedink-data component. The game also avoids MP3 files in favor of Ogg Vorbis audio.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Sharing work is easier with an Open Document Format

      We often wish to share electronic documents with friends, colleagues, business or government, and the software application we use to prepare these documents will save them in a particular format.

      Any application that later loads the document will also need to be able to understand this format. If an organisation can control the format, and convince people to use it, then they can use this as a very powerful tool to create a monopoly in the market.

Leftovers

  • Hardware

    • AMD Launches New FX CPUs, Cuts Prices On Existing Processors

      AMD today is rolling out three new FX-Series processors (the FX-8320E, FX-8370E, and FX-8370) while cutting prices on their existing Vishera AM3+ FX processors. AMD sent over the new FX-8370 and FX-8370E CPUs last week to Phoronix (the FX-8320E is still forthcoming) so we are here with the rundown on the Linux performance of these new FX CPUs compared to a wide variety of other Intel and AMD Linux systems with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

    • Nude photos leak in massive celebrity iCloud hack

      Nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Kim Kardashian and Rihanna, among others, leaked online Sunday in what appears to be a massive celebrity hacking scandal. The racy photos surfaced online Sunday and had the Internet buzzing.

      A representative for Lawrence has since confirmed the images are real.

      “This is a flagrant violation of privacy,” the actress’ spokesperson said in a statement. “The authorities have been contacted and will prosecute anyone who posts stolen photos of Jennifer Lawrence.”

    • Naked celebrity hack: security experts focus on iCloud backup theory
    • Apple Investigating Reports of iCloud Vulnerabilities

      Initial media reports suggested that the hacks stemmed from individual accounts on iCloud, an online service to store photos, music and other data from Apple devices.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance

    • Limits to Growth was right. New research shows we’re nearing collapse

      The 1972 book Limits to Growth, which predicted our civilisation would probably collapse some time this century, has been criticised as doomsday fantasy since it was published. Back in 2002, self-styled environmental expert Bjorn Lomborg consigned it to the “dustbin of history”.

      It doesn’t belong there. Research from the University of Melbourne has found the book’s forecasts are accurate, 40 years on. If we continue to track in line with the book’s scenario, expect the early stages of global collapse to start appearing soon.

  • Censorship

    • Indonesian student faces hearing over ‘Yogyakarta is stupid’ social media post

      n Indonesian student, who could be jailed for comments posted on social media, is facing an ethical hearing at her university.

      An Indonesian student, who could be jailed for comments posted on social media, is facing an ethical hearing at her university today.

      Postgraduate law student Florence Sihombing, 26, was arrested on Monday after a message she sent to friends on social media went viral.

      In her post, Ms Sihombing called the central Java city of Yogyakarta “poor, stupid and uneducated”.

  • Privacy

    • The Times of India just instituted a bizarre Twitter and Facebook policy

      Hundreds of journalists working at the Times of India and its sister publications have received a peculiar request from their employer: hand over your Twitter and Facebook passwords and let us post for you.

    • Indian Media Giant’s New Policy For Employees: Hand Over Your Social Media Passwords
    • No to police drones [Letter]

      Regarding your recent editorial on drones, while there may be benefits of using unmanned aerial vehicles in less populated areas, I oppose providing Baltimore City police with drones for any purpose (“Eyes in the sky,” Aug. 28).

      Drone manufacturers and operators hope to create thousands of jobs and earn billions of dollars with this technology. But as with any quasi-military device there is a need for civilian oversight. It’s time the City Council takes up the matter.

    • Cities scramble to upgrade “stingray” tracking as end of 2G network looms

      Documents released last week by the City of Oakland reveal that it is one of a handful of American jurisdictions attempting to upgrade an existing cellular surveillance system, commonly known as a stingray.

      The Oakland Police Department, the nearby Fremont Police Department, and the Alameda County District Attorney jointly applied for a grant from the Department of Homeland Security to “obtain a state-of-the-art cell phone tracking system,” the records show.

    • Surveillance, where do you draw the line?

      The Don’t Spy On Us campaign is coming to the Labour party conference in Manchester and asking the question “Surveillance, where do you draw the line?”

  • Civil Rights

    • Cameron poised to unveil powers making it “easier to take people’s passports away”

      David Cameron will make a statement to the House of Commons later today on proposals for new legislation which will “make it easier to take people’s passports away“.

      This comes after a fortnight during which senior Tory, Labour and UKIP figures, as well as the Met police commissioner and the former Archbishop of Canterbury, spoke in favour of increasing the government’s ability to remove the passports of those with British citizenship who go abroad to fight with extremist groups.

    • Coalition to propose new powers to stop citizens returning to UK

      The Coalition is proposing new discretionary powers to stop terror suspects returning to the UK, David Cameron announced today.

      The move is designed to thwart court challenges to Home Office attempts to remove passports of suspected terrorists while they are abroad.

      In a wide ranging Commons statement responding to crises in Ukraine and the Middle East as well as an increased terror threat at home, the prime minister also unveiled plans to give border police temporary powers to seize the passports of those who they suspect are travelling abroad to fight with terrorist groups.

    • Homeland Security was built to fend off terrorists. Why’s it so busy arming cops to fight average Americans?

      From Ferguson’s military police to loaning drones and tracking your every move, the agency’s expensive, violent sinkhole of bureaucracy needs reform – now

    • ’60s activist Tom Hayden to donate papers, FBI file to U-M

      One of the leading activists of the 1960s and beyond will house his papers, including his extensive FBI file, at the University of Michigan.

      The collection of Tom Hayden’s papers will be open to the public, starting in the middle of September.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • UK Police Make Third ‘Pirate’ Streaming Arrest

        The UK’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit arrested a man yesterday believed to have operated streaming sites that provided illegal access to subscription-only sports TV services. The arrest marks the third carried out by PIPCU in the streaming sector.

09.01.14

Links 1/9/2014: Poettering on systemd, ITNews on DBMSs

Posted in News Roundup at 4:24 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Ten Linux Desktops Showing Just How Far Behind Mac OS X and Windows Designs Are

    Linux doesn’t have any kind of PR, and in the collective mind of the people, there is still an impression that Linux users spend their time inside the terminal and in dreary desktops. In fact, most of the current Linux desktops are much better than anything made by Apple of Microsoft.

  • Lennart Poettering Talks Up His New Linux Vision That Involves Btrfs

    Lennart Poettering of systemd and PulseAudio fame has published a lengthy blog post that shares his vision for how he wishes to change how Linux software systems are put together to address a wide variety of issues. The Btrfs file-system and systemd play big roles with his new vision.

  • Revisiting How We Put Together Linux Systems

    Of course, we are developers of the systemd project. Implementing this scheme is not just a job for the systemd developers. This is a reinvention how distributions work, and hence needs great support from the distributions. We really hope we can trigger some interest by publishing this proposal now, to get the distributions on board. This after all is explicitly not supposed to be a solution for one specific project and one specific vendor product, we care about making this open, and solving it for the generic case, without cutting corners.

  • Desktop

    • Linux has run out of time – I looked into the trap, Jim

      Is Word better than LibreOffice Writer or is LibreOffice Writer better than Word? Is Android better than Apple? Were Nirvana better than Pearl Jam? Which were better “The Beatles” or “The Rolling Stones”?

      Microsoft Word has a lot of flaws that people seem to gloss over. Bullets and numbering for instance are just random. The fonts change, the numbering changes, the indentation changes and for no apparent reason.

      The Microsoft ribbon bars have surely just been added to sell training courses because there is no way they are better than menus, toolbars and keyboard shortcuts. Everything we have been used to for 20 years all switched around for no seemingly good reason. I don’t like it when my local supermarket rearranges all the shelves for no apparent reason either. If you want a ribbon bar then there is always Kingsoft Office.

  • Server

    • Matching databases to Linux distros

      Relational database management systems (RDBMSs) aren’t the sort of thing to get most folk out of bed in the morning – unless, of course, you happen to think they’re one of the most brilliant concepts ever dreamed up.

      These days you can’t sneeze without someone turning it into a table value in a database somewhere – and in combination with the freely available Linux operating system, there’s no end to them.

      Most Linux distros make it almost trivial to add popular DBMSs to your system, such as MySQL and MariaDB, by bundling them in for free in their online app stores. But how do you tell which combination – which Linux distro and which DBMS – will give you the best performance?

      This week we’ve revved up the Labs servers to ask the question: what level of performance do you get from OS repository-sourced DBMSs?

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux 3.17-rc3

      I’m back to the usual Sunday release schedule, and -rc3 is out there
      now. As expected, it is larger than rc2, since people are clearly
      getting back from their Kernel Summit travels etc. But happily, it’s
      not *much* larger than rc2 was, and there’s nothing particularly odd
      going on, so I’m going to just ignore the whole “it’s summer”
      argument, and hope that things are just going that well.

      Please don’t prove me wrong,

      Linus

    • Linux 3.17-rc3 Kernel Released Back On Schedule

      Linus Torvalds is back to his rhythm of releasing new kernel release candidates on Sundays.

      After Linux 3.17-rc2 was released last Monday to celebrate 23 years of Linux, Torvalds is now back in Portland and doing his Sunday release rhythm.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Mesa 10.3 release candidate 2

        Mesa 10.3 release candidate 2 is now available for testing. The current plan of record is to have an additional release candidate each Friday until the 10.3 release on Friday, September 12th.

        The tag in the GIT repository for Mesa 10.3-rc2 is ‘mesa-10.3-rc2′. I have verified that the tag is in the correct place in the tree.

      • Mesa 10.3 RC2 Arrives Via Its New Release Manager
      • Nouveau X.Org Driver Released With DRI3+Present, Maxwell, GLAMOR

        The Nouveau development community released the xf86-video-nouveau 1.0.11 driver update to kick off the start of September. While you wouldn’t guess it from the version number, this driver update is actually very significant and introduces a lot of new functionality and other improvements.

    • Benchmarks

      • Preview: AMD’s FX-9590 Eight-Core At Up To 5.0GHz On Linux

        Since last year AMD’s had the FX-9590 as the top-end Vishera CPU that can top out at 5.0GHz with its Turbo Frequency, but initially this processor was only available to OEM system builds. Over time the OEM version of the FX-9590 became available to consumers while earlier this summer AMD launched a retail version of the FX-9590 that included the eight-core CPU with a closed-loop water cooling solution. Today we’re reviewing this highest-end Vishera CPU to see how it compares to other AMD and Intel processors on Ubuntu Linux.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • AMBIANCE & RADIANCE COLORS THEMES UPDATED WITH XFCE FIXES

      Quick update for Ambiance & Radiance Colors fans: the theme pack was updated (version 14.04.6) today with quite a few Xfce fixes such as: fixed window borders on non-Debian distros, fixed Xfce GTK3 indicator background and more.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Personal clones on KDE infrastructure

        I’m doing a little work on Tupi – the 2D animation application that joined the KDE community some months back — so that it builds on FreeBSD (the C++ code is wonderful, but the build system is qonf, which is not).

        This has led me to the maze of git documentation on KDE’s infrastructure, and I’m taking notes so I don’t forget what I did. It’s also part of one of the things-to-do-at-Akademy on my list: talk to the techbase people to find out what the status and intentions are.

      • THE AWESOMELY EPIC GUIDE TO KDE

        Desktops on Linux. They’re a concept completely alien to users of other operating systems because they never having to think about them. Desktops must feel like the abstract idea of time to the Amondawa tribe, a thought that doesn’t have any use until you’re in a different environment. But here it is – on Linux you don’t have to use the graphical environment lurking beneath your mouse cursor. You can change it for something completely different. If you don’t like windows, switch to xmonad. If you like full-screen apps, try Gnome. And if you’re after the most powerful and configurable point-and-click desktop, there’s KDE.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Try GNOME 3.14 Beta 1 with Wayland Without Installing Anything

        GNOME is working to implement official Wayland support for the upcoming 3.14 release and they seem to be more than half way there. It’s difficult to test the new GNOME 3.14 Beta updates that have been made until now, especially with the Wayland integration, but a Reddit user posted a short and easy-to-follow tutorial in this regard.

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • Black Lab Linux 5.1 Released

        Today we are pleased to release the next in the 5 series of Black Lab Linux. Black Lab Linux 5.1 contains many updates, new features and enhancements to the Black Lab Linux distribution.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Debconf Wrapup

        Debconf14 started with a Meet and Greet before the Welcome Talk. I got to meet people and find out what they do for Debian. I also got to meet other GSoC students that I had only previously interacted with online. During the Meet and Greet I also met one of my mentors for GSoC, Zack. Later in the conference I met another of my mentors, Piotr. Previously I only interacted with Zack and Piotr online.

      • Derivatives

  • Devices/Embedded

    • The Curious Case of Raspberry Pi Consumerism

      I find the attitude of many within the Raspberry Pi community to be strange and offensive.

      I first discovered this odd phenomenon (odd because it contradicts the ethos of the project’s academic foundations) back when it first started, as many within the Raspberry Pi community took an extremely hostile attitude toward academic freedom, apparently in defence of various parties’ highly dubious intellectual monopolies (Broadcom and MPEG-LA, for example).

      I pointed out the irony and hypocrisy of their attitude at the time, explaining that they were more than happy to leech Free (as in freedom) Software for their own benefit, but then balked at the prospect of freely sharing the results, and in particular this contradicted their stated academic goal of facilitating better computer education in UK schools, an environment that rightly demands open access to knowledge.

    • A web browser for the Raspberry Pi

      Since the first beta release we have made huge improvements; now the browser is more responsive, it’s faster, and videos work much better (the first beta could play 640×360 videos at 0.5fps, now we can play 25fps 1280×720 videos smoothly). Some web sites are still a bit slow (if they are heavy on the JavaScript side), but there’s not much we can do for web sites that, even on my laptop with an Intel Core i7, use 100% of one of the cores for more than ten seconds.

    • Phones

      • Android

        • The Trouble With Android

          At my house we have a second generation Nexus 7. I don’t use it at all, but my roommate depends on it. Again, it’s a beautiful OS, stable and easy to use, but it’s all about selling things. In fact, you can’t even enter the app store without going through a screen that nags you to make a deposit in case you find an app you want to buy — and a way of saying “no thanks, I’m just looking for free apps” isn’t as obvious as it should be.

          Like the Internet, Android is primarily a marketing tool designed by Google, which is primarily a marketing company.

        • Android Build Support Improved For Libdrm

          Emil Velikov, the new Mesa release manager, just landed a large set of libdrm patches for improving the open-source graphics drivers for Android.

Free Software/Open Source

  • 5 tips on migrating to open-source software

    Open source is not just for Linux. Yes, you’ll certainly find a much larger selection of open-source software for the Linux platform, but both Windows and Apple also enjoy a good number of titles. Regardless of what Free Open Source Software (FOSS) you need to use, you might not always find it the most natural evolution — especially when you’ve spent the whole of your career using proprietary software. The thing is, a lot of open-source software has matured to the point where it rivals (and sometimes bests) its proprietary counterpart.

  • Tech kingpins: Your kit would be tastier with a spot of open source

    Of course, I’m not just aiming this blogpost at EMC, I’d also like to see IBM take this approach with GPFS. The open-source products are beginning to be good enough for many, certainly outside of some core performance requirements. Ceph, for example, is really beginning to pick up some momentum, especially now that RedHat has bought Inktank.

  • Events

    • A free culture event in Pakistan

      With regards to the open source community in Pakistan, the situation is analogous to that on Wikipedia. Outside of a core group of members of Mozilla Pakistan and Linux Pakistan, the majority of internet users are not familiar with the free culture and open movements. This, in all likelihood, is due to a lack of widespread awareness of the movements.

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Google Chrome 38 Beta Brings New Guest Mode and Easier Incognito Mode Switching

        The developers have explained that the user switching feature has been redesigned and it will make changing profiles and into the incognito mode a lot simple. They have also added a new experimental Guest mode, a new experimental UI for Chrome supervised users has been implemented, and numerous under-the-hood changes have been made for stability and performance.

    • Mozilla

      • Indian Firefox OS phones start at $33

        Intex and Spice launched the first Firefox OS phones in India using a low-cost Spreadtrum design: the $33 Intex Cloud FX and the $38 Spice Fire One Mi-FX 1.

      • Mozilla Firefox 32 Officially Released

        It’s been a little over a month since the previous Firefox stable release and the developers have now pushed a new major update to users. This latest iteration of Firefox brings just a few major features for regular users, but it excels in other areas like better HTML 5 support.

      • Mozilla Improving Security Processes After Exposing Developer Data

        Users of the Mozilla Developer Network and Bugzilla testing system are advised to update their passwords after a pair of data disclosures were reported in August.

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Databases

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • On my way to the LiboCon 2014!

      There are many, many interesting talks this year, and I cannot resist to remind you of the two talks I’ll be giving, even though Italo and I will also be on the deck for a few talks about LibreOffice marketing especially on Wednesday.

  • BSD

    • PfSense 2.1.5 Is a Free and Powerful FreeBSD-Based Firewall Operating System

      PfSense is a free network firewall distribution based on the FreeBSD, it comes with a custom kernel, and a few quite powerful applications that should make its users’ life a lot easier. Most of the firewall distros are Linux-based, but PfSense is a little bit different and is using FreeBSD. Regular users won’t feel anything out of the ordinary, but it’s an interesting choice for the base.

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government

    • Code for Germany project launches

      Each OK Lab is a source of a great variety of projects, tackling different social issues and topics. For example, the OK Lab in Hamburg has a strong focus on urban development, and has created a map which shows the distribution of playgrounds in the city. An app from the OK Lab Heilbronn depicts the quality of tap water by region, and another from the OK Lab Cologne helps users find the closest defibrillator in their area. One more of our favorite developments is called “Kleiner Spatz”, which translates to “Little Sparrow,” and helps parents to find free child care in their city.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Standards/Consortia

Leftovers

  • Sports fan lobbyist fights NFL blackouts, taxpayer-funded stadiums, and Comcast

    Since 1973, the National Football League has prevented local TV stations from broadcasting games when tickets aren’t sold out—and Federal Communications Commission rules enable this decidedly fan-unfriendly policy. The rules are finally close to being overturned, and if they are you can thank David Goodfriend.

    Founder of the Sports Fans Coalition, Goodfriend is an attorney and lobbyist with years of experience in government and private industry. He was a Clinton Administration official, a Congressional staffer, legal advisor at the FCC, and executive at Dish Network. The Sports Fans Coalition teamed with four consumer advocacy organizations in 2011 to petition the FCC to stop supporting the NFL’s blackout regime.

  • Silence to mark the 100th anniversary of the death of last ever passenger pigeon

    Conservationists will fall silent at noon today to mark the hundredth anniversary of the death of Martha, the last ever passenger pigeon – just as a new project is set up to bring the species back from the dead.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Ecuador: WikiLeaks cables show US how used ‘democracy promotion’ to push corporate interests

      Ecuador’s pro-US neoliberal president Lucio Gutierrez was ousted in 2005. Since then, relations between Ecuador and the United States have deteriorated, with the Andean nation’s increasing rejection of US hegemony.

      The government of Rafael Correa, first elected in 2006, has broken from the neoliberal doctrines Washington has imposed on Latin America. It has embraced regional integration, moving closer to its neighbours and further away from the US.

      Diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks show how hard the US fought to control Ecuador’s future post-Gutierrez.

      They show a key element of US efforts to control Ecuador’s political and economic direction in the post-Gutierrez years was the US Embassy’s “democracy promotion” activity.

      So-called “democracy promotion” came to prominence as a method for maintaining US hegemony in the 1980s.

    • The New Terrorism

      We had the first proof of this strategy with the decryp­ted mil­it­ary film “Col­lat­eral Murder”, where heli­copter pilots shot up some Reu­ters journ­al­ists and civil­ians in Iraq in 2007. That was bad enough — but the cover-up stank. For years the Pentagon denied all know­ledge of this atro­cious war crime, and it was only after Wikileaks released the inform­a­tion, provided by the brave whis­tleblower Chelsea Man­ning, that the fam­il­ies and the inter­na­tional com­munity learned the truth. Yet it is Man­ning, not the war crim­in­als, who is serving a 35 year sen­tence in a US prison.

      Worse, by sheer scale at least, are the ongo­ing, wide-ranging unmanned drone attacks across the Middle East and Cent­ral Asia, as cata­logued by the Bur­eau of Invest­ig­at­ive Journ­al­ism in the UK. Many thou­sands of inno­cents have been murdered in these attacks, with the US jus­ti­fy­ing the strikes as killing “mil­it­ants” — ie any male over the age of 14. The US is mur­der­ing chil­dren, fam­il­ies, wed­ding parties and vil­lage coun­cils with impunity.

    • The game-changer in global conflicts

      IN THE last 10 years armed unmanned aerial vehicles — drones — have been operated to kill individuals in at least seven countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Palestine, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. Their use is changing the way war is conventionally waged.

    • Fighting erupts between Syrian army, rebels on Golan Heights

      Heavy fighting between Syrian army forces and rebels erupted on the Golan Heights on Monday, a Reuters photographer said, but it was unclear if either of the two sides had gained an advantage to control a key frontier crossing.

      Rebels of al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front have been battling the Syrian army in the area and have wrested control of the crossing at Quneitra, which is operated by the United Nations.

      Persistent small arms fire and explosions from mortar shells and other munitions could be heard on the Israeli-controlled side of the frontier of the strategic plateau, the photographer reported.

      At least one tank belonging to the Syrian army loyal to President Bashar al-Assad was also involved and rebels could be seen a few meters (yards) away from the frontier fence.

      On Sunday, Israel’s military said it shot down a drone that flew from Syria into Israeli-controlled airspace over the Golan.

    • Israel downs drone from Syria over occupied Golan: army
    • UN withdrawal and Syria drone point to new order in Golan

      After four decades, UN supervision on the Syrian border is about to end and Assad’s military is being replaced by more hostile forces.

    • Taking Yemen from bad to worse

      Recent months have witnessed worrying developments in the realm of news media in Yemen. On June 11, the Yemen Today TV Channel was shut down by Presidential Guards on President Hadi’s order following the channel’s coverage of the demonstrations and riots in Sana’a that same day.

    • China reacts guardedly to Narendra Modi’s expansionist remark

      China today reacted guardedly to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remarks of “expansionist” tendency among some countries, saying it is not clear what was he referring to and recalled his earlier comments that India and China are strategic partners.

      “We have noted relevant information about Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Japan. You just mentioned comments made by him I don’t know what is he referring to,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a media briefing here when asked about Modi’s remarks made during his ongoing visit to Japan.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Danish Police Arrest Sea Shepherd Team Trying to Stop Faroe Islands Whale Slaughter

      The Royal Danish Navy arrested 14 volunteers from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society on Saturday for trying to intervene in the slaughter of 33 pilot whales in the Faroe Islands, a protectorate of Denmark.

      A team of six Sea Shepherd volunteers spotted a pod of pilot whales from shore on Sandoy Island in the remote North Atlantic archipelago on Saturday and alerted Sea Shepherd’s small flotilla of boats, which has been patrolling the icy waters for nearly three months. Sea Shepherd has been trying to stop the annual Faroese whale hunt known as grindadráp, or grind.

    • Sea Shepherd crew members released

      A total of 14 volunteer crew members of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s pilot whale defence campaign Operation GrindStop 2014 arrested on Saturday in the Faroe Islands today have been released.

      As of Sunday morning, all 14 Sea Shepherd crew have been released. The six volunteers from the land team must return to court tomorrow, Monday, September 1. The eight members of the boat team have been told to return to court on September 25. Postponing the court date until that time allows the police to hold the three Sea Shepherd boats until the end of September, as they are being held for “evidence.” All video and still camera data cards were removed by police and are still being held. Sea Shepherd attorneys are working to have them returned as well.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • New Docs Undermine Walker’s Statements on Criminal Probe

      Despite claims that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is not a “target” in the state’s criminal campaign finance probe, newly-released documents demonstrate that prosecutors are indeed looking at potentially criminal activity by the first-term governor and 2016 presidential hopeful.

      The latest round of documents released in Wisconsin’s “John Doe” investigation shine new light on the stalled inquiry into alleged illegal coordination between Walker’s campaign and outside political groups like Wisconsin Club for Growth (WiCFG) during the 2011-2012 recall elections.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

  • Intellectual Monopolies

Moving Away From Windows to GNU/Linux and the Abandonment of Windows as the Modest Proposal These Days

Posted in Asia, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 2:54 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Good news for “Free software” team

Soccer players

Summary: Morale of GNU/Linux and an embrace of GNU/Linux is very high, despite recent propaganda from Microsoft MVPs and boosters (primarily security-themed and Munich-themed FUD)

Any nation that still uses the back doors which are Microsoft software ought to wake up and make immediate changes. Russia and China are already making rapid changes. Korea (South Korea to be precise) is following suit. But that’s old news.

Microsoft is abandoning operating systems in a way that compromises security in very mission-critical operations. Clients get abandoned and they are helpless. They cannot even access source code, so messy patches at binary level is all they have left.
“Microsoft replaces a broken update with one that’s even more broken than the first one,” says Ryan in our IRC channels, citing Woody Leonhard’s report [via] about increasing fragility of Windows:

Microsoft re-releases botched MS14-045/KB 2982791 ‘Blue Screen 0×50′ patch, buries tip to manually uninstall first patch, and introduces more problems

Windows is a total mess. A lot of those involved in developing it have left and it truly shows. Just look what a mess recent releases of Windows have been, both when released and when patched (bricked).

Some rumours suggest that Microsoft may be gradually abandoning Windows altogether. “According to unconfirmed media reports,” says The Mukt, “IT giants like Amazon, Samsung, Yahoo! and Microsoft are in talks to either acquire or partner with Cyanogen, a company which forked the Android Open Source Project and has become quite popular lately.”

Over at IDG, Microsoft’s booster Preston Gralla thinks that Windows for mobile should be completely abandoned. This is quoting a Microsoft advocate who makes money from Windows: “It’s been nearly four years since Microsoft first released Windows Phone, and what it has gotten after many millions of dollars in development and marketing costs, plus its $7.2 billion acquisition of Nokia, is this: a worldwide smartphone market share of less than 3 percent. And that number has been going down, not up.

“Ask any smart businessperson whether that investment is a good one, and you’ll get a straightforward answer: no. Over at Microsoft, though, they think differently. Rather than abandoning Windows Phone, they’re doubling down and making an even bigger bet on the struggling smartphone operating system. A company with Bill Gates’ DNA will never willingly admit defeat, but in this case it may be time to do just that and instead hitch its mobile wagon to Android.”

Sarcastically, my co-host Tim writes:

Microsoft has deleted 1500 apps which presumably are spam/fakes/malicious from its store. Surely this must only leave about 2 left?

Over in China people are now being moved to COS, especially for mobile devices on the face of it (although COS is said to be based on Ubuntu). There is an antitrust case there against Microsoft because China may have gotten its documents stuck in Office, which is not running natively on GNU and Linux. The Register is spinning lock-in complaints as “compatibility”, saying that “China’s antitrust regulator has given Microsoft 20 days to hand over a written explanation of how the Windows OS works together with the bundled Office software suite as part of its probe into the firm’s alleged monopoly activities.”

It sure looks like China is very serious about getting rid of Microsoft this time around. The Web version of Office has already been banned and the same goes for the latest versions of Windows. █

Korean Press Slams Microsoft Over Patent Extortion Against Linux/Android as New Abuses Resurface

Posted in Finance, Microsoft, Patents at 2:34 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Is this BusinessKorea’s depiction of Elop and Ballmer?

Nokia trolls
Image from BusinessKorea

Summary: Harsh words from the national press of South Korea as Nokia’s role in Microsoft’s anti-Linux tactics becomes more apparent

MICROSOFT is a big loser, but a dangerous loser nonetheless. Microsoft is above the law in many countries and it knows it. So, inevitably, Microsoft acts like it always has and it resorts to criminal activities in an attempt to destroy the competition. It’s just the same old Microsoft, acting like a spoiled brat and a bully.

Last week the Korean press was portraying Microsoft and Nokia as trolls (pay attention to the photos in this article). To quote the opening paragraphs:

Korean Industry Demanding Measures against Patent Offensives by Nokia, Microsoft

The local electronics industry is demanding stricter conditions for the approval of Microsoft’s purchase of Nokia by the Korea Fair Trade Commission (FTC). The demand is attributable to the fact that those conditions will inevitably have a huge influence on the industry.

Remember that the criminals from Microsoft (crimes like racketeering and conspiracy to extort from multiple directions, patent-stacking, etc.) recently sued the increasingly-confused Samsung, which became a litigation/extortion target of Nokia (e.g. via MOSAID) and Microsoft trolling.

European regulators have already warned about this. They seem to know what Microsoft is up to. For those who still insist that Microsoft is not a crime syndicate masquerading as a company this report can serve as a reminder:

Business Korea has just published a very provocative piece that depicts a monstrous troll attacking its home country’s pride and joy, Samsung. That troll, you’ll be surprised to learn, is Nokia.

The reason for this is easy to understand: Samsung may be forced to pay one of the history’s biggest patent royalty sums to Nokia, and fellow Korean electronics titan LG is not scot free, either.

What unleashed the beast in the Finnish company was its decision to sell its handset division to Microsoft a while back. As long as Nokia was a phone company, it was bound by a web of cross-licensing deals limiting how much it can charge for its thousands of handset-related patents. Nokia needed to use both essential and non-essential patents held by Samsung, Apple, Motorola and other industry giants, which put a rather severe cap on how much it could charge other phone vendors.

Microsoft is not even interested in Nokia as a producing company, based on recent layoffs that affect Finland while Microsoft is avoiding many billions in tax. As one of the latest articles put it, “Microsoft’s Staggering Tax Dodge Alone Would Fund the Entire State of Washington for Two Years”. This was pointed out by a former Microsoft employee who protested against this, but suddenly it’s all news again:

Reading companies’ annual reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission is a reliable cure for insomnia. Every so often, though, there is a significant revelation in the paperwork. This year, one of the most important revelations came from Microsoft’s filings, which spotlighted how the tax code allows corporations to enjoy the benefits of American citizenship yet avoid paying U.S. taxes.

According to the SEC documents, the company is sitting on almost $29.6 billion it would owe in U.S. taxes if it repatriated the $92.9 billion of earnings it is keeping offshore. That amount of money represents a significant spike from prior years.

When people insist there there is a ‘new’ and reformed Microsoft be sure to recall and pointed the racketeering, the massive tax evasion, and many more of Microsoft systemic abuses. The company deserves to have no more than zero employees, or many who are in prison. But when corporations control politics this is unlikely to happen any time soon. The criminals not only get away with crime; they get wealthy and they hide their wealth from the state. █

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