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04.29.15

Pharmaceutical Patents and Hedge Funds: Evil Fighting Evil

Posted in Patents at 8:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Revisiting the subject of patents on life or life-saving processes, plus a hedge fund’s extortion-type attack on such patents (for quick profit)

TECHRIGHTS has been focused on software patents, but in earlier years there were quite a few articles here about other notorious kinds of patents that should not at all exist because they kill a lot of people and contribute nothing at all to innovation, progress etc. They are clearly against public interests.

“We examine the effect of pharmaceutical patent protection on the speed of drug launch, price, and quantity in 60 countries from 2000-2013,” said this new article about evidence from TRIPS, responding to some rather disturbing developments around patents and lobbying from pharmaceutical giants (seeking more protectionism from governments, especially Canada’s). See last week’s article “Startup Pledges To Cut Cost Of Breast Cancer Genetic Testing From $4000 To $249″. It says that a “startup called Color Genomics is announcing that it will provided genetic testing for breast and ovarian cancer – the same genetic tests that led Angelina Jolie to have her breasts and ovaries surgically removed – at one-sixteenth the cost of the main test that is currently used.”

“They are now using patents, or threats of invalidation thereof, to manipulate markets.”This isn’t about pharmaceuticals’ abuse but it is related to it and it tackles patents which pertain to life — patents that oughtn’t exist in the first place.

Much of the news coverage this month actually revolved around a case which was mentioned here before because of the very dirty tricks involved (“hedge funds are extorting money from pharmaceutical companies by either filing or threatening to file for re-exam,” is how Steph put it). The Wall Street media wrote: “A well-known hedge-fund manager is taking a novel approach to making money: filing and publicizing patent challenges against pharmaceutical companies while also betting against their shares.”

Other Wall Street media wrote: “Shire Plc is “confident” it will prevail against a U.S. hedge fund’s challenge to its drug patents after winning a similar fight with Actavis Plc, according to an intellectual-property attorney for the Dublin-based company.”

The Financial Times went with the headline “Shire rebuffs hedge fund’s attack on patents” and various Wall Street-centric sites covered it 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] without paying much attention to the unethical side/aspect. Here is a press release, coverage from lawyers’ media, and some from pharmaceuticals’ media [1, 2, 3]. Since one party is Irish, even the Irish press covered it, adding to a lot of other reports in English [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].

To put it in very simple terms, what we have here is abuse by gambling agencies/firms (hedge funds) that so often act like vultures in order to make a quick buck. They are now using patents, or threats of invalidation thereof, to manipulate markets. We have sympathy for neither side because both hedge funds and companies that hoard patents on drugs (to artificially elevate prices) are deeply unethical. Both have been criticised here before. █

UCLA Foolishly Grooms Microsoft’s Patent Troll Nathan Myhrvold (Intellectual Ventures), Who is Busy Attacking Android and Linux These Days

Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 7:46 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

UCLA

Summary: More news about Intellectual Ventures, Microsoft’s and Bill Gates’ anti-Linux tool, who lost a battle because of last year’s SCOTUS ruling and is now groomed by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

THE PATENT troll known as Intellectual Ventures is so vast that it does not need an introduction. It is one of the most hated entities in the world, rivalling even ALEC (which Bill Gates financially supported, just like he financially supports Intellectual Ventures). This monstrous patent troll is very closely connected to Microsoft and people from Microsoft. Just look who’s heading and funding Intellectual Ventures. To quote leaked E-mails, “Intellectual Ventures, the investment vehicle and sometime patent troll set up by former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold [has] taken to market by TerraPower, which is partially funded by Gates.”

Well, we wrote about this ‘special’ TerraPower relationship several years ago. This greedy bunch is looting; it’s looking to profit together, as once again Gates is subsidising his mate Nathan Myhrvold, in order for both Gates and Intellectual Ventures (and sometimes Microsoft) to profit, often at the expense of the public. That’s a disturbing pattern which we have shown repeatedly and demonstrated for almost a decade now.

“All we have here is a patent troll who attacks Microsoft’s rivals, including Android and Linux.”Last week we wrote about Microsoft's troll (Intellectual Ventures) losing software patents. This is important because Intellectual Ventures attacks Linux and Android (even this month, as we highlighted weeks ago). Something must be done about these vultures (not ventures). All we have here is a patent troll who attacks Microsoft’s rivals, including Android and Linux. It is run by a friend of Bill Gates, who uses Gates’ and Microsoft’s money to attack their rivals. One potential solution to this is not to crush trolls but to crush software patents. As it turns out, based on this report, it was the SCOTUS decision regarding Alice that demolished these vultures’ agenda. Quoting The Register: “A US district court has torn the heart out of two patents wielded by Intellectual Ventures against two antivirus makers.

“In a judgment [PDF] this week, Chief Judge Leonard Stark ruled that Intellectual Ventures’ US patents 6,460,050 and 6,073,142 were “ineligible,” meaning they are too vague and the technologies they described unpatentable.

“The ’142 and ’050 patents described email filters designed to catch spam and malware. A third Intellectual Ventures patent, 5,987,610, which described “computer virus screening methods and systems”, was upheld by the judge.”

Here is some subsequent press coverage and a press release. As one headline put it, “Citing ‘Alice,’ Judge Squashes IV Email-Sorting Patents”. It says that “Latham’s Douglas Lumish and Paul Hastings’ Yar Chaikovsky teamed up in a successful Section 101 attack on two Intellectual Ventures patents.”

This helps show that trolls can be combated by squashing software patents, not just by obsessing over patent trolls (the small ones, not big ones like Microsoft).

We were shocked and disgusted to discover last night that UCLA put this horrible troll in a commencement ceremony. An article’s author, Ara Shirinian, decided to write about this without mincing words. He complained and said that “keynote speaker for UCLA’s commencement ceremony has just been announced as Nathan Myhrvold. He is the cofounder of Intellectual Ventures, the worlds biggest “patent troll,” a company that exploits the loopholes in the patent-granting system by collecting patents and suing other companies, both big and small, hoping to get a piece of their revenue.”

Watch the comment which says “Intellectual Ventures is the patent troll division of Microsoft. It exists to keep the large foot of Microsoft Corporation firmly on the throat of the entire Tech Industry.”

This article drew attention from Tim Wilson, who asked: “Will UCLA students protest patent troll founder’s selection as commencement speaker?”

They definitely should. UCLA has too much pride and reputation to associate itself with parasites and aggressors. Are they actually paying this troll for his self promotion? █

04.28.15

Links 28/4/2015: Plasma 5.3, Cutelyst 0.8.0

Posted in News Roundup at 6:21 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Citrix Delivers Linux Virtual Desktop Offering

      Citrix is out with some interesting moves in the Linux virtual desktop arena. The company has a new kit called the “Linux Virtual Desktop Tech Preview” which is available here for XenApp or XenDesktop customers with active Subscription Advantage accounts. Citrix Partners can get it as well.

    • Chrome OS will get Lucid sleep mode

      François Beaufort, a Google developer, writes on his Google+ page that Chrome OS is receiving the ability to perform some Wifi functions while the device is sleeping.

    • VXL Launches Gio 6 Linux OS for its Suite of Thin, Cloud and Zero Client Desktop

      VXL Instruments has developed and designed exclusively in-house, VXL’s new, industry-leading Gio 6 Linux operating system features a new look, user-friendly design together with greater flexibility, connectivity, security and multimedia capabilities.

  • Server

    • Linux vendor Cumulus rolls out management pack

      Linux network operating system developer Cumulus Networks this week at Interop rolled out a management platform that provides a common interface and operational process for data center racks.

      The Cumulus Rack Management Platform is based on the company’s Cumulus Linux network operating system code base. Out-of-band management switches running Cumulus RMP may be managed by the same Linux toolsets as both servers and data-plane switches running Cumulus Linux, the company says.

    • VMware Draws on Open Source to Manage Cloud Micro Services

      VMware last week released details about two new open source projects that aim to bridge the divide between the company’s virtualization software and other vendors’ containers. Both projects integrate into VMware’s unified platform for the hybrid cloud, allowing the company to create a consistent environment for cloud-native and traditional applications.

  • Kernel Space

    • A Brief Update On Fwupd For Linux Firmware Updating Of Devices

      One of the latest focuses of prolific free software developer Richard Hughes has been on fwupd, an open-source and easy way to update device firmware.

      Fwupd is part of the initiative to make updating of UEFI/BIOS easily from the Linux desktop and fwupd can be used for updating the firmware of peripheral devices like Richard Hughes’ ColorHug device.

    • Updating OpenHardware Firmware

      One of the use-cases I’ve got for fwupd is for updating firmware on small OpenHardware projects. It doesn’t make sense for each of the projects to write a GUI firmware flash program when most of them are using a simple HID or DFU bootloader to do basically the same thing. We can abstract out the details, and just require the upstream project to provide metadata about what is fixed in each update that we can all share.

    • Graphics Stack

      • AMD Radeon R9 290 OpenGL On Ubuntu 15.04: Catalyst vs. RadeonSI Gallium3D

        While I’ve posted some new AMD OpenGL benchmarks on Ubuntu 15.04 since last week’s release of the Vivid Vervet, the Radeon R9 290 wasn’t tested since at that time this Hawaii graphics card was busy on other Phoronix test systems. However, due to the interest level in seeing some fresh Ubuntu 15.04 numbers for the Radeon R9 290 series, here’s some numbers.

      • Nouveau NVC0 Gallium3D Driver Now Exposes GLSL 4.10

        While there’s still more work to be done before advertising OpenGL 4.0~4.1 compliance, the Nouveau NVC0 Gallium3D driver is now advertising support for GLSL 410 (4.10), the GL Shading Language version to match OpenGL 4.1.

      • GTX 750 Maxwell Acceleration Starts Working On Nouveau With Linux 4.1

        While the Nouveau developers remain blocked by NVIDIA on bringing up accelerated support for the GeForce GTX 900 series, with the forthcoming Linux 4.1 kernel there is initial GeForce GTX 750 “Maxwell” accelerated support out-of-the-box.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Distributions

    • BackBox Linux 4.2 Is a Complete Penetration Testing Distro Based on Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS [corrected URL]

      BackBox Linux, a distribution based on Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS, developed perform penetration tests and security assessments has just received a new update and is now ready for download.

    • New Releases

    • Screenshots/Screencasts

    • Red Hat Family

      • Fedora

        • CUDA enabled programs

          There is a new repository available with CUDA enabled programs in package format. This contains programs that have been linked to CUDA libraries or have CUDA support enabled. At the moment this is available only on Fedora 21, if there is sufficient feedback I will enable it also for other distributions.

        • Making It Easier To Deploy CUDA On Fedora

          While Fedora 21 ships with decent OpenCL support, if you’re running the binary NVIDIA graphics driver on Fedora Linux and wishing to use CUDA-accelerated programs, it’s a little bit easier today thanks to a new third-party package repository.

        • FLISOL Panama 2015 Report

          Panama Fedora team participated in Festival Latinoamericano de Instalación de Software Libre (FLISOL) given on Saturday, April 25th at Universidad del Istmo, main campus.

    • Debian Family

      • Debian 8.0 Jessie Debuts After Two Years of Effort

        New Debian releases don’t occur every day, or even every year. This past week, Debian 8.0 codenamed Jessie was released after nearly two years of development effort. Debian is the first major milestone update for the GNU/Linux distribution since Wheezy was released in 2013.

      • why not trying to package Hadoop in Debian?

        OpenStack Sahara already provides the reproducible deployment system which you seem to wish. We “only” need Hadoop itself.

      • Backporting and git-buildpackage

        For working with Debian packages, one method of maintaining them is to put them in git and use git-buildpackage to build them right out of the git repository. There are a few pitfalls with it, notably around if you forget to import the upstream you get this strange treeish related error which still throws me at first when I see it.

      • Derivatives

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Arrow Electronics Joins Open-Source Software Pioneer Linaro to Help Bring Innovative New Boards to Market
    • Compact embedded PC runs Linux on Bay Trail

      Aaeon’s ruggedized, 158 x 95 x 20mm “Boxer-6403″ PC offers Celeron or Atom SoCs, plus four USB ports and double helpings of GbE, serial, and mini-PCIe I/O.

    • Phones

      • Tizen

        • Learn more about the Tizen Web Application Development Process

          Tizen is a new Linux based HTML5 centric Operating System that will offer developers a great opportunity for developers to bring their existing or new apps to a brand new ecosystem, where they actually have a chance of being discovered, and better still stand a chance of generating some real cash revenue.

        • Samsung’s 4K SUHD Smart Tizen TV

          The Samsung Smart TV revolution is upon us, and Samsung promises to redefine your viewing experience with television. We now have curved screens that feel more natural to watch as we see the world in a non-linear way, so why should we watch TV on a flat screen?

          Samsung Tizen TV offers some great image quality and promises to be able to become the Smart hub of your Smart home, allowing you to control peripheral devices from the comfort of your armchair.

      • Android

        • Android could ignite the Nokia of old

          For an entire generation, the name Nokia will stir up a lot of emotion. From the iconic 3210 to the symbolic N95, the pre-smartphone years were Nokia’s heyday and a large majority of current smartphone users will be able to recall using a Nokia handset in their past.

        • Disney’s Infinity Digital Toys Finally Come To Android With The Toy Box 2.0 App

          If you’re not familiar with Disney Infinity, it’s basically the media giant’s answer to digital toys like Skylanders, Angry Birds Telepods, and Nintendo Amiibo. The gist is that you buy your kids RFID-enabled collectible statues, they stick ‘em on a base station, and then they can use digital versions of those characters inside the Disney Infinity game. Is there a technical reason that a completely digital character needs a $15 hunk of physical plastic to unlock? Why certainly, so long as “technical reason” includes “making Disney a boatload of money.”

        • Google blushes over Google Maps showing Android icon urinating on Apple icon

          As of Monday, all was well in Pakistan’s Ayub National Park, at least as far as Google Maps was concerned, which was showing it as a verdant green swath of pixels.

          It was a nice change from the image of Google’s Android icon peeing on an Apple logo: an image that a map prankster uploaded to Google Maps and which had stayed up for an undetermined time.

        • Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Play Edition to get Android 5.1 Lollipop

          The Galaxy S4 may be more than two years old now, but it’s still very much a part of Samsung’s Lollipop upgrade plans. The device has already received an Android 5.0 upgrade, and according to a new report, Google Play Edition variants will get Android 5.1, too.

        • Will This Android Wear Update Fend Off the Apple Watch?

          Meanwhile, Google has kept the ability to customize Android Wear low compared to Android for smartphones and tablets, which has caused several manufacturers to experiment with homegrown solutions. These updates keep Android Wear’s feature set compelling enough to keep most OEMs from venturing out on their own.

        • The Livescribe 3 smartpen finally works with Android devices

          Livescribe has been in the business of merging physical content you generate — things like hand-written notes and voice recordings — with the digital world for years now. The Livescribe 3 “smartpen,” which launched in the fall of 2013, was certainly its most successful attempt to date. The combo of the Livescribe 3 pen alongside specially designed notebooks meant that you could take traditional notes, make drawings, do calculations, or anything else you do with a pen and paper and have them synced to your phone, tablet, or computer. That’s assuming you were an iOS user, of course — the Livescribe 3 only supported Apple’s mobile devices.

        • Samsung Galaxy Android 5.1 Release Details Arrive

          While the Android 5.1 update probably won’t be hitting the Samsung Galaxy S6, Galaxy S5 or Galaxy Note 4 anytime soon, it does appear that the rumored Galaxy Android 5.1 Lollipop update will be hitting at least one device in the near future.

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Security

  • Transparency Reporting

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • ‘All Weather Is Part of Actual Climate’
    • Climate change could drive air conditioning to boost carbon emissions

      The climate is full of feedback loops. When a warming climate melts sea ice, the water that’s left behind reflects far less sunlight, leading to a further warming. Now, some researchers at the University of California Berkeley have looked at a human feedback loop: the relation between climate change and air conditioning. Using Mexico as an example, they find that the rising use of air conditioning may boost the country’s electricity use and carbon emissions by 80 percent before the century is over—but only if economic growth continues at a pace that allows people to buy air conditioners.

  • Finance

    • The End of a Job as We Know It

      The concept of a job, as we know it, is starting to go away.

    • Wall Street Halts Twitter Trading Following Earnings Leak (Liveblog)

      Wall Street briefly halted trading for Twitter stock Tuesday afternoon after the company’s Q1 earnings were leaked early.

      Twitter missed analyst’s revenue projections, and the market reacted as Twitter stock quickly dipped almost 6 percent before trading was halted. Trading then resumed, and the stock finished the day down more than 18 percent.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Vouchers on the Move: Return to School Segregation?

      Twenty-five years ago, Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson signed the nation’s first school voucher bill into law. Pitched as social mobility tickets for minority students, Wisconsin vouchers allow children to attend private, and sometimes religious, schools on the taxpayers’ dime.

  • Censorship

    • Salman Rushdie: The authors boycotting event awarding Charlie Hebdo a prize for free speech are ‘pussies’

      Salman Rushdie has accused fellow authors, including Peter Carey and Michael Ondaatje, of being “pussies” for boycotting an event organised by the free-speech organisation PEN at which the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo is to be given an award.

    • Rieder: Why ‘Charlie Hebdo’ deserves free speech award

      A debate has erupted over the decision by PEN American Center to give its annual Freedom of Expression Courage Award to the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

      It was at the offices of Charlie Hebdo that an assault by Muslim extremists in January left 12 people dead, including the publication’s top editor and a number of prominent cartoonists.

    • Demonoid Blocks Adblock Users – Fair or Fail?

      Demonoid, once one of the Internet’s most popular torrent sites, is now barring users who try to visit the site with advert blocking software Adblock installed. The move raises some interesting questions, not least the value of revenue to torrent sites and the intricacies of whether or not content really should be ‘free’.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

Links 28/4/2015: More on Debian 8 “Jessie”, Fedora 22 Beta Walkthrough

Posted in News Roundup at 7:23 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • 2016 might just be the year of Linux on the (virtual) desktop

    Come November, some “pundit” will declare that next year is the year of Linux on the desktop. This November, expect a twist on that prediction, as 2016 could just perhaps conceivably be the year of virtual Linux desktops now that Citrix has taken kit capable of delivering it into Beta.

    That kit is called the “Linux Virtual Desktop Tech Preview” and can be had here if you’re a XenApp or XenDesktop customer with an active Subscription Advantage account. Citrix Partners can get it too.

  • Desktop

  • Server

  • Kernel Space

    • Anti-Systemd People

      For some reason the men in the Linux community who hate women the most seem to have taken a dislike to systemd. I understand that being “conservative” might mean not wanting changes to software as well as not wanting changes to inequality in society but even so this surprised me. My last blog post about systemd has probably set a personal record for the amount of misogynistic and homophobic abuse I received in the comments. More gender and sexuality related abuse than I usually receive when posting about the issues of gender and sexuality in the context of the FOSS community! For the record this doesn’t bother me, when I get such abuse I’m just going to write more about the topic in question.

    • Unix and Personal Computers: Reinterpreting the Origins of Linux

      So, to sum up: What Linus Torvalds, along with plenty of other hackers in the 1980s and early 1990s, wanted was a Unix-like operating system that was free to use on the affordable personal computers they owned. Access to source code was not the issue, because that was already available—through platforms such as Minix or, if they really had cash to shell out, by obtaining a source license for AT&T Unix. Therefore, the notion that early Linux programmers were motivated primarily by the ideology that software source code should be open because that is a better way to write it, or because it is simply the right thing to do, is false.

    • Linus Torvalds Announces Linux Kernel 4.1 RC1 with Initial ACPI Support for ARM64

      Linus Torvalds announced a few minutes ago, April 27, the immediate availability for download and testing of the first Release Candidate version of the upcoming Linux 4.1 kernel, due for release later this year.

    • Reducing power consumption on Haswell and Broadwell systems

      Haswell and Broadwell (Intel’s previous and current generations of x86) both introduced a range of new power saving states that promised significant improvements in battery life. Unfortunately, the typical experience on Linux was an increase in power consumption. The reasons why are kind of complicated and distinctly unfortunate, and I’m at something of a loss as to why none of the companies who get paid to care about this kind of thing seemed to actually be caring until I got a Broadwell and looked unhappy, but here we are so let’s make things better.

    • Intel Haswell/Broadwell Power Use On Linux Still Moving Lower

      The latest work of Matthew Garrett is on further lowering the power consumption of modern x86 systems powered by Intel’s Haswell and Broadwell processors.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Gallium3D’s HUD Gets New Customization Options

        For the past two years there has been an optional Gallium3D HUD to display various performance-related metrics as an overlay while running OpenGL applications with the Gallium3D drivers. With the latest Mesa Git code, the heads-up display can be a bit more customized.

      • Intel Is Making Some Progress With Compute Shaders

        One of the big extensions of OpenGL 4.3 and also a requirement of OpenGL ES 3.1 is support for compute shaders. While the work isn’t complete yet, Intel’s open-source developers are making progress on GL_ARB_compute_shader support.

    • Benchmarks

      • AMD Radeon GPUs With Linux 4.0 + Mesa 10.6-devel

        For at least the few graphics cards tested, the results of Linux 4.0 + Mesa 10.6-devel didn’t end up being much more interesting than the stock Ubuntu 15.04 numbers with Linux 3.19 and Mesa 10.5. However, for those interested, I’ve enclosed the results in this article. Though the Radeon HD 6870 numbers are missing as with Linux 4.0 stable the graphics card could no longer properly mode-set on this system: the HD 6450, HD 6570, HD 7850, and R9 270X all were fine in this situation.

      • GCC 4.9.2 vs. GCC 5 Benchmarks On An Intel Xeon Haswell

        For those craving some more GCC 5 compiler benchmark numbers following last week’s release of GCC 5.1, here’s some new comparison numbers between GCC 4.9.2 stable and the near-final release candidate of GCC 5.1.

        Pardon for this light article due to still finishing up work on migrating to the new Phoronix web server while separately working to take care of thermal issues coming about in the new Linux benchmarking server room.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KActivities powered recent media in Plasma Media Center

        As you may have already read the blog post from Eike Hein about Building on new pillars: Activities and KPeople in Plasma 5.3, activities can provide the useful information about the recent applications and resources used by them.

      • kreenshot-editor is incubating

        Now, kreenshot-editor is a new Qt-based project that was inspired by Greenshot’s image editor. It is hosted on KDE playground. It focuses on the image editing task, can be invoked from command line and should also provide a resuable editor component which could be integrated into other screencapture tools. The current code is already separated into an image editor widget and the main application.

      • Spring break for the KDE system monitor
      • Kubuntu 15.04 With Plasma 5.3 – A Totally Different Kubuntu

        The latest version of Kubuntu, 15.04, aka Vivid Vervet was released last week and it’s available for free download. With this release it has become the first major distro to ship Plasma 5 as the default desktop environment.

        There are chances that some users may still have bad memories of Kubuntu. It’s true. Back in 2011 when Ubuntu made a switch to Unity, I started looking for alternatives as their desktop environment was not suited for me. I started trying KDE-based distros and Kubuntu was among the top choices. However my experience with the distro was mixed. It was buggy, bloated and GTK apps would look ugly in it. That’s when I found openSUSE and settled down with it.

      • Google Summer of Code 2015

        The list of students accepted to the 2015 edition of Google’s Summer of code has just been published. We’ve got two students this working on Krita: Jouni and Wolthera. Wolthera has been a Krita developer for quite some time, working on color selectors perspective assistants and more, while Jouni has contributed with bug fixes for 2.9.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • A brief glimpse into usability testing

        This provides the description and results of my 1-person usability test for GNOME version 3.14.2. I set up the test environment on a virtual machine running Debian Jessie, and conducted the usability test with only one participant on February 21, 2015.

        When doing usability testing, I strongly believe that understanding the participants is a very important point that we shouldn’t ignore. Here, the tester was a 23 year old female student in computer science, who self-reported a medium level of computer expertise.

  • Distributions

    • BackBox Linux 4.2 Is a Complete Penetration Testing Distro Based on Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS

      BackBox Linux, a distribution based on Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS, developed perform penetration tests and security assessments has just received a new update and is now ready for download.

    • New Releases

    • Screenshots/Screencasts

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

      • Mageia 5 Release Candidate Includes the LXQt Desktop, Supports Intel Broadwell

        After several delays, the Mageia development team, through Rémi Verschelde, announced the immediate availability for download and testing of the Release Candidate version of the upcoming Mageia 5 Linux operating system, due for release sometime in May 2015.

      • Debian 8 and Mageia 5 RC Released Over the Weekend

        What an exciting weekend that just passed. First up, the long-awaited Debian GNU/Linux 8.0 “Jessie” was released in live and traditional installation media. Elsewhere, Mageia 5 Release Candidate was released with UEFI support and other installation improvements. In addition, LibreOffice 4.3.7 was released Saturday as well.

      • All things come to those who wait

        While you wait for the download to complete, all restless and eager that you are to try this new release, let’s talk a bit about this release candidate: what can you expect of it, and why did it take so long?

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Debian 8 Jessie released

        For the first time since 2013 the Debian team have released a major upgrade of Debian, bumping it up to version 8. The new version has gone under the moniker ‘Jessie’, a continuation of the Toy Story themed names.

      • Debian Edu 8.0 Beta 1 Is Now Available for Testing, Based on Debian 8 Jessie

        The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, through Holger Levsen, announced the general availability for download and testing of the first Beta release of the upcoming Debian Edu 8.0 distribution.

      • Debian 8.0 ‘Jessie’ arrives following Ubuntu 15.04 release

        The DEBIAN OPERATING SYSTEM has reached version 8.0 as the company announces the latest edition of the popular Linux distro.

        The Debian ‘Jessie’ release information says: “After almost 24 months of constant development the Debian project is proud to present its new stable version 8 (codename Jessie), which will be supported for the next five years thanks to the combined work of the Debian Security team and the Debian Long Term Support team.”

      • Debian 8 ‘Jessie’ Released: The Road To systemd Is Complete

        Following nearly two years of “constant development”, Debian 8 ‘Jessie’ hit the Web this past weekend. As with Ubuntu 15.04 and its derivatives, all released last week, Debian 8’s most notable feature is the adoption of systemd. With this move, Gentoo becomes the final major distro that doesn’t ship with systemd as default.

      • Debian 8 “Jessie” the GNU/Linux-based operating system released

        After being for almost two years in development, Debian 8 “Jessie” version is now released for download. Debian is a Unix-like computer operating system and a Linux distribution that is composed entirely of free and open-source software, most of which is under the GNU General Public License, and packaged by a group of individuals known as the Debian project.

      • Debian 8 released
      • Debian ships new ‘Jessie’ release with systemd AND sysvinit

        The Debian project is touting new ports for ARM and POWER architectures, a bunch of software updates, an upgraded Gnome desktop and better security in its just-unleashed Jessie release.

        However, El Reg fully expects that the switch to systemd as the default init system will divert at least some attention from the release.

      • Updates tothe Debian sources editor

        If your browser performs automatic updates of the extensions (the default), you should soon be upgraded to version 0.0.10 or later, bringing all those changes to your browser.

        Want to see more? multi-file editing? emacs and vim editing modes? in-browser storage of the modified files? that and more can be done, so feel free to join me and contribute to the Debian sources editor!

      • Debian 8 Linux moves to systemd by default and drops Itanium and Sparc

        Debian, one of the most widely used Linux distributions, has been updated with the release of Debian 8 ‘Jessie’, which now uses systemd to initialise the system and ships with updated versions of the Gnome desktop and numerous other enhancements.

      • These Are Good Days

        I decided to use the last hour of my day to install Debian GNU/Linux 8, Jessie, again, this time with defaults from “tasksel”: Debian desktop XFCE and “base utilities”. I did this in a virtual machine while grooving to a stream of my local “oldies” radio-station, checking the weather on the web, blogging, browsing the web and Beast’s CPU is barely above idling speed, and I’m nowhere near out of RAM. It’s all surreal compared to the work we had to do in the old days: downloading multiple .iso files, burning CDs, checking them for defects…, having the installation fail to boot or not start X, and the old systems ground away for an hour or more. Heck, Beast doesn’t even have a CD-drive these days.

      • GLT15: Slides of my “Debian 8 aka jessie, what’s new” talk

        I wasn’t sure whether I would make it to Linuxdays Graz (GLT15) this year so I didn’t participate in its call for lectures. But when meeting folks on the evening before the main event I came up with the idea of giving a lightning talk as special kind of celebrating the Debian jessie release.

      • virt-builder Debian 8 (Jessie) image

      • Derivatives

        • Debian-Based Distribution Updated With KDE 3.5 Forked Desktop

          Q4OS 1.2 “Orion” is the new release that is re-based on Debian Jessie, focused on shipping its own desktop utilities and customizations, and designed to run on both old and new hardware.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Is Ubuntu moving away from .deb packages? Here is the complete story

            Canonical loves to shake things up. After introducing Unity, HUD, Mir, Click and Snappy the sponsor of Ubuntu is now contemplating moving away from just .deb based desktop and adopting its own Snappy.

          • My Ubuntu Phone is here!

            The BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition comes in a nice, fancy package, with the right dose of orange color. Inside the box, you will find a phone that’s neither too big nor too slim. It’s more like what the mainstream market used to offer a couple of years ago, which makes far more sense than the ultra-slippery models today. Aquaris reminds me of iPhone 4, not that I’m a great connoisseur of phones and what they should be like, but that’s how it is.

          • First impressions of Ubuntu 15.04

            Canonical’s Ubuntu operating system is probably the most widely used Linux distribution in the world. Ubuntu is made available in several editions, including desktop builds, server builds and there is a branch of Ubuntu for mobile phones. Ubuntu provides installation images for the x86, ARM and Power PC architectures, allowing the distribution to run on a wide variety of hardware. The most recent release of Ubuntu, version 15.04, includes a fairly short list of changes compared to last year’s Ubuntu 14.10, however some of the changes are significant. Some small changes include an upgrade of the kernel to Linux 3.19 and placing application menus inside the application window by default. A potentially larger change is the switch from Canonical’s Upstart init software to systemd.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • New gst-rpicamsrc features

      These bring the GStreamer element up to date with new features added to raspivid since I first started the project, such as adding text annotations to the video, support for the 2nd camera on the compute module, intra-refresh and others.

    • The most recent project hits a Yak-shaving milestone…

      …so that’s sucked me into the world of spectrometers, reverse engineering the protocols to use them on Linux (oh, yeah, I need to publish that), binning leds by hand with a makeshift integration chamber…

    • 64-bit STB SoC supports 4K video and Android TV

      Marvell announced an “Ultra” version of its Android-focused Armada 1500 STB SoC that advances to a 64-bit, quad-core Cortex-A53 foundation for 4K delivery.

      The Armada 1500 Ultra (88DE3218) is designed to “enable PayTV operators and set-top box (STB) manufacturers to cost-effectively deliver small form factor devices with feature-rich 4K entertainment and gaming services,” says Armada. As with earlier Armada 1500 system-on-chips, it’s primarily focused on Android, with specific support for Android TV

    • Interview: Eben Upton

      The founder and CEO of the Raspberry Pi Foundation talks about the Pi Model 2, and how Google’s Eric Schmidt convinced him to knock down the price.

    • Phones

      • Tizen

        • Tizen DevLab coming to Bangalore and Mumbai in India for May 2015

          Following on from the successful Tizen DevLabs in London and Paris, we have some great news for developers as the Tizen DevLab Series is coming to India, well specifically to Bangalore and Mumbai. If your a you’re a novice or an expert, a programmer or an innovator then you are welcome to come along, you could even find yourself winning a Samsung Z1.

        • [Game] Angry Birds comes to the Tizen Store and the Samsung Z1

          The hugely successful game Angry Birds is now available for the Tizen based Samsung Z1 Smartphone. The game is an Android App (equivalent to Android Angry Birds version 5.0.2.) that is running on the Z1 thanks to OpenMobile’s ACL technology.

          Angry Birds is an iconic game for MeeGo and Tizen as this one of the big games to be shown running on developer devices at Tizen developer events. The original game supports In-App purchases, but this doesn’t seem to be working with the Tizen Store, most likely a compatability issue. The gameplay is pretty good and any slowness can be attributed to the modest hardware of the Z1.

      • Android

Free Software/Open Source

  • File a bug!

    Sadly, these are often just empty words. “Patches welcome” can be a seemingly-polite way of saying “your problem is not important to me. Go solve it yourself and I’ll accept your solution.” And telling a user to go file a bug can be equally dismissive, especially if the bug-filing process is unpleasant.

  • Bazel, Google’s Open Source Build System

    One of the most important, yet unsung, applications in a software developer’s life is the Make utility, or its equivalent. Make first appeared in 1977 and has been with us ever since. There are a very large number of build utilities, some based on Make, others completely different. The principle remains the same. The build system has a set of rules that tell it how to build an application from source files, usually fetched from a version control system. The Make utility reads the rules, then runs the compilers and linkers to do the build. The really good ones will run tests, as well.

  • Linux Freedom vs. Convenience

    One of my favorite websites that illustrate this point is WhyLinuxIsBetter.net. As the page loads, you’re immediately presented with clear, easy to understand reasons why Linux is better than proprietary operating systems. Now granted, the website is a bit dated. But the overall message is timeless and positive. What this site does well is show its readers exactly why Linux on the desktop is awesome. From its features to its built-in safety, everything is clearly illustrated and easy to understand.

  • Events

    • PyCon 2015 conference report & video roundup
    • [Event Report] April Python Pune Meetup 26th April, 2015
    • [Event Report] Docker Pune Meetup #5
    • Open Source Conference in Oslo – May 8 – 10

      In just a few days we’ll have an open source conference in Oslo. I’m happy that we’ll have a Qt and KDE track, so I’d like to invite everyone to join for the weekend May 8-10 at the University of Oslo.

    • LinuxFest Northwest in the Books for 2015

      Feast or famine: This is the typical modus operandi for FOSS shows, where Saturdays (or the “first days,” whatever they are) are a literal beehive of activity on the expo floor while talks are standing-room only. Sundays (or “second days”) — ah, those second days — the activity drops off a bit.

      [...]

      With Sunday being more low-key, I got to catch up with LibreOffice’s Robinson Tryon, who said that the show was a hit for the project. Without the cacophony of multiple conversations going on at the same time, like on Saturday, we got to talk about advances LibreOffice is making in Android, which is going faster than expected, and various aspects of document freedom, not the least of which is the successful growth of Document Freedom Day. Heady days are in store for LibreOffice.

    • KVM and Xen to Hold Joint Hackathon for Open Source Virtualization

      That’s right. The teams behind Xen Project Developer Summit and KVM Forum recently announced plans to co-host a hackathon and social event on August 18, 2015, at the close of the Xen Project Developer Summit and on the eve of KVM Forum. Virtualization is one of the most important technologies in IT today, so it makes perfect sense for the two best hypervisor projects to collaborate and socialize at an event that celebrates their similarities and bridges that gap between all things KVM and Xen.

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Education

    • Microsoft & Education: The Song Remains the Same

      One of our hardware donors emailed me and asked if I would come to Austin and pick up a dozen Optiplex 745s with 17 inch monitors and accompanying keyboards. These Dells already had scrubbed drives and had either 4 or 8 GB of RAM, depending on what they were originally assigned to do. I said I most certainly would and arranged a time to be there. This donor has been especially generous to us, and not with just decent hardware. They also present us an annual Christmas cash donation of $1000. On the years they do employee matching, it is more than that — a lot more.

  • Healthcare

  • Funding

    • EUR 38 million EU funds for ICT in Malta

      Over the next seven years, the EU is funding ICT programmes in Malta with some EUR 38 million, the government of Malta announced in March. The funds are part of a EUR 400 million package earmarked to finance socio-economic development in the country. ICT is seen as one of the main ‘enablers’ for development and innovation in Malta.

  • BSD

  • Public Services/Government

    • Can funding open source bug bounties save Europe from mass-surveillance?

      The report also suggests promoting open-source software as a way to build resilience to surveillance, which could be achieved by funding audits of important open-source software. Among several products it highlights is disk encryption software, TrueCrypt, which was recently subjected to a crowd-funded audit that was able to rule out the existence of NSA backdoors in the product.

      “TrueCrypt is a typical example of a problem of the commons: worldwide use of software package was probably dependent on two or three developers,” the study notes to highlight why funding open source projects may be valuable.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • C++ Daddy Bjarne Stroustrup outlines directions for v17

      Calm yourselves, readers. The Spring 2015 C++ Standards Committee Meeting takes place next week in Lenexa, Kansas. And at that meeting much of the discussion is expected to consider C++ 17, a major revision of the programming language due in 2017.

    • Atom Shell is now Electron

      Atom Shell is now called Electron. You can learn more about Electron and what people are building with it at its new home electron.atom.io.

Leftovers

  • UK Elections

    • Clegg Hoist With Own Petard

      Indeed if the total number of votes cast in the UK for Tories plus Lib Dems is equal to the total number of votes cast in the UK for Labour plus Scot Nats (which is more or less what the polls are showing), then Labour plus the Scot Nats will win approximately 35 more seats than the rival bloc for the same total votes, entirely because of the Lib Dem veto on the Boundary Commission proposals.

    • General Election 2015: What do MPs think about mass surveillance?

      Like the British public, the vast majority of MPs had no idea about the extent of bulk data collection by the security services when whistleblower Edward Snowden spoke out. With the election pending, what do parliamentary candidates think there needs to be done about mass surveillance?

    • BBC Mock Balance

      Whereas the “equal time” allowed the SNP candidate included BBC commentary giving direct personal criticism of her, there was no critical note in the Alexander side of the coverage. An interesting example of how the state propaganda system works.

  • Security

  • Finance

  • Censorship

    • Dan Bull’s ‘Death To ACTA’ Video Silenced After Claim From Rapper Who Used The Same Sample

      Back in 2010 we wrote about rapper Dan Bull’s excellent “Death to ACTA” song and video, which is a parody of Jay-Z’s “Death of Autotune.” In 2011, we further wrote about the MP3 of that song (which Bull distributes willingly on file sharing platforms) being taken down from Mediafire due to a questionable takedown request. Now, years later (well after ACTA is pretty much long dead), Dan’s discovered that his video on YouTube was just silenced due to copyright claims.

  • Privacy

    • Facebook denies fresh allegation that it DOES collect the text you decided against posting

      Ever written out a status update or comment but decided against posting it? One techie has claimed Facebook collects this content, despite the company’s claims to the contrary

    • Encrypting Your Laptop Like You Mean It

      Unlike in Windows and Mac OS X, you can only encrypt your disk when you first install Linux. If you already have Linux installed without disk encryption, you’re going to need to backup your data and reinstall Linux. While there’s a huge variety of Linux distributions, I’m going to use Ubuntu as an example, but setting up disk encryption in all major distributions is similar.

    • Facebook Messenger Gets Video Calling on iOS, Android

      Move over Skype, Google Hangouts, and FaceTime. Facebook wants to host your next mobile video chat.

    • Senior Police Officer Suggests Companies Allowing People To Use Strong Crypto Are ‘Friendly To Terrorists’

      The technology is not being “exploited” by terrorists, it’s being used by them, just as they use telephones or microwaves or washing machines. That’s what those devices are there for. The idea that trying to make broken internet technologies should be “front and center” of technology companies’ thinking bespeaks a complete contempt for their users.

      This constant refrain about how awful strong crypto is, and how we must break it, is simply the intelligence services implicitly admitting that they find the idea of doing their job in a free society, where people are able to keep some messages private, too hard, so they would be really grateful if technology companies could just fall in line and make life easier by destroying privacy for everyone.

  • Civil Rights

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Treaties

      • As resistance grows, TTIP is increasingly in trouble.

        It’s been a couple of months since my last TTIP update. That hiatus reflects the talks themselves, which feel strangely suspended. That’s not to say nothing is happening: indeed, there’s an air of desperate busy-ness beginning to creep into the proceedings as even the most fervid supporter of the agreement realises that TTIP is not going to be finished by the end of 2015, and people rush around vainly trying to do something about it. That’s pretty astonishing when you remember that the original plan was to finish it by the end of 2014:

      • President Obama Demands Critics Tell Him What’s Wrong With TPP; Of Course We Can’t Do That Because He Won’t Show Us The Agreement

        President Obama is apparently quite annoyed by the fact that his own party is basically pushing against his “big trade deals” (that are not really about trade). Senator Elizabeth Warren has been pretty aggressive in trashing the TPP agreement, highlighting the fact that the agreement is still secret (other than the bits leaked by Wikileaks). In response, President Obama came out swinging against the critics of TPP arguing that “they don’t know what they’re talking about.”

      • NYT Lets Economic Pundit Disappear TPP’s Economist Critics

        So all economists are for TPP because TPP is a “free trade” bill and all economists are for “free trade.” Simple, right? The only reason Congress wouldn’t pass fast track, Mankiw suggests, is if politicians listened to voters who were “worse than ignorant about the principles of good policy.”

04.27.15

Microsoft is Attacking Android Like Never Before, Qisda the Latest to Sign Patent Extortion Deal

Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 7:11 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Microsoft says it wants peace, but actions suggest otherwise

War chair

Summary: More blackmail and propaganda against Android, courtesy of the gentler, kinder, ‘new’ Microsoft

DESPITE recent Outlook scandals, Microsoft is trying hard to inject it into Android devices, either by blackmail or by bribing (as we correctly foresaw). Microsoft’s Mouth wrote about it and so did other embedded ‘journalists’ of Microsoft or friendly media. They help the "embrace, extend, extinguish" efforts of Microsoft (targeting Android). One site called it “crapware [...] for Android” (crapware being Microsoft spyware). Some say that Microsoft is developing software to wipe Android from Android devices and install Windows instead. Here is the next potential step towards it [1, 2] (Microsoft can delete Android from the Windows partition).

These attacks on Android sure are serious and Microsoft lobbied (usually through proxies) European regulators to help with the attacks. Quoting Microsoft proxies, the Microsoft-friendly Cade Metz continues his anti-Linux blitz in Condé Nast (toxic agenda). The headline is equally toxic, as should expected from Metz. It says “Google Faces Huge Forces in Fight Over Android’s Future” and it’s full of anti-Android talking points from Microsoft front groups. There is some kind of deliberate attack on Android in the media; Microsoft’s booster Julie Bort helps an anti-Android company right now and all that Microsoft boosters can do at the moment is promote Microsoft spyware for Android, unless they just trash Android. Mark Hachman, a Senior Editor at IDG, promotes Microsoft’s overpriced and underpowered product by framing it as a Google ‘killer’ or whatever. His byline says “Mark focuses on Microsoft news and chip technology, among other beats.” Well, enough said…

In other news, Microsoft continues with the effort to extort Android/Linux. As Fagioli, an occasional troll against GNU/Linux, put it the other day: “Microsoft continues earning money from Linux — increases patent licensing agreements”. While we know these deals are patent deals, we do not know if anything at all is being paid to Microsoft, so Fagioli lacks evidence. Fagioli wrote: “If you choose to laugh at Microsoft over its mobile presence, feel free, but please know that Microsoft is laughing too; all the way to the bank. What you may not know is, Microsoft makes money from Android handset sales thanks to its patent portfolio. In fact, it also collects money from Chromebooks too. In other words, Microsoft is profiting from Linux, since both operating systems are based on the kernel. Today, Microsoft increases its number of patent licensing agreements, by making a deal with Qisda Corp.”

“Microsoft attacks Android using entryism, lobbying, media distortion, extortion, misguided regulators, etc.”Qisda is not widely known to the public (Wikipedia has some details) and whether it pays anything at all to Microsoft we do not know. Google, in reaction to such offensive deals, pursues and gets granted thousands of patents per year. It is now trying to buy some more. As IDG has just put it: “Looking to offload some patents and make some extra cash? Google may be an interested buyer.

“The Web giant on Monday launched a Patent Purchase Promotion, an “experiment to remove friction from the patent market and improve the landscape.” On May 8, Google plans to open a portal where you’ll be able to tell the company about the patents you’re willing to sell, and how much you’re looking to make.”

Vista 10 (merely a brand, or "marketing" as Microsoft puts it) for mobile phones is a total joke and a dead end without any signs of gains, only massive financial losses. Microsoft is reportedly bricking phones with Vista 10 Preview. The report is inherently flawed, however, because as iophk put it: “The shill can’t even make an honest comparison there, he has to restrict it to within Microsoft world. Most “popular” Windoes(r) phone…”

We too spotted this article the other day. We found it when looking for articles of the same author, after he had attacked GNU/Linux or something along those lines.

In summary, there is no ‘new’ Microsoft. Microsoft attacks Android using entryism, lobbying, media distortion, extortion, misguided regulators, etc. Extortion apparently does not bother regulators, even if it’s against the law. To say that Microsoft loves Linux is like calling Stalin a man of peace. █

Caution Needed When Microsoft Copywriters Flood the Media With Microsoft Propaganda

Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 6:18 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Lying to the public for salaries

Pondering

Summary: Media actively subverted by Microsoft-sponsored agents of deception, whose goal is to change what people think of Microsoft and its software, even if by lying (they call it ‘marketing’)

ALL around the world there have been many misleading reports about Microsoft being “open”. These reports are not always in English, so it may not be easy to spot and rebut them. Writers of such reports are either extremely gullible, pressured (e.g. by assertive editor/publisher/advertiser), or bribed.

Someone, a long-term reader of Techrights, came to our IRC channels claiming that “one of my ex classmates is now a paid Microsoft copywriter… I got furious yesterday when I found out” (the company in question is VISIBILITY, one of Microsoft’s many PR agencies/proxies that include Visible Technologies). We already explained how such firms operate and it’s absolutely appalling. Microsoft already got caught (several times) sending out people to conduct AstroTurfing campaigns in sites like Reddit and YouTube. Now we know that Microsoft may also be paying agencies (at least in east Europe) to push into the media pro-Microsoft stories. And they wonder why they’re hated. Well, given the prevalence of agencies that push ‘stories’ for Microsoft it’s not crazy to debunk these ‘stories’, it’s just crazy to believe them. Lies in repetition can become compelling nonetheless. We already explored how Microsoft was pushing fake (prepared) ‘articles’, often to be ghostwritten or ghost-published by fake/lazy ‘journalists’. With enough bribed ‘reporters’ no wonder Microsoft can rewrite history and lie so routinely and effectively. If Microsoft pays agents in east Europe to ‘plant’ articles, then it’s not even expensive because salaries there are significantly lower and perhaps regulations of the press are relatively lax. It’s like outsourcing of AstroTurfing. Clever move.

“Business as usual then,” wrote Paolo Vecchi about it, reminding us of very recent examples like damn lies about Vista 10 being 'free'. It went on for many weeks before Microsoft finally admitted that it had lied (‘marketed’). The media pushed this lie into every corner of the Web for weeks. It was published in many languages in some very widely-read sites. The correction from Microsoft (weeks later) hardly received any coverage at all.

A new report by Gregg Keizer says that “Free Windows 10 is not an upgrade … it’s marketing,” according to Microsoft. Vista 10 is not free and was never going to be free. It’s a big lie and Microsoft’s 10-Q filing shows that Microsoft knowingly lied (‘marketed’). To quote Keizer: “Windows 10 is not a free upgrade, Microsoft said last week. It’s a “marketing and promotional activity.”

“The odd nomenclature appeared in Microsoft’s 10-Q filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that highlighted the company’s first quarter financial numbers.

“In the 10-Q segment devoted to revenue recognition — typically several paragraphs of static boilerplate — Microsoft brought up Windows 10, specifically the free upgrade it plans to hand out to users of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 after Windows 10′s summer debut.”

So remember that Microsoft wilfully lies and just calls it ‘marketing’. Truths and lies have no meaning to Microsoft; it’s all ‘marketing’. It’s manipulation of the media.

Bear that in mind when seeing the openwashing of Microsoft, such as the latest (and seemingly obligatory) Nadella grooming by Sam Dean, whose parent company was paid by Microsoft to embed pro-Microsoft messages inside articles. It’s more of the ‘new Microsoft’ nonsense, which means that Dean is either gullible or acting as a salesman. “It’s becoming more and more clear that we aren’t witnessing the old Microsoft anymore,” he says. Actually, Microsoft is getting worse but also more secretive. Do we really need to perpetuate all those lies (‘marketing’) from Microsoft?

Watch this new headline that says “Microsoft may love Linux now, but can Hadoop vendors ever kiss and make up?”

Very loaded headline they got there. Microsoft hates Linux, as its actions serve to show. We wrote about this just over a month ago in:

Journalists should stop repeating Microsoft’s slogans and PR. Microsoft does not “love Linux”, it hates it with a passion and actively tries to destroy it. Phoronix shows how the BSD world is increasingly being used as a wedge through which to harm or change GNU/Linux, as Microsoft tries to spread .NET through it (.NET and associated tools such as Visual Studio are totally Microsoft-controlled and proprietary). █

Gartner Staff That Worked for Microsoft and the Latest Nonsense from Gartner or ‘Former’ Staff

Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 5:30 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The ‘special’ relationship between Microsoft and Gartner is simply impossible to overlook

Michael Silver

Summary: Gartner waited until 2015 to declare FOSS fit for databases; another example spotted where Gartner staff comes from Microsoft or vice versa

OVER half a decade ago we showed how Microsoft-friendly ‘analysts’ were using totally bogus yardsticks to measure the market share of databases. They love to keep track of revenue, not actual usage or installed base. Well, based on this new report, Gartner is still stuck 10+ years in the past, pretending that “Relational open source databases,” as the headline at IDG (parent of IDC) puts it, “come of age” (oh, really?). So how come the Internet and many other servers at the back end (server room) of businesses have been running postgres, mysql, etc. for ages? Gartner prefers to pretend that it’s a new thing, but then again, Gartner is so corrupt (paid by Microsoft and Oracle) that one should expect bias. They have been in denial about Free/Open Source software (FOSS) and GNU/Linux for as long as they could get away with it. Surely they’ve spread FUD for years, so why the sudden change?

To quote the report from IDG, “Open source relational databases have come of age, according to a new report from Gartner. The analyst firm recommends folding an open source database into your application portfolio.

“In its report, The State of Open-Source RDBMSs, 2015, the company found that open source relatoinal database management systems (OSRDBMSs) have matured to the point where they can replace commercial databases. CIOs can now consider them as a standard infrastructure choice, the company advised.”

Only now? Gartner has got to be kidding, not just lying.

What we have here is a bunch of Microsoft propagandists pretending to support FOSS, but all they really do is mischaracterise it and belittle it. They put it under negative light. They make it seem immature and borderline amateur.

Speaking of Gartner, the other day we saw a Microsoft boosting site presenting some column called “Analyst Watch” in which a former Gartner (and IDC) guy said that FOSS would “eat the world” (not a very friendly way to put it). To clarify who wrote this, see the byline: “Al Hilwa is an industry analyst at research firm IDC, specializing in application development research. He has written columns for tech publications and is widely quoted in the media, including the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and National Public Radio. Prior to IDC, he spent seven years at Microsoft in the Server & Tools division, and five years as an industry analyst at Gartner specializing in database systems. Before Gartner, he worked in IT in various industries. ”

Yes, so he spent seven years at Microsoft in the Server & Tools division and also Gartner. People can work for Microsoft and Gartner. No conflict of interest. None at all! This isn’t an exceptional case. Gartner is totally corrupt. See the recent Gartner spin from Mr. Silver, the firm’s lead booster of Microsoft. He went as far as lying for Microsoft.

Al Hilwa also works for IDC (by extension IDG), which is a frequent booster of Microsoft that in the above example amplified Gartner’s ‘findings’.

When we have Gartner/IDC/Microsoft staff commenting on FOSS in a Microsoft-friendly ‘news’ site we need to be very careful. Apart from openwashing of Facebook surveillance, e.g. sticking/shoving its proprietary surveillance software (call records hoarder) into Free/libre Android right now, the article is associating FOSS with anti-FOSS concepts. Al Hilwa from Gartner/IDC/Microsoft says “IP” and “IP back into the community.” He speaks of “Creating IP in open source”, “proprietary IP”, and “Open-source IP-based businesses”. Yes, sounds like real ‘advocacy’ of FOSS, eh?

And here comes the Microsoft apologist Adrian Bridgwater. He follows Al Hilwa’s lead with an article titled “If Software Is Eating The World, Then Open Source Will Chew It Up (And Swallow)”.

“In a world where ‘even’ Microsoft embraces open source,” he writes, “surely we need to know what kind of software is eating the world.”

Microsoft does not embrace open source, it "embraces, extends, extinguishes" open source. It’s a destruction strategy, but Microsoft has not yet extinguished it (the third phase). It keeps trying though. █

Links 27/4/2015: Debian 9 Named, Linux 4.1 Reaches RC

Posted in News Roundup at 7:27 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • What is open source? Licensing, history, and more

    Another example of open source: You wouldn’t buy a car with the hood welded shut, so why do we buy proprietary software? If you can’t see what’s going on and see what’s happening under the hood then you’re stuck with the car exactly the way it is and that might not be so great. While some people are fine with that, computer geeks shouldn’t be. We should want to get in there and tinker with it.

  • AMD FP3 Motherboard Ported To Coreboot

    Another AMD motherboard has been ported to work under Coreboot.

    Sage Electronic Engineering, a company that does a lot of Coreboot work for AMD and other firms, has ported the AMD Lamar reference board for Coreboot. AMD Lamar is a consumer reference board used for AMD Kaveri APUs of the FP3 socket.

  • Events

    • A Rousing Start for LinuxFest Northwest

      With around 2,000 registrants, this year’s LFNW seems to be the largest in its history. This not only bodes well for the widespread popularity and acceptance of FOSS in general, but it also bodes well for one of the longest-running FOSS shows here in the Pacific Northwest.

  • CMS

    • An open source, e-commerce friendly CMS

      Developers Peter Ivanov, Alex Raikov, and I came up with the idea for Microweber about five years ago, when we were all having problems building sites with the existing solutions.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

Leftovers

  • Poll: SNP increase lead over Labour

  • Security

    • Google Provides Detailed Analysis of GitHub Attack Traffic

      It wasn’t until March 26 that the attackers actually began targeting two separate resources on GitHub, one of which housed content from GreatFire.org, a censorship monitoring organization in China. The other resource was Chinese language content from the New York Times. The attack on those resources lasted until April 7 and Provos said that the attack wouldn’t have been possible if all of the Web’s links were encrypted.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • University offering free online course to demolish climate denial

      The course coordinator is John Cook, University of Queensland Global Change Institute climate communication fellow, and founder of the climate science myth debunking website Skeptical Science. Cook’s research has primarily focused on the psychology of climate science denial.

  • Finance

    • Charles Gladden: Homeless man employed at US Senate building earns just $360 a week

      Like many of the people who work in menial jobs in the US Senate, Charles Gladden works long, hard hours for very modest pay. Unlike probably everyone else, Mr Gladden is homeless.

      The 63-year-old sweeps and mops, cleans dishes and carries laundry, for take-home pay of around $360 a week. He says he gives most to his children and grandchildren and spends most of his nights at the McPherson Square Metro Station, less than half-a-mile from the White House.

  • Privacy

    • Here’s how you can see and delete your entire Google search history

      The list does not stop at Google’s search engine function. It also includes documentation of searches within users’ email accounts and addresses that may have been typed into Google Maps. The range of personal information available has given rise to concerns over the databases’ potential vulnerability.

      Google has said the company is aware of the dangers associated with storing an extensive amount of personal information on home computers and warns users with a message before they download their entire search archive, asking users to “please read this carefully, it’s not the usual yada yada,” normally seen in warning messages.

      [...]

      But just because a user deletes his or her search history, that does not mean that it disappears completely.

  • Civil Rights

    • The Gordon and Dougie Show

      Douglas Alexander not only facilitated the use of Diego Garcia for torture and extraordinary rendition, in an act of extreme hypocrisy the evil little shit also declared a “marine conservation area” around it. In the 1960’s Britain forcibly deported the entire population of the islands to make way for the US Air Base. Faced with a continual political and legal fight for them to return, Alexander sought to make it impossible with his “marine conservation area”. There is nobody who better represents Scottish Labour’s loss of its soul than Alexander. If Mhairi beats him I shall be extremely happy.

    • 7 whistle-blowers facing more jail time than David Petraeus

      The administration of President Barack Obama once promised to be “the most transparent administration” of all time. Instead, Obama’s Department of Justice has led the most targeted campaign against whistleblowers of any president ever, charging more government employees under the Espionage Act than all previous presidents combined—almost all of whom sit in prison serving sentences up to 30 years.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

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