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07.07.12

Nokia Shies Away From Direct Patent Extortion of Android

Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 10:42 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Old mobile

Summary: Nokia tiptoes around its allegations that Android products infringe on its patents, choosing instead to spread its standard-essential patents to patent trolls

TECHRIGHTS’ WIKI has just added this page about Nokia with the intention of providing a timeline of Nokia’s abduction (by Microsoft) and transformation into a patent troll.

Nokia is now leaving MeeGo for good — a move that would please Microsoft a great deal. There are still new calls for the sacking of Elop, but it is realised that the board too should be sacked. It’s like an army of moles after entryism. To quote Jean-Louis who is famous in the computing industry (he is not just some pundit):

“I think that Elop will have to go, but I also think that the board also needs to be renewed with people who have an understanding and working knowledge of the mobile industry,” Gassée told Computing in an exclusive interview.

Gassée built up HP in Europe during the 1970s before joining Apple in 1981, where he served as a senior executive from 1981 to 1990. He also founded operating system company Be Inc, and is now a partner at venture capital company Allegis Capital.

Nokia is already playing a game of innuendo against Android while it is feeding patent trolls. Here is Nokia’s damage control: “While Nokia hasn’t accused Google of violating any of its patents with its Nexus 7 tablet, it has noted that neither Google nor Asus, the tablet’s manufacturer, is under any license agreement with the handset maker. It could mean Google will opt to buy into Nokia’s good graces — or face yet another front in the ever-expanding worldwide patent war.”

“Nokia is already playing a game of innuendo against Android while it is feeding patent trolls.”Nokia will pass the portfolio to a proxy (or several) first and pray that antitrust regulators won’t cause issues.

Over at OSNews, the mobile patent wars lead to the realisation that this patent system is broken. “First,” says the author, “let’s identify the problems of the current patent system. Most of us here are aware of the problems inherent in the system, so I don’t want to go into too many details; we’ve covered it a million times before, as has the rest of the web.”

“On a point-by-point basis,” he notes, we have (to quote verbatim):

  1. Patents are granted too easily, even on trivial and obvious stuff.
  2. Patents are granted on ideas instead of actual implementations.
  3. The system allows for software patents to exist. Software patents are patents on math and language, which ought not to be patentable. Software already enjoys copyright protection.
  4. Patents are transferable, which leads to patent hoarding and patent trolls.
  5. Patent protection lasts too long, putting a huge damper on innovation and creating a truly massive collection of still-valid patents you have to take into account.
  6. Invalidation is too expensive, making it virtually impossible for small companies or individuals to do anything about aggressive large corporations. The result is that large corporations can easily crush small companies and start-ups.

That last one is important and it shows what the real purpose of patents became. It paralyses the industry, preventing change. Nokia is trying to use past glory to justify impeding Android. This is why Microsoft latched onto Nokia. █

Calls for Apple Boycott Follow Ineffective Android Ban Attempts; Judge Compares Apple to Animals

Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Google at 10:27 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Wild hedgehog

Summary: Apple is hit harshly for its aggressive behaviour that targets Android

MR. Karsten Gerloff from the FSFE writes that “Posner’s common sense slices through the #swpat [software patents] foolishness like a knife through butter. Fun indeed.” He refers to this article titled “Judge who shelved Apple trial says patent system out of sync”. To quote: “The U.S. judge who tossed out one of the biggest court cases in Apple Inc’s (AAPL.O) smartphone technology battle is questioning whether patents should cover software or most other industries at all.”

Carlo Piana, who worked with the FSFE in the antitrust case against Microsoft, writes that “Judge Posner says same things as anti #swpats, now that’s fun :-) ”

He also wrote to me that “pissing off a 70_something appellate court judge, must be a record. :-P The situation is contemptuous.” (source)

Apple has already banned some Android products, sometimes using fake 'evidence' to make its bogus case. There is going to be evasion from the ban, but not just yet. The customers suffer, not just companies. The Berkeley LUG says that “if you care about innovation, you shouldn’t” buy Apple products. It is essentially a boycott then. A Microsoft booster notes that the aforemented judge calls Apple (and the likes of it) “animals”. To quote the context:

Judge Richard Posner, who recently threw out an entire patent lawsuit involving Apple and Motorola, has been nothing if not outspoken on the wildly busy US patent litigation system. In an interview published today by Reuters, he calls patent litigants animals struggling for survival and suggests that some industries—perhaps including software—shouldn’t have patent protection at all.

This comparison is an insult to animals; they are not so arrogant and self righteous. Here in the UK Apple is laughed out of the court for obvious reasons:

HTC has won an important case against Apple in UK. The court ruled that HTC did not infringe four Apple patents including the infamous ‘slide to unlock’.

Four Apple claims that the court threw out of window include:

* Unlocking a device by performing gestures on an unlock image
* Portable radio communication apparatus using different alphabets
* Portable electronic device for photo management (related to multi and single touch gestures)
* Portable electronic device for photo management (involves the animation when you stretch the image and it bounces back)

Apple’s patents are so ridiculous that cartoons have been made about them (one is shown at the bottom). █

iPad

Bill Gates Criticised by Childhood Friend, Gates Foundation Criticised in Site It Funds

Posted in Bill Gates, Deception, Microsoft at 10:16 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Monopoly megalomaniac

Monsanto - bones logo

Summary: The anti-social nature of Bill Gates and his front group as outlined by those who are professionally close to them

ONE of our followers drew our attention to some articles about Bill Gates. Others highlighted articles that provide glorification and whitewashing of an unethical patent troll and arguably the world’s biggest criminal who privatises the public sector for monopoly and profit. It does, however, show that he was a sociopath raised in a family of snobby sociopaths. As put by the poster, “The history about it and what kind of a person he always has been. Even in the beginning always trying to grab as much money as he could even from someone that was kinda like a friend.”

“Gates is privatising public policy, controlling the press, selling people’s lives away, indoctrinating children, and so on.”Proceeding to more interesting coverage about the Gates Foundation, we are rather happy to see that people sooner or later defeat the PR machine and then expose crooks, even in publications that these crooks pay to help glorify themselves/gag critics. Slashdot writes: “The common perception among Slashdotters is that while Bill Gates may cause us some professional difficulties, he makes up for it with an exemplary philanthropic record. His philanthropic efforts may turn out to be not as altruistic as one may think. Edweek, not ordinarily an unfriendly venue for Gates, is running a series of blog post/investigative journalism pieces into what the Gates’ foundation is doing, and how it is not always well received by stakeholders.”

Gates is privatising public policy, controlling the press, selling people’s lives away, indoctrinating children, and so on. Here is a good new article about it. We advise our readers to take a look because it’s a well written (yet incomplete) summary:

Philanthropy wonk Lucy Bernholz defines the buzzword leverage
as “the idea that you can use a little money to access a lot of money.”

It’s hard to think of the Gates Foundation’s $26 billion leverage effort
as “a little money”, especially since it’s been spread over the globe to gain access to vastly more resources than it contributes, including U.S. tax dollars, the foreign exchange of emerging African nations, and United Nations funds for international development and world health.

Gates’ leveraged philanthropy model is a public-private partnership
to improve the world, partly through targeted research support but principally through public advocacy and tax-free lobbying to influence government policy. The goal of these policies is often to explicitly support profitability for corporate investors, whose enterprises are seen by the Gates Foundation as advancing human good. However, maximum corporate profit and public good often clash when its projects are implemented.

For example, chemical giant Monsanto has partnered with the Gates Foundation, which reportedly works to suppress local seed exchanges and environmentally sustainable agricultural practices through its global agricultural charity work. Fraud-prone drug giant GlaxoSmithKline
is a partner in the Foundation’s work to leverage its own relatively fractional contribution to vaccination efforts, so that it centrally controls enormous world funds for purchase, pricing, and delivery of vaccines for world public health. And in its U.S. education reform charity work, the Gates Foundation has increasingly shifted its funding to promote market domination by its British corporate education services partner, Pearson Education.

The Gates Foundation, and Gates personally, also own stock and reap profits from many of these same partner corporations. In addition, the Foundation owns a profit-generating portfolio of stocks which would seem to work against the Foundation’s declared missions, such as the Latin American Coca-Cola FEMSA distributorship and five multinational oil giants operating in Nigeria. These corporate investments, now moved to a blind trust whose trustees are Bill and Melinda Gates, are collaterally supported by the Foundation’s tax-free lobbying and advocacy activities.

Criticism of the profit-driven philanthropy agenda is muted by the fact that many of the Foundation’s “advocacy” gifts are positioned to leverage control of policy analysis and news outlets. The Gates Foundation recently undertook sponsorship of the Guardian’s Global Development coverage, for instance, which now maintains a weary-but-compliant stance toward corporate domination of development aid. The Gates Foundation also literally dominates news coverage of Global Health issues.

On the U.S. Education Reform front, the Gates Foundation maintains long-time charitable support of Media Bullpen, as well as Education Week itself (see disclaimer).

Tom Paulson of Humanosphere reviewed some critical stories that reporters did get published in major news outlets last November.

If time permits, in a few weeks we will catch up with the Gates Foundation. It has been months since we last properly did so. I ought to have more free time now that some personal matters are mostly taken care of. Bill Gates spends over a million dollars per day just advertising his brand, portraying him as a saint. It’s up to the rest of us to educate our peers, explaining to them the real stories, rightly contradicting the paid-for spin. This is class warfare and Gates is the upper class colonel, whitewashing by extrapolation along the lines of “job creator” propaganda. █

World’s Leading Spammer, Microsoft, is Accusing Android of Spam

Posted in FUD, Google, Microsoft, Security, Windows at 10:03 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Talking to the mirror

Mirror

Summary: Microsoft is trying to divert attention to Google while Windows machines continue to generate the lion’s share of SPAM

TECHRIGHTS wrote a great deal about Microsoft’s contribution to SPAM [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] (it kills E-mail as a reliable medium) several years ago. We try not to repeat old news, so let us leave that aside. In the corporate press, spam-spewing Windows boxes are often just called “botnets” rather than “Microsoft Windows botnets”. Well, based on this report, Microsoft staff is busy coining terms like “Android botnet” and to quote one resultant article: “An international botnet could be using infected Android handsets to send out massive amounts of spam, Microsoft antispam engineer Terry Zink said in a Thursday blog posts on MSDN.”

“It should not be too shocking that spammers intrude Windows too; it’s just not coded for security.”It takes some nerve for Microsoft of all companies to point the finger at others in such a fashion. Does it not want a monopoly (on SPAM)? People who accused Windows of having government backdoors used to be called paranoid; after Stuxnet revelations they deserve apologies because now we know that Microsoft is even letting governments intrude Windows. It should not be too shocking that spammers intrude Windows too; it’s just not coded for security.

Here is more Android security FUD from Windows insecurity firm, Trend Micro. It is part of a trend of FUD that we wrote about before. Here is a rebuttal to the FUD that came directly from Microsoft. It says: “Terry Zink, a Microsoft ‘researcher’ who earlier claimed that Android devices were used to send spam, has now admitted that he ‘guessed’ the source of the spam. Guessed!

“This change in stand came after Google did its own investigation and found that was not the case. In a statement Google said, “Our analysis suggests that spammers are using infected computers and a fake mobile signature to bypass anti-spam mechanisms in the email platform they’re using.”

“Google’s response turned Terry’s ‘claims’ into a wild guess. But Terry did not miss the opportunity to take a dig at Google’s Android when reporting the botnet, “I’ve written in the past that Android has the most malware compared to other smartphone platforms, but your odds of downloading and installing a malicious Android app is pretty low if you get it from the Android Marketplace.””

Watch out for claims that Android is not secure. If people knowingly install untrusted applications, then it’s social engineering, not an innate security problem like in Windows. The reality distortion field is showing. Microsoft tries to accuse others of its own offences (the “equally evil” pattern of defence). █

Tying Moodle to Microsoft

Posted in Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 9:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Bronze-age love

Summary: Microsoft puts proprietary end points/hooks in Moodle

THE OTHER day we wrote about Blackboard, noting that this Microsoft ally was submitting code to Moodle, its competitor. The Microsoft booster tells us that Microsoft is now making — by proxy — the Moodle FOSS project increasingly tied up (with respect to Microsoft).

“It should not qualify as FOSS as all it does is link FOSS to proprietary, just like the Hyper-V driver that Microsoft gives Linux — a counter-productive ‘gift’ for sure.”To quote: “Microsoft is working on adding new education-focused capabilities to its coming SharePoint 2013 release, which could make the product more of a head-to-head Moodle competitor, according to some of my contacts. A public beta of SharePoint 2013 is expected before the end of July by many of us Microsoft watchers.”

It should not qualify as FOSS as all it does is link FOSS to proprietary, just like the Hyper-V driver that Microsoft gives Linux — a counter-productive ‘gift’ for sure. It’s worse to have it included in the sense that it leads to embrace of blobs. That’s all it’s there for. █

07.06.12

Links 6/7/2012: Mandriva Name Changes; Next GPL

Posted in News Roundup at 7:16 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux Played a Crucial Role in Discovery of ‘Higgs boson’

    Scientists working at CERN, Geneva have announced the discovery of Higgs boson which is considered to be one of the most important scientific feats in understanding the creation of Universe.

    Higgs boson is a a new subatomic particle that enables particles in atoms to gather mass, the basic building blocks of the universe. It is called ‘God particle’ because its existence is fundamental to the creation of the universe.

  • I failed the Linux Community

    Last night I’m afraid to say I failed the LINUX community.

    My wife’s Aunty and Uncle came up from Glasgow to Aberdeenshire to visit my mother in law for a few nights and en route stayed at our house for a meal.

    After the meal my wife’s Uncle asked whether he could use our PC to check his emails etc. My wife asked my son to give the Uncle his laptop to use which is running Windows 7 but I saw the instant opportunity to demonstrate the power of LINUX by letting him loose on my laptop running Mageia 2.

    Now the reason I am running Mageia 2 is that I had an unfortunate incident last weekend whilst playing with the partitions on my laptop whereby I accidentally destroyed the version of Zorin I was running previously. This however was not I thought an issue because I had set up Mageia meticulously with the KDE 4 plasma desktop and I think it looks really impressive. I have even installed Compiz to add some whizzy effects. Add to this the Chromium browser and you would think you have a really good setup to demonstrate to a non Linux user.

  • Tux and the God Particle

    One CERN physicist, though, went out of his way to give Linux some credit where credit is due, and posted a complimentary thanks to the operating system on Reddit.

  • Linux central to Higgs Boson discovery, claims CERN physicist

    After Linux was founding wanting over last weekend’s leap second server hiatus, some better news – it helped CERN physicists track down the mysterious Higgs Boson.

  • Desktop

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • Climate skepticism not rooted in science illiteracy

      People who strongly resist data indicating that human-induced climate change could spell catastrophe aren’t ignorant about science or numerical reasoning. Quite the opposite, a new study finds: High science literacy actually boosts the likelihood that certain people will challenge what constitutes credible climate science.

      Who will be receptive to climate science, the study found, depends more on cultural factors such as attitudes toward commerce, government regulation and individualism than on scientific literacy.

      “Simply improving the clarity of scientific information will not dispel public conflict” over climate, the study’s authors conclude online May 27 in Nature Climate Change.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Gnome 3.5.3 Development Release Out, To Become 3.6

        The GNOME project have released the third update to the development cycle heading for GNOME 3.6. This is an unstable release and though usable, its mainly for testing and hacking purposes. The major changes in this release are a new API framework for Evolution Data Server, new widgets in GTK+ and a new Empathy interface to integrate well with the Gnome 3 style.

      • GNOME and input method integration

        Those of us who type in Latin characters may easily overlook what it takes to get text into windows or command lines in other writing systems. Entry of characters not found on one’s keyboard requires the use of an input method (IM) which turns multiple keystrokes into characters. There are plenty of capable projects, but they often lack deep integration into the desktop environment or widget toolkit. In April, GNOME developer Rui Matos proposed a feature for the upcoming GNOME 3.6 release that would integrate the IBus framework into the core GNOME desktop, tackling this precise challenge. IBus is a framework that allows the user to select — and switch between — multiple IMs. The plan spawned considerable debate, not only on the merits of IBus, but on the wisdom of tightly integrating a single component into the desktop environment. Complicating matters is the divide between the bulk of the GNOME developer community and those users who depend on input methods, primarily from the Chinese-Japanese-Korean (CJK) language communities.

      • Parsix GNU/Linux 4.0 Test 1 Ships with GNOME 3

        Alan Baghumian announced last night, July 4th, the immediate availability for download of the first test version of the upcoming Parsix GNU/Linux 4.0 operating system.

      • Shotwell vs F-Spot

        Shotwell is an image organizer designed to provide personal photo management for the GNOME desktop environment. In 2010 it replaced F-Spot as the standard image tool for several GNOME-based major Linux distributions like Fedora and Ubuntu. Shotwell’s power is its simplicity, ease of use and speed.

  • Distributions

    • 4 Fine Linux ARM Distros

      The ARM platform is exploding like a mad wet cat out of the bath. Here are four good distros cram-full of ARM fun.

      Linux has had ARM support since forever, but it’s been bumpy. There are hundreds of vendors of ARM devices (see Tiny Pluggable Linux ARM Computers Are Red-Hot for a sampling), all shoving their own personal hacked code out the door as fast as possible. This made Linux support complicated and unwieldy, to the point that Linus Torvalds threatened to stop accepting ARM changes in the mainline Linux kernel.

    • Arch linux – not just for geeks
      ?
    • Cultix RC1 Screenshots
    • ROSA Marathon 2012 GNOME preview
    • Porteus 1.2 Screenshots
    • Preview: CrunchBang (“#!”) Linux 11 “Waldorf”

      I’ve been a fan of #! ever since I tried version 9.04.01. It’s quite lightweight, yet the UI doesn’t feel antiquated, and it’s quite well-stocked with features that normal users would find useful. Two months ago, the first testing images of version 11 “Waldorf” went online, so I am previewing that now.

      #! is a Debian-based Openbox distribution. It used to be based on Ubuntu, and at one point, it gained [and then later lost] an Xfce edition. It aims to be quite lightweight yet have the niceties of other distributions with more mainstream DEs.

    • New Releases

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Help Name New Mandriva Community Distribution

        Last week when Schulz posted his diagram of the general structure of the new Mandriva foundation, he used the name OpenMDV as a placeholder for the new community distribution. It sounded liked like a good name to me, I even liked the spelling. However, Schulz being the community minded sort he is, decided to put it to an open vote. So, now, you too can help pick the name of the new Mandriva community distribution.

      • Voting opened to name Mandriva community distribution
      • Mandriva To Change Name: Votes Open

        Mandriva is going through a complete overhaul. The company recently decided to turn this once #1 GNU/Linux distribution into a community driven distribution. Now, they are seeking a name change for the distribution (and the foundation governing the development of Mandriva) to separate its identity from the company Mandriva S.A.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Knoppix 7.0.1

          Aren’t you frustrated at having to wait for all of an operating system’s services to load before you get to a usable desktop? Experienced Linux users would know that the system initialization of a Linux system, until recently, (by default, unless you know how to customize it) starts several services (some of which are either unnecessary to the user OR some are not needed instantaneously on startup, e. g. printing). Sounds familiar?

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Community Leadership Summit 2012: A Week Away!

            Just a quick reminder that in just over a week we will be hosting the Community Leadership Summit 2012 in Portland, Oregon on from Sat, July 14, 2012 – Sun, July 15, 2012. The event happens the weekend before the OSCON conference, so this is a great opportunity to attend both events.

            The Community Leadership Summit 2012 brings together community leaders, organizers and managers and the projects and organizations that are interested in growing and empowering a strong community.

          • The Power Consumption In Ubuntu 12.10

            Since last year when spotting a major Linux kernel power regression and subsequently finding the cause of the power problem that affected a large number of mobile Linux users, plus other regressions, it’s been fun to look at the Linux power performance situation. How though is the latest Ubuntu Linux code performing when it comes to power efficiency? Here are some early tests of Ubuntu 12.10.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • MeeGo team to part ways with Nokia

        Sotiris Makrygiannis, MeeGo’s Head of Development has announced that the entire MeeGo team will be parting ways with Nokia.

        MeeGo announced this just after releasing the MeeGo PR1.3 update for the Nokia N9, which was the first and last MeeGo phone by Nokia. The Finnish mobile manufacturer will be now concentrating fully on the development of Windows Phones with the help of Microsoft.

        MeeGo was very closely involved in the launch of various handsets by the Nokia, such as N770, N800, N810, N900, N950 and the N9. MeeGo, as you know, is a Linux-based open source operating system designed for various hardware platforms such as netbooks, desktops, tablets, and mobile computing. It is currently being spearheaded by the Linux Foundation.

      • Android

        • Amazon Working On Its Own Phone?

          According to reports, Amazon is working on its own Smartphone running a forked version of Android. Amazon already has its own Kindle Fire tablet which runs on Android. However, Amazong has cut Google out of its platform as user’s can’t buy content or apps from Google Play Store. On the contrary Google allows Amazon to sell their content on Android devices. So, an Android powered Amazon phone can be a lucrative market for Amazon as it has the entire ecosystem in place.

        • Nexus Q gets torn down, some parts are in fact imported
        • Android is Not a Single OS

          Long time ago I argued that Linux is not an OS the way many people think. Most people, when they say “Linux”, think of a singular operating system like Windows and Mac OS X when it in fact refers to a multitude of distributions each of which practically qualifies as its own OS. I argued that a better way to present “Linux” is as a brand representing a rather sizable family of operating systems with a common core: the Linux kernel. Back then I actually called it a “market of operating system components” out of which various Linux based operating systems are made.

        • ROM Manager Makes Device Maintenance a Pleasure
        • Nexus S 4G Reunited With The AOSP Family

          Jean-Baptiste Queru, Technical Lead on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and man after my own heart announced the return of the Nexus S 4G (Sprint) back into the main AOSP tree. In a post in the Android building group on Tuesday, Queru stated, “We’ve been able to resolve the issues around Nexus S 4G, and we can now properly distribute its CDMA and WiMAX binaries. That allows Nexus S 4G to work with AOSP just as well as Nexus S”. As a Nexus S user on Sprint, I can say that I did a few virtual cartwheels, but what is the current status of all Nexus phones within AOSP?

        • Recon MOD heads-up-display goggles go open source with Android

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

Free Software/Open Source

  • Interview: Sebastiaan Mathôt talks about Psychological experiments with OpenSesame
  • Blender

    Blender was created as a rewrite by a Belgian company and spun off in its own company Not a Number Technologies. They expanded too fast and went bankrupt. Blender lives on under the umbrella of a non-profit organization The Blender Foundation. A failure it is not. About every two years, the organization produces a new animated movie and continues to thrive on donations and other revenue.

  • Public Art with Augmented Reality and Blender
  • The Open Source Balance at Banks

    While many banks still ponder the benefits of using open source technology for their coding needs, nascent BankSimple has gone full steam ahead.

  • ZaReason: a computer company with freedom built in

    For the past couple of months, I’ve been playing with a laptop from ZaReason, a small, GNU/Linux-based system builder founded in Oakland, CA (though it has expanded to New Zealand). ZaReason’s deal is that they build computers themselves, using components that are guaranteed to have free and open drivers, and pre-install your favorite free/open operating system at the factory. They offer full support for the hardware and the software, and promise that they’ll never say, “Sorry, that component just doesn’t work right under Linux.” So unlike buying a ThinkPad or other commercial laptop and installing a free operating system on it (which can be a bit of a gamble, and will shortly become more of one, see below), ZaReason’s machines arrive ready to run. And unlike buying a commercial laptop from a freedom-friendly vendor like Emperor Linux (who’ll sometimes warn you that certain features of your hardware aren’t supported), ZaReason can promise you that every single capability of every single component in your system will just work.

  • We could build an open Twitter, but would anyone use it?

    Amid the recent brouhaha over Twitter’s future — which some say is aimed at restricting what developers can do with the real-time information network, in an attempt to monetize it more easily — a number of critics have proposed duplicating the network using open-source tools and principles. This idea, which has also been proposed in the past by blogging pioneer and programmer Dave Winer, seems to have a lot of merit: after all, if a short-messaging utility like Twitter is a useful service for society to have, then why not recreate it as an open-source project? The only problem is that others have tried to do exactly that, and have mostly failed to achieve any traction. For better or worse, we seem to be stuck with Twitter.

  • GWT Swept Under Open Source

    Google is handing over control of its GWT (Google Web Toolkit) for browser application development to a steering committee. A release candidate of GWT 2.5, the final Google-directed release, is also available and features compiler optimizations.

  • Open source developer Bassel Khartabil detained by Syrian government

    Days after Human Rights Watch revealed that the Syrian government was putting political detainees through 20 torture techniques in 27 locations around the country, EFF learned that open source developer Bassel Khartabil has been detained by Syrian authorities.

  • Mozilla, Activists Call for Release in Syria of Open-source Developer
  • Kaltura expands open-source video in Europe
  • Non-profit launched to advance open source point cloud processing
  • Europeans develop open-source software for biosciences

    Processing bioimaging data has just become easier, thanks to new open-source software for multidimensional image visualisation, processing and analysis, developed by a team of German and Finnish researchers. In the making for the last 10 years, the so-called BioImageXD software is facilitating the analysis of cell and tissue functions, including how molecules move on cell surfaces and how they bond together. Presented in the journal Nature Methods, the study was funded in part by a grant under the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).

  • Mama is Open – why should clients care ?

    Simply put – it represents a real chance to have a single market data abstraction that clients can commit to, resulting in significant benefits arising from code reuse, reduced support and better tooling when compared to supporting the multiple platforms that many organisations have today. In addition, they will be able to turn to a large number of vendors externally who are committing to OpenMama.

  • .eu and EURid: .eu goes open source with YADIFA name server solution

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS

    • Eucalyptus Branches Towards Open Clouds

      Version 3.1 brings enterprise-grade cloud computing to open source

    • Open source: SugarCRM at Footprints Recruiting

      Customer relationship management (CRM) software is generally hard to get excited about, but Jeff Strachan a founder of Footprints Recruiting[1], an English as a second language (ESL) placement agency, verges on evangelical. And little wonder: Being burdened with a legacy system built using forms in Microsoft Outlook and being burnt by the lock-in of proprietary software would be enough to make an open source evangelist out of most people.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • CMS

  • Semi-Open Source

    • Group-Office 4.0 groupware released

      Dutch company Intermesh has announced the availability of version 4.0 of its Group-Office groupware solution. The open source Community edition of the suite of online applications includes address book, email, calendar, task and notes functionality, as well as file sharing, email templates and a newsletters module. Support and other features such as projects, a helpdesk system, and synchronisation with Microsoft Outlook and mobile devices are available in the commercial Professional version.

    • Atlassian’s big experiment with performance reviews

      Do you ever wonder if and how you could call a halt to your performance review process? Do you think traditional processes are marred by the distribution curve (and forced rankings), huge time investments and low impact on performance improvements? Maybe you agree that your processes have their faults, but you think that it’s not sensible to abolish performance appraisals altogether or replace them with coaching sessions.

  • Licensing

    • The next GPL: Why it’s being shaped on GitHub

      While you were getting ready to stick a fork in a burger for the Independence Day holiday, Red Hat employee Richard Fontana was making a fork of the GPL. Fontana previously worked at the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), a nonprofit law firm providing pro bono legal services to free and open source projects. He’s now the open source licensing and patent counsel at Red Hat, but he’s been careful to explain that the GPL fork is a personal project.

    • Red Hat Storage 2.0 Hits General Availability

      Red Hat is now officially a storage vendor. The open source operating system vendor released it first commercially supported storage system, dubbed Red Hat Storage 2.0, this week at the company’s annual user conference event.

      Red Hat Storage 2.0 first appeared as a beta in April of this year. The solution is built of top of Gluster, a company Red Hat acquired October of 2011 for $136 million.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Source Drug Discovery programme to cover drug development and delivery soon

      Spurred by the progress of the Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD) scheme, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) is planning to expand its scope of work to include more areas like drug development and delivery.

      The OSDD programme, which has emerged as a new platform for innovation in the domain of affordable healthcare, will expand to cover Open Source Drug Discovery, Open Source Drug Development, Open Source Drug Delivery, Open Source Disease Diagnostics during the current Plan period, sources said.

    • White House to open We the People platform

      The White House is in the process of creating an open source version of its “We the People” online petition platform, says Chris Vein, deputy federal chief technology officer.

      The effort will fulfill one of its objectives under the National Action Plan it revealed as a member of the international Open Government Partnership. One OGP member country, Latvia, plans to use the platform as soon as it’s available, said Vein June 20 at NASA’s Open Source Summit in Washington, D.C.

    • Hardware

  • Programming

    • Eclipse Developer Survey

      The results of this years Eclipse Open Source Developer Survey include some interesting finding about what motivates participation in open source projects and motivates developers to build apps in their free time.

      Compared to previous years, the survey noted that corporate policies are becoming more positive towards open source participation with only 0.6% of respondents choosing the “Does not allow the use of any open source software” to describe their organizations policy.

    • Eclipse 4 Lives – alongside 70 Open Source Projects in Eclipse Juno

Leftovers

  • Apple ‘fesses up: We broke App Store downloads

    An Apple App Store server spat out broken copies of several high-profile titles this week, the iPad maker has admitted.

    Updates for popular software including Instapaper and Angry Birds in Space were corrupted when downloaded, causing the programs to crash when fanbois attempted to use them.

    Instapaper dev Marco Ament chronicled his nail-gnawing frustration after a flood of punters blamed him for the error even though he was powerless to fix it. Deleting the app and installing it from scratch fixed the problem on individual devices, but Apple’s cock-up meant a new version of Instapaper received a rash of one-star reviews.

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • NPR, NBC Use One Guy for Small Biz Opposition to ACA and Fail to Disclose his NFIB Ties

      With millions of small business owners in the United States, why can multiple news outlets find only one small business owner to say that federal health care reform will negatively impact business?

      When national news outlets want to know how ordinary small business owners feel about the U.S. Supreme Court upholding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), they apparently all turn to just one man: Joe Olivo, owner of Perfect Printing in New Jersey. In recent weeks, Olivo has been quoted by both NPR and NBC News as a representative small business owner concerned that the ACA will make him reluctant to hire more employees.

  • Censorship

    • Freeing your router from Cisco’s anti-porn, pro-copyright cloud service

      But shortly after my purchase, Cisco pushed a firmware update to this router that limited owners’ ability to administer the devices ourselves. The update led me (and many others) to install an older version of the firmware in order to regain all the control we had in the first place. More on just how to do that in a bit. First let’s explain what Cisco did, and why many people are upset.

  • Civil Rights

    • WikiLeaks Releases 2.5m ‘Syrian Emails’

      WikiLeaks has started publishing 2.5 million emails from Syrian political figures, ministries and associated companies.

      The emails date from August 2006 to March 2012 and come from 680 “Syria-related entities”, including the Ministries of Presidential Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Finance, Information, Transport and Culture, WikiLeaks said.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • YouTube Audio Ripping Website Takes On Google

        Philip Matesanz, a 21 year old student of applied computer science and the sole owner of the YouTube-mp3.org website, has ignored “cease and desist” letters from Google and has instead launched a public campaign against the company.

        Matesanz operates an mp3 conversion service which extracts the audio tracks from content hosted on YouTube. After being threatened with a court case, he consulted legal professionals and now claims that Google had no right to block his website from accessing YouTube. He has also launched a petition which has already collected 334,361 signatures.

      • Could Oracle ruling lead to used e-book, music sales?

        When the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that Oracle couldn’t block the sale of used software over the Internet, did it open the door to sales of used e-books, digital music, and video?

      • BitTorrent usage increases in Europe, following the blockade of The Pirate Bay

        In a twist that will surprise no one except the RIAA, MPAA, BREIN, and other anti-piracy lobbies, the amount of BitTorrent traffic has stayed the same or increased in Europe following the blockade of The Pirate Bay in the UK, Netherlands, and other countries.

      • ACTA

        • ACTA: Last-Minute Appeal to EPP Group

          If you watched the stream of the plenary session in the European Parliament yesterday, you will know that what we saw was an incredible parade of politicians from all parties denouncing ACTA – with one exception. The centre-right EPP Group is asking for a decision on ACTA to be postponed until after the European Court of Justice hands down its judgement on the compatibility of the treaty with EU law. That’s likely to take a year or two, and amounts to a massive delaying tactic, as I’ve explained before.

07.05.12

Links 5/7/2012: Android 4.1 Reviewed, RHEL 7 Preview

Posted in News Roundup at 7:11 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Is a community approach to IT security ever safe?

    Back in February of this year we heard about security firm AlienVault’s creation of the OSSIM standard open source SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) information base.

    Described (arguably) somewhat hopefully by its makers as a new “de facto” standard mechanism for sharing cyber threat intelligence, the AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTX) system is free to all users of OSSIM (and the firm’s own customers) as it aggregates, validates and publishes threat data.

  • Countly’s Gorkem Cetin argues open source is best when it comes to app analytics
  • Open Source Content Management Systems Offer Wider Range of Functionality for Horton Group Clients
  • SAP Open Source initiative progressing well
  • Open Source’s Promise

    While many banks still ponder the benefits of using open source technology for their coding needs, nascent BankSimple has gone full steam ahead.

  • EURid debuts YADIFA name server

    An open source DNS name server that supports DNSSEC and is designed to be authoritative has been released by EURid, the European Registry of Internet Domain Names. YADIFA is intended to be a lightweight alternative to more established projects; the developers say it was “built from scratch to face today’s DNS challenges, with no compromise on security, speed and stability”.

  • Free Open Source Radio Automation Software

    It’s called Airtime 2.1 and it’s open source, free to download, but only runs on Ubuntu Linux and Debian Squeeze. But, once installed you can interact with it through any web browser.

  • HP Cloud Strategy to Focus on Open Source

    HP’s Converged Cloud model will depend on interoperability with hardware from other vendors.

  • Sometimes Open Source Software Just Wins

    When I first came across open source software I was amazed. I could hardly believe that good quality software could be made available for a minimal cost. Sure there could be issues with support and maintenance from time to time, but the flexibility and pure value for money equation was hard to beat.

  • UK teachers are free to choose open source curriculum

    The UK Department of Education has confirmed that information and communications technology (ICT) lessons that teach children how to use Microsoft Word and PowerPoint will soon be more open.

    Starting September 2012, computer teachers will be given “the freedom and flexibility to design an ICT curriculum that is best for their pupils,” says Michael Gove, Department of Education secretary. This means teachers can change the curriculum to teach open source if they prefer.

  • Collide: A Dead Google Project Now Open-Source

    Google’s canning their engineering efforts in Atlanta, Georgia this month. Their engineering staff is moving on, but as one last effort, they were allowed to open-source portions of their last project: Collide.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mucker Lab and Mozilla Team-up on Open-Source Startup Accelerator Program

        Mucker Lab, one of the newest startup/accelerator programs based in Los Angeles announced yesterday they will be partnering with Mozilla’s WebFWD to create a joint acceleration program aimed at at open-source ventures. The companies hope to help the Los Angeles area open-source community turn projects and ideas into viable businesses through the resources of both Mucker Lab and Mozilla.

      • Firefox OS: One more for the road

        Choice, as they say, is a good thing. Or you can never have too choices. In the mobile device operating system space, there are plenty to choose from, with Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android leading the pack.

        Not to be left out, the Mozilla Foundation, publishers of the popular, open source Firefox Web browser, plans to add one more mobile OS to the mix.

  • SaaS

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice For Android Starts Taking Shape

      The Document Foundation is planning to release LibreOffice, the free software office suite, for Android devices. A good amount of work has been done on the app and here we bring the latest screenshots of how this app will look like.

  • Project Releases

    • Tomahawk cruises to version 0.5

      The developers of the open source Tomahawk media player have announced the release of Tomahawk 0.5 and a new version of the accompanying Toma.hk online service. Tomahawk is an open source music player that includes sharing functionality and is designed to be source-independent. New features in Tomahawk 0.5 include a new grid view for albums, and redesigned artist and track pages. The new version can also bi-directional sync playlists with Spotify and Last.fm. New media key controls have been added for Windows and Linux.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Alfresco to open up Bristol City Council

      Open source vendor Alfresco has implemented its services at Bristol City Council (BCC) as part of the council’s revamp of its document management systems and continued efforts to reduce spending.

  • Open Hardware

Leftovers

  • Microsoft’s Downfall: Inside the Executive E-mails and Cannibalistic Culture That Felled a Tech Giant

    Analyzing one of American corporate history’s greatest mysteries—the lost decade of Microsoft—two-time George Polk Award winner (and V.F.’s newest contributing editor) Kurt Eichenwald traces the “astonishingly foolish management decisions” at the company that “could serve as a business-school case study on the pitfalls of success.” Relying on dozens of interviews and internal corporate records—including e-mails between executives at the company’s highest ranks—Eichenwald offers an unprecedented view of life inside Microsoft during the reign of its current chief executive, Steve Ballmer, in the August issue. Today, a single Apple product—the iPhone—generates more revenue than all of Microsoft’s wares combined.

  • Security

    • Double security for Flash under Linux

      Chrome version 20 represents a major step forward for the security of the Google browser, at least for Linux users, for whom this has often been a somewhat neglected area. It introduces a new sandbox concept which precisely regulates and filters the system calls a process is able to make.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • New Film Hammers Democrat Andrew Cuomo’s Plan to Frack New York

      Gasland director Josh Fox released a short film last month targeting the Democratic governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, for his plan to open economically distressed parts of the state to hydraulic fracturing or “fracking.” The 18-minute film skewers Cuomo for his plans and exposes oil and gas industry internal documents which detail that some of corporations also have concerns about well safety and water contamination.

  • Finance

    • Regulators release ‘living wills’ for big banks

      Banking regulators released public portions of “living wills” submitted by nine of the world’s largest banks, which details how they could be dissolved if trouble strikes.

      The documents, required as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, mark an effort to ensure that huge financial institutions, if struggling to stay afloat, can be safely wound down without posing a threat to the overall financial system.

      The Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) posted the public portions of the plans online, saying they had not been reviewed or edited by the regulators.

  • Censorship

    • UK Pensioner Could Face Arrest For Atheist Poster

      Along with ridiculous libel cases, the UK is also infamous for laws that are designed to stop people hurting the feelings of others. Maybe that’s a laudable aim, but the end-result is that they can cast a chill over freedom of speech

  • Civil Rights

    • Evidence of a US judicial vendetta against WikiLeaks activists mounts

      The US Department of Justice (DoJ) tried to hack by legal means into my social media accounts without my knowledge. But they were exposed by Twitter’s legal team who manged to unseal the DoJ’s secret document and give me a chance to defend in court my personal information from being used in a dragnet for the first serious attacks on WikiLeaks’ supporters and volunteers. I still am not sure why they chose to take the risk of going after a member of Iceland’s parliament, because it has caused distress among fellow parliamentarians from around the world. As a result of the speaker of the Icelandic parliament raising the issue at the International Parliamentarian Union (IPU), I was asked to appear for the human rights committee at the IPU to explain the details of my case. A resolution on my case was put forward and adopted unanimously by the IPU’s governing council, in October 2011.

  • Copyrights

    • ACTA

      • The European Parliament Rejects ACTA: The Impossible Becomes Possible

        On October 23, 2007, the U.S., E.U., Canada, and a handful of other countries announced plans to the negotiate the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The behind-the-scenes discussions had apparently been ongoing for several years, leading some countries to believe that a full agreement could be concluded within a year to coincide with the end of the Bush administration. Few paid much attention as the agreement itself was shrouded in secrecy. ACTA details slowly began to emerge, however, including revelations that lobby groups had been granted preferential access, the location of various meetings, and troubling details about the agreement itself.

      • European Parliament Rejection Puts ACTA Future In Doubt

        Today’s overwhelming defeat of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) by the European Parliament could have a resounding effect on the treaty’s prospects for survival, according to sources. Meanwhile, public interest groups are celebrating and copyright holders fuming.

      • ACTA Killed In European Parliament

        Today at 12:56, the European Parliament decided whether ACTA would be ultimately rejected or whether it would drag on into uncertainty. In a crushing 478-to-39 vote, the Parliament decided to reject ACTA once and for all. This means that the deceptive treaty is now dead globally.

      • ACTA: Total Victory for Citizens and Democracy!

        The European Parliament rejected ACTA1 by a huge majority, killing it for good. This is a major victory for the multitude of connected citizens and organizations who worked hard for years, but also a great hope on a global scale for a better democracy. On the ruins of ACTA, we must now build a positive copyright reform2, taking into account our rights instead of attacking them. The ACTA victory must resonate as a wake up call for lawmakers: Fundamental freedoms as well as the free and open Internet must prevail over private interests.

      • ACTA Defeated In EU Parliament: Happy Fourth Of July

        Happy Independence Day. The day when Europeans stood up for their own freedom from the US corporate interests. The day when ACTA — the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement — proposed by the US corporations was defeated on the European soil.

        ATCA was the ‘international’ edition of SOPA/PIPA which was defeated within the US by huge protest from public and organizations like Google and Wikipedia.

        SOPA/PIPA’s cousin ACTA has been rejected by the European Parliament, by an almost unanimous margin of 478 votes against to 39 in favor. 165 members abstained from the vote. In a nutshell, “with 682 MEPs ACTA was supported by 5.7%, rejected by 70% of MEPs,” posts Jan Wilderboer on Google+.

Microsoft-Led Nokia is Confirmed to be Already Extorting Android/Linux

Posted in GNU/Linux at 11:33 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Plan P[atents]

Stephen Elop
Photo by Luca Sartoni

Summary: Apple continues its embargo assault on Android while the Elop-occupied Nokia pressures companies to pay Android ‘protection money’

THE FIRST thing we wrote when Microsoft and Nokia signed a deal is that patents would be the major issue, not necessarily by proxy. The duopoly is trying to make Android “illegal” (banned or taxed) and everything we have seen so far confirms this.

Apple is banning Android devices using poor judgment from Mr. Koh, but Apple is not succeeding against everything it tries to ban:

HTC Corp. (2498) can continue to bring its newest smartphones into the U.S. while a trade agency investigates whether the phones violate an order that the Taiwanese company stop infringing an Apple Inc. (AAPL) patent.

The U.S. International Trade Commission yesterday instituted an investigation into Apple’s claim that HTC continues to infringe a patent in violation of an order issued in December. The agency denied an emergency request to have the HTC phones, including the One X and EVO 4G LTE, detained at the U.S. border. Notice was posted on the agency’s electronic docket.

HTC was the first victim of Apple (that was more than 2 years ago). Some former Microsoft staff remarks on this ruling:

HTC has won a U.K. High Court case after a judge said that the Taiwanese smartphone maker has not infringed four of Apple’s European-held patents.

However, Judge Christopher Floyd said that three of the four patents were invalid, according to Bloomberg.

HTC’s upper hand is celebrated by Pamela Jones at Groklaw:

So maybe in time, reason will prevail. But probably not initiated by Apple, as I’ll show what they’ve been up to after the dismissal, according to Judge Posner, who was not amused. Or maybe he was. I am.

Google is trying to dodge bans by modifying its products:

Google Pushes Galaxy Nexus Update To Circumvent Ban

Google has stopped selling Galaxy Nexus device from Google Play Store as Apple deposits around $96 million bond demanded by the court in a controversial decision. The reason of why the sale of the devices has been halted is unknown, as Google has not released any statement. What it does mean is US citizens can no longer buy the device from Google Play Store.

However, Google and Samsung are working on circumventing the ban. Google will be pushing an OTA update which will limit the search functionality to web and remove the ability to search local content, emails, apps etc. Voice search will also meet similar fate. It is ironic that Google is a pioneer in search technologies and just because the company stayed away from patenting every stupid process, and Apple did, it is suffering.

Most importantly, however, we finally have confirmation that Nokia is not just scaring Android behind the scenes; now it’s public:

Thanks to the flawed patent system, you can’t innovate without stepping on someone’s patents. Nexus 7, the most awaited device has barely been launched and Nokia claims that it infringes upon its ‘standard essential patents’.

Here is the cited source:

THE GOOGLE NEXUS 7 is already in hot water, as Nokia claims that the tablet infringes some of its patents.

[...]

A Nokia spokesperson told The INQUIRER, “Nokia has more than 40 licensees, mainly for its standards essential patent portfolio, including most of the mobile device manufacturers. Neither Google nor Asus is licensed under our patent portfolio.

“Companies who are not yet licensed under our standard essential patents should simply approach us and sign up for a license.”

However, unlike Apple, it’s doubtful that Nokia will seek injunctions against the Google Nexus 7. Instead, Nokia is more likely to request that Google or Asus obtain the proper licenses.

This is significant. So Nokia is indeed already fighting Android, along with Apple, Microsoft, and Oracle (CPTN members/conspiracy). No wonder Google filed an antitrust complaint; several giants collude against the fastest-growing operating system, which is based on Linux and is Open Source.

Nokia was advised to embrace Android but instead it took “Microsoft’s Trojan horse”, to quote former Nokia executive Tomi Ahonen. Here it is:

Nokia Consultant Says Stephen Elop, Windows Phone A Monumental Mistake

[...]

But maybe it’s not too late for Nokia to swim ashore, dry off, and go the Android route. As reported by CNET, the Finnish company already has a so-called Plan B in place. And if what former Nokia executive Tomi Ahonen says is true, that Elop “secretly serves as Microsoft’s Trojan horse tasked with devaluing the once great cell phone giant so that Redmond could buy it for peanuts and become a handset maker,” then Nokia must act fast.

Should Microsoft’s clandestine Surface tablet initiative be any indication of the company’s plans for its handset future, Nokia had better be all in or all out.

If they still value the freedom to control their own destiny, they’ll choose the latter.

No crime is without victims. Microsoft is doing it again. █

‘We recommend that we *informally* plant the bug of FUD in their ears. “Have you heard about problems with DR DOS?”‘

–Microsoft (internal correspondence)

Nokia firing people
Picture by Or Cohen

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