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04.21.15

Software Patents Are Still Menacing to Free Software: OIN Expands Scope, HEVC Adds to MPEG-LA Burden/Tax, Google and Facebook Give in on Patents

Posted in Free/Libre Software, Google, Patents at 1:32 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Making distribution of software strictly contingent upon payments

Wealth

Summary: A look at recent news about software patents and especially Free/libre software, which is inherently incompatible with them

SOME time ago the OIN announced that it was extending its ‘coverage’ of ‘protection’ for Linux-related packages. “For this update,” is said, “115 new packages will be added to the Linux System, out of almost 800 proposed by various parties. Key additions are the reference implementations of the popular Go and Lua programming languages, Nginx, Openshift, and development tools like CMake and Maven. This update will represent an increase of approximately 5% of the total number of packages covered in the Linux System, a reflection of the incremental and disciplined nature of the update process.”

It’s a shame that they don’t mention GNU at all, but let’s not get too pedantic about words and ‘brands’. Simon Phipps from the OSI covered this almost a week later (the technology media largely ignored the OIN’s announcement), writing that “Docker, Puppet, LibreOffice, and the Go language are the latest additions to the Open Invention Network’s extensive patent nonaggression umbrella” (patent pool may be more accurate a term than nonaggression umbrella).

“Out of nowhere,” the inventor and developer of Ogg wrote some weeks ago, “a new patent licensing group just announced it has formed a second, competing patent pool for HEVC that is independent of MPEG LA. And they apparently haven’t decided what their pricing will be… maybe they’ll have a fee structure ready in a few months.”

So a new patent troll emerges to attack Free software in multimedia, adding its weight (and tax) to that of MPEG-LA, a patent troll that’s already viciously criticised by Simon Phipps. It’s not getting much better, is it? The OIN has no way to protect against such patent trolls. If they are non-practising, then there is no way to retaliate with a defensive lawsuit, is there? That’s just why we deem OIN not part of the overall solution, just a sort of duct tape. The OIN does not lobby for patent reform that involves elimination of software patents. The OIN was founded and first run by proponents of software patents (it was initially managed by a man from IBM, perhaps the leading or biggest proponent of software patents).

“It is somewhat understandable that Google fears destruction by patents given all the patent attacks against Android, multimedia codes that are FOSS (VP8/9), etc.”Meanwhile we have noticed (last night) that Google goes deeper into the patents mess. “Google is a large company that has plenty of technology and many innovations,” says the report, “and in turn they hold plenty of patents on those technologies, but they still fell behind other big name tech companies last year for the biggest earners of U.S. patents. According to Fortune though, Google did rise up the list to reach being the company with the 8th largest amount of U.S. patents being awarded to them last year, gaining around 38% more patents in 2014 than they had the previous year which totaled a number of 2,566 U.S patents in all. With such a large portfolio it must seem like a daunting task to keep up on all the information related to patents in Google’s portfolio, and that may be true, but Google’s legal team has more than a few tools at their disposal to get the job done and one of those is an analytics software called PatentIQ.”

It is somewhat understandable that Google fears destruction by patents given all the patent attacks against Android, multimedia codes that are FOSS (VP8/9), etc. Companies like Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and numerous smaller trolls that they are feeding (Rockstar Consortium and MPEG-LA, to name just a couple, let alone Intellectual Ventures, CPTN, MOSAID/Conversant, and Acacia) are usually behind it.

“Kudelski Group and Google Enter Into Patent Cross License Agreement,” said this headline very recently, adding not many details except this: “The Kudelski Group, a leading independent provider of media protection and value-added service technology, and Google, today announced they have entered into a multi-year patent cross licensing agreement.”

There is clearly a systematic issue here and unless we manage to get rid of software patents in the US, this issue won’t just go away.

Simon Phipps wrote another related article recently. Titled “Facebook gives in on patent grant”, the article explains how occasional patent bully Facebook tries to appease its critics:

Late Friday, Facebook announced it’s finally giving in to pressure from the open source community and fixed its open source patent grant. While most people felt the intent was good and welcomed the original version of the grant, it was worded in such a way as to give Facebook a significant legal advantage in any open source community where it was the initiator.

While current versions of modern open source licenses, such as the Apache License, the Mozilla Public License, and the General Public License, all include coverage to patent rights associated with the copyrights the licenses cover, older licenses like BSD and MIT include no explicit patent grants. Facebook was following common practice by giving a full license to any patents necessarily infringed by users of code in Facebook projects that incorporated the grant under those licenses.

For the Free/Open Source software world the patent situation has become very tricky, so in the coming few posts, spread across the coming few days, we are going to explain where we’re at when it comes to patent law. It’s not looking too good because large corporations diverted the entire public debate to “patent trolls”. The corporate media helps them do this. █

The Latest Developments Around Microsoft’s Clever Attack on Android/Linux

Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft at 12:56 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Show of ‘love’ by aggression

War crimes

Summary: Microsoft’s campaign of destruction, extortion, etc. against the most widely used Linux-powered operating system is revisited in light of new reports

ONCE upon a time there was a company called Nokia which dominated the mobile market and then started moving to Linux. It quickly became a top contributor to Linux, in the development sense, and later there were rumours about it embracing Android (or exploring it alongside MeeGo). But Microsoft killed Nokia (using a mole) before Nokia could actualise any of this and Nokia’s Linux ambitions were never realised, except in the company founded by former employees (Jolla). Tizen and Sailfish OS have yet to fulfill the promise of MeeGo, or else they will go down in history just like WebOS, which LG now owns and develops (Tizen is developed almost exclusively by the other Korean giant, Samsung).

It is now being reported that quite unsurprisingly Nokia may be getting back to Android endeavours, without any reliance on or affiliation with Microsoft. We have heard that for a while, but this time it sounds more substantial. Whether Nokia considers going down the same route as Cyanogen (‘Microsoft Android’, i.e. ‘Microsoft Nokia’ again) we don’t quite know yet. One thing we do know is that Microsoft attempts the embrace, extend, extinguish approach against Android right now. That’s what the ‘new’ Microsoft is trying to do. According to this new report about Ballmer, Sinofsky and other people who are no longer at Microsoft, “Steve Ballmer killed an early version of Office for iOS because it compromised Windows, Bell said. He added that Steve Sinofsky’s reign was marked by infighting, hampering Microsoft’s strategic response to competition from Apple and Google.”

“It is not atypical for the media, and especially for foes of Android, to rewrite the history of Nokia and how Microsoft destroyed it.”The takeover of Nokia had multiple objectives including patent extortion of Android. It worked only to a certain degree. Nokia revisionism has just been reported to us by a reader, who told us that this article from an Apple propaganda site includes “revisionism.”

“Elop killed Nokia’s phone division,” iophk wrote to us, emphasising the part which started with: “But the company was…”

It is not atypical for the media, and especially for foes of Android, to rewrite the history of Nokia and how Microsoft destroyed it. There ought to have been a European investigation into it, but it never happened. In December last year the New York Times wrote that “Google’s Detractors Take Their Fight to the States”. The author focused on Microsoft and said that Sony’s leaked “emails show the extent of the efforts with state attorneys general. The messages detail how the Motion Picture Association of America — the Hollywood industry group — and an organization backed by Microsoft, Expedia and Oracle, among others, have aggressively lobbied attorneys general to build cases against Google in recent years, sometimes in complementary ways.”

Microsoft also uses Nokia to attack Google and Android at a regulatory level, as we showed some years ago. A new article titled “The Google gold rush” says: “No sooner had Margrethe Vestager, the European commissioner for competition, accused Google of violating antitrust laws last week than the mobile phones of Brussels-based lawyers started buzzing with messages from LinkedIn telling them that Microsoft’s local law firm needed two anti-trust lawyers — and fast.”

We have already written a great deal about Microsoft’s role in these anti-Google actions which coincide with Microsoft’s attempt to ‘hijack’ Android from Google. “Google’s Biggest European Headache Isn’t Search,” says this new headline, “It’s Android.”

Yes, it's all about using Cyanogen and patent extortion against Android while European regulators limit Google’s response.

Whether Microsoft’s embrace, extend, extinguish approach will work or not remains to be seen. Microsoft may have tried similar tricks before, e.g. using Nokia and partners like Facebook (Home), Amazon and others before. It never worked.

Here we have so-called ‘hackers’ bringing more Microsoft spyware (Cortana or Portaña is software that records Android users and transmits the audio to Microsoft) carrying water for Microsoft. One article explains that “Portaña is apparently communicating with Microsoft’s servers, and it’s not a strict port: the hackers have not recreated all the digital assistant’s features. Portaña naturally can’t interface and integrate with Android and its various features like Cortana does with Windows Phone.”

Either way, Microsoft benefits from this. It’s part of the notorious datagrab effort. One way to interpret the whole “cloud computing” buzz is a concerted effort to gather people’s data in very few companies servers’ (worldwide, by merit of replication), especially if these companies already have a special relationship (e.g. subpoenas, PRISM interceptions and so on) with spying agencies in many countries. █

The Microsoft ‘Community’ is Maligning the Free Software Community

Posted in Site News at 12:18 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Promoting the “will code for food” myth

Bread

Summary: Dishonest generalisations and baseless deductions portray the Free/Open Source software communities as a nasty place that leads to poverty and despair

Stephen Walli, one of Microsoft’s longest-standing moles in Free/Open Source software communities (we wrote about it even in 2008), joined Microsoft, left Microsoft (acting as a mole for a while), joined Microsoft again (in a more senior position, again as a sort of top mole), then left Microsoft again because Microsoft is shutting down 'open' so as to quit pretending it cares about Free/Open Source software. How long before Walli re-joins Microsoft (the third time around)? He is now at HP.

Weird articles from Walli are the rule rather than the exception. He occasionally mocks those who are not friendly to Microsoft’s agenda or are friendly towards the FSF/GNU/GPL/copyleft/Free software. Being a Microsoft booster, mole, etc. Walli does not do much to hide his affiliation. He is an on-and-off employee (salaried) of Microsoft and this new article from him, hosted by a Red Hat-run site (he habitually posts there), is attempting to preach what Free/Open Source software communities should be like. We find it disturbing whenever Microsoft people try to preach to Free/Open Source software communities what these communities should be like, especially because Microsoft is constantly attacking Free/Open Source software communities. That’s like the Pope explaining to Muslims how they should behave, or vice versa.

Yesterday we saw some guy called Derrick Wlodarz (not familiar with him) posting a vicious attack piece against Free/Open Source software communities. He uses misleading comparisons (apples versus oranges), selective quoting (even of trolls) and all sorts of old smears against migrations to GNU/Linux. It’s a really ugly piece of work and this anti-Linux piece comes from BetaNews, where trolling against GNU/Linux is common (usually it’s from Mr. Fagioli). “He holds numerous technical credentials from Microsoft,” Wlodarz says about himself. So here again we have the Microsoft bunch smearing Free/Open Source software communities, exploiting the fact that Free/Open Source software communities work out in the open, unlike proprietary software companies where everything happens secretly and marketing people help hide the nasty elements. Microsoft boosting in Wlodarz’s articles is quite the standard though; just look at his latest articles, titled “Migrating from Windows Server 2003: 12 best practices straight from the trenches”, “Windows RT: Did it really die? Absolutely not and here’s why”, and “Windows Phone 8.1: Why I ditched Android and couldn’t be happier” (not a single positive thing to say about Free/Open Source software, only negative things). Using systemd resistors to badmouth Linux (and by extension Free software) is just so easy, especially because the debate has been so open, as is always the case in the Free/Open Source software world.

“Some of the world’s wealthiest companies are using and also producing Free/Open Source software.”Last but not least, there is some FUD today in the Financial Times (FT is widely distributed). Longtime Microsoft booster Richard Waters attacks Free software in the FT and spreads this attack to other sites too. His premise is wrong and biased. It’s the “can’t make money from FOSS” smear. It is very baseless, it shows his ignorance, demonstrates bad research, and perhaps bad faith (he is loyal to Microsoft and has a long history of such hostility towards FOSS).

Many proprietary software companies are dying every day because they are not financially viable. Just because one Free software-based (not really FOSS, but FOSS-based) company died Microsoft boosters think they can legitimately generalise and make it seem as though supporting Free/Open Source software means being poor. Some of the world’s wealthiest companies are using and also producing Free/Open Source software. I myself have always made a living only by writing Free software; my wife does too. █

Googlebombing ‘Microsoft Open Source’ Even When Microsoft Shuts Down Its ‘Open Source’ Proxy

Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 11:41 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Putting news into reverse

Top gear

Summary: A massive failure by the press to cover the most basic news, which is Microsoft putting an end to a supposedly ‘Open Source’ effort

Microsoft has turned the media into somewhat of a joke. The technology ‘news’ sites that we can thus far see covering the shutdown of Microsoft’s “Open Tech” proxy (we took a very comprehensive look) are simply misleading their readers on behalf of Microsoft. It’s an insult to journalism. There is no scepticism, no fact-checking. It’s what some people call industrial journalism and it’s clear which industry is being served.

Here are some Microsoft “Open Tech” articles that we wrote here before:

“Open Tech” is not ‘Open Source’ but rather a mole whose goal is to derail ‘Open Source’ as we know it. It’s about making ‘Open Source’ Microsoft-dependent, i.e. dependent on Windows, SQL Server, Office, and so on. “Open Tech” from Microsoft is better at anti-copyleft propaganda (or anti-Free software), as Microsoft’s former manager who founded Black Duck hsd been doing for years (even a decade ago). Here is a reminder from Black Duck, whose anti-Free software press releases are still being republished (we saw this one last night, following last week's media blitz). Black Duck, which came from Microsoft, began as an anti-GPL entity, by its very own admission. Microsoft is just joining it a little later. It’s a ‘divide and rule’ strategy.

To share with our readers some of the poor journalism, see this article which called shutdown “absorption” and see Microsoft’s booster Jeffrey Schwartz from the Microsoft-connected sites (a Microsoft boosting network) misleading readers [1, 2] in Redmond and elsewhere using appalling spin. “Microsoft believes enough in its open source commitment that it no longer feels it has to have an offshoot to emphasize,” he said. What utter nonsense. It’s followed by some more openwashing, such as: “Mark Russinovich, CTO for Azure, earlier this month raised eyebrows when raising the specter of Microsoft open sourcing Windows, saying “it’s definitely possible.””

So they return to the googlebombing of "Open Source" — a gross googlebombing campaign to which Matt Hartley too (despite being a GNU/Linux advocate) is not so reluctant to help/assist.

Saying that Microsoft’s shutdown of a so-called “Open” entity is proof of Microsoft’s commitment to “Open” is not just counter-intuitive; it’s total nonsense, it is make believe, and some fools are falling for it (or maliciously playing along).

We can understand why Microsoft boosters such as Mary Jo Foley and Darryl K. Taft would spread the lies and deceive for Microsoft’s agenda (they were among the earliest ‘journalists’ to cover this ‘scoop’ with ‘damage control’ embedded in it), later adding a Microsoft propaganda video. What’s harder to justify is reporting from non-Microsoft-affiliated sites doing the same, perhaps refusing to do the most basic research. They are repeating the shameless spin from Microsoft, casting something bad as “good”, so it is not really journalism, it is more like PR in disguise and they are complicit in it.

Witness what Microsoft apologists wrote or what Microsoft propaganda sites wrote. Also see some of the more colourful headlines, such “Microsoft Open Technologies to ooze its open source vibes through Microsoft proper” (what a bizarre way to explain a shutdown).

Brian Fagioli, at times a Microsoft troll and propagandist, did the same thing, but the most misleading headline, “Microsoft’s open source ambitions pick up speed”, came from TechRadar, an occasional Microsoft troll.

How can a shutdown of a unit called “Open Tech” be interpreted as “Microsoft’s open source ambitions pick up speed”? Are these journalists drunk, bribed, or just satirical? A better headline would be “Microsoft closes Open Tech open source subsidiary” (in the British press).

All in all, we hope that our readers do understand that the corporate media, saturated with Microsoft friends (pretending to be objective journalists), is lying through its teeth. The above is a complete summary, based on what we were able to find with search tools. It was extremely hard to find accurate reports on this. History is being warped/shaped/revised by friends of Microsoft and the biggest victim is truth itself. █

Links 22/4/2015: Calculate Linux 14.16, SparkyLinux 4.0 RC KDE

Posted in News Roundup at 7:01 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Server

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux Kernel 3.10.75 LTS Is a Small Update that Brings New and Updated Drivers

      After announcing the fifth maintenance release of Linux kernel 3.19, Greg Kroah-Hartman also published details about the seventy-five point release of the Linux 3.10 kernel, urging users of the 3.10 kernel series to upgrade as soon as the packages become available in the official software repositories of their Linux distributions.

    • LLDB Is Getting Into Shape For Linux 64-bit Debugging

      From Valve’s interest in the LLDB debugger to many other firms also being interested in LLVM’s debugger as an alternative to GDB on Linux, LLDB is getting into very usable shape for 64-bit Linux systems.

    • Linux Kernel 3.14.39 LTS Is Now Available for Download

      After releasing the Linux kernels 3.19.5 and 3.10.75 LTS, Greg Kroah-Hartman had the pleasure of announcing the immediate availability of Linux kernel 3.14.39, an LTS (Long Term Support) version that is currently maintained for a couple of years with security patches, drivers updates, and bugfixes.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Intel’s Windows Driver Now Supports OpenGL 4.4, Linux Driver Still With OpenGL 3.3

        The Intel Windows driver is up to supporting the OpenGL 4.4 specification while the company’s open-source Linux graphics driver still doesn’t yet fully support OpenGL 4.0.

      • AMD Open-Sources “Addrlib” From Catalyst

        As part of AMD finally releasing the AMDGPU kernel driver yesterday along with initial Iceland/Carrizo/Tonga support in Gallium3D, they also open-sourced a component formerly within the Catalyst proprietary driver.

      • AMD Releases New “AMDGPU” Linux Kernel Driver & Mesa Support

        At long last the source code to the new AMDGPU driver has been released! This is the new driver needed to support the Radeon R9 285 graphics card along with future GPUs/APUs like Carrizo. Compared to the existing Radeon DRM driver, the new AMDGPU code is needed for AMD’s new unified Linux driver strategy whereby the new Catalyst driver will be isolated to being a user-space binary blob with both the full open-source driver and the Catalyst driver using this common AMDGPU kernel driver.

    • Benchmarks

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • 72 Applications ported to Kde Frameworks 5 (KDE Applications 15.04)

        Great news for Kde fanatics since this is a month full of great releases. In fact, after the stable release of KDE Frameworks 5.9 and the up-and-coming beta of Plasma 5.3 there’s another important step for the Kde development: KDE Applications 15.04.

        With this new release of KDE Applications 15.04 we have the full porting of 72 applications to KDE Frameworks 5 and consequently to Qt5.

  • Distributions

    • What’s in a name?

      Hello all, from the first post on our new domain!

      Firstly we’d like to apologise for the downtime, confusion and general inconvenience of late. In short we’ve been involved in a naming dispute for the previously named “Evolve OS” project. On April 1st (yep, really) we were contacted regarding a naming dispute over the use of ‘OS‘. In the past the Evolve OS project had applied for a trademark in the name of “Evolve OS”, which was going through a 2 month period in which those opposing the mark can file their objection.

    • New Releases

    • Screenshots/Screencasts

    • Gentoo Family

      • Trials & Tribulations: Installing Gentoo Linux With GNOME & Systemd

        Despite going four years without using GNOME 3 to any real degree, it felt familiar from the get-go, almost as if it was just mere months since I last used it. As I’ve had to do with Ubuntu’s Unity, I needed to find a tweaking tool for GNOME, stat, as many of its defaults don’t suit me very well. After figuring out via Web search that it was gnome-tweak-tool I was looking for, I was rather surprised to see that Gentoo had included it in that monolithic ‘gnome’ install. It’s really easy to see why.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Fedora

        • Fedora’s Christian Schaller Asks ‘What Can We Do?’

          Today in Linux news Fedora developer asks the community what can we do to get you to switch to Fedora? Elsewhere, the number of Debian 8 release blockers remains steady despite looming release date and Rob Williams shares his “trials and tribulations” installing Gentoo with GNOME and systemd. The former Evolve OS has a projected release date of the release of their newly renamed Linux and Simon Phipps reports on the latest Open Invention Network members.

        • Fedora Workstation: More than the sum of its parts

          Anyway, I thought this could be a good opportunity to actually ask the wider community a question, especially if you are using GNOME on another distribution than Fedora, what are we still missing at this point for you to consider making a switch to Fedora Workstation? I know that for some of you the answer might be as simple as ‘worn in shoes fits the best’, but anything you might have beyond that would be great to hear.

          I can’t promise that we will be able to implement every suggestion you add to this blog post, but I do promise that we will review and consider every suggestion you provide and try to see how it can fit into development plans going forward.

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

    • CamJam EduKit

      When the Raspberry Pi launched in 2012 it was clear that it would rise or fall on the strength of the supporting material. And so it has proved; there are more powerful and cheaper devices out there, but the Pi has grown a huge community providing how-tos and projects, and several third-parties have popped up selling add-on equipment.

    • Phones

      • Tizen

      • Android

        • 10 Android for Work Features Sure to Appeal to Enterprises

          There’s a new enterprise mobile platform for companies that are prepared to invest in Android. Google has introduced its long-awaited mobile device management (MDM) platform Android for Work. Android for Work gives IT departments and companies a more secure way for employees to access corporate data and applications with their Android mobile devices. It’s the Android equivalent of platforms such as Apple’s own MDM platform and others from Good Technology and BlackBerry. One advantage Android for Work has that all those others don’t, however, is that it can be used on more than a billion Android devices that are in users’ hands around the world. In other words, it’s an MDM system that’s destined to be adopted on a massive scale worldwide. But what in Android for Work will make it an effective management tool for the millions of workers who want to not only bring their Android mobile devices to work but use them productively for business? This slide show looks at the features that could make Android for Work an effective MDM platform for enterprises.

        • Android Wear’s biggest update ever takes aim at the Apple Watch
        • Android Wear’s Second Big Update Is Coming: Gestures, WiFi, And Better UI In The Next Few Weeks

          Word around the rumor mill was that Android Wear was about to get a pretty big update — and sure enough, such an update is officially on the way.

        • Android Wear adds WiFi support, always-on apps, emojis

          Google released a major update to Android Wear that adds always-on apps, WiFi support, a wrist-flipping gesture for scrolling, and emoji drawing support.

          Google just released a major Android 5.1.1 update for its Android Wear smartwatch platform, and considering the huge pre-sales for the Apple Watch, it’s not a moment too soon. Even with a nine month head start over the new Apple Watch, Google’s Android Wear hardware partners sold only 70,000 watches by the end of 2014, according to an early February estimate from Canalys.

        • I’m tired of getting excited about Nokia Android phones, but I can’t help it

          For years, I waited for Nokia to change its mind and start making the gorgeous Android handsets many fans wanted from the company. Instead Nokia steered clear of a path that may have brought it some success, and eventually succumbed to iOS and Android. Yet, Re/code has learned that Nokia is once again working on Android smartphones, something that was previously rumored as well, and I can’t help but get excited all over again.

        • Nokia phones expected in 2016: Android or something else?

          Nokia is planning a return to the smartphone market in 2016, after it sold off its handset business to Microsoft in 2013, sources tell Re/code. The timing is right: Based on the Microsoft deal, Nokia can’t sell phones with the Nokia brand until next year.

        • Sony’s Android-powered 4K TVs and new soundbars are coming in May

          After first showcasing its 2015 lineup of 4K TVs at CES earlier this year, Sony has now revealed pricing and release dates for most of the sets. All of them run Android TV, which replaces Sony’s previous, clunky software for a richer experience deeply tied to Google’s own software and third-party streaming apps. Most of Sony’s lineup is on the larger side when it comes to display size. Though you’ll find a few options available in the 43- to 55-inch range, Sony is putting the most effort into models that will dominate most home theater setups at 65 or 75 inches. It’s here you’ll find the flagship XBR-75X940C, a $7,999 TV that features full-array local dimming, 4K resolution, and support for HDR video output, which Sony will deliver through a firmware update sometime this summer.

        • Best new Android widgets (April 2015) #2
        • Android Lollipop OS update live for Sprint Spark-driven Samsung Galaxy S4 tri-band LTE users in US: What’s new

          After rolling out the Android 5.0 (Lollipop) OS update to Samsung Galaxy Note 3 users who have subscribed to its wireless network services in the US, Sprint is now seeding the much expected OS update to Galaxy S4 owners using its Sprint Spark service in the country.

        • Android 5.1.1 Lollipop almost ready for Nexus 9, WiFi Nexus 7

          You may be excited that your device is finally getting the Android 5.0 Lollipop update but others are already getting Android 5.0.1 (Moto E, and Moto 4 with 4G LTE, Galaxy Note 4, Note Edge, Galaxy S5, Galaxy S4) and Android 5.0.2 (LG G2 from T-Mobile and AT&T, Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, Nexus 7, original Moto X). Several mobile devices have even received Android 5.1 already like the Nexus 5, Nexus Player, HTC One (M7), Moto G GPE, LG G Pad 8.3 GPE, and the Sony Z Ultra GPE. And to further burst your bubble, sorry, but Android 5.1.1 is almost ready.

        • 8 great Google Maps tips for Android and iOS
        • ZTE’s Spro 2 Android-powered ‘smart projector’ will hit AT&T for $399.99

          How would you like a 120-inch screen you can toss into your backpack or purse? Yes, please!

          First announced at CES 2015, ZTE’s Android-powered smart projector Spro 2 is finally launching in the U.S. The 1.2-pound portable projector that measures 5.28 x 5.16 x 1.22 inches will be available on April 24 from AT&T.

        • Your favorite websites can now send notifications to Chrome on Android

          Support for push notifications was the most important feature in last week’s Chrome 42 release — and starting today you’ll begin to see why. Today, several websites including eBay, Facebook, Pinterest, Vice News, and Product Hunt will begin to offer Chrome push notifications on both desktop and Android. It’s that last platform that’s a big deal: websites that support Chrome push notifications can send out updates that look and feel like regular app updates even if the Chrome browser isn’t currently active on an Android device.

        • Google just unveiled a hugely ambitious Android Wear update – here are the 3 coolest features

          With all the hype surrounding the Apple Watch, you may have forgotten that Google has a smartwatch software platform of its own called Android Wear. To remind us of this, Google on Monday took the wraps off a hugely ambitious Android Wear update that adds three important features that the platform had been sorely missing.

        • Samsung Galaxy S6, S6 Edge Receiving Android 5.1 Lollipop Software Update
        • Australia’s first Android TV device arrives with Google Nexus Player

          The player, which runs the Android TV platform, was released in the U.S. in October 2014. It will be sold at JB Hi-Fi and Dick Smith from Tuesday for A$129. The device sits in the same market as Apple TV, and is the first device to offer Android TV locally.

        • Improve your game with the best golf Apps for Android

          These days, technology is just as much a part of golf as a good swing. Both professional and amateur players are constantly seeking an edge from the best equipment and engineering breakthroughs.

        • Nexus 5 & 7 Still Facing The Same Issues After Android 5.1 Update

          Usually with updates to software, developers try to address any bugs or issues that were present in the previous version. Unfortunately it seems that in the case of Android 5.1, Google has yet to address some problems that are still plaguing handsets like the Nexus 5 and the Nexus 7 which are no doubt rather annoying for its users.

          The issues in question are related to memory leaks in which after prolonged periods of use, the devices start to feel sluggish due to the amount of free RAM remaining which is less than ideal. This is an issue that Google had acknowledged back in Android 5.0.1 and was actually reported back in 2014.

        • Chrome’s push notifications reach your Android phone

          Chrome’s website push notifications are no longer confined to your desktop — they now surface on your phone, too. Grab Chrome 42 for Android and you can opt into alerts from websites that show up no matter what you’re doing. You won’t have to worry about missing out on breaking news, even if your favorite sites don’t have dedicated apps. You’ll also have an easier time adding home screen shortcuts for those sites if you always want them close at hand. It’ll be a while before many of the sites you frequent can deliver notifications (eBay, Facebook and Pinterest are some of the early adopters), but it’s worth upgrading now to get ready.

Free Software/Open Source

  • A Gigabyte Sandy/Ivy Bridge Motherboard Now Handled By Coreboot
  • Myth Busting the Open-Source Cloud Part 1

    On the contrary, open-source cloud computing products are designed from the outset with security in mind. For example, there are features such as identity management to monitor who has access to content, and data encryption to safeguard information while it’s at rest or in transit.

    Furthermore, open-source cloud software is peer-reviewed by community participants, leading to continuous improvements in the quality of security features and mechanisms. This community also monitors and rapidly discloses vulnerabilities and issues, and provides security updates to address them.

  • Why the Open Source Stars Must Align

    Open source projects like OpenStack, Docker, OPNFV and OpenDaylight are more supported and better funded than ever before. They mark a broader trend of large, active and well-resourced open source projects that are among the leaders in Big Data, cloud computing, operating systems and development practices. Open source has come a long way in 30 years – and its success marks a new era for the overall OSS community.

    But success does not come without potential pitfalls. One of the greatest obstacles to project success isn’t the proprietary competition – it’s the lack of communication between large open source projects like OpenStack and Docker.

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Google Shuts Off NPAPI in Chrome

        With the release of Chrome 42 this week, Google fixed more than 40 vulnerabilities. But the most significant security change in the new browser is Google’s decision to disable the NPAPI, essentially turning off plugins such as Java and Silverlight by default.

    • Mozilla

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government

    • German Greens want increased support for open source

      The Greens in the German parliament want the government to shore up support for open source, but are not sure how. The politicians are working with the Free Software Foundation Europe, to figure out the most convincing arguments and how to increase pressure on the federal government.

    • Germany’s Foreign Ministry Questioned Over Use of Proprietary Software

      Germany has been in the news many times with its open source policy, usually at the local level, but now the Parliament is getting involved, and it’s making some serious accusations towards its Foreign Ministry.

  • Openness/Sharing

Leftovers

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Sony CEO Michael Lynton Slams Middle East Peace Talks In Leaked Emails: ‘Let Them All Kill Each Other!’ PLUS Secret Chats With State Department

      Assange posted a massive collection of hacked Sony emails on Thursday, he explained that they show the workings of a corporation “at the centre of a geo-political conflict.” Indeed, RadarOnline.com can exclusively report that the leaked emails reveal extensive communication between SONY CEO Michael Lynton and the US State Department. And it wasn’t just business: Lynton was not shy about sharing his political beliefs via his work email. In one communication, Lynton bashes the Middle Eastern peace process and sniffs, “Let them all kill each other!”

      The disturbing email came as a response to an October 2014 article by Fareed Zakaria in The Washington Post regarding President Barack Obama‘s foreign policy in Syria. A relative had forwarded it to Lynton with the comment, “Brilliant.”

  • Censorship

  • Civil Rights

    • Guest Post: Undermining Attorney – Client Privilege Weakens Rule of Law

      The systems of surveillance that Edward Snowden revealed in both the UK and US depend on law for their justification, and are facing legal challenges in both countries’ legislatures. This might give the impression that, whatever the merits of these controversies, they will be sorted out through well-established, neutral principles of law. But a case in the UK has raised concerns about whether the impartial protections of the legal system are themselves being undermined.

    • Michael Eric Dyson’s Hatchet Eulogy for Cornel West

      In most respects, it’s very much a by-the-numbers smear, which credits West’s increasingly vocal antipathy to Obama to personal and professional decline, and the usual array of pathologies and character defects that prevent public figures from staying within the boundaries of permissible dissent: grandiosity, selfishness, envy, political calculation, hypocrisy and grudges. Y’know, Ralph Nader syndrome.

  • DRM

    • Apple and Sony emails on Wikileaks

      The leaks included Apple’s agreements to distribute Sony videos through the iTunes Store. This includes the original agreement between the companies covering TV shows such as Charlie’s Angels and Who’s The Boss that was signed in 2007 with term extensions, high-definition amendments, and “Virtual Storage Locker” – the service that we now know as iTunes in the Cloud.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights and Sony

      • The Sony hacking scandal

        The threat came from a group of hackers that had already caused havoc with a cyber-attack on Sony Pictures, and leaked reams of the studio’s confidential information. Washington was quick to blame the hack on North Korea and many in the US media could not wait to do the same.

        [...]

        Pyongyang’s official response to the film – that releasing it would amount to an act of war – also struck people as a reach, but when you consider the way the country is depicted by Hollywood and take a closer look at what was actually revealed in the hack-job on Sony Pictures, you may reconsider.

      • Wikileaks reveals that David Cameron met with Sony before the Scottish Independence referendum to discuss the release date of Outlander

        I have no real time for conspiracy theories as people reading these blogs will know. Sure, some are fun but mainly they’re there to be dismissed so when before the Scottish Independence referendum there were people saying that the UK government had ‘blocked’ the broadcast of Outlander, a SF series set in 18th century Scotland I just treated these people pushing that idea with the contempt they deserved.

      • Leaked Sony email speaks of political ‘importance’ of Outlander to independence debate

        The Outlander TV series and its possible impact on the Independence Referendum were raised by Sony executives before a meeting with Prime Minister David Cameron last year.

      • Sony Once Again Ridiculously Warns The Media Not To Report On Leaked Emails

        Back in December, when the Sony emails first leaked, we wrote about how Sony hired super-high-powered lawyer David Boies to send off ridiculously misinformed letters to media outlets warning them that they should not write anything based on information in the leaks. Boies took it a ridiculous step further, threatening to sue Twitter for not blocking screenshots of the emails. Both threats had no real legal basis.

        Of course, now that the emails are in the news again, thanks to Wikileaks posting the archive online and making it searchable, Sony is apparently shelling out more big bucks to Boies to send around another version of the letter. You can see the letter here or at the bottom of the post.

      • WikiLeaks Release of Stolen Sony Data Is ‘Just Wrong’ – Former NSA Director

        WikiLeaks made the wrong decision in releasing the cache of data hackers obtained from Sony Pictures Entertainment in November 2014, former National Security Agency Director General Keith Alexander said on Friday.

      • WikiLeaks reveals new Springsteen contract, with release plans

        The document goes into a lot of economical details (higher royalty rates, a $31-million advance, a contract extension until June 2027, etc), including details of the benefits the 2005 contract brought to Columbia ($73-million on top of the $101-million paid to Springsteen)

      • WikiLeaks: What is written about BiH and Sarajevo in hacked Mails of SONY

        Three days ago, WikiLeaks released thousands of documents and e-mails which they reached after the company Sony has been hacked last year. Our country is mentioned as well in the published content.

        Among more than 170.000 e-mails, there are ones of the author Jennifer Rawlings who filmed a documentary in 2008 that investigates lives of several women that survived the war in BiH. Author of the movie “Forgotten voices: Women in Bosnia“, has frequently been visiting war zones, including BiH after the war.

04.20.15

Links 21/4/2015: Project Photon, Ubuntu Touch Buzz

Posted in News Roundup at 7:00 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • The best free, open-source software for everyday PC users

    Finding new software is a breeze for Linux users. The Linux desktop offers powerful, easy-to-use open-source applications for everything you need, just a few clicks away in your Linux distribution’s package manager. The programs are free, too—and you don’t have to dodge the installer crapware you do on Windows.

    But which of those programs are right for you? We have answers. The applications highlighted here are the pick of the litter for the average Linux user looking to stock up on software. Heck, these particular applications are so good that almost all of them are available on other platforms and are popular even among Windows users.

    Say what you want about the Linux desktop—it’s a much more capable, mature environment than the WinRT environment in Windows 8. Chrome OS and its Chrome apps still can’t match Linux’s power, either.

  • What does an adult look like in an open source community?

    Communities can be as simple as a person having a campfire and someone else joining them. If you’re a commerce-minded campfire owner, it’s about what other people need to trade to sit beside it. If you’re a government-minded campfire owner, it’s about when you need to implement a firewood tax so that you can maintain the fire. And social structures manifest in very straightforward ways. Every village has its idiot. Every playground has its bully.

  • Solving the Free Software Liability Conundrum

    As you may have noticed, a lot of software has a lot of bugs. Even open source code has them, but the main damage tends to come from certain well-known, widely-used proprietary programs – not forgetting well-known, widely-used open source programs with proprietary layers like Android. In fact, some estimates put the annual damage caused by serious software flaws in the hundreds of billions of pounds range, which probably means that many trillions of pounds’ value has been destroyed thanks to buggy, flawed software over the years.

  • Ten lessons from Open Source Open Society 2015

    There’s a dark underside to open source culture. Chris Kelly from GitHub says because anyone can take part in open source, the door is open to assholes (he’s American, I’d prefer to say arseholes). That includes bullying white men with a sense of entitlement. Things often end up argumentative.

    He says this culture can frighten off outsiders, only a few women coders work in open source and the movement is missing out on the benefits of diversity. There’s a clear need to deal with this and to improve communications between people working in open source.

  • The future of Audacity, interview with the team

    We’re working on ways to make the code smaller, less work to bug fix, and related things to keep the project fun.

  • Events

    • POSSCON Successfully Reboots

      Last week in Columbia, South Carolina, the developers’ conference POSSCON went through something of a reboot. Last year the conference was cancelled to allow It-oLogy, the organization behind the event, to put its energy behind launching the Great Wide Open conference in Atlanta. This year, with last year’s successful premiere of the Hotlanta event under its belt, IT-oLogy pulled-out all the stops to reestablish POSSCON.

    • Libre Graphics Meeting 2015 for free and open source design

      This conference is open to the public, and registration is free. Libre Graphics Meeting is four days of talks, workshops, and hack sessions about free/libre and open source software for software developers, artists, designers, users, and other contributors. This year, the conference will be held in Toronto from April 29 to May 2.

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Chrome 43 Beta: Web MIDI and upgrading legacy sites to HTTPS

        The newest Chrome Beta channel release includes Web MIDI support, new features to improve security and compatibility and a number of small changes to enable developers to build more powerful web applications. Unless otherwise noted, changes described below apply to Chrome for Android, Windows, Mac, Linux and Chrome OS.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Big Data Titans Align Around Open Data Platform, Open Tools

      Big data leaders are really converging around the Open Data Platform, recently announced by Pivotal, which we covered here. Hortonworks, IBM and Pivotal have announced that they are essentially harmonizing their Hadoop and data analytics strategies.

  • Databases

    • How real time data supply has changed

      RethinkDB is an open-source scalable database for what its makers call “the real time web”, but what does real time data supply mean in terms of the way web-centric applications function today?

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • April 2015 GNU Toolchain Update
    • Gnuastro webpage is activated

      The Gnuastro webpage ( http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuastro/ ) was activated and the documentation is now available. There is still a lot of work to do until it is ready for release though.

    • 30 Years On, HURD Lives: GNU Updates Open Source Unix Kernel

      The latest version of GNU HURD is out. If you’re asking, “What is GNU HURD?” you’re probably in good company. But as the open source kernel that was supposed to do what Linux ended up doing—provide the core for a cross-platform, Unix-like operating system whose code would be freely shared—the HURD is important. That it is still being actively developed three decades after its launch is worth remarking.

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • L.A. School District Terminates iPad Program and Seeks Refund From Apple

    As the Los Angeles Times reports, the Unified School District Board of Education told its attorneys that they should consider litigation against Apple and Pearson. (Pearson developed the iPad curriculum as an Apple contractor.) District counsel David Holmquist said that Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines “made the decision that he wanted to put them on notice, Pearson in particular, that he’s dissatisfied with their product.” In a letter to Apple, the school district wrote that it won’t continue to pay for the Pearson curriculum or services. And board members are calling for a refund.

  • ‘Help! Fire!’ Talking parrots cause house fire confusion

    Emergency crews responded to a structure fire in Canyon County Friday night that caused some confusion.

  • Report: Scientology spy pretending to be a Time reporter tries to interview Paul Haggis

    Paul Haggis, the filmmaker and prominent ex-Scientologist whose story formed the backbone of Alex Gibney’s Scientology expose “Going Clear,” has alleged that a spy from the church pretended to be a Time reporter in order to get an interview with him.

    According to Haggis, on April 7th he received an email from someone named Mark Webber, who claimed to be a Time magazine reporter seeking to interview Haggis for a piece about the “golden age of film.”

  • We all risk losing our most previous memories: Mobiles mean we’re taking more pictures than ever, but RAY CONNOLLY has a warning

    Surely only a modern-day Luddite would disagree. Well, maybe not. Because it seems to me that the march of progress doesn’t always keep everything in step.

    While many things are gained by any great leap forward, other things are lost. When the CD was introduced in 1985, music fans were in raptures.

    Albums would never again get scratched, and CDs were so much better to play in the car than those cassettes on which the tape was liable to stretch or snap. What’s more, CDs were easier to store than those large pancakes of vinyl we used to love.

    But 30 years on, as Record Store Day showed at the weekend, those pancakes are making a comeback, with two million expected to be sold in Britain this year. Apparently, while CDs may be handier, the good old LP offers a warmer sound than the compressed noise we get on digital.

  • Science

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • New Saudi-Led Airstrike Kills At Least 26 Civilians in Yemen

      At least 26 people were killed by a Saudi-led bombing in Yemen’s capital, including a journalist at a nearby television station headquarters.

    • Oxfam Condemns Coalition Bombing of a Warehouse Containing Vital Humanitarian Aid

      Oxfam has vehemently condemned yesterday’s Coalition airstrike on one of its storage facilities in Saada Governorate in northern Yemen.

      Grace Ommer, Oxfam’s country director in Yemen said: “This is an absolute outrage particularly when one considers that we have shared detailed information with the Coalition on the locations of our offices and storage facilities. The contents of the warehouse had no military value. It only contained humanitarian supplies associated with our previous work in Saada, bringing clean water to thousands of households. Thankfully, no one was killed in this particular airstrike although conservative estimates put the death toll in the country as a whole, since the conflict began, at around 760 – the majority of which are civilians.”

    • Explosion Rips Through Homes in Yemen’s Capital After Airstrike

      Dozens of people were feared dead after an airstrike on Monday morning by a Saudi-led military coalition set off a huge explosion that flattened homes in the Yemeni capital, according to witnesses.

      The explosion shattered windows and shook buildings miles from the site of the attack, in the Faj Attan area of the capital, Sana. The wounded were taken to a nearby hospital in a stream of ambulances and trucks, and medical workers called for blood donations.

    • Saudi King Salman receives former UK Quartet envoy Tony Blair

      Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz received Britain’s special envoy for the Middle East quartet and former Prime Minister Tony Blair in his palace in Riyadh on Sunday, the state-run Saudi Press Agency reported.

    • US Military Spending Still Up 45% Over Pre-9/11 Levels; More Than Next 7 Countries Combined

      Despite a decline in military spending since 2010, U.S. defense expenditures are still 45 percent higher than they were before the 9/11 terror attacks put the country on a seemingly permanent war footing.

      And despite massive regional buildups spurred by conflict in the Ukraine and the Middle East, the U.S. spends more on its military than the next seven top-spending countries combined, according to new figures compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

  • Transparency Reporting

    • Keeping Track of the US Intelligence Community’s Leakers

      Harvard Law School professor Yochai Benkler has written an excellent law-review article on the need for a whistleblower defense. And there’s this excellent article by David Pozen on why government leaks are, in general, a good thing. I wrote about the value of whistleblowers in Data and Goliath.

      Way back in June 2013, Glenn Greenwald said that “courage is contagious.” He seems to be correct.

    • The Right Way to Share Information and Improve Cybersecurity

      This year is turning out to be a banner one for flawed proposals that would allow businesses to share information about Americans’ online activity with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the name of cybersecurity. First came the White House plan in January, then the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) — which passed the Senate Intelligence Committee on a 14-1 vote earlier this month — and on Tuesday, the House introduced the Protecting Cyber Networks Act.

    • Official Leaks: “These Senior People Do Whatever They Want”

      When asked whether he would have supported working with the producers of Zero Dark Thirty, Department of Defense’s Director of Entertainment Media said he would not have recommended working with screenwriter Mark Boal and director Katherine Bigelow, because he was not happy with the way their movie Hurt Locker had presented the military. But he was not given a choice. “These senior people do whatever they want,” the Director told DOD’s Inspector General, according to a draft of the IG’s report on the leaks of classified information to Boal and Bigelow.

      The Project on Government Oversight released the draft this week.

      The Director’s comments are all the more telling given how much more centrally this draft of the report — as compared to another POGO obtained and released — point to the role of then CIA Director Leon Panetta and his Chief of Staff, Jeremy Bash, in leading the government to cooperate on the movie.

    • Assange: How ‘The Guardian’ Milked Edward Snowden’s Story

      In recent years, we have seen The Guardian consult itself into cinematic history—in the Jason Bourne films and others—as a hip, ultra-modern, intensely British newspaper with a progressive edge, a charmingly befuddled giant of investigative journalism with a cast-iron spine.

      The Snowden Files positions The Guardian as central to the Edward Snowden affair, elbowing out more significant players like Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras for Guardian stablemates, often with remarkably bad grace.

      “Disputatious gay” Glenn Greenwald’s distress at the U.K.’s detention of his husband, David Miranda, is described as “emotional” and “over-the-top.” My WikiLeaks colleague Sarah Harrison—who helped rescue Snowden from Hong Kong—is dismissed as a “would-be journalist.”

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance

    • The Big Business of Being Sergey Brin

      Running Sergey Brin’s family affairs is a full-time job—and it takes dozens of people. The Google co-founder, who’s worth about $30 billion, has ex-bankers and philanthropy experts working at his family office, Bayshore Global Management. Brin also has employed a former Navy SEAL for security, a yacht captain, a fitness coordinator, a photographer, and an archivist, according to profiles on LinkedIn.

    • Who Subsidizes Restaurant Workers’ Pitiful Wages? You Do

      For Americans who like to eat out occasionally, the full-service restaurant industry is full of relatively affordable options—think Olive Garden, Applebees, or Chili’s. But these spots aren’t exactly a bargain once a hefty hidden cost is factored in: The amount of taxpayer assistance that goes to workers earning little pay.

      Food service workers have more than twice the poverty rate of the overall workforce, and thus more often seek out public benefits. A new report published last week by the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC), a restaurant workers’ advocacy and assistance group, calculated the tab and found that from 2009 to 2013, regular Americans subsidized the industry’s low wages with nearly $9.5 billion in tax money each year. That number includes spending from roughly 10 different assistance programs, including Medicaid, food stamps, and low-income housing programs like Section 8.

    • Migrants are not stealing our jobs; we have stolen theirs, even their lives

      So now we have deserving and undeserving migrants. Police in Sicily arrested 15 Muslim boat people rescued from a leaky rubber dinghy after other survivors accused them of having thrown 12 Christian passengers overboard in a dispute about religion. Perhaps this new moral category may help ease European consciences over the 22,000 desperate people who have died crossing the Mediterranean from Africa since the year 2000. We now have innocent migrants to contrast with guilty ones, good migrants and bad, or perhaps we should say bad migrants and worse migrants.

      We can add that to our existing hierarchy of moral culpability. Refugees are somehow accorded an ethical superiority over economic migrants because they are escaping persecution, rather than merely wanting a better life. Yet, in Africa, the migrant is celebrated as a contemporary hero, the daring risk-taker.

    • How to get into Harvard

      WikiLeaks has published all the Sony emails that had been hacked last November, and made them searchable by keyword. In 2014, a senior executive emailed an Ivy League vice-president of philanthropy: he’d like to endow a scholarship, anonymously, ‘at the $1mm level’. In another email, he tells a development officer that his daughter is applying to the college as her first choice. It’s all very decorous. The development staff arrange a ‘customised’ campus tour for his daughter and a meeting with the university’s president; but he asks for no favours and nothing is promised. An email from the president says that his daughter’s application will be looked at ‘very closely’. She gets in. He writes to his sister: ‘David… called me. he is obsessed with getting his eldest in Harvard next year.’ She replies: ‘If David wants to get his daughter in he should obviously start giving money.’ Obviously.

  • Censorship

    • The Miami Herald, the CIA, and the Bay of Pigs scoop that didn’t run

      There were a lot of bad days during the Cold War, but 54 years ago this weekend was one of the worst, at least for the United States. President John F. Kennedy sent an army of anti-Castro exiles backed by the CIA onto the beach at Cuba’s Bay of Pigs to suffer bloody, catastrophic defeat. It was “the beating of our lives,” the despondent Kennedy would say a few days later as he wondered aloud why nobody had talked him out of it.

      One of the piquant questions of Cold War history is, could the Miami Herald have done that — talked him out of it? In a little-known collision of journalism and national security, the Herald, seven months before the Bay of Pigs, had prepared a news story saying that the United States was planning to launch a military operation against Cuba. But the paper’s top management killed the story after CIA Director Allen Dulles said publishing it would hurt national security.

  • Privacy

    • GitHub’s 2014 Transparency Report

      Like most online services, GitHub occasionally receives legal requests relating to user accounts and content, such as subpoenas or takedown notices. You may wonder how often we receive such requests or how we respond to them, and how they could potentially impact your projects. Transparency and trust are essential to GitHub and the open-source community, and we want to do more than just tell you how we respond to legal notices. In that spirit, here is our first transparency report on the user-related legal requests we received in 2014.

    • ACCAN: Gov’t should remove ambiguity around VPNs

      Holy moly, ACCAN has issued a submission on the Copyright Amendment Bill 2015 regarding VPNs, website blocking, whack-a-mole and more.

      ACCAN, the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, has made a 10-page submission on the Copyright Amendment (Online Infrigement) Bill 2015.

    • HBO Cracks Down on Paying VPN “Pirates”

      HBO has started to crack down on paying customers who access the HBO Now service from outside the United States. Subscribers from countries including Canada, the UK, Germany and Australia who use VPNs and other unblocking tools are now being threatened with account terminations.

    • The NSA’s Earth Day Mascot Is So Freaking Creepy

      The National Security Agency had released a mascot (?) for Earth Day (??) and it’s an anthropomorphized and oddly buff recycling bin named Dunk (???).

      Earth Day is this Wednesday, and the NSA apparently forged Dunk from the ether of our collective nightmares as part of its STEM education partnership with Maryland schools.

  • Civil Rights

    • Germany defies Turkey, calls Armenian massacre ‘genocide’

      The German government backed away on Monday from a steadfast refusal to use the term “genocide” to describe the massacre of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces 100 years ago after rebellious members of parliament forced its hand.

      In a major reversal in Turkey’s top trading partner in the European Union and home to millions of Turks, Germany joins other nations and institutions including France, the European parliament and Pope Francis in using the term condemned by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Geneva Internet Platform

      The Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (EDA) and the Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM) have initiated the Geneva Internet Platform (GIP), which fulfils the mission of an observatory, a capacity building centre (online and in situ), and a centre for discussion. The GIP is hosted by DiploFoundation.

    • Letter to MEPs: Do not give up Net Neutrality!

      On 3rd March 2015, the Council of the European Union voted a text endangering Net Neutrality in Europe, despite European Parliment’s position adopted a year ago. Negotiations between the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of the European Union (trialogue) started on 11 March in order to settle an agreement on the final version. It is crucial that the European Parliament remains firm on the preservation of Net Neutrality, that ensure equal treatment on the data network and on prices. Infringing Net Neutrality means infringing fundamental rights and liberties of any European citizen. This is why, in order to remind our representatives their responsabilities, La Quadrature du Net sends a letter to Members of European Parliament calling them to reject Council’s propositions and to come back to a real protection of everyone’s rights and liberties.

    • Internet.org: delivering poor Internet to poor people

      Mark Zuckerberg’s Internet.org project bribes corrupt, non-neutral carriers in poor countries to exempt Facebook and other services of its choosing from their data-caps, giving the world’s poorest an Internet that’s been radically pruned to a sliver of what the rest of the world gets for free.

      Internet.org characterizes its goals as charitable and development-oriented. In their framework, poor people either face severe data-caps that limit their access to the Internet to almost nothing, or they get unlimited access to some of the Internet, thanks to Internet.org’s largesse.

    • ‘Sky wouldn’t let me leave until I had discussed my account for 90 minutes’

      Sky customers are continuing to report difficulties cancelling their contracts despite a crackdown by the regulator and a promise from Sky’s senior management last year that it would make it easier for customers to leave.

    • Net neutrality: What The Top People in Industry Have to Say

      Net neutrality has become a raging issue in the country and over the last one month everybody has been talking about it. Net neutrality is the concept that makes it mandatory for all service providers to offer access to consumers to all content on the internet including websites and applications, irrespective of the source and no special favors or blocking of any applications or websites.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Hundreds in Poland protest TTIP

      As many as 300 protesters took to the streets of Warsaw to voice their disapproval of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

    • Sony Emails Show Industry Execs Pushing for Trade Deal

      Broadcast media has not devoted much air time to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, an agreement that will greatly impact 40 percent of the global economy. But hacked emails from Sony reveal that media industry executives have been engaged in active discussions about the agreement behind closed doors.

    • MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough Pleads “Guilty” on Failing to Cover TPP Trade Pact

      MSNBC TV personality Joe Scarborough pled “guilty” to not giving the major Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal enough coverage when I spoke to him about the issue over the weekend.

      I caught up with the Morning Joe cohost at the First in the Nation conference in Nashua, New Hampshire, a gathering of potential Republican presidential candidates and local activists. Scarborough spoke onstage about the importance of media diversity, encouraging his audience to listen to all sides of the ideological spectrum.

    • Copyrights

      • Sony Lawyer David Boies Warns Media Not To Publish Information On New WikiLeaks Database

        An attorney for Sony Pictures Entertainment is demanding media outlets ignore a new WikiLeaks database of internal documents obtained during a high-profile hack last year. The searchable archive, published Thursday, contains more than 200,000 documents and emails from a cyberattack that created a public relations nightmare for the studio, and which the U.S. government linked to North Korea.

        Lawyer David Boies sent a warning letter regarding use of the database to news outlets on Friday. The Hollywood Reporter said that it received the letter, and Bloomberg News reported it had reviewed the letter as well.

      • WikiLeaks Docs: Sony Chiefs Met With Cameron Ahead of Scottish Referendum

        British Prime Minister David Cameron met with representatives from Sony Pictures just ten weeks before the Scottish independence referendum to discuss the release of a TV show based on Scotland’s repression under British rule, documents released by WikiLeaks have revealed.

      • Leaked emails reveal Hollywood execs at work for Israel

        Top Hollywood bosses enjoy a strong relationship with the Israeli government and various pro-Israel lobbying groups across the United States, according to a cache of Sony internal emails leaked to Wikileaks and published for the first time last week.

        The emails reveal a dinner between Sony executives and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; the presenter of American X-Factor chiding actress Natalie Portman aggressively for her views on Israel; meetings between top entertainment chiefs and the Israeli consulate-general; close ties between Sony’s Co-Chairperson and various pro-Israel lobbying groups; and film chiefs planning, in detail, a new documentary about the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, about which the emails also reflect rising concern.

      • New WikiLeaks documents reveal the inner workings of the Dr. Oz Show

        Dr. Mehmet Oz often appears on his popular show to promote new health products and devices. Most viewers are likely under the impression that he’s doing this because he’s closely considered their merits and decided the products are widely beneficial.

        But newly leaked emails suggest that business considerations — not health or science — can be a driving factor in which products Oz decides to promote.

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish: How Microsoft Plans to Get Rid of Linux/Android

Posted in Deception, Europe, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft at 7:04 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Android and Microsoft

Image from Android Beat

Summary: Microsoft’s sheer abuse against Android is laying bare for everyone to see now that Microsoft has paralysed Google’s legal department with potential antitrust action in Europe

WHAT can we say? Cyanogen's latest move is very troublesome. We have warned about this for a very long time, but much of the press played along with Microsoft’s plot (covering Office for Android), propping up Cyanogen etc.

So, what do we do now? Microsoft has nothing to fear but an informed public (or truth itself). The sooner people realise what Microsoft is up to, the sooner they will reject Cyanogen and stop buying from Samsung (we called for a Samsung boycott way back in 2007, right after Samsung had signed its first Microsoft patent deal covering Linux).

“If Microsoft bought Cyanogen, as some people had speculated, it would harm its ability to pretend ‘independence’.”Several readers have sent us links about Cyanogen. My wife says Cyanogen’s interest is “just making money, they don’t care about privacy or people’s concerns.” Richard Stallman asked me today for more information (having read my previous articles) and the better familiar we are with this circumstance and the underlying facts, the more effectively we can challenge this “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” (EEE) manoeuvre from Microsoft.

A Microsoft-linked site weighed in on Friday, explaining to readers how Cyanogen is essentially a Microsoft proxy. The article titled “3 Companies Are Helping Microsoft Corporation Steal Android From Google Inc.” It also names Samsung and Amazon (many executives from Microsoft moved there, including those who manage the Linux efforts, such as Kindle, and ended up paying Microsoft for Linux). The section about Cyanogen is titled “Making Android-powered Windows Phones”. That’s a good description of Microsoft’s goal.

As a kind of FUD advisory, one ought to know that Microsoft has gone “full frontal assault” mode on Android. It’s usually done through proxies, e.g. biased publications with Microsoft boosters who are shamelessly misleading audiences. Here for example is some Microsoft propaganda from Microsoft’s booster Matt Rosoff (yes, he is still around). It was published yesterday. It used deception/false charts, big lies, shameless PR, and ultimately sought to mislead Google, mischaracterise Google, and incite readers. It’s disguised as analysis, but being from Rosoff (a loyal Microsoft 'analyst'), one oughtn’t expect it to be honest.

“Deceptive charts,” called it iophk, “using ‘shipments’ rather than activations. Microsoft market share gets the illusion of being more than double that way. In reality it is less than 2% and shrinking.”

What Rosoff provides is not advice for Google (the headline says “It’s time for Google to throw ‘open’ Android under the bus”), Rosoff has been a Microsoft propagandist for many years and his words should be treated accordingly. Rosoff is offering a trap, misguided ‘ideas’ that would essentially help his friends at Microsoft and get Google in a lot of trouble (e.g. in China, where promises have been made).

The anti-Android propaganda (not just the above) is all in sync; in Europe there’s talk of antitrust (after Microsoft lobbying and pressure through proxies like Nokia) and then there’s the bribe for Cyanogen to sell out (official announcement here). They want to pretend that ‘evil’ Google must be destroyed and Microsoft will be our ‘saviour’. All of this happened almost on the same day, so there is probably no coincidence in timing. It looks like a strategic alignment of announcements that exploit people’s emotions and put forth a misleading storyline; while Microsoft lobbyists are misleading regulators Microsoft is proposed as the ‘solution’ by Cyanogen and while regulators slam Google over many things (some legitimate, e.g. privacy) Cyanogen steps forth to ‘help’. Microsoft is trying to pressure OEMs — using threats of litigation or bribes — to preinstall Microsoft (and thus drop Google), all whilst EU press (and by extension the international media; see the New York Times article “Microsoft, Once an Antitrust Target, Is Now Google’s Regulatory Scold” further down in this post) attacks Google for being so unbelievably evil (even compared to Microsoft). Microsoft is about as evil as ever, if not worse. The fact that it hides this behind a grin and massive PR efforts (lies) won’t change that.

We already see some large media sites helping Cyanogen (explaining to people how to replace Android with ‘Microsoft Android’) and promoting Microsoft’s narrative. We, in response, ought to work hard to make sure Cyanogen has not a single partner and that people don’t ever install it. We called for a boycott quite some time ago and shortly afterwards OnePlus dumped Cyanogen ([cref 82427 there is more to be done by OnePlus and its users).

Over at the Microsoft-friendly ZDNet one does not get the full story. Microsoft’s Mouth at ZDNet/CBS, Mary Jo Foley, downplays the evilness of this move. As one site reminded readers: “There were rumors before of a potential synergy between both companies especially when Cyanogen initiated its funding round. Although at that time Microsoft did not invest, but rumor mill announced a potential team up between the two, which has now been realized.”

Wired shamelessly labelled Microsoft spyware ‘choice’, saying that “[t]he partnership, as detailed by Cyanogen yesterday, will allow the budding mobile OS to integrate Microsoft apps like Outlook, Office, Skype, Bing, OneDrive, and OneNote. The subtext here is that these apps can act as a replacement for the ones that Google appends to its Android releases, such as Gmail, Maps, Hangouts, and more.”

Further down it says: “That’s a lot of upside with not much to lose, especially given the recent cross-platform push. And an arrangement like this makes more sense than the $70 million investment Microsoft was rumored to make back in January. Cyanogen doesn’t have to feel beholden to one software suite, and Microsoft limits its financial exposure and Windows Phone conflicts.”

That’s untrue. Cyanogen is imposing or at least pushing Microsoft software, it is not offering choice.

In response to this article from Wired (titled “Microsoft Just Took Android’s Future Out of Google’s Hands”) one person published a post titled “No, Microsoft isn’t taking Android’s future out of Google’s hands — here’s why”. To quote the conclusion: “Microsoft isn’t taking Android’s future out of Google’s hands, it is likely taking Cyanogen’s future out of Cyanogen’s hands.”

Exactly!

Cyanogen is now a proxy of Microsoft. If Microsoft bought Cyanogen, as some people had speculated, it would harm its ability to pretend ‘independence’.

What Microsoft does here with Cyanogen is similar to what Microsoft did to Yahoo! (Yahoo! shows signs of regaining some independence now). All that Microsoft can do right now is try hard to bamboozle politicians, developers and users, pretending it is all about “choice” rather than destroying competition, much as it did when it took over (before shattering) Novell, Corel, and Nokia. Microsoft does not need to complete an acquisition in order to destroy the competition. Microsoft’s proxy war on Android is very much similar to other Microsoft plots to “knife the baby”, to use Microsoft’s own words (in reference to Linux). And for anyone still gullible enough (or amnesic) to believe that Microsoft no longer hates GNU/Linux, revisit the following series:

We urge readers to keep track of where many people who run Cyanogen are from; many come from Microsoft’s back yard in Seattle. “The startup that wants to take Android ‘away from Google’ just struck a deal with Microsoft” is a new report that helps put it in perspective. “The move,” says the report, “comes months after The Wall Street Journal and The Information reported that Microsoft had considered investing in Cyanogen, but the company opted to strike a partnership with the company instead.”

Wall Street Journal‘s owner Rupert Murdoch (a close friend and business partner of Bill Gates) gave the money instead and Microsoft is then making the investment ‘worthwhile’. Clever accounting tricks are likely to be at hand. Microsoft potentially reassures “return on investment” by making promises of deal before some third parties funnel money into Cyanogen. Larry Goldfarb from BayStar, a key investor in SCO, once said that Microsoft’s “Mr. Emerson and I discussed a variety of investment structures wherein Microsoft would ‘backstop,’ or guarantee in some way, BayStar’s investment…. Microsoft assured me that it would in some way guarantee BayStar’s investment in SCO.”

Learn from SCO history.

“Microsoft has kept its coffers full for the fight,” says the New York Times on the same day as the Cyanogen deal, “spending more on lobbying here than any European company.”

The timing cannot be a coincidence. The report from the New York Times is titled “Microsoft, Once an Antitrust Target, Is Now Google’s Regulatory Scold” and it serves to demonise Google at a very strategic time. It says “Microsoft has founded or funded a cottage industry of splinter groups. The most prominent, the Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace, or Icomp, has waged a relentless public relations campaign promoting grievances against Google. Icomp hosts webinars, panel discussions and news conferences. It conducted a study that suggested changes made by Google to appease regulators were largely window dressing.”

Microsoft is still using lots of proxies, some of which we wrote about before, and it is giving politicians the wrong impression that Android (Free software) is ‘abuse’. This is clearly a proxy fight which blends with the “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” (EEE) manoeuvre that Microsoft has made famous. Fight back or be extinguished. █

Yahoo’s Current CEO (Mayer, Formerly of Google) is Trying to End Yahoo! Status as Microsoft Proxy

Posted in Microsoft at 5:52 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Marissa Mayer

Summary: There are signs of relinquishing Microsoft’s control over Yahoo! after Marissa Mayer worked to end the company’s suicidal/abusive relationship with Steve Ballmer’s Microsoft

Firefox and other bits of software have become tools of spying by Microsoft because Yahoo! had essentially turned into a Microsoft proxy when it comes to search in several countries (I recently saw that happen in the UK, not just the US). We chronicled Microsoft’s hijack of Yahoo for many years. It was entryism.

“Microsoft can try all it wants to pretend it’s about “choice” after destroying Yahoo as a search contender.”Several years ago it seemed like Microsoft was destroying Yahoo! altogether (reducing the number of options for searchers while it was falsely described as ‘choice’ because of Google’s dominance), but with Mayer entering Yahoo! there are some signs of hope. According to this new report, Yahoo’s “Mayer had reportedly plotted to end the relationship [with Microsoft] as recently as February.”

Microsoft’s booster Peter seems to suggest that Yahoo is distancing itself from Ballmer’s gang, whereas a more objective source says that the latest development “means that Yahoo could, for example, augment the results with those of Duck Duck Go or Wolfram Alpha.”

In conclusion it says: “It now appears that Yahoo is looking to make itself distinct from Bing by having the freedom to sell its own advertising and make searches more its own.

Microsoft can try all it wants to pretend it’s about “choice” after destroying Yahoo! as a search contender. If Yahoo! ever manages to become independent from Microsoft again, that would really be something. █

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