03.28.16
Posted in Europe, Patents at 5:09 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Part of the Željko Topić EPO series – English translations welcome. Original in Croatian published two days ago.
Autor: Tomislav Kovač / dnevno.hr 27. ožujak 2016.
Photo: www.mvep.hr
Britisches Portal ‘Techrights’, spezialisiert für Fachthemen Software, Rechner und intellektuelles Eigentum, mit dem Sitz in Manchester – in der Stadt und Hauptstadt von Joy Division hat am 24. Februar 2016 einen Artikel unter dem Titel „Possible Connections Found Between WIPO Misconduct and a Dozen Serious Criminal Charges Against EPO’s Željko Topić„ veröffentlicht, in welchem Autor Roy Schestowitz in ganzem Umfang den in unserem Portal veröffentlichten Text vom 4. April 2012 überträgt und welchen Enthüllungsjournalist Darko Petričić unterschreibt. Link auf Artikel des Portals Dnevno bringen wir in Fortsetzung: http://www.dnevno.hr/vijesti/hrvatska/vesna-vukovic-u-genevi-ugoscuje-topica-kojeg-je-zdusno-prijavljivala-dorh-u-i-uskok-u-53626-614473
Glaubwürdige Quellen, auf welche sich Portal Techrights aus Großbritanien beruft, kündigt immer gewisser in letztem Monat den Wechsel des direktors von Europäischem Patentamt (EPA) in München, Herrn Benoit Battistelli an. Wie andere Medien in der EG übertragen, der korruptive Fall in EPA ist fast identisch mit internationalem Skandal von Sepp Blatter in UEFA. Dadurch, führen die Quellen an, würde zum Wechsel von allen Battistellis Helfern in EPA kommen, und dadurch auch den kroatischen Staatsbürger Željko Topić. Die Entscheidung über die angekündigten Personaländerungen liegt am Verwaltungsrat von EPA – höchstem Organ dieses internationalen Patentamtes. Außgenommen diese Ankündigung ist auch eine andere Wendung in der entstandenen Situation möglich und zwar daß: alle Verwaltungsmitglieder von EPA unwiderrufliche Kündigungen auf ihre Posten überreichen. Ansonsten, Herr Željko Topić wurde am 28. März 2012 zum Chef von EPA’s Sekretariat der allgemeinen Verwaltung ernannt und mit sehr aggresiver Unterstützung des Hauptdirektors von EPA Benoit Battistelli.
Nebst dem erwähnten Artikel hat das Portal Techrights in letztem Monat noch einen Artikel vom Portal Dnevno, mit dem Thema unter dem Titel: „A New MUST-READ Article From Croatia About EPO Vice-President Željko Topić, Condemning His Behaviour Even Inside the EPO„ am 16. Februar 2016 übertragen. Korruptiver Fall rund um EPA und Željko Topić wird aufmerksam auch in Brüssel beobachtet und zwar seitens der Frau Monica Macovei und kroatischer Abgeordneten im Europarlament Ruža Tomašić.
DIPLOMATISCHES CHAMÄLEON AUS MINISTERIUM FÜR AUSWÄRTIGE UND EUROPÄISCHE ANGELEGENHEITEN
Wir müssen aufmerksam machen, eine versteckte Lobistin von Vesna Pusić, Diplomatin und ehemalige Botschafterin be UN in Genf, Vesna Vuković hat sich im internationalen Skandal gefunden, denn, laut glaubwürdige Unterlagen, hat gerade sie eine Strafanzeige gegen ehemaligen Direktor des Staatamtes für intelektuelles Eigentum der Republik Kroatien (DZIV RH) Željko Topić erstattet und später, als sie den wichtigen diplomatischen Posten in Genf besetzte, hat sie sich bei demgleichen Topić entschuldigt, da sie eingesehen hat, daß der angezeigte Herr dem Wolfsrudel von ZAMP (Amt für den Schutz von Autoren- und Musikrechten) des ehemaligen Präsidenten Ivo Josipović gehört und welcher sie an diesen verantwortungsvollen Posten in Genf ernannt hat.
In den letzten Tagen der ehemaligen Regierung hat Vesna Pusić an UN ihre Vision der Hauptaktivitäten dieser internationalen Organisation im Rahmen ihrer Kandidatur für den Arbeitsplatz der Hauptsekretärin zugeschickt. So wird Frau Vesna Pusić am 3. April 2016 nach New York zur Vorstellung ihres Programmes reisen und als eine von sieben Kandidaten, die sich für den Nachfolger von Ban Ki-moon bewerben. In diesem Augenblick ist es nicht bekannt, wer diese Reise und Unterkunft in New York der selbsternannten Kandidatin Pusić finanziert.
Zufällig oder nicht, Ministerpräsident Tihomir Orešković, neue Koalitionsregierung der Republik Kroatien und zuständiges MVEP (Ministerium für auswärtige und europäische Angelegenheiten), kroatisches Parlament, obwohl sie ihre Uneinigkeit mit der Art und Weise, wie ihre Kandidatur vorgestellt wurde, ausgedrückt haben, haben sich in der Öffentlichkeit und vor den Internationalen Gremien ofiziell nicht übers Schicksal von Vesna Pusić geäußert.
Nebst der von früher kompromitierten Vesna Vuković und anderen vorsichtig auserwählten Angestellten im Zagreber Zentrum vom Ministerium für auswärtige und europäische Angelegenheiten der Republik Kroatien, wird direktes Lobieren von Vesna
Pusić für renomierten Posten in UN und dabei benutztend kostenlose staatliche Logistik der Republik Kroatien, Frau Dubravka Plejić Marković leisten, Botschafterin der Republik Kroatien bei UN und OSCE in Wien. Sie ist in kroatischer Öffentlichkeit mehr bekannt als Ehefrau des Rechtanwaltes, welcher seine Finger in der Affäre “Spice” hat und welche Affäre über schwingelerregende Summe von 400 Millionen Kuna wiegt, als auch Vladimir Drobnjak, Botschafter der Republik Kroatien beim Sitz der UN in New York, auch bekannt nach einem kleinen Detail, daß sein Sohn überhaupt kein Kroatisch spricht. Vielleicht wäre in einem anderen zivilisierten Staat nicht möglich, daß das Kind vom Inhaber eines diplomatischen Reisepasses keine Muttersprache spricht, wenn es sich aber um Republik Kroatien handelt, ist alles möglich.
Statt Vesna Vuković, als kroatische Vertreterin bei UN in Genf ist Vesna Batistić Kos mitte 2015 gekommen, durch persönliche Wahl der talentierten Vesna Pusić. Pusić’s private Initiative und untransparente Kandidatur für UN, unterstützt durch unüberlegene Unterschrift von Zoran Milanović in den letzten Tagen seiner Regierung, stellt für Kroatien und internationale Öffentlichkeit ein großes Rätsel, genauso wie Mysterium der Ernennung der anti-kroatisch orientierten Vesna Pusić an die Spitzenstelle der HNS (Kroatische Vokspartei), welche ihr, äußerst kroatisch orientierte Savka Dapčević Kučar, überlassen hat.
TOPIĆ WIRD VON DORH (STAATSANWALTSCHAFT DER REPUBLIK KROATIEN) GENAUSO WIE PERKOVIĆ-MUSTAĆ BEHANDELT
Darüber, daß die Strafanzeige um Željko Topić überhaupt nicht harmlos ist, spricht die Angabe, daß sie von DORH direkt USKOK (Kanzlei für Bekämpfung von organisierter Kriminalität) wegen schweren Qualifikationen von Straftaten, welche für ihn belastend sind, übernommen hat. USKOK hat sie aber nach fünfjährigem Studieren abgelehnt. An dem Bescheid der abgelehnten Strafanzeige von USKOK gegen Željko Topić steht die Unterschrift von Dubravka Krklec, einer aus der Reihe Bajić’s “Bunga – Bunga” Ermittlerinnen. Da DORH und USKOK als halbmilitärische Bildung funktionieren, konnte so ein großer Bissen bei der Ablehnung der Strafanzeige gegen fette Beute Željko Topić nicht ohne Segen von Mladen Bajić, beziehungsweise Dinko Cvitan abgewickelt werden. Wie wir unofiziell erfahren, an dem Gegenstand hat jahrelang auch USKOK’s ehemalige Ermittlerin Sani Ljubičić gearbeitet, jetzt Chefin von ŽDO (Gespanschaftsstaatsanwaltschaft) in Zagreb. Dengleichen Gegenstand hat Gespanschaftsgericht Zagreb übernommen, beziehungsweise seine spezielle Abteilung für Bekämpfung von organisierter Kriminalität und Kriegsverbrechen, welche die Anzeige gegen Željko Topić als unerlaubt unter der Geschäftszahl des Gerichtes Kir-Us 202/15 verkündet hat. Vorsichtshalber wurden an dem Tag sogar zwei verschiedene Bescheide ausgestellt und zwar unter dergleichen Geschäftszahl. Die angeführten Bescheide des Gespanschaftsgerichtes unterschreibt Untersuchungsrichter Zoran Luburić, ansonsten ein enger Freund vom Präsidenten dieses Gerichtes, Herrn Ivan Turudić. Der Gegenstand befindet sich zur Zeit beim außerordentlichem Kammer des Gespanschaftsgerichtes Zagreb und er erinnert unwiderstehlich an schon gesehene Seifenoper und billigen juristischen Wettbewerb über den Fall Mustać-Perković, welche bei der juristischen Behandlung von EU-Verhaftungsbefehles für den bekannten Zweier abgewickelt wurde, in welcher DORH und einige Anstalten der Republik Kroatien sich bemüht haben, Strafverfolgung von entlärvten Mitglieder von UDBA (Verwaltung für Staatssicherheit zu den jugowlawischen Zeiten) zu obstruieren.
Laut einige Quellen in kroatischer Justiz, gibt es eine unversteckte Angst einiger Strukturen, daß durch die Eröffnung von Ermittlungen, Inhaftierun und Gerichtsverfahren gegen Željko Topić, die Ermittler auch an die Türe des ersten ZAMP-Mitglied und des ehemaligen Präsidenten der Republik Kroatien, Dr. Ivo Josipović klopfen könnten, als auch an die Türe seines Verwandten Mladen Bajić.
FIKTIVE SUMPFENTWÄSSERUNG IN DZIV (Staatamt für intelektuelles Eigentum)
Nebst DORH und USKOK ist auch Gespanschaftsstaatsanwaltschaft Zagreb mit Herrn Željko Topić beschäftigt. An dem Gegenstand arbeitet Ermittlerin Sunčica Blažević, ehemalige rechte Hand der guillotinierten Željka Pokupec. Die Untersuchung wurde wegen der “Verdunkelung” des Autos Marke Mercedes eröffnet und welches einst dem DZIV gehörte und jetzt befindet es sich, geparkt in der Garage von EPA in München, mit neuen Kennzeichen und sein Inhaber ist Željko Topić. Jedenfalls, ein ein Bißchen bizarrer Fall, welcher mehr einem ländlichen Hühnerdieb, als einer Person, welche ein Gehalt von 15 tausend Euro erhält, entspricht. Nebst Mercedes, wurden aus DZIV, unter der Führung von Željko Topić, durch geheime Kaufverträge mindestens noch drei Dienstwagen “ertrunken”, unter welchen ein teuerer Audi A6 Quattro Tiptronic.
Ansonsten, eine fiktive Aufsicht über dem ehemaligen Direktor von DZIV hat ehemaliger Minister in der SDP (Sozial-demokratische Partei) in der Regierung von Zoran Milanović, Željko Jovanović angestrengt. Er mußte aber diese Aufsicht, laut eigene öffentliche Erklärung, und welche aus der Strafakte sichtbar ist, wegen dem Druck aus Pantovčak (Präsidentenkanzlei) stoppen.
Im Anhang des Textes ist das Diplom von Željko Topić.
Die Sumpfentwässerung in DZIV ist unrühmlich gescheitert, als auch noch einige Aufsichten, welche der schreiende Željko Jovanović und sein damaliger Mitarbeiter Saša Zelnika geführt haben. Weiter, auch unter dem Einfluß von der ersten Geige von ZAMP und ehemaligem erstem Einwohner von Pantovčak, hat die Redaktion von einer einflußreichen kroatischen Tageszeitung ausgestellten Dienstreiseauftrag und schon vorbereitete Dienstreise des Journalisten an die Universität Banja Luka gestoppt, wo man mehr als klare Spuren möglicher Fälschung des Magisteriums des zweiten Mannes von EPA, Željko Topić erkannt hat. █
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Posted in America, Patents at 4:45 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Original/English
Publicado en America, Patentes at 4:18 am por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz
El debate acerca de los trolles de patentes mantiene a su vez el debate acerca de las patentes de software elusivo
Un téclado
Sumario: Una mirada a las reciéntes noticias envolviendo o implicado a los trolles de patentes en los Estados Unidos
IAM Muestra AMOR por los TROLLES de PATENTES
El medio compadres/aliados de la EPO IAM (quien tiene una ´revista´ y ahora también eventos) fue financiado por MOSAID (que cambió de nombre to Conversant después de toda la prensa negativa), que es esencialmente un troll de patentes de Microsdet-Nokia. IAM no fue lo suficiéntemente selectivo y sin tacto se asoció a sí misma con actores notoris. Estan ahora pasyo los puntos de vista de alguien quien vido de alli, juntamente con los de gente que trabajan para los trolles de otras compañíás como Ericson. Como IAM lo puso: ¨En el primer panel del día, cuatro gerentes de NPEs -Jim Kippen de WiLAN, , Anthony Hayes de Spherix, Network1’s Corey Horowitz y Alexyer Poltorak de General Patent Corporation – discutiéron como estaban trátando con el clima corriente. Skippen quien estuvo en Mossaid (ahora Conversant) antes de convertirse en cabesa de Conversant en 2006, esta discutiblemente bien posicionado como alguien que evalúe lo que ha sido un cambio profundo en el ambiente operativo.
Ellos no deletrearon MOSAID correctamente (es referido a “Mossaid”). Este evento de IAM es simplemente acerca de trolles de patentes (referidos a ellos con eufémismos); debería también cubrir grandes firmas de extorsión como Microsoft (las que tienen sus in-house ‘PAEs’, como “Licensing de Microsoft”).
Tackle Trolls by So-called ‘Reform’
Algunos todavíá pierden la corriente al decir cosas como “#trolles de Patentes contínuamente extorsiónan pequeños negocios de los US y debe detenerse esto en todos los niveles, incluyendo @TradeGov: http://bit.ly/1pyMbJR #FixPatents”
Ellos deberíán enfocarse en patentes de software, no simplemente actores que son pequeños (trolles de patentes son asumidos ser pequeños). La prensa acompañante publica charlas de la CTA no acerca de los gigantes, aunque correctamente echa algo de la culpa a la ITC por facilitar sus embargos (o amenazas de embargos, con propósitos de sacar ventaja).
La siguiente declaración es atribuída a Gary Shapiro, presidente y CEO de la Consumer Tecnology Association (CTA)™, antiguamente Consumer Electronics Association (CEA)®, acerca de la reintroducción de la Protección de Comercio contra Trolles Act por los Reps. Tony Cardenas (D-CA) and Blake Farenthold (R-TX):
“Los trolles de patentes son capaces de todo para extorsiónar a los pequeños negocios Americanos. No sólo estan explotando nuestro sistema de cortes pero también están abusando a la International Trade Commission (ITC) – atascando al sistema con frivolos reclamos de infringimientos de patentes. Si el Congreso quiere dar a los pequeños- y medianos -negocis una oportunidad de pelear contra los trolles de patentes, debe requerirse a los trolles de patentes cuando llenan un jucio ITC demuestren que ellos licensian sus patentes a compañíás que actualmente hacen productos. De otra manera, los trolles de patentes continuarán consumiéndo $1.5 billón a la semana de la economía y desperdiciar el tiempo de la ITC de manera similar a lo que han hecho con el sistema de las cortes.
La cosa acerca de las grandes corporaciones que usan patentes contra la competición, es que son ellas las que CABILDEAN PARA CAMBIAR LA LEY QUE SE ACOMODE A SU AGENDA. Correcta o erróneamente, Watchdog dot org ha dicho que ¨cambios en las leyes de patentes podría pilar la cubierta de las grandes empresas¨. Aquí esta la porción relevante:
Cambios en la ley de propiedad intelectual persegidas en el nomber de combatir a los ¨trolles de patentes¨ podría hacer más fácil para las grandes compañíás avasallen a los pequeños inventores.
Separation Design Group, un laboratorio de investigación con ocho empleados en Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, se preocupa que eso exactamente pase si las reformas del Presidente Barack Obama y gigantes como Google son implementadas.
“La gente está diciendo que la litigación sofoca grandes negocios. En nuestro caso, es más o menos lo contrario, “CEO SDGroup Doug Galbraith dijo Watchdog.org. “Si la gente habla de reglas más estrictas sobre cómo litigar esas situaciones, ¿cuál es la alternativa para una empresa como la nuestra?”
La Buena Pelea de NewEgg Contra los Trolles de Patentes
“La solución al trolling de patentes es ser agressivo,” escribió Julian esta semana. “Nunca, por nunca ceda a un troll de patentes.” NewEgg ha seguido este mantra por un número de años ahora [1, 2, 3, 4] y este nuevo artículo muestra que NewEgg sigue la tradición. “Newegg donará más de $10,000,” dice un experto en trolles acerca de dinero “que ha ganado vendiéndo camisetas anti-trolles-de-patentes a Jordan Gwyther, quien es dueño de Larping.org, un centro para la comunidad del rol de acción viva (LARP). Gwyther fue enjuiciado el año pasado por Global Archery. El fundador de Global Archery John Jackson dijo que se molestó que Gwyther había tratado de vender flechas de espuma a campos, iglesias, y resorts que forman la gran parte de sus clientes.
La historia LARPing fue cubierta aquí varias veces antes [1, 2, 3] y este nuevo artículo de TechDirt también provee contexto como sigue: “lo que muchos de esos trolles de patentes se basa en su totalidad para obtener -extorsiónar- dinero por arreglos es el tamaño de sus objetivos. Su un negocio es lo suficiénte pequeño, digamos un pequeñisimo sitio usado principalmente por entusiástas de roleplaying, ese sitio no pueda tener los recursos necesarios para evitar un reclaamo legal proveniente de un troll de patentes. En vez de eso, ese negocio típicamente aceptará cualquier arreglo que el troll ha solicitado.
Esto es una suerte de ´dinero de protección´ y hay una dimensión de chantanje/extorsión en ello, lo que hace a Microsoft indistinguible de los trolles de patentes. Microsoft == Troll de Patentes, más simple no puede ser.
LOTNet ¿Cómo un Mecanismo Anti-Troll?
“LOTNet fue lanzada,” dijo IAM esta semana, “en Enero de 2014, con el objetivo de contrarrestar los llamados comportamientos ‘troll’ al graduálmente restrigir la provisión de patentes a las PAEs. LOTNet define a un PAE como “una entida y sus afiliados” que derivan “más de la mitad de sus ganancias totales… de la aserción de patentes en un periódo de 12-meses, o si tiene un plan aprobado por un veterano gerente a hacerlo”. [...] Un mes más tarde, Lenovo acquirió más de 3,800 patentes relacionadas a una familia de patentes de aparátos mobilees de NEC. También ha obtenido un número de patentes de IBM a traves de los años, por lo menos podemos presumir que puede ser contada por su adqusición del 2014 de su negocio de servidores. En el mismo año, Lenovo fué asignada 2,000 patentes como parte de su $2.9 billion compra de Motorola Mobility su amigo miembro de LOTNet Google.”
El artículo es realmente acerca de Lenovo, quien compró parte de los negocios de IBM, es ahora un agresor de patentes que ataca a rivlales mucho más pequeños. █
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Posted in America, Apple, Patents, Samsung at 4:30 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
English/Original
Publicado en America, Apple, Patentes, Samsung at 11:50 am por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz
La sin precedentes barra de baja examinación en la oficina de patentes de Estados Unidos hizo una gran cantidad de patentes de software sospechosas o totalmente falsas
Sumario: Sellando unas felices examinaciones en cuanto se trata de patentes de software, esta teniendo su tardío efecto en los aplicantes quienes ven sus patentes o inválidadas or masívamente devaluados después de que la Corte Suprema de los Estados Unidos (SCOTUSP) las evalúa
“La definición de un Troll de patentes es totalmente simple,” escribió una persona temprano esta semana, haciendo eco a lo que algunos de nostros define “[cref 90921 PAE” estos dias. Es “cualquier compañía que hace la mayoría de su dinero usando patentes al amenazar con litigatión.”
Eso es exactamente lo que el “licensing de Microsoft” esta haciéndo. Microsoft ahora tiene su in-house troll de patentes, or PAE, de lo que escribimos la semana pasada.
“Eso es exactamente lo que el “licensing de Microsoft” esta haciéndo. Microsoft ahora tiene su in-house troll de patentes, or PAE…”Afortunadamente la consecuencias de la mayoría de trolles (or PAES) esta en las rocas por Alice. Las patentes de software no pueden dejar de morir, en ambas PTAB y en las cortes. La USPTO últimamente permite que casi cualquier cosa sea patentada (la EPO tiene que observar esto y tomarlo como algo precaucionador), pero simplemente por que una patente es otorgada, no significa que sea válida si/cuando es desafíáda de la manera apropiada, especialmente si esta patente cubre o se relaciona al software.
“Esta decisión de la PTAB invalidándo los reclamos de la patente IV bajo 101 es transtornada,” escribió un abogado de patentes, linking a esta decisión contra Intellectual Ventures, el TROLL de PATENTES de Microsoft y Bill Gates, así como el troll de patentes MÁS GRANDE DEL MUNDO.
“La única patente buena es la patente muerta.”“La hermana de esta patente,” añadió este abogado (citando la patente #9050977), “Conseguí una Rechazo 101” o como este tweet lo pone: “This reads like an un-patentable mental process that drivers do-just “done on a computer”. http://www.pat2pdf.org/patents/pat9290181.pdf” [patent #9290181]
La única patente buena es la patente muerta. Otro nuevo ejemplo de patente de software muerta es esta. Para citar el blog de Docket Rport:
En una escrita decisión final, el Jurado encontró recmaos de un contenido electrónico de distribución no-patentabje bajo
35 U.S.C. § 101. “La ’patente 464 describe que publicaciones electrónicas fueron comúnmente repeditas en una forma leíble por computadora en storage magnético o óptico diskettes y distribuídos a tiendas o por ventas directas de correo. Así el concepto de distribución de publicaciones (contenido), ha sido conocido mucho antes que la patente ´464. Más aún acordamos con el petitioner que distribución de publicaciones (versus publicaciones electrónicas), han sido conocidas por largo tiempo… [Nosotros] determinamos que los reclamos están dirigidos al concepto ABSTRACTO de distribuír contenido electrónico, o más específicamente, a seleccionar, transportar, guardar y enseñar contenido electrónico.”
Es buenho ver noticias como la de arriba porque no sólo devalúa existentes patentes de software pero también reduce el incentivo de llenar aplicaciones por nuevas patentes. ¿Hará SCOTUS lo mismo con las patentes de diseño pronto?
El Caso Apple-Samsung
“A diferencia de Apple, esta compañía Asiática actualmente produce cosas, no simplemente hacen propaganda y rediseñan sus logos.”Vis-à-vis diseño de patentes and patentes de software at SCOTUS, siguiendo talvez miles de reportajes de los medios en casos como este, IDG sirvió para confirmar lo que Florian Müller había pronósticado, principalmente esto. De la historia de IDG: “la Jueza Lucy Koh está preoucpada que el resultado del juicio pueda ser cuestionado después de una revisión de la Corte Suprema” (extraído por Müller).
¿Habrá alguna vez paz? Bueno, todo eso depende de Apple, quién comenzó toda esta guerra total con sus patentes de software y diseño (usuamente GUI software). Esto es lo que pasa entre compañías Asiáticas como Samsung ahora mismo: “Midea y Toshiba anunciaron la semana pasada que ellos han firmado un memorandum de entendimiento por un tratado el cual vería a la más larga compañíá China fabricante de apáratos para el hogar adquirir la mayoría del gigante Japonés bienes blancos.” A diferencia de Apple, esta compañía Asiática actualmente produce cosas, no simplemente hacen propaganda y rediseñan sus logos. Apple ahora gasta un montón de dinero en abogados de patentes; no nos sorprende el porque sus productos están obscenamente con sobreprecio (costos asociados con propaganda sin fin y abogados de patenes son pasados al consumidor). █
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Posted in News Roundup at 4:10 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Desktop
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Hmmm… The death of the GNU/Linux desktop appears to be premature. Gaming in GNU/Linux is growing rapidly. So is use of GNU/Linux for creating software.
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Server
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It’s hard to quantify the value created through open source development of software. Last year, the Linux Foundation released a white paper that found the total value of the development of the Linux operating system amounted to $5 billion. In 2013, IBM itself committed to donating $1 billion in cold hard cash to further development of Linux and other open source projects. When one considers that nearly all of the cutting-edge IT work being done in distributed computing (i.e., the worlds of Hadoop, Spark, Kafka, and NoSQL databases) involves open sharing of source code–mostly through the Apache Software Foundation–then the humongous value that open source brings comes into view.
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Kernel Space
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You couldn’t ask for a better segue than this, from Smith’s book about the pitfalls of automotive security to our community’s solution to them—that is, The Linux Foundation’s Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) new Unified Code Base (UCB) distribution. AGL is a Linux Foundation Workgroup dedicated to creating open-source software solutions for automotive applications. AGL’s UCB distribution is a collaborative open-source project developing a common, Linux-based software stack for the connected car. Leveraging the best software components from AGL and other existing open-source projects, such as Tizen and GENIVI Alliance, UCB enables development of in-vehicle-infotainment systems while allowing different profiles to be created from the same code base to address all applications in the car, such as instrument cluster, heads-up display, telematics and connected car. UCB is based on the Yocto Project and offers a complete embedded-Linux development environment with tools, metadata and documentation. AGL’s members make up a who’s who of the automotive, IT and electronics industries, including Toyota, Ford, Intel, Sony, Linaro, Wind River and scores of others.
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Graphics Stack
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Benchmarks
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With the in-development Linux 4.6 kernel there is the long-awaited NVIDIA GeForce GTX 900 series accelerated support atop the open-source Nouveau driver. While it requires using NVIDIA’s signed binary blobs for the firmware, the support is now working. Here are some benchmarks on several different GTX 900 Maxwell graphics cards comparing the open-source driver performance to what’s offered by NVIDIA’s proprietary Linux driver.
If you are curious about setting up the Nouveau driver stack for a GeForce GTX 900 “Maxwell” graphics card, see the article I wrote a few days ago about It’s Easy Now Getting GeForce GTX 900 Graphics Cards Running On Open-Source Nouveau. Atop an Intel Xeon system running Ubuntu 16.04 x86_64, I was using Mesa 11.3-devel (built against LLVM 3.8, using the Oibaf PPA), xf86-video-nouveau 1.0.12, and a Linux 4.5 Git kernel following the DRM-Next merger. The NVIDIA firmware blobs were obtained from linux-firmware Git. The same system with the same set of graphics cards were then compared to the results when using NVIDIA’s latest proprietary driver release, the NVIDIA 364.12 driver.
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Applications
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The Calamares team is happy to announce the immediate availability of Calamares 2.2, a feature release that brings many incremental improvements over Calamares 2.1.
Calamares is a distribution-independent system installer, with an advanced partitioning feature for both manual and automated partitioning operations. It is the first installer with an automated “Replace Partition” option, which makes it easy to reuse a partition over and over for distribution testing. Calamares is designed to be customizable by distribution maintainers without need for cumbersome patching, thanks to third party branding and external modules support.
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The Calamares distribution-independent graphical installer used in various operating systems, including Manjaro Linux, Sabayon, and many others, has been updated to version 2.2.
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The SystemTap team announces release 3.0!
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Recently I wrote about 5 free alternatives to Google drive on Linux and I mentioned 5 interesting cloud storage services. When I was searching the web for some more interesting services, I got to know that Copy, one of the popular cloud services, has been planned to be discontinued in May this year. Because Copy has great number of Linux users so it’s a big point to notify all you Linux users who use Copy to backup your data as soon as possible.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Games
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Two Worlds 3 is in development, Topware Interactive has announced, and its 2010 RPG Two Worlds 2 will be getting an engine update – as well as some new DLC.
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I am still using the 358 driver series myself, as it seems the 355 series doesn’t work on Ubuntu 16.04.
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Zombasite is the rather unimaginative titled action RPG from Soldak that’s surprisingly good gameplay wise, and now you can try before you buy.
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One day I will be able to write something nice about 7 Days to Die, but today is not that day. The developers have released 7 Days to Die alpha 14 and shown they still aren’t testing the Linux builds.
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Hello, open gaming fans! In this week’s edition we take a look at what’s new in the world of Linux gaming.
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Easter is being celebrated in different parts of the world, and the developers of the free and open-source Warsow first-person shooter have announced the release of version 2.1.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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KDE Plasma 5.6 the latest version of KDE Desktop environment has been officially released and announcement by KDE development team.
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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With GNOME 3.20 having been released this week, developers working on the desktop stack have already firmed up their release schedule for the next six-month update, GNOME 3.22.
Via the GNOME Wiki, the release schedule was for GNOME 3.22 was ratified earlier in the week. The date most people care about for GNOME 3.22 is 22 September, the planned release date of GNOME 3.22.0. Though, of course, it’s no big surprise considering the release usually lands right around that time considering their release cadence.
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Now that the GNOME 3.20 desktop environment has been released with updates to most of its core apps and components, the time has come for associated projects to be updated as well to support the latest technologies implemented in GNOME 3.20.
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Stali, which is built with statically linked binaries for speed and compactness, upends traditional ideas about how a Linux distribution should work
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New Releases
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Just a few moments ago, March 27, 2016, Josh Strobl from the Solus Project had the great pleasure of announcing the release and immediate availability of Budgie Desktop 10.2.5.
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I have updated the Pinguy Builder so it now has full support for UEFI on 32-bit distros. This includes off-line install of the UEFI Grub. Version 4.* has beta support for 16.04. This is still very much a work in progress.
Because of the update and people having issues with off-line install with Pinguy OS, I have updated and repackaged all the ISOs with the new Pinguy Builder. So if you had issues installing in the past, this is now all fixed.
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PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family
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A few minutes ago, March 27, 2016, the development team of the Mageia project announced the release and immediate availability for download and testing of the first devel version of the upcoming Mageia 6 Linux operating system.
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PCLinuxOS is a rolling release distribution which was originally forked from Mandriva. Though its roots are in Mandriva, PCLinuxOS is currently maintained as an independent distribution. The project is unusual in two regards. First, PCLinuxOS has a relatively conservative approach for a rolling release distribution. PCLinuxOS maintains desktops with classic layouts, still uses the SysV init software while most Linux-based systems have moved to systemd, and PCLinuxOS tends to have a stronger emphasis on stability than other distributions which employ the rolling release model. The second feature that sets PCLinuxOS apart is that it uses RPM packages with Debian’s APT package management tools, an uncommon combination.
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After the delays caused by upgrading the major parts of the base system and switching to the Plasma 5 Desktop Environment, we are very happy to announce that the first development milestone of Mageia 6 has been released and is ready for testing by the community.
Note that only the classical ISO images have been released, those being the i586 and x86_64 DVD images. The live ISO images are not quite ready. If the live images can be made functional soon, they may also be released, otherwise they will come with the next milestone release.
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Gentoo Family
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The Sabayon Linux rolling release operating system based on the powerful Gentoo distro has just been updated today, March 28, for the month of April 2016, and new ISO images are now available for download.
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Arch Family
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Allan McRae of the Arch Linux project made a brief announcement at the end of last week to inform users of the acclaimed GNU/Linux operating system about some important changes in the default package manager.
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The release of pacman-5.0 brought support for transactional hooks. These will allow us to (e.g.) run font cache updates a single time during an update rather than after each font package installation. This will both speed up the update process, but also reduce packaging burden for the Developers and Trusted Users.
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Red Hat Family
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Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT)‘s stock had its “buy” rating reaffirmed by equities researchers at Deutsche Bank in a research report issued to clients and investors on Thursday, Marketbeat.com reports.
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Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) had its price objective upped by Robert W. Baird from $80.00 to $85.00 in a report issued on Wednesday morning, MarketBeat.Com reports. They currently have an outperform rating on the open-source software company’s stock.
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Common sense dictates that making open-source software, where the original code can be modified by anyone and freely distributed, doesn’t seem like a sound business decision. After all, competitors could freely use code to create products. The success of Red Hat Software (RHT – Get Report) proves otherwise.
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Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) stated loss of 589,108 shares or 10.5% in the short interest. The short interest registered from 5,584,864 on February 29,2016 to 4,995,756 on March 15,2016. In terms of floated shares, the shorted positions stood at 2.8%. The stock has been averaging 1,499,267 shares daily in trading and would need 3 days to cover the shorts. The information was released by Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc (FINRA) on March 24th.
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Zacks Research has assigned an affirmative Growth Style Score to Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT). The Growth Score considers both the company financials and the growth outlook of a company. It is arrived at by analyzing multiple company financials like Cash Flow Statement and Income Statement and a ranking in a range of A to F is provided. The ‘A’ rating illustrates that the stock has immense growth potential to perform relatively better than the market.
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The Linux vendor keeps growing while sector rivals like Microsoft and Oracle pin their slowdowns on economic trends.
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Fedora
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A new working group is being formed that’s focused on making Fedora more modular and to define a base module from which new derivatives of Fedora can be constructed.
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Here are some tests of Fedora 23, Fedora 23 with all available stable release updates that currently takes it to Linux 4.4 and Mesa 11.1, along with enabling the Fedora Rawhide Nodebug repository where an early Git snapshot of Linux 4.6 is present.
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Hey folks! Sorry for the short notice, but once again it’s time for a Fedora Test Day! Tomorrow, 2016-03-29, will be Translation Test Day over in #fedora-test-day on Freenode IRC. Fedora’s dedicated g11n (globalization) team is working hard as always to get translation and internationalization in shape for the Fedora 24 release, so please do stop by and help out if you can. If you speak any language other than English, you can help out by checking the translations of some key apps in other languages!
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Debian Family
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It’s that time of year again for the Debian Project: the elections of its Project Leader!
Neil McGovern who has held the office for the last year will not be seeking reelection. Debian Developers will have to choose between voting for the only candidate running Mehdi Dogguy or None Of The Above. If None Of The Above wins the election then the election procedure is repeated, many times if necessary.
Mehdi Dogguy was a candidate for the DPL position last year, finishing second with a close amount of votes to the winner Neil McGovern.
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It’s looking incredibly likely that ownCloud, the popular open-source project for easily setting up your own private cloud for file storage, will not be available as Debian packages with next year’s 9.0 Stretch release.
The past few weeks have seen Debian stakeholders debating over ownCloud as an unfit upstream with it being a pain to maintain the current ownCloud Debian packages. Due to the unwillingness of the ownCloud developers, managing ownCloud upgrades being a headache, and Debian packaging rules, it’s looking like the Debian developers maintaining these packages are getting ready to throw in the towel for Stretch. Of course, others are wanting ownCloud to continue to be packaged since there is no viable open-source alternative to this project.
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Derivatives
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It looks like the AV Linux 2016 operating system for audio production has been released this past weekend, bringing a whole new set of tools and open-source software for low-latency audio production.
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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We reported this month that Canonical, the company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux, and BQ, the Spanish mobile manufacturer, teased users with the availability for pre-order of the first-ever Ubuntu tablet, the BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition.
The tablet is usually sold via BQ’s online store in two variants, Aquaris M10 HD and Aquaris M10 Full HD, with the Android 5.1 Lollipop mobile operating system, but thanks to the collaboration between Canonical and BQ, the Ubuntu community can now purchase it with the latest Ubuntu Touch mobile OS.
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Flavours and Variants
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As we reported last week, the final Beta of the upcoming Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system was announced, and it also included the Beta 2 builds for several official flavors.
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VoCore is an open hardware that runs OpenWRT Linux. This tiny computer comes with Wi-Fi, USB, 20+ GPIOs that will help you to make a smart home automation system or use it in other embedded projects. Read more to know about this device and grab one for yourself.
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The human race has a certain love affair with robots. From the early days of film we have The Day The Earth Stood Still where an ominous robot named Gort protected his master. Moving forward to the 1970s and 1980s we have the loveable C-3PO, R2-D2 and a certain war machine turned pacifist called Johnny 5. In those early days we would dream of owning a robot that could do our bidding, as long as your bidding did not violate Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics.
Building a robots can be an incredibly personal project, from choosing the components to giving the robot a name. Each robot is unique and loved by its maker, and with the Raspberry Pi enabling anyone to build a robot it has never been easier to get started with robotics. There are many different robots on the market, from cheap and cheerful kits that retail for around £30, up to large sophisticated projects such as the Rapiro, which retail for many hundreds of pounds. Choosing the right robot can be a difficult task and that is where kits such as those in our group test can really help get you off to a flying start.
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The Raspberry Pi is an inexpensive computer that has become the most popular device for smaller computing projects and learning. Sales have surpassed 8 million units making it the best selling UK personal computer.
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Phones
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Tizen
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Android
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New York Cheesecake, Nutella and even Nankhatai are some of the names that have been recommended to Google as the name of the final release for its upcoming Android iteration tagged as Android N. The name game aside, there are plenty of new bits and changes under the hood that every Nexus user (and eventually others in the form of custom ROMs) would like to have.
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First, I purchased my Galaxy S7 directly from Samsung so there were no carrier add-ons, but naturally the phone ships with Samsung’s now default TouchWiz implementation over the top of Android Marshmallow 6.0
I may have a slight bias here because despite a short flirtation with HTC phones in the earlier days of Android I’ve always used Samsung phones, so I’m used to the interface and it doesn’t worry me, and while there were some Samsung apps installed on the device I will never use, they’re hardly a serious burden.
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2016 is going to see a flush of the Android phones and choosing the best Android phone among all will surely depend on what you are looking for. Still some factors like Quick charge, 4K video support, fingerprint scanner, type-C port reversible charger, wireless charging etc. are something which will force you to change your mind.
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Samsung has already launched its first flagships of 2016 and the company’s next flagship, the Galaxy Note 6, is expected to be launched in August or September this year.
The phablet may sport a 5.8-inch slim RGB AMOLED display with a QHD resolution of 2,560 x 1,440 pixels. Just like the Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 edge, the upcoming Galaxy Note 6 may be available in two variants: one with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor and the other with an Exynos 8 chipset.
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For the last three years, I have rounded up the most popular open source project management tools for Opensource.com readers. As there continues to be major reader interest in this area, I decided to take a look back at the tools we covered in 2014 and 2015, and give you updates on all of these projects. I looked to see which projects had new releases, notable new and improved features, and more.
Let’s take a look at each of these projects and try to answer some of the questions readers have had in the comments of last year’s edition, including which are still in active development, provide hosting options, offer a mobile solution, and more.
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Events
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This is the year of open source in networking, The Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin told a packed room at Open Networking Summit (ONS) in Santa Clara earlier this month. The industry is gaining momentum, as more network players such as China Mobile profess to adopting SDN, and use open source software to meet their needs.
“2016 is really the confluence of projects up and down the stack,” Zemlin said. “What we’re seeing now is open source projects covering the gamut of technology that’s required to run modern service provider networks and enterprise datacenter networks.”
Nowhere was this breadth of technology more evident than ONS, which featured more than 175 talks covering every aspect of open networking for developers, technologists, operators, service providers and executives. Managers and practitioners alike came together at the event to listen, present, and interact — all with the aim to accelerate development and transform the networking industry.
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At 4:30PM we all moved into the big hall for the last session of the event. Hong Phuc and Mario gave many details about how they event went. We had people are 32 different countries, 206 speakers (7 did not turn up), 1086 unique participants. FOSSASIA is going to stay in Singapore, means next year we all are coming back to this amazing country for another great event.
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Do you know the American TV show Mr. Robot? It aired in June 2015, and at SxSW Interactive this year, a panel convened to talk about “Coding of Camera: Mr. Robot and Authenticity on TV.” The panel consisted of Sam Esmail, Rami Malek, and Christian Slater.
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Web Browsers
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Chrome
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Google has announced that it will retire its Chrome app launcher. The company said that since Windows, Mac and Linux users prefer to launch their apps from within Chrome, it is discontinuing the app launcher.
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Mozilla
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SaaS/Big Data
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Is it possible to spin up a free Hadoop or Spark cluster in only five minutes? That is what startup company Galactic Exchange is billing as its calling card.
The company is fresh out of stealth mode and wants to cater to those who may not have any Big Data experience at all. Here are more details.
Galactic Exchange has a beta product, ClusterGX, coming out this week. It is built to work on Linux, Windows or Mac OS, and can reportedly be installed nearly instantly by those with no experience in building clusters, Hadoop or Spark.
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Databases
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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New to Gzip is a –synchronous option for forcing fsync usage when outputting data for greater reliability, but obviously at the cost of slower performance. Gzip 1.7 also has a –rsyncable option when compressing to make the output more amendable for efficient rsync use by minimizing the changes within the gzip file.
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This is to announce gzip-1.7, a stable release. There have been 60 commits by 4 people in the nearly three years since 1.6.
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Public Services/Government
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The proliferation of OSS technologies, libraries, and frameworks in recent years has greatly contributed to the advancement of software development, increased developer productivity, and to the flexibility and customisation of the tools landscape to support different use cases and developers’ preferences.
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Openness/Sharing
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Open Access/Content
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After more than 10 years in existence, the Indian-language Wikipedias still are not known to many Indian language speakers. Wikipedia became the largest encyclopedia in history as a result of thousands of volunteer editors. Whereas native-language Wikipedias are becoming game changers in other corners of the world, the scenario in India is skewed.
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Rajiv Jhangiani grew accustomed to the emails he would receive from his students at the start of each semester:
“Is a previous edition OK?”
“Do I really need the textbook?”
The psychology instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University saw an increasing number of students attempting to go without the $150-$250 textbooks he was assigning for his courses, so he decided to stop assigning them.
“I think it’s absurd, really,” Jhangiani said. “Every two-to-three years we get new editions which are basically cosmetic in terms of the changes that they have, and students are forced to spend a lot of money.”
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Open Hardware
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The Onion Omega, a curiously named ultra-tiny linux-based WiFi board, is a useful little device for everything Internet of Things related. [Daniel] decided to use it to connect his car to the internet.
Most new cars these days have remote start built in, and slowly, manufacturers are catching up to modern technology and including apps to control various features of their vehicles. But for old cars, there’s not much you can do aside from after-market remote start kits and the likes.
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Automotive diagnostics have come a long way since the “idiot lights” of the 1980s. The current version of the on-board diagnostics (ODB) protocol provides real time data as well as fault diagnostics, thanks to the numerous sensors connected to the data network in the modern vehicle. While the hardware interface is fairly standardized now, manufacturers use one of several different standards to encode the data. [Alex Sidorenko] has built an open source OBD-II Adapter which provides a serial interface using the ELM327 command set and supports all OBD-II standards.
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Programming
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If your company uses Node.js, you may have suffered a shock this past week. A critical software package in the open source code base that many Node.js applications rely on suddenly disappeared. The problem was quickly rectified, but it caused problems for many users – and belies a fundamental problem with open source software.
The problem arose when Azer Koçulu, the developer of the Kik software module, was approached by lawyers working for a company of the same name. They wanted him to unpublish his module because the name infringed on theirs, they said. Koçulu refused, so they approached a company called NPM Inc.
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Standards/Consortia
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As the majority of European countries have taken into account the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) in their National Interoperability Frameworks (NIFs), the NIFO Observatory focuses its 2015 update on the implementation and monitoring aspects.
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Remember when soccer’s governing body FIFA spent $30m making a film about itself starring Tim Roth and Gérard Depardieu?
Well, the tech world’s most egomaniacal company is going to bring its version to the small screen.
That’s right, Apple has decided to join Netflix and Amazon and get in on the content commissioning game by ordering a television show about… app developers.
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Science
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The Internet of Things is a good example of this change. Every industry, no matter how traditional — agriculture, automotive, aviation, energy — is being upended by the addition of sensors, internet connectivity, and software. Success in this environment will depend on more than just creating better digital-enabled products; it will depend on building ecosystem-level strategies that encompass the many moving pieces that come together to create the new value proposition.
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Health/Nutrition
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The U.S. is asking Novartis AG to provide records of about 80,000 “sham” events in which the government says doctors were wined and dined so they would prescribe the company’s cardiovascular drugs to their patients.
The Swiss drugmaker and the Manhattan U.S. Attorney are engaged in a whistle-blower lawsuit that alleges Novartis provided illegal kickbacks to health-care providers through bogus educational programs at high-end restaurants and sports bars where the drugs were barely discussed.
In a filing Friday, the U.S. said it needs Novartis to provide information to support its allegation that the company defrauded federal health-care programs of hundreds of millions of dollars over a decade by inducing doctors to prescribe its medications through sham speaker events.
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Security
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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OF ALL THE CULTURAL NARRATIVES to emerge in the aftermath of American wars, few have proven as pervasive as the Soldier’s Disease. Popular lore holds that the Soldier’s Disease affected hundreds of thousands of Civil War veterans, Yankee and Confederate. A term so specific and vague all at once, the Soldier’s Disease sounds like something meant to conjure up millenniums-worth of human destruction and violence.
Yet it was never that visceral, or all that physical. The Soldier’s Disease was code for addiction to morphine or other opiates. Given the industrial nature of the Civil War, and the state of medical treatment at the time, the source of the addiction developed from amputations caused by shrapnel wounds. Morphine and the like numbed the horrifying pain that came with the amputations and recovery process. That dependence became addiction, and returned home with the veterans after the war, unleashing a great scourge upon the land.
So goes the narrative, at least. There’s just one problem, though: the Soldier’s Disease is more myth than historical record. Modern studies reveal that sure, many a Civil War vet had their opiate issues, but so did a lot of Americans in that era, not the least because of a booming (and often unchecked) pharmaceutical industry. Further, the first chronicled use of “Soldier’s Disease” didn’t appear until 1915, a good 50 years after Appomattox. Why? There was a growing antidrug political movement occurring across the nation, and it needed some talking points.
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The tit-for-tat game of killing will not end until exhaustion, until the culture of death breaks us emotionally and physically. We use our drones, warplanes, missiles and artillery to rip apart walls and ceilings, blow out windows and kill or wound those inside. Our enemies pack peroxide-based explosives in suitcases or suicide vests and walk into airport terminals, concert halls, cafes or subways and blow us up, often along with themselves. If they had our technology of death they would do it more efficiently. But they do not. Their tactics are cruder, but morally they are the same as us. T.E. Lawrence called this cycle of violence “the rings of sorrow.”
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Our empathy for white working-class people who are taken with Trump shouldn’t keep us from intervening in the gathering storm of white supremacy that his rise represents, if for no other reason than because we know that the number of people who are repulsed and angry about what he represents—but have remained inactive—is far greater than the total filling the seats of his hate-filled celebrations of patriarchal masculinity. However imperfect our protests have been—and they should incorporate more dramatic and bold experiments along the lines of the Phoenix blockade—they are offering an alternative to the story of white silence, and are galvanizing many to act.
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For days now, American cable news has broadcast non-stop coverage of the horrific attack in Brussels. Viewers repeatedly heard from witnesses and from the wounded. Video was shown in a loop of the terror and panic when the bombs exploded. Networks dispatched their TV stars to Brussels, where they remain. NPR profiled the lives of several of the airport victims. CNN showed a moving interview of a wounded, bandage-wrapped Mormon American teenager speaking from his Belgium hospital bed.
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Former Assistant Treasury Secretary in the Reagan Administration, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, contends it is no accident why bankers do not get jail time for constantly committing fraud by stealing documents and committing fraudulent, criminal insider trading and market manipulations. Dr. Roberts explains, “Look at Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. They claim they stole documents, and we are determined to destroy them. One of them is hiding out in Russia, and one of them is hiding out in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. This again shows the immunity of the banks. They are not held accountable because they are in control. Who controls the Fed? Who controls the Treasury? Where do all the Treasury Secretaries come from? They come from the big New York banks. Look at the financial regulatory agencies that are supposed to be regulating the banks. They are filled with executives from the banks. The banks control the government. There isn’t a government, there’s the banks. . . . We have the entire economic policy in the United States concentrating on saving five banks. We had 10 million people who lost their homes, and nothing was done for them, but five banks are saved.”
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With plans for military spending on a new Cold War — as well as on old fears about terrorism — spinning out of control, the next U.S. president will face a budgetary time bomb, explains Chuck Spinney.
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Who should play Hillary on Broadway?
“Maybe Lily Tomlin,” Nader says. “She’s good at playing characters that speak with forked tongues.”
“Hillary the Hawk is the darling of the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned about in his farewell address,” Nader said. “And she gets quite a bit of money from those companies. Hillary the Wall Street Promoter gets money from Wall Street. And yet she comes out on that stage and says exactly the opposite and gets away with it.”
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The population of Brussels is nearly 25 percent immigrants from Muslim countries, primarily Morocco and Algeria. And as it turns out the two brothers who were the core of the ISIS cell were habitués of the now notorious Molenbeek neighborhood, which consists primarily of the descendants of immigrants who settled there decades ago. Poor, and beset by petty crime, it is a pool in which terrorist recruiters fish with much success. The Syrian civil war has become a cause that attracts young toughs with no prospects, who are looking for some sense of meaning – and a way to express their alienation from the larger society in which they live. Molenbeek was also the base for those who planned and carried out the Paris attacks – it is, in effect, a general headquarters for ISIS to carry out its European operations. Salah Abdeslam, the chief planner of the Paris attacks, fled there and found sanctuary for four months before being caught.
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Our integrated American Muslim communities are helping to keep us safe.
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Around midday on March 15, fighter jets from a Saudi-led coalition bombed a market in Mastaba, in Yemen’s northern province of Hajjah. The latest count indicates that about 120 people were killed, including more than 20 children, and 80 were wounded in the strikes — perhaps the deadliest attack yet in a war that has killed more than 6,000 civilians. Local residents and health officials say the carnage was so great in Mastaba that most of the bodies could hardly be identified, and several were beyond recognition.
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In a season when the political becomes theater, and when military actions remain as prominent and prolific as they were when the sergeant enlisted in the military for the second time, the old refrain that military justice is to justice, as military music is to music, ought to give anyone pause hoping that in Sergeant Bergdahl’s case cooler heads will prevail and the accepted wisdom of enough punishment being enough becomes widely shared. Nearly 15 years of war in Afghanistan, and with a nation on permanent war footing, the chance of Sergeant Bergdahl’s case being considered outside of the turbulent winds of the presidential primary season and the general election are highly unlikely. In this highly charged political atmosphere, the chance of justice prevailing is remote. Determining the conditions on the ground in Afghanistan at the time of Bergdahl’s absence from his unit are impossible to assess since this war is only covered by major media outlets when an event of major proportions takes place.
The details of how Bowe Bergdahl might be punished are worth comparing to the actual punishments resulting from the assault on My Lai in Vietnam in March 1968 and its aftermath. About 500 unarmed men, women, and children were killed in that massacre by US forces. The only officer to face a military trial for the atrocities of My Lai, Lieutenant William Calley, could have faced the death penalty for the 109 Vietnamese he had been charged with murdering. Ultimately, he was convicted of killing 22 civilians and sentenced to life imprisonment. That sentence was reduced to 20 years and then further reduced to 10 years. Calley’s final time spent under house arrest amounted to three and a half years, at which time he was released by a federal court. Bergdahl has never been charged with killing a single individual or responsibility for the death of troops involved in the search for him as the result of his leaving his post. No one was killed during the search for the sergeant.
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There is exploitation by politicians of the spike in public concern about terrorism, this time with presidential candidates calling for patrols of American neighborhoods identified by religion, when those same candidates are not calling for carpet bombing a foreign country.
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Recoiling from the terrorist carnage in Brussels, Americans may be attracted to the “tough” posturing of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. The casino mogul wants to bring back torture, while the Texas senator hopes to bomb indiscriminately until the desert glows. Trump would bar any Muslim from entering the United States, while Cruz would dispatch special police patrols into Muslim neighborhoods. Both eagerly demonize Muslims worldwide and stigmatize Muslims in America.
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More than a quarter of a century after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the afgantsy are still struggling to carve out a place for themselves in post-Soviet Tajikistan.
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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Japan’s fleet known for capturing whales for research returned to shore this week and confirmed it killed more than 300 minke whales, including pregnant specimens, triggering international condemnation.
Every year, Japan undertakes what it has labeled as a scientific hunt for whales in the Southern Ocean. However, in 2014, the International Court of Justice ruled Japan should stop. Instead, Japan ignored the ruling last year and announced it would continue whaling while reducing the number of whales it would kill by two-thirds to 333.
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On Saturday, four UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters from the Kansas National Guard were deployed to contain the prairie blazes that have burned at least 620 square miles in southern Kansas and Oklahoma, where it originated, the Associated Press reported. Smoke was reportedly detected as far away as St. Louis, Missouri — hundreds of miles to the northeast — as at least four homes and livestock were affected, according to Kansas officials. No serious human injuries or fatalities have been reported.
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That’s what nuclear power plants are. And that’s another very big reason—demonstrated again in recent days with the disclosure that two of the Brussels terrorists were planning attacks on Belgian nuclear plants—why they must be eliminated.
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Today governments from all over the world will meet at the United Nations in New York to develop a new treaty to save our oceans. We will be there to ensure clear rules for the creation of sanctuaries that will give our oceans the protection they desperately need.
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Finance
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Since its inception, many members of the European confederation of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are allocating more money to addressing the social costs of refugee and asylum seekers. For example, the Netherlands has increased its budget 145%, Italy has raised theirs by 107%, Cyprus increased its by 65%, and Portugal has gone up 38%.
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And serve the deep state the Clintons certaintly do as is indicated by the $153 million in “speaking fees”—read bribes and payoffs—that CNN and Fox News report the Clintons have been paid by Wall Street, the mega-banks, and corporate America. This sum does not include campaign donations or donations to the Clintons’ foundation. http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/05/politics/hillary-clinton-bill-clinton-paid-speeches/
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Students, faculty and staff staged a die-in Thursday in New York City to demand the state fully fund the City University of New York. Later that same day, Governor Andrew Cuomo agreed to some of their demands. Cuomo had threatened to push nearly $500 million in state costs onto the city. Watch a video of some of the voices from the demonstration, at which two city council members were also arrested.
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Politicians have imposed evidence-free re-organisations on us health workers for years. Now they tell us that it’s too late to change the mess they’ve got us into.
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Numerous statewide polls have suggested voters would approve a minimum wage proposal—perhaps even a more sweeping version—if given the chance.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Indeed, Sanders bested Clinton by more than sixty points in Alaska, where he took 81.6 percent to her 18.4 percent. In Hawaii, he won 70.6 percent to 29.2 percent and in the delegate-heavy Washington, Sanders beat Clinton 72.7 percent to 27.1 percent.
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Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is defending Bernie Sanders’ decision to keep campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination and calling out Donald Trump for being the worst kind of predatory capitalist.
Warren spoke to reporters after visiting a community health center in suburban Boston and made the following six points about Sanders and Trump, which were quickly picked up by Associated Press.
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The recent AIPAC meeting brought four of the five remaining presidential candidates – all except Bernie Sanders – to Washington to grovel at the feet of the Israel lobby, a depressing scene, says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
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Bernie Sanders swept all three Democratic caucuses on Saturday, with decisive victories over front-runner Hillary Clinton in Washington state, Alaska and Hawaii, according to NBC News analysis.
Speaking to a rapturous crowd in Madison, Wisconsin, after his victory in Alaska, Sanders declared his campaign was making “significant inroads” into Clinton’s big delegate lead.
The Vermont senator also gave some breaking news to his jubilant supporters.
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Sanders gained 45 pledged delegates, bringing his current total to 975, inching closer to Clinton’s 1,243. And while the former secretary of State claims the support of 469 superdelegates, Sanders predicts that some of those party elites may change their mind if he keeps notching up such impressive wins.
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Censorship
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Amos Yee, the teen blogger who was convicted for criticising Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, is missing from his home since 12 Dec 2015. Yee was sentenced to four weeks jail for cutting a video comparing Lee to Jesus.
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Toh further said in her post that she believed that Yee was arrested just for criticising Mr Lee so soon after his death. Referring to the ongoing second investigation Toh said, “saying that Amos had offended Islam was just another excuse to arrest and silence him.”
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The Brussels terror attacks earlier this week stoked the hashtag #StopIslam on Twitter and other social media platforms. The phrase was one of Twitter’s most popular hashtags in the hours following the attack until the site removed #StopIslam from its U.S. and Worldwide trending topics.
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China’s young people are fed up. From the well-policed streets of Beijing to the turbulent campuses of Hong Kong, their discontent has blossomed into a surprising challenge to President Xi Jinping.
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Privacy
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David Cameron announced early last year that it was “unacceptable” that all communications could not be intercepted and read by intelligence services and law enforcement agencies. He stopped short of calling for a ban but strongly hinted this would be addressed in the Snooper’s Charter.
This followed the head of the UK’s GCHQ throwing both terrorism and child porn into the mix while vocally handwringing about encrypted communications — portraying tech companies as callous accomplices of child abusers and jihadists.
In Brazil, WhatsApp was blocked and a Facebook executive arrested for refusing to hand over identifying information on its users.
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First, the legislators came for encrypted phones, because terrorists were apparently using encryption. (Except they weren’t.) Now, they’re coming for prepaid phones. Sure, customers will still be able to buy prepaid phones. They’ll just have to “register” with their local retailer in order to do so.
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When the DOJ announced that the FBI may have miraculously found a way in to Syed Farook’s work iPhone after swearing to a court that such a thing was impossible, many people zeroed in on the possibility of “NAND Mirroring” as the technique in question. After all, during a Congressional hearing, Rep. Darrell Issa had gone fairly deep technically (for a Congressperson, at least) in asking FBI Director James Comey if the FBI had tested such a method. Well-known iPhone forensics guru Jonathan Zdziarski wrote up a good blog post explaining why such a technique was the most likely. While recognizing that there are other possibilities, he does a good job breaking down why none of the other possibilities are all that likely, given a variety of facts related to the case (I won’t go through all of that — just go read his post). It’s worth a read.
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Karen: I always intended to link my name with my story because it is a story that needs to be told, but since I have a lawsuit against NSA (technically an appeal of an unlawful, employer action, i.e. my termination at the 28 point year of my career for trying to request an investigation by the NSA Inspector General), sitting under a gag order demanded by NSA, on the docket at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in Baltimore, I could not do so without risking the adjudication going against me for that reason alone. However, in 2015 NSA Security made the decision to yet again engage in a massive slander campaign against me in my new location, thus breaking its own gag order so I feel no compunction to be held to a standard required by the EEOC judge at NSA’s request that NSA itself clearly holds in utter contempt.
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The same Alabama school district that claimed God the NSA told it to monitor its students’ social media activities is back in the news again. The tune has changed but the lyrics remain the same. This new social media monitoring program proceeds without the NSA’s blessing or the use of a snappy acronym, but it’s pretty much the same thing — only expanded to cover all students (potentially), rather than the former’s programs 600 or so “targets.”
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All the more so given this news: last week (apparently after Thursday), Admiral Mike Rogers had a “secret” meeting with Israel’s Intelligence Corps Unit 8200, the unit CyberCom partnered with on the StuxNet attack.
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Civil Rights
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National isolation is the desire of every dictator: If his subjects never see what a freer society looks like or have the opportunity to avail themselves of its goods and services, they have no standard against which to measure his rule and find it wanting.
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IN THE RUN-UP to oral arguments before the Supreme Court this week to challenge the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employers’ health care plans cover birth control, Republican lawmakers held a series of events to highlight the importance of religious liberty. Conservatives claim that the law, which requires insurance companies to cover contraception, violates the religious rights of Catholic nuns.
That commitment to religious freedom, however, does not appear to extend to Muslim Americans.
On Tuesday, in reaction to the terror attacks in Belgium, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz called for law enforcement to preemptively “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.” Later that day, The Intercept attended a press conference organized by House Republicans to champion religious liberty ahead of the Supreme Court contraception case.
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It seems pretty clear that Trump has no clue what is being discussed and just falls back into his usual talking points about how America just isn’t that good any more, and then uses the tiny bit of information he does have (China and Russia have been in the news around hackings) and argues that they’re better than us. But, “we’re obsolete”? Huh? As noted above (not by him, of course), the most powerful computer-based attacks do seem to be coming from the US itself, not Russia or China.
Also, what does “inconceivable that, inconceivable the power of cyber” even mean? All I can think of is the scene from The Princess Bride.
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Microsoft has joined a corporate campaign calling on politicians “to abandon or defeat” anti-LBGT legislation, and its president, Brad Smith, specifically criticized the North Carolina law on Twitter. And like the political action committees of Bank of America and Lowe’s, Microsoft’s PAC — run by its managing director for government affairs, Edward Ingle — has given to the same anti-LBGT politicians, though somewhat less generously. Since 2008, the Microsoft PAC has given $2,000 to McCrory, $3,000 to Berger, $2,000 to Moore, and $4,000 to the North Carolina Republican Party.
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WHO CREATED Donald Trump?
Now that Donald Trump, the candidate, has become both widely popular and deeply loathsome, we’re seeing a cataract of editorials and commentary aimed at explaining how it happened and who’s to blame. The predictable suspects are trotted out: the Republican Party, which had been too opportunistic and fearful to stand up to its own candidate, Fox News, which inflamed the jingoes, and white working-class voters, unhinged by class envy and racial resentment.
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The CIA took photographs of detainees naked, bound, and blindfolded—some with visible bruises—before extraditing them to other countries to be tortured, an investigation by the Guardian’s Spencer Ackerman revealed on Monday.
“The naked imagery of CIA captives raises new questions about the seeming willingness of the U.S. to use what one medical and human rights expert called ‘sexual humiliation’ in its post-9/11 captivity of terrorism suspects,” Ackerman wrote. “Some human rights campaigners described the act of naked photography on unwilling detainees as a potential war crime.”
Ackerman also reported that “a former U.S. official who had seen some of the photographs described them as ‘very gruesome.’” The photos in question remain classified.
The detainees were photographed before being extradited to nations known to use more brutal forms of torture than that used in the U.S., Ackerman said, as part of the CIA’s so-called “extraordinary rendition” program.
The writer V. Noah Gimbel characterized that program in 2011 as “the outsourcing of interrogations to countries where torture could be employed without the legal barriers that exist within the U.S. military and civilian justice systems.”
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Experienced intelligence professionals reaffirm that torture – while popular with “tough” politicians – doesn’t work in getting accurate and actionable information, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
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Internet/Net Neutrality
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Comcast for years has offered what most find to be utterly abysmal customer service and support, resulting in story after story of nightmare experiences for consumers and businesses alike. This is, by and large, thanks to limited competition in most of Comcast’s footprint, and despite Silicon Valley being arguably the tech epicenter of the country, the region apparently isn’t immune to Comcast’s particular… charms or the nation’s obvious lack of broadband competition.
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 4:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Keeping as much information as is publicly available online for good
SUEPO archived: [Home | contact | public | about us | background | links]
Summary: Techrights amasses information about EPO abuses, but there are cases where such information gets taken down and we explore/explain why
At long last, after experimentation nearly two months ago, SUEPO changes its Web site’s design and adds an RSS feed. It has been getting difficult to open the SUEPO Web page (necessary in the absence of an RSS feed) because of many embedded videos that accompanied it, never mind the endless wall of text (going years back).
Whatever happens at the European Patent Office (and will happen in months/years to come), it is important to keep properly documented what happened over the past few years in order to serve as a cautionary tale. SUEPO already removed some of the content from its older site/incarnation (like the Drupal-powered site) and was at times, under pressure from EPO management, removing some material. We still do our very best to never let stuff simply vanish (deletionism/revisionism a possibility thereafter). The only thing ever removed here (after more than 20,000 blog posts) was a long post about the EPO. It later turned out that after we removed it people had already made copies from Google cache and pasted the whole thing elsewhere (not within our control and completely without our knowledge). The EPO's management was the first ever to send us a threatening legal letter. Another such threat was sent to us about a week ago after the EPO's management had expressed anger over a TV program. We have received a lot of feedback since the videos (of the TV program) were removed. The videos started with information about one of 5 recent EPO suicides, blaming it (at least partly) on the Investigative Unit. One reader told us that the “most brutal reorganisation (as part of the reforms) has apparently been carried out in Patent Administration. Two (or three?) of the Munich colleagues who committed suicide worked in Patent Administration units. The working pressure must be extremely high there.”
In an attempt to figure out why takedown of the videos was demanded we considered various views, some of which provided compelling explanations and potential remedies.
“I expected the EPO to threaten BRtv,” told us one reader, “however I don’t get why they (BRtv) agree so easily?!?!? BR should rather be glad that Techrights, SUEPO and others spread their revealing report, shouldn’t they?”
This reader added, “perhaps is this only something from the BR to remain in full control of their material?”
“It would be easier to believe if it didn’t take so long and the EPO didn’t make the two internal communications that it made,” I responded. “Bavarian politicians now intervene. The video supports culpability for deaths.”
A reasonable explanation for BR’s takedown request was provided by another reader, who remarked as follows (redacted):
I checked the Mediathek-View app, and found that the original, German, un-undertitled “Kontrovers” videos are still present there. Videos of the BR-produced “Kontrovers” feature are usually staying there in the Mediathek for a very! long! time! – see other “Kontrovers” videos. These are usually NOT removed after 8 days, or four weeks (unlike normal productions).
So this is one important conclusion for you, me and the public.
So you can use the mere presence of the BR EPO-Video (in the Mediathek) as a “canary” that BR has apparently not received a take-down notice from EPO (or is ignoring such a letter)!
Another issue is the copyright status of the transcript.
(DE undertitles) and the translations (FR, EN), which — in my view — are added-value, and intellectual property of the translators (in this case: WTF license). But I am not sure and you should contact a lawyer, whether you can still publish the two (three) text versions. From view of the DE transcriber and the EN/FR translators: they do not claim any rights for sure.
Here is the up-to-date information (23.03.2016)
The “Story” (Bayerischer Rundfunk/Bayerisches Fernsehen “Kontrovers” 02.03.2016) is still available in the (official) producer’s ARD MEDIATHEK:
Page with background information text
Video selection page
Direct URLs to the videos:
High Definition Video
Single Definition Video
Small Definition Video
I hope you understood what I wrote in addition, namely that one can regard the presence of that specific video in the ARD MEDIATHEK as a “canary” (that ARD / BR is part of ARD / have not received a take-down notice from the EPO, or is ignoring this).
[...]
Normally, due to German law, broadcast videos must not be available longer than 7 days (otherwise, the TV/Radiostations WOULD fall under Internet law, as Internet provider, and not as journals/publishers laws.) This is the legal background, why TV/Radio stations in Germany must usually remove their Mediathek copies after 7 days. But for special programms (Eigenproduktionen), a different rule exist, luckily!
Similar information came to our attention at around the same time.
As one reader put it, “first of all many thanks for all the excellent work done so far. Your informative contribution is essential for the public and the 8800 employees and former employees of the EPO.” Here is a slightly redacted (for privacy) version of the explanation:
Allow me to comment on the article: “Why Bayerischer Rundfunk Videos About the European Patent Office Have Been Removed”
I try to keep it short. The Bayerische Rundfunk (BR) is the public broadcasting authority of the Bavarian free state (Freistaat Bayern). The same kind of authority exists in the other German states (Länder). I guess they compare with the BBC. The trouble with the public broadcast is that they are NOT independent but their Masters voice. This is a structural flaw. Another problem is a lack of financial transparency and a questionable governance. I guess you see where I am heading to…
The BR and other “Staatsfunk” are structurally the same kind of liars as the EPO. They don’t serve the public: They serve themselves. All public TV in Germany collect over 8 billion euros a year. Imagine what you can do with such an amount of money. And no transparency and a bad governance.
There is a huge lack of acceptance of a new financing model which doesn’t rely anymore on the fact of owing a TV set or not, but on having a roof over your head. Every household in Germany has to pay 17,50€ a month, whether you use their service or not. The public TV also dismisses critics are as coming from right wing extremists (Godwin’s Law).
All the German tribunals dismissed so far the complaints as ungrounded although there are plenty of independent expert assessments (one coming from the federal minister of finance!!) proving that the new financing model is illegal.
After FIFA and EPO, BR and consorts are to be the next big scandal in Germany.
Therefore, do not expect much understanding for the EPO problems from the German public TV. Germany, Bavaria and Munich have a big profit from the EPO therefore I don’t expect Germany to change a situation from which they draw a maximum benefit.
Regarding “EPO and BR”, another person wrote to us with similar observations at hand (redacted for privacy/anonymity as well):
I am really bothered by the fact that the most effective blow to EPO in decades, has been silenced. These videos got some attention [...] many of them will only reach error messages or empty pages now.
I just checked the original link on BR and apparently the entire video of 18 minutes is still there, which is good. I had recorded the TV program myself, by the way. Also, the people who made the subtitles must have copies in their hard drives, with and without subtitles.
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Another workaround could be to contact the authors and get their agreement. [...] I am tempted to believe that BR did it under EPO’s instigation, but then again they still might have some genuine interest in casting light on the issue.
Finally, if the subtitled (or even some synchronized translations) come out again in a way or another, the last attempt to silence them will actually emphasize the message, it might be another bigger blow against EPO.
Noting again that the videos are accessible online, one person added:
Can you tell me who demanded you to take down the Kontrovers video?
The video is available on the Federal ARD web site, and should theoretically remain available for the next five years.
(The media is actually hosted by BR and served its CDN).
There are quite a few user-uploaded ARD and ZDF videos on Youtube, so there doesn’t seem to be a blanket policy. I wonder whether Bayerischer Rundfunk has a different policy.
Regards,
[redacted]
The letter (just to clarify) was sent by BR. In the interests of transparency and clarify, below is a redacted letter. █
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Posted in Europe, Fraud, Microsoft at 4:11 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Microsoft gleefully watched from afar as young children in Romania got Microsoft’s indoctrination after corrupt contracts
Children were made prisoners of Microsoft
and those responsible for it are sent to prison
Summary: An update from Romania regarding a corrupt contract for Microsoft software
THE SITUATION with regards to corruption in Romania is grimmer than in most of Europe and Microsoft’s role in it was covered here before, e.g. in:
Last month we took note of Microsoft licences in the midst of high-profile corruption and a former Romanian minister is finally going to prison over it. To quote one article about this (in English, not Romanian): “Romania’s high court of cassation and justice on Thursday jailed the former telecommunications minister, Gabriel Sandu, for two years for money laundering, abuse of office and bribery involving the lease of Microsoft IT licenses for schools.
“The ex-mayor of the eastern town of Piatra Neamt, Gheorghe Stefan, and two other businessmen who acted as middlemen also got jail terms of up to three years.
“The four defendants have also to pay a total of almost 10 million euros in compensation. The Supreme Court’s sentence is not final.”
It is worth noting that owing to such corruption it is Microsoft — not GNU/Linux and Free software — that makes it into Romanian schools. Recent reports serve to indicate Microsoft corruption in other countries; this is still the subject of a US-led probe which maybe some more corruption can somehow scuttle. Recall Microsoft’s influence in the United States government, its tax evasion (which only recently became an issue) and big payments to the current US President. “Prosecutors said there was manifest corruption in the contract worth 105 million US dollars,” says the above article, “which was to supply Microsoft Office licenses to schools and other public institutions between 2004 and 2009.”
The article pretends that Microsoft has nothing to do with this corruption/bribery, even though Microsoft clearly benefited from it. How convenient. █
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