“All that Apple does is dissemination of DRM, maximisation of (weaponised) patents, and exploitation of public ignorance/apathy to ‘sell’ (actually rent) proprietary software on overzealously locked-down hardware.”Android rose to unbeatable levels of dominance despite Apple’s assault (remember that Apple started it 5 years ago) and in one legal case alone there are now “3,200 documents [...] not including exhibits.” Imagine the cost of legal defence here. Apple and Samsung are still fighting in court and “Koh’s recent orders suggest she is fed up with the intense litigation by both parties,” Mullin notes. “The case docket for the first of two Apple v. Samsung lawsuits now has more than 3,200 documents in it, not including exhibits. Last week, Koh issued an order prohibiting the parties from making any further additions without permission.”
This is, at the very least, deterrence. More importantly, it’s Apple greed (it wants billions of dollars from Samsung). Apple is just hoping that companies with pockets less deep than Samsung’s will simply give up and pay Apple for profits made through distribution of Android (Free software). This is clearly an attack on Free software, so anyone still insisting that Apple likes “Open Source” is about as delusional as people who deem ‘i’ products superior and worthy of the high price tags.
Several years ago we openly and unambiguously called for a boycott of everything “Apple”. The company is malicious and it is dangerous to the future of Free software. All that Apple does is dissemination of DRM, maximisation of (weaponised) patents, and exploitation of public ignorance/apathy to ‘sell’ (actually rent) proprietary software on overzealously locked-down hardware.
Patent-holding company Rothschild Connected Devices Innovations (RCDI) owns US Patent No. 8,788,090, which was granted in 2014 and describes a system where a “remote server” “transmits” a “product preference” via a “communication module.” Using those broad claims, RCDI has sued more than 20 companies for making things that connect to the Internet. The company sued ADT (PDF) over its Pulse product that allows for things like adjusting a thermostat.
The patent relates to an application filed back in 2006 that essentially describes an Internet drink mixer. A consumer can customize products by connecting to a server on “the global computer network, e.g., the Internet,” which can then “provide product preferences of a user to a product or a mixing device, e.g., a product or beverage dispenser.”
This is an example not just of patent trolling but also software patents, which are the weapon favoured among patent trolls. If the latter can be eliminated, much of the former too will vanish (go bankrupt). This is why we emphasise the need to combat software patents (scope), not just “trolls”, however one defines them (definitions tend to vary somewhat as some very large companies act indistinguishably from classic patent trolls or patent sharks).
Changes Afoot
There are more new signs of the US patent system tightening. Yesterday for example Foley & Lardner LLP published an analysis of another criterion (not “abstract”) by which patents can be squashed in US courts, even the notorious Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC). To quote the analysis: “As noted in the Federal Circuit decision, Dow Chemical Company asserted selected claims of U.S. Patent No. 5,847,053 and U.S. Patent No. 6,111,023 against NOVA Chemicals Corporation (Canada) and NOVA Chemicals Inc. (Delaware). A jury found the asserted claims to be infringed and not invalid, and the Federal Circuit affirmed, holding, among other things, “that the asserted claims were not indefinite.” The district court then conducted a bench trial for a supplemental damages period through the expiration date of both patents, granted $30M in supplemental damages in the form of lost profits and reasonable royalties, and denied Dow’s request for enhanced damages. NOVA appealed, and Dow cross-appealed.”
Earlier this year we wrote about the Nautilus case. This too is relevant here. “Applying the Nautilus standard,” says Foley & Lardner LLP, “the Federal Circuit held that existence of multiple methods that could lead to different results and the absence of guidance in the patent or prosecution history as to which method should be used rendered the claims indefinite because they “fail to inform, with reasonable certainty, those skilled in the art about the scope of the invention.” The court therefore reversed the $30M supplemental damages award.”
This ought to discourage litigation, filing of new patent applications that are similar in nature to the above, and generally feed back (like in a loop) into the US patent system so as to modify examination guidelines, in very much the same way that Alice has done since last year. See this new article titled “After Alice: A Feedback Loop of Software Patent Invalidity”. The article comes from the pro-patents media (whose audience is patent lawyers) and it’s summarised as follows: “Ever since a major patent decision handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court last year, patents have seemed to be invalidated right and left. But is that a result of the decision itself, or because of the feedback loop caused by the process by which patents are challenged?”
They are trying to dismiss the legitimacy of the decisions by casting them as an “echo chamber” of sorts. Well, that’s what one might expect from the patent profiteers, even thought some patent lawyers’ blogs already acknowledge that software patents may be on their death throes.
IP Kat, a blog run by patent lawyers (and other monopolies like copyrights, trademarks, etc.), is still openly concerned about voices of reason, or published opinions from people who don’t profit from this corrupt system of protectionism by patent monopolies. Watch this latest dismissal of The Economist‘s pair of articles.
“No,” insist sthe patents proponent, “what these articles are ultimately intended for is to try and set the narrative by which the patent system is discussed. To this end, economics is merely a hand-maiden. In so doing, The Economist joins a long tradition. We have seen the struggle to control the patent narrative played out several times in the recent past.”
OK, so the lawyers are upset at an opposing (not dissenting) view and insist that The Economist is basically trolling (in the Internet troll sense of the word). “No,” continue this particular lawyer (second in this blog this week to write about The Economist‘s articles from one month ago), “this Kat is not an IP Luddite. The patent system and the laws underlying it can certainly be improved. But this is not what the two pieces in The Economist are about.”
It was perfectly clear what The Economist meant to say. Rather than tip-toeing and making decorative, minor changes to a broken system (like all of these proposed ‘reforms’ we keep hearing about) the writers/editors at The Economist wish to just scrap the entire lot, potentially starting from scratch (if at all). Seeing the patent lawyers squirm over this very idea is hardly surprising. Their want their share. They want to tax everything, even if nobody needs them at all. █
“We cannot hope to own it all, so instead we should try to create the largest possible market and insert ourselves as a small tax on that market.”
This is the condition when there are over 300 Linux distributions with a number of them being desktop focused. Linux was (and still) considered to be the “geek only” zone with the biggest misconception that one need to know the command line to use Linux.
Times have changed. Linux is a lot more user-friendly than what it used to be in late 90’s or early 2000. The chances for Linux to gain market share is now and you definitely could help in this cause.
Xiaomi is known for its popular clones of Apple’s iPhone and iPad. Now the Chinese company is rumored to be working on a Linux-based alternative to Apple’s Macbook Pro laptop.
Acer is launching its first Android tablet designed for gaming. The company’s been showing off the device for months, but now it’s official: the Acer Predator 8 is a tablet with an 8-inch IPS display, an Intel Atom x7 Cherry Trail processor, and a $299 price tag.
Chromebooks have been burning up the sales charts on Amazon. And now convertible Chromebooks seem to be where the market is headed. Acer has jumped on the convertible bandwagon by announcing the Chromebook R11. This new model offers notebook and tablet functionality built into one Chromebook.
The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization that sponsors Linus Torvalds and runs many programs to accelerate the growth of Linux, is now giving away free Chromebooks to those who enroll in one of its training courses during September.
Free Chromebook. To everyone. Throughout September.
The foundation has chosen Dell’s Chromebook 11 for this program. The $299 Chromebook features a 11.6″ display, is powered by 1.4Ghz processor, and comes with 4GB of RAM.
Collabora is a software consultancy specialising in bringing companies and the open source software community together and it is currently looking for a Core Software Engineer, that works in the Linux kernel and/or all the plumbing around the kernel. In this role the engineer will be part of worldwide team who works with our clients to solve their Linux kernel and low level stack technical problems.
Not too long ago, software development was done a little differently. We programmers would each have our own computer, and we would write code that did the usual things a program should do, such as read and write files, respond to user events, save data to a database, and so on. Most of the code ran on a single computer, except for the database server, which was usually a separate computer. To interact with the database, our code would specify the name or address of the database server along with credentials and other information, and we would call into a library that would do the hard work of communicating with the server. So, from the perspective of the code, everything took place locally. We would call a function to get data from a table, and the function would return with the data we asked for. Yes, there were plenty of exceptions, but for many application-based desktop applications, this was the general picture.
Talk about unikernels is starting to gain momentum. Still, these are such early days for this technology that implements the bare minimum of the traditional operating system functions. Its functionality is a topic we discussed last month in a post by Russell Pavlicek of Citrix. As Pavlicek wrote, unikernels implement the bare minimum of the traditional operating system functions — just enough to enable the application it powers.
Not even a decade ago, native gaming on Linux was barely a conceivable reality save for a few open source cross-platform games. Today, it’s clear that the “no games on Linux” myth is dead.
On September the 23rd, Australian developer Witchbeam will be releasing their intense sci-fi twin stick shooter Assault Android Cactus on Steam and Humble Store for Linux, Mac and Windows. The release date trailer below unveils the game’s opening cutscene in which Jr Constable Cactus calmly and professionally boards the Genki Star to take command of the situation.
I do love my FPS games, but I’m not entirely sure about Illuminascii. It mixes traditional graphics with ASCII for a really cool effect, but the gameplay isn’t all that great.
There are so many articles about how to do games using Windows with engines such as Unity and flipping art from assets stores. But really there are not many articles about alternative development processes such as building under Linux using a cheap and open-source approach.
The folks at Unity have made good on a summer promise to port the Unity Editor to Linux by releasing an experimental build last week that runs on 64-bit Linux distros and exports games to a subset of Unity’s supported platforms.
We in KDE don’t ignore constructive feedback, so at Akademy, we set out to find solutions to the issues he pointed out. In order to maximize the reach of our efforts’ documentation, I decided to write a two-part series about it over at Linux Veda, a “web-magazine to share and spread knowledge about Linux and Open Source technologies” which has always been very interested in – and generally supportive of – KDE.
The GNOME Project sent an email to Softpedia a few minutes ago, informing us of the release of the second Beta build of the upcoming GNOME 3.18 desktop environment, due for release on September 23, 2015.
Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) dropped -0.84% or -0.59 points to trade at $69.68 per share. As per the latest trading data available, the net money flow stood at $3.03 million as the shares received $22.45 million in upticks and gave away $19.42 million in downticks. The final up/down ratio was at 1.16. On a weekly basis, the stock has appreciated by -5.66%.During the course of the session, the shares witnessed a block trade with an up/down ratio of 3.14. $6.17 million was the inflow in upticks and $1.97 million was the outflow in downticks. For the block trade, the net money flow was $4.2 million.
After announcing the release of the DebEX GNOME and KDE Editions, Arne Exton had the great pleasure of informing us about the immediate availability for download of a new build of his DebEX Barebone distribution.
After just a few months, we’re excited to announce a major upgrade for elementary OS Freya! This new version 0.3.1 closes about 200 reports and brings new features, tons of fixes, better hardware support, visual polish, and enhanced translations.
We’re very proud to share some elementary OS download stats as well! So far, elementary OS has been downloaded an estimated 5 million times. Of those downloads, we’re seeing that almost 70% are coming from Windows and OS X. So, “Welcome and congratulations!” to the over 3 million new users of an open source operating system!
The developers of the popular and gorgeous elementary OS Linux distribution were proud to announce a few minutes ago the immediate availability for download of the first maintenance release to Freya.
Now when Linux is becoming more & more popular among non-Linux users, there is a Linux distribution dedicated for such users who are blank about Linux. ChaletOS is a new, sleek & beautiful operating system that is very much Like modern Windows. ChaletOS aims for making ease in learning Linux, taking away from complexities for new users. Personally I think about their aim, “Great!”. Let’s take a look at this new & sleek Linux distro.
Samsung has released some more information on its next generation of smartwatches, the Gear S2. Unlike most of the spate of non-Apple watches being released this week, it’s not running Android Wear. Instead, Samsung has opted to continue using Tizen, the Linux-based operating system that powers its smart TVs and some phones in India.
A curious thing happens almost every year in the land of Android announcements: We hear about some of the most interesting Android phones around — devices that not only are beautifully designed and a pleasure to use but also fill an important gap in the current Android ecosystem — and then…nothing.
Smaller, high-quality Android smartphones have gotten disturbingly hard to find. While Apple sells millions of 4.7-inch iPhone 6 units, Android phone makers often seem to think “small” means “cheap,” as they scale their flagship phones up to 5.5 inches and beyond.
In just the past two days, we’ve seen a telling trend in the next generation of smartwatches. As their capabilities improve, they’re looking a lot less like wrist-computers. They’re actually starting to look like fashionable timepieces that just happen to have built-in computers.
Earlier this year, Marshall surprised the tech community by unveiling the London smartphone — a conventional Android device with quite unconventional styling. At the time, Marshall was lauded for doing something different in the rather staid smartphone world (or rather, the Swedish firm Zound Industries was praised for not messing up the brand they’d licensed), but how does the London stand up to closer scrutiny?
Gateworks announced a 7-inch touchscreen Android development kit, with a quad-core i.MX6 SoC, GbE, WiFi, BT, GPS, USB, serial I/O, and dual mini-PCIe slots.
The Gateworks “GW11036″ Embedded Android Development Kit is aimed at easing the process of developing smart touchscreen-interfaced systems for use in a wide range of applications, including those requiring extended temperature operation. The kit builds on the company’s GW5224 single board computer, adding a 7-inch, 1024 x 600-pixel TFT display, capacitive touchscreen, wireless modules, and a customized, microSD-bootable, Android KitKat operating system.
The Android TV box looks more like a router than it does a TV box, but that might help it blend into your TV tablet. Thanks to its neat and new software, the Emish X800 is a pretty good device. Considering its rather low price tag, this TV box can become a crowd favorite for those who like portability, even though this one doesn’t work with a battery. Maybe the next one will.
As it turns out, in 2015, a really good mid-range smartphone is also a really good overall smartphone, and the Moto X Pure Edition is the best mid-range smartphone you can get.
Lockheed’s move points to the power of open source, particularly when it comes to big overreaching issues such as cybersecurity. Rather than Lockheed keeping their tool as internal proprietary software and requiring others to license or purchase it, they recognized the potential their innovation holds for the greater good. This represents a huge step for both the open source and cybersecurity communities.
Twitter is today announcing the availability of Diffy, a new piece of open-source software that developers can use to spot bugs when they’re making updates to certain parts of code.
Twitter uses the code internally. Now the social networking company is releasing it to the rest of the world.
Our first project is something I was already working on, an extensible parser to chew bank statements and shit out transaction sheets. We made a gem, made an API and learnt a lot in the process. (We even wrote a java API to unlock pdf files given a password. Whew!). We currently have a meager three bank support, but we’ve managed to build a framework that makes it super easy to add other banks and statement formats.
This manifested itself largely in attempts to force conference organisers to adopt draconian codes of conduct. In 2013, Aurora was very much in the public eye when she forced the organisers of the Security BSides conference in San Francisco to cancel a talk that she deemed unsuitable.
The presenter was well-known speaker Violet Blue and the talk was titled “sex +/- drugs: known vulns and exploits”.
Though Aurora tried her level best to make out that she had been asked to look over the conference programme by the organisers, it became apparent that she was the one who had poked her nose into the whole affair and tried to muscle the organisers into cancelling the talk.
The Australian national Linux conference has not made a loss in 2015 after a disastrous 2014, according to the president of Linux Australia, Joshua Hesketh.
Hesketh said LCA 2015, which was held in Auckland earlier his year, was expected to return to profit once the books were fully closed and audited.
After seven years of development, Google continues its rapid pace of release and enhancement for its Chrome browser. On the seventh anniversary of the first Chrome public release on September 2, Google released Chrome stable version 45 and Chrome beta 46.
It’s no secret that Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox–both open source browsers–were locked in a neck-and-neck market share battle for a long time. The two browsers have remained on rapid release cycles, and for years they tended to leapfrog each other for market share in small increments each month.
FossaMail is built on the Mozilla Thunderbird client but without all the will-they-or-won’t-they of the rumors that Mozilla has done with Thunderbird. Even better, FossaMail is compatible with both Windows and Linux, while offering a 64-bit download in Windows to up the speed, address more memory, and perform other 64-bit operations.
At the same time, FossaMail looks and feels just like Thunderbird, despite the oval tab fiasco. It still offers a contacts list, calendar, and chat, just like most users have come to expect from their email platforms. It’s so close to Thunderbird, in fact, that the developers didn’t bother with an extensive tutorial or FAQ, but instead just point users to the Thunderbird help section if they have any problems.
Two of the reasons to deploy an open source database are cost and philosophy. Philosophically, the open source movement subscribes to the notion that having community-developed product creates a better product, and/or “contributes to the world in a better way.” The other reason is cost, which usually means “free,” or at least no-charge for the software database license.
As it turns out, open source software is not always so free, proprietary software is not necessarily closed, and help from the open source community isn’t nearly as comprehensive as the level of support you get from a professional vendor.
Advocates of free and open source have tailored two Linux-distributions, motivating the country’s public administrations to use this type of software solutions. The distributions were presented on 29 August at events in Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca, the country’s most-populous cities. The Ministry of Education is the first to take an interest.
Creating a good looking book cover proved harder than I expected. I wanted to create a cover looking similar to the original cover of the Free Culture book we are translating to Norwegian, and I wanted it in vector format for high resolution printing. But my inkscape knowledge were not nearly good enough to pull that off.
goes against one of the arguments used more frequently to promote Free Software (which, in and by itself, is intrinsically weak, and therefore not used as the main one by the most experts) that is licensing costs. The graph clearly show that such costs (the leftmost column) are only a small part of the total. From left to right the columns show “software license costs”, “immaterial goods” (whatever that means…), “software acquisition and development”, “litigation and other legal expenses” (as much as licenses..), “software assistance and maintenance”
You’re supposed to have distinct passwords for every one of your different accounts, and, what’s more, those passwords are supposed to be difficult. Use some numbers and symbols and weird capitalization, they tell us. But it’s hard, and so we wind up just using the same password for everything and taking the risk.
The New York Times‘ Rick Gladstone (9/3/15) has an article on the use of cluster bombs—aptly described as the “widely outlawed munitions that kill and maim indiscriminately”—in conflicts in Libya, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen, five countries that have not signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which banned the production, sale and use of these weapons in 2010.
[...]
This is just wrong: The Convention not only bans the use of cluster bombs—which the US military used against Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq before the treaty went into effect, but did not use subsequently in its air attacks on Libya—it also mandates that signatories are “never under any circumstances to…develop, produce, otherwise acquire, stockpile, retain or transfer to anyone, directly or indirectly, cluster munitions.”
Diplomats from the UK, China, France, Germany and Russia told Congress that the Iran nuclear deal is the best deal possible, according to a report from The New York Times.
Secretary Duncan has previously called for “absolute transparency” when it comes to school performance, but that’s just a talking point unless he releases the applications, or even a list of the states that are in the running, before they are given the final stamp of approval.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar called out Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for the “insidious political crime” of increasingly “attacking the First Amendment’s protection of a free press by menacing journalists.”
In an essay for The Washington Post’s PostEverything section, Abdul-Jabbar detailed Trump’s increasingly hostile attacks on the press. On two separate occasions, Trump has thrown Hispanic journalists out of his press conferences.
“If an ordinary worker at the State Department or the Central Intelligence Agency … were sending details about the security of the embassies, which is alleged to be in her email, meetings with private government officials, foreign government officials and the statements that were made to them in confidence over unclassified email systems, they would not only lose their jobs and lose their clearance, they would very likely face prosecution for it,” he added.
Snowden also set his sights on GOP White House front-runner Donald Trump for calling him a “total traitor” earlier this summer.
“It’s very difficult to respond in a serious way to any statement that’s made by Donald Trump,” he said of the outspoken billionaire.
Clinton’s voter support is fading amid controversy over her technology habits while serving as secretary of State. Critics say her use of a personal storage device prevented accountability of her actions and jeopardized national security secrets.
Wimbledon Ukip candidate Peter Bucklitsch sparked anger by calling the parents of the Syrian child whose body washed up on the shores of Turkey yesterday “greedy”.
Writing from what appears to be his account on Twitter, he said the parents of the boy are responsible for his death for their attempts to “queue jump” into Europe for “the good life”.
You may not know it, but wifi is under assault in the USA due to proposed FCC regulations about modifications to devices with modular radios. In short, it would make it illegal for vendors to sell devices with firmware that users can replace. This is of concern to everyone, because Wifi routers are notoriously buggy and insecure. It is also of special concern to amateur radio hobbyists, due to the use of these devices in the Amateur Radio Service (FCC Part 97).
Hopping to the competitor’s side of the fence/gate, just like in Troy
Summary: Vista 10 adoption is already plateauing (at very low levels considering the zero-cost ‘upgrade’) and Microsoft is trying to assert or exploit (patent) monopolies where adoption and market growth are extremely high (Free software)
Barely anybody is using Microsoft’s ‘new’ (rebranded) browser, according to this article which cites an IDGreport, which in turn uses Microsoft-friendly data sources such as Net Applications. That’s despite Microsoft’s dirty and anti-competitive tricks regarding the default Web browser (Microsoft overriding users’ preferences) [1, 2] in Vista 10. Microsoft Emil, who is writing lots of propaganda pieces for Vista 10 over at VentureBeat these days, is trying to give a terribly false impression by passing the gross distortion/illusion that Vista 10 now has majority market share (extreme cherry-picking) while even the most Microsoft-friendly surveys put its market share at under 5%, instantaneousness debunking Microsoft’s unverified claims of 75 million Vista 10 ‘users’ (however Microsoft defines these). Matt Weinberger, in the mean time, comes out with another promotional Microsoft piece advocating a new Microsoft monopoly (because the operating system monopoly has been lost to Android, GNU/Linux, and so on). One Microsoft apologist (very Windows-centric) is now trash-talking GNU/Linux and devaluing privacy in an effort to convince people to adopt Vista 10 and avoid GNU/Linux. How much more blatant can it get? Microsoft doesn’t “love Linux”, it just hates it. The Microsoft boosters truly fear Free software and they’re pretty bad at hiding it.
“Expect Microsoft to continue wielding patents against GNU/Linux and Android (it’s still happening), especially now that Windows is in a state of crisis.”Android is currently being besieged by Microsoft. A site that is affiliated with Microsoft’s MSN (and by its own admission “owns shares of Microsoft”) is trying to promote Microsoft inside Android, a former Microsoft lackey (see her career history, before she scrubbed it off her profile) is promotingSkype on Android, and Ketan Pratap says “Microsoft’s Push Into Google’s Android Is Good News for Users”. That’s almost as foolish or terrible as saying that the Trojan horse was good for Troy.
Microsoft is viciously attacking Google, Android, and ChromeOS using patents. Make no mistake about it, there is extensive evidence of that and not even Microsoft would deny it when asked. When Microsoft approaches Android et al. it’s part of an effort to weaken competitors, not contribute or complement them.
Patents are an ugly business. They’re offensive, not defensive, but tabloids like Gizmodo make gossip out of Google’s patent search, adding a ‘sexy’ angle to it. Google is no fan of patents and it tries combating them using prior art searches.
There is a practice we’ve been covering here in relation to patent attacks to Android. Tim Sparapani calls this “Attack of the Patent Privateers”, alluding to a system of cartels that collude against competitors (assuring one thrives with protectionism, not innovation). As Sparapani puts is, companies like Apple or Microsoft “are becoming more clever about using – or misusing, depending on your perspective – the patent system to extract funds from competitors or thwart others’ growth. This harms America’s best companies and most promising startups.
“One example of this growth is the emergence of so-called patent privateering, which contributes to an ever-greater amount of frivolous or abusive patent litigation. Privateering is a pleasant euphemism for empowering a pirate to attack your competitors for profit. Patent privateering occurs when a company lends or sells a portion of its patents to another litigious company to sue alleged patent infringers who are all too often the competitors of the original patent recipient company that was under the impression it had licensed the entire portfolio.”
That’s what Microsoft is doing to Android and Google, using Nokia‘s patents in MOSAID/Conversant‘s hands, to give just one example. Microsoft even does this more directly with Vringo. Sparapani uses the word “pirate”, not “troll”, to refer to the types of goons whom Microsoft empowers to attack competitors.
Patents are thankfully collapsing with developments such as the Alice determination. Patents on software lose their value, as do their profiteers, based on this latest analysis of the Marathon Patent Group, which (as the name implies), is not a producing company. This is basically nothing but a bunch of goons for hire — people who will use patents to attack by proxy (hence retaliatory litigation becomes an impossibility). To quote the latest on this:
According to Zacks, “Marathon Patent Group Inc. is a patent and patent rights acquisition and licensing company. The Company acquires patents from a wide-range of patent holders from individual inventors to Fortune 500 companies. It serves its clients through two complementary business units: IP Services and IP Licensing and Enforcement business. Marathon Patent Group, Inc. is based in Alexandria, Virginia. “
Expect Microsoft to continue wielding patents against GNU/Linux and Android (it's still happening), especially now that Windows is in a state of crisis. Microsoft will do this not only directly (blackmail using patents) but also indirectly, using entities like the one above (we wrote about several of them before).
Microsoft does not want peace, it wants domination. As long as this remains the case, peace will be reached with Microsoft only when Microsoft is practically dead. █
Back in December 2014, word got out that Xiaomi might be looking to enter the laptop market. Currently, the company is selling handsets, tablets, wearables, plus other accessories. But the Chinese device maker is apparently interested in branching out and infiltrating itself into niches it hasn’t dabbed into before. Like laptops, for instance.
Computers have fascinated me since childhood, but my first encounter—like many others—was not with Linux. For me, it was with Microsoft Paint. Then, many years later in 2011, it was my Wikipedia mentor, Shiju Alex, who introduced me to Linux. Since then, it’s been my life!
If I recall correctly, Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS (Lucid Lynx) was my first distro. It was different, light, and fun. And, I would often switch back to Windows for something, then back to Ubuntu. The smoothness—and having a virus-free environment—was wonderful and enticed me to continue on with Linux. Unlike today, Ubuntu was not a graphic-rich distro at the time. I was coding less than I am today, so I was working more with editing images using GIMP and Inkscape.
The politics of Ireland have been complex but they were using GNU/Linux a lot back in 2008 according to StatCounter but there was a huge drop when “7” emerged. Slowly but surely, GNU/Linux is back in Ireland.
The No. 1 Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, which is the fourth biggest smartphone seller globally, is reportedly looking to foray into a new sphere-laptops.
According to DigiTimes’ supply chain sources, Xiaomi is working on a lineup of laptops that are poised for an early 2016 release. The company is allegedly partnering with Foxconn and Inventec for that purpose. The production schedule for the laptops is not known at this juncture as it is yet to be confirmed.
The report also divulges that Xiaomi will initially launch a 15-inch laptop model which will be Linux-based. This size has been chosen as it is the most popular screen size in China. The Xiaomi laptop is estimated to be priced at around $470, per the supply chain sources.
Windows 10 has a privacy issue, no matter if Microsoft agrees with this or not, but it’s pretty clear that the existing configuration of the operating system isn’t quite what users have been expecting when they decided to upgrade.
The Linux Foundation is no stranger to the world of open source and free software — after all, we are the home of Linux, the world’s most successful free software project. Throughout the Foundation’s history, we have worked not only to promote open-source software, but to spread the collaborative DNA of Linux to new fields in hopes to enable innovation and access for all.
The EXT4 file-system updates have been sent in for the Linux 4.3 kernel.
There isn’t much to the EXT4 updates for Linux 4.3 besides clean-ups and fixes. Ted Ts’o wrote in the pull request, “Pretty much all bug fixes and clean ups for 4.3, after a lot of features and other churn going into 4.2.”
The X.Org Foundation, through Keith Packard, announced the immediate availability for download of the first Release Candidate (RC) build towards the X.Org Server 1.18 open-source implementation of the X Window System.
NVIDIA has announced their GRID 2.0 platform while also unveiling their Tesla M6 and M60 server cards.
GRID is NVIDIA’s virtual GPU technology for “sharing true virtual GPU hardware acceleration between multiple users.” Notable to GRID 2.0 is Linux support to complement Windows. GRID 2.0 also aims to have 2x greater density, 2x greater performance, support for 128 users per server, and now supports 4K displays.
Kornelix, the developer of the popular Fotoxx open-source image editor software for GNU/Linux operating systems, informed us about the release and immediate availability for download of Fotoxx 15.09.
CodeWeavers, the company behind the commercial CrossOver application for GNU/Linux and Mac OS X operating system, which aims to be a user-friendly graphical interface for Wine, announced the availability of CrossOver 14.1.6.
Armello backers, the wait is over! The game, which was first introduced on Kickstarter last year by League of Geeks, is now available for PS4, Windows, Mac and Linux.
There’s no denying that Minecraft is a favorite game to millions. And being written in Java enables it to run on a variety of platforms, including Linux. With a huge modding community, there are countless Minecraft tinkerers out there who would love to be able to get under the hood and play around with the source code themselves. Unfortunately, the source is not available to the general public.
Medieval II: Total War has popped up on SteamDB with Linux information, and we also have Feral Interactive teasing us on twitter again, looks like they are behind it.
About a month ago, Eric Griffith posted an article on Phoronix where he compared Fedora’s KDE spin to the main Fedora Workstation which uses GNOME. In that article, Eric described a number of issues that he became fully aware of when comparing his favorite desktop environment, Plasma (and the KDE applications he regularly uses) with GNOME’s counterparts.
I read that article, shared it with other KDE designers and developers, and we came to the conclusion that yes, at least some of the issues he describes there are perfectly valid and clearly documented. And since KDE does listen to user feedback if it makes sense, we decided we should do something about it.
The developers behind the TDE (Trinity Desktop Environment) project, an open-source desktop environment that keep the spirit of KDE3.5 alive, have announced the immediate availability for download of Trinity Desktop Environment R14.0.1.
I believe that in today’s world where more an more of our daily life depends on technology it is crucial that people have control over that technology. You should be empowered to know what your technology does and you should be empowered to influence it. This is at the core of Free Software. Unfortunately it is not at the core of most of the technology people interact with every day – quite the opposite – walled gardens and locks wherever you look with few exceptions. KDE is working hard to provide you with technology that you control every single day so you are empowered and the one ultimately in charge of your technology, data and life – the basis for freedom for many today. This is written down in the first sentence of our manifesto: “We are a community of technologists, designers, writers and advocates who work to ensure freedom for all people through our software.”
The Calligra team is pleased to announce the release of Calligra Suite, and Calligra Active 2.9.7. It is recommended update that brings further improvements to the 2.9 series of the applications and underlying development frameworks.
Kontact has, in contrast to Thunderbird, integrated crypto support (OpenPGP and S/MIME) out-of-the-box.
That means on Linux you can simply start Kontact and read crypted mails (if you have already created keys).
After you select your crypto keys, you can immediately start writing encrypted mails. With that great user experince I never needed to dig further in the crypto stack.
Fullscreen applications launchers are my favorite kind of application menus, of which there are several to choose from on the K Desktop Environment, or KDE.
On KDE 4, available options are the Takeoff Launcher, Simple Welcome, and Homerun.
Two months of bug fixing, feature implementing, Google-Summer-of-Code-sweating, it’s time for a new release! Krita 2.9.7 is special, because it’s the last 2.9 release that will have new features. We’ll be releasing regular bug fix releases, but from now on, all feature development focuses on Krita 3.0. But 2.9.7 is packed! There are new features, a host of bug fixes, the Windows builds have been updated with OpenEXR 2.2. New icons give Krita a fresh new look, updated brushes improve performance, memory handling is improved… Let’s first look at some highlights:
The development team of the popular, open-source, and cross-platform digital painting software Krita, acclaimed by numerous artists from all over the world, have announced the release of the last maintenance version of the 2.9 branch.
While the GNOME Project prepares for the release of the second Beta build of the forthcoming GNOME 3.18 desktop environment, due for release on September 23, the GTK+ development team announced the release of GTK+ 3.17.8.
In the last 2 days, I refactored the whole GimpFileDialog code, which was completely mixing every concepts with hard-to-read if {} else {} statements inside a single class. GimpFileDialog became a generic parent class, containing only logics common to all file dialogs, and I added 3 specific children: GimpOpenDialog, GimpSaveDialog and GimpExportDialog.
Philip Müller, the lead developer and creator of the Manjaro Linux project, had the pleasure of announcing the immediate availability for download of the first Release Candidate build of the upcoming Manjaro Linux Xfce 15.09 distribution.
After announcing the release of the Manjaro Linux Xfce 15.09 RC1 distribution, Philip Müller comes with some more great news, this time for KDE fans, as the first Release Candidate build of the upcoming Manjaro Linux KDE 15.09 operating system has been seeded to testers worldwide earlier today, September 3, 2015.
Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) reported an earnings surprise of 14.81% when the company last reported earnings for the period ending on 2015-05-31. The reported EPS of $0.31 was $0.04 away from what Wall Street analysts had expected. A significant surprise factor often results in stock volatility and sharp price movements following the earnings announcement. In terms of sales expectations, the surprise factor in per share dollar terms was $8.757 away from what analysts had projected for the quarter, or a difference of 1.854%.
I’m not going to do a day by day outline of what I did at flock, if I did it would basically be “blah blah blah I talked a lot to a lot of people about a lot of tech topics” and anyone that’s ever met me would have guessed that! It was, as in the past, a great conference. A big shout out to the organisers for an excellent event with two excellent evening events! So I’m going to give a brief summary to my talks and link to slides and video recordings.
Writing documentation is not only about writing, but actually a lot about layout, accessibility, UX and UI, too. So I actually enjoyed listening to Beth Aitman, for example (here are here slides). Among the most memorable were Elijah Caine with his talk about writing emails, which I really really hope more people could listen to, and Christina Elmore talking about creative problem solving. One of my personal favorites was a lightning talk by Marcin Warpechowski about laptop stickers! TL;DR – stickers are a great way to engage employees and the community! Got me (and actually everybody) excited about stickers even more and willing to create some. GitHub’s octocat also contributed to my feelings about stickers. They actually produce a special version for all conferences they attend! Also I think it was ladies from GitHub taking most the notes (or maybe I just happened to seat behind them ).
For this test day we are going to concentrate on the base image. We will have vagrant boxes (see this page for how to set up your machine), qcow images, raw images, and AWS EC2 images. In a later test day we will focus on the Atomic images and Docker images.
The development team behind the Robolinux project announced earlier today, September 3, the immediate availability for download of their brand new Robolinux Xfce 8.1 “Raptor” Linux distribution.
Canonical’s Zoltán Balogh published a very interesting article for all Ubuntu Touch and Ubuntu Phone app developers, informing them about the upcoming, next-generation version of the Ubuntu SDK (Software Development Kit) software.
Canonical’s Łukasz Zemczak has had the great pleasure of informing all users of the BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition and BQ Aquaris E5 HD Ubuntu Edition smartphones that the Ubuntu Touch OTA-6 software update has been officially released.
Cristian Parrino, leader of the team behind the Ubuntu Phone project as well as of the development team that creates the Ubuntu Touch operating system, has announced his resignation.
We’re sorry to give you, guys, such bad news, but Cristian Parrino decided that it was time to step down from leader position and leave Canonical. The announcement was made public a few hours ago.
Martin Wimpress, the lead developer and maintainer of the Ubuntu MATE operating system, had the great pleasure of informing us about the contributions made to various open source projects during the month of August 2015.
In the latest salvo in the Canonical IP controversy, Jonathan Riddell today posted his own IP Policy. Elsewhere, the GNOME Foundation today posted support of an updated User Data Manifesto and SUSE today revealed some SUSECon 2015 plans. Phoronix reported Monday that ext3 will be removed from the kernel and Red Hat announced the release of 7.2 Beta.
In some more relaxing news, Jonathan Riddell, leader of the Kubuntu Linux distribution, has had the great pleasure of announcing his own IP (Intellectual Property) policy, mocking Canonical’s.
We’ve looked at robots a few times here at Linux User & Developer, from our very first from-scratch build with a Dawn Robotics kit in issue 132 through to robotics kit reviews, tutorials on the 3D-printed Rapiro and programming guides for last year’s Pi Wars challenges. It’s an incredibly exciting field that’s expanding all the time, especially with the rise of drones more recently that’s driving interest in the field, but if you’re coming to it all for the first time then it can be tough to know exactly where to start.
There’s never been a better time to buy an Android smartphone. Not only is there a huge array of different handsets from a multitude of manufacturers to choose from, but what you get for your money is simply incredible.
So far, we have utilized open source as a model to innovate quickly and engage with customers and a broad developer community. SmartOS and Node.js are open source projects we have run for a number of years. In November of last year we went all in when we open sourced two of the systems at Joyent’s core: SmartDataCenter and Manta Object Storage Service. The unifying technology beneath both SmartDataCenter and Manta is OS-based virtualization and we believe open sourcing both systems is a way to broaden the community around the systems and advance the adoption of OS-based virtualization industry-wide.
A set of automated calibration techniques for tuning residential and commercial building energy efficiency software models to match measured data is now available as an open source code. The Autotune code, developed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is available on GitHub.
Cloud developers and operators are facing a challenge: Much of the IT toolkit that has worked well for “silo” architectures and well enough for virtual machine environments isn’t a good match for apps made using containers or for microservices, where components may be not just on different machines but in many locations, and instances may come, go, or multiply. Yesterday’s “network fabric” does not accommodate this activity efficiently or reliably.
For a clear and encouraging look at where this should be going, read Phil Windley. He not only writes eloquently about the IoT, but he has been working on GPL’d open-source code for things and how they relate. To me, Phil is the Linus of IoT—or will be if people jump in and help out with the code. Whether Phil fills that role or not, nobody has more useful or insightful things to say about IoT. That’s why I decided to interview him here.
Next up on Brother FOSS’s Traveling Salvation Show — pack up the babies and grab the old ladies and everyone go — brings the proverbial tent and revival show to Columbus, Ohio, at the beginning of next month.
After announcing the promotion of the Google Chrome 45 web browser to the stable channel on September 1, Google pushed earlier today, September 2, the Chrome 46 web browser to the Beta channel for testers worldwide.
Google released Chrome 45 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android yesterday, and today we’re learning that the Android update includes support for a new feature called Chrome custom tabs. You can download the new Chrome version now from Google Play, but you won’t see Chrome custom tabs right away — today’s news is primarily aimed at developers. That said, Google has partnered with a few apps already — Feedly, The Guardian, Medium, Player.fm, Skyscanner, Stack Overflow, Tumblr, and Twitter will support custom tabs “in the coming weeks.”
SAP is out to create closer connections between the worlds of Big Data and Business Intelligence. The company is embracing Spark via SAP HANA Vora, a new in-memory query engine that leverages and extends the Spark framework to produce enriched Hadoop queries and experiences.
The European Broadcasting Union, one of the world’s largest broadcasting networks and the organisation behind the Eurovision Song Contest, has sought help to manage the open-source MySQL databases that power its online video and audio streaming services.
I woke up this morning babe, and the Internet was storming, inside of me. And when I get that feeling I know I need some LibreOffice testing. Yes. What happened was, I opened the browser, like, and I was, like, there’s a new, like, LibreOffice, like, and it’s a whole-number version. Yay.
In all seriousness, LibreOffice 5.0 got me really excited. Yes, I know, it was an almost arbitrary increment of a minor version to a major one, much like Mozilla did with Firefox a few years back. Still, I totally liked the previous version, and for the first time in many years, it showed real, actual potential of being a viable alternative to payware solutions. Let’s see in which direction this latest edition carries the good news and all that hope.
The claim certainly generated plenty of headlines about the benefits of moving from OpenOffice to Office 365. However, it seems that, from the report, some of those savings are tied to the specific scenario facing the local authority in question, while others would diminish over time, as the bulk of the cost difference stems from estimates of lost productivity during years immediately after shifting to OpenOffice.
These past years -and months- we have had several examples how lack of funding can cut a project’s ability to develop, patch and maintain its codebase and by project I mean developers not getting adequate money, if no money at all, for what they do. There is really two sides to the same coin here. There’s the one where an entire industry re-uses entire FOSS stacks or components, sometimes without even acknowledging it licence-wise or even just in name. And there’s the other side, where the same industry will not compensate anyone upstream, because the license terms enables simple reuse and distribution of those software components.
I set out to run FreeBSD on my Beagle Bone Black (now dubbed “smurf” by the kids on account of it’s small and blue), for network services. My DSL modem is a crappy under-configurable thing, but I don’t dare to start hacking on it directly because it runs the telephony side of things, too. So I decided to use the Beagle Bone Black to take control of my home network.
The Irish Government opened an ‘expression of interest’ for a new open data public body in charge of the Open Data Strategy Governance and presented a new version of the national Open Data portal.
The Scottish government has published an open data resource pack aimed at helping all local public authorities to implement their own open data plan. This resource pack has been developed to support the Open Data Strategy of Scotland.
This summer, the Bulgarian Council of Ministers organised ‘A Date with Data’. The theme for this one-day event was ‘Open Data for Transparent Governance’. The programme featured presentations, panel discussions, demonstrations of visualisations, and other applications of open data.
SanDisk is best known for storage. Led by Nithya Ruff, the company’s head of open-source strategy, the company is integrating open-source into storage. In their latest deal with Nexenta, an open source software-defined storage leader, the pairing of NexentaStor with SanDisk’s all-flash InfiniFlash IF100 system underlines this shift.
Over the past few years we’ve noticed that portions of the 3D printing community have regularly struggled with 3D modeling software. After all, the hobby itself isn’t cheap, so do you splurge on expensive, professional tools, or do you stick to a more limited free one? And does your programming experience limit your choice, or are you willing to learn a new language for the sake of the software you found? If you’ve struggled with these issues yourself or are unhappy with your current setup, then we’ve got some good news for you: a brand new, free and open source online 3D modeling tool has just launched a beta version; called CraftML, it is especially interesting for being accessible through common web technologies including html, css and Javascript.
But where, one may ask, will we as a global workforce find the next generation of bright young programmers, hardware engineers, and system administrators? This is the problem being addressed—in part—by CoderDojo, an Ireland-based international organization of more than 700 coding clubs worldwide. By engaging young people ages 7-17 in informal, creative environments, independent clubs of youngsters can learn web and application development along with other opportunities to explore technology and learn what excites them. Volunteer adults lead the local clubs, called Dojos, and teams of mentors and helpers are working together to keep the Dojo active and healthy. The kids are usually referred to as Ninjas and can complete activities and earn belts as their skills grow, although most clubs are using color-coded USB bracelets to signify ranks.
Sure, sure the mouse won on desktop and the trackpad won on laptop. IBM’s magnificent Trackpoint is a tiny minority share of the pointer market on both, maybe even headed for extinction. Even Lenovo has been leaving it off some ‘Thinkpads’.
Two days ago, I commented I was seeing only 1/10th or so of the theoretical bandwidth my Intel GPU should have been able to push, and asked if anyone could help be figure out the discrepancy. Now, several people (including the helpful people at #intel-gfx) helped me understand more of the complete picture, so I thought I’d share:
Bitcoin contributors and developers released an open letter that asked the cryptocurrency’s community to come together to reach a technical consensus on the currency’s security and scalability.
We think that “RSA-CRT hardening” (for the countermeasure) and “RSA-CRT key leaks” (for a successful side-channel attack) is sufficiently short and descriptive, and no branding is appropriate. We expect that several CVE IDs will be assigned for the underlying vulnerabilties leading to RSA-CRT key leaks. Some vendors may also assign CVE IDs for RSA-CRT hardening, although no key leaks have been seen in practice so far.
Intel Security has released a five-year retrospective report on industry threats, finding people have become dependent on devices at the cost to their security and privacy, allowing malware and ransomware attacks to rapidly grow.
I would like to officially announce that at NICE we have been working on a TLS backend for glib using Openssl. This still lives on the wip/openssl branch of glib-networking but hopefully next cycle we will manage to merge it to master.
The planet of the trees has given way to the planet of the apes. The Earth has lost more than half of its trees since humans first learned how to wield the axe, scientists have found.
A remarkable study has calculated that there are about 3 trillion trees on the planet today but this represents just 45 per cent of the total number of trees that had existed before the rise of humans.
Using a combination of satellite images, data from forestry researchers on the ground and supercomputer number-crunching, scientists have for the first time been able to accurately estimate the quantity of trees growing on all continents except Antarctica.
What do Governor Scott Walker and Walmart have in common? They talk pay raises in public while cheating their workers of pay.
When Walmart announced with great fanfare that it was boosting pay for frontline workers, CMD questioned the spin. After all, Walmart is regularly forced to pay back wages between 2007-2012 amounting to an astonishing $30 million according to a U.S. Senate report. This week, Bloomberg reported that Walmart is cutting hours for its workers, robbing many of the benefit of the recent pay hike.
The Guardian has a fascinating piece on house prices which deserves to be read and studied in detail. In London in 2013 the median house price had reached 300,000 while the median salary was 24,600. House prices are 12.2 x salary. That means it is in practice impossible for working people, without inherited wealth, to buy a house.
But the point is, that it should be equally impossible to rent a house. Landlords look for a rental return of approximately 6% of rental value. So that would put median rent in London at around 18,000 pa, which is a realistic figure. But nobody on a salary of 24,600 before tax can pay 18,000 pa in rent. So we should be at a stage where it is impossible for Londoners who have not inherited homes to live there at all.
Benefit spending is constantly in the news but how much do we really know about where the benefits money goes in the UK?
Well, we have collected the data as part of our annual analysis of UK public spending. It shows how benefit spending dominates the UK’s budget each year – but it also breaks it down in detail.
What it shows is that the Department for Welfare and Pensions is the biggest spending department in the UK – spending £166.98bn in 2011-12, which is Of that huge sum, £159bn was spent on benefits – an increase of 1.1% on the previous year. That is 23% of all public spending.
But there’s a more fundamental problem with the Times story than suggesting that criticizing police violence is (maybe) responsible for a rise in homicides: It’s not clear that the rise in homicides that the story is pegged to actually exists as a nationwide phenomenon.
The evidence for this supposed murder wave seems to be the responses the Times got when it called police departments across the country. After the story’s lead detailed a rise in homicides in Milwaukee, the story continued: “More than 30 other cities have also reported increases in violence from a year ago.” That’s 30 out of a number that the New York Times does not disclose, making it a numerator without a denominator—though the story makes reference to the (steady) crime rate in Newark, which is the 69th largest city in the country, so depending on how thorough the Times‘ survey was, it’s possible that half or more of the cities it contacted did not report any increase in violence.
And when the story rephrases the data, it’s clear that “increases in violence” is a flexible concept: “Yet with at least 35 of the nation’s cities reporting increases in murders, violent crimes or both, according to a recent survey, the spikes are raising alarm among urban police chiefs.” How many cities actually had a rise in homicides–the statistic that justifies the story’s lead about “cities across the nation…seeing a startling rise in murders”? Remarkably, the Times story doesn’t say.
O’REILLY: Now, we want Kate’s Law, which would say, if an aggravated felon — someone convicted of an aggravated felony in the United States is deported and comes back, mandatory five year prison, can get more, all right, in a federal penitentiary. You support that?
RAMOS: No. Because I don’t think–
O’REILLY: It’s outrageous. It’s outrageous.
RAMOS: –you are approaching the problem in a global way. And this is a problem. I’m not here to be defend criminals.
Twitter has suspended the accounts of two popular torrent and linking sites in response to dubious takedown notices. The accounts in question didn’t link to any infringing material on Twitter, but were called out because their websites allow people to download pirated movies.
“EU needs to finish its work on data protection so that better enforcement and fines of 2% of turnover make this a board room issue for every organisation.”
The e-newsletter, which contains the latest information about HIV services and treatment, is sent out monthly but normally the details of recipients are hidden. Instead the full list of recipients was visible, therefore revealing the fact that everyone in the address bar is HIV-positive. The clinic then sent an email trying to recall the original one, alerting patients to the mistake, before sending a further email apologising.
A federal judge, whose ruling against the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of telephone data was overturned by an appeals court last week, maintained Wednesday that he believed the surveillance program violated the constitutional rights of “tens of millions of people every single day.”
With the case back in his court, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon urged conservative activist Larry Klayman to amend his challenge to the NSA program, suggesting that he would again rule to block the bulk collection before it expires Nov. 29.
Today, the non-profit ISPs FDN and the FDN Federation as well as La Quadrature du Net announced the introduction of two legal challenges before the French Council of State against the Internet surveillance activities of French foreign intelligence services (DGSE). As the French government plans the introduction of a new bill on international surveillance, these challenges underline the need for a thorough oversight of surveillance measures.
There are times when political considerations must give way to the relief of immediate human suffering. The current refugee crisis is one of those times and the UK must take genuine refugees on the same scale as Germany, starting immediately.
More migrants and refugees are arriving in Europe than ever recorded before as war, persecution and poverty continues to drive people from their homes – and the numbers are still rising.
One in every 122 people in the world is currently either a refugee, internally displaced or seeking asylum because the “world is a mess”, according to the head of the UN’s refugee agency.
Yesterday’s tragic images of a young Syrian boy washed ashore on a beach in Turkey have shocked many Britons into using social media to say that those fleeing war and persecution are welcome in the UK.
People across Britain are calling on the government to address the plight of those trying to escape conflict in their home countries.
David Cameron has responded to photographs of a dead Syrian child washed up on a Turkish beach by telling The Independent that Britain is doing enough to help refugees.
A string of politicians and charities have urged the Prime Minister to do more to improve the desperate plight of those fleeing war-torn countries, following The Independent’s publication of the powerful images of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi.
Thousands have signed a petition calling on the Government to ensure the UK works with other European Union countries to set and welcome a quota of refugees.
The pictures were sent to Downing Street, whose response suggests the Prime Minister is content the UK should not do any more to improve the ongoing crisis.
Jeremy Corbyn has hit out at David Cameron over his “wholly inadequate” response to the Syrian refugee crisis, after the emergence of powerful images showing a dead child washed up on beach in Turkey.
The Labour leadership front-runner said Britain was being “shamed by our European neighbours” by refusing to take in more than just a few hundred Syrian refugees and said we were failing in our duty under international law and “as human beings” to offer those fleeing conflict a place of safety.
Downing Street isn’t saying whether David Cameron has seen the photo of the little boy in the red shirt and the blue shorts. I’m not entirely sure why. Actually, the little boy is still wearing his shoes. I’ve only just noticed that. I think it’s his shoes that make it look like he’s only sleeping.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t have to look at it. In fact, he shouldn’t have to. None of us should.
There are lots of very difficult decisions you have to make as prime minister. Whether to go to war. When to make peace. Where the axe of austerity should fall. Where the hand should be stayed.
Just as there is no moral equivalence of a rapist and the rape victim, there is none between the police and Blacks. It is nowhere near a 50/50 equivalence of blame between the police and Blacks, though it is not surprising that there may be some Black pastors or some in the NAACP who will equally tell police and Blacks to tone down the rhetoric, or worse tell only Blacks to do so. It is not a school ground situation where a principal may tell two boys who are fighting to just shake hands and make peace.
Three journalists working with Vice News have been charged with “engaging in terrorist activity” on behalf of ISIL (ISIS), because one of them used encryption software. A Turkish official told Al Jazeera: “The main issue seems to be that the [journalists'] fixer uses a complex encryption system on his personal computer that a lot of ISIL militants also utilise for strategic communications.” There are no details as to what that “complex encryption system” might be, but it seems likely that it is nothing more than the PGP email encryption software, or perhaps the The Onion Router (TOR) system, both of which are very widely used, and not just by ISIL.
The correspondent and cameraman for Vice News, who are both British, and their fixer, who is Iraqi but Turkey-based, were arrested last Thursday in Diyarbakir, located in south-eastern Turkey, and an important centre for the country’s Kurdish population. According to The Guardian, the Vice News journalists were covering “recent clashes between Turkish security forces and the Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement, the youth wing of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).”
A Transportation Security Administration agent at New York’s LaGuardia Airport was arrested after being accused of luring a woman to an airport bathroom under the pretense of a security search and molesting her, authorities said on Friday.
The suspect, identified by officials as Maxie Oquendo, 40, was wearing a TSA uniform when he brought the 22-year-old traveler to an upstairs bathroom and molested her on Tuesday night, according to Joe Pentangelo, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Digital Rights Management (DRM), the backbone of copyright protection for every form of digital property from games and software to ebooks and music is finally coming to blows with its natural enemy: the open-source software movement.
The fight is rooted in the longstanding belief of organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) that DRM and open source are “fundamentally incompatible” and comes to the fore on an unlikely front: Wi-Fi routers.
Summary: An episode which focuses on the rise of Chromebooks, serious issues pertaining to privacy, media bias, and the demise of Windows
This is the first show to have been recorded this year and hopefully the resumption of TechBytes as a weekly of bi-weekly show. We are hoping to facilitate live broadcasting of the show as well (coming soon). The show officially turns 5 in just 4 weeks from now.
2000+ people have already watched Tim’s video and that is potentially 2000 people that might not use Linux based on invalid arguments.
Hopefully a few more people will read this article and therefore redress the balance somewhat.
Before I go I wanted to mention that Tim has produced his own counter argument called “5 Reasons To Use Linux”. The points in that video state that Linux is multikernel, is open source, has support for many different hardware devices such as the Raspberry PI, has lots of distros (which kind of counters against point 5 in the reasons not to use Linux) and finally it is free.
ONE OF THE CITY COUNCILLORS behind the alleged “Bring Back Windows” letter to Munich City officials has told The INQUIRER that she has no desire to see the city migrate back to Microsoft.
Munich spurned Windows for its own version of Linux, known as Limux, and recent reports suggested it is once again getting high-level calls to trash the experiment and get back to the old days.
The story, which has been circulating for the past week or so, is based on a memo sent by two councillors from the city which appeared to request consideration of a return to Windows.
Want to learn about open source programming and get a free Chromebook? The Linux Foundation is sponsoring an opportunity to do both by enrolling in one of its training courses this month.
Now there are concrete numbers to show that Chromebooks are in fact beating the sales of Windows notebooks. Microsoft fans may not accept it, but Microsoft knows how credible a threat Chrome OS is: That is why they ran an anti-Chromebook ad campaign, and why, we presume, they have created strategies to counter Chromebooks. You don’t come up with such plans to mute a non existing threat.
The non-profit organization called The Linux Foundation has announced that they are offering free Chromebooks to all students who enroll in their Linux training program during the month of September 2015.
Asus’s new Chromebook Flip isn’t the first touchscreen Chromebook we’ve fondled here at The Register. That accolade belongs to the Lenovo N20p. But since the N20p has been discontinued in the UK, Asus needn’t worry about its new convertible being overshadowed by it.
“Everyone has their Chrome OS.” That’s a theory a co-worker and I came up with, hypothesizing that everyone has that niche piece of technology that they unabashedly love. For my co-worker, that’s Windows Phone, but for me, my “Chrome OS” is, in fact, Chrome OS. Despite all the jeers and sneers I get on a weekly basis, I wanted to prove just how useful Chrome OS actually is. For all the naysayers who claim you can’t do work on a Chromebook, I’m here to tell you that you can – to a point. Here’s what happened when I spent a month using only Chrome OS.
I have to confess: I sort of hate laptops. It’s a thing with me. I have so many customisations and tweaks on my Windows desktop that using a laptop either feels like a crippled experience, or a hassle managing two separate computers. I also don’t tend to buy expensive laptops because I don’t use them often enough to make the price tag worth it. It’s safe to say that my experience will not reflect everyone’s needs.
Google decided to put its container project Kubernetes [ku-ber-net-ease] out in the wild because “there is power in open source”, its co-founder tells ComputerworldUK.
The project, which aims to simplify containers for organisations looking for faster app launch and scale-out, began as a “grand experiment”, Kubernetes’ co-founder Craig McLuckie reveals. During the build, he discovered that if Google built a cloud platform in the open, “it would be better across any measurable dimension.”
For this, GENCI will have access to some of the most advanced high performance computing technologies from the rapidly expanding OpenPower ecosystem, which includes a wide range of computing solutions that use IBM’s licensable and open POWER processor technology. OpenPower is supported by more than 140 OpenPower Foundation members and thousand of developers worldwide.
Jiri Kosina sent in his pull requests for code he maintains within the mainline Linux kernel, with one of the notable subsystems being the HID updates.
Most notable to the HID feature updates for Linux 4.3 are yet more Wacom driver improvements, which are a mention for almost every kernel cycle. Wacom highlights for Linux 4.3 include support for the Express Key Remote and various bug-fixes and feature work.
While yesterday it looked like the EXT3 driver would be removed in Linux 4.3 as the pull request was sent in and there were no objections brought up last month when it was proposed, Linus Torvalds has taken issue with removing the driver.
The IBM s390 architecture will gain fake NUMA support with the upcoming Linux 4.3 for providing faster performance under some workloads.
Martin Schwidefsky sent in the s390 patches for Linux 4.3 and there he mentioned the main highlight being this “fake NUMA” (Non-Unified Memory Architecture) support. “The big one is support for fake NUMA, splitting a really large machine in more manageable piece improves performance in some cases, e.g. for a KVM host.”
Now we come to the systemd controversy. It started as a replacement for something called init. A running Linux system has about 20 different programs running in userspace. When the system boots up, it has only one, a program called “init”. This program then launches all the remaining userspace programs.
Fixing a broken Linux System can be a cumbersome job if you don’t have the idea of what exactly is going on. What most of us do when we gets a broken Linux system? Most of us searches the forum and/or google about the problem. While we hate troubles, how about installing a ‘Trouble Maker‘ application, which essentially creates troubles, gives you hard time and want you to fix broken system.
Guild Software has announced the release of a new maintenance version of its popular Vendetta Online 3D space combat MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) for GNU/Linux, Android, Mac OS X, iOS, and Microsoft Windows OSes.
As part of an ongoing series of asking you stuff, today I ask “What was your favourite Linux game release from August?”.
Personally, I’m seriously torn on this, as we had quite a number of great releases, but I think it’s going to have to be Company of Heroes 2. The game has hooked me in with the interesting cut-scenes, and the great gameplay.
Recently, we accepted an article that quoted Obsidian Entertainment saying Linux wasn’t worth it. That same developer now has nicer comments about it all.
In this interview, Eager, a product engineer at Tumblr, discusses his contribution to the EarthBound community, his decision to open source it, and his favorite EarthBound moments.
However, as shared last week, Arma 3′s Linux future isn’t entirely clear. The beta is now public, but based on sales and other factors will determine whether it will be maintained for the longhaul and graduate from beta.
The Unreal Engine 4.9 game engine update brings significant improvements to mobile Android/iOS support, Steam VR and Gear VR support updates, experimental DirectX 12 support, editor improvements, and a wide range of renderer advancements to boost the visuals.
Aside from “every frame being perfect” with Wayland among its many advantages over X11, another benefit will be for greater power-savings in properly implemented software when a display is turned-off/sleeping.
The developers of the Ubuntu-based Netrunner Linux distribution have announced the immediate availability for download of the second point release of their LTS (Long-Term Support) version of Netrunner 14.
Tomasz Jokiel from the Porteus Linux project announced earlier the release and immediate availability for download of the Porteus Kiosk 3.5.0 operating system based on Gentoo Linux, after being in development for approximately three months.
The first day of a month is an important day for all Arch Linux users, as a new ISO image is being generated with all the updated packages released during the month that passed.
Today, we are pleased to announce the beta availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2, the latest version of the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 beta includes a number of new features and enhancements – furthering Red Hat’s mission to redefine the enterprise operating system – while continuing to provide the stability, reliability, and security required to meet both the demands of the modern datacenter and next-generation IT requirements. A focus on security, manageability and system administration, as well as a continued emphasis on the functionality to build and deploy Linux containers, helps Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 beta provide enterprises a trusted path towards the future of information technology.
Red Hat is out today with a beta release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (RHEL 7), providing users with an early preview of new features set to become generally available later this year.
After announcing the release of the DebEX KDE Linux distribution and the availability of a custom Linux 4.2 kernel for Ubuntu- and Debian-based operating systems, Arne Exton is now happy to inform us about the immediate availability for download of the GNOME edition of his DebEX Linux distribution.
Since last December we’ve been receiving emails from a company working on an Ubuntu Tablet inspired by the failed Ubuntu Edge campaign. That company is apparently going to start accepting pre-orders for their device soon with hopes of shipping this unofficial Ubuntu Tablet in January.
The last we heard of this Ubuntu tablet was earlier in the year when they shared with us their Intel specifications on this tablet and in March had shared expected pricing on the tablet with hopes of shipping the device later this calendar year. Last week I received an unsolicited email from Mark Jun of MJ Technology.
The Ubuntu Kernel Team at Canonical had their regular meeting on September 1, announcing the rebasing of Ubuntu 15.10′s development kernel packages, the master-next branch, on the recently released Linux 4.2 kernel.
Linux-based operating systems are like those friends you make in high school–you know the type: reserved, quirky and not quite like the rest of the pack. But intelligent and the kind that, once you get to know them, will stand by you through thick and thin.
Ok, that may be a stretch, but you get the idea. Linux comprises but a fraction of a percent of operating systems deployed, and with reason–it’s traditionally been difficult to set up and use. Which is why it used to appeal only to users with a higher level of computer proficiency: basically geeks. But while this was the case back in the day, plenty has changed–today installing and using it is very comparable to the Windows experience.
The lead developer and creator of the Linux Mint and Cinnamon projects, Clement Lefebvre, announced earlier today, September 2, that the upcoming Cinnamon 2.8 desktop environment will offer a visual workspace switcher applet.
The developers of the Ubuntu-based Pinguy OS Linux distribution have announced a few hours ago the immediate availability for download of the Pinguy OS 14.04.3 Mini operating system.
F&S announced a COM that runs Linux on Freescale’s Cortex-A7 based i.MX6 UltraLite SoC, and offers dual Ethernet, WiFi, and an industrial temperature range.
Since May, when Freescale unveiled its new, Cortex-A7 based i.MX6 UltraLite SoC, we’ve seen several announcements of computer-on-module products that incorporate the new, more power-efficient processor. These include two products from TechNexion — an EDM form-factor COM and a module fits in an Intel Edison socket — plus an SODIMM-style COM from iWave Systems. Now, F&S Elektronik Systeme has announced that it is adding an i.MX6 UltraLite-based “efus-A7UL” module to its “efus” COM family.
After reporting last week news about the Ubuntu MATE 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) operating system running on the Banana Pi BPI-M1 SBC (Single-board computer) device, we’re informing you today that Snappy Ubuntu Core runs on Banana Pi BPI-M2.
Samsung unveiled its Tizen Linux-based Gear S2 smartwatch, which it teased a few weeks ago at the recent Galaxy Note 5 and Edge S6+ launch. The round-faced watch boasts up to three days battery life and features a rotating bezel to augment the touchscreen UI. It will also be available in a slightly thicker 3G model with up to two hours of life that supports voice calls, according to a report from The Verge.
IT has spent lot of time and money in the last five years to secure mobile apps, considering technologies such as mobile application management servers, app wrapping, app containers, thin-client-style Web apps, and even mobile virtualization.
But IT has spent very little effort on actual mobile apps. As a result, mobile devices continue to be largely user-driven, email-oriented devices that IT simultaneously fears for spurious security reasons and considers a poor substitute for a real PC. It doesn’t have to be this way.
If you’re looking for the absolute best value Android smartphone out there: Yep. Yep, you should. The only hesitation you should feel in your heart is that Google will most likely be announcing two Nexus smartphones possibly by the end of the month. A Google Phone means two devices very similar to the Moto X, definitely getting upcoming Marshmallow update first, and ones that could even be a part of Google’s new Project Fi wireless service.
But what Nexus most likely won’t have is a look tailored specifically to you and legitimately useful Moto apps you’ll want to use. Pull the trigger or wait—it’s a win-win.
Lenovo says improvements have also been made to the projector inside, which has gotten brighter and can now beam out a 70-inch picture — and you can point it at either the wall or your ceiling this time. Sound quality is also a major focus, as the Yoga 3 Tab Pro has four front-facing speakers and what Lenovo describes as “virtualized Dolby Atmos” for an experience the company says can replicate surround sound. Such claims rarely pan out, but if you need to throw on a Netflix movie for a small room or restless kids (like say, when Netflix gets first dibs on Disney films next year), it might work out just fine.
There are several reasons. If you have an idea for a utility or framework or whatever, and you would like the support of an entire community of developers, open source is a great way to go. If you want your code “out there” so it can be reviewed and critiqued (which will improve your skills), open source is a good solution. If you are just out of school and want to establish yourself and show off your coding skills, start an open source project. Finally, if you’re altruistic and just want to help the software community at large, yes, please, start an open source project.
Version 2.0 of CloudRouter , an open source router designed for the cloud, is actually two versions, one based on CentOS Linux, for network operators looking for a stable version with long support cycle, and another based on Fedora for rapid iteration of new features, Jay Turner, CloudRouter project lead and senior director of DevOps at IIX , tells Light Reading.
The founding members are Amazon, Cisco, Google, Intel Corporation, Microsoft, Mozilla and Netflix. The goal is to “create a new, open royalty-free video codec specification based on the contributions of members, along with binding specifications for media format, content encryption and adaptive streaming.” The word open is used many times in the announcement, but only once with source. Is “open” the same thing as “open source?” Roy Schestowitz at Tuxmachines.org doesn’t think so. He organized the news of the AOM under the title “OpenWashing (Fake FOSS).”
[...]
It is difficult to trust some of these players, but Mozilla’s David Bryant today wrote that the work will be released under a free software license, compatible with version 3 of the GNU GPL.
As of today, just after Microsoft announced its membership in the Open Media Alliance, they also quietly changed the internal development status of Vorbis, Opus, WebM and VP9 to indicate they intend to ship all of the above in the new Windows Edge browser. Cue spooky X-files theme music.
Mozilla, the foundation behind the Firefox Web browser, may declare in its mission statement that “the Internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible,” but it’s going to have a hard time realizing that vision with less than 1 percent of the mobile market share globally.
Being a company with a core value to “Embrace Open Source,” when it came to launching a public cloud service it made sense to want that offering grounded upon powerful, versatile open source software that could deliver scalability, resiliency, and security. Because of that, it was an easy choice to base it upon OpenStack’s open source platform – and here’s why.
More businesses may be trialling Hadoop within their organisations to gain insight into unstructured data, but it is the ability to cut storage costs that will drive mainstream enterprise adoption, according to WANdisco’s CEO.
David Richards, the chief exec of the company which is co-headquartered between Silicon Valley and Sheffield, says that fast-growing data demands mean that those who do not adopt open source tools such as Hadoop are at a competitive disadvantage.
Ever since the LibreOffice open-source office suite was forked from the Oracle OpenOffice suite in 2010, its community of developers has been working to improve it. The latest evolution of LibreOffice, version 5.0.1, came out Aug. 27 and provides users with new features and improved performance. LibreOffice bundles multiple components as part of the suite, including the Writer Document, Calc Spreadsheet, Impress Presentation, Draw, Math Formula and Base Database applications. Being able to import and export in multiple formats has always been an important element of LibreOffice’s interoperability capabilities. In LibreOffice 5.0.1, Writer now has improved Apple Pages document import capabilities. For PDF export, the ability to time-stamp a document is now enabled. Manipulating images is now improved across the suite, with the ability to crop an image with a mouse. The Calc spreadsheet now benefits from improved formula handling as well as new conditional formatting capabilities. LibreOffice is typically available as the default office suite in many Linux distributions and is also freely available for Apple Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows applications. Here, eWEEK takes a look at key features of LibreOffice 5.0.1.
So for this issue that coincides with pupils around the country heading back to school, we’re supplying our own guide to help you and your children get a head start with coding in Python, using the Pi at school, choosing the best languages for the jobs you want to do and taking a first step into developing web applications.
Last month we looked at the argument that the open source business model is flawed because selling maintenance and support subscriptions doesn’t provide companies with enough revenue to differentiate their products from the underlying open source software or to compete with the sales and marketing efforts of proprietary software companies. The argument was advanced by Peter Levine, a venture capitalist at Andreessen Horowitz.
At the recent Open Daylight Summit, Margaret Chiosi, the Distinguished Network Architect said, “We don’t need money. We need participants. We need people to work on use cases and bust things out.” In other words, the open source community is at a point where it needs involvement more than dollars.
Open source increasingly depends on end-users who will create code, contribute documentation, and innovate to make open source projects relevant and useful. In order for open source to continue its upwards trajectory, fully engaged end-users that together create a vibrant and active community are necessary.
LLVM 3.7 along with sub-projects like Clang 3.7.0 have been officially released this afternoon.
Hans Wennborg announced 3.7.0 a few minutes ago on the mailing list. “This release contains the work of the LLVM community over the past six months: full OpenMP 3.1 support (behind a flag), the On Request Compilation (ORC) JIT API, a new backend for Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF), Control Flow Integrity checking, as well as improved optimizations, new Clang warnings, many bug fixes, and more.”
A web developer from South Africa said a bug in a tool for using Microsoft’s Visual Studio IDE with code-sharing site GitHub inadvertently exposed his sensitive data – and the error cost him more than $6,500 (£4,250) in just a few hours.
Carlo van Wyk of Cape Town–based Humankode said he used the GitHub Extension for Visual Studio 2015 to commit one of his local Git code repositories to a private repository on GitHub.
Unfortunately, however – and unknown to van Wyk at the time – a bug in the extension caused his code to be committed to a public GitHub repository, rather than a private one as he intended.
VP9, and its planned successor, VP10, is an open-source technology that, like its competitors, compresses online video so that it takes up less capacity on IP networks, making delivery easier and more reliable. Article
There will be blood in September — literally, according to the Internet postings of end-times believers.
The night of September 27-28 will bring a “blood moon.” To skywatchers, it simply refers to the copper color the moon takes on during an eclipse, but to some Christian ministers, the fourth and final eclipse in a tetrad — four consecutive total lunar eclipses, each separated by six lunar months — fulfills biblical prophecy of the apocalypse. (The first three in the series took place April 15, 2014; October 8, 2014; and April 4, 2015.)
In promotion for his 2013 book “Four Blood Moons,” Christian minister John Hagee claimed that the tetrad was a sign of the end.
“The coming four blood moons points to a world-shaking event that will happen between April 2014 and October 2015,” he said.
Something stinks about Europe’s trash. A two-year investigation into Europe’s electronic waste found that most of it is stolen, mismanaged, illegally traded, or just plain thrown away.
The European Union has guidelines on how to correctly dispose of unwanted electronics, like IT equipment, household appliances, or medical devices. But, according to a report published Sunday by the United Nations University and INTERPOL, only 35 per cent of electronic waste was disposed of correctly in 2012.
Manuel Blum, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who won the Turing Award in 1995, has been working on what he calls “human computable” passwords that are not only relatively secure but also don’t require us to memorize a different one for each site. Instead, we learn ahead of time an algorithm and a personal, private key, and we use them with the website’s name to create and re-create our own unique passwords on the fly for any website at any time.
A car manufacturer recalled more than a million cars following security concerns about car hacking, as the National Insurance Crime Bureau issued an alert about a “mystery device” being used to break into vehicles by defeating the electronic locking system of later-model cars.
So-called connected car “convenience technology” could put consumers at risk.
“Right now, what has happened is the digital key fob has become a way for someone to steal your car,” NICB investigator James “Herb” Price said.
We recently ran a sponsored series from Fox Technologies on Linux.com. We want to thank the company for its support and for sharing useful information for SysAdmins and developers alike. Fox Technologies is continuing the conversation with a free webinar September 17 that will address security considerations in moving from VMs to containers. More information about this webinar is below.
A man convicted of a gruesome crime involving a dog is back in jail Tuesday morning.
Joel Clark was convicted of torturing or mutilating an animal, for baking a dog in an oven.
Just last week, a judge sentenced him to home detention at Good News Ministries and community service with an animal rescue. Clark was not allowed to have direct contact with the animals.
Citigroup has published an analysis of the costs of various energy sources called “Energy Darwinism II.” It concludes that if all the costs of generation are included (known as the levelized cost of energy), renewables turn out to be cheaper than fossil fuels and a “benefit rather than a cost to society,” RenewEconomy reports.
“Capital costs are often cited by the promoters of fossil fuels as evidence that coal and gas are, and will, remain cheaper than renewable energy sources such as wind and gas. But this focuses on the short-term only — a trap repeated by opponents of climate action and clean energy, who focus on the upfront costs of policies.
Actually, fuel costs can “account for 80 per cent of the cost of gas-fired generation, and more than half the cost of coal,” RenewEconomy says.
Three senior scientists who collectively produced two decades of government research on controlling badgers to reduce bovine TB are among a group of eminent experts to call for an immediate halt to the badger cull. The intervention comes as figures reveal the government has spent nearly £7,000 killing each badger so far.
Professor Lord Krebs, Professor John Bourne and Professor Ranald Munro write of their disappointment that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has extended the controversial cull to Dorset and called on it to immediately reconsider its decision to continue culling badgers.
On Sunday, the New York Times maintained a long, proud tradition of uncritically repeating official claims that the US—despite having twice the population, eight times the military budget and a nominal economy almost ten times as large—is “lagging behind” Russia on a key military strategic objective…
[...]
So here we have it: Pro-NATO think tanks and military brass feed a narrative to the Times, the Times prints it with little skepticism, then these very same forces turn around and use this reporting to justify its military buildup. The crucial question as to whether or not America is objectively “lagging behind” is never really approached critically.
More importantly, the normative question as to whether the US has any intrinsic obligation or right to maintain parity with Russia in the Arctic is never brought up. The assumption is just taken for granted, and once it is, US military officials and their friendly establishment press are off to the races debating how—not if—they can amass more military brass in another corner of the globe.
[...]
This is nothing new, of course. Ominous warnings about “gaps” with the Russians are a decades-long tradition in US and Western media. Over the past few years alone, the US has “lagged behind” the dreaded Russians in the following departments:
Cyber security
Online and traditional propaganda
Space race
“Military tactics”
Nuclear technology
Now let’s remember: Russia’s military budget is one-eighth the size of the US’s—and 1/14th as large as NATO’s cumulative $1 trillion in annual military spending. But we’ve been here before. During the Cold War, the public was constantly told the US was “lagging behind” Russia in developing enough nuclear weapons.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) on Wednesday ruled against India over its national solar energy program in a case brought by the U.S. government, sparking outrage from labor and environmental advocates.
As power demands grow in India, the country’s government put forth a plan to create 100,000 megawatts of energy from solar cells and modules, and included incentives to domestic manufacturers to use locally-developed equipment.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has drafted a bill that aims to eliminate the US dollar and the euro from trade between CIS countries.
This means the creation of a single financial market between Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and other countries of the former Soviet Union.
It’s always dangerous when followers of an insular cult gain positions of power. Unfortunately, that appears to be the case with the Washington Post editorial board and the Federal Reserve Board cultists.
The Federal Reserve Board cultists adhere to a bizarre belief that the 19 members (12 voting) of the Federal Reserve Board’s Open Market Committee (FOMC) live in a rarified space where the narrow economic concerns of specific interest groups don’t impinge on their thinking. According to the cultists, when the Fed sits down to decide on its interest rate policy, they are acting solely for the good of the country.
Those of us who live in the reality-based community know that the Fed is hugely responsive to the interests of the financial sector. There are many reasons for this. First, the 12 Fed district banks are largely controlled by the banks within the district, which directly appoint one-third of the bank’s directors. The presidents of these banks occupy 12 of the 19 seats (five of the voting seats) on the FOMC.
A lawyer representing two Vice News journalists and their assistant on Tuesday denounced a Turkish court’s decision to arrest them on terror-related charges, calling it a government attempt to deter foreign media from reporting on the conflict with Kurdish rebels.
The arrests have prompted strong protests from media rights advocates, the U.S. and the European Union.
An Australian reporter for the ABC, Will Ockenden published a bunch of his metadata, and asked people to derive various elements of his life. They did pretty well, even though they were amateurs, which should give you some idea what professionals can do.
In the digital age, how much of your life is actually private? To find out, ABC reporter Will Ockenden got access to his metadata. This is what that data looks like.
Yes, the WSJ has a right to see these files… but not until the DOJ decides these investigations are really and truly over — a determination that has yet to be reached for files zooming past the half-decade mark.
The oral arguments delivered in June provide a little more insight into the DOJ’s thought processes — mainly that it should be the sole arbiter of document releases. The DOJ went past the constraints of its earlier argument — that “open” investigations are not subject to “common law access” — by claiming that documents used in the course of investigations, even closed ones, are not public records.
After searching through the Ashley Madison database and private email last week, I reported that there might be roughly 12,000 real women active on Ashley Madison. Now, after looking at the company’s source code, it’s clear that I arrived at that low number based in part on a misunderstanding of the evidence. Equally clear is new evidence that Ashley Madison created more than 70,000 female bots to send male users millions of fake messages, hoping to create the illusion of a vast playland of available women.
The closure of the station appeared prompted in part by pressure from other European Union nations trying to cope with the influx of thousands of migrants flowing through Hungary. Europe has been overwhelmed by a surge of migrants, with over 332,000 arriving so far this year, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Over 100,000 Irish Water protesters turned up on Saturday for another massive show of opposition towards the unfair second tax on the nation’s water supply. The high numbers were a definite message to the unpopular Fine Gael and Labour government. The movement which is made up of many parts, will not be going anywhere until they end their plan to continue with a tax that is one too many under the austerity policy.
A FORMER US SECRET SERVICE AGENT HAD ADMITTED to charges relating to the theft of digital currency collected during the investigations into the Silk Road and its criminal activities.
The Silk Road is, or was, an online bazaar for the sort of things that can be bought in the real world. It was smashed apart by hard working agents in a successful effort that was later revealed to be tarnished.
Unfortunately two lone, former secret service workers have put their hands up to the theft of bitcoins gathered during the raids, and admitted that this was the wrong thing to do.
Over the weekend, Spencer Ackerman published a fairly incredible story about a newly appointed West Point professor, William Bradford, who had written a paper, published in the National Security Law Journal, entitled Trahison Des Professeurs, in which he argues (among other things) that US academics who oppose current US anti-terror policy should themselves be targets for killing as a “fifth column.”
Dr. Peter Moskos: “There’s Not A Result Of Cops Getting Killed From Black Lives Matter … There Are Fewer Cops Shot This Year Than Last Year. Are You Willing To Give Black Lives Matter Credit For That?”
The government is coming under increasing pressure to take in more refugees from the war in Syria, with former foreign secretary David Miliband saying on Wednesday that not welcoming more refugees would be “an abandonment of the UK’s humanitarian traditions” of the 1930s and ’40s.
However, David Cameron has said there is little point taking in “more and more” refugees, adding that it’s more important to bring “peace and stability” to the areas refugees are coming from. So far, 216 people have been accepted under the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme, with a further 2,000 asylum applications from Syrians in the 12 months before June.
Fans of movies like The Hunger Games and World War Z are waking up to bad news this morning after Netflix revealed in a Sunday evening blog post that it will not renew its contract with Epix, the premium cable channel whose deal with Netflix put those movies (and plenty of others) on the streaming service.
The recent leak of the intellectual property chapter of the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement, currently entering its 7th year of negotiation, shows that New Zealand’s negotiators are doing a good job holding the line against more restrictive copyright laws. Things like allowing righsholders to veto parallel imports, mandatory statutory damages and requiring consent for transient automatic copying of files as they transfer across the internet, which would have taken an axe to our copyright law, now all appear to be off the table. Unfortunately, longer copyright terms and criminalisation of technological protection measures are still there, so not all is won.
I’ve written before though about some of the things that aren’t even in TPP and which are needed to level the playing field, particularly with the US. One of those things is fair use, a US law defence, which creates a broad and flexible exception to the exclusive rights a rightsholder would otherwise have. So, for example, US cases have held 2 Live Crew’s parody of Roy Orbison’s Oh, Pretty Woman, even though it was for commercial gain, was fair use. Links and thumbnails created by search engines have also been held to be fair use. Google also claims that its scanning of tens of millions of books without permission, is fair use. Timeshifting TV programmes for later viewing is fair use. The US Supreme Court has sent Google and Oracle back to the Federal Court in San Francisco to decide if Google’s use of Oracle owned java APIs is fair use. The list goes on. Of course, for a rightsholder, a successful fair use defence can put a big hole in its exclusive rights – that’s why Oracle is fighting so hard in its API case.
Australia National University’s Dr. George Barker suggested that New Zealand could do well by strengthening its copyright legislation. He warned against the fair dealing exceptions that have crept into the law and asked, “Why not have copyright law like property law—i.e. it lasts forever?”
That is a good question. And it is an important one as New Zealand and other countries consider extending the term of copyright under the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. Current New Zealand law maintains copyright in written and artistic works for 50 years after the death of the writer. Copyright in film and sound recordings is shorter, lasting 50 years from the works being first made available. While the text of the TPP is not yet public, it appears that the agreement would extend copyright’s duration to 70 years from the death of the creator.
The U.S. Government says it’s in no way responsible for the fate of Megaupload’s servers, which were raided and seized as part of the criminal proceedings against the file-sharing site. The authorities reject the proposal that they should buy the servers to preserve user data and other evidence.
Posted in Patents at 1:08 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Yet another “over the Internet” patent gets flagged
Summary: Another example of patent trolls and software patents as gatekeepers and parasites, denying access to very trivial ideas or implementations
“Stupid Patent Of The Month” this month was mentioned by the EFF on the last day of August, giving us another glimpse at “over the Internet” patents — so-called ‘innovations’ that basically involve just connecting an existing thing to the Internet. It’s a sham and an embarrassment to the USPTO. Rothschild Connected Devices Innovations is just a litigation apparatus, which makes it a classic patent troll, not just holder of an ugly patent.
The EFF’s rant (composed by Daniel Nazer) was reprinted in TechDirt, as usual, stating: “Imagine if the inventor of the Segway claimed to own “any thing that moves in response to human commands.” Or if the inventor of the telegraph applied for a patent covering any use of electric current for communication. Absurdly overbroad claims like these would not be allowed, right? Unfortunately, the Patent Office does not do a good job of policing overly broad claims. August’s Stupid Patent of the Month, U.S. Patent No. 8,788,090, is a stark example of how these claims promote patent trolling.
“A patent troll called Rothschild Connected Devices Innovations, LLC (“RCDI”) owns a family of patents on a system of customizing products. Each of these patents stems from the same 2006 application. The idea is simple: connect some kind of product mixer to the Internet and allow users to make custom orders. The application suggests using the system to make beverages or shampoo.”
This is basically a software patent and it ought to be thrown out along with many other patents that are equally ridiculous. Watch Apple‘s latest ludicrous patent to have made headlines. Putting smoke detection “over the Internet” or “on a phone” is now deemed patentable too? Were the patent examiners drunk?
“The problem is not just various particular companies but the system itself. Until or unless it correct itself this abuse will carry on.”“Patents need to be questioned,” wrote IP Kat today, “questioning whether we have that balance right.” Alluding to the recent articles from The Economist (almost a month later), the author “notes the magazine’s support for the abolition of the UK patent system in the 19th century. The Economist is not immune to flip-flopping (e.g. flip-flops on African economies). TechDirt finds flip-flops on patents in the last five years. In 2015, The Economist is arguing in favour of patent policy reform with higher thresholds for patentability and shorter terms in what they call a “rough-and-ready” system.”
It is clear that the aforementioned RCDI patent is not just some rotten apple. Many other patents are equally ridiculous if not even more ridiculous. The problem is not just various particular companies but the system itself. Until or unless it correct itself this abuse will carry on. █
Posted in America, Patents at 12:48 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Voices for patents are accepting the new order wherein software patents are hardly potent at all (and increasingly difficult to acquire)
TECHRIGHTS has chronicled the post-Alice aftermath and the demise of software patents in the United States for well over a year. We wrote about the subject dozens of times and gave examples of cases that demonstrate change, both at the courts (rulings against patents) and at the patent office (examination guidelines being tightened).
The USPTO‘s evolving guidelines for examiners are very much instructed by courts’ decisions. Each time a court invalidates a patent granted by the USPTO it serves to discredit the USPTO and decrease confidence in (or perceived worth of) USPTO patents. According to this interesting new post from a pro-patents blog, the “USPTO provides the following data on petitions challenging examiner decisions:
– the average decision time on petitions challenging a final Restriction Requirement is 91 days, with a 47% grant rate.
– the average decision time on petitions challenging the finality of a rejection is 46 days, with a 39% grant rate.
There are many more statistics there, based on petitioners’ data. Even more interesting, however, was this other pro-patents blog. Usually patent lawyers are denying the magnitude and weight of the Alice case, but this one admits the harsh reality (for patent lawyers):
Courts Everywhere are Finding Software Patents Invalid, So What Next?
[...]
The Supreme Court’s June 2014 ruling in Alice v. CLS Bank calls into question the eligibility for patent protection of these issued utility patents on computer software, and is a barrier to future applications on computer software. Alice and its progeny compel software developers to look beyond patents to protect their intellectual property. What are these alternatives? When and how can they be used?
In Alice, the Supreme Court found that an issued patent protecting high frequency trading software was invalid because it was directed to patent ineligible subject matter. Unfortunately, the Court provided little or no direction as to how to determine patent ineligibility. The Court said that a “patent-ineligible concept” is “an abstract idea.” So the natural next question must be: What is an abstract idea? The Court defined “an abstract idea” as “[a]n idea of itself,” or one that is “a fundamental truth.”
With the issued patent challenged in Alice, the Court used this definition to deem them directed to an “abstract idea” and therefore patent ineligible. But the Court did not explain how the patented claims were “drawn to the abstract idea of intermediated settlement” in the high frequency trading software realm. The Court did not pinpoint what fundamental truth the patents purported to protect such that they were ineligible.
We are gratified to see that people no other than the pro-patents crowd are coming to grips with the demise of software patents, even in the United States.
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