12.09.15
Posted in Europe, Patents at 11:49 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The military-grade attack on staff unions at the EPO
![](http://techrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Control_Risks_Blackwater_logos.png)
Summary: The European Patent Office (EPO) is attacking popular staff figureheads inside the institution and disguises this as just an investigation, with outside (paid-for) help from highly abusive firms such as Control Risks (which we call ‘British Blackwater’ because of its past)
Yesterday we wrote about the “J’accuse” against staff representative Elizabeth Hardon — a highly flawed dossier that the EPO‘s technically inept staff put together. We have decided to write a rebuttal based on our own understanding of the situation. It serves to show what the EPO’s management is really up to. Here is a point-by-point response to the early part of this “J’accuse”:
2.1. acting as an accomplice in a campaign to disseminate information and opinions detrimental to the EPO, its proper functioning and its reputation as well as the reputation of its employees;
Aside from the fact that proof is lacking or insufficient to implicate this one person in “disseminate information” (which in itself is not a crime), it should be no offense to inform others, e.g. journalists, in case something has gone rogue. The use of terms like “accomplice” and “campaign” shows the bias of the accuser. Facts themselves are treated like an enemy now. The word “reputation” is mentioned twice, as if there is some God-given right for the EPO to guard its precious reputation irrespective of the management’s actions.
2.3. disregarding (i) the express instruction of her employer and (ii) her concurrent obligation under Art. 4 of Circulars No. 341 and No. 342 to keep confidential the investigation C- 071/2015.
Some requests are inherently unjust, such as the request to keep an unjust “investigation” (accusations and destruction, as part of union-busting actions) secret. It’s clear why Team Battistelli would want to avoid facing the music. They are trying to save face.
3. The defendant is a Dutch national who joined the Office in 1988 as an examiner at Grade A2.
In other words, the defendant has spent more time at the EPO than Battistelli and all of his French buddies (whom he brought from INPI) combined.
4. She has, for a number of years, been active in the leadership of the Munich local section of the Locals Staff Committee (LSC) and of a staff trade union (SUEPO).
She is provably popular too. That’s why she must be crushed. Move over, Elizabeth; It’s Benoît’s time to shine, but you have evidently stolen his thunder.
5. The background to this report is formed by two recent wider investigations.
[...]
6. The first, C-62/2014, was conducted by the Investigative Unit (IU). Its report was submitted to the Administrative Council on 06.03.2015 which initiated and conducted disciplinary case D1/2015. The IU had found C, a member of the Technical Boards of Appeal, guilty of an electronic campaign of unauthorised disclosure and publication of confidential, non-public documents and information as well as of threatening, insulting, defaming, and libellous and/or racist messages to politicians, journalists, bloggers and EPO staff.
These accusations, which have been made by people salaried by (and thus loyal to) Team Battistelli, have been categorically rejected by an independent board. Any convictions coming from the IU should be treated with extreme prejudice. These people’s track record is rather poor.
7. On 12.10.2015, the IU presented the investigation C-62a/2015 reviewing the background of the C-62/2015 case and possible involvement of other parties. Its report found that C had acted with a network of staff and external contacts, including the defendant.
Notice where they’re going here. Guilt by association. If you can’t find a person guilty of something, then look for another person’s alleged actions and try to link these to another person. Welcome to Stalin’s USSR.
8. The President of the EPO has more recently been provided with a summary of findings in IU report C-62b/2015 (Annex I), which were forwarded to him…
IU working for the President and serving him heads on a silver platter. Envision where this is going…
9. The second investigation, C-071/2015, was conducted by external investigators, the firm Control Risk Group, under the authority of the IU, into allegations against unknown suspects of a campaign of harassment and intimidation against
So “Control Risk Group” goons (CRG not even spelled correctly by the EPO, as it should say “Risks”) are now named by the EPO itself and are working “under the authority of the IU”, which works under the authority of the President. So much for “external” investigators. It’s just a waste of money and lipstick on a pig.
10. The Control Risk Group…
OK, so it definitely wasn’t a typo. The EPO doesn’t even know who it’s hiring. It’s “Risks”, not “Risk”. How sloppy can one be? For some background about CRG, see the following articles of ours:
Next come “The Charges”, which range from unbacked by evidence to utterly laughable. It’s something between Kafka and Orwell.
In the interests of brevity, we’ll leave it at that for today. There’s lots more to come. Don’t believe anything that the management says about Hardon (or any other critic of the EPO’s management for that matter). █
“The Social Contract is nothing more or less than a vast conspiracy of human beings to lie to and humbug themselves and one another for the general good. Lies are the mortar that bind the savage individual man into the social masonry.”
–H.G. Wells
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Europe, Patents at 10:43 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
A view from above, in layman’s terms
Summary: A beginner’s guide to the EPO crisis, which is basically an altercation/quarrel between the assets of the office, highly knowledgeable patent examiners, and those assigned to manage them, only to pursue completely orthogonal goals that are clearly detrimental to Europe
THIS concise article assumes that the reader has no prior knowledge about the EPO scandals, or that only the EPO’s misleading narrative has been thus far accepted as fact. Links are intentionally omitted so as to make this article self-contained.
The European Patent Office, or EPO (not to be confused with the drug), is a multinational organisation whose members are mostly EU states. EPO staff is located primarily at the centre of Europe although the staff comes from a wide range of places (EPO members). Due to the way the EPO was set up more than 40 years ago — predating the European Union by several decades — no single country’s laws apply. This means that human rights and various protections are unexplored territory, which in practice means that the EPO’s administration can neglect staff’s health (as it does), ignore court rulings (as has become very notorious a point), chill freedom of speech, and lobby politicians without any apparent restrictions.
The EPO enjoys a monopoly in Europe. It is supposed to be a benevolent monopoly, but in practice it has gone rogue. Rather than adhere to public interests when it comes to patent scope, the EPO now operates like a private business and seeks to maximise profit. It means that patent scope has gone off the rails and to make matters worse, incestuous relationships between large international companies and EPO management have developed, leading to unequal service to different applicants. Some receive preferential treatment, whereas others suffer neglect, with applications taking even more than a decade before being handled.
The EPO practices gross censorship and intimidation against critics. Its grossly overpaid (and at times under-qualified, chosen based on nepotism) managerial staff staged a de facto coup. It now repels, discourages, and even ejects anyone who is even remotely sceptical of the management’s choices, often made in secret without public scrutiny being even tolerated.
The patterns of the EPO’s abuses are overwhelmingly detrimental to those who help sponsor it.
First, the EPO allows applicants to receive abstract patents, patents on life, etc. and it generally blurs the gap between European patent regulations and those from the United States, often to the benefit of foreign corporations with highly dubious ethical standards. Patent maximalism, which is further facilitated by a systemic hogwash or synthesis, threatens to bring patent trolls (non-practising litigious firms) to Europe, essentially taxing everything, to the detriment of every single ‘consumer’ in Europe.
Second, the EPO disregards human rights, especially in its pursuit of the objectives above. Repressions inside and outside the EPO include institutional abuse and violation of the EPO’s own rules, censorship of the media, alleged DDOS attacks (technical or physical) against critics, legal bullying against critics, and illegal surveillance on staff and visitors, not to mention on journalists. These are the hallmarks of imperialistic regimes.
Third, in order to control everything and everyone by fear, the EPO openly demonstrates its maniacal tendencies and makes an example of scapegoats inside and outside the organisation. Staff suicides are a likely outcome of these maniacal moves, crushing of protests is a de facto standard (in spite of EU laws), union-busting is now taken for granted (with the helping hand of private firms from the outside), and there is not even due process. The management of the EPO, which has become a cabal surrounding the megalomaniac President, is systematically abolishing workers’ rights and acts like an absolute power (a state within the state of Germany for the most part). The President is the judge, the jury, and the executioner. In order to secure this unacceptable state of affairs, the management insists on ignoring court orders, crushing oversight or critical (of the management) branches like the boards, tightening the relationship with the Administrative Council by means of entryism (even accepting into its ranks people who are alleged to have bribed, and even worse), character assassination or defamation of (typically anonymous) critics, and disseminating propaganda or misinformation in the media (sometimes literally paying the media or paying vast amounts of money to PR agencies).
To EPO insiders, the EPO seems almost unstoppable. No matter how many abuses the management resorts to, it’ll always get away with them. The EPO’s workers, therefore, harnesses power in numbers, in spite of the management’s relentless efforts to crush anyone who dares organise the staff for direct action.
Staff complains about the above points, as well as monetary waste, nepotism in top-level appointments, conflicts of interest, and so on. All of these crises put not only the management at risk but also threaten the reputation and the status of the EPO itself, hence the jobs of patent examiners. It is clear that the goal of the angry staff is to actually save the EPO and salvage its reputation, whereas the existing management is just looking after its own interests, hence it is working hard to silence and suppress the staff. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in America, Europe, Patents at 9:48 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Software development environments neither need nor want patents
Summary: An interlude regarding the subject of software patents in Europe and the United States
THE main subject of this site has always been software patents (we are not anti-patents in general). It’s why the site came into existence in the first place. There is a war going on in the software domain and it is fought between protectionists and programmers. Alice denialists typically fall under the former group and Free/Open Source software developers are just a subset of the latter (it includes proprietary software programmers too).
Alice denialists, who are mostly patent lawyers, only ever choose to comment (cherry-picking) about Alice when it’s some Microsoft-connected patent aggressor like Finjan managing to convince a court to uphold a software patent, as we recently noted. This new article by Monte Cooper and Cam Phan from Orrick says: “This goes to show that despite the significant shift that has occurred since the Alice decision, all hope is not lost for plaintiffs asserting patents in the software space.”
“There is a war going on in the software domain and it is fought between protectionists and programmers.”Well, Alice denialists wouldn’t want to admit that SCOTUS and the USPTO don’t quite tolerate software patents like they used to. Even the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), which is said to have brought software patents to this world, is finding itself rejecting a lot of software patents these days, on grounds of abstractness.
Despite the EPO‘s troubling leanings towards software patents in Europe (because it helps management improve so-called EPO ‘productivity’ figures, measured in misguided terms or yardsticks like number of patents granted), it’s still not easy to get patents on software in Europe, either.
The mainstream media is increasingly covering various EPO scandals these days (there are many scandals, not one). It happens on a daily basis right now. See Stefan Krempl’s new article in German (if SUEPO doesn’t produce a translation, maybe one of our readers wants to).
The European Commission and second-biggest EU establishment — the EPO — apparently have something in common. The EPO is clearly dysfunctional right now and “at the EPO,” according to this new article, “oppositions can take 12 years” (if not longer).
There are many aspects to the EPO situation and our Wiki page breaks these down into various loose categories. Some readers have asked us for an overview of everything. This, in preparation for the protest on Thursday, is something we intend to do next. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 9:26 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: News of interest to anyone who seriously considers Microsoft a suitable host for GNU/Linux instances
THE Linux Foundation no longer shocks us when it decides to become even more financially dependent on Microsoft. We have written many articles on this subject — articles in which we explained many of the reasons why this was a bad idea. Our focus these days is software patents, not Microsoft’s subversive attacks on Linux. This is why we don’t want to compose any more long articles on the subject of today’s Linux Foundation announcement, however disturbing it may be. The arguments made back in the days (see the 10 links below) are still valid and applicable today.
To remind people of what it means to host with Microsoft, consider this new article titled “Microsoft begins migrating Office 365 SMB customers to new plans”.
“Proof that once Microsoft can ransom users’ data,” a reader of ours called it, “they can pull the rug out from under them at any future date without notice.”
The same would inevitably go for people who decided to host GNU/Linux with Microsoft. Control is lost and Microsoft’s price-gouging practices are like no other company’s practices. We already highlighted other malicious business plans Microsoft would subject clients to, such as in-place Linux-to-Windows migrations with financial incentives. Watch what Microsoft is doing to Android right now.
One must also bear in mind that Microsoft’s software is designed for remote control by people who are in power, notably the NSA. Consider this new article which shows just how deep this goes:
It’s nearly 2016, and Windows DNS servers can be pwned remotely
Microsoft is closing out the year with a fix for 71 security vulnerabilities in Windows Server, client-side Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, and Edge.
Among the patches are two vulnerabilities that are already being exploited in the wild for elevation of privilege and remote code execution.
Put in very simple terms, DNS, which can serve as a gateway to GNU/Linux-based sites, can be remotely controlled through vulnerabilities which Microsoft didn’t bother addressing until they were already exploited by players other than the NSA et al.
There are many old articles which come to mind in light of today’s mistake from the Linux Foundation. Among them:
- Microsoft Gradually Embraces, Extends, Extinguishes Linux Foundation as a Foundation of GNU/Linux
- Only Months After Microsoft’s Ramji Enters the Linux Foundation Microsoft Gradually Joins Him
- Message to LinuxCon Regarding Microsoft: “It is Necessary to Get Behind Someone in Order to Stab Them in the Back.” -Sir Humphrey Appleby
- More People With Microsoft Roots Enter the Linux Foundation, Occupying Top Positions
- They ‘R’ Coming: More Microsoft Money for the Linux Foundation
- Microsoft is Interjecting Itself Into GNU/Linux and Free Software News, Even Events and Foundations
- The ‘Microsoft Loves Linux’ Baloney is Still Being Floated in the Media While Microsoft Attacks Linux With Patents, New Lawsuits Reported
- Microsoft is Trying to Subsume GNU/Linux and Free/Libre Software
- The Linux Foundation Appoints Former Microsoft Manager for Management of OpenDaylight
- When ‘Former’ Microsoft Influence Lands in Free/Open Source Software
We will probably refrain, as matter of principle in fact, from any further comments regarding the Linux Foundation, at least for the time being (we have a lot more to say). Not because it’s unimportant but because it wouldn’t be our top priority at this point in time…
We have a lot to say about the EPO these days and it is generally more urgent (people’s careers or lives are at stake). We write about it as quickly as we receive new material in order to cope or catch up with the growing backlog. We have reached a critical point and tomorrow there will be massive protests in Munich again. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in News Roundup at 5:02 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
![GNOME bluefish](/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/120px-Gartoon-Bluefish-icon.png)
Contents
-
Recently, I have been adding a lot of patches to the version of Eclipse (Mars.1) that is packaged in Fedora Linux. This post attempts to explain why.
In my opinion, one of the chief benefits to packaging your software for a Linux distribution is the ability of the distribution to carry patches. These patches generally come in two flavours.
-
Kernel Space
-
Linux is not only the future, but the present too. Even if you do not directly use an operating system based on the kernel, there is a good chance that it impacts you every day. Much of your precious internet traffic is routed through servers that run Linux. Many set-top boxes and devices are powered by the kernel and you may not even know it. Of course, Android is one such Linux-based operating system that millions upon millions of people use daily.
-
Microsoft’s newfound embrace of open-source software continues with the news today that the company will now offer a Linux on Azure certificate through its Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate program.
Those who pass both Microsoft’s 70-533 exam and the Linux Foundation’s Certified System Administrator exam will receive the Linux on Azure cert from the MCSA program. The cert is available as of today, according to a joint announcement.
-
The Linux Foundation collaborative project formalizes its governance structure for standardizing containers, though it doesn’t answer all questions about container interoperability.
-
-
-
From participating in Node.js, the Core Infrastructure Initiative and other Collaborative Projects at Linux Foundation to its recent partnerships with Red Hat and SUSE, Microsoft is demonstrating a sincere, smart and practical approach to how it builds new technologies and supports its vast customer base. Microsoft open sourced .NET; it open sourced key parts of its web browser; and it uses Linux for its Azure Cloud Switch. The Linux Foundation and Microsoft share a common, strategic approach to technology development: balance internal R&D with external R&D to create the most important technologies of our time.
-
Right after Microsoft releasing MS-Linux, a few years ago I would have said the next most unlikely thing for Microsoft to do would be to offer a Linux certification. Guess what? They are.
-
-
Shuah Khan was the very first engineer to join Samsung’s North American Open Source Group shortly after it was founded in 2013. Since then, she has been extremely valuable to the company through her contributions to the Linux Kernel. She was recently elected to the Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board, presenting her with a wonderful opportunity to help direct the Linux Kernel community from the highest technical level.
-
While KDBUS has yet to be mainlined as it was sent back to the drawing board, at least some of the systemd developers are working on a new kernel bus implementation called BUS1.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Graphics Stack
-
-
Daniel Vetter of Intel’s Open-Source Technology Center has done his usual recap of the i915 DRM graphics driver changes to be found in Linux 4.4.
There is a lot of code being converted over to the new atomic interfaces, Panel Self Refresh fixes (PSR), frame-buffer compression fixes (FBC), 48-bit GPU address space support with GEM for Broadwell and newer, GuC-based command submission, XenGT virtualized GPU support for Broadwell, and a variety of other changes.
-
-
-
The design is to move the input event code off to its own thread rather than running on the same main thread as the X.Org Server. Keith Packard cleaned up the threaded input code and patches it for the xf86 and KDrive/FBDEV areas. As part of this work, Keith is proposing that SIGIO support be dropped from the X.Org Server, which will break DRI1 support. This patch series is part of the reason why DRI1 support was proposed to be killed off yesterday in the X.Org Server.
-
-
Benchmarks
-
Applications
-
As of this morning in NetworkManager is support for creating MAC VLAN and MAC VTAP devices.
MAC VLAN is like a reverse VLAN where a single network connection creates multiple virtual connections with different MAC addresses. MacVTap meanwhile is a new driver to simplify virtualized bridged networking. MacVTap is described in more detail here.
-
The Git developers have announced the release and immediate availability for download of the fourth maintenance build for the stable Git 2.6 branch of the world’s most popular distributed version control system.
-
This time the focus was mostly on fixing problems introduced in 1.36.7.
-
I’m a researcher at the interface between physics, chemistry and biology, and in our team, we pride ourselves on making the most of the data we acquire, especially through quantitative analysis and modelling. In fact, we spend a lot of time doing fitting simple formulas or complex differential equations to our data. As we were not really satisfied with the data fitting capacities of the software available, we’ve had our custom data processing/fitting tool, SOAS, for ages. However, that tool was hard to maintain (Fortran + Fortran libraries interfacing with X11 with ABI changing every once in a while without notice), impossible to port to non-X11 platforms, not very user-friendly, and not easy to extend at all. So, when I got my permanent position, a rewrote a completely new version from scratch, called QSoas using C++, Qt, Ruby and the GNU Scientific Library. The result is incomparably more powerful, more easy to maintain, more user-friendly, and more portable (I build it for Linux, Mac and Windows).
-
Proprietary
-
Unsurprisingly called SoftMaker Office 2016, the company, which won an INQUIRER Tech Hero award earlier this year, claims it’s the fastest office suite for Linux, being five quicker than Microsoft Office. It also offers more than 400 new features including vastly improved compatibility with Microsoft Office.
-
-
BeyondTrust says it is making life easier for Linux and Unix systems administrators who use sudo for security and authentication. The company has a new product, PowerBroker for Sudo, that simplifies sudo file and log management.
-
Instructionals/Technical
-
Wine or Emulation
-
-
Back during E3 in June, CodeWeavers was talking about “support for DirectX 11 [in the coming months].” It’s been nearly six months and it looks like we’re still a ways out from seeing support in Wine.
-
-
Games
-
First of all it was a great year. The number of Linux titles that we received is good, but shouldn’t it be better? Personally I think it should. And I hope it still can be.
-
Lucius II is a game we sadly overlooked, once again due to it not showing up in Steam’s new releases section due to adding the Linux version later. I really wish Valve would fix that, as it comes up quite often.
I tested it, and while it could be interesting it doesn’t play very well with the Steam Controller, during a tutorial it told me to throw an item, but it didn’t pick up the right trigger at all.
-
-
I’ve been sent Sunken by a user, and I have to say it looks like quite a good addition to the action RPG genre, the good news is the developer is already planning a Linux version.
-
The Mean Greens – Plastic Warfare is a pretty damn good looking action game about plastic toy soldiers, reminds me of a game I played like it years ago. The developers are interested in a Linux version, and want testers.
-
The Last NightMary – A Lenda do Cabeça de Cuia is an interesting hybrid of a point and click game with survival elements, has nice artwork too.
-
-
-
The Unity game engine has been upgraded to version 5.3, and its developers have made a series of very important improvements to it.
-
-
-
When the HTC Vive launched there was hopes of it launching in November along with the Steam Machines, Steam Controller, and Steam Link. As time went on we heard by the “holidays 2015″ for a limited release and full availability in Q1’2016. HTC has now announced their new retail target, which slightly misses the old window. The new expectation is for the retail launch of HTC Vive in April 2016.
-
Well this was a surprise, the Humble NEOGEO 25th Anniversary Bundle has been released, and it features plenty of games nearly all of which are available on Linux. Right now Linux is leading the pack with the highest average payment too.
-
-
-
I’m a pretty big fan of Albion Online, as we had a big drought of MMORPG games on Linux. Albion Online is in closed beta (you can buy in anytime) and it just had a juicy update.
The new update is named Aurelius, and it comes with a ton of fixes, new abilities for weapons, and more! The new dungeons to fight PvE sounds like a well needed addition for the game.
-
Hatred, that weird shooter about killing anyone and everyone is now in testing for Linux the developer has confirmed, and SteamDB shows it too.
-
The wildly popular game Rocket League is expected to be playable on GNU/Linux soon. Rocket League is a multiplayer physics based Soccer game played with fast booster, rigged vehicles in place of athletes, and is the sequel to Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars! Since its release last year for Playstation 4 and Windows, Rocket League has gathered a huge following, which has only increased the demand for a Linux version.
-
Desktop Environments/WMs
-
K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
-
We are happy to announce the release of the Calligra Suite, and Calligra Active 2.9.10. It is recommended update for the 2.9 series of the applications and underlying development frameworks.
-
Krita 2.9.10 has been released today as part of the Calligra 2.9.10 open-source office suite, for which we will publish a separate article later today, when an official announcement is made available.
-
Ark 15.08 was the first Ark release after the port to KF5, so there wasn’t much room for new features.
With the upcoming 15.12 release the situation is quite different, as there are a significant number of changes that are worth of a blog post.
-
GNOME Desktop/GTK
-
GNOME’s Epiphany web-browser is under heavy development for the GNOME 3.20 cycle. Epiphany 3.19.1 was just released and it’s packing a lot of new features.
First off, WebGL and WebAudio support are finally enabled in this browser by default while most tier-one browsers have long exposed these web APIs.
-
Last week I attended the Content Apps Hackfest in Madrid. A group of about 12 us met for three days to work on GNOME’s content apps: Documents, Files, Music, Photos and Videos. The goal for the hackfest was to make as much progress with these apps as possible, although we also ended up talking about other apps, due to who was in attendance.
-
-
New Releases
-
Neofytos Kolokotronis from the Chakra GNU/Linux project has had the pleasure of announcing the general availability of new updates for the latest stable release of the Chakra GNU/Linux computer operating system.
-
Ballnux/SUSE
-
I was recently looking into Pulp’s ability to sync and publish SUSE repositories, including those from openSUSE, SLES 11, and (after a little bit of work) SLES 12.
-
SUSE® has joined the Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV) project, a carrier-grade, integrated open source platform that is accelerating the introduction of new products and services using network functions virtualization (NFV). The addition of NFV capabilities enhances SUSE’s software-defined data center offerings, including OpenStack-based cloud infrastructure and Ceph-based software-defined storage.
-
Red Hat Family
-
Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) has earned an average recommendation of “Buy” from the thirty-five ratings firms that are currently covering the company, Market Beat.com reports. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, eight have issued a hold rating and twenty-five have assigned a buy rating to the company. The average 12-month target price among analysts that have issued a report on the stock in the last year is $83.26.
-
Red Hat Inc has had its stock rating noted as ‘Reiterated’ with the recommendation being set at ‘OUTPERFORM’ today by analysts at RBC Capital Mkts. Red Hat Inc are listed in the Technology sector within NYSE. RBC Capital Mkts have set a target price of 90 USD on its stock. This is indicating the analyst believes there is a potential upside of 12.5% from the opening price of 80.02 USD.
-
A cloud of bioinformatics intelligence has been harmonised by Red Hat to create ‘virtual supercomputers’ that can be shared by the eMedlab collective of research institutes.
The upshot is that researchers at institutes such as the Wellcome Trust Sanger, UCL and King’s College London can carry out much more powerful data analysis when researching cancers, cardio-vascular conditions and rare diseases.
-
-
The company is using the Node package manager to develop connectors linking Node.js to ActiveMQ, the Java messaging service, said Rich Marples, senior director for product management at the Red Hat app platforms business group.
-
-
optionMONSTER’s monitoring systems detected the sale of 3,300 January 72.50 puts in one print for $0.85 this morning. Volume was more than 7 times the open interest in the strike, which indicates that this is a new position.
-
-
In a report released today, Matthew Hedberg from RBC Capital reiterated a Buy rating on Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), with a price target of $90. The company’s shares closed yesterday at $80.52, close to its 52-week high of $83.
-
-
Fedora
-
-
-
He first started using Linux in 1996 when he installed Slackware on an 80386-based computer. That attempt was not successful, so he tried Red Hat Linux, which worked. At the time, he was a data systems technician for the United States Navy and was responsible for a wide array of systems running everything from HPUX, SunOS, Solaris, and Windows NT. While the Navy was not running Linux at the time, Dan saw its potential and has been running at least one Linux system at home since that first install. It has been an integral part of his job for nearly fifteen years.
-
The Fedora Hosted lists will be migrated on November 16th, and the Fedora Project lists later in the week. After migration you should be able to use the new Hyperkitty UI to post and read the lists if you choose or continue to get emails in the traditional way.
-
-
Debian Family
-
Derivatives
-
Canonical/Ubuntu
-
UAVIA, a French company that develops inspection and surveillance drones controlled remotely without human intervention on the ground, has announced the availability of the first commercial 100% remotely operable drones powered by Ubuntu.
-
The MeegoPad T02 is a PC-on-a-stick with an Intel Atom Bay Trail processor, 2GB of RAM, and 32GB of storage. Plug it into the HDMI port of your TV or monitor and you’ve basically got a low-power desktop computer.
-
Canonical’s Joseph Salisbury has announced the availability of this week’s Ubuntu Kernel Team Newsletter, published on Tuesday, December 8, 2015, on the Ubuntu Wiki.
-
-
-
-
The Ubuntu developers have finally merged the Plymouth package from Debian, and they are preparing for some important changes.
-
Ubuntu’s kernel team has temporarily moved up to the Linux 4.3 kernel in the archive, but it will be short-lived.
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS will end up using the Linux 4.4 kernel but while that version is still weeks away from release and being fixed up, Ubuntu “Xenial Xerus” users have the Linux 4.3 kernel upgrade, as confirmed by this week’s kernel team news.
-
Flavours and Variants
-
While other operating systems dabble with mobile or push the bleeding edge, Mint’s shaping up to be the Old Faithful of the Linux desktop world.
Linux Mint 17.3 “Rosa” continues a series of stable releases built on the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS code. Rather than hacking away on experimental features or adding all the latest low-level software, Mint’s developers have been spending their time polishing the Cinnamon and MATE desktops. “Rosa” is yet another solid release that will please fans of Mint and anyone who misses the more traditional Linux desktop.
-
-
Pi2Design has won Kickstarter funding for a $49 multifunction SSD shield for the Raspberry Pi 2 with an mSATA socket, WiFi, dual USBs, and an 8-25V supply.
Pi2Design, a Rhode Island based startup focused on Raspberry Pi shields and other Pi-based projects, has surpassed its modest, $15,000 Kickstarter goal for a “CSB502SSD” multifunction storage shield for the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B. The device is designed and manufactured by Cogent Computer Systems, makers of embedded modules and boards such as the Marvell Armada XP-based CSB1726 module. Pi2Design handles marketing, sales, and distribution.
-
The day before the announcement of the Raspberry Pi Zero, a new version of Raspbian Linux very quietly appeared in the Raspberry Pi Downloads, along with a new NOOBS archive that included it.
As there was no release announcement made at that time, and then there was so much excitement about the Raspberry Pi Zero the next day, the Raspbian release slipped past almost entirely unnoticed.
-
Like many LJ readers these days, I’ve been leading a bit of a techno-nomadic lifestyle as of the past few years—jumping from network to network, access point to access point, as I bounce around the real world while maintaining my connection to the Internet and other networks I use on a daily basis. As of late, I’ve found that more and more networks are starting to block outbound ports like SMTP (port 25), SSH (port 22) and others. It becomes really frustrating when you drop into a local coffee house expecting to be able to fire up your SSH client and get a few things done, and you can’t, because the network’s blocking you.
-
Beyond all the recent kernel work with landing the initial Raspberry Pi KMS driver for the Linux 4.4 kernel, Eric Anholt at Broadcom has remained busy in user-space too with more improvements to the VC4 Gallium3D driver.
-
-
-
Phones
-
Where will 2016 take us? Will we see Ubuntu Touch get some broader distribution and hardware support? Will Jolla survive as a company? Will some other company or organization come along and surprise us all with the Linux mobile OS of the future?
No, really. I’m asking. Does anyone know? Because I have absolutely no idea. I just hope 2016 is a bit better than 2015 for mobile Linux.
-
Android
-
The Pixel C marks several firsts for Google and Android: It’s the first tablet Google has designed and manufactured on its own. It’s the first device other than the Chromebook Pixel to bear the “Pixel” name (and thus also the first Android device to use that moniker). And it’s the first time Google has actively pursued a convertible gadget that attempts to straddle the worlds of both touch-centric computing and keyboard-based input.
Beyond all that surface-level stuff, though, the Pixel C holds an interesting extra surprise: It’s the first time since 2011′s short-lived Honeycomb era that Google is moving back toward the idea of providing a tablet-optimized interface for large-screened devices.
-
The previously rumoured flagship smartphone codenamed HTC O2 has reportedly been abandoned by HTC. The company instead might launch a new handset, with codename HTC Perfume.
-
The tech industry loves to watch platforms and products duke it out, and the competition can produce truly useful innovation that betters us all. It can also lead to lots of wasted effort and shattered dreams once the actual war is over but people keep trying to pretend it’s still on.
That’s certainly the case in mobile, where for years it’s been clear that only two operating system mattered: iOS and Android. Yet there were always a bunch of hopefuls that the tech industry cheered on, for sport if nothing else.
-
-
The open-source nature of Google’s Android is both a curse and a blessing. Google conquered the post-PC world by making sure its mobile OS is the dominant platform in the smartphone business. Over 1.4 billion smartphone users have an Android device that can be used to browse the web and bring in some ad-based cash to Google – though many reports still say that iPhone owners are even more profitable for Google when it comes to ad money.
-
Back in early October, Motorola published a preliminary list of its smartphones that are scheduled to receive the Android 6.0 Marshmallow update. At the time, many Motorola fans have been disappointed to find out that the 2nd-gen Motorola Moto E, a handset that the manufacturer launched earlier this year, was not included among the Moto smartphone models scheduled to be updated to the latest Android version.
-
-
-
Google is back with yet another Android tablet. The latest hardware effort, the Pixel C, comes from an odd place inside Google: the Pixel team. Usually a “Pixel” is the latest, fancy high-end Chromebook, but with the Pixel C, the traditionally Chrome OS-centric team decided to make an Android tablet. It’s not just a tablet, though, there’s also a clip-on keyboard base making it a Surface-style convertible.
-
HTC’s next flagship smartphone will be called Perfume, and it will come loaded with the yet-to-be-announced Android 6.1 OS, according to the usually reliable leakster @LlabTooFeR, who made the revelation in a tweet. He also said that the device will run version 8.0 of the company’s Sense UI.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
The latest smartphone sales data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech for the three months ending in October 2015 shows Android returning to growth in Europe’s big five markets (“EU5”), after a decline that began in October 2014. Meanwhile, iOS registered a small decline in the EU5 for the three months ending in October 2015, the first such decline since the three-month period ending in August 2014.
-
The first age of Android saw Google’s OS attain popularity on smartphones in its early days. The second age took that approach to the next level, with a coherent design language and a move into tablets. Now, as we approach the end of 2015, it is the dawn of the third age of Android.
-
Google has said a quiet goodbye to the Nexus 6: as of today, you’re no longer able to buy it from the Play Store. The decision appears to mark the end of the road for the 6-inch handset now that both the Nexus 5X and its successor, the Nexus 6P, are up for sale. If you’re still itching to get your hands on one — though we can’t think of a reason you’d want to — Amazon is still selling a 32GB version for $349.99. Google was not immediately available for comment on whether the phone has been permanently discontinued.
-
The Linux Foundation brought the container powers, including CoreOS, Docker, and Google, together to form the Open Container Initiative (OIC). Its job? To create a vendor-neutral, portable and open specification and runtime for container-based solutions.
-
Open source is in your best interest, whether you’re an individual, a corporation, a small business, a non-profit, or a government agency.
-
-
List: These skills are the foundations for a strong career in open source development.
-
The Hashcat password recovery tool and cracker is now available to developers under an open source license, sending the Github community into meltdown with the news.
-
-
A few of weeks ago I got a email from a friend who was attending an education technology conference. In the note he referenced PyGaze, an open source project I might be interested in.
-
There’s a lot to be said for open source software. The ability to change code to suit one’s needs, the fact that security vulnerabilities can be easier to find, and the overall transparency are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the strengths of using open source software. And, while Microsoft is no Apple when it comes to locking down their source code, their operating system is still, unfortunately, closed.
Don’t despair, though! There is a project out there that aims to change this. No, they’re not stealing anything or breaking into any computers to obtain Microsoft’s code. They’re writing their own version of Windows called ReactOS that aims to be binary-compatible with Windows. The software has been in development for over a decade, but they’re ready to release version 0.4 which will bring USB, sound, networking, wireless, SATA, and many more features to the operating system.
-
A popular European cable modem has seen its software open-sourced by Technicolor in order to comply with the GPL.
-
-
-
In the Summer of 2015 the Open Source Initiative® (OSI) announced the extension of its Affiliate Member Program to include institutions of higher education, and shortly after announced admission of our first member from the higher education community, the University of Southern Queensland. Today the OSI announces Marist College has joined as well. Marist College is an important supporter and contributor to not only the advancement of open source software within colleges and universities, but also as a community member of another OSI Affiliate, the Apereo Foundation. Marist College’s experiences in open source software adoption, community development and policy advocacy within the higher education landscape will inform the OSI’s work throughout the education sector and help shape the Affiliate Member Program to best serve institutions of higher education exploring, using and producing open source software.
-
Events
-
The FOSDEM Distro Devroom will take place 30 & 31 January, 2016 at FOSDEM, in room K.4.201 at Université Libre de Bruxelles, in Brussels, Belgium.
As Linux distributions converge on similar tools, the problem space overlapping different distributions is growing. This standardization across the distributions presents an opportunity to develop generic solutions to the problems of aggregating, building, and maintaining the pieces that go into a distribution.
-
In this year’s edition of Google Code-in, students can choose from tasks provided by the following organizations / projects: Apertium, Copyleft Games, Drupal, FOSSASIA, Haiku, KDE, MetaBrainz, OpenMRS, RTEMS, SCoRe, Sugar Labs, Systers, Ubuntu, and Wikimedia.
-
Web Browsers
-
Mozilla
-
With Mozilla’s recent Firefox 42 Web browser release, a new tracking protection feature became available to Mozilla’s users. Now Mozilla is extending its protections even further with the new Focus by Firefox app, which is available now in the Apple App Store as a free content blocker for iOS 9 users running the Safari Web browser.
-
Farewell Firefox OS smartphones. Mozilla today announced an end to its smartphone experiment, and said that it would stop developing and selling Firefox OS smartphones. It will continue to experiment on how it might work on other connected devices and Internet of Things networks.
-
I first started writing about FirefoxOS when it was called Boot2Gecko. The idea was sound, a mobile operating system that uses the web to deliver the web and web applications.
Unfortunately good ideas don’t always turn into good business. Mozilla was not able to push FirefoxOS through the crowded mobile landscape dominated by IOS and Android at the top end. Smaller efforts like Blackberry, Windows mobile, Tizen and even Ubuntu Phone have all been trying to gain share against the Android and IOS too, but little movement occurs.
-
Mozilla announced at the Mozlando developer conference in Florida that it has officially abandoned attempts to get a foothold in the smartphone market with its Firefox OS system.
“We are proud of the benefits Firefox OS added to the Web platform and will continue to experiment with the user experience across connected devices. We will build everything we do as a genuine open source project, focused on user experience first and build tools to enable the ecosystem to grow,” said Ari Jaaksi, SVP of Connected Devices at Mozilla in a statement to El Reg.
-
-
Mozilla made the announcement earlier today that they are ending Firefox OS. However, there is some unrelated bright news today for Firefox fans.
Mozilla has announced that in 2016 they will begin shipping components of Rust and Servo in Firefox! It’s been confirmed by the official @RustLang, the account for this programming language backed by Mozilla.
-
-
The results of our latest poll have been tallied and FOSS Force readers evidently think that Mozilla should keep Thunderbird instead of helping the project find a new home. Mozilla executive chairperson, Mitchell Baker, announced on November 30 that the foundation intended to eventually separate itself from the popular desktop email client it first released in 2004.
-
SaaS/Big Data
-
-
As many of you have found out, I am relatively willing to help people out with Keystone related questions. Here are a couple guidelines.
Don’t ask me support questions here on the blog. I’ll lie or make something up and you will never know it. Instead, ask in #openstack-keystone if you can find me on IRC or on the #openstack or #oepnstack-dev mailing list with [keystone] in the title. I might not answer, but someone that knows will. Or someone that doesn’t know, will answer, and I’ll correct the answer, and then someone else will correct my correction.
-
CMS
-
Version 4.4 of WordPress, named “Clifford” in honor of jazz trumpeter Clifford Brown, is available for download or update in your WordPress dashboard. New features in 4.4 make your site more connected and responsive. Clifford also introduces a new default theme, Twenty Sixteen.
-
today I’ll show you how you can make your website more useful for your readers by installing more plugins to your WordPress site. In this article you will know how to install WordPress plugins.
-
In this article you will know more about responsive WordPress themes and also how important these themes are for your site ranking in the search engines. So let’s dive in and discuss responsive WordPress themes.
-
More than 3,000 people contribute to the core Drupal codebase that provides a base level of functionality with a modular architecture. Over 10,000 developers contribute and maintain more than 25,000 contributed open source modules that modify and extend the core capabilities, changing behavior, adding new features, and integrating Drupal with other systems. Users can add their own modules, as well as third-party PHP libraries, and leverage a lot of existing functionality, so they can focus on their unique needs, branding and design, and business logic to get up and running quickly.
-
Education
-
I stared at a blinking cursor when confronted with the question, “Your profession and position?”
It can be difficult to define the entire spectrum of my role at Reglue. Yeah, I am founder and executive director, but outside of that, in the real world where people are identified by their professional roles, how do I answer such a question?
-
Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)
-
-
EMC open sources more storage software [Ed: only mere components; also recall the back doors fiasco of RSA, owned by EMC]
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Apple’s open source release of OS X (aka Darwin) has been around since 2000 and usually arrives in the weeks following the public release of OS X.
-
-
-
-
FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
-
We’ve put together a gorgeous 2015 Giving Guide to encourage people to shop ethically for tech gifts, just as they might for other kinds of gifts. Now it’s time to get it into the hands of holiday shoppers! In what is now an FSF tradition, we’ll be in elf and gnu costumes at Davis Square, handing out print copies of the Giving Guide to people buying their loved ones presents for Christmas, Hanukkah, and everything else.
-
Licensing
-
Should governments be able to force source code to be open? Arguably, yes. But the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement prevents authorities from requiring that, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation warned recently. As a result, the TPP places severe restrictions on open source software.
-
Openness/Sharing
-
Open Data
-
Last week, the Dutch Minister of the Interior, Ronald Plasterk sent the government’s National Open Data Agenda (NODA) in a letter to the Dutch parliament. The agenda aims to make as many high-value datasets as possible available for re-use. It will provide tools to keep track of progress and quality, and support for data managers in opening up their datasets.
-
Open Hardware
-
Users looking to connect their existing smart home setup to Apple’s HomeKit ecosystem can turn to Homebridge, an open-source tool that brings voice control to popular devices from Nest, Sonos and others.
-
Programming
-
It was a 1 day workshop the day before PyCon and it took place in Fit Vut (Faculty of Information Technology). There were several reasons I applied for it:
it’s free;
it’s for women;
you don’t have to be an experienced programmer. In fact the only requirement was to have a laptop;
it’s an amazing opportunity to learn some code and get guidance;
you can meet many great people from open source community.
-
Standards/Consortia
-
The Italian government agency Agenzia per Italia Digital (agID) has been asked by the European Commission to preside over a working group to address the interoperability of public data and public services, the agency said on its blog. The work of the agency was presented during a Share-PSI workshop in Berlin on November 25 and 26. The main topic of this workshop was “maximising interoperability — core vocabularies, location-aware data and more”.
-
Hardware
-
Samsung has always been at the forefront of technology, making advances which are well out of reach of most companies. Their latest is 128GB DDR4 Ram.
-
Security
-
-
IDG Enterprise’s latest cloud computing study is out, and it points to robust trends in the cloud market for next year. The study summary is found here, and you can view a related infographic. Today, according to study findings, 72% of organizations have at least one application in the cloud or a portion of their computing infrastructure in the cloud, and they are not stopping there. Here are more details.
-
-
-
The malware uses a configuration file encrypted through the XOR algorithm to make it difficult for security firms to detect Rekoobe. According to a blog post on the Dr. Web website, “Once the file is read, the Trojan periodically refers to the C&C server to receive commands.”
-
It doesn’t matter how good your computer security systems are if your users just let attackers know how to log in. Social engineering is the black art of persuading victims to tell you everything you need to know to break into their computers. Sometimes this can mean persuading them to hand over usernames or passwords, sometimes it can mean granting you physical access to their computer, and sometimes it can mean deleting any incriminating evidence. In truth, the skilled social engineer can persuade victims to bypass all sorts of computer security that would be hard to compromise using just technical means.
-
-
Adobe abandoned active development for the Flash Player on Linux a while back and is now only releasing security upgrades. The company just released a massive security update, and it looks like the Linux platform is covered as well.
-
In what some might see as swimming against the political mainstream, the Netherlands parliament has just decided to back open-source web security with hard cash.
-
The Netherlands’ Lower House has thrown its weight behind a plan to improve key open source security solutions, and has voted €500,000 towards a range of projects.
-
Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
-
Germany’s vice-chancellor has publicly accused Saudi Arabia of financing terrorists in the West.
Sigmar Gabriel claimed the country was funding mosques linked to extremism, which he said were becoming a threat to public security.
-
Where could Trump have gotten the idea that his “infantile threats of massive bombing” would be taken seriously as foreign policy proposals? Well, as a resident of New York City, maybe he reads the New York Times…
-
Environment/Energy/Wildlife
-
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has suffered the loss of another major corporate sponsor, the Guardian reported Tuesday, with the electric utility American Electric Power (AEP) announcing it will no longer provide the climate change denial group with funding from 2016.
AEP becomes the 107th identified corporation to have withdrawn funding since the Center for Media and Democracy launched the ALEC Exposed project in 2011, joining others such as Shell, BP, Google, Microsoft and Facebook.
The loss of AEP will be particularly troubling for ALEC. AEP lobbyist Paul Loeffelman is still listed on the ALEC website as the private sector chairman for the group’s Energy, Environment and Agriculture task force. This task force is the arm of ALEC promoting climate change denial to state legislators and driving its anti-environmental agenda, which includes working to block President Obama’s Clean Power Plan and oppose the development of renewable energy in the United States.
-
But Sir David has warned that future generations of holidaymakers could soon be unable to enjoy the same experience because of the damage global warming is doing to the reef.
Speaking at a screening of his new documentary on the reef at Australia House in London last week, he said: ‘The real danger is the rising temperatures and acidity and the effect that has – if the acidity grows to a certain limit it will damage the coral itself.
-
Finance
-
A monthlong Gizmodo investigation has uncovered compelling and perplexing new evidence in the search for Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin. According to a cache of documents provided to Gizmodo which were corroborated in interviews, Craig Steven Wright, an Australian businessman based in Sydney, and Dave Kleiman, an American computer forensics expert who died in 2013, were involved in the development of the digital currency.
-
Even as his face towered 10 feet above the crowd at the Bitcoin Investor’s Conference in Las Vegas, Craig Steven Wright was, to most of the audience of crypto and finance geeks, a nobody.
The 44-year-old Australian, Skyping into the D Hotel ballroom’s screen, wore the bitcoin enthusiast’s equivalent of camouflage: a black blazer and a tieless, rumpled shirt, his brown hair neatly parted. His name hadn’t made the conference’s list of “featured speakers.” Even the panel’s moderator, a bitcoin blogger named Michele Seven, seemed concerned the audience wouldn’t know why he was there. Wright had hardly begun to introduce himself as a “former academic who does research that no one ever hears about,” when she interrupted him.
-
Police have raided the home of an Australian tech entrepreneur identified by two US publications as one of the early developers of the digital currency bitcoin.
On Wednesday afternoon, police gained entry to a home belonging to Craig Wright, who had hours earlier been identified in investigations by Gizmodo and Wired, based on leaked transcripts of legal interviews and files. Both publications have indicated that they believe Wright to have been involved in the creation of the cryptocurrency.
-
It seems that there will be a rare UK debate about TTIP tomorrow. This is a great opportunity to contact your MPs and let them know what you think. Here’s what I’ve just sent – you can use WritetoThem to make things easier.
-
PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
-
Back on September 17, as Donald Trump basked in the post-Labor Day glow of being the Republican Party’s undisputed frontrunner, he spoke to a boisterous crowd in New Hampshire and took a question from an especially boisterous fan. “We have a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims. We know our current president is one. You know he’s not even an American,” said the Trump t-shirt-wearing man. “We have training camps growing where they want to kill us. That’s my question: When can we get rid of them?”
-
Privacy
-
Back in October, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to approve CISA, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, which has nothing to with cybersecurity at all, and is almost entirely a surveillance bill in disguise. Want to know the proof: many of the most vocal supporters of CISA, who talked up how important “cybersecurity” is these days are the very same people now looking to undermine encryption.
-
The Obama administration just responded to the 104,109 people who asked the president to stand up for strong encryption. The response—penned by Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer Ed Felton [sic] and Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel—acknowledged the importance of the conversation but offered no conclusions. Instead, they asked us to share our thoughts on encryption.
-
On Friday the FBI classified the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, as “an act of terrorism”. Tashfeen Malik and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, don’t seem to have been in direct contact with ISIS, but the extremist militant group called the couple “supporters” on Saturday.
-
As of last week, the National Security Agency can no longer cull through Americans’ phone records, but it can continue to eavesdrop on our emails, video chats, and documents. The NSA can keep metadata already collected until Feb. 29, 2016, and your phone data will continue to be collected by telecom companies.
But the fact that phone records can no longer be easily searched is nearly meaningless to the world of cloud computing. If the data is still up for grabs — and it is — then we’re likely to have the same concerns we did before the USA Freedom Act that curtailed some of the NSA’s activities last week.
-
After we gave it some more thought, we realized we were hypocrites. Since inception, SpiderOak has been an advocate for online privacy. Unlike many others in our market, we strive to be very clear about how our product design truly delivers Zero Knowledge privacy for our users. We tell potential supporters, what matters most is who has the keys and how they are stored. But you can read more about how we solved those problems from our many other posts our site.
For the past five years, we had been using Google Analytics for monitoring our web traffic. Innocent enough decision, right? Then we asked ourselves, “are we contributing to the mass surveillance of the web by using a feature-rich, yet free service that tracks web visitors?” Sadly. we didn’t like the answer to that question. “Yes, by using Google Analytics, we are furthering the erosion of privacy on the web.”
-
Privacy and encryption have been two very hot topics for the last few years. The Tor browser can help protect your privacy while online, but it may come at the cost of being spied on by the NSA.
-
Worried about the NSA monitoring you? If you take certain steps to mask your identity online, such as using the encryption service TOR, or even investigating an alternative to the buggy Windows operating system, you’re all but asking for “deep” monitoring by the NSA.
-
Civil Rights
-
The Henry Jackson Society seconds staff to the Quilliam Foundation. This extraordinary organisation is a career vehicle for “reformed jihadists” to milk huge salaries and luxury lifestyles from government money, in return for fronting an organisation run by the security services. Quilliam specialises in denouncement of Muslim organisations and talking up the Jihadi threat, offering “expert advice” on the government’s anti-free speech strategy. At the same time, it seeks to maximise the income of its directors. One interesting collaboration to make money was its collaboration with the current head of Pergida UK, and former head of the English Defence League, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (Alias Tommy Robinson).
Quilliam have received millions from the taxpayer for their dubious “work”. But their application for Home Office funding to split with Yaxley-Lennon remains an episode beyond belief. Several of Quilliam’s staff are “lent” by the CIA-funded Henry Jackson Society.
-
Jacob Appelbaum read a powerful statement at this year’s Aaron Swartz Day Celebration. I’m still processing everything he revealed to us that night.
-
The Internet is a diverse ecosystem of private and public stakeholders. By excluding a large sector of communities—like security researchers, artists, libraries, and user rights groups—trade negotiators skewed the priorities of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) towards major tech companies and copyright industries that have a strong interest in maintaining and expanding their monopolies of digital services and content. Negotiated in secret for several years with overwhelming influence from powerful multinational corporate interests, it’s no wonder that its provisions do little to nothing to protect our rights online or our autonomy over our own devices. For example, everything in the TPP that increases corporate rights and interests is binding, whereas every provision that is meant to protect the public interest is non-binding and is susceptible to get bulldozed by efforts to protect corporations.
-
Despite al this, I would not be tremendously concerned about the result if Alistair had the decency to be a bit chastened by it. It is only because of our ridiculously undemocratic electoral system that representation is so skewed. You didn’t ought to get over 95% of the seats on 52% of the votes, and I am not sure what is gained by magnifying that other wrong. But any mixed feelings I have on those grounds are dispelled by the utterly inappropriate triumphalism the Lib Dems are displaying, as though to be found a blatant liar by a court is something to be proud of. The brass neck of it all is sickening.
-
-
News Corporation and 21st Century Fox executive co-chairman Rupert Murdoch cited “radical Muslim dangers” to endorse a “complete refugee pause” one day after Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump called for a total ban on Muslims immigrating to or visiting the United States.
On December 7, Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United states until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on,” citing a flawed poll from an Islamophobic organization to claim that Muslims are a danger to America.
-
Internet/Net Neutrality
-
All of our YouTube party playlists and Netlix-and-chill date nights are starting to add up: streaming video now accounts for 70 percent of broadband usage, according to data newly released by broadband services company Sandvine.
This statistic might look pretty innocuous and simple on its face, but our dependence on massive amounts of data for our daily use has some dangerous implications. Because cable providers would rather you be watching actual cable programming versus streaming shows from Hulu and Netflix, they impose arbitrary data caps on your Internet usage, like the ones Comcast has been quietly implementing in markets across the country. You end up shelling out for something that costs the providers next to nothing.
[...]
And T-Mobile isn’t the only culprit: on the broadband side, Comcast is launching its own streaming service that—you guessed it—won’t count toward your household’s data cap. This practice, called “zero-rating,” is as much a threat to net neutrality as anything else has been, directing consumers to certain data channels and making the free market less free.
-
Intellectual Monopolies
-
Copyrights
-
Today, the European Commission has presented its proposal to reform copyright law in the European Union. This package includes a proposal for a regulation on portability of online services, as well as a communication to announcing future reforms to follow in 2016. The European Commission has thus confirmed that it does not wish to reopen the file on the InfoSoc directive 1, reflecting its reluctance and lack of ambition on this issue.
-
-
It has been obvious for decades that copyright law is ill-matched for the opportunities and challenges created by the Internet. It’s been equally obvious, however, that sensible copyright policies face huge practical barriers, in large part because few are willing to challenge the default assumption of copyright law that every time a copy is made the rightsholder’s permission is required. That assumption makes no sense in the digital age, but it’s hugely difficult to dislodge, especially at the international stage.
-
Leaks from a confidential auditor report into the activities of bankrupt anti-piracy law firm Johan Schlüter suggest that the company defrauded its entertainment industry clients out of $25m. One lawyer was singled out for most criticism after enriching both herself and family members.
-
People selling unwanted eBooks online have been warned that their activities could result in six months imprisonment. However, anti-piracy group BREIN, the alleged sender of the threats, says it is not responsible. Nevertheless, given a legal case to be heard next week, the timing is certainly curious.
-
New data published by Canadian broadband management company Sandvine reveals that BitTorrent can be credited for a quarter of all upstream Internet traffic in North America, more than any other traffic source. With heavy competition from Netflix and other real-time entertainment, BitTorrent’s overall traffic share is falling.
Permalink
Send this to a friend