11.13.11
Posted in Antitrust, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Patents at 11:27 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Coordination of Microsoft thugs no better than the mafia
Photo by Luca Sartoni
Summary: Why the modus operandi of Microsoft (against Linux) is mostly overlooked because of proxies that it uses to distance itself from attacks
BASED on the comments we received yesterday, people misunderstood the basis of our complaint. Microsoft is breaking the law like Capone broke the law. Microsoft uses thugs to go and beat up the competition. If a company does not pay Microsoft “protection money”, then Microsoft will send some trolls. Microsoft’s patent troll Nathan Myhrvold does the same thing and should accordingly come under criminal/federal investigation (as already suggested by some of his victims).
When B&N complained about Microsoft abuses it did not neglect to mention this important point. MOSAID, for example, is one of those thugs [1, 2, 3] that Microsoft along with its mole Stephen Elop are arming. As one article from a Linux site put it, “Barnes and Noble petitions Nokia over Microsoft deal”. To quote:
Barnes & Noble has subpoenaed Nokia in its defense against Microsoft’s Android-related patent infringement claims, following its petition to the U.S. Department of Justice to look into Microsoft’s patent behavior for possible antitrust violations. In other patent-related news, Microsoft and Huawei are negotiating on a patent agreement, say reports.
When we say that Microsoft is breaking the law, it is essential to understand why and perhaps actually read the B&N complaint. One of our US-based members is currently preparing a petition to the White House about this. █
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Posted in Antitrust, Europe, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 11:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Negative pricing and retaliatory offerings from a convicted monopolist with antitrust violations — is that the ‘new’ Microsoft?
WHEN Microsoft paid people to use its Google scraper (known as "Bong") journalists called it a "bribe" and it failed anyway (Microsoft loses billions per year online). Microsoft wanted to be able to spy on more Internet users for all sorts of purposes. Now, we also know that Microsoft uses Internet Explorer to spy on users by keeping track of all the pages they visit. But this browser is failing pretty badly, so what does Microsoft do? Bribe ‘em:
Somewhere along the line, Microsoft went from being the 800-pound gorilla in the browser market to begging users to switch back to Internet Explorer. Now, Microsoft is running a “where’s the love?” campaign to offer “free stuff” for users who download IE9. After all these years, hasn’t Microsoft learned yet that it can’t buy love? Is the company capable of competing on features at all?
While IE may hold a lead over Firefox, Chrome and Safari individually, it’s trounced by the trio overall.
There are several articles about it out there. Microsoft gets slammed for trying to merely buy its userbase and thus deprive smaller companies, removing their rivals’ customers to the point where they are in mortal danger. This is monopoly abuse. There is some other interesting news today which very much screams “EDGI”. Assuming this report is accurate, Microsoft is offering ‘free’ stuff to derail its Free/open source competition, which again, is definitely monopoly abuse and ought to be investigated. To quote:
Free Microsoft upgrade when you threaten open source?
Qamar Yunus, assistant director in the Cabinet Office ICT policy team, says that Microsoft provided its software for free when a government department decided to pilot open source LibreOffice as an alternative to upgrading its Microsoft software.
Yunus was making the point that considering open source helps improve competition. He added, though, that open source should be considered properly rather than simply as a negotiating tool, according to Guardian Government Computing.
Yunus was speaking at EHI Live in Birmingham. He said that extensive research has established that neither departments nor system integrators understand open source.
He was also reported as saying that the ‘myth’ that open source was less secure than proprietary had been dispelled, and every government department was now mandated to look at both proprietary and open source software.
Antitrust officials should take action against this. If they disregard monopoly-related rules, then what good is the rule of law anyway? █
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Posted in Bill Gates, Deception, Microsoft at 11:06 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Caution: lobbying on the BBC
Summary: The establishment which was supposed to be taxpayers-funded (to serve taxpayers of course) is broadcasting propaganda funded by one of the world’s most infamous abusive monopolists and shady lobbyists
THIS POST is being written just 100 meters away from the BBC at Media City UK, where a lot of footage is done to promote public understanding of the world, at the expense of people who pay TV tax.
It is truly troubling that the BBC lost sight of its goals, yet again. It is now taking money from billionaires (through their front groups) for what can only be described as “placements”. They piggyback the reputation of the BBC to deceive the public, glorify themselves, and create a financial dependency (strings) in an establishment that operates worldwide, supposedly informing people.
It has been years since we last showed the great number of Microsoft UK executives who moved to the BBC. The bias of the BBC was accordingly noted and now we discover that yet more money is being funnelled from Bill Gates to the BBC in exchange for coverage:
A television health show supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation launched on BBC World News last week. The 26-part weekly magazine programme, called The Health Show, reports on global health issues from areas vulnerable to specific conditions.
This is part of the Gates PR campaign, which in turn aids lobbying and allows him to market particular patents or run the world the way he wants to. The post-Microsoft Gates is in many ways more dangerous than that man who was grilled for (and found guilty of) criminal business activities. His PR operating is currently trying to dismiss critics as “ill informed”, armed with empty and arrogant rhetoric.
As Gates Keepers put it:
Gates Keepers find it odd that this chronic problem with the Gates Foundation is being framed and labelled as a value-free ‘communication problem’. Institutional values are involved. Perhaps it is a mission problem, a leadership problem, or even an attitudinal problem. Or all three or none of them.
But the focus on a ‘communication problem’ with grantees does not allow for discussion of a far greater issue – the relationships between the Foundation and other institutions & between the Foundation and its beneficiaries around the world.
This whole “communication problem” line is not new. We saw it used before. it’s worse than the “rotten apple” line, which companies typically use to excuse themselves when they are caught in a major scandal. The author gives several examples of the whitewash. These are example that he gives of Gates-funded publications that push this form of apologism while one talks about the real issue, concluding:
Perhaps the reason this issue has become such a chronic refrain isn’t due to the lack of coming up with some new plan, or timeline or committee-designed set of principles, as it is about developing a new mindset.
As a journalist who’s been covering the Gates Foundation for more than a decade, I’ve seen it evolve from an upstart start-up philanthropy run by just a handful of people — who were actually pretty bold, outspoken and perhaps even a bit reckless — into a massive, fairly bureaucratic and apparently risk-averse organization.
The Gates Foundation has no “communication” problem. When you are doing selfish things that harm society, then it is simply hard to communicate it positivity, even when you spend a million dollars (or more) per day on media coverage that is warped, corrupted, and essentially just a case of ghost-writing/PR/placements. █
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Posted in Bill Gates, Microsoft, Steve Ballmer at 10:53 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: News suggests that more people from Microsoft (not just Raikes and Gates) are occupying the obligatory system which shapes the next generation at taxpayers’ expense
INJUSTICE is prevalent when the legal system is operated directly or indirectly by those who are affluent. Such status quo would be prejudiced against those who are unable to pay. Tax law is similarly dependent on the influence of money, which means that those who are very rich will make up ways to pay little or no tax. This is a famous problem in the United States of America and increasingly in the UK too. People pay more tax the richer they are but once they get to a certain level they can become almost tax-exempt, using loophole which they lobbied to create and call “legal”.
“Additionally, Gates uses the publicly-funded education system to do what it tells everyone to do.”So-called foundations make the situation ever more outrageous because they glorify those who do not pay tax and sometimes help rob the public, too. Citing this article, Gates Keepers alleges that “The public subsidises the Gates Foundation” — a subject that we covered here before. To repeat the crux of the argument, what the Gates Foundation is doing is lobbying politicians to funnel taxpayers’ money into companies that the foundation invests in for profit. It is about monopolies, patents, and public subsidies. We gave many examples and showed how this is done.
Additionally, Gates uses the publicly-funded education system to do what it tells everyone to do. These acts are an injury and an insult to future generations, which Gates believes he is responsible for along with fellow plutocrats, shaping the minds of children not for critical thinking but for obedience and admiration of those in power (like himself).
There is a new article titled “The Money Behind the School Board Incumbents”. It is one among many recent articles that portray Bill Gates as the villain in the education scene. They know he is up to no good, a self-servitude of sorts that also buys the media to hide those real interests. To quote:
All the School Board incumbents are supported by zillionaire donors who don’t have children in our schools. Most live on the Eastside. They generously funded The Seattle Foundation to bring Teach for America into Seattle Public Schools. Most also backed the defeat of Initiative 1098. The anti-1098 donors include Steve and Connie Ballmer, Matt Griffin, Evelyne Rozner, John Stanton, and James Faulstich. In addition to backing TFA and the incumbents, Connie Ballmer sits on the WA advisory board of Stand For Children, a national lobbying organization that aggressively promotes charter schools. Jeff Raikes, CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and his wife Patricia did not donate to defeat I-1098, but they support TFA, charter schools and the incumbents. The same holds true for John Faulstich.
What if any connection is there between defeating Initiative 1098, supporting Teach for America, Stand for Children and the incumbent School Board Directors?
First– why the opposition to I-1098 from anyone who supports public education? Initiative 1098 would have provided $2 billion a year as a trust fund dedicated to public education, health services and middle class tax relief. The year I-1098 was filed, Seattle Public Schools had a budget shortfall of $34 million. It’s safe to assume these people don’t want a miniscule portion of their ginormous incomes to support public education as it is now. They must have another plan.
Teach for America provides public and charter schools with conditionally certified teachers who have received a total of five weeks of training during the summer. Charter schools hire many of their teachers through Teach for America. Wendy Kopp, founder, CEO and relentless marketer of TFA draws an annual salary of $660,000, paid for by funds presumably raised for public education. TFA also received $50mil from the Obama administration last year. TFA is very much a part of a national movement to privatize and profit from public education through charter schools.
[...]
The challengers in this race are trying to move us beyond this phase of Ed Reform to the next. Our vision of effective Ed Reform is about meeting the individual needs of our students, rather than imposing a one-size-fits-all standardized education. We must increase pathways to success by offering compelling programs that engage students all the way through high school, and help them prepare for the futures they want. We must improve our curricula and give struggling students more support. We must open up our district to far greater community input and control. We need to restore more choice to our student assignment plan. And we can do it all without diverting public funds into the pockets of people like Wendy Kopp and others who profit from charter schools.
We found it most interesting that even the Ballmers are in it now. Ballmer’s wife is a PR person (professionally), which says a lot on its own. These couples also sponsored Obama's PR campaign, which got him elected. Ballmer routinely visits the White House now. We gave examples in the past.
Here is another new article critical of Gates, despite his sponsorship of education news sites (with aim of influencing coverage). The headline says Bill Gates’ Big Play: How Much Can Money Buy in Education?
What would happen if one of the wealthiest men in the world decided to remake the institution of public education in America? What if that man believed he understood the secrets to success, and sought to align the nation’s schools to his vision and methods? What if he decided to devote all his time and considerable money to this objective? Could he succeed? We are in the process of finding out just how far money and a sharply defined agenda can take you.
Why is Gates deciding on educational policy in public education? This is a person who went to prestigious private schools and sends his kids to these. There is a poor article titled “Bill Gates: Poverty not excuse for no education”. So says the man who was born rich and didn’t finish college. Here is a copy of it (the original expired):
Bill Gates: Poverty not excuse for no education
Microsoft founder Bill Gates told the National Urban League on Thursday that a child’s success should not depend on the race or income of parents and that poverty cannot be an excuse for a poor education.
This is just the usual shallow coverage from AP, but what’s troubling here is different; who is he to talk for the poor? Or to demand better education/results from these people? Just because he is wealthy and employs lobbying groups to run a lot of things (for profit) does not make him a figure of legitimate authority. The AP not only parrots or promotes his so-called ‘studies’ (sponsored propaganda, as we showed before in AP). In this case it also lends to the man’s status by quoting him as though he is an education expert. This is truly troubling. But the BBC is worse. We’ll deal with that next. █
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Posted in News Roundup at 6:10 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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Clearly, GNU/Linux has a dominant position in China by this measure. With hundreds of millions soon to gain access to IT in China, GNU/Linux has a bright future.
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Audiocasts/Shows
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Kernel Space
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Floating around the Linux kernel mailing list information is some new data about the evolution of the Linux kernel’s size. Obviously, it’s getting larger.
Jérôme Pinot took the size of every Linux kernel (the .tar.bz2 package) since Linux 1.0 and through the recent Linux 3.1 kernel release and plotted it out. It’s comparing the size of the kernel versus the release number (not against the time). His findings are that “Impressive, it’s mostly exponential. If dev keeps same pace, we should break the 100MB at linux 3.19.”
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This blog post isn’t only directed to ThinkPad owners as most notebook Linux users with Intel Core Duo 1/2 and i3/i5/i7 processors have been affected by this bug if not all. And yes, this problem is present on latest Debian Unstable and Ubuntu 11.10.
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Graphics Stack
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Many Phoronix readers have written in asking about the news this week concerning HTC joining the Open Invention Network. In particular, many Phoronix readers are interested in HTC joining OIN due to their acquisition of S3 Graphics earlier in the year and the accumulated graphics IP portfolio.
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Applications
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Instructionals/Technical
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The Fedora Project recently released Fedora 16 (“Verne”), featuring GNOME 3.2, as well as virtualization and cloud enhancements including Aeolus and OpenStack integration. Fedora 16 upgrades to Linux 3.1, the GRUB2 bootloader finally shows up, and Firefox 7.0.1, while offering improved system settings, plus enhanced contact and document management apps.
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Games
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Clothing retailers better listen up, because Jens Nilsson and his team at Frictional Games have discovered a way to make a good chunk of gamers go out and buy a new, unsoiled pair of trousers. The indie developer’s previous effort, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, is regarded by some as one of the scariest games of all time, and the Penumbra trilogy that preceded it shares its innovative control scheme and focus on realism and physics-driven puzzles. Spurred by Amnesia’s unexpected success, the team is already hard at work on their next project, and the next iteration of their “HPL” engine.
I almost didn’t manage to speak to Jens at our arranged time on Tuesday; I had issues with our Internet connection and wasn’t able to keep our Skype appointment, and it was merely by the stroke of luck that I managed to get his telephone number and call him at his home in Helsinborg, Sweden. He’s currently the CEO of the eight-person team, handling both audio and scripting for their games’ development process, as well as “all the boring stuff with the company”, like administration and so on. He’s one of the team’s two original founders, and his passion for video games is obvious.
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Desktop Environments
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For some time, I have been noticing that KDE Display Manager (KDM) slows down after every version bump. I was of the idea that this was because KDE was becoming bloated. However, CPU usage of KDE had started declining after version 4.4. So, I was sure that KDE was actually not getting hung up in the background any more. However, till 4.7 the KDM load time kept increasing. As a matter of fact, after the recent update, KDM became so slow that I had to restart my system twice before actually getting to KDM. In fact, during the first two restarts, I was thinking that my installation was broken after the update.
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)
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In fact the feature was finished some weeks ago with a complete transition to KWin. Unfortunately it turned out that there is one possible situation for a race condition which could lead to a desktop being unlocked in the worst case if KWin crashes. Of course it would not be possible to trigger a crash when the screen is locked, but KWin relies and integrates libraries which are out of our own control (e.g. think of drivers).
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With this release, there is a DVD and a CD installation image. The CD image contains very few applications, while the DVD image is relatively loaded. This review is based on test installations of the DVD image on real hardware and in a virtual environment.
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New Releases
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Directly from our “Breaking Stuff” dept., three new Sabayon 7 releases have seen the light!
These releases all go under the “Experimental” umbrella, not that because
* LXDE is a minimal, CD-sized flavour geared towards low-end computers, shipping the LXDE Desktop Environment.
* E17 is a minimal, CD-sized flavour made for people wanting to showcase the magic of Enlightenment 17.
* Awesome is a first timer here, thanks to Brian Tomlinson efforts, Sabayon has now an Awesome WM flavour as well.
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Parted Magic lead developer Patrick J. Verner has announced the release of version 11.11.11 of his open source, multi-platform partitioning tool. Based on the Linux 3.1 kernel, the new release introduces a new versioning system (the previous version was 6.7) and upgrades a number of the included applications.
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You can download SoaS v6 via bittorrent or direct downloads by heading over to this page. The accompanying installation instructions for various operating systems are available here.
As you can see from the screenshot above I gave SoaS a spin around the block using VirtualBox on my Windows 7 laptop and it worked like a charm. As I have access to XOs I personally don’t need SoaS that often but I do use it occassionally to show off Sugar during presentations or talks I give.
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PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family
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PCLinuxOS has been around since 2003. It started off as a set of RPM packages to improve Mandrake (now Mandriva) Linux. Eventually it grew and changed and became a standalone distro in it’s own right.
PCLinuxOS uses APT-RPM as it’s package management system. Basically, it uses APT and Synaptic, but on RPM packages instead of DEB. It’s used a variety of desktop environments in it’s time, but currently (version 2011.09), KDE is the only desktop environment available officially.
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Red Hat Family
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Fedora
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Jared Smith has been associated with the Fedora Project for several years and currently is the Project Leader. In an exclusive interview with devworx, he spoke on Fedora 16, the btrfs filesystem, other Linux projects and more! Jared said his role is all about bridging the gap between the Fedora user community, developers and Red Hat. To Red Hat as a company, he represents the Fedora community, while to the Fedora community, he represents Red Hat. That way, the bridges of communication always stay open in the community side as well as the corporate side.
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I admit, my brief tryst with Fedora 16 the other night has been stuck in my mind. It was good. Really good. I guess I had a few preconceptions going in. When you go with IBM, when you date that FBI agent, or that covert military assassin, you just expect some kind of perfection. They’ve got to have hard-core discipline, they had to work everything out well in advance. A downright ruthless execution in the name of perfection.
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So, I also updated and here are my impressions 
XFCE live cd works like a breeze, installation went smooth. I even got wifi (broadcomm) working out of box (suspend works for me too, btw.)! GRUB 2 seems nice, although it associated detected kernels with the newly installed Fedora. Still better than nothing from grub 1 >:-D Now for the system itself. GDM suck. It sucks hard. As soon as I installed some of gnome as deps it started putting gnome instead of xfce to session. It also does not seem to allow for keyboard and language selection. I need to switch to LXDM or try out LightDM soon… XFCE works as expected, after copying old configuration and installing apps I use, almost everything seems to work.
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For those who wonder “what updates are already pushed out”, there aren’t that many updates for Fedora 16, which I suppose is a good indicator of its stability at release. My update was 55MB, and took only a few minutes while I did other things.
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Debian Family
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Commodore OS Vision stands on the shoulders of giants, with a lineage that traces back to fantastic linux operating system distributions such as Debian, Ubuntu and Mint, which you might also be interested in installing on our machines. Commodore OS Vision auto-installs a graphical operating system boot menu facilitating this further, making your new Commodore machine a technology tinkerers delight.
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Canonical is in a hurry. After the successful release of Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, it’s time to plan for next, more important, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS release. Ubuntu 12.04 is codenamed “Precise Pangolin” and following are the important changes in the upcoming Ubuntu 12.04 release, as decided upon during recently concluded Ubuntu Developer Summit.
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Do you want to know if your computer will work with Ubuntu? Head to Ubuntu Friendly to quickly find out. It’s an ever-growing database of computers known to work flawlessly with everyone’s favorite Linux-based operating system. Do you want to help make that website useful? Run the system test on your computer running Ubuntu right now. You will run tests on your wireless card, your sound and more.
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I am looking to hire a new member for my team (the Community Team) here at Canonical. I am looking for a bright, motivated, and experienced person to build, maintain and develop a cohesive, productive and effective Ubuntu QA community. I am looking for someone with solid QA experience particular in the areas of testing and defect management.
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Flavours and Variants
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Earlier preview added by LinuxMint shows quite the same new features mentioned on the release notes of Linux Mint 12 RC Lisa. Linux Mint 12 based on Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, It comes with Gnome 3 and Mint Gnome Shell Extension. MGSE featuring with the new bottom panel, applications menu, window list, visible system tray icons and a task-centric desktop allows you to easily switch with between running applications using Alt+Tab.
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Clement Lefebvre, father of the Linux Mint project, announced a few days ago that the upcoming Linux Mint 12 (Lisa) operating system will feature a new desktop interface built on top of the GNOME 3 desktop environment.
So, we’ve downloaded a development version of the Linux Mint 12 distribution and took it for a test drive, to see that amazing new interface everyone is talking about, that Unity killer.
To our surprise, it appears that Linux Mint 12′s new interface, called MGSE (Mint Gnime Shell Extensions) is actually a small modification of the GNOME 3′s GNOME Shell interface.
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I like Mint… it is not the distro I run on my own system, that is Ubuntu, but I am VERY impressed with Mint. This new version looks very cool. Time to play!
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Phones
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Android
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Occasionally, if you get stuck on a difficult word, there’s always the big fat dictionary waiting to be dusted off. But what if you find that process a tad old-fashioned? Don’t worry, you’re not the only one. These days, more and more people are using online dictionaries instead of the traditional paper-made ones to find synonyms, definitions and antonyms. Also, for looking up words on the go, there are a myriad of apps available for smartphones and tablets. So, if you’re an Android user and are looking for some good dictionary apps to try out, read on as we cover the best ones for the platform.
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Naughton made the same claim in March and again in August. It looks like nobody is listening to his dog whistling else he wouldn’t be at it for the third time in a calendar year.
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Over the next few months, dual-core phones with 720p HD displays will be the new standard by which all high-end Android phones will be judged. And it looks like SONY Ericsson is already at work on a new phone that will allow them to play with the big boys. Pictures, specs and benchmarks for the upcoming SONY Ericsson Nozomi (aka SONY Ericsson XPERIA Arc HD) made an appearance on the web this weekend, giving us a close look at what SE’s next generation handsets will look like.
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A leaked picture of a retail box for a Motorola “Corvair” has surfaced, indicating the company is prepping a small tablet/ TV controller. Likely to be tied with Google TV, the 6-inch Android 2.3-powered device is called a “dedicated controller” designed for the “connected TV”.
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Toys R Us is synonymous with kids, so you shouldn’t be surprised to hear they have teamed up with app developers to offer a kid-centric Android tablet. What is surprising is the price. Available for just $199, the Nabi tablet joins Amazon’s Kindle Fire as one of the few sub $200 dollar Android tablets available in the market today. While we all love a good price… what exactly are we getting with the Nabi tablet?
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Sub-notebooks/Tablets
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Asus announced the first quad-core Android tablet, featuring the newly shipping Nvidia Tegra 3 clocked to 1.3GHz. The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime is slimmer (0.33 inches) and lighter (1.29 pounds) than the original Transformer, and offers a 10.1-inch display,an eight-megapixel camera, and up to 12 hours of claimed battery life — or 18 hours when plugged into the optional keyboard dock.
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Web Browsers
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Mozilla
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Mozilla has released the first beta of Firefox 9, just days after the release of the eighth build of the popular open source browser.
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Databases
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Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
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Just over a year ago the open source Office Suite world was disturbed by indecision, much the same way world stock markets have been upset by uncertainty today. Oracle had purchased Sun Microsystems and with it the “ownership” of the open source office suite OpenOffice.org.
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The Free Software Conference and Exhibition 2011 organized by FSF.hu Foundation was held today in Budapest. With more than 500 participants, it was the biggest free software event in Hungary this year. I think it was a great success, there were many good presentations in 4 tracks, and there was also a room for workshops.
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Public Services/Government
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I have a fairly simple approach to investing: Start with data and objective evidence to determine the dominant elements driving the market action right now. Figure out what objective reality is beneath all of the noise. Use that information to try to make intelligent investing decisions.
But then, I’m an investor focused on preserving capital and managing risk. I’m not out to win the next election or drive the debate. For those who are, facts and data matter much less than a narrative that supports their interests.
One group has been especially vocal about shaping a new narrative of the credit crisis and economic collapse: those whose bad judgment and failed philosophy helped cause the crisis.
Rather than admit the error of their ways — Repent! — these people are engaged in an active campaign to rewrite history. They are not, of course, exonerated in doing so. And beyond that, they damage the process of repairing what was broken. They muddy the waters when it comes to holding guilty parties responsible. They prevent measures from being put into place to prevent another crisis.
Here is the surprising takeaway: They are winning. Thanks to the endless repetition of the Big Lie.
A Big Lie is so colossal that no one would believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. There are many examples: Claims that Earth is not warming, or that evolution is not the best thesis we have for how humans developed. Those opposed to stimulus spending have gone so far as to claim that the infrastructure of the United States is just fine, Grade A (not D, as the we discussed last month), and needs little repair.
Wall Street has its own version: Its Big Lie is that banks and investment houses are merely victims of the crash. You see, the entire boom and bust was caused by misguided government policies. It was not irresponsible lending or derivative or excess leverage or misguided compensation packages, but rather long-standing housing policies that were at fault.
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Finance
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Privacy
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Civil Rights
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A couple of days ago, the Associated Press reported that the Department of Homeland Security claims not to be “actively monitoring” social media networks like Facebook and Twitter. Lest you worry that status updates that present a threat to national security are going unread, the AP today reports that the Central Intelligence Agency is actively monitoring social media networks.
The story in the earlier article was that our sprawling intelligence and national security apparatus was caught off-guard by social media-fueled uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, and that they were going to take steps to be better prepared in the future.
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Copyrights
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This is about how over-budgeted media productions historically paid to license things they didn’t need to license, just because they had tons of money and their lawyers preferred to “play it safe” rather than claim Fair Use, which is how Fair Use became the weak pathetic limping layer of pointlessness it is today.
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