“Stimulus” isn’t so different from “looting” when put in perspective
Summary: What corporate media calls “looting” isn’t so different from what it euphemistically dubs “bailout” (except the latter is done at a scale one million times worse)
Summary: Partisan hacks have taken over the news cycles, feeding Internet trolls and chronic liars instead of publishing based on merit and accurate, verifiable truths (facts don’t sell as much as emotion, including anger/rage)
THE Web is changing. The Internet as a whole is changing. Not for the better…
Once upon a time we had journals, news sites (local and (inter)national corporate media) and various personal pages in sites such as Geocities (yes, I too had a site in Geocities back in the 1990s). But now we have this “Social [Control] Media” nonsense, which is neither social nor media. It’s sickening at times.
“But now we have this “Social [Control] Media” nonsense, which is neither social nor media.”A lot of remaining ‘journalism’ is little but a tweet (or cluster of tweets) with a headline. The skills required to compose articles have been significantly lowered. Many so-called ‘news’ ‘reports’ nowadays look more or less like Facebook posts. No investigation required. It’s all hearsay and claims, no fact-checking needed (it can only restrict the click-bait). The writers know something or nothing about the subject covered. Usually the latter… but their job isn’t to study issues but to act as amplifiers of some agenda (company, political party and so on) and people are accordingly agitated, divided (there’s no pursuit of truth, just partisan “tribes”) and we’re left with divided nations that speak more about race than class, more about wings than substance, more about money than human rights. Every time I try to visit the front page of the BBC it seems to serve no purpose other than repeating what Donald Trump and Boris Johnson say. Free pass. Facts-free…
Mouthpieces of governments and corporations… because might makes right and money is power.
An associate of ours, who participates heavily in Daily Links, can see the demise of journalism. “There aren’t that high or even medium-yield tech-related sites to check,” he told me. “There aren’t even that many tech-related sites to check. Yes, there are a handful of crap Microsoft infomercials like Ars, Wired, and PCWorld. NO, there is not much else dedicated to ICT. Although while many of the more mainstream sites cover more ICT than years past, they are all more or less clue-free in regards to policy and strategy issues.”
“We’ve long attempted to dodge all this binary “wing” thing; not being pro-Obama, or anti-Obama, or pro-Trump, or anti-Trump or whatever.”A lot of them still blame “computers” for Microsoft Windows issues; this is related to the series we recently did about hospitals.
Where does this leave us? We’ve long attempted to dodge all this binary “wing” thing; not being pro-Obama, or anti-Obama, or pro-Trump, or anti-Trump or whatever. It’s like a two-team sport. Too many sites, such as TechDirt, became just that. You pick a political side and then it’s all “good versus evil” (and each side is sure that the other is pure evil on each pertinent issue). Two days ago John Cleese shared this old video of his, which is now three decades old. Have a listen (sorry about the awful file format):
So here we are at the end of a First Wave of a pandemic and there are protests if not riots in the streets. Even here in the UK…
“Because hey, who needs meaningful news anyway? We just need something to get very angry about, right?”People are upset and to be fair many of them have legitimate grievances. But how many news outlet are covering the scandals of the European Patent Office (EPO)? When was Benoît Battistelli last mentioned in the media (not even once this year) and why is corruption of António Campinos and his colleagues being totally ignored? Why are software patents no longer condemned?
No, all that white-collar crime doesn’t matter as much as a British author “liking” a tweet about gender. Because hey, who needs meaningful news anyway? We just need something to get very angry about, right? Lynch mobs are a 'thing' now, supported by the media and primarily — at least initially — by Social Control Media, where hearsay is better than due process and good facts are superior to real facts. There’s only one site we’ll never link to and that’s Watchtroll; the other day it posted another misleading rant about 35 U.S.C. § 101 from a former (‘retired’) judge of the Federal Circuit, reinforcing the notion that former judges can become malicious lobbyists.
For those of us who still value what’s true and what truly matters (and no, tweets don’t matter all that much!) the shortlist of Web sites is getting ridiculously small. They might not be good at ‘selling’ stories, but their heart and art are in the right place. █
Summary: There’s that worrying trend which serves to distract from the really evil deeds of Bill Gates and sometimes helps him collectively paint his critics as “conspiracy theorists” (or “truthers”) and a threat to public health
Summary: Just like back in March, BMJV persists in fronting for litigation giants, both in defiance of the German constitution and in defiance of basic logic (as if justice isn’t the goal but merely an excuse by which to bypass the law)
FOLLOWING condemnations for an official acting utterly dismissive about the FCC’s decision back in March (tossing out FCC ratification by admitting and accepting the constitutional complaint), the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection (BMJV) issued the above statement, which is contemptible. Will EPO President António Campinos use that again for spin doctoring and will Benoît Battistelli have plans for Paris?
Probably not. The way we see it, BMJV mostly harms its own reputation and Germans too rightly complain about it. What good is a BMJV that deliberately ignores the German constitution? What part of “Justice” does it not understand?
“The way we see it, BMJV mostly harms its own reputation and Germans too rightly complain about it.”“Germany ignores Brexit,” one reader told us. “There are rumours that this has been inspired by the Tilmann paper,” the reader said.
A rough translation: “The fact that Great Britain broke the Convention as a result of the Leaving Brexit does not prevent its implementation: The Regulations for Entry into Force in the Convention and its Logs should ensure that all three are involved in the contract States, the Federal Republic of Germany, France and Great Britain, already participate in the judicial system at the start of the Unified Patent Court. In this respect, it should be avoided, for example, due to the different duration of the ratification procedures the treaty initially entered into force with only one or two of the three states occurs. The reference to this has the purpose, the point in time of entry into force among those actually involved in the contract coordinate. Regardless of the fact that UK approval currently exists a departure from Great Britain has no influence on the applicability of the entry into force regulations in any case because these are to be interpreted in such a way that if one of these three states can not be foreseen by anyone, the entire entry into force for the does not hinder remaining participants.”
“…are they eager to openly promote what Germany’s top court deemed to be unconstitutional?”This is of course nonsense. It makes no sense for a lot of reasons and it makes one wonder if BMJV is run by lobbyists, not politicians. In fact, “this is totally insane,” the reader told us. What are the people inside BMJV hoping to accomplish here? First of all, this won’t pass. Secondly, they only stand to suffer (in terms of reputation) and further embolden people who grew tired of the EU, arguing that it disregards all sorts of laws and constitutions.
We note with concern that World Intellectual Property Review (WIPR) and its sister lobbying site, “Life Sciences Intellectual Property Review,” are pushing for this illegal and unconstitutional plot again [1, 2], based on “EC official” (which again harms the EU’s image). What are they hoping to accomplish? Breton was already bad enough… are they eager to openly promote what Germany’s top court deemed to be unconstitutional?
We’ve meanwhile noticed this new comment citing the “recent research paper from Dimitris Xenos,” a paper we alluded to here, and to quote:
The joint EPO-EUIPO study released last year has to be seen in the framework of the support given by the EPO to the UPC. European SMEs have been the fig leave behind which big industry and a select group of IP lawyers were hiding to push the UPC through. The same group is also advocating the necessity of the UPC in order to help the users of the patent system to recover from the damages caused by COVID-19. Please don’t pull my leg.
A recent research paper from Dimitris Xenos, “The Impact of the European Patent system on SMEs and National States and the Advent of Unitary Patent”, published in Prometheus, Vol. 36, No. 1 (March 2020), pp. 51-68, comes to the conclusion that “objective evidence shows that the new legal/institutional developments amplify existing imbalances in technological and economic capacities that are already observed between and within member states, and between them and non-EU states in the current global conditions of technological competition”.
The figures used in the study, albeit older, are comparable to the actual figures, so that the conclusions in the paper are also valid today.
One of the conclusions of the paper is that “Objective evidence has emerged, albeit ex post, showing that the position of SMEs is very weak under the EPO system as their share of annual European patents granted is less than 10% and 17% in patent applications. These statistical results contradict the official justifications of the UPP, which focus on benefits for SMEs”.
A further one is “the democratic control of industrial property in national markets is an essential responsibility of the state. Yet, the state is being stripped of democratic control by the EU’s new, pseudo-federal patent system”.
In all meetings I have been in which the topic IP and SMEs was discussed, it was very clear that SMEs are frighten of IP as they consider themselves as underdogs in IP matters. This is for two main reasons. Firstly they cannot afford to spend a lot of money for IP, and secondly they constantly fear the threat of litigation stemming from large companies with deep pockets. They do not have a chance against them!
With the creation of the UPC it was question a long time ago of a kind of IP insurance for SMEs, but this idea has disappeared. Even without the UPC, the idea is worth thinking about.
Nothing against SMEs being made more aware of IP rights, but it has to be seen in the framework of their limited budget.
I have seen SMEs shaken by attacks from big companies, and even then, having to struggle to survive, they were in the end not able to afford patent protection.
I would therefore consider the present guest post as not looking at the deeper roots of the problem. Offer SMEs a safety net in litigation matters would be a beginning. Offer them real incentives to invest in IP, and help them to bear the cost!
It does not have to be for a lot of countries, but the patent they might obtain have to be solid and resisting attacks. But alas, this is not the case. Too many patents do not resist a strict scrutiny, and crumble at the first push. SMEs cannot afford huge portfolios of patents. Once one or two of their patents have been nullified, they turn their back to IP.
One of the problems is also their absence of lobbies. If a SME closes, the number of job losses is very small. They cannot say, like the big industry, if the state does not give us money we will lay off hundreds if not thousands of people.
That’s the reality! Support for SMEs is badly needed, but also money.
At the moment it seems like Breton et al with their “European champions” just want to help multinational monopolies through the UPC; they don’t care about SMEs and they certainly don’t care about the rule of law. Just like BMJV, what we have here is a crisis and an insult to democracy. One easily gets the impression that so-called ‘public’ officials/servants are in fact serving nobody but large firms. This kind of behaviour can only lead to more EU exits and make radical parties seem “equally bad” (even AfD or UKIP). █
Megaphones and loudspeakers of lawyers who profit from frivolous lawsuits
Summary: We live in an age when patent offices may be eager to grant/allow patents on things courts would reject; but moreover, the media in the pockets of litigation firms plays a role (lobbying for such invalid patents, based on falsehoods)
THE lies being disseminated with regards to software patents are hardly new. We already know, based on US courts, that software patents are generally abstract. They’re therefore not valid, even if the USPTO grants some, having cherry-picked 35 U.S.C. § 101 cases to misinterpret caselaw. We also know that all those software patents in Europe barely stand a chance in European courts. The next batch of Daily Links will contain several more outcomes where European Patents got squashed. It’s not cheap (the process takes money), but at the end we see that the European Patent Office (EPO) under António Campinos and Benoît Battistelli just issues a load of junk. Even examiners complain about it; it harms morale.
“We already know, based on US courts, that software patents are generally abstract.”A few hours ago we caught up with Managing IP, a site bought by a nefarious bunch that promotes litigation and fronts for lawyers. Well, Managing IP is at it again, posting spam for private companies (for a fee!) and even for firms that viciously lie to promote software patents in Australia. So you get a rough idea where their money comes from…
They’ve also just published summaries and headlines which use the term “IP harvesting”; aside from “AYE PEE” (IP) being a deliberate lie (propagandistic misnomer), harvesting? Seriously? What a disgraceful site… and this one comes from an author who’s a megaphone of patent trolls and Team UPC.
“A few hours ago we caught up with Managing IP, a site bought by a nefarious bunch that promotes litigation and fronts for lawyers.”Days apart the site was calling software patents “CIIs” or “computer-implemented inventions,” then speaking of “certainty” rather than validity. It’s about Australia, under the headline “Rokt decision boosts certainty on CIIs in Australia” (no, Australia does not allow software patents, but law firms try to figure out ways around that). From the outline:
Businesses will need to think carefully about how to draft claims for computer-implemented inventions – and may need to protect them as trade secrets
Notice the wording: “how to draft claims…”
“That’s just Managing IP in a nutshell; like the other site founded by the same scholar (IP Kat), this one became the very opposite of honest and anything remotely scholarly.”It’s about finding loopholes and sneaking in patents that likely aren’t eligible. So at the end they might get some fake patents that don’t stand a chance in courts; but since not many parties have sufficient budgets for a challenge/day in court, they might settle or desist anyway. Managing IP is crafting propaganda pieces like these on average twice per day. Nowadays the business model also includes ghosting for law firms. That’s just Managing IP in a nutshell; like the other site founded by the same scholar (IP Kat), this one became the very opposite of honest and anything remotely scholarly. █
He gives nothing away, not even tax money (the so-called ‘charity’, Gates Foundation, is an astonishingly shrewd for-profit investment vehicle that helps Bill dodge taxes and shape the narrative/agenda)
Summary: Money and greed know no “wings” and political loyalties based upon ideological orientation; in a two-party system, moreover, the rich will always get a lot richer (and fast!) because they play parties off against each other
THE term “Liberal” or “Liberalism” does not mean in the US what it means in most other countries; moreover, the meaning of “Liberal” changed over time and now we have terms like Neo-Liberal, which is altogether different. Libertarianism is another thing altogether and the notion of liberty is so widely abused that Donald Trump calls a bunch of armed lunatics “liberators”; many still call troops who invade other countries (for oil companies or so-called ‘democracy’) “liberators”.
If Mr. Gates and his wife are “Liberals,” which they’re not, what liberty are they celebrating? Exemption from tax? Liberalism/liberty from regulation? As in… deregulation?
“Considering the Gates family’s past with race issues (trying to whiten and ‘purify’ the population), Mr. Gates is about as tolerant as Donald Trump. He’s just hiding it better.”So-called ‘Conservatives’ in the US aren’t much different from the fake ‘left’ that’s just oligarchs masking themselves as tolerant (focusing on race, not class). There’s this stigma associated with tech companies, saying they’re all “leftist” or “liberal”. Watch their actions though! They support war. They support oppression. They profit from human suffering. What part of all this is actually “Liberal” or “liberal”? What the heck does that label even mean?
People who call the Gates family “Liberals” are obviously clueless as to how the ruling class (or plutocracy, or magnates, or oligarchy) thinks and operates. They hardly even care for such labels. To them, it’s just “us” and “them”, as in us the “champions of the world” and them the peasants, the ignorant masses whom we tell that we deserve that massive wealth because of our “hard work” (not privilege, not other people’s hard and underpaid-for work).
Considering the Gates family’s past with race issues (trying to whiten and ‘purify’ the population), Mr. Gates is about as tolerant as Donald Trump. He’s just hiding it better. █
Orange Lives Matter (to Microsoft)
Summary: Don’t be misled by Bill’s man at the helm (he uses Modi similarly to distract from Microsoft's institutional racism problem)
As Britain is poised to open ‘non-essential’ services and stores not much will change; the encouraging current trend will persist
Summary: It seems reasonable to assert that at this stage the growing domination of GNU/Linux is unstoppable and underhanded tactics will be exploited to purposely hijack the movement, in effect taking control of one’s competitors
AFTER nearly 3 months of lock-down (in Britain at least, we’re always at the UK’s second-largest city in terms of productivity) things might change informally. Informally only. Because people still lack confidence to leave their homes for noncritical purchases, such as food (some people don’t even leave the home to buy food anymore). So the day after tomorrow we open up… to the Second Wave. I am not particularly excited, knowing people will ‘mingle’ as they enter stores, potentially passing around not only germs but also one particularly lethal virus (to which we still lack a solution other than isolation that limits/contains its spread). We just need some computer equipment to replace what stopped working during lock-down (two mice, one screen). My wife and I are both working from home, so we depend heavily on technology.
“This will boost the morale of many GNU/Linux and Free software developers.”Seeing that for several consecutive months GNU/Linux market share rose, apparently by quite a bit (I don’t trust the Microsoft-connected firms, including Net Applications), it’s not surprising that Dell, Lenovo and several other OEMs — both large and small — massively advertise laptops with GNU/Linux preloaded. This is undoubtedly better than those OEMs offering no option other than Windows (even if we dislike some of these OEMs). This will boost the morale of many GNU/Linux and Free software developers. It will increase the number of users who are exposed to and favour Free-as-in-freedom software.
“Despite the ordeals and the endless legal attacks on it, a large community of developers and users — a growing community in fact — made SCO’s and Microsoft’s strategy unbearable and unsustainable.”When it comes to GNU/Linux I’ve long been an optimist, despite being a pessimist by nature (our contributor figosdev is a lot more pessimistic than me). I’ve advocated GNU/Linux since I was a teenager, more so since my early twenties. Back then I was really genuinely concerned that GNU/Linux might go the way of the dodo, seeing some of the attacks that predated the Novell deal. There was a lot to be worried about back then. I could not always play videos on S.u.S.E., my Web browser kind of sucked (an old version of Mozilla browser, well before Firefox), and lots of software and games could not at all be used, not even with WINE. Back then I used Konqueror at times; many sites were MSIE-only. Nowadays I use Konqueror as my secondary if not primary browser and always it’ll render pages correctly (except perhaps 1% of cases, especially hostile sites that I don’t care about anyway).
I don’t consider the maturity of GNU/Linux to be a matter of luck. Despite the ordeals and the endless legal attacks on it, a large community of developers and users — a growing community in fact — made SCO’s and Microsoft’s strategy unbearable and unsustainable. Microsoft bled as it fought GNU/Linux (it still does, but differently). At this point GNU/Linux is unstoppable, but the shape of it remains to be determined. Whether it has DRM, whether it’s just another ramp for proprietary games (like Steam), whether we have a modular UNIX-like system or just Microsoft-hosted systemd…
“So people are going to download loads of Free software — browsers included — and eventually it might lead them to GNU/Linux, knowing they get a lot of stuff done over the Web browser anyway.”A lot of people still work from home and will continue to work from home… for the foreseeable future. Many still get more freedom and choice when it comes to their operating environment because they own the computers and it’s harder to police what they install (they’re ‘offsite’ so to speak). So people are going to download loads of Free software — browsers included — and eventually it might lead them to GNU/Linux, knowing they get a lot of stuff done over the Web browser anyway. The tightening of domestic budgets will have families gravitating towards GNU/Linux at the very least for cost-saving reasons. The tightening of corporate budgets will have a similar effect.
The press sort of ‘missed’ the true story (it wrote some fluff about “HEY HI” instead), but Microsoft imposed a hiring freeze and then started laying off employees. Sales aren’t going well (some of the biggest clients are large workplaces that overpay for crap they don’t even need) and the hype about “cloud” going up is false; it’s fake, but ZDNet is happy to promote all the lies Microsoft tells its shareholders. If you rebrand a product called “A” as “B” and “B” is classified as “cloud”, does that mean massive growth? No, only a fool would believe that. Even the chief of ZDNet started to have some questions about that…
“Watch out as Hamburg and Munich (and other parts of Germany) join China, South Korea and several other countries (with a particularly strong economy) that gradually move everything away from Windows.”Every country around the world (bar few) will soon ‘reopen’ the so-called ‘economy’ (they define that as stuff like centralised, shared offices and stores with a fancy floorplan). Some already have. Did that stop GNU/Linux from growing? Evidence does not suggest so.
Almost 5 years after the “Microsoft loves Linux” media tour and WSL (EEE) the numbers are still pathetic and I hardly come across anyone who uses Azure. We work with many clients and not a single one of them uses Azure in any shape or form whatsoever. Not even one. Ignore the hype and the fake numbers. Microsoft will get more aggressive and will lay off more workers in months to come (even if the media fails to report these layoffs). GNU/Linux will continue to grow gradually; but let’s make sure it’s not being monopolised by Amazon/AWS or IBM. Canonical is still a laughing stock and the same is true for SUSE. They act as if they need Microsoft to succeed. Hardly a new thing…
Watch out as Hamburg and Munich (and other parts of Germany) join China, South Korea and several other countries (with a particularly strong economy) that gradually move everything away from Windows. The media may not say much about it, but that’s alright; there’s no money in it. Instead the media will try to help Microsoft et al decapitate the movement, leaving power vacuums for G[I]AFAM to fill. Don’t let them… having run out of options, this is all they have left. Buying GitHub, buying NPM, bribing officials (still)… █
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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