Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Kernel at 7:27 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Video download link | md5sum 77e0c252bb9df82b7f88b6374b6a0a31
Linux Will Rust Along With Bloat
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0
Summary: There are currently loads of puff pieces (mindless corporate fluff, no technical considerations) about Rust coming to Linux in the sense that Linux will become dependent on a monstrous shebang controlled by Microsoft proprietary software; a lot of developers very well understand the risk, but it feels like nobody wants to face the mob (for saying out loud that the emperor is naked)
MORE than two years ago we argued that Linus Torvalds was pressured to make a mistake by adopting Rust as part of the kernel’s code. Since then Rust has had countless security problems, some emergency-level patches, and many people resigned from the Rust project in protest; some resigned en masse (whole teams). Everything we’ve been saying about Rust, cautioning about adoption in core projects such as Linux, turned out to be true. That’s putting aside censorship issue, training/skill issues, and long-term sustainability aspects.
“Every software project has a limited ‘shelf life’ and Torvalds — who in effect betrayed or abandoned his mantra, for the kernel neglects its own principles — went along with a mistake after years of lobbying (mostly by Google).”The above video is long but unscripted; I’ve been sitting on it for two days already (pondering whether to do a video or just a long article, textually). I’ve been seeing lots of puff pieces (we’ll link to none), including one just a few hours ago, so the propaganda clearly isn’t ending. Nobody expresses any ‘dissenting’ views about the decision — that of course would be deemed “hateful”!
The subject has been discussed here for years and there are many rebuttals in IRC (the logs are public), especially the past week’s proceedings. But I’ve attempted to summarise at least some of the issues in the video above.
The conclusion is, Linux shortened its lifetime and made a more compelling case for developers to adopt (and develop around) other, simpler kernels. Every software project has a limited ‘shelf life’ and Torvalds — who in effect betrayed or abandoned his mantra, for the kernel neglects its own principles — went along with a mistake after years of lobbying (mostly by Google).
My scepticism of Rust and criticism of legal and technical aspects have earned me defamatory condemnation by serial trolls salaried by Google. No, they didn’t respond to my legal and technical arguments; instead they threw baseless innuendo, insinuating Rust critics are somehow transphobic. Welcome to the new Maoism. █
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Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 6:04 pm by Guest Editorial Team
Reprinted with permission from Ryan
NoScript’s legacy XUL version supports Pale Moon.
It works fine, but by default, “MoonChild” has set it to disable NoScript and warn the user that the extension may “cause issues”.
I went to install NoScript, the legacy XUL version, which works fine in SeaMonkey.
Pale Moon immediately disabled it and told me it was dangerous to use that extension because it might break Web sites.
Then when I clicked to know more about this issue, I was led to a page on Pale Moon Forums where “MoonChild”, the main developer, explains that he doesn’t want people coming to bitch to him if an extension that disables JavaShit breaks a Web site.
So it just turns it off and makes it sound like the extension is sketchy, and then you have to read that and say “Oh bullshit!” and turn the extension back on.
The cynic in me would say that since it breaks Pale Moon’s default start.me page full of ads and shit, he’s worried he may lose money if you don’t see that every time you load the browser.
So he is scaring people away from NoScript to keep the spice flowing.
It’s understandable that people who spend significant time and effort to create a program deserve to be compensated for it, but scaring the users of an extension that enhances Web browser security by reducing the Active Content attack surface (which is present in all Web browsers) is not the right way to handle this.
“MoonChild” doesn’t need to deal with his revenue problem by implying that NoScript is malicious software, which is dishonest to say the least. He should, rather, put a one time notice in the browser explaining that he needs revenue and that blocking the start.me page harms his ability to fund Pale Moon development, and then asking the user or offering to the user to whitelist that page, and ultimately respecting the user’s decision.
Free Software (as defined by the Free Software Definition in “The Freedom to run the program as you wish.”) is about respecting user choices.
If your program doesn’t respect what the user wants, it may technically fall under a Free Software license as source code, but it violates the spirit of the Free Software Definition.
When I went to learn more about the issue that Pale Moon causes for NoScript, I came to a different forum where I learned that after “MoonChild” made the childish decision about overriding the user’s clearly expressed intention of installing NoScript to protect them from Active Content, users flooded the Pale Moon forums to complain, and the result of the complaining was that NoScript is declared a “banned subject” on their forums, and threats of being banned from the Pale Moon forums by “MoonChild”.
I’m starting to seriously wonder about “MoonChild’s” version of the events that led to former Pale Moon developer Matt Tobin being expelled from the project. Tobin hangs out at the #SeaMonkey IRC room on Libera Chat, and he doesn’t seem like a bad/mean person to me. The description of a developer as a Prima Donna and a “Hitler”-like figure sounds more to me like “MoonChild” because of the ongoing NoScript debacle.
I would generally like to have another browser to recommend to people.
I’m going to hold off on Pale Moon. It does seem to have fewer Web compatibility issues than SeaMonkey, but there are still quite a few.
I noticed that the Palefills extension to fix some of these up also works in SeaMonkey (it’s in the manifest and makes GitHub and Gitlab and dozens of other sites work again in both browsers).
Typically, both browsers should generally appeal to people who don’t like the “Modern Web” very much and who think Firefox has gone completely off the rails, who are willing to deal with “Modern Web” breakage by deploying clever hacks and workarounds where needed (or just opening some Modern browser to pay their electric bill and close it again for a month), but the developers of Pale Moon seem to be difficult people, to put it mildly.
I’ve noticed that “MoonChild” has made Matt Tobin another “graylisted” subject on his forums. Either you say Tobin is Hitler or you disappear too.
“Communities” such as this are impossible and ultimately fail due to attrition.
They can be fun to make fun of, though, but you have to find your own platform to do it on.
For example, when MinceR in #techrights IRC said, “Has he heard of the ability to change home pages?”, I said, “ALERT: Changing your home page is dangerous and may cause Pale Moon to become unstable, resulting in profile corruption. We cannot support this if you proceed. -M.C. Hitler”.
Gone are the days where we can have mild disagreements, or disagreements that aren’t even about Free Software, or even an off beat sense of humor, without the Cancel Mob trying to hijack everything and kill us with fire.
Recently, Matthew J. Garrett, or Matt GULAG as I call him on #Techrights IRC has been petitioning Roy to cancel me over some personal beliefs that I have expressed that aren’t even that unusual. Roy hasn’t acted on that.
Matt GULAG’s career in software development is on a jack stand provided by Microsoft and other companies that are hostile to software freedom.
Unfortunately, when Freenode turned into The Pretender’s “Freenode Autonomous Zone”, people who are bad in other ways, like Matt GULAG and “MoonChild” (*cough* M.C. Hitler) (which MinceR refers to as “ManChild”) forked it and created Libera.Chat. Libera.Chat is awful because it’s been politicized by the cancel mob.
Freenode, before The Pretender took it over, had almost 100,000 users and was _the_ place to discuss Free Software.
Libera.Chat only has about 49,000 users at peak hours, and it’s because they cancel anyone who isn’t some total leftist freak-of-nature or a Microsoft toady that supports their sabotage efforts of GNU/Linux.
Libera.Chat has banned me like 7 times (sort of like Matrix.org has), but K-Lines don’t mean much of anything to me like they did in the days of dial-up or direct connect over my real IP which only changed every several months or so.
I change IP addresses and VPN providers every so often so good luck making any of that stick. I’m on Libera.Chat in several different ways all at once right now.
Eventually the bans don’t happen as often because you know which rooms (such as #linux and #libera) which have asshole moderators in them.
Microsoft has virtually succeeded in planting moles in every high profile place where “Linux” is up for discussion, and they’ve made sure that people who don’t like Microsoft and say why get banned. Even if it’s like, a one-liner and you’re not up on a soap box. Or you make a joke about something that really happened.
(Like the time Microsoft did the BIG BOOBIES debacle with the Linux kernel in their HyperV driver and then says all the perverts are in open source.)
The bans happened to me on Reddit and Libera, and whether the ban itself sticks or not, they know that you know that if you come back and criticize them again, the ban will just happen again.
This is part of their strategy to make it seem like everyone “loves” Microsoft or are at least indifferent.
When communities fall apart, and the center cannot hold, due to people like Matt GULAG re-defining “community” into something that creates proprietary “standards” that people have no control over, which lock them out of their computer (e.g., “secure boot community”), then projects like GNU/Linux become little more than another crappy “vendor UNIX”, which everyone hated due to the lock-in and incompatibilities.
Oh, you want to go make something else?
It won’t be compatible, it’ll probably have bugs if you try, but “you have every right to do that”, says Matt GULAG on his Twitter blog.
(In reference to IBM’s systemd. The creator of systemd now works for Microsoft. I’m assuming that Mr. GULAG was trying to bring his manure spreader of FUD to bear on Devuan GNU/Linux.)
Mr. GULAG has repeatedly defended Microsoft “Secure” Boot even though he himself admits that their Platinum-level OEM partner, Lenovo, has now sabotaged it to prevent Linux kernels from booting, either nearly entirely, on a laptop that was hard coded to only boot if the OS entry was Windows Boot Manager, or Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or on a very recent one that doesn’t enable the third-party certificate that his Linux implementation of “Secure” Boot needs to start up, and in which case Windows screws up your Bitlocker and potentially causes data loss on your Windows partition if you try to re-configure this.
I had another system, the Yoga 900-ISK2 that was sabotaged so badly that I filed a lawsuit against Lenovo in Illinois before they agreed to change it.
My reward? Mr. GULAG’s white glove character assassination, as usual. He only ever attacks defenders of Free Software, and people who write Free Software. He never attacks the rapists, stranglers, and pedophiles of Microsoft and their affiliates.
Peter Bright of Ars Technica? Posted pro-Microsoft articles constantly. Silence. (Tried to rape a 9 year old. Now in prison.)
Jeremy Soule of Microsoft Bethesda? Silence. (Raped a woman in the office, sent her a video of himself masturbating. Tried to force himself on an immigrant and threaten her immigration status if she refused. Quietly slinked away with no punishment.)
Alex Gravely of Microsoft GitHub? Silence. (Strangled an immigrant Latina woman and raped her. Court gave him a pre-trial diversion as pretend punishment.)
Rick Allen Jones? Silence. (Personal engineer of Bill Gates. Arrested in the Gates mansion after police found a Child Pornography dungeon in his house.) Silence from Mr. GULAG again.
I’ve never actually gotten him to offer me his opinion of those people or why we’re letting them form “communities”. The only community most Microsoft toadies should be in is that one under the bridge in Florida, obviously.
He only attacks defenders and writers of Free Software. He himself seems to be currently employed writing some proprietary software for these self-driving cars. Which don’t have a very good safety record. Many brands of these cars run over people and the company goes “Welp, thought she was a shopping bag! How little can we get the family to settle for?!”.
I’ve been driving for decades and haven’t managed to injure anyone. But money talks, and pretty soon we’ll all be forced onto the road with buggy/dodgy software and we all get to hope it doesn’t get in front of us and randomly slam the brakes or mistake us for shopping bags, because it will be the law.
But back to Microsoft… Microsoft has regrouped and changed its strategy, but the clear endgame is still against Free Software, and they have an army of useful idiots to help them.
Using difficult people as pawns to manipulate and pull apart communities is one of the center pieces of this strategy.
But as Robert Reich would say, “Don’t believe it!”.
If it seems like all you hear is good things about the corporate takeover of FOSS, it’s because they’re taking out all of their critics by any means necessary. █
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 3:42 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Video download link | md5sum 7d12153c747f7ab91b69c309bcc83489
EPO Staff Still Resents the EPO
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0
Summary: Despite relatively quiet weeks there is no calm at the EPO; the quality of patents continues to fall and staff isn’t being properly rewarded for the work
THE national delegates will discuss the EPO next month (warning: epo.org link) in a meeting that involves some new representatives (Bulgaria and the UK for instance). These are the people who enabled Benoît Battistelli‘s countless crimes and continue to support the same from António Campinos, in exchange for bribes of course!
The EPO has become so tragic on so many levels. As noted in the video above, it’s staining Germany’s reputation (warning: epo.org link) and lobbying a government that reciprocates kindly for corruption. It’s difficult not to feel cynical about the EPO emulating China as well (warning: epo.org link)… all this while pretending to be “green” and to value science (warning: epo.org link). The PR strategy is shallow and superficial, complete with “Hey Hi” (AI) hype instead of actual substance.
“The EPO has become so tragic on so many levels.”However, the video above focuses on the following new letter. The Local Staff Committee The Hague (LSCTH) further and more widely disseminated a message to staff earlier today, stating:
Education Allowance Portal: legal drawbacks – Letter to VP4 requesting immediate action
Please find in attachment an open letter to VP4 concerning severe deficiencies of the Education Allowance Portal. Please read the letter carefully as it contains important information regarding the Portal and the procedure to follow.
In the meantime to have legal certainty we would advise you to send to hrservices@epo.org the request for reimbursement of any educational costs forcedly deducted when requesting the advancement and/or the reimbursement. Please make sure to have your ticket open and a written trace of the HR reaction (e.g. rejection). Once your claim has been officially rejected, we would like to remind you of the possibility to launch a request for review within 3 months from the official rejection.
From now on until the problems with the Education Allowance Portal are solved, we advise you to send all the requests for full reimbursement to hrservices@epo.org, and to use the portal only in case you need an advancement urgently, mentioning a disclaimer in your request if needed. In our previous publication you find more details about the excluded education costs, guidance on how to have them reimbursed, and the disclaimer to be used to safeguard your rights.
Please do not hesitate to contact us for assistance.
With kind regards,
Your Local Staff Committee The Hague (LSCTH)
Shown above (in the video) but not discussed much is the corresponding open letter:
European Patent Office | Postbus 5818 | 2280 HV RIJSWIJK | NETHERLANDS
Ms. Nellie Simon
Vice-President Corporate Services, DG4
ISAR – Munich
Open Letter on issues with the Education Allowance Portal
Dear Ms. Simon, dear Nellie,
We are addressing you concerning an important IT issue regarding the Education Allowance Portal. When sending the request for reimbursement or advancement, it appears that the Education Allowance Portal does not provide any feedback, and only in the cases where there is a problem, it automatically sends an error message rejecting the claim with no indication of what the problem is.
It appears that the reason for these problems is that there is presently no possibility in the portal to have the request partially approved where the submitted costs are considered only to be partially reimbursable or advanceable. Therefore, colleagues are expected and asked verbally to modify their request and resubmit it in order to make their claims processed even if the amount applicable is contested by the requester.
We believe that the Education Allowance Portal by not providing a complete record of the facts and submissions is not fit for purpose. This and many other important features are still missing in the portal. This results in legal uncertainty for the users by depriving the colleagues to exercise their legal rights according to Article 107 ServRegs. and moreover, it goes against the provisions of Article 106 (2) ServRegs., by which “any decision adversely affecting a staff member shall state the grounds on which it is based”.
We therefore request that this issue be corrected as soon as possible. We expect that the Education Allowance Portal leaves a written permanent trace of any action, including request for correction handled by phone, to both parties. In the meantime we urge your services to provide alternative means to the colleagues affected in order for them to be able to request the reimbursement of the education expenses according to Article 71 ServRegs. without being deprived of their legal rights according to Articles 106 and 107 ServRegs.
We feel it is our duty as staff representatives to warn the colleagues about this fact and recommend them to send their requests via email to hrservices@epo.org until the problem is solved.
We thank you for your attention to this matter,
Jorge Raposo
On behalf of the Local Staff Committee The Hague
SUEPO The Hague Committee is also involved. “To address the plethora of different legal aspects related to the Education and Childcare Reform,” it recently said, “we have prepared a table collating the legal cases already initiated, their status and timeline.”
Action is underway, coordinated, to give staff what it is entitled to.
“The video does not say much about this topic as it concerns financial details and staff salaries.”It’s not just staff in The Netherlands by the way. Munich too is taking action. There is coordination across sites. “SUEPO Munich informs you that the Local Staff Committee The Hague (LSCTH) organises a hybrid information session on the topic of rewards / career advancement: promotions, steps, bonuses on Tuesday September 13th, at 11:30,” a recent announcement said. “Check which of the following dates is the earliest and note it down: 1) having been informed verbally by the line manager of not having received a reward; 2) reception of email with link to salary slip of July 2022…”
The video does not say much about this topic as it concerns financial details and staff salaries. Those aspects don’t relate to the topics we typically cover, including software patents. Expect our EPO coverage to carry on for years to come. █
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– by Bryan Lunduke
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