Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 27/10/2010: Unity Debate Carries on, Fedora 14 Goes Gold, Qt Goes Modular, Community Goes Away From Oracle



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux





  • Kernel Space

    • Reminder: short merge window
      So this is just a reminder - I'm trying to make sure that everybody is aware of the fact that in my 2.6.36 announcement, I was talking about trying to do a short merge window. Why? So that I could release -rc1 by the time the kernel summit started, despite the release of 2.6.36 being delayed.


    • LLVM's Clang Is Onto Building The Linux Kernel
      In February of this year the Clang C/C++ compiler for LLVM hit the milestone of self-hosting itself after Clang's C support was declared production ready (with the recently released LLVM 2.8, the C++ support is now deemed feature-complete) just last October. In April another achievement was reached for LLVM/Clang and that was building much of FreeBSD's base operating system. Today another milestone has been hit and that's building the Linux kernel for Debian to the point that it's functional and can run the X.Org Server both on bare metal and this can also be done within a QEMU virtualized environment.


    • Intel Core i7 970 Gulftown On Linux
      When looking at the Core i7 970 at its stock speeds with turbo boost capabilities, the CPU performed very well and practically winning every benchmark. Granted, the CPUs we used for this comparison were limited to what we had access to, and that meant no six-core AMD tests or any of Intel's Extreme Edition processors. The only tests where the Core i7 970 "Gulftown" did not come out the winner was with the software that did not have enough work to keep all twelve CPU threads busy and so the Core i7 870 commanded the lead due to its higher turbo frequency. The Core i7 870 quad-core with Hyper Threading can be boosted up to 3.60GHz when needed, but with the Core i7 970 in most cases you can overclock this CPU to at least 3.6GHz if not 4.0GHz. Of course, that is unless the motherboard (or cooling) limits you in doing so as we were faced with in this set of tests.


    • Graphics Stack

      • Radeon Page-Flipping Patches Come About


      • xorg-server-1.9.2 plans
        So xorg-server-1.9.1 went out fairly smoothly and will probably be the version tied to the Katamari release.


      • Clutter's Latest Release Gains Wayland Back-End
        The Wayland Display Server continues moving forward and is nearing the point of usability by enthusiasts and those interested in easily trying out this display server that leverages the latest and greatest Linux graphics technologies.


      • A Peek Into The X.Org Stack For Ubuntu 11.04
        The general X.Org planning summit for Ubuntu 11.04 just ended at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Orlando. Here's a few key highlights from this hour-long discussion about the make-up of the X.Org / graphics stack for the Natty Narwhal release due for release in April.






  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments



    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)



      • KDevelop 4.1 Brings Git Integration
        Roughly half a year and over a thousand commits after the first stable release, the KDevelop hackers are proud and happy to announce the release of KDevelop 4.1, the first of hopefully many feature releases. As with the previous bugfix releases, we also make available updated versions of the KDevelop PHP plugins.




    • GNOME Desktop

      • Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal - Unity replaces Gnome as default shell
        This move could anger at least some open source enthusiasts, but it probably shouldn't. Ubuntu is clearly trying to further differentiate itself in a Linux world filled with UIs and user experiences that are extremely similar. It is a risky bet, but Shuttleworth says that developers need not worry because fragmentation can be avoided by using FreeDesktop.org to ensure that desktop integration mechanisms are standardized and interoperable. Whether that will be enough to alleviate all possible issues or silence the critics of this decision remains to be seen.


      • Open Ballot: do you support Ubuntu's move to Unity?


      • A Desktop is a Desktop and should be a Desktop
        I was vocal enough in the past so I guess there is no need to reiterate again how much I dislike GNOME Shell... I see now Canonical is practically forking GNOME and replacing the Shell with Unity for the next Ubuntu release. In both the case of the Shell and Unity I can't understand why people behind those projects persists in trying to make a Desktop OS act and feel like a mobile phone OS, like being targeted exclusive at clueless users.


      • Gwibber to gain Unity Quicklists, Geolocation Integration and more
        It is the super secret service that does all the work behind Gwibber. It is not without improvements this cycle, most notably Geolocation support, the ability to display maps about where your friends are, inside it and the the ability to store you and your friends’ profile data offline.


      • Ubuntu 11.04 To Ship Unity
        There is going to be some questions about this decision in relation to GNOME. I want to make something crystal clear: Ubuntu is a GNOME distribution, we ship the GNOME stack, we will continue to ship GNOME apps, and we optimize Ubuntu for GNOME. The only difference is that Unity is a different shell for GNOME, but we continue to support the latest GNOME Shell development work in the Ubuntu archives.


      • Compiz Will Find It's Way Into Ubuntu Unity, Awesome!
        Compiz 0.9.2 was revealed recently with a number of major improvements, new features and even new plugins. But the future of Compiz became uncertain since both Gnome with its GNOME Shell and KDE with its new KWin has decided to go forward with the new integrated desktop approach. But hold on, Compiz might just become an ever more active and important project with Canonical deciding to integrate Compiz with Ubuntu Unity.


      • What's really going on with Ubuntu Unity
        As Debian is to Ubuntu so GNOME is to Unity. What do I mean by that? Well, once upon a time there was an operating system called Debian. It was, and is, a powerful version of Linux. Outside of the Linux community though almost no one had ever heard of it. Then Ubuntu came along, built its own easy-to-use distribution on top of Debian, and now it's arguably the most popular Linux in the world.






  • Distributions



    • Red Hat Family



      • Fedora

        • Fedora 15 Release Name
          Asturias Blarney Lovelock Pushcart Sturgis


        • Restoring GRUB in Fedora 13 after you've killed it
          I was doing an installation of Debian Squeeze to a USB drive, and unfortunately the Debian installer was eager to drop its own GRUB on the Master Boot Record — not on the drive to which I was installing Debian but to the first hard drive on the system, which contains Fedora 13 and Windows 7.

          So I had a dead GRUB on the Master Boot Record of my drive.


        • F14 release events


        • Fun facts


        • Lessons from the past


        • Fedora 14 goes gold
          So we just got done signing off on the gold images for Fedora 14. I’m amazingly proud of the whole little release management group – development (especially Anaconda team, who were awesome), release engineering, and QA teams: we had an unbelievably smooth ride through the Final validation testing stage. Unprecedented in the annals of Fedora history, we span one publicly-announced Test Compose (TC) build (there were five unannounced ones, but they were just to test small fixes which we needed an image compose to verify) and exactly one Release Candidate (RC) build, which was the build signed off as Gold today. We have never needed just one candidate build to get a release right before.


        • Fedora 14 Has Gone Gold
          Fedora 14 has gone gold. According to Adam Williamson, Red Hat Senior Quality Assurance Engineer, the Fedora 14 Final Release Go/No-Go Meeting resulted in the unanimous decision that RC1 should be declared Gold. Attendees were pleased that the quality tests had gone so smoothly and this is the first time a first release candidate would ship as final. An email with the good news will go out to mailing lists on Thursday.







    • Debian Family

      • Kicking the tires on Debian Squeeze
        Squeeze includes not only Shotwell but the GIMP and Inkscape. It also includes OpenOffice and what's known as GNOME Office, the latter including Abiword and Gnumeric.


      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat Released, What's Next?


        • Video: UDS Natty 11.04 - Mark Shuttleworth's Keynote


        • Ubuntu Developer Summit Natty, Monday
          I’m writing this blog post in a chair in the ‘Grand Caribe Convention Center’, at the end of the first day of the Ubuntu Developer Summit in preparation of the 11.04 Natty Narwhal release. It’s been a very interesting first day to say the least.


        • Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty End Of Life
          Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty has reached EOL (End Of Life). It is no longer supported by Ubuntu with security updates and patches. You have known this day was coming for 1.5 years, as all non-LTS Ubuntu releases are supported for only 18 months.

          I have no plans to delete the Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty AMIs for EC2 published under the Alestic name in the foreseeable future, but I request, recommend, and urge you to please stop using them and upgrade to an officially supported, active, kernel-consistent release of Ubuntu on EC2 like 10.04 LTS Lucid or 10.10 Maverick.


        • This is it!
          This is it! Porting the Unity view to Compiz, comibing the Desktop and UNE editions, and defaulting to UNE for users who can run it. This is is a huge opportunity for the Ubuntu community to make something that can deliver free desktops to millions and millions of people who don't have software freedome today. And also, having a lot of fun with our friends doing something really big along the way.


        • Ubuntu Font Family Uploaded To The Ubuntu 10.04, 9.10 And 8.04 Official Repositories
          The Ubuntu Font Family, which was only available for Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.04 (in the official repositories) has just been uploaded to the official Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx, 9.10 Karmic Koala and 8.04 Hardy Heron repositories.


        • Mint



          • The Digital Prism Screencast
            The Digital Prism Screencast covers both Drupal and Linux Mint.


          • MintBackup


          • MintUpload
            MintUpload is one of the Mint Tools, it's a simple drag & drop FTP / SFTP / SCP client. It allows multiple services, folders or sites to be set up for different purposes. It's a notification area widget and desktop widget.










  • Devices/Embedded



    • Phones



      • Nokia/MeeGo

        • Report: Symbian Foundation To Close Down
          Well, this was inevitable. After Samsung and Sony Ericsson abandoning Symbian for their line of smartphones, and after Symbian Foundation executive director Lee Williams leaving the company for "personal reasons", there's now a report that the Symbian Foundation is winding down its operations, in preparation for closing up shop entirely.

          The news comes from a "source close to Symbian", and basically states that Lee Williams' successor as executive director, chief financial officer Tim Holbrow, has been appointed to wind down the Symbian Foundation's operations. This seems in line with Holbrow's background in finance, whereas Williams worked within Nokia on S60.


        • Qt is going modular
          Recently a project called “Qt Modularization” was initiated. This is a project that aims to modularize Qt at every level. As you may know already, Qt is currently modularized on the DLL level; each module has its own DLL. However, the project as a whole is still monolithic; all the code is being hosted in a single repository, and you cannot build a leaf module without building the modules on which it depends at the same time. This project aims to change that, so that the modules are hosted in different repositories, with a separate maintainer for each, and the modules may have different release schedules.


        • PR1.3 just released – now with Qt4.7 and Qt Mobility


        • Qt Quick
          Qt Quick provides a declarative framework for building highly dynamic, custom user interfaces from a rich set of QML elements. Qt Quick helps programmers and designers collaborate to build the fluid user interfaces that are becoming common in portable consumer devices, such as mobile phones, media players, set-top boxes and netbooks. Qt Quick consists of the QtDeclarative C++ module, QML, and the integration of both of these into the Qt Creator IDE. Using the QtDeclarative C++ module, you can load and interact with QML files from your Qt application.


        • Nokia N900 PR 1.3 Firmware Now Available
          ‘It also aligns the Qt application and UI framework with the planned version for the MeeGo 1.1 platfrom (Qt 4.7). Qt Mobility 1.0.2 APIs for mobile development are also included’. Essentially, even without MeeGo1.1 handsets, you can built now apps for it using the N900 running PR1.3, and Qt4.7.










Free Software/Open Source



  • Funambol replaces BES as Zimbra replaces Exchange
    Since setting up Zimbra, the email migration has gone quite well. The Outlook-connector works as expected and the more adventurous users are enjoying the fully-featured Zimbra web interface (which is much better than Outlook and Gmail, it could only be better if it made you lunch).

    [...]

    For agenda and contact synchronization I finally settled on Funambol, which has native mobile clients for Blackberry, iPhones, Nokia and WM and provides a J2ME client for other mobile platforms. Another plus over BES is that Funambol is both open source and very easy to deploy (it does require a server- and a client-side install though).


  • Moor Allerton Hall Primary School goes green with Inkscape at the North East CLC
    The children had been designing images to go on bags that could be sold for charity to aid flood victims in Pakistan. They came to work with Jelena to actualise their ideas. They were introduced to a piece of open-source software called Inkscape (download here) and were shown how to produce high quality designs and manged to achieve some incredible results in a total of only four hours.


  • Access to power for women in free software
    Of course, Grace Hopper is a conference for women in all sorts of computing, which includes lots of proprietary software and the ratio of women in proprietary software is significantly higher than it is in free software. At 20%+ vs 2% (respectively) one would expect the strategies and tactics to be a little different. Yet, despite the differences in the two communities, I don’t think advancement is out of reach for us.


  • AISL, the Italian Association of Free Software companies is born!
    AISL, the Italian Association of Free Software companies, recently debuted at the SMAU exhibit, the Italian leading ICT to discuss items related to digital technologies for business.


  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla

      • Why Mozilla needs to pick a new fight
        One of my very first gigs when I started at PC Pro in 2007 was to interview Tristan Nitot, the president of Mozilla Europe. He was an affable chap, full of engaging answers to questions he’d no doubt heard a hundred times before. The interview practically wrote itself – though for the sake of appearances I held the pen.

        Safari for Windows had just been released and I asked Tristan what he thought of it. “I want Safari to have a significant market share. We want choice, we want innovation, as a company that’s what we stand for,” he told me.






  • Databases

    • LWN.net covers Drizzle beta and MariaDB RC
      LWN.net has a nice article on their front page on Drizzle's and MariaDB's recent beta and RC releases. it is behind a paywall for a few more days, but using the link below you can already read it.




  • Oracle



    • Oracle OpenOffice.org vs. TDF LibreOffice
      Whether the proposal was backed by Oracle or not, some long-term contributors are resigning already. On Friday, October 22, Charles H. Schulz announced his resignation in a blog post. He said it saddened him to have to resign, but was also a relief due to the tension at OpenOffice.org lately. He said the proposal and subsequent behaviors and discussions were unprofessional and showed a complete lack of understanding of Free and Open Source Software. He and others have stated that both projects will now lose out due to a competitive atmosphere instead of the desired cooperation. Schultz said the LibreOffice will now become an official fork since Oracle et al. "refuse to play ball" with The Document Foundation. Schultz will continue to contribute to The Document Foundation.


    • Resigning from my CC deputy role
      Hi Louis, all,

      This mail to inform you that I'm resigning from being Louis deputy at the CC. Please remove my role from the site. I unsubscribe from the list just after this mail.

      Kind regards Sophie [Gautier]


    • Resigning from my CC deputy role
      Hi Louis, all,

      With respect for my friends in the community I hereby resign from myposition as deputy for Charles in the community council.

      I'm sorry that this is a necessary step.

      Good luck in the future. I hope we can meet one day - still as friends and free software enthusiasts.

      Cheers, Leif Lodahl


    • Babylon 5 and the Great War of Java
      The Java Community Process truly was a great hope for peace. A neutral place where everyone from developers to vendors could work together to produce specifications, reference implementations and tests to drive the success of Java.


    • Java Is Under Siege. Will Oracle Let It Burn?
      For one thing, as much as people may have complained about Sun’s guarded control of the Java Community Process (JCP), concern is growing that Oracle’s commitment to Java may benefit it more than it benefits the wider Java community. Oracle, perhaps recognizing that it had a PR battle to win, has repeatedly emphasized Java’s central importance to it, leading the Java community to mostly give Oracle the benefit of the doubt.




  • Business

    • Marketing an open source business
      For example, when I teach a class about OpenNMS, I often ask the students if they are subscribed to the main OpenNMS discussion list. Usually, less than one in ten raise their hands. In fact, more than half of our commercial customers contact us for the first time without ever having installed the software. And that’s because our customers don't come to us looking for open source software. They come to us because they want to find the best solution to their problems—and, in many cases, that solution includes open source software.




  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



  • Openness/Sharing

    • Thoughts on Tim Wu’s Master Switch, Part 2 (On “Cycles” & “Market Failure”)
      I believe history – especially recent history — teaches us something very different. While information technology markets certainly go through cycles, they tend to oscillate between open and closed more fluidly than Wu suggests – and that dynamic is accelerating today. Moreover, during periods which Wu regards as more “closed,” things aren’t always as closed as he suggests. Or, more importantly, the “closed” models typically spawn more innovation than Wu and others bother acknowledging. It’s during what some regard as a market’s darkest hour when some of the most exciting forms of disruptive technologies and innovation are developing. Finally, to the extent some markets are completely locked-down for a time, it’s more often than not due to public policies that facilitate that lockdown or the “closing” of systems.




  • Standards/Consortia

    • Free HTML5 & CSS3 Web Templates
      This website has W3C-compliant, CSS3 and HTML5 -based website templates with a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.






Leftovers

  • Unions - the Big Society is you
    “Unions set to fight plans for €£6bn cuts” was the front page news of the Financial Times yesterday, May 24th, in the aftermath of the well-trailed and assiduously leaked initial skirmish in what we are told is to be a long and multi-billion War of Austerity pitilessly fought out in the next couple of years.


  • Behold, the Next Media Titans: Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon


  • Rand Paul supporters pin down and curb-stomp MoveOn activist - video
    Boingboingdave sez, "Outside the Conway-Rand Paul debate in KY, Paul supporters held down a woman from MoveOn while another stomped on her neck and head. The woman was attempting to present Paul with a mock Employee of the Month award from Republicorp representing the merger of the GOP and business interests controlling political speech."


  • Who challenge J&K’s accession,should be put behind the bars :BJP
    Asserting that Jammu and Kashmir’s accession with Union of India is full and final, the BJP State President Shamsher Singh Manhas today said that no body can dare to challenge it and any one who does should be put behind the bars.


  • WikiLeaks ready to drop a bombshell on Russia. But will Russians get to read about it?


    The Kremlin had better brace itself for a coming wave of WikiLeaks disclosures about Russia, the website's founder, Julian Assange, told a leading Moscow newspaper Tuesday.


  • Chinese Twitter user seized after supporting Liu Xiaobo


  • Nobel Peace Prize Winners on Behalf of Liu Xiaobo (updated)
    Fifteen past winners of the Nobel Peace Prize have issued a letter to Chinese president Hu Jintao, asking that the newest winner, Liu Xiaobo, be released from his 11-year prison sentence, and that his wife, Liu Xia, be freed from de-facto house arrest.

    Chinese police seized a woman from her house in the middle of the night after she tweeted her intention to demonstrate with a banner congratulating jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo on winning the Nobel peace prize, a friend said today.


  • WePay Drops 600 Pounds Of Ice In Front Of PayPal Conference, Hilarity Ensues
    If you’re headed to PayPal’s big developer conference in San Francisco today, you may spot an unusual landmark sitting in front of the Moscone Center: a massive, 600 pound block of ice with hundreds of dollars locked beneath the surface. The frigid booty comes compliments of the WePay team, and they’re trolling PayPal’s conference in an effort to tell everyone in attendance that “PayPal freezes your accounts” and that you should “unfreeze your money”… by switching to WePay, of course.


  • Digg caught gaming its own system, claims it was just a test


    The 159 dummy accounts all have obviously-fake names (such as the 'dd1' pictured) and curiously seem to only have contributed to submissions from Digg's publishing partners. The suspicious activity began after an algorithm revision that took place on October 15.


  • Beleaguered Digg announces more layoffs
    On Monday, following a report in AllThingsD that publisher and Chief Revenue Officer Chas Edwards was bailing for a start-up, Pixazza, CEO Matt Williams e-mailed staffers to announce that "the burn rate is too high" at the company and that it would be laying off 25 of its 67 staffers, a total of 37 percent. At its peak--at the time of Adelson's departure--the number of employees was slightly over 100.


  • Science

    • Topological insulators could help define fundamental constants
      A newly discovered class of materials known as "topological insulators" could help physicists to obtain new ways of defining the three basic physical constants – the speed of light (c); the charge of the proton (e); and Planck’s constant (h). That’s the claim of a team of physicists in the US, which has proposed a new experiment to measure the fine-structure constant (α), which is a function of h, c and e, by scattering light from such a material. Topological insulators are unusual in that electrical current flows well on their surface, but not through their bulk.


    • Quantum computing: Cheat Sheet




  • Health/Nutrition

    • Global food crisis forecast as prices reach record highs
      Rising food prices and shortages could cause instability in many countries as the cost of staple foods and vegetables reached their highest levels in two years, with scientists predicting further widespread droughts and floods.

      Although food stocks are generally good despite much of this year's harvests being wiped out in Pakistan and Russia, sugar and rice remain at a record price.




  • Security



    • Tuesday's security updates
    • System Administrators Gone Wild


    • Is Firesheep illegal?
      SocialMediaLand has been flooded in the last couple of days with stories about Firesheep. In case you have not heard about it, Firesheep is a Firefox add-on that allows anyone to hijack other people’s social network accounts in open wifi zones. The way the application works is staggeringly simple. If you login to a social media site, it is likely that you will be getting a session cookie to keep you logged in (usually turned on by the “Remember Me” button). This cookie will identify you as already having logged into the system, and therefore its possession will allow you to connect to the social media site without having to identify yourself again. So, now imagine you are in a coffee shop with open wifi and you have your laptop with you, and you are also logged in with a session cookie to Facebook or Twitter. Guess what? Any person in the possession of Firesheep will be able to intercept that session cookie, and therefore will be able to connect to your Facebook account. Not only that, Firesheep will capture all of the unencrypted cookies flying around in the open wifi environment.


    • Protecting journalists from Firesheep
      There's been a great deal of coverage in the last day or so of Firesheep, a plugin for Firefox that lets you take over the Facebook and Twitter accounts of others on your local network. If you use Firesheep, you can pick one of the people on, say, the same open wireless at your nearby cafe, and then easily view, delete, and add comments using their name on these sites.




  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • Fox News editorial: WikiLeaks employees should be declared ‘enemy combatants’
      Leading the attack on whistleblower web site WikiLeaks, Fox News editorialist and former Bush-era US State Department official Christian Whiton said on Monday that the US should classify the proprietors of WikiLeaks as "enemy combatants," opening up the possibility of "non-judicial actions" against them.

      "So far, the Obama administration appears to have been asleep at the wheel in responding to this," he wrote for FoxNews.com on Monday. "The same is true of the Democratic-controlled Congress, which has no fewer than ten committees of jurisdiction that could be doing something about this—but which are not."


    • DoD Expanding Domestic Cyber Role


      The U.S. Defense Department is quietly taking on an expanding role in defending U.S. critical infrastructure from cyber attacks.

      In a break with previous policy, the military now is prepared to provide cyber expertise to other government agencies and to certain private companies to counter attacks on their computer networks, the Pentagon's cyber policy chief, Robert Butler, said Oct. 20.






  • Finance

    • Where are the cuts in your country?
      As you may have seen, last week the OKF launched a new mini project called WhereAreTheCuts.org. Created by by Jordan Hatch and Richard Pope, the site enables UK citizens to find and report spending cuts near them. It had a pretty enthusiastic reception, and was picked up by the Telegraph and several local news sources.




  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights



  • Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

    • “books” On the Cambridge Train
      I’m coming back from JISC and again sitting on the floor among the Bromptons. Alice and Bob are in their regular seats. They must get out earlier than me or rush along platform Zero faster than the average punter. (The 1645 is not a good train to arrive just-in-time for unless you like bicycles). Anyway I catch part of their conversation.


    • BitTorrent Still Dominates Global Internet Traffic
      A new Internet traffic trends report released by the Canadian broadband management company Sandvine reveals that global P2P traffic is expanding, with BitTorrent as the key player. In North America, more than half of all upstream traffic (53.3%) on an average day can be attributed to P2P. The report further signals some really interesting regional differences in P2P use, such as the dominance of Ares in Latin America.


    • Watermark




  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • 3M claims ownership over purple
      "The color PURPLE is a trademark of 3M."


    • Facebook Sues Faceporn, Apparently Believing It Owns The Words Face & Book
      Earlier this year we covered how Facebook was suing a site called Teachbook.com, claiming that any social network that ended in "book" was infringing on its trademarks.


    • Climate-Ready Crop Patents Present Danger For Biodiversity, Group Says
      A civil society group this week warned government officials gathered here against patents on “climate-ready” crops and what they characterised as an attempt to obtain an exclusive monopoly over plant gene sequences. The group asked states at the United Nations biodiversity conference to recognise that such patents are a threat to biodiversity and to the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the utilisation of genetic resources.

      Yesterday, the ETC Group held a side event and presented a paper [pdf] alleging that the six largest global agrochemical and seed corporations are filing wide-scope patents with the aim of obtaining a monopoly on plant gene sequences that “could lead to control of most of the world’s plant biomass” for food, feed, fibre, fuel or plastics.

      Biomass is defined by the group as “material derived from living or recently-living biological organisms.” Biomass includes all plants and trees, microbes, but also by-products like organic waste from livestock, food processing and garbage, they said. “Climate-ready” crops are engineered to address climate change challenges.


    • Federal Circuit: Patentability of Isolated Genes
      In a landmark 2010 declaratory judgment decision, a Southern District of New York court invalidated claims from seven Myriad patents associated with the BRCA1/2 breast and ovarian cancer genes. The patents include both composition claims covering isolated DNA molecules and method claims covering the processes of detecting and screening for BRCA mutations. The lower court held that these claims all fail the patentable subject matter eligibility test of 35 U.S.C. €§101. A typical invalidated claim includes Claim 1 of Patent No. 5,747,282 which reads “1. An isolated DNA coding for a BRCA1 polypeptide, said polypeptide having the amino acid sequence set forth in SEQ ID NO:2.” (The amino acid sequence No. 2 was provided as a part of the patent filing).


    • Protocol on ABS Could Further Impoverish Indigenous Peoples, Groups Claim
      Indigenous Peoples previously protested the position of Canada opposing the language in the 21 October preambular text “noting the significance of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples” (IPW, Biodiversity/Genetic Resources/Biotech, 21 October 2010). The CBD secretariat is housed in Quebec, Canada.

      “The protocol must meet standards consistent with the internationally accepted rights of Indigenous Peoples,” said Harry. “If it does not, the ABS protocol will facilitate the misappropriation of genetic resources from indigenous lands and territories, and alienate the traditional knowledge implicated in benefit sharing schemes,” she said, adding that this would lead to a further impoverishment of the “world’s most vulnerable peoples.”

      Today, a group of Canadian indigenous peoples published a press release about Canada’s alleged undermining of the biodiversity negotiations. They said that in an interview with the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, John Duncan, Canadian minister of Indian affairs and northern development, “claimed the ABS issue was a diversion. “What is being discussed in Japan is about intellectual property, so to think that has anything really significant to do with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is inappropriate,” he was reported saying.


    • Copyrights

      • French three strikes agency getting 25,000 complaints a day
        Nobody knows how many file sharers are getting warnings from France's new P2P infringement authority, but Billboard.biz says that French labels are sending 25,000 complaints a day to Hadopi, the agency enforcing that country's "three strikes" law.


      • Hard Choice? Chinese Internet Café Owners/Transport Operators Can Choose Between Paying For Chinese Movies Or Using Free Pirated Foreign Movies
        IP Dragon is concerned that the owners of internet cafés and the operators of planes, trains, ships and buses are not charged for showing foreign films. This is not only discriminatory to foreign film makers, and in violation of international treaties, but it will hurt the fledgling Chinese film industry. There is not really fair competition if you have to pay or Chinese films and foreign pirated films you can use for free. The National Copyright Administration of China has already announced that this will not change in the near future. Maybe Hollywood, Bollywood and the European filmindustry can change their opinion.


      • The Coming Showdown over Free Music
        Many people, including myself, have said it’s inevitable: digital music is going to be given away legally for free, while musicians and songwriters try to make livings in other ways. But just how inevitable is it?


      • Copenhagen Salon
        With this salon, CC Denmark would like to invite the public in to discuss the benefits of using open licensing models in business. Presenting each of their work, renowned speakers from three international projects will elaborate on using CC licenses and sharing ideologies in their respective fields.


      • Local News Website Says You Need To Pay To Read Its Stories, Says It's Collecting Visitor IPs To Sue
        Well, here's a fun one. Apparently, there's a local news site known as The North Country Gazette (don't click that just yet...) covering parts of upstate New York via a blog format. Rather than putting in place an actual technical paywall, the site has apparently decided to go with a paywall-by-threat model.


      • Interview With The Guy Who Embraced The 'Pirates' Of 4chan


        ERIKA: Like I said earlier, it's made me re-think how you interact with the trolling, toxic readers that everyone inevitably picks up when their work starts to attract an audience.


      • LimeWire Shuts Down After Losing Court Battle With The RIAA
        The Gnutella-based download client LimeWire has ceased all its operations after a U.S. federal judge granted a request from the RIAA. Limewire was ordered to disable all functionalities in the current application to prevent users from sharing copyrighted material. The verdict is expected to have an unprecedented impact on the P2P file-sharing landscape.


      • ACTA

        • ACTA: GI-card seen
          När det gäller det redan sÃ¥ hÃ¥rt kritiserade ACTA-avtalet , sÃ¥ är kristdemokraterna (EPP) och de konservativa (ECR) i Europaparlamentet mycket angelägna om att det även skall omfatta sÃ¥ kallade geografiska indikatorer (GI). In the case of the already much-criticized ACTA treaty , so is the Christian Democrats (EPP) and the Conservatives (ECR) in the European Parliament is very keen that it should also include so-called geographic indicators (GI).

          Det innebär i korthet att de vill att geografiska produktmärken (Champagne, Parmaskinka mm) skall fÃ¥ samma skydd som vanliga varumärken mot förfalskning. That basically means that they want to geographic marks (Champagne, Parma ham, etc.) shall receive the same protection as regular brands against counterfeiting.












Clip of the Day



EFF Celebrates 20th Anniversary With New Animation by Nina Paley



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Credit: TinyOgg

Recent Techrights' Posts

IBM May Well Be Laying Off Over 13,500 and Up to 27,000 Staff This Week When It Says "Single-Digit Percentage of Our Global Workforce"
It's not yet possible to know how many people IBM gets rid of
Early Unverified Figures About Scale of Latest IBM Layoffs
the real scale of the RAs will remain elusive
How Techrights Search Works
Hopefully bots won't use it
Techrights Became a Lot More Productive as a Result of Attacks on It
By default, it's safe to assume anything on the Web is garbage, especially in social control media
Unverified Rumours: IBM Cuts Will Continue Another ~10 Days, Managers Will Invite Those Impacted for 1-on-1 Meetings
Right now IBM likes diversity because with adoption of low-paid demographies it gets to pay workers less for the same work
analytics.usa.gov: Vista 11 Scarcely Used, GNU/Linux Increasingly Dominant (Microsoft Loses "Goodwill", Depletes Cash Equivalents, and Debt Soars)
"Total current assets" fell by more than 2 billion dollars in the past 3 months
Not Only Mass Layoffs at IBM But Complete Shutdowns "Amid A.I. Boom"
apparently about 10,000 layoffs, not counting those who got pushed out by PIPs and other means
 
Slopwatch: linuxbsdos.com, Linux Journal, LinuxSecurity, Brian Fagioli, and WebProNews
Either Google doesn't care about the integrity of Google News or it deems slop to be acceptable
Gemini Links 05/11/2025: Affirmation, GnuPG, and While Loops
Links for the day
Links 05/11/2025: Economic Trouble in France and US Bombing All Over the World Without Declaration of War or Congress Approving
Links for the day
Red Hat Staff Also Impacted by Latest IBM Layoffs With Focus on North America and Software, Infrastructure
After the bluewashing never expect to see news about "Red Hat layoffs", just as "Tivoli layoffs" aren't to be expected
Coming Soon: Part 4 About the EPO's Substance Abuse (Breaking Laws to Fake 'Production' and Profiting From Unlawful Monopolies)
Notice how quiet the EPO's management has been lately
For the Record: We Never Named Staff of the Law Firm That's Attacking Us, Except the One the Firm is Named After!
Just to affirm and be sure, I've used our new search facility
Links 05/11/2025: Medicare Privatisation and "Breaker Box Economy"
Links for the day
Techrights Search Will Come Early
Maybe tomorrow
It Seems Like GNOME/IBM Don't Like Women and When Budget is Limited Only Women Take the Fall
Seems like a very patriarchal, GAFAM-controlled Foundation
"Last Day" as in "IBM Sacked Me" (Cruel Euphemisms)
"The entire design and research technical leadership at IBM was laid off in the past year, including this round"
Shadow Crew and Ads Disguised as Articles
That The Register MS runs articles that are paid-for fluff isn't unprecedented
Vista 11 "Market Share" Has Fallen This Month, Based on statCounter
The US government's own data shows the same thing this month
This is How Mainstream Media, Boosted or Parroted by Slopfarms, Spins IBM's Commercial Failure and Mass Layoffs as "AI"
Some say "software focus", but most just resort to buzzwords and blame-shifting hype
Resisting Misogynists
Rianne has already added close to 100,000 pages to this site
Starting November on a Strong Note
All in all, this month started well for us as we have good, accurate publications with considerable impact
Fake Retirements Help IBM Keep the Layoff Figures Down
Yesterday we read that it was quite cruel how IBM (or Red Hat) compelled staff to pretend to be happily leaving or "retiring" when the reality was, they had been pushed out with some "package"
Cocaine at the European Patent Office Now a Subject in YouTube, Media Will Revisit the Topic
"The Cocaine Patent Office" is no joking matter
Gemini Links 05/11/2025: "Wuthering Heights" and "Winter is Coming"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 04, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 04, 2025
2 Days Until Site Anniversary Party, Search Likely to Launch Same Day
We're now just two days away from the nineteenth anniversary of the site
Richard Stallman's 2005 Article on Why Patents on Software Should be Denied
If patent law had been applied to novels in the 1880s, great books would not have been written. If the EU applies it to software, every computer user will be restricted, says Richard Stallman
"Last Day" at IBM and Red Hat as "Stealth Layoffs" (They Force People to Pretend It's Wilful)
So the real extent of the layoffs is being kept 'undercover'
Slopwatch: The WebProNews Slopfarm and the Serial Slopper
The Web is ill
Links 04/11/2025: Tensions Around Belarus Grow, Turkey’s Hype-inflation Continues
Links for the day
Corporate Media That Fails to Report Cocaine at EPO is Totally Failing to Report Mass Layoffs at IBM
How come nobody anywhere writes about this week's RAs?
Search @ Techrights: Almost There Now (Maybe an Anniversary Gift)
Just to be very clear, search would not be unprecedented at Techrights
At IBM, Layoffs Start at 1AM (at Night)
not a single English-speaking site covers the news about the layoffs
Links 04/11/2025: Google Cloud Account Engages in Censorship of the Innocent, arXiv Spammed by LLM Slop
Links for the day
EPO Cocaine Chronicles: Our Aim Will be to Ensure This Becomes a Mainstream Media Topic, Not a Suppressed Scandal (Which the German State Deems Embarrassing and Detrimental to Its Pan-European Patent Franchise)
At the EPO, and perhaps in German media as well, people "fall upwards" (they get rewarded for bad things)
Envy Makes People Do Self-Harming Things (and Harm to Others)
Online communities that can be deemed successful are built around trust, mutual respect, and collective accomplishment
Static Site Generators (SSGs) Made Techrights Better, Faster, Easier to Manage
Consider adopting SSGs if you still use a CMS such as WordPress
But he Was Born in Manchester! (Origin Stories)
Borussia Dortmund does not exist!
What Julian Darley Wrote About the Stallman Talk Regarding "AI" in Oxford (2025)
From LinkedIn (Microsoft)
GNU/Linux is American, Not Finnish
It started in Boston, not in Helsinki
'Hacker' 'News' Makes Dumb Assertions Against Smart People
A logical fallacy
We Turned Down Every Settlement Offer Because Truths Aren't Determined in Bank Accounts
Without free press, there won't be free society
"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them." -Galileo Galilei
This site is educational
Why I'm Always Proud of the Site I've Devoted My Life to
As a graffiti around the corner from our home says, "be a better person"
Standing Up or Standing for What's True But Inconvenient
Bad actors need to be called out
Many People Have Said That They "Leave" IBM in Recent Days (Ahead of Mass Layoffs)
So the real extent of layoffs is greater than what's publicly stated (there are silent layoffs) [...] Whatever IBM says about the scope, scale, or magnitude of the "RAs", it doesn't tell the full story
Media Coverage Regarding IBM is Vapourware and LLM Slop
With slop images, too
statCounter Says GNU/Linux Rose to 4% in the Russian Federation
Adoption of Vista 11 has been embarrassingly weak
Corruption is Not a Joke
we'll try to limit our use of humour to avoid misunderstandings or misinterpretations
The Slopfarm WebProNews is Overwhelming "linux" Results in Google News
Google News is slop
The Fall of IBM: What Happened?
Just like the EPO continues riding some old reputation acquired in the 1970s IBM relies on old myths like, "nobody gets fired for buying IBM."
IBM's CEO Already Has the Excuse for the Latest Wave of Mass Layoffs
Only days ago the CEO told a bunch of nonsense
Links 04/11/2025: Conflicts, Politics, and IPv6 at Home
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/11/2025: Entering WiFi Passwords and Programming Rambles
Links for the day
Arch Linux Seems Like the New Debian
Arch users (btw!) are growing in relative and absolute share
Analytics From US Government Affirm a Trend: Microsoft's "Market Share" in Search is Falling
the data set is large
Holding Institutions Such as the EPO Accountable Through Public Information
Speaking truth to power is never easy
Techrights Will Contact German Media About the EPO's Substance Abuse
This scandal won't "go to waste"
EPO Staff Losing Holidays, as Usual, as the Office Increases Profits by Illegally Granting Invalid Patents While Reducing Salaries
How much more can the staff endure and generally tolerate?
Free Software Does Not Always Speak for Itself, It Needs Advocates
Legal matters that relate to sharing of code will be discussed
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 03, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, November 03, 2025
The Register MS Continues Looking for Money in Promotion of the "AI" Ponzi Scheme
That The Register MS participates in this deceit rather than tackle/debunk it says a lot about The Register MS
IBM Layoffs in "Software", This Likely Impacts Red Hat as Well
Many people say "software" people are impacted
Escaping Proprietary Software, Not Just Escaping Microsoft
To take control of your life adopt GNU/Linux
A Lot of Fake News About Microsoft Headcount (Also: Microsoft's Debt Rose by About 24 Billion Dollars in Past 12 Months)
If you see some headline about Microsoft's CEO making claims about hirings, look away
Techrights Turns 19 in Three Days
It would be nice to meet for a chat
Akira Urushibata on How Grokipedia Fails to Work
The Grokipedia article gives the wrong character for the "Ko" on "Koan"
Links 03/11/2025: Data Breaches, Wars, and Digital Censorship
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/11/2025: Poetry, Old Androids and Small Shells
Links for the day
The Rumour Was True, Mass Layoffs at IBM Today
How widespread the layoffs are (or how they're disguised, e.g. PIPs) is hard to assess
Links 03/11/2025: Internet Anniversary
Links for the day
Two Years of Uptime
Reboots are seldom involuntary
Richard Stallman is Giving Another Talk in Less Than a Fortnight
in two weeks' time (13 days from now)
Windows Falls Below 20% in the UK
Many people choose to leave Windows altogether
Microsoft's Search Business Falls to Lowest Point in 2 Years, Based on statCounter
what can Microsoft sell other than shares in Microsoft?
Evidence Regarding Layoffs at Red Hat
Seems like IBM layoffs
Microsoft: Our "Goodwill" Value Grew More Than Tenfold Since 2011
Hallmark of pseudo-economics
GNU/Linux as a Boarding Pass
being mostly analogue is still feasible
Links 03/11/2025: Lack of Trust in LLMs and Windows TCO at Jaguar
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/11/2025: Books in October and Change
Links for the day
Mozilla Firefox Won't Survive and Many Sites Don't Work With It (Compatibility Abandoned)
The Web has become monocultural
Debian is Non-Free
Devuan might be worth looking into
Slopwatch: Brian Fagioli and LinuxSecurity
This is a real problem and most certainly a big problem because when people try to find real information about security and GNU/Linux they instead read "word salads" made by bots
Four Reasons to Party With Us in Four Days, Celebrating the Four Freedoms
Today we expect to be back to a more-or-less regular publication pace
Links 03/11/2025: The "Smartphone Panopticon" and Belarus' Hybrid Attacks on EU Intensify
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, November 02, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, November 02, 2025