Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 16/5/2014: HP Selling GNU/Linux PCs in China



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



Leftovers



  • Security



  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression



    • The UK In The Dock
      International Criminal Court is to investigate war crimes committed by British armed forces in Iraq.




  • Censorship



    • The EU's Google Decision Destroys Search


    • European Court of Justice Google ruling gives the Dog a Bone


    • Google ruling 'astonishing', says Wikipedia founder Wales
      A ruling forcing Google to remove search results has been described as "astonishing" by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.

      The European Courts of Justice ruled on Tuesday that an individual could demand that "irrelevant or outdated" information be deleted from results.

      Mr Wales said it was "one of the most wide-sweeping internet censorship rulings that I've ever seen".

      Google has said it is looking into the implications of the decision.


    • Health And Human Services Apparently Unable To Recognize Satire; Sends Bogus Legal Threat
      Another day, another story of someone with skin way too thin not comprehending satire and dashing off an angry legal threat. In this case, it's worse than usual because the bogus legal threat is coming from the US government. Popehat has the full story of how some of the legal geniuses at the Department of Health and Human Services have sent a bogus cease-and-desist letter over a pair of obviously satirical posts on the site AddictionMyth.com. While we've long been skeptical of the medical profession's desire to label all sorts of things "addictions," that particular site takes it to extreme levels, arguing that there's nothing that's addictive, and all talk of addictions (including drug and alcohol addictions) are just a big scam "perpetrated by law enforcement, rehab groups and the entertainment industry." I think that's nuts, but they certainly have their right to say so.




  • Privacy



    • Photos of an NSA “upgrade” factory show Cisco router getting implant
      A document included in the trove of National Security Agency files released with Glenn Greenwald’s book No Place to Hide details how the agency’s Tailored Access Operations (TAO) unit and other NSA employees intercept servers, routers, and other network gear being shipped to organizations targeted for surveillance and install covert implant firmware onto them before they’re delivered. These Trojan horse systems were described by an NSA manager as being “some of the most productive operations in TAO because they pre-position access points into hard target networks around the world.”

      The document, a June 2010 internal newsletter article by the chief of the NSA’s Access and Target Development department (S3261) includes photos (above) of NSA employees opening the shipping box for a Cisco router and installing beacon firmware with a “load station” designed specifically for the task.


    • Encrypted Internet Traffic Surges in a Year, Research Shows
      Encrypted Internet traffic is surging worldwide according to data published by Canadian broadband management company Sandvine. After the Snowden revelations the bandwidth consumed by encrypted traffic doubled in North America, and in Europe and Latin America the share of encrypted traffic quadrupled.


    • Our privacy is interdependent
      Last week I gave a presentation at CommonsFest in the spirit of my Free Your Android post, trying to educate people on simple steps they can make to have better privacy on their mobile devices.

      A couple of days before my presentation I watched this great speech from Jillian York and Jacob Appelbaum (please go and watch this). At some point Jacob mentions that "our security is interdependent".


    • Rostock University Faculty to award Edward Snowden an honorary doctorate
      Members of the Faculty of Arts, Rostock University, Germany, have voted to award Edward Snowden an honorary doctorate degree.


    • The best way to read Glenn Greenwald's 'No Place to Hide'
      Journalist Glenn Greenwald just dropped a pile of new secret National Security Agency documents onto the Internet. But this isn’t just some haphazard WikiLeaks-style dump. These documents, leaked to Greenwald last year by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, are key supplemental reading material for his new book, No Place to Hide, which went on sale Tuesday.




  • Civil Rights



  • Internet/Net Neutrality



  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Copyrights



      • Let’s all welcome the UK IP Crime Group! – Yet another “group” surrounding industry and IP?
        It has a .gov address and many of the people I talk to would advise against challenging government agencies/bodies (I believe because of an unwarranted fear of repercussions), suffice to say it doesn’t bother me at all and taking a closer look at the connections between industry and government is always worth doing, if it wasn’t then past “naughty” behaviour by others would never have been discovered.

        Is it a I scratch your back world? Who knows? But what is known is that there’s a growing trade (for want of a better word) in groups that live off “defending” others IP. Its worth noting that many of these groups don’t actually create anything at all and are funded to serve the interests of the businesses who pay them. Pay them I hasten to add in many cases on the back of huge profits.








Recent Techrights' Posts

When Everybody Has a Right/Access to An Attorney/Lawyer (But Some Get Funding From Malicious American Corporations to Spend a Million Dollars on Many Lawyers and Several Barristers)
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European Qualifying Examination (EQE) Being Reduced to Pieces of Papers One Can Buy, Patent System Rapidly Losing Its Legitimacy
Welcome to the "new Europe"
IBM Cannot Even Do Payroll, Now a "Legitimate Target" of Iran
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Priorities in 2026
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Microsoft is like a "legacy" company
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true!
In the Name of Transparency, Today We Show Our Defence and Counterclaim
already uploaded by the other side
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Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
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Under Open Access
The Register MS, on Verge of Collapse, Keeps Promoting a Ponzi Scheme for China
Publishers that participate in this simply don't care about their readers
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Many of the latter slides are the same as Munich's
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Why does Europe's second-largest institution: 1) curtail communication among staff (including union) and 2) go out of its way to avoid obeying a court order from ILOAT in Geneva?
Exactly One Week Before Next EPO Strike, Media Intentionally Not Mentioning EPO Strikes
One form of propaganda technique/s involves the systematic suppression of certain topics, or of particular "narratives"
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It's time to put a stop to this abuse of process (which is what the Judge deemed it to be last year)
Suicide of disgruntled employee? Bus fire at Kerzers / Chiètres, Switzerland, at least six dead
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
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The cost of maintaining illusions
IBM's Payroll: Cannot Even Pay the People What They're Legally Entitled to
How financially-stressed is IBM at this point?
Slides From the European Patent Office (EPO) Explain Why They're Striking, How They're Striking, and What Comes Next
A week from now the strike will go ahead
GAFAM Datacentres Are Facilities of War, So Risk of Downtime by Missiles or State-Sponsored Cracking Has Vastly Increased
How safe is your business in "clown computing" or DCs marked as some "legitimate targets" at wartime?
Companies That Take Away Blood and Sweat From the Community to Sell a Ponzi Scheme to Everybody
We need Free software that is run by communities
1,234 People Gather Online to Plan Next EPO Strikes and Other Industrial Actions
yesterday an online gathering orchestrated the next moves by EPO staff
Links 11/03/2026: Fake Videos Swarm YouTube, "Ukraine Can Now Manufacture ‘China-Free’ Drones"
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Kafkaesque: Unlawful Activities in the UK to Cover Up Unlawful Activities in the United States of America
Why is bribery and even extortion seen is OK? Because rich people do those things?
Former IBM Executive, Ron Hovsepian, Doomed S.u.S.E. (SUSE)
SUSE is like a child nobody wants to raise
Quiet Layoffs or Silent Layoffs Alleged at Microsoft
Will some investigative journalists do their job now and ask Microsoft tough questions?
After a Long Lull LinuxTeck (linuxteck.com) Came Back Only as a Slopfarm
Unlike Linuxiac, LinuxTeck wasn't very active in recent years
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Links for the day
Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 9 Out of 200: 5RB Barrister Does Not Even Know the Name of His Own Client (That He Was Paid Well Over $200,000 to 'Speak' or 'Cover' for)
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the message circulated regarding the open letter to the Administrative Council
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Gemini Links 11/03/2026: School, Code Slop, and "Fancy Weapons"
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Over at Tux Machines...
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