05.07.13
Posted in Apple, Courtroom, GNU/Linux, Google, Patents, Red Hat, Samsung, SCO at 5:01 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Accepting the status quo, like sheep led to slaughter
Summary: Red Hat is too soft on the issue of software patents, based on its comments to the USPTO; Linux/Android continue to suffer from software patents in court cases which may last years
Red Hat has hardly been a flag bearer in the fight against software patents. It is not as bad as IBM, but it is not always helpful, either. Red Hat itself is filing to receive software patents of its own, making a distinction between what it calls “bad” software patents and “good” software patents. It tends to focus on trolls and in its Web site OpenSource.com (Red Hat-run) it has almost a monopoly on views regarding software patents.
Nevertheless, in the wake of USPTO opening up to feedback Red Hat is making its policy known:
The USPTO has been asking the public to respond to a series of questions with suggestions on improving patents. It is aware that the technical community isn’t happy with the way patents are being issued, particularly software patents. You are familiar with some of the USPTO’s questions, because we at Groklaw responded to two of them, topic 1 on how to improve software patents, regarding functional language, and topic 2, suggestions for future topics for discussion.
Red Hat’s suggestions play along the lines of software patents as a given, which is problematic. Groklaw‘s ‘cref 66895 suggestions], on the other hand, were very good and they are essential for a meaningful discussion of the real issues. Elsewhere in Groklaw there is a discussion about a legal case involving the best-selling Linux devices, the ones from Samsung. Here are the latest two updates on that:
1. Joint Case Management Statement Filed in Apple v. Samsung
The judge in the first Apple v. Samsung patent case in California, the Hon. Lucy Koh, asked the parties to file a joint case management statement, just in case she decides to go forward with an immediate second jury on the issue of damages on the 14 products where the first jury got the math wrong. And they have now done so [PDF]. There will be a hearing on all this on April 29. Of course, they disagree. Because they don’t agree on how to go forward, they each set out their positions, once again. The short version is that Apple wants to hurry up and have the trial immediately and Samsung wants to hear from the appeals court before the new damages trial goes forward, so as to ensure the same mistakes aren’t repeated.
2. Judge Koh’s Order in Apple v Samsung: No Stay on Damages Retrial, Unless…
Judge Lucy Koh has reached a decision [PDF] on going forward on the retrial on damages in Apple v. Samsung. Trial is set now for November 12th, on damages only, same Daubert rulings, motions in limine, discovery disputes, and evidentiary objections ruled on the same as the first trial, meaning if she made mistakes in the first trial, they’ll be repeated in the retrial. “The parties may not relitigate these issues,” she writes. So it’s all for the appeal court to figure out. She isn’t interested in reviewing all that. So if the appeals court orders a third trial, that’s the way it will have to be. She wants to keep the damages retrial short and sweet and limited to just one issue, and then send it on its way to appeal, so no new theories and no new fact discovery. There is a schedule for expert discovery. The jury will be 8 people, with the parties’ given three peremptory challenges each. Apple asked for the very same jury instructions, but she says they will get together on October 17th to discuss “how to
present infringement and validity findings” to the new jury. Other than that, she is silent on that point.
Trial expected at the end of this year, eh? Justice is taking too long, so it’s SCO all over again in that respect. What needs to occur some time in the next year or two is elimination of software parents in the United States (or radical cut-down). Red Hat just doesn’t go far enough to achieve that. We need other fronts in the fight against software patents; Google ain’t it, either. █
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Posted in Apple, Finance, Microsoft at 4:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Stopping contribution to their home country
Summary: The financial games of Microsoft and Apple culminate in more loan-taking manoeuvres, which give legs to speculations and rumours
ARE Microsoft and Apple good for the US economy? It depends on whose economy. Microsoft made some few Americans very affluent, but those people and the company they work(ed) for, Microsoft, do not pay tax, or only pay negligible amounts in tax. Apple, to a certain degree, is the same.
The other day we showed 'legalised' tax avoidance using corporate tricks that lobbyists make "legal". We showed how Microsoft moles in government let Microsoft avoid billions in tax, leaving others to fill the fiscal gap. This is robbery, technically speaking, but nobody will be sent to jail for it because the legal system is controlled by those with a lot of money,
According to this report as well as others, Apple keeps much of its money abroad, despite being US-based. With an estimated 22-30 trillion dollars (global aggregate) in offshore tax havens, this too deserves criticism. No wonder the richest families continue to gain trillions in value every year while others struggle to earn enough money for food and shelter. Microsoft has been doing this for years as well and it still does it.
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), one of four U.S. companies with a top credit rating from Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investors Service, sold $2.67 billion of bonds with a portion of euro-denominated debt paying a record-low coupon.
The world’s largest software maker issued bonds in euros for the first time, raising 550 million euros ($715 million) with 20-year, 2.625 percent notes, the lowest coupon among similar-maturity, non-financial corporate bonds sold in that currency, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The debt pays 55 basis points more than swaps.
Microsoft has debt to repay. We wrote about this in many posts for over half a decade. Contrary to common myths, Microsoft is not always profitable, but it is always corrupt, at times with its finances, too. █
“One strategy that Microsoft has employed in the past is paying for the silence of people and companies. Charles Pancerzewski, formerly Microsoft’s chief auditor, became aware of Microsoft’s practice of carrying earnings from one accounting period into another, known as “managing earnings”. This practice smoothes reported revenue streams, increases share value, and misleads employees and shareholders. In addition to being unethical, it’s also illegal under U.S. Securities Law and violates Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (Fink).
–2002 story about Charles Pancerzewski, Microsoft
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents, RAND at 3:59 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Yet another display of bias from the state in which former Microsoft executives run the government and write the policy
A few days ago we wrote about 'former' Microsoft people inside Washington state authorities enabling Microsoft to avoid billions of dollars in taxes. This is corruption through infiltration.
There is a major battle going on over the future of Android. A lot of money is at stake. Apple and Microsoft are suing Motorola (Google) and the MSBBC serves their party line, still (the BBC has been Android-hostile for years).
The Seattle courts, as biased (in favour of Microsoft) as one should expect them to be, continue to harm Android. After Microsoft had sued Motorola there was an attempt at deterrence by Motorola, but the courts don’t let it be. As CBS put it: “Judge determines Motorola is entitled to $1.8 million in royalty rates for patents used in Xbox — not the $4 billion it had sought.”
Notice the following remarks:
The Verge asks if anyone can work out why Google bought Motorola. Their argument being that they’re not having much luck in enforcing the patent portfolio against anyone so therefore that’s $12.5 billion just wasted.
Google sought to prevent the Apple/Microsoft cartel from getting Motorola’s ammunition like the cartel got Nortel’s and Novell’s. Google can also use Motorola’s portfolio for deterrence, but silly corruptible Seattle courts are one-sided. How many people in this system are former Microsoft staff?
Motorola will get 3.5¢ per Xbox; not the $4-$6 per machine it wanted.
Here is good coverage and a post about “FRAND, Uncertainty & Doubt”:
It’s been interesting to watch the latest patent litigation between Microsoft and Motorola. The judge’s opinion have been well documented (see Groklaw’s copy here and an annotated one there over at the Essential Patent blog). Now I’m not going to offer an informed legal perspective in this post and by the way, “IANAL”. What I’m expressing here are the views of someone who’s been in the I.T. industry, the field of digital standards and Free Software for over a decade.
FRAND has had until the end of the month of April 2013 no definition. What “Fair” terms, let along “Reasonable And Non Discriminatory” mean had no agreed definition. Worse, it had no definition at all. It is the first time that a U.S. judge is struggling with this matter and while it is applied to a specific case only (the use of patents in the H.264 codec claimed by Motorola to be used by Microsoft in its products), it is nonetheless interesting to see someone actually tried to evaluate them.
Here is an earlier report and some further analysis:
I’ve found some materials that I think will help us to put the order [PDF] from Judge James Robart in context, the order setting a RAND rate for Microsoft to pay Motorola. From the materials, particularly this report [PDF] from a conference on patent pools and standards bodies held in Brussels in April, 2012, I think you will see that the judge has used the wrong ruler, namely patent pools, to set a rate that is not fair to Motorola for its standards patents. And as you will see, that is the very danger that the conference highlighted, that patent pools can impede innovation, by lowering the price for newcomers to a field who wish to merely implement the standard, like Microsoft, by letting them unfairly underpay those who did the research to develop the standard, as in Motorola.
At the same time, Seattle court are pounding Motorola. Is this justice or “just us” (Seattle)? █
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Posted in FUD, Microsoft at 3:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Scaring home and business users who explore Free/Open Source Software (FOSS)
Summary: A Zeitgeist of FOSS hostility, with strong links to proprietary software and sometimes to Microsoft too
WHEN SOMEONE invests time and effort collecting data with which to demonise FOSS, one should expect a lot of output (publication) effort to follow. Attention whore Florian Müller would know the feeling as it’s about driving business (lobbying), not pushing a point of view. It did not take Xuxian Jiang (and some colleagues) too long to rear that ugly heads again, pretending that Android has a big malware (or even “virus”) issue, mischaracterising the system under the flawed assumption that anti-virus is needed at all (this myth is being spread to salespeople too). Watch this article and notice that the authors are never named. Some worked for Microsoft. Isn’t that relevant? They are overlooking the real problem, Microsoft Windows, instead picking on Android. It is noteworthy that ISPs start disconnecting customers for using Microsoft Windows, based on this new story which says:
A few days ago I talked with a young woman whose ISP had notified her of disconnection if she did not take care of her malware spamming the network. Over the phone we discovered that she had managed to install an anti-virus application but had not even her firewall running… She did not need this stress during the last couple of weeks of her school year.
This is not FUD but a real issue associated with Windows, and only Windows. Speaking of the FUD business, recently we compared Univa to Black Duck, which came from Microsoft and liaised with Microsoft. We see a similar pattern in this proprietary software sympathiser (Sonatype) which spreads security-themed FUD about FOSS. A FOSS-hostile site [1, 2] covered it as follows:
Sonatype’s annual survey of 3,500 software developers and shows struggle in setting corporate policy on open source and enforcing it
Last but not least, see this proprietary software player contributing to FOSS FUD:
CAST Software is a software analysis and measurement firm that uses an automated approach to capture and quantify the reliability, security, complexity and size of business applications. A main company objective is increasing software assurance around reliability and security of applications delivered to the U.S. government.
CAST is proprietary, like all the above. How come they get a near-monopoly on information regarding FOSS? We must work hard to prevent the proprietary software business taking over the voice of FOSS [1, 2]. █
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05.06.13
Posted in News Roundup at 3:34 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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It’s no secret that GNU/Linux is being used by the Hollywood studios to create block-busters. Pixar is working on OpenSubdiv, a new open source library that implements high performance subdivision surface drawing and evaluation on modern GPU and massively parallel CPU architectures.
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Not to being totally free, that is a completely different kettle of fish. Linux is a tantalising sample and example of what freedom can deliver.
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THE SPANISH REGION of Extremadura has announced that it will switch 40,000 government PCs to open source software.
The government of Extremadura has worked out what many already know, that open source software can deliver significant cost savings over using proprietory software. The region’s government has decided to switch 40,000 PCs to open source software, including a customised Linux distribution called Sysgobex.
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Desktop
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The latest incarnation of the Linux Kernel was released this week, and for the first time, it includes code for running Linux on Google Chromebooks. Chromebooks come loaded with Chrome OS — a web-happy, Linux-based operating system designed by Google — but the new kernel code will make it easier to run other versions of the popular open source operating system on these machines.
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Kids don’t always treat technology with care, so we selected systems that were either ruggedized against drops and spills, low-cost to make replacement less painful, or both. The K-5 set probably won’t be using any performance straining software tools, but they will definitely want to play games or get online, so we focused on laptops that would meet those needs without the expense of high-end processors. And finally, we looked for kid-friendly features, such as the educational tools found in the DirAction Classmate PC, or the dead-simple ease of use offered by Google’s Chromebooks.
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Server
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Kernel Space
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The Linux 3.10 kernel will feature new improvements and features when it comes to KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) virtualization.
The KVM pull request for the Linux 3.10 merge window was volleyed on Sunday morning to the kernel mailing list. Interesting bits include:
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Graphics Stack
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Are you itching to try out open-source AMD Radeon “UVD” video acceleration support over VDPAU on Fedora Linux?
It was in early April that AMD provided open-source Radeon UVD video acceleration code at long last for the past few generations of Radeon HD graphics cards for use by their open-source Linux driver. This allows applications that support VDPAU (the Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix) to leverage GPU-based video hardware acceleration.
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Applications
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The Linux world is home to some unusual controversy. None is greater than the phylosophical battles regarding text editors. Some will tell you emacs is the best, while others will argue for vi as the supreme editor. I happen to like vi though I will tell you about emacs in a later article. The vi editor holds an almost mythical place in tech lore, with jokes like “vivivi, the editor of the beast” (think Roman numerals). You can almost hear this fearsome voice echoing eerily across the walls of your office or home; “I am vi, the Great and Powerful!” Yes, if there is one editor that strikes fear in the hearts of newbies alike, it is certainly vi (or “vim”), the visual editor. “vim”, by the way, stands for “vi improved” and is the version of “vi” that you will find in your Linux system. Anyhow, pay no attention to that fearsome voice behind the program. vi, or vim, is not so frightening once you get to know it.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Wine or Emulation
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CodeWeavers, through Josh Dubois, CrossOver product manager at CodeWeavers, proudly announced a few hours ago, May 1, that the CrossOver 12.2.0 software has been officially released for both Linux and Mac OS X platforms.
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Games
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The German game publisher Runesoft has released the “point-and-click” adventure Jack Keane on the Indie gaming platform Desura. This game is based on the free rendering engine OGRE and has won numerous game awards.
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So with some recent titles including Brutal Legend and now Stacking and Costume Quest all hitting the Steam Linux Database and no weekly sales on Humble could the time be ripe for a Humble Double Fine Bundle? This is all pure speculation of course.
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A tree killed his granny and now he is out for revenge. Meet Jack Lumber, the supernatural lumberjack who hates trees, loves animals, and hates trees. Did we say that twice? The guy really hates trees, and boy does he have an axe to grind.
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After the success of Anomaly: Warzone Earth and Anomaly Korea, the famous 11 Bit Studios announced at the beginning of the year that they were working hard on a new version of the popular game, Anomaly 2.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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KDE’s Plasma is one of the most popular desktop environment in the GNU/Linux world. The community was also working on a Windows port of KDE applications so that these users can also take advantage of KDE’s technologies. The Windows project was in the state of limbo for quite some time and now KDE SC 4.10.2 is available for Windows.
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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The first maintenance release of the stable PyGObject 3.8 library for the GNOME desktop environment has been announced some time ago, fixing a few bugs and introducing new rules.
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Matthias Clasen had the pleasure of announcing last evening, May 3, that the first development release of the upcoming GNOME 3.10 desktop environment is ready for download and testing.
We, here at Softpedia, are monitoring the development process of the GNOME desktop environment very closely, and we can report that this first development release has very few updated packages, as compared with other testing versions from the past.
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New Releases
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After over a year sense the last release of JULinux (2011-06) A New Release is Born, and It’s Awesome !
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Jitsi 2.2 is now available for download…
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Kwort 4 is finally here! For those who don’t know, Kwort 4 is a full x86_64 system (finally!). In the last couple of week we’ve been testing Kwort 4 hardly to see if everything is “stable-enough”.
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Screenshots
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PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family
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Last week we looked at PCLinuxOS, an excellent Linux distribution based on Mandriva Linux. Today we’re kicking the tires of Mageia Linux, which is a fork of Mandriva. Mandriva Linux has had its ups and downs as a commercial venture, but despite the financial struggles it’s a first-rate distribution that offers enterprise support and a number of enterprise products such as Pulse, their enterprise IT management system, Mandriva Business Server, and training and consulting. Mageia was created in 2010 as an independent, non-profit project, not tied to the fortunes of a commercial company, after most of the Mandriva developers were laid off.
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Arch Family
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Almost a year after the last release of the Open Build Service (OBS), the openSUSE developers have announced version 2.4 of their software. The biggest new feature in the distributed packaging and build service is support for the PKGBUILD format from Arch Linux which becomes the third packaging format the service can now use – the other two being RPM and Debian’s packaging system. Furthermore, OBS 2.4 introduces the 64-bit ARM AArch64 architecture as a target infrastructure and kernel, and bootloader packages can now be signed to work with UEFI Secure Boot.
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Debian Family
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Debian Linux doesn’t get all the attention it once did, but as the foundation for other, more popular Linux distributions, such as Mint and Ubuntu, the release of a new major Debian version, 7.0, aka Wheezy, is still a big deal in Linux development circles.
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Derivatives
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We appreciate your feedbacks about the overall speed/lightness of the system compared to last stable version of Elive. You can say something in our chat channel directly from the running system. If you detect any lagging in the system please consider different setups like disabling composite (which you can select on the startup of the graphical system) in order to report improvements. We would also appreciate feedbacks about composite enabled or disabled in old computers, suggestions for better performances, and memory usage compared to Topaz.
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Ubuntu is on an exciting journey, a journey of convergence. Our goal is to build a convergent Operating System that brings a uniformity of technology and experience across phones, tablets, desktops, and televisions, and smoothing the lines between those devices in terms of interoperability and access to content. It is a bold vision, but Ubuntu has a strong reputation both in terms of our heritage in the desktop, server, and cloud, and with our passionate and capable community. I just wanted to provide some updates on work that is going on in delivering this vision.
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Within the past year, there has been an abundance of criticism aimed at Ubuntu and the Gnome 3 projects. At times, it resembled a scorched earth carpet bombing mission. The outer edges of the Linuxsphere are still hearing echos of that event and while it has calmed a bit, there are those who have left one or both of those projects in protest.
And to be honest…..
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Canonical published a few minutes ago, May 3, the regular top 10 app downloads chart, this time for April 2013, extracted from Ubuntu Software Center.
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Canonical Founder Mark Shuttleworth has really big, plans to put Ubuntu on your smartphone, on your tablet and (via OpenStack). What he doesn’t offer is details on revenue.
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Tablet shipments continued to “surge” in the first quarter of 2013, growing 142 percent year-over-year, according to market analyst IDC’s latest “Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker” report. Additionally, Android vendors had an extremely strong first quarter, shipping 27.8 million tablets versus Apple’s 19.5 million iPad and iPad mini devices.
More tablets shipped during the first quarter of this year than during the entire first half of 2012, with most of the growth “fueled by increased market demand for smaller screen devices,” largely based on a strong performance of Apple and Samsung, notes IDC.
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The new Linux 3.9 kernel adds driver support for tiny MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems) devices made by ST, including accelerometers and motion sensors. Other Linux 3.9 features that affect the embedded world include SSD caching support, a lightweight suspend power mode, and support for Android’s “Goldfish” virtualization system.
When Linux 3.9 arrived on April 28, its support for MEMS devices was hardly a marquee enhancement. Yet of all the many Linux 3.9 improvements of interest to the mobile and embedded world, MEMs support may have the most significant long-term impact. As devices continue to shrink and sensing applications grow in importance, there is greater demand for the tiny devices, which range in size from a millimeter down to 20 micrometers.
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f you’re squinting as you read this on a smartphone, here’s some good news: mobile fonts may soon be clearing up. In collaboration with Google and the FreeType project, Adobe has contributed its CFF (Compact Font Format) rasterizer to the open source FreeType font engine.
The open version of CFF is designed to improve legibility of small fonts rendered by the lightweight, resource-efficient FreeType on devices running Android, Linux, iOS, and other Unix-based platforms.
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Via Technologies announced a tiny, low-power Pico-ITX SBC with optional 3G connectivity and battery power support, aimed at in-vehicle and mobile applications. The VAB-600 is based on an 800MHz ARM Cortex-A9 system-on-chip (SOC) with on-chip graphics acceleration, offers Ethernet, WiFi, and 3G connectivity, operates from 0 to 60° C, and runs either embedded Linux or Android 4.x.
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Abalta Technologies announced an in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) solution that inexpensively mirrors browser content from smartphones or tablets to Linux-enabled “head” units. The company’s Weblink IVI demo consists of a client app running on a Raspberry Pi-based simulated head unit acting as a remote touchscreen for WiFi- or USB-connected smartphones running a companion server app.
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Phones
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It has been quite some time since my last post about Firefox OS running on a Raspberry Pi, but the questions didn’t stop to come in “when will it be released”? Well, I’m sorry that it took so long (sometimes finding time is not that easy), but finally, here we are: the sources and build instructions are available!
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Ballnux
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So you think Samsung Electronics America is just a consumer brand? Guess again. Samsung has launched a B2B branding initiative to promote its laptops, Galaxy tablets, smartphones and management software into business accounts. For channel partners, the key opportunities could involve BYOD, mobile device management, vertical market applications and plenty more.
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Sub-notebooks/Tablets
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Shezhen, China-based Promate Technologies claims to have created the world’s first tablet-projector. The “LumiTab” sports a modest 1024×600 7-inch IPS screen, runs Android 4.2, and uses a Texas Instruments digital-light-processing (DLP) chip to render “incredibly sharp 1080p HD images” on walls and projection screens, according to the company.
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The second point release of the XBMC Media Center 12 software has been announced last evening, May 3, 2013, for the Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, Android and Raspberry Pi platforms.
XBMC Media Center 12.2 is a maintenance release, which brings various improvements and bugfixes over previous releases. The infinite loop on add-on dependencies has been fixed in this release, as well as audio-related crashes for Linux builds.
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I’ve been educating library professionals about open source software for nearly seven years now, and sometimes I feel like I’ve made huge strides and other times, like today, I feel like I have so much more work to do.
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Web Browsers
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Mozilla
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A recent report by Citizen Lab uncovered that commercial spyware produced by Gamma International is designed to trick people into thinking it’s Mozilla Firefox. We’ve sent Gamma a cease and desist letter today demanding that these illegal practices stop immediately.
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CMS
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Acquia has entered into an agreement with Capgemini Digital Services. Acquia will collaborate with Capgemini Digital Services to develop and operate content driven applications that deliver rich, immersive digital experiences for its clients.
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Healthcare
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GNU Health, an free software hospital information system, medical record system and health information system, is rapidly becoming popular in hospitals around the world, says one of its developers, Sebastian Marro. “This project has the potential to grow really large.”
Marro presented GNU Health at the Medetal conference in Luxenbourg, earlier this month. The GNU Health software is supported by a not-for profit organisation, GNU Solidario, set up in Spain. Marro, based in Argentina, is one of the board members of the NGO.
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Business
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This week we release the Express and Community Editions of eXo Platform 4.0: The Open Source Enterprise Social Platform.
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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The GnuCash development team proudly announces GnuCash 2.5.1, the second release in the 2.5.x series of the GnuCash Free Accounting Software which will eventually lead to the stable version 2.6.0. It runs on GNU/Linux, *BSD, Solaris and Mac OSX.
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BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA — Tuesday, April 30th, 2013 — The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today awarded Respects Your Freedom (RYF) certification to the TPE-N150USB Wireless N USB Adapter, sold by ThinkPenguin. The RYF certification mark means that the product meets the FSF’s standards in regard to users’ freedom, control over the product, and privacy. The TPE-N150USB can be purchased from http://www.thinkpenguin.com/TPE-N150USB. Software certification focused primarily on the firmware for the Atheros AR9271 chip used on the adapter.
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Licensing
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Luis Villa, an OSI board member and Deputy General Counsel at the Wikimedia Foundation, sat down with us to share his thoughts on the behavior he is seeing in the community away from copyleft licenses and how to get involved in the upcoming Open Source License Clinic.
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Openness/Sharing
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As the open source ethic has changed the way that we share and develop resources, crowdsourcing is redefining how we can create new resources based upon that willingness to share. One example of crowdsourcing at work for the betterment of us all is public health researchers turning to Twitter to collect real-time data about public health.
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Open Hardware
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At Open Source Junction 4 we invited attendees to present their hardware projects. Some were open source hardware, while some used consumer hardware components in conjunction with open source software to provide an innovative solution to a problem.
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Programming
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There’s a prevailing ethos among IT hirers that younger is better when it comes to programmers, but a study by academics in North Carolina suggests that employers might be missing a trick by not hiring the grizzled veterans of the coding world.
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The Facebook website has lost 10 million visitors in the US and seen no growth in monthly visitors in the UK over the past year, according to data from market research firm Nielsen.
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Security
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The arrest of a 24-year-old Australian claiming to be the head of an international hacking ring and a Twitter hack that briefly sent Wall Street into a tailspin last week has shone the light on hackers as Perth prepares to host its first “hacker con”.
But the figures behind this weekend’s WAHCKon conference say the term hacker has been hijacked and most hackers are simply curious people with a computer.
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A home science experiment that probed billions of Internet devices reveals that thousands of industrial and business systems offer remote access to anyone.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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Six days after the U.S. bombed his village, Yemeni activist Farea al-Muslimi testified on Capitol Hill about the terror of the U.S. drone wars. Al-Muslimi spoke during the Senate’s first-ever public hearing on the Obama administration’s targeted killing program. His family’s village was hit by a U.S. drone strike last week. The White House refused to send an official to defend the program’s legality. “When they think of America, they think of the terror they feel from the drones that hover over their heads, ready to fire missiles at any time,” al-Muslimi says of his fellow Yemenis. “What the violent militants had previously failed to achieve, one drone strike accomplished in an instant.” Others to testify at the hearing included law scholars and members of the U.S. military.
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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For better or worse, the biological research community has become heavily reliant upon an animal that most of us would try to kill if we found it in our homes: the mouse. Mice have lots of good points. There’s about a century’s worth of genetic research on it to draw upon, there are sophisticated tools for pursuing genetic studies, and it’s relatively closely related to us. Results from mice often translate into knowledge of human disease.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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If the journalists who were far too generous in their coverage of Bush’s presidency are the same ones writing about how that presidency should be viewed now, he’s in safe hands.
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That’s the unfortunate thought that raced trough my head while reading the report in Sunday’s New York Times that Charles and David Koch — the notorious billionaire bankrollers of climate-change denial, voter suppression, and much of the right-wing noise machine — could be the leading candidates to buy eight major daily newspapers from the recently bankrupt Tribune Company, including the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune.
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Privacy
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Why does your government want a backdoor in all popular Internet products and services? That’s like asking why a prostitute wants you to pay for her services, or why a politician wants a bribe (or is that a campaign contribution?).
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In a CNN interview about the Boston Bombings investigations, a former FBI counterterrorism agent admitted a startling (yet unsurprising) fact: “all digital communications” are recorded and stored. All of them. All phone calls, all e-mails and all social media interactions. According to him, there is definitely a way of retracing and listening to any phone call made on US soil. While most Americans ignore or deny this reality, the shaping of the USA into a heavily monitored police state is complete. Here is part of the CNN interview.
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Civil Rights
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Building owner, factory owner and engineer accused, as death toll in disaster reaches 622
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The United Kingdom has denied entry to a Kazakh artist who does not have hands because he cannot provide fingerprints, he says.
Anti-nuclear activist Karipbek Kuyukov was due to travel to Great Britain last month to attend a conference and show his paintings, he told Tengrinews.
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Internet/Net Neutrality
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“The Wall Street Journal and others are reporting that longtime telecomm lobbyist Tom Wheeler will be nominated to head the Federal Communications Commission. According to the LA Times: ‘Wheeler is a former president of the National Cable Television Assn. and the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Assn. Despite his close ties to industries he will soon regulate, some media watchdogs are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. “As someone who has known Tom for years, I believe that he will be an independent, proactive chairman,” said Gigi B. Sohn, president and chief executive of Public Knowledge, adding that she has “no doubt that Tom will have an open door and an open mind, and that ultimately his decisions will be based on what he genuinely believes is best for the public interest, not any particular industry.”‘”
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President Barack Obama will nominate venture capitalist Tom Wheeler to be the next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, The Wall Street Journal reported today. Wheeler is “a former top lobbyist for the cable and wireless industries” and will be nominated as soon as tomorrow, the Journal wrote. The Hill reporter Brendan Sasso said the White House has now confirmed that Wheeler will be nominated for the post.
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President Obama on Wednesday nominated telecom veteran Tom Wheeler to serve as the next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
If the Senate approves Wheeler’s nomination, he will replace outgoing chairman Julius Genachowski, who announced in March that he would step down from his post after four years. Until the Senate vote occurs, Democratic Commissioner Mignon Clyburn will serve as interim chair after Genachowski leaves in mid-May.
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DRM
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While the shares fall and the smartphone wars rage, Apple’s music store keeps growing – and tying users into its platform
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Today is the seventh annual International Day Against DRM (Digital Rights Management). We’ve talked a lot here about DRM particularly in movies and books (read my two-part timeline, The DRM graveyard: A brief history of digital rights management in music
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On April 25, 2012, Tor Books UK announced that it was making all of its ebook list DRM-free. There’s still a lot of debate and interest in the topic. I recently wrote a piece about the subject for Publishers Weekly which I’ve replicated here.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Trademarks
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SOFTWARE DEVELOPER Mozilla has sent a cease and desist letter to Gamma International, claiming the firm is using Firefox’s branding to trick users into downloading and using its malware.
Mozilla’s hugely popular Firefox web browser is trusted by many users because it is not a commercial organisation like Google or Microsoft, making it a good target for those that want to steal some of its good will. Mozilla has alleged that Gamma International is trying to do just that, with its malware masquerading as the firm’s Firefox web browser, and Mozilla said it sent Gamma International a cease and desist letter.
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Copyrights
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Earlier this month Finland’s largest ever Internet piracy case ended with four men being found guilty of copyright infringement and two being exonerated. The case involved a so-called ‘topsite’ called Angel Falls and had an interesting twist. During the trial it was revealed that evidence gathered by a local anti-piracy group and the IFPI was also handed to a “senior MPAA executive” who tampered with the evidence before handing it to the police.
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The Pirate Party in Iceland seem to have booked a major victory in Iceland’s parliamentary election today, scoring 5.1% of the total vote. It’s a truly remarkable achievement for a party that’s only a few months old, and also the first time that a Pirate party anywhere in the world has been democratically chosen in a national parliament. One of the main goals of the Pirates will be to fight increased censorship and protect freedom of speech.
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POLITICAL UPSTART the Pirate Party has won three seats in the Icelandic Parliament.
The party won just over five percent of the national vote, just enough to ensure its place, according to a celebratory post from Pirate Party spokesman and evangelist Rick Falkvinge.
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The United States and ten governments from around the Pacific are meeting yet again to hash out the secret Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) on May 15-24 in Lima, Peru. The TPP is one of the worst global threats to the Internet since ACTA. Since the negotiations have been secretive from the beginning, we mainly know what’s in the current version of this trade agreement because of a leaked draft [PDF] from February 2011. Based upon that text, some other leaked notes, and the undemocratic nature of the entire process, we have every reason to be alarmed about the copyright enforcement provisions contained in this multinational trade deal.
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Swedish authorities have filed a motion at the District Court of Stockholm on behalf of the entertainment industries, demanding the seizure of two Pirate Bay domain names. In addition to the Swedish-based .se domain the motion also includes the new Icelandic .is TLD. In a rapid response, The Pirate Bay has just switched to a fresh domain, ThePirateBay.sx, registered in the northeastern Caribbean island of Sint Maarten.
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Norway has moved an important – some say unstoppable – step towards legislative change that will enable the aggressive tackling of online copyright infringement. Proposed amendments to the Copyright Act, which will make it easier for rightsholders to monitor file-sharers and have sites such as The Pirate Bay blocked at the ISP level, received broad support in parliament this week and look almost certain to be passed into law.
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Posted in Europe, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 3:16 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: BT starts sending out nastygrams to companies which facilitate secure and standards-based communication
I have been having serious disputes with BT recently. It’s not the first time, either. I am currently speaking to managers there about their poor service that has gone on since January. My Internet connection’s socket being an utter disaster is not my sole reason for disliking BT though. The company has been attacking Linux using FUD and patents [1, 2]; now it goes after free protocols for secure communications using patents, based on this report from the British press which says:
VoIP-to-PSTN termination providers and SIP vendors will be watching their inboxes for a lawyer’s letter from BT, which has kicked off a taxing licensing program levying a fee on the industry, based on a list of 99 patents.
As noted in Australian telco newsletter Communications Day, the move seems to have caught the VoIP industry by surprise, with SIP Forum chair Richard Shockley saying the move has shocked the industry and is already frightening smaller players.
BT is a dangerous giant which seems to have aligned with Microsoft a little too often in recent years. Who is BT trying to defend here, Skype the spyware? Its overpriced landline business? This is an attack on the customers. If BT cannot be reformed by criticism, then hopefully it will suffer consequences for its behaviour. We really need secure communication in the age of Big Brother states. In the news today we have articles such as:
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In a CNN interview about the Boston Bombings investigations, a former FBI counterterrorism agent admitted a startling (yet unsurprising) fact: “all digital communications” are recorded and stored. All of them. All phone calls, all e-mails and all social media interactions. According to him, there is definitely a way of retracing and listening to any phone call made on US soil. While most Americans ignore or deny this reality, the shaping of the USA into a heavily monitored police state is complete. Here is part of the CNN interview.
Skype is spied on and so are cellphones and landlines. So what’s left for secure long-distance communication? This is a privacy and civil rights issue, not just a matter of software freedom and open standards. █
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Posted in Asia, GNOME, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 2:54 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Having conquered the China-controlled Taiwan and the two Korean giants, Microsoft now goes deeper into China and demands payments for Linux-powered products
A few years ago we found out Microsoft’s strategy for patent extortion, thanks to a legal leak. The company behind this leak continues to protest to its government about the USPTO and contrary to what it said after Microsoft had bribed it, it continues with Android, not Windows, at least based on reports such as this. For those who cannot quote remember, B&N (Barnes & Noble) brought out the NDA-concealed extortion proposition (nastygram) with a list of patents included therein and then it got bribed by Microsoft for silence and lack of further legal challenges.
Microsoft is worried about its total defeat in the mobile world. “MS percent of the US market is larger than its percentage of the World market,” tells us a reader. So Microsoft decided to extort Android, maybe even bribing companies to make it appear feasible (financial details are never disclosed, but it’s about FUD). It recently went after Foxconn, based in Taiwan where patent collusion might be brewing. We don’t know if Foxconn pays anything. Now Microsoft got a patent deal with ZTE, another Chinese company. One site says:
For several years now, Microsoft has been asserting that any company making Android phones owes it money, because Microsoft has patents that cover various aspects of those phones.
Last week, the company said that the Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn, which makes 40 percent of consumer electronics worldwide including a variety of Android and Chrome-powered products, had agreed to license its patents. Today, the company announced a patent-licensing deal with another huge Asian electronics company: Chinese telecom ZTE.
A reader sent us “more coverage” such as this, but there is nothing to suggest they pay Microsoft. Remember that another Chinese giant, which reportedly spurned Microsoft’s attempts to tax Android phones, rejects the US market and refuses to sign such a patent deal for Android. Disguising extortion as “licence” is not an acceptable business practice. Microsoft increasingly uses proxies like Nokia, too, either to litigate in Europe or to feed patent trolls such as MOSAID. Nokia itself recently attacked a Taiwan-based company, HTC, in several places in Europe.
Over at IDG, software patents promotion continues with lobbyists for this cause, such as Martin Goetz [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7], getting a European platform. Shame on IDG. The patent lawyers, a tiny minority of the overall populations, already have their platforms where they try too find rarity like developers who favour software patents. Groklaw, despite its strength in this area, also gives a platform for trolls but only as means of balance.
In order to stop Microsoft’s patent extortion we need either to kill software patents or take Microsoft executives to prison for RICO Act violations. In a system controlled by corporations, both are hard goals to attain. █
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Posted in Patents at 2:24 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Focus is lost
Summary: A deviation from the core issue a key trend now that everyone mentions “trolls” to trivialise the problem with the patent system
Our posts which criticise the US patent system (USPTO) receive a lot of positive attention because people overwhelmingly agree. We are told that a new survey says patent attacks scare off customers and kill businesses — something which patent lawyers would rather avoid discussing. The problem, however, is that Chien (law professor) singles out trolls and not software patents. To quote an article about the new study:
A new survey of in-house lawyers is adding some heft to the claim that patent attacks, especially by so-called “trolls,” are hurting the economy. Professor Colleen Chien of Santa Clara University revealed the results of her survey of 116 in-house lawyers today, and it shows that patent trolls—or companies that exist simply to litigate patents—are more prevalent than one might think.
Chien led off her brief talk by laying out the scope of the problem. Fully 62 percent of the patent lawsuits brought in 2012 were filed by trolls, which she calls Patent Assertion Entities or PAEs, the same nomenclature used by the government.
How about quantifying — proportion-wise — the frequency of software patents being involved?
Here is another article which shifts attention to trolls by saying “CBS also might be on the cutting edge when it comes to dealing with patent trolls, who seek reimbursement for companies alleging infringing on their patents. Previously, CBS would give them some money to just go away. These days, CBS partners with others to take a stand against patent trolling.”
Trolls are not the only issue; authors should be reminded of that. The same goes for copyright. Copyright trolls, as they are increasingly being labeled, are not the biggest issue with copyright law as it stands today. To give an example of copyright misuse consider the SCO case. 10 years down the line the harassment of Linux using copyright claims carries on. As Pamela Jones put it the other day:
That’s a bonk on the head for SCO, for sure, by a judge who demonstrates the simple truth that judges tend to be brainiacs, and they know it’s a duck when they see one paddling along calling out “quack, quack” even if it holds up a sign saying, “I am a Swan.” Utah, or so I’ve read, is the scam capitol of the US. So judges there not only have brains, they probably get a lot of experience as well, one assumes. Judge Nuffer also ruled that he doesn’t think oral argument would be needed on this, so SCO’s request for a hearing is also denied. I guess you could call it a no-brainer. I mean, fair is fair. Isn’t that what courts are supposed to be for? But dealing with SCOfolk does take brains and some careful planning, because they are tireless and nothing dissuades them from trying again any which way, and you see that careful thought went into this order. Also because dealing with SCO is like picking up a scorpion. You do want to give it some advance thought before you try it.
SCO is a reminder not only that trolls are the problem with so-called ‘IP’; it is also a reminder of the fact that large entities, such as Microsoft, like to use smaller entities, e.g. Nokia, to attack the competition. Nokia and SCO were both paid by Microsoft. █
“…Microsoft wished to promote SCO and its pending lawsuit against IBM and the Linux operating system. But Microsoft did not want to be seen as attacking IBM or Linux.”
–Larry Goldfarb, BayStar, key investor in SCO approached by Microsoft
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