01.11.11
Posted in Deals, Finance, Novell at 7:29 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: AttachMSFT [sic] does not have enough money to complete an acquisition of Novell, so it is reaching out for a loan
IN THE coming days we shall cover the AttachMSFT acquisition of Novell and the barriers which remain, including the important fall of the CPTN deal and the many lawsuits from investors. One of the lesser-discussed barriers is actually financial and according to this report from Bloomberg:
Attachmate Corp., the connectivity solutions provider owned by private-equity firms, is seeking $1.09 billion in loans to finance its acquisition of Novell Inc.
Attachmate is seeking an $825 million first-lien term loan, a $40 million first-lien revolving line of credit and a $225 million second-lien facility, Waltham, Massachusetts-based Novell said today in a regulatory filing.
This was echoed by [1, 2, 3] and for some more recently-written background:
6. Novell, the Waltham open-source software developer that once called Utah home, finally found a mate in Attachmate last month, following an eight-month strategic review. The Seattle firm shelled out $2.2 billion for Novell.
There is a lot more to be said about this planned takeover, but that is a subject for future posts. We still have a backlog of about 20 posts. █
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Posted in Microsoft, Novell, OSI, Patents at 7:16 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft et al. head for the door just shortly after OSI files a complaint to the German Federal Cartel Office
TECHRIGHTS wishes to begin with the good news. Those patents which Novell was going to hand over to Microsoft? Well, that ain’t gonna happen on the face of it. And with AttachMSFT [sic] still looking for a loan with which to buy Novell (more on that in a later post), the whole Novell acquisition is now in jeopardy, shareholder lawsuits notwithstanding.
Here is just one article about the latest regarding CPTN:
A plan created by Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, and EMC to create a consortium to acquire hundreds of Novell patents has been withdrawn after complaints from open source advocates, leaving the fate of the nearly half billion dollars’ worth of patents uncertain.
It was first revealed in mid December that the four companies had set up CPTN Holdings LLC to jointly acquire 882 Novell patents for $442 million.
The rest of Novell was to be sold to Attachmate for $2.2 billion, with that sale being “conditioned upon the closing of the proposed sale of certain intellectual property assets to CPTN Holdings LLC.” according to the original Novell press release about the acquisiton.
There were precursors too. “This went almost unnoticed,” wrote Carlo Piana about a week ago, “Novell-Attachmate HSR filing withdrawn, to be refiled today”. To quote:
Regulatory Matters (page 73)
Under the HSR Act and the rules and regulations promulgated thereunder, certain transactions, including the merger, may not be consummated unless certain waiting period requirements have expired or been terminated. The HSR Act provides that each party must file a pre-merger notification with the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (“DOJ”). A transaction notifiable under the HSR Act may not be completed until the expiration of a 30-calendar-day waiting period following the parties’ filing of their respective HSR Act notification forms or the early termination of that waiting period.
The parties to the merger originally filed their respective notification and report forms pursuant to the HSR Act with the FTC and DOJ on December 1, 2010 and the initial 30-day waiting period would have expired on December 31, 2010. In order to provide the DOJ with additional time to review the information submitted by the parties, Attachmate is voluntarily withdrawing its HSR Act notification form, effective December 31, 2010 and intends to re-file for the same transaction on or about January 3, 2011. The effect of this re-filing will also be to extend the waiting period under the HSR Act to a date 30 days from the date of the re-filing, unless earlier terminated or extended by the DOJ requesting additional information from the parties.
The merger was also subject to review and approval by the FCO. Attachmate, with the consent of Novell, filed the appropriate notification in Germany, and the FCO granted clearance to the merger transaction on December 23, 2010 stating that it will not oppose the merger transaction.
Under the HSR Act, the patent sale also may not be completed until the expiration of a 30-calendar-day waiting period following the filing by the parties to that transaction of their respective HSR Act notification
For those to whom the whole thing is news, see the previous post about the complaint in Germany or about CPTN in general. It’s almost as though the FTC is too corrupted from the inside, so they need to go to Europe for help investigating this. Here is the original complaint [PDF].
“But why were the involved parties’ minds suddenly changed?”As O’Reilly Radar put it the other day, this could become another SCO-like trouble. To quote: “As someone who has 10 shares of SCO framed and displayed in his bathroom, 2010 looked to be a very good year. The Beast from Utah finally exhausted all of its legal options, and cratered into a messy bankruptcy, leaving Novell with clear ownership of the Unix intellectual property that Linux may or may not incorporate. We all rejoiced, assuming that Linux would enjoy a happy existence in the future, unworried by fears of corporate protection rackets trying to intimidate people into paying for the free OS.
“Then this fall, Novell announced that it was selling more than 800 of their patents to a consortium that includes Microsoft as a major player. Suddenly, all of the angst about IP attacks against Linux were back on the table, but now with known Linux-hater Microsoft appearing to hold the reins. Will further legal hijinks ensue? Only time will tell.”
Apparently not, assuming the latest news will stick and eventually become a confirmed reality. But why were the involved parties’ minds suddenly changed? Our reader Satipera noticed that a software patents’ crass booster, Patent WatchTroll, weighs in on the subject by writing that “The Meaning of “Open Source”: Patented by Microsoft”. Frankly, the headline alone is so inane that it seems automatically- or stochastically-generated and Satipera seems to agree. He simply calls this “Completely clueless.” To give just a flavour of this mind dropping:
Apparently, Novell was committed to open source and that makes it acceptable to the OSI that they owned patents, but the fact that patents might be used for a competitive advantage by a patent owner, and used to stop infringers from infringing is troubling. So troubling that they are urging the German government to investigate. See Open source campaigners urge investigation of Novell patent sale and Novell’s Microsoft patent sale referred to regulators. So it seems that the position of the OSI is that those who are anti-software patent and committed to open source are the only ones who can own patents without necessitating an investigation by the government. Breathtakingly self-serving if you ask me.
In any event, wouldn’t it be ironic if the movement developed at least in part to prevent monopolization of the software industry in Redmond wound up being responsible for handing Microsoft rights to every program ever created? Perhaps it is Microsoft that is behind the open source movement. Who knows, but several things seem abundantly clear, namely that nothing in life is every truly free, and the true meaning of the term “open source” may be “patented by Microsoft.”
On the contrary, Brian Proffitt came up with an accurate analysis which on January seventh scrutinised what Microsoft was doing:
For the record, I’m not terribly happy about the patent purchase agreement that’s running in parallel to the Novell-Attachmate acquisition deal. The thought of 882 Novell patents getting sold to CPTN Holdings, LLC (a holding consortium made up of Apple, EMC, Microsoft, and Oracle America) does not sit well with me.
Now, also for the record, a source inside one of these four companies told All Things Digital’s John Paczkowski “‘We get to buy in at a cheap price and get a license to a very valuable portfolio… It’s cheap defensive insurance.’”
I’m sure.
It is, like anything else in the world, possible that this is the reason behind the patent grab. If these are covering technologies that affect networking and cloud computing, areas that everyone and their sister are trying to get into, then a defensive stance makes sense.
But even if these patents have no direct correlation to open source, do you think the CPTN members will really miss a chance to spread some FUD if it suits them to? After all, in 2004, Steve Ballmer made the claim Linux violated 228 Microsoft patents, a claim that was revised upwards to 235 in 2007. Who will lay odds that in late 2011, if this patent purchase agreement goes through, that number will change to, say, 1117 patents?
Alex Handy argued that “Fall was a bad season for Linux” partly because of this news about CPTN:
The Novell deal sends 882 of its patents to CPTN Holdings in exchange for US$450 million. Microsoft expressed pleasure at bringing Novell technology in-house, but declined to comment further on its intentions for these patents.
Meanwhile, in October, Red Hat was back in US District Court, Eastern District of Texas with Acacia Research over litigation relating to Acacia’s patents on systems and methods for exchanging data and commands between an object-oriented system and a relational system. While such patents could be used to take down almost every database-backed applications ever created, Red Hat decided to settle with Acacia for an undisclosed sum.
On the face of it, people may just forget this whole thing ever happened, but Novell’s buyer too might walk away. Wouldn’t that be memorable? We choose to believe that there was maybe a conspiracy to hide — something malicious which had Microsoft retreat before further revelations could be made. Microsoft must not have expected formal (perhaps federal) complains to be made, later to unravel more participants in what had the word “cartel” come up. We wrote about this last month and so did many American news sites [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17], British news sites, and even former Novell employees like Zonker who argued: “According to the letter, “the proposed CPTN transaction represents a potentially new, and unprecedented threat against open source software.” I’d go farther than that, though. The CPTN transaction is a threat against competition in larger marketplace, period. Yes, open source is in danger — but pretty much any legitimate competition in the areas of operating systems, virtualization, cloud computing, middleware, etc. I’m sure Red Hat feels uneasy about this unholy alliance, but then again so do Google and Parallels. Of course, OSI is only responsible for speaking up for the open source community, not the entire computing industry.”
“On the face of it, people may just forget this whole thing ever happened, but Novell’s buyer too might walk away.”Despite being a former Novell employee, he wishes this will fail. Zonker can be commended for not being loyal to Novell to the point of self-imposed blindness. Further he says: “There’s still time before the deal closes, though. Here’s hoping that OSI’s voice is heard, and that it’s not alone. Many companies and communities stand to be affected. There’s no reason to stand by silently and let Apple, EMC, Microsoft, and Oracle increase their collective patent warchests without any scrutiny whatsoever.”
Zonker’s colleague wrote:
Indeed, the number and significance of Novell’s open source patents call for scrutiny of CPTN from regulators. Novell is nearly as old as the personal computer, and when CPTN’s newly acquired patents came to light, we, along with other open source observers, expressed concern about a Microsoft-led consortium inheriting hundreds of them.
Simon Phipps (OSI), who took part in this complaint, published a blog post about it and separately he wrote: “I’ve had a steady stream of investment analysts asking me for private advice on the Novell/CPTN deal. No others, just them. Not giving it.” From his blog post we have:
I’m a member of the OSI Board, who were all involved in the drafting process. This is a significant new step for OSI, who have not previously referred a matter to competition authorities. It reflects the changing emphasis for the organisation, shifting from a role focussed almost exclusively on approving licenses to a more general role representing the interests of the open source movement.
Taking positions on important issues internationally is a valuable counter-balance to the influence of computer industry trade associations, and I hope OSi will keep doing it. That’s one of the reasons we’re shifting to a representative governance – a process which just progressed to the next step in the volunteer Governance Commitee, and which I hope will be completed before mid-2011.
Phipps also appears in some comments on the original post announcing this complaint.
In relation to the CPTN announcement, Groklaw admits its mistake (where Techrights got it right). To quote some relevant parts of the article “OSI Asks German FCO to Look Into the Proposed Patent Deal & You Can Too”:
Remember when Novell won in SCO v. Novell before the jury in Utah in March of this year, and they put out the statement pledging their loyalty to Linux and how they would protect it?
Novell is very pleased with the jury’s decision confirming Novell’s ownership of the Unix copyrights, which SCO had asserted to own in its attack on Linux. Novell remains committed to promoting Linux, including by defending Linux on the intellectual property front.
This decision is good news for Novell, for Linux, and for the open source community.
Like a dope, I believed them. Maybe you did too. Maybe your business relied on that promise and decided to use Linux as a result. Now what? If you get sued for patent infringement over those 882 patents Novell wants to sell to the Microsoft consortium, would you have a cause of action against Novell as a result of what OSI calls a “major disruption to the competitive landscape.” Ask your lawyer. But if the German FCO is saying it welcomes comments from the public, why not tell them about it, particularly if you have a business that could be directly affected by this proposed patent deal, if this is how you feel?
In short, the good news is that the whole CPTN plot is self-nuking at this moment. The question which remains to be answered is, did the complaint from the OSI play a role in derailing this part of the Novell deal? If so, there was probably something rogue to hide. █
Update: it is now being reported that the CPTN arrangement ought to be still on, despite reports like this one.
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Posted in Microsoft, Rumour, Windows at 6:11 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Muglia’s exit bodes badly for the convicted monopolist and it may have been a sacking based on a person close to Microsoft
YESTERDAY we wrote about the departure of Bob Muglia, which was rather vague and resembled the departures of Bach and Elop in the sense that Ballmer’s statements created uncertainty and led to more speculations than answers. First of all, let it be pointed out that this was another classic case of spinning bad news as wonderful news. Microsoft loves to spin it as “reorg”, as we explained 3 years ago (and provided many examples of thereafter).
“All presidents are leaving Microsoft just months apart from each other, leaving no reasonably-solid succession option for Steve Ballmer.”Microsoft understands that in order for trust from shareholders to be assured, it is better to pretend that nobody ever leaves Microsoft wilfully. Bob Muglia is no exception in that regard and he is just among many at his level who left recently (e.g. Bob Muglia, Robbie Bach, Stephen Elop, and Ray Ozzie). All presidents are leaving Microsoft just months apart from each other, leaving no reasonably-solid succession option for Steve Ballmer. “IMHO,” writes Jan Wildeboer, “Muglia and Ballmer seem to have different opinions about future of Windows Server market. No successor named means a lot IMHO.”
Well, here is some background about Muglia, courtesy of Joab Jackson who currently works for IDG:
Muglia has been with Microsoft for 23 years, leading development efforts in Microsoft Office, Windows NT and online services businesses. As president of STB, he oversaw Microsoft’s development and infrastructure products, including Microsoft Windows Server, SQLServer, Visual Studio and System Center products, among others.
Jackson also gives new signs that Microsoft Dynamics is struggling to stand on its feet (as always). Let’s face it; very few of Microsoft’s products are actually profitable. Some of the latest unprofitable ones can burn money at a pace of billions per year. They cannot rely on the cash cows forever and based on Muglia’s departure, something is not quite right with the division that handles Windows (Office too has had Elop elope). Recently it was confirmed that Microsoft is manipulating its SEC filing, specifically when it comes to fake numbers around Windows (so there is no guarantee that the rest of the report is reliable, either). This wiki page contains a lot more information on the subject.
“Recently it was confirmed that Microsoft is manipulating its SEC filing…”Microsoft’s most prominent boosters are very baffled by the news about Muglia and one of them insinuates that Ballmer actually fired Muglia, which would make it even more bizarre. To quote: “For a CEO, it’s surprisingly blunt to write: “I have decided that now is the time to put new leadership in place.” Vaguer, gentler language is generally used.
“Why the blunt talk? No one seems to know. And why is Muglia being let go when his division has been doing surprisingly well? Again, no one is sure.”
The title is “Why did Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer publicly oust Bob Muglia?” and the only comment at the time of writing rightly says: “What’s more vague than Steve Ballmer’s mail is your take on it, Preston. You haven’t answered your question that makes up the title of your post; but speculatively let the whole thing lie as is; without answers or offering insights or clues.” █
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Posted in News Roundup at 5:24 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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We’ve talked about the concept of national Linux distributions before, and the Russians are a nation that has engaged in previous attempts to standardize on Linux. Recently, Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister, made an announcement of a renewed effort towards open source adoption on a massive, despite the previous failures.
Armchair pundits have had to make do with translated versions of the report and of the announcement, but what seems clear is that under the new plan Russian institutions will undergo a transition to open source software between 2011 and 2015.
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A few days ago the Russian government announced that they were going to transition the government to using Free Software by 2015, starting as early as mid-2011.
In reality, this transition started much earlier. It was in 1997 that I first went to Moscow and attended a Unix Expo, helping to staff the Digital Equipment Corporation booth and giving two talks, one on Digital Unix and one on Alpha Linux. There amidst two-story trade show exhibits were little stands selling distributions of Slackware, Yggdrasil and even “white box” Linux workstations. Copies of the Linux Journal adorned shelves in the exhibit hall.
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Linux.conf.au 2011, set for 24 January through to 29 January, is to be held at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) situated on the banks of the Brisbane River.
Shaun Nykvist, director of Linux.conf.au, told ZDNet Australia today that the buildings intended for use at the conference are well above the level of the Brisbane River.
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Desktop
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We’ve reached a point where the expectations — and the stakes — are higher now than they’ve ever been. And bad interfaces, are, well, bad. It’s often unpleasant to watch as someone makes the sausage, but in this case it can go a ways toward explaining how this technology is developing.
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Server
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The London Stock Exchange’s delayed Linux-based trading system has finally been given a go-live date of 14 February, for the exchange’s main cash markets.
The LSE also confirmed speculation that it had to work on greatly increasing the Millennium Exchange system’s capacity in order to cope with high volume trading.
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Kernel Space
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The Linux Foundation has announced that GoAhead Software has become its newest member. Based in Bellevue, Washington, GoAhead Software is a global commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions specialist targeting network equipment manufacturers. Discussing the announcement, GoAhead Sales and Marketing Senior VP Bill Yaman said, “Linux has become the primary operating system in the telecommunications market. An increasing number of our customers use it in their network equipment and systems.”
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David Airlie has just called upon Linus to pull in his DRM tree for the Linux 2.6.38 kernel. With this being the first 2.6.38 DRM pull request and with the merge window still open, this code brings in a fair amount of exciting work.
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Graphics Stack
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With our big AMD Linux GPU / driver comparison we found its open-source Gallium3D driver to be noticeably faster than the classic Mesa DRI driver across an array of Radeon hardware from multiple generations. However, the official Catalyst driver was multiple times faster (roughly 5.18x faster) than the Gallium3D driver, not to mention its lack of proper support for OpenGL 3/4, VA-API/VDPAU/XvBA video playback, and many other features only found within the proprietary Catalyst driver. Now though it is time to see how the Gallium3D Nouveau performance compares to that of NVIDIA’s proprietary Linux driver across different GeForce graphics cards.
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We’ve been getting some requests recently about what is the best make of graphics card to buy for use with Ubuntu, and although we aren’t a benchmarking site, and so can’t recommend specific models, what we can do is give people a brief overview of the current state of graphics drivers (both open and closed) from the different manufacturers.
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Applications
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Sandbox started as a quick hack I wrote at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Orlando, FL back in October.
Since then it evolved quite a bit, getting a decent user interface and even a nautilus plugin.
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Diodon is a lightweight clipboard manager for Linux written in Vala which “aims to be the best integrated clipboard manager for the Gnome/GTK+ desktop”. It doesn’t have as many features as Glippy, Pastie and so on but it’s a lot lighter and only uses around 2.7 mb of RAM on my system.
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The Parcellite (one of the best Linux clipboard managers) development stopped a while back and for a year there were no new versions. But Vladi pointed out in a comment that a new developer took over the project back in December and a new version has already been released: 0.9.3.
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Software installation in Linux can confuse new users, while it pleases and irritates more experienced campaigners in equal measure.
Here are 20 things we’d change about it.
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Stay up-to-date with the latest news from your favourite feeds directly on your desktop with News – an Open Source RSS ticker for Linux.
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Proprietary
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It is a sincere hope that GIMP finds itself in the near future. Current and, more importantly, future Libre artists rely on it extensively.
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Now here are my two cents: last summer I tried for some months the development branch and this is what I have to say, the biggest and most anticipated feature, the single window mode is expected as the holy grail by those wanting a Photoshop clone on Linux, but are simple users, with no interest in contributing back (many times, they are not even users, making it as an excuse to stay with Photoshop). Trying it, I found it cute (it has an “Inkscape feeling”, good for consistency) but not something I want to use, it wastes screen estate and makes harder to work with multiple documents at the same time. This coupled with a number of smaller annoyances made me return to the 2.6 branch with the upgrade from Fedora 13 to Fedora 14 and want to look again at it only after the release.
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Recently something came up with one of the other sites I write for. I proposed an article about the Hamachi VPN client which had an outstanding version for Linux. The setup was incredibly simple, the software ran well, it was free, and it could save many a admin a lot of headaches in the setup of VPN servers. Problem was, the software was proprietary. Although there was no cost attached to the software, it wasn’t possible to download the source and do with it what you will.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Games
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Commercial Wine software ‘Cedega’ is to “cease operation” at the end of February, parent company TransGaming Inc. have today announced.
The proprietary fork of WINE, which proved popular with Linux users thanks to its enhanced support for Windows gaming titles, will instead live on as a free service under the new name of ‘GameTree Linux’.
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Desktop Environments
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)
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Last week KDE 4.5.4 was released for Windows. It was a late Christmas present from the KDE on Windows team and we were immediately interested in learning more about the project. In the first interview of the “Platforms” series, Pau Garcia i Quiles talks with Patrick Spendrin, the current release manager of KDE on Windows and asks, well, everything.
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GNOME Desktop
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So far, voice recording in GNOME has been an obscure feature because the sound recorder app is not easily accessible and it doesn’t provide a convenient way to organize and access your voice memos. The Board makes it extremely simple to record voice memos. No need to care about saving files or anything. You can easily label your tapes for later reference. Just add a sound element and start recording!
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I’ve spent several days playing with LucidWorks Enterprise and I have to say I am impressed with what I have seen thus far. The system requirements are low, the system is flexible and fast and there are lots of example scripts for developers who wish to expand on the functionality. The documentation is well put together, the admin GUI is easy to use and the end-user interface is familiar. Aside from stepping out of the GUI to change the admin password, I found the whole experience to be smooth and friendly. LWE is built from open source components and, in my opinion, offers an excellent solution for organizations who need to keep track of large numbers of documents in a wide range of formats. If you have any interest in search technology, I recommend you give it a try.
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I’m glad to see their is interest in the project and I’m constantly working with it and testing it to make sure things are working. I see I need to switch slocate out for mlocate since slocate went bye bye from portage. I suspect it will from Sabayon soon also. The KDE version is something I need to get back to. I was able to create and test a KDE version, but there are issues with KDE and the menus getting updated. Some of the programs were missing from the menu. Of course they worked from konsole, but that’s kinda lame. I need to try it again with the latest KDE version and see if it is better. The problem is, I am swamped. Life is very stressful for me at the moment as I try to get to the surface for a fresh breath of air. My full time job is in the toilet and I need to make the right decision as what to do with that. I just wish things didn’t have to revolve around the mighty dollar, which isn’t even mighty at all in reality.
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Reviews
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To conclude, I wish I could suggest Arch Linux to Linux newcomers instead of these ‘buntu, mint stuff. It’s a quite easy to learn and use. You just should not be afraid to use command line. The process of installing and configuring all parts of your operating system might be a bit time-consuming yet it’s a very rewarding and valuable experience. Just give it a go!
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I also want to add that Puppy 5.1.1 and 5.2 uses some of Ubuntu’s binaries. This in some way makes it easier and more compatible to make .pet packages out of Ubuntu’s packages (.deb). If I have this wrong please correct me!
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Red Hat Family
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Gov. Bev Perdue is expected to announce Monday that Red Hat will keep its corporate headquarters in the Research Triangle area and add jobs, sources tell WRAL and WRAL.com.
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As 2011 begins, Red Hat Inc. is mapping out details for how its acquisition of Makara will fuel the next generation of open source options for cloud computing. Makera, a provider of deployment and management solutions for cloud-based apps, will simplify app deployment and management, according to Red Hat execs.
Makara’s technologies will accelerate the build-out of Red Hat’s platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solution as part of its Cloud Foundations portfolio. Makara provides tools to deploy, manage, monitor and scale applications on both private or public clouds. Red Hat will integrate Makara’s tools and Cloud Application Platform with JBoss Enterprise Middleware.
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Marten Mickos – the former MySQL boss who now runs build-your-own-cloud startup Eucalyptus Systems – has hitched his new wagon to Red Hat. In more ways than one.
Last month, Mickos and company announced a pact with Red Hat that will see Eucalyptus embrace the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) hypervisor as well as the Red Hat’s deltacloud project, an open source effort to provide a common API for all “infrastructure clouds”. Eucalyptus Systems is the commercial outfit that sprung up around the open source Eucalyptus platform, a means of building infrastructure clouds behind the corporate firewall.
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Red Hat has decided to keep its trademark fedora hanging in North Carolina.
The Linux software developer announced Monday it would keep its corporate headquarters in Wake County and create 540 new jobs over the next decade as it expands current operations and targets new technology.
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Fedora
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I finally sat down on the weekend to try and get some OS other than Android running on the Toshiba AC100 I bought off ebay on a whim. The AC100 doesn’t look that different to your average 10.1 inch netbook except its extremely thin and and light and on the inside it has a Nvidia Tegra 2 SoC based on the dual core ARM Cortex A9. My initial plan was to get Ubuntu running on due to the instructions about doing that to be found on the net. After doing some reading and while part way through the process I decided that I would try Paul Whalen’s Fedora 13 ARM rootfs instead as the process of creating a linux rootfs is similar across all distributions! There’s still quite a way to go.
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You might be wondering why I chose to derive Kororaa from Fedora.
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Debian Family
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All during this SimplyMEPIS 11 development cycle boot problems have stopped many users from testing. Unfortunately, and probably the root of problem, is that this occurs for only some of the users with little hardware in common. To compound the issue, the boot issues haven’t been caused by the same reason to the same people each release either. With so much variation, it can be very difficult to nail down corrections.
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Scott James Remnant, the Ubuntu Developer Manager is quitting Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu to join Google. Remnant is known for authoring the new Upstart initialization system and the popular Planet weblog aggregation system. In addition to his work on Ubuntu, Scott served as a long-time Debian developer where he maintained libtool, the dpkg package management system, and several other important packages. Scott resigned from Debian in 2006.
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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I started working on a chapter for the Ubuntu Developers’ Manual. The chapter will be on how to use media in your apps. That chapter will cover:
* Playing a system sound
* Showing an picture
* Playing a sound file
* Playing a video
* Playing from a web cam
* Composing media
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There’s no doubt at this point that the Nexus S from Samsung, which out of the box runs Android’s latest version of Android (2.3), is a versatile device. We’ve already seen the handset boot up MeeGo, and now the developer is at it again. This time, though, we’ve got Ubuntu loading up on the device. The XDA developer forum member, stroughtonsmith — or Steven Troughton-Smith– has gone through the same method of bringing MeeGo to the device, but focusing his attention on Ubuntu this time around.
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Flavours and Variants
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Screencast tutorial style examination Edubuntu Linux 32Bit 10.04 DVD Lucid Lynx is an operating system of education that is part of the official Ubuntu Linux derivative. It is Ubuntu, the most popular system Debian Linux-based operating an excellent choice for computing needs of children, students, parents, teachers, and schools. I show you all the features of this software free of awesome computing. original video production by www.OSGUI.com Tech Show.
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I must admit that it has been just about 12 months since I had last tested a Linux distribution. During my past experiences, I normally uninstalled whatever distribution I tried, because I either had issues getting a wireless connection or was unable to print to my HP laser Jet via a print server. Either of these is a deal breaker for me. I also spent way too much time trying to configure either the wireless connection or printer and basically just gave up. I won’t bore you with the installation details, since you have one of three choices. You can install as a standalone OS, dual-boot [this was what I opted to do} , or run as a Live CD.
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Additionally, “[Tamir Berliner] said the company was making the source code for the PrimeSensor available to give developers the freedom to play around with it. “It will all be open source so you can take it and port it to any device,” he said.
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The promise of a hardware companion for the popular open source media centre Boxee has interested us since its original announcement. Let’s see how the final product stacks up against expectations…
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Phones
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Nokia/MeeGo
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Pros, this is a heads up. If you’re into the whole installing of one OS on a competing brand’s hardware, this news is for you. It seems that some folks including XDA Developers Forum member stroughtonsmith (aka our friend Steven Troughton-Smith,) and a crack team of other smarties have booted MeeGo unto their Nexus S phones from a rootfs image on their internal memory.
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Android
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Motorola has managed to come up with a very good concept. Its essentially a very powerful phone, which can be converted into a PC or a netbook. This will provide a serious competition to the iPhone4 and also provide a single device which can double up as a PC or a netbook.
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Rejoice newer myTouch users! Months after original myTouch owners had their Froyo delivered, T-Mobile has just announced that the myTouch 1.2 (3.5mm headphone jack version) and the myTouch Fender LE are the next in line for the tasty treat. MyTouch Slide users still have to wait a little bit longer, though, due to two specific issues.
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Android is a long way from being overrun with security threats but that hasn’t stopped Trend Micro getting its retaliation in early with a new security app for the platform.
Trend’s Mobile Security for Android features a number of layers of security, mobile users might or might not deem necessary for the modest $3.99 (£2.50) fee.
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Last summer, Hulu announced the “Plus” subscription service bringing premium content to mobile devices such as the iPhone 4 and iPad. Unfortunately, the millions of Android users, which just passed the total number of iPhone U.S. subscribers according to comScore, were left out in the cold. At the Samsung CES 2011 Press Conference, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar brought some good news announcing that Hulu Plus was heading to Android phones.
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Tablets
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The Xoom is listed as “due in soon,” with the obvious caveat that we don’t know what Handtec’s concept of soon is. As previously reported the information that we received from Motorola indicated a February launch with a tentative circle around Valentine’s Day. Assuming that launch date holds we’ll probably be seeing more of the usual suspects putting up pre-order pages soon enough so unless you are particularly anxious to be first in line or have a special place in your heart for Handtec you should be safe to wait.
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There seems to be no stopping the current avalanche of Android tablets — just look through the CES announcements for a not-so-small sampling — and that’s undoubtedly a good thing for Linux.
A shadow was recently cast upon that otherwise sunny landscape, however, in the form of a report examining said tablets’ GPL compliance.
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I think there are two major classes of threat to freedom: one that has been present for many years now, and the other that is relatively new.
The first is from intellectual monopolies – copyright and patents – or rather, attempts to preserve their power in a world of digital abundance. That’s not possible, of course, which is why we have Draconian legislation like the DMCA, and the increasingly-insane fines awarded against people for sharing copyright material online.
[...]
The other threat has been accelerated by Wikileaks, but was not caused by it: the introduction of online censorship by nations that have traditionally prided themselves on their support for free speech. In some ways this is even more dangerous than ACTA, since the latter is bound to fail. However, governments are very adept at dressing up repressive measures as “necessary” to protect someone from something – us from “terror”, or children from paedophiles etc.
But of course the powers that they arrogate to themselves never stop there: they are gradually used and abused for a far wider range of cases. Unless people fight back now against these moves – which, incidentally, mean that the West loses what little moral leverage it has when criticising countries like China – I think that things could get very bad here.
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Matt Asay’s recent article in The Register If you open source an old market, are you doomed to fail? highlights the need for open source specialist vendors to innovate, as well as commoditize.
This is an issue that has been discussed regularly by CAOS practice – most recently in our Control and Community report into open source software-related business strategies.
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The open source movement is a popular one, and it’s certainly made its mark on the software landscape. But where has it made its biggest mark? What is the most successful open source endeavor of all time?
Actually, when you see it as a whole, isn’t the Web the biggest open source success of them all?
[...]
Most of the programming and scripting languages used on the Web, like PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, are open source projects.
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In this economy, employees who can save their employers money are highly regarded and will potentially be in line for advancement. Using open source technology is one great way to help your company cut down on costs across the board.
In this article, I’ll share twenty great open source applications that can help save your employer some money.
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The most receptive audience, I usually find, are activists. The idea that you should take control of your computing seems a natural extension of beliefs to people who already believe that you should take control of your government by getting involved, or of your environment by recycling and encouraging green technology solutions.
Yet, even here, difficulties arise. For the most part, activists are not technically oriented, and are as accepting of proprietary lock-in as anyone else. The idea that they should apply the beliefs that they operate by in the rest of their lives to their computing is new to most of them. Here and there, you may find a Green Party that has a pro-FOSS policy, or a Pirate Party whose ideas may echo those found in FOSS, but such groups are rarely in any position to promote — let alone enforce — FOSS ideas.
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Open source software offers a great many potential security benefits. Few, if any, of them offer any guarantees, but the potential is often realized as a strong probability of greater security. The power of dilettantism, also known as the principle of “many eyes”, is of particular interest when considering the complexity of your software design.
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When online investigative journal ProPublica wanted to figure out just how much doctors are being paid by pharmaceutical companies to promote their drugs, reporters Dan Nguyen, Charles Ornstein, and Tracy Weber naturally turned to the internet for research. They quickly realized that, though the data exists on the Web, fashioning it into a comprehensive and useable format was nothing short of headache-inducing. Rather than give up, the journalists created their own data-scraping software using open source tools.
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Web Browsers
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Mozilla
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Developer Tools is the area of the site that deals with submission and management of hosted add-ons, and is among the most complicated parts of AMO. Our rewrite brings these tools into our new codebase, which should result in faster performance and better cache invalidation, a common annoyance over the years.
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In line with the predictions we had here before, IE has not only fallen below 50% market share for the first time ever, it has now become the second most popular browser in Europe. Firefox has taken the lead and is now the most popular browser in the whole of Europe. Is that what you call as the great circle of life?
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One of the best options on today’s Internet to listen to a song, any song for that matter, is to search for that song on Youtube. Chance is there is at least one video with that song on the video portal. Some web users use Youtube more or less exclusively to listen to music.
The Firefox add-on Youtube Music Player tries to make this more comfortable to those users by offering them comfortable features such as playlists and an external player.
The extension supports multiple playlists which can be played, created and edited directly in the browser. Several controls are added to the browser which some users may not like.
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SaaS
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Whereas Rackspace offers public compute and storage services, NASA is building its own private cloud, known as Nebula. This was originally built atop Eucalyptus, another open-source platform. But according to NASA chief technology officer Chris Kemp, Eucalyptus didn’t scale as well as NASA hoped, and it wasn’t as open as the agency would have liked.
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Databases
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Continuent is hiring. The business is growing, the opportunities are piling up nicely, and we need to beef up the team with the addition of some new professionals.
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Oracle
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Companies usually wind down the week before Christmas, so you don’t usually see them make a lot of strategic moves or announcements. And so it was with some marked astonishment that I received an anonymous tip that Oracle ceased development of Lustre right before the holidays. Not out of a job quite yet, Lustre engineers have reportedly been encouraged to apply for other positions within the company.
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CMS
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The House worked with a number of Drupal experts for this project, including Acquia, Phase2 Technology and Ingalls Information Security. The team developed, validated, and delivered the Drupal 7 platform that will be used by both individual House Member sites and Committee sites. Here are some examples of recently deployed sites (a complete list can be found at http://house.gov/house/news.shtml): http://sewell.house.gov, http://hanabusa.house.gov/, http://womack.house.gov/.
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Business
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Semi-Open Source
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So, the question is: Are commercial open-source software and Free and Open Source Software at odds with each other, or is the relationship more symbiotic?
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BSD
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The RC1 release brings with a number of enhancements, improvements, and bug fixes in response to previous 8.2 testing snapshots. Here are the changelog as shown in the website:
* Updated to FreeBSD 8.2-RC1
* Fixed issue detecting the proper video card driver
* Fixed some crashes when adding new users / groups
* Added /sbin/nologin as a shell choice in the user manager
* Let created users have a homedir of /nonexistant via the GUI
* Fix customizing desktop languages when using a () in the description
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Project Releases
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This new version of Joomla, version 1.6, has been in development for about three years, said Ryan Ozimek, president of Open Source Matters, a not-for-profit organization providing legal and financial support to the Joomla project. The project has about 80 volunteer programmers, including 10 who manage the code-base.
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The XBMC project released version 10.0 of its integrated media center software just before the holidays, and if you haven’t test-driven it in a while, do yourself a favor and grab the new build now.
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Licensing
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Over the past 48 hours it seems the Great Persian Firewall is updating to attempt to block a number of circumvention tools, including Tor. Iranians and their diaspora have been reporting to us that Tor, Hot Spot Shield, UltraSurf, and Freegate are all experiencing connectivity problems from inside Iran to the outside world.
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Openness/Sharing
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Canadian documentary filmmaker Todd Harris gets up close and personal with the communities he films. He is especially attracted to stories that involve an underdog fighting for justice against government and corporate interests, where he can cover a side of the conflict that is usually untouched by mainstream media. Until a few years ago, he restricted himself to issues that were particular to Canada. Now he plans to extend his research into the international realm.
I first noticed Todd two years ago at the infamous Dump Site 41 protest in the Georgian Bay area of Ontario, Canada, as he casually surfed the crowd, sometimes talking, sometimes filming. But it wasn’t until his film aired at Georgian College one blustery night in December 2010 that I realized who he was.
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The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has launched an Open Internet apps challenge, inviting the public to produce research and create apps that empower consumers to monitor and protect Internet openness.
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Open Data
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For schmoozing between 2004 and 2006, “departments should cite the cost threshold” (an exemption from disclosure if it would take more than 3.5 days to find the information). Since departments are required by the civil service code to keep registers of hospitality and the Cabinet Office could not foresee departments’ time costs, this was always a deceitful and arguably illegal ploy.
It duly hit a snag when an official in the Department for Work and Pensions reported an official in his bosses’ private office having “collected this [information] from hospitality logs where they exist without exceeding the disspropriate (sic) cost limit. I therefore cannot see how we can cite this exemption,” even though, said the official, “I am sure that [redacted name] would not want to break ranks.” All other departments simply said what the Cabinet Office had told them to, almost certainly untruthfully.
There then seem to have been attempts to persuade officials in the DWP to relent and tell a porkie, a frustrated internal Cabinet Office email reporting the DWP official as “adamant that he won’t say disproportionate cost as he’s looked into it”. A Yes Minister-style compromise was eventually agreed: the response to Private Eye would simply ignore the excuse – but not provide the information anyway.
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The OpenStreetMap (OSM) Project’s next State Of The Map conference will take place from 9 to 11 September 2011, in Denver, Colorado. Founded in August of 2004 by Steve Coast, OpenStreetMap is an open source project that is building free online maps, not based on any copyright or licensed map data.
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Open Access/Content
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It’s a question that students, and a growing number of their professors, are asking: Why require students to buy expensive textbooks every year, when the Internet is awash in information, much of it free? After all, the words of Plato have not changed in the past 2,000 years, nor has basic algebra.
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Programming
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Of the languages listed in the TIOBE index, Python was the fastest growing programming language of 2010. The scripting language was therefore crowned language of the year in the January edition of the index of popular programming languages. Objective-C, used to develop iPhone and iPad apps, had long been the favourite to take the award, but its popularity appears to have dwindled a little in recent months. Its growth rate of 1.6% was only enough for the runner-up spot behind Python (+1.81%).
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As more hospitals and clinics plug patient monitoring equipment and other devices into traditional data networks, the closer the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) comes to regulating the networks as medical devices.
Currently, most hospitals and clinics manage medical devices on discrete networks to better ensure the safety and security of those systems. But there is a trend toward consolidation, particularly onto wireless networks, for easier management.
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Manonamission.blogspot.com is a great collection of corporate mission statements. I recently used its search function to find examples of companies that prominently and publicly state something close to “people are our most important asset.” Here’s a partial list: Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, Land O’ Lakes, Danaher, Archer Daniels Midland, Valero, Performance Food Group, Norfolk Southern, and Border’s Group. And here’s a group of companies that similarly value “empowerment:” Caremark, Sara Lee, Heinz, Dow Chemical, GE, and Alcoa.
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Why does a comfortably middle-class youth in Australia, such as myself, profess his political views to be socialist in orientation? Surely, many would think, for what reason would I advocate for such a radical position? It’s simple, really. Socialism is a political representation of my value system as it currently exists.
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Most of our thinking about how to influence human behavior — how to get people to pay taxes, to obey laws, to not steal from each other — rests on the model of homo economicus.
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Children’s clothing store Orchestra has apologized to a 36-year-old mother who was recently told to stop breastfeeding her five-month-old daughter at its Montreal location.
In a letter dated Jan. 7, the president of the company’s Canadian arm, Jean-Claude Yana, apologizes for the actions of a “new” employee who told Shannon Smith and another nursing mother, “you can’t breastfeed in the store.” After protesting, Ms. Smith said she left feeling upset and uncomfortable.
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Security
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Defence/Police/Aggression
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If it turns out that a poisonous variant of free speech is partially to blame for the shootings in Tucson, we will most certainly be struck by the fact that Gabrielle Giffords was seen last week in Congress, reading part of the Constitution that allows an American citizen to say just about anything.
But as Rep. Giffords herself also pointed out, in March when she was a target because of her vote on health care reform, free speech does have a cost.
“We’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list,” said Giffords. “Crosshairs of a gunsight over our district. When people do that, they’ve got to realize there’s consequences.”
Giffords had already felt a blunt edge of opponents’ rage — a window in her Tucson office was shattered after she voted to expand health care for other Americans.
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The shootings over the weekend of a US congresswoman and 19 others in Arizona prompts German commentators to urge the Americans to tone down the rhetoric and take a step back. Some say Europeans, too, could learn a lesson from the violence in Tucson.
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In a story covered very well in a witty post by our friends over at TechEye, it has emerged that the Home Office hid the parlous state of its Identity Card Scheme from the public – it withheld publication of a report by the project’s oversight board in the run up to the 2010 general election (when, you’ll remember, some sort of card remained Labour policy).
Disgracefully, the Home Office only slipped out the final report of the Independent Scheme Advisory Panel (ISAP) this week, more than a year after it was written, after the scheme had finally bitten the dust under the Coalition.
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Police should look beyond the available intelligence and take a broader view of potential threats, a report into an attack on a car carrying the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall has said.
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When the Messiah comes, the first sign will be a gag order. A coded report on a high-profile news website will be made to disappear. It will reappear on a blog from Seattle, and then in The Guardian.
The government will put off responding, eventually issuing a statement ascribed to sources in Jerusalem and reading “We have no knowledge of this.” The Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson’s Unit, quoting an unnamed senior military official, states that there is no evidence that a Messiah of any kind has come. It will later soften the denial, saying it is checking the report and directing reporters to the Defense Ministry, which turfs them to the Prime Minister’s Office, which cannot be reached for comment.
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Cablegate
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This has never happened before, never been heard before and never been told before. People across the oceans are complaining that they are consistently having a common dream. In their dreams they see an around 90 year’s old person who identifies himself as Mahatma Gandhi and ask the people to convey his message to President Barack Obama. He says that Barack Obama who calls himself a follower of Mahatma Gandhi needs to be told that his actions against whistleblowers specially in the case of Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, Wikileaks and participation in wars across the globe do not go along with the basic philosophy of truth, non-violence and freedom for which Mahatma Gandhi sacrificed his live. Mahatma also briefs people a message that he wants to be delivered to the President. When people argue how they would contact the President, he replies as “just pass the message, just pass the torch to the next deserving person and the torch would definitely reach where darkness exists”. Mahatma also said that he wanted the message to be delivered before January 30th (i.e. his death anniversary) People say they are disturbed by this consistent dream they are having and have decided to come together to serve this common cause. We have decided to pass the torch as fast as we can so that it reaches the destination as soon as possible. Mahatma also asked us to be non violent, democratic and peaceful in our endeavor.
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I have no doubt at all, if I put out the same documents now, they would call me a terrorist, because that’s the bad thing now.
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Assange said he might base himself in Switzerland or Australia, and that WikiLeaks has been losing more than 600,000 Swiss francs ($622,000) a week since releasing a collection of diplomatic cables, the newspaper said. He also said he hasn’t made a request for political asylum in Switzerland, and declined to say if he would, according to the Tribune.
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Can the leak phenonomen sustain the continued assault by the corporate sector to prevail in the first ever cyber-war?
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Guardian Books today confirmed the publication next month of WIKILEAKS: Inside Julian Assange’s war on secrecy.
With rights having already been sold in eight territories*, WIKILEAKS: Inside Julian Assange’s war on secrecy, is the first in-depth account of the WikiLeaks phenomenon. From the website’s launch in 2006, to the latest developments in this epoch-defining drama, it exposes the real story behind the headlines, a compelling and revelatory account that brings the reader right up to the present time.
The authors, top Guardian journalists led by David Leigh, Investigations Editor, and Luke Harding, Moscow correspondent, have been at the heart of the Guardian’s coverage of the biggest leak of secret information in history. Working alongside the Guardian’s New York correspondent, Ed Pilkington, they have had unprecedented access to all the major players, from diplomats and politicians to the former WikiLeaks spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg and Julian Assange himself.
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Elmer’s release of files from the Swiss-based bank Julius Baer’s offshore operations in the Cayman Islands prompted a U.S. judge to temporarily shut down WikiLeaks in 2008. The order was lifted following complaints from free speech groups and media organizations.
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Amid the sound and fury of the reaction to WikiLeaks, something is missing. Whether hostile or supportive, politicians and commentators on all sides have managed to miss the real point. The contents of the leaked cables should demand a deep reflection on our foreign policy. That this has not happened tells a sorry story about our very democracy.
On the right, and indeed center, the reaction has been hysteria. Politicians have lined up to decry the threat to US national security and even American lives, without offering a shred of evidence to confirm this claim.
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Twitter introduced a new feature last month without telling anyone about it, and the rest of the tech world should take note and come up with their own version of it.
Twitter beta-tested a spine.
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[UPDATE 2011-01-11 11:44 CET: Seems the domain julianassangemustdie.com has been deleted by its owner. See Godaddy WHOIS entry]
[UPDATE 2011-01-11 11:33 CET: Seems killjulianassange is down ATM. Could be simple change though.]
[UPDATE: I send an updated mail with the doamin julianassangemustdie.com added and clarified some aspects. New version reproduced here, old version archived in this same post.
I have just sent this mail to abuse@godaddy.com and urge you to do the same…
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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Greenpeace and a broad swath of civil society groups in Australia and Europe have successfully prevented solvents and explosives maker Orica from sailing tonnes of extremely harmful chemical waste from Australia to Denmark for incineration. In response to massive public pressure, the Danish Government announced on December 23, 2010 that they wouldn’t accept the shipment after all – just 24 hours before it was due to be loaded with the toxic waste in Australia.
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More sarcasm came over coffee in the form of a photograph splashed over many a frontpage the world over: the giant bluefin on a cart in Tokyo. The headlines said it was such a remarkable feat, a business coup at almost US$400,000 for a 342kg endangered bluefin tuna.
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Peak Coal. Some folks have begun eagerly researching this topic and writing about its timing, now that talk of Peak Oil is all around. The different outlooks on how and when the peak will occur are disparate, ranging from next year to a time many decades in the future. This post tries to view this debate in a different, wider perspective, and deals with the following issues:
* Applying the Hubbert Method to Coal;
* Looking at Ultimate Reserves for Coal;
* Coal and its place in the Olduvai picture;
* Implications for stakeholders;
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Thank you for visiting www.againstinternetsurveillance.org. I created this website because I value my own privacy and believe that every internet user in the world is entitled to their own privacy also. I am an American citizen and it is my opinion that the overwhelming majority of internet users are having their civil rights violated by private companies every day. On this website I have information that will A) broaden knowledge of internet surveillance that takes place each and every day, right under your noses, and B) help you, the internet user and citizen, browse the internet safely and effectively. Honestly, it really does not take a lot to accomplish both of these things and it is my hope that with this website I can spread the word and create a world of more informed citizens who are able to browse the internet safely and effectively.
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Finance
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Obama is replacing his chief economic adviser – Larry Summers – with Gene Sperling.
Sperling is currently a counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and is now being appointed as Obama’s chief economic adviser. He’s been there before: Sperling will hold the exact same post he held under Bill Clinton – National Economic Adviser to Clinton and director of the National Economic Council.
In that post, Sperling was principal negotiator with Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers in finalizing the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act Financial Modernization Bill which repealed Glass-Steagal.
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Former Goldman Sachs managing director Nomi Prins says Goldman’s $500 million Facebook deal is every bit as risky for investors as the subprime debt deals that blew up the economy.
Facebook and Goldman Sachs unleashed a tech investing mania this week compared far and wide with the euphoric 1990s dot-com run-up. By arranging a $500 million private investment, at a staggering $50 billion valuation, Goldman at once delayed a Facebook public offering (now expected in 2012), prompted a likely LinkedIn IPO, and thrilled its clients, who clamored for a piece of Mark Zuckerberg’s behemoth.
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After a year of hard work, South Africa has formally joined with the four major emerging powers that form the BRIC cooperation mechanism. South African media said it is an important milestone, signifying South Africa is becoming a major emerging economy in the world.
The prime motivation for South Africa’s entry into BRIC — short for Brazil, Russia, India and China — is to create conditions for the country’s economic development. Before the outbreak of the international financial crisis, South Africa had experienced the fastest economic growth since 1994, with the economy growing at a rate of more than 5 percent for three consecutive years. But the financial crisis drastically slowed economic growth and pushed unemployment higher.
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Today’s Telegraph reports that David Cameron hopes relaxed employment laws will help to boost the private sector and encourage firms to take on thousands of new workers.
The theory appears to be that if it’s easier to sack and mistreat workers then employers will be more likely to create jobs.
But, as last year’s comprehensive TUC research (undertaken by Landman Economics) showed, this assumption is false.
Macro and micro evidence from across the globe shows that there is no significant relationship between employment levels and employment protection legislation and that countries with very different levels of regulation have equal levels of success in generating employment.
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Germany and France want to push Portugal to seek a bailout from the EU’s rescue fund in order to stop the debt crisis from spreading to countries like Spain and Belgium, according to reports from SPIEGEL and Reuters. Portugal on Sunday denied any such pressure, but the euro is falling on fears of contagion.
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Now those lobbyists are pushing hard to undo their mistake — and progressives, led by AFL-CIO president Rich Trumka, are pushing back.
The winner won’t be clear until later this year when the Securities and Exchange Commission, the federal watchdog agency over Wall Street, releases the final regulations that will enforce the Dodd-Frank legislation.
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Goldman Sachs Subprime Mortgage Meltdown and Financial Crisis The investigation, being conducted with the Securities and Exchange Commission, comes as Wall Street and major banks around the world are attracting scrutiny from regulators who are looking at transactions that occurred in the run-up to the subprime mortgage meltdown and financial crisis. The source said the investigation includes mortgage-bond deals, that it is in an early stage, and that it might not necessarily lead to criminal charges against all of the firms.
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The last few months I’ve been busy trying to ignore the minutia of the daily media and look at the big picture. I was listening to this interview with 4 conservatives talking about how the economy works and questioning whether these politicians and policy makers are actually subversives (!).
Imagine my surprise when our good friends Goldman Sachs is mentioned by Mike Norman who says that Goldman understands that “government deficits add to savings”(around 24 minutes into the interview).
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Goldman Sachs, after a nine-month review of its business practices, has concluded its operations need only a fine-tuning, not a complete overhaul.
The Wall Street investment bank, which has been criticized for putting its own interests ahead of those of clients, plans to detail new rules on disclosure and financial reporting on Tuesday, as suggested by the study. The rules are aimed at bolstering internal controls, improving transparency and burnishing its reputation.
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BANK investors cheered the announcement last week that Bank of America would pay $2.6 billion to buy back mortgages it had improperly sold during the housing bubble to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the beleaguered mortgage finance giants. It seemed a sweet deal for the bank, whose Countrywide Home Loans unit had peddled tens of billions of dollars in risky loans to the taxpayer-owned companies.
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The military authorization law signed by President Obama on Friday contains a little-noticed “Buy American” provision for the Defense Department purchases of solar panels — a provision that is likely to dismay Chinese officials as President Hu Jintao prepares to visit the United States next week.
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A coalition of seven major public pension systems called on the boards of directors of Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), Citigroup (NYSE: C), JP Morgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), and Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) to immediately undertake independent examinations of the banks’ mortgage and foreclosure practices.
Led by New York City Comptroller John C. Liu on behalf of the five NYC Pension Funds, the coalition also includes the Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds, the Illinois State Board of Investment, the Illinois State Universities Retirement System, the New York State Common Retirement Fund, the North Carolina Retirement Systems, and the Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund.
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Laverl “Nick” Nicholson used to look out of his kitchen window at the weeping willows that mark the burial place of two of his daughters. Then a debilitating car wreck left him unable to pay the $220,000 he owed on his northwestern Montana home.
He tried for a year and a half to lower his mortgage payments through a loan modification, but the government-insured loan that he took out three years ago came with restrictions. The best the bank could offer him was a reduction of $124 per month, leaving Nicholson with a $1,585 payment that he still couldn’t afford.
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Earlier this week, I had a few choice comments in Colin Barr’s Fortune column about Volcker’s retirement…
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To gaze upon the world of American corporations is to see a sunny place of terrific profits and princely bonuses. American businesses reported that third-quarter profits in 2010 rose at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion, the steepest annual surge since officials began tracking such matters 60 years ago. It was the seventh consecutive quarter in which corporate profits climbed.
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Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights
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At the beginning of February 2011, the Civil Liberties Committee of the European Parliament will hold its first crucial vote on whether mandatory EU-wide web blocking should be introduced – time is running out.
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About a month ago, custom domain Blogger blogs have been blocked in Turkey by mandate of the Turkish Government and since WebUpd8 is hosted on Blogger, it couldn’t be accessed from Turkey.
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Last Spring, the European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Cecilia Malmström, presented a proposal for a directive to combat child exploitation. Unfortunately, this very important and sensitive matter is used to introduce dangerous provisions regarding Internet blocking, which could pave the way for a wider censorship of the Internet in Europe. The EU Parliament must absolutely reject this Trojan horse and uphold the fundamental rights of EU citizens.
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A lawyer has played down the significance of the Twitter data mining sparked by the US’s clampdown on WikiLeaks, saying that anyone using sites hosted in the United States had to accept that their data could be made available to authorities.
The US security forces have come under fire after it emerged that officials had subpoenaed Twitter demanding it released information from five accounts in connection with its WikiLeaks probe – including the account details of an Icelandic MP and a Dutch computer programmer.
The move has sparked outrage among civil liberty campaigners, and the Icelandic government has called for an explanation of the situation, but the basic concept of sovereign states accessing data hosted on their territory is well documented.
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Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM
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Credit Suisse media analyst Spencer Wang and team just released the results of their video-streaming study dubbed “Project Canada,” conducted to assess the affect of broadband consumption based pricing (CBP) on Internet-delivered video from an “over-the-top” non-cable or telco service (e.g., Netflix). The U.S. does not have consumption-based pricing, in which you pay more as you use more, but it has been rolled out widely in Canada since 2008. The investment bank wanted to see what the affect of this pricing is on broadband usage and the TV bill. It tested Netflix Canada streaming service for one month over Rogers cable system.
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As digital book publishing continues to expand at a rapid pace to meet reader demands, piracy rears its head at the forefront of many a discussion in publisher circles. Many publishers respond to the perceived threat with strict digital rights management (DRM) software. But is this the best solution? And does it even provide protection from piracy?
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Copyrights
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Sony Music Entertainment Canada Inc., EMI Music Canada Inc., Universal Music Canada Inc. and Warner Music Canada Co. have agreed to pay songwriters and music publishers $47.5 million in damages for copyright infringement and overdue royalties to settle a class action lawsuit. ‘The 2008 class action alleges that the record companies “exploited” music owners by reproducing and selling in excess of 300,000 song titles without securing licenses from the copyright owners and/or without paying the associated royalty payments. The record companies knowingly did so and kept a so-called “pending list” of unlicensed reproductions, setting aside $50 million for the issue, if it ever arose, court filings suggest.
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The four major record labels that comprise the Canadian Recording Industry Association – EMI Music Canada Inc., Sony Music Entertainment Canada Inc., Universal Music Canada Inc. and Warner Music Canada Co. – have agreed to pay $45 million to settle one of the largest copyright class action lawsuits in Canadian history. The settlement comes after years of fruitless efforts to get the industry to pay for works it used without permission.
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The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal from the country’s four largest music labels, refusing to block a suit accusing them of conspiring to fix Internet song prices.
Units of Sony Corp., Vivendi SA, Warner Music Group Corp. and EMI Group Ltd. argued unsuccessfully that the allegations in the consumer complaint aren’t sufficient to suggest the companies engaged in misconduct. A federal appeals court in New York said the allegations were enough for the case to go forward, and the Supreme Court today left that ruling intact.
The suit centers on MusicNet and pressplay, two services the music companies started in 2001 to sell songs online. The complaint alleges the services charged unreasonably high rates – - a combined $240 per year in subscription fees — and imposed unwarranted restrictions, barring customers from transferring songs to iPods and other portable digital music players.
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The largest copyright pirates are the large corporations, particularly in the content distribution business. Yes, those companies who scream the loudest that their customers are ‘pirating’ movies, songs, books, etc. In this series, we are going to look at cases where these companies have engaged in large scale copyright infringement, or in other ways have been ripping off artists.
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Last week the BPI released their overview of 2010 sales volumes in the UK. As always, their press release was filled with claims that piracy is ruining their industry and most mainstream media was quick to republish this propaganda. However, we can use the very same data to show that more music is being sold than ever before, and argue that piracy is likely to have had very little impact.
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The Supreme Court on Monday declined to review a ruling that reinstated an antitrust lawsuit alleging major record labels conspired to fix prices and terms under which music would be sold over the Internet.
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Digital Economy (UK)
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The coalition is not looking to repeal the controversial act.
The government has again said it has no plans to repeal the Digital Economy Act (DEA), despite complaints from BT and TalkTalk.
These two broadband providers have been granted the right to a judicial review of the piece of legislation, with each insisting it infringes the basic rights and freedoms of internet users in the way it seeks to clamp down on illegal filesharing.
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The maximalist lobby has now shifted its attention internationally. Pushing the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement was its global summer project, and the Open Rights Group’s latest FOI requests show the BPI pushing the new UK government to lobby the European Union on its behalf.
The UK is still waiting to see what will be done with the Digital Economy Act. The Lib Dems have called for its repeal; BT and TalkTalk have won the right to a judicial review of the Act; Ofcom is struggling to ready a legitimate and fair ‘Initial Obligations Code’ through which the Digital Economy Act is expected to be enforced.
This Act, as ever, remains infuriatingly unpredictable. Stay tuned.
gNewSense 2.3 deltah i386 GNU Libre version of Ubuntu Linux Review Tutorial
Credit: TinyOgg
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Posted in Apple, Free/Libre Software, FSF, GPL at 3:10 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Co-authored with G. Forbes
Summary: Developers can learn how Apple harms software producers, by acting as a draconian gateway that separates users from producers
MIDDLEMEN are prevalent in the world of copyrighted video and audio, but what about software? Apple is trying to do to hackers and organised businesses that sell software or services exactly the type of thing media conglomerates do to creative artists and so-called ‘pirates’. Should we step aside and allow this to happen? It’s no longer just the mobile platform of Apple that does this; Microsoft too has similar plans.
The VLC story was mentioned here earlier as the old GPL/VLC saga carries on (Apple has contested the GNU GPL).
The news of Apple’s banning of VLC media player from its “App” Store has produced a large amount of response (Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols’ response is noteworthy). A large majority of it is predictable, trying to paint the GPL, R. Denis-Courmont, and practically anyone but Apple as the problem here. Jason Perlow is known for his frequent hostility towards the FSF and he previously wrote on the subject of the FSF’s relationship with the Apple App Store (or others). With regards to the VLC removal, he pushed an argument that the GPL’s complexity is what is at fault here. He supposedly explains “[h]ow to avoid public GPL floggings on Apple’s App Store”:
It is often said that no good deed goes unpunished. Unfortunately even with the best of intents, particularly as it relates to releasing Open Source Software, it is possible to run far afield of GPL and FOSS kashruth even if you think you are following the rules to the best of your ability.
It’s humourous to see him describe GPL compliance as some sort of minefield when Apple’s App Store developer agreement is needlessly complex, and apps can be removed at will, such as the censorship target of the day (the Wikileaks app [1, 2, 3]). By contrast, the GPL violation issue here can be put rather simply:
The difference in the two policies was flagged up to Apple by Rémi Denis-Courmont, one of the original developers of VLC. The GNU license would allow Apple to distribute the iOS version of VLC, but not to apply DRM to it; as has been the case with previous GNU-licensed apps, Apple has chosen to pull it from the App Store rather than amend their DRM policy.
See this article too:
VLC was a surprise addition to the App Store back in September, but one which iPad and iPhone users quickly came to appreciate. Now the multi-format media player has been yanked from the store, the result of incompatibilities with Apple’s App Store DRM policies and the terms of the GNU General Public License on which VLC is based.
Other articles ignore this plain fact and instead resort to idle speculation. One article even attempted to suggest that Denis-Courmont was influenced by his occupation at Nokia:
Rather, it’s a direct result of one man’s misguided crusade… a man who, (perhaps) coincidentally, is an employee of Nokia, one of Apple’s competitors in the mobile space.
Of course, the flaws with the assumption are numerous. VLC is still available for Android, an operating system which Nokia doesn’t utilize but many of its competitors do. Furthermore, VLC has been ported to other proprietary operating systems including OS X. Of course, if Apple amended its App Store policy to allow GPL software, then Denis-Courmont would not have a reason to protest the inclusion of VLC.
Of course, VLC isn’t the only software under the GPL which has had conflicts the restrictive App Store policy:
Before I give a status update on the iPhone issue, let’s get a refresher course on why this project exists in the first place. For years, Windows and Mac users have completely ignored their Linux gaming brethren. Linux users have spent countless hours trying to get the official Ventrilo program working under Linux with various levels of success. If the users of Ventrilo had decided to care in the slightest about cross-platform voice communications programs, they would have switched to Mumble (BSD licensed)… or even Teamspeak (which has Linux support, even if it is crappy).
Anyhow, Luigi Auriemma wrote a GPL implementation of the the Ventrilo call-home and encryption algorithm which is required for any implementation of the Ventrilo protocol. That code was the basis for the beginning of Spux (which, by necessity was GPL) by Michael Sierks and Cris Favero, which helped spawn the development of our little project here. Even if Luigi’s code hadn’t been GPL, we would have licensed our app as GPL anyway… but either way, we’re obligated to use the same license for our work.
For the most part, Pro-Apple Web sites mostly refrain from criticising Apple. VLC developers on the other hand explain this situation as follows: “First, even I do not know for certain why Apple removed VLC, and Apple will probably never state the truth.
“Second, Apple has already removed VLC from the “old” Mac Store for computers… already about 4 years ago, at a time when VLC was one of the most popular applications, and I am yet to learn the reasons why.
“Third, Apple received my copyright notification more than 2 months before they pulled the application. This was not expedited, as the US copyright law would require. As such, it seems dubious that my well-publicized notification from last october is the root cause of the removal. It is nevertheless the reason why I was learnt directly from Apple that VLC was removed.
“Last, Apple had the power and plenty of time (2 months) to adjust and clarifiy the terms of the App Store. Indeed, said terms were modified several times since then…”
Meanwhile it turns out that “Pirate Bay Founder Says Apple “Becoming Microsoft” with Mac App Store,” to echo the headline of another pro-Apple Web site:
The million people who downloaded Apple’s Mac Store yesterday are turning themselves into PCs, says Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde.
“Apple is going on the path to control computer use,” he told Forbes via e-mail, adding that Steve Jobs’ company is “forcing you to use their App Store to get programs.”
Whether you think the Mac App store makes Apple more like Microsoft or not, the confusion generated by the first iteration of the store – our post on what happens when you try to install apps you already have reads like something out of a Windows joke book – is definitely un-Apple like.
Sunde, who is facing jail time and a $700,000 fine after unsuccessfully fighting charges of encouraging copyright infringement by helping set up Pirate Bay, reportedly hit “delete” when a software update automatically installed the App Store on his Mac.
Apple is increasingly being associated with unjust control. Developers and users alike should pay attention to these attitudinal issues. █
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Posted in Bill Gates, Deception at 2:41 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Co-authored with G. Forbes
Summary: Another arm of Gates Foundation buzz is revealed following an acquisition
THE Gates Foundation advertises itself by contracting the marketing to outside companies. This includes pushing articles of interest into relevant publications. We wrote about this many times before and have given examples.
Not so long ago, WPP (which we have criticised before) had acquired Blue State Digital. It has become evident that the Gates Foundation was and is one of the many strong clients of Blue State Digital. To quote: “Its clients include the Democratic National Committee, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation”. This report from Ed Week further elaborates:
In addition to the Obama campaign, Blue State has worked for a wide array of media companies, and cultural and charitable organizations, including HBO, Hearst, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the American Red Cross and Carnegie Hall. According to Sky News, the agency, which is based in Washington, D.C. (with offices in New York, Boston, London and Los Angeles), has also worked for former U.K. prime minister Tony Blair.
Bear this in mind when reading anything about the Gates Foundation. There is a lot of PR muscle flexing behind the scenes. █
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Posted in Bill Gates, Deception, Patents at 2:05 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
(ODF | PDF | English/original)
Resumen: La literatura que cubre temas de salud critica a Gates y luego es pagada por él, con lo cual el tono de repente puede cambiar.
La Fundación Gates [http://techrights.org/wiki/index.php/Gates_Foundation_Critique]quiere llevar a cabo «estudios», encargando a otros a hacerlo. Se les dice lo que están instruidos lograr y luego que los resultados llegan, ayudan a los grupos de presión de la Fundación Gates. Huelga decir que eso no es investigación. Cuando está destinado a un fin comercial y la conclusión se ajusta a la exigencia más que hipótesis, entonces deja de ser una exploración y se vuelve más afín a la comercialización. Hace unos meses nos mostraron la revista The Lancet criticar a Bill Gates [http://techrights.org/2010/09/07/simon-chapman-on-gates-slim/], pero no te preocupes. Gates puede abordar el problema como siempre lo hace – mediante el pago a sus críticos [http://techrights.org/2011/01/10/bill-gates-pays-bloggers/].
Comencemos con algunas noticias acerca de los negocios en la medicina, que en gran medida también involucra a los troll de patentes más grande del mundo (compadre de Gates), Nathan de Intelectual Ventures[http://techrights.org/wiki/index.php/Intellectual_Ventures]. Dimos ejemplos de ello el año pasado, así que vamos a dejar eso de lado para hoy y para tratar con las noticias en su lugar.
En primer lugar, aquí es el impacto de los medios de comunicación sesgada (o la cobardía, debido a la Relaciones Públicas PR, lo que hace la crítica de Gates mal vista): “Carta abierta pieza de opinión sobre las vacunas y los medios de comunicación [http://gateskeepers.civiblog.org/blog/_archives/2010/10/27/4665275.html]”
Los medios de comunicación tienen la oportunidad de llamar a sus editoriales y artículos de opinión “cartas abiertas”. ¿Vamos a leer sólo las buenas historias de noticias acerca de la inmunización en el futuro?
Lo anterior deja de lado el hecho de que “noticias” son en gran medida financiadas por Gates. Él se dirige específicamente a los círculos cuyos lectores/espectadores a quien sus empresas se dirigen. Esto incluye el área de vacunación y se dieron ejemplos antes. Tom Paulson, proporciona lo que GatesKeepers llama la Fundación Gates paga a los medios de comunicación para cubrir la salud y el desarrollo mundiales[http://gateskeepers.civiblog.org/blog/_archives/2010/10/23/4662032.html]“, “la cobertura de los medios de sobornados por de la Fundación Gates.[http://humanosphere.kplu.org/2010/10/thoughts-on-the-gates-foundation-paying-media-to-cover-global-health-and-development/]“:
Tuve que reír en el título del artículo (basado en el título de una charla dada por Suárez en Seattle hace un tiempo). La respuesta Fortner es que Suarez y PBS NewsHour agarraron la gripe después de que recibir $ 3,6 millones de Gates para cubrir los problemas mundiales de salud.
Fortner, quien escribió acerca de la Fundación Gates para Crosscutss, dijo que renunció en 2009 a causa de su malestar con el editor David Brewster por aceptar fondos de la Fundación Gates. Brewster me dijo que no había sido consciente de que esta fue la razón Fortner renunciara.
La última sociedad mediática fue lo que el New York Times llamó “un acuerdo financiero inusual” entre ABC News y Gates la filantropía más grande del mundo destinadas a promover una mayor cobertura de temas de salud mundial.
Este menciona PBS, que vamos a cubrir en el próximo post. Esto también se menciona Crosscuts, que abarca el post anterior. ¿Y quién es el New York Times para comentar o quejarse por su propias acciones en los últimos tiempos [1 [http://techrights.org/2011/01/07/washington-post-without-gates/], 2 [http://techrights.org/2011/01/09/educacion-melinda-gates/]]? La prensa corporativa se está deshonrando, pero los blogs también se están distorsionados por el dinero de Gates. Entonces, ¿dónde puede una persona a su vez buscar verdadera información, los hechos que abarca la cobertura de la vacuna y el giro no? Recuerde que hablamos de áreas particulares a quienes Gates se dirige. Es probable que la cobertura de noticias y entradas de blog sobre el clima, por ejemplo, se dirigirán principalmente por los gigantes del petróleo, que se esfuerzan por garantizar la incertidumbre. El Huff y Puff (Huffington Post), por ejemplo, amplifica la señal de ‘Noticias’ Fox (donde los presentadores son instruidos para negar el calentamiento global), pero de nuevo, Huffington es una familia rica en petróleo. Gates invierte en Exxon Mobil por la forma [1 [http://techrights.org/2010/02/22/bill-gates-and-exxon/], 2 [http://techrights.org/2010/08/23/gates-foundation-financial-contributions/]]. A saber, no manzana cae lejos del árbol. “Un tema The Lancet es un proyecto financiado por el Grupo de Eliminación de la Malaria, que es casi completamente financiado por la Fundación Gates y Exxon Mobil [http://gateskeepers.civiblog.org/blog/_archives/2010/11/1/4669086.html]“, dice GatesKeepers en un post de noviembre:
“The Lancet” tiene un nuevo número con temas sobre la eliminación de la malaria, una meta modesta en comparación con la meta mundial de erradicación de que Bill y Melinda inesperadamente han surgido en el mundo hace tres años. El tema de The Lancet es un proyecto financiado por el Grupo de Eliminación de la Malaria, que es casi completamente financiado por la Fundación Gates y Exxon Mobil -
Parece que la revista The Lancet no recibió financiamiento de la Fundación Gates directa de la serie. Hay un poco de una declaración de divulgación en el líder de la serie de Pamela Das y Richard Horton:
“Escribiendo en 2009, Richard Feachem y Phillips Allison concluyó que” tenemos muchos motivos para ser “optimista. Junto con los demás en el Grupo de Eliminación de la Malaria (MEG), el cual es financiado en parte por la Fundación Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, la serie en la edición de esta semana de The Lancet ahora pone eliminación de la malaria en el microscopio “.
A continuación, en el Resumen Ejecutivo:
“Esta serie de The Lancet, apoyada por el Grupo de Eliminación de la Malaria (MEG) y convocado por el Grupo Mundial de la Salud de la Universidad de California en San Francisco, …”
La malaria Eliminación Grupo está casi totalmente financiado por la Fundación Gates y Exxon Mobil.
GatesKeepes no puede encontrar otra referencia a la Fundación Gates o Exxon Mobil financiación de la cuestión temática Lancet. Esperan que nada se oculta. “The Lancet” revela numerosos escándalos financieros.
La Fundación Gates compra los periodistas en los medios de comunicación, pero se espera que el contenido en la revista The Lancet no se puede comprar.
Mira lo que dice acerca de Paulson Día Mundial del SIDA [http://humanosphere.kplu.org/2010/12/gates-foundations-stefano-bertozzi-three-things-make-this-world-aids-day-different/]:
Puede ser difícil para muchos apreciar cuánto es una diferencia de estos avances en la promesa de la prevención para que en los próximos años, dijo Bertozzi. Una vacuna eficaz contra el VIH está a años de distancia todavía, reconoció, pero no hace mucho tiempo, hubo muchos desesperados incluso si era posible.
“Un diagnóstico erróneo mortal [http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/11/15/101115fa_fact_specter?printable=true#ixzz14kYlfvN1]” es un artículo de The New Yorker que cubre también a este ámbito, pero lo hace de forma independiente *. “No hay dinero Gates necesaria para escribir este excelente artículo [http://gateskeepers.civiblog.org/blog/_archives/2010/11/10/4676250.html]“, señala GatesKeepers:
The New Yorker y el autor no recibieron fondos de la Fundación Gates para publicar este artículo. Es posible escribir sobre la salud pública, e incluso las actividades de la Fundación Gates, sin tomar dinero de los gorilas en la habitación.
The New Yorker fue más tarde de ser criticados [http://pavakshah.com/2010/11/08/et-tu-new-yorker/] y GatesKeepers trató de averiguar si el crítico estaba conectado a Gates. █
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* Los resultados de un búscador del internet se llenaron con la prensa financiado por Gates, que está en constante inflamiento que reducen la señal y elevar Relaciones Públicas PR.
“Gates ha creado una gran operación de compra de sangre que sólo se preocupa por el dinero, no de las personas.”
–AIDS-gerente de la organización, diciembre de 2009
Many thanks to Eduardo Landaveri of the Spanish portal of Techrights.
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Posted in Bill Gates, Deception at 1:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
(ODF | PDF | English/original)
Resumen: Public Broadcasting Service (EE.UU.) se convierte en otro instrumento con el que Bill Gates avanza sus metas personales después de un pago grande.
¿Hay algun canal de televisión importante que no fue pagado por Gates durante algún tiempo a sesgo? Dicha lista canales se está acabando. No es sólo una cuestión de EE.UU. a próposito. En Gran Bretaña también Gates paga a The Guardian, por ejemplo, para hacer esto. En cuanto a Microsoft personal británico, no olvidemos lo que hicieron en la empresa de radiodifusión nacional. El MSBBC se parcializa cada vez hacia Microsoft [http://www.connectedconsoles.com/xbox-microsoft-and-bbc-still-in-talks-over-iplayer-on-360.cfm], Channel 4 también se convierte en cautivo [http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/news/1047234/Microsoft-C4-partner-TV-ad-break-innovation/]. En los EE.UU., el Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) es la última víctima de la ofensiva Gates de Relaciones Públicas PR, que cubre en muchos sitios como éste, que lo llama “Subvencion de la Fundacion Gates [http://www.tvnewscheck.com/article/2010/12/14/47745/pbs-receives-500000-gates-foundation-grant]” en lugar de lo que realmente es. Algunos críticos lo llaman un SOBORNO y como Gates también pagó a la NPR (radio pública) por un trabajo similar, la confianza es nula, incluso en los medios de comunicación nacionales.
PBS ha recibido una subvención de casi 500.000 dólares de la Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation para crear nuevos contenidos educativos digitales en “multiplataforma” para avanzar en el logro de matemáticas en colaboración con la ciudad de Nueva York Departamento de Educación de la Escuela experimental de uno (SO1). El nuevo contenido se creará específicamente para la plataforma de instrucción en el aula personalizada por primera vez por SO1 y distribuido a través de la PBS de Aprendizaje Digital Library (DLL).
Aquí es un sitio que lo llama una inversión [http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/461066-PBS_Gets_Funding_From_Gates_Foundation.php]:
“Los recortes del Gobierno de presupuesto puede ser mirando con avidez los fondos para la televisión y la radio no comercial, pero Bill Gates está invirtiendo en el servicio.”
“Cada vez hay más incomodidad sobre el apoyo de la Fundación Gates de los medios de comunicación [http://gateskeepers.civiblog.org/blog/_archives/2010/12/20/4707965.html]” y Paulson, lo hace de nuevo, como ya mencionamos en el post anterior [http://techrights.org/2011/01/10/lancet-gates-exxon-mobil/]:
Tom Paulson lo entiende. Y algunos otros en Seattle lo entienden también. El complejo de desarrollo de la filantropía-no fue mencionado por Ike en su discurso de despedida. ¿Cómo podía haberselo imaginado? Pero ahora que es una realidad, hay algunas voces críticas y disidentes. Aquí está uno.
La valoración crítica de Paulson sobre la financiación de PBS se señaló en el post anterior y luego habló de ABC News en otro post nuevo es noticia vieja [http://techrights.org/2010/10/12/consensual-monopolisation-with-abc/]. “La serie de la ABC Gates-financiado plantea preocupaciones sobre la salud mundial … y los medios de comunicación [http://humanosphere.kplu.org/2010/12/gates-funded-abc-news-series-on-global-health-starts-raises-concerns-about-health-media/]“, dice el titular y para citar a las partes de su artículo:
Pero lo que más problemas que otros fueron todas las referencias en el sitio web de ABC para la Fundación Gates – incluyendo numerosos clips de vídeo de Bill y Melinda Gates. Además, gran parte de esta serie en realidad suena – y es – un lanzamiento para las donaciones para numerosas causas “caritativas”.
Usted bien puede preguntar: ¿Así que Sr. Gruñón, ¿por qué son estos algún problema?
Bueno, para empezar, no todos están de acuerdo con Bill y Melinda cuando se trata de identificar los problemas ya sea primarios o las mejores soluciones en la salud mundial. Eso es inevitable, y bien, pero los periodistas tienen la obligación de seguir siendo independiente de la agenda de nadie.
[...]
La Fundación Gates, huye de estas cuestiones políticas candentes y vamos a ver si ABC News también lo hace. Otro ejemplo de un potencial “punto ciego” es la tendencia de la filantropía de Seattle a favorecer soluciones tecnológicas – como las vacunas o los alimentos enriquecidos – a diferencia de cuestiones relacionadas con la gobernanza, la industria y la economía.
¿Se cubren estos temas desordenadamente y, en caso afirmativo, ¿los críticos de la Fundación Gates, creen que están siendo representados de forma justa y adecuada por los observadores independientes?
Cuando un “Public Broadcasting Service” se convierte en un servicio financiado por Gates es más fácil de explicar quién dirige el país. █
Many thanks to Eduardo Landaveri of the Spanish portal of Techrights.
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