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06.28.16

Links 28/6/2016: Vista 10 Updategate, OpenMandriva 3.0 Beta 2

Posted in News Roundup at 4:31 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Linux Practicality vs Activism

      One of the greatest things about running Linux is the freedom it provides. Where the division among the Linux community appears is in how we value this freedom.

      For some, the freedom enjoyed by using Linux is the freedom from vendor lock-in or high software costs. Most would call this a practical consideration. Others users would tell you the freedom they enjoy is software freedom. This means embracing Linux distributions that support the Free Software Movement, avoiding proprietary software completely and all things related.

      In this article, I’ll walk you through some of the differences between these two freedoms and how they affect Linux usage.

    • When A Computer Is Ready for the Junk Pile

      To that point, there was a report that a mail server failure in a large business office remained a mystery for two days until someone found an old Pentium II back in the corner of some obscure closet with a burned out power supply. It is reported that the Slackware/Debian/Red Hat machine had been plugging away as a mail server for a number of years, completely unattended. That’s feasible I suppose, but I further suppose that it’s a modern day parable about how open source can indeed, carry the day.

    • Microsoft draws flak for pushing Windows 10 on PC users

      With about a month left for many PC users to upgrade to Windows 10 at no charge, Microsoft is being criticized for its aggressive — some say too aggressive — campaign to get people to install the new operating system.

    • Microsoft forks out thousands over forced Windows 10 upgrade

      Microsoft has had to pay a Windows user in California US$10,000 over a forced upgrade to Windows 10, according to a report in the Seattle Times.

      The user, Teri Goldstein, runs a travel agency in Sausalito, a San Francisco Bay Area city in Marin County, California.

    • A lawsuit over an unwanted Windows 10 upgrade just cost Microsoft $10,000

      Microsoft recently paid a (very small) price for its Windows 10 upgrade tactics, and that was before they became increasingly aggressive.

    • Updategate: California woman awarded $10,000 for borked Windows 10 upgrade

      A CALIFORNIA woman has set a precedent after a court ruled that she was entitled to damages over the installation of Windows 10 on her machine.

      Teri Goldstein, a travel agent, testified that the new operating system had auto-downloaded, started to install, failed, and left her Windows 7 computer running painfully slowly and often unusable for days.

      “I had never heard of Windows 10,” Goldstein told reporters. “Nobody ever asked me if I wanted to update.”

    • Microsoft pays out $10,000 for automatic Windows 10 installation

      Company withdraws appeal leaving it liable for $10,000 compensation judgment after botched automatic upgrade of travel agent’s computer

    • Microsoft Pays Woman $10,000 Over Its Forced Windows 10 Upgrade

      As a result of a legal suit, Microsoft has paid a woman $10,000 over the forced Windows 10 upgrade.

    • ‘I urge everyone to fight back’ – woman wins $10k from Microsoft over Windows 10 misery

      A California woman has won $10,000 from Microsoft after a sneaky Windows 10 update wrecked the computer she used to run her business. Now she’s urging everyone to follow suit and “fight back.”

      Teri Goldstein – who manages a travel agency in Sausalito, just north of San Francisco – told The Register she landed the compensation by taking Microsoft to a small claims court.

      Rather than pursue a regular lawsuit, she chose the smaller court because it was better suited to sorting out consumer complaints. Crucially, it meant Microsoft couldn’t send one of its top-gun lawyers – or any lawyer in fact: small claims courts are informal and attorneys are generally not allowed. Instead, Redmond-based Microsoft had to send a consumer complaints rep to argue its case.

  • Server

    • Docker 1.12 Linux Container Engine Promises Built-in Orchestration Capabilities

      The Docker developers are working hard these days to bring us one of the biggest releases of the widely-used open-source and cross-platform container engine, Docker 1.12.

    • Docker Expands Container Networking Capabilities

      When Docker 1.0 debuted in June 2014, it was missing a key feature: fully integrated networking that works. In June 2016, networking in Docker containers is a very different story, with a host of new capabilities now present in the Docker 1.12 milestone, which was officially released last week.

      At the core of Docker’s networking capabilities is the libnetwork stack, which first debuted in the Docker 1.7 release in June 2015 and became fully integrated in the Docker 1.9 update. Libnetwork is based on technology built and since expanded by SocketPlane, a company that Docker acquired in March 2015.

    • Sony Settles in Linux Battle

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

    • Screenshots/Screencasts

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

      • antiX 16 & OpenMandriva 3.0 Beta 2 Release, openSUSE Numbers

        It was a busy day in Linux with Slack, antiX, and OpenMandriva all working towards their next releases. Sam Varghese quoted Alberto Planas who said openSUSE sees about 1600 new installations each month and Gentoo’s Donnie Berkholz posted his retirement notice. Bruce Byfield posted two interesting articles today, one explaining the difference between an Open Source user and a Free Software Activist and the other describing the stringent Debian packaging policies. As a bonus, a lady in California won a $10,000 award in small claims court from Microsoft over its Windows 10 behavior.

      • OpenMandriva Lx 3.0 Beta2 is here!

        OpenMandriva is a cutting edge distribution compiled with LLVM/clang. Combined with the high level of optimisation used for both code and linking (by enabling LTO) used in its building, this gives the OpenMandriva desktop an unbelievably crisp response to operations on the KDE Plasma5 desktop which makes it a pleasure to use.

      • New Releases!

    • Gentoo Family

      • Time to retire

        I’m sad to say it’s the end of the road for me with Gentoo, after 13 years volunteering my time (my “anniversary” is tomorrow). My time and motivation to commit to Gentoo have steadily declined over the past couple of years and eventually stopped entirely. It was an enormous part of my life for more than a decade, and I’m very grateful to everyone I’ve worked with over the years.

        My last major involvement was running our participation in the Google Summer of Code, which is now fully handed off to others. Prior to that, I was involved in many things from migrating our X11 packages through the Big Modularization and maintaining nearly 400 packages to serving 6 terms on the council and as desktop manager in the pre-council days. I spent a long time trying to change and modernize our distro and culture. Some parts worked better than others, but the inertia I had to fight along the way was enormous.

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Why Debian Policy is important to package quality

        Unless you are a Debian maintainer, you probably haven’t read the Debian Policy Manual. However, when Ubuntu started promoting Snappy packages as a more secure solution to package management, the claim was challenged, not by reference to the technical structure of Debian packages, but to the Debian Policy Manual.

      • Derivatives

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Google “Project Bloks” education kit starts with RPi Zero

      Google’s “Project Bloks” education platform is built around a Raspberry Pi Zero that controls baseboards that talk to “Puck” inputs via a capacitive sensor.

      Google announced a Project Bloks hacker platform for kids, developed with IDEO and Paulo Blikstein of Stanford University. A prototype has been built based on the Linux-driven Raspberry Pi Zero SBC, and now Google is seeking researchers, developers, and designers who are interested in using the technology “to build physical coding experiences.” Later this year, Google will conduct a remote research study with the help of these partners.

    • 96Boards SBC showcases Mediatek’s deca-core Helio X20

      MediaTek launched the fastest open-spec SBC to date with a 96Boards development board that runs Android on its deca-core Cortex-A53 and -A72 Helio X20 SoC.

      The “Helio X20 Development Board” is MediaTek’s first 96Boards form-factor single-board computer, and the most powerful open-spec hacker SBC to date. Although we’ve seen some fast 64-bit SoCs among 96Boards SBCs, such as the HiKey, based on an octa-core, Cortex-A53 HiSilicon Kirin 6220, the Helio X20 Development Board offers an even more powerful Helio X20 system-on-chip processor.

    • RaspEX Linux Based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Supports the Raspberry Pi Touch Display

      After informing us the other day about the availability of a new release of his RaspAnd distro that brings the Android 6.0 Marshmallow operating system to Raspberry Pi 3 devices, Arne Exton is happy to announce that his RaspEX OS works with the official Raspberry Pi Touch Display.

    • Dual-core MCU Arduino compatible SBC has WiFi and audio

      T-Firefly’s open-spec, Arduino Uno compatible Fireduino SBC offers Rockchip’s dual-core, Cortex-M3 RKNanoD MCU, plus WiFi, RTC, and MP3 audio.

      Chinese embedded firm T-Firefly is apparently the new name for T-Chip Technology, which sponsors the Firefly open source hardware project. Its Arduino I/O- and IDE-compatible, dual-core Fireduino board is supported by the Firefly project along with Linux/Android hacker boards like the Rockchip RK3128 based Firefly-RK3288 Reload and Firefly FirePrime. Schematics and the like have already been posted.

    • Phones

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Hardware

    • Modern Hardware’s Role in a Software Driven Data Center

      Peterson also noted HPE has a variety of servers built around the Helion OpenStack world, which dovetails well with its contributions to the Open Compute Project. The teams at Helion and Cloudline have continued to join forces in order to provide a better experience for developers, end users, and IT teams working with these servers in their own architecture.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Truck Full of Dead Bees Delivered to the EPA

      The Keep Hives Alive Tour, a traveling protest of farmers, agriculture scientists, and activists, has been traveling around the country bringing its message to the masses.

      Keep Hives Alive is a two-fold group: Their aim is both to educate about the desperate need for honeybees and to advocate for concrete legislation that could help protect them. As part of that effort, the tour includes an awfully stark reminder of just how bad things are out there in bee-world: a truck full of 2.6 million dead bees.

  • Security

    • Chrome vulnerability lets attackers steal movies from streaming services

      A significant security vulnerability in Google technology that is supposed to protect videos streamed via Google Chrome has been discovered by researchers from the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Cyber Security Research Center (CSRC) in collaboration with a security researcher from Telekom Innovation Laboratories in Berlin, Germany.

    • Large botnet of CCTV devices knock the snot out of jewelry website

      Researchers have encountered a denial-of-service botnet that’s made up of more than 25,000 Internet-connected closed circuit TV devices.

      The researchers with Security firm Sucuri came across the malicious network while defending a small brick-and-mortar jewelry shop against a distributed denial-of-service attack. The unnamed site was choking on an assault that delivered almost 35,000 HTTP requests per second, making it unreachable to legitimate users. When Sucuri used a network addressing and routing system known as Anycast to neutralize the attack, the assailants increased the number of HTTP requests to 50,000 per second.

    • Study finds Password Misuse in Hospitals a Steaming Hot Mess

      Hospitals are pretty hygienic places – except when it comes to passwords, it seems.

      That’s the conclusion of a recent study by researchers at Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania and USC, which found that efforts to circumvent password protections are “endemic” in healthcare environments and mostly go unnoticed by hospital IT staff.

      The report describes what can only be described as wholesale abandonment of security best practices at hospitals and other clinical environments – with the bad behavior being driven by necessity rather than malice.

    • Why are hackers increasingly targeting the healthcare industry?

      Cyber-attacks in the healthcare environment are on the rise, with recent research suggesting that critical healthcare systems could be vulnerable to attack.

      In general, the healthcare industry is proving lucrative for cybercriminals because medical data can be used in multiple ways, for example fraud or identify theft. This personal data often contains information regarding a patient’s medical history, which could be used in targeted spear-phishing attacks.

    • Making the internet more secure
    • Beyond Monocultures
    • Dodging Raindrops Escaping the Public Cloud

  • Defence/Aggression

    • It’s Still the Iraq War, Stupid.

      No rational person could blame Jeremy Corbyn for Brexit. So why are the Blairites moving against Corbyn now, with such precipitate haste?

      The answer is the Chilcot Report. It is only a fortnight away, and though its form will be concealed by thick layers of establishment whitewash, the basic contours of Blair’s lies will still be visible beneath. Corbyn had deferred to Blairite pressure not to apologise on behalf of the Labour Party for the Iraq War until Chilcot is published.

    • Mufti confirms classifying DAP as ‘can be slain’ kafir harbi

      It is an Islamic belief that kafir harbi refers to non-believers who can be slain for waging war against Islam.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • WSJ Fakes a Green Shift Toward Nuclear Power

      The Wall Street Journal (6/16/16) published an article headlined “Environmental Groups Change Tune on Nuclear Power: Focus on Climate Change Has Raised Profile of Reactors, Now Viewed as Reliable, Carbon-Free Source of Energy.” Written by Amy Harder, the approximately 600-word piece appeared on the front page of the Journal’s B section.

    • Iran cracks down on ‘vulgar Western’ dog owners by seizing pets for ‘vaccination’ then destroying them

      Iranian pet lovers are in uproar after dogs were confiscated in a crackdown on ‘vulgar Western culture’.

      One unnamed dog owner in the Isfahan province, central Iran, said officials had shown up suddenly at his house.

      Officers who claimed to be from a veterinary practice took the dog away because it needed to have ‘vaccinations’.

      The owner told Iran’s Shahrvand newspaper: ‘We were shown a piece of paper indicating they were from the municipal veterinary office.

      ‘They came in and took away our dogs under the pretext of vaccination. Ever since our dog was taken away, you only hear the sound of crying and sobbing in our house.’

  • Finance

    • People are really, really hoping this theory about David Cameron and Brexit is true

      As the dust settles on the EU referendum battleground, some 33 million voters await with bated breath to see what the victors will do now that the nation has spoken to leave.

      Political commentators forecast a dark future for the UK: Jeremy Corbyn has just sacked Hilary Benn to head off a coup, and Boris Johnson could be prime minister come November.

    • Why the British said no to Europe

      Immigration was exploited in the campaign with consummate cynicism, not only by populist politicians from the lunar right, but by Labour politicians drawing on their own venerable tradition of promoting and nurturing racism, a symptom of corruption not at the bottom but at the top. The reason millions of refugees have fled the Middle East – irst Iraq, now Syria – are the invasions and imperial mayhem of Britain, the United States, France, the European Union and Nato. Before that, there was the wilful destruction of Yugoslavia. Before that, there was the theft of Palestine and the imposition of Israel.

    • Brexit is Only the Latest Proof of the Insularity and Failure of Western Establishment Institutions

      The decision by UK voters to leave the EU is such a glaring repudiation of the wisdom and relevance of elite political and media institutions that – for once – their failures have become a prominent part of the storyline. Media reaction to the Brexit vote falls into two general categories: (1) earnest, candid attempts to understand what motivated voters to make this choice, even if that means indicting one’s own establishment circles, and (2) petulant, self-serving, simple-minded attacks on disobedient pro-leave voters for being primitive, xenophobic bigots (and stupid to boot), all to evade any reckoning with their own responsibility. Virtually every reaction that falls into the former category emphasizes the profound failures of western establishment factions; these institutions have spawned pervasive misery and inequality, only to spew condescending scorn at their victims when they object.

    • Political Elites’ Program of Austerity Set the Stage for Brexit

      At 4 am, following the UK referendum on EU membership, Nigel Farage, the leader of the Eurosceptic UK Independence Party, gave a tentative victory speech. Bullish and beaming, but couching his cheer in caveats that not all areas had declared results, flanked by young men in suits jeering and pogoing, Farage announced that if the Leave campaign had won, “We will have done so without a single bullet being fired.”

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Multiple Crises in Democracy

      There is a strong strand of belief among the political class that Boris Johnson has no intention of taking the UK out of the EU. His aim was to see off Cameron and install himself in No. 10, after which he will discover that leaving the EU is proving far too dangerous and call for a second referendum. I suspect that this credits Johnson with a Machiavellian genius he is far from possessing, though as a prediction of future events it is in with a chance. (Personally I am hoping for Theresa May, the reaction to whose elevation will speed up Scottish Independence).

    • On Brexit, Experts Leave Much to Be Desired

      Actually, the pound’s fall was a necessary and good development in the long run, even if it would have been better had it occurred over a longer period of time. The UK was running a trade deficit in the neighborhood of 5.0 percent of GDP (equivalent to about $900 billion in the US); this was unsustainable. And, contrary to what Legrain claims in this piece, the best way to get the trade deficit down is to lower the value of the pound.

      Legrain incorrectly asserts that the drop in the pound in 2008 did not lead to a reduction in the trade deficit. In fact, it led to a substantial reduction, although with a 1–2 year lag, as would be expected. (The pound fell from a peak of more than 1.5 euros in 2007 to just over 1.0 euro at its trough in 2008. It remained low until it began to rise sharply in 2013, reaching values of more than 1.4 euros last year, hence the large rise in the trade deficit.)

      An inflow of money from abroad was fueling a housing bubble in the UK. This has priced many people out of the real estate market. Bubbles do burst, often with very bad outcomes. The problem with bubbles is not the factor that causes them to burst; the problem is allowing them to grow in the first place.

    • Putin Conspiracies, Obama Nonintervention Blamed for Brexit

      The referendum results in favor of Britain leaving the European Union seemed to have caught most Western media off guard. Betting markets and the pundit class had heavily favored a vote to keep the UK in the EU, but at around midnight on the US East Coast, it became increasingly clear Britain would be supporting “Brexit” by a roughly 52–48 percent margin. Per usual, the more cynical writers and pundits—no matter how contrived the task would be — would take the opportunity to take a story about a nationalistic British response to a pro-austerity EU, and make it about Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin.

    • Private Prison CEO Unconcerned About Hillary Clinton’s Pledge to End His Industry

      After The Intercept revealed that the Clinton campaign had received campaign donations from private prison lobbyists, a number of activist groups confronted Clinton, leading her to announce that she would no longer accept the money and later declaring that “we should end private prisons and private detention centers.”

    • Thousands of Jeremy Corbyn supporters march on Parliament against Labour Party leadership challenge

      The Labour leader called on people to unite together to oppose racism but did not address the challenge to his leadership

    • The problem with the Corbyn strategy

      Corbyn’s uncompromising ‘anti-austerity’ stance has certainly tapped into some Labour members’ discomfort with the direction taken by their party in recent years. If these misgivings predated the 2008 fiscal crisis, the resulting austerity effectively brought to a head criticisms many had of New Labour.

    • Jeremy Hunt ‘highly likely’ to launch leadership bid – Spectator magazine

      Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt is “highly likely” to launch a bid to succeed David Cameron as prime minister, the political editor of the Spectator magazine tweeted on Monday, without citing sources.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • SABC implosion: Staff threaten ‘blackout’ over censorship
    • WATCH: Lukhanyo Calata on SABC censorship

      SABC journalist Lukhanyo Calata says he is saddened by what he’s calling the disturbing direction being taken by his employer, the SABC.

      His father, Fort Calata, was a member of the so-called Cradock Four, who were killed exactly 31 years ago.

      “Today is quite an important day for me and my family because 31 years ago on June 27, 1985, my father and his three colleagues went from Cradock to Port Elizabeth and they never returned,” he said.

      “When I woke up today and I checked Twitter and saw that my former boss Jimi Matthews had resigned I just thought this was not what my father died for,” said Calata.

    • Opinion: Orlando tragedy reveals troubling censorship

      There were many proposed reasons, but the prevailing theory appeared to be the mods began deleting posts after finding out the killer was Muslim. That, combined with the fact the victims were part of the LGBT community, appeared to have caused mods to delete posts out of some fear of offending or appearing to be racist, xenophobic or homophobic rather than a duty to present the conversation as it is happening.

    • China to regulate search results following man’s death

      China has issued new regulations demanding search engines clearly identify paid search results, months after a terminally-ill cancer patient complained that he was misled by the giant search engine Baidu

    • German politicians, activists file complaint against Turkey’s Erdogan

      German lawmakers, rights activists and celebrities said on Monday they had filed a civil suit against Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and some of his aides for what they called “war crimes” in counter-terrorism operations against Kurdish militants.

      Turkish-German relations have been deteriorating lately over a resolution passed by the German parliament declaring the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces a genocide.

      Chancellor Angela Merkel now faces mounting domestic pressure to hold Erdogan accountable for human rights abuses after last year’s collapse of a ceasefire between Ankara and PKK militants seeking autonomy in Turkey’s main Kurdish southeast. Thousands have been killed in the renewed conflict.

    • Man who depicted Erdoğan as Gollum given suspended sentence

      A man who depicted Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as the Lord of the Rings character Gollum has been convicted of insulting the Turkish president and handed a suspended jail sentence.

      According to Turkish media reports, a court in the south-west province of Antalya on Thursday sentenced Rifat Çetin to a year in prison, suspended for five years. The court also stripped Cetin of his parental custody rights.

      Çetin posted an image on Facebook in 2014 in which he combined three pictures of Erdoğan with Gollum, the newspaper Hürriyet said.

      Çetin told another newspaper, the daily BirGün, that he planned to appeal against the verdict as Erdoğan had been prime minister, not president, when the image was posted.

    • Actor Fakhre Alam resigns as Sindh Censorship Board chief
    • Fakhr-e-Alam resigns as chairman Sindh censor board
    • Fakhr resigns as chairman Sindh Censor Board
    • Courts May Have Come to Udta Punjab’s Rescue, But Let’s Not Ignore Judicial Censorship of Cinema

  • Privacy/Surveillance

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Nirej Sekhon on Illegal Searches, Jamila Michener on Expanding Voting Rights

      This week on CounterSpin: In her forceful dissent from a ruling on the admissibility of illegally obtained evidence, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the decision “implies that you are not a citizen of a democracy but the subject of a carceral state, just waiting to be catalogued.” The defendant in Utah v. Strief is white, but the suspicionless stops at the case’s heart disproportionately affect black and brown and poor people, marginalized in media as elsewhere. The press are quoting Sotomayor’s words, but do they really hear the message? Nirej Sekhon is associate professor at Georgia State University College of Law. He’ll join us to discuss the ruling.

    • ‘Minority Communities Bear the Brunt of Police Abuses’

      From the media accolades for Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent in a recent Supreme Court case involving the use of illegally obtained evidence, it’s almost unclear if media realized that the ruling represents a loss for her point of view. With a 5-3 decision in the case Utah v. Strief, the Court said that a police officer may detain someone without cause and run their identification, and, if they uncover a warrant, may arrest them and charge them with additional crimes, based on what they find in a search. Previously, the fact that the initial stop was illegal would mean evidence unearthed would be inadmissible. Sotomayor, Kagan and Ginsburg dissented, with Sotomayor especially powerfully noting the disproportionate impact the ruling will have on communities of color.

    • ‘It’s Amazing How Little These Issues of Unequal Access Come Up’
    • Congress: Protect Every American’s Right to Vote this November

      This year, we will hold the first presidential election in 50 years without the full protection of the Voting Rights Act. Not coincidentally, 17 states will have new restrictions on voting in effect that were not in place during the last presidential election. Collectively, these states contain over 114 million people and have 189 votes in the Electoral College – about 70 percent of the votes needed to be elected president. Congress can take action now to strengthen voter protections that have been weakened by the Supreme Court to ensure that every American vote counts this November.

    • Digital Dystopia: Egyptian Civil Society At Risk

      Digital rights defenders are amongst those who have been targeted. In March’s Digital Citizen, a monthly review published by EFF and five other organizations, we’ve covered the judicial harassment of and travel bans imposed on Gamal Eid and Hossam Baghat, two prominent advocates whose organizations—ANHRI and EIPR—have been instrumental in the fight for human rights in Egypt. More recently, OTF fellow Wafa Ben Hassine published a paper that demonstrates how four Arab countries—including Egypt—use legal means to silence freedom of expression and its advocates online.

    • As Austin Struggles To Understand Life Without Uber & Lyft, DUI Arrests On The Rise

      A month ago, folks in Austin Texas voted against a proposition that Uber and Lyft supported, concerning a number of new rules that would be put on ride hailing operations. Given that, both companies immediately shut down operations in Austin — a city with over a million residents and only 900 cabs. In response, people are so desperate for rides that they’re seriously trying to recreate the Lyft/Uber experience by using a Facebook group where people can post their location, negotiate a fee, and have someone pick them up (something that seems a lot more dangerous than typical Uber/Lyft).

    • Erdogan: EU doesn’t want Turkey because ‘majority is Muslim’

      Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says Europe doesn’t want his country to join the EU because the majority of the nation’s population is Muslim. He said his government will ask the public whether negotiations with Brussels should continue.

      “Europe, you don’t want us because the majority of our population are Muslim…we knew it but we tried to show our sincerity,” Erdogan said at a graduation ceremony in Istanbul on Wednesday, as quoted by Reuters.

    • Afghanistan’s Dwindling Sikh, Hindu Communities Flee New Abuses

      On a bright day in downtown Kabul, Jagtar Singh Laghmani was in his traditional herb shop when a man turned up, drew a knife and told him to convert to Islam or he would cut his throat. Bystanders and other shopkeepers saved his life.

      The incident earlier this month was the latest attack on a dwindling community of Sikhs and Hindus in Afghanistan, a deeply conservative Muslim country struggling with growing insecurity caused by an Islamist insurgency and economic challenges.

    • Dear Chief Justice John Roberts, Search and Seizure: Does Innocence Matter?

      The United States Constitution’s 4th amendment supposedly protects us from illegal search and seizure. This constitutional right against illegal search and seizure has been tested time and again in the highest court in America. Chief Justice John Roberts, who was nominated by President George W. Bush and a nominee whom then-Senator President Barack Obama voted against, is one of many pushing for an update to Rule 41. Roberts has submitted a letter to Mr. Paul Ryan describing the proposed change that any US Government Judge may “issue a warrant to use remote access to search electronic storage media and to seize or copy electronically stored information located within or outside that district.”

    • Berlin imam files complaint against teacher who insisted on handshake

      A conflict between an imam and a female teacher at a Berlin private school over a handshake has escalated into a legal complaint against the woman, German media outlet RBB24 reports.

      The preacher, Kerim Ucar, was initially called in for a conversation over his sons’ involvement in brawls at the Platanus School in the Berlin district of Pankow. The female teacher tried to greet the father with a handshake, but Ucar rejected the gesture citing religious reasons.

    • AFDI Muhammad Ads Roll Out on London Taxis Tomorrow

      After the Muslim mayor banned advertisements on buses and subways of bikini-clad women, what could be more appropriate (or needed) then our new ad campaign?

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Net neutrality advocates to FCC: Put the kibosh on internet freebies [iophk: "nasty title. These schemes are just cost shifting, penalizing the open Internet"]

      Representatives from Fight the Future, the Center for Media Justice and Free Press on Friday hand-delivered a 6-foot tall package containing 100,000 letters of complaint to the Federal Communications Commission. They ask the agency to take action against AT&T, Comcast, T-Mobile and Verizon for violating the agency’s Open Internet order by offering so-called zero-rating service plans.

  • DRM

    • Researchers Crack ‘Social DRM’ EBook Watermarks

      Researchers have released a report dissecting the BooXtream ‘Social DRM’ eBook watermarking system. Inspired by publisher Verso who refused to remove the DRM from an Aaron Swartz book, the Institute for Biblio-Immunology responded by tearing down the privacy-busting system.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • The Secret to the Incredible Wealth of Bill Gates

      This point may be simple and obvious, but it seems to have been lost on most of the people arguing about inequality. In these discussions we hear continual expressions of concern over how technology is behind the massive upward redistribution of income we have seen in the last four decades. This upward redistribution is usually treated as an unfortunate fact of nature. Even if we don’t like to see the rich continually get richer at the expense of the rest of society, what can we do, stop technology? A little serious thinking could go a long way.

      The story of Bill Gates’ copyright protection, along with patent protection for prescription drugs and all sorts of other things, are a big part of the story of inequality. The key issue is that these protections are created by the government. They don’t come from the technology. It is the protections that make some people very rich, not the technology.

      We grant patent and copyright monopolies in order to provide an incentive for innovation and creative work. It is arguable whether these mechanisms are the best way to provide these incentives. For example, in addition to making drugs very expensive, even when they would be cheap in a free market, patent protection also provides an enormous incentive for drug companies to misrepresent the safety and effectiveness of their drugs. But the key point for the inequality issue is that the strength and length of these monopolies is set by government policy.

    • Russia Centralizes State Power In The Field Of IP Rights

    • Trademarks

      • CafePress Takes Down T-Shirt Calling Donald Trump A Cheeto-Faced Shitgibbon, Saying It Violates Frito-Lay’s Trademark

        As I write this, it has over 6,000 retweets and over 7,000 likes. Not bad. Based on all of this, Jay Lender, a writer/director for SpongeBob SquarePants, Phineas and Ferb… and also his own movie, They’re Watching, created an image in the style of Shepard Fairey’s famous (and legally disputed) Obama Hope poster.

        [...]

        It’s not at all clear if Frito-Lay made this request or if it’s just CafePress worrying about future Frito-Lay concerns. Lender asked CafePress for clarification, and all they sent back was a link to Frito Lay’s corporate contact page, telling him to contact Frito Lay to ask for authorization, implying that Cafe Press made this decision on its own. But, really, there appears to be a ton of other merchandise hosted at CafePress that mentions Cheetos in some form or another, so if the company is suddenly concerned about trademark threats from Frito-Lay, it seems to be targeting rather selectively.

      • Registration of a trademark license: the result of the CJEU is reasonable, but what about the Court’s reasoning?

        In the best of circumstances, the law of licensing is the murky side of trademark law.

      • 800-pound Comodo tries to trademark upstart rival’s “Let’s Encrypt” name

        Comodo, the world’s biggest issuer of browser-trusted digital certificates for websites, has come under fire for registering trademarks containing the words “let’s encrypt,” a phrase that just happens to be the name of a nonprofit project that provides certificates for free.

        In a blog post, a Let’s Encrypt senior official said Comodo has filed applications with the US Patent and Trademark Office for at least three such trademarks, including “Let’s Encrypt,” “Let’s Encrypt with Comodo,” and “Comodo Let’s Encrypt.” Over the past few months, the nonprofit has repeatedly asked Comodo to abandon the applications, and Comodo has declined. Let’s Encrypt, which is the public face of the Internet Security Research Group, said it has been using the name since November 2014.

    • Copyrights

      • Judge Dismisses Movie Piracy Case, IP-Address Doesn’t Prove Anything

        In what’s believed to be a first of its kind ruling, a federal court in Oregon has dismissed a direct infringement complaint against an alleged movie pirate from the outset. According to the judge, linking an IP-address to a pirated download is not enough to prove direct copyright infringement.

      • Rightscorp Pressures ISPs to Hijack Pirates Browsers

        Piracy monetization firm Rightscorp is promoting its browser hijacking system to ISPs. In a proposal revealed by Internet provider RCN, Rightscorp suggests a gradual approach where pirating subscribers eventually have to pay a fine to regain Internet access.

      • From file-sharing to prison: A Megaupload programmer tells his story

        Soon after the domain was registered in Hong Kong, the now-defunct Megaupload.com grew into one of the world’s most popular file-sharing sites. At its peak, the site engaged nearly 50 million users a day and took up around four percent of the world’s Internet traffic. Users uploaded nearly 12 billion files overall.

      • Judge Calls Out Malibu Media For Its Attempt To Cut And Run When Faced With Challenge To Its Infringement Claims

        IP trolls are about 90% cardboard facade. They puff themselves up with blustery legal threats written on serious-looking legal letterhead, but it’s really no different than the defensive mechanisms of many creatures found on the lower end of the food chain. For most, the slightest of pushes back results in the whole charade collapsing.

        There’s a great future in speculative invoicing, said no one ever in any seminal coming-of-age, post-college disillusionment film. Just look at Prenda Law, which resorted to fraudulent behavior when its aggressive, but incompetent, trolling failed to pay the bills. And yet, nothing stops the trolls from trolling. The occasional speed bump surfaces, but trolls dismiss these rather than meet the challenge head on. They’re in it for settlements, not wins… and certainly not precedent.

      • If Extradited, How Might Kim Dotcom Be Treated in the US?

        More than four years after the Megaupload raids, Kim Dotcom continues to fight extradition to the United States. However, if that battle fails, how might he be treated by authorities there? Revelations from a previously jailed Megaupload programmer show that things could get pretty miserable.

06.27.16

Links 27/6/2016: Linux 4.7 RC 5, OpenMandriva Lx 3.0 Beta 2

Posted in News Roundup at 5:33 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • The heartbeat of open source projects can be heard with GitHub data

    GitHub released charts last week that tell a story about the heartbeat of a few open source, giving insights into activity, productivity and collaboration of software development.

    Why are these important? Enterprises increasingly define software development as a top priority to gain competitive advantage or defend against disruption. They often turn to open source software because it is fast and agile. Enterprise IT decision makers should understand GitHub because it is the backbone of most open source projects.

  • 7 myths about open sourcing your company’s software

    Many companies benefit from open source, and countless companies have opted to open source components of their infrastructure (or even their bread and butter) in an effort to give back. However, there are a lot of misconceptions about what happens when you open up your business’ code and workflows to the public, and as companies delve into how to apply open principles within their organization, it’s easy to get lost in the weeds. Here are some common misconceptions about what happens when you open source your code.

  • Open source software has to sell user experience

    Open source software that is to succeed in this new world is going to have to be better than anything else. You can’t sell just openness anymore; it is added value, not a unique selling point. Open source software now has to sell user experience. In a way it is a simpler metric, and probably one that is going to change open source forever—for the better.

  • Top 7 open source business intelligence and reporting tools

    In this article, I review some of the top open source business intelligence (BI) and reporting tools. In economies where the role of big data and open data are ever-increasing, where do we turn in order to have our data analysed and presented in a precise and readable format? This list covers tools which help to solve this problem. Two years ago I wrote about the top three. In this article, I will expand that list with a few more tools that were suggested by our readers.

    Note that this list is not exhaustive, and it is a mix of both business intelligence and reporting tools.

  • Six free open source alternatives to Windows 10

    Windows 10 has generally be viewed as a welcome successor to Windows 8, both by businesses and individuals. However it has also come under scrutiny from users that are concerned about data privacy. So why not opt for a free Windows 10 alternative?

    We’ve listed open source Windows 10 alternatives based on features and user reviews. Here’s some of the best.

  • Obsidian Systems brings open source monitoring with Icinga
  • Obsidian offers Open Source monitoring with Icinga

    Obsidian Systems is now the exclusive African reseller partner for Icinga, a scalable and extensive monitoring system that checks the availability of resources, notifies of outages and provides business intelligence data.

  • Open source connects the dots in the digital transformation

    Developments in cloud, big data, analytics, and social and mobile technologies are all happening to a large extent because the underlying technology is evolving quickly, and Red Hat believes that this is happening because a lot of it is based on open source and is developed collaboratively between multiple communities and companies. Much of the cloud is based on Linux and open source based technologies, consequently open source is a key driving force in these changes and the rapid innovation cycles.

  • Lime hits crowdfunding target, a milestone in open source mobile hardware

    UK RF specialist Lime Microsystems has raised almost $624,000 in a crowdfunding campaign to bring its LimeSDR software defined radio to market, and will now begin production of the radios, which enable open source, programmable ‘network in a box’ devices for low cost coverage, especially in rural or temporary networks.

  • Nokia is traditional telecoms’ fifth column, embracing open source disruption

    One of the most important trends in the current reinvention of the mobile network is the introduction of open source to infrastructure hardware. Open source processes have been creeping into this formerly tightly closed world in software (from Android to carrier Linux) and in devices, but the network equipment itself remained the preserve of proprietary vendors and formal standards bodies. Now that is changing. From small innovators like Lime Microsystems (see separate item), to entrenched guardians of the old ways, like Nokia, suppliers are finding new ways to work with open source.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla Pushes Online Privacy with New Open Source Funding Awards

        Mozilla is funneling yet more money into the open source ecosystem. This week, the organization best known for the Firefox Web browser announced an award of $385,000 to fund eight open source projects, including several important online privacy platforms.

      • Mozilla to Rebrand Itself, and You’re Invited to Help

        Mozilla has been involved in reinventing itself for some time now. Known for the venerable Firefox browser, it has made forays into several other open source arenas, and was even known for its dalliance with the smartphone business. The company is currently involved in a broad rebranding effort, and the way it is going about rebranding comes directly from the open source playbook.

      • “Branding without walls”: Mozilla’s open-source rebrand

        Internet advocacy and software group Mozilla is rebranding with help from johnson banks. In an unusual move, the company has decided to document the process online – from strategy and concept development to refinement – inviting its community to help shape its new positioning

  • SaaS/Back End

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice 5.1.4 Released with Over 130 Fixes

      The first release candidate represented 123 fixes. Some include a fix for a crash in Impress when setting a background image. This occurred with several popular formats in Windows and Linux. Caolán McNamara submitted the patches to fix this in the 5.1 and 5.2 branches. David Tardon fixed a bug where certain presentations hung Impress for extended periods to indefinitely by checking for preconditions earlier. Laurent Balland-Poirier submitted the patches to fix a user-defined cell misinterpretation when using semicolon inside quotes.

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open source. Open science. Open Ocean. Oceanography for Everyone and the OpenCTD

      Nearly four years ago, Kersey Sturdivant and I launched a bold, ambitious, and, frankly, naive crowdfunding initiative to build the first low-cost, open-source CTD, a core scientific instrument that measures salinity, temperature, and depth in a water column. It was a dream born from the frustration of declining science funding, the expense of scientific equipment, and the promise of the Maker movement. After thousands of hours spent learning the skills necessary to build these devices, hundreds of conversations with experts, collaborators, and potential users around the world, dozens of iterations (some transformed into full prototypes, others that exist solely as software), and one research cruise on Lake Superior to test the housing and depth and temperature probes, the OpenCTD has arrived.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

  • Programming/Development

    • PHP 7.1 Alpha 2 Released

      Succeeding the PHP 7.1 Alpha release that happened earlier this month is now the second alpha build of this significant update to the PHP programming language.

    • 4 languages poised to out-Python Python

      Nothing lasts forever — including programming languages. What seems like the future of computing today may be tomorrow’s footnote, whether deserved or undeserved.

      Python, currently riding high on the list of languages to know, seems like a candidate for near-immortality at this point. But other languages are showing that they share Python’s strengths: convenient to program in, decked out with powerful ways to perform math and science work, arrayed with a huge number of convenient third-party libraries.

    • ECMAScript 2016: The Latest Version Of JavaScript Language Has Arrived

Leftovers

From Alleged Organised Crime to Vice-President of the European Patent Office (EPO)

Posted in Europe, Patents at 11:20 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Lawlessness is in Team Battistelli’s blood

EPO Three Stooges

Summary: Željko Topić’s situation in Croatia illuminated by means of recent documents from the authorities

OVER the weekend while we were away on holiday and the EPO struggled to digest the news about 'Brexit' (as did we, but for other reasons) someone sent us an update from Croatia. It’s not looking any better for Battistelli’s ‘bulldog’ (not to be confused with ‘lapdog’ or ‘his master’s voice’, Mr. Kongstad).

“The various criminal complaints filed against Željko Topić and others,” told us a source, “have been spread among a number of public prosecutor bodies in Zagreb and elsewhere (Municipal State Attorney’s Office, County State Attorney’s Office etc.).

“This seems to have led to a lack of coordination and delay in progress with processing of the complaints.

“According to what I have understood, the main public prosecutor is now trying to sort out the matter and has been sending letters to some of the other public prosecutors in an attempt to improve the coordination and deal with various issues that have been festering for many years now.

“I managed to get my hands on a redacted copy of one these letters which is dated June 10th.”

Here is the original letter.

Croatia June 10th document

A rough English translation is included below.

REPUBLIC OF CROATIA
Office of the County State Attorney in …

File No.: …
Zagreb, 10 June 2016

To the County State Attorney in …

Re the file no.: …

Referring to your letter of 11 May 2016 re the above case in which you have submitted an assessment and opinion of the criminal complaint of V.S. of 9 January 2013, filed against Z. T. and SM in connection with the criminal acts of illegal changes in the structure of state administration under Article 320 of the Criminal Code / 97, abuse of office under Article 337, paragraph 2 of the Criminal Code / 97, bribery under Article 348 para. 1 and 347 no. 1 of the Criminal law / 97 and negligent performance of duty under Article 339 of the Criminal code / 97, we draw your attention you, in this respect, to the criminal charges annexed to the file of the Office of the County State Attorney … number … given the fact that it concerns the same legal matter. Namely, in the indicated criminal case prior proceedings were conducted by this State Attorney’s Office concerning suspected irregularities in the actions of those responsible and officials of the State Intellectual Property Office, the Croatian Composers Society and the Ministry of Economy of the Republic of Croatian and the Croatian Government, whose acts directly or indirectly damaged the State budget of the Republic of Croatia.

On the other hand, concerning the criminal offence of racial or other discrimination under Art. 174 para. 1 of the Criminal Law / 97 and violation of the right to work and other labor rights referred to in Art. 114 of the Criminal Code / 97, which alleged offences were committed to the detriment of the applicant V.S., bearing in mind that it is a criminal offence falling within the jurisdiction of the Office of the Municipal State Attorney, in this part, we return this criminal complaint to the competent procedure for a prosecutorial decision on the merits. In this regard, because it has been reported to you by the Zagreb Police Department, Department Criminal Investigation, Department of Economic Crime, that they are also linked to the findings on crimes carried out which have been notified to the Office of the County State Attorney in … under the file reference number …, we note that the aforementioned criminal case does not apply to the criminal complaint that was submitted by V.S. and that it was a mistake that the result of the police investigation was delivered under that file number, and at the same time that the competent lawyer Office of the Municipal State Attorney wasn’t informed about the result of the police investigation. Concerning the above, we informed the Zagreb Police Department, Criminal Police Department, Department of Economic Crime, which then with the special report of 1 June 2016 file no … submitted the results of criminal investigations relating to the crimes within the jurisdiction of the Office of the Municipal State Attorney and which we also enclose for you to use.

In addition, we enclose for you the submission of the applicant V.S., sent to the Office of the Municipal State Attorney in … electronically on 6 June 2016, which shows that the stated criminal charges are dealt with in other criminal cases of the Office of the Municipal State Attorney in …, and how to perform the review of the specified files to establish a possible connection with your criminal case.

Deputy County State Attorney
[Signature and official stamp]

Attachments:
as in the text

For notification to:
Zagreb Police Department, Criminal Police Department,
Department of Economic Crime, reference number …
V.S., Zagreb, …

“What is interesting here,” explains our source, “is the statement at the end of the first paragraph indicating that officials of the State Intellectual Property Office and others are under suspicion of having caused direct or indirect damage to the state budget of Croatia by their actions as detailed in the criminal complaints. If this line of inquiry is followed up by the public prosecutor then it seems quite likely that prosecutions could be initiated fairly soon.”

In the mean time someone sent us a further document which is dated 22nd of June, 2016 (even more recent). To quote a source that understands this better than we do, this is a document “which indicates that the public prosecutor has sent the results of the investigation in one case to the USKOK – the Croatian State Prosecutor’s Office for the Suppression of Organized Crime and Corruption – a department of the State Prosecutor’s Office that specialises in cases of corruption and organised crime.

“As far as I understand the current state of affairs the investigation report is now with the USKOK for a decision as to whether or not to initiate a prosecution. These developments come at an interesting time because according to information from the EPO, the renewal of a number of Vice-President appointments including VP4 (i.e. Mr. Topić) is on the agenda for next week’s Administrative Council meeting.”

We actually wrote about this before. Here is the original document:

Croatia June 22nd document

Here is an English translation:

REPUBLIC OF CROATIA
Office of the County State Attorney in …

File No.: …

Zagreb, 22 June 2016

Dear …

As the submitter of a criminal complaint against Z.T. etc. in relation to unlawful conduct of the then director of the State Intellectual Property Office as well as other persons who are associated therewith, and whose acts directly or indirectly damaged the state budget of the Republic of Croatia, we inform you that the preliminary investigation in the criminal case has been completed, after which, according to the General Instructions on the Work of the Public Prosecutor and the USKOK for cases in which there are indications of corruption and organized crime number O-3/11 of 11 May 2011, the file has been submitted to the Office for Combating Corruption and Organized Crime (USKOK) for a prosecutorial decision concerning which you will be notified in writing.

Yours respectfully,

Deputy County State Attorney

[Signature and stamp]

Expect to learn more soon. If the Administrative Council continues to ignore issues such as the above, then that makes the delegates somewhat complicit. A few days remain to inform national delegates regarding Topić’s legal status. █

Battistelli May Still be on the Way Out as Pressure Grows in Germany, UPC in Shambles

Posted in Europe, Patents at 10:31 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Even Tilman Müller-Stoy is growing impatient

Tilman Müller-Stoy
Image source

Summary: Pressure on Battistelli is growing even from within circles that are traditionally protective of him and a long letter is sent to Dr. Christoph Ernst, who some believe will replace Battistelli

THERE are many articles about the EPO planned for today. A whole lot of stuff in happening and just a short whole ago MIP wrote that: “Pressure on EPO Admin Council which meets this week. Letter from Tilman Müller-Stoy of @bardehleIP calling for “transparency initiative”” (that’s quite an understatement).

Well, there is already some discussion around about this (see context in Twitter) and we are fortunate to have copies of the relevant text. First, as a little bit of background, consider what huge amount of pressure Battistelli will come under not just for 'Brexit' but also for his latest abuses against a truth-telling judge (again). As mentioned here before, EPLAW expresses concern about this and CIPA worries about the whole situation too. These are traditionally pro-EPO circles and they seem to be losing their patience. Not too long ago Alex Robinson bemoaned the latest among systematic attacks on the appeal boards. He wrote: “According to an unconfirmed report on the usually-reliable IPKat blog, European Patent Office (EPO) President Benoît Battistelli has submitted a further proposal for reform of the EPO’s Boards of Appeal. The alleged proposals are not yet publicly available, but if the report on IPKat is correct, Battistelli proposes a sharp increase in the EPO’s official Appeal fees, from a current level of €1880 to a projected level of €7350 by 2021.”

These aren’t just reports, it’s exactly what Battistelli plans to do and it would further erode patent quality for sure. Now, see 2016 AMBA Panel Discussion on Judicial Independence. AMBA is the Association of the Members of the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office. It strives to protect those whom Battistelli cannot help attacking.

We publish in our web site the proceedings of the panel discussion on judicial independence held in Munich on 27th February, 2016.

AMBA is the Association of the Members of the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office, having its seat in Munich.

The Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office as an Independent Judicial Body.

The attack on justice itself at the EPO was bound to invoke the wrath of legal professionals, who Battistelli needs to support him. They are, after all, some of the biggest stakeholders. But they are revolting now.

Shortly after Dr. Tilman Müller-Stoy sent a dissenting message someone ended up forwarding us the E-mail and related material. Dr. Tilman Müller-Stoy, according to our source, “is an attorney of the renowned Bardehle Pagenberg firm (he represented Microsoft in most their offensive cases in Germany against Motorola but he also does defense work for clients such as Amazon) to an undisclosed circle of recipients.

“His open letter to Dr. Ernst, one of Battistelli’s rumored potential successors [is] linguistically imperfect but the message is pretty good and strong.”

Tilman was mentioned here before, in the following articles among more:

In English we have the message raising awareness of this:

From: Tilman Müller-Stoy
Sent: Monday, June 27, 2016 1:55 PM
To: Tilman Müller-Stoy
Subject: WG: EPO Crisis – Call for Transparency Initiative

Dear „Interested Circles“,

In view of the latest events at the EPO, I sent today the attached further public letter (to which I refer for any details) to the Head of the German Delegation in the Administrative Council of the EPO (following up on my letter of 5 December 2014 that you all know). I strongly believe that it is time for the EPO to engage in a transparency initiative.

Notably, the next session of the Administrative Council of the EPO is scheduled for this week (29/30 June 2016) and I am very interested to see the respective results.

Best regards,

Dr. Tilman Müller-Stoy
Partner
Rechtsanwalt / Attorney-at-Law
Fachanwalt für Gewerblichen Rechtsschutz / Certified IP Lawyer
Wirtschaftsmediator / Commercial Mediator (MuCDR)

In German we have the message to Ernst:

Von: Tilman Müller-Stoy
Gesendet: Montag, 27. Juni 2016 13:38
An: ‘ernst-ch@bmj.bund.de’
Cc: ‘cornelia.rudloff-schaeffer@dpma.de’; Tilman Müller-Stoy
Betreff: EPO Crisis – Call for Transparency Initiative

Sehr geehrter Herr Dr. Ernst,

anbei übersende ich Ihnen im Nachgang zu meinem Schreiben vom 5. Dezember 2014 meinen offenen Brief vom heutigen Tag. Über eine gelegentliche Antwort würde ich mich freuen. Frau Rudloff-Schäffer ist in Kopie. Den Ergebnissen der Verwaltungsratssitzung am 29./30. Juni 2016 sehe ich erwartungsvoll entgegen.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Dr. Tilman Müller-Stoy
Partner
Rechtsanwalt / Attorney-at-Law
Fachanwalt für Gewerblichen Rechtsschutz / Certified IP Lawyer
Wirtschaftsmediator / Commercial Mediator (MuCDR)

Here is the full message from the accompanying PDF:

BARDEHLE PAGENBERG – Postfach 86 06 20 – 81633 München

Bundesministerium der Justiz
und Verbraucherschutz
Herrn Dr. Christoph Ernst
Head of the German Delegation in the
Administrative Council
Mohrenstr. 37
10117 Berlin

Per E-mail
ernst-ch@bmj.bund.de

CC:
Mrs. Rudloff-Schäffer:
cornelia.rudloff-
schaeffer@dpma.de

München, 27. Juni 2016

EPO Crisis – Call for Transparency Initiative

Dear Dr. Ernst,

In December 2014, following a house ban on a member of the Boards of Appeal, I took the liberty to address you in your capacity as Head of the German Delegation in the Administrative Council (hereinafter: AC) of the EPO in order to express concerns about the judicial independence at the EPO and a functioning EPO patent system, concerns which I shared with many users of the European patent system. Please allow me to reiterate these concerns, in the form or a public letter, in the light of the following two developments:

The Proceedings against the suspended member of the Boards of Appeal

Notably, not knowing the details of the facts and accusations, I have no word to say as to the substance of the matter. However, I do have some general observations:

Until now, the member concerned has been temporarily suspended for more than 1 1⁄2 years. The AC made three attempts to request pursuant to Article 12a (1) of the EBA’s Rules of Procedure that the EBA makes a proposal to remove the member concerned from office. The first one was rejected as unsubstantiated in the

EBA’s decision of September 17, 2015, the second one was presumably withdrawn and the third one turned out to be unsuccessful on June 14, 2016. As far as I understand the latter was the result of a conflict between the President of the EPO, the AC and the EBA about the question whether or not oral proceedings should be held in public and that the EBA felt threatened by a letter of the President alleging that the course of proceedings intended by the EBA was unlawful, insinuating consequences for the members of the EBA in case they would conduct public oral proceedings. Eventually, as a result, the proceedings appear to have come to a deadlock now as the EBA decided not to propose removal from office but to close the proceedings without a decision on the substance of the case.

Since the public has not been officially informed of what had actually happened, I have to abstain from commenting on these events in detail. However, the intended and codified system seems not to have worked properly in this case due to the President intervening in the procedure, the reaction of the president of the AC, and the EBA not providing a substantive decision in the case (contrary to its judicial function which is another concern in itself). These events increase my earlier concerns about the functioning of the EPO and the judicial independence at the EPO (see also the reasoning of the in the meantime published decision of the EBA: http://ipkitten.blogspot.de/2016/06/enlarged-board-publishes-decision-epo.html; http://eplaw.org/epo-eba-complains-undue-pressure-exercised-by-the-president-of-the-office-in-proceedings-on-the-request-to-remove-a-member-of-the-boards-of-appeal-from-office/).

Notably, the proceedings and their background rightfully gained prominence over the last 1.5 years which seems to be only natural as they concern a house ban / removal from office of an EPO judge, i.e. a question which relates to the core of the reliability of the EPO’s judiciary system. Therefore, I believe that the users of the system (who also finance it to a large extent) have a justified interest in obtaining respective official information from the AC. This issue should not be dealt with in camera. Further actions in the proceedings should be taken – at least partially – in public. At any rate, the case should be terminated quickly and, if not dealt with in a public oral hearing, the public should be informed about the cornerstones of the underlying fact finding and legal assessment process.

Thus, as my first request, I ask the AC to officially inform the public about the details of the reported events to the extent compatible with the justified interests of all participants.

Secondly, I request the AC to publish an unredacted version of the letter of the President and the AC’s view on the substance of this letter.

Thirdly, I request the AC to provide a plan as to how the issue shall be decided in substance, in due course.

Structural Reform of the Boards of Appeal

Following decision R 19/12 in which the EBA allowed an objection to the Vice-President DG3 as Chairman of the EBA based on concerns of partiality, the President presented a proposal for the structural reform of the Boards of Appeal to the Council (Doc. CA/16/15). In reactions from users’ organizations (e.g. epi in epi information 3/2015, 87, Union IP, epi information 4/2015, 120) and from the Board of Appeals (see website AMBA-EPO.org), objections were raised e.g. to the mixing of the questions of efficiency and independence and to the role of the Board of Appeals Committee (BOAC) to be created as a subcommittee to the AC.

In March 2016, the AC requested the President to submit proposals for immediate implementation of the structural reform of the Boards of Appeal. The President prepared a further paper which is still not publicly available but cited as CA/43/16. So far, there does not seem to be the intention to make it public, for consultation with the users of the European Patent System.

Again, an open communication seems to be key in the present situation. This is what the users can expect from a modern administration in a democratic society and this is the standard in the Contracting States to the Convention. A transpar-

ent procedure excludes that the still unpublished proposals could be accepted in the June meeting of the AC. Compared with national German legislation, the structural reform of the Boards of Appeal may be compared with a reform of the Law on the Constitution of Courts (GVG), the Law on the Judiciary (DRiG) and further laws affecting judges at the same time. It would be unthinkable that legislation of such importance implying basic questions of the rule of law, in particular the principle of separation of powers, could take place behind closed doors. The public at large, applicants, the patent profession and academia should have a proper opportunity to scrutinize and comment on the proposals. It should be kept in mind that a reform which does not achieve its aims would add further damage to the reputation of the Boards of Appeal and the European patent system as a whole.

Thus, my fourth request to the AC is to provide transparency in this context to the users, and to take comments of the members of the Boards of Appeal and other contributors with sufficient expertise into serious consideration before any reform is adapted (unless that has not been done already).

Concluding, I do only see one solution to reduce the risk that users like myself continue to lose confidence in the EPO system – namely sufficient transparency. Therefore, the AC is generally called upon to develop a transparency initiative. Following the above requests could be a first step towards the right direction.

Yours sincerely,
Dr. Tilman Müller-Stoy
Rechtsanwalt
- Fachanwalt für Gewerblichen Rechtsschutz -
- Wirtschaftsmediator (CVM) -

As readers may recall, Ernst isn’t just the German representative this week but also a rumoured possible successor to Battistelli.

We look forward to publishing some more new material about the EPO — material of which we already have plenty. It is a very busy week ahead. █

Caricature: European Patent Office (EPO) Under Battistelli

Posted in Europe, Patents at 9:40 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

EPO fascism

Summary: The latest caricature about the state of the European Patent Office (EPO)

Techrights (Almost) at 10: From Software Patents to Novell and to Present Focus on EPO

Posted in Apple, Europe, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, Patents at 9:10 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

A weak and/or incompetent EPO would harm everyone in the world

10 dollars

Summary: A short story about how and why we ended up writing so much about the European Patent Office (EPO) and the impact beyond Europe

THE EPO has become a subject of considerable debate and focus here. It started around 2014 after we had primarily focused on the US patent system, the USPTO.

For those who have not been reading the site since its inception, here is a short introduction.

I had been a GNU/Linux advocate well before this site existed and an opponent of software patents (not patents as a whole) for a little longer than that. People who have themselves developed software don’t find it difficult to understand why copyrights, not patents, are suitable protection for one’s work (protection from plagiarism, misuse, misattribution, and so on).

The earliest goal of the site, back almost 10 years ago, was to end the software patents assault by Microsoft against GNU/Linux and Free software in general — an assault which began if not publicly culminated with the Microsoft/Novell patent deal. Novell took several years to decline after this deal and ultimately, unsurprisingly, Microsoft grabbed Novell’s own software patents, in a joint takeover along with Apple, Oracle, etc. These companies do not want Linux and Android to succeed, not without them being heavily taxed by the proprietary software oligopoly (Microsoft, Apple and Oracle still have ongoing patent/copyright fights against Android).

Apple’s attack on Linux (through Android) officially began in 2010, whereupon we wrote a great deal about Apple and shortly afterwards Oracle joined this war. It had already shown some hostility towards Red Hat, just shortly before the Microsoft/Novell deal in 2006.

For those who are not yet seeing a pattern, let it be spelled out clearly; the rise of Free software and GNU/Linux gave power to new actors such as Google, which made proper use of Free software in order to build back- and front-end stacks (databases, operating systems, AI, Web servers and so on). This meant that gadgets-selling giants, database giants, operating systems giants/monopolies etc. that were and still are proprietary (e.g. iOS, Mac OS X, Oracle, Windows) needed to either crash/crush emergent forces or tax them, using either patents or copyrights (this goes back to 2003 with the Microsoft-backed SCO assault on Linux).

Right now, in 2016, the aforementioned issues are unresolved. Microsoft is still attacking Linux (but more cleverly, with shrewdly-worded announcements that brand/frame patent settlements as bundling deals), Apple still has several patent cases against Android OEMs, and Oracle refuses to give up even after 6 years in the courtroom (against Android through Google). The cause of utmost importance here deals not only with software patents anymore but also with some design patents (Apple v Samsung) and copyright on APIs (Oracle v Google).

About 8 years ago we expressed concerns about software patents in Europe due to FRAND lobbying (from companies like Microsoft) and Brimelow’s loophole “as such”. We thereafter didn’t keep a close eye on the EPO for quite some time. Not much seemed to happen, but new kinds of abuses started to emerge and these seemed to be related to the resurrection of the “EU patent” or “community patent”, this time under a new kind of name and marketing (equating maximalism with union, unity, universality etc.) accompanied by/with repression of staff and suppression of critics. Even the staff union of the EPO, which had existed for several decades, came under unprecedented (even outside the EPO) attacks.

The reason we now focus a great deal on the EPO is that we have reasonably good understanding of the matters involved. We also have many articles on the subject, which helps us create a cohesive story with a lot of cross-referencing. Our goal now is to help other people (EPO insiders as well as politicians who are outsiders) gain an equally good understanding of why the EPO’s management must be chopped laterally and replaced en masse. It is the only way to save the EPO right now. Delegates that make up the Administrative Council probably have a good grip on the current situation, but they are afraid (or tied up by Battistelli’s hand on the budget), so they are not likely to do anything. The EPO needs somewhat of a revolution and strikes/demonstrations are steps towards that.

In the coming days we shall have a lot to write about the EPO and we will devote plenty of time and resources to ensure this historic period in the EPO is properly documented. We welcome feedback from readers and we hope that new material will continue to flow in. Now that everyone in the UK (and increasingly beyond) talks about “Brexit” it looks like Battistelli will definitely fail to deliver on his promises. He will be remembered not as a pioneer manager who compromised the rule of law for some ‘necessary’ reform but as a ruthless tyrant that shattered the EPO’s reputation for many years if not decades to come.

The EPO will outlive Battistelli and it is everyone’s job, especially at the EPO, to fight for patent quality (i.e. defy Battistelli’s ‘productivity’ obsession or lunacy). Remember that patent offices live or die (or make or break if not perish) based on the value or perceived value of their granted patents, i.e. examination that increases certainty in a court of law. Being an ENA graduate, Battistelli perhaps hopes that his predecessor will be left to deal with the aftermath of his atrocious policies (brain drain, low patent quality, reputation problems). Then the blame might be misplaced. A retired Battistelli would have little or nothing to worry about, but what about patent examiners who are far from retirement? How about retired examiners whose pension will be at risk? Given some upcoming Battistelli ‘reforms’, many people’s pensions are already at risk. This is just bad for Europe’s competitiveness across many sectors (medicine, chemistry, physics, telecommunication and many more). As patents get granted and assigned not just to European applicants (only the employees of the EPO are European), this may also means innovation will happen in the courts (lawyers’ strategies with patent trolls) rather than in the laboratories. Patent monopolies that are granted for the sake of being granted (artificially elevating some measure of EPO ‘output’) rather than to promote innovation can retard human progress as a whole. █

06.26.16

Patents Roundup: Bad Quality (USPTO), Bad Analysis (India), Bad Microsoft, Bad Actors (Trolls), Bad Scope (Software Patents), and the Ugly

Posted in America, Law, Patents at 3:36 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Learning from bad aspects or what has gone awry in the patent world

A bad dog

Summary: A mishmash of news about patents, mostly regarding the United States, and what can be deduced from that at the moment

THIS coming week promises to be rather big and historic, at the very least in Europe. It’s not just because of Brexit and its impact on the UPC but also because of the Administrative Council’s meeting. Big news is definitely afoot. In order to get some less important news out of the way in preparation for tomorrow (I’m getting back home after 3 days’ holiday), below are bits and pieces of relevance. It’s all from outside Europe.

“With patent ‘quality’ like this, why even pretend that the USPTO does legitimate quality (or novelty) assessment?”

USPTO’s Neglect of Patent Quality a Bursting Bubble

IAM, which is preaching under the guise of 'journalism', actually bemoans not the quality of USPTO patents being terrible and truly worth of cleanup by PTAB. Instead, it keeps moaning about the ‘worth’ of patents, as if not quality control is the problem but lenience of courts etc. “Judge Newman alone again as she warns of devastating loss of public confidence in US patent system” is the latest headline. IAM being IAM, it’s amusing to see how shallow the agenda is to see.

“It sure looks like pride is harder to derive these days from USPTO employment.”For details about the low quality of today’s USPTO patents, see the new article titled “General Mills Granted A Design Patent On A Tortilla Bowl Because Why Even Pretend Anymore?”

To quote the opening part alone: “While we’ve talked in the past about how absurd design patents can get, it’s worth pointing out that, hey, shit’s not getting any less absurd, people. Design patents, as opposed to utility patents, function more like trademarks. The idea is that the “invention” in the case of design patents are supposed to be unique outputs of what might otherwise not be unique inventions that are then said to act as some sort of single-source invented thing. Honestly, the whole concept smells of a workaround on the actual purpose of patent law and it tends to function that way as well. How else do you explain the design patent granted on a toothpick with some lines carved into it, for instance? Or Apple’s design patent on the animation of turning a page within an ebook? Rewarding exclusivity to these types of “inventions” that barely work up the sweat of an “inventor” should seem absurd to you, as should the frequency with which the public is left wondering where exactly the “invention” is in any of this.”

“Patent lawyers everywhere have been trying to spread software patents to just about everywhere on the planet, irrespective of what software developers are saying.”With patent ‘quality’ like this, why even pretend that the USPTO does legitimate quality (or novelty) assessment? We were recently contracted in relation to someone who works for the USPTO and does not wish to be described as such. It sure looks like pride is harder to derive these days from USPTO employment. Today’s USPTO is not what it used to be; rubber-stamping millions of patent applications for large corporations whose managers become USPTO Directors isn’t so scientific anymore.

Trying to Push Software Patents Into India

Patent lawyers everywhere have been trying to spread software patents to just about everywhere on the planet, irrespective of what software developers are saying. Last week, for example, Germany’s Bastian Best asked: “Targeted advertising is patentable in India if a piece of hardware is claimed?” Software patents are not legal in India, but Kenneth Saldanha, one of those hoping to change that, wrote:

A Software Patent in India is a tricky issue. First of all, let us understand what a Patent is. A patent is essentially a set of rights granted to a person in respect of something new (an invention) created by him. This ‘something new’, under the Indian law i.e. the Patents Act, 1970 is called an ‘invention’ and includes a software as well.

No, not really. India’s Patents Act excludes that and those hoping to change that are the same people who say software patents are possible and legal in Europe (or Germany, which is consistently more lenient on the matter). Even Battistelli’s EPO cannot change that, not without the UPC or some other new loophole.

Microsoft Bought a Patents Dud and Engages in Trolling (Through “Microsoft Tech Licensing”)

“Put another way, Microsoft acts like a patent troll (Microsoft Tech Licensing is technically a patent troll).”“At a glance,” IP Watch wrote some days ago, “Microsoft’s portfolio of US patents currently stands at approximately 50,000, compared to LinkedIn’s US patent portfolio of 1,085. Microsoft is well known for asserting its patent rights and has even created a licensing entity Microsoft Tech Licensing Ltd.”

Put another way, Microsoft acts like a patent troll (Microsoft Tech Licensing is technically a patent troll). We wrote over a thousand posts on this subject alone.

Even Microsoft-connected sites have already explained why “Microsoft’s LinkedIn Acquisition Is a Bad Move”. Compare that to other failing companies (LinkedIn had gotten into serious issues before Microsoft placed a bid) that actually have a lot of patents. As IAM put it the other day: “In terms of IP value creation Blackberry is one operating company worth keeping a close eye on. The Canadian tech giant has a huge portfolio of assets – around 38,000 – and has a brand with global cachet; but it is slowly withering in its legacy handset market and is transitioning away from manufacturing devices.”

“Will software patents ever make a comeback in the US? We sure hope not.”We previously wrote explanatory posts on how BlackBerry (or RIM) was becoming a patent troll. Thankfully, many of their patents would no longer be valid or possible to uphold in a court of law. Not in the US and not even in Canada (home country). See the paper “Patents and the Wealth of Nations” by Stephen Haber from Stanford University, published almost 2 months ago.

The Fight Against Patent Trolls Continues

“There are even uglier aspects inside law firms which focus on/pertain to patents and their clients.”Writing about the pro-patent trolls Halo decision, a comment from someone called Mike at IP Kat says that “influential Senator Orrin Hatch has filed an amendment to a funding bill criticizing the Supreme Court’s decision in Halo. Basically, it states that Congress considered the Seagate test and did not act to change it, thus Congress’ intent is for the Seagate test to govern.”

Destruction of Software Patents Continues

Remember some old news about CAFC ruling against software patents, in this case a “patent infringement claim filed by software company Rosebud.” There have been so many such cases since, including a lot from the court that initially authorised software patents in the US. Will software patents ever make a comeback in the US? We sure hope not.

The Ugly Side of Patent Practice

A few days ago Patently-O wrote about “Sexism in Patent Practice”, taking note of what’s characterised as “stories of appalling sexism. Each had been taken as the assistant for the actual lawyer. Each had been called things like “missy” and the like. And each had experienced this at high levels of practice, in recent years, not at some point long ago.”

“That’s where particular patents (or patent holders) do not just have ethical issues but also criminal/forensic issues.”There are even uglier aspects inside law firms which focus on/pertain to patents and their clients. “Commission finally targets Patent Boxes as tools of fiscal evasion,” Benjamin Henrion wrote, “not sure they cover EU2EU transfers” (reference in europa.eu). Prior to it, Francisco Moreno wrote about this as well, but in Spanish (“Exit taxation en paquete anti-evasión de la Comisión:si sacas patentes fuera de la UE pagarás en función de su valor”), his native language.

This serious subject was covered here before [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. That’s where particular patents (or patent holders) do not just have ethical issues but also criminal/forensic issues. █

Links 26/6/2016: IceCat 38.8.0, Wine 1.9.13

Posted in News Roundup at 2:00 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Q&A with Tracy Hinds: Improving Education and Diversity at Node.js

    To increase developer support and diversity in the Node.js open source community, the Node.js Foundation earlier this year brought in Tracy Hinds to be its Education Community Manager. She is charged with creating a certification program for Node.js, increasing diversity, and improving project documentation, among other things.

  • Startup Snyk Aims to Lockdown Open Source Code in Real Time

    Eight months ago, without a lot of fanfare, a startup company called Snyk, with roots in London and Israel, started talking about its unique focus on helping developers keep open source code secure. Specifically, Snyk monitors vulnerabilities and dependencies in open source code and integrates securing open source into common developer workflows. The bottom line is that code vulnerabilities get checked in real-time, rather than getting focused on during official audits.

    Now, Snyk is coming out of beta with its tools, and releasing some metrics on how successful it has been at finding probems and patching them.

  • Best Open Source Software for Windows 10
  • Open Source Replacements for Windows XP
  • Open Source Business Intelligence Software [Ed: rather old]
  • Open Source Software: Top Sites
  • A DevOps dashboard for all: Capital One’s Hygieia project offers powerful open source resource

    When do you know a technology or process has reached the peak of its hype cycle and crossed over to the mainstream? When there’s an executive dashboard to track key performance indicators.

    US-based financial services company Capital One birthed an open source project that provides a dashboard for DevOps projects. The project, called Hygieia, is notable for several reasons.

  • EU Researchers Are Making a Tool That Fact-Checks Tweets

    Back when people were still using the term “Web 2.0,” everyone was excited about Twitter‘s impact on journalism. After all, anyone could use it. Maybe it could crowd-source journalism starting from the exact moment a newsworthy event happened across the globe!

  • A team of researchers from 7 countries is building an open-source tool to help verify claims on Twitter

    Social media newsgathering and verification are no longer novel practices in the newsroom. But even if publishers now have a person or a team of reporters tasked with monitoring conversations on these platforms and verifying their accuracy, there have still been instances of fake rumours or misrepresented facts spreading online when news breaks.

    A team of researchers, developers and journalists is hoping to solve this through the EU-funded project Pheme, an open-source dashboard they are currently building to help newsrooms detect, track and verify facts and claims the moment they start spreading on Twitter.

  • SaaS/Back End

    • Open Source NFV Part Four: Open Source MANO

      Defined in ETSI ISG NFV architecture, MANO (Management and Network Orchestration) is a layer — a combination of multiple functional entities — that manages and orchestrates the cloud infrastructure, resources and services. It is comprised of, mainly, three different entities — NFV Orchestrator, VNF Manager and Virtual Infrastructure Manager (VIM). The figure below highlights the MANO part of the ETSI NFV architecture.

    • After the hype: Where containers make sense for IT organizations

      Container software and its related technologies are on fire, winning the hearts and minds of thousands of developers and catching the attention of hundreds of enterprises, as evidenced by the huge number of attendees at this week’s DockerCon 2016 event.

      The big tech companies are going all in. Google, IBM, Microsoft and many others were out in full force at DockerCon, scrambling to demonstrate how they’re investing in and supporting containers. Recent surveys indicate that container adoption is surging, with legions of users reporting they’re ready to take the next step and move from testing to production. Such is the popularity of containers that SiliconANGLE founder and theCUBE host John Furrier was prompted to proclaim that, thanks to containers, “DevOps is now mainstream.” That will change the game for those who invest in containers while causing “a world of hurt” for those who have yet to adapt, Furrier said.

    • Is Apstra SDN? Same idea, different angle

      The company’s product, called Apstra Operating System (AOS), takes policies based on the enterprise’s intent and automatically translates them into settings on network devices from multiple vendors. When the IT department wants to add a new component to the data center, AOS is designed to figure out what needed changes would flow from that addition and carry them out.

      The distributed OS is vendor-agnostic. It will work with devices from Cisco Systems, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Juniper Networks, Cumulus Networks, the Open Compute Project and others.

    • MapR Launches New Partner Program for Open Source Data Analytics

      Converged data vendor MapR has launched a new global partner program for resellers and distributors to leverage the company’s integrated data storage, processing and analytics platform.

    • A Seamless Monitoring System for Apache Mesos Clusters
    • All Marathons Need a Runner. Introducing Pheidippides

      Activision Publishing, a computer games publisher, uses a Mesos-based platform to manage vast quantities of data collected from players to automate much of the gameplay behavior. To address a critical configuration management problem, James Humphrey and John Dennison built a rather elegant solution that puts all configurations in a single place, and named it Pheidippides.

    • New Tools and Techniques for Managing and Monitoring Mesos

      The platform includes a large number of tools including Logstash, Elasticsearch, InfluxDB, and Kibana.

    • BlueData Can Run Hadoop on AWS, Leave Data on Premises

      We’ve been watching the Big Data space pick up momentum this year, and Big Data as a Service is one of the most interesting new branches of this trend to follow. In a new development in this space, BlueData, provider of a leading Big-Data-as-a-Service software platform, has announced that the enterprise edition of its BlueData EPIC software will run on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and other public clouds.

      Essentially, users can now run their cloud and computing applications and services in an Amazon Web Services (AWS) instance while keeping data on-premises, which is required for some companies in the European Union.

  • CMS

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

    • FreeBSD 11 Alpha 1 — New Features Coming To This Open Source OS

      For those unfamiliar with FreeBSD, it is considered one of the few operating systems left to be true UNIX. It is a direct descendant of the BELL/AT&T labs UNIX. Much of the software available for Linux is also available for FreeBSD as well, including Gnome and KDE desktop environments and much more user and server software. Despite the amount of software available, it is often thought of as an obscure system with a rather small software library. This is simply

    • FreeBSD 11.0 Alpha 5 Released, Schedule So Far Going On Track

      The fifth alpha release of the huge FreeBSD 11.0 operating system update is now available for testing.

      FreeBSD 11.0 is bringing updated KMS drivers, Linux binary compatibility layer improvements, UEFI improvements, Bhyve virtualization improvements, and a wide range of other enhancements outlined via the in-progress release notes.

    • DragonFly’s HAMMER2 File-System Sees Some Improvements

      The HAMMER2 file-system is going on four years in development by the DragonFlyBSD crew, namely by its founder Matthew Dillon. It’s still maturing and taking longer than anticipated, but this is yet another open-source file-system.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

    • North American Cities Are Slow To Adopt Open Source Software

      Government IT departments are often one of the last places that politicians or the general public look to when trying to squeeze more out of the limited public purse. This is not likely intentional. Elected officials and their constituents understand when roads and bridges are in need of repair. But the IT department is often just seen as a bunch of people in a far off building who make desktops work so that employees at the municipality can get their work done.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • In-demand dev skills, understanding licensing, and more open source news

    • Open Access/Content

      • Higher ed systems expanding access to open-source materials

        Open-source learning technology is at the core of higher education for institutions that want to reach broader audiences with very strict ideas about how convenient learning should be. But developing these initiatives does not happen quickly or easily. It requires strong leadership in information technology, expertise to determine which solutions work best for a campus, and a financial commitment to making sure the technology is sustainable.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Proxmark Pro Proxmark3 Standalone Open Source RFID Tester (video)

        Rysc Corp has unveiled a new open source board in the form of the Proxmark Pro which now offers a true standalone client and RFID test instrument, check out the video below to learn more.

        The Proxmark Pro will feature an FPGA with 5 times the logic cells of the Proxmark3 and will remove the need to switch between HF and LF bit streams during operation, to use developers.

  • Programming/Development

    • Python gains functional programming syntax via Coconut

      Many Python fans have longed for the language to adopt functional programming features. Now they can get those features without having to switch to a new Python implementation.

      Coconut, a newly developed open source dialect of Python, provides new syntax for using features found in functional languages like Haskell and Scala. Programs written in Coconut compile directly to vanilla Python, so they can be run on whatever Python interpreter is already in use.

    • ECMAScript 2016: New Version of the JavaScript Language Released

      Ecma International, the organization in charge of managing the ECMASCript standard, has published the most recent version of the JavaScript language.

      ECMAScript 2016, or JavaScript 2016, is the first release in the organization’s new release schedule that it announced in 2015, when it promised to provide yearly updates to the JS standard instead of updates years apart.

    • PowerNex: A Kernel Written In The D Programming Language
    • ErupteD Brings Vulkan To The D Programming Language

      The D programming language is just the latest to have support for Vulkan alongside C++, Rust (via Vulkano, if you missed that project), Go, and many other modern languages getting bindings for this Khronos Group high performance graphics API. Should you not be familiar with the D language, see Wikipedia.

Leftovers

  • Printing At Night

    I haven’t touched a Mac in over a decade but one came to my home yesterday in the hands of a visitor. A party was being planned and a document was produced on the Mac. It should have been simple to print over my LAN. I allow all comers. Somehow, it didn’t work. The printer was seen but no driver could be found and there was the “locked” icon beside it. The last time I was in a school that used Mac OS (Pre UNIXy version) printing kept failing to a bog standard HP Laserjet printer so the Macs e-mailed a Mac which had been liberated by me to GNU/Linux. A tech arrived eventually and made the Macs print again but within an hour of his departure printing failed again. Besides connectivity, the Macs butchered every file with a MacOS header of some kind which I had to strip off… MacOS/X is apparently much more sane.

  • Meanwhile, In An Alternate Universe, M$ Defines Reality

    The slaves of Microsoft accept that upgrading a motherboard is “essentially building a new PC”.

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

    • Linux Kernel 4.6.3 Has Multiple Networking Improvements, Better SPARC Support

      Today, June 24, 2016, renowned Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the general availability of the third maintenance release for the Linux 4.6 kernel series.

      Linux kernel 4.6.3 is here two weeks after the release of the second maintenance update in the series, Linux kernel 4.6.2, to change a total of 88 files, with 1302 insertions and 967 deletions. Unfortunately, very few GNU/Linux distributions have adopted the Linux 4.6 series, despite the fact that Greg Kroah-Hartman urged everyone to move to this most advanced kernel branch as soon as possible from Linux 4.5, which reached end of life.

    • Teardrop Attack: What Is It And How Does It Work?

      In Teardrop Attack, fragmented packets that are sent in the to the target machine, are buggy in nature and the victim’s machine is unable to reassemble those packets due to the bug in the TCP/IP fragmentation.

    • Updating code can mean fewer security headaches

      Organizations with high rates of code deployments spend half as much time fixing security issues as organizations without such frequent code updates, according to a newly released study.

      In its latest annual state-of-the-developer report, Devops software provider Puppet found that by better integrating security objectives into daily work, teams in “high-performing organizations” build more secure systems. The report, which surveyed 4,600 technical professionals worldwide, defines high IT performers as offering on-demand, multiple code deploys per day, with lead times for changes of less than one hour. Puppet has been publishing its annual report for five years.

    • Over half of world’s top domains weak against email spoofing

      Over half of the world’s most popular online services have misconfigured servers which could place users at risk from spoof emails, researchers have warned.

      According to Swedish cybersecurity firm Detectify, poor authentication processes and configuration settings in servers belonging to hundreds of major online domains are could put users at risk of legitimate-looking phishing campaigns and fraudulent emails.

    • Friday’s security updates
    • A couple of unpleasant local kernel vulnerabilities

      As part of a kernel fuzzing project by myself and my colleague Tim Newsham, we are disclosing two vulnerabilities which have been assigned CVEs. Full details of the fuzzing project (with analysis of the vulnerabilities) will be released next week.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Emails Show Hillary Clinton’s Email Server Was A Massive Security Headache, Set Up To Route Around FOIA Requests

      While trial-and-error is generally useful when solving connection problems, the implication is undeniable: to make Clinton’s private, insecure email server connect with the State Department’s, it had to — at least temporarily — lower itself to Clinton’s security level. The other workaround — USE A DAMN STATE DEPARTMENT EMAIL ADDRESS — was seriously discussed.

      This latest stack of emails also exposed other interesting things… like the fact that Clinton’s private email server was attacked multiple times in one day, resulting in staffers taking it offline in an attempt to prevent a breach.

    • Post Gag Order, Lavabit Founder Reveals Non-Secret That Feds Were After Ed Snowden’s Emails

      Want some unsurprising news? Apparently a three year gag order has just lapsed, allowing Ladar Levison, the founder and former operator of Lavabit, the secure email service Ed Snowden famously used, to finally say that yes, the feds asked him to turn over his encryption key in order to access Ed Snowden’s emails.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Democrats Ignore Urgency Of Climate Crisis, Vote Against Adding Fracking Ban To Platform

      Democrats appointed to the Democratic Party’s Platform Committee by Hillary Clinton and the party’s chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, defeated a ban on fracking on June 24.

      Former U.S. Representative Howard Berman, American Federation of State, County, and Muncipal Employees executive assistant to the president, Paul Booth, former White House Energy and Climate Change Policy director Carol Browner, Ohio State Representative Alicia Reece, former State Department official Wendy Sherman, and Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden all raised their hands to prevent a moratorium from becoming a part of the platform.

      Those who voted against the ban were met with a cry of, “Shame on you! Shame on you!” from the audience.

  • Finance

    • European Parliament to Britain: Don’t let the door hit you as you Leave

      The leaders of three of the European Parliament’s largest groups have called for exit talks with Britain to begin immediately, and Members of Parliament are likely to vote on a resolution on the matter at a voting session on Tuesday, sources told POLITICO.

    • The British are frantically Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

      The whole world is reeling after a milestone referendum in Britain to leave the European Union. And although leaders of the campaign to exit Europe are crowing over their victory, it seems many Britons may not even know what they had actually voted for.

      Awakening to a stock market plunge and a precipitous decline in the value of the pound that Britain hasn’t seen in more than 30 years, voters now face a series of economic shocks that analysts say will only worsen before they improve. The consequences of the leave vote will be felt worldwide, even here in the United States, and some British voters say they now regret casting a ballot in favor of Brexit.

    • British Lose Right to Claim That Americans Are Dumber

      Across the United Kingdom on Friday, Britons mourned their long-cherished right to claim that Americans were significantly dumber than they are.

      Luxuriating in the superiority of their intellect over Americans’ has long been a favorite pastime in Britain, surpassing in popularity such games as cricket, darts, and snooker.

    • Brexit could be Scotland’s ticket into the EU as an independent state

      In times like these, political journalists like me tend to reach for the collected works of WB Yeats. “All changed, changed utterly,” he wrote after Ireland’s Easter rebellion, and those words could not be more appropriate as a description of Scottish politics in the wake of yesterday’s Brexit vote. The Yeats poem captured a decisive moment that altered everything in its wake; for Scotland that moment was the 2014 independence referendum.

    • Blimey, it is Brexit!

      A striking victory for what I dubbed ‘Maggyism’ has taken place. It seeks the “liberation” of Europe from a ‘super-state’, not isolation. It might even succeed, this being a time of surprise, as the EU is struggling with a dysfunctional currency and has other electorates already enflamed by its rigid policies and lack of democracy. In England for sure, under the banner of Maggyism’s alluring yet chilling command to ‘take back control’, a new form of populist Toryism will be tested. The challenge for the left across England will go deep and it will have to discard its attachment to the ruins of Labourism if it is to recover.

    • Oil prices plunge 5 percent as Britain votes to leave EU

      Oil prices settled 5 percent lower on Friday after Britain’s vote to leave the European Union spurred massive risk aversion and a rally in safe havens like the U.S. dollar that threatened to cut short a three-month-long recovery in global oil markets.

      Financial markets have been worried for months about what a British exit from the European Union, dubbed widely as ‘Brexit,’ would mean for Europe’s future, but were clearly not fully factoring in the risk of a ‘leave’ vote.

    • Five legal points about the Leave victory
    • Reality Check: ‘Do I need a new passport?’ and other Brexit questions

      A Reality Check reader gets in touch to ask about what happens to his Italian wife. “My wife has lived and worked in the UK for 15 years having come over from Sardinia, Italy. We got married in March of this year.”

      It seems unlikely that your wife will be forced to return to Italy – nobody has suggested there will be deportations of people already living and working in the UK.

      If there were to be problems, she may be eligible to apply for British citizenship as she is married to a British citizen and has been in the country for more than three years.

    • DisUnited Kingdom

      This is a man-made disaster. The EU is a mess but it is fixable. Breaking up the UK will be a bigger mess and it isn’t fixable.

    • Brexit won the vote, but for now we remain in the EU

      The most significant announcement David Cameron made this morning was not that he plans to resign in October. It was that he will not be triggering article 50 of the Lisbon treaty in the meantime. When to “start the formal and legal process of leaving the EU” would be a matter for the new prime minister, he said.

    • Petition for London independence signed by thousands after Brexit vote

      A petition calling for Sadiq Khan to declare London an independent state after the UK voted to quit the EU has been signed by thousands of people.

      The petition’s organiser James O’Malley, said the capital was “a world city” which should “remain at the heart of Europe”.

      Nearly 60% of people in the capital backed the Remain campaign, in stark contrast to most of the country.

    • Post-Brexit – The What Now?

      Out of 46,500,001 electorate 17,410,742 voted to leave, which is a mere 37.4% or just over a third.

    • To mitigate poverty, Y Combinator set to launch minimum income plan

      Earlier this month, Y Combinator, the famed Silicon Valley incubator dropped a bombshell: it had selected this city to be the home of its new “Basic Income” pilot project, to start later this year.

      The idea is pretty simple. Give some people a small amount of money per month, no strings attached, for a year, and see what happens. With any luck, people will use it to lift themselves out of poverty.

      In this case, as Matt Krisiloff of Y Combinator Research (YCR) told Ars, that means spending about $1.5 million over the course of a year to study the distribution of “$1,500 or $2,000″ per month to “30 to 50″ people. There will also be a similar-sized control group that gets nothing. The project is set to start before the end of 2016.

    • America’s national priorities: Police thuggery, broken schools, and the ‘wages of whiteness’

      A budget is a statement of priorities and values. In a political community, a budget also prioritizes the interests of some individuals and groups over those of others.

      For example, the city of Chicago has spent more than $ 500 million since 2014 in literal blood money for the victims of police brutality. Collectively, the 10 largest American cities have paid out hundreds of millions of dollars to settle police misconduct cases during the same time period.

      These sums of money are the macro-level reflections of individual tragedies and needless deaths that include names such as Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, Laquan McDonald, and Rekia Boyd.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Republican delegate sues to avoid voting for Donald Trump at convention

      One of Virginia’s delegates to the Republican National Convention has filed a federal lawsuit in an effort to avoid voting for presumptive nominee Donald Trump at the party convention next month.

      The delegate, Carroll Correll Jr of Winchester, Virginia, argued in the suit that being forced to vote against his conscience was a violation of his constitutional rights.

    • Osborne Told LBC Last Week He Had No Plan For Brexit

      The Chancellor told LBC earlier this week that he has no plan for the UK economy should the nation vote to leave the European Union.

      He said: “Britain does not have a plan for Brexit. It’s not for me to come up with [Leave's] plan.

      “It wouldn’t just be when we left in two years time that the economic hit would come,” said Osborne. “It would start to come this coming Friday.

      “That’s when the uncertainty would start.”

      Iain says that means he shouldn’t stay in his job.

      Speaking on Britain Decides, LBC’s results show, Iain said: “As far as I’m concerned – and I like the man and have a lot of respect for him – but his credibility has to be shot after this.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • New Service Sends Summaries of Your Social Media to Landlords, Employers to ‘Assess’ You

      Here’s a shout out to all of you who said “If I’ve got nothing to hide I’ve got nothing to fear” after the Snowden revelations. And this little gem deals only with publicly available information about you. Imagine what it’s like when it gets into the good stuff you think is private.

      An Orwellian startup called Tenant Assured will to take a deep dive into your social media, including chats, check-ins, how many times you’ve posted words like pregnant, wasted, busted, no money, broke, moving back in with the parents, weed, or loan, and deliver to potential landlords and employers a “personality score.”

    • Judge Says FBI Can Hack Computers Without A Warrant Because Computer Users Get Hacked All The Time

      The FBI’s use of a Network Investigative Technique (NIT) to obtain info from the computers of visitors to a seized child porn site has run into all sorts of problems. The biggest problem in most of the cases is that the use of a single warrant issued in Virginia to perform searches of computers all over the nation violated the jurisdictional limits set down by Rule 41(b). Not coincidentally, the FBI is hoping the changes to Rule 41 the DOJ submitted last year will be codified by the end of 2016, in large part because it removes the stipulation that limits searches to the area overseen by the magistrate judge signing the warrant.

      For defendant Edward Matish, the limits of Rule 41 don’t apply. He resides in the jurisdiction where the warrant was signed. He had challenged the veracity of the data obtained by the NIT, pushing the theory that the FBI’s unexamined NIT was insecure (data obtained from targets was sent back to the FBI in unencrypted form) and info could have been altered in transit.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • OECD Ministerial On Internet Wraps Up: Openness A Concern

      The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) should not wait 8 or 10 years before its next Internet Ministerial, said OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria at the closing session in Cancun Mexico yesterday. Gurria called for a faster pace for government and regulators to adapt to the digital markets. Better data on the data economy will help, as reflected in the new Cancun Declaration.

    • Tell Europe’s regulators: Net neutrality isn’t just for the US and India!

      Net neutrality exists when Internet service providers (ISPs) must allow equal access to everything on the Web, rather than favoring some sites over others. It’s a bedrock condition for Internet freedom, but ISPs generally oppose it because it prevents them from charging companies extra for privileged access to the network — making a video from one Web site load faster than video on other sites, for example.

  • DRM

    • Oculus reverses course, dumps its VR headset-checking DRM

      The Oculus team has reversed course on one of its most unpopular decisions since launching the Rift VR headset in April: headset-specific DRM. After weeks of playing cat-and-mouse to block the “Revive” workaround that translated the VR calls of Oculus games to work smoothly and seamlessly inside of the rival HTC Vive, Oculus quietly updated its hardware-specific runtime on Friday and removed all traces of that controversial DRM.

    • Oculus Reverses DRM Course After Public Backlash

      Weeks back, Karl Bode wrote about the curious position Oculus Rift had taken in updating its software to include system-checking DRM. VR headset technology and game development, experiencing the first serious attempt at maturity in years, needs an open ecosystem in which to develop. What this DRM essentially did was remove the ability for games designed to run on the Rift from running on any other VR headset, with a specific targeting of community-built workarounds like Revive, which allowed HTC Vive owners to get Rift games running on that headset. Oculus, it should be noted, didn’t announce the DRM aspect of the update; it just spit out the update and the public suddenly learned that programs like Revive no longer worked.

      The backlash, to put it mildly, was swift and severe. Oculus having been acquired by Facebook likely didn’t help what were already negative perceptions, supercharging the outcry with allegations of the kind of protectionism and the lack of care for the public that Facebook has enjoyed for roughly ever. Still, many saw the whole thing as peons screaming at a feudal lord: Oculus would simply ignore the whole thing. Just weeks ago, in fact, Oculus was working journalists at E3 in defense of the DRM.

    • Sony agrees to pay millions for removing Linux support from the PlayStation 3
    • Sony settles with PS3 owners over Linux lawsuit

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Sequencing the future of IP in genomics [Ed: Bristows cannot see the issue with patents on genomics yet?]

      Genomic technology has rapidly created a multi-billion dollar growth industry. With life sciences companies scrambling in US and European courts for a share of the lucrative market, in-house IP counsel should start preparing for the next wave of IP litigation, explain Dominic Adair and Annsley Merelle Ward

    • Key amendments to Russian patent legislation

      Federal Law No 35-FZ of March 12 2014 introduced several substantial amendments into Part IV of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation which regulates intellectual property. Some of the amendments came into force on October 1 2014, and others did so on January 1 2015. We provide a review of the key amendments that involve patents.

    • Trademarks

      • Dweezil Zappa Renames His Tour Again: Dweezil Zappa Plays Whatever The F@%k He Wants; The Cease & Desist Tour

        Oh boy. A few weeks back, we wrote about the absolutely ridiculous story in which the four children of Frank Zappa appear to be fighting over the Zappa name. The story is somewhat complex and involved and is actually somewhat more nuanced than the unfortunately-all-too-typical “heirs of famous artist fight over splitting up the proceeds of that artist’s legacy.” In that original article, we noted that the dispute seemed to focus on two specific claims: first that the Zappa Family Trust (run by Ahmet and Diva, but to which all four children are beneficiaries) had a trademark on the tour name “Zappa Plays Zappa,” under which Dweezil Zappa had toured for years. After some fairly public back and forth online, it became clear that there was an underlying dispute that had simmered for years here: Frank’s wife Gail, who had controlled the ZFT, had trademarked Zappa Plays Zappa and charged Dweezil to use it, but had (according to Dweezil) then reneged on an agreement to share the proceeds from
        merchandise sales. Ahmet insisted that he’d allow Dweezil to continue to use the name for just $1, but it didn’t seem that there was any interest in clearing up the older dispute about merch sales, or to allow Dweezil to get some of the proceeds from ongoing merch sales.

      • Is it safe to bring abandoned brands back to life?

        What trade mark issues arise with the resurrection of zombie brands? Carrie Bradley and Tony Dylan-Hyde examine the position in Europe and the United States

      • Super Slimey: Comodo Tries To Trademark ‘Let’s Encrypt’ [Updated]

        Almost two years ago, we excitedly wrote about the announcement behind Let’s Encrypt, a free certificate authority that was focused on dramatically lowering the hurdles towards protecting much more of the internet with HTTPS encrypted connections. It took a while to launch, but it finally did and people have been gobbling up those certificates at a rapid rate and getting more and more of the web encrypted. This is a good thing.

        [...]

        Update: And… of course, after this goes public, Comodo suddenly backs down. Of course that doesn’t explain why it refused to do so when asked months ago.

    • Copyrights

      • A Bug in Chrome Makes It Easy to Pirate Movies

        For years Hollywood has waged a war on piracy, using digital rights management technologies to fight bootleggers who illegally copy movies and distribute them. For just as long, hackers have found ways to bypass these protections. Now two security researchers have found a new way, using a vulnerability in the system Google uses to stream media through its Chrome browser. They say people could exploit the flaw to save illegal copies of movies they stream on Chrome using sites like Netflix or Amazon Prime.

      • As CBS/Paramount Continue Lawsuit Over Fan Film, It Releases Ridiculous & Impossible ‘Fan Film Guidelines’

        We’ve been covering the still going lawsuit by CBS and Paramount against Axanar Productions for making a crowdfunded fan film that they claim is infringing because it’s looking pretty good. Things got a little weird last month when the producer of the latest Star Trek film, JJ Abrams, and its director, Justin Lin, basically leaked a bit of news saying that after they had gone to Paramount, the studio was going to end the lawsuit. At the time, Paramount said that it was in “settlement discussions” and that it was “also working on a set of fan film guidelines.”

        We pointed out that we were concerned about what those guidelines might entail, and worried that they would undermine fair use. In the meantime, as settlement talks continued, the case moved forward. I’m still a little surprised that the two sides didn’t ask the court for more time to continue settlement talks, as that’s not that uncommon, and it’s something that a judge often is willing to grant if it looks like the two sides in a dispute can come to an agreement. But, without that, the case has continued to move forward with ongoing filings from each side.

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