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Vista 7 Unacceptable for Large Businesses and Windows XP Still Not Secure

2 hours 2 min ago

Sink or leak

Summary: Intel migrates only about 3% of its workforce to Vista 7; many of the rest use an operation system with a “built-in” vulnerability that compromises designs/trade secrets

TRUTH be told, neither Vista 7 nor Windows XP proved to be secure (references gathered at the bottom). Here is where Windows users are at, based on the latest news:

• Intel: Just 3,000 employees run Windows 7 (Intel’s problems with Vista 7 were covered here earlier this month)

Despite the firm’s rapid turnaround of PCs and its very public partnership with Microsoft, Bryant said that so far it had shifted just 3,000 of its 80,000 plus employees onto Windows 7.

• Windows XP’s built-in Wi-Fi Security Hole

I noticed that I kept seeing “Free Public Wifi” APs (access points) showing up. I assumed it was someone trolling for innocents wanting to be infected with malware. I was wrong. It’s actually a much more interesting Windows XP security flaw.

• Botnet takedowns ‘don’t hurt crooks enough’

The takedowns of the Mariposa and Waladec botnets last week were victories for the good guys, but security experts warn that although cybercrooks suffered a bloody nose they collectively retain the upper hand in their ongoing conflict with law enforcement and its security industry allies.

The author completes this article without mentioning Windows! Time for an awareness campaign? We’re working on it. ?

Related posts:

  1. Cybercrime Rises and Vista 7 is Already Open to Hijackers
  2. Vista 7: Broken Apart Before Arrival
  3. Department of Homeland Security ‘Poisoned’ by Microsoft; Vista 7 is Open to Hijackers Again
  4. Vista 7 Security “Cannot be Fixed. It’s a Design Problem.”
  5. Why Vista 7 Could be the Least Secure Operating System Ever
  6. Journalists Suggest Banning Windows, Maybe Suing Microsoft Over DDoS Attacks
  7. Vista 7 Vulnerable to Latest “Critical” Flaws
  8. Vista 7 Seemingly Affected by Several More “Critical” Flaws This Month
  9. Reason #1 to Avoid Vista 7: Insecurity
  10. Vista 7 Left Hijackable Again (Almost a Monthly Recurrence)
  11. Trend Micro: Vista 7 Less Secure Than Vista
  12. Vista 7 Less Secure Than Predecessors? Remote BSoD Now Possible!
Categories: News

Links 11/3/2010: Fedora 13 Frenzy, Free Software in City of Athens

Thu, 03/11/2010 - 21:16

Contents GNU/Linux
  • All Hail Our Benevolent Corporate Overlords

    After reading Electronics Manufacturers Use US Legal System to Thwart Hardware ‘Hacks’ I was all set to type a fiery response, but Linux Today readers beat me to it. In a nutshell, the tech industry is accelerating its attacks on our rights to do what we want with our own property.

    The article is full of revealing quotes from industry apologists, who all display an astonishing un-awareness of how asinine they sound. It was hard picking a winner, but I give the prize to Leander Kahney, author and editor, who says this is why Apple is so bent on micromanaging what its customers do with their own property:

    “Apple is selling directly to consumers, who aren’t the best guardians of their own self-interest. The open PC model works for knowledgeable users who know what they are doing and how to protect themselves, but not so for 15-year-old fashionistas and techno-phobic geriatrics,” Kahney said. “A measure of lockdown is exactly why Apple is successful – it hides complexity while ensuring a certain level of reliability and stability. The vast majority of Apple’s customers are utterly unconcerned – they could give two hoots that they can’t hack their devices.”

    Isn’t that special. The nice people at Apple are making sure that dumb kids and senile old people, and all the rest of us don’t hurt ourselves, because we’re too stupid to make our own decisions. Last time I was in Home Depot I saw high-powered welding machines, bandsaws, nailguns, great big heavy pieces of lumber, bottles of sulfuric acid and muriatic acid, pesticides, and many other scary dangerous products that anyone could buy.

  • Why You Don’t Need Anti-Virus Software For Linux

    You don’t need anti-virus for Linux. Others in here will do a better job at explaining why this is, but in short, the OS has a big advantage here due to it being open source. The operating system is a product of crowd-sourcing, much in the same way as Wikipedia has been since it first showed up several years ago. And much like the highly-moderated articles of Wikipedia that require membership and has an approval process for changes made to locked articles, so to is a strict moderation that goes on with the source code for Linux before it’s allowed to become part of the official distribution. Everybody is out to identify possible flaws or weaknesses or bugs in the source code and it’s much easier for any single person to make a contribution because the OS and much of the software that runs on it is open-source.

  • Texas Linux Fest announces 2010 program

    Texas Linux Fest has announced the initial list of speakers and presentations for its inaugural event. Keynote speakers include Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier and Randal L. Schwartz, with additional presentations by Linux, free software, and open source experts such as Jon “maddog” Hall, Amber Graner, Bradley Kuhn, and Max Spevack.

  • And thank you for the penguins

    Of the many thousands of things we have Linus Torvalds to thank for, one of them is the venerable penguin, symbol of all things Linux. But what if Linus had chosen to instead use the Gnu (I know, that one was already taken, but humor me here), or a beaver, or a bear, or maybe a demon like Freebsd uses? (already, it’s technical a “daemon”, but let’s ignore the technicalities for the sake of this argument.)

  • Desktop
    • Asus Eee Box EB202 with Linux selling for $190 at Newegg

      Asus has pretty much stopped offering its netbooks and nettops with Linux preloaded. Instead, most of the company’s products come with Windows XP or Windows 7. But retailer Newegg is selling a first generation Asus Eee Box EB2020 nettop with Red Flag Linux, a Chinese Linux distribution that’s designed to look an awful lot like Windows XP.

    • Dell launches Vostro 3000 series laptops for entrepreneurs

      All the devices feature HD wide LED anti-glare display and an option for Windows [...] Linux Ubuntu operating system.

    • System 76 Lemur Review

      In conclusion, I think the Lemur is a beautiful machine, and combined with what I consider a beautiful Operating System, particularly with the new fit and finish of Lucid. When running the Lemur it really feels like great design in hardware and software meeting well. I would happily recommend this machine to others.

  • Server
    • Selecting an Open Source Operating System

      Sample server FOSS operating systems include:

      * CentOS
      * FreeBSD
      * Red Hat

      Special Purpose Operating Systems

      There are a number of special purpose FOSS operating systems that offer bundles of pre-configured applications with graphical installer and management tools. Some of the most common special purpose operating systems are for file serving, firewalls, and rescue CDs. They’re usually based on an existing general purpose desktop or server operating system, but with the installation modified in such a way that a certain set of software is installed. Management in special purpose operating systems is usually very specific and tends to emphasize the system’s particular function. Many areas of management are not readily accessible through the default management interface. On the bright side, special purpose FOSS operating systems may provide a quick and easy way to fulfill a specific need – if you can find one that accomplishes what you require.

      Sample special purpose FOSS operating systems include:

      * Knoppix Rescue CD
      * FreeNas Free NAS file server
      * Smoothwall Firewall

    • Best Linux Distro for Web Server

      Best Linux Distro for Web Server: If you are planning to build a web hosting company or simply host your own website at home, then it is best to use Linux as your operating system. Linux servers have been known to be extremely reliable and rarely crashes so there’s less downtime. Linus Torvalds has once been quoted as saying “How do you power off this machine?” when upgrading the site “linux.cs.helsinki.fi”, and after using the machine for several months.

    • Unified network administration using eBox

      Linux is an excellent choice for a server operating system, no matter what the size of business. However, it is still not very easy to administrate. Recently many distributions have launched their own interface to configure these server components (like Apache and Samba), but really failed at delivering an easy-to-use interface to configure it. That alone turns off many SMB (small and medium business) folks. eBox is trying to fix this particular issue. eBox (or eBox Platform, to give it its full name) can play multiple roles. It can act as a network gateway, an infrastructure manager, a unified threat manager, an office server, a unified communication server or a combination of any of these. eBox is delivering these functions using already popular open source software with a solid administration interface.

    • IT World Canada Video Library:Linux is the cloud’s future: IBM Canada
    • SCALE 8x: Ten million and one penguins

      At SCALE 8x, Ronald Minnich gave a presentation about the difficulties in trying to run millions of Linux kernels for simulating botnets. The idea is to be able to run a botnet “at scale” to try to determine how it behaves. But, even with all of the compute power available to researchers at the US Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories—where Minnich works—there are still various stumbling blocks to be overcome.

    • Yellow Dog Enterprise Linux for GPU computing

      CUDA, an acronym for Compute Unified Device Architecture, is a parallel computing architecture developed by NVIDIA that uses GPUs to improve the performance of some types of applications. According to Fixstars, the Yellow Dog distribution, based on the free CentOS Red Hat clone, includes “multiple versions of CUDA and can easily switch between them via a setting in a configuration file or an environment variable”. Additionally, it features Fixstars’ own Eclipse-based graphical IDE for CUDA.

    • Yellow Dog Linux licks CUDA
  • Kernel Space
    • 4K-sector drives and Linux

      Almost exactly one year ago, LWN examined the problem of 4K-sector drives and the reasons for their existence. In short, going to 4KB physical sectors allows drive manufacturers to increase storage density, always welcome in that competitive market. Recently, there have been a number of reports that Linux is not ready to work with these drives; kernel developer Tejun Heo even posted an extensive, worth-reading summary stating that “4 KiB logical sector support is broken in both the kernel and partitioners.” As the subsequent discussion revealed, though, the truth of the matter is that we’re not quite that badly prepared.

    • HDD Makers Adopt Improved Storage Format, Windows XP Users Beware

      And that brings about a thorny and underpublicized problem. Windows Vista, Windows 7, along with OS X Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard and versions of the Linux kernel all support hard drives with a 4KB sectors. Windows XP does not.

    • Kernel Log: Linux 2.6.34 goes into testing

      Linus Torvalds has released the first RC of Linux 2.6.34 and completed the integration of the next version of the kernel’s most important changes. Improvements include graphics drivers for recent Radeon GPUs and for the graphics cores of some Intel processors that are only expected to be released early next year. Another new addition is the LogFS solid-state storage file system.

  • Applications
  • Desktop Environments
    • Window Maker Desktop: Lightweight Linux Minimalism

      Window Maker is a fast, lightweight window manager based as closely as possible on the look and feel of the NeXTStep interface. (You may be familiar with NeXTStep an ancestor of Mac OSX, although the look and feel has changed a fair bit between the two.)

    • On benchmarks

      So take this from somebody who has already done a lot of performance work: Benchmarks, on their own, mean almost nothing if you don’t understand them. Especially if they are seriously flawed (I mean, testing filesystem performance by doing CPU-intensive tasks? Hallo? Probably even FAT16 could provide the same results in those tests on an SSD.), but even if the results are useful numbers, it is still necessary to understand what the numbers actually say. I think I wouldn’t even have a big problem forging a “benchmark” where KDE would get better (and correct) numbers than LXDE by finding a scenario that’d be twisted enough.

    • GNOME Developer Kit Slimmed Down

      The GNOME Developer Kit is a Linux distro based on Foresight Linux. Its new release shows a somewhat reduced collection of software for GNOME developers.

      The size of the GNOME Developer Kit system image was reduced from 1.4 GBytes to under 700 MBytes. To this end, Firefox was replaced by Epiphany and multimedia codecs were excluded. The distro for developers and translators now fits on a single CD.

  • Distributions
    • Peering at Paldo 1.21

      One of the things I love about software, particularly open source software, is innovation can come from anywhere. Sometimes it appears out of large tech companies such as Red Hat, IBM or Sun and other times it can come from one person writing code on a second hand computer in their college dorm. Software is really the expression of ideas and concepts, which can come from anyone. So I really enjoy seeing small open source projects try new things. Some will succeed and be adopted and some will fade away, but the amazing thing is to see people put their idea out there and present it to the world. Which is why I was thrilled when a few people directed me to Paldo and suggested it was worth a look.

    • Mandriva displays its products at the 2010 Solutions Linux exhibition

      Paris, March 10th, 2010 – Mandriva, Europe’s leading Linux solutions publisher, will display its latest products at the 2010 Solutions Linux exhibition, from March 16 to 18 at the porte de Versailles Exhibition Centre – Hall 1 – Stand E 29.

    • Frugalware 1.2 Comes with KDE 4

      The Frugalware development team has announced the release of Frugalware 1.2, the 12th stable release of the Linux distribution. Frugalware 1.2 comes with only a number of bug fixes from the second release candidate, but there are some pretty big changes from the previous stable release, Frugalware 1.1. The biggest update is the move to KDE 4 code based on the aging KDE 3.5 one, as the software pack was deemed mature enough to make it to the stable release. There are also plenty of package updates.

    • PCLinuxOS 2010 mini review

      If you are looking for a Linux distro specialized for the common everyday desktop computer then PCLOS is the number one choice. Like the much advertised MacOSX, PCLOS is ready to do every fun stuff, like watch online videos, download files using torrents, do some photo editing make DVD slideshows etc., right after install. PCLOS 2010 is the first release featuring KDE 4 as default desktop. Despite using KDE 4, the PCLOS architects have managed to maintain the original and unique style of this great distro. Though KDE4 series is radically different from KDE 3, an average Joe user who installs PCLOS 2010 wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. I think this would greatly help in KDE 4 adoption among more and more people. I am looking forward for the final release to install on my ASUS Nova lite mini desktop at home which is currently running PCLOS 2009.

    • PCLinuxOS 2010 Beta 1

      I have been looking at PCLinuxOS 2010 Beta 1 because I like the rolling release concept and PCLinuxOS does keep things rolling. I have the beta installed on a system with an NVidea GeForce 220 GT and an HP HDMI 25″ wide screen flat panel display, this combination is very problematic for most distribution but has no issues of any kind in the beta. Plymouth is installed by default, it does not currently work from the Live CD but works fine in the installed system. Plymouth will work on the Live CD for the final release and this was presented as a known issue. The Plymouth issue is minor and it gave me the opportunity to see that there were no errors at start up.

    • New Releases
    • Red Hat Family
      • Swedish Internet Leader to Standardize on Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization

        Red Hat, Inc. /quotes/comstock/13*!rht/quotes/nls/rht (RHT 30.36, +0.15, +0.50%) , the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Swedish Internet company Voddler has standardized its movie service on Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization. Voddler has also selected Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Network Satellite as the basis for its new infrastructure, providing the company with a centralized and scalable server platform.

      • Red Hat’s Next Move: Keep An Eye on Two Investments

        Red Hat already focuses on Linux, JBoss middleware and virtualization. But there are multiple signs the open source company will make a business intelligence move soon. And Red Hat’s move could involve either Jaspersoft or EnterpriseDB — or both. Here’s some analysis, some speculation and some potential implications for Red Hat’s channel partners.

      • Red Hat Inc. (RHT) EVP, CFO Charles E Jr Peters sells 51,600 Shares

        EVP, CFO of Red Hat Inc. (RHT) Charles E Jr Peters sells 51,600 shares of RHT on 03/09/2010 at an average price of $30.45 a share.

      • Fedora 13
        • First Fedora 13 Linux Alpha Shows Promise

          For Enterprise users, the new Dogtag Certificate System is something that could represent an innovative approach to handling security credentials. According to Fedora’s project description, Dogtag is an enterprise-class open source Certificate Authority (CA) supporting all aspects of certificate lifecycle management including key archival, OCSP and smartcard management.

          The other item I find interesting in the Fedora 13 release cycle is the new boot.fedoraproject.org. (BFO) effort. Think of it as pxeboot on steroids for network installs.

        • The Direction Of Intel Graphics With Fedora 13 Alpha

          Fedora 13 Alpha was released yesterday with a plethora of new features and updated packages for this Red Hat Linux distribution. Aside from the features like Btrfs system rollback support and PolicyKit One support for Qt/KDE applications to excite end-users, each Fedora release always pulls in the very latest Linux graphics code. Fedora was the first distribution shipping with the Nouveau driver, then its KMS driver, and now with Fedora 13 it’s the first OS deploying Nouveau’s Gallium3D driver (there’s benchmarks behind that link). Fedora 13 is also carrying the latest packages for the unreleased X Server 1.8, DisplayPort monitor support for more graphics cards, the latest ATI driver code from the xf86-video-ati DDX to the in-development DRM, and then there is the very latest Intel work too. To get an idea for the direction that the Intel 3D support is heading in this release, we have carried out a few quick OpenGL benchmarks.

        • Some cool features in Fedora 13, Goddard

          System Rollback feature with Btrfs

          Btrfs lets you take light weight snapshots of the filesystem which can be mounted or booted into selectively. This means, before doing something crazy with your system, you can easily take a snapshot of the partition and in case something bad happens, just boot into the older snapshot.

          In Fedora 13, codenamed Goddard, if you have selected one or more partitions as btrfs, then it will automatically create new snapshots with every yum operation. You will also be allowed to select which snapshot to boot into. This is indeed an amazing addition.

        • Fedora 13’s Artwork – Need Your Help for F13 Beta!

          So now that Fedora 13 Alpha is out…. have you given it a try? What do you think about the wallpaper? We want to hear your feedback, because there isn’t actually that much time to update the wallpaper for beta, I think a little over a week. We haven’t gotten much feedback about it yet, so we need to hear from you now!

    • Ubuntu
      • Ubuntu Road Test

        So long story short, halfway through the test, Linux excels in consistency and performance, not showing any signs of slowing down. OpenOffice, Firefox, Songbird… you name it, they all behave as usual, sometimes a bit quicker than I am used to!

      • Saving Money with Ubuntu

        Note to readers from the Ubuntu Planet – this is written for people whom don’t have a clue what Ubuntu is. Hence why I describe it.

        With the global economy in a depression, most people cannot currently afford to buy a new computer. But, you don’t have to.

        [...]

        Ubuntu takes a minimal amount of technological knowledge and time to install, and you will be up and running in a few minutes.

      • Why (I think) Ubuntu is Better Than Windows

        So those are 10 things I do with Ubuntu that I’d have a hard time doing on Windows. It’s arguable whether you’d need to be able to do some of this stuff, and that I accept.

        I realise that there are Windows-based tools that can replicate/emulate some of these tasks, or maybe Windows Vista or 7 can do some of the above tasks. I kinda stopped bothering with Windows after XP, so my knowledge may be lacking. Feel free to correct me in the comments, or suggest what you can’t live without.

      • 16 things that could be improved in Ubuntu 10.04

        In this post I’m going to list 16 things that I think could be improved in Lucid. I’m going to try my best to address the issues in detail and offer solutions. Of course, all of this is also a matter of opinion too. The object of this post is to make you think about ways we could improve each one. I’ll try to link to bugs where there are bugs, but a lot of these are quite new design decisions only present in 10.04 and hence don’t have bugs filed.

      • Lubuntu 10.04 Alpha 3 Screenshots
      • Ubuntu 10.04 To Hang Onto Old Intel Driver

        With Ubuntu 10.04 being a Long-Term Support (LTS) release, Canonical is just going to stick with Lucid Lynx being the last release where Intel user-space mode-setting is supported, albeit for most Intel users you will still be greeted by a KMS experience, just with an older driver and many back-ported patches. This decision was shared on the ubuntu-x mailing list.

      • Ubuntu 10.04 Gets New Logout Dialogues

        Did you ever get annoyed by the restart/logout/shutdown countdown timers that presented themselves in previous Ubuntu releases?

        [...]

        All three main ’session’ dialogues have been reworded thus allowing the user to make an informed choice as to whether the action selected it the one they want.

  • Devices/Embedded
    • Tilera wins VC from Broadcom, Quanta, NTT

      The chips support Linux at the 2.6.26 kernel level and an open source stack that includes Apache, PHP and MySQL, as well as the GNU GCC compilers and the C/C++ compilers that Tilera has licensed from Silicon Graphics. (This is what leads everyone to believe that the Tilera chips are variants of the MIPS architecture once controlled by SGI.)

    • LinuxCertified Announces its next Linux Device Driver Development Course

      LinuxCertified Inc, a leading provider of Linux training and services, today announced its next Linux Device Driver Development Course class to be held in South Bay, CA from March 15th – 17th, 2010.

    • Amazon Looks for Developers For Kindle Browser

      Applicants must have a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field, three or more years experience in Java, familiarity in Web standards, experience working with browser engines and experience working with embedded devices on Linux.

    • Linux-ready plug-in enables IPv6 traffic over IPv4 nets

      Access subsidiary IP Infusion announced a new Linux-ready “stateless tunneling” product that enables the coexistence of IPv4 and IPv6 networks. Based on the IETF’s “6rd” (IPv6 rapid deployment) specifications, ZebOS Rapid Deployment forwards IPv6 traffic though existing IPv4 networks, enabling carriers to more easily transition to IPv6, says IP Infusion.

    • Wind River (Intel)
      • Wind River Extends Reliable Carrier-Grade Linux to Growing Telecom Server Segment

        Wind River today announced it has integrated support for HP BladeSystem carrier-grade and enterprise server blades into its industry-leading Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) operating system, tools and build system. Wind River Linux is the first registered CGL 4.0 solution supported on HP ProLiant server blades for HP BladeSystem, allowing customers to standardize on one common carrier-grade operating system platform to build highly reliable network elements across different hardware platforms.

      • Wind River extends Carrier-Grade Linux to telecom server segment

        Wind River said that it has integrated support for HP BladeSystem carrier-grade and enterprise server blades into its Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) operating system, tools and build system.

    • Phones
      • Nokia
        • Hands on with Nokia’s N900: When is a phone not a phone?

          Nokia might dominate the global phone market but its clunky old S60 operating system just doesn’t cut it anymore, taking the shine off impressive new devices such as the N97 mini. Facing serious competition on all sides, the Finnish mobile behemoth has unveiled the N900 – its first Linux-powered smartphone running the Maemo 5 mobile operating system

        • VoX Communications Launches Its $69.95 Unlimited Voice and Data Plan on Nokia’s N900 Maemo Smart Phone

          Pervasip’s Chief Information Officer Mark Richards noted, “We are very excited to be a voice and data service provider for this mobile computer. The N900 uses the Linux derivative Maemo operating system, an open-source platform that enables the Maemo community to freely modify and continually develop software as part of the shared goal of bringing added value to Maemo. VoX is a Linux shop and we employ several Linux experts. We congratulate Nokia for developing such a sensational introductory Linux phone. In our opinion, there has never been a more responsive and intuitive device.”

        • My 2010 Nokia QWERTY smackdown.

          I put the N900 around the middle of the pack. Despite the keys being crammed up against each other they’ve a slight contour to them, so you’ll have little trouble finding the one you want. Pressing a key yields a satisfying click, but compared to my #2 keypad they’re maybe just a bit stiff.

        • Tinymail 1.0 Released

          At the core of the Nokia 900’s Modest email client is Tinymail, a library for developing mobile apps with email features. Three years in the making, Tinymail 1.0 has made it out the door. In addition to making it past the 1.0 barrier, this release brings a bunch of improvements and new features for the project.

      • Palm
        • Palm’s webOS PDK beta adds Pixi native development, PDK’d apps will hit the Catalog mid year

          On a more technical front, we’re told the PDK supports the Linux standard SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) to ease in porting and development (Unreal for Linux runs using SDL, for instance), and that developers could even build apps like an audio processor that rely on PDK components but don’t show up in the UI at all, or OpenGL-empowered things that aren’t necessarily games or in 3D. Also, existing developers have only been able to do “full screen” games that rely on PDK components alone, but the PDK beta lets you mix and match webOS UI with PDK elements. Currently there aren’t many PDK games that use the extra Palm hardware like the QWERTY keyboard and the gesture area, but we’re told that’s all exposed to the developer, along with any other element of webOS that Mojo SDK users have access to. One notable plugin hangup is the fact that Flash only works in the browser, and can’t be embedded into a regular webOS app, PDK or no — though we have to assume this is something that’s in the works.

        • Palm pops out plug-in dev kit

          Palm has released its Plug-in Development Kit, enabling native development for those who find AJAX just can’t cut it.

        • Palm Confirms Further PDK Details At GDC

          Currently available PDK developed games do not utilize additional Palm hardware elements such as the QWERTY keyboard and the gesture area, but they are available to developers to integrate along with any other element of webOS that the Mojo SDK supports.

      • Android
        • Android NDK comes out

          SMARTPHONE OS DEVELOPER Google has released its third version of the Android Native Development Kit (NDK).

        • Android native code kit apes iPhone game 3D

          Google has opened the door to iPhone-like 3D games on certain Android handsets, offering support for the OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics standard with its latest Android Native Development Kit (NDK).

    • Sub-notebooks
      • Device Wars, Pt. 3: Netbooks, Tablets Fight For Space

        The second smartbook to be announced was the HP AirLife, which weighs in at 2.2 pounds and is based on the Linux operating system. The first generation of this product is planned for Europe only, but it should make its way into the United States at some point.

        Like the netbooks for solid-state memory, smartbooks are more dependent on a broadband connection and cloud-based applications and data services. The present generation of smartbooks does not appear to be corporate-ready, but this too will change with time.

        When To Choose A Netbook
        Since both the solid-state memory netbooks and solid-state memory smartbooks are mostly Linux-based systems, at least initially, they cannot be easily blended into a corporate environment based on the Microsoft OS and applications.

      • Bigger is not always better, especially when running a notebook

        So, no surprises, but for a product that I might be able to use on my Netbook, not very likely. The problem is a lack of modularity and this is missing from many products today. As people start spreading out over the computer power spectrum, it would be nice to have a small VS core to which could be added libraries and functionality that could conceivable run on a Netbook.

        Linux is an example of this approach, a main core that is controlled by a small groups and a plethora of bits and pieces that can be added on as desired. Since the core is small, it can run anywhere. With products like our example VS, you will need a fairly powerful minimum spec to run it properly and this is typically about double what MS puts done as their minimum requirements especially in the memory areas.

      • ARM sees over 50 new iPad-like devices out this year

        The launch of Apple’s iPad will pave the way for a slew of rival products this year, an ARM executive said Wednesday, predicting over 50 tablet PC devices will be launched globally.

      • ARM: Over 50 tablets will launch in 2010

        If predictions from Roy Chen, processor-maker ARM’s worldwide mobile computing ODM manager, come true then we’re going to see a whole lot of tablet computers in 2010. The exec said that he reckons there’ll be more than 50 launched globally this year.

    • Tablets
      • Android – the winning formula for tablets and netbooks?

        What might the iPad have been? Apple announced it as a Magical and Revolutionary Device, defining “an entirely new category”. But it actually only addresses a small part of the yawning gap between mobile handsets and notebook computers, where there’s still a lot of defining to be done. There’s space there for dramatically different reimaginations of the iPhone, for counter-attacks from handset companies, and for diverse devices based on Google’s Android.

      • $200 Freescale Tablet Runs Android, Chromium OS or Linux

        Remember the Freescale Smart Tablet from CES earlier this year? Well its returned with a range of compatible operating systems which now includes Android, Chromium OS or Linux.

      • Prototype $200 Tablet Runs Android, Chromium OS, Linux

        It can’t touch the form factor of the iPad or some other tablet devices, but a $200 device that runs the open source Linux, Android or Chrome operating systems might just find a place in the already-crowded tablet world.

Free Software/Open Source
  • SpringSource adds springiness to Tomcat server

    Open-source Java framework specialist SpringSource has unveiled a new incarnation of its Apache Tomcat-based tc Server, offering application developers and operators additional tools for building, deploying, and monitoring their software on the lightweight runtime platform.

  • The 10 Most Downloaded Open Source Apps Of All Time!

    So, I used metrics gathered from SourceForge.net to compile this list. I think the results show some interesting things about computer users the world over. Here they are along with the total number of downloads for each one. NOTE: this list does not include open source projects outside of SourceForge. Enjoy.

    1. eMule – 520,970,337 downloads: The most popular open source download of all time is a peer-to-peer file sharing client. What does this tell you?

  • Canonical speaks to the ‘commercial’ debate

    Other accusations in the same vein come from more mature people. But the line of thought is still the same: free is good, commercial is bad. Such individuals are clearly unaware of the fact that free software, as defined by the Free Software Foundation, can be sold for monetary gain.

    But then this is the Linux community. One has to be ready for poorly educated, illogical assertions aplenty. The problem is that such uneducated, shrill voices are often taken as the majority – in the same way that a mob follows the voice of him/her who shouts loudest – and does a lot of damage to a company which is trying to provide things free and also keep the red ink out of its books.

  • Google and open source want to make us OCD on energy

    The low-hanging fruit in the renewable energy business still lies with efficiency. Cutting your energy use without crimping your lifestyle gives you a faster payback than turning into Ed Begley Jr.

    It’s still good to be a little Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) on energy use, even if your politics are to the right of Rush Limbaugh, because there’s money in saving, money you can spend on cigars or vacations. Or food.

  • IMDbPY projects IMDb.com data onto your screen

    If you want to develop an application that incorporates information about movies, do we have a tool for you. IMDbPY is a Python package that can retrieve and manage the huge amount of data available from IMDb.com, the Internet Movie Database. IMDb data is free for personal and non-commercial use; IMDbPY is free software. The tool is widely used by video collection managers, multimedia players, and media centers, says its creator, Italian developer Davide Alberani.

  • 5 Open Source Resources For Boosting Your Productivity

    No matter how smart a worker you are, there are plenty of open source tools that can make you more productive. They range from hugely useful Firefox extensions such as iMacros (which lets you record repetitive, multi-step tasks and then execute them with one click) to collaboration applications for efficient co-working. Here, you’ll find five of our best posts and collections on productivity enhancement tools. Everything found here is free.

  • Evan Prodromou Speaks on the Future of StatusNet

    There’s no moss growing on StatusNet these days. The company has been busy announcing cloud service plans, an enterprise network service, and the 0.9 release of the open source StatusNet microblogging platform.

    To get a sense where all this is going, I took the chance to ask a few questions of StatusNet’s CEO, Evan Prodromou. He gives the scoop on the new stuff coming to StatusNet and provides a few thoughtful answers on where he thinks social media is heading.

  • Happenings: FOSS at CeBIT 2010

    The H attended this year’s CeBIT trade show on the world’s largest fairground in Hannover, Germany and had the chance to meet up with a wide variety of people from the open source community, including free and open source software (FOSS) developers, project members and commercial open source companies.

  • Mozilla
    • Mozilla Jetpack flies out of laboratory into loving arms of Firefox

      Mozilla has promoted its web extensions prototype package – Jetpack – by pushing it upstairs and readying it for production with its Firefox browser.

    • Updating the Mozilla Public License

      Twelve years ago I spent the month of March frantically drafting version 1.0 of the Mozilla Public License. That was a public process, a part of the launch of the Mozilla project. Approximately a year later we created the 1.1 version.

    • Mozilla refreshes its open-source backbone

      Ten years on, Mozilla has concluded that its open-source underpinnings are due for a refresh.

      The Firefox browser and Thunderbird email software are governed by the Mozilla Public License, which determines what rights and restrictions apply to programmers who want to use the software in their own projects, extend it in various ways, or just peek at the programming instructions that underlie the software.

  • Databases
    • A Bright Future for Drizzle

      It seems like there’s been little but bad news and resignations coming from Oracle since it finally managed to close the deal on Sun. Finally, there’s good news in that Drizzle seems to have a bright future ahead. It just isn’t with Oracle.

  • CMS
    • City of Athens using Drupal

      Athens is a large city (3.5 million residents and 6 million tourists each year), with a large tourism base due in part to its role in the 2004 Olympic Games. To support the city’s needs, the site includes a large calendar of city events, a comprehensive map-based index of city services and interactive tools that allow citizens to access city resources. The site builds on Drupal’s multilingual capabilities to provide information in both Greek and English.

    • Towards a Beautiful WordPress Future: Automattic Hires Theme Wizard Ian Stewart

      Stewart is known for his ThemeShaper blog and Thematic WordPress theme framework. The WordPress community has produced thousands of free (and paid) themes, but most are intended to be deployed as-is on other blogs. The Thematic theme is a framework that’s designed to be customized and extended, and supported a number of child themes based on the main Thematic framework.

  • Business
    • Three Areas of Open Source Economics

      These days, I get involved in a lot of discussions about open source economics. Usually, they lead to an invitation to present our research and clarify “how open source works” to the audience. I’ve found it helpful to distinguish these three rather different areas of open source economics: (1) direct profits, (2) public welfare, (3) labor market.

    • The Open Source Renaissance

      Take, for example, U.S. patent and copyright protection laws and policies. They reinforce proprietary, “closed source” rights and policies. As a result of this system, many substantial U.S. companies have formed around breakthrough ideas, but incentives are in place for those companies to guard and protect their intellectual property, even if others outside the company could extend or advance it more rapidly.

  • BSD
    • OpenSSH 5.4 released

      OpenSSH 5.4 has just been released. It will be available from the mirrors listed at http://www.openssh.com/ shortly.

      OpenSSH is a 100% complete SSH protocol version 1.3, 1.5 and 2.0 implementation and includes sftp client and server support.

  • Licensing
    • Liferay Adopting the LGPL License

      I would like to announce that starting with version 6, Liferay Portal will be made available under the Lesser GNU Public License (LGPL) v2.1.

Leftovers
  • Cryptome: PayPal a ‘liar, cheat and a thug’

    With reasoning worthy of a Kafka plot, PayPal told Cryptome it couldn’t provide a reason for shutting down the account. “In accordance with our Privacy Policy, we cannot share any specific information regarding this Account with you,” Young was told.

  • NewEgg Confirms Fake Core i7s, Apologizes

    Online retailer NewEgg said late Monday that it has confirmed that a shipment of Core i7s were indeed fake, and that it had broken off its supply relationship with IPEX, the supplier. NewEgg also apologized.

    The fake Core i7s surfaced this weekend, and Intel confirmed them on Monday morning. At the time, reports had indicated that the fake processors were in fact so-called “demo units”.

  • Government spends £11k on ID card ‘branding’

    The government still seems to be shying away from spending too much money advertising its ID card and National ID Register schemes.

    In a commons answer yesterday ID minister Meg Hillier said that the Identity and Passport Service had spent £1.3m so far buying “buying advertising space to communicate to the business community nationally and to consumers in Greater Manchester, north west England and London” about the ID card and National ID Register schemes.

  • ACTA
    • Parliament threatens court action on anti-piracy treaty

      The European Parliament defied the EU executive today (10 March), casting a vote against an agreement between the EU, the US and other major powers on combating online piracy and threatening to take legal action at the European Court of Justice.

      A strong majority of MEPs (663 against and 13 in favour) today voted against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), arguing that it flouts agreed EU laws on counterfeiting and piracy online.

    • Negotiations on ACTA agreement lack transparency

      Members of the European Parliament have raised concerns today with the European Commission on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a broad-scope agreement on counterfeiting goods, generic medicines and piracy over the internet, that raises questions of transparency and citizens’ rights since the negotiations are conducted in total secrecy. The ALDE group is asking for the Parliament to be provided with immediate and full information about the negotiations in accordance with Art. 218 TFEU before the next round of negotiations begin in New Zealand in April.

    • ACTA: EU Parliament demands transparency on Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

      With wide cross-party support, the European Parliament today adopted a resolution demanding transparency on the negotiations regarding the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a plurilateral and far-reaching deal (including internet issues) that is being negotiated by the Commission on behalf of the EU. The Commission is yet to provide negotiation documents to the European Parliament, a violation of the Lisbon Treaty. (1)

    • Epic win for transparency on ACTA

      The European Parliament today voted on a resolution that demands transparency in the ACTA negotiations, and that the Commission puts all papers on the table.

Categories: News

Microsoft and Toyota

Thu, 03/11/2010 - 09:07

Summary: Where Toyota’s problems intersect with Microsoft’s

FOR those who know nothing about the incident that affects Toyota, here is a new article of interest:

Toyoda said that when his company gets a complaint about a mechanical problem, engineers set to work trying to duplicate the problem in their labs to find out what went wrong.

Norton said: “Your answer — we’ll wait to see if this is duplicated — is very troublesome.” Norton asked Toyoda why his company waited until a problem recurred to try to diagnose it, which is exactly what he was not saying.

Members of Congress are generally lawyers and politicians, not engineers. But they are launching investigations and creating policies that have a direct impact on the designers and builders of incredibly complex vehicles — there are 20,000 parts in a modern car — so there are some basics they should understand. Chief among them: The only way to credibly figure out why something fails is to attempt to duplicate the failure under observable conditions. This is the engineering method.

Greenfield from ZDNet has published what he calls “Microsoft’s Toyota Letter” and a reader sent us some information about the Toyota fiasco.

Is Toyota’s software problem a Microsoft problem? I’m finding their fingerprints on a lot of this. A partner of theirs did a lot of software for them and Microsoft invaded the ITRON world of Japan in 2001 and 2003. Microsoft’s invasion of automotive control systems created similar problems for BMW in the late 90’s.

In 2001 Toyota used Keane to develop software for their cars.

They are a Microsoft Gold Partner.

Just look at their home page:
http://www.keane.com/

Ewwwww!

Am I on to something here? Was Toyota dumb enough to make Prius and other vehicles dependent on .NET and C#? I’d look into this some more, but it’s time for me to sleep. I’ll bet more digging will find a stinking Microsoft center to Toyota’s recent problems.

This forum discussion points to something called itron a sort of non free unix.

They link to the Free software-hostile Linux Insider:

Which has this gem. Microsoft sought to corrupt ITRON

In late September, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) surprised the industry by joining the T-Engine Forum. Microsoft intends to work with the Forum to establish specifications for an environment in which the T-Kernel and Windows CE can coexist on the T-Engine hardware reference platform.Microsoft will continue to develop its own OS, but the company hopes T-Engine developers will be attracted to Windows CE’s user interfaces. The company will demonstrate prototypes derived from the joint effort at December’s Tokyo TronShow. Microsoft’s decision to join the T-Engine Forum is not without irony. The company was the main beneficiary of U.S. government actions against the TRON project in 1989.

A Microsoft damaged ITRON malfunction would be about as damaging to Microsoft as a Windows malfunction because it shows that non free software from Microsoft does the same sorts of things regardless of OS. Junk is junk no matter what you run it on and GNU/Linux infused with Microsoft will be not do well.

Given these hints of Microsoft involvement in the cock up, it’s funny to see Microsoft pretending to come to the rescue.

Inside the car QNX from Lucent Actel provides wide area networking and other services

http://www.ngconnect.org/ecosystem/connected-car.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX

The vehicle uses Bluetooth to suck information from cell phones, so that the car’s built in phone is synced with the one in your pocket. This was the center of some Windows-centric security hype and it may have been a vector for Microsoft corruption but nothing seems to have come of that.

The car is also supposed to be able to talk to iPhone.

Well, iPhones are becoming widespread. And now that Apple’s market valuation soars, former Microsoft employee John Carroll blasts Apple in his ZDNet blog. He also smeared OLPC while hiding his Microsoft roots.

“Microsoft promises to be more like Apple,” says Fudzilla.

The New York Times, which is one of Apple’s favourite newspapers, has been seen giving Microsoft a bit of a hit with a rubber hose. Microsoft is quoted as saying that it has learnt a lot from the way Apple has gone into the mobile market and it will be learning from what it did.

So Microsoft admits copying Apple, just as Steve Jobs admits "stealing" from other companies. ?

Categories: News

Microsoft Tries to Destroy Online Competitors Rather Than Improve Its Own Products

Thu, 03/11/2010 - 08:58

Summary: A look at what Microsoft is doing to Google and what it has done to Yahoo!

IT IS no longer a secret that Microsoft is behind investigations of Google in Europe. Microsoft admits this after being pressured. There are still some articles about it [1, 2] and the ZDNet theatre discussed this last month before it was confirmed, at which point it was mentioned as well [1, 2]. Here are some articles that stood out:

John Dvorak wrote an article titled “Is Microsoft Behind Google’s Italy Woes?”

Microsoft is up to its old tricks again. Google is under all sorts of attacks right now—all somehow related to Microsoft. There are a slew of stories about how Microsoft managed to get Google into anti-trust trouble with the EU. This proxy fight may also have had something to do with the situation in Italy, in which Google executives were indicted for allowing some dopey video to be uploaded in that country.

There’s also:

• EU Regulators and the Microsoft Antitrust Issue

No sooner did Microsoft settle its antitrust woes with the European union, than it turned around and allegedly threw Google under the very same bus.

• Yahoo CEO Doesn’t Favor Google Antitrust Investigations

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has taken the high road as more and more antitrust regulators start to display an interest in Google’s practices. Rather than cheer on the investigations – or instigate new ones – Bartz has stayed mostly neutral on the matter, perhaps even supporting her biggest rival a little.

Yahoo’s position is interesting given what Microsoft did to it and news like this. Following some interview/s, there was the following additional coverage:

• Why We Have A Hard Time Thinking Of Yahoo As A News Company

• Yahoo Could Take Years to Recover, Says CEO Bartz

• Yahoo Is Marching Forward, We’ll Prove It: CEO Bartz

• How Yahoo has evolved over 15 years

• Yahoo Celebrates Its 15th Anniversary: Now, Is It Finally Time to Buy AOL as a Gift to Itself?

Microsoft Nick published an article that says: “If Bartz were Yahoo CEO then, would she have accepted Microsoft buyout? ‘Sure’”

Microsoft is still trying to defend its abuse of Yahoo!, pretending that it was a saviour rather than a bully. It is crucial to remember Bartz’s past ties with Microsoft and how she came to power (proxy battle).

BNET writes: “It’s Official: Yahoo Is Available for Purchase. But Who Wants It?”

Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz put in an appearance on CNBC yesterday during her company’s 15th anniversary. There was the bravado you could expect from any CEO of a publicly-traded company trying to convince listeners why the company is doing better than many may think. However, one interesting tidbit that came out was that any company could buy Yahoo for the “right price”. The question is, of the potential suitors, who would bother with an acquisition?

Microsoft is getting Yahoo! users (including Ubuntu users [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]), so it doesn’t need to buy Yahoo! anymore. Microsoft got what it wanted from Yahoo! very cheaply.

So anyway, Microsoft has not only abused Google but it was abusing Yahoo! too. Microsoft is trying to hurt its competition rather than improve its own product. Microsoft’s entire history is like that.

A world where Microsoft is relevant in search is a rather scary one because Microsoft — being the control freak that it is — changes the search results to suit its own agenda. Here is a new look at what Microsoft does in the Arab world: [via]

Sex, Social Mores, and Keyword Filtering: Microsoft Bing in the ‘Arabian Countries’

[...]

It is unclear, however, whether Bing’s keyword filtering in the Arab countries is an initiative from Microsoft, or whether any or all of the Arab states have asked Microsoft to comply with local censorship practices or laws.

[...]

Microsoft’s declared aim from this type of censorship is to filter out “results that might return adult content.” However, filtering at the keyword level results in overblocking, as banning the use of certain keywords to search for Web sites, not just images, prevents users from accessing—based on Microsoft’s definition of objectionable content—legitimate content such as sex education and encyclopedic information about homosexuality.

In our past writings about Bing we mentioned the calls for a Bing boycott in China (where Microsoft censors heavily). Homophobia at Microsoft is not news, either. But anyway, in China Microsoft still censors “sex”, according to this new article from Forbes:

Where Microsoft Censors Bing For ‘Sex’

[...]

Microsoft, unlike Google, never said that it wouldn’t be evil. So when it comes to censorship of its search engine Bing, it should come as no surprise that the company is much more willing than Google to block content rather than risk upsetting censorious governments around the world.

That doesn’t just apply to China, where Google says it plans to stop filtering search results.

Google is changing its position in China, with an announcement to come shortly (according to Google’s CEO). Microsoft Nick has meanwhile assured that it’s business as usual for Microsoft in China where it will maintain operations. Microsoft is generally close to the Chinese government, for diplomatic reasons that we covered here before.

Microsoft’s fear of Google does make sense. Google is no longer a search company (maybe the googol refers to money); it threatens Microsoft’s fattest cash cow and this new acquisition (announced here) is doing more to undo Microsoft lock-in in office suites:

Stepping up its fight against Microsoft Corp., Google Inc. acquired DocVerse, a technology startup that allows people to edit Microsoft Office files online.

This is also covered in:

• Google Buys DocVerse For Reported $25 Million

• Google Takes Another Shot at Microsoft Office

• Google DocVerse Buy Builds Bridge For Google Apps, Microsoft Office

• Google to plug self into Microsoft Office

• Google fends off Microsoft Office with DocVerse acquisition

• Google takes aim at Microsoft with acquisition

• Google To Steal Office Web Apps’ Thunder?

• Google to steal Office Web Apps’ thunder?

Google has stepped up its assault on Microsoft’s productivity software with the acquisition of a start-up company that allows Office users to edit and share their documents on the web.

People ought to avoid both Microsoft and Google when it comes to mail and office suites. both are proprietary.

Here is another proprietary software firm that’s after Microsoft’s customers.

NetSuite woos Microsoft resellers with commissions

NetSuite Inc (N.N), which makes Web-based business accounting programs, is offering software resellers commissions to promote its products over those of bigger rival Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O).

Microsoft is feeling the heat on the Web, where it is losing over $2 billion per year. ?

Categories: News

Patents Roundup: Microsoft, Apple, Nokia, Monsanto, Pfizer, and ACTA

Thu, 03/11/2010 - 07:52

Summary: This is a list of news items of interest to Free software supporters

• Ex-Sun Chief Dishes Dirt On Gates, Jobs (covered yesterday)

• Bill Gates and Steve Jobs wanted to sue Sun

• Ex-Sun boss punts Apple-Microsoft-world ‘tried to sue me’ missive

• Judge puts Apple-Nokia case on hold (this case was covered in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9])

A JUDGE has put the Apple and Nokia legal battle on hold.

The move is to give the feds a chance to investigate the matter, which involves patent infringement claims from both Nokia and Apple.

• US judge Puts Apple-Nokia Legal Battle on Hold

A US federal judge has put the Apple-Nokia legal battle on hold, until the feds get their chance to investigate into the whole matter that seems to have tangled itself to no end. The federal agency will scrutinize the details of the case, which involves patent infringement claims.

• Nokia files a mobile device power patent (hardware patent, but Nokia favours software patents too)

• Microsoft battles an alleged patent troll (more on VirnetX in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6])

SOFTWARE BULLY Microsoft threw its toys out of the pram in court yesterday at the beginning of the jury trial against Virnetx.

According to the Seatle PI, the Vole said that Virnetx only existed to sue it and would collapse if the court case failed.

In his opening statement, Virnetx attorney Douglas Cawley told the jury that the inventors of an automatic vitual private network (VPN) technology for the CIA, SAIC employees Edmund “Gif” Munger and Bob Short, obtained patents and shopped around, trying to get companies to purchase their technology.

• Blu-ray licensing cartel starts operation

AFTER HAVING LAUNCHED exclusively by a few companies, Blu-ray is about to be licensed to the world plus dog but don’t expect prices to drop.

[...]

Interested parties are also free to negotiate separate license agreements, rather than taking a single portfolio license, with each of the four companies, which have committed to provide such licenses for their respective essential patents under fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms and conditions., the outfit said.

• ‘Soy far, soy good’ for Argentine importers (Glyn Moody adds that “Monsanto [is] slapped down by EU on GM soya”; also see [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8])

It’s available in various official European Union languages, including Latvian, but not in English. Still, with the help of his friends, the IPKat has been able to piece together the deeper inner meaning of Advocate General Mengozzi’s Opinion in Case C-428/08 Monsanto Technology LLC v Cefetra BV and others, a reference to the Court of Justice of the European Union for a preliminary ruling from the Dutch Rechtbank ‘s?Gravenhage.

Right: Monsanto’s latest genetically modified bean?

From the talented Stephanie Bodoni (Bloomberg) the IPKat learns that the Advocate General is advising the Court of Justice to rule that Monsanto, the world’s biggest seed company, can’t rely on a European patent for its Roundup Ready soybeans as it seeks to block imports of soy meal from Argentina. This is because the European patent for the trait that makes soybeans resistant to some herbicides doesn’t extend to soy meal made from the patented seeds.

Argentina, the world’s third-biggest soybean exporter after Brazil and the US, is one of the few countries where Monsanto does not hold a patent on the herbicide-resistant seeds. However, a ruling that Monsanto’s European patent is enforceable would let it block those imports.

• The USPTO-Pfizer collaboration to change India’s laws on patents and test data (this is essentially murder with patents)

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has a joint program with Pfizer to fund and manage seminars in India on “misconceptions of evergreening” and “the importance of regulatory data protection and patent linkage.” KEI has submitted a FOIA request to USPTO on this topic, and received a small installment of documents on Friday. Attached to this blog are 4 pages of documents that we received from two meetings held in Mumbai, India on September 9, 2009. Ten journalists and 15 NGOs attended the meetings. The USPTO and Pfizer each paid $3,190 for the days events ($6,380 total).

• USTR pressures Taiwan on pricing and reimbursement of pharmaceuticals and medical devices

• US Government Working With Pharma Companies To Raise Drug Prices In Other Countries

Then, over in India, it appears that the USPTO is putting on co-branded events with Pfizer about drugs, health care and patents. Along with this, Love points to growing concerns from folks in India about a project between George Washington University and various pharmaceutical companies to “train” Indian politicians and judges on the importance of patents in pharma. Except, of course, that’s very much in dispute. Many studies have shown that patents on pharma do more harm than good — especially in countries with big healthcare issues.

• If You’re Going To Sue For Patent Infringement, It Helps To Say What Actually Infringes

Last year, we wrote about a guy, Greg Bender, who holds a patent (5,103,188) on a “buffered transconductance amplifier,” that he’s decided is infringed upon by pretty much any electronics device.

• Vaguely Identified Devices in Patent Complaint Fails Twombly

Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure requires that a complaint contain a “short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.” If a complaint fails to satisfy Rule 8, it “must be dismissed” under Rule 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007). To survive a motion to dismiss, the plaintiff must allege “enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.”

• KEI looks at USTR letter to Wyden, and conflicts between ACTA and patent reform (thus the great relevance of ACTA to Free software)

On January 6, 2010, Senator Ron Wyden sent a letter to the USTR asking a number of questions about the U.S. negotiating objectives in ACTA. On February 28, 2010, USTR responded. The USTR response focused mostly on the official U.S. “asks,” rather than the state of the negotiating text, which also reflects also the views of other parties. For this reason, the USTR letter to Wyden only tells part of the story about what ACTA may do.

On March 1, 2010, a European Union document leaked discloses several key sections of the ACTA text, including those relating to damages, injunctions, provisional measures and the Internet. This note highlights a few issues in the USTR letter to Wyden, in the context of what is known so far about the ACTA negotiating text.
Patents included in ACTA

USTR is now acknowledging, for the first time, that the U.S. has asked that patents be included in ACTA. In briefings in 2009, USTR said the US only wanted ACTA to cover trademarks and copyrights, and that it was the position of the European Union to include patents and other types of intellectual property. The leaked EU analysis reported the US had supported including “all intellectual property” in the civil enforcement sections of ACTA, and this is now finally acknowledged by USTR. It is unclear why the USTR had said the opposite in several briefings to Congress and the NGOs in 2009.

Categories: News

IRC: #boycottnovell @ FreeNode: March 10th, 2010

Thu, 03/11/2010 - 00:15

Read the log

Enter the IRC channel now

To use your own IRC client, join channel #boycottnovell in FreeNode.

Categories: News

Apple’s Legal Attack on GNU/Linux and Mistreatment of Developers Already Costing it Business

Wed, 03/10/2010 - 23:54


Original photo by Matthew Yohe, modified by Boycott Novell

Summary: Apple upsets some of the very same people who made the company what it is today, including some of the inspirers

Apple is likely to learn the hard way what Microsoft is still learning. Attacking developers is not a wise step to take. First of all, according to this bit of news from the EFF, “All Your Apps Belong to Apple” [if you develop for Apple platforms].

The entire family of devices built on the iPhone OS (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) have been designed to run only software that is approved by Apple—a major shift from the norms of the personal computer market. Software developers who want Apple’s approval must first agree to the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement.

So today we’re posting the “iPhone Developer Program License Agreement”—the contract that every developer who writes software for the iTunes App Store must “sign.” Though more than 100,000 app developers have clicked “I agree,” public copies of the agreement are scarce, perhaps thanks to the prohibition on making any “public statements regarding this Agreement, its terms and conditions, or the relationship of the parties without Apple’s express prior written approval.” But when we saw the NASA App for iPhone, we used the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to ask NASA for a copy, so that the general public could see what rules controlled the technology they could use with their phones. NASA responded with the Rev. 3-17-09 version of the agreement.

Here is another new post that’s titled “Why I don’t use Apple products”

1. Apple’s software is not open-source.

[...]

2. Apple is not open-anything.

[...]

3. They are even closed about other software you can install.

[...]

4. The final straw. Not only does Apple control exactly how you can use any Apple device, they now want to take away your choice to use any other device as well. This week they brought a lawsuit against HTC, the developer of the majority of Android phones, alleging 20 Apple patent violations. Many of these patents seem to be comprised of trivial ideas that should be non-patentable and/or ideas Apple itself stole from other companies. It is clear that Apple is scared of the consumer choice that competition brings and is scared of the innovation that is possible within the open Android framework. Patents were intended to promote independent innovation by protecting small inventors from being scooped by large established corporations. Apple is hijacking the patent system to protect the interests of their large corporation against any competition at all. This is an incredibly dangerous precedent to set that could stifle innovation for many years to come.

[...]

In the important realm of science, technology and ideas, I believe that the continual conversion of ideas and development effort into the private property of companies like Apple is a great threat to continued free innovation.

Apple is attacking Linux at this moment [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. It’s using software patents. Earlier today (or yesterday) it turned out that Apple was also bullying Sun (patent extortion) over innovative software that Sun was offering to GNU/Linux users, so this aggression is nothing new. Here is some more information about that:

Former Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz has a nice insider take on the latest patent craze including how he sent Apple’s Steve Jobs and Microsoft’s Bill Gates packing when they came looking for a fight.

[...]

In the case of Bill Gates, Schwartz said Gates tried to extract a licensing royalty for OpenOffice, a free productivity suite developed by Sun, because Gates said it copied Microsoft Office.

Schwartz responded by drawing comparisons between Microsoft’s .NET platform and Sun’s Java technology, which he believed was some of the inspiration for .NET. “We’ve looked at .NET, and you’re trampling all over a huge number of Java patents. So what will you pay us for every copy of Windows?” Schwartz asked. That brought the meeting to a hasty close, he said.

The president of the FFII also found the following news gem this morning:

Apple talks tough to handset makers

[...]

Citing “industry checks,” Reiner writes that:

“Starting in January, Apple launched a series of C-Level discussions with tier-1 handset makers to underscore its growing displeasure at seeing its iPhone-related IP [intellectual property] infringed. The lawsuit filed against HTC thus appears to be Apple’s way of putting a public, lawyered-up exclamation point on a series of blunt conversations that have been occurring behind closed doors.

“Our checks also suggest that these warning shots are meaningfully disrupting the development roadmaps for would-be iPhone killers. Rival software and hardware teams are going back to the drawing board to look for work-arounds. Lawyers are redoubling efforts to gauge potential defensive and offensive responses. And strategy teams are working to chart OS strategies that are better hedged.”

[...]

Why pick on HTC? Reiner speculates that as the earliest and most aggressive user of Android, HTC was the perfect proxy for Apple’s real target: Google (GOOG). It helped that Apple and HTC didn’t have any supplier relationships that could be disrupted by a protracted legal battle.

Apple continues to show that it’s not cool and gentle. Au contraire — Apple is becoming quite a bully, maybe because of arrogance. It is indicated above that Apple’s behaviour has begun turning developers and potential customers away. ?

“Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D.”

–Steve Jobs, Apple CEO

Categories: News

Ashley Highfield, Microsoft UK, Bill Gates, Murdoch, and the BBC

Wed, 03/10/2010 - 23:37

“We have 17.1 million users of bbc.co.uk in the UK and, as far as our server logs can make out, 5 per cent of those [use Macs] and around 400 to 600 are Linux users.”

–Ashley Highfield

Summary: The latest embarrassments from the BBC, including discrimination against users of GNU/Linux

James Randi correctly pointed out that “some things are easily accepted because they are repeated so often” (watch what he says towards the end). Our disappointment with the BBC is no news [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] and the BBC is no news, either. Many reasons were given here before.

A regular reader wrote to us about “Ashley Highfield, Microsoft, and the BBC,” explaining again this incestuous relationship that we covered here before, sometimes concentrating on Ashley Highfield in particular [1, 2, 3]. “So he’s been ‘working with’ Microsoft since 2006,” writes our reader, “spends ages slowing down the adoption of iPlayer and then goes full time at Microsoft. Meanwhile, some time back we have legal challenges to iPlayer from Murdoch, who also happens to be in talks with Microsoft. No doubt Microsoft promised him he would make lots of money if he became their attack dog against Google. What a long term devious strategy by his Billness.”

“Meanwhile, some time back we have legal challenges to iPlayer from Murdoch, who also happens to be in talks with Microsoft.”
      –AnonymousLast week we showed that after private debates between Murdoch and Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13], Murdoch said that he was "ready to sue" Google. This is now corroborated by CNET. But anyway, this post is mostly about Highfield.

To quote this week’s news from The Guardian, ‘”This is a big moment – we are taking out our slingshots and taking on Goliath,” said the managing director and vice-president of consumer and online at Microsoft UK, Ashley Highfield, adding that he believed Bing met a real desire from both consumers and advertisers”…’

Our reader adds this much older reference from the BBC, which says: “Ashley Highfield, director of the BBC’s new media division, shared a platform with Microsoft boss Bill Gates at a technology conference in Las Vegas.”

It also says: “Mr Highfield demonstrated how a system like iMP could work on a computer running Microsoft’s updated Windows Vista operating system as part of a potential home entertainment solution…”

Remember Vista?

Wonderful. Today we found out (via Popey) that the BBC does even more to ensure that iPlayer is blocking/neglecting Free software users.

The events of the past two weeks (here, here, here and here) have clarified the BBC’s stance on allowing interoperability with open-source iPlayer clients. I have therefore decided to withdraw get_iplayer with immediate effect.

Ian Hunter’s post (Managing Editor, BBC Online) provided very clear guidance on the way the BBC feels about open-source applications accessing iPlayer streams. I have no desire act against the BBC’s wishes in this respect.

Via ThistleWeb we found “More BBC / MS incest” (his words), which can be found right here in The Times:

The system was launched by Ashley Highfield, Microsoft’s UK consumer and online managing director, who had been one of the key figures behind the development of the BBC’s iPlayer.

The iPlayer has been remarkably successful in Britain, regularly dealing with more than 40 million programme requests a month.

However, Mr Highfield insisted that Microsoft’s product, which has been in testing for the past six months, is superior to the iPlayer. “Not all video players are equal,” he said. “Our average viewer watches for 25 minutes, significantly higher than other online services. It shows we’re doing more than slapping on any programme for people to watch.”

The technology company has secured deals with a number of television studios and broadcasters such as Endemol, the maker of Big Brother; RDF Media, which created Location, Location, Location; and BBC Worldwide.

Who is this guy kidding? Does the BBC not realise that hiring people like Highfield has become a total embarrassment that leads to resentment from the British public? There are quite a few other BBC executives who were hired from Microsoft UK, including Highfield's successor. It’s almost as though they discovered a new host that also enjoys the ability to deliver (or deny) content and misinformation. Such relationships between national media and corporations are always dangerous. ?

Categories: News

Microsoft Wants to be the Standard

Wed, 03/10/2010 - 23:08

“[W]e should take the lead in establishing a common approach to UI and to interoperability (of which OLE is only a part). Our efforts to date are focussed too much on our own apps, and only incidentally on the rest of the industry. We want to own these standards, so we should not participate in standards groups. Rather, we should call ‘to me’ to the industry and set a standard that works now and is for everyone’s benefit. We are large enough that this can work.”

–Microsoft

Summary: Microsoft plants another flag in W3C, MonoDevelop pushes .NET at Novell or elsewhere, and Vista 7 continues to repel businesses

OUR LATEST post about the W3C has made the front page of Slashdot and almost immediately we found the familiar trolls attacking the messenger (a subject that we wrote about before [1, 2, 3, 4]). Jeremy Allison actually defended us by saying: “Jeff [Jaffe] was *definitely* one of the architects Novell/Microsoft deal, and had been part of the leadership for at least a year when it was finalized. I know. I was there.”

“Jeff [Jaffe] was *definitely* one of the architects Novell/Microsoft deal…”
      –Jeremy AllisonAllison responded to the trolls and added: “don’t let facts get in the way of your post.” The funny thing is that some trolls are then attacking the messenger here too (the messenger who defends the messenger), which makes them — the trolls — hypocrites. The thread needs to be watched carefully in order for this claim to be understood. But anyway, based on this brand new page, Microsoft has already planted a flag in W3C and it rewrites history while it’s at it. Let’s not forget SVG, which Microsoft now pretends to have befriended [1, 2].

Over at Novell, it’s business as usual. Mono and Moonlight are key products and MonoDevelop is improved to encourage development with them. It’s all about empowering Microsoft Windows through its APIs.

It ought to be mentioned that Vista 7 continues to suffer difficulties because large businesses overwhelmingly reject it in RTM form, as expected all along [1, 2]. Pogson argues that “Things are not Rosy for “7?.”

They don’t want the public to hear any negatives about Vista-recycled. Now they have to worry that fewer will migrate from XP to “7? or that migrations will be delayed. Poor babies. The longer XP hangs around, the more will migrate to GNU/Linux because it is an actual improvement and it’s faster. The patch rate of that other OS is the only thing fast about that other OS. Having to install a lot of patches on top of a retail licensed OS is not what they want a lot of consumers seeing, but it is happening.

There are many important releases of GNU/Linux just around the corner. We have seen and documented signs that many homes and businesses continue to migrate, at least into a dual-boot mode. ?

Categories: News

Microsoft Still Spreads Lies About GNU/Linux, Faces Rational Opposition

Wed, 03/10/2010 - 22:27

“Ideally, use of the competing technology becomes associated with mental deficiency, as in, “he believes in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and OS/2.” Just keep rubbing it in, via the press, analysts, newsgroups, whatever. Make the complete failure of the competition’s technology part of the mythology of the computer industry.”

–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]

Summary: The same old myths that Microsoft spreads in the media contradict reality and fact; the GNU/Linux userbase resists hostile intervention

YESTERDAY we gave a new example of Microsoft TEs smearing GNU/Linux in the technology media. SJVN has politely responded to the same FUD without exposing the messenger, who is a former Microsoft employee whose job still appears to be boosting of Microsoft (we have gathered many examples to show this and got in touch with the actual person, who politely denied it).

Here are the rebuttals to particular technical points that were exaggerations, lies, and spin (for example, the typical suggestion that GNU/Linux needs to look and act like Windows in order to succeed).

I found it more than a little sad that someone in 2010 could still think that Linux is “still a non-starter on the desktop.” Please — wake up: We’re all Linux desktop users now.

No matter what you’re running on your desktop — Windows 7, Snow Leopard, XP, whatever — you use the Internet, right? And you use Google to search? You talk to your friends on Facebook, Twitter of some other social network, yes? Then congratulations — you’re a Linux user.

Thanks to the Web, desktop Linux is everywhere. The old desktop metaphor is dying. Every day that goes by the lines between what used to be a desktop, a server, and the network keep blurring. Don’t think so? Answer me this: How much work could you get done without access to the Internet?

It goes on and discusses more areas such as the desktop. On the desktop too there is this issue of bad reporting regarding market share and the following new rebuttal just posted by Jeff Hoogland:

For starters how do these places collect their statistics? What websites do they pull their data from? The content of a webpage very much determines the type of operating system that a person is likely to view it on. For instance these are the operating system statistics from the last month for my own (primarily Linux-focused) blog :

* Windows: 44.4%
* OSX: 8.03%
* Linux: 44.03%
* Other: 3.54%

[...]

Beyond just looking at the source of web statistics of operating systems, when it comes to the global market as a whole, you have to consider the countless systems that are offline or are rarely connected to the internet. Unlike OSX where you can count the systems by the amount of Apple hardware sold or Mircosoft’s Windows where they can count the number of activations, a single Linux ISO download can account for multiple (sometimes even hundreds) of offline (or online) installations.

Truth be told, will we ever truly know the precise market share of each operating system? No, we will not. From my four sources here (and others you can find around the internet) I’m inclined to believe that currently Windows floats somewhere around 88%, OSX around 8%, Linux somewhere close to 2%, and the rest can get lumped into that wonderful “other” category.

What do you think? Know of another credible source for market share statistics regarding operating systems that I didn’t mention? Let me know!

This is an issue that we explored several times before. Here at Boycott Novell we get similar percentages (similar to the above). In a way, Boycott Novell is a ‘vacuum’ of GNU/Linux traffic in the sense that it is one among many GNU/Linux sites that ‘deplete’ from the presence of GNU/Linux users in sites that give away their users’ privacy (for Microsoft- and Apple-sponsored firms like Net Applications).

Speaking of this Web site, there seems to be misunderstanding when it comes to the effect of Boycott Novell (especially when it comes to so-called divisiveness); The site actually addresses potential problems, it never strives to divide, but where a division does exist it’s often a case of people who cross over (for money) to a side that’s hostile towards GNU/Linux. Shane Shields has just explained why it’s OK if “the Linux community is fragmented” and here is part of his argument:

So while the Linux community may look fragmented to those outside looking in, in reality it has a stronger, larger bond than any proprietary company can ever hope to achieve. It is the individuality of it’s members which drive and motivate innovation as well as the shedding of unneeded cruft. What is good in Linux quickly propagates through the rest of the Linux community and what is not fades away.

This is, in my humble opinion, the reason why Linux is becoming so powerful and in a surprisingly short time has surpassed the capabilities of older, more established operating systems. This is why proprietary companies have made efforts to either embrace or destroy the Linux community. Those who have embraced Linux have not lost anything and those who tried to destroy it have, in some cases, lost everything.

Microsoft has tried to embrace Novell; to a great extent it succeeded, but Novell is rejected by many who are using GNU/Linux, so this ‘fragmentation’ can be seen as a defensive one, and thus not a detrimental one. ?

Categories: News

Microsoft-Sponsored GNU/Linux-Hostile Site, HowSoftwareIsBuilt.com, is Powered by GNU/Linux

Wed, 03/10/2010 - 21:36

Summary: HowSoftwareIsBuilt.com is paid by Microsoft, promotes Microsoft, but it runs on the very same platform Microsoft is ridiculing and extorting

Microsoft — or perhaps someone else whom Microsoft definitely pays — has created howsoftwareisbuilt.com, where Microsoft apparently tries to promote itself and ‘embrace’ the FOSS world (here is the latest interview). In the homepage, the site also links to the company’s anti-GNU/Linux pages (“compare” site). How demeaning. Notice the footer which clearly states: “How Software is Built is sponsored by Microsoft Corp.”

Now, look at a server query’s results:

OS Web Server Last changed Linux Apache/2.2.13 Unix mod_ssl/2.2.13 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 mod_bwlimited/1.4 28-Nov-2009

It does not look like an Akamai-type response and the Web site uses WordPress, which is extremely hard to run on non-UNIX-compliant platforms. We are not entirely sure who’s behind the site, as only a hosting company is listed:

Registrant Contact: midPhase Services, Inc. midPhase Services, Inc. () Fax: 223 W. Jackson Blvd #1014 Chicago, 60606 US Administrative Contact: midPhase Services, Inc. midPhase Services, Inc. (techsupport@midphase.com) +1.3123861630 Fax: 223 W. Jackson Blvd #1014 Chicago, 60606 US Technical Contact: midPhase Services, Inc. midPhase Services, Inc. (techsupport@midphase.com) +1.3123861630 Fax: 223 W. Jackson Blvd #1014 Chicago, 60606 US

It is worth adding that other such Microsoft Web sites run GNU/Linux simply because it’s better [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. As we have shown before, Microsoft wants to present F/OSS as just a “development method” (we showed this a lot around 2008), not a licensing/sharing paradigm/model, so the site’s name, howsoftwareisbuilt.com, is a good fit. ?

Categories: News

Links 10/3/2010: Fedora 13 Alpha, Freescale+Linux

Wed, 03/10/2010 - 18:21

Contents GNU/Linux
  • LB – Episode 51 – Eating the Tonido by Linux Basement
  • Desktop
    • Austin Texas – Linux Against Poverty 2010

      It’s spring time in Texas.

      The Bluebonnets are fixin’ to get ready to bloom, today’s temperature is going to be around 80 degrees Fahrenheit and a solid date for the second annual Linux Against Poverty is, with a fair amount of certainty… official.

    • Shutting Down That Other OS

      Clean machines that I installed in these three months are coming back to me. Even my own machine that I use to connect to a GNU/Linux terminal server slowed down. That was the last straw. I cannot afford the time to keep fixing XP. Last night I had an opportunity to shut down that other OS on another PC.

      A teacher who is doing a fine job managing some rowdy junior high school students has lately been working late on his PC. He told me recently that it had lost its connection to the Internet. I looked at it and indeed, it no longer knew about the Atheros chip. There was no sign of malware so I expect it was some automatic update clobbered the DLINK installation. There were .DLLs missing, too. I told him I would install GNU/Linux and it would hold its configuration. He said, “OK”. The guy is only recently a PC user so I doubt he understood the implications but his needs were simple. He said he had no files to back up.

    • Your way is the right way

      That’s this machine, of course, with a Grub-to-console boot time of 23 seconds (including the time it takes to snap the framebuffer into place), a full-workload memory footprint of less than 18Mb and taking up around 1Gb of hard drive space. Jump in any time.

    • Lenovo IdeaCentre Q110

      The Q110 is a marked improvement over the Q100 for movie playback and thin-client computing, especially in Ubuntu Remix for Netbooks.

  • Server
  • Kernel Space
    • Linux 2.6.34 development marches on

      Only 12 days after the release of Linux 2.6.33, the merge window for version 2.6.34 of Linux has now been closed and Linus Torvalds has announced the first preview release of the upcoming 2.6.34 Linux kernel.

    • 400,000+ lines added in Linux 2.6.34-rc1 kernel

      But wait it gets better, Torvalds noted that approximately 175,000 lines of code were deleted too. Over half of the changes were in drivers and approximately 850 developers contributed.

    • Store
      • Linux Store
      • Wear Your Linux Pride on Your Sleeve, Linux.com Launches New Store

        If you’ve been longing to wrap your baby, significant other, or even your coffee in Linux-y goodness, now you can — while supporting a valuable FOSS community resource at the same time. Linux.com launched a new store filled with all kinds of geeky t-shirts, baby onesies, mugs, and other fun paraphernalia.

      • Embrace Your Inner Geek At The New Linux Store

        The Linux Foundation, the non-profit that supports the growth of the Linux kernel, has launched a merchandise store where people can purchase a newly launched line of original T-shirts, hats, mugs and other items that reflect “geek culture.”

  • Applications
  • Desktop Environments
    • GNOME and KDE: Seven Attractions in Each

      Despite all the talk about the mythical Year of the Linux Desktop, somewhere in the last few years, free software passed a milestone without anyone noticing. At some point, after years of struggling to rival proprietary desktops, both GNOME and KDE have caught up in features and narrowed the gap in usability. We are now at a point where free software is often an innovator on the desktop.

    • Open-PC will use KDE

      The first Open-PC survey is now finished. Over 12,000 people participated in our survey with interesting results: 48% choose KDE as the Desktop. 42% choose GNOME and 9% choose Xfce. 52% chose Amarok as mediaplayer and 88% choose Firefox as default Browser.

    • KDE a resource hog?

      In all tests, KDE 4.4.1 had both the highest minimal memory usage and highest average system memory usage, while LXDE 0.5 had the lowest.

    • K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)
      • Five Improvements for KDE 4.5 (Part 1)

        4.) Easier Theme Installation
        Another issue I had with KDE (even with the KDE3.x series) is that themes are so easy to install in GNOME, but a pain in KDE. While installing new themes is still easiest to do in GNOME (download, drag, and drop) KDE SC 4.4 has made strides in this area, finally. It can only get better from here.

        [...]

        So, there you have it. Those are features/changes I wished for during previous KDE releases that have all materialized into reality. With such progress, it’s clear that KDE is moving at the speed of light, and I predict KDE SC 4.5 will be the height of the KDE4 series. What am I hoping for in that release? Stay tuned next week to find out, and be ready to share your ideas so we can help make KDE the best it can be.

  • Distributions
    • PCLinuxOS
      • PCLinuxOS 2010 Rocks Even in the Beta Stage

        The wait is over! Tex and the Rippers announced PCLinuxOS 2010 on 6th March, 2010. Final iso is very close.

        PCLinuxOS-2010.beta1 has gathered all the goodies: latest 2.6.32.8 kernel with BFS scheduler, full ext4 support, KDE 4.4.1 SC and the latest applications. Besides, users having more than 4Gig of RAM can pull in a PAE kernel from the repo.

      • PCLinuxOS 2010 Beta 1 released

        PCLinuxOS Logo The PCLinuxOS developers have announced the release of the first beta for the 2010 edition of their Linux distribution. The distribution’s goal is to be “radically simple” and easy to use. The latest development release includes a number of changes and updates.

      • PCLinuxOS 2010 beta review

        Once upon a time, PCLinuxOS was the biggest desktop distro. It came from nowhere straight to the top, beating Ubuntu and other big distros.

        But as fast as it rose to the top, even faster was its decline.

        The next release was no where near as popular as it’s predecessor. The distro seemed to have faded into the giant pool of small Linux distros.

        Is PCLOS once again a serious contender for the desktop with the 2010 release?

    • Fedora
    • Debian Family
      • Distros and End Of Life

        I like Jaunty. I might decide to stick with it. Given that the truth is that it’ll still be perfectly fine, with only security updates and anything 3rd party repositories provide, I don’t really see much wrong with it. But if I have to change it, there’s only a few options.
        I’ve gone off Debian and Ubuntu based systems. the DEB package format isn’t bad, but Debian and Ubuntu, along with most of their derivatives, seem to make things too easy.

      • Ubuntu
        • Project: Getting Ready For Ubuntu 10.04 – Part 1

          As you have probably heard, the next release of Ubuntu, 10.04 (“Lucid Lynx”) will occur during the final days of April 2010. My production systems (the ones on which I do my writing and photography) are running Ubuntu 8.04 and I have decided to upgrade them to the upcoming version. This is the first of five-part series that will document my transition to the new version.

          [...]

          In a past life, I ran the QA department of a software company and I often employ these skills to perform software testing on new Linux releases. This case will be no different. The first beta release of 10.04 is scheduled for March 18 so we will begin our work then. Testing is not just something I do for fun (it isn’t) but it’s important to look for problems that might interfere with the deployment. By checking for problems now, we have a better chance of getting them fixed before the final release.

        • Kubuntu vs Ubuntu or Ubuntu = Kubuntu?

          The official derivative of the Ubuntu is Kubuntu. Instead of GNOME, Kubuntu uses KDE graphical environment, and shares its underlying system along with Ubuntu; Kubuntu is a project of Ubuntu.

          [...]

          Customizations in Kubuntu

          Kubuntu can be totally customized according to the user’s requirement. Kubuntu’s intention is to make the transition easier for the users from different operating systems by giving the allowance to a desktop layout that is similar.

          Architectures like AMD64 and Intel x86 are presently supported by the Kubuntu’s desktop version. As Kubuntu is derived from Ubuntu, any kind of software that is applicable for Ubuntu is available also for Kubuntu!

        • Wyse Technology Prepares Ubuntu Linux Thin Clients

          Wyse Technology, the prominent thin client company, is preparing a “completely new product in the consumer and enterprise space” that leverages Ubuntu Linux, The VAR Guy has learned. Our resident blogger is nearly sworn to secrecy… Still, here are some preliminary details about the emerging Wyse-Ubuntu effort. Plus, the implications for Canonical (Ubuntu’s chief promoter) and channel partners that focus on thin clients.

        • Appearance
          • Ubuntu 10.04 Live CD Installer gets improved look

            The Ubuntu 10.04 Live CD has ditched the boring ‘black on white text’ menu approach and instead delivers up a GUI menu. Whilst we’re still 2 months away from the final installer design, here’s a quick peek at it as it currently exists: -

            So you’ve download and burnt your Ubuntu 10.04 Live CD, you pop it into your disc tray and whirr up.

          • New Ubuntu Design Created on Apple Mac

            Dave Walker, a Ubuntu community leader who was invited in Canonical’s offices in London to preview the style changes and give opinions on how the community will interpret the new branding, wrote about his ‘behind the scenes’ experience with the design team.

          • I’m a Mac, I’m an Ubuntu PC

            Now, almost two years later, Shuttleworth seems ready to put his money where his mouth is with the coming release of Lucid Lynx, the first Ubuntu to break out of its dark brown motif and orange “Human” theme since the distribution was introduced in 2004.

            In a blog entry this month, Jono Bacon, Ubuntu community manager at Canonical, offered the public a glimpse of the new look that the popular Linux distribution will sport when it is launched in April.

            “The new style of Ubuntu is driven by the theme ‘Light,’” Bacon writes. “We’ve developed a comprehensive set of visual guidelines and treatments that reflect that style, and are updating key assets like the logo accordingly. The new theme takes effect in 10.04 LTS and will define our look and feel for several years.”

          • Ubuntu’s new look

            Good interface design is crucial to making users comfortable with the tools in front of them. It makes it easy for them to find what they want and get the task at hand done. Whether they do this with a black background or a brown one or an orange one doesn’t really matter all that much.

            Having been a long-time user of Ubuntu Linux I can say with certainty that there are far more pressing issues when it comes to interface design than the choice of colours. The menu system, almost entirely based on Gnome, is still incredibly unfriendly to users. I know much has been done over the years to improve this but there is some way to go.

          • Ubuntu Rebranding
  • Devices/Embedded
    • Phones
      • Greed kills: Why smartphone lock-in will fail and open source win

        The competitive dynamic between Linux/Android and OS X can be understood in the same way. OS X is playing a control game and Android a ubiquity one. We can expect the outcome to be the same: when the bazaar meets the walled garden, the walls will eventually come down, crushing the life out of the garden.

        This is why Symbian is now open-source in spite of having no inheritance from Unix-land; its backers have figured out that a control strategy collects short-term gains over a ubiquity strategy but simply cannot compete in the longer term against open-source Android and open-source Maemo. Apple will learn this, to its cost, too. Because Steve Ballmer may be an evil maniac, but when he yelled “developers, developers, developers!”, he was right. In the war for market-share, allies are better for your long-term prospects than walls, and ubiquity will always eventually triumph over control.

      • The Linux Box in My Pocket

        My wife and I picked up new ‘phones’ last week. Penny wanted a phone with a slide out keyboard so she would be able to text more easily. I wanted a Droid.

        The Droid is a 4 inch machine running a slim Linux Kernel called Android. The whole thing is orchestrated by Google. The machine comes with 16 gigs of flash memory, a 5 megapixel camera, audio player that plays several different formats of music including MP3s, GPS, 3.7 inch touch screen, slide out keyboard, WiFi, wireless broadband, a very sophisticated (free) software installation framework, and, oh yeah, a phone.

      • Cell phones in the classroom

        Teachers from the pilot also tell me that their instruction has changed since they started using cell phones in class.

    • Android/Chrome OS
      • Why online resources are not free and ChromeOS will fail

        In the end I think that Android will crush Google’s other operating system, ChromeOS because for the foreseeable future most people will still want to be able to take their applications, data, entertainment and games offline, or at least on a limited connection. That is something that Android is much better designed to do than Chrome.

      • Chrome OS to get business-grade edition

        Drewry says the Google Chrome OS has auto-updating and sandbox features to reduce malware exposure and will warn users when they come upon a website that is known to have malware. A developer mode can be turned on thanks to a switch under the battery, which would sacrifice the embedded security in favor of freedom to browse wherever one wishes. It’s meant to give developers the range to play with the open source code in order to come up with new ideas and apps.

      • Parallels Officially Supports Google Chrome OS

        There’s also a bigger story here: Parallels provides the base software foundation for many VARs and software developers that are deploying SaaS (software as a service) applications. Now, that SaaS ecosystem may be more inclined to give Google’s Chrome OS a look.

      • Ikan Wireless Kitchen Appliance Revolutionizes In-Home Grocery Shopping

        The Jetsons kitchen of the future is upon us with SnS Design’s Ikan kitchen appliance. Either that, or we’re looking at quite possibly the most expensive and glorified grocery app yet. With its 7-inch touch screen, WiFi integration, and voice input capability, the device builds a shopping list from items you scan or input before disposing of them. Oh, and it runs Android. Simply place this on the counter or mount it near the trash can and add +50 productivity point to your life!

      • Android Phone Grows Up, Becomes Brain for Real Robot

        The bot they recently finished building — Truckbot — is still relatively simple. It’s got an HTC G1 phone for a brain, riding on top of a chassis with some wheels and treads. All it can do is roll around on a tabletop, turn and head off in a specified direction. When I visit the workshop where they’re building it, Heath and Hickman show how it can use the phone’s compass to make itself point to the south. But the duo have much more ambitious plans in mind.

      • Petition to improve the Android Market. Sign it today!
      • Google’s Push for Better Games

        The two-day Game Developers Conference kicks off today in San Francisco and Google will be there promoting Android. In fact, members of the Android team will be presenting a handful of sessions including development in Java and/or C++.

      • Stuck In The iPhone Mindset, AT&T Locks Down Apps On Their First Android Phone

        Our full review of the Motorola Backflip should be up in a few days, but a few words of wisdom in the mean time: Don’t buy it. Between its crazy form-factor and the hidden trackpad tucked on the back of the display, everything we took as merits at face value have devolved into novelties.

    • Tablets
      • Freescale’s $200 tablet will support Chromium, Android and Linux OSes

        Earlier this year at CES, Freescale revealed a $200 smartbook tablet reference design that they were shopping around to partners.

        It was a beautiful tablet for the price, powered by a 1GHz i.MX515 ARM processo. Other specs included 512MB of DDR2 RAM, a 1,024 x 600 multitouch screen, between 4GB to 64GB of internal storage, a microSD expansion slot, optional 3G WWAN module, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, GPS, a USB 2.0 socket, audio in / out, 3 megapixel camera, inbuilt 3-axis accelerometer, an ambient light sensor and a 1,900mAh battery.

      • HTC Touch Pro2 Runs Ubuntu Linux

        This is probably another development that Microsoft won’t be too happy about, but it’s not like they can stop you from tinkering with your phone, right? Now, after the HTC Touch HD has been hacked to run Android, we’ve got wind of a HTC Touch Pro2 running Ubuntu Linux 8.04. Of course, the OS is really meant for laptops and desktops, but again, nobody can stop you from having some fun, right?

Free Software/Open Source
  • Haiku OS Hopes For New 3D Stack

    Haiku OS, the nine year old project to develop an open-source BeOS-compatible operating system, is hoping it will receive a new OpenGL stack this year. The Haiku project, like X.Org, will be participating in this year’s Google Summer of Code project where the search engine giant pays many student developers to work on code for various open-source projects. There’s a long list of ideas for where Haiku OS could use some help, and one of them includes a hardware 3D acceleration stack.

  • For teaching touch typing, it’s clearly Klavaro

    Many years ago, Felipe Castro learned to type with the help of the proprietary Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing application. But though Castro is from Brazil, he had to use an English keyboard layout. That got him thinking. When Castro, an engineer by trade, decided to improve his programming skills, he decided to create a touch typing tutor, Klavaro, and make it keyboard- and language-independent.

  • Xen Hypervisor Monitoring with Open Source Zenoss Core

    This week I am very excited because we released Zenoss Core 2.5.2 with a cool new feature, Xen hypervisor monitoring.

  • Digium Asterisk, Open Source Unified Communications Score Partner Win

    Digium Asterisk, the open source IP PBX platform, just received a major vote of confidence from a key channel partner. Synnex Corp., a distributor that supplies more than 15,000 resellers in North America, has agreed to promote Digium’s Switchvox to channel partners. Here are the implications for the unified communications market and the emerging open source IT channel.

  • Can free software drive the fourth paradigm?

    The biggest science story to hit the mainstream media in the last year was of course the big switch on at CERN. What made it such a great story for me was not just the sheer and audacious enormity of the enterprise or the humbling nobility of the colossal experiment but the story behind the story. That story was the absolutely central role of free software philosophy at the heart of everything CERN was (and is) doing. Despite the false start, CERN’s search for the Higgs Boson has got into its stride. The same cannot be said for the car crash that is climate science, which may have inflicted terminal damage on the reputation of science. I believe the rigorous application of free software methodology in conjunction with the Fourth Paradigm may save it.

  • Run Your Own Twitter Clone: Status.net Launches Public Beta

    StatusNet, the open-source microblogging service that serves as the foundation for identi.ca, just announced the launch of the public beta of its StatusNet Cloud Service. Thanks to this, you can now easily host your own Twitter-like community for your blog, club or company.

  • Free Software is about Freedom

    Cord Blomquist did a good post over at TLF about the USTR/open source software issue. It set off a lively debate in the comments that, I think, reflected a common misconception about what free software is and why it’s valuable.

    Before digging into that, I should be clear that I don’t generally think it’s a good idea for government software procurement decisions to be dictated from the top down. I’ve had first-hand experience with working at the bottom of large IT hierarchies, and so I know it’s incredibly annoying to have distant bureaucrats constrain the tools you’re allows to use. I wouldn’t endorse a proposal for the federal CTO to mandate that all federal agencies use free software.

    [...]

    The same point applies to software. The difference between Windows Server 2008 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux isn’t just that one was produced by humorless suits in Redmond and the other was produced by dirty hippies in Raleigh. It’s not even that one costs a lot of money and the other one is free. (Support costs will often dwarf licensing fees anyway).

    The key difference is that proprietary software comes with a lot of restrictions about how it may be used—restrictions that don’t apply to free software. Probably the most important freedom free software gives provides is the freedom to switch vendors. If a government agency chooses a proprietary software package, the agency is likely to find itself with serious lock-in problems down the road. Switching vendors will mean switching software platforms, which will involve large conversion and training costs. In contrast, if an agency chooses a free software-based solution, the lock-in problems will be less severe. The agency can easily bring in a new firm to provide support for the existing software. Or it may not need to hire outside contractors at all—the internal IT staff may be capable of fully supporting the system internally.

  • Psychology
    • Kindness Breeds More Kindness, Study Shows

      Goodness spurs goodness, they found: A single act can influence dozens more.

      In a game where selfishness made more sense than cooperation, acts of giving were “tripled over the course of the experiment by other subjects who are directly or indirectly influenced to contribute more,” wrote political scientist James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, and medical sociologist Nicholas Christakis of Harvard University.

    • Open source makes psychological sense

      ACCORDING TO a recent study random acts of kindness have a very positive impact on humans and regularly spread this good feeling to others.

  • Mozilla
    • Mozilla borrows from WebKit to build fast new JS engine

      Mozilla’s high-performance TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, which was first introduced in 2008, has lost a lot of its luster as competing browser vendors have stepped up their game to deliver superior performance. Firefox now lags behind Safari, Chrome, and Opera in common JavaScript benchmarks. In an effort to bring Firefox back to the front of the pack, Mozilla is building a new JavaScript engine called JägerMonkey.

  • Databases
    • The history of MySQL AB

      MySQL, the open source database product that puts the “M” in LAMP, was created by MySQL AB, a company founded in 1995 in Sweden. In 2008, MySQL AB announced that it had agreed to be acquired by Sun Microsystems for approximately $1 billion.

    • Open Source CouchDB Heads to the Cloud

      SQL-based relational database management systems (RDBMS) are beginning to be challenged by a new movement of NoSQL databases. Among those NoSQL databases is the open source CouchDB, which provides an alternative to the relational datastores used by RDBMS vendors — and which is banking on cloud-based deployment options to sweeten its appeal to users.

  • Oracle
    • Reconciling Sun’s Java investments with Oracle’s: a simple suggestion

      On the theoretical side the answer starts with a reality most people want to ignore: the java ecosystem that’s grown up around mobile phones, cards, and other smart devices is only marginally related to the java ecosystem that’s grown up around enterprise applications – and there’s no threat to mobile java here at all.

    • The Post-Oracle Sun Exodus

      So, what does this mean for Oracle? Well, obviously less than it would have meant for Sun. Whenever two large technology companies merge, you always expect some attrition… both voluntary and involuntary. That’s what makes M&A in this industry so difficult, especially when Open Source companies are involved. With an Open Source company, much or what you’re acquiring when you buy a company is the people. If those people start leaving in droves, much of the value of the company goes with it.

    • ? Last Day At Sun

      Today is my last day of employment at Sun (well, it became Oracle on March 1st in the UK but you know what I mean). I am a few months short of my 10th anniversary there (I joined at JavaOne in 2000) and my 5th anniversary as Chief Open Source Officer. I hope you’ll forgive a little reminiscence.

    • ? OpenSolaris Governing Board

      I am standing in the election for the OpenSolaris Governing Board one last time (this would be my third consecutive term if elected, so it has to be the last time). Each term has been quite different to the others, and I have no doubt this next year will be very different again for the OpenSolaris community.

  • Business
    • Open Source Saves the Day (and Lots of Dosh)

      It seems every day we hear about hideous cost overruns on public sector projects in the UK. What makes it even more frustrating is that open source, a real no-brainer for many applications, is rarely given the chance to prove itself here. Which means, of course, that there are no case studies to refer to, so no one gives open source a chance etc. etc.

      Against that background, a new paper by Darrel Ince, Professor of Computing at the Open University, which rejoices in the deceptively-bland title of “The Re-development of a Problem System”, is pretty exciting stuff

  • Government
    • London Government Accused Of Open Source Inaction

      A Green Party representative has accused the London government of failing to fully exploit open source software, but activists say the Greater London Authority (GLA) is doing well… at least compared to central government.

      Despite a central government commitment to use open source, London’s local government has too many plans “in the pipeline” and not enough actually delivered, said Darren Johnson, a Green Party member of the GLA: “It is clear that nothing is likely to happen without some major push towards progress”.

      [...]

      “If the Mayor wants efficiency savings to balance the budget and avoid frontline cuts, he should be doing more to promote open source solutions,” said Johnson. “Free and open source software could reduce long-term costs significantly, and promote a spirit of co-operation and collaboration within London government.”

    • Brazil launches new version of their electronic government portal

      Technology: The Brazil Portal is developed with Plone 3.1.7 and runs on Zope Application Server 2.10.6, programmed in Python 2.4.4. “The use of free platforms is the direction of the federal government. And the choice of the tools for the construction of the Portal would not be different. So, we chose Zope/Plone,” explained Silvia Sardinha, Director of the Internet and Events for Secom.

    • SI: Complaint over government purchase of proprietary software

      Slovenia’s court of Auditors and Slovenia’s anti-corruption authority have received an anonymous complaint regarding the government’s procuring of proprietary software licences for computer operating systems and office applications, Slovenian media reported last Month.

      The complainant, using the pseudonym ‘Kranjski Tux’, is asking the government’s auditors and anti-corruption authority to investigate the ministry’s negotiations and licence agreement between the Ministry for Public Administration with Microsoft between 2002 and 2010. According to the complaint these deals are violating procurement rules, ignore basic economic principles and are hindering competition between software suppliers.

  • Openness
    • New Project Puts Open Source Spin on Data Center Design

      A new initiative seeks to give future data centers an open source twist by developing an open and free engineering framework for data center designers and builders. Such standardized approaches could “remove much mystery behind the work that happens in designing facilities,” according to Nokia’s Michael Manos, an adiviser on the project.

    • Five for Friday: Biggest Breakthroughs in Open Science

      As Peter Suber puts it on his blog, Open Access News, “this is big.” Why? First of all, it’s MIT, and anything that its faculty senate adopts unanimously is likely to become a de facto standard. In this case, MIT’s faculty has agreed that research articles authored by members of the faculty will be made freely available on the web, without permission or payment barriers to the reader.

    • Scottish Information Commissioner challenges public authorities to “think FOI”

      The 2009 Report, which also celebrates the first five years of FOI in Scotland, is being presented electronically for the first time through an interactive website. Additional features in the report include video commentary, interactive tables, user stories, and detailed chronologies charting the development of FOI in Scotland over its first five years. Hard copies of the report will be available by contacting the Commissioner’s office on 01334 464610.

    • Truly Open Data

      Open source discourages laziness (because everyone can see the corners you’ve cut), it can get bugs fixed or at least identified much faster (many eyes), it promotes collaboration, and it’s a great training ground for skills development. I see no reason why open data shouldn’t bring the same opportunities to data projects.

    • Filling the Gap: Open Clip Art Library Provides More than 26,000 Images

      Would you like some Libre content to go with those free and open source applications? One of the initial challenges that the open source community has had in supplanting proprietary solutions is not just the software itself, but the entire ecosystem that has built up around proprietary software. Case in point: While you can find top-notch free and open source tools to create artful documents, finding clip art and templates that are free is a much bigger challenge.

    • Love, hate, and the Wikipedia contributor culture problem

      I love Wikipedia, and I am not alone (a Google search for “love Wikipedia” brings back 109,000,000 entries—almost 10x the number for hate). So if you love Wikipedia too (or even if you don’t), please share some of your ideas below.

Leftovers
  • Feds Move to Break Voting-Machine Monopoly

    Citing anti-competitive concerns, the Justice Department sued Election Systems & Software in order to force the company to divest itself of the voting machine assets it obtained from Premier Election Solutions last year.

  • Link-phobic bloggers at the NYT and WSJ

    Clark Hoyt, the NYT’s public editor, has a good post-mortem on l’affaire Zachary Kouwe, and asks whether “the culture of DealBook, the hyper-competitive news blog on which Kouwe worked” was partly to blame for his plagiarism.

    It’s a good question, but also a dangerous one, because I fear it will help to keep blogs marginalized at the NYT and elsewhere: is there something inherent to the culture of blogging which breeds a degree of carelessness ill suited to a venerable newspaper?

  • Science
    • Exclusive: Colorado Doctors Skirt FDA Jurisdiction to Provide Stem Cell Therapies

      The FDA has yet to approve stem cell therapies for general use in medicine, but that hasn’t stopped doctors in Colorado from providing them anyway. Chris Centeno and John Schultz have boldly formed Regenerative Sciences Inc. in Broomfield, Colorado. RSI provides its patients with the Regenexx procedure, an adult stem cell transplant that uses your own cells (autologous) to treat joint injuries and bone damage. There’s no surgery needed. A needle extracts bone marrow, RSI isolates the stem cells and cultures them in your own blood, and then these cells are injected into the area where they are needed.

  • Security
    • DNA policy ‘impossible to defend’ say MPs

      “The current situation of indefinite retention of the DNA profiles of those arrested but not convicted is impossible to defend in light of the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights and unacceptable in principle,” the committee says in a report published on 8 March 2010.

    • More fuel to the DNA debate

      Dnainspect Big Brother Watch has always been opposed to the retention of the DNA of innocent people on the National Database; click here to see the full list of blogposts we have written on the issue.

    • ID Card for Workers Is at Center of Immigration Plan

      Mr. Schumer said employers would be able to buy a scanner to check the IDs for as much as $800. Small employers, he said, could take their applicants to a government office to like the Department of Motor Vehicles and have their hands scanned there.

    • U.S. Adding Full-Body Bomb Scanners at 11 Airports

      The government is accelerating use of the scanners after Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight on approach to Detroit Dec. 25 by igniting explosives in his underpants.

      The agency purchased 150 machines last year for $25 million from OSI Systems Inc.’s Rapiscan unit of Hawthorne, California. They will be deployed to the 11 airports, starting today with Boston and within a week in Chicago. The devices already in place are made by New York-based L-3 Communications Holdings Inc.

    • UN Official warns against “ineffective” body scanners

      Interestingly, he also said that technologies that intrude into privacy tend to be ineffective in preventing terrorism. Finally, Scheinin said this:

      Full body scanners are ineffective in detecting a genuine terrorist threat if they do not reveal dangerous substances in body cavities, body folds or hand luggage. They may also give a false feeling of security and allow the real terrorists to adapt their tactics to the technology in use.

      Quite.

    • Bid to scrap right of entry laws

      It may sound like a Monty Python sketch – but an ancient law allowing people on private land without a warrant if they are following a bee might still apply.

      The law, aimed at protecting honey supplies, is one of 1,208 powers of entry in dozens of different Acts of Parliament unearthed by a Tory peer.

    • Northerners give up ID cards for Lent figures suggest

      The initial rush to join the government’s ID card scheme appears to have eased, with applications from people in the Northwest running at an average of as little as 14.5 per working day.

    • Waterboarding for dummies

      Internal CIA documents reveal a meticulous protocol that was far more brutal than Dick Cheney’s “dunk in the water”

    • Hundreds more town hall staff to get police-style powers

      Under CSAS, a chief constable can give employees of local authorities or private companies limited powers such as the right to hand out on-the-spot fines for offences including disorder, truancy and littering; stopping vehicles for roadside tests and confiscating alcohol.

      They have their own uniform and badge and can demand names and addresses as well as take photographs of offenders.

      There are 1,667 so-called “accredited persons” in England and Wales with 109 organisations, including 31 private companies, involved across 26 forces.

      A further 478 civilians have been given the power to stop vehicles to check for out-of-date tax discs.

    • All Dogs To Be Insured By Law

      EVERY dog owner in Britain will be forced to fork out up to £600 a year for insurance under new Labour plans to tackle so-called “devil dogs”.

    • UK slides towards relegation in electronic surveillance league

      US software company Cryptohippie have released a new piece of research (it is available to read by clicking here) addressing the extent to which states are electronically monitoring their citizens and ranking the results to produce a Premier League table of intrusive governments. The findings are typically depressing.

  • Environment
    • Europe outsourcing CO2 emissions to developing economies

      China is now the largest emitter of CO2 on the planet, as it powers a large industrial base primarily through the use of coal-fired power plants. However, many of those goods are immediately shipped overseas, often to the US and EU, which generate and use power far more efficiently. A new paper, which will be published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, now takes a look at the impact of outsourcing these carbon emissions by tracking CO2 based on a product’s point of use. For some Western European economies, the result is enormous: anywhere from 20 to 50 percent of their emissions come in the form of imported goods.

    • Pushing Back Against the Methane Tipping Point

      A piece in the latest issue of Science shows that there’s a considerable amount of methane (CH4) coming from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, where it had been trapped under the permafrost. There’s as much coming out from one small section of the Arctic ocean as from all the rest of the oceans combined. This is officially Not Good.

    • BNFL memoir revives nuclear safety fears

      The autobiography of a former director of British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) is likely to reignite fears about the safety of nuclear power, as Britain prepares for a new generation of reactors, by exposing the panic that rocked the industry two decades ago when a link was suggested between radiation and childhood leukaemia.

    • New hope for mountain gorillas in Congo

      A recent report showed that, of the world’s 634 primate species, 48% are classified as threatened with extinction on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s “red list”.

  • Finance
    • More states propose Internet sales taxes

      Jeremy Bray received an e-mail message this morning with an unwelcome surprise: Amazon.com told him it had canceled its affiliate program, which provides small payments for referring customers, for everyone in the state of Colorado.

      The reason? A state law, which Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter signed last week, slaps onerous new restrictions on large out-of-state sellers like Amazon, which said it has no choice but to end its marketing program in response.

    • Europe bars Wall Street banks from government bond sales

      European countries are blocking Wall Street banks from lucrative deals to sell government debt worth hundreds of billions of euros in retaliation for their role in the credit crunch.

    • Greek workers to stage new general strike

      Greek unions have called another national strike after PM George Papandreou unveiled yet more public-spending cuts in a bid to appease EU officials and international financiers.

      After talks with visiting EU economy commissioner Olli Rehn, Mr Papandreou announced that public-sector salary bonuses at Christmas and Easter will be slashed by 30 per cent, while taxes on fuel, alcohol and cigarettes will be increased for the second time in two months. And he bumped VAT up from 19 to 21 per cent.

    • Reality TV Star Pushes Financial Reform

      Today the Funny or Die crew took the fight for financial reform to a knew level, tapping the talents of reality TV star Heidi Montag who delivers the message that “with hidden fees and standard interest rate increases, that $11,000 jaw line can end up costing $50,000 dollars!” Montag is famous for her multiple plastic surgeries featured recently on the cover of People magazine.

    • Is Wall Street bullish on America — or is a Greek tragedy opening soon?

      Now saved, they are back to their old mischief with derivatives and swaps, including in sovereign debt. This may be one reason President Obama keeps Tim Geithner and the “Government Sachs” alums close to him (as in, keep your friends close and your enemies closer) — a reason beyond wanting to convey continuity or even keep Wall Street campaign contributions.

    • Goldman Paulson Sachs

      1. Why did Treasury and the Fed allow Lehman Bros. to collapse after they’d bailed out Fannie and Freddie and facilitated the sale of Bear Stearns?

      Paulson does not say. The line at the time was that Treasury had no legal authority to intervene, but that was the extent of the information officials gave out. Paulson tells a long story (which has its own problems) about his efforts to coax different banks into buying Lehman, and then concludes with this: “Some in the group asked if we should revisit the idea of putting public money into Lehman, but Tim said there was no authority to do that.”

    • Goldman Sachs sued by big pension fund over pay

      The International Brotherhood of Electric Workers fund filed the lawsuit in Delaware Chancery Court, seeking to recover money for the company on behalf of other shareholders.

    • Goldman Sachs (GS) Sued Over Compensation Practices

      The International Brotherhood of Electric Workers, a shareholder in Goldman Sachs (GS), filed a lawsuit in Delaware which accuses the investment bank of overpaying its management and bankers. The union wants Goldman to give some of that money back to shareholders. The action also attempts to get Goldman’s management to make charitable contributions instead of them coming from the firm. Goldman views the giving as way to publicly defuse the outcry over its pay practices.

    • Dealbreaker.com editor Levin playing Goldman Sachs PR person on Twitter

      Charles Gasparino of the Fox Business Network believes that it’s Bess Levin, the snarky editor of Dealbreaker.com, who is portraying Goldman Sachs PR person Lucas Van Praag on Twitter.

      Gasparino writes, “Bess Levin of the DealBreaker blog is one of several people posting tweets under the name Lucasvpraag, including one that takes aim at Matt Taibbi, the Rolling Stone writer who attacked Goldman businesses practices, and another in which Van Praag is alerting people that he is back on his low carb diet of ‘Filet of baby seal, asparagus.’

    • Goldman Sachs PR – The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

      Charlie Gasparino, FOX Business News, recently talked about the Fake Lucas van Praag Twitter page. Lucas van Praag is Goldman Sachs (GS) Global Head of Corporate Communications who has not helped improve the GS image. Yet his “Fake” Twitter page has garnered a lot of attention. The comments are funny.

    • Pranking Goldman’s Lucas Van Praag

      Goldman Sachs’ head of public relations, the sharp-tongued Lucas van Praag, has gone from deflecting negative publicity about his firm to taking barbs as the subject of a blistering Twitter parody, authored by a group of financial bloggers who are sharp-tongued snarks in their own right. The group includes Dealbreaker’s widely followed Bess Levin and Daily Intel’s Jessica Pressler.

      It’s hard to distinguish their parody tweets from the utterances of the real van Praag, which is part of the fun.

    • Goldman Sachs Group’s hour of reckoning

      For the bank to restore its public standing, the people running it must acknowledge there is something wrong with the way it does business

    • Joe Stiglitz Slaps The Invisible Hand

      As always – we request the attention of Christine Varney, and the entire anti-trust arm of the US government, in claiming that Goldman Sachs has to be dismantled forcefully (as it will not happen voluntarily) before the societal implications of Goldman’s size become a destabilizing factor and potentially lead to war: civil or otherwise. In the meantime, Goldman’s warehousing of, and trading on, “asymmetric” information will continue, and be a persistent ridicule to wooden economists, who are still stuck with 18th century concepts of reality.

    • Senate Said to Weigh $50 Billion Fund to Wind Down Failed Firms

      Senate negotiators are closing in on a deal to create a $50 billion trust fund from fees on large U.S. financial firms that likely will include Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Citigroup Inc. and be used to wind down failing institutions, said a Senate aide and two people familiar with the talks.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
    • Nutrition experts battle industry groups over sugar

      Before you chug down another regular soda, or spoon sugar into your tea or coffee, consider this: There’s a heated debate going on over the health risks of consuming too much sugar, high-fructose corn syrup and other caloric sweeteners.

      On one side: Leading nutrition experts who believe that these sweeteners, including those used in soft drinks, tea, coffee and countless other foods and beverages, add empty calories to people’s diets and promote weight gain. And they say emerging scientific research indicates that consuming too much of these sweeteners may increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and other health problems.

    • High-Fructose Public Relations

      But HFCS manufacturers say their products don’t cause health problems or weight gain. To make their point, the Corn Refiners Association (CRA) is running a series of TV ads aimed at boosting the image of HFCS and convincing people that they are misled by marketing tactics that imply that products labeled “high-fructose corn syrup-free” are healthier than products with HFCS.

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights
    • Newegg Ships Fake Intel Chips; Supplier Threatens Journalists For Reporting It

      You know what’s even better than weird news? Weird news well-flavored with legal stupididy, that’s what. Our saga today starts with a shipping oddity; specifically the fact that Overclockers.com forum member Dreadrok ordered a Core i7 920 from Newegg and received a completely fake processor. It’s a good fake, too—if it weren’t for a few misspellings on the outside of the box, we’d believe it was completely legit, particularly if we didn’t take the time to scour the box looking for the telltales.

    • Vision Media’s Attempt To Silence Critic May Be Exposing More Questionable Activities

      Of course, none of this would be getting as much attention if the company wasn’t trying to silence 800Notes and its users from saying why they felt the pitches were questionable.

    • Police get Webcam pictures in school spy case

      Two IT employees at Pennsylvania’s Lower Merion School District have been put on administrative leave, and pictures taken from Webcams on school-issued computers have been turned over to the local police department, according to the attorney of one of the employees now on leave.

    • Pa. schools’ tech specialists on paid leave amid spying probe

      Two information-technology workers at a suburban Philadelphia school district that secretly activated webcams on students’ school-issued laptops are on paid leave amid an FBI wiretap investigation.

      Lower Merion School District officials insist the move is not meant to suggest wrongdoing by the veteran employees. They have said the webcams were only activated to find missing laptops, and not for any rogue purpose.

    • CCTV in toilets – again

      In 2008, Toileta school in Plymouth was forced to remove CCTV from toilets after very significant protests from pupils and parents. In November last year, CCTV footage of children changing into sports kits in school changing rooms was seized by the police in Salford. Plainly, it was wrong to record such footage and you would think that such drastic action in these and other similar cases would be heeded by others. But, ironically given their educational mission, it seems that some schools just won’t learn.

    • Solihull school installs CCTV in children’s toilets

      I wasn’t shocked that it happened, because I have read so many stories recently about people in low level positions of authority who assume they have a ‘right to spy’ that trumps any else’s right to privacy. What shocked me was the headline itself. It didn’t say “Headmaster arrested for installing CCTV in children’s toilets”, or “Headmaster resigns after being caught installing CCTV in children’s toilets.” It didn’t even say “Headmaster apologises after installing CCTV in children’s toilets.” Instead the headline was a plain and unadorned “Chelmsley Wood school puts CCTV in pupil toilets.”

    • 100 extra CCTV cameras mean more parking fines in Westminster

      The number of motorists fined for parking offences in central London will rise from today as 100 CCTV “spy” cameras are switched on.

    • Facebook’s Beginnings Likely Shaped Its Privacy Policies

      In Nicholas Carlson’s piece, he tells the “full story” of Facebook’s beginning. He starts with the initial conversations Harvard sophomore Zuckerberg had with the trio of seniors who wanted him to code for a new Web site they wanted to start, called HarvardConnection. Then, complete with instant messages and e-mails that have not been made public until now, he outlines how Zuckerberg appears to have decided to create his own site — thefacebook.com — but not to tell the HarvardConnection founders he wasn’t working on their project until his was almost finished.

    • MEPs told to vote or else as US data row deepens

      The European Parliament has been asked to vote to approve or reject the Passenger Name Record agreement with the US.

      The Civil Liberties Committee is likely to postpone its vote until a new template has been created, to detail what information is exchanged. The Committee also wants to lay down how the information should be stored and used.

    • Internet Freedom: Beyond Circumvention

      Circumvention tools help Turks who want to see YouTube get around a government block. But they don’t help Americans, Chinese or Burmese see Irrawaddy if the site has been taken down by DDoS or hacking attacks. Publishers of controversial online content have begun to realize that they’re not just going to face censorship by national filtering systems – they’re going to face a variety of technical and legal attacks that seek to make their servers inaccessible.

      There’s quite a bit publishers can do to increase the resilience of their sites to DDoS attack and to make their sites more difficult to filter. To avoid blockage in Turkey, YouTube could increase the number of IP addresses that lead to the webserver and use a technique called “fast-flux DNS” to give the Turkish government more IP addresses to block. They could maintain a mailing list to alert users to unblocked IP addresses where they could access YouTube, or create a custom application which disseminates unblocked IPs to YouTube users who download the ap. These are all techniques employed by content sites that are frequently blocked in closed societies.

    • Brandeis in Italy: The Privacy Issues in the Google Video Case

      I don’t think this is really a case about ISP liability at all. It is a case about the use of a person’s image, without their consent, that generates commercial value for someone else. That is the essence of the Italian law at issue in this case. It is also how the right of privacy was first established in the United States.

      The video at the center of this case was very popular in Italy and drove lots of users to the Google Video site. This boosted advertising and support for other Google services. As a consequence, Google actually had an incentive not to respond to the many requests it received before it actually took down the video.

    • Columnist Claims Italy’s Google Verdict Makes Sense

      But the really scary thing is that Rall seems to think that basically destroying the freedom to communicate and to express yourself online makes sense, just because the tool might possibly be used to spread a false statement. Does he not recognize the unintended consequences of this? Does he not realize that his “suggestion” for fixing the internet is effectively how much of China’s internet censorship program works? Does he not think there might be more effective ways of dealing with such situations? For example, if Rall were to falsely accuse you of being a drug-addicted child pornographer, and it’s clearly bogus, then you have an opportunity to fight back, and point out that Rall is wrong, destroy his reputation, and make sure he never gets another job again. Why not let free speech combat free speech?

      Instead, Rall seems terrified of free speech, and would prefer that it only come from the “professionals” like himself.

    • Schneier: Fight for privacy or kiss it good-bye

      If the public wants online privacy it had better fight now for laws to protect it because businesses won’t and individuals don’t have the clout, security expert Bruce Schneier told RSA Conference.

    • Lindsay Lohan wants $100M over E-Trade ad

      The world revolves around Lindsay.

      Lindsay Lohan is suing the financial company E-Trade, insisting that a boyfriend-stealing, “milkaholic” baby in its latest commercial — who happens to be named Lindsay — was modeled after her. And she wants $100 million for her pain and suffering, The Post has learned.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM
    • The internet without net neutrality
    • Electronics Manufacturers Use US Legal System to Thwart Hardware ‘Hacks’

      In the United States, the First Amendment in the US Constitution protects free speech, even if the information communicated can be used to, among other things, cause harm or to commit illegal acts. These laws, for example, allowed author William Powell to write and publish “The Anarchist Cookbook,” which gave instructions about how to make bombs and to commit other acts of mayhem in the early 1970s. Communicating how to hack OEMs devices and even how to steal services is thus protected under First Amendment laws, said Fred von Lohmann, staff attorney for the EFF.

      “Under the DMCA [US Digital Millennium Copyright Act] and copyright law, users are entitled to reverse engineer and make interoperable products,” von Lohmann said. “And certainly the First Amendment applies if you’re talking about these subjects (even if you’re expressing yourself by writing and publishing software code), which is the point we made when squaring off against Apple on behalf of hobbyists who wanted to sync their iPods using software other than iTunes.”

      However, service agreements can preclude communicating how to hack devices, especially if they involve rented products, such as cable modems, said Bennett.
      “Most cable modem hardware is owned by network operators and leased to users. In the cases where users own their cable modems, they’re sold with a licence agreement that prohibits reverse engineering,” he said. “Reverse engineering is a predicate to distributing step-by-step hacking guides.”

    • Letter to the FT (Financial Times) – Amendment 120A Digital Economy Bill

      Endorsing a policy that would encourage the blocking of websites by UK broadband providers or other Internet companies is a very serious step for the UK to take. There are myriad legal, technical and practical issues to reconcile before this can be considered a proportionate and necessary public policy option. In some cases, these may never be reconciled. These issues have not even been considered in this case.

    • NSFW: Hey, America! Our draconian copyright law could kick your draconian copyright law’s ass

      I’ve always had mixed feelings about the DMCA.

      On the one hand, as an author, I like that it gives me a way to stop illegal copies of my work being distributed in the US, so ensuring that I can continue to make a living without having to get a proper job. On the other hand, as an occasional journalist, I hate that it can also be used by trigger-happy lawyers to prevent certain embarrassing documents entering the public domain.

      [...]

      TechCrunch’s own Devin Coldewey notes that the “persistent offenders” list won’t just affect domestic file-sharers. Internet cafes, hotels and anywhere else that offers public wi-fi access could find themselves taken offline if their customers are found to be swapping copyright files. If anything, these public access points are even more at risk as it doesn’t take many teenagers using your cafe to rack up 50 copyright violations: this despite there being no way for the establishments to police what their customers are doing online. As Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow put it, almost entirely without hyperbole, “UK Digital Economy Bill will wipe out indie WiFi hotspots in libraries, unis, cafes“

    • New amendment gives copyright owners a blank cheque for web censorship

      Imagine that, in the Summer of last year, you had been following the MP’s expenses scandal and heard that The Telegraph was publishing a rather less redacted version that MP’s were prepared to give us. Interested, you navigated your way to www.telegraph.co.uk only to find it was not responding. After some searching around and asking friends you discover that the website has been blocked by most major UK ISP’s. It seems a junior official in Parliament had asked them to block The Telegraph for copyright violation.

  • Advertising
    • Daynotes Journal [Ars Technica blocks visitors who use AdBlock Plus]

      Ars Techica opened a can of worms last Friday when without notice they started blocking visitors who were using Adblock Plus. In this followup article, they asked visitors to whitelist their site. The comment thread is approaching 1,500 entries now, and it’s running about half-and-half between those who have either whitelisted the site or paid the $50/year subscription and those who refuse to do either.

      I side with the latter group. I won’t subscribe because Ars Technica simply isn’t worth $50/year to me, or anything near that. I check the headlines every day or two and occasionally read an article. Ars is apparently paid per viewer rather than per click. Even if I were viewing their ads, I doubt they’d be making more than a buck a year from my visits and ad views, and probably nowhere near that much. So that’s my upper limit for what I’m willing to pay them for ad-free browsing. If Ars allowed readers to decide how much to pay for an annual subscription to an ad-free version of their site, I’d happily send them a buck via PayPal. But they don’t, so I won’t.

    • Don’t Blame Your Community: Ad Blocking Is Not Killing Any Sites

      Every so often we hear about a random blog or website that freaks out and claims that ad blockers are “stealing” or somehow damaging websites. But it’s quite a surprise to see a similar argument from a site like Ars Technica — one of the top techie sites out there, which is now owned by Conde Nast. Over the weekend, Ars wrote an odd post claiming that ad blocking “is devastating to the sites you love.” Ars decided to run an experiment where it blocked access to its content to any user using an ad blocker (with no warning or explanation). Not surprisingly, this pissed off a bunch of readers, and Ars now admits that it was a mistake in how it was handled — but that it still believes ad blockers are harming sites.

    • DoGood Replaces The Web’s “Evil” Ads with “Good” Ads

      DoGood has recently released their DoGooder plugin for Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer. DoGood’s main goal is to raise money for donations to charitable organizations and they are doing this with a simple plugin.

      The DoGooder plugin replaces generic ads on websites with “green” themed ads instead of those old generic ones. A lot of people ask whether or not the owner of the website will still get paid for the advertisement even though it’s replaced by DoGooder’s go green ads, and the answer according to DoGood is yes.

  • Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights
    • Open Science vs. Intellectual Monopolies

      Well, maybe it creates a tension because intellectual monopolies are fundamentally antithetical to science and knowledge. Maybe the scientific community needs to realise this, and ought to refuse to compromise on its basic tenets of sharing knowledge for the greater good, not least because the shift from analogue to digital is magnifying their importance. Maybe the report should have been less pusillanimous in this respect.

    • Britain’s other new copyright law

      The lack of public controversy surrounding the Regulations may, in part, be because they don’t affect very many of us in a big way – unless you happen to be a media studies student that is. Mostly they offer copyright exceptions when copying film and music for academic purposes. Students get a fair-dealing exception when using sound recordings, films and broadcasts in research. Schools and colleges can record clips of film and music, and transmit them and recorded broadcasts to distance learners. Libraries and museums can make copies of films, sound recordings and artistic works for preservation purposes. Here’s a summary.

    • EU ministers want new life for IP enforcement

      European Union minsters have told EU governing bodies to revive plans to create a pan-EU law criminalising intellectual property infringement, and to make more use of a new body to cooperate on the enforcement of intellectual property rights.

      They have also asked the European Commission to create new laws if cooperation does not work.

    • How to Build a Post-Scarcity Village Using Existing Technology – Marcin Jakubowski (FSCONS 2009)
    • Marcin Jakubowski – Transformative Economics via Open Source Product Development

      We aim to create a world-class center for open product development, and popularize the open development method as a viable competitor to corporate research and development. In this presentation, we will introduce the GVCS, and its applications relevant to creating a free society. We will show initial results of economically-significant product development with the high-performance Compressed Earth Brick (CEB) press as our first product release. We will discuss our goals of producing Open Source Business Models (OSBM) as a route towards distributive economics.

    • If the shoe fits, they’ll copy it

      Though Suk may think it’s clear why the fashion world needs tighter restrictions, shoppers and even some designers in Boston aren’t all quick to agree.

    • Music Biz Hopes To End Piracy By Tempting ISPs With Millions

      A new study commissioned on behalf of Universal Music reports that if ISPs got involved in the digital music market, they could make millions in the years to come. But one can’t help wondering that this is less about the music biz helping ISPs to make more profit, but more about giving them an incentive to do something about piracy.

    • Billions of photos online, Billions of privacy offenders?

      Both freedom of expression and privacy are fundamental human rights. But those rights are not both equally enforced, protected or policed. There are literally thousands of data protection bureaucrats in Europe whose job is to enforce European data protection regulations. As far as I can tell, there is not a single government official in all of Europe whose sole job is to do the same for freedom of expression. Curious, no?

    • Piracy Rises In France Despite Three Strikes Law

      In the first few months following the adoption of the three-strikes anti-piracy legislation in France, online piracy has increased significantly. Instead of stopping, file-sharers are seeking alternatives to bypass the new law. Perhaps even more striking is that new research reveals that disconnecting file-sharers will actually hurt the revenues of the music industry.

    • Music industry failing to promote legal alternatives to piracy

      Consumer Focus, the Government-backed watchdog, sees the growth of the legal online music market as the best way to tackle online copyright infringement, but it claims that the music industry is failing to promote the many legal alternatives.

      [...]

      The Government’s Digital Economy Bill, not yet law, contains measures to disconnect persistent offenders through a process of graduated warnings.

      The consumer body has also called for reform of UK’s copyright licensing system to make it easier for online music services to offer copyrighted works to consumers legally.

    • OK, Computer: File Sharing, the Music Industry, and Why We Need the Pirate Party

      The Pirate Party believes the state and big business are in the process of protecting stale and inefficient models of business for their own monetary benefit by limiting our right to share information. The Pirate Party suggests that they are achieving this goal through the amendment of intellectual property legislation. In the dawn of the digital era, the Pirate Party advocates that governments and multinational corporations are using intellectual property to: crack down on file sharing which limits the ability to share knowledge and information; increase the terms and length of copyright to raise profits; and build code into music files which limits their ability to be shared (Pirate Party, 2009). There are a number of ‘copyright industries’ that are affected by these issues, none more so than the music industry. Its relationship with file sharing is topical and makes an excellent case study to address the impact big business has had on intellectual property and the need for the Pirate Party’s legislative input. The essay will then examine the central issues raised by illegal file sharing. In particular, the future for record companies in an environment that increasingly demands flexibility, and whether the Pirate Party’s proposal is a viable solution to the music industry’s problems.

    • RIAA Takes The Cake: Equates File Sharing To Children’s Fairy Tale

      Something must be in the water over at the RIAA. After first trying to link the Chinese hack of Google to Google’s position on copyright and then ridiculously claiming that file sharers were undermining humanitarian aid in Haiti (despite neither being even close to true), now it’s resorted to using simplistic fables to try to demonize file sharing. Perhaps it’s part of the RIAA’s propaganda campaign for school children, but in a recent blog post, RIAA VP Joshua Friedlander compared the file sharing situation to the children’s fable Nobody Stole the Pie by Sonia Levitin (by the way, you would think that the RIAA, so concerned about content creators getting paid would at least provide a link to information about that book so you could buy it if you wanted to — but we’ll fix that omission for the RIAA).

    • Did Ok Go Free Itself From EMI?

      This was the same point that was made back last year by someone from Billboard in dismissing online viral sensations as being unimportant for “real” sales. But, as the band itself noted, the success of the video brought out huge crowds and made the band quite profitable to the label. This is the problem you run into when you only think about the music industry as if “album sales” are everything. Selling music directly is not a very good business model, and focusing on how many album sales there are totally misses the mark these days.

    • ACTA
Clip of the Day

The Listening Post – The ‘hearts and minds’ of Operation Moshtarak – Part 2

Categories: News

Videos: Peter Landrock on His Software Patent and DeGucht Defending ACTA

Wed, 03/10/2010 - 10:50

Summary: Motion pictures that demonstrate the positions of people who pose dangers to the freedom of software

EARLIER on we wrote about DeGucht and Landrock playing their role in suppressing Free software (indirectly). Here are some new videos of interest.

Nominee 2010 (Lifetime achievement): Peter Landrock

If software patents are not legal in Europe, why would he be offered an award, let alone a patent?

Here is DeGucht echoing talking points that concentrate on imaginary problems but not the real impact of ACTA. We have seen it before. Is he playing devil’s advocate?

DeGucht won’t give the ACTA drafts to the Parliament [1/2]

DeGucht won’t give the ACTA drafts to the Parliament [2/2]

Other defenders of ACTA in the EU are Paul Rübig (video and transcript) and Pedro Valesco-Martins (video). ?

Categories: News

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs Extortionists With Software Patents

Wed, 03/10/2010 - 10:05

Summary: Bill Gates’ personal role in racketeering is revealed by the CEO of Sun Microsystems; Steve Jobs is not any better

NOT so long ago we showed that Bill Gates was scheming to use software patents in order to fight against OpenOffice.org. How about that? Using software patents rather than creating products. Comes vs Microsoft exhibits show this very clearly.

The outgoing CEO of Sun Microsystems is finally spilling the beans about what was happening behind the scenes. Check the following portion of his new text:

As in life, bluster and threat are commonplace in business – especially the technology business. So that interaction was good preparation for a later meeting with Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. They’d flown in over a weekend to meet with Scott McNealy, Sun’s then CEO – who asked me and Greg Papadopoulos (Sun’s CTO) to accompany him. As we sat down in our Menlo Park conference room, Bill skipped the small talk, and went straight to the point, “Microsoft owns the office productivity market, and our patents read all over OpenOffice.” OpenOffice is a free office productivity suite found on tens of millions of desktops worldwide. It’s a tremendous brand ambassador for its owner – it also limits the appeal of Microsoft Office to businesses and those forced to pirate it. Bill was delivering a slightly more sophisticated variant of the threat Steve had made, but he had a different solution in mind. “We’re happy to get you under license.” That was code for “We’ll go away if you pay us a royalty for every download” – the digital version of a protection racket.

Bill Gates can carry on pretending to be charitable with his patent foundation that he uses to make even more profit and monopolies. At the end of the day, he is just another bully in a sweater, wearing glasses.

But wait. Steve Jobs, the patent bully who is attacking Linux at this moment [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], is no better. From the same post as above:

I feel for Google – Steve Jobs threatened to sue me, too.

In 2003, after I unveiled a prototype Linux desktop called Project Looking Glass*, Steve called my office to let me know the graphical effects were “stepping all over Apple’s IP.” (IP = Intellectual Property = patents, trademarks and copyrights.) If we moved forward to commercialize it, “I’ll just sue you.”

People should understand that when they buy something from Microsoft or from Apple they are paying money to racketeers. ?

Update: There is more coverage of this in Groklaw and BTL.

Categories: News

Microsoft and Insecurity: Vulnerabilities, Botnets, and a Whole Lot of Nerve

Wed, 03/10/2010 - 09:29

Summary: Windows insecurity a matter of persistence, Windows botnets a lost cause, and Microsoft’s staff interferes with security policy

From One Critical Vulnerability to Another

THE security problems in Windows are a never-ending problem. Those patches that we mentioned last week arrived on Patch Tuesday, as usual. Here are some of last week’s articles about it [1, 2, 3, 4] and indication that Microsoft may be silencing researchers again:

Microsoft Exploits Talk Dropped From RSA Agenda

An RSA Conference presentation on Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) application hacks and exploits that was originally slated for Tuesday was canceled, although it’s unclear why.

An RSA Conference spokesperson told Channelweb.com on Tuesday that the session appears to have been canceled in early January, but didn’t offer a reason for the cancellation. A Microsoft spokesperson declined to comment on whether the session was canceled at Microsoft’s behest.

Whether Microsoft was behind this or not, the company definitely had been doing such things before. There’s security through obscurity and security through gagging. And in other news, “Microsoft resumes XP patch distribution; says rootkit remover coming soon”

In mid-February, Microsoft halted automatic distribution of one of its Windows patches, blaming the interaction of the patch with already-present malware on users’ systems for a rash of blue-screen-of-death reports among XP users.

Microsoft would love to just blame “a rootkit”, but this was caused by lack of security in the first place. It is a circular trap that still has Microsoft deserving at least some of the blame. This problem was also covered in [1, 2].

In other news, we soon learn that “patchy Windows patching leaves users insecure,” according to Secunia.

Windows users need to patch their systems an average of every five days to stay ahead of security vulnerabilities, according to a study this week.

The numbers come from a company called Secunia which just happens to be developing an all-in-one patching tool to reduce update headaches for consumers.

Stats from the two million existing users of Secunia’s free Personal Software Inspector tool show the average home user needs an average of 75 patches from 22 different vendors to be fully secure. The complexity of patching means that most users are not even in the race, meaning that hackers hoping to exploit software vulnerabilities to infect vulnerable systems stay well ahead of the game.

Matters are further complicated by the variety of different update mechanisms applied by differing suppliers.

Secunia says that “The core of this patching issue is that the software industry has, so far, failed to come up with a unified patching solution that can help home users on a large scale; that is, encompassing all software programs” and as our reader put it, “Doesn’t Linux have a one-stop-shop for the distro? As long as you stick with the official “repository”, everything can be automatically updated, including the apps.”

From One Windows Botnet to Another

Microsoft has a new zero-day vulnerability in its hands and the attempt to suspend Windows botnets is of course futile. There are just too many Windows botnets out there.

Spamhaus: Microsoft’s botnet cull had little effect

Microsoft’s takedown of the Waledac botnet has not been effective, according to some security researchers.

The throttling of Waledac, which Microsoft claimed to have achieved by means of legal action last week, has led to no appreciable reduction of junk mail coming from the botnet, anti-spam organisation Spamhaus told ZDNet UK on Tuesday.

We wrote about the Waledac takedown in [1, 2, 3]. Here is more new information about it:

Well, criticism has come from two main areas: Firstly, as Jose Nazario of Arbor Networks Inc. , a security solutions provider, told The Wall Street Journal, the Internet addresses that Microsoft’s lawsuit brought down could be a small percentage of those used by hackers to control the network. “The botnet will survive in many cases,” said Nazario.

And Richard Cox, the chief information officer at anti-spam service Spamhaus told ComputerWorld: “If this did affect spam, we haven’t noticed… Waledac was not a high threat; it’s less than 1% of spam traffic.”

On the face of it, Microsoft Windows may rely on Free software to secure the Web from itself.

From Microsoft to Apple

Apple is suing Linux (we covered this in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]). Apple becomes more of a fighting company (an aggressor), not a pacifier.

Apple is also hiring from Microsoft, based on this report about Window Snyder.

Window Snyder’s first day at Apple was Monday, according to PC World. While it noted that Apple was the “third browser-maker in the past five years that has employed Snyder,” it did not indicate whether she would work on the Safari browser or some other technology for the Cupertino, Calif., company.

Microsoft was spreading lies about Firefox (and sometimes GNU/Linux too), but even Snyder, who had worked for Microsoft, told them off for it*. It all happened when she worked for Mozilla, but she luckily left after using her Mozilla hat to praise Microsoft. She is going to Apple now.

From US DOJ to Microsoft

Microsoft’s fairly new hire from the US DOJ is upsetting many people. Scott Charney’s remarks [1, 2, 3] led to some strong reactions. “Blow me,” says this one article from iStockAnalyst to Microsoft:

In short, these machines are infested (not infected, infested) because their operating system has historically been full of security holes (this has improved, especially in Windows 7, to be fair.)

So what does Microsoft propose?

So who would foot the bill? “Maybe markets will make it work,” Charney said. But an Internet usage tax might be the way to go. “You could say it’s a public safety issue and do it with general taxation,” he said.

That’s nice.

Sell an insecure operating system and then get someone else to pay a tax because they bought an arguably-defective product you sold?
How about this instead Microsoft?

For each computer infested, the publisher of the operating system sold to that user is assessed a fine of US $100,000 by the Department of Justice.

Here is what The Atlantic argues:

Most opponents of a tax would say that software companies should be responsible for paying, since it’s their responsibility to develop a safe product. Indeed, some criticize Microsoft for advocating a tax as an excuse to spend less of their own money developing safer software.

Also see:

• Microsoft’s Ideas for Making PCs Safer

• Microsoft’s Scott Charney Calls For Disrupting Cybercrime Activities

• Microsoft Security Chief proposes taxes to protect the Internet

• Microsoft moots digital healthcare tax

• Microsoft’s Ideas for Making PCs Safer

• Microsoft and the Incredible ‘Internet Usage Tax’

• Say It Ain’t So, Microsoft

Maybe Microsoft Vice President for Trustworthy Computing Scott Charney wanted to see if his audience was really awake. Maybe he entered a time warp and thought it was April 1st. Maybe someone gave him a funny cookie. Or maybe he really didn’t think it would be sheer lunacy to suggest levying an Internet tax on Americans to pay for cybersecurity.

[...]

What Were You Thinking, Scott?

Not satisfied with blaming and seeking to punish the victim, Charney then went on to suggest the imposition of a tax on Internet users to ensure cybersecurity.

“You could say it’s a public safety issue and do it with general taxation,” he said.

Really, Scott? Why should we the users pay for the ineptness of software vendors? And please, don’t give me that tired routine about the bad guys being out there always looking for flaws.

Let’s take an analogy from real life. When you’re a kid your parents tell you the rules for living safely. Don’t talk to strangers or take candy from them. Look both ways before you cross the street. Don’t walk down dark streets or alleys at night. Never walk between a parked van and the wall, especially at night. Keep your doors locked.

Even some Microsoft boosters disagree with Microsoft on this, whereas most are unable to sincerely criticise it [1, 2, 3]. ?
______
* Microsoft hates real numbers, so it manufactures its own.

Categories: News

Patents Roundup: Lawyer Takeover, Failed Reform, and Policy Laundering With ACTA

Wed, 03/10/2010 - 08:20


Brussels, Belgium

Summary: What the latest news tells us about the use of law — not improved products — to compete in the market

THIS post mostly looks at policy-making around software patents, which are being used by Apple and by Microsoft at the moment in order to stifle their "most potent operating system competitor". That would be Linux, sometimes with GNU. The issue of software patents is far more important than GNU/Linux-oriented Web sites typically indicate.

Question of Bias

The EPO nominates some people for what it calls “European Inventor Award 2010″.

Twelve candidates from nine countries are competing this year for the European Inventor Award 2010, a highly regarded innovation prize presented annually by the EPO together with the European Commission.

The prize, which is purely symbolic and involves no material recompense, is awarded in four categories: Lifetime achievement, Industry, SMEs/research and Non-European countries. The four winners will be chosen by a high-ranking international jury and will be presented with their prizes by EPO President Alison Brimelow in Madrid on 28 April 2010.

Professor Peter Landrock is in that list and it may all seem fine, except for the fact that the president of the FFII points out that the “EPO [is] nominating a software patent proponent and enforcer [by] the name of Peter Landrock (Cryptomathic)”

“FairSoftware is not a software company. The name is deceiving.”This page says: “We have invested heavily in secure, mobile signature solutions based on two-factor authentication which offer high security as well as ease and convenience to the end-user. Our approach is based on research and development carried out over many years, and we feel strongly that we deserve fair acknowledgement from companies and organisations using our patented technology,” said Professor Peter Landrock, Executive Chairman of the Board of Cryptomathic. “This core technology contributed to Cryptomathic earning a nomination as one of the 40 most innovative companies in the world at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2003. We prefer to resolve such issues through commercial discussions without litigation but have so far been unsuccessful with BBS. Hence we are left with no alternative but to file suit.”

So, it’s another one of those European supporters of software patents. There are also people such as this guy, who describes himself as “the founder of FairSoftware, a venture dedicated to helping entrepreneurs find co-founders for their web or iPhone app.”

FairSoftware is not a software company. The name is deceiving. The company strongly promotes software patents.

Here is something from the news which reminds us that lawyers — not engineers — favour software patents (the more, the merrier to them because it means legal business).

Kimberlee Weatherall, who teaches intellectual property law at the University of Queensland, puts the controversial issue of software patents into perspective.

Here is the new perspective of a software developer:

I’ve considered the arguments by Stallman, John Gruber, and Tim Bray on software patents, and I side with Stallman in that software patents are inherently problematic and are a net loss for society.

The major difference in their arguments is that, while all three mention the realities and dysfunctions of the patent system, Stallman focuses strongly on the difference between what it’s intended to do and what actually happens. He also illustrates the reality of trying to develop any nontrivial software in a patent-filled landscape.

[...]

As a working software developer, the thought of accidentally and unknowingly stumbling into someone’s patent is terrifying. There’s no question that it has hurt our industry in the past and will continue to artificially restrict progress indefinitely, and there’s little convincing evidence that the supposed benefits exist in practice at a large enough scale to maintain the status quo.

Reform

Patent reform in the United States is a subject that we wrote about some days ago [1, 2]. Basically, those in control of the system do not want to truly fix this system. From Senate.gov we now have “Leahy, Sessions, Hatch, Schumer, Kyl, Kaufman Unveil Details Of Patent Reform Agreement”:

WASHINGTON – Leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday announced details of an agreement on long-pending legislation to make needed reforms to the nation’s patent system.

This is the third consecutive Congress in which Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the chairman of the panel, and Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a former committee chair, have introduced patent reform legislation. A bipartisan majority of the Committee advanced the legislation last April. In the months since, Leahy, Hatch, and Senators Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the Committee’s ranking Republican, and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), and Ted Kaufman (D-Del.) have continued to work toward an agreement to make the legislation ready for Senate consideration.

“[The] US Patent Reform [is] promoting cheap patents,” argues the president of the FFII, “good rebate for patent trolls, 75% price reduction.” It sure seems reasonable to argue that the patent reform is a lost cause. Those in control of this system are mostly lawyers, not engineers. According to this patent lawyer blog (floridapatentlawyerblog.com), software patents are still (currently) allowed, even post-Bilski.

In one of its last decisions of today, the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) reversed a Patent Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. §101 non-statutory subject matter rejection of a key Invatron Systems invention. As a Miami Patent Attorney, this case was interesting because I haven’t seen any BPAI decisions regarding 35 U.S.C. §101, much less a decision that invokes Bilski, in a while.

At issue was an Invatron Systems claim pertaining to a scale for weighing items, wherein the scale included a computer that performed a series of steps, such as providing a coupon. The Examiner found the claims recite a method of purely mental steps, not tied to another statutory class. The Appellants contended the claimed method recites steps including providing a coupon to the customer and that these steps cannot be performed purely mentally since there is no way to provide a coupon without the coupon being physically inputted into the weigh station display.

[...]

As such, claim 17 required a specific structure that captures, stores, and displays specific data. This specific structure ties the recited method to a particular machine, in that the method recites how to operate a weigh station with a weigh station display. Since there is a particular machine required, claim 17 satisfies the machine prong of the machine-or-transformation test and the transformation prong need not be evaluated.

[...]

The lesson learned in this case is that although a claim may not explicitly and positively recite a structural element, the claim may require a specific structure to perform the steps of the claim. If that structure satisfies the machine prong of the machine-or-transformation test, an Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. §101 non-statutory subject matter rejection may be reversed under Bilski.

ACTA

The ACTA encompasses patents, as we last showed about a week ago. It’s just policy laundering for the big companies. The “European Parliament reserves its right to challenge ACTA in front of the European Court of Justice,” shows the FFII’s president, who also found out that “DeGucht tries to keep the European Parliament happy on ACTA” [1, 2]. He cites this article from IP Watch about ACTA. Check out the following part:

IIPA drew commentary from internet rights groups and open source software proponents by saying that government procurement policies encouraging or mandating the use of open source software were akin to piracy. The IIPA suggested Brazil, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam be put on USTR watch lists for policies favouring open source software, saying it limited the ability of proprietary software to compete.

Philip Morris said the increasing number of countries proposing to adopt plain packaging for cigarettes, or having heath warnings covering more than 50 percent of cigarette packaging is worrisome, as it might infringe trademark rights, and encourage “illicit trade in tobacco products.” The cigarette maker called for their IP rights to be protected and enforced in a number of countries, arguing that “these initiatives, which are not based on any solid scientific evidence that they contribute to legitimate public health objectives, would effectively constitute an expropriation of some of the world’s most valuable trademarks without the payment of adequate compensation to manufacturers.”

The Free Software Foundation called for an end to digital rights management software, which they said prevents users from freely enjoying their purchases and are almost always incompatible with free software.

The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) said that IP rights were wrongly considered to be mainly the concern of sectors such as pharmaceuticals, software, and entertainment. International counterfeiting and piracy is a “mainstream and Main Street issue for US manufacturers,” they said. The specific focus of NAM in 2010 is “four Cs”: counterfeiting, customs, cooperation internationally and China.

Agricultural technology company Monsanto complained about patent backlogs in Argentina and Brazil, which it said delays their ability to enter the market and enforce rights on their products, and about government procurement that favours locally owned or registered IP in China. The European Union’s recent trend to “unduly broaden breeder’s exemptions” will undermine IP rights on plants, Monsanto said. Breeders exemptions are intended to protect plant varieties while not restricting follow-on innovation by people other than the original rights holder.

Watch what Monsanto — with all of its sickening business practices [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] — is doing there. Also see the role of IIPA. It is related to what we wrote in [1, 2, 3]. “IIPA suggested Brazil, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand be put on USTR watch list for policies favouring open source,” writes the president of the FFII. ?

Categories: News

Response to Red Hat FUD from Canonical’s COO Matt Asay

Wed, 03/10/2010 - 02:14

Summary: A dissection of unfounded suggestions that Red Hat will lose its independence because Novell is dying

IT is no secret that we distrust Matt Asay, who currently links to fluff from Microsoft's shill Eric Savitz. Based on this shill, he then assumes that Novell’s serious troubles as of late [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] are likely to spell doom for Red Hat as an independent company. But these are totally unrelated events; if anything, Novell dissipating would give more room for Red Hat to expand, not to be acquired. Asay is a very clever guy, so why does he spread such FUD about Red Hat? One possibility that crossed our minds is that such hasty/hopeful/awful predictions would work well for the company he helps manage now, namely Canonical. What’s with his recent headline that says (with a question mark, as usual), “When will Microsoft sue Google over Linux?” Such a headline is not helpful and it sometimes seems like he just wants traffic with headlines like these.

“Asay is a very clever guy, so why does he spread such FUD about Red Hat?”Our reader Brandon says that it sounds like Asay is “a conspiracy theorist now” (because of the speculative, provocative headlines). But anyway, the criticism in general ought to be tied to other things. Asay is also routinely citing lobbyists for software patents (maybe unknowingly) and sucking up to Gartner, which is corrupt and better off ignored. You needn’t play nice with crooks like Gartner, you should expose them instead.

We apologise for not being fans of Canonical’s current COO, but why lie or keep silent about it? In the forums we refer to him as “Mac Asay” because of his love for Apple, which is currently his competitor. Is this behaviour (from the news) the type of thing that GNU/Linux should be imitating?

Reader: Steve Jobs says no tethering between iPad and iPhone

Steve Jobs appears to have fired off a tersely worded email reply to a user in Sweden who asked whether the WiFi-only iPad could be tethered to the iPhone: “No.”

Apple retards its own products and does not listen to users, as usual.

Put together with Apple’s lawsuit against GNU/Linux [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], Apple should be abandoned, not taken as an example. Apple is a niche product for spree-happy people with more taste for GUIs, not technical merit that includes powerful file systems, centralised software management, and frequent updates. Bar marketing, Ubuntu beats Mac OS X in many areas. Making GNU/Linux “more like the Mac” (even with a new default theme that begs to suggest so) will give GNU/Linux the reputation of “cheap Windows/Mac” and that’s not a way to win the market’s respect. ?

Categories: News

Ubuntu One Adds Mono Bindings

Wed, 03/10/2010 - 01:29

Summary: Mono lock-in potentially increased due to Novell’s Banshee in Ubuntu GNU/Linux

OUR reader Ryan has shown us this new page, which according to him, brings Ubuntu One closer to Mono (there is also the increased dependency due to gbrainy [1, 2]). The page says:

libubuntuone (0.2.100-0ubuntu1) lucid; urgency=low

* New upstream release.
– Added mono bindings
* debian/control
– added build depends needed for the mono bindings
– added mono bindings
[Jo Shields]
* debian/patches/use_debian_cli_policy_0.7_dir.patch
– Follow debian CLI policy
* debian/rules
– Added libubuntuone1.0-cil
— Ken VanDine <email address hidden> Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:07:59 -0500

Jono Bacon from Canonical explains to us that “they are just mono bindings – so it works in Banshee, but we don’t ship the mono bindings on the disc.” Ryan replies with: “So Banshee brings in the offending bindings for Ubuntu One? Or will or something?”

Bacon explains that “there has been some work upstream to have support for U1 [Ubuntu One] in Banshee, but not sure if it will be in the upstream build… as we ship RB [RhythmBox], we don’t ship the bindings on the disc… as we don’t need to.”

The main issue that we have with Banshee is that only Novell customers can use it safely because of the limitations in Microsoft's "Community Promise" (MCP). ?

Categories: News

IRC: #boycottnovell @ FreeNode: March 9th, 2010

Wed, 03/10/2010 - 01:19

Read the log

Enter the IRC channel now

To use your own IRC client, join channel #boycottnovell in FreeNode.

Categories: News

IDG Gives a Platform for Microsoft’s Familiar Attack Dogs (and Former Employees) to Smear GNU/Linux

Wed, 03/10/2010 - 01:14

Summary: Formerly-paid Microsoft employee and technical evangelist Michael Gartenberg belittles GNU/Linux again, this time through IDG

IN OUR PREVIOUS post we showed that the market share of GNU/Linux can easily be misrepresented due to quiet deployments that receive no proper attention because Linux and GNU have no public relations departments with advertisements and such conventional means of mind control.

Another vector of mind control (promotion and ridicule) consists of paid marketing people and pushers whom Mirosoft labels “technical evangelists” (TEs for short) and pays full wages. We covered these before [1, 2] (with concrete proof and confirmation) because Boycott Novell was among their victims.

A regular basher of GNU/Linux makes his appearance again. He is no stranger to us because we gave an example of his mischiefs in:

That is former Microsoft employee (evangelist) Michael Gartenberg, who merely does that “anti-Linux” job once again (as he does every now and then, using similar arguments). He also pretends to care about GNU/Linux, by starting with “I’d love to see viable alternatives to the current mainstream operating systems.”

“It’s not reporting, it’s opinionated placements in disguise, daemonising one’s professional rival.”This is the equivalent of “I like Linux, but…”

It’s a lie with which the author tries to gain some credibility to begin with. It was only yesterday (or earlier today, depending on geography) that we wrote about the Microsoft-affiliated “Linux curious” persona attacking more often than before.

“Linux on the desktop: Still not happening,” says the former Microsoft TE over at ComputerWorld today. Shame on IDG for publishing this nonsense despite the obvious yet undisclosed conflict of interests. It’s either malicious or IDG was bamboozled again (IDG relies on Microsoft as a large revenue stream [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]). IDG might as well pass over some writing responsibilities to Microsoft’s many PR agencies. It’s not reporting, it’s opinionated placements in disguise, daemonising one’s professional rival.

Last week we wrote about how big statistics firms produce and spread lies that benefit those who pay them [1, 2]. Here is a decent new post which explains the role of money.

Oh Linux, how shall I count thy installs?

[...]

I have also heard it said that 76.3% of people believe that you put a percentage sign behind any random number they will believe it to be true.

Research and marketing companies especially love statistics. That is how they make their money by providing the numbers to make their paying customers feel good. Yet there is the old adage GIGO, which means Garbage In, Garbage Out. It seems to me that just about all of the numbers regarding operating system installs fall into that GIGO category.

Of course bloggers, journalists and article writers take those numbers and spin them into fanciful stories for their readers to eat up like so many cream puffs. These fevered outpourings of fanatical minds are often used to show how their operating system has the most market share and consequently is the bees knees and of course everyone should be using it.

Where do these statistics come from? Most of the time it comes from sales data provided by the companies supplying the operating systems and this is where the problem lies. This is because while companies of proprietary operating systems actually rent their products, open source operating systems are not. So any statistics regarding operating system market share are automatically bogus and can only be used for FUD campaigns.

What about Web sites that are not included in those Microsoft-sponsored aggregations of logs, such as this new one?

Operating System on WWWUSE on W3Counter Windows XP 28.00% 53.60% Linux 20.00% 1.55% Windows 7 18.00% 10.66% Windows Vista 16.00% 20.07% Mac OS X 13.00% 8.12% Unknown 3.00% under 1% Windows 2003 1.00% 1.01% iPhone OSX 0.60% 0.75% Android 0.20% 0.10% Windows 2000 0.10% 0.43% All Microsoft 63.10% 85.77% All no Microsoft 36.80% 14.23%

As a side note, Alex Brown, Jesper Lund Stocholm, and Microsoft employees are flirting at the moment in Twitter, promoting their agenda for Microsoft lock-in. We won’t go into it on this occasion. The important point to remember is that Microsoft is getting very desperate. It relies on known allies attacking GNU/Linux with lies that they repeat over and over again. Lies need to be rejected. Tolerating them only helps them spread. ?

“I’d put the Linux phenomenon really as threat No. 1.”

–Steve Ballmer, 2001

Categories: News
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