Showing headlines posted by Ridcully

Ten years ago, SCO decided to sue IBM and started a series of legal attacks on Linux. Their cases were pathetically weak, but CIOs and CFOs didn't know that. Thanks to paralegal turned legal journalist, Pamela "PJ" Jones and her Website Groklaw, executives who wanted to know what was really what with SCO's multitude of lawsuits soon learned of the FUD behind SCO's claims. SCO and its silent backer Microsoft hopes for profits and slowing down Linux's corporate success would come to nothing, and SCO ended up in bankruptcy.

For those looking at new static code analysis tools, OCLint is an open-source utility powered by LLVM's Clang foundation to provide a variety of features when inspecting C, Objective-C, and C++ code-bases. In recent testing of OCLint for an internal C-based Phoronix code-base, OCLint proved to be quite useful...

The hilariously named "Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property" has finally released its report, an 84-page tome that's pretty bonkers. But amidst all that crazy, there's a bit that stands out as particularly insane: a proposal to legalize the use of malware in order to punish people believed to be copying illegally. The report proposes that software would be loaded on computers that would somehow figure out if you were a pirate, and if you were, it would lock your computer up and take all your files hostage until you call the police and confess your crime. This is the mechanism that crooks use when they deploy ransomware.

As described more fully below, we would affirm the district court’s judgment in its entirety and hold that the method, computer-readable medium, and corresponding system claims before us recite patent-ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101.

In essence, the USA Federal Circuit court has, in a majority (7/10) decision, affirmed that the software before the court cannot be patented. The ramifications of this decision are enormous and will affect software patents in general. One of the dissenting judges (Moore) wrote: “Let’s be clear: if all of these claims, including the system claims, are not patent-eligible, this case is the death of hundreds of thousands of patents, including all business method, financial system, and software patents as well as many computer implemented and telecommunications patents".

The software patentability row in New Zealand seems to have been settled with the release of new legislation by the government. In a move that's been welcomed locally by the IT industry, the government has clarified the original intention of the legislation, that software alone should not be patentable.

Medical centres, entertainment businesses, mechanic's workshops and advertising companies have been targeted by hackers and more than 100 Queensland businesses may have fallen victim to hackers holding their computer files to ransom according to the police. Once they gain access to a business's file system, the hackers encrypt the data on the server, lock it down and make it completely inaccessible. They then demand thousands of dollars for the return of the information.

THE Australian federal government has abandoned its long-standing commitment to introduce a national internet filter and will instead ban websites related only to child abuse. This whole plan was hatched by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy however it has been widely derided from the start. The chief executive of the Internet Industry Association, Peter Lee, welcomed the decision as ''a positive step''

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt has pointed to estimates that there are some 200,000 mobile patents with "complicated" and "overlapping" technical specifications. He further added that this ""literally prevents choice, prevents innovation. And I think that's a very bad outcome".

Samsung files documents requesting judgment as a matter of law, a new trial and remittitur; and also shows in detail how no reasonable jury could find what this jury did. Samsung asks for a new trial in the interests of justice.

Internet security researchers said Thursday they may have been mistaken about claims that mobile devices powered by Google Inc.’s Android operating system were hacked and used to send spam emails. Redmond's in there too, busily ramping up the spam label on Android.

After 20 years of service, France's precursor to the Internet is finally shutting down. At its peak, about 9 million Minitel sets were connected for booking services, chats, games and buying and selling items/stock/etc. or paying bills. The little b&w sets connected with a modem over telephone lines. There will be 400,000 sets shut down.

Judge Alsup has only just ruled that API's are not subject to copyright protection. This story is only just breaking and other details have not yet been reported.

The highest court in Europe, the EU Court of Justice, has just ruled that social networks cannot be forced into installing filtering systems to prevent the “unlawful use” of copyrighted works.

Comedian Louis CK has proved a point: People are willing to pay a reasonable amount of money for DRM-free content from a performer they love, even though it would be trivial for them to pirate the same content for free.

This is a follow-up article on a previous document in the same line of argument. This new article aims to provide a simpler explanation on why software can be considered as a branch of mathematics and it is written in language that can be understood by those who are not programmers, including journalists and lawyers. It is presented in two parts with Part I providing the logical argument and Part II providing the evidence. In the summary of Part I the author explains why current case law on software is factually erroneous and implies that correction of the situation will reflect on software patents.

Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility also has the implication that the purchase comes with a patent portfolio consisting of over 24,000 patents and pending patent applications world wide. Google's aims in the purchase would undoubtedly include the fact that this patent portfolio gives Google a much greater ability to defend itself against patent attacks by other players in the fiercely competitive and growing smartphone market.

Linus Torvalds has joined those who are stating that they really do not like the Gnome3 desktop. Linus states he is using Xfce ~ he thinks it's a step down from gnome2, but it’s a huge step up from gnome3; and Linus is not the only major Linux player who thinks Gnome3 is a backward step.

Rules outlawing the transfer of content from CDs or DVDs on to MP3 files and computers are set to be scrapped by the government. The changes apply to personal use and are compelled by the fact that 90% of the population are ignoring the current copyright rules.