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The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

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MacBook Pro means being literaly locked out of your own computer | 227 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Perhaps there is hope after all
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 12:05 AM EDT
Members of QPAC [Queen’s Printer Association of Canada] from across Canada were in town for their annual conference. Last Saturday, QPAC co-hosted a hackathon using legislative data with the Open Data Society of BC, a community group of developers passionate about open data. The developers presented the applications they created at the hackathon to the QPAC conference attendees Tuesday.

Their work was proof that when given the opportunity, developers can create easy-to-use applications that provide citizens improved access to legislation.

Loren Mullane, DataBC Team

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

New Scientist: The man who gave Linux to the world
Authored by: macrorodent on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 01:14 AM EDT
Guess who is being interviewed here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428680.200-the-man-w ho-gave-linux-to-the-world.html

Not much new for those already familiar with Linux and open Source, but a good intro to other folks.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Linus Torvalds: Linux succeeded thanks to selfishness and trust
Authored by: eamacnaghten on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 04:11 AM EDT

An interesting article. Not so much new content, but it is on the BBC web site which is main stream.

Linus Torvalds: Linux succeeded thanks to selfishness and trust

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Software Patent Discussion Thread n/t
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 08:27 AM EDT
RAS

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 08:54 AM EDT

Continuing a long string of similar cases, the Supreme Court will review a New York federal court decision that decided, in short, that the first-sale doctrine does not apply to any copyrighted product manufactured abroad. That case concerns textbooks.

John Wiley & Sons, a textbook publisher, sells expensive versions of the textbooks here and less expensive versions abroad. Supap Kirtsaeng, a foreign graduate student at University of Southern California, decided to help pay for his schooling by having relatives buy him copies of the foreign versions abroad, send them to him, whereupon he'd sell those books on eBay to willing students. He'd make money, the students would save money, but Wiley might have fewer sales of its pricey American versions. The case is styled Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons.

Both the District and Second Circuit courts held that any product manufactured abroad is not subject to the first-sale doctrine.

The Atlantic

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide' - Thanks PJ for letting us post as Anon's
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 10:45 AM EDT
When the nothing-to-hide argument is unpacked, and its underlying assumptions examined and challenged, we can see how it shifts the debate to its terms, then draws power from its unfair advantage.

The nothing-to-hide argument speaks to some problems but not to others. It represents a singular and narrow way of conceiving of privacy, and it wins by excluding consideration of the other problems often raised with government security measures. When engaged directly, the nothing-to-hide argument can ensnare, for it forces the debate to focus on its narrow understanding of privacy.

But when confronted with the plurality of privacy problems implicated by government data collection and use beyond surveillance and disclosure, the nothing-to-hide argument, in the end, has nothing to say.

Daniel J. Solove, The Chronicle of Higher Education

Daniel J. Solove is a professor of law at George Washington University. This essay is an excerpt from his new book, Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff Between Privacy and Security, published this month by Yale University Press.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Linus Torvalds shares Millennium Technology Prize
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 10:56 AM EDT
He shares the honour with Dr Shinya Yamanaka, a stem cell scientist.

Technology Academy Finland said Mr Torvalds's achievements had "had a great impact on shared software development, networking and the openness of the web".

It is the first time the bi-annual award has been split. Each man receives 600,000 euros ($752,000; £483,000).

BBC

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

lattice vibrations = draw 30 picowatts of power and produce 69 picowatts of light
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 11:39 AM EDT
The researchers chose a light-emitting diode with a small band gap, and applied such small voltages that it acted like a normal resistor. With each halving of the voltage, they reduced the electrical power by a factor of 4, even though the number of electrons, and thus the light power emitted, dropped by only a factor of 2. Decreasing the input power to 30 picowatts, the team detected nearly 70 picowatts of emitted light. The extra energy comes from lattice vibrations, so the device should be cooled slightly, as occurs in thermoelectric coolers.
hipstomp, Core77

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

MacBook Pro means being literaly locked out of your own computer
Authored by: Gringo_ on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 12:57 PM EDT

Article

The device uses proprietary screws (which mean that you'll need a special screwdriver just to open the bottom cover), the RAM is soldered to the logic board, and there is no traditional hard-drive enclosure, just an array of proprietary flash storage.

What's more, the battery is glued — rather than screwed — into the case, and the display assembly is completely fused.

As a software developer, computers are the tools of my trade. With a former background in electronics, I take great pride in fixing or upgrading my own computers. I would hate a MacBook Pro. I would feel locked out of my own computer.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Microsoft Education©
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 02:44 PM EDT
"Examining body AQA has teamed with Microsoft to create a new computer science GCSE to address demands from the IT industry to develop more candidates with the necessary IT skills .. We are working with Microsoft to provide support and continuing professional development for teachers," link

"To enhance student learning with industry required skills and certification the course content for AQAs GCSE in Computer Science is aligned with the new MTA certifications .. MTA is a new entry-level credential from Microsoft .. students can choose from a variety of Microsoft courses including gaming, mobile app, software development, networking and web development" link

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Android: not-so-open open source
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 02:45 PM EDT
"How open is Android in reality? The system now runs on more than 300 million smartphones and tablets, made by all sorts of companies. It primarily targets the ARM platform, according to Christopher Neugebauer, a young Tasmanian developer, who presented a talk on Android to the island's LUG a couple of months ago.

Android has a Linux kernel at its core. "There's the kernel itself which talks to your hardware; there's a C library (in the case of Android, it's called 'Bionic' (most Linux distros use Glibc, from the GNU Project) which provides a useful interface to the kernel; and then there's the user space. The difference is that the userspace is an entirely custom one developed by the Android project, so it doesn't, for example, include X11 for drawing GUIs, but instead it uses its own custom layer," he says.

The Linux kernel, of course, is released under the GNU General Public Licence which says that any changes made to the code have to be released whenever the changed version is distributed. But when it comes to the other elements of Android, things do become a little murkier."
Read the entire 3 page article here - itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/open-sauce/55247-android-not-so-o pen-open-source.


[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

How Microsoft and Yahoo are selling politicians access to you
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 05:34 PM EDT
The Web giants provide users no notification that their information is being used for political targeting. Click here

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Lawmakers Weigh in on Microsoft v. Motorola Fight at ITC
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 05:36 PM EDT
Lawmakers Weigh in on Microsoft v. Motorola Fight at ITC

If those lawmakers would have done a better job reforming the patent system, they would not have to lose time with letters.

And, by the way, if the ITC is involved, you are talking about import, whatever the music that sounds.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Speech app removed from App[le] Store over patent dispute
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 06:07 PM EDT
"Earlier this year, I wrote a story about Maya, a four-year-old girl who used an app called Speak for Yourself to help her communicate with the outside world. Maya’s mother, Dana Nieder, preferred the app over more established augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices because it worked on an iPad, which was easier for Maya to handle, and it was cheaper — $299 plus the cost of an iPad, as opposed to bulkier devices that can cost up to $8,000".

"The app is being threatened by a joint lawsuit from Prentke Romich Company (PRC) and Semantic Compaction Systems, which claim that Heidi LoStracco and Renee Collender — the two speech pathologists behind Speak for Yourself — infringed on over 100 of their software patents. LoStracco and Collender fought back, claiming in court that the lawsuit is baseless". link

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

The silence of Maya
Authored by: MadTom1999 on Thursday, June 14 2012 @ 02:39 AM EDT
Does anyone know about this speech app for the iPad? linky If this app is really as simple as it seems anyone want to spend a few minutes making an open source android one?

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

No Fishing in Texas
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 14 2012 @ 02:50 AM EDT
Court Denies Petition To Question Zuckerberg and Banks About Alleged Facebook IPO Fraud

Today a Texas court dismissed a petition asking for “oral depositions and requests for documents” from Facebook to determine if it defrauded investors in its IPO last month.

The judge ruled that the plaintiffs needed to already have grounds for a complaint against Facebook, and could not use a petition for discovery in order to figure out the basis for a lawsuit

Josh Constine, TechCrunch

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Cryptic Message
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 14 2012 @ 03:44 AM EDT
If the sky goes dark today (or tomorrow for that matter), remember those
immortal words written in large friendly letters, referred to far and wide
across the galaxy: DON'T PANIC!

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Nokia to cut 10,000 jobs
Authored by: say_what on Thursday, June 14 2012 @ 08:27 AM EDT
Clicky
The company also warned that increased competition in the smartphone sector would hit its financial results in the second and third quarters, causing its operating loss margin to be bigger than previously forecast.

---
A cheap solution that doesn't work is neither,
Say What?

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

More Nokia Disinformation
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 14 2012 @ 12:18 PM EDT
The Danish daily 'Politiken' (The Policy) has a small item on Nokia's fall from
grace

(Story from Danish news agency Ritzau (in Danish) here:
http://politiken.dk/tjek/digitalt/forbrugerelektronik/ECE1656369/nokia-er-roeget
-fra-top-til-bund-paa-kun-fire-aar/)

I've provided a homespun translation below

*******************************************

NOKIA HAS GONE FROM TOP TO BOTTOM IN ONLY FOUR YEARS

Once it was a Nokia the smart, the hip, and the fast whipped out when the phone
rang.

Those days are long gone. American Apple with iPhone and Korean Samsung with
Android has long ago left Nokia and their smartphone (the) Lumina in the dust.

"What happened to Nokia, to put it in simple terms, was that a man in a
turleneck and round glasses came down from the mountain with the holy
phone", says Nikolaj Sonne, gadget expert and host on the Danish
Broadcasting (DR) program So ein ding.

It is Apple, iPhone and Steve Jobs the TV host refers to. And history has shown
that Nokias bosses read the situation the wrong way.

"Because they said at Nokia -'No, that there wonn't matter' and they were
simply asleep at the wheel", thinks Nikolaj Sonne.

Nokia has made a lot of good phones:

"They wow'ed the whole world with the N95, which had camera, GPS, music
player - it could do everything. The problem was that they kept adding
functionality to their phones without looking at the user interface. They got
too hard to use", opinions Nikolaj Sonne.

And the numbers says it all. Samsung sold 90 million mobile phones in Q1 2012,
of which 44 million were so-called smart phones. Nokia sold 83 million mobile
phones of which 12 million were smart phones.

Samsung's sales of smart phones gives it a marketshare of around 31 percent.
Apple sold 35 million smart phones, adding up to a marketshare of 24 percent.

Nokia, which Thursday announced they will lay off 10.000 people globally, are
trying to once more become the preferred choice for customers - but without any
luck:

"In February thay presented a phone with a fantastic camera but with an OS
that was essentially dead. And nobody wants to buy a phone for which there are
no (downloadable) apps", Nikolaj Sonne points out.

******************************************

Notice how any mentioning of Microsoft is deftly avoided.

A few day back, another story bemoaned the lack of market share for former
market leader Nokia - also without any reference to Microsoft.

If I was into conspiracy theories, I might see a pattern in this and think
disinformation campaign...

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

"Statistics can help in all walks of life."
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 14 2012 @ 07:01 PM EDT
In most papers we at Ars cover, we'll be pleasantly surprised to find a single clever turn of phrase that has survived multiple rounds of editing and peer review.

So it was an unexpected surprise to come across a paper where the authors, all professors of economics, have spent the entire text with tongues so firmly planted in their cheeks that they threatened to burst out, alien-style. It surprised me even more to find it in a journal that is produced on behalf of the Royal Statistical Society and American Statistical Association. Credit to the statisticians, though, for the journal's clever name: Significance.

What topic allowed the economists to cut loose? Bank robberies—or more specifically, the finances thereof.

John Timmer, ars technica

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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