54582571
submission
TrueSatan writes:
Previously devices have either been of an heart-assist type or short term heart replacements. Physicians at the Georges Pompidou European Hospital in Paris have inserted a heart made by the French Carmat company. The heart features bovine tissue components used to reduce the clot forming tendencies of fully artificial units and is intended to allow greater freedom of movement to the patient than previous, short-term use, units permitted. It is powered by external, wearable, lithium-ion batteries and is approximately 3 times heavier than a typical (European) human heart though the manufacturer intends to reduce the weight and size of the unit so as to allow use by smaller recipients in particular most women and men from areas of the world where average body size is less than white/caucasian averages...they specify India and China though this is hardly an exclucive clientelle.
50089397
submission
TrueSatan writes:
Blogging platform Tumblr has issued a Cease and desist notice to http://istumblrdown.com/ a rather trivial and harmless site that simply offered status updates for Tumblr. The site owner claims this to be symptomatic of Tumblr's disregard for users needs quoting http://zachinglis.com/posts/why-tumblr-sucks and their fixation on banning users rather than any more positive improvements they might make to their platform. http://www.dailydot.com/news/missing-e-banned-tumblr/
43916843
submission
TrueSatan writes:
Notorious copyright troll Prenda Law have sent a subpoena to Wordpress attempting to force the disclosure of all IP addresses related to two Wordpress hosted sites that specialise in monitoring and encouraging action against copyright trolling. The sites in question are http://fightcopyrighttrolls.com/ and http://dietrolldie.com/ . These sites state their aims as "To keep the public and fellow victims informed and to ensure that through activism, trolls make as little money as possible."...aims which almost anyone bar a copyright troll, or lawyer acting for one, might well applaud.
Prenda Law's demand is not for a subset of addresses that might have posted in a manner that could be construed as legally defamatory but for all IP addresses that have accessed these sites irrespective of the use made of them.
Prenda Law have filed three defamation lawsuits already http://fightcopyrighttrolls.com/2013/03/04/copyright-trolls-prenda-law-paul-duffy-and-john-steele-commence-three-lawsuits-v-paul-godfread-alan-cooper-and-our-community/ against the individuals who run fightcopyrighttrolls and one has been dismissed http://fightcopyrighttrolls.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/gov-uscourts-flsd-416314-6-0.pdf
Dietrolldie release the following warning:
“As there is a possibility that a release could occur, the public IP address (date/time stamp) could fall into the hands of Prenda. I would expect that they would then try to cross-reference the IP address with their list of alleged BitTorrent infringement IP addresses,” .
“If you have ever gone to this site or Fightcopyrighttrolls.com since 1 January 2011, you may want to contact WordPress and tell them you want them to refuse this overly broad request and at least wait until the issue of the case being removed to the Federal court is answered, before releasing ANY information,” DTD concludes.
43855155
submission
TrueSatan writes:
Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday said the suicide death of internet activist Aaron Swartz was a “tragedy,” but the hacking case against the 26-year-old was “a good use of prosecutorial discretion.” The attorney general was testifying at a Justice Department oversight hearing before the Senate Judiciary committee and was facing terse questioning from Sen. John Cornyn (D-Texas).
Holder stated: “I think that’s a good use of prosecutorial discretion to look at the conduct, regardless of what the statutory maximums were and to fashion a sentence that was consistent with what the nature of the conduct was. And I think what those prosecutors did in offering 3, 4, zero to 6 was consistent with that conduct.”
Notwithstanding Holder’s testimony, Massachusetts federal prosecutors twice indicted Swartz for the alleged hacking, once in 2011 on four felonies and again last year on 13 felonies. The case included hacking charges under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act that was passed in 1984 to enhance the government’s ability to prosecute hackers who accessed computers to steal information or to disrupt or destroy computer functionality.
43820579
submission
TrueSatan writes:
Miguel de Icaza, via his blog, has declared his intention to move to the Apple Mac platform stating his main reasons as being, "To me, the fragmentation of Linux as a platform, the multiple incompatible distros, and the incompatibilities across versions of the same distro were my Three Mile Island/Chernobyl."
Reaction to his announcement includes http://blogs.kde.org/2013/03/05/gnome-founder-leaves from Jonathan Riddell of Blue Systems/Kubuntu.
Given Miguel de Icaza past asociation with Microsoft (CodePlex Foundation) and the Free Software Foundation's founder Richard Stallman's description of de Icaza as a "traitor to the free software community" http://www.osnews.com/story/22225/RMS_De_Icaza_Traitor_to_Free_Software_Community this might be seen as more of a blow to Microsoft than to GNU/Linux.
43807929
submission
TrueSatan writes:
In a highly detailed decision the UK Court of Appeal has rejected Tesla's appeal against an eartlier ruling by a lower court that, too, rejected Tesla's case. Reading through the decision it is clear that the judge saw Tesla's case as lacking sufficient detail and specific instances of proof to support each claim. The judge stated that that Tesla's chances of a successful appeal, should the case have gone to trial, were insufficiently high to justify holding a trial. He stated that Tesla's case had no real chance of success and in many notes picked appart Tesla's legal team's arguments...that said he did not say that Top Gear were right or justified in portraying Tesla's vehicle in the way they did merely that there wasn't a legal case for an appeal.
One of the key flaws in Tesla's case, according to the judicial decision, was Tesla's inability to show that actual pecuniary harm, with detailed financial figues, had occured.
43711679
submission
TrueSatan writes:
In an utterly craven move the Canadian government has launched a bill http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&DocId=6013262 to bring Canada into full compliance with the discredited, US led, ACTA agreement...an agreement to which most of the world does not agree. To further pressure the acceptance of this awful bill the US, on the same day, released their Trade Policy and Agenda Annual Report http://www.ustr.gov/sites/default/files/AnnualReport Final2013.pdf that calls on Canada to comply with ACTA obligations. For ACTA to take effect it would require six signatures from the major economic blocks and it appears to have no remaining possibility of getting them yet the US, and now Canada, continue to push it forward.
The Canadian bill features claims based on spurious health and safety concerns that have been thoroughly debunked by a US report http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-423 , Despite these claims being so dubious they remain a cornerstone of the Canadian bill. Similarly the claimed losses due to counterfeiting ($30 Billion US) stated in the bill have also been debunked and were plucked from thin air as 3-4% of US/Canadian trade http://cacn.ca/PDF/4-JMyers-CME.pdf without any substantiation of why the figure should be applied.
The Canadian bill seeks to give border guards an unprecedented level of control without the possibility of judicial oversight and with any contentious decisions being at the whim of copyright holders discretion...guilty until proven innocent and with no chance to prove oneself innocent.
Despite a lack of evidence to suggest that Canada is a major source of counterfeit product the bill puts at risk fully legal parralel import of generic items..pharmaceuticals for instance see https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsites.google.com%2Fsite%2Fiipenforcement%2Facta-section-analysis.
The bill would also change copyright infringement from a civil dispute to a breach of criminal law.
Pity Canada if this bill is enacted!
42420585
submission
TrueSatan writes:
Thankfully Auernheimer doesn't appear suicidal, no thanks to US prosecutors, yet he has been under attack for an his act of altering an API URL that revealed a set of user data and posting details of same.
"In June of 2010 there was an AT&T webserver on the open Internet. There was an API on this server, a URL with a number at the end. If you incremented this number, you saw the next iPad 3G user email address. I thought it was egregiously negligent for AT&T to be publishing a complete target list of iPad 3G owners, and I took a sample of the API output to a journalist at Gawker."
http://gawker.com/5559346/apples-worst-security-breach-114000-ipad-owners-exposed
Auernheimer has been under investigation from that point onwards with restrictions on his freedom and ability to earn a living that are grossly disproportionate to any percieved crime. This is just as much a case of legislative over reach and the unfettered power of prosecutors as was Swartz's case.
40975535
submission
TrueSatan writes:
Perhaps a sign of our troubled times or a sign that BSD is becoming less relevant to modern computing needs: the FreeBSD project has sought $500,00 by year end to allow it to continue to offer to fund and manage projects, sponsor FreeBSD events, Developer Summits and provide travel grants to FreeBSD developers but with the end of this year fast approaching it has raised just over $280,000...far short of its target.
40973417
submission
TrueSatan writes:
Pirate bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm is set to be released from solitary confinement but is still to serve the remainder of a 1 year sentence relating to Pirate Bay activities. 5 months remain of that sentence and they are to be served in a normal prison with far less restrictions on his confinement...assuming no new charges are brought against him.
He had been accused of involvement in the hacking of Swedish IT firm Logica but no charges have been substantiated in this case. He was later implicated in a second case but, once more, no charges have been substantiated against him http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founder-arrested-again-on-suspicion-of-new-hacking-fraud-offenses-121110/ . Given that his solitary confinement has not resulted, thus far, in additional charges and that it is far and above the intended sentence in the original case one might have thought that some reduction in sentence or other leniency was more than his due but this doesn't appear to be forthcoming.
40927379
submission
TrueSatan writes:
Bloomberg report that Apple and Google have partnered to make a more then $500 million bid for the Kodak patent portfolio. The bid relates to Kodak's 1,100 imaging patents.
Kodak obtained commitments for $830 million exit financing last month, contingent on its sale of the digital imaging patents for at least $500 million.
This is likely to be an opening bid with the final figure being far larger...by comparison a group including Apple, Microsoft Corp. and Research in Motion Ltd. bought Nortel Networks Corp.’s more than 6,000 patents for $4.5 billion out of bankruptcy last year. Google lost the auction for those patents after making an initial offer of $900 million.
40559179
submission
TrueSatan writes:
Matthew Garrett, formerly of Red Hat, is providing a shim bootloader that will allow installation/booting of secure boot enabled computers. The shim is designed to chain boot GRUB (Grand Universal Bootloader) without the need for a distribution to obtain a key from Microsoft.
Garrett asks that further contacts regarding the shim be made to him and not to Red Hat as he no longer works there and they may not have knowledge of the product.
40539811
submission
TrueSatan writes:
Finally Bradley Manning's military court case starts and he's only had to wait 2 years to be heard. Manning claims that while remanded in custody in Iraq he "passed out due to the heat" and "contemplated suicide" The United Nations special rapporteur on torture found Manning's detention was "cruel and inhuman." Manning wants the case against him to be dismissed because his pre-trial punishment was so severe. Manning's attorney, David coombs, has released an 11 page letter detailing the conditions of Manning's confinement. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/11/stripped-naked-bradley-manning-prison.
Manning offered guilty pleas to minor charges but not to spying, aiding American enemies or treason and those pleas have been accepted by the judge.
38167503
submission
TrueSatan writes:
Reminiscent of buggy whip manufacturers taking legal action against auto makers the former US Register of Copyrights Ralph Oman has given an amicus brief in the Aero case http://jstyre.com/misc/Oman_Amicus_20120921.pdf stating that all new technology should be presumed illegal unless and until approved by Congress. He goes further in stating that new technology providers should be forced to apply to Congress to prove that they don't upset existing business models.
37957979
submission
TrueSatan writes:
A leak from the Clean IT project reveals how it has been subverted from its original, much more innocuous, goals into a surveilance horror story with democrating freedoms and personal rights being the victims.
