Submission + - Japan Probe Finds Miswiring of Boeing 787 Battery (time.com)
The Transport Safety Board said in a report that the battery for the aircraft’s auxiliary power unit was incorrectly connected to the main battery that overheated, although a protective valve would have prevented power from the auxiliary unit from causing damage.
Flickering of the plane’s tail and wing lights after it landed and the fact the main battery was switched off led the investigators to conclude there was an abnormal current traveling from the auxiliary power unit due to miswiring.
Submission + - White House Petition Lobbies to Make Cell Phone Unlocking Legal (whitehouse.gov)
Submission + - Tech Leaders Create Most Lucrative Science Prize In History (ibtimes.com)
Submission + - Notification of server breach mistaken for phishing email (networkworld.com)
Submission + - The Two Big Problems with Online College Courses 2
Submission + - Top U.S. Stealth Jet Has to Talk to Allied Planes Over Unsecured Radio (wired.com)
Submission + - Dealing with an Advanced Wi-Fi Leech? 8
Submission + - Planetary Resources To 'Claim' Asteroids With Beacons (singularityhub.com)
Submission + - Astronomers find planet barely larger than Earth's Moon
Submission + - iOS Developer Site at Core of Facebook, Apple Watering Hole Attack (threatpost.com)
Submission + - CryptoCat creator "I am under surveillance, my computer has been backdoored " (nadim.cc)
If any agency is continuing to monitor me because of Cryptocat, you are invited to meet me under honest pretenses and have a cup of coffee with me. Just don’t lure me in with lies and don’t backdoor my computers. Be honest with me and I will have no problem discussing my work with you. I am not a criminal, I am an upstanding citizen. If you want answers, then contact me and be honest about it. You have nothing to fear from me.
In order not to cause unnecessary drama, to protect my privacy and to lessen my stress levels, I’m removing this blog post until further notice and investigation. This attracted way more attention that I wanted it to. I just wanted to protect myself, not cause a media uproar. Thank you everyone for your support. This is already a stressful situation and the huge level of attention to this blog post is just making everything more stressful to deal with.
Submission + - AutoDesk Accuses Non-profit User Forums of Trademark Infringement (revitforum.org)
Submission + - Oracle, Microsoft, BSA, Scott McNeally, and others all gang up against Google (groklaw.net) 1
Microsoft has filed one, together with EMC Corporation, and NetApp, Inc. Scott McNealy has filed one with Brian Sutphin. Can McNealy be a witness for Oracle at trial, which he was [PDF], and also file an amicus brief? Well, he has. The Picture Archive Council of America, Inc. has filed one with the Graphic Artists Guild. Also there's one from the BSA. And finally Eugene Spafford, Zhi Ding, and Lee A. Hollaar have filed an amicus in support of Oracle. Hollaar seems to file a lot of amicus briefs.
So why do these entities and individuals care about this Java API case, do you suppose?
Brian Sutphin was the VP at Sun Microsystem who in 2003 signed the deal with SCO Group's (then Caldera) then-CEO Darl McBride just days after Caldera filed its suit against IBM. I know. It kind of makes your skin crawl, doesn't it? He also testified at trial for Oracle. Both he and McNealy told the court with straight faces that Jonathan Schwartz's corporate blog was personal, not a company blog.
All filed on the same day. Less than a week after Oracle filed its appeal brief. Before Google even files its responding brief. Does it feel a little bit coordinated to you?
The company Oracle keeps these days takes one's breath away. Who would ever have predicted an Oracle-Microsoft buddy system?"
Submission + - Tizen not as Open Source, drops EFL to merge with Bada 1
Visiting Tizen 2 and Bada 2 platform web documentation is enough to notice that Tizen 2 native developer experience evolved into what was known as the Bada advanced featurephone OS. For a quick comparison, a simple screenshot has been published.
Moreover Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL) developers have been advertising strong Samsung's support for years. Now this support has been basically dropped in the middle of the changes that form Tizen 2.0.
Is there a chance for Tizen to become a real Linux operating system we all know, capable of running existing free software, not just HTML pages and Bada apps? There is IF the community takes over areas where Linux Foundation is passive. While there is no official support for these third-party frameworks, according to the explanation on the Tizen SDK page:
Tizen applications for mobile devices can be developed without relying on an official Tizen IDE as long as the application complies with Tizen packaging rules.
Still, is this declaration enough to gain trust in the community? Just before the release, Carsten Haitzler aka rasterman, Samsung's Principal Engineer working on Tizen and EFL guru in one person, showed some signs of irritation (an excerpt from an Tizen IRC log, original typos corrected):
tizen is not meego or maemo, it is not related
i've been working on this os now for like over 4 years
i have spent years saying "release ports to existing products"
no action, years saying what you say, i don't bother anymore
what will happen — will happen
i have no chance to change it because at least [in] samsung all decisions are top-down
ie. some executive with zero connection/knowledge of OSS is going to decide all the technical details
as i mentioned tizen is SLP [Samsung Linux Platform], SLP is a continuation of Limo
Limo is something that existed alongside and/or before maemo did
it has been in competition internally, no ball was picked up, it's a separate ball
it was renamed to tizen and put under a [Linux Foundation] banner and Intel then joined in
Intel has pushed for things to be much more open and to use OBS [Open Build System] and much infra that was used before for meego
[..]
tizen uses enlightenment and efl, thus why its then "zero porting":)
that doesn't mean you will be able to use efl in apps you port/write
i do this for my own amusement, YOU may be stuck with a phone that is locked down and that doesn't allow installation of native apps at all
Shortly after that rasterman shared his look at the openess of the Linux Foundation-backed project in more depth to fight some misinformation:
Tizen, and what is in it (technically), is controlled by/decided on by the TSG [Technical Steering Group]. The TSG is a committee of executives (Samsung and Intel — you can read up on it — Imad and JD). They decide what will happen, and that's how it works. It's a top-down thing with VP's in charge. How and what they decide is up to them entirely. I have no idea what they will decide, when or where. Well officially I don't. What I may, or may not know is simply rumour and not for me to disclose, as decisions are made by the executives in charge (as above) as they see fit (which is not here in public, like on these mailing lists, IRC etc.). This (Tizen) is not like open source projects (let's say like E/EFL, Qt, GTK+, Xorg, Linux Kernel etc.), where I, or any developer, is free to talk about plans for the future and work being done, (or for that matter even knows or can find out). I understand that you are coming from that perspective, and thus logically asking those questions here, expecting answers like you would with pretty much any OSS project, but Tizen is not like that.
On the day of the release once the secret has been disclosed, rasterman concluded the reason for frustration on the Tizen IRC channel to the fellow engineers:
jooncheol Open Services Platform !!!
jooncheol bada !!
jooncheol hmm
jooncheol bada...
jooncheol omg
Stskeeps looks like a good compromise, EFL on the inside, OSP on outside
raster hehe
* Stskeeps envisions raster being taken away in a white straightjacket to the funnyfarm
raster they did that years ago
raster i then escaped
raster and wrote a wm
raster and trust me
raster its not efl on the inside
raster efl is nothing mroe than a glorified wrapper around windows and then a simple surface compositor
Stskeeps sorry to hear that
raster everything else above that is not efl
raster so u may want to reserve judgment until u've seen it all
In addition to governance and technical aspects it becomes clear that Tizen's licensing model looks complicated at the moment. Tizen is presented as an open source and standards-based operating system with popular media praising its openness when compared to Android. However Tizen's SDK contains a mix of open and closed components released together under a non-open-source Samsung's licence.
What's typical in open projects driven by corporations, a number of components internally developed by Samsung such as calendar, task manager or music player are however released under the Flora License which is most likely incompatible with requirements of the Open Source Initiative. Next releases will hopefully resolve the issues to avoid irrelevance.