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Submission + - Software patents are crumbling, thanks to the Supreme Court (vox.com)

Submitted by walterbyrd
walterbyrd writes: This doesn't necessarily mean that all software patents are in danger — these are mostly patents that are particularly vulnerable to challenge under the new Alice precedent. But it does mean that the pendulum of patent law is now clearly swinging in an anti-patent direction. Every time a patent gets invalidated, it strengthens the bargaining position of every defendant facing a lawsuit from a patent troll.
Microsoft

Windows Tax Shot Down In Italy 421

Posted by timothy from the note-that-it's-not-a-tax dept.
An anonymous reader writes Italy's High Court has struck a blow to the practice of forcing non-free software on buyers of PCs and laptops. According to La Repubblica, the court ruled on Thursday that a laptop buyer was entitled to receive a refund for the price of the Microsoft Windows license on his computer. The judges sharply criticised the practice of selling PCs only together with a non-free operating system as "a commercial policy of forced distribution". The court slammed this practice as "monopolistic in tendency." It also highlighted that the practice of bundling means that end users are forced into using additional non-free applications due to compatibility and interoperability issues, whether they wanted these programs or not. "This decision is both welcome and long overdue", said Karsten Gerloff, President of the Free Software Foundation Europe. "No vendor should be allowed to cram non-free software down the throats of users."

Submission + - Windows tax shot down in Italy (fsfe.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Italy's High Court has struck a blow to the practice of forcing non-free software on buyers of PCs and laptops. According to La Repubblica, the court ruled on Thursday that a laptop buyer was entitled to receive a refund for the price of the Microsoft Windows license on his computer.

The judges sharply criticised the practice of selling PCs only together with a non-free operating system as "a commercial policy of forced distribution". The court slammed this practice as "monopolistic in tendency". It also highlighted that the practice of bundling means that end users are forced into using additional non-free applications due to compatibility and interoperability issues, whether they wanted these programs or not.

"This decision is both welcome and long overdue", said Karsten Gerloff, President of the Free Software Foundation Europe. "No vendor should be allowed to cram non-free software down the throats of users."

Submission + - Italy: High Court shoots down Windows tax (fsfe.org)

Submitted by FSFE
FSFE writes: Italy's High Court has struck a blow to the practice of forcing non-free software on buyers of PCs and laptops. According to La Repubblica, the court ruled on Thursday that a laptop buyer was entitled to receive a refund for the price of the Microsoft Windows license on his computer.

To learn more on how to refund your Windows visit — https://wiki.fsfe.org/WindowsT...

Submission + - Italy: High Court shoots down Windows tax (fsfe.org)

Submitted by jrepin
jrepin writes: Italy's High Court has struck a blow to the practice of forcing non-free software on buyers of PCs and laptops. The judges sharply criticised the practice of selling PCs only together with a non-free operating system as "a commercial policy of forced distribution". The court slammed this practice as "monopolistic in tendency". It also highlighted that the practice of bundling means that end users are forced into using additional non-free applications due to compatibility and interoperability issues, whether they wanted these programs or not.

Submission + - Stephen Hawking tries Linux powered Wheelchair made by Intel (themukt.com)

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: While media was crazy about a smart watch, Intel created a smart chair for disabled people. Stephen Hawking, one of the smartest brains on the planet, gave Intel’s Linux powered wheelchair a try and talked about it. The company showcased their ‘Connected Wheelchair’ at the ongoing Intel Developer Conference (IDF).

Submission + - City of Turin to Switch from Windows to Linux and Save €6M (zdnet.com)

Submitted by jrepin
jrepin writes: The municipality of Turin in Italy hopes to save 6 million Euro over five years by switching from Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux in all of its offices. The move will mean installing the open source operating system on 8,300 PCs, which will generate an immediate saving of roughly €300 per machine (almost €2.5m altogether, made up from the cost of Windows and Office licences) — a sum that will grow over the years as the need for the renewal of proprietary software licences vanishes, and the employees get used to the new machines.

Submission + - Net neutrality comments surge past 1.7M, an all-time record for the FCC

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Following Wednesday's Internet Slowdown campaign, the Federal Communications Commission says it has now received a total of 1,750,435 comments on net neutrality, surpassing the approximately 1.4 million complaints it saw after the exposure of Janet Jackson's breast during Super Bowl XXXVIII in 2004.

Wednesday saw citizens submit more than 700,000 new comments to the FCC, and place more than 300,000 calls to the agency.

Submission + - Top EU Court: Libraries Can Digitize Books Without Publishers' Permission (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: The top European court has ruled that libraries have the right to digitize the contents of the books in their collections, even if the copyright holders on those books don't want them to. There's a catch, though: those digitized versions can only be accessed on dedicated terminals in the library itself. If library patrons want to print the book out or download it to a thumb drive, they will need to pay the publisher.

Submission + - The State of ZFS on Linux - ClusterHQ (clusterhq.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Richard Yao, one of the most prolific contributors to the ZFSOnLinux project, has put up a post about the current state of ZFS on Linux, saying that it's definitely production-ready. He says, "ZFS provides strong guarantees for the integrity of [data] from the moment that fsync() returns on a file, an operation on a synchronous file handle is returned or dirty writeback occurs (by default every 5 seconds). These guarantees are enabled by ZFS’ disk format, which places all data into a Merkle tree that stores 256-bit checksums and is changed atomically via a two-stage transaction commit.. ... Sharing a common code base with other Open ZFS platforms has given ZFS on Linux the opportunity to rapidly implement features available on other Open ZFS platforms. At present, Illumos is the reference platform in the Open ZFS community and despite its ZFS driver having hundreds of features, ZoL is only behind on about 18 of them.

Submission + - Cuba calculates cost of 54yr US embargo at $1.1tn

Submitted by ltorvalds11
ltorvalds11 writes: Cuba says its economy is suffering a “systematic worsening” due to a US embargo, the consequences of which Havana places at $1.1 trillion since Washington imposed the sanctions in 1960, taking into account the depreciation of the dollar against gold.
“There is not, and there has not been in the world, such a terrorizing and vile violation of human rights of an entire people than the blockade that the US government has been leading against Cuba for 55 years,” Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Abelardo Moreno told reporters.
He also blamed the embargo for the difficulties in accessing internet on the island, saying that the United States creates an obstacle for companies providing broadband services in Cuba. Additionally, he said that the area is one of the "most sensitive" to the embargo, with economic losses estimated at $34.2 million. It is also the sector that has fallen "victim of all kinds of attacks" by the US, as violations of the Cuban radio or electronic space “promote destabilization" of Cuban society, the report notes.
The damage to Cuban foreign trade between April 2013 and June 2014 amounted to $3.9 billion, the report said. Without the embargo, Cuba could have earned $205.8 million selling products such as rum and cigars to US consumers.
Barack Obama last week signed the one-year extension of the embargo on Cuba, based on the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, created to restrict trade with countries hostile to the US.

Submission + - Linus Torvalds on insults: Respect should be earned (themukt.com) 1

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: During DebConf 2014 an attendee asked Linus about his ‘insults’ mentioning one of the episodes involving Kay Sievers of systemd where Linus said, “Who the f*ck does idiotic things like that? How did they noty die as babies, considering that they were likely too stupid to find a tit to suck on?” Unlike commercial companies where a boss can fire an employee for messing things up, Linus doesn’t have that luxury. It’s an open source project; he can’t fire people. One of the ways Linus can express his frustration when some top developer breaks something is through harsh words on mailing lists, which he says is kind of hyperbole and joke. Linus also said that he is abrasive and he likes arguements.

The attendee then said he was not talking about Linus being abrasive but about respecting orthers.

There was a loud applause. Linus said, “I don’t respect people unless I think they deserve the respect. There are people who think that respect is something that should be given, and I happen to be one of the people who is perfectly happy saying no respect should be earned. And without being earned, you don’t get it. It’s really that simple.”

Submission + - Smartphone Kill Switch A Consumer Safe Haven Or Just More Government 'Tyranny'? (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: We're often told that having a kill switch in our mobile devices — mostly our smartphones — is a good thing. At a basic level, that's hard to disagree with. If every mobile device had a built-in kill switch, theft would go down — who would waste their time over a device that probably won't work for very long? Here's where the problem lays: It's law enforcement that's pushing so hard for these kill switches. We first learned about this last summer, and this past May, California passed a law that requires smartphone vendors to implement the feature. In practice, if a smartphone has been stolen, or has been somehow compromised, its user or manufacturer would be able to remotely kill off its usability, something that would be reversed once the phone gets back into its rightful owner's hands. However, such functionality should be limited to the device's owner, and no one else. If the owner can disable a phone with nothing but access to a computer or another mobile device, so can Google, Samsung, Microsoft, Nokia or Apple. If the designers of a phone's operating system can brick a phone, guess who else can do the same? Everybody from the NSA to your friendly neighborhood police force, that's who. At most, all they'll need is a convincing argument that they're acting in the interest of 'public safety.'

Submission + - Linus Torvalds Want to Dominate the Desktop (eweek.com)

Submitted by darthcamaro
darthcamaro writes: Linux is everywhere or is it? At the LinuxCon conference in Chicago today Linus Torvalds was asked where Linux should go next. Torvalds didn't hesitate with his reply.

"I still want the desktop," Torvalds said as the audience erupted into boisterous applause.

Torvalds doesn't see the desktop as being a kernel problem at this point either, but rather one about infrastructure. While not ready to declare a 'Year of the Linux Desktop' he does expect that to happen — one day.

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