The Irish Penguin

Woke up this morning and found myself dead… Well, more to the point, my Internet connection dead. So being a Nymphobyte - someone feverously attracted to a reliable high bandwidth connection - there was little else to do than ponder the state of broadband in Ireland. Options are limited in the land currently home to the so called ‘Pariahs’ of Europe. Just make our broadband better and we’ll vote Yes! to Lisbon II and even Lisbon III ‘The Search for Spock’. Until then, you’re better off sending your packets of data back and forth via carrier pigeon rather than trying to connect via the empty promises of the current providers.

At least things aren’t as bad as in Sweden, oft thought of as land of the liberal and freedom loving Swedes, where their elected leaders are trying to sell them down the river - forcing a copy of all networked communications to be forwarded on the government so that they can, presumably, check for things like terrorists trying to share the latest episode of Desperate Housewives over Bittorrent. Sweden is now being mentioned in the same breath as China and Saudi Arabia with respect to Internet Freedom. According to an Information Age article even Google, not known to be adverse to collecting data on people, has been heavily critical of the crippling legislation. Blogger Oscar Swartz has a rallying mayday call on his site. Yes, that’s right, even the Scandinavians have given up on civil rights - now we know the world is doomed! They’re kind of like a civil liberties version of those budgies that used to warn of noxious fumes down the mine shafts in the old days - once they go tits up then you know the game is over.

Nope, freedom is not on the menu anywhere this week. An article in The Economist took stock of the scale of civil liberties that have been eroded under the Labour government and the relative apathy that this has been met with by the people. Gordon Brown, despite the having the popularity of Brian Cowan at a Eurocrat orgy, has even managed to push through legislation in Parliament to the effect that one can now be detained for 45 days at a go without charge. That’s over 6 weeks! You could miss the whole European championships if you’re unlucky enough! Which might suit you if you’re a Portuguese or Croatian fan, after their sides painful exists. But 6 weeks! Perhaps Gordon just has a secret repressed side that he didn’t know about - which is subconsciously upset that Ireland is now seen as more Eurosceptic than Britain. Forty five days isn’t so bad though. After all, Tony Blair wanted to lock ‘em up for 90 days without charge. Why not go the whole hog and just lock people up at birth? It saves all that awkward decision making and you wouldn’t even need National Identity Cards anymore. Mind you, who needs ID cards when everyone one has already gotten their own copy of secret government dossiers that they picked up on the Tube on the way to work. Now there’s a government I wouldn’t trust mind my dog for the weekend, never mind my confidential information. And I don’t even own a dog…

It’s been a tough week all right. It’s hard to know how to stay on top of things. My great plan is to do away with RSS feeds and subscriptions and just diff the Internet each morning before going to work. If there was some interesting news found it could be managed using git and deltas emailed to friends to keep them informed. Sure, it would be a lot of data to contend with, but there would be some scant satisfaction knowing that it would make those draconian Swedish government servers that spy on their citizens work that little bit harder!

It’s a shiny express card and it promises Internet free from cables, plugs and sockets but will it work on your pretty Kubuntu laptop? Let’s hope so. This guide worked for me and hopefully it’ll work for you too!

Now before we start let me tell you my setup. I’ve got this working on a Kubuntu based Dell Inspiron using O2 as my network provider. It did not work on a separate Dell Vostro running Ubuntu 7.10 (however I did get it working on a different Kubuntu 7.10 Dell Inspiron laptop). So I’m not sure whether that was a Ubuntu or Vostro thing or just bad luck. Also, note that the below approach worked for me when setting up Huawei’s E220 USB modem too.

In any case, here’s the 6 step plan to happiness
1.) Download the huaweiAktBbo-i386.out file
2.) Create the /etc/chatscripts/huawei-e220.chat file
3.) Create the /etc/ppp/peers/huawei-e220 file
4.) Create the /etc/wvdial-huawei.conf
5.) Edit the /etc/resolv.conf
6.) Create and tailor the /home/username/bin/connectme script (and chmod it!)
7.) Tip of the day - lose the Edge!

1.) Download the huaweiAktBbo-i386.out
This can be done by visiting http://www.kanoistika.sk/bobovsky/archiv/umts/ and downloading the file huaweiAktBbo-i386. If you really want you can also build it from the C source provided (in order to build it you will need to have a C compiler and some basic tools on your system). NB: Copy the huaweiAktBbo-i386.out file to your /home/username/bin directory after downloading. If you don’t have a bin folder under your home directory then create one (’mkdir /home/username/bin’). Also ensure that it is in your $PATH environment variable. Try echo $PATH and if you don’t see it listed add the following line to your /home/username/.bashrc file

export PATH=$PATH:/home/username/bin

To get this change immediately picked up by your shell run the command ’source ~/.bashrc’. This something I didn’t learn for years!!! D’oh!

2.) Create the following /etc/chatscripts/huawei-e220.chat file

TIMEOUT 3
ABORT BUSY
ABORT 'NO CARRIER'
ABORT VOICE
ABORT 'NO DIALTONE'
ABORT 'NO DIAL TONE'
ABORT 'NO ANSWER'
ABORT DELAYED
"" ATZ
OK ATQ0V1E1S0=0&C1&D2
OK ATDT*99#
CONNECT ""

3.) Create the /etc/ppp/peers/huawei-e220 file

/dev/ttyUSB0
460800
noipdefault
defaultroute
persist
noauth
nodetach
usepeerdns
connect "/usr/sbin/chat -vf /etc/chatscripts/huawei-e220.chat"

4.) Create the /etc/wvdial-huawei.conf

[Dialer Defaults]
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0
#Baud = 3600000
Baud = 7200000
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2
Init3 =
Area Code =
Phone = *99#
Username = ppp
Password = ppp
Ask Password = 0
Dial Command = ATDT
Stupid Mode = 1
Compuserve = 0
Force Address =
Idle Seconds = 0
DialMessage1 =
DialMessage2 =
ISDN = 0
Auto DNS = 1

5.) Edit the /etc/resolv.conf file
Add the following entries at the top of this file (they are O2’s nameservers)

nameserver 62.40.32.33
nameserver 62.40.32.34

6.) Create the and tailor the /home/username/bin/connectme script as follows (and chmod it!)
Note: See step 1 for more instructions if you don’t have a bin folder in your home directory

#!/bin/bash
sudo /home/username/bin/huaweiAktBbo-i386.out # CHANGE THIS TO YOUR 'USERNAME'
sleep 3 # wait for the USB host to settle down...
sudo wvdial --config /etc/wvdial-huawei.conf
#/usr/sbin/pppd call provider

Then just do a ‘chmod u+x /home/username/bin/connectme’ from the command line (to allow you to run ‘connectme’ from the command line directly) and hopefully you should be ready to rock! The next step is to insert your E870 into the express slot. You might start to see Linux picking up the the devices and popping dialogs asking you if you want to mount the device (you should select ‘Cancel’ for them all).Wait about 5 seconds for it to steady itself and then run ‘connectme’ from the command line. You should see

Hladam HUAWEI E220 a prepnem na modem - bbo 06
4 set feature request returned 0
Prepnute-OK, Mas ttyUSB0 ttyUSB1 (cez usbserial vendor=0x12d1 product=0x1003)
pozri /proc/bus/usb/devices
WvDial<*1>: WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.56
WvModem<*1>: Cannot get information for serial port.
WvDial<*1>: Initializing modem.
WvDial<*1>: Sending: ATZ
WvDial Modem<*1>: ATZ
WvDial Modem<*1>: OK
WvDial<*1>: Sending: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2
WvDial Modem<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2
WvDial Modem<*1>: OK
WvDial<*1>: Modem initialized.
WvDial<*1>: Sending: ATDT*99#
WvDial<*1>: Waiting for carrier.
WvDial Modem<*1>: ATDT*99#
WvDial Modem<*1>: CONNECT
WvDial<*1>: Carrier detected.  Starting PPP immediately.
WvDial: Starting pppd at Tue Mar 25 21:22:08 2008
WvDial: Pid of pppd: 11465
WvDial<*1>: pppd: H���h�[06][08]`�[06][08]
WvDial<*1>: Using interface ppp0
WvDial<*1>: pppd: H���h�[06][08]`�[06][08]
WvDial<*1>: pppd: H���h�[06][08]`�[06][08]
WvDial<*1>: pppd: H���h�[06][08]`�[06][08]
WvDial<*1>: pppd: H���h�[06][08]`�[06][08]
WvDial<*1>: pppd: H���h�[06][08]`�[06][08]
WvDial<*1>: pppd: H���h�[06][08]`�[06][08]
WvDial<*1>: local  IP address 62.40.58.185
WvDial<*1>: pppd: H���h�[06][08]`�[06][08]
WvDial<*1>: remote IP address 10.64.64.64
WvDial<*1>: pppd: H���h�[06][08]`�[06][08]
WvDial<*1>: primary   DNS address 62.40.32.33
WvDial<*1>: pppd: H���h�[06][08]`�[06][08]
WvDial<*1>: secondary DNS address 62.40.32.34
WvDial<*1>: pppd: H���h�[06][08]`�[06][08]

If you want to disconnect from the web simply press Ctrl-C twice to kill it off. The first time you press it, it talks of wanting to exit gracefully - but better to press it a second time and exit effectively

You’ll see the following

Caught signal 2:  Attempting to exit gracefully...
WvDial<*1>: Terminating on signal 15
WvDial<*1>: pppd: H���h�[06][08]`�[06][08]
WvDial<*1>: Connect time 8.6 minutes.
WvDial<*1>: pppd: H���h�[06][08]`�[06][08]
WvDial<*1>: pppd: H���h�[06][08]`�[06][08]
WvDial<*1>: pppd: H���h�[06][08]`�[06][08]
WvDial<*1>: Disconnecting at Tue Mar 25 21:30:45 2008

7.) Tip of the day - lose the Edge!
Disclaimer: this is just my opinion as to the performance of the Edge network so O2 lawyers keep your knickers on (however Apple iPhone suckers, enjoy the sheer speed of the Edge network, getting dripfeed broadband at 1500 Euros a year!). In stark contrast though, my experience with the HSDPA network have been good. Yes, as you may have already guessed, the Edge network was not really delivering for me. But a friend of mine showed me how to change your O2 broadband Express card (or USB modem) settings so that it not even bother connecting if it can’t get a proper UTMS or HSDPA signal. For this you need a Windows friend. Install the express card on their machine and from the O2 broadband application and select “Tools->Choose Network Type->3G Only”. This setting directly updates the card so even when you switch back to a using it on a Linux box it will go with 3G only. If I don’t do this I’ve found that it will flip flop between Edge (GPRS) and 3G networks and drive you mad in the process. I found it pretty much impossible to even check my email on Edge.

Special thanks to Andy and Paul on the ILUG mailing lists for their help and also to O2, Vodaphone, Three et al. for providing Mobile Internet via hardware that can actually be used on an Open Source platform such as Linux; as we hopefully move from an era of proprietary lock-in and DRM-based crippleware to software that delivers genuine value for businesses and users. Vodafone have gone as far as having their own Open Source website to help along development at Betavine. Enjoy!

The revolution will not be televised! It will be streamed over TCP/IP…

The ever confusing term ‘Intellectual Property’ gets another run out today as the EU attempts to shoot itself in the foot, yet again on crucial IT issues. This time the European Union wants to embark on a plan to encumber its multimedia sector in a cocoon of red tape through the introduction of DRM. And goes to the absurd length of stating that it is doing so in the interests of consumers. What the …???

The Irish Penguin is a die-hard market fanatic. The reason is not just because it’s the most efficient way to run an economy but rather that it is the best for the consumer (Note: The Penguin doesn’t think that its the best way to run some things like health care but that’s another story altogether). The bottom line is the customer truly is always right. Remember this for later. Which is way todays announcement is not just bad news for budding business entrepreneurs within Europe’s software economy but also a smack in the chops for European consumers. One of the frantic undertones of the EU is often one of desperation - an attempt to try and emulate America - in order to somehow shed the image of a union which is hamstrung fragmented markets and business unfriendly polices. Unfortunately, it sometimes goes about it the wrong way. Instead of the Japanese tradition of copying a process and improving it, the EU cumbersomely ambles towards the wrong target and periodically releases sound bites which it thinks will make it sound economically competent. Today was a comical case in point. Here is an excerpt from its press release.

“The European Commission has decided today to give a new boost to Europe’s online content sector. EU citizens should be able to enjoy easier and faster access to a rich variety of music, TV programmes, films or games via the Internet, mobile phones or other devices.”

Let’s read that first line again. The European Commission has decided what? This opening sentence sounds like the EU is trying to convince itself that this is a good idea. In reality, the European Commission has NOT decided today to give a boost to Europe’s online content sector. This is because included in its announcement the EU has decided that DRM (a completely misnamed and dangerous Digital Rights Management technology) should be forced on the European customer at every turn - in order to stifle the promising multimedia sector. It is highly useful to see that DRM has roundly been rejected by media consumers right across the globe. All of the major record company’s used to have DRM woven into their CDs and products at the turn of the year. DRM prevented users playing music on more than one music playback device. For example, it locked customers who had purchased an album online into playing it back on an iPod only; the user could not choose to play that same album on their home computer. And it also locked users who had bought CDs from playing them on their iPod. As sales plumetted and customers rebelled, EMI was the first to reject this notion and give back consumers the right to play their music on any device. That the left the remaining labels with an inferior product and they all quickly followed suit. Sony BMG, Warner Music Group and Vivendi’s Universal Music Group all now sell ‘clean’ products in United States which are not contaminated with DRM. This shows the power of the Free Market to correct problems like DRM. So if it makes sense for these major players to roundly reject DRM then how on earth can it make sense for the EU to move towards it? The answer - it doesn’t!

Ironically, the second sentence is also meaningless rhetoric. The EU Commission’s announcement today does NOT make it easier or faster to access rich multimedia. The only thing that can do that is solid broadband policies and Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality is crucial. It guarantees that the all services provided over the Internet are treated equal. This allows the separation of the bandwidth providers (such as European telecom companies and ISPs) from the content providers (movie distributors, news channels, websites, email services) in order to prevent the bundling of content with services. The big word there is ‘bundling’. If your telecom company is providing your movies via cable TV and an online company seeks to compete with them by providing movie downloads it is unwise to let the telecom company to control the bandwidth available to the online company - clearly it would be in the Telecom’s interest to restrict bandwidth for movies thus ruining the challengers business model and locks consumers into the telecom company’s cable movie offering. Thankfully, thus far Net Neutrality is not under serious threat in Europe. However, DRM certainly does nothing to make your Internet connection any faster. All is does is make digital media that you purchase over the Internet into an inferior product than it otherwise could have been.

One of the driving forces of the damaging policies is Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for the Information Society and Media. She says “We have to make a choice in Europe: Do we want to have a strong music, film and games industry?” However the report issued goes on to call for the “establish(ing of) a framework for DRM transparency concerning, amongst others, the interoperability of different DRMs, and ensuring that consumers are properly informed of any usage restrictions placed on downloaded content…” The question remains, why create ‘usage restrictions’? Why not let the user just play their music how they want. It’s like selling someone a car and then letting them drive down only one street. It defies logic. Not to mention the that fact that every digital item you purchase will be more expensive as the cost of DRM will be included in each product. A more expensive and less functional product is not what the consumer wants. And the consumer is always right! They have rebelled against DRM before and they will rebel again. And the EU Commission wants to drag down European software houses and content providers with this sinking ship. With a ratification on the Lisbon treaty coming up in Ireland with guaranteed influx of the “No” vote protesters from neighbouring countries, we can only hope that Europe starts to give its citizens reasons to vote for Europe than against it.

For a more technical analysis of the announcement, as well as an open letter which you can sign that argues against the EU’s position, check out this link.

It’s coming up to Christmas and it’s the time to be merry - especially if you are a certain thief, who has made off with 450 kegs of festive beer, including 180 kegs of the black stuff, from Ireland’s premier brewery! [source: Times Online] St James’s Gate, home of the famous pint that is Guiness, was the scene of the crime as the assailant drove off (staggered???) in a trailer drawing vehicle; the most exciting heist since The Cattle Raid of Cooley. Interesting it has come admist a police blitz in the nation’s capital - 160 police on the beat in the Xmas run-up. You’d think someone would have noticed the equivalent of half a mega-pint.

Only one person is believed to have been involved in the incident; who’s now shot to fame with the infamous title “The Beer Hunter”. Their whereabouts is currently unknown as a ‘thirsty-man hunt’ sweeps the nation. One thing is clear however, the sought-after thief does not have much respect for his/her taste buds - making off with an additional 180 kegs of Budweiser (which in Ireland tastes like a cross between a dog’s urine, and well… another dog’s urine - mostly drank by people who hate the taste of beer¹) and 90 kegs of Carlsberg. All in all, the liquid loot was worth in the region of 65000 euro. Quote of the day goes to Grainne Mackin, spokesperson for Guinness’ owner Diageo Ireland, who said “What could they possibly want with all that beer?” Hmm… Have a very merry Christmas perhaps?

¹ In your correspondent’s humble opinion

Ahhh… Another day, another distro. The harddrive partitions around here are a bit like the Wizard of Oz; every day a new one joins the merry troupe. Todays turn was the KDE spin on Ubuntu Gutsy. So armed with the standard Kubuntu CD, which serves as a live distro and an install CD in one, we set on the path to enlightment (or should that be KDE - always good to end the week on a bad pun).

Generally, it seems to be recommended practice these days to install Ubunutu or its derivates off the ‘alternate’ CD when trying to set up an Inspiron to avoid things like incompatible versions of ALSA or wireless drivers working their way into the install. But the Penguin didn’t really feel like giving the whole GUI experience a miss. And so the live CD was fired up before you could say ‘Holy wireless drivers, Batman!’. A nice desktop link provided a pretty path to installation and within an hour Kubuntu was installed and ready to go.

First thing that was apparent was that the default Kubuntu appearance is quite bland. Especially when compared with something like OpenSuse’s nice crisp out-of-the-box KDE look (however nothing will ever get installed waiting around for YAST!). But the good news is that Kubuntu’s eye-candy vacuum can be fixed with a bit of tweaking. That wasn’t the initial major concern though. The lack of sound and wireless was!

The fix for the sound was easy, running ’sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-generic’ from the command line delivered sound after a reboot. The wireless was a lot more fiddly to get working - the strange thing is that NetworkManager was picking up all the secured networks and tantilisingly displaying them in its wireless list. But no way in the world was it going to connect to any of them. (BTW, the card is a Intel Pro Wireless 3945). However, the laptop in question is also running Ubuntu Studio out of another partition and it can connect through Gnome’s network-admin program without any probs. So there was definitely something fishy up.

Plan A at solving the problem was to install wlassistant (sudo apt-get install wlassistant) in order to try and put a different network program in the firing line. But alas still no connection. Then after a bit of head scratching we decided to install the whole bloody Gnome network admin and try and use that (sudo apt-get install gnome-system-tools) - which can be run via the ‘network-admin’ command. There was a time there when this was looking like a winning plan but no joy. Weird thing is, and the Irish Penguin has no explaination for this, is that rebooting and connecting via wlassistant did the job! Worked a charm! A lucky charm!!!

Final things on the list was to glam up that gaudy GUI. The install of Gnome’s networking stuff had left a few stray icons in the menu so they had to be wisked away as they weren’t working anyway. Then a few nice things to do are

* Right-click on the quicklauncher at left of the taskbar and configure it to have a fine big icon size - 28 looked good on the Inspiron. Big icons always look nice in KDE’s taskbar, otherwise where’s the fun?

* One of the best ways to brighten up the panel is to (right-click on the taskbar and configure) set ‘Enable background image’ for the panel and select a nice tile. This also puts a pretty sash down the left of the K-menu. Optionally choose ‘Colorize to match desktop theme’

* In the system settings keep the Style->Widget Style as ‘Polyster’ but change the Window Decoration to ‘Keramik’

* Change the window background to be a nice soft colour - a very light fawn is nice - and in keeping with the Ubuntu theme…

* And for God’s sake pic a nice desktop background!

Along the way, we flicked over to the proprietary NVidia drivers via the restricted driver management without problems. Although it did make all the fonts bigger for some reason - so they had to be tamed again using the following fix (note: changing font properties in System Settings isn’t enough to fix this). I used a dpi of 75 instead of 100 as the fix did. Another thing that was hard to track down was power management adjustment there’s no setting in System Settings - rather it can be found by right-clicking on the battery icon to the right of the task bar and selecting ‘Restore’ to bring up the dialog - of course!

So what’s the verdict after all the hard work is out of the way. Kubuntu is a fine desktop if you’re prepared to put in a little effort customising its look and feel. Because of the effort required in prettying it up - Kubuntu initially feels less polished than it’s sister Ubuntu. Package management in Adept isn’t as smooth as Synaptic. But there are some real pluses out of the K stable. Dolphin has replaced Konqueror as the default file browser and its two pane mode is great. Not quite sure why its taken so long for a two pane file manager to crop up in a modern OS but it’s not before time. All the usual great KDE apps from K3B to Amarok are in there. The Penguin’s final verdict is that it feels a little more ‘bright’ and ‘fun’ than Ubuntu which is more ‘finished’ but serious.

An anonymous source at Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters revealed today how the software giant plans to release Windows XP as the successor to the ill-fated Vista operating system in the next decade.

“User’s want choice and Microsoft will offer customers the choice of a mandatory upgrade cycle which will deliver value to the end user and a greater end user experience. Part of that experience will include the launch of Windows XP as the next generation operating system in 2010 and will replace Windows Vista as our flagship product.”

“We have listened to customers that have told us that they would like a responsive GUI that can offer productivity gains over Windows Vista technology. In particular, usability tests have shown that Vista’s “preparing to copy - calculating” feature, which gave the users the option to go and make a cup of tea whilst the underlying OS took 5 minutes to decide how long it would take to copy those two 4 kilobyte text files, are not proving to be the win we expected. Instead we shall revert to our patented MS-DOS technology which can perform the same task in a fraction of the time. A patent which Linux infringes.”

“Additionally we will be removing the patented ‘99 OK Click’ security functionality security feature that Vista introduced as many users asked how security was improved by providing an OK click without requesting any password. We just saw some kind of similar feature when we visited our friends at Novell called ’su ‘and ’sudo’ and we thought our users would also like that. But we also knew that they wouldn’t like entering passwords. This was borne out through extensive usability testing with rabbits in our lab scenarios. The rabbits also suggested that they liked the idea of a ribbon when working with the office programs. We were determined to deliver such productivity gains and value, not only to these rabbits, but also sheep and other users of our products.”

“We found Windows XP to be the most efficient way to deliver these gains to our users through a familiar and proven user interface as well as harnessing our synergies across the Windows brand. The good news for users is that through our software assurance policy means that their subscription plan will cover the licencing cost for the XP upgrade - unless its release gets delayed like Windows Vista. Existing Windows XP licence holders will only have to pay the licence fee one more time in order to continue to use their product.”

Rumour also has it that Microsoft are already even planning the next OS release after Windows XP which will be in 2015. The provisional codename for it is to be “Long Horn, Short Memory” and it is expected that it will be built on the Windows 3.1 codebase that delivered such rich functionality through much of the nineties…

Breaking with the blogging tradition of incredibly obvious (and search engine indexable) article titles, I think it’s fitting to have a subtle, more European perhaps, heading for this post. To cut to the chase, it deals with the great transatlantic dog fight between possibly the world’s biggest monopoly and the Eurocrats - that is Microsoft vs European Competition Commission.

This has caused great entertainment for those browsing the net as, for some, this has broken down into a full scale Europe vs America battle. The ruling is Microsoft’s first court loss of significance that stands to have genuine legal ramifications as most other similar cases have been settled out of court by deep pockets and hamstrung prosecutions. Although it’s always hard to pick the legal meat off the bones in a lot of software related court cases, other articles have mentioned that the ruling means limited scope for MS to appeal, possible requirement of protocols disclosure and of course the small matter of hundreds of millions of dollars in fines. Small change to a big fish perhaps but no one likes to throw away money.

Those who support the decision are proudly strutting the streets with their vin rouge in one hand and their petit pain in the other singing “Vive la Revolution” as they go. Some have changed to spelling color with a ‘u’ and prefer to organise their day than organize it. Those against, see the fleeting head of communism attacking capitalism’s finest hour. Cries of “Red! Reds! Under the beds” can be heard from those who shun the European Courts ruling. Particularly entertaining is the comments at the end of the article Microsoft’s Stunning Court Defeat. I don’t normally mange to keep chugging through the comments but I did find this little flame quite amusing.

So what does the future legal direction of this case hold? Well that’s anyone’s guess, but the interesting thing that FFII correctly pointed out in one of their recent press releases is that patents are where the battle is at. Whatever respect Europe can garner by being the first one to call a spade a spade - or an illegal monopoly an illegal monopoly - will be soon squandered if software patents are allowed in the back door. How anyone could be stupid enough to repeatedly bring software patents to the brink of legality in Europe is amazing. But that is what’s happened time and time again. Software lifecycles are measured in months (not decades like in big pharma) and innovation has always occurred by building on the ideas of others. But yet there are those who are scared that taking a stance against software patents means being anti-intellectual property - when the reverse is the case. Let’s hope that the next time software patents are on the European menu, that there will be enough intelligent people in the room to call the spade again.

And so the biggest legal saga to face Linux over the last few years was that of SCO trying to sue people for copyright infringement, saying that it owned the rights to UNIX. This has dragged Novell, IBM and more into the courts to fight for the right to party. Well today that party was in full swing as the judge in the case, Dale Kimball, has ruled in Novell’s favour saying that it is Novell, and not SCO, who own the UNIX and Unixware rights.

Kudos to Novell! It’s hard to see that there is much, if anything, left in the SCO locker that they can accuse IBM of infringing. In fact, it looks like they’ll be busy trying to organise a whip-a-round to pay up to Novell who will now be due a big cheque from SCO for the UNIX rights that Microsoft and Sun had previously paid SCO for. Yes, that sentence is a bit long and confusing. Perhaps it would be better to allocate IP addresses to each note in the UNIX rights cash pile and use traceroute to track its hops from one accounting subnet to another!

Interesting it was Microsoft who were reported to have set the SCO ball rolling back in 2003 by paying them for the first UNIX licence . Here’s one of the article’s from back then when the news first broke and the world looked a bleaker place. Once details of a Microsoft-SCO association had been reported it prompted one analyst, Gordon Haff of Illuminata, to say “Microsoft should certainly be worried about even a little bit of SCO’s stench rubbing off.” Well the only stench today will be from rear end of the trousers of the SCO management as they nervously wonder where to go next from here.

Given that Microsoft stumped up the initial cash to set SCO off like a bull in a China shop, it is possibly fitting that such money will now likely pass on to Novell to fund Linux development. Mind you, it’s hard to keep track of the amount of Microsoft cash that the Novell management are rolling around in these days. Maybe the Redmond team should just give up on Windows and focus on their Linux development entirely. Let’s be honest, it’s much more fun!

Groklaw has been covering this tale from the start of the case and and PJ is in bouyant mood as she covers the details whilst downing some chocolates. Thanks for a great site PJ, to keep the great unwashed up to date on the legal rumblings over the last few years, and please continue to do so as this fish gets reeled in.

A couple of blog and news posts on the Internet this week seemed to make the headlines with death knells for Linux and Open Source for a multitude of reasons, both chronic (less anti-Microsoft sentiment about) and recent (GPL 3). But on reading, I couldn’t help but feel that both posts sounded wrong, utterly utterly wrong in fact. No disrespect intended to the authors of course.

The first post Open Source Is Dead, Long Live Open Patents? by David DeJean, which took a commonly cited angle on GPL3 hurting Open Source by fragmenting the community. But that is to not understand the community. Bare in mind one important fact about community-oriented Open Source developers, of which I am one - we write the software because we love to. For the vast majority of SMD’s (Small-to-Medium size project Developers, for want of a better term) we don’t really care whether our project is GPL2 or GPL3 - why? Because they are both effective Open Source licences and they will both serve our personal purposes fine as either licence would suit our pet projects. Of course, we’ll all still get our goat up as to whether Linux or the GNU Compiler Tools should be GPL 2 or 3 - but that’s a separate issue - it’s won’t stop us writing the software we love. It is naive for commentators to think that because a new licence comes out that it will hurt the amount of FOSS produced. As for businesses, if it made sense to switch to Linux before GPL 3, it will still make sense after GPL3 - irrespective of what or who adopts GPL 3. It technically affects Tivo (although they will be able to stick with Linux 2.4 kernel) - so what? Such cases only make up a small part of the econosphere. Plenty of business providers seem to be happy. Even embedded solution providers are saying that GPL 3 won’t turn customers off, with Jason Wacha of MontaVista saying “Our customers are used to working with licenses that are much more restrictive than the GPL. In my opinion, typical proprietary licenses are much more restrictive in pretty much all instances than the GPL.”

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Robots in disguise? No. Michael Bay - film maker in disguise. He has taken a cult classic and turned it into a steaming pile of utter junk of the “Yeeh hawww! God bless America variety.” Certainly, he should never be allowed near a movie studio ever again. Here’s why…..

You would think that Transformers would be a film about robots. No, in fact the only time robots make it into the film is to appear in cabaret style slapstick sketches where they incompetently fall about the place. They are like extras from a pantomime, lacking any personality, led by incredibly boring Optimus Prime who comes across a sort of Treebeard, from Lord of the Rings, with a number plate strapped - he really is that bland in this film.

A massively disappointing thing in the film is that all the Transformers look the same - kind of like a couple of electricity pylons stuck together. It’s actually hard to tell Megatron, the ultimate baddie, from any of the robots because they all look the same. Poor Megatron doesn’t even have his trademark canon strapped on his arm??? And Optimus’ colour scheme makes him looks like he’s about to lead a gay pride Autobot march rather than go into battle. Worse again he has lips - no doubt this is to give the audience something ‘human’ to identify with. However the only thing this movie could be identified with is the type of thing that you flush down a toilet after a long night on the beer. Yes, it’s that bad.

And to top it off the film can’t resist rolling out the usual racial stereotypes

• The black people in the film are portrayed as stupid and fat
• The dialogue is peppered with things such as ‘Could the Iranians have invented this weapons system? No, they’re not smart enough. It must be the Chinese or the Russians…’ (not an exact quote as I’m trying to forget things about this film but close enough)
• And whilst the autobots collapse clumsily around the place, the U.S. marines fly in to save the day. Wup dawg!

The Autobots and the Decepticons also never really get to have a good fight with each other. For example when Megatron and Optimus tee off they look more like a couple of fat wrestlers bumbling each other around that robots having a death match. You don’t really get to see much, just a blurry zoomed in camera on their shoulders as they tussle about like drunks thrown out after closing time. There are a few saving graces to this movie. The acting isn’t bad, there’s a few funny gags along the way, the lead female in the film - Megan Fox - does a very good job of looking hot, the small boom-box radio transformer at the start of the film is funny and has a bit of personality.

But the bottom line, if you want to watch a war film - along the lines of Armageddon or something - then this might pass the time for you. Think of this as Iraq with cabaret robots. If you, like me, grew up with Optimus and Co and were hoping for a strong appearance on the silver screen then this is two and half hours of your life that you’ll want back! But like the brilliance of the original series - you can’t have it!

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