● 06.04.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 04/06/2023: Unifont 15.0.05 and PCLinuxOS Stuff

Posted in News Roundup at 8:39 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Audiocasts/Shows

Kernel Space

Applications

• The Bluefish text editor just got a new bug-fix release today! It’s Bluefish 2.2.14, that fixed crashes when deleting backup files on close, when closing some of the dialogs in flatpak app, and when the CSS language file was loaded on a 32-bit system.

• Oh My Posh is a custom prompt engine for any shell that has the ability to adjust the prompt string with a function or variable. It’s beautiful, elegant and intuitive; if you use git from the command line it will be great for you, it has several predefined themes that allow you to customize your prompt in a matter of seconds, it is also possible to create your own theme, it is compatible with BASH, PowerShell, CMD, Fish, Zsh and nushell is developed in golang and can be installed on GNU/Linux, MacOS, Windows and Termux (Android).

• Most Linux users (PCLinuxOS users included) got their start with computers using a commercially available OS. Exceptionally few actually started with Linux.

• Along the way, we all encountered software that we came to love. Much of that software was designed to run on Microsoft Windows, the commercially available OS that held/holds the lion’s share of the OS market.

• However, as I’m sure we’re all aware, Linux is NOT Windows, and in MANY aspects, we Linux users are thankful for that. But, it also means that it’s typically not a trivial task to hang on to and use those software titles that we came to love along our journey, if we can even get them to run at all.

• According to Synaptic, NovelWriter is “a markdown-like editor for novels”. Well, what does this mean?

• As the name implies, it’s a program intended for writing novels. It has several features to help with that, including an adaption to the markdown syntax to help with getting an overview of the novel. On my computer (a reasonably old one), this application launches instantly and is very responsive.

• When we open NovelWriter we are immediately greeted by an “open project” window. It lists the projects we’re busy with, which can be opened by double-clicking. There are several other options at the bottom to create a new project, remove a project, and to change the current path.

• I chose to create a new project. It asks me several questions about the project and finally asks me whether I would like to have it fill the project. I chose the option which results in an example project.

• If your digital music collection is similar to mine, the music files are haphazardly tagged with various degrees of completeness. Some files may lack informative names and cover art; others may have misspelled track titles or incorrect genres. To better organize your collection, specialized audio tag editors allow you to add and/or edit metadata. Metadata lets information about the audio file — such as Title, Artist, Composer, Album, Genre, Year — be stored in the audio file itself. (These core tags are popularly known as ID3 tags).

• Puddletag is a simple yet powerful, Qt-based music tag editor that uses Python 3 and PyQt5 (for the GUI). Under the hood, the application uses Mutagen, a Python module which handles audio metadata. Puddletag is an alternative to EasyTag, the oldest and perhaps most commonly used tag editor.

• Puddletag is a mature project with a fourteen-year track record. It was first released in July 2008. The original developer, known by the Internet moniker concentricpuddle, is now assisted by a group of developers which includes Sandro Tosi (a computer scientist from Italy) and Corubba (Germany). The program has been translated into French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Czech, Swedish and Russian. The version in the official PCLinuxOS repository is 1.2.0 (released in November 2016).

• Thorium Reader is a free Electron-based ebook reader designed with accessibility and ease of use in mind. With support for both EPUB 2 and EPUB 3, PDF, DAISY, LCP DRM, and numerous other ebook as well as audiobook formats, Thorium Reader should be able to open most books without a problem.

• Thorium Reader provides a very uncluttered interface, making it quick and easy to navigate. The application is divided into three tabs allowing access to the main books page, OPDS catalogs, and the application settings. From the My Books page, you can open and manage all your ebooks, which can easily be imported into Thorium Reader by simply dragging and dropping them into the application. Books are automatically sorted into separate categories for those that were recently added, and those that you’ve already started reading. You can also add custom tags to books in order to help organize them better. A search bar is also provided to make finding books easier.

Instructionals/Technical

• Dynamic IP addresses are set automatically, but liable to change each time your computer boots up. Static IP addresses need manual configuration, but always survive reboots. Is one better than the other?

• This tutorial is about LibreOffice Writer (from now on referred to as simply Writer). If you follow along you will learn quite a lot about how to get stuff done with this amazingly complex program, which is capable of more than you might think.

• Now, there are some situations in which you probably do not want to use Writer, like when you have loads of “objects” in a big document. Everything other than text is an object. If you want to work on a document, which you’ll expect to become large and it is expected to have a lot of these objects, you’re better off working with another solution, such as LaTeX. It’s specifically designed for such situations (and is a whole other subject of its own).

• As I’m looking on YouTube for interesting things to do with Inkscape, I found one from IronEchoDesign on how to make a Celtic Knot. It’s fairly easy and very fun!

• In this tutorial, we’re going to use the Path Effect called Knot.

• With ext4 fscrypt v1, it was easier. Running Easy 5.3.*, with encrypted folders, if you plugin Easy 5.3.* on a USB-stick, if the bootup password is the same on the USB-stick, then the encrypted folders on the USB-stick are accessible.

• Not so with fscrypt v2. The decryption password has to be applied to each filesystem.

• To fix this, I have modified /usr/local/bin/drive_all. This script runs when you click on a partition icon on the desktop. The script now detects that the mounted partition may have encrypted folders, and pops up this window:

• So, as long as you know what password you used to boot that USB-stick, you can decrypt any encrypted folders. Fscrypt v2 only.

• I can see where this might be handy. Maybe the USB-stick won’t boot, so now you can copy any files off it. As long as it is not broken so much that the working-partition can’t be mounted.

• Redirecting URLs is a common practice in web development to ensure users are directed to the correct page or location. NGINX, a popular web server, provides powerful tools for URL redirection. In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the concept of URL redirection, learn how to configure URL redirects in NGINX and discuss advanced techniques,

• For some requirements, you may need to find a block device mapped against a logical unit number (LUNs) and filesystem (FS) for FS expansion or disaster recovery (DR) activity.

• What is Kubernetes and Why is it Important in Modern Computing? Kubernetes is a powerful open-source container orchestration system that automates deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

• Modern software development is all about scalability, agility and speed. This is why developers are increasingly turning to container orchestration platforms like Docker Swarm. Docker Swarm provides a native clustering and scheduling solution for Docker containers.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install VLC Media Player on Rocky Linux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, VLC is a popular open-source media player that can handle virtually any type of media file you throw at it, including DVDs, CDs, and streaming media.

• Docker Swarm is a widely used container orchestration tool that simplifies the deployment, management, and scaling of containerized applications. It allows developers to easily manage multiple Docker containers across distributed infrastructure. With Docker Swarm, you can create a cluster of Docker nodes that work together as a single virtual system.

• However, deploying and managing these applications can be a challenge. This is where Docker Compose comes in handy.

• I was a happy Wayland user for a long time now, even if I have a hybrid NVIDIA graphics system. I usually like to use the internal AMD graphics when I don’t play games for better battery life, so Wayland is my default session. I like to use Wayland because there are a few advantages over X11, such as pinch-to-zoom in Firefox.

• As you may know, my main machine is a hybrid NVIDIA graphics laptop with an AMD Ryzen CPU and a dedicated NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti GPU. Recently, I discovered that I am not using Wayland anymore as my system falls back to X11 even if I am using the integrated AMD GPU.

Distributions and Operating Systems

New Releases

• It’s been quite a while since our last post, and a great many questions emerged as a result of our announced cooperation with the Solus project. This post will clarify a few points, including our technical approach to solving problems as well as the relationship between the two projects going forwards.

BSD

• Building on the Enterprise maturity of prior versions, TrueNAS 13.0-U5 is released. The previous version, TrueNAS 13.0-U4, proved to be the highest quality release in TrueNAS history and has become the most widely-deployed version of TrueNAS. This new release includes roughly 60 new bug fixes including improvements to NFS, SMB, and replication. For Enterprise users, a specific fix corrects an incorrect alert in earlier generation NVDIMMs.

• TrueNAS 13.0 includes significant new components and delivers improved performance, scalability, and reliability when compared to the previous major version, TrueNAS 12.0. To date, over 75% of TrueNAS 12.0 users have updated to TrueNAS 13.0, including many of our larger enterprise customers. In particular, the increased speed and robustness of HA failover is extremely valuable for most Enterprise use-cases. Version 12.0 is no longer available for TrueNAS Enterprise, and is no longer recommended for deployment.

• One strong quality indicator of TrueNAS 13.0 is that there are fewer than 10 bug fixes and improvements currently planned for 13.0-U6. We recommend that all TrueNAS 12.0 and TrueNAS 11.3 users update their systems to TrueNAS 13.0 before attempting to resolve any software or performance issues.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

• So, please don’t be like all these idjits out there, on their phones while operating a motor vehicle. Put your phone down, and “arrive alive.” Your life and the lives of those around you depend on it. Most of all, we don’t want to lose any PCLinuxOS users because they were on their phones while operating a motor vehicle. We’d also hate to see any PCLinuxOS users cause the demise of innocent bystanders because they were on their phones while operating a motor vehicle.

SUSE/OpenSUSE

• When last we met, I offered my first-run experience with the SUSE Rancher Kubernetes distribution, which did not go well.

Fedora Family / IBM

• The Red Hat Package Managers for LibreOffice “have recently been orphaned,” according to a post by Red Hat manager Matthias Clasen on the “LibreOffice packages” mailing list, “and I thought it would be good to explain the reasons behind this.”

Debian Family

• The Armbian project is nearing its 10-year anniversary, and we’re excited to announce that our upcoming release Armbian 23.05, codename “Suni”, will be the biggest one yet! It’s a significant milestone as it marks the first release based on our completely refactored build framework! The new framework has been in development for around 3 years, during which we combined our decades long experience with Linux and embedded systems with the latest technologies that have emerged in recent years. We’ve taken all that knowledge and expertise to create something truly exceptional for our users and Linux community at large.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Ten months after Intel released their first line of dedicated GPUs, out-of-the-box support with Linux has arrived with the release of Ubuntu 23.04.

Open Hardware/Modding

• Niklas Bommersbach is using a Raspberry Pi to power his beer pong-playing robot alongside an Arduino.

• These are the best Raspberry Pi projects we’ve had the honor of covering over the last month.

• Diego Trujillo Pisanty is using a Raspberry Pi to power this blind camera that has no lens and relies on sound to generate an approximation of its surroundings for photos.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Is MINIX dead? OSnews is sounding its death-knell, citing evidence from the operating system’s git log that its last updates happened as long ago as 2018. Given that the last news story on the MINIX website is from 2016 and the last release version, 3.3, came out in 2014, it appears they they may have a point. But perhaps it’s more appropriate to ask not whether or not MINIX is dead, but whether indeed it matters that the venerable OS appears no longer in development. It started as an example to teach OS theory before becoming popular in an era when there were no other inexpensive UNIX-like operating systems for 16-bit microcomputers, but given that its successors such as Linux-based operating systems have taken its torch and raced ahead, perhaps its day has passed.

• Drag and drop headless CMS for React, Vue, Svelte, Qwik, and more

• Docspell is a personal document organizer. Or sometimes called a “Document Management System” (DMS). You’ll need a scanner to convert your papers into files. Docspell can then assist in organizing the resulting mess 😉. It can unify your files from scanners, emails and other sources. It is targeted for home use,

GNU Projects

• 3 June 2023 Unifont 15.0.05 is now available.  This is a minor release, but significantly is planned to be the last release to include TrueType files in its default build.  This release also includes a new Hangul Syllables block contributed by Minseo Lee, with his modifications to three combining patterns in the johab2ucs2 Perl script.  This release also includes a few changes to Chinese ideographs.  Details are in the ChangeLog file.      https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/unifont/unifont-15.0.05/      https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/unifont/unifont-15.0.05/      ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/unifont/unifont-15.0.05/      https://unifoundry.com/pub/unifont/unifont-15.0.05/      https://unifoundry.com/pub/unifont/unifont-15.0.05/font-builds/       https://unifoundry.com/unifont/unifont-utilities.html Enjoy! Paul Hardy

Programming/Development

• Motivation and key points

• So this tweet came across my feed.

Perl / Raku

Standards/Consortia

• At Homebrew Website Club this week, we discussed book indexes (with the Chicago Manual of Style nearby as a reference, of course!). This got me thinking about what a web index may look like for a blog: a page formatted like a book index where you can see articles that mention unique concepts on your blog. Book indexes are useful tools for navigating information. Given a concept, the index tells you where to find out more. I was curious about what this may look like for a blog.

• Note: Old links to my site do not work anymore, due to change in the URL layout!!

• Blog update

• I have finally updated my blog look and feel. In fact, I completely switched my static site generator from Jekyll to Zola!

• I used Jekyll at first due to it being the one that Github Pages used. It was clunky but once set up it just did the job.

• But the reason why I changed to Zola was not Jekyll itself, it was the mess of setting up Ruby on my home PC.

• I tried Ruby Version Manager, using Ruby from DNF packages, changing paths, but there was always some package that kept failing. All I wanted to do is test my site before I push it to server. I couldn’t test on my own PC. Yes, I had to test on production!

• And I didn’t want to set a virtual machine or docker or whatever for a dang static site generator. That is just silly!

• So instead I went with Zola since my friend told me about it. Zola is just a single binary that you run and it does the magic for you, which is all I wanted.

Leftovers

Science

• The view from nowhere came from somewhere.

• Researchers found, Black holes will eventually evaporate due to Hawking radiation, but the event horizon is not as important as previously thought.

• New theoretical research from Radboud University’s Michael Wondrak, Walter van Suijlekom, and Heino Falcke has shown that Stephen Hawking was partially correct about black holes.

• A little pluck here, a little pluck there.

• Your brain is amazing.

• This isn’t OK.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• A new review suggests modest incentives appear to have positive effects on vaccine uptake.

• Losing loved ones may have a significant impact on both psychological and physical health. The University of Arizona researched the influence of grief on heart function and discovered that intense grieving might induce a significant increase in blood pressure. According to the data, grieving may be a risk factor for cardiac events.

• The study, published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, demonstrates an association between grief severity and elevated systolic blood pressure response.

• Cutting boards are useful kitchen utensils that may be found in most homes and restaurants. However, a small-scale research published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology by the American Chemical Society reveals that they are an overlooked source of micrometer-sized particles. According to the researchers, cutting carrots on wood and plastic boards can generate tens of millions of microparticles every year.

• Fewer children are starving, fewer moms are dying and terrible diseases are retreating.

• The latest data from the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) reveals that anxiety and experiences of bullying among 8th and 9th graders in middle school have increased. The percentage of students reporting moderate to severe anxiety in the spring 2023 survey is even higher than during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. In particular, girls have experienced a significant rise in anxiety compared to previous years.

• unday’s anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown is the first since Hong Kong lifted Covid-19 social distancing restrictions. In recent years, the authorities cited anti-epidemic measures as the reason to ban the annual candlelight commemoration in Victoria Park.

Proprietary

• A “new genie” has escaped the bottle. A new prince occupies the castle. Elvis has left the building. The barn door has been bolted after the cows and horses have left.

• No matter how you frame it, talks about “regulating” (read that legislation) the new, emerging and proliferating artificial intelligence (AI) technology might just be too little, too late.

• I’ll talk mostly about efforts in the U.S. to “regulate” the explosion of AI across the computing landscape, simply because this is where I am, and where the information I’m exposed to is most focused. But, we’ll also talk a bit about the E.U., since they offer the best head-to-head comparison with U.S. efforts.

• But first, we need to look at a bit of recent history.

Security

• An Improper Validation of Array Index vulnerability (CVE-2023-0950) was discovered in the spreadsheet component of The Document Foundation LibreOffice 7.4 versions prior to 7.4.6 and 7.5 versions prior to 7.5.1. With a low attack complexity, no privileges or user interaction required to exploit, and a high confidentiality, integrity and availability impact, this bug has received a National Vulnerability Database (NVD) severity rating of ”Critical”.

• Your email address may actually be hurting your chances for landing that new job, according to an article on Lifehacker. Believe it or not (or like it or not), gmail.com email addresses are generally viewed as “neutral.” Addresses from aol.com or yahoo.com may elicit concerns about your age. And email addresses like “ladysman@someemail.com” or “satansoffspring@anotheremail.com” or “darthvaderfan@sith.net” may be torpedoing your job chances before you ever get out of port, so to speak.

• The U.S., Europe and Ukraine are reportedly targets in this malware threat involving Cisco routers, according to an article on TechRepublic. State–sponsored Russian threat actor APT28 targets certain Cisco routers with an old vulnerability. I’ll wait patiently to see a show of hands of everyone who has ever/never applied patches to their router. [chirp-chirp] [chirp-chirp] [chirp-chirp] sing the crickets. Yeah … me neither. Routers (and other hardware) can be “borked” or “bricked” too easily while applying patches, and cost too much to replace (if they do end up borked/bricked). Thus, the vast majority of users never do apply patches to hardware, despite the presence of a valid and verified threat vector. Fortunately (unfortunately?) these particular Cisco routers (they never say in the article exactly which routers are affected) appear to be “commercial” routers. But then again, you can never know for sure which consumer-level Cisco routers use a command or SNMP protocol (the attack vector) that has been (or may have been) “inherited” from the commercial side of their business.

Privacy/Surveillance

• The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) suggested on Thursday that Frontex (European Coast Guard Agency) is violating rights and data protection laws by not handling migrant data correctly when processing debriefing interviews before handing the data to Europol (EU’s police agency).

Defence/Aggression

• Tens of thousands of people gathered in the center of the Serbian capital, Belgrade, on June 3 for the fifth anti-government protest in recent weeks.

• “…the perpetrator has been identified as an Egyptian law enforcement officer…”

• Rodolfe Jaar was sentenced to life in prison Friday by Judge Jose Martinez of the Southern District of Florida for his role in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise. In Jaar’s March plea agreement, he admitted to “knowingly and willfully” providing weapons and personnel in furtherance of the plot.

• The White House announced sanctions against Sudanese companies Thursday in an attempt to “hold the [fighting] parties accountable and to deny them the resources, funds, and weapons that have enabled them to perpetuate this horrific conflict.”

• Turkey will send a battalion as reinforcements for the NATO-led peacekeeping force KFOR in Kosovo, the Turkish Defense Ministry said on June 3.

*

• North Korea will never acknowledge UN sanctions resolutions, said Ms Kim Yo Jong.

• Speeches by two top officials illustrated the depth of concern over the rift between the nations. China called it provocation.

• Senegal’s government says the number of people killed in clashes between police and supporters of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko has now risen to 15, including two security officers. While Dakar was calmer on Saturday, clashes continued into the evening as protesters threw rocks at police, who responded with tear gas. Sonko was convicted Thursday of corrupting youth but acquitted on charges of rape and issuing threats. Senegalese are blaming the government for the violence and the loss of lives. Sonko is the main rival to President Macky Sall and is popular with the country’s youth. His supporters maintain his legal troubles are part of a government effort to derail his candidacy in the 2024 presidential election.

• Cybersecurity news that you may have missed this week: the spyware used by various governments, new vulnerabilities, industrial security products, and Linux router attacks.

• The suspect was identified by the Israeli and Egyptian authorities as an Egyptian security officer. The deadly event may be connected to a thwarted drug smuggling attempt, the Israelis said.

War in Ukraine

• Lithuania used to boast that it lies at the geographical centre of Europe and even built a park around the spot as part of its campaign to “rejoin Europe” in the 2000s. The park has been somewhat neglected in the following decades but is now up for a facelift.

• China is a more formidable adversary than the Soviet Union ever was, and the world is less divisible.

Environment

Energy/Transportation

• “…injured passengers have been transported to medical facilities…”

• Stroad is a deliberately-ugly portmanteau given by Strong Towns to thoroughfares that fail at being streets and roads. Roads are high-speed connections, and streets are complex environments with driveways and pedestrians. Trying to be both, they argue, makes stroads ineffective, expensive, ugly, and dangerous. And they have the data to prove it.

• Australian artist and video creator Ben from Bens Worx has been hitting it for six lately with all his projects, but this latest episode might be among his most impressive and beautiful works yet.

Wildlife/Nature

• Scientists keep discovering species in museum collections long after they’ve died out. What else have we missed?

• If only I could see what you’ve seen with your eyes.

Finance

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Erdoğan is set to undertake the oath ceremony at the Grand National Assembly

• Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan was on Saturday sworn in for a third term as president, promising to serve “impartially” after winning a historic runoff election to extend his two-decade rule.

• Canadian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) submitted  a court application, known as a mandamus, in federal court Friday urging Canadian Minister of Public Safety Marco Mendicino to deny former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett entry into Canada.

• June 4 Memorial Hall aims to preserve memories erased by Communist Party propaganda

• “For the next five years, we will continue to work heartily to realize our vision of the Century of Türkiye”

• Iran’s navy commander said his country and Saudi Arabia, as well as three other Persian Gulf states, plan to form a naval alliance that will also include India and Pakistan, Iranian media reported.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

Censorship/Free Speech

• At least eight people were apprehended by the police as they sought to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown in Causeway Bay on Saturday. Police confirmed four arrests for alleged sedition and public disorder.

• U.S.-based legal scholar and activist Teng Biao says totalitarian regimes are ‘major manufacturers’ of jokes

• Just published as part of the symposium on Media and Society After Technological Disruption, edited by Profs. Justin “Gus” Hurwitz & Kyle Langvardt.

• Police say they have detained 8 people, 4 of them for ‘seditious intention and disorderly conduct’.

• A carnival hosted by 26 pro-Beijing organisations in part of Causeway Bay’s Victoria Park opened on Saturday morning – the eve of the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown. For three decades, the space hosted the city’s annual commemorative vigil, which would normally take place on the June 4 anniversary.

• A Sai Kung shop has been inspected by officers from four different government departments within nine days, after it started to give away candles to commemorate the Tiananmen crackdown.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• Chris Licht, chairman and CEO of CNN Worldwide, felt so confident in his plan to reinvent cable news that he allowed extraordinary, months-long access to a magazine writer. The result is devastating.

• Why it matters: The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta paints a brutal portrait of the head of one of the world’s most famous, consequential and profitable brands — in what’s destined to become an iconic magazine profile.

Civil Rights/Policing

• On Thursday, the Northern Ireland Department of Justice published a summary of various responses pertaining to increasing the minimum age of criminal responsibility.

• Three Europeans returned home on June 3, a day after being released by Iran in a prisoner swap, and Tehran said there was no reason for Europeans to be arrested if they were not “exploited” by foreign security services.

• On the night of May 10, 2023, publishers of Ming Pao axed Zunzi’s political cartoons, which they had published daily since 1983. Governance and civil society in Hong Kong are worse off for this move. Ming Pao reacted to government pressure.

• Floridians gathered across the state Thursday to protest a recently enacted law that imposes restrictions on undocumented immigrants. In what protesters dubbed, “a day without immigrants,” thousands walked off the job to voice their disapproval of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s approval of Senate Bill (SB) 1718.

• Judge Thomas Parker, a judge for the United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, Friday ruled that Tennessee’s Adult Entertainment Act (AEA) is unconstitutional. In his opinion, Parker ruled that the AEA violates First Amendment rights. He stated that free speech does not extend to just words.

Monopolies

Software Patents

• What is the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) thinking of? The USPTO’s new proposed rules sound good. It would “provide a less-expensive alternative to district court litigation to resolve certain patentability issues while also protecting against patentee harassment.” Open-source legal experts, however, from the Unified Patents Open Source Zone, The Linux Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) the Open Invention Network (OIN) hear an entirely different message

• When they listen closely, they hear a message that will encourage patent trolls, aka non-practicing entities (NPEs), increase patent litigation costs, and inflate the overall volume of patent litigation. We need this like a hole in the head.

• Besides open-source, for example, pharmaceutical businesses use patents to keep the price of life-saving drugs high. According to a recent New York Times report. “The House Oversight Committee concluded that … twelve of the drugs that Medicare spends the most on are protected by more than 600 patents.” These patents include such important changes as “making a tablet instead of a pill, changing the dose, adding a flavor. When it comes to protecting a drug monopoly, it seems no modification is too small.”

Trademarks

Copyrights

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