[4709] in linux-announce channel archive
Linux-Announce Digest #2
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Digestifier)
Wed Jan 5 13:13:06 2005
From: Digestifier <Linux-Announce-Request@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu>
To: Linux-Announce@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu
Reply-To: Linux-Announce@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu
Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2005 13:13:03 EST
Linux-Announce Digest #2, Volume #5 Wed, 5 Jan 2005 13:13:03 EST
Contents:
[FSFE PR][EN] Software patents are putting the wealth of the software ("Frederick Noronha (FN)")
Announce: RIP Linux CD boot/rescue system! (robotti@godmail.com)
sysstat-5.1.4 - System performance tools for Linux (Sebastien Godard)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2005 12:45:15 CST
From: "Frederick Noronha (FN)" <fred@bytesforall.org>
Subject: [FSFE PR][EN] Software patents are putting the wealth of the software
========== Forwarded message ==========
For the attention of The Director General of the WHO
Dear Mr LEE Jong-wook,
Software patents grant a monopoly on their specific idea. The patentee
can grant or withhold authorisation to use that idea and unilaterally
define the terms under which such authorisation is granted or
withheld. This is before even a single line of source code has been
written. In fact: lawyers are generally in a better position to obtain
software patents than the majority of programmers are. Each program
consists of thousands of ideas -- each of them potentially subject to
patent claims. Even though the European Patent Convention explicitly
excludes software from being patented, so far 30,000 software patents
have in fact already been granted in recent years.
The discussion [1] about a formal introduction of software patents has
been ongoing for several years and we would like to make you aware of
the effect of software patents on telemedicine, an area of great hope
for many.
Today, we are seeing the first steps in the telemedicine area. Instead
of being delivered by traditional post, X-Ray scans are transferred
electronically, reducing the availability timescale from days to
seconds. Physicians will soon be able to monitor individual patients
remotely, something that will in particular offer possibilities of
increased medical coverage for people in remote areas all over the
world. Given the demographic development in northern countries and the
increasing medical needs of potentially wealthy elderly people; that
particular idea was patented years ago. [2]
The database of the European Patent Office currently contains 69
patents directly referring to "telemedicine". That seemingly low
number should not let you rest easy. Not only is the number of
software patents likely to skyrocket after the formal introduction of
software patents.
Each application in the field of telemedicine will also depend on
basic software principles to function. These basic principals include
security, networking and data storage. Security in particular is key,
because the number of methods to make computer systems secure are
limited. There is no compulsory licensing of software patents, so
market tactics are likely to see many applications disappear in
courtroom battles before they have become available to patients. In
addition, besides having to refinance the legal costs, each
telemedicine and remote surgery application is likely to suffer from
known security holes and stability problems.
Software patents are putting the wealth of the software patent lobby
over the health of citizens in Europe and around the world.
That is why we believe software patents will adversely affect your
cause and are asking you to take a firm stand against software
patents. If you have further questions, need additional information or
would like to help us prevent software patents in Europe, please do
not hesitate to get in touch.
With kind regards,
Georg Greve
President
Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE)
About the Free Software Foundation Europe
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a charitable
non-governmental organization dedicated to all aspects of Free
Software in Europe. Access to software determines who may participate
in a digital society. Therefore the Freedoms to use, copy, modify and
redistribute software - as described in the Free Software definition
allow equal participation in the information age. Creating awareness
for these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and
giving people Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are
central issues of the FSFE, which was founded in 2001 as the
European sister organization of the Free Software Foundation in the
United States.
Further information: http://www.fsfeurope.org
[1] http://fsfeurope.org/projects/swpat/swpat.en.html
[2]
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,038,465.WKU.&OS=PN/6,038,465&RS=PN/6,038,465
--
Georg C. F. Greve <greve@fsfeurope.org>
Free Software Foundation Europe (http://fsfeurope.org)
GNU Business Network (http://mailman.gnubiz.org)
Brave GNU World (http://brave-gnu-world.org)
_______________________________________________
Press-release mailing list
Press-release@fsfeurope.org
https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/press-release
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------------------------------
Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2005 14:32:18 CST
From: robotti@godmail.com
Reply-To: robotti@godmail.com
Subject: Announce: RIP Linux CD boot/rescue system!
This is a bootable Linux CD rescue system!
=========================================================================
Recovery Is Possible! v11.6
The bootable CD image `RIP-11.6.iso.bin' can be written to a CD/DVD disk,
using cdrecord/dvdrecord etc.
The 2.6.10 kernel has IDE, SCSI and SATA support.
The kernel also has PCMCIA, LVM2, RAID, and Ethernet/cable/dsl/ppp/
pppoe/wireless networking support.
These are some of the programs it contains (partimage/partimaged, parted,
dump/restore, reiserfsck, fsck.reiser4, fdisk, cfdisk, sfdisk, mke2fs,
e2fsck, tune2fs, debugfs, mkfs.xfs, jfs_mkfs, jfs_fsck, xfs_repair,
cdrecord/dvdrecord, mkisofs, dvd+rw-format, growisofs, ntfsresize,
mkntfs, lynx, mutt, fetchmail, pop3spam, popselect, ncftp, epic irc,
tin, telnet, wget, naim, zgv, testdisk, smbclient, smbmount, ssh/sshd,
rsync, udp-sender/receiver, lde, blesstivo, rtvpatch, chntpw, cmospwd,
grub, grubconfig, smartctl, memtest86, captive-ntfs, ddrescue)
It also includes the DVD udf filesystem packet writing tools
(cdrwtool, mkudffs, pktsetup).
The 'reiserfsck' and 'fsck.reiser4' programs are used to check and repair
a Linux reiserfs and reiser4 filesystem.
The 'xfs_repair' program is used to repair a Linux
xfs filesystem.
The 'jfs_fsck' program is used to check and repair
a Linux jfs filesystem.
The 'e2fsck' program is used to check and repair
a Linux ext2 or ext3 filesystem.
The 'ntfsresize' program non-destructively resizes Windows XP/2000/NT4
or Windows Server 2003 NTFS filesystems. Read /usr/doc/RIP/ntfsresize.txt
on the rescue system.
The 'parted' program is used for creating, destroying, resizing (fat16/32,
ext2/3, reiserfs v3.6), checking and copying partitions, and the file
systems on them. This is useful for creating space for new operating
systems, reorganising disk usage, copying data between hard disks and
disk imaging.
The partition image program 'partimage' saves partitions in the ext2,
ext3, reiserfs, jfs, xfs, ufs, ntfs, fat16, and fat32 formats to an
image file. Only used blocks are copied to save space and increase
the speed. The image file can be compressed, in gzip or bzip2 formats.
============ WinNT/XP & BIOS password change programs! ==============
The chntpw program will enable you to view some information and
change user passwords in a Windows NT/XP SAM userdatabase file.
Read /usr/doc/RIP/chntpw/README.
cmospwd is a CMOS/BIOS password recovery tool.
Read /usr/doc/RIP/cmospwd.txt.
ATTENTION! The read-write NTFS support in the kernel is just for use
with chntpw, it has no other use.
If you want to mount a NTFS partition, mount it read-only!
# mount -t ntfs -o ro /dev/hda1 /mnt/win
ATTENTION! If you want to mount a Windows (NT/2k/XP) NTFS partition
read-write, use captive-ntfs. # mount-ntfs "For help!"
=====================================================================
You can also install and boot the system from a USB flash/pen drive.
The flash drive needs to hold at least 30MB, and be no more than
1GB.
There are also Linux-PXE-Network-CD, FreeBSD-CD and Linux Floppy versions
of the rescue system!
You can get it here!
http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robotti/looplinux/rip
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------------------------------
Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2005 15:08:28 CST
From: Sebastien Godard <sebastien.godard@wanadoo.fr>
Subject: sysstat-5.1.4 - System performance tools for Linux
Hi all,
This is to announce that sysstat 5.1.4 is now available for download.
In this new release, sar is now able to display NFS statistics for a
server or client box.
Other bugs have also been fixed here. In particular sysstat should now
compiles successfully again on 2.6 kernels.
Sysstat 5.1.4 is available for download from my web page at:
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/sebastien.godard/
It is also available on ibiblios Linux archive site:
ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/status/
143kB sysstat-5.1.4.tar.gz
114kB sysstat-5.1.4.tar.bz2
147kB sysstat-5.1.4-1.src.rpm
131kB sysstat-5.1.4-1.i586.rpm
The sysstat utilities are a collection of performance monitoring tools
for Linux. These include sar, sadf, mpstat, iostat and sa tools.
Feedback always welcomed. Send your remarks and comments to:
sysstat at wanadoo.fr.
To learn some more about sysstat, check out
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/sebastien.godard/
Enjoy!
Changes vs 5.1.3 are:
* NFS client and server statistics added to sar.
* sar -d now only reads stats for devices (and not partitions) from
/proc/partitions. (This is what it was already doing with /proc/diskstats).
* Display routines from sadf merged, so that -ppc and -db always output
the same values.
* sadf updated to handle NFS statistics.
* sadf can now display the header of a data file (option -H).
* Define MAX_BLKDEV in ioconf.h if non-existent in <linux/major.h>.
* sar now looks for sadc in one directory only, specified at compile
time. Moreover it is now possible to have two different sysstat versions
installed: sar knows where its sadc counterpart is located.
* sapath.in removed. SADC_PATH is defined in CONFIG file.
* sar and sadf manual pages updated.
* sysstat.ioconf file updated.
* Fixed a bug in i386 RPM package, where sadc location was not
consistent with that of sar. Spec file updated.
* Makefile updated.
* NLS updated.
* Various cosmetic changes (code and manual pages). Code cleaned.
* FAQ and CREDITS files updated.
--
Sébastien Godard (sysstat <at> wanadoo.fr)
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------------------------------
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End of Linux-Announce Digest
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