Android 4.0 at the Chaos Communication Congress

Coming at the CCC, I thought I should take some extra caution. One of the things I did was to add a lock-screen password on Android 4.0 (that I updated from manually about a week ago). Yesterday morning, I figured this was mostly annoying. So I decided to remove it and I kept the simple “slide” lock icon.

Then this night, around 3 or 4 a.m. I wanted to check my emails at the #28C3 party, there was a sheet of paper with the name of a wifi network and a password. I thought, well, that’s great. How stupid I was.

I connected to this network and did some emails for about 20 minutes. As the night goes on, the phone went out of battery. When I got home and plugged the phone to restart it something unexpected happened. The phone was displaying the lock screen, asking for a password; not the SIM code.

I don’t have the password. The former password I use doesn’t work. And there aren’t any options available to me to fix it (apparently, former versions used to suggest to reset the password with an email to the Google account). I am not root on this phone, it’s not in debug mode, etc.

Basically, I got locked out of my own phone. It looks like I just got owned.
Bug report: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=23697

Edit: Fixed with fastboot

root@synclavier:/home/hugo/Tech/android/android-sdk-linux/tools# ./fastboot-linux-i386 devices
31320E7E6C1F00EC	fastboot
root@synclavier:/home/hugo/Tech/android/android-sdk-linux/tools# ./fastboot-linux-i386 oem unlock
... OKAY

It has erased everything on the phone, but at least I can use it back.

Add Duck Duck Go as a search engine in Gnome Shell

Take one of the xml for DuckDuckGo in the OpenSearch standard, here’s mine:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
<ShortName>DuckDuckGo</ShortName>
<Description>Encrypted Duck Duck Go with encrypted Google Suggest</Description>
<InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
<Image height="16" width="16" type="image/x-icon">https://duckduckgo.com/favicon.ico</Image>
<Url type="text/html" method="get" template="https://duckduckgo.com/?q={searchTerms}"/>
<Url type="application/x-suggestions+json" template="https://encrypted.google.com/complete/search?output=firefox&q={searchTerms}"/>
<Url rel="suggestions" type="application/x-suggestions+xml" template="https://encrypted.google.com/complete/search?q={searchTerms}&client=ie8&mw={ie:maxWidth}&sh={ie:sectionHeight}&rh={ie:rowHeight}&inputencoding={inputEncoding}&outputencoding={outputEncoding}"/>
</OpenSearchDescription>

and save as /usr/share/gnome-shell/search_providers/duckduckgo.xml for instance on Debian Wheezy. Now, refresh Gnome Shell (by doing alt+f2, ‘r’) and whenever you search for someting in the Shell’s Activity overview, you have the possibility to search the Web with DuckDuckGo.

ACTA: this is the kind of nonsense we’re dealing with.

The ACTA has thrown a lot of nonsense at us, citizens, for the last four years now. Not only the policies the agreement wants to impose are absurd from economic, social and cultural standpoints (if you’re aiming at any kind of progress or well-being); but also the whole process that we’ve been trying to deal with is made of such non-sense that it’s hard to make the citizens’ voice heard (and even less to make the citizen’s voice count — you know: free speech and democracy).

Lately, the European Parliament legal service has refused to provide a public analysis on ACTA, although it was aksed to do so by the European Parliament (people we elected to represent us at the EU level). The reason?

“Important trading partners of the EU, such as the United States, Canada, Japan, Korea and Switzerland are contracting parties to the ACTA agreement. Disclosure of the parts of the legal opinion under consideration dealing with questions 1, 2 and 3 would seriously interfere with the complex ratification procedures of the ACTA agreement and the EU’s relations with the other contracting parties, as it might prejudice the ratification procedures by these countries.”

(source, the excellent Ante on FFII ACTA’s blog)

So, let’s sum up.

The legal service won’t publish their analysis because it might influence the ratification process of other parties to the agreement; that means other than the EU.

So the EU Parliament will vote on ratification on a treaty without public analysis, because such an analysis would have influenced the US. Brilliant, if not sad.

For a quick analysis on how ACTA endangers Free Software growth, please read ACTA: threats to Free Software. Your comments on that are strongly welcome.

Free Software legal news weekly. November 7-13, 2011

Software patents

Microsoft v. Barnes & Noble: Trivial patents lawsuit?

  • Groklaw – Barnes & Noble Exposes Microsoft’s “Trivial” Patents and Strategy Against Android ~pj Updated

    Barnes & Noble has done the world a tremendous favor, by pulling aside the curtain and revealing Microsoft’s patent campaign tactics against Android in lurid detail.

    It reveals the assertion of “trivial” and “invalid” patents against Barnes & Noble and some shocking details about an “oppressive” license agreement that would have controlled hardware and software design features that Microsoft presented, thus limiting to what degree Barnes & Noble could offer upgrades and improved features to its customers if it had signed it, features it says none of Microsoft’s patents cover. Microsoft worked so hard to keep it all secret, and I think you’ll see why. It’s ugly behind that curtain.

  • Barnes & Noble’s 29-page slide deck calls B.S. on Microsoft’s Android patent campaign – GeekWire

    A 29-page slide deck — made public this week in Microsoft’s patent lawsuit against Barnes & Noble — outlines, in great detail, the bookseller’s objections to the software company’s campaign to collect patent licensing fees from Android device …

Patents in the multimedia realm have always been an issue; recently with the battle for HTML5 video codecs between H264, backed by Apple and Microsoft, against Theora and WebM backed by Google, Opera, Mozilla and others. A lot of media and PR from proprietary companies tried to discredit Free Software technologies by means of patent infringement threats. This article about the Xiph.org foundation shows what legal strategy can be pursued; and how much this draws back innovation.

  • Xiph.org’s “Monty” on codecs and patents [LWN.net]

    One way to combat that is to document why the patents don’t apply. Basically, Xiph did enough research to show why the Qualcomm patents don’t apply to Opus and it is planning to release that information. It is a dangerous strategy at some level because it gives away some of the defense strategy, he said, but Xiph has to try something. By publishing the results of the research, Xiph will be “giving away detailed knowledge of the patents” and may be called to testify if those patents ever do get litigated, but it should counter the belief that the Qualcomm patents cover Opus.

    […] regardless of how Qualcomm responds, Xiph has something concrete (i.e. the research) for the money that it has spent, which is not really the case when taking the declaratory judgement route.

    New codecs:
    […] Finishing the Opus rollout and “responding to patent claims” have been higher on the list, but they will get to it eventually.

Software and copyrightability

  • Android’s Bionic Problem Is Not “Bogus”: Why Judge Alsup Got It Right And Linus Torvalds Got It Wrong

    In September, federal judge William Alsup denied Google’s request for a ruling that the Java application programming interfaces (“APIs”) were, categorically, not protected under copyright law[…] Judge Alsup ruled that each of the disputed files must be analyzed individually to determine whether it is protected by copyright. He also ruled that even if the individual files are ultimately determined not to be copyrightable, the selection and arrangement of those unprotected elements may nevertheless show creativity that is entitled to copyright protection. […]

    That analysis leads me to the conclusion that Google’s approach doesn’t work. But if it does work, if the guardians of the Linux kernel and the GPL believe that it is acceptable to use an automated process to “clean” GPL’d headers or code so that you can re-distribute them under a non-copyleft license

  • Groklaw – Oracle v. Google – How to Proceed on the Copyright Issue II

    Oracle is not claiming that the code that implements the APIs infringes. See 9/15/11 Tr. at 51 (“We are not claiming that this code is not an—that this code is not an independent implementation.”). Instead, it appears to be claiming that Google’s code is an infringing derivative work of Oracle’s specifications because the Android source code implements the APIs described by those specifications.

IT news of legal interest

A newcomer in the very competitive “App Store” landscape.

  • NASA Plans Cloud Marketplace For Scientists – Government – Cloud/SaaS – Informationweek

    “Cloud services suite to expand with platform as a service, data as a service, and a new cloud computing storefront likened to Apple’s AppStore and Google’s Android Market.

    “NASA, already among the government leaders in cloud computing, plans to offer a cloud storefront where scientists will be able to determine their computing needs and access cloud services from a central location. […]

    “The storefront or marketplace won’t just serve as a single point of access to NASA’s cloud services. Scientists will also be able to enter details on their computing needs, and NASA will offer service suggestions based on those needs. For example, a prospective user might be able to detail the type of application they are using, storage requirements, and other variables, and the marketplace, in return, will make a suggestion about what service to use.”