Author: phil

European Software Patents Version 3.0


We wrote to the European Patent Office to indicate our concern about patents being granted:

“Paris, 30th of April 2009

Contribution to the Referral G03/08

Dear members of the Enlarged Board of Appeals,
together with a majority of software experts and parliaments in Europe we see no role for patents for software and business methods. So we are surprised to find out that some die-hards in the European Patent Organization (EPO) still do. We apologize in advance for the unbalanced tone of this Amicus Curiae Brief, however we intend to transmit our opinion through content and form. We hope with this to help the members of the board, among other issues, to understand how outrageous the question of software patents is seen by many and what answers are considered correct.

Where is the law on which legal base you grant for us in Munich patents on software, eCommerce and business methods? In our country we believe that laws have some importance for a referral on points of law, so let us remind you of the relevant legal base:
European Patent Convention Article 52 Patentable inventions
Continue reading “European Software Patents Version 3.0”

Church of Security

Church of Security opened its temporary chapel last week. Preaching about the over-development of surveillance and the creative space it created for us, believers, who will use Infrared-Blinder for CCTV, Consumer B Gone to prevent highly dangerous terrorist from stealing your shopping cart in the supermarket, RFID detection and activation Crosses and other artifacts during our constant celebration of the all-seeing, all-knowing (yet slow to act) God of Security. Allelujhack!

Contre HADOPI, ce soir et toujours!

Make Some Noise against HADOPI
Make Some Noise against HADOPI

Contre une loi qui coupe le net sans preuve réelle, qui surveille et flique tout le monde, qui confonds droit privé et droit public, une protestation ce soir, jeudi 12 mars, a 18h devant l’assemblée.

Amenez de quoi faire du bruit et offrez des adresses IP aux députés…

Si vous ne pouvez pas, soutenez La Quadrature du Net.

/tmp/lab @ wintercamp, Amsterdam, NL

This week is the wintercamp, and a few members of /tmp/lab and Art Sensitif are going there, along with Jaromil for Dyne, meeting 160 participants for a networked experience in order to create, cross-breed and develop what the collectives are doing. Very different than the traditionnal approach to CodeCamps or Hack Conference, wintercamp is organized by some great dutch organization giving it a very different flavor, at least in the making. Questions and projects that will be addressed will revolve around Open Education, Code and Open Source, Tech experiments for culture, Open Infrastructure development, Social and Creative network building and autonomous initiatives.

Workshop: Soldering workshop + Repurposing Audio Devices as Hacking Tools

This thursday 18th of December 2008 at 8 PM, there will be a workshop with Mitch Altman, father and inventor of TV-B-Gone,

1/ First part: Soldering Workshop
Learn to solder, anyone can learn. Just bring your solder iron if you have one. If you don’t, it’s ok, we have some. Mitch has fun kits to practice on. Reimbursement for parts cost requested. Lack of fund should not be a problem to you (means: COME ON!)

2/ Repurposing Audio Devices as Hacking Tools
TV B Gone from an Music Player?
Consumer B Gone from your cell phone?

Audio cards and players are amazing hacking platforms for other-than-sound signalling:
* Infra Red
* Radio-frequencies
* Electromagnetic Fields
All this can be generated by your audio output!!!

Come and let’s be creative about what will be the next WHATEVER-B-Gone

— FRENCH —
Continue reading “Workshop: Soldering workshop + Repurposing Audio Devices as Hacking Tools”

35 Days Against DRM — Day One: MacBook – DefectiveByDesign.org

DefectiveByDesign has launched a new initiative to show which products are being tweaked by their own manufacturer in order to pressure consumer into more sheep-like buyers:

35 Days Against DRM — Day One: MacBook | DefectiveByDesign.org

have a look and vote for it on DIGG.

Laboratoires Foulab.org – Proje(c)t Hackerspace Montreal

C’est avec grand plaisir que nous voyons naître un nouveau Hacklab à Montreal, Canada après avoir rencontré un des protagonistes de cette affaire qui était venu nous rendre visite à Vitry. Vive le Québec tout court! 🙂

Laboratoires Foulab.org – Proje(c)t Hackerspace Montreal

Freedom not fear France – La liberté pas la peur – Rendez vous ce samedi 11 à 13h30 à République

Le /tmp/lab participe à la Freedom Not Fear. Donc rendez vous à 13h30 ce samedi 11 Octobre à 13h30 à l’angle du boulevard Magenta et de République.

Human Rights 21 –  Participation française à la journée d’action internationale “Freedom not fear”

Appel à participation à la journée d’action internationale “Freedom not Fear”.

Freedom Not FearLe 11 Octobre 2008, une manifestation mondiale contre la surveillance se déroulera sous forme de conférences, d’ateliers et de fêtes pour montrer que nous ne sommes pas des moutons à fliquer ou de la viande à caméra.

Human Rights 21 – Freedom not fear France » Communiqué: Appel à participation à la journée d’action internationale “Freedom not Fear”.

Réservez donc votre samedi après midi et votre soirée! Bien évidemment, on vous tiens au courant pour ce que le lab prépare à cette occasion.

Les « bidouilleurs » de la société de l’information, par Jean-Marc Manach (Le Monde diplomatique)

On parle du /tmp/lab dans Le Monde Diplomatique! C’est assez agréable de voir que certains médias relèvent l’apport bénéfique que les hackers ont sur la société de l’information et la société en général. Un traitement non manichéen qui au delà du traitement médiatique populiste “méchant – gentils” ou “blanc – noirs” (white hat / black hat) que l’on doit à Jean Marc Manach.

Notamment, on verra des allusions à l’impact politique et sociétal du Chaos Computer Club en allemagne qui a pu s’exprimer sur des sujets d’actualité devant des politiques bien trop souvent manipulés par les lobbys industriels comme on a vu récemment en France avec la Dadvsi (les majors de l’industrie du disque avaient même fait des démonstration de leurs systèmes à l’intérieur de l’Assemblée Nationale) et comme on le voit tristement dans le cas actuel du paquet telecom.

Les « bidouilleurs » de la société de l’information, par Jean-Marc Manach (Le Monde diplomatique)

OLPC Sugar on EEE pc with bootable USB key and OLPC XO emulation fun

Sugar on EEE pc using XubuntuAfter the BackTrack3 Live SD card for EEE, I continued the distribution exploration with the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) operating system on their brand new XO laptops and their slick and simple GUI called Sugar.

Before jumping into “did this, done that”, current advances in SD card and USB memory sticks sizes, bootable distribution and virtualization take computing to a different level.

Remember when you use to insert a MSDOS diskette into your computer to boot it? Each new operating system could be booted on the same old PC by merely changing the diskette and rebooting? Of course, there were not as many OS as now. This is where the fun begin.

Now, a child can have “his own computer” by just possessing a SD-card. All his changes to his environment will be persistent. He will be able to add programs without depending or affecting anyone. 2 Gb SD card are as cheap as 10 euros now. On such a card, you can have OLPC Sugar, Ubuntu or Debian. And guess what, these are not mutually exclusive. For proof is my experiment by Booting my EEE pc with Xubuntu running Sugar GUI borrowed from standard OLPC / XO distribution. These SD or USB storage are bootable even if they are formatted as VFAT, that means, readable on a standard Windows PC.

On top of this, Kevin’s SD card or USB key may also store a Virtual Machine application (Qemu or Virtual Box are free alternatives to VMware) which may enable him to run his own environment without rebooting daddy’s computer. Such freedom may transform PCs into a commodity where you actually boot your own environment.OLPC XO Sugar emulation fun

Speaking of which, I did some test also running OLPC XO Fedora Core-based distribution in VMware Fusion on my MacBook and it runs nicely, without crashes or else.