12.19.17 Posted in,, at 7:23 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz How low can the bar go?

Summary: The aspiration to lower patent quality in order to saturate the space with patents and lawsuits is what controls exist for; but those who profit from lots of patents and lawsuits want these controls obliterated HE ‘s appeal boards are essential. The Board is known as PTAB, but it’s actually like a bunch of small tribunals. Like BoA at the. They help ensure high patent quality and scare those whose patents are of low quality. A few hours ago ( “The EPO Raises The Bar On Plausibility When Assessing Inventive Step: T488/16 – Dasatinib”). This is why Battistelli attacks the Boards of Appeal. They raise the patent bar.

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The Office perpetually lowers it. The Boards also serve to highlight systematic decline/ intentional reduction of quality at the Office (if work can be done at a high volume; the Boards have been grossly understaffed and under-equipped by the EPO; even their office space shrank a lot).

From the new article: On 1 February 2017 the Board of Appeal of the EPO upheld the revocation of Bristol-Myers Squibb’s (BMS) patent for anti-cancer drug dasatinib due to a lack of inventive step. It is common for post-published data to be taken into account by the EPO when such data supports a technical effect rendered plausible by the application. In this case the Board decided that the original application did not make it plausible that the dasatinib had any useful properties, i.e. Any technical effect. As a consequence, the post-filing data could not be taken into account when assessing inventive step and the patent was revoked for merely claiming an obvious further organic compound.

This finding raises the bar on whether a patent specification makes it plausible that a technical problem has been solved and could have far-reaching effects for the patentability of pharmaceutical and other inventions. It’s no secret that patent quality at the EPO nosedived. Not a single insider publicly claims otherwise. In the US, by contrast. Patent quality seems to have improved.

Even when the USPTO grants a patent, that patent may soon be invalidated by PTAB or by a court. That’s just happening so much these days that litigation frequency has gone down considerably. This is bad news for nobody but trolls, patent law firms, and opportunists whose patents are bunk. Watch Sunday’s from Watchtroll.

They just can’t stop PTAB-bashing. They do it all the time. Here’s Watchtroll trying to shift outcomes such as Alice in favour of patent trolls while slamming AIA (which birthed PTAB): “The America Invents Act (AIA) has laid waste many of the advantages of being an innovator, but the Supreme Court is currently considering the constitutionality and propriety of some of the more troublesome aspects of the AIA.” Nonsense. This is like weapons manufacturers bemoaning peace and stability. They just need feuds for income. In absence of conflict, they’ll try to create some.

PTAB was also mentioned by Marie McKiernan. This is being cited by the patent microcosm, including high-profile PTAB bashers. To quote: As we discussed in May, PTAB decisions are a primary source for guidance regarding what constitutes a “printed publication” under § 102, because the PTAB faces the issue so frequently. Since that post, the PTAB has continued to define the scope of what is or is not a printed publication. In most instances, where the issue was contested, the PTAB found the petitioner failed to prove a document was a printed publication. [.] These PTAB decisions serve as an invaluable source of guidance for an issue often commonly contested before the PTAB, and their lesson continues to be that more evidence should be provided.

In many instances, although the petitioner provides some evidence pointing toward the public accessibility of the alleged prior art, the evidence falls short of demonstrating that the document is a “printed publication.” When it comes to proving that a reference is a printed publication before the PTAB, less is not more. Parties should take heed of the PTAB’s approach. Before filing their petitions, petitioners must think of all potential avenues of dissemination to connect all the dots between the prior art, its publication, and how that translates into public accessibility. Patent owners should not shy away from attacking petitioners’ evidence. Seriously biased spin.

PTAB bashing is in some sense akin to Battistelli’s attacks on the Boards. It’s intended to help reduce the patentability bar and facilitate more feuds (something a system like UPC would depend on). PTAB bashers have also promoted (even the headline a lie, suggestive of outcome that won’t happen).

The American Enterprise Institute is basically a pressure group for the maximalists; it’s just cleverly named. It cites Watchtroll as its source. That’s like Daily Caller citing Fox News. Here is what it says about Oil States: “So how will the case shake out?

It’s difficult to tell at this stage, but Gene Quinn of IP Watchdog asserted after the argument that “a 9-0 decision that ratifies the constitutionality of IPR proceedings seems quite unlikely.” And a panel he interrogated also sounded divided. We’ll likely have to wait until June for the ruling, but Patent Office trials now seem more endangered than before.” Not by a long shot. Even patent professionals are already accepting that SCOTUS, based on the hearings so far, leans towards PTAB. Sadly, PTAB bashing continues to thrive in blogs of such extremists, whereas companies which create products are mostly apathetic and silent. The media is therefore dominated by PTAB-hostile voices,. Contents • • • • • • Desktop • Having spent 20 years of my life on Desktop Linux I thought I should write up my thinking about why we so far hasn’t had the Linux on the Desktop breakthrough and maybe more importantly talk about the avenues I see for that breakthrough still happening. There has been a lot written of this over the years, with different people coming up with their explanations.

My thesis is that there really isn’t one reason, but rather a range of issues that all have contributed to holding the Linux Desktop back from reaching a bigger market. Also to put this into context, success here in my mind would be having something like 10% market share of desktop systems, that to me means we reached critical mass. So let me start by listing some of the main reasons I see for why we are not at that 10% mark today before going onto talking about how I think that goal might possible to reach going forward. • Longtime Fedora/GNOME developer Christian Schaller who leads the desktop engineering team at Red Hat recently commented on some bold Linux/tech predictions for 2018. He’s now also shared his personal opinion on why “the year of the Linux desktop” has yet to materialize.

Christian believes that holding back to the Linux desktop from conquering has been the fragmented market, the lack of specialized and big name applications being natively available, Linux not having a stable API/ABI, Apple’s resurgence on the desktop, Microsoft being aggressive, Canonical’s business model not working out, ODM support lacking, and more. • Microsoft’s Surface Book 2 has a power problem. When operating at peak performance, it may draw more power than its stock charger or Surface Dock can handle.

What we’ve discovered after talking to Microsoft is that it’s not a bug—it’s a feature. • Audiocasts/Shows • • Kernel Space • Graphics Stack • • In order to target around a mid-February release date, the Mesa 18.0.0 branching and first release candidate would be around mid-January, currently set for 19 January after which the branching occurs and all new feature development would be for Mesa 18.1 in Q2’2018. Weekly release candidates as usual come between RC1 and the official stable release. The rough schedule was posted today to Mesa-dev. • • Mesa 17.3.1 is on track to be released this week as the first point release to this quarter’s Mesa 17.3 feature release.

Mesa 17.3.0 finally shipped in early December after facing delays. As is usually the case with the first point release of new Mesa branches, 17.3.1 is quite heavy on the fixes. Mesa 17.3.1 will ship with around three dozen fixes, including notable fixes for RADV / RadeonSI / i965 and even some Nouveau NVC0 and Freedreno bug fixes too. The GLSL shader cache should also be more robust in this release. For those on big endian architectures, there’s fixes for you too. • A fun little spot has been made today, there is an AMD entry seen in the AMD Linux driver that is stirring up the web. The entry nearly reads out like a pun really, but does suggest NAVI, the successor to Vega.

Nobody knows why or what, but 7nm isn’t surely ready for GPUs, so as to why that entry is in there, remains speculation. • While details regarding the Navi GPU architecture have been scarce, we do know that AMD has a solid GPU roadmap and that next-generation Navi GPU will be based on 7nm manufacturing process and feature “next-gen memory”, possible either GDDR6 or HBM3. • Intel has sent in another round of feature updates of their i915 DRM driver to DRM-Next of new material slated for Linux 4.16. At the start of December they began with their first round of i915 work for Linux 4.16 that included continued work on Cannonlake “Gen 10″ graphics, power-gating improvements, GEM proxy support, continued HuC/GuC clean-ups, GVT virtualization enhancements, and more. Then last week was a second round of feature additions that included execlist improvements, more Cannonlake “Gen 10″ graphics enablement, Geminilake workarounds, more robust GPU reset handling, and more. • Since yesterday several (Windows-focused) publications have been running stories about how AMD’s next-gen “Navi” GPU was supposedly spotted in the AMD Linux driver code. • AMD’s next generation GPU architecture, Navi, has interestingly been spotted in the latest Linux drivers.

That said, it should be noted that the aforementioned drivers do not contain the word “Navi” specifically, but there are certain hints which show that this is indeed a new GPU from Radeon and AMD. The latest Linux drivers contains the following line of code: • Today marks the release of Portable Computing Language “POCL” 1.0 for this originally CPU-based OpenCL implementation. Earlier this month marked the POCL 1.0 release candidate while out today is the official 1.0.0 release. POCL 1.0 is the best implementation to date for offering OpenCL support on CPUs.

• It remains to be seen how exactly the situation will play out with the existing open-source RADV Vulkan driver that’s in the Mesa tree and AMD’s to-be-opened “Radeon Open Vulkan” driver that is the company’s official Vulkan driver. At least though Vulkan drivers are lighter and less maintenance than OpenGL drivers.

For those curious about the size of the RADV Vulkan driver, when checking out Mesa Git this morning, the src/amd/vulkan directory comes in at 36,253 lines of code. • Benchmarks • As part of our end-of-year benchmarking, a Phoronix Premium supporter had brought up the idea of seeing how the Radeon RX Vega Linux driver performance has evolved since launch. Ask and you shall receive: here’s some numbers showing the state of the Radeon RX Vega 56 and RX Vega 64 performance with the open-source RadeonSI+AMDGPU performance as of this week compared to back on launch-day. • Applications • It’s called ‘Dashboard’ and it is a dockable dialog that provides at-a-glance info on how GIMP is using cache and swap space. GIMP devs say the feature could be useful for anyone looking to improve the performance of GIMP as it lets them see how the editor copes with the default settings.

I imagine the feature will also prove popular with developers who work on GIMP, too! • Alex Larsson released at the end of last week a new stable update of the Flatpak 0.10 Linux application sandboxing and distribution framework (formerly XDG-App) for GNU/Linux distributions. Bringing a month’s worth of improvements, Flatpak 0.10.2 is out with support for OSTree 2017.14, which is required for building the new release. An interesting feature of Flatpak 0.10.2 is the ability of the “flatpak update” command to update apps from both system and user installations by default. • MKVToolNix, the open-source and cross-platform collection of tools developed by Moritz Bunkus for manipulating the MKV (Matroska) media container format, received its last release in 2017. Bringing a month’s worth of improvements and bug fixes, MKVToolNix 19.0.0 is here to update the mkvmerge component to take the first keyframe within 1ms of the requested value into consideration when splitting by duration, by timestamps or by timestamp-based parts.

• Proprietary • Google asked rival browser Vivaldi to add uninstall instructions on its website download page – something Google doesn’t do itself – after deactivating Vivaldi’s advertising account earlier this year. Vivaldi is among the many software vendors that advertise products with the search giant. AdWords customers appear at the top of a search for related keywords with a small “Ad” in a box next to them. “Google deactivated our advertising account a couple of days after I had a few interviews where I talked about privacy issues,” Vivaldi CEO and co-founder Jon von Tetzchner told us. “This is the second time they did this, but this time there was no indication in the AdWords interface that we had been blocked. • Instructionals/Technical • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Wine or Emulation • The Vulkan graphics API has been particularly popular with some gaming console emulators from the Dolphin Emulator to RetroArch.

The latest emulator now working on Vulkan support is PPSSPP on Linux. • Games • • • Just a quick tip here!

For those who enjoy the classics, Disney’s The Lion King & The Jungle Book now have Linux versions on Steam. • The crafting MMO Wild Terra Online [Steam, Official Site] has now officially launched, come check out the launch trailer and decide if it’s the MMO for you. We don’t have a lot to choose from when it comes to MMOs, so it’s good to see Wild Terra Online support Linux. It’s come a long way since the early builds I’ve tested, the UI is looking a lot nicer that’s for sure. • • • • • The Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III [Steam, Feral Store] has been updated for Linux to include the Endless War Update which brings in some fun free stuff. • The slick deals just keep an appearing and naturally we don’t want you to miss out on any of them!

Be quick and grab some more free games. • Crashlands [Steam, Official Site] is a silly story-driven crafting ARPG and as of today it’s officially available for Linux gamers. • In the first article in this series, I explained how to use Python to create a simple, text-based dice game. In the second part, we began building a game from scratch, starting with creating the game’s environment. And, in the third installment, we created a player sprite and made it spawn in your (rather empty) game world.

As you’ve probably noticed, a game isn’t much fun if you can’t move your character around. In this article, we’ll use Pygame to add keyboard controls so you can direct your character’s movement. There are functions in Pygame to add other kinds of controls, but since you certainly have a keyboard if you’re typing out Python code, that’s what we’ll use. Once you understand keyboard controls, you can explore other options on your own. • If you are exclusively using Linux for gaming, hopefully you aren’t hoping for an HTC Vive this Christmas as the SteamVR support on Linux still leaves a lot to be desired.

At the start of the year Valve finally put out their first SteamVR developer build for Linux and now nearly one year later, it still feels like a very rough beta. • When developer Radiant Entertainment announced that Riot Games had acquired it last year, the studio also revealed that it was shuttering its indie fighting game, Rising Thunder. But in a Reddit post today, Radiant unveiled Rising Thunder: Community Edition, a free, open-source version of the game that will be available in January 2018 for PC. • Rising Thunder was a big deal in the fighting game community when it was announced way back in 2015. It was in development at Radiant Entertainment, a studio led by fighting game legend Seth Killian and EVO Tournament co-founders Tom and Tony Cannon. After Radiant was bought by Riot Games in 2016, however, work on Rising Thunder shut down–but now, it looks like the game will live again.

• Rising Thunder, the indie fighting game canceled in its alpha phase of development in 2016, will live on through one final build, with open-source server code, the game’s developers said today. • Rising Thunder was a fighting game from Radiant Entertainment, built in part by FGC luminaries like Seth Killian and Evo founders Tom and Tony Cannon. It was to have all the depth of a traditional fighter, but with a simplified, infinitely more accessible control scheme, but was cancelled after Radiant were acquired by League of Legends developers Riot Games. Yet Rising Thunder is not gone, as the developers are releasing the final build of the game to the public.

• Last year, Riot Games acquired Rising Thunder developer Radiant Entertainment. Following that move, the promising robot fighting game was never finished and the team shifted its resources toward another project. It was a bittersweet note to end on, but the story isn’t over just yet.

• Desktop Environments/WMs • This is the third article in our series on migrating to Linux. If you missed earlier articles, they provided an introduction to Linux for new users and an overview of Linux files and filesystems. In this article, we’ll discuss graphical environments. One of the advantages of Linux is that you have lots of choices, and you can select a graphical interface and customize it to work just the way you like it.

Some of the popular graphical environments in Linux include: Cinnamon, Gnome, KDE Plasma, Xfce, and MATE, but there are many options. One thing that is often confusing to new Linux users is that, although specific Linux distributions have a default graphical environment, usually you can change the graphical interface at any time.

This is different from what people are used to with Windows and Mac OS. The distribution and the graphical environment are separate things, and in many cases, they aren’t tightly coupled together. Additionally, you can run applications built for one graphical environment inside other graphical environments. For example, an application built for the KDE Plasma graphical interface will typically run just fine in the Gnome desktop graphical environment. • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt • And the winner is Well, it’s kind of obvious. Kubuntu 17.04 Zesty Zapus is the uncontested king of this contest. It just did everything superbly – from the live session to prolonged, heavy use on several machines, it maintained and still maintains quality, elegance, flair and stability that no other Plasma rival – or for that matter, any rival – can offer.

There are still some issues, like the Samba timestamp or screenshot shadows, and a handful of other papercuts, but the benefits outweigh these nuisances. Kubuntu 17.04 is most likely the best KDE/Plasma release ever made, and it is a culmination of years of hard work. But then, It also sets a dangerous precedent, because once you have perfection, it is very hard to retain it, and consequently, the backlash is going to be ever more severe. As other tests show, including the Kubuntu family itself, it takes only a few short months to undo the stellar record with nothing more than some regressions and overstretched development resources. But let’s stay in the happy zone. Kubuntu 17.04 is the perfect distro and the perfect Plasma desktop, and it’s the ultimate demonstrator of what this desktop environment can do, with a range of splendid features, great quality, deep forethought, excellent consistency, excellent ergonomics, and of course, all the fun stuff that people need. There’s little else that needs to be sad except lament the fact it’s not an LTS but just an interim release.

Conclusion It is fun reading your own articles, and seeing how things change. And they did change. I believe that Plasma has progressed heavily since last year.

Gnome went down, and Plasma went up. The cycle of Tux. I was rather cautious about Plasma, and it is still a volatile desktop environment.

Good results are a gamble, but I believe that’s an outcome of shoddy QA and insufficient attention to details and less an integral failing of the Plasma desktop. As a whole, Plasma is a lot better than it was. But then, it’s also more difficult to put together than before. You either get amazing or horrible.

There’s no middle ground. To be honest, I prefer that to gray mediocrity. While Kubuntu 17.04 is the unrivaled star of the year, Mageia 6 also deserves a lot of praise. Like Antergos in the Gnome space, we have an underdog quietly slipping under the radar and delivering a bombshell. Quality, originality – such a rare trait nowadays – cunning, great ergonomics and then some.

Side by side, these two show that Plasma is an excellent choice for the desktop. 2017, I am far more optimistic about Plasma even as my passion for other options is fading fast. You still need to be cautious and risk it, but the reward is so much higher than last year. Plasma is on a good trajectory, and hopefully it will continue into the next year. Meanwhile, you have some awesome distros to test and play with and sample the best of Plasma. • After an exciting and successful year, we give you all an opportunity to help us recharge our proverbial batteries. You’ve always wanted to contribute to a Free and open source project, right?

Maybe you wondered how you could do that. Well, supporting our fundraiser is a perfect way to get started. Donations are also a great way to show gratitude to the developers of your favorite KDE applications, and to ensure the project will continue.

• • Endless OS 3.3.6 is currently rolling out to existing users, and it introduces sign-on improvements by allowing users that use a mix of English and non-English words in their passwords to more easily unlock their computers. Moreover, the new release adds the latest Flatpak and Flatpak Builder tools to improve the apps ecosystem. These include hardware-acceleration graphics support for apps on ARM devices like Endless Mini and Mission Mini, improvements to language and localization selection, add missing icons for some apps, as well as to prevent situations where apps can’t connect to the Internet when switching between wireless networks. • When it comes to the popularity of different operating systems, Linux enjoys a better position in the servers market. Due to many unbeatable benefits like stability, security, freedom, and hardware support, Linux is often the favorite platform to work upon for system administrators and expert users. Just like other special uses (including gaming, programming, or hacking), the category of Linux server distros too is vast.

• Ikey Doherty, founder and lead developer of the Solus Project developing the Linux-based Solus operating system, released today a much-improved version of the Linux Steam Integration (LSI). Linux Steam Integration 0.7.2 is now available with several new features and improvements that might worth your attention if you’re an avid Linux gamer.

These include initial support for Canonical’s Snappy daemon Snapd, a workaround for the Unity3D “black screen of nope” bug, as well as enhanced vendoring rules and shim system. To improve the shim implementation, Linux Steam Integration 0.7.2 brings a new generic lsi-exec entry point used by both steam and lsi-steam binaries. It also includes support for the XDG specification, a more robust environment bootstrap, and various other improvements. • OpenSUSE/SUSE • As we’ve been covering since the original patches back in October, SUSE has been working on a very interesting in-kernel bootsplash system.

It’s growing into an interesting alternative to the user-space-based Plymouth, but one of the leading common criticism of it is the use of FBCON rather than interfacing with the DRM/KMS APIs. • Red Hat Family • Finance • • • • • • • • • • • • Fedora • Fedora’s Modularity initiative aims to make it easy for packagers to create alternative versions of software and for users to consume those streams simply. We’ve been working on this for several years, resulting in the “Boltron” prototype this summer and the recent Fedora Modular Server beta. Feedback shows that these test releases didn’t meet the goal, and we’re incorporating that in a modified design which we think will. We plan to demo the new approach by DevConf.cz and FOSDEM. • Debian Family • Derivatives • Canonical/Ubuntu • For Ubuntu fans the past 12 months have been a strange mix of dramatic and the ecstatic moments.

The world’s most popular desktop Linux distribution began the year with one desktop environment, yet ends it with another. But despite several controverisal decisions along the way Ubuntu is, arguably, in better shape than it’s ever been. It’s found its mojo, refined its focus, and heads into the next year emboldened and renewed.

In this post we present 12 images from our archives that (somewhat) illustrate Ubuntu in 2017. • Flavours and Variants • The Linux Mint team continues to release fresh versions of their operating system approximately every 6 month, following the updates in Ubuntu LTS versions. You could read the quick screenshot overview of Linux Mint 18.2 Cinnamon back in July 2017. It is now turn of Linux Mint 18.3 Cinnamon.

Let’s have a whistle-stop tour through it. • • Android • • • • • • • • • • • • Over the years, I’ve watched first hand as enterprise-centric companies took open source technologies and found ways to make millions (and sometimes many millions) by providing trustworthy support. But what about those open source applications that lack enterprise level financial backing, how are the developers of these applications supposed to pay their bills? In this article, I’m going to address one of the biggest issues facing those who want to see non-enterprise open source software – funding. • As 2017 draws to a close, we look at some of the reasons why the use of open source software is growing and will continue to grow in the year ahead. • A solid ecommerce platform can help smooth out the whole shopping experience for your customers, from click, to cart to payment. From massive corporations to sole traders, ecommerce platforms can meet the needs of most businesses, and those that don’t are constantly improving operations to keep up with the fierce competition.

So, why go open source? If you want total control and absolute customisation, open source software lets you inspect, copy and alter that software to make the perfect package for you. • So, why Mastodon?

The new social media service is a non-profit, open-source project that has attracted many Twitter refugees over the last year, including myself. Founder Eugen Rochko (gargron@mastodon.social) wrote in March that Mastodon was aiming to learn from the “mistakes” of Twitter and be an inclusive, decentralized microblogging platform. The result is a social media service where users actually feel comfortable being themselves, as opposed to a performative, more sarcastic version of who they actually are. • The Rochester Mini Maker Faire is an annual event that takes place at the Joseph A. Floreano Riverside Convention Center in Rochester, NY. Each year, makers, creators, artists, and others from upstate New York and beyond show their crafts and creations to the community.

Open source tools are popular at the Rochester Mini Maker Faire, where you’ll find countless Raspberry Pis, Arduino boards, and open source-powered projects and creations. • Bloomberg has adopted Kubernetes, the open source system for deploying and managing containerized applications which has gained a great deal of industry momentum, in its infrastructure. As a result, systems are becoming more distributed than ever before, running on machines scattered around the globe and across the cloud. This means there are more moving parts, any of which could fail for a long list of reasons. Systems engineers want to feel confident that the complex systems they’ve built will withstand problems and keep running.

To do that, they run batteries of elaborate tests designed to simulate all sorts of problems. But it’s impossible to imagine every potential problem, let alone plan for all of them. • Events • xTuple open source ERP ended their 2017 series of on-the-road events at the Pittsburgh Technology Council (PTC), the largest regional tech trade association in the nation. The open-forum discussion focused on digital marketing strategies for manufacturers using next generation business management software, including xTupleCommerce, the online Customer Web Portal. • Web Browsers • Mozilla • If you use Firefox instead of Chrome, do you do so because you prefer Mozilla’s stance on privacy? Some loyal Firefox users and even employees were up in arms after Mozilla surreptitiously installed the add-on Looking Glass last week.

It didn’t happen to all Firefox users, but the ones affected did not give the browser permission to install it. • Over the course of the year Firefox has enjoyed a growing relationship with the Mr. Robot television show and, as part of this relationship, we developed an unpaid collaboration to engage our users and viewers of the show in a new way: Fans could use Firefox to solve a puzzle as part of the alternate reality game (ARG) associated with the show. • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice • LibreOffice 6.0 just exited beta testing and the development cycle will continue this week with the first Release Candidate, which should be available to download by the end of the week as The Document Foundation plans a third bug hunting session just before the Christmas holidays, on December 22, 2017. “On December 22 we will have an international Bug Hunting Session (BHS), testing the RC1 (first release candidate) of LibreOffice 6.0,” writes Mike Saunders.

“You can download, try out and test this RC1 version – and if you spot any bugs, let our QA (Quality Assurance) community know.” • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing) • • • BSD • Obviously I still use FreeBSD on the desktop; with the packages from area51 I have a full and modern KDE Plasma environment. We (as in, the KDE-FreeBSD team) are still wrestling with getting the full Plasma 5 into the official ports tree (stalled, as so often it has been, on concerns of backwards compatibility), but things like CMake 3.10.1 and Qt 5.9 are sliding into place. Slowly, like brontosauruses driving a ’57 Cadillac. In the meantime, I do most of my Calamares development work — it is a Linux installer, after all — in VMs with some Linux distro installed. Invariably — and especially when working on tools that do the most terrible things to the disks attached to a system — I totally break the system, the VM no longer starts at all, and my development environment is interrupted for a bit. • Programming/Development • Yesterday, we published a beginners guide to manage Python packages using PIP. In that guide, we discussed how to install pip, and how to install, update, uninstall Python packages using pip.

We also discussed the importance of virtual environments and how to create a virtual environment using venv and virtualvnv tools. However managing multiple environments using venv and virtualenv tools is tedious task. There is an another python package manager named pipenv, which is the new recommended Python Packaging tool by Python.org. It can be used to easily install and manage python dependencies without having to create virtual environments.

Pipenv automatically creates and manages a virtualenv for your projects. It also adds/removes packages from your Pipfile as you install/uninstall packages. • • As normal, I’ve been busy since our last update. Here are a few highlights of features in addition to all those bug fixes. • The GNOME Builder development environment has already been working on many new features for next year’s GNOME 3.28 desktop environment while even more features are now on track. Work already being addressed is improved Flatpak support, pseudo-terminal support in the build pipeline, improved search, better CMake and Meson build system integration, support for unit tests, and more. Lead GNOME Builder IDE developer Christian Hergert has written another status update on his latest improvements for the project.

• Developers wanting to use the Google Go language, aka Golang, for web programming can try the beta open source Joy compiler, which promises—when it reaches production release—to turn Go code into JavaScript code. With Joy, idiomatic Go code will be translated into JavaScript that will work in every browser (as ECMAScript 3 code, with ECMAScript 5 code on the roadmap as well), the open source project claims. It also means JavaScript developers will be able to use Go’s type system and tools. Joy project creator Matthew Mueller says the Go-to-JavaScript translation work is about 90 percent complete. • A diver examines an anchor at the Two Brothers shipwreck site, located on a reef off French Frigate Shoals, hundreds of miles northwest of Honolulu. Two Brothers was captained by George Pollard Jr., whose previous Nantucket whaling vessel, Essex, was rammed and sunk by a whale in the South Pacific, inspiring Herman Melville’s famous book, Moby-Dick. • Security • Zealot campaign used Eternalblue and Eternalsynergy to mine cryptocurrency on networks.

Security researchers have found a new hacking campaign that used NSA exploits to install cryptocurrency miners on victim’s systems and networks. They said that the campaign was a sophisticated multi-staged attack targeting internal networks with the NSA-attributed EternalBlue and EternalSynergy exploits. • Hackers are using leaked NSA cyberweapons to mine cryptocurrency over vulnerable servers.

The weapons can be used to take over Windows and Linux systems, and download malware that can mine the digital currency Monero, according to security provider F5 Networks. • • Network security vendor F5 has discovered a new attack that makes use of known vulnerabilities including the same Apache Struts vulnerability linked to the Equifax breach to mine the Monero cryptocurrency. F5′s threat researchers have dubbed the campaign “Zealot”, which is also the name of a file that is part of multi-stage attack.

The Zealot files include python scripts that trigger the EternalBlue and Eternal Synergy exploits that were first publicly disclosed by the Shadow Brokers hacking group and were allegedly first created by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) linked Equation Group.

• HP has recently come under fire for allegedly bundling a keylogger into its drivers, allowing the company or cybercriminals who could hijack it to record every keystroke of the user. But Synaptics, the company that builds and provides TouchPads for HP and other OEMs on the market, says the keylogger in question isn’t actually a keylogger, as it was implemented solely with the purpose of serving as a debug tool. In a security brief published recently, Synaptics says HP isn’t the only company that offers drivers with this debug tool included by default, but all OEMs featuring its hardware. “Each notebook OEM implements custom TouchPad features to deliver differentiation. We have been working with these OEMs to improve the quality of these drivers. To support these requirements and to improve the quality of the experience, Synaptics provides a custom debug tool in the driver to assist in the diagnostic, debug and tuning of the TouchPad.

This debug feature is a standard tool in all Synaptics drivers across PC OEMs and is currently present in production versions,” the firm says. • The researchers used Google’s proprietary data to see whether or not stolen passwords could be used to gain access to user accounts, and found that an estimated 25 per cent of the stolen credentials can successfully be used by cyber crooks to gain access to functioning Google accounts. • Drawing upon Google as a case study, we find 7–25% of exposed passwords match a victim’s Google account. • • Security researchers have spotted a new multi-stage attack campaign using NSA exploits to infect victim machines with Monero mining malware. The attack begins by scanning for vulnerable servers: specifically ones that are still open to the Apache Struts flaw (CVE-2017-5638) which led to the infamous Equifax breach, and CVE-2017-9822, a DotNetNuke (DNN) content management system vulnerability. If a Windows machine is detected, the attackers deploy two NSA-linked exploits leaked by alleged Russian state hackers the Shadow Brokers earlier this year. • • A recent Request for Comment at the Internet Engineering Task Force calls for SSH developers to deprecate 1,024-bit moduli.

RFC 8270 was authored by Mark Baushke (at Juniper Networks but working as an individual) and Loganaden Velvindron (of Mauritian group Hackers.mu) in response to demand for a response to the 2015 Logjam bug. Visual Assist 10 9 Keygen Crack on this page. Logjam, discovered by Johns Hopkins cryptoboffin Matthew Green, would let a state-level actor attack Diffie-Hellman cryptosystems using 1,024-bit primes. • Defence/Aggression • What just happened and what will happen in Honduras are painfully unclear right now. There’s still no resolution to the November 26 presidential election, in which opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla was leading when the electoral commission—controlled by allies of incumbent President Juan Orlando Hernandez—suspended the count for a day and a half, citing technical problems, only to resume it and declare that Hernandez had, in the meanwhile, overtaken his opponent and won. Hardly surprisingly, this was met with public protest, in turn met by a state crackdown. We hear at least 11 people have been killed by security forces, and there’s a public curfew, which at least some police are reportedly refusing to enforce. 8, 2017, a lawyer for the U.S.

Government stood before a federal appeals court to defend President Donald Trump’s third attempt to ban immigrants and visitors from predominantly Muslim countries. He argued that while there may be legal limits on presidential power to ban noncitizens from the United States, the courts should still defer to the executive branch, taking Donald Trump’s word for it that he is no longer intent on banning Muslims from the United States.

The judges might have asked, “What is the historical precedent that supports President Trump’s position on the travel ban?” None of them asked that precise question, but the President himself gave a chilling answer when he proposed the ban: Korematsu v. United States, the 1944 Supreme Court decision upholding Executive Order 9066, which banished Japanese Americans from their homes and forced them into prison camps. The Korematsu ruling came down 73 years ago today and the lessons from it could not be more relevant. • The Trump administration has publicly blamed North Korea for unleashing the so-called WannaCry cyber attack that crippled hospitals, banks and other companies across the globe earlier this year.

• The US has declared North Korea the perpetrator of the widespread and financially devastating WannaCry ransomware cyberattack that rapidly spread across the globe in May, hitting hospitals, companies, and other critical institutions in countries around the world. The announcement came in the form of an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal authored by President Donald Trump’s Homeland Security Advisor, Thomas Bossert. • He said the world community needs to recognise Pakistan’s sacrifices in the war against terrorism as the country suffered the most as compared to other nations.

“Pakistan has suffered a lot in the war on terror both in terms of lives lost and damage to economy, but international community has not looked upon our sacrifices in this war with a positive attitude,” Nasser complained. • Transparency/Investigative Reporting • The revelation this week that Donald Trump Jr. Corresponded with WikiLeaks during the presidential campaign has added a new wrinkle to the competing probes into Russian interference. Legal experts say the development is likely to intensify scrutiny of Trump’s eldest son, who is already under the microscope for a controversial June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer. Separately, a pair of senators revealed Thursday that Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had received correspondence about WikiLeaks prior to the election. They said Kushner has not yet turned over those documents to congressional investigators.

Here are five things you need to know about Russia, WikiLeaks and the Trump campaign. • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature • In June, a team of European researchers traveled to Papua New Guinea on a mission of global significance. They came to search for the Giant Banana plant.

The scientists traveled through the jungles of the South Pacific nation, by car and on foot, accompanied by two armed guards. They were tantalized by images circulating online, purportedly taken by locals, that depict a towering banana corm, several stories high, with leaves about 5 yards long.

Podium Browser Thousands of high quality, render ready components Learn how to use Podium Browser Paid content to design and visualize rapidly Update your SU Podium V2 to V2 Plus, please.. Read the Podium Browser What's New page Table of Contents - a monthly update on new content and tips Podium Browser Design tutorials on specific categories - automatical auto-cut used in Podium Browser doors, windws and recessed lights.

How do you adjust the light power in a Podium Browser light fixture? - the basics of applying Podium Materials. Also introduces the use of EditInPlace.

Is a simple tutorial on the basics of applying Podium Browser materials and Podium lightings for a good interior rendering. This tutorial examines editing Podium Browser components and materials using SketchUp's Edit Component commmand. This tutorial shows how to randomize the roof tiles that are available on Podium Browser? Click on the image to view 'What is Podium Browser' YouTube video. Podium Browser provides thousands of render ready components such as light fixtures, furnishings, plants and materials from a web server directly to SketchUp.

Using Podium Browser content can greatly reduce the time required to design in SketchUp and then visualize in SU Podium. The content will be downloaded directly into your model and is ready to be photo-realistically rendered by SU Podium. You simply click on a thumbnail in the Browser to drop content into your SketchUp model. When you render with SU Podium, this content will appear in your image as a photo-realistic object without any additional preparation.

Podium Browser is part of SU Podium V2/ V2 Plus and works with SketchUp versions 8, 2013 and 2014, Windows and Mac. SU Podium Browser can also be downloaded as a free, independent plug-in to SketchUp but it works best with SU Podium V2 or V2 Plus. Check out the Facebook account for SUPlugins which focuses on new components on the browser here - Also look in the What's New section of this web site to see what is new in the Browser. Free and Paid Categories. Podium Browser has a significant number of free 3D light fixtures, 2D face-me plants, high resolution textures, 'Podium ready' 3D cars, render ready furniture and some Podium materials.

Podium Browser also has a Paid category with several thousand components and is growing quickly. This Paid category requires the customer to purchase a $59.00 permanent, Paid Content license. The license can be purchased from the. You can view the Paid content by looking at the thumbnails in the Paid category without purchasing a license. 'Click and Drop' within SketchUp. You can click-and-drop all the components directly into your SketchUp model.

This means click on a thumbnail image but do not hold down your mouse button. This will invoke a download command of the selected component. Then move your cursor to a position in SketchUp and wait a second or two. SU Podium Browser will download the component to where your cursor is in SketchUp. Note: Avoid actually dragging thumbnail images into SketchUp. Click on the thumbnail, move your cursor to a position in SketchUp.

SU Podium Browser is included in SU Podium V2.6 and later. It is accessible through the SU Podium V2 tool bar. Choose this icon to access it If you are a SU Podium V2 user but do not have the SU Podium Browser in your Podium tool bar, please download the most current version of SU Podium V2 and install it. If you are not a SU Podium customer, you can download a trial version of SU Podium V2 and use the Podium Browser feature even after SU Podium V2 trial has expired. However, without SU Podium V2, none of the render ready components will render in any other rendering plug-ins except Podium Walker.

All the Podium Browser content will render in Podium Walker as well. You can also use Podium Browser in SketchUp without SU Podium V2 or Podium Walker if you are looking for highly realistic models of furniture, light fixtures, 2D and 3D trees, 2D face-me people for your SketchUp model. When you install SU Podium, you receive Podium Browser and it's available render-ready, free content. Click on S how only free files, if you only want to view the free content.

Free content includes: • Over 300 render ready light fixtures components in the ceiling, floor, street, table, wall categories, • a large collection of 2D face me plants in the 2D plants and 2D trees categories, • one or two Podium materials from each Material category • 3D car models with Podium render ready materials, • one item per Paid content category including kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, living room, etc. The 3D light fixtures come with SU Podium V2 omni lights or LEMs and are render ready. This means all you need to do is click and drop the light fixtures into your SketchUp model, position the light fixture and it's ready to render. The 2D face-me plants and trees can be used for Podium renderings as well as for modeling in SketchUp.

If you do not have a Paid category content license and click on a Paid content thumbnail you will see this message Purchase the Paid category content license to unlock all the Paid content. Paid Content categories have thousands of render ready components and materials in addition to the free content. Content includes: • advanced 3D plants and trees • additional 2D face-me plants • additional vehicles • hundreds of advanced light fixtures in various categories • hundreds of • hundreds of render ready furniture and household items in many categories including kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, living room, dinning room, office, electronic, decoration, hardware & construction • exterior components for exterior modeling • hundreds of 2D face me people Content is added frequently and updated automatically so you do not have to do anything to access new content. To view what has been added recently to Paid content categories, open the SU Podium Browser from your SU Podium V2 tool bar click on and Show only recent files. Paid content is updated monthly with new content and does NOT require additional purchases once you have purchased a permanent Paid content license.

To see what is new, click on Show only recent files Paid content is currently only $59.00 (USD) for a permanent license. 25% off two or more licenses.

Web server based. Because the content resides on a Cadalog, Inc. Web servers, updates can be made without requiring the user to download and reinstall software. Updates to the Paid content are made every month.? To access the paid content, purchase a license from the or from your SU Podium reseller.

After obtaining a license, an e-mail will be sent to you. SU Podium Browser is included in SU Podium V2 and V2 Plus. It is only accessible through the SU Podium V2 tool bar. Choose this icon to access it Activate the license.

Open Podium Browser. Enter the sixteen digit Paid content serial number (not your SU Podium V2/ V2 Plus license) in the Podium Browser by clicking on the Options icon at the top of the Podium Browser user interface. You can copy and paste the license key from your e-mail order receipt but it's best to key in your license to avoid adding spaces at the back or front of the serial number. After entering the 16 number serial number, click Save so that the license key will be saved on your computer. The serial number is not the same as your SU Podiumm V2 or V2 Plus license code.

Do not use your SU Podium V2 license for your Paid content serial number. The Paid content serial number is comprised of 16 whole numbers and no letters. Podium Browser 2 is the latest version of this plug-in. Access the settings dialog box by choosing the Options icon. Having trouble activating? Make sure your browser's cookies are turned on.

If you are not using SU Podium V2 or V2 Plus, please download a more recent version of Podium Browser by updating your SU Podium version Note: You can still use Podium Browser using the trial version of SU Podium V2, even after the trial version of SU Podium V2 expires. Podium Browser is web server based content. A lightweight ruby application is installed with your SU Podium V2 full or evaluation version (commercial or student). If you are not an SU Podium user, you can install a free license of Podium Browser by downloading it from the Download page. However, you will not benefit from the render ready components and lights. The dialog shows the available categories on the left-hand pane, like folders and sub-folders display in a file browser.

Click an entry to see preview images of the available components or textures. When you select an entry on the left, the right-hand pane is populated with images of the available components or textures. When you click one of the component images, the corresponding component is downloaded. You should see a progress indicator at the bottom of the Google Sketch up window. When the download completes, you are automatically switched to 'insert' mode, and can place the component in your model.

If the 'Insert Mode' setting is 'Multiple', you can insert multiple copies of the selected component; hit the Escape key or select another tool to complete the command. 'Click and Drop' within SketchUp.

You can click-and-drop all the components directly into your SketchUp model. This means click on a thumbnail image but do not hold down your mouse button. This will invoke a download command of the selected component. Then move your cursor to a position in SketchUp and wait a second or two.

SU Podium Browser will download the component to where your cursor is in SketchUp. Note: Avoid actually dragging thumbnail images into SketchUp. The exception to this method are the 2D textures in the Free Section.

The 2D textures do need to be dragged and dropped into SketchUp. This will tell SketchUp to import the texture directly into the model. You can then paint the texture to the SketchUp face or group that you want. With the release of Podium Browser 2, a category and keyword search was added to Podium Browser.

To use the keyword search, it is most effective to pick a category and then enter a keyword. Then click on the search icon.

Keywords are being added frequently. Another way to search for an item is to view the categories or folders and their sub-categories from the left hand column. The Podium Materials category has cubes with Podium 'render ready' materials on each of the cube's faces.

'Render ready' materials means that the materials have pre-defined reflection, blurs, refractions, bump maps and other Podium properties. These materials can be applied to any face within your SketchUp model to make the setup of your rendering environment very fast. The Podium Materials components are 'clicked and dropped' into SketchUp like the light fixtures, furnishings and plants. When selected, a cube with a Podium material is inserted into SketchUp. You can use the particular Podium material on other faces in your model. To use the Podium materials on other faces, go to SketchUp's Material dialog located in the Windows menu.

From the SketchUp Material dialog, click on the In Model icon and then select a Podium material. Use the Paint bucket to paint SketchUp faces with the selected material. Also, you can use SketchUp's eye dropper to quickly paint Podium materials to other faces. There are several Podium Material cubes in the Free library and and a growing number of hundreds in the Paid section. Click on the image above to view the materials page with the embedded video tutorial.

Make sure to choose HD quality and increase the display size. This simple tutorial will show how the material cubes work and how easy it is to get high quality render ready materials into your model. Don't want to or can't access You Tube? You will be asked to install Flash if you do not have it on your computer. The settings icon opens the settings dialog. There are two entries: License Key and Insert Mode.

The License Key is only needed if you purchased a Paid content license. You can ignore this if you only want to access the free content. The Insert Mode has Single or Multiple options.

Single will allow you to drag and drop, one component at a time. Multiple will allow you to insert the same component in multiple locations in your model. You may have already noticed the little green logo on the bottom left corner of the images of some components in the SU Podium Browser. This dynamic component logo indicates that there are some special options you can customize. Coleman 426b Stove Manual.

Preview images generally tell you a bit about what you can change whether it is material type, dimension, state or disposition. You can access those options after downloading the component and by opening the “component options” in the window tab inside SketchUp. Activating the dynamic option tool bar will also get you there more quickly.

Once the window is opened: select one of the dynamic components, change the parameters in the list and click the apply button. However not all of the dynamic components in the Browser have the icon yet. All the light fixtures can be turned off and on this dynamic way and some of them have a choice of light type. If the preview images are showing more than one components it might be worth it to check it out even if there is no icon. All images will be updated in the near future, so look up for this little icon! - an alternative to the plug-in version In some cases, you may need to access SU Podium Browser outside of SketchUp. This may be due to a fire wall interference or something to do with security issues that does not let you work with Podium Browser inside SketchUp.

In those cases, we have prepared a stand alone version of Podium Browser that works on any Browser and outside of SketchUp. To access this stand alone web site go to (click on this link). You will be asked to agree to the EULA every time you access this. Click on 'I agree to the above' and proceed. If you are a Free category user, simply download.skp files from the various Free categories.

If you are a Paid content license owner, enter your Paid content license into the Options dialog. From that point you should be able to download components directly to your computer. This is not a plug-in to SketchUp. Therefore the items downloaded are.skp files. You will need to take the extra step and import these.skp files into your SketchUp session.

Note: Mac users with Safari 7 (Maverick). Do not use Safari 7 if you want to use the stand alone web version. Use FireFox or Chrome. Safari will add an.html file extension to the.skp files being downloaded.

Problems with Mac 10.9 and 10.10, Safari 7and 8 and above Warning: SU Podium V2 users. Podium Browser does not automatically work with Safari 7 for Mac OS 10.9 if you are using SU Podium V2.

You need to download and install the new SU Podium V2 Plus which is free or V2.5 Plus which is $39.95. Mac OS 10.9.x and 10.10(Mavericks/ Yosemite) come with Safari 7.x or above. SketchUp on the Mac uses Safari settings for any web dialog box based user interface. Podium Browser, is a plug-in to SketchUp and on the Mac, it uses Safari as it's default browser (Safari is the only browser that web dialogs use on the Mac).

Podium Browser in Podium V2 does not work with Safari 7. You must upgrade (for free) to V2 Plus or purchase V2.5 Plus (39.95) Download the new versions of SU Podium V2Plus or V2.5 Plus.