Month: June 2015

There’s now an official case for your Raspberry Pi!

The Raspberry Pi finally has an official case, priced at just $9 (£6)

Ars Technica – By: Sebastian Anthony – “More than three years after launch, there is now an official Raspberry Pi case. In keeping with Raspberry Pi’s aspirational remit of bringing affordable computing to the masses, the new case costs just £6 (or $8.60 in the US). Rather fittingly, the new item features a dashing white-and-raspberry color scheme.

Since the release of the Model A and B in 2012 and through the follow-up releases of the Model B+ and Raspberry Pi 2, an official case has always been one rather obvious omission from the product stack. Because the Raspberry Pi is designed for a range of uses—DIY maker machinations to low-cost educational computing—it never really made sense to provide one. Instead, the Foundation encouraged people and third-party vendors to make and/or sell their own. As such we’ve seen some wonderful cases over the years, including offerings made of 3D-printed plastic, Lego bricks, and even hand-crafted wood.

Now, the Foundation has stepped in. The official case for the Raspberry Pi 2 (and the Model B+) was designed in partnership with Kinneir Dufort. It’s made of injection molded plastic and comes in four parts: a raspberry-colored main chassis and three clip-on panels (two for the sides and one that goes on top). You can remove some or all of the white panels depending on how much of the underlying electronics you want to display. Only the panel nearest the GPIO pins is solid and will need to be removed if you want to use it.

The official Raspberry Pi case is priced at £6 (RS Electronics, Swag Store, Element14) or $8.60 (MCM Electronics, Newark, Allied), which might sound impressive, but it’s in-line with some of the cheaper third-party offerings already on the market. However, we’d be inclined to say the official case is a bit more attractive at first glance than some of the other cheaper cases.”

Patent Trolling is evil! VERY evil! And, now, there is a Bill being considered to fight it!

Senate committee backs bill that targets patent trolls

ComputerWorld – By: Grant Gross – “A U.S. Senate committee has voted to approve a bill aimed at curbing abusive lawsuits by so-called patent trolls.

The bipartisan Protecting American Talent and Entrepreneurship (PATENT) Act, introduced in late April, now heads to the full Senate for consideration after the Senate Judiciary Committee vote Thursday.

The bill targets patent-holding companies that use infringement lawsuits as a primary business model. It would require judges to award attorney fees to defendants or plaintiffs in patent infringement lawsuits when the court finds the other side acted unreasonably.

It also requires that companies sending patent licensing demand letters provide details of the alleged infringement, not ‘vague’ demands. The bill would also delay expensive discovery procedures in some patent infringement lawsuits, and it would shield customers using allegedly infringing products from lawsuits.

Several technology groups have praised legislation targeting patent trolls, but others have suggested the bills would hurt the ability of small patent holders to file lawsuits against infringers.

The bill still needs ‘significant work,’ said Brian Pomper, executive director of the Innovation Alliance, representing tech and manufacturing companies. The bill leaves open the potential for abuse of the customer lawsuit provision, and it includes overly broad discovery provisions, he said in a statement.

‘We can strengthen our patent laws without undermining intellectual property rights and crippling a system that is so important to incentivizing innovation and job creation in our country,’ Pomper added.

Sponsors are open to changing the bill as it moves to the full Senate, said Senator Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican and main sponsor of the PATENT Act. The committee tried to ‘strike the right balance’ between ongoing patent reforms at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and concerns about abusive patent lawsuits, he said during Thursday’s hearing.

Some ‘good-faith negotiations’ on the bill continue, Grassley added.

The Consumer Electronics Association praised the bill, saying in a statement that it ‘closes the legal loopholes used by patent trolls — the individuals and companies that don’t invent or manufacture anything useful, but rather abuse our patent system and extort American innovators.’

A similar bill was introduced in February in the House of Representatives.”

Now it is much easier to get LibreOffice on your Mac!

The LibreOffice Open-Source Office Suite Is Now Available on the Mac App Store

Softpedia – “On June 18, Collabora announced that they added two versions of the popular LibreOffice open-source office suite software for Apple’s Mac OS X operating systems on the Mac App Store.

While one of the versions, called LibreOffice Vanilla, is available for download for free, the other one is entitled LibreOffice-from-Collabora and is available for purchase for the sum of $9.99 or €9.99, depending on your geographical location, and comes with a 3-year maintenance, optional professional support, and automatic updates.

It would appear that Collabora, an open-source software consultancy company based in UK, has spent the last few months making all the necessary preparations and tweaking the LibreOffice office suite to meet the requirements implied by Apple when submitting apps to the Mac App Store.

‘Collabora continues its march into new markets bringing the power and flexibility of Open Source to professional users’ said Michael Meeks, Collabora Productivity General Manager. ‘Simultaneously we’re introducing an easy new way to get LibreOffice Fresh from the Document Foundation, while providing in-app donation links to support their work’.

LibreOffice Vanilla vs. LibreOffice-from-Collabora

Both LibreOffice versions from Collabora are available for download starting June 18, 2015 on the Mac App Store, but it is very important to note here that the popular open-source office suite software was already available for Mac OS X operating system as a standalone installer from the LibreOffice website.

When searching the Mac App Store for LibreOffice, users will be presented with two entries, LibreOffice Vanilla and LibreOffice-from-Collabora. As mentioned, the latter costs money and is a customized version of LibreOffice-from-Collabora, based on the upstream LibreOffice 4.3 and designed for business customers who want to get long-term maintenance updates and optional professional support.

On the other hand, LibreOffice Vanilla is an almost identical build of the latest upstream LibreOffice office suite (version 4.4.4.2 at the moment of writing this article), with the exception of a new welcome screen where you’ll find all the necessary information to donate money to the open-source project.”

As a LastPass user, I got this notice:

“Dear LastPass User,

We wanted to alert you that, recently, our team discovered and immediately blocked suspicious activity on our network. No encrypted user vault data was taken, however other data, including email addresses and password reminders, was compromised.

We are confident that the encryption algorithms we use will sufficiently protect our users. To further ensure your security, we are requiring verification by email when logging in from a new device or IP address, and will be prompting users to update their master passwords.

We apologize for the inconvenience, but ultimately we believe this will better protect LastPass users. Thank you for your understanding, and for using LastPass.

Regards,
The LastPass Team”