01.03.08

Acacia, Microsoft and Wishful Thinking

Posted in Courtroom, GNOME, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Novell at 3:42 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The ‘lawsuit firm’ Acacia, a patent troll with Microsoft links [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9], has had a busy month, according to patent TrollTracker.

Turning to our busiest patent troll in 2007, Acacia, it kept up momentum in December with new lawsuits.

[...]

So, let’s get this straight. Acacia, a California company located in CDCA, is an exclusive licensee who has sued 19 defendants, who are located in 17 different judicial districts (including CDCA)

The broken state of the USPTO has given birth to an industry of trolls whose only contribution to society is harassment and pain. In the same fashion, a weak political system has raised a multi-billion dollar industry of lobbying, which is, to an extent, a legalised form of bribery. Even the country’s administration has recently come to realise this. It plans to cut down the level of this plague accordingly.

In other patent news, Microsoft wants to patent ‘Big Brother’, adding that to its portfolio of brow-raising patents.

Judging from a recent patent application, Microsoft hopes to build some sort of “activity monitoring system” that keeps an eye on worker productivity using various “physiological or environmental sensors.” These sensors would track everything from heart rate, respiration rate, body temperature, facial expressions, and blood pressure to brain signals and galvanic skin response.

On a separate (and yet related) note, Bruce Byfield reused some of his arguments against this Web site and made it a blog post. The post characterises our interpretation of motives as a “conspiracy theory”. This was discussed so many times before, so it hardly needs repeating. He seems to believe that Microsoft plays no role at all. Never mind if there is undeniable truth, such as the fact that Microsoft offered people money to sue Linux (the kernel).

”Novell does not do anything which it does with malicious intents.“By the way, the blog post also confirms all suspicions that he consistently tried to deny — suspicions that he was all along biased in favour GNOME's stance on OOXML. He did this even in his journalistic writings that are intended not to contain bias and present both side of the arguments.

Just as Bruce Byfield says that he’ll ignore what he considers a theory (apparently, OpenOffice.org finds our site worthy enough to put it in its front page), maybe we should take Groklaw’s advice and learn to ignore those who live in a world where companies never do anything wrong. Convenient fantasies like that are too cuddly not to embrace.

Novell does not do anything which it does with malicious intents. Nevertheless, we must understand why it does the things which it has done in the past year. It’s about understanding, not demonisation or witch hunting. █

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Dear BBC, Shame on You

Posted in Deception, Europe, FUD, Microsoft at 2:11 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Fool us once, shame on you; fool us for a whole year, shame on us taxpayers

As part of a continued trend at the BBC, which is tax-funded, as well as the media at large [1, 2, 3], it is saddening to see this:

THE BBC is inviting its readers to ask Vole supremo Bill Gates questions.

This has to be seen in context, along with recent developments. The news above is no ‘smoking gun’ in its right. For those who have not followed this saga, it is worth mentioning again that the BBC succumbed to the pressure of Microsoft after those two made a deal. The BBC not only delivers Microsoft’s perspective of the news and gives Microsoft some placements and free columns, but it also acts as an agent of monopolisation with products like iPlayer. Adding insult to injury, the BBC was caught spreading GNU/Linux FUD. This includes claims that only hundreds of Linux-using Brits visit the BBC Web site, which turned out to be a lie of unbelievable proportions.

”It’s just like putting trophies and medals up for sale.“This is a worrisome trend. We live in a world where one can simply buy positive and seemingly-independent publicity. This needs to be stopped. Only a week ago we saw a so-called 'analyst' praising Microsoft twice. It was Frost & Sullivan, which is somewhat of a joke.

It’s just like putting trophies and medals up for sale. Microsoft, which does business with Frost & Sullivan, ‘acquired’ two such medals, where medals is a reference to a quote whose proper attribution I cannot remember. It talks about high society and royals throwing a party with wine, gifts and medals. They exchange awards among themselves to show each other how important they are and then strut around town with objects that symbolize pseudo or non-existent achievements. █

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