04.09.08

Links 09/04/2008: Another Low-cost GNU/Linux Laptop Debuts; New South Wales (Australia) Shuns Microsoft Office in Education

Posted in News Roundup at 8:44 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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11 Comments

More gone freedom said,

April 9, 2008 at 11:35 am

someone mentioned your site here:

http://dot.kde.org/1207652481/

and people are asking why novell should be boycotted, perhaps your important voice could be added to the conversation in a definite answer? thanks!
CoolGuy said,

April 9, 2008 at 12:02 pm

Its all going down for Microsoft….tada…dumm..dumm….

The Netscape ghost takes his revenge finally. IBM OS/2 ghost also got his share of revenge – Finally Netscape can now R.I.P.

hum…i see that ISO (yet to be) didn’t make any difference in Office win, but sure heck gave a lot of publicity to OpenOffice.org I guess M$ looses this round – it fired back, I see even more OO.o migrations happening lately – big time.
CoolGuy said,

April 9, 2008 at 12:06 pm

M$ stock is going to tank big time by the end of this year…HAHAHA
Kevin said,

April 9, 2008 at 1:24 pm

I’ve found an odd trick used by Microsoft : according to the website Mac OS X Hints (http://www.macosxhints.com), Apple Mail can’t synchronize correctly with the calendar built into Microsoft Exchanger Server.

“The reason this bug exists is because Exchange doesn’t use standard compliant time zone information, but Apple does so, leading to two different time zone formats. As a result, iCal can’t figure out what the correct time zone is from Exchange iCal invitations. Here’s a quick example of the South African time zone differences between the two:

Exchange format: (GMT+02.00) Harare/Pretoria
iCal format: Africa/Johannesburg

This means that when a meeting request comes in from a Windows PC, iCal can’t read data beyond the GMT+02.00 and it simply adds on two hours to the event. So a meeting sent from Exchange, scheduled for 14:00, actually appears in iCal as 16:00. We’ve missed many a meeting as a result !”

This is quite disgusting. It’s no wonder Apple can’t fix this mess. This is yet another proof that Microsoft has no intention of playing nice with others.
Roy Schestowitz said,

April 9, 2008 at 4:30 pm

It’s also one of the reasons to reject OOXML at all costs. It redefines leap years, it has multi-lingual problems and many things are made incompatible almost by design.
SubSonica said,

April 9, 2008 at 5:40 pm

Zimbra customers and community are wondering with disbelief what Zimbra’s future will be under
Microsoft’s iron fist.
http://www.zimbra.com/forums/chit-chat/14964-ms-offering-buy-yahoo-28.html
Meanwhile, it seems that Matt Assay has been not just drinking, but “smoking” the kool-aid. This is WTF of the week for me. What are you trying to sell us, Matt?
(and Matt, since you are already grown-up I don’t believe you are still as naive as to have such rosy thoughts about the assault on Yahoo,so you are increasingly looking as having all the sympthoms of an acute “borgization” stroke):
Source:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=2253

Asay is somewhat optimistic that such a deal could be a big turning point for Microsoft – toward open source.
“I actually think that Yahoo! gives Microsoft a chance to open up. I’m convinced that significant swaths of Microsoft are keen to open up (open source, open standards, open APIs) and Yahoo! gives them a convenient excuse to persuade Ballmer that this makes compelling business sense for them,” Asay added.

“They don’t have much of an alternative. There’s simply no way for it to move all of Yahoo! including Zimbra over to .Net and other Microsoft technologies, not if it wants to lead technically and to retain employees,” he said. “So, I see Microhoo as being good for Microsoft and good for Zimbra, ultimately. If Microsoft proves foolish enough to gut Zimbra’stechnology, then listen for the bell tolling its demise.

Promote the petition to help Zimbra stay independent (or at least make as much noise and resist the assault by MSFT as long as possible)

http://www.freezimbranow.org
http://www.petitiononline.com/zimbra01/petition.html

IMHO the only sage way to save Zimbra would be to licence the community edition undert the GPLv3.

Look at the photo here:
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/16916/
Do you really think that person is goingrespect the Zimbra community and to keep a sensible strategy towards Zimbra in detriment of Exchange if he gets his way?
Roy Schestowitz said,

April 9, 2008 at 5:54 pm

I just wish Asay was not so friendly with Microsoft’s ‘open-source’ hijackers. Earlier today:

http://www.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9915155-16.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Asay is also a friend of Hilf.

It now turns out that even the head of The 451 Group was invited to Redmond. I’ll write about it shortly. They are trying to buy love and prodding bloggers/analysts to invite them to the ‘family’ (“come on, come on, don’t be so anti-Microsoft, show the world you love us”).
CoolGuy said,

April 10, 2008 at 12:25 am

M$ wants Yahoo to kill it – plain and simple.

They cant stand if someone is better than them.

Too bad many FOSS projects have been infested by M$ sponsored people.
Roy Schestowitz said,

April 10, 2008 at 12:31 am

There’s nother interesting development in the Yahoo situation (not just the Google AsSense ploy). The problem is that a lot of Yahoo talent (and users such as myself) have left by now.

Fleury pulls a fast one also.
LinuxIsFun said,

April 10, 2008 at 5:26 am

If Yahoo wins then I will go back to yahoo ! Brave people if they can fend of M$ !!
Roy Schestowitz said,

April 10, 2008 at 5:33 am

I’ve summarised some of the latest in this group of links. More details I’ve posted to USENET and there’s a ray of hope now, primarily thanks to the AOL chit-chat. Additionally, it’s worth seeing Brad Smith vain response to the Google approach. He whines about a combination that makes 90%, neglecting to see his own hypocrisy (office suites, desktop operating systems).