01.18.09
Posted in Deception, Fraud, Hardware, Microsoft at 6:05 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Violation of EU law
Microsoft AstroTurfing is a reality and undeniable fact, not just a reasonable assumption. Using concrete proof and admission from Microsoft, we last showed this a month ago. We also asserted that one of the key people who organise AstroTurf campaigns for Microsoft — a gentleman who goes by the name of Marshall Goldberg — was seemingly leaving fake reviews in Amazon.
Well, thanks to this new report, it seems like there is a whole business behind fake reviews in Amazon.
I just contacted Belkin to confirm but this doesn’t look good. A site called The Daily Background found evidence that Belkin Bizdev guy, Michael Bayard, is paying folks 65 cents to write good things about Belkin routers. Why? I’m not sure. I sure didn’t mind Belkin routers in the first place and 65 cents isn’t a lot of money for a paragraph. Maybe a flat buck or a USB hub instead? Is false praise really that cheap?
We are not through with such exploration of AstroTurfing by Microsoft because it is a crime in the European Union. The company can probably be sued already because there is sufficient evidence and victims. █
Who can you trust?
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Posted in Finance, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft at 5:26 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Might as well call it “Comcastsoft”?
For quite a few months we were exploring the Microsoft-Comcast relationship and attempted to explain Comcast’s hostility towards the Web, towards GNU/Linux, towards Google, and also its sheer neglect of the law.
We already knew that Microsoft had invested a considerable amount of money in Comcast around 1997 ($1 billion). Microsoft buys love from other cable companies worldwide, but the following report suggests that while an investment in Comcast has remained since, it is currently much smaller.
Microsoft Corp. has liquidated its 7.3 percent stake in Comcast Corp.’s Class A shares, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Friday.
[...]
Microsoft acquired 115 million Comcast shares in 2002 as part of a deal related to Comcast’s acquisition of AT&T Broadband.
In order to explains any company’s corporate behaviour, such as its attitude towards players in other areas, partnerships like this one must be realised and remembered. █
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Posted in Antitrust, DRM, Microsoft, Mono, Novell at 4:33 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Novell & Miguel de Icaza help Microsoft
SOME people may be wondering why Microsoft’s partners want Mono in LiMo and why Miguel de Icaza is so keen on putting Mono inside Android [1, 2]. Microsoft Windows CE/Mobile is not doing well in this area, so the company wants its Intellectual Monopolies to ‘infect’ competitors’ devices. Today we’ll show evidence from Microsoft, in the form of E-mails that came through antitrust litigation.
“I saw that internally inside Microsoft many times when I was told to stay away from supporting Mono in public. They reserve the right to sue”
–Robert Scoble, former Microsoft evangelist
In today’s evidence, Microsoft discusses the failure of Windows CE and the last resort — a need to “license” from competing operating systems, as we shall show at the bottom.
In a world or a nation where software patents are seen as legitimate, ownership need not be physical alone, so there is wiggling room. How to do all that? Formats, programs (like codecs) and .NET, even DRM.
As a timely plug from the news, Ryan Paul is boosting Mono again. It’s ‘infecting’ iPhone and Wii, two devices that Microsoft is very much afraid of.
According to Novell’s lead Mono developer, Miguel de Icaza, several applications in Apple’s App Store are powered by Mono. This might come as a bit of a surprise to those familiar with Apple’s highly restrictive application inclusion policies, because the company strictly prohibits developers from using interpreted languages and third-party runtime environments—a constraint that largely rules out technologies like .NET and Java.
Many comments appear in the accompanying OS News pointer. Mono is very controversial for various reasons.
Arstechnica reports that Mono, an open source implementation of .NET runtime, is bringing Microsoft’s development technologies to some unexpected places, including the iPhone, Android, and the Wii.
Mono continues to evolve and sneak into areas that are legal minefields, by admission from the most stubborn defenders of Mono, such as Dan O’Brian. From Heise:
Version 2.2 of Mono, the open source alternative to Microsoft’s .NET framework, is now available.
Evidence of Microsoft’s plans for Mono/.NET we have covered using antitrust material before (E-mails from inside Microsoft). But today we move on and look at Comes vs. Microsoft Exhibit px07010 [PDF], which we translated entirely by hand (it’s too poorly scanned). We address this reverse chronologically, just like in the exhibit.
In this “Highly Confidential” set of E-mails from 2001, Microsoft’s Alex Limberis writes:
- Customer visit evidence that 50% plus is Linux
- CE’s POR market data pointing to only less than 10% market share
- Support from MSTV agreeing we need to support all OSes
He is talking about set-top boxes. For context, Alex Limberis was “Director of Wireless, Broadband and Consumer Electronics” at Microsoft between 2000 and 2004.
Microsoft’s Amir Majidimehr, who left Microsoft a year ago, writes:
In Korea, clearly the format is dragging the OS in. But elsewhere in the world, where we having nothing close to 90% (or even 90%) marketshare, the OS is selected first.
Microsoft wants to control the format (or API) and it uses Korea as an example. Just watch the Korea/ActiveX situation [1, 2, 3].
I think the situation is rather simple (although the decision is not). When we asked for permission to take our format everywhere 2.5 years ago, no one blinked. JimAll himself said it was just fine to go on embedded Linux. Of course, this was at a time when people though we brought no compelling value.
Control the format, control the minds.
Now, contrast this with the situation in Korea where WMT has a 90% share. Last time I was there, I think they said they have something like a dozen WinCE stb wins, all because of WMT. You better not say anything about supporting Linux or the ESG guys escort you out to the airport!
Eureka moment:
So, the story at both extremes is very clear. When we had no value, we could be everywhere. And where we have ultimate value, then we must be on our own platform. The question is, when do you make the switch?
Integration and dependency:
[Alex Limberis] To be a format means render everywhere. The key to OS success is to create the value proposition from a compelling combination of ease of use, time to market and features of which WM, IE, real time kernel, IP stack, etc. etc. is part of the package.
Kind of like .NET versus Mono… and Moonlight with Microsoft’s proprietary codecs. To quote further:
With nearly zero design wins for video, and strong threat of MPEG-4, I would say this is no time to be picky. We must establish our base as we have done with audio. The stronger we become, the more value we can provide to the other assets of the company. We need to be the “icing on the cake and not the cake itself” when it comes to WinCE! This is not what happened PocketPC.
Linux-powered devices like TiVo are then mentioned:
[Alex Limberis] In the case of audio, we were not facing a “thick” os. The CE team never felt threatened by the OS as it were running on RIO. They are threatened by the OS running on a Moto, Replay TV, Ti Vo etc. that could support our format. This is our internal challenge.
Then it’s back to media formats and their power as a “standard” (which is controlled by Microsoft through bundling or added value… even software patents).
I always come back to; we are FM radio, or NTSC TV we must render on everything regardless of what shape, form or OS choice the gizmo is made from. CE must win on the total value of proposition of ease of use and integration of technologies including WM. In total power cost to deploy.
Linux and the GPL are mentioned as an “issue” (because Microsoft hates them both, of course).
His expressed sentiment seems to be the blocker for us moving forward and not the Linux GPL issue.
Here is why Mono may merely be a path towards Windows and Visual Studio in the long term:
I don’t know what other argument to make other than we must have 100% of the nodes available to us to be a successful format, and no matter how you slice, dice, justify and segment CE doesn’t have anywhere near 100%. Then we get into the belief that having WM in account helps move them to a Win OS in the future.
It then moves on to .NET:
The .net argument doesn’t cut it. Doesn’t .net need to run on everything also?
Here is a key part which is very telling:
2. As I mentioned on the call, WMT is one of the main distinguishing features of WinCE. To offer it on Linux (starting with STBs and then extending to other devices as well) robs us of our competitive edge.
3. While you mentioned that you will start by offering only the codecs and Udl on Linux today, I am very worried that a year from now, you will need to bow to customer demand and offer WMP and DRM as well at that stage. And by that time, the horse may have bolted too far for us to lock the gates.
4. There was mention of OEMs such as Pace, Moto, Nokia moving to Linux today. It is true that many OEMs are playing around with Linux today (since it is the easiest for developers to kick tires on)….however, most of the same OEMs mentioned above are moving to a WinCE platform as we discuss this. And the move in most cases has been driven by their need for WMT – if you take that away, we lose the battle before it begins.
We understand the need for DMD to proliferate the format … however, if it is at the expense of our embedded OSs, I fear that it can hurt us in the long run. Especially when you consider that part of enabling the .NET vision is to embed our OSs in devices of all forms going forward – hence our apprehension.
Here is the bit about “we must license onto the competing OSes” in order to compensate for Windows’ failure in this space.
I guess the net of it from DMD’s perspective is only 6% of the world is going to be CE based we must license onto the competing OSes.
So there. They want to pollute the competition with their own technology. They see this as a gaining strategy. █
“As many of you may know, we’ve actually kind of broadened the product portfolio of Visual Studio, targeting all the way from the low end with students and hobbyists, kind of competitive in that Linux space, making sure that every developer has a copy of .NET and is trained in writing .NET solutions. [...] I think it will really help us in our competition with open source.”
–Eric Rudder, Senior Vice President, Microsoft
Appendix: Comes vs. Microsoft – exhibit px07010, as text
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Posted in IBM, Intellectual Monopoly, Microsoft, Patents, Red Hat at 11:36 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“…Microsoft wished to promote SCO and its pending lawsuit against IBM and the Linux operating system. But Microsoft did not want to be seen as attacking IBM or Linux.”
–Larry Goldfarb, Baystar, key investor in SCO
EXTRACTED FROM this antitrust exhibit [PDF] (context here), everyone should a look at what a Microsoft vice president wrote about GNU/Linux:
5. We need someone to tear down the indemnification offered from RedHat and IBM to customers. We need to understand exactly the risk a customer is under if a patent lawsuit happens and Linux is challenged. I’d like Dan to own this. There MUST be risks to customers that are being passed on. I want this understood precisely. We need to get the license from IBM given to customers and investigate.
That was said less than 6 months before SCO attacked Linux. The same goes for this reference to SCO and Novell from Microsoft’s General Manager in India. █
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Posted in Deception, FUD, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Windows at 11:21 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
In Part III: How Microsoft Manufactures Statistics with Gartner|IDC
THIS IS the second part of a short series that began here. It reveals the ways in which IDC and Gartner interact with Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7].
Comes vs. Microsoft Exhibit PX07168 [PDF] from September 2002 shows why a ‘study’ against GNU/Linux is being manufactured.
Microsoft’s Jim Allchin, for example, states in this debrief that “we are not on a path to win against Linux” where he mentions (in point 6) the absolute necessity to “get a study done”. To quote in context, “We MUST get a TOC study done. Cost is a first thing on everyone’s mind right now given the economy and pressure on cost reduction. I am not sure what the final decision was on the IDC study. We REALLY need some here. I think billv/bob own this. If the IDC report won’t cut it, then we get another one done.”
Among those involved in this correspondence we find Paul Flessner, who wrote about Dell’s GNU/Linux dealings: “We should whack them, we should make sure they understand our value.” Brian Valentine is there too and so is Bill Veghte of the anti-GNU/Linux initiatives [1, 2, 3].
The subject of this discussion is — as plainly put in the subject line — “Linux”.
The quote above is very real by the way. Allchin is chanting about “Facts”, repeatedly (as in “Get the Facts”). Here is how it starts:
My conclusion: We are not on a path to win against Linux We must change some things and we must do it immediately. The current white papers, etc. are too high level and they are not going to cut it. Here are specific actions that I have concluded that we must take.
1. bill’s team must get a couple more hot resources assigned to it immediately who can do a tear down of Linux.
Jeff Jones (of Microsoft) has just had the IDC/IDG-owned magazines [1, 2] publish his security FUD. That was yesterday (an attack on Firefox) and here in this letter we find Allchin writing about the very same lies-based methodology that’s so often criticised (counting and aggregating all packages that are peripheral to the operating system):
3. We need a comparison of the security issues published from some place like CERT for Linux vs Windows 2000 or Windows XP. We need to be sure to count all the component pieces of Linux (e.g., apache, samba, navigator, etc.).
Then come more FUD about having to recompile applications in GNU/Linux:
4. We need the technical resource / strategy resource to look for fundamental issues about Linux that customers might not know. One that I thought of while on the trip that I used dealt with the fact you need to recompile your apps, etc when a new release of Linux comes out. I don’t think anyone wants to recompile their apps when they are running them in production, etc. I am sure if we put serious IQ to the situation we can think of many issues.
Check this patent FUD out:
5. We need someone to tear down the indemnification offered from RedHat and IBM to customers. We need to understand exactly the risk a customer is under if a patent lawsuit happens and Linux is challenged. I’d like Dan to own this. There MUST be risks to customers that are being passed on. I want this understood precisely. We need to get the license from IBM given to customers and investigate.
Here is an important bit:
6. We MUST get a TOC study done. Cost is a first thing on everyone’s mind right now given the economy and pressure on cost reduction. I am not sure what the final decision was on the IDC study. We REALLY need some here. I think billv/bob own this. If the IDC report won’t cut it, then we get another one done. Some customers know that Linux isn’t really free, but we need to help the other customers see this.
According to Allchin, “Customers are very disappointed (outright angry!) in how our apps interfere with each other.” They need to dig some dirt on GNU/Linux, so someone is assigned for the job.
8. We need a paper explaining how we do scale up. Linux is getting in some places based on the fact that customers are trying to scale up and they can’t run applications independently/safely on Windows. I will be writing mail about this separately. The paper would explain how to do it on Windows. Customers are very smart about the problems (eg., registry issues, lack of support from 3rd parties if more than a single app is running on the system (even though it works), etc.). We need a story here. I think this has to be someone as smart as davidds, I am not sure who should own this. It is possible that someone Iike blaing should do this. Maybe someone in Paulfle’s team can do it. We must address MSFT server products in this (e.g, sql, exchange, etc.). Customers are very disappointed (outright angry!) in how our apps interfere with each other.
Microsoft needs to manufacture some “quick facts” because, according to Allchin, “The paper [against GNU/Linux that] we have today as I said was laughed at in one place.”
10.. We need to put together a single short paper (just a couple of pages – maybe a single sheet) for a leave behind for customers of the 10 questions that they should consider before adopting Linux This should be based on the learnings we get from some of the items above and well as others that we find. These should be as hard hitting as we can be, BUT they need to be factual based, We should be thinking about howto put things like Red Hat’s server price In it to show where it’s going, etc, The paper we have today as I said was laughed at in one place. (I am not sure what one they had seen,) I think Billy needs to figure out who should own this I think someone like vlcg would be great.
Jim Allchin then admits that he is scared when he says under the subject line “Linux”:
I am scared.
The third and last part of this series will give most of the ‘beef’ of this story. The correspondence, in full, is below. █
Appendix: Comes vs. Microsoft – exhibit px07168, as text
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