03.28.09
Posted in GNU/Linux, Novell, Red Hat, SLES/SLED, Xandros at 8:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
SUSE (SLES/SLED)
SLES 11 has been released (more on that later), but some sites are still writing about SLES 10 whilst vendors preinstall SLED 10. There is the following offer from H-P:
One gigabyte of DDR2 memory is standard; the system maximum of 2GB is a $50 option, and also requires a change from Win XP Home to another operating system — HP offers Windows Vista, Vista with a “downgrade” to Windows XP Professional, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10.
Red Hat’s fantastic financial results had its GNU/Linux business compared to Novell’s over in BetaNews, which covers Novell and Microsoft rather frequently.
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Novell, OpenSUSE at 7:41 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Technical
THE MAIN news for this project is probably the release of Build Service 1.5, which was announced in the project’s Web site.
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Posted in Mail, Microsoft, Security, Windows at 6:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A bunch of links about Windows and security
Leaked memo says Conficker pwns Parliament
The House of Commons IT systems has reportedly been infected by the infamous Conficker superworm, which has previously infected millions of Windows PCs and affected the operation of hospitals, military and large corporate systems.
Parliament reveals lack of digital security
The parliamentary IT system has suffered a virus attack, joining millions of other computers that have fallen victim to the Conficker computer virus.
But astonishingly, an email sent to MPs, lords and their staff reveals that parliament’s IT network seems to be completely unsecured.
Breaking news: Australian Government’s Classification Board website hacked
Breaking News: Australian Classification Board website attacked by hackers
In the mad fight to finally get a true R18+ rating for Australian gamers, there have been a few blows passed from both teams – the latest one was a flat-out refusal of the rating back in February 2009.
On top of that is the contention over ACMA’s blacklist, of which the Classification Board was recently placed in charge of.
94% of emails are spam or viruses
More than 90% of all emails are spam or viruses. So says South African Linux specialist Synaq, which monitors more than 10 million corporate emails every day using its Pinpoint SecureMail product. Just 5% of emails entering corporate networks are in fact legitimate, the company says.
Also see: Why Microsoft Doomed Exchange... and E-mail Too
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Posted in Deception, Vista, Vista 7, Windows at 6:05 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Windows news ranging from a lawsuit to tightening of DRM, bad marketing, and betrayal of developers
Windows Vista has Microsoft face a couple of lawsuits right now, the former of which focuses on Microsoft’s collusion with Intel [1, 2, 3]. Add another one to this group of lawsuits now that Acer gets sued for Vista-incapable computers.
Two Middle Americans have sued Acer over its low-cost Aspire notebooks, claiming that the Taiwanese PC giant pre-installed Windows Vista on machines ill-equipped to run Microsoft’s latest OS.
With a lawsuit filed Wednesday in San Francisco, California, two residents of Fostoria, Ohio seek damages and relief from the world’s third-largest computer maker after purchasing a sub-$600 Aspire notebook that included Windows Vista Premium and a gigabyte of shared system and graphics memory.
It was Acer’s CEO who said that the entire industry is disappointed with Vista. That was almost 2 years ago when Microsoft was still spending a lot of money to deceive the public, so this remark from the head of a large OEM stood out, obviously.
There is some other Windows news that’s worth paying attention to. For example, despite the fact that Microsoft needs and sometimes takes pride in counterfeiting of Windows, the company is now tightening the screws for extra cash.
Microsoft updates WGA
SOFTWARE GIANT MICROSOFT is updating Windows XP anti-piracy technology to detect illegal copies installed with stolen or faked product keys, or with new activation cracks.
This is a bad strategy because it will push a lot more people to GNU/Linux, but on the financial side, it may give Microsoft short-term gains.
“They are planting some supportive information using a corruptible analyst (in this case about Vista 7) and then push links to it to the press, as revealed by Mary Jo Foley.”Microsoft is coming to realise that this business model of licensing an operating system through/to OEMs is reaching its end. The company has already experimented with subscription and it tries to prevent protocols and formats from being a commodity. It also tries hard to push companies into new lock-in such as OOXML. It uses the corrupted individuals at Gartner Group to do this right now (as shown early in the week) and as Roughly Drafted put it the other day, “PC market share numbers as reported by groups such as IDG and Gartner were invented in the 90s to flatter Microsoft and marginalize competitors, providing a quotable metric to prove that nobody could possibly compete against the monopoly, so why even try.”
It is the same with TCO. The genesis of this term is a Microsoft-Gartner deal that we uncovered before in a series of posts.
To be more specific, by “corrupted individuals” in this case we refer to Michael Silver, who is still acting in complete alignment with Microsoft's evangelism presentation. They are planting some supportive information using a corruptible analyst (in this case about Vista 7) and then push links to it to the press, as revealed by Mary Jo Foley. Microsoft did this with the Burton Group quite recently in order to advance OOXML.
Moving on and looking at news about Windows, the latest advertising campaign is being ridiculed and Microsoft has come under fire for its approach towards developers, whom it now charges to merely develop for Windows Mobile. Both reports are from IDG.
Microsoft’s New Message: Windows Is For Losers?
[...]
So, Microsoft, if this is the message you’re pushing–that your prospective customers “aren’t cool enough” to own a Mac, what does this make your users? Losers?
Microsoft may charge developers if they submit within a year more than five applications or application updates to the Windows Mobile Marketplace, a move that has some developers concerned that the store won’t be able to compete with the iPhone App Store or the Android Market.
How far would Microsoft go for revenue? Microsoft is not as profitable as people are led to believe. █
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Posted in Deception, GNU/Linux, Marketing, Microsoft, Novell at 5:16 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Novell’s role in Microsoft PR revisited, along with forgotten offences
OSBC 2009 had ended a short while ago and it was probably a little harsh to focus only on Microsoft's presence over there. Nonetheless, this is part of a pattern and it’s clearly damaging to GNU/Linux and Free software. This substitutes the peaceful force with something else where "open source" is just another Windows ISV. Open source developers are probably aware of this, but some of them don’t mind because Microsoft does not tell them the truth and it’s too easy to forget one’s repeatable bad behaviour.
Novell’s role in this is less than obvious, but yesterday we found yet another example where Microsoft uses Novell to lure in some more victims, whom they sooner or later throw to the dogs.
Microsoft will be there as a sponsor of NAC Day, featuring its Interoperability by Design concept, and educating attendees about its partnership with Novell, contributions to open source projects, open protocols to its projects and related projects.
In reality, Microsoft is far from a friend of Free software and it hardly wants to collaborate at all. A couple of days ago, Dana Blankenhorn explained why Microsoft’s talk about about “open source” simply cannot be taken seriously. It’s partly because its rhetoric doesn’t match its deeds.
It is, in fact, Microsoft’s actions, and not its words, that are the problem:
1. Microsoft claims patents covering Linux, and signs “cross-license” deals with embedded Linux firms that explicitly acknowledge those claims.
2. Microsoft sued TomTom for infringing those claimed patents.
3. Microsoft SharePoint is all about locking customers in to proprietary standards.
4. The whole Office Open XML (OOXML) mess before the ISO was about making proprietary code a standard everyone would have to follow.
Have people in the press already forgotten crimes committed to ram OOXML down ISO’s throat? It sure seems so sometimes. The reassuring news is that traditional media — Microsoft’s included — is dying peacefully and not even evolving for the Web. This leaves room for independent media to thrive.
The next day would be the last of the print Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the publisher declared. He added that “the bloodline” would live on in the form of a news website carrying the Seattle Post-Intelligencer name. Behind him were human-resources professionals flown in from other Hearst-owned papers in Houston and San Francisco.
The announcement was spun as the first paper to make the transition to an all-digital daily. Nevermind that the site left behind would be a skeleton of its former self. The new editor in charge would not respond to questions when I asked her for a story about the transition intended to run in the final print-edition. Instead, she posted her own, unfiltered thoughts online.
We wrote about the Seattle P-I earlier this month. Its part of those circles in the press which Microsoft controls through ownerships or staff-inflicted bias. █
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