04.26.09
Posted in Courtroom, Google, Microsoft at 2:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft’s “if you can’t beat them, sue them” [or daemonise them] approach
Here’s a funny one:
A Utah man is suing Microsoft, Google and Bill Gates for $30,000,000 alleging that his email accounts were blocked by the companies.
Speaking of lawsuits, guess who is still working on having Google sued? Yes, it’s Microsoft. There are some recent examples of hostility that are very blatant (maybe this one too). Wired Magazine wrote about Microsoft's role in the book settlement and now we find this:
One such objection is coming from a group based at NYU law school, an effort partly funded by Microsoft. There have accordingly been some questions about the “independence” of this initiative.
Microsoft’s Google envy is spinning out of control and it now relies on a feeble Yahoo! to join the attack on Google.
U.S. software company Microsoft (MSFT.O) still sees value in a potential partnership with Yahoo (YHOO.O) even though it is no longer wants to buy it, chief executive Steve Ballmer said on Friday.
They are still talking, but is Yahoo making a mistake? █
“Google’s not a real company. It’s a house of cards.”
–Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, SLES/SLED, Windows at 2:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Buy your improved Mono solutions from Novell now!
LAST week Novell made this quiet announcement:
Novell has released a new product based on Mono 2.4, the SUSE Linux Enterprise Mono Extension, which provides commercial support for running .NET applications on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.
As seller points out, “the first example of Commercial or Open Source is… Microsoft SQL Server!” There is also VistaDB in there. Why was the press not covering this? This seems like a dodgy business model for Novell, which goes out of its way to spread Mono in competing GNU/Linux distributions.
Mono and “Microsoft Moonlight” (that's what Novell and Microsoft call it now) are nothing but trouble. Beranger did the right thing and we’ve started compiling a list of Mono applications and their recommended replacements.
Yesterday we explained that Microsoft is hoping to ease the migration from GNU/Linux to Windows using all this work (some from Novell). Paula Rooney wrote some more about it and her colleague Dana Blankenhorn added:
I was reminded of this reading Mary Jo Foley’s piece on Microsoft financing an open source version of NFS4 for Windows. The software will let Windows clients easily transfer data from Linux servers. It is of enormous benefit to the Windows community.
What a wonderful transition this whole “interoperability” provision is preparing. If only it worked the other way.
As a side note, reminds us one reader: “It might be worth finding out how Novell is dealing with apparent EOL of its main product [Netware]. Is it staying open source and steering its former customers to Samba, or is it simply yet another sales front for Microsoft?”
Any ideas?
“Samba is in some cases a drop-in replacement for Netware or Windows Server,” reminds us the reader. █
“There is a substantive effort in open source to bring such an implementation of .Net to market, known as Mono and being driven by Novell, and one of the attributes of the agreement we made with Novell is that the intellectual property associated with that is available to Novell customers.”
–Bob Muglia, Microsoft President
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Posted in Deception, Finance, Microsoft at 2:06 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The “rich uncle” offers as a gift some skills required to buy/use its products
AS THIS WEB site stressed before, Microsoft’s "Elevate America" initiative is a publicity stunt. It is wrongly (or fraudulently) being recast as charity. Microsoft repeatedly calls it that, so the more obedient journalists uncritically pass it as what Microsoft claims it to be. But it’s actually more harmful than helpful; it makes people dependent on an abusive corporation whose products they will not be able to afford. In many ways, “Elevate America” might even be worse than EDGI. Well, EDGI is usually known to the public as “Unlimited Potential”. This was shown before, e.g. in:
With that in mind, let us proceed. The news comes in the form of a press release. Microsoft is bringing to Houston a programme which it typically brags about in developing countries. Is Texas a place in need of “Unlimited Potential” grants? Does Microsoft perceive it as poor? Because that’s what “Unlimited Potential” targets, as a matter of definition.
City of Houston Announces Multi-Million-Dollar Partnership with Microsoft for Digital Literacy and Workforce Preparedness
[...]
The Microsoft Unlimited Potential grant, awarded to the Houston Public Library Foundation for WeCAN Works, includes $4.3 million in software and $200,000 in cash over a two-year period.
There is also an article about it, but it totally misses the key point and instead it parrots Microsoft’s claims.
The Wireless Empowered Community Access Network (WeCAN) provides digital literacy and other job-readiness support services and training to prepare Houstonians for work.
It’s about teaching them Microsoft, it’s neither about working skills nor computing. It is self-serving — for Microsoft to benefit; it’s merely an investment (with ROI) cast as “charity”.
Why does BizJournals.com miss this important point? There are other PR initiatives from Microsoft that BizJournals.com is covering right now in order to improve Microsoft’s image. It is irresponsible when Microsoft’s words are taken for granted without looking deeper at their motives. It’s cowardly, but it’s just so typically coming from the business press.
In Associated Press we find that the Gates Foundation, whose big funds (billions) are investments that go directly to the pharmaceutical cartel [1, 2, 3], also gives money for “training”.
The grants announced this week will focus largely on training librarians to use Internet resources, to make it easier for library patrons to get vital information and educate themselves and their children, officials said.
Will these librarians be taught to use GNU/Linux in order to keep costs low? Experience suggests that it is never the case. █
“They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”
–Bill Gates
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Posted in Deception, Microsoft at 1:21 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Black kettles and all that malarkey
Summary: Americans are not green enough, says one of the biggest polluters (according to Greenpeace)
Microsoft is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) environmental fiends in its area of technology, so imagine the surprise of being met with the headline: “Americans not green enough, Microsoft claims”
The survey is intended to support “Earth Day”, and quizzed 1,086 people over the age of 18.
What gives Microsoft the privilege of advancing “Earth Day” without looking like total hypocrites? See this for background. █
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Posted in Security, Windows at 1:07 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Microsoft
• Windows Bugs Never Truly Squashed
Hackers can successfully attack Windows PCs months — even years — after Microsoft Corp. fixes a flaw, a security expert said, because there’s always a pool of unpatched systems.
According to data that Qualys Inc. culled from scans of more than 80 million machines, between 5% and 20% of all systems are never patched for any vulnerabilities, including those disclosed by Microsoft in its monthly security updates.
• Rigged Word docs exploit 2008 bug, say researchers
Attackers, probably based in China, are exploiting a December bug in Microsoft Word to hijack Windows PCs, Vietnamese security researchers warned today.
• The Microsoft Tax: Conficker’s estimated economic cost: $9.1 billion
“The Cyber Secure Institute claims that based on their previous studies into the average cost of such malware attacks, the economic loss due to the Conficker worm could be as high as $9.1 billion,” Dancho Danchev reports for ZDNet.
Others
• After Five Years, Apparently The Mobile Virus Flood Is Really Coming This Time
For about five years, there’s been an effort to whip up hype around the supposed threat of mobile viruses and malware. Pretty much all of that hype’s come from anti-virus vendors, so it’s been pretty suspect, particularly as this threat they’ve been hyping for so long has failed to materialize.
• International hackers, many from China, are attacking NYPD computers
A network of mystery hackers, most based in China, have been making 70,000 attempts a day to break into the NYPD’s computer system, the city’s top cop revealed Wednesday.
• K.gov cautious on EU cyberwar effort
Security chiefs are considering joining an EU wargame to help guard critical internet infrastructure against attacks from enemy states or criminals, but Whitehall officials are concerned other members of the bloc are not ready.
• The Great Brazilian Sat-Hack Crackdown
“This had been happening for more than five years,” says Celso Campos, of the Brazilian Federal Police. “Since the communication channel was open, not encrypted, lots of people used it to talk to each other.”
• Conficker
The New York Times called it an “unthinkable disaster”, the television news show 60 Minutes said it could “disrupt the entire internet” and we at the Guardian warned that it might be a “deadly threat”. Naysayers were few, and drowned out.
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04.25.09
Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Vista, Vista 7, Windows at 6:00 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
GNU/Linux forces Microsoft’s Windows margins to decrease
Summary: Analysis of the GNU/Linux factor in Microsoft’s negative results
Sub-notebooks are hurting Microsoft's bottom line because GNU/Linux competes also on price proposition, not just Freedom and technical edge. The result is very clear to see [1, 2] and to corroborate we have:
Microsoft earnings drop as netbooks take chunk of PC sales
[...]
The client division saw its revenue drop by a bit more than $600 million, with income down by almost the same amount. The trend of the PC market towards netbooks, which either run Linux or a low-cost version of Windows XP, undoubtedly hit this division hard. With Windows 7 apparently progressing well, however, the light may be visible at the end of the tunnel here, provided the company can convince netbook makers to pay more for the improvements it brings (and consumers are interested in its netbook version).
Matt Asay alleges that “Netbooks bleed Microsoft profits. It’s about to get worse.” Here’s why:
After all, Canonical, which develops Ubuntu, the world’s leading consumer-focused, Linux-based desktop operating system, on Monday released a Netbook-optimized Ubuntu distribution, as IDG reports.
Better battery life. A nicer visual experience. An operating system tightly tuned for applications like e-mail, Web browsing, and office productivity. All for a price that is dramatically less than Microsoft Windows…even after Microsoft discounts.
Windows XP? No thanks, says this prominent writer.
Rant: Microsoft Windows Out of Box Experience Sucks
OK, rant mode on. This morning I spent over three hours running Windows Update on the cool Viliv S5 UMPC I am evaluating. Yes, I realize it runs the older Windows XP operating system, but even so Microsoft must make the out of box experience (OOBE) better than this. I have recently experienced this process with Vista too, and it’s no better than XP. It’s time that Microsoft fix this absolutely unbearable process.
The entire Windows Update process resulted in 5 reboots and took almost 3.5 hours. That is ridiculous in and of itself, but watching it closely (something you have to do as it requires user input at inopportune moments) really got me steamed, as I realized that Microsoft could easily fix this stupid process.
Windows Vista seems to be passé already. To prove this, we conducted our weekly experiment. We grouped together news picks from Yahoo! News and Google Groups, accumulated using RSS feeds for the keyword “Microsoft”. Slicing based on the presence of “Vista” inside the headline, we have just 2 matches. Doing the same for “Windows 7″ we are left with 17 matches, which is almost 10 times the number of “Vista”. But Vista 7 does not even exist yet (it’s vapourware). In fact, given that the Microsoft-sympathetic blogs are now crowing about “Vista 8″ (Windows 8), it's clear that something is wrong (there are more new examples and they arrive from the usual suspects).
“There is a group of Microsoft-sympathetic reporters who spin Microsoft’s bad financial results…”Forbes Magazine has just come up with the headline “Forget Vista”, but it’s actually more of an advertisements for Vista 7. The Shane O'Neill marionette is promoting Vista 7 although it does not even exist yet (at least not as a product). The message he is sending from IDG goes along the lines of: “it’s coming, it’s coming, so get ready because there is no other choice.” Richard Waters from the Financial Times* plays along with the Microsoft ‘party line’, as usual. There is a group of Microsoft-sympathetic reporters who spin Microsoft’s bad financial results and rather grim outlook; Waters is usually one of them. █
______
* Or financial tiems[sic], i.e. TIE-MS (ties with Microsoft).
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Posted in Finance, Marketing, Microsoft at 5:10 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft’s Origami folds; picnic cancelled; conference cancelled; PR budget cut worldwide
Microsoft’s profit sank by a third [1, 2] and just look at this thing, it’s like an avalanche:
Remember Microsoft’s Origami? Well, that’s gone.
Microsoft’s Origami campaign came in for both praise and criticism, and while they can’t claim to entirely control the UMPC (or subsequent MID) markets they’ve were at least initially responsible for promoting ultramobile PCs. Now Microsoft have decided to shut down their official Origami project site, three years after it was founded.
There is already one victim (OQO ) if the rumours are true.
There’s more.
Microsoft’s unofficial CNET spokesman says that Microsoft cancels company picnic and the company’s official spokesman said:
“The big reason is to pay attention to costs,” said Lou Gellos, a Microsoft spokesman.
Translation: a picnic costs too much.
But wait, there’s more.
Microsoft has just canceled its business intelligence conference.
Citing the recession and cutbacks in travel budgets, Microsoft has canceled this year’s October Microsoft BI Conference, according to a posting on the company’s Web site blog.
Rarely will a story be found where some company issues a press release merely to announce a failure or cancellation of something, unless of course there is a positive spin to disseminate. And that is precisely what Microsoft did (not for the first time, either).
And there’s more.
According to a couple of Web sites, Microsoft is also cutting its PR budget. But being PR, Microsoft is spinning this cut as something sensible and growth in other areas.
Across Europe and the UK, it is thought as much as a quarter of Microsoft’s citizenship PR spend is being shelved. Similar cuts have been made in Asia, while a source said pullbacks in global and US budgets were ‘imminent’.
There’s no more. No more happy days for Microsoft. █
“It’s nice for you to admit your guys are running scared [of Free software]. They should be.”
–The sum of Microsoft’s fears
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Posted in Debian, GNU/Linux, Law, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Ubuntu at 9:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: More disturbing details about Moonlight are unleashed
ONE OF our regular participants has just taken a close look at Moonlight’s legalese and published 3 questions about the project. Watch the image at the bottom. Yes, it figures. Moonlight is now being called “Microsoft Moonlight” and this is not a joke. Novell is becoming an attractive takeover target for Microsoft.
“Users is the key word,” claims oiaohm. It “says nothing about distributions. Codecs in Moonlight come from Microsoft.”
“Moonlight is now being called “Microsoft Moonlight” and this is not a joke.”“The way the Microsoft covenant reads to me,” says the author, “only Novell can distribute Moonlight. So, if you are non-Novell user, it won’t be something that is wrapped up in your distro.”
“Unless [the] distribution wants to risk hot water or out side where Microsoft rules apply,” adds oiaohm in an informal IRC conversation.
There is also “the expectation is that users will get the distro from wherever and then download Moonlight from Novell,” remarks the author.
Well, guess what? Debian Legal has just received the following from Saul Goode, who had taken a look at Moonlight licensing; it does not seem too good. Fedora (Red Hat) reached the same conclusion after the SFLC had taken a look at the Moonlight licence and did not like what's in it.
Since the license for the Debian package must “comply with” the Ms-PL, its license should necessarily offer the patent grants required in Section 2(B). Assuming that a license which complies with the Ms-PL is used — or indeed that the Ms-PL itself used — the question is thus raised, how are patent grants being provided for the MIT/X11-licensed components of the Debian binary package? Without providing such a grant, the package licensing would not meet the terms and conditions of Section 2(B) and fail to “comply with” the Ms-PL. Providing such a grant should demand extra measure be taken with regard to the MIT/X11-licensed code because the authors of that code were not obligated by its licensing to provide such a grant.
As a final comment, and one more hypothetical in nature, the Ms-PL makes no distinction between derived and collective works and offers no exemption for “mere aggregation” (as does the General Public License). In lieu of such an exception, we are left with relying upon the interpretation of the courts as to what constitutes a derived or collected work of joint authorship under copyright law. Should a Ms-PL-licensed package be included with a Debian distribution, it may very well be argued that the entire distribution (a collective work) must be offered under licensing which “complies with” the Ms-PL — any inclusion of code for which there is no patent grant could be construed as infringement of the copyrights of Ms-PLed code’s author.
While Mark Shuttleworth is asleep at the wheel, Moonlight makes it into Ubuntu; Mono had already slipped its way into it anyway, thanks to pressure from fans of .NET. “It’s shocking,” we’re told, “considering de Icaza said publicly you must download Moonlight from Novell (or else).”
“But why should other GNU/Linux vendors be foolishly dragged into Novell’s (and Microsoft’s) trap?”Whereas Debian doesn’t care about anything legal all that much, Canonical is vulnerable because it is a company and it inflicts great pain upon Microsoft's profit. Microsoft does not even need to attack it directly (either with FUD or with legal action) and one regular reader of ours thinks that it inevitably will.
All in all, Microsoft hopes that by assimilation it will gain greater legal and technical control over GNU/Linux. It’s the same ol’ embrace, extend, and extinguish (EEE) tactic. It’s about attracting engineers to .NET/C# (or clones) and leading them into the ‘first class’ choice which is Microsoft .NET along with Silverlight, Visual Studio, and Windows. One has to bury one’s head in the sand in order not to comprehend it.
Earlier on today we wrote about Microsoft's "embrace, extend, and extinguish" against open source. Well, here is a new comment from the Microsoft Blog in ZDNet, which attracts the pro-Microsoft crowd, naturally:
“Sounds like one more way to help migrate from linux to Microsoft Windows. If this is implemented pulling data from a linux server will be that much easier until the server is no longer needed. I’m liking this interoperability.”
So go ahead, Novell. Do what Microsoft has paid you almost half a billion dollars to achieve. But why should other GNU/Linux vendors be foolishly dragged into Novell’s (and Microsoft’s) trap? █
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