The Mouth of Truth is a stone mask
inside the portico of Santa Maria in
Cosmedin, Rome. It is said to bite the hand off
of any liar who places his hand inside.

Summary: A quick look at some of the latest lies which are floating

A FEW DAYS ago, evidence was used to show that Microsoft strives to marginalise 'dissent' such as GNU/Linux. The GPL, unlike anything Apple would ever adapt to, is too disruptive for Microsoft's business to tolerate. There is a perceptual level at which GNU/Linux can be suppressed, by creating the illusion that GNU/Linux is scarcely adopted and then working hard to make it so. As background, see for example:

• Microsoft and Apple Pay Net Applications (Hitslink)
• Lies, Damn Lies, and... Netcraft/Microsoft
• Net Applications: the Big Lie, Boosted by IDC|IDG et al

Press introspection is desperately needed. GreyGeek from LinuxToday had something to say about Net Applications' latest lies, which are spinning out of control (widely propagated despite being funded by Microsoft and Apple, at least in part). He wrote about the desktop market share of GNU/Linux:

A year ago Matt Assay said it was at 2.02%

ZDNet reported on Feb 24th, 2004 that the 2003 Linux desktop market share hit 3.2% and expected it to hit 6% by 2007. http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/?p=5334 In 2005 they reported that the 2004 saw the Linux desktop at 4%. I believe that the all the ZDNet figures were spot on. If anything, the Linux desktop market share has continued to increase and is probably currently at 8-10% and rising. Dell and the other PC OEMs wouldn't have invested in selling Linux pre-installed if it appealed only to less than 1% of the desktop market.

It is quite obvious that NetApplications latest "report" is merely Microsoft's continuing attempt to control the news about Linux's success in replacing Windows on the desktop. It's not working... No one with half an ounce of brain would take the bait on a "free" Win7 (a dumbed down version that can run only 3 apps at a time) that will deactivate after one year unless the user PAYS Microsoft to activate it. Win7 is NOT free.

There is a lot of venom out there. See the first comment here for example. It seems like off-topic AstroTurfing, which we know does exist.

A Microsoft pseudo-journalist who publicly humiliated GNU/Linux in the past and has just been laid off simply keeps up the same habit with the nonsensical heading "Where Office Beats Linux". Well, Joe Wilcox should know pretty well that Linux is not an office suite; it's an operating system kernel. So comparing Linux to an office suite that is the market loser in the sense that it can't harness the very basics of the international standard is just plain silly and inappropriate.

Speaking of Microsoft Office 2007 SP2, here is a good new comment from Luc Bollen (found in Rob Weir's blog):

I also found back a funny discussion about spreadsheet formulas between Doug Mahugh and Jesper Lund Stocholm in the comments of the following blog post: http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/...

Doug explains there why Microsoft does not intent to be compatible with the OOo formulas: # dmahugh said on February 20, 2009 12:13 PM: [...] One interesting area is spreadsheet formula syntax -- since ODF has never had such a syntax in any published version of the spec, implementers have used other standardized formula languages such as the one in IS29500 (as is allowed in the current ODF spec). [...]

Doug then reacts to a comment by Jesper: # dmahugh said on February 21, 2009 2:38 PM: [...] Jesper, if I understand your point correctly, you're saying that you don't mind if documents containing IS29500 formula markup are unable to ever be conformant to "pure ODF 1.2" [...] My view is that this would needlessly punish users of ODF who currently save formulas in the only ISO-standard formula markup language available for this purpose. [...]

This triggers the following response from Jesper: # Jesper Lund Stocholm said on February 23, 2009 3:10 AM: [...] Seriously, Doug ... please don't play the "reuse exisiting ISO-standards or users will be punished"-card.

So Microsoft and cheerleaders like Jesper Lund Stocholm are still working in tandem to daemonise ODF and to make it look incapable. It's not surprising that pseudo-journalists join them. It must be part of what Microsoft calls "the Slog". ⬆