Summary: The remainder of Novell’s news (from the past week), most of which minor
STARTING with the financial news today, Novell was mentioned as just one among many stocks in the news, but nothing particularly special. Via Jupitermedia:
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Summary: News about Microsoft-taxed distributions
Following previous coverage and discussions about Moblin and Novell’s SUSE [1, 2] there’s a lot more such coverage. Here is what we found:
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Summary: News from the past week about the OpenSUSE project
THE main event of this month is probably the “Community Week” of OpenSUSE. It was characteristically covered by Kristin Shoemaker, who seems a tad too close to the project.
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Gartner Group Comes to Microsoft’s Rescue, Again
Summary: Microsoft’s brigadier Michael Silver helps foil Europe’s migration to GNU/Linux, using lies
WHILE THE Web site was down (more details about it later) we had planned to publish what later on showed up on Slashdot. As it may seem like old news by now, we will take a somewhat unique angle on this and take a deeper look at those who are involved.
This whole thing began on Thursday night when Stefano Forenza got his hands on some really interesting documents, which he then translated into English before/whilst sharing the findings. The documents were not supposed to be seen in public because transparency is not truly a priority to those who are involved in heavy contracts where fairness is merely a luxury.
Here is what Stefano wrote.
An Italian EU deputy, Marco Cappato, had the guts to ask. The reply was they were basing on a study made in 2005. He asked to them to make it public, but his request was refused. Nobody believed he could get the EU to make it public. An well known Italian IT website even called that ‘a miracle‘.
I’m going no further, I’ll just translate Cappato’s post and attach here the document for the world to see. Up to you to judge how good it is.
(not that is that the document is still super-secret, but it has been disclosed very recently and I guess you won’t have many other chances to read it otherwise)
The following day it entered Slashdot’s front page and here is the story’s summary.
For 4 years MEP Marco Cappato tried to get access to the EU Council’s 2005 open source migration study because he is a member of a responsible IT oversight committee in the European Parliament. His repeated requests for access were denied. Now they have finally been answered because the Council’s study has escaped into the wild (PDF in French and English). Here is a quick look. It is embarrassing! Gartner, when asked if there were any mature public Linux installations in Europe, claimed that there were none. Michael Silver said, ‘I have not spoken to any sizable deployments of Linux on the desktop and only one or two StarOffice deployments.’ Gartner spread patent and TCO FUD. Also, the European Patent Office participated in the project, although it is not an EU institution.
The long discussion seen in Slashdot took place in many other sites. It’s truly fascinating, yet typical.
Let us go through some finer details which may or may not have been caught by eyewitnesses who saw this document.
As Stefano put it, the “title of a user comment on the news [is] ‘dirty pigs, just because it’s up to us citizen to pay’.” The original file [PDF] is in French and English. That, according to Stefano, is “the study the EU used to decide between Microsoft and FLOSS (a study they didn’t want to make public).”
It was not so long ago that we wrote about a study like this which the EU had shelved and we also saw American Microsoft lobbyists deviously invading an EU panel on Free/Open Source software to completely ruin the study which came out. There are other such examples. We are still in touch with the Commission about it [1, 2], but they keeps finding excuses and procrastinating. It’s truly comedy and they also violate transparency laws while using poor reasons to refuse or delay until the requester gives up.
Going back to Gartner, which we have proven to be corrupted by Microsoft [1, 2, 3], don’t the European diplomats know that Microsoft commissioned Gartner for anti-Linux studies, which we know about because we have the receipts? Asking Gartner about migration to GNU/Linux is like asking the Pope if one should convert to Islam.
“Next time they’ll ask IDC,” Stefano jokes, referring to another Microsoft-corrupted analysts firm [1, 2] (their affair with Microsoft lives on at this very moment).
Anyway, looking at the document, we find that it’s a familiar character in it. It’s the infamous pro-Microsoft Michael Silver [1, 2]. Yes, we saw him many times before. One should skip to page 25 (onwards) to find Microsoft is all over it and also take a look at page 33, which reveals nothing but Windows. In page 39, for example, they also mock GNU/Linux.
“That’s a document the EU didn’t want to disclose,” explains Stefano, “because disclosing may ‘compromise our business agreements with Microsoft’.” That’s according to the Italian man from the EU parliament — the man who fought the EU to disclose this study. Why was it done in secret anyway? Why was Microsoft involved? Well, now we know why.
Here are bits of the correspondence:
From: Silver,Michael [Michael.Silver at gartner.com]
Sent: lundi 14 février 2005 13:55
To: BIANCHESSI Pietro
Cc: Drakos,Nikos; MARIOTTI Jean-Marc (EP); TURPISZ Vincent (EP); LORA-TONET
Pierre (EP); DiMaio,Andrea; Heyneman,Christine
Subject: RE: references for site visit of OSS on workstationsDear Mr. Bianchessi,
Thank you for your inquiry on desktop Linux and open source office products.
The organizations I mentioned in my presentation are in their infancy, if that, in their open source
desktop deployments. I have not spoken to any sizable deployments of Linux on the desktop and only
one or two StarOffice deployments. Here is the status of the ones you mentioned.
-City of Munich – in the planning phase
-City of Bergen (N) – this organization is not doing Linux desktop. I mentioned these people as an
example of the Linux hype. There was an erroneous press report and since then the CIO has been
trying to correct it, saying that they are doing servers, not Linux desktops.
-Allied Irish Bank – Sun and AIB put out a press release last year, but Sun informed me a few months
ago that AIB was not doing reference calls. You can ask your Sun representatives to connect you with
a reference.-NSW RTA – This is another Sun reference, but they are only doing StarOffice, not Sun Java (Linux)
Desktop. Again, Sun should be able to connect you.
I continue to work with my colleague, Andrea DiMaio, to find references at these and other
government organizations. We will keep you in mind as we speak with other organizations that might
be appropriate references and ask their permission to give you their contact information. Unless I hear
otherwise, I will assume we are free to give them your information and ask them to contact you.
I would be happy to discuss your Linux desktop plans with you on an ongoing basis if you like and I
believe Ms. Heyneman can help you arrange a call with me. I recently spoke with a large bank that
had been seriously considering Linux for a large portion of their users but found that staying with
Windows would be less expensive. There may be other benefits that government organizations have
considered that companies cannot (like economic benefit) and we can discuss that, but I cannot share
this organization’s name or contact information at this time.Regards,
Mike
Michael Silver
Vice President and Research Director
Gartner Hardware and Operating Systems
56 Top Gallant Road
Stamford, CT 06904
ph. 203 316 1200
fax 203 316 6560
hwos@gartner.com
Click Here for Gartner’s Latest Client Platforms Researchhttp://www3.gartner.com/research/focus_areas/asset_57051_815.jsp
From: BIANCHESSI Pietro [mailto:pbianchessi
Dear Mr. Silver,
recently I attended a Gartner presentation in Brussels by Nikos Drakon on OSS. I told him that at the
European Parliament we would be interested in visiting one or more sites where OSS workstations are
implemented on a large scale. He was kind enough to send me your presentation titled "Client OS and
Office: is Open Source in Your future?". I find this presentation brilliant, and very useful.
At the European Parliament we often receive questions from Members on "why have we not migrated
our workstations to OSS?" and we are examining the possibilities. We definitely do not want to embark
in a migration without having verified that others have done it successfully before us, and that the
benefits would exceed the disadvantages. In this spirit, we would like to visit 2 or 3 successful sites, if
any exist.We have a base of 11.000 PC's (in the process of migrating from Win NT + Ofiice 97 to Win XP +
Office 2003).
The question is: can you help me obtaining the name and e-mail or adress of a contact person
in some of the main Organizations that have installed, and are working with, OSS workstations ?
I am thinking of the Organizations you quote in your slide:
-city of Munich
-city of Bergen (N)
-Allied Irish Bank
-NSW RTA
and others:
-Bundestag (Germany)
-Ville de Paris
-etc.Regards
Pietro Bianchessi
head of Office Automation and IT support Division
SUTI - DIT (Parlement Européen)
tel 00352 4300 22185
fax 00352 4300 27108
email: pbianchessi@europarl.eu.int
On a purely factual level, Gartner is very wrong, but it is no surprise given the hypothesis delivered by the paying clients of Gartner, including Microsoft (Bill Gates is an investor in Gartner too). Regarding GNU/Linux deployments in Europe, how about French police? This success story alone boasts over 100,000 desktops/laptops running Ubuntu.
In other news, Gartner seems to be advertising Vista 7 after some negotiations with Microsoft regarding Windows Vista. Here is what they say:
The Gartner comments come with speculation rampant that Microsoft could ditch Vista in the wake of what appears to already be a groundswell of positive reviews from early users of Windows 7.
Like the bribed-for ones? As opposed to those whose reviewers got smeared for criticising [1, 2]?
One thing is for sure. We have just looked at 2 weeks of news about “Microsoft” (judging by the headlines). For “Windows 7″ we get 56 matches and for “Vista” just 8 matches. Microsoft is trying to prevent discussion about Vista and have people talk about vapourware instead. █
Highlights of the site for me:
* The Linux Guru Directory. We have a saying, “code is the new resume.” With the transparency of the Internet, those who participate and showcase their skills are best positioned for success. Users of Linux.com can gain Linux guru status for answering questions, reviewing products, submitting tutorials or much more. The top user every year receives a dream laptop signed by no other than Linus Torvalds.
[...]
I’d also like to thank our inaugural sponsors: Intel, NetApp, Novell and Red Hat. It’s certainly no surprise to see those names associated with Linux but we truly appreciate their leadership in helping us make this site a reality.
It already is. It already has been. It will continue for the forseeable future.
My scorn for lazy tech reporters who have made an industry out of “This is the year of Linux!/ No it isn’t, stupid hippies!” is no secret. In fact I could make my own little industry out of scorning lazy, useless, content-free tech reporting, except that complaining all the time is dull and annoying. It gripes me greatly that this grand bully pulpit of online publishing, where a single person has the potential to reach the entire world, is wasted on 90% dreck. But then Theodore Sturgeon said that ninety percent of everything is crap, so I guess that’s just the way humanity operates.
The relationship will also see Elug and SA Linux collaborating on marketing and events, with the first major collaborative event taking place on the 19 September with two gatherings in the east of Gauteng to celebrate Software Freedom Day.
To me this is a very simple question to answer. Linux does not need a unified package manager when the source to the application you are using is available for you to compile on your own. Make your own package.
“Now Dann,” you might say: “Surely you do not mean for generic desktop user Joe to compile his own software?” To that I reply: “If not him or her, then surely there is someone else in the community willing to help him or her out.”
With just less than one month left of class, I decided to see if my 8th Grade students at the American International School in Saigon would be interested in learning Linux. I am glad I tried because these kids seemed to be having a lot of fun.
What do football, Linux and nitrogen have in common with each other? Quite a lot, it seems, as far as start up company Kinetic Performance Technology is concerned. The company formed six years ago and is now behind some of the nation’s top footballers and athletes. We speak with one of its co-founders in the first part of a series that will focus on successful technology start-ups.
[...]
What technology do you use in your developing, I understand that Linux plays a large part?
The Altitude room runs on a Linux server. We program it all in Python and it runs on an Apache web server so its all open source. Our other product, GymAware is an Apache mod-Python Web application with a MySQL database backend.
Kinetic’s network infrastructure runs on Linux with Samba, Subversion and automated backups aided by Python. We use eclipse to run our development environment, and rely on plenty of support from the open source community.
The next kernel version is to provide all that’s necessary to convert, for example, a RAID 5 into a RAID 6 and vice versa. There are changes to the block layer designed to speed up the system, and new and improved drivers will offer better SAS support.
With the fifth release candidate of Linux 2.6.30 out a few days ago, the development of the next kernel version in the main development line continues to progress. As indicated by Linus Torvalds in his release email, the changes are slowly decreasing in number and size, which is what usually happens at this development stage.
Most of you may already be aware of Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems. If not, here is an article stating just that from Sun’s website. I read the news as soon as it was published on the net along with the reactions of Sun users for Sun products. What will be the future of mySQL or OpenOffice?
Yesterday afternoon there were two new Gallium3D state trackers released by VMware / Tungsten Graphics for OpenGL ES 1.1 and ES 2.0 support. With these new state trackers there is now OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0 acceleration for any graphics hardware that has a Gallium3D driver. The OpenGL ES state trackers came just weeks after the release of an OpenVG state tracker.
Looking back for a moment, there’s no question that KDE 4 has had a very rough ride. Certainly, version 4.0 was a disappointment for many users, lacking features and functionality to make the move from 3.5 worthwhile. Version 4.1 started to repair the damage, and 4.2 padded it out to be good all-round desktop (don’t miss our top KDE 4.2 tips!). Will 4.3 be the first 4.x release to win over armies of Gnome fans?
As you should know, the GNOME foundation is run by a board of 7 directors known as “The Board”. After 18 months of active duty, it’s now time to refresh either the blood or our confidence. Which means…
The GoblinX Project is proud to announce the first released of the next G:Standard. The G:Standard 3.0.beta01 (2.9.90) is Released. The G:Standard is the original edition first released in the end of October 2004. In the past it was called as GoblinX and later as GoblinX Standard. In order to dismiss doubt about the releases and follow the same criteria used for all dsitributions (editions) of the GoblinX Project it became simply G:Standard.
I, much like every other hardcore geek on the face of the earth, have multiple linux based distro iso’s laying around. Some of them are for testing and some of them contain tools that I use on a daily basis. I have had many people email me about the best distro out there. The only answer I have for them is “depends on what you want to do”. I have spent sometime working on a list of Linux distros and what they are good for.
Arch installation is done through a text installer, but is quite simple. Installation is quick because there’s not much software to install. The base installation only has core libraries and binaries. There’s not even X. You’ll only get a console prompt, vi and not much more. And this is great, because you can customize it the way you like it and install only what you want. And if you want X, just issue “pacman -S xorg”.
It’s not for everyone, but long-time Linux users that like to fiddle with their system will probably like Arch.
Yesterday I made it a point to spend some time with both antiX and SimplyMEPIS. There were no package updates in SimplyMEPIS at all; it is rock stable. There were only a few package updates to antiX, which is based on Debian Testing. Both of them ran very smoothly and cleanly. No wonder I keep them among my trilogy of systems!
As discussed some time ago [1], we are going to rebrand ourselves as the Fedora Design team rather than the Fedora Art team, both in hopes of attracting more UX designers, and also since it’s a more accurate representation of the team so folks needing help with UI design will know where to go. Well, for roundabout reasons (getting fed up with our limited ability to collaborate on files, more later in this email) I finally got around to starting this process.
Some good news from OLPC: we’ve decided to base the new XO-1.5 laptop’s software release on Fedora 11. Unlike previous releases, we plan to use a full Fedora desktop build, booting into Sugar but giving users the option to switch into a standard GNOME install instead. (This will mostly be useful for older kids in high school.)
Some of you might know that Ubuntu recently launched a beta online storage service called “Ubuntu One”. This service looks very similar to what other popular online storage service like dropbox already does, except that Ubuntu One (pro service) is more expensive than Dropbox and the fact that dropbox client already supports Linux very well that it makes little sense to use Ubuntu One as an online storage service. Unless you consider these facts:
I recently decided to try out CrunchBang Linux. The lightweight, Ubuntu based Linux distribution although lacking some of the features of a modern GNOME or KDE desktop still stuns.
[...]
Default Applications. This distribution has some of the best preinstalled software installed. Gwibber, Skype…the list goes on. Although some applications have been replaced by lightweight alternatives: Evolution with ClawsMail, OpenOffice Writer with ABIWord… the choices are reasonable for a desktop that is designed to be lightweight. Likewise, there are some great oddities in the “Terminal Apps” section: everything from web browser to torrent client can be accomplished through the CLI and that will surely speak to the inner geek . Oh and did I mention Flash and other restricted formats are enabled by default.
I found this on Reddit and I was amazed nobody is talking about it over here. Well the site http://www.hmrgroup.co.uk/ is been using this logo which is strictly forbidden by the Ubuntu trademark policy http://www.ubuntu.com/aboutus/trademarkpolicy
Overall, it was fun and a new experience to sit with Ubuntu and not with Windows. I hope there will be more days in the future when I will work with Ubuntu and have all my needed files ready for it and work with it without any constraint or limitation.
Linux users should soon be able to use USB-connected monitors that incorporate DisplayLink’s chips. DisplayLink has released Linux versions of its USB monitor source code under LGPL, and has partnered with Novell and the Linux Driver Project to develop drivers for desktops and mobile devices.
Besides Intel, VIA, and ATI/AMD cooperating with X.Org and Linux developers by providing source code and documentation to help with the enablement of their hardware under Linux, another major company has come to the open-source table. No, sadly it is not NVIDIA. DisplayLink is the company and it has now provided an open-source library so that products using their technology will eventually work with Linux.
Digi-Key has confirmed it is shipping Revision C of the BeagleBoard from BeagleBoard.org, targeted at the active open source community.
Based on a Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) OMAP3530 processor, the BeagleBoard bridges desktop and embedded development by delivering laptop-like performance in a pocketsize, 3×3-inch form factor for innovative projects ranging from robots, netbooks, and mobile Internet devices to entire Linux distributions and gaming frameworks, Digi-Key explained.
Despite the unquestionable success of the S60 platform, Nokia apparently isn’t ready to settle with just one OS for all of its devices as word is that they’re preparing a new mobile OS in collaboration with Intel. Called oFono, this new Linux-based mobile platform is for GSM phones ruling out any speculation that it’s for a Nokia netbook
With the adoption of this open source client, Sybase iAnywhere said it added support fo over a billion phones including numerous Nokia devices and Symbian phones.
Recently, fellow Computerworld blogger, Preston Gralla wrote about a Lenovo analyst who felt that Windows 7 will dominate netbooks, and Linux will fade away. Of course, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols responded that Linux does have a future on netbooks.
But they are all addressing adults. When you instead focus on children, it seems pretty clear. Kids belong on Linux, specifically on netbooks running Linux.
Hey, remember the $199 Impulse TNX-9500, the “world’s cheapest laptop?” Yeah, it was just the beginning. Say hello to the iUnika Gyy, which manages to shave its price down to €130 ($176) by using a slower 400MHz MIPS processor and ditching that costly XP license for Linux.
Android, based on a Linux kernel, meets some of those criteria, says Jim McGregor, chief technology strategist for research firm In-Stat. With Google at the helm for Android, device makers can get a open-source product that still has the backing of a big brand.
Yes, Linux has a perfectly good (although slightly complex) image editor in GIMP but if Adobe decides to pump out a version of Photoshop for Linux, all of a sudden, Linux becomes a palatable option. Linux can already do everything else and while Linux hardheads will continue to push the “open source” mantra for this OS, the average consumer couldn’t care less and likely doesn’t know what open-source means anyway.
To cut software costs during the economic downturn, companies should trim overlaps in software deployments and unnecessary support subscriptions, advise experts.
Chong Yoke Sin, Group CIO of healthcare cluster, SingHealth, told ZDNet Asia in an interview, wastage commonly occurs when companies purchase software with overlapping capabilities. She offered an example of a company purchasing a business intelligence (BI) tool which comes with online analytical processing (OLAP) features, but purchases another standalone OLAP tool on top of it because the company believes the latter to have more features.
We have the pleasure to announce the third edition of one of the most important Open Source and Free Software conferences in Eastern Europe: eLiberatica 2009 that will take place on 22nd- 23rd of May, in Bucharest, Romania.
Sound, video, distros and programming all figure into this month’s roundup of open source goodies. Read on for more.
According to Rehan Khan, associate CIO, University of Georgia, the uPortal open source solution provided the University with a secure and scalable enterprise platform with the capability to evolve and expand online services in the future.
In a recent blog post, Yahoo’s grid computing team announced that Apache Hadoop was used to break the current world sorting records in the annual GraySort contest. It topped the ‘Gray’ and ‘Minute’ sorts in the general purpose (Daytona) category. They sorted 1TB in 62 seconds, and 1PB in 16.25 hours. Apache Hadoop is the only open source software to ever win the competition. It also won the Terasort competition last year.
My argument is that the $100 really isn’t the point, but it is the lack of access, the lack of “eyeballs” that this situation causes acts as an impediment to health care transformation. The fact that Jack, the computer science undergraduate, can’t just go download a copy and start building the next big Health 2.0 company should be a real source of concern. I’d argue that the total openness of protocols such as HTTP, and TCP/IP is one of the key reasons why the Internet itself works and is generally interoperable. In the words of Linus Trorvalds, “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”.
Since end of April, all civil servants of Anderlecht are using OOo. Charleroi and Vorst to follow this example.
http://leo-ooonewsfrombelgium.blogspot.com/
Sean Moss-Pultz and Christopher Hall for OpenMoko, the open source hardware platform for mobile phones.
Note: this is a draft icon rendering for Firefox 3.5, subsequent iterations will be posted every 24 hours or so.
Identi.ca is a service that’s built on the GNU Affero GPL, which is a modified version of the GPL that closes a loophole enabling people to make alterations to GPL software without releasing those changes. (The GPL says you must release your changes only when you distribute them and technically web servers aren’t distributing code, as they’re run at the server.) Identi.ca is also special because all the content on it is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence, so you’re able to get all your data off whenever you want to.
An open-source speech recognition platform called ‘Simon’ has been developed under the General Public License (GPL), in order to serve people with locomotor and cognitive dysfunctions with an advanced speech recognition system (SRC).
In general, speech recognition is a process of converting an acoustic signal (captured by a microphone or a telephone) to a set of words. Some of the speech recognition applications include voice dialing, call routing, content-based spoken audio search, simple data entry, preparation of structured documents and speech-to-text processing.
Great to see Heather Brooke getting at least *some* recognition for the huge service she has done transparency in this country by fighting for access to details of MPs’ expenses, thanks to her fascinating piece in the Guardian today, which lets her tell the real story behind recent events. Do read it if you can: it’s an extraordinary tale of dogged refusal to give up in the face of unremitting parliamentary arrogance.
I spent two days this week visiting Peter Murray-Rust and others at the Unilever Centre for Molecular Informatics at Cambridge. There was a lot of useful discussion and I learned an awful lot that requires more thinking and will no doubt result in further posts. In this one I want to relay a conversation we had over lunch with Peter, Jim Downing, Nico Adams, Nick Day and Rufus Pollock that seemed extremely productive. It should be noted that what follows is my recollection so may not be entirely accurate and shouldn’t be taken to accurately represent other people’s views necessarily.
Lately I’ve been spending a fair amount of time talking to the folks at NESTA in the UK. There’s a lot of interest in how the kinds of legal and technical infrastructures we’re building at Creative Commons might work at scale in the UK, and yesterday NESTA hosted me and James Boyle (founder of Creative Commons, and a guiding force in our science work from the very beginning) at an event labeled Open Innovation and Intellectual Property, jointly hosted by the Wellcome Trust and Creative Commons.
Synthetic biology is developing into one of the most exciting fields in science and technology and is receiving increased attention from venture capitalists, government and university laboratories, major corporations, and startup companies. This emerging technology promises not only to enable cheap, lifesaving new drugs, but also to yield innovative biofuels that can help address the world’s energy problems.
Pirate Bay judge Tomas Norström’s objectivity has already been called into doubt because of his ties to national and international pro-copyright lobby groups. Now, one of the defense lawyers says he has uncovered another scandal and claims to have evidence that Norström wasn’t assigned to the case randomly, as should be the case according to court procedure.
Steve Weber, creator of the phrase “anti-rival goods” 14 (2005)
Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.
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Summary: Gnote penetrates distributions at the speed of lightning
OVER AT Identi.ca, gdk writes: “Yay! #Gnote is in !Debian”
seraphyn adds: “Surely better than the mono-litter on !debian. I dislike mono”
This was probably inevitable and Ubuntu might soon swing the same way. Fedora already has it as well, not to mention Debian Sid.
“Fedora already has it as well, not to mention Debian Sid.”Someone wrote about Novell’s iFolder and Mono in relation to UbuntuOne, stating wrongly that “The client side seems to be free software and based in mono.”
This is not correct. If one looks at the source code, then it’s clearly all wrong.
The problem with Mono is old news to many. Applying some simple logic and considering what’s at stake, here is one way to put it. To repeat a message I sent elsewhere, if Microsoft hates something, it means it’s bad for Microsoft. Examples may include GNU/Linux advocacy, critics, and law enforcement. When Microsoft assists something, it’s means it’s good Microsoft. It might help to think along the lines Mono, Moonlight, OOXML plug-ins, Hyper-V support, and SLE*.
Microsoft openly states (both Ballmer and Ozzie) that open source and/or GNU/Linux are the biggest threats to Microsoft.
Does anyone really think Microsoft will help its biggest threats?
Microsoft is a business. It operates for shareholders. It works to defeat its competitive threats.
This is obvious, but Mono and Novell apologists just ignore the warning signs. Microsoft has already sued Linux (probably SCO to an extent, then TomTom, maybe others). What more proof does one need that Microsoft does battle this so-called “cancer” and so-called “IP” is its weapon of choice? It’s only rational to react responsively. █
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Summary: Microsoft wants the government, Adobe wants the children
A FEW weeks ago we saw Obama bringing Microsoft closer to his government [1, 2]. A lot of supportive references are already provided for context and Goblin, one of our readers, adds:
US Science panel assimilated?
[...]
The BBC site say:
“As a member of President Obama’s new science panel, he [Microsoft's Mundie] is also involved in helping the US administration understand the unfolding intersection between technology and society.”
I wonder if this “understanding” will involve him mentioning Linux/Mac or other alternatives? I wouldnt have thought Mr Mundie would want anyone understanding them, not when Microsoft have a tool for everyone!?!??
Anyway, resistance is futile. Next time you keep watch on your toaster (to prevent toast burning) consider that in the future, it could be Microsofts “feature rich & intelligent” toaster watching back at you.
What might actually be more curious is the news which came since then (not related to Mundie in any way). How about this?
Microsoft offers stimulus-tracking software
Microsoft Corp. on Monday unveiled a software program that will help government agencies track projects funded by the economic stimulus program.
Will this software track taxpayers’ funds that are used to build a bridge so that Microsoft employee can luxuriously drive to their private mall? Because that’s exactly where some of the money goes.
There is also this in the news: “REI, Microsoft meet with Obama on health care”
Local companies REI and Microsoft were among a handful of businesses praised today by President Obama for programs designed to make their employees healthier and keep down health-care costs.
This was also published here.
Glyn Moody complained about the cheapening of the word “open” in a programme Microsoft calls “OGDI” (sounds similar to EDGI). It’s another Microsoft ploy which receives coverage right now. Here is a deceiving headline: “Microsoft offers free repository for agency data”
Microsoft has set up a repository in which government agencies may upload and store their public-facing datasets so that they can be reused by other parties.
It’s not “free”, it’s lock-in. This platform is about making the government and its civilians more dependent on Microsoft and the company appears to be doing the same thing in India right now.
New Microsoft software to monitor state projects through Internet
Microsoft India is developing a dynamic software framework, which will allow Gujarat to track the implementation of various schemes at the touch of a button. The project called Darpan, which is under development, works on Internet-based technology and would be useful to get important information from small villages and remote areas faster.
To capture the government like this seems like a form of colonialism. From India we also get the following massively-distributed E-mail, which was sent to students so that they become volunteer agents of Adobe. It’s only a few days old and it’s HTML-formatted.
From: adobe
Sent: Thu 5/14/2009 3:54 PM
To: adobe
Subject: Submissions closing soon for Adobe Design Achievement AwardsIf this message is not displaying properly,
http://direct.adobe.com/v?xlJqWcTEJPTPnJJl click here to launch your
browser.Adobe Design Achievement Awards
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Adobe Design Achievement Awards
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Summary: A roundup of financial news for the most part (and some relationships to Microsoft families)
THIS POST is not a look at the personal lives of people; rather, it delves into professional activity alone. With that in mind, let it be stated that Bill Gates’ father is a participant in what became of Microsoft. Many times before we wrote about his role in the SCO lawsuit, Abramoff visas, and so on and so forth. We last mentioned all this (with links) right here.
Microsoft is now disengaging from this man’s firm. It was covered by far the most by the Microsoft journalists and the press up in Washington. Examples that we found include known pro-Microsoft reporters and also the Seattle press.
Microsoft will no longer seek regular legal counsel from a firm named after Bill Gates’ father, after it was chopped from a list of regular suppliers.
K&L Gates has been removed from Microsoft’s list of preferred providers following a comprehensive review, the company said, which saw Microsoft seek competitive bids. Microsoft narrowed a list of 16 potential suppliers down to 10 in the process.
No single factor was believed to be behind the decision to chop K&L Gates.
More from Seattle:
Microsoft, under increasing pressure to cut costs, says a competive bidding process led it to drop law firm K&L Gates from its top 10 list of “preferred” legal providers. The news is notable because the firm traces its roots, in part, to Preston Gates & Ellis — with the “Gates” in its name referring to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates’ father. But Microsoft says it will still continue to work with the firm.
The sources that covered it matter because it was published mostly in the Microsoft-friendly press, which didn’t take the notion and observation to task.
Bill Gates comes from a family of lawyers and diplomats on the face of it, but this is a subject that we covered before. There is also this self-congratulatory new piece.
Meanwhile we find that Microsoft’s PR person in CNET posted this: “Ballmer: ‘The world borrowed too much money’”
Says the man whose company is now borrowing money for reasons it is unwilling to publicly disclose. The pro-Microsoft reporter Stuart J. Johnston asked, “If Microsoft Is So Rich, Why Is It Borrowing?”
Well, maybe it’s not so rich after all. The company has, after all, engaged in financial fraud before and its investors are unhappy, some making comparisons to Madoff. See our previous posts about Microsoft and debt:
Also in the news right now: “Does Bill Gates Have An Open Sell Order On His Microsoft (MSFT) Stock? Dumps 20M Shares In 10 Trading Days”
A filing after the close on Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) showed that Bill Gates sold another 3 million shares of the stock on 5/12 at $19.79.
Our reader Twitter, pointing to the article above, explains that “Bill Gates dumps 3 million shares at less than $20.
“If Microsoft is buying stocks, it’s people executives raping the company. They sell out and leave the worker bees with a lot of useless paper and a failed company [...] but the company has done dumber things.”
“In other news,” he says, “Microsoft takes on debt.” He points to an article from a Microsoft faithful [1, 2] who spins it like many others that cite one another.
“A reader has just informed us of yet more evidence of the tie between the New York Times and Microsoft.”“The article speculates the 3.75 billion dollars are going toward acquisitions and assures it’s readers that the company has plenty of cash,” he says. But he continues: “I’m not so sure. Could it be that they are actually out of money and ready to implode?”
We have heard this from other sources too.
Whether it’s true or not, Wikipedia used to say Steve Ballmer is a son of a banker. It no longer says such a thing, but interestingly enough it does however shed light on Microsoft’s obsession with extreme marketing: “In 1990 Ballmer married Connie Snyder, who was on Microsoft’s PR team at the Waggener Group in the ’80s.”
A reader has just informed us of yet more evidence of the tie between the New York Times and Microsoft [1, 2]. And despite the fact the New York Times had no choice but to dump Silverlight-related software, here is this duo collaborating again, conspiring against Web standards, essentially.
Microsoft, in collaboration with The New York Times, introduced at the start of May 2009 the Silverlight 2 Kit for the New York Times Open application programming interfaces.
They even call it ‘Open’ API in order to (once again) falsely associate Silverlight with “openness” — whatever that actually means these days.
First they reluctantly dumped Silverlight (for technical reasons) and now the The New York Times is helping Microsoft Silverlight. It’s truly mystifying. But what is more interesting is the fact that Steve Ballmer is actually writing/publishing for them right now. Yes, Steve Ballmer has just published an article there and our reader notes that he says: “My brain is just chop, chop, chop, chop, chop. And so, if you really want to get the best out of people, you have to really hear them and they have to feel like they’ve been really heard. So I’ve got to learn to slow down and improve in that dimension, both to make me better and to make the people around me better.”
In relation to the phrase “chop, chop, chop”, our reader points to Alice Cooper’a video/performance of “Chop, Chop Chop” and adds some lyrics:
Some people call me the creeper
‘Cuz they don’t know my name or face
I got ‘em running in circles
Because a homicidal genius never leaves a trace
I’m a lonely hunter
City fullo f game
Walkin in the neon lights
Chop, chop, chop – engine of destruction
Chop, chop, chop – a perfect killing machine
Chop, chop, chop – it’s a symbiotic function
Chop, chop, chop – I keep the city so clean
Truly strange choice of words.
Lastly, regarding Paul Allen’s baby, it’s pretty much going the wrong way. From the latest news:
If economic depression now looms or reigns (for obvious reasons), then definite answers should not be so distant in the future. █
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