08.03.09

IRC: #boycottnovell @ FreeNode: August 3rd, 2009

Posted in IRC Logs at 7:43 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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To use your own IRC client, join channel #boycottnovell in FreeNode.

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Microsoft Wants More Control of Indian Government, US Space Programs

Posted in America, Asia, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Windows at 3:55 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: A repeat offender, Microsoft, wants more direct control of government affairs

SHORTLY after Nasscom had opened the national doors for Microsoft to enter [1, 2], this abusive monopolist from the West was taking further steps towards digital colonialism in India. According to the following new report, “This is viewed by many players as a ‘back-door’ entry vied by Microsoft.”

Microsoft must be going against the interests of the vast majority of this country’s population, relying on those fraudulent partners who help Microsoft colonisation in exchange for personal benefits. It’s just like British imperialism in India, only many decades later (and in digital form).

Even as advocacy for using open standards for the e-governance programme proposed by the Centre is assuming increasing popularity, there seems to be nothing that is plugging Microsoft’s ambitions.

Reacting to Deccan Herald’s story, dated July 19, 2009, “Rat race begins among vendors for contracts,” the software giant said that being a platform based company, Microsoft has worked with a lot of open source players and is even willing to work with industry opponents to get its hands on the projects. This is viewed by many players as a ‘back-door’ entry vied by Microsoft.

As the sole commenter points out, “We should go for Open Source and ditch any monopolistic approach of vendors like Microsoft…Open Source is the future of computing and especially they are being used by so many Governments and companies. The previous excuse and reasons given by vendors towards support and security no longer holds good now. We all know how secure microsoft OSes are considering every now and then out of band patches are released…So much money they charge for such pathetic security of their softwares. OpenSource should be the path taken by Governments simply because they are cost effective, easy integration, and SECURITY!”

“Windows has had remote kill switches for quite some time…”To let a foreign company control computing (including databases) is absolutely insane. It gives Microsoft (and by extension the United States) access to all data in India and it also permits them to disable all the computers in India, in case of a political dispute for example. Windows has had remote kill switches for quite some time [1, 2, 3] (and back doors too). There is nothing which prevents them from being misused for diplomatic reasons, not even legal restrictions. Free software, on the contrary, is under complete control by its user/s.

Speaking of Microsoft’s inappropriate interference with government affairs, some time ago we wrote about how Microsoft had used NASA against GNU/Linux. Now, what on Earth [pun not intended] is this? Watch the sponsors and venue. █

Related:

• Microsoft influence in the United States government
• Microsoft influence in the Indian government
• Microsoft influence in Europe
• Microsoft influence in Asia
• Lists of Microsoft- and Gates-Hired Lobbyists in the United States of America
• Details of Microsoft’s Lobbying in Europe

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MediaWiki Replaces Microsoft Office While Microsoft’s Attack on ODF Continues at Wikipedia

Posted in Free/Libre Software, FUD, Microsoft, Office Suites, OpenDocument, Wikipedia at 3:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: The Internet wants to be free and so do computer users; Microsoft keeps standing in their way

BACK in 2007, Wikipedia embraced ODF. The software on which it is built, MediaWiki, happens to be used by Boycott Novell and one of Microsoft’s loyal users has just decided to abandon Microsoft Office in favour of MediaWiki. This is not particularly surprising and by all means it is another win for Free software. The following is a sort of eulogy for Microsoft Office.

I chose MediaWiki, the open-source software that powers Wikipedia. It was relatively easy to install on a virtual Linux server. Since everyone has read Wikipedia, the interface was familiar and so our users needed no training. Because Wikipedia managed to efficiently store—at the time of this writing—all human knowledge, speed and scalability weren’t a problem. Finally, the price (free) was acceptable.

[...]

So farewell, Microsoft Word. Don’t feel too bad—you had a long and prosperous run. We had more than twenty years of fun together. You added feature after feature after feature, and I learned how to avoid your crazy style changes whenever I deleted an invisible formatting command. Maybe if you just had “Reveal Codes”… nah, it wouldn’t have mattered. The world simply changed.

The Microsoft-faithful crowd keeps vandalising Wikipedia’s article on ODF, turning it in favour of Microsoft. We last saw this a few days ago, but it just doesn’t stop [1, 2, 3]. Who the heck is “SmackBot“?█

On abuse against ODF at Wikipedia:

• Microsoft Starts Attacking the ODF Alliance, Sends Paid Wikipedia Editors to ODF Article (Updated)
• OOXML BRM Convenor (Alex Brown) Joins the Pro-Microsoft Wikipedia Spinners
• Microsoft Folks Rewrite ODF’s History and Build Anti-ODF Social Network
• Fraunhofer Again Lobbies for Microsoft Lock-in
• Is Microsoft’s AstroTurf Against ODF Still On?
• Microsoft Accused of Anti-ODF Whisper Campaign

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Net Applications Finally Shows It’s Just a Joke: Mac ‘Market Share’ Halved Overnight!

Posted in Apple, Deception, Europe, FUD, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Windows at 2:49 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Net Applications changes its mind about so-called ‘statistics’

WE HAVE been writing extensively about how Net Applications, contrary to Steve Ballmer, places Apple ahead of GNU/Linux in terms of market share. But Apple is virtually out of existence in the large majority of the world’s countries and it has been known for many years that GNU/Linux had gained a lot on the desktop, globally speaking.

For those who do not yet know about Net Applications admitting the deficiency of their US-oriented ‘results’ (and tweaking of them too), not to mention having Microsoft as a paying client and having staff with Microsoft history, read the following:

• Three New Articles Question Net Applications’ Integrity
• Net Applications: the Big Lie, Boosted by IDC|IDG et al
• Net Applications Has Former Microsoft Employee, Also a Microsoft Investor?
• Summary: Lies, Damn Lies and Net Applications (Fake ‘Statistics’)

From the Fortune/CNN Web site comes the following rant which shows just how ‘reliable’ Net Applications must be now that Apple sees a rise in performance, whereas Microsoft reports a sharp decline.

Net Applications: Apple just lost half its ‘market share’

The so-called market share reports issued every month by Net Applications have long been controversial — mostly because they didn’t actually measure market share (which business people typically express as the number of widgets they sell in a given period divided by the total number of widgets sold).

What Net Applications did instead was sample data from browsers visiting their clients’ websites and report what percentage came from machines running Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.

If almost 10% can become 5% overnight (based on some secret recipe), how reliable can those numbers be? Since Net Applications refuses to show its methods and its data, its results are as useless as those that arrive from Black Duck.

“Just having a lot of IP addresses means nothing; it is the distribution and the population of IPs that count…”It is funny how Net Applications always raves about number of IP addresses. Just having a lot of IP addresses means nothing; it is the distribution and the population of IPs that count (here is a great example of it). Net Applications keeps its data secret, obviously, so it usually means it has something to hide, something to be embarrassed of, like Diebold. It is biased in favour parts of the world where GNU/Linux adoption is already known to be very scarce, notably the United States.

Speaking of GNU/Linux adoption, not many people are even aware of the fact that, according to the following new report, “all of the members of the European Union (EU) are required to use open source Linux-based software exclusively, and this includes everything from operating systems to office applications.” Here is a broader quote:

When I thought about it, the list of open source software applications is actually quite long. Some of the major open source applications you may have heard about include MySQL, Apache Server, WordPress, Mozilla Firefox, Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, just to name a few.

I found it interesting to hear that all of the members of the European Union (EU) are required to use open source Linux-based software exclusively, and this includes everything from operating systems to office applications. There is also a move afoot here in this country to attempt to do a similar thing. A couple of the major programs are Government 2.0, that hopes to leverage Web 2.0 federated social networks in government, and Open Source for America, that advocates greater acceptance of open source software and efforts.

[...]

Open source Linux actually fostered the emergence of a couple of computer categories – the netbook, including the one laptop per child (OLPC) program where a good percentage are sold with Linux as the operating system.

What is the market share of GNU/Linux on the desktop? According to statistics from the Boycott Novell domain, it is approximately 40%. Honest. █

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Introducing Bloatnux

Posted in Boycott Novell, GNU/Linux, Novell, OpenSUSE, SLES/SLED, SueMe at 2:06 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: New GNU/Linux distribution from Boycott Novell

IT has been a long time since SueMe GNU/Linux, so one of us decided to create a similar distribution which is based on (Open)SUSE. It is called Bloatnux^* because it contains unhealthy doses of Mono and thus it begs for a lawsuit from Microsoft, which has already sued (at least) two companies for using Linux, backed by those allegations stemming from the Novell deal.

Here is the direct download link (via Novell^**) and here is a list of the packages installed:

Many thanks to the anonymous contributor who created Bloatnux. █
______
^* Therefore the name, which means it’s bloated.
^** The download link may not last longer than 7 days. Builds older than 7 days may be deleted to free up space on Novell’s servers. Thanks, Novell, for hosting our distribution. Here is the download link for a USB version.

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Links 03/08/2009: Linux 2.6.31 @ RC5, GNU Hurd Monthly Report

Posted in News Roundup at 1:42 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

Luis Casas Luengo, Director of Extremadura’s Fundecyt foundation 14 (2004)

Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.

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Microsoft and Apple Gag Truth Tellers, Disregard Risk of Death

Posted in Apple, Deception, Microsoft, Security at 7:36 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: People’s lives are put at risk due to Apple’s and Microsoft’s greed and secrecy

Microsoft has already fired an employee for daring to warn people about defective products that may cause death. Apple is doing something similar right now by attempting to gag witnesses of an iPod explosion. Nice move from Apple. That truly ought to resolve the problem of exploding iPods for good. If nobody hears about it, then no harm will be done (to Apple’s bottom line). This is not an isolated incident by the way. According to The Times, “Last week it emerged that Apple had tried to keep a number of cases where its iPod digital music players had started to smoke, burst into flames and even burned their owners, out of the public eye.”

Microsoft has actually just done similar things. According to IDG, Microsoft gagged people who are aware of Microsoft security flaws. From the news:

Yesterday, security experts involved with two separate lines of research declined to comment further about the findings they had already published, saying or hinting that they were doing so at Microsoft’s request.

For Microsoft, this is part of a pattern. Security vulnerabilities too can cause death and evidence is abundant. █

“It is no exaggeration to say that the national security is also implicated by the efforts of hackers to break into computing networks. Computers, including many running Windows operating systems, are used throughout the United States Department of Defense and by the armed forces of the United States in Afghanistan and elsewhere.”

–Jim Allchin, Microsoft

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Microsoft Sued Melco Group Over Linux and Microsoft is Likely to Lose Another Patent Case (VirnetX)

Posted in Courtroom, Microsoft, Patents at 6:59 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Processor.com indicates that the Melco deal was a result of Microsoft suing; Microsoft gets slapped by VirnetX

A FRIDAY report from Bloomberg suggests that Microsoft may be poised to lose in the patent dispute with VirnetX.

U.S. District Judge Leonard Davis in Tyler, Texas, yesterday sided with VirnetX in the defining of key terms in patents it claims are infringed by Microsoft.

Despite it being located in Texas, the trial does not involve a classic patent troll, but all that VirnetX seems to be doing is licensing patents. The “Products” page talks about nothing but patents, so there is no tangible output.

Increasingly, Microsoft becomes more like VirnetX because it uses patents as a racketeering tool, most recently against Melco [1, 2, 3] (this was mentioned briefly also in [1, 2]). It’s a way of leeching off someone else’s products. Here is the latest mention of the Melco betrayal.

As the result of a lawsuit settlement, Microsoft will get an undisclosed sum from Melco Group, which manufactures Linux-based networking tools. Melco Group is paying the amount to ensure indemnity for its Buffalo brand network-attached storage devices and routers. The suit is a result of Microsoft’s complaints that parts of the Linux operating system infringe on Microsoft’s patents, although the company has yet to identify which patents are at issue. The Linux community strongly denies that its operating system violates any patents and has publicly challenged Microsoft to name which patents are being infringed upon.

This is major. So Microsoft not only sued TomTom; Microsoft may be systematically suing and extorting vendors of Linux. Since no patents are being disclosed, this may be in violation of the RICO Act. Microsoft should be reported to the authorities. █

“Microsoft is asking people to pay them for patents, but they won’t say which ones. If a guy walks into a shop and says: “It’s an unsafe neighbourhood, why don’t you pay me 20 bucks and I’ll make sure you’re okay,” that’s illegal. It’s racketeering.”

–Mark Shuttleworth

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