09.20.09
Posted in Microsoft, Security, Servers, UNIX, Windows at 5:23 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A blast from the past shows Microsoft dismissing Windows 2000, which it has just officially discontinued
“Here’s an oldie but goodie,” says a reader to us. It is an article discussing Microsoft’s dilemma that it faced when Hotmail ran on UNIX very well, which was damaging for Microsoft’s corporate pride as it contradicted the hype about NT. Microsoft touted it as “better UNIX than UNIX”. We wrote about this before [1, 2].
MS paper touts Unix in Hotmail’s Win2k switch
An older MS internal whitepaper from August 2000 on switching Hotmail, which MS acquired in 1997, from front-end servers running FreeBSD and back-end database servers running Solaris to a whole farm running Win2K, reads like a veritable sales brochure for UNIX, but concludes that the company ought to set the right example by ensuring that each division “should eat its own dogfood.”
The whitepaper, by MS Windows 2000 Server Product Group member David Brooks, has been posted on the Web by Security Office, which says it discovered the item and numerous other confidential MS documents on a poorly protected server. There are a number of other fascinating documents posted, in which the careful reader will find a veritable treasure map for hacking the citadel, but the one I enjoyed best was the comparison between Win2K and UNIX.
Hotmail is currently a mess, which even some fans of Microsoft dislike (Microsoft censors critics of it). Hotmail is also a spam issue and it has security problems. But regarding Windows Server, whose problems we covered some days ago, it finally sees the end of the 2000 version. Microsoft has newer problems to tackle, such as this one from the news (still unpatched):
Microsoft still does not acknowledge a weakness in its Internet Explorer browser that was pointed out seven weeks ago and enables attackers to hijack what are supposed to be secure Web sessions.
Microsoft typically hides its flaws and attempts to patch them secretly. This way, numbers can be kept lower and dishonesty is further enabled when politics come into play. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft, Samsung at 4:56 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft spreads its FOSS suppressors with SXSW promotion, Barnardos ‘donation’, and more
EVERY NOW and then we see Microsoft dumping software in order to block its competition. Microsoft always passes it by the press as “charity” or “donation”, which essentially recasts anti-competitive behaviour as goodwill (for the gullible). We gave an example from the UK one week ago.
It is unfortunate to see SXSW selling out to Microsoft for promotion, according to this press release.
South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive is now accepting entries for the Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator at SXSW competition. Debuting last year, the first edition of Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator at SXSW generated entries from more than 200 innovative companies from around the United States and across the world.
Microsoft is still dumping software using the *Spark programmes, which we wrote about to explain in:
There is also some new dumping in Barnardos, which the New Zealand press covered as though it was “donation of software to childcare charity.” Well, “open source” is mentioned there among the comments, so people are not foolish enough to fall for PR (“donation”, “children”, and “charity” all in the same sentence).
Microsoft chief financial officer Chris Liddell, a New Zealander, on Monday announced a $1.4 million donation of software to childcare charity Barnardos New Zealand.
Software cannot be donated, as it costs nothing to copy. People should read up on EDGI. Here is a similar publicity stunt from Microsoft’s extortion racket subscriber, Samsung.
The philanthropic initiative will reward winning writers with a Samsung Go Netbook and their local schools with cutting-edge Samsung products, Microsoft software, DIRECTV educational television programming and cash grants as well as special @15 gift cards supplied by Best Buy.
Best Buy and Microsoft software are quite a pair, aren’t they? They bash GNU/Linux together [1, 2, 3, 4]. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Bill Gates, Finance, Microsoft, Security, Windows at 4:31 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The incestuous relationship between Microsoft Corporation and the US government rears its ugly head again
Microsoft’s proximity to the government’s security bureaucrats is an issue we explored before, with obvious evidence such as Microsoft managers at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) [1, 2]. In general, Microsoft’s impact on current American politics is too easy to see (Obama and Silverlight, anyone?) and the back doors in Microsoft’s software [1, 2] may as well be token of that.
The following new press release is very funny. Microsoft is granted — wait for it — a “Freedom Award”.
Yes, Microsoft.
The “Freedom” company.
Who was this award given by? It’s the Office of Secretary of Defense. From the press release.
Microsoft Recognized by the Office of Secretary of Defense With Freedom Award
Joining 14 other companies from around the country, Microsoft Corp. is being honored in Washington this week by President Barack Obama and Secretary Robert Gates as a top supporter of the National Guard and Reserve. Today, the diverse set of companies, chosen from among a record 3,200 National Guard and Reserve member nominations of employers, will each receive a 2009 Employer Support Freedom Award from the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Robert Youngjohns, president of Microsoft North America, will accept the award for Microsoft during an award ceremony to be held at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington.
Let us remember that Bill Gates and Obama are no strangers. In fact, Gates paid Obama and that’s just how politics work. The above “award” is something for Microsoft to brag about to clients, pretending it can deliver security. It’s like a publicity stunt that ignores reality.
To make matters worse, Microsoft now intervenes with government finances. It wants to manage the bailout money (public looting by banks), which is not particularly surprising [1, 2, 3, 4]. Here is the press release from Monday.
BNY Mellon and Microsoft Corp. Launch New Solution to State and Local Governments for Managing Stimulus Funds
BNY Mellon today announced it has executed an agreement with Microsoft Corp. to bring to market a solution for project fund administration, tracking and reporting to aid state and local governments with their requirements related to the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).
There is some more coverage of this, but it all neglects to mention the irony of putting a convicted monopoly in such a position where it gets to converge with the government. Microsoft has already abused taxpayers’ money to build a bridge for itself, leading to great controversy. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Africa, Bill Gates, Deception, Microsoft at 3:40 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Exploration of the relationship between the Gates Foundation and Monsanto
Microsoft’s colonisation in Africa is a subject that we last covered earlier this year. It is a complicated and long subject, but our reader Scientes responded specifically to yesterday's post about the Gates Foundation, doing so by showing this article from earlier this month. It alludes to some of the things we previously wrote about, including genetically-modified crops and their relation to Bill Gates.
The preference for private sector contributions to agriculture shapes the Gates Foundation’s funding priorities. In a number of grants, for instance, one corporation appears repeatedly–Monsanto. To some extent, this simply reflects Monsanto’s domination of industrial agricultural research. There are, however, notable synergies between Gates and Monsanto: both are corporate titans that have made millions through technology, in particular through the aggressive defense of proprietary intellectual property. Both organizations are suffused by a culture of expertise, and there’s some overlap between them. Robert Horsch, a former senior vice president at Monsanto, is, for instance, now interim director of Gates’s agricultural development program and head of the science and technology team. Travis English and Paige Miller, researchers with the Seattle-based Community Alliance for Global Justice, have uncovered some striking trends in Gates Foundation funding. By following the money, English told us that “AGRA used funds from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to write twenty-three grants for projects in Kenya. Twelve of those recipients are involved in research in genetically modified agriculture, development or advocacy. About 79 percent of funding in Kenya involves biotech in one way or another.” And, English says, “so far, we have found over $100 million in grants to organizations connected to Monsanto.”
This isn’t surprising in light of the fact that Monsanto and Gates both embrace a model of agriculture that sees farmers suffering a deficit of knowledge–in which seeds, like little tiny beads of software, can be programmed to transmit that knowledge for commercial purposes. This assumes that Green Revolution technologies–including those that substitute for farmers’ knowledge–are not only desirable but neutral. Knowledge is never neutral, however: it inevitably carries and influences relations of power.
Is anyone in this case participating in an experiment for the potential of long-term profit? This is already done at a pharmaceutical level. The population is made dependent on American patents (medicine and agriculture) and those who benefit incidentally receive endorsements and heavy investments in them from the likes of the Gates Foundation, which in turn profits. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Asia, Law, Microsoft at 3:12 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft broke the law again, essentially by bundling rather than competing
KOREA takes antitrust laws seriously. It has already addressed Intel's crimes and found Microsoft guilty some months ago, having studied this for a while. Recently, Korea was also a victim of Windows zombies. Korea chose ODF and rejected OOXML, so more sanity seems to prevail there as far as technology is concerned.
Right now, according to reports, Microsoft is declared guilty of breaching antitrust laws, yet again.
A South Korean court ruled that global software giant Microsoft Corp. broke anti-trust laws by bundling programs with its Windows operating system, local media reported Monday.
In a case filed by local software company Dideonet, the Seoul Central District Court ruled against Microsoft on Friday, saying its bundling the Windows Media Service with the Windows operating system violated fair competition regulations by infringing upon consumers’ right to free choice and obstructing fair competition among rival firms.
Korea Times has more to say:
A Korean court ruled Monday that Microsoft Corp.’s bundling practice was disruptive to the market, but stopped short of ordering it to pay damages.
The American press, unlike the Korean press, hardly covered this news. It mostly passed on copies of the translation to English and no major Web site appears to have covered it. Why is that? █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in IRC Logs at 2:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Read the log
Enter the IRC channel now
To use your own IRC client, join channel #boycottnovell in FreeNode.
Permalink
Send this to a friend
09.19.09
Posted in News Roundup at 7:53 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
-
I’ve been aware of Proxmox VE for a couple of years now. I’ve installed it a few times and tested it out. I have recommended it to others and know a few local people using it in production (at MSU-Bozeman and Rocky Mountain College for example). Since I’m involved in the OpenVZ community I’ve also noticed some of the contributions to OpenVZ that have come from Proxmox VE (vzdump for example) and have run into Martin Maurer in the comments section of this site. I asked him if he would be interested in doing an interview and he accepted. I hope to add a picture of Martin to this interview in the near future.
-
What Hillcrest Labs announced yesterday is about more than just Linux compatibility. Hillcrest is the company behind Freespace, a “complete solution for the creation of in-air pointing and motion control devices for a broad range of applications including pointing remote controls, hybrid 2D/3D mice and motion-sensing game controllers.” Companies can license Freespace to develop precision devices for all manner of tasks, from presentation pointers to medical monitoring gear.
-
Surfing the net all this time on topics related to GNU/Linux, Free and Open Source Software, I came across various interesting, imaginative and some times funny videos and advertisements.
-
-
-
-
-
Version 4.3 of the lean Puppy Linux distribution is now available to download. At a size of just about 110 Mbytes, the system with its JWM and IceWM window managers offers up to date applications and includes many new features. Puppy Linux 4.3 now uses with kernel version 2.6.30.5 which includes ext4 filesystem support.
-
Ubuntu
-
-
Even if you don’t buy it, I would be hugely grateful that if you like it, please go and review it on Amazon. This is a hugely contribution. Thanks!
-
18/09 : Announced by UPR team the release of the second stable release of Ubuntu Privacy Remix 9.04. All software packages including the kernel were updated to their newest version to close security holes and fix bugs.
-
The worlds of open source and freeware both include many outstanding applications for working with graphics and photos. These include standard fare such as image editors, but it’s also worth looking into free desktop publishers, web design templates, and quirky graphics tools. Whether you want to produce splashy graphical documents, enhance graphics on a blog or web site, create eye-catching logos, or more, check out our newly updated collection of 12 applications and resources here.
-
In regards to my comment to him “championing the Mac” I use the word champion to describe something any user has settled on as a result of their own research and needs. I champion Linux since I have chosen it above alternatives as its best for me. Throttlemeister has done so with Mac on the same basis.
Throttlemeister makes reference to the needs of work and MS Office. I think this highlights perfectly that far from Microsoft being “standards compat” and as some would like you to believe [1] entering into a brave new world of cooperation and interoperability with FOSS. The fact remain that intentional or not, there are barriers for people wanting freedom of choice in their software solutions and its not a fault of FOSS.
-
Vendors with normal software containing encryption are required to file for a license exception, but that regulation offers an exemption to open source vendors.
However, that exemption is nullified if the source code is distributed to any of the countries on the U.S embargo list, such as Cuba, Iran or North Korea. Under the open source export exemption, the project isn’t supposed to have knowledge of distribution to any of the embargoed countries, Anderson said.
-
“While the internet may know no borders, the US government does. There are a number of rules that affect software vendors, including encryption export regulations from the US Department of Commerce and export sanctions by the Department of Treasury. But what do you do when your application is open source and freely available to anyone in the world? Do the same the rules apply? It’s a question that Mozilla asked the US government about. The answer they received could have profound implications not just for Firefox but for all open source software vendors. ‘We really couldn’t accept the notion that these government rules could jeopardize the participatory nature of an open source project, so we sought to challenge it,’ Harvey Anderson, VP and General Counsel of Mozilla, told InternetNews.com. ‘We argued that First Amendment free speech rights would prevail in this scenario. The government took our filing and then we got back a no-violation letter, which is fantastic.’”
-
Software Freedom Day
-
-
A special talk by the founder of the free software movement, Richard Stallman, will lead the list of special programmes put together by the IT@School on the VICTERS channel on the occasion of the Software Freedom Day (SFD) on September 19.
-
For those uninitiated to this concept — a full-fledged philosophy for many — applying something as lofty as freedom to the world of bits and bytes may seem a tad misplaced. However, advocates of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) will tell you that ‘freedom’ is as critical in the digital world, especially in one that is largely controlled by proprietary (and market) forces.
Richard Stallman, the foremost torchbearer of the Free Software Movement, points out ‘Free’ is a matter of liberty, not price: “‘Free’ as in ‘free speech,’ not as in ‘free beer’,” he distinguishes. In simple terms, the user is free to run, copy, modify and distribute software, and this, enabled by the fact that its source code (a set of instructions that calls the shots) is freely available.
-
This year September 19, is software freedom day (SFD), a global celebration of free and open source software.
There are three types of software, you can buy and use it, you can download and use for free and the third is where you could dowload it, modify the code and upload it for others to use.
[...]
Announcing programs for SFD, Lokayat on Friday issued a roadmap for countering monopoly of big companies.
They will mark this day by not using softwares like Windows, Adobe Photoshop etc. Rishikesh Yewalekar, Neeraj Jain and Vaibhav Gupta of the organisation said, “SFD is a worldwide celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). The goal is to educate the public about ethical reasons and benefits of using high quality FOSS.
-
Programming
-
COBOL is celebrating its 50th birthday. Or at least the name is.
-
I’m one of many who believe this week’s announcement of Apps.gov–a portal targeted at reducing the cost and effort for public agencies to acquire cloud services–is forcing all of IT to face the economics of cloud computing.
-
AstroTurf
-
“The First Amendment, as the Court has construed it, safeguards the right of citizens to band together and pool their resources . . . to express their views about policy issues and candidates for public office,” Kavanaugh wrote in his 44-page opinion.
A FEC spokeswoman, Judith Ingram, said officials were reviewing the opinion.
The challenge by Emily’s List is just one of several assaults on campaign finance laws and regulations in the courts. Last week, in a case with high stakes for campaign finance advocates, the Supreme Court heard arguments in an appeal that seeks to strip decades of restrictions on corporate support of candidates.
“We in the reform community are seeking attacks on all fronts of campaign finance laws,” said Tara Malloy, associate counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit group that supports campaign finance reform.
Friday’s ruling will be felt next year and in 2012, the experts said.
-
Censorship/Web Abuse
-
Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, plans to propose a new so-called net neutrality rule Monday that could prevent telecommunications, cable and wireless companies from blocking Internet applications, according to sources at the agency.
-
Either I am licensed to view BBC content, or I am not. If I am, then it should be none of the BBC’s concern what method I use to view that content. If I wish to use equipment officially “endorsed” by the BBC, or if I wish to use a self-built PVR running my own choice of software, I should be able to do so without the BBC imposing restrictions on my activities, but their proposed DRM system will indeed impose such a restriction.
This restriction will also compel me to purchase equipment manufactured only by certain companies, which I feel is also in violation of the spirit of the BBC’s charter of impartiality. Is it right that the BBC should essentially endorse products in this way?
-
Intellectual Monopolies
-
Of course, since we were suggesting more reasonable responses to the RIAA’s proposals, why not have those same kids do a class project where they talk about artists who have embraced what their fans want, and have showed that it’s possible to do quite well with models that don’t involve going to war with your best fans.
-
We wrote about Music-Rules! and similar industry propaganda efforts in May, outlining some of their falsehoods and biases. For instance, the RIAA tells kids, “Never copy someone else’s creative work without permission from the copyright holder” — omitting the important right to make creative fair use of existing content. It also coins a misleading term, “songlifting,” (which the curriculum says is “just as bad as shoplifting”). Perhaps most disturbing of all given that the curriculum is supposed to be adopted by schools, it teaches kids bad math as part of its lessons on peer to peer file-sharing.
-
The MPAA and cable companies could offer up movies whenever they want. They just don’t want people to record them, because they want to introduce yet another annoying window. So, they declare that they need to break your TV and DVR from recording.
-
However, Oregon is back in the news on a similar issue, as Slashdot points us to the news that a professor is challenging the state’s attorney general to sue him after he scanned and posted a state-produced guide to using public-records laws. You would think, again, that the state would want such a document spread as widely as possible, as it would better help Oregonians understand the law. But the state claims it needs to sell the book for $25 to cover production costs.
-
Way back in 2003, when Linden Lab announced that individuals owned the real world copyright on virtual trinkets they made in the game, we noted that this was a bad idea that would lead to problems. It was, in effect, taking bad real world laws and bringing them into a virtual world. It was even worse, because it was taking real world laws that were designed for a world of scarcity, and bringing them into a world of abundance — and effectively allowing the laws to reach from the real world into the virtual world. That’s a recipe for trouble.
-
Almost every form of publishing has been organized as if the medium was what they were selling, and the content was irrelevant. Book publishers, for example, set prices based on the cost of producing and distributing books. They treat the words printed in the book the same way a textile manufacturer treats the patterns printed on its fabrics.
Economically, the print media are in the business of marking up paper. We can all imagine an old-style editor getting a scoop and saying “this will sell a lot of papers!” Cross out that final S and you’re describing their business model. The reason they make less money now is that people don’t need as much paper.
-
-
Jim Hogg teaches GNU Linux to high school kids 10 (2008)
Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Dell, Mail, Novell, Security, Virtualisation at 3:14 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: BrainShare 2010 hype, some news about GroupWise, Novell Teaming 2, and little more of the rest
SO, the biggest item this week comes from John Dragoon, who exclaims that “BrainShare Returns!”
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
Send this to a friend
« Previous Page — « Previous entries « Previous Page · Next Page » Next entries » — Next Page »
