11.16.09
Posted in Deception, FUD, Microsoft at 7:49 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Award and outcome — new case study courtesy of Microsoft and comScore
Microsoft and comScore are getting all cuddly again. Two days ago we wrote about the “analyst tax”, which may have equivalents like the “survey tax” (or the “measure-things-that-make-me-look-better tax” [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]). This pair that we deal with today is not new to us; we wrote about it in:
Look, what do we have here? Well, several days ago we found a lot of news from comScore and Microsoft (yes, again). For instance:
• Massive and comScore Announce Breakthrough In-Game Advertising Research Methodology
For the first time ever, advertisers will now be able to see the direct impact that in-game advertisements have on consumer online behavior, thanks to a new research collaboration between Massive Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corp., and comScore Inc.
• Microsoft’s Massive Partners With comScore To Prove In-Game Ads Work
The unit was disproportionately hard-hit in Microsoft’s recent layoffs (28 percent of Massive’s staff was let go)—and we had heard that Microsoft was shopping Massive and was willing to sell it for just a fraction of the $200 to $400 million that it had paid for it three years ago. As for the in-game ad business overall, it has not met heady projections for its growth.
• Massive teams with comScore to verify how well in-game ads work
Hoping to win over advertisers, Microsoft’s Massive division and market researcher comScore have teamed up to statistically show how effective in-game advertisements are.
They are sharing data now. That’s one company that claims to be delivering “independent” data on usage.
Within the new methodology, comScore utilizes Massive’s relationship with Microsoft by pulling anonymous data from services including Microsoft’s Xbox Live and Windows Live ID. comScore then combines that data with input from its large panel to determine if ad viewers visited the product’s website, searched for the brand online, or other relevant activities.
Should this be making any output from comScore regarding Microsoft highly suspect? This is not their first time hooking up and working together.
More news items, for future reference:
• Microsoft, ComScore Pair For Gaming Measure
• comScore, Massive partner for gaming insight
• comScore helps Microsoft measure in-game ads
• ComScore makes Massive breakthrough with in-game ads
And look what we found in the news just days ago:
Microsoft websites prove popular with users
Industry tracker conScore released a study which found that 1.2 billion internet users aged 15 older spent a total of nearly 27 billion hours online in September, and Microsoft websites accounted for 14.5 percent of the minutes spent online worldwide in September.
ComScore reported that the results reveal Microsoft is “the most enegaging global property.”
Yes, comScore is advertising Microsoft again. Maybe what’s “engaging” is something like Windows Update and security advisories. The data and methods are all proprietary, so comScore need only deliver sound bites that glamourise Microsoft and both parties are happy with their business relationships; the public? Not as much. It is being deceived, but most people do not know about it. Microsoft applies the same tactics to lie about GNU/Linux and Free software, so this is relevant to everyone. █
“Distrust everyone in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!”
–Friedrich Nietzsche
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Posted in Asia, Law, Microsoft at 7:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The Marshall Law of Microsoft comes to CHT, more attempts at exclusion of competition are noted
“Project Marshall” is what Microsoft internally — as opposed to publicly — calls MoU, as revealed by confidential documents. When Microsoft speaks about an MoU, it means that it strives to maintain exclusivity through boiler room deals, sometimes with corruptible people who are willing to give Microsoft control in exchange for personal favours.
There is nothing ethical about an MoU and some are technically illegal. It’s not as though Microsoft was ever shy about breaking the law, but anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that a week after Microsoft signed an MoU in Taiwan (we also mentioned banks in China in that post), Microsoft also signs an MoU in China. Steve Ballmer was there too, probably taking a break from signing Vista 7 copies for celebrities who in turn feel compelled to lie about the O/S and recommend it.
The MOU signaling the beginning of a collaboration on software applications and cloud services for end-user devices was signed by Simon Leung, corporate vice president, chairman and CEO of Microsoft Greater China Region, and Shyue-Ching Lu, chairman and CEO of CHT, in the presence of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.
An MoU is blanket/bulk contract, like those imposed on OEMs that limit choice by preinstalling Windows on everything, taking choice away from people further down the chain. Schools and universities are the same because all machines get covered by Microsoft “licences”, no matter what operating system they actually run. That’s how Microsoft’s business has been engineered for a long time, namely taking options away. Speaking of which, Microsoft has just found another accomplice to assist with the Live@edu scam which imprisons students. █
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Posted in ECMA, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, OpenSUSE, Patents at 6:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: OpenSUSE 11.2 (GNOME) has Mono installed by default, including non-ECMA parts like Winforms
OPENSUSE users ought to become licensed customers of Novell, too.
According to this, the Winforms problem [1, 2, 3] goes deeper under the skin of OpenSUSE.
What is interesting, is that by default openSUSE ships the Mono implementation of Windows.Forms from .NET, which is outside the ECMA standard (and not covered under Microsoft’s horribly inadequate Community Promise).
Furthermore, all of the afore mentioned applications rely on Windows.Forms (package “mono-winforms“) and want to pull it in as a dependency.
At some point, Novell intends to split the Mono package between free and non-free components, but that doesn’t appear to have happened yet.
Last month Jeremy Allison suggested moving Mono and Mono applications outside the repositories [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] because of issues such as this. █
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Posted in Bill Gates, Deception, Marketing, Microsoft at 6:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: People’s assorted perspectives on Nathan Myhrvold, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs
Nathan Myhrvold is of great interest to us because he is the world’s largest patent troll, who was jointly conceived and funded by Bill Gates himself. Gates too is in the same type of business and Glyn Moody reveals that both hide their inner weaknesses. The following item is “[...] putting those Freakonomics chaps (+ IV’s Nathan Myhrvold) in context,” he writes.
Pierrehumbert then does a scarifying dissection of Myhrvold’s nutty arithmetic, which is interesting not just because it shows how a supposedly-clever ex-Microsoft guru can make a complete fool of himself, but also because it shows how Levitt — who, after all, makes the claim that his statistical ingenuity makes him more insightful than the rest of us — can’t do arithmetic either.
At present, people like Gates and Myhrvold are playing God, pretending to be the people who save humanity when it fact they have become patent trolls and parasites with a greased up marketing (PR) machine.
Regarding Steve Jobs, one of our readers wrote to say: “Here is part of the reason that Gates is sucking up to the public regarding Steve Jobs:
Fortune names Steve Jobs its CEO of the decade
Forget Oprah; Jobs is Teens’ Most Admired Entrepreneur
Steve Jobs- The Teenage Icon
Our reader adds to these references: “Remember before Gates entered politics in 1999? After that he started having marketing firms attack critics and whitewash his image, he was even more reviled than today. No one could put it more politely than a US federal judge: ‘Bill Gates arrogant as Napoleon, says judge’
“Netware gets a mention here,” he adds. █
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Posted in Deception, Microsoft at 6:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Media channels that Microsoft is associated with to get acquired by Microsoft’s partner, Comcast
Quoting from The New York Times, Groklaw shows that “Comcast’s plan to gain control of NBC Universal, which is expected to be announced in the weeks ahead, barring any unforeseen developments, is likely to be the first major test of the Obama administration’s media regulators. Given its scope, analysts and public interest groups anticipate that the deal will undergo intense government scrutiny.“
Most such deals eventually receive the green light, given enough “lobbying”, which is a euphemism for political corruption or legalised bribery.
One of our readers wrote about the above as follows:
Some big shake up is happening at NBC that reflects the overall health of US industry. NBC is being purchased by Comcast, a move that signals the decline of both broadcast and the original US manufacturing and telco parents GE and Bell. Cable and Internet have largely taken the audience from broadcast. US manufacturing has been offshored almost as entirely. The old broadcast model for pushing goods and opinions is broken and gone, despite the nearly universal consolidation of radio, newspaper and TV by equally consolidated manufacturing interests. Little is left of those interests but spectral logos and ancient slogans like, “More Colorful”.
“Little is left of those interests but spectral logos and ancient slogans like, “More Colorful”.”It is difficult to tell where Microsoft fits into the new ownership picture. They are in decline as much as their old industry partners but have a better foothold than most in the future of espionage and steering US consumers to brands of Chinese goods. Spectacular failures like Zune, Xbox and Vista demonstrate the difficulty of pushing garbage and digital restrictions. Microsoft’s massive PR army is having trouble keeping Windows itself alive. Windows is a key component of police state wiretapping that controlling interests won’t give up so the situation is unstable and unpredictable. If efforts at quantum decryption are successful, Microsoft is doomed. If not, or to preserve the appearance of privacy, Microsoft may be bailed out. Either way, communications moves from regulated telco to unregulated cable and Internet strips away the last pretensions of privacy in the US.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Msnbc
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_electric
It will be interesting to see what you and your contacts dig up about this if you have the time. My view is that GE’s manufacturing interests were gutted to the point where they can hardly manufacture turbines. They could not, for example, replace the turbine at [a] plant. [...] Siemens got the parts from Japan. The Wikipedia article on GE is a depressing list of sell offs. Jack Welch was praised for making GE some kind of a merchant bank but the fact that half of GE’s revenues came from loans is due more to the decline of manufacturing. It is interesting that Microsoft has net income almost as large as GE. I shudder to think what GE’s financial industry holdings look like after the recent market collapse. In a way Microsoft has already gotten a big bailout because shoring up AIG probably backstopped GE’s collapse and kept NBC alive long enough for sale to a cable company with more reliable income. No one really knows where AIG money went.
Microsoft’s relationship with MSNBC is worth mentioning [1, 2]. █
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Posted in America, Antitrust, Europe, Fraud, Hardware, ISO, Law, Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument at 5:53 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“Behind every great fortune there is a crime.”
–Honor de Balzac
Summary: Analysis of a culture where those who believe in the law are being discouraged and daemonised
AT Boycott Novell we often get flak for merely pointing out the truth, such as the truth that Intel and Microsoft are criminal companies. That’s a factual statement, it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. There is even action in the United States now, which would seem more rare than similar actions in Korea and Europe, for example. Microsoft was found guilty twice in Korea this year [1, 2] and Intel just once (one time is enough). In Europe, Intel was found guilty this year and Microsoft is still under multiple antitrust investigations.
“Somehow the criminal receives sympathy and the justice seeker eventually daemonised…”Our reader Yuhong Bao has shown us this article where NVIDIA is described as though it decided to “Harass Intel”. Spot the irony. The victim of the criminal activity is now described as an “harasser”, but it is no more an “harasser” than the police harasses a murderer. Somehow the criminal receives sympathy and the justice seeker eventually daemonised (NVIDIA has its share of crimes too). That’s the society we live in — one where those who challenge authority are targeted by people who are kept separate, isolated, and hostile towards peers who merely stand up for their neighbours’ rights (including protesters).
This serves as timely indication that criticising someone for crime is a bad thing to do. Here are some of Intel’s crimes as NVIDIA might put them:
NVIDIA Uses Cartoons to Harass Intel
[...]
The site is especially critical of CEO Paul Otellini. A recent post features a cartoon with a cross-eyed Otellini denying using “bribery, coercion and kickback relations” to try to corner the market. The site has a rather humorous disclaimer informing readers that it “is not provided, sponsored or endorsed by Intel Corporation.”
Intel has meanwhile chosen to settle with AMD, but the case should be between Intel and the people, whom Intel robbed by overcharging, limiting choice, etc. In general, Intel should be embargoed for illegal activities and several executives put in prison. Such a thing rarely happens in the society we live in, which means that those who pillage and plunder may simply be forced to give away part of their loot. Eventually, this leaves the criminal better off, sending out the message that crime pays off. It’s sad, but it’s still true. Are penitentiaries only for crimes whose cost to society is low, such as shoplifting?
More recently we encountered Microsoft’s OOXML corruptions, for which the company was not held accountable. Microsoft showed that you can be a criminal in society and walk away freely as long you wear a suit. Here is Norbert Bollow’s latest response to what happens in ISO.
Since the results of the DCOR1 (draft corrigendum 1) ballots for ISO/IEC 29500 have been distributed to the ISO/IEC member bodies last week, it has become clear that there is much confusion about what the relevant ISO/IEC rules (in this case, the JTC1 Directives) say about this kind of situation.
Microsoft — by coercing ISO — corrupted both ISO and itself. This is just a major loss to the IT industry as a whole and no justice was ever sought. Those who point this out will usually be described as “negative” characters, simply because they stand up for the law. What an amazing reversal. Laws were established to protect the majority from the minority of the opulent, but nowadays it feels like the opposite. █
“Microsoft corrupted many members of ISO in order to win approval for its phony ‘open’ document format, OOXML. This was so governments that keep their documents in a Microsoft-only format can pretend that they are using ‘open standards.’ The government of South Africa has filed an appeal against the decision, citing the irregularities in the process.”
–Richard Stallman, June 2008
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Posted in FUD, GNU/Linux, Hardware, Microsoft, Windows at 5:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“Acer and Intel, for example, are already complaining that Windows 7 Starter Edition simply won’t sell.”
–Source
Summary: As expected, customers reject Vista 7 Starter Edition and Microsoft is restructuring for coming change
AS we showed earlier this month, Microsoft had been lying about the market share of GNU/Linux in sub-notebooks. Microsoft lies about a lot of things and then repeats the lies over and over again, until both customers and vendors might actually believe these lies, assuming them to be true.
According to this new survey, Microsoft is just trying to “kill” the sub-notebooks market because people who buy sub-notebooks with Vista 7 simply do not like them. Microsoft is to blame for artificial limitations.
It’s no secret the disdain Steve Ballmer and Michael Dell have publicly expressed for netbooks. Both companies make more money from bigger iron running bigger versions of Windows.
[...]
Retrevo was not surprised to discover that 61% of consumers intending to buy a netbook computer were not aware of limitations in Windows 7 Starter Edition. When Retrevo pointed out the differences 56% of those respondents said they would not be satisfied if their new netbook came with Windows 7 Starter Edition.
Another bit of coverage states that “Windows 7 Won’t Support ARM Processors Anytime Soon [Microsoft Still Plays Ball with Intel, Forgets About ARM CPUs].”
What’s interesting is that ARM processors are already used extensively in consumer electronics, and that includes PDAs, mobile phones, digital media, music players, and many more other, but still not getting any Microsoft love right now, which could be because the company is more focused on desktop computers, laptops and netbooks as their main market.
As our reader Ryan points out, “Windows 7 Starter sucks so bad that even Windows “evangelists” are running for cover.”
More coverage on the subject includes sources like Jupitermedia and
USA Today.
With some 1,100 consumers responding, the non-scientific survey found that 56 percent said they’d be dissatisfied if a new netbook came with Starter Edition, the lowest-end edition of the new Windows 7 operating system.
– Only 42% of respondents were aware that Windows 7 Starter Edition lacks key features, such as the “Aero skin” feature that enables the user to translucently stack open programs.
– About 54% of respondents said they would be unsatisfied with a new netbook equipped with Windows 7 Starter Edition.
Microsoft-oriented reporters (pro-Microsoft, for the sake of their careers) have covered this too, but some are attempting to spin it.
It is interesting to note that other Microsoft-oriented reporters have complaints about Microsoft, including the fact that Microsoft is shifting to countries where workers are paid less and/or work a lot more [1, 2]. For instance, while Microsoft fires massively in the US and the UK, it is still hiring more people in India. There is nothing wrong with India, there is something wrong with pay and workers’ rights.
Venkatesan said the company hired a few hundred people last year in India, where it employs 5,300.
Microsoft is now restructuring and preparing itself for lower margins, which is an inevitability that a move towards cheap(er) computing will bring. ARM has sold over 10 billion processors, so Intel too is frantically working on Atom and it was caught colluding with Microsoft [1, 2], which is a criminal offence, if convicted. The next post will look more closely at Intel, whose offences do not receive sufficient attention. █
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11.15.09
Posted in IRC Logs at 10:04 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Read the log
Enter the IRC channel now
To use your own IRC client, join channel #boycottnovell in FreeNode.
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