Summary: A reader alerts us that GNOME permits the GNOME Foundation committee to have more Microsoft influence; Planet SUSE promotes .NET
IT IS bad enough that GNOME accommodated anti-Stallman people whose employers paid for a position (akin to lobbying). When these people are attacking Richard Stallman they only divide and thus harm GNOME [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7], probably giving way to conscious erosion of Freedom in the project (Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza [1, 2], for example, brings Mono and Moonlight to GNOME).
It’s truly like lobbying (the language of money) and one of our readers, Ziggyfish, worries slightly about the new GNOME Foundation committee (the director is from Novell). Among its members he finds Jeff Schroeder, who runs a blog about Microsoft SQL Server (blog name is “Jeff Schroeder – SQL Server and other interesting stuff”). There is also Ke Wang, whose resume says:
“06/2004 – 08/2004 Summer intern, Systems and Networking Research Group, Microsoft Research Redmond
Mentor : Dr. John Dunagan
My project: FDR – Flight Data Recorder. In this project we are trying to use black-box analysis to the persistent state changes to manage changes on a computer. Persistent state here means the registry system and file system. Our goal of this project is: given all the registry and file modification traces of some machine, we can automatically group them into meaningful groups that are corresponding to the actions happened on that machine. During the summer I’ve finished initial algorithm design and implemented a GUI to present results. Later we are wishing to refine it and do more experiment using more traces
[...]
Program Committee, SDM 2006.
Invited as university representative to the Microsoft Professional Developers’ Conference (PDC) 2001 by Microsoft Corporation.”
Even Tux Radar (Linux Format, the magazine) has been sort of derailed in the sense that it writes about Microsoft software now, due to Mono.
If you’ve been following the Hudzilla Coding Academy – our free Mono and C# tutorial series – you’ll be pleased to know that it’s now available as a special edition magazine, on-sale worldwide and available online.
Wow. Miguel’s vision of GNU/Linux. Would you like a EULA with that?
It is worth adding that Novell closed down offices across Europe last year (SUSE operations are mostly located there, unlike Mono which is centred around Boston). This was done in order to save money and have people work from home or somewhere else. Later came large-scale SUSE layoffs (or offshoring), but the Mono team was unaffected. That’s the trend [1, 2, 3].
Based on this new European article, Novell is now leasing office area. Leasing, not buying. Sounds reassuring, eh?
The following companies leased office area in the complex: Javart, Bongrain, HTC, Novell, Forma Deco Art, X-press Couriers, Safira Polska, Budlex, Bueltel International Poland, Schutz Polska, M.P. Polska and the Warsaw branch office of Echo Investment.
Microsoft has a long history of turning its competitors into allies and thus eliminating competition. GNOME is hopefully smarter than Novell (which got filled with former Microsoft managers). █
“We could refresh the look and feel of the entire desktop with Moonlight”
Summary: Brandon Lozza on the past 6 months’ attacks on Richard Stallman and against Free software
Everyone loves Time-lines! Here is my own account of attacks towards Richard Stallman and people critical of Mono. I am approaching this from the belief that there has been increased hostility towards Richard Stallman since his public statements towards Mono. At the same time I am also highlighting some of the attacks towards people who are critical of Mono as this has also increased.
This is an incomplete list currently and a changelog will be created upon modifications detailing exactly what has been added or modified. Other people are free to e-mail me or leave comments suggesting additions.
Note: I am aware RMS has been attacked since the 80’s but I’m not going back that far in time and my angle is based upon the Mono issues.
June 11th to June 17th:
- A discussion between Richard Stallman and I emerged as a result of reading “Ubuntu is Censoring Opposition to Mono by Default” written by Roy Schestowitz of Boycott Novell. I explained to Richard about various mono applications being used to replace well established applications with no defects. We both agreed on the patent dangers of relying on C#. He told me he would mention this at GUADEC (Part of the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit).
July 5th 2009:
- Richard Stallman gives his speech at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit (GUADEC). The C# and Mono dangers were explained for the first time in public by RMS.
- David “Lefty” Schlesinger writes “A Good GCDS Beginning (with significant disappointment)” on his blog attacking Richard Stallman for being “sexist” for making a joke.
“We do this by understanding the barriers that might otherwise prevent the developer from adopting our standards, and removing them; by understanding the inducements that might facilitate the developer’s adoption of our standards, and providing them; by understanding the arguments of our competition, and countering them.”
July 8th 2009:
- David “Lefty” Schlesinger writes “Emailing Richard Stallman“, an email exchange with Richard Stallman demanding a public apology for making a joke which people attributed to being “sexist”. This was done so “at the encouragement of a couple of friends”. Could this be Miguel De Icaza, or other members of Team Mono or Microsoft? It is in my (the authors) opinion and many others that in doing so he is pressing the issue to commit what is known as an “ad hominem attack“.
- It would be critical to Microsoft, Team Mono and other companies that want to subvert free software for unpaid labour that Richard Stallman no longer has a positive image.
July 13th 2009:
- Roy Schestowitz of Boycott Novell writes “Is Mono’s Latest Strategy to Vilify Richard Stallman?” linking Team Mono to an effort to vilify Richard Stallman for warning against Mono and C#. This is a theory that a lot of people have supported prior to Roy writing an article on it.
July 14th 2009:
- Roy Schestowitz of BN writes “Another Angle on Personal Attacks from Mono” which has more information on the ad hominem attacks coming from Team Mono. Including attacks on Mono-nono, Groklaw and more.
August 25th 2009:
- Ecom2009 finally managed to upload a video of David “Lefty” Schlesinger’s talk on “Governance for Mobile Handset OS” which can be viewed here. In this talk David makes the same sort of comments that someone could view as “sexist”. Rank Hypocrisy? I guess since it was “in the past” it doesn’t count?
- The comment is as follows “You can’t go and tell your mom ‘Well it’s really easy all you have to do is run uh config and then say make all and then make cle..’ no – it’s not going to work it’s not a workable model. “. I don’t know what Lefty is talking about, I know plenty of moms who can compile source code and do.
September 19 2009:
- Allegedly Richard Stallman was asked about David “Lefty” Schlesinger during a Q&A and Lefty was brushed off as a “troll-like enemy of the free software movement”. I can’t speak for Richard but I believe this statement shows he is aware of the trolling Lefty has perpetrated over the years.
September 30th 2009:
- David “Lefty” Schlesinger publishes a vast array of attack articles on his secret website Boycott Boycott Novell (which he makes public at a later time).
- The Articles include “Anti-Mono, Anti-Woman?” – Lefty links anti-mono resentment to sexist behavior as an attempt to alienate people from being anti-mono.
October 1st 2009:
- David “Lefty” Schlesinger (who doesn’t have ties with Bruce Byfield) writes “A Quick Note…” and in it mentions an e-mail he received from Bruce Byfield. Apparently Miguel De Icaza spilled the beans to Bruce Byfield that Lefty was working on an attack site called “Boycott Boycott Novell”.
- It is interesting to note that David Schlesinger and Miguel De Icaza are close enough that Miguel knew about the attack site before it came online. Obviously the two share common goals.
- Another interesting point is that Lefty mentions the site has been in the works for about a month prior which would put it’s creation in September or perhaps even August if he isn’t being accurate enough.
October 4th 2009:
- David “Lefty” Schlesinger publishes “Terminology Wars I: Linux versus GNU/Linux” which attacks Richard Stallman’s insistence that Linux be referred to as GNU/Linux. He even posts a little update to attack Linux-libre – an
effort to remove non-free code from the Linux kernel.
October 5th 2009:
- Richard Stallman publishes “Lest CodePlex Perplex” on FSF.org where he writes about Microsoft’s CodePlex organization which is run by current MS employees, ex-MS employees and an apologist known as Miguel De Icaza. Among the things Richard talks about, he debunks Microsoft’s theory that you can’t make money from free software.
- Miguel De Icaza, seemingly offended by being called a Microsoft Apologist – wrote his own article on his blog. It was called “World Views” and it compared Richard Stallman to George Bush rallying his base. He also continued to be an apologist for Microsoft by saying “I merely happen to have a different perspective on Microsoft than he has. I know that there are great people working for the company, and I know many people inside Microsoft that are steering the company towards being a community citizen. I have blogged about this for the last few years.”
October 6th 2009:
- Ed Ropple writes a guest column for Boycott Boycott Novell (Published by David “Lefty” Schlesinger) called “It’s a Party Out Here! (Guest Column)” which contains nothing but a long rant against the Free Software Foundation.
- One of the interesting things Ed says is an insult towards gNewSense. “All five of you who are actually using gNewSense are probably happy with your glorious “free” operating systems, unsullied by the eeeeeeeeeeevil Micro$oft3 taint of Mono.” – Ed Ropple
- David “Lefty” Schlesinger also publishes “Another User Contribution” from an anonymous author which is simply a digitally modified image turning Richard Stallman into “Tsar Richard the Terrible”.
October 11th 2009:
- Published on my own blog regarding David “Lefty” Schlesinger also being sexist (if you follow the same logic). The article was “Lefty makes sexist comments at LUG RADIO LIVE USA 2008” and it gained quite a large number of trolls attacking me instead.
- Among the trolls Lefty published his own defence claiming he would not apologize unless someone who was offended asked him to.
“I’d point out that no one who was present at LUG Radio Live USA, neither attendants nor organizers, has asked me to apologize, but if someone had told me they were offended by those particular comments, I certainly would have done so.” – Lefty
- David “Lefty” Schlesinger publishes “And Another Thing!” which attacks the FSF’s Windows 7 sins campaign. He claims the site looks like something circa 1997. It is starting to look like Lefty is another Microsoft apologist. I find this complaint amusing considering Lefty doesn’t know too much about web development himself. It took him a month to get Joomla running and hisExtinct Marsupial harassment/blackmail site (warning Pornography) also looks like something that comes from 1997.
October 14th 2009:
- David “Lefty” Schlesinger also writes “Back to the Past” an attack article which puts Apple Software (a proprietary software company) in positive light and which tries to link advocates of free software and sexist behaviour. What triggered this was an article written by Bruce Byfield called “Writing about FOSS sexism” that made him support this stance.
-Note: On his website the article claims to be from October 1st 2009 but Bruce’s article is dated October 9th 2009. I am going by his “last modified” date as it seems the most likely to be correct.
October 20th 2009:
- David “Lefty” Schlesinger publishes another attack article “Terminology Wars II: ‘Free’ as in ‘Open Source’“. Lefty appears to be disgruntled at the fact that Richard Stallman, who works for the Free Software foundation, might not like Free Software being referred to under another name. Perhaps it’s the job of the President of the Free Software Foundation to think that way? I dunno.
November 4th 2009:
- David “Lefty” Schlesinger publishes the results of a biased poll he was conducting (biased based on the type of visitor who would frequently visit his site). The page titled “Results of our Latest Poll“. 104 People claim Richard Stallman hurts free software. 16 people say he helps it and 11 people say he has no effect. If you go over his various polls they all look pretty much the same as the people agreeing with him already visit Boycott Boycott Novell.
December 13 2009:
- David “Lefty” Schlesinger publishes “Richard Stallman Calls for Planet GNOME Changes” which attacks Richard Stallman for suggesting that Planet GNOME not be used to promote proprietary software. This is the same issue which caused discussion of a GNU and Gnome split.
December 14th 2009:
- David “Lefty” Schlesinger publishes “If Proprietary Software is ‘Illegitimate’, Why is the FSF Funded by It?“. It attacks a mailing list posting Richard Stallman made regarding funding. RMS had said “These are worthy causes, but I would not encourage anyone to use non-free software even to get money to give to a worthy cause.”
December 18th 2009:
- I wrote an article called “Corporate Funding FSF vs GNOME” as a response to David Lefty Schlesinger’s “If Proprietary Software is ‘Illegitimate’, Why is the FSF Funded by It?” and I compared the Free Software Foundations setup for donations and funding to the Gnome Foundation. After research I discovered that Gnome was set-up in such a way that allowed Lobbyists to infect the organization. While the FSF is set-up in a way where they accept funding but also state that accepting donations does not condone the actions of the company that makes it. This in effect would not conflict with what RMS had said regarding accepting corporate funding. Lefty misses this point because Lobbyists aren’t paid to disagree with their agendas.
December 27th 2009:
- I published “Evangelism is War: The Mono/Moonlight Agenda” where I went over old court documents from the Comes vs Microsoft case. I draw parallels regarding their old ‘Evangelism is War’ plans with their current actions towards Mono and Moonlight and attempt to prove that Mono is a good thing for Microsoft because it pushes their standards instead of alternative standards. █
The Supreme Court’s docket shows that Novell requested an extension of time to file its petition for a writ of certiorari in the SCO v. Novell case, and Judge Sonia Sotomayor has just granted that request. They now have until February 18th to file their petition. As you recall, the earlier deadline was this month. At this level, the case is titled “Novell, Inc., Applicant v. The SCO Group, Inc.”
Finance
Some more analyses of Novell (NOVL as a stock) continue to come [1, 2, 3] and here is another case of detailed reporting (technical, not financial):
*The report covers the following IT systems management vendors: BMC, CA, EMC, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Novell and Symantec.
Virtualisation
Memories of Netware come back not because of the new Novell Client but because the Burton-esque comparison rears its ugly head again. Comparisons between VMware and Netware [1, 2] were last mentioned and shown one week ago and here is another example:
VMware is not Novell
“What makes VMware different than, say, Novell, is that Novell kept competing in Microsoft’s space rather than innovating. It kept fighting in the same boundaries and markets, on Microsoft’s terms,” said Scott Lowe, a virtualization expert formerly at a large VMware partner. [Editor's note: As a matter of full disclosure: He recently took a position at VMware parent company EMC Corp.]
A little more about PlateSpin, which has gone nowhere since Novell acquired it:
VMware had a product in the space (and still does) and there was also some popular products provided by 3rd parties like Platespin (who had a nice exit to Novell for ~$200MM).
Security
SJVN mentioned SLES as a candidate for a weakness that wasn’t. java-1_5_0-ibm has just proven to be a bit of a pain (also here) and ZENWorks, a proprietary software product from Novell, suffers from an SQL injection vulnerability. In the coming month, eDirectory will be at the firing line because of Intevydis. See the following coverage:
Intevydis intends to publish advisories on zero-day vulnerabilities in products such as Zeus Web Server, MySQL, Lotus Domino and Informix and Novell eDirectory between 11 January and 1 February, security blogger Brian Krebs reports.
Security expert Brian Krebs revealed that Intevydis will post advisories on products from big name vendors such as IBM, Novell and Sun Microsystems, in protest at a ‘responsible disclosure’ policy which it regards as a waste of time.
Utilizing change and configuration management tools can boost the ability to back up data automatically, notes Grant Ho, senior solutions marketing manager for endpoint management at Novell (www.novell.com).
People
Novell’s former CEO Eric Schmidt was mentioned here and so was Ray Noorda:
This mystery speaker has had the honor to be consulted by such leaders as Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google; Robert Allen, NY Times best-selling author; Bob Frankerberg (in the past: Chairman at Kinzan, Chairman, CEO at Encanto Networks, Chairman/CEO at Novell, Vice President at Hewlett-Packard, Vice President at HP ); Ray Noorda (former CEO of Novell).
He has also held executive positions at Legato, Novell and WordPerfect Corporation. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration, finance from Brigham Young University.
Prior to entering the search industry, Ms. Carter occupied executive-level marketing and business management positions in such technology and finance companies as Novell, State Street Corporation, Sitara Networks and CheckFree Corporation.
Sydney-based integrator, Accucom, has snapped up several ex-Synergy employees to build out its managed services capabilities.
[...]
It also owns an ISP business and partners with HP, Cisco, Microsoft and Novell.
The movement of Jim Tanner was mentioned here last week, but here it is again at TMCNet (which mostly modifies press releases and posts them under a week later):
Jim Tanner Joins Hosted Call Center Solutions Provider inContact as SVP of Product and Strategy
According to a press release, Tanner has a wealth of IT and telecommunications experience in both domestic and international markets, having previously worked in product and market strategy forUnisys ( News – Alert), Novell, Realm Business Solutions, and others.
The awards recognize Utah companies and leaders for innovation, business growth and contributions to the entrepreneurial community. Award recipients were honored at ceremonies held today at the Provo Novell Campus.
Novell’s Ken Muir gets to speak to this one Web site, but it’s not particularly fascinating. He talks about Pulse [1, 2], which is proprietary for all it seems so far.
Ken Muir is the Chief Technology and Strategy Officer of Novell’s WorkGroup Business Unit. He is responsibile for the overall technical vision and strategy for Novell’s collaboration products. We asked Muir about his group’s work with Novell Pulse and how it integrates with Google Wave.
Connections/Partners
Novell’s connections with other companies can be seen in the following very recent articles:
These are Zelig-ian perspectives. I’ve sat down face to face with the heads of Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Novell – sometimes cordially, sometimes in negotiation. I’ve been in arms length contact with just about everyone who’s who in the tech industry.
The York-based reseller set up a professional services division in September to drive the transformation, which Haddow said was necessary to satisfy the big software vendors such as Microsoft, Oracle and Novell.
[...]
Haddow said Trustmarque is also throwing more weight behind six “elite” vendor partners: Microsoft, Novell, Adobe, VMware, McAfee and Symantec.
GoAnywhere Director installs on a variety of platforms, including IBM System i, IBM System p (AIX), IBM System z (Mainframe), Windows, Novell SUSE, Linux, UNIX, HP-UX, Mac OS and Solaris platforms. Pricing starts at $3,995.
Express Data is looking to recruit seven staff across its business development and account manager teams.
The jobs on offer include three business development manager positions for its Novell, Cisco SMB and Cisco practices, along with a Symantec partner enablement specialist and two account manager roles. It is also on the hunt for an account co-ordinator.
Messaging Architects, the global experts in email risk management, today announced the release of M+Archive 2009.2, its policy-based enterprise-class email retention and eDiscovery solution. This major release extends M+Archive’s search capabilities with a robust new web-based tool for eDiscovery designed for maximum efficiency, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness and minimum risk during an electronic discovery process. Additionally, the new version of M+Archive simplifies email management operations with improved reporting and offers an enhanced migration toolkit to facilitate migration between email platforms.
Novell’s relationships with other companies were also mentioned in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9].
Novell Brainshare is set to return to Europe. The event, which last ran five years ago, is taking place in Amsterdam from 18-21 May 2010.
[...]
Javier Colado, president EMEA, Novell, said: “The return of Novell BrainShare EMEA in 2010 is a reflection of our focus on helping customers, prospects and partners. As we embark on our strategy of intelligent workload management, it was important we provided a forum for customers, partners and prospects to come together to listen, see and discuss how it could be applied to their organisations.”
Groupwise gets promoted in the following new video that someone has put in YouTube.
Here is another new video which is probably not related to this company.
According to a survey sponsored by Novell, IDC states that more than half of their respondents are planning to increase adoption of Linux on the server.
This video titled “Cloud Computing: Beyond the Hype” was uploaded by Novell some days ago and it spreads Novell’s marketing messages, right from the mouths of the company’s management (including Ron Hovsepian). Novell is still unable to make a business case, so customers walk away. █
MSI is currently working with multiple software vendors to try and see which product will best enhance the mobile user experience. Along with using Windows 7 for their current line, they are also partnering with Novell Linux using their Moblin netbook operating system. Trying it out first hand, the netbook seemed fast and very user friendly. This type of interface offers a different look when compared to the Microsoft counterpart, the Linux variant actually seems to be more integrated with the social portal experien
Similarly, HP puts SUSE on sub-notebooks (it also uses a home-grown Ubuntu derivative) and this continues to receive coverage:
The HP Mini 5102 Netbook offers a 10.1 inch touchscreen display with multitouch support, 1GB of RAM, and the Intel Atom N450 processor. The touch-enabled HP Netbook ships with Windows 7 Starter Edition (including face recognition) or SUSE Linux Enterprise 11.
It seems like a good plan with HP as the backbone.
So Var Guy is pleased and SJVN is happy with two forms of Ballnux (Samsung and SUSE) just because these contain Linux. He writes:
Shame on me, I missed that during last week’s CES (Consumer Electronics Show), MSI wasn’t the only company to announce the release of a SUSE/Moblin Linux-powered netbook. Samsung also announced that they’ll be releasing this Linux mix on its N127 netbook.
Separately, SJVN wrote about Novell Linux Certified Engineers in this new article:
Beyond the Red Hat certifications, I’ve also heard good things about Novell’s NLCE (Novell Linux Certified Engineer). The other Novell certifications can also land you a job.
Both the Novell and the Red Hat certification families are for more advanced system and network administrators. If you want to get an entry-level Linux job, you should look into the Linux Professional Institute’s entry-level LPIC-1. This vendor-neutral certification probably delivers the best bang for the buck for someone’s who new to Linux.
While you can still download many free versions of Linux online, for convenience sake, several vendors offer user-friendly versions and charge a fee for support. Red Hat and Novell are the primary desktop Linux vendors, accounting for nearly 95 percent of the operating system revenue in 2008, according to IDC.
Revenue is not the way to measure share. This is why IDC statistics tend to be a load of nonsense, also on the server side. More expensive products get more “share”.
Linux.com (Foundation/Development Network) has this new article which focuses on SUSE success stories in terminals/registers.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Novell has a fully ready enterprise-level POS flavor in their product line: SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service. Novell has recently been talking up the fact that SLE POS has been deployed at Office Depot, National Vision, and Sherman-Williams.
Is Linux the magic bullet for POS machines? There may be a little work to go, but not much. If these POS applications can be easily connected to accounting databases for small- to medium-sized business owners, then the sky’s the limit. We may already be at that point.
So when you’re checking out that shiny new Linux device, take a look at the cash register screen: you may just see a familiar penguin looking back at you.
Here is another advertisement for SUSE, with only SUSE stories. Not surprisingly, it was put there by a Novell marketer:
Meike Chabowski is a Product Marketing Manager for Enterprise Linux Servers at Novell. Her responsibilities include Linux for Retail and Linux on the Mainframe.
The headline talks about “Linux”, but the content/body is focused on SUSE, which the author is trying to sell.
Samsung
Samsung was mentioned a little earlier. Despite its proximity to Linux, it is trouble in the sense that it enables Microsoft to charge for the use of Linux (a lot of people still don’t know this). Samsung is entering the sub-notebooks market with Moblin:
Samsung aren’t the only ones toying with Moblin on netbooks. MSI is planning a U135 netbook with SUSE Linux and the Moblin UI. Novell has worked hard to get boot times down to 30 seconds. This particular model is planned to launch in February. Liliputing spotted one of these at CES and shot a quick hands-on video that we’ve attached below.
Samsung is no longer just about phones when it comes to GNU/Linux.
LG
LG — like Samsung — is not just Korea based but it will also make use of an Intel-controlled distribution (in the hands of the Linux Foundation, but guided by Intel). Smartphones from LG will make use of Moblin:
Yesterday, at the Consumer Electronics Show, LG surprised everyone by taking the wraps off its latest smartphone, the GW990, the first ever device designed to run on Intel’s Moorestown platform, which makes the use of Intel’s Moblin Linux operating system.
Intel and LG have teamed up to release a new smartphone which is powered by Intel’s Moorestown processor, and will run Intel’s Moblin 2.1 Linux based OS.
The 4.8″ 1024 x 480 pixel display is the most immediately obvious feature of the LG GW990, and a consequence this is a really big device, by our reckoning it has a footprint of around 140 x 60mm.
[...]
The LG GW990 runs the Moblin operating system, a product of the Linux Foundation. Moblin is pitched at products from netbooks to what they call “mobile internet devices”, so it is aimed at that market segment between (say) Android on smartphones and Ubuntu on full-blown PCs.
LG Electronics will keep the strategic partnership with Microsoft though its U.S. partner has recently been struggling due to the skyrocketing consumer demand for Google-powered Android phones, a company executive said.
Ahn Seung-kwon, president of LG’s mobile communications division, said the world’s third-biggest handset vendor after Nokia and Samsung, however, will heavily bet on phones with Google’s Android operating system.
“MS Windows Mobile operating system is rather unqualified in mobile interfaces. Despite such worries, the partnership with Microsoft is still safe,” Ahn said at a press conference in Seoul.
Summary: A short rundown involving OpenSUSE links and few developments
NOT much can be said about OpenSUSE this week. There seems to have been some stagnation, but in particular areas there is awakening. Kevin Yeaux returns to OpenSUSE after experimenting with Vista 7 and there are other happy campers:
On the whole, openSUSE 11.2 is pretty good after you find the little tripping stones…
Technical
On the technical side, not much has changed, but there are OpenSUSE-specific HOWTOs in all sorts of Web sites [1, 2, 3, 4], even when the content is not OpenSUSE specific.
Many of the blog posts are from SUSE people and Novell employees, but the same goes for almost any company. Here is progress on OBS 1.7, which is further discussed in the OpenSUSE news site.
Michael Schröder put some effort into supporting a new way of doing a branch and merge of a package with openSUSE Build Service (OBS). This is a new feature of OBS 1.7 release and is active now on build.opensuse.org by default. This new way is almost the same way as subversion or git are working.
What I found is that this board booted a debian old-stable (etch) just fine, but that debian stable (lenny), opensuse 11.1 and 9.04 ubuntu, all locked up shortly after initialising the ide controller. Some digging around revealed that this was an issue with the processor power state and recent kernels, and that this is only seen with an older bios version, and that version A03 and higher would fix this. Upon reboot, it was indeed confirmed that this was an old version, namely, A02.
I thought it might be nice after the holidays to tell about the status of the Kraft project, the KDE software for people operating a small business. Some nice things happened around it.
All I really need know I learned in kindergarten … Come on, say you’re sorry when you mess things up. Allright, we released a YaST (ncurses) update. It broke ncurses packager in openSUSE 11.1 and 11.2 for everyone.
Summary: Another fine look into the workings of proprietary software giants and how they control what people are exposed to
Microsoft controls British education through BETCA [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] and earlier this week we showed that Microsoft uses this power not just to capture children in the perimeter of their schools but also in their homes [1, 2]. It’s quite a cunning plan to monopolise the world’s education and it is backed by Monopolist Supreme, Bill Gates. This is an issue that we wrote about in:
According to this tripletofreports from BETT, teachers may finally get some exposure to Free(dom) software — the one which enables and empowers students rather than train them for some offending company from another country.
Frog and Fronter who are hoping to be standing when the VLE music stops are going for broke and everyone seems to have heard of Moodle.
Microsoft, which is inappropriately getting paid by British taxpayers, was there at BETT too. Watch what it’s doing:
For instance, when I got in early before the crowds I counted (before getting bored) 45 black-t-shirted sales folk ready for action on the £100,000 Microsoft stand. 45! Their salaries alone would be over a million pounds a year..thank you UK taxpayer I’m sure it’s all worth the money you give MS.
THE APPLE RELIGION has thrown down a fatwa on the scribes at Valleywag for daring to post a bounty on a picture of an Apple tablet.
The existence of the Apple tablet, sometimes called the Second Coming of the Newton, is an article of faith in the Mac fanboy community. No one has ever seen it, even Apple denies it exists, yet more has been written about the Apple tablet than about any other non-existent product including Duke Nukem Forever.
[...]
They sent out a cease and desist letter demanding that Valleywag withdraw the bounty.
At least with Apple there is far less of an attempt to force (or impose) proprietary software on students. For Microsoft to achieve what it has achieved it needed to get many people — including officials — into the fold; Microsoft did all that, it did it very effectively in fact. What it leaves the world with is an unethical ‘education’ system that trains young people on behalf of an outlaw company. Memorising menu items is a disposable skill. █
“Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.”
Summary: Microsoft-rewarded companies hail Bing while it’s said to be down; crucial Perl services go down after MSNBOT goes out of control
EVERY firm that provides US-only statistics on search engines seems to be showing Microsoft's Bing on the decline (for December 2009). There is one exception. comScore, which is a Microsoft partner [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7], contradicts the rest of the bunch, including Nielsen and Hitwise. This shows either that they are inaccurate or that there is a bias somewhere, favouring Microsoft at comScore (comScore is being paid by Microsoft and it cannot be trusted once its employees accept money from the very same company whose performance they assess in comparison to others’).
Nielsen, Hitwise, and comScore are all in agreement, so onlookers can perhaps declare it official now: Google had a good December. comScore, the member of the trio that most recently released its search market data, didn’t put Google up by a whole lot, though, and unlike the other firms, saw Bing gain ground.
The Bing-sponsored blog continues to show its bias and it says nothing about the fact that Microsoft is just buying some market share. Verizon is paid by Microsoft for example [1, 2]. So there are two issues here:
Microsoft paid comScore, which is now contradicting Nielsen and Hitwise when it claims Microsoft gains
Microsoft pays companies to remove Google as an option while blogs that it pays are claiming gains, describing that as success without mentioning those incentives (allegedly as much as $500,000,000 was paid to Verizon alone, in order to remove Google, despite customers’ preference)
It is worth adding that the same Microsoft-rewarded blog shares some Xbox 360 sales figures (US-only, even though this is not mentioned in the headline); these show Nintendo completely smashing Microsoft. Why not show global figures? Why not explicitly mention and emphasise that the figures refer only to one country? It is Microsoft’s home country where it battles against Japanese companies.
“MSNBOT must die!” says the Perl blog, which complains about Microsoft’s bad bots overwhelming the server due to shoddy code. Even CPAN was affected.
If you’ve suffered any problems accessing any of the sites, the databases, the CPAN mirror, etc from the CPAN Testers server last night, please direct your wrath at Microsoft. Last night the msnbot took out the CPAN Testers server with a dedicated denial of service attack. As a consequence measures are now being put in place to completely ban the msnbot from accessing at least the Reports site, and probably all the sites on the server.
Microsoft in their incompetent wisdom decided to unleash 20-30 bots every few seconds. I know this because I can see the IP addresses in the logs. The ones spotted within a few minutes of rebooting the server this morning to clear the processes were
Microsoft can’t even implement search right. An engine that’s estimated to handle just 3% of the world’s web search is causing far too much damage for far too little in return. █
Germany’s Office for Information Security (BSI) has issued a warning against using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE). The advisory follows cyber attacks against Google believed made possible by the IE weaknesses.
A Los Angeles law firm representing a company suing China for allegedly stealing its software code announced its computers have come under a cyber-attack that originated in the Asian nation and that the FBI is investigating the attempted intrusion.
