04.19.10
Posted in Microsoft, Security, Vista, Vista 7, Windows at 4:53 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A big heap of security news from the past week, hopefully showing the really sad state of Windows
Patchfest
• Microsoft Targets Media Flaws In April Patches
• Another big Microsoft Patch Tuesday coming
• Big Patch Tuesday On Way
• Microsoft Schedules Major Patch Tuesday
It’s likely that at least a few Microsoft employees had to work overtime in preparation for tomorrow’s Patch Tuesday activities. The company’s supposed to release 11 security bulletins in order to address 25 vulnerabilities, which may send signals about both its dedication to fixing stuff and the state of some popular software.
• Microsoft to fix F1 bug
Microsoft plans to fix the ‘F1′ security bug that has been plaguing Internet Explorer users for six weeks in its monthly set of security patches tomorrow.
XP Neglect
• MS kernel patch skirts infected machines (mentioned a few days ago)
Microsoft’s latest batch of patches contains a kernel update designed not to install on machines infected with a rootkit.
• Microsoft Tries to Avoid Windows Blue Screen Repeat (same here)
• Microsoft Will Not Patch Newest XP Virus
• Microsoft Advises Some XP Users to stay Unpatched (interesting headline, but not entirely accurate)
Vista Neglect
• Microsoft slams coffin lid on Vista
Microsoft has killed support for its unloved Windows Vista operating system today.
The company announced in February that the service pack-free version of its post-XP, pre-Windows 7 OS would hit end of life support in April.
This means that from today, the OS which hit manufacturers in late 2006 is left entirely at the mercy of hackers who might wish to exploit the now unsupported code.
• Windows Vista SP1 needed for support to continue
• Microsoft Ends Original Vista Support
• Microsoft ends support for original Windows Vista
• Microsoft Ending Support For Windows Vista [Redmond Decides Not Worth It Support Non-Service Pack Vista, Although They Still Support XP]
• Microsoft to end support for earlier Windows versions
• End of the road for Windows Vista RTM
• Microsoft To Stop Supporting Windows Vista RTM
• No more support for Microsoft Windows Vista – so now what do you do?
Microsoft is now using fake numbers about Vista 7. These are fake for reasons we explained before (it was the same with Vista).
Vista 7 Spin
• Microsoft to Patch Unhackable Windows 7 Bug (also here)
Later today, Microsoft will play it safe by patching a Windows 7 bug that it says can’t be exploited.
Of the 11 security bulletins that will be released in a few hours, “Bulletin 7″ will address one or more vulnerabilities in Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.
Worth seeing:
Zeus (Windows Spyware/Botnet)
• Zeus spyware pretends to be Royal Mail PDF
Once infected, compromised machines ‘phone home’ to hacker controlled servers in China.
• Zeus botnet exploits unpatched PDF flaw
• Researchers find bugs in archive file formats
Most antivirus vendors have patched their applications in order to detect the tampered archive file formats, such as “.rar,” and “.zip,” said Tomislav Pericin, founder of the commercial software protection project RLPack.
New Malware
• Hentai malware publishes web history of marks online
Some bogus files posing as games from Abel software attempt to trick victims into handing over personal information as part of a supposed game registration process. Meanwhile, in the background, the malware is collecting information on the victim’s computer including domain, OS version, file use history and IE favourites.
• Fake anti-virus scams on the rise, Google says
In a blog post previewing a 13-month study on the prevalence of fake AVs on the Web, Google said that more than 11,000 individual domains were involved in the distribution of these scams. According to Google, that figure accounts for roughly 15 percent of all malicious software on the Internet.
Conficker
China Reports Millions of Conficker Worm Infections (Conficker is good for GNU/Linux)
China had about 7 million Internet Protocol (IP) addresses infected with Conficker B at the end of last year, according to a recent annual security report posted on the Web site of China’s National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team (CNCERT). The number of infections varied during the second half of the year, which the report covered, but was higher than 5 million during all but one week.
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Posted in Marketing, Microsoft at 4:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A quick glimpse at some of Microsoft’s latest circles of influence and how they may be used (controlling thought for the most part but also controlling strategic direction and commercial affairs)
MICROSOFT IS not just a company. It’s a culture, it’s an ecosystem, it's a mindset, and it’s a circle of influence. In order to understand how Microsoft operates, we sometimes need to look at who from Microsoft enters the government (example from hours ago), the platoons of lobbyists, and even other companies. Retail Innovation Group is now promoting/bringing in Microsoft’s J Allard to the board. This is the man who in 2007 said: “We’re getting the gang back together.” This is the type of mindset that we keep warning about.
TechFlash, a Microsoft-centered Web site, also says that Glympse is actually a bunch of former Microsoft employees.
Glympse, launched last year by three Microsoft veterans, lets people share their location on maps with specific people or groups for limited periods of time, which they can specify and control to maintain privacy.
Here is another man to keep an eye on:
Jim Hord has joined WPP Group’s JWT in New York as an ecd working on the Microsoft business, a new post, the agency said today.
It’s a PR threat.
JWT New York has hired Jim Hord to serve as an executive creative director on Microsoft.
So basically, JWT New York will glorify Microsoft from afar. Microsoft can be as criminal as it wants to be as long as it has effective PR, as illustrated in the previous post. █
“This is WAR, and in that regard, I believe we should design Janus such that if this multiboot partition (has a unique partition number (11)) is found, we should warn the user a foreign OS has been detected, give them a chance to exit and read the docs and possibly make a backup, and then repartition the disk, removing the multiboot partition. This way, we disable OS/2 2.0 in *all* cases.”
–Microsoft internal mail
“Where are we on this Jihad?”
–Bill Gates
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Posted in Asia, Deception, Microsoft at 4:08 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Agents previously hired by Microsoft or working on Microsoft’s behalf have indeed shut down independent media using claims of Microsoft software counterfeiting
LAST WEEK we wrote about what Microsoft did in Kyrgyzstan, noting in part that Microsoft continues to assist suppressive and/or corrupt regimes like the one in China [1, 2].
Microsoft’s PR drones were posting comments, mostly spinning and denying what was originally reported in Forbes. Well according to Jeffrey Carr from Forbes, who looked deeper into the issue, “Microsoft Denial On Kyrgyzstan Censorship Conflicts With The Facts” and here is why:
A further investigation into who this association is and who Microsoft’s local lawyer reveals facts that conflict with the accuracy of Microsoft’s statement. The lawyer is Sergey Pavlovsky (see here, here), and he is the President of the “Association of Rights Holders of Intellectual Property Protection”, a Kyrgyz organization; the President – not merely a “technical advisor”. Pavlovsky is also the Co-Chair (.pdf) of the IT Committee of the American Chamber of Commerce in the Kyrgyz Republic. In other words, he’s a big player in the world of anti-piracy in that region of the CIS.
In December, 2007 representatives from Microsoft signed an agreement with Pavlovsky’s association to represent Microsoft in matters relating to copyright infringement and the discovery of such infringement via confidential online technology.
In January, 2010, Pavlovsky discusses the problems associated with enforcement of copyright violations in the Kyrgyz republic, one of which is that the copyright holder (i.e., Microsoft) needs to initiate a case with the Financial Police.
There is more coverage about it which refers to Carr’s new claims.
As Jeffrey Carr reported on his Forbes’ blog today, Microsoft later said that “the raid against Stan Media was initiated by the Kyrgyz police without any involvement from any Microsoft employees or anyone working on Microsoft’s behalf.” The company acknowledged that personnel involved in the Stan TV raid had represented Microsoft in previous “enforcement actions.”
As president of the Kyrgyz Association of Rights Holders of Intellectual Property Protection, Pavlovsky has frequently spoken in the region on behalf of companies like Microsoft. In 2007, he spoke of his work detecting and pursuing the users of pirated Windows software. Kyrgyz law requires that a copyright holder initiate a complaint before financial police will investigate.
CPJ has documented previous occasions in the former Soviet republics in which authorities used Microsoft’s name in pursuing independent media. In November 2007, the Samara edition of award-winning Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta was effectively shut down due to accusations that the company was using unlicensed Microsoft software.
The key part is one which says that “The company acknowledged that personnel involved in the Stan TV raid had represented Microsoft in previous “enforcement actions.”” To Microsoft, the latest denial is likely to be an exercise in PR, but it is not exactly working. It did manage to censor some news sites though, so the story was not reported as widely as it ought to have been reported. █
“Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won’t leave you alone.”
–Richard Stallman
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Posted in America, Deception, Microsoft at 3:53 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Nevada, Kentucky, and the state of New York continue to help Microsoft turn the population into Microsoft drones
Thanks to Governor Jim Gibbons, who lets Microsoft escape tax in his state and indoctrinate Nevada’s population [1, 2], Microsoft is getting away with what it calls “training”, where training simply means making people the servants or perpetuators of Microsoft’s monopoly. Here is a new article about it.
Nevada announced in April that the state has redesigned the Web site for reporting activities and spending generated from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, as well as an initiative sponsored by Microsoft that will give thousands of citizens free access to technology training and certification.
Microsoft does the same thing in Kentucky [1, 2], whose press has confirmed that the state is actively participating in this abomination which Microsoft characterises as an act of goodwill. It’s only beneficial to Microsoft.
Unemployed workers in Kentucky now have a chance to improve their computer skills, thanks to a free program made available by the state.
Such state-funded/assisted Microsoft indoctrination is nothing to celebrate. It is shameful and it shows how deep in the pockets of corporations about one dozen states have fallen. Even New York fell for it, with coverage that continues to arrive. Microsoft is getting more involved with the US government and this parity/duality ought to make one wonder who runs the country. Here is some new PR from Delhi, India, which supposedly explains “Why Microsoft Certification Training is Necessary”; It’s not necessary, unless one wants to be of service to a convicted monopolist and always depend on it. █
“The danger is that Microsoft is using strategic monopolistic pricing in the education market, with the government’s assistance, to turn our state university systems into private workforce training programs for Microsoft.”
–Nathan Newman
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Posted in Deception, Finance, Microsoft at 3:41 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“In the fall of 1982, Pam Edstrom [of Waggener Edstrom], a diminutive woman with piercing blue eyes, was recruited by Microsoft. [...] In modern-day business, flacks were responsible not only for avoiding bad press, but for spinning the good. [...] Hanson and Edstrom would spin a whole new image for Gates himself. They would tap the best and worst of Chairman Bill, changing his clothes, his voice, and his allegiances, driving him to become not just the boss, but, essentially, the company mascot—a sort of high-technology Colonel Sanders.”
–Pam’s daughter
Summary: Microsoft and its PR department are under great pressure, so instead of addressing the issue they just start spinning and lying with press presence and self-serving ‘studies’ that they fund
MICROSOFT’S bad habits when it comes to paying tax are made increasingly worse as the company not only refuses to pay tax like all citizens do but it also arranges campaigns to hide the problem. Why pay tax when it’s so much cheaper to just change perception? We wrote about it last week and this week we see similar responses from other sources, notably from Jeff Reifman, a former Microsoft employee who fights others like Rep. Hunter from Microsoft, who is now helping Microsoft escape tax in Washington. Watch Rep. Hunter as he continues to help his former employer while publicly denying that he does such a thing:
It appears that Rep. Hunter has successfully re-inserted the amnesty clause for Microsoft’s thirteen year Nevada tax dodge (earlier, Rep. Santos’ amendment had removed this clause for unrelated reasons).
(2) Section 201 of this act does not apply to any tax periods ending before May 1, 2010, that were included in a completed field audit conducted by the department.
Section 201 is the clause that was supposed to help the Dept. of Revenue crack down on these kinds of abusive tax transactions – more on this in a moment.
Interestingly, Rep. Hunter’s latest blog post is about Tax Freedom Day. Thanks to Rep. Hunter, April 10th is quickly becoming Tax Freedom Day for Microsoft.
This is the type of thing that happens when Microsoft employees enter the government. It’s more or less like legalised corruption. Microsoft Nick was among those who gave this PR routine its intended undeserved coverage [1, 2], but there is more on that rebuttal from Reifman right here. See the comments too.
As we pointed out last week, Microsoft had arranged — along with its outsourced PR department — a bunch of fake ‘studies’ and press events to spin what it’s doing in Washington. Reifman responds:
Last week, Microsoft’s PR firm, Waggener Edstrom, invited local reporters to a press conference with Microsoft General Counsel and possible architect of its Nevada tax dodge, Brad Smith, to discuss an update to a Microsoft-funded University of Washington study on Microsoft’s overwhelming economic impact on our state.
[...]
The only problem with Microsoft’s WagEd press conference is if you actually pay any attention to the illogic of Mr. Smith’s message. For example, quoting from TechFlash:
* “It absolutely remains the case that Washington state is Microsoft’s home.” – unless of course we’re reporting the revenue received from our $20.7 billion annual licensing business, the home for that business is in Nevada.
* “If you’d ask what is more at play in the future, it’s more a question of whether the jobs that Microsoft is able to add will be added in Washington state, another state, or outside the United States. The big issues playing into that decision include the company’s ability to secure visas for foreign workers, quality of life (including education, transportation and cultural life) and the cost of doing business”
In other words, in order for Microsoft to add more jobs in Washington State, it needs to secure more visas for foreign workers.
Brad Smith is part of the tax fiasco [1, 2, 3], yet here he is along with Waggener Edstrom just lying to trick the public for PR purposes. Microsoft’s Tax Dodge has an audio track now. Their problem is not going away.
It is going to get even worse. Based on this new post, Microsoft will consciously expand its influence in the United States government by inreasing/pacing up lobbyists in Olympia:
It would be naive to say Microsoft hasn’t had plenty of influence on Washington politics through lobbyists in Olympia. But the state’s second-largest private employer plans to be more publicly vocal about issues its leadership thinks are important, an executive said.
Microsoft is already funding more ‘studies’ in the University of Washington (that’s where the tax dodge was justified, by paying academics) that are to have an impact on the press, which asks no questions about Microsoft’s known bias.
According to a new University of Washington study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, California’s pregnancy-related death rate (19 per 100,000 in 2008) is higher than the national average (17 per 100,000). It’s double that of Canada and most Western European nations, and it’s worse than Bosnia, Serbia, Poland and Qatar.
Here is another new example of self-serving ‘studies’ but one that we’ll expand on later.
The school counseling world experienced a bit of a shakeup recently when a report entitled “Can I get a Little Advice Here?” was released by the Public Agenda (www.publicagenda.org) for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
[...]
Unfortunately, the Gates Foundation report did not discuss some of these barriers and why it might be that a counselor did not have time to provide the services the students who were surveyed were seeking. No recommendations were given as to how to change these trends nor did the report highlight how in some schools, with proper support and staffing, school counselors indeed make a difference in the lives of their students. Hopefully, that’s the next report to be released on behalf of the Gates Foundation.
Same here:
In a recent poll conducted by Microsoft, 56% of the teens questioned think the Web allows bullies to prosper, while 67% say they spend most of their time using Facebook and MySpace.
A poll conducted by Microsoft is simply not reliable.
Here is another last finding. Just like Rep. Hunter acts as Microsoft’s guardian in Washington’s government, Gary Gigot does his service through another policy-making move from Microsoft veterans. See the following short new report:
Washington’s Governor “joined us” on stage for a role-playing exercise. And with the help of a prototype Time Machine, we explored several opportunities for businesses, researchers and policymakers to create a prosperous future in clean energy.
[...]
Panelist Gary Gigot is Chief Marketing Officer at Optimum Energy. His company reduces energy use in the air-conditioning systems of large, commercial office buildings.
Forthrightness compels me to add that Optimum Energy is a past client. I was the company’s interim VP of marketing in 2007, up until Gigot was recruited as CMO. Gigot brings his prior experience in marketing at Microsoft and, prior to that, Visio.
With the prior role as a Microsoft marketer, can he be trusted to be unbiased? █
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04.18.10
Posted in Asia, Microsoft, OLPC, Open XML, OpenDocument at 11:05 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“That particular meeting was followed by an anonymous smear campaign against one of the TC members. A letter was faxed to the organization of the TC member in question, accusing the TC member in question of helping politicize the issue (which is, of course, untrue). I too had the dubious pleasure of hearing first hand how Microsoft attempted to remove me from the TC (they did not succeed, thanks to integrity and cojones of the organization I am affiliated with).”
“If this unethical behaviour by Microsoft was not sufficiently despicable, they did the unthinkable by involving politics in what should have been a technical evaluation of the standard by writing to the head of the Malaysian standards organization and getting its business partners to engage in a negative letter writing campaign to indicate lack of support of ODF in the Malaysian market. Every single negative letter on ODF received by the Malaysian standards organization was written either by Microsoft, or a Microsoft business partner or a Microsoft affiliated organization (Initiative for Software Choice and IASA).“
Open Malaysia
Summary: Microsoft’s attempt to conquer Malaysia, one of the countries where Free software and ODF adoption is incredibly high, takes a new route
Despite Malaysia choosing OpenDocument Format (ODF), Microsoft fought people who promote Free software and continues to do so. Moreover, based on three news reports that are written in English [1, 2, 3], Microsoft Malaysia is fighting back by recruiting developers (maybe incentivising or bribing them, as usual). From the Daily Express we have:
Software maker, Microsoft (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, is optimistic 50 per cent of the estimated 60,000 technology developers in the country will become its customers in two years.
And also:
General Manager for Local Software Innovation Azli Jamil said here Monday that Microsoft Malaysia was confident of doubling the penetration rate as the company was aggressively promoting its activities.
Promoting “aggressively”, eh? Given what Microsoft Malaysia has done so far (see quote at the top), there is hardly an ethical boundary stopping this company from attaining the goal of infinite control and wealth.
Watch what Microsoft is doing in Limkokwing University, based on this new article.
STUDENTS at Limkokwing University of Creative Technology (LUCT) now have the chance to download Microsoft Windows 7 for free, in an attempt by the software giant to combat piracy among students.
“Combat piracy,” eh? Were there any casualties?
Microsoft is doing this in many universities (maybe in all of them, to a greater or lesser degree) so that the students serve Microsoft and make the company stronger. Microsoft executives even brag about this strategy and admit the crocodile tears.
We have just found a rather disturbing piece of an apologist from Malaysia, describing a company that committed crimes as “successful and productive”.
This latest clash between Microsoft and the EU represents a continuation of the saga of persecution and injustice against one of the most spectacularly successful and productive companies in the history of business.
Already, there are signs that the harassment will go on…
The judges who attempt to penalise a criminal are engaging in “harassment” now, eh? This whole article seems to have come from a parallel universe or from the Kool-Aid fountains at Redmond. At the bottom it states: “The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.” It’s a good thing that The Malaysian Insider distances itself from such a rubbish article that recommends pardoning criminals and punishing or at least mocking the law enforcers. This whole piece is just noise, but why can this material percolate into the press? It even contains the obligatory, utterly blind Bill Gates worship and praise of “free markets”, which obviously did not work in Microsoft’s case (they worked well for Microsoft, which did not obey any market rules and felt “free” to behave as it pleased, even by sabotaging competitors’ products). The author is belittling the issues that are well recorded and documented (e.g. in Comes vs Microsoft). There is no excuse for that. He also writes: “The common theme running through all these cases is that Microsoft is too large; that by dominating the market, it has “abused” its “monopoly” power to compete in an “unfair” manner.”
“Those who believe that Microsoft is “micro” and “soft” needn’t look further than how OLPC was sabotaged by Microsoft and Intel.”Well, obviously the author has not done his homework. The quotes around “abused” and “monopoly” (apparently intended to be scare quotes, depending on one’s conventions) really give away the bias, don’t they? It is not as though Microsoft apologists never roam the press [1, 2], selling the illusion that Microsoft is a lovable, huggable company that’s being run over by those “ugly”, “vicious” truly “horrible” regulators (who are just doing their important job).
Those who believe that Microsoft is “micro” and “soft” needn’t look further than how OLPC was sabotaged by Microsoft and Intel. Yes, they even attacked a charity, as revealed by internal E-mails (from Comes vs Microsoft for example). Here is part of a new article from the New York Times:
Among the infrastructure problems that the Microsoft research team saw in rural India was unreliable electrical power. It spurred another Microsoft research project that provided farmers in one district with cellphones that supplied the same information via text messaging that the farmers had obtained from PC centers.
[...]
“We jokingly call it ‘One Mouse Per Child,’ ” said Kentaro Toyama, who led the project while he spent five years in the Technology for Emerging Markets group at Microsoft Research India.
Microsoft has been trying to replace rather than embrace OLPC, which insisted on giving children Free software that they can control. But to Microsoft, children are customers. There’s no money to be made from giving them real education and control. █
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Posted in Apple, Boycott Novell, Hardware, Law, Microsoft at 9:52 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Prisoners Youth in China is manufacturing
Microsoft hardware for as little as 52 cents per hour
Summary: Xbox 360 consoles continue to fail, Xbox Live for the original Xbox shuts down, and Microsoft sends jobs to China and India to reduce expenses (Xbox is made under prison-like conditions in China)
MICROSOFT’S Xbox and Xbox 360 are poor-quality products that continue to disappoint. Based on this new survey, almost half of Xbox 360 owners continue to experience failure/s. Here is what we learn from GameSpy:
It’s a sight Xbox 360 gamers dread: the power button glowing with three red rings. According to the largest survey of its kind, we now know how prevalent the RROD and other hardware problems are: 42% of all 360 owners have had their consoles repaired or replaced.
Microsoft has also just messed up the Gears Of War 3 launch, which it was planning to hype up using old and dishonest tricks. As ITWire puts it:
We all knew it was coming, and we all knew that a clarification announcement was imminent, but a slip on the Xbox 360 dashboard by Microsoft’s PR department has let the Gears of War 3 cat out of the bag.
As we mentioned the other day, Xbox Live is dead for many users (this post also refers to Microsoft's exploitative practices in China) and this is now confirmed [1, 2]. Those two subjects are connected to one another because of the gruesome sweatshops where all Xbox 360s are typically manufactured. Low-cost production breeds low-quality products and Xbox 360 is one such product (there are many more).
“The legal team too — not just operations — is being shipped to India.”Speaking of offshoring, the other day we wrote about Microsoft's new deal with Infosys, which acts like a Microsoft department in India [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16]. One of our sources from India confirmed this allegation earlier today by saying that Infosys “has lot of mutual understanding with Microsoft”; Infosys is notorious among Free software proponents in India. Here are some more articles about that deal which was mentioned the other day [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. This contract gabbed a lot of mainstream media attention, so a heaps of publications did not pay attention to yet more offshoring, courtesy of Microsoft in India. The legal team too — not just operations — is being shipped to India. Based on this new article from Law.com, “Microsoft Signs Outsourcing Deal With Integreon,” which will handle the legal work in India after Microsoft fired a lot of its legal workforce in the West [1, 2].
Microsoft Corporation has signed a new deal with Integreon that will see the legal process outsourcing (LPO) company carry out further legal support services for the software giant.
The new agreement, which confirms Integreon as Microsoft’s exclusive provider of offshore managed document review, will see a team of lawyers in India provide contract review and offshore document review for Microsoft.
Microsoft is trying to save money. It tries to pay employees as little as it can get away with. If the quality of products from Microsoft declines, people ought to know why. Prison-esque conditions like those exposed in China do not accommodate high-quality production, but as long as Microsoft expenses (on wages) decrease, why would this monopoly complain? █
“Gates has created a huge blood-buying operation that only cares about money, not about people.”
–Chinese AIDS organisation manager, December 2009 (New York Times)
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Posted in DRM, GNU/Linux, Kernel, LG, Microsoft, Patents at 9:07 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Samsung Electronics signs a DRM deal with Microsoft, on top of the Linux patent deal
Samsung’s patent deal with Microsoft has been damaging to Linux and we have a special page about the subject. The latest development teaches us that Samsung not only helps Microsoft by enabling Microsoft ‘tax’ on Linux based on some software patents that were never revealed or proven to be legitimately applicable; Samsung will also exclude Free (as in freedom) platforms from “entertainment” by promoting Microsoft lock-in with DRM.
Here is the press release which says that “Samsung Electronics and Microsoft Announce Plans to Expand Access to Digital Entertainment”
Samsung adopts PlayReady technology in its consumer devices to enable easy access and transfer of content among TVs, mobile phones, set-top boxes and other devices.
We’ve only found this one article about it:
Samsung to use Microsoft’s DRM on handhelds, TVs
[...]
The first PlayReady-compatible Samsung devices will ship later in 2010, and Samsung expects to change all of its electronics devices from Windows Media DRM to PlayReady by 2012.
Microsoft and Samsung have been close partners for quite a few years, primarily because Microsoft is claimed to have helped Samsung sell hardware like memory chips. At Techrights we consider companies like Samsung and its Korean neighbour LG to be a danger to Linux, not friends. They change how Linux is treated by the market by making the statement that Microsoft should be paid for each Linux instance sold [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. █
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