08.25.10

Novell India

Posted in Asia, Novell at 11:48 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2008 “Boycott Novell” protest in India

Summary: A reminder of the fact that Novell is moving to India, just like Microsoft which gains more control there over government operations

NOVELL has been looking for Indian talent for a few years now (we first wrote about it in 2007 and we always show Microsoft doing the same thing, e.g. with Infosys this month). The company is increasingly employing people in countries where wages are lower and Sandeep Menon, the Country Head of Novell India does not foresee Indians actually taking the lead in such companies. They are being exploited for their brains and paid minimally for their skills and passion. It’s a bit like wage slavery. In the words of another Indian publication:

The interview with the country head of Novell India, Mr Sandeep Menon, ‘Potential CEOs or cyber coolies?’ ( Business Line, August 23) should ring alarm bells as regards where the Information Technology Enabled Services based in India are heading.

Last week we found this article about the very dangerous idea of giving heathcare to outside companies like Microsoft, without liability. There have been cautionary tales about it in India, where Microsoft was also given control over IDs. See our page about Microsoft influence in the Indian government. This merits further investigation in the future and if anyone from India can provide additional information, please use our IRC channels. █

“The alliance uses Microsoft technologies instead of challenging Gates in his own game. Wipro is just a servant of Microsoft facilitating Indian cyber slavery under the American corporate banners.”

–India Daily

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IDG Spin: Microsoft a Victim in Patent Racketeering, Loves Open Source

Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Open XML, Patents at 11:16 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: More pro-Microsoft reality distortion from IDG, which has Microsoft as a client

The “OOXML Paoli” story has generated a great deal of response from the public [1, 2, 3]. Almost nobody defends Microsoft’s position. It all originates in the Microsoft-funded IDG, which helped Microsoft claim that it had changes its attitude for the better. As one sceptic put it (IDG playing “good cop, bad cop”):

Yet, according to Paoli, that’s all changed now.

The company made the mistake of equating all open source technology with Linux “very early on,” he said. “We understand our mistake.”

Isn’t that nice?

One can’t help but wonder, however, how much of a mistake the company would think it was if it weren’t for Linux and open source’s growing market credentials.

For those who do not remember, Paoli ought to know better than anyone that Microsoft has not changed for the better. The OOXML corruption is something he had a lot to do with and given his high position in this abusive monopolist he must also know about his colleagues’ patent extortion, which qualifies as racketeering against Open Source [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] (and also proprietary software). Jeremy from Linux Questions responded as follows:

First, the article is correct: we all do remember the “Linux is a cancer” comments made oh so long ago. Unfortunately for Microsoft though, they have much to atone for. It’s not just the vituperative comments made in 2001, but the continued incursions since: the 235 Linux patent violations, the OOXML debacle, the HTC and TomTom licensing issues – the list goes on and on. Does that mean that Microsoft can’t change its ways? Of course not, but it does mean that many in the Open Source ecosystem are going to be a bit circumspect. I continue to believe that the odds of Microsoft truly changing while Ballmer is still CEO are minuscule, but I could be wrong.

Now, watch IDG spinning again. Microsoft is known to be battling over 50 patent cases and here we have Julie Bort describing Microsoft as a victim, despite all the context. Bort writes for the Microsoft Subnet and the Fauxopen Source sections at IDG. Now she passes even more Microsoft apologists’ talking points by suggesting that “Microsoft’s own patent lawsuits [are] merely covering its costs”. For perspective:

In recent years, Microsoft has earned the reputation of being the aggressor in patent infringement lawsuits. I think this is overstated, stemming from a lot of loud mouth claims by its top executives, the uproar over the Tom Tom case in 2009 and that its other suits have been fairly high profile. But they have also been relatively sparse.

In 2010, so far, we have had the much ballyhooed Microsoft case against Salesforce.com (in which both parties settled, with Salesforce agreeing to pay Microsoft an undisclosed sum). But mostly, Microsoft announced cross licensing agreements, such as one from HTC for Android. We had a similar one from Panasonic for exFAT and one with Amazon for Kindle. A less flashy deal was a licensing agreement with Tuxera, the Finnish company that created an open source driver for Microsoft NTFS (the NTFS-3G) for exFAT. The Tuxera deal likely won’t generate tons of cash, but it stems from the fact that Microsoft managed to get exFAT embedded as part of the new SDXC specification. The Redmond company will collect royalties (perhaps a few cents each) on all SDXC memory sticks, and that could add up.

Even so, when it comes to patent infringement, Microsoft is more likely to be the victim than the bully — at least in terms of the number of lawsuits per year.

Watch how she is trying to justify it, as though the extortion is acceptable when Microsoft names not a single patent and pressures Linux vendors to pass their money to Microsoft (based on no evidence). How can one defend the indefensible? Well, it’s IDG, so truth does not matter [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. That’s why they also publish headlines suggesting that Microsoft “loves” open source. It’s deceiving, it’s trolling.

Bort asks: “Other than calling payouts “a cost of doing business” what other option does Microsoft have but to try to collect on intellectual property on the one hand, while paying damages with the other?”

“Other than calling payouts “a cost of doing business” what other option does Microsoft have but to try to collect on intellectual property on the one hand, while paying damages with the other?”
      –Julie Bort, IDGHow about working to abolish software patents? As it stands, Microsoft is an active lobbyist for for very same thing it pretends to decry (crocodile tears).

“And if that’s the case,” concludes Bort, “will we see a Microsoft that becomes more aggressive to collect on intellectual property? I fear so.”

She fears so? Didn’t she use this whole article to sympathise and defend Microsoft’s extortion of “open source” (patent tax)? IDG makes little more sense than Fox 'News'. Fox/Murdoch wants people to believe that Obama is the “anti-Christ”, Wikipedia is run by pedophiles, and Wikileaks’ founder is a sex offender; IDG wants people to believe that Microsoft’s extortion is acceptable and that Microsoft is a friend of “Open Source”. █

Image from Wikipedia

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Your News is PR: The Economic Times Example

Posted in Deception, Dell, IBM, Marketing, Microsoft at 10:20 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Who pays for articles you read in “official” sites and why?

Summary: IBM is buying the news, this time in India

The Economic Times publishes a lot of Microsoft PR and earlier this week we caught it publishing a “sponsored story” for IBM. Yes, it even says that it’s a “sponsored story”, so there is no question about it. Is this the future of journalism? Even in the Economic Times, which is considered a mainstream publication and “official” source? What is the role of journalists then? Are they becoming just another tier in PR operations, like Microsoft's Peter Galli for instance? It seems like Dell has begun something similar with journalists (see screenshot above with former Noveller Zonker).

Either way, see for yourselves one paragraph which IBM paid for. To the authors’ credit (probably IBM), at least they are honest about it over at the Economic Times. Some others would probably omit the evidence of sellout altogether:

Not only IBM, but there are other companies too that provide collaborative tools. Novell GroupWise gives a wide range of collaborative tools to create a “plugged in” work environment. Novell Pulse enables real-time communication, authoring and social messaging for the enterprise. Microsoft offers Live and NetMeeting. But IBM’s Sametime is a class apart.

Says who? IBM? The Economic Times? It doesn’t matter. It’s all just PR masquerading as journalism [1, 2], even in a major paper. █

“[A]fter analysing a five-day working week in the media, across 10 hard-copy papers, ACIJ and Crikey found that nearly 55% of stories analysed were driven by some form of public relations. The Daily Telegraph came out on top of the league ladder with 70% of stories analysed triggered by public relations. The Sydney Morning Herald gets the wooden spoon with (only) 42% PR-driven stories for that week.”

–“Over half your news is spin”

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Links 25/8/2010: OpenSSH 5.6, Inkscape 0.48

Posted in News Roundup at 6:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Clip of the Day

Free Software in Ethics and in Practice Manchester, UK 2008

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Adobe Joins Novell in Daemonising Oracle and Whitewashing Microsoft

Posted in GNU/Linux, IBM, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Oracle, SCO at 3:41 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Adobe boss cites Microsoft MVP de Icaza as he tries to incite people against Oracle; SCO case updates help show that Oracle is not all “evil”

THE REGISTER has this new article titled “Oracle forms new ‘axis of evil’ against open source, claims Adobe” and it opens by saying that “Oracle has replaced Microsoft as the FOSS community’s number one enemy, according to Adobe System’s open source boss.”

Here is Adobe’s original post (to avoid misrepresentation by The Register) which says “see also this great post by Miguel de Icaza” (he distorted the facts about Oracle and Java [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] in order to promote Microsoft/.NET/C#). Adobe is a drug dealer-like fake friend of Free/Open Source software and a real nuisance to GNU/Linux users. It is in no position to tell Free software which companies are greater enemies to Free software as that would be hypocritical.

One area where Novell remains helpful (to itself but also to others) is the SCO case, where Oracle too seems involved at the moment. People must remember that Oracle is still the steward of many Free software projects like OpenOffice.org, VirtualBox, and even MySQL. Its lawsuit against Google is described by some people as defensive or reactionary. Anyway, from Groklaw we have:

Cahn Replies to Reservations of Rights by Novell and Oracle, HP and US Trustee – Update

[...]

But then it gets tricky. Cahn’s position is that SCO owns “explicitly or impliedly” — that last bit being the sticky part — certain rights, to develop UnixWare, for example, to license or sublicense UNIX technology as per Amendment 2, in his interpretation, and the ownership and copyrights to any new code SCO itself developed after the APA. OK. How about a list on that? For real. How about a list of copyrights? So that is what Cahn proposes selling, “Debtors’ rights to exploit and develop Unixware and the Software Business.”

That’s what they told the ‘new guy’ in this company. What planet do they live on? It’s somewhat bizarre that a Novell vice president promotes Microsoft along with Novell while Novell is fighting the Microsoft-funded SCO and even fights Microsoft in the WordPerfect case (new update from Groklaw, see [1, 2] for background). Groklaw has another post about SCO’s bankruptcy (which SCO may have faked for convenience and pardoning). Here is new proof that SCO knew about IBM’s Linux involvement as far back as 1998 (back when Bill Gates called Linux “LUNIX” because it was more obscure).

Look what I just found, SCO’s Partners page from 2002, on Internet Archive, and lo and behold, it provides proof positive that SCO, then calling itself Caldera, knew that IBM was involved with Linux as far back as 1998. That’s the year Santa Cruz and IBM signed the agreement regarding Project Monterey, executed in October of 1998. No one, therefore, Santa Cruz or Caldera, had any reason to be in the dark about IBM’s Linux activities while IBM was also working on Project Monterey.

Now that the old caldera.com pages are on Internet Archive again, thanks to SCO selling off the domain name, many interesting things are surfacing, and we find out why SCO tried to hide them for so long. They should have waited a little bit longer.

It was funnier when SCO published "Blah. Blah. Blah." last year. █

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Response to Judith Wilcox and Axel H. Horns Regarding Patents to Software Developers

Posted in EFF, Intellectual Monopoly, Patents at 2:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Credit: Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS)

Summary: Monopoly proponents from Europe rebutted; Lexmark sues 24 companies for patent infringement; EFF kills another ludicrous patent

Horns is an informative blogger (not just a European patent attorney from Germany) who often sheds light on important issues such as UPLS [1, 2, 3]. But there is one point that he overlooked a little while ago when he debated the patentability of software (an important subject in Germany due to Microsoft and Siemens [1, 2]).

Here is where Horns gets it wrong: [via FFII]

He says that there is a “myth” of software patents being used as a tool of dispossession against the copyright programmers earned by writing something. This is a “myth”, in his view, since programmers need to check for patents, just as someone who wants to build somewhere needs to check the property status of the real estate in question.

He then goes on, however, to explain that it is actually impossible for most software authors to do the patent check. That means he is refuting his own point.

Being a patent lawyer, he sure wants more patents. It’s business to him. The same goes for the British Intellectual Monopoly Minister, Judith Wilcox. The president of the FFII highlights this new bit of patent propaganda from Incisive Media/Bizmedia:

The Intellectual Property Minister Baroness Wilcox has unveiled a research programme into intellectual property and its value to the British economy

[...]

Wilcox said: “Intellectual property has a key role to play in rebalancing the British economy. The highly-skilled industries where the UK can excel are driven by innovation.

“Britain must have an intellectual property system that encourages innovation and is internationally competitive.

Wilcox wants the public to believe that a patent system “encourages innovation” (“internationally competitive” is euphemism for “imperialistic”), but what happens when it’s used to actually suppress competition? Just watch this new lawsuit:

Lexmark sues importers of laser cartridges for patent infringement

Lexmark International, Inc. (NYSE: LXK) announced today that it has filed a patent infringement complaint with the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) against 24 companies engaged in the manufacture, importation and sale of replacement cartridges for various Lexmark laser printers and multifunction devices.

The complaint alleges that these replacement cartridges infringe at least 15 U.S. patents owned by Lexmark. Lexmark is requesting that the ITC issue a general exclusion order banning the importation and sale of patent infringing laser cartridges by any entity.

ITC means embargo [1, 2, 3, 4]. How does that encourage innovation? It encourages litigation and limits competition.

In other noteworthy news, the EFF has just squashed another bad patent. It’s hardly the solution though because as Richard Stallman once put it, “Fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria.” Regardless, the following is good news at least for symbolic reasons:

Good news in the fight against bad software patents: a jury in the Eastern District of Texas recently found the Firepond/Polaris patent (U.S. Patent No. 6,411,947) invalid. This patent was on EFF’s “Most Wanted” list, targeted because it claimed nothing more than a system using natural language processing to respond to customers’ online inquires by email.

EFF was not involved in this case, in which Bright Response, LLC — the technical owner of the patent — sued Google, Inc., Yahoo!, Inc. and eight other companies, alleging that Google’s AdWords and Yahoo!’s Sponsored Search infringes the Firepond/Polaris patent. The jury found three of the patent’s claims invalid based on the public use bar, obviousness, and for lacking written description. The jury also found that neither Google nor Yahoo! infringed those claims. Finally, the jury found the entire patent invalid due to improper inventorship.

Mike Masnick has just covered this too. █

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Microsoft Can’t Do Hardware

Posted in Hardware, Microsoft at 1:55 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: The hardware business is proving too hard for Microsoft, still

THE XBOX 360 is a story of how to burn money because consoles are sold (and repaired) at a loss. Xbox 360 hardware was a technical disaster and Microsoft is still paying for it. Microsoft’s KINect seems like yet another case of bad hardware for reasons we named before [1, 2, 3]. Sony’s attempt to emulate the Wii’s controller is already leaping ahead of Microsoft’s:

Gamescom: Move beats Kinect to major award

An expert panel at Gamescom – the German trade show that brought us all sorts of juicy announcements this week – has crowned Sony’s Move controller as the best hardware accessory at the show.

The jury, which consisted of celebrated German video games industry experts, overlooked Microsoft’s Kinect for the prize.

“Kinect lost out to Sony’s move at the CVG awards,” Tim said last night.

Chips B Malroy contributed some more news last night, as well. According to this, for example, “Kinect [is] Truly Dumb at Launch” as “the voice chat feature touted at the E3 unveil alongside voice control won’t be ready for November 14th.”

“Kinect is really becoming dumbed down and a product of bait and switch,” Malroy explains. “Lower graphics video camera, no sign language, on now no voice control. Perhaps the ‘Kin’ name is appropriate.”

Another news item says that “Video chat will also be missing on launch, presumably to be turned on “in due course” as well.”

“Kinect is really becoming dumbed down and a product of bait and switch [...] Perhaps the ‘Kin’ name is appropriate.”
      –Chips B Malroy“At the top of the list of issues that Microsoft’s Kinect controller for the Xbox 360 faces is the problem of interference from people not in the virtual driver’s seat of the console,” says another new report. “That’s a very bad sign, especially with Kinect due out in about three months. The fact that he couldn’t tell me what Microsoft would be doing to resolve the issue was an even worse sign” (thanks Malroy for the link).

This article says that “MICROSOFT is selling advertising on the home screen of its Xbox 360 gaming console for the first time.” It also says that “The ads, which can be seen on the Xbox Live platform on consoles that are connected to the internet, will be displayed as tiles that open up full-screen video or link to a branded destination page featuring downloadable content.”

“So it uses up your bandwidth as well,” says Malroy.

Microsoft has failed in hardware every time it tried, the exceptions being mice and keyboards perhaps. “Microsoft Windows glider crashes,” says another new article:

Those of you who’ve been following our Paper Aircraft Released Into Space (PARIS) programme are invited to spare a thought today for Microsoft’s Phoenix glider, which failed to demonstrate the Right Stuff over the weekend at Red Bull’s Flugtag competition in Long Beach, California.

Microsoft is not a hardware company. At the moment it just tries taking credit for a new microchip from IBM, falsely claiming it to be its own ‘innovation’. Don’t be easily misled by articles about it. That’s just PR. █

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New Evidence Suggests HP CEO Was Ousted Not for Sexual Harassment

Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, HP, Microsoft, Vista 7, Vista 8, Windows at 1:21 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Photo by JD Lasica

Summary: Mark Hurd, who navigated closer to Linux and had Microsoft name HP as a competitive threat for this (in its SEC filings even), was not really ejected for his publicly-exaggerated situation with Fisher; MSI turns to Linux for slates and Microsoft starts turning to more Vista 8 vapourware

EARLIER this month we raised suspicions that Hurd got virtually fired (pressured to quit) for his policies rather than any particular scandal [1, 2, 3].

Our suspicions are beginning to seem more likely now that a news article reveals that “HP decided Hurd exit ‘before’ actress settlement” (quoting the headline in full). From the article:

HP had decided to force this month’s resignation of chief executive Mark Hurd before he settled a sexual harassment claim from a former actress, according to sources close to the matter.

[...]

Hurd was forced out of the company because the board concluded he had broken HP’s code of conduct. While the directors found Hurd had not harassed Fisher, they found improper expense filing that allegedly deliberately failed to reveal the actress’ name on a number of occasions.

Hurd said he was not involved in filing the expenses and was not attempting to conceal any relationship. Fisher has also said that she and Hurd “never had an affair or intimate sexual relationship”.

“This kind of hypocrite sexual puritanism and „political correctness” in American companies is imbecile at best,” told me Răzvan Sandu from Bucureşti, România (Bucharest, Romania).

As we pointed out before, HP officially brought Vista 7 back to tablets just days after Hurd got canned (yes, they made his departure look friendly and all). We are now learning from Mary Jo Microsoft that “Another Windows 7 slate dropped from this year’s Christmas list” (again, just quoting the headline):

Another week, another Windows 7 slate is cut from the list of those slated (pun intended) to ship in time for this holiday season.

This time, as Engadget’s PC reviewer extraordinaire Joanna Stern noted on August 23, the vendor didn’t decide to dump Windows 7 for Android. Instead, MSI has decided to delay its Windows 7-based WindPad so it can incorporate Intel’s Oak Trail processors that are expected to offer better power management and battery life. (MSI is also developing an Android WindPad slate, which is still on tap to ship before the end of this year, by the way.)

Here comes Linux (Android) again, this time to a slate from MSI. Will anyone toss management people at MSI? After choosing Linux (WebOS) over Vista 7 for slate at HP a Vice President from Microsoft was appointed to become software head at HP and then Hurd got ejected. One of our readers believes that Microsoft is ‘pulling a Belluzzo’.

On a separate note, since Vista 7 fails to sell much (don’t believe the hype), Microsoft keeps pushing the Vista 8 envelope. Microsoft booster Marius Oiaga produces more vapourware and there is also shameless fawning from an Indian site upon a certain anniversary.

Windows 95 marks 15th birthday in uncertain Microsoft future

[...]

The company is also now facing long-term threats to its success. Apple and now Google both have much larger presences in the smartphone space where Microsoft has had to scrap Windows Mobile and start fresh with Windows Phone 7 to stay current. Attempts by co-founder Bill Gates and later Steve Ballmer to force acceptance of pen-based Windows tablet PCs have also been undermined almost overnight as the iPad has crushed tablet PC records; Apple sold more than twice as many tablets in three months than Microsoft was expected to manage all year.

“When I want to do something mindless to relax, I install windows 95,” Jean-Louis Gassée once said. He had history at Apple, which challenges Microsoft at the consumer’s high end, whereas GNU/Linux challenges Microsoft at the business high end and the consumer’s low end. It’s not surprising that Microsoft's stock is approaching a minimum right now. Shareholders are not too happy.

It’s time for Microsoft to drastically raise its dividend, says Eric Jackson, the founder of hedge fund Ironfire Capital, which owns 12,000 shares of Microsoft.

How about having them pay tax for a change? █

“In January of 1994, Waggener Edstrom began recruiting 100 key editors, 32 analysts, and 150 third-party vendors for the Windows 95 bandwagon. Lining up the national media and the business press was easy. Edstrom had been massaging those relationships for over a decade, sending flowers and cartoons and reminding editors of their spouses’ birthdays and wedding anniversaries, earning her “Gates’s keeper” reputation. Not only would these people tout Windows 95, they would also be more inclined to show sympathy for Microsoft when competitors started ragging them. [...] In an unusual move, Edstrom’s minions had New York’s Empire State Building lit in the Windows 95 colors. [...] Waggener Edstrom claimed that Microsoft received more media attention than even the O.J. Simpson trial, which was going on at the same time.”

–Barbarians Led by Bill Gates, a book composed
by the daughter of Microsoft’s Pam Edstrom

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