08.23.10
Posted in GNU/Linux, IBM, Microsoft, Vista 7 at 4:36 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Vista 7 refunds become possible, Microsoft apologist Florian Müller makes friends in the Mono camp, and MSNBC writes about malware on the Spanair computer system, but somehow it doesn’t mention Windows
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ARLIER TODAY we wrote about Tim's efforts to open the door for Vista 7 refunds in the UK. There’s good news because it’s succeeding. A few hours ago Tim wrote: “My quest for a Windows 7 refund has gone well. Apparently Acer will be refunding me. I’ll keep people posted!”
This is great news and it can help British people (even Europeans) demand a refund not just from Acer. It’s all about precedence and it needs to be publicised. Refunds are possible if one tries hard enough, knows which prior cases to cite, and knows the exact procedures to follow.
Let’s face it; Vista 7 is just lipstick on a pig (Vista) and security-wise it’s even worse than predecessors. The former managing editor of Linux Today has just had to use Vista 7 for a while and he says that “looks aren’t everything” (referring to deceiving appearances and labels). From his post:
This anecdote kept bopping around my head this week, when I’ve had the opportunity to work on Windows 7 more than I usually do.
[...]
It’s still Windows.
And that that means is that no matter how much anti-virus software I would put on this platform, and how many security precautions I take, whenever I start visiting the Internet, which is easily 50 percent of where I do my job, the risk factor for getting infected by malware is far more than using Linux.
The lesson here, as always, is that pretty looks aren’t everything. It’s easy to get distracted by the gadgets, gimmicks and all the shiny, especially as a geek. But is it worth your data? Because, to me, the ability to keep my work and personal data secure is way more important than transparent windows or
And, it’s not like Linux doesn’t have eye candy and shiny of its own, if that is indeed what floats your boat. GNOME, KDE, and even LXDE offer gorgeous, streamlined interfaces that are getting better with each release.
Want to know who happily uses Vista 7? Florian Müller, the guy who pretends to represent “FOSS” interests when it comes to patents (while defending RAND, which is incompatible with Free software). Well, Müller is a complicated story of what seems like a Microsoft lobbyist. Right now (all day today) he is busy talking with all the Mono boosters and those who only ever attack Techrights while defending Microsoft. It’s like he finally found his colleagues. It’s amusing really as it invalidates and voids any credibility he had left as a lobbyist for “FOSS”. It’s a fake friend.
A couple of days ago we showed how Müller blamed Trojans and malware on IBM (he wants people to believe that IBM — not Microsoft — is a threat to “FOSS”). Watch this coverage from MSNBC. Being Microsoft’s pseudo-press the imported article says and does nothing to call out Windows. MSNBC was previously caught censoring an existing article which named Windows as the cause of a problem. Here is a portion of this article: [via]
The malware on the Spanair computer has been identified as a type of Trojan horse. It could have entered the airline’s system in a number of ways, according to Jamz Yaneeza, head threat researcher at Trend Micro.
Some of the most likely ways are through third party devices such as USB sticks, Yaneeza said, which were responsible for the International Space Station virus infection in 2008, or through a remote VPN connection that may not have the same protection as a computer within the enterprise network. Opening just one malicious file on a single computer is all it takes to infect an entire system.
“Any computer that is connected to a network is vulnerable to a malware infection,” O. Sami Saydjari, president of Cyber Defense Agency, told TechNewsDaily. “Standards have not been set to protect critical infrastructure.”
Those who foolishly believe Müller might think that it’s a mainframe’s fault. He increasingly becomes a source of humour. █
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 3:53 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A response from high authority is discovered and discussed, raising suspicions that the United Patent Litigation System (UPLS) will be revised
THE SITUATION in Europe when it comes to software patents (aka “computer-implemented inventions”) is far from resolved. There is UPLS lurking and struggling for breathing space [1, 2]. Additionally, Microsoft and its buddies at Siemens have been pushing software patents into Europe via the German courts [1, 2]. Since when can the courtroom determine patentability of software? This whole situation is rather troubling.
Based on Bristows.com, the “Advocate General says ‘non’ to the Community Patent and a European Patents Court” and the FFII’s president opines that UPLS will therefore be rewritten.
Advocate General says “non” to the Community Patent and a European Patents Court
[...]
In short, the fate of the single Court and single patent remains in the balance, but the scales look to be tipping badly against them. We await the decision of the ECJ itself with great interest.
Horns has also responded to these remarks from the Court of Justice of the European Union. His words are interpreted as suggesting that “the Court would decide on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions”:
Only now I have stumbled upon Opinion 01/09 – Statement by the Advocates General of the Court of Justice of the European Union concerning the European Patent and the Community Patent Court as planned by the EU Council; see my earlier postings here, there and there. The date on that Document (Original in French only) is July 2, 2010; however, the Opinion was not published on the Official website of the Court of Justice of the European Union (formerly known as European Court of Justice, or ECJ for short). A link to the French version was posted on August 19, 2010, on EPLAW Patent Blog.
I won’t understand those childish games played by interested circles inside of and close to the EU Council in a futile attempt to withhold such important documents from the eyes of the general public.
[...]
Hence, the Document summarises that the creation of the PC as an international court does not conflict with the objections of principle drawn from the provisions of the treaties on the European Union judicial system. However, the decisions of the European Patent Office (EPO) on patents may form the subject of an effective judicial appeal before an independent court within whose scope a correct and uniform application of Union law will be assured.
Given that the EU court system has already been responsible for some software patents, this whole situation is definitely worth keeping an eye on. █
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Posted in GNU/Linux, HP, Microsoft, Vista 7, Windows at 11:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: HP suggests that a tablet with Windows may come before a tablet with WebOS and Microsoft entryism is therefore revisited
IN A COUPLE OF prior posts we warned that Hurd's departure might be bad news to Linux at HP. A few days later HP spoke to the public (conference call) and revealed what we had feared all along. HP has already hired a Vice President from Microsoft to become software head (that was a few months ago) and the ‘Microsoft press’ keeps talking about possible Hurd (CEO) replacements from Microsoft:
Internal candidates to replace Hurd include Todd Bradley, who turned around the company’s once-struggling PC business. Ann Livermore, who runs HP’s huge services business is another oft-mentioned possibility. Outside candidates include two Softies: Microsoft COO Kevin Turner and Stephen Elop, president of the company’s Business Division.
Another Microsoft-boosting Web site has other Microsoft candidates in mind:
Handicapping HP’s CEO search
[...]
This is a reach, but one interesting possibility to think about is Robbie Bach, the outgoing Entertainment & Devices Division president at Microsoft. Bach has said he truly plans to retire, but given his history across business computing and mobile devices — and his impending availability — he would seem less of a long shot than the Microsoft execs floated by the Seattle Times last week: Kevin Turner, the company’s chief operating officer, and Bob Muglia, the Microsoft Server & Tools president.
Tim Bajarin, typically a stern Microsoft booster, says that “HP’s New CEO Must Embrace Palm,” but based on Murdoch’s rags/tabloids, “HP to Ship Microsoft Tablet This Year, webOS Tablet Next Year” (and notice the bits about Android):
Noticeably absent from Bradley’s list: that Android device that was supposed to arrive at market in the fourth quarter of 2010. As I reported in July that tablet has been tabled–at least for the time being.
“HP Officially Delays Tablet until 2011,” says this report, but at least it’s not cancelled [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. Here is one take on it:
Hewlett-Packard confirmed its tablet plans in a conference call on Thursday.
From a product standpoint, company executives said that a “Microsoft product” would appear in the “near future,” with a “WebOS product in early 2011.” That appears to confirm both reports of HP’s Windows tablet as well as the company’s plans to feature WebOS after HP purchased Palm.
It still seems like a step back because HP dumped Vista 7, at least when it comes to Slate (a form of tablet).
Speaking of potential Microsoft entryism, watch what goes in at OpenAmplify:
OpenAmplify, the Semantic Web platform, today announced that Sanjay Parthasarathy has joined its executive board. Parthasarathy brings over two decades of experience to the OpenAmplify team, most recently serving as corporate vice president of the Developer and Platform Evangelism Group (D&PE) and also the Microsoft Startup Business Accelerator.
Also mind changes at DigitalTown:
Mark is Director of Strategic Relationships for Microsoft Corp. /quotes/comstock/15*!msft/quotes/nls/msft (MSFT 24.23, -0.21, -0.86%) Media & Entertainment Group and has more than 13 years’ experience in developing innovative business and technology solutions for global media companies. He is based in Los Angeles.
Wipro is growing closer to Microsoft, which makes it hard to trust and Microsoft liars find a new home at Liar Liar List LLC:
Liarliarlist.com (http://liarliarlist.com), a brand new website that publishes members reviews of people who lie on their online dating profiles, has just appointed Microsoft Corporation alumni Adesh Desai as Chief Technology Officer and Deepak Sodhi as Chief Operating Officer.
It is possible that Microsoft too will be getting a new CEO. There are rumours about Ballmer being pushed out and Microsoft proponents don’t want him either (only 9% say he is doing a great job based on a recent poll). “Half of Microsoft’s (Anonymous) Employees Don’t Approve of Steve Ballmer,” heralded the Seattle Weekly blogs a short while ago, so now we know how even employees feel, despite being indoctrinated.
Half of Microsoft’s (Anonymous) Employees Don’t Approve of Steve Ballmer
[...]
You’ve heard of this guy Mark Hurd, right? The Hewlett-Packard CEO forced to resign late last week because of a sexual harassment investigation? Lots of his employees apparently didn’t like him very much. At least according to his record-low approval rating of 34-percent on Glassdoor.com, a site that lets employees anonymously dish on their bosses.
It’s not impossible for Ballmer to replace Hurd, either. Earlier this year Ballmer was strutting HP’s gear (Slate) on stage. It did not really have a penguin on it; it had Vista 7. █
Original photo here, fair use for humour purposes
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Posted in Microsoft, Mono, Novell at 9:53 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Seif Lotfy inquires about more Mono dependency which makes its way into GNOME’s core components
LAST year we thought that Zeitgeist had eventually given up on Mono, but Novell’s Banshee (outside Microsoft's MCP and thus a patent trap) and Tomboy push it back in. Seif Lotfy, who also puts Mono in Canonical’s repository, writes:
At Zeitgeist we are finishing up some nice Tomboy and Banshee Addins.
It is disheartening to see even Ubuntu folks helping Mono. Canonical's CTO distrusts Mono, but from people in IRC we are quickly learning that Mono boosters have infiltrated Ubuntu Forums (this includes self-acclaimed anti-Linux crowd and people who daemonise Techrights over there) where they constantly promote Mono. Watch out for entryism, Canonical. More on entryism in the next post. █
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Posted in Deception, Marketing, Microsoft at 9:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: W3C entryism becomes more pronounced as Microsoft pretends to have aligned with Web standards; Microsoft also pretends to have sidled with science and MSNBC spreads new propaganda about it
SEVERAL MONTHS ago Microsoft pretended to have befriended SVG [1, 2] after attacking it for years by deliberately ignoring it under Internet Explorer (Microsoft promoted its proprietary VML instead). Well, earlier this months we showed that "VML is back" and despite Microsoft’s vicious history when it comes to the World Wide Web, someone was tactless enough to give Microsoft a chair in the W3C Web Performance Working Group:
Microsoft will co-chair the group with Google.
Why is Microsoft in there? The creator of the Web has already denounced Microsoft for snubbing SVG, for example. Why was Microsoft given a chair there? Because it illegally obtained a lot of market share? Microsoft PR agents are still trying to pretend that Microsoft employees are friends of the Web, at least to the cameras (PR gesture only). “I am worr[ied] about w3c now,” said one Indian blogger, “Microsoft to Co-Chair New W3C Web Performance Working Group”
We too are worried about W3C entryism (not just Microsoft but other companies with software patents, which are antithetical to the W3C). Microsoft is far from a friend of the Web. Likewise, Microsoft is a foe of scientific progress, but its publicity stuntmen (or stuntwomen) try to paint themselves as friends of science, more recently with the whole space elevator/NASA gig. Watch MSNBC advertising this some more:
Artsutanov is among the optimists who have come to the Microsoft corporate campus in Redmond, Wash., for the 2010 Space Elevator Conference this weekend. (Microsoft and NBC Universal are partners in the msnbc.com joint venture.)
Just giving this disclosure doesn’t make it any less of a Microsoft advertisement. Shame on MSNBC for masquerading as a reliable news source. There is too much spin in the mainstream media, in this case appealing to psyche and attributing space exploration to Microsoft. █
“Don’t encourage new, cross-platform Java classes, especially don’t help get great Win 32 implementations written/deployed. [...] Do encourage fragmentation of the Java classlib space.”
–Ben Slivka, Microsoft
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Posted in Marketing, Microsoft at 8:51 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg
with a former Microsoft evangelist who more recently joined Rackspace only to see it aligning with Microsoft a year and half later (source: Robert Scoble)
Summary: How Microsoft and Facebook continue to disrespect people following their alliances and partnerships which lead to incredible distrust
IN OUR previous posts about Facebook we showed that Microsoft gets direct access to Facebook data. Well, more data will soon be attainable by Microsoft which links Facebook Chat to Windows Live Messenger for IM.
Microsoft says it will roll out Facebook Chat as part of Windows Live Messenger initially in the U.S., U.K., France, Brazil, Germany and Russia. New countries and geographies will be added over time.
A few years ago Microsoft tried to buy Facebook; instead, they eventually became close partners and Facebook is partly owned by Microsoft now. One person has passed us information about what is potentially Microsoft guerrilla marketing in Facebook. To quote with appropriate redactions that keep the parties safe:
Is Microsoft ghost writing Facebook pages for their partner’s employees? I’ve got a hunch that they are and it will be easy to check up on. [...]
An acquaintance’s Facebook page is all about Microsoft these days. He’s given himself a middle name of “Mr. [Microsoft product]” and all of his messages are about Microsoft junk. I thought that was strange because the last time I talked to him he was down on Microsoft because someone rooted his NT based ftp server.
I’m going to give the guy a call tonight to find out what’s up. It’s possible the guy has been converted to a walking Microsoft advertisement after years of work for a Microsoft partner. I’ll take a screenshot to share with you if it turns out that he’s unaware or if the page is ghostwritten. If it is ghost written, he might not be able to say so and he might not want to be a published example but you should see what I mean even if you should not share it. Chances are that you won’t need anything about my friend at all.
You can verify my hunch yourself. Lack of originality is a signature of Microsoft campaigns, so it should be easy to find hundreds of people named after Microsoft junk. If my hunch is right, these ghostwritten accounts will all have the same lame Microsoft copy paste comments and talking points. Have a look and let me know if you find anything.
If my hunch is right, Microsoft has sunk to new lows in Astroturf and another danger of Microsoft controlled social media has been exposed. Exploiting the trust people have in their friends and neighbors is the Facebook business model and it would not be surprising for 15% investor Microsoft to take advantage of Facebook sneaky ways. Microsoft’s PR department writes blogs for Microsoft’s employees and they were caught sending snail mail on behalf of others, even dead people, to the US Congress. Microsoft has impersonated people like Bruce Perens and Roy Schestowitz on bulletin boards and other social media. We also know Microsoft people promote Microsoft friendly opinion and discourage everything else. Sticking opinions into the mouths of people’s friends would be a new low but an entirely predictable one. Free software social networking will avoid this pitfall with public key infrastructure.
If my hunch is wrong, well, shame on my friend for being such a tool.
Facebook is now tracking people too and Microsoft receives a copy of this data:
It should come as no surprise that Facebook is using Microsoft’s Bing Maps to pinpoint locations in Places.
Microsoft made a considerable investment in Facebook several years ago, and other Microsoft services such as Bing search and Microsoft Docs are already integrated with Facebook.
Facebook may be using Free software as the underlying stack for its operations, but everything else is proprietary and to make things worse, Facebook violates Free software licences to make proprietary software for proprietary platforms:
Facebook Caught Plagiarizing Open Source Code in the Official iPhone App
[...]
One of the many nifty features present in the official Facebook app for iPhone is the “Pull to Refresh” functionality, which was pioneered by Tweetie. This UI (user interface) element is derived from the open source TTTableHeaderDragRefreshView class created by Enormogo. Unfortunately, it appears that Facebook was using third party open source code without proper attribution.
Microsoft did this too and it got caught several times last year. Bad minds think alike. “Microsoft pulls a ‘Facebook’ by exposing Windows Live users’ names,” says the sceptical Microsoft booster:
I have to point out, it’s not the fact that a relatively small number of users are vocally complaining across more than a half-dozen help forum strings that caused me to write about this. It’s the fact that Microsoft pulled a “Facebook” and exposed users names and other info that was previously not visible to anyone.
How tactless. Is it not hypocritical for Microsoft to accuse Google of privacy violations? █
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Posted in Bill Gates, Finance, Microsoft at 8:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Financial contributions from the Gates Foundation go to some of the very same companies whose actions this foundation pretends to counter
THE Gates Foundation, a big investor of BP [1, 2, 3] and other companies that destroy the planet, the economy, and even retail (CocaCola and Wal-Mart, for example, are receiving extra funding from Gates) continues to reveal a rather disturbing agenda. At the end of last year we explained that Gates was busy creating more monopolies, thereby taking more power over the entire system. He seems to be following Rockefeller’s footsteps, not just actively working with Rockefeller descendants. Oil, monopolies, and lots of power. What’s not to like? By putting money in Exxon, for example, Gates actually contributes to global warming denial.
Based on several new articles [1, 2], Gates continues to sell his Microsoft shares (not much confidence in the company’s future).
Since the beginning of the year, Gates has reduced his stake in the Bellevue, Wash. based company by nearly 150 million shares. To me, this seems like more than diversifying your portfolio, or selling some shares to buy another house.
Another house is what the Gates Foundation recently built itself. This foundation operates just like a business and it invests in some really vicious companies that are detrimental to solidarity and to the environment. But hey, it makes a lot of money so what’s not to like?
One journalist asks, “Has Microsoft lost its edge?”
Bill Gates continues to sell his stock in the company. Between the beginning of May and today, Gates has sold more than 20 million shares. He still owns an enormous 620 million shares though, so stock analyst Roger Nachman’s suggestion that maybe other stock holders should sell too is a bit off.
In relation to Microsoft’s stock, CNN asks (in the headline): “Why does everyone hate Microsoft?”
“Jefferies Lowers Estimates, Price Target for Microsoft” says another headline and one last headline says that “S&P Downgrades Microsoft to Hold”:
Just a few months ago S&P were touting technology stocks. They said that tech stocks tend to do well in the 2nd year of a bull market. Now they think that the slower growth expected in the 2nd half of this year will affect tech and Microsoft.
Earlier today we wrote about Microsoft approaching new lows. In order for Gates’ money to be future-proof, he increasingly diversifies. How so?
First of all, Gates is increasing his investments in Monsanto:
Bill Gates buys Ecolab Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The, Monsanto Company, during the 3-months ended 06/30/2010, according to the most recent filings of his investment company, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust.
For background, also see:
We previously explained how Gates relates to the World Bank, IMF, and the rest of those controversial/notorious establishments (ask the Greek about these debt predators). The Gates Foundation must really not give a damn about its image anymore. Now it invests in criminals in suits (with many impending charges pressed against them). Yes, that would be Goldman:
The Gates Foundation Buys Shares Of Goldman Sachs
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation took advantage of sagging stock prices in the second quarter to add Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), one of the most storied names in finance, to its portfolio, according to a 13F regulatory filing
When one thinks of the Gates Foundation, one should think more about BP, Goldman Sachs, and Wal-Mart, not hungry children in Africa. Need it be added that Goldman Sachs recently got slammed for contributing to world hunger, just for profit? The Gates Foundation is now contributing financially to the very same establishment that causes starvation. But hey, it’s all about power, ego, and money, right? █
“Bill Gates says banks are dinosaurs, well, some dinosaurs run real fast and bite the hell out of you.”
–Unknown
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Posted in America, Bill Gates, Deception, Europe, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 7:23 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: In the troubled economy of Europe Bill Gates and Microsoft try to make the population more Redmond dependent and in the United States too the Gates Foundation shapes (changes) public library policies
WHAT clearly contributed to financial problems in Greece was Microsoft dependency and outrageous deals with this monopolist. A couple of years ago Bill Gates traveled to Greece in order to ensure that the country stays stuck with Microsoft. We also wrote about Greece in relation to software patents and in relation to OOXML. Microsoft clearly knows which politicians to exploit there.
“Microsoft clearly knows which politicians to exploit there.”According to this new press release, Bill Gates is now using his foundation to attack the Greek’s right to software freedom. Only weeks ago we showed Gates doing the same thing in Vietnam. He was using his foundation along with Microsoft to jointly derail that country’s migration to Free software. How inappropriate and unethical, especially for someone who claims his foundation strives to help rather than to harm (or serve a personal agenda and ego). It’s a similar situation in Greece now that they try to cut costs. Consider recent articles like [1]-[8] (links at the bottom).
The announcement makes it clear that Gates’ foundation is once again ‘donating’ Microsoft indoctrination in public institutes. To quote the news:
The Seattle foundation presented the library with its 2010 Access to Learning Award. In addition to the prize, Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) will provide the library with donated software and technology training curriculum. Bill Gates is chairman and co-founder of Microsoft.
Software has no concrete value (Free software is typically gratis) and this so-called ‘training’ too is worth money to Microsoft, not to Greek people. It creates leverage to Microsoft and dependency to Greece.
For those who want to learn more about this travesty, we have gathered the remainder of the articles in English (it’s written like PR for Gates):
Notice what they really do here. It might seem subtle, but they are lobbying to change other libraries using the “models” trick, just like in schools. Basically, they try to present some “model” library or school (the Gates and Microsoft way) and then offer rewards to those who follow this model. To quote one more article:
The award, which is accompanied by a one million dollar cash prize, was bestowed to the Veria National Library as the “most successful library model in Greece and throughout the world”.
It is the “change to get a treat” lobbying tactic. How distasteful.
Libraries from the United States have more to teach about what Gates and Microsoft are doing in Greece right now. See for example:
The whole “libraries” spiel is shameless PR for self-serving deeds and it is still being done in the United States too. Earlier this month we found this article about Gates giving computers (with Windows of course) to more libraries while lobbying with his so-called ‘studies’ that he funded to serve his agenda in public libraries. To quote the Denver Post:
Responding to a rush of recession-time visitors, 88 percent of our libraries now offer access to job databases. And at least two-thirds of library staffs are helping applicants complete online job applications, according to a national survey by the American Library Association and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Gates is ‘injecting’ himself into many articles about libraries this way. It’s lobbying. Watch what Gates is doing in Kentucky public libraries this month. The underprivileged citizens are pushed into using Microsoft Office (“write resumes and learn computer skills,” says the article).
The article also says: “Kentucky participated in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Opportunity Online broadband grant program and received technical and consulting assistance to develop a competitive funding proposal for BTOP.”
See this report for more details. In Idaho they have just made up some euphemisms:
The ICFL will also receive $942,000 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. All the funding will go to the Online@YourLibrary project the commission is running.
What shocks us about Greece is that rarely do we see this lobbying going beyond US libraries. What next? Will Gates attempt to hijack the education systems worldwide, having already taken a lot of control over the US system [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]?
To Greece, Bill Gates is a threat as big as Goldman Sachs. As we’ll show in a later post, Gates has just invested a lot of money in Goldman Sachs too (using his foundation). It’s all about the money, but it’s marketed as goodwill. █
“Get me into that and goddam, we’ll make so much money!”
–Bill Gates, Microsoft
_____
[1] GR: Municipalities to get open source platform for electronic services
Greek municipalities are building an open source platform to offer citizens and small and medium sized business access to their services. This Local Government Application Framework (LGAF) will be developed by the Central Union of Municipalities of Greece (Kedke).
Sixteen cities and municipalites will begin the development project, including Imathia, Ithaca, Konitsa and Chios.
[2] Athens schools promote ‘open source’ computing
Athens was invited because it is one of few districts in Michigan teaching on Linux operating systems. Linux is a cost-free alternative to proprietary systems, such as Microsoft Windows or Apple’s Mac O.S. While some open source software applications, such as e-mail programs, come at a cost, Linux is almost entirely free. Windows or Mac systems can cost up to $400 per machine.
Open source means the source code for an operating system cannot be owned and is available for free.
[3] Open source tour of Europe: Greece
There are isolated examples of public open source adoption projects, such as Heraklion on the island of Crete expressing a preference for open source software for its e-Government portal, Athens using Linux, Apache and PHP, and Toperos Xanthis using Linux and Joomla.
[4] Agreement between Microsoft and the Greek government
On 1 February 2006, the Greek government and Microsoft announced a strategic partnership agreement (the “Agreement”). At least 6 questions by the parliament remained unanswered by the government. On 10 January 2008, the government created a law proposal that would make the Agreement have the power of law. The law was approved by the Parliament on 29 January 2008. The FFII and the Hellenic Linux Users Group filed a complaint to the European Commission, which is still (as of 28 December 2008) under investigation.
[5] Let’s set the ERT audiovisual archive free (manifesto – draft)
Greek citizens, but also citizens of other countries, we jointly sign this text on the occasion of ERT’s choice to distribute its audiovisual archive non-freely to the public. Our aim and ambition is to publicize our propositions so that they become the starting point of an open dialog among the Greek society, the European and global public audience and to signal the revision of backward policies and the creation of common political wealth.
Few days ago, the ERT administration presented the beginning of the availability, only via Internet streaming, of a part of its audiovisual archive. This move constitutes an important first step, which, however, in our opinion, is tarnished by the fact that the public availability of the archive is not made free, although the Greek and European citizens have paid their money to make the production and digitization of the archive feasible.
[6] Hot stuffin’ in Greece?
After the voting of the Greek HoD you may ask why the votes were 14 in total, when the organisations appointed to the committee are just 12. That’s only the latest of the magical wonders around OpenXML.
[...]
New voting members are joining the committee at the last minute:
However, during the discussion, the representative of the Information Society showed the fax he had received, to which was attached the decision 19103/08 of the ELOT administration, dated 1 February 2008, which modifies the composition of the Committee by adding four new organisations: the Ministry of Education, two departments of the Ministry of Economics, and Information Society S.A. The representatives of NTUA had not been informed of this decision.
[7] Greece sell-out Proposal
Microsoft Hellas proposes a contract that will take over control of the sovereign European state. Greece would lose the right to speak about other products its government uses and gain the right to support the business interests of the vendor and its policy goals.
[...]
Nice proposal, Microsoft will help Greece to spy on its ICT infrastructure in order to weaken the procurement power of Greece for the benefit of the supplier. Win-Win, right?
[8] GR: Open Source developers protest access restrictions public broadcast
Greek Open Source developers are protesting that ERT, Greece’s national broadcaster, will make its online archive available only for users of Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OSX.
The Hellenic Linux User Group six months ago approached ERT, after finding out the public broadcaster was restricting their access to a new archive. ERT is a public organisation, the developers argue, and should not discriminate
against users of Open Source.
[...]
ERT is developing an archive of its broadcast material, digitising film, video, pictures and hosting them online. The archive is going to be developed in a 1.95 million euro project, the major part of which is funded by the European Union, the Open Source developers say.
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