09.21.10
Posted in Mail, Microsoft, Servers at 4:11 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
ERROR: data inaccessible, application inaccessible
Summary: People and whole businesses that relied on Fog Computing from Microsoft for software as a service are unable to access their software and their data; Microsoft tries to keep things under control by compensating for the damage caused (but poorly)
THE previous post talked about a new Exchange vulnerability and “Microsoft Exchange Online users [are] reporting more cloud access problems,” says ZDNet. Welcome to the crazy world of Fog Computing — where failure at any layer of the network/server means access to neither applications nor data (no contingencies, either). Microsoft not only had a tough September as far as security goes; in terms of uptime too Microsoft had a hard time [1, 2, 3] and Exchange problems are just a symptom. Here are some articles that we found over the weekend:
i. Can Microsoft Properly Host Its Own Cloud Applications? (MSP Mentor)
ii. Microsoft hangs head, makes apology for US cloud bust (The Register)
iii. Microsoft Apologizes for Service Outages (IDG)
iv. Microsoft apologizes for recent BPOS outages (Seattle P-I)
v. Microsoft apologizes for spate of recent Online Services outages (ZDNet)
vi. Microsoft’s Cloud App Outages: Was Mea Culpa Enough?(IDG)
vii. Microsoft issues service credits after cloud outage(IDG)
viii. Microsoft sorry for US cloud coverage (ITNews)
ix. Microsoft issues credits after cloud outage (IDG)
Who would be willing to depend on the Microsoft stack when it comes to Fog Computing? “Microsoft Questions Salesforce.com Growth Prospects,” according to this news article, but it’s probably just jealousy. Salesforce patents affairs ought to show just how far Microsoft was willing to go to injure Salesforce and build a stonger reputation of a patent bully for itself.
When not entirely busy promoting the latest item Microsoft needs advertising for (this month it’s its CRM offerings [1, 2, 3]) Microsoft’s PR helper Ina Fried does some damage control regarding BPOS downtime [1, 2].
Users of Microsoft’s hosted versions of Exchange and SharePoint have had to endure a bumpy last couple of weeks, with at least three service interruptions or outages.
This is giving a bad name to Fog Computing and to Microsoft (both failures are good things to software freedom). But servers are not the only thing that’s down at Microsoft. There are financial issues, but that’s the subject of the next post. █
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Posted in Microsoft, Rumour, Security, Windows at 3:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: As loads of security problems occupy the world of Windows, Microsoft resorts to seeking help from security firms it competes with and more botnets thrive nonetheless
Microsoft is having a tough month dealing with many security problems caused by its own weaknesses. This post is a quick accumulation of some issues from the past 2 weeks.
Viruses
Earlier in the month we wrote about the ‘Here You Have’ virus, which got a lot of news coverage [1, 2, 3]. It was politically motivated:
THE HACKER claiming credit for the ‘Here you have’ Trojan, written as a blow against the invasion and occupation of Iraq, might be located in Spain.
Cisco says that this virus caused brief havoc. It affects everyone to a certain extent.
Stuxnet
Stuxnet is real bummer which we covered in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]. “Holes used by the Stuxnet worm remain in Windows XP,” said this recent report (there are more) and it is exploiting zero-day flaws. Microsoft liaises with Kaspersky in hopes of tackling this problem. Eventually some patches arrived [1, 2, 3, 4] but only after a lot of damage had been done. It turns out that Symantec — not just Kaspersky — helped Microsoft here:
Microsoft has credited security partners at Kaspersky Lab and Symantec for helping to close a critical Windows vulnerability that was being exploited by a sophisticated worm that has attacked industrial plant
Symantec
Earlier this month Symantec created a tie-up with Microsoft’s Fog Computing [1, 2]. Then came speculations that Microsoft was looking to buy Symantec. It was just a rumour (likely false), but investors took it seriously and Symantec surged [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. The stock being driven up like this may always lead to suspicion that someone spread the rumour just to make money in a short-term period. That’s illegal of course and the SEC should keep an eye open.
Speaking of acquisitions by Microsoft, “PopCap Rejected $5 Million Microsoft Buyout” says this one report among many more [1, 2,
3]. This one says that “Microsoft tried to convince PopCap it was only worth $5 million, but the studio didn’t believe it.” To quote another item, ‘During an interview with Develop, Jason Kapalka, creative director at PopCap, explained how even Microsoft tried to buy them, but the offer price was a joke: “We had a couple of funny instances in the early years of PopCap where we were talking to Microsoft about a possible acquisition – I think it was in 2002 – and they sat us down and gave us this long speech about why our company was worth 5 million dollars, at a time when we had four million in the bank.”‘
Fakes
Back to insecurity, an older rogue antivirus attack gave trouble to Windows users this month [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. It’s a form of malware. In an operating system where antivirus software is not necessary, this would hardly be an issue.
ASP.NET
Microsoft is acknowledging that there is a security problem with ASP.NET, as mentioned here last week.
Microsoft has released a security advisory about a vulnerability affecting Web applications built on ASP.NET.
Here is another article about it.
It’s already being exploited, based on today’s reports:
Attackers have begun exploiting a recently disclosed vulnerability in Microsoft web-development applications that opens password files and other sensitive data to interception and tampering.
The vulnerability in the way ASP.Net apps encrypt data was disclosed last week at the Ekoparty Conference in Argentina. Microsoft on Friday issued a temporary fix for the so-called “cryptographic padding attack,” which allows attackers to decrypt protected files by sending vulnerable systems large numbers of corrupted requests.
Now, Microsoft security pros say they are seeing “limited attacks” in the wild and warned that they can be used to read and tamper with a system’s most sensitive configuration files.
Malware
There are many new stories about malware, such as:
i. Report: More Than 1 Million Web Sites Serving Malware in Q2 [via]
Web anti malware firm Dasient has published data claiming that more than 1 million Web sites were compromised in the second quarter, 2010 – a sharp increase.
More than one million Web domains were infected with malicious code in the second quarter of 2010 – around one percent of all active Web domains, according to data released by Web security firm Dasient, Inc.
ii. Pirate Bay beset by tainted ads
The tainted ads exposed visiting surfers to Windows Trojans via drive-by download attacks. Pirate Bay has experienced similar problems in the past, and it’s unclear how long it will take to clear up the latest issues.
iii. Study: 33% of SMBs Have Been Infected With Malware From Social Networks
About one-third of small and medium-sized businesses have been infected with malware from social networks like Facebook and Twitter, according to a recent study released by Panda Security, a company specializing in cloud security.
iv. Windows malware dwarfs other viral threats
The vast majority of malware – more than 99 per cent – targets Windows PCs, according to a new survey by German anti-virus firm G-Data.
G-Data reckons 99.4 per cent of all new malware of the first half of 2010 targeted Microsoft’s operating system. Just 0.6 per cent of the 1,017,208 new malware programs discovered in 1H2010 targeted other systems, such as Apple Mac boxes and servers running Unix.
Botnet
When one in two Windows computers is said to be a zombie PC, there is clearly a problem, especially when it goes on for years, still unresolved. Some of the latest Windows botnets stories are:
i. A botnet for hire springs up
Insecurity outfit Damballa revealed that the creatively named IMDDOS (I’m DDoS) botnet can be hired out as “pressure test software” by those who are willing to cough up some cash and download an application. The application is little more than dialogue box allowing the user to point the botnet to a particular IP address and port number and start hitting it with spurious requests.
ii. Microsoft Helps Cox Identify Infected Computers
iii. Microsoft gets legal might to target spamming botnets
iv. Microsoft gets superweapon for fighting botnets
Internet Explorer 8
The very latest version of Internet Explorer is still not so widely adopted because of Microsoft’s hostility towards the Web which it still cannot reverse. Here is the latest vulnerability in Internet Explorer 8 [1, 2].
Late last week, a security flaw in Internet Explorer 8 was publicly disclosed to the Full Disclosure mailing list. The flaw allows attackers to steal private information from online services such as web mail and Twitter, allowing attackers to, for example, delete e-mails or send tweets from their victims’ accounts.
Exchange
“Microsoft Exchange opens the door for hackers,” says The Inquirer.
FIRMS RUNNING Microsoft’s Exchange mail server could find that users of its Outlook Web Access (OWA) software have their sessions hijacked.
A security vulnerability in Exchange Server 2003 SP2 and Exchange Server 2007 SP1 and SP2 means that attackers can take control of a user’s OWA session and issue commands up to the level permitted by security controls without the user knowing. OWA is a rich ‘web mail’ client that is offered by Exchange Server and has the look and feel of Microsoft’s standalone Outlook software.
According to this, a well-selling Linux phone (not Ballnux) suffers from its reliance on Exchange.
There are rumors that the possible technical problem with the Microsoft Exchange is causing the delay of Android 2.2 Froyo push to Motorola Droid X devices. Multiple news outlets including Droid Life has confirmed the news.
Who needs Exchange anyway? It’s just a brand. Android can do better than that and also avert the security problems. █
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Posted in Google, Microsoft, Search at 12:49 pm 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: Facebook is giving Microsoft even more power and more user information for search profiling; Yahoo is meanwhile dying in Microsoft’s arms, perhaps serving as a cautionary tale to Facebook
Facebook receives a lot of bad publicity not just owing to its size. The company’s founder called Facebook users “dumb fucks” (a phrase used regarding trust and privacy) and not surprisingly he has personal relationships with Microsoft executives, both past and present. Even Microsoft's patent troll Nathan Myhrvold is someone whom he knows personally and met.
“A company is practically or just virtually ‘brought’ when its agenda is changed to align with Microsoft’s.”In our previous posts that are focused on Facebook we showed an increase in technical collaborations between Microsoft and Facebook (they get slapped for swapping personal data of users). Microsoft once tried to buy Facebook, but it’s so much easier and cheaper to just command the company from the outside, just like in Yahoo’s case. A company is practically or just virtually ‘brought’ when its agenda is changed to align with Microsoft’s.
Earlier this month it was revealed that “Bing could get access to anonymized Facebook data” or that “Your Facebook ‘likes’ might influence your Bing search results”. It turns out that “Microsoft and Facebook [are] in Talks to Add ‘Like’ Utility to Bing” or to put it differently, “Bing [is] in talks to fine-tune search with Facebook ‘Like’ data”. In more general terms, “Facebook, Microsoft in talks to deepen search ties” (shades of Yahoo!) and there is more information here. Facebook has been sharing data with Microsoft for quite some time.
The latest joining between Facebook and Microsoft was perhaps revealed here, if the “Exclusive” prefix is anything to go by.
Facebook and Microsoft are discussing an agreement that would significantly expand the search relationship the pair have shared for many years, said several people with knowledge of the situation.
Microsoft booster Emil Protalinski reveals more points of intersection between this pair of companies. Speaking of intersections between companies, “Microsoft’s Blair Westlake to join I-Academy” says this new article which shows just how much further Microsoft is reaching: “Blair Westlake, corporate vp of Microsoft’s Media and Entertainment Group, has been tapped as treasurer of the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.”
Then there is the Nokia HR problem which we mentioned in the previous post. A few days ago we found the article titled “What We Can Learn from the Flight of Microsoft Execs to Amazon, AOL, GM, Nokia, Yahoo…and Micro VC”:
Sometimes all you need to do is look at where former Microsoft executives are going, to piece together some interesting trends in the tech industry.
In recent months, a number of high-profile leaders from very different divisions of the Redmond, WA-based software firm (NASDAQ: MSFT) have departed. This might be true in any given year at a company with roughly 90,000 employees, of course, but what’s interesting here is where these execs are going—and what their moves say about their respective industries. (Also noticeably absent are any publicized moves to hated competitors like Apple, Google, or Oracle.)
I posit that the following six personnel moves say more about the near-term future of industries like mobile, gaming, online services, and automotive than about Microsoft itself, although there might be some intriguing partnerships with Redmond in the works:
Nokia, Amazon, and Yahoo are all mentioned there. We gave examples of Microsoft executives entering these big companies and concerns are justified based on consequences we saw. Yahoo! is still just busy serving Microsoft’s search [1, 2] rather than advancing PHP and BSD with its own operations. Its once-leading E-mail service gets a belated revamp after Zimbra was passed to the Microsoft employees who run VM_Bware [sic].
“In northern America, Yahoo! routes traffic to Microsoft, so gullible journalists resort to pretending that the US is the whole world…”Nielsen, which Microsoft is apparently paying, remarks/plots/writes about the Yahoo!-Microsoft search outcome while Yahoo! still holds on to Alibaba [1, 2] (noteworthy is their recent Google deal in Japan).
In northern America, Yahoo! routes traffic to Microsoft, so gullible journalists resort to pretending that the US is the whole world and therefore “Microsoft’s Bing Overtakes Yahoo As Number Two Search Engine” [1, 2, 3, 4]. Nielsen is used, but Microsoft swaps data with Nielsen, which leaves room for bias. The Microsoft-paid comScore [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10] says the same thing [1, 2], but it also measures market only in the US while saying the opposite of everyone else sometimes (while it only claims to be checking one country, the American press often fails to mention this).
MSNBC carries content from another Microsoft booster (original in Fool.com). It’s just propaganda along with self-selected numbers (that same old "US-only trick") regarding search. The Microsoft press is trying to get across the idea that Microsoft is somehow winning in search. How utterly shameful. There is more of that boosting from the same source and Enderle is still given a platform by ECT, despite his conflict of interest. That’s just a good example of how bad the press can be.
Here is what the ‘Microsoft press’ in Redmond says:
So, that Microsoft-Yahoo search deal? It’s kind of working a little bit! With Bing now running Yahoo, Microsoft’s consumer-search market-share numbers now seem, at least, to be marginally less pathetic than they used to be. Keep on foisting that sword at those windmills, Don Microxofte.
They refer to US-only (or north America) deal as though it’s global. That’s rather dishonest, yet expected from such a biased source.
The truth of the matter is that Google keeps gaining (Google gains are currently covered in [1, 2, 3]) and Yahoo! suffers because Microsoft is ruining the company. It is infiltrating those important positions in the company (CTO for example) and halting useful development, not to mention funding of Free software projects. In companies like Yahoo! and VM_Bware there used to be potential for advancing Free software, but that’s hardly the case anymore. Microsoft made Yahoo! lose its identity and become just a channel for Microsoft’s biased ‘search’. One journalist asks, “Why Is It So Hard For Yahoo To Explain What It Is?” There is this new article in the MSBBC (“Yahoo bids to get its ‘cool’ back and remain relevant”), which led richslxh from Identi.ca to writing: “Google at least helps !foss Yahoo doesn’t, now they are whining. #Yahoo-is-tech #my #arse… Google introduced instant search, Twitter revamped its website. Yahoo in comparison talked about “cool things coming up soon”. #yahoo #fail”
“What Microsoft did here only increased unemployment in Silicon Valley.”It’s not entirely Yahoo’s fault. Microsoft hijacked the company (ousted the old/original management), took the valuable parts, and ejected the rest. And some people still say that Microsoft is beneficial to technology? What Microsoft did here only increased unemployment in Silicon Valley. Some people from Yahoo! were left without a job (they previous worked around Free software) and some moved to Microsoft. Google has had a similar problem for a while — the problem is absorbing former Microsoft staff like Daniel Costello in this new case or Don Dodge last year [1, 2, 3, 4].
Who is left to run Yahoo! then? One might say that the company will inevitably become unethical/criminal like Microsoft, maybe even based on this new and exclusive report from The Register: [via]
According to Yahoo!’s chief economist, Preston McAfee, the company is “handicapping” its auctions using an algorithmic method it calls squashing. And it had been doing so since 2007.
“When someone has a really high ad click probability, they’re very hard to beat, so it’s not a really competitive auction,” McAfee told The Reg. “So that they don’t just win [every auction], we do squashing. This makes the auction more competitive.
“It’s like handicapping. We handicap the people with the high click probability.”
This, McAfee said, can increase Yahoo!’s revenues. “The bidders respond by bidding higher. The one who was destined to lose is now back in the race, so they bid higher trying to displace the number one, and the number one is trying to fend them off so they bid higher too.
“We can make the competition a bit more fierce using squashing, even on keywords where there’s not much bidding.”
This is potentially illegal.
Here is an article which preceded it (also from The Register):
Yahoo! economist rebuilds ad empire with ‘Magic Formula’
[...]
McAfee is a disciple of Nobel Prize–winning economist Roger Myerson, whose “mechanism design theory” has been used to build everything from efficient trading systems to reliable voting procedures. “In the same way a physicist develops a theory and an engineer builds something that actually uses that theory, we’re the kind of people who use scientific principles to actually make markets or interactions among people work better, work more smoothly,” McAfee says.
Ultimately, it seems possible that Facebook’s trajectory is similar to Yahoo’s. It is gradually being assimilated. █
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Posted in Courtroom, GNU/Linux, Google, Java, Law, Microsoft, Mono, Patents at 11:16 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“In United States, software mafia sues YOU!”
Summary: With broken patent law in the United States and in far east Asia, winners in the mobile space are determined in the courtroom rather than the market
OUR IRC regular gnufreex says that “it looks like Microsoft is down to patent trolling…
“They are dead in mobile game,” he explains. “They can only try to extort patents now… And they might set off OIN… So they could be blasted forever.”
Actually, the OIN has been pretty useless in that regard. It has done almost nothing at all to defend Linux against Microsoft’s ongoing extortion. The mobile space is where Microsoft can make a lot of money from Android phones because Microsoft itself cannot produce anything worthy.
“They [Microsoft] can only try to extort patents now…”
–gnufreex“Oh… They still own Nokia,” says gnufreex. “Sadly, they might pull down Nokia with them.” gnufreex refers to what we last wrote about yesterday on a couple of occasions. We’ll return to that later and for the time being just point out the coverage from AP, the Reuters headline which says “Analysis: Another Microsoft exec pushes escape key” (Reuters also has “Factbox: Key problems facing new Nokia CEO Elop”), and some other articles which can indicate that Nokia cannot join Android because Microsoft would not like it (Nokia has Symbian, which does not advance Linux). “Android, Symbian to Vie for Dominance as Microsoft Phone Series Flounders” says one article and another proposes “10 Things Nokia’s New CEO Must Do ASAP”. We consider this to be a candidate for entryism based on the statement from Steve Ballmer, but hopefully we are wrong. Surely enough, it can also be a negative to Microsoft. Murdoch’s press says that “Elop’s Exit Adds To Microsoft’s Mounting Challenges” (to a certain degree it does).
As we showed yesterday, even Microsoft partners are unwilling to touch Vista Phone 7 [sic] this year and the number of companies that distance themselves from this platform appears to be growing (now it includes Sprint Nextel too).
Microsoft increasingly turns to software patents as a way of making money in the mobile space. Microsoft keeps paying all sorts of patent trolls and agitators like Uniloc [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] for their software patents and these companies, in turn, use this Microsoft money to sue loads of other companies. Here is Uniloc’s latest:
Uniloc has vigorously pursued legal action against some of the biggest technology companies in the world over unauthorized used of its patented technology since it sued Microsoft Corp. in 2003. That case was in Rhode Island; the more recent ones have been filed in federal court in Tyler, Tex.Uniloc won a $388 million judgement against Microsoft, but the judge threw out the verdict. At that time, Uniloc attorney Paul Hayes said, “This is a real David and Goliath case. Microsoft probably makes more profit in a day than Uniloc makes in sales in a year.”More recently, Uniloc sued Sony and McAfee.Other companies sued in the newest lawsuit include CA Inc.; National Instruments Corp.; Pervasive Software Inc.; Aladdin Knowledge, part of SafeNet Inc.; Pinnacle Systems, part of Avid Technology; Sonic Solutions Inc.
Some days ago we showed that Microsoft was verbally attacking Android using patent FUD. “It does infringe on a bunch of patents, and there’s a cost associated with that,” Microsoft’s Ellawala was quoted as saying. He then said “there’s a… cost associated with Android that doesn’t make it free.”
“This is exactly what I knew they’d say as soon as I read about Oracle’s lawsuit against Google,” Pamela Jones wrote in response to this in Groklaw. “Shame on Oracle for even inadvertently helping Microsoft FUD like this.”
Oracle’s lawsuit may also help .NET and Mono against Java. One blogger has just explained “how Oracle can easily be defeated in its patent offensive against Android”:
Interestingly, OIN appears to be rather stealthy and no longer publishes a list of protected technologies (other than mentioning linux) nor does it make public any strategy or commitment to protect anything. It might be doing this to prevent patent trolls finding loopholes or to prevent the organisation from wasting resources in unwinnable situations. Then again, it might just be an impotent organisation with no real teeth or one that only caters to protect the interests of its founding members and no one else.
Its amazing how much power OIN has (100+ patents) yet does very little to prevent the likes of Microsoft, Apple and Oracle from their anti-competitive and unethical actions which result in terrorising users of Open source with patents. The only success it has had was to purchase a set of anti-Linux patents that Microsoft would have sold to a bunch of trolls. Time to end the moral cowardice of OIN if you ask me…
Is it time for the OIN to finally shine? OpenBytes wrote about this too: (as a side note, the site is currently being trolled too much by pro-Microsoft trolls/AstroTurfers, who also abused other Web sites including Techrights under identical names)
Which comes as little surprise since over the life of this blog Ive commented on my experiences of Winmob with a MDA Mail. Lets also cast our minds back to the praise Kin received from some individuals and whilst most tech observers were predicting a flop (it was blatantly obvious in the case of Kin) we were called haters and accused of dishonesty. These claims were never retracted when the Kin was withdrawn having allegedly sold only 500 units. 500 units for a company like Microsoft? And we “haters” were right weren’t we?
As I mentioned in the comments section of the previous article (kindly prompted by a resident troll) Verizon is allegedly not jumping on board with Windows Mobile 7 at its launch. This must come as a blow to Microsoft, but then after the Kin experience who could blame Verizon if they have been put off getting involved in Microsoft’s latest “innovations”.
I strongly suggest you read the Registers article. Whilst Microsoft siding with Oracle may not be “news”, to me shows just how impossible it considers the task of competing with Android. Windows Mobile 7 will be touting great “sales” on launch day, just remember they are giving them away to their employee’s for free (apparently)…
Microsoft booster Robert Mullins has just cited Microsoft Florian and belittled Java’s future, as one ought to expect (his piece is further promoted by the pseudo-open source blog of IDG, in a new blog post which might show how much they love BSD because Microsoft too is based on some PostgreSQL codebase for its proprietary database).
While their comments were all obviously cleared by corporate, one of them, Stephen Chin, a director of software engineering, states: “This year at JavaOne is the seminal event of Oracle’s stewardship, which will drive the future of Java.”
“JavaOne 2010 is THE event that will make or break Java, the technology,” writes Rom Feria, a professor at the University of the Philippines. “I cannot wait to know what Oracle will do with this awesome technology—where will Java be on the desktop, enterprise and mobile in the next in the next year or two.”
The truth of the matter is that Java is still the dominant language and Oracle had arguably legitimate concerns here (not regarding Android at all).
To Microsoft, Oracle’s lawsuit against Google provides FUD against Linux and Java at the same time. To Microsoft it’s all about software patents at this stage (it reinvents itself as a parasite) and as further evidence of this consider Microsoft’s IP Ventures, which makes the news again in Ireland:
The company is based on technology provided by Microsoft under the Microsoft IP Ventures program in collaboration with Enterprise Ireland.
This program enabled InishTech to acquire and successfully build upon Microsoft’s IP in return for a providing Microsoft with a significant minority stake in InishTech.
Microsoft is trying to defeat GNU/Linux using absurd laws, not using products. The sooner everyone realise this, the sooner GNU/Linux blogs will place greater emphasis on subjects that truly affect the future success of Free software. As we argued some days ago, for software freedom the #1 barrier is software patents. A few days ago we explained this in great detail and earlier this month we showed that "the only remaining competition to mobile Linux is software patents" (this is one of the biggest growth areas at this moment). █
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Posted in Novell, Patents at 10:08 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A roundup of news about software patents in the United States, hopefully demonstrating that matters are unlikely to improve because people who are in charge fell into the pockets of monopolies and truth matters hardly at all
MATT ASAY, a former manager at Novell, says that software patents complicate Novell’s sale. This is a good lesson on the harms of software patents. Novell previously bragged about its software patents.
A few days ago we found this article about software patents that are awarded in Maine (where Novell’s headquarters are based).
Move Networks, which was founded by Novell’s co-founder, is reportedly shutting down but not before getting some more software patents:
According to Move, the patent covers adaptive streaming, and is similar to what Akamai, Apple, Adobe, Limelight, Microsoft, Netflix, Widevine and others have deployed. Move said those firms deployed adaptive bit rate architecture “inspired by” the firm’s invention.
Might Move Networks be in preparation for a lawsuit? Just like Interval it’s a dead company with a skeleton of patents. It’s worth keeping an eye on.
The other day we wrote about something called a "Patent Reform Bill" being pushed by senators. As the editor points out in Tech Daily Dose, it is not a reform. “Just because they call it “reform” doesn’t mean it is,” said the editor. TechDirt says that “Senators Make One Last Push For Bad Patent Reform That Will Make Problems Even Worse” and Law.com’s headline says that “Senators Urge Reid to Quickly Bring Amended Patent Reform Bill to Vote”:
A bipartisan group of 25 U.S. senators wrote a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Wednesday, asking him to bring an amended patent reform bill to the Senate floor as soon as possible.
Fourteen Democrats, 10 Republicans and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) signed the Sept. 15 letter. Intellectual property insiders say there hasn’t been this much support for a patent bill since the American Inventors Protection Act of 1999.
[...]
The amended bill, which enjoys widespread support from industry and intellectual property groups, would give the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) the authority to adjust patent and trademark fees, and it includes a procedure allowing for challenges to issued patents. Another key provision would change the U.S. patent system to award patents to the first to file instead of the first to invent. Other sections would require courts to consider only “methodologies and factors that are relevant to the determination of damages” and to multiply awards only for damages amassed after the infringement became willful.
What an insane idea. Who is this bill for? They are about to destroy the economy even more. There is this new article right now (“Germans win through sharing”) where economic historian Eckhard Höffner explains how patents and copyrights can harm progress. Previously, Höffner was slamming software patents more specifically.
Called by some a sellout to corporate interests and a surrender to Washington, Bill C-32 — the federal government’s third attempt at bringing the Copyright Act into the Internet age — has its share of opponents. So, new peer-reviewed research by German economic historian Eckhard Höffner may find some eager Canadian students. A lawyer and author of several books, Höffner’s new two-volume work, Geschichte und Wesen des Urheberrechts (his preferred English translation is The History and Nature of Copyright) contends that the German states’ 19th-century transformation from an agricultural backwater to an industrial power the equal of Britain was due in part to their relaxed attitude toward copyright and intellectual property (IP).
[...]
Höffner’s research grew out of an interest in the usefulness of software patents, which he suspects are too restrictive over the long term. Relaxed copyright’s role in the rise of Germany as economic superpower suggests proof that “longer and stronger protection has negative impacts.” More recently, the likes of China have profited from a considerably looser approach to IP than that of the developed West.
Here is an “intellectual property” cartoon (new Dilbert) which also makes fun of the idea. [via Groklaw]
The latest column from Goetz (holder of the first software patent) was debunked here and elsewhere before [1, 2] and now it’s Groklaw’s turn. Pamela Jones wrote a quick rebuttal in News Picks and it went like this:
I see pro software patent folks are quite worried about the “software is mathematics” argument, and I think they should be, because it’s true. Speaking as one die hard, as he puts it rather dismissively, I do continue to believe that software is mathematics, and hence not patentable subject matter, being “part of the storehouse of knowledge of all men”, as the Bilski opinion stated about the exceptions to Section 101, quoting from Funk Brothers. And I recall this section from the Bilski opinion that I consider germane:
“The Information Age empowers people with new capacities to perform statistical analyses and mathematical calculations with a speed and sophistication that enable the design of protocols for more efficient performance of a vast number of business tasks. If a high enough bar is not set when considering patent applications of this sort, patent examiners and courts could be flooded with claims that would put a chill on creative endeavor and dynamic change.”
And in real life we see exactly that is what happened. Can we not learn from that experiment that something is very clearly off-base? Mr. Goetz says he’d like to see frivolous patents done away with:
“In conclusion, while I am a strong proponent of software patents I am very aware, and agree with, many of the arguments against patents because of patent trolls, frivolous patents, e.g. Amazon’s one-click patent, and frivolous patent litigation that can put companies out of business. And I support changes in the Patent Law to reduce those problems.”
But I’d like to ask him this: where exactly would you draw the line to accomplish that goal if software patents are allowed at all? Can we not see that opening that door is precisely what led to the Amazon one-click patent? He argues for three things: “Innovation 2. A proper disclosure and 3. Usefulness.” So, new, useful and disclosed so that others in the field can reproduce the invention. That second is laughable. Please show me a software patent that fits that description of “proper disclosure”. As for the other two, I’m sure Amazon would argue it got over both bars. And the USPTO did issue that patent, so we can agree that the present system is broken. What precisely does Mr. Goetz suggest to fix it?
It is clear that the case for software patents looks increasingly weak over time. The problem is that lawmakers in the United States are not paying attention and the USPTO is too arrogant to understand and acknowledge its shortcomings [1, 2]. █
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Posted in Courtroom, GNU/Linux, Linspire, SCO at 9:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The many things that SCO and Linspire have in common; the verdict is in regarding the Kevin Carmony vs. Michael Robertson case
TWO years ago Linspire’s founder sold the company’s assets to Xandros and it has been over a year since we last heard about the legal fight this led to (within Linspire). Basically, Kevin Carmony and others alleged that Michael Robertson did not say where the money went and they have been fighting quite viciously for quite a long while. Well, a verdict is finally in, a long time after it had all begun:
Carmony, who sold out to Steve Ballmer 3 years ago, tells the story in his blog:
Once again, Michael Robertson’s bullying has been put to an end by the greatest legal system in the world. Yesterday, a jury vindicated four former Linspire employees who were being wrongly abused and attacked by Michael Robertson. He knew these employees had done nothing wrong, but used them as innocent pawns in his attacks.
Another company which is selling virtually all of its assets is SCO [1, 2, 3] and we have found two more articles about it [1, 2]. SCO and Linspire have several things in common
- Both companies were once in the GNU/Linux business, still obsessed with proprietary software
- Both companies received money from Microsoft to FUD Linux
- Both companies are/were selling all their assets
- All that remains in both companies is a legal battle
The world needs neither SCO nor Linspire. █
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Posted in Bill Gates, Finance, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Steve Ballmer at 9:07 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft’s poor CEO has no choice but to lobby Washington lawmakers (some of whom are from Microsoft) so as to pass the burden of taxation to the public
TECHRIGHTS has many posts about Microsoft’s tax dodge but rarely do we see individual positions on the subject. Yesterday we showed that a former Microsoft manager, Ross Hunter, in now working in the Washington government to rid Microsoft of tax while passing all the burden to the public. Now it turns out that Microsoft’ CEO personally pays to lobby for himself to pay less in taxes:
Ballmer and Bezos opposing income tax initiative I-1098
Microsoft as a company has been silent on the initiative, although the Washington Roundtable, which represents executives from large corporations, including Microsoft, opposes the measure.
The contributions by Ballmer, Bezos and others “says that they’ve reached the same conclusion that many others have, which is this is really bad for the economy and really bad for job creation,” Mullin said.
Sandeep Kaushik, a spokesman for Yes on I-1098 campaign, said he wasn’t surprised by the contributions. “We’ve known for some time that some of the state’s wealthiest people, who would pay more under I-1098, are opposing it for that reason,” he said.
What the article does not say is that Bill Gates’ family is exempted from tax because of the Gates Foundation and therefore its positions on the subject may be different. We wrote about this in [1, 2, 3, 4]. The Seattle Times fails to mention this crucial point.
Famous Ballmer quotes appear in the following new articles which are so timely:
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Here’s another one of our favorites from Ballmer. Yes, Larry Ellison was paid $74 million when Ballmer said this. Ballmer had received less than a million. Though most of Ballmer’s money comes from ownership of Microsoft stock. When this was reported, the guy was worth $15 billion. Sorry, but if you are worth that kind of money, the last thing you should be complaining about is someone else being overpaid.
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1. Google’s not a real company. It’s a house of cards.
– Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft (MSFT)
Allegedly, Ballmer made this statement upon learning that engineer Kai-Fu Lee was leaving Microsoft in order to join Google (GOOG). Microsoft sued Google over the hiring, arguing that it was in violation of Lee’s noncompete agreement. In a legal document used in the lawsuit, another engineer named Mark Lucovsky recounted Ballmer’s words when he decided to defect from Microsoft for Google in 2004.
Microsoft is most nervous and afraid of Google right now, so it plays dirty against Google, as we last showed just hours ago. Microsoft’s top competitors are (nearly) all GNU/Linux users/vendors, but GNU/Linux is not a company. For those who wonder why Microsoft is relevant to GNU/Linux, the answer ought to be obvious. █
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Posted in Deception, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 8:43 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Bad publicity for the BSA following some of its latest propaganda; International Talk Like a Pirate Day is reached
THE BSA LIES IN YET ANOTHER new 'study' which has already been debunked. IDC should be ashamed of itself for its role in it. We have already explained the subject of counterfeiting and how it is being misportrayed, too (see wiki page). Most recently we gave one rebuttal from Michael Geist in our daily links (surely there are more rebuttals) and also from Glyn Moody, who in turn got cited by some other Web sites. Examples of new coverage also include:
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The BSA (Business Software Alliance, or Bad Statistics Alliance, depending on who you talk to) have released yet another one of their comical studies. I have been very critical of these studies (See: Lies, Damned lies, and IIPA/BSA/etc statistics). What I recommend people do is skip to the methodology section and see what they are measuring, and decide for themselves whether what they are measuring is harmful or beneficial for the Canadian economy.
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Beyond the basic report, though, the BSA likes to dribble out other ridiculous claims based on the same report from May. The latest, is the blatantly false and simply laughable claim that “reducing software piracy would inject $142 billion into the global economy and create nearly 500,000 new jobs. This is wrong. Not only is it wrong, it’s been widely debunked a variety of times. There are two key (but related) problems. The first, is that IDC/BSA count “ripple effects,” which they don’t seem to realize mean double, triple or quadruple counting the same dollars. But, more importantly, they only count those “ripple effects” in one direction. That is, they look at how they believe software companies would make more money (and then hire more people and pay more taxes) if there was less software piracy, but they don’t even pretend to cover how paying for such software would mean tons of others would employ fewer people and pay less in taxes.
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Come on, folks. Help out the BSA. Use Debian GNU/Linux and other Free Software.
I am doing my part. Yesterday I converted the last kids’ PC in the school to GNU/Linux. I had forgotten it, but the teacher asked me to look at it because it had “slowed down”. I found the anti-malware and firewall had been defeated by malware… Now it runs Free Software and I do not expect problems except hardware. Do your part! Convert as many PCs as you can (legally) to GNU/Linux this year. I recommend Debian GNU/Linux but many distros will do a better job than that other OS. Shop around. You will find one you like and can recommend to others.
In another new article a whistleblower is glorified. The article quotes someone as saying: “I was aware that the BSA offers a financial payment but I never expected this much money [...] This is definitely an extra motivation for other people like me, already frustrated by a management that thinks that they can get more with less.”
It is stories like this one which ought to motivate migration to GNU/Linux. Here is a nice new cartoon which serves as a reminder of the pitfalls of proprietary software:
“There were some large gentlemen looking for Stef.”
“I expected them. I showed Stef how to change the wallpaper in Windows 7 Starter.”
“You didn’t tell him it was against the EULA?”
Talk Like a Pirate Day was just a few days ago.
Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day everyone!
There is no “piracy” in Free software. This is why Linux Journal is all humourous about this notion. The BSA depends on the existence of such villains for perpetuation of its business, which is why it lobbies so much against software freedom. That’s why it’s important to discredit the BSA when it resorts to propaganda. The hope is that the mainstream press will learn to ignore or at least critically assess BSA claims before publishing.
In summary, IDC (IDG) has helped the BSA prepare some big lies, but thanks to the Internet and a growing body or ‘ammunition’ against these claims, all parties involved lose their credibility as they very much deserve. █
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