10.20.10
Posted in America, Patents at 11:17 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: News about patents from New Zealand and from Canada
Software patents are a hot issue in New Zealand and it’s not over yet. “The Software Patent Debate was held on the 15th of October 2010,” wrote the person who uploaded talks from Peter Harrison, Mitchell Cooper, Igor Portugal, Brett Roberts, Peter Harrison, Ben Milsom, Mitchell Cooper, and Igor Portugal. Some people are in favour of software patents, others are against them, but as we showed earlier this year, developers in New Zealand overwhelmingly oppose software patents, whereas those in favour are usually lawyers and multinationals.
New Zealand has really been adhesive and effective as a small nation whose developers stood up against outside and internal threats like monopolies on maths. The same type of popular resistance has not yet been visible in Canada, where Amazon is causing problems [1, 2]. “One-Click” Not a Business Method,” claims one legal site. I will possibly be on Canadian television to discuss this issue soon. █
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Posted in Europe, Microsoft at 9:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Exodus continues at Microsoft and as head of the Symbian Foundation leaves we reconsider the role of Elop at Nokia
IT was only earlier this month that we wrote about Călin Tatomir, whose role with Microsoft (MD/head in Romania) had him associated with some controversial behavior such as whatever we covered in:
Well, Răzvan Sandu has just told us that “Călin Tatomir resigns as CEO of Microsoft Romania” and a translation of the report in Romanian can be found here. Tatomir’s departure comes amid many other high-level departures including Ozzie's. Maybe the CEO of Microsoft will also leave soon. Some people seem to be very much in favour of it.
As always, departure of Microsoft bigwigs leads to increased risk of entryism (their absorption along with influence inside other companies). Let’s consider what happened in Nokia after Microsoft’s president Elop had been made its CEO. We wrote about this subject in:
- If You Can’t Beat Them, Hijack Them (Microsoft Joins Nokia and It Already Shows)
- Linux Battle in Mobile Phones Becomes Primarily Legal, Not Technical, Due to Software Patents
- Taking Over Linux, by Proxy
- Microsoft Passes More of Its Executives to the MSBBC. What About Nokia?
- Microsoft President Quits, But is Nokia the Next Victim?
- Microsoft Insiders Galore: BBC, Nokia, Others Already Damaged by Microsoft Hires
- Linspire/Ballnux in Tablets; HP Possibly Experiments With Vista 7 in Slate After Abandoning It, Then Hiring From Microsoft
- New Article Says Nokia Might be Bought by Microsoft After Appointing Microsoft President as CEO
- Entryism Watch: Yahoo! Keeps Being Abducted by Microsoft Executives, HP Cancels Android Projects After CEO Appointment From SAP
- As Expected, Nokia and HP Betray Linux Under Microsoft-sympathetic New Leadership
Shortly after the departure of Ari the MeeGo manager (he was their top Linux guy) comes this departure of the head of the Symbian Foundation:
It’s not just the OEM partners that are abandoning Symbian; its executive staff is jumping ship too.
The Symbian Foundation announced that Executive Director Lee M. Williams is stepping down, effective immediately. Symbian Foundation CFO Tim Holbrow has been appointed by the Foundation’s Board of Directors to take his place.
Before joining the Foundation, Williams led the S60 Software organization in Nokia’s Device unit. He was appointed to lead the Foundation in October 2008.
[...]
Nokia proper has had several high-profile leadership changes over the past three months, including the recent departure of Ari Jaaksi, the head of Nokia’s MeeGo division. That came just one month after Stephen Elop became Nokia’s new CEO and Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia’s head of mobile solutions, resigned.
Let’s hope that Nokia will keep its strong Qt and Linux (MeeGo) focus. It’s worrying that some rumours suggest experimentation with Vista Phone 7 [sic] at Nokia just shortly after the joining of a new CEO from Microsoft. █
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Posted in Security, Windows at 12:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Bruce Schneier photo by sfllaw
Summary: Harsh words about Windows security from a security guru but promotion from the MSBBC
India’s “Grand Secret OS” (developed with involvement of the Indian government) has just led Bruce Schneier to making this statement which reminds us that transparency — not control — may be the key to making software more secure.
The only way to protect it is to design and implement it securely. Keeping control of your source code didn’t magically make Windows secure, and it won’t make this Indian OS secure.
Recall some of the latest (published this month) Microsoft security propaganda from the MSBBC [1, 2, 3]. “Who does Maggie Shiels work for? MS or the BBC It’s getting harder to tell,” argues our valued regular ThistleWeb, who respond to this latest advertisement from Maggie Shiels. She has been doing this for a while (pretending or neglecting to state that zombie PCS are a Windows issue). ThistleWeb adds, regarding this same article: “prepare for a new wave of malware, all powered by the infected MS cloud, instead of regular powered MS desktops”
Well, here is another new report about such issues:
A recently discovered category of malware — advanced evasion techniques — can sneak through most intrusion-prevention systems to deliver even well-known exploits such as Sasser and Conficker to targeted machines without leaving a trace of how they got there, researchers say.
When will the world’s governments realise that secure platforms are produced by collaboration rather than secrecy? And when will the BBC cease to be the second home of Microsoft UK? It has become embarrassing for a network which taxpayers are forced to fund. █
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Posted in Apple, FUD, GNU/Linux, Google at 12:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Andy Rubin, photo by Yoichiro Akiyama (Tokyo, Japan)
Summary: Andy Rubin (above) and Iain Dodsworth, the founder of TweetDeck, respond to lies told by Steve Jobs, whose products no longer sell well because of competition from Linux-powered devices
Steve Jobs, the control freak who is suing to prevent companies from selling Linux, is becoming no better than the other Steve (Ballmer, not Wozniak). He is spreading FUD about the competition, which is a loser’s strategy when you’re a CEO. Yes, Jobs is speaking badly about Android and he only gets backlash for it.
Jobs has reasons to be afraid of GNU/Linux. It does more than Apple’s operating system, it runs on more hardware, and it is a lot more affordable. PC Pro currently runs the article “Why I prefer Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition to the iPad” and it’s a reminder of the fact that hypePad may have catching up to do as less than 0.1% of the world’s people have one and it is far too limiting. Syanide says:
4.2 million people. They expected even more. I doubt any figures for Android tablets even exist.
Android is sold by many companies and they can fork it, too. hypePad is a one-company thing, it’s a monopoly.
Here is what PC Pro thinks of the hypePad;
I should admit that I come to the iPad pre-irritated by Apple’s attempts to swaddle the thing in a wholly unearned sense of awe. A “magical, revolutionary device”? Please: the telephone was a revolutionary device. It’s like when some 20-year old would-be Apprentice declares “I am the best manager you’ll ever meet”: I want to smack him twice, once for the arrogance and again for the delusion.
Jobs is speaking negatively about Android right now. He knows that few people (a niche of hardcore clients) would be willing to pay a lot more for just a brand name on a tablet that will always have even more restrictions. As the Financial Times puts it, “Apple iPad sales fail to hit forecasts” and it oughtn’t surprise.
Sales of Apple’s iPad have failed to meet the steadily rising expectations for the touchscreen tablet device, letting some of the air out of the enthusiasm that has built on Wall Street in recent weeks.
Apple’s shares slipped more than 6 per cent in after-hours trading after it said it had sold 4.2m of the devices in the three months to the end of September, below the 5m that some had projected. It sold 3.3m after being introduced part of the way through the prior quarter.
As we pointed out yesterday, Jobs has started a FUD attack on Android and Google has responded politely to show that he was lying.
If you haven’t heard by now, Steve Jobs pretty much lost his sh– (shut yo mouth!) yesterday during Apple’s earnings call — going way above and beyond his usual diatribe over Google and Android. To say it’s entertaining is pretty much the understatement of the year. And what’s more — these were prepared remarks. Somebody thought about this for a bit.
Jobs calls stock Android “a commodity” and invents the “Twitterdeck” Twitter client to rail against all of the different handsets developers must contend with. (Of course he meant Tweetdeck — only one of the more popular Twitter clients out there.)
[...]
Anyhoo, Android’s Andy Rubin fired up Twitter this morning to post his first Tweet, which you see above. Pretty much speaks for itself.
Our take? It’s telling how much time Jobs spent on his competitors in the earnings call. Best way to downplay the competition is to dismiss it. No longer. And in the process, Jobs is coming off more a loon and less a sage. Listen for yourself after the break.
Jobs not only lied about Android. In the process, he also lied about application developers for Android and TweetDeck’s CEO, for example, responds quite strongly according to Engadget and Business Insider which says:
This morning, Iain Dodsworth, founder of TweetDeck, responded to Jobs with a tweet: “Did we at any point say it was a nightmare developing on Android? Errr nope, no we didn’t. It wasn’t.”
If you look at the original TweetDeck post about all the Android handsets, and Android OSes out there, you can see the company is impressed by it all, not annoyed: “From our perspective it’s pretty cool to have our app work on such a wide variety of devices and Android OS variations.”
Business Insider has a video of “Steve Jobs’s Epic 5-Minute Anti-Google Rant”:
In a surprise, Steve Jobs joined Apple’s Q3 earnings call today.
Here is the video as ogg. It ought to remind people that Apple is hostile and harmful to GNU/Linux. It’s just spreading FUD and suing. █
Original photo by Matt Buchanan; edited by Techrights
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10.19.10
Posted in Microsoft, Steve Ballmer at 5:27 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Everybody around Microsoft’s CEO is abandoning and there is disagreement over what this will do to the company
MR. Ozzie's exit is just the latest among many departures and his exit led to even more speculations about Ballmer’s next move. Ozzie was arguably Microsoft’s #2 man.
We could find/reach no consensus on whether Ozzie’s departure is good news or bad news to Ballmer. Business Week, for instance, says that “Ozzie Microsoft Exit Fuels Concern Over Ballmer Bench”:
The departure of Ray Ozzie as Microsoft Corp.’s chief software architect fueled concern that Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer may not be doing enough to nurture would-be successors and executives who can set strategy.
Ozzie, 54, joined the company in 2005 and was later named as one of the two executives who would chart vision as co- Founder Bill Gates stepped away from day-to-day operations.
Microsoft boosters like Tim Anderson wrote about it and so did prominent Microsoft employees like Mini-Microsoft, who wrote: “I feel with Ray Ozzie’s departure that Steve Ballmer has finally asserted his complete control over the company. We’ve had some house cleaning this year, ranging from Mr. Ozzie to Mr. Bach & Mr. Allard to Technical Fellows to continued targeted layoffs. Perhaps this is due to the big, contemplative review Mr. Ballmer had with the Microsoft Board this year. Mr. Ballmer has hit the reset button. Do we have a Hail Mary pass, or is this Ballmer 2.0?
“I feel with Ray Ozzie’s departure that Steve Ballmer has finally asserted his complete control over the company.”
–Mini-Microsoft“We’ll see how that goes. In the meantime, here’s hoping that the technical Presidents reporting to Mr. Ballmer can take up the custom of intellectual rigor. Because that is one custom we can’t let decline anymore.”
If this is true, then Microsoft will be even more aggressive. Throughout his time at Microsoft, Ozzie hardly ever said anything provocative or controversial at all. Some believed that he would inherit the helm and be somewhat of a peacemaker. Now we know this will never happen.
People have been speculating for a while that Ballmer will be kicked out because he is not popular and even some investors want him out. Will Ozzie’s departure contribute to pressure for Ballmer to stay or to leave? There’s no real agreement on that. Besides, a Microsoft with Ballmer is a bully (which can be bad) and it is also a company with an ever-alienating strategy (which may make it better for Free software because he ruins the company). It’s like having Darl McBride behind SCO’s wheel. █
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