11.12.10
Posted in Microsoft, Mono, Novell at 1:53 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Another way of using Mono to make Microsoft stronger is found and Miguel de Icaza brags about it
ANYONE still doubting that Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza really works for Microsoft should check out his latest blog post, which Phoronix summarises as follows:
In this blog post by Miguel he shares that F# support will now be distributed by Mono for Linux and Mac OS X. There will also likely be F# support for Google’s Android and the Nintendo Wii too, which are other platforms supported by Mono, and that there may possibly be F# support for other Mono platform targets like the Apple iPhone and Sony PlayStation 3.
He spreads Microsoft to other platforms and ignores the bad consequences. It is valuable to his career as a Microsoft booster and he gets Microsoft interviews this way. █
“In summer of 1997, he [Miguel de Icaza] was interviewed by Microsoft for a job in the Internet Explorer Unix team (to work on a SPARC port), but lacked the university degree required to obtain a work H-1B visa.” — Wikipedia
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Posted in Apple, Microsoft, Security, Windows at 1:46 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Ways in which proprietary operating systems (even with excessive restrictions) get exploited and therefore cannot be kept under control by their users
SOFTWARE that contains code which cannot be audited is less likely to be secure. Many security folks agree on this point. Well, rather than use Linux as Apple engineers were about to do (Steve Jobs reportedly vetoed), Apple chose to pick code it need not contribute back to when building iOS, one of the world’s most restrictive platforms. Just because iOS is as locked down as a nail on a coffin does not make it secure, either. Appleʼs iOS dials calls without warning, researcher asserts” and an original post says:
I feel the risk posed by how URL Schemes are handled in iOS is significant because it allows external sources to launch applications without user interaction and perform registered transactions. Third party developers, including developers who create custom applications for enterprise use, need to realize their URL handlers can be invoked by a user landing upon a malicious website and not assume that the user authorized it. Apple also needs to step up and allow the registration of URL Schemes that can instruct Safari to throw an authorization request prior to yanking the user away into the application.
Apple has not managed to make the platform secure by expelling everything from it (except the list of “apps” that Apple approves). Kevin Lynch has just alleged that Apple is lying about its reasons for blocking Adobe Trash (Flash):
Last week, critics hammered Adobe over a report showing that Flash drained the new MacBook Air’s battery life by several hours. It’s not the first time Adobe has been in fisticuffs with Apple: the companies have been duking it out ever since Steve Jobs began ridiculing Flash and touting its alleged-killer, HTML5. Today, in an interview with Fast Company, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch answered critics who might say HTML5 is somehow more efficient than Flash.
Irrespective of whether Apple is lying or not, Adobe Trash needs to go away. It’s a sore spot and it does not belong on the Web. But the point to be made here is that Safari is not secure, with or without Trash. Apple just cannot really use “security” as an excuse for blocking potentially millions of applications (or “apps” as Apple likes to call them, as if “applications” is too big a word for its clients to memorise).
Over at Microsoft’s side of things, “Stuxnet attack unleashes a torrent of SCADA hacks”:
Intelligence agencies and private cybersecurity companies worldwide are scrambling to reinforce online defenses against a tsunami of malware directed at online industrial control systems in the wake of a successful attack on Iran’s uranium enrichment plants by the Stuxnet worm.
Demand for experienced Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition software experts in the IT security marketplace now has reached record levels, according to various sources.
The sophistication and apparent effectiveness of the Stuxnet worm served as a reminder that national intelligence agencies can deploy formidable attacks when they focus their energies on a single target and do so knowing that their assaults probably will be traced back to their source.
More links about Stuxnet can be found in the links below. █
- Ralph Langner Says Windows Malware Possibly Designed to Derail Iran’s Nuclear Programme
- Windows Viruses Can be Politically Motivated Sometimes
- Who Needs Windows Back Doors When It’s So Insecure?
- Windows Insecurity Becomes a Political Issue
- Windows, Stuxnet, and Public Stoning
- Stuxnet Grows Beyond Siemens-Windows Infections
- Has BP Already Abandoned Windows?
- Reports: Apple to Charge for (Security) Updates
- Windows Viruses Can be Politically Motivated Sometimes
- New Flaw in Windows Facilitates More DDOS Attacks
- Siemens is Bad for Industry, Partly Due to Microsoft
- Microsoft Security Issues in The British Press, Vista and Vista 7 No Panacea
- Microsoft’s Negligence in Patching (Worst Amongst All Companies) to Blame for Stuxnet
- Microsoft Software: a Darwin Test for Incompetence
- Bad September for Microsoft Security, Symantec Buyout Rumours
- Microsoft Claims Credit for Failing in Security
- Many Windows Servers Being Abandoned; Minnesota Goes the Opposite Direction by Giving Microsoft Its Data
- Windows Users Still Under Attack From Stuxnet, Halo, and Zeus
- Security Propaganda From Microsoft: Villains Become Heroes
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Posted in Hardware, Microsoft at 1:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Zune is becoming the dirty laundry of Microsoft, which just like “KIN” ought to be axed
AS THE “KIN” teaches us, sometimes it’s better to just give up on a whole product and end the embarrassment early (Verizon seems to be trying and even struggling to get rid of unwanted “KIN” stock, still). [thanks to Ziomatrix for the pointer]
“KIN” used a platform similar to that of Zune. Some might say that KIN was the “Zune phone”. Some success, eh?
Well, Zune is still a disaster and Microsoft boosters/experts appear to believe that it should be axed. Our show guest Brandon alleges that Microsoft possibly “resorts to spam to push Zune”.
Is the spam part of Microsoft’s zune advertising campaign? It certainly looks like it. Though I’m sure they don’t call it spamming, they call it Public Relations.
There is not enough evidence to suggest Microsoft (or one of the PR agencies it is contracting) is behind it, but given that Microsoft’s Zune advertisers were at one point arrested for guerrilla marketing, anything is possible. █
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Patents, Ubuntu at 9:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Mono: is it a science, or is it a faith?
Summary: The Mono proponents have yet again turned to “ad hominem” mode because the simple facts about Mono-associated risk cannot be refuted
TECHRIGHTS’ “Boycott Novell” initiative has warned about Mono patents since 2006 (weeks after Novell and Microsoft signed their patent deal). At the time, not many people dared to slam Mono (the FSF did not do so until 2009), but over the years more evidence was gathered to show that Mono is indeed a problem. Now there is more of a consensus and general agreement about it although the approach taken to alleviate/mitigate the issue varies somewhat. Techrights has been relatively polite about it.
Guy Van Sanden (at “nocturn”, posting from Belgium) got flamed by Mono proponents after he had criticised Mono. For his recent posts about Mono, which we covered at the time [1, 2, 3, 4], he received personal abuse from the bullies [1, 2] and liars. It’s almost as though Mono is a religious cult akin to Scientology. I have personally seen and over the years experienced what one goes though for criticising Mono (being called the “c” word and talked to with the “f” word, even assaulted with libel). No other topic seems to invoke quite as much resentment as from the group of Mono proponents, who often tend to trust (sometimes love) Microsoft as well. Van Sanden has just posted some instructions for removal of Mono from one’s system. Innocent enough, right?
Following my post “Get the facts on mono” from yesterday, I thought it would be nice to post a refresher about how to remove mono from Ubuntu and more importantly, prevent it from being reinstalled (for example by installing a package if you are not aware it was built on mono).
Here is the “Get the facts on mono” post which he refers to. Notice the number of comments and flames. The concise argument he made goes like this:
The debate surrounding the replacement of Rhythmbox with Banshee in Ubuntu 11.04 brings back many of the concerns about F-Spot, Tomboy and gBrainy: the mono patent trap.
But a lot of time has past since the original discussions and in that time, some things became very clear.
* Microsoft does hold patents on the .NET technology that mono is based on
* They made a community promise not to sue FOSS projects implementing the ECMA submitted parts of .NET
* The community promise is not a binding patent grant
* Mono implements a lot more than the ECMA parts, De Icaza’s promise to seperate mono into safe and non-safe parts was never fulfilled
* There is no promise on the non-ECMA parts
* Software like F-Spot and Tomboy are therefor using parts based on non-free bits of .NET
So, why is including MP3 support and DeCSS problematic but do we digg a hole by using patented technologies from one of the biggest patent trolls on the planet???
I don’t think any of this is malicious, but it does feel naive and misguided to me…
Jason from The Source has defended the arguments above by adding supporting evidence in a useful, precise, and easy-to-follow way. Jason claims that “Mono Criticism” is being falsely characterised as intolerance or “Uninformed Hatred” as he puts it:
Mono Apologists must rely on uninformed acceptance of their points, because one can not simultaneously be informed and make the arguments that Team Apologista does. The best honest argument Team Apologista can make is something along the lines of: “Mono may have issues, but so do a lot of projects, and we don’t think ours rise to a level of serious concern.”
That argument is fair, truthful, and – unfortunately – not very convincing. That is why Team Apologista must resort to misrepresenting the FSF, or trying to silence critics, or trotting out one logical fallacy after another, or resorting to personal attacks.
In the last version of Ubuntu, Canonical decreased its dependence on Mono, so we assumed that the problem was being addressed. But Banshee is possibly to be included in the next version of Ubuntu, as we noted in some of the following posts:
Banshee is a Novell product. It uses parts of the Mono project which the MCP does not cover (by design) and while it’s probably fine for SLED users to use for another one year and one month, all other users of Banshee would be sensitive to Microsoft lawsuits (and Microsoft is specifically suing over Microsoft APIs in Linux, as stressed in the previous post).
David Siegel, a Canonical employee, currently works on the controversial Unity, which is based on Vala (discussed in our pilot episode of the TechBytes show). Vala is quite similar to Mono but with an escape route from complete dependency on it. Anyway, Siegel is better known to people because of GNOME Do, which gets another facelift or extension:
A trusted source, one wishing to remain anonymous, sent in the following screenshot to the OMG! Inbox along the assurance that what you see below ‘is not a mockup but rather work in progress.’
This post from OMG!Ubuntu (occasional promoter of Mono [1, 2, 3, 4]) contains very few details, in fact almost none at all except the picture. It’s an issue because we have come across a Ubuntu proponent who dislikes Mono and reads/links to OMG!Ubuntu over at at Identi.ca. This reader of OMG!Ubuntu is now praising GNOME Do, probably because he — like many others in his position — simply does not know that GNOME Do is based on Mono. Getting those people to recommend such Mono applications is like getting angry, exploited people to lobby for the same billionaires who are exploiting them (and that’s what the Tea Party managed to achieve in the US). █
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Posted in Courtroom, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft at 5:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft litigation against Linux (not just via proxies like SCO and maybe Acacia) is chosen as a principal route by this company that cannot compete and whose biggest investors are bailing out
JUDGING by Microsoft’s behaviour alone (never mind the layoffs, dead products, departing managers, etc.), Microsoft is in serious trouble. It’s SCO’s successor. Its market presence with Windows and Office is the only thing which really keeps it going for the time being (same with few of SCO’s remaining deployments), and that too is an eroding market where Microsoft relies on chasing poor people (whom it labels “pirates”).
“BlackRock cuts Microsoft stake below 5 percent,” alerts Reuters.
BlackRock (BLK.N), one of the biggest holders of Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) shares, has cut its stake in the software company below 5 percent, according to a regulatory filing on Tuesday.
As another headline put it (all caps), “BLACKROCK AND STEVE BALLMER ARE SELLING MICROSOFT SHARES, SHOULD YOU? (BLK,MSFT)”
BlackRock (NYSE:BLK), which is one of Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) largest shareholders, cut its stake to below 5%, just days after Steve Ballmer sold 50 million shares of the company.
Chips B. Malroy gave us those two links along with some insights last night, quoting the above as saying: “At the end of last quarter, BlackRock’s major units held about 470 million Microsoft shares, according to Thomson Reuters data, about 5.5 percent of the company.”
“Just like the CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer,” argues Malroy, “BlackRock has no expectations of MS stock rising. In fact, this next link maybe the reason for all the selling.”
“Just like the CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, BlackRock has no expectations of MS stock rising.”
–Chips B. MalroyTo put some of these recent developments in context, Ballmer will possibly lose his job if he does not manage to keep up and catch up with the mobile market. He joked about it about a month ago and last week we started urging for people to share sales figures of Vista Phony 7 [sic], where Silverlight came to die. Just as we wrote some days ago, they refused to give numbers, which was indicative of failure because they always brag when they can.
Well, we finally have some numbers regarding Vista Phony 7 [sic] sales. It’s looking pretty ugly. The Inquirer‘s headline says that “Microsoft is failing to shift many Windows Phone 7 handsets” (just as The Inquirer claims to have predicted).
Over here in Blighty, Microsoft and mobile operators have been cagey about releasing sales figures, making vague statements about “strong demand” that did nothing to quell speculations that WP7 hasn’t got off to a rousing start. The 40,000 handsets that Microsoft apparently has sold in the US in the first 24 hours are a sign that even after the Vole spent hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing, punters are simply not buying into the hype.
“Market researchers claim that the Vole’s WP7 handset partners have managed to flog only 40,000 WP7 smartphones during the first 24 hours on sale in the US,” Malroy quotes it as saying. He adds: “So is the WP7 to become the “next of Kin?” Or rather, the next Kin.”
One of the original reports with the number can be found here (“Microsoft Sells 40K Windows 7 Phones”). It says that:
The anemic sales number does not include the 89,000 Microsoft employees that will be given free Windows 7 phones.
Vista Phony 7 [sic] is doing pretty poorly and “Microsoft reps declined to comment,” according to the article. Anything they say would help verify the embarrassing reports. To put things in perspective, Google (Android’s nearly sole maintainer) activates 5 times more Linux phones than Microsoft does upon hyped-up product launch. How many units per day ship with Vista Phony 7 [sic] after this launch? Could it be less than 10,000 a day? That’s quite likely. The few people who bought “KIN” (just 503 people according to Gruber) are sometimes getting rid of them on eBay. Is Vista Phony 7 [sic] too going the way of the dodo (“KIN”) within years? Microsoft made a big bet on it by giving it to all of its employees (for internal use, so Silverlight may now be required for internal use too). One has to remember that Vista Phony 7 [sic] users are Microsoft employees a lot of the time. Microsoft seems to have also made some deal with Dell. Few other companies would adopt such an immature product because, as IDG helps show, a platform being “Windows”-labeled is not expected to be secure, either.
Many businesses will not be able to support Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 operating system, which began shipping in the United States today. Like the competing Google Android, Windows Phone 7 does not support on-device encryption to protect data stored on it. Many businesses require such encryption to be able to access corporate data through EAS (Exchange ActiveSync) policies and automatically block connections from devices that don’t support device-level encryption.
Users will get the error code 85010013 when trying to sync their email on a Windows Phone 7 device, rather than an English description of the problem. Microsoft’s support forum confirms the lack of on-device encryption support.
So, just like Swiss cheese, Windows would not be what it is without lots of holes. The ‘secure’ Wi-Fi is simply flawed in Vista Phony 7 [sic]:
A flaw possibly linked to Windows Phone 7 itself may be preventing devices from connecting to secure Wi-Fi points, new owners have discovered since launch. Those trying to reach a locked network are told they “couldn’t reach the Wi-Fi network” even when using a known good password. The issue doesn’t appear confined to one device and has affected at least the Dell Venue Pro and HTC HD7, BGR has heard.
This makes Vista Phony 7 [sic] unsuitable for many business-oriented uses. What’s left for it to go after? Any niche at all? Probably not.
“Microsoft employees can meanwhile use yuppie-Nuremberg defense to justify extorting the competition.”Microsoft has a Plan B however. If it cannot make something which works, then it wishes to make money from other companies’ products (which do work). Continuing its tradition of extortion (Horacio and his thugs can just sue more), Microsoft recently initiated two lawsuits against Motorola. Microsoft tries to make this company along with other companies surrender and pay Microsoft for Linux without even a challenge. It’s racketeering [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7].
Some would conveniently try to label Microsoft a “patent troll”, but as long as Microsoft delivers a mobile platform — no matter how useless it is — Microsoft can’t be called “patent troll” due to these cases of aggression while extorting Android phone makers. Microsoft employees can meanwhile use yuppie-Nuremberg defense to justify extorting the competition. There’s no good excuse for such a behaviour.
“While it might be too early to tell if WP7 is the complete failure like Kin was,” argues Malroy, “the rumors coming out seem to support this. Could this be why Steve Ballmer and BlackRock are selling shares off? After all, Steve Ballmer already knows the WP7 sales figures from Europe, which he is not sharing with the world. But he is dumping stock. As WP7 maybe starting to fail in a big way, Microsoft turns to more legal action. And Motorola countersues MS:”
The lawsuit comes just a day after Microsoft filed its second lawsuit against Motorola in recent months. Last month, Microsoft took aim at Motorola for the alleged infringement of nine patents in Motorola handsets that use Google’s Android mobile software. On Tuesday, Microsoft filed suit against Motorola over licensing terms for technology Microsoft uses in its Xbox game machines.
Motorola Mobility filed the current lawsuit in the U.S. District Courts for the Southern District of Florida and the Western District of Wisconsin, it said in a statement Wednesday. The patents are related to a number of technologies, including digital video coding, e-mail technology including in Exchange, Messenger and Outlook, and Windows Live instant messaging software. Motorola also directly attacked the Xbox patents in question in the recent Microsoft case, which are related to video coding and Wi-Fi technology.
“Since WP7 cannot compete with Android based on Linux kernel,” says Malroy, “MS sues companies that use Android like Motorola. Clear sign of the coming end for Microsoft when a company is desperate and cannot compete. This lawsuit is most likely MS attempting to apply more pressure on MS to settle on using Android and pay MS. Which resulted in Motorola counter suits. Motorola is not going away quietly. Is this all that Ballmer and Microsoft have, lawsuits because they cannot compete and turn out products that sell without monopoly power?”
Wayne Borean’s ongoing roundup called “Microsoft Death Watch” is now accumulating evidence from Business Insider and it includes the news about Vista Phony 7 [sic]:
So if Microsoft only sold 40,000 phones on the first day, it’s quite possible that Windows Phone 7 is going to be a flop. There are also rumors of stores that sold out however. Whether this is because of limited stock, or because of higher interest in some areas, we don’t know. A final rumor was that there have been shortages of touch screens, and that this may have affected launch stock.
So to summarise, as long as Vista Phony 7 [sic] is around, Microsoft cannot be called a “patent troll”, but it’s clear that litigation against rivals is Microsoft’s plan for the future. It’s all about software patents and the only ones which are named correspond or refer to FAT, which should give Mono a clue. Microsoft APIs are an Achilles heel and ActiveSync too is an example. We’ll expand on Mono in the next post. █
“That’s extortion and we should call it what it is. To say, as Ballmer did, that there is undisclosed balance sheet liability, that’s just extortion and we should refuse to get drawn into that game.”
–Mark Shuttleworth
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Posted in Courtroom, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Novell, SCO at 3:40 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft’s little helper, SCO, refuses to die just yet as it’s playing the legal system
Was SCO’s bankruptcy in 2007 a fake one? Some say that SCO uses it as a strategic tool with which to buy more time to attack Linux and increase uncertainty. SCO is repeatedly delaying bankruptcy hearings and even the latest one gets cancelled again and again. Groklaw is not especially surprised anymore:
Well, knock me over with a feather. I surely didn’t expect this. SCO’s hearing in bankruptcy court in Delaware set for November 8 has been cancelled/postponed.
Groklaw has some other posts about the case [1, 2, 3], which carries on because SCO manages to scrape funds off mysterious places (whilst decreasing staff size). █
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