05.12.11
Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Vista 7, Windows at 8:00 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft’s back door-friendly operating system receives praise from the secret agencies but a bad report card regarding actual security
THE ANTIFEATURES are totally free of charge and they come with all editions of the operating system which the NSA is recommending for peculiar reasons. Yes, Vista 7 is not secure as we showed in older posts such as:
- Cybercrime Rises and Vista 7 is Already Open to Hijackers
- Vista 7: Broken Apart Before Arrival
- Department of Homeland Security ‘Poisoned’ by Microsoft; Vista 7 is Open to Hijackers Again
- Vista 7 Security “Cannot be Fixed. It’s a Design Problem.”
- Why Vista 7 Could be the Least Secure Operating System Ever
- Journalists Suggest Banning Windows, Maybe Suing Microsoft Over DDoS Attacks
- Vista 7 Vulnerable to Latest “Critical” Flaws
- Vista 7 Seemingly Affected by Several More “Critical” Flaws This Month
- Reason #1 to Avoid Vista 7: Insecurity
- Vista 7 Left Hijackable Again (Almost a Monthly Recurrence)
- Trend Micro: Vista 7 Less Secure Than Vista
- Vista 7 Less Secure Than Predecessors? Remote BSoD Now Possible!
- Vista 7 Unacceptable for Large Businesses and Windows XP Still Not Secure
A Windows site says that “Windows 7′s malware infection rate climbs, XP’s falls” (many thanks to Will for the link). To quote:
Microsoft released data today showcasing that Windows 7′s malware infection rate has climbed by more than 30% during the second half of 2010, while the infection rate for Windows XP has dropped by more than 20%.
As ComputerWorld reports, during the second half of 2010, the data shows that 32bit Windows 7 computers were infected at an average rate of 4 PCs per 1,000, compared to 3 PCs per 1,000 that took place during the first half of 2010. This is a 33% increase in the infection rate. Those running Windows 7 64bit had better chances of avoiding problems with an infection rate of 2.5 PCs per 1,000.
Most secure operating system? Tell that to the NSA, which actually has reasons to treat insecurity as a good thing. The government’s own security depends on its ability to keep on eye on the citizens’ computers and we know that such power is being misused.
Katherine Noyes has this good new article on the subject. It quotes Mr. Robert in places:
“NSA recommending Vista for home security is merely a reflection of the reality of monopoly in the retail space,” blogger Robert Pogson offered. “In the USA probably as few as 2 to 3 percent of users use GNU/Linux, so a recommendation is almost useless.”
Those who are serious about security “are already aware of SELinux, a product of the NSA,” Pogson added. “The NSA is merely recommending that folks move on from XP, a poor OS poorly supported by M$. Folks who would heed that advice probably do not even know GNU/Linux exists.”
Recommending something whose workings are a secret is always a bad idea. Nobody can tell what’s actually in it.
The bottom line is, Vista 7 is not secure, but the “security” in national security means almost the opposite of what people assume it to mean. National security is about intruding people’s lives, i.e. breaching security, not blostering it. Whatever the NSA says, consider doing the opposite if you care about freedom. █
“Government relations is a test of how you manage frustration” ~Anonymous
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Posted in Courtroom, GNU/Linux, Patents at 7:41 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Bedrock’s lawsuit against Yahoo! sinks like a rock. Here’s why.
NOT so long ago Yahoo joined the Linux Foundation, whose head has just said that “Software Patents invite Trolls,” based on Falk Metzler, who is a patent lawyer.
Well, on the same day we learn that “Yahoo won the Bedrock patent trial that Google lost”: [via]
There may be only one place in America where Yahoo is outperforming Google: the Tyler, Texas, courtroom of federal district court judge Leonard Davis, where a patent holding company called Bedrock accused both companies of infringing a Linux software patent.
On Tuesday Yahoo and its lawyers from McDermott Will & Emery won a jury verdict that Yahoo does not infringe Bedrock’s patent, which involves code for removing expired records while the operating system performs other operations. On April 15, a separate Tyler jury reached a contrary conclusion in Bedrock’s case against Google, finding that Google infringed the same patent and awarding Bedrock $5 million in damages.
To be fair, the Google verdict was hardly the windfall Bedrock and its lawyers at McKool Smith were hoping for. McKool lead trial counsel Douglas Cawley told jurors that Google had saved half a billion dollars as a result of its infringement of Bedrock’s patent. He asked for an award of $183 million and got only $5 million. But given the success Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan has had in East Texas litigation for Google, it’s worth taking a look at why Yahoo got a flat-out defense win and Google didn’t — especially because McKool put on the same three Bedrock witnesses (the patent inventor, a damages expert, and a technical expert) in both trials.
First off, Bedrock had a stronger case against Google. Cawley put on evidence that Google used Bedrock’s Linux code on its servers (although Google got rid of the code before trial). Yahoo, on the other hand, used a different form of Linux, and its lead trial lawyer, Yar Chaikovsky and Fay Morisseau of McDermott Will, were able to argue that Yahoo never executed the Bedrock code.
Yahoo also benefited mightily from going to trial second. Chaikovsky and local counsel Jennifer Doan of Haltom and Doan were in the teeming throng of defense lawyers who sat through the Google trial in April, along with lawyers for co-defendants Amazon, AOL, MySpace, and SoftLayer. They got to preview Bedrock’s case and watch how Cawley of McKool Smith handled Google’s experts and its corporate witness, software engineer Lucas Pereira. That undoubtedly helped Chaikovsky prepare his witnesses. (McDermott was also smart to call Yahoo co-founder David Filo as his corporate witness — East Texas juries love hearing from top-level execs.)
For related posts about Bedrock, consider the following:
Soon we will find out how mobbyists will try to spin this after exaggerating the risk and pushing journalists to play along (following the preliminary Google ruling, whose outcome was dubious and can be overruled). █
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Posted in News Roundup at 6:26 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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As we rev up our podcast engines for the next recording, we want to hear your words: what do you think is the killer feature of Linux? What’s its strongest selling point, the thing that makes it better than its competitors? Perhaps you reckon the kernel’s rock-solid stability is key, or maybe you think the plethora of desktop environments gives it an advantage.
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Desktop
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Google
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Google is rumoured to be set to announce a scheme where students can get a Chrome OS toting laptop for a $20 (£12) a month contract, mimicking the way in which many people get the latest mobile phones.
According to Forbes, Google will announce the deal later in the day at its Google I/O conference, and the package will include Google Apps.
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I’ve been watching the commentary on Google’s announcements yesterday that their Chrome OS will be available on laptops from partners – ChromeBooks – and that they will offer a scheme where they provide a ChromeBook to businesses and students for $20-$30 per month. It’s clear that some people are not seeing the real deal here. I’ve seen comments on early reviews, Identi.ca and Twitter saying this is just a Linux laptop and asking why it will be any more successful than previous abortive attempts at the same, such as putting Ubuntu on “netbook”-style laptops.
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When Google first started talking about Chrome OS, I thought it might be turn into a Windows killer. Well, now we know that the first commercial Chromebooks will be available in mid-June and there’s no question: Google is aiming right at the Windows business desktop market.
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As Google Chrome OS nears a grand release, everyone is excited about a brand new operating system entering the monopolized desktop market. On the other hand, Mark Shuttleworth has set a target of 200 million Ubuntu users in the next four years. With Ubuntu 11.04 ‘Natty Narwhal’ not being as good as expected, Shuttleworth’s plans, if not impossible, may seem a bit too ambitious.
Many people believe that Chrome OS’s release can further hamper Ubuntu’s stagnating growth. However, if we consider the recent desktop trends, and if everything goes well for Google, Chrome OS might actually be the magic boost Ubuntu so desperately needs. Here’s why:
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Google co-founder Sergey Brin has said that only about 20 per cent of Google’s employees are still using Microsoft Windows, and that all of those users are on Windows 7.
He stressed, however, that he is not sure of the exact percentage.
Rumors had indicated that within the company, Google had almost entirely banned Windows. Speaking at Google’s annual developer conference on Wednesday, where and when the company announced that it will offer Chrome OS notebook for a subscription fee, Brin said that Google hopes to move most of its employees to Google’s Chrome OS, an operating system that puts all applications inside the browser.
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Audiocasts/Shows
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Kernel Space
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Eventually we will see Ubuntu Linux deploy Btrfs as the default file-system. While we will likely not see the switch from EXT4 to Btrfs with Ubuntu 11.10, there is work underway on Btrfs integration support into Ubuntu’s Update Manager.
With Fedora 13, Red Hat introduced system roll-back support whereby anytime a yum transaction takes place for installing a new RPM package on a Btrfs root file-system, a snapshot will be created. Btrfs supports efficiently creating copy-on-write snapshots. Fedora has been quicker to adopt Btrfs installation support and its features, but now Canonical is finally supporting this path.
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Applications
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Proprietary
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Now, be honest: do you remember that aQuantive deal? Are you aware of any benefit that Microsoft has managed to extract from a purchase with that “shocking” purchase price? No, me neither. Now compare that acquisition with its current move, which has also “shocked” people for its “substantial overpayment”. Sounds like déjà vu all over again.
But leaving all this shock aside, what will the impact of an undoubtedly important move be for open source?
Whatever else it might mean, one consequence of the deal is that Microsoft now has less money in the bank, which will have knock-on consequences in all the markets it is active in. Given that it started out with $50 billion, and now has “only” $42 billion, you might think that effect will be minimal. But according to this interesting analysis, most of Microsoft’s money is held outside the US, which means that it’s actually quite constrained in the things it can do with it.
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Now, before any Skype fan-boys get on soap boxes to tell Mr. Vaughan-Nichols and myself just how wrong we are, that Skype is worth every penny being paid and maybe even more, let me dig-up a few facts to explain our position. eBay bought Skype when it was a two year old start-up, in 2005, for $2.6 billion. A few years later, eBay was forced to admit to their shareholders they’d paid way too much. In 2009, they were happy to dump the company onto a group of investors for $2 billion, a $600 million loss. In the first six months of 2010, Skype finally realized a $13.2 million profit, after losing $99 million in 2009.
As I like to do sometimes, let me quote the great television sage, Thomas Magnum: “I know what you’re thinking…”
Easy AdSense by Unreal
You’re thinking that Skype has to be worth gazillions of dollars because practically everyone on the planet is using it and it’s finally making a little bit of money.
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The message that Skype is being acquired by Microsoft got GNU/Linux community worried. There are indications that Microsoft may stop the Linux client of Skype. Microsoft won’t have to pull the binaries from the site. They can delay the development of Skype for Linux, either way Skype’s Linux kind is behind its Mac/Windows version.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Not all Linux books are created equal. Some are amazingly good, and definitely worth buying. Others are a waste of money. Three specimens identified in this article are of the latter variety.
The technical book market has seen legions of Linux-related books come through Amazon and brick-and-mortar store chains like Barnes & Noble. Over the years, I have acquired quite a few of them. On my shelf right now are:
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Desktop Environments
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To start off, I don’t actually mind arrogant people as long as they back their attitude up with some semblance of sanity, however arrogance without ability pisses me off, and it seems that its the number 1 trait to be a maintainer of glibc.
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Believe me, I used to think Linux on the desktop was one user interface revamp away from hitting it big time. Now I realize the problem is much more fundamental: Linux was never created to serve an end-user market, and end users are hard to serve properly. The only way Linux can be so reworked is if someone removes it from its native environment and single-handedly shapes it into something else.
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)
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Recently I’ve been surveying a lot of KDE distros. I tried a lot of live cds and looked at a lot of videos and screenshots. Things have changed a little bit since I last searched for a distro. People have started modifying KDE (KDESC?) a bit more from the defaults but not by much certainly nothing that compares to how much Gnome2/Kde3 were/are customized. In any case I eventually decided I had to settle on something. So I went to my s.o.p for distro selection. Make a list and use each distro long enough to decide if it was something I could use with minimal annoyance. Here are my findings so far.
[...]
My next distro was going to be Arch. I have a great many good memories of my time on Arch.
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KDEPIM users have been suffering through a variety of bugs and lagging development releases since KDE 4 first hit download mirrors. Developers tried to fix some, but others were just ignored or given up on. Now word is coming out of the project that KDEPIM 4.6 is finally coming, but will that fix users’ problems?
Bugs have plagued KDEPIM ever since KDE 4 was released over three years ago. Some did get some attentions, but for the most part users were told to wait for the next major release. Well, that next major release is immenent, but according to a recent developer’s blog post, some of the same issues experienced in 4.4 will rear their wiggly heads in 4.6. In addition, other regressions are being reported as well.
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The ALERT Project, as already explained, aims to improve bug tracking and resolution in free software communities. KDE is participating as a project partner by providing expertise on how free software communities work and by providing testing and feedback for the ALERT software.
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After an update by Sebastian Kügler on the status of PlasmaActive, let’s see what’s happening lately on its semantic Contour user interface and backend.
During Tokamak together Sebastian, we designed a plugin system for delegates of arbitrary Nepomuk resources.
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GNOME Desktop
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As you probably know after the gnome 3.0 release developers are back on releasing the second iteration of the ‘awesome’ desktop, gnome 3.2. There have been discussions going on in gnome development lists. One of the discussions is about including deja dup backup as default in gnome. This will help to create a unified experience from the start.
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I can’t believe it’s been this long already, but it is time for yet another Board of Directors Election! Having had the opportunity to serve on the Board for these last 12 months, I want to encourage anyone who have the time and interest to improve the GNOME project to run for one of the seven spots on the Board of Directors! For more information on this, please read the official announcement here!
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New Releases
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We are happy to announce the highly awaited Zenwalk Live 7.0, which will allow more people to try out Zenwalk without having to install it first.
Zenwalk Live 7.0 is based on the sophisticated Slackware-Live-Scripts, being the first distribution using the brand new and not yet official released version 0.3.3
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Gentoo Family
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It’s been some time since my last blog post, but if you’re a Sabayon user, you may know that I’ve been busy with a lot of stuff lately. Entropy eventually entered the final Beta phase: API documentation is complete, Entropy Services infrastructure has been rewritten from scratch taking advantage from the best communication protocol ever invented: HTTP (and JSON as “data format”), Sulfur eventually got its awaited speed boost (1.0_beta15), packages.sabayon.org has been deployed, www.sabayon.org will follow, Python 2.7 is now the default, same for GCC 4.5, and Entropy in general is as rock solid (and fast) as ever in all its 300.000+ lines of code, millions of line changes, that I’ve been able to work out in 4 years. You know, when you’re 20 you think everything is possible. Well, this time I was right and we can, today, all enjoy the most advanced and crazy package manager ever written by a single human being.
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Red Hat Family
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Talk to Navin Thadani, Red Hat’s senior director, virtualization, and he’ll tell you that RHEV’s attractions are that it offers high-performance server virtualization, it’s scalable, and it’s very secure. And, perhaps most importantly, it offers “solid economics for customers.” What does that mean? It’s less expensive than Hyper-V and VMware, in other words.
Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) doesn’t seem to sell RHEV based on the features it offers, and that’s probably because it lacks a few key ones. Despite Thadani promising as long ago as February 2010 that “you will be able to do an apples-for-apples feature comparison between us and VMware,” RHEV is still quite a few pieces of fruit short of a full picnic basket vis a vis VMware.
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Fedora
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Debian Family
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The Debian Project is happy to announce that it will be again represented at the LinuxTag event in Berlin, Germany, this year. At the booth members of the project will be available for questions and discussions.
The Debian booth will be at Hall 7.2b stand 118c. We invites users, developers and everyone else interested to visit it and ask questions, discuss technical issues and meet the Debian project and its developers in person.
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Ubuntu 11.04, codenamed Natty Narwhal, rose from the depths last week. The update brings a number of significant new features to the Linux-based operating system. It includes a much-improved refresh of the Unity shell and a number of other significant improvements throughout the application stack.
This is the first version of Ubuntu to ship with Unity on the desktop. Due to the far-reaching nature of the changes that accompany the transition to a new desktop shell, this review will focus almost entirely on Unity and how it impacts the Ubuntu user experience. We will also look at how Unity compares with GNOME 3.0 and the classic GNOME experience.
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- Nouveau Gallium3D will finally be enabled by default, hopefully. For the past few releases it’s been optional in the package repository, but now it’s finally ready to enter the limelight. Why? Largely because upstream Nouveau developers are willing to look at Gallium3D bug reports, according to Canonical. There’s still some concerns by the Ubuntu X developers over the state of the OpenGL driver, but following my comments — and noting that the Nouveau support can be like a game of Russian Roulette depending upon the kernels — they’ll still likely move forward. In enabling this open-source NVIDIA driver, users could then use the new Unity (3D) desktop without the NVIDIA binary driver. The enabling will likely occur soon for Oneiric but if there’s too much fall-out around the time of Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha 3, the feature could be reverted.
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Earlier, during the Natty development cycle we reported that LightDM is being considered as a replacement for GDM. That did not happen for Ubuntu 11.04, but today it has been confirmed at the Ubuntu Developer Summit at Budapest that LightDM is finally replacing GDM.
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This lightweight distro could be the perfect match for your netbook or for that old computer you’ve refurbished. Find out why Mark Shuttleworth has seen fit to welcome Lubuntu into the official Ubuntu family…
Pros: Lubuntu 11.04 is a mature Ubuntu derivative featuring the LXDE desktop environment and lightweight applications
Cons: Some software choices are odd, and Lubuntu lacks the Ubuntu Software Center. i586 processors aren’t supported any more
Homepage: Lubuntu.net
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LightDM’s a from-scratch implementation of an X display manager, ie the piece of software that handles remote X connections, starts any local X servers, provides a login screen and kicks off the initial user session. It’s split into a nominally desktop-agnostic core (built directly on xcb and glib) and greeters, the idea being that it’s straightforward to implement an environment-specific greeter that integrates nicely with your desktop session. It’s about 6500 lines of code in the core, 3500 lines of code in the gtk bindings to the core and about 1000 in the sample gtk greeter, for a total of about 11,000 lines of code for a full implementation. This compares to getting on for 60,000 in gdm. Ubuntu plan to switch to LightDM in their next release (11.10).
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Ximea GmbH announced Linux-compatible “smart cameras” that include Intel Atom processors and color image sensors ranging from WVGA (752 x 480 pixels) to five megapixels. The Curerra-R devices offer 1GB to 4GB of flash storage, microSD slots, VGA and Ethernet ports, and isolated digital I/O, the company says.
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Phones
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Sub-notebooks/Tablets
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AT&T announced it will offer Cisco Systems’ seven-inch Android-based Cius tablet this fall, tuned to its 4G HSPA+ network as part of a new billion dollar plan by the carrier to offer “next-generation services for businesses.” Meanwhile, struggling Cisco announced fiscal 3Q earnings showing a 17.6 percent loss in net income, and warned of more job cuts to come.
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GNU Radio is an open source Software Defined Radio (SDR) project that was started about ten years ago by Eric Blossom, an electrical engineer. The main idea which is behind this project, as its founder says, was to turn all the hardware problems into software problems, that is move the complexity of a radio equipment from the hardware level to the software one, and get the software as close to the antenna as possible.
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In an effort to broaden my horizons beyond writing code, I’ve been reading a lot of business books lately. Coming from a mostly Free Software background, it’s been an enlightening experience1. One thing sticks out the most: Processes matter, and they matter more than I ever thought.
It’s common for me to contribute to random projects. Launchpad and Github and the like make it easy (can we get a Launchpad version of this shirt2?). However, I’m not likely to contribute to a project that has a HACKING document longer than any source file in the entire tree. If it takes me longer to figure out how to send a patch than it takes to write the patch, there might be some problems.
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If the name sounds familiar then it should. Ian is an active designer within the open source community – for example, he created the logo for the semantic app launch tool ‘Synapse’ and has been working with the Novacut team on creating a brand identity for the project.
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Events
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I attended in the morning the round table on Governance lead by ALexandre Zapolsky (Linagora)
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Web Browsers
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Chrome
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Just noticed that Angry Birds is now online at http://chrome.angrybirds.com
Plays pretty well in Chromium Browser. Takes a tad longer to load in Firefox. Most people seem to be able to play the game. Some though appear to have some graphic issues. I’m using the fglrx driver along with Flash 10.3 RC without issue. Check it out if you need a little time waster. *Warning* Game can be addictive. Level 20 here I come!!!
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Mozilla
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I know I’m a little late with this news, but that’s because I was kind of busy earlier in the week. Anyway, the news (Nate Anderson, Ars Technica) is that the US government (specifically, the Department of Homeland Security) tried to force Mozilla to remove an add-on for Firefox called MAFIAAFire. The DHS a few months ago seized tens of thousands of website domains without a warrant and without due process; only a few (countable on two hands) of those were truly harmful in any way, while the vast majority of those sites were perfectly legal. MAFIAAFire, whose name jabs at the RIAA and MPAA (frequently referred to as the “MAFIAA” in technology circles), essentially redirects searches for the old domains to the new domains where the content is now hosted. The DHS claims that such redirection violates the orders regarding the original seizures.
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Mozilla is currently preparing to phase out Firefox 3.5 and said that it will not release further major updates for the browser version.
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Project Releases
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Boxee released the second major update to the D-Link Boxee Box’s firmware today. The new v1.1 release adds a variety of content channels for both movies and shows, enhances the device’s browser functionality, improves the consistency of its user interface, and squashes numerous bugs.
The new firmware (numbered 1.1.0.19036) will be pushed out to users’ Boxee Boxes gradually over the next 48 hours, according to Boxee VP of marketing Andrew Kippen. While there will be numerous mostly unseen fixes, changes, and enhancements under the hood, here’s a run-down of the more noticeable improvements…
Trisquel GNU/Linux 4.5……….Cry Freedom..
Credit: TinyOgg
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Posted in Microsoft, Patents at 11:49 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The elephant in the room, software patents, is investigated in Skype’s case, revealing that Acacia was in fact applying pressure against the company; Patent TrollTracker Rick Frenkel is back online
OUR community has grown recently and with this unprecedented growth comes improved research (we also have a second hand to help with Daily Links now). As pointed out yesterday in IRC, there is more than meets the eye in the Skype takeover.
Some people have already remarked on Microsoft’s VoIP-related patents, which they say that Microsoft can now exploit inside Skype. But nobody appears to be talking about the impact of Skype being in Europe (where software patents hardly count and patent trolls are very scarce) and also the pressure exerted by Acacia with its lawsuits. Yes, there is some history there. The gist of it is that Peer Communications is a subsidiary of Acacia Research Corporation. It sued Skype a while back. Acacia uses several such tentacles to taunt real companies and it has a special taste/appetite for GNU/Linux players such as Red Hat. Now that Microsoft owns Skype we shall see if the lawsuits from Acacia will carry on.
“Now that Microsoft owns Skype we shall see if the lawsuits from Acacia will carry on.”In other news, US patent #6,098,180 is being used by a patent troll, Content Delivery Solutions LLC, in order to extort many companies and as pointed out in Twitter, Free software utilities are also affected. To quote one opinion piece on the subject: “At 3:45 pm on March 18th 2011, the company Content Delivery Solutions LLC filed a complaint in a court in Texas, USA. [...] The complaint was later amended with an additional patent (filed on April 18th), making it list three patents that these companies are claimed to violate (I can’t find the amended version online though). Two of the patents ( 6,393,471 and 6,058,418) are for marketing data and how to use client info to present ads basically. The third is about file transfer resumes.”
This goes on to explaining how Free software is affected. Given that the US government recognised the threat of patents to “Open Source”, how come the patent system remains unshaken? “Software patents and some styles of cloud computing are blunting the ability of average people to innovate,” points out this new piece from Bruce Sterling, who talks about Dr. Vernor Vinge.
The other day we also wrote about Patent Hawk losing his weapon and here is a good new piece on the subject:
A couple of years ago, we wrote about a patent infringement lawsuit filed by a guy named Gary Odom, who is better known in the patent blogging world as the Patent Hawk. He’s an… aggressive supporter of all things patent, and has a way with words, often shown off in his inimical insult-to-backuppable-statement ratio, seen at times here in the Techdirt comments. The “patent” (7,363,592) was on editable toolbars in software. What’s amusing in our post on the initial lawsuit is to see the usual crew of defenders insisting that the patent likely is valid, in part because of Odom’s job as a prior art searcher, suggesting he would clearly know of any prior art that would invalidate the patent. We were also told that Odom’s “expertise” on the subject was something we should learn from. A few months later, Odom used the same patent to sue 28 more companies.
Speaking of Patent Hawk (who worked for Microsoft), remember Patent TrollTracker? He is back online after cataloguing many patent trolls and their activities), Also, he is available on Twitter. We owe him great gratitude as based on his work we prepare an important exposé this month. He wrote a lot about Acacia. █
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Posted in FUD, Google, Marketing, Microsoft at 10:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg
with former Microsoft evangelist (source: Robert Scoble)
Summary: The PR agency Microsoft works with to attack Google has just been paid by Facebook as well, in order to attack Google
Facebook has done so much to help Microsoft, including the promotion of Silver Lie, OOXML, B0ng, and even passing all of its users’ data to Microsoft for mining purposes and obvious privacy intrusion. There is a lot more of that, but we covered it before. Add another medal of loyalty to Mark “dumb f*cks” Zuckerberg’s vest.
Microsoft just had to pay Facebook hundreds of millions (like in Novell’s case) and the payoff is good because attacks on Google are now being funded by Facebook [via, HT “walterbyrd”]
Folks its ON, Facebook vs. Google, clash of the Internet Giants reached new heights after a spokesman for Facebook confirmed to Daily Beast that Facebook paid a high level Public Relation firm to publish and spread stories against Google throughout the media to study various methods to examine the allegations that Google has been violating with user privacy. The PR Firm Burson-Marsteller, offered their help to Chris Soghoian to write an article on Social Circles which shows how Gmail users can access information on “Secondary Connections” or friends in their circle of friends. This very “Social Circle” seemed to be the very core of the Anti-Google campaign by Facebook. The PR Company spokesman told the news journalist in black and white terms.
We wrote about this firm earlier in the week [1, 2], but it is more interesting than that. In 2007, “Microsoft and the PR agency Burson-Marsteller formed ICOMP to fight against Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick,” as we quoted last year. We also mentioned this attack dog in an article about super-crook Richard Edelman. Prior to this we mentioned Burson-Marsteller in the context of Visible Technologies, a company founded by former Microsoft employees to engage in AstroTurfing through blogs (Microsoft is a client, obviously). This is some nasty, nasty stuff. Microsoft’s hooligans in suits are as liable as Microsoft itself. Where is the liability? Where are the antitrust regulators? █
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Posted in Microsoft, Novell, OpenSUSE, Patents, SLES/SLED at 10:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: FLOSS Weekly host Aaron Newcomb admits that it was the Novell/Microsoft deal that got him out of SUSE
MANY people left OpenSUSE (or SUSE) when Novell signed the deal with Microsoft. Some waited until the next installation cycle (I am among them), so it was not an overnight breakup.
SUSE is getting back into its roots in Germany (which is a key market for Novell) while the Microsoft-centric Mono implodes (although we recently learned that Mono sneaks into Android’s latest release — a subject we are still researching). “Mono boosters on FLOSS weekly,” alerted us one reader about this new episode. I listened to the entire show this afternoon and heard what he meant, but I reserve judgment as I quite like both hosts. I was also on the show before. As a quick remark, I will only rebut the show’s title by saying that it’s FLOSS Weekly which has a “Demise” (with Leo and others like DiBona stepping away), not FLOSS. Additionally, the Linux-hostile Netflix sponsorship of the show is testament to an issue we raised here before. What was interesting about this episode is that one of the hosts, Aaron Newcomb (shown on the right), admits that he abandoned SUSE because of the Novell/Microsoft deal. That’s yet another person who confirms it. It’s important because Novell loved pretending that the deal had no such effect and that “customers loved it” (or something along those lines).
It is believed that SUSE will be sold, which will sadly enough leave good people in a bit of a limbo. Maybe they can start looking for employment in other places. Novell and Microsoft ruined SUSE. █
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Posted in Antitrust, Apple, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Windows at 9:50 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Despite all the spin, Microsoft is still attacking the little guy, primarily using new methods like government-granted and USPTO-stamped monopolies
THOSE who believe that the mythical “new Microsoft” exists are simply not paying attention. Pamela Jones from Groklaw recently wrote about Microsoft's antitrust/oversight expiring in the context of its patent racketeering. Windows and Internet Explorer are both losing market share, but Microsoft is now busy using software patents as means of being paid for the competitors’ platforms. How is that not abusive? It’s a distortion of the market. Ironically enough, says IDG, “Open source foiled Microsoft antitrust case,” but the claim is not compellingly defended in the article. To quote one part of it:
What loomed foremost in the courtroom was Microsoft’s massive market share in desktop operating systems and productivity apps, as well as the dramatic decline of the Netscape Web browser with the arrival of Internet Explorer.
Economists from Stanford, MIT and Berkeley filed briefs advising the court on remedies, giving Jackson the arguments for strong action.
“The most important benefit for society that will be created by this remedy will come from faster innovation,” wrote Paul Romer, a professor of economics at Stanford, in a court brief about a break-up.
Jackson’s order created two new and powerful companies, one to run the operating system business, and the other, its applications. Each company would have revenue at more than $8 billion a year and profits of more than $3 billion in 2000 dollars.
Needless to say, Microsoft gamed the legal system and managed to sneak out of Jackson’s ruling. We wrote about this before.
In general, government intervention has thus far been ineffective. Microsoft only needed to show some minimal commitment to other platforms. Even that is being done improperly because, to borrow this one new headline, “Microsoft leaves Mac Office users in the lurch, says research” (not exactly news, is it?)
Microsoft yesterday told Mac Office users it doesn’t yet have a fix for a PowerPoint bug that it patched for Windows customers.
“Security updates for Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac, Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, and Open XML File Format Converter for Mac are unavailable at this time,” the company’s MS11-036 security bulletin said. “Microsoft will issue updates for these software when testing is complete, to ensure a high degree of quality for their release.”
MS11-036 was part of May’s two-update Patch Tuesday, and closed a pair of holes rated “important” in PowerPoint 2002, 2003 and 2007 on Windows. Only one of the two bugs affects Office for Mac 2004 and Office for Mac 2008.
The newest versions, Office 2010 on Windows and Office for Mac 2011, do not contain the vulnerabilities.
Expect Microsoft to get more and more vicious as the debt grows. Just see what Microsoft did for OOXML (corruption galore). Microsoft is not just a company that is being sued a lot for its abuses; increasingly, Microsoft is suing other companies as part of its business model. The “new Microsoft”, if such a monster exists at all, is a lot worse than it has ever been. Regulators ought to initiate new antitrust action against the racketeering operation named Microsoft Corporation. They already know the address of the Don, who is busy investing his billions boosting patents/monopolies and rewriting his bio (by buying out the press). █
“This anti-trust thing will blow over. We haven’t changed our business practices at all.”
–Bill Gates, 1995
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