03.06.14
Posted in Google, Microsoft at 8:48 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Rupert Murdoch’s special relationship with Microsoft and Bill Gates seems to be coming to an end
“News Corp dumps Microsoft for Google Apps,” says this report’s headline, shocking the world somewhat. So the Murdoch press itself (The Australian) announces that it is ditching Microsoft, and even more surprisingly for Google, which Murdoch famously hates (we covered many examples to that effect before, even a few years ago, noting Gates connections). Murdoch also hates net neutrality and the Internet/Web in general because it's competition (the Web has just turned 25 [1,2] and some worry about excessive control by few people [3,4], the erosion of basic principles [5], and the death of net neutrality in the US [6-10], rendering the Web not much more than a DRM and surveillance engine [11]). “I would have rather seen a move to Kolab or Citadel but this is a start,” says iophk about the news. “They’re still locked into Microsoft Office. It seems that LibreOffice should interest them.”
Using an office suite on the Web is a huge and unnecessary privacy mistake. It even tracks clicks. It’s worse than proprietary software that one installs locally in some ways.
Anyway, one must admit that when even Google’s big enemy is dumping Microsoft for Google, it means that Microsoft is going the way of the dodo. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
-
-
As the 25th anniversary of the World Wide Web approaches, 87 percent of U.S. adults use the Internet, according to a Pew Research Center survey.
-
The people conducting the ceremony are part of an organization called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). ICANN is responsible for assigning numerical Internet addresses to websites and computers and translating them into the normal web addresses that people type into their browsers.
-
-
Here’s a simple truth: the internet has radically changed the world. Over the course of the past 20 years, the idea of networking all the world’s computers has gone from a research science pipe dream to a necessary condition of economic and social development, from government and university labs to kitchen tables and city streets. We are all travelers now, desperate souls searching for a signal to connect us all. It is awesome.
And we’re fucking everything up.
Massive companies like AT&T and Comcast have spent the first two months of 2014 boldly announcing plans to close and control the internet through additional fees, pay-to-play schemes, and sheer brutal size — all while the legal rules designed to protect against these kinds of abuses were struck down in court for basically making too much sense. “Broadband providers represent a threat to internet openness,” concluded Judge David Tatel in Verizon’s case against the FCC’s Open Internet order, adding that the FCC had provided ample evidence of internet companies abusing their market power and had made “a rational connection between the facts found and the choices made.” Verizon argued strenuously, but had offered the court “no persuasive reason to question that judgement.”
-
-
-
The Internet service provider and the streaming video service announced on Sunday that they had struck a deal that speeds up streaming of Netflix content into the homes of Comcast subscribers. In a joint statement, Netflix and Comcast hailed this “mutually beneficial interconnection agreement” that provides “a more direct connection between Netflix and Comcast, similar to other networks, that’s already delivering an even better user experience to consumers, while also allowing for future growth in Netflix traffic.”
-
It was revealed over the weekend that Netflix and Comcast had struck a historic deal: for the first time the streaming-video service would pay the cable giant in order to ensure that the huge volume of data it was sending would arrive swiftly and smoothly in customers’ homes. This came after months of Netflix traffic performing increasingly poorly on Comcast’s network. Also at issue is the massive increase in the last few years of Netflix’s size; it grew to encompass roughly one-third of all internet data piped across the United States during prime-time video-viewing hours.
-
Consumer groups and media watchdogs on Monday expressed “grave concerns” about Netflix’s landmark pact with cable giant Comcast for improved internet service.
Netflix, the world’s largest video on demand service, announced at the weekend that it had made an undisclosed payment to Comcast for direct access to the cable company’s broadband network, in order to ensure smooth delivery of its content.
-
It’s hard to believe the World Wide Web has already been around for 25 years — the time since Tim Berners-Lee proposed a system that would allow computers to access files on other computers via the Internet.
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 8:28 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The return of discussions about patent stacking and the role played by the anti-Android camp
ANDROID really took off not just because it’s Free/Open Source software but also because it was free. Now, a few years down the line, Android phones can cost as much as €699 (Samsung Galaxy S5) and although the main reason may be Samsung’s greed (knowing that some people would be willing to pay this price), we should not forget the role patent stacking plays. We have written about it for years.
Microsoft Nokia and Apple signed a secret deal which Samsung now formally complains about, as we covered earlier this week (the latest Google and Samsung complaint is in China). “Nokia,” explains Sosumi, is “now a patent troll and a Microsoft tentacle” (it has been like that for 3 years).
There is secrecy there that harms Android. Not only do Microsoft and Nokia pass patents to trolls who target Android; they also try to engage in patent stacking themselves. A pro-Apple site mentioned this latest twist the other day: “Last October, Apple filed a motion seeking sanctions against Samsung and its outside lawyers, accusing both of unlawfully sharing sensitive data about Apple’s 2011 patent license agreement with Nokia. Specifically, the motion stated that a Samsung executive informed Nokia that the terms of the patent settlement were “known to him”, and used that information to negotiate other patent agreements in Samsung’s favor. The license terms between Apple and Nokia were marked “Highly Confidential – Attorneys’ Eyes Only”, but were shared with other Samsung employees.” Bear this in mind whenever pundits try to claim that Nokia is befriending Android.
Patents which are based on secrecy like this are a matter of price-fixing and collusion. This should be against the law, but guess who writes the laws these days? In India, for example, one major newspaper now publishes the article “India must call the US’ bluff on patents” [1] and in Red Hat’s site Rob Tiller is finally slamming software patents [2] (which he rarely does), adding to increased opposition to software patents these days [3], in light of an imminent SCOTUS milestone event (Red Hat too is involved). █
Related/contextual items from the news:
-
Apart from the deterioration of the business environment generally, which impacts both domestic and foreign investors, retrospective taxation has figured most prominently in the media as the principal cause of growing scepticism among foreign investors. Entirely missing from the discourse has been an equally potent factor with wholly foreign origins: the hijacking of the economic policy dialogue between the United States and India by pharmaceutical lobbies in the US. Big Pharma has convinced the US government that the country’s interests are synonymous with its own. With its own list of grievances against trade restrictions in India, the National Association of Manufacturers, a lobby group of the United States manufacturers, has lent its support to the pharmaceutical industry.
-
Software patent thickets are often compared to minefields, but with a note of resignation, as though there’s no avoiding them. The U.S. Supreme Court now has before it a case that could go a long way towards addressing the litigation risks and business uncertainties created by software patents. The case is Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, and the issue is whether claims to computer-implemented inventions are eligible for patents.
-
Public Knowledge is back at it, carving holes in dubious software patent claims by distilling supposedly “complex” ideas into a minimal amount of code. Late last year, Public Knowledge filed an amicus brief in a lawsuit involving Ultramercial, whose disputed patent basically involved appending “on the internet” to a very basic idea.
Permalink
Send this to a friend
03.04.14
Posted in Google, Marketing, Microsoft at 8:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: An appointment of Penn to the role of “chief strategy officer” says a lot about Microsoft’s strategy
IN ADDITION to trolling Google with patents (via proxies) Microsoft is running smear campaigns against Google. Microsoft is a political movement, not a technology company, and now it is hiring political astroturf figures and promoting them to the very top [1]. To quote this new report: “For Washingtonians, Penn’s appointment is of particular interest, given his time on the Clinton presidential campaign and his subsequent resignation after his public relations work raised conflict-of-interest issues. During his year and half at Microsoft, he has helped the firm use his penchant for negative advertising against tech competitors.”
Writing about this man’s promotion to “chief strategy officer”, Glyn Moody says that “if Nadella thinks “scroogled” is strategy, MS is truly in finished” (Nadella is not really in charge, Ballmer and Gates still control him behind the scenes and he serves mostly as a public face).
So the official Microsoft strategy now revolves around throwing libel at Google, based on Penn’s promotion. Sam Dean, often an apologist for Microsoft, asked yesterday [3]: “How Will Microsoft Respond to the Success of Chromebooks?”
Well, we think it’s very clear now: smears and patent litigation/extortion.
Welcome the ‘new’ Microsoft. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
-
-
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)’s newly-appointed Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella, in an effort to reignite growth, is shuffling management and putting former political operative Mark Penn in the new role of chief strategy officer, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
-
As we’ve reported, although market research findings have been very bleak for PCs and PC equipment makers, Chromebooks–portable computers based on Google’s Chrome OS platform–have continued to sell well, and did especially well during the 2013 holiday season. These devices feature low prices, with some of the them going for $200, and a cloud-centric approach to working with apps and data. They also increasingly come with freebies, such as large amounts of free, online storage.
Permalink
Send this to a friend
02.27.14
Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Samsung at 12:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Samsung’s proximity and increasing control of Tizen is another reason to avoid Tizen, not just Samsung
LONG before Samsung was really into Linux there were numerous efforts to bring Linux to mobile. It’s a shame that one of the largest such efforts is now controlled by Intel/Samsung but officially steered by the Linux Foundation, which is funded by those companies that help Microsoft. By far the biggest player, however, remains Android, which is also based on Linux (some journalists don’t seem to know that Android has Linux in it [1] and others overlook the contribution of Alien Dalvik back in MeeGo’s days [2]). There are numerous articles about Samsung’s adoption of Tizen as an important platform [3-5], but none of them offers a critical take on Samsung’s special relationship with Microsoft.
CBS had a lot of coverage regarding the latest Samsung phone [6-8] which increasingly involves the likes of Intel [9]. The coverage in Muktware [10,11] focused on the features and release date, but there too there was no criticism of Samsung, which increasingly imitates the bad side of Apple.
The bottom line is, Samsung has too much control of Tizen and only to a lesser degree of Android. This is not a good thing; Samsung never cared about freedom, instead emphasising DRM and other such negative aspects of technology. This issue merits an open discussion. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
-
Tizen has a long road ahead in terms of matching Android in apps or popularity. Quite frankly, that happening is very unlikely. Of course, many would have said BlackBerry was unbeatable years ago, so never say never.
-
With a simple click, the Polaris App Generator software is able to wrap an Android APK and convert it to a Tizen OS executable file. This means developers don’t have to pour additional resources into manually porting their apps.
-
-
-
The long wait for a major Tizen OS device is finally over, and it’s a…smartwatch? At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, Samsung skipped the unveiling of its first Tizen smartphone, and instead rolled out a trio of Tizen-based wrist computers: the Gear 2, Gear Neo, and Gear Fit. Due to ship in April, the devices are lighter and more stylish than Samsung’s Android-based Galaxy Gear.
-
-
The Korean electronics giant unveiled three new software development kits to make it easy to create programs that work with its new wearables and its Galaxy S5.
-
-
-
The much-anticipated Galaxy S5 is finally here! After months of rumors and leaks, Samsung unveiled the successor to the Galaxy S4 at a press conference at Mobile World Conference (MWC) 2014 in Barcelona. Though it’s a minor evolution of the Galaxy S4, the new phone packs a sharp 5.1-inch screen, a faster, 2.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor, 2GB of RAM and a 16-megapixel camera. Taking cue from the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active, the smartphone is also waterproof. It features a new fingerprint scanner similar to the iPhone 5S.
-
We’ve waited for this moment for quite some time, but now the S5 has officially been revealed. Samsung’s latest offering comes with a 5.1″ 1920 x 1080p screen, 2GB of RAM, 16 or 32GB of storage plus the ability to host a Micro SD card. Android 4.4.2 is on board as expected, and it sports a 2.5Ghz quad-core Snapdragon process (not sure of 800, 801 or 805).
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Bill Gates, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 7:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Secret deals and racketeering techniques elude journalists who are passing allegations as ‘facts’, damaging Linux for the most part
SOMETHING fascinating has been happening in the corporate press over the past few years (starting 2010 with HTC). Unlike with the Novell deal (Microsoft SUSE), when it comes to Android the press seems eager to push the “Android is not free” line. Even some pro-FOSS journalists are doing it, only to face opposition. To quote Pogson’s response to one of them: “I don’t often disagree with SJVN but I think his argument that M$ makes $billions from Android/Linux taxes is extreme. If that were happening, there would be some mention of it in M$’s SEC filings.”
Not only is this not happening based on any concrete evidence; the sources which make these claims are quoting some arbitrary analysts with Microsoft connections or Microsoft boosters/lobbyists who cite such people. Trace it all back to the source and it looks like make believe. It’s like a big lie that needs to die, at least until or unless there’s some kind of proof.
Those of us who see journalists perpetuating and spreading the claims that Microsoft makes billions of dollars from Android should respond to the authors/editors by equating them with so-called ‘conspiracy theories’ who throw around unsubstantiated claims. Microsoft has long been manufacturing dirt and lies, only to be caught some time later, after much damage had been done to the subject of libel. Bribed journalists often play a role in such big lies and nobody demonstrates this as well as the Gates Foundation, which is basically a lobbying and investment shell (masquerading as a charity and bribing the press to maintain this illusion). As Jamie Love put it yesterday: “The few reporters that have written about the trade disputes over cancer patents are not on the Gates payroll. [...] Gates has effectively aligned itself with Merck, Novartis and others, against cancer patients. Sometimes, discretely. [...] WHO is quite cautious on the IPR issues these days, because of fears that Gates will complain. [...] Gates Foundation funding of health news reporters, most health NGOs, contributes to lack of criticism of Obama’s actions on cancer patents” (we wrote about cancer patents before, including their impact on death). Remember that Gates received got a huge amount of money last year from this patent profiteering (gains of about 15 billion dollars). He is still all about patents and monopolies. Gates is also investing in patent trolls and collaborating with the world’s biggest patent troll, which he helped create (the head of this trolling entity is one of Bill Gates’ best friends).
As Joe Mullin put it the other day, frivolous litigation with baseless patents is still worthwhile in the US because the plaintiff never assumes the financial burden of the cases. This works well for trolls such as Microsoft, Bill Gates, and the world’s biggest patent troll which he created. It’s deterrence against defence. As Mullin puts it: “The American judicial system has long held to a general principle that each party in a dispute should pay for its own legal fees, win or lose.”
Microsoft is a patent troll based on its actions, signing secret deals using useless patents, knowing that the burden of a legal case would be put on the victim. As long as this kind of system prevails the corruption of the industry and the media (which cannot gain access to these secret deals) will continue.
Microsoft corruption is an immensely powerful phenomenon which now transcends the software industry. One way to address this issue is to work on changing the patent system (which is hard). █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
02.25.14
Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Samsung at 9:07 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: How Samsung/Tizen and Jolla/Sailfish continue a tradition started with LiPS, LiMo, Moblin, Maemo, etc.
NOKIA is dying in Microsoft's hands and is now turning to Android for intrusion. It turned out that the “burning platform” which Elop had famously spoken about was actually Microsoft’s platform, not MeeGo or some of Nokia’s other Linux-based OS attempts (in addition to Symbian). Linux always gets its way, especially when the code is free and cannot be buried.
Sadly enough it is actually a company that pays Microsoft for Linux (Samsung, not Amazon, an Android ‘forker’ which does this too [1]) taking over much of MeeGo with the project now called Tizen. Jolla is a small company; it can’t match the size of Samsung. While this company develops some cutting-edge hardware [2,3] it turns out that it increasingly standardises on Tizen for gadgets [4,5].
Whatever small operating system emerges these days (COS, Ubuntu Touch, WebOS, Firefox OS, Sailfish OS and more), it is always Linux-based. What makes Tizen unique, however, is that it’s controlled by a company that is in bed with Microsoft when it comes to patents. So, for alternatives to Nokia look at Jolla, not Samsung. Let Samsung fail. It does not honour people's freedom. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
-
It didn’t make its intended launch window of the 2013 holiday shopping season, but Amazon’s web TV set-top box is apparently still very much on the roadmap. Recode reports word from multiple sources today that Amazon is aiming for a March rollout of its Apple TV and Roku competitor. Having invested in developing a rich and varied Prime Instant Video library, Amazon has done a good job of distributing that content across platforms, but there are obvious benefits to the web company controlling and selling its own hardware.
-
-
-
Samsung will reportedly use its Gear smartwatch as a trial balloon for its Tizen operating system. The move makes a lot of sense to see if Tizen can really hold its own relative to Android.
-
A mere six months after the introduction of the Galaxy Gear, Samsung is returning to the smartwatch market with two new models: the Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo. Announced at Mobile World Congress today, the new watches remain faithful to the original’s look, but make a number of substantial alterations as well. The disappearance of the Galaxy branding is indicative of the biggest change: Android has been replaced by Tizen as the operating system on Samsung’s smartwatches.
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft at 7:20 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Major Setback for Corporate Surveillance in Cars and Phones
Summary: The demise of privacy-infringing operating systems from Microsoft and the growth of Linux in tracked devices such as phones and cars
LARGE OEMs long ago signalled their departure from a Windows-only strategy. Companies, unlike some governments, are not in the business of providing welfare or subsidies to Microsoft. When doing business with Microsoft stops making sense, then assuming there are no bribes or extortion, they do have a solid, industrially-recognised alternative to turn to. It’s GNU/Linux and Android/Linux (Apple does not work with partners as such).
Microsoft’s biggest and perhaps only supporter when it comes to automobiles (also a surveillance-leaning company) is reportedly going to ditch Microsoft for a Canadian platform. As one Canadian put it: “When Ford figures out that BB is not much better in the user-interface department they may come to their sense and use FLOSS.”
Yes, they can also turn to Linux, which has several initiatives specificially for automobiles. There is plenty of momentum there. “I guess from a sales perspective it makes sense,” one added. “Anyone would run far far away from a Windows Car. Blackberry, not so much. It’s Unix-like, so it should be hackable,” Chris wrote.
Will Hill said: “That’s not a far jump from Microsoft but it’s better than nothing. [...] People need to realize that all non free software is malicious. My brother tried to watch one of my videos, html 5 video tag pointing to theora, and it crashed his blackberry. Barfed it so hard he had to cold start it.”
Not only cars are ejecting Windows. A Nokia expert says that “Windows Phone is dead” just a few years after Windows Mobile quietly died. iophk from Finland wrote: “Despite what other articles may say or imply, Nokia phone are not Finnish, at least not after a few weeks from now. The sale to Microsoft will be final then.”
Yes, Microsoft Nokia remains a huge problem and its so-called 'Android' phones are surveillance devices on steroids (don’t believe the spin the media). Microsoft is a very creepy corporate surveillance company, or as one new article puts it [1], “Microsoft turns bosses into the NSA” (and informs on bosses to the NSA). Microsoft is going to do spying on users of Google’s Android, based on what it did with Lumia, leaking Finnish information to its close espionage partners at the NSA. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
-
Software giant Microsoft has invented tools which can turn control-freak bosses into the NSA.
For a while now there has been a hole in the market for autocratic bosses who love to spy on their employees. After all they have looked at the US government looked at how they can check everything that their citizens do and said “I want some of that”.
Now the friendly software maker Microsoft is allowing such bosses to set up a NSA spy network in their own companies.
Permalink
Send this to a friend
02.20.14
Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Google, Samsung at 10:55 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Samsung is treading bravely towards an oppressive digital world and is playing a role in this oppression
SEVERAL politicians are making mandatory the inclusion of nasty back doors, or at least trying to do so [1,2]. “Apple has actually already implemented a kill-switch like feature on its iPhones, as of the iOS 7,” quotes iophk from the CIA-connected press, and “Samsung has also said it’s working on a similar feature.” Sosumi adds that “the killswitch and features of remote lock and wipe on the iPhone have been around since the iPhone 3G, aka 2008″ (that’s six years ago).
Proprietary software tends to be inherently malicious. Is it said that an Android backer like Samsung goes down the same route. We already called for a boycott of Samsung in 2007 and reiterated the call last year. The company is freedom-hostile in several other areas and it mimics the Orwellian 'features' of Apple. Samsung is now helping the surveillance state [3] and it’s a shame because it shines a negative light on Android (already surveillance-leaning), Samsung being the biggest seller of Android devices [4] (the biggest/most popular operating system in the world [5]). Not only Android is affected because Samsung now makes Tizen-based wearable surveillance [6], too. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
-
-
-
It seems like Samsung will go head to head with Apple again this year, and they will, barring some unforeseen catastrophe, maintain their spot as the ‘King of Android’. I just wish that they would have implemented on screen buttons like so many others are doing, but, they are the world wide leaders in sales after all; who am I to judge? Here’s to hoping that their implementation of the scanner works a lot better than HTC’s recent attempt with the One Max, and that their users grow to love it.
-
Samsung dominates the Android enterprise charge, but Motorola has a sizeable chunk of the devices in the field, according to data compiled by Fiberlink. The real fun for Android in the enterprise will come when Lenovo closes its Motorola Mobility acquisition from Google.
-
We have been having the biggest debate of the mobile world for a few years now… Android, or iOS? Each of them have their own major perks. Android has its insane amount of customization possibilities, and iOS has its ease of use (just to name a few). However, a new report from the IDC shows us some irrefutable proof: Android is the most popular mobile operating system in the world. Over the last three years, the Android operating system market share, in percentages of global unit shipments, has increased by roughly 29.6%, while iOS has dropped 3.6%. Windows Phone has surprisingly gained 1.5%, and BlackBerry has dropped 9.4%. As of May of last year, Samsung held the title of the first place, but that is to be expected.
-
The next version of Samsung’s Galaxy Gear smartwatch will run the Linux-based Tizen operating system instead of Android, suggests a USA Today report.
Permalink
Send this to a friend
« Previous entries Next Page » Next Page »
Content is available under CC-BY-SA