LONDON, England – August 18, 2011 UTC – Royal Dutch Shell Group, an internationality-known Big Polluter (BP), has purchased Apple’s product line of trademarks. Apple, a company that specialises in creating a culture around commodity-but-overpriced products, will complement Royal Dutch Shell Group in the most desired areas.

“Blind faith from the public is always what we sought,” explained Ollie Black, the Chief Executive Officer of Royal Dutch Shell Group. “With the purchase of Apple’s logos and names,” he relented, “people will no longer judge us by our actual behaviour.”

“Royal Dutch Shell is a splendid example of innovation in the field of dilution and shipping,” wrote the CNN hours before the official announcement, which brought 5,000-10,000 people out to the streets of London where they queued up to take a glimpse at Mr. Black signing the deal. “Royal Dutch Shell makes the best oil you can conceivably get,” contented one of the adolescents who queued up for 40 hours, according to a report from the independent magazine, AppleUniverse. In the press conference, Black assured the audience that choice will not be available. The product will be available in one colour, black, and confusion will be eliminated by ensuring there is only one single product for the purpose. The audience reacted enthusiastically with a round of standing ovations. “This is what makes Royal Dutch Shell so brilliant,” explained one of the attendants, miss Bott, only minutes after the ceremony had ended. “This is the brilliance of it, we no longer ever have to choose. Did you see the new logo? Who would have thought of a piece of fruit? I love it!”

“With the purchase of Apple’s logos and names people will no longer judge us by our actual behaviour.”
      –Ollie BlackThe acquisition of trademarks from Apple comes only weeks after rumours that Royal Dutch Shell would seek to issue an injunction against BP’s import of “black stuff,” to use the words of Royal Dutch Shell’s Vice President of legal affairs. In an interview with MSNBC, a GE company masquerading as a news avenue, he strongly denied allegations that he had colluded with Exxon to raise the price of oil.

Mr. Black has assured reporters that Royal Dutch Shell will continue with its current practices, which are, to use his words, “magical.” The innovative product of Royal Dutch Shell will continue to be available to the public under its old banner, “Shell”, however reporters are strongly encouraged to refer to the company as Apple. Analysts have re-raised speculations that Royal Dutch Shell might go after Carl Icahn next, forcing him to change his surname or face shutdown. “This is perfectly decent and the right thing for Royal Dutch Shell to do,” explained to us a Royal Dutch Shell fan outside the Black Shop, “because if Mr. Black says Icahn is a trademark violation, then I trust him.”

Critics of the deal allege that it is being used by Royal Dutch Shell to attract gullible and impressionable young men who will pretend that oil spills are beneficial to the environment and that Royal Dutch Shell’s products — even though they come from the very same source as the competition’s — are by merit of their own branding “superior”.

Starting September 5^th, Royal Dutch Shell will broadcast and officially launch a new marketing campaign, whose motto will be, “I’m an Apple/Shell, and I’m just oil”. █

“IT WAS too hard to pretend any longer,” stated Microsoft’s CFO, who only recently replaced another CTO who was paid millions for his silence. “Basically, we have been faking it,” he admitted, “there is not so much money in attaching a tax to machines that could just run GNU/Linux for free.”

Mr. Steve Ballmer announced his resignation following this revelation, publicly announcing using a $300,000,000 marketing campaign that the newly-formed Ballmer Foundation will save hungry children and that everyone who resents him for it wants those children dead.

The fate of the remaining 80,000 or so Microsoft employees were not allowed to be approached for a comment; they have all been gathered in a stadium instead, to be given instuructions on how to help Microsoft outlive its former shell by interjecting themselves strategically into competitors.

And in case it’s not obvious by now, this post is published on April first. █

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Credit: TinyOgg

Summary: An interpretation of one bit of apparent humour from the hugely popular OMGUbuntu Web site

OMGUbuntu often endorses Mono-based applications, but all in all, there’s nothing nefarious in the site, which does a great job promoting Ubuntu GNU/Linux and introducing new users to it

OMGUbuntu has just chosen the bait headline “Clementine music player goes mono…” and it doesn’t mean what it may sound like. “Clementine,” Joey says, “the Amarok 1.4 inspired music player – is going mono in its forthcoming release.” That’s not Novell’s Mono at all and the confusion appears to be deliberate. OpenBytes believes that “OMGUbuntu makes a dig at Mono”. To quote:

If you ever find yourself with views which don’t support a Mono advocate, my advice to you would be keep them to yourself, lest you get a vulgar tirade of the “c” word that I did by an advocate of theirs. Whilst a Mono supporter may try to woo you with statements like “haters like to hate” (in order to cheapen any opposition to it) or the best one “they’re killing FOSS!” it seems that the disapproval (or at least concerns about it) are much larger than any Mono supporter would want to acknowledge, afterall Jo Shields wrote a whole article trying to justify it.

Mono has already tainted OpenSUSE (including forbidden parts like Banshee) and although there is not much news from OpenSUSE anymore, there are some nice new stories of deployment in Indonesia for example:

Yogyakarta is one of the tourism destination in Indonesia. The unique Javanise tradition blend with some acculturation from outside culture. Recently I was asked by the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology and Office of Education, Youth and Sport of Yogyakarta to help them to prepare the computer lab for elementary and junior high school in Yogyakarta Province – Indonesia.

Well, this is the tough job. I work with some expert, teacher and education strategist to prepare the e-learning system. We should prepare learning/teaching material in digital format, train the teacher to use authoring tools and operating system, and prepare the schools to be ready to receive the PC’s. This government initiative will involve 500 schools in 3 years. Every school that involve in this program will receive 21 PCs.

It’s important not to make children dependent on applications which depend on Mono. Microsoft (aka SCO 2.0) is trying to exploit that. █

“I saw that internally inside Microsoft many times when I was told to stay away from supporting Mono in public. They reserve the right to sue”

–Robert Scoble, former Microsoft evangelist

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Summary: The video above captures some embarrassing moments of Apple which are fairly recent

AS WE stated about a month ago, July was a terrible month for Apple from a reputation perspective. The video we have just transcoded — even though the language may be a barrier — provides a summary. Here is where we found this video:

An enlightening CNN clip that interviews Jimmy Lai and takes us behind the scenes at Next Media’s Taiwan animation headquarters quotes Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz huffily declaring that if this is the future of journalism, he wants no part of it. I can see his point. Lai is out to make money by syndicating his animations far and wide, Associated Press-style. But while the Steve Jobs clip does a decent job of covering a spring and summer’s worth of Apple news — stolen iPhone prototypes, suicidal Chinese workers — it certainly doesn’t fit under what we used to think of as “news.” Steve Jobs isn’t actually Darth Vader.

“I hasten to add,” said the person who brought this to our attention, “I found the last story bizarre rather than useful or well argued but sometimes bizarre is enough.” █

Summary: SparkleShare is Mono (and proud of it), Ubuntu still under threat of having Banshee spread throughout the project, putting in it code which Microsoft explicitly stated is a patent problem

Yesterday we linked to this post about a “Slick FOSS Alternative to Dropbox”. What we did not know at the time is that it’s Mono based. One reader told us: “[I] Was about to install it, so I first opened the readme file.” The text shown above (in the title) was in it, probably as just a tongue-in-cheek gesture.

Why is it that Mono proponents use humour to escape criticism? Novell’s Jeffrey Stedfast (of the Mono team) is currently linking to humourous viral marketing from Microsoft and the OMG!Mono! folks advertise/promote Banshee in the sense that they call for help testing it. Ubuntu Netbook Edition is intended to have Banshee by default [1, 2, 3] and it would be worrying if the desktop edition followed suit because it’s a lawsuit threat:

Given that Ubuntu aims to replace the default mediaplayer on the Ubuntu Netbook Edition with Banshee, Didier Roche has requested that the proud OMG army unleash their unspeakable powers of mass breakage on the newly promoted Banshee 1.7.5 package in Maverick.

Those who do not understand the legal ramifications (that would be the majority) may need the advice of others. █

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Hat tip: SubSonica

Update: just to clarify (this might be elusive), the image shows Ubuntu influencing Microsoft rather than the other way around.

–Stewart Alsop, Fortune

WALTHAM, Mass., April 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) today announced that Microsoft had agreed to acquire Ximian, along with its owner which possesses UNIX, one of Microsoft’s most formidable competitors.

Microsoft and Novell choose to keep the details of their deal secret but are delighted to assure customers that it is absolutely good news to them all.

About Novell

Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) delivers a Microsoft-taxed Linux platform and a portfolio of integrated software patents designed to help customers around the world increase cost, complexity and risk.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in racketeering, extortion services and collusions that help people and businesses realize their full potential. █

“It’s possible, you can never know, that the universe exists only for me. If so, it’s going quite well I must admit.”

–Bill Gates

Summary: The relationship between Washington and Microsoft as shown more comically (see the original in the links below)

TAX dodger Microsoft Corporation [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] is receiving no love these days.

Jeff sez, “Inspired by Boing Boing post about Microsoft tax dodge, cartoonist RR Anderson takes on Washington’s $100 million tax cut and tax amnesty for Microsoft.”

This cartoon was also mentioned by a former Microsoft employee. There is this post/article of his about bias at the Seattle Times, which still seemingly refuses to cover Microsoft’s offences and instead glorifies rogue operations.

As the Seattle Weekly discussed earlier, the Seattle Times has yet to report on Representative Ross Hunter’s HB3176 and its proposed $100 million tax cut for Microsoft as well as $1.27 billion in amnesty. It may be that the paper is too busy running to the bank to cash Microsoft’s latest check for a full page ad on the controversial 20th century vision to add more car lanes highway 520.

We wrote about the bridge story just a couple of days ago. █

“Microsoft looks at new ideas, they don’t evaluate whether the idea will move the industry forward, they ask, ‘how will it help us sell more copies of Windows?’”

–Bill Gates, The Seattle Weekly, (April 30, 1998)

Summary: Adding more humour and visuals with the help or readers/contributors

WALLCLIMBER, one of our big contributors, was kind enough to make that graphic from the previous post. She’s professional at that.

One reader who offered to hook us up with a cartoonist said that “if Boycott Novell wants to reach out to more individuals, it can use cartoons, because they can say a thousands words, without using words, or in the most simple terms…

“So, I have inserted a few on China, to help give you the idea, and what’s best, when individuals have fun seeing them, they will help spread the word too.

“Cartoons are very easy to understand, and should be encouraged more, especially on a blog, as lots of comments can generate higher volume o traffic, which is what you want, for more new readers to discover the website, right? Each day a new cartoon can be uploaded, making everyone want to go look and see the latest new developments and of course the cartoon!

“If attribution is preferred, we will add one too.”“Pictures are visual methods to share information…”

If anyone is willing to create a cartoon that advocates Free software, please send it to us for sharing (copyleft). We are always glad to receive and share funny or educational imagery, as we already did earlier this week. If attribution is preferred, we will add one too.

The same reader who suggested cartoons has also sent us material from the book “Barbarians Led by Bill Gates”. It was written by someone who is close to Gates and we can quote portions of the book (fair use). This ought to be interesting! █

“Stolen’s a strong word. it’s copyrighted content that the owner wasn’t paid for.”

–Bill Gates, June 2006

“You might be amused by the attached picture,” said one of our readers, who sent us the following photo. “I found posted on a wall not too far from my desk,” he said and “it brings to mind the Brian Valentine quote that ‘Windows is just not designed for security.’”

Click the image for a larger size. Priceless. █

Related posts:

• Please Sign Petition to Protest Amazon’s Remote Deletion of 1984 and Animal Farm
• Saturday Film: George Orwell 1984

–Richard Stallman

[For the socially-deficient, it's called humour. Webster defines sat·ire as "a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn"]

Summary: A hypothetical exchange of ideas published for humour

AS a little bit of background, see:

• Microsoft Colludes Against Google
• Microsoft’s Search Endeavours: Resorting to Bribery, Deception, and Intimidation
• Microsoft’s Use of Bribes for Search, Only 4% of Microsoft/Razorfish Clients Used Microsoft Search
• Mainstream Media Finally Discovers Microsoft’s Anti-Google AstroTurf
• Microsoft’s Anti-Google Whisper Campaign

One of our readers has produced this spoof ‘memo’, which reuses some phrases that can be seen in real memos. It goes like this:

-----------------------------
------- memo to billg -------

From: nathanm
To: billg
Date: 6 November 2009, 3:05 am
Subject: the threat from Google

It’s come to my attention that Google is making money out of Internet Search. This despite our best efforts, buying up Yahoo search patents, promoting litigation against the Google book deal and so on. I mean it’s not as if we went after Google to pay up royalties on our patented search patent technology, oh, wait, we did so just that… never mind.

I think our forward looking strategy is to tie up with some mega-media corporation offering them prime place on Bing and get them to criticise Google for stealing content. We’ll get them to enthuse the rest of the online media to move to paid content, despite the fact they are virtually cutting their own throat. Whatever we do we mustn’t ever let slip that content – paid or otherwise – is next to useless, if no one can find it, and we will of course control exactly that.

We’ll also plant… er… seed the media with suggestions as to paying people to move from Google to Bing. Make sure it looks like it isn’t coming from us. Once we’ve got ‘free’ content shutdown and most content on Bing, we effectively control the Internet toll road…

First thing in the morning:

From: billg
To: rupertm@wsj.com
Date: 6 November 2009, 9:05 am
Subject: lets be partners and make lots of money

Dear Rupert,

Those evil people at Google are stealing all your content, but I can help you. Lets be ‘partners’ and Microsoft will give your material exclusive priority on our upcoming Bing. All we ask in return is you remove your content from Google and trash them in the press and government. Of course once Google is defeated and Microsoft owns Internet search, we’ll effectively own both you and your content, but by then it’ll be too late. And it isn’t as if you are clever enough to notice you being used as a stalking horse in out battle against Google. It isn’t the first time we played one ‘partner’ off against another with empty sweet nothings.

Thanks to our anonymous reader who wrote these E-mails/memos. █

Summary: Self-serving ‘charitable’ foundations under gentle fire

“DILBERT is picking on Bill Gates and his foundation,” alerts us a reader. For those who have not followed this closely, we last wrote about it yesterday, adding to existing critique of the Gates Foundation.

A lot of people do not know that critics of the Gates Foundation include respectable figures such as the chief of malaria for the World Health Organisation. It’s all driven by facts, not irrational resentment or envy. Those who do their homework also understand the role of Bill's press in the mythology. █

“My background is finance and accounting. As a socially conscious venture capitalist and philanthropist, I have a very good understanding of wealth management and philanthropy. I started my career in 1967 with the IRS as a specialist in taxation covering many areas of the tax law including the so-called legal loopholes to charitable giving. […] However, the Gates Buffet foundation grant is nothing more than a shell game in which control of assets for both Gates and Buffet remain the same. […] The only difference is that the accumulation of wealth by these two will be much more massive because they will no longer have to pay any taxes.”

The Gates and Buffet Foundation Shell Game

Also recent (cartoons):

• Dilbert on Microsoft Corrupting Standards
• Cartoon: What Microsoft *Really* Innovates
• The New Ubersoft