09.16.14
Posted in Deception, Marketing, Microsoft at 5:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: CBS continues to be infested with Microsoft staff past and present (this time Dave Johnson) and the bias in output is quite revealing
PROPAGANDA giant CBS (notoriously selling to the public wars of conquest and mass surveillance) has been a target of our criticism also because it hires people who have worked or are still working for Microsoft to cover Microsoft positively and slam Microsoft’s competition. It’s not news, it’s advertising or agenda, if not propaganda.
Microsoft boosters are everywhere at CBS, with several in CNET and several in ZDNet; some are still Microsoft employees, not former employees. They are attacking Microsoft rivals and planting PR for Microsoft. Later on when they chat to me in Twitter they still pretend to be “objective”. They don’t say much; they just know they got caught in a conflict of interest.
Anyway, CBS has apparently just hired yet another (there are many more) “former” Softer to put Microsoft puff pieces disguised as articles. This guy, Dave Johnson, works neither in CNET nor ZDNet (CBS-owned) but more directly writes for CBS sites. There are quite a few articles like this one and it’s an epidemic that ought to raise concerns and draw criticism. Watch his stream of Microsoft propaganda (even vapourware at the moment).
Meanwhile it’s reported that Microsoft paid almost half a billion dollars for NFL to pretend to endorse Microsoft (advertisement disguised as recommendation), but even this has not worked like Microsoft hoped. As TechDirt (among other publications) put it, “Marketing Failure: Microsoft Pays NFL To Use Its Surface Tablets — And People Still Call Them ‘iPad-Like Tools’”:
Over at The Verge, Vlad Savov has an amusing post about how NFL announcers this weekend referred to the sideline tablets that players are using as “iPad-like tools.” Microsoft Surface tablets are being allowed on the sidelines as part of a $400 million deal between Microsoft and the NFL. And Microsoft is promoting the Surface as “the official tablet of the NFL.” And, in the end, all anyone remembers is that it’s an “iPad-like tool.” I wonder if the guy who signed that deal for Microsoft has lined up a new job yet…
There have been quite a few articles like this one.
Embedded advertisements or fake endorsements are only some of the tools in Microsoft’s arsenal of AstroTurfing tools, used by proxy much of the time. But again, what CBS is doing is much worse than most. It’s corrupt means of providing what CBS pretends to be “news”.
CBS is not news; neither in politics nor in technology. It needs to be shunned. It’s corporate press, not news. █
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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:
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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.
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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.
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02.13.14
Posted in Free/Libre Software, Marketing at 12:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Mozilla is imitating the business model of Formula One drivers, wearing corporate stickers as covert marketing
YEARS before abandoning Google I also abandoned Firefox, which I had used since before the 1.0 release (I was a very early and happy adopter). The reason for abandonment was mostly technical and I returned to Firefox partly for idealogical reasons. Mozilla started talking about privacy (also hiring privacy advocates), it publicly shunned advertisers (thanks to these new hires), it adopted (and hired) standards, and it even embraced Linux, which was no longer an afterthought for the company. Mozilla also said goodbye to people whom it had hired from Microsoft — people who would later use their Mozilla hat to promote NSA Windows for ‘security’.
I was truly shocked to learn, despite the deceiving language from Mozilla [1], that it decided to sell out [2] (even longtime supporters of Mozilla think so) after I switched to Firefox even on mobile devices. Mozilla claims to offer better privacy these days [3], it has a new focus on mobile [4], and it even has its own homegrown mobile OS that is based on Linux and coming soon to many phones [5] (not to mention the huge popularity of the desktops/laptops browser [6]). What is going on at Mozilla and how could this be? Mozilla spends $300,000 trying to buy the community’s support [7] and now it’s throwing it all away by saying it will soon be embedding “sponsored content from hand-picked partners” inside the browser? Is Mozilla so desperate for cash or has its management lost its mind? This whole strategy needs to be abandoned fast (if it’s not too late to revoke deals). █
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Directory Tiles will instead suggest pre-packaged content for first-time users. Some of these tile placements will be from the Mozilla ecosystem, some will be popular websites in a given geographic location, and some will be sponsored content from hand-picked partners to help support Mozilla’s pursuit of our mission. The sponsored tiles will be clearly labeled as such, while still leading to content we think users will enjoy.
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Lots of folks are lamenting the latest news from Mozilla stating they’ll soon be showing users “sponsored content from hand-picked partners.” In other news, a recent Debian decision leaves Ubuntu on its own with upstart. Matt Hartley recently compared the ease of Ubuntu to the flexibility of rolling release distributions.
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Like its desktop counterpart, HTTPS Everywhere makes sure that you’re using HTTPS whenever possible, and kicks your browsing session over to HTTPS on its list of sites that support it, even if you click a link or are routed to a page that’s not SSL encrypted. To install, visit the link below using Firefox for Android, and the add-on will be automatically installed for you. Firefox will prompt you to accept the installation, restart to complete the changes, and when it’s back up, you’ll see the HTTPS Everywhere logo in the address bar.
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At this week’s InContext Conference, Mozilla and EverythingMe showed a preview of the upcoming release of Firefox Launcher for Android. Firefox OS, Mozilla’s mobile platform has already used EverythingMe’s tools for presenting easy to get at collections of links to web apps. Firefox Launcher for Android is intended to make it easy to discover content you want and get it optimized for the way you use your phone.
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After yesterday’s article about the new Firefox UI landing in the Aurora channel, here’s some screenshots showing what the new Firefox marked at 29.0a2 looks like on Ubuntu Linux.
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Mageia 4 was released on schedule last weekend and got the full treatment by friend Jamie Watson at ZDNet while Sean Kerner posted a screenshot tour and brief introduction. Firefox 27 and 29 are getting some attention. Red Hat’s Chris Mendler is planning to open a run distillery in his spare time. And Jack Wallen thinks geek speak is keeping Linux out of the mainsteam.
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“Gigabit networks have the potential to change how we live, work, learn and interact on the web, much like the switch from dial-up to broadband did,” says Mark Surman, executive director of Mozilla. “The educators, developers, students and other inventive thinkers in these leading gigabit economies have a unique opportunity to help shape the web of the future, in ways that can help us all know more, do more and do better.”
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02.07.14
Posted in Deception, Marketing, Microsoft at 9:06 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The latest lies from Canalys are basically Microsoft promotion disguised as “just statistics”
WE HAVE REPEATEDLY seen and reported dubious claims of Microsoft “success” in mobile because it always turns out to be baseless propaganda, often from Microsoft-paid entities.
We are again seeing all sorts of ridiculous claims about Microsoft mobile “success” (tiny gains) — claims that are mostly thrown around for promotion by Microsoft booster and shameless (at times AstroTurfing) PR agencies. The Microsoft boosters really need some source to cite if they sell an illusion and ZDNet (part of ) is a popular source because there’s lots of Microsoft staff and boosters there, masquerading as “journalists” (Microsoft Zack, for example, plays the Microsoft “privacy” card at ZDNet these days, omitting his employment at Microsoft). ZDNet‘s worst writer, Rachel King (we covered her for propaganda and PR before), writes that “Windows Mobile is coming on the strongest, poised to be the biggest disruptor in 2014.” [1]
Oh, really?
This reminds us of familiar deception from Microsoft- and Apple-funded firms like Net Applications (no longer cited anymore; maybe after a while they stop funding disgraced entities and move on to another, just as they do with their lobbyists).
Canalys and its shameless lies are already debunked thoroughly by Tomi Ahonen [2]. “On Mythbusters today,” he wrote, “did Windows Phone really grow more last year than Android and iOS? We put Canalys to the test. And also in today’s program the Microsoft way to cook your books. Mythbusters team tires to turn a yes into a no. How can you tell the opposite of the truth through the magic of statistics.”
Remember when IDC was paid by Microsoft to make fake market share studies and also to push out to the press (not just IDG) bogus claims? Microsoft did the same with Gartner. So the question remains, what is the relationship (if any) between Canalys and Microsoft? We might never know. It took a long while to discover that Microsoft had paid Net Applications and also had former staff there (prolonging the myths around market share). It was not an isolated incident or example. We covered many more. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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For quite awhile now, there has been no question about which operating system dominates the smartphone market, domestic or worldwide. Android’s reach is not slowing down either, based on a new report from global market research firm Canalys.
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Mark Twain quoted Benjamin Disraeli saying that there were three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. This is the mythbusters edition about Canalys the supposedly professional mobile industry analyst house who would like to sell you their expensive reports. its been a while since we’ve had to do some work as the industry’s stats police but unfortunately for the supposedly trustworthy Canalys, this is already the second time they are on our agenda.
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02.05.14
Posted in Deception, Marketing, Microsoft, Patents at 7:28 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A closer look and briefer analysis (than most) of people whom Microsoft is grooming amid perception-altering appointments
Analysis of the press release from Microsoft has been shallow and promotional. Watch out for bogus ‘reporting’ from Microsoft boosters like Peter ‘Bright’, to give just one example among hundreds or thousands jaw-dropping puff pieces. Even some Microsoft-hostile circles have offered too week a scrutiny, if any at all. Let’s sum up what it’s all about (and it’s mostly marketing, not real news).
Microsoft has a new racketeer in chief, overseeing patent extortion along with Horacio while putting a ‘gentle’ face on it. It is all just a rebranding exercise — a familiar old trick that the company behind Kin and Vista is known for. This is a persona routine that marketing companies are renowned for and villains/abusers like BP or Monsanto are (in)famous for.
Also joining the leadership is the man best known for his leadership in GNU/Linux foe Symantec and his role in Seagate, a company sometimes known for its NSA connections just like Microsoft (those three are all connected, or even four if Symantec gets counted because Seagate preinstalls Microsoft software on drives and Symantec profits from Windows). As a timely side note, avoid Seagate. They are absolutely horrible, both technically (based on new studies [1, 2]) and ethically. Today I had to print labels at a high price at some shop to send back my faulty drive to Segate (Netherlands); they shipped me a faulty drive to replace another drive that had gone faulty. Seagate is garbage.
Last but not least, Microsoft boasts the involvement of serial felon, tax evader and patent booster, who is making money by charging taxpayers for his patents against their will and through governments (as an investor in Wal-Mart, for example, his quickly-growing money hoard is at least partly funded by taxpayers, as Wal-Mart itself admits [1]).
Based on what seems like a satirical piece about Vista 8, this man who joked about Vista being crappy (video from Homer) is now complaining about Vista. To quote Homer’s analysis of the satirical piece: “Bill Gates’ first day at work in the newly created role of technology adviser got off to a rocky start yesterday as the Microsoft founder struggled for hours to install the Windows 8.1 upgrade.
“The installation hit a snag early on, sources said, when Mr. Gates repeatedly received an error message informing him that his PC ran into a problem that it could not handle and needed to restart.
“After failing to install the upgrade by lunchtime, Mr. Gates summoned the new Microsoft C.E.O. Satya Nadella, who attempted to help him with the installation, but with no success.
As Will Hill points out: “Sadly, satire: PR for Gates and advertisement for Vista 7.”
This is pretty much all over the press these days: whitewash, humour, PR, and viral marketing. There was a similar story about Ballmer trying to get rid of a virus, requiring days of work and the help of several ‘engineers’. That was in Vista days, but in court documents it turned out that Ballmer and others really did struggle with Vista and expressed concerns.
Going back to Gates, it’s all decoy, distraction, and appeal to the press. So all we have here is one fake ‘charitable’ hoarder who increases his wealth by surveillance, private police thugs (G4S), GMO etc. and two people of ethnic minorities with proximity to NSA (Azure and Seagate). This is not change or reform, it’s just like the Obama speech about the NSA.
A week or so ago Microsoft booster Julie Bort was prolonging the myth of Microsoft as “an insanely profitable company” [2] when she said Microsoft should kick Gates out of the board. This reveals that Ballmer too will continue to be involved. So here we see that the architects of illegal activities still run Microsoft. Ballmer and Gates are to Microsoft what Clapper and Alexander have been to the NSA in recent years.
Remember that Gates has had a lot to do with Microsoft’s patent extortion strategy. Now that we learn about more patent deals [3] we should remember that there is nothing “gentle” or “charitable” at Microsoft. It’s the same ruthless people, including the man who was put on trial for business crimes and was arrested when he was young (to be bailed out by his affluent family). It’s all just marketing now.
“The new patent cross-licensing agreement is designed to protect both companies from patent lawsuits,” says the Microsoft booster about Google and Cisco. What a classic mischaracterisation of patents.
Where is the criticism of Gates for rackeetering? Where are the good investigative articles from Wired, which nowadays (on a weekly basis) seems to be acting as Gates’ private perception management journal? █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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Walmart has been in the national spotlight for their poverty wages and employees’ reliance on government assistance. In their quarterly report, Walmart is set to announce that their profits have taken a hit. In a moment of rare honesty, they cited the Republican funding cut to the federal food stamp (SNAP) program as a part of the reason for their lower profit margins, admitting that the federal food stamp program amounts to corporate welfare that subsidizes their profits.
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Microsoft is an insanely profitable company standing on the edge of disaster. It desperately needs new thinking.
With word that 22-year Microsoft veteran Satya Nadella is likely the new CEO, attention turns to the leadership of the company’s board of directors. It will have two former CEOs, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.
So new thinking is unlikely to come from them.
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12.12.13
Posted in GNU/Linux, Kernel, Marketing at 10:46 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A group called the “AllSeen Alliance” is the last thing which the Linux Foundation should want to be associated with
Branding is the main expertise of the Linux Foundation’s head (Linux Foundations CEO). That’s the field he comes from (his professional biography reveals this) and this is the purpose he serves, especially by ignoring if not altogether deleting GNU's role. It is all about the “Linux” brand, trying to label everything that uses the popular kernel “Linux” but never GNU or something similarly (or even more) important. Just remember who is the guardian is the “Linux” trademark and who seized control of the domain Linux.com. That in itself is not a major issue or a big deal, but the point is, the “Linux” brand is a relatively huge success story, perhaps bigger than Apple and the “i” things (or even the “Obama” brand, which exceeded in value any single corporation in the world, as empirically measured some years back).
“Perhaps the name of this so-called alliance can still be amended.”The Linux Foundation has been very good at advancing the Linux brand, so why was it so tactless in labeling its new initiative “AllSeen”, especially amid the NSA scandals? LXer commenters have rightly pointed out that this was a mistake. We can expect what they promote to be a potential cause for issues (see [1] from October 2013), but alas, the announcement [2] received a lot of press [3-13], not just from Linux Foundation staff [14].
The name “AllSeen” is not benign; it’s similar to All-Seeing and in practice it involves sensory signals being passed over a surveillance-dominated Internet. This can be used against people (espionage), as information about ‘smart’ meters shows. Perhaps the name of this so-called alliance can still be amended. Android, by the way, is no brilliant brand either, no matter if it refers to the devices, the users, or the creator (Andy Rubin).
Branding matters. The Linux Foundation can still dodge the “AllSeen” nonsense before it’s truly irreversible due to brand recognition. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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The Linux Foundation, together with industry heavyweights, has announced the formation of the AllSeen Alliance.
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The Linux Foundation announced an “AllSeen Alliance” for the Internet of Things built upon Qualcomm’s open source “AllJoyn” IoT interoperability framework.
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open source project, which was originally developed by and is contributed to the Alliance by Qualcomm.
The Linux Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux and collaborative development, announced the formation of the AllSeen Alliance, a consortium dedicated to advancing adoption and innovation in the “Internet of Everything” in homes and industry.
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08.10.13
Posted in Bill Gates, Deception, Marketing, Microsoft at 12:59 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Seeding the PR at the wrong places to drive away longtime readers
Summary: How the Gates propaganda machine has spread as far as Slashdot, which was originally known and even renowned for its geeks-oriented focus
Microsoft moles and boosters are being used for PR even in less expected sites, such as Slashdot. As is often the case with those people, they serve a dual role of grooming Microsoft and also the Gates Foundation, which they try to charitywash Microsoft with.
The Microsoft plant in Slashdot [1, 2] is at it again this week. “Microsoft Nick is active promoting His Billness,” told us iophk, basing his statement on the alias seen here (he uses known aliases now). It’s always just PR, never any reporting. He did the same thing for years in a site called “Microsoft Watch” (which was a misnomer because it was nonstop Microsoft promotion after he had taken over).
“The site is now run by people who deem it their duty to make Microsoft stronger.”How about Microsoft Nick doing some real reporting for a change? Maybe he can comment on the money Gates was funnelling to ALEC [1, 2], which is now denying global warming (Gates does it yet again) and attacking the working class. No, that would not be a good story, would it? It’s not Nick’s job. He may think he is a journalist, but his profession is more like a mole for Microsoft in various sites, tugging along the official party line.
What can one do to restore Slashdot, bringing it back to its roots? There is not much that can be done, as it increasingly looks like entryism. The site is now run by people who deem it their duty to make Microsoft stronger.
Those who favour FOSS-oriented sites are running low on options, as good sites are shutting down or becoming less active (we covered several examples recently), leaving a lot more room for fake journalism or marketing. █
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06.22.13
Posted in Marketing, Microsoft, Vista 8 at 11:05 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Rigging debates
Summary: Comment AstroTurf alleged by an industry veteran who has observed and studied this phenomenon for decades
A long time ago, about half a decade into the past, Mr. Dvorak wrote about so-called “Munchkins” and we cited/quoted him on it. He saw these tactics going back to the days of OS/2 and "Barkto". Now that Reddit-planted Xbox AstroTurfing comes to light we should point out a Dvorak article from the end of 2012, around the time of the release of Vista 8 John Dvorak suspected Microsoft was “planting” comments in support of Vista 8:
While following the recent hirings and firings at Microsoft, the presence of Microsoft Munchkins is more obvious than ever to me. I cannot prove their existence, however, unless someone finally steps forward and admits everything. If you are one, please do so!
Munchkins are commenters who I believe work directly for Microsoft or for its public relations agency. They scour the comment boards and rebuke with high authority all criticisms of specific Microsoft products. The reality of these people was well-documented during the Windows versus OS/2 days and I can only suspect that the practice continues to this day.
Once in a while, one of these characters shows up on my blog with a long and seemingly thoughtful post about some Microsoft product. The piece manages to condemn everyone who is critical of something Microsoft did. When you go back into the admin section of the blog where you can look at all postings by that person, the IP address, and other details, you always find that this person has not been on the blog before, and has never posted any prior comments. I can assure that anyone who is long-winded in the comment section posts a lot of comments.
Microsoft and crime are almost synonymous, so it would not be shocking if many or most pro-Vista 8 comments were indirectly funded by the company of crimes as ‘norm’.
Thanks to the reader who showed us the article above; somehow we missed it (we are no longer watching Microsoft closely). █
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