06.26.20
Posted in Deception, GNU/Linux, Marketing, Microsoft at 7:55 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: ZDNet isn’t showing the ability or the will to improve; its “LINUX” section is still littered with Microsoft marketing/propaganda and its articles that are actually about GNU/Linux are preceded/covered by Windows promotion
EARLIER this month we took note of ZDNet embedding Microsoft promotion (as videos!) in articles about competitors of Microsoft. How does ZDNet excuse or frame such behaviour as ethical? It’s not. It is also an insult to reporters, who basically cover X only for the publisher to place anti-X at the very top of their articles (something positive about X).
Today, having just checked, we’re still seeing the same thing. A couple of examples:
The subliminal message or issue is rather clear: you should really just use Vista 10. It’s all about the “new Microsoft” that tells us it "loves Linux" so that it can attack GNU/Linux.
“Keep it up, ZDNet. You show your true face.”This is, quite frankly, all one needs to know about ZDNet and who runs the agenda there. We might also note that about half the story in the “LINUX” section are currently just Microsoft promotion/spam. Some have nothing whatsoever to do with GNU/Linux (even remotely). Hey, it’s not like ZDNet is trying to pretend to be a professional news site, right? It’s all about advertisers, to whom readers (“audiences”) are a product to be sold.
Keep it up, ZDNet. You show your true face. You expose your real owners. █
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06.14.20
Posted in Deception, GNU/Linux, Marketing at 2:59 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Cheap marketing stunts or political opportunism with not a single quote from a black person?
Not a single quote from a black person in this blog post (no black people work for the Foundation, after all)
Linux Foundation Board
The Linux Foundation’s leadership team
Summary: “We are proud (and privileged) to work with communities and members that support our initiatives and reflect the same values,” [sic] the Linux Foundation says while using only tokens as 'support' for black people
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05.20.20
Posted in Deception, GNU/Linux, Marketing, Microsoft, Mono, Windows at 4:07 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft is hijacking the names and brands of its direct competition; this is not an accident or a mere coincidence, it is part of a well-planned and longstanding tradition of battling by false association
WE are doing the best we can to stay focused and deal with the important topics. Microsoft is meanwhile googlebombing the news; those who follow “Linux” news will know what we talk about. We’ve come to the conclusion that the best way to deal with it is not to even mention it, even negatively, as any attention would serve Microsoft’s agenda by mentioning brands like “Edge” or “Azure” or “Vista 10″.
Our series about Windows in hospitals is quite popular; some readers can relate and have come across similar incidents. Truth be told, hospitals would be vastly better off with BSDs and robust GNU/Linux distributions at the back end as well as the front end. The ‘choice’ of Windows is largely political (or led by moles) and Microsoft is currently trying to blur the gap, making it hard to distinguish between GNU/Linux and some malware with keylogging. They want GNU/Linux to also push proprietary non-standards like DirectX. That really says a lot about Microsoft’s true agenda. It has nothing to do with loving “Linux”; it’s about love of Azure, SQL Server, Office and DirectX. We can see that the Linux Foundation now lends a hand to the openwashing of Office as well. It’s grotesque, but so was the Foundation this past few years. It’s actively working to undermine GNU/Linux, based on its very actions.
“It’s part of the Microsoft-mastered decades-long tradition of diluting if not ‘stealing’ the competition’s brands.”Rest assured, we want to stay focused and not fall for the trap; our Daily Links will be 100% sanitised of all that Microsoft spam. Our series about Windows in hospitals will resume shortly.
Honest GNU/Linux news sites ought not cooperate with this googlebombing campaign of Microsoft, trying to own not only its own brand but others’ brands. Vis-a-vis branding, watch what Microsoft has just done [1,2]. It’s part of the Microsoft-mastered decades-long tradition of diluting if not ‘stealing’ the competition’s brands. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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Today May 19, 2020, we were notified by a couple of users at the KDE Maui Project Telegram channel about a name change of a Microsoft product, the UI framework previously known as ‘Xamarin.Forms’ was rebranded as MAUI (Multi-platform App UI ). This name change is unfortunate as there is an existing project called Maui; evidently, we are referring to the Maui Project (https://mauikit.org/). The word “Maui” often capitalized as MAUI in the Maui Project is also an acronym, and it means Multi-Adaptable User Interfaces taking this as consideration; there’s a reasonable cause of confusion between these two frameworks.
As it is the case, both are UI frameworks to create cross-platform applications, which does not help the situation. We created the Maui Project in 2018, announcing it for the first time on June 10 of the same year, as per our calculations, that is two years before Microsoft introduced this change into their product. The Maui Project’s code was initially at GitHub, and it has code commits dating back to April 29, 2018. Currently, the code of MauiKit and the Maui applications lives on KDE Invent.
Even going back as far as checking the registration of the original domain https://maui-project.org which dates back to 2018-05-06 and the current domain (which is under KDE infrastructure) https://mauikit.org which dates back to 2018-09-21, it’s relatively easy to observe that the Maui Project predates this rebranding by Microsoft.
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03.22.20
Posted in Deception, GNU/Linux, Marketing at 8:19 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
What has the Linux Foundation become?
Summary: With many links to the editor’s personal site, which sells PR services (usually proprietary software and ‘cloud’), one wonders how Linux.com can call itself a news site
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02.15.20
Posted in Deception, Marketing, Microsoft at 11:53 pm by Guest Editorial Team
Response to yesterday's post
Summary: A noteworthy message we’ve received from someone who knows Microsoft from the inside
Microsoft’s marketing and sales budget is bigger than their R&D. Ad revenue fueled media outlets actively seek out entities with budgets such as this and will naturally shill for such entities while tending to avoid their ire by adhering to embargoes, letting them slip in sponsored content, not publishing negative press, and such. If they play ball, then they get privileged access and such. So yes, ZDNet is owned by Microsoft (and others) in some senses.
Media outlet gets a shit ton of ad-revenue. Company makes a fortune with an image bolstered by biased news that plays to the favor of companies with huge ad budgets in return. People and companies stand to make so much money off of an inflated and unrealistic image that there are 6 PR people for every journalist. And the disparity is probably 20:1 when you separate the real journalists from the shill journalists. █
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Posted in Deception, Marketing, Microsoft at 10:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Snapshot from this morning (not out of the ordinary)
Summary: A look at what ZDNet tells its readers (screenshot from this morning) and a rare look at how its writers are censored/suppressed
How Microsoft’s chief PR person (from the army) talks to other Microsoft staff for merely being honest
Old mail from Mary, who covers Microsoft for ZDNet
Some things never change
“The author of the email, posted on ZDNet in a Talkback forum on the Microsoft antitrust trial, claimed her name was Michelle Bradley and that she had “retired” from Microsoft last week.
“”A verbal memo [no email allowed] was passed around the MS campus encouraging MS employee’s to post to ZDNet articles like this one,” the email said.
“”The theme is ‘Microsoft is responsible for all good things in computerdom.’ The government has no right to prevent MS from doing anything. Period. The ‘memo’ suggests we use fictional names and state and to identify ourselves as students,” the author claimed.”
–Wired Magazine
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01.29.20
Posted in Marketing, Microsoft at 2:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Does Microsoft wish to actively associate with occult?
Reality? Really? This was on MSN (Microsoft) News yesterday…
Summary: Microsoft’s ‘news’ sites fail to heed the warning or the toxicity (bad publicity) associated with Marina Abramović and they promote Microsoft’s proprietary software using not only militarism (goggles for the Army) but borderline cannibalism
THIS may sound truly ridiculous (because it is). What does Microsoft have in common with Satanic ‘spirit cooking’ rituals? Watch what has just been promoted as a “World Tour” in MSN? It’s promoted shamelessly in a Microsoft site (MSN is fully controlled by Microsoft), which does marketing and propaganda for the company rather than objective news.
One reader asked us: “Ever hear of “spirit cooking”?”
“If not, read up on what came of the Podesta Emails via Wikileaks and then check this out.”
“I wrote a lot about this as soon as Podesta E-mails came out,” I responded, though “I didn’t take that to be or to mean what some people claim it to be… but it showed how debased, irrational and bloodthirsty some people are. They think these cults are entertainment…
“Maybe they just got bored of their yachts and stuff…”
“The only surprising thing is that Microsoft is willing to associate itself with that occult lunacy to promote its proprietary software products.”For those who don’t know, these silly rituals, which involve blood and breast milk (from humans) — sometimes even parts of carcasses like animal skulls — are beyond bizarre. They’re described as performances, but any members of the public who are amused by sticking pins and consuming blood (or milk intended for babies) or whatever the hell they do probably need to visit a psychiatrist to have their heads examined.
The only surprising thing is that Microsoft is willing to associate itself with that occult lunacy to promote its proprietary software products*. Unreal! Maybe they’ll name a successor to Vista 10 “Windows Epstein Edition” as an homage to a close friend of Bill Gates. █
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* These products have failed in the market, so Microsoft will settle for anything to create the false perception of widespread use.
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01.10.20
Posted in Deception, GNU/Linux, Marketing, Microsoft at 2:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The media plays along (more like advertising than journalism and Microsoft’s advertising budget for magazine space certainly plays a role)
Does this look like a Microsoft ad or an actual article? They also promote listening devices down at the bottom.
Summary: Microsoft keeps buying ad space in magazines, compromising their integrity and tarnishing brands such as “Linux” (making it look like merely a component available with Vista 10)
“Microsoft EDGE, the browser that’s better and safer than Chrome,” a reader of ours joked, having sent us the above photograph. “Or else, steal the Chrome rendering engine, add-in hooks to the underlying OS then rename it Microsoft EDGE. Have these people no shame?”
“What kind of “Admin” uses that toy? That’s like selling a rickshaw to truck drivers…”Remember that it has KHTML roots (KDE) — a topic we covered here about a decade back.
“Computer mags at the local WHSmith,” as our reader noted, show more of the same pattern. “See image,” he wrote. “See also the front page of ‘Admin’ magazine: “Windows Subsystem for Linux”. If you can’t steal Linux then at least you can steal mindshare :]”
In Microsoft’s very own words [PDF]: “Mind Control: To control mental output you have to control mental input. Take control of the channels by which developers receive information, then they can only think about the things you tell them. Thus, you control mindshare!”
Here’s the latest pile:
Nowadays, with WSL, they use that “Linux” thing to offer more Windows ‘features’ while tying them to the underlying spying machine. Shades of AWS in the server space…
Look closely at the top pick:
Yes, WSL. What kind of “Admin” uses that toy? That’s like selling a rickshaw to truck drivers… █
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