01.20.21
Posted in GNU/Linux, Hardware, Microsoft, Windows at 7:59 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Intel Inside®? No, Microsoft inside. Shoehorned using buzzwords and marketing hype.
Summary: The video above is continuation of the previous part about a document full of superficial buzzwords (not technical jargon anywhere), in effect recommending to managers that they blindly follow trends and cargo cults (such as Clown Computing) and not what’s most suitable for technical excellence
THE sorts of material we receive from and about Intel is embarrassingly shallow. The company has put its future in the ends of clueless clowns, who are better at reciting buzzwords and putting together fancy presentations at the expense of technical arguments.
“Intel is pivoting towards Microsoft also for clown computing,” told us a former Intel insider, “because Amazon, Oracle and other clown companies are moving towards (their own) ARM processors for their respective clowns [and] at least with Microsoft they will be able to sell their processors for running backdoored servers and desktops in the clown…”
We’ve already heard all about the backlash at Intel. They’re being pushed around by people who instead of striving to make better products basically cheat the market.
To give an example, the former insider quotes European authorities as saying: “First, according to the contested decision, Intel awarded four OEMs, namely Dell, Lenovo, HP and NEC, rebates which were conditioned on these OEMs purchasing all or almost all of their x86 CPUs from Intel. Similarly, Intel awarded payments to MSH, which were conditioned on MSH selling exclusively computers containing Intel’s x86 CPUs.”
“But Intel has changed logos,” I jokingly responded, “so all is forgotten now…”
Here’s an article about the slap-on-the-wrist fines, noting that Intel “paid retail stores rebates to only stock x86 parts.”
“competing on merit my ***,” said the former insider. Ryan noted that “Intel-based laptops have gotten MUCH cheaper lately.” Increased competition tends to lead to that and Intel never tolerated competition. It has this in common with Microsoft. “Lenovo knocked the $1,500 Thinkbooks down to like $850,” Ryan added, as “probably Intel and Microsoft had to lower their prices significantly. There’s just not much more you can do with a Windows computer these days than with anyone else’s.”
The latest news suggests that Intel will lose some of its biggest clients. This will be a boon to GNU/Linux and hardware from Chinese firms (with or without back doors, which Intel has anyway).
Big blow to Intel, do doubt…
The video above does not deal with the fluff Intel commissioned or paid for; instead it speaks in more general terms about the aimlessness of the company, driving away its talent while pulling in Microsoft’s orbit (and then imposing it on GNU/Linux developers).
This document which we show here (HRI tools analysis report) is a research report from a 3rd party to Intel, in effect “recommending Microsoft/proprietary tools,” including “the recommendation to partner with Microsoft,” according to a source. We’ll come to this at a later stage and discuss the ramifications. In the meantime we can dwell in the superficiality and lack of insight. █
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01.18.21
Posted in GNU/Linux, Hardware, Microsoft, Windows at 2:42 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Video download link (see this series’ index for more)
Summary: Things aren’t rosy at Intel because the hires aren’t suitable for the job of documenting and/or presenting GNU/Linux-centric products (whose target audience is Free software developers)
THE situation at Intel seems grim because everywhere one looks there are Microsoft boosters who deal with GNU/Linux like it’s just Windows. They don’t understand GNU/Linux and probably never used it.
This is clearly a recipe for disaster.
“…Intel is choosing Microsoft, not GNU/Linux, and Intel snubs software freedom except when it needs openwashing PR perks, shoehorned for money by the Linux Foundation (another faker full of people who never even used Linux).”Before we proceed to the second ‘phase’ of this series — a phase that deals with other kinds of documents — we explain in some brevity the sort of scenario GNU/Linux professionals find themselves in when they work for Intel. They’re basically surrounded if not besieged by people who don’t understand Free software and don’t even wish to understand it. They impose bad practices on everybody else and it should come as no surprise that many skilled and experienced developers are leaving (I personally know two who left last year).
As we shall show in the next so-called ‘phase’, Intel is choosing Microsoft, not GNU/Linux, and Intel snubs software freedom except when it needs openwashing PR perks, shoehorned for money by the Linux Foundation (another faker full of people who never even used Linux).
Intel is risking becoming a fossil, circling down the abyss of irrelevance. Hours ago Phoronix published “Itanium IA-64 Was Busted In The Upstream, Default Linux Kernel Build The Past Month,” saying that:
While Intel formally discontinued the Itanium processors just under two years ago, the Linux software support for IA-64 continues. However, as a possible sign of the times, the Linux 5.11 kernel build for it has been broken the past month.
As what might set off Linus Torvalds on a Monday morning, it turns out since the Linux 5.11 merge window the Itanium “IA64″ kernel code has been broken and unable to even successfully carry out a “defconfig” default configuration kernel build. This wasn’t due to some foreign change within the kernel regressing the support but a change made by IBM to the IA64 Kconfig to enable SPARSEMEM by default.
The world is moving past the Intel monopoly (and by extension x86). The Wintel monoculture won’t save Intel anymore because this monoculture too is rapidly eroding, becoming perhaps a mere niche some time later in this decade. █
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01.17.21
Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Windows at 6:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Video download link (see this series’ index for more)
Summary: A look inside Intel explains what holds back the technical team, which bemoans the lesser technical people getting in the way and not even using the product that they are writing about
THE GEEKS at Intel aren’t having an easy time. They’re being made to work or ‘cooperate’ with people who mostly get in their way, justifying their very existence using biased ‘studies’ which they themselves control. The resentment isn’t due to jealousy or zealotry; it’s due to issues of a technical nature and there’s reluctance to actually listen to technical people. The net effect is, Intel products and documentation of those products suffer. The end users (or developers) suffer.
This issue isn’t unlike many that we’ve seen in other companies. Non-technical or barely technical people are made to enter positions of power, in turn driving out the real talent and leaving in place unsuitable people who aren’t able to produce good products. If the real goal is to seed disharmony and harm products (or projects), then well done, mission accomplished. The Developer eXperience (DX) team seems to be self-harming… to Intel.
“I find it difficult to understand Intel’s line of reasoning when it comes to hiring people for DX,” told us a person who knows Intel from the inside, “as the company where I worked in mixed Linux/Unix/Windows environments gave adequate training to new hires to fill any gaps in Linux knowledge and skills.”
He continued: “I also always made sure to test scripts and code in the environment they were supposed to run in in order to minimise the chance of bugs occurring and to get as close to the customer environment as possible. This really helped when working on solutions to problems, so it is disappointing to see Intel not having similar levels of documentation and support.
“Intel doesn’t seem to see the urgency in doing this and it makes you question if they don’t want that training effort to be made. This in turn will lead to more people with a Microsoft background being employed until there are few if any people with GNU/Linux skills left.
“Last but not least I realise now that it is a good thing that the people who do the actual technical work should also be the ones writing the documentation, even if this takes time away from doing other technical work.”
The rest of this series can be found in the relevant wiki page. The video above deals with only a few examples (more to come tomorrow). █
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01.04.21
Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Hardware, Microsoft, Windows at 2:05 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: GNU/Linux developers inside Intel are being surrounded by non-technical and harmful employees; it’s as if Intel wants to merely pretend that it supports “Linux” when all it really supports is Microsoft
The series was preceded by an introduction and part I, which was a bit of a deliberate spoiler. Part II has the first actual leaks in it. Today we dive a little deeper and explain the scandal at hand.
Have a look at this:
“Looks like whatever they’re building is remarkably fragile and they’re bringing a Windows mentality to Linux where you should pay consultants to work on a program targeting already-rotten software as if it will never become unsupported,” Ryan noted in IRC some moments ago.
But wait, it’s going to get worse as we dive yet deeper. They not only adopt a “Windows mentality”; they wish to outsource the whole shebang to Microsoft. That’s the subject of future parts.
“Microsoft is still fostering this mindset with LTSC versions of Windows 10,” Ryan explained, “which are quite different than consumer ones. Companies are so resistant to change that even the built-in components that are being deprecated and removed in favor of Universal Windows Platform on other SKUs still have the legacy components in LTSC. Even the calculator. Because you move even the smallest thing around, and something breaks. LTSC doesn’t even have UWP, so the name is misleading. If you build a Universal Windows App, it will not work at all on Windows 10 LTSC. Which is because the UWP runtime and the Windows store are trash and corporations know that. The Win32 “Classic” API is actually far more capable, and Microsoft doesn’t want to admit it.”
How about this:
Or this:
Sometimes you must wonder why companies insist on outsourcing to Microsoft (GitHub), perhaps forgetting that many important decisions aren’t being made by geeks with a clue but by clueless nontechnical managers and so-called ‘consultants’ who may be covertly working for cults such as Microsoft. █
“Working behind the scenes to orchestrate “independent” praise of our technology, and damnation of the enemy’s, is a key evangelism function during the Slog. “Independent” analyst’s report should be issued, praising your technology and damning the competitors (or ignoring them). “Independent” consultants should write columns and articles, give conference presentations and moderate stacked panels, all on our behalf (and setting them up as experts in the new technology, available for just $200/hour). “Independent” academic sources should be cultivated and quoted (and research money granted). “Independent” courseware providers should start profiting from their early involvement in our technology. Every possible source of leverage should be sought and turned to our advantage.”
–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]
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12.29.20
Posted in Microsoft, Windows at 4:55 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Video download link
Summary: Less than a third of Web users observed by Statcounter are Windows users, according to the latest available statistics
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12.23.20
Posted in Deception, GNU/Linux, Kernel, Microsoft, Standard, Vista 10, Windows at 1:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: In yet another arrogant display of Hubris and self-admiration, Microsoft enters a project merely to divert resources away from its principal goals, instead rendering it a ‘slave’ of Microsoft’s proprietary universe (DirectX, WSL, GitHub)
THE ‘good folks’ from Microsoft have decided to ‘help’ Linux… by helping themselves to it. In whose favour? To whose ends?
Bill Gates once said: “The fact that there’s some e-mail here at MS that says ‘let’s go up and beat this guy’: there’s nothing wrong with that – that is capitalism at work for consumers.”
Yeah, so sabotaging Linux is also “capitalism at work for consumers.”
“They don’t love Linux, they just try to change Linux, including outsourcing of Linux to GitHub, which is proprietary software.”He even used the word “consumers” because that’s how Microsoft views computer users — merely those ‘peasants’ out there, ripe to ‘consume’ whatever Microsoft imposes on them.
This video started as a response to this hours-old article entitled “Microsoft Adds SPIR-V To DXIL Library In Mesa – With A Focus On WebGPU Support“ (as usual, the responses are better).
Microsoft “should stop fooling around, drop DX/DXIL and switch to Vulkan/SPIR-V to begin with,” as somebody put it in the latest comment. The article itself says Microsoft is “using Mesa to translate the APIs for consumption by Direct3D 12 drivers…”
So they come to Mesa to promote Microsoft, i.e. the usual. We’ve seen this many times before and we wrote about it dozens of times this year alone.
They don’t love Linux, they just try to change Linux, including outsourcing of Linux to GitHub, which is proprietary software. It's all about control (by Microsoft). As these videos aren’t scripted I ended up also discussing the sort of vision Microsoft has for Linux, namely a kernel that’s closely controlled by Microsoft, with all developers closely monitored and censored by Microsoft. Is this what we want for Linux?
Microsoft loves to use or mischaracterise its control over some GNU/Linux instances (in Azure) as “proof” that it “loves Linux”, but Azure has basically been an utter failure (financial calamity) and days ago we had it confirmed that Azure employees were fired this year. The video above also mentions that WSL has been an utter failure. They’re not exactly succeeding at “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish,” but they carry on trying. If we aren’t sufficiently vigilant, we might even fall into their trap. █
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12.22.20
Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Search, Security, Windows at 12:23 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
It won’t be financially sustainable for much longer and Microsoft admits to us (in IRC) that there were also Azure layoffs this year (and Azure has just been cracked)
Summary: When it comes to Web servers (World Wide Web as assessed by pertinent sites), Microsoft is already a goner living its last days (months or years)
THROUGHOUT the year we wrote nearly half a dozen posts about IIS, seeing that it’s nose-diving in terms of usage during the pandemic (both in absolute and relative terms). According to this latest report, which is the most comprehensive of its kind, only 3.87% of Web sites use Windows/IIS. This share is rapidly declining.
“…the trends are telling… Windows servers are a dying breed.”The latest report is, as usual, a bunch of graphs preceded by (foreword with text) explanatory notes. The name Microsoft is repeated at least 3 times and it says “Microsoft lost 14,700 computers”. To quote just 3 paragraphs:
Microsoft, Apache and nginx each suffered losses in their total number of domains, although nginx’s loss was small enough that its market share increased slightly. 30.3% of the world’s domains are now powered by nginx, compared with 26.4% powered by Apache. Despite losses affecting each major webserver vendor, the causes were independent in each case; for example nginx’s 34,000 loss resulting from a drop of 387,000 domains at Freenom.
OpenResty is continuing to show strong growth, with GoDaddy’s use of the web server for its parked domains. It now powers 71.3 million sites across 36.9 million domains and 84,680 web-facing computers.
The number of web-facing computers running nginx, Apache and Microsoft web server software also fell this month. The largest loss was 38,600 web-facing computers for nginx, which took its total down to 3.63 million and its share down by 0.33 percentage points to 34.4%, leaving it just over one percentage point ahead of Apache. Microsoft lost 14,700 computers, while Apache lost 5,820.
This is the kind of story that Microsoft-funded (e.g. bribed through ad-buying) corporate media never covers.
Instead, media will talk about “clown” (not servers) and hail it as a revolution like never before — one that you mustn’t miss out on or else you won’t be “smart”. They give the false impression (delusion/illusion) that Microsoft is at the cutting “edge” of things, the “recency” perception, e.g. having “secure” chips while putting NSA back doors in virtually everything.
As we said earlier this year (when the declines in Microsoft’s share were considerably bigger), it won’t be long before the cost of maintaining IIS outweighs the financial benefits. That’s when Microsoft starts rebranding and speaking about “reorg” (to avoid words like “layoffs” or “product termination”).
GNU/Linux and Free/libre Web server software is becoming very dominant; one might say it has become the norm, so all those sites that claim to compare “Windows hosting versus Linux hosting” are terribly outdated because they give the illusion of parity; the trends are telling… Windows servers are a dying breed.
As for Windows in general, it’s a mess. Microsoft cannot maintain it anymore, so it breaks itself again. Not that Red Hat or Canonical will take advantage of it to promote GNU/Linux… █
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12.17.20
Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Windows at 5:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Google is trying to replace one malware-as-OS with another; the latter, however, is at least based on GNU/Linux (Gentoo at the core or the starting point)
TODAY we learned that “Google buys Neverware to turn old [Windows-running] PCs into Chromebooks” — a likely high-impact move considering the market share Windows still has on such PCs (with out-of-support Windows).
Putting aside buzzwords and brand names like “ClownReady”, “Neverware” and “Chromebook”, what we have here is the possibility of many millions of older computers being converted into GNU/Linux, albeit only a distro Google uses to harvest data about the user/s. Is this good news? Well, that depends on whether we consider a move from Windows to Chrome OS to be a “win” (relatively speaking). As IDG put it a few months back: “Not everyone needs a computer with a full set of bells and whistles. A Chromebook’s simplified interface makes it popular with schools—and those of us who serve as IT support for less tech-savvy relatives. You don’t need to worry about managing irritating updates or avoiding malware on a Chromebook, like you do if you simply install Chrome on an old Windows laptop, and the lightweight operating system feels much snappier than Windows on modest hardware. Chromebooks can cost less than a budget PC, too.”
“This whole situation is a tad awkward; 20 years ago many of us thought that the goal or the final outcome would be adoption of GNU and Linux, not something like Chrome OS.”Not many GNU/Linux distributions are freedom-respecting. They were not in the 1990s, either. Many contained various blobs, so nothing is really perfect. But again, on a relative scale, the shift to Chrome OS can be seen as a “lesser evil” (than moving to Windows). It also weakens Microsoft by directly harming its “common carrier” approach — the monopoly enabler. One could moreover argue that Chrome OS might become a sort of “gateway drug” towards freedom, not because Chrome or Google respect freedom but because the underlying stack has GNU and Linux in it, unlike Windows.
This whole situation is a tad awkward; 20 years ago many of us thought that the goal or the final outcome would be adoption of GNU and Linux, not something like Chrome OS. When I started using GNU/Linux more than 20 years ago (I was 18 back then, I turn 39 today) it was really difficult to browse some sites on the Web because Microsoft “extended” Web sites to discourage use of Netscape and running Netscape on GNU/Linux was sub-optimal. Now we have a whole operating system based upon running everything in a Web browser — the sort of thing we’ve long attempted to prevent Windows from accomplishing (ActiveX and similar stuff). The multi-faceted battle for software freedom is no longer limited to “let’s get rid of Microsoft” or “let’s just put Linux in everything…” (especially when speaking about the kernel, which Android uses to spy on billions of people from their pockets/purses) █
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