Links 21/02/2008: Lots on Open Source, Lots of Trouble at Redmond, WA
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2008-02-21 15:12:17 UTC
- Modified: 2008-02-21 15:16:19 UTC
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Sophie Brun, Raphael Hertzog & Debian sexual conflicts of interest
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Instant Bluewashing at Confluent: Mass Layoffs Alleged at IBM
- So the main question is, did IBM just fire 800 people?
-
- Slop Is Plagiarism, Not (Vibe) Coding, and It's Not Automated, It Doesn't Save Money
- Reject misnomers, explain what's actually happening
- UPC is Still Illegal and Unconstitutional (Kangaroo Court for Patents, Manned by Corporate Staff), Federal Court of Justice of Germany Receives Belated Complaint About It
- What is happening to Europe???
- EPO Demonstration Happening Right Now, Later This Week Things Will Only Escalate Further
- The SUEPO The Hague Committee wrote to staff this morning
- Links 18/03/2026: Commodore's Hedley Davis Dies, Apple Not Good Enough, Cheeto "Floats Treason Charges for Iran War Coverage"
- Links for the day
- A Step Close to Shutting Down the European Patent Office (EPO)
- Not going to work all month long
- EPO Staff Demonstration Today
- The demonstration will be live-streamed for those thousands of colleagues who don't live in Munich
- Gemini Links 18/03/2026: Brazilian SYN Attacks and BGP
- Links for the day
- LibreLocal Also Coming to Jordan, Kenya, Mexico, New Zealand, and Spain
- It helps raise awareness of Software Freedom
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 17, 2026
- IRC logs for Tuesday, March 17, 2026
- Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 14 Out of 200: Men Who Strangle Women (and Worse) Trying to Force Us to Write Public Apologies to These Men
- For those who never before saw a SLAPP, they basically make many demands
- "Vibe-forking" and Why It'll Ultimately Fail (Hype on Top of Hype)
- Code made with LLMs sucks; converting solid, human-tested code into slop only complicates matters and increases risk
- Updates About Richard Stallman's Free Software Foundation
- After all those years (a decade) and in spite of phony scandals many people out there still respect him
- LLM Slop With "Linux" in the Domain Names
- This is becoming a pain and a problem also in the arts and in software engineering
- The EFF Has a Bug, Fixing This Bug is Likely Not Possible Anymore
- "the EFF's continued existence impairs the arrival of a replacement organization, one which will actually champion digital rights."
- Links 17/03/2026: Microsoft Windows Broken by Samsung, Afghanistan-Pakistan War Escalation
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 17/03/2026: Newcomers and False-Positive 'Slop'
- Links for the day
- Héctor Orón Martínez & Debian shadow candidate pressure on Sruthi Chandran
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Links 17/03/2026: American Fentanylware (TikTok) Investors Implicated in Kickbacks, "Big Oil Knew It Was Wrecking Louisiana’s Coast"
- Links for the day
- For Third Time in a Week The Register MS Runs Google SPAM That Paints Google as an Ally of Women (Which is False, They're Womanisers)
- What does that make The Register MS to women?
- British Justice Minister Sarah Sackman Blasts Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)
- The "legal industry" is due for "some reckoning"
- GAFAM Deprecating Old Videos ("Content") by Removing the Support for Their Format for No Good Reason
- "Security" is not a valid excuse
- Credit/Debit Cards Have Long Been Called Plastics, Over Time They're Becoming More Like Pure Plastics
- They cost less than a dollar to manufacture
- The European Patent Office (EPO) Holds a Public Demonstration Tomorrow and It'll be Live-streamed
- The EPO's workforce was meant to be capable of speaking many languages and have extensive experience in the sciences
- People Who Attacked Techrights Also Attacked My Mother
- Picking on old ladies because you don't like Free software advocates is never OK
- Little Community Element Left in CentOS
- CentOS, unlike Fedora, was meant to be long supported and solid
- Social Control Media is Cancel Culture (Companies Like Facebook Also Punish/Ban Accounts for Mentioning "Linux" and Lobby for Anti-Linux Legislation)
- The masters of Social Control Media decide what ideas can and cannot be expressed
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 16, 2026
- IRC logs for Monday, March 16, 2026
- Someone at Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is Censoring the Birthday Greetings to Richard Stallman
- Some people remember
- The European Patent Office (EPO) Illegally Transitioning Into 'Gig' 'Economy' Equivalent (a Shop for Patent Monopolies in Europe)
- for scabs aka SEALs
- At Least Six EPO Strikes Next Month (Yes, Six!)
- The pressure intensifies over time
- Several MPs Blast Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) for Inaction and Ineffective Action This Week
- "Four MPs have written to the SRA"
- Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 14 Out of 200: The Abusive Cases of the Serial Strangler From Microsoft and His Litigation Buddy Garrett Did Cause "Serious Harm"
- claims were de facto abandoned at the trial
- Today's Discussions About How IBM Pushes Workers Out
- The corporate media keeps trying - baselessly and in vain - to paint everything that happens with the "hey hi" brush
- Linux Teck (linuxteck.com) and Ubuntu PIT (ubuntupit.com) Are Botspam
- now they just keep experimenting by trashing their sites and reputation
- Links 16/03/2026: Moscow Experiencing Cellphone Internet Outages, "Salman Rushdie Is Tired of Talking About Free Speech"
- Links for the day
- Links 16/03/2026: Arctic Security and 'Mr. Nobody Against Putin'
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 16/03/2026: KN95 Skins and CSS Surprises
- Links for the day
- Debian is Dying for Some of the Same Reasons IBM's Fedora is Rapidly Dying
- Prioritising CoC censorship, not communities
- The Register MS is Again Femmewashing GAFAM (Which Makes Widows) in Exchange for Money
- This is a moral issue because they betray or harm women and prop up authoritarian regimes
- Gemini Links 16/03/2026: AB 1043, Lagrange Android Beta 47, and Poetry
- Links for the day
- "Slop-forking" or "Vibe-forking" as the New 'Noble' Plagiarism
- New Cloudflare Slop Project?
- EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part VII - Cult Mentality, Mobbing, Nepotism
- Does the EPO actually believe in the law?
- 2026 Microsoft Layoff Rumours
- Surely if we had properly-functioning media, then someone would investigate this rather than rely on official statements from Microsoft and WARN notices
- EPO Strike This Week
- contact your national representatives about it
- Gemini Links 15/03/2026: "Create Opportunities for Good Things to Happen", DOSbook, and Bitcoin Criticism
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 15, 2026
- IRC logs for Sunday, March 15, 2026
- Pirate Praveen Arimbrathodiyil & Debian denouncing volunteers, hiding romances
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Comments
CoolGuy
2008-02-21 16:45:45
steve got pwned by larry.
seriously i think M$ is loosing out and steve has lost control over what he is doing. this is a guy who has zero technical knowledge, has never written a single line of code, cant make out any difference between a asp or php code...lol. i dont know if any m$ executive has advised steve over the technical hurdles of moving yahoo to m$ technology.
rofl.i think no one will dare to go near the chair throwing ninja.
entire blame of M$ doom will be on steve and bill has side stepped out of this mess really easy.
by doing a hostile take over - this is really going to blow out of proportion. everyone is making fun of m$ so openly, they have become a joke of what m$ used to be a decade back.
look at the action figures / toys stuff m$ is doing lately. everyone is laughing at them. they are trying so hard to be like google. haha.
just cant stop laughing.
CoolGuy
2008-02-21 16:49:00
BoomBoom
2008-02-21 18:28:35
- A BB for a brain in an empty head. Shake him and hear him rattle! - A pile of stolen patents for things someone else invented! - Extra sweat! - Awesome monkeydance action! - Developers developers developers developers! - Buggy software that doesn't work! - Buggy patches for buggy software that *still* doesn't work! - A fake sense of security! (along with thousands of exploits and weaknesses) - An EULA written by the Ghost of Stalin and the RIAA! - MONO! (Both the poisonware and the disease) - Office chair grenades! - FUD machinegun! - Arrogance out the wazoo! - Megalomaniac world domination plans! - And not a snowball's chance in Hell of ever having a clue.
:P
Roy Schestowitz
2008-02-21 22:39:12
This VNUnet article dovetails nicely with the recent piece on Groklaw[1]
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2210121/microsoft-engages-proxy-fight
I wonder if a deep-cutting summary or analysis can be written to Slashdot without using the M-word.
The plan seems to be to lobby and intrigue behind the scenes to replace the board with a more obedient set. Before that happens, Yahoo should re-license Zimbra as GPL. Also, how big a contributer is Yahoo to open source development in general and BSD in particular? That could be one of the main motivations for hostile take over.
I also notice that the astroturfers have returned to slashdot in droves since about Monday or so and, probably related, there is article after article of advertising.
[1] http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071023002351958
Also, about the last attempts to save the cash cow :
Houston, we have a problem ... ... when trying to paint a nice face before the BRM ...
Google News Alert for: (OpenDocument OR ODF) AND ("Ecma 376" OR OXML OR OOXML OR "office open xml" OR "open XML")
Microsoft pledges not to sue over open source CNet News.com Blog - USA The company does not natively support the alternative Open Document Format, or ODF, standard in Office 2007. Although it does not mention ODF specifically ... See all stories on this topic
MS to publish free APIs for Windows, Office Electronista - Santa Clara,CA,USA Office 2007 has been a particular subject of investigation and has been criticized for its switch to the Microsoft-made Office Open XML (OOXML) standard, ... See all stories on this topic
Microsoft Promises Interoperability Digitaltrends.com - Lake Oswego,OR,USA Microsoft also says it won't sue open source developers who build or distribute non-commercial implementations of its protocols, although developers who ... See all stories on this topic
Microsoft is fighting. Don't give it too much room for manipulation.