Comments

• Kevin Vacit

  2009-01-16 22:07:47

  Good reporting! Its about time the American public start to realize that the Dems and Repugs are just two ends of the same corporate juggernaut that is in actual control of the country.
  
  Its sad to have to admit it, but it wouldn't be realistic to expect any "democrat" or republican in public office to actually care about such triffles as basic human rights and fair market regulation.
  
  Until such time, we can only keep hammering the obvious; please keep up the good work Roy!

• aeshna23

  2009-01-17 00:03:20

  I have been so happy with the substance of what Obama had done, and admire how his symbolism goes the other way. For instance, Obama has promised his pacifist moron supporters that he will issue an executive order his first day closing Gitmo. However, if you read what Obama has been saying recently, it's pretty clear the actual closing of Gitmo is dubious and we don't have to worry about 250 terrorists being loosed upon the world. Maybe this is similar, and Obama is just giving Microsoft a symbolic issues and will be with us on the issues that really count.

• Roy Schestowitz

  2009-01-17 00:12:21

  I happen to agree with Kevin actually.
  
  The United States -- in my eyes at least -- is effectively a one-party nation where people are congregated once every 4 years to choose between "brands", whose policies happen to intersect a lot (they are funded by the same companies whose interests they must serve to win an election).

• Roy Schestowitz

  2009-01-17 09:46:39

  I hope people don't take offence in my post, which I think is quite objective.
  
  I supported Obama.

• SR

  2009-01-17 09:13:43

  aeshna,
  
  I have an IQ of 148. I campaigned for Obama. While I'm dissapointed at some subsequent results, I challenge your ad-hom, weasel-word of "moron".
  
  In a battle of wits, my freind, you are out-flanked, out-maneuvered, out-matched, outnumbered, and over-run. I think you could adress the issue without ad-homing those working for change from the status quo, in the only legal means available to us.
  
  GG for insulting more than half of the United States with your holier-than-thou comments ;-)

• SR

  2009-01-17 09:56:58

  None taken at all, Roy. If you'll recall, I proof-read one of your first articles about this, and while I was dissappointed, I could find *no* fault in your reporting :-( I only very specifically take exception to aeshna's elitist comments ;-)

• SR

  2009-01-17 10:03:53

  BTW - not to pick on one side at all.
  
  God help the person if I can find the "autistic" insult I've seen referenced. I have Asperger's Syndrome, but have done work in logic for organizations such as NASA, and have been involved in more than one thesis referee commitee ;-) I find the number of general intarweb slurs to be unacceptable.

• Roy Schestowitz

  2009-01-17 10:10:15

  I've seen that sort of libel spread against me. I've been 'accused' of being transsexual, autistic, a child molester, you name it!
  
  There's no bound to ad hominem with total fabrications. :-)

• Dan O'Brian

  2009-01-17 12:14:52

  Kind of like you've accused innocent people of astroturfing, censorship, and worse?
  
  E.g. Jimmi Hughs and Jeffrey Steadfast?
  
  I'm sorry, but I can't feel sorry for someone who gets slandered if they are guilty of the same thing.
  
  "Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy."

• Roy Schestowitz

  2009-01-17 12:43:41

  Jeffrey Steadfast?
  
  You mean, the Novell employee who promotes Mono?
  
  How exactly did I treat him unfairly?
  
  As for Jimmi Hughs, he was one among two people who censored Wikipedia.
  
  Where is the slander?

• Dan O'Brian

  2009-01-17 13:08:12

  You accused him of trying to be anonymous, not "coming clean with who he works for" when that was total bullshit. You also accused him of posting under anonymous accounts, yet you had no proof of that.
  
  You badmouthed him for "bashing Java" when anyone with at least half a brain could read his blog post and conclude that Jeffrey was not bashing Java at all.
  
  As far as Jimmi Hughs, give up, Roy. Even Shane agrees that you have no evidence of him censoring and that your claims are total hogwash.

• Roy Schestowitz

  2009-01-17 13:15:54

  You accused him of trying to be anonymous, not “coming clean with who he works for” when that was total bullshit.

  
  
  No, it's only because you happen to know who he is.
  
  

  You also accused him of posting under anonymous accounts, yet you had no proof of that.

  
  
  No, no accusation. One our our readers had suspicions, which he is allowed to express. Without asking questions, we can never get answers.
  
  

  You badmouthed him for “bashing Java” when anyone with at least half a brain could read his blog post and conclude that Jeffrey was not bashing Java at all.

  
  
  He was. He made it look bad.
  
  

  As far as Jimmi Hughs, give up, Roy. Even Shane agrees that you have no evidence of him censoring and that your claims are total hogwash.

  
  
  I disagree.

• Dan O'Brian

  2009-01-17 13:28:11

  Roy: A Google search would have revealed he worked for Novell. He posts thousands of messages to mailing lists with his @novell.com email address, he had a Mono Contributor icon on his blog, his name (alongside the @novell.com email address) appears in countless source files across quite a few FLOSS projects.
  
  Anyone with at least half a brain could have figured out he works for Novell. He never tried to hide that fact.
  
  As far as the Java thing, where did he make Java look bad? He found a bug in the Java benchmark test which killed Java's performance and submitted patches upstream to double the performance of the Java test.
  
  He also commented that he examined some of the other benchmark tests and found that even after optimizing the Mono implementation, it was still half the speed of Java.
  
  How is that bashing Java?
  
  On Jimmi Hughs, you disagree with FACTS? Oh, wait, you are Roy Schestowitz, the guy who lives in his own little dream world where the facts are only facts if they mesh with his world view (see above text for more evidence of this).

• Roy Schestowitz

  2009-01-17 13:33:40

  Are you suggesting he did not participate in removing a portion of vital text?

• Dan O'Brian

  2009-01-17 13:43:17

  If we're talking about Jimmi Hughs, I think that's already been established, Roy.
  
  Since you obviously didn't understand the changelog in wikipedia, he merged the text elsewhere in the article (where it was more appropriate) so as to get rid of the criticism section.
  
  You would have seen this yourself were you not so blinded by your desire to rabidly attack someone.

• Shane Coyle

  2009-01-17 13:58:13

  Are you suggesting he did not participate in removing a portion of vital text?
  
  Well, vitality (or is it vital-ness?) is subjective, but no - the link in question had appeared to be removed by a FreeRangeFrog bloke, and Mr. Hugh was more editing and reallocating the info to remove the 'frowned upon' criticisms sections in Wikipedia.
  
  Here is a pretty good play-by-play, courtesy of G. Michaels

  * On Oct 9, user FreeRangeFrog removes the paragraph in the Criticisms section that references the Bill Gates email. He then posts this message on the talk page explaining what and why he did. There is no subsequent challenge by other editors to this change. * Between Oct 25 and Oct 28, Jimmi Hugh makes 12 edits, including removing what is left of the criticisms section and working the "salvageable points" into the rest of the article. This is in line with Wikipedia policy. Remember, by this time the Gates reference did not even exist in the article, as it was removed previously by FreeRangeFrog. Hugh then makes additional edits to the article. The sequence can be seen better by looking at the whole revision page. * On December 16, an anonymous user (identified on Wikipedia only by an IP address) restores the entire Criticisms section claiming "censorship", placing the Bill Gates claim back but also in effect duplicating information that had already been worked into the article by Jimmi Hugh. * The next edit is made by user Slatedorg, which does not even have a Wikipedia user page. He helpfully "corrects" the Bill Gates reference. I assume Slatedorg is this person, who is a well-known collaborator of BycottNovell. It's important to remember that the paragraph in contention here pointed to his blog. Surprise! * On December 17, FreeRangeFrog reverts the Bill Gates reference only, leaving the rest of the (now duplicate) Criticisms section, mentioning his post on the talk page. This is wrong in that the correct action he should have taken is to revert the entire change by the anonymous user. * That same day, Jimmi Hugh reverts (again, and correctly) the entire Criticisms section.

  
  
  Note: Since I referenced Gordon's site, the writer of this comment feels it should get an ominous warning text.

• Roy Schestowitz

  2009-01-17 14:04:05

  I never visited that page. Thanks, Shane.
  
  By the way, I tried adding a subdomain to BN and I don't know why but
  
  www.boycottnovell.com
  
  does not resolve (via DNS).
  
  boycottnovell.com
  
  works fine.
  
  Do you know why? I don't know how to contact the host.
  
  Sorry about that...

• Shane Coyle

  2009-01-17 14:06:58

  I'll look at the DNS thing, don't know why off hand, but didja notice all the Bandwith and Disk space I got ya now? Maybe something got borked in the upgrade...

• Roy Schestowitz

  2009-01-17 14:14:21

  didja notice all the Bandwith and Disk space I got ya now?

  
  
  I did, thank you! :-)
  
  Thanks for pointing out inaccuracies. We can spot them effectively if we co-edit. In case I step down at some stage, I know you'd do a great job.
  
  As you are aware, there is also a disinformation campaign against this site, which uses and disseminates exaggerations/misconceptions/lies to discourage the press from citing us. Don't be easily pushed into fabrications like people in India being arrested (they were not, and their campaign had nothing to do with us... I didn't even know about it).

• Needs Sunlight

  2009-01-17 14:20:16

  Biden. I expect that some of the problem originates from Biden. Obama's policies, at least as described on his web site, were quite sound prior to joining with Biden. It could have been worse, though.
  
  However, I do hope that some of our congressional representatives can step in and do an emergency fix to this disaster. Later we can deal with this attempt at sedition that the MSFTers tried to sneak in under the tight deadlines of the inauguration.

• Dan O'Brian

  2009-01-17 14:20:57

  Roy: have you noticed that you are doing this to yourself? E.g. by lying and spreading misinformation that is so easily trumped with facts against your accusations?

• Roy Schestowitz

  2009-01-17 14:28:20

  Dan O'Brian,
  
  Two other people defended the Wikipedia accusation, so I'll need to look into it later and decide what was happening.
  
  

  E.g. by lying and spreading misinformation that is so easily trumped with facts against your accusations?

  
  
  You can correct mistakes in the comments, but there are no incorrect perspectives. Very often you just accuse me of not agreeing with you on subjective matters.

• Dan O'Brian

  2009-01-17 14:29:59

  Yea, go ahead and try to spin your libel against Jimmi Hughs as "perspective", it's not fooling anyone.

• Roy Schestowitz

  2009-01-17 14:33:09

  No, I was referring to separate cases where you disagree with opinion and try to shoot the author for expressing a point of view . That's nothing to do with the former part of the comment.

• Roy Schestowitz

  2009-01-17 14:34:20

  Apropos: http://www.itwire.com/content/view/21377/1090/

• Needs Sunlight

  2009-01-17 14:43:16

  I guess this explains all the yammering about the Blackberry. It smelled like an M$ distraction, and I guess now we can see that some of it was about keeping the eye of the public off of what M$ was doing to the inauguration.

• Roy Schestowitz

  2009-01-17 14:47:03

  Don't forget the Zune incident.

• krishna

  2009-01-17 15:04:27

  When will you replace the 'Hovsepian + Ballmer' logo of your website by a 'Obama and Ballmer' logo? When can we expect a 'boycottobama' website?

• Roy Schestowitz

  2009-01-17 15:09:37

  It's not Obama's fault. The rule in the White House is that your show will be run by the big corporations. I believe Obama is just being used; likewise, some sources who left the Pentagon suggest that Cheney and others misled and used George Bush, but that's another story.

• Shane Coyle

  2009-01-17 15:23:07

  Can anyone else confirm that www.boycottnovell.com is now resolving once again? I can get it here, don't know if it's propogated out around the world yet...

• Roy Schestowitz

  2009-01-17 15:26:51

  Thanks, Shane.
  
  It doesn't work from my side (yet), so I've just asked in IRC.
  
  The W3C validator gets to it just fine:
  
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.boycottnovell.com%2F
  
  Maybe it hasn't been updated across all DNS servers?

• Shane Coyle

  2009-01-17 15:35:26

  Yeah, I think. Shouldn't take too long - used to be days, now prob less than an hour or so.
  
  Funny thing, this helped me discover that my cable company has implemented DNS Assistance - ya know, (likely paid) search results off of your unresolved DNS requests, just to help out.
  
  They let me opt out.

• Roy Schestowitz

  2009-01-17 15:41:38

  Awesome!
  
  You're better than me at all the technical stuff.
  
  I hope the spare money from AdSense helps cover the costs of Edu-Nix CDs (have the teachers been in New York EDGI-ed yet?). ;-)

• Shane Coyle

  2009-01-17 15:48:13

  CDs are sooo yesterday, actually have a USB version now that I've put on a 1GB stick - currently, I have about 90 out and in use in 2 elementary schools around here - mostly teachers, and one group of 'gifted' kids (a subjective term).
  
  Am actually working this 3-day weekend on a CD version of it, to post for download on edu-nix.org, just OOO and OpenClipart and a bunch of OpenFontLibrary stuff with the KDE 4 (4.1.2 or 3 I think it was) desktop.

• Magus

  2009-01-19 03:48:01

  The thing I like the most about some of these comments is how people "supported" Obama until they found out he was using Windows. It's a lot like disliking the president because they aren't brushing their teeth with my favorite toothpaste (but they will get caries!!)
  
  Only in America you choose George Bush, then reelect him and then start crying because your new president is pro-Windows and you are pro-Linux.

• Shane Coyle

  2009-01-19 04:57:09

  As a follow-up for anyone interested, I have posted a new Live CD (despite the fact it is sooo yesterday), as well as a bunch of new Slax LZM modules for those who like to roll their own, on EDU-Nix.org.
  
  Basically, it is an "OOO3 Delivery System" featuring the KDE 4.1 Desktop, with quite a few OpenFontLibrary fonts included as well as the OpenClipart collection, pre-linked to OOO's gallery folder - Just Insert > Picture > From File and enjoy.
  
  Guess we've come quite a long ways since I had penned this, huh?

• Spartan2276

  2009-01-19 16:33:26

  So instead of all you bitching and complaining about this or that why hasn't anyone started a petition to make sure the damn thing is broadcast in a format everyone can see it.
  
  And even if it does not happen start one just for the hell of it, What the fuck is Change if it just going to be more of the same. So much for openness and fair, what a fucking joke we are as a country.

• Gentoo User (and proud of it)

  2009-01-19 17:20:27

  I never visited that page. Thanks, Shane.

  
  
  You never visited the page, did you? Well, that's understandable, after all it was only referenced by your friend Slated when he said "ok, wrong target", and about 20 times by Gordon. It was then referenced by Jose_X, and also by Shane Coyle, where he said you had slagged the wrong person.
  
  You did not read the page.
  
  Wow. Let me ask you, seriously, what did you think was on that page after he first created it and referenced it on his comments, which you must have seen since you marked with a disclaimer manually? Did you not notice that someone had created a rebuttal to your hit job, maybe because you typically get 100+ comments per blog post and didn't think twice about the activity? Oh but wait, you actually posted and said you wouldn't "deal with the vandal" or something like that.
  
  So you didn't read the page. Well. I don't know about everyone else, but I doubt that very, very much.

• Timmy the Driver

  2009-01-20 23:28:04

  Who is streaming through Silverlight any worse than streaming through Flash?

• Roy Schestowitz

  2009-01-20 23:56:20

  [How] is streaming through Silverlight any worse than streaming through Flash?

  
  
  To quote the FSF:
  
  "You can tune in to Ogg Vorbis coverage of the US presidential inauguration on WBUR at < http://www.wbur.org/listen/feed/ogg.m3u >.
  
  'If you know other places streaming in Ogg Vorbis or Theora, please send them along to our new discussion list at address@hidden (and subscribe at http://lists.gnu.org/listinfo/playogg-discuss).
  
  "If you're an < http://identi.ca > or Twitter user, you can direct a comment to "obamainaugural" on Twitter asking them why the official streaming format is Microsoft's Silverlight and not Ogg Theora. Public events like this should be broadcast in publicly accessible free formats, not used as levers to gain market share and control over citizens for proprietary software companies like Microsoft."
  
  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/advocate/2009-01/msg00001.html

• Jose_X

  2009-01-21 02:58:09

  >> [How] is streaming through Silverlight any worse than streaming through Flash?
  
  One supports the monopolies of the abomination that is Monopolysoft, and the other supports a much less serious threat (Adobe); however, the "other" also gets bonus points for competing against the abomination and standing in their way.

• Roy Schestowitz

  2009-01-21 10:53:53

  Here's an observation I liked:
  
  

  Microsoft will love you if you do.
  
  However, before you do you should understand Microsoft's thinking about this topic. Jame Plamondon, although the first head of dirty tricks at Microsoft he has done a mea culpa, wrote a training manual for his troops entitled "Effective Evangelism".
  http://platformevangelism.spaces.live.com/blog/cns !37F174267DC274C!152.entry
  
  Under the paragraph entitled "Evangelism is War" he wrote:
  

  
  
  Every line of code that is written to our standards is a small victory; every line of code that is written to any other standard, is a small defeat. Total victory ... is the universal adoption of our standards by developers, as this is an important step towards total victory for Microsoft itself: "A computer on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft software."
  
  

  
  MONO and Moonlight are BIG victories for Microsoft, because it keeps some developers and distros dancing to Microsoft's tune. In the future, after enough applications and distros have Microsoft technology buried too deep into their work to be easily removed without starting over, they should not be surprised when (not if) Microsoft pulls their plug by extending (sound familiar?) those two technologies with patented and proprietary components that leave them setting on a desert island unless they give up their FOSS freedom completely and move onto the Microsoft plantation. THAT would be the "total victory" that Microsoft strives for.
  
  Fortunately, no current distro that I am familiar with depends on MONO for its essential activities. You can check you installation by using the "locate" command from a root console to search for "libmono". If you find files with those characters in their names use Synaptic (or what ever) to select those libraries and remove them. Then reboot. If you distro doesn't come back up then your distro is hooked. IF it does come back up then check for "Beagle" and other apps which use MONO and see if they still work. IF they do then you've missed some mono libraries. If they don't then remove them as well.
  
  DON'T GIVE MICROSOFT ITS VICTORY!
  ---
  GreyGeek