Bonum Certa Men Certa

Intel -- Like Microsoft -- Uses Heavy Lobbying to Permit Own Crimes

Intel: criminal inside



Summary: Intel's response to convictions seems to be lobbying (aka "legalised bribery") and Moblin absorbs Mono

INTEL's lobbying is not a secret, but nobody in computing spends on lobbyists as much as Microsoft, which has loads of them. Amid many crimes it turns out that whilst Intel is cutting down its workforce it is also increasing the level of lobbying. The Inquirer summarises it as follows:



WHILE INTEL LAID OFF employees and slashed costs to ride out the recession, it increased what it shelled out for political lobbying to more than $877,000 in the last quarter.

Capitalist tool Forbes went through the fine print in Intel's financial reports and found a huge blowout in the chipmaking giant's lobbying budget.


A reader wrote to remind us not only that Intel and Microsoft show their love in public but also that the acquisition of Wind River is bad news for all. Regarding the lobbying he wrote:

At that rate, Intel could burn through 3.508 million per year. That's assuming the lobbying budget does not grow. It probably will grow, since Intel's chips aren't getting better and the x86 legacy is not getting left behind by Intel.

3.5 million would cover a lot of salaries, were technology a priority over political activism.

Also, Nick's gotten so used to the x86 architecture that he hasn't noticed the false dichotomy he's presenting. The question is not Intel or AMD. No matter how you slice it, at the end of the day both are out-dated x86 architectures left over from the 1980's. To be relevant today, it's a matter of finding the right architecture for the job: Freescale, SPARC, MIPS, or ARM to name the big ones.

I do hope that the EU regulators grow a pair and place a 18 - 24 month moratorium on import or sale of Wintel products inside the EU.


Intel and Microsoft/Gates also did some joint lobbying for Abramoff visas. Further, argues the reader:

Neither component in Wintel advance technology. Microsoft competes by price dumping, illegal tying, extortion and lobbying. Intel tends to compete only by crushing. Intel is chained to Microsoft, for life or death. So, when Microsoft loses steam, which it has done except for lobbying, Intel joins in the lobbying, but will increase stomping going after more or larger targets.

Intel's recent Wind River stomp will have some very far reaching negative effects in the embedded systems world. Shoehorning systems into an x86 'solution' will only result in harm, even if one only looks at the power consumption when multiplied by the sheer number of devices.

Apple screwed up big time by moving to the outdated x86 architecture instead of MIPS or Freescale or a cluster of ARMs. Now Apple is beholden to Wintel for the hardware and again for the data formats. If Apple wants to prove that it's not going to get pulled down, it needs to push harder in open standards.

Yahoo screwed up big time by allowing Microsoft to place three political activists on the board. That cut FreeBSD badly.

That leaves Linux and Solaris which are doing well, but for the fact that the few remaining news sources are nearly entirely beholden to Microsoft or Microsoft partners for income directly or indirectly. There are the advertising fees directly, but remember Microsoft made a move to grab many ad servers. So it's not unusual for FOSS sites to have difficulty in collecting ad revenue due them.


Last week we wrote about the issue of Intel's Moblin being encumbered by Microsoft tax on the face of it. According to this, even Mono packages that are not covered by Microsoft's useless MCP (Banshee for example) are being put in Moblin|Goblin.

6.) Media, this is a combined Video/Audio/Photo application. It works OK, but I prefer the tools I've used for a long time - Banshee and F-Spot ;-) They are included by default in Goblin :-)


As Novell continues bringing Linux closer to Microsoft (joint conference now), we foresee more signs of convergence between Novell and Microsoft. It is a victory to Microsoft whose .NET framework wins an enodrsement thanks to the efforts of Miguel de Icaza et al. Needless to say, such prizes are silly and given how much coverage Mono received from IDG, this prize should not be surprising. Ziff Davis is currently covering Microsoft/Mono stuff (Mono project created by former Microsoft employees), but that too should not be particularly surprising [1, 2, 3, 4].

Daniel Eran Dilger writes about the failure of Microsoft's latest search/marketing push (under a new name). He ends by reminding readers that there too, Microsoft chooses lobbying over technology [1, 2].

Now, ill equipped to catch up, Microsoft is using its well equipped lobbyists to attack Google using government interference in lieu of competing against it in the marketplace. Ten years ago, Microsoft was defending its own monopoly to the government, although Microsoft’s monopoly was not legitimately won in the market as Google’s, but was instead massed together through shady business practices and competition suppression.

The question this time around will be: has the “center right” American government become saturated enough with corporate socialism for the rich that the very success of liberal spending on basic research will be attacked and handed over to loser parties such as Microsoft in new bailouts that reward failure and punish legitimate success, after twenty years of doing the opposite, ignoring Microsoft’s monopolistic lock on markets while rewarding conservative corporate profiteering with more government grants and overseas political support?

Because that would be devastating to US recovery.


Lobbying is nothing short of "legalised bribery", but people are taught to become accustomed to it. There is a better way.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Coming Soon: Microsoft Fake Results, Mass Layoffs, and Silence About All the People Microsoft Pressured to "Quit" (So That They Don't Get Counted as Layoffs)
there will be more mass layoffs
Speed of GNU/Linux
The media seldom speaks of the dangers of "proprietary software"
Proprietary Windows Versus "Linux" News (Trying to Keep People on Windows, Never Exploring GNU/Linux)
Good editors know better how to recognise threats and not give them lip service
Ensuring That Every Computer User Anywhere in the World Can Take Control of All His or Her Computers
We must fight the people who attack general-purpose computing, in particular those who push this agenda very aggressively inside Linux
 
Microsoft is Already Laying Off Lots of Contractors
cost-cutting at Microsoft takes a new "edge"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, April 28, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, April 28, 2025
China is Already Culling GAFAM (Not Just Microsoft Windows)
OS monoculture or "OS hegemony" may be coming to an end
The "Telephone Operating System in the Vatican" is 95 Years Old, Vatican Moved to GNU/Linux
Maybe Microsoft is down to zero already
If Tesla Shares (and Alleged Value) Fell 55% (From $489 to $222) in a Few Months Maybe It's Not Worth Anything At All (It's Just Gambling)
Tesla swasticars have turned from a "status symbol" into a "public embarrassment" and cause for casual humiliation
Chromebooks' Adoption in Sweden No Longer Depends on Schools
School breaks are when classrooms are shut
No, IBM is Not Investing $150 Billion in the US and It Doesn't Even Have That Kind of Money
Here we go again... media as a vehicle of lobbying and misinformation
Leak: The EPO's General Consultative Committee (GCC) Does Not Consult Staff on Crucial Matters and Bypasses the Administrative Council (AC) to Do Illegal Things
violations against the EPO's very staff
New Leaks Coming Soon, We Maintain 100% Record of Successful Resistance to Censorship
We won't be told what we can and cannot say (especially when it's true)
Central African Republic (CAR): Vista 11 is Only ~0.2% Market Share
99.8% to go!
BSD and GNU/Linux Replaced Microsoft in Secure Servers, All Microsoft Has Left is LLM Slop for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD)
the FUD machine never rests
Gemini Links 28/04/2025: A Simple Task Tracking and Auto-Prioritization Tool and Other Programs
Links for the day
Links 28/04/2025: Canada's Election, Pakistan-India Conflict
Links for the day
Glue Inside Your Pizza (or Why People Will Get Fed Up With Slop)
People are given "answers" from non-intelligence word dumpsters
Links 28/04/2025: Cyberattacks Happening, Chatbots Disappointing, and "Free Speech Under Fire"
Links for the day
Phone Adoption Very Low in Vatican, Windows Usage Fell Nonetheless
Even in places where people still use desktops/laptops most of the time (and have access to these) Windows is gradually losing ground
GNU/Linux 9% in Cuba, Vista 11 Waning, Android Dominant
Microsoft has pretty much lost Cuba
Gemini Links 28/04/2025: Autism and Structural Navigation
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, April 27, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, April 27, 2025
What Happened to the Open Source Initiative (OSI) Elections: The Purge, the Cover-up, and the Witch-hunts
OSI has gone "full Microsoft"
In 24 Countries Observed by statCounter Vista 11 is Still Less Than a Quarter of Windows Users Despite All Other Versions Being 'Expired'
They ought to move to GNU/Linux
Links 27/04/2025: Pope Goodbyes, "Politics of Fear", Slop Redux and More Google Shutdowns (Google Debt Had Grown This Year)
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Serenity Dialectics, Hockey Jersey Ethics, and More
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Death of Nest Thermostats, Death of Metaverse
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Projects Workflow and Discovering Technology
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, April 26, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, April 26, 2025