Summary: Layoffs at Novell take place just days after the company's signing of a terrible transaction which puts many patents in Microsoft's hands
YESTERDAY we began publishing a string of posts about the end of Novell [1, 2]. Then, some Novell employees started badmouthing yours truly in public. This rarely happens unless they mask their names and/or IP addresses (that's where a lot of the incitations and lies about Techrights come from). So I knew something must have happened and shortly afterwards Will gave me (via IRC) this link to yesterday's report from Paul Koepp, who claims that hundreds are being laid off in Novell's Provo office. From his article:
Novell Inc. laid off hundreds of employees Monday from its Provo office, just days after the company was sold, according to employees.
Company officials would not take questions or talk specifics about the number of jobs cut, giving KSL News only a prepared statement.
[...]
As a result of the merger, Novell stock stopped trading publicly Wednesday. The company also said it was selling patents to CPTN Holdings LLC, a consortium organized by Microsoft Corp., for $450 million.
| Will_ | http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=15382738 | May 03 13:55 |
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| GoForbes28 | it, I want to wipe it so the code no longer matches what the manufacturer put it | May 03 13:55 |
| TechrightsBot-tr | Title: Employees say hundreds laid off at Novell's Provo office - ksl.com .::. Size~: 46.63 KB | May 03 13:55 |
| GoForbes28 | Will_: To be expected. Novell is a Nortel-like state of euphoric denial | May 03 13:55 |
| DaemonFC | yeah, now Canonical promoted Mono | May 03 13:55 |
| DaemonFC | the only thing they've developed so far are some self-serving Banshee plugins that siphon revenue from the GNOME project | May 03 13:56 |
| DaemonFC | :) | May 03 13:56 |
| Will_ | Ugh. Mono needs to die. | May 03 13:56 |
| GoForbes28 | maybe we should spread the association with Mono the disease | May 03 13:56 |
| DaemonFC | Ubuntu has as much Mono as OpenSuse GNOME edition ever did | May 03 13:57 |
| GoForbes28 | you know, like how the "entertainment" "industry" did with the term piracy and theft | May 03 13:57 |
| DaemonFC | but what's funny is that Monotorrent and the GUI frontend, Monsoon | May 03 13:57 |
| GoForbes28 | Tell people to use Kubuntu or Xubuntu | May 03 13:57 |
| DaemonFC | those were so bad that they ended up getting rid of them in OpenSuse | May 03 13:57 |
| GoForbes28 | oiaohm: Do you know of what I speak in regards to the TPM? | May 03 13:57 |
| GoForbes28 | DaemonFC: $$$ | May 03 13:58 |
| Will_ | I'd thought that was already a common association. Mono is an infection that makes things sluggish. Wait, was I talking about the virus or the programming language? | May 03 13:58 |
| oiaohm | GoForbes28: around Linux tpm software there are all the tools to clear the TPM. | May 03 13:58 |
| GoForbes28 | oiaohm: I remember you telling me that. Is there instructions or some sort of tutorial? | May 03 13:58 |
| oiaohm | GoForbes28: If software is not possible it is possible to physically high voltage a pin to clear the TPM as well. | May 03 13:58 |
| oiaohm | GoForbes28: TPM was really not designed to keep the owner out if they need to break the device on most X86 motherboards. | May 03 13:59 |
| DaemonFC | The scary thing is that there are actually a couple of really good programs made with Mono, only a couple, only ones made to demonstrate it with | May 03 13:59 |
| DaemonFC | Novell poured a lot of money into Banshee | May 03 13:59 |
| DaemonFC | and Pinta is mostly recycled Paint.NET code | May 03 13:59 |
| oiaohm | DaemonFC: Banshee was build by staff that had worked on rythimbox. and for a while they worked on both. | May 03 14:00 |
| GoForbes28 | oiaohm: I'm thinking from the Trusted computing perspective | May 03 14:00 |
| DaemonFC | Yeah, Rhythmbox is not maintained very well anymore | May 03 14:00 |
| GoForbes28 | oiaohm: I believe in the near future that the TPM will become a problem, and I'm not waiting to find out | May 03 14:00 |
| Will_ | Banshee really needs to _not_ be in the default Ubuntu install. I usually wipe Mono first thing, but now, won't wiping Mono from 11.04 will break the upgrade path in the package manager? | May 03 14:00 |
| DaemonFC | and those guys are promoting Banshee as a replacement for users that want to know why things in Rhythmbox are broken or not being fixed | May 03 14:00 |
| oiaohm | http://sourceforge.net/projects/trousers/ So you are thinking this. GoForbes28 | May 03 14:00 |
| TechrightsBot-tr | Title: trousers | Download trousers software for free at SourceForge.net .::. Size~: 24.34 KB | May 03 14:00 |
| DaemonFC | hmmm | May 03 14:01 |
| DaemonFC | good question | May 03 14:01 |
| GoForbes28 | oiaohm: I guess | May 03 14:01 |
| GoForbes28 | oiaohm: Since my hardware experience is lacking, I would think the software approach would be the ideal first step | May 03 14:01 |
| oiaohm | GoForbes28: Yes trousers is the software you use to TPM the complete Linux system. | May 03 14:01 |
| DaemonFC | ryan@ryan-MS-7501:~$ sudo apt-get purge mono-runtime | May 03 14:01 |
| DaemonFC | Reading package lists... Done | May 03 14:01 |
| DaemonFC | Building dependency tree | May 03 14:01 |
| DaemonFC | Reading state information... Done | May 03 14:01 |
| DaemonFC | The following packages will be REMOVED: | May 03 14:01 |
| DaemonFC | banshee* banshee-extension-soundmenu* banshee-extension-ubuntuonemusicstore* | May 03 14:01 |
| DaemonFC | gbrainy* libappindicator0.1-cil* libart2.0-cil* libgconf2.0-cil* | May 03 14:01 |
| DaemonFC | libgdata1.7-cil* libgkeyfile1.0-cil* libglade2.0-cil* libglib2.0-cil* | May 03 14:01 |
| DaemonFC | libgmime2.4-cil* libgnome-vfs2.0-cil* libgnome2.24-cil* | May 03 14:01 |
| DaemonFC | libgtk-sharp-beans-cil* libgtk2.0-cil* libgudev1.0-cil* | May 03 14:01 |
| DaemonFC | liblaunchpad-integration1.0-cil* libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil* | May 03 14:01 |
| DaemonFC | libmono-addins0.2-cil* libmono-cairo2.0-cil* libmono-corlib2.0-cil* | May 03 14:02 |
| DaemonFC | libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil* libmono-management2.0-cil* libmono-posix2.0-cil* | May 03 14:02 |
| DaemonFC | libmono-security2.0-cil* libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil* libmono-system2.0-cil* | May 03 14:02 |
| GoForbes28 | sudo apt-get instal nomomono | May 03 14:02 |
| DaemonFC | libmono-zeroconf1.0-cil* libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil* libndesk-dbus1.0-cil* | May 03 14:02 |
| DaemonFC | libnotify0.4-cil* libtaglib2.0-cil* libubuntuone1.0-cil* mono-2.0-gac* | May 03 14:02 |
| Will_ | DaemonFC: what needs to happen is for more programs like Gnote to be written. Like you said, there aren't that many good Mono programs. | May 03 14:02 |
| DaemonFC | mono-csharp-shell* mono-gac* mono-gmcs* mono-runtime* pinta* tomboy* | May 03 14:02 |
| DaemonFC | 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 41 to remove and 0 not upgraded. | May 03 14:02 |
| DaemonFC | After this operation, 36.6 MB disk space will be freed. | May 03 14:02 |
| DaemonFC | Do you want to continue [Y/n]? | May 03 14:02 |
| GoForbes28 | Y | May 03 14:02 |
| DaemonFC | Will_, There's a couple, and obviously that's enough to get it wedged into distros like Ubuntu | May 03 14:02 |
| oiaohm | Will_: Really we need gimp to get its updates done. | May 03 14:02 |
| GoForbes28 | oiaohm: What's the effectiveness of the software on the TPM | May 03 14:02 |
| DaemonFC | all they need is an excuse, and Banshee and Pinta give it to them | May 03 14:02 |
| oiaohm | GoForbes28: TPM is always designed to have a hardware backing. | May 03 14:03 |
| oiaohm | GoForbes28: Its basically a checksumed executable system so you cannot change stuff without approval. | May 03 14:03 |
| DaemonFC | I like how they renamed all the mono packages to get rid of the "ms" parts to the name | May 03 14:03 |
| DaemonFC | like mscorelib is now just corelib | May 03 14:03 |
| DaemonFC | :P | May 03 14:03 |
| DaemonFC | Will_, Looks like it won't break the desktop package | May 03 14:04 |
| DaemonFC | the desktop package recommends the Mono apps | May 03 14:04 |
| DaemonFC | but it doesn't depend on them | May 03 14:04 |
| Will_ | DaemonFC: classic MS whitewashing. Just like how some of their mouthpieces sometimes edit their info to scrub their connection to MS just prior to or during a smear campaign. | May 03 14:04 |
| oiaohm | GoForbes28: Little bit of a tutorial in usign tpm to protect a system. https://www.grounation.org/index.php?post/2008/07/04/8-how-to-use-a-tpm-with-linux | May 03 14:04 |
| TechrightsBot-tr | Title: How to use a TPM with Linux - GrouNation .::. Size~: 91.41 KB | May 03 14:04 |
| oiaohm | GoForbes28: TPM is one of those things its who controls it. | May 03 14:05 |
| DaemonFC | Will_, The only reason .NET is any good is that it's basically swizzled JAVA | May 03 14:05 |
| oiaohm | GoForbes28: If the owner of the machine controls it . TPM is good since it can make virus writers live hell. | May 03 14:05 |
| DaemonFC | that's why MinceR calls it MS Visual JAVA | May 03 14:05 |
| Will_ | Although I'll probably skip 11.04. Primarily because the Nvidia binary drivers don't work at all in 11.04 on some Nvidia cards--like mine. I probably won't buy an Nvidia card again for a long time, if ever. | May 03 14:05 |
| MinceR | wait, what? .net is "any good"? | May 03 14:06 |
| DaemonFC | I never got the need to make several different languages with different syntax that all get turned into CIL and ran by a JIT compiler | May 03 14:06 |
| Will_ | But this just goes to show why closed-source binary drivers are, hmm, non-optimal | May 03 14:06 |
| MinceR | i've found it to be a cesspit full of manure | May 03 14:06 |
| GoForbes28 | DaemonFC: There already was virtual Java, need a better name :P | May 03 14:06 |
| GoForbes28 | *Visual Java | May 03 14:06 |
| DaemonFC | At least JAVA is just one language | May 03 14:06 |
| MinceR | it's surprising that m$ could ruin java so far | May 03 14:06 |
| MinceR | actually, java is a virtual machine and a language | May 03 14:06 |
| MinceR | :> | May 03 14:06 |
| GoForbes28 | oiaohm: Unfortunately, the corps want to be the owners of the machines | May 03 14:07 |
| DaemonFC | not several that are totally different as far as the programmer is concerned but all have the same access to the CLR | May 03 14:07 |
| DaemonFC | .NET is a lot more confusing because of that | May 03 14:07 |
| DaemonFC | MinceR, You notice that Mono 2.0 no longer has any way to run J#? | May 03 14:07 |
| GoForbes28 | oiaohm: Are there instructions specifically on how to wipe the TPM? | May 03 14:08 |
| DaemonFC | Microsoft has deprecated it, but .NET can still run it | May 03 14:08 |
| GoForbes28 | oiaohm: Or do the instructions you link to include that | May 03 14:08 |
| -TRIdentica/#techrights-[opensourceway/@opensourceway] How @CityCamp became an open source brand by @kmcurry | http://red.ht/jvOpmV #gov20 #opengov | May 03 14:08 | |
| TechrightsBot-tr | Title: How CityCamp became an open source brand | opensource.com .::. Size~: 46.8 KB | May 03 14:08 |
| DaemonFC | Microsoft is why companies never upgrade any of their software | May 03 14:08 |
| MinceR | DaemonFC: never tried | May 03 14:09 |
| DaemonFC | the backwards compatibility sucks in cases like this | May 03 14:09 |
| MinceR | my life is blissfully free of c#, .net and mono currently | May 03 14:09 |
| DaemonFC | where they say "Hey, use J# to port all your Java apps over" | May 03 14:09 |
| DaemonFC | then they abandon it | May 03 14:09 |
| MinceR | and i intend to keep it that way :> | May 03 14:09 |
| GoForbes28 | oiaohm: What is the "owner password"? | May 03 14:09 |
| DaemonFC | oh great, now you need an old .NET runtime forever, that only runs on Windows XP and Vista | May 03 14:09 |
| MinceR | not on vista sp7? | May 03 14:10 |
| DaemonFC | hope you didn't like, actually use J# B-) | May 03 14:10 |
| Will_ | DaemonFC: I don't know what to make of MS's recent interest in ARM. Even if they port Windows, they won't have all the third-party apps and legacy compatibility, which is the only thing keeping Windows going at this point. | May 03 14:10 |
| DaemonFC | MinceR, Not like it is, no, you have to trick the .NET 1.1 installer into thinking you have Windows XP | May 03 14:10 |
| MinceR | Will_: they'll probably include an emulator | May 03 14:10 |
| GoForbes28 | Will_: Windows porting is largely a failure | May 03 14:10 |
| DaemonFC | then hoping that it it doesn't have security flaws that Microsoft will never patch | May 03 14:10 |
| DaemonFC | hooray! | May 03 14:10 |
| GoForbes28 | Windows for powerpc, etc. | May 03 14:10 |
| GoForbes28 | DaemonFC: That's how Microsoft works | May 03 14:11 |
| oiaohm | GoForbes28: There are particular ways included in the spec. http://linux.die.net/man/3/tspi_tpm_clearowner | May 03 14:11 |
| TechrightsBot-tr | Title: tspi_tpm_clearowner(3): clear TPM ownership - Linux man page .::. Size~: 4.36 KB | May 03 14:11 |
| MinceR | (which will be unusably slow, of course) | May 03 14:11 |
| Will_ | Mince: emulating x86 on ARM? Won't that pretty much defeat the purpose of ARM and bring the system to a crawl? | May 03 14:11 |
| GoForbes28 | 64-bit Windows is more secure only by the most superficial or reasons | May 03 14:11 |
| MinceR | Will_: does m$ care? :> | May 03 14:11 |
| DaemonFC | GoForbes28, Not really | May 03 14:11 |
| MinceR | do their stupid users care? :> | May 03 14:11 |
| GoForbes28 | 64-bit Windows is a true example of security by obscurity | May 03 14:11 |
| DaemonFC | the applications that benefit the most from ASLR and DEP have to opt in if they are 32-bit, web browsers that is | May 03 14:12 |
| DaemonFC | Firefox doesn't | May 03 14:12 |
| GoForbes28 | since the only security benefits are those provided "naturally" by 64-bit architecture | May 03 14:12 |
| DaemonFC | Chrome and IE do | May 03 14:12 |
| DaemonFC | Opera does | May 03 14:12 |
| MinceR | oiaohm: is there a way to wipe the Endorsement Key? | May 03 14:12 |
| GoForbes28 | Which are more than offset by Windows flaws as you point out | May 03 14:12 |
| DaemonFC | GoForbes28, You only benefit from the added security features in 64-bit Windows if you use 64-bit apps, where it is mandatory, or the programs you use that are 32-bit opt-in, or you force them (one by one or globally) | May 03 14:13 |
| DaemonFC | most users don't even know what this shit is and just run Firefox as it is | May 03 14:13 |
| DaemonFC | Microsoft trojan horse plug-ins and all | May 03 14:13 |
| DaemonFC | :) | May 03 14:13 |
| -TRIdentica/#techrights-[glynmoody/@glynmoody] Busting the myths of the Alternative Vote - http://bit.ly/jnj15G a statistician speaks #av #uk | May 03 14:13 | |
| TechrightsBot-tr | Title: Nic Marks - Busting the myths of the Alternative Vote | the new economics foundation .::. Size~: 35 KB | May 03 14:13 |
| GoForbes28 | DaemonFC: Exactly | May 03 14:13 |
| GoForbes28 | Security through 5-second obscruity, if that | May 03 14:14 |
| GoForbes28 | oiaohm: How can the private key be used against the owner? | May 03 14:14 |
| DaemonFC | the only reason Firefox and Chrome and Opera aren't attacked more than they are on Windows is because they fix their bugs in a timjely manner and auto update their users | May 03 14:14 |