01.12.09
Posted in Finance, Microsoft, Windows at 6:20 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
According to more reports about the layoffs [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], they might be just days away (the announcement at least) and signs are being given away by a Microsoft president.
Microsoft hints at cutbacks
Senior Microsoft executive Robbie Bach has hinted that there may be cutbacks as the Seattle software giant looks to tighten its belt during the recession.
The Street says, “Microsoft Investors, You Have Been Warned.”
The warning from Intel, which said Wednesday that revenue in its fourth quarter will now fall 23% from a year ago to $8.2 billion — a mere half-billion below what Wall Street analysts had expected — wasn’t a complete surprise.
There are still doubts regarding some other new reports about the layoffs — reports whose sources are few but suggest that cutbacks are likely to come pretty soon, just days before the big report. This report seems likely to disappoint by missing already-lowered expectations.
A little less related to this is the observation that Microsoft’s campaign against illegitimate distributors of Windows is continuing and gathering steam.
Microsoft Prosecuting Counterfeiters
[..]
Most of the counterfeit schemes involve Windows XP operating systems and software, including the false “Blue Edition.” The 63 legal actions against counterfeiters are taking place around the world, especially in the United States, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom.
These are signs of urgent need for more revenue and this aggression is good news to Free software because its adoption will be a side effect. For Microsoft, patent litigation and lawsuits against the sellers who made its software ubiquitous seem like the way forward. █
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Posted in Hardware, Microsoft, Windows at 5:50 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
All the characteristics of a failing company
A COUPLE OF DAYS AGO we wrote about the latest publicity stunts whose intent is to "freeze the market". It’s about Vista 7 which, as we’ve said right at the start, is likely to come no earlier than 2010 and offer very little compared to Vista (the latter point is factual, whereas there is room for speculation regarding the former).
There are additional signs that this is possible and a release could be over a year away, but in order to freeze the market Microsoft must not admit this publicly.
Microsoft is not too keen on rolling out an underdone Windows 7 and will only proceed with its launch when it is sure that the OS is ready. This is the reason it is not committing to a 2009 launch date. Microsoft’s Bill Veghte told Cnet that the OS will be shipped when the quality is up to scratch.
Microsoft also said that it would ship Vista (Longhorn at the time) by 2003 and deliver far more than it eventually delivered — leaving people in a position where they favoured XP over Vista. It is important to remember that Microsoft has already dropped the major features which it had promised for Vista’s successor.
Looking elsewhere at Microsoft’s business this week, it turns out that — due to massive losses or not — XBox 360 is likely the last of its kind. This is not the first time that Microsoft speaks of quitting this market, which has already cost it close to $7 billion (in just losses).
No new Xbox Console in Microsoft’s future
[...]
As such, the company is planning on concentrating its efforts of exploiting the Xbox 360 to its full potential, with plans for new features and further game development. This isn’t terribly surprising, but it’s still a bit disappointing given the relative ago of the Xbox 360, which went into production in 2005…almost 4 years ago.
Other sites speak about this too. As for the Zune, when we last wrote about this gadget, it was already on its death throes and now comes the word that it might finally be “nuked”.
Microsoft May Finally Nuke The Zune (MSFT)
As everyone who doesn’t work for Microsoft has known for two years, the Zune is doomed. Thankfully, it seems this message may finally have reached Steve Ballmer.
There is some more information about this here and here, even in Microsoft-affiliated sites.
Assuming that there is deflation of products, what will Microsoft have to show that’s new other than just software patents? Judging by CES, as the company is entering debt [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], there is nothing new to show.
Microsoft shows nothing new at CES
It has to be said, Microsoft has shown us nothing new, interesting, or even slightly exciting at this years CES show in Las Vegas. I watched the first half hour or so of the live feed; Microsoft’s keynote and opportunity to show off a few things. I went to bed feeling empty, dissatisfied and underwhelmed – a lot like a classic iPod with only 2% storage used.
Microsoft had some older things to show at CES, such as error messages on the $13,000+ Surface that runs a variant of Vista.
Intrepid reader Yves Milord snapped a pic of what might be the first error message seen on a Microsoft Surface.
This is a very symbolic thing. One of the latest products and the most overhyped one simply fails to come together, let alone be marketed. The American car industry showed similar characteristics amid its gradual failure at renewed prosperity. █
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01.11.09
Posted in News Roundup at 10:59 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
GNU/Linux
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With apologies to my boss, a story in today’s Wall Street Journal has me thinking that the future of Linux deployment might perhaps be even better than he predicted.
The realization didn’t come quickly. My first glance at the paper is about 10 minutes after rolling out of bed and starting the process of getting my kids to school. I’d like to be able to tell you that as soon as I saw the article, I made the instant leap to my conclusion, but in reality, at 0-dark-hundred my thought process is something like this: “mrmmsmrm… coffee… mehhphrm drmhfsp… coffee…”
Apparently something must have clicked, because I had the presence of mind to place the article in my office for later (coherent) consumption. The topic was netbooks, and how hardware vendors are scrambling to get some new offerings out the factory doors after the very popular Asus Eee PC came out in 2007 and made a big splash in an otherwise bleak electronics market.
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It is Debian GNU/Linux, but it is Linux Mint and just plain old Ubuntu. But Canonical says Ubuntu is a Linux-based distro, not a GNU/Linux based distro. It is also PCLinuxOS and not PCGNU/LinuxOS. Redhat calls it Redhat Linux and the list goes on. So what is it GNU/Linux or Linux?
I have been criticised for using Linux by itself and have seen others being chastised for it elsewhere. You write a long article and the only comment from some people is that you failed to call it GNU/Linux. They are showing disdain for you and are telling you that they will not read what you write until you follow their terminology. I get it, but don’t like the bad attitude. Their cause suffers as a result of their rudeness and quite frankly I don’t care that they choose not to read what I write. I actually believe in freedom.
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The merge window is over, and while it is quite possible that I missed a few merge requests in the crazy week that is behind us, apart from those we should now have most of the bulk of 2.6.29 merged up. And now it’s just a small matter of making sure it’s all stable and ready to go.
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For software programmers and developers worried about layoffs and job security in these tough economic times, the answer may be as clear as the screen on your cell phone. That’s because manufacturers of small consumer equipment like cell phones and PDAs need programmers trained in embedded Linux to hand-tune the product’s software code.
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Today is one of those days that starts with a sweet taste. The FSF has declared another victory for its BadVista campaign: Vista is a clear failure for Microsoft and for FSF it’s time to devote energy to something else. (btw: did you donate to FSF?)
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Applications
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Way back at the beginning of the web (or when it started to become mainstream) it was popular to spend hours hacking away at a keyboard to type your first web page.
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Its a common misconception that Linux doesn’t have applications for day to day computing, nothing can be further from the truth. In fact I would wager that there is an alternative for any app/function out there. And since this blogs claims to “bring Linux to the masses” I thought it would be a good idea to write a series of blogs about the different apps available to Linux users in different categories.This article’s category will be: Bittorrent Clients…
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Audio
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XBMC
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If you are looking for a home media Centre, and have had it with figuring out MythTV, this is a VERY VERY good alternative to MediaCentre, Myth or TVersity. I think the interface is well written. and the software seems to be very well supported.
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With sabayon Linux 4.0 rolling on it’s way it’s time to look at some sort of a mini edition. We are gonna spin out a mini-dvd instead of a mini-cd. There is several reasons for this move and I’m not going to go into them as I don’t want to hear comments of not having a dvd drive for whatever reason it is. It’s the 21st Century, get with it and get a dvd drive, even microsoft is moving to dvd format releases.
LiteMCE stands for lite dvd version, multimedia center edition. It’s desktop environment is gnome. It comes with xmbc for your multimedia. If I recall correctly the dvd download will be roughly 2GB.
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Desktop Environments
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Plasma makes the desktop valuable again. I liked the default uncluttered mode without any icons and I liked the idea of widgets that you can put on the desktop. Unlike 4.0 and 4.1 Plasma in 4.2 is usable and stable (not without minor glitches though).
KRunner is a killer feature. Once you try it, you’ll never stop, believe me. In my opinion, KRunner may easily be one of the reasons to switch to KDE4. I only wish it was more prominent and more documented.
As a general conclusion, I should say that after KDE4 I don’t want to get back to KDE3. The new Plasma desktop is a huge success and with proper architecture and implementation behind it, I’m sure we’ll see even more exciting improvements in the future. And of course, I’m sure that in subsequent KDE releases we’ll also see even more polished and ironed out 4.x desktop.
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Distributions
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The more I think about it, The more I’m convinced that the both approaches that have been proposed to change the way we deal with Debian membership (Joerg’s new statuses for non-developing contributors, and Lars’ counting of advocates) are both steps in the wrong direction.
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Fedora
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The Fedora 11 release name is:
Leonidas
The full GPG-signed message from our election coordinator, Nigel
Jones, is attached. Thank you to the community for their suggestions,
Josh Boyer and the Board for their work on additional diligence
searches, and Nigel Jones for setting up the voting.
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I decided to switch my desktop back to Linux now that I know I can play Counter-Strike in VirtualBox thanks to the OpenGL 3D acceleration availible in VirtualBox 2.1.0. I *was* going to go back to the ‘ol reliable Ubuntu, but I decided since I have Nvidia graphics now, that I would try out Fedora 10 since the drivers are availible in RPMFusion’s repo.
[...]
Fedora has always been known to have great artwork, and Fedora 10 is no exception. The default look and feel is very sharp and professional. Fonts rendering is also very nice – seems better than the defaults in Ubuntu. I tend to use defaults for themes and such, so while the theme isn’t hugely important, having a nice theme as default is a niceity for me. I grow tired of the “brown” in Ubuntu (it’s depressing 
)
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Ubuntu
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If you like OS X’s look and feel, but you’re a Linux guy or gal at heart, this is a mod for you. While the mod to make Hardy Herron look like OS X has been out for a while, it is now available for Intrepid as well. So whether you are running Heron or Intrepid (Ubuntu) you can get the same look and feel for the Gnome GUI as you have with OS X. The Mac4Lin themes allow you to customize your Linux box with the same background as the Mac, and additional options even give some of the same functionality. Since the Mac OS and Ubuntu share a Unix base most of the common applications for the Mac can be found in the Linux world. Sometimes Apple even borrows things from Linux for the Mac OS.
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The gOS (”good OS”) project released SP1 of gOS 3.1 Gadgets. The Linux based gOS is an excellent Operating System for Netbooks & NetTops.
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With the EXT4 file-system having been stabilized with the Linux 2.6.28 kernel, the Ubuntu developers are preparing to adopt this evolutionary Linux file-system update. EXT4 will not replace EXT3 as the default file-system until at least Ubuntu 9.10, but as of yesterday, Ubuntu 9.04 now has install-time support for EXT4. In this article we are looking at the EXT4 support within Ubuntu as well as providing a few Linux file-system benchmarks from a netbook-embedded solid-state drive. In this article we have published Ubuntu benchmarks of EXT4, EXT3, XFS, JFS, and ReiserFS file-systems.
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Devices/Embedded
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Sub-notebooks
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Hardware provider Hewlett-Packard has released a Linux version for its mini-laptop. HP wants to be clear from the outset that disabling the Linux command line interface in the product is not an act of heresy.
End of October 2008 HP began confirming rumors about their own Linux netbook variant, and have now followed up with release of their Mini Mi 1000 series. The netbook has 2 GByte system memory and an Intel Atom CPU, with the choice of an 8.9 or 10.1 inch display, and costs around $330. HP describes the mobile internet software as “a user-friendly, all-inclusive interface built on Linux.” In fact, “Mi” stands for mobile internet, a clear message that HP wants to put the mini-laptop square into the netbook market.
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It also comes with an onboard Linux based operating system, which will be able to host applications developed by third parties, according to Novatel.
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Freescale is also looking to add fast-boot capabilities to future Linux-based netbooks with its Arm-based i.MX515 processors, which the company introduced at CES. The company demonstrated an i.MX515-powered netbook made by Pegatron, an Asus spin-off, at the show.
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F/OSS
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Competitors Apple, Google, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Linux-based Open Source platform LiMo and Nokia’s Symbian have begun to accept applications and services will now become crucial to growth, said Seema Haji, a technical manager in Silicon Valley.
“Mobile phone technology is not just about voice anymore. Features such as global positioning, social networking and interactive user interfaces are determining the usefulness and effectiveness of these devices,” she said.
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Commit to open-source software and open standards: Free software, or as it is more commonly known, ‘open-source’ software, is software distributed under a license that gives users the right to copy, modify and redistribute the source code. In fact, most of the Internet runs on open-source software such as GNU/Linux, Apache and MySQL.
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What the open source community needs is a more streamlined way to bring everyone together to collaborate and ensure interoperability, says Gopi Ganapathy, president and CEO of Essentia and the new Community Development Chair of the Open Solutions Alliance.
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Applications
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Open source and cloud computing are hot today, so its no surprise Hyperic, which plays in both technology spaces, says it’s having good luck recruiting solution providers to the channel program it launched in October. The company said its partner ecosystem now accounts for 30 percent of its sales and that number is growing.
Even the tough economic climate may be aiding Hyperic. The company develops open-source tools for monitoring and managing the performance of Web applications, including those deployed on premise or hosted through cloud-computing systems. Jeff Santelices, Hyperic business development vice president, said companies are trying to control their IT operating costs, and that’s boosting demand for Hyperic’s software.
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On a mission to bring open source and software-as-a-service (SaaS) to the customer service and support markets, SpiceCSM has introduced their first set of products to the open source community. Using www.opencsm.org as its open source community portal, SpiceCSM is dedicated to delivering solutions that are tailored for customer service organizations such as call centers and help desks.
Knowledge/Open Access
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What will your keynote at linux.conf.au be about?
I’m going to talk about the “scarcity mindset”, how it holds us back, and how adopting an “abundancy mindset” would free us to think more creatively about IT.
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Digital rights management (DRM) refers to technologies typically used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, and copyright holders to attempt to control how consumers access and use media and entertainment content. Among other issues, the workshop will address the need to improve disclosures to consumers about DRM limitations. Interested parties may submit written comments or original research on this topic.
ODF
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At this year’s Expo, Araxis Merge was back, and with a nifty addition to its bag of tricks: it can now automatically extract and compare text from Word, Excel, PDF, and Open Document Format documents. Just open these files directly in Araxis Merge, and the program will extract and compare the text within the files.
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One priority is open-document-formatting legislation, which could save governments millions of dollars. He has also been active in efforts to reform school finance and property taxes.
Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day
Digital Tipping Point: IP attorney Julian Summers 02 (2005)
Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.
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Posted in Antitrust, Microsoft, Mono, SUN at 8:48 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
We have just copied (by hand) the contents of Comes vs Microsoft exhibit px08290 [PDF]. There are some curious bits there about .NET and the people involved are Charles Fitzgerald, Sanjay Parthasarathy, Tom Button, Yuval Neema, Graham Clark, and Joe Long.
“By putting CLI into ECMA, we are inviting x-plat implementations. With Rotor we are even doing some work on Linux and Solaris,” says Graham Clark, Microsoft’s general manager of .NET business development.
“…there is no mechanism to provide transaction (and other core services) support on these non-Windows implementations.”
–Microsoft GM of .NETFurther he adds: “For enterprise customers/partners, wanting to build enterprise apps, all this is meaningless as there is no mechanism to provide transaction (and other core services) support on these non-Windows implementations.”
“Microsoft is well aware of how to position .NET to make it seem attractive, but at the same time be worthless (or worth much less) without patented and non standardized, non-royalty free bits,” writes the reader who drew attention to this.
Worth paying attention are also the parts about "evangelism". █
Appendix: Comes vs. Microsoft – Exhibit px08290, as text
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Microsoft at 7:58 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Not one but two pills
People rarely forget where they came from
THE issue of influence through recruitment was last mentioned two days ago, with more examples given several months ago. This may lead to a clash of cultures because any employee in any company inevitably becomes an integral part of it. Former colleagues remain friends or contacts and it’s illogical to assume otherwise.
Citing this seminal report from Mary Jo Foley, it is stated elsewhere that eBay too took the pill (Microsoft vice president).
Positronic founder Chris Payne had formerly been Corporate Vice President of Windows Live Search at Microsoft and had also spent 3 years at Amazon.com. He is now Vice President of Search at eBay, and Positronic co-founder Dane Glasgow is Vice President of Engineering at eBay.
According to this other report, it’s not a case of one person alone. It’s actually two Microsoft executives who have just joined eBay.
In 2006, Microsoft search gurus Christopher Payne and Dane Glasgow left Microsoft to start Positronic.net. We’re not all that clear on what Positronic did, the company’s “about” page doesn’t add much detail and Mary Jo Foley describes Positronic’s work as “all about machine-learning and data-mining.”
It’s worth keeping an eye on what eBay does next, from either a technological or diplomatic (e.g. relationships, collaborations) point of view. VMware is a good case study [1, 2, 3, 4], but it’s still ongoing. XenSource is a much better example of vendor capture. █
“…[C]ut off Netscape’s air supply.”
–Paul Maritz, Vice President, Microsoft (Now VMWare CEO)
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Posted in Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 7:25 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“Microsoft: Get your grubby hands off education” — Unnamed
Picture by SubSonica
“Microsoft has a PhD scholarship grants program which specifically excludes Free Software (Notice: NOT “Open Source”), the GPL, Sun, Netscape and Apache,” says one of our informants. Microsoft disinterested in open source? That can’t be. Or can it? Microsoft just pretends to like open source in order to weaken it and to change it. Moreover, in education, Microsoft’s track record has been abysmal and distasteful, to say the very least. It even bribes professors.
“There is so much scientific work which uses Free Software,” says our informant “and needing students who would deserve a scholarship can’t afford to spend money in proprietary software… let alone the fact of the philosophy commonly shared by freedom of knowledge fostered by Free Software and the scientific exchange of knowledge.”
Here are the conditions of the grants program, for those who don’t believe it:
«7.2 The University shall ensure that the Resulting IPR does not include any Publicly Available Software, that is to say each of (i) any software that contains, or is derived in any manner (in whole or in part) from, any software that is distributed as free software, open source software or similar licensing or distribution models; and (ii) any software that requires as a condition of use, modification and/or distribution of such software that such software or other software incorporated into, derived from or distributed with such software (a) be disclosed or distributed in source code form; and/or (b) be licensed for the purpose of making derivative works; and/or (c) be redistributable at no charge. Publicly Available Software includes, without limitation, software licensed or distributed under any of the following licences or distribution models, or licences or distribution models similar to any of the following: (a) GNU’s General Public Licence (GPL) or Lesser/Library GPL (LGPL), (b) The Artistic Licence (e.g., PERL), (c) the Mozilla Public Licence, (d) the Netscape Public Licence (e) the Sun Community Source Licence (SCSL), (f) the Sun Industry Source Licence (SISL), and (g) the Apache Server Licence. »
Yes, Microsoft just loves open source. █
When research meant sharing…
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Mono, Quote at 11:11 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“As many of you may know, we’ve actually kind of broadened the product portfolio of Visual Studio, targeting all the way from the low end with students and hobbyists, kind of competitive in that Linux space, making sure that every developer has a copy of .NET and is trained in writing .NET solutions. [...] I think it will really help us in our competition with open source.”
–Eric Rudder, Senior Vice President, Microsoft
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