LAST week we wrote about the release of 11.1 and here is the official press release that we neglected to add (also here, along with this modified press release). There are some shallow announcements that pretty much repeat the contents of the press release, which is always disappointing.
Here is LinuxPR (JupiterMedia/LinuxToday) announcing it a little differently.
“It could be argued that Microsoft’s unethical Technology Evangelism (TE) practices are “old news”—i.e., that Microsoft stopped using these questionable TE practices long ago. This is very unlikely to be the case, for at least three reasons.”
–James Plamondon, former Microsoft shill (aka ‘Technology Evangelist’)
Microsoft is very well aware that the beans have been spilled and its disgraceful AstroTurf tactics are now known to an increasing number of people. As a victim of Microsoft's tactics, I am neither willing to forget nor to forgive them. I intend to inform, to expose, and hopefully to make those responsible come forward or get sued.
James Plamondon is one of the key people behind it. You can find samples of his 'work' in several pages of this Web site. He explained in 2008: “Between 1992 and 2000, I was a Technology Evangelist (TE) with Microsoft, where I was widely considered to be its leading TE theorist and practitioner. For example, in the late 1990′s, I was the only Microsoft employee to design and lead TE training seminars that all of Microsoft’s newly-hired TE’s were required to attend.”
“As a victim of Microsoft’s tactics, I am neither willing to forget nor to forgive them.”By forcing dirty secrets into public knowledge, we forced people who had practiced these illegal tactics on behalf of Microsoft to come out and acknowledge them. Marshall Goldberg is apparently one of the high-level people responsible for it too. Is it he who rates Microsoft products 5/5 in Amazon? Either way, a Marshall Goldberg was presenting alongside James Plamondon, but there is not much information about this Marshall on the Web. Remember “Steve Barkto” [1, 2, 3, 4]?
There are several Web sites which seek to bring out the truth other than ourselves. There are other domains like slated.org, edge-op.org and even this Russian site, gotthefacts.org, which all expose the same type of illegal Microsoft tactics. Most of them just provide Web hosting (mirrors) for the evidence stamped by a United States court.
Several weeks ago we received a public message from James Plamondon, who said:
Roy, et al.,
You’re right. Some of the evangelism practices that I taught and executed at Microsoft in the 1990’s were unethical. I didn’t think so at the time — I thought that they were just hyper-competitive — but I agree now.
I am trying to change the error of my ways. I trust that you will agree that even the most hardened sinner can be redeemed.
We also obtained a copy of a private E-mail claiming to be from James Plamondon, but we can’t divulge it. Our source says: “Perhaps he’s on a fishing expedition to find out exactly what else is out there that might show him in a bad light. And wants me to do it for him. Remember all these Comes docs were supposed to stay buried.”
We’ve asked for permission to publish that E-mail too. Unless it’s fake (which is unlikely), this was sent to Groklaw too.
In any case, James now has his own blog where he’s disclosing some of the things he was doing at Microsoft. He even links to Groklaw and Slated.org. For example:
For eight years (1992-2000), I was the driving force behind Microsoft’s effort to make its Technology Evangelism (TE) efforts more efficient, effective, and ruthless, by studying both the practice and the theory of TE. After leaving Microsoft in 2000, I spurned the inquiries of numerous Microsoft competitors to testify on their behalf. As recently as year, I fell on my sword on Microsoft’s behalf.
So why come forward now?
Two reasons.
First, the global financial melt-down forced an epiphany. We at Microsoft always felt that we were on the side of free markets and unfettered capitalism—you know, the Good Guys. But so did the guys at Lehman Brothers, AIG, Fannie Mae, and all of the other failed financial institutions. Even Alan Greenspan, the High Priest of free markets, has had to concede that there’s “a flaw” in free market economics—a flaw that led directly to the current financial collapse.
My belief that I was one of the Good Guys was similarly flawed. This is now inescapable. I was wrong. Many of the TE practices that I developed, taught, and espoused were wrong. Anyone who continues to practice them is wrong. As a first step towards making amends for my past wrongdoing, I must make this clear, and widely known.
Second, Microsoft—where these practices were developed, welcomed, and endorsed as official policy—is this week launching its first public volley in the Mother of All Standards Battles, to control the de facto standards of cloud computing. For Microsoft, this is a life-or-death struggle. When Microsoft’s back is to the wall, can it reasonably be expected to refrain from using the TE tactics that it KNOWS will help it win, if its use of those tactics is unrestrained?
However, my concern is not just for Microsoft. These TE practices are very effective, and now that some of them have been documented in the public record, other platform vendors will be tempted to use them, too, when their backs are against the wall.
This problem can only be treated, I believe, by professionalizing TE, and thereby inoculating platform vendors against unethical TE practices.
That’s why I felt compelled to come forward now. Only now have I realized how wrong I was, and by coming forward now, in the opening skirmishes of the Cloud Computing Wars, I can begin to make amends for my past wrong-doing.
Our previous post discusses exactly that. Microsoft is on “a Slog” against competing virtualisation/cloud offers and also against GNU/Linux, which is facilitated by these. Microsoft attacks Google Apps via former employees; Preston Gralla, who some call “a Microsoft shill”, joined this anti-Google Apps parade earlier this week, twice in a row in fact (his blog is called “Seeing Through Windows”). He’s assisted by his IDG colleague, Eric Lai, in the “Regarding Redmond” blog. Need it be repeatedly said that IDG receives Microsoft money [1, 2]? This impacts coverage through biased appointments and editorship. Preston Gralla, for example, attacks GNU/Linux constantly by promoting Microsoft vapourware that involved bribing bloggers.
Going back to James, it makes a lot of sense. This former Microsoft shill (he insists on calling it “TE”) also says that Microsoft must still be doing it, and in fact it’s quite evident. He also wrote:
It could be argued that Microsoft’s unethical Technology Evangelism (TE) practices are “old news”—i.e., that Microsoft stopped using these questionable TE practices long ago. This is very unlikely to be the case, for at least three reasons.
[...]
The point is that this Judgment, by affecting only TE activities after the last major beta test release, does almost nothing to limit Microsoft ability to perform TE unethically, and indeed increases its incentive to put the hammer down before the last major beta test release is issued.
Secondly, to the extent that the requirements imposed by Section III.D of the Judgment had any salutary effect on Microsoft’s TE practices, those requirements are now irrelevant, as the term of that section of the Judgment expired in 2007 (although the requirements of other sections were extended). Microsoft is now free to practice TE any way it damn well pleases, without let or hindrance.
Thirdly, members of the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) community have asserted that Microsoft has used these practices in its recent evangelism as recently as last year (2007).
In summary, this aspect of Microsoft’s illegal behaviour is not a theory. It’s a reality. Even those who were involved in it regretted this after leaving the company and then divulge these secrets simply because they had already been leaked out to the public throughout class action litigation (2006, with further analysis in 2007). They want to tell their own story because the evidence is too embarrassing for them to cope with. They spin, spin, spin, but the truth remains too hard to deny. People should not be gullible and they can independently interpret the evidence [PDF].
“In summary, this aspect of Microsoft’s illegal behaviour is not a theory. It’s a reality.”This is worth keeping in mind — especially amongst victims of Microsoft’s ill practices — in case a lawsuit is filed against the company in the future. People should not just avoid the company for behaving in this way; entire countries should sue Microsoft or impose an embargo already.
This is not competition. It’s unhealthy market distortion, it’s corruption. Real people are hurt and Microsoft’s competitors who cater for their families lose their jobs so that Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates can hoard billions and funnel these into governments so that they will blindly procure Microsoft. It’s the kickbacks routine, which perverted procurement is a part of. It has mischief and manipulation written all over it and there are heaps of hard evidence.
These things are large and complex, but thanks to input from readers and fellow bloggers we are beginning to obtain and put together a comprehensive alta vista that explains how Microsoft operates internally (if not intimately). Those who are desperate to dispute it must stop attacking the messenger; this only legitimises the message, which cannot be countered directly. █
Related posts (more of Microsoft’s dirty tricks):
ONE of the more appalling, if emotional, stories we’ve come across and also covered here is to do with VMware. In a nutshell, Microsoft and its established allies in the industry tossed out the core of VMware quite forcibly and replaced it with Microsoft cronies. In addition, Microsoft had its very close partner buy XenSource (there is a background story) and it is also using Novell to ensure that Windows earns a place in the so-called ‘cloud’. We have heaps of supportive evidence that we accumulated. Some of our previous posts on this topic include:
On numerous occasions — and always well-equipped with evidence — we warned that Citrix was turning Xen into a Windows/Hyper-V enabler. Citrix is, after all, one of the companies most dependent on Microsoft’s success. A few days ago, more evidence emerged:
Microsoft’s VMware assault: New Citrix management tools for Hyper-V
In the first quarter of 2009, Citrix will release its XenServer suite of management tools that works with Microsoft Hyper-V rather than its own XenServer hypervisor, said Lou Shipley, general manager and group vice president of Citrix’s XenServer unit, the Management Systems Group.
No live migration? No problem. Courtesy of Citrix Systems Inc., Microsoft’s relatively rudimentary Hyper-V virtualization offering is due to gain valuable new management capabilities, which could catapult Hyper-V into the same league as VMware Virtual Infrastructure.
It is rather clear to see what they aspire to achieve here. They use Xen to empower Microsoft Windows, mostly at the expense of GNU/Linux (Hyper-V is GNU/Linux-hostile [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]). VMware too has been captured by one of Microsoft’s anti-competitive felons, who were found guilty of breaking the law. He was among the group that schemed to cut Netscape’s air supply, to use his own words.
This is not competition; it’s what Microsoft calls “a Slog”. █
“…[C]ut off Netscape’s air supply.”
–Paul Maritz, Vice President, Microsoft (Now VMWare)
Permalink
Comments off 
Send this to a friend
it’s not a joke
This news from Christmas day is even more flabbergasting than Amazon’s One-Click: [via Digital Majority]
Indiana based Cygnus Systems has filed a lawsuit against the three giants Microsoft, Apple and Google claiming that they are infringing on a patent owned by them.
The patent is related to file preview technology which gives the user a view of a file before it is opened.
Yes, that’s correct. The USPTO granted a patent for “file preview”, failing to recognise prior art relating to the idea and even its obviousness, or triviality. This is also covered here:
A small Indiana company has sued tech heavyweights Microsoft, Apple, and Google, claiming that it holds the patent on a common file preview feature used by browsers and operating systems to show users small snapshots of the files before they are opened.
Believe it or not, this so-called ‘innovation’ was conceived in 2001, or at least filed at this very late stage.
According to McAndrews, Cygnus’s owner and president Gregory Swartz developed the technology in his spare time.
Cygnus applied for its patent in 2001. It purports to cover a “System and method for iconic software environment management”.
There is prior art. Getting a patent and actually selling a products are separate things. The latter is damaged by the former, which benefits society in no way (unless one is a lawyer). █
KDE had file previews many years ago
Permalink
Comments off Send this to a friend
Apple’s difficulties were noted here last week, although they are not of much concern to us given that Apple harms the freedom of software [1, 2, 3, 4]. It would only be fair to state that any business which relies on sales is likely to suffer a bit (or a lot), and it’s a problem that hardly affects Free software, bar donations and subscription renewals to those who offer support and/or services.
The Inquirer had this article about Apple’s shares falling after a series of unfortunate events and speculations. A pro-Microsoft Web site, Barron’s, presents this analysis which predicts further declines in Windows and Office sales.
Thomas Weisel analyst Tim Klasell this morning cut estimates for Microsoft (MSFT) for the current quarter ending December, Microsoft’s fiscal Q2, and slightly for the 2009 and 2010 fiscal years, citing slowing PC demand, but also lower demand than might have been expected for Microsoft’s server packages, which include the Exchange email server, and the Microsoft Office productivity suite and Microsoft Dynamics, programs for customer relationship management and the like.
Windows and Office are two among the few profitable products from Microsoft, so this could be interpreted as a major blow. Analysts predict that Microsoft will issue a warning, probably some time in the next year and layoff rumours simply carry on. These persist following actual layoffs that we already know about [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].
More headlines have appeared just before the holidays. One news site, for example, somehow concluded that “Microsoft Plans To Cut Jobs By 10 Percent.”
“The news is in. All the money making groups cut 10 percent of the workforce,” says another Microsoft employee.
An analyst defends such a decision, assuming it comes next month.
Analyst: Microsoft staff cuts would be “healthy”
[...]
“While a 10 percent (reduction in force) would be hard for those impacted, we believe it would be a healthy move for the company as it would help rationalize the tens of thousands of employees who have been hired over the past several years,” Reback wrote.
Microsoft would not be the only Washington-based technology company to see the guillotine coming down.
CUTBACKS: October and November brought a series of layoffs at Seattle-area technology companies — nothing like the dot-com meltdown, but still substantial enough to make it clear that the belt-tightening is serious.
We’re anticipating another wave after the holidays. Rumors have already started about possible cuts at Microsoft next month. And venture-backed companies that have yet to turn a profit may be forced to further reduce expenses as it becomes harder to raise capital. The only question is how deep the cuts will go.
As usual, there must be a dose of damage control from Microsoft Jack, who is like some sort of Microsoft spokesman in the Guardian [1, 2, 3], just like Ina Fried is the company’s sworn booster in CNET.
“Their reports were already tackled and financial practices criticised.”Jack writes about these layoff reports and also adds that “Microsoft has plenty of cash,” but apparently he does not know (or does not want his readers to know) about Microsoft reaching debt [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] and also losing billions in most of its divisions. Their reports were already tackled and financial practices criticised [1, 2]. Only 1 or 2 divisions at Microsoft are profitable and those that are profitable see their margins shrinking due to increased competition, mostly from SaaS, FOSS, and GNU/Linux. In the area of sub-notebooks, for example, they reportedly dropped the price of Windows to just $5 because otherwise GNU/Linux would reign.
As the classic saying goes, “may you live in interesting times.” Red Hat’s results, which came out on Monday, were impressive. The other publicly-traded company that sells GNU/Linux is Novell, and it continues to lose money because of its dependency on proprietary software. █
Permalink
Comments off Send this to a friend
A short while ago, I installed Windows XP on one of my computers. *horror*. It’s not so bad. It does some things quite well. Even after bloating it up with about 50 open source apps, it still seems to chug away quite merrily. I gor rid of the antivirus software, as it slowed the system down. What is this ‘virus’ thing that everyone keeps talking about anyway? Today, a win to Linux and a win to Windows XP.
The 0.10.4 release of Google Gadgets for Linux is out, with optimized performance and memory consumption, as well as many bug fixes. To install or upgrade your copy of Google Gadgets for Linux, just download and install the binaries for your platform.
The g.Micro is available as an ISO image of the CD, you just need to download and burn it with your favorite cd-writing software and then boot from cd-rom. For USB is distributed as a ZIP archive. Simply unzip it to your USB device and run bootinst.bat (for Windows users) or bootinst.sh (for Linux users) to make it bootable.
E-Swecha is based on the Debian OS which is a variant of Linux, the most popular open source OS. Unlike proprietary software like Microsoft Windows, open source software allows the original source code to be modified and distributed.
LeanXcam is an intelligent color camera that combines a CMOS sensor, 500-MHz Blackfin ADSP-BF537 digital signal processor, tailored Linux-based operating system, and OSCAR image-processing framework. Memory includes 54-Mbyte internal SDRAM and 2 x 4 Mbyte flash; microSD cards up to 2 Gbytes are optional.
SEVERAL MONTHS AGO, shortly after Gates had allegedly retired (to do more politics), he met with the head of the UN, which was encouraging Free software adoption at the time. So what did they discuss? Were any favours possibly exchanged through the Gates Foundation? Stories of UN corruption are too easy to forget.
According to this new article, “In partnership with the United Nations, Microsoft recently launched Imagine Cup 2009.” Why is the UN liaising with a company so widely known for criminal behaviour and discrimination against underprivileged countries?
Microsoft is also sniffing around for lock-in opportunities and it seems to have just found another victim in Bahrain, which was (or still is) exploring Free software [1, 2]. This new agreement smells like another MoU (Memorandum of Understanding), which is discriminatory. We wrote about these before, e.g. in:
There is related information also in:
All these secretive deals do mean a lot, so someone, somewhere ought to keep track of them for future reference which accompanies complex explanations that are backed by compelling circumstantial evidence from the past. █
____
[1] Region’s open-source experts to support first of its kind conference in Bahrain
The DataShell IT Open Minds Conference and Exhibition, scheduled to take place on 13th November, will be a first of its kind for Bahrain, bringing together regional business decision-makers as well as IT executives and providing them with information and resources to implement Linux and other open-source solutions in business infrastructures.
We are pleased to announce the first meeting of the Bahrain Linux User Group!
Permalink
Comments off Send this to a friend
« Previous Page — « Previous entries « Previous Page · Next Page » Next entries » — Next Page »
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Guest Editorial Team
Community: Get involved
RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates
Site Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content
Site Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page
IRC Channels: Come and chat with us in real time
Design by Beccary and Weblogs.us · Valid XHTML · Valid CSS · Hosting by CoPilotCo · Part of Bytes Media
 |  |
Content is available under CC-BY-SA
