07.27.09
Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux at 2:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Was Gandhi “a zealot” for sticking to principles?
Summary: Self-appointed judge and jury call “zealots” those whom they are overzealous over
THERE is an interesting trend we have been noticing. Apple/Mac enthusiasts like Matt Asay are calling FOSS advocates who are actually GNU/Linux users “zealots”. Asay is doing this repeatedly. Yes, apparently sticking to FOSS makes it a case of “zealotry” now. That’s how compromise gets justified, by ridiculing those who don’t. Tarus Balog from OpenNMS is rather disturbed by this.
I didn’t make it to OSCON this year (thanks for everyone who voted for us for the CCA, by the way, even though we lost out again to Firebird) and I am quietly thankful for it, because it seems like the conference kicked off a new round of hyperbole and hypocrisy from the fauxpen source crowd and I’m going to try to stay out of it (instead of any kind of rational discussion, this round seems even more full of ad hominem attacks).
I’ve been labeled both an open source purist and a zealot simply because of my assertion that the term “open source” is defined by the open source definition. And while no one calls me a pragmatist, only a pragmatist could have kept a company like OpenNMS going through good times and bad without investment.
As Dana Blankenhorn points out:
Open source advocates still called zealots
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We are no longer talking about something that is unproven, or risky. The open source model is a decade old. It has already saved enterprises, small businesses, and individuals literally billions of dollars. It has empowered programmers, it has built new fortunes. It’s not communism, but capitalism at its very best.
Another person suggests that the use of the word “zealots” is supposed to associate FOSS with “terrorism”. We saw this before when Rob Enderle wrote in relation to FOSS advocates: “I have a hard time seeing the Zealots as any different from terrorist… I strongly believe that if September 11 showed us anything, it was that zealots…”
Our reader Goblin compares this to a Monty Python scene when he writes: “He’s not the messiah he’s a very naughty boy!”
We sometimes wonder if people who are not even FOSS users are trying to hijack the voice of FOSS. Black Duck comes to mind.
As one of our readers correctly points out, some of those who accuse of “zealotry” are simply “overzealous for themselves”. This is hypocrisy. Even Microsoft is a very zealous, but big entities are rarely thought of as “zealots”, who are conveniently perceived as a small minority (and thus “mistaken”). █
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Posted in Formats, Office Suites, Open XML, OpenDocument at 2:01 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Little bits of ODF news
FOR THOSE who wonder what’s new in Open Document Format (ODF), a new workshop is being organised for users and there is also this new tutorial for ODFDOM. Those who are not familiar with ODFDOM probably ought to notice a short description of it:
The ODFDOM Toolkit API is a framework written in Java and designed to provide an easy common way to create, access and manipulate OpenDocument format (ODF) files, without requiring detailed knowledge of the ODF specification.
David Weinberger has a go at explaining ODF.
[E]ven if ODF were to become the dominant document standard, Microsoft could support it robustly, although that might mean that some of Word’s formatting niceties wouldn’t make the transition. Would business be ok with that? For creators, probably yes; it’d be good to be relieved of the expectation that you will be a document designer. For readers, no. We’ll continue to want highly formatted documents. But, then ODF + formatting specifications can produce quite respectably formatted docs, and that capability will only get better.
ODF is not about supporting Microsoft Word, so this is not relevant. Word can support ODF, but ODF need not supporting any specific office suite. At present, Microsoft Office does not support ODF properly [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. █
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Kernel, Marketing, Microsoft, Patents, Servers, SLES/SLED, Ubuntu, Windows at 1:46 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Novell should look at the mirror sometimes
Summary: Microsoft’s ally claims moral high ground for helping Windows Server
Novell’s CMO is being disingenuous. As Canonical’s CTO correctly points out, Novell uses Microsoft’s self-serving code [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] to take a shot at a poster child, Ubuntu. This is not the first time, either.
Novell’s Chief Marketing Officer John Dragoon has taken the opportunity to compare Canonical with Novell partner Microsoft on his blog. As he “commend[s] Microsoft for taking this very significant step”, he points out that the 20,000 lines of source code contributed by Microsoft to the Linux kernel “will far surpass those contributed by Canoncial[sic]“.
John credits Novell colleague Greg Kroah-Hartman for helping Microsoft to achieve this historic milestone. Greg is fond of counting lines of code in the Linux kernel, and based on his commentary elsewhere, I’m sure it was his pleasure to provide this statistic. I haven’t checked the figures myself, but it’s certainly believable that our contributions to the Linux kernel haven’t amounted to 20,000 lines of code.
Before we congratulate Microsoft and Novell too heartily, though, let’s get beyond the numbers, and look at what those 20,000 lines of code actually do. What can Linux do now that it couldn’t do before Microsoft’s contribution? According to Microsoft’s press release, it’s a device driver which enables Linux to run much faster—on Windows servers. That’s right, it helps us to get more value out of our expensive Windows Server 2008 licenses by consolidating our Linux servers into Windows Hyper-V virtual machines. It lets us put Windows in control of our hardware, and rely on Microsoft to allow it to perform well, for as long as that makes sense for them strategically.
[...]
Microsoft’s contribution to Linux creates new business opportunities for Microsoft by locking customers into their technology. Canonical’s contribution of Launchpad helps free software developers do what they do best, and benefits Canonical by making it easier for us to package, distribute, maintain, and provide services for free software.
It is possible that Dragoon does not understand just what Microsoft’s code is achieving. He is, after all, a marketing person. Along with Ron Hovsepian, Jeff Jaffe and a some other key people, he must have helped arrange the Linux patent racket with Microsoft — a racket that other companies later subscribed to as well. Novell is very unique in that regard because it has laid the foundations for future racketeering against Linux. The latest victim/accomplice is Melco [1, 2, 3, 4], but Pamela Jones argues that it’s the parent company which should be blamed:
Microsoft is apparently pushing this as a Linux company folding to their patents, but if you go here, the company describes its products. It’s a hardware company, from its own description. The US subsidiary, Buffalo, makes things like external hard drives. The second paragraph here tells the tale, I think. A company reliant upon Microsoft caves to Microsoft. But this is by no means a “Linux vendor” as some are trying to spin it. And without the terms being made public, there’s not telling if Microsoft was paid $1 or what the “protection” involves. But I know I’ll never buy anything from Melco Group from this day forward, speaking just for myself. And it’s one more piece of evidence that Microsoft hasn’t altered its patent strategy one iota. Think Mono, folks. Think carefully.
If it were not for Novell’s deal, all these subsequent deals probably would not come about. It was Novell that came to Microsoft and eventually signed that patent deal. Negotiations began in the middle of 2006. █
“I’ve heard from Novell sales representatives that Microsoft sales executives have started calling the Suse Linux Enterprise Server coupons “royalty payments”…”
–Matt Asay, April 21st, 2008
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Posted in Microsoft, Mono, Novell at 1:21 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Signs indicating that C# is not catching on raise questions about the essence of Mono
Mono is not a solution for a real problem; it is a ‘solution’ in search of a problem. Mono helps Microsoft resolve its own problems because after many years out there, programmers are still reluctant to use C#.
Balrog points out that new figures of book sales have just come out and it “looks like C# popularity went down”. In relation to this, says David Gerard: “I don’t understand why MS waited until 2009 for this attack, and why they’re doing for the sake of *mono* of all things.”
Mono proponents will probably say that Mono is safe to use because Microsoft promised not to sue, but worth highlighting is this new article from Law.com:
Why Patentees Conveying Covenants Not to Sue Should Take Another Look at the Fine Print
Patentees concerned with downstream use may want to take a closer look at the terms on which they license and covenant not to sue. Very recently, on April 8, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in TransCore, Inc. v. ETC Corp. that an unconditional covenant not to sue authorizes the sale of a patented article, thereby exhausting patent rights in the article. Although the TransCore ruling represents a logical extension of existing patent exhaustion jurisprudence, it should be carefully considered when drafting patent licenses and covenants not to sue.
The FSF has already remarked on and tackled Microsoft's Community Promise — supposedly a promise not to sue. There are many holes in that promise. █
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07.26.09
Posted in News Roundup at 6:06 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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This year they will be upgrading, installing WiFi and starting to use the laptops properly, something they didn’t do last year. Having spoken to this particular friend, I was pleasantly surprised and relieved to see that this little DELL Mini 9 was running Ubuntu Linux. Now the council obviously wanted to cut costs when preparing these, so they put Ubuntu Linux on them. I explained to this friend and her brother what Ubuntu was and the benefits but they didn’t want to accept it.
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Topics this year include OpenMoko, the collaborative web, parallelism, Drupal, GIMP, LVM, MPs’ expenses, spam fighting, and TeX. Plus there’s still the healthy social scene outside the talk sessions, where attendees can make new friends and renew old acquaintances.
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Before, we’ve posted here several cool and funny tux icons and some scary ones too. This time, we will showcase some of the finest tux icons that sports fans/Linux-users may love.
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Desktop
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When at press events like the Acer launch I was at today, I find myself asking this a lot – “will you be releasing a Linux version”. And more likely than not, I hear “nobody wants Linux, so no”.
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The good news for this blog is that the Linux experiment has worked. I have Windows virtualized on one machine using VirtualBox OSE for the occasional application that simply refuses to work with anything other than Windows.
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VirtualBox 3.02 seems to be really good though. The USB pass through and auto-filtering is just brilliant (so Ubuntu doesn’t alert when you plug in the iPod when the VM is running; it goes straight through to the Windows VM). It does seem to take quite a long time for the whole Windows/iTunes thing to settle down after I’ve plugged the iPod in but it might be just because it’s a big 120G iPod anyway… But it isn’t a major issue.
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Server
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The company’s “young tech wizards” had done an analysis, Quinn said. At the start, they hadn’t been sure about Sun’s future, although since then it had been bought by Oracle, so Quinn thought the company would probably survive. In the end, however, the team believed that Linux was more what the company needed. “We didn’t want to have four,” Quinn said.
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Kernel Space
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About a year ago I made some notes about plucking out parts of the 2.6.25.5 kernel — as well as some other ideas — with a goal of knocking down the boot time on an eight-year-old 550Mhz Celeron to about 16 seconds from Grub to X. I’ve configured a lot of kernels for a variety of machines in that time, and I have a few more subtractions to recommend.
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Applications
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To-do list programs can help you stay organized and boost productivity. Ars looks at GTG, KOrganizer, and other task management tools for the Linux desktop.
I’ve found that maintaining a proper to-do list consistently boosts my productivity. The challenge, however, is finding task management software that fits with my workflow. I’ve tried several web solutions—including Remember the Milk (RTM) and a self-hosted Tracks setup—but the problem with browser-based to-do lists is that I tend to ignore what’s not immediately visible on my desktop. Fortunately, there are several reasonably good open source to-do list tools for Linux.
I recently started using Getting Things GNOME (GTG), an organizer for the GNOME desktop environment that provides a robust feature set and a relatively high level of usability. Although it’s still at an early stage of development and has some rough edges, it meets my needs better than any of the other to-do list programs that I’ve tested. It has supported for nested substasks, tagging, and task notes.
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I’m very, very happy to announce that the KMess team has released KMess version 2.0, after more than an year and an half of development!
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One of the most important programs in the toolbox of any converter of ideas to physical things is Autocad. This program has pretty well become the standard of every research and development branch in factories. Many attempts have been made, and quite a few have been successful, to have Autocad running under Linux.
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Games
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Version 0.5 of the eSports oriented FPS is soon to be released, but for that the Warsow team is looking for in game scenes for a promotion trailer, as they state in an article on their website.
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If the thought of free frags makes your trigger finger twitch, take a look at AssaultCube. This open-source first person shooter doesn’t offer much in the way of snazzy graphics or major frills, and there’s no storyline or plot. Just a selection of maps where you can hunt or be hunted by other players or computer-controlled bots. But the multi-platform AssaultCube can run on Windows, Linux or Macs, and its minimum system requirements are so low that just about any computer should be able to run it (Pentium III 500Mhz and nVidia GeForce 256 or equivalents, 128MB RAM). Plus, the entire game fits into a compact 40MB download.
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If your gaming needs are a little off the cutting-edge, Linux can be a viable alternative. And it’s an alternative that has many advantages of its own. There are no viruses, no wayward processes chugging away in the background, no spyware, lie-ware, trojans or worms, and you have complete control over your system.
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KDE
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There’s a new Qt and Plasma theme in KDE 4.3 that looks pretty nice. Overall every release of KDE4 seems to become more stable, more polished, more eye-candy (if you want it).
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Aurelien Gateau and the rest of the Canonical Desktop Experience folks have been working super hard to get the visual notifications on KDE and Gnome united as part of their Project Ayatana. This involves uniting the Galago and KDE VisualNotification DBus interfaces. Along the way freedesktop.org had to get fixed to make such cooperation possible
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A new Plasma-based custom KDE desktop shell is designed to deliver a better user experience on netbooks and other devices with small screens. Ars takes a look at the prototype to see how it compares to the conventional KDE desktop environment.
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Red Hat
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Now some venture-capital firms are trying to tamp down the anxiety levels over taking a company public. Earlier this week, Benchmark Capital–which has invested in hits such as eBay and Red Hat over the years–held an IPO workshop for 20 of its largest portfolio companies. The event was designed to walk startup CEOs through the IPO landscape and to debunk some of the myths about the hurdles of going public.
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Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) is trading 2.1% higher (up $0.48 to $23.72) today on volume of 2,464,566 shares. The stock has breached its 52-week high of $23.48.
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If you are one of those open source aficionados using Fedora, you must be looking to lend a cool look to your system. What could be better than allowing a complete makeover to your Fedora. Well, there are fantabulous Fedora themes that can enhance your desktop, background, icons and more. Fedora theme are no simple delights, each of them patronize and symbolize the inherent nature of the ever improving operating system that is said to hold a greate future. For now, its your turn to make your Fedora appear fascinating and inspiring. We have assorted the top notch Fedora themes just for you.
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Ubuntu
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I recently found the need to install Ubuntu on a machine with a poor CD drive (and no USB ports) that could not read large amounts of data, but could manage to read smaller amounts of data. As such, the machine could not read the 700MB but could read smaller amounts, like 10MB.
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So all in all I now have four installations of this OS around my house. My websever runs it (you’re using it right now) and my fileserver is running on it as well. No issues at all on these boxes, even during the upgrade to 8.10 and then onto 9.04. My laptop is now humming with some initial hiccups that were resolved as is my VMware installation. Will it kill Microsoft? Probably not. But it’s a damn good OS and, in particular applications, it’s the best OS for the job.
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I think that we in the Ubuntu Server Community are leading the charge in developing an energy-efficient server class Linux distribution.
It is my hope that by the 10.04 LTS release, the Ubuntu Server is widely recognized as the de facto Green Computing Server Platform.
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New Releases
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The CoreCD is a text-based release. There is no X-Server, Gnome, or KDE provided.
The Feature list is intentionally short:
* Bootable Image suitable for a CD or USB thumb drive (~400M)
* Text-Based installer
* Basic default networking
* Entropy and Portage ready
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The antiX-team is proud to announce that an updated antiX MEPIS 8.2 Final is available at MEPIS mirrors in the testing directory and the released/antix directory.
Anti announced “On behalf of the antiX-team I am proud to announce that antiX MEPIS 8.2 is a fast, light, flexible and complete desktop and livecd based on SimplyMEPIS and Debian Testing is now available in full and base versions. This release defaults to a fully customised icewm desktop (fluxbox is also installed) using a SimplyMEPIS 2.6.27-25 kernel and tweaked MEPIS Assistants for better compatibility in antiX.”
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Reviews
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I am really enjoying the time spent with antiX MEPIS 8.2. It’s speedy, it’s responsive, it has plenty of useful tools, it looks as good as an IceWM system can look (oh, I forgot to mention… I absolutely love the icons!) and it’s very flexible. Good stuff, really! 
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The announcement for the release of antiX M8.2 can be found here on the antiX forum site, and as usual, I recommend it.
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GoboLinux is a Linux distribution I heard about from a friend who said that it looked interesting for its flagship property – a simpler file structure. I decided to check it out.
I downloaded the distribution ISO from their website, which was easy enough, and booted up VirtualBox with that ISO mounted as a drive.
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All in all, I liked Crunchbang very much. It really gave new life to my old Vaio.
If you’re willing to use the command line every now and then then, with the help of a very active community you can setup your system any way you want. Crunchbang is easily the best compromise between speed, looks and difficulty I’ve found so far. I definitely recommend trying it.
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Mandriva 2009.1 is overall an excellent transition from Windows to Linux, and comes with many great features for the tech-savvy user who wants an improved, sleek desktop look and feel as well as an abundance of programs to use. Before its merger with Conectiva, Mandrake Linux was concerned with making the Linux desktop more compatible for the end user, easier to understand and operate, as well as all-around better looking. With those goals in mind, Mandriva Linux as it is known today has accomplished those goals of popularizing the Linux desktop all while creating an awesome user-interface that gives the utmost control to the computer user.
[...]
All in all, the Mandriva 2009.1 is a great Linux environment that has the power to give both Linux-familiar and new-to-Linux users an awesome look, feel, and experience! With the 20,000 program directory that Mandriva 2009.1 contains and all the new programs that are unique to Mandriva Linux along with the quick, easy, and out-of-the-box instant setup, anyone coming to Mandriva 2009.1 should find it to be an enjoyable time!
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Phones
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In another document that was given to us by our friends in the East Coast reads the following about the upcoming Bell Palm Pre: “Palm Inc. has chosen Bell as the exclusive carrier to introduce the 3G Palm Pre to the Canadian market – the most important launch in Bell’s history”.
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Today Palm made webOS 1.1 available for the Palm Pre. The changelog is outrageous. There’s only one new application, but most of the Pre’s systems see major updates. Oh, and Palm fixed the Pre’s ability to sync with iTunes.
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Palm has released Palm webOS 1.1 to target its Pre smartphone at enterprises, according to a Palm executive
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Sub-notebooks
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I did a fair amount of research this month on netbooks, and ended up choosing the Toshiba NB200 (or NB205 as it is in the US) as what I thought was the best option currently. I read quite a few reviews online, and paid attention to the reviews comparing among netbooks the real world issues that aren’t often covered by comparing specs. Each computer maker seems to have a netbook now trying to corner the market, and they’re almost all the same hardware it seems. But good notebook review sites measure practical concerns like screen brightness outdoors, contrast, heat, fan noise, keyboard feel, and actual battery life.
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* Boot is insanely quick. BIOS appears to take longer to come up.
* Alpha software, not Beta. Crashes a lot. Functionality doesn’t consistently work.
* Reworked UI hints at amazing amount of promise. So many interesting new possibilities. So many of which are yet unrealized.
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I consider software important. Really really important. Why?
Most people don’t really understand just how much power software has over our current society. Let’s pretend all the software in the world was really just one single person. What could that person do?
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The OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA), an open-source project that develops, tests, licenses and distributes Linux and Windows driver and middleware software for high-performance, low-latency Ethernet and InfiniBand networks, today announced that more than 40 percent of the 100 top-performing HPC systems, and as many as 60 percent of all new HPC installations worldwide, utilize OpenFabrics Software as an Enterprise Distribution (OFED) for parallel computing, low-latency interconnects, and/or file-system operations.
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Ever thrown your hands up in despair when that much-anticipated video file would not play without yet another round of codec/plug-in installations? If your answer is an emphatic ‘No,’ you probably are already on to the Video Lan way of life — free and independent, even literally so.
The VLC player, which finally released version 1.0 this month after a decade of development, is truly a labour of love — in true Unix tradition development, versions till now were numbered under 1.0. This is the legacy of the free software (and open source) world, where developer communities — and not corporations — develop and own the software and distribute it freely. VLC is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
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The students at Lincoln College have been breaking the mould and testing Linux Operating Systems as part of their IT courses. Local IT support company, ForLinux Ltd, has been working with the college over the last 6 months to support and aid the learning of Lincoln College students and to open their minds to the potential of alternative operating systems. ForLinux were initially approached at the start of the year by Barry Smith, a Curriculum Tutor from Lincoln College, and asked to give a presentation to students on Open Source operating systems and the relationship has grown from there.
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Celine and Charlene trumped most of the older competitors handily in the contest organised by the Information Technology Standards Committee and supported by the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA)
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Speaking of the winners, here they are:
* Best Commercial Open Source Project: PortableApps.com (portableapps.com)
* Best New Project: Eeebuntu (eeebuntu.org)
* Best Project: PortableApps.com (portableapps.com)
* Best Project for Academia: XMind (xmind.net)
* Best Project for Gamers: ScummVM (scummvm.org)
* Best Project for Government: OpenOffice.org (openoffice.org)
* Best Project for Multimedia: Audacity (audacity.sourceforge.net)
* Best Project for the Enterprise: Firebird (firebirdsql.org)
* Best Tool or Utility for Developers: Notepad++ (notepad-plus.sourceforge.net)
* Best Tool or Utility for SysAdmins: phpMyAdmin (phpmyadmin.net)
* Best Visual Design: PortableApps.com (portableapps.com)
* Most Likely to Change the Way You Do Everything: PortableApps.com
(portableapps.com)
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Web Browsers
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While hailing the emergence of an “Open Web,” a high-ranking Mozilla official on Friday nonetheless stressed that steps still must be taken to preserve openness in the face of potential threats.
The official, Mark Surman, Mozilla executive director, urged participation in the “OneWeb Day” set for September 22.
[...]
“If you want the Web to be more secure, let’s get rid of the 100 million copies of IE (Microsoft Internet Explorer) 6 that are still out there,” said Surman, whose employer is best known as the maker of the Firefox browser that rivals IE.
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Say you want to look up words using Cambridge Dictionaries Online Web site. Navigate to dictionary.cambridge.org, right-click on the search box, and select Add a Keyword for this Search. Give the new bookmark a name and assign a keyword to it, for example, camb. Next time you want to perform a search, enter camb followed by the query into the Location bar, for example: camb monkey. Hit Enter, and you should see a list of found results
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In its effort to detangle itself from the ongoing proceedings of the European Union antitrust case, it seems Microsoft is offering to include rival web browsers in the Windows OS. Revealed in a statement by the European Commission, Microsoft offered to give consumers a choice of browser installation through a browser ballot screen. New computer owners running Windows may get a chance to choose their browsers form a variety of software makers.
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Finally, users don’t need to wait for Google to get a simple, secure, open-source, Web-centric operating system. The versions of Linux shipping on many netbooks already match most of this description.
Want to turn a Linux netbook into a Chrome look-alike? Set its Firefox browser to run on startup in full-screen mode, then lock out access to every other application on the netbook.
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Audio
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Topics for this podcast:
* The Myth of Open Source License Proliferation
* Microsoft contributes Linux kernel drivers under GPLv2
* Linux and open source loom large in cloud computing
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Hosts: Randal Schwartz
“DHH” talks about Ruby on Rails, 37Signals, and how he came late to coding.
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On Tuesday night (July 21st) I gave a talk at a meeting of the Manchester Free Software group. It was about audio production with Linux and Free Software. Basically how I produce many podcasts and other things using only Free and Open Source software. I wanted to upload the slides and share them here with everyone. I hope they’ll be interesting and somehow useful on their own, but don’t worry there was HD video taken on the night – courtesy of Tim Dobson – which I hope to be able to share with you very soon. Everything is available under a Creative Commons license, naturally.
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Business
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The Enterprise Service Bus [ESB] has been intrinsic to many SOA programs in recent years. You can say you are doing SOA and not have done an ESB. But there is a high likelihood a successful SOA program includes successful ESBs.
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OSCON 2009
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Organizers of a major open source technology conference said today there’s a “good chance” they’ll return the event to Portland next summer following one year in San Jose.
The weeklong O’Reilly Open Source Convention spent six years in Portland before moving to California for the 2009 event, which wrapped up this afternoon. At the convention’s closing address, in response to a question, organizers told attendees they would probably move the event back to Portland in 2010.
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OSCON 2009 is now drawing to a close, and, before we hop on a flight back to the UK, we spent an hour or two typing up just a few snippets from some of the interviews we conducted at the conference. So, if you’d like to read what Jacob Kaplan-Moss thinks about Google, what Jim Zemlin thinks about Larry Lessig, what Michael Tiemann thinks about lobbyists, what Stormy Peters thinks about KDE, what Evan Prodromou thinks about Miguel de Icaza and what Bradley Kuhn thinks about Mono, read on…
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Openness
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The marketing agent, that is Google, had to share the cut with the data provider who was providing the content to the people. What if there was a way to not share the cut with the provider of the content? Yes there is a simple way – if you become the provider of the content. This is what Google tried to do next and is still in the process of trying.
Google Groups, GMail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, YouTube, Google Maps, Orkut, Blogger, are all attempts by Google to become THE place to keep your content if you indeed want to store content publicly. The deal they offered to the public was that they would store everybody’s content for free.
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In a settlement announced Monday, the world’s oldest and largest newsgathering operation forced All Headline News to discontinue its practice of rewriting AP stories and posting them to the AHN site with a new byline and no credit. The site, which sells news to the media, dubs itself as “The Missing Piece to Your News and Content Puzzle.”
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Mike Morgan, a Florida-based investment adviser who started the controversial blog GoldmanSachs666.com, has prevailed in a case he brought against the investment bank in April.
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Millions of people use torrent sites every day, but little is known about the people who operate these traffic moguls. This summer TorrentFreak will feature the workstations and offices belonging to some of the leading figures in the BitTorrent community, starting with the founder of BTjunkie.
Luis Casas Luengo, Director of Extremadura’s Fundecyt foundation 03 (2004)
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, IBM, Microsoft, Windows at 8:44 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A journey back in time shows Microsoft’s explanation of bundling
TODAY we take a look at some more fascinating Comes vs Microsoft exhibits. The first item, Exhibit PX00982 (1991) [PDF], shows how Microsoft was scheming to bundle with OEMs in order to block competition. That was almost 2 decades ago. Microsoft later compared OEMs to its "delivery people".
One of Microsoft’s most predatory people, Brad Silverberg [1, 2], suggests giving Windows for ‘free’ (bundling) and then sell it separately for an extortionate price. The same scheme continues to this date in order to artificially elevate the perceived value of Windows and virtually force people to buy Windows along with any computer.
>From: bradsi Sat Sep 28 10:56:44 1991
To: joachimk peterbre steveb
Cc: alean jeffl janre markbu richardb richardf ronh teresach
Subject: Re: Compaq Windows status
Date: Mon Sep 30 10:30:02 PDT 1991
you’re saying that when someone buys compaq dos for $99, they also get windows for free. but if you want windows alone, it cost you $150.
and compaq wants windows for free.
am I missing something why this is good for us?
don’t forget that today, retail is still 61% of windows revenue.
Joachim Kempin, who is also known for his predatory behaviour (see this for example), replies as follows:
From: joachimk Mon Sep 30 10:53:23 1991
To: bradsi
Subject: Re: Compaq Windows status
Date: Mon Sep 30 10:30:02 PDT 1991
Do not see this as a price issue. They will pay. Remember IBM did not pay for DOS, but see what happened?
See the strategic value: It will have lots of followers-OS1 can’t compete for now. IBM can only pitch OS/2 against it, but who wants this. The industry will rally even more around it and use it in every account against IBM.
Money: for six month thereafter no or very low impact. Next year we plan for it. Whereby WIN becomes over time -may be earlier than expected -a 90% OEM product.
Count Your profit, not the revenue.
One reader of ours explains that “this is important because it demonstrates that the prime reason for Microsoft bundling was to kill DR-DOS. They had to come up with the techno-waffle later on.” This is a reference to excuses like, “people can’t install it themselves” or “people love Windows because many people use it.”
The next exhibit, Exhibit PX00980 (1991) [PDF], was sent to Brad Silverberg and Joachim Kempin. It reveals what Microsoft had in mind when it conceptualised bundling.
On 9/25 Mark and I met with Clark and Alan. Among other issues that Mike brought up, he came up with an alternative way for Compaq to bundle Windows. On 9/26 we had a meeting with their Windows team.
[...]
Mike’s alternative way of bundling Windows would be that Compaq bundles Windows with MS-DOS. There would not be a seperate DOS SKU; there would not be any choice. When somebody buys the Compaq DOS product he gets Windows with it.
[...]
Compaq issues with bundle/preinstall that are addressed
1. The manufacturing preinstall problem
2. The updating of Windows when it is on the hard disk
3. Allows the end user the choice of installing Windows and allowing custom configuration of Windows according to specific requirements.
4. Simplify their localization issues.
5. Reduce cost – will not lose dos revenue with a preinstall and offset the cost of Windows by charging for it.
6. Still allowing the end user the choice to buy other operating systems for his system; not burden the end user with either the implicit cost of Windows or having to deinstall Windows and DOS.
7. It provides Compaq with a perceived leadership position with Windows by being the first oem to combine Windows and DOS.
For MS it does the following:
1. Compaq leadership position with Windows.
2. With slick technology, Windows/DOS can be installed quickly w/p much of the pain installing Windows today. Although it is not a pre-install, it will be much easier to get Compaq to preinstall in the future if they combine Windows/DOS now.
3. Gets many more Windows sockets out there. We believe that our attach rate today with Windows on Compaq 386 systems is between 25% and 35% based on their registration information. their current attach rate for DOS is 86%.
4. It raises the bar for other oems and makes it more difficult for DRI to compete.
5. Will increase our revenue from Compaq, depending on what we can get for the Windows royalty.
The intent to ensure a prevention of choice is hopefully evident based on the above. █
Appendix A: Comes vs. Microsoft – exhibit PX00982, as text
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Posted in Boycott Novell, Site News at 7:36 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Existing and former Microsoft employees are jointly attacking us, joined by others whose interests are seemingly similar or at least intersecting
FOR THOSE who have not noticed, there is an ongoing campaign to smear the messenger, Boycott Novell, because its messages are apparently hard to refute. In the process, false allegations are routinely being made (there are many that come from multiple directions). We kindly ask that people do not believe everything they read about Boycott Novell. Here is one person who defends us. Since the very latest smears come from a Microsoft employee (“Technical Evangelist” Wong), the response also alludes to this one particular instance.
If you’re Microsoft and spend a lot of money on phony research reports for the sole reason of spreading FUD, that’s alright because that are normal business practices. If you’re Microsoft and you’re crying for developers because nobody has any fun developing software for that pile of digital junk they call an Operating System, so you’re forced to hire your own community, that’s alright because that are normal business practices. If you’re Microsoft and wait for the right time to fire your legal equivalent of nuclear missiles – aka patents – that’s alright because that are normal business practices.
Here is another possible explanation.
By the way, the fourth financial quarter just rolled around, and MSFT is tanking like a dead mastodon. We’re talking declines as high as 30% here. Ooooooh, so that’s why all the distraction!
To be clear here, we are aware of at least 3 more Web sites — including journalists — who are being smeared in a similar fashion for their views. The many hecklers may come in large numbers (Microsoft TEs, after all, get paid for all this), with which they try to overwhelm any defense and then, by sheer noise, declare moral victory. █
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Posted in Asia, Bill Gates, Deception, Microsoft at 7:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Analysis of Bill Gates’ latest business trip to India
A couple of days ago we wrote about Microsoft and NASSCOM. It quickly became apparent that Bill Gates’ encounter with NASSCOM had nothing to so with pseudo-philanthropy. It also happened in 2003 and some obligatory PR we spoke about the last time can be seen in [1, 2, 3]. It’s a decoy to which Gates adds his usual anti-Google rhetoric.
So anyway, what was this trip all about?
First of all, according to reports, Gates was just pushing the same old agenda that Abramoff used to be pushing for Microsoft. From The Register:
Bill Gates called US immigration restrictions a “huge mistake” while on tour of India today, urging America to open its golden doors for more “smart people.”
Nothing at all is said about cost. From the Indian press:
“How about making an exception for smart people,” asked Mr Bill Gates while addressing Nasscom CEO Forum in the Capital on Friday.
The Chairman of Microsoft Corporation was referring to the immigration restrictions being imposed by the US.
It is part of a recurring theme; In order to justify less expensive labour, Gates is calling American people “stupid”. Intel and a few other giants are doing the same thing when they insult developed countries. Reuters accompanies this old stunt with superficial coverage that lacks criticism and the New York Times makes more or less the same mistakes.
In a far-ranging speech on Friday, Bill Gates criticized the American government’s policy on immigration and data privacy, predicted giant leaps in technology in the near future and explained why he had to shut down his Facebook page.
Now watch this classic case of hypocrisy. While acknowledging that being out there in the public was an idea he regrets, Gates is also lobbying for a form of surveillance in India — one that he wants Microsoft to take the lead in (it’s all about money). Unsurprisingly, look who’s there by Microsoft’s side: Infosys.
The venture is part of a plan by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh government to improve the delivery of the nation’s welfare programs and boost security. Singh chose Nandan Nilekani, former co-chairman of Infosys Technologies Ltd., India’s second-biggest provider of software services, to helm the project.
For a bit of background about Infosys, see what we wrote several months ago. Infosys is helping Microsoft legalise software patents in India [1, 2, 3], it is exploiting Indian people, and it also helped OOXML [1, 2]. There is lots more [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8].
Microsoft India is now offering a new type of lock-in/trap which resembles DreamSpark and BizSpark. █
“[A]mazing that corruption is excepted by the entire developed world. stunning that it has met with resistance only with some developing nations and maybe the european union. what should have been an overwhelming anger by all nations . the notion that developed nation are immune to corruption is bogus. microsoft did it in full view, without any hesitation. microsoft should be nailed for this.”
–Ashok Pai
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