“Fat operating systems spend most of their energy supporting their own fat.”
–Nicholas Negroponte, MIT Media Lab, rediff.com, Apr 2006
Summary: Wintel is conspiring to take over kids’ future, this time battling to eliminate Linux and ARM, not Linux and AMD
It is hard to forget how OLPC got sabotaged after Wintel had conspired to shoot it down. We saw hard evidence of this. Now that Apple considers leaving Intel, the very abusive firm, and Android gives a boost to ARM, we are not shocked to see another conspiracy, this time countering Linux and ARM, not Linux and AMD. To quote this one report:
Clearly spooked by the success of the low-cost Linux-based Raspberry Pi, Microsoft and Intel have teamed up with RM to launch the Shape the Future UK programme.
Here is more:
Microsoft, Intel and RM Education have announced the Shape the Future UK programme through which they aim to promote UK computing education.
Announced today, the programme sees the three companies partner up to provide hardware and software at a hefty discount – over 30 per cent, it’s claimed – to all government-funded schools across the UK. Those signing up to the scheme will provide one-to-one access to computing resources for their pupils – meaning everybody gets a tablet or laptop of their very own.
As long as kids depend on monopolistic, closed-source resource hogs, the Wintel collusion approves. UK education should deny Wintel for reasons we’ve covered for years. █
Summary: Another news item that describes a seemingly successful project as a “failure”
THERE is something quite rotten at The Economist and it’s not just fallacies-filled GNU/Linux-hostile articles (we mostly ignore them so as to not feed the provocatuers).
The OLPC, which runs Fedora, has been under continuous attacks, being the trailblazer that — just like Munich — Microsoft and its comrades must mock.
In The Economist, OLPC Is being called a “failure” in Peru — under the assumption that part of the problem is that students learn faster than many of their teachers. Here is a person from Fedora addressing the article:
OLPC a “failure” in Peru
According to the Economist. Ah, but here’s the rub. From the article:
Part of the problem is that students learn faster than many of their teachers, according to Lily Miranda, who runs a computer lab at a state school in San Borja, a middle-class area of Lima. Sandro Marcone, who is in charge of educational technologies at the ministry, agrees. “If teachers are telling kids to turn on computers and copy what is being written on the blackboard, then we have invested in expensive notebooks,” he said. It certainly looks like that.
So, instead of a “disappointing return,” or “not accomplish[ing] anything in particular,” IDB did actually find a measurable benefit.
Could it be that the disparity between test scores and actual measured achievement means that it’s the tests that are lacking, rather than the laptops? It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that academic testing was shown to be seriously wanting.
And is it too much to ask for The Economist’s journalists and fact-checkers to actually get as far as the sixth sentence in the report’s abstract, before writing the story? I know that many of today’s workers exhibit short attention-spans, but really!
There seems to be a reporting failure, not an OLPC failure. If they start with the premise that everything is failing, then they can collect claims that support the hypothesis and disregard the rest. █
Summary: HIV/AIDS and avian influenza a back-door Trojan for a computer deal with Microsoft deal written all over it
USING malaria to attack GNU/Linux is not uncommon. Gates loves using “health” as an excuse to lobby politicians and then have them commit to Microsoft Windows at the same time. It’s a clever trick. If someone berates Gates for suppressing GNU/Linux adoption, then his PR people will accuse the critics of leading to deaths of people.
In what initially seems like another Cablegate cable about AIDS (see these two cables), there is actually a part which says that “The Ambassador requested a meeting with Bakrie after learning of his proposed February 5 visit to the Gates Foundation through a Microsoft contact.”
Notice how the Gates Foundation and Microsoft remain inseparable. Then it says: “Bakrie hopes that Microsoft can help Indonesia expand access to computers in schools and throughout the country. [...] software for one million computers. Bakrie also hopes Microsoft will use its contacts to help persuade other information technology companies to provide hardware. The Ambassador noted that Nicholas Negroponte leads One Laptop per Child and offered to help make contact.”
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TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 7703
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RHHMUNA/HQ USPACOM HONOLULU HI
RHHMUNA/CDR USPACOM HONOLULU HI//J07/CATMED/CAT//
RUEHBK/AMEMBASSY BANGKOK 8296
RUEHBY/AMEMBASSY CANBERRA 1899
RUEHFR/AMEMBASSY PARIS 1075
RUEHGV/USMISSION GENEVA 7717
UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 JAKARTA 000126
SIPDIS
SENSITIVE
SIPDIS
DEPT FOR EAP/MTS, G/AIAG AND OES
USAID FOR ANE/CLEMENTS AND GH/CARROLL
DEPT ALSO PASS TO HHS/WSTEIGER/ABHAT/MSTLOUIS AND HHS/NIH
GENEVA FOR WHO/HOHMAN
E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: TBIO, AMED, CASC, EAGR, AMGT, PGOV, ID,
SUBJECT: BAKRIE DESCRIBES GATES FOUNDATION AGENDA
REF: Jakarta 68
1.(SBU) Summary. Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare Aburizal
Bakrie told the Ambassador on January 21 that a five-member
delegation planned to visit the Gates Foundation in Seattle on
February 5 to discuss health concerns and Indonesia's interest in
expanding access to computers. Bakrie noted that the Indonesian
delegation would make presentations to the Foundation's Global
Health Program on HIV/AIDS and avian influenza and may also discuss
tuberculosis. The Ambassador described growing concerns about
Indonesia's handling of avian influenza, noting that the Foundation
may be more receptive to other health collaboration. Bakrie
expressed interest in joining the delegation if the Foundation could
change the date. End Summary.
Proposed Visit to Gates Foundation
----------------------------------
2. (SBU) The Ambassador requested a meeting with Bakrie after
learning of his proposed February 5 visit to the Gates Foundation
through a Microsoft contact. Bakrie told the Ambassador that the
Indonesia government had exchanged letters with Dr. Tadataka Yamada,
President of Global Health Program, and planned to send a
five-member delegation to visit the Foundation on February 5.
Bakrie explained that Indonesia is seeking programmatic support from
both Microsoft and the Gates Foundation on computer and health
concerns.
Increasing Access to Computers
------------------------------
3. (SBU) Bakrie hopes that Microsoft can help Indonesia expand
access to computers in schools and throughout the country.
Indonesia currently has one computer for every 1,000 people. With a
goal of providing one computer for every 20 people, Indonesia will
seek Microsoft assistance in providing software for one million
computers. Bakrie also hopes Microsoft will use its contacts to
help persuade other information technology companies to provide
hardware. The Ambassador noted that Nicholas Negroponte leads One
Laptop per Child and offered to help make contact.
Health Challenges of AI, HIV/AIDS, and Tuberculosis
--------------------------------------------- ------
4. (SBU) Bakrie described Indonesia's planned presentations to the
Foundation on both avian influenza and HIV/AIDS. The Ambassador
noted that Indonesia and the Gates Foundation could benefit from a
friendly but frank discussion of health issues. The Ambassador
cautioned that the Gates Foundation may not be receptive to proposed
collaboration on AI, noting growing international concerns about
Indonesia's continued refusal to share samples while its avian
influenza fatality rate is increasing and cases continue to occur in
Tangerang, the district adjacent to the international airport.
Bakrie noted that sample sharing would need to be worked out in
accordance with Geneva talks and dismissed the severity of the AI
problem, stating that tuberculosis is really the bigger crisis that
continues to be ignored. The Ambassador encouraged Bakrie to raise
tuberculosis concerns with the Foundation.
Delegation Members
------------------
5. (SBU) Bakrie expressed interest in joining the GOI delegation if
the Foundation could change the date. Current members of the
delegation include:
-- Dr. Nafsiah Mboi, Secretary to the National AIDS Commission
-- Dr. Broto Wasisto, Head of the Ministry of Health Committee on
Drug Control
-- Tantri Yuliandini, National AIDS Resource Center Coordinator
-- Bayu Krisnamurthi, Executive Secretary, National Committee on
Avian Influenza Control and Pandemic Preparedness
JAKARTA 00000126 002 OF 002
-- Dr. Heru Setijanto, Secretary, National Committee on Avian
Influenza Control and Pandemic Preparedness.
HUME
Notice how Microsoft and AIDS somehow make it into the same cable. Is it about helping people or just corporations with patents (including those who sell very expensive drugs, not just Windows)? █
Update: Also see the following cable from around the same time. The subject is “Bill Gates Visits Indonesia for Global Leadership Forum”.
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DEPT FOR EAP/MTS, G/AIAG, L/DL, EAP/EX, EB/CIP AND OES/IHA
USAID FOR ANE/CLEMENTS AND GH/CARROLL
DEPT ALSO PASS TO HHS/WSTEIGER/MSTLOUIS AND HHS/NIH
GENEVA FOR WHO/HOHMAN
USDA/FAS/OSTA BRANT, ROSENBLUM
USDA/APHIS ANNELLI
E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: TBIO, EAGR, KFLU, ECPS, AMGT, PGOV, ID
SUBJECT: Bill Gates Visits Indonesia for Global Leadership Forum
//////////////////ZFR/////////////ZFR//////// /ZFR
PLEASE ZFR THE ABOVE JAKARTA MRN 927 IMI PLEASE ZFR THE ABOVE JAKARTA
MRN 927 AND BLANK ALL ASSOCIATED MCN'S. MESSAGE WAS CANCELLED PER
DRAFTER. MESSAGE WAS SENT IN ERROR. WE ZOB.
//////////ZFR////////////////ZFR//////////ZFR
HEFFERN
Here is another cable of interest. “Government Leaders Forum Asia” includes Bill Gates, even though he is not a government leader (or maybe he is a de facto one). Once again we see how HIV/AIDS and avian influenza are being used to help Microsoft.
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TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 8969
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RUEHGV/USMISSION GENEVA 7779
UNCLAS JAKARTA 000932
SIPDIS
SENSITIVE
DEPT FOR EAP/MTS, G/AIAG, L/DL, EAP/EX, EB/CIP AND OES/IHA
USAID FOR ANE/CLEMENTS AND GH/CARROLL
DEPT ALSO PASS TO HHS/WSTEIGER/MSTLOUIS AND HHS/NIH
GENEVA FOR WHO/HOHMAN
USDA/FAS/OSTA BRANT, ROSENBLUM
USDA/APHIS ANNELLI
E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: TBIO, EAGR, KFLU, ECPS, AMGT, PGOV, ID
SUBJECT: Bill Gates Attends Government Leaders Forum Asia
1. (U) During the May 8-9 Microsoft Government Leaders Forum (GLF)
in Jakarta, Bill Gates praised President Yudhoyono for personally
leading Indonesia's national committee on information technology and
for setting ambitious goals. Gates said that while not all of
Indonesia's goals in information technology will likely be
achievable in current timeframes, having lofty goals in itself is a
best practice as it serves as a driver towards achievement.
Yudhoyono highlighted the USAID/MCC-supported E-Procurement system
as an example of Indonesia's effort to promote electronic governance
in order to streamline processes and improve transparency. Over 200
government leaders and private sector participants from other Asian
countries attended the forum that focused on education, health and
economic development.
2. (SBU) During the forum, Microsoft President Director for
Indonesia Tony Chen told Embassy staff that hosting the GLF
Conference in Jakarta was a boon to both Microsoft Indonesia and to
the Indonesian government. He thanked Embassy staff for assistance,
emphasizing the important role Ambassador Hume played in allaying
Microsoft leadership's security concerns. Hume's trip to Redmond,
Washington was one of the important factors in Microsoft's decision
to hold the forum in Jakarta.
3.(SBU) On the sides of the forum, a Gates Foundation official
queried Embassy staff on latest developments in avian influenza
sample sharing and on recent Ministry of Health actions barring
NAMRU-2 from receiving samples. He noted that Indonesian media had
mischaracterized the Gates Foundation's interest in avian influenza
assistance to Indonesia. The Gates Foundation was interested in
working on new vaccine development technologies that would
ultimately eliminate chronic global vaccine shortages years from
now. The Foundation was not planning on specific assistance to
Indonesia to develop an avian influenza vaccine.
4. (SBU) On May 9, Bill Gates spoke to 2,000 assembled government
officials and students at a Presidential Lecture organized by the
Kadin Secretariat. During the event, Gates recognized a student
group from Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB) as the national of a
Microsoft sponsored innovation competition and also announced that
Universitas Pelita Harapan has been named the fifth Indonesian
university that will host a Microsoft innovation center.
HEFFERN
Summary: Convicted monopolist Intel joins the Microsoft-style lobby of advocating monopolies on mathematical ideas such as algorithms
ONE THING THAT INTEL and Microsoft have in common is that both are committing crimes to gain and to protect their monopolies and when legal action is brought against them they just pay a bribe to have the evidence destroyed and for the legal cases to go away. Both Microsoft and Intel were found guilty in multiple continents and they had colluded for many years (recent example [1, 2]) as they rubbed each others’ back and forced smaller competitors out of the market.
“Intel submits that if New Zealand chooses to provide restrictions on the patentability of software, those who will suffer the most include citizens of the country, and particularly those who develop software.” –David Simon, IntelIntel’s pretense (PR lies) is a subject we wrote about before. Do not believe what Intel says. It wants the world to perceive it as a GNU/Linux friend so that its hardware gets bought by people with a clue in computing. It’s a PR exercise. Intel paid SCO and attackedOLPC (which was Linux-based), then covered it up. Moreover, notes the FFII’s president upon this release of submissions regarding software patents in New Zealand, that “Intel says[PDF] you cannot distinguish hardware from software, very shocking from the number manufacturer of hardware” (does Intel ‘own’ the transistor yet?)
We have looked at the said submission and were appalled. There is also a very shameful lie there from David Simon (on behalf of Intel). He said that “Intel submits that if New Zealand chooses to provide restrictions on the patentability of software, those who will suffer the most include citizens of the country, and particularly those who develop software.” The very opposite is true, but don’t let facts gets in Intel’s way. Shame on Intel.
Glyn Moody notes that “#Microsoft fights desperately for #swpats” in there, but we already knew that. Microsoft and its front groups in New Zealand are a subject we explored quite thoroughly before (see this wiki page for details). The FFII’s president adds that the “European Commission DG Trade commenting on software patents guidelines in New Zealand, while EPC is not even EU law” (in New Zealand they try to legitimise software patents in the same way they do in Europe, by painting software as hardware or “device”). Mr Vassilis Koutsiouris from the intellectual property unit is deceiving New Zealand[PDF]. Is this what European taxpayers pay for? To harm themselves and empower monopolies whose billionaires have no qualm about lying? █
“That particular meeting was followed by an anonymous smear campaign against one of the TC members. A letter was faxed to the organization of the TC member in question, accusing the TC member in question of helping politicize the issue (which is, of course, untrue). I too had the dubious pleasure of hearing first hand how Microsoft attempted to remove me from the TC (they did not succeed, thanks to integrity and cojones of the organization I am affiliated with).”
“If this unethical behaviour by Microsoft was not sufficiently despicable, they did the unthinkable by involving politics in what should have been a technical evaluation of the standard by writing to the head of the Malaysian standards organization and getting its business partners to engage in a negative letter writing campaign to indicate lack of support of ODF in the Malaysian market. Every single negative letter on ODF received by the Malaysian standards organization was written either by Microsoft, or a Microsoft business partner or a Microsoft affiliated organization (Initiative for Software Choice and IASA).“
Software maker, Microsoft (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, is optimistic 50 per cent of the estimated 60,000 technology developers in the country will become its customers in two years.
And also:
General Manager for Local Software Innovation Azli Jamil said here Monday that Microsoft Malaysia was confident of doubling the penetration rate as the company was aggressively promoting its activities.
Promoting “aggressively”, eh? Given what Microsoft Malaysia has done so far (see quote at the top), there is hardly an ethical boundary stopping this company from attaining the goal of infinite control and wealth.
Watch what Microsoft is doing in Limkokwing University, based on this new article.
STUDENTS at Limkokwing University of Creative Technology (LUCT) now have the chance to download Microsoft Windows 7 for free, in an attempt by the software giant to combat piracy among students.
“Combat piracy,” eh? Were there any casualties?
Microsoft is doing this in many universities (maybe in all of them, to a greater or lesser degree) so that the students serve Microsoft and make the company stronger. Microsoft executives even brag about this strategy and admit the crocodile tears.
We have just found a rather disturbing piece of an apologist from Malaysia, describing a company that committed crimes as “successful and productive”.
This latest clash between Microsoft and the EU represents a continuation of the saga of persecution and injustice against one of the most spectacularly successful and productive companies in the history of business.
Already, there are signs that the harassment will go on…
The judges who attempt to penalise a criminal are engaging in “harassment” now, eh? This whole article seems to have come from a parallel universe or from the Kool-Aid fountains at Redmond. At the bottom it states: “The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.” It’s a good thing that The Malaysian Insider distances itself from such a rubbish article that recommends pardoning criminals and punishing or at least mocking the law enforcers. This whole piece is just noise, but why can this material percolate into the press? It even contains the obligatory, utterly blind Bill Gates worship and praise of “free markets”, which obviously did not work in Microsoft’s case (they worked well for Microsoft, which did not obey any market rules and felt “free” to behave as it pleased, even by sabotaging competitors’ products). The author is belittling the issues that are well recorded and documented (e.g. in Comes vs Microsoft). There is no excuse for that. He also writes: “The common theme running through all these cases is that Microsoft is too large; that by dominating the market, it has “abused” its “monopoly” power to compete in an “unfair” manner.”
“Those who believe that Microsoft is “micro” and “soft” needn’t look further than how OLPC was sabotaged by Microsoft and Intel.”Well, obviously the author has not done his homework. The quotes around “abused” and “monopoly” (apparently intended to be scare quotes, depending on one’s conventions) really give away the bias, don’t they? It is not as though Microsoft apologists never roam the press [1, 2], selling the illusion that Microsoft is a lovable, huggable company that’s being run over by those “ugly”, “vicious” truly “horrible” regulators (who are just doing their important job).
Those who believe that Microsoft is “micro” and “soft” needn’t look further than how OLPC was sabotaged by Microsoft and Intel. Yes, they even attacked a charity, as revealed by internal E-mails (from Comes vs Microsoft for example). Here is part of a new article from the New York Times:
Among the infrastructure problems that the Microsoft research team saw in rural India was unreliable electrical power. It spurred another Microsoft research project that provided farmers in one district with cellphones that supplied the same information via text messaging that the farmers had obtained from PC centers.
[...]
“We jokingly call it ‘One Mouse Per Child,’ ” said Kentaro Toyama, who led the project while he spent five years in the Technology for Emerging Markets group at Microsoft Research India.
Microsoft has been trying to replace rather than embrace OLPC, which insisted on giving children Free software that they can control. But to Microsoft, children are customers. There’s no money to be made from giving them real education and control. █
One of our readers quotes the following portions: “There is a long history of IP litigation in the mobile phone market, and innovation has continued apace [...] as the IP situation settles in this space and licensing takes off, we will see the patent royalties applicable to the smartphone software stack settle at a level that reflects the increasing importance software has as a portion of the overall value of the device.”
“Is this Microsoft-codespeak for, we expect people to start paying us a hardware tax.” –Anonymous readerThe simple translation is that Microsoft wants tax on Linux phones. Microsoft wants us to pretend that mobile Linux too is Microsoft’s own property (the software layer). Our reader says: “Is this Microsoft-codespeak for, we expect people to start paying us a hardware tax. Something like they suggested to the OLPC developers? It’s in the Comes documents, in references to either ‘investing’ in the OLPC or getting them to stump up a Linux tax, can’t remember the exact words.”
With Apple’s lawsuit against GNU/Linux (via HTC/Android), the impact of Microsoft becomes increasingly suspect. Did Microsoft speak to Apple prior to this action? Either way, Apple is clearly a foe of software freedom and GNU/Linux users should cease viewing Apple as benign just because it competes against (or with) Microsoft.
Apple is clearly having a hard time competing against GNU/Linux. The iPad seems like a train wreck that even former Apple executives are negative about [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]. It appears as though the iPad’s target market is dyed-in-the-wool Apple followers. And surely enough, according to the following numbers, just fans are eventually buying it. [via Glyn Moody]
Orders for the Apple iPad fell sharply over the weekend, indicating that most of the real obsessives bought one on Friday.
As Ghabuntu reminds us this week, iPad is just a “toy” (Apple is irrelevant in places like Africa).
I just keep asking myself, what is it that makes Apple toys so special even if they come at a *huge* cost, both economically and philosophically?
SJVN writes about the iPad and resorts to discussing tablets that are better and run GNU/Linux.
After that, why not a wearable Mac or Linux PC? We’ve already had wearable Linux and Windows PCs, but those early models had all the problems I listed earlier. In 2010, it’s a different story. We may not have flying cars, but we can certainly have wearable computers.
We already know that Asus is looking into running Google’s Linux-based Chrome OS on wearable PCs. Who knows: in 2020, we may look back and see that iPads and tablet computers were only a brief rest stop on the way to wearable entertainment devices and computers.
Dell too is planning to release tablets that run Linux (maybe with GNU). Many of the ARM-based tablets look exceptionally promising.
Proprietary giant is licensing open source to its partners. What is going on?
Over the past few weeks Microsoft has been licensing Linux to a number of its partners, most notably Amazon. Although the idea of Microsoft, a company steeped in proprietary software, licensing open source software is ludicrous it’s not completely unexpected. It’s also not the first time Microsoft has played the Linux patent game and we can expect to see more deals in the future. So what’s going on?
[...]
Then in February Microsoft announced a deal with Amazon which it described as covering a “broad range” of products, including Amazon’s Kindle and Amazon’s use of Linux-based servers. Effectively Microsoft is licensing Linux to Amazon on the understanding that it won’t sue the company for infringing on its alleged Linux-related patents.
This is not unlike the agreement struck between Novell and Microsoft in 2006 in which Microsoft agreed to indemnify Suse Linux users against potential patent suits. That deal too attracted significant ire from the open source community.
The most recent Linux patent deal from Microsoft is a deal with Japanese hardware maker I-O Data. Although the specifics of the agreement are not known the two companies said that the the deal “will provide I-O Data’s customers with patent coverage for their use of I-O Data’s products running Linux and other related open source software.” Again, Microsoft is providing an assurance that it won’t file a patent suit against I-O Data for its use of Linux.
This is not the first time that a company has tried to claim Linux patent ownership and used that against other businesses. SCO is the most obvious example and they even went so far as claim that they owned Unix. SCO, fortunately, was never that successful at winning its claim over Linux and Unix. Microsoft on the other hand is a potentially different case.
[...]
Suing a Linux vendor directly over patent claims would be a shortcut to ending up in court. And being hauled into court would force Microsoft to open its books and explain what it is that it claims to own.
For now Microsoft is prepared to rely on compliant partners to create uncertainty around Linux ownership.
It’s a clever strategy by Microsoft and one hard to counteract.
It’s not a “clever strategy”, it’s racketeering and it’s illegal [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. It should be reported by vendors like Red Hat as it probably violates laws introduced with the RICO Act. The racketeering from Gates and Jobs goes quite a long way back. It’s just another SCO-like strategy, going back to around the same time as the SCO lawsuit (2003).
This is just about the most naïve explanation for whether a product will or will not be stable that I’ve ever read. If Maureen had bothered to email or call any one of the core Drizzle developers, they’d have been happy to tell her what is and is not stable about Drizzle, and why. Drizzle has not changed the underlying storage engines, so the InnoDB storage engine in Drizzle is the same plugin as available in MySQL (version 1.0.6).
Watch the first comment which says: “There’s no reason to be nice to MoG. She’s the same hitwoman who wrote a bunch of pro SCO, anti GPL FUD during that whole trial (while being paid by them, while claiming to be impartial), including publishing a bunch of personal info about the previously anonymous blogger behind Groklaw.”
Few more comments like this follow, but a lot more about the SCO/Sys-Con attack on Groklaw can be found in this new Slashdot discussion.
In other important news, the Virnetx case is over and Microsoft lost. We previously covered this in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] and here is the news from Microsoft Nick:
A Texas jury has sided with VirnetX in its patent-infringement lawsuit against Microsoft, recommending an award of $105.75 million.
In the last few years, Microsoft has become a bigger and bigger supporter of patents, which is a bit ironic, given that Bill Gates once pointed out that the software industry never would have developed if there had been software patents back in the early days. But, proving that new companies innovate, while older companies litigate, Microsoft has become a big patent hoarder in recent years. But, to date, while it’s used those patents to threaten lots of companies, it seems like Microsoft’s decision to live by patents, is actually costing it quite a bit of money.
Sadly, Microsoft uses patent trolls like Virnetx only to justify its own patent attacks against rivals. Microsoft’s #1 rival is Free software of course (although its embodiment can be companies like Google, IBM, Red Hat, and so on). █
“I’d put the Linux phenomenon really as threat No. 1.”
Summary: More Microsoft dirty secrets (anti-GNU/Linux evidence), courtesy of Comes; book about Gates Watcher retrieved, for its scoops to be shared more widely
A YEAR and a half ago we wrote about an HP smoking gun or at least a deja vu that can help connect Microsoft and SCO. Groklaw has just found an interesting Comes vs Microsoft exhibit which shows how Microsoft responded to HP’s embrace of Linux. From the introduction:
I have another Comes v. Microsoft exhibit to share with you, Exhibit 9542 [PDF], a November 22, 2002 email to Jim Allchin and Orlando Ayala from Mike Oldham. It has to do with a planned meeting on the 25th between the two companies, on their “Better Together” theme. I think it will explain some things we’ve sometimes wondered about. One thing is clear. Microsoft was seriously concerned about Linux. And HP? Somewhat flexible, I’d say. Note the part about “the HP plan of record” to “bring a new Linux powered device into the mid-range marketplace” regarding NAS devices (network attached storage devices) and how Microsoft was able to convince them not to do that.
Microsoft and HP recently renewed their vows.
From the exhibit we have : “Based on HP’s server shipments, HP reports Windows share is up one point to 73%, Linux is also up one to two points to 12-13%. This represents approx. 200K Linux servers in the next year. HP believes that a substantial part of the Linux growth is due to the declining share for Novell. However they believe there is a growing Linux threat in the enterprise space – especially financial accounts….”
“Microsoft recently used similar tactics against i4i and against OLPC.”That was in 2002. Interesting. We have more Comes material queued for posting, but not enough time to work on it. One exhibit[PDF] (full text here) that was shown to us by a reader is what Groklaw describes as: “Letter from Bill Gates to Robert Carr, GO Corporation, December 4, 1987 (“It is too bad that you never got a chance to make Framework into the mainstream product it deserved to be. In the objects we are building for the object oriented versions of our languages we will have a concept very similar to your frame.”)”
It “looks like useful work,” said our reader, who helped us see a similarity to Mono, .NET, and Java (former Java developers sometimes join Microsoft). “My point is to update the blank files on GR with brief relevant quotes,” said our reader, “And, for instance in relation to GO, to create a narrative from the texts. In this case, billg [Bill Gates] gets a looksee at GO technology, then after sabotaging GO, incorporates it [into] Microsoft product and later on offers the GO CEO a job at Microsoft.”
We have already gathered “GO” + Microsoft references, extracted the relevant quotes, and put them in chronological order, then inserted links to relevant original Comes exhibits. It’s quite blatant. Microsoft recently used similar tactics against i4i and against OLPC.
He wrote: “Near the end there is a voiceover quote referring to the villain (Arthur Case), something like “he sold his integrity for money and spend the rest of his life trying to get it back”. Just then the scene switches to a picture of a billboard, of Microsoft. Get the movie [trailer] and check it out.
“No shot in a movie is by accident, is this an accident or not?”
Another reader has sent us some articles on Microsoft — old articles taken from different Web sites. “I’m sure you already probably know all this information,” he said, but actually, no, there is a lot of material there which we will organise quite soon. “If Boycott Novell website could offer a download it all as archive version that is html based, it can be translated very eas[ily],” this reader added.
This reader also sent us parts of a book from a revealing account of the daughter of Pam Edstrom (of Waggener Edstrom). Steve Ballmer’s wife comes from there and a lot of dirty secrets about the inner culture at Microsoft are being told there. Expect some interesting posts soon. This book is titled “Barbarians Led by Bill Gates”. █
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