09.20.11
Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Servers, Windows at 1:05 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Acid3 results for Internet Explorer 8.0
Summary: Why Microsoft’s erosion in the server side (usage-wise, not revenue-wise) is likely to further motivate erosion on the desktop
HE WHO controls the back room will also dominate the client side, be it cellphones and desktops or whatever. It’s a well known fact and one that must really worry Microsoft.
Major Microsoft outages may lead to ASA intervention for false advertising. There is this new article about the Hotmail outage, sent to us yesterday by a reader. This whole downtime mess helps demonstrate what happens when one relies on Windows and other Microsoft products. Just watch how Microsoft fails to tackle ARM compatibility issues, even in the mythical Vista 8 which lacks support for browser plugins and is likely to suffer a backlash similar to Vista’s when it’s out in 2 or more years. It has been advertised since April 2009, 4+ years in advance (a time period throughout which a GNU/Linux distribution might have 8+ new versions released).
Going back to Web services, this is where GNU/Linux is clearly winning as we noted some days ago. The Inquirer has this to add:
Microsoft’s IIS webserver is the second most widely used webserver daemon after Apache. While it never occupied the top spot, at one point in 2007 it was starting to get close to Apache’s hugely popular webserver software. However since 2008, its market share plummeted and while it still manages to hold onto second place, there’s the best part of 50 percentage points difference between Apache and Microsoft’s IIS and the Vole’s IIS apparently is back to the level of market share that it saw in 1997.
Apache’s HTTPD webserver is popular for two reasons. It runs on just about every operating system out there, and it can be implemented in other products such as Oracle’s own application server products. Microsoft’s IIS, on the other hand, is closed source and runs only on Windows, so it’s no surprise that it lags behind Apache’s more robust and flexible sofware offering.
Microsoft failed so badly that it decided to just hijack Yahoo and eventually iinstalled a henchwoman there. Microsoft might be preparing to formally scoop up Yahoo! and maybe Nokia too, at least at a later stage (when it becomes cheap). Check out the news following Microsoft's passage of Nokia's patents to patent trolls (an antitrust issue):
Finnish mobile phone company Nokia has been deleted from the Stoxx Europe 50 index, a benchmark index owned by Deutsche Börse and the SIX Swiss Exchange Group that tallies the top 50 largest European corporations.
Late in August, Stoxx announced that Nokia would be delisted from the Stoxx 50 index, along with three banks: Intesa Sanpaolo and Unicredit from Italy, and GRP Societe Generale from France. Meaning the former powerhouse mobile phone maker is no longer big enough to be considered one of Europe’s biggest corporations.
Steve Ballmer keeps talking about Windows phones that don’t exist yet (see articles in the the previous post) and Microsoft is trying to make people think of about mythical versions of Windows rather than today’s version of Windows. What does that tell us? █
“In the face of strong competition, Evangelism’s focus may shift immediately to the next version of the same technology, however. Indeed, Phase 1 (Evangelism Starts) for version x+1 may start as soon as this Final Release of version X.”
–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]
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Posted in Microsoft, Novell, Patents at 12:24 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Why Microsoft matters less and why we must still keep track of Microsoft nonetheless (mainly due to patent lawsuits)
BACK when this site led a push against Novell, it was evident that Novell was a fairly strong company. In 2006 it had one of the best GNU/Linux distributions for the desktop, namely SLED 10 with XGL. Microsoft then stepped in and ruined it for Novell, harming the momentum and also ensuring that any of Novell’s momentum would become Microsoft’s (Mono, Linux tax, and so on). Microsoft’s parasitic nature capitalised on patents that year. It devoured whatever parts of Novell it found valuable and in 2009 Novell was already out of breath. So we started concentrating on Novell’s masters at Microsoft, spending the next year or two going through many of Microsoft’s behavioural patterns that recur in the news. We also documented selected Comes vs. Microsoft exhibits, which offer a look back in time. There came a time in late 2010 when almost any story we covered was deja vu-filled and even a case of repetition with new examples. So we started focusing on the mechanism which Microsoft was exploiting (by that stage, Apple had already joined Microsoft’s cartel-like efforts). Yes, we are talking about patents. I spent an hour talking to a friend today about how the Western system depends on so-called ‘IPR’ to ensure it gets paid without producing. Our recent Cablegate posts show the political process — including back-room deals and secret treaties — that are necessary to impose this system on producing nations which oughtn’t have interest in IPR. We hope that going deep into the core of the issue, even if this done by using secret communications/leaks, will help advance the Free software ideology. We never hid this ‘agenda’, which is mostly ethical as it promotes equality and freedom.
So getting to the main point, this site was never about Microsoft even though it covered a lot of Microsoft after Novell had become insignificant. Some detractors of this site did try to portray it as a case of “zealotry” against Microsoft, even though we criticise a wide range of companies large and small, from small FUD shops to giants like IBM and GE (we also praise many companies, including those that we criticise when they do something positive). They are far, far bigger than Microsoft. Based on this new report that a reader sent us yesterday, Microsoft has become the company that can’t grow (while Apple and IBM both pass it in terms of market cap). Quoting the opening part:
A rising tide of investor agitation over Microsoft Corp’s static share price and bulging cash hoard made no mark at the software company’s annual meeting with Wall Street analysts and fund managers on Wednesday.
Linux is a major part of Microsoft’s problems, but it is not being called “Linux”. As Pogson points out, Android has doubled while Ballmer is forced to admit failure:
Two major players are increasingly dominating the smartphone OS market: Apple with its iOS-based iPhones and Google’s army of Android devices. Microsoft wants a piece of the smartphone pie as well with Windows Phone 7 (WP7), but so far its efforts have fallen way short.
According to AllThingsD, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has stated at the Microsoft financial analyst meeting that, “We haven’t sold quite as many as I would have liked in the first year.” Ballmer did insist that the company is working hard to make the WP7 platform more appealing – the upcoming “Mango” release will help quite a bit on this front.
Microsoft is also trying to make a lot of money out of Android. It is regularly being reported that Microsoft makes more money from Android (through patent extortion) than from its own platform. This is why, despite the decline of Microsoft, Techrights simply cannot ignore this company. Keeping track of Microsoft is common sense, not an obsession. We will diversify a bit as time permits while priorities change; the goal is still to protect the freedom of software and thus empower software developers. It’s not about Microsoft. █
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09.19.11
Posted in Site News at 9:31 pm by Guest Editorial Team
Six years after CERN invented the World Wide Web, an AT&T engineer noticed that that his company was obsolete and wrote an essay called, “Rise of the Stupid Network.” There is a disturbing reassertion of Smart networks by telco companies built on non free software, spectrum ownership and lawsuits to prevent the build out of municipal networks. In 1997, David Isenberg noted:
The astute reader might by now suspect that the main beneficiaries of the Intelligent Network are the telephone companies themselves. Nevertheless, telephone companies propound a “philosophy” that the Intelligent Network makes it easy to introduce new services and new technologies, and to meet new customer needs. … Internet Telephony, because the Internet Protocol works at the level that user software manages the session, takes the telephone company out of the value equation. The Internet breaks the telephone company model by passing control to the end user.
He went on to vent some frustrations had while trying to improve services on AT&T’s voice quality. His team spent two years figuring out how to add a little more bass to voice without blowing up every piece of voice equipment but the wires. He concluded, “Want a different voice quality? With a Stupid Network, you’d get a different program, install it in your intelligent end user device and run it.”
These observations are common sense and very old news today. After more than a decade of relative network freedom, no one would go crawling back to Ma Bell would they? No one willingly.
With no sense apparent irony and perhaps great foresight, Isenberg credited Bill Gates with understanding the “new value proposition” of stupid networks. Gates is widely derided for having missed the world wide web in the early 90′s, especially in his writing and toy computer software, Windows 95, which did not have a web browser. Gates understood the proposition as an extortionist. The value would no longer come from owning networks and charging users for each and every particle of service, it would come from owning computers through non free software and charging for every particle of service. It is likely that telcos understood this lesson too, though they practiced it with less success after being broken up.
So it was with great surprise and alarm that I learned that there are now almost as many subscribers to “broadband” cell networks as cable modem and dsl subscribers in the US. Persistent networks are being used as bait to get people to surrender their software and network freedom. AT&T got to this position by suing to stop municipal networks, through rampant corruption in spectrum auctions, and a series of mergers and acquisitions that have combined most of their once mighty empire. They have also embraced free, to them, software. Android, the most “open” of smart phones, is not free software. As Richard Stallman put it,
we can tolerate non-free phone network firmware provided new versions of it won’t be loaded, it can’t take control of the main computer, and it can only communicate when and as the free operating system chooses to let it communicate. In other words, it has to be equivalent to circuitry, and that circuitry must not be malicious. There is no obstacle to building an Android phone which has these characteristics, but we don’t know of any.
“The Cloud” through AT&T is a dystopian throwback to dumb terminals and computers owned by others that should not exist in a world that’s overflowing with cheap computers, radio devices and networks.
Alternatives exist to falling back into the wiretapped world of 1960′s telco. The most obvious alternative is to demand software freedom for smart phones and network freedom for cell phone networks. As Isenberg demanded fifteen years ago, “just deliver the bits, stupid.” Open Spectrum is the technically and ethically proper replacement to spectrum auctions that is ready, fast and finally in production testing but threatened. Another good solution is to cooperate and build out municipal networks. There are several of these running in the US in cities like Tacoma which provide excellent and fair service. We should be so lucky to have any but we should demand all of these alternatives.
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Posted in Site News at 8:36 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Goodbye to old Identi.ca (shown below)
Summary: Identi.ca returned to full operation late on Monday and it generally looks good. The upgrade took longer than expected and soon after this site’s return, the front end went down again for a couple of hours. We look at how this affects Techrights now that it’s all back to “live” mode with some bugs.
Identi.ca is a fast communication medium that many of us at Techrights use (personally I’ve used it for 2.5 years, longer than I was on Twitter). It has transformed into something more like Google+ or Diaspora rather than microblogging (like Twitter).
Identi.ca upgraded to a new version over the weekend and this affects how some of us communicate and how our IRC channels are run. Since yesterday, the rightmost sidebar column (along with ladder-shaped Twitter feed) contains more information of interest. it is based entirely on some Identi.ca feeds that bring information from somewhere out there quicker than blog posts can. The new Identi.ca seems to have not lost backward compatibility as Chokoq, for example, still works fine (without software updates on the client side) and so does the IRC bot (dependent on the new page layouts and APIs). One can see new features on the server/service side, but there are not so many of them. It’s mostly about improved usability and simpler conversation facilities. Experimental new features include data export (which seems not to work based on my tests). During the migration some metadata was lost, but it could be recovered manually (salvaged even) from cache. The timelines got a little too verbose and Identi.ca accounts are therefore getting a little too much input.
“It has transformed into something more like Google+ or Diaspora rather than microblogging (like Twitter).”We are not sure whether it’s strictly just one background picture for all users (standardised like Digg or Facebook, as opposed to older versions) and Twitter is not as well connected as before (there was a bridge to allow Identi.ca users to maintain a mirror in Twitter, but it is not available now, perhaps temporarily).
There are clearly some new bugs, e.g. in “Tags”, which won’t show up in anyone’s case and the upgrade did not migrate these data fields, either. But that’s fair enough, it’s a limitation of Web-based software and it requires ironing out.
The bottom line is, things are significantly improved following the upgrade and it was worth the wait (scheduled downtime). Because of the licence, it is the only such service we ever endorsed. █
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Posted in America, Intellectual Monopoly, Patents at 4:04 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Job cremation
Summary: The USPTO (shown above) comes under more fire as a so-called ‘reform’ fails to make it harmonious with science, technology, and human rights
THE USPTO IS happily granting software patents/monopolies and processing some patent-pending ones on green energy, demonstrating that it is still dissociated from the betterment of society and instead dedicated to protectionism.
The First Amendment is said to be violated by some particular types of patents, according to TechDirt which argues:
Do Patents On Medical Diagnostics Violate The First Amendment?
We’ve been following the extremely worrisome Prometheus Laboratories v. Mayo Collaborative Services case for a while now. This is the case in which Prometheus patented some basic medical diagnostics tests, and then sued the Mayo Clinic for daring to do similar diagnostics without paying up. Tragically, CAFC, the court of appeals for the Federal Circuit, has ruled that it’s just fine and dandy to patent a diagnostic test. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal on this in the upcoming term, and folks at the Cato Institute have filed a very interesting amicus brief, arguing that such a diagnostic test should not be patentable on two key points. I don’t know that it’ll convince the court, but they try out the argument that doing so would actually be a First Amendment violation, and even cite the famous Eldred case to make their argument (emphasis mine in the quote here):
As we explained yesterday, antitrust concerns too help shed doubt on the legitimacy of the patent system. Google may have bought some more patents from IBM (mentioned in the context of software patents in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]), but deterrence does not work when Microsoft uses patent trolls to wage anti-competitive legal wars. This whole systems looks more and more like s sham. Even NPR did a show about it about 3 days ago. To quote a part of it:
BLOCK: What is the broader goal in terms of job creation here?
SYDELL: Well, this is what they say. What they say is if we speed things up and we get that backlog cleared up, then there are all these startups that are just waiting to move to the next phase of financing and get their products to market. And they’ll be able to do that and they’ll hire people in the process. So that’s what they’re saying.
BLOCK: And what about those businesses, Laura, or inventors, entrepreneurs – do they think that the law will, in fact, encourage hiring, make them hire more people?
SYDELL: No, I’m not hearing that largely at all. I’m hearing a lot of skepticism about the bill. I think one of the problems that entrepreneurs and startups face is that there are a lot of bad patents that are out there, particularly in the realm of software and business method. And the bill doesn’t really do anything to address that.
So one of the problems that you have is you have a lot of these, they call them patent trolls. They’re companies that buy up patents, particularly broad patents. They buy them up and they go out and they sue startups and they demand licensing fees. And this has put a lot of startups out of business. And this bill doesn’t really do anything to address that problem.
The Patent Office has granted, for example, in 2000, they granted a patent for a method of making toast. Really, seriously.
BLOCK: Laura, what other solutions would there be to this problem of bad patents that you’re talking about that wouldn’t involve Congress?
SYDELL: The courts could step in. And, in fact, it is the courts who initially pushed to have, for example, software patents and business method patents granted. So they could pull back and there is some evidence they are. But I think it could be a long time before they address it directly. And people are concerned about that.
I think a lot of people wish Congress would revisit this soon. And they’re worried that because they just granted and created this new act it’ll be a long time before Congress steps in again, which really would be the fastest and most efficient way to address the problem.
BLOCK: NPR’s Laura Sydell. We were talking about the new U.S. patent bill that was signed into law by President Obama today.
There are more news articles about it, e.g. [1, 2], but only few mention software patents. The government which signed this ridiculous bill ignores the real issues, spews out a load of nonsense which contradicts research, and one GNU/Linux advocate had this to say on Saturday:
Patent "reform"? Not really.
From: Homer
Date: Saturday 17 Sep 2011 14:38:53
Groups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
Apparently "patent reform" happened already, and nobody noticed. But
what exactly happened, and what effect will it have on patent trolls
like Myhrvold, Apple, Microsoft and Oracle, perhaps the biggest threats
to Linux, Free Software and innovation in general?
[quote]
Late last night the Senate voted 89-9 to pass the America Invents Act
that would radically reshape patent laws, and President Obama is
expected to sign it without delay. It's the first such significant bill
in 60 years, and it has one key component: It moves the onus from merely
"inventing" a patentable idea first to becoming the person who actually
files for an innovation first.
...
But "first to invent" has some big pitfalls, including the ability of an
inventor to totally gut the hopes of someone else with a similar or
identical idea, and who then files for a patent--because the original
inventor, without necessarily having to make any move toward realizing
the innovation, can claim they invented it. A complex legal battle may
then ensue, and perhaps the second filer may choose to settle privately,
license the idea, or fight the situation in an expensive court case.
This trolling completely destroys the idea that a successful new thing
is built on 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration--a troll, perhaps even a
rich troll who's made money from previous innovations they've dreamed up
(or, more materialistically, bought from someone), can simply keep the
legal upper hand by saying they're the real innovator without actually
building anything.
[/quote]
http://www.fastcompany.com/1779071/first-to-file-a-patently-obvious-reform
Sorry (and excuse the pun) but this is patently wrong. Invention is
invention, not manufacturing; it's the idea (strictly - the method) not
the implementation. If you're not the first to have a particular idea,
then you're not its inventor. Period. This "reform" simply transforms
"invention" into a brawl, where being the first to find or create
something doesn't necessarily secure ownership - you can be mugged for
it by someone more powerful.
Is this really all the "America Invents Act" has to offer? Is this the
best "reform" congress could come up with? Pathetic.
/Real reform/ would have been a re-examination and redefinition of what
exactly is patentable, a more rigorous patent examination process (or,
let's be honest, /any/ patent examination process), and stricter (or
again - /any/) remedies against those who persistently file trivial
claims.
/Real reform/ would have made patents non-transferable, thus completely
solving the problem of patent harvesting by non-practising entities.
/Real reform/ would have made it impossible to patent something as
trivial and non-inventive as a "rounded rectangle" or a "record button".
But no, that's not what the "America Invents Act" has done at all. All
it's done is make innovation impossible for anyone who lacks the
financial means to bribe the USPTO, and allows the wealthy to steal
others' ideas. The US patent system was already an abomination, but now,
incredibly, it's actually an order of magnitude /worse/.
Apart from anything else, it seems to completely undermine the premise
of "prior art", since apparently the only thing that counts now is being
the "first to file", regardless of who actually came up with, or even
implemented, the idea first.
Consider the case of IP Innovation LLC and the Technology Licensing
Company (ex-Microsoft employees, and likely just two of Myhrvold's many
shell companies) vs. Red Hat & Novell, where the litigants claimed
they'd "invented" multiple workspaces. Of course, their definition of
"invented" was "harvested patents from Xerox".
Unfortunately for the patent trolls, those patents were granted in 1991,
some 6 years /after/ multiple workspaces ("screens") had already been
implemented on the Amiga, and so they lost the case. Indeed Commodore
implemented the concept as a commercial product in 1985, a full year
before it was even first implemented internally by Xerox PARC, and the
Amiga implementation was based on ideas devised by Jay Miner (of the
original "Amiga Corporation") as far back as 1982, some two years before
it was even first imagined at Xerox PARC.
But that prior art would apparently mean nothing in the new patent
regime, since neither Jay Miner nor Commodore thought to patent the
concept of multiple workspaces, despite clearly being the inventors and
first implementers of the concept. Xerox PARC was the "first to file",
and that's all that matters in a gun-slinger economy. Anyone with enough
money can now file patents against other people's prior art, use them as
weapons to extort money, from anyone - including the /actual/ inventors,
then pass those weapons on to other gun-slingers to do likewise.
Meanwhile those same gun-slingers remain free to claim "invention" of
every trivial speck of dust in the world, completely unchallenged until
they turn up in the "great" troll-friendly State of Texas, and either
win on the basis of the corrupt court's pro-patent bias, or bleed their
victims dry in the process.
So much for "patent reform".
It’s all about inflating the elevating the amount of patents (under the assumption that patents have real value, as legal types wish us to believe), but if the assumption is that this bill will give more jobs to patent lawyers, maybe they have a point. Just creating more and more monopolies is like overprinting money, which devalues the currency but works well for the mint. Watch McKool Smith in the news last week, pulling $391,000,000 from an actual practicing company based on this press release:
Attorneys from McKool Smith have secured a $391 million court judgment in favor of firm client Versata Software Inc., a pioneer in front-office enterprise software, following a successful patent infringement lawsuit against global software giant SAP America Inc. and its German-based parent company SAP AG (NYSE: SAP).
That is some really expensive “patent infringement”. Notice that SAP America Inc. is the target. The USPTO really needs to get its act together or go away. █
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