04.21.11

If Microsoft Stores Were Independent, They Would be Bankrupt by Now

Posted in Site News at 3:24 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Possibly because Microsoft is disliked by the public, the Microsoft stores fail miserably (unlike Apple’s)

MICROSOFT is losing money. A lot of money. Some products are profitable, but many are not. Microsoft is known to have borrowed money for reasons that even financial analysts struggle to explain. One of our readers, Wayne, has been looking more closely into the numbers and he found out facts that the corporate press rarely reports, maybe because it is afraid of the backlash. Anyway, one news site says that “Microsoft Executives [Are] In A Heated Battle Over Opening More Retail Stores”. Just like many other endeavours and quite famously search, it turns out that Microsoft’s stores are money down the drain. It should never have begun. Surface, which was going to be axed before Gates vetoed the decision, led to massive waste of effort and money. It’s one of those things that Microsoft does out of jealousy, maybe Apple envy (or Google envy in the case of the Web). The article about Microsoft’s losses in stores actually comes from a Microsoft guy, Lance Whitney, who is citing another, Matt Rosoff (career associated with Microsoft, the company, and it shows [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]). Here is the excuse:

Plus, most of the stores have so far failed to turn a profit, according to Business Insider. One reason is that many of the products they sell are available at a variety of other retail chains.

No, this is not the reason. People do not choose a computer with Windows. In fact, they never choose Windows, it is enforced upon them due to market distortion which the European Commission will hopefully challenge very soon (people just need to be heard, in order for regulators to actually know that Windows licences are not used by many buyers). That’s why Microsoft is not succeeding. People do not want Microsoft products, they are simply forced to pay for them. When this forcing ends, so will Microsoft’s monopoly, which relies on Windows as a common carrier. Windows sales have been declining for several consecutive quarters now. █

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Microsoft Exploits Dead Scientist From Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Order to Elevate Dying Silverlight

Posted in Marketing, Microsoft at 2:58 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Rogue marketing tactics from Microsoft carry on even 2 years after being slammed for them

GOTTA love old ‘news’ recycled! Microsoft PR department, along with the Microsoft boosters from IDG (the “Microsoft Subnet”), uses the anniversary of someone’s death to do that shameless, shameless thing again.

We have already explained what Microsoft is doing here and to put it more briefly, Microsoft is exploiting the now-deceased Feynman, again, for PR (appealing to geeks). They exploited his work to spread the dying Silverlight (and sought to increase sales at the same time). It was not so long ago that they started this (less than two years ago) and now that his death is mentioned again, Microsoft bumps up the marketing machine. It’s utterly disgusting, but then again, this is Microsoft we are talking about. The headline in Slashdot is “Microsoft Celebrates Feynman 50-year Anniversary” and it does mention the Silverlight strings which are attached to that. If this is Microsoft’s idea of PR (goodwill), then the company has gone morbid. But this is something we already knew because of another death it recently exploited for PR. █

“I heard Bill and Steve (Ballmer) speaking heatedly in Bill’s office and paused outside to listen in. It was easy to get the gist of the conversation. They were bemoaning my recent lack of production and discussing how they might dilute my Microsoft equity by issuing options to themselves and other shareholders. It was clear that they’d been thinking about this for some time.”

–Paul Allen, Microsoft co-founder, writes about what Gates and Ballmer did when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma

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What ORNL Should Learn From CERN: Use GNU/Linux on Desktops

Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Security, Windows at 2:37 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) gets infiltrated because of Microsoft Windows

IF THERE IS one area where Europe is ahead of the United States, it is GNU/Linux and Free/libre software adoption (and maybe even development). The United States also lost an opportunity to create a massive hadron collider before Europe did (the famous story of how it came about can be found elsewhere on the Web, but the take-away is that physics research will advance quickly in Europe because they beat the Americans to it) and as far as one can tell, CERN uses a lot of GNU/Linux, even parts of KDE on the desktop (these days I’m coding every day and running scientific experiments on NIST data, under KDE of course). Here is what happens over at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is clearly having a critical moment with Microsoft Windows: [via]

According to the lab, the breach originated in a phishing email that was sent to about 570 employees. The emails were disguised to appear as notes about benefits changes written by the lab’s HR department. When a handful of employees clicked on the embedded link in the email, a malware program was downloaded onto their computers.

The malware exploited an unpatched flaw in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer software, and was designed to search for and steal technical information from Oak Ridge, whose engineers are in the midst of an effort to build the world’s fastest supercomputer.

As someone in Groklaw put it:

The taxpayers in the USA have spent their hard earned tax dollars to finance supercomputer research. However, those in charge have been completely irresponsible guardians of the public interest by providing Windows platforms and allowing employees to use Internet Explorer.

Time for GNU/Linux on desktops, right? Google banned Windows (internally) about a year ago. The causes were similar. █

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Software Corruption Leads to Protests in India, Again

Posted in Asia, FUD, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft at 2:21 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“I have lost my sleep and peace of mind for last two months over these distasteful activities by Microsoft.”

–Deepak Phatak, a highly regarded Indian professor

Kids holding up graphics from Techrights (see context)

Summary: Microsoft FUD and other market abuses among the factors leading to anger and prominent action in India

THIS is not the first protest of its kind, but Muktware has announced yet another action which it precedes with: “Another problem with buying proprietary software is that the government agency is locked into that one company. The non-standard and incompatible technologies makes it impossible for governments to migrate to better or more advanced technologies like GNU/Linux.”

For those who do not remember, groups that include Groklaw and FFII are calling for people to provide their “Microsoft OEM tax” stories to the European Commission because there is belated action brewing.

Meanwhile, adds another article from Muktware (echoing some of what Groklaw covered the other day), Microsoft was not eligible for government selection as it had lacked certifications. We will write more about security later today. Watch how this article begins:

I can’t forget the sentiments within the Indian IT industry when Microsoft, a company which doesn’t even disclose finacial results for India, accused one of the most reputed engineers of India – Prof Phatak — to be working against the interest of India. Why? Because he rejected Microsoft’s OOXML on technical grounds!

The company whose products cost billions or dollars in losses [read the SJVN link] every year due to uncountable security holes is now accusing Google of selling insecure products to the government.

Lastly, states Muktware (it is a great Indian news site by the way), “The Game Microsoft Plays The Best [is] FUD”

Microsoft is well reputed for spreading FUD and launching proxy wars against free and open source technologies. Instead of competing in the market on the basis of better products Microsoft uses different routes, one of their favorite routes is spreading FUD.

It is well known that Microsoft has failed to mention which patents Linux infringes upon yet the company continues to bully Linux players to pay ransom using its FUD machine.

Microsoft uses against Google (as a services provider) the same tactics it uses against Linux and Android. It is not surprising. Microsoft has always been an empire of distortion and manipulation. It’s seen as profitable. Well, sometimes it’s time to get up and protest. █

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How Novell Betrayed OIN and Joined Microsoft Instead

Posted in Microsoft, Novell, OIN, Patents, Tivoization at 2:09 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The criminal court in London

Summary: News about CPTN, the Open Invention Network (OIN), and Microsoft patent cases

WAY back in the days, Novell took great pride in its OIN membership, reassuring us all that many of its patents were wonderfully innovative and benevolent because of the OIN. Novell actually used this propaganda for marketing of Novell’s products, even proprietary ones. It was the “goodwill” PR. Now that Novell is eager to give those patents to Microsoft, what is a person supposed to call Novell? There are many words that fit here and our readers and intelligent enough to fill the gap.

The latest CPTN development is now described by IDG, which correctly states that this is “Microsoft’s Purchase”, not the shell it’s hiding behind (like OuterCurve [1, 2] and others) for regulatory reasons and PR purposes. Novell should be shamed and boycotted for what it is doing here. Even when it’s sold to AttachMSFT, its products ought to be avoided. There is no point in asking Novell to withdraw the CPTN agreement because a withdrawal is not going to happen. Novell is now run by a bunch of Microsoft vassals, to whom monetary gifts from Microsoft — Trojan horses included — are a matter of priority.

“Novell should be shamed and boycotted for what it is doing here.”So anyway, what will it be for OIN if CPTN (Microsoft proxy) gets some of the patents once owned by the OIN? We covered this some months ago when companies reacted by joining the OIN before the closure of Novell’s deal. Ever since then OIN grew 28 percent (in the first quarter alone!) and CIS — with roots in OSDL because of Stuart Cohen — will speak about that very soon. Facebook, a patent aggressor with Microsoft ownership (a partial stake), has also just joined the OIN this month and that says a lot. It was already mentioned in that previous post about Facebook joining. Since Microsoft Florian and other Linux haters from Microsoft circles spread so much FUD about the OIN, we can tell for sure that the OIN is doing something positive. So thanks, Florian, for validating what we already knew. Reading Florian is like reading manipulative strategies from within Microosft, the bias, defamation, FUD, and lies included. He is currently pushing for Microsoft to get Novell’s (and probably Nokia’s) patents, by proxy. As for the Nokia situation which he gloats over (premature sealing of the Microsoft deal [1, 2] with Elop), this should definitely get reported to the anti-cartel authorities in Germany, just like CPTN. Microsoft’s Elop, representing Nokia, signed the deal with his former employer very quickly, before an investigation for this cartel-like tactic or entryism could be announced. Even seniors at Nokia too called it a "take over" as opposed to a deal. This is an example of corruption, a white-collar offence that nobody seems to be investigating even though a lot of people complain. This is why Microsoft is generally distrusted or even loathed throughout the industry.

Some ‘Linux companies’ are notorious for a dubious patent strategy and no company is more notorious for it than TiVo, which turned into an aggressor and a loser in its fight for relevance. Here is the latest from the TiVo-EchoStar court case [1, 2]

A federal appeals court upheld a ruling that EchoStar infringed TiVo patents for digital recording technology, raising hopes the long legal battle could end with a TiVo victory.

TiVo shares shot up after the ruling, trading more than 30 percent higher in the early afternoon.

This is nothing to be celebrated. And one need not pardon TiVo for Tivoization, either.

Microsoft is also in court because of patent violations. It is the important case of i4i. Microsoft is in fact at the Supreme Court because it knowingly infringed patents and also engaged in trial misconduct, quite characteristically. Here is some of the latest coverage from IDG, in addition to SJVN’s take [1, 2]. There is another news article today about patent troll Ric Richardson, who used that joke of a ‘company’ called Uniloc (see [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]) to get a lot of money for code he did not write at all. Watch him help this propaganda piece titled “Innovation festival”:

Inventor Ric Richardson made a name (and a whole lot of money) for himself when his company Uniloc successfully sued Microsoft for a breach of their anti-piracy software patent.

Innovation in software happens at the keyboard, not a “festival” or even a patent lawyer’s office. Now, if only these patent trolls could lead Microsoft to finally flip-flopping on the software patents stance. It would be good to have more such trolls suing Microsoft. 50 is not enough. █

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Having Added Mono and OOXML to OpenOffice.org, Novell Wants to Cash in and Give Patents to Microsoft

Posted in Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Open XML, OpenOffice, Patents at 1:10 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Novell may be days away from approval of being acquired by AttachMSFT and passing almost 1,000 patents to Microsoft; in the mean time, Novell wants to monetise the project it polluted, forked, and to some extent wrecked

NOVELL is a proprietary software company which thinks like a proprietary software company but markets itself as an open source software company or a “Linux company”. Some journalists fall for it and propagate the illusion, even though Novell’s contributions to OpenOffice.org, for example, can almost be summarised as “adding the features Microsoft paid us to add to OpenOffice.org” (antifeatures like OOXML, which helped Microsoft ram is down ISO’s throat). Novell tries monetising Sun’s work to which they added OOXML and other such antifeatures. And who can ever forget Novell's Windows-only OpenOffice releases?

“Will Novell give its OpenOffice.org-related software patents to Microsoft now?”Based on Michael Applebaum’s latest PR piece, Novell’s marketers are back to their odd buzzterm, “agility”, as well as “cloud computing” (more on Fog Computing in this other PR post) and of course “innovation”, the bigger word for “invention” and sometimes a synonym or eurphemism for “patent” (which itself is a euphemism for monopoly). What ever happened to “open source” at Novell? It dissipated after the Microsoft deal.

Novell can go on and on about award nominations (for obscure awards like the CODiE we mentioned the other day), reviews and “success stories”, but the company is a total failure which now feeds Microsoft and some other foes of GNU/Linux with Linux-hostile patents. A lot of pressure is being put on regulatory agencies to stop the CPTN deal, but the OSI and FSF forget to place a lot of the blame and the pressure where it fits (more on that important subject will come later). The main problem is Novell, which could theoretically still withdraw its CPTN deal. Instead, Novell is eager to just sell its patents to Microsoft as soon as possible and an acquisition by attachMSFT is scheduled for 6 days from now, based on Novell. Nobody even raises the question about Novell’s motives. The issue was deflected by spin. Remember what we wrote in 2006 about Novell as a patent minefield in OpenOffice.org. Will Novell give its OpenOffice.org-related software patents to Microsoft now? Boycott Novell. █

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Links 21/4/2011: Choqok 1.1 Released, Fedora 15 Beta and GNOME 3

Posted in News Roundup at 10:06 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Clip of the Day

Steve Jobs on privacy, Steve Jobs at the D8 Conference (Video)

For context, see the “Privacy” links at the top. How foolish he must look now.

Credit: TinyOgg

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The World According to ZDNet: Vista 7 a Whole Area of IT

Posted in Marketing, Microsoft, Vista 7, Windows at 1:28 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

…or just paid placement? You can be the judge.

Summary: ZDNet UK puts up Microsoft-endorsing elements in ‘news’ pages and nukes comments that expose Microsoft’s PR department, Waggener Edstrom

THE MONOPOLIST from Redmond loves injecting trademarks into people’s consciousness. We already know that Microsoft was 'incentivising' hundreds of Korean bloggers to write a lot about Vista 7 . That’s just one example among others for which there is ample evidence.

The screenshot at the top (annotated) helps show circumstantial evidence which may suggest there is a paid endorsement in the editorial part of ZDNet UK. What is “Windows 7″ doing there? It is totally out of place, sitting there among actual areas of IT. “Windows 7″ is not “Windows” or even “Microsoft”. Why is this a whole category? This seemed suspicious, so I raised this question while they tried to silence me for posting politely my opinions in ZDNet UK (they also threatened to remove my account, even though I did nothing wrong, as people can judge by comments I reproduced and see for themselves).

My question, which was not deleted by the way, sought to discover whether the site’s marketing side was affecting editorial sections without disclosures. There is no need to be inflammatory about it and I was very polite. I also pointed out that ZDNet’s Twitter account is summarised as “All the latest business technology news, covering security, mobile, Microsoft and much more” (Microsoft is the only trademark mentioned). It’s basically the same pattern as the above. Microsoft is the only trademark to be mentioned by what claims to be a technology site. Here is what I wrote to ZDNet:

Upon closer inspection, this gets even more interesting. I see that the said twitter account follows 33 people and also an account called “(http://twitter.com/)/ZDNetUK_Win7″. I notice that alongside menu items at the top of *all* pages in ZDNet UK there is an oddly out-of-place section called “Windows 7″ (and again, it’s the only brand mentioned). I clicked on and it’s purely promotional therein. It says: “ZDNet UK’s special report covers a range of content, including reviews, articles and videos, to help you discover the key features in Microsoft’s latest operating system, as well as the pitfalls you should be looking out for.”

But more interestingly, all comments that mention Microsoft’s PR department, known as Waggener Edstrom, were removed. When one wants to do paid Microsoft endorsement, it’s natural to go through Waggener Edstrom. Microsoft.com refers such queries to Waggener Edstrom.

What was conspicuous to me was that ZDNet became extremely panicky and very defensive of this firm, whose named was removed along with all comments that even mentioned it. In fact, the response from ZDNet (which came late, around the time we complained about censorship) only dealt with the Waggener Edstrom claims, not rebutting the remaining evidence but instead throwing everything away by just using Waggener Edstrom as an excuse (it was not even mentioned in all the comments).

“The claims about ZDNet UK were not removed, just the ones about Waggener Edstrom. What is this irrational fear of criticising Waggener Edstrom?”We do know that Waggener Edstrom was pressuring British publications like The Inquirer to change their coverage. The Inquirer wrote about it. Is ZDNet fearful of criticising Waggener Edstrom? And if so, why? It’s just Microsoft’s marketing department. Why is this such a sensitive subject?

We only encourage people to explore this and to take these questions further. Where there is smoke there is often fire.

Look again at the deleted comments, in particular Comment #6 and Comment #7. Both of these are the ones which mentioned Waggener Edstrom. None of the 7 comments were deleted until comments #6 and #7 got posted; it’s as though we blew a dog whistle and the E-mail response to us further validates such a theory because it only defended Waggener Edstrom and ignored all the remaining evidence. Is a sacred cow the trigger? Watch the response from ZDNet: “In addition, they make unsubstantiated harmful suggestions about companies – about ZDNet UK, for example. Some of these comments may place this site at legal risk,” said Karen Friar only after I had mentioned Waggener Edstrom (and their name got wiped off the page). I did provide links, e.g. documents from Comes vs Microsoft, to support my claims. Karen ignored this court exhibit. The claims about ZDNet UK were not removed, just the ones about Waggener Edstrom. What is this irrational fear of criticising Waggener Edstrom?

To summarise, we would like to leave an open question: what is the relationship — if any — between Waggener Edstrom and ZDNet? I sent ZDNet’s editorial team this question. Even though they did write to us before, to this question they did not reply. It has been 2 days, so we assume that “no comment” is their stance. The top of all Web page in the site (which possibly reaches a million per day) is still an endorsement of “Windows 7″. It validates the product in a strange context. █

“In honor of the event, Pam Edstrom, who had since left Microsoft to cofound her own agency, Waggener Edstrom, and handle Microsoft’s PR from the outside, sponsored a “Windows Roast.” Gathered at the Alexis Park Resort in Las Vegas, Gates and Ballmer made fun of themselves and not so subtly apologized for the Windows delays. “To Dream the Impossible Dream” was the theme song playing in the background. With three hundred analysts and members of the press invited to these festivities where Gates and Ballmer let it all hang out, it was another coup for “Gates’s Keeper.” Gates joked that Ballmer had insisted, ” ‘We just gotta cut features.’ He came up with this idea that we could rename this thing Microsoft Window—and we would have shipped that thing a long time ago.”

–Barbarians Led by Bill Gates, a book composed
by Pam’s daughter

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