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07.09.15

The Future of Computing is Mobility and Microsoft Cannot Do Anything But Patent Extortion Against Android/Linux, So More Massive Layoffs Are Announced by Microsoft

Posted in Microsoft at 5:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Microsoft officially announces yet another massive round of layoffs, but it spins/denies the cause and misleads about the effects

“It’s a criminal gang bent on stifling competition any way it can,” wrote Robert Pogson about Microsoft, which has caused layoffs in many companies over the years (many of these companies went completely out of business). “In this case it was “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” to control Nokia rather than letting Nokia go with */Linux.”

Pogson’s comments are correct and they help highlight the reason why Microsoft layoffs are always good news. They help secure the jobs of many outside of Microsoft — jobs that actually are ethical and involve workers who obey the law. Microsoft has a long history of using criminal activity to drive companies out of business (layoffs). Now it does it to a nation (Finland) because of Nokia. Whenever considering why Microsoft is bullying Linux and Android (not just with patents and FUD but also with moles) think about Microsoft layoffs and what they really mean. It’s aggression from a cornered bully. Ethics have been thrown out the door.

Microsoft calls the latest layoffs “Restructuring”. Funny that “Restructuring” can involve nearly 8,000 people without a job… that instantaneously redefines the word Restructuring”.

Well, Microsoft is still extorting Linux using patents because it worries about the present and future that is Windows-free, not free Windows. According to media that spoke to manufacturers, Vista 10 won’t improve computer sales (i.e. Vista 10 will fail) and Pogson decided that “GNU/Linux works fine for them.” Yes, therein lies Microsoft’s biggest headache. It’s not Apple that is hurting Microsoft but Linux. The developers have moved away from Windows and Microsoft now virtually begs them to come back. Well, the boat has sailed away and it ain’t coming back…

“Elop the mole was allegedly (Microsoft’s narrative) forced out after he had destroyed Nokia (Nokia became a Microsoft-centric patent troll) and pocketed a massive bonus from Microsoft for it.”Almost all of our readers must have heard by now about additional Microsoft layoffs, even if Microsoft manipulated the media into belittling the impact and distorting the facts. “Finding any good news in this announcement is a very difficult task,” wrote Adam Hartung, but some people really did try.

I heard about this from an insider a while ago, but it wasn’t anything official until Wednesday. The latest big rounds of layoffs were mentioned in much of the corporate media. It’s nearly another 10% of the company that’s being eliminated. “One year after announcing a massive round of job cuts impacting 18,000 employees,” wrote USA Today, “Microsoft is wielding the ax again.”

“In a statement released Wednesday, Microsoft said it will slash up to 7,800 additional jobs. Most of the cuts are connected to the company’s phone business.”

Well, that’s what Microsoft says. The latest (not last) time it announced nearly 20,000 layoffs it misled the media by trying to paint it as a ‘Nokia thing’, as it had done before (Microsoft is always trying to downplay the severity of its layoffs by diverting attention).

Elop the mole was allegedly (Microsoft's narrative) forced out after he had destroyed Nokia (Nokia became a Microsoft-centric patent troll) and pocketed a massive bonus from Microsoft for it.

Microsoft boosters attempt to distract from the layoffs over at IDG and other networks, putting a positive spin on it. They’re not alone because they have already misled others (non boosters) into repetition of this spin. We need to counter it.

So basically, another huge proportion of Microsoft staff is to be laid off. That’s the real news. Microsoft spin says it’s “mobile” layoffs; this is mostly untrue, but they try to belittle the impact, as they always do. Here is how Gizmodo put it:

Near the end of his 14-year-long run, Microsoft’s head honcho, Steve Ballmer, did a pretty bad, not-so-great thing and bought Nokia’s phone business. We know this because Microsoft just admitted it by writing off that entire $7 billion purchase and laying off 7,800 people, most of whom work directly on Microsoft phones.

We have seen one journalist claiming to be trying to find good news in this whole Microsoft layoffs thing. Why? A spin campaign surely has begun in the media, probably well coordinated by Microsoft’s unethical (peripheral) PR agencies. They try to sweeten layoffs, using slogans/motto like “lean”. This is marketing nonsense. Staff of Microsoft is being shuffled and has moved into smaller/shared offices (based on our sources). This has been going on for a while now. Microsoft layoffs are not much to do with Nokia as people from inside the company reveal the layoffs to be far more wide-reaching. Microsoft doesn’t want to publicly speak about this.

The Nadella transition is more of a preparation for demise. The demise of Windows will result in many Microsoft operations (Exchange, ‘security’, probably Office too) coming to complete shutdown or gradual demise. Microsoft is understands that, so it is so unbelievably desperate to keep Windows (or Vista 10) a common carrier. Microsoft is willing to even lie repeatedly about Vista 10′s cost, about Windows’ value, etc. we gave many examples as even Microsoft itself later refutes its own lies (once challenged).

If an article you see about Microsoft layoffs says “Nokia”, “writeoff” (AOL is framing layoffs as “Writedown”), or “Nadella”, then you are almost definitely reading shallow spin, or something more like PR or ‘damage control’. We can still vividly remember all the Novell spin that management/PR was coming up with every time Novell announced shrinkage. █

The Real Reason Microsoft Gives Money to OpenBSD is Not Security or Free Software But Proprietary Windows With Back Doors

Posted in BSD, Microsoft, Security at 12:09 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

OpenSSH
Image from the OpenSSH project

Summary: Exploring the real motivations and the real implications of Microsoft giving money to the OpenBSD Foundation

MICROSOFT is in pain. The company sees its monopoly diminished due to software becoming a commodity and platforms such as BSD and GNU/Linux taking over everything, not just the back end. Microsoft can attempt to cope with this the way it typically copes with competition (including Android as of late): Embrace, Extend, Extinguish [1, 2, 3, 4].

The other day we wrote about yet another example of openwashing from Microsoft (assimilation strategy). Microsoft booster Darryl K. Taft is the latest to call a Windows-only .NET pile of Microsoft APIs “open source” and it leads us to Microsoft’s effort to characterise its involvement in OpenSSH [1, 2] as something benign or even good.

“So it’s about putting secure Free software on an insecure proprietary software platform (with back doors), in order to promote its use.”Based on an OpenBSD Foundation announcement [1] and some press coverage [2] that says Microsoft “handed a pile of money to the OpenBSD Foundation”, we are becoming a little concerned, knowing Microsoft’s history in such circumstances (creating unnecessary financial dependencies). This story is growing feet now, even in some Linux sites, so it is hard to ignore the risk of Microsoft using BSD as a front against GNU/Linux and copyleft, as it did in past years. Prudently one can say that if things are as indicated, this won’t be the first time Microsoft uses BSD as anti-Linux front.

As Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols put it (implicitly) a couple of hours ago, it’s about “help in porting OpenSSH to Windows.”

Windows is known for gaping holes (see the latest in [3]), i.e. the very opposite of OpenBSD. For these two entities to work together (NSA resistor and the NSA’s number one partner) is to have an incompatible relationship. Nothing on top of Windows can be secured and as we pointed out in our past articles about this, SSH keys will be put at risk. Microsoft’s ‘help’ to OpenBSD reminds us of Microsoft’s ‘help’ to Novell, where the goal was to use Novell to promote Windows, even inside Linux (e.g. Hyper-V).

It’s not a payment intended to help OpenSSH development. Microsoft looks to get its money’s worth (shareholders’ money). So it’s about putting secure Free software on an insecure proprietary software platform (with back doors), in order to promote and increase its use. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. Microsoft Now OpenBSD Foundation Gold Contributor

    The OpenBSD Foundation is happy to announce that Microsoft has made a significant financial donation to the Foundation. This donation is in recognition of the role of the Foundation in supporting the OpenSSH project. This donation makes Microsoft the first Gold level contributor in the OpenBSD Foundation’s 2015 fundraising campaign.

  2. Microsoft rains cash on OpenBSD Foundation, becomes top 2015 donor

    Microsoft has handed a pile of money to the OpenBSD Foundation, becoming its first-ever Gold level contributor in the process.

  3. Bundestag Hack: Possible Backgrounds and Defense Methods

    Here at Univention, we are of course also concerned by the attack on the German parliament’s IT infrastructure, better known as the “Bundestag hack”. To recap: It appears that there were some bogus e-mails there including links to malware. A number of the Windows PCs in the Bundestag’s “Parlakom” network were or may still be infected with the malware, which is alleged to have searched for and copied certain confidential Word documents. According to a report in the Tagesspiegel (German) newspaper, this allowed the hackers to gain “administration rights for the infrastructure”. The attack was conducted as an “advanced persistent threat” or “APT attack” for short: in other words, a complex, multi-phase attack on the German parliament’s “Parlakom” IT network.

Links 9/7/2015: LinuxIT Sold, Alpine Linux 3.2.1 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 8:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Don’t touch this! Seven types of open source to dance away from

    d In a world where even Microsoft gets the open source religion, the planet’s overall quota for positivity and good karma must be increasing, right? Of course this is not the case, there are bad eggs in every basket and open source has had its share of so-called “openwashing” from time to time.

  • This is the tiny computer the BBC is giving to a million kids

    BBC Learning head Sinead Rocks said the project was about “young people learning to express themselves digitally” through coding. Suggested projects for the Micro Bit include using its magnetometer to turn it into a metal detector, using it to control a DVD player, or programming its buttons to work as a video game controller. After the devices go out to school children later this year, the BBC and its partners in the project are planning to make the Micro Bit available for purchase, and its specifications open source.

  • 5 open source tools for taming text

    Text: it’s everywhere. It fills up our social feeds, clutters our inboxes, and commands our attention like nothing else. It is oh so familiar, and yet, as a programmer, it is oh so strange. We learn the basics of spoken and written language at a very young age and the more formal side of it in high school and college, yet most of us never get beyond very simple processing rules when it comes to how we handle text in our applications. And yet, by most accounts, unstructured content, which is almost always text or at least has a text component, makes up a vast majority of the data we encounter. Don’t you think it is time you upgraded your skills to better handle text?

  • Open source developers hostile to women, claims Docker DevOps guy

    Open source development is not a meritocracy, and its culture globally is hostile to women. That was a claim made at Cloud Week 2015 in Paris by Jérôme Petazzoni, ‘Tinkerer Extraordinaire’ for software container provider, Docker.

  • HashiCorp Unifies Open Source IT Infrastructure Management

    When it comes to IT infrastructure management, many IT organizations have opted to employ open source tools such as Packer, Terraform and Consul as alternatives to commercial offerings, mainly because getting budget approval for IT management software can be a challenge.

  • Introducing s2n, An Open-Source TLS implementation from Amazon

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Databases

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Something about styles in LibreOffice

      Styles are much more than defining the look and feel of text in a paragraph. Its almost everything about how paragraphs behave in the context. A Paragraph style for example defines how words are hyphenated and in what language the text in the paragraph should be spell checked.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • FSF endorses embedded GNU/Linux distro ProteanOS as fully free

      The FSF’s list consists of ready-to-use full GNU/Linux systems whose developers have made a commitment to follow the Guidelines for Free System Distributions. This means each distro includes and steers users toward exclusively free software. All distros on this list reject nonfree software, including firmware “blobs” and nonfree documentation.

      ProteanOS is a new, small, and fast distribution that primarily targets embedded devices, but is also being designed to be part of the boot system of laptops and other devices. The lead maintainer of ProteanOS is P. J. McDermott, who is working closely with the Libreboot project and hopes to have ProteanOS be part of the boot system of Libreboot-compatible devices.

    • The Licensing and Compliance Lab interviews Joël Krähemann, maintainer of Advanced GTK+ Sequencer

      In this edition, we conducted an IRC-based interview with Joël Krähemann, Maintainer of Advanced GTK+ Sequencer. Joël is an IT professional in Switzerland and works on music for fun. Advanced GTK+ Sequencer (AGS) is a an audio processing and composition tool.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Germany IT planning board wants to pool resources

      Germany’s IT planning board (IT-Planungsrat), a steering committee of federal and state government IT boards, is recommending the pooling of IT projects and IT development. Uniting IT project is important because of the increasing digitisation of public administration services, the rising complexity of IT and the growing importance of IT security.

    • Denmark helps coach Malta local councils on eGovernment

      Denmark’s Digital Agency (Digitaliseringsstyrelsen) and Malta’s Information Technology Agency (MITA) are coaching the archipelago’s local council officials on eGoverment solutions. In June, a workshop on guiding and encouraging citizens to use online services, was attended by about 100 council representatives from the islands of Malta and Gozo.

    • Awards for Austrian and Swiss eGovernment projects

      The Austrian online family allowance application and the Swiss federal geoportal geo.admin.ch are the winners of this year’s eGovernment-Wettbewerb (eGovernment Competition), which took place in Berlin on 24 June.

    • Italy: eParticipation at the centre of decision making (webinar)

      In a webinar, titled “Govern with Citizens: online participation in the design of public policies”, the Ministry for Simplification in Administration said that civil society had been consulted in finalising the next Action Plan and commentaries had been collected to help build the text.

    • Malta a front-runner in provision of e-government services, yet take up is low – Jose Herrera

      Malta is one of the leaders in the European Union when it comes to the provision of e-government services, yet the uptake of such services is low, the Parliamentary Secretary for Competitiveness Jose Herrera said today.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Standards/Consortia

    • The API Evangelist has spoken

      Kin Lane is on a mission to educate the world about the transformative potential of APIs. He has a message for you, too

    • An Interesting Interview About The Vulkan API

      Neil Trevett, the President of the Khronos Group, did an interview recently about the Vulkan API as the future of graphics programming.

    • The Future of Graphics Programming: The Vulkan API

      The Khronos Group announced a few months ago the Vulkan API, a project aimed at replacing OpenGL, and starting from a clean slate in terms of graphics programming. We had the opportunity to have a chat with Neil Trevett, President of the Khronos Group, to talk about the future!

    • Khronos To Soon Open-Source Initial SPIR-V LLVM Work

      One of the big things we’ve been looking forward to with SPIR-V is the to/from LLVM IR pass in order to open up the possibilities for this new industry-standard intermediate representation to be used by Vulkan and OpenCL. Some code will soon be opened up, but it’s not the end game.

Leftovers

  • Uber Under Fire For Tripling Fares During London #TubeStrike

    Taxi firm Uber is under fire after it emerged fares had nearly tripled at peak travel periods during the London Tube strike.

  • TfL Tube strike: Total shutdown of Tube set to cost London £300 million

    Desperate London commuters battled their way to work today as business leaders warned that the first total Tube shutdown for 13 years could cost up to £300 million.

    About 20,000 staff from four rail unions refused to work in a stoppage causing disruption over three days that started during last night’s rush hour.

  • Tube Strike: LBC Host James O’Brien Goes On Epic Rant In Support Of Drivers

  • Hardware

    • The truth about Intel’s Broadwell vs. Haswell CPU

      Intel’s fifth-generation Broadwell CPU has been the default laptop processor of choice since its debut in January, but it’s been difficult to get a real bead on just how much of an improvement it really was over its Haswell predecessor.

  • Security

    • Security advisories for Monday
    • Security updates for Tuesday
    • Security advisories for Wednesday
    • Bundestag Hack: Possible Backgrounds and Defense Methods

      Here at Univention, we are of course also concerned by the attack on the German parliament’s IT infrastructure, better known as the “Bundestag hack”. To recap: It appears that there were some bogus e-mails there including links to malware. A number of the Windows PCs in the Bundestag’s “Parlakom” network were or may still be infected with the malware, which is alleged to have searched for and copied certain confidential Word documents. According to a report in the Tagesspiegel (German) newspaper, this allowed the hackers to gain “administration rights for the infrastructure”. The attack was conducted as an “advanced persistent threat” or “APT attack” for short: in other words, a complex, multi-phase attack on the German parliament’s “Parlakom” IT network.

  • Finance

    • Greece’s fight is for democracy in Europe. That’s why we must support it

      From the cradle of democracy, a lion has roared. It is difficult to overstate the pressure the Greek people have both endured and defied. A country that has already experienced an austerity-induced economic disaster with few precedents among developed nations in peacetime has suffered a sustained campaign of economic and political warfare. The European Central Bank – which has only recently deigned to publish some of the minutes of its meetings – capped liquidity for Greek banks, driving them to the verge of collapse. There were stringent capital controls, and desperate queues outside banks followed. A country desperate to stay within the euro was told it would be ejected, and with calamitous results.

    • Prof. Wolff on Roots of Greek Crisis, Debt Relief & Rise of Anti-Capitalism in Europe on Democracy Now!

      Prof.Wolff joins Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! to discuss the latest on the economic and political situation in Greece and the rise of anti-capitalism in Europe

    • New York Stock Exchange suspends trading after technical glitch

      The New York Stock Exchange halted trading in all securities on Wednesday morning after a “major technical issue”.

      The exchange posted the news on its website and said “additional information will follow as soon as possible”. The halt began at 11.32am ET. the Department of Homeland Security said there was no sign of suspicious activity.

      The NYSE has been hit by technical difficulties in the past but the scale of the closure was unprecedented. Also known as the Big Board, the NYSE is the world’s largest stock market and home to many of the world’s largest companies including AT&T, Bank of America, Ford and General Electric.

      The US’s other large exchanges, including the technology heavy Nasdaq, remained open.

      The halt came as China’s stock markets continued their free fall and the Greek debt crisis continued to rattle European investors. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had fallen 213 points when trading was halted, a fall of 1.2%

    • What it looks like when the New York Stock Exchange suddenly shuts down, in 1 chart

      The New York Stock Exchange stopped trading unexpectedly on Wednesday morning. “NYSE/NYSE MKT has temporarily suspended trading in all symbols,” the NYSE said on its market status page. “All open orders will be cancelled. Additional information will follow as soon as possible.”

    • Tonight’s Tube Strike Is Entirely Justified

      This evening sees the beginning of a strike by workers on London Underground and with the reliability of a Swiss train timetable, the mainstream media has been quick to dust-off the hackneyed cliché of the tanned, well-fed, well-paid train driver holding London to ransom at any opportunity to chisel money out of TfL. To describe the dispute in this way is to do a disservice to readers: fundamentally, it has little to do with the money on offer and by portraying it as ‘yet another tube strike’ is to ignore the severity of the real issues at stake.

      It will be the biggest tube strike for over a decade as all four unions representing London Underground workers are participating, resulting in total stoppage of the network. The RMT, TSSA and Unite will walk out at 1830, with ASLEF members walking out at 2130, all for a 24-hour period so, overall, industrial action will span 27 hours. London Underground will be putting contingency measures in place to allow normal service to resume as quickly as possible; expect services to start winding-down this afternoon and not back to normal by at least Friday morning.

      [...]

      So if the dispute isn’t over pay, then what is it about? In the simplest terms, it’s about rostering. As the proposals currently stand, tube workers are being opened up to the possibility of working unlimited night shifts, running roughshod over their entitlement to a life outside work. It’s akin an office manager telling their 9-to-5 staff that they are to work from 2 o’clock in the afternoon to 10 at night without asking if that’s alright. None of the unions involved are opposed to the Night Tube per se – introducing it would bring London Underground up to speed with the more complex New York Subway to an extent, but limits need to be placed on the number of night and weekend shifts individual members of staff will be expected to work. This is vitally important for passenger safety, as well as the health of those working the night shift.

    • European Parliament re-brands ISDS, still wants to let companies sue nations

      The European Parliament today called for foreign investors to be allowed to sue the EU and member states in special new courts. This controversial proposal came as part of a non-binding set of recommendations to the European Commission on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), currently being negotiated with the US. The new investor courts would replace the old investor tribunals employed as part of the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system, but would function largely in the same way.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Privacy

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Do we really need the Internet?

      On June 25, 2015, FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly caused a bit of a kerfuffle with his remarks to the Internet Innovation Alliance. The speech was titled “What is the Appropriate Role for Regulators in an Expanding Broadband Economy?” It contained five key points that every regulator in every country should adhere to when considering legislation or regulation regarding the Internet:

      The Internet cannot be stopped

      Understand how the Internet economy works

      Follow the law; don’t make it up

      Internet access is not a necessity or basic human right

      The benefits of regulation must outweigh the burdens

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Wikimedians urge the EU to protect freedom of panorama

        The ability to freely share information of all kinds, from text to images, is core to Wikimedia’s mission of making all knowledge available to everyone. Recently, the Wikimedia community has mobilized in response to a European Parliament recommendation on freedom of panorama—the right to freely take and publish images of works in public places, like buildings, permanent works of art, and landmarks. A recent amendment to the recommendation now under consideration threatens to place restrictions on this right across all European Union member states.

      • David Guetta: Piracy Brings Fans to My Concerts

        For more than a decade piracy has been a hot topic in the music industry. While some of the major labels have tried to eliminate the problem by taking pirates to court, others prefer a more positive approach. DJ and producer David Guetta says that the industry should embrace piracy, noting that it helps him to sell out concerts.

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