08.15.12
Posted in Deception, Microsoft, Open XML at 11:33 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Phantom ‘Standard’
Summary: The sham which is OOXML and what the past teaches us about it
THANKS to some funds from former Microsoft executives, Mono continues to be developed, giving the illusion that there is something “open source” about .NET. We saw the same thing being done to promote the idea that OOXML is “open”; companies like Novell were bribed to become participants. According to this new post from Andy Updegrove, only in 2012 did Microsoft actually get an implementation of OOXML. To quote: “Yesterday, Microsoft made an unobtrusive announcement that brings a degree of closure to a seven year long epic battle between some of the largest technology companies in the world. The same saga pitted open source advocates against proprietary vendors, and for the first time brought the importance of technical standards to the attention of millions of people around the world, and at the center of the action were Microsoft and IBM, the latter supported by Google and Oracle, among other allies.”
Just as we stated years ago, nobody had implemented OOXML; this was just an excuse for attacking ODF and keeping people stuck with Office. Looking further back we find that Microsoft used similar tactics against old Novell. To quote Pamela Jones: “When Judge J. Frederick Motz recently threw Novell’s WordPerfect antitrust case under a bus, ruling for Microsoft on its motion for judgment as a matter of law, his excuses seemed flimsy to me, at best. One of his reasons was that, in his view, when Microsoft withdrew support from certain APIs back in the ’90s, Novell could have just used what they already had to at least come up with a makeshift solution to tide them over so as to be ready for the Windows 95 launch. He also found it important that Novell bigwigs didn’t complain about the APIs to Microsoft at the time.
“Was he right?
“[I]n the process of corruption Microsoft managed to rip people out of their job (we provided example), simply because they stood up against Microsoft’s criminal activity.”“I want to show you some emails from 1994 and 1998 our volunteers have just transcribed as text, from the collection of PDF exhibits in Comes v. Microsoft. The 1994 internal Microsoft thread includes Jim Allchin saying, in effect, that the company should deliberately make sure competitors’ applications don’t work as well on Windows as their competing applications do. That is precisely what Novell claims happened with WordPerfect, and in that exact time frame. The Allchin email seems to match Bill Gates’ notorious email about deciding to pull back on the API support (“We should wait until we have a way to do a high level of integration that will be harder for the likes of Notes, Wordperfect to achieve, and which will give Office a real advantage.”). And then there are a couple of internal Novell emails from 1998 on problems with Microsoft, and finally a Gateway thread from the same general time frame, showing how Microsoft could really mess your business up, if Microsoft Help didn’t want to help, which Novell says is what happened right after Microsoft pulled the API support.”
This is very revealing. Microsoft does everything to sabotage interoperability and it still does not get punished for it. Rich criminals are rarely being jailed, even when they bribe, cheat, and bully. See the OOXML abuse index.
Glyn Moody says the latest news “means [Microsoft] *failed* to [implement OOXML] until now” and he links to this submission from Updegrove. Not a single person was sent to prison for what clearly was Microsoft corruption. Not a single person in Microsoft lost his or her job, either. On the contrary, in the process of corruption Microsoft managed to rip people out of their job (we provided example), simply because they stood up against Microsoft’s criminal activity. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Apple, Microsoft, Patents at 11:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Not just CPTN
Summary: Realisation that when it comes to patent monopolies Apple and Microsoft are hardly any different
APPLE and Microsoft continue to act as though they are more than patent allies — something that we wrote about several years ago to explain Apple’s support of patent-encumbered Microsoft pseudo ‘standards’ (OOXML, FAT, etc.). In terms of their patent litigation, there is some overlap and the Microsoft booster helps the Microsoft/Apple litigation against Android by echoing their talking points. As we showed some days ago, Apple and Microsoft want Kodak‘s patents and they are willing to buy it together with Intellectual Ventures, a massive patent troll. Apple and Microsoft increasingly behave like patent trolls themselves, seeking to make money by doing no work.
“Apple’s patents are outrageous. The company’s designs are not even original.”Groklaw has been tracking Apple’s legal battles against Linux/Android, noting more latterly that “The Apple v. Samsung trial begins again Monday. Samsung has filed its witness list [PDF], because Apple should be finishing up its case this coming week early and then Samsung presents its side of the story to the jury. We get a peek in advance, because the parties have filed the graphics [PDF], or as the law calls them the demonstratives, that each used in opening statements (and with witnesses), so we can see in advance what Samsung will be showing and explaining to the jury. The first seven witnesses will be: Markus Paltian (by deposition; see page 64 of Samsung’s demonstratives used in its opening statement), Andre Zorn of Intel (by deposition; see page 72 of Samsung’s demonstratives used in its opening statement), Tim Williams, Ph.D., Benjamin Bederson, Adam Bogue, Clifton Forlines, Ph.D. , and Woodward Yang, Ph.D. The links are my best guesses in some cases.”
A contributing writer in the site, Michael Risch [1, 2], provides an explanation of the patents in question: “Summing Up: What to Look For. Here’s what to look for, then. To what extent does the product design get driven by actual function? Does the dock provide function that you can’t protect, even if you were the first? For that matter, is it even distinctive? When you see 4 icons across, do you think of Apple only? Or is that a “generic” or “functional” feature? If Android implemented the four icons right away, then that aspect might well have never been associated exclusively with Apple, and secondary meaning never formed. That’s why Apple is relying on its design patent for that as well, because the patent doesn’t require secondary meaning.”
Apple’s patents are outrageous. The company’s designs are not even original. In the past we saw that Microsoft too uses outrageous patents to extort Linux/Android. People who care about technology should boycott this abusive duopoly. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Microsoft, Security, Windows at 11:02 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Gauss, not the famous person but the Windows malware, is not reported on accurately
THE other day we saw a report titled “Gauss Malware Detected Through Unique Palida Narrow Font”. It reminded us of Stuxnet because the press fails to name Microsoft Windows as the only affected platform.
The latest threat, this one called Gauss, is also not being tied to Windows. To quote part of the report we saw: “Malware researchers believe that Gauss was created by the same development group as Flame, an espionage program thought to have spread to thousands of systems over at least a three-year period. Unlike its cousin, Gauss spread faster by an unknown means like infecting three or four times as many systems. While Flame gathered intelligence on and from the systems it infected, Gauss focuses more on surveying specific targets, and gathering financial data. It also carries an encrypted payload that will only execute on specific systems, according to Schouwenberg.
“It helps shows how Microsoft passively or actively enabled selective governments to break the law.”“”All these things hint towards the creators going after an air-gapped network,” said Schouwenberg. Military and other sensitive networks are typically cut off from the Internet, a configuration referred to as “air-gapped.”
“While the Gauss malware carries all the hallmarks of the same development program as Flame, it is only distantly related to Stuxnet and Duqu. U.S. administration officials acknowledged developing Stuxnet with the Israelis, according to a recent book.”
That last part is important because it is now confirmed, too. It helps shows how Microsoft passively or actively enabled selective governments to break the law. It shows darn well why software freedom is essential. And until everyone calls out Windows people just won’t get it, will they? No country, except the US (and perhaps US allies), should ever deploy Windows anywhere. It’s a Trojan horse. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Debian, FSF, GNU/Linux, Ubuntu at 10:53 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Analysis of two popular and closely related distributions of GNU and Linux
DEBIAN made headlines for several reasons lately. We covered these in our daily links and didn’t make a big fuss over any of that. It’s just not our point of focus, e.g. Xfce in Debian.
One of our contributors, one who uses a great deal of Debian in the front and back end (as do I), noticed a change in the Debian branding. “Scroll down to ‘Index of Releases’” he writes, “and notice that GNU/Linux is now gone [from] http://www.debian.org/releases/”
So they also support BSD, but that is not entirely new. Our contributor explains that “that’s why there’s no Linux mentioned, but aren’t the FreeBSD and Hurd kernels using the GNU userspace?
“Debian is currently working with the FSF to get the FSF’s endorsement.”“I took a quick look and put Debian Linux and FreeBSD [1] 6.0 onto a pair of VMs and then ran a script [2] to look for mention of GNU in the manual pages. Both versions were installed with only the standard system utilities and nothing else. Hurd is not available for Debian 6.
“Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 had 347 out of 674 manual pages (51%) mention GNU.
“Debian GNU/FreeBSD 6.0 had 292 out of 535 (54%) mention GNU.
“Ubuntu Server 12.04 had 492 out of 1032 (48%) mention GNU.
“Computing,” he explains, “like society at large, risks heading into a post-freedom era. The GNU base is something that Debian could be advertising both from a technical perspective and a freedom perspective.”
We recently saw that in action when Debian sidled with the FSF on UEFI.
“The amount of GNU GPL tools,” he adds, ” is actually higher since some are under the license but do not mention it or GNU in the manual page. One example is flock which is under the GPL [3] but the man page says nothing.
“I’m not sure how to count whether they tools are part of the actual GNU project without a manual count, which it not interesting due to the effort needed.
Later he added: “Turns out that flock is not GPL even though the parent directory implies so. It has its own license. hwclock is a better example because it actually is GPL, though the manual page does not mention it.
One other contributor writes: “Now that they also distribute gnu/hurd and gnu/kfreebsd, gnu/knetbsd, it might make sense for them to drop the Linux moniker. Perhaps they they should call it, "Debian GNU OS and free software distribution" or just "Debian GNU and free software distribution" because the common, binding software is GNU.”
The Debian brand is generally quite strong and it represents freedom to a certain degree. Debian is currently working with the FSF to get the FSF’s endorsement. It’s an easy distribution to provide endorsement to and in due time the FSF too might give it some blessings. █
____
[1] http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/6.0.5/kfreebsd-amd64/iso-cd/
http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/6.0.5/amd64/iso-cd/
[2]
#!/bin/sh
for j in $(for i in $(echo $PATH | tr ":" "\n" );do ls $i;done);do
echo $j;done|wc -l
for j in $(for i in $(echo $PATH | tr ":" "\n" );do ls $i;done);do
(man -R ascii $j|grep -il gnu && echo OK || echo NO);done 2>/dev/null
| grep OK | wc -l
[3] ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/v2.22/v2.22-ReleaseNotes
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Content is available under CC-BY-SA