09.20.10
Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, OpenSUSE, Red Hat, SLES/SLED, Virtualisation, VMware at 9:25 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: More people are afraid of VMware, Groklaw suspects that VMware only pretends to compete with Microsoft, and there are reasons to believe that VMware would abandon free elements such as OpenSUSE
IT APPEARS as though the Microsoft-occupied VMware (which we may call MSWare or WCware, as suggested by one of our readers) will become a subject of greater focus at Techrights. It seems like the future owner of Ballnux [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8], the Microsoft patent tax-encumbered distribution of GNU/Linux. VMware would most likely try to hurt Red Hat with it, using the hypervisor as a sales channel. VMware has been buying FOSS to bury it, based on our experience and many links we covered here before. We realise that a lot of people are unaware of this, just as they do not know that the top of VMware’s management is filled with former Microsoft executives after the old management was ousted with help from EMC, a close Microsoft partner.
Earlier today in IRC it came up that the news about VMware is definitely bad news for SUSE and for FOSS. “[I] don’t think Novell was a good fit for Suse,” Chips B. Malroy said to kick off this discussion (which may be more long-winded than this post). What would happen to OpenSUSE, whose weekly activity seems to be decreasing over time? VMware does not have a history of fostering much of a community at all. As pointed out in IRC, it is possible that VMware is just Microsoft’s way of getting better control over SUSE. ThistleWeb
says: “isn’t the MS dictionary definition of “embedding” about getting their own employees embedded with other companies or committees to help further the MS agenda? yahoo, vmware, iso style”
“[I] don’t think Novell was a good fit for Suse”
–Chips B. MalroyBrian Proffitt from IDG says that “A VMware/Novell acquisition makes sense, but care must be taken.”
Another IDG columnist writes the article/column: “Dear VMware: Please don’t buy Novell”
From Novell’s point of view, he is right. VMware would be bad news given its staff and its history. It’s a brain drainer to FOSS.
It does seem inevitable that Novell will be sold (and SUSE sold separately) based on this new report from Bloomberg.
Investors should buy bullish Novell Inc. options to profit from a potential breakup of the maker of Linux operating-system software, which is exploring a sale of its assets, MKM Partners LP said.
Etai Friedman, MKM’s head derivatives trader, recommended purchasing November $6 calls on Waltham, Massachusetts-based Novell while selling the same number of November $7 calls, a strategy known as a call spread that cuts the price of the trade while capping potential profit. Novell rose 1.2 percent to $6.12 at 4 p.m. New York time and has gained 47 percent this year.
“Speculation of a Novell deal has whipsawed the stock for quite some time,” the Greenwich, Connecticut-based strategist wrote in a report today. “With specific buyers in the mix,” MKM “believes investors’ attention should move toward the valuation of Novell with prospects of a deal much higher than current prices.”
Paul Singer (Elliott Associates) too will be making a profit from his shares of Novell. Vultures tend to get their way in such a society with a “free” market. That’s another subject anyway.
TechFlash, a Microsoft boosting news site, had this to say about Novell:
A potential acquisition of Novell could pose an interesting situation for Microsoft, which partnered with the Linux vendor on virtualization technologies in 2006. But VMware, led by former Microsoft executive Paul Maritz, inked a key partnership with Novell earlier this year which sparked strong negative reactions from the Microsoft brass.
Over at Groklaw, Pamela Jones supports our suspicion that the ‘new’ VMware (with Microsoft veterans in charge) is still working for Microsoft in a way. “Let me hasten to say I have no knowledge if this is so or not,” Jones wrote, “He goes on to say that Maritz and Microsoft have been publicly trash talking each other, so that means there’s no love lost. Maybe. Or maybe it’s like professional wrestling, where it looks like a fight, but in reality it’s a choreographed dance so it looks like a fight.”
“Maritz and Microsoft have been publicly trash talking each other [...] maybe it’s like professional wrestling, where it looks like a fight, but in reality it’s a choreographed dance so it looks like a fight.”
–Pamela Jones, GroklawJones said this last year as well. It does seem like a possibility and we have publicly inquired for more information about the private relationship between Maritz and existing executives of Microsoft.
If it turns out that VMware serves Microsoft’s interests, then maybe it would be suitable to change how we refer to the ‘new’ VMware. “MSWare” would confuse people too much, but we can figure something out. Today’s VMware is clearly not the VMware people knew some years ago (we covered in great detail what Tucci had done to the management while he was getting closer to Ballmer).
“Red Hat let VMware have: Zimbra, SpringSource, RabbitMQ, Tungsten Graphics, GemStone,” wrote gnufreex. “They could intercept at least two of those… Zimbra and Spring source for example.”
Our main concern is that VMware has some Microsoft loyalty (like EMC, its owner) and that together they will both try to hurt Red Hat, drain FOSS competition to Microsoft, and sell just ‘Microsoft Linux’ (SUSE) through hypervisors they wish to control at KVM’s expense, for example. Our “VMware” wiki page may be required reading for those who have not seen what happened to VMware over the past couple of years. It’s just not the same company anymore. Jason from The Source wrote about it before he knew that the likely buyer would be VMware and he wondered what this would mean to Mono and Moonlight:
Mono goes on, maybe under a spin-off company with Miguel de Icaza and troops. Team Apologista is large and insular enough to remain divorced from the overall FLOSS community and still soldier on as a Microsoft team. Mono has always been and will always be a niche product in a niche market, but you can make money off of niche products. Besides, the ideological and personal investment of many Team Apologista members mean they are not going to give up on Mono, no matter what.
I have a harder time imagining an existing company taking on Mono, though. The reason is – even if you think Mono is perfectly fine to use, it is still true that a large and vocal segment of your potential user base disagrees. A segment including the Free Software Foundation, by the way.
If you aren’t a desperate company flailing about for some lifeline – any lifeline – and you know what happens in terms of FLOSS community trust and respect when striking deals with Microsoft – not to mention what happens to companies in general that deal with Microsoft – why would you take on such a white elephant as Mono?
Speaking of Mono, the FSF is not a fan of it as projects like Banshee are clearly a patent liability, based on the MCP from Microsoft. We still saw arbitrary reviews/advocacy of Banshee a few days ago [1, 2]. People should not be encouraged to install this Novell software, which gives Microsoft a legal weapon against distributions other than SUSE. Mike Masnick is meanwhile reminding us of what empty copyright allegations have meant to GNU/Linux and to SCO:
Unix For Sale: Massively Damaged, Sold As Is & Absent Delusions Of Grandeur Over Linux Copyright Infringement
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It’s unclear what anyone would really do with whatever magical assets the sale comes with, but I would suggest suing IBM for infringement is not one of the better ideas.
We covered this last week on a few occasions [1, 2]. We don’t need another SCO and Novell owns UNIX rights (now on sale). █
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Posted in Deception, Europe, Free/Libre Software, FUD, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 8:25 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Leopard Seal
Summary: Microsoft is hiring more people to stifle the adoption of its #1 competition rather than create better products that can practically compete; updates about Microsoft’s latest open attack on “Open Source” and from Switzerland too
“PJ [Groklaw] and Linux Today have spotted a Microsoft anti-Linux hiring spree,” told us a reader some moments ago.
He linked to this page from Microsoft and the summary from Linux Today, which says:
Is Microsoft hiring more anti-Linux Gurus? There’s evidence that yes, they are. All over the world!!!
In one of their recent marketing job ads, the words “Linux” and “FOSS”, appears more than 20 times !!!
http://www.microsoft-careers.com/job/San-Salvador-Initiative-Marketing-Manager(717317-External)-Job-SV/864893/
“Develop and manage an end-to-end view of the local Linux Server competitive environment (Paid and Nonpaid) and the local FOSS compete environment (Paid and Nonpaid): Be the local expert on Linux Server and FOSS issues for the GM, BG and Segment leads. Build a solid 360 view of the Linux Server and the FOSS environments through market intelligence at the local level that can be used to ensure the region/sub maintains a healthy, balanced and sustained share growth projection. This view should also be used to create awareness, take action, and drive programs to win share with appropriate segments and BGs including paid and nonpaid Linux Server and FOSS environments..”
“Embrace Open Source Web Companies and Community Projects: Develop a OSS ISV program in local market to establish partnerships with key OSS companies and community projects. Help educate Open Source Web companies on how they can expand their business opportunities and make money on the Microsoft platform (Windows, SQL, etc). Escalate companies to corporate CSI team where there is opportunity to run Linux Web applications on Windows, such as PHP on Windows.”
“They did not have the nerve to say “subvert” or “co-opt” in public the way they do in their private communications, but that is clearly the intent,” said our reader.
“They did not have the nerve to say “subvert” or “co-opt” in public the way they do in their private communications, but that is clearly the intent.”
–AnonymousWe gave many examples like this before, especially when we discussed Munich’s migration to GNU/Linux less than a year ago [1, 2, 3]. Microsoft keeps pretending to be a friend of FOSS, but its senior haters let it be known that this is not the case. Consider prior examples which we covered last week after Mirosoft had made distasteful remarks about “Open Source” [1, 2, 3]. Even in 2010 Microsoft is fighting against “Open Source”, but unlike in previous years, Microsoft is better at hiding it.
“Microsoft’s Hernán Rincón Launches Anti-FOSS Missile In Brazil” says this new headline and another one says: “Microsoft’s Latin America chief: Open-source equals ‘imcompetence’” (via Rob Weir we learn that “A Microsoft President Equates Open Standards with Incompetence”).
This is a small PR disaster for Microsoft, due to the level of exposure (there is more than the above, in languages other than English). Dana Blankenhorn calls it “Microsoft tea party against open source”:
Anyway, back to Microsoft. Windows Mobile is being crushed by Google Android. Governments are rejecting Microsoft in favor of open source. Microsoft Azure is nothing next to Amazon’s EC2 cloud. Bing!
If you have made your career drinking the corporate Kool-Aid (and Redmond can be pretty isolated from the rest of the computing universe) what’s going on in the market these days can seem absolutely maddening.
Hence the crazy.
* Tivanka Ellawala insisted that Android is not free. It’s the usual FUD about patents, built around Oracle’s suit against Google and Apple’s suit against HTC. Only in this case it is taken to extremes, implying that anyone with an Android phone might be forced to pony up extra money to use it sometime. Patent suits don’t end that way.
* Hernan Rincon, asked about Brazil’s support of open source, called open source incompetent. Judging from Rincon’s Twitter feed, this is the usual nonsense about innovation. He was trying to say that open source requires continual investment by government, as opposed to outsourcing, but something was lost in translation.
Notice that both these people are Microsoft careerists. Ellawala, a Stanford grad, has been with Microsoft for 11 years and it’s her second employer. Rincon, a Harvard man, started at Unisys. Both joined Microsoft when it was on top. Neither is responsible for what has happened since.
Going back to Microsoft’s anti-GNU/Linux ‘fighters’ that it recruits, recall the latest happenings in Switzerland. The article from Heise not has a translation to English:
Agreed in December 2001, the migration to Linux was supposed to be completed in 2007. This was an unobtainable goal because, for example, some of the project’s calls for submissions were only launched in 2006. Nominating the Scalix web interface as a replacement for Outlook proved to be an ill-advised choice: Even last June, the Scalix web mail client still lacked a task manager and various convenience features found in native mail clients.
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When there was no bad news to report, the papers simply made some up: The headline “Wieder Ärger mit dem Pinguin” (More trouble with the penguin) promised a big screen production but delivered no more than amateur dramatics. In May 2009, the Solothurn public prosecutor’s office hosted a lawyers’ convention for 400 participants from all over Switzerland, but failed to prepare a Windows system for rendering PowerPoint presentations. The Cantonal Police, who, according to Berner Zeitung, had “successfully warded off Linux”, were able to help out with a Windows system and saved the Solothurn prosecution from embarrassment. Linux can be blamed for many things, but the convention hosts’ lack of organisational skills isn’t one of them.
All this eventually led to IT director Bader having to step down last summer, and to a Cantonal spokesperson announcing the switch to a dual strategy which was to involve both open source software and Microsoft solutions. The definitive end to Linux in the Canton of Solothurn finally came yesterday: desktop computers will apparently be migrated to Windows 7 in 2011, and Outlook will replace the Scalix web mail client.
There is another report from Switzerland and it indicates that Micro☭oft communism (monoculture) in the country is due to habits, specialised applications, and existing Microsoft lock-in. Some comments we found indicate that Microsoft also put its own minions in seats which enabled them to derail this migration (the same was done for OOXML in Switzerland a few years ago).
They could all take a lesson from Munich about staged migration which is a long-term investment, taking into account the financial benefit of dodging lock-in for good. █
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Posted in News Roundup at 6:26 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Who doesn’t like quotes especially if it’s about Linux and Microsoft. Here are some fascinating, funny, intriguing and totally awesome quotes on technology, Linux and Microsoft.
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The presidency of Linux Australia fell his way recently in rather unusual circumstances when the man holding the job, James Turnbull, decided to accept a billet in the United States.
Ferlito was not next in line, Lindsay Holmswood, the vice-president was. But he opted out due to the impending arrival of an addition to his family. Ferlito put up his hand, and the rest, as they say, is history.
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Desktop
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t’s good to see that ZaReason and System 76 are now offering many more models than they did before and prices seem lower. They must be doing well…
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Server
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PEER 1 Hosting in the UK has launched a supercomputing cloud service based on the Nvidia Tesla S1070 and M2050 GPU computing systems. We’re talking serious computing power here; the S1070 is a 1U rack mount that contains 960 processor cores and four teraflops of computing power.
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Considering a switch to a virtualized infrastructure strikes fear into the hearts of even the most educated among today’s CIOs. Technology confusion and vendor choices aside, the physical-to-virtual transition dread stems from security concerns, performance uncertainty and scalability questions. Red Hat’s Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM) attempts to answer those trepidations positively.
KVM is Red Hat’s commercial competition for Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware ESX/vSphere. Like the others, KVM is a full virtualization technology. Full virtualization means that virtual machines (VMs) built with KVM fully abstract computer hardware, so the operating systems that run inside the VMs “think” they’re running on physical hardware. Memory, CPU, disk, peripherals, NICs and graphics adapters compose VMs using full virtualization technology.
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Ballnux
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It looks like that Taiwanese component maker that previously ran their mouth about the HTC tablet coming in Q1 had a few more details to get off their chest. The folks over at DigiTimes – the previous rumor source – are now reporting that their source inside Pegatron Technology has now revealed some specs of this HTC tablet rumored to be launching in Q1.
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Kernel Space
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Oracle today announced the availability of Oracle’s Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel, a fast, modern, reliable Linux kernel that is optimized for Oracle software and hardware.
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Oracle has developed its own Linux kernel software and will offer customers both the new Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel as well as the Red Hat Linux-compatible kernel Oracle has provided for several years.
The move could result in more fragmentation of the Linux industry.
Oracle debuted its own version of Linux four years ago, basing the operating system on Red Hat Linux and maintaining compatibility with that OS ever since.
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Graphics Stack
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The X.Org Developers’ Summit in Toulouse finished up over the weekend. It is now time for PhoronixFest at Oktoberfest in Munich, but here is a recap of what was discussed at this French X.Org event along with some photos.
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The last talk of the 2010 X.Org Developers’ Summit was regarding X.Org Server 1.10. The good news is that nearly every X.Org graphics driver will not be merged back into the xorg-server repository.
The release schedule for X.Org Server 1.10 was talked about, which has the final release set to arrive in February. Some of the features for this next major X.Org Server release include libxkb, RandR 1.4, input clean-ups, threaded input events, and other clean-ups. “It’s pretty much our job right now to remove system-level code out of the server and into a share-able environment.” Such work also directly benefits the Wayland Display Server, like the XKB common library that was talked about.
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Applications
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I’ve been testing and using Ardour since its 0.xx releases. I know that other Linux DAWs are also excellent programs, but for some reason I’m drawn to Ardour as my first-choice for serious recording. Perhaps it’s the support for my Frontier Tranzport or maybe the excellent synchronization capabilities, but whatever the reason, I’m a die-hard Ardourista. You can check out some of my Music Made with Ardour for some examples of Ardour’s use here at Studio Dave, or you can check out the announcements of new music on the Ardour forums. The addition of OS X as a supported platform has brought many new musicians into the Ardour camp, and as far as I’m converned it’s all for the better. As this little article explains, there’s a lot going on in the world of Ardour. I hope my readers are inspired to check it out for themselves.
Yet one word more: Big thanks to Thorsten Wilms for the use of his fine logo seen at the top of this article. Thorsten has designed a variety of similar logos for Ardour, but this one’s my favorite.
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As wide in scope as the Elementary project has stretched in the last few years it is still one canon short of an arsenal – it lacks a dedicated Elementary-styled media player.
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I bet at one point or another you felt you missed the system tray integration feature in some application, be it xterm, an audio player, a file manager or any other program. Well, KDocker is just the thing which comes to help: a simple, yet practical docking application built for KDE4 (older KDE3 version can be found here), but not only. Let me tell you how to use this program in a productive and useful manner.
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Shell In A Box is project that includes a web server, Javascript files and CSS templates to setup web-based terminal access to your system. You might remember that Shell In A Box was part of last week’s TurnKey Linux project. It is a fascinating project of its own and it deserves some focused attention.
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PeaZip 3.3 is released, this release brings various fixes and an improved user interface focused in better integration with web search (optionally on multiple search engines at once) and in launching favorite applications, scripts or websites/web services from PeaZip.
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Instructionals/Technical
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For an embedded/thin client project without GNOME, KDE, or even full XFCE I needed a small daemon to automount USB sticks. Using the full gvfs/gdu/nautilus or Thunar stack is too heavyweight for my purposes, but a simple udev rule just doesn’t cut it — I need to mount these USB sticks for a particular user (permissions), and also want to do an action like pop up a window with the contents.
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Games
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Almost nine years ago, I played Return to Castle Wolfenstein, a classic 3D shoot-em-up with Nazis and supernatural horrors and completed it. I also played the multi-player online. Particularly memorable were the flame thrower and the big climactic battle against the resurrected Knight.
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Ri-Li is an arcade game meant for children aged 3 years and up. In this game, the you control a wooden toy train and you have to collect all the coaches spread across the tracks to complete each level.
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Frictional Games, developers of the new game Amnesia: The Dark Descent, have posted an analysis for the title’s sales a week after the survival horror game’s release…
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Making the game available
This was the first time that we have had a game that would be simultaneously released for six different stores on the same day, so we were a bit nervous on how that would go. To make sure that all stores had enough time we sent out the game more than a week before release. This seems to have worked and all the stores had the game available in time for release.
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Desktop Environments
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)
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Previous wallpapers were just posted as previews here on the blog, but since this was not requested by the distro-art-managers of Arch, but only users, it will probably not end up as a part of the distro.
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Well, now I’m on the other side (so to speak) I’m painfully aware of the following: KDE.News relies on you, that is KDE promo contributors and the wider community, for its existence.
Being a Dot editor is a busy job. We have to receive your articles, make them nice (or worse, depending on whether you like our edits), upload them into Drupal and add html tags, adjust pictures and often source them too. Complex articles can take an hour of work and a few days of emails – that’s just the stuff we do, after the article is written.
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Most KDE users use Kopete for their IM needs. There’s a reason why it’s the default IM client in Linux Mint KDE as well as nearly every other KDE-based distro out there. It works, it’s stable, supports plug-ins, and incorporates just about every major protocol out there. I’ve used it for years, and still do.
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As I am sure you can tell, this is simply a very high level introduction to Digikam. I consider it an impressive application with loads of features and very much encourage that you give it a try. Having said so, there is already news about the soon to come Digikam 2.0, the next production version of this high quality photograph manager.
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The Amarok Team is happy to announce the release of Amarok 2.3.2.
This release brings with it much requested bugfixes for some long-standing bugs. Specifically, Dynamic Collection has received fixes and should now work better with hard drives and USB mass storage devices (Collection directories on these media will need to be rescanned for the changes to take effect). The Collection Browser now refreshes properly after a full rescan, fixing a bug where it would show incorrectly cached entries until Amarok was restarted.
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After a summer hiatus with lots of… well, not Amarok hacking… we are back with a fresh release. I won’t list all of the changes here in my blog, as you might as well head over to the official release notes.
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GNOME Desktop
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GNOME Shell is a window manager designed specifically for the upcoming GNOME 3 desktop, with the intention of offering a rather different way of interacting with the desktop, providing a workspace which hardly resembles the classic desktops.
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It must be the season for recycled anti-Linux whinges, because in the past few weeks I have had the pleasure of wading through a flurry of stories about Linux has too many choices, Linux is not ready for prime time, Linux is too expensive just like proprietary software, and FOSS is amateur hour and all insecure. We’ve heard it all before.
The one that is worth a bit of discussion is “Linux has too many choices.” I rather like that the Linux/FOSS ecosystem is huge, messy, and highly productive. I understand that standing before such a vast colorful feast can be overwhelming. But there is one key point that has not been addressed: how could any kind of simplification be achieved? Think about it– how would this work? All I can think of is some kind of central clearinghouse run by an iron-fisted tyrant who approves or disapproves everything. It’s absurd. FOSS is a giant wonderful cat herd. There is no single turtlenecked dictator. By design it is decentralized and distributed. Anyone can play, and the only entry requirements are ability and desire to learn.
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Across all three tests Chakra scored the highest (With PCLinuxOS and Sabayon in close second and third). Ubuntu 10.04 was at the very bottom (over 10% behind Chakra). While I think Ubuntu is a great distro it appears that if you are a Linux Gamer, you are better off using a non-Ubuntu distro.
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Security
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Canonical has released updated kernels for Ubuntu versions 10.04 LTS, 9.10, 9.04, 8.04 LTS and 6.06 LTS to close the recently discovered holes in the Linux kernel. The updates are also for the equivalent versions of Kubuntu, Edubuntu and Xubuntu and should be available through Ubuntu’s Software Update system.
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Red Hat have evaluated their Enterprise Linux offerings and say only RHEL5 is vulnerable to CVE-2010-3081; RHEL4 and Red Hat Enterprise MRG have similar validation issues but lack the “compat_mc_sockopt()” function used by the exploit. The company plans an update to RHEL5 as soon as the fixes have passed testing and will address issues in RHEL4 and Enterprise MRG in a later update. The company says that no version of RHEL is vulnerable to CVE-2010-3301.
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PCLinuxOS/Mandrake/Mandriva Family
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PCLinuxOS is a community driven distribution of GNU/Linux, which began in 2003 with the objective of creating a Linux that was radically simple, “worked out of the box, looked fabulous and didn’t require a technical degree from college to get it working.”
At the time, the idea of a live CD – a version of Linux that ran from RAM and didn’t need to be installed on the hard disk – was still a novelty. Klaus Knopper’s Knoppix had been around since 2000, but the better-known Linux distributions had yet to pick up on the idea.
The inspiration behind PcLinuxOS, also known as PCLOS, is Bill Reynolds, who is known to fans of PCLinuxOS as Texstar. PCLinuxOS began as an offshoot of Mandrake/Mandriva, to which Texstar had been a long time contributor of third-party packages.
The objective was to build a fast, reliable distribution of Linux, that was both a Live distribution on the model of Knoppix and a fully installable and flexible Linux desktop, driven by Reynolds’ passion to make the perfect software package.
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Apparently they want development be governed by a non-profit organisation or developer cooperative. A main concern of them seems to be the past business decisions of the Mandriva management. The business model looks unclear.
Consider that Mandriva currently competes with a Russian consortium on a Russian National Operating system contract.
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Last Friday the newspaper Vedomosti reported that a Russian firm, NGI, has purchased a controlling interest in Mandriva. The Quintura blog published a short English language summary of the article today. NGI had previously purchased a 5% stake in Mandriva in July for an undisclosed sum as part of the €3 million financial rescue of the company according to the Vedomosti article. NGI and Ceychas Fund are investing an additional €2 million to acquire controlling interest, including purchasing shares currently held by two other investors.
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I usually view these developments with caution, but this one I am actually happy about. Here are my reasons:
* Mandriva’s management has done a very lousy job with the resources they have. It is pretty appalling. Mandriva was supposed to be to the desktop space what Red Hat is to the server market. But no, the company got stuck somewhere between 1998 and 2005. There were no new ideas. They could have done what Steve Jobs did with Apple, if only they had the vision and a good understanding of the technology and community they had at their disposal.
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The Mandriva Community will be autonomous and governance structures will be created to ensure freedom. The Mandriva enterprise is just an element of this independent community.
A community manager will be hired by Mandriva to help the community to implement these plans.
The next version of the Mandriva community distribution will be available in spring 2011.
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Gentoo Family
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I’ve been using the minimal “server” profile on my Gentoo servers for a few years now. (Ever since I first found out that hardened didn’t support the glibc version that the stage tarballs used.) This profile has been excellent for the minimal needs of a headless server but it constantly reminded me that I should be using hardened; so, I finally decided to take the plunge and moved all my Gentoo servers to the hardened profile. The migration was mostly painless (with the errors being my own fault as usual).
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Red Hat Family
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Red Hat’s heady growth has led it to explore out-of-state options for a whopping 300,000 square feet of office space.
Officials with the Raleigh-based Linux software business recently looked at office space about that size in Atlanta and Austin, Texas.
The amount of space is substantially more than the 188,000 square feet the company occupies at its headquarters on N.C. State University’s Centennial Campus, sparking speculation about whether the company is considering a relocation of its headquarters.
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Fedora
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Debian Family
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Debian is one of the oldest and most popular distributions among the Linux users. There are probably hundreds of distributions which are based on Debian, or others which are based on distributions which in turn are based on Debian. Although I’m not a Debian developer, I use it for over two years or so, and slowly got to love this OS.
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All in all, there are definitely some changes in the beta version of Ubuntu 10.10, but for some reason I’m not as impressed with it as I thought I would be. However, I think that Ubuntu is heading in the right direction by polishing up the interface before jumping into large changes. Additionally, it is my understanding that the GUI-based installer has been significantly improved in Ubuntu 10.10, however I have yet to experience this myself because I use the “alternate” text-based installer.
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I have loaded Mint Debian on my three main laptop/netbooks so far – Fujitsu Lifebook S6510 (Intel Core2 Duo), HP Pavillion dv2-1010ez (AMD Athlon Neo) and Samsung N150 Plus (Intel Atom), and it loads and runs very nicely, and it looks and feels exactly like the Ubuntu-based Mint 9 (Isadora) distribution.
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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I am amazed at the high quality artwork produced by Canonical for Ubuntu which permits Ubuntu to complete against other commercial products such as OSX and Windows. The problem is these products are created and release with little if any community involvement.
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Well that was quick. The “Sent from Ubuntu” default email signature for Evolution in Ubuntu 10.10 has been removed – as you can see in the latest Evolution package changelog.
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Ecolo is switching to Ubuntu desktops.
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To me, that sounds like it means Moovida will not be entirely open-source. This fact may complicate its status for Ubuntu users, ruling it out as a replacement for Rhythmbox/Totem and driving ideologically minded users away.
On the other hand, the flexible nature of the plugin licensing could prove beneficial to Linux users by making it easier for proprietary developers to reach them. Commercial programmers have a tendency to stay away from open-source applications because the viral nature of the GPL often makes it difficult to bring proprietary code anywhere near open-source programs. Moovida might make that barrier a little easier to overcome.
For the time being, though, we can only wait and see what develops, since there’s been little word on when we can expect an official Linux release (the Moovida website promises an OS/X release in summer 2010, but the summer is just about officially over and the Mac build has yet to appear, so development may be running behind schedule).
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If you’re not already aware of Ubuntu 10.10’s new netbook interface, called ‘Unity’, then I would sincerely ask you to point to the rock under which you have been living.
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Also, the Ubuntu Software Centre should start charging for open source software and help out the hard working programmers that bring us great apps for the GNU/Linux desktop. This would enable the programmers and the many great open source projects to earn a revenue from the software they produce. Advanced games would be more plentiful and complex software would be available as well. The Ubuntu Software Centre has a lot of potential to create a great market for excellent GNU/Linux software and a great stream of revenue for open source programmers that are struggling to turn a profit. I hope that the next few versions of Ubuntu will have these great features implemented. The Software Centre can spur a new class of great applications for the GNU/Linux platform and bring more users to use Linux as their primary operating system.
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Mark Shuttleworth interview about Ubuntu and Dell Tie Up
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Flavours and Variants
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There are a lot of things I like about the Linux Mint distribution. One is that they aren’t reinventing the wheel. Linux Mint is less an independent from-the-ground-up distro and has been more of the icing on the Ubuntu cake. It’s changing (I think improving) the Ubuntu experience without starting over from scratch. Essentially this means that the Mint team is able to introduce new ideas and features to the user without wasting resources on the underlying base. Another point in its favour is that I can easily slap an install on a new computer in twenty minutes and have all the basics right there with no configuring, no tweaking and no adding extra repositories. It’s really the pizza delivery to your door in under thirty minutes distro.
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Sub-notebooks
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They have just released a new netbook running Android and it promptly sold out. This puts the lie to the revisionist history some recount of the netbook as released in 2007 by ASUS. These things will sell and in the USA. There is always a market for smaller and cheaper computers.
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Even as the economy slouches its way toward another bout of recession, the software industry has been in comparatively rude health. Earnings across the board have been impressive and, as a recent SIIA and OPEXEngine study (warning: PDF) shows, software companies are returning to robust profitability after years of red ink.
In other words, when the economy has boomed proprietary software companies have also boomed. When it went bust, so did they, to varying degrees.
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We can blame the baby boomers for proprietary software. (We can also blame them for C++ and Java, and I write two chapters detailing why they have been a total disaster for the industry. I recommend everyone use Python today.) We can also blame boomers for outlawing nuclear power, never drilling in ANWR despite decades of discussion, never fixing Social Security, destroying the K-12 education system, and numerous of the other long-term problems that have existed in this country for decades, that they did not fix, and the ones they created. Linus Torvalds is a Generation X-er, having been born in 1969. It is this generation that is coming into its own now that will invent the future, as we incorporate more free software, cooperation, and free markets into society.
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So without further ado, here are 58 open source replacements for popular commercial communications software…
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Web Browsers
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Mozilla
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Firefox Home, a free app that syncs your Firefox browsing history, bookmarks and open tabs to your iPhone or iPod touch, is now available in 15 languages worldwide. Get Firefox Home in your language now!
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Firefox 4 won’t have the menu it has on Windows – according to THIS bug report, but it does have the other new features.
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Mozilla has released a JavaScript engine strictly for testing purposes to allow web developers to gain deeper access to – and better understanding of – the code underpinning its browser.
The Narcissus engine and Zaphod script look-up tool have been added to Mozilla Labs to help the open source outfit develop new ideas for the JavaScript language.
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The free Firefox add-on Pixel Grabber makes it dead easy to take screenshots in the browser. How does it work? Simply right-click on a page, or click on the status bar icon to grab a screenshot of the whole page, custom or visible area.
The first and last option display a selection menu to download the screenshot to the local computer, copy it to the clipboard, share it with the image hosting service imm.io or send it to an online editor for immediate image editing.
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Firefox 4 shutdown is already almost instant, but Mozilla has had their sights set on faster start-up times for quite a while. Over the summer, a pair of Mozilla interns looked at simple tweaks which would make Firefox appear faster. It now looks as if at least one of the suggested changes will make its way in to Firefox 4.
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… at least if we believe Mozilla. Mozilla has published new benchmark results that aim to prove that IE9 is not quite as fast as Microsoft claims. In fact, Firefox has gained the edge again.
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Databases
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PostgreSQL 9.0 is here! The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announces the availability of our most eagerly awaited release. PostgreSQL 9.0 includes built-in, binary replication, and over a dozen other major features which will appeal to everyone from web developers to database hackers.
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While Oracle trumpets its open source MySQL database management system this week at the company’s OpenWorld conference, the creators behind MySQL’s rival, PostgreSQL, have released a major new version of their rival database software.
The newly released version 9 of PostgreSQL includes a number of new features that are potentially appealing to enterprise users. It includes the ability to do streaming replication, the upgrade process has been made considerably easier, and for the first time, it can run natively on clients running the 64-bit version of Microsoft Windows.
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Clearly, the new owner has left its mark in the new default for the database engine. The transaction-capable InnoDB is used, instead of the old MyISAM engine. Oracle says it is much faster than the previous version, thanks partly to multiple roll-back segments and the use of asynchronous I/O under Linux. In particular, MySQL does not come to a standstill as often when there are simultaneous connections on multi-core machines. The developers have changed the threading that the server uses, for example, by using dedicated locks for individual tasks instead of the former global lock.
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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FLOSSK has invited me to talk about Sugar in the upcoming Software Freedom Kosova 2010 Conference that will take place next weekend (25th-26th September) in Prishtina.
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I’ve just tested Gnash 0.8.8 in a recent firefox beta and it works very well with youtube here. Other famous video (e.g. vimeo) sites, checked some pr0n sites as well, don’t work (properly) though. Now the Gnash developers pointed out on their blog that a) many people, especially debian users, use way too old versions or don’t follow the informations given on setup and therefore don’t remove their youtube cookies, so they get a blank screen and b) many people seem to be barely interested in a free flash player, so they quickly install adobe flash, when gnash does not work or they simply don’t see any reasons to open that technology up. Now since both Google and Apple have turned away from Adobe flash player, Google by actually supporting them, but by breaking their main monopoly with patent-free html 5 video and powerful javascript runtimes and Apple by also focusing on open Webstandards and Html 5 video, flash’s days seem to be counted.
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Project Releases
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Government
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Europe is leading in the development and adoption of open source, according to a report by Cenatic, Spain’s national competence centre on this type of software, published yesterday at an IT conference in Palma de Mallorca. “Government support is key for the adoption of open source.”
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Examples of open source in the U.S. government abound. The Smithsonian and Search.USA.gov use Solr/Lucene open source enterprise search. The White House re-launched whitehouse.gov using Drupal. The DoD and the Intelligence Community have proposed an Open Technology Development roadmap “to increase technical efficiency and reduce software lifecycle costs within DoD,” and the DoD has developed forge.mil to “enable continuous collaboration among all stakeholders including project managers, developers, testers, certifiers, operators, and users.” In fact, my own company, Lucid Imagination, is funded in part by In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA, further evidence that open source and government are going hand in hand.
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Openness/Sharing
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Open Access/Content
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The first line was, “A new player entered the field of open online education last week: NIXTY, a Web site that allows any user to take and create courses for free.”
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He said he worked in Microsoft’s Valley office and at some point in the conversation told me that you couldn’t jump either way between, specifically, Microsoft and Apple; that if you were talking to a recruiter from the one, they’d drop you if you came from the other. He said “They do that to keep people from going back and forth to get raises.”
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They democratically elected a president to stand up to the rich and multinational corporations – so our governments have him kidnapped
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Should you get Windows 7 over a Linux distro? It really and truly depends on your needs. In terms what what you get for price, Linux is amazing. You get tons of programs for free. Your drivers are mostly all already installed. It runs faster on an SSD drive. This version of Windows cost me $99 for an OEM license. I bought it because I like to play computer games and because I want to run Adobe Photoshop Lightroom at maximum efficiency (not via Wine or VirtualBox). Although my wife still has bits here and there where she wishes she had Windows XP instead of Ubuntu, it’s usually because something is different, not because it’s lacking. So she’d be giving most of the same complaints if I had moved her to Windows 7. And, I use my Linux, Fedora-based computer for EVERYTHING that isn’t photography or video games. Sometimes I go for days without booting up my Windows computer.
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Science
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What happens in our brain when the mind is considering itself? Until now, it has been unclear what happens during a navel-gazing session. Now a team of neuroscientists has shed light on the process by identifying an area of the brain that is larger in more introspective individuals.
Introspection is the act of assessing or thinking about one’s own thoughts, decisions and feelings. Stephen Fleming from University College London and his colleagues were interested in how the act of introspection – thought to be a crucial component of consciousness – links to the physiology of the brain.
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Unearthed during a construction dig at the San Diego Zoo in California last Thursday: The fossilized remains of a 24-foot-long baleen whale that lived 3 million years ago.
The age of the find is remarkable, but what makes this even more rare is the fact that the entire skeleton appears to be more or less intact: head, vertebrae, flippers, and all.
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Health/Nutrition
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Before, Fudia would have been taken to the hospital in the midst of labor, and when complications arose, the medical care would have stopped. Someone would have called Alex saying he needed to get to the hospital to pay for a C-section delivery before the operation could take place. The operation would cost between $200 and $500. Alex would have turned to me and asked for help. I would have searched around for someone to deliver the money to the hospital. All that time would have passed before a doctor and nurses could deliver the baby. All that time was endangering the Fudia’s life, and the unborn baby’s.
Now, because of free health care, a team at the hospital delivered their baby boy. The only phone call Alex received was to tell him that mother and child are healthy. This is one example among many. We are saving the lives of mothers and their children. That is something to celebrate not only in Sierra Leone, but around the world.
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Security/Aggression
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With each revelation, or court decision, on US torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gitmo—or the airing this month of The Tillman Story and Lawrence Wright’s My Trip to Al-Qaeda—I am reminded of the chilling story of Alyssa Peterson, who died seven years ago this week. Appalled when ordered to take part in interrogations that, no doubt, involved what most would call torture, she refused, then killed herself a few days later, on September 15, 2003.
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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In 1929, Russian botanist Nikolai Vavilov traveled to Central Asia on one of the many seed-collecting expeditions that took him to five continents over more than two decades. In what is now present-day Kazakhstan, Vavilov — the father of modern seed banks — found forests of wild fruits and numerous cultivated varieties. Around the city of Alma Ata, he was astonished by the profusion of apple trees, writing in his journal that he believed he had “stumbled upon the center of origin for the apple, where wild apples were difficult to even distinguish from those which were being cultivated.”
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The fate of the station is now in limbo as, after an intense lobbying campaign by botanists and conservation groups around the world, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has announced that the government is investigating the effort to uproot one of the most valuable botanical collections on Earth.
The priceless nature of the Pavlosk station can be traced directly back to Vavilov and his painstaking efforts to collect seeds from what he viewed as hot spots of plant diversity around the world, now known as Vavilov Centers. His insights into the importance of preserving botanical genetic diversity, particularly among food crops, are highly relevant today as that diversity faces unparalleled threats from industrial agriculture dominated by monoculture crops, destruction of wild habitats, and climate change.
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Rosen wrote a terrific comment for my August 29 post, “What’s the difference between climate science and climate journalism? The former is self-correcting, the latter has become self-destructive.” Since it was #52, I suspect many missed it, so I’ll repost it below.
First, though, here are a couple of choice excerpts from Rosen’s Economist interview that readers identified:
I do not think journalists should “join the team”. They bridle at that, for good reason. Power-seeking and truth-seeking are different behaviours, and this is how we distinguish politics from journalism. I think it does take a certain detachment from your own preferences and assumptions to be a good reporter. The difficulty is that neutrality has its limits. Taken too far, it undermines the very project in which a serious journalist is engaged.Suppose the forces that want to convince Americans that Barack Obama is a Muslim or wasn’t born in the United States start winning, and more and more people believe it. This is a defeat for journalism—in fact, for verification itself. Neutrality and objectivity carry no instructions for how to react to something like that. They aren’t “wrong”, they’re just limited. The American press does not know what to do when neutrality, objectivity, balance and “report both sides” reach their natural limits. And so journalists tend to deny that there are such limits. But with this denial they’ve violated the code of the truth-teller because these limits are real. See the problem?
… When journalists get attacked from the left and the right, they take it as confirmation that they’re doing something right, when they could be doing everything wrong. There’s a certain laziness that creeps up too, which you can hear in phrases from the commentariat like “extremists on both sides”. No attempt to actually examine centre and margin and compare them across parties; instead, this sorry act of positioning, in which the political centre is associated with truth, common sense and realism. This is a very common prejudice in political journalism.
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Peru is said to be the 56th richest country in the world, with 28 of the world’s 35 climates and more than 70% of the tropical glaciers on earth. Most are in rapid retreat, leaving behind devastated farmers and communities short of water.
Julio invited us to his home, but we are in the hands of Oxfam and heading for another region far from the retreating glaciers but where climate change is impacting communities hard.
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A council has launched a landmark legal case against the supermarket giant Sainsbury’s for using too much packaging on a fresh joint of beef.
Lincolnshire council’s trading standards claim “excessive” wrapping around the meat is damaging to the environment. The case is believed to be the first time a major supermarket has been prosecuted for failing to stay within acceptable levels of packaging.
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The Obama administration is facing two new charges of suppressing information about the BP oil spill.
Independent scientists, environmental organisations and local groups in the Gulf have repeatedly accused government agencies of helping BP to under-estimate the amount of oil that spewed out of its well and play down its effects on marine life.
The emergency phase of the spill may now be all but over: administration officials say the well could be permanently sealed by Sunday. But the Obama administration still faces a big trust gap over its handling of the spill, with environmentalists and scientists growing more vocal about their suspicions that the US public is being spun.
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Plans by the energy giant BP to sink an oil well off the Libyan coast could have disastrous consequences for the region’s rich heritage of coastal ancient city sites and shipwrecks – already under threat from oil tankers, coastal erosion and tourist developments – archaeologists from around the world have warned.
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If the world has been reminded of anything through the tragedy of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, it is that biodiversity and the health of ecosystems is neither an abstract scientific concept nor the pet project of a green elite. Biodiversity and healthy ecosystems are the vital underpinnings of human society.
Food and energy production on land and from the sea; medicine; tourism, and real estate: these industries and many others have been shown to be starkly vulnerable to the destruction of marine and terrestrial ecosystems. And yet, while the link between biodiversity and human well-being is better understood now than ever before, the news from the frontlines of the global effort to preserve the world’s biodiversity is bleak. The web of life that we all rely on for our very survival is being torn apart at an increasingly alarming rate and action to address this global crisis is still distressingly lacking and slow.
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Finance
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From PBS comes this video which reviews how Goldman Sachs takes great pleasure in making money in whatever way presents itself while at the same time ignoring the sufferings of those from whom they obtain their money.
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Anger is sweeping America. True, this white-hot rage is a minority phenomenon, not something that characterizes most of our fellow citizens. But the angry minority is angry indeed, consisting of people who feel that things to which they are entitled are being taken away. And they’re out for revenge.
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For one thing, craziness has gone mainstream. It’s one thing when a billionaire rants at a dinner event. It’s another when Forbes magazine runs a cover story alleging that the president of the United States is deliberately trying to bring America down as part of his Kenyan, “anticolonialist” agenda, that “the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s.” When it comes to defending the interests of the rich, it seems, the normal rules of civilized (and rational) discourse no longer apply.
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Building the Big Banks
So, let’s start with me. I have a checking account at a Wells Fargo Wachovia bank and I regularly make deposits, withdrawals and debit purchases with it. A few months ago, Wachovia settled a case with the Department of Justice for $160 million on the charge of laundering potentially billions of dollars for Mexican drug cartels. High-level Wachovia executives would have us believe they had no prior knowledge of this serious criminal activity which helped keep their company afloat (at least for a little while), but evidence suggests there were numerous red flags they were made aware of and chose to ignore. At the very least they had been extremely negligent in establishing and maintaining money laundering “detection systems”, and why wouldn’t they be when due diligence may cost them millions in bonuses. [2]. Thousands of innocent Mexican and American citizens die every year at the hands of Mexican drug cartels and violence associated with their activities. The drug trade also contributes greatly to socioeconomic ills in both societies, such as the social costs resulting from habitual drug abuse and economic costs from medical treatment and prosecuting the “war on drugs”. [3]. I feel an acute sense of guilt for depositing my money at Wachovia banks, supporting their business activities and aiding them in growing to the extent that their managers can get away with financing murder, even though the amount in my checking account alone is negligible to their overall worth. There are obviously millions of other people in this country who also support Wachovia and other major financial institutions like it, and all that cash adds up to serious capital.
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The Securities and Exchange Commission unanimously approved on Friday a proposal to reinstate a requirement that publicly traded companies disclose more information about their short-term borrowings.
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I look forward at the beginning of each month to getting Gary’s latest letter. I often print it out and walk away from my desk to spend some quality time reading his thoughts. He is one of my “must-read” analysts. I always learn something quite useful and insightful. I am grateful that he has let me share this with you.
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A gold trading company has no plans to end its high-profile sponsorship of conservative commentators despite coming under congressional scrutiny.
Scott Carter, executive vice president of Goldline International, Inc., told The Hill that the firm is “very pleased” with its advertising relationship with Glenn Beck and other radio and television pundits that are popular among conservatives.
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“We’re all freaking doomed.”, says Alan Greenspan.
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The overall poverty rate climbed to 14.3 percent, or 43.6 million people, the Census Bureau said Thursday in its annual report on the economic well-being of U.S. households. The report covers 2009, President Barack Obama’s first year in office.
The poverty rate increased from 13.2 percent, or 39.8 million people, in 2008.
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IN TODAY’S AMERICA, the poor are apparently getting poorer.
Then again, so is the middle class. And just like in the days leading up to the Great Depression, the rich are getting even richer.
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Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights
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The gifted artist is alive and well, thankfully. But on the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI, she is, as they put it, “going ghost”: moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity. She will no longer be publishing cartoons in our paper or in City Arts magazine, where she has been a regular contributor. She is, in effect, being put into a witness-protection program—except, as she notes, without the government picking up the tab. It’s all because of the appalling fatwa issued against her this summer, following her infamous “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” cartoon.
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Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM
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Europe has proposed an Internet Treaty to protect the net from political interference which threatens to break it up.
The draft international law has been compared to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which sought to prevent space exploration being pursued for anything less than the benefit of all human kind. The Internet Treaty would similarly seek to preserve the Internet as a global system of free communication that transcends national borders.
An early draft of the Treaty has come into our possession as governments around the world pile pressure on the United Nations to bring the Internet under political control. Their various hare-brained schemes threaten to make communication on the Internet conditional on criteria set by narrow political interests.
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The entertainment industry’s favorite two Senators, Patrick Leahy (who keeps proposing stronger copyright laws) and Orin Hatch (who once proposed automatically destroying the computers of anyone caught file sharing) have now proposed a new law that would give the Justice Department the power to shut down websites that are declared as being “dedicated to illegal file sharing.” Other Senators signed on to sponsor the bill are: Sens. Herb Kohl, Arlen Specter, Charles Schumer, Dick Durbin, Sheldon Whitehouse, Amy Klobuchar, Evan Bayh and George Voinovich. Perhaps these Senators should brush up on their history.
They do realize, of course, that Hollywood (who is pushing them for this law) was established originally as a “pirate” venture to get away from Thomas Edison and his patents, right? Things change over time. Remember, that YouTube, which is now considered by Hollywood to be mostly “legit,” had been derided as a “site dedicated” to “piracy” in the past. It’s no surprise that the Justice Department — with a bunch of former RIAA/MPAA lawyers on staff — would love to have such powers, but it’s difficult to see how such a law would be Constitutional, let alone reasonable.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Wednesday next week the European Parliament will be voting on the Gallo report on intellectual property enforcement.
Unfortunately, there is a major risk that the parliament will adopt the report, which would be bad news for the Internet community. I am one of the signatories on an alternative resolution submitted by the Green, Social Democrat and Left groups, but it is doubtful if we will be able to get a majority for it. But we will keep on trying until the final vote.
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Copyrights
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The Swedish Pirate Party has failed to replicate last year’s massive victory in the European elections. The Party, which promised it would host Wikileaks and The Pirate Bay inside the Swedish Parliament if it was voted in, lost the majority of last year’s support and won’t reach the threshold that would allow it to enter Parliament.
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Since its inception in 2003, Abstract Logix has consistently positioned itself at the cutting edge of every element of music–sales, production, and distribution. In addition to traditional record label functions, Abstract Logix has fostered a vital community of musicians and fans via its online portal, constantly taking advantage of the ever-expanding possibilities of the digital revolution. Yet, we understand that nothing can replace the exhilaration of master musicians performing in concert. Thus the idea behind The New Universe Music Festival. Our artists will connect with the fans at the festival. The artists will be approachable and will be interested in trading ideas with their fans.
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Members of the notorious 4chan image board have launched a coordinated a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack against mpaa.org, the website of the Motion Picture Association of America. The attack began at 9:00 PM EST and is still ongoing. It only took eight minutes for the MPAA website to go down. According to an announcement posted on the Internet, 4chan members consider this a retaliation against film studios who paid an Indian company called Aiplex Software to attack torrent websites in a similar manner.Last week, Aiplex’s managing director boasted in the media that when websites refuse to respond to DMCA takedown notices sent by his company, on behalf of local and international film studios, his team resorts to DDoS.
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Fox News’ decision to sue a Democratic candidate over her campaign’s use of footage first aired on the network in an ad is an apparent escalation of such fair use battles — bringing disputes between media companies and campaigns from YouTube to the courtroom.
The suit the network filed against the campaign of Robin Carnahan, a Democrat challenging Rep. Roy Blunt (R) for a Senate seat in Missouri, appears to be the first time such a fair use fight between a media company and a political campaign has been taken to court. It is much more common for media companies to flag the videos to YouTube and assert their copyright.
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Kids (of all ages) around the world revel in a whole day in which they can “Talk Like A Pirate”. Arrr. Be a pirate. Sing and play pirate songs like the Arrogant Worms classic pirate tune Last Saskatchewan Pirate. Dress up in pirate gear. There is even an online Pirate Translator for assistance with pirate talking. It is nothing to do with politics, or copyright. The point of “Talk Like A Pirate Day” is fun. Yo ho ho.
This year, not so much.
The MPAA has been unsuccessfully trying to convince people that sharing is a bad thing by spending vast sums of money on ‘anti-piracy’ advertising. Of course it doesn’t help that they what they call piracy is not just commercial bootlegging, but includes personal use sharing and any number of things that users feel justified in doing. (Some copyright “reformers” say that we need to purchase copies of the same book for every member of the family.) Or format shifting. (Some copyright “reformers” say we should purchase copies of the same song for every device we would play it on.)
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Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day everyone!
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Digital Economy (UK)
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With a new Government telling us massive spending cuts are inevitable, and an old Government that forced through a shoddy piece of legislation called the digital Economy Act before it shuffled off, it hasn’t been looking good for broadband.
However, each new intake of MPs brings with it new and younger blood, which hopefully has a better handle on the desperate need to keep this country’s broadband infrastructure up to date – or at least close – with our neighbours.
One of those MPs is Cambridge’s Liberal Democrat MP Julian Huppert. A tech savvy newcomer to Parliament with a PhD in Biological Chemistry, he’s just the kind of character we need to ensure the voice of gadget loving consumers and tech reliant businesses is heard.
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Posted in America, Antitrust, Asia, Finance, Microsoft at 10:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: India is better than the United States at regulating Microsoft; the latest figures about Microsoft’s tax dodge in the US are revealed, along with the role of former Microsoft staff in letting this be
A former Microsoft lawyer recently said that Microsoft “routinely produces and/or condones deficient investigations, covers up alleged misconduct, mischaracterizes evidence, refuses to preserve or provide pertinent facts and data, protects the perpetrators and retaliates against victims.”
At the end of last year in India, Microsoft was fined for using “money power” to “harass” defendants. Earlier this year we wrote a great deal about Microsoft’s connections in government, which enabled to company to “legally” evade tax (when one controls the law, any crime can become lawful). It’s another type of money games which may be tolerated in the United States, but in India Microsoft was found guilty of tax evasion a few years back (last mentioned here in the comments). For further background, compare Microsoft influence in the Indian government to Microsoft influence in the United States government.
There is a highly-referenced report in the Times of India right now and it says that the Competition Commission of India takes on Microsoft:
Global software major Microsoft Corp has been dragged to the Competition Commission of India (CCI) by a law firm for allegedly abusing its dominant position as a market leader.
Singhania & Partners has filed a complaint against Microsoft alleging that software company first signed an agreement to sell a software at a certain price, but later raised the price intending not to sell it, sources said.
The law firm had placed an order for MS operating systems and MS Office software. They had paid 50 per cent advance the got quotations for original equipment manufacturer (OEM) licences, but at the time of delivery Microsoft said that they would give them volume licence, which would cost the firm double the price.
The life of an OEM finishes with the life of a computer, while that of a volume licence is transferable.
Microsoft’s antitrust violations are recalled here this month (“Obama antitrust enforcement looking like more of the same”) and more coverage from India was shared last night by Chips B. Malroy who quoted: “Software giant Microsoft has been dragged to the Competition Commission of India by a Delhi-Headquartered Law Firm. The company has been charged with allegedly breaching the competition act by using its monopoly position in the Indian market, reports CNBC-TV18′s Ashwin Mohan. [...] In short, Singhania and Partners has claimed before the Competition Commission of India that Microsoft is coercing its consumers to buy its softwares at higher prices. Now, there are two things that it has sought before the commission. It has to sought an investigation into the anti competitive practices, the alleged anti competitive practices of Microsoft. Secondly, it has also an enquiry into the overall consumer impact as a part of these practices of Microsoft.”
“Microsoft becomes less of an American company over time.”There’s also this one which says: “During the economic slowdown, Microsoft expanded its reach in India from around 13 cities to at least 300 cities, through a network of nearly 7,500 partners??seeds for future growth?, as Ruskill puts it.”
We wrote about this several hours ago. Microsoft becomes less of an American company over time. It’s expensive to be based primarily in the United States because of ‘nuisance’ like workers’ protection rights.
Microsoft Florian is taking Microsoft’s side on the face of it (no surprise here) and in India there are other noteworthy wage discussions that ignore share holdings/value (Larry Ellison being the victim of this pattern of disinformation as in some companies the founders receive only a symbolic wage of $1). Despite the fallacies, here is how the article from the India Times goes:
Patni Computer Systems, 90 times smaller than Microsoft by revenues, cannot hold a candle to the US software company on most counts. There is one notable exception though — CEO pay.
The cash portion of Patni chief executive Jeya Kumar’s compensation was twice that of Mircrosoft’s Steve Ballmer in 2009. An Australian citizen, Mr Kumar, 55, received Rs12.19 crore for the year to December 2009 compared to $1.26 million, or nearly Rs6 crore, for the fiscal to June 2009 for Mr Ballmer.
Likewise, Wipro chief Azim Premji earned Rs7.8 crore, again outshining Mr Ballmer’s pay.
They refer to Wipro, one of several companies that are like Microsoft subsidiaries in India. To quote again from the article “Microsoft wants India among top 5 markets”:
Mumbai: The world’s largest software products company Microsoft Corp. wants India to be among its top five revenue generators globally within the next three-five years.
Yes, that’s where the wages go and the wages are embarrassingly low. Microsoft is neither interested in paying its workers enough nor in paying taxes for its citizenship (a problem in Europe and in the United States, with Ireland and Nevada being the tax havens, respectively).
The former Microsoft employee who became an activist against Microsoft’s tax dodge is back to blogging after a long time being idle. He revises his figures to show that Microsoft has avoided paying far more taxes than he initially calculated:
Instead of a projected $3.3 billion deficit, Washington State would today have a $1.8 billion surplus.
So, while Microsoft’s been publicly lobbying the legislature to spend more on transportation and education, its behind the scenes lobbying to cut its tax bill and its Nevada tax dodge have actually helped make Washington State insolvent, siphoning the coffers that might have otherwise invested in our state’s infrastructure.
I read today that the Gates Foundation has made a tentative deal with Seattle not to have the city tunnel under its new offices during the rebuild of the crumbling Alaska Way Viaduct. But apparently, it’s just fine for Chairman Gates to figuratively tunnel under the capital in Olympia and dismantle the state’s financial stability.
Back in 2004 when I interviewed Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith for my Seattle Weekly article Citizen Microsoft, he seemed open to considering opening up more of Microsoft state tax records for public inspection. Perhaps it’s time.
Coming soon at the Microsoft Tax Dodge blog: Ross Hunter’s Message to 48th District Taxpayers and My Discussion with Seattle Times Executive Editor David Boardman on the paper’s failure to cover Microsoft’s Nevada tax dodge for readers.
In another post, Microsoft’s former manager Ross Hunter is being slammed for betraying citizens of Washington. As a public official after his long Microsoft career he is throwing all the burden of taxes on the public while leaving Microsoft almost tax free. It is outrageous and it’s true. Where are the protests?
Ross engineered a gigantic tax cut for Microsoft. Some pesky blogger had been hassling Microsoft for avoiding the state’s royalty tax through a small office in Nevada, so Ross just changed the tax! With the royalty tax cut to shreds, the blogger had nothing bad to say about Microsoft. But just in case, Ross quietly added in amnesty for Microsoft’s entire 13 year tax dodge. Ross likes Microsoft because, well, he worked there for 17 years. And Microsoft likes Ross!
And, that pesky blogger, he recently estimated that if Microsoft had just stayed out of Olympia and paid the OLD royalty tax, Washington State would have a surplus today … Ross knows that surpluses are bad because they just feed big government…and big government is bad.
As Chair of the powerful Finance committee of the democratically controlled House of Representatives, Ross pushed through the legislation that delivered our new $4.5 billion deficit. It couldn’t have been easy to do that. That’s delivering results!
[...]
In the meantime, if you’re tired of paying all those taxes, ask Ross to make a video about how to evade them. I’m pretty sure Microsoft has watched all of Ross’ Tax Evasion for Dummies videos … especially steps 2 and 3 about shell corporations and step transactions. Microsoft must have a pretty bad-ass post office box in Nevada to hold $30 billion a year.
Over at Associated Press we now learn about the tax-exempt Gates Foundation (Bill’s bank account under a different name). It says that “The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has made a deal with the city of Seattle to build a new street around its new campus rather than allow the city to tunnel under the property.”
Gates’ booster Kristi Heim does not investigate these issues properly. Some journalists play along with the idea that Gates is helping the city/state, but actually, he is paying for his own project/private property. In some places and almost exclusively in the Seattle Times (which is a strong Microsoft and Gates booster and therefore a biased and poor publication) it is almost described as an investment in the city, but it’s not. Recall the bridge controversy. Microsoft is only taking from the state and gives back almost nothing, not even jobs (many workers are laid off, then replaced by workers in countries like India and others come to to the state from another country on a visa). This gives unregulated capitalism a bad name. █
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Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Search at 9:04 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The dark future of Vista Phone 7 [sic] is shown with the backing of many news articles and explanations about the suicidal gambles Microsoft made
Msmobiles.com is apparently dead. It was an interesting place in which to learn about customers’ gripes, not just Microsoft’s utterly bad mobile products (back when the flag to be carried was
“Windows Mobile”). “Interesting article[s] to read and site,” said our reader Girts to us.
“Yes, Windows Mobile is dead until it will be open source then it will have maybe bright future,” he added.
“Yes, Windows Mobile is dead until it will be open source then it will have maybe bright future.”
–GirtsLast night we shared some links about mobile market share estimations. Linux seems like the long-term victor and bar software patents it’s unstoppable. Referring to US market on the face of it, comScore reported good growth for Linux. Microsoft Nick reported on that and comScore is paid by Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10] (comScore is usually showing opposites of what everyone else is showing, so maybe it sells bias to Microsoft). This helps show that even sources that are biased in favour of Microsoft could not help reporting a sharp decline in Windows market share in mobile.
“Nearly Ninth Inning For Microsoft Smartphone Effort” says an article whose language is explained as follows: “Pardon the baseball metaphor but it seemed appropriate: the impending debut of Windows Phones (Windows Mobile 7) is a very high stakes moment for Microsoft, especially in the wake of Kin’s recent failure. [...] The fate of Windows Phones and Bing’s future are not necessarily inextricably linked. Bing has diversified beyond Windows Mobile and can succeed potentially even if Windows Phones fail. But it needs to succeed on its own merits rather than count on default search deals like the one with Verizon (which has seen some user backlash).”
“Linux seems like the long-term victor and bar software patents it’s unstoppable.”Samsung and others are reluctant to experiment with the poor phone platforms which Microsoft produces, especially after “KIN” [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. Some Microsoft partners got severely burned by “KIN”, so unless (just perhaps) Microsoft pays them to do so, few companies will even bother with Vista Phone 7 [sic]. “Verizon Wireless Will Take Its Time To Sell Windows Phone 7″ says this headline.
Maybe Verizon Wireless still has a sour taste left its mouth when Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) abruptly shutdown the teenage-focused KIN project less than two months after Verizon started selling it? Maybe not. But whatever is the case, the largest U.S. carrier said it will wait until next year to start selling phones based on Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7, reports Bloomberg.
“Microsoft has gotten very desperate and it’s nowhere near competitive enough to fairly compete in the mobile space.”Also see “Verizon will not sell Windows Phone 7 devices until 2011″ and “First generation Windows Phone 7s won’t be on Verizon or Sprint”.
The Microsoft boosters cheer Microsoft’s scheme of paying to exclude rivals at Verizon (background in [1, 2, 3]), whereas others are more critical (“Fascinate Fiasco: Is Verizon Blocking Google Search?”).
They just can’t compete, so instead they try to tax Linux-powered phones. “Microsoft Must Make Its Own Phone If Wants To Make Money,” says Business Insider, but Microsoft tried it with “KIN” and it won’t be doing that again. See “Microsoft Isn’t Planning On Making Any More Cellphones” and “Microsoft Has No Plans for Design Another Smartphone – Executive.” It just won’t happen, unless Microsoft is lying yet again.
“An alternative route Microsoft seems to be exploring is entry through acquisition and/or entryism (the cheaper way).”An alternative route Microsoft seems to be exploring is entry through acquisition and/or entryism (the cheaper way). Recall Yahoo! hijack through entryism and see the news about “Microsoft Windows Phone 7 exec leaves for Yahoo” (also covered in [1, 2]). The original report (“Another Former Microsoft Exec to Yahoo, Joining Other Ex-Softies”) says: “He is now SVP of Yahoo’s communications products and communities unit.” Many of his ‘new’ Yahoo colleagues are former colleagues from Microsoft, who helped take over Yahoo! so that it doesn’t need to be acquired in order to be exploited.
“This potential Nokia invasion would require Elop to surround himself with former colleagues from Microsoft (like Maritz in VMware) or sign some new Microsoft deals.”Speaking of entryism, here is the type of articles we alluded to some days ago; it’s titled “Will Microsoft And Nokia Team Up To Take On Apple, Google?” (source: TechCrunch).
This potential Nokia invasion would require Elop to surround himself with former colleagues from Microsoft (like Maritz in VMware) or sign some new Microsoft deals. Nokia soared when the appointment was announced. There are also some suggestions (still) that Microsoft should by RIM. One columnist asked, “Will Steve Ballmer Buy RIM Now Just To Destroy Nokia?”
One financial news site asked, “Should Microsoft buy RIMM?” Another one asked, “How Would You Feel If Microsoft Buys RIM?”
“Microsoft just cannot buy Apple and Google.”Microsoft may need to borrow more money to just duplicate and saturate what it already has (shades of Danger) and have more proprietary software whose market is stagnating due to lack of technical edge anyway. Microsoft just cannot buy Apple and Google. Microsoft was asleep behind the wheel for far too long and investors who pushed for the ousting of Ballmer were mentioning RIM takeover almost 2 years ago (when Microsoft was in less of a desperate state).
RIM has just bought DataViz [1, 2, 3], which significantly reduced chances of RIM planning to be acquired. The question is, will RIM’s ownership of DataViz impact support/availability on other platforms? “DataViz Keeps Documents To Go Updates Coming” says IDG. Oddly enough, one article says “RIM Buys Another Company — This Time To Defend Itself Against Microsoft”
“Joe Wilcox, a former Microsoft watcher, says that IDC and Gartner mobile OS forecasts may not be trustworthy…”Microsoft is hardly its main competition in phones, just in office suites. The thing about Microsoft in mobile is that it is almost irrelevant everywhere in mobile devices (tablets too), it just roars a lot and organises a funeral for BlackBerry rather than for itself.
Going back to Nokia again, the Microsoft boosters have an audiocast about this subject which we covered too much already. Microsoft executive Stephen Elop jumping to Nokia is something which we mentioned in the previous post and well before that. Joe Wilcox, a former Microsoft watcher, says that IDC and Gartner mobile OS forecasts may not be trustworthy (check their clients list because IDC and Gartner have questionable practices). Scepticism withstanding, one writer is saying or rather just asking, “Can Android Be Stopped in the World of Smartphones?” He is confused by IDC and IDG (see cross/strikeout), but they are inherently the same, one is a subset. “Microsoft Faces an Uncertain Future in Search, Mobile OS and Cloud Computing (MSFT)” says another new article and even firms that Microsoft is paying cannot spin in Microsoft’s favour anymore (neither regarding present nor future). Microsoft boosters just admit that “Research firm has low expectations for Windows Phone 7″ (this is Microsoft Nick’s headline).
“Way to spend half a billion dollars marketing a technically bad product!”“Microsoft Struggles to Gain in Mobile Search” says the headline from Murdoch’s press and the advertisements (brainwash) for Microsoft’s mobile business get negative reactions/reviews. Way to spend half a billion dollars marketing a technically bad product!
“Yes, Windows Phone 7 is doomed” says the headline from TG Daily, a site which is usually in favour of Microsoft’s interests. “Because I’m not sure if there is anyone I know who would seriously consider purchasing a Windows-powered phone,” wrote the author. “Seriously, folks, how many people do you see running around proudly flashing their Zunes? “Um, yeah.
” Probably not that many, right?”
“Delays and setbacks are already hitting Vista Phone 7 and it is not helping that Microsoft has been ‘rebooting’ everything, including backward compatibility.”Delays and setbacks are already hitting Vista Phone 7 [1, 2] and it is not helping that Microsoft has been ‘rebooting’ everything, including backward compatibility. “The Windows Phone 7 gives a fresh start to Microsoft,” says this article. Does that make Microsoft a startup contender? Again, this is suicidal and a lot of marketing is the only impact Vista Phone 7 will have. Expect a lot of marketing (as much as Vista 7 marketing, budget-wise). Just how many gullible souls can Microsoft lure into Kin2K? Frankly, in order to save money, Microsoft ought to just cancel this whole product before launch. It does not need to be launched just for the sake of it. Learn from Courier, Microsoft, and spare the money.
Just don’t expect any pornography to attract users to Vista Phone 7. Microsoft is barring that too, just like Apple and unlike Android/Linux/Google. Given that Microsoft starts from 0% market share, is it not too risky and premature to place restrictions on developers? This is gonna be atrocious; both journalists and analysts feel that way too (not necessarily Microsoft PR people or bribed journalists/analysts in this $500,000,000 marketing frenzy). █
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Posted in Microsoft, Standard at 6:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Silverlight is sliding down the toilet, but Flash continues to be a major barrier to reliance on Web standards alone; Nokia’s new CEO (Macromedia COO and then Adobe executive, Microsoft president) seen as a threat to the Web, too
Silverlight dying is a subject we explored quite a lot recently [1, 2]. Techrights was cited quite a lot on these matters and Microsoft entered into “damage control” mode, soon stating that Silverlight is not dead and that it can co-exist with HTML 5 (there were several articles about it this month and that’s just about the only news, except announcement of some third-party products that depend on Silverlight). As we explained a fortnight ago, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is dying/dead and Silverlight seems likely to collapse with it because they are closely tied to one another.
Microsoft's friend suspects that Microsoft will “embrace and extend HTML 5″ in order not to surrender to Web standards that everyone can use. But either way, “In Flash-HTML5 Battle, Silverlight Is the Big Loser,” says this new article. Yes, Adobe Trash is still a major obstacle to Web standards, especially in video streaming.
While Apple and Adobe bicker over whether HTML5 or Flash is the best platform for delivery of video, games and other interactive applications, Silverlight gets nary a mention — even from its own team. And Microsoft itself has increasingly moved to HTML5 for new interactive applications in its products.
The ‘Microsoft press’ desperately craves for Nokia to save Silverlight now that it’s run by a former Microsoft president and has a Silverlight deal. Microsoft — like Adobe — is going against Web standards and it’s rather telling (Adobe circulates a new PR story at the moment, something about HTML). Remember where Microsoft’s president who recently became Nokia’s CEO came from. That’s right, Macromedia.
It is worth working to ensure that Nokia never falls into the trap of promoting a binary Web and dying technology like WPF (like Vista Phone 7 [sic] does). Actually, the subject of the next post will be the impending death of Microsoft’s next mobile venture, which is negatively affected by WPF’s demise. I was rather disappointed to receive the E-mail below 6 days ago because it turns out that some hedge funds foolishly rely on WPF (and .NET), but then again, this is England. Microsoft software thrives the most in English-speaking countries. To the world at large, Silverlight is niche or unheard-of product. █
Hi Roy,
Leading Hedge Fund in West London has a new requirement for a Matlab developer with good technical experience of C# and/or Java.
This role requires solid working knowledge of Matlab and C#/Java, and it would be advantageous to have experience of WPF and .Net. Prior use of TDD would also be beneficial. A strong mathematical background is preferred, however, prior banking experience is not essential.
This role is based in Germany 3 days per week – all accommodation and expenses will be provided. The other two days will be spent on site in West London.
This position is for an initial 6-month contract and is paying up to £500/day dependent upon experience.
[...]
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Posted in Apple, Videos at 6:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“My Interview with Steve Jobs!”
Summary: The rudeness of Steve Jobs helps show that even after his near-death experience the Apple superstar patronises his surroundings
With memorable phrases like “that’s the dumbest fucking idea I’ve heard since I’ve been at Microsoft” and “Fuck! It took you a year to figure that out!”, it ought to be clear that Bill Gates is not the polite guy people see on camera. Likewise, Steve Jobs in not the gentleman people are led to believe that he is (the image of company founders is immensely important to the company’s image and thus performance in terms of sales).
“Now Steve Jobs Is Having An Email Pissing Match with A College Journalism Student,” says this headline about Jobs telling a young lady: “Leave us alone.” Who is “us” anyway?
Steve Jobs is known for replying to random emails sent to his personal Apple email address. Well, a college journalism student from Long Island emailed him about a problem she had with Apple’s PR department. Jobs’ response? “Leave us alone.”
Remember Jobs’ rather menacing or rude response to the FSFE. “A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other “open source” codecs now,” he said.
Apple is a major threat to software freedom and Techrights treats Apple just like it treats any other company that jeopardises computing and turns ingenuity into toys with limited functionality and artificially-elevated/high cost. “Consumer watchdog lambasts Apple’s Iphone 4 rubber band program,” says this new headline from The Inquirer which starts as follows:
SWEEPING MATTERS under the rug only works if everyone forgets about it, but for Iphone 4 antennagate it seems that Consumer Reports isn’t nearly ready to let Apple forget it.
As Apple wraps up its free rubber band giveaway, the US consumer product testing magazine Consumer Reports has come out and fired another salvo at the fruit themed toymaker by repeating its recommendation not to buy the Iphone 4. The outfit also denounced the ‘new’ rubber band program, charging that it is “less consumer-friendly in several respects”.
Apple CEO and cult leader Steve Jobs offered customers a selection of cases in order to overcome the faulty design of the Iphone 4 antenna. Since then, the cappuccino company has laid the groundwork for withdrawing its offer by claiming that the number of those customers affected by the problem was “even smaller than we originally thought”.
“Apple tries to spin its broken Iphone 4,” says another headline from The Inquirer:
FRUIT THEMED Apple is having another go at spinning itself out of the public relations disaster that is the Iphone 4.
After initially pretending that the Iphone 4 dropping calls was all in the imagination of the press and nothing to do with poor design, Apple offered to “fix” the problem by giving users a free rubber band.
At the time it said that it would stop giving anyone a rubber band by September. The assumption was that the problem would be fixed by then.
It is disappointing to see so much attention being paid to minor issues (gossip almost) like Steve Jobs carrying ‘ninja throwing stars’ in hand luggage. From The Register:
Steve Jobs has vowed never to visit Japan again after being prevented from leaving the country with a set of ninja throwing stars, according to a local magazine.
“Steve Jobs no ninja, says Apple” stated a followup from The Register the following day:
Sensei Steve’s supposed double life as a black-clad Japanese assassin was revealed yesterday, when Bloomberg reported a local magazine’s account of the alleged incident.
“Steve Jobs ninja story won’t die on Web” says CNN.
Steve Jobs is apparently not arming himself for ninja warfare.
Apple has found itself in the bizarre position of having to deny that claim this week after a tabloid report that its CEO was stopped at a Japanese airport with ninja throwing stars.
It’s more like gossip and not a big deal [1, 2, 3, 4] although one could argue that Jobs’ obsession with weaponry does not look all that great, even if it’s just a souvenir. █
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