For years, people have accused Microsoft of being an imitator, rather than innovator. Finally there is evidence: The ways Windows Phone 7 Series imitates the very worst of Apple’s iPhone. Unless there is the strangest of coincidences — like two students having the same wrong answers on a high school history test — Microsoft is imitating Apple, using the same strategy to make the same mistakes. It’s either imitation or incompetence, and out of fairness I assume the former.
If rumours are to be believed, the Windows Phone 7 will not support multi-tasking, at least for third party applications, no removable storage, no copy-cut-and-paste and will have an application store that will only feature Microsoft approved apps. Does this sound familiar? It is just as if Microsoft used a 3D scanner and a 3D printer to create the exact same device from the fruit company.
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I am waiting for consumers to criticize this new OS from Microsoft – the same way they criticized the iPhone. Android lovers will still find their OS to be “superior” because of its third-party background app support.
Microsoft fails quite badly when it tries to sell something other than just software; it fails not just in technical terms but in business terms too. The monopoly abuser uses these toys to lure young people, but that’s about it. Not many buyers accept hardware from Microsoft. “Microsoft Surface is vapourware” is the title of this post, which turns out to be more like a Microsoft advertisement. Surface never sold in a sizable number, so it’s a business failure. Microsoft is removing negative technical reviews of the Surface, so it’s not so easy to find them.
Damning with faint praise Tretton said that Natal was a “pretty big idea” and if punters really want to play with a camera they might like to buy a $99 PS2 and play some of the great technology “we invented eight years ago.”
Microsoft has already admitted that Windows Mobile too (now renamed to escape its bad reputation) is an attempt to copy other companies’ products. Microsoft is still not innovating, it’s just observing what others do and then markets its copycats mercilessly. History can be rewritten later when the victims die and cannot defend themselves (or preserve the true story). █
“I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating systems.”
If you’re a recent Linux convert, you’ve probably noticed you cannot install iTunes on your new system. That doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy your favorite podcasts anymore – there is plenty of Linux podcast software available that are capable of managing and downloading podcasts.
Rhythmbox, Banshee and Amarok all include built-in podcast management, as do a number of other Linux media library applications. I’m not interested in using my music player to download music, however I want a program that does podcasts and only podcasts. If you feel the same way keep reading – here are three lightweight podcast managers for Linux.
This week on Linux Outlaws: Mini-review of the new Crunchbang, is the Palm Pre dead?, Nexuiz is forked, lots of Microsoft sillyness and a Steve Jobs cheese sculpture…
As Laptop Magazine recently discovered, Mobinnova, an upstart smartphone and soon-to-be notebook producer, has dropped Windows CE in favor of Android for its upcoming Mobinnova Beam.
Igel announced a new all-in-one thin client that runs Linux. The UD9 includes a 21.5-inch display, a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, plus an optional touchscreen, wireless networking, and a smart card reader, the company says.
Yes, make no mistake. You can have all the advantages: cost effectiveness, speed, a clever use of hardware resources. But where the migrations fail, it is in human beings. And how does this happen??
FatRat comes with many very interesting options. For one, it can download from HTTP(S)/FTP, RapidShare free and even YouTube. But FatRat can also download torrents, (it has BitTorrent support) has RSS feed support + special functions for TV shows and podcasts, support for SOCKS5 and HTTP proxies and even remote control via Jabber and a web interface and of course, a scheduler. FatRat has way to many options to list them here so check it out for yourself by installing FatRat (instructions further down).
First off you need to download Memtest and I would suggest burning the bootable ISO image onto a CD. That is perhaps the easiest way to use Memtest. Owing to its popularity and usefulness, Memtest is also included on a number of Live CDs including the likes of Ubuntu and System Rescue CD.
Booting. Sometimes it seems like it takes forever. What’s the computer doing all that time? How do you find out?
The Linux boot sequence is surprisingly simple, and the best part is that almost all of it is controlled by shell scripts you can read — and even edit yourself.
While TiddlyWiki is probably the most popular desktop wiki out there, it’s not the only fish in the sea. And if you don’t fancy TiddlyWiki’s approach to managing content, or you are looking for a desktop wiki that can help you to manage not only your notes but also appointments and contacts, then you might want to try Wiki in a Jar.
The best, refined blend of GNU/Linux, coming with bleeding edge edges is eventually here! Say hello to Sabayon Five-point-Twoh, available in both GNOME and KDE editions!
Can you install Debian with the live image? I’m not sure you can. There is some talk about modifying the running live system to invoke the installer, but it looks like you’re better off grabbing a Squeeze image and creating a real Debian install disc, whether it be the first full CD, a DVD or even Blu-ray image, or a much-smaller network-install or business-card install image (the latter two which I favor, since the newest packages are pulled from the repository and you don’t need to do a massive update right out of the box).
It’s true, I’ve given Ubuntu a thrashing from time to time, but it was deserved. (See Hey Ubuntu, Stop Making Linux Look Bad and Two Simple Suggestions for Ubuntu) Now, it deserves a little of something else.
Last week the first Beta of Ubuntu 10.04 was released, providing a solid glimpse of what will comprise the final release in a month’s time. It looks damn good.
I have the beta of the latest Ubuntu on a spare partition on my HD, mainly out of curiosity. My impressions in one sentence:
“Looks okay, but it’s not for me.”
Basically, the same reaction as I have to Windows 7 and Mac OS X.
The install was fast and painless, boot times up to GDM were quick (quicker than my main Arch install, even), but Ubuntu’s GNOME is as slow as ever and starts a load of services I don’t need (bluetooth? I don’t even have bluetooth hardware in my PC), but deselecting them doesn’t seem to make any difference.
It’s one small step for Dell, and one big strategic win for Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux cloud strategy. Specifically, Dell on March 24 said it would support Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) as an infrastructure solution. Apparently, Canonical and Dell have been developing this UEC relationship for more than six months. Here are the details and the implications for channel partners.
Looking at this list it makes me wonder if I have a good reason to stick with Ubuntu, and the conclusion is I don’t, I could switch to an alternative distribution, DEB based, RPM based, Slackware or any other kind that’s out there but I like to think I give back to the Ubuntu community by way of my How to compile your custom Kernel articles and my Git repository. For now I’ll stick with Ubuntu and yes I will be updating to Lucid Lynx when it comes out.
Last week we published benchmarks looking at the ATI Radeon KMS vs. UMS performance and found the user-space mode-setting support with the ATI driver (that is also limited to using DRI1 with these older code-paths) to perform significantly faster than the newer kernel mode-setting routes in most instances. To see how the performance difference is on the Intel side between the kernel mode-setting and user-space mode-setting implementations we ran a set of benchmarks on this side as well using Ubuntu 10.04.
Franklin Wireless Corp. announced two mobile WiFi hotspot routers based on embedded Linux that each weigh only 2.46 ounces. The R526 shares CDMA 1x EVDO Rev. A+ bandwidth with WiFi clients while the R536 WiMAX Wave II shares WiMAX connectivity, says the company.
Opengear announced a new version of its Linux-based ACM5000 line of serial device servers, claimed to be the first to offer remote monitoring over 3G cellular network devices. The ACM5004-G is equipped with four serial ports, an Ethernet port, and a USB port, and supports EDGE, GPRS, GSM, HSDA and HSUPA networks.
…4G smartphone slated to come to market, the Android-powered handset boasts some serious specs, which is fueling a frenzy of positive posts in the days since it was unveiled. A full list of HTC Evo 4G features is at the Sprint Web site, but the features making the geeks go ga-ga include: Android 2.1 OS, a QualComm SnapDragon 1Ghz processor, a 4.3-inch touchscreen, HTC Sense UI, 8-megapixel auto-focus camera with HD-capable video camcorder and a forward-facing 1.3-megapixel camera, built-in mobile hotspot functionality allowing for eight wireless devices, live video sharing with Qik, 1GB of built-in memory and 512 MB RAM, in addition to all the typical smartphone specs we’ve come to expect.
Open Kernel Labs (OK Labs) announced the availability of a mobile virtualization reference platform for its Android version of the OKL4 microkernel hypervisor (“Microvisor”). The Android “One Core” platform appears to be the first implementation of version 4.0 of OKL4, which offers security and performance enhancements, says the company.
Fusion Garage is shipping a the Linux-based tablet formerly known as the CrunchPad. Rights to the “JooJoo” are still being legally contested by TechCrunch, which claims to have co-developed the device, but the 12.1-inch tablet is available anyway for $500, complete with a 4GB solid state drive (SSD), WiFi, Bluetooth, and a nine-second boot-time.
The category of collaboration software is growing and changing quickly, encompassing fields like CRM dashboards, enterprise intelligence and analytics. In this category, the very nature of open source software gives it a clear advantage. It doesn’t seek to own the platform, the protocol, the exchange format or the community.
Open source is no longer considered the wild underdog, but it will need more new companies making money off the trend, the one-time CEO of MySQL stressed Wednesday at the EclipseCon 2010 conference.
Miro, the open source Internet TV / podcast downloader and player, has been updated to version 3.0 and is now able to display embedded or standalone subtitles for videos. When a video is playing in Miro 3, a drop down menu displays any automatically located subtitles. Alternatively, the user can select their own subtitle files.
Part of Mozilla’s appeal is its library of extensions. Users can easily find extensions ranging from business integration to social networks that extend the functionality of the browser far beyond its default installation. Extensions can’t be underestimated. If users can find value in their extensions, they won’t leave Firefox. It’s a major advantage to have as Microsoft is losing its own users.
3. It’s open source
Although the average, mainstream user might not care about Mozilla being open source, it really does matter. Open-source software is widely considered superior to closed applications, thanks to the ability for the entire community to work on improving a single piece of software. Closed software, like Internet Explorer, is a different story altogether. Since it’s closed software that only Microsoft can work on, it lacks the benefit of having thousands of eyes working on improving it. The browser is also a major target for hackers.
Oracle’s decision to limit Solaris 10′s free usage to 90 days could be a boon for Linux vendors
Recent changes to Solaris licensing could further encourage Solaris 10 users to consider Linux — and result in fewer new users considering Solaris at all. If you’re a Solaris customer, don’t overlook this license change.
The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team this week put out the FreeBSD 7.3 release which is about four months after FreeBSD 8 was released.
FreeBSD is known as a solid, stable and reliable open source operating system. It should come as no surprise then that many users of FreeBSD don’t jump to the next major version number right when it becomes available, but rather stay with the legacy version for a while.
Project GNU urges people working on free software to follow standards and guidelines for universal accessibility on GNU/Linux and other free operating systems. Multi-platform projects should use the cross platform accessibility interfaces available that include GNU/Linux distributions and the GNOME desktop. Project GNU also advises developers of web sites to follow the guidelines set forth by the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Accessibility Initiative.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about HTML5 and whether Flash is in it for the long haul. Word on the street is that HTML5 will be able to deliver rich content without the need for a proprietary plugin clogging up your Web browser.
Such patients have difficulty processing social emotions such as empathy or embarrassment, but “they have perfectly intact capacity for reasoning and other cognitive functions,” says Young.
A 2007 study by Damasio, Young and their colleagues showed that such patients are more willing than non-brain-damaged adults to judge killing or harming another person as morally permissible if doing so would save others’ lives. That led the researchers to suspect that the brain-damaged patients lacked appropriate emotional responses to moral harms and relied instead on calculating, rational approach to moral dilemmas.
A Russian awarded $1million (£666,000) for solving one of the most intractable problems in mathematics said yesterday that he does not want the money.
Said to be the world’s cleverest man, Dr Grigory Perelman, 44, lives as a recluse in a bare cockroach-infested flat in St Petersburg. He said through the closed door: ‘I have all I want.’
The prize was given by the U.S. Clay Mathematics Institute for solving the Poincare Conjecture, which baffled mathematicians for a century. Dr Perelman posted his solution on the internet.
Four years ago, the maths genius failed to turn up to receive his prestigious Fields Medal from the International Mathematical Union for solving the problem.
At the time he stated: ‘I’m not interested in money or fame. I don’t want to be on display like an animal in a zoo.
When his wife was diagnosed with a hereditary disease, Peter Johnson wanted to help. Using a program called Folding @ Home, he found a way to make a difference — by doing genetic research on his home computer. Due to the sensitive nature of his wife’s illness, Peter requested that his last name is changed for the purpose of this story to protect his family’s privacy.
I really really really wasn’t going to write this post, but so many people kept submitting it, I figured it needed to be done. The Telegraph has some ridiculous story claiming, without any actual evidence, that Facebook is “linked to the rise in syphilis.” Quite a claim. The evidence? Oh, that’s not included.
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So, yes, you have a bit of weak correlation combined with self-selected anecdotal bias. And that proves what? Uh, absolutely nothing.
If you tell your browser to ignore certain things on a website, that should be your choice. This add-on is there to help people who want it, such that it makes Facebook more useful to them. It’s too bad that as Facebook gets bigger, we’re hearing more and more stories of this kind of bullying activity.
IN WHAT MUST BE bad news for Gary McKinnon’s defence team a US court has dismissed Asperger’s syndrome as a hacking defence and thrown the book at Albert Gonzalez.
At present it is the NHS patient records system that is muddled between paper and online records – but this could change very soon. As we make clear in the report, the Government’s National Programme for IT (NPfIT) is slowly rolling-out across the country at great expense and, as was revealed by the British Medical Association (BMA) earlier this month, with very little regard for patient privacy.
To read about the full horrors of this system, please do head to The Big Opt Out – the website of the NHS Confidentiality campaign, which was set up to protect patient confidentiality and to provide a focus for patient-led opposition the government’s NHS Care Records System.
Mekki sez, “The city of Ottawa has launched a security campaign funded by Transport Canada (federally) that asks people to report any ‘suspicious behaviour’, which includes photographers and sketchers. They explicitly list ‘An individual taking photos or pictures [...], drawing maps or sketches’ as things to report. My friend Sarah Gelbard teaches in the Architecture department at Carleton University in Ottawa. She had her students do a project on transit in the city last year. They all went to transit stations and took reference pictures to help plan out their projects. Security stopped and questioned several of them. And this was before this new campaign. I’m afraid what might happen now if people started calling in the “suspicious behaviour” of students taking photos of a transit station.”
For nearly 30 years, India and Bangladesh have argued over control of a tiny rock island in the Bay of Bengal. Now rising sea levels have resolved the dispute for them: the island’s gone.
Heartland, a N.J.-based provider of credit and debit card processing services said that unknown intruders had broken into its systems sometime last year and planted malicious software to steal card data carried on the company’s networks. The company, which is among the largest payment processors in the country, claimed to have discovered the intrusion only last week after being alerted by Visa and MasterCard of suspicious activity.
China has sent 1.4m tonnes of emergency grain supplies to drought-stricken southern provinces that are struggling to cope with the worst drought in decades, the local media reported today.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported that 147 comments were submitted to the government on its proposal to begin blocking certain Web sites – particularly those that present harm to children.
Over the last few years, WikiLeaks has been the subject of hostile acts by security organizations. In the developing world, these range from the appalling assassination of two related human rights lawyers in Nairobi last March (an armed attack on my compound there in 2007 is still unattributed) to an unsuccessful mass attack by Chinese computers on our servers in Stockholm, after we published photos of murders in Tibet. In the West this has ranged from the overt, the head of Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, threatening to prosecute us unless we removed a report on CIA activity in Kosovo, to the covert, to an ambush by a “James Bond” character in a Luxembourg car park, an event that ended with a mere “we think it would be in your interest to…”.
Thanks to the recent PRO-IP Act, the US has for the first time has an “Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator” responsible for pulling together all the resources of the federal government. What should the IPEC be doing with her time and resources? The “core content industries” have an answer: she should turn the online world from a “thieves’ bazaar to a safe and well-lit marketplace” by encouraging network admins to deploy bandwidth shaping, site blocking, traffic filters, watermark detectors, and deep packet inspection.
Perhaps the most common mistake that paywall supporters make is forgetting that people haven’t paid for the news in 180 years. Newspaper readers used to pay for paper, ink, trucks and delivery boys—and often barely paid enough to cover that bill. Now they pay for internet connections instead. Then and now, the reader only pays for access—advertising always has and will continue to pay for everything else.
How exactly Hammonton will enforce a copyright of a public meeting baffles this author, but looks forward to seeing the explanation in Council. Remember, any production by the Town of Hammonton is paid for by public dollars and owned by the public.
The much-criticized cloak of secrecy that has surrounded the Obama administration’s negotiation of the multilateral Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement was broken Wednesday. The leaked draft of ACTA belies the U.S. trade representative’s assertions that the agreement would not alter U.S. intellectual property law. And it raises the stakes on the constitutionally dubious method by which the administration proposes to make the agreement binding on the United States.
After speaking with people in or close to the negotiations, European Commission and Spanish Presidency of the EU, this is some of what I have gathered despite dealing with very tight-lipped people:
1. The negotiations are not going that well and many issues are still wide open. It is doubtful they could wrap up soon.
2. There is a significant problem in making US and EU legislation compatible on a number of issues. One of the important topics of contention, but not the only one, is probably the differences between US “fair use” and the “commercial scale”, term the EU negotiators seem adamant on leaving very ambiguous to be interpreted later a la carte, even with all the risks involved.
As well they should. This is a point that we’ve raised repeatedly, noting not just the similarities between the methods used for censorship in authoritarian countries and ACTA, but also in the way that those countries will almost certainly use ACTA to justify their own censorship.
The controversial digital economy bill will be pushed through in the “wash-up” leading up to an election, after the government confirmed that it will receive its second reading in the Commons on 6 April – the same day that Gordon Brown is expected to seek Parliament’s dissolution.
Summary: Firefox is the latest project to quit developing for Windows gadgets
MICROSOFT’S mobile business is in shambles and major vendors gradually abandon it (with recent examples like Skype and Adobe). The latest exit from Windows Mobile is Firefox [1, 2, 3]. The H says:
Mozilla’s Mobile Team Technical Lead, Stuart Parmenter, has announced that Mozilla have put development of Firefox for Windows Mobile, also known as Fennec, on hold. Parmenter explained in a blog posting that although development on Firefox for Windows Mobile 6 and 6.5 had been progressing, the announcement of Windows Phone 7 Series by Microsoft – and Microsoft’s closing off of native development for that platform – meant that it would not be possible to bring Firefox for Windows Mobile to Windows Phone 7 Series. Parmenter said “Given that Microsoft are staking their future in mobile on Windows Mobile 7 (not 6.5) and because we don’t know if or when Microsoft will release a native development kit, we are putting our Windows Mobile development on hold”.
Microsoft abandoned backward compatibility and it costs the product dearly. “Mozilla drops Windows Mobile because it no longer matters,” says the “open source” ZDNet blog. Sadly, in another new post, this same ZDNet blog does not properly discredit"open core" (as we last showed yesterday, neither do some others), which is not “open source” and is in fact a big threat to it. But that’s another story altogether. Microsoft wants modify “open source” by entering its community.
Microsoft is getting very weak these days (not much good news for the company, at least judging by aggregators) and it has succumbed to using suppressive tyrants and political cronies to achieve goals, as we showed just hours ago. Expulsion of these becomes necessary because corruption cannot be resolved through negotiations and kindness. █
Not really, says McLaughlin, a Certified Information Security Professional and CIO of CNL Bank. Accessing online banking from your everyday PC is just asking for trouble, he says.
In fact, the CIO of the Orlando, Florida-based regional bank would like to see all of his customers – both consumers and businesses – access online banking either from a dedicated machine or from a self-booting CD-ROM running Ubuntu Linux and Firefox.
Windows defenders like to claim that all other operating systems would have just as much trouble if they were as popular as desktop Windows is. They’re wrong of course. Windows was designed as a single user operating system and to make it easy for applications to share data. That single-user, no IPC (interprocess communication) DNA remains in Windows to this day. That said, they do have a point, which is why I like to say that Windows has a “Boll Weevil” problem.
If you’re still running applications that are IE6-specific, you have to dump them. You’re doing your customers a disservice by requiring them to use a Web browser that’s infamous for its lack of security and is clearly on its way to the trash can. The sooner every company dumps support for IE6 and starts requiring that its Web applications can work with any generic HTML 4-compliant Web browser the better.
Even though over 80% of email users are aware of the existence of bots, tens of millions respond to spam in ways that could leave them vulnerable to a malware infection, according to a Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) survey.
Summary: Microsoft’s entryism in the European Commission is explained by David Hammerstein and other developments in Europe serve as a practical reminder
We have already written extensively about what Microsoft did to Neelie Kroes and what happened as a result. She turned against open standards and fell for software patents [1, 2] in a continent where these are illegal. But Kroes is just one example amongst others in the Commission [1, 2]. Microsoft became a political vendor, not a software vendor. At stake: our democracy.
Mr. David Hammerstein, who describes himself as “European Advocate for Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue [and] Spanish Green Member European Parliament 2004-2009″ is now saying that “Kroes has been under intense lobbying pressure from Microsoft to get rid of interoperability and open source goals of EU” and also he adds that “Kroes wanted the EU institutions to practice what it preaches and migrate to open standards in its own software. Big backlash.”
“DG enterprise and “revolving door” EC officials from Microsoft torpedo Commissioner Kroes open proposals.” –David HammersteinIn what he described as “revolving door” (we heard this term a lot in relation to Monsanto’s corruption of governments), Hammerstein lays the blame. “DG enterprise and “revolving door” EC officials from Microsoft torpedo Commissioner Kroes open proposals.
Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz now has a third board seat she can fill. John Chapple, the president of PE firm Hawkeye Investments (and the former CEO of Nextel) won’t stand for re-election in order “to devote more time to his other business interests.”
This would never have happened if Microsoft hadn’t demolished the company from within in order to ‘steal’ its users and disrupt its agenda which was sometimes beneficial to Free software (BSD and PHP for example).
Speaking of Microsoft entryism in Europe, an Italian activist who insists on using ODF in his country was recently met by resistance and FUD from Microsoft (yes, Microsoft is still fighting against ODF). Now he writes about a similar scandal that discourages use of standards in Italy. He calls it “Cash for software clunkers”.
Replacing a software program with its latest version, that is continuing to do the same things as before in a computer window with a different color, would do little to solve the italian ICT crisis. However, thinking about it, maybe there is a way to “dismiss software clunkers” that may bring lots of work to italian programmers and make their customers and all taxpayers save much more money than any other incentive program. What if the Government said “within 2/3 years all Public Administrations will cease to accept, produce, archive or distribute new digital documents in closed formats, since they create so many problems, and to use proprietary digital protocols”.
The italian Government already considers closed the formats of Microsoft Office and those of many other programs currently used by italian PAs. Therefore, probably this approach would not be loved by Assinform members like Microsoft: in 2007 Assinform had even stated in a press release that all technical standards on the market should be considered equally valid, without prejudices. This, however, is the same “file format neutrality” that Microsoft promotes without giving enough information.
Imposing certain obligations on the italian PAs is like imposing it on every organization or individual that must communicate with them. Sure, doing so would cause a sort of earthquake, but one that would have, at least in the medium/long term, beneficial consequences both for italian programmers and for the italian economy as a whole. Because the obligation to only use open formats and protocols would not just create a lot of real work. Due to their own nature, these technologies would make it possible for all ICT companies, regardless of their size, to compete on a fair ground, without paying royalties abroad. Open formats and protocols would also allow all public and private users to use the software they really need, not the one that somebody else wants them to buy. I’ll welcome a “cash for software clunkers” program, but only if cash will only be given to organizations that will commit to stop production of documents in proprietary formats.
Summary: Why the article that exposed Miguel de Icaza’s views was removed and why his defense of spin on these views is utterly flawed
WE are not fans of SD Times, especially because the repeated promotion of Microsoft software and partly because of the Mono apology and sometimes honesty, which magically vanished [1, 2], only to be resurrected in several places. We expected to see those involved pretending that it was “an accident” (we even wrote this when we reasoned about the nature of the apparent censorship), but it was not an accident.
Miguel de Icaza has posted this long ramble praising Microsoft and denying things that he said (not by words but intention/context). From the comments we have this remark from David Worthington, who wrote the original article:
Miguel – I did write this as a single story that was broken up for print and the Web. It has since been merged back together, and this blog is linked in the story. Sorry for any misunderstanding, as I believe your comments were fair and balanced.
Worthington, for those who do not know [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], has been in contact with Microsoft employees and boosters like the Yankee Group since he had lunch with Microsoft executives and shortly later he also visited Microsoft’s and Novell’s facilities. Not surprisingly, Worthington therefore repeated a lot of Microsoft disinformation about ODF and other issues like the Microsoft/Novell deal. They are probably just grooming and using him to spin and to warp the ‘reality’ in their favour, so frankly, he could be the innocent one being manipulated without his awareness.
“Miguel de Icaza and his followers, some of whom are from Microsoft, have been attacking Groklaw, Jeremy Allison, and Boycott Novell like creationists sometimes attack or terrorise scientists.”But in any event, the latest quotes from Miguel de Icaza say quite a lot (he does not deny them). As someone in Slashdot pointed out, “When Stallman said the same thing, de Icaza called him a fanatic. Well, most voices on /. called him the same thing. He was right then like he was right with his movement from the start. You can’t have half-measures.”
Miguel de Icaza and his followers, some of whom are from Microsoft, have been attacking Groklaw, Jeremy Allison, and Boycott Novell like creationists sometimes attack or terrorise scientists. They attacked anything and anyone who ‘dared’ to warn about the dangers of Mono — dangers whose existence is confirmed by Miguel de Icaza himself.
The Source breaks apart Miguel’s apology in an excellent way, so check out the entire post which begins with an explanation of how the censorship came about and how it was covered up:
Aspect the First: The Disappearance
The “disappearance” is explained by Mr. Worthington (the article author) on Twitter as so:
on my recent .net evolution stories – nothing was pulled. they were just merged into one. http://www.sdtimes.com/link/34183
Mr. Alan Zeichick, the editorial director of BZ Media explains it here on this blog in a comment as so:
My apologies — the story is not “taken down” from sdtimes.com, and there’s nothing nefarious going on.
The story had been erroneously posted in several small pieces. When we saw the error, we reassembled it on Mar. 23. The entire piece, including that complete section (about hallway down), is at http://www.sdtimes.com/link/34183
I don’t know the workings of a media empire. I only know when I tried to verify the quotes, they were not to be found in any article.
There’s some strange things to me about the SD Times article:
* It’s strange timing that the article “disappeared”, a lot of people noticed, and then it “re-appeared”.
* It’s strange the article dates are 7 days apart and the Mar. 17 article was “rolled back” into the Mar. 10 article.
* It’s strange that the “entire piece” is the longest thing by far Mr. Worthington has ever written for SD Times.[1]
* It’s strange that the whole “out of context” defense popped up – more on that in a bit.
But strange things do happen sometimes – so let’s move on.
Aspect the Second: The Quotes
Since Mr. de Icaza has claimed ownership of the quotes, we can dig into the juicy stuff! That’s all I wanted to do anyway!
In his blog, Mr. de Icaza starts off his explanation:
It seems that David’s article on Windows strategy tax on .NET lacked enough context for my actual quotes in there.
But on Twitter, Mr. de Icaza seems to think the article was excellent:
@dcworthington I am in whole agreement with you there; Btw I loved the article, good balance.
It sounds almost like they colluded in publication, but as we have shown before, Microsoft and Novell also fed this author with “scoops” and “connections”. Very unprofessional. Very damaging to the freedom of software, too. When journalists become the mere extension of corporations, then it’s not journalism, it's PR. █
Update: Bruce Byfield has just responded to this and he took Mono’s side, as usual. We insist that our observations are accurate (and not been proven otherwise), but opponents just attempted to paint it with the "conspiracy" brush that Byfield uses, as usual, as if the use of words would make his side victorious. He also says “sworn enemy” and other weasel terms, then concludes with “Move Along — Nothing to See Here”. In several years of seeing SD Times articles I have only once before seen an article vanishing (that I can recall) and it was also about Microsoft/Novell. As for Byfield, he has been consistent with his defense of Novell, Mono, and sometimes Microsoft apologism (e.g. OOXML).
Summary: Another guest post from a Boycott Novell contributor based in China
Just why shouldn’t “human rights” be a good enough reason for Microsoft to join Google’s “don’t be evil” business principles, or has “profiteering” become the most important and only reason for Microsoft to be in business today?
Corazón Aquino democratic President of the Philippines got it right when she said, “Freedom of expression, in particular, freedom of the press, guarantees popular participation in the decisions and actions of government, and popular participation is the essence of our democracy.”
However, using the words of the Chinese Communist Party, “China does not need democracy, or democracy does not fit China”. But since they consider Taiwan a part of China, as a province, didn’t Taiwan already have democracy?
Isn’t Taiwan’s president elected? Hasn’t Taiwan implemented a multi-party system? Isn’t freedom of the press and speech already existent in Taiwan? Taiwan’s existence signifies that Chinese can have democracy.
So how does the CCP spread its “culture of influence” upon the world, using labels that evoke positive images, by confusing reality; for instance, it has attached the label of “patriotism” to “supporting the CCP” instead of “supporting China.”
Does “anti-CCP” really mean “anti-China”?
Is the CCP actually necessary for China’s growth and prosperity?
Why shouldn’t China be a democratic, free and “morally conscious” new China?
If anyone has doubts about what the Chinese Communist Party values are, see for yourself in the manner to which they deny the people their actual true experiences from being heard in the media…
Translated Orders by the Chinese Communist Regime on Reporting “Google.cn” News in China Media Outlets
Originated from: Li Wufeng (李伍峰), Bureau Chief of the State Council Information Office Internet Affairs Bureau
All chief editors and managers:
Google has officially announced its withdrawal from the China market. This is a high-impact incident. It has triggered netizens’ discussions which are not limited to a commercial level. Therefore please pay strict attention to the following content requirements during this period:
A. News Section
1. Only use Central Government main media (website) content; do not use content from other sources
2. Reposting must not change title
3. News recommendations should refer to Central government main media websites
4. Do not produce relevant topic pages; do not set discussion sessions; do not conduct related investigative reporting;
5. Online programs with experts and scholars on this matter must apply for permission ahead of time. This type of self-initiated program production is strictly forbidden.
6. Carefully manage the commentary posts under news items.
B. Forums, blogs and other interactive media sections:
1. It is not permitted to hold discussions or investigations on the Google topic
2. Interactive sections do not recommend this topic, do not place this topic and related comments at the top
3. All websites please clean up text, images and sound and videos which attack the Party, State, government agencies, Internet policies with the excuse of this event.
4. All websites please clean up text, images and sound and videos which support Google, dedicate flowers to Google, ask Google to stay, cheer for Google and others have a different tune from government policy
5. On topics related to Google, carefully manage the information in exchanges, comments and other interactive sessions
6. Chief managers in different regions please assign specific manpower to monitor Google-related information; if there is information about mass incidents, please report it in a timely manner.
We ask the Monitoring and Control Group to immediately follow up monitoring and control actions along the above directions; once any problems are discovered, please communicate with respected sessions in a timely manner.
More than 2,000 years ago, Confucius said: “A man of noble character remains composed and continues to follow principles even in a difficult situation; a villain, on the contrary, becomes flustered and would commit all kinds of wrongdoing.” Even when suffering the loss of money and harm to one’s practical interests, one must uphold principles. Freedom is not free. – Epoch Times News Group
“All business issues are related to political issues, and in the end, every important political and social issue has relevance to business!”
Just when does it become personal, enough for everyone to take a stand in favor of those suffering, our brothers and sisters, to be without their human rights, when it’s your own businesses, such as Microsoft, which are fully supporting in compliance the repressive regime’s oppression of the people?
Just what are Microsoft’s core values – NOT what the business achieved (as a monopoly), but what it stands for?
Why is Microsoft NOT supporting its own people at home, by evading its own taxes under the Washington State laws, instead of supporting the Communist regime laws of a foreign country without debate or discussion? See for yourself how Microsoft is tax dodging the good State of Washington: http://microsofttaxdodge.com█
Posted in Microsoft, Novell at 5:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Susan Heystee, who was part of the glue between Microsoft and Novell, is leaving to join Telogis
IT is difficult to determine whether Heystee decided to quit or was laid off, but what we do know is that she immediately moved to another job at another company, which suggests the former possibility. For those who do not know, Heystee was Novell’s General Manager who was close to Microsoft [1, 2]. You can hear her talking about the deal in some old audio and a recent video where she speaks with Microsoft (there are several of these).
Heystee joins Telogis from global infrastructure software vendor, Novell, where she was a member of Novell’s Executive leadership team. Most recently she served as vice president, general manager, global strategic alliances and was responsible for leading Novell’s strategic partner business covering global relationships with Microsoft, SAP, VMware, Accenture, Dell, HP, IBM and Cisco as well as Intel and AMD.
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