08.07.09
Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Mono, Novell at 11:36 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: New example of Mono hypocrisy
THERE was a degree of hostility between Tomboy and Gnote. Part of it was to do with licensing issues (one complainer was Jo Shields), but as the following shows nicely, it would be hypocritical for Mono proponents to whine about this from now on.
The announcement that there is now a “line-by-line port of Sqlite to C#” is travelling around all the planets.
[...]
Note that the licensing has changed to from Sqlite as well! Scandalous!
[...]
So, will we be seeing those apologies and corrections for the reaction to Gnote yet? How about a round of good old-fashioned personal attacks and assigning malicious motives for the author of csharp-sqlite? I’ll be right here holding my breath. Good thing I quit smoking, no?
In other Mono news, the Microsoft-friendly Gavin Clarke writes about Novell bringing Mono to iPhone. It’s wonderful news to Microsoft. █
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Posted in Finance, Microsoft, Vista, Vista 7, Windows at 11:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft carries on shrinking and the product that it’s hinging its hopes on is a dud
THIS FATE of 2,000+ jobs of is not exactly news because we wrote about it back in June, but the news is that Publicis is most likely to absorb 2,000+ jobs, which will be deducted from Microsoft’s headcount. This is part of the ongoing deflation that we find in Microsoft, which is also axing many products and borrowing money.
French advertising company Publicis Groupe is in the lead to buy Microsoft Corp.’s digital ad agency, Razorfish, according to people familiar with the matter.
Steve Ballmer, like Microsoft in general, keeps shouting about Vista 7 as though it is the Second Coming which will rescue Microsoft amid serious trouble. It won't happen.
It is very important to pay attention to Microsoft’s Vista 7 hype. It is not natural hype, as we last pointed out last night because others agree. We call it “Vista 7″ because it is just another Vista. Less than a year ago, Steve Ballmer said: “[W]e’re not going to have products that are much more successful than Vista has been.”
“Microsoft is trying to associate the next operating system with premium hardware that’s not even new…”Ziff Davis has been hyping up Windows Vista in exchange for payments from Microsoft and ZDNet, which has (or had) a complex relationship with Ziff Davis, published the following article not so long ago: “Windows 7: A better Vista?”
The Ziff Davis publication known as Microsoft Watch is one that we mentioned a few days ago because of bias. In recent days, Microsoft Watch has been participating a great deal in the artificial hype behind Vista 7, with postings such as this one. As it says in the comments, “[S]ince Seven is just “a better Vista” according to Steve Ballmer, it most likely will not work on most of the older computers out there running XP now. So you can save some bucks by not running out and buying this bloatware for the old computer, unless you are already stuck with Vista. Then again one could try out and use Linux for free at distrowatch.com.”
There is another brand new buzz-generating posting from Microsoft Watch. It’s one of those very typical attempts to make something out of an operating system that lacks added value, so hardware is used to complement the software side. Microsoft is trying to associate the next operating system with premium hardware that’s not even new — in this case tablet PCs, which failed badly as Origami and Vistagami clearly showed. There is a funny comment there which states the obvious:
Talbet is just another form factor for touchscreen. More marketing.
MS is on the decline, as such eweek needs to rethink its approach to news.
If the operating system is worthless, then trying to make people associate it with expensive and fun hardware is all that remains for marketing. Microsoft only requires some ‘carriers’ in the press who will pass it as “news”.
There is no compelling reason to touch Vista 7, surely not for its ability to virtualise XP just as one can virtualise GNU/Linux. It’s not even pragmatic because virtual machines are resource hungry. This has “disaster” written all over it, but pricey perception management [1, 2, 3] makes it difficult to believe. █
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Posted in Courtroom, GNU/Linux, IBM, Law, Microsoft, Novell, SCO, TomTom, UNIX at 10:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“…Microsoft wished to promote SCO and its pending lawsuit against IBM and the Linux operating system. But Microsoft did not want to be seen as attacking IBM or Linux.”
–Larry Goldfarb, Baystar, key investor in SCO
Summary: As the SCO lawsuit falls deeper into oblivion, it is worth relating this to existing new lawsuits (TomTom and Melco, both settled)
YESTERDAY we came across this curious comment about Microsoft, which said: “if/when their revenue get down far enough… i will expect to see more lawsuits being initiated by MS…. when that start to happen.. MS will have officially “jumped the shark” as they say..“
Based on Larry Goldfarb’s testimony (under oath), it seems safe to say that Microsoft has at the very least funneled money into SCO. Whether Microsoft is also responsible (in part) for initiating the SCO lawsuit is a separate question which we can only speculate about based on circumstantial evidence.
Apart from that, many reporters seem to have not paid attention to Microsoft’s lawsuits against TomTom and against Melco. Both lawsuits were against Linux and they came directly from Microsoft. They came at a stage when SCO was too deep inside a hole, so its ‘FUD factor’ was pretty much annulled. For those who have not been following the SCO saga as of late, in chronological order we have:
With all these scandals behind, it turns out that unXis will not be allowed to buy SCO’s assets after all. From The Register:
A US judge has blocked SCO’s attempt to sell off part of its business in order to fund its ongoing litigation, and appointed a Chapter 11 trustee to oversee the company’s next moves.
SCO was hoping to sell off some of its assets, in order to fund its court battle against IBM and Novell for claimed Linux licenses. For its part, SCO said it was glad not to be pushed into Chapter 7 – full liquidation of the firm.
[...]
Support from Microsoft added to suspicions that the case was designed to put litigation-wary enterprises off using Linux.
The next stage was this appointment of bankruptcy trustee
In the latest development to emerge from the sordid SCO saga, a bankruptcy judge has blocked SCO’s proposed asset sale while denying Novell’s motion to force the company in to Chapter 7 liquidation. In his decision, the judge says that SCO’s hopes of successful litigation against prominent Linux vendors are like Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot.
The SCO Group attempted to stave off liquidation in June by signing a last minute deal with Gulf Capital Partners and a tech firm called unXis. The terms of the agreement, which were finalized only moments before a court hearing, stipulated that SCO would sell its remaining UNIX assets for $2.4 million—a maneuver that could have potentially made it possible for SCO to continue pursuing its bogus litigation against the open source Linux operating system.
Groklaw was the centre of attention regarding this important development.
The judge in the SCO bankruptcy has ruled at last. SCO’s motion to let it sell to unXis is denied. There could be an auction later. The motions to convert to Chapter 7 by IBM, Novell and the US Trustee’s Office are also denied, but alternative relief is granted, and there will be a Chapter 11 trustee appointed. IBM and Novell agreed that a Chapter 11 Trustee was appropriate if he did not convert to Chapter 7, and that is what he has done. That means presumably that SCO management no longer run this show.
There are over 820 comments on that one (which is a rare number by all means) and Heise covered it too, summarising it thusly:
A Chapter 11 trustee has been commissioned to take over the business affairs of the SCO Group, which is threatened by bankruptcy. The trustee will work to guide the company out of the impending bankruptcy according to Chapter 11 of US bankruptcy code, but can also send the company into liquidation according to Chapter 7 and auction individual company assets to the highest bidder. With this order, the Bankruptcy Court in Delaware has removed SCO’s executive board.
Groklaw has a corresponding transcript.
The bankruptcy judge partly bought it, as you know, although he blocked the sale to unXis, questioning their good faith, which is of course why IBM and anyone would care about a sale to them, but for us, who have followed the SCO litigation so closely for six years now and saw SCO’s malice toward Linux with no evidence on the table the public has ever seen, it’s a wonderful laugh. SCO’s “potent claims”, indeed. What IBM and Novell “have done to SCO”. SCO sued them, actually. And Novell prevailed totally against SCO’s allegations of slander of title, which was what SCO sued Novell over, a claim which SCO humiliatingly lost. SCO is not appealing that claim. Just read it for yourself. Page 2 of SCO’s appeal brief lists the issues on appeal, and SCO’s claim of slander of title is not on the list.
Why doesn’t SCO just give up? Is its goal to win this lawsuit or just to prolong the agony and — along with it — the fear, the uncertainty, and the doubt? █
“[Microsoft's] Mr. Emerson and I discussed a variety of investment structures wherein Microsoft would ‘backstop,’ or guarantee in some way, BayStar’s investment…. Microsoft assured me that it would in some way guarantee BayStar’s investment in SCO.”
–Larry Goldfarb, Baystar, key investor in SCO
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Posted in Microsoft, Security, Windows at 9:41 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: More victims of Windows botnets abound; Microsoft discloses 5 new remotely-exploitable vulnerabilities
LAST NIGHT we wrote about Twitter's injury from Windows zombies. Twitter was not alone however; now that the Web is saturated with Windows botnets, anyone with an axe to grind can take Web sites of choice offline. A decade or so ago even Yahoo! was a victim, so our own suffering is very minor in comparison (but increasingly common). According to the BBC, Facebook is another new victim.
Denial-of-service (DOS) attacks take various forms but often involve a company’s servers being flooded with data in an effort to disable them.
The Register reports that Gawker too is a victim.
New York-based media news and gossip blog network Gawker is recovering from a debilitating denial of service attack.
SJVN wrote a good essay on how Twitter was killed by Windows botnets.
DDoS attacks are hard to beat. While some Twitter fans are claiming that this is the biggest DDoS attack ever, I’m inclined to doubt it. Twitter, even though its performance has gotten much better, has often teetered on the edge of collapse due to the enormous load its users put on its social network infrastructure. No, the DDoS attack on Google earlier this year was probably still the worst attack on record.
How is this happening? Well, let me tell you. Today’s DDoS attacks are made by Windows-powered botnets. They’re not terribly sophisticated about these attacks. The last major one, which may or may not have come from North Korea, was driven by MyDoom, Windows malware from 2004.
[...]
Russians already successfully attacked Estonia’s Internet infrastructure in 2007. With Windows botnets growing by leaps and bounds, it’s easier than ever for governments or even just a handful of people to knock out major Web sites like Twitter.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Thanks to Windows’ security weaknesses, botnets are now commonplace and we can only expect to see more DDoS attacks in the future.
One person believes that he knows who was behind the attack (and its motives), being the botmaster or the leader of several.
As Twitter struggled to return to normal Wednesday evening, a trickle of details suggested that the outage that left 30 million users unable to use the micro-blogging service for several hours – at least in part – may have been the result of a spam campaign that targeted a single user who vocally supports the Republic of Georgia.
Windows has become an expensive and dangerous political tool. Based on this new report from Heise, change is nowhere near.
Microsoft to patch nine security vulnerabilities on Patch Tuesday
Five of the security updates reportedly patch critical vulnerabilities that could lead to remote code execution in Windows and a variety of other software.
Here is a couple more that are new. █
“It is no exaggeration to say that the national security is also implicated by the efforts of hackers to break into computing networks. Computers, including many running Windows operating systems, are used throughout the United States Department of Defense and by the armed forces of the United States in Afghanistan and elsewhere.”
–Jim Allchin, Microsoft
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Posted in News Roundup at 9:09 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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The filing adds Linux distro vendors Canonical, the sponsor of Ubuntu, and Red Hat (Red Hat Enterprise Linux), to the list of competitors for Microsoft’s Client division. Previously, Red Hat was listed only as a competitor for its Microsoft Business and Server & Tools divisions, writes Bishop.
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Ferguson goes on to say that to avoid copyright restrictions, he and the designers are only able to consider concepts and original slogans, not images or artwork. Once all the collaboration is over and design decisions are made, free t-shirts will be given to anyone who contributed a chosen design.
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So I looked at GNUcash, which I remember playing with back in my early induction into the Linux community. GNUcash is much more complex then HomeBank and would be an excellent alternative to proprietary paid financial managers.
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Desktop
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Now Peter Kirn has captured Cascone’s conversion story on createdigitalmusic.com. Interesting about the article is not only the facts of Cascone’s conversion, but the comments accompanying it that contain numerous tips and information on sound processing under Linux.
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Applications
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Though Linux comes in many different flavors, there are a common string of favorite apps that seem to unite all users.
These apps are high-quality, versatile, professional, reliable, and often available in many different packages (deb, rpm, etc). If you’re new to the Linux game, or simply want a list of programs that have been re-verified as excellent by many hundreds of users, this article is for you. To download and install the apps, just go to your built-in package manager.
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People who do use a GUI should do so knowing the risks of exploitations and security and try to keep a system updated and use the GUI only when needed.
If you aren’t actively sitting at the machine, stop the x server until you need to use it again. This will go a long way to improving overall resourcefulness and productivity.
It doesn’t need to be a fight. Use the system how it works best for you. Just make sure you know all the facts going in to be the best prepared as possible.
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Desktop Environments
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This year’s Gran Canaria Desktop Summit represented the first time the GNOME and KDE communities have co-located their annual conferences in the same location. 852 free software advocates from 46 countries gathered together last month to discuss and enhance the free desktop experience at the first ever Gran Canaria Desktop Summit.
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That probably covers the main features in the release especially the ones I’ve liked. Overall its is stable and the KDE developers themselves have said – “KDE 4.3 offers a more stable and complete product for the home and small office.” I think this was the release we were all waiting for in terms of stability and features as well.
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The way we use computers is changing, but Linux isn’t standing still. Tiny Core is a minimal Linux distribution that boots a complete live system for every day use. Its foundation and unique approach to the desktop helps it achieve certain goals like preventing system rot and ensuring your system is fresh every time it boots.
[...]
Although Tiny Core is a relatively new distro, it has a great deal of history behind it already. It is developing at a rapid pace and implementing new features along the way. It really can change the way you think about running Linux over a more traditional method. It’s an exciting project and really worth playing with. It’s lots of fun and it does deliver on its promises. Try it out and see how fast, stable, clean and fun a Linux system can be!
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A few hours ago Slackware’s creator, Patrick Volkerding, announced that the second release candidate of the upcoming Slackware 13.0 Linux distribution was available for download. This update brings numerous new base packages, like the Linux kernel version 2.6.29.6, X.Org Server 1.6.3 and the K Desktop Environment 4.2.4. However, there are no official ISO builds for this release, but those interested in testing Slackware 13.0 RC2 can get it by using the link at the end of the article.
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Suitable For: Beginner, intermediate or advanced Linux users. Highly recommended for beginners.
Summary: A terrific alternative to the Gnome version of Linux Mint 7 for KDE users.
Rating: 4/5
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Red Hat
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Whole Foods Market was named a finalist in open-source solution provider Red Hat’s Third Annual Innovation Awards, which recognize the outstanding use, innovation and extension of Red Hat and JBoss solutions by Red Hat customers, partners and the open-source community.
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Denx announced the first Xenomai User Meeting, which will co-locate with OSADL’s Eleventh Real Time Linux Workshop (RTLWS11) in Dresden, Germany, on Sep. 28-30. The Xenomai meeting will showcase this major real-time Linux extension alternative to PREEMPT RT — and maybe help make peace between the warring camps.
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Phones
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The MyTouch 3G (pictured at right) is the first Android phone to ship out of the box with the new and much improved Android 1.5 “cupcake” release of the Linux/Java mobile platform. T-Mobile has also added its own additional apps and UI elements on top of Android, although the additions are not nearly as extensive as those offered in the Sense UI made available on HTC’s upcoming Hero phone.
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Opera Mini is available for Android now, and the Android browser itself is pretty darn good. Opera Mobile is a nice browser, and it works with the Opera servers to make mobile browsing lightning fast.
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Sub-notebooks
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At its core, Google’s new desktop, netbook, smartphone OS is built around Google’s just introduced Chrome browser and will debut by the second half of 2010.
It will initially be targeted at the low-cost netbook market, although it will eventually migrate to the PC segment, an area long dominated by Microsoft, which is planning to roll out the latest version of its Windows OS later this year.
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We already experimented with WebKit in the past, but moved to Gecko because of the better integration with most of the sites out there; Aaron is using Clutter inside “Cubano”, a media player based on the Banshee framework and mostly targeted at platforms like netbooks.
The GNOME Shell project, which is considered one of the major new features of the future GNOME 3.0 release, is using Clutter for the UI and as part of the window manager, just like the Moblin netbook user experience is. GNOME Shell alone would expose something between hundreds of thousands and millions of users to Clutter.
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The 2009 Open Source CMS Award was launched today, inviting people to visit www.PacktPub.com and submit nominations for their favorite Open Source Content Management Systems. Now in its fourth year, the Award has helped to support a variety of Content Management Systems gain recognition in a crowded and high quality marketplace.
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An amazing Open Video Conference in New York earlier this year brought together video creators, technology hackers, entrepreneurs, and others to address the crossroads of open source/open content/open society and the facts of digital media technologies, file formats, standards, and the legal/regulatory climate. At the same time, the amazing Mozilla project demonstrated their support for the <video> tag. Companies like SpectSoft are creating amazing, high-spec VTRs and DDRs (running Linux, natch), and now Blackmagic Design announces Linux SDKs for several video interface products. Finally, video is becoming a technology that sits where mainstream hackers can play!
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We were eager to know what’s happening with Firefox. Mike Beltzner, the open-source browser’s director, was glad to tell us. Here’s what he had to say about future features, competition with Chrome, and keeping all of Firefox contributors in sync.
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Note that releasing your code as BSD for a project that has or may have GPL code doesn’t protect your code from being dual-licensed in an unfavorable way. The only way to ensure full freedom for others is to only donate your code under a contributor agreement with a clause as suggested below or to a project that has agreeable guidelines for how they license their code!
To assure our users, contributors, and customers of how we at Monty Program Ab intend to re-license the code we produce or the code people donate to us, I have added the following note to our contributor agreement:
“Monty Program Ab agrees that when it dual licenses code, it will not restrict the way the third party licensee uses the licensed copy of the code nor restrict how they use their own code.”
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The move is a response to a slowdown in security spending during the recession. PC World reports that Websense plans to lay off 70 people from its worldwide workforce of 1,400.
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Literature
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Either way, given those statements, perhaps it’s no surprise at all that Murdoch is now planning to put paywalls across all his online news properties in the relatively near future. Apparently the plan will be based on the WSJ model, meaning that some stories were be available for free, but there will be severe limits. Given how many old school newspaper guys have talked about putting up a paywall, this isn’t much of a surprise (though, it is still odd given his comments from two years ago).
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In October, Google settled a lawsuit from the US Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers over its Book Search project, which that seeks to digitize the works inside the world’s libraries. Still awaiting court approval after an October hearing, it would – among other things – give the company a unique license to scan and sell and post ads against orphan works, titles whose rights holders can’t be found.
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Congratulations to the Smithsonian for thinking about the future lives of their content in such a sustainable fashion. We’re very excited to see the future developments that the Smithsonian Commons brings to free culture on an institutional scale.
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Imaginary Property Issues
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In light of these concerns, I fail to see why Amherst or any other city should be in the business of licensing video arcades. And even if they are doing so for tax purposes, they shouldn’t be using that power to censor arcade games or shutting down businesses that offer such games.
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What a stupendous waste of time, money and resources. But it shows what a ridiculous society we’ve created, where intellectual property law means that you can’t have a McDonald’s appear anywhere in the background in a movie. I’m sure that’s exactly what our founding fathers were concerned about when they put in place the constitutional clause about “promoting the progress.”
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Chester French isn’t your typical rock band. Singer D.A. Wallach and multi-instrumentalist Max Drummey met as freshmen at Harvard, where lanky, longhaired Drummey majored in social anthropology and twee, preppy Wallach graduated as the top student in the school’s African-American Studies program. In the video for their best-known song, “She Loves Everybody,” a pretty girl punches the stuffing out of the two helpless weaklings, leaving them bloody-nosed among their broken guitars and drums.
[....]
Instead of giving interviews to reporters or dropping by radio stations, Wallach spends most of his time online, going through an average 100 to 200 e-mail messages a day. “We respond to every single e-mail we get,” he said. “I do an hour in the morning and an hour at night.
Luis Casas Luengo, Director of Extremadura’s Fundecyt foundation 20 (2004)
Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.
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Posted in IRC Logs at 3:03 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Read the log
Enter the IRC channel now
To use your own IRC client, join channel #boycottnovell in FreeNode.
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08.06.09
Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Vista, Vista 7, Windows at 9:06 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Computer expert wrestles with Vista 7 to no avail; benchmark of Vista 7 (RTM) delivers bad news to Microsoft
KVUE-TV has this rather enjoyable new article where the reality behind Vista 7 is shown in a semi-direct comparison with GNU/Linux. It says:
Linux is an alternative operating system that is freely available. I had squirreled away several discs (bonuses from British computer magazines) that let you boot up to Linux from a CD without the need to actually install it.
Guess what?
My computer ran with Linux and didn’t shut down.
That would seem to indicate that the computer hardware is just fine, right?
I had a copy of the new Windows 7 operating system ready to go; perhaps whatever incompatibilities my L100 had with Vista would be rectified with Windows 7!
So, I started installing Windows 7, and things seemed to go pretty smoothly… at the start.
But after 51 minutes, guess what? The installation shut down!
When I pressed the power button, the “Windows Error Recovery” screen popped up.
After following all the directions (and attempting to load Windows 7 several more times), I finally stopped trying.
What will happen when Vista 7 hits the shelves and many ordinary people have similar problems? Yesterday we wrote about a nasty new bug in the to-be-boxed version of Vista 7 and John C. Dvorak believes that Microsoft’s policing of the image of Vista 7 is going out of hand. In his latest column, he seems to refer to Microsoft’s perception management [1, 2], which we last mentioned in our complaint to the FTC — a complaint that they responded to.
Why has Windows 7 suddenly fallen off the track with negative publicity? What happened? What changed?
This is one of the strangest developments I have ever witnessed—even rivaling the reverse publicity that began to pound OS/2 beginning around 1987, which eventually destroyed that OS as a viable alternative. The OS/2 destruction was orchestrated by Microsoft; who is orchestrating this?
I knew something was up beginning a few weeks back when studies and reports began to emerge about how businesses will not upgrade to Windows 7. Everyone is trying to save money or something. It was never fully analyzed. The data point that sticks out was one report that said 60 percent of businesses are going to hold off on Windows 7 implementation. And these are companies that probably did not upgrade to Vista.
These announcements came on the heels of an extremely positive pre-publicity campaign that was probably orchestrated by Microsoft or one of its agencies. In January of this year everyone—and I mean everyone—was raving about Windows 7. Microsoft gave out the beta, which was praised, and then gave out copies of RC1, which was also praised. It was the best thing ever!
Some Web sites that wrote negatively about Vista 7 got targeted and their authors humiliated by Microsoft employees at times, including those who dared to show that Vista 7 was about as heavy as Vista [1, 2, 3, 4].
Another new benchmark which includes Vista 7 simply shows that it is slower than Vista in some tests. SoftPedia showed the same thing a few months back.
Interestingly, the results were mixed. Boot times, despite dedicated tweaking from Microsoft were slightly worse than in Vista SP2 or XP SP3 (by over a second). Shutdown times, though, showed much improvement over the slow XP, and even some improvement over Vista.
One Boycott Novell reader added that “With benchmarks like that, Microsoft is stuck talking about “look and feel”, but it’s hard to see what kind of good feeling a slow, buggy system will yield.”
Fewa responded by saying, “that’s what happens you insert huge DRM schemes into your products, making them less useful and performing.” █
“My initial evaluation of Windows 7 shows that it’s really just Vista with a fresh coat of paint.”
–Randall Kennedy
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Posted in Antitrust, Europe, ISO, Microsoft, Office Suites, Open XML, OpenDocument at 8:21 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: More of the incestuous relationship between ISO, Microsoft, and SC34; new Microsoft tricks in the EU
MOST people probably never noticed (or cannot remember) Microsoft paying for an ISO-associated dinner in Korea and paying for the meeting in Norway. It is all just part of a pattern which shows ISO shaking like a feather, dancing to the tune of Microsoft cash.
Microsoft is now organising the next ISO SC34 meeting. Yes, it will all take place in Redmond and shall revolve around Microsoft’s OOXML maintenance.
We already know that SC34 is a mess — a mess which is dominated by Microsoft-faithful folks who are hostile towards ODF. According to the above, convenors now include Alex Brown [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21] and Patrick Durusau [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7], who have been making comments (and actions) favourable to Microsoft’s proprietary format.
Also see this PDF which provides further details, such as: “For general questions about Westin meeting logistics, or things to do around Seattle, please contact Dave Welsh, dmwelsh@microsoft.com, cell phone +1 206 313 0879.”
How about this: “More hotel options, at different rates, are also available. For more hotel options in the immediate Bellevue area and the Seattle vicinity, please try Live.com.”
Bellevue is where a lot of Microsoft’s core people reside, including its gigantic patent troll.
We have also learned that Microsoft will be the “social host” in the Seattle meetings, hosting the reception, dinner, and so on. How familiar. They will also be organising a DII event (“interop”) to occur the day after the SC34 Plenary. It will take place at Microsoft, which will announce how they intend to support Office 2010 as extensions to OOXML.
The word about Office 2010 has just come out, with this new Microsoft proposal [PDF] that can be found in the company’s Web site (encoded in Microsoft’s proprietary format). There is some initial coverage in OS News, which starts with: “Just when you thought the world couldn’t get any crazier, something happens that makes you move your expectations of the world up a few nothces. We already have to deal with the browser ballot, but that’s not the only ballot Microsoft will deliver. Hold on to your panties, as Microsoft will also offer a file format ballot in Microsoft Office 2010. On a happier note, Microsoft makes a whole load of promises to the EU about opening up technologies and file formats.”
Oiaohm says that it’s getting “even worse [as] Microsoft seems to be out to avoid the EU regulators.”
ThistleWeb argues that Microsoft’s thinking is that people will be allowed to “pick from a working Microsoft format, or a (supposedly working) broken ODF”. Microsoft never implemented ODF properly, after all [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7].
“[M]aybe they’ve finally, reluctantly seen the writing on the wall, that the EU are gonna keep hammering them on case after case, with fine after fine…”
–ThistleWebAs Georg Greve (FSFE) put it a few days ago, “Microsoft [is] planning to freeze ODF at “broken useless” level by blocking updates at ISO? Seems quite possible according to [URL]”
The above refers to Microsoft wanting to impose RAND on Free software.
Oiaohm adds: “Microsoft is being forced to come into line with ODF 1.2 as well, but the issue is that [it's mandatory]. If it’s done the wrong, way you could have produced document hell in a business.”
ThistleWeb responds by hypothesising that “maybe they’ve finally, reluctantly seen the writing on the wall, that the EU are gonna keep hammering them on case after case, with fine after fine [...] that they’re now reluctantly trying to placate the EU [...] each new fine, is another chunk of cash.”
“Or maybe they are running out of money to resist,” argues Oiaohm. Microsoft is already borrowing money. █
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- 2016 in Review and Plans for 2017
A look back and a quick look at the road ahead, as 2016 comes to an end
- Links 31/12/2016: Firefox 52 Improves Privacy, Tizen Comes to Middle East
Links for the day
- Korea's Challenge of Abusive Patents, China's Race to the Bottom, and the United States' Gradual Improvement
An outline of recent stories about patents, where patent quality is key, reflecting upon the population's interests rather than the interests of few very powerful corporations
- German Justice Minister Heiko Maas, Who Flagrantly Ignores Serious EPO Abuses, Helps Battistelli's Agenda ('Reform') With the UPC
The role played by Heiko Maas in the UPC, which would harm businesses and people all across Europe, is becoming clearer and hence his motivation/desire to keep Team Battistelli in tact, in spite of endless abuses on German soil
- Links 30/12/2016: KDE for FreeBSD, Automotive Grade Linux UCB 3.0
Links for the day
- Software Patents Continue to Collapse, But IBM, Watchtroll and David Kappos Continue to Deny and Antagonise It
The latest facts and figures about software patents, compared to the spinmeisters' creed which they profit from (because they are in the litigation business)
- 2016 Was a Terrible Year for Patent Trolls and 2017 Will Probably be a Lot Worse for Them
The US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) is planning to weigh in on a case which will quite likely drive patent trolls out of the Eastern District of Texas, where all the courts that are notoriously friendly towards them reside
- Fitbit’s Decision to Drop Patent Case Against Jawbone Shows Decreased Potency of Abstract Patents, Not Jawbone’s Weakness
The scope of patents in the United States is rapidly tightening (meaning, fewer patents are deemed acceptable by the courts) and Fitbit’s patent case is the latest case to bite the dust
- The EPO Under Benoît Battistelli Makes the Mafia Look Like Rookies
Pretending there is a violent, physical threat that is imminent, Paranoid in Chief Benoît Battistelli is alleged to have pursued weapons on EPO premises
- Links 29/12/2016: OpenELEC 7.0, Android Wear 2.0 Smartwatches Coming
Links for the day
- Links 28/12/2016: OpenVPN 2.4, SeaMonkey 2.46
Links for the day
- Bad Service at the European Patent Office (EPO) Escalated in the Form of Complaints to European Authorities/Politicians
A look at actions taken at a political level against the EPO in spite of the EPO's truly awkward exemption from lawfulness or even minimal accountability
- No “New Life to Software Patents” in the US; That's Just Fiction Perpetuated by the Patent Microcosm
Selective emphasis on very few cases and neglect of various other dimensions help create a parallel reality (or so-called 'fake news') where software patents are on the rebound
- Links 27/12/2016: Chakra GNU/Linux Updated, Preview of Fedora 26
Links for the day
- Leaked: Letter to Quality Support (DQS) at the European Patent Office (EPO)
Example of abysmal service at the EPO, where high staff turnover and unreasonable pressure from above may be leading to communication issues that harm stakeholders the most
- Negative Publicity (Personal or by Association With the EPO) is Devouring the Institution
Willy Minnoye, Ciarán McGinley, Lionel Baranès, Theano Evangelou and others near the top of the EPO pyramid recalled in light of old news about them
- 2017 Will be the Year Team Battistelli Collapsed and EPO 'Reform' Became All About Detoxifying the Organisation
Battistelli's circle (or "Team Battistelli") is starting to disintegrate, perhaps in anticipation of a tough year full of new leaks ("WillyLeaks" as some put it)
- With the Demise of Software Patents and Likely Soon Patent Trolls (Based on SCOTUS), Trump Appointments Matter Even More
In light of Trump's awkward history with judges (e.g. attacking them) one can hope that upcoming patent cases at the highest court won't be affected by his pro-big corporations agenda
- Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Bilski Blog is Actually AGAINST Alice and Bilski, in Favour of Software Patents
Looking at some of the latest promotions of software patents in the US and where this is all coming from (and why)
- Free/Open Source Software Under Attack From Software Patents
Free/Open Source software (FOSS), which encourages sharing, is increasingly becoming infested or subjected to software patents barbwire, courtesy of those who want to monopolise rather than share
- Culture of Appeals Against Granted Patents Means Better and Improved Scrutiny, Less Litigation
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), led by David Ruschke, continues to function as another 'layer' that ensures patent quality by weeding out bad patents and here are some of the latest cases
- After Microsoft's Notorious Intervention Nokia is Nothing But a Patent Troll Whose Patent Portfolio Needs to be Smashed
Nokia's saber-rattling (and now lawsuits) against Apple are a worrying sign of what's to come, impacting Android OEMs as well as Apple, which is why the post-Microsoft Nokia is dangerous
- Australia's Productivity Commission Reiterates Opposition to Software Patents, Shelston IP (Patent Microcosm) Upset
Now is the time for Australian software developers to explain to their government that they don't want any software patents, otherwise their voices will be hijacked by a bunch of law firms that totally misrepresent them
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