03.17.08
Posted in America, Deception, Europe, Finance, Fraud, Microsoft at 1:49 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The art of illusion, hypnotic propaganda
This fairly old article from The Chronicle outlines one of Microsoft’s shameful secrets. It’s referred to as “academic kickbacks” (kickback is a gentle form of bribery). To quote just the opening paragraph:
If you’re a professor and you mention Microsoft programming tools in a scholarly presentation — in fact, even if you just use the tools — Microsoft will send you a check for $200.
In case you believe that Microsoft has left such dirty tricks behind, think again. We were reminded just months ago by a reader that Microsoft continues to do such things in Europe. It happens under everyone’s noise. The media, unsurprisingly, hardly covers any of this fiasco, with the exception of a few bold reporters.
While we’re at it covering such past stories, how about this one?
The Best Enthusiasm Money Can Buy
We might think that spending several hundreds of millions of dollars every year on commercial speech would be just about enough to allow any company to “tell its story” to the public. But we would not be Microsoft, who the Los Angeles Times revealed was gearing up a multi-million dollar public relations campaign which included planting ersatz letters to the editor in major national newspapers. The goal: to create the appearance, if not the reality, of “grassroots” support for the company.
“Spontaneous” testimonials penned by hired guns may not be an entirely novel idea in the surreal world of public relations, but Microsoft’s response to having been caught in the act of committing such a crass act was certainly uncommon. At first, the company denied their intentions to actually implement such a plan. Then, a few days later, company spokespersons announced a new spin: Microsoft has a perfect right to engage in public opinion manipulation campaigns, if that’s what it takes to “tell its story.”
Now, what exactly was that story, again?
At present, there are similar stories to tell, including Microsoft’s purchase of love, AstroTurfing and viral marketing (see some recent examples here). █
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Posted in Asia, Bill Gates, Deception, Fraud, Microsoft, Open XML, Steve Ballmer at 1:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Learning who’s running the country
A couple of weeks ago we mentioned Steve Ballmer's and Bill Gates' successful attempt to pressure diplomats on the OOXML question. This was done secretly and totally off the record. Thereby they flipped a “No” vote on OOXML, promptly making it a “Yes”. A lot was said back then (including in cited links which provide further details), so the story is not be repeated here. More recently, Pieter summarised such issues as well (pressuring or bribing politicians until people vote “properly”).
Well, guess what? It appears to be happening again, albeit in a more open fashion. Moments ago the following article was published:
Gates goes to Washington as US OOXML decision nears
[...]
Gates answered that Microsoft wants to see OOXML become an ISO standard, in part, “so that families and researchers and archivists will be able to access information from the past and use it to interact in the future…”
It’s all the usual fluff.
Don’t let affluent people buy an undeserved standard in your country. Gates’ systematic deception on immigration aside (articles on this are appended below [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]), recall recent evidence of what seems like bribery (via charities) in India, for OOXML [10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15].
___
[1] Programmers Guild rebuts Bill Gates call for more H-1b visas
The Programmers Guild disputes that more H-1b visas would benefit “U.S. global competitiveness,” and they would represent undue competition for Americans seeking jobs in this recessionary job market.
1) One way to “allow more highly-skilled workers to remain in the U.S.” is to grant H-1b visas on the basis of skill rather than by a lottery. But just as last year the Programmers Guild expects USCIS to conduct a lottery, granting H-1b to $16/hour hotel clerks while denying visas to PhD genetic researchers. The best proxy for “skill” is “wage.” This simple reform in H-1b would allow Microsoft to have as many “highly skilled H-1b” as then need under the current cap – AS LONG AS THEY PAID THEM WHAT THEY ARE WORTH.
2) Our competitive advantage is eroding, and Bill Gates has used the H-1b program to facilitate that erosion…
[2] Microsoft India centre working on Windows 7
Designers and engineers at Microsoft R&D centre in India have a new mandate for development of Windows 7, the next generation operating system from Microsoft Corporation, slated for release in 2009-10.
[3] Study: There Is No Shortage of U.S. Engineers
…a new study from Duke University calls this argument bunk, stating that there is no shortage of engineers in the United States, and that offshoring is all about cost savings.
[4] Is There a Shortage of U.S. Tech Workers?
Speaking before a Senate committee earlier this month, Gates said that America is facing a critical shortage of tech workers. He recommended boosting the number of H-1B visas to allow more foreign tech workers into the U.S.
[...]
“I think that has created an environment where the population of advanced skill workers has shrunk a lot in the U.S., because we just haven’t created a fair system,” he says. “Where if you go to other countries, you’ll find national policy around broadband deployment, which creates a much more even playing field for people of all income levels to learn by and work by.”
“We did it to ourselves,” he says.
[5] Microsoft Sending All XP and Vista Tech Support Calls To India?
Microsoft is sending ALL of its XP and Vista tech support calls to India starting March 29th, according to a call center insider
[6] “Dear Microsoft”: An open letter to Microsoft regarding the outsourcing of jobs.
Don’t get it twisted: I don’t have a problem with you outsourcing jobs to people that will work for next-to-nothing. It’s just getting a bit out of hand, don’t you think? I mean, there’s no point trying to fool me.
[7] Gates to speak to Congress [March 2008]
Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corp., is expected to address the U.S. House Science and Technology Committee in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.
[8] Guess Who’s Getting the Most Work Visas
Microsoft (MSFT) and Intel (INTC) are the only two traditional U.S. tech companies among the top 10. Microsoft received 959 visa petition approvals, or one fifth as many as Infosys, while Intel got 369.
[9] Microsoft India centre working on Windows 7
Designers and engineers at Microsoft R&D centre in India have a new mandate for development of Windows 7, the next generation operating system from Microsoft Corporation, slated for release in 2009-10.
[10] Microsoft influencing partner NGOs to support OOXML in India
Microsoft is encouraging its business partners to promote its Office Open XML specification (OOXML) to the Indian Bureau of Standards (BIS) and Ministry of IT. This move has incensed supporters of the rival OpenDocument Format (ODF) who fear that the “soft” Indian state may not be able to stand up to Microsoft pressure tactics.
[11] Microsoft India using NGOs to fake support for OOXML
Microsoft has “persuaded” several non-profit organizations to bombard the Indian IT Secretary and the Additional Director General of the Bureau of Indian Standards with letters supporting its OOXML proposal. A copy of the form letter they have been circulating to NGOs is given below.
[12] Becoming a better company: Microsoft helps NGOs in India
Of course, there has to be some trade-offs, because there should never be free lunch, even for the ones who starve: Microsoft, according to this article, has conditioned its help to Indian NGOs to their support of OOXML. What the NGOs had to do was to send letters of support on OOXML to the federal government of India.
[13] Microsoft “persuades” NGOs to support OOXML
Our friends at Linux Delhi have put up a copy of the form letters that Microsoft has been sending NGOs on the OOXML issue. Apparently, these NGOs have been sending copies of these letters to the Ministry of IT and Bureau of Indian standards.
[14] Developers around the world, unite!
Monopoly and proprietary software have an advantage in influencing state and governmental institutions because of their large market base and ready capital. Unscrupulous ways of influencing state governments have persisted in India, for example, where executives of proprietary software cajole government heads to promote their brands in lieu of some form of charity given. FLOSS activists must overcome this huge challenge in order to get their philosophy accepted and model implemented for the good of people who are still on the barren side of the digital divide.
[15] Using NGOs to Push Agendas
The extent to which Microsoft can go in its efforts to get OOXML is interesting. Microsoft has “persuaded” several non-profit organizations to bombard the Indian IT Secretary and the Additional Director General of the Bureau of Indian Standards with letters supporting its OOXML proposal. A copy of the form letter they have been circulating to NGOs is given below. Somebody should interview these NGOs to see how much they really know about OOXML and open standards.
The sequence of events leading up to the spamming of GoI? is:
Letter from an NGO thanking Microsoft (name changed to protect their identity)
Also see our evidence of Microsoft issuing money to tens of thousands to Indian charities just days before the vote. █
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Posted in Europe, Microsoft, SCO at 12:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“If you flee the rules, you will be caught. And it will cost you dearly,”
–Neelie Kroes (about Microsoft), February 27th, 2008
The disturbing phenomenon known as “Microsoft Munchkins” was introduced in this Web site before. About 8 months ago, the European Commission it would address this problem and crack down on the culprits.
“A couple of years ago they mass-mailed colleagues, employers, a University President, ISPs and everyone else that can help in gagging me. I am not foolish enough to forget this, and I never will.”There is plenty of evidence to show that Microsoft Munchkins (paid PR people in disguise) continue to operate, to this date. But here I present a personal story, which developed over the past few days. I am adding supporting examples of similar stories that affected other people.
My unpleasant ‘affairs’ with Microsoft Munchkins go a long way back. A couple of years ago they mass-mailed colleagues, employers, a University President, ISPs and everyone else that can help in gagging me. I am not foolish enough to forget this, and I never will. There are many other tactics, including direct intimidation and widely-spread slander. I won’t go into this in depth, but it’s well recorded on the Web (and cannot be removed).
For several months the Microsoft Munchkins have said that my site served malware. They lied, but they spread this lie in many places and repeated the lie (c/f Big Lie).
A few months went by.
Now, someone did a ‘dirty job’, essentially hacking my site last week (the cause remains uncertain for the time being). This happened after many months of extremely high activity, with unsuccessful hacking attempts ranging from common probes around PHP-Nuke to other CMSs. It’s a case of scanning for vulnerabilities. I noticed these attempts, but said nothing in public. Some people refuse to speak about such things, despite inquiries.
<Take with a grain of salt>
The Munchkins, whose history is too telling, noticed last week’s hack almost immediately (within hours and before anybody else, including myself), which is suspicious.
In public, I get accused of knowing about this for months, which is a lie (see the paragraphs above once again). They repeatedly make this lie in various forums (and not just in USENET), then back/mod each other up (pseudo validation/audience). I could go into specifics and produce more evidence to show this. It would be time consuming.
Scott Douglas, a Munchkin, already makes accusations in public, under various pseudonyms. He claims bogus ‘damages’. More libelous claims are made about this having gone on for months, which is a lie easy enough to disprove.
Gary Stewart, another Munchkin who has gone by the name “flatfish” for over a decade (as well as literally hundreds of other pseudonyms), says a case legal is made against me. It’s possibly just an intimidation tactic, which I mentioned yesterday.
To sum up in simple terms the situation described above, I am suggesting that false accusations were made in order to be used later and make a legal case.
</Take with a grain of salt>
Does any of this ring a bell? To me it does.
The above should be taken with a grain of salt, but there is a lot of evidence to show it. Anonymous/pseudonymous characters will soon shout out “paranoia!” to bury or deplete from the messages, but if it’s true, it means that Microsoft is unable to find dirt, so it’s making some ‘dirt’ up. I already have at least one person spying on all my activities (digging up dirt, followed by publication) and it’s somewhat reminiscent of this old report.
Microsoft Critics Assigned PR “Spooks”
San Jose Mercury technology reporter Dan Gilmore recently discovered he’s been assigned a special “owner” at one of Microsoft’s public relations firms, Waggener-Edstrom. These spin-masters are attached to troublesome journalists like Gilmore who have the temerity to write uncomplimentary articles about the company or its products.
The really irksome reporters, according to documents spirited from the Waggener-Edstrom offices, are also assigned “buddies” at Microsoft itself. John Dodge, the editor of PC Week, has a special buddy at Microsoft, and Mary Jo Foley at Smart Reseller, is the subject of a “Mary Jo six month plan.”
These “owners” and “buddies” are just there to “help” the journalists, of course. How dare we think otherwise?
Mary Jo Foley sort of confirmed with me yesterday that Microsoft’s ‘personal treatment’ does exist and I’m appending some references below, including this more recent one about Dan Gilmore.
Microsoft Sends Secret Dossier on Reporter, to Reporter
[...]
It also was strange to see just how many resources are aligned against me when I write a story about Microsoft.
This also has some shades of the attacks on Groklaw. Remember the MYTHICAL DDOS attacks against sys-con, which sys-con formally confirmed was a LIE? Or other lies about IBM, which had SCO give legal harassment to its opposition (using media placements as manufactured ‘evidence’)? By the way, the ‘spy agent’, Maureen O’Gara, is back at sys-con (mysteriously enough because she was embargoed after misbehavior). She too wrote an article claiming that PJ was “paranoid”. The apple hardly falls far from the tree and the same strategic patterns seem to recur.
To repeat a story that was mentioned quite recently, Tim Bray too was bullied by Microsoft.
Netscape hired me to represent their interests, and when I announced this, controversy ensued. Which is a nice way of saying that Microsoft went berserk; tried unsuccessfully to get me fired as co-editor, and then launched a vicious, deeply personal extended attack in which they tried to destroy my career and took lethal action against a small struggling company because my wife worked there. It was a sideshow of a sideshow of the great campaign to bury Netscape and I’m sure the executives have forgotten; but I haven’t.
Also recall the Massachusetts story, which is broad and utterly shocking once you look closely enough. To repeat some quotes of interest about Microsoft’s fight against CIOs who supported ODF.
As CIO of Massachusetts from February to November last year, Louis Gutierrez had to endure most of the brunt of Microsoft Corp.’s political wrath over a state policy calling for the adoption of the Open Document Format for Office Applications, or ODF — a rival to the software vendor’s Office Open XML file format.
Who could ever forget Peter Quinn?
Quinn: Almost to a person, to anybody involved or who knows about the ODF issue, they attributed the story to Microsoft, right, wrong or otherwise. Senator Pacheco may be a bully but I do not believe he is disingenious and would stoop to such a tactic. Senator Pacheco and Secretary Galvin’s office remain very heavily influenced by the Microsoft money and its lobbyist machine, as witnessed by their playbook and words, in my opinion.
Looking at yesterday’s news and considering legal fights (or frivolous lawsuits), we find similar incidents. This one happens to involve not Microsoft but the RIAA. It talks about how Shareaza and open source were essentially bullied by lawyers and an RIAA front. From yesterday:
The hijacking of Shareaza.com is a complex story with many twists and turns. Here is the story of Shareaza from its open source GPL roots, to the hostile takeover and where the project is today, directly from those at the heart of the news – the real Shareaza community. The fight for Shareaza has only just begun.
[...]
The French (RIAA) Connection
[...]
A Dump for Ill-Gotten Gains
[...]
Threats of C&D
As you can imagine, the members of the Shareaza community were rather upset about all of this and set up a new website with user forums. After two users made some offhand remarks about a distributed denial of service attack…
[...]
A Tangled Web
[...]
Making The Takeover Official
[...]
The Danger Posed To Open Source Software
Unless we are able to prevent the trademark being granted and regain control of the domain, our project will die. It really is as simple as that.
Early comments on this story (in addition to the ones appended to the post above):
Lawyers and Fraud
Lawyers and Fraud ( Mar 16, 2008, 19:20:16 )
Lawyers and fraud. Nothing new there.
The courts are all messed up in Europe (and America) and have been since before the fall of Rome. The project may need to rename itself. It won’t be the first one that has had to do that. It wouldn’t be the last one either.
The lawyer claiming trademark in the US might be laying his client open to fraud charges, but you’d need a lot of money to pursue it.
Just another case of ‘Innocent Until Proven Broke’. Standard legal procedure. Happens all the time in the Corporate world.
Also this one:
disgusting ( Mar 16, 2008, 15:15:20 )
Dam Shameful and these are the people that are supposed to be championing Intellectual Property and copyright for the creators and artists, disgusting.
The world is far from perfect and the juridical system is open for misuse. In case Microsoft is trying to frame critics whom it want ‘immobilised’, I decided to post this here in this Web site. Remember Patent TrollTracker?█
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03.16.08
Posted in Boycott Novell at 11:34 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Posted in GNOME, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Mono, Novell at 10:56 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
A ‘Micro’ kick in the ‘Soft’ crotch
Thanks to a Microsoft partner [1, 2, 3] called Novell, the plan to have a semi-cooked, always-behind, patent-sensitive .NET implementation for GNU/Linux is under way. As expected, it’s far from satisfactory. Unless you are Microsoft, you are a second fiddle at Microsoft lawyers' mercy. Have a look at some early thoughts about MonoDevelop:
MonoDevelop an open-sourced IDE for creating software using Mono has gone gold. Sounds interesting! It is more stable than before, but there are some caveats:
1. The documentation is far from complete!
2. To be able to create applications graphically is darn nice, but the GTK# implementation of Windows.Form namespace requires an awkward approach: I can’t simply drop components on my form, but I have to create a layout before doing anything and I’m still waiting for a normal Visual Studio compatible layout manager.
[...]
Windows.Form raises software patent issues. This was covered before in posts about Mono [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33], so it needn’t be further discussed or repeated. It was only days ago that we last mentioned the dangers of Mono, the context being remarks from a GNOME Foundation member.
The name .NET echoes some of the framework’s aspirations to become part of the Web (or Net). The ‘host’ to prey on will have a seemingly-innocent and enlightening name: Silverlight. Where does Novell stand in that regard? Have a look at this new report:
One thing I did learn is that Moonlight is not ready and the code Miguel presented was apparently quite buggy (confirmed by comments from Miguel like “this has got a bug in it…”).
Recall again what Miguel de Icaza said about it in this very same conference. This doesn’t sound reassuring, so why did he go down this path in the first place? The duty for moneyflow seems to have been his primary motivation. It is therefore only natural to consider Novell a Microsoft accomplice in this context. We previously explained why Novell does more harm than good here.
Now, recall again the case of Microsoft sort of bribing (with an advance payment of $3,000,000) to have Silverlight in the Library of Congress Web site [1, 2, 3, 4]. Should we not learn from history here? Remember Bill Gates’ Corbis and the following incident, in case you never read about it before.
Annexing the Public Domain
In 1995 a virtually unknown company called Corbis purchased the Bettman Archives, the world’s largest private collection of historical and newspaper photographs. Corbis, a company founded in 1989 and owned by Bill Gates, is also actively negotiating with museums worldwide for exclusive licenses to electronically reproduce works of art held in their collections. Since that time, the Corbis “collection” has swelled to over 20 million images.
The apparent purpose is to provide Microsoft with access to a huge supply of exclusive cultural “content” for its web sites and multimedia CDs, and to prevent others from obtaining similar access. The rub is that Corbis now holds exclusive reproduction rights to images which are not copyrighted, but are in held in the public domain. Gates has seduced these museums, presumably with promises of future residuals, into veering from their missions as trustees of our cultural legacies, and into exploring the murkiest areas of “fair use” practices and curatorial ethics.
What if all our memories and national assets got .NET-ified and no longer accessible in a proper archival-friendly fashion? About a year ago it was said that Microsoft had given the US Government free services for data storage of medical data just so that they impose the same type of dependency (even bankruptcy protection) that Silicon Graphics once received. Don’t let Silverlight seize your data. Reject it now when it’s earlier enough and complain about Web sites that use it. █
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Posted in Europe, Interoperability, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Office Suites, Open XML, OpenDocument, Patents at 10:44 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Earlier today we published a pointer to an article that explains OOXML interoperability as an impossibility. As practical proof of this, consider the results of development work that has probably gone on for over a year.
His results reveal that conversion needs more attention from developers, esp. now that The Netherlands standardize on ODF – with more public agencies to come. The German Foreign Office migrated to Linux and Open Source solutions. The test results demonstrate that PR stunts won’t convince customers that compare the solutions available. The results also indicate that the OOXML conversion will be a non-trivial exercise for competitors. A single international standard could help to reduce the pain.
Why even discuss the unfeasibility of OOXML’s interoperability capabilities in theory when actual real-life “splats” such as the above make good demonstrations? There are more examples of this. From this month alone:
- Microsoft API Pledge Worse Than Useless, Real Standards Needed
- Broken Promises: Microsoft Interoperability Already Broken (No GNU/Linux, No ODF)
- The Latest Hits at Microsoft’s Broken OOXML Platform/App/Format
OOXML is hardly interoperable among and between different versions of Microsoft Office (and never will be). There is no chance of ever achieving decent interoperability between different applications if Microsoft’s OOXML enters the equation. Need it even be added that such interoperability is not free? █
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Posted in News Roundup at 3:02 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Posted in Europe, Formats, Interoperability, Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument at 2:20 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Cracking attempts against my Web sites continue, so I am likely to find little time to post here. It’s more severe than some previous issues.
In general, it’s all just a tad suspicious. I now find Microsoft partners like Stocholm posting on a regular basis in Linux newsgroups (most recent example here). But what is curious are not the cracking attempts, some of which were successful, but the quick response.
“Anyway, education about OOXML must carry on to combat disinformation and manufactured consent.”As soon as a site gets hacked, Microsoft Munchkins are accusing me in public of spreading malware (portraying a victim as a criminal) and trying to have my sites blacklisted. They are flooding the whole of USENET, which gets mirrored and accessed via HTTP. At times like these, I can’t help but think about Bob Sutor’s almost obsessive patching habits.
Anyway, education about OOXML must carry on to combat disinformation and manufactured consent. As a few links and articles worth reading today, consider this new technical analysis which speaks about the impossibility of OOXML interoperability.
A couple of counter examples have demonstrated that Microsoft Office document interoperability is wishful thinking at this point. The documents made available by Microsoft for direct download won’t and shouldn’t impress third-party implementers since it does not help much.
What is being shown is that in addition to missing documentation, the binary documentations sometimes conflict with the ECMA 376 documentation, itself not a full documentation of the new XML-based formats anyway.
Remember ECMA's response to such issues (hint: “I Have Never Seen a Person So Nervous and Ashamed in My Life” ).
In other good news, just days after protests from Oracle, Red Hat, Google and others, the mayor of Munich calls for abolishment of OOXML. Groklaw has a translation. Here is part of it.
Mayor of Munich opposes OOXML being made a Standard (German)
Munich’s mayor Christian Ude says in a letter to the Federal Minister for Economics and Technology, Michael Glos, he thinks there should be a clear “no” to the standardization of OOXML. The German Institute for Standardization (DIN) is currently evaluating how to vote in the ISO standardisation procedure. All the city needs, Ude indicates, is OpenDocument Format (ODF), already an ISO standard, and he believes competition is weakened by a competiting standards….
What the world needs is an industry-wide standard, not a bunch formats that are controlled and can only be implemented by one company and supported (almost properly) by just one single application on one single platform. █
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