08.02.12
Posted in Microsoft at 12:37 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“War is peace”
Summary: Microsoft’s lobbyist Florian Müller is used as a Microsoft mouthpiece to besiege Android
MICROSOFT keeps pretending to be open (as long as you purchase proprietary) and this is part of the attempt to assimilate to its victim. This keeps regulators at bay. The lying lobbyist Florian Müller is repeating Microsoft talking points and pushing that garbage into articles as part of the deception/PR campaign that seeks to normalise extortion. Watch the article “Microsoft Seeks Mobile Patent Peace With Google”. Peace? Really? Quoted therein are the Microsoft talking points from its paid mouthpiece: “More than 70 percent of Android devices sold in the United States have a license from Microsoft,” said patent expert Florian Meuller.”
“The battle against Linux in tablets and smartphones is vital to Microsoft because Windows market share is falling.”He echoes the words of Horacio Gutierrez, the mafia don who pays him to do this. Those people should be in jail for racketeering, but given their manipulation of reports they have been able to escape prosecution, just like George Bush and Tony Blair.
The battle against Linux in tablets and smartphones is vital to Microsoft because Windows market share is falling. To quote the report’s summary, “Apple retakes lead from HP; Asus, Samsung and Lenovo gain ground, but Windows share falls to new low” (depending on how it’s measured).
Without Windows monopoly, Microsoft may be doomed. █
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Posted in KDE, Microsoft at 12:18 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Qt is being slapped in the face by the Microsoft mole and a debate starts about the impact of this move
THE Microsoft-occupied Nokia attacks Linux platforms and harms KDE by proxy, first neglecting Qt components and then reportedly dropping Qt altogether (as we expected 4 years ago). Quoting the main report we found about it:
Word has leaked out that Nokia will be shutting down their Brisbane Australia office next month. This is the office that’s responsible for developing and maintaining several Qt components.
Hitting the Qt development list on late Tuesday is word that “the Brisbane Australia office, consisting of the teams working on Qt3D, QtDeclarative, QtMultimedia, QtSensors, and QtSystems modules, as well as the CI/QA team for Qt, will be shut down.”
Michael Larabel reaffirms his assertion later:
While word crept out last night that Nokia would be closing down their Brisbane office where several of the Qt components are maintained and developed, it looks like the Qt infliction is going much further. Nokia’s now reportedly trying to offload Qt entirely.
To not much surprise, Nokia doesn’t want to do much these days with the Norwegian tool-kit now that they’re on the Windows Phone bandwagon and letting Microsoft bang their drum. Nokia already parted ways with Maemo and MeeGo (and Symbian) and then last week they put a bullet in Meltemi, their last Linux effort. Now the failing phone company no longer has any use for Qt; Nokia bought out Trolltech in early 2008.
So there we have it. Nokia is showing its hostility towards Linux after the Microsoft entryism. Here is an article someone brought up in IRC (where we still argue on the matter, with some stating that Nokia’s move would be good for Qt).
Here is what the report says: “Reports are coming in that Nokia has shut down its Qt offices in Australia and laid off the developers responsible for QML. The staff that was laid off were responsible for developing key aspects of the Qt open-source toolkit including the QML user interface layout. At least one of the laid off developers, Lorn Potter, has told the Qt community that he intends to continue working on the toolkit himself but is seeking new employment.” █
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Posted in OpenSUSE, SLES/SLED at 12:04 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: New PR from SUSE seems dubious
SUSE, the Microsoft-funded and Microsoft-funding company that taxes GNU/Linux, has got some awkward new press release claiming leadership in Fog Computing. Someone from the Attachmate Group, promoting Microsoft tax through SUSE, accompanies the PR with this article:
But think of it this way: If you’re running a proprietary stack, you’re limited to the service providers that run on that single brand of infrastructure. If you need to mix and match, will your proprietary vendor be open to having the solution integrate with everything else? If you don’t have full support, then you’re opening up risks when the pieces don’t work together.
SUSE is sort of proprietary. It is hard to get SLE* source code, as we demonstrated several years ago. And also, it’s not free of charge. One must pay Microsoft. Here is an example of a writer who aided SUSE’s PR:
While much is written about the convergence of open source and cloud computing these days, including coverage of the trend here on OStatic, the usual players–OpenStack, CloudStack, Eucalyptus Systems, Red Hat–tend to dominate the headlines.
OpenSUSE blog posts have become quite rare, but here is one from hackweek:
The provisioning of a system is nothing new in SUSE Manager, so you might already be familiar with it. I stripped it down a bit, so the only option is to select the autoinstallation and to Create Cobbler System Record.
There are other improvements, but we no longer keep track of this project that openwashes SLE*. SUSE is gradually dying, but it is shameless with its PR. To claim leadership is to basically spin or lie. █
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Posted in Microsoft at 11:43 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft helps confirm what publications have been claiming about Skype
FIRST came speculations, then came supporting source code, then came proof from news sites, and now comes confirmation from Microsoft itself.
“Microsoft first denied it, then people became sceptical (Microsoft has a history of lying)”One Linux/BSD site called it “one more reason not to use Skype”. To quote: “Even though Skype for Linux is unlike most applications available on any Linux installation, that is, it is a proprietary application, it has long been a popular chat and VoIP application for many users, not for free software purists, but for those that do not care about the core philosophies of free software.
“If you belong to that group, that is, if any of the core principles of free software does not come into play in your decision to use or not use a software, the latest news about Skype should make you think twice about using it.
“In a recent article published in the The Washington Post, Craig Timberg and Ellen Nakashima reports that “Skype … has expanded its cooperation with law enforcement authorities to make online chats and other user information available to police…””
We wrote about it repeatedly and summarised the issues. Microsoft first denied it, then people became sceptical (Microsoft has a history of lying):
The accusation that started all of this was the changes to Skype’s architecture. Gillett says that Skype made the changes “to provide the best possible product to our users.” He says that the company was already in the process of moving supernodes to the cloud long before they were acquired by Microsoft.
As for their cooperation with law enforcement, Gillett claims that their policy has not changed since 2005. They will accomodate law enforcement when it “follows appropriate procedures” and they “respond where legally required and technically feasible.”
The move to in-house hosting does not give Skype the ability to monitor or record your conversations. The in-house servers were only added help establish calls. The data that’s transferred during calls (audio and video) are only passed between the two Skype clients and never through their servers.
There are 3 admissions there. The first is that more inter-communication is being moved to Microsoft servers, just after Microsoft took over (it doesn’t matter when it was first planned). Microsoft also admits that it is giving authorities access to Skype communications. Thirdly, here is the key part:
The company addressed the claims from the Washington Post that said Skype was actively monitoring instant messages on Skype. Gillett does say that messages are stored on their servers temporarily if the message can’t get through to another user. The key word is temporarily as they are never hosted on their servers for that long. They will of course respond to legitimate law enforcement requests whenever possible in regards to instant messages.
They basically confirm that the reports are true and in all three cases (3 confirmations of speculations) they add some excuse to distract from the admission. Here is the post from Microsoft for those who want to swallow all the spin. Tim, my co-host, writes that:
If we also look towards the allegation of snooping – which has hit the mainstream press, we have to consider that if it is true, then its hardly a secret and people are going into Skype with full knowledge of the allegations towards it. If they choose to accept that caveat in return for speaking with their contacts, then fine, there is no issue – as long as they are aware of the implications of using.
For those who at least wish to know the facts about Skype privacy, all of this is relevant.
VoIP is gaining traction and since code is law, as Larry Lessig put it, we must ensure that some privacy in phone conversation is preserved. Cellular networks already compromised some of this privacy.
When it comes to E-mail, the NSA is getting copies of everything and encryption of E-mail is the exception rather than the norm. Using Hotmail Microsoft has been spying on people for advertisers, profiling users and non-users (who write to Hotmail users) by their identities. Hotmail is being killed now (as a brand) to further promote Skype surveillance:
Microsoft is overhauling its free webmail service, dropping the Hotmail brand it has used since acquiring the product in 1998, and adopting the name Outlook.com.
The revamped service will help sort messages as they arrive and allow users to make internet calls on Skype.
So as we noted before, Microsoft is to store copies of people's written communications and also phonecalls. Do you trust Microsoft? █
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Posted in Apple, Deception, GNU/Linux, Google at 11:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Strategy Analytics is propaganda
Summary: Misleading numbers from Strategy Analytics help lie to the public, belittling or denying Android’s victory over Apple
EVERY source tells us that Android grows faster than Apple can tolerate, so the Microsoft booster in CNET throws in some shameful FUD. Microsoft parters can’t help telling us that Android has majority market share, but with omission of the best-selling device from the leading Android player some obscure firm made it into pro-Apple fan sites that lie and lie for the cult. Well, omitting the best-selling Android phone surely has an effect on the overall numbers. The data is rigged:
Strategy Analytics released their latest research report on smartphones with the data revealing that Android lost ground to iOS when comparing Q2 2011 with Q2 2012. While Android is shown to have fallen four percent, this data does not count the incredible sales from the Samsung Galaxy S III that is now available on all major US wireless carriers so I imagine this slight dip will disappear in the next quarter results.
In other words, the whole thing is invalid. Google’s reported activation numbers continue to rise, so the above claim hardly made any sense. It just took a while for proper, critical analysis to come. Anyone citing it has been bamboozled or is actively bamboozling readers. The question is, are there any relationships between Apple and Strategy Analytics? Whose strategy is it to lie like this? Apple’s? █
“Analysts sell out – that’s their business model… But they are very concerned that they never look like they are selling out, so that makes them very prickly to work with.”
–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]
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Posted in OIN, Patents at 11:10 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: News about steps that are taken or may be taken to weaken software patents in the largest market
SO APPLE is still trying to ban Linux-powered devices, using software patents of course. There are signs that unless we get rid of them, software patents will continue to harm Linux growth.
Meanwhile, a patent reform bill with some potential is making its debut:
New Patent Reform Bill Defines Software Patents; Targets Trolls
We’ve discussed the “America Invents Act,” a patent reform bill that passed last year after years of Congressional fighting. As we (and plenty of others) noted at the time, for all the hyperbole around the bill, it completely ignored nearly every problem with the patent system today, and seemed almost entirely useless. Our worry, then, was that this would kill off any appetite for Congress to take on the real problems of patents today. So it’s good to see that a new patent bill has been introduced — by Reps. Peter DeFazio and Jason Chaffetz, with a very, very minor change to patent law: it would allow those sued for hardware or software patents the ability to recover litigation costs if it’s determined that the suing patent holder “did not have a reasonable likelihood of succeeding.”
The new bill helps define software patents, which will in turn make it possible to treat them differently. Richard Stallman recently explained to us why it's an important first stage towards elimination or defanging of such patents.
In other patent news, a case with software patents at its core is being appealed:
A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday revived patent infringement claims brought by 01 Communique Laboratory Inc against LogMeIn Inc, sending LogMeIn shares down 16 percent.
According to another report, software patents are at risk from another direction:
The US court responsible for hearing patent appeals is showing fresh signs of disarray over the question of when software-based “inventions” can be patented. We recently covered a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that upheld a patent on the idea of using a computer to perform a particular kind of financial transaction. Now, just a couple of weeks later, the same court has reached the opposite conclusion about a patent on using a computer to manage a particular type of life insurance policy.
The patent in question dates to the late 1990s and is held by a firm called Bancorp Services. Because the courts have traditionally been skeptical of “business method” patents that merely claim a sequence of financial transactions—the Supreme Court invalidated one such patent in 2010, for example—Bancorp’s patent also claims a “system” for carrying out the necessary steps using a computer. It consists of a “policy generator,” a “fee calculator,” a “credit calculator,” and so forth.
The pro-Linux patent group claims to be growing, but it is not an opposer of software patents. To quote: “Open Invention Network (OIN) announced today significant growth in the size of its community of licensees year to date. Licensees continue to benefit from the value of OIN association and the freedom of action enabled by OIN’s licensing program. During the period, OIN had over 50 companies join its community of licensees, so that the community currently numbers over 460 open source supporters. OIN licensees, which include founding members and associate members, benefit from the leverage provided by a patent portfolio dedicated to the protection of Linux and access to enabling technologies through OIN and shared intellectual property resources.”
While we appreciate what the OIN is doing to protect Linux, it is far from a solution; it helps keep software patents in tact. █
“Writing non-free software is not an ethically legitimate activity, so if people who do this run into trouble, that’s good! All businesses based on non-free software ought to fail, and the sooner the better.”
–Richard Stallman
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Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 10:52 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Apple shows how serious a problem software patents are while a new bill in the United States may help classify them in preparation for isolation
THE Apple versus Samsung case has the ability to determine winners and losers in tomorrow’s market, in which mobility matters a lot.
Pamela Jones, now the almost-exclusive writer in Groklaw, is on top of the case, favouring Samsung/Android having taken Apple’s side in a court case a couple of years ago. She calls it “food fight” as Apple seeks to block Android devices as a matter of “emergency” (Apple is being battered by Android, so it reacts frantically). To quote:
In a letter to U.S. district court judge Lucy Koh this afternoon, Apple’s counsel William Lee said the company found Samsung’s letter to the court — which was filed by John B. Quinn of Samsung’s law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan earlier today — to be unsatisfactory.
As the trial begins coverage says that Apple is lining up silly designs that are copies of other companies, such as Sony. The trial in San Jose is “a patent battle between Apple and Samsung Electronics — and the stakes are high,” says one report. There is a lot of hardware money circulating in this market.
Here is a refreshing look at Apple’s pattern of copying from others:
There is a lot of buzz and confusion around Samsung’s claims that iPhone design was originally conceived by Sony. The reputed Apple blog Daring Fireball tries to debunk some misinformation. He points out the ‘original’ quote from Samsung’s court filing to prove that there is no such Sony phone which inspired the iPhone design
The corporate press says:
A federal court jury in Apple Inc.’s patent trial against Samsung Electronics Co. is set to be the first in the U.S. to hear lawyers’ arguments and evidence in the global dispute over smartphone technology.
Murdoch’s press weighs in too, but the article is not as suggestive as some. It does not imply that Apple’s case has merit.
Snyder, a Apple and Microsoft shareholder in the past, says that this case shows how patent wars have “gone wild”.
If I were more technically adept, I’d present this post as a split-screen video: On one side, we’d see a San Jose, Calif., courtroom, where Apple and Samsung throw rhetorical bombshells at each other as they fight for the soul of the mobile revolution. On the other, we’d see a Tucson, Ariz., nail salon where a young mother of two tells reporters she is being strong-armed by lawyers for pornographic movie producers who claim she pirated their film.
These are stories that should never have seen the light of day. The patent and copyright system was designed to foster innovation and protect honest entrepreneurs from unprincipled copycats; instead it’s becoming a mechanism to stifle innovation, enrich lawyers, and bog down the court system. Witness these two legal actions, Apple vs. Samsung and the rise of porn trolls, putting to rest any doubt that the patent system is badly broken.
That’s a refreshing change from this writer, who typically writes a lot of nonsense. In the next post we’ll show that patent reform — in the form of a bill at this stage — may be on its way. This is essential for defending Android/Linux. Several years ago we warned that such patents would become a a mortal risk to Linux; now we see it in action, with embargoes, tax, and other rogue tactics. █
“Patent monopolies are believed to drive innovation but they actually impede the pace of science and innovation, Stiglitz said. The current “patent thicket,” in which anyone who writes a successful software programme is sued for alleged patent infringement, highlights the current IP system’s failure to encourage innovation, he said.”
–IP Watch on Professor Joseph Stiglitz
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Posted in Microsoft, Vista 7, Windows at 10:35 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The main pillar of Microsoft’s monopolistic power is shaken and battered
THE myth Microsoft created out of Vista 7 is that it’s good; in reality, it’s just better than Vista. Now we learn from the Microsoft booster that 3 years after Vista 7′s release only about 20% of large businesses use it. To quote: “Windows 7 is running in just 20 per cent of large enterprises with the most difficult migrations yet to come.” As Pogson puts it: “There are lessons to be learned from this. Why not rewrite those web applications in FLOSS and use FLOSS clients to prevent a repetition?”
Microsoft’s encryption has just been cracked, assuring that Windows security will continue to be poor:
Security researcher Moxie Marlinspike has turned his attention to VPNs based on Microsoft’s MS-CHAPv2 protocol, demonstrating software at Defcon that can capture and crack passwords.
Chapcrack [1] parses the credential information out of MS-CHAPv2 handshakes, which are then sent to Cloudcracker [2]. Cloudcracker will then return a packet that can be decrypted by Chapcrack to recover the password.
As noted by ThreatPost [3], MS-CHAPv2 is an old protocol that should have been replaced, but hasn’t: criticisms go back as far as 1999.
This affects all versions of Windows.
Microsoft in general is declining as Windows declines. Despite whitewash pieces like this one, the reality remains clear to see; it is not just a lost past but also a lost future. As one pundit put it, Microsoft is in a “downward spiral”:
In essence, Microsoft was unwilling over the last 12 years, since Ballmer took over as CEO, to give new technologies a gestation period without demanding that they prove their worth in dollar terms. Technology companies come up with a great many ideas, 90 per cent of which prove to be ghosts in the dark. The 10 per cent that do succeed make the big bucks.
But it all takes time. And, from Eichenwald’s article, it looks like Ballmer is always in a big hurry – though he does not appear to have a clue about his destination.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates himself was more of a marketing man than a technology person; he was interested in the money and did not mind selling mediocre products that he convinced himself were the best. None of his minions ever dared to contradict him.
That culture has been taken to its logical extension by Ballmer. Some technologies like the e-book were looked at by Microsoft in 1998, well before other companies did; yet Gates did not have the patience to give developers their head to go off and create the right kind of hardware for such a product. No time was given for consolidation of the product because it did not look like a Windows product. It had to immediately had to have a business plan, a projected profit and loss statement.
This is a surprising development because it indicates that Microsoft did not learn from its own history of never getting anything right except on the third try.
And then, Eichenwald writes, there was the stack ranking system for evaluating its workers. When a given group was evaluated, there was a predetermined outcome. Some people had to get lower rankings than others, the evaluation wasn’t objective. Which meant that some people just could not progress in career terms.
People, in short, became dispensable. If you were in good with your manager, you got ahead. The incompetent were encouraged by this, the competent (read less mainstream types) were discouraged.
Microsoft’s monopoly is a “house of cards” in the sense that without Windows monopoly Office too will suffer. In a later post we’ll show new studies which suggest declining market share for Windows. Things change rapidly and Linux gains the most through Android right now. █
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