10.24.11
Posted in Antitrust, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Novell, Patents at 8:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Compal is the latest subject of Microsoft’s racketeering/PR campaign, which seeks to distort the way business is being done and ultimately ‘normalise’ corruption
IN THE PAST few posts we have concentrated on Apple and Microsoft, showing quite clearly that they don’t compete (they can’t), they cheat instead.
Nearly 5 years ago this site was created to challenge the beginning of this distortion of ‘competition’, where one turns one’s competition into its own cash cow. The customer suffers enormously and businesses suffer as well, except those which violate the law and get away with it (like the mafia when the police turns a blind eye, due to complicity or fear).
“Microsoft is a reactionary company whose mode of operation is: spot potential threat, then extinguish/buy out, and of course repeat.”Novell is utterly destroyed and all that’s left of it are products that act as Microsoft cash cows and masquerade as “GNU/Linux” (or as “open” and “community-driven”, thanks to gullible people who help OpenSUSE approach another public release). Then there are products like GroupWise, whose future seems uncertain to us based on recent talks (some management left and they lose customers at a rapid pace). Groklaw keeps track of the 'old Novell' case against Microsoft, which Pamela Jones is very familiar with. Microsoft managed to kill both the ‘old Novell’ and the ‘new Novell’, which became too much of a threat to Windows and Office around 2006 when SLE* 10 came out. Microsoft paid to remove Novell as a competitor from the market, in fact paying very cheaply in order to control its opposition through SUSE/OpenSUSE, Go-OO (with OOXML), Mono, etc.
Microsoft is a reactionary company whose mode of operation is: spot potential threat, then extinguish/buy out, and of course repeat. There are many examples of this kind (involving companies or form factors like sub-notebooks) and Microsoft is now focusing on Android. Why don’t people ever learn properly from the past? Microsoft never changed. Only the PR changed.
“Now that we know what both Novell and Microsoft lawyers said in their opening statements Tuesday at the antitrust trial just starting in Utah over WordPerfect and QuattroPro,” writes Jones, “folks here are Groklaw are starting to find exhibits from the Comes v. Microsoft antitrust trial collection here on Groklaw that do seem to raise questions about the facts asserted in the Microsoft opening statement.
“So I decided to put the report about the Microsoft opening statement from the courtroom up again, with some of the exhibits we’ve uncovered, in the hope that it will be useful by comparing them. If you find more, please add them in your comments. We’re still transcribing the exhibits, so feel free to help with that as well, by all means. We’re concentrating on this page now, but you can work on whatever interests you.”
This is where antitrust exhibits and especially their meticulous archival come handy (e.g. Comes vs Microsoft). We already know many of Microsoft’s tactics and can use them in a legal context to make real impact.
“We know based on antitrust material that the act of “planting” articles is very real. We also know that Microsoft pays Florian for sure.”Looking at the Android side, Microsoft lobbyists continue to amplify the fear with a new PR campaign for FUD. They help ‘normalise’ racketeering, making the unthinkable seem acceptable. For instance, after another secret extortion deal Microsoft’s lobbyist Florian Müller and shameless Microsoft booster Jon Brodkin push this new Microsoft talking point (which we prefer not to repeat). Google should “wake up” and file an antitrust complaint, a complaint for violation of the RICO Act, and also file a lawsuit for this criminal activity from Microsoft (which has gone on for years and motivated the creation of this Web site). Microsoft’s PR people keep ‘planting’ Microsoft spin and attacks on Android (Florian messaged me about it several times even though he knows I ignore him). We know based on antitrust material that the act of "planting" articles is very real. We also know that Microsoft pays Florian for sure. Put 2 and 2 together.
CNET calls it “patent-protection”, playing along with euphemisms as we very much expect it to. Quoting this shallow article (one among many):
China-based Compal Electronics will pay undisclosed royalties to the software giant for use of Google’s Android and Chrome operating systems used in smartphones, tablet, and other consumer electronics, the company said.
Microsoft cannot sell, so it is trying to tax those who do by means of divide and conquer with litigation and threats.
Nobody doubts that extortion is a crime, but there are ‘political’ reasons for the way it is handled (antitrust equilibrium) and the endless spin is vital for Microsoft in ensuring people don’t view this logically. They will be running lobbying and PR campaigns to whitewash their habitual crimes (keeping both critics and regulators at bay).
“They will be running lobbying and PR campaigns to whitewash their habitual crimes (keeping both critics and regulators at bay).”A case of accurate reporting will ignore the PR and delve into the issues, then explain what really happens there. But there is cowardice and compliance in the corporate press and lobbyists along with PR agents exploit this to seed deceptive coverage. For instance, Microsoft PR puppets like Preston Gralla go with the “Android/Linux hard to use” FUD, but then again, this is typical Gralla. They are pretending to be journalists, but their job is to boost Microsoft on behalf of publishers that receive big payments from Microsoft (for advertising and ‘consulting’).
Here is a nice new cartoon about the hilarity of patents. More people ought to understand that patents are merely monopolies that a lot of the time cannot be justified. The inventor of Java, which Oracle sues Android over, is now quoted in the news as saying that the patent system is “a disaster”. From Wired Magazine:
The patent system is fundamentally flawed thanks to a combination of ridiculous litigation, really trivial patents and a landscape where you can’t know what is patented, according to James Gosling, the father of the Java programming language and chief software architect at Liquid Robotics.
Gosling , speaking at The Economist’s Innovation Summit, admitted that there was “a kernel of principle that I actually believe in”, which is the value in being able to compensate innovators for what they do. However, he maintained: “The patent system is, frankly, a disaster. It’s one of these things I feel really frustrated about.
One reader wrote to us today: “got email about it this morning: ;There’s one good reason not to buy an Android phone, you’ll be likely paying up to $15 to MS for royalties…’”
“Their goal is to impose desperation and eventually make Android as expensive as Windows Phone 7, with little help from other oligarchs or trolls.”Well, they push this FUD repeatedly, along with fake costs. Their goal is to impose desperation and eventually make Android as expensive as Windows Phone 7, with little help from other oligarchs or trolls. Fortunately, the Oracle vs. Google case is tracked again by Pamela Jones [1, 2, 3], whose site does a fantastic job defending Android, probably the most mainstream ‘distro’ of Linux. Pamela has all along (since last year) warned everyone about Florian’s relationship with Microsoft and raised the need for antitrust action over the Android extortion. A lot of the corporate press never did any of that. Instead, it played along with the Microsoft PR and also quoted Florian extensively (after his mass-mailing campaigns). █
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10.23.11
Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Google, Patents at 9:48 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The empire of ripoff comes under fire after revelations about its deceased CEO
MR. JOBS Is gone, but his legacy remains for all of us to suffer from. Several readers have urged us to write about this legacy, but we were collecting existing feedback (as the subject was thoroughly covered in the big publications).
Fabricating evidence, dozens of actions to ban the competition and various other cases of aggression are not an achievement. Exploiting Free software and other people’s ideas is not an achievement, either.
“Fabricating evidence, dozens of actions to ban the competition and various other cases of aggression are not an achievement.”One person who was once working at MIT told us that Steve Jobs had pressured MIT to keep fostering the GNU project because it was valuable to the industry. But just look what Apple turned into a couple of decades later. Apple is becoming almost worse than Microsoft in certain aspects. And based on new reports, Steve Jobs was very much at the core of the abusive behaviour inside Apple. We shall come to this in a moment.
Over at USENET, Ron quotes Jobs as saying that Microsoft is “mostly irrelevant”. This comes from a new biographical book. About Microsoft and its CEO, Steve Ballmer: “In the final pages of the book, written in Mr. Jobs’s own words, he described Microsoft as “mostly irrelevant” and said companies like it often ran aground when they were run by salespeople. He singled out Apple’s former chief executive, John Sculley, and Microsoft’s chief executive, Steve Ballmer, as examples, adding that he didn’t think Microsoft would change as long as Ballmer was in charge.”
“Bill [Gates] is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. He just shamelessly ripped off other people’s ideas.”
–Steve JobsAbout Bill Gates: “Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. He just shamelessly ripped off other people’s ideas.”
Gates is now promoting patents, just like Jobs does (even after his death).
“Unfortunately,” writes Ron, “Jobs seemed incapable of looking in the mirror and applying this to himself.”
“We’ve always been shameless about stealing great ideas,” said Steve Jobs. “As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours,”said Bill Gates. They use the word “steal” very spuriously and, as we shall see in a moment, they also make such accusations against Linux/Android, where sharing is encouraged and the word “steal” is hardly ever used. According to TalkAndroid, the “upcoming biography, Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson is scheduled for release next week, but the Associated Press got a copy early. From their descriptions, it sounds like there is some pretty bombshell stuff scrawled on the pages within. Apparently Steve Jobs was so vehemently agitated by Android that no monetary settlements with Google would ever be made. He had every intention to fire all of his guns at once, in effort to obliterate Android from the marketplace. Straight from the book, you’ll find this, quite frankly kind of disturbing, quote,
““I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” Jobs said. “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.””
“Apple sure is scared of Linux/Android and evidence of this is undeniable.”It also says that “[i]n a subsequent meeting with Schmidt at a Palo Alto, California, cafe, Jobs told Schmidt that he wasn’t interested in settling the lawsuit…”
The quote goes line this (assuming one kept accurate record of it): “I don’t want your money. If you offer me $5 billion, I won’t want it. I’ve got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that’s all I want.”
Apple sure is scared of Linux/Android and evidence of this is undeniable.
We know that there are Apple fans out there who attempt to discredit Android and back Apple’s position, but a lot of rebuttals have been written already. To quote one from Homer, “Jobs vowed to “destroy” Android with his “last dying breath”,” his USENET message goes like this:
From: Homer (Slated.org)
Date: Saturday 22 Oct 2011 00:17:55
Groups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
What an evil bastard:
[quote]
Steve Jobs said he would spend his “last dying breath” fighting Google’s Android mobile operating system because he viewed it as a “stolen product,” according to an upcoming biography on the Apple co-founder.
The Associated Press excerpted Jobs’ words after obtaining a copy of the book “Steve Jobs,” written by noted biographer and former Time executive Walter Isaacson, ahead of its Oct. 24 release date. Though other biographies on the enigmatic entrepreneur have appeared in the past, the book is unique in that it is the only one to be officially authorized by Jobs himself.
According to the report, Isaacson writes about an “expletive-laced rant” that Jobs made to him about Android after the introduction of one particular HTC phone in January 2010.
“I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” Jobs reportedly said. “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”
[/quote]
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/20/steve_jobs_vowed_to_destroy_google_android_called_it_a_stolen_product.html
Behold the “great” Steve Jobs.
So let’s see what Apple “invented”:
Android is a Dalvik shell running on Linux, incorporating applications primarily for communication, such as E-mail and Web browsing, and many third-party applications for other tasks. The visual design is roughly a grid of icons on a desktop, with full screen menus for preferences.
Dalvik is derived from Java, Sun’s “open source” development platform, but which its new, patent-troll owner, Oracle, now claims needed to be licensed and paid for when implemented… on mobile platforms, despite the former owner giving Google its explicit blessing to do so.
Apple did not invent Java, or Dalvik. Java was invented in 1995 by Sun employee James Gosling, who (ironically) later joined Google, and most recently joined a startup company called Liquid Robotics.
Linux is an operating system kernel ideologically based on Minix, that was further ideologically based on Unix. Andrew Tanenbaum, the creator of Minix, has explicitly stated Linux did not copy any code from Minix whatsoever, and is not a “rip-off”.
Apple did not invent Linux, or Unix. Unix was invented by Thompson and Ritchie at AT&T Bell Labs in 1969, whilst Jobs was still trying to get his first date in high school, and was being taught how to not put the round peg in the square hole by his foster parents.
The communication application interfaces on Android are based on KHTML technology, which was later assimilated by Apple, then renamed WebKit, and various industry standards for communication protocols established
by the Internet Engineering Task Force and many others.
Apple did not invent KHTML, or WebKit, or any communication protocols. Even Bonjour is just Apple’s reimplementation of Zeroconf, which was a protocol developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force. In fact the person most directly responsible for Zeroconf was Erik Guttman of Sun, not Apple:
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=613609
http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/webExtensions/elections/SA/SA2/Election_April_2011/SA2_GUTTMAN_Chairman.pdf
The concept of a grid of icons on a desktop was invented by Xerox PARC way back in 1973, and only assimilated by Jobs, when he was allowed to peek inside the Palo Alto facility in exchange for stock options.
Apple did not invent the GUI, or icons, or grids of icons, or windows, or mice, or pointers, or any other aspect of desktop computing. All of that was invented by Xerox PARC, including drop-down/pop-up menus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_interface#Xerox_PARC
Apple invented nothing, Jobs invented nothing, and his vicious crusade against others implementing ideas that had nothing to do with him is one of the most sickening chapters in the history of technology.
May the name “Steve Jobs” be forever remembered as an evil tyrant, who fraudulently laid claim to others’ creations, and swore with his dying breath to destroy all those who were not beholden to him and his reign of tyranny.
May he burn in Hell.
Strong words. Another poster calls this “Apple’s premeditated patent aggression against Linux Android” and says that it “looks like Apple hallucinatories had pre-meditated the patent aggression against Linux android from day 1 because they
were hallucinating!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
“Some sources alleged that Jobs also resorted to “alternative medicine” (placebo treatment) rather than procedures that could save his life.”He is referring to other reports based on the book, referring specifically to Steve Jobs’ drug use, which is more of a personal angle. “So this patent aggression with a $40bn war chest is completely premeditated. Any judge looking at that should think very carefully about the judgments that are being handed down. No one has the right to sue every tom dick and harry because they got money in the bank and want to grab even more by manufacturing reasons and using the courts to hand out verdicts that are systematically unfair given the *whole* picture.”
He adds: “Far east manufacturing companies should also look hard at servicing any more orders from Apple. Unless they undertake written commitments by Apple to not sue you or your customers who are buying androids components and devices from you, you should avoid doing business and definitely not share your best tech with Apple.
“Most far east companies now gift their most advanced technologies to open source, Linux and Android companies. They make a lot more money doing that than go play judge and jury games with Apple’s patent trolling management who are out trying to impoverish any and all companies that do business with Apple.”
For those who are interested in the personal issues with Jobs, there is this article from a reputable source. One poster in USENET jokingly wrote: “The whole empire was built on LSD addiction!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
From the article: “The 630-page account of the technology pioneer’s life reveals intimate details of his relationships, how he was influenced by LSD and railed against executives at Apple who, he believed, cared more about making money than good products.”
But as we later found out, Jobs was willing to blow $40 billion on just destroying Android. What will shareholders say? “Apple should spend their $40bn cleaning up their electronics manufacturing waste mess in their China factories and pay the locals compensation before these factories are all shut down,” writes the USENET poster.
To quote more from the article: “Jobs also describes how taking LSD had “reinforced my sense of what was important: creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.””
More mysticism. Some sources alleged that Jobs also resorted to “alternative medicine” (placebo treatment) rather than procedures that could save his life. But that again is a personal angle which does not relate to the technical and cannot be properly verified (Wikileaks also contains alleged evidence of Jobs having HIV).
“Jobs then proceeded to renounce greed by … making a $337 billion company and an $8.6 billion personal fortune, without ever donating even a single dime to charity, and “reinforced his sense of what was important” by … selling trivial toy gadgets, then went on to oppress any competition with patent extortion and litigation, thuggishly and hypocritically hoarding ideas he merely stole from others, whilst vowing with his dying breath to destroy everyone else, like a frothing maniac,” wrote another poster. “Yup, definitely the hallucinatory effects of LSD. Of course it helps if one is already an evil bastard in the first place.”
As the latter poster put it: “It’s hard to work with addicts and their violent character, particularly in a business environment where getting the work done and taking responsibilities are a big part of daily chores to bring in the daily bread. I pity all who were his coworkers. I hope they sue the crap out of Apple if they were subject to daily abuse from drug addicted management.
“No one has rights to inflict abuse on fellow workers if their manager chose to be an LSD addict and visit them with daily abuse.”
Last night we saw funny comment from a troll, who said: “The steve jobs attacks are funded by the FSF, and carried out by Techrights and its supporters.”
“Does the man behind ARM know that Steve Jobs claim credit for things he never came up with?”Now, that was funny. We find it flattering that one might draw a connection between us and the FSF (none exists).
The only thing Android stole was Jobs’ thunder. Richard Stallman was right about Jobs. And just because we agree with the FSF on many issues does not mean we are, in fact, in any way related to it. We are 100% independent. We always were.
This afternoon I had the pleasure of sitting down in a local coffee shop talking to a Ph.D. graduate of Sir Stephen Furber, who is one of ‘the’ public faces of ARM. Does the man behind ARM know that Steve Jobs claim credit for things he never came up with? Either way, the man I spoke to detests Apple for many of the reasons we covered here over the years. █
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Posted in Apple, Oracle, Patents at 3:05 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Jobs image licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (version 1.2 or any later versions); Ellison patch By Thomas Hawk
Summary: A mishmash of stories about software patents in the United States
THE agency known as the US International Trade Commission [1, 2, 3] has got far too much power that it does not deserve. It can be seen as a US-based office for the interests of any US-based company that wants to ban its competition and Apple misuses those powers to block competition just as Steve Jobs once hoped (more on that later, in a separate post).
The news is still abuzz with software patents, but only in the United States (Microsoft is trying to lobby for software patents in other countries, but that too will be a separate post).
Some companies are in fact basing themselves on a patent monopolies. To quote this new example:
…a new patent covering aspects of its mobile video and mobile personalization technologies.
The intent here is to exclude or to sue rivals. Is this really a valid business model? And as for Oracle, it too has turned to patents, having made statements against patents in the past. But it is being reported that Oracle’s case, which has already gone on for over a year, gets postponed:
A judge postponed an Oct. 31 trial over Oracle Corp.’s claims that Google Inc.’s Android software infringed patents on the Java programming language.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco vacated the scheduled trial date, saying it conflicts with a criminal gang case in his courtroom that will continue through January. He asked lawyers for Oracle and Google to consent to a trial before a magistrate judge. If they don’t agree, Alsup said he’s considering ‘swapping the case to another federal judge,” and the companies will have no right to object.
‘I have not been so overworked in 37 years of professional life,” Alsup said. The hearing concluded today with no new trial date scheduled.
The British press has more information about it:
Google over alleged Android patent infringements of Oracle-owned Java software has been postponed again, due to a criminal trial that will start the week before the two tech giants were due to meet.
Groklaw‘s take is as follows:
The two motions for summary judgment Oracle wants to file are, first, regarding “the copyrightability of the selection and arrangement of names in the API design specifications at issue”. Second, it wants to file a motion for summary judgment regarding “Google’s four equitable defenses — laches, equitable estoppel, implied license and waiver” and Google agrees that it can be decided as a matter of law. This has to do with Google’s arguments that nobody on Sun objected and in fact praised Android.
It did indeed and there is denial of evidence that can support Google according to other reports that call patents “intellectual property”. Funnily enough we found this new article titled “RIM’s operating system BBX in patent trouble”. It says that “A New Mexico firm claims the ‘BBX” name is protected by trademarks it holds and is threatening to take legal action against RIM unless it stops using the moniker.” Watch the headline that speaks of patents. The article is about trademarks, not patents. It is just more evidence of how poor journalism can be when it comes to these topics, with the term “IP” thrown around spuriously as well. █
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by representatives from Microsoft and AJ Park (and another MS apologist, Chris Auld of Intergen, MS’ favourite partner) who are trying to convince the government to retract its position excluding software from patentability, as is proposed in the Patent Amendment bill which is scheduled to be passed into law sometime in the next session of parliament.
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