07.26.09
Posted in Finance, Hardware, Microsoft, Windows at 3:34 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: New numbers suggest that the decline of crucial Microsoft products sharpens
MICROSOFT’S XBOX — including 360 — has not only cost the company billions in losses. Several months ago the unit was still operating at a loss and now that Microsoft releases bad figures that are partly influenced by GNU/Linux it turns out that XBox losses deepen. According to one source, “Microsoft Q4 games revenue falls 25%.”
Microsoft’s fiscal fourth-quarter sales from Xbox 360 consoles and videogames fell from a year earlier as gamers bought less hardware and software and spent more time playing free games online.
Here are some concrete numbers:
The company’s Entertainment and Devices Division, which contains its games business, as well as the Zune and other miscellaneous items, saw a 25 percent year-over-year fourth quarter revenue decrease to $1.19 billion.
[...]
The EDD division’s quarterly loss overall was $130 million, slightly decreased compared to a $171 million loss in the same quarter, a year prior.
The phones/smartphones market is pretty much the same for Microsoft. For a long time it has operated at a loss and things are getting worse.
Microsoft losing mobile OS ground
It’s been able to spruce up its image a bit with targeted ads, but Microsoft has kept mobile operating systems out of its sights and is losing market share. Analysts predict that trend is likely to continue.
If the future is mobile, then Microsoft is in serious trouble here. It remains to be seen what comes out of the Danger acquisition. As we have been showing in daily links in recent days, HTC, Garmin-Asus and Sony-Ericsson increasingly abandon Windows mobile in favour of Android (Linux).
Linux is growing rapidly. Just because it’s not in the news doesn’t mean it’s not happening. █
“Gates is trying to make sure that he has a proprietary position in controlling the tools that allow you and me to access information. And that’s profitable by definition. How would you like to own the printing press?”
–PaineWebber Media Analyst Christopher Dixon
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Posted in Microsoft, Vista, Vista 7 at 3:03 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: More signs that Vista 7 suffers from the same problems as its chubby sibling, Vista
IN addition to all that we know about Vista 7, last night we found more evidence that Vista 7 is doomed to be a compatibility failure. Under the hood, Vista 7 is just Vista, but there is a lot of marketing and "evangelism" to hide even the fact that reception ahead of Vista’s RTM (2006) was a lot higher than it is now.
Anyway, from IDG:
Microsoft Admits API Error On Security Center Warnings
Last week we reported that Windows was reporting, a couple months early, that some security software was using an expired API to report its status to the Windows Security Center. One reader of the ISC story we linked to stated that he was experiencing it with Panda 2009 and the Windows 7 release candidate.
Ignore the “evangelism” and brace yourselves for another Vista. █
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Posted in IRC Logs at 2:50 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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To use your own IRC client, join channel #boycottnovell in FreeNode.
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Posted in Antitrust, Europe, Microsoft at 2:44 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The European Commission makes progress, but it neglects to stop Microsoft’s abandonment of Web standards
ABOUT a fortnight ago we wrote about how Microsoft had attempted to escape punishment in the EU by choosing its own ‘punishment’, only to upset Opera, Mozilla, and the European Commission.
There is a new development in this case. As Reuters puts it:
Microsoft (MSFT.O) has offered to let users choose their own browser and provide more interoperability information to third parties in a bid to resolve two antitrust cases, EU regulators said on Friday.
The European Commission charged the U.S. software company on January 15 with seeking to thwart rivals by bundling the company’s Web browser with its Windows PC operating system, thus harming innovation and reducing consumer choice.
From BizJournals:
European Union regulators said on Friday that Microsoft Corp. will offer users of its new Windows 7 operating system a choice of browsers.
People must remember that this is done because Microsoft broke the law in order to gain market share. According to a Microsoft-funded blog, Microsoft has seemingly made the change due to pressure and IDG says that it’s about appeasing the Commission.
Microsoft says it’s willing to put a “ballot screen” into Windows 7 to let European consumers choose from among several competing web browsers as the default in the operating system. The concession is aimed at resolving an antitrust complaint filed against the company in Europe by Opera Software over the bundling of Internet Explorer in Windows.
One reader of ours opines that “Microsoft is Silverlighting the EU.”
“This recent offer by Microsoft to allow end users to choose browser at first boot, is largely becoming academic,” he states. “As since they are moving most content to Silverlight, and you need Windows to use Silverlight, well… I bet Bill and Steve are laughing up their sleeve…”
The European Commission has actually dealt with Silverlight as an antitrust issue. However, there is no report of progress on the subject.
“Silverlight is much, much more than delivering video,” the reader insists. “So they are using Silverlight to do an end run around the browser wars. I bet there’s a memo in Redmond about Silverlighting Mozilla and Google.” The Netscape case has lessons to teach us. █
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07.25.09
Posted in Fuji Xerox, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, SCO, UNIX at 7:08 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Wild, wild SCO is doing more wild things
THE NOTORIOUS SCO case will resume in a couple of days and for those who missed the fascinating developments from the past couple of weeks, see:
Heise has this report which highlights payments from SCO (and from Darl McBride’s own bank account) to its to-be rescuer. If this sounds dodgy, it probably should, but then again, it’s SCO we’re talking about.
According to SCO, Steven Norris, who heads a group of investors which hopes to rescue SCO from liquidation, received $100,000 for a study he carried out for SCO Japan on emerging markets in Brazil, Russia, India, China, the Middle East and Africa. The company also states that $100,000 was paid from SCO boss Darl McBride’s personal funds as payment for Norris’ efforts to put together a group of investors to back SCO. It sees the fact that of all its creditors only Novell and IBM have complained about Norris’ role and challenged the contracts being drawn up to transfer software development to Unixis, as significant. SCO pugnaciously declares that, “In stark contrast [to the other creditors], IBM and Novell are out for themselves and seek only to avoid the consequences of their wrongful exploitation of the Unix computer code for the benefit of their Linux-related business. It is telling that with one possible minor exception, no other creditor has filed an objection to the sale.”
This is amazing. Now watch this from Groklaw about “York [possibly] lurking in the shadows.”
So much is happening at once in the SCO bankruptcy. Novell has filed a Response [PDF] to SCO’s Notice of Cure Amounts. Oracle has filed a limited objection [PDF] to SCO’s Notice of Cure Amounts and is sending in a lawyer [PDF]. IBM is adding yet another lawyer, Noah J. Phillips [PDF]. Oracle has a claim listed on Exhibit A [also continued here], but it says it has no clue what contract is involved.
Watch this one too. SCO is now trying to portray itself as a victim. Groklaw writes:
Dude, Novell won. You lost. Get over it. No one harmed you if you don’t own the copyrights. And if the contract says Novell can block your litigious moves, that’s what the judge said the contract says. That isn’t harm to you. It’s harm to Novell that it had to go into court and deal with bogus claims to establish the obvious. As for IBM, I believe it is going to wipe the floor with you, as I’m certain you know by now, even if by some miracle the copyrights became yours after all. That’s because you have been unable to demonstrate any meaningful infringement.
Things are going to get interesting on Monday. Knowing SCO, it is possible that it will pull some money from somewhere in order to pursue more litigation against Linux, never mind the clout of bankruptcy. █
“…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
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Posted in Microsoft, Novell, Patents at 6:45 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Novell uses intellectual monopolies to make business
IN A PRESS release that we mentioned earlier today, Novell is seen bragging about dozens of patents on ‘cloud computing’. Many thanks to a reader for noticing the following part:
Based on more than 60 cloud-related patents and patent applications, the Novell® Cloud Security Service enables Cloud Providers and Software as a Service (SaaS) vendors to ensure their offerings meet the strict security and compliance standards required by global businesses.
This is typical.
To be fair here, IBM is also playing those sorts of games with software patents. Yet two negatives don’t make a positive (unless they are multiplied).
In other news about software patents, it is argued that even video games are now being polluted by them. It’s Microsoft again.
A bunch of folks keep submitting various versions of this story about how Microsoft has apparently received a patent on join-leave in split-screen multiplayer games. We see so many of these sorts of stories these days, it’s getting a bit tiresome to talk about them, but no less disappointing.
The weird Microsoft-attributed patent which we mentioned yesterday is receiving coverage at The Inquirer right now.
The problem was fixed and the patent is now owned by Kawneer. Sadly Microsoft never actually owned the rights to the butt clamp and has missed out on the licensing rights.
More than anything, this incident probably serves to show how messy the USPTO really is. █
“Software patents have been nothing but trouble for innovation. We the software engineers know this, yet we actually have full-blown posters in our break-room showcasing the individual engineers who came up with something we were able to push through the USPTO. Individually, we pretty much all consider the software-patent showcase poster to be a colossal joke.” —Kelledin, PLI: State Street Overruled… PERIOD
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Posted in News Roundup at 5:44 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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Look for personal computer users to soon get their hardware in the same way that they get their cell phones: for free as part of telecommunications service subscriptions, the executive director of the Linux Foundation said on Friday afternoon.
In a presentation at the O’Reilly OSCON (Open Source Convention), Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin said a trend will emerge in which users would select a wireless or network service provider and get a free PC when buying a data plan. AT&T, he said, already is offering netbooks as part of a service plan, with the user getting the netbook for $50.
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CodeWeavers, Inc. today announced that recent sales trends position them to overtake Microsoft’s operating revenue in 2018, based on Microsoft’s fourth quarter report dated July 23, 2009 showing a 17 percent decrease in revenue quarter over quarter.
Yesterday while eating lunch at his desk, CodeWeavers President and CEO Jeremy White spied a story reporting that Microsoft’s quarterly revenues had decreased 17 percent – leading to the first year-over-year decline in their 34-year history. “I nearly spit a mouthful of a Jimmy John’s Turkey Tom sandwich onto my desk in excitement and awe,” he said, “because our own revenues had grown by more than 20 percent during our fourth quarter.”
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While we just shared that there are now patches available that introduce HDMI audio support for the xf86-video-ati driver, the RadeonHD driver has picked up improvements for power management, an area where previously the xf86-video-ati driver was in a better position. Novell’s Matthias Hopf added some power management support for an area of the AtomBIOS that he had reverse engineered, after AMD hadn’t provided any public documentation on the matter.
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Applications
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A screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output, typically carrying audio narration. Screencasting software takes a series of screenshots of a running application, recording the user’s actions, and creating a video file. The movies can be output in a variety of different formats such as Theora, Macromedia Flash (SWF), AVI, and Flash Video (FLV). This type of software was brought into prominence by the commercial Windows application Lotus ScreenCam in 1994.
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The latest version of Shutter (0.80) takes the “serious stuff” to the next level by adding six new features to the Edit tool. Shutter’s screenshot-taking features alone make it worth installing but the additions for editing make it the software of choice. This article describes the latest tools.
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Red Hat
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The Scientific Linux enterprise platform is available in version 4.8. Next to those from the upstream, downloads can be single packages.
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Red Hat is sowing the seeds of open source software development among college professors.
This week a fourth-floor meeting room at the company’s Centennial Campus headquarters in Raleigh is the site of a boot camp for faculty from a half-dozen universities, including N.C. Central and Elon. It’s a prototype for a program whose ultimate goal is to immerse computer science students in real-world open-source development projects.
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Red Hat, which is poised to join the Standard & Poor’s 500 index after the market closes today, makes its money by bundling Linux with various levels of support services.
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Ubuntu
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A few minutes ago, the Ubuntu developers unleashed the third alpha version of the upcoming Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) operating system, which is scheduled for release in late October this year. As usual, we’ve downloaded a copy of it in order to keep you up to date with the latest changes in the Ubuntu 9.10 development.
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It’s clear from the approaches above that putting a hard number on Ubuntu’s market share is impossible. Canonical seems reluctant to put forward any qualified figure, which is unfortunate–minimally, it would be nice to see an honest attempt at transparent analysis similar to Fedora’s statistics.
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Phones
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The Nuvifone G60, which has a 3.55-inch touchscreen and uses a Linux OS, will be in stores July 27 in Taiwan and then in Singapore and Malaysia by the end of August, the company said. The smartphone will be available in Europe and the U.S. later this year.
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The touch-screen handset was first introduced by Garmin in January of 2008, and its location-based features made some industry watchers think it could be a decent alternative to Apple’s iPhone. But the handset has faced multiple delays as Garmin struggled to create a Linux-based mobile operating system from scratch, and Apple has already released two new iPhone models since Garmin first announced its handset.
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Sub-notebooks
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But lo and behold, Dell has brought back its itty-bitty Netbook for $199 until July 27. The price gives you bare necessities: the Ubuntu Linux OS, a 4G SSD, a Webcam, and other basic features.
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But wait! While searching the Ubuntu website, I noticed an advertisement for a local distribution known as “Netbook Remix”. After delving into the details, I found that this OS was DESIGNED, that’s right, designed, to be used on small laptops (much like my Acer).
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From the first prototype portable computer in 1968 to the OLPC XO (an inspiration for netbooks) to the CrunchPad Web tablet of the near future, these 16 notebooks mark important stages in the progress of laptops.
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Laptops are closing the price gap on less-powerful netbooks, with retailers delivering fully equipped systems for under US$300 as part of promotional offers.
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With Intel looking to Linux for its Moblin operating system solution for portable device, the Wintel alliance between Microsoft and Intel – which has long had the stranglehold on personal computing – is showing signs of weakening.
Of course Windows XP/Vista/7 will not run on an ARM processor, so this next generation of devices will see some interesting, not to say overdue, diversification in user interfaces. At the core of many if not most devices will be Linux, skinned with something a bit more approachable than a geeky command-line interface. Maybe even more user-friendly than the current ‘best fit’ of Ubuntu Linux that we saw on the Pegatron.
While Ubuntu is a reasonable clone of the Windows desktop paradigm, in order to make personal computing a truly easy ride for all generations of the family, we should see some interesting graphical interfaces appear on new ARM/Linux mobile internet devices.
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Fog Computing
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What worries free software advocates is that their software can be enhanced without sharing the source, if the software is hidden behind a web interface. I claimed that this is not really a threat to the free software movement because modern languages and development tools make it so easy to replicate a service. In fact, we have so many people creating so many services that nobody has time to try all the ones that interest him.
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- Tropo “Shims” for Groovy, JavaScript, Python, and Ruby programming languages. Tropo Shims adapt the Tropo core API for use in a specific programming language. Open-sourcing these components enables Tropo to quickly support other programming languages. By releasing this code and working with the open-source telephony community, Voxeo hopes to add support for additional programming languages such as Clojure, JavaFX, and Scala.
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Hardware/Hybrid
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We’ve all been on the wrong end of a solution that was sold as inexpensive, free, time-saving, energy saving or one that offered a quick return on investment only to end up spending more on that alternative solution than a mainstream one. For some technologies, you’re better off with a brand name, but for a select few, generic is the only way to go. FreeNAS is one of those surprising projects that not only saves you a huge amount of money but is so simple to use that you’ll wonder why there’s so much mystery surrounding network-attached storage(NAS).
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After years in the making, the AcceleGlove open source data glove is now available for purchase from Anthrotronix. Originally designed for use as an automated American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter, the AcceleGlove can be used for a host of other applications. Thanks to the open source Software Development Kit (SDK) provided with the glove, developers and hobbyists alike can adapt the glove for use in assistive technology, rehabilitation, robotics, video gaming, virtual reality or a computing input device to name a few.
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Business
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At the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON), WSO2, also known as the open source SOA company, announced the availability of the WSO2 Governance Registry 3.0 and the WSO2 Identity Server 2.0, two new installments in its family of open source service-oriented architecture tools.
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A UK construction group’s growth has been assisted by outsourcing its IT systems to one of Europe’s fastest growing Open Source services groups. Killby & Gayford (K&G) announced today that its partnership with Sirius Corporation plc is part of a restructuring programme to lower costs and increase operational flexibility.
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Government
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We have examples of endeavours such as Wikipedia, that are only able to be created by a community, working together to create something they could not create individually. The Open Source Software community is another example. Such community efforts deliver efficiency, but the primary driver is an ethical one; as Glyn Moody comments when discussing the General Public License “It is not trying to be “efficient”, it is trying to be ethical; ideally you want both – and in many respects, the culture that the GNU GPL fosters is extremely efficient. But if efficiency and ethics clash, ethics win every time.”
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Government authorities in the Indian State of Kerala will save more $US2.27 million by using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) on computers to be installed in schools throughout the state as part of an $US11.7 million (Rs.57 Crore) expansion to its IT@School project.
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Licensing
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This is important not just because it shows that there’s considerable vigour in the GNU GPL licence yet, but because version 3 addresses a particularly hot area at the moment: software patents. The increasing use of GPL v3, with its stronger, more developed response to that threat, is therefore very good news indeed.
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Openness
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The meta-issues that question suggests, which touch on software as a service (SaaS), Internet architecture decisions, and “cloud” software licensing, were the topic of a panel discussion moderated by Bradley Kuhn from the Software Freedom Law Center, “With Software as a Service, Is Only the Network Luddite Free?”
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Programming
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The forthcoming standard for the object-oriented language C++ will not be released before 2010. It will also lack the planned ‘concepts’ mechanism. This is according to information in a Dr. Dobbs Journal article by C++’s inventor, Bjarne Stroustrup. Concepts have been “decoupled” – or in Stroustrup’s words “yanked out” – by the ISO group responsible for the standard, Working Group 21.
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Many tens of thousands of words have been printed over the years in attempts to answer the question “Why would anyone want to code for free?” Sometimes it is phrased more bitingly, like “Richard Stallman thinks programmers should work for free and starve to death!” With rare exceptions, various pundits, analysts, and random passersby have tried to explain these issues without asking any actual developers, or having any coding experience themselves. And thus in a daring deed of the blindingly obvious, I asked several experienced, professional developers for their views on the subject. These will be published next week in Part 2. Today I’m going to look at the value of Free/Open Source software to the non-coder, us lowly end users.
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WordPress is no longer just used to power blogs. It has become the CMS of choice for many web designers. It’s always interesting to see how it’s flexibility provides web designers with the freedom to design sites with no limitations. Here are 15 beautiful web sites all powered by WordPress.
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Google isn’t only crawling your Web site, it’s looking at your source code as well. That was the introduction for Chris DiBona, the open source programs manager at Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), one of several keynote speakers here at OSCON 2009 today.
While Google Code Search has been available through Google Labs for some time, DiBona revealed some telling — and potentially — unexpected findings about the state of open source.
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Dear AP: your RSS feed is for syndicating your stories. If you don’t want the content out there, don’t syndicate the content!
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DRM has failed in almost every instance it’s been tried. Not only does it fail to actually prevent copying, it tends to piss off legitimate users and limit value rather than enhance it. And yet… people keep trying. But, honestly, I can’t think of anything as pointless as the latest move from the Associated Press which appears to be an attempt to DRM the news
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Most scholars will tell you, quite correctly, that the very first modern copyright law was the Statute of Anne. which was passed in 1710 in the Kingdom of Great Britain (now the United Kingdom). Prior to its passing, copyright was handled more by giving monopolies to publishers. The Statute of Anne had term limits, namely 21 years and a familiar goal, to promote the printing of new works.
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We’ve discussed a few times over the years how copyright gets in the way of academic work. Journals (who get all of their writing and reviewing totally for free) insist on holding the copyright for those works in many cases. I’ve even heard of academics who had to redo pretty much the identical experiment because they couldn’t even cite their own earlier results for fear of a copyright claim.
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Last week, the National Portrait Gallery in London, UK sent a threatening letter to a Wikimedia volunteer regarding the upload of public domain paintings to Wikimedia’s media repository, Wikimedia Commons.
The fact that a publicly funded institution sent a threatening letter to a volunteer working to improve a non-profit encyclopedia may strike you as odd. After all, the National Portrait Gallery was founded in 1856, with the stated aim of using portraits “to promote appreciation and understanding of the men and women who have made and are making British history and culture.” [source] It seems obvious that a public benefit organization and a volunteer community promoting free access to education and culture should be allies rather than adversaries.
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We’ve noticed that pretty much every single new and innovative digital music startup that pops up eventually gets sued by the record labels.
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Restaurants and clubs threaten to pull plug over bid to increase background music fees
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Netizens of South Korea could find themselves at the mercy of a copyright infringement firestorm today, as a tough new copyright law takes effect. A prominent social networking site is sending warnings to its customers about their behavior, noting that far reaching penalties include 6 month Internet disconnections.
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The Big 4 record labels, Vivendi Universal (France), Sony (Japan), EMI (Britain), and Warner Music (US), are distinctly unhappy with France’s National Assembly.
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Internet service provider (ISP) Karoo, based in Hull, has changed its policy of suspending the service of users suspected of copyright violations.
The about face was made following a BBC story outlining the firm’s practice.
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It’s no secret that the web’s been buzzing about Tim Burton’s theatrical rendition of Alice in Wonderland, coming out in March 2010. With Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, Anne Hathaway as The White Queen, and the unique directing style of Tim Burton, how could there not be throngs of excited moviegoers?
Luis Casas Luengo, Director of Extremadura’s Fundecyt foundation 02 (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 6:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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To use your own IRC client, join channel #boycottnovell in FreeNode.
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