Other formats that are suitable as LTPFs include Open Document Format (ODF), HTML, XHTML and XML. For digital images, JPEG, TIFF or PNG are recommended, and FLAC for digital audio.
None of the above is a Microsoft format; at Microsoft, digital obsolescence and single vendor control are part of the business plan. █
Microsoft’s relationship with Citibank is a subject that we covered a year ago when there was obvious Microsoft bias from the bank. Well, guess what? Citigroup, the parent of this bank, wants to compete with a financial news site right now. Conflict of interests? Just pretend it ain’t so. But look at Citibank’s partner for this venture. It’s Microsoft.
Citigroup has formed a venture with Microsoft Corp to compete with Mint.com, the personal-finance website that Intuit Inc agreed to buy last week for $170 million (Dh624 million), people familiar with the matter said.
[...]
After last year’s $45 billion bailout, Pandit may have to justify the cost of each project, said Thomas Noyes, who until 2007 headed Citigroup’s international Internet and mobile-banking businesses.
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Microsoft runs MSN Money, a website that displays stock quotes, offers tools for tracking bank accounts and publishes articles and columns on investments, personal budgeting and credit repair.
This is ridiculous. While not descending to the corruption that led to this whole “bailout” thing (colossal public looting), worth noting here is that it’s ethically wrong for a bank to own, control or even collaborate with news sites that cover its activity.
Prime Minister Igor Chudinov is visiting USA, governmental press service reports.
During the visit I. Chudinov will take part in a work the 64th session of UN General Assembly and Climate Change Summit.I. Chudinov will meet with leadership of the State Department, World Bank, IMF, representatives of Microsoft corporation.
Watch this carefully. He meets the government, a large bank, another international bank, and then… Microsoft. Anyone else? No.
Microsoft and Bank of New York Mellon announced earlier this month that they are working together to help state and local governments meet reporting requirements related to economic stimulus funding.
A study commissioned by Microsoft Corp. estimates that the unlicensed “white spaces” spectrum coveted by the software giant and other technology companies could be worth more than $100 billion over the next 15 years.
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The companies were met with stiff resistance from the telecommunications, media and audio technology industries, though the FCC ultimately approved the unlicensed use of the white spaces late last year.
Is Microsoft trying to lobby the FCC to give it a place on the table and greater access to taxpayers’ money? Is that the purpose of Microsoft paying people to conduct a so-called ‘study’? Microsoft does not create white papers for educational purposes; It is not in shareholders’ interest.
If the say-on-pay had been in place, you have to wonder how many investors would vote to spend that kind of money on relocating one executive.
Jackson, who claims to have a “long position in MSFT,” writes:
Microsoft’s Distasteful Plans to Save Us from the Housing Crisis
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This last disclosure came out late Friday in Microsoft’s preliminary proxy.
Michelle studiously noticed that in that same filing, Microsoft disclosed that it may outdo the Fed and the Obama administration in saving the country from the current financial mess. Specifically, they are going to focus on the housing mess and try to stabilize the market one Bay Area executive mansion at a time.
[...]
The reason for this was that Elop apparently couldn’t sell it. Therefore, using bizarre executive comp logic, he hired 3 independent appraisers to peg the value of his home and got Microsoft’s shareholders to pay him that amount for the home. This was all to “induce” him to take the job of heading up Microsoft’s Business Services Division in Redmond. I know it rains more in the winter in Seattle, but that’s quite an “inducement.” I guess the “war for talent” is brutal — even in the biggest recession since the Great Depression.
[...]
If Elop couldn’t sell his house in the Bay Area and he didn’t want to carry the mortgage on it while moving to Seattle, that’s his decision. As a shareholder, I’d say let’s find some other executive who does want this exciting opportunity. Enough with the “that’s what we had to do to get this talent” logic. There are many talented people that would have jumped through hoops for this job.
It’s too bad Elop and Kevin Johnson couldn’t have coordinated their plans to switch jobs at Microsoft and Juniper Networks. They could have saved shareholders a lot of expense by just doing a house swap.
Microsoft co-founder on secret jaunt to Israel – with 92-meter yacht
Microsoft founder and multi-billionaire Paul G. Allen landed Friday at Ben-Gurion Airport, the day after his 92-meter mega-yacht, Tatoosh, anchored at the Ashdod port – since no regular Israeli marina is large enough to hold the ship, the world’s 26th largest motor yacht. He took a helicopter from the airport to his yacht.
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As to what Allen is doing in Israel – he is considered extremely secretive and has banned journalists from his yacht and covering his visit.
How polite. Secrecy sometimes indicates something illegal/unethical is being done, not necessarily a crime. █
A South Korean court ruled that global software giant Microsoft Corp. broke anti-trust laws by bundling programs with its Windows operating system, local media reported Monday.
In a case filed by local software company Dideonet, the Seoul Central District Court ruled against Microsoft on Friday, saying its bundling the Windows Media Service with the Windows operating system violated fair competition regulations by infringing upon consumers’ right to free choice and obstructing fair competition among rival firms.
Summary: Mass-migration to OpenOffice.org in Kazakhstan may imply adoption of the international standard; Nokia makes use of KOffice, which also implies wide use of ODF
A move to OpenOffice.org would imply ODF support — support which is improving in OpenOffice.org 3.2, based on this report from Malte Timmermann.
Further improvements in OOo 3.2 and/or the ODF 1.2 specification
ODF 1.2 now allows for using different encryption algorithms, and all details about the algorithms used need to be documented in the manifest.xml (which is the reason that the manifest.xml itself can’t be encrypted). These ODF enhancements have been submitted to the OASIS ODF TC, and OOo 3.2 already implements them.
Today Thomas Zander from Nokia announced in a blog (http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2009/09/17/office-viewer-…) that Nokia will be using KOffice as the core of the office viewer of Maemo 5.
“The KOffice community is very happy to see this development”, says Inge Wallin, marketing coordinator of KOffice. “It shows that our long and persistent work on compatibility and adaptibility within KOffice has paid off and is visible to outside viewers.”
This ought to help KDE, which will in turn help ODF, despite the recent Microsoft-Nokia deal. Here is the original post from Zander, which leads IBM’s Rob Weir to saying: “Zander rocks! RT @gwidion: Kudos to @KOfficeHacker, Thomas Zander. Just ported #koffice to the nokia #n900! #ODF to go!! #kde”
This nicely demonstrates how ODF and Free software are complementary. It may be worth pointing out especially today because it’s Software Freedom Day throughout the world (there is also Document Freedom Day). According to this, the spread of ODF on phones is wider than just Nokla devices. “#odf on the iPhone (FileAid), Blackberry (Visor ODF movil), WinCE/PocketPC (SoftMaker) and soon Maemo/Nokia N (KOffice),” writes one person in Twitter. QuickOffice too is to be pressured to offer ODF support. Microsoft may try to fragment ODF [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7], but people are smart enough to find ways around Microsoft’s broken ‘support’. █
After Vista flop, Indian CIOs not open to new Windows
Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, may be throwing parties for potential customers to test its Windows 7 operating system to be launched in October, but many chief information officers (CIOs) are not joining the party yet.
Reliance Communications, Asian Paints, Essar Group and some other companies will wait to see how efficient the new product of Microsoft is before shifting to it, after the Vista failed to deliver on the promise of a faster and sleeker operating system.
Windows Vista was lauded and hailed prior to its release and shortly afterwards, before it got some real-world tests, leading to testimonies which overrode pseudo-reviews that Microsoft PR had managed. █
“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
The Live@Edu scam is another case of Microsoft abuse in mail and collaboration. This one relies on bribes (or “incentives”) and ignorance (or selfishness). Recently we gave some examples in [1, 2, 3, 4]. Microsoft actually competes very viciously with Google in this area, but we lack evidence to suggest that Google offers bribes like Microsoft does. Watch the hypocrisy of Microsoft, which is now accusing Google of being monopolistic. We should really all just lean on Microsoft to save us from all those evil monopolists. Really. Microsoft to the rescue!
Here is a new account of what Microsoft achieves with Live@Edu:
It’s an interesting approach, and both companies are providing their products free for a reason. Perhaps now this will shed some light on the internal processes both Microsoft and Google take into account when offering free services or products.
What do you think? Ethical? Unethical? Good business practice or doomed to bite them in the arse?
Microsoft — unlike Google — has another methodology for spreading Live@Edu through a separate type of bribes. Microsoft is recruiting young people whom it calls MSPs (Microsoft Student Partners). They are hired ‘shills’ for Microsoft, whom Microsoft feeds with gifts, as we showed before. Microsoft is doing a lot of this in India these days. It is a modern, digital form of colonisation with the help of people who betray their country(‘s autonomy).
The Times of India had this coverage some days ago. It is very superficial and promotional, but it serves to show that Microsoft has not changed its ways.
To acquaint information and technology students with latest tools and software technology, Microsoft Student Partners (MSP) has launched a state-wide educative programme. The programme’s first phase kick-started with a workshop at Navrachana University (NU) here on Sunday.
“This is our first programme of the state-wide plan wherein we will cover 10 universities in Gujarat, including MS University. We are also looking to promote collaboration between universities and Microsoft through two major programmes – MSDN Academic Alliance and Live@Edu,” said Prakhar Agarwal, MSP programme head in Gujarat.
This is ridiculous. Universities can trivially host their own mail using Free software, not Fog Computing. Whether knowingly or not, those promoting such programmes are not just promoting multi-nationals but they also help turn their peers into slaves of a single foreign company that probably has the most appalling track record in its field. Witness who else is helping Microsoft in India at the moment. It’s Microsoft's old shill, TCS. Along with (potentially) tens of thousands of ‘charities’ that were seemingly offered gentle bribes from Microsoft, TCS lobbied for OOXML. And now:
IT outsourcing firm Tata Consultancy Services has entered into an alliance with Microsoft India to launch a virtualisation Center of Excellence (CoE) in Chennai.
That, together with EDGI, should be sufficient reason to kick Microsoft out of India, just as the British were once forced out. Microsoft exploits India, but it pays/bribes enough Indian people to carry on serving Microsoft’s agenda in the country. As the highly-regarded Professor Deepak Phatak put it last year, “This hypothetical counter complaint shows Microsoft as working at national and International forums to maintain and enhance its monopoly in global markets, and as attempting to ensure its monopoly strangle-hold on Indian desktop Market. It also paints INFOSYS, TCS, WIPRO and NASSCOM as willfully helping Microsoft in this evil design, and thus acting grossly against Indian National interests.” █
“The alliance uses Microsoft technologies instead of challenging Gates in his own game. Wipro is just a servant of Microsoft facilitating Indian cyber slavery under the American corporate banners.”
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