Novell’s love for .NET, OOXML, ActiveX, Vista, and Silverlight was discussed here before, along with accompanying examples.
Watch this new post from Novell’s public relations department. “Novell is pleased to announce the availability of its OpenOffice.org Novell Edition for Windows,” states the post. AlbertoP, one of the OpenSUSE volunteers, has already responded to this. He wrote: “Next time maybe say “Windows and Linux”. Linux should be your preferential platform, at least according to what you write on your site. For your information OpenOffice 3.0 packages are not available yet for SUSE in the Build Service. Next time maybe prioritize your platform and then think to Windows.”
The same company which shattered the standards industry wants to bring some of its brainwash to more innocent minds. It seems like a familiar story.
“The same company which shattered the standards industry wants to bring some of its brainwash to more innocent minds.”Will you attend such an event?
Well, worry not as nobody else will attend, either. There was a plan for “Some [...] Rick Jelliffe from Topologi with an Overview of XBRL, Microsoft’s Lawrence Crumption with a presentation entitled ‘Openly Excited: Microsoft, Open Source and Open Specification’…”
For the uninitiated, Rick Jelliffe was actively involved in promoting OOXML, even on Microsoft’s payroll [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18]. But it’s all cancelled now. As reported by IDG, “The Open Standards 2008 conference scheduled to be held in Sydney this week has been cancelled due to a lack of registrations.”
Given the farce that ISO has become, who can blame the target audience for lack of attendance? Standards as a whole were disreputed — arguably ruined — by the Microsoft/ISO tag-team operation. And sadly enough, with the decline of standards, the only party to be grinning with glee must be Microsoft.
Elsewhere in the press, there is a lot of harping and raving from Microsoft (even a press release) about joining a standards group, but skepticism is only to be expected.
I’ve no idea whether AMQP is indeed the bee’s knees, as Red Hat would have us believe, but I do know this: if Microsoft *really* wants to join in the open fun, it must always freely license its contributions, as Red Hat says it has done for AMQP. If the devil *insists* on supping with you, do check that you have a good supply of long spoons first.
“[A]mazing that corruption is excepted by the entire developed world. stunning that it has met with resistance only with some developing nations and maybe the european union. what should have been an overwhelming anger by all nations . the notion that developed nation are immune to corruption is bogus. microsoft did it in full view, without any hesitation. microsoft should be nailed for this.”
‘Excerpt from Lincoln’s famous speech, noted for the phrase “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” when accepting the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate from Illinois in June of 1858.’
Today’s news may suggest that not only Microsoft, being a very large corporation, influences the government using campaign contributions — a subtle form of (legalised) ‘bribery’. That’s just how the broken system operates. It’s more interesting to find that out Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates are opening up their wallets to personally support a Republican.
Redmond’s own Republican fights uphill battle for re-election
[...]
One important Microsoft employee seems favorably inclined: Steve Ballmer donated the maximum amount of $2,300 to Reichert’s campaign in November 2007 and again in June 2008.
It seems as if not all Microsoft employees are sold, however. According to OpenSecrets.org, an independent campaign finance tracking site, 22 Microsoft employees from the state of Washington donated $34,200 to Reichert this election cycle. Comparatively, Burner received $116,969 from 134 Washington-based Microsoft employees.
As for the 8th district’s most famous resident? Bill Gates donated to both Reichert and Burner.
It’s all about money and favours. In such an ill state of affairs, no wonder the whole system is collapsing (along with Microsoft). Perhaps — be it wishful thinking or a matter of inevitability — a better regulatory system will rise from the ashes. █
“Did you know that there are more than 34,750 registered lobbyists in Washington, D.C., for just 435 representatives and 100 senators? That’s 64 lobbyists for each congressperson.”
REMEMBER the incognito blogger known only as “Linux Hater”? We mentioned this character once before, after s/he had taken Boycott Novell’s claims to task. Miguel de Icaza is claimed to know the author, who was never publicly exposed. Anyway, we might never find out who that was, either. That blog is over.
It is worth pointing out that “Fake Steve Jobs” (another formerly ‘anonymous’ blog) was shut down by its creator several months after its author got exposed and found himself in some trouble. It was no-one other than a renowned Microsoft/SCO shill, Daniel Lyons, who harassed sites like Groklaw and "Show us the Code" (more information and background here). He also mentioned Boycott Novell in Forbes Magazine.
We are not suggesting that this is a ‘plant job’, even though these do exist (with concrete evidence [1, 2]), but for the uninitiated, at least for the record, it’s important to explain where Slate comes from.
If Slate publishes something which is pro-Microsoft, one must remember that Slate was Microsoft’s own Webzine until several years ago. It’s likely that some of the same writers remained (biases and colleagues play a role) and the influence of the Washington Post, directed by Bill Gates’ wife, does not inspire much confidence. Don’t believe everything you read. And as we approach the end of October, remember the Microsoft Halloween documents. Memo X, titled “Follow The Money,” (March 2004) is an “e-mail from consultant Mike Anderer to SCO’s Chris Sontag revealing Microsoft’s channeling of US$ 86 million to SCO.” █
He doesn’t seem to have an understanding of what they talk about and according this video which we put here recently, he is likely to appoint pro-software patents figures/lobbyists as advisors. Some of these issues were also discussed in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].
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