11.16.10

IRC Proceedings: November 16th, 2010

Posted in IRC Logs at 7:17 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Enter the IRC channels now

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Links 16/11/2010: Debian 6.0 is Coming, OpenRespect.org Criticised

Posted in News Roundup at 6:14 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Clip of the Day

Intel on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

Credit: TinyOgg

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Confirmed: Microsoft Still Manipulates Financial Reports

Posted in Deception, Finance, Fraud, Microsoft, Windows at 4:43 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: A real case of investigative journalism from Paul McDougall shows that Microsoft misreports its results

MICROSOFT is not new to fraud charges. Even when the company hit its peak value (or thereabouts) the company was caught manipulating reports, after a whistleblower showed evidence. Microsoft later paid him several millions of dollars to drop the charges and go away, but the SEC did not go away. This whole story and many others can be found in our wiki. There are some more recent allegations as well.

Let us bear in mind that Windows profit declines despite Microsoft cheating by the numbers as Paul McDougall helps reveal: (thanks go to Girts for the pointer)

Microsoft’s most recent Windows sales totals got a boost from the fact the company quietly added revenues previously assigned to other groups to its operating systems unit, a bit of accounting legerdemain that, along with other bookkeeping moves, helped the Windows group post big gains in the past quarter, according to an InformationWeek analysis of the software maker’s SEC filings.

[...]

Just leaving Bolzano after three nights here for SFSCON (a small but perfectly formed FOSS conference). Passing through the tiny airport I noticed an unusual security requirement – which was being actively enforced. Despite apple strudel (that’s a delicious, giant pastry filled with spiced apple and mixed berries) being a major tourist item on sale in Bolzano, it’s banned on aircraft here.

There are surprisingly few comments on this article, which is an exclusive. More people need to see this. One commenter says: “Given that the reason Microsoft’s share price has maintained its price is due to what is happening in its three traditional core businesses, could Microsoft be burying underlying sales and growth problems simply by the way it uses inter-business charges? After all, investors have now become so blasé about the fact that Microsoft is bleeding around more than a $1B a year in its Online Services Division, what matter whether it loses $1B or $2B. However, adding another $1B to the three core business makes things look somewhat rosier than perhaps they really are.

“Questions should be asked, more especially given the recent sale of $1.3B shares by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.”

Not just questions should be asked; lawsuits should be filed, too.

Here is another such post which relies on the above as its source and adds:

Microsoft declined to comment on how the company’s Windows division gained the extra $259 million.

Why can’t Microsoft comment? Probably because it’s true. Let us remember that Microsoft’s former CTO quit the company and was paid to keep quiet

Novell admitted playing the bucket game several years ago, which leads to the question: shouldn’t shareholders be allowed to receive compensation if they sue the company for misreporting figures while it’s public traded? Shouldn’t the SEC step in again? █

“One strategy that Microsoft has employed in the past is paying for the silence of people and companies. Charles Pancerzewski, formerly Microsoft’s chief auditor, became aware of Microsoft’s practice of carrying earnings from one accounting period into another, known as “managing earnings”. This practice smoothes reported revenue streams, increases share value, and misleads employees and shareholders. In addition to being unethical, it’s also illegal under U.S. Securities Law and violates Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (Fink).

–2002 story about Charles Pancerzewski, Microsoft

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Nature Calls Microsoft in Red Hat’s Back Yard

Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Red Hat at 4:31 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

…and Microsoft asks Red Hat for toilet paper

Summary: The state which is renowned for Red Hat’s great success over there surrenders its schools to a convicted monopolist from the west coast

WHEN Microsoft feels threatened in some geographical area, then it starts dumping software on this area. Sometimes it’s American EDGI [1, 2, 3, 4] and sometimes it’s some ‘educational’ deal where a school or university (or entire school district) agrees to give up education and instead deliver Microsoft indoctrination to young people, usually at the expense of their parents. This blatant display of disregard is now targeted specifically near Red Hat’s headquarters. It’s a familiar strategy as we gave other examples of Microsoft doing similar things specifically in this area (it’s in our archives and there’s also an example from Novell), but Gavin Clarke does not mention this cheekiness at all. Instead he just says that “North Carolina to raise army of Microsofties”:

Thousands of students in the state of North Carolina are set to get a skoolin’ in Microsoft technologies thanks to a state-wide deal with the software giant.

Microsoft said Tuesday that North Carolina has become the first US state to implement Redmond’s Microsoft IT Academy Program for its public high schools — 628 in total.

The program offers students and teachers the latest Microsoft software for classrooms and labs, Microsoft e-learning materials, discounts on courseware, access to Tech Net, and marketing resources to help promote the institutions’ association with Microsoft, along with certification in Microsoft technologies.

Why Carolina and why now? Red Hat’s address is 1801 Varsity Drive Raleigh, North Carolina 27606. █

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Microsoft is Paying Red Hat Foe Acacia and Bruce Perens Criticises Red Hat Over Acacia NDA

Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Novell, Patents, Red Hat at 4:08 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“Microsoft hardly needs an SCO source license. Its license payment to SCO is simply a good-looking way to pass along a bribe…”

–Bruce Perens

Summary: Red Hat pressured but not vilified for the fact that it signed some deal with patent troll Acacia, locked it in a box, and hid away the key, leaving some developers in a state of uncertainty

We have already done quite a lot to pressure Red Hat to unseal the Acacia settlement [1, 2, 3]. Other did the exact same thing. It was all in vain.

Bruce Perens is now increasing the pressure on Red Hat. He explains why software patents — the main subject of Techrights since its beginning — is the main problem software freedom faces (a point we made many times before).

One pro-patents guy (for professional reasons) agrees with our assessment at the time and refers to this new piece from Bruce Perens, who was raining on Novell's parade a few years ago (Perens is more of a Debian person).

In this specific example, Perens echos the concern that Red Hat’s actions may have strengthened Acacia, and placed developers building JBoss related applications in a worse position by “validating” Acacia’s patent. Of course, the real issue is that no one knows (other than Acacia and Red Hat). The consequent confusion and uncertainty is benefits no one. For example, its possible that Red Hat obtained a license that specifically authorizes developers to build applications without fearing legal claims from Acacia. Its also possible that the legal doctrine known as “exhaustion” bars any relief that Acacia might have against downstream developers.

For those who do not remember, Microsoft has been paying Acacia on a few occasions, most recently because ACCESS had some sort of an alliance with Acacia. In his blog, the ACCESS mobbyist everyone likes to hate is now admitting being a “patent troll” too. This ought to explain those personal attacks against Richard Stallman, no? Anyway, Stallman’s colleague Bradley Kuhn comments on Perens’ piece as well. He starts by stating:

Bruce Perens and I often disagree about lots of things. However, I urge everyone to read what Bruce wrote this weekend about software patents. I’m very glad he’s looking deep into recent events surrounding this issue; I haven’t had the time to do so myself because I’ve been so busy with the launch of my full-time work at Conservancy this fall.

Despite my current focus on getting Conservancy ramped up with staff, so it can do more of its work, I nevertheless still remain frightfully concerned about the impact of software patents on the future of software freedom, and I support any activities that seek to make sure that software patent threats do not stand in the way of software freedom. Bruce and I have always agreed about this issue: software patents should end, and while individuals with limited means can’t easily make that happen themselves, we must all work to raise awareness and public opinion against all patenting of software.

Specifically, I’m really glad that Bruce has mentioned the issue of lobbying against software patents.

It’s probably just better to read Perens’ piece, including the comments (there is a discussion in Slashdot too, not to mentioned LWN). To quote some parts of the analysis:

When patent troll Acacia sued Red Hat in 2007, it ended with a bang: Acacia’s patents were invalidated by the court, and all software developers, open-source or not, had one less legal risk to cope with. So, why is the outcome of Red Hat’s next tangle with Acacia being kept secret, and how is a Texas court helping to keep it that way? Could the outcome have placed Red Hat in violation of the open-source licenses on its own product?

The suit in question — Software Tree LLC v. Red Hat, Inc. – claimed that JBoss, the well-known Java web software, infringed upon U.S. Patent No. 6163776 (PDF), which essentially claims invention of the object-relational database paradigm. In that paradigm, an object in an object-oriented software language represents a database record, and the attributes of the object represent fields in the database, making it possible for programmers to access a database without writing any SQL. It’s a common element in most web programming environments today.

The patent was originally filed by Software Tree Inc., a database software vendor. Acacia acquired Software Tree’s patent portfolio (with terms undisclosed) and formed the Acacia subsidiary Software Tree LLC, which pursues lawsuits against other companies and does not produce any products. Most of the press was misled by the similar names of the two companies and provided links to Software Tree Inc. in their reporting.

Soon after the judge produced a finding on claim language, a first step in such cases, Acacia filed a press release announcing that the parties had settled, while Red Hat gave a terse acknowledgment. But a month later, there has been no announcement of the terms of the settlement by either party. Open-source developers are especially concerned, because the license on the JBoss software, the Lesser General Public License (LGPL), contains language that prohibits one party from licensing a patent unless that license is available to all developers of the software.

[...]

Richard Stallman has said, “There’s no way to cure malaria by swatting mosquitoes — you have to drain the swamp.” Meaning that the solution is to fundamentally change the law so that free software and open source are protected from software patenting. But even Stallman’s legal counsel, Eben Moglen, acknowledges this is a lofty goal: “We can’t drain the swamp in the near future. So we need effective public hygiene that isn’t based on draining the swamp. What it will take is careful, constant, expensive, and difficult attempts to make the patent system part of the coexistence between freedom and business instead of a constant irritant and threat.”

For leaders like Moglen to discourage direct lobbying against software patenting probably won’t help to drain the swamp, either. The open-source community must start to take the problem of software patenting seriously, and must hold its commercial partners responsible to invest more of the profits made from open source into protection of the right to produce it.

It was not just Techrights advising Red Hat never to sign NDAs again (as it harms trust within the community and in turn hurts Red Hat). But in any case, Red Hat should find a way out of its NDA and just tell us what it has been trying to hide because as it stands, Red Hat provides ammunition to Microsoft and its mobbyists. They won’t leave it alone. █

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Microsoft is Speaking ‘for’ Small EU-based Businesses to Promote Software Patents

Posted in Deception, Europe, Microsoft, Patents at 3:11 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Microsoft and its front groups pose for the cameras, pretending to be representatives of small European businesses and asking for legalisation of software patents on their behalf

BRUTAL monopolist Microsoft Corporation can never play fairly, can it? This is why we have got to watch what it’s doing in Europe right now and also pay attention to who it pays this time around to attack Linux (Microsoft paid SCO on numerous occasions, although not always directly).

Lo and behold as Microsoft AstroTurfing arm, ACT, already interjects itself into the British press:

The failure to reach agreement was met with disappointment by the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT).

“Not reaching an agreement is a terrible setback for European SMEs regardless of their origin. The benefits of having a single patent far outweigh the linguistic concerns being used to block it,” said ACT president Jonathan Zuck.

“This merry-go-round is detrimental for our innovation and growth. We hope that discussions for the EU patent are soon back in the lane and not postponed to an uncertain time.”

Barnier echoed the disappointment of businesses, but said that an agreement was “impossible” to reach.

Zuck represents a monopoly, not businesses. He has been an AstroTurfer for a long time, having started some sort of a career in acting (which he is obviously still doing, but this time as a lobbyist who lies a lot). The above article is an example of bad reporting from David Neal, who also pretends that Barnier [1, 2, 3] serves business intesrests, based on that other lobbyist who is pretending to speak for businesses. What a catastrophe in the so-called “official” news. This is why we weigh particular blogs like Groklaw as highly as the mainstream press, and especially more highly than the corporate press.

For Zuck and his fellow minions, the job was accomplished (mind shared gained by the bad people whom Microsoft hired to do it), ‘injecting’ disinformation into the press. Neal just swallowed it without doing sufficient research, just as a lot of ‘news’ channels such as Fox echo Big Oil lobbyists regarding climate issues.

Anyway, pressing on a bit we find the president of the FFII showing that Microsoft too does the lobbying along with ACT:

Microsoft speaking in the name of European SMEs: “It’s very costly, particularly for small and medium-size enterprises”

The quote is from here and the spokesman is Jan Muehlfeit, the European chairman at Microsoft — one whom we wrote about in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] (just don’t mention that he is a former communist [1, 2]). We commented further on the above article just when the news first trickled in and the the president of the FFII writes to another booster of the European Patent (a fellow countryman).

@VincentVQ Do you know if the Belgian Parliament gave a mandate to the Belgian Presidency to negotiate on patent matters? Any link?

Barnier and the person addressed above (Vincent Van Quickenborne [1, 2, 3, 4]) are like the latest McCreevies, whose role appears to be helping multinationals harm European businesses (not law firms) while shrewdly pretending to help them. Here is a patent lawyers’ blog blaming Spain for doing the right thing:

Via a number of sources, including the IPKat’s friend Stephanie Bodoni (Bloomberg) comes news that the European Union has [predictably, say some people] failed to find a compromise on a system to make it easier to obtain region-wide patent protection [click here for recent background information], to the great disappointment of internal-market commissioner Michel Barnier.

Neatly enough, patent as “monopoly” seems to have become somewhat of a perceptual norm because the first comment states: “If the cost of transacting business in a foreign country is higher than in your own, then it must be to your advantage to be able to afford to secure a local monopoly, and not just foreign ones.”

Carlo Piana, an Italian who is stubborn regarding elimination of software patents, writes:

“Patents on software are a bad idea.” “Patents on software are a bad idea.” Now repeat that to yourself one thousand times, PLS!

Piana had this tweet retweeted by a lot of people. The Italians too helped derail the European Patent.

Now that Microsoft lobbies for RAND (like the RAND in OOXML) the news about the European Patent is very important. Perhaps Europe will managed to expel the lobbyists and follow India's footsteps.

Axel H. Horns, who is poised to benefit from a system more encumbered by patents, says that the patent-legitimising initiative called “Peer-To-Patent” (how about Peer-NOT-To-Patent?) is possibly reaching the UK.

The Peer-to-Patent project (also known as the Community Patent Review project) is an initiative that seeks reform of the patent system by gathering public input in a structured, productive manner. Peer-to-Patent seeks to improve the quality of issued patents by connecting the USPTO to an open network of experts online.

The president of the FFII has responded to this by writing:

UKPTO to push for more resistant software patents via the Peer to Patent Program: http://ur1.ca/2c2fx

Whose agenda does Peer-To-Patent serve anyway? IBM’s maybe? IBM is the one injecting money into Peer-To-Patent this year, not surprisingly (there was a disclosure in recent weeks and we covered it at the time). This is not the right approach to be taking, certainly not in Europe. █

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Cost of Proprietary and Patented ‘Microsoft-Only’ Memory Cards

Posted in Microsoft, Patents, RAND, Standard, Windows at 2:21 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Microsoft’s deliberate deviation/departure from a world of standards and into the realms of proprietary, software patents-encumbered ‘standards’ (RAND) is taking its toll

MICROSOFT does not like standards. Standards are considered dangerous to Microsoft. They help increase competition.

In order to stifle one’s ability to move data from one computer/device to another Microsoft introduced exFat, which Tuxera helps Microsoft spread in the form of a patent tax to platforms like GNU/Linux and Android. According to some new reports about Samsung and Microsoft, there is now the notion of ‘certified’ (for/by Microsoft) microSD cards. It’s rather amazing, isn’t it? They spoil hardware, too. But watch how it blows up in Microsoft’s face. Based on Engadget:

We’d put forth the theory that Microsoft and Samsung would eventually certify microSD cards specifically for use with Windows Phone 7 devices after they finally came to terms with the fact that the microSD drama surrounding the Focus was going to lead directly to broken devices and broken hearts — and sure enough, that’s exactly what’s happening. We just received this statement from AT&T, pointing out that the platform is extremely finicky when it comes to microSD selection — so finicky, in fact, that only “Certified for Windows Phone 7″ cards should be used.

Here is the prior post from Engadget and our reader Will quotes: “But what appears to have fried our card is the fact that any card inserted into a Windows Phone 7 device “will no longer be readable or writable on any other devices such as computers, cameras, printers, and so on” according to documentation on Samsung’s site — including, amazingly, the ability to format the card. ”

“And here’s yet another reason not to get a Windows 7 phone,” claims Will regarding the above (lots more of this discussion can be found in our IRC logs).

Mike Halsey has aptly called/titled it “Windows Phone Locks-in MicroSD Cards” and he cites Engadget:

There has been discussion for a few weeks now about how Microsoft’s new smartphone OS handles expendable storage, with many people reporting that inserting the wrong card can reduce the OS to a crawl.

Now Engadget have discovered that the Windows Phone OS makes permanent changes to a card that can prevent it from being read, written to or formatted on any other device.

Jan Wildeboer from Red Hat writes humourously that “Microsoft [says]: All your Micro SD cards belong to us when using WinPhone7″ and citing additional pages such as this one, Wildeboer adds: “This includes an inability to format the microSD card” – Windows Phone 7 #fail with Micro SD cards.”

Microsoft: when failure becomes standard. █

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Claim: Out of Misery, Microsoft Booster Paul Thurrott Throws the Software Patents FUD at Linux/Android

Posted in FUD, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 1:52 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Washington’s (Microsoft state) FUD is being funneled through longtime Microsoft boosters like Paul Thurrott, who need to be stood corrected because they repeat and thus amplify the Big Lie regarding software patents

TODAY we are focusing on a lot of patent news, primarily Microsoft’s attacks on software freedom using software patents. We strive to be exhaustive in our coverage.

In somewhat separate news, Android FUD turns out to be arriving from Paul Thurrott, who has his share of critics for all sorts of reasons (also among the pro-Apple crowd). As Wikipedia puts it, “Paul Thurrott has been the target of criticism for some of his claims in his articles by several notable writers, including John Gruber of Daring Fireball[2][3], Daniel Eran Dilger of RoughlyDrafted Magazine[4][5], and Jim Ray[6].”

“I like to listen to Windows Weekly just for the crap that comes out of Paul Thurrott’s mouth.”
      –AnonymousThis is nothing personal against Thurrott, whom we merely use as an example to show how Microsoft boosters in general are assisting Microsoft’s racketeering [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. The pen is mighty and FUD is effective.

Here is a message from a reader/listener of ours, who sent us the following mail some days ago: “I’m just your average Joe Blow Who switched from Windows to Linux a couple of years ago, mainly because it was free so I thought why not try it. Since then though, after a lot of reading I’ve come to understand a lot more about the background issues. I like to listen to Windows Weekly just for the crap that comes out of Paul Thurrott’s mouth. He is sounding increasingly desperate in his promotion of Windows phone 7(last few episodes devoted entirely to windows phone). This quote from the latest episode #182 @ 32:50 for example. “wild west….I mean, crazy IP violation world of Android”

“I don’t think they realize how informed the average computer user is these days due to sites like yours. Keep up the great work @ techrights.org Great read.”

We thank this person (whose name we removed) for the kind feedback and ask others to please report to us similar incidents where Microsoft boosters spread the patent FUD against Linux. If challenged to back this with proof (which Microsoft is unwilling/unable to provide), they will probably stop. █

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