Who's toying with who?

Novell is shutting down offices across Europe (these are not layoffs) in order to reduce expenses. However, there might be better ways for Novell to slash unnecessary costs.

Joint Novell/Microsoft ads are appearing very repeatedly in eWeek, so why don't Novell and Microsoft just call it a day and partially merge their marketing teams? At least then people would also realise that Novell is more of a Microsoft subsidiary than a "Linux company".

Here is an advertisement which appeared earlier in eWeek. That's what it says:

Mixed Source Virtualization Microsoft and Novell: Driving data center agility through mixed source virtualization Until recently, the burden of interoperability has rested on the shoulders of the IT professional. With the collaboration between Microsoft and Novell, however, this is no longer the case. Join us on Oct. 29 as experts from Microsoft and Novell share insights into how mixed-source virtualization can help improve operational efficiency, and what work is being done to help manage these environments. Register Now!

Aside from the fact that this Web site displays an 'expired' ad (eWeek's parent company went bankrupt), what is a person supposed to conclude from this? The companies are a pair.

There are even nastier things happening at IDG News Service. A few days ago we showed how Nancy Gohring was entertaining Android FUD over there. She seems to be doing this again by advertising a security product but presenting it as an 'article' (see it to believe it). This also contains FUD such as: "SMobile argues that because Android is open source, it will attract more hackers who will be able to look for holes they can exploit to gather user data for malicious purposes."

You can't make this stuff up. IDC, is that you again? ⬆