11.03.08
Posted in America, Microsoft at 6:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
S
OME time in the past we mentioned Microsoft's and Bill Gates' blackmail in Kenya and in Denmark, respectively. Microsoft denies both allegations, but then again, Microsoft also denied financial wrongdoings, only later to see a conviction, with a former manager ending up in prison for financial fraud.
After some joyful searching, we pinned down the following old story.
The people who run this city recently heard a familiar pitch from Microsoft: Sign up for a multiyear, $12 million software licensing plan or face an audit exposing the city’s use of software it hadn’t paid for.
[...]
Bullied by Microsoft?
Piper had other things on his mind. Awaiting him in Houston was a new contract Microsoft wanted him to sign. The software giant had recently announced a plan, referred to as “Software Assurance,” to get more companies and agencies to upgrade to Office and other software every two to three years instead of a more typical four years or more. Almost 50% of companies upgrade software every four years or more vs. 23% every two years, said a 2002 survey of 1,500 companies by The Yankee Group research firm.
Microsoft set fall 2001 as a deadline for customers to sign up. Those who did would pay $239 to $380 per copy for Office XP, the latest version.
Those who passed would pay $479 a copy when they did upgrade.
Microsoft says the plan cuts software costs and improves service. That’s especially true for companies that upgrade every three years — typically bigger companies. But research firms Gartner and Yankee say the plan will raise costs for companies that upgrade less often, usually medium and smaller ones.
With no viable Office alternatives, some companies, like the 25-member Clendon Feeney law firm in Wellington, New Zealand, felt bullied.
“Microsoft gets nice, steady cash flow from their big users, and then they get the real cherry on the cake when all the businesses who choose not to upgrade now have to go out and buy at full price later,” says managing partner Craig Horrocks.
Microsoft also sent letters to 500 school districts in 30 states giving them 60 days to produce receipts accounting for every copy of Microsoft software being used. Failure to do so could result in an audit and penalties, the letters warned. In the same envelope came a sales brochure about the new licenses.
Mind the role of the Yankee Group and the Gartner Group. We complained about this pair only yesterday.
In addition, worth pointing out is the uncompetitive tool called “Software Assurance.” It’s similar to Memoranda of Understanding, which we wrote about many times before. Posts about this include:
Business strategy, often characterised by ruthlessness, is one of Microsoft’s reasons for so-called ‘success’. It was rarely about technical merits, so the famous essay “How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates” truly fits well here. █
“Life is not fair, get used to it.”
–Bill Gates
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Posted in America, Europe, Patents at 6:32 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
A month or so ago, Richard Stallman wrote: “Staff at the European Patent Office went on strike accusing the organization of corruption: specifically, stretching the standards for patents in order to make more money.”
The activists at the Stop Software Patents initiative have just spotted something interesting.
The New York Times has an article about the recent Bilski decision. The USPTO has requested a change in the title of the article.
There is then an implicit mention of software patents, courtesy of the USPTO. Benjamin Henrion inquires:
If Mrs Jennifer Rankin Byrne could point out where she sees the term computer in the Bilski decision, that would help to back her statement.
What is that all about? Remember John McCain's view on the subject.
Another day, another spurious lawsuit.
Mformation, a maker of mobile device management software, said Friday that it has sued Research In Motion for patent infringement.
[...]
This does not, of course, mark the first time RIM has been sued for patent infringement. Most famously, the BlackBerry maker was embroiled in a long-running patent spat with patent-holding company NTP that at one point threatened to shut down BlackBerry sales and service.
Where is the ‘innovation’ in all this? █
“I think that “innovation” is a four-letter word in the industry. It should never be used in polite company. It’s become a PR thing to sell new versions with.
“It was Edison who said “1% inspiration, 99% perspiration”. That may have been true a hundred years ago. These days it’s “0.01% inspiration, 99.99% perspiration”, and the inspiration is the easy part. As a project manager, I have never had trouble finding people with crazy ideas. I have trouble finding people who can execute. IOW, “innovation” is way oversold. And it sure as hell shouldn’t be applied to products like MS Word or Open office.”
–Linus Torvalds
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Posted in News Roundup at 5:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
GNU/Linux
- Compiz Fusion and X.org MPX and Input Redirection Patches are now out!
So, as previously said, the patches are now out today.
- Editor’s Note: Does Linux Deliver For Small Businesses?
The answer is Yes, it does, though with some qualifications. The short answer: it’s all in the implementation.
- How Linux Supports More Devices Than Any Other OS, Ever
“It’s an interesting model, but people are happy with it and we only go by what our users and our distros; I mean Linux is still growing at an installed base rapidly. Companies are betting the farm on Linux as far as their embedded devices. All these embedded devices are shipping with it, Garman and TomTom, little embedded GPS devices; they’re all Linux, so it is working.”
- LB – Episode 30 – Season Finale and OLF by Linux Basement
- Review: Sabayon 3.5 Pod
Since both Gentoo and Sabayon were included on this Linux Format DVD, I decided I would first try and install Gentoo and then Sabayon and compare how easy the installations were since Sabayon is a derivative distro from Gentoo.
- Linux Operating System
- Virtualization’s MF Future is in its MF Past
- LXDE, A stable and lightweight desktop environment.
- Features of Phoronix Test Suite 1.4
- Using Your Linux Computer As A Media Server (Part 2)
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Sub-notebooks
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KDE
- Switching your kids to Linux
They all seem to like KDE4 in Intrepid. If you haven’t tried KDE4, you really ought to give it a shot even if you’re a true Gnome fan. I suspect you may be pleasantly surprised.
- What can KOffice 2 Beta 2 offer us?
- Tips and tricks to tune up KDE 4.1
Another great feature is file embedding. KDE 4 seems to have abandoned this space-saving ability in favour of launching a new window when you click on a file, but we prefer to see the embedded version for certain file types – text and PDF documents in particular.
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Embedded/Devices/Phones
- Real-time JVM takes on multi-core
- When Android beats the iPhone
This is great. A week or so ago Google was alone in developing Android. They made it open source and boom, an internal application is getting perfected by the community. End user benefit from it immediately, because they can download it for free from the Android Market (which is such an easy task to do). The OS allows you to define a default email client, so you are good to go.
All this, without any intervention of Google or T-Mobile. The community fixed the issue for T-Mobile… You have to love this one if you are a mobile operator.
- Aussie entrepreneur beats telco giants to develop Google phone
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*buntu
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New Releases (also BSD)
Solaris
Electronic Voting
F/OSS
OpenDocument Format
Web Browsers
Censorship
Copyrights
Leftover
- Intel Describes How Credit Crunch Can Hurt
“The recent financial crisis could negatively affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition,” Intel wrote in its 10Q filing, published by the SEC on Friday.
[Ed: I received an unconfirmed report about Microsoft layoffs (in MSN/Live) going wider without being reported.]
Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day
Dan Gillmor, creator of the phrase, “Distributed Journalism” 08 (2005)
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 Site News at 4:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
LAST night we added a Google search facility to the menu on the right (where two text input boxes now appear). This simple facility performs a search which is based on indexing rather than an exhaustive MySQL search. Here is an example.
At some stage in the future we will need to set up chronological lists of posts, separated by topic. If anyone volunteers to do this, that would be great. It gets hard to navigate through almost 4,500 posts and we could truly use timelines. █
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