Summary: The problems associated with Windows are explained by another longtime professional in this area; Dell’s reversal regarding GNU/Linux security agitates GNU/Linux users who suspect that Microsoft is at least partly responsible for the change
MR. Richard A. Clarke is no person to be ignored. As Ars Technicarecently revealed, Clarke blames Microsoft for many security problems that jeopardise national security and the Huffington Post has just written about this as well:
As Clarke reports, prior to the 1990s, the Pentagon made extensive use of specialized software designed by in-house programmers and a few defense contractors. But under pressure from libertarian ideologues and business lobbyists, the Pentagon began to use commercial software instead — in particular, Microsoft software. However, it turned out that Microsoft had built a low cost brand based on a principle of “one format for all” — rather than software that was tailored to special security needs. Problems soon arose, including, as Clarke recounts, a 1997 incident when the USS Yorktown, a Ticonderoga-class cruiser whose ship operations were administered on computers running Windows NT, was rendered inoperable after Windows crashed. “When the Windows system crashed, as Windows often does,” Clarke writes, “the cruiser became a floating i-brick, dead in the water.” After this and a “legion of other failures of Windows-based systems,” the Pentagon considered a shift to free, open-source operating systems like Linux. The code of open-source software can be altered by the user, and so the government would be free to change the software without interference from companies jealously guarding their design. It is also free.
Such a switch, though, would have been disastrous for Microsoft’s lucrative dealings with the government. The company was already fiercely opposed to regulation of its products’ security; it did not want the added delay and cost of improving its software in order to decrease its vulnerability. If the government switched to open-source software, it could make the improvements itself — but doing so would deal a major blow to Microsoft’s profits. So Microsoft moved to prevent the government from exploring any alternatives. It “went on the warpath,” writes Clarke, threatening to “stop cooperating” with the government if it adopted an open-source platform. It made major campaign contributions and hired a small army of lobbyists. Clarke outlines their purpose as: “don’t regulate security in the software industry, don’t let the Pentagon stop using our software no matter how many security flaws it has, and don’t say anything about software production overseas or deals with China.” (China, security experts feared, could plant logic bombs and malware into the software.)
Clarke reports that Microsoft insiders admitted that the company “really did not take security seriously,” because “there was no real alternative to its software, and they were swimming in money from their profits.”
For those who have not noticed, we updated twice each post about the Dell incident (it says “Updatedx2″) in order to show the response to what Dell had done [1, 2]. People alleged that Microsoft was responsible for changes in security advice and here is another new example of a rant:
Gosh, I wonder how many lawyers, and how many threats, it took to get that changed, and whose payroll the lawyers were on, and who was making the threats?
I think I’ll go over in the corner and hurl now. The whole situation, and the disgusting company behind it all, makes me ill.
Summary: Dell repeats the mistakes of history by harbouring censorship and fearing to pass judgment about Microsoft
YESTERDAY I had a face-to-face conversation with a friend who thought that Bill Gates had invented computers. This was a reminder of the fact that PR agencies are in the awesome position of subconsciously programming people’s minds, lying to them even without making explicit lies (just insinuations and illusions).
“Microsoft didn’t even accept the Internet (thinking it was a passing fad) until long after others had embraced it.”One mythology that Microsoft has been trying to spread for a long time is that Windows is secure (note omissions) and that Windows was designed with security in mind, despite clear evidence that this was not the case (Microsoft edits Wikipedia). Microsoft didn’t even accept the Internet (thinking it was a passing fad) until long after others had embraced it.
Yesterday we posted a second update on a post about Dell. Several people who decided to insult the messengers (myself included) refused to believe that Dell changed its pitch about GNU/Linux security. There is more evidence and corroboration now. Here is the before/after screenshot:
Revisionism is what the VAR Guy calls it. It is him who originally brought up the subject that ended up in hundreds if not thousands of blogs.
The VAR Guy saw this coming. On June 10, The VAR Guy was first to report Dell considered Ubuntu Linux safer than Windows. But now, Dell has apparently updated its web site to remove/alter that statement. Linux conspiracy theorists think Microsoft pressured Dell to make the change. Is that really the case?
Frankly, The VAR Guy doesn’t know for sure. Our resident blogger has requests for comment out to Dell, Microsoft and Canonical — promoter of Ubuntu Linux.
That’s a funny thing to say because Dell accepts a form of bribe from Microsoft to pretend that it recommends Vista 7 . Dell puts this fake endorsement is loads of pages in order to hypnotise the public and receive kickbacks.
Five days after being disclosed publicly by a Google engineer, a zero-day security vulnerability affecting Microsoft Windows XP has come under attack. The controversial bug, which remains unpatched, gave rise to a new round of debate about responsible disclosure.
If Dell maintains its spineless approach and refuses to speak out its mind because it depends on Microsoft’s bribes/incentives, what does that say about Dell? And what does that say about truth? █
[Update (17/Jun, 1:40 GMT): the page from Dell appears to have been reinstated.]
[Update #2 (18/Jun, 0:10 GMT): Dell has indeed changed this page (permanently), as the cached page clearly reveals. We have just grabbed screenshots to compare:]
Summary: After public embarrassment for Microsoft, Dell ‘censors’ its own Web pages that say GNU/Linux is more secure than Windows
Dell appears to be back-tracking on a claim made on its website that Ubuntu is safer than Windows.
[...]
Dell’s proclamation was immediately picked up on by bloggers and news aggregators such as Digg.com, no doubt attracting the attention of Microsoft’s PR machine.
This morning, Dell appears to have taken down the Ubuntu page, although a copy of the original site (PDF) was saved by The VAR Guy website, in case Dell decided to pull it.
When PC Pro asked Dell what it’s official position on the relative merits of Ubuntu and Windows were, a company spokesperson replied: “With regards to the information cited on the Ubuntu page on Dell’s website, it is not Dell’s intention to recommend one OS over another, but instead to offer some educational facts that may be of interest to customers considering a system with Ubuntu pre-installed.”
Is Dell insecure about its own judgment? Is it afraid of Microsoft’s wrath? We may never find out until another lump of E-mail gets unsealed (like in Comes vs Microsoft).
For an idea of how much damage was caused to Microsoft’s reputation (maybe on par with Google’s abandonment of Windows), see some of the latest posts on the subject. There are many more and below we have just a new sample:
The page compares that other OS on a number of features and it looks pretty fair. I like that they actually tell people “Ubuntu is safer than Windows“.
That last one from Pogson is already being trolled by a known, longtime Microsoft booster (who has multiple identities), whose alleged friend once mailed me claiming that he knew him in person, as an AstroTurfer with pride. We already know that Microsoft employs AstroTurfers, but that’s a story for another type of discussion.
In other news, according to IDG, “Hackers exploit Windows XP zero-day, Microsoft confirms”:
Hackers are now exploiting the zero-day Windows vulnerability that a Google engineer took public last week, Microsoft confirmed today.
Although Microsoft did not share details of the attack, other researchers filled in the blanks.
A compromised Web site is serving an exploit of the bug in Windows’ Help and Support Center to hijack PCs running Windows XP, said Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at antivirus vendor Sophos. Cluley declined to identify the site, saying only that it was dedicated to open-source software.
After almost 9 years of patches Windows XP remains insecure. Some known flaws will never be fixed, either. Vista 7 is not the solution. █
Since WebM launched in May, the team has been working hard to make the VP8 video codec faster. Our community members have contributed improvements, but there’s more work to be done in some interesting areas related to performance (more on those below).
The elephant in the room is still MPEG-LA, which is a patent aggressor that agitates Google. We wrote about the subject in posts such as:
In other words, if Google doesn’t address patent indemnification-or at least release information about its findings on the patents efficacy-a new licensing pool will be created to capitalize on fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Yet Google seems more concerned with modifying its WebM FAQ than it is with helping the online video world understand the practical and financial benefits of an open-source competitor to H.264.
So the patent issue and Google’s existing plan matter a lot here. Fortunately, we have received some valuable information over the past few days. It helps us understand how Google views MPEG-LA. Florian Müller has had a scoop and he finally gave us the needed permission to shoot off the following:
“[S]omeone told me something that raises doubt about MPEG LA’s $5 million license fee cap but that same source has now substantially weakened its claims to the extent that the cap actually seems to be the case at least for most companies,” Müller told us.
Prior to this there was a stronger claim. “Concerning video codecs I heard something that raises doubt about the $5 million license fee cap, but I’ll try to obtain authorization from someone so I can attribute a quote to a person rather than just saying it’s a good source,” he expounded.
“The source originally claimed that contrary to the related claim made on MPEG LA’s website, the source has information that some licensees do indeed have to pay much more for such reasons as the $5 million per-company per-year royalty cap not including all categories of products.” –Florian MüllerLater he wrote: “The source does not want to be named. The conversation took place at this event in Brussels on Wednesday. The house rules allow quoting from what was said at the event, but it’s not allowed to say WHO said something (without permission, of course). The source originally claimed that contrary to the related claim made on MPEG LA’s website, the source has information that some licensees do indeed have to pay much more for such reasons as the $5 million per-company per-year royalty cap not including all categories of products. With a view to the house rules of the event, I asked the source, which was present at the event and may have information I don’t, whether I could provide its name when quoting. The source asked not to be named. Meanwhile (yesterday) the source also added this clarification: “For most companies, they probably don’t see much more than one overall fee.” I will mention this on my blog next time I report on codecs [...] The thing is that philosophically I’m against those codec royalties, but economically, if big companies pay a maximum of $5 million per year, it’s not a fundamental problem to the industry and those who end up paying are largely in favor of software patents anyway, so I’m not much more sympathetic to them than to MPEG LA. I’m most sympathetic to those who want to get rid of software patents but are attacked nevertheless.”
Finally, Müller said: “I don’t know when to put it out because it was no longer the “gem” I thought it was once I received that additional clarification about most companies just seeing one item on the bill. You know, I would really have liked to call into question the truthfulness of the representations they make about the cap, but with the clarification the same source provided, it doesn’t really have a lot of teeth anymore.”
Google is often criticised for secrecy, so we found it neither surprising nor curious that “there are some confidentiality-related sensitivities there: at the start of the event in Brussels, the chairman announced the “house rules” which related to quoting…”
This matter is extremely important because codecs like Theora and VP8 help eliminate the patent problem often associated with codecs in GNU/Linux. To platforms like Windows and Mac OS X it matters a lot less, for sure (they already ship the codecs on the computer/CD). A couple of years ago Red Hat cited codecs as a key reason for abandoning plans to release a desktop product.
What this might mean is that although hackers’ views and motivations are relatively unaffected by the existence of software patents, they might in fact find themselves hugely affected if major software companies or patent trolls start trying to assert their software patent portfolios – something that many fear might happen. True, this is only speculation, but at the very least, it might provide an interesting topic for further research….
Here in Europe, codec patents can be more or less ignored, at least in theory*, but as multinational companies like Dell are selling computers here, it is hard to avoid the MPEG ‘codec tax’ which even a Ubuntu machine from Dell comes with [1, 2] (yes, also in Europe). This issue ought to be resolved in order to make GNU/Linux free (which it’s not, at least not from major, multinational OEMs). █
____ * Nevertheless, as Müller points out, “you can find links to stories on the rigid enforcement of MP3/MP4 patents in Europe, particularly at the CeBIT trade show. So much for the exclusion of patents on software in Article 52 of the European Patent Convention…”
Summary: How Hewlett-Packard, which is currently under investigation for corruption, charges a premium on GNU/Linux after acquiring Neoware
SUFFICE TO say, based on evidence we have provided over the years, Microsoft and HP share a bedroom. To name just a few examples, start here or consider many of the other posts on the subject [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].
As readers may be aware by now, HP is getting a big load of bad PR because of an alleged bribery case. The gist:
U.S. officials have joined Russian and German authorities in looking into allegations that Hewlett-Packard may have paid millions in bribes to win a computer equipment contract.
Pogson has just found out that HP “charge[s] a premium” on GNU/Linux after buying a company that distributed GNU/Linux.
A few years ago, HP bought Neoware which produced several thin clients running GNU/Linux.
[...]
HP is willing to satisfy customers who demand GNU/Linux but they charge a premium. They are partners in crime with M$ in spite of all the harm M$ has done them. HP is still the #1 OEM in the world but they will not be for long selling $1000 thin clients. The Chinese are selling thin clients for less than $100 in bulk.
It is important to remember that we have reasons to suspect that HP pays Microsoft for GNU/Linux (they both signed a deal just before SCO attacked Linux). Russia’s Antimonopoly Service targeted HP in a probe into collusion with Microsoft (against GNU/Linux). The latest bribe case involves the Russian authorities too. █
Amazon does worse things than killing of trees for books
Summary: What Amazon does not want to tell us about software patents in its recent deal with Microsoft; more reasons to suspect that Dell pays Microsoft for Ubuntu GNU/Linux
ONE of our readers, who goes by the name of “Mad Hatter”, has just explained why he will not link to Amazon anymore. As some people may recall, we called for an Amazon boycott* [1, 2, 3] not just because what Amazon does to the patent system but also because it joined Microsoft’s anti-GNU/Linux racket after hiring many executives from Microsoft (entryism). Here is the explanation about reasons to avoid Amazon:
By signing a deal with Microsoft, for technology that the Free and Open Source Community developed, Amazon has shown a lack of respect for the ‘Intellectual Property’ of the Free and Open Source Software Community. Amazon’s action is an attack on the community. It can also be considered an attack on the Constitution of the United States of America, which states
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
The wording above makes mention only of the Authors and Inventors. The drafters of the U.S. Constitution clearly meant that only the Author or Inventor of a work or invention can speak for that work or invention. Therefore if there are issues with a work or invention, the party who has the issues must approach the Author or Inventor, not a third party such as Amazon. In simple terms, Amazon has no right to admit that the Linux Kernel infringes on Microsoft’s patents, only the Authors or Inventors of the Kernel have that right. By making an admission that they have no right to make, Amazon has engaged in what is known as ‘Slander of Title.’
So if you are considering a lawsuit against a competitor who uses Free and Open Source Software in the product you claim infringes on your patents or copyrights, don’t expect the community to like what you are doing, and do expect them to do something about it.
In other news, Dell appears to be lying about GNU/Linux, Vista 7, and maybe software patents (Dell announced in 2007 that it had joined the Microsoft/Novell deal).
On many occasions before we explained and showed why we suspect that Dell pays Microsoft for so-called “Linux patents”. The potential evidence comes from many places, including videos from Dell. And now we find this disappointing report showing up in the news, shortly after it turned out that Dell sells machines with Ubuntu at a higher price than equivalent machines with Vista 7.
Dell bars Win 7 refunds from Linux lovers
Dell has told a Linux-loving Reg reader that he can’t receive a refund on the copy of Windows 7 that shipped with his new Dell netbook because it was bundled with the machine for “free”.
In October, another Reg reader succeeded in gaining a $115 (£70.34) refund from the computer maker after he rejected the licence for Microsoft’s OS and installed Linux instead. Microsoft’s EULA, you see, provides for such a refund.
One of our readers asks, “If it’s ‘free’ then how does MS factor in the revenue into its accounts? If it’s not ‘free’ then who enthused DELL to not pay the refund?” █
__ * Boycott as an action to correct a corporation’s behaviour, not to ostracise.
Our reader Chips B. Malroy told us last night that there is more new evidence that Vista 7 could not have sold much. “The Dell article,” he explains, “shows that people are buying cheaper computers now. That cannot be good for MS. At some point the OEM pain of companies like Dell, will start finding ways to cut the MS profit.”
Dell profit drops despite Windows 7 PC rush
[...]
Its gross margin dropped to a relatively slim 16.6 percent as the holiday-related sales spike pushed it to sell 2 million more computers without as much profit as in the past.
Microsoft got its sums wrong on the price tag for the boxed version of Office Professional 2010, forcing it to hike the product by £30.
This is classic Microsoft. Time to "whack" Dell again? █
“Bill [Gates] would go to a very senior person at these other OEMs whether it was DEC or Tandy or Compaq or whoever and yell at them or tell them it had to be this way, or if you don’t do this we’ll make sure our software doesn’t run on your box. What do you do if you’re one of these OEM guys? You’re screwed. You can’t have Microsoft not support your hardware so you better do what they say.”
Christie drew attention to the issue in a session on “Changing the NZ Desktop Stack to FLOSS [Free Linux Open Source Software]” at the linux.conf.au open source conference in Wellington last month.
The NZOSS launched a project last year known as Remix, to encourage migration from Windows to Linux on government desktops. Part of the challenge in dislodging Microsoft from its dominance on government agency desktops is simple aversion to change and the power and familiarity of Microsoft. But the effort to encourage open source is not helped by the lack of a support resource for agencies, Christie says.
[...]
As an example of Microsoft’s unique influence with PC makers here, you still cannot buy a Dell PC with Linux installed in New Zealand, Christie says. You can in almost every other country where Dell operates. There are arrangements for Microsoft to assist the hardware makers with marketing and these create a tight bond between them, Christie says.
Dell did not immediately reply to a call seeking confirmation that it still does not provide Linux systems here.
Suffice to say, GNU/Linux still accommodates subcultures like Mono (headed by Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza) which are refusing to acknowledge that Microsoft is doing something wrong. Nothing that they are shown ever changes their mind, not even the TomTom lawsuit.
Microsoft to Drop Linux, Unix Versions of Enterprise Search
Microsoft will no longer offer Linux or Unix versions of its enterprise search products after a wave of releases set to ship in the first half of this year, the company announced in an official blog post Thursday.
After Microsoft bought Fast Search & Transfer in 2008, it said it would continue offering and updating standalone versions of the company’s ESP platform for Linux and Unix, wrote Bjorn Olstad, CTO for Fast and a Microsoft distinguished engineer. “Over the last two years, we’ve done just that.”
Microsoft used to brag about GNU/Linux tolerance at FAST, but the pretense period is over. FAST was also involved in a major fraud scandal, which basically puts Microsoft under fraud allegations (yes, again [1, 2]).
Here is a comment on the article above, which says: “For someone else, perhaps a free software/open source project to take these customers away from Microsoft. Lets hope that someone steps up and Microsoft just loses out by ignoring the fastest growing server platform in the market.”
“Forty percent of servers run Windows, 60 percent run Linux…”
While it makes sense, from a development perspective, for Microsoft to drop Linux and Unix support for FAST, it doesn’t make much sense from a market perspective. Offering FAST only on Windows means that businesses that want to use it will potentially incur costs for Windows licenses, system administration, and systems redesign.
Linux servers, especially for file systems and non-Exchange e-mail, continue to grow. Throw in the notion of cloudlike systems that are effectively operating system-agnostic, and this move seems even less logical.
It’s just like with PhotoSynth. Microsoft buys something that runs on GNU/Linux and makes it a Windows-only product.
Here is what Microsoft’s de facto press people have to say [1, 2]. They don’t see anything wrong with this picture. It’s as though it’s some kind of a Windows religion. █
“Microsoft allowed us to [remove Internet Explorer from Windows] but we don’t think we should have to ask permission every time we want to make some minor software modification. Windows is an operating system, not a religion.”
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