05.14.08
Recommended Readings: OLPC and Microsoft’s Financial Games
OLPC was left devastated by the corruption against it. Attempts to breathe life back into this project after the systematic sabotage have just got Ivan spilling the beans.
OLPC should be philosophically pure about its own machines. Being a non-profit that leverages goodwill from a tremendous number of community volunteers for its success and whose core mission is one of social betterment, it has a great deal of social responsibility. It should not become a vehicle for creating economic incentives for a particular vendor. It should not believe the nonsense about Windows being a requirement for business after the children grow up. Windows is a requirement because enough people grew up with it, not the other way around. If OLPC made a billion people grow up with Linux, Linux would be just dandy for business. And OLPC shouldn’t make its sole OS one that cripples the very hardware that supposedly set the project’s laptops apart: released versions of Windows can neither make good use of the XO power management, nor its full mesh or advanced display capabilities.
Read on because it’s an eye-opener. In other news, Naked Emperor Microsoft has Robert Cringely spilling some beans too.
This has everything to do with business and nothing at all to do with technology. Wearing my business reporter’s fedora, then, I’ll point you back a week or so to Microsoft’s most recent earnings announcement, which disappointed Wall Street. This is significant because it is hard to find a Wall Street analyst who remembers the last time Microsoft’s earnings were disappointing. It simply doesn’t happen. That’s because Microsoft has a myriad of tools for adjusting the numbers to look just right.
More about this here and here. Remember that Microsoft lost about 30 billion dollars in value after the Yahoo bid.
These are the truths you hardly find in the media, which typically has a separate agenda. █
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.
AlexH said,
May 14, 2008 at 6:45 am
I’m not convinced Microsoft “lost” $30B. “Cash balance” isn’t the same as “value”.
If you want to look at value, look at price/earnings ratio or market cap. or something.
The fact Microsoft’s cash balance went down is pretty easily explainable, e.g. buying Aquantive. Most people would not categorize acquisition as “loss”.
To put this into perspective, Merrill Lynch wrote off almost $30B which helped trigger the global crisis in credit over sub-prime mortgages and is cutting thousands of jobs:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7352402.stm
Believe me, if Microsoft had made a loss anything like $30B, it definitely would not have been “ignored” in the media.
Roy Schestowitz said,
May 14, 2008 at 6:58 am
It was not ignored by the media. It was in the Wall Street Journal.
To quote a recent response to it from a friend (a tad blunt):
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.advocacy/msg/14f9fdac2738f299
Welcome to the wacky world of trading, where a company’s perceived value
is based on expectation, and that expectation can be manipulated with
bullshit like Vapourware; dumping; profit forecasts based on wildly
speculative (or downright dishonest) sales figures; buffering sales with
“channel” partners (in crime); just the merest hint of a takeover;
discrediting and sabotaging the competition; employing spin-doctors to
artificially “sell” the idea that the company is thriving, through the
use of marketing gobbledygook; or just plain old-fashioned lying through
one’s teeth about a company’s future direction.
That manipulation not only comes in many ways, but it comes from many
places too, like right here in COLA for example. Witness how frantically
DooFuS (in particular) flooded COLA with anti-Linux vitriol on the very
day that the final OOXML votes were being cast. Coincidence? I think
not. He may as well wear a badge that reads “Microsoft Shill”, it’s that
obvious. Make no mistake, to him this is nothing personal, he’s merely
doing his job, which is why he’s never discouraged, no matter how
ridiculous or suspicious his behaviour, nor how decisively his vitriol
is rebuked.
What other possible motive could someone have for spending *years*
sabotaging a group that exists to serve the purposes of an alternative
to his chosen operating system? Surely he should be extolling the
virtues of Windows in a /Windows/ group, not sleeping with the enemy.
But that’s the way thugs and gangsters operate. They don’t play by the
rules, they extort; threaten; bribe; manipulate; lie; attack and destroy
to “succeed”, and then bray about it like a pack of hyenas, overwhelmed
with “pride” in their path of destruction, too busy slavering over the
spoils to worry about trivialities like morality. The Microsoft shills
in this group are merely another arm of the Microsoft crime syndicate.
And that’s exactly what Sweaty the Impaler does to further Microsoft’s
cause, which is of course greed, so what better place to manipulate
people than at the stock exchange, where greed blinds people against the
menacing advances of manipulators like Ballmer.
Basically the only difference between the stock market and the dog track
is that, generally speaking, down at the track the dogs don’t trying to
win by lying or ripping each other’s throats out.
Sweaty the Impaler tried to fscking kill Google by attempting to eat
(what he thought was) one of the weaker dogs in the race (cowards always
attack the weak, just like hyenas), to become bigger and stronger, and
eliminate some of the competition (typical of the “Embrace, Extend and
Extinguish” paradigm). The ravenous punters got too excited and bet
heavily on the Vole to win, but lost it all when Yahoo unexpectedly bit
back, and sent the Vole whimpering back to the kennels, leaving Google
to streak across the finish line. Poetic justice.
That won’t stop the Vole, of course, much like the pesky lack of money
doesn’t stop a drug addict from getting a fix. They’ll just keep mugging
other innocent victims until they get what they want. The only way to
“cure” that rabid dog, is to put it down.
AlexH said,
May 14, 2008 at 7:18 am
Can you cite a specific WSJ story where they state that Microsoft have lost (specifically “lost”) $30B?
Roy Schestowitz said,
May 14, 2008 at 7:28 am
“Yesterday’s early relief rally reversed, and Microsoft’s value has now fallen by more than $30 billion since it unveiled its bid for Yahoo on February 1.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121004447596669953.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Compare with what I wrote: “Remember that Microsoft lost about 30 billion dollars in value after the Yahoo bid.”
I was actually wrong. It was *more* than 30 billion dollar. Mea cupla.