06.18.08
Microsoft Fights OpenOffice.org and ODF Using FUD, Technical Problems (Updated)
[Update (19/06/2008) : We have supplementary screenshots in this follow-up post.]
It is already known that Microsoft fought ODF like fire. It even ran a Get the Facts-type campaign against it. It’s easily provable because it is all well documented.
In the IRC conversation below (a fragment from Monday), you will find some of the latest examples.
<Eruaran> Currently if you attempt to open a .odt document for example in Microsoft Word, you get assailed by dialogues that say the document is corrupted, asks you if you want to ‘fix’ it, and it insinuates you shouldn’t trust it or the source it came from.
<schestowitz> Remember DR-DOS?
<Eruaran> I know there are many people who will think negatively about ODF because of this kind of flat out BS in Microsoft products.
<Eruaran> yes
<schestowitz> http://boycottnovell.com/2007/08/03/do-dos-odf-microsoft-sabotage/
<schestowitz> http://boycottnovell.com/comes-vs-microsoft/text/msg00083.html
<schestowitz> http://www.boycottnovell.com/comes-vs-microsoft/text/msg00194.html
<Eruaran> I love this one: “If Microsoft says you’ve got five fingers on each hand, many people will insist on an independent count.”
<schestowitz> Microsoft: “what the guy is supposed to do is feel uncomfortable, and when he has bugs, suspect that the problem is dr-dos and then go out and buy ms-dos, or decide not to take the risk for the other machines he has to buy for in the office.”
<Eruaran> Even if they tell the truth, nobody trusts them, such is their history and reputation.
<Eruaran> yes, they are up to the same old tricks
<schestowitz> “Concerns have been raised that DR-DOS incompatibilities and flaws are being overlooked by reviewers. [...] We recommend that we *informally* plant the bug of FUD in their ears. “Have you heard about problems with DR DOS?”
<Eruaran> I decided to try and open an open document in Word one day just to see what happened… what I saw simply disgusted me.
* PetoKraus (n=Peter@host-77-247-224-25.isper.sk) has joined #boycottnovell
<Eruaran> Have you seen the clip on YouTube where a guy attempts to use Vista’s voice regognition with OpenOffice ?
<PetoKraus> 
<Eruaran> He tries it out with MS Word, then word pad and it all works fine
<schestowitz> http://www.odfalliance.org/resources/BurtonGroupResponseFinal.pdf [PDF] (Microsoft’s Burton puppet: “ODF is simplistic” (bad word). Beat in mind that Pete O’Kelly later had contracts with Microsoft. Lots of money.
<Eruaran> Then he tries it with OpenOffice and Vista’s speech recognition suddenly develops selective deafness and an inability to comprehend basic speech patterns.
<PetoKraus> Eruaran: got vid?
<PetoKraus> *link
<schestowitz> Yes, please.
<Eruaran> yes, just a sec PetoKraus (and hello)
<PetoKraus> i’d even launch firefox to see that 
<schestowitz> That;s something to write about. Also your easrlier observation.,
<Eruaran> If you like I could take some screenshots tomorrow at work
<Eruaran> of the dialogues MS Word gives you when you try to use and ODF document
<schestowitz> Please do. The error message. I can make an Ogg from YouTube vids.
<schestowitz> Yes, a screenshot would be good.
<PetoKraus> schestowitz: how do you do that, anyway
<Eruaran> I was disgusted when I first saw them because I knew that Microsoft knows damn well what a .odt is
<schestowitz> akf told me about a service that allows you to download the flvs. I used to have PyTube working, but Google broke its functionality.
It ought to be pointed out at this stage that Microsoft claims to have become ‘buddies’ with ODF [1, 2, 3, 4]. Not quite, eh? Later on came the video, which we have produced an Ogg Theora version of.
As embedded Flash, for those who prefer it in this form:
This conversation then continued:
<Eruaran> Vista speech recognition refusing to work with OOo: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=5sVQlphmqsU
<Eruaran> One commenter says: It is a demonstration of how Vista speech recognition is deliberately crippled with a non-Microsoft piece of software.
* mark_antony_ken1 (n=user@host86-152-103-82.range86-152.btcentralplus.com) has joined #boycottnovell
<PetoKraus> LMAO
<schestowitz> Wow.
<schestowitz> The “Wow” starts…. now.
<Eruaran> yes
* mark_antony_ken2 (n=user@ellandroad.demon.co.uk) has joined #boycottnovell
<schestowitz> So we can conclude from this that Notepad is better than OOo
<PetoKraus> sure!
<Eruaran> oh yeah 
<PetoKraus> it has more useful features
In conclusion, Microsoft hardly changed its way. The predatory nature of the Beast lives on to this date. █
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.
Needs Sunlight said,
June 18, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Find someone still using Windows and get them to fire up the MS web browser (not Firefox or Opera). Then try reading Gmail. You’ll see similar errors and warnings out the Wazoo. AARD all over again.
Michael said,
June 18, 2008 at 8:36 pm
That vid is a year old? I looked for more recent info.
http://www.tau.ac.il/~itamarez/sr/Vista-vs-Xp.htm
Looks like it’s some extra api they’re focing dev’s to use before it works properly.
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-6165615.html
“I was not able to dictate into Open Office Writer and other non-Microsoft programs by default, but when I selected Options | Enable Dictation Everywhere from the Speech context menu, which is used to dictate text into programs that don’t automatically accept dictation, I was able to dictate to the Open Office program. However, it didn’t work as well as with Microsoft programs. Instead of immediately typing the text I spoke, it would pop up a number of alternatives for me to choose from. With the Speech APIs, developers can make their applications speech-enabled (and many more probably will in the future).”
Or they just cripple it.
That’s interM$operability for you.
Roy Schestowitz said,
June 18, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Michael,
Yes, I brought this up in the IRC channel. See the full log.