09.01.08
Ryanair is Closing the Web with Microsoft Silverlight
Another airline bites the digital ashtray
Ryanair seems to have been getting a little chummy with Microsoft recently. It’s quite the rarity, but a concerning one nonetheless.
The recent [4432 door-shutting] at the Democratic National Convention left a lot of GNU/Linux users very bitter. The same goes for football and the Olympic games [1, 2, 3]. Microsoft is using Silverlight to put a “no entry” sign on several Web sites, just as it used to do with ActiveX, which Novell still supports.
Ryanair seems to have recently approached Microsoft with the aim of ‘un-opening’ its Web site, making it closed and obscure by design and by choice. An article was published about this today.
Travolution understands that Microsoft and technology provider Navitaire have been asked to “proactively eliminate” screen scraping of the Ryanair site, primarily by blocking block access from other sites.
A spokesperson confirmed that the airline would attempt to block as many sites as possible – mirroring a strategy by Directline Insurance in the UK which claims its products cannot be found on any price comparison website.
Perhaps it’s related to something we were alerted about over the weekend. Reader maxstirner told us yesterday that “Ryanair requires silverlight!!”
Was this part of the arrangement? This must not be the future of the Web or even tiny portions of it, which Microsoft wishes to also saturate with DRM (as part of the specifications even). █
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.
max stirner said,
September 2, 2008 at 4:19 am
thanks for picking this up roy, i really just wanted to find out how to get to smaland airport & was shocked to find their route map is not accessible anymore
john roborts said,
September 10, 2008 at 11:19 am
u suck so does ur mother u suck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!