03.09.10
Posted in Boycott Novell, FUD, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument at 8:14 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Formerly-paid Microsoft employee and technical evangelist Michael Gartenberg belittles GNU/Linux again, this time through IDG
IN OUR PREVIOUS post we showed that the market share of GNU/Linux can easily be misrepresented due to quiet deployments that receive no proper attention because Linux and GNU have no public relations departments with advertisements and such conventional means of mind control.
Another vector of mind control (promotion and ridicule) consists of paid marketing people and pushers whom Mirosoft labels “technical evangelists” (TEs for short) and pays full wages. We covered these before [1, 2] (with concrete proof and confirmation) because Boycott Novell was among their victims.
A regular basher of GNU/Linux makes his appearance again. He is no stranger to us because we gave an example of his mischiefs in:
That is former Microsoft employee (evangelist) Michael Gartenberg, who merely does that “anti-Linux” job once again (as he does every now and then, using similar arguments). He also pretends to care about GNU/Linux, by starting with “I’d love to see viable alternatives to the current mainstream operating systems.”
“It’s not reporting, it’s opinionated placements in disguise, daemonising one’s professional rival.”This is the equivalent of “I like Linux, but…”
It’s a lie with which the author tries to gain some credibility to begin with. It was only yesterday (or earlier today, depending on geography) that we wrote about the Microsoft-affiliated “Linux curious” persona attacking more often than before.
“Linux on the desktop: Still not happening,” says the former Microsoft TE over at ComputerWorld today. Shame on IDG for publishing this nonsense despite the obvious yet undisclosed conflict of interests. It’s either malicious or IDG was bamboozled again (IDG relies on Microsoft as a large revenue stream [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]). IDG might as well pass over some writing responsibilities to Microsoft’s many PR agencies. It’s not reporting, it’s opinionated placements in disguise, daemonising one’s professional rival.
Last week we wrote about how big statistics firms produce and spread lies that benefit those who pay them [1, 2]. Here is a decent new post which explains the role of money.
Oh Linux, how shall I count thy installs?
[...]
I have also heard it said that 76.3% of people believe that you put a percentage sign behind any random number they will believe it to be true.
Research and marketing companies especially love statistics. That is how they make their money by providing the numbers to make their paying customers feel good. Yet there is the old adage GIGO, which means Garbage In, Garbage Out. It seems to me that just about all of the numbers regarding operating system installs fall into that GIGO category.
Of course bloggers, journalists and article writers take those numbers and spin them into fanciful stories for their readers to eat up like so many cream puffs. These fevered outpourings of fanatical minds are often used to show how their operating system has the most market share and consequently is the bees knees and of course everyone should be using it.
Where do these statistics come from? Most of the time it comes from sales data provided by the companies supplying the operating systems and this is where the problem lies. This is because while companies of proprietary operating systems actually rent their products, open source operating systems are not. So any statistics regarding operating system market share are automatically bogus and can only be used for FUD campaigns.
What about Web sites that are not included in those Microsoft-sponsored aggregations of logs, such as this new one?
Operating System on WWWUSE on W3Counter
Windows XP 28.00% 53.60%
Linux 20.00% 1.55%
Windows 7 18.00% 10.66%
Windows Vista 16.00% 20.07%
Mac OS X 13.00% 8.12%
Unknown 3.00% under 1%
Windows 2003 1.00% 1.01%
iPhone OSX 0.60% 0.75%
Android 0.20% 0.10%
Windows 2000 0.10% 0.43%
All Microsoft 63.10% 85.77%
All no Microsoft 36.80% 14.23%
As a side note, Alex Brown, Jesper Lund Stocholm, and Microsoft employees are flirting at the moment in Twitter, promoting their agenda for Microsoft lock-in. We won’t go into it on this occasion. The important point to remember is that Microsoft is getting very desperate. It relies on known allies attacking GNU/Linux with lies that they repeat over and over again. Lies need to be rejected. Tolerating them only helps them spread. █
“I’d put the Linux phenomenon really as threat No. 1.”
–Steve Ballmer, 2001
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02.25.10
Posted in Antitrust, Europe, FOSS, Google, Microsoft, Office Suites, Open XML, OpenDocument at 5:07 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft’s EU ballot claimed not to be rearranged at random and besides, it totally disregards the issue of Microsoft perverting the Web to make it MSIE-only
BOOSTERS of Microsoft have defended the company's discriminatory treatment of ODF in its new ‘ballot’ dialogue. Well, according to this report, Microsoft might also be cheating in the ballot that displays Web browsers:
How Random Is Microsoft’s Random Browser Choice Screen In Europe?
[...]
More than once out of every four hits, the page would show Google Chrome on the far left, and Internet Explorer would only make it to the first spot in 13,8% of page loads (scoring well below all four other browsers). In fact, in over 50% of all page hits, Internet Explorer would come out to the far right spot of the five browser choices shown on the screen.
It’s rather interesting, isn’t it?
Browser options are made worse for the illusion that they will make IE go away from Windows. They won’t. In some places, and especially in Korea [1, 2], Microsoft has used ActiveX to make a Web browser and operating system monoculture. Mozilla talked about this yesterday.
As has been in the news this week and mentioned on many Mozilla blogs, the European Commission is working with Microsoft and other browser manufacturers, including Mozilla of course, to launch the web browser ballot in the EC.
To those critics of the browser ballot who would rather the free market be left completely to Adam Smith’s invisible hand, I would present to you the example of South Korea. In short, South Korea is a sad example of a Microsoft monoculture where the course of history and the lack of anti-monopoly oversight have created a nation where every computer user is a Windows user and banking or ecommerce or any secure transaction on the Internet with South Korean entities must be done with Internet Explorer on a Windows OS.
[...]
So when people ask you, “why is the choice of a web browser important?” tell them that in South Korea, people don’t get a choice of what operating system to use or what web browser to use. After you explain to them that a place without choice is South Korea, ask them again if they’d like to not have a choice and why the choice of a web browser is important.
Microsoft is currently using Silver Lie in addition to ActiveX in order to remove choice through the Web. This is why the ballot misses an important point and a lot of users will blame their “non-IE” browser when visiting MSIE-only Web sites. Microsoft uses the same strategy to make ODF look bad.
“In one piece of mail people were suggesting that Office had to work equally well with all browsers and that we shouldn’t force Office users to use our browser. This Is wrong and I wanted to correct this.
“Another suggestion In this mail was that we can’t make our own unilateral extensions to HTML I was going to say this was wrong and correct this also.”
–Bill Gates [PDF]
Glyn Moody does not mind the ballot approach. He called it a “good design”, but he had something to say about Microsoft’s insulting treatment of ODF.
Who in their right mind would opt for that? Given that Microsoft has come up with a good design for the browser ballot, it should be pressed to do the same for ODF as well. Even if it does, ODF will be faced with the same recognition problem as Firefox does, but at least it will be doing so fighting on a level playing field.
Microsoft will never treat ODF fairly; it threatens its #1 cash cow whose existence it may depend on. █
“They are not implementing all parts of the OOXML standard, so he [technical director of Microsoft Denmark] is lying.”
–Mogens Kühn Pedersen, chair of the Danish Standards Committee
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02.24.10
Posted in FOSS, FUD, Microsoft, Office Suites, Open XML, OpenDocument, OpenOffice at 2:02 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“Microsoft implemented ODF with all the grace of a 6 year old asked to tidy up their room”
–Jeremy Allison, LCA 2010
Summary: How boosters of Microsoft have covered the insulting “support” of ODF in Microsoft Office
IN THE previous post we explained that Microsoft pretends to be a friend when it’s obviously not. It’s a lulling technique against critics.
Microsoft is attacking ODF — at least indirectly if one pays attention — in all sorts of ways while pretending to have embraced it (which would make no business sense). We have given so many examples over the past year. One vector of attack has been Microsoft’s bribed [1, 2, 3] and sometimes just loyal ‘reporters’ (loyal to Microsoft). We are seeing examples of it even this week. Here is Microsoft’s booster Gavin Clarke attacking ODF with a headline that says “ODF’s doomed mission to break into Microsoft Office”
There are the following two criticisms being mentioned:
Free-Software-Foundation president Richard Stallman has told Neowin that the Office ballot screen is designed to actually deter potential users from using ODF. Stallman concludes Microsoft is simply going through a pretense – to be able to say it offers ODF support.
ODF managing director Marino Marcich pointed to a bigger issue, saying a ballot screen is meaningful only if the ODF implementation is “complete, current, and interoperable with other ODF applications.”
Clarke is ending with his Microsoft party line: “Would it take fresh regulatory pressure on Microsoft this time? Possibly. Microsoft is within its rights to support ODF as much – or a little – as it wants in Office.”
That’s not true. Microsoft’s strategy of “embrace and extend” was at times ruled illegal and had Microsoft penalised. Microsoft is still doing this to ODF [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] because it wants to get rid of ODF by making it look bad and thus discourage its use. Other Microsoft boosters did the same thing. The Microsoft-boosting site called Neowin got its hands on a screenshot that we mentioned a few days ago. It’s like those fake “leaks” [1, 2] that are actually controlled — leaks where they are setting the tone for all followup articles (breaking the news artificially). Neowin’s biased coverage has fed other Microsoft boosters like Marius Oiaga who cites Neowin and Mary-Jo Foley (whom Microsoft contacted based on the statement which says “the Redmond company confirmed officially to Mary-Jo Foley, after Neowin published a story accompanied by the file format screen which is apparently being served to users of the Release Candidate version of Office 2010″). Even sites that are not in Microsoft’s pocket had to rely on biased coverage from Neowin, which fortunately they took with a barrel of salt.
As for Office, Neowin has revealed Microsoft will use a similar ballot screen to prompt users about which file format they would prefer to use: Office Open XML (OOXML) or OpenDocument (ODF) document formats. OOXML is the suite’s default format, but Canadian software company i4i filed a patent dispute over the way Word uses these XML files. In December Microsoft surprisingly lost an appeal against i4i’s sales injunction and has had to act quickly.
So can these matters now be drawn to a close? Highly unlikely…
Should Microsoft add to the dialogue some warning about deliberate patent violations in OOXML [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]? And if not, then why not? It’s actually unfortunate that the i4i case is currently being used to promote software patents:
Mark Kenrick, a partner at patent and trademark attorneys Marks & Clerk, explores the recent Microsoft injunction, prohibiting sales of its flagship Word program. How did it come to pass that David beat Goliath in this fiercely contested patent dispute, and what does this mean for the software industry at large?
Another Microsoft booster admits that competitors are not satisfied with what Microsoft did. He quotes ODF Alliance’s director:
Update: Marino Marcich, managing director of the ODF Alliance, had this to say via email this morning:
The ballot screen, although it may at first look like it gives users a fair choice between OOXML and ODF, doesn’t give ODF a fair shake, and it isn’t likely to have much impact. Not only does the ballot offer OOXML as the first option, but more significantly, it provides what is essentially a warning — OOXML is designated to support “all the features” of the software, while ODF is explained to enable “many features,” but “some content or editability may be lost.”
At the end of the day, the key issue here is the level of ODF support and functionality. A ballot is no substitute for a quality implementation of the format. In this case, a ballot that offers the user the choice of ODF in MS Office is only significant if the ODF support in MS Office is complete, current, and interoperable with other ODF applications. Previous attempts, in Office 2007 SP2 fell far short of this. We have not yet evaluated the level of ODF support in Office 2010.”
Here is an update on where Google stands when it comes to document standards. █
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02.23.10
Posted in FOSS, Google, Hardware, Marketing, Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument, Search, Ubuntu at 5:32 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Yahoo! Blog from Sunnyvale, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
Generic license (caption added by us, with Ballmer’s words
Summary: Brainwash receives a much greater emphasis at Microsoft, a CMO role is created, and Microsoft finds new ways of deceiving the masses
“I hope Ubuntu is getting lots of money for pissing off users with irrelevant search results from Bong [sic],” says our reader Ryan regarding the Yahoo-Canonical deal [1, 2, 3, 4]. “You can tell Yahoo is Bing now, the least relevant crap ends up on top.”
The news is pretty much official that Microsoft has hijacked Yahoo!, sucking the life out of Yahoo! for its own selfish good (and regulators are unable to stop this). To an extent, Microsoft is doing something similar in Amazon, namely gradual assimilation through strategic staff appointments. They don’t adhere to the basics of human resources (HR) or maybe they just simply don’t care.
Anyway, Jerry Yang has just dumped Yahoo! shares. That’s the company he once created, before he labeled Microsoft an “agitator” and saw the company destorying his “baby”.
Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) holders probably never want to hear the name Jerry Yang again. Well, those same holders will love this… Tonight after the close a filing at the SEC from Yahoo! showed that Jerry Yang is going to be selling stock in the company. David Filo, the other Yahoo founder, is also selling shares. Normally insider selling or founders selling is viewed with some caution. That doesn’t seem to be the case here, and for good reason.
Microsoft’s buddy, Carl Icahn, has also dumped his shares, as we noted a few days ago (more press coverage in [1, 2, 3]). Yahoo director Ron Burkle is quiting as well, which only shows what type of damage Microsoft did the company. Also see:
i. Yahoo! Director Burkle Stepping Down
Yahoo!(YHOO Quote) director Ron Burkle, the supermarket magnate, won’t seek re-election to the Internet search company’s board at the annual meeting later this year.
ii. Ron Burkle to Quit Yahoo! Board
Ron Burkle will not seek re-election to Yahoo!’s Board of Directors at the annual shareholders’ meeting this year. Burkle gave the usual reasons about other business pursuits and spending more time with his family.
“Now Microsoft, Yahoo Can Tag-Team Google,” IDG says mercilessly and it also quotes the same Microsoft-corrupted DOJ [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] which blocked the Yahoo!-Google deal after intense AstroTurfing from Microsoft (political fights by secretive groups of paid-for protesters who fought for Microsoft and later got exposed). Here is the nonsense that IDG is quoting:
Bing will become a better search engine when Microsoft takes over Yahoo search, and better able to compete with search giant Google, the U.S. Department of Justice said in its decision supporting the deal.
Microsoft suffers over $2,000,000,000 in losses per year in this area. Microsoft has only itself to blame because what it shamelessly calls a “decision engine” is simply a tool for lying to the public. No wonder people don’t take it seriously. Microsoft is [p]rearranging the results such that they mock Microsoft’s competitors and hide Microsoft’s crimes. That alone is a reason to boycott Bing, as some journalists have already suggested. But Microsoft has found ways of forcing people to use its “decision engine”, namely paying carriers to remove Google as an option and probably repeating browser crimes in IE8. Microsoft also uses the Olympics again, not only to promote Silver Lie but also to make people use its “decision engine” and be indoctrinated the One Microsoft Way.
“Microsoft is [p]rearranging the results such that they mock Microsoft’s competitors and hide Microsoft’s crimes.”As usual, Microsoft will later lie about market share, citing US-only data so as to triple its real market share at least in the perceived sense. Microsoft is also using this type of deception to fraudulently enhance perception of Windows Mobile and to belittle GNU/Linux. If they are lying often enough for people to actually believe that Microsoft exceeded 10% market share in search (rather than maintained about 3%), then Microsoft believes that people are more likely to fulfill the bogus prophecy by giving Bing a try. In the same way, Microsoft discourages the industry from supporting Linux, based on some fake numbers that produce illusions.
“Ideally, use of the competing technology becomes associated with mental deficiency, as in, “he believes in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and OS/2.” Just keep rubbing it in, via the press, analysts, newsgroups, whatever. Make the complete failure of the competition’s technology part of the mythology of the computer industry. We want to place selection pressure on those companies and individuals that show a genetic weakness for competitors’ technologies, to make the industry increasingly resistant to such unhealthy strains, over time.”
–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]
Microsoft has begun focusing on perception, not products. According to the news, Microsoft has just hired more marketing (i.e. deception) people from the outside [1, 2, 3]. Microsoft hires from the outside because this way it is not held accountable for overzealous behaviour (like phone-spamming that we mentioned over the weekend). Microsoft has also just created a new role, a CMO (chief marketing officer). That’s the equivalent or ministers who are responsible for lying and spinning in order for the public to think wrongly of everything and adhere to blind consent.
As part of a broader realignment of its Central Marketing Group, Microsoft on Thursday named Gayle Troberman to the newly created position of chief marketing officer.
Novell’s chief marketing officer is John Dragoon. Here is more information about Gayle Troberman:
ADOTAS – Microsoft has done some rearranging of its central marketing group and created the position of chief creative officer for Gayle Troberman, a 13-year veteran of the company who was most recently general manager for Microsoft advertising and consumer
Working for an abusive monopoly and lying on its behalf is nothing to be proud of. Steve Ballmer is about to give a keynote talk at a “Search Marketing Conference”. Will he explain to the public how he manipulated search results so as to mock everything he dislikes? That’s just Stalinist.
Two weeks ago we wrote about Microsoft's relationship with Facebook, which is becoming one of the most visited sites on the Web. Facebook will no longer allow Microsoft to spy on Facebook users for marketing reasons [1, 2], but it does embed Microsoft’s shameless “decision engine” in the site. According to another report, Microsoft also wants to buy a Facebook game developer and it tried to buy Yelp:
About two months ago, when Yelp turned down an offer from Google, there had been speculation that Yelp had received a counter offer from Microsoft.
That would allow Microsoft to rank competitors just as it demotes and mocks competitors in its so-called ’search engine’. It’s a good thing that Yelp turned down the $700+ million Microsoft offer:
When Google offered $550 million to purchase Yelp, Yelp walked away saying it had another offer.
Looks like the other offer was Microsoft. According to Peter Burrows at BusinessWeek, Yelp had “a bid north of $700 million from Microsoft.”
If Microsoft is allowed to rank other businesses and products, then it will abuse this power. That’s exactly what it’s doing with Bing. Microsoft is a morally corrupt company, based on simple evidence.
Regarding the Facebook game developer, there are several more reports about it:
Microsoft Corp. is among companies in talks to buy CrowdStar, the creator of games for social- networking site Facebook, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Microsoft is still trying to control top sites and use them in all sorts of ways, especially spying for marketing reasons. There needn’t be a tacit admission of this.
Here is Microsoft doing some new sniffing for marketing reasons:
v”Microsoft, Starcom Initiate Research On Mothers
[...]
Commenting on the initiative, Pushkar Sane, chief digital officer, North and South Asia, Starcom MediaVest Group said, “This is one of the many joint initiatives with Microsoft Advertising. Our strategic partnership spans across research, education, measurement and innovation. Mothers are an important audience segment for many of our clients. This initiative will help us bridge the current information gap that exists in our understanding of this key demographic.”
For those who don’t know what Starcom is:
Welcome to Starcom. We are a media communications agency that specializes in making connections between consumers and brands.
Yes, more of that very same advertising/spying business.
There is another new liaison of a similar kind — one involving the Intel-Microsoft collusion partnership [1, 2].
Today, FedScoop announced that Intel and Microsoft will be sponsoring an educational campaign focused on the present and future possibilities of cloud computing called, “Minds in the Cloud.” Each week, for 25 weeks, new High Definition (HD) interviews of influential technologists from the government, non-profit, and private sectors discussing their views on the importance of the cloud will be posted to mindsinthecloud.org.
That’s more marketing and Intel is once again helping Microsoft. It will of course be geared towards selling Microsoft software and Intel gear. It’s not about the so-called ‘cloud’, but that’s the banner under which their campaign is disguised. They sort of hijack ‘cloud’ for their own purposes, just as they do with “business intelligence” in the following new case:
Microsoft, Solver and ProfitBase are to host a business intelligence (BI) event in Los Angeles on 23 February, which will look at how companies can leverage their existing investments in Microsoft technologies.
It’s not a “business intelligence event”, it’s a business intelligence with Microsoft software event. It’s a familiar strategy of hijacking movements like the green causes in order to promote heavy fuels (reversal of causes). That’s another subject that’s to do with ethical offences in PR/AstroTurfing where smoking or carbon, for example, are described as beneficial in a way that overlaps the reasons against them, which leads to confusion. Microsoft uses these tricks to make people confused about OpenOffice.org (Office Open XML, anyone?) and “open source”. █
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02.22.10
Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Office Suites, Open XML, OpenDocument, Servers, Windows at 1:17 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Data corruption glitches inherent and more likely with Microsoft’s sub-standard products that do not comply with industry standards
TWO YEARS ago I called Windows Home Server (WHS) “data corruption server” because it turned out that its unique feature (or antifeature) was that it silently destroyed people’s data rather than make backups like it was supposed to. We wrote about the disaster which is Windows Home Server around that time; it’s built upon pretty much the same codebase that makes up Vista 7.
According to this very extensive new review of the Asus TS Mini Windows Home Server, GNU/Linux is still miles ahead of Microsoft when it comes to so-called “home servers” (Microsoft terminology for the most part). To quote some portions of the text:
Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices are essentially small servers designed for use in the home, but generally use modified versions of Linux. It was only a matter of time before Microsoft got in on the action with Windows Home Server (WHS), which it introduced in 2007.
Most NAS devices run Linux on hardware based around embedded processors from manufacturers such as Marvell or Freescale, typically based on the ARM design. WHS, on the other hand, will run on standard PC hardware based around Intel or AMD x86 processors.
[...]
Linux is the obvious choice since many distributions are free and its reliability is well-documented. Installing, configuring and maintaining Linux can be a time consuming hassle though, even if you’re already familiar with the OS.
[...]
Overall, Asus’s Home Server TS Mini is a disappointment. The hardware’s clumsy design makes adding or replacing a hard disk more difficult than it has to be. Asus’ WHS plug-ins don’t add much value either, although these can always be updated in future or just replaced with alternatives of your choosing. The sluggish performance is particularly disappointing though, limiting the TS Mini’s usefulness.
All of this is a shame, since the WHS OS clearly has much potential, but it’s not without its flaws either. It’s disappointing that almost three years after its launch, there aren’t easily accessible printer sharing options or RAID support.
There is one area where the failure of Windows Home Server is similar to that of OOXML. According to this new post from Rob Weir, Microsoft Office has data corruption problems that affect OOXML.
In this post I take a look at Microsoft’s claims for robust data recovery with their Office Open XML (OOXML) file format. I show the results of an experiment, where I introduce random errors into documents and observe whether word processors can recover from these errors. Based on these result, I estimate data recovery rates for Word 2003 binary, OOXML and ODF documents, as loaded in Word 2007, Word 2003 and in OpenOffice.org Writer 3.2.
My tests suggest that the OOXML format is less robust than the Word binary or ODF formats, with no observed basis for the contrary Microsoft claims. I then discuss the reasons why this might be expected.
It is not exactly surprising because OOXML has corruption written all over it, but Microsoft’s crimes aside, there are clearly some technical deficiencies. Microsoft does not build software for robustness. The London Stock Exchange found this out the hard way [1, 2]. People inside Microsoft know this too. █
‘Eller and his team had written what they felt was some very good Windows code. When Konzen came over he appeared to want to counter this impression—he told the Windows team their code was garbage. They had completely misengineered the system, he said.
‘”These Apple guys really know their graphics,” Konzen told Eller.
‘”They’re better, faster, and simply easier to use. You chimps working on Windows don’t have a clue.”‘
–Barbarians Led by Bill Gates, a book composed
by the daughter of Microsoft’s PR mogul
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02.21.10
Posted in FUD, Google, Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument, Videos at 9:23 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft is still attacking its competition rather than focus on its own products and comply with industry standards
Microsoft — like Novell [1, 2, 3, 4] — uses YouTube to promote its products and to spin/lie (e.g. about OOXML), but according to the following two reports, Microsoft also uses YouTube to disparage its competition. Microsoft not only sues Google and resorts to whisper campaigns; right now it has employees going out there to smear a rival of Microsoft’s biggest cash cow (and one of the very few products that are profitable):
The Irony of Microsoft’s Anti-Google Apps Campaign on YouTube
[...]
In a Microsoft video extolling its virtues, the narrator makes the point that marketing is difficult with Google Apps. It’s far simpler with Microsoft Office.
So we find it deliciously ironic that Microsoft is marketing a number of anti-Google Apps videos using Google’s YouTube. Hmm…doesn’t that defeat the point a bit?
[...]
It all feels like a company protecting its power base more so than embracing the current disruption in the market.
Also:
Microsoft Attacks Google Apps … on YouTube
[...]
They’ll let anything onto YouTube these days. No, I’m not talking about the millionth video featuring a squirrel lip-syncing to Right Said Fred, but a set of Microsoft-created videos attacking Google Apps. I guess Google, which owns YouTube, really has no inclination to censor anything aside from content that violates copyrights; but watching the Microsoft videos play out next to that YouTube logo is like watching promos for a TV show like “Dexter” (produced by Showtime) playing on HBO or another rival channel.
Microsoft sometimes uses former employees from the Office group in order to do the smearing/belittling of Google Apps and the Microsoft-paid blog called TechFlash is now giving a platform for a former Microsoft employee (“He worked in Microsoft’s Information Technology Group in the early 1990s,” says the bottom part) to do the same type of things. This control of the press is a subject that was demonstrated in the previous post and one which we’ll return to later.
It’s easy to see why Microsoft is so concerned. First it was ODF and now it’s Google Apps. One dismantles Microsoft’s lock-in using open formats that everyone supports and the other challenges Microsoft’s core business model. Microsoft's old friend, Dina Bass from Seattle, has just disseminated this Microsoft narrative which she originally published in Bloomberg:
Microsoft Corp. President Stephen Elop is preparing for the biggest shakeup to the $19 billion Office business in a decade as the company races Google Inc. to sell Internet-based programs.
The article is imbalanced and Google is hardly quoted at all (even though it’s a subject of the article). It reads almost like an advertisement for Microsoft. Speaking of which, Microsoft already advertises a product that’s not even available (Office 2010) and someone sent us this screenshot of a new dialogue, which he described as “Satan’s talk with Jesus, at the desert.” As usual — and as we have expected all along — Microsoft sells people the illusion that ODF is defective. Microsoft doesn’t even implement it properly [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7].█
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Posted in Asia, Marketing, Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument at 8:36 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft Philippines “targets Manila’s top 100 Netizens” and also targets so-called ‘piracy’
THE head of Microsoft Philippines quit the firm last year but not before being part of Microsoft’s OOXML scandals. Among posts that covered OOXML in the Philippines we have:
A leopard does not change its spots and Microsoft Philippines is still very unethical if not simply corrupt.
We previously covered examples where Microsoft had bribed bloggers [1, 2, 3, 4] to rave about Vista 7. Some months ago we also showed that Microsoft fed 777 prominent Korean bloggers in order for them to do this type of promotion and now we are finding something similar in the Philippines. The following article has changed since it was first published. Its older headline was “‘VIP Mix’ of Microsoft targets Manila’s top 100 Netizens”
Microsoft in the Philippines is trying out what looks and sounds like the second-oldest sales strategy in the book.
[...]
To secure a free VIP invite, a prospective guest needs to comply with certain requirements previously set by the company.
Last December, when it held its first VIP event for students, the software company chose the top 100 students with the most number of friends on Facebook.
Those who emerged on top of the pile had an average of 2,000 Facebook friends, an achievement made possible by their extensive networks, de Dios said.
[...]
An unofficial Facebook account of Microsoft friends in the Philippines — known as MSfriends Philippines — has also been created.
Who knows how much buzz that will generate?
No one does, as of yet.
But one thing’s for sure: Bill Gates is smiling.
Yes, Bill Gates is always smiling all the way to the bank because there are enough fools out there who fall for his PR operations and fail to see his continued abuse of society (more on that later).
“Microsoft is just trying to alter press coverage and blog coverage in the Philippines.”The article above can also be found here and it’s hard not to think of Melvin Calimag, a Microsoft booster/journalist from the Philippines — one whom Microsoft flew to the United States at its own expense for some OOXML brainwash and poison against ODF (courtesy of Microsoft employees, who disparaged ODF “independently” at the time). Microsoft is just trying to alter press coverage and blog coverage in the Philippines. It’s as simple as that.
At the same time, Microsoft suppresses Free software adoption in the Philippines using dumping techniques that we covered in:
- The EDGIfication of the Philippines
- Microsoft’s B.A.D. in China, Philippines
Our reader Chips B. Malroy has just shown us this new article that says: “Citing a study by a global technology research firm, Magsadia said the country has a 69 percent software piracy rate. Magsadia bared the Microsoft Philippines has decided to reduce the standard retail price of its Windows 7, for instance, from P9,000 down to P2,000, to help alleviate the problem on piracy.”
We are going to write about the latest “piracy” propaganda from Microsoft a little later (today or tomorrow). As Malroy explains, the above shows that “MS first goes after the “business” users. Last I knew 50peso to the US dollar, so MS is selling Seven for less than $40 to these cafe owners, in order to get some of them to buy.”
Microsoft is suppressing GNU/Linux in Internet Cafés [1, 2] where Free software is a good fit (mostly safe Web browsing is required). “MS going after piracy, is another way to squeeze out more revenue as profits decline. MS attempts to do this will increasingly become evil,” concludes Malroy. █
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02.16.10
Posted in Apple, Interoperability, Mail, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Office Suites, Open XML, OpenDocument, OpenOffice, Protocol at 6:37 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A new story of migration to Microsoft (due to Apple’s reliance on Microsoft) offers an important lesson about the purpose of Novell’s Mono and Moonlight
AS we have shown before, Microsoft’s supine friends at Apple have helped OOXML and continues doing this. Based on the news about “Office for Mac 2011″ [1, 2], Mac OS X will accommodate more promotion of monoculture the Microsoft way. Matt Asay, for example, is a Mac user who extols the virtues of Microsoft Office and openly mocks OpenOffice.org. That’s apparently what Apple enthusiasts are for. Ironically enough, Canonical has made him a COO (a decision that we criticised in [1, 2, 3, 4]). COO rhymes with coup.
As one of our readers has said repeatedly, Microsoft inserts its APIs and non-standards into the competitors’ products and once that’s ‘injected’ they can proceed to infiltrating the server/desktop side interchangeably. As a specific example, this reader gave Office for Mac OS X (or Entourage). Based on the following new example from Internode, he was right. Internode is moving from FOSS to Microsoft Exchange and here is its explanation:
So what changed?
Snow Leopard was the key.
[...]
Apple delivered a huge corporate software upgrade in Snow Leopard, by tightly integrating Exchange client functionality into the operating system – in Apple Mail, iCal, and Contacts.
Now watch this discussion at Linux Today. “The lockin begins at internode,” says Petem. Rainer Weikusat reconstructs the arguments and starts with: “I have rarely seen such an amazing amount of BS in a single text.” Someone from Citadel writes: “Just wait until the first time Exchange blows itself up. That always happens eventually.” And one person says: “To pick this apart. All of your staff needs to have access to configure your filtering? Wow!!! Just plain WOW!!!”
“I have rarely seen such an amazing amount of BS in a single text.”
–Rainer WeikusatSo anyway, what Microsoft did here is simple. It used proprietary integration with something it controls not to facilitate interoperability but to upsell Microsoft products/stacks. It is the same with Mono and Moonlight. In more or less the same ways, Mono and Moonlight are ramps to Visual Studio, Windows, and other proprietary Microsoft products.
Why are Novell and Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza promoting these? We venture to guess that for selfish gain, some people promote this inside GNU/Linux. If their new interests are rewarded by Microsoft, then they would do anything. Stephane Rodriguez told us a couple of years ago: “So far, Microsoft has got all the marketing PR they wanted from “open-source” groups that are remarkably compatible with Microsoft minds. Again, I think those guys are just Microsoft persons who take a pride not to be on their payroll. (DeIcaza told me in the past that he’s rich). [...] DeIcaza took the role of [Microsoft's] Brian Jones, the technical person. (technical person who concentrates on never answering the good questions)…”
Here is Moonlight being used in what seems like a sort of Microsoft advert. Meanwhile we learn from a reader of ours that “Someone made Ada for .NET? (A#)”. Embrace and extend much? █
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