07.29.08
Posted in Microsoft, Windows, GNU/Linux, Deception, Open XML, Vista, Search at 12:14 pm by Roy Schestowitz
“The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.”
–Andre Gide
Microsoft continues to show that those ‘iie genes’ run deep in its blood. It’s a marketing company, and one that’s unethical enough to lie for sales. Check out this new article.
“From the 30th of June, we have no longer been able to ship a PC with an XP licence,” said Jane Bradburn, a marketing manager for HP Australia. “However, what we have been able to do with Microsoft is ship PCs with a Vista Business licence but with XP pre-loaded. That is still the majority of business computers we are selling today.”
Therefore the Vole’s claims for high Vista sales figures are merely so much steer manure. The major PC vendors are still preloading Windows XP, but Microsoft is counting those XP preloads as Vista sales.
Microsoft has bragged about Windows Vista sales since the very beginning. It lied over and over again for many months, hoping that the lies will serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy and then capitalise on the cattle effect.
“Channel-stuffing techniques were also used to boost figures and perceptions of the XBox360, Zune and Office 2007.”In essence, the numbers Microsoft speaks of (now it’s 180,000,000) are the number of PCs sold, not number of copies of Vists sold. A licence for Windows XP Microsoft just calls a “Vista licence”, yet most PCs are sold without Vista! And PCs that come with Windows are sometimes wiped for GNU/Linux to be installed, due to market distortion at OEM level (paying for something you do not require).
Microsoft used to also lie about the adoption of OOXML. It desperately needed to sell that format, so it knew no boundaries when it comes to truth and lie. On the brighter side, this has taught the world a great deal about Microsoft and dishonesty. The existing format saturation could end monoculture and promote unification (or Web-based interaction and exchanges). Either way, things are bound to change for the better; all but Microsoft’s spin and deception. Some things never change. Channel-stuffing techniques were also used to boost figures and perceptions of the XBox360, Zune and Office 2007. NPD’s methods are sensitive to such gaming and so are search engine trackers, which Microsoft broke using ‘junk’ automated queries. █
“Microsoft looks at new ideas, they don’t evaluate whether the idea will move the industry forward, they ask, ‘how will it help us sell more copies of Windows?’”
–Bill Gates, The Seattle Weekly, (April 30, 1998)
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04.25.08
Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, FUD, Deception, Google, Search at 3:01 am by Roy Schestowitz
Can we trust what Microsoft tells us?
“The elements of the evangelical infrastructure - conference presentations, courses, seminars, books, magazine articles, whitepapers, etc. – should start hitting the street at the start of the Slog. They should be so numerous as to push all other books off the shelf, courses out of catalogs, and presentations off the stage.
“Working behind the scenes to orchestrate “independent” praise of our technology, and damnation of the enemy’s, is a key evangelism function during the Slog. “Independent” analyst’s report should be issued, praising your technology and damning the competitors (or ignoring them). “Independent” consultants should write columns and articles, give conference presentations and moderate stacked panels, all on our behalf (and setting them up as experts in the new technology, available for just $200/hour). “Independent” academic sources should be cultivated and quoted (and research money granted). “Independent” courseware providers should start profiting from their early involvement in our technology. Every possible source of leverage should be sought and turned to our advantage. “
–Internal document, Microsoft (read more)
Some months ago, Mary Jo Foley wrote about Live search being seemingly ‘broken’ and returning results that support Microsoft’s business agenda. This was by no means an isolated observation and we covered many additional examples before. Some of these examples you can find in:
The complaints keep on coming. Here is one of the latest reports.
I was looking to see what search sites might have a particular bug that I (ahem) came across and was trying the search for the number 0 in various places. There is a pretty good Wikipedia page about zero. Zero has a rich and interesting history and there are many other potentially reasonable results.
Microsoft and Yahoo have, for quite some time as a matter of fact, been collaborating with the Chinese government on search engine censorship, disclosure (unmasking), spying and the like. It’s just something to bear in mind. Microsoft’s patents said a little more about this.
Interestingly enough, it was only yesterday that the BBC published the following good article which warns about closed system that restrict information and can be exploited by large corporations to feed minds in a self-serving fashion. It’s an eye-opening example of the need for what the article calls “programmable” systems.
He contrasts generative devices with “sterile appliances”, closed systems which appear to give consumers access to the net.
He argued such devices were damaging innovation and potentially putting easilly-abused powers into the hands of a few companies and governments.
“Consumers are eagerly asking for technologies, which can be used to surveil or control them,” said professor Zittrain.
So, when will Google release some code to the public? This was the rationale behind the birth of Wikia. █
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04.06.08
Posted in Microsoft, Finance, Open XML, Google, Search at 1:50 am by Roy Schestowitz
When it’s cheaper to corner and squash rivals than to make better products…
In the previous post we showed an attack by Microsoft against a prominent figure. Microsoft made it personal. This was intended to promote Microsoft’s business interests. It also serves as a warning sign to anyone else who ‘dares’ to question OOXML.
We promised to write some more about Microsoft’s proxy fight against Yahoo because not only does it bear a resemblance to the above only at a larger scale, but it also intensified yesterday. In case you have not seen those development in the news yet, here are a bunch of headlines with accompanying snippets.
1. CNET: Microhoo: Ballmer takes off his gloves
What Ballmer means: Jerry, you are making us both look bad. It’s time to get in gear, and if I have to bring on the irate dancing monkey and go straight to the shareholders, I will.
2. Wall Street Journal: Microsoft Threatens Yahoo Board With Proxy Battle, Lower Bid
Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Steven A. Ballmer threatened Yahoo Inc. directors with a hostile takeover of the company if they don’t reverse course and agree to a deal within the next three weeks.
You will find some more details in this most recent update from CNET.
Microsoft on Saturday issued an ultimatum to Yahoo, giving the Internet search pioneer three weeks to enter formal merger negotiations and conclude a deal.
The software giant threatened to launch a proxy fight to unseat Yahoo’s board of directors, as well as take its case straight to Yahoo investors should no deal be reached in that period.
And as a further cattle prod in getting a deal consummated, Microsoft threatened to lower its existing bid, citing how Yahoo’s value will be hurt if it needs to resort to such hostile means.
“It’s all very similar to what you find in those infamous OOXML abuses, wherein Microsoft just sets the deck and games the system…”This is not exactly a topic for us to cover because it’s broad and would most likely prove to be a distraction, but if you have watched this saga since the beginning, then you would know that Microsoft urged various parties (proxies) to legally assault Yahoo and apply pressure to it. Additionally, Microsoft tries to grab seats on the board (squeezing in ‘insiders’, potentially secretly, according to last week’s reports) so as to make Yahoo more ‘compliant’ until it re-evaluates the offer, this time deciding ‘properly’.
It’s all very similar to what you find in those infamous OOXML abuses, wherein Microsoft just sets the deck and games the system by ensuring only obedient people are to vote, or at least a sufficiently-large majority of them. Watching what Microsoft has done to Yahoo so far is painful because the tactics are truly appalling.
Listed below are headlines we have accumulated and they are sorted roughly chronologically to tell you the story so far:
For those who still believe that a Yahoo takeover would be a ‘win’ for Microsoft (like the OOXML ‘win’), consider the following article which appeared in Forbes just over a fortnight ago. Of interest:
Co-founder Bill Gates can’t be thrilled with watching Ballmer drain the company’s cash. He didn’t get so rich by buying at the top of the market.
Going a little further back, watch the detailed article from Reuters:
Microsoft Corp said on Monday it may borrow money for the first time in its history to fund a portion of its $44.6 billion unsolicited offer for Yahoo Inc.
Or from Glyn Moody:
The rest of the $44.6bn (£22.3bn) deal would be financed with an undisclosed amount of credit.
What that means is that it must squeeze as much money as it can from its operations to fund that debt and still pay dividends to shareholders, who will be looking for some payback from the Yahoo takeover. Giving away software is the last thing it would want to do in these circumstances, and
the DreamSpark announcement shows just how worried it is about the future.
We wrote more extensively about Microsoft financial issues right here. Do not be misled into thinking that Microsoft can defeat Google quite so easily. It can cause harm to some competitor, albeit at a hugely high cost.
To reduce expenses, Microsoft reaches out to foreign labour. We wrote about this recently in order to show that Microsoft uses nothing but excuses and resorts to truth-bending in order to justify its actions (mocking Americans’ intelligence in the process). Here are a couple of picks from the latest news. What you see here is a form of blackmail for visas (c/f other forms of Microsoft blackmail in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]).
Visa woes? Microsoft has Vancouver, B.C.
The majority of those workers are graduates of U.S. universities who can’t stay in the country because of visa issues, said Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos. Another 15 percent to 20 percent are from Canadian universities, Gellos said.
Who Got H-1B Visas Petitions Approved Last Year? Look At The List
The top 25 H-1B visa recipient companies contacted by Durbin and Grassley this week include Infosys, Wipro, Satyam, Cognizant, Microsoft, and Tata.
Marketing is the art of hypnosis. Microsoft is doing as well as it manages to have you believe it does. Learn not to trust what you are told about Microsoft by the press and the analysts whom it cites. Microsoft is a lot more fragile that most people realise. █
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03.27.08
Posted in Microsoft, Deception, OpenDocument, Open XML, Search at 3:00 am by Roy Schestowitz
World Wide Web for documents lock-in or against it?
Thanks to one reader, we have just become aware of a story told by another reader. It was published in noooxml.org and it speaks about the latest trick that involves anti-ODF manipulation on the World Wide Web. Here is the gist:
In March 26, 2008, was celebrated around the world the first Document Freedom Day (http://www.documentfreedom.org/). Notice the site’s name: Document Freedom dot org.
While refusing all around the world to participate in a celebration towards the promotion and usage of open standards, Microsoft even goes to the point of issuing a press release in Portugal against ANSOL’s Document Freedom Day announcement.
Meanwhile, anonymous supporters of OOXML use Domains by Proxy registar in order to register a site with a very similar address of Document Freedom Day’s. The OOXML support site is Document Freedom Day **dot com** and redirects to a well known astroturf site which pretends to be a community of OOXML supporters.
It is worth emphasising again that we saw or at least suspected such things in the not-so-distant past. Examples include:
The reader who send us the pointer to this adds: “A blatant astroturfing maneouver from the borg. What concerns me is that it can be used to ruin documentfreedom days in successive years. Also they try to silence every criticism to OOMXL.” █
“It just tells you how desperate Microsoft is for a competitor that they’re holding up a software box produced by 100 guys in the hills of North Carolina. Who are they trying to kid?”
–Robert Young, CEO of Red Hat at the time
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03.21.08
Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, Open XML, Search, Linspire at 9:23 am by Roy Schestowitz
Feels like redeeming the wounded out of its misery
One company which we rarely keep our eyes on is Linspire. Its sins against its supplier, namely volunteer coders, are just as bad as Novell’s, if not worse.
Freespire is not as free as its name wishes to suggest. This was actually covered before. It’s only make belief. In a couple of quick new posts we find out about the ‘joys’ of Freespire. Witness the pleasant sight of ‘Microsoft Linux’.
That’s right, this was the first evidence of the Microsoft deal that I had found. Most distributions have Google as their default search, but this is the first I had come across with Live search. Thankfully, this could be changed to Google, my search engine of choice.
Another result of the Microsoft patent deal was a converter for the Microsoft’s OOXML document format. Really, the format in Office 2007, “.docx” is a partial integration of OOXML, but it is nice to have the format just in case someone sends me a file with the .docx extension, although the chance that I will receive a .docx file is minimal at best. Most people still send .doc files for the purpose of compatibility.
A day afterwards came this rant from the same person.
As I wrote just several hours ago, I have made the move (temporarily) to Freespire.
It looks like that stay will be short-lived.
The CNR client is not working on my computer. I go to CNR, with the CNR client running, click “Install Now”… and I get redirected to a page that says something along the lines of “Upgrade CNR client to install software.”
It’s reassuring to see — albeit with a degree of sadness for innocent developers who pay the price for ignorant managers — that Linspire is unlikely to survive. This comes to show and to teach many others that those who sell out to Microsoft choose the grave, not the advantage. We continue to boycott Linspire, but it’s a shame that developers and users get punished, not just the managers who need to be held accountable (Kevin Carmony ran away). █
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Posted in Windows, GNU/Linux, Standard, Ecma, IBM, Search, ISO, OSI at 2:37 am by Roy Schestowitz
“When you control the minds, you control the people…”
Shortly after Bruce’s call (or plea) for assistance in getting into OSI comes this fairly strong message at a very strategic time. From OSI’s Web site:
OOXML needs to die. It’s clear that OOXML is a faux standard — not because it’s a vendor standard. There are lots of vendor-created standards which are real standards (e.g. PostScript). No, OOXML is a botch because it’s expressed in terms of an undocumented Microsoft graphics library. OOXML is all “and then a miracle occurs”. You’ve seen that cartoon, right? Where the left and right sides of the blackboard are filled with equations, and the blank space in the middle says “and then a miracle occurs”. Well, when there’s a miracle required, there’s no science even if the miracle is surrounded by scientific-seeming accoutrement. A standard which is expressed in terms of miracles is still a miracle and not a standard.
Any standards body that approves OOXML needs to blush. Any company which submits OOXML as a standard needs to blush.
Bob Sutor has just taken some search engines for a joyride. He is not entirely pleased with what’s Microsoft search engine tries to show him.
I’m not sure there’s a concrete conclusion here though it is clear to me that Microsoft Live Search has the least useful and relevant set of links about ODF in the top ten beyond the Wikipedia entry. I find that odd. Perhaps they just have a really quirky relevance algorithm.
On several occasions in the past, people showed that searches on Windows and Linux in Microsoft’s search engine return very biased results. This is hardly surprising and it’s also the reason Microsoft must never be permitted to dominate search engines and become the gateway for dissemination of information. Yahoo, anyone? Remember Microsoft’s “evangelism is war” (keyword: “Jihad”). Microsoft barely tolerates an alternate point of view.
With regards to ODF/OOXML, you are also encouraged to read the following past posts:
Just to point out some key issues from these posts:
- Smears are directed at ODF through advertisements and pointers Microsoft buys (e.g. from Google)
- Viral marketing efforts have entered YouTube, with an account called “Open XML” taking the lead
- Manual tweaking (intervention) of search results is suspected, but Microsoft claims this to be a bug with the crawler/indexer, which dropped many sites by accident
- Microsoft is still getting caught spamming search engines and also spamming Web sites with what’s known as “referrer spam”
- Microsoft has a tremendous effect over journalists, some of whom it invites to take free trips
- There is the suspicion that former Microsoft employees can affect the flow of information by entering other companies
- Payments are made by Microsoft to people who are not working at Microsoft and write information that is favourable to OOXML
Whatever applies, it is rather clear that information on the Web is polluted by Microsoft’s ‘PR Machine’. Be very, very careful.
One must not forget about Munchkins, personal attacks (e.g. against Rob Weir) and even smears campaigns. Feeding the so-called “OOXML trolls” (usually Microsoft employees or business partners) should probably be discouraged. It encourages them to do more of the same. It’s a case of feeding.
Over in USENET, we have a serious Munchkin issue. It’s best to ignore them. The personal libelous attacks there are the worst and the Munchkins, including Microsoft business partners like Jesper Stocholm, poke with bargepoles even folks like Bob Sutor. At times like these, Microsoft would do anything to shoot down and derail ODF. Microsoft is desperate to secure its most important lock-in amid secret financial woes. █
“Microsoft looks at new ideas, they don’t evaluate whether the idea will move the industry forward, they ask, ‘how will it help us sell more copies of Windows?’”
–Bill Gates, The Seattle Weekly, (April 30, 1998)
[Substitute “Windows” with “Office”]
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02.04.08
Posted in Microsoft, Google, Search at 8:38 am by Roy Schestowitz
Earth-shaking decisions and flip-flops
Yahoo and Microsoft. The news is full of it! We have neither covered nor explored these developments properly yet. We only included some relevant links in our daily (or bi-daily) digests. I’ve just sent out an article about this (yet to be published in the more mainstream press), but it neglects to account from some of the very recent developments, including this one.
Yahoo Inc would consider a business alliance with Google Inc as one way to rebuff a $44.6 billion takeover proposal by Microsoft, a source familiar with Yahoo’s strategy said on Sunday.
If this ever materialises, it will be a game changer. Either way, in case you missed this morning’s news digest, Google’s original/official complaint about the Microsoft bid is here.
This hostile bid was announced on Friday, so there is plenty of time for these questions to be thoroughly addressed. We take Internet openness, choice and innovation seriously. They are the core of our culture. We believe that the interests of Internet users come first — and should come first — as the merits of this proposed acquisition are examined and alternatives explored.
Very curious was the following report we’ve just come across. It seems to suggest that Microsoft hasn’t as much spare cash as it wishes us to believe.
An interesting side-note on the potential Yahoo-Microsoft deal: Microsoft has only $17B in cash/liquid reserves, but has bid $44.6B for Yahoo.
Recall what was said this morning about Microsoft bluffing it. The information above truly flushes that poker face, does it not? █
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Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, Opensuse, SLES/SLED, Patents, Search, Linspire, Turbolinux at 12:07 am by Roy Schestowitz
An announcement has just made in France and it is brought to more people’s attention over at Digital Majority. The announcement was made by Microsoft, which recently signed a Linux deal in France, a Windows deal in Paris [1, 2, 3], but also lost the French police to GNU/Linux.
The announcement speaks volumes about the reason Microsoft likes Novell. It merely uses Novell. We already knew this. As for OpenSUSE, it aids the development of SLED and SLES, which improve at the expense of other GNU/Linux distributions that are not ‘taxed’ by Microsoft. Here is the gist of it all:
I let you guess why Microsoft likes Linux and Open Source now: software patents solves the OSS problem and makes them confident that they have a legal certainty that they can suck royalties out of Linux sales, and control competitors when they want to operate with their dominant products.
Remind yourself of the place Linux has in Microsoft’s ‘mindspace’. It is only there to be used, exploited, even subverted. If you think that so-called ‘community’ distros are safe from the abuse, think again. As Ken Starks came to discover, even Freespire is contaminated by the effect of Linspire’s patent deal.
It only took me a few minutes to notice it. It would seem that the Freespire people have been given their marching orders and I would Like Eric Raymond to comment if he is allowed. I can understand why Linspire would have to bow to the Microsoft Collusion but why Freespire? Now I know that Linspire is expected to dance to Microsoft’s tunes…If I calculate correctly, 5 top Linspire executives entered their Linspire employment weighing 3 lbs less than they did when they left.
That extra weight was from the 30 pieces of silver each carried out when they abandoned the infested ship at the end of the MS Deal. (thank you Stephen J.)
Watch the image of Windows Live Search. Turbolinux does this too. They completely sold out to Microsoft and they sell out their so-called ‘community’ in the process. █
Update: Here are some more links of interest.
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« Previous entries ·
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.