I gave it a shot, but Vista Ultimate simply did not impress. If “the most complete version of Windows” can’t cut it, I think I can definitely say that Vista is not for me. I for one plan on sticking with XP for my gaming fixes as long as it still works, and use Linux for everything else.
Nicholas Petreley actually writes about Microsoft for a change and the following bit is interesting:
I’ll never forget the day Steve Ballmer visited me at InfoWorld to convince me that Windows 95 would be the wave of the future. In our conversation, and in front of a room full of editors and skilled technicians, he unapologetically admitted that IBM’s OS/2 was superior to Windows 95.
Wipro Infotech, the India and Middle East IT Business of Wipro Ltd and a leading provider of IT and business transformation services announced that it has won the prestigious Intel Global Innovation Award for Storage at the Intel Developer Forum 2008 in San Francisco.
When Microsoft first announced paybacks/cashback for Live/MSN search users, Charles Copper at CNET labeled it “bribery as a business model”. It does not even seem to be working. Here are a couple of new article about it:
When it comes to search, Microsoft is trying everything it can to become a serious player. It tried to acquire Yahoo, its latest version of Internet Explorer attempts to steer Web surfers away from Google, and then there is straight-out payola to search advertisers. I am talking, of course, of Microsoft’s Live Search Cashback promotion, which lets advertisers offer rebates to consumers who make a purchase after doing a Microsoft search.
Microsoft has been desperately trying to chip away at Google’s dominance in search — and the ad coin it brings in — but it looks like its plan to pay searchers isn’t having much impact on market share.
Microsoft’s Online/Web division is losing many heads and things are not improving when mail outages become not only a recurrence but also the cause for lost work and unroutable (i.e. destructed) mail. Here is the latest incident.
Microsoft Office Live Small Biz suffers outage, possibly lost e-mail
[..]
“Outages you can understand, but the outright loss of data? They should be ashamed of themselves, being the biggest computer company in the world,” said Joe Reilly, owner of Marine Wireless Internet in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Relative: Why does my computer lose my wallpaper and give me a black screen every hour?
Me: Ah, that’s just Vista for you. You have to pay Microsoft to get rid of that.
Relative: Why? Why should I have to pay Microsoft? Why doesn’t it just work?
Me: A.) It’s not Linux, so it won’t “just work” no matter what you do, and B.) You didn’t really expect Microsoft to let you use their computer for free, did you?
The price of Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 productivity suite has been slashed by up to 40 percent in an effort to ensure that technology is made easily accessible and affordable to people across Africa.
The article neglects to mention the real reasons for Microsoft’s discounts, namely SaaS (e.g. Zoho, Google Apps) and Free software (e.g. KOffice, OpenOffice.org), even gratis proprietary software like Lotus. It’s not about goodwill and it’s not about Microsoft’s affinity for students. Microsoft is a ruthless business.
As you all know, my job here at Novell is to migrate all worthwhile desktop Linux applications off of that ridiculous platform and onto Windows so that we can do away with this nasty open source stuff. Unfortunately I haven’t yet gotten the paper work to close up my code for the latest victim of this effort, so for now dirty open source hippies can get it here…
[…]
What do you think? Excited to end the Linux charade and switch to a solid and hip platform like Vista? Woo!
I feel very silly today.
It’s like Corel all over again: From a GNU/Linux strategy to .NET strategy, just after a deal with Microsoft.
Having approached Richard Stallman for a comment regarding the latest from Miguel de Icaza, he told us: “Miguel has been no supporter of the free software movement since around 2002. He often says things that support the Microsoft line.”
It is true that, in general, Novell has been supporting “the Microsoft line” for quite some time now. Where is this headed? █
The regulators are fast asleep. Apart from the fact that Microsoft makes profit from GNU/Linux preinstalls [1, 2, 3], it’s still nearly impossible to find and then to get them.
Taiwan, China, Poland, [1, 2], and Hungary have formally complained about Microsoft this month, but not the United States. As pointed out yesterday (see the comment at the bottom), the American (US) regulators are indifferent because they are themselves corrupt. Meanwhile, says a reader, Steve Ballmer’s trip to Portugal might be aimed at intercepting Free software.
It’s not grim news all around though. Yesterday, for example, this article showed up and it proves that some people do get in trouble for buying Microsoft. Quebec’s government comes under legal scrutiny, which is not exactly surprising given prior complaints about the procurement process there. It’s equally bad in the UK and elsewhere.
Quebec’s open-source software association is suing the provincial government, saying it is giving preferential treatment to Microsoft Corp. by buying the company’s products rather than using free alternatives.
The lawsuit by Facil was lodged with the Quebec Superior Court on July 15 and made public on Wednesday. In it, the group says the provincial government has refused to entertain competing bids from all software providers, opting instead to supply public-sector departments with products bought from proprietary vendors such as Microsoft and Oracle Corp.
Microsoft may have given up on its old strategy. See the previous post about a patents revenue strategy and recall those SCO analogies . Microsoft suffers from a customer retention issue. Could Microsoft buy out the lawsuit and the competitor? It could be less expensive than buying out threats like XenSource (using Citrix as a proxy) due to competitive bids and a large numbers of players in this space. Naturally, GNU and Linux can spread endlessly between vendors, which keeps them secure from hostile takeovers, but software patents change this. Novell and Microsoft actively try to change this using “licensing”. This exclusionary move shows just why Novell and Microsoft are already becoming the same company.
“This exclusionary move shows just why Novell and Microsoft are already becoming the same company.”Let us return to exclusion at the OEM level. Exclusionary OEM contracts is something that we covered before and this article from the Czech Republic was mentioned some days ago. It shows just how impossible Microsoft has made it to choose an operating system other than Windows (or no operating system at all, i.e. just bare-metal hardware bundles). Over at Groklaw, Pamela just wrote: “Isn’t it ridiculous that it’s nearly impossible to avoid buying Vista on a new computer, even if you have no desire to get Vista? And then Microsoft counts such “sales” as indicating an interest in Vista.”
Going a long way back, you can still find this detailed page on the impossibility of obtaining a Toshiba computer without Microsoft software. Not much has change since then.
I hope that this web page will prove useful to those people who want to purchase a laptop without Microsoft Windows. The short summary is:
* It is near impossible to buy a laptop without Windows
* The Microsoft Software License Agreement allows you to return the software if you do not agree to its terms.
* It is difficult, but not impossible to get Toshiba (at least in Australia) to send you a cheque in return for the Windows License.
My name is David Chun. I am an undergraduate student at UCLA, where I am in the UCLA Center for American Public Policy and Politics. I am working this spring as an intern at the Consumer Project on Technology. On May 25, 1998 through June 3, 1998, I called 12 computer manufacturers, known in the industry as original equipment manufactures (OEMs), attempting to buy computers without a Microsoft Windows operating systems.
This is not competition. It’s free market distortion. █
There are some news items which are worth covering, but time is limited, so here are a few quickies.
The Fight Against GNU/Linux and ODF in South Africa
As background, it is important to be reminded of what happened a month ago in South Africa. Microsoft seems desperate to stop the country’s fast adoption of GNU/Linux and standards like ODF.
Microsoft not only provided ‘free’ (gratis) proprietary software to people who have no computers. Now it appears to be reaching out to Intel for help. We saw this before, so the pattern is too familiar. The following article requires subscription, but the excerpt drops a clue.
South Africa’s retail bank Absa has teamed with Intel and Microsoft to offer students PC and notebook finance packages.
Microsoft Corp. today said it will update the antipiracy software in Windows XP Professional to make nagging more prominent for those running bogus copies and — assuming the user approves the update — to skip any future notification of an impending update to the tool.
The release of a new OS begins both a new hardware buying cycle and an upgrade cycle. Since the buying cycle is stretched to six years or more, you end up with an interesting phenomenon: The upgrade cycle is contaminated with machines too old to upgrade. This causes the entire system to break down because the upgrade cycle immediately feeds back into the perception of the new product. In the situation with Vista, too many old clunkers couldn’t be upgraded and the OS was given a bad reputation. This was worsened by Microsoft itself discouraging upgrades and admitting to problems.
Reports have been circulating recently which spoke about Windows-based voting machines losing count. The database engine from Microsoft was reported to have led to data corruption in Diebold machines over a year ago. If observers thought such glitches are the exception, how about this from the news?
Shacknews discovered something strange while testing out Microsoft’s “Rock The Vote” section on Xbox Live: Silver users can’t register to vote.
iViZ ,a company that specializes in on-demand penetration testing, announced its discovery of a new class of vulnerability. This vulnerability lets attackers steal computer boot passwords and reach the pre-boot authentication software like hard disk encryption tools. It can result in unauthorized access and theft of confidential data, contributing to an already big problem; for 2007, the global loss due to data theft was estimated at $40 billion.
A New Zealand security researcher is exploring several scenarios in which Windows Vista could be attacked and warns more protection is needed for users.
Ben Hawkes presented his findings at the Black Hat conference, held in Las Vegas this month, and will also present them at the Kiwicon conference, to be held in Wellington in the end of September.
Hawkes’ research has uncovered hacking techniques for attacking the Vista heap, which is a dynamic memory management component, used by every single application, from Microsoft Word to web applications, he says.
Now look at this. Windows viruses are going out of planet Earth and are now infecting computers in space. Amusing picture here. Hopefully, for the aliens’ safety, Microsoft does not yet stock its software in other galaxies.
Immersion Corp, which develops and licenses touch feedback technology, said it will pay $20.75 million to software maker Microsoft Corp as part of the settlement of a litigation.
The companies agreed to resolve Microsoft’s claim under a 2003 sublicense agreement, as well as Immersion’s counterclaim that Microsoft breached a confidentiality agreement dated May 2007, Immersion said in a statement.
Dong Zhengwei, a partner with Beijing-based Zhongyin law firm, has attracted the attention of multinational corporate executives and the legal community alike, after he filed a complaint against Microsoft with China’s anti-monopoly regulators and proposed that a US$1bn fine be imposed on the global software giant.
Apple Rivalry
Microsoft viciously sabotaged PlayStation 3 launch parties around the world when Sony launched the product back in 2006. Apple advocates suspect that Microsoft will try to become Apple’s party pooper.
The Mac rumour machine is predicting Apple will introduce new products at a special event on 9 September - but now it appears Microsoft plans to flex its muscle to spoil Apple’s game.
“At Microsoft I learned the truth about ActiveX and COM and I got very interested in it inmediately [sic].”
–Miguel de Icaza
Novell, whose on-line shop requires that the buyer uses Internet Explorer, is also an embracer of ActiveX, a nasty poison which Microsoft devised in order to break the Web, bring Netscape to its knees, potentially make more backdoors, and make third-party information and services dependent on Microsoft Windows.
Attackers can exploit bugs in Novell Inc.’s iPrint application to obtain corporate information or hijack computers, security experts said today.
Novell has issued a patch that plugs multiple holes in the ActiveX control that Novell ships as part of its iPrint product, but according to Copenhagen-based bug tracker Secunia APS, one of the flaws remains unfixed.
If Novell uses ActiveX, does it mean that it turns its back on Firefox? And on GNU/Linux? Either way, it does not look good.
Microsoft has been playing some wicked games in Portugal recently. Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, will soon pay a visit (English translation). It might be better than that trip to Hungary, but the agenda is not exactly known. Notice in the article that they attach a photo of Ballmer with Novell logos in the background. Is that prophetic or what?
It seems that Microsoft has been struck with a slight case of buyer’s remorse. The Redmond-based corporation took control of Avenue A/Razorfish about one year ago as part of the aQuantive acquisition, and reports indicate it’s now trying to trade the ad agency to WPP.
Almost six months after the companies started talking, WPP and Microsoft have reopened talks that could have the software company unloading Avenue A/Razorfish. But the question is whether Microsoft could ever get anyone to buy the digital ad agency for the price at which it needs to sell it.
Swedish Television Rumored to Expose Microsoft’s Mojave Campaign.
[…]
There is a dark side to this type of advertising and it took a bold Swedish television station to expose this genre of ads for what they really are; a series of carefully edited clips that only show the most positive reactions. This video reveals the truth around this form promotion.
Perhaps Microsoft should cancel their contract with Jerry Seinfeld and instead bring back “Madge.” I think lot users who are exposed to Vista would be not be surprised to hear the words, “you are soaking in it.”
Expect Microsoft to ally even more closely with the RIAA and MPAA in making yet another try at hardware-based DRM restrictions — and legislation making them mandatory. The rationale will be to stop piracy and spam, but the real goal will be customer control and a lockout of all unauthorized software. Two previous attempts at this have failed, but the logic of Microsoft’s situation is such that they must keep trying.
I also expect a serious effort, backed by several billion dollars in bribe money (oops, excuse me, campaign contributions), to get open-source software outlawed on some kind of theory that it aids terrorists. We can only defeat that by making sure that national governments become so attached to open-source code that their military men and bureaucrats will short-stop the bribed legislators, rather than let their vital infrastructure be outlawed.
For those who are wondering, “Microsoft-critical” posts such as this one are simply a response to requests from readers. █
Yesterday we published a little roundup of Microsoft-hired agencies or groups that are used to contaminate the Web and wash errand readers’ minds. It’s not a speculation, it’s a reality and it needs to be throughly investigated and documented. We are still at the stage of collecting evidence before it can be presented in a tidied-up fashion.
Reading reddit today, I come across this reddit user who is apparently a Microsoft shill. I honestly can’t think of any other explanation except that Microsoft is paying him/her: this user posts lots of comments, all are pro-Microsoft, and every single one of Microsoft’s products gets praised at every opportunity. He/she also puts down all competing products, and has apparently no opinions about any other topic than areas in which Microsoft competes (it’s nice that you can see all past comments).
I’ve seen XBOX fanboys and Windows fanboys, so I don’t automatically assume anyone who likes a Microsoft product is a shill. But all of their products? Windows, IE, SQL Server, Silverlight, IIS, etc. etc.?
Has Microsoft no shame? This is, frankly, pretty disgraceful. I hope I’m wrong here, perhaps someone can explain this?
Before jumping the gun with accusations of “paranoia”, read these well-documented examples of Microsoft AstroTurfing. There are many more which are scattered around this Web site, but that’s not the point because we are after new examples rather than old ones.
“It’s a win-win situation to those who resort to such tactics.”Some people have reported being harassed by ‘gangs of modders’, who are modding down critics of Microsoft, e.g. in Slashdot. There’s evidence of this, too. It’s a way of shooting messengers along with their messages and — at best — a way of discouraging them from participating. It’s a win-win situation to those who resort to such tactics.
Speaking for myself, I guess this explains why 4 people in Digg (at least two of whom stalk, libel and harass me in USNET) still systematically mod down every single comment of mine (regardless of the content/context) and occasionally throw in some slander, too. They have done this for almost a year and some proof of this was included here.
Anyway, personal attacks are small potatoes compared to titanic manipulation that goes on in corporations and the press, as opposed to social media. Whitepapers are another story. In the following oldie, for example (”Microsoft shills on the attack again”), Microsoft is compared to Enron, which is interesting not just because of its financial secrets and woes [1, 2]
“The real wonder is that there is any users left who buy the grist that comes out of the shill mill. It would seem to me that Microsoft has been so fully discredited that their methods and minions would also be suspect.
The Microsoft Anti-Trust trial painted them fully as the Enron of the Information Industry, with Gartner playing the role of Andersen. How Gartner escapes the destructive and discrediting taint of Chairman Bill’s own special breed of Enronitis is beyond me. Enron collapsed because the investors (users) discovered the scam. Andersen kept the scam going long after the jig was up.
Will someone please explain to me how what Gartner does is any different?”"
Sadly, the original article is no more. It might be possible to pull it back from the grave, but maybe not. The source, Gary Edwards, is a bit questionable at this later stage [1, 2].
Gary complains about “the unfair treatment the OpenSource community is receiving from the hands of Gartner and the like.” Watch this new article.
By Daisuke Wakabayashi
[…]
Gartner analyst Ray Valdes said 90 percent of the top global 1,000 companies have yet to deploy any sort of RIA, while 90 percent of the top 100 consumer Web sites have already done so using the nonproprietary and more simple AJAX format.
That opportunity has Microsoft eyeing current leader Adobe for business that extends beyond Silverlight and into the sale of design tools along with server and database software to enable these new applications.
This has just been published in several different places. It seems like a subtle Microsoft/Silverlight advertisement. Rings a bell yet?
“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.”
According to the document above, Microsoft relies on the fact that “analysts sell out” and we wrote about the relationship between Microsoft and the Gartner Group many times before [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Microsoft and Gates partially pay the Gartner Group. As you may notice, this latest article not only echoes Gartner, which offers a self-to-be-fulfilling prophecy to its client, Microsoft. The article is composed by Daisuke Wakabayashi. Watch what journalisted.com says about Daisuke Wakabayashi.
Daisuke Wakabayashi has written…
* More about ‘microsoft’ than anything else
The likes of Gartner and other Microsoft-promoting journalists are not the only problem here. Publication are too.
One example that we gave before was the New York Times. It turns out that, independently enough, Roughly Drafted Magazine has reached the very same conclusion as ours. Here is an older post about this phenomenon.
New York Times Violates its Own Microsoft Shill Policy
[…]
Randall Stross tried to explain in the New York Times that Apple is bungling its limited window of opportunity to sell Macs as Microsoft recovers from its Windows Vista retail sales flop. In doing so, he had to rely on overly broad generalizations, ignore well known retail realities, and violate the Times’ ban on interviewing Microsoft’s weaselly shills.
Motley Fool is an example of a blatantly-pro-Microsoft press with a stance resembling constant advertisements of a stock. It’s almost chronic. They would hardly even deny it. Here is another new attempt at self-fulfilling prophecies in this Microsoft’s ‘fan press’. Unsuspecting readers. who are unaware of affiliations (MSN), might actually fall for it. Those pseudo-reporters seem to be joining the Yankee Group’s [1, 2] and Burton Group’s [1, 2] verbal fight against VMWare.
We have some more new examples to share. Here you can find “Time” (CNN) doing some more advertising for Vista/Seinfeld/Microsoft. The same on-line magazine recently published no less than three ‘placements’ from the husband of the former head of the Gates Foundation. Therein, he praised this foundation and strongly denied the hard reality behind it. It was an unchallenged rebuttal to critics. It’s worth stressing that it was another magazine which owned by CNN that had announced (actually broke the news) about Microsoft’s patent smear against GNU/Linux. It did this in a deliberately-fear-inspiring fashion and someone wrote a whole short paper on ways in which they enhanced the drama in the text. There is clearly some proximity there in the publication.
People remain unimpressed by the buyout of a famous comedian and hopefully they’ll be reading the following rather than the glossy piece from “Time”.
To conclude this post — Shame on yourself Microsoft for paying Jerry Seinfeld $10 million when people in North America are hit by recession and foreclosures and barely surviving. We urge everybody not to buy Microsoft’s products.
Alternatively, and perhaps more realistically, Microsoft could give up on the cool, sexy image. It really doesn’t fit. And, honestly, I’d rather buy my software from a dork.
It’s tough countering placements when the press is used to shape and reshape the image of Microsoft, never mind the constant manipulation on the Web by PR agencies where Microsoft hires shills [1, 2]. █
Well, Microsoft has tried out many ways to promote their current generation console in India. They had tied up with cricketer Yuvraj Singh and Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar. They even came up with an Indianised Marcus Fenix! Now Microsoft has partnered with Yash Raj Films for the Bollywood movie Bachna Ae Haseeno.
Other recent Microsoft promotions included the ‘recruitment’ of NASCAR vehicles and the star of “Jackass”. What is the company thinking? What message does that send the customer? The “Mojave experiment” has already (dis)served quite a rude message: “You, our customers, are dumb.” █
Update: With this breaking news, Microsoft clearly resorts to comedy in order to market what it possibly perceives as a joke (Vista).
WSJ: Microsoft hires Seinfeld to bite Apple
Continually painted by Apple and other rivals as uncool and unsafe, Microsoft plans to spend $300 million on a new series of advertisements, designed around its “Windows Not Walls” slogan, that will feature Seinfeld and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates.
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. Learn more
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. Learn more
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. Learn more
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. Learn more
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. Learn more
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy. Learn more
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Microsoft may have given up on its old strategy. See the previous post about a 
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.