Summary: The press seems pessimistic about Microsoft, which is increasingly seen as unable to evolve and innovate; Microsoft’s security problems (and security PR) persist in a major way

THIS VERY large post contains a lot of details (and new references) about the weaknesses of Microsoft and the endless spin it continues to rely on. We begin with this article from a former Microsoft chief who publicly blasted the company’s technical capabilities. We wrote about this in a previous post that complained about the way he rewrote history when he called Microsoft a “largely accidental monopolist.” From The Source we have this response:

Other stuff: Playing Monopoly

It’s interesting that the official Microsoft Blog didn’t address some of the other interesting claims from Mr. Brass.

Take for example his assertion that Microsoft is “at worst” a “highly repentant, largely accidental monopolist”. Largely accidental? First off, I question the idea that a company can “accidentally” stumble into monopolizing an industry. Secondly, we have reams of documentation (like Comes v. Microsoft) that show Microsoft at all levels is deadly serious about eliminating competition, regardless of the means.

Even if you accept “highly repentant” – which I emphatically do not – Microsoft certainly did not become a monopoly largely by accident.

Other Stuff: Sustaining Economy

Another interesting assertion by Mr. Brass is that Microsoft “helps sustain the economies of Seattle, Washington State and the nation as a whole.”

Perhaps Mr. Brass is not aware of the $1 Billion Microsoft Tax Dodge? Or the over $650 Million in tax breaks Microsoft recieves? That’s just at the state level.

Well, since the tax dodge was brought up, Jeff Reifman’s writings about Microsoft’s massive tax dodge [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] are worth commending. It seems to have had an impact in the sense that the Seattle Weekly has just placed the issue at a highly visible part of the paper. It says:

As our cash-strapped state prepares to cut services for the poor and mentally ill, billions of dollars in tax breaks and exemptions are still being doled out.

[...]

Deferral of state and local retail sales and use taxes are also allowed for the construction of buildings for high-tech projects involving research and development. That has Microsoft and its ever-expanding campus written all over it, allowing MS to avoid sales tax on construction costs, materials, and new equipment, for example. Another 500 small and large companies also benefit, says the state. The exemption was created in 1994 and extended in 2004 for another 10 years. Over a decade, that’s $650 million the state is not raking in.

Almost 1,700 high-tech firms also share another $50 million in B&O tax credits for research and development under an exemption that was also renewed in 2004 for another decade. And a $12 million property-tax break goes to companies that use custom computer software.

Microsoft, incidentally, has also avoided paying a ton of state taxes by moving offshore, so to speak. According to writer and ex-Microsoftie Jeff Reifman, Microsoft opened a small Nevada office in 1997 to record software-licensing revenue and skirt Washington’s half-percent wholesale tax on software-licensing royalties. Reifman estimates that has helped the company of billionaires Bill Gates and Paul Allen avoid more than $700 million in Washington taxes. With interest and penalties, the total exceeds $1 billion.

There is also this open letter to Steve Ballmer. It protests against his tax evasion in the Seattle Weekly.

Microsoft Nick (from Ziff Davis [1, 2, 3], not the Seattle P-I) has responded to the article from Mr. Brass in eWEEK (“Microsoft Suffers from Creative Difficulties, Says Former Exec”) and in Microsoft Watch (“Microsoft Failing in Innovation, Former Executive Asserts”). Joe Wilcox, who used to edit Microsoft Watch, does a series called “Microsoft Confessions” in which he shows how rotten things have become inside the company. “Microsoft Confessions: ‘Deeply dysfunctional family’” was one part of it, but another one, “Microsoft Confessions: ‘Killed over politics’,” says that one confession goes like this: “When Bill Gates first started the ‘aggressive schedule’ mantra to get people to work harder, [it was] tell folks we only had 2 months left, when we knew it was six. How could I as a manager look my people in the face and seriously tell them we’re two months from shipping — work your ass off — knowing the bug count was high, the find rate was high and undercover dev work was still being completed?

“I finally had enough when my last reorg had me put under a brand new manager, with less weeks experience than I had years doing his job, telling me I wasn’t doing my job properly. I asked him how many products he shipped. A couple was the answer. Meanwhile, I had three full Lucite blocks packed with ship-it awards on my desk. At that point, I gave my notice.

“How many [Microsoft] reorgs have ever benefited anyone except the folks on top? In all my reorgs, I only ever had one that actually benefited the troops; and that was a super good manager that said if you take me, you take my team. He was one of the best I’d ever worked for — and, of course, he is no longer at MS either. To me, that speaks volumes.”

One last part, titled “Microsoft Confessions: ‘Poor worker bees,’” goes like this: “My former team required 60-90+ hours a week of its employees for several years straight. The average across many weeks was 80-90 [hours], for months on end. If you were unwilling to do the hours any more, you became persona non grata. This meant the least desirable assignments, poor reviews and so on. While the conventional answer to a bad team situation in a big company is to transfer teams, it didn’t work for people on that team.”

It’s all rather revealing, isn’t it? Microsoft is crumbling from the inside because it mistreats employees and brings many from other countries to compete with those who adhere to workers’ rights. Other responses to the article from Mr. Brass are:

• The Instability of Monopolies

• Weekly high-tech hot topics in the blogs: Microsoft’s creative destruction, Nexus One

• Sack Ballmer? Break Up the Company? How Microsoft Could Innovate

• Global CIO: Microsoft’s Suicidal Infighting: An Insider’s Story

Late last year, I wrote about how Microsoft had lost its will to lead and had become a big but passive follower and imitator whose competitors regard it this way:

“They see Microsoft as drifting toward fat and complacent, prone to bold talk but tepid action, and increasingly satisfied with being a not-so-fast follower instead of the brash and aggressive embracer of high-risk strategies and approaches that enabled Microsoft to dominate markets by sheer dint of its unmatched will and its sometimes-brutal assault on any and all obstacles between it and the top spot.”

• Has Microsoft become clumsy, dysfunctional and uncreative?

Bill Gates is no longer a day-to-day force at Microsoft Corp., but you have to wonder what he makes of the smackdown delivered by a former Microsoft vice president in the New York Times.

• Former VP Says Microsoft is ‘Failing’ Despite Windows 7 Profits

Executive blames lack of creativity for the supposed problems at Microsoft, points to RIM, Apple, and Amazon as innovators

• How the mighty fall

A sensational piece in today’s New York Times by Dick Brass, former vice president at Microsoft between 1997 and 2004, on the continuing struggles at the software giant. Mr Brass worked on the company’s unsuccessful attempts to develop popular tablet PCs and e-books. You might think he is writing out of bitterness and disappointment. But he offers a measured (and fascinating) commentary on the difficulty big, successful companies have in changing to adapt to new times.

Microsoft responded and IDG has covered this response. “Microsoft flings chairs at former VP,” is how The Inquirer chose to put it:

SOFTWARE MONOLITH Microsoft is fuming after a blog post penned by a former vice president claimed the outfit had lost its edge and is “failing” as a result.

As this new article reminds us, Microsoft is not innovative and competitors have said that for a long time. Oracle’s Larry Ellison, for example, has memorable quotes.

Here’s some quotes from him about Microsoft: “If an innovative piece of software comes along, Microsoft copies it and makes it part of Windows. This is not innovation. This is the end of innovation”. And “Microsoft is already the most powerful company on earth, but you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Going back to the “largely accidental monopolist” remark, here is what Groklaw had to say about it, preceding it with the example of history being rewritten by the BBC:

I had no idea when we began working on this project that the Comes exhibits covered such a broad time period, so far from 1988 to 2003. I woke up this morning thinking about the BBC’s truly offensive series on innovation and the internet, which you can only view in the UK, in which Bill Gates of all people is one of those highlighted as an internet innovator, if you can believe it. Maybe because ex-Microsoft employees seem to be running things there? Having just transcribed several emails that prove that Microsoft was perhaps the very last to hop on board, I realized that with this collection of exhibits, we are indeed publishing The True History of Microsoft. Please feel free to help out. You can either transcribe any exhibit in full, in part or just describe it enough so it’s keyword searchable. Come on and join us if you’d like to help historians in the future know how it really was and what really happened, keeping always in mind that this is still only part of a complex picture, despite their great historical value.

Here’s Microsoft Corporate’s response to the NY Times Op Ed piece, to be complete in our coverage, and fair, but also so you can compare it and Brass’s words with what you find in the exhibits. I think you will agree with my opinion, that Brass’s characterization of Microsoft as “a largely accidental monopolist” is hardly accurate.

A few days earlier, Jones wrote: “I think if you read through the exhibits we are publishing from the Comes v. Microsoft antitrust litigation, you will see that it was hardly accidental.”

Groklaw also gives the text of the “we were smoked” memo (exhibit PX07219 (2003) [PDF] from Comes vs Microsoft), which we are appending at the bottom. We previously wrote about Microsoft’s fear of Apple and Bill Gates wanting to maximise “patented stuff”. That was another memo which was similar.

As for the BBC, on it goes with the same shameful agenda. Part 2 of “The Virtual Revolution” is out right about now (available for viewing only in the UK) and our reader who has already watched it gives the following errata:

(9:50) she trots out that old chestnut, that the the Internet was designed to defend against nuclear missiles. At least that’s what is implied with the visuals.

At (51:38) she mentions DOS attacks against Estonia, absolutely no mention that they are caused by a vast army of compromised Windows ‘computers’.

I’ll watch this show later tonight and hopefully add more to the above.

This reader of ours has noticed that Microsoft uses yet another publicity stunt with kids in it. It is “Paying dividends in good publicity already,” says our reader. “Of course the kiddies will be attracted to the filth, like moths to a flame…

“Microsoft exploits parental fears to push Internet Explorer 8,” he later added, linking to this post from Microsoft Jack [1, 2, 3]. “Personally,” he argues sarcastically, “if you mention something to a kid and tell them not to do it, then they’ll want to do it…”

Our reader ThistleWeb points to Rory Cellan-Jones from the BBC, calling it “More MSBBC PR”. Rory’s headline is “Government advice: Browse safely with Microsoft”

He is not joking, but he asks ORG for a response at least:

But open-source campaigners are concerned that Ceop has been just a little too eager to promote the Microsoft solution.

“Microsoft have scored a publicity hit for a little cost,” Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group told me. “It’s important that Ceop doesn’t persuade people to use a single browser, particularly one which has had a history of security lapses causing other threats to home users.”

Microsoft has a good record in helping to promote safe internet use in schools and homes – and Ceop is working hard to educate parents and children about internet safety.

That last sentence says it all about Rory’s consistent denial of the company’s incompetence, never mind the many crimes (with convictions). The BBC is deep in Microsoft’s pocket because former Microsoft employees are running the show [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. We’ll come back to security in just a moment.

Many people will not have the time to read Comes vs Microsoft exhibits for themselves, but they ought to trust the judgment of those who did go through the documents. Groklaw complains about a silly, misinformed, and biased article from Randall Kennedy (IDG). Pamela Jones writes: “My vote for funniest column of the day goes to this article. The author thinks Microsoft brings standards to the world, and so a world without Microsoft would be so innovative, it would be chaotic without Microsoft’s steady hand making us all follow standards. Because I’ve spent the last couple of weeks transcribing and describing the exhibits from the Comes v. Microsoft antitrust case, I confess I found his “vision” of a Windows-less world simply hilarious. But for any who might take it seriously, it is Microsoft who has a history of “extending” standards in its own proprietary ways, not Open Source. And it was Opera who just pointed out to the EU Commission Microsoft’s refusal to follow HTML standards. The Commission got Microsoft promise to improve, but Kennedy’s vision of Microsoft somehow making the world follow standards… well, it’s priceless. Is he Rob Enderle’s son or something?”

To be fair, he has always been focused on Windows everything. Linux Insider (ECT) gives a ride to that piece of FUD.

One reader sent us a pointer to this article, noting that “Th[is] letter from 2003 sheds some light on how long that Microsofters have been aware of the scam perpetuated there.

“Stuz had lots of good quotes:”

A retiring Microsoft executive delivered a kick in the pants to his former employer, warning in a version of his resignation letter that he posted to the Internet that Microsoft is in danger of being swept away by open source.

Microsoft faces the same embrace-or-be-destroyed alternatives with open source that it faced with the Internet years ago, David Stutz said, Microsoft’s group program manager for the Shared Source Common Language Initiative until his recent retirement.

Our reader then commented on Microsoft’s corporate culture:

Yes, the work culture there has always sucked. It’s not a new thing. The management has always sucked, that’s not new either. The employees have always sucked, too. Between them and the management,that’s why nothing works or is completed on time.

What is new is that individuals go strange. Matt Asay probably went Microsoft quite a long while ago. It’s not uncommon for Windows trolls to use OS X. He’s probably not a Windows troll, maybe just an apologist. Whatever.

I find his amnesia regarding Microsoft unconvincing, to say the least. Didn’t the same strangeness turn up in Patrick Durusau, too? He did a 180 on Microsoft after a ‘meeting’ with some representatives:

http://www.robweir.com/blog/2008/03/contra-du…
http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2008/06/the-weed…
http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2008/06/a-memo…

What’d they do to him? money? threats? abuse? chemicals? blackmail?

Matt Asay almost went to work for Microsoft a few years ago, but very few people do understand this. Either way, his new role at Canonical [1, 2] will hopefully not shock. As for Patrick Durusau, we wrote about the subject in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. There was a lot of money at stake.

Microsoft had lost over $5,000,000,000 just trying to dethrone Google (in vain) and Microsoft’s latest poor results (which Microsoft scrambled in order to confuse people [1, 2, 3, 4]) showed that the losses online continue. “Admit It, Microsoft: You Suck at the Web,” says GigaOM (not Malik himself, as he is the one who received money from Microsoft). The rant says:

And what does it have to show for all its effort? Years of losses. Since 2002, when Microsoft began breaking out MSN and online services as a separate category, the division has seen aggregate revenue of $20 billion but a total operating loss of nearly $7 billion. In the past 18 months, the losses in proportion to revenue have only grown larger. Microsoft now spends nearly two dollars on its online businesses for every dollar it makes in revenue. Major points for trying, but it’s time to call a failure a failure.

Another insight: “Why Microsoft Can’t Grow– And Why Its Shareholders Deserve More Cash”

There is no shame in Microsoft coming to the realization that they have one and a half valuable properties and that they are wasting time and money on everything else (see chart below).

This takes us back to the subject of security, on which the BBC are others are currently deceiving by advertising Microsoft. One of our readers complained about the following analysis which neglects to blame Windows botnets as the cause.

Covering the last six months of 2009, the report is based upon the findings of the ThreatSeeker Network which is used to discover, classify and monitor global Internet threats and trends courtesy of something called the Internet HoneyGrid. This comprises of honeyclients and honeypots, reputation systems and advanced grid computing systems, all of which combine to parse through one billion pieces of content every day while searching for security threats. Every single hour the Internet HoneyGrid scans some 40 million websites for malicious code as well as 10 million emails for unwanted content and malicious code.

How about Microsoft's role? It neglected to patch its browser for almost half a year and Internet Explorer users paid the price [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]. Shortly after the “emergency” patch, yet another flaw came to the surface, followed by another:

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer could inadvertently allow a hacker to read files on a person’s computer, another problem for the company just days after a serious vulnerability received an emergency patch.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was subsequently subjected to backlash and in recent days we have found news reports, such as:

• Microsoft warns that IE zero-day vulnerability causes data leakage

Microsoft issued a new advisory late Wednesday, warning Internet Explorer (IE) users of the potential for data leakage as a result of new publicly disclosed IE zero-day vulnerabilities.

• Microsoft were aware of Aurora security flaws

In a blog posting by Jerry Bryant, a Microsoft security programme manager, “when the attack discussed in Security Advisory 979352 was first brought to our attention on Jan 11, we quickly released an advisory for customers three days later.”

“As part of that investigation, we also determined that the vulnerability was the same as a vulnerability responsibly reported to us and confirmed in early September.”

• Has Microsoft shot itself in the foot with Security Essentials?”

• Expert finds vulnerabilities in Microsoft browser

• Microsoft probing new hole in IE security

The newer problem is covered in:

• Internet Explorer Bug Can Disclose Local Files

• New attack against IE could expose all PC files

Microsoft’s popular Internet Explorer web browser suffers from several minor flaws, which, when combined, can allow an attacker to read all the files on a user’s computer, according to researchers at penetration testing vendor Core Security Technologies.

A lot of patches are coming today (we wrote about it here).

• Microsoft slates colossal Windows patch next week

• Unlucky 13 Microsoft Patches Due Next Week

• Microsoft Patches Coming Tuesday: Brace Yourself

And a system restart will be required for these Windows patches, which will mean down time for servers. In fact, 10 of the record-tying 13 bulletins require a restart.

How about this: “Microsoft to patch 17 year old bug”

Like many teens, the 17 year old bug does not do much other than lounge around the hard drive unable to speak. It only exists because the Vole wanted users to be able to run ancient programs on newer machines and had an insecure app to do it.

Having first appeared in Windows NT 3.1, the vulnerability has been carried over into almost every version of Windows that has appeared ever since.

Despite the obvious problems, Microsoft still treats itself as though it’s an authority in security (there is a press release even) and sticking its nose in Super Bowl security (probably for some publicity). This company is preaching about safety while being utterly negligent by choice [1, 2, 3].

With fake cures and despair, fingers keep being pointed in the wrong direction. Microsoft has a serious design issue that cannot be fixed with patches. For instance, there are no repositories in Windows, so the users rely on a poor system/framework of trust. No wonder this type of stuff still appears in the news:

Fake Microsoft Outlook Update Installs Trojan

A malicious spam campaign caught by Panda Labs is using a fake Microsoft Update notice to trick victims into installing a Trojan. While well crafted, the attack still provides dead giveaways.

Will Microsoft ever abandon Windows and build something atop another platform? It has probably run out of time by now. As Jim Allchin put it 7 years ago (see E-mail below), Microsoft was “smoked”. Back then Microsoft still had some savings in the bank, but now it's just borrowing money. █

Appendix: Comes vs. Microsoft – exhibit PX07219, as text (not complete text, see original)

—– Original Message —–
From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wed 4/30/2003 10:46 PM
To: Amir Majidimehr; Dave Fester
Cc: Will Poole; Christopher Payne; Yusuf Mehdi; David Cole; Hank Vigil
Subject: Apple’s Jobs again.., and time to have a great Windows download service…

Steve Jobs ability to focus in on a few things that count, get people who get user interface right and market things as revolutionary are amazing things.

This time somehow he has applied his talents in getting a better Licensing deal than anyone else has gotten for music.

This is very strange to me. The music companies own operations offer a service that is truly unfriendly to the user and has been reviewed that way consistently.

Somehow they decide to give Apple the ability to do something pretty good.

I remember discussing EMusic and us saying that model was better than subscription because you would know what you are getting.

With the subscription who can promise you that the cool new stuff you want (or old stuff) will be there?

I am not saying this strangeness means we messed up – at least if we did so did Real and Pressplay and Musicnet and basically everyone else.

Now that Jobs has done it we need to move fast to get something where the UI and Rights are as good.

I am not sure whether we should do this through one of these JVs or not. I am not sure what the problems are.

However I think we need some plan to prove that even though Jobs has us a bit flat footed again we move quick and both match and do stuff better.

I’m sure people have a lot of thoughts on this. If the plan is clear no meeting is needed. I want to make sure we are coordinated between Windows DMD, MSN and other groups.

…. Original Message ….
From: Jim Allchin
Sent: Wednesday, April 30, 2003 4:58 PM
To: Amir Majidimehr; Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Will Poole; David Cole
Subject: Apple’s music store

1. How did they get the music companies to go along?

2. We were smoked.

jim

Summary: Vista 7 is plagued by serious bugs and new patches from Microsoft are said to be making things even worse; Microsoft is still unable to formulate a response to the new problems and Vista 7 sales continue to disappoint, so more vapourware and fake “leaks” are being used instead

T

HE reality behind Vista 7 continues to move along the lines that we have expected. It is beginning to look more and more like Vista as the weeks go by. Hundreds of millions of dollars in brainwash budget are running out and with this depletion, so does Microsoft’s ability to gag critics or overwhelm them with a bunch of fluff (distraction amid blunders using new announcements).

Today we will show that Microsoft faces new PR gaffes and at the same time it’s pressing ahead, resorting to fantasy (new projects or versions that will supposedly fix everything).

As we pointed out some months ago, Acer saw disappointing sales of computers after the release of Vista 7. A week and a half ago we saw Microsoft’s poor results that it faked with spin [1, 2, 3, 4]. It was all geared towards hyping up Vista 7, but according to the Wall Street Journal, “Windows 7 Fails to Boost Profits of PC Makers”

Microsoft Corp.’s new Windows 7 operating system has fattened the company’s earnings and boosted personal-computer sales at retailers like Best Buy Co. But it hasn’t increased the profits of PC giants Hewlett-Packard Co., Dell Inc. and others.

PC makers — unlike Microsoft — did not use deferral tricks to deceive their shareholders. Let’s face it. Vista 7 does not sell well and we keep seeing news reports about it. Microsoft has enough gullible journalists out there who are willing to corner and scare away the truth. That’s a huge failure of the media. Over at Groklaw, Pamela Jones wrote: “If you look closer, you see that this is consumers buying new computers. Their first chance to escape Vista. Not much of a choice of operating systems at the Best Buys of the world. But business sales are down, ditto XBox and Zune. It’s all in how you read and then spin the rest, I gather.”

Take their fan Savitz for example. He is still pumping Microsoft [1, 2], which makes one wonder if what he’s doing is legal. He and Barron’s (whom he writes for) seem to serve a role as Microsoft’s cheerleader, still. Goldman Sachs [1, 2] is also right there alongside Microsoft. That’s just how the analysts (speculators) industry works. Dennis Kucinich did an excellent job exposing it.

Going back to the main issue, Vista 7 is overrated because of PR (Vista was roughly the same in its early days, in least in terms of perception). Now we know that Vista 7 is a “battery killer” [1, 2, 3] and Microsoft is unable to deny the problem. Even Mary Jo Foley is left speechless.

But wait. That’s just the beginning of it. According to SoftPedia, Vista 7 suffers from “USB Data Transfer Issues on PCs with NVIDIA USB EHCI Chipsets”:

Microsoft has made available for download two updates designed to resolve issues related to data transfer failures in computers running Windows 7. According to the Redmond company, machines with Windows Server 2008 R2 can also be impacted by problems involving failed transfers of information over USB. However, the company underlined that customers must have computers with a specific hardware configuration in order for such issues to occur. The software giant explained that machines equipped with an NVIDIA USB EHCI chipset and at least 4GB of RAM were prone to problems when end users moved data over USB.

Those who bought Vista 7 (or had it forced upon them with a new computer) are part of the experiment. Here is what happened next:

1. Windows 7 has stability issues

One of the stability updates, KB977074, has been found to be responsible for compromising the stability of the operating system. Oh, the irony.

The update was one of many issued by Microsoft for Windows 7 just two weeks ago and the stability concerns have been highlighted by some annoyed forum members in a thread on the Vole’s Technet.

2. Windows 7 stability update makes PCs unstable, users report

Some Windows 7 users have reported that their PCs started to freeze or randomly display the infamous “Blue screen of death” after applying a January update Microsoft billed as a stability and reliability fix.

Microsoft today said it doesn’t consider the problem a “major issue,” but acknowledged it’s investigating.

As first noticed by Ars Technica, a short thread on Microsoft’s Windows 7 support forum discusses the update, which Microsoft issued two weeks ago, on Jan. 25.

Microsoft Emil (of Ars Technica) is speechless. He and Microsoft do not know how to defend themselves or spin themselves out of this hole. The response from a regular troll who defends Microsoft is that “it’s not major”.

For Windows 7 customers don’t worry though, as some Microsoft advocates like to say “It will be better next time” So just hang on, then dig deep when Windows 8 is released.

What a mess!

Here is what another notable blogger had to say a week and a half ago. He said that “Windows 7 Is Frustrating”:

I fired up a PC I haven’t used in a while, expecting to have to sit through the mind-numbing Windows Update parade. What I was confronted with was worse than that, as the computer refused to boot properly. I found myself staring at the window above, telling me that something was wrong and asking if I wanted Windows 7 to fix itself. I told it yes and the fun began.

It sat and did something, I don’t know what but the hard disk was thrashing, for a good while. Eventually it indicated it needed to restore the system to an earlier point, so I said yes. This fired off another seemingly endless process that eventually required a reboot.

Yes, join the experiment (Mojave, anyone?). Vista 7 is still messy, which is why almost no businesses actually adopt it. There is already a Windows exodus. In the words of Mary Jo Foley (who comments on Mike Nash quitting):

With Nash’s departure, all of the top Windows marketing leaders who were part of the Windows Business Group created under Veghte three years ago — Mike Sievert, Will Poole, Joe Peterson and Nash — are now gone from the company

And indeed, Microsoft has already begun talking about its Vista 8 vapourware. We are seeing more of the (probably fake) “leak” that we mentioned before [1, 2, 3]. Microsoft must have created some gossip about a “roadmap”, labeling it a “leak”. This leads to excitement for some, even though it’s nothing but a name. “No Telling How Windows 8 Will Be Better than Windows 7,” says SoftPedia.

These are probably all fake leaks. Groklaw said that the recent “leak” of Windows Mobile 6.5 SDK was probably also intentional. “This happens so regularly,” she said,”that one has to ask: is it accidental?” There is one new “leak” for the mobile version of Windows too, not just the SDK [1, 2] (Windows Mobile 7 “concepts”). They try to hype up a dying platform, even though developers are clearly walking away (we showed this before).

Microsoft is charging Windows Mobile developers indefinitely more than Apple and Google

Can you believe that? Market share of Windows Mobile is sinking like Titanic, and competitors have tens of thousands of apps (compared to less than one thousand in Windows Mobile app store), plenty of which are not available at all (!) for Windows Mobile, and what is Microsoft doing?

Microsoft is charging Windows Mobile developers indefinitely more than Apple and Google as you can see in this comparison…

Some journalists have blamed Windows Mobile for HTC’s poor performance (HTC is only gradually moving to Linux/Android). Microsoft Emil makes a suggestion identical to one which we saw 2 weeks ago, namely the use of anti-standards (Silverlight) to advance Microsoft’s own mobile platform. what a preposterous and unethical idea.

Here is another fake “leak”, this one involving Office 2010, which is said to have been “Released by Accident” (to generate a lot of buzz over this version). Joe Wilcox, formerly the editor of Microsoft Watch, says that “Microsoft Office is obsolete, or soon will be” (that’s the headline he uses).

I’ll ask upfront: Do you really need Microsoft Office on a daily basis? Is Office vital to your work day? Do you use it at home? If you use it at work, how often? If you use it at home or for college, how often? Please respond in comments.

My answers are easy. I don’t use Office at all. The software isn’t installed on my laptop.

This is the number one cash cow of Microsoft, whose numbers keep decreasing. No wonder Microsoft relies on obviously and embarrassingly fake “leaks” of Office.

Apple uses the same tactics of fake "leaks" and Microsoft’s former AstroTurfer Don Dodge [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], is sidling with Macs now [1, 2]. It just comes to show how badly Windows is really doing.

For those who are still using the RC of Vista 7, be prepared for Microsoft’s remote kill switches [1, 2] to kick in. Here is how Microsoft treats volunteer testers of its proprietary software:

• Windows 7 RC nears auto-shutdown deadline, Microsoft warns

• Running Windows 7 RC? Prepare for Shutdowns

• Windows 7 RC ‘buy a copy’ shut downs start next month

• Microsoft Windows 7 RC Goes Into Reduced Functionality Mode On 15th Of February

• Microsoft warns of Windows 7 RC cut off

Although the Windows 7 RC officially expires 1 June, users will be hit with bi-hourly shutdowns from 1 March, making it impractical for day-to-day use.

Considering all the major bugs in Vista 7 (RTM), there is still a lot of testing to be done. But Microsoft says that the next version of Windows will fix everything. It promises, as usual. █

“[W]e’re not going to have products that are much more successful than Vista has been.”

–Steve Ballmer

Summary: The authorities in Norway justify the country’s decision to reject Microsoft’s standards-hostile ploy

IT was almost 2 years ago that people of Norway were marching in the streets after Microsoft corruption. We wrote about the subject in:

• Steve Pepper Spills the Beans on MSOOXML in Norway
• Norway Embraces Open Standards, Many Others Follow Suit
• Norway Changes OOXML Vote, Receives New Microsoft Search Base (Updatedx2)
• Microsoft’s Latest OOXML Corruptions in Germany, Croatia, Norway
• OOXML Dirty Tricks Miscellanea: Norway, Misdirection, GPL Exclusion as Standard
• Microsoft’s OOXML Corruptions Have Ruined Standard Norway
• OOXML in Norway, Denmark, and Poland… Looking More Closely at the Stories (Updated)
• OOXML Protests Scheduled in Norway, Microsoft’s Reputation Claimed Tarnished
• Norway’s Protest Against Microsoft Abuse Goes More Public (Updated)

According to this report from IDG, Norway’s final decision to stick with ODF was the correct one. It has received endorsement from the Norwegian Agency for Public Management and eGovernment.

Microsoft’s XML-based office document format, OOXML, does not meet the requirements for governmental use, according to a new report published by the Norwegian Agency for Public Management and eGovernment (DIFI).

The agency wants to start a debate over the report as part of its work on standards in the Norwegian government.

For the Norwegian government, PDF is the recommended file format for publishing noneditable files, while Open Document Format (ODF), the native file format of productivity suites including the open-source OpenOffice.org, is the recommended format for publishing editable files. Versions of PDF, ODF and OOXML have all been adopted as international standards by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO).

“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

One of our readers has highlighted this comment from the accompanying Slashdot item:

[OOXML] combines “OO” and “XML”, two of the most powerful buzzwords the computing industry has ever seen.

I’m not trying to be funny, either. You wouldn’t believe the number of managers I’ve had to deal with who see those terms, and go apeshit crazy about how good something is. Tell them your technology is “object-oriented”, and they’re sold. Then tell them it involves “XML”, and they absolutely can’t resist it.

Mind you, these people tend to not know a thing about the technical aspects of software development. They don’t know any programming languages, but are convinced that “object-oriented” is the ONLY way. They haven’t got a clue what an XML document even looks like, but insist that it can do anything.

The only thing managers these days slurp up more than “OO” and “XML” are “Web Services”. If Microsoft had named it OOXMLWebServices instead of just OOXML, ODF would’ve been destroyed years ago.

We have written about this deceiving name many times before. It’s also intended to make people (including via search engines) wrongly associate “Open Office” with “Office Open [OOXML]. Microsoft has used these shameless tricks for years. █

“The Norwegian [OOXML] affair was a scandal and we are still pursuing it. We haven’t given up hope of changing the vote back to No, and we hope people who experienced similar travesties in other countries will do the same.”

–Steve Pepper

Summary: Updates on the competition between Microsoft and Google — a rivalry that takes political form

GOOGLE is gradually devaluing Microsoft’s products and Steve Ballmer understands that (Microsoft’s poor results [1, 2, 3, 4] are related to this). Free software and Google challenge Microsoft’s fundamental business model, as opposed to Apple for example. Moreover, watch how Google became an attractive employer, whereas Microsoft dropped like a stone (for several years now, even before the massive layoffs that are still ongoing, having officially begun over a year ago). From CNET:

Among the technology firms that ended up on Fortune’s list were SAS at No. 1, Google at No. 4, Cisco Systems at No. 16, Adobe Systems at No. 42, and Microsoft at No. 51. The firms scored points for a couple of different factors, including top pay and best perks. And with the job market still tight, Fortune also looked at the job growth for each company.

Microsoft is always trying to cause trouble to Google. Microsoft sued Google last month, having previously used other parties to sue Google. See for example:

• Microsoft is Still Attacking Google via Publishers
• More Antitrust Pressure for Yahoo!-Microsoft, Google Blocked by MSDOJ
• Microsoft, Google Sued; Microsoft Funds Legal Action Against Google
• Who’s Bugging Google and Apple? (Updatedx2)
• Lobby Which Google Said Was in Microsoft’s Pocket Wants Google’s Street View Shut Down
• Microsoft and Politics (Against Google)

Here is what Microsoft has been up to in recent days:

• ABC News: Microsoft: Google Likely to Face Questions on Ads
• CNBC: Microsoft lawyer: Google may face antitrust queries over search advertising market share

This is typical. This type of attitude is highlighted in a new post which is titled “Steve Ballmer, did you ‘f***ing kill Google’ yet?”

Well About 1/2 a decade ago, a key individual defected from Microsoft to Google that lead to one heck of lawsuit. According to official documents, Steve said he was going to ‘fucking kill Google’ as he hurled a chair across the room. literally.

[...]

We were just wondering Mr. Ballmer, did you ‘fucking kill Google’ yet? We figured 1/2 a decade has passed now and we were just wondering the status of it.

More in this new article:

If you think this is creepy, then join the club. In terms of collective IQ, Google is the smartest company in cyberspace: for five years it’s been taking the cleverest graduates from elite universities and the most experienced computer engineers. It’s been such a magnet for talent that even Microsoft is enraged. In 2005, for example, an ex-Microsoft engineer named Mark Lucovsky alleged in a sworn statement to a Washington state court that Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, became so enraged on hearing that Lucovsky was about to leave Microsoft for Google, that he picked up his chair, and threw it across his office. (Ballmer called this a “gross exaggeration”.)

Well, nothing that Microsoft has tried (and it tried so many things at a very high cost) has helped it accomplish the goal of simply destroying another competitor. Microsoft managed to pretty much destroy Yahoo! but not Google. Yahoo! Search got hijacked by Microsoft after an AstroTurfing campaign funded by Microsoft had derailed a deal between Yahoo! and Google. Microsoft was tearing apart the company through its staff and Microsoft fans are now saying that “Yahoo! Continues to Slip”. One has to wonder why, eh? Well, here is another fleeing executive of Yahoo! (more here):

It took three years, but former Yahoo executive Dan Rosensweig believes he has found another great Internet gig.

Rosensweig’s career shifted in a new direction this week when he took over as CEO of Chegg.com, a Silicon Valley startup that says it has rented about 2.4 million textbooks to cash-strapped college students since its 2007 inception.

AOL is with Google, still:

Armstrong Hints AOL Will Renew Search Deal With Google: ‘Distribution Is Almost As Important To Us As Money’

[...]

During today’s AOL earnings call, which just finished, CEO Tim Armstrong dropped the strongest hint yet that Google is the front-runner in negotiations for who will power search across AOL properties. Google is AOL’s current partner, as it has been for nearly a decade, but snatching the search partnership away would be a coup for Microsoft’s Bing search engine. Bing wants the search deal, which would help it increase its total volume of searches by a couple percentage points since AOL on its own has the fifth largest search share in the U.S.

Here comes Steve Ballmer to the White House (yes, again [1, 2, 3, 4]):

DJ Obama Meeting With Microsoft’s Ballmer, Amex’s Chenault, 8 Other Execs

A group of 10 top corporate executives, including Microsoft Corp.’s Steve Ballmer and American Express Co.’s (AXP) Ken Chenault, will join President Obama for lunch at the White House Thursday, an administration official said.

Some weeks ago we saw Ballmer using his "innovation" propaganda to have Obama promote patents and the Huffington Post helped Ballmer in that regard. Ballmer can also poison the government against Google and fight against the planned fixes for taxation policy (Microsoft is a tax dodger [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]).

Bank of America, Microsoft, Exxon May Face Obama Tax Increases

[...]

Bank of America Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp. and Microsoft Corp. would be among companies paying $400 billion in additional taxes under President Barack Obama’s $3.8 trillion budget.

On several occasions in the past we wrote about Microsoft’s influence in the Department of Justice [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] — an immense influence which led to discrimination against Google in that department.

“Microsoft is pulling out every favor it’s got … It has a very close relationship with DOJ and the White House, and all of that pressure is being brought to bear.”

–“Microsoft lobbies to fight Yahoo-Google pact”

Watch what the Department of Justice is doing to Google right now:

• UPDATE: Justice Dept Voices More Concerns On Google Books Settlement
• DOJ opposes revised Google book deal

Kara Swisher and a few other journalists argue that Google too lobbies heavily [1, 2], with Google Watch (Ziff Davis [1, 2, 3]) going further:

Google, Microsoft Meet in the Lobby on Capitol Hill

Google and Microsoft compete in search, cloud computing and Web services, but their battles extend from boardroom bargaining with customers to the nation’s capitol.

One has to remember that when it comes to lobbying, there are secret spendings and political power that is unaccounted for. Microsoft’s influence over the government has become inherent in the system and it’s possible that Google is just more transparent when it comes to lobbying disclosures. Either way, lobbying should ideally be eliminated altogether.

With Google’s domination in video (Microsoft is far behind), there is likely to be regulatory pressure that goes beyond just search.

Google has a problem in China. But it may have bigger headaches in Europe.

According to another perspective:

Germans and Frenchmen are more likely to Google themselves than are Brits and Americans.

The German and French authorities recommended that people drop Internet Explorer [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12] after repeated cases of Microsoft negligence [1, 2, 3].

Also in the news in recent days:

1. Google joins the ‘kill-IE6′ campaign

2. A Tad Too Late, Google Begins Phase-Out of IE6

3. Google pushes Chrome browser as PC battle looms

Google has taken the unusual step of using real-world advertising to promote its Chrome web browser in Europe ahead of a regulatory change that will make it easier for consumers to switch Web browsers.

4. Time to die, but Microsoft can’t kill Internet Explorer 6

World governments want you to stop using IE6. Microsoft does too. But the software giant claims its hands are tied — it’s like a drug. Why Microsoft can’t stop supporting IE6.

Google can help the elimination of Microsoft's threat to Free software. For that reason, it is better to favour Google. Rumours suggest that Google might buy Canonical. █

Summary: Microsoft wants to make medical records and management of patients a lot more dependent on Windows and its own private servers

MICROSOFT has just announced another medical takeover. The following text has an interesting description for Microsoft, calling it “developer and licensor of software solutions”.

Microsoft Corporation, a developer and licensor of software solutions, has acquired Sentillion, Inc., a developer of identity and access management solutions for the healthcare industry. Both the companies are based in the US.

There is more information about it here and here. It’s not the first acquisition in this area. A few weeks ago we showed that Microsoft was trying to make the healthcare system dependent on Microsoft’s existence [1, 2]. The NHS is already captive to a high degree [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], but Microsoft wants to expand its influence over people’s lives (and deaths). Ballmer’s tour across the United States (to influence health professionals) carries on and he is even seeding some money to entrap the system:

To that end, Microsoft, along with the Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), announced new “Innovation through Technology” grants – in which the computing giant will donate $1 million in software and the HCA will give $250,000 in cash to Tennessee community agencies that focus on, among other areas, primary health.

It is a trap, but large companies like Siemens, a top software patents lobbyist in Europe, are still falling for this [1, 2, 3, 4]. There is a sucker born every minute, including those who are willing to pass records of patients to a convicted monopolist that disregards the law. Microsoft is even doing this in Haiti — a subject that wrote about twice last month (the notion of “disaster capitalism” and the PR whose purpose is possibly to distract people from the role of Free software in Haiti [1, 2]).

Microsoft Nick and Fried are among the distractors. They are arguably trying to take attention away from the real story, e.g.:

Crisis Commons – Open Source in Action for Disaster Relief

Over the past two weeks, I’ve been working to organize a CrisisCamp in Calgary. It was the 1 of 4 happening in Canada this weekend. Based on Barcamp, the focus was on solutions to aid the NGO”s and responders on the ground in Haiti. The code base is all open source and can be modified for other disasters that may occur globally.

Several CrisisCamp events have taken place globally since the quake hit Haiti on Jan 12th. Volunteers in cities across North America, Bogota in Colombia, and London, UK have coded solutions directly requested by non governmental organizations (NGOs) on the ground, all via a website submission page. Visit CrisisCommon for further insight

It is worth adding another item from the news [1, 2, 3]. Microsoft has been trying to control bar codes for several years now, without success. They want to tag objects and people using their patented ideas. It has been mentioned for years and it is not new, either. Nevertheless, last week it was promoted by the Microsoft boosters who pretend to be just innocent reporters.

Microsoft Tag, whose slogan is “Linking real life with the digital world,” is another stab at digital scanners that aim to connect printed materials with online content.

This could relate to the new acquisition of a “developer of identity and access management solutions for the healthcare industry”. Microsoft wants more control over society, even if it means patients and crowd control. Should we give Microsoft such powers? As the links below show, Microsoft and hospitals don’t mix. █

Related posts:

• Security Links: Another Hospital Falls Prey to Windows Spyware; Another Trojan and Botnet
• US Army Becomes Zombies Army; London Hospitals Still Ill (Windows Viruses)
• NHS Never Learns: Windows Viruses Leave British Patients to Die, Again
• How Many People Must Die Before Abandoning Windows?
• Utah Has Novell, SCO, and… Conficker in the Hospitals
• New Casualties of Microsoft Windows?

Summary: “Pinta” comes from Novell staff and software patents tax (on SLE*) comes from Microsoft in the form of vouchers

YESTERDAY’S LONG post about Ubuntu has led to some reactions that include this rant about “Microsoft, Ubuntu, Canonical, Novell, and Mono”:

I was reading Goblin’s latest post at OpenBytes. He had some interesting points, but I thought he was missing a few things. At point I hit four paragraphs in response, I decided to answer him here instead, because I kept on thinking of more things to say. Goblin’s concern is that Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu family of GNU/Linux operating systems, is bringing out a new product called Ubuntu One, and they are going to make a Windows version as well as a Linux version.

Goblin’s is right – Canonical seems to be moving closer to Microsoft, both in supplying a Windows version of Ubuntu One, and because of Canonical’s new search deal with Yahoo. Since Yahoo has a search deal with Microsoft, Canonical is in effect delivering Microsoft Bing search results to GNU/Linux users.

[...]

Yes, Microsoft is trying to use it’s monopoly to force everyone else out of the market. They’ve bought several companies recently who produced products for multiple operating systems, and then proceeded to make them Windows only. So sorry, we don’t make a Unix version anymore… The only problem with this sort of action, is that those customers who used the Unix version now know what Microsoft thinks of their business. Nothing. So they aren’t going to buy more Microsoft product. There’s no gain for Microsoft. Oh, strictly Microsoft shops might buy a bit more, but they are becoming rarer, as the advantages of GNU/Linux servers become more evident.

[...]

Microsoft can limit competition in the marketplace for a short period of time only. This combined with the damage that Microsoft has done to their brand by releasing failures like Windows Vista, which limits the amount of money they can spend on monopolistic practises means that we are probably only five-ten years from seeing a collapse of the company, driven partly by their own incompetence, and partly by the negative image that the Microsoft brand has gained over the last five years. For example Novell made a deal with Microsoft, and Microsoft’s bad reputation has affected Novell’s reputation, to the point where a lot of techs, even those who had used a lot of Novell in the past, will not recommend Novell products anymore. Another example is the migration under way from Yahoo to Google, because of Yahoo’s pending deal with Microsoft.

[...]

But Gnome may no longer matter. There are rumours around the net about a ‘New Desktop Foundation.’ The rumour I heard was that this would be a fork of the Gnome desktop, removing all Mono and C# packages. There are enough people who are upset at Ubuntu, Gnome, and Miguel de Icaza (one of the founders of Gnome, and founder of the Mono project, and a Microsoft MVP) that it could possibly be true. I was also told that the use of ‘New’ was deliberate, since in English the pronunciation is the same as the pronunciation of ‘Gnu’.

OpenBytes has meanwhile done some digging into the project called “Pinta” (it was also mentioned yesterday). Guess what? This Mono project is developed by a Novell employee. Here are the details:

I’ve often made the point that if Mono is so great, where is the killer app for it? Where is the app that everyone MUST have? Whatever coders think about Mono and whatever they create, its the end-user who will decide on its future and I challenge anyone to show me a FOSS project that continues to run when nobody wants to use it.

Over at http://jpobst.blogspot.com/2010/02/over-holiday-break-i-stumbled-upon-this.html where the Pinta project has a blog, the authors description says:

…I’m Jonathan Pobst and I am a full-time open source hacker for Novell. I work on Mono, specifically on Mono Tools for Visual Studio.

and he certainly has “great” aspirations for this software. Full time open source hacker? You mean employee then? Implying that he is inspired by Paint.net. Inspired by Paint.net eh?…..moving swiftly on….

[...]

If I had seen a mass of Mono apps being released to “hungry” end users I may have seen the need, but when Novell is seemingly trying to create its own killer apps to promote its own implementation of a Microsoft framework then I really can’t see the point of this “gift to the world”.

In the case of Mono and its associated “wares” the most important person is not the coder(s) behind the projects, but the end-user – YOU. The success or failure of such projects will solely depend on if they are taken up by the “average desktop user” who outnumber enterprise/advocates/coders many times over. Ask yourself did you move to Linux for a “FOSS” implementation of a Microsoft technology which is headed up by Microsoft MVP Mr De Icazza or did you (like me) move because you were tired of inhibiting licenses, crashes, bloated software and the blame being placed at the feet of anyone but Microsoft? Were you fed up of the ethos of “everything has a price” or the takeaway menu style purchasing of Microsoft products? – I’ll let you decide.

We didn’t know that Novell staff had made this Mono program. It’s tempting to say that “Embrace and Extend” with Mono would potentially work here. If there was enough of Microsoft inside GNU/Linux, then maybe it would be ripe for adoption by Microsoft. It’s almost as though Microsoft is brewing and fortifying a GNU/Linux is can recommend, with software patents tax, .NET, and all the rest of the stuff.

As our reader Goblin put it last night, “It seems if people won’t use Mono to make apps, Novell will have to do it for them……so much for this “gift to the world”… I think its a “gift to the world” in the same way the atom bomb was.”

To another reader he said: “I’d like to give it back….Marty do you have the receipt? we can get a refund! … Stand by for the “Mono hater” or “Killing the FOSS” comments because I dare to give MY opinion on Mono.”

The Mono team often bullies those who disagree.

In other news, an article which was mentioned in last week's post (and some prior posts [1, 2]) is attempting to portray Microsoft as a GNU/Linux vendor. This portrayal is accentuated by this article, which is just a lot of spin. The comments in Linux Today complement it.

Rainer Weikusat writes: “According the article, Microsoft is the third-largest Linux vendor in the USA. That’s something to remember for the next round of ‘”Linux” is low-quality hobbyist’s software’ …”

Jose X is being more realistic and Bernard Swiss says: “Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but I have grave doubts that in this case, the word “sold” means what I would usually take it to mean.”

A lot of people miss the point that what Microsoft sells here is not GNU/Linux, let alone support. It sells licences to software patents it would not disclose. Matt Asay has connections with his former employer Novell and based on his conversations with old colleagues he said that he had “heard from Novell sales representatives that Microsoft sales executives have started calling the Suse Linux Enterprise Server coupons “royalty payments”,” so it means that they are selling patents, and mostly profiting at the expense of Red Hat. Another comment says that “What Microsoft has done here is keep Windows on all those computers by selling a support license for Linux installed in a virtual machine on a Windows host computer.

“Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but I have grave doubts that in this case, the word “sold” means what I would usually take it to mean.”
      –Bernard Swiss“So where companies where going to put Linux on the hardware, Microsoft keeps selling another copy of Windows and they still rule the system.

“Why else would they pay so much for so little? Just more protectionism and keeping keeping customers from really knowing what they are missing staying on Windows.”

It’s the same with Mono and the CodePlex Foundation. It’s about putting Microsoft in charge. Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza will soon be joined by Hunter [1, 2, 3], a Microsoft employee [1, 2] whose role is to help Microsoft fight against Free software and GNU/Linux for the sake of Windows, DRM, software patent racketeering and the usual criminal activities that Microsoft still specialises in. eWEEK has an unintentionally deceiving headline that says: “Canonical, CodePlex Foundation Announce New Leadership” █

–Richard Stallman

Summary: A quick look at some patent news from the past week, ranging from defence to offence

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)

THE EFF still fights one patent at a time. According to this new page, it is going after VoIP monopolies right now.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has won reexamination of an illegitimate patent on voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) that could cripple the adoption of new VoIP technologies.

IDG wrote about this too:

The patent, held by a small company called C2 Communications Technologies, is one of 10 that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has been trying to strike down for several years through its Patent Busting Project. On Friday, the patent office granted the EFF’s request for a re-examination, the EFF said. The digital civil-liberties organization argued that another applicant had submitted basically some of the same technology to the patent office before C2 did.

The EFF means well, but a better solution would be abolition of software patents as a whole. The problem is that companies like IBM, Google, Novell, and fronts like OIN are proponents of software patents, which makes them far from defenders of Free software.

Do Know Evil?

Google is acquiring/obtaining some more software patents. Here is the original report:

Google has filed at least four patent applications for technology it’s building into its Chrome browser to try to make the Web a more powerful foundation for applications.

Google is part of the software patents problem, just like IBM. Sometimes it gets sued.

Apple

A few weeks ago we explained why Apple too is part of the software patents problem. Here is Apple applying for some more patents and blocking developers’ use of their associated ideas/functions.

Apple this week notified iPhone developers that they cannot use the device’s GPS data to serve location-aware advertisements to users of App Store software.

[..]

One patent application described a dynamic home screen that would display specific applications automatically populated based on factors like the current location of the phone. For example, when traveling in San Francisco, a specific “San Francisco” icon could appear on the screen, and give users easy access to local weather, time, maps and contacts.

More information here and here:

Apple doesn’t appear to be opposed to location-based targeted advertising in principle. It has filed patents for location-based targeted advertising, especially in relation to offering currently playing songs or videos at a particular location for purchase via iTunes.

Is Apple’s banning iPhone applications that would use location data for displaying advertising not as onerous as anything Microsoft tried–and mostly didn’t get away with?

What about banning the word “Android” from the App Store? Like Apple thinks it can control the flow of information its customers receive? Give me a break.

This new article brings back memories of Apple’s patent fight with Microsoft. Well, Microsoft ripped off a lot of companies, Apple included.

Back in the dark ages, around 1991, Apple had some pretty cool Macs while PC users were still mired in DOS. Apple was making good money. Meanwhile, on the PC side, just marrying a mouse with DOS was the big thing. However, over time, Microsoft was able to copy what Apple was doing with the WIMP interface (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointing device).

That was due in part to poor IP protections and a strategic error made by John Sculley who opened the door, contractually, to a GUI for Microsoft back in the 1980s. That resulted in a lawsuit by Apple against Microsoft in 1988, one that Apple eventually lost. (The fascinating saga has been documented at Low End Mac.) Once that GUI door was opened, Microsoft was eventually able to mimic the Mac OS look and feel. Today, many non-technical users are not able to differentiate between Windows 7 and Snow Leopard, and that has to irk Apple.

Black Parasite Software

Black Duck’s new patent (mentioned in [1, 2]) is still receiving some press coverage. Confrontation with the SFLC too gets it some attention:

Bradley Kuhn, the technology director of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) expressed dismay this week after learning that Black Duck Software was granted a patent that covers software methods for detecting and resolving open source software licensing conflicts. Kuhn, who plays a major role in the SFLC’s GPL enforcement efforts, contends that Black Duck’s patent is far from novel and describes techniques that he has been using for licensing compliance analysis for over a decade.

Black Duck was founded in 2002 with the aim of providing automated solutions for tracking the provenance of source code in applications. The company’s first product, called Protex, reached the market at a time when the software industry was being confronted by emerging legislation and high-profile litigation that raised concerns about software licensing practices. At the time, the ill-fated SCO trial was just starting to heat up and there were still unanswered questions about whether the newly-passed Sarbanes-Oxley Act would require more rigorous internal audits of software licensing. Black Duck turned the industry’s fear over these issues into a marketing tool and became one of the leading vendors in the compliance management market.

Black Duck ought to withdraw the patent or be perceived as even more of a parasite to the Free software community. With a Microsoft-tied genesis, Black Duck was always difficult to trust. This brings us to Microsoft.

Microsoft

Microsoft has signed a new patent deal, this time with Webmap Technologies.

Webmap Technologies, LLC has entered into a license agreement with Microsoft Corporation, a developer and licensor of software solutions. Webmap Technologies is a subsidiary of Acacia Research Corporation, through its operating subsidiaries, acquires, develops, licenses and enforces patented technologies. All the companies are based in the US.

Here is another new article about Microsoft’s patent deal with Funai — a deal which we previously wrote about in [1, 2, 3].

Software major Microsoft and Japanese home technology firm Funai have struck an IP cross-licensing deal, granting each other access to agreed areas of their patent portfolios. Set to bolster the companies’ mutual research and development (R&D) efforts in integrated media, the deal reflects the growing popularity of cross-licensing and patent pools in the technology field as key players aim to avoid IP disputes.

The most significant news though is probably to do with RPX [1, 2, 3], a patent pool/racket which Microsoft is entering. It was only a couple of weeks ago that Microsoft signed a deal with Acacia and now it joins RPX with the excuse that it needs protection from “patent trolls.”

Microsoft Corp., a technology giant that wins thousands of patents every year, has joined RPX Corp., a start-up network aimed at aggregating intellectual property to shield its members from what are known as “patent trolls.”

Here is a funny headline (“Tech Giants’ New Plan To Fight Patent Trolls”). It is funny given that Microsoft itself created the world’s largest patent troll, Intellectual Ventures. For Microsoft to complain about “patent trolls” would be nonsensical and hyporitical.

Microsoft has signed up for “patent insurance” with a startup called RPX, which buys up patents that could be used against its clients. Microsoft says this approach can save the industry billions of dollars by thwarting the industry’s controversial “patent trolls” and their litigation. But how much can a firm like RPX do to prevent litigation?

This is also covered at Law.com, requiring subscription though. Here is an article everyone can read at the site, as well as a few others:

Frustrated by litigation costs, Microsoft, Sony, and Nokia are paying third-party patent acquirers such as RPX to fend off patent lawsuits

Dallas News has this story to tell:

That’s what Melsheimer of Fish & Richardson PC’s Dallas office found in getting a $511.6 million verdict against Microsoft reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Plaintiff Alcatel-Lucent initially sought $50 billion in damages.

The ruling ended a seven-year odyssey featuring seven different cases and three jury trials. One case hinged on the value of a particular feature of Microsoft’s Outlook electronic mail program. Melsheimer and his team convinced the appeals court that the feature wasn’t part of Outlook’s appeal to customers, hence no damages.

We wrote about Fish & Richardson a couple of months ago.

Patents as Barriers

Against Monopoly has something to say about “Common Sense” and the Economist has published an article against patents (essentially monopolies).

DO PATENTS help or hinder innovation? Instinctively, they would seem a blessing, especially for backroom tinkerers. Patenting an idea gives its inventor a 20-year monopoly to exploit the fruit of his labour in the marketplace, in exchange for publishing a full account of how the new product, process or material works for all and sundry to see. For the inventor, that may be a reasonable trade-off. For society, however, the loss of competition through the granting sole rights to an individual or organisation is justified only if it stimulates the economy and delivers goods that change people’s lives for the better.

[...]

If truth be told, few inventions are really worth patenting. Time and again, surveys show that in both America and Europe companies rate superior sales and service, lead time and secrecy as far more important than patents when it comes to profiting from innovation. And, although applying for patents is relatively cheap, the cost of maintaining them can be horrendous. If the idea behind a patent has any commercial merit, it will attract imitators—and the inventor must be prepared to defend it in the courts. In a majority of cases, the cost of litigation will far exceed any revenue the inventor may subsequently earn from royalties or licensing.

By and large, the inventions and discoveries worth patenting are those in the pharmaceutical and biotech fields, where the pay-off for blockbuster drugs can amount to billions of dollars a year. Also, because the vast majority of inventions in such areas depend on unique molecular architectures, patents for new products are easier to defend in the courts. A me-too drug that is believed to violate a firm’s patent is either based on the same molecule or not.

[...]

An end to frivolous patents for business processes will be a blessing to online commerce. Meanwhile, the loss of patent protection for software could make programmers realise at last that they have more in common with authors, artists, publishers and musicians than they ever had with molecular architects and chip designers. In short, they produce expressions of ideas that are eminently copyrightable.

That could be good news for innovation. After all, who in his right mind would seek a lousy old patent offering a mere 20 years of protection when copyright can provide monopoly rights for up to 70 years after the author’s death? That one fact alone could spur more innovation than all the tinkering attempted so far.

A new study (already mentioned here) shows that patent trolls are taking over the system.

“Adobe pays patent royalties for the h264 codec so that video plays reliably worldwide, across browsers and OS’s,” says the president of the FFII, pointing to this from Adobe:

But in follow the comments from our CTO’s posting “Open access to Content and Apps”, I noticed that there are comments about Flash not being an “open” technology and questions about why we don’t open source the Player, so I thought I’d jump in and provide some details to help clear up some misconceptions and explain how open we are with the Flash Platform.

Another new article shows that one researcher has decided that sharing is better than not sharing (“open-source research”), which probably means that patents too will be affected.

One medical researcher applies generosity of spirit with his open-source research project designed to fight a tropical disease for which medical treatment is expensive and tough to come by.

[..]

Now, Scientific American reports that Australian chemist and entrepreneur Matthew Todd is initiating a totally open-source research project geared to the fight against the tropical disease schistosomiasis.

Sharing is better than not sharing. Scientists understand that. Investors don’t care. █

Summary: Microsoft’s and Gates’ incursions in Africa are backed by self-serving Western agenda of patents and proprietary software

THIS is a long post which contains links to the required evidence. For those who are not familiar with the lesser-known activities of the Gates Foundation, here is a place to start. From this point on we shall assume that the reader is already well informed and therefore will not repeat topics that were covered here before.

Bill Gates’ very special connections at the UN seem to be paying off as abusive monopolies beyond Microsoft (in which he is a stakeholder) are given contracts, with the UN’s help.

Microsoft’s PR buddy at CNET, namely Ina Fried, is offering a stage/platform to more blind-folded praise for the world’s notorious monopoliser. It’s about Gates and Monsanto. Over at Groklaw, Pamela Jones responds to it with: “Would those, by any chance, be patented genetically modified seeds? If so, who benefits? The poor?”

Yes, Groklaw too is familiar with how Gates is using Africa to advance his darling, Monsanto [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8].

We are encouraged to find that Groklaw too has begun complaining about the patent games Gates plays with his “foundation”. A lot of people are fearful of criticising the foundation, as though it’s some sort of holy or sacred institution that one cannot question. That’s what PR has led to — a dangerous false consensus that people are unable to challenge without being frowned upon.

“We are encouraged to find that Groklaw too has begun complaining about the patent games Gates plays with his “foundation”.”The GNU Web site has this old cartoon about Gates creating scarcity even in food that can be grown off the ground (soil) and medicine that can be shared to reduce suffering and hunger, much like Richard Stallman’s concept of “infinite bread”.

Gates tries to characterise all this as “charity” by donating access to man-made monopolies that he is funding (patents). The mainstream press plays along, putting some highly inflated prices (maybe 1000 times the production costs) on some medicine and then hailing Gates’ “generosity” [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]. People must remember the economics of drug production and also remember that Gates is investing billions of dollars in this (investing, not donating). To him, it’s a win-win scenario; he gets to be portrayed as charitable while at the same time having another opportunity to make big profits. It’s not a lot of money because it’s just patents/licensing, so it’s the illusion of cost. It’s the same when Microsoft ‘”donates” software, putting some imaginary value on the “donation” (which is usually just a tool for blocking competition anyway).

Take this article for example. It’s a patent and PR campaign, not a “vaccine campaign”. As GatesKeepers put it a few days ago, there is too much “worship of the Gates Foundation”.

More worship of the Gates Foundation and it was not even published on a Sunday.

The mainstream press is highly deceiving here because it obeys those who pay the bill (or those editors/publishers who are paid by Bill). Had it actually investigated the issue, then it would discover the other side of the story, which is an inconvenience to banal and “safe” reporting (in the job security sense).

Watch Bill Gates as he makes some new and very silly PR trips [1, 2]. Recently he took his tour to the New York Times and the Huffington Post [1, 2, 3]. He is meeting the editors and chiefs, probably ensuring that they focus on his own side of the story. This whole charade leads to delusional writings from Ziff Davis for example. They too are paid by Microsoft [1, 2, 3]. No wonder a serial monopoliser is portrayed as a hero and saviour of the world. It’s not just Gates who is pulling those PR strings after committing crimes. The loot is usually sufficient to acquire a new public image, which is what a successful PR team is working behind the scenes for (this charade has gone on for years and it is quite relentless, much like a full-time job).

Let’s get to the interesting parts. As we already know, Gates strives to control what tomorrow’s generation will think of computers, patents, and himself of course. When not using or relying on the BBC to rewrite history in his favour, Gates (mis)uses the education systems around the world. We covered the subject in:

1. Bill Gates Puts in a Million to Ratify His Role as Education Minister
2. How the Gates Foundation is Used to Ensure Children Become Microsoft Clients
3. More Dubious Practices from the Gates Foundation
4. Microsoft Builds Coalitions of NGOs, Makes Political and Educational Changes
5. Microsoft’s EDGI in India: Fighting GNU/Linux in Education
6. Microsoft’s Gates Seeks More Monopolies
7. Gates Foundation Funds Blogs to Promote Its Party Line
8. Microsoft Bribes to Make Education Microsoft-based
9. Lobbyists Dodge the Law; Bill Gates Lobbies the US Education System with Another $10 Million
10. Gates Investments in Education Criticised; Monsanto (Gates-Backed) Corruption Revisited
11. Latest Vista 7 Failures and Microsoft Dumping

Mr. Reifman, who used to work for Microsoft before exposing the company’s massive tax dodge [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8], has just alluded to the subject:

Given the importance that Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation place on Education and the health of Washington communities, we are eager to hear how the Microsoft chairman squares its tax practices with the state’s $2.6 billion deficit and this dramatic court decision declaring the failure in funding for our public schools.

Retirement for Gates? Not so fast. He only moved on to some other monopolies, one of which is a monopoly on the world’s food supply. Our reader Fewa said that “David Suzuki has a great talk on that topic [...] and comes as a scientist who has done research in the field and is well respected”

Here is an article from David Suzuki which he pointed to:

I am a geneticist by training. At one time, I had one of the largest research grants and genetics labs in Canada. The time I spent in this lab was one of the happiest periods of my life and I am proud of the contribution we made to science. My introductory book is still the most widely used genetics text in the world.

When I graduated as a geneticist in 1961, I was full of enthusiasm and determined to make a mark. Back then we knew about DNA, genes, chromosomes, and genetic regulation. But today when I tell students what our hot ideas were in ‘61, they choke with laughter. Viewed in 2000, ideas from 1961 seem hilarious. But when those students become professors years from now and tell their students what was hot in 2000, their students will be just as amused.

“But there is a whole talk to the technical audience [...] and very persuasive,” added Fewa. Here it is on Google Video.

This brings us to the part where Gates is pulling strings like he always does. As we wrote last month, “Gates is already hooked up with the United Nations too (the core of it, nothing less). UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is even hanging out in Bill's and Melinda's own home and there are other connections like Microsoft’s Andrea Taylor.”

“Microsoft strikes partnership deal with UN in Africa,” says this article from last week.

At the ongoing African Union summit on ICT, Microsoft has signed an agreement with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa under which it will provide software, technical support and software development.

Why the heck does the UN assist a convicted monopolist in entering Africa? Well, Bill Gates’ connection with the UN is not one that can be immediately dismissed. He has people from the UN invited to his house and few Microsoft employees enjoy overlap with the UN (never mind his UN lobbying). There is more information about this here and here:

United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and global computer giant, Microsoft Corporation have sealed a partnership memorandum of understanding that aims to foster regional cooperation and economic growth in Africa through the use of Information and Communication Technologies’ (ICTs).

Apparently, Microsoft can “spur digital development”, not just train the public to become a voluntary maintainer of Microsoft’s products.

The East African Community (EAC) and Microsoft have signed an agreement under which the latter would assist the regional body in its efforts to spur digital development in the region.

Have Gates & Microsoft have just used the UN to colonise Africa? The connections there could only help and therefore perpetuate the perceptions about UN corruption being prevalent.

A few months ago we showed how Microsoft had taken over Nigerian schools [1, 2] and now we find this in the press. From last week:

Two teenage students, Miss Oluwagbemisola Akinsipe (SS1) and Miss Ibukunoluwa Onaeko (SS2), both from Christ Ambassadors’ International College, Ibadan, Oyo State, have been awarded Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP).

The award is one of Microsoft’s certificates given on merit to anybody who registered and passed the qualifying examination.

Microsoft is colluding with the government at times and this one seems like another example.

Microsoft and Nigeria have released a song and video as part of a campaign to dissuade people from getting involved in cybercrime.

We have already shared some videos that show how the West is exploiting Nigeria for its oil. In general, Nigerians do have some reasons to be angry, especially given that Bill Gates, for example, contributes to death of children with his investments in cheaply-produced oil in Nigeria. The Los Angeles Times exposed that. A few days ago we found out that Nigerian militants retaliate.

Nigerian militants calling themselves the Joint Revolutionary Council (JRC) said Sunday they had attacked a major Shell oil pipeline in the volatile Niger Delta, in a statement obtained by AFP.

To understand Nigeria’s oil wars, a longer post that strays off topic would be required. We leave that aside for now.

Last week we shared a Pilger video on IMF's role in crises of the developing nations. We have also covered a lot of stories about Microsoft and bankers working in tandem [1, 2]. They must have found commonalities [1, 2] and areas of collaboration. Anyway, in the news we now find that “World Bank and Microsoft to promote development in Africa”:

The World Bank and Microsoft have announced a new partnership that will seek to reinforce social and economic development in Africa by leveraging information and communication technology (ICT). The two institutions today signed a Memorandum of Understanding in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on the sidelines of the summit meeting of African heads of state on the theme “ICTs in Africa: Challenges and Prospects for Development”.

Another Memorandum of Understanding (“Project Marshall”). What does the World Bank have to do with this and why make a “new partnership” with Microsoft? Is the World Bank becoming a front for a convicted monopoly abuser? The location, Addis Ababa, might have something to do with another item from the news. Microsoft is releasing Windows Vista (not Vista 7) for the Ethiopian public, as reported by AFP some days ago (also here). That was only announced last week:

Addis Ababa, February 6, 2010 (Addis Ababa) An Amharic version of Microsoft Vista software was launched here last Thursday.

Microsoft is trying to pull them away from other software in ‘creative’ ways (GNU/Linux has decent share in Africa). We have mentioned Ethiopia in relation to Gates' crusades with evil Monsanto, as well. What’s Microsoft’s obsession with Africa anyway? Microsoft is dumping software on them while Gates is dumping patents on life upon them (patented seeds and patented drugs that he holds shares in). It creates debt they will need to service later. █

“Bill Gates says banks are dinosaurs, well, some dinosaurs run real fast and bite the hell out of you.”

–Unknown

Read the log

Enter the IRC channel now

To use your own IRC client, join channel #boycottnovell in FreeNode.

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers
• Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

GNU/Linux

• The new LTSP-Cluster website’s officially out

  The LTSP-Cluster project is proud to announce that its website is now on-line.

• Server

  • 10 Ways that Enterprises use Linux

    9. Google Search Appliances – Google builds its search appliances on the Linux platform. If you’re using one in your company, you’re using Linux. Sure Google uses a special version of just about everything for their appliances but it’s built on the solid stability of Linux.

    8. Monitoring Services – If you’re doing any network monitoring or system performance checking, chances are good that you’re using Linux to do it. Large companies use commodity hardware and free software to do their bidding where possible. Projects like Orca make life easier for IT professionals who must find and deploy tools that are scalable, inexpensive and return a lot of bang for the amount of effort applied. Orca and Sysstat are absolutely indispensable for large networks where you have to manage thousands of disparate systems.

    7. Development Platform – Since Linux comes standard with so many development tools such as Eclipse, C, C++, Mono, python, perl, PHP and many, many others; it’s no wonder that it’s the world’s most popular development platform. It contains thousands of dollars worth of development software all free of charge and that’s good news for developers in all parts of the globe.

• Kernel Space

  • Linux 2.6.33-rc7

  • The kernel column by Jon Masters #83

    Finally though, spare a thought for a kernel developer named Dan Carpenter who is currently travelling across Africa and struggling to keep up with kernel development on expensive and infrequent bandwidth. Dan asked for help in cloning a fresh git tree using a protocol such as rsync that supports partial transfers, since he can only purchase 200MB of bandwidth at a time and this is not enough to fetch a complete git development tree. That’s all folks. Don’t forget to visit www.kernelpodcast.org (which had its 100,000th download this month) for daily updates on kernel development.

  • Graphics Stack

    • ATI releases open-source graphics drivers for Evergreen hardware

      Although the high-end graphics cards were released months ago, ATI just this week announced the availability of open-source drivers for the Evergreen family of devices.

    • AMD and Nvidia bitchfight over open source support

      Of course, many pertaining to the brotherhood of linux have long had a gripe with AMD over its perceived “lesser” support, an issue which really came to a head back in 2007, when things were possibly at their most dire in terms of AMD open source support.

      When we contacted the firm to find out why it was that it had such a bad rep on the linux street, we were told by John Bridgman of the firm’s software development engineering group that the image was undeserved.

    • AMD defends itself from Nvidia OpenCL attack

      Earlier this week Nvidia and AMD squared off over support for open source drivers, and it seems neither company is ready to lay down the handbag just yet – this time against the backdrop of OpenCL.

• Applications

  • Brewtarget Helps You Create and Manage Your Homebrew Recipes

    If Brewtarget turns out not to be your pint of beer (har har), brewsta is another free, cross-platform, open-source alternative worth a look. This editor’s definitely going to forward these apps on to his homebrewing dad, but if we’ve got any other experienced homebrewers out there who’ve got their own homebrew hacks and helpers, let’s hear about it in the comments.

  • Planetarium Software for Young Children in Ubuntu / Debian Linux : Stellarium

    Stellarium is a free open source planetarium Software for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.
    Features

    * default catalogue of over 600,000 stars
    * extra catalogues with more than 210 million stars
    * realistic Milky Way

  • Instructionals

    • Get xen guest IP address without Login

    • Recover from a frozen system with the magic SysRq key| Tips

    • Cairo-Dock 2.1.3 Is Out, Features A Simplified Configuration Panel

    • How To Upgrade Debian Etch To Lenny

    • Linux fdupes: Get Rid (Delete) Of Double Duplicate Files In Directory

    • Inkscape Class Day 7

    • Image Editing Tutorial – Adjusting Colour Curves Pt. 2

    • Iptables Limits Connections Per IP

    • PHP Security: Limit Resources Used By Script

    • Writing man pages

    • Linux – Manipulate the stdout and stderr

    • GTalX – Google Voice Chat has arrived in Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic)

    • How to install Avast Antivirus on Mandriva 2010

    • Tomcat with Gentoo

    • Remove lines that are in another file

    • Playing around with KVM on Root Servers

    • 15 Remote Desktop Solutions for Linux.

• Desktop Environments

  • K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

    • The KDE 4.3 System Settings – Part 4 – Advanced User Settings

      Welcome to part four of our look at the KDE 4.3 System Settings panel. In this section we’ll tackle the Advanced User Settings under the Advanced tab. So let’s take a look at what’s available in this section and how it may benefit you.

    • Mmm pies! (aka Disk usage in Lancelot)

    • Open-PC uses no proprietary software

      Nettop is constructed using only open source software and hardware with all tech specs available.

      Nettops are nothing new; we have seen many of the desktop machines that run netbook hardware inside. One of the more colorful entries we have seen on the market was the Dell Zino HD unveiled back in November 2009. If your tastes lean more towards open computers than machines that use lots of proprietary software the new Open-PC nettop may be perfect for you.

    • Open-PC Is A Completely Open-Source Nettop PC [Open-PC Features Open Software, Open Spec Hardware]

  • GNOME Desktop

    • A Few New Features In Gnome-Shell

      GNOME-Shell needs no introduction. I’m sure many of you all know what it is, have opinions on it and probably you will have tried it out.

• Distributions

  • New Releases

    • Parsix GNU/Linux 3.0r2 `Kev` has been released

      The second update version of Parsix GNU/Linux 3.0 aka `Kev` is available for immediate download.

    • Area1 Sai na frente e ja tem Ekaaty 4

    • Gibraltar Firewall 3.0

  • Red Hat Family

    • A newbie’s guide to Fedora 12

      Sometimes it’s easy to forget that we all had to start somewhere with Linux. When you’re not used to the way it works, or the kind of concepts involved, Linux can seem like a foreign language. If you’re struggling with free software, or if you know someone who needs help making the switch to Linux, we hope this feature will help.

  • Debian Family

    • Discuss application use-cases in Lucid UNE

      It is felt that Ubuntu Netbook Edition provides too many applications by default, so this specification is about discussing the use cases we want to support, and which applications are needed to provide that.

    • Ubuntu 9.10 on Dell Latitude D820 Laptop

      The PowerBook G4 Mac in the house finally quit working. We splurged $300 on a brand new laptop recently. We got a 3 year old Dell Latitude D820 from Craigslist. With 2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo, and 1920×1200 screen resolution – that makes for an impressive system with Ubuntu 9.10 installed.

      [...]

      All in all, I am very pleased with the clean look and speedy performance of Ubuntu 9.10 on the Dell D820. Linux has come a long way, and now looks totally professional, especially on a high resolution screen. It certainly feels like I’m using serious computing power, and the fact that it’s open source, free, and so adaptable – is just inspiring. Thanks to the leagues of open source developers out there who created an amazing system, which in my opinion is clearly superior to Windows on the basis of speed, flexibility, and cost. I’d like to hear from others if they also have similar opinions on the speed issues – and if so – why isn’t everyone switching to Linux on the basis of that metric alone.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Phones

    • Nokia reveals secret Pole Dancing Robots feature for N900

      Symbian may have gone open-source, but Nokia’s Maemo smartphone OS had OPEN SAUCE galore at the Push N900 event in London this week.

    • Nokia N900 review

      With the implementation of the Nokia N900 Maemo 5, the menu structure is entirely new, which means that it takes time to get used to. After startup, there are a number of home screens for the user to scroll through. Widgets, average shortcuts or contacts can be added to a home screen. This structure is found on several mobile phones nowadays and is very convenient. It allows you to create your own user environment, containing everything that is important to you, in an easy way.

    • Android

      • 6 of the Best Android Mobile Devices

        Android is the name given to a mobile operating system using a customised version of the Linux kernel. It was first released in late 2008. The platform enables developers to write code in the Java language, controlling the device via Java libraries developed by Google.

      • Google/HTC’s Nexus One is only $49 (in a manner of speaking)

        Would you like to get the Google/HTC Nexus One Superphone for a cool $49?

        What if I also threw in the unlocked version of the phone?

        Now what if I also said you don’t need to sign a two year contract?

        [...]

        So, Google/HTC could have very easily made this one phone model compatible with not only T-Mobile and AT&T, but pretty much any 3GSM network worldwide if they only included the right combination of power amplifiers. According to iSuppli’s teardown of the Nexus One, the four small power amplifiers that are in the Nexus One only account for $2.20 in manufacturing costs. $2.20! How much more could a different combination of power amplifiers have cost? Maybe another $2 (at most)?!

      • Make sense of the Android buzz with this cheat sheet

  • Tablets

    • iFreeTablet – the open source iPad competitor from Spain

      Competition for the Apple iPad is already threatening to come from many different, well-known companies. Google and HTC may have a tablet this year, Microsoft certainly has a few running Windows 7 from its partner manufacturers. But another tablet looks promising and comes from a complete unknown.

    • Chromium code changes add more weight to Google tablet speculation

      Evidence supporting the theory that Google is planning to release its own tablet computer is mounting, according to new online reports.

Free Software/Open Source

• FOSDEM 2010: Tag: Exportable

• WebKit still receiving contributions from Nokia, Apple, Google and Rim

  While you can argue about what the numbers actually mean, it’s nice to see that the main players in mobile browser are all feeding back changes to the WebKit open-source project. Alongside Nokia (and Trolltech), Apple, Google and RIM are all contributing in some form, as shown in Evan Martin’s blog post to the Chromium web

• America’s First Public Koha Library Chooses ByWater Solutions

  ByWater Solutions, an open source community supporter and official Koha support company, announced today that Nelsonville Public Library, serving Athens County, Ohio since 1935, has partnered with them for the implementation of Koha, the open source integrated library system.

• VivoWare to Open Source VivoSocial for Custom Social Networks

  VivoWare, Inc today announced plans to release source code for VivoSocial™ as open source. This initiative will let developers worldwide participate in the growth of the industry’s most advanced social networking framework for building rich social Internet applications for the DotNetNuke framework. The open source VivoSocial SDK and documentation will be available under the MIT License.

• Confusion over Sun’s Kenai hosting platform

  Now the future of Kenai is being portrayed in a somewhat different light. Ted Farrell, Oracle’s Chief Architect with co-responsibility for developer tools and middleware products, has announced that Oracle does indeed plan to close down kenai.com to concentrate on java.net as its central hosting platform, but that Oracle is in the process of migrating the Java community portal to the Kenai technology.

• The Cloud Is Not a Place

  Full disclosure: I like SugarCRM and have a lot of respect for what they are trying to do. The idea of open source CRM is very appealing and can be very successful — like open source operating systems (think Linux), open encyclopedias (like Wikipedia) and open source Web servers like Apache. All of these open source products are very good in their own right and highly sought-after. Let me give just one example of open source success: Apache has 52 percent of the market for Web server software.

• 15 Open-Source PBX/VoIP Products To Know

  Will this be the year open-source PBX and VoIP systems are ready for their close-up? The opportunity is better than ever, argued attendees at January’s Digium Asterisk World conference in Miami. According to one researcher, Eastern Management Group, open-source PBXes now account for 18 percent of all PBX sales in North America — and that number’s rising.

• UCLA Team Sequences Cell Line, Puts Open Source Software Framework into Production

  In their paper, which appeared in last week’s PLoS Genetics, the team highlighted “enormous improvements in the throughput of data generation.” The scientists had decided to mainly use open source software for the project, putting in place an open-source analysis and data-management pipeline called SeqWare, which was developed in the lab.

• KnowledgeTree Links with Open Tech

  KnowledgeTree, an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) provider focusing on document management software, announced it joined Open Tech, a new channel for open source independent software vendors (ISVs) to market and sell the company’s solutions to thousands of resellers nationwide.

• TWIA Episode 16: Open Source Rocks!

  With Pamela Fox (@pamelafox) from Google Australia as our special guest this week, the TWIA crew tried to make sense out of the JooJoo’s new partnership with CSL Malaysia. We also reviewed the future of Naver, the top search engine in South Korea, the Malaysia government’s declaration of 95% adoption in OSS and most exciting of all, the impact of the court ruling on iiNet’s victory over the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT). Not to mention, we weaved Google Wave, FilmCamp SG, the #dIE6 movement and adoption of open source in governments into an exciting week of This Week in Asia.

• Paradigm Works Releases Free Open Source Software for VMM-based Verification

  Paradigm Works, Inc., a world-class leader in ASIC and FPGA development services and software, announced today that it has released its RegWorks™ Spec2Reg tool as Free Open Source Software (FOSS) for the chip development community. Built on VMM’s Register Abstraction Layer (RAL) capability, Spec2Reg provides development teams a fully automated path for taking register definitions from design specification to verification implementation.

• Office Suites

  • 5 open source office suites to watch

    The Microsoft Office productivity suite has risen to become the dominant application of its type for business IT management. But there are open source office productivity suites available that may provide a suitable alternative to Office, depending on your requirements.

  • OpenOffice.org Extensions to Try

    Are you one who’s been showing presentations and wish that you have an idea what the next slide will be? The Sun Presenter Console might be the tool for you.

• International

  • Finland, FAO to bolster Ghana land administration system

    The US$ 2.4 million project will help FAO member countries to test and adopt low-cost open source technology for the benefit of their land records maintenance.

  • Will China grab open source now?

    ZDNet Asia blogger Frederic Muller, who has been promoting Linux in China for some time, says it’s about ownership and getting credit.

  • SourceForge turns off “blanket blocking”

    SourceForge, the open source project hosting site, has announced that it has turned off the “blanket block” on access from Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.

  • Some good news: SourceForge removes blanket blocking

• Australia

  • Queensland open source firm scores US deal

    Queensland open source software company Zac-Ware has scored a contract for its Jentla software with the sixth largest educational institution in the US.

  • Learning with the computer using open source

    John Graves, who ran a multimedia CD business during the dot-com boom and also put in time on Wall Street, is enrolled at the Auckland University of Technology (AUT). His doctorate aims to determine how quickly open source software projects can cycle or evolve.

• Mozilla

  • Licensing Delay Complicates Decision Between Open Source and Proprietary Video Players

    “Gack!” you say (justifiably). “Thank goodness I don’t need to know about this H.264-HTML5-Ogg Theora mumbo-jumbo.” Unfortunately, if you are in charge of encoding video for your Web site, if you design video players, or manage those who do, then you probably do need to pay attention.

    Blame it on YouTube and Apple. Though they didn’t start it, their recent moves have brought the debate about open-source video codecs from niche blogs to a wider audience.

    [...]

    There is one major obstacle to HTML5, however: Mozilla, the open-source developer of Firefox, doesn’t support H.264 because it’s a proprietary codec. (Mozilla and others in the open-source community prefer Ogg Theora. And Google is looking to buy On2, the company that owns yet another proprietary video codec.)

  • Mozilla Thunderbird 3 review

    While it offers advanced features that enable greater fine-tuning of settings than Mail, Thunderbird’s biggest selling point is its expandability. It supports hundreds of extensions including calendars, antispam, themes and encryption. Thunderbird can also run off a USB stick.

  • Mozilla releases Thunderbird 3.1 Alpha 1

    According to the developers, one of the main goals for the Thunderbird 3.1 Alpha 1 release is “to find out about possible problems caused by the changes in the underlying platform”.

• Intelligence

  • Accuity takes minority stake in World Compliance

    Accuity, the leading worldwide provider of payment routing data, AML screening software and services, is pleased to announce that it has acquired a significant minority stake in World Compliance, the Miami, Florida-based Open Source Intelligence company.

  • Open-Source Business Intelligence: 5 Times Bigger by 2012

    “Venture capital flooding into open-source start-ups over the past several years resulted in an explosion of enterprise-ready tools and applications,” writes Mark Madsen, industry expert and president of Third Nature in one of the reports, “Open Source Solutions: Managing, Analyzing, and Delivering Business Information.” The report, published by BEyeNetwork, contains the results of Madsen’s survey of more than 1,000 information technology professionals. About one-third of the respondents claim to have deployed open-source software for reporting, data integration, or database analytics purposes, and more than a third say they plan to evaluate open-source for analytics in the near term. Only 12 percent of respondents say they have no plans to look into open-source BI.

• BSD

  • Interview with Kris Moore, PC-BSD

    DW: From what I’ve read, PC-BSD makes a strong effort to add to the underlying FreeBSD operating system without changing the base. Are there any parts of FreeBSD you do have to change and what effect does this have on the system?

    KM: We’ve actually done a very good job at keeping as vanilla of a FreeBSD base as possible. With PC-BSD 8.0, the only differences are a few extra kernel configuration options, such as “atapicam” support to enable CD/DVD burning and options to enable some specific “pf” firewall features.

    DW: Could you please explain the relationship between PC-BSD and iXsystems? Do they own/control the project?

    KM: iXsystems owns the trademark “PC-BSD”, and greatly assists it by funding some of its development, along with promotion and support. The project itself is open source, of course. All our code is BSD licensed and freely available.

• Government

  • From Open Source to Open Government

    This means that once a company has begun the open source journey, and started to understand what that implies in terms of how software is created and used, they are then far better placed to work with governmental implementations of the same approach when they appear.

    In other words, the more a company deploys open source now, the better it will be able to see – and grasp – future opportunities as government gradually opens up its data treasuries. Yet another reason for not only using free software, but also embracing the underlying ideas it represents.

  • Make-or-buy balance still unclear in 2011 Defense and Veteran budgets

    The VA’s VistA system is open source, but aged. Late in the Bush years moves were made to replace it with a contracted system. In the new budget those moves are expected to bear fruit, just as open source VistA implementations are making waves in the private Electronic Health Record (EHR) marketplace.

  • Of governments and geeks

    But even as politicians start seeing the light, the pace and methods used by governments to free up facts are much influenced by independent, open-source software designers. (One reason that English-speaking governments are ahead of others is that there are a lot of activist anglophone open-source programmers.) Most of the data sets offered by governments bear the stamp “beta”, suggesting that they are open to improvement. With unusual humility, bureaucrats are borrowing jargon from open-source developers.

  • Hungarian Public Sector Mandated To Use Open Source Solutions

    Open standards have been made mandatory for the IT systems of Hungary’s public administrations. The Hungarian parliament voted in favour of amendments prescribing open standards, to a law on electronic government services, on 14 December. The changes received 197 votes in favour, one against and 146 abstentions, according to the Open Standard Alliance, a Hungarian advocacy group that lobbyed in favour of the amendments.

  • Tories pledge radical reform of public sector IT

    The Conservative Party says it intends to publish all IT contracts and Gateway project reviews. But the pledge, which is outlined in a paper on its information technology and communications strategy, is likely to be opposed by senior civil servants who have convinced successive Labour ministers of the need for continued secrecy over IT projects.

• Licensing

  • ICEsoft Technologies releases ICEpdf 4.0 open source PDF rendering

    This week ICEsoft Technologies announced the release of ICEpdf 4.0, its open source PDF rendering technology for Java.

  • Mark Radcliffe to Join the Board of UTEK Corporation

• Openness

  • Meet the Wikipedia of the mapping world

    If you want to find an up-to-date map of Haiti, then there is only one place to go. It is not Google Maps or any of its competitors. It is the admirable OpenStreetMap.org (OSM), which is being updated even as I write by volunteers all over the world.

  • MiraCosta professor goes with free books for class

    If there is one enduring truth about college students it is that they are usually broke —- and the way business professor Christina Hata sees it, she ought to do something to help them save money when possible.

    [...]

    For the second consecutive year, Hata has used free “open-source” textbooks in place of a $180 hardbound book as the main texts in her Small Business Management course at MiraCosta College.

    Open-source textbooks are electronic copies of books that can be downloaded from specialized Internet Web sites that are dedicated to making education more affordable.

  • Crowdsourcing + Open Source: the Perfect Combination for Startups?

    Crowdsourcing represents an interesting attempt to generalise the open source methodology to non-technical areas. The basic idea is to tap into the the vast store of knowledge and wisdom among the general population by providing a mechanism to funnel the best ideas to those who can build on them.

• Programming

  • VSOpen Source Tools Available for Game Development Discussed at IGDS 2010

    Industry-quality open source tools that can be utilized in the development of video games without compromising the quality of the game or the experience.

  • Rails 3.0 beta features merger with Merb framework

    Ruby on Rails 3.0, an upgrade to the popular Web development framework that features a merger with the Merb framework, has just gone into a beta release, according to a blog post on the Ruby on Rails Web site this week.

• Applications

  • 8 of the Best Free Linux Geometry Software

    In the field of mathematical software packages, applications such as Wolfram Research’s Mathematica, and Maplesoft’s Maple system instantly spring to mind. These are both highly popular, proprietary, commercial, integrated mathematical software environments. Other types of mathematical software packages generally receive much less publicity.

  • 5 Useful and Fun GIMP Plug-ins

    For those of you who use GIMP, you know it is a really great alternative to Photoshop. Like any program, free or not, there is always room for improvement. Plugins are a an easy way to add functionality.

    GIMP has two different types of plugins, Script-fu and Python-fu. Right out of the box, you can add Script-fu plugins. To add Python based plugins, there is some additional steps and add-ons needed.

Leftovers

• Internet

  • Google analyst: U.S. Internet needs to get faster

    Google long has been an advocate of a single Web, one that’s free of government censorship and barriers to information access.

  • Google doppelgänger casts riddle over interwebs

    Asked for comment, Google merely said the domain is used to “identify the servers on our network,” and it hinted that such identification involves reverse DNS lookup – the process of determining which domain name is associated with a particular IP address. Reverse DNS is often used by anti-spam services to verify email senders, but it’s also used a general means of ensuring a network is working as it should be working.

  • Wither the web (site)

    Are web sites today so complicated because they have to be or because they can be?

    I am sure if you are a web site designer, you believe the former, but as an end user and part time designer, I am really beginning to wonder.

    For example, why do I need Flash, Silverlight, or Shockwave, to find where your restaurant is located? Why do I need to have JavaScript enabled to log into your web site? Why do I have to download megabytes of wrapper to read a couple of kilobytes of information?

• Science

  • IBM hits graphene transistor breakthrough

    IBM Research on Friday announced that it has demonstrated a radio-frequency graphene transistor with the highest frequency so far: 100GHz.

• Space

  • NASA administrator concerned about potential job losses

    On the eve of Sunday’s launch of space shuttle Endeavour, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said he supports President Obama’s goal of making the space industry a commercial venture, but is concerned about potential job losses at the agency.

  • Shuttle Endeavour blasts off for space station

    The space shuttle Endeavour bolted off its seaside launch pad on Monday on a voyage to install the last two main pieces of the International Space Station.

  • Shuttle Endeavour launches from Florida

    The US space shuttle has made its final night launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

    The Endeavour orbiter soared into the Florida sky on a 13-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

  • Astronauts to install a window on the world

    The weather is looking good here at the Kennedy Space Center for Sunday’s pre-dawn launch of the Endeavour shuttle.

• Security

  • China shuts down training website for hackers

    China has closed down what is believed to be the country’s biggest training website for hackers, state media has reported.

• Environment

  • Climate emails: were they really hacked or just sitting in cyberspace?

    But McIntyre was meanwhile guarded with his source in Norwich. He emailed him back: “I haven’t seen such a website. You’d think there’d be discussion on the blogs of something like that. I’ll definitely stay tuned!!” Only after the bloggers had launched their great scoop did he inform Dennis.

• Finance

  • Goldman Sachs And The Republicans

    I testified yesterday to the Senate Banking Committee hearing on the “Volcker Rules” (full pdf version; summary). My view is that while the principles behind these proposed rules are exactly on target – limiting the size of our largest banks and preventing any financial institution backed by the government, implicitly or explicitly, from taking big risks – the specific rule changes would need to be much tougher if they are to have any effect.

    Wall Street is strongly opposed to the Volcker Rules (link to the written testimony; webcast) and the discussion elicited some classic Goldman Sachs moments. Gerry Corrigan, a senior executive at Goldman and former head of the New York Fed, suggested that Goldman Sachs has an impeccable approach to risk management and seemed to imply that the firm was not in trouble in fall 2008. When pressed on why Goldman requested and was granted a banking license – and access to the Fed’s discount window – in September 2008, he fell back slightly, “There is no question whatsoever that when you look at totality of the steps that were taken by central banks and government, particularly in 2008, that Goldman Sachs was a beneficiary of this.”

  • Why Goldman Sachs Executives Go Into Government

    There’s a what? No wonder the American voter handed over control of Congress to the GOP. That’s a pretty corrupt move. Can we get a role call vote on that? And did it go into effect under Bush 41?

    Huh. This is the Ethics Reform Act of 1989. And it ‘passed by voice vote.’ It was first used under Clinton. And the New York Times discusses how Paulson could make $48M off it in 2006.

  • Keiser: Goldman Sachs’ Silent Coup d’Etat

    Max calls them “Financial Terrorists” and never lets up on Goldman Sachs. Watch the video and see what else we can agree on with Max Keiser and why… It’s a silent coup d’etat via Goldman Sachs.

  • Is Geithner going to Goldman Sachs?

    Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is scheduled to testify to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee tomorrow. The hearing is certain to be good theater. Whether it reveals good government, or a government working for the few at the expense of the many, is another matter.

  • Testy Conflict With Goldman Helped Push A.I.G. to Edge

    A.I.G. had long insured complex mortgage securities owned by Goldman and other firms against possible defaults. With the housing crisis deepening, A.I.G., once the world’s biggest insurer, had already paid Goldman $2 billion to cover losses the bank said it might suffer.

    A.I.G. executives wanted some of its money back, insisting that Goldman — like a homeowner overestimating the damages in a storm to get a bigger insurance payment — had inflated the potential losses. Goldman countered that it was owed even more, while also resisting consulting with third parties to help estimate a value for the securities.

  • You Had Better Cage The Monster CONgress (AIG/GS/CDS)

    I’ve been writing about this now over a year in regard to the mess that became of AIG, their “financial products” unit, and what I believe is culpability not only of certain financial parties but more importantly our regulators of these firms.

    Now The NY Times has published a new article that makes clear that my clarion call for major changes in these areas of the market were not only spot-on, but are even more necessary today than they were back then.

  • Present at the Destruction

    To be sure, Mr. Paulson has not written a book intended to rebut the conspiracy theorists who claim that he was driven to help his old firm, Goldman Sachs, or to aid big investment banks generally. He acknowledges that throughout the crisis he remained “in constant touch with Wall Street CEOs,” and he reports no fewer than 50 phone conversations with Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld between the March 2008 bailout of Bear Stearns and the Lehman bankruptcy in September.

  • CIA Agents Moonlight for Goldman Sachs

    CIA officers are allowed to moonlight, and ply their espionage skills elsewhere in their free time, reports Janine Wedel.

  • What Do People REALLY Think Of… Goldman Sachs?

    Should Goldman Sachs be regulated? Or are they doing nothing wrong at all? Do people even care about Goldman Sachs? Find out in the video above!

  • Warning: This is Not Another Wall Street Conspiracy Theory, These are the Facts

    Just last week, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing on the U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision to directly pay billions of dollars to banks as part of its scheme to bail out insurance giant American International Group Inc. (NYSE: AIG).

    According to committee Chairman Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, the testimony that congressmen heard just didn’t “pass the smell test.”

    [...]

    The same day that AIG received the $85 billion taxpayer infusion back in September 2008, Goldman Sachs Chief Financial Officer David A.Viniar said he “would expect the direct input of our credit exposure to both of them [referring also to bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings (OTC: LEHMQ)] to be immaterial.”

  • Goldman Sachs Wimps Out in Buck-Breaking Brawl: David Reilly

    Throughout the financial crisis, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. extolled the use of market prices to value holdings, saying this instills needed discipline. The firm’s hard-line stance turned to mush, though, when it came time to end a market myth that fueled 2008’s meltdown. Goldman, along with the mutual-fund industry, argues that it is fine for money-market funds to use historical values, rather than market prices, to value holdings. This helps money- market funds maintain a stable price of $1 a share. The problem: the $1 share price gives investors the false impression that money-market funds are like bank accounts and so can’t lose money.

  • When Goldman Sachs hates marking to market

    The most ridiculous sentence I’ve read today comes from Goldman Sachs, protesting against proposals that money-market funds should be marked to market. But first let’s remember what Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein has to say about marking to market:

    For Goldman Sachs, the daily marking of positions to current market prices was a key contributor to our decision to reduce risk relatively early in markets and in positions that were deteriorating. This process can be difficult, and sometimes painful, but I believe it is a discipline that should define financial institutions. We mark-to-market, not because we are required to, but because we wouldn’t know how to assess or manage risk if market prices were not reflected on our books.

    Now read this, from his employee James McNamara:

    We do not believe that disclosing shadow prices or market-based prices of portfolio securities would be informative to investors… Investors who perceive a NAV differential between two money market funds may wrongly assume that the fund with the lower market NAV is experiencing a material credit or liquidity problem. This may result in destabilizing — and unnecessary — levels of redemption activity in that fund, which could infect other funds managed by the same adviser or other funds as well. The Commission should be mindful of this type of unintended consequence before adopting regulations mandating the disclosure of market-based NAV’s and market-based pricing of portfolio securities.

  • Rivals Await Blankfein’s Bonus at Goldman Sachs

    Anxious executives at rival banks are awaiting the news with a mixture of envy and alarm. Guesses range from nothing to $100 million. Whatever the final figure is — high, low, or somewhere in between — it will set a new benchmark for pay throughout the industry. Goldman Sachs insisted on Wednesday that no decision had been made.

  • Golden Sacks: 57% pay rises for staff at Goldman Sachs… as bank claims it showed ‘restraint’

    The average employee at the giant investment bank scooped £308,000 in salary, bonuses and other benefits in 2009, which is £112,000 more than they got the previous year.

  • The man who walked away from Goldman Sachs

    Jon Winkelried had 2.8 million shares of GS (essentially all his networth), currently worth $500 million.

  • The Great American Financial Sandwich: Goldman Sachs, PricwaterhouseCoopers LLP and AIG

  • Goldman Sachs’s Corrigan Opposes `Volcker Rule’ to Limit Bank Risk-Taking

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

William Fischer, Harvard law professor and Free Culture Business Theorist 03 (2004)

Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.

Summary: Lawsuits from many fronts add to the trouble that Microsoft’s Xbox 360 already faces

Xbox 360 is a big disaster. Microsoft is putting an end to more parts of Xbox 360, but it still faces lawsuits that involve Xbox.

Well, the word has spread that Microsoft is sued over Live Points. We wrote about this before and Microsoft-sympathetic/paid sites are playing ball for Microsoft’s side, as usual. Microsoft opportunistically uses Psystar versus Apple as precedence and the outcome might be interesting. From BetaNews:

All the major home video game consoles offer downloadable games and add-ons that can be bought from a Web-based store, directly through the user’s console. But of the three major companies, Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft, only Sony assigns actual dollar values to its downloadable content. Both Microsoft and Nintendo work on points systems where users must first buy a specific amount of credits that are then spent on new content.

More here at Kotaku:

Samuel Lassoff, an attorney in Philadelphia, is taking Microsoft to court over claims that the Xbox 360’s currency system – Microsoft Points – exists to “unjustly enrich” the console manufacturer.

Microsoft handles several other Xbox 360 lawsuits, many of which involve patents. But here is one which relates to a real fiasco demonstrating that Xbox 360 can only be rented, not owned. From the news we have:

One of the reasons Xbox 360 owners shouldn’t be allowed to use unauthorized third-party memory cards is that users sign away their right to do so when purchasing the console, according to Microsoft.

In other words, the users do not own their own hardware that they paid for. Microsoft wants to bury serious allegations.

Sony is about to bring out a motion controller and maybe even beat Microsoft to it. Microsoft does not impress any of its console competitors because Xbox 360 was a failure from a technology and business perspective (extremely high error rates and massive losses which are related to those errors).

Sony is breathing down Microsoft’s neck, and it’s “not going to take too long” for the PS3 to pass the Xbox 360, the Japanese company has confidently claimed.

Nintendo was the first with the motion controller and it is the winner of this generation of consoles. Its competitors just try to imitate now.

Take yourself back in time to 2006 for a moment. The Wii just came out, and it has a controller that looks like a magic wand and controls games in a way that’s never been done — at least not on such a large scale, and not as the main draw of a console. Motion control establishes itself as a bonafide addiction, and the Wii turns into a runaway success.

Nintendo has managed to beat expectations as Wii sales increased. Microsoft is nowhere near and it has already spent billions trying to catch up. It’s the same as the story against Google. █

“They [Microsoft] have the deepest of pockets, unlimited ambition, and they are willing to lose money for years and years just to make sure that you don’t make any money, either. And they are mean, REALLY mean.”

–Robert X. Cringely

Summary: A look at Facebook’s relationship with Microsoft in 2010; Microsoft employees have an effect in competitors of Microsoft, so this issue is addressed too

IN an earlier post we said we would elaborate on the Facebook affairs. We shall do that now and also expand on the issue of entryism (Microsoft entering other corporations).

Facebook — to its credit — contributes a little to Free software, but the management over there is close to Microsoft^* and it does all sorts of favours to Microsoft (we wrote about them before). Microsoft is pushing out/causing inconveniences to Facebook’s non-Microsoft customers, on whom it also spies with JavaScript.

The previous post was about Silver Lie infiltrations through NASA, so now is a good opportunity to mention this new announcement: “Microsoft Launches The Facebook Silverlight Client”

Facebook is said to be dropping Microsoft adverts (less spyware from Microsoft) and there is also this in the news:

• Zynga’s FarmVille Expands Beyond Facebook to MSN-ier Pastures
• Zynga’s ‘FarmVille’ Facebook Game Debuts on MSN Site (Update2)
• FarmVille Ready To Harvest A New Crop Of Users With MSN Games Partnership
• Zynga exports popular FarmVille to MSN Games
• Zynga To Bring Its Games To Microsoft Properties

This is another game that will enable Microsoft to spy directly (not via Facebook) on users. As for Facebook, they still have a Bong [sic] deal that enables Microsoft to watch over Facebook users. Microsoft has a new patent on “personal data mining”, which we last mentioned here some days ago; this is important and Canonical should pay attention [1, 2].

When it comes to display advertising on its own site, Facebook is taking full control of its inventory away from Microsoft. Even prior to Microsoft’s initial $240 million investment in Facebook in 2007, the two companies had an advertising partnership giving Microsoft the ability to serve display ads on the social network. That was a three-year deal which was up for renewal. The two companies just finished renegotiating it, and Microsoft will no longer be serving up display ads on Facebook.

“Facebook Swaps Banners for Search Deal With Microsoft” says this new article:

Facebook is changing its approach to display advertising and dropping traditional banner advertising, which Microsoft has sold on the social network since 2006. But Facebook is also deepening an existing search deal with the tech company that will put Bing.com results in front of Facebook’s 400 million global users.

Microsoft keeps its feet inside Facebook not only with an investment but with search too. People must not underestimate these things because Microsoft has offshoots that are dedicated to data mining on individuals and controlling what they write. This leads us to another problem.

“Microsoft keeps its feet inside Facebook not only with an investment but with search too.”A couple of weeks ago we pointed out that Microsoft was coming near to Red Hat's headquarters. A couple of hours ago, Jan from Red Hat publicly told me: “the exodus at MSFT leaves a bad taste. Are they maybe “infiltrating” other corps and orgs?”

Well, based on the latest news [1, 2], Microsoft might be setting up a datacentre right in Red Hat’s back yard. Locations of datacentres are usually strategic [1, 2] (because of tax, competitors, recruits, and other political reasons [1, 2]).

Another type of strategic move would be prizes/awards. Microsoft is buying more influence in other companies by rewarding them and the CEO of Evolve Technologies has just been made a Microsoft MVP, just like Miguel de Icaza. Miguel is problematic because of his role at Novell and the CodePlex Foundation, the executive of which we mentioned here before (here is the official press release).

Anyway, another company that has just been ‘injected’ with Microsoft influence would be G2G3, based on this press release.

G2G3 appoints industry thought leader as US Director of Architecture

[...]

He spent 11 years in a senior position at Microsoft Corporation where he was responsible for the architectural development of Microsoft’s system management products and technologies.

We are actually more concerned about another new Nokia appointment (DRM influence in Nokia came from a man who used to work for Microsoft). Here are the latest details:

Manos joined Digital Realty from Microsoft, where he ran Microsoft’s global data center operations. His new job will put him in competition with other big vendors building mobile services platforms, including Google, Apple and Microsoft, he noted.

More here:

Mr. Manos used to head up Microsoft’s vast data center operations. In that role, he set up many of the enormous computing centers that handle Microsoft’s myriad online services, including Xbox Live, hosted e-mail and the Azure business software platform.

And this is the guy whom Nokia hires for a notable role? Recipe for another Wenger-esque disaster. █

“Compatibility with DRM. We understand that this could be a sore point in W3C, but from our viewpoint, any DRM-incompatible video related mechanism is a non-starter with the content industry (Hollywood).”

–Stephan Wenger, Nokia [PDF] (previously worked with Microsoft)

____
^* Facebook’s father has interpersonal relationships with Ozzie and Microsoft's patent troll Nathan Myhrvold.

Summary: Microsoft-imposed corruption of NASA’s obligation to the public carries on as it strives to capture academia too

NASA is going through some rough times at the moment. In our daily links we have included some stories about budget constraints/cuts, so clearly there are no spending sprees over there, not anymore anyway. What some would find infuriating (as several of our readers did) is that Microsoft is using the tax-funded NASA to sell Microsoft products and close the Web to non-Microsoft customers (public NASA data becomes accessible only via Microsoft Silver Lie or patents-encumbered Trojans). We gave examples in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].

Microsoft is doing it again, this time in Texas. Here is the press release:

In partnership with the Texas Business and Education Coalition, the state of Texas and Microsoft, NASA is pleased to invite Texas high school students to participate in the bliink Web design competition.

We could not confirm if this one too involves Silver Lie, but the rules of the competition make it clear that it’s just some more NASA-backed promotion of Microsoft’s proprietary software.

Bliink is a Web design contest (“Contest”) for students that encourages them to dream big and to express their ideas while building their technology skills. Student participants will design and develop a Web site using Microsoft® Expression® suite of software tools.

Silverlight only? Maybe? Like the last time NASA got involved? We don’t quite know, but either way, Silverlight has pretty much failed in the market years after its release and Forrester admits that there is a problem (Microsoft is a Forrester client).

Microsoft needs to build developer mindshare, on top of its efforts to establish exclusive content deals, to fulfill ambition for Silverlight to achieve Web ubiquity, says an industry analyst.

The headline says that “Silverlight still needs more developers” and NASA is giving it to Microsoft (Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza is also trying). NASA is not a private company, which is what makes it so ludicrous. This is not the only area where NASA is serving Microsoft’s interests as of late. It gives public data to Microsoft and requires that the public buys Microsoft products.

Another way of tricking developers into Silverlight is the set of *Spark programmes, which Microsoft uses to achieve something similar (through dumping, especially on young people). From India we learn about a “Microsoft Bizspark Camp”. Where else have we heard of a “camp”? Here’s where: young MSPs in India attending camps with Microsoft gifts.

How low can Microsoft stoop? “Microsoft India rolls out BizSpark One” is the headline of this new article and Microsoft sponsors something similar in the Bahamas:

The camp was sponsored by Microsoft, Indusa Global, and Cogentes.

Returning to science for a moment, following Microsoft's closing of the Feynman lectures (using Silver Lie), we find the company using ‘free’ samples to lock down research [1, 2, 3, 4]. To quote Microsoft’s old friend from the New York Times:

It uses Microsoft’s Windows Azure computing system, which the company recently introduced to compete with cloud computing services from companies like Amazon, Google, I.B.M. and Yahoo. These cloud computing systems allow organizations and individuals to run computing tasks and Internet services remotely in relatively low-cost data centers.

The previous post showed the latest examples of Azure downtime. This can disrupt researchers in the middle of an important and long experiment or simulation. Bad choice, no? The scientific community rarely chooses Windows (for supercomputers in particular, unless Novell gets involved).

Based on this new press release, Microsoft’s deal with Zend (around 2006) is still being exploited, this time to use PHP to promote Azure. Microsoft booster Gavin Clarke wrote about it in his usual promotional fashion.

Zend Technologies has updated its developer framework to improve the way PHP applications float on Microsoft’s Azure cloud.

It is worth mentioning that Clarke has grown very close to Microsoft and he even collaborates with Mary Jo Foley right now. They are defending one of the most corrupt companies in the history of IT. Last night someone posted the following message in USENET:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=5152%20&tag=content;wrapper

I’ve noticed for quite a while that Mary-Jo is simply too much of a Microsoft fangirl to be a truly unbiased reporter. I can understand her not being outright anti-Microsoft because that would get her shut out of the company she’s reporting on. But that doesn’t mean she has to defend almost everything the company does. She almost sounds like a Microsoft PR-spokesperson disguised as a reporter, defending M$ and its management no matter how they screw up and always trying to find a positive spin on any news which negatively portrays the company.

I’ve noticed too that The Register, in the past well known for it vitriolic attacks on Microsoft, has taken a much softer stand towards the company. I rarely see outright scathing critcism on them anymore, instead they usually merely report incidents in which the company is invovled (i.e. security lapses) with mild cynicism. Has The Register succummed to the carrot of Greenbacks?

I replied by saying: “The Register signed a deal with Microsoft and it has Microsoft boosters like Kelly and Gavin on their staff. Microsoft’s payments to The Register paid off.” █

Summary: Microsoft continues to give online operations and online storage a bad name because of its sheer incompetence

ONLY when it happens to Google people tend to notice a downtime and publish reports about it, but Microsoft, whose Azure ‘cloud’ was once down for a whole day, receives almost no flak. Microsoft cannot beat Google because it uses an inferior stack that the London Stock Exchange (LSE) is dumping right now [1, 2]. Even Bing crashed and fell offline some months ago, which was hardly surprising.

Now we learn that Azure fell offline for over half of a working day, demonstrating yet again that Microsoft — not computing over a network — is the weakest link.

On the heels of my story about the Microsoft (MSFT) TechNet registration servers being down for five days, I received an email from a reader claiming that Microsoft Online Service, the current name for its cloud offerings, had a five hour outage. According to the tip, that included the hosted Exchange email service. This is clearly not the sort of thing corporations want to hear when considering who to trust going forward in cloud computing.

More here:

Microsoft’s cloud has been hiccuping all week, cutting North American customers off from access to the services included in its Business Productivity Online Suite, which includes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Office Live Meeting.

But wait. That’s not all. There are other new examples.

The Zune downtime that we wrote about recently merely followed a longer Zune downtime from last year and now it seems like data is being lost too:

According to a post on the Zune Forums, owners of the Zune Pass are having a bit of trouble accessing the music they’re paying for with their subscription, as first reported by Engadget. In less than two weeks, the thread in question has passed 50 replies as users complain and list what they can no longer access: specific songs, entire albums, or even everything produced by an artist.

This could be like SideKick all over again (but at a smaller scale because almost nobody uses a Zune). For details, see:

• Microsoft Pink is Already Declared Dead and Danger Dies with Permanent Data Loss
• Microsoft Sued for Data Loss
• Lawsuits Against Microsoft Turn to Class Action Lawsuit While Microsoft Mobiles Become Dying Breed
• Microsoft Recovers Sidekick Data? Not So Fast!
• Microsoft Sued for Sidekick Disaster, Fined for Using “Money Power” to “Harass” Defendants

Another new example comes from the Australian press, which writes about a Microsoft service that has been down for over a month.

Entrepreneur finds Microsoft closed for business

A PERTH small-business owner has been at his wits’ end trying to register a legitimate copy of Microsoft Office on the software giant’s own website.

Jim Embury, a safety and risk consultant for the oil industry, has been talking to Microsoft Australia’s hotline personnel over the course of more than a week to resolve the matter, but there’s no end in sight.

Microsoft’s damage control comes from the ‘Microsoft press’, as usual. It’s like a Microsoft outlet pretending to be official news.

From the same Australian publication happens to come the following report which is deceiving. It is just like BECTA in the UK where they talk about “savings” (on software that costs nothing to copy) but not about “expenses”. It opens like this:

QUEENSLAND is set to save $10 million over three years because of a whole-of-government deal signed with Microsoft Australia late last year.

What an utterly poor opening. It pretends that by paying Microsoft, Queensland is actually receiving a payment. It’s the art of spin. Australia in general is close to Microsoft, partly because it speaks English and trades with the US. We wrote about these factors many times before. That’s another story altogether and it usually annoys the apolitical. █

Summary: Analysis of Canonical’s latest moves, which are being defended by some and severely criticised by others

UBUNTU is an important part of the GNU/Linux family and we defend it at every chance, always giving it the benefit of the doubt. Some readers pressure us to change the tune, which would be hard and counter-productive. I have personally used Ubuntu at some capacity since its very first release (which I was using at work).

In the interest of presenting perspectives of other people and showing Canonical where it can improve, this post accumulates mostly criticisms of the company’s latest moves.

“Canonical has already employed other ex-Novell employees and some might attribute Mono affinity to this.”“PyCon sprint for Windows support” is the title of a post right here at Canonical.com. It made Pamela Jones (over at Groklaw) write “Blech.”

We previously defended this strategy, which we believe to be a case of Canonical reaching out to Windows users. In relation to the Yahoo! deal signed by Canonical [1, 2], Jones wrote: “And if Microsoft offers you money, will you change it to Bing? Wait. Is Yahoo not Bing, if you stop and think about it a little? Microsoft has plenty of money, so if money is all it takes to undermine and corrupt what I used to think of as a FOSS project, it will happen.”

This is why we prefer not to openly criticise (or “attack”) Ubuntu; it would only serve Microsoft if unnecessary infighting was to occur. Novell is a different case because it uses its beloved software patents to directly discriminate against other GNU/Linux vendors and it publicly aligns itself with the monopolist. Microsoft is not completely external here; we have already shown how at least one former Microsoft employee entered Ubuntu, which probably means that Canonical HR did a poor job.

“Shouldn’t we leave the [Microsoft] elephant alone and stop poking it with sticks? Well, the problem is they aren’t going to leave us alone,” said Jeremy Allison some weeks ago. We wrote about these remarks in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. He also warned about Mono in Ubuntu [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. Robert O’Callahan from Mozilla wrote some more things about Allison’s public appearance at LCA 2010:

Jeremy Allison’s talk about Microsoft was good. We’ve feared Microsoft for so long it’s become almost unfashionable, but I think Jeremy is right to keep reminding the free software community of the danger there. He talked about Microsoft’s attempts to take over the Web, and kindly mentioned Firefox’s role in pulling us back from that brink. He made the point (which I think is too often overlooked) that which company one works for is almost always an individual moral choice and we should hold people accountable for it … we can’t let people off the hook by saying “oh, the company I work for is just evil and I can’t do anything about it”. The focus of his talk was the suggestion that Microsoft is gearing up for an all-out patent war on free software. I don’t know if this is true — honestly, I expected them to do it long ago and I’m not sure what’s been holding them back — but we certainly do need to keep aware of the possibility. Jeremy suggested that Microsoft will promote “RAND” standards — standards covered by patents whose licenses would require a “Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory” fee, which sound good except that for free software, any non-zero fee is a show-stopper. In fact, as I discussed later in my talk, RAND-encumbered standards won’t fly in the traditional Web standards world — e.g. CSS and HTML5. We have a very good situation there, where everyone understands that any suggestion that can’t be implemented in Gecko (MPL/LGPL/GPL) or Webkit (LGPL) is simply a non-starter. However, we do face a very serious situation in video, where the licensing isn’t even RAND, and possibly in other technologies such as touch interfaces. It was good to be able to use some of these issues that Jeremy raised as launching points for my talk.

“How will Ubuntu’s move to proprietary software affect the free world?” is the title of this post that Groklaw pointed to last week, adding: “Some of the responses are downright worrisome.” Yes, Jones too is concerned that Ubuntu neglects the “Free” in FOSS.

This brings us to the next subject, which is Matt Asay. We have written about his appointment twice already [1, 2] but what we have not yet mentioned is that Matt Asay almost went working for Microsoft some years ago. He wrote about it, but a lot of people do know this. Also, we have not yet mentioned the timing of his departure from Alfresco, which intersects Alfresco’s departure from the GPL. Novell used to pay Matt Asay’s wage, which is another important fact that Ghabuntu mentions:

A founding member of Novell’s Linux Business Office and an early influencer and participant in the company’s move to Open Source, Matt Assay will bring to Canonical and the Ubuntu project an in depth knowledge of commercial marketing of open source

Canonical has already employed other ex-Novell employees and some might attribute Mono affinity to this. Several months ago, when a former Microsoft employee who now leads Ubuntu’s desktop endeavours called for the removal of the GIMP, we immediately responded and later pointed out a reader's opinion that Paint.NET might be added next. Now, watch this new Mono project called Pinta, which strives to mimic Paint.NET.

Anyway, going back to Asay, here is what he wrote in his personal blog:

All day Friday, congratulations hit my Twitter account (mjasay). I got dozens of emails, too, and 50+ comments on my CNET blog where I announced the change. It was overwhelming, because I (perhaps like you) normally assume that no one is that interested in me.

Hopefully none of those messages were from Microsoft, which used to take him out to lunch and other places in attempt to acquire his love. Microsoft calls this "schmoozing". At least he did not end up working for Microsoft; in fact, he went the other way to become a big fan of Apple and their products, which he is miserably trying to characterise as open source (they are just about as closed as something can get, as iPad shows perfectly well [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]). Matt Asay will also need a new E-mail address. mjasay@mac.com does not work well for a Canonical employee.

The founder of the Free Software Foundation Europe writes in reply to Jan (from Red Hat): “RT @jwildeboer: @mjasay making Ubuntu OpenCore now? > He But seriously: Congratulations, @mjasay!”

This notion of “Open Core” (like Mono) for a project such as Ubuntu would not so far fetched. The Source wrote about reasons why Matt Asay joining Canonical is mostly bad news:

Good Thing

For Mr. Asay, this is a good thing: he will greatly expand his influence, and be able to impose his philosophy on what is arguably the most popular distro.

Bad Thing

For everyone else, this is a bad thing: he will greatly expand his influence, and be able to impose his philosophy on what is arguably the most popular distro.

Ubuntu is already under too much influence from anti-Free Software, pro-Commercialization / pro-Fauxpen Source thinkers. They hire ex-Microsoft and ex-Novell employees, brook virtually no discussion on fundamentally divisive technologies like Mono and Moonlight, and put profits ahead of both user experience and ethics by making Microsoft the “opt-out” default search provider. At best, this mindset considers the Free Software foundation of GNU/Linux an inconvenience or distraction.

Our reader Goblin wrote the following post regarding Canonical’s decision to drop OpenOffice.org from a minimal version of Ubuntu. He is going further than that:

Ubuntu has been receiving quite a bit of attention on Openbytes. I was (and still am) optimistic regarding possible native Linux proprietary software being offered to users, but what with Gnome being the flagship DE for Ubuntu (led up by Microsoft MVP Mr De Icaza and the “gift to the world” Mono), Ubuntu having the “good ship Yahoo” (bound for Microsoft) as its default search engine, I can’t help feeling that as it stands now Ubuntu 10.04 is far from “Lucid”.

And what of Gimp? Reports from Alpha’s of 10.04 state that the package is still present. Are Canonical going to remove it and if they do is that for the opportunity of a proprietary option or are they going to try it on with a Mono app?

Canonical has, in my opinion a rather large responsibility and a great opportunity. There can be little doubt that Ubuntu is one of the most, if not the most popular Linux distro’s and is many users first experience of the Linux platform. If Canonical decisions and actions are seen as a poorer cousin of Microsoft then I would predict its user base would decline. As Ive said before I believe had Novell not signed “the deal” with Microsoft, it would be Novell in the position that Canonical is now.

Yesterday we showed that Microsoft takes over companies from which it is removing the GNU/Linux focus. We used FAST as an example. Richard Rasker wrote: “Hm, haven’t we seen this before — Microsoft buying a mixed OS outfit, then dropping the non-Windows part, even if it doesn’t make sense? The names Hotmail and GeCAD come to mind …”

“It looks like a divide and conqueror plan to me,” says Locutus in his latest headline:

Being a large and world wide company with deep pockets and short arms they can afford to take the long term view of something. They seem to be relying on the fact that peoples memories can be short sighted. So they buy a company which supports operating systems other than windows and then over time they reduce the support for the other operating systems.

We also saw that happening to Novell, Xandros, Corel, and others. We hope that it is not happening to Ubuntu. Later on we will write about what Microsoft is doing to Facebook, which runs on the LAMP stack. █

Summary: Apple’s iPad still faces sometimes-overwhelming criticism, even from the company’s own supporters and existing/former staff

AS WE have shown before, Apple’s iPad disappointed [1, 2, 3, 4]. Even keen supporters of Apple thought it was a bad product. Now we have it confirmed even by Apple people; to be exact, it’s the former Apple executive behind the Newton:

The iPad is too big and lacks communication capabilities, argued the former Apple executive who oversaw the demise of the company’s iconic-but-flawed Newton more than a decade ago.

Yikes.

Anyway, the FSF’s educational campaign about the iPad’s effects on people’s rights continues to receive publicity and one person calls the iPad “a technological faux pas”:

Which is rather disappointing, considering the opportunity that Apple had to launch the iPad with Mac OS X and be a truly powerful computing device.

Time.com writes about the iPad’s shortcomings. This product from Apple seems like a miss, not a hit, but the important thing is that it teaches people how standards-hostile and customer-hostile products from Apple have become. █

“Microsoft does not hesitate to use its operating system monopoly power and application program dominance to try to eliminate competition.”

–Apple Computer Senior VP Avadis Tevanian Jr.

Summary: Another Microsoft Vice President has just left Microsoft, joining the ranks of many more

THE Microsoft exodus carries on. The latest one to leave is Michael Golden:

The Microsoft Education Products Group corporate vice president has left the company after his team was reorganized and placed within the Microsoft Business Division.

Over at New Zealand, the internal turmoil Microsoft is going through [1, 2] ends up with temporary appointments, which are always a bad sign.

Microsoft New Zealand managing director Kevin Ackhurst will take two months long service leave from February, the company announced today.

This is just the latest debacle among more in New Zealand, with the government furthermore warning the public against the use of Internet Explorer [1, 2, 3]. Watch what Microsoft New Zealand told the NZ Herald some days ago:

The latest security threat to hit the internet has provided further evidence that cyberspace is the new battleground between hostile nations, says Microsoft’s chief technologist in New Zealand.

Well, he sure ‘forgets’ to mention that Microsoft software is the cause. We wrote about this a couple of days ago.

Anyway, the major news is that another Microsoft Vice President is out and investors do notice the vacuum. From recent days we have:

Wake Up Call For Microsoft

[...]

All its executives in charge of music, e-books, phone, online search and tablet efforts over the past decade have left the organization.

In a later post we will write about the Windows exodus, which involves almost all the Windows managers leaving the company in very recent years (the “Vista era” drives them away and Vista 7 is not much better). █

Read the log

Enter the IRC channel now

To use your own IRC client, join channel #boycottnovell in FreeNode.

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers
• Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

GNU/Linux

• New approach sought with open source desktops

  Horizons Regional Council “would be remiss not to investigate alternatives” to Microsoft on the desktop, as it has a responsibility to the ratepayers that fund it to spend their money wisely, says William Gordon, IT team leader at the council.

  Horizons, covering a large area of the mid-North Island, has agreed to participate in the Public Sector Remix project, devised by the NZ Open Source Society.

  “We’ll be trialling the Ubuntu-based desktop devised for the Remix project, initially on six to eight PCs,” Gordon says.

  The council expects to start the trial within the next two months. There is no firm plan for project duration, but it will probably last between four and six weeks, he says. Horizons wants to have a month-end included in the test, to test the open source systems’ ability to handle regular peaks in workload.

  The main driver for Horizons to consider open source was the failure of the government’s G2009 negotiations for bulk purchase of Microsoft software last year.

  “That caused us to realise that we should be investigating alternatives for the next three-year cycle.”

• Don’t be shy

  In this article I shall attempt to relive my experience finding, beginning to use; and finally full conversion into a GNU/Linux desktop user. I will enumerate both the frustrations and the pleasures experienced during this first year of use. In an attempt at full disclosure my opinions and bias will be sprinkled throughout; after all this is written entirely from personal perspective. In the end the purpose of writing this is to provide the experience of one local (eastbay) user to any and all people who have started to use, or contemplated using Linux (shortened from Gnu/Linux for brevity) for any reason.

• Linux Professional Institute and Training Materials

  Recently there has been a discussion on the Linux Professional Institute (LPI) mailing list about why LPI does not publish its own training materials to help students prepare for their tests. I started to answer in the mailing list, but instead I decided to answer here.

  LPI, of course, is a non-profit organization that creates certification exams for Linux systems administrators. It is distribution neutral, and tries to be comprehensive in its tests.

• Audiocasts

  • Podcast 71 Are you a Slacker?

    In this podcast comprookie talks about learning Python as a group, and his Gentoo unslacking.

  • 2010 Show Notes · Going Linux Podcast

    Feb 05: #092 – Listener Feedback

• Kernel Space

  • What to Expect at LinuxCon 2010 this August in Boston!

    The call for participation and registration opened for LinuxCon today signaling the beginning of planning for the 2nd Annual LinuxCon.

  • Worlds Smallest Tux Image !!

  • Linux NIC teaming recommendations

    Most people should use ALB (mode=6) for NIC teaming their Linux server because it is the simplest method to achieve fault-tolerance and load balancing. If you require higher bandwidth, and you have an internally redundant switch, and you can configure your switchports to use LACP, then you should use LACP (mode=4) for NIC teaming.

  • Graphics Stack

    • X.Org Server 1.7.5 Is Just About Done

      Peter Hutterer has put out a new release candidate for X Server 1.7.5, which also marks this point release as being just about complete.

    • Cleaning Up The Linux Graphics Driver Stack

      Yesterday Luc Verhaegen gave a talk at FOSDEM on reverse engineering a motherboard BIOS, but today we finally have X@FOSDEM for the last time. Luc has just begun his talk on unifying and simplifying the free software desktop’s graphics driver stack. Here are his slides and we will be back with more updates and videos on Phoronix as the presentation progresses.

• Applications

  • Manage your money in Linux with HomeBank

    For many Linux users one area where Linux needs some improvement is money management. Yes there is the very powerful GnuCash (check out GnuCash in my article “GnuCash: Open source Accounting/Financing goodness“). But many users find GnuCash to be too much power for what they need. There is also the slick KMyMoney, but that depends upon KDE. So what do the non-power, non-KDE users have? One option is HomeBank.

  • Instructionals

    • Six Easy Steps to Make a Super Secure Linux Server

    • TestDrive Automatically Downloads And Runs The Latest Ubuntu Development Snapshot In A Virtual Machine

    • How to configure Java / Javac on Linux

    • Intel D945GCLF2 and Surround Sound on Gentoo

    • Quickly access hard drive contents in ubuntu with Hawkscope

    • Create animated wallpaper with XML slideshow creator

    • How to install Gyachi in ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic)

    • Grsync – A Graphical User Interface for Rsync

    • Gobby server in 3 steps

    • Howto boot ISO images via grub2 with ubuntu

    • LAMP Server Setup CentOS 5 64-Bit in 5 mins!

    • Linux – Check OS Brand And Version

    • 13 Ways To Customize Ubuntu Netbook Remix For Better Usability

      Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) is a modified version of Ubuntu specially for the netbooks. The latest version of UNR runs Ubuntu Karmic in the backend, but the interface has been heavily customized to make it looks/functions good in small screen. Recently, I installed UNR on my netbook (as a replacement for WinXP). While I like the interface, I find that there are still many places that can be improved for better usability and performance. Here I will highlight several of my own customizations.

  • Games

    • Waste plenty of time with Frozen Bubble and gnubik

      Let’s face it, we sit at our computers for hours on end. Be it administrating, working, or just plain killing time. Everyone knows that the interwebs is a sure-fire time killer. But what happens, gasp, when those interwebs are down and you’ve no way to pass time? You shrivel up and die right? No! You waste your time coding, writing, or playing games!

    • Natural Selection 2 and GNU/Linux

      One of the Unknown Worlds developers, Max has posted a blogpost about the GNU/Linux port for their upcoming game Natural Selection 2 :

      “Beat Wolf asks: What platforms will be supported? (Linux, OS X, XBox, etc..) The web page still mentions Linux and OS X as target platforms, but there have been many doubts with the inclusion of Steamworks and because the question seems to be avoided for some time now.

• K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

  • Generic web-service queries on your desktop using Plasma

    What is the usual you do in cases like that? Of course, you write a Plasmoid that checks the web-service periodically and informs you when your passport is ready. This plasmoid – PersonalKwery – can be seen in screenshot 1.

  • Skrooge 0.6.0 released

    The Skrooge team is proud to announce the release of version 0.6.0, bringing new features and a lot of bugfixes.

• Distributions

  • PCLinuxOS 2010 is Shaping Up

    Last time it was a great decision by Tex and the Gang to stick with KDE 3.5.10 on their 2009.2 release. They played safe for the welfare of the community and the users, while many desktop-wannabes plunged into KDE4 line. Now that KDE 4 has become a lot more stable and feature-complete, it’s time for a release.

  • Debian Family

    • Debian Linux on the Toshiba Libretto 100ct – Part 1 Installing the Operating System

      I got this little Toshiba Libretto for myself for Christmas as a tinkering project, as I’ve mentioned previously. I like to tinker with computers, and I wanted a machine that I could use to experiment with a full installation of Linux. I also wanted to restrict myself to a command line interface only to internalize the use on the console.

    • Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 179

        Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #179 for the week January 31st – February 6th, 2010. In this issue we cover: Open source industry veteran Matt Asay joins Canonical as COO, Lucid Translations now open, Ubuntu Developer Week Re-Cap, Ubuntu 8.04.4 LTS Maintenance release, Lucid Ubuntu Global Jam Announced, Project Awesome Opportunity, New Ubuntu Review Team: Reviewing bug with patches, Jane Silber Interview, Dustin Kirkland Interview: Encryption in Ubuntu, Nicaraguan LoCo Team’s Third Anniversary, Report on Launchpad down-time of 4th Feb 2010, January Team Meeting Reports, and much, much more!

      • Portable Ubuntu

        Last week, I made note of one of the more intriguing software packages I have come across in a long time: Portable Ubuntu. I said at the time that, as a means of bringing the convenience of Unix utilities to my Windows workstation…

      • Project Awesome Opportunity

        In the continued interests of making Ubuntu a rocking platform for opportunistic developers, today we formulated the plan for Project Awesome Opportunity. The goal is simple: build an opportunistic development workflow into Ubuntu. You will install one package from Universe and your Ubuntu will be hot-rodded for opportunistic application development, making development more fun and more accessible for a glorious itch scratching smackdown.

      • Ubuntu Development: Quickly, Lernid, and Ground Control

        The Lucid (10.04) development cycle has some really interesting … er … developments with regard to … uh … the development landscape. Wow. That was an awful sentence.

      • Indicator and me menu, lucid looking awesome

      • KSM Now Enabled in Ubuntu Lucid

    • Mint

      • Bet you guys thought I forgot about this blog, huh?

        I then decided I’d test the “upgrade” feature when Ubuntu 9.10 came out, and let it upgrade itself via APT. That was interesting, but a few things didn’t work quite right. I’ve never been one to upgrade an OS because of this. I’m a clean install kind of guy. So when things didn’t work quite right, I wiped it and installed my next project. Linux Mint 8.
        Mmmm, Mint

        Now, back in September-ish, I rebuilt my main desktop machine at home. I had initial plans to install Slackware 13, but since Slackware now doesn’t fit my needs, I decided to go with something else entirely, so I ended up installing Linux Mint 7 on it.

        My desktop is still running happily on Mint 7, and while that process came with its own issues (the default kernel didn’t like my DVD-ROM drive, plus I discovered massive problems trying to set up Mint 7 on a machine that uses both IDE and SATA drives together), once I got everything set up, it’s been really great.

      • Linux Mint 8 KDE released!

        The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 8 “Helena” KDE Community Edition.

      • Linux Mint 8 KDE Community Edition

        The final release of Linux Mint 8 (Helena) KDE Community Edition is available for download. I wrote about the Release Candidate of this a couple of weeks ago, so I won’t add too much more now. I’m still more of a Gnome desktop user than KDE, but as KDE 4 gets better and better, and combined with the excellent integration with Linux Mint, this one is a real alternative for me.

        [...]

        It may be that this is the same one used by Kubuntu, I haven’t installed that in quite a long time so I don’t know what it looks like any more. But this is nice, clean, easy to use and easy to understand.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Hardware based randomness for Linux

  • Phones

    • Palm Shares Rise As Analyst Raises Takeover Possibility

      Palm Inc. (PALM) shares advanced Tuesday after an analyst raised his price target on the stock, citing strong potential for the company’s wireless devices as well as a takeover possibility.

    • Android

      • Happy camper

        But I have to admit, the Nexus One is a winner. I wasn’t enthusiastic about buying a phone on the internet sight unseen, but the day it was reported that it finally had the pinch-to-zoom thing enabled, I decided to take the plunge. I’ve wanted to have a GPS unit for my car anyway, and I thought that google navigation might finally make a phone useful.

      • Kernel 2.6.32 for your Nexus One

        The Nexus One ships with a 2.6.29 kernel but if you like living on the bleeding edge you can install your own kernel (e.g. the experimental 2.6.32 kernel). Below you’ll find an update image I built which includes a 2.6.32 kernel, su, scp and ssh.

      • Garmin-Asus to Show Its First GPS Smartphone of 2010

        The venture has launched two handsets, the Nuvifone G60 with a Linux OS on board and the Nuvifone M20 with Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional. The M10 will be its third smartphone, and the company is widely expected to announce its first smartphone with Google’s Android mobile OS on board at the Mobile World Congress, which opens in Barcelona on Feb. 15.

  • Tablets

    • Where are the Linux tablets?

      In my opinion, the ideal OS for a tablet PC would be a Linux-based OS running the Elive distribution. This distribution would be lightweight enough, yet have plenty of 3D eye candy for a modern desktop. The Elive desktop would be ideal for a touchscreen-based hardware. Yes, this is me showing favoritism, but if you really put some thought to it, the E17 desktop is perfect for the touchscreen. If you’ve not experienced Elive, download a Live CD of it and try it out. Once you have it running, imagine it being used on a tablet PC. The only hitch would be how to initiate some of the compiz features without having the keyboard handy. Of course, after seeing what the Elive team has done so far, any hitches to tablet migration would be minor.

Free Software/Open Source

• Symbian Operating System, Now Open Source and Free

  Similar as it may sound to Android’s promise, there are major differences, says Williams. “About a third of the Android code base is open and nothing more,” says Williams. “And what is open is a collection of middleware. Everything else is closed or proprietary.”

• NASA + Wikipedia = OpenLuna

  “Space: the final frontier.” The folks at the OpenLuna project take that line to heart. OpenLuna is an open source, wiki-based attempt to design a leaner, meaner, public driven moon mission. As with any open source project, they encourage everyone to participate. When they run into questions, problems and challenges, they pose them to the crowd and invite people from every field to weigh in.

• What is OpenLuna?

• credativ Announces OpenLogic Partnership and Broadens Reach for Open Source Support

  credativ, a global open source service and support company, announced today a partnership with OpenLogic, Inc., a provider of enterprise open source software solutions. Together the companies are able to offer credativ’s in-depth third level support to OpenLogic’s customers throughout Europe and North America.

• Marten Mickos joins Index as European Entrepreneur-in-Residence

  Index Ventures, a leading venture capital firm today announced that Marten Mickos has joined the firm as a European Entrepreneur-in-Residence.

• CEO Interview: Brian Gentile on How to Build a successful Open Source business

  Olliance will be running a series of CEO Interviews throughout the year. I sat down with Brian Gentile, CEO of Jaspersoft ( www.jaspersoft.com ), to get his thoughts on Open Source software and current market trends. This is the first in a two part series with Brian where he shares his thoughts.

• E-mail Hardware Appliance Available Ready-to-Run for Small and Medium Size Enterprises

  Open-Xchange will offer its e-mail and groupware in cooperation with hardware manufacturer Pyramid as pre-configured and ready-to-run appliances for up to either 50 users or 300.

• Open source means freedom from ‘anti-features’

  Proprietary vendors are using “anti-features”, features that no user would ever want, to protect intellectual property, Benjamin “Mako” Hill, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the linux.conf.au open source conference last month.

  But IP protection is only one of several reasons vendors introduce such features into their products.

  An anti-feature serves the interests of the vendor, he says, not the user. A typical example is the set of limitations placed on the Home Basic version of Microsoft’s Vista operating system; these restricted memory and disk-storage support and limited the user to at most three concurrent applications using the graphical user interface, Hill says.

• FOSDEM

  • the fosdem dance

  • FOSDEM 2010 KDE Group Picture

• Sun/OpenOffice.org

  • IBM releases updated Symphony 3 office suite

    IBM has released Lotus Symphony 3, the latest version of its office productivity suite which is based on new code that supports Microsoft Office applications.

  • IBM Launches Lotus Symphony 3 with More Microsoft Support

    IBM has upgraded its free Lotus Symphony productivity suite, adding several features that make its word processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications work with Microsoft documents. Launched in 2007 to chip away at Microsoft Office, Symphony failed to budge Office’s share of 500 million seats. Instead, Symphony has acquired a more potent rival in free, Web-based platforms such as Google Docs. IBM is working to build the Web-based version of Symphony under the Project Concord banner. Concord will initially allow Web-based editing for documents and proceed to Web-based spreadsheets and presentations.

  • Sun-Oracle Merger Looks Bright for OpenOffice, MySQL

    The announcement, which was actually a planned webcast, reassured those worried over the fate of two open-source Sun products for small business: the database software, MySQL and the productivity suite, OpenOffice.org. The acquisition might make MySQL and OpenOffice.org even more competitive against costly Microsoft counterparts (SQL Server and Microsoft Office).

  • Database Thought Leaders Divided on Oracle MySQL

    With all of its newly acquired Sun intellectual property and R&D in hand, Oracle is now moving headlong into the server, storage, processor, networking and, yes, even the switch business. But the most hotly debated factor in the acquisition has been the MySQL database.

  • Oracle loses some MySQL mojo

    On Friday, Jacobs announced his resignation from Oracle to key members of the MySQL team via e-mail. Jacobs, a 28-year Oracle veteran and one of its first 20 hires, has been Oracle’s liaison with the MySQL community for the past several years, ever since Oracle acquired the popular MySQL storage engine, InnoDB.

  • Continuent Finds Success Within SaaS Data Management And MySQL Market

  • [MySQL slide]

  • [Maria-developers] Ideas for improving MariaDB/MySQL replication

  • McNealy’s bittersweet memo bids good-bye to Sun

    The memo, sent Tuesday under the subject line “Thanks for a great 28 years,” has more genuine emotion than you’ll see in a year’s worth of official communications from most corporate leaders. And even as he departs the Sun stage, he couldn’t resist sprinkling in a number of characteristic barbs–even taking his beloved auto industry to task.

  • New beginnings for Sun, MySQL — and me

    The only bet Oracle had to make was that it could run the business profitably. Given Sun’s bloated infrastructure and broad range of unprofitable products, I don’t think it’s that hard a task. Both Oracle and IBM have become adept at running legacy businesses for profit rather than growth.

    [...]

    Personally, I’ve enjoyed my time with MySQL and Sun. It was a heckuva ride. I’ve never had as much fun as we did growing MySQL from a few million in revenue to more than $100 million, with a community that measures in tens of millions of users around the world. The one side effect of working for a high-growth startup is that it can be quite addictive.

  • Calpont Launches InfiniDB™ Enterprise Analytic Database: First MySQL-Based Engine to Offer Scalable MPP Capabilities for Analytics and Data Warehousing

  • [JBoss:] We’re still the home of open source

    I have to admit that I was one of those people who sat through the entire 5 hours of the Oracle/Sun presentations the other day (it seemed longer!) In a way it’s sad to see Sun finally set over the horizon, but in another way it has been inevitable for a while and the whole process of the acquisition really couldn’t have been drawn out much longer. So there we are: gone is Sun and in its place is Snorcle (or is that Oracun?) But where does this leave the industry as a whole? Well Sun had quite a portfolio of hardware and software, so unlike the BEA or PeopleSoft acquisitions this has potential wider ramifications. But if you listened to the presentations then it’s almost as if Sun hasn’t really gone away but Oracle is just injecting a lot more cash (and people) into the business.

  • [Red Hat:] Oracle’s Java Opportunity

    With the EU’s approval of Oracle’s acquisition of Sun, Oracle is acquiring a major hardware and software player, and perhaps most significantly, they are now taking stewardship of the Java platform. As Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison said shortly after the acquisition announcement in April of last year, Java is “the single most important software asset we have ever acquired.”

  • Oracle: Java Will Be ‘Business as Usual’

    When Oracle lays its cards on the table to present its road map for the combined Oracle and Sun Microsystems organization, one thing developers can expect is consistency as far as Java is concerned, according to an Oracle executive.

  • New virtual world could revolutionize education

    To understand Texas Tech’s bold new classroom, one must first shake away the wholesale confines of reality and its pesky restrictions like space and time.

  • Laid off Wonderland developers to continue project

    Project Wonderland developers say they will continue working on the virtual world platform, despite being laid off after Oracle’s takeover of Sun Microsystems.

  • Oracle shutting off Sun project-hosting site

    In the wake of its merger with Sun Microsystems, Oracle is discontinuing access to Project Kenai, which was developed by Sun as an open source project-hosting site.

• Databases

  • Research and Markets: Microsoft SQL Server Most Used Database in Emerging Markets MySQL Close Behind, New 2009 Data Survey Shows

    …[B]ut 46% use MySQL. MySQL is slightly stronger in India and Latin America, but MS SQL Server leads in China and Latin America.

  • Ingres’ VectorWise rises to answer Microsoft

    Ingres is inviting data munchers to take a bite out of its planned software architecture targeting high-performance analytics.

    The open-source database company has released alpha code for its VectorWise project, a high-performance storage engine computing-intensive data warehouses running on standard Intel boxes. A first beta of VectorWise is planned for the current quarter.

  • Ingres Announces Technology Preview Program For Ingres Vectorwise

• CMS

  • BuddyPress 1.2 released

• Funding

  • Laszlo Systems raises $3M to integrate internet applications

    Laszlo Systems, builder of integrated internet applications for email, workplace dashboards, calendaring and other services, has brought in $3 million in new funding, according to Dow Jones VentureWire.

• Business Intelligence (BI)

  • Jaspersoft’s New Software Community Release Delivers Broad Suite of Business Intelligence Capabilities

  • Pentaho CEO: We’ll Double Bookings in 2010

• Government

  • Cities Powered by Open Source

    San Francisco recently established a new policy requiring open source software to be considered equally with commercial software within the city’s procurement process.

  • U.S. Prevents Cuba from accessing Open Source projects.

    Cuban Enterprise software DESOFT has reported that the U.S. impeded home users access to Source Forge, the largest repository of open source projects online.

    Sources from the Cuban company that is dedicated to finding solutions within and outside the island, said the U.S. restriction strengthens Washington’s hostility against Havana.

• Programming

  • Development of Rails 3 on schedule

    The developers of the Ruby on Rails framework have, as promised, made the first beta of Rails 3 available within their scheduled time frame. Rails founder David Heinemeier Hansson announced that more than 250 developers contributed to the release, submitting a total of 4,000 commits since the current 2.3 development line.

• Standards/Consortia

  • Late Last Year, Google Overtook Apple In WebKit Code Commits

    Today, the blog Chromium Notes, which is written by a developer who works on the open source project (that Google Chrome is built on top of), posted a very interesting graph: one that shows the number of code commits to WebKit. Notably, it appears that Google has overtaken Apple as the organization that contributes the most commits to the open source project.

Leftovers

• This is the title of a typical incendiary blog post

  This sentence contains a provocative statement that attracts the readers’ attention, but really only has very little to do with the topic of the blog post. This sentence claims to follow logically from the first sentence, though the connection is actually rather tenuous. This sentence claims that very few people are willing to admit the obvious inference of the last two sentences, with an implication that the reader is not one of those very few people. This sentence expresses the unwillingness of the writer to be silenced despite going against the popular wisdom. This sentence is a sort of drum roll, preparing the reader for the shocking truth to be contained in the next sentence.

  This sentence contains the thesis of the blog post, a trite and obvious statement cast as a dazzling and controversial insight.

• Google to Push Google Voice, Google Wave to Businesses

  Google Enterprise President Dave Girouard said search engine will release a version of Google Voice for businesses, roll out Google Wave to all users who want it, and may deliver as much as 200 new features to Google Apps this year. Google Voice offered as part of Google Apps could be a powerful combination for businesses in the market for a UCC (unified communications and collaboration) suite, particularly at a time when companies pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for UCC from Microsoft or IBM. Google will also release Google Wave, the company’s real-time collaboration platform, for all consumers and businesses in 2010.

• Google Updates Apps for Smartphone Use

• Apple and Oracle on way to do what IBM and Microsoft could not: Dominate entire markets

  I was a bit distracted from the Apple iPad news due to the marathon Oracle conference Wednesday on its shiny new Sun Microsystems acquisition.

  But the more I thought about it, the more these two companies are extremely well positioned to actually fulfill what other powerful companies tried to do and failed. Apple and Oracle may be unstoppable in their burgeoning power to dominate the collection of profits across vast and essential markets for decades.

• Technology, Leadership and Innovation in the Service Economy

  Service or organizational systems are quite different. While they also include extensive infrastructures and lots of technologies, people constitute the major part of their components, if not the most distinctive.

• Science

  • Homeopathic society ‘misled’ MPs in inquiry

    The British Homeopathic Association has been accused of misrepresenting scientific evidence on alternative medicine in documents it gave to a parliamentary inquiry.

• Security

  • BAE admits guilt over corrupt arms deals

    The Serious Fraud Office said in its announcement yesterday that some of the £30m penalty BAE was to hand over in the UK would be “an ex gratia payment for the benefit of the people of Tanzania”.

  • “Use of mercenaries masks scope of US involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq”

    There has been a massive increase in the funding of US war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and private military contractors are flourishing in its wake, even though their reputations are at an all-time low.

  • Woman Found Guilty of Stalking Judge

    Jurors found Nuevelle guilty of unlawful entry, stalking and second degree burglary. Prosecutors alleged that Nuevelle broke into the home of her former girlfriend, Magistrate Judge Janet Albert of the D.C. Superior Court, in an attempt to harass her after their breakup, and inundated her with e-mails, text messages and phone calls. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said Nuevelle could face a maximum of 16 years in prison.

  • Cisco backdoor still open

    The “backdoors” that Cisco and other networking companies implement in their routers and switches for lawful intercept are front and center again at this week’s Black Hat security conference. A few years ago, they were cause celebre in some VoIP wiretapping arguments and court rulings.

  • Cisco’s Backdoor For Hackers

    Cross revealed a collection of security weaknesses in Cisco’s architecture that he says add up to a lawful intercept system that could be easily hijacked by a skilled cybercriminal. When hackers try to gain access to a Cisco router, the system doesn’t block them after failed password-guessing attempts and it doesn’t alert an administrator. Many Cisco routers are still vulnerable, he said, to a bug that was publicized in June 2008, since some administrators haven’t implemented the patch that Cisco later released. And once data has been collected using the lawful intercept, it can be sent to any destination, not merely to an authorized user.

  • Spying on Americans: A Multibillion Bonanza for the Telecoms

    In late January, the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General released a report that provided startling new details on illegal operations by the FBI’s Communications Analysis Unit (CAU) and America’s grifting telecoms.

    For years, AT&T, Verizon, MCI and others fed the Bureau phone records of journalists and citizens under the guise of America’s endless, and highly profitable, “War on Terror.”

  • Matt on travel: airport security

  • World’s Largest Data Collector Teams Up With Word’s Largest Data Collector

    EPIC has filed a Freedom of Information Act Request, asking for records pertaining to the partnership. That would certainly help, because otherwise we have no idea what’s actually going on.

    Under an agreement that is still being finalized, the National Security Agency would help Google analyze a major corporate espionage attack that the firm said originated in China and targeted its computer networks, according to cybersecurity experts familiar with the matter. The objective is to better defend Google — and its users — from future attack.

• Finance

  • Bank of America bosses charged with fraud

    New York attorney general files civil charges against the bank and its former chief executive, Ken Lewis, over last year’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch

• PR/AstroTurf

  • The Corporate Takeover of U.S. Democracy

    Jan. 21, 2010, will go down as a dark day in the history of U.S. democracy, and its decline.

    On that day the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the government may not ban corporations from political spending on elections—a decision that profoundly affects government policy, both domestic and international.

    The decision heralds even further corporate takeover of the U.S. political system.

  • Supreme Court Ruling Spurs Corporation Run for Congress – First Test of “Corporate Personhood” In Politics

  • Lessig: Congress is broken and Obama has failed

    The most complete and eloquent account of Lessig’s views is The Nation piece. Here he picks up on the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which would make any limit on campaign contributions unconstitutional. “… the clear signal of the Roberts Court is that any reform designed to muck about with whatever wealth wants is constitutionally suspect.” He despairs of getting the Congress, (that he calls the Fundraising Congress) to do anything. He proposes instead a Convention to amend the Constitution as the only possible avenue.

  • AP: Obama admits health care bill may die

    After insisting for a year that failure was not an option, President Barack Obama is now acknowledging his health care overhaul may die in Congress.

• Censorship/Civil Rights

  • Computer security: fraud fears as scientists crack ‘anonymous’ datasets

    Computer scientists in the US have discovered ways to “re-identify” the names of people included in supposedly anonymous datasets.

    In one example, a movie rental company released an anonymous list of film-ratings taken from its 500,000 subscribers. Using a statistical “de-anonymisation” technique, the academics were able to identify individuals and their film preferences.

  • Free at last

  • Appeals court: MySpace parody is protected speech

    A federal appeals court today agreed that a high school student’s parody profile of his principal was protected free speech.

    Justin Layshock, who in December 2005 created a MySpace profile of then Hickory High School principal Eric Trosch, filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the school district, claiming the administration had no say over the online parody.

• Internet/Web Abuse/DRM

  • Internet companies voice alarm over Italian law

    Internet companies and civil liberty groups have voiced alarm over a proposed Italian law which would make online service providers responsible for their audiovisual content and copyright infringements by users.

  • Amazon Removes Macmillan Books

    Amazon.com has pulled books from Macmillan, one of the largest publishers in the United States, in a dispute over the pricing on e-books on the site.

  • Court Finds Constitutional Significance in Defendant’s Failure to Password-Protect Home Wireless Network

    Taking a few moments to secure a residential wireless network with a password is a good idea, a fact recently noted by the Federal Trade Commission. An open network is an invitation for piggy-backers and data thieves.

    Who knew that password-protecting a wireless router also had constitutional significance? According to a recent court decision from Oregon, the failure to password-protect a wireless network can diminish the extent to which the Fourth Amendment protects computers and information on that network from government searches.

• Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

  • Studios crushed: ISP can’t be forced to play copyright cop

    In a definitive defeat for film studios—and in a first case of its kind worldwide—Australia’s Federal Court has ruled that ISPs have no obligation to act on copyright infringement notices or to disconnect subscribers after receiving multiple letters. If copyright holders want justice for illegal file-sharing, they need to start by targeting the right people: those who committed the infringement.

    The ruling handed down today by Judge J. Cowdroy aims to be nothing less than magisterial: in 200 pages, it examines the issue from every possible angle because of the “obvious importance of these proceedings to the law of copyright both in this country and possibly overseas.”

  • Men At Work’s Colin Hay hits out over plagiarism ruling

    Men at Work’s Colin Hay has issued an angry statement calling the Down Under plagiarism case “opportunistic greed”.

    Earlier this week, a federal court in Sydney ruled that Men at Work had plagiarised Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree in its 1983 hit, Down Under.

  • The ACTA Guide, Part One: The Talks To-Date

    The 7th round of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiations begins tomorrow in Guadalajara, Mexico. The negotiation round will be the longest to-date, with three and a half days planned to address civil enforcement, border measures, the Internet provisions, and (one hour for) transparency. Over the next five days, I plan to post a five-part ACTA Guide that will include sourcing for much of the discussion on ACTA, links to all the leaked documents, information on the transparency issue, and a look at who has been speaking out.

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

William Fischer, Harvard law professor and Free Culture Business Theorist 02 (2004)

Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.

Summary: Johnson and Johnson’s multi-billion-dollar patent fine, patents’ harms to real science and life, patent trolls thrive, and Mozilla’s opposition to patent-encumbered codecs gradually pays off

THIS roundup comprises mostly snippets, due to time constraints.

• Boston Scientific to Pay J&J $1.73B to Settle Stent Patent Disputes

Boston Scientific Corp. said Monday it would pay Johnson & Johnson a hefty $1.73 billion to end more disputes in long-running legal battles over patents for heart stents.

• How Patents Harm Biotech Innovation

Patent defenders often claim that patents are necessary because top venture capitalists would never invest without patents. And yet, we keep pointing to examples of some of the best venture capitalists in the business who are quite skeptical of patents.

It is worth remembering that the Gates Foundation invests in the patents of these companies, apparently for big money like $1,730,000,000 to be won.

• Do Patents Slow Down Innovation?

I’m still obsessed with my mission to “abolish software patents” especially after receiving yet another email from a new startup that claims to be a “Patent Insurance Company.” A number of these have popped up recently in the past few years, including several that are funded by VCs. Their pitch is that you pay them an annual fee, license any patents you have to them, and they will “protect you” against any patent litigation. Whenever I hear this pitch, all I can think about is Al Capone walking the streets of Chicago going door to door offering “protection” to all of the local businessmen if they will pay his vig every week.

See what we wrote about RPX [1, 2, 3] and Intellectual Ventures. They are two rackets of this kind.

• Non-Practicing Patent Holders Winning Bigger And Bigger Awards — And Why They Like East Texas

It’s no secret that many non-practicing entities (i.e., patent holders who do not actually build anything, but just try to license their patent or sue others for infringement) tend to prefer jury trials. It’s well-known that juries, who have been fed years of misleading (and sometimes blatantly false) stories of the mythic “sole inventor,” are extremely sympathetic to stories of big bad companies “stealing” ideas from lone inventors.

• China (Hearts) Royalty-Free Standards?

The royalty-free option is exactly what free software needs, and what patent holders have been fighting against so hard in the West (nominal fee is still problematic, though).

• Oh, What a Lovely Standards War

You know something big must be afoot when people start to get worked up over video compression standards. Basically, the issue is whether the current de facto standard, H.264, will continue to dominate this field, and if not, what might take over.

[...]

The key point here is that Mozilla’s stubbornness on this issue has *already* made a difference – a financial difference in this case. It demonstrates that Mozilla was right to be stubborn, and shows why it is right to stand up for the Open Web wherever it may be threatened. Moreover, this provides yet another demonstration of the fact that you don’t have to believe in free software’s principles to benefit from its victories: you get them to share in them anyway.

Other stories about this are/were mostly included in the daily links at Boycott Novell █