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Maybe you should read this.

For example, look at the infamous kill OS/2 multi-boot antitrust exhibit. Doesn't matter if MS actually did it, if they were desperate enough to think about such tactics, that proves my point.

I love the smell of witch hunts in the morning. That guy wasn't a "key architect" of the Novell deal, he wasn't even part of the company's leadership when it was finalized between Hovsepian and Ballmer. What he did do for many years was run the openSUSE project. But why let facts get in the way? The submitter of this flamebait (because what does one call it?) is one of BoycottNovell's groupies. He hangs out on their chat room as "ender270" and is currently in the middle of a legal dispute with David Schlesinger, one of the members of the GNOME board of directors - who incidentally was also attacked by BoycottNovell - subsequently the proprietor "Dr." Schestowitz was forced to issue an apology for that.

But of course, his crime is that he dared work for Novell. For this he should be punished for all eternity.

BoycottNovell and the 12 people (including one of our past resident trolls) who count themselves as members of that "community" are the ass-end of FOSS advocacy.

This strongly worded page at Boycott Novell features copious links to support the above characterization.

So I follow the link in TFS. And? I see a barely coherent rant about "evil enemies of Linux" infiltrating W3C - a bunch of links to that effect, but none to do specifically with Jeff - followed by the part that actually mentions him as the new "evil guy" on the block. The specific quote is "He was chosen despite his love for software patents", followed by 3 links. Of those, only two are actually unique (#2 and #3 are the same link). I reproduce them here, in order, for convenience:

http://boycottnovell.com/2009/02/21/mono-moonlight-novl-strategy/
http://boycottnovell.com/2010/01/31/jeff-jaffe-and-zonker-quit/

Now, here's the thing. Neither one of those even contains the word "patent" anywhere, much less in any citations!
Apparently - judging by the first of those links - the sole reason why they even speak of his "love of software patents" is because he dares to promote Mono and Moonlight.

This strongly worded page at Boycott Novell features copious links to support the above characterization.

So I follow the link in TFS. And? I see a barely coherent rant about "evil enemies of Linux" infiltrating W3C - a bunch of links to that effect, but none to do specifically with Jeff - followed by the part that actually mentions him as the new "evil guy" on the block. The specific quote is "He was chosen despite his love for software patents", followed by 3 links. Of those, only two are actually unique (#2 and #3 are the same link). I reproduce them here, in order, for convenience:

http://boycottnovell.com/2009/02/21/mono-moonlight-novl-strategy/
http://boycottnovell.com/2010/01/31/jeff-jaffe-and-zonker-quit/

Now, here's the thing. Neither one of those even contains the word "patent" anywhere, much less in any citations!
Apparently - judging by the first of those links - the sole reason why they even speak of his "love of software patents" is because he dares to promote Mono and Moonlight.

Well, here is an article from Boycott Novell on this: http://boycottnovell.com/2010/02/23/boycott-amazon/

This patent stuff has got to be a gold mine for msft. IP extortion seems to be a brilliant business model.

February 22, 2010
Microsoft, Amazon strike patent deal covering Kindle and Linux

As would be expected, the actual patents that were supposedly violated are not disclosed. For many years msft claimed that Linux violates msft patents, but msft absolutely refuses to disclose which patents.

Microsoft says the deal grants Amazon patent-related "coverage" for its use of open-source and proprietary technologies in its Kindle e-reader, and its use of Linux-based computer servers.

At the same time, the deal has the potential to stir new controversy in the tech industry, if it's interpreted as Amazon implicitly endorsing Microsoft's claims that Linux and other open-source technologies violate its patents.

February 19, 2010
Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures Could be Biggest Racketeering Operation in the United States and Beyond

Patent thug Nathan Myhrvold turns out to have over 1,000 patent proxies with which to potentially attack and extort those who do not pay "protection money"; he also spent over $1 million lobbying his government

THE New York Times has published this report about Microsoft's patent troll Nathan Myhrvold, who is backed by his colleague Bill Gates, his former employer Microsoft, and even Apple. He already terrorises the industry using patents that it spent literally billions of dollars acquiring (not actually working to invent anything of substance).

http://boycottnovell.com/2010/02/19/nathan-myhrvold-exposed-again/

And here is the NYT article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/technology/18patent.html

I suppose using the US legal system for patent extortion is especially cost effective since msft uses offshore labor for the legal work.

February 18, 2010
Microsoft to outsource general legal work to India

Software giant Microsoft will begin outsourcing general legal work to India after signing a deal with legal process outsourcing (LPO) company CPA Global. The news comes as CPA outlined plans to expand its Indian workforce from 600 to 1,000 by the end of 2011, and hinted at opening another outsourcing centre.

http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/microsoft-outsource-general-legal-work-india

It goes much deeper than just fanoiz. It's a mindless hate group.

Yes, software patents are broken. Yes, Linux has lots of patent vulnerabilities. Beyond that, I can't really understand your point.

Legal issues are all about perception, and in this case, "Linux Hackers" and distros cloning a Microsoft technology with well-publicized patents creates an entirely different perception in the wild-west of the patent-law courtroom than a troll like SCO popping up and trying shake down IBM.

This is the entire point of Microsoft paying de Icaza for his work on Mono and Gnome. Novell's crooked patent deal with Microsoft ties in to the same strategy.

It's quite simple really. By the way, a lot of the supposed credulity about these issues on slashdot is a paid service. :)

Now, regarding "Miguel never tried to embrace GNOME with Mono. You can't show me any mail/blog post regarding with that." This sounds so obviously and totally untrue that I think this must just be a misunderstanding.

"We hope that the tools that we will provide will be adopted by free software programmers including the GNOME Foundation members and the GNOME project generally."

Okay, I'm confused. Whenever privacy is discussed around here, we say "wouldn't it be great if we could retain personal control over our data, and could willingly decide whom to sell our data to?"

  So know someone with a great deal of economic leverage is trying to push exactly such a system, and all of slashdot goes "Oh my god, how evil! Quick, everyone give your data away for free, so nobody can monetize them any more, not even yourself!"

Where do you get the user would get to set a price? And why would somebody interested in letting people put their data on sale patent it, which would ensure very few people could do it?

In any case, I object to the data being collected in the first place.

Guys, Bill Gates stopped being the most evil man about five years ago. I care much less about the shortcomings of Windows than I care about Google and Facebook knowing more about me than I do myself. At this point, I'd be willing to pay Bill Gates if he offers to secure all my personal data.

No, he's still evil, he just moved to doing other kinds of it.

The still has an enormous influence and can use it to evil ends.

Perhaps they could start by consulting someone like RMS and Linus rather than involving themselves with Microsoft and proprietary software:

"Taxation without web presentation
The Library of Congress recently signed a deal to accept 3 million dollars worth of "technology, services and funding" from Microsoft towards building a new website powered by Microsoft's Silverlight plug-in."

"Most disturbingly, users are locked in, too: anybody using an iPhone, an old version of Windows, any version of Linux, or any other operating system or device not supported by Silverlight will be unable to use the Library of Congress' new website. How is that compatible with the principles of democracy or librarianship? It's taxation without web presentation. And how exactly is that a quantum leap forward? (If the LOC really wanted to make a quantum leap, it would open up its data.)"

* http://www.librarything.com/thingology/2008/02/taxation-without-web-presentation.php

Silverlight lockins - references with links re: Silverlight
http://boycottnovell.com/2008/02/24/silverlight-ooxml-sharepoint-and-more/

LOC / Silverlight news
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Stewart/?p=724

Do your own searches for more references:
"library of congress" silverlight
"library of congress" silverlight site:boycottnovell.com
etc.

So, LOC, does this mean you'll redo any portions of your site(s) which feature Silverlight, which is proprietary (troll posters need not bait us by mentioning the useless Moonlight plugin which did not work when major media outlets streamed stuff like the Olympics which required Silverlight, where was Microsoft's big ball of interoperability goodness then? Nowhere! Linux users were scrambling all over posting VLC and other type of workarounds. this is about FREEDOM, not % of population using a certain OS)

"Just take the high road, fight the good fight, and take care of business .. Don't try and take on MS just write better code and better systems .."

'Linux' isn't trying to take on Microsoft, it's the other way around. A company with a long time enmity towards anything open source and not adverse to using any dirty trick to get its own way.

Comes v. Microsoft

Microsoft EDGI: How It Works

Nah, I don't think that is probably what happened in this case, but yes, I agree that board of directors of companies should no longer select these types as CEOs. And yes, I know about MS's unethical PR practices that was discussed in Boycott Novell and elsewhere. Nice comparison to the Pentagon, BTW.

Read the articles that the link below points to:

http://boycottnovell.com/2009/08/30/anti-google-astroturf-lawmedia/

I also strongly suggest you and everyone else that thinks Google isnt the target for a whisper campaing to read the Comes VS Microsoft documents and internal Microsoft e-mails. Read them, think about it for a while and then come back and tell me its not plausible or infact very probable.

Why am I so certain you've read Atlas Shrugged in the last three years.

Don't worry: when you regain the capability for independent thought, you'll realize the world is not black and white, and not everyone who doesn't want to give free reign to manipulative, anti-competitive, privacy-intruding, innovation-stifling, cartelizing corporations (Pt. 2, 3) wants to steal your soul. They may be looking to fix our problems, too, you know.

Example: OLE vs. OpenDoc

The Old Strategy

• Direct competition on tech details
• Press, pundits LOVE this!
  • Conflict!
  • Underdog!
• ISVs are confused, so they do nothing
  • "I'll wait to see who wins"
  • OpenDoc's FUD worked
• Complete disaster
  • Delayed the widespread adoption of OLE

The New Strategy

• Allies
  • Apple, Novell, IBM
• Strategy
  • Disrupt the alliance
• Tactics
  • Reposition OpenDoc as an OLE dev. tool
  • Put OLE in the enterprise
  • Pits Apple against IBM & Novell
• Help Claris & WP support OLE in Win95
  • pits part of an ally against itself

(From: How to Get Your Platform Accepted as a Standard - Microsoft Style)

(Don't despair if it's been longer than three years. You can always hope for a lightning strike to work its magic.)

Microsoft makes money, so obviously they would use this as a competitive advantage.

The problem is not that Microsoft would compete with OpenOffice. The problem is that Microsoft will unethically leverage its position as Monopoly to destroy OpenOffice. Many commercial companies will ethically compete with each other. As a corporate culture Microsoft does not want to compete in a market. They want to have 90%+ share of a market and will do whatever is necessary to shrink or kill all other competitors. This is not typical nor ethical behavior.

So you want to love those conferences to death. I’ve killed at least two Mac conferences. James Plamondon, Microsoft

Microsoft does not care if its competition is another commercial venture, a non-profit corporation, a hobbyist or a government. If it competes with Microsoft in any market where Microsoft does not hold at least 90% of the market then their goal is to minimize, marginalize and even torpedo, and kill the competition. Without regard for ethical behavior or what means are necessary to do so.

Some would say "Microsoft has changed, the now want to work with the FOSS community." To see if that statement is accurate, or if as a corporate culture they are still up to their old tricks, we need to analyze their motives. In this instance, this would be to analyze their motives in regard to OpenOffice AND to glean from it how seriously they take OpenOffice as a competitor in the market. The fact that they have a position entitled "Linux and Open Office Compete Lead" is an indicator of how serious they are about both Linux and OpenOffice.

Traditionally being in Microsoft's sniper scope has not worked out well for other companies. On the other hand as someone once said:

Q. What's the difference between Batman and Bill Gates?
A. When Batman fought the Penguin, he won.

MS started crushing the Google-Yahoo deal months prior to the DOJ antitrust division's meeting through their political lobbying and the usual tactics, it concluded by DOJ picking that deal apart. Now lets see how the new office deals with all those MS donations and astroturfing against Google. Lets see if DOJ kicks this deal too. Why would anyone want to strengthen the second biggest search-engine market competitor and antitrust-laws-breaking firm by giving them the bigger market share and allowing to take out a smaller one?! Lets really take a good look at Obama's office' DOJ decision on this one...

The claims of removing Gimp are just smoke and noise to hid the damage the monomaniacs are doing elsewhere in Debian and Ubuntu.

Microsofters always try to present their schemes as a done deal. It's documented in their bag of tricks. The relevant trick is from plaintiff's exhibit 3096 from the court case Comes v Microsoft. Microsoft appeared prepared to ignore the last state, Iowa, indefinitely in the last unresolved class action case for over-charging. Roll down to page 45 and start reading. Or download the song version.

Regardles, Ubuntu 10.4, Lucid Lynx is just starting. There are several channels through which the mistake can be corrected. One is through brainstorm: Idea #110: No Mono by default in Ubuntu can use your vote.

MS are merely creating a trail of concept.

It gives then credibility when they challenge their ultimate target: all those applications running on Linux(under Mono) built with C#.

Build Linux apps in C# at your peril

Judging from the comments it seems like this may be a bogus claim of copyright infringement.

That said, if MS *were* infringing, this wouldn't be insignificant. MS is a member of the Business Software Alliance, one of those trade groups that encourages disgruntled employees to turn in their former employers for violations, provides controversial statistics/misinformation about the frequency and effects of piracy, lobbies congress to increase penalties and strengthen laws against copyright violators, and goes after small and medium-sized businesses for violations large or small, whether or not they're "making bloatloads" off the software.

One of the things about trade organizations like the BSA, MPAA, RIAA, etc. is they can act as a PR cover for companies who want to use bullying tactics but don't want their actions directly associated with the member companies names. The BSA has certainly been accused of such bullying and as being a "front" for Microsoft in particular, so if they were pirating code themselves, it would be significant.

But without boycottnovell, where would we learn such interesting facts as Apple switched from PPC to Intel because Jobs wanted to support Vista, or that Slashdot always takes the Microsoft party line.

Without BN, I could have scoured every reliable source in the world, and never have learned those obscure facts.

But without boycottnovell, where would we learn such interesting facts as Apple switched from PPC to Intel because Jobs wanted to support Vista, or that Slashdot always takes the Microsoft party line.

Without BN, I could have scoured every reliable source in the world, and never have learned those obscure facts.

Ah, mods... this is a factual and informative post about Debian policy.

The controversy over Mono in Debian is hardly offtopic and the viewpoint expressed here is quite rational, given that we are still in the midst of a massive Microsoft-backed anti-free-software lawsuit and FUD campaign (SCO, tomtom, etc).

References:

• http://boycottnovell.com/2008/07/23/mono-controversial/
• http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/06/15/1251228/Mono-Squeezed-Into-Debian-Default-Installation?from=rss
• http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS7392358109.html
• http://boycottnovell.com/2009/06/16/debian-not-including-mono/
• http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3828231/Lets-Settle-the-Mono-Debate.htm

Ah, mods... this is a factual and informative post about Debian policy.

The controversy over Mono in Debian is hardly offtopic and the viewpoint expressed here is quite rational, given that we are still in the midst of a massive Microsoft-backed anti-free-software lawsuit and FUD campaign (SCO, tomtom, etc).

References:

• http://boycottnovell.com/2008/07/23/mono-controversial/
• http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/06/15/1251228/Mono-Squeezed-Into-Debian-Default-Installation?from=rss
• http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS7392358109.html
• http://boycottnovell.com/2009/06/16/debian-not-including-mono/
• http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3828231/Lets-Settle-the-Mono-Debate.htm

O3Spaces

Lenya

SugardCRM

Alfresco

Main pyrus

Nuxeo

M$ is never going to play nice, the sooner you realize this the less time you will waste. They screwed the IBM develop team with an inferior API that their own developers hated. They bastardized Java to screw Sun. They "contributed to" WISE many moons ago to screw all of Unix. How many times to you have to see other "partners" get treated like pawns and one night stands before you get the picture? To quote an internal memo,

all through this presentation previously I talked about how youre using the pawns [developers] youre going to screw them if they dont do what they want, and da-da-dah. You cant let them feel like that. If they feel like that, youve lost from the beginning. Its like youre going out with a girl; forgive me ... it goes the other way also. Youre going out with a girl, what you really want to do is have a deep, close and intimate relationship, at least for one night. And, you know, you just cant let her feel like that, because if you do, it aint going to happen, right. So you have to talk long term and white picket fence and all these other wonderful things, or else youre never going to get what youre really looking for.

Welcome to the back seat of Bill Gate's limo, Apple. NotNet is the flimsiest of condoms, I hope you've got better protection than that, but you really should not be in this situation to begin with.

Sam won't leave M$; he will continue to astroturf like Joe Wilcox, Steve Ballmer, Paul Allen, and Bill Gates has while being paid by M$. Sam Ramiji is the anagram for I Am Sam Jr. and M$ is the acronym for evil. M$ will not only continue to hamper the efforts of free software, but hold onto a monopoly through the offerings of crappy non-free software, crappy specs, , and act as the so-called friends" of the free software movement. M$ will stab the free software movement in the back once M$ gains the undeserved full trust of the free software community. It is time for the Obama administration to send the FBI over to M$ and arrest all M$ executives for their illegal monopoly. After that M$ should be forced to free all of their code and specs for all file formats under the GPL 3 then turn all available money over to the free software movement. Once that happens the stock holders should be turned loose on the brooke M$. M$ should cease to exist.

--
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Friends do assist M$ addicted friends in committing suicide.

Sam won't leave M$; he will continue to astroturf like Joe Wilcox, Steve Ballmer, Paul Allen, and Bill Gates has while being paid by M$. Sam Ramiji is the anagram for I Am Sam Jr. and M$ is the acronym for evil. M$ will not only continue to hamper the efforts of free software, but hold onto a monopoly through the offerings of crappy non-free software, crappy specs, , and act as the so-called friends" of the free software movement. M$ will stab the free software movement in the back once M$ gains the undeserved full trust of the free software community. It is time for the Obama administration to send the FBI over to M$ and arrest all M$ executives for their illegal monopoly. After that M$ should be forced to free all of their code and specs for all file formats under the GPL 3 then turn all available money over to the free software movement. Once that happens the stock holders should be turned loose on the brooke M$. M$ should cease to exist.

--
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Friends do assist M$ addicted friends in committing suicide.

They bought DOS, they bought Windows - they stole Windows, excuse me; they bought PowerPoint, they bought Word, Excel, they bought WebTV, they bought their browser technology, they bought Hotmail, they bought a billion dollars of Comcast: they bought, they bought, they bought. What have they innovated? Goose egg.

"While the Microsoft investment was important for Apple, it had nothing to do with money. The main thing Apple got out of the deal was Microsoft's commitment to continue Office on the Mac"

Actually MS threatened to cancel Office on the Mac unless they stopped shipping competing product like ClarisWorks.

"The threat of cancelling Mac Office 97 is certainly the strongest bargaining point we have, as doing so will do a great deal of harm to Apple immediately"

David "Lemon party" Gerard is busy shilling for Firehose votes over at the Den of paranoia, who also sponsor Slashdot's favorite troll.

Coincidence.

M$ people have a lot of never to complain, considering how difficult it is to "upgrade" any of their junk. Vista Failure springs to mind, but so do the number of companies still using IE 6, ancient versions of Outlook and Office. Given the slow speed of transition to any new M$ program, we can and should conclude that they are all failures before we judge Google Docs and Gmail a failure because one highly political institution has not made the transition overnight.

> Boycott Novell

Ah yes, that's the website you shill for tirelessly and
where you boast to your buddies that you're gaming Slashdot:

After some thought, I've decided to keep using multiple accounts on Slashdot

And you even proudly announce you're stalking people.

You claim Slashdot is "tamed" because they remove your creative spelling when they choose to promote your stories.

Your friends even claim Slashdot is run by Microsoft.

Why do you even bother posting here if you hate Slashdot so much?

> Boycott Novell

Ah yes, that's the website you shill for tirelessly and
where you boast to your buddies that you're gaming Slashdot:

After some thought, I've decided to keep using multiple accounts on Slashdot

And you even proudly announce you're stalking people.

You claim Slashdot is "tamed" because they remove your creative spelling when they choose to promote your stories.

Your friends even claim Slashdot is run by Microsoft.

Why do you even bother posting here if you hate Slashdot so much?

> Boycott Novell

Ah yes, that's the website you shill for tirelessly and
where you boast to your buddies that you're gaming Slashdot:

After some thought, I've decided to keep using multiple accounts on Slashdot

And you even proudly announce you're stalking people.

You claim Slashdot is "tamed" because they remove your creative spelling when they choose to promote your stories.

Your friends even claim Slashdot is run by Microsoft.

Why do you even bother posting here if you hate Slashdot so much?

The FCC has no interest in protecting individual rights or promoting a competitive market. They are there to sell off public assets to private corporations, and enforce rules and fines to ensure societal conformity to the morals of politically important voting blocs...

Weeks after taking on a Microsofter as FCC Managing Director the FCC was used to go after Apple.

The FCC's action or inaction on this will play out as to what role and relation Comcast is having with M$ and if M$ executives consider Comcast a problem.

The FCC has no interest in protecting individual rights or promoting a competitive market. They are there to sell off public assets to private corporations, and enforce rules and fines to ensure societal conformity to the morals of politically important voting blocs...

Weeks after taking on a Microsofter as FCC Managing Director the FCC was used to go after Apple.

The FCC's action or inaction on this will play out as to what role and relation Comcast is having with M$ and if M$ executives consider Comcast a problem.

M$ employees have been trolling Slashdot by astroturfing and posting FUD. One notable M$ employee has Numerous accounts on slashdot for the sole purpose of astroturfing for M$ and spreading FUD. I have wondered about you for some time and now your latest post all but confirms you account is merely a troll account for M$.

--
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Friends do assist M$ addicted friends in committing suicide.

We at least need a partial disclosure of David Gerard with the hopes that in the future we get a rejection of submissions that include childish remarks like: "Well, at least they're not Microsoft."

For one thing, David is good friends with Roy Schestowitz, the mastermind behind Boycott Novell among other things. This site also happens to be the feeding ground for everyone's favorite Slashdot troll: Twitter. You'll find David making comments in both places and even going to far as to drop in the IRC chat room on rare occasions.

When he isn't trolling Slashdot to drop links to his website or editing Wikipedia to keep it free of people he can label as "shills", David is also responsible for shock sites such as lemonparty(dot)org (homosexual images) and other disgusting things he apparently thinks are funny. You might find that hard to believe without the proper context. Take a look at this unofficial collection of pictures. Yes, that is a man wearing leather pants standing next to a huge red-haired beast. Assholes like David are the kind of people that turn Slashdot into something the rest of us don't like.

How do you prove whether a particular poster is a paid shill or not? Who knows? How do you prove anything? I'll spare you the philosophical implications of that questions as you aren't intellectually equipped to appreciate them anyway. However, it is a known and verifiable fact that Microsoft does indeed pay people to troll internet forums like slashdot and spout vague shill bullshit. In memos released during a certain trial against Microsoft, it said precisely that and one of the tactics discussed in the document to give the professional propagandist "credibility" was to pretend to be a Linux user that "is willing to give Windows its due"

Don't insult your inteligence by pretending this isn't so. And, if you are so oblivious or stupid to not already be aware of this fact, look it up. Typically, I don't do trolls' research for them but, this time, I'll at least point you to a couple of good places to get started.

You obviously have some studying up to do, so I'll bid a good day sir.

You give positive remarks about a Microsoft operating system on Slashdot despite the fact that GNU/Linux is superior in every possible way, even to all other Unix based systems. Therefore you must be a paid M$ Astroturfer sent here to deceive others. There was a time when posts like this might have gone unnoticed, but thanks to Roy Schestowitz we now know better.

You may be right that they weren't sabotaging Lotus 123. I don't remember much about that story (though there WAS a big lawsuit over some of those things, unless I'm confused by all the many lawsuits Microsoft has been through).

That said, in spite of your talk about them "bending over backwards to maintain compatibility" it's not like they'll do that to help their competitors. Read this, for example.

Don't get me wrong. They DO preserve compatibility with their own stuff, even to ridiculous degrees (it often causes bugs, like that huge hole in image previews caused by support for a really ancient, terrible file format nobody has used for at least a decade).

But don't try to make it sound like they're altruistic about compatibility or that they're above using cutthroat tactics against their competition.

twitter is angry you did that. He says you're "tamed".

http://boycottnovell.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/irc-log-27062009.html#tJun%2027%2020:42:28

Slashdot needs a "-1 Citation Needed" option.

How about a /. article on the MS paying bloggers off:
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/28/0428236

"I'm thinking of hitting the OEMs harder than in the past with anti-Linux. ... they should do a delicate dance," Kempin wrote to Ballmer http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/03/19/microsoft_killed_dell_linux_states/

Mostly, though, you'll find that most reports of Microsoft paying off journalists/bloggers/whoever are on sites like this one: http://boycottnovell.com/2009/04/25/microsoft-censorship-on-the-surface/

...

"Backroom" deals are named that way for a reason -- they're very hard to prove, and thus unlikely to be reported in reputable publications that require absolute proof. Regardless, Microsoft is known for throwing its monopolistic weight around to its advantage, and being suspicious of such articles is likely not a bad thing.

Anyway, the suitor has been announced: Gulf Capital Partners. Which raises the question: is there a Microsoft connection to these guys? The only company with any discernible reason to keep Sweet Zombie SCO alive is Microsoft.

I have answered my question: yes there is a definite MS connection. "The issue is not if you're paranoid, it's if you are paranoid enough." -- Max, "Strange Days"

Earlier today I created the hAl Microsoft Topic Ban incident on Wikipedia's Conflict of Interest Noticeboard, highlighting some of the particularly troubling points in the contributions of a user called hAl (who reveals little beyond liking beer). It seems I'm not the first to stumble on this apparent Microsoft shill, but hopefully I'll be the last (at least on Wikipedia) as with any luck he'll land himself a topic ban having been blocked 4 times already.

Sam

Wait. So we have tons of open source apps that, somehow, have great compatibility except for minor nits. Then we have Microsoft which removes all the XML it doesn't understand, destroying documents (rather than just leaving it the hell alone).

And you blame the ODF standard for this?

Maybe you should read some of the Comes v. Microsoft documents. It's not the ODF folks. It's just the way Microsoft works.

Should I feed the trolls children?

"Yeeees Mr. Socceroos.". Ok then.

There isn't much in the way of Linux any more.

Someone should tell the whole of Russia's schools. Oh, and the French Gendarmerie Nationale. Oh, also, you should tell the Vietnamese government.

Ah, stuff it, go read page 12 onwards of the PDF on this page: http://boycottnovell.com/2009/01/10/edgi-continued-dumping-vs-gnu/

I handed them the nice little instruction book filled with pretty pics that came with the motherboard. The only question i got was "How do you tell which screws go where?" which was a simple "Look at the threads of the hole and compare them to the threads of the screw" but other than that they were good to go. Computers really are pretty simple to work on now, most folks would just rather pay some guy like me than DIY. As for MSFT owning the Netbook market, is Acer and Toshiba good enough sources?

And you cite CnR, but CnR is now owned by Xandros and the Linux community HATES Xandros for daring to sign up with MSFT so they could get access to the APIs they needed for their server product to support AD and Exchange. So while you got lucky that CnR came with yours I sincerely doubt you will see many main stream distros support it in the future. Just look at the hatred that Novell has gotten and most of the Zealots LIKE Novell when compared to Xandros. So pretty much anything Xandros gets its hands on will be dropped because the "free as in freedom" types will have a living shit fit.

As for the PHB, I'm sure the state will have SOME say in it. After all I'm sure the foundation will be getting tax credits for this charitable contribution, which is worth exactly squat if nothing in the entire school system can actually support the thing. After all, the teachers are going to have to be able to provide educational materials for it, the schools are going to have to set up some sort of system for repairs, all of this means it had better work with what they have or be easy to support or their "free" laptops could bankrupt the system. And both MSFT and Apple have a history of "giving away" systems at reduced or no cost to education to get their foot in the door. I still have my server 2K3 and Office 2K3 discs around here somewhere from when I was in school.

As for you being old enough to remember the Trash80, I still got my Vic20 in the closet. that ain't the point. The point is that before the GUI most folks had little to no interaction with PCs. And I seriously doubt that the folks who are in charge of "tech" in SC have any experience with anything other than Windows. I live in the rural south and even most of the admins are "clicky clicky" Windows jocks. Here you can't give Linux boxes away, because five seconds after you give them the machine they are heading to Walmart to pick up some cheap Lexmark printer or a CD in the software aisle and they'll be bringing it back to you the next day because it is "broke" because it doesn't run Windows. This is why I quit selling cheap Linux boxes and this is the mindset that you have to deal with.

How is taking the laptop to the bozos at Geek Squad supposed to help? WTF? You're gonna tell all those poor kids to shell out $150 just to be told "buy a better computer dude"? The point is XP SP3 right NOW sucks up more than 3GB of HDD, out of the box. That number ain't gonna get smaller as time goes on, its gonna get bigger. Take an AV from 9 years ago and run it. See how small the memory and CPU footprint is? Now run the latest Norton, which is what schools use. See how quick it turned your P4 into a 386DX? THAT is the problem. These laptops are probably gonna be 1GHZ with MAYBE 16GB of flash space,and if they are lucky 1GB of RAM. If they give them those laptops with XP home and they ain't locked down worse than any BOFH they are gonna be spambots before the first week is out. After all, we are talking about kids here. Kids fuck up, kids go where they ain't supposed to and do dumb shit. That is part of growing up.

But running Windows on those specs means you better know what the hell you are doing. They will also need an on access AV and antispy, that costs serious resources that these things ain't got to spare. And it will only get worse as more and more malware flood the net. The antiviru

Not really a troll.