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Intel could have been first in mobile space, except for Microsoft repeatidly leaning on them to stick to making chips for the IBM PC, that would be IBM, 'the PC company' as they referred to them in internal emails:

March 1994: "IBM has a LOTUS NOTES .. We have entered another round of "partnership" talks with the PC company and mentioned this as an issue, but they claim thay can't fix this for us."

Dec 1996: "we have a conference call with them (intel) re NetPC today at 9 .. yup, it would be crazy to Intel define this the only urgent issue I can think of is defining how it boots, if we let Intel do this in a proprietary way we're screwed."

Oct 1997: "I have a critical meeting with Intel a week from Wednesday. I want to convince them that they need to stay away from Oracle NCs and work more closely with Microsoft."

Nov 1997: "IBM refused to big anything related to Backoffice. I said they to use their PCs to distribute things against us. I said they are dabbing in NCs in a way we don't like .. Overall we wil never have the same relationship with IBM that we have with Compaq, Dell and even HP because of their software ambitions .. On their side I mean JAVA and NC."

Nov 1997: "Intel .. did 2 things that amaze me: They kept the NC specification around despite saying they would not .. They snuck in a server specification. There is some failure in communication"

Nov 2001: "I think we will have to live without a Chinese wall clause for the front end of the compiler .. If we don’t get Intel off of Linux internally (the failed EDA project) – we will never get the *cultural* alignment that we want'

@Anonymous Coward: "That's part of the issue - they don't want to be just the CPU maker. They want to control and possibly integrate on the chip network, video and higher level components under their control. Effectively killing the ability to choose best in breed or external but upgradable network and video and more."

Is that you billg ;] ..

"We have to make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities" billg

"I have a critical meeting with Intel a week from Wednesday. I want to convince them that they need to stay away from Oracle NCs and work more closely with Microsoft." billg

.. "our plans continue to underestimate the importance of an OPEN unified approach for the internet. The demo I saw today when Windows 95 was showing its Internet capability was someone calling up the Fedex page on the internet and typing in a package number and getting the status. Imagine how much work it would have been for Fedex to call us up and get that running on MSN and negociate with us. Instead they just set it up. A very simple way to reach out to their customers." billg

Nonfree software didn't recently "add spying/telemetry/etc". The malware was a part of nonfree OSes (such as Windows, iOS, MacOS) for a long time in both the OS and various apps. Here are a few examples concerning Windows: the backdoor in Windows by which Microsoft can impose any change it wants and when this was used, and who can forget Microsoft's choice to trick or force Windows 7 and Vista users into Windows 10 "upgrades". Since that software was nonfree even technical users and developers couldn't legally remove the malware and distribute the improved malware-free variant to help others.

When it came to spying, Windows 10 gave users a UI that apparently deceived them into believing that the user had a say in how much their OS ratted them out. Windows 10 shipped with bad defaults for preserving user's privacy and continued "talking to Microsoft" (as Condé Nast put it) "even if a user turn[ed] off its Bing search and Cortana features, and activate[ed] the privacy-protection settings" (quoting the GNU Project). So now Microsoft assures Windows users things are better, but one has to wonder for whom and what users are legally allowed to do if they discover the proprietor's words aren't how the software behaves.

Just in case someone want to read IBM/Microsoft's Joint Development Agreement . http://antitrust.slated.org/ww...

March 1989: "Nearly four years have elapsed since the initiation of our Joint Development Agreement .. Now, we need to focus on .. establishing OS/2 as the next standard in personal computing."

Aug 1988: "I think we need to think very carefully about how much we want Windows to compete with OS/2 in the OEM channel and for the ISVs attention".

"In December, OS/2 shipped initially from IBM .. I was super enthusiastic that we shipped OS/2"

June 1991: "I have written a PM app that hangs the system (sometimes quite graphically). You can take a look at it anytime, just let me know Eric"

July 1991: 'SteveB went on the road to see the top weeklies, industry analysts and business press this week to give our systems strategy. The meetings included demos of Windows 3.1 (pen and multimedia included), Windows NT, OS/2 2.0 including a performance comparison to Windows and a “bad app” that corrupted other applications and crashed the system'

"The demos of OS/2 were excellent, crashing the system had the intended effect"

“Mind Control: To control mental output you have to control mental input. Take control of the channels by which developers receive information, then they can only think about the things you tell them. Thus, you control mindshare!” ref

Absolute, 100% rubbish! Show me an OEM that does not provide the ability to turn secure boot off.

I don't know if you're the same Microsoft supporter as before, but in case you aren't, I'll repeat that we are talking about "designed for Windows 10" machines which aren't for sale yet.

Impossible, no machine could ever be sold without the capability to boot from an external device, as this would prevent installing Microsoft Windows on it.

Wrong again, they can easily install it and then lock you out of the BIOS.

No, because that would prevent the user from buying copies of future versions of Microsoft Windows.

Bullshit. The OEMs should be held accountable if they make the choice to produce a product that doesn't allow secureboot to be turned off. Why are you so desperate to defend the OEMs as some blameless, unaccountable entity?

Because the OEMs are known not to care about letting the users fiddle with advanced boot options. They are also known to make firmware that, for example, will crash the machine from SMM when running a non-Windows OS: I've owned such PCs (that bug was meant to be a fix to make Windows 2000 run on that hardware). If the machines they make don't boot Linux, it's because they don't care, or haven't the resources to support Linux, not because of malice. But it's Microsoft who put these hurdles for them (and the users) to overcome. It's their decision that will lock people out of their own PCs, not the disinterest of the OEMs, which has always been there and is not changing.

Do you also blame Google for not forcing everybody who makes Android devices to provide an unlocked bootloader and root-level access on phones?

Yes of course. That's where I usually lose most of my karma points.

can you give a non-malicious explanation about why the requirement of being able to disable the so-called Secure Boot is being lifted now?

Less overhead in the certification process perhaps

You've just admitted that there's "overhead" in the overall process of the OEM to add an option that disables the so-called Secure Boot. Hence, OEMs that want to get rid of this "overhead" WILL remove the option. Thanks for proving my point.

but likely pushed by the OEMs as a way to try and sell both their Windows and Linux offerings separately rather than just one and have the user dual-boot it.

That is, to keep Linux out of of the users' PC as I've been stating from the beginning!

If MS wanted to stop Linux they would be offering huge discounts to OEMs to not ship Linux (and Android) devices and to only ship Windows.

My friend, in this world pressures against OEMs are the norm, not an exception.

In recent years despite Linux on the desktop being offered pre-installed from big box retailers, available in the form of ChromeOS, available pre-installed systems from Dell, HP, Lenovo and others, free of charge, easy to install and even with the ability to try *without* installing the desktop PC userbase has *still* rejected it, it hasnt made any gains at all.

I'm not denying that Linux users are a minority. I'm stating that they risk to become zero thanks to these dirty tricks. And this will harm the market of Linux on the servers, too, because of the way how people become Linux contributors. And I'm stating this in a comment which, if you bother to read, was meant as a response to someone who said "Microsoft supports Linux now".

If they really wanted to lock out alternative operating systems they would have done it decades ago when they actually saw Linux on the desktop as a threat.

They have been doing stuff like this endlessly for decades. Remember Bill Gates' "we should make ACPI Windows-only" in the 90s?

A possible bug in Foxconn boards BIOS affects Linux ACPI

Windows Update drivers bricking USB serial chips

One thing I find myself wondering about is whether we shouldn’t try and make the "ACPI" extensions somehow Windows specific.

"One thing I find myself wondering about is whether we shouldn't try and make the "ACPI" extensions some how Windows specific.

It seems unfortunate if we do the work and get our partners to do the work and the result is that Linux works without having to do the work.

Maybe there is no way to avoid this problem but it does bother me.

Maybe we could define the APIs so that they work well with NT and not the others even if they are open.

Or maybe we could patent something related to this." Bill Gates, Jan 1999

Don't Feed the Super-Troll

1990: "The purpose of announcing early like this is to freeze the market at the OEM and ISV level .. One might worry that this will help Sun because we will just have vaporware":
Nathan Myhrvold to Bill Gates ..

1995: "Given that we are looking at the Internet destroying our position as the setter of standards and APIs do you see things we should be doing to use ACT assets to avoid this?":
Biill Gates to Nathan Myhrvold ..

Don't Feed the Super-Troll

1990: "The purpose of announcing early like this is to freeze the market at the OEM and ISV level .. One might worry that this will help Sun because we will just have vaporware":
Nathan Myhrvold to Bill Gates ..

1995: "Given that we are looking at the Internet destroying our position as the setter of standards and APIs do you see things we should be doing to use ACT assets to avoid this?":
Biill Gates to Nathan Myhrvold ..

My understanding is that they never explicitly 'slowed down' AMD systems; but that the binaries produced by their compiler refused to honor the capabilities flags of non-intel processors

Oh, my. Just how many major non-Intel x86-64 CPU vendors are there? AMD, and...? It's suspiciously similar to the ACPI and SecureBoot affairs, don't you think?

I'm amused how he looks a little more and more like Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now every year. I'm pretty sure that there's eventually going to be an investor meeting in a temple surrounded by spikes with iMacs and Apple computers skewered on them somewhere in Redmond. Ballmer will be sweating out and squeezing cool water over his bald forehead while rambling slowly in spurts to SEC reporters who are trying to make heads or tails of what he is saying. Minions will be slaughtering a cow with chairs in the background while he sputters on about Windows 8's success and how they said his methods were madness.

That fails to explain why a three-year-old has no problems using it ... on a standard desktop PC. Like what the summary describes.

Three year old also has no problems with eating dog shit picked up from the ground.

Somewhere a Microsoft marketing executive leaned back in his chair and pursed his lips. An idea was forming....

Im affraid this is an old idea they already tried http://media.slated.org/albums/userpics/10002/zoon-turd.png

The patch imitates a nonstandard behavior -- if it sees BIOS claiming that ASPM is disabled, it leaves devices in whatever state BIOS left it instead of following what BIOS claims about device. This is certainly a bug in BIOS, and possibly a bug in Windows that happened to cancel the BIOS bug. However very likely that incompetent hardware or BIOS vendors (I am pretty sure, it's a certain company known as "the largest BIOS vendor") first produced wrong BIOS behavior, and Microsoft seized the opportunity to exploit it instead of reporting the bug, so now buggy BIOS behavior is a de-facto standard, even though actual ACPI standard says otherwise.

Please note that this is just one more link in a very long chain of "bug for bug compatibility" implementation that ACPI support turned into. For example, Linux now identifies itself as Windows Vista (!!!) in ACPI scripts just to avoid broken tables that are given to it if it identifies itself as Linux. How the Hell any OS-dependent things ended up in the supposedly platform-independent ACPI standard in the first place, is a separate question, and very likely the answer is this: http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/3000/PX03020.pdf

ACPI was not designed by Intel alone, Microsoft was also there. And let's remember what Microsoft tried to do:

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Sunday, January 24, 1999 8:41 AM
To: Jeff Westorinon; Ben Fathi
Cc: Carl Stork; Nathan Myhrvold; Eric Rudder
Subject: ACPI extensions

One thing I find myself wondering about is whether we shouldn't try and make the "ACPI" extensions somehow Windows specific.

It seems unfortunate if we do this work and get our partners to do the work and the result is that Linux works great without having to do the work.

Maybe there is no way to avoid this problem but it does bother me.

Maybe we could define the APIs so that they work well with NT and not the others even if they are open.

Or maybe we could patent something related to this.

First, you seem to confuse OEMs and MS. OEMs don't care about Linux one way or the other, but MS obviously does.

Second, as to why we blame MS's antipathy to Linux for ACPI cruft...
Because Billy G said so. {pdf}

This behavior is by design:

"One thing I find myself wondering about is whether we shouldn’t try and make the "ACPI" extensions somehow Windows specific.
It seems unfortunate if we do this work and get our partners to do the work and the result is that Linux works great without having to do the work.
Maybe there is no way Io avoid this problem but it does bother me. Maybe we couid define the APIs so that they work well with NT and not the others even if they are open."

William H. Gates III

How can somebody be a shill for Linux? It's free. You might find a few fanboys but, shills? No. Microsoft, on the other hand has a history of paying people to shill their products.

1) Don't think you've escaped DOC. OOXML has binary blobs in it. And "corner cases" is way understating the semantics problem; in many cases it is defined to "do what Word XXX does". Um, right.

2) HTML and CSS are tiny, elegant and well defined standards compared to the towering crapheap that is OOXML.

The site has been offline for two years, but the Internet Archive has most of it is HERE .

Read it and weep. Nothing will be done because most Windows users, like you, prefer to not believe that they are being spied on, or that former Microsoft employee James Plamondon trained "Technical Evangelists" who astroturf websites making fun of such claims.

You should read James Plamondon's mea culpa concerning his training of PAID "Technical Evangelists" to do the "Slog", the "Stuffed Panel", Astroturf congress and various websites with pro Microsoft and/or anti-Apple or Linux lies, etc...

Plamondon had to do a mea culpa because his activity was exposed in the Combs vs Microsoft lawsuit where the training documents he wrote were released to the public. As an example of how TE's work, read exerpts from Plamondon's training manual for the phrase "stacked panel", "The Slog", and other techniques here.

When Joe Barr wrote SLIME in 1994, he didn't know about the TE's Microsoft had unleashed on the world, but he described them to a tea:
http://slated.org/more_microsoft_dirty_tricks_history

Internet Achive has the "SLIME" article here.

A more complete, but not exhaustive list of dirty tricks by Microsoft are listed here:
http://www.grokdoc.net/index.php/Dirty_Tricks_history

The reason MS lost at search was Google was better at it, and MS couldn't leverage their desktop monopoly to make using Google a jolting experience.

The slide is a manufactured one stemming in direct link from Microsoft. If you look carefully at the bloggers, commenters, journalists etc you will start seeing a pattern. Its the same exact nicks/people lambasting Linux, dancing in joy over any new or old Microsofts product that badmouths Google. Sometime in september -09 Microsoft started a orchestred effort into throwin FUD at Google. Since finding dirt on Google is about as easy as getting a picture of Bill Gates using Linux most of it consists of lame attacks about privacy.

I dont know what Google does about this but at some point they will have to take this up into the open. No company that has tried to ignore Microsofts criminal activities and not take an open fight has ever survived.

PS. I do understand i sound like a raving lunatic to some people but please, read this and come back and tell me Microsoft is your everyday normal corporation. DS

http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2007021720190018
http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/

'I have a critical meeting with Intel a week from Wednesday. I want to convince them that they need to stay away from Oracle NCs and work more closely with Microsoft', Oct 1997

'They did 2 things that amaze me: a) They kept the NC specification around despite saying they would not. b) They snuck in a server specification. There is some failure in communication', Nov 1997

'I have a critical meeting with Intel a week from Wednesday. I want to convince them that they need to stay away from Oracle NCs and work more closely with Microsoft', Oct 1997

'They did 2 things that amaze me: a) They kept the NC specification around despite saying they would not. b) They snuck in a server specification. There is some failure in communication', Nov 1997

"If nobody can beat Linux and Apache with commercial products, then shame on all of us in the industry!

"Even if Linux is on a path that ultimately bumps against economic realities, it might take years, or even a decade for that to occur. In the meantime it could be an important competitor, wreaking havoc with established OS providers. There are several ways to look at Linux as a competitor"

"As a desktop phenomenon, I don't think that Linux is very important. The application set is too limited, and they are too far behind. The place where Unix is very important (i.e. dangerous) is on the server "

"This happens at an interesting time, because server based computing is exploding. The Internet creates a vast need for new servers at every level"

"If nobody can beat Linux and Apache with commercial products, then shame on all of us in the industry!

"Even if Linux is on a path that ultimately bumps against economic realities, it might take years, or even a decade for that to occur. In the meantime it could be an important competitor, wreaking havoc with established OS providers. There are several ways to look at Linux as a competitor"

"As a desktop phenomenon, I don't think that Linux is very important. The application set is too limited, and they are too far behind. The place where Unix is very important (i.e. dangerous) is on the server "

"This happens at an interesting time, because server based computing is exploding. The Internet creates a vast need for new servers at every level"

'One of the great strengths of the Windows platform is that it has always been licence-agnostic', westlake

as long as it isn't the GPL ..

'The system never frets or complains when you try to install an app that doesn't meet Microsoft's standards of political correctness', westlake

Except with WGA, Microsoft can remotely disable your desktop if it deems it 'unlicensed' and they don't give a toss about unlicensed third-party software.

'The Linux distro can make you jump through a hoop or two or three before you get to that closed source app or binary driver', westlake

Except, a certain software company keeps threatening codec developers with litigation, therefore such codecs have to be supplied seperately. If such a 'closed source app' exist do you mind telling us what it is. And if a binary only driver is available, then that's down to the supplier of the hardware, in'it?

'Windows does like to see a signature', westlake

Microsoft gets to approve what gets installedon my computer. Besides they are now selling a 'crapware' free computer, that's software from third party developers I assume.

"We think we're really unlocking the potential of Windows 7 "

OLPC ran into trouble because of its "all or nothing" attidude, westlake

bs, there was much machinations behind the scene. In fact MS was initially going to join the project to 'help' it get better .. :)

'The meeting begin with a question by Marcelo on wether Microsoft felt the OLPC project would be successful without its involvement '

MS even wanted to get a license for the "open source hardware"

'Remember that a key part of our strategy is to create a situation where even if Nick rejects us for philosophical reasons there is a long and visible history of our attempts to work with them and then we have to ask to get a license for the "open source hardware" and we will make our own offering on the commercial side'

If that didn't work, then they proposed creating their own 'open source' license and naming it "Education Open Source" or some such ..

'I think we should name our new open source license and romance its creation. "Education Open Source" or something like that'

'When the minister took his business elsewhere there was suddenly room in OLPC for XP and MS Office', westlake

You're comments are becoming ludicrous here ..

How accurate is it, does it handle 'regional' accents. How does it deal with grammar constructs.
-------

Making (microsoft) ACPI not work with Linux ..

"Foxconn .. have several different tables, a group for Windws XP and Vista, a group for 2000, a group for NT, Me, 95, 98, etc. that just errors out, and one for LINUX.

The one for Linux points to a badly written table that does not correspond to the board's ACPI implementation, causing weird kernel errors, strange system freezing, no suspend or hibernate, and other problems"

'You are incorrect in that the motherboard is not ACPI complaint. If it were not, then it would not have received Microsoft Certification for WHQL', Foxconn

'One thing I find myself wondering about is whether we shouldn't try and make the "ACPI" extensions somehow Windows specific ', billg Jan 1999

'unless it has application in the porn industry, it's dead in the water'

They were always early adopters of the 'new' technology .. :)
-------

Making (microsoft) ACPI not work with Linux ..

"Foxconn .. have several different tables, a group for Windws XP and Vista, a group for 2000, a group for NT, Me, 95, 98, etc. that just errors out, and one for LINUX.

The one for Linux points to a badly written table that does not correspond to the board's ACPI implementation, causing weird kernel errors, strange system freezing, no suspend or hibernate, and other problems"

'You are incorrect in that the motherboard is not ACPI complaint. If it were not, then it would not have received Microsoft Certification for WHQL', Foxconn

'One thing I find myself wondering about is whether we shouldn't try and make the "ACPI" extensions somehow Windows specific ', billg Jan 1999

I see a use in wearables, devices built into your clothes ..
-------

Making (microsoft) ACPI not work with Linux ..

"Foxconn .. have several different tables, a group for Windws XP and Vista, a group for 2000, a group for NT, Me, 95, 98, etc. that just errors out, and one for LINUX.

The one for Linux points to a badly written table that does not correspond to the board's ACPI implementation, causing weird kernel errors, strange system freezing, no suspend or hibernate, and other problems"

'You are incorrect in that the motherboard is not ACPI complaint. If it were not, then it would not have received Microsoft Certification for WHQL', Foxconn

'One thing I find myself wondering about is whether we shouldn't try and make the "ACPI" extensions somehow Windows specific ', billg Jan 1999

It was well documented in "Undocumented Windows. There's also the Court's Finding of Facts in US v Microsoft, and, if that weren't clear enough, The letter (warning: PDF) from now-former MS Group Manager Dennis Adler submitted as evidence in Comes v Microsoft makes it clear that this behavior did not stop as it was supposed to with the consent decree (although it may have become more innocuous and innocent overall). Quoting from that last: "Why not just document the API's, preface the document with some HONEST history (yes, we did use undoc'd APIs, yes we now have a policy in place of not doing that -- a policy that was not in place previously [...]"

Maybe. Maybe they've stopped now. The fact is that they did do it, they continued to do it even after the consent decree forbade it, and there is no evidence that they've stopped (although there is evidence that it's no longer standard policy).

It was well documented in "Undocumented Windows. There's also the Court's Finding of Facts in US v Microsoft, and, if that weren't clear enough, The letter (warning: PDF) from now-former MS Group Manager Dennis Adler submitted as evidence in Comes v Microsoft makes it clear that this behavior did not stop as it was supposed to with the consent decree (although it may have become more innocuous and innocent overall). Quoting from that last: "Why not just document the API's, preface the document with some HONEST history (yes, we did use undoc'd APIs, yes we now have a policy in place of not doing that -- a policy that was not in place previously [...]"

Maybe. Maybe they've stopped now. The fact is that they did do it, they continued to do it even after the consent decree forbade it, and there is no evidence that they've stopped (although there is evidence that it's no longer standard policy).

Except that this is a story about a "web conference hosted by the license-sniffing firm Black Duck software". Blackduck is hardly going to allow any criticism of its partner, Microsoft, nor allow its major thorn, the GPL, to go unmolested. Go re-read plaintiff's exhibit 3096 about stacking conference panels. Even without a sock puppet organizing the conference, M$ has a prolific history now of interfering with and shutting down conferences on competing (that's everything by the way) technologies.

When you're dealing with Microsoft, you're dealing with cockroaches. Get over it.

Wow, that presentation is superb.

There's all kinds of good stuff in that one. It's especially interesting when you see that M$ started its jihad (yes, the movement leadership's own words) back in the 1990's. It sure looks like a political / ideological / religious movement that uses illegal means to push its agenda and at the cost of billions of dollars of damage. Isn't DHS suppose to be protecting us from people like that?

MS-CC-RN 000001089959
HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL
MGB 2003
7/7/2005 10:52 AM

Assume Linux is in your account Someone is doing some research

Find and Lean on your insider friend, 'the fox' Having a trusted MSfriend in the account is critical. Some people (unix Bigots) can think of lots of reasons not to have a MS solution. MS folks may not be the strongest voice but they are true believers (Protect them, make them look good)

http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/9000/PX09346.pdf

We've all seen these saboteurs in action.

This makes me want to live in Germany. Though it seems amazon.de has a bunch of linux notebooks and netbooks, the same models aren't even on amazon.co.uk. I wonder if amazon.co.uk will even list arm based netbooks when they finally hit full force. The paucity of choice on amazon.co.uk is incredible, mostly older models and mostly out of stock.

When you live in a country in hock to M$* so deeply, maybe it's not surprising.

*The use of M$ in place of Microsoft is and indicator of the many years spent watching Microsoft compete fiercely for their market share, in both a legal and illegal manner.

"The Network Computer [wikipedia.org] was developed by Oracle and partners to take out Microsoft and Microsoft Windows .. It eventually flopped"

Actually no, the NC was seen as a good revenue stream by the originators and only seen as a threat if you were living in Redmond and saw every new development as one less Windows license.

"The Windows Org marketing team has spent the past 6 months fighting the TCO battle, addressing the threat of the NC .. We have been closely monitoring, attacking, and winning NC threatened accounts", FY98

'we have a conference call with them (intel) re NetPC today at 9 .. yup, it would be crazy to Intel define this .. the only urgent issue I can think of is defining how it boots, if we let Intel do this in a proprietary way we're screwed .. having Intel draft this spec and take it to the industry will cause up more headaches in the long run if we don't get out in front'

As I read in the antitrust documents, Microsoft feels that a "win" in the "war" is for the competition to use their standards. In several email messages and presentations given at MS, they outline this philosophy. They compare it to owning the competition by making them play the game by their rules.

http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/3000/PX03096.pdf

They must really really needed for the ASUS Linux experiment to fail. I just wonder what really went on behind closed doors, and what it cost MS in monetary value to squelch the deal.

"In order to compete more effectively against Linux and other providers on these deals, we can now leverage the Education and Government Incentive [EDGI] program to help tip the scales to MS in the deal. After engaging the regional team. the region may use funds to provide services and/or rebates to the customer with the following limitation:

"Not to exceed the estimated Windows royalties recognized by MS from the OEM selling the PC's to the customer (in the example, 50,000 PC's at approx. $100/PC for OEM Windows XP Professional would result in a maximum of $5M for the individual deal)"

It is essential, therefore, that we use this in only in deals we would lose otherwise

"Bottom line do our best to show the great value of our software to these customers and ensure we get paid for it under NO circumstances lose against Linux before ensuring we have used this program actively and in a smart way

if only Microsoft didn't spend all their time trying to break ACPI rather than improve it:

http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/3000/PX03020.pdf

More FUD.

The companies you mention don't have a history of using bloggers to shil. Microsoft does.

http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/3000/PX03096.pdf

As for Vista, adoption rate speaks louder than words. This seems appropriate:"Everytime the topic comes up, your type gets shot down... here I thought you'd learn."

In some of those published emails, you can see Bill Gates:

-Asking to add Windows-specific quirks to the ACPI "standard", just to make Linux more dificult. "It seems unfortunate if we do this work and get our partners to do the work and the result is that Linux works great without having to do the work [...] Maybe there is no way to avoid this problem but it does bother me. Maybe we could define the APIs so that they work well with NT and not the others even if they are open. Or maybe we could patent something related to this

-Asking their teams to add IE-specific crap in the HTML code generated by Office, just to make harder for other browsers to display things: One thing we have got to change in our strategy - allowing Office documents to be rendered well by others people browser is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company. We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPIETARY IE capabilities" (emphasis by gates, not mine)

-Lobbying Intel to get them to do all their design work in Windows desktops, not in Linux.

-A lot of other "fun" stuff.

And you wonder why people hates Gates? ;)

In some of those published emails, you can see Bill Gates:

-Asking to add Windows-specific quirks to the ACPI "standard", just to make Linux more dificult. "It seems unfortunate if we do this work and get our partners to do the work and the result is that Linux works great without having to do the work [...] Maybe there is no way to avoid this problem but it does bother me. Maybe we could define the APIs so that they work well with NT and not the others even if they are open. Or maybe we could patent something related to this

-Asking their teams to add IE-specific crap in the HTML code generated by Office, just to make harder for other browsers to display things: One thing we have got to change in our strategy - allowing Office documents to be rendered well by others people browser is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company. We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPIETARY IE capabilities" (emphasis by gates, not mine)

-Lobbying Intel to get them to do all their design work in Windows desktops, not in Linux.

-A lot of other "fun" stuff.

And you wonder why people hates Gates? ;)

Well, in Iowa case documents there was an analysis of Linux and Open Source: http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/6000/PX06501.pdf
It is a 70-page document and it is well made. I'll quote from the summary:
Consequently, OSS poses a direct, short-term revenue and platform threat to Microsoft - particuiady in the server
space. Additionally, the intrinsic parallelism and free idea exchange in OSS has benerifs that are not replicabie with our current licensing model arand therefore present a long term developer mindshare threat.

A very good analysis though, one of the best I've actually seen.
So they did care back then.

According to microsoft antitrust evidence, it certainly seems like the conspiracy holds some water ;)

http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/3000/PX03020.pdf

I don't think this is the actual document in question, but I found this while looking and I would say it qualifies as interesting and related. I like the reference to "scare tactics".

"One thing we have got to change in our strategy - allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other peoples browsers is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company. We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities."

Bill Gates, 1998, in a memo to the Office product group.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates#proprietary-ie-capabilities

http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/2000/PX02991.pdf

http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/3000/PX03020.pdf (PDF)

'"it works on Windows" is not enough to claim ACPI compatibility'

It works on Microsoft ACPI .. dumass .. ;)

'One thing I find myself wondering about is whether we shouldn't try and make the "ACPI" extensions somehow Windows specific'

übersoft.net ...

'One thing I find myself wondering about is whether we shouldn't try and make the "ACPI" extensions somehow Windows specific. It seems unfortunate if we do this work and get our partners to do the work and the results is that Linux works great without having to do the work. Maybe there is no way to avoid this problem but it does bother me. Maybe we could define the APIs so that they work well with NT and not the others even if they are open. Or maybe we could patent something related to this'