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Actually, he's taking money from both. It was disclosed a while ago that he's taking money from M$.

poetmatt takes any opportunity to slide in an anti-microsoft comment

How can it be anti-Microsoft when it's a simple statement of fact.

http://falkvinge.net/2012/03/02/how-microsoft-pays-big-money-to-smear-google-audaciously/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/07/icomp_productivity_commission/
http://techrights.org/2011/08/08/burson-marsteller-busted/

Apple doesn't play too lose with marketing statistics?

Apple plays loose with everything else, why should they not play loose with benchmarks?

And indeed, I find Apple's claim that their two core ARM outperforms nVidia's 4 core ARM with Apple's chip running at a lower clock on a cruder process, difficult to swallow. Impossible even. But much in keeping with Apple's general attitude towards honesty these days.

OK Apple astroturfer shills, have at.

Looks like you Apple Astroturfers are right on top of things.

Apple Astroturfers still out and about. Apple descends further into moral decrepitude

Apple doesn't play too lose with marketing statistics?

Apple plays loose with everything else, why should they not play loose with benchmarks?

And indeed, I find Apple's claim that their two core ARM outperforms nVidia's 4 core ARM with Apple's chip running at a lower clock on a cruder process, difficult to swallow. Impossible even. But much in keeping with Apple's general attitude towards honesty these days.

OK Apple astroturfer shills, have at.

Looks like you Apple Astroturfers are right on top of things.

Hey, don't shoot the messenger. It wasn't me who did all those unethical things. If you want it to stop, send Tim Cook an email.

1) You're basing a conclusion on numbers you're pulling out of your ass.

Not at all, I used the number from the article, or didn't you read it? Giving the benefit of the doubt of course, because in truth I believe the whole little drama to be pretty much the sort of fiction we have come to expect from Apple

According to the linked articles in the post, consumer advocates (or, more accurately, at least one consumer advocate that is associated with Microsoft) are opposed to this move because it gives Google "unprecedented dominance" in the mobile market.

None of the linked articles give any evidence of "strong opposition from open source... advocates". Can anyone explain or give examples of this supposed "strong opposition"? As is, this appears to be a mostly invented controversy.

it's a misconception that patents stifle innovation

No it isn't... They Do

The author is a lawyer, so its no wonder he is defending the legal system. It pays his bills. Take the whole thing with a gigantic grain of salt.

-=Geoskd

Of course, this is old news, see something from 2007 no less... http://techrights.org/2007/10/29/exclusionary-deals-linux/

The blog post was written in 2007, what it's talking about is out-of-date contracts from well over a decade ago. Since the anti-trust investigation we have seen a slew of big-name vendors try and fail to push pre-installed linux and surprise surprise people didn't want it so naturally they stopped. But can you blame them? Why would you continue pushing a product for a market that plainly does not exist?

Do you know if they still doing this?

A) The use of the word was should be a hint that it may or may not be the case.

Do you have any citations?

B) Yes, I have citation from the Dept. of Justice no less, http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f0000/0045.htm Relevant paragraph quoted:

Beginning in 1988, and continuing until July 15, 1994, Microsoft induced many OEMs to execute anticompetitive "per processor" licenses. Under a per processor license, an OEM pays Microsoft a royalty for each computer it sells containing a particular microprocessor, whether the OEM sells the computer with a Microsoft operating system or a non-Microsoft operating system. In effect, the royalty payment to Microsoft when no Microsoft product is being used acts as a penalty, or tax, on the OEM's use of a competing PC operating system. Since 1988, Microsoft's use of per processor licenses has increased. In fiscal year 1993, per processor licenses accounted for an estimated 60% of MS-DOS sales to OEMs and 43% of Windows sales to OEMs.(3) Collectively, the OEMs who have such per processor contracts are critical to the success of competing operating system vendors, but those OEMs effectively are foreclosed to Microsoft's competitors.

Of course, that was before judgement...you could always read the court's findings of fact, if that helps with the credibility of this. http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm

That's some bullshit right there.

C) May be the case, but it still happened. And as I recall, the practice continued to happen after the trial was concluded, for a short time. The trial concluded in late '99, which means the practice did continue into the '00s... Of course, this is old news, see something from 2007 no less... http://techrights.org/2007/10/29/exclusionary-deals-linux/ I'll leave the rest to you as an exercise.

This ought to be good news for taxpayers long-term regardless of how the economy is doing now.

Until Microsoft decides to force people to pay them licensing fees for Free and Open Source Software.

Remember this is the year of SOPA and PIPA. "Intellectual Property" is dead. Long live "Intellectual Property".

References:
http://www.yro.slashdot.org/story/11/04/28/039255/bn-responds-to-microsofts-android-suit
http://techrights.org/2011/11/12/

Public education is slowly coming under the control of Bill Gates and Microshaft...Linux is forbidden in many school districts, due to golf course deals with M$ and computer illiterate administrators, etc. I fear for the future generations...
http://techrights.org/2010/04/12/strings-attached-to-education/

what apple don’t realise is that HTC, VIA and so on are backed by – and owned by – the Taiwanese Triads. i find it just absolutely staggering that any company would even contemplate taking on such powerful people. the Triads are the 800lb gorilla: leave them alone and they’ll leave you alone. cross them and they will put in a long-term plan to completely obliterate you.

Gold :)

What? For agreeing with you that Failbook is similar to M$ in terms of privacy? Fact : Failbook is in bed with M$.
Fact : M$ also owns the data on Failbook

Fact : Failbook is attacking software developers using imaginary property laws to give M$ a bigger monopoly. All paid for by Failbook l-users

That is the tip of the iceberg for the partnership between Failbook and M$. The FTC needs to investigate the whole deal between M$ and Failbook, revoke corporate charters, then shutdown both Failbook and M$ for numerous privacy violations and for abusing a monopoly. Even non users must deal with less privacy due t0 M$ and Failbook.

What? For agreeing with you that Failbook is similar to M$ in terms of privacy? Fact : Failbook is in bed with M$.
Fact : M$ also owns the data on Failbook

Fact : Failbook is attacking software developers using imaginary property laws to give M$ a bigger monopoly. All paid for by Failbook l-users

That is the tip of the iceberg for the partnership between Failbook and M$. The FTC needs to investigate the whole deal between M$ and Failbook, revoke corporate charters, then shutdown both Failbook and M$ for numerous privacy violations and for abusing a monopoly. Even non users must deal with less privacy due t0 M$ and Failbook.

What? For agreeing with you that Failbook is similar to M$ in terms of privacy? Fact : Failbook is in bed with M$.
Fact : M$ also owns the data on Failbook

Fact : Failbook is attacking software developers using imaginary property laws to give M$ a bigger monopoly. All paid for by Failbook l-users

That is the tip of the iceberg for the partnership between Failbook and M$. The FTC needs to investigate the whole deal between M$ and Failbook, revoke corporate charters, then shutdown both Failbook and M$ for numerous privacy violations and for abusing a monopoly. Even non users must deal with less privacy due t0 M$ and Failbook.

Yeah, he's got nothing to gain from this crusade. I wonder why he deleted all the references to his microsoft employment from his curriculum, that's probably because there are no interests connected to him or maybe because he has nothing to gain. Really.... a lawyer who has nothing to gain...

Microsoft deploys more than software donations. They employ political power. Note here how Hilary Clinton works hand in hand with Microsoft:

http://techrights.org/2011/01/02/vietnam-with-proprietary-software/

And that is just one country.

LOL! I was referring to that sudden $140m "UNIX IP licensing fee" Microsoft paid SCO directly not even six months after the whole brouhaha started... so unless you can show me some SysV code in Windows XP, 2k3, 2k8, Vista, 7...

As for the rest, someone was kind enough to record the various ways that Microsoft has snuck money into SCO the whole time.

The Patent Pool isn't to kill WebM, it is to protect those who choose to use WebM from litigation.

Sure, but protection from whom? From themselves perhaps?

'The president of the FFII has brought to people’s attention this good report from The Prior Art blog, saying that “MPEG-LA’s CEO Larry Horn also heads MobileMedia, a patent troll holding no less than 122 patents bought to Nokia and Sony” '

You have no idea how much many of us are going to enjoy watching you guys squirm and flail about for the next two years. No doubt HP's early look at W8 had a lot to do with them deciding to opt out of selling Windows PCs. I can just barely imagine Leo Apothaker, having waited patiently through the show turning to the presenter and asking: "What else have you got? Is that it?" You guys have no idea what you've done. This is going to be delightful.

Twitter got tired of being stalked and mod-bombed by sockpuppets and left for greener pastures. I do believe you'll find him on techrights if you're really looking. A shame, that. I do believe he was one of slashdot's most prolific article submitters ever and the quality has gone downhill since.

You've got some gall to bring up standards. Why don't you go back and see if you can get W8 adopted as a standard by ISO.

I might question whether you are incapable of reading comprehension, but I don't know it.

You can question anything you like. There's still no doubt Microsoft knew what they were doing.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/12/russia-uses-microsoft-to-_n_713653.html
http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/russia-uses-microsoft-to-suppress-dissent-51505
http://www.osnews.com/story/23797/NYT_Russia_Uses_Microsoft_to_Suppress_Dissent
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Russia-Anti-Piracy-Raids-Microsoft-Piracy-Putin,11270.html
http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2011/03/microsoft-sorry-for-bing-quake-tweet.html
http://techrights.org/2011/09/05/microsoft-mockery-of-the-chinese/

http://techrights.org/2009/09/20/privatization-africa/

http://techrights.org/2009/11/02/gates-africa-un-education/

http://techrights.org/2009/10/22/seeds-of-doubt-in-bill-gates-investments/

http://techrights.org/2009/09/20/privatization-africa/

http://techrights.org/2009/11/02/gates-africa-un-education/

http://techrights.org/2009/10/22/seeds-of-doubt-in-bill-gates-investments/

http://techrights.org/2009/09/20/privatization-africa/

http://techrights.org/2009/11/02/gates-africa-un-education/

http://techrights.org/2009/10/22/seeds-of-doubt-in-bill-gates-investments/

Apple (not the Beatles record label, the one that copied their name) hates copying so much they bully entire countries into banning their competitors. Mind you, they actually do have a sense of humour - at least I'm being charitable and assuming their latest desperate claim over Android itself is a joke. If you can stop laughing long enough after reading that, didn't Andy Rubin do his work on Danger *after* he left Apple? And m$ bought Danger? So by Apples latest barrel-scraping logic, they should be squabbling with m$ too. Oh, and when Andy was 12 I hear he did a paper round, and some of the mags he delivered were tech and so inspired him. The newsagents lawyers would like a word...

You are COMPLETELY correct about this guy. You can't trust ANYTHING he says - here is an example of what he said concerning PJ and Groklaw being paid by IBM back in the middle of the SCO lawsuits. He his completely unreliable as a reporter. He has an agenda that is transparent.

http://techrights.org/2010/08/06/record-straight-on-groklaw-ibm/

Maybe there IS a lawsuit between Apple and Mot in Germany. As others have mentioned, Mot is a BIG company and can take care of themselves. They do have fundamental technology in Cell phones, and many in radio technology. Apple just doesn't like competition, so they resort to lawsuits to clear the field for their milch-cow products. They're STILL whining about loss of the "look and feel" lawsuits over Windows 1 with Microsoft! ;-) They are just as anti-competitive as Microsoft.

No doubt Apple is backing its new iCloud platform as the way for everyone to share - and damn the so-called hardware Server market. This is the only operating system not natively supported in most virtual machines. IDC doesn't even include Apple in market share reports anymore, and they've clearly de-leveraged their investment over the past few years as opposed to their commitment to growing xServe in 2002

All that aside, I had a client who insisted on moving to OSX Server in 2003 to manage his email. FIle sharing was fine, even over a massive fiber/iscsi San config. But it didn't take long for his users to force a switch to an exchange hosted environment. The features just weren't there and the support or the tech resources to make corrections were far too time-consuming.

I can't find the thread that I was thinking about, but here are a pair of pages about this:

This one from Techrights contain a lot of links about the matter:
http://techrights.org/2010/06/29/ibm-paranoia/

Here is another one:
http://slushdot.com/article.php?story=20100628001225597

Although his most recent FUD campaign is against Android, clearly it is not his first FUD campaign.

There is the TechRights blog. It's more a blog, though, and has a weaker discussion mechanism than Slashdot.

Seriously, half of the stories that get posted on /. now are from trolls,

...and the other half are Packt book reviews.

Cmdr Taco has always promoted fanboi on fanboi contreversy, but lately not only have the fans been deserting Slashdot in legions, but Slashdot appears to be run by Microsoft - I can only see anti-Google/Linux/Apple stories on Slashdot, and I can't remember the last time I read anything on here that didn't look like it was pre-approved by Sarah Fuckwit Palin.

TFA written by a Microsoft shill

Which company is paying YOU, shill?

So the truth is now an anti-$YOUR_FAVORITE_COMPANY rant? Personally, I think it is completely appropriate to bring MS up in this discussion as there is proof that they do this. The Halloween Documents. Read them. They speak very specifically about how they send in their shills to discussion forums (like Slashdot) to dog the competition and talk up Microsoft products.

A while back during the Xbox RROD fiasco, one of their paid forum shills got fired for something then signed into the forum the next day and admitted he was a paid astroturfer. I mean, really, man. How the hell are you supposed to have a good non-biased discussion on the merits of a technology when you have companies paying people to make sure that doesn't happen. It's sickening. I happen to like Slashdot. I also like fair competition. Using millions of dollars to "steer the discussion" is fucking bullshit. It's vandalism.

So the question is, who is paying you?

Imagine how childish it would be if Microsoft and Apple did that.

The irony's thick in here today.

I wonder why Slashdot does not tag stories about Windows malware with "Windows". I know why ComputerWorld and other publishers that deal with WE and take Microsoft advertising money are cowed and don't Call Out Windows. Slashdot should be better than that.

I wonder why Slashdot does not tag stories about Windows malware with "Windows". I know why ComputerWorld and other publishers that deal with WE and take Microsoft advertising money are cowed and don't Call Out Windows. Slashdot should be better than that.

I wonder why Slashdot does not tag stories about Windows malware with "Windows". I know why ComputerWorld and other publishers that deal with WE and take Microsoft advertising money are cowed and don't Call Out Windows. Slashdot should be better than that.

I wonder why Slashdot does not tag stories about Windows malware with "Windows". I know why ComputerWorld and other publishers that deal with WE and take Microsoft advertising money are cowed and don't Call Out Windows. Slashdot should be better than that.

And, from your own link:

A settlement with a comment from the judge saying "she sees the GNU GPL to be an enforceable and binding license".

Some guy was denied standing to sue since he didn't establish a valid anti-trust claim.

In one case a judge ruled "the GPL was not material to a case dealing with trade secrets derived from GPL-licensed work".

A legal precedent in Germany.

Apparently BusyBox has mostly settled, and agreed to release code.

Again, Linsys and Cisco settled.

As much as we all would like to GPL upheld in court, and some of us would like to say that this has been definitively settled by a court, it seems like in a lot of ways it's a lot murkier than that. Some jurisdictions have upheld it, some judges have commented that it should be legally binding, and many cases have been settled ... which means they don't really provide actual precedents in terms of case law.

I'm just not convinced that there is enough actual legal precedent to say in most jurisdictions that violating the terms of the GPL has been consistently upheld. So far, it seems to be a fairly hodge-podge collection of cases which established various things to various degrees.

I'm certainly not convinced that one of the references you cite actually authoritatively establish this in enough jurisdictions to say the matter has been resolved. I'm not arguing against the GPL ... I'm saying I don't believe that the issue has become cut and dried enough that with enough lawyers you couldn't convince a judge otherwise.

Quick Google Search:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#The_GPL_in_court

http://techrights.org/2007/11/23/gpl-court-test/

If you wish, http://techrights.org covers similar subjects.

As I understand it, here is the chief complaint that people have about Mono: Microsoft could have some sort of patents that could apply to Mono; and Microsoft could in the future use these patents to do something bad.

I have never seen any specific examples given, it's just a general "there could be some patents" argument. In fact, I believe the theory is that these could be "submarine" patents, not known now but lurking invisibly.

Here's a specific example. This is a long essay about this very issue. What is the danger if we use Mono? "[C#] was developed inside Microsoft, so it's likely they have many patents to cover different aspects of its implementation." Got that? "it's likely" Microsoft has "many patents". Citation needed.

This is the 21st Century, and patents are not only public, there are patent search engines. Where are the specific examples?

The situation is even crazier due to the passage of time. Microsoft introduced .NET in the year 2000. It is now the year 2011. Patents in the USA today have a term of 20 years. Presumably these submarine patents were not filed the same year as .NET was introduced; that would be far too obvious... they were probably filed a year or two ahead of time. So presumably these patents have a maximum life of under 9 years, and probably under 7 years.

In the past 11 or 12 years, nobody has noticed these deadly patents, lurking. But wait: these could be true "submarine" patents, where the patent was filed but not granted yet, and Microsoft is using sleazy tricks to extend the filing period and delay granting the patents. This implies that the patent must have been filed before 1995, when the US patent system was changed (patent term went from "17 years after patent granted" to "20 years after patent filed", specifically to fix the problem of submarine patents). Thus, a true "submarine" patent would have to have been kept going via sleazy tricks for over 16 years now, and nobody has noticed it yet.

So, if I understand correctly, we shouldn't use Mono because it could be a trap. Microsoft could have patents nobody has noticed for a dozen years that will expire within the next nine years that could apply to Mono. Or else they could have pending patent applications that have been pending for over 16 years without anybody noticing; those would apply for 17 years after the patent grant finally occurs in the future.

And if the above turns out to be true, and you wrote a program in C#, what would Microsoft's remedy be? Would you be forced to pay them huge sums of money? Would you be forced to give ownership of your source code to Microsoft? Not likely, and anybody who claims it is likely needs to provide legal precedents showing such a remedy in a similar case. No, the only realistic remedy would be that you would have to choose between buying some sort of licensed version of Mono (to comply with the patent licensing terms), or stop using Mono.

And the obvious exit strategy is to rewrite your C# app in Java. That would be a pain, granted, but hardly the end of the world.

And that is even assuming that Microsoft was successful in asserting these hidden patents. After offering C# up as a free standard, and not taking any action for a dozen years, to suddenly assert hidden patents would leave Microsoft wide open to the "unclean hands" legal doctrine. It's hard for me to imagine Microsoft prevailing in this.

And nobody has yet proposed a motive why Microsoft should do this. How does Microsoft gain by backstabbing the C# community? In the near term they could gain some patent licensing fees, but in the long term they would be alienating people they have been trying to woo. How likely is this, really?

So, in conclusion: because of this nebulously scary potential situation with possible unknown Microsoft patents, Mono and C# are

The list of highly questionable if not outright illegal activities is very long:

You can start here with "A History of Anticompetitive Behavior and Consumer Harm"
http://www.ecis.eu/documents/Finalversion_Consumerchoicepaper.pdf

and then move on to a catalog of their attacks on standards:
http://www.grokdoc.net/index.php/Dirty_Tricks_history

and then any of these:
Illegal tying: http://www.ecis.eu/documents/ECISPressStatementonOperaSO1.pdf
Unethical marketing: http://www.nearsoft.com/blog/MS-test.html
Antitrust: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/600488.stm

Or these:
http://slashdot.org/story/00/05/02/158204/Kerberos-PACs-And-Microsofts-Dirty-Tricks
http://www.technologyevangelist.com/2007/02/microsoft_dirty_tric_1.html
http://techrights.org/2008/12/01/leaked-oem-vista-ad-incentives/
http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/57261/index.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/368660.stm
http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2005010107100653
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/06/08/23/1251210/Microsoft-Admonished-by-US-District-Court-Judge
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-tried-to-muck-with-anti-linux-facts/235
http://www.zdnet.com/news/fact-and-fiction-in-the-microsoft-sco-relationship/139743
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/10/23/13219/110
http://lproven.livejournal.com/102128.html
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7654

Forgot to include this:

CNET Shows Anti-Google AstroTurf (‘Consumer’ ‘Watchdog’) is Connected to Edelman, “Microsoft Goes on the Offensive” Against Google

Political Games Against Google

Back in 2009 Unxis and SCO seemed to be the same company.

http://techrights.org/2009/07/14/sco-and-unxis/

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090711015440158

http://www.unxis.ca/
http://www.unxis.co.uk/
http://www.unxis.com/

So I would say it all seems like a scam to avoid having to do anything legal.

I like how you left off the part about him lying to the EU commission about the effect on MySQL during the Oracle buyout of Sun:
    http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20091204095942328
When the FSF's Eblen Moglen has to side with Oracle against his FUD, clearly something is up.

Florian set up a FUD campaign against IBM in the TurboHercules:
    http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20100408153953613
Pamela Jones stated "It seems Groklaw will have to open a new category, answering Florian Mueller FUD."

Florian managed to delay and possibly kill the high-profile Munich migration to Linux:
    http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/application-development/2006/03/29/munich-linux-migration-delayed-by-pr-stunt-39260037/
Then he bragged about it:
    http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20091021164738392
His attitude seems to be "the end justifies the means".

Of course, I'm sure it's a coincidence that Florian is connected with CCIA, which is a Microsoft-funded proxy:
    http://techrights.org/2010/04/11/florian-mueller-and-erika-mann/

Florian seems to have a lot to write about... well anyone that Microsoft needs to spread some FUD about. It's always quite timely too, where he can start streaming out articles on something he never seemed to care about a short time earlier.

Believe who you want, but I'm with the FSF and Groklaw on this one. In many cases I may not like the companies Florian is attacking (Oracle, for one), but that doesn't mean you can just start making stuff up (FUD about the Sun acquisition).

Have you TRIED any other search engine? These guys have been working hard to claw a 0.1% from Google. And along the way they have actually managed to produce some pretty nifty search algorithms. I have stopped using Google for 2 years now and have seldom been let down by my new search engine.

Naming your new one would have been useful, especially if its so great. By not naming it I just assume you are a an anti-google troll. Sorry if that is wrong but we all know there is an anti google campaign paid for by AT&T and MS.

http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/2741
http://techrights.org/2009/06/15/microsofts-whisper-campaign-goog/
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-an-anti-google-whisper-campaign-looks-like-2009-6

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.

Yeah, then everyone can see just how stupid it is to compare him with a drug lord.

Right, because as everybody knows, Bill Gates never thinks like that.

BP got the rewards but everyone else is stuck with the cost of their screw up. BP is paying pennies on the dollar to gulf coast residents for loss of business. They will pay nothing in long term health costs.

As a gulf coast resident and free software advocate who's worked for Fortune 100 companies, the role of Microsoft in Deepwater Horizon was not that surprising. I helped write this report about the problems BP had with Microsoft and other non free software and this follow up report when more details were revealed. I'll be looking closely at NOV. Their lack of cooperation is probably concealing more trouble with the system that's largely responsible for the disaster. Industry needs to dump Microsoft to avoid future calamities. BP technicians thought they were doing as much as they can to fix the problems but they were clearly taking risks they should not have been taking and their solution clearly would have lead to more of the same.