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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.

Florian, your sugar daddy's getting squashed between Apple, Google, HTC, Motorola, a host of others, and a stampeding horde of customers clamoring for the progress that's been held back too long. HP, Acer and Dell will be slow to come along, but their partnership is not a suicide pact. Your flopping about will not slow the outcome in the slightest.

Enjoy your incentives while they still come. Nothing lasts forever. They'll use you up and throw you out one day so you may as well get yours, right?

I'll leave you with a parting thought: "Analysts sell out -- That's their business model." - James Plamondon, Microsoft Evangelist.

On a story where it's neither possible to be interesting nor informative, how did seventeen comments (by my preference settings) make it to +5?

I Googled for "microsoft obnoxious shill" expecting Allchin to make the cut. Turns out he was elbowed out in grand style by James Plamondon. I missed that one at the time. After the financial meltdown, he inexplicably leaked on himself.

How to Get Your Platform Accepted as a Standard - Microsoft Style

Here's a Microsoft hater with some serious elbow grease:

Former Microsoft Shill Openly Confesses, Alleges Microsoft Still Does This
How Jim Allchin, Gartner and Enderle Lied to the Whole World

I read a piece by Allchin once that forever set my normalization basis for all things Microsoft. Dang, it's hard to divide by mucous.

What Microsoft says about momentum is true. Exchange == U.S.S. Bismarck.

From the bathroom wall of all knowledge:

Dorsetshire and Maori stopped to rescue survivors, but a U-boat alarm caused them to leave the scene after rescuing only 110 Bismarck sailors, abandoning the surviving crew in the water. The next morning U-74, which had heard sinking noises from a distance, and the German weather ship Sachsenwald picked up 5 survivors. 1,995 of the ship's crew of 2,200 died.

If Microsoft ever loses the Bismarck, they had better be prepared to rescue their own.

On a story where it's neither possible to be interesting nor informative, how did seventeen comments (by my preference settings) make it to +5?

I Googled for "microsoft obnoxious shill" expecting Allchin to make the cut. Turns out he was elbowed out in grand style by James Plamondon. I missed that one at the time. After the financial meltdown, he inexplicably leaked on himself.

How to Get Your Platform Accepted as a Standard - Microsoft Style

Here's a Microsoft hater with some serious elbow grease:

Former Microsoft Shill Openly Confesses, Alleges Microsoft Still Does This
How Jim Allchin, Gartner and Enderle Lied to the Whole World

I read a piece by Allchin once that forever set my normalization basis for all things Microsoft. Dang, it's hard to divide by mucous.

What Microsoft says about momentum is true. Exchange == U.S.S. Bismarck.

From the bathroom wall of all knowledge:

Dorsetshire and Maori stopped to rescue survivors, but a U-boat alarm caused them to leave the scene after rescuing only 110 Bismarck sailors, abandoning the surviving crew in the water. The next morning U-74, which had heard sinking noises from a distance, and the German weather ship Sachsenwald picked up 5 survivors. 1,995 of the ship's crew of 2,200 died.

If Microsoft ever loses the Bismarck, they had better be prepared to rescue their own.

Because he couldn't possibly be getting most of that back as profit now could he?

• Microsoft sues TomTom over Linux and other patent claims
• Aiming at Android, Microsoft sues Motorola
• Microsoft sues Salesforce.com for alleged patent infringement

That's before we get to the actions of the major Microsoft shareholders e.g: Microsoft Co-Founder Launches Patent War "

And finally of course ; Microsoft's apparent involvement in many proxy actions.

• Microsoft Proxy Fights Against Google in the United States
• Microsoft Proxy Attack on GNU/Linux Continues With TurboHercules
• Google Accuses Microsoft of Proxy Legal War
• Also suggestions of MS involvement in the SCO lawsuit

Under previous management MS may not have been lawsuit happy. Nowadays they pretty clearly are.

• Microsoft sues TomTom over Linux and other patent claims
• Aiming at Android, Microsoft sues Motorola
• Microsoft sues Salesforce.com for alleged patent infringement

That's before we get to the actions of the major Microsoft shareholders e.g: Microsoft Co-Founder Launches Patent War "

And finally of course ; Microsoft's apparent involvement in many proxy actions.

• Microsoft Proxy Fights Against Google in the United States
• Microsoft Proxy Attack on GNU/Linux Continues With TurboHercules
• Google Accuses Microsoft of Proxy Legal War
• Also suggestions of MS involvement in the SCO lawsuit

Under previous management MS may not have been lawsuit happy. Nowadays they pretty clearly are.

From the article:

To find malware-distribution sites, Google uses a huge number of virtual machines running completely unpatched versions of Windows and Internet Explorer that they point at potentially malicious URLs. The company then ties this in with the data that it gathers from its automated crawlers that are tasked with looking for malicious code on legitimate Web sites.

It would be nice if people would call this stuff Windows malware if it does not do anything to normal computers. Please Call out Windows, people.

Since the video is little more than quotes from people heralding the stark beauty of Microsoft products when compared to various open-source (and sometimes generic open-source) products, you might wonder where the quotes come from. They're old success stories, most of which are marketed as "Case Studies" on Microsoft.com.

I looked up the quotes in the video and apparently wasn't the only one to notice. Taking the first three quotes your years are 2007, 2009 and 2006. Some of them are more recent than others but I get the feeling that Microsoft needs to dig further back to find quotes deriding open source. I've used OpenOffice.org for a very long time. In college (~2002) I even used StarOffice on the school's Sun machines. And OpenOffice.org used to have some really really shitty aspects. But a few years back, major revisions have made it a lot better. Enough to cause Microsoft to come up with new ideas for their Office Suite. And I'm forced to use MS Office at work and I'm okay with that. It's becoming a contender. And as "tech debt" or "IT debt" begins to be realized for Microsoft and what it did to our history of proprietary format documents, I think OpenOffice.org is only going to look better and better. Yes, there's some cost with OO.o but there's some cost with MS Office as well.

It doesn't always happen but sometimes open source catches up to and even surpasses proprietary software. I cannot say OO.o will pass MS Office but it has made up a lot of ground in the past 2-3 years. A good example of this is the Linux 2.6 kernel and its steadily growing stability and features compared to Windows that remained largely stagnant while this occurred.

With the serious changes to the interface of MS Office suites (not saying they're bad, they're just some of the most major updates I've seen from MS), I think now is going to be the hardest time for Microsoft to find current quotes from customers criticizing open source. Because flipping from MS Word 2007 to OO.o is probably going to be as difficult for users to adapt to as flipping from MS Word 2007 to MS Word 2010.

It all depends how trustworthy you think the nytimes reporting is. I admit, that can be shaky at the best of times... but they claim to have interviewed a source that was only suspected of being a Wikileaks agent - who was "leaned on" by the Army’s criminal division to rat out on Wikileaks (where leaned on in this case meant “a considerable amount of money").

First - the NYT is not this leaked intel document that you referred to as a plan. Secondly, I'll trust your quote as the NYT article is beyond their gateway that I don't feel like jumping around at this point. :P

Having said all that - I'm sure the NYT is faithfully reporting what was told to them. The question is who this source is. And if the source is accurate - so what? Army intel wanted to hire themselves an informant. We already know that they intend to assess Wikileaks as a threat. That's not going to end with pointing a browser to the Wikileaks site.

If they do that with just a suspected wikileaks insider "agent" - it is not a far stretch to ask what are they trying to do with confirmed insiders like Domscheit-Berg. Especially when they know that his wife works as a Microsoft political lobbyist. Lots of pressure points to lean on there.

Recruiting an informer is hardly the kind of leaning on that the parent is talking about (or what you're implying). And it's a far cry from the kind of discrediting that's being theorized.

What fails to come to light in this thread is any evidence of a conspiracy to lean on Wikileaks agents. Yet you've invoked all this as proof.

It all depends how trustworthy you think the nytimes reporting is. I admit, that can be shaky at the best of times... but they claim to have interviewed a source that was only suspected of being a Wikileaks agent - who was "leaned on" by the Army’s criminal division to rat out on Wikileaks (where leaned on in this case meant “a considerable amount of money"). If they do that with just a suspected wikileaks insider "agent" - it is not a far stretch to ask what are they trying to do with confirmed insiders like Domscheit-Berg. Especially when they know that his wife works as a Microsoft political lobbyist. Lots of pressure points to lean on there.

What Everyone Needs to Know About Wikileaks and Microsoft Lobbyists Like Anke Domscheit-Berg, Zuck, and Maybe Florian Müller

More on Domscheit-Bergs role in leaking details of the EU's OSS initiative to wikileaks (to the detriment of OSS and Microsofts gain. Probably to the Domscheit-Bergs financial gain as well, I would imagine...

Oh, except for the part where he says: "i didnt speak to newsweek or other media representatives about this."

No? It looks like Domscheit-Bergs Wife, political relations for Microsoft... did instead. They have already set a precedence of leaking between them to political and financial advantage.

So you use Novell which would never do anything underhanded for business?

Microsoft: http://techrights.org/2009/05/04/consumer-watchdog-exposed/

Amazing, it's almost like it's sponsored by Microsoft. Fail.

"Consumer Watchdog" appears to be an astroturfing organization, financed by Microsoft.

http://techrights.org/2009/05/04/consumer-watchdog-exposed/

I talked to them, and their arguments don't make much sense; they can't come up with a coherent argument why they are focusing on Google so much.

Did Microsoft Hire Consumer Watchdog to Attack Google?

That is a year old story. According to it, "consumer watchdog" is a hired gun.

See that last bit? It’s important. Consumerwatchdog.org is linked to Grassroots.com, which is Grassroots Enterprise. ...

Grassroots Enterprise is not about grassroots. It’s about AstroTurfing.....

It’s a business. It hires people to do jobs for companies (clients).

Microsoft is the greedy evil company we think they are, and then some.

Patent bullying, funding the scox scam, astro-turfing, fake TCO studies, fake benchmarking studies, outright lying to the US congress about difficulty of removing msie from windows, outright lying to the EU about difficulty of removing media player from windows, the OOXML scam, having Washington taxpayers pay for $11 million bridge on MS campus. Firing thousands of US workers, and hiring h1bs to replace the US workers, and all the while crying to US congress about the desperate shortages of US workers.

I could go on. But you could probably learn more here:

http://techrights.org/?stories

Nobody is bashing Windows so far[...]

Don't worry, the "journalists" at Boycott Novel have that covered: Microsoft Windows BSOD Caused Deepwater Horizon Disaster.

Here's the summary, as provided by the site itself: Blue Screen of Death caused a crucial computer system not to prevent the biggest disaster of the 21st century . So yes, they are in fact claiming that it was a Windows failure that actually led to the explosion and oil spill.

I had thought that they had reached the limit of over-the-top claims when they tried to imply Microsoft caused Reiser to murder his wife, but they sure proved me wrong on that!

I'm guessing that most of the intelligent, technically knowledgeable people have left Microsoft. So now non-technical employees are pretending to run a technological company. It's worth it to them to put a lot of effort into pretending that they are doing a good job, because they would not be paid as much somewhere else.

One indication that the smart people have left is when a company brings out a new version of software, and the big change is in the menus. Menu changes are something people who don't care about technology can do.

There have been a lot of technological embarrassments at Microsoft in recent years. An obvious patent is just one of them.

(The Microsoft Vista operating system was, it is said, not a failure, but an intentional method of getting people to pay for two operating systems, by deliberately releasing an unfinished one.)

And I assume Microsoft would want to fix things if people reported them in.

And you would be wrong a lot. (One of many; Google is your friend, finding others is an exercise left to the reader.)

IBM supports some open source projects, yes, but only where they improve its profits.

... and we wouldn't have it any other way. If you believe, like I do, that open source will win out in the end, then you know that as time goes on, more of the "animal kingdom" of software will be open source, and businesses will still find ways to profit from it.

To put it another way (and into the current perspective), Florian Mueller is not a friend of open source. He's your typical troll 4 hire. And he's surprisingly inept when it comes to technical issues - even simple things like how user moderation works here on slashdot.

His agenda is simple - disrupt until he gets his (or his client's) way. We saw that with the Oracle rescue of Sun. We're seeing it with the current campaign of lies over Turbo Hercules/Hercules. His goal is always the same - to insert himself into issues, to be "a player."

Too bad for him that he melted down so badly over the weekend. The man has zero credibility at this point. Just another net-kook, like Maureen O'Gara.

groklaw is a moderated site; as such, it is expected that comments that don't conform to the site's standards will be removed; most sites, including slashdot, will remove certain types of comments.

I didn't say that they can't remove comments. The question is what standards they apply. If those standards are reasonable and only unreasonable comments get removed, that's one thing. Should any evidence of perfectly resaonable comments being removed ever come up, it would add to concerns over the site's bias and validate some people's impression that it's a propaganda tool. That's why it's interesting to look at.

What's in it for you?

I don't do FUD. I have given a "mission statement" to TechRights who reported on one of Groklaw's recent attacks against me. Here's what I told TechRights: "Of course there are issues, including in the OIN context, where I personally have fears, uncertainty and doubts, and there are reasons for it. That does not make “FUD” my agenda. Instead, my agenda with the FOSS Patents blog is to provide information that (i) helps FOSS developers, distributors and users identify, avoid and deal with patent-related problems and (ii) puts a spotlight on ulterior motives and hypocrisy on the part of false friends of Free and Open Source Software. A long time ago I thought Groklaw shared the first goal. But by writing that IBM is free to sue the pants off TurboHercules, PJ has unfortunately shown that her agenda is different."

But since it emulates the mainframe CPU instruction set, any software written for that CPU (z/OS as well as applications) can be emulated.

It may be able to run atop the emulator, but that's not the issue:

1. can it run adequately - doubtful - it's simply not the same hardware with the same features.
2. what is IBM's legal liability if they allow it?
3. since zOS is licensed by workload, how do you calculate the workload on an emulated system?

This is impossible.

Here's what I'd like to see:

...

2) IBM agrees to license its software on reasonable, nondiscriminatory terms on Hercules. This doesn't mean they need to support Hercules ..

This is self-contradictory. If you license it, in the clients' mind, you support it, despite any and all disclaimers (and the disclaimers probably wouldn't hold up in many courts anyways - after all, you received a consideration - money - you can't then waive your obligations).

You dissimulate here:

My primary concern about the mainframe case is the Hercules open source project, which started in 1999 and can therefore not be considered a Microsoft front by any reasonable stretch of the imagination.

... by confabulating the Hercules project and Turbo Hercules. They are not the same.

The difference is, IMHO, Nokia's hardware patents stand up to scrutiny. UI and software, on the other hand, have not yet been court tested, and there's even a small possibility that software or UI patents may be invalidated by a surprise Bilski decision in the Supreme Court.

It stands to reason that Nokia's portfolio is more valuable.

Neither you or I really know exactly what deals Nokia or Apple had in mind going into the talks- but one thing's for certain: Apple walked. The same way they walked from talks with Cisco over licensing their registered trademark for "iPhone", and then used it anyway without approval (fortunately, Apple learned its lesson by the time it used Fujitsu's iPad trademark). Who else chooses to walk from a legal agreement just so they can spend millions on legal fees over the fallout?

I might be extrapolating, but here are my two observations:

1. Apple doesn't seem to be a very agreeable company in negotiations. They're the prima donna of the tech industry, and everyone knows it.

2. They take a hypocritical stance when violating IP of other companies.

Other things to consider: Apple has already proven themselves to be quite the patent troll, and even intends on attacking free software soon.

Sorry, but this pattern of behavior is hard to justify.

Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation
In a contradiction between its grants and its endowment holdings, a Times investigation has found, the foundation reaps vast financial gains every year from investments that contravene its good works.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Holdings Outperforming S&P 500 Handily
It is also overweight Healthcare, Consumer Staples and Industrials. The Foundation is underweight Telecom, Consumer Discretionary and Energy, and it has a 0% weight in Technology, Utilities and Materials.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Owns Over 7 Million Shares of BP

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Buys CSX Corp., M&T Bank Corp., XTO Energy Inc. Mcdonald's, Devon Energy Corp., Sells Johnson & Johnson
These are the top 5 holdings of Bill Gates

      1. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK-B) - 1,251,250 shares, 48.36% of the total portfolio
      2. McDonald's Corp. (MCD) - 6,867,500 shares, 5.27% of the total portfolio
      3. Canadian National Railway Company Fully (CNI) - 8,399,653 shares, 4.82% of the total portfolio
      4. Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) - 4,285,000 shares, 4% of the total portfolio
      5. Costco Wholesale Corp. (COST) - 6,128,000 shares, 3.74% of the total portfolio

Is this a philanthropic venture or a tax evasion investment scheme?

I do commend Gates for what he is doing but I would not go so far as to slobber all over him for his philanthropic works considering his past illicit activity that played a significant role in providing him with the funds to become a philanthropist.

If it comes down to Adobe Flash or HTML V5 H.264 I'll take Flash any day and twice on Sundays! At least Adobe doesn't act like douchebags and make you pony up $$$ just to have flash support in Linux distros. And SD Flash plays beautifully on this 1.8Ghz Sempron I use for a low power netbox, and with the latest Flash I can add a $50 AGP card and go full HD. From what I have seen HTML V5 is frankly a dog, and even in a window it runs like a slideshow.

And let us not forget the real enemy here is MPEG-LA, who unlike Adobe really REALLY likes to sue...a lot. Old Steve may like having only H.264 on his iStuff ( and why not? Apple and MSFT are a part of MPEG-LA) but I prefer having a format I can run just about anywhere WITHOUT having to write a check. MPEG-LA has made it clear that even just using a browser plugin to view H.264 means you WILL pay up.

So everyone can go "poo poo Adobe, poo poo" and I'll be the first to say their past versions of flash left a lot to be desired. But at least it seems they are trying, and aren't going around trying to lock up the web with an AV paywall like MPEG-LA. Why anyone not drinking the iKoolaid would actually want MPEG-LA with their major douchebag behavior to win over Flash is frankly beyond me. And please don't claim the H.264 paywall is a "standard" because it doesn't matter if it is all locked down behind a paywall of patents. I mean, do you REALLY want to help lock web video into a legal minefield that benefits Apple and MSFT while screwing Linux?

As far as I'm concerned, Novell stabbed the community in the back. I don't use Novell products and neither should you.

Funnily enough when Hovsepian took over as CEO in 2003 I remember him saying how much Novell would do for the Linux Community. Then a few years ago this Interview.

Lets look at what he did for the Linux Community and for the Developers he thinks are so great:

Novell Plans To Lay Off 20% Of Workforce

Novell offshores for cheap developement

Novell cuts SuSe Develpers

Suse Developer Layoffs

While I think constant vigilance is needed with Google, this looks like nothing more than Microsoft once again using other groups to legitimize it's attacks on a competitor that has with consistent success kicked it in the ass at every turn.

Agreed on both points. This fails to mention the 'two rival companies' these lawyers represent. I'd be willing to bet one of them was from Microsoft.

I did a little digging to see if there was any affiliation between Microsoft and Consumer Watchdog, (ironically using google)... and came up with this link http://techrights.org/2009/05/04/consumer-watchdog-exposed/

Here's a quick summary:
A look beneath the surface reveals that ConsumerWatchdog.org is “the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights”, which is affiliated with/derived from Grassroots Enterprise, a Washington/SF-based AstroTurfer for hire.

If you do even a little digging you can find countless incidences of Microsoft and friends doing this exact same thing. I suppose if you can't beat your competitors in a given market... lobby them into oblivion!

If someone has a very strong motive to do something, it makes an exception to occam's razor much more likely.

Seriously. Look at some facts. This company is linked to known astroturfers.

Microsoft has already been exposed using CWD in the past as part of their fake astroturfing attacks:

http://techrights.org/2009/05/04/consumer-watchdog-exposed/

I'm just saying, as with anything, always consider the source.

http://techrights.org/2009/05/04/consumer-watchdog-exposed/

Don't trust anything they say.

http://techrights.org/2009/05/04/consumer-watchdog-exposed/

Both it and its predecessor link back to grassroots.com.

"At Grassroots Enterprise, we combine the best of cutting-edge Internet technology with high-impact communications to build movements that make an impact.
  What does this mean, in plain English? In a nutshell, that means that we help clients:"

The question is who is the client????

it's not fair to bet when the answer is known to be YES

Perhaps we do not have the time; however, I have a feeling that it is a matter of effort -- effort well worth investing. In that spirit, I am attempting to help increase public knowledge of technology and their rights. If you wish to contribute, please contact me.

Perhaps we do not have the time; however, I have a feeling that it is a matter of effort -- effort well worth investing. In that spirit, I am attempting to help increase public knowledge of technology and their rights. If you wish to contribute, please contact me.

You precisely echo my view. In an effort to turn sentiment into action, I am attempting to help increase public knowledge of technology and their rights. If you wish to contribute, please contact me.

You precisely echo my view. In an effort to turn sentiment into action, I am attempting to help increase public knowledge of technology and their rights. If you wish to contribute, please contact me.