Isn't it time to let this go? Fair or not, 'Linux' has won even if only because it's a more marketable name. Isn't encouraging community infighting over this distracting from many far more important free software issues?
As you've already made your fortune, I'm curious as to why you choose to get involved in controversial patent licensing, rather than, say, Bill Gates style philanthropic work ?
According to this Windows Defender was actually originally written in VB, and rewritten to use.net ( C++/CLI ) . That seems like actually the opposite of what you're saying, or do you mean it was rewritten again after that to use straight C++ ?
That's probably true. But we've seen several court verdicts (Piratebay, Limewire etc) that show the courts consider it's the intent that's important, which would give Google a much better chance in court than Isohunt and the like have.
Isohunt, TPB, Limewire run their business on providing access to copyrighted content, take that away and 99% of their users aren't interested anymore. Google providing access to torrent links is more like an accidental side-effect, and 99% of their users wouldn't even notice if all torrent links were removed from Google tomorrow. Perhaps Slashbots think that shouldn't make a difference, but the courts seem to think it does.
"Defective By design" is meant to refer solely to products intentionally crippled by DRM.
I think it's an effective slogan for that, and its meaning will be trivialized by calling what are intended to be positive changes or features "defective by design". Don't do the *AA's work for them!
Here in Thailand, a similar system works by phone users purchasing top-up cards at 7-11's, supermarkets or general stores. Once you've got the credit on your phone, you can make a payment by sending a specially formatted text message. The stores selling top-up cards are everywhere, and no credit cards or bank accounts are needed.
On the other hand, this is why killing HD-DVD was such an important thing. Putting two major patent holders (Toshiba and Microsoft) in charge of the direction of the de facto media format would have been disastrous.
Instead we've got nine major patent holders - Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Thomson, LG Electronics, Hitachi, Sharp, and Samsung - in charge of Blu-ray. Is that really an improvement ?
as CPU's become faster and more efficient, its likely browsers will pass eventually regardless of if they optimise their code or not.
Not true AFAIK - although I can't find the exact reference offhand and haven't checked the code, I remember reading that this speed test is written to become gradually more demanding over time to keep pace with computers getting faster.
Doesn't it read a bit more like they're trying to block google analytics? Not that they're taking a direct shot at any particular company of course... maybe I'm just overly paranoid.
I don't think so. Google Analytics tracks many visitors to the same site, whereas this seems to be aimed at preventing tracking of the same visitor to many sites. In the MS blog it says it'll prevent the same cookie tracking you across more than 10 sites. I think the implication is that it's bad for Adsense, Doubleclick and the like as they can no longer track you through third-party cookies on dozens of sites and build up an advertising profile of you that way.
Good for privacy of course, but as so much of the web is ad-funded is this really going to be good for the web as a whole ? I guess we'll have to wait and see on that one.
I think it's interesting also that this is happening as Microsoft tries to become a bigger player in the internet ad business. They could use IE feature to their advantage here, as it'd be fairly easy for them to implement a scheme where all third-party cookies are limited, except for those of Microsoft and its "selected partners". Would we put it past them to do something along those lines ?
Given that goal and context, why does the marketing matter?
Why not ? Whatever the goals, it's only going to be helped by sensible and clever marketing (e.g. Firefox). It's not hard to see that names like GNewSense/nuisance or GIMP could make people feel embarassed about recommending the product to their boss regardless of its other virtues, and that can't be helping their cause at all.
I guess we'd better hope voting records don't mean much, as it seems Biden is a firm friend of the *AA's
NEW YORK -- Joe Biden may have made his name in foreign relations in 32 years in the Senate, but his efforts against piracy have won him respect in Hollywood.
Biden was named Saturday as Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's running mate. The Delaware senator has got a long list of credentials, including chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, membership on the Senate Judiciary Committee and experience on the world stage lacking in the top of the ticket. But the 64-year-old Scranton, Pa., native has been a strong advocate for U.S. intellectual property rights and an ardent soldier in the fight against piracy.
As a founding member of the Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus, Biden has helped the lead the fight against countries such as China, Russia, Mexico and India that need stronger copyright protections.
"When somebody holds you up on the street and takes your wallet, we call it robbery," Biden said in May 2007. "And when somebody steals your idea and creation, we call it theft, plain and simple." The MPA has lauded the work of the anti-piracy caucus as being essential to motivating the government to action.
Thanks for the information, looks like another one to strike off the list for now then! I imagine it won't be heading to my corner of the world (Thailand) for another 10 years or so:(
TFA is pretty short on details, but I'd be interested in knowing the range of countries Amazon's system can be used in. Anyone know? Google Checkout looked promising but is limited to just US/UK (at least the last time I checked), and there's a wider world out there!
I realise international banking transfers is a complicated area, but it's one Paypal seems to be miles ahead of it's competitors in at present. Google don't seem to have problems with Adsense/Adwords in this regard though, so it's a bit puzzling to me why Checkout is so limited in who they accept.
Which is a shame really, as it leaves only Paypal and all of its problems that everyone's familiar with.
I never really got the point of rss either, when you had to use a separate program to get the feeds. But the "Live bookmarks" feature in Firefox made me a convert, it's so much easier even for only 3 sites.
You can add an rss feed/live bookmark and then store the ones you visit the most on the toolbar just beneath the location bar, and you don't need to worry about it waiting for it to update as you can set how often you want it do that automatically. It makes seeing if there's any new posts on the sites you visit the most just a single click away, and then going to direct to the new content one more click.
Try it, once you "get" RSS it's painful going back to the manual bookmark + reload way.
And how is that different from the way Symbian is currently open for devs?
On my phone I have already different phonebook and camera app, both installed by me. I also toyed a bit with different sms app (threading of messages, Gmail - style).
I think it's different in a few ways.
1) The apps you're talking about are only for S60, most Nokia handsets for the lower end are S40 and apps for that are limited to sandboxed J2ME ones (so, pretty much only crappy games).
2) Even for S60, development is far from open. On the newest S60v3 every app has to go through the Symbian Signed process for each release - slow and $$$. That only gives you basic permissions too, for anything more advanced (e.g. connecting to the net) it's more involved still.
3) I know there are things like address books and camera apps, but my impression is they're still second-class citizens on the phone. Is it possible to completely replace the default phonebook and camera apps with your own ones ? My impression was that such a task is akin to fully uninstalling IE on Windows, but please correct me if I'm wrong.
And how about, say, a translation app that can intercept an SMS and do something with it before it reaches the inbox ? Or something that changes the dialer screen to show numbers in the local language ? As far as I know the access needed to do something like that is not available to developers on Symbian, but should be relatively easy on Android. My knowledge of Symbian is pretty limited admittedly , I'd be pleased to be proved incorrect if it is actually possible to develop these kind of apps.
It seems like a much better solution would be for Nokia/Symbian to fully open up their O/S and allow 3rd party applications access to the same APIs as the native apps, in the way that Google Android promises to. That way, local developers and vendors could add features relevant to local conditions, and guys like this researcher would hardly be needed.
I really don't understand how these pricing mistakes continue to happen. OK, the occasional typo when entering the price is human nature, but why doesn't their system catch them ? It doesn't seem like it would be very hard to make a warning or require manual confirmation by a manager if a price of something is reduced to (say) less than 20% of its previous price.
Indeed, but Google seems to actively support this kind of domain squatting - see http://www.google.com/domainpark/ . Seriously, how does this 'service' they provide possibly fit into "don't be evil" ?
If this old argument carried some water when used with Opera
I'm not sure it ever made any sense with Opera either. Setting Opera to identify itself as IE would cause it to add a "MSIE" into the UA string, but the word Opera was still in there as well, so any of the web browser stat sites would still be able to easily identify it. I think it was only in the latest version (9) that they added an additional option to "Mask as Internet Explorer" that would mimic IEs UA string, but at the same time buried it 5 clicks deep in the preferences (actually, not even in Preferences at all as far as I can see but only in "Quick Preferences").
I find it very difficult to imagine there's enough people who both bother to change it and are aware of the difference between "Identify as Internet Explorer" and "Mask as Internet Explorer" that it would make any difference at all to global net browser usage stats.
Another thing to bear in mind - the junta's popularity is rapidly falling, and taking on youtube is seen as coming to the defence of the King and national pride. It's a nice easy way to get popular and divert the population from pesky demands for democracy and keeps the spotlight off their policy failings!
It's not the King whos doing the sue-ing because he's personally offended, it's the government and (so it seems) with the support of the people. Because he's so adored and seen as a national icon, Thais I know here in Bangkok who've seen the video(s) are horrified and angry about it, and take it as a national insult in much the same way I'd imagine Americans would react to someone burning their flag.
If he's universally adored, then why are people making fun of him on the Internet?
Or is he universally adored in Thailand because it's illegal not to?
I live in Thailand, and there's no doubting the King is genuinely universally adored. For example, to celebrate his 60th year on the throne the royal family asked people to wear yellow shirts (the royal colour) on Mondays. That was months ago, but still in Bangkok now every Monday at least 50% of the people you see about are voluntarily wearing yellow shirts with "We live the King" written in Thai on them. No one has a bad word to say about the King even in private, and just about every household has a picture of the King and Queen too.
There's no doubt in my mind the affection is genuine and not legally mandated (after all, the Crown Prince is protected by the same law but much less venerated), although to what extent it's caused by "brainwashing" and propaganda is somewhat arguable. After all, if you're only ever told how wonderful your King is and all the good things he's done for the country and never hear a word of criticism, then who wouldn't love him ?
(Damn, I wish I could have people thrown in prison for making fun of me on the Internet. Wow.)
Interestingly, the King himself actually told people him and his ideas shouldn't be above criticism in one of his birthday speeches - though he's probably the only person in Thailand who could publically make such a statement! He also pardoned the Swiss guy jailed for lese majesty very quickly, so he doesn't seem to be the instigator to me.
As to why people put the videos on youtube, well who knows, but Thais I know who have seen the video are very angry about it - much more so about that than the fact that youtube is blocked. I've seen quite a few "boycott youtube" messages on Thai websites, so whatever else the failings of the junta government they do seem to be in touch with the feelings of the population on this issue, and they could have faced a bigger problem if they'd done nothing. It seems strange to me Google accommodate China's censorship and oppression but are unwilling to work with Thailand on this issue.
Personally I find the block very frustrating though, I didn't realise how often I went to youtube following some link or other before this!
I'd take links that don't work over PDF links anyday. You know, that sinking feeling when you just realised the link you clicked is not to another HTML page but to a 4MB PDF file, which then causes the browser to freeze and choke up trying to open it, and you can lose whatever is was you had in other tabs or windows when it crashes. Adobe Acrobat Reader has surely got to be one of the most annoying tech products for this reason alone - who ever thought making PDFs open in the browser was a good idea anyway??
Keeping something a secret until six months before release is much, much easier than keeping it a secret until release day.
Looks like that wasn't an option this time. If you read the TFA it says:
In the end, Apple decided to reveal the iPhone several months ahead of its official June launch because it could not keep the secret any more. Apple has to file with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for the permits needed to operate the iPhone, and once those public filings are made, Apple has no control over the release of that information. So, Jobs said, he made the decision to have Apple tell the world about its new phone, rather than the FCC.
I live in Thailand, and there's masses of internet censorship. Although it's not quite to Chinese limits (as all news sites are available), they block as many porn and gambling sites as they can find and anything that fits the rather vaguely defined category of "lese majeste" or "threat to national security" also. Criticizing the decision of a high-court judge is against the law too. On the most popular Thai language forum (pantip.com) you're required to give a valid ID card number to register, and there's often stories in the news of contributors being tracked down for their opinions. I guess at the moment any anti-coup or pro-democracy website could fall under the national security category, it's all a bit uncertain. So much for free speech!
So I guess I'd better avoid giving an opinion of the minister in question in case of getting a unwelcome knock at the door! Regardless of him though, open-source is quite strong in Thailand. The National Computer Center (http://www.nectec.or.th/) has released a lot of open source code and data, and there's a relatively thriving OS community here - linux.thai.net (a thai slash-code site), opentle.org, thaiopensource.org, tosf.org, osdev.co.th etc. It seems unlikely to me these comments will change that much.
Whether these comments have anything to do with an alliance with Microsoft I don't know. Often when you buy a new PC here, they don't want to pay the Windows tax but instead of coming with Linux (or, god forbid, XP starter edition) it's advertised as coming with "Microsoft DOS Operating System" (!). After you pay, the shop staff then load a pirated version of XP pro for you without even asking! I guess it's certainly in Microsoft's interest to get that situation improved.
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Isn't it time to let this go? Fair or not, 'Linux' has won even if only because it's a more marketable name. Isn't encouraging community infighting over this distracting from many far more important free software issues?
As you've already made your fortune, I'm curious as to why you choose to get involved in controversial patent licensing, rather than, say, Bill Gates style philanthropic work ?
According to this Windows Defender was actually originally written in VB, and rewritten to use .net ( C++/CLI ) . That seems like actually the opposite of what you're saying, or do you mean it was rewritten again after that to use straight C++ ?
That's probably true. But we've seen several court verdicts (Piratebay, Limewire etc) that show the courts consider it's the intent that's important, which would give Google a much better chance in court than Isohunt and the like have.
Isohunt, TPB, Limewire run their business on providing access to copyrighted content, take that away and 99% of their users aren't interested anymore. Google providing access to torrent links is more like an accidental side-effect, and 99% of their users wouldn't even notice if all torrent links were removed from Google tomorrow. Perhaps Slashbots think that shouldn't make a difference, but the courts seem to think it does.
"Defective By design" is meant to refer solely to products intentionally crippled by DRM.
I think it's an effective slogan for that, and its meaning will be trivialized by calling what are intended to be positive changes or features "defective by design". Don't do the *AA's work for them!
Here in Thailand, a similar system works by phone users purchasing top-up cards at 7-11's, supermarkets or general stores. Once you've got the credit on your phone, you can make a payment by sending a specially formatted text message. The stores selling top-up cards are everywhere, and no credit cards or bank accounts are needed.
On the other hand, this is why killing HD-DVD was such an important thing. Putting two major patent holders (Toshiba and Microsoft) in charge of the direction of the de facto media format would have been disastrous.
Instead we've got nine major patent holders - Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Thomson, LG Electronics, Hitachi, Sharp, and Samsung - in charge of Blu-ray. Is that really an improvement ?
as CPU's become faster and more efficient, its likely browsers will pass eventually regardless of if they optimise their code or not.
Not true AFAIK - although I can't find the exact reference offhand and haven't checked the code, I remember reading that this speed test is written to become gradually more demanding over time to keep pace with computers getting faster.
Doesn't it read a bit more like they're trying to block google analytics? Not that they're taking a direct shot at any particular company of course... maybe I'm just overly paranoid.
I don't think so. Google Analytics tracks many visitors to the same site, whereas this seems to be aimed at preventing tracking of the same visitor to many sites. In the MS blog it says it'll prevent the same cookie tracking you across more than 10 sites. I think the implication is that it's bad for Adsense, Doubleclick and the like as they can no longer track you through third-party cookies on dozens of sites and build up an advertising profile of you that way.
Good for privacy of course, but as so much of the web is ad-funded is this really going to be good for the web as a whole ? I guess we'll have to wait and see on that one.
I think it's interesting also that this is happening as Microsoft tries to become a bigger player in the internet ad business. They could use IE feature to their advantage here, as it'd be fairly easy for them to implement a scheme where all third-party cookies are limited, except for those of Microsoft and its "selected partners". Would we put it past them to do something along those lines ?
Given that goal and context, why does the marketing matter?
Why not ? Whatever the goals, it's only going to be helped by sensible and clever marketing (e.g. Firefox). It's not hard to see that names like GNewSense/nuisance or GIMP could make people feel embarassed about recommending the product to their boss regardless of its other virtues, and that can't be helping their cause at all.
I guess we'd better hope voting records don't mean much, as it seems Biden is a firm friend of the *AA's
NEW YORK -- Joe Biden may have made his name in foreign relations in 32 years in the Senate, but his efforts against piracy have won him respect in Hollywood.
Biden was named Saturday as Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's running mate. The Delaware senator has got a long list of credentials, including chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, membership on the Senate Judiciary Committee and experience on the world stage lacking in the top of the ticket. But the 64-year-old Scranton, Pa., native has been a strong advocate for U.S. intellectual property rights and an ardent soldier in the fight against piracy.
As a founding member of the Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus, Biden has helped the lead the fight against countries such as China, Russia, Mexico and India that need stronger copyright protections.
"When somebody holds you up on the street and takes your wallet, we call it robbery," Biden said in May 2007. "And when somebody steals your idea and creation, we call it theft, plain and simple." The MPA has lauded the work of the anti-piracy caucus as being essential to motivating the government to action.
(From http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i67f2ad037eba0dd6e4821ce39ce827a3?imw=Y)
Thanks for the information, looks like another one to strike off the list for now then! I imagine it won't be heading to my corner of the world (Thailand) for another 10 years or so :(
TFA is pretty short on details, but I'd be interested in knowing the range of countries Amazon's system can be used in. Anyone know? Google Checkout looked promising but is limited to just US/UK (at least the last time I checked), and there's a wider world out there!
I realise international banking transfers is a complicated area, but it's one Paypal seems to be miles ahead of it's competitors in at present. Google don't seem to have problems with Adsense/Adwords in this regard though, so it's a bit puzzling to me why Checkout is so limited in who they accept.
Which is a shame really, as it leaves only Paypal and all of its problems that everyone's familiar with.
I never really got the point of rss either, when you had to use a separate program to get the feeds. But the "Live bookmarks" feature in Firefox made me a convert, it's so much easier even for only 3 sites.
You can add an rss feed/live bookmark and then store the ones you visit the most on the toolbar just beneath the location bar, and you don't need to worry about it waiting for it to update as you can set how often you want it do that automatically. It makes seeing if there's any new posts on the sites you visit the most just a single click away, and then going to direct to the new content one more click.
Try it, once you "get" RSS it's painful going back to the manual bookmark + reload way.
And how is that different from the way Symbian is currently open for devs?
On my phone I have already different phonebook and camera app, both installed by me. I also toyed a bit with different sms app (threading of messages, Gmail - style).
I think it's different in a few ways.1) The apps you're talking about are only for S60, most Nokia handsets for the lower end are S40 and apps for that are limited to sandboxed J2ME ones (so, pretty much only crappy games).
2) Even for S60, development is far from open. On the newest S60v3 every app has to go through the Symbian Signed process for each release - slow and $$$. That only gives you basic permissions too, for anything more advanced (e.g. connecting to the net) it's more involved still.
3) I know there are things like address books and camera apps, but my impression is they're still second-class citizens on the phone. Is it possible to completely replace the default phonebook and camera apps with your own ones ? My impression was that such a task is akin to fully uninstalling IE on Windows, but please correct me if I'm wrong.
And how about, say, a translation app that can intercept an SMS and do something with it before it reaches the inbox ? Or something that changes the dialer screen to show numbers in the local language ? As far as I know the access needed to do something like that is not available to developers on Symbian, but should be relatively easy on Android. My knowledge of Symbian is pretty limited admittedly , I'd be pleased to be proved incorrect if it is actually possible to develop these kind of apps.
It seems like a much better solution would be for Nokia/Symbian to fully open up their O/S and allow 3rd party applications access to the same APIs as the native apps, in the way that Google Android promises to. That way, local developers and vendors could add features relevant to local conditions, and guys like this researcher would hardly be needed.
I really don't understand how these pricing mistakes continue to happen. OK, the occasional typo when entering the price is human nature, but why doesn't their system catch them ? It doesn't seem like it would be very hard to make a warning or require manual confirmation by a manager if a price of something is reduced to (say) less than 20% of its previous price.
What we don't need are more linkfarms.
Indeed, but Google seems to actively support this kind of domain squatting - see http://www.google.com/domainpark/ . Seriously, how does this 'service' they provide possibly fit into "don't be evil" ?
If this old argument carried some water when used with Opera
I'm not sure it ever made any sense with Opera either. Setting Opera to identify itself as IE would cause it to add a "MSIE" into the UA string, but the word Opera was still in there as well, so any of the web browser stat sites would still be able to easily identify it. I think it was only in the latest version (9) that they added an additional option to "Mask as Internet Explorer" that would mimic IEs UA string, but at the same time buried it 5 clicks deep in the preferences (actually, not even in Preferences at all as far as I can see but only in "Quick Preferences").
I find it very difficult to imagine there's enough people who both bother to change it and are aware of the difference between "Identify as Internet Explorer" and "Mask as Internet Explorer" that it would make any difference at all to global net browser usage stats.
Another thing to bear in mind - the junta's popularity is rapidly falling, and taking on youtube is seen as coming to the defence of the King and national pride. It's a nice easy way to get popular and divert the population from pesky demands for democracy and keeps the spotlight off their policy failings!
It's not the King whos doing the sue-ing because he's personally offended, it's the government and (so it seems) with the support of the people. Because he's so adored and seen as a national icon, Thais I know here in Bangkok who've seen the video(s) are horrified and angry about it, and take it as a national insult in much the same way I'd imagine Americans would react to someone burning their flag.
If he's universally adored, then why are people making fun of him on the Internet?
Or is he universally adored in Thailand because it's illegal not to?
I live in Thailand, and there's no doubting the King is genuinely universally adored. For example, to celebrate his 60th year on the throne the royal family asked people to wear yellow shirts (the royal colour) on Mondays. That was months ago, but still in Bangkok now every Monday at least 50% of the people you see about are voluntarily wearing yellow shirts with "We live the King" written in Thai on them. No one has a bad word to say about the King even in private, and just about every household has a picture of the King and Queen too.
There's no doubt in my mind the affection is genuine and not legally mandated (after all, the Crown Prince is protected by the same law but much less venerated), although to what extent it's caused by "brainwashing" and propaganda is somewhat arguable. After all, if you're only ever told how wonderful your King is and all the good things he's done for the country and never hear a word of criticism, then who wouldn't love him ?
(Damn, I wish I could have people thrown in prison for making fun of me on the Internet. Wow.)
Interestingly, the King himself actually told people him and his ideas shouldn't be above criticism in one of his birthday speeches - though he's probably the only person in Thailand who could publically make such a statement! He also pardoned the Swiss guy jailed for lese majesty very quickly, so he doesn't seem to be the instigator to me.
As to why people put the videos on youtube, well who knows, but Thais I know who have seen the video are very angry about it - much more so about that than the fact that youtube is blocked. I've seen quite a few "boycott youtube" messages on Thai websites, so whatever else the failings of the junta government they do seem to be in touch with the feelings of the population on this issue, and they could have faced a bigger problem if they'd done nothing. It seems strange to me Google accommodate China's censorship and oppression but are unwilling to work with Thailand on this issue.
Personally I find the block very frustrating though, I didn't realise how often I went to youtube following some link or other before this!
I'd take links that don't work over PDF links anyday. You know, that sinking feeling when you just realised the link you clicked is not to another HTML page but to a 4MB PDF file, which then causes the browser to freeze and choke up trying to open it, and you can lose whatever is was you had in other tabs or windows when it crashes. Adobe Acrobat Reader has surely got to be one of the most annoying tech products for this reason alone - who ever thought making PDFs open in the browser was a good idea anyway??
Foxit and http://www.pdfdownload.org/ help a lot though.
Keeping something a secret until six months before release is much, much easier than keeping it a secret until release day.
Looks like that wasn't an option this time. If you read the TFA it says:
In the end, Apple decided to reveal the iPhone several months ahead of its official June launch because it could not keep the secret any more. Apple has to file with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for the permits needed to operate the iPhone, and once those public filings are made, Apple has no control over the release of that information. So, Jobs said, he made the decision to have Apple tell the world about its new phone, rather than the FCC.
I live in Thailand, and there's masses of internet censorship. Although it's not quite to Chinese limits (as all news sites are available), they block as many porn and gambling sites as they can find and anything that fits the rather vaguely defined category of "lese majeste" or "threat to national security" also. Criticizing the decision of a high-court judge is against the law too. On the most popular Thai language forum (pantip.com) you're required to give a valid ID card number to register, and there's often stories in the news of contributors being tracked down for their opinions. I guess at the moment any anti-coup or pro-democracy website could fall under the national security category, it's all a bit uncertain. So much for free speech!
So I guess I'd better avoid giving an opinion of the minister in question in case of getting a unwelcome knock at the door! Regardless of him though, open-source is quite strong in Thailand. The National Computer Center (http://www.nectec.or.th/) has released a lot of open source code and data, and there's a relatively thriving OS community here - linux.thai.net (a thai slash-code site), opentle.org, thaiopensource.org, tosf.org, osdev.co.th etc. It seems unlikely to me these comments will change that much.
Whether these comments have anything to do with an alliance with Microsoft I don't know. Often when you buy a new PC here, they don't want to pay the Windows tax but instead of coming with Linux (or, god forbid, XP starter edition) it's advertised as coming with "Microsoft DOS Operating System" (!). After you pay, the shop staff then load a pirated version of XP pro for you without even asking! I guess it's certainly in Microsoft's interest to get that situation improved.