From vaporware to scareware

[AC0H]

People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
Computerworld article (http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/D1173B1AE779A1A1CC2572E6000E30E6)

[K3WRV]

Kevin-

Agree: M$=SCO=FUD, and software patents suck! But for the moment, we're stuck with them. Real problem is how many patents is M$ infringing?

My suggestion to M$ is that they patent crashes and the BSOD! and that the OSS folk platent reliability and sue M$ every time it improves it's products so they suck a little bit less. http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[WD8OQX]

http://www.lannuier.com/images/piss_on_microsoft.gif

[VE3SRE]

Micro$oft just lost a $1.5 billion lawsuit brought on by Alcatel-Lucent over their use of the "mp3" file format. How many more lawsuits would M$ lose if their source code were opened up?

In the meantime a group of folks over on the "Digital Tipping Point" website are telling M$ to "put up or shut up" by demanding that Microsoft "Sue Me First".

Sue Me First, Microsoft (http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php?title=Sue_me_first%2C_Microsoft)

BTW, for those ham radio podcasts...why not use "ogg vorbis" instead of "mp3"? It's a completely free and open source audio codec with free and open source audio players to play them! You'll never be "in trouble" with anyone http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[KA5PIU]

Quote[/b] (ve3sre @ May 29 2007,23:21)]Micro$oft just lost a $1.5 billion lawsuit brought on by Alcatel-Lucent over their use of the "mp3" file format. # How many more lawsuits would M$ lose if their source code were opened up?

In the meantime a group of folks over on the "Digital Tipping Point" website are telling M$ to "put up or shut up" by demanding that Microsoft "Sue Me First".

Sue Me First, Microsoft (http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php?title=Sue_me_first%2C_Microsoft)

BTW, for those ham radio podcasts...why not use "ogg vorbis" instead of "mp3"? # #It's a completely free and open source audio codec with free and open source audio players to play them! # You'll never be "in trouble" with anyone http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
Hello.

Doing a podcast will not get anyone in trouble.
The USE of the MP3 format has never been an issue.
It is the distro of the MP3 codec that is an issue.
Once you buy a licensed product, be it an MP3 player or a laptop, you can use it to your hearts content.
The same is true of IMBE, once you buy it in firmware, such as a radio, or even just a chip, it is yours.
This is not the case of the DVD encryption that belongs to the MPAA.
Not that the RIAA has not tried to limit MP3.

[N2IZE]

Quote[/b] (AC0H @ May 29 2007,09:39)]People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
Computerworld article (http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/D1173B1AE779A1A1CC2572E6000E30E6)
Microshaft wants to spread fear among business users of open source, i.e. Linux. MS has been terrified of Linux since I started with Linux in the early-mid 1990's. But in those days MS never preceived Linux going very far and either just scoffed at it and threw a little FUD in it's direction.

Now MS is running scared. Linux has matured and MS has even created advertisements bashing Limnux in many ways including, "when you want to do serious work you use Windows",. But people are not buying it so theyy need another scare tactic. Time to bring up the furture lawsuits scaremongering. Convince as many business customers that adopting Linux today may mean big lawsuits tomorrow. Will it work ?? Maybe, but somehow I doubt it.

[KD2DMV]

Yes to my way of thinking I believe M$ is afraid of Linux and Open Source. For years they scoffed and now that Linux has matched and is about to slip past them they launch this FUD campaign.

Well I see it as a good thing, they blew it with Vista and the latest server side app servers. The hardware requirements versus the lack of functional gains really turned peoples stomachs.

I imagine that while their desktop OS sales are acceptable, the sales in development products and app servers may have fallen off (need to check out those stats if available) Linux/Open Sources really needs to focus on blowing past MS via web 2.0/web 3.0, the web as the API strategy.

Has anyone ever looked at webmin... the application is beautiful you can operate a remote VPS server without a desktop.
It is written in Perl, which some consider a dead language, open source and readily extended (http://www.webmin.com) There are a lot of great ingredients out there to kick MS right in the n#@ts and really surpass them. It might be that all people have to do is to ignore the MS FUD and MS may be forced to change it's ways to stay in the game.

They do have one huge advantage they have a lot of money and they could kill off the Linux surge by simply giving away the desktop OS (for free) but I don't think they will do that, too much of a revenue loss. Of coarse that would mean they are changing their business model, which could be good too?

Still, you never know... they got where they were by looking the other way and letting people install a lot of copies of windows 3.0/3.11 without examining how many licensed copies had been purchased. That isn't open source, like Linux, but for the average end user or a corporate IT manager that might be good enough?

PS: This is probably some FUD started by MS
OpenOffice Macro Virus (http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20070524/tc_pcworld/132235;_ylt=AiBYBZTHWMNLQdj9QwMErN.or7oF)
I imagine that very few people are effected as most users don't even use much of the Open Office macro feature. To be honest I think the whole Office app paradigm is dying anyway most users have started using web apps for document centric computing. Those that haven't are about 80-95% unlikely to be affected http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[KL7AJ]

I joined the list. Thanks for the tip!

eric

[AC0H]

I think this move on MS's part throws the Novell "agreement" into question. MS's IP chief has said that the way for current and future Linux users to get on the right side of the patent issue is to buy a license from Novell, their "partner".

Has Novell sold Linux out?

[KD2DMV]

Quote[/b] (AC0H @ May 30 2007,03:56)]Has Novell sold Linux out?
Probably after all they have been looking out for their own interest for a long time. When MS came up with AD Domains Novell spent quite a bit of time spreading their own FUD. Doing that didn't help them maintain or increase their market share then.
Novell was ultra proprietary back in the bad old Windows 3.n days and they too scoffed at the clunky (and then inexpensive) desktop gui that wanted to be more.
I suppose it is all just evolution just keep telling the boss that all the FUD is really just their (MS's) FUD showing. Novell is just going along for the ride and will deny any knowledge and involvement later on http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[KL7AJ]

Quote[/b] (kc2orw @ May 30 2007,12:18)]
Quote[/b] (AC0H @ May 30 2007,03:56)]Has Novell sold Linux out?
Probably after all they have been looking out for their own interest for a long time. When MS came up with AD Domains Novell spent quite a bit of time spreading their own FUD. Doing that didn't help them maintain or increase their market share then.
Novell was ultra proprietary back in the bad old Windows 3.n days and they too scoffed at the clunky (and then inexpensive) desktop gui that wanted to be more.
I suppose it is all just evolution just keep telling the boss that all the FUD is really just their (MS's) FUD showing. Novell is just going along for the ride and will deny any knowledge and involvement later on http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
This is too bad, because Novell Netware was ONE SOLID OS! And the "Active Directory" which Microsoft "innovated" was stolen directly from Netware.

Considering how Microslop has shafted Novell over the years, it's odd to see them in the same bed.

"Political bedfellows share the same bunk."

http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

eric

[W6TMI]

Quote[/b] (kl7aj @ May 30 2007,11:22)]
Quote[/b] (kc2orw @ May 30 2007,12:18)]
Quote[/b] (AC0H @ May 30 2007,03:56)]Has Novell sold Linux out?
Probably after all they have been looking out for their own interest for a long time. When MS came up with AD Domains Novell spent quite a bit of time spreading their own FUD. Doing that didn't help them maintain or increase their market share then.
Novell was ultra proprietary back in the bad old Windows 3.n days and they too scoffed at the clunky (and then inexpensive) desktop gui that wanted to be more.
I suppose it is all just evolution just keep telling the boss that all the FUD is really just their (MS's) FUD showing. Novell is just going along for the ride and will deny any knowledge and involvement later on http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
This is too bad, because Novell Netware was ONE SOLID OS! And the "Active Directory" which Microsoft "innovated" was stolen directly from Netware.

Considering how Microslop has shafted Novell over the years, it's odd to see them in the same bed.

"Political bedfellows share the same bunk."

http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

eric
Personally I felt Netware was THE best networking OS for X86 proc. I had netware 3.x servers with 2-3 year uptimes, it was highly tuneable good for a small to huge infrastructure...

A'well.. Their marketing sucked..

[N2IZE]

Quote[/b] (AC0H @ May 30 2007,08:56)]I think this move on MS's part throws the Novell "agreement" into question. MS's IP chief has said that the way for current and future Linux users to get on the right side of the patent issue is to buy a license from Novell, their "partner".

Has Novell sold Linux out?
Which is why I refuse to support Novell. I have removed Suse Linux from our machines at work and replaced it with Debian, Fedora Core, and Ubuntu.

For many years in a row I attended the LinuxWorld trade shows. So many different companies were represented supporting Linux in so many different ways. The only company silent and absent was Microsoft with no interest whatsoever in supporting Linux in any way shape or form.

Now Microsoft has the audacitry to tell me to watch out I may be sued for using Linux ?? The same Microsoft who washed it;s hands of Linux over years and years. Now they are going to try and tell me that they have a stake in Linux and they might want to sue me if I don't play Linux their way ? I've been runnign Linux for well over a decade and Microsoft is suddenly gonna tell me I need to buy a license from them to continue. ?? Microsoft can take a nice long walk off a short pier in lead boots for all I care. #And they can put their lawsuit threats where the sun don't shine on the way to the bottom for all I care. Screw em.

[KL7AJ]

I think it's time for Linus to invent a whole new operating system. He's done it before, he can do it again.

I think Microsoft has just shot itself in the sphincter....again.


eric

[KD2DMV]

I would never disagree, even now, that Novell has some solid products. MS never even had real networking till NT 4.0 came around and they adopted IP as the standard. You pretty much had a choice of Novell or not much else. The Internet Protocol wasn't invented or much enhanced by MS it was pretty much all the work of the Unix people.

One thing about MS products is that they always had a little piece of Unix internally even if it was somewhat disguised by a gui interface. Remember Xenix which MS licensed from AT&T. MS learned a lot from that OS and they sold it off to SCO (another recent bad apple)

Oh yeah AD isn't really Novell NDS it is actually MIT Kerberos as a front end with LDAP as a back end. I actually consider it quite good if properly deployed after all it was based on good protocols which MS did not create http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

[AC0H]

Quote[/b] (kl7aj @ May 30 2007,14:22)]
Quote[/b] (kc2orw @ May 30 2007,12:18)]
Quote[/b] (AC0H @ May 30 2007,03:56)]Has Novell sold Linux out?
Probably after all they have been looking out for their own interest for a long time. When MS came up with AD Domains Novell spent quite a bit of time spreading their own FUD. Doing that didn't help them maintain or increase their market share then.
Novell was ultra proprietary back in the bad old Windows 3.n days and they too scoffed at the clunky (and then inexpensive) desktop gui that wanted to be more.
I suppose it is all just evolution just keep telling the boss that all the FUD is really just their (MS's) FUD showing. Novell is just going along for the ride and will deny any knowledge and involvement later on http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
This is too bad, because Novell Netware was ONE SOLID OS! And the "Active Directory" which Microsoft "innovated" was stolen directly from Netware.

Considering how Microslop has shafted Novell over the years, it's odd to see them in the same bed.

"Political bedfellows share the same bunk."

http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

eric
This is correct. NDS was around for quite a while before AD was even a glint in somebody's eye in Redmond. Netware was the freaking energizer bunny. A little quirky to install but it was good.

The Kerberos implementation is MS AD isn't really standards compliant Kerberos. But then again almost nothing MS does is standards compliant.

I wonder how much Xerox could light MS up for in a court battle over the IP rights to "the GUI"?

[KD2DMV]

Oh to add a correction to the kerberos mention of mine. The MS kerberos portion wasn't added till Windows 2003 came around.
As to standards well MS's adherence or lack of has always been a bone of contention to sys admins and developers alike.
Even more amusing when you think about it is that MS has drawn very freely from a lot of open source ideas and given back a lot less.

One has to consider that MS wouldn't have a web server without NCSA HTTPd source code. They, and everyone else, wouldn't have a nice gui browser without NCSA Mosaic's source code.
If we hadn't had the above and the creation of the CGI (Common Gateway Interface) by Rob McCool et al we wouldn't be here discussing this very topic http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
At the very least it would all be very different then it is now.

[N2IZE]

Quote[/b] (kc2orw @ May 30 2007,07:57)]Yes to my way of thinking I believe M$ is afraid of Linux and Open Source. For years they scoffed and now that Linux has matched and is about to slip past them they launch this FUD campaign.

Well I see it as a good thing, they blew it with Vista and the latest server side app servers. The hardware requirements versus the lack of functional gains really turned peoples stomachs.

I imagine that while their desktop OS sales are acceptable, the sales in development products and app servers may have fallen off (need to check out those stats if available) Linux/Open Sources really needs to focus on blowing past MS via web 2.0/web 3.0, the web as the API strategy.

Has anyone ever looked at webmin... the application is beautiful you can operate a remote VPS server without a desktop.
It is written in Perl, which some consider a dead language, open source and readily extended (http://www.webmin.com) There are a lot of great ingredients out there to kick MS right in the n#@ts and really surpass them. It might be that all people have to do is to ignore the MS FUD and MS may be forced to change it's ways to stay in the game.

They do have one huge advantage they have a lot of money and they could kill off the Linux surge by simply giving away the desktop OS (for free) but I don't think they will do that, too much of a revenue loss. Of coarse that would mean they are changing their business model, which could be good too?

Still, you never know... they got where they were by looking the other way and letting people install a lot of copies of windows 3.0/3.11 without examining how many licensed copies had been purchased. That isn't open source, like Linux, but for the average end user or a corporate IT manager that might be good enough?

PS: This is probably some FUD started by MS
OpenOffice Macro Virus (http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20070524/tc_pcworld/132235;_ylt=AiBYBZTHWMNLQdj9QwMErN.or7oF)
I imagine that very few people are effected as most users don't even use much of the Open Office macro feature. To be honest I think the whole Office app paradigm is dying anyway most users have started using web apps for document centric computing. Those that haven't are about 80-95% unlikely to be affected #http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Quote[/b] ]
Has anyone ever looked at webmin... the application is beautiful you can operate a remote VPS server without a desktop.
It is written in Perl, which some consider a dead language, open source and readily extended (http://www.webmin.com) There are a lot of great ingredients out there to kick MS right in the n#@ts and really surpass them. It might be that all people have to do is to ignore the MS FUD and MS may be forced to change it's ways to stay in the game.


Perl a dead langauge ?? Nunsense !! Who says that ? While I do sometimes get fed up at Perl maniacs who insist on condensing every program into a single line of what looks like random noise it's a fabulous, powerful, easy to us, relatively secure (as secure as they can get) langauge with so many add on features it's mind boggling. If Perl is dead what has replaced it...Java ?? PHP ??

Only langauge that some guys seem to like better than Perl is Python (which I haven't learned...yet)... Then coding in a langauge is not what I consider most important. Knowing how to create/use good efficient algorithms is.

[KD2DMV]

Quote[/b] ]Perl a dead langauge ?? Nunsense !! Who says that ?
Tain't me but I am careful in front of some IT managers who seem to think only Ruby or Ruby On Rails is wonderful, mostly cause that is the only buzz word they can recall.

Quote[/b] ]Only langauge that some guys seem to like better than Perl is Python (which I haven't learned...yet).
Python is a contender with Ruby as just about even, Ruby is too slow for my tastes...

Oh well back to the original topic...

I see Xandros has jumped into this now too, not such a great thing.
I am starting to better understand how MS will try to work this FUD and it may work in corporate shops that use multiple OS's with Linux mostly used as backend servers. They want to appeal to some of those corporate IT managers who are afraid of using anything that doesn't leave them an option to blame someone else.
MS isn't trying to work the FUD o.n desktop end users just the big corporate shops where CYA is the rule of thumb.
It still does indicate MS is afraid that Linux and Open Source apps are eating into market share and in a very effective manner.
They should continue demand MS to show them where the copyright infractions are. Then developers can decide if it is easier to rewrite around the contended code or ignore them and chance the possible lawsuit

[VE3SRE]

Quote[/b] ]I see Xandros has jumped into this now too, not such a great thing.
I am starting to better understand how MS will try to work this FUD and it may work in corporate shops that use multiple OS's with Linux mostly used as backend servers. They want to appeal to some of those corporate IT managers who are afraid of using anything that doesn't leave them an option to blame someone else.
MS isn't trying to work the FUD o.n desktop end users just the big corporate shops where CYA is the rule of thumb.
It still does indicate MS is afraid that Linux and Open Source apps are eating into market share and in a very effective manner.
They should continue demand MS to show them where the copyright infractions are. Then developers can decide if it is easier to rewrite around the contended code or ignore them and chance the possible lawsuit

I think M$ is trying to cram in a few more "patent protection agreements" before GPL Version 3 is implemented. The changes in GPL3 I understand won't be retroactive and therefore won't affect any agreements that are already in place.

M$ is really about making sure that they continue to completely dominate the desktop computing market and are a major force in the business/server market. This at a time when people are increasingly seeing the merits of using free and open source software instead of M$ software.

The writing is clearly on the wall for closed-source proprietary software. Micro$oft's challenge is to figure out a way to keep making oodles of cash in the new environment...so they've decided to run a "protection racket".

Protection rackets might not be the world's oldest profession...but I'm sure its one of them http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif