Bad Windows

In the past, I have always found it comical when companies have found themselves buying into the need to protect their content with DRM because of the pressure from the music and movie industries. Well, it seems that Netflix is no different, but I have to ask: is the DRM protection really needed in their case for online movie viewing? Personally, I think there is another way to protect the content and do so without traditional DRM headaches as well.

Netflix, Consider Flash (Silverlight?). Since I have no idea whether or not they can ever get the movie industry to go for it, I must ask: has Netflix considered taking a Flash approach to viewing content, similar to Pandora? Granted, Pandora is having some problems now on the legal front, but it is not due to DRM specifically. In their case, it is the issues of taxing them out of existence.

But I digress. Why couldn't Netflix use a similar technology as we have seen with Pandora? And considering no one is trying to tax the movie efforts out of existence, there should be very little reason to prevent some level of success with viewers in addition to protecting the necessary content from would-be pirates. As obvious as this may be to us, I do not believe that Netflix, or perhaps even the movie industry, is willing to consider this. But what if they did?

Netflix and Linux: So Happy Together! Just as I found myself completely convinced that there would never be any hope of Netflix support for Firefox, and more importantly, the popular Linux distros, I discovered the f ollowing article . So, now we know that Apple users running Firefox are set, should this be an indicator that we will eventually see this for Linux as well? Possibly, but will it be via Silverlight or Moonlight (the Mono port)? That remains to be seen.

Read more at MadPenguin.org 

For June's "patch Tuesday" (12 June), Microsoft issued fixes for critical flaws in Internet Explorer, Outlook Express and Windows security and interface components.

Most embarassingly, the June 2007 Microsoft Security Bulletin details security issues affecting Windows Vista – the new version promised to be the most secure ever.

One of the critical vulnerabilities highlighted in Security Bulletin MS07-034 could allow remote code to be run on a PC if a user viewed a specially crafted e-mail using Windows Mail in Windows Vista. MS07-32 patches a problem rated as "important" taht could allow people to access information including administrative passwords in the Windows Vista registry and file system.

Read more… 

“The game will go on for a decade or more (just as IBM (IBM) continues to milk its mainframes) but, to paraphrase Churchill I think, although this is not the beginning of the end, it is the end of the beginning for Windows. In my analysis, Microsoft will move away from selling technology in favor of going all SaaS (look for the Live… brand on everything from entertainment software to really cool new B2C stuff to Longhorn). The next decade for Microsoft is all about the experience according to Ray Ozzie.

“Therefore Microsoft doesn’t care in the long run whether users have Linux on their desktops or OpenOffice on their servers…”
Complete Story

I must admit that I am shocked – SHOCKED – that Microsoft found that its software is better than open source software on the desktop for European schools. Shocked, I tell you! I mean, after hours of rigorous study and painfully bought and paid for research, to find out that it likes its own software more than open source…. Who would have thought?

For those who aren't aware, Microsoft paid Wipro Technologies to come up with findings (as Mary Jo Foley and others have reported) that show that open source software on the desktop stinks for schools, and that Microsoft is manna from heaven.

Among the "findings":

• In schools where both Microsoft Office and Open Office are available, student and teacher satisfaction with Microsoft is consistently higher. For desktop productivity, 48?50 per cent of schools reported that student satisfaction with Microsoft products is higher than with OSS, but only 17?26 per cent reported the same for the open source platform.

• In terms of its support for student and teacher activities, Microsoft receives a higher rating than OSS in eight out of ten areas, in the two remaining areas the platforms were rated equally. Teachers reported that Microsoft offers stronger solutions for learning-management scenarios such as monitoring, grading and collaborating on assignments online with students and parents.
• Despite the lack of licensing costs for OSS solutions, the schools benefit from Microsoft?s lower ongoing support costs, fewer failures, and less time devoted to troubleshooting. The study found that OSS solutions required just over 105 hours ICT support per month, in comparison to Microsoft solutions that required just over 87 hours per month (based on the report average of 148 PCs per school).

And there you have it. Open source stinks; Microsoft is king. Silly mortals who disagreed….

The problem with such "findings," of course, is two-fold:

Read more at ZDNet 

Microsoft is on the march. Novell, Xandros, Linspire, hiring Tom Hanrahan straight from the Open Source Development Labs. There should be no doubt that Microsoft has a strategy to….. Yes, to do what to Linux? Did the Redmond Mogul finally realize that Linux is a worthy partner for the future and is it now investing in strategic partners to guarantee a slice of the future market? Or is this a repetition of the old browser wars with the embrace, extend and make extinct strategy and will the Linux world end up empty handed?

The first agreement with Novell was met with mixed feelings. Novell will have the honor of being embedded in the GPL 3 with it’s own clause. The agreement with Microsoft provided mutual protection against patent violations, coöperation in order to improve interoperability and it gives Microsoft the opportunity for Windows 2003/Suse Linux package deals to it’s own customers. Not a few expected Microsoft to use this agreement to repeat it’s own patent claims against all the other Linux distributions, which it did. The agreements with both Xandros and Linspire are quite similar, albeit that Microsoft won’t be offering the two distributions to the longing desktop users. Maybe I am wrong but it does feel that the uproar has become a lot less. Xandros and Linspire are distributions that are the most focused on current Windows users and they use a graphical interface that resembles the Windows desktop as close as possible. Linspire was also one of the first distributions to pay license fees in order to ship with MP3 playback on board. Linspire and Xandros can be considered very pragmatic distributions from commercial companies that focus more on user experience than on philosophical purity and have no qualms on adding proprietary and closed source software if that benefitted their market shares. Two other distributions that fit this profile are TurboLinux and Mandriva. So it wouldn’t surprise if one or both of these companies are next on the list of Microsoft’s Linux partners.

Read more …

The high priests of free software have congregated at Google headquarters this week to debate the future of the movement and face down recent patent threats by Microsoft.
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Leading names of Linux, the world’s biggest grassroots software phenomenon, are spending three days to Friday debating whether an increasingly commercial open source community should fight or ignore the world’s largest software maker.

Dressed in the alternative software movement’s casual uniform of T-shirts and jeans, the group is coming to grips with internal divisions that sap at its success — Linux is now used to power desktop computers, major Web sites, mobile phones — since rival factions often create very similar products.

But as many of the world’s top tech companies and corporate customers demand ever more from Linux, open source devotees still fight among themselves with the fervour of a tiny monastic order seeking to root out theological error in their midst.

“Guys: Be seekers of truth, not finders of contradiction,” Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, organizer of the event, only half-jokingly told the 150 attendees of what is billed their “Collaboration Summit.”

Linux is the best-known variant of so-called open source software — software that is freely available to the public to be used, revised and shared. Linux suppliers earn money selling improvements and technical services. By contrast, Microsoft charges for software and opposes freely sharing its code.

Read more at Scotsman

When Microsoft launched Vista earlier this year, I'd heard all sort sorts of horror stories and frankly considered these to be highly exaggerated and the figment of the jealous imagination of competitors.

How on earth, I thought, could such a successful company produce a product that was supposed to be so full of holes? So absolutely unready. And with such pathetic after sales service.

Faith in Bill Gates

So, in spite of warnings from a lot of people in the know, instead of just settling for good old Windows XP Pro for my new laptop I decided to put my faith in Mr Gates who looked to me to be such a nice chap on TV and who gives away so much of his money to poor people. Hardly a heartless bastard.

But Vista certainly is. Thoroughly heartless and a bastard to work with.

The experience has been shattering. Brief moments of technological delight interspersed with long period of intense frustration and watching more and more money being poured into a bottomless pit of hidden terms and conditions applying at the drop of a hat.

Whatever I tried to do, Windows Vista kept telling me that I couldn't because I didn't have a codec. I had no idea what codecs were and for the first three days I laughed out loud because I couldn't help thinking that a codec sounded like a woman with a cold buying tampons.

Read more at BIZCOMMUNITY 

Microsoft unveiled its first Windows Vista-only patch along with five other security bulletins in its latest monthly "Patch Tuesday" release on June 12.

Although Microsoft labelled four of the six patches as "critical," one security researcher believes the flaw Microsoft labelled "moderate" should also be considered critical.

The Vista-only bulletin, MS07-034, reveals four "critical" vulnerabilities in Outlook Express and the email client in Vista, said Amol Sarwate, manager of the vulnerabilities lab at Qualys. These could allow the execution of malicious code downloaded in an email message, he said.

"We've got more of the same" from Microsoft, said Eric Schultze, the chief security architect at Shavlik Technologies. "I believe three of the six [bulletins] impact Vista, so its not immune [from flaws] — there will always will be patches for Vista."

Read more at SC 

Some things can't be spun.

If you're clubbing baby seals into a bloody pulp, for example, I can't hear your justifications. You can talk about needing to make a living and how this is how it's always been done, but all I'm thinking is, there is nothing you can say that will make me like you for this. Or ever agree that it is acceptable. I want you to find a better way, something that doesn't involve cruelty to adorable little creatures that never harmed a flea. I hear them crying.

Similarly, when Microsoft joined the SCO "you must pay me forever for my precious IP" club, made up of companies that don't know enough not to club baby Linux penguins, the world said, Ewww.

Microsoft can talk about its precious IP and its shareholders demands and its customers needs, and all people are thinking is, this is hateful. Here Microsoft has more money than God, and when a bunch of good-hearted volunteers give the world some wonderful free code, Microsoft's reaction is to club it to death with patents. What could ever justify such a horrible course, we are thinking.

No PR in the world can fix this.

You can see what I mean if you listen to Steve Gibson and Leo LaPorte, about 17:00 minutes in to their talk show on Security Now, "The Microsoft Patent Wars," Episode 93, which Groklaw member SilverWave found and alerted me to. They have it posted as text and PDF too, as well as MP3, so you can read the transcript instead, if you prefer.

Gibson, who early in the conversation makes it clear he believes in trademarks and copyrights and intellectual property — although he sees software patents have become a problem — and has even applied for patents when he's done consulting work, explains how patents get written and then stretched like taffy to be broader and stupider, and then he talks about his reaction to Microsoft's claims of 235 patents:

Read more at Groklaw

Sam Hiser has put up a detailed comparison of the OpenDocument and Microsoft OOXML document formats. “ODF is the only format unencumbered by intellectual property rights (IPR) restrictions on its use in other software, as certified by the Software Freedom Law Center. Conversely, many elements designed into the OOXML formats but left undefined in the OOXML specification require behaviors upon document files that only Microsoft Office applications can provide. This makes data inaccessible and breaks work group productivity whenever alternative software is used.”

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