Bad Windows

Microsoft uses Linux-powered phones not just to make income (patent tax) but also to spread Microsoft propaganda, which includes Linux insults

REDMOND-BASED PARASITE MICROSOFT is losing its ability to compete online and to compete in mobile, including tablets. What does it do? It extorts Linux, which increasingly leads the way in these two strategic areas. Here is another Samsung/Android phone for Microsoft to make money from owing to patent extortion (patents never named) and another HTC EVO 4G clone will receive similar treatment.

Read more at Techrights

Vast majority of Vista 7 “sales” are licence write-offs and Microsoft tries to convince people to shop for Vista 7, not be forced to get it with a new PC

THE reality behind Vista 7 was never pretty. In many ways it mirrored Windows Vista, which actually seems to have brought more money in its time. Based on news headlines which were published in two weeks (filtered based on occurrences in the headlines), articles about “Vista” were pretty much none. There was this one article about 64-bit Windows (Vista and Vista 7 included) being targeted by a new rootkit. We mentioned it in the previous post and it’s not really about Vista 7. When it comes to Vista 7 headlines, all we found was hype about discounts. These were not “discounts” per se but some words about implicit discounts (“Family Pack”), which help show that adoption has been poor and Microsoft tries to change this (it’s just bundling that worked, i.e. forced sales).

Read more at TechRights

Microsoft just received confirmation of a patent that hands the company the intellectual property of shutting an operating system down.

I can’t quite recall how often Microsoft has talked about a faster way to shut down its operating system. It is part of the pitch of virtually every new operating system and it has remained an annoyance that it can take quite some time until the software in fact closes running applications and the operating system itself.

In August 2005, Microsoft filed for a patent to more efficiently shut down its Windows operating system as well as other operating systems, including Apple’s Mac OS X, and override running programs that may prevent Windows from closing.

Read more at http://www.conceivablytech.com/

Is there some kind of secret brotherhood of lesser-known Microsoft and Apple founders? Steve Wozniak, the Apple co-founder better known as Woz, is voicing some surprisingly strong support for Paul Allen and the Microsoft co-founder’s patent litigation against Google, Apple, Facebook and other tech giants.

Asked about the lawsuit during a video interview with Bloomberg News, Wozniak says he’s “not at all against the idea of patent trolls,” and he believes Allen’s suit represents the fact that inventors have rights under the U.S. patent system.

Read more at TechFlash

At first sight, this extraordinary legal action against most of the digital world’s leading lights might seem one of a kind:
Interval Licensing LLC (“Interval”), a Paul G. Allen company, filed a complaint today in the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Washington against major internet search and e-commerce companies alleging that they have infringed on four patents held by Interval. The eleven defendants are AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo, and YouTube.
Interval Licensing holds patents of Interval Research, the former company founded by Allen and David Liddle in 1992 to perform advanced research and development in the areas of information systems, communications, and computer science. The patents in the lawsuit cover fundamental web technologies first developed at Interval Research in the 1990s, which the company believes are being infringed by major e-commerce and web search companies.
But I believe that at its heart, Allen’s move springs from the same motivations that lie behind Larry Ellison’s equally surprising attack on Google.

Read more at ComputerWorld UK Blogs

The Free/Open Source software community responds to more of the same deception from Microsoft

EARLIER TODAY we wrote about the IDG whitewash that helped Microsoft portray itself as “loving” Open Source. That piece of deception didn’t just make Slashdot but the Telegraph too. The original article (IDG’s NetworkWorld) has been thoroughly debunked in the comments section and the quote above comes from the FFII’s president. The FFII does not buy this spin from Paoli (more of a rebuttal in Twitter), whom the FFII is very familiar with because of the OOXML fiasco.

Read more at Techrights