Bad Windows

Microsoft scored a victory Monday when defense contractor General Dynamics’ Itronix division agreed to pay it licensing fees for using the Android operating system. Itronix makes rugged mobile computers for military, law enforcement, first responder and field service use. Microsoft’s assertions of patent rights over Android and subsequent demands for licensing fees are controversial. Some devices makers that use Android, such as Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC, have ponied up in response to Redmond’s demands for licensing fees.

Read more at LinuxInsider

“After nearly a decade, Microsoft’s reign as a monopoly is over.” … “The latest real-world data on web usage confirms that Microsoft’s once-dominant position in the world of personal computing is crumbling.” That’s not me, the Linux guy speaking. No, that’s Ed Bott, who’s as much a Windows fan as I am a Linux fan. Ed’s the one, not me, who’s saying that “if Windows 8 flops on phones and tablets, Microsoft’s future is very dim indeed.”

Desktop Linux’s future isn’t any better. Windows isn’t declining because of Linux’s security or stability benefits. No, as Ed points out, it’s declining because of the rise of mobile computing. Apple’s iPhone and iPad are the ‘villians” in the mystery of who killing Windows. And, they’re also killing off the traditional desktop Linux.

Read more at ZDnet

In the spirit of the famous articlePDF by Edsger Dijkstra, Microsoft says, in a piece entitled “WebGL considered harmful”, that the 3D technology is not secure enough for its products. The blog post lists three reasons for this conclusion: first, browser support for WebGL gives web applications direct access to hardware; second, there could be security flaws in third-party software (such as in graphics drivers); and finally, Microsoft says that operating systems do not currently offer any protection against denial-of-service attacks on graphics cards. “We believe that WebGL will likely become an ongoing source of hard-to-fix vulnerabilities. In its current form, WebGL is not a technology Microsoft can endorse from a security perspective.” However, Microsoft itself plans to access graphics card hardware directly in the upcoming Silverlight 5. In other words, the criticism of WebGL may stem not only from security concerns, but also from marketing interests.

Read more at H-online

Microsoft determines the support lifecycle of each of its products from the day that they are released: all products intended for private use are given five years of “mainstream support”, while products designed for enterprise use receive an additional five years of “extended support”; in practice, a product’s support lifecycle is always a few days or weeks longer. During the second phase, the only patches Microsoft will provide free of charge (at its download centre and via the Windows update function) are those which the it considers to be security related.

From 10 April, 2012, the Home editions of Windows Vista will no longer be supported. The Business and Enterprise editions of Vista with their comparatively wider range of features will be supported until 2017. However, Vista Ultimate, which has the widest range of features, is counted as a Home edition, and Microsoft’s support for this edition will also end in April 2012.

Read more at H-online

Well, the Linux bloggers down at the blogosphere’s Broken Windows Lounge had just barely finished chanting Skype’s funeral dirge last week when word came that there might be reason to belt out another round. Sure enough, turned out Skype has decided to cut its ties with the free and open source Asterisk telephony system, leaving Microsoft’s new VoIP offering with one fewer FOSSy friend to worry about supporting — and leaving Asterisk users with one fewer option for Skype integration.

Read more at LinuxInsider

Summary: Microsoft is destroying independence in the OEM market (for everyone) in order to ensure that Linux suffers artificial limitations and that Windows monoculture stays for a while longer

WINDOWS is in trouble and “Microsoft [is] Worst Performing Dow Component,” says this new headline (kudos to Chips B. Malroy for the pointer).

Since Windows profits are declining [1, 2] Microsoft has decided to become a super-abusive monopolist again, but almost nobody notices.

Microsoft not only enjoys the privilege of using blackmail to monetise Linux/Android (which in itself is probably a violation of some laws as extortion [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] is covered by the RICO Act). According to reports, Microsoft is now also distorting the hardware market, just as it did when GNU/Linux was thriving on sub-notebooks. We wrote about it in a lot of posts around 2008 and 2009.

Read more at TechRights

Last week the Competition Directorate of the European Commission and Microsoft again did battle in the European courts. This time it was a hearing in the European Court of Justice to argue the propriety of the fine levied on Microsoft by the Commission stemming from the 2004 determination that Microsoft was violating EU competition laws. Microsoft was appealing the $1.3 billion fine on the grounds that it was excessive and had not been arrived at through proper due process.

Background

In 1998 Sun Microsystems lodged a complaint with the European Commission asserting, among other things, that Microsoft was abusing its dominant position (what those of us from the U.S. would think of as using illegal means to maintain a monopoly) by refusing to disclose necessary interoperability information pertaining to Microsoft’s desktop and related workgroup server technology. After extensive investigation, in 2004 the Commission issued a decision in the case and found Microsoft to have violated competition law. Among other remedies, Microsoft was ordered to make its workgroup server protocols available to competitors on a reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) basis and was fined approximately $800 million. Microsoft sought annulment of the Commission decision and fine, but the Commission was upheld by the Court of First Instance in 2007.

Read more at Groklaw

Summary: Why Internet Explorer should be a candidate for exclusion if not banning, especially given that Microsoft knowingly ignores security problems that in turn pass the cost to society, collectively

Negligence is a matter of routine at Microsoft, but this is a subject we wrote about many times before (e.g. [1, 2, 3]), so we shall look at this from another angle today.

Microsoft desperately wants its Internet Explorer (IE) monoculture back. It uses many dirty tricks to get there and around my house there are many billboards promoting IE this year. It is not something that Mozilla, for example, can afford. But the reality is that Microsoft deliberate and well-understood negligence is costing everyone a lot of money.

Read more at TechRights

Over the weekend, a Skype partner firm used the VoIP software’s auto-update function to install a program on users’ systems – even against users’ express wishes. EasyBits has been responsible for online gaming on the Skype platform since 2006. Now, the company’s stand-alone “EasyBits Go” games centre has been installed on Skype for Windows users’ computers via a games update.

Users were given the option to abort the installation – but the program was installed regardless. The unwanted program created a separate program folder and proved difficult to uninstall. Although it appeared in the list of installed programs and could be uninstalled from there, the program folders and their contents as well as the Skype plug-in remained in place.

Read more at H-online