No post anterior em que afirmei que havia um profundo desconhecimento por parte dos media sobre a verdadeira face de Bill Gates e da microsoft não fui tão longe quanto podia, hoje com um pouco mais de tempo para umas pesquisas e para me relembrar de coisas que há muito li, vou tentar completar o que anteriormente escrevi, infelizmente ainda muito ficará por dizer.
Quando afirmo que existe um profundo desconhecimento por parte dos jornalistas, sendo verdade esta afirmação, ao mesmo tempo faz-me pensar se não existirá outro mecanismo em causa, nomeadamente esconder a verdadeira face de um monopólio e dos seus reponsáveis através do obscurantismo, afinal de contas se não aparece na televisão, se não é mencionado nos media, ou não existe ou nunca existiu, ou então o que aparece é tido como dogma, que não se pode contraditar, pelo menos é o que nos querem fazer pensar.
Michael Parenti descreve bastante bem este tipo de manipulação dos media no seu artigo Monoploy Media Manipulation, “Some critics complain that the press is sensationalistic and invasive. In fact, it is more often muted and evasive. More insidious than the sensationalistic hype is the artful avoidance. Truly sensational stories (as opposed to sensationalistic) are downplayed or avoided outright. Sometimes the suppression includes not just vital details but the entire story itself, even ones of major import.“
Também o grande repórter australiano, John pilger, nos fala do mesmo, quando afirma que “My experience is that what the Russian journalists were referring to is censorship by omission, the product of a parallel world of unspoken truth and public myths and
lies: in other words, censorship by journalism, which today has become war by journalism. For me, this is the most virulent and powerful form of censorship,
fuelling an indoctrination that runs deep in western societies, deeper than many journalists themselves understand or will admit to. Its power is such that it can mean the difference between life and death for untold numbers of people in faraway countries, like Iraq.”
(…)”Now consider the treatment of Harold Pinter, Britain’s greatest living dramatist. In accepting the Nobel Prize in Literature last December, Harold Pinter made an epic speech. He asked why “the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought” in Stalinist Russia were well known in the west
while American state crimes were merely “superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged.” Across the world, he pointed out, the extinction and suffering of countless human beings could be attributed to rampant American power, “but you wouldn’t know it”, he said. “it never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening, it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest.” For the BBC, Pinter’s speech never happened. Not a word of it was broadcast. It never happened.”
Não nos podemos esquecer que a microsoft paga milhões para falarem bem dela, para passarem a mensagem que eles querem, e agora com a fundação Bill e Melinda Gates passa-se exactamente o mesmo.
Leaked email exposes MS charity as PR exercise | The Register
Microsoft deliberately set out to use charitable contributions to bolster its image in February this year, according to a leaked internal Microsoft email we have seen. Ann Redmond, Microsoft corporate marketing research group manager, asked David Kaefer, a marketing research manager at Microsoft, to seek expert opinion as to
“a preferred set of attributes” to help Microsoft with its image problem. Kaefer emailed ten Microsoft people seeking views as to what “image attributes” should be used for improving the effectiveness of “our branded philanthropic communication efforts” (which means getting the best mileage out of Microsoft’s and Gates’ charitable contributions). It was a most cynical exercise that shows beyond doubt
that Microsoft “gives” donations and software to non-profit organisations to get favourable publicity.
Temos de estar cada vez mais atentos ao que os media nos tentam impingir, está longe de ser a verdade dos factos, aliás cada vez é mais desinformação e menos factos, contrariamente ao que é ensinado nas escolas de jornalismo, mas como é óbvio à ética da profissão sobrepõe-se a realidade do dinheiro e dos interesses dos grandes grupos de media, multinacionais que protegem os interesses e as negociatas de meia dúzia de poderosos que dominam o mundo a seu belo prazer.
Convém ainda não esquecer que Bill e Belinda Gates fazem parte do grupo Fascista, Bilderberg e dali nada de bom pode vir.
Mas indo agora a algumas das trafulhices e esquemas da microsoft para criar e manter o monopólio, e para me facilitar a vida ;), vou recorrer ao copy paste de outras investigações já levadas a cabo e a outros posts que já escrevi.
Os truques sujos da microsoft:
Criticism of Microsoft has followed various aspects of its products and business practices. Issues with ease of use, stability, and security of the company’s software are common targets for critics. More recently, Trojan horses and other exploits have plagued numerous users due to faults in the security of Microsoft Windows
and other programs. Microsoft is also accused of locking vendors and
consumers into their products, and of not following and complying with
existing standards in its software.[1] Total cost of ownership comparisons of Linux as well as Mac OS X to Windows are a continuous point of debate.
The company has been in numerous lawsuits by several governments and other companies for unlawful monopolistic practices. In 2004, the European Union found Microsoft guilty in the highly publicized European Union Microsoft competition case. Additionally, Microsoft’s EULA for some of its programs is often criticized as being too restrictive as well as being against open source software.
in Wikipedia
Desde a sua génese que a microsoft, que começou como micro soft, sempre teve tendência para não olhar a meios para atingir os fins, tal como já mencionei, o ms-DOS não foi produzido de início pela microsoft, foi adquirido por esta para o vender à IBM, tendo o cuidado de deixar bem explícito no contracto que mantinha os direitos sobre ele e que poderia negociá-lo à parte da IBM, mais não fizeram portanto que adquirir o QDOS de Tim Paterson e renomearam-no.
O próprio QDOS era uma tentativa de imitação do mais poderoso CP/M de Gary Killdall, que a IBM tentou adquirir primeiro mas devido a a uma NDA que não foi aceite pela Digital Research, e após Bill Gates ter afirmado que existia um DOS, a IBM resolveu tentar a sua sorte com este.
O interessante é que o ínicio da m$ sempre se repetiu pela sua história fora, ou seja, são raros os sucessos de Bill Gates e companhia no software que desenvolveram in house, creio que só o seu Basic teve algum sucesso, de resto a maior parte do seu sucesso sempre residiu na aquisição de produtos de qualidade que existiam no mercado ou através da “cópia”, tal se passou por exemplo com o Frontpage, o qual não era da m$, e que esta adquiriu e logo a seguir começou a colocar as suas extensões proprietárias, deixando este de gerar código standard para passar a código microsoftês.
Quer o m$-word quer o m$-excel, eram cópias descaradas dos melhores programas da altura, o Wordperfect e o Lotus 1-2-3, em relação ao m$-excel, conta-se a história de que durante uma feira de informática da altura, um representante da m$ terá estado a falar bastante tempo com os representantes da Lotus e a escrever tudo o que esta última versão fazia.
Durante o reinado do m$-dos começaram logo os truques sujos, nomeadamente quando lançaram as primeiras versões do m$-windows, que não mais era que um layer que corria sobre o DOS e que como seria natural não necessitaria do m$-DOS para correr mas sim de qualquer DOS presente na máquina, como é natural da parte destes senhores, trataram logo de matar à nascença a liberdade dos utilizadores, tendo construído uma rotina de detecção de qual DOS corria na máquina, ou seja, caso não fosse o da m$, o m$-windows não podia ser instalado.
O DOS de maior qualidade e fazendo enorme sucesso na altura era o da Digital Research, criado a partir do CP/M de Gary Killdall, também ele programador da DR.
“Though DR-DOS was apparently 100% binary compatible with applications written for MS-DOS, Microsoft nevertheless expended considerable effort in attempts to break compatibility. In one example, they inserted code into a beta version Windows 3.1 to return a non-fatal error message if it detected a non-Microsoft DOS. This check came to be known as the AARD code[2]. With the detection code disabled, Windows ran perfectly under DR-DOS and its successor Novell DOS.”
Mas onde a m$ é mais poderosa nos truques baixos é na criação de formatos de ficheiros e protocolos fechados e proprietários, ou ainda pegando em protocolos abertos como o TCP/IP e fazendo-o passar como se fosse criação sua e tentando ainda adulterá-lo, ou ainda pegando no protocolo de autenticação Kerberos sob licença MIT e acrescentado-lhe extensões as quais o tornam incompatível ou de díficil implementação noutros Sistemas Operativos, o mesmo se passa com problemas e servidores HTTP e browsers bem como SMTP e ainda com o LDAP que foi extendido para se tornar de dificil implementação, dando origem ao Active Directory da m$, RFC’s, a microsoft desconhece o que são.
“With that in mind, we have no problem believing that Microsoft has some sort of cockamamie plan to try and replace TCP/IP with its own proprietary system. That fits with every single other strategy that the company has ever pursued. Smart Tags, Hailstorm and Passport are merely the most recent schemes by the company to try to control (and therefore, derive a revenue stream from) every aspect of the Internet,
and TCP/MS will not be the last. It won’t even be the worst of them, either. We are thoroughly convinced that Hailstorm/Passport are clearly the most evil of Microsoft’s near-term offerings, but that’s the subject of another column.”
“For example, Kerberos is an industry standard for encryption, in which certain fields are reserved for optional use. Microsoft, however, has used one of those fields to produce its own proprietary version of the standard. In itself, this is unobjectionable.
Microsoft, however, has gone one step further: it has manipulated its operating systems and middleware so that they will use and accept only the Microsoft version of the Kerberos standard.(16) This is diametrically contrary to the purpose for which standards, even with optional fields, are developed. Optional fields are included in standards to enable firms to add information to a message. Ordinarily, if an optional field is used in creating standard messages, those messages can still be sent and received among all products that comply with the standard. In such cases, the information included in the optional field may simply be ignored. Optional
fields are never, however, intended to enable a firm — i.e.,— to subvert the standard and preclude its widespread usage.(17) Microsoft Thus, by polluting industry standards, such as Java and Kerberos (among others), Microsoft can further impede the use and development of competing middleware. Any calls encrypted with Kerberos sent by Microsoft Windows can be read only by other Microsoft
Middleware and not by Novell’s middleware. Similarly, Novell’s middleware cannot send calls encrypted with Kerberos (the industry standard), because Windows will reject them.”
10. See CCIA White Paper, supra (“Active Directory is also used as Microsoft’s vehicle for
locking customers into a Microsoft proprietary standard. Active Directory supports
standard interfaces such as Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and Domain
Name Service (DNS). These protocols are subsets of what Active Directory supports,
meaning that no other directory services can substitute for Active Directory.”) For a
discussion of LDAP, see Novell Technical Information Document:GroupWise and LDAP
Whitepaper (Feb. 15, 2000), available at http://support.novell.com/cgi-bin/search
/searchtid.cgi?/2955731.htm (visited Jan. 22, 2002).”
15. Perhaps most remarkable, is the arrogance with which Microsoft exploits its
anticompetitive efforts to impede interoperability. Microsoft, for example, repeatedly
issues marketing materials that criticize products offered by Novell and other competitors for technical problems cause by Microsoft’s refusal to allow effective interoperability with Windows.
17. Not content with Microsoft’s corruption of the Kerberos standard, Microsoft has filed for a patent on its proprietary version. Consequently, not only will Microsoft products fail to interoperate with non-Microsoft products (because of the modification), but Microsoft will not allow anyone else to use its version unless they purchase a license from Microsoft.
Recorrendo agora ao excelente documento que vem sendo criado no site Groklaw, o Grokdoc, aqui ficam mais alguns dos abjectos truques com que Bill Gates e companhia sempre brindaram a concorrência.
Eis pois a lista que consta neste site sobre os diversos standards que a microsoft ou subverteu ou tenta subverter ou como no caso do ooxml tenta a todo o custo impingir destruindo no processo a credibilidade o ISO:
- MS OfficeOpenXML
- MPEG
- HTML and WWW
- Kerberos standard with proprietary extension
- The Sender ID flap, a failed attempt to make all email depend on MS licenses
- Ecmascript, MS’ own Javascript ECMA standard which MS didn’t conform to (Link?)
- RTF, MS’ previous interoperability standard that wasn’t.
- LDAP, the standard MS broke to close Active Directory
- CIFS, (Samba) a standard poisoned by MS
- OpenGL, a standard MS wants to get killed at ANY cost.
- C#/CLI, an ECMA standard to prevent alternative implementations
- .NET, an ECMA standard that only MS can use legally.
- Java, MS lost the fight
- ODBC API, how to prevent database API standardization
- ActiveX standardization.
- NTP, the Network Time Protocol
- RIFF (WAV) is just a convoluted and subverted AIFC with byte order switched
- VFAT, the file system “standard” that MS suddenly seems to have patented
- C++ Microsoft C++ compiler discourages writing standard and portable code
- RC4 encryption
- Rdesktop, to connect from *nix to Windows
- Boot sector pain.
- PNG, a web graphics standard that might, at last be supported in IE 7.
For overviews look at The Rise of Proprietary Formats, msversus and netaction. A very good (but long) read is the pdf of the 2004 final decision of the EU comision regarding MS.
Standards are also part of the first antitrust case, see On the Remedy Phase of the Microsoft Antitrust Trial. The following quote from 2003 is quite revealing:
The best characterization of Microsoft’s attitude to standardization was given in their own words, in the first Halloween document (read them all!):
By folding extended functionality (e.g. Storage+ in file systems,
DAV/POD for networking) into today’s commodity services, we raise the
bar & change the rules of the game.
Eric Raymond has an excellent analysis of this standards behavior (the same Halloween document):
What the author is driving at is nothing less than trying to subvert
the entire “commodity network and server” infrastructure (featuring
TCP/IP, SMTP, HTTP, POP3, IMAP, NFS, and other open standards) into
using protocols which, though they might have the same names, have
actually been subverted into customer- and market-control devices for
Microsoft (this is what the author really means when he exhorts
Microserfs to raise the bar & change the rules of the game).
The `folding extended functionality’ here is a euphemism for
introducing nonstandard extensions (or entire alternative protocols)
which are then saturation-marketed as standards, even though they’re
closed, undocumented or just specified enough to create an illusion of
openness. The objective is to make the new protocols a checklist item
for gullible corporate buyers, while simultaneously making the writing
of third-party symbiotes for Microsoft programs next to impossible.
(And anyone who succeeds gets bought out.)
Infelizmente e para mal de todos as trafulhices não passam apenas pelo software mas ainda pelo modo como fazem negócio e contractos com outras empresas, como fica exposto neste resumo que existia no site da vcnet, infelizmente já desaparecido.
Am I Blue?
On November 18, 1998 the digital greeting card company Blue Mountain Arts discovered that beta versions of Microsoft’s Outlook Express (which comes free with Internet Explorer) were automatically filing Blue Mountain’s e-mail greeting cards into the “junk” folder rather than the “inbox.” Shortly afterwards, Blue Mountain Arts discovered that Microsoft’s WebTV service was blocking their e-mail greeting cards as well.
Why would Microsoft want to prevent electronic greeting cards from being delivered? It turns out that after an unsuccessful attempt to purchase Blue Mountain Arts, Microsoft started its own electronic greeting card service. The “bug” in Outlook Express appeared at about the same time that Microsoft’s greeting card service began.
Coincidence? The Honorable Robert A. Baines didn’t think so, and granted a preliminary injunction against Microsoft to protect the delivery of Blue Mountain Arts greeting cards. Microsoft reacted to this injunction by removing the e-mail filter from Outlook Express.
Peeping Bill
Microsoft is now using its WebTV boxes as an in-house consumer
data-gathering tool — with “in house” defined as “in customer’s
houses.” Microsoft polls WebTV boxes nightly to collect customer web
surfing and viewing habits — statistics which in turn are sold to
advertisers. But there’s more: When the first Window CE television cable boxes hit the market in 1999, they will invite Microsoft’s prying eyes into at least 5 million additional homes, and will be armed with an even more comprehensive ability to track customer viewing habits and report them to advertisers. ¿Mi casa es su casa?
Smothering Freeware
Containing commercial competitors is one matter, but undercutting the free software movement is another — one Microsoft has apparently designated a high priority. As a measure of the perceived threat of freeware, witness Microsoft’s maneuvers to marginalize Samba, the freeware application that permits the Linux OS (a free Unix derivative) to communicate with Windows NT, 95 and 98, among others. The combination of Linux and Samba can obviate the need for Windows NT servers, one of Microsoft’s most coveted markets. And that can’t be allowed to happen.
Microsoft’s stealth war against Linux and Samba opened with the release of Service Pack 3 for Windows NT 4. With this release, Microsoft implemented a subtle change to NT’s communications protocols, making it incompatible with Samba. An adjustment to the Windows NT registry can reverse the incompatibility, but at the same time Microsoft eliminated the instructions for this fix from their website. In fact, they went several steps further — by erasing from the website every reference to Samba and a previously posted technical article.
Microsoft’s company philosophy was never more clear; competing
technology, no matter the source, cannot be allowed to survive. Freeware like Samba may be invulnerable to the usual marketing ploys, but that won’t stop Microsoft from attempting to will it out of existence.
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O Vigia 