Bill Gates arrested in his younger days (photo in public domain)

As previously discussed, the admirable state of Massachusetts is able to recognise problems with closed applications and proprietary formats. It is now confirmed that Massachusetts will carry on and dispose of Office in a staged migration to OpenDocument, culminating in 2007.

With Microsoft’s OpenOffice XML the loser to OpenDocument in Massachusetts, the war of desktop formats is likely to spread to other governmental bodies, says one participant in the deliberations who sees the decision as a tipping point.

“In many ways it becomes circular,” said Doug Heintzman of IBM in an interview Friday. “It emboldens other entities. We are on the cusp of a big change.”

Immense perseverance at Microsoft did not help avoid this key loss of the Massachusetts ‘flagship’. Awakened interest in Linux recently emerged among African governments as well. Only last week, South Africa wished to ditch proprietary and get rid of hundreds of millions (USD) worth of licences. All the same, it is still worth reading the open letter from the KDE team to Microsoft.

Is this the beginning of the end for Office proprietary?

How much diversity can the industry handle?

HERE has been a recent shakeup in the O/S battlescene. Many factors led to the narrow existence of Linux, Windows and the Mac in that conceptual picture which contains significant platforms. Other platforms are no longer catered for; support for them becomes a rarity.

Companies are beginning to leave aside Palm OS as we know it (e.g. Skype who changed their minds) while gaming systems like Nintendo approach their misfortunate end. The future of the Sony playstation appears uncertain as Sony issue warnings and are headed into some financial trouble.

Likewise, phones running Symbian OS will soon be suffering from so-called “smart phones”. We do not hear much about Solaris anymore, UNIX (not Linux) is seeing its demise, as well as OS/2 which had nails hammered to its coffin as IBM recently called it quits. Meanwhile, Apple ‘feed’ on their music players the most.

The Palm Treo 700 is going to run Windows — that is — Palm negotiate with their former sworn enemy of Palm OS. Later on in the future, Palm should complete their promised move to Linux, but one would have to express doubt as they were recently bought by Access. As it currently stands nonetheless:

Palm Inc. is teaming up with Microsoft Corp. to launch a Windows-based version of the Treo smart phone, marking the first time the handheld computer pioneer will sell a device based on its former rival’s software.

Related items:

• Google OS – What if?
• Linux console
• The Linux PDA Showcase
• HP to Ship Linux
• Third Linux Box – with reference to Linux from Dell

Cited by: PalmAddict

Longhorn beta – recent screenshot

ANY must have wondered why the latest version of Windows, namely Windows XP, dates back to the end of 2001. Moreover, one might ask, why has it been so fragile and susceptible to attacks? Service packs were merely a plaster that covered up a variety of loopholes. Monthly security patches did not help credibility either.

Spherical desktop – experimental demo

It turns out that Windows is a collection of component stitched together rather poorly. A Wall Street Journal article reveals that Windows Vista had to be re-built in a simplified manner, some would say “from scratch”. The name of that article, quite surprisingly and yet not out of the ordinary, is “Battling Google, Microsoft Changes How It Builds Software“. As mentioned earlier today, Microsoft surely recognise Google and respect their status as the main rivals. On the contrary, Microsoft CEO still refuses to openly express fears due to Linux. From the WSJ:

REDMOND, Wash. — Jim Allchin, a senior Microsoft Corp. executive, walked into Bill Gates’s office here one day in July last year to deliver a bombshell about the next generation of Microsoft Windows.

“It’s not going to work,” Mr. Allchin says he told the Microsoft chairman. The new version, code-named Longhorn, was so complex its writers would never be able to make it run properly.

The news got even worse: Longhorn was irredeemable because Microsoft engineers were building it just as they had always built software. Throughout its history, Microsoft had let thousands of programmers each produce their own piece of computer code, then stitched it together into one sprawling program. Now, Mr. Allchin argued, the jig was up. Microsoft needed to start over.

Related Vista/Longhorn items:

• Competition:
  • Novell: Vista to Drive User to Linux
  • Vista Perils
  • Evolve or Die
• Performance:
  • Windows Vista Hogs Resources
  • Spherical Desktop
• Looks:
  • Microsoft Steal the Mac GUI? Again?
  • XP + New Colours = Longhorn
  • Microsoft Battles Screenshots
• Others:
  • Windows Command-Line Interface Delays
  • Longhorn: A Trainwreck?

Update: a more profound article on the subject appeared in The Register the following day.

An article from CNET makes some interesting observations and is titled Microsoft’s nightmare inches closer to reality. From the article:

The nightmare is inching closer to reality and Microsoft execs are apparently paying attention to the decade-old alert. As part of a management shuffle, Microsoft said Tuesday it would make hosted services a more strategic part of the company and fold its MSN Web portal business into its platform product development group, where Windows is developed.

Another memo, called ‘Google–The Winner Takes All (And Not Just Search),’ is also making the rounds. This internal memo, written in 2005, argues that Google threatens Microsoft and the company’s crown jewel, Windows.

Rumours continue to circulate that Google, whose tight relationship with Linux is no longer a secret, may be ‘cooking’ an operating system. Some recent hirings of user interface experts, notable Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, only support this crazy speculation.

Related items:

• Google OS – What if?
• Towards On-Line Operating Systems
• Google builds an empire to rival Microsoft (ZDNet)

There has been a fair bit of fuss about Microsoft’s use of Open Source software. In the past few days, I have come across numerous articles describing how Windows relied on some BSD network components in the early nineties. Above all, the incorporation of Open Source software for Message Passing Interface (MPI) in their server software makes many among the Open Source community bitter.

In a move that shows just how far Microsoft Corp. has come, and how pervasive open-source software is in certain areas, the software powerhouse is, for the first time, including open-source technology in one of its shipping products.

Related item: Software Communists – referring to software patents

This afternoon, as I was watching over the front desk at work, I had no alterrnative but to use an operating system called Microsoft Windows. It did not have a good browser installed. I once installed Firefox on it, yet somebody insisted on removing that ‘spyware’. In that browser that ended up using, my site looked corrupted at times. There were no tabs either and when opening a context menu over a link, I lacked the ability to use key bindings, which would open a link in a new window. The experience was a very frustrating one. I felt imprisoned for that long time period, namely half an hour.

Most annoyingly, at the top of my Web log, I noticed Google AdSense advertisements, which usually get blocked in my Firefox installations owing to some nifty CSS. The advert I got served in my own site occupied two AdSense slots that clearly stated:

Linux versus Windows

Windows performs better than Linux according to independent studies

Guess where the link pointed? It pointed to Microsoft’s Get the Facts Campaign. I took no screenshot as the process is rather laborious under windows: print screen, paste in paint.exe, crop, then save.

Let me clarify a few facts:

• AdSense is Google
• Google is competing with Microsoft whether they admit that or not
• Google uses Linux only and runs Linux servers
• AdSense should preferably be kind to my visitors, not drive them away
• AdSense should reflect on site content, not oppose it
• Visitors seek the truth. Look again at the link above

Now, why would Google have my site point to that garbage? Can it not sense the Microsoft bashing that is contained heavily in a decent proportion of the pages? Are they trying to make me, as their client, promote false propaganda that feeds the same lies which I strongly oppose and detest? If Microsoft are allowed to infiltrate, by the means of money (verging the notion of “bribery”), a site like mine, then how can their deceitful campaign ever reach an end? Linux bashing on my own turf?

My writings are rather blunt and honest. I feel rather disappointed and filled with mixed feelings about AdSense, which can be outrageous at times, although not voluntarily so.

EVERAL months ago I read about a Macromedia (now acquired by Adobe) manager who was very much afraid from a Microsoft response to Flash. A response as such was the only thing that kept him awake at night.

The Windows maker is now releasing Sparkle, which is a Flash equivalent, striving to become a ‘Flash Killer’. While there are many people who would be glad to see Flash die¹, they would not like to see a replacement, especially not one which suffers from poor cross-platform compatibility.

My guesstimate is that Microsoft will stick to their aggressive nature in order to penetrate the market, nudging Flash aside in the process. With control over so many computers, they will be able to manipulate user preferences, exploiting an existing monopoly. Does anyone still remember Lotus? It is only one among dozens of examples. Moreover, having faced proprietary formats like wma and wmv (audio and video respectively), I know that they aim to maim competing platforms (as a side-effect perhaps). Tools that promote such formats are provided by default along with bundled software for Windows users. It is common knowledge that tools which get bundled with the operating system promote proliferation by serendipity.

What are the implications to those who snub Flash already? Some of us will not need to block not only Flash, but also Sparkle, which means a bloat in terms of plug-ins. It is worrying that a Flash equivalent will soon be bound to a vendor of a platform. Very scary it must seem that the target for Sparkle output is the open Web. That is when media serves as a promotion for the operating system while crippling the opposition. I, for one, fear such technologies.

As regards unoriginality of the name, would it not be similar to renaming their Web browser Firedog? The words flash and sparkle are almost analogous (Macromedia Fireworks comes to mind too). This is by no means the first time Microsoft are copying names, slogans, or graphics.

Related item: Microsoft to Fight PDF’s

¹ Along the lines of “Flash is evil”; confer Jakob Nielson, a Web usability authoritative figure.