have been a very vocal critic of the BBC, which is still perceived by many as the Auntie that can never do any wrong and can also always be trusted (de facto stance). For a variety of reasons, the BBC has been aligning with many commercial interests and you are warned that the channel (like many other broadcasting/publishing companies including Fox News and CNN) are serving agenda, not news.

In my personal case of criticism, I am most aware of the BBC’s ties with Microsoft and battles against common rivals. Now that Ashley Highfield is out, it’s claimed that he has moved to a place where could do more damage, so we should keep an eye on him.

An official complaint that was served against the BBC was returned recently as they responded to the official complaint with a “F*ck Off”. The European Commission (Neelie Kroes’ departments) should investigate this further along with similar cases involving Public Broadcasters.

The reason for writing this is actually my return from a short encounter with the Chinese protest against the BBC. It’s still taking place in Manchester and about 1,000 people attend. The BBC seems to have rubbed many people the wrong way for their commercial slant and national agenda. They continue to portray the Olympics torch’s journey as one that is filled with loud protesters instead of focusing on the millions of protesters that rally along. In order to increase damage to the reputation of the Chinese nation, which seems like the next superpower of the world, there is also an inaccurate portrayal of the incidents in Tibet.

Keep an eye on what you watch and remember that most broadcasters, including the BBC, serve you propaganda (or personal point of views, approved by moderators and funding sources). To many readers, this won’t be news, but it’s worth a quick reminder. Don’t trust anyone. See different points of view for yourself and make a balanced judgment. It will make you smarter and will simplify your understanding of seemingly complex situations.

Intel Against Our Children

Intel sabotaged and even strove to ‘kill’ the OLPC charity by derailing it off a mass-production route. It’s disgraceful. Then they made a deal with Nick (project head) to shut him up. If you want proof, I’ve collected articles from the press here and here. Criminal-minded companies like Intel ought to be punished already. They are already an abusive, convicted monopoly in some nations, but the Bush administration turns a blind eye.

Analysts Are Often Shills in Suits

Analysts are paid by companies to dig their dirt. Red Hat seems to be a recent victim of their wrath. One analyst, for example, has already got one damaging prediction on Red Hat totally wrong and then disappeared into a distant cave (not to admit the ‘mistake’).

See this podcast from last week. In many cases analysts are little more than shills in suits. Gartner and IDC, for example, are funded by Bill Gates. Steve Ballmer shouts at the analysts on the phone and there are records in antitrust memos about hiding disclosures (a misconduct)

Google’s ‘Innovations’ That Weren’t

Innovating Lock-in

Google acquired the company which used the ‘wrong’ (platform-dependent) tools to build Picasa, which isn’t innovative at all. They would probably need to rewrite the whole application just to make it properly run in platforms other than Windows.

It’s better to just buy companies whose software is build not for just one platform. Wine patches are a nice gift though. At least Google’s work on the Windows-centric Picasa continues to bring good patches to Wine, which benefits other applications too.

Innovating Buyouts

Let’s use a better example. Take into account another acquisition (KeyHole) and be aware that ‘Google Earth’ has always been OpenGL+QT, making a native port trivial for most platforms to enjoy. One thing to point out here is that Google takes pride in Google Earth, claiming it is its own innovation (they even suggested that in an interview with me).

Google is like Microsoft in that respect. It buys more ‘innovation’ than it creates. And these acquisitions are typically proprietary.

Environment Concerns

The British government’s study on servers revealed that Linux can be 50% greener than Windows. The study says a lot about aging, but little about utility where GNU/Linux enjoys even more advantages (fewer Linux servers are needed to handle the same loads).

“It’s all about the apps”

HIS is by no means a review, but just a quick mind dump that reflects on my impressions of KDE 4 applications in isolation (other factors aside). Think of it as a ramble which I’m unlikely to proofread properly (a bad habit of mine, I know). It has become tiring to find rants about KDE 4.0. Yes, some people have decided to put to shame a product that is not yet finalised and they also evaluate what appears to be the wrong things.

Several months ago, in KDE’s news site (the Dot), someone started a whole big flame when he insinuated that KDE 4 was all about clocks, and widgets, and plasmoids. This is simply not true and it is the form of superficial perspective which has had recent proprietary platform releases assessed in the wrong way (e.g. Leopard, Vista, both of which suffer from other real issues). To many of us, it’s all about function, not visuals. The internal structures of KDE have been overhauled and the promise of a better system will be delivered as time goes by.

For me, using KDE 4.0 should primarily be a question of applications; general usability (advanced functions in particular) is probably second. So, here’s just a quick comparison that convinced me to gradually move to KDE 4.0 once it’s made final. It’s truly something to look forward to.

KNode in KDE 4.0 beta still indicates that it’s version 3.5.6, assuming the About windows is anything to go by. The same goes for KOrganizer.

Korganizer (KDE 4 on the left, KDE 3 on the right), click image for full size

KWriter is a different story because 3.8 is said to be in use. There’s no apparent visual difference, but it’s likely that new functionality is hidden away in the menus somewhere.

KWrite (KDE 4 on the left, KDE 3 on the right), click image for full size

Dolphin is an impressive addition that will probably convince many beginners to hope on the KDE bandwagon. I haven’t had a chance to experiment with it all that much, but in all these screenshots that are here (be sure to view them in full scale), the subtle differences can be seen. I’m combining KDE 3.5.6 and 4 in the same session, just in order to do a quick comparison.

File managers (Dolphin on the left, Konqueror on the right), click image for full size

If you’re left curious about a proper 4.0 session, here’s a demo video

Remember that KDE 4.0 is still work in progress and if you need to get your work done properly, KDE 4.0 is probably ready for you. I’ve had no crashes and encountered no issues or quirks while tinkering. That indicates that stability is almost there, even at a stage of prematurity.

No investigation, no scrutiny, and Robbie Bach is not even in jail. Let the following recent story teach you why the legal system in America is broken beyond repair and why Microsoft is virtually above the law. It is permitted to steal millions from investors and get away untouched.

MarketWatch.com reports that Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division, sold $6.2 million of Microsoft stock just prior to announcing that Microsoft was going to have to extend XBox 360 warranties to three years because of extensive failures. The filings note that this was not part of any scheduled diversification or selling program; this was a conscious, unscheduled sale by the guy in charge of releasing news that could affect the value of Microsoft stock.

[...]

Insider trading is a very serious violation of the law; just ask Martha Stewart, who served five months in prison for avoiding losses of $43,000 through trades that just had suspicious timing (no insider trading was actually proven). This is $6.3 million that went straight into Robbie Bach’s pocket.

It has been weeks. No apparent action taken.

IGG had a long downtime last night (or so it seemed from here). More strangely, this morning, some content simply vanished. About 20 hours after I submitted a timely FSF-related item, the item is just gone. I don’t know if Digg had a massive error that led the Web site to restoring from backup. I checked their blog, I checked the front page, but there is nothing to indicate this.

I submitted a link to a video of Professor Moglen, which very quickly accumulated a lot of Diggs and at least one comment Why has it disappeared? Has Digg censored (as in “deleted”) this? If so, why did this happen after so many hours of the item being ‘live’? For the time being, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. I wish to see if more than just my own contributions was lost.

In any event, I have submitted the same story to Netscape, in case you are curious about the content which Digg had deleted (either deliberately or not)

Joe Wilcox, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Several days ago, I left a comment in his inherited Web site just to say that Microsoft hides some of its Vista weakness by secretly patching vulnerabilities. I even provided two links from very reliable source to support this. One of these sources was the Microsoft Blog at ZDNet. With further confirmations that this is true, I see no reason whatsoever why my comment should be removed. This leads to the suspicion that Microsoft Watch has turned from a professional Web site run by Mary Jo Foley into a Microsoft shilling dumpster. Several months ago, the site dropped its Windows server and had it replaced by Red Hat Linux. This is hypocritical, is it not?

It has become obvious (by admission) that many Microsoft employees visit the Web site and even comment without disclosure. I refuse to participate as much as I used to knowing that a site which once served me well has decided to lift and iron first and decide what is valid information and what is an inconvenient truth.

Knowledge is power.

Over a year ago I expressed my concerns about newspapers that wish to know too much about us. I mentioned the New York Times, in particular for its required registration process. These concerns now seem justified.

Barely a year after their reporters won a Pulitzer prize for exposing data mining of ordinary citizens by a government spy agency, New York Times officials had some exciting news for stockholders last week: The Times company plans to do its own data mining of ordinary citizens, in the name of online profits…