Ed is a subtle troll. He often says vague things in support of software freedom but what's below shows that he could care less. Often software freedom arguments are turned against M$ competitors like Google and Apple. This is paradoxical when he's busy supporting things like OOXML, Silverlight and so on. There's no mistaking his smart ass attitude and smug hatred of Slashdot users. With a little bit of digging, the general patern emerges, Love for M$, hate for Slashdot, other M$ enemies and a well hidden hatred of software freedom.

Love for M$

• Moolight booster, wants to waste effort porting to Windows
• Novell/M$ deal defender, real smart ass remark.
• M$ Defender denies obvious M$ coding coherence problems by denying one small inflamatory piece of their problem and insulting the accuser
• Promotes Mono
• Defends Silverlight as less evil than flash.
• Promotes OOXML
• Defends Vista with, "Microsoft is normally very good about keeping backwards compatibility - indeed, the need to stay compatible with old badly-written apps is the cause of much of the cruft in Windows." Vista's incompatibility was infamous at the time.
• Defends Vista, blames problems on security and everyone but M$.
• Defends DRM as "altruistic." Yes he was talking about M$.
• Confusion about non free licenses, you can't sue M$ for flaws and losses.

Hate for Slashdot and Other General Hate.

• Hates Slashdot
• Hates Slashdot
• Ridicules Slashdot
• Groklaw is not trustworthy, November 2008. Amazing.
• Defends offshoring regardless of conditions of programmers.
• The term "closed source" is lame. He's exploiting the differences between free software allies.
• more general heckling

His homepage on 11/23/2008 has has him and other old people beating each other up in cheasy martial arts class. Thanks for sharing, Ed.

Here are some of the stories I submitted that Slashdot thought were worth sharing. I collected them to see how my interests and worries held up over the years.

2010

I put most of my effort into helping Techrights in 2010. I still read Slashdot but don't bother to submit news anymore. The policy of sharing email addresses was a turn off here at Slashdot. I'm keeping the following logs reasonably up to date:

• Microsoft Death Watch.
• Vista Failure Log
• Window 7 Hype log
• Windows 7 Failure Log
• Microsoft Patent Extortion Timeline

Techrights has been more enjoyable and productive. The link sections are what Slashdot once was and Roy's investigative journalism is first rate reporting.

2009

• January 12, How M$ Beats GNU/Linux in Schools.
• January 20, The In-Progress Plot To Kill Google. Mainstream media eventually caught on as M$ became more blatant.
• February 5, Ubuntu Wipes Windows 7 In Benchmarks. [see follow ups 1 and 2]
• June 27, RMS says No to Mono
• July 14, US Postal Service Moves To GNU/Linux. This was not the most important issue I'd submitted lately but it is significant and amusing. The popular press was soon filled with stories about the Post Office being cut back and shut down.
• September 7, Another Lawsuit Claims WGA Is Spyware.

2008 - There's a brief break here, where I did not realize that journal submission was broken and then due to system gaming.

• January 1, Dvorak Looks Back At 'Another Crappy Tech Year'
• January 3, UK Moves to Outlaw 'Hacker Tools'
• January 13, Malware Distribution Through Physical Media a Growing Concern
• January 25, Motley Fool Writes Off Microsoft
• March 03, Dell Documents Reveal Microsoft's Pre-launch Vista Errors
• March 23, University of Penn. Recommends Against Vista SP1
• April 6, UK Banking Law Blames Customers For Insecure OS
• August 18, Grokking SCO's Demise - tag credited to me, officially attributed to another AC story.
• October 16, E17, Slimmed Down For Cell Phones
• October 17, Ballmer Admits Google Apps Are Biting Into MS Office
• November 8, Netbooks Take a Bite Out of Windows Profits
• November 24, Groklaw Says Microsoft Patent Portfolio Now Worthless
• December 1, The Myth of Upgrade Inevitability Is Dead (compare)
• December 26, Technocrat.net Shut Down

2007

• March 23, White House Specifies And Mandates Secure Windows
• June 24, CA Bill Limits Skin Implantation of RFID Chips about insane industry opposition to RFID limits.
• August 8 Federal Journalist Shield Law Advances
• August 14, Increased Linux Use With SCO's Defeat Predicted
• August 18, PC Magazine Editor Slams Vista and Steps Down.
• October 11, Microsoft Flip-Flops On URI Protocol Handing Flaw
• October 12, Airlines Have to Ask Permission to Fly 72 Hours Early
• October 28, Vista Sales Rate Fell Last Quarter
• November 9, AntiPiracy Macrovision Bug is Actually Six Years Old
• December 30, PCWorld Says Firefox is Strong, Vista is Weak

2006

• January 12, Computers Top BBC List of Stress Producers
• January 28, Standby TVs Waste Electricity, How About ACPI?
• March 15, PA Seizes Newspaper's Computers
• April 18, New Blow for Microsoft in EU Row
• June 6, Students Skip College Music Services
• July 29, Microsoft Locking Out Anti-Virus Makers?
• October 16, iPod Users Buy CDs, Shun iTunes
• December 10 The Future of Journalism Online
• December 13, NY Times Tries to Untangle Analysts and Shills

2005

• February 25, Online Trust Failing Overall
• March 25, BBC Writer Tries PC Repair, Finds Poor Software
• April 15, People are More Accepting of Spam
• June 16, Zombie Report By ISP
• November 6, BBC Examines Open Source Business Model

2004

• January 10, Microsoft Soft-Pedals Dialup
• June 8, Infected Windows PCs Now Source Of 80% Of Spam
• June 11, Labor Department Downplays Offshoring
• May 12, Tocqueville Blames U.S. IT Troubles On Free Software

2003

• February 27, Baby Bells Promise Broadband Stagnation
• May 15, Doubting Electronic Voting. Yes, this one was really on target.
• July 11, NYT Reports Porn Spam Hijacking Network

2002

• November 26, BBC says "Avoid Explorer"

1999

• December 14, Surgeon General Says 1/5 of Americans are Nuts

Worth bookmarking and sharing. Half of mono is not free, so the whole thing should be avoided as java was before it was all GPL'd.

The powerful hold M$ has over the minds and wallets of users was put on display at a November 19th shareholder meeting. Karen Robins, a children's book author, had these things to say:

"Twenty years ago, I started my dream to be a children's writer. Bill Gates and Microsoft totally changed my career. I just wanted to thank you. I love Microsoft. I believe in the company. It is my only individual stock still left in my portfolio. I'm still hanging on to Microsoft and the dream. I remember I sat in this very same room several years ago and I believe it was Mr. Steve Ballmer who said the best is yet to come. So, Mr. Ballmer, what year do you predict the best is yet to come?"

After the meeting, Robbins, said that Microsoft's products had made her life as a writer much easier. She no longer had to type letters to publishing houses individually. And she no longer had to retype the entirety of a letter when there was a mistake. "I wanted to always personally thank Bill Gates," she said.

[Despite the lost share value she concluded] "It was worth so much. Where else would I invest? I love the company. It changed my whole career."

This is the core sin of non free software that RMS warns about, that the user is so grateful for what the software does that they will do as the programmer says. These kinds of emotions should never guide investment decisions.

Unable to sell stock to raise money, M$ will sell bonds which will deplete the company of it's cash, in an attempt to raise it's declining stock value.

Microsoft Corp. may sell debt in what would be the world's largest software maker's inaugural bond offering. Microsoft may offer senior unsecured debt securities, according to a regulatory filing today with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The shelf registration clears the way for the company to issue debt at any time.

The move comes amid suspicions of hidden weakness and demonstrated threats to it's cash cows Windows and Office. It is part of a previously announced plan to enter debt for $20 billion worth of stock buybacks. M$ had $20.7 in cash left as of September 30th, which was down from a high of $60 billion just a few years ago. At the time of announcement, USB analyst Heather Bellini predicted:

Microsoft to complete the repurchase -- at least five times larger than its average per quarter in the last fiscal year -- over the next three months. ``They won't announce it until it's done,'' Bellini said.

Despite this news, M$FT has hit a 52 week low of $18.00 today and continues to float there, down from peaks of $36 at the start of the year and $56 in 1999. Stock options were once an important mechanism to attract talent to the company.

If you ever wondered why Windows never just works, look at the start of Bill Gates computer career.

In the fall of 1968, Computer Center Corporation opened for business in Seattle [and offered computer time to Bill Gate's high school]. It was not long before [Gates and his comrades] started causing problems. They caused the system to crash several times and broke the computers security system. They even altered the files that recorded the amount of computer time they were using. ... the Computer Center Corporation decided to hire the students to find bugs and expose weaknesses in the computer system. In return for the Lakeside Programming Group's help, the Computer Center Corporation would give them unlimited computer time ...

The pattern is apparent, break the system and forever be paid to fix it.

This reaction to computing scarcity should be contrasted with Richard Stallman's. As a graduate student, he railled against locking unused terminals so that everyone could have access to otherwise wasted resources. Decades later we still see M$ abusing its position of trust and Stallman still trying to help his neighbors.

A 100,000 M$FT share holder details his frustrations at M$'s incompetent management.

In these last eight years, I have witnessed an appalling decline in shareholder value of this extraordinary business enterprise. My personal shareholder value has been steadily destroyed both in actual and potential value. It is not unreasonable to expect Microsoft, the world's software leader, enjoying a high-margin monopoly on more than 90 percent of the world's computers, to have annual stock appreciation of 9 percent over this span of eight years. At this compounded rate, MSFT should now be selling at twice the price I originally paid. Instead, it is selling at half the price I paid. The current economic meltdown hasn't materially altered the underlying, long-term price trend of MSFT shares. ... five out of seven of the non-employee directors up for re-election have minimal share ownership (stakes less than mine), and they are impotent as a counterbalance to the two out-of-touch titans.

In this same time frame, my Berkshire-Hathaway shares have tripled. ... Apple, meanwhile has experienced a nine-fold growth in share value during this period. ...

[M$] should not be in the hardware business selling low-margin, low-volume games and devices such as Xbox. ... has no proven skills in the business of advertising, either as a marketer of its own products and services or as an advertising service provider in the Google space. ... How many billions of dollars have been wasted on poor acquisitions? How many billions has Microsoft squandered on losing legal battles (as well as on Pyrrhic victories) that have severely damaged the brand's reputation and credibility around the world? Where are the tangible results of the billions spent on R&D? Where is the accountability for the lateness of the Windows Vista operating system and its poor design and performance?

I am sorry for this man's personal loss and wish that he had listened to free software advocates instead of greed heads. By 2000, there were enough anti-trust lawsuits to convince any reasonable person that M$ was a criminal organization that would abuse all stake holders the same way it abused customers and employees. Non free software is morally bankrupt and those who vend it should not be trusted.

The investor finishes his rant with a proposal to change management, fire Steve and get Gates out of the picture. This, of course, will fail because it treats the symptoms not the cause. M$'s core products, Office and Windows are also failing and no dancing elephant can prevent the rise of free software. M$ has stomped off into low margin businesses like Zune and Xbox because they can't afford to see free software prove itself anywhere without losing their entire monopoly. M$ lost control of developer conversation long ago, the cool new toys and mindshare follow that and market share follows what developers make.

Randall Kennedy, of InfoWorld, has documented an ugly incident where M$ expressed their dissatisfaction with his writing. There are lots of stories about how M$ manipulates the press and punishes people that do not praise the company but this one is worth mentioning because it shows the danger of using M$ Exchange. People should also remember W.E.'s place in the world

Oct. 3, 2008 - I receive an e-mail from Julie McCormick at Waggener Edstrom in which she extends a "special save-the-date" invitation to attend a "unique, invitation-only" event being hosted by the Windows Client team. She labels the subject matter as "confidential" and notes that attendees will be hosted at a special "socializing event" on Saturday night as compensation for flying in a day early. [Kennedy accepts and arranges a flight]

Oct. 8, 2008 - I receive a mysterious "recall" notice in my Outlook Inbox from this same Julie McCormick. Apparently, she's trying to "unsend" the aforementioned invitation e-mail. Fortunately, I don't use Exchange Server (makes it harder for my sources to recant when they get cold feet), so this rather clumsy attempt at "evidence elimination" fails miserably.

October 9 .... it appears that someone high up on the Client Team (Steve?) really doesn't like me. I mean, really, truly loathes me. And it's not just your run-of-the-mill frustration with a journalist who picks on them. This thing is personal, and the executive in question is allowing his or her personal feelings to spill over into the company's handling of formal press relations with InfoWorld.

... The "official" explanation for my blacklisting and subsequent "dis-invitation" is that I somehow "violated the non-disclosure agreement" for Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Beta by publishing benchmark results before the update was released. Of course, this argument is entirely specious because a) I haven't signed any NDA with Microsoft in the past decade and b) I've never published any benchmark results for Vista - at least none that originated with me. Furthermore, if there really was some sort of NDA violation in play, it wouldn't be Waggener-Edstrom relaying the message. It would be Microsoft Legal ... in the form of a lawsuit.

I heard that they even considered banning me from PDC outright, so toxic is my presence. However, cooler heads eventually prevailed

The same author later found out that part of the special meeting was a laptop bribe.

Dear Microsoft: I'm writing in regard to your recent FREE LAPTOP COMPUTER giveaway program for members of the industry media/analyst community. It is my understanding that authors and pundits who are "friends" of Microsoft - i.e. those who praise Windows Vista and generally write positive stories about your products and strategies - were eligible to receive their FREE LAPTOP COMPUTER during the super-secret, invite-only workshop that you held on the Sunday just prior to your Professional Developers Conference.

This was later covered by Boycott Novell, which attempted to finger those who took the laptops.

If Indiana is typical, free software can save the US billions when moving to one computer per child programs. In 2001, the state had good networks and about one computer for every four students. Despite that investment, most students got less than an hour per week using the labs. Were talking about more than a million students.

It was then that state officials knew each student needed a computer, and Indiana's one-to-one initiative was launched. But how were they to pay for such a huge project that would have cost $100 million a year in software licensing alone?

Today, more than 100,000 Indiana school kids (in all, 300,000 high schoolers are slated to receive one) have their own $298 computer and monitor with numerous free software applications, and, in turn, schools across the state have secure, reliable, sophisticated server systems thanks to Linux-based open source technology.

Did Indiana children mind? "Who cares?" one student quipped to Michael Huffman, special assistant for technology, as he surveyed the one-to-one program's success across the state. [He] estimates software costs total only $5 per machine annually, "It's the only model we've come up with that is affordable, repeatable, and sustainable. If you look at a lot of other states that have had laptop initiatives, I think there is a real breakdown. And there are a lot of them that aren't continuing. There are schools that have gone out and bought a lot of laptops, but there is no plan for four years down the road. That's why we went with open source."

The current state of Vista/Windows 7 and shrinking budgets made free software all the more attractive. States that have made the move are in much better shape for the current recession than states with a pile of laptops that run XP.

Update 6/22/09

Boycott Novell details M$'s response to these programs, strategic and well advertised dumping.

Update 2/3/2010. There were 7 points of hype, I'm going to look into which ones I got right and which ones they hype was right about. So far, I count: Hype 1, Twitter 6. Windows 7 sucks. It came "on time" if you think it was "ready". Battery life, security, sharing, netbook function, performance, and compatibility were all BS. More links will follow.

Update 10/22/2010 - The technical points remain valid after a year on the market. There are no tablets, mobile devices or anything resembling the "connected world" launch hype. Security is an obvious failure. Microsoft boosters brag about sales, just like they did for Vista, but business does not really want then new OS and it is stuck in single digit land. In fact, GNU/Linux is winning the race because 36% of businesses are using GNU/Linux on the desktop.

2010, Now we start to see the dust settle I'll post confirmation of failure as it arrives.

• 11/18 - Preston Gralla admits Vista 7 is too fat for tablets and netbooks, "[Steve Ballmer] Ballmer was being a bit disingenuous when he said that [tablets would run Windows 7]" Compare this to his previous "Linux killer" gloating.

The Hype Log as written.

Windows 7 is being pushed by all the usual suspects as the "cure" for what ails Vista. It's the same talking points and hype that surrounds any "upgrade" but the M$ and friends are hysterical given the technical and public relations nighmare that Vista was. "This one will be secure, fast and better than competing software that you could have bought years ago," they always say but Windows remains Windows because non free software development does not work. People who make a living with M$ really, really want to see Windows continue as the dominant OS. A little bribery here and there (list) and punishment for objectors makes friendly press coverage too but these represent the tip of M$'s manipulation. It's one thing for M$ to make this stuff up, it's another for it all be reported so uncritically by a press corps that's been lied to repeatedly. This kind of stuff has destroyed the reputation of the Wintel press. Vista should have been their last hurrah, but they are at it again. In fact, the worst offenders have already started to promote Windows 8 because Windows 7 in on track to fail.

Here's what they promise and how it's unlikely. The most obvious reason Windows 7 is unlikely to be better than Vista is that it's sill Vista. They were not able to get right in six years of development, it's doubtful they will fix things in two years of light use. The failures are cataloged separately as they happen. Anyone inclined to believe the promisses should revisit this 2002 video promotion for Vista and the launch of XP. Windows 7 hype is reaching new extremes of shameless lying as M$ itself fails. Benchmarks show that the average user is better off with Ubuntu and other Debian based distributions are likely to give similar results.

It will be ready for Christmas 2009. Trying to freeze the market. Even as they promise the date, most of the people below admit that it's prudent to add months or years to M$ release dates.

• James Bannan, APC, said this January 22 of 2008!
• The Register
• Mary Jo Foley, "When anyone asks me whether they should buy a new PC now or wait, I tell them I'm banking on getting a new Windows 7 PC next fall." [2], "early 2010. I still believe that's a worst-case date and we'll see Windows 7 by the second half of 2009."
• Ed Bott, June (said 9/25/08), then 2nd half 0f 2009 (10/21), then July (1/10/09). The phrase, "In five minutes" from a SNL spoof comes to mind. . June passed and we now have a Vista Capable (fiasco) style "upgrade for less" on Vista computers that might happen by the end of July.
• Paul Thurrott
• Alexander Wolfe, "Microsoft isn't going to launch what might be its best OS ever in the midst of a PC-upgrade-killing recession. I'm betting that the Redmond brain trust is hoping things will ease up in time for next December's Christmas shopping season, where Windows 7 could spark the kind of computer buying spree Microsoft dreamed of for Vista." Sickening.
• InternetNews.com quotes Windows 7 blogger Brandon LeBlanc and estimates general availability for late October, and notes that this is not meeting the company's earlier promises to deliver in June. This is the usual lie, it's always less than six months away.
• PCWorld publishes the latest lie from a "leaked" Best Buy memo. M$ will start selling "upgrade rights" at the end of June - promissed to be available in October. This is the Vista Capable fiasco all over again.

Score: they pushed something out the door in late October.

You can share it with your family - M$ generously charges for something people used to take for granted and GNU/Linux will always provide.

• Todd Bishop of Tech Flash, without knowing any real details, uncritically promotes the deal, "a Family Pack would start to look very economical for people who need to install Windows 7 on multiple computers." Shame on him.
• Ed Bott, of course.

Score: of course Windows 7 is not free software and can not really be shared. In fact, users of the "family pack" will not even be able to share their own media because of built in restrictions.

Will run on Netbooks. They can't get XP to do that, but this claim is critical to their ability to compete with GNU/Linux which can. M$ all but concedes that this is a lie with their SKU scheme which has nothing but "starter" versions for netbooks. You won't be able to chose ARM, MIPS and other frugal chipsets that you can get with GNU/Linux and OSX. At RTM, Vista 7 Netbooks are still Science Fiction.

• CIO Magazine [2, shows some scepticism by different author]
• Mary Jo Foley, "Sinofsky spent a considerable amount of his keynote demonstrating that a full implementation of Windows 7 will be able to run on netbook, even as stripped down as an Asus Eee PC with 1 GB of RAM."
• Joanna Stern tells us Windows 7 already runs well on an upspeced EEE 1000H, but "well" does not mean to me what it means to her. 58 second boot, 720P has playback glitches, 485MB of the RAM was in use with no applications. The few things that worked were free software applications, GIMP and Filezilla and a network manager that works better than Vista or a sharp stick in the eye.
• Preston Galla of ComputerWorld takes the last story and transmorgifies Windows 7 into a "Linux Killer". Garbage in, garbage out.
• Andre Da Costa
• Todd Bishop
• Jack Schofield is an innovative liar, "[Windows 7] uses far less memory than Vista, and runs well on today's netbooks. [but you will never see it because Microsoft wants to protect notebook sales with Vista 7 starter edition which is intentionally limited]."

Score: Windows 7 will make any computer perfrom like a netbook. Only the very foolish will try to actually run it on a netbook. I bought a netbook with Vista 7 and saw Debian Lenny run rings around it.

Security They claim it's just as good as Vista. That's true, but Vista is just as bad as any other Windows release which have all been failures. Exploits have already been demonstrated. Now comes news that Windows 7 will run XP in a VM. This is being done in such a way that all of XP's flaws will become Windows 7 flaws too.. Windows 7 may be the least secure version of Windows ever.

• Andre Da Costa

Score: of course Windows 7 is a mess.

Fast Boots, Better Performance. GNU/Linux on Netbooks shows this is possible, but not for Windows. Performance is that of Vista now, change is unlikely. Now we see, leave it to M$ to cheat with hibernation and lie about it. They promise what others deliver honestly:

• Eric Traut of M$ promisses MinWin, aka Windows 7, will be small and stable like GNU/Linux.
• Mary Jo Foley, March 20, 2008, says Windows 7 will be modular to combat bloat. Ars Technia thinks it's paradoxically about more lock-in.
• Mary Jo Foley "Microsoft execs hinted that Windows 7 might boot up in under 15 seconds, but didn't officially commit to that number."
• Andre Da Costa
• Adrian Kingsley-Hughes Better than Vista, XP even. Oh please.
• Ben Hardwidge, Custom PC Graphics will work on your CPU if not on your GPU. This is transparent Vista Capable damage control. Given M$'s OEM lock, GPUs will always work with Windows unless M$ wants to punish a chipmaker like Intel for releasing free software.

Score: it's not even faster than Vista.

It's a major release and it's a minor upgrade It seems to depend on what is being talked about. For compatibility, they claim minor. For Vista reputation damage control, they might as well claim it's a ground up rewrite.

• Paul Thurrott, "I'm going to give Microsoft a pass on this one. Windows 7, in many ways, is indeed a major Windows release."

Improved battery life. This one conflicts with speed improvements and DRM. If M$ really cared about power consumption, they would spend their money porting to ARM instead of false advertising claims. Windows 7 probably has the worst battery life of any Windows yet.

• Mary Jo Foley
• Andre Da Costa
• Todd Bishop. Blinded by jargon and details he misses the obvious.

Score: Windows 7 is a battery wrecker.

It won't break your old software and hardware. This lie happens every upsell. This time, it has already been exposed by Randal Kennedy but people are still passing it around. Now comes news that Windows 7 will run XP in a VM. You can get that kind of compatibility now with GNU/Linux, and better with Wine which runs DX9 games. Finally, Walt Mossberg breaks the bad news that Vista 7 is the least compatible version of Windows ever, requiring users to reinstall all of their software or start from scratch.

• Paul Thurrott, "customers, partners, and developers won't face the same tortuous incompatibilities that dogged them with Vista"
• Paul Thurrott again, " It is feature complete, it is reasonably stable, and it is highly compatible with the software and hardware I use on a regular basis."

Score: it won't even work with software for Vista. Here's Microsoft executive telling people they should be like Boeing and only use the 7,000 of their 11,000 applications that work with Windows 7.

08/01/2009 - RTM and the hype goes into overdrive. Various "reviews" repeat all of the above. The list of shame includes:

• Seth Rosenblatt CNET, Windows 7 is more than just spin. It's stable, smooth, and highly polished, introducing new graphical features, a new taskbar that can compete handily with the Mac OS X dock, and device management and security enhancements that make it both easier to use and safer. Importantly, it won't require the hardware upgrades that Vista demanded ... .
• Brooke Crothers, CNett, Windows 7 will be more than just a better interface. Under-the-hood changes will allow chips from Intel, Nvidia, and Advanced Micro Devices to ratchet up Windows 7 performance above previous Microsoft operating systems.
• Brian X. Chen, Wired Magazine, makes the "Microsof's Best OS Yet," automotive analogy and many other cliches. a clean, modern look that competes with Apple's finely designed Mac OS X Leopard. ... Windows 7 feels a lot faster than its predecessors, and that's because memory management has been smartly re-engineered. Shameless and quickly touted by Seattle PI and just as quickly crushed in comments, "This is akin to saying that the last Yugo that was manufactured was the best yet."
• Windows 7 is better than Mac in every way claims from Mitchell Ashley of Network World and Randall C. Kennedy of [dis]InfoWorld. Apple is just as vicious an enemy of software freedom as M$, but their software works a lot better.
• Windows 7 is just as good as Mac, claims Samara Lynn, of ChannelWeb. Windows 7 is a desktop operating system as performance-nimble, aesthetically pleasing and, dare we say it, as potentially secure as Apple has delivered with OS X.
• M$ themselves try to teach Best Buy employees to lie about Windows 7, and are called on it in public.
• Jennifer Bosavage, of Channel Web, hits all the lies in a compact space with, "Five Things That Separate Windows 7 From Vista." Meanwhile, David Coursey of PC World has the nerve to say, "If you've lived with Vista this long and installed the Service Packs, you now have an OS that actually works pretty well.".

Sooner or later, most of these people will be apologizing the same way everyone who praised Vista did. Where I find them, I'll quote the Hall of Shame Winner's previous Vista quotes.

• David Coursey, "At First Glance, Vista Looks Like a Winner" Beta 1 of Microsoft's next OS has a sleek interface to rival Apple's Tiger, and its search capabilities look promising. ... Vista Beta 1 doesnt do a very good job of showing much of this goodness. Nevertheless, I find myself quite enchanted.
• Jennifer Bosavage, "Time's A-Wastin" "There's an easy fix for Windows 2K and XP [daylight savings problems]; Vista is ready with the new updates already,"

Roughly Drafted predicts Windows 7's failure even if it's technically perfect because OEM's are tired of paying the Windows Tax for the pleasure of competing in a fierce low margin commodity market.

The real problem with Vista is that nobody wants to pay Microsofts Windows Tax. Not even a hypothetical, brilliantly flawless new version of Windows can solve that problem. ... PC makers are desperately jealous of Apple, which not only doesnt pay Microsoft the Windows Tax, but also is so strongly differentiated by its unique software that it can charge sustainable prices for its products in a market that has PC rivals diving into a shallow margin of water with no hope of floating. ... big PC makers from HP to Dell to Acer to Sony are all investigating Linux or their own software that can be used in place of Windows. Once Microsoft loses their business, it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to ever get it back.

The author gleefully points out the massive failure of Vista and reminds the readers of their correct prediction that failure. The article mentions how "downgrade to XP" has been used to pull more money than ever out of customers for seven year old software that sucks a little less than Vista, and how OEMs realize that XP is the only way to sell their computers. The previous article predicted Vista failure from a lack of demand for what Vista had to offer, overpricing, a more competitive Apple and everyone else in the world ("IBM to Oracle") having invested in GNU/Linux. No one could have imagined the Vista compatible dissaster, spill over of internal email calling the product shit or even just how shit Vista's insane DRM and spyware anti-features would make the OS. Some of that technical failure is pointed out in the previous article because M$ has yet to deliver on it's early 1990's feature promisses.

Firehose submission, of FT article about hackers breaching White House email. Previous stories are linked showing M$ systems are used and is at fault, if the non free Lotus Notes system is not. Irony of enemy being better informed than US citizens is pointed out. A previous break in to expose corruption is pointed to and hoped for.

IT budges at all levels are expected to fall next year.

Thirty-eight percent of local government IT budgets will decrease in the next two years as a result of the current economic slowdown, according to a survey by the Public Technology Institute and Input.

even federal agencies are likely to feel the pinch in the coming year. Market research firm Input, which specializes in federal spending, predicts the federal governments spending on IT will increase at a modest 4 percent compound annual growth rate between now and 2013, from about $72 billion to $88 billion. That would be a historical low, when compared with the average 7 percent growth rate of the past two decades.

This will be the final nail in Vista's coffin and a good thing for software freedom. The DOT, FAA, UK Schools and other government agencies were already avoiding it. With budget cuts on the way, no one is going to migrate to new software unless there are significant savings on the other end. Red Hat expects to do well.

PCWorld has a similar article.

Thirty-eight percent of city and local government IT budgets will decrease over the next two years, causing a shift in tech priorities, according to a survey of 162 local and state CIOs. About half of the IT managers surveyed said they expected IT spending would remain flat over this period. Only 14% said spending would increase.

Failed banks don't buy IT:

Microsoft and California based Cisco to lose $4.3 billion in orders next year. While Cisco earns about three percent to four percent of annual revenue from the U.S. financial industry, Microsoft accounted for 22 percent last year.

Larry Tabb, Founder of Tabb Group in New York says, "Finance-industry technology outlays will sink 20 percent to $17.6 billion next year from an estimated $21.9 billion in 2008." "Additional mergers could affect companies' technology spending," said Suresh Kumar, the Chief Information Officer of Pershing LLC, a subsidiary of the Bank of New York Mellon that oversees $940 billion in assets.

The picture is worse, now that we know that bail out money is being used for mergers instead of new loans as intended. Fewer banks will spend less money than more banks.

Windows 7 suffered a no user intervention required remote root flaw before it was introduced:

The more than 6,000 attendees who will be walking away from the sold-out event with the Windows 7 operating system software in hand could have been vulnerable to an attacker exploiting the security hole. "The code that will be distributed at PDC for Windows 7 was put on CD before last week's security update was developed, so it will not contain the update," a Microsoft spokeswoman wrote...

This is to be expected because Windows code does not change much. 2000, XP and server 2003 were listed as sharing the problem.

Update, November 3: ActiveX is still a hole in Vista, and that has probably carried over into Windows 7.