● 01.29.08

●● Brett Winterford Had Kool-Aid in Redmond (and Then Came ODF FUD)

Posted in Australia, Deception, FUD, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Open XML, OpenDocument, Turbolinux at 12:17 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The best pro-OOXML propaganda money can buy

At the end of last week we alluded to Sam Varghese's piece of spinmeisters when discussing threats as a competitive weapon. Spinmeisters are expected to be well paid. These are the people that will have you (or the press) believe anything. Spinmeisters are often driven by some corporate interests and Sam warns that their number is rising. Several months ago Sam also wrote the article “Shills Abound”, which warns about the type of stuff that we find in OOXML/ODF studies from IDC (funded by Microsoft) and the Burton Group, which has very recently given some pro-OOXML/anti-ODF presentation to the press in Microsoft’s own yard. There is also the Yankee Group. Remember that analysts are not always required to say who funds their operation. Sometimes the funding comes through investments rather than commissioning.

“Good publicity in exchange for a paid-for trips is a no-brainer.”This brings us to the point of this post. The spinmeisters from Redmond are at it again (yes, again). Several months ago we gave examples where Microsoft flew in some Linux journalists to its campus and even bribed bloggers for positive publicity. Microsoft gets its money’s worth. Good publicity in exchange for a paid-for trips is a no-brainer. And here is a brand-new example from ZDNet Australia which quotes Microsoft employees on the subject of OOXML and ODF:

>

>

“It obviously works,” he said. “Apple, Novell, Turbolinux, Google can all do it. For somebody like Apple to bake natively the format into their operating system, it says a lot.”

>

Brett Winterford travelled to Redmond as a guest of Microsoft. ¶

>

Novell and Turbolinux are a case of paid-for support for OOXML (Microsoft buys this support [1, 2, 3]). The inclusion of Google is utter FUD for the same reason that IBM inclusion would be FUD. Microsoft recently lied about IBM and got slammed for it.

So there. Here you have another bias article that was composed after a seemingly-free trip to Redmond, WA where Microsoft partners delivered grossly-biased talks. We spoke about these free trips some time ago and nothing seems to have changed. Sugar Daddy buys some sugar.

More FUD can be found in the following new article:

>

>

“ISO has a policy that, wherever possible, there should only be one standard to maximise interoperability and functionality,” she says. “We have an international standard for digital documentation, ODF, which was developed by Microsoft, IBM, Sun, Oracle and the open-source community some years back. ¶

>

Microsoft throws lies about ODF in this article. It’s almost as though some of these articles are intended to promote Microsoft rather than focus on the technical deficiencies of OOXML, the documented briberies, and the endless manipulations which themselves alone justify getting the boot in Geneva. █

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Permalink  Send this to a friend

----------

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.