• UK citizen sues Microsoft over Prism private data leak to NSA

If this is true at all (and evidence is still absent), then this is extortion and we need to bring it to light in order for legal procedures to follow. Some company needs to leak out information, potentially breaking an NDA. That’s how Edward Snowden helped hold the NSA and GCHQ accountable.

Read more

Microsoft’s offensive and facts-free campaigns still target products which run GNU/Linux, even if the “G” and “L” words are not mentioned (Chromebooks/Google are the target now)

Read more

The dirty secret IBM, Microsoft, and other self-proclaimed advocates of patent reform don't want you to know is that they are trolls, too. They have large and highly profitable business units using exactly the same tactics as the patent trolls they hate. The reason they hate the trolls is not because of what they do -- after all, IBM and Microsoft were the pioneers of treating patent portfolios as profit centers rather than cost centers. No, the reason they hate the trolls is because the trolls attack them with the weapons they themselves perfected.

Read more

Also from Phipps (OSI President): 4 ways open source protects you against software patents

So in other words, it is about taxing and controlling (and spying on) GNU/Linux by making Microsoft its seller. It is also about running GNU/Linux merely as a guest on Windows hosts, using proprietary software of course.

Read more

As previously reported, AOL plans to shut down Winamp after serving music lovers for around 16 years. The company didn’t state why the long-time service and app will be discontinued, only reporting that Winamp will no longer be available past December 20, 2013. We can’t even use it through the holidays.

Now there’s a petition to keep Winamp alive by making the client open source. "Winamp is the best media player ever built. If there were other alternatives that would be fine. But there is nothing that can do what Winamp can do. It is the most versatile media player on earth," the petition reads.

Read more

• Richard Stallman on Splitting Companies
• The Danger of Microsoft Moles Still Largely Underestimated
• Microsoft Windows is a Trojan Horse for the NSA
• Microsoft’s Corruption of Schools: Using the State to Train/Indoctrinate Children
• Microsoft Takes AstroTurfing to New Levels, Co-opting Grassroots and Bribing People

Google has started an anti-Microsoft campaign called ‘MicroShaft’ to convince users to avoid Microsoft products – which (despite being insanely expensive) have backdoors to give security agencies easy access to user’s data.

Read more

Last week, we wrote about Microsoft's intense, and somewhat dishonest, lobbying to try to remove one aspect of proposed patent reform: the covered business methods program, which would have allowed approved technology patents to get reviewed by the Patent Office much more quickly. It was based on Senator Chuck Schumer's plan, which enabled the same feature for patents related to financial services. Many have seen that Schumer's effort was somewhat successful in stopping bad financial services patents, and so it makes sense to do the same thing for software as well. In fact, it makes more sense, since so many patent lawsuits and patent troll shakedowns involve software-related patents.

Read more

Xamarin, the company driving the development of the Mono open-source .NET framework that is generally loved or hated by Phoronix readers, has announced a new partnership with Microsoft.

Read more

And then, there's the celebrated Microsoft update to convert your Windows 8 RT computer into a Windows 8.1 RT... brick! It went so bad that Microsoft had to prevent people from installing it.

I don't know if they fixed it but, according to this post, the update to Win 8.1 now seems to convert your computer into a cat (because it does not play nicely with mice).

Read more

networkcomputing.com: The "year of the Linux desktop" has been prophesied by Linux supporters almost every year for the last decade. This was once a lofty goal in the Microsoft-dominated enterprise, but times are changing.

thevarguy.com: Microsoft (MSFT) is loaning Dell roughly $2 billion, but Michael Dell continues to support Ubuntu, Oracle, Red Hat and other Microsoft rivals. Here's why.

itworldcanada.com: Linux has made the operating system fight into a “two-horse race”, the head of the Linux Foundation told the opening of the annual LinuxCon conference.

theregister.co.uk: Windows XP users in Germany’s third largest city are being offered free upgrades to Ubuntu ahead of termination of Microsoft support for the OS next Spring.