The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Following is self explanatory. About all I can add is:
– “The West wasn't won with a registered gun.”
– As Charlton Heston said, “… from my cold, dead hand …”
– “Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.”
– “Don't dry fire in a gunfight.”
– “I am the NRA — and I vote!”
Click on Image to Upload
Eleven Other Images Below the Line
A recent Microsoft video suggests the company considers OpenOffice.org a significant threat to its own Office suite.
Titled “A Few Perspectives on OpenOffice.org,” the video features a series of horror stories from customers who tried the open-source productivity suite and suffered from excess costs as well as IT resources, performance and compatibility issues.
A series of customer quotes flashes across the screen in the slickly animated video, read aloud by a series of unseen narrators. “If an open-source freeware solution breaks, who's going to fix it?” according to a statement ascribed to a school district official in the U.S.
“When we returned to Microsoft Office after our experience with OpenOffice, you could practically hear a collective sigh of relief across the entire district,” states another comment attributed to a U.S. school system official.
Comments are not enabled on the video's YouTube page.
Microsoft is facing competition from OpenOffice.org on multiple fronts, from the commercial version sold by project owner Oracle, as well as offshoots like the recently announced LibreOffice.
Phi Beta Iota: Google is in more trouble than Microsoft. Oracle will not scale, and IBM is not as imaginative as it likes to believe. Microsoft, however, has no strategy at all. Attacking OpenOffice in an era of Open Everything is a sure sign that Microsoft leadership is struggling–and this tracks with the decline of the company under Steve Balmer. We believe there will be a need for Bill Gates to take the helm again, or Microsoft is going to start falling apart and will fail to use the time it has right now–the next two years–to bury the competition by innovating itself into the future.
Guest Comment:
“Microsoft as a corporation is disgraceful. The classic case is when they bribed Nigerian Officials to replace Linux with Windows on school computers. http://www.facebook.com/l/8396a;www.geek.com/articles/news/mandriva-ceo-calls-out-microsoft-ceo-steve-ballmer-2007112/ I prefer to work with an operating system with a Social Contract http://www.facebook.com/l/8396a;www.debian.org/social_contract or code of conduct: http://www.facebook.com/l/8396a;www.ubuntu.com/community/conduct”
Tip of the Hat to Paul Harper at Facebook.
Robert Steele's response: Quite right. Not sure we can turn a pig into a cow, but miracles do happen. I predict Bill Gates will return to run Microsoft, the question is, has he learned to listen to others? Jury is still out on that one.
Events this week – NPOCamp and Austin News Hackathon
Cross-posted from http://effaustin.org.
Two great events coming up this weekend in Austin, sponsored by EFF-Austin.
Friday, join us at NPO Camp – a Barcamp for Nonprofits and Techs. We had one of these several months ago, and it was a real blast! The idea here is to bring the nonprofit and technology communities together for a day and talk about the technical challenges the NPOs face, while educating the techs about that world. Last event, we had 200+ attendees forming into sessions and pods; all were lively. Greg Foster, our newest EFF-Austin board member, has done most of the legwork in organizing the event, with major production assistance from Maggie Duval, also a board member and producer of the annual Plutopia event during SXSW. Sign up here.
Saturday, coders and journalists come together to build innovative news applications at the Austin News Hackathon, cosponsored by EFF-Austin and the local Hacks Hackers chapter led by Cindy Royal. The day will begin with a presentation by Matt Stiles and Niran Babalola of the Texas Tribune, talking about some of the news apps they’ve been developing. Then teams will form to match ideas from journalists with technical expertise from the coders who are attending. These kinds of events are the future of journalism! This event also benefited from Maggie Duval’s production assistance. Sign up here.
Both events will be catered by Pick Up Stix of South Austin.
Phi Beta Iota: The convergence-emergence that is starting to pick up momentum is happening all around us. Here we see two example of “cognitive surplus” creating “infinite wealth” as web and code geeks help, respectively, non-profit organizations and journalists. This is the model of the future–there is plenty of wealth for everyone, we just need to stop corruption at all levels across all domains–we do this with transparency where money is involved, and with open space where money is not involved.
SEATTLE — Microsoft is starting to incorporate what your friends do on Facebook right into its Bing search engine.
A new feature rolling out Wednesday will start showing what Facebook friends “like” on the search results page.
On Facebook and sites around the Web, people can click a “like” button to show support or share information with friends. On Bing, if you search for a topic in the news, articles friends have shared on Facebook might appear. Restaurants and movies that friends have “liked” could help you decide what to do on your next date.
Microsoft has been working with Facebook since 2006.
The feature could help distinguish Bing from Google, which only has access to information users make public.
Phi Beta Iota: The various Microsoft initiatives are both inspiring and troubling–inspiring because Microsoft is clearly struggling with its inner demons and reaching out to “not invented here” options; and troubling because there does not appear to be any over-arching strategy. Amazon is the mother lode for intelligent content–when will Microsoft bite the bullet and make Jeff Bezos an offer he cannot refuse? THAT will be a game changer.
Caucus is an open-source, web-based eLearning and discussion platform. It is used in universities, non-profits, and companies wherever learning, conversation, and coordination must happen together.
PCMag.com By: Sascha Segan
BlackBerry makers Research in Motion just proved it can innovate with the PlayBook, a major new platform that vaults BlackBerry out of its doldrums and potentially back into the top rank of hot consumer technologies.
Tip of the Hat to Pierre Levy at LinkedIn.
Phi Beta Iota: This excellent but truncated report has the same problem we saw in Global Governance 2025–it just does not “get” the dual facts that a) governments no longer rule and b) connecting is not the main event–sense-making is the main event and it is 5-10 years off. THAT will be the revolution. Better–and earlier–insights remain those in 2002 Pinkham (US) Citizen Advocacy in the Information Age and Reference: Social Search 101. The future was defined in 1989, then again in 1992, 1998, and on and on. Connecting all humans with all information in all languages all the time is the end-game. Anything less lacks integrity.
