05.24.10
Posted in Site News at 11:59 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The site hits 10,000 blog posts and crosses a milestone. If you have enjoyed it, please consider supporting us. In return, we will continue to deliver daily analysis and a roundup of links free of any promotion/commercial bias
THIS is blog post #10,000. Yes, we’ve finally made it! In 3.5 years*.
This site is purely a hobby. We never accepted donations. Never. In fact, we declined donations when people offered them. Since then, the site has grown a lot bigger and it attracts far more people now (considerably more every year, mostly GNU/Linux and Free software supporters). It needn’t be strictly just a hobby anymore. I used to carve out some time and put some posts out there between work and play (I don’t sleep much, but it’s a commitment I don’t give up and do take very seriously). The site now serves consistently over a million file hits every week. There are moderators working along in the IRC channels (we have 3 channels), ‘behind the scenes’ so to speak but also transparently because the logs get posted every day. There are tens of thousands of comments in the blog, but the volume fell by about 90% since we started requiring registered accounts for comments to be left. Every once in a while we also create dynamic pages that accumulate posts, sorting them by particular topics. We organise those primarily in the Wiki. Once in a while I get invited to also make an appearance related to the site’s information and share ideas/exhibits. This sometimes requires traveling. This means that the site has become more than just a hobby and it means quite a lot to particular people. The time and money required to run this site is cut as thin as can be, but it’s not free. I realise that micropayments rarely work as something that can sustain a Web site. We have Ad Bard promoting Free software at the sidebar and it brings in about $20 a month, which helps compensate our very kind Web host who operates a powerful server in the US. At certain times of the day the server slows down and sometimes hardly responds due to heavy load. It’s a side effect of growth and we already use caching heavily.
As it stands at the moment, everything that goes into operating the Web site is donated by myself and others who support this site in means other than financial. It comes out of the pocket of few people to whom the site matters. A fraction of the support comes from savings and is a personal investment in a cause that I believe in. One of the biggest expenses is measured in terms of time that’s missed — time that could otherwise be used to do paid work. Promotion for the site is sometimes done by people who care about the site and tell friends/colleagues about it. That’s appreciated as it’s the readership that gives this site purpose to exist and carry on with its mission. This helps bring the site to new audiences, which means that the site does not just preach to the choir, so to speak. Growing the audience size is what it’s all about if people are to be educated about the importance of software freedom, ethics, and the problems with proprietary software and those who promote it. Those who have read this Web site since its early days may have read thousands of posts and had a chance to share information even by word of mouth, not just links or texts. That’s a good thing.
If the site was to receive greater support, it would strive to extend the message to a broader audience and further the goals of enlightening, so that others who read the same material can pass on the message and work as an informed group. If you are willing to donate a few dollars/pounds a month, they will be spent with this goal in mind and be well spent by someone who is a minimalist and believes in this cause. Techrights has several sections, some of which are run by the community of contributors and readers. Some are edited by yours truly with advice from others (who are always attributed). The site may have grown to the point where it can be a part-time job and also sustainable as a source of daily news, as well as analysis which focuses on the issues, not brands.
This site is probably the biggest contribution I have ever made out of my own time and I hope others do appreciate a bit of sacrifice and dedication, which never has ill intent. Most of the time spent on this site is time that I allocate to reading material and connecting it to other material, then carefully checking the facts and ensuring all sentences are defensible. If errors are spotted, they do get corrected.
I never regret time that I spend on the site, especially upon hearing from people that they appreciate it. This has been the biggest and most personally fulfilling project I’ve ever worked on (more so than my Ph.D.). I run this site because of personal interest in the topics and because it matters to a lot of people who read and participate in it (there is always a lively discussion in our IRC channels).
My strategy is to find a way for Techrights to lead to something that can pay its own bills. I firmly believe that if a message is going to be successful, it has to be made something that can cover its author’s/maintainer’s most basic needs, so that the most minimal activity can be afforded. I participate in as many side activities as I can to help make up for the fact that this site never had a source of income (except ads that merely covered hosting expenses and sometimes fell short because our readers block ads… and we are glad that they do so if they dislike ads). We do the best that we can to keep the site going. So, please help with that if you can. At the side bar of every page of the blog there is a link that enables donating (I am not a fan of PayPal, but it’s what everyone uses, so I’ve just created an account there).
The commitment to you, dear reader, is that I’ll make you proud and glad that you donated (if you want a complete copy of the databases, we can arrange that too). We have not run out of topics and there are new ones popping up every day (with many more posts pending publication but requiring more work, which means time). People mail us every day with suggestions and pointers. People send material faster than we can keep up with, but we view this as a service to others, so we always make effort to incorporate all that can be incorporated. We also receive valuable leaks and promise confidentiality to protect the sources.
Once we choose subjects to work on we typically start the research by looking for required additional links (diversity of sources is important to us) and also some internal links to similar posts that covered similar/the same topic. Mixing internal and external links hopefully helps people go outside the site and verify the facts with more sources like we did in the first place. This process of research and aggregation of sources is not so foreign and if it requires improvement, someone will usually point this out. Each post requires over an hours of writing and research behind it (on average, as the length varies).
We are sometimes asked how research is being done and the answer is always the same. For instance, it is fair to say that 95% of the sources are accessible via the Internet and we do offer links to them. The limitation of having just over an hour for each post means that visiting the library is not most practicable, but there were exceptions in the past. Exhibits from key court cases can be considered peripheral and they are extremely valuable. We rarely rely on Internet sources unless they are corroborated by news sources or are verified, authenticated pieces of evidence. This way we minimise the likelihood of linking to and relying on false or falsified information. Our adversaries like to point out some needle in a haystack of 10,000 posts and point to innocent mistakes which were made due to bad sources (either private correspondence or other sites that present incorrect information). That’s called nitpicking. We rarely have errors in our posts and if any are found we add “(Corrected)” or “(Updated)” to the title along with the amendments/additions so that future reference won’t be deceiving.
As someone who lives in an apartment adjacent to a campus, I have an online account to just about any journal or printed material imaginable (PubMed, for example, would be easy for me to access). This helps a lot sometimes (even when other people require access), but in the context of what we do here we need news sources and PACER-type access. Old newspapers would require other types of sources (many are being scanned and archived in the UK these days), so we mostly rely on Google News archives that go a few decades back.
Writing the site is fun, but it cannot be treated purely like a hobby anymore. I cannot afford it. I treat it like teamwork and I follow a strict schedule in order to keep abreast of events. A hobby, by definition, is something that you fool around with in your spare time. It’s not managed. My commitment to people who help support Techrights is that it won’t be a mere hobby; that’s why you can expect to receive updates every day without exception. And that dependability is why people respond the way they do. Some people analyse specific issues differently after reading this site and that is why I perceive this as worthy project that can receive support from readers who find value in it. If you find it valuable, please consider supporting it on a micropayment basis. Maybe just a few bucks per month or whatever amount you prefer? It takes just a minute or two and I will continue doing the work on your behalf, every day, every week, every month. Again, I want you to consider yourself a partner in producing posts that anyone can use and share freely. That is how I view supporters of the site who help improve the information and offer story ideas. We’re all in this together. This type of support is an essential part of what we’re doing. For those who can’t support the site financially and still want to help there are other things that can be done. For example, share the message of the site with a friend of two, help spread the word. People can of course also help with research and there is a way to do this, mostly via the IRC channels. Just come and bring up the issue/topic of choice. When there are specific items we need help with, they are brought up in the channels and then discussed further until answers are found.
One last point: this unusual post does not take the place of today’s posting schedule, which will resume shortly. So thanks again for sticking with us for up to 10,000 posts. There are plenty more planned, including some that are quite exciting and exclusive. I hope you can support the site and regardless, I hope you continue reading the site and spreading the word. Whether you just lurk or participate, every single reader has earned our sincere thanks.
Please be aware of our candid confession that we never ever accepted donations (for the past 3.5 years). We do this because we believe in it and because readers do too. Some support us by contributing in content, time, advice, lively discussions, etc. Some are hopefully in a more fortunate position where they can offer financial assistance. █
_______
* As a side note, Groklaw has just turned 7 and Techrights turned 3.5 years old a few weeks ago. Pamela Jones wrote:
I’d say we’ve met all the goals we set for ourselves, and more. And no, it wasn’t easy or even always pleasant. But it’s been soooo much fun too. There is nothing in the world, in my experience, as creatively satisfying as trying to do something no one has tried to do before and having it actually work. Our hope was that geeks could help lawyers understand the tech better, and vice versa. And it has happened.
Groklaw has kept the same style (more or less) over the years. It had an immeasurable contribution and if we keep on going for 7 years we too can make more impact.
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Posted in Courtroom, Europe, Law, Microsoft, Security, Windows at 8:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft faces new challenges as security problems continue to be found even in the latest version of Windows and a UK High Court ruling indicates that Microsoft is now liable
NOW that one in two Windows PCs is believed to be a zombie PC Microsoft becomes a national and international problem. The latest Vista 7 vulnerability is a sign that things are not improving and Microsoft will start working privately/secretly with government in its disclosure of vulnerabilities [1, 2, 3, 4]. Will hidden/silent patches also be shared with governments? Last week there was an erroneous suspicion in Slashdot citing a blog with a semi-false alarm about a new security hole.
If you’re relying on the password encryption in Microsoft Dynamics GP — formerly Great Plains — to meet your PCI requirements, stop what you’re doing and listen up. It’s been revealed that its encryption algorithm is about as simple as it can be: a substitution cypher.
Look at the original source to see how Microsoft responded to the blogger by spinning and having the blogger state: “I must correct this and clarify. By default, GP gives the user access to the DYNAMICS database but the user CANNOT login to the SQL server using SQL Enterprise Manager. Here’s what happened: I reset the LESSONUSER’s passwords with SQL Enterprise Manager and afterward I was able to login to SQL Enterprise Manager with the LESSONUSER’s credentials. Some flag most have been updated when I reset the password – I need to investigate this further (this was all done in a Test environment). This was a BIG oversight on my part and I apologize for this. I really should have tested this out more before posting that statement. (Thank you Mark and others that pointed this out to me).”
Other known flaws are being addressed.
Microsoft, the software giant based in Redmond (USA), released two critical security updates on May 11, 2010, patching vulnerabilities within its e-mail applications as well as the Visual Basic for Applications designed to implement software programming language built into Microsoft Office.
“New Exploit Resists Windows Security Software,” reports IDG:
“This is definitely very serious,” said Alfred Huger, vice president of engineering at Immunet, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based antivirus company. “Probably any security product running on Windows XP can be exploited this way.” Huger added that Immunet’s desktop client is not vulnerable to the argument-switch attacks because the company’s software uses a different method to hook into the Windows kernel.
According to Matousec, nearly three-dozen Windows desktop security titles, including ones from Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro, BitDefender, Sophos and others, can be exploited using the argument-switch tactic. Matousec said it had tested the technique on Windows XP SP3 and Vista SP1 on 32-bit machines.
Here is security guru Bruce Schneier commenting on the news that Microsoft’s EULA is no longer an excuse for security flaws [1, 2], at least in the UK where Schneier’s employer is based.
The British High Court ruled that a software vendor’s EULA — which denied all liability for poor software — was not reasonable.
Microsoft claims no liability [1, 2, 3, 4] in its EULA and other places. From now on it may be possible to sue Microsoft UK when its inherently-flawed software leads to big damages (as it does all the time). █
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Posted in America, Asia, Deception, Microsoft at 7:51 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Workers in Redmond — not just in China — are fed up with the way Microsoft treats them
LAST YEAR (and in later months of 2008) when Microsoft was laying off a lot of staff there were several protests waged by Microsoft employees, who claimed to have been exploited or mistreated by Microsoft. It is happening again while Microsoft is throwing private parties for very wealthy people who come to visit:
Microsoft janitors to protest during CEO Summit
Janitors at the Microsoft campus in Redmond will be protesting their working conditions Wednesday evening during the company’s annual CEO Summit. But they’re not mobilizing against Microsoft.
[...]
In a news release, Service Employees International Union Local 6 explained why its workers have mobilized two other times since November:
SBM Site Services has decreased their workforce since winning the janitorial contract for the Microsoft Campus in Redmond a little over a year ago. Layoffs have led to unmanageable workload increases for the janitors that clean the over 100 buildings at the Redmond campus.
While Microsoft is one of the wealthiest corporations in the world and has invested incredible resources into local and global communities, SBM Site Services workers at the campus have faced unsafe and unmanageable working conditions.
As Microsoft’s prepares for their annual Global CEO Summit in Redmond, janitors at the Microsoft campus are mobilizing to send a strong message to their employer SBM Site Services: Stop the greed, stop the layoffs, and support reasonable working conditions for janitors.
So now we know that Microsoft employees in Redmond — not just in China — are treated like tools. Last month we wrote about Microsoft sweatshops and there is a new article about them:
Teenage Microsoft Sweatshop
[...]
Over the course of a three-year investigation of the KYE factory in Dongguan, China, unprecedented photos were smuggled out of the factory of exhausted teenagers, seen slumping over asleep on their assembly line during break time.
“We are like prisoners… We do not have a life. Only work.” according to one teenage worker making products for Microsoft.
KYE recruits hundreds (up to 1,000) “work-study” students 16 and 17 years of age, who work 15-hour shifts, six and seven days a week making webcams, mice and other computer peripherals. Some of the workers appear to be just 14 or 15 years old. A typical shift is from 7:45 a.m. to 10:55 p.m. Most of the students work for three months, but some stay longer.
This article is from last week. Microsoft never said if the problem had been resolved at all. We just assumed that Microsoft said it was ‘investigating’ for PR purposes (damage control). █
“Long live the liberation of the workers off all countries from the infernal chasm of war, exploitation and slavery!”
–Karl Liebknecht
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Posted in Bill Gates, Finance, Microsoft, Patents at 7:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Investment (profit-making) aspects of the Gates Foundation come to the forefront of the news again and the race for GMO in India continues
THE “Gates Foundation Portfolio Gains,” states Philanthropy.com, which is actually a site that’s used to promote the Gates Foundation. For those who don’t know yet, the Gates Foundation is primarily a tax-exempt investment vehicle, not just a charity as it’s often described with the help of PR agencies. Some of the investments include those oil giants that pollute everyone’s ocean at this moment and poison people in Africa.
The nation’s largest grant maker, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, reported holdings of $12.7-billion as of March 31, up $2.3-billion over the previous quarter, according to MarketWatch. The foundation benefited from significantly increasing its stakes in blue-chip stocks, such as Wal-Mart and McDonald’s.
As stated by this pro-Gates Foundation Web site, “The foundation benefited from significantly increasing its stakes in blue-chip stocks, such as Wal-Mart and McDonald’s.”
See? Everybody wins.
Gates becomes richer by helping Wal-Mart and McDonald’s, two companies that help society, right? Just like Shell and BP. Gates is investing in McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, and other such questionable companies that can help Gates make a profit (assuming the investments are well placed). This disclosure-centered news is also appearing in some Wall Street-oriented Web sites:
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation profited from bets on several blue-chip stocks in the first quarter, nearly doubling its stake in Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) and adding two million shares of McDonald’s Corp. (MCD), according to a regulatory filing late Monday.
Another new headline: “Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Buys Expedia Inc., Walmart Stores Inc., The Cocacola Company, Sells Peabody Energy Corp., CocaCola Enterprises Inc., The Home Depot Inc.”
That’s just so charitable, right? Over $12,000,000,000 invested, not donated. And some of those companies benefit directly from the work the Gates Foundation does as a charity. We gave many examples before. Not being familiar with them is hardly an excuse.
Market Watch says:
Gates Foundation nearly doubles Wal-Mart holdings
[...]
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation profited from bets on several blue-chip stocks in the first quarter, nearly doubling its stake in Wal-Mart Stores Inc., purchasing over three million shares of Coca-Cola Co. and adding two million shares of McDonald’s Corp., according to a regulatory filing late Monday.
Richard Stallman calls for boycott of Coca-Cola for crimes that too few people are aware of. Gates not only supports those companies; He is making money along with them. More from the news:
On another front, Bill Gates’ foundation nearly doubled its stake in Walmart stock, while unloading shares of Home Depot and Dick’s Sporting Goods. Perhaps Gates has confidence that Walmart will fare well.
This is also mentioned here. It is very important to remember what the Gates Foundation is, not how it sells itself to the public using the mainstream press. To be fair, there are other foundations that operate similarly. It’s sometimes known as philanthrocapitalism.
Here is a famous film about Walmart’s impact on people (Flash only):
Gates not only invests in American multinationals. Here in the UK, Walmart owns Asda. Gates also has investments in the UK-based JJB, which is a huge chain of sports shops. What about Monsanto investments or promotion? We wrote about the subject in posts such as:
- With Microsoft Monopoly in Check, Bill Gates Proceeds to Creating More Monopolies
- Gates-Backed Company Accused of Monopoly Abuse and Investigated
- How the Gates Foundation Privatises Africa
- Reader’s Article: The Gates Foundation and Genetically-Modified Foods
- Monsanto: The Microsoft of Food
- Seeds of Doubt in Bill Gates Investments
- Gates Foundation Accused of Faking/Fabricating Data to Advance Political Goals
- More Dubious Practices from the Gates Foundation
- Video Transcript of Vandana Shiva on Insane Patents
- Explanation of What Bill Gates’ Patent Investments Do to Developing World
- Black Friday Film: What the Bill Gates-Backed Monsanto Does to Animals, Farmers, Food, and Patent Systems
- Gates Foundation Looking to Destroy Kenya with Intellectual Monopolies
- Young Napoleon Comes to Africa and Told Off
- Bill Gates Takes His GMO Patent Investments/Experiments to India
- Gates/Microsoft Tax Dodge and Agriculture Monopoly Revisited
- Beyond the ‘Public Relations’
- UK Intellectual Monopoly Office (UK-IPO) May be Breaking the Law
- “Boycott Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in China”
- The Gates Foundation Extends Control Over Communication with Oxfam Relationship
- Week of Monsanto
Gates has generated quite a PR blitz in India after his recent visit there. Here are the Indian Express and other publications glorifying him. It is accompanied by a fluff piece playing for Monsanto|Gates and the Indian Express also prints “Gates backs GM crops: tech must help farmers, feed rising population” (it appeared in two places even). It says:
Giving his full support to the use of genetic engineering in agriculture, Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates today said if the world continued to produce food with existing technologies it would not be able to feed its increasing population.
In an interview with Shekhar Gupta, Editor-in-Chief of The Indian Express, for NDTV’s Walk The Talk programme, Gates, who is on a visit to India for work related to his charitable foundation, said the world needed newer crops with increased productivity, better adaptability to changing climatic conditions and the ones that use less of insecticides. And these, he said, could only be made through innovations in agricultural biotechnology sector.
“Technology, properly applied, is the reason, if you like, why nine billion people can live on this planet without destroying it,” said Gates who toured remote villages in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar during his visit.
The comments are all negative because this piece seems like it was ghost-written by those who manage the Monsanto|Gates marketing/agenda. From the comments:
“If memory serves me right this author tried the same GM push earlier without any foresight or vision(As expected 
). Now wait..suddenly by adding Bill Gates into this mix the author is trying to “cook-up” some credibility around GM food. The idea behind organic/sustainable agriculture is for more farmers to embrace it thereby making it affordable to everyone. Just by mischaracterizing “organic” food as neo rich is not a solution but pure %u201Cpropaganda%u201D. It%u2019s the same lies churned out in a new flavor (vanilla with caramel anyone?:)). Again the Gates foundation which our author harps about…who are they? who funds them? what is BIG GM companies like Monsanto. Cargill%u2019s role in these orgs?”
Another one:
“Do people like to eat genetically modified chicken and meat? Do Indian farmers want to grow genetically modified seeds? Why are the opinion of the Indian farmers missing in this debate?”
As we showed earlier this month, these farmers often commit suicide with Monsanto pesticides in order to protest against Monsanto. It is estimated that about 100,000 Indian farmers have died this way. Another comment:
“I concur with Mr Y Srinivas’ arguments. Unfortunately our GM science is so poor, we have to follow the West to seek innovations and technology. Hope people are hearing the aftermath of growing Roundup Ready (RR) crops – RR resistant weeds are emerging fast in the USA. If we depend on foreign technology be rest assured that we will blackmailed.The editorial here has been influenced by lobbyists.”
Now watch Gates influencing Indian farmers with slush funds (farmers apparently need speakers from the West). He is putting in relatively small amounts of money and urging taxpayers (through their politicians) to pay the vast majority which is the rest that can feed Monsanto. They call it “kickstart” rather than lobby. It’s the same in the pharmaceutical industry where the research is quite similar (genetics and immunisation).
The Gates Foundation’s allegedly-corrupt official is dressing that up a little, in the context of health:
‘Grand Challenges Explorations continues to generate unique and creative ways to tackle global health issues,’ said Tachi Yamada, president of the Gates Foundation’s Global Health Programme.
As we have shown in many previous posts, Gates has holdings in some of the same pharmaceutical giants that are set to benefit from the Gates Foundation’s activities. They are chasing a big bounty with diseases like malaria [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], always relying on more PR (entirely supportive press coverage), which is sometimes covered by African news site (few speak English):
While the Melinda and Gates Foundation should be commended for the grant, it should be born in mind that donors may have their own research priories.
The research priorities are also connected to investments. “Gates Foundation committed to tribes, but unfocused,” says the following article’s headline.
The Gates Foundation typically defines a goal and approaches it with strategies that vary in scope, cost, complexity and tactics.
Investments in vaccine are commendable, but it is crucial to understand who profits from them. Gates’ vaccine investments are further promoted by US politicians who put tax money in the pool, eventually to reach the pockets of particular companies. Last week we showed a conflict between WHO and Gates (staff intersection reported in the French press) and in recent days we found this report [1, 2] with names of beneficiaries.
Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline and U.S.-based Pfizer Inc. make pneumonia vaccines.
Gates is an investor in them and they are working inside the Gates Foundation, as we showed before. The Head of Global Health for the Gates Foundation is from GlaxoSmithKline, where he was bullying researchers who expressed doubt about his products. We wrote about the Gates Foundation and Pfizer in [1, 2]. It’s a question of patents and who pays for a licence. Profiting from their patents at taxpayers’ expense is what the Gates Foundation has the option of doing and the problem is not vaccination, which is important; the problem is the conflict of interests, which routinely characterises profitable philanthrocapitalism. They seldom neglect the opportunity to gain more power.
“The Head of Global Health for the Gates Foundation is from GlaxoSmithKline, where he was bullying researchers who expressed doubt about his products.”Critics might be inclined to suggest that this is a misinformed demonstration against modern medicine, which it’s not (I understand the vitality of medicine and I hold a Ph.D. in Medical Biophysics); this is about an entirely separate issue which involves distribution/concentration of wealth, poor ethics, and mass deception. Politicians too have argued for a reform in the way drugs — including generics — are made available to those whose life they can save. The state of the US insurance/healthcare system is a wonderful example of what happens when profit comes before morality and huge numbers of unnecessary deaths just get ignored by a lot of the media (Murdoch leads here). The press sometimes prefers to play along with the companies that make obscene amounts of money from imbalance in the unjust system which they themselves propagate. In turn, this puts a lot of journalistic independence in jeopardy. █
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Posted in Finance, Microsoft at 5:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft is having a massive political/corporate party over at its place
LAST week Microsoft had some interesting people over as guests (Bill Gates was there too). We won’t address the wrongdoings of each party, but just to give people an idea of the company Microsoft hangs out with:
Keep your eyes open for some celebrity CEO sightings in the Seattle region over the next few days. Executives coming to town include IAC’s Barry Diller, Walmart Chairman Rob Walton, JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, and Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway, along with his lieutenant Charlie Munger.
In such events, Microsoft can do undisclosed lobbying without traveling much. Watch the caption which says: “Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Clayton Christensen at last year’s CEO Summit. (Microsoft photo)”
That’s the same Murdoch whom Microsoft incited against Google [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14].
Microsoft has also invited political figures from strategic regions such as Jordan. They give awards to wrap up Jordan’s authorities:
This seems like another PR attempt from Microsoft, which is trying to acquire trust in the Arab world. Kuwait’s Ministry of Electricity & Water recently moved to Red Hat [1, 2, 3, 4], but Microsoft’s strong push in Kuwait carries on. It strives to control ICT in these rich places.
Microsoft Gulf today announced that MS Retail, the leading Kuwaiti based retail chain has chosen Dynamics NAV Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software to maximize internal efficiencies.
Moving on a little, we still look at political aspects of the meeting. Guess who else came to Microsoft’s event? It’s Bill Gates’ patent mate, Timothy Geithner, who helps Gates promote Monsanto for fun and profit. Just how political are those Microsoft events? They have queens and even the US treasury secretary inside them. Here is some coverage about it:
i. Treasury Secretary Geithner visiting Seattle
The Treasury Department says he’ll tour the Boeing plant in Renton and visit the Port of Tacoma with Gov. Chris Gregoire. He’ll also have a private meeting with bankers and attend the Microsoft CEO summit.
ii. Treasury Secretary Geithner talks trade, China in visit to region
Geithner toured Boeing’s 737 plant in Renton before heading south for a rain-drenched walk around the Port of Tacoma. He also met with community bankers to discuss the environment for small-business lending and attended the Microsoft CEO Summit dinner.
iii. Geithner stresses trade’s role in recovery in Wash. visit
He met with representatives of community banks at the port offices, and was scheduled to address the Microsoft CEO summit, a gathering of business leaders from around the world, Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.
Geithner is getting too close to Microsoft and Gates after his fiasco with the banks, especially Goldman Sachs. We included dozens of links about that in our daily postings.
As we have shown before, Microsoft uses Twitter for its AstroTurf campaigns. Posts on the subject include:
Why did Twitter’s CEO come to this Microsoft summit? Last week we wrote about MSNBC and the same week it’s reported that “MSNBC [is] to extend Wonderwall platform into celebrity politics”
Like Wonderwall, the political-fame site will pull in content from Microsoft’s MSN and other sources, a Microsoft spokesperson said. The new site will be distributed through the MSNBC Digital Network (including MSNBC.com, TodayShow.com, NBCsports.com, Newsvine, EveryBlock and other properties) and will be heavily promoted on MSN.com.
That translates to more Microsoft control in the press. Do we really need to accept private political meetings at corporate venues and also control of the press by them? It threatens a free democracy. █
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Posted in Apple, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Marketing, Microsoft at 5:12 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Disinformation in the press gives Microsoft credit for ideas it merely copied; herein we rebut
Microsoft is not an inventive company. It never was. Microsoft is good at adopting other people’s ideas and then mass marketing/patenting them. That’s not innovation, it’s just consumerism maybe.
“More Profit Than Prophet” is what The Atlantic claims Bill Gates to be. He is a businessman, not a scientist with foresight (and anyone who is sufficiently familiar with Microsoft’s history will say the same). He just copied other people’s ideas from the very start. “In my case,” said Bill Gates, “I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating systems.”
Anyway, here is the piece from The Atlantic. It shows Gates’ many unfulfilled predictions.
It’s been 15 years since Bill Gates published The Road Ahead, a book packed with the Microsoft founder’s predictions about the future. How do Gates’s prophecies hold up now that the road ahead has arrived?
Despite the obvious, some sites wrongly attribute the hypePad to Gates [1, 2, 3]. The hypePad is neither innovative nor is it Gates’ idea; It’s more of a cult item. And anyone who bothers studying the history of mobile computers will see that neither touchscreens nor mobile devices like the hypePad (most are running Linux these days) are Microsoft’s invention. In the mainstream press they often ignore a lot of prior art and pretend that just two companies, namely Apple and Microsoft, exist. It makes good headlines and a game of two teams (like the elections). We ought to point out that Microsoft used the same lies about Surface, which GNU/Linux-based projects (with working prototypes in research) predate by a long time.
Is there any true Microsoft innovation? Something that truly came out of nothing? Needless to say, innovations never come about this way. Apple is not innovative either and it’s rather conformist. Free software probably breeds the most innovation because of freedom of thought and creation. █
“We’ve always been shameless about stealing great ideas.”
–Steve Jobs
“Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?”
–Steve Jobs
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Posted in Bill Gates, Finance, Microsoft at 4:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft finds more ways to reduce expenses and let the public fill the gap; hypocrisy eludes Microsoft staff as it harps about “keep[ing] your data center cool enough”
EARLIER this month we explained why Bill Gates’ father was lobbying the government on the issue of tax (which Microsoft is avoiding). He and his son are already exempted from tax to some extent because money that’s put inside the Gates Foundation is conveniently shielded from tax law. Sadly, a lot of the mainstream press (e.g. [1, 2, 3]) missed this important point and pretended that the Gates family calls for higher taxes to be imposed upon itself. Not true.
Now, watch the Microsoft boosters from Seattle seemingly cheering Microsoft’s latest exemptions from tax [1, 2].
The company had previously been shifting resources away from its Quincy data center, citing the end of a previous tax break.
This tax break simply means that citizens are left to pay what greedy corporations like Microsoft would not (later on, Waggener Edstrom spins it on Microsoft's behalf to deceive the public on this issue). Here’s more:
Lawmakers say Microsoft is cashing in on the tax exemption they provided this year.
That’s what happens when the law is written by/with lobbyists. Watch how Microsoft also instructs on the issue of environmental impact in the datacentres:
“There is a freight train coming that most people do not see, and it is that you are going to run out of power and you will not be able to keep your data center cool enough,” Rob Bernard, the chief environmental strategist for Microsoft, told attendees at the conference.
[...]
Bernard used Microsoft as an example.
Does Microsoft want to be a policy maker on the environment too? They would be hypocrites if they ever did this because, among many offences, Microsoft is known for harming the environment [1, 2]. Energy savings are just not a big priority when Microsoft has debt to repay. █
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Posted in Bill Gates, Microsoft at 4:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Ravitch is in the press again, the Washington Post turns a semi-blind eye, and the Gates Foundation asks schools to change in order to receive money
THE Boston Globe has some new coverage about Bill Gates’ hijack of the United States education system. This helps Gates and Microsoft too (children raised only with Windows in sight). The paper cites Ravitch’s new book, which we previously wrote about in [1, 2, 3]. To quote from the Boston Globe:
Bill Gates’s risky adventure
[...]
But in “The Death and Life of the Great American School System’’ Ravitch writes that Gates and other so-called venture philanthropists, including Eli Broad, are experimenting thoughtlessly. There is no proof, she writes, that Gates is on the right track now any more than he was from 2000-2008, when he pumped about $2 billion into a campaign to restructure large American high schools into smaller schools. That effort, writes Ravitch, was marginal at best.
Ravitch argues that high-flying, unaccountable philanthropists are dictating the country’s public school agenda through their grant-making instead of listening to the field. The “current obsession with making our schools work like a business,’’ writes Ravitch, “threatens to destroy public education.’’
Gates may be innovation-happy, but he is hardly laying waste to the nation’s public education system. If anything, he is seeding it for future success in ways similar to his funding of biotechnology research to improve the yields of crops in developing nations. Of course, his agricultural effort has its share of critics, too.
As for his limitless power, Gates says his charter school work is possible only in states where the public and lawmakers are willing to support experimentation. His home state of Washington, he adds, has blocked the creation of charter schools.
“The education system is always decided politically,’’ said Gates. “If she (Ravitch) thinks foundations are dictating, I don’t see it.’’
It’s not quite so simple. The pressure is mounting on school systems to conform to the foundations’ visions, especially when the current trend is to fund projects with measurable outcomes, not discretionary grants. And pushing back against the big foundations, or modifying their requirements based on local knowledge, was a lot easier a decade ago when the foundations were smaller and less bureaucratic.
The Gates Foundation is in a state of denial. We have provided evidence of its harmful influence on education for well over a year and Ravitch is far from a lone critic (the issue extends beyond the United States too). We cited many other people whose position on Gates’ intervention in schools was similar if not identical. To deny this is simply to be closed-minded or deluded by PR (the previous post hopefully helped show how far PR goes).
There is some more here in the Washington Post (about Ravitch and Meier), but interestingly enough it mostly leaves out Ravitch’s criticism of the Gates Foundation. Could this have something to with the Gates family ties to the Washington Post's board? The Washington Post hardly ever criticises Gates and/or his foundation, unlike other publications; the same goes for the Seattle Times, which knowingly ignores confirmed stories that disagree with its agenda.
Anyway, here is a brand new example of Gates funds for education with strings attached.
In the story, Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen is cited as pushing legislation that made student test scores 50 percent of annual teacher evaluations, something critical for Race to the Top.
“Bredesen points to an earlier development in his state, that, he says, had ‘broken the ice.’ In 2009, the Gates foundation provided a $90 million grant to the Memphis school system — the state’s largest — on the condition that teachers there allow 35 percent of their performance ratings to be based on student test scores.”
The message is clear: change the agenda or be left out. We have shown many examples like this before. We also explained how the foundation’s influence can be converted into profit. █
“Education and training: Target both developer and knowledge worker environment; Money and resources for curriculum development; Money and resources for teacher training; Subsidized certification on MS products”
–Confidential Microsoft document [PDF]
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