05.19.10
Posted in Apple, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 4:26 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The harms of software patents are everywhere in mobile and those who are to blame for them are named, ramifications explained
NOW that Microsoft is suing like crazy, it’s really time to abolish software patents. About 85% of Microsoft's patents are software patents and they are being used to bully and extort servers companies such as Amazon and Salesforce (both use GNU/Linux).
What does Google do? Google’s support of software patents is not acceptable and the company takes a similar approach to IBM's when it comes to them. Google just makes promises and concessions about its software patents, which might not be as effective as just working to abolish software patents for good (not that Google would necessarily want that).
Here is a senseless rave about yet another software patent from Google, in this case relating to a Linux-based product of theirs:
Mobileblab is reporting that something very interesting has been found regarding Google’s Smart TV project while searching the Google Patent data base. What exactly could be so interesting? Well, according to the database, the new Smart TV will be Android powered, and come with a special Android app store with its own TV applications. This patent application was filled by Google and Sony for a “network media player with user-generated playback control.” That name sounds a little similar to their latest Android powered TV that should be announced soon.
What is Google thinking? Why spend so much effort assigning patents to the company at the expense of engineers’ time?
Later on, when Apple obtains software patents and sues with them (even targeting the Linux-based Android) Google declines to comment as that would make Google a hypocrite. Here is one of the Apple ‘fan’ sites bragging about software patents from Apple.
A New Social Workflow Patent from Apple Highlights Facebook
[...]
The target device may receive the user selection and transmit data 266 corresponding to the selection to the initiator device 10A. For example, the Facebook script may include instructions directing the target device to transmit the confirmation or rejection to the initiator device as the confirmation data. The initiator device may then receive the confirmation data and display the screen 232 indicating that the friend has been successfully added and that the workflow is complete. Although the specific screens displayed on the devices 10A and 10B may vary, the interaction between the initiator device and the target device may occur in a similar manner for each action within a workflow.
Katonda.com has some good insights on Apple’s use of software patents against Linux/Android, including:
It is widely believed that Apple’s target is Google’s Linux-based Android which is making inroads into Apple’s smart phone territory. But Google might be too big for Apple to fight with. HTC, one of the core partners of Google, seemed to be an easy target for Apple.
Let’s not forget Apple’s attacks on Theora:
Apple’s disparaging (at times terrorising) remarks about Theora are a promotion of H.264 and just look at the consequences. A few days ago we wrote about Wild Fox and explained why Apple was harming Mozilla Firefox (Apple has the proprietary Safari), which has essentially just been forked [1, 2, 3, 4]. OStatic writes:
Most of us users of Mozilla’s Firefox browser are used to getting new versions of Firefox from Mozilla, but, like many open source projects, Firefox has already been forked into other versions. Now, as OSnews reports, a new fork of the browser is taking shape. Dubbed Wild Fox, one of the more interesting new aspect of it is that it supports the H.264 coded for video. However, the way the new fork treats patents could cause trouble.
Had Apple (and Google or even Microsoft) actually helped promote Theora, none of this would be necessary. But being the software patents proponents that they are, they seem resistant to free/libre codecs. Google has made some commitments, but it still offers nothing but H.264 (or other patent-encumbered codecs) in its huge number of videos.
Situation in Europe
Formally, software patents are not legal in Europe but in practice they seem to be. In order to resolve this bizarre situation once and for all, the EPO consulted the EBoA, whose decision finally came some days ago [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], pretty much to say that they could make no decision.
Isn’t that grand? They only increase this state of vagueness and the EPO has opposers of software patents hanging on and relying on nothing substantial. It’s like a delaying tactic and the head of the EPO meanwhile escapes her position on a higher note.
André Rebentisch disagrees with the EBoA assessment from Marks & Clerk and he is clearly dissatisfied with the EPO’s embellishment/spin.
The spin machine of the European Patent Office in Munich in full motion. Its Enlarged Board of Appeal declared the referred questions of EPO-President Alison Brimelow inadmissible. A court would stop here but the EBoA is no Court but just an administrative appeals chamber and not bound by judicial standards, so they also discuss the substance.
“Over time, more and more companies would have to join the DPL, but the big patent holders would continue to just pay a lot of money to trolls rather than joining such a defensive alliance.”
–Florian MüllerFlorian Müller, one of the leaders of the move to abolish an EU software patents directive in 2005, elaborates on his previous/latest post. He has more to say about “the Defensive Patent License and the ‘Fair Troll’ business model” and on the basis described in his previous post, he now argues: “I do believe the Defensive Patent License, due to be published soon, could become amazingly effective. The basic idea would be for the software developer community (especially but not only the open source community) to feed “fair” patent trolls — who would have to commit to the terms of the DPL or else the community wouldn’t support them — with patentable ideas and those would then go after companies who don’t want to support the DPL. Over time, more and more companies would have to join the DPL, but the big patent holders would continue to just pay a lot of money to trolls rather than joining such a defensive alliance. It would be a way for the open source community to beat the supporters of software patents at their own game. So there’s money to be made while contributing to the good cause of making more and more companies join the DPL alliance and reduce the threat patents pose to the members of the alliance.”
Florian has told us that he is now working with some of the parties involved to ensure that DPL won’t harm some of the innocent players, including some of those which FOSSBazaar mentioned earlier this week:
In one recent deal we were left with the thorny problem of Indemnity and who pays for it. Typically, if you are using proprietary code you are buying a pig in a poke (buying something in a black sack that the vendor says will do the job). The case of indemnity arises if a patent troll claims ownership and then sues the user for a multi-million dollar sum.
Does anyone still think that patents have anything to offer to small businesses? Patent trolls don’t qualify as “small businesses” because they have no products and they don’t do business; they do lawsuits and they engage in intimidation (for settlements), just like Microsoft. Rui Seabra has just passed on Glyn Moody’s words on the Salesforce case and wrote about Microsoft: “new business model: Patent troll?” █
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Posted in Asia, Bill Gates, Marketing, Microsoft, Patents at 6:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Bill Gates Claimed to Have Said He Would
Spend Half His Money on PR (Propaganda)
Summary: A roundup of news looking at the actions of the Gates Foundation and the consequences of profit which is made in the process
Matthew Bishop and Michael Green have published a book titled “Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World”. The concepts they introduce help us analyse today’s news items which are focused on the activities of Bill Gates.
Harnessing the Press
As we have shown for the past couple of years, Gates invests a lot of money (at least hundreds of millions) in “communication”, which essentially means putting PR pieces all over the place (obscuring such opinions of grandeur as “news reports”). Well, Gates’ investment in the media expands further:
Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Link TV recently launched ViewChange.org — a digital media hub that highlights progress in reducing hunger, poverty, and disease in developing nations. It combines powerful video stories with the latest Web technology to make videos, articles, blogs, and actions readily available to key audiences working in global development. The Gates Foundation has also spearheaded the use of storytelling to shift industry and public attitude towards global health via the Living Proof Project, a multimedia initiative intended to highlight successes of U.S.-funded global health initiatives. By reporting success stories back to the people who funded them – American taxpayers and their representatives – the Project hopes to reframe the current global health conversation.
A few weeks ago we showed how the Gates Foundation pretends to do one thing while actually doing the exact opposite. This is simpler to achieve when one controls the message.
“If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good.”
–Bill Gates, Microsoft
Last year we explained the concept of PR and the history of it. GatesKeepers understands the matter and can probably see beyond some spin. “Barbarians Led by Bill Gates“, a book composed by the daughter of Microsoft’s PR mogul, says a lot about how Microsoft employees built an image around “Bill Gates”. It says for example: “In the fall of 1982, Pam Edstrom [of Waggener Edstrom], a diminutive woman with piercing blue eyes, was recruited by Microsoft. [...] In modern-day business, flacks were responsible not only for avoiding bad press, but for spinning the good. [...] Hanson and Edstrom would spin a whole new image for Gates himself. They would tap the best and worst of Chairman Bill, changing his clothes, his voice, and his allegiances, driving him to become not just the boss, but, essentially, the company mascot—a sort of high-technology Colonel Sanders.”
Under the “Bill Gates” brand (similar to the “Obama” brand and associated PR tactics), we now find the following quote whose authenticity is said to be in doubt:
The tweetosphere is buzzing with this “quote” from Bill Gates. Did he really say this or is it apocryphal?
“If I had two dollars left, I would spend one on PR”
Assuming that it’s true (even hypothetically), it is curious to know that he would spend half his money on “perception management” [1, 2], not on health or development (which essentially have the same effect in the media if it’s properly owned and policed).
There is a lot of Gates PR going on in India this month. Microsoft and Gates are described as “software czar” and we’ll say more about this towards the end. In short, he is glorifying himself after committing crimes and there is money to be made while getting glorified.
Since the early days, we have quoted from many different sources bits of evidence that drew a clearer picture and explained how Gates takes control of education systems. We have only just discovered that some education reporting is also funded by Gates, along with a lot more papers and radio shows/sites that he funds (we gave many examples before).
The Hechinger Report is funded by four philanthropies: the Lumina Foundation for Education, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Foundation for Child Development, and the Joyce Foundation. The Gates and Joyce foundations have also provided grant support for Education Week. At this point, news organizations that publish content from The Hechinger Report do not pay for it, Mr. Colvin said.
This matters because Education Week is now likely never to criticise Microsoft or recommend software freedom in the classroom. That’s just one new example and there are many more. This is how the messages are controlled, by buying out writers or their publisher/editor (which can lead to self censorship).
It turns out, based on this short analysis at least, that Gates’ communications in Twitter are also PR which is managed by a team rather than Gates himself. They are building and embellishing the “Bill Gates” brand, as some people have suspected for quite a while.
It’s something that the Gates Foundation typically refers to as “communication/s” rather than PR (it’s just a euphemism). They are putting their words inside publications, which in turn deceive other publications and set the tone. This normalises philanthrocapitalism as acceptable and even commendable.
Arrogance and Seclusion
The Seattle Times writes about Gates’ new centre of operations, which shows discouraging early signs. “The Gates Foundation doesn’t want people driving near their new headquarters,” writes GatesKeepers (more in here).
The arrogance is astounding … and the power of money is not surprising.
The report says:
The northern on-ramp to Seattle’s planned downtown tunnel could lead traffic right under the Gates Foundation’s new $500 million campus.
And the world’s largest foundation doesn’t like that one bit.
“It’s a serious concern for us,” said Martha Choe, chief administrative officer of the foundation, which is pushing for the road to curve around its campus, instead.
Why the secrecy and isolation? Transparency would breed trust.
A few days ago we found an article about what Gates had been doing for the past several years. It’s called “philanthrocapitalism” and it’s nothing particularly new, unlike the following article:
Philanthrocapitalism: dawn of a new era?
[...]
When Bill Gates and Warren Buffett stood on stage together at the New York Public Library and the elder billionaire announced the he was going to give away most of his fortune through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help the poor, a new ideology was born.
[...]
“It’s still in its early days, but if you go back 20 years, companies like Nike, Nestle, Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart regarded it as a badge of honour to be seen as not soft and sentimental, and socially progressive. They preferred to be seen as really focused on efficiency, and maximising profits and shareholder value.”
[...]
That said, he concedes that philanthrocapitalism is still “not a very well defined field” and that “there’s an awful lot of experimentation”, such as learning from others and trying things to see what works and what doesn’t.
These companies can afford to spend a lot for people to whitewash and change people’s memories. It’s an investment really.
Steve Jobs said that “It’s better to be a pirate than to join the Navy.” For Gates, being a pirate and then using the loot to buy PR seems like a way of life. Should we therefore cherish this pirate? And where did the wealth come from in the first place if not by exploiting or defrauding other people? Currency is a measure of power over others, it is not a commodity that can be increased in a planet with finite resources. You give and you take, you can rarely generate.
Colonisation and GMO
“Gates Foundation ‘strongly opposed’ to an expansion of the Global Fund mandate,” says GatesKeepers, which refers to reports like this.
Although it was set up by UN member states in 2002, the fund largely got of the ground thanks to the involvement of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
With new African ventures in places like Nigeria, Senegal, and Cameroon, one must remember who is investing in patents on drug production and the likes of that and who is actually paying (sometimes government, i.e. taxpayers). As it was put in The Scientist two weeks ago:
Most universities are non-profits, too, and many academic researchers share the altruistic motives of charitable organizations like the Gates Foundation. But when it comes to intellectual property rights, relations between universities and foundations can get tricky. Since 1980, when the Bayh-Dole Act was passed, research institutions that receive federal funding are required to seek ownership of any patentable technologies produced on school grounds. Some institutions also have licensing agreements with companies.
Bill Gates invests in drug design (invests, not donates), so the more of that business goes on, the more profitable it can be to Gates.
Last year we wrote about an African connection between Tony Blair and Bill Gates. It seemed like a scandal and news from Sierra Leone looks deeper into it:
Tony Blair’s Mystery Thieves in Sierra Leone – A Rejoinder to Blair/State House!
[...]
The said approximately ten billion leones cash was collected by Mr. Blair from the American Billionaire’s charity, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and paid into an entity operated by Mr. Tony Blair known as WINDRUSH VENTURES NO. 3 LIMITED PARTNERSHIP. The money was paid out to Mr. Blair in June 2008 under the award of a Grant numbered “Grant OPP50878″.
[...]
Mr. Blair regularly jets into Sierra Leone ostensibly to help Sierra Leoneans because he loves Sierra Leoneans but it is only now that Sierra Leoneans are learning that the “love” and the “help” has been propelled with some infusion of billions of leones from American Billionaire Bill Gates into the deep pockets of Blair’s private vehicle.
More information is contained in the article “Fresh Corruption Issues Dog Former British P.M. Tony Blair in Sierra Leone”
Another strand of investments which involve patents is Gates’ Monsanto push of which we are seeing more right now:
Research to improve sorghum’s nutritional levels through genetic engineering is under way.
[...]
The research is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
This is about GMO. Here is someone who apparently talks about bringing Monsanto to India [1, 2] and appeals to Bill Gates, whose relationship with Monsanto we have already covered in:
- 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
There are also signs that Monsanto is being promoted in India by Gates. As we showed last year, Gates and Monsanto are experimenting there, despite lawsuits from the government and backlash from farmers. As shareholders of the companies which benefit from it, is it fair to make judgment for the Indian people without their full understanding and consent? The press often deceives them.
Also in this month’s news:
Scientists have for years been using biotechnology to genetically modify crops in the United States. They say that changing the DNA of food with genetic engineering makes farming more efficient.
The United States is the main producer of such crops, along with Argentina, Brazil, Canada, India, and China.
But farmers and activists in many countries worry that genetic changes to crops are risky. They are concerned about health and environmental implications. They also say the new methods are expensive and tied to intellectual property laws, putting smaller farmers at a disadvantage.
There is a growing debate within aid groups over whether biotechnology is good for agriculture in Africa.
South Africa already grows biotech cotton, corn and soybeans, and Burkina Faso has started experimenting with BT cotton. Aid groups like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are looking into helping with biotech experiments in many other African countries.
But it appears to be the way forward for AGRA, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. Four years ago, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation partnered with the Rockefeller Foundation to launch AGRA. Their strategy was explained in the report, “Africa’s Turn: The New Green Revolution for the 21st Century.” The report emphasized hybrid and genetically engineered seeds [a.k.a. GMOs or GE seeds], chemical fertilizers, training agricultural scientists for crop improvements and agricultural reforms.
Jos Ngonyo, recipient of the Eastern Africa Environmental Leadership Award, wasn’t scheduled to meet with the Gates Foundation during his visit. He says he would have welcomed the opportunity to explain why he thinks AGRA is a bad idea.
Ngonyo: “AGRA didn’t involve the people in Africa. This was an idea pushed to Africa and that does not work. It’s not about us without us.”
Ngonyo says people are so aware in the world that “you can’t just bring an ideology from outside and push. They’ll only take it for sometime and then rebel against it.”
In early April, protestors, lead by Kenya’s Biodiversity Coalition, rejected 40,000 tons of genetically modified maize grown in South Africa. The maize remains blocked at the port city of Mombassa. Protesters say the maize is a springboard to contaminate non-GMO crops.
“Green Revolution” is carried out with the Rockefeller Foundation (another convicted monopolist). It’s about GMO. See the Rockefeller Web site for news about the Gates Foundation working alongside Rockefeller.
Sometimes we find competition over influence. Here is an interesting take:
While at TED, Bill took time out (twice) to bask in the genius award glow of Esther Duflo. She says: “I had two dinners with Bill Gates in two days. It was efficient.” “Gates later pressed MIT to make Duflo’s undergraduate course on poverty available online and told her, “We need to fund you.”" Too bad, Bill. She’s already taken by MacArthur.
Is Bill Gates really, like, crass, or does he just put his foot in it too often? Will he now abandon his beloved microfinance program?
One thing ought to be clarified. We never claim that GMO won’t stop hunger; in fact, one issue is that the more people are fed, the more children they will have, unless contraception is made more widespread. The main problem with GMO is one of patents and long-term risk. Evolution is a slow process of careful selection that is self-correcting, whereas these companies obtain patents (monopolies) on rather arbitrary changes that they make without proper testing. It is very short sighted and it is profitable.
Here is a new CNN article that compares Monsanto to Microsoft Windows:
In the view of DuPont and other alarmed observers, this situation makes Monsanto an industry gatekeeper, capable of deciding which new genetically modified traits can be introduced and which cannot. Put another way, Roundup Ready has become a monopoly platform product, much like what the Microsoft Windows operating system became in the market for personal computer software in the late 1990s.
The parallels are not lost on DuPont’s longtime outside counsel Boies, chairman of Boies Schiller & Flexner, who was the Justice Department’s lead trial counsel in its antitrust case against Microsoft. He argues that Monsanto’s stacking restrictions are actually more objectionable than the conduct that got Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) into trouble 15 years ago. “Microsoft’s actions were designed to inhibit the stacking of the Netscape browser on the Microsoft Windows operating system,” says Boies. “Here, you have outright prohibition of stacking genetic traits on top of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready trait.”
Some weeks ago we showed how selected officials from the US government backed Gates' adventures with Monsanto. It’s more of that push which would benefit Monsanto [1, 2] and thus benefit Gates at well, at the expense of taxpayers.
Patenting Life
Related to investments in GMO (biotechnology) there is the patenting of drugs, which are essentially biological too. We don’t intend to repeat old posts even though they are necessary background to those who are skeptical of Gates skepticism.
As we pointed out some weeks ago, Gates’ foundation comes handy when it comes to making profits. Gates is using it to market its patent troll Nathan Myhrvold (Intellectual Ventures), who is profiting from the vaccines push and apparently also these nuclear projects that Gates raved about earlier this year (Bill Gates is an Intellectual Ventures investor).
Now I know all this is a long way from Bill Gates trying to nuke us, but I’m getting there.
A spin-off company from Intellectual Ventures is TerraPower, a group developing new-age, next-generation nuclear power that is truly clean, cheap, safe and does not require the enriched uranium fuel that also makes bombs and leaves stockpiles of radioactive waste collecting around the world.
It’s almost as though Gates became a marketing front for Intellectual Ventures just as he did for Monsanto.
We previously wrote about the Lancet study [1, 2, 3], a study which was “published in The Lancet and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,” says pharmacynews.com.au (also here). Gates does have his critics in the medical community and they deserve more attention than they receive.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is fascinating. So is the 19-page annual letter that describes the work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest philanthropy. But for someone as smart as Gates, who can afford to hire experts on any subject under the sun, some of his foundation’s strategies are baffling.
Consider his foundation’s approach to malaria, which focuses on bed nets, a low-tech, only modestly effective intervention, and on the development of a vaccine, a high-tech solution that has eluded intensive efforts for decades. This approach dismisses an old, cheap, and safe way to control the vector – the Anopheles mosquito – that spreads the disease: the chemical DDT.
[...]
Moreover, even if mosquitoes become resistant to the killing effects of DDT, they are still repelled by it. An occasional dusting of window frames and doorframes is extremely effective. Bill Gates’s experts seem not to know that; the foundation’s annual letter contains the following single mention of DDT: “The world hoped in the 1950s and 1960s that [malaria] could be eliminated by killing mosquitoes with DDT, but that tactic failed when the mosquitoes evolved to be resistant to the chemical.”
[...]
But policies based on science and data have a short half-life at the UN. With a notable absence of fanfare, in May 2009 the WHO, together with the UN Environment Program, reverted to endorsing less effective methods for preventing malaria, announcing that their goal is “to achieve a 30% cut in the application of DDT worldwide by 2014 and its total phase-out by the early 2020s, if not sooner.” In the absence of effective vaccines or new anti-malarial drugs – and the funding and infrastructure to deliver them – this decision is tantamount to mass murder, a triumph of radical environmental politics over public health.
How can we drain the public-policy swamp?
This was also published in the Taipei Times. It’s a shame that there is no PR (or “communication”) department to broadcast these messages more widely. Opposition to Gates is being squashed by well-greased marketing machines.
Earlier this year we wrote about the vaccine project in Canada [1, 2, 3] and it turns out that Gates is still involved in this [1, 2].
“The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is supportive of the mission of Grand Challenges Canada and pleased to work together on the Grand Challenge of Point-of-Care diagnostics,” said Dr. Carol Dahl, Director of Staff for the Global Health Program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Gates’ affairs in Canada recently came under some scrutiny for the tobacco fiasco [1, 2], which is still being coverage in the Canadian press. The short story is that Gates’ foundation helped the tobacco companies for a long time and now it uses plausible denial.
Asia
GatesKeepers looks with concern at what Microsoft is doing in Asia and summarises:
Gates Keepers find the following statement distasteful: “Perhaps because of language or cultural barriers, stories of malaria elimination from Asia—Pacific have been under-recognised and under-appreciated within the region and by the international community.”
Let’s look a little deeper. Immunisation is a very important thing, but there is also money to be made from it and it’s important to understand who is doing that (the money which is made does not mean that immunisation is not effective). The new article “Bill Gates in India” says:
Bill Gates visited the village to research for a large-scale immunization program, which could potentially save hundreds of lives. By providing vaccines to villages in remote areas like Khangaria, “The idea is very exciting to us, we believe that we can save the lives of hundreds of children,” said Gate.
There are several new projects in this area, which Gates is funding:
OU assistant professor Sunil Joshi obtains $100,000 grant for his research on boosting immune systems.
Another project actually shows both the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Gates making the investment [1, 2].
BREAD is a new five-year program jointly funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
As in many such cases, Gates is among the stakeholders in the respective patents [1, 2] and in his trip to India he has just signed a Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC), so he plays a bit of politics too, putting polio and vaccination on the national roadmap for some companies to supply aid. Gates even met the Health Secretary (also mentioned in [1, 2] where the health official is given advice by a person who is not even in the field of health) and he is found to be in the midst of a bit of a scandal which gets covered in French. An automated translation says: “Margaret Chan, director general of WHO, announced the opening of an internal investigation into the circumstances of the leak. World learned that members of the panel had not been asked to sign a declaration of conflict of interest. Some observers note that the Australian Mary Moran, who played a key role within the group of experts working for the George Institute, An institution largely funded by pharmaceutical manufacturers and the Bill & Melinda Gates.”
“As in many such cases, Gates is among the stakeholders in the respective patents…”We have already written many posts to shed light on the relationship between pharmaceutical manufacturers and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (some of them actually work inside the Gates Foundation). To clarify again, “Big Pharma” is not the monster which many people claim that it is (extreme daemonisation), but there is a lot to be known about it. Those companies are sometimes giving away experimental drugs to see what happens in poor populations (as they would be unable to sue for damages or generate much publicity), but then again, these are amoral entities (sometimes immoral) working for their own interests. They are mostly owned by shareholders, Gates included. It’s not as though they produce many billionaires from within. A breakdown of stakeholders is quite revealing.
There is criticism of what Gates is doing in India right now. For example:
This coverage of the head of the Gates Foundation’s trip to India is amusing. It gives a whole new meaning to: “You are our father. You are our mother. Please adopt us” Arey bap! Bill appears to be a development tourist and Rahul is leading him by the nose. What does he expect the villagers to say to him except that they love his grants and want him to be their mother and father just like the Congress Party?
And further:
Development tourism in Bihar for the head of the Gates Foundation
This development tourist is so naive. He has never heard of breast milk as the first vaccine but mothers in Bihar have been told this for years. And they can parrot it to any important visitor with connections to the ruling elite.
And then he says he knows nothing about the cervical vaccine trial being stopped. He is either lying or ignorant. We are not sure which is worse.
The Indian press did not exactly do its job giving a voice to opposition.
Bill Gates flew in a chartered plane along with Rahul and landed at Fursatganj airstrip in Rae Bareli 15 km from Jais. Jais is 32 km from Rae Bareli district headquaters.
Gates was scheduled to meet Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to “adopt the village” (their words, not ours) and “Bill Gates takes over Indian village,” says another headline.
Bill Gates has offered to adopt an entire village in India.
This sounds like colonialism and this is also affecting computing there (sounds familiar because of EDGI in India with backing from Gates). Not all villages will benefit from this as one report states that “Gates denies promises to help Amethi”
“I did not make any promise in the IT sector in Amethi … In fact, I have not spoken anything on the IT during the past one week,” says Mr Gates to the journalists in India.
Not to worry. Microsoft is always making promises to Indian IT coordinators, as long as they do not touch Free software. █
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Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Google, GPL, Marketing, Microsoft at 3:33 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The latest Microsoft moves which are intended to redefine “Open Source” and turn it into free labour for Microsoft’s benefit
Python’s creator Guido van Rossum is working for Google and Microsoft wants a share of his action? What does it do then? It throws some money at the problem, as always. Earlier today we showed how Microsoft people were taking more control of a Ruby company, having already embraced and ‘extended’ the language with IronRuby [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14]. Similarly, Microsoft wants more control of Python and there is already IronPython [1, 2, 3], which is used to spread Silver Lie and other such proprietary software.
Python ought to beware an “embrace and extend” here because Microsoft’s goal is to help sell proprietary software from Microsoft at the expense of GNU/Linux. Now, watch this from the news. Very typical Microsoft maneuver.
Microsoft sponsors first Aussie Python conference
[...]
“Microsoft hasn’t had a great relationship with the open source community, but that’s not to say it isn’t doing good things with open source,” Ansell said. “And we are not the only open source conference to have Microsoft as a sponsor.”
“At some conferences the keynotes are sponsored, but ours are really technical. It’s not Microsoft selling the technology, but about the work done at Microsoft on language interoperability.
That’s an interesting choice of headline and it appeared in other IDG sites.
The reason Microsoft is interested in Python is because it hopes to change the project’s direction and make it help the convicted monopolist. In the same way, CodePlex is intended to disrupt and redefine “Open Source”. Watch this new press release and be aware that Microsoft has a CodePlex ‘press tour’ in Microsoft blogs and elsewhere these days. Microsoft is trying to sell an image of Microsoft as a friend of open source (it even sends a female, which better shields it from criticism). In reality, Microsoft is the biggest enemy of "Open Source", although anyone who produces evidence of this will be called something along the lines of “irrational hater” [1, 2, 3, 4] (religions too use this as a suppressor of criticism). How many times need Microsoft sue and bribe against “Open Source” before more people wisen up and realise what’s going on? There is the reality, and then there is the PR.
“How many times need Microsoft sue and bribe against “Open Source” before more people wisen up and realise what’s going on?”Microsoft is promoting proprietary software using opposite terms like “Open Source” and in Techflash, Microsoft continues to further deceive the public. Microsoft’s Paula Hunter says: “The other thing that’s different about us — you know, there’s plenty of other open-source foundations out there — is, we’re license-agnostic, so we’re not trying to force-feed a particular license.” To which Groklaw replies with: “I’m sorry, but that simply is not true. Codeplex doesn’t allow you to use GPLv3. I wouldn’t call that license-agnostic.”
Of course. At Microsoft they want software patent traps, leaving developers scared and ensuring they will be at Microsoft’s mercy at all times.
To be fair, Microsoft is not the only company which fakes open-source (“open minus source”;here is a new example) but it is by far the biggest faker and it is also an aggressor against real “Open Source” (going as far as suing with software patents, even racketeering [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]). There are always those who try to change what open source means, but at least they are not actively attacking Open Source or Free software, unlike Microsoft.
Those who try to be compatible with Microsoft seemingly get burned [1, 2]. As a Microsoft partner put it last year, Microsoft “destroys” partners. Is this a company worth trusting and working with? █
“I’d be glad to help tilt lotus into into the death spiral. I could do it Friday afternoon but not Saturday. I could do it pretty much any time the following week.”
–Brad Silverberg, Microsoft
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Posted in Deception, Google, Microsoft, Search at 2:48 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Is Microsoft 'pulling a Net Applications' with comScore?
Summary: comScore, which is paid by Microsoft in many ways, claims that Microsoft is gaining at Google’s expense but other surveys that measure the same thing say that both Yahoo and Microsoft dropped while Google gained
THE previous post was a reminder of how Microsoft insiders can help take over companies or other bodies. Microsoft has this phrase about "insider friend, ‘the fox’" and we also saw Yahoo getting hijack by agents of Microsoft who gradually increased dependency and gave Yahoo to Microsoft (without the need for an acquisition).
Here we have Yahoo and Microsoft increasing “integration”, as expected. Was there a virtual merger nobody heard about?
Last week, Yahoo posted an update about the search alliance with Microsoft, indicating that it would “protect the holiday period,” “ensure a quality transition,” and “provide a window-of-time.” Advertisers were still left with questions, however, and Yahoo has addressed some of them today.
Yahoo is said to be lobbying a lot already (also in MSN), which makes one wonder how much lobbying it is doing against Google [1, 2].
“The money which Microsoft gives to comScore is money well spent.”In any event, Microsoft’s hijack of Yahoo aside, we are more concerned to see Microsoft’s partner comScore [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10] saying the exact opposite of the rest about Google’s US market share in the month of April. comScore claims that it declined and it even promotes Microsoft. Microsoft-sponsored firms are always showing the opposite of non-Microsoft-sponsored ones, at least in recent months. Once there is money on the table, there is reason to play little games with statistic (by controlling the data set) as it’s not likely to be a mere coincidence when it happens time after time. Here it is fueling messages from Microsoft boosters and other sources where writers are ignoring comScore’s relationship with Microsoft (at the very least there ought to be a disclosure). The very opposite results were shown some days ago for the same month and region, but that’s not the story the press is telling [1, 2].
The money which Microsoft gives to comScore is money well spent. Microsoft also gives money to Net Applications and this relationship brings about/receives similar results (belittling GNU/Linux).
In reality, Microsoft is losing about $3 billion per year (at the current pace) competing with Google and its deals that remove Google from menus are expensive [1, 2], not to mention advertising.
5. Uniforms: The Storm signed a sponsorship deal with Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, and will display the Bing name across the chest of jerseys and on the back of warm-up tops. But that’s not the only makeover. No more calling officials zebras — their uniforms resemble the NBA with cream coloring accented by orange on the shoulder.
But anyway, the big story is that numbers from comScore are contradicting other numbers from other firms (Hitwise for example) and they are contradicting these in the same way one ought to expect, namely that they benefit Microsoft, which is among comScore’s paymasters.
comScore is apparently expanding areas/scope of those numbers that are not trustworthy. What’s next? Will comScore start measuring operating system market share and say that GNU/Linux has 0.1% market share? █
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