05.31.10
Posted in Bill Gates, Finance, Patents at 3:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“The chief of malaria for the World Health Organization has complained that the growing dominance of malaria research by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation risks stifling a diversity of views among scientists and wiping out the world health agency’s policy-making function.
–New York Times, 2008
Summary: Research diversity is being stifled by the Gates Foundation and Gates-funded ‘studies’ spread misconceptions to defend the foundation’s own agenda
THE Gates Foundation is relevant to this Web site because of the role it plays in promoting Microsoft at the expense of software freedom. Today’s post is more closely related to patents than software and we kindly ask readers to revisit some background in order to understand how the Gates Foundation promotes patents on solutions that save people’s lives. It’s an issue of scarcity where any scarcity means loss of life (patents being the expensive component, not manufacturing).
Thanks to PR efforts from the Gates Foundation (which contracts outside agencies to manage its PR), several high-profile publications continue to promote Gates as a saviour of lives, but the truth (or reality) is a little more complicated than that. Some honourable people do talk about it, but the amount of PR typically marginalises them (by sheer volume).
“Big Pharma gets on board with Gates Foundation,” says this new article which points out:
Although most observers of the Gates Foundation highlight the organization’s influence over grantees, it is clear that the world’s largest philanthropy is exerting a strong influence over the pharmaceutical industry.
As we have shown before, the Gates Foundation is a shareholder and a benefactor in this industry. There actually is a conflict of interests. The Gates Foundation is monopolising research while investing (in the shareholder sense) in the companies that benefit from it. As the Indian press put it some days ago:
Should it be just one big idea, the way Bill and Melinda Gates foundation tackles malaria? (Not even a nano comparison in terms of funding).
The investments are selective and they sometimes come with strings attached. This puts a lot of pressure on researchers to comply with the plan of the Gates Foundation and not anything else. Is this the free thinking that research requires? Does that permit diversity of opinions and breadth of exploration?
Here is another new article:
Although the British drug giant known as GSK was heralded by leading health organizations, the driving force behind the disclosure was the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
For those who do not know or remember, the Head of Global Health for the Gates Foundation is from GlaxoSmithKline where he was caught abusing outside researchers who did not agree with him. Charles Grassley was there in the Senate investigating such inexcusable abuse. GlaxoSmithKline is not the only company which is very much inside the Gates Foundation and we gave more examples before (even Monsanto staff is inside the Gates Foundation).
Anyway, this man is called Tachi Yamada and here he is speaking to the press some days ago.
“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.
To complete his sentence, they strive to generate unique and creative ways to tackle global health issues by paying big pharmaceutical companies after lobbying governments to allocate funds. That does not mean that the Gates Foundation won’t pay anything; it does pay generously, but it also uses its brand power to further boost investment in companies which it has investments in, using taxpayers' money for the most part. Look who is managing some of these funds:
Arabella Philanthropic Investment Advisors, a philanthropy services firm, is working with ultra-wealthy families’ foundations that are looking to make a philanthropic impact with fewer resources. The firm has done work for The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Mead Family Foundation and for corporations like Caterpillar and Hyatt.
One might say that taxpayers choose to support Gates’ vision, but not everyone agrees. Gates has just produced a self-serving ‘study’ [1, 2] which is being called “absolute nonsense” by someone who is simply not agreeing with the results of such Gates Foundation-funded research. There is an article about it:
FAIR CEO Blasts Kaiser Foundation & Public Agenda HIV/AIDS Study Results as ‘Absolute Nonsense’
The President and CEO of the FAIR Foundation, Dr. Richard Darling, DDS, is publicly denouncing research studies by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Public Agenda which conclude that Americans want more money spent on HIV/AIDS.
[...]
FAIR points out that in addition to the exorbitant federal funding, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has spent approximately $7 billion on global HIV, TB & malaria efforts and billions of additional dollars have been spent on behalf of HIV patients by the collective efforts of pharmaceutical companies, Hollywood AIDS activists and non-profit organizations such as amfAR (American Federation for AIDS Research).
Let’s not forget the Lancet study from Gates — a ‘study’ which was quite widely disputed [1, 2, 3, 4] but is still appearing in the press.
A new study published in the Lancet and funded by the Gates Foundation, looks at rates of decline, and accelerations and decelerations in rates of decline, in mortality in children younger than 5 years for 187 countries from 1970 to 2009.
There is a quiet fight going on between those who advance the Gates agenda and those who understand that his monopolisation of research (and incestuous relationship with particular companies) is a dangerous one for refinement of drugs. It’s simply irresponsible not to report on these issues, however inconvenient it might be to bring them up. █
“Gates has created a huge blood-buying operation that only cares about money, not about people.”
–AIDS organisation manager, December 2009 (New York Times)
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Posted in Asia, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft, Steve Ballmer at 2:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Arizona University descends into Microsoft’s Fog Computing trap (‘cloud’) and Ballmer travels to Malaysia, hoping to derail this government’s migration to Free software by offering Fog Computing
Students in Australia and Arizona will both be receiving similar type of treatment:
The University of Arizona in Tucson will be moving 18,000 staff members to cloud-based e-mail and calendar applications from Microsoft that will include a larger inbox quota, instant messaging, and tools for holding online meetings. This will be the first major change to employee e-mail in about seven years, the university said.
Microsoft boosters are cheering and posts that are sponsored by Microsoft seemingly just add to the newly-issued a press release, titled “University Of Arizona Selects Microsoft Corp.’s Business Productivity Online Suite For E-Mail, Calendaring and Collaboration Tools” (other Windows sites are spreading spin/lies for a wage, not caring about the consequences).
“Microsoft seems to have just made another trip to fight their adoption of Free software in the government and replace that with so-called ‘clouds’ from Microsoft.”This is not about Google versus Microsoft in mail, never mind the fact that it’s wrong to let a company which is abusive spy on everyone’s activities. So-called ‘clouds’ are plainly wrong and are a big mistake for public services. The “private” cloud lie which Microsoft is using is merely a decoy. It’s not private because it’s proprietary. It’s private to Microsoft, not to the user.
This whole ‘cloud’ charade is going overseas.
We recently wrote about what Microsoft was doing in Malaysia. Microsoft seems to have just made another trip to fight their adoption of Free software in the government and replace that with so-called ‘clouds’ from Microsoft. Watch Steve Ballmer lobbying the prime minister some days ago:
This was relayed during a meeting between Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak and Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft Corporation at the Prime Minister’s Office here Tuesday.
The prime minister is not a technology person. They try to politicise this.
There is some other coverage from Malaysia which we’ll remark on later today. Choosing those ‘clouds’ is even worse than relying on proprietary software on one’s own machine because there’s increased helplessness and lock-in when it’s on someone else’s machine.
“The prime minister is not a technology person. They try to politicise this.”In a recent private summit, Microsoft marketed those ‘clouds’ which it uses to control the users’ data, not just application code [1, 2]. They will hopefully not entice people to become prisoners rather than deploy Free software (to run everything possible locally for control, which is especially important for business autonomy).
No business deserves to put its financial operation at a company with a history of financial fraud [1, 2], but that never bothers financial sites that emit more deception and spin while masquerading as “news”. Richard Stallman wrote an essay about those so-called ‘clouds’. Why would anyone be naïve enough to still go for these options? It’s clear why Microsoft lobbies for it. █
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Posted in America, Deception, Marketing, Microsoft at 2:05 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Oregon, Utah, New Jersey, Minnesota, Ohio, West Virginia, Florida, Alabama, D.C., and Arkansa are the latest states to support brainwashing by a convicted monopolist
IN the previous post we emphasised that Bill Gates had liaised with US politicians in order to gain greater control over US schools. This week we have many new examples of “American EDGI” [1, 2, 3], which received coverage full of euphemisms to make the abuses seem like a “gift”. Microsoft has already brought this scam to over half of the United States (“Now in 32 States and DC,” brags Microsoft in its pet publication, “R&D”), where governors are essentially colluding with Microsoft to brainwash the public for Microsoft’s benefit. They use the same tactics in schools, turning a public system into a private factory for future clients of Microsoft.
Last week we saw many victims, starting with Oregon (more coverage in [1, 2]).
Microsoft will provide nearly 17,000 training vouchers to Oregon to help unemployed people learn the company’s software, the state said today.
Utah is another new victim (more coverage in [1, 2, 3, 4]. They market Microsoft indoctrination as a route to “reduce unemployment and strengthen the economy”. It smells as though it was passed on by PR agencies to local news agencies which merely printed it. Appalling coverage.
Bridgerland Applied Technology College is serving as a distribution site for free e-learning vouchers available through a partnership between Utah and Microsoft.
So far, 32 states have signed on to the software giant’s Elevate America program, which is designed to reduce unemployment and strengthen the economy.
New Jersey is another new victim (a pretty major one) and so is Minnesota (more coverage here)
Minnesota is among states teaming up with Microsoft to offer free computer-skills training.
It’s not free. There are hidden costs that are very high.
Ohio is also a victim.
Ohio will receive 60,000 vouchers through a partnership with Microsoft Corp. for free online technology training.
Vouchers for what exactly? Bandwidth that’s used for Microsoft brainwash?
West Virginia is a most major victim and this got a lot of coverage last week [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. They really drop the bomb, so to speak. Microsoft agents find that better than competing. Their innovation is going into the back room, finding corruptible politicians, and convincing them to sell out their voters, marketing this sellout using euphemisms in the cheap local press.
Florida has not escaped the same type of scam. There is a press release from accomplices and prominent coverage.
Workforce Connection, Workforce Florida Inc., the Agency for Workforce Innovation and Microsoft are working together to provide free technology training to individuals. Microsoft is donating to the state of Florida 35,000 vouchers for no-cost, online technology training and certification through the state’s 24 Regional Workforce Boards.
More in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].
The Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) announced Wednesday that it will work with Microsoft in a public-private partnership to provide free technology training.
Alabama too.
The ‘Elevate America’ euphemism has come to D.C.:
The District is joining Microsoft Corp. in a public-private partnership to provide free technology training to more than 10,000 D.C. residents.
Arkansa too.
California's sellout was mentioned here before (it happened in March) and here it is again in the news:
Microsoft is offering free technology training and certification through a partnership with the State of California and the San Bernardino Employment and Training Agency. California has received 166,500 vouchers to allow the public to take advantage of this on-line training opportunity.
It starts with a few states and like a plague it quickly spreads. It makes those who don’t sell out the minority and nobody escapes. This whole “Computer Training” that we find elsewhere is indoctrination for Microsoft’s benefit. Microsoft is not “Computer” and neither is Windows. █
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05.30.10
Posted in Bill Gates, Finance, Microsoft at 7:01 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: “Abrupt takeover” is an overstatement, but Bill Gates is buying influence over US education and not everyone is keeping quiet about it
THE NEW BOOK from Ravitch is critical of the Gates Foundation and we wrote about it in [1, 2, 3, 4]. In short, Ravitch alleges that Gates is buying influence over the schooling system/s and in this new article it’s being claimed that “both Sen. Williams and Mr. Gates do a great disservice to the hundreds of thousands of students and teachers who are successful and accomplishing great things in our public schools.” Our next post has a lot more to say on the subject of Microsoft intrusion into the public sector/government, but here are some fragments from this new article:
In her recent book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education,” Diane Ravitch makes the following observation regarding charters:
“Given the money and power behind charter schools (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, Obama Administration/RTT), it seems likely that they are here to stay. If we continue on the present course, with big foundations and the federal government investing heavily in opening more charter schools, the result is predictable. Charter schools in urban centers will enroll the motivated children of the poor, while the regular public schools will become schools of last resort for those who never applied or were rejected. The regular public schools will enroll a disproportionate share of students with learning disabilities and students who are classified as English-language learners; they will enroll the kids from the most troubled home circumstances, the ones with the worst attendance records and the lowest grades and test scores.”
[...]
However, not all of our schools face those same challenges. The public school system is not by any means a blanket failure. Both Sen. Williams and Mr. Gates do a great disservice to the hundreds of thousands of students and teachers who are successful and accomplishing great things in our public schools.
Gates is putting pressure using those so-called ‘donations’ that have strings attached to them (we gave many examples before). They actually call it a “contract”, not a “donation”. Here is an article from three days ago:
The district must contribute $129.55 million beyond the community gift over the seven-year term of the contract, under the deal with Gates Foundation.
According to the contract, MCS will receive $6.5 million installments from Gates twice a year.
There are other new examples where Gates offers money to schools [1, 2] (sometimes it’s called a “grant”) and here are the warning signs:
The Gates Foundation has become a leader in education reform, and Memphis is fortunate to have qualified as a sort of laboratory for change. An investment in that change could pay off well in the form of better teachers, administrators and schools.
The above says “leader” as in “monopoliser” and “reform” as in “do it our way”. The Gates Foundation has become a de facto source of guidance, just as Ravitch warned in her book. The Gates team defends its actions with reports it pays to generate (Microsoft too privately admits producing fake claims just to be able to cite them for support, as antitrust exhibits clearly show). Here is an example from last week’s news.
“Consequences of dropping out include increased chances of being in poverty, being unemployed, being on public assistance, being in prison or on death row, being divorced or being a single parent,” the report says, quoting the Gates Foundation.
This article is about high schools. It references the Gates Foundation as though it is a school board or education ministry. This is dangerous because private interests are private. “Never in the history of the United States was there a foundation as rich and powerful as the Gates Foundation,” wrote Ravitch. “Never was there one that sought to steer state and national policy in education. And never before was there a foundation that gave grants to almost every major think tank and advocacy group in the field of education, leaving almost no one willing to criticize its vast power and unchecked influence.” █
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Posted in Bill Gates, Marketing, Microsoft at 6:24 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
David Gerard’s rendition of Bill Gates as Microsoft Jack, who
permanently left the Guardian about a week ago
Summary: New study suggests that legions of PR people whose job is to glorify Bill Gates in the mainstream press are also doing a service to Microsoft (and a disservice to history)
LAST week we wrote about the role of Edelman and Waggener Edstrom in embellishing Bill Gates' image after his crimes at Microsoft. It’s a familiar stunt that the Rockefeller family used as well. It’s nothing out of the ordinary, but it is important to recognise what’s going on.
In the United States and in the United Kingdom at the very least (based on surveys), Microsoft is received better than in most of the rest of the world where Microsoft is rightly perceived as parasitic, unethical, and imperialistic. There is a new survey in the US and its results suggest that the PR work which Bill Gates is doing for himself (by hiring many agencies, some of which work on Microsoft brands) is also working well for Microsoft, in which he still has many shares and an important role (not a very public role). From The Hindu:
About Microsoft, the report stated consumers found it “to be as inspiring as any non-profit in the world today because of the close association with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In fact people view the work of the Foundation as an authentic extension of the mission of Microsoft.”
More on the same topic from Forbes Magazine:
When Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, created America’s largest (by wealth) charity organization in 1999, their intention was simple: use profits to improve the lives, education and health of others. Their good deed, however, had an unintended consequence. It helped overhaul public perception of Microsoft. Now the Redwood, Wash., software giant is viewed as America’s most inspiring company.
They are brushing up the image of the guy who, according to antitrust material (Comes vs Microsoft for example), is the man behind many of the violations of the law. It’s rather refreshing to turn from a villain into a hero using PR alone. As we shall explain in later posts, Gates is still making money, sometimes more than he gives away. Bill Gates has become a label and a franchise, kind of like “Michael Jordan”. Here is another new example or two where the “Bill Gates” brand is being used for Microsoft apologetics.
A lot of people forget (due to PR) that Bill Gates was not an engineer. He was perhaps an engineer of loopholes in the law — things that kept him out of jail as he refused to answer very simple questions. Gates comes from a legal family and legal background; it’s just a shame he could not obey the law and instead used knowledge of the law to bypass the law. David Morgenstern, an Apple fan (as if Apple is pure bliss just because it competed against a corrupt company), writes about Bill Gates’ lack of technological foresight (we also wrote about this a week ago).
Prediction hell: How dumb do Bill Gates & Microsoft’s iPad, Surface predictions look now?
[...]
According to Mary-Jo Foley’s reporting at All About Microsoft, Microsoft has moved its Macintosh Business Unit away from the Specialized Devices and Applications team. We can only hope that’s good news. The further away from Surface the better.
The company which ranks best appears to be Sony, which does a lot of appalling things (RIAA, rootkits, etc.) despite its use of Linux in many areas such as phones, televisions, and even PS3 (until recently).
Google rated top “most trusted, liked, and respected” company worldwide by consulting firm Reputation Institute, with the Japanese electronics giant taking second place.
Microsoft’s fan press wonders what it will take to save Microsoft while the Seattle Times, a de facto branch of Bill Gates PR for the most part, carries a message of “Microsoft philanthropy” (turning a criminal company into the very opposite by playing with words and headlines).
The Web site Microsoft Hohm helps people calculate their energy use and find ways to conserve, and it’s planned in the future as a tool to help manage information about when and where to recharge electric vehicles.
“Young generation redefines culture of Microsoft philanthropy” is the headline. The Seattle Times is nearly always playing along with the PR. It has become almost amusing. Over the past week there have also been loads of that energy nonsense striving to portray Microsoft as “green” and “environmental”. To be fair, other companies do that too, but they don’t pretend as much as Microsoft does. There are people being assigned to manage such spin campaigns, as Howard Bloom explained some days ago (skip to 45 minutes from the start). █
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Posted in Microsoft at 5:32 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Another missing piece of the Microsoft exodus (almost everyone with a long history at a high-level rank has left in recent years, except Ballmer)
WE are gradually compiling this large page and an increasingly-long list of major departures from Microsoft. We started doing this in late 2008 and a departure we did not notice at the time it happened is that of Microsoft’s Robotics chief. Mary Jo Foley brought it up some days ago:
Given last year’s departure of Robotics chief Tandy Trower, I’m wondering about Microsoft’s future intentions and directions in the robotics space…
Mary Jo Foley can only hope that Microsoft will appeal to professionals in robotics (she also promotes vapourware at the moment, despite similar fluff to this, never mind if nothing ever came out of it). In this one particular area they are losing to Linux big time. No wonder the managers are leaving, which is never a good sign because it’s statistically correlated to failure. Departures from Microsoft are not necessarily good news however. On the one hand they are a sign that Microsoft is losing, but on the other hand, those who depart can actually cause damage to companies other than Microsoft by twisting and bending those companies in Microsoft’s direction. It’s mostly an HR issue. One failed unit of Microsoft was responsible for phones, devices, and the likes of these. Prior to the departure of J Allard and Robbie Bach [1, 2, 3] it was Enrique Rodriguez who left this team [1, 2]. He was a Vice President. Guess where he ends up? Cisco (see background [1, 2, 3]). He won't be alone.
Enrique Rodriguez, a former exec at Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)’s video and music division, is joining Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) to take on a key role at the tech giant’s Service Provider Video Technology Group (SPVTG), Light Reading Cable has learned.
Another recent departure from Microsoft is Alex Gounares [1, 2] and finally he explains how or why he left Microsoft to join AOL. He becomes a CTO there.
Why did you decide to move to AOL after so many years with Microsoft?
It really was the opportunity that attracted me here, and it started with a phone call that I got a couple months ago. I started doing my homework, and of course I knew about AOL, obviously being in the industry I had tracked it somewhat, but I hadn’t tracked it in depth. And the company that I saw was an amazing company; it was not the AOL that maybe I had thought of before.
We have already shown (some time earlier this month) the role of Gounares in Microsoft’s abuses at least as a quiet observer. █
Update (02/07/10): Tandy Trower contacted us and offered clarifications regarding his departure. With his kind permission, we add these below.
Not certain if this will get through your spam filter, but someone passed on your blog mention of my departure. You may not be interested, but I thought I would provide you with some information regarding my departure.
First, you are correct that robotics development is mostly done on Linux, some on VXWorks or other proprietary OSes. This was actually the case when I proposed to Gates that we develop a robotics toolkit. However, that recommendation came directly from many of the leaders from diverse parts of the robotics community including people using robotics in education, academic research, industrial automation, and even innovators like Helen Greiner of iRobot.
The invitation/encouragement for Microsoft to participate came from people like Red Whittaker, long time robotics veteran and leader of the CMU robotics department and organizer/founder of the CMU DARPA Challenge teams. When Red encouraged Microsoft to get involved, one of the first questions I asked him was why since it was obvious he and other key researchers were not using Microsoft technology and I highly doubted with their investment in Linux based development that they would switch. Red was very clear. It was not to help him or other experts already in the field but the broaden the market. From his perspective (and this was shared by the people I talked to) for robotics to really emerge into its potential required not just the experts to participate but as wide and diverse a community as possible to contribute their creativity. And there simply were not enough tools out there and plenty of room for other alternatives.
While it is true that the toolkit my team created was based on Microsoft OS and tools, we very much tried to build bridges to other toolkits and technologies. For example, the interprocess communication library we defined we published as part of Microsoft’s Open Software Licensing that would enable anyone to create a compatible interface on Linux or other OS. In fact we did have developers who used our libraries to interact with code run on other OSes including Mac and Linux. I even explored doing versions of our core libraries for Linux. I’d be the first to admit we had a long way to go, and never proposed that developers already invested on other platforms convert to using our toolkit. As you might know robots often have multiple processors and so multi-OS solutions are not uncommon. Windows never was a very good OS for real-time programming. Few, including Linux, are. Often very tight processing scenarios an OS isn’t even used but driven by FPGAs as was the case with the UBot-5 created by students in Rod Grupen’s department at UMass Amherst. FPGAs drove the two-wheel dynamic balancing, but they found Windows with the Microsoft robotics layer as a compatible solution.
You are welcome to your own opinion, but my departure from Microsoft was not a failure at my job, unless you want to consider that after Gates’ departure (my original and primary exec sponsor) I was unsuccessful in convincing the executive management that took his place of my next steps in strategy. Given the directive to take the next step beyond the toolkit and define a compelling application solution (since outside industrial applications, entertainment, education, and simple cleaning) robotics still lacks “killer applications”. This is pretty much universally acknowledged by all in or observing the state of the current industry. After looking at several application areas (automotive, military, education, consumer, etc.) I decided that assistive care was not only the best opportunity, but where the technology could applied to the growing number of people needing help in performing normal daily activities. Already according to the reports on disabilities in the US, 25% of the population falls into this category and incurable chronic diseases like autism and Alzheimer’s are actually on the rise. When you add to this that the boomer generation will almost double the number of seniors over the next 20 years, while we are facing an increasing shortage of care providers, I was able to imagine scenarios where a self-mobile PC (aka robot) could be used to make up for the inevitable reduction in cognitive and physical abilities.
For the first time in my 28 years at Microsoft, my proposal wasn’t funded, due in part to the economic conditions that allowed for little new investment. However, I felt so strongly about what many observers characterize as a potential coming care tsunami that I decided to leave and try to do this by creating my own company. Further, despite my 28 years at Microsoft I am open-minded to what tools and platform I build on. The people at Willow Garage will confirm that I have been to visit them and explore their ROS work. To me its a practical matter of determining where the best enabling technologies are. The task of creating a semi-autonomous robot that can enable people to compensate for the deficits of aging, chronic disease, or other severe disabilities will be hard enough without having to develop everything from scratch. As I had done at Microsoft, my intent is to find the best of breed technologies I can license and combine for building this.
What all this means about Microsoft, I’ll leave to your own opinion, but I did want to clarify that I didn’t leave because I had failed in my efforts to start the robotics at Microsoft. The group continues there and has actually grown in number since I left. There’s important work going on. Where they go from here is no longer my concern. I have a new mission and my experience at Microsoft will help me in what I do, though since it has yet to be done by anyone, my chances of success may be remote, but considering the potential impact on addressing the challenges we will be facing not only in this country but around the world (in Asia, EU, and China assistive care ranks as one of the top motivators for robotics research), I do not think my efforts will be wasted.
Best regards,
Tandy Trower
CEO/Founder
Hoaloha Robotics (btw Hoaloha is Hawaiian for compassionate friend)
[...]
You are welcome to post provided you don’t do it in a mean spirited way and take sound bytes to flail with me with. (I am trusting that if that was your purpose, you likely wouldn’t ask for permission to use.)
However, again my departure was no so much triggered by a reduction in the investment in robotics. As mentioned, I believe the organization I founded has actually grown in size since I left. But the primary reason I resigned was to pursue an application scenario that execs there did not wish to invest in (at least for the present). Microsoft is obviously already invested in many different areas already, so it is unclear that management can be faulted for not wanting to invest in the strategy I feel compelled to pursue. Perhaps that may be analogous to J Allard’s departure, but I do not know since I haven’t sat down with J to understand the circumstances of his departure.
I spent 28 years at Microsoft and had the opportunity to help start a number of new things for the company. This is one where we had to part ways.
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Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Vista 7, Windows at 4:55 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft says goodbye to Expression Media
MICROSOFT’S list of dead products is growing rapidly. Once in a while, rather than kill a product or a division Microsoft just sells it to someone else (for better or for worse). One large and recent example would be Razorfish
This week’s news is that Microsoft Expression Media is no more. Microsoft lets it go. Coverage of this was quite extensive:
Here is Microsoft’s press release which PR Fried was dressing it up a bit:
Microsoft said on Tuesday it has unloaded its Expression Media photo catalog product, selling it to medium-format digital camera maker Phase One.
[...]
Microsoft said the deal was arranged by Microsoft’s IP Ventures unit, which licenses or sells technology that Microsoft decides is no longer strategic.
Microsoft is axing products at a high pace (decreasing the size of its portfolio). Attempts to make new products like Slate are failing for Microsoft [1, 2, 3] because Vista 7 is dropped (to be replaced by a Linux-based operating system). No wonder even Apple is worth more than Microsoft at this stage. Microsoft’s forecast just isn’t so encouraging, regardless of Microsoft’s size. █
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