08.21.11

Links 21/8/2011: Fusion Garage Makes Android Tablets, GNU IceCat 6.0 is Released

Posted in News Roundup at 11:50 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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Bill Gates Under Fire for Hijacking the Voice of the Poor

Posted in Bill Gates, Deception at 11:03 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: The world’s richest monopolist loves to pretend that he is a representative of the world’s poorest and he pays selected people to play along with this illusion

The Gates Foundation is not only a good lesson regarding the weakness of the corporate media but also the corruptibility of blogs because some of these too have been hijacked by Gates, who gave them money with strings attached. We covered some examples of that before. By seeding money the way he does (over a million dollars per day just for media), Gates is making the poor speak like (and for) the rich, pretending that bribing journalists and creating strings for them is actually helpful. Here is an insult to journalists, courtesy of the Gates Foundation:

Here is an interesting strategy or tactic on the part of the Gates Foundation. Instead of sending Bill and Melinda out to answer recent valid criticism of the Foundation, they send Jeff Raikes. Who would dream of arguing with Jeff? He always says that everything is all right.

In defending the Foundation’s millions of dollars given to the press, Mr Raikes appears to call journalists “poor”. “We feel a very strong responsibility to enable the voice of the poor,” he said.

Huh?

But wait. They are funding rich journalists too, not just poor ones to whom they provide training and instructions.

As one blog put it in the headline, “Is Gates Foundation Unethical Or Just Leading-Edge? See this post’s core argument:

Case in point: The Gates Foundation. In October 2010, its partnership (funding) with ABC was celebrated as a way to bring information about third-world illness to the forefront of public discussion despite the fact that newspapers everywhere were cutting overseas coverage.

Now, The Seattle Times is questioning the ethics of the Gates Foundation and of the news agencies benefitting from its largesse because “To garner attention for the issues it cares about, the foundation has invested millions in training programs for journalists. It funds research on the most effective ways to craft media messages.”

That’s called marketing. Also, advocacy. Getting the word out about social problems is an important aspect of advocacy, even if it means training reporters to uncover the stories that need telling.

The Gates Foundation is ramping up advocacy by giving money to those – yes, for-profits – who can really get the word out. As long as they don’t dictate the contents of the coverage, how is this wrong? Does it differ from hiring a for-profit ad agency to put together an ad campaign? Or paying an event-planner to put on a gala? It’s about giving money to professionals in the hope of getting the job done right.

Is receiving money from a foundation going to affect the content of the news any more than the proceeds from a big advertiser do? Ah, now that is the ethical question and it is one the news media, not the foundation, must answer. The article should investigate whether both sides of the stories about health initiatives in Africa were examined.

Including whether the medical solutions supported by Gates are effective.

The article didn’t ask that question.

The tone of The Seattle Times article focused on criticizing the Gates Foundation for funding news reports, for partnering with a for-profit news organization, and for advocacy that is “ … essentially public relations: an attempt to influence decision-makers and sway public opinion. The ultimate goal is to boost funding and focus from governments … “

Remember that the Seattle Times too received money from Gates. This situation became so serious that even corporate press has begun giving it mainstream attention. FAIR complains too, and for those who do not know, FAIR is a highly regarded watchdog of journalism. To quote part of their assessment:

• Philanthropies have interests, too, that reporters are in the business of scrutinizing; but what if those deep pockets are bankrolling the show? The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pushes projects from genetic engineering to charter schools, among other things, so when ABC News formed a “partnership” with the Gates Foundation, to “offset” costs of a series on “global health problems and their potential solutions” (NYTimes.com, 10/6/10), ABC News president David Westin felt obliged to note that the network would decide where to go and what to cover—right before saying that news execs met with a Gates official to “pick his brain” about…where to go and what to cover.

Shocking. Or not. This is how sad things are. █

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Gates Foundation is Lobbying for Monsanto Shareholders (Including BIll Gates)

Posted in Bill Gates, Intellectual Monopoly, Patents at 10:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Yet more blatant promotion of Monsanto’s food monopolies, courtesy of Monsanto investors and publicists

TECHRIGHTS has written dozens of posts about Monsanto and about Gates’ lobbying for their monopoly on seeds (and food). For Gates, solving the world’s hunger needs to be a profitable enterprise and he wants to be part of the profit-making. Some even allege that by doing so Gates actually creates “food shortages”. To quote:

According to Reuters the Gates Foundation has a long history in agricultural development, spending over $2 billion for projects in developing countries including partnering with agricultural industry heavy weights Monsanto and Cargill.
The Seattle Times reports the Gates Foundation bought 500,000 shares of Monsanto stock between April and June 2010 to a total value of $27.6 million.

Do not be deceived by those big numbers of supposed “donation”. When one issues a “licence” to use a seed (not the same as giving a seed), this is not a donation. It’s seeding the market, both figuratively and literally. Using the “Bill Gates” brand (which Gates spends over a million dollar per day promoting), Monsanto is advancing a very malicious agenda and investigative journalists who actually do their work give voice to the other side in this debate:

Day said her organization welcomes the Gates Foundation interest in trying to help smallholder farmers in Africa. But she said the philanthropy’s approach, with its emphasis on science and technology, is really most favorable to the large agricultural corporations like Monsanto and Cargill.

Indeed. This is what all publications ought to be saying, but they don’t. They have been paralysed and put in a state of fear of criticising Gates. The PR industry that Gates has been using for the past decade has made one a borderline “k00k”for even suggesting that Gates is not a villain-turned-hero. █

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Chair of Gates Foundation’s Global Development Program Advisory Panel an Alleged Insider Trader

Posted in Bill Gates at 10:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Photo by World Economic Forum

Summary: Mr. Gupta from the Gates Foundation allegedly turns out to be as unethical as his master and he may face criminal charges for huge damages caused to society

THE GATES FOUNDATION is not all that it may seem on the surface. It is headed by the world’s most notorious monopolist (of the 20th century at least) and some of his deputies have a thuggish history that includes bullying of researchers. But this one is a newer example which involves Mr. Gupta. According to this report, Gupta “chaired the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Development Program Advisory Panel, and was the only panel member, according to Bloomberg, “who has not led a country or at least worked directly for its president or administration.”

“”More recently he’s become a global philanthropist who rubs shoulders with Bono, Bill Clinton, and Bill Gates, tackling problems like malaria in Africa and AIDS in India,” Fortune reported last year. [...] We also thought it was interesting that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation said the soft-spoken “Rajat is a valued member of the panel and will continue to serve on it.””

By Gates’ standards, he must be a hell of a guy, but he is alleged to have engages in serious and costly crime some months ago, which validates his status as a goodfella and a member of Gates’ club. When will Mr. Gates start paying tax like people who are much poorer than him do? He and his friend Warren pretend to be givers, but they are actually the biggest hoarders and for them to call for increase in taxing of the rich is hilarious at best. They’re exempt because they became “too rich”. This is the sort of looting that requires smashing of not a single glass and the police stays apathetic towards. █

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Bill Gates Buys More Blogs and Papers, Creates Puppet Group “Teaching First” to Lobby the Press

Posted in Bill Gates, Marketing at 10:01 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: With financial stake in many channels of communication (even seemingly small ones like Crosscut), Bill Gates continues to push his educational ‘reform’ agenda, additionally creating yet another puppet that pushes for this agenda while hiding its roots in the Gates Foundation

THE LOBBYING to take over the education system just never stops. Indoctrination of children a taxpayers’ expense is at valuable resource for the greedy. One teacher complains about this dubious “Open Letter”, perhaps not realising that the source, Crosscut, is funded by Gates [1, 2, 3, 4]. He is taking over everything which covers particular topics, or at least seeding his propaganda in sources which he controls. To quote the teacher-turned-activist:

“4. Use the coming year as a chance to put in place some serious educational reforms, creating a powerful task force with members from the Gates Foundation, the UW College of Education, national foundations, and others to make Seattle a leading example of one or two key reforms along the lines of the Gates/Arnie Duncan idea of getting more students in front of the best teachers. Not every reform idea: just two or three that make a difference and where Seattle could (with Gates funding) lead the nation rather than dragging behind in the rear.”

Brewster wants to bring in people from the Gates Foundation and University of Washington to push reforms in SPS?! They’re already here! Goodloe-Johnson was their gal. Gates already funded her to the tune of $9 million and apparently is the sugardaddy for another of her dubious reforms, bringing TFA, Inc. to Seattle. Dean Tom Stritikus of UW’s College of Ed is a Teach for America alum who wrote an op-ed last year in support of charter schools coincidentally just before TFA got introduced to the school board agenda.

For more information about Goodloe-Johnson, see this recent post about her firing. It is rather disturbing that minions of Gates can be appointed to high positions without much trouble. Gates provides the money which they need to buy that pedestal.

Later on it turned out that more new puppets were funding the propaganda of Gates and fellow billionaires. To quote “The Fordham Institute and the National Council on Teacher Quality: Manipulating Teacher Layoffs (& Union-Busting?)”:

What the Fordham Institute Wants

The Fordham Institute, which supports research, publications, and action projects advocating “education reform,” is funded by billionaire foundations such as the Broad Foundation, the Doris and Donald Fisher Fund (the Fishers own the GAP clothing stores), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation (the family that owns WalMart). It also receives support from the Fordham Foundation, a charitable foundation for charter schools in Ohio.

[...]

And who are its customers? That information is readily available on their Web site. NCTQ funders include the Fordham Institute, the Gates Foundation, and the Doris and Donald Fisher Fund. Members
of the board of directors also include charter schools groups like the KIPP Foundation and the NewSchools Venture Fund, and teacher preparation groups like Teach for America, Inc. and the New
Teacher Center – all organizations with a financial interest in altering teacher contracts in order to create openings for new, low-paid teachers with less training.

Manipulation of Contract Negotiations in Seattle: A Case Study

Seattle provides a prime example of how the NCTQ operates. In October 2009, less than a year before contract negotiations, the NCTQ produced a report called “Human Capital in Seattle Schools.” This report was commissioned by the Alliance for Education, one of many local education funds (LEFs) around the country. Like the other LEFs, it takes money from prominent billionaires and local companies. It uses that money to influence policy in the Seattle Public Schools system, and then works closely with the district to make sure that policy is implemented.

NCTQ’s “Human Capital” report cost $14,000, and was paid for in part by the Gates Foundation. (The Gates Foundation has funded the Alliance, NCTQ, and the report itself.)

And that’s not all. From around the same week we have “15 Reasons Why the Seattle School District Should Shelve the MAP® Test—ASAP”:

2. Too costly. MAP® = an unfunded mandate. The initial subscription to the test cost $370,000. But the district has spent much more since then in implementation costs. A portion of the $7.2 million Gates Foundation grant to SPS in 2009 went toward MAP®. Another $4.3 million of the February 2010 school levy was also earmarked for MAP®. Some believe that the proposed $2 million network capacity upgrade currently before the school board is also associated with the test. By some measures, MAP® has cost our school district as much as $10 million.

It has become hard keeping track of all of Gates’ front groups in education. TFA for example was a major one some months ago and last year. But they keep nym-shifting, multiplying, and using decoys, just like some of Microsoft’s front groups. “Teaching First is a puppet organisation of the Gates Foundation,” writes Gates Keepers, pointing to the article which explain what Teaching First is all about. It’s very blatant based on this opening paragraph:

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is spending at least $3.5 million to create a new organization whose aim is to win over the public and the media to its market-driven approach to school reform, according to the closely held grant proposal.

The organization is tentatively called “Teaching First,” and already has a chief executive officer: Yolie Flores, a member of the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education, who has championed such issues as public school choice and teacher effectiveness. Flores did not immediately return phone calls for comment. A Gates foundation spokesman said she would take over the job fulltime when her board term is up in June.

The Gates proposal lays out a strategy to win public approval for the foundation’s investment of more than $335 million in teacher effectiveness programs in four school districts that involve controversial initiatives including linking teacher pay to student standardized test scores. Critics (including me) say this “value-added” model-based test scores is unfair measure of how well a teacher is doing because there are many factors that go into how well a student does on a test.

The Gates Foundation should not be mistaken for Bill’s apology to the society he hurt. Gates Foundation is yet more punishment to yet more people, even those who do not have a computer. We will explain why in the next few posts. In the mean time, internalise the reality that Gates remains around here for many years to come, probably to hurt society while imposing self-censorship on journalists. Well, read the following response to the article. It was posted here:

So, The Gates foundation strategy is an attack from the front and on the flank (Please excuse the battle metaphor). Note that Gates is approaching (aka, controlling) his corporate edu-reform propaganda from two points of entry.

He is directly funding favorable PR to organizations for his ill informed education initiative at the same time he is rating independent media reports at his obnoxious “Media Bullpen” http://mediabullpen.com/

Does anyone think that this bullpen is anything other than an intimidation tactic to marginalize public criticism of his education privatization scheme? Check out the batting averages and home runs for school choice, teacher’s unions, and funding.

Well, eventually he bribes his way into the desired outcome (desired by Gates, who sends his children to private schools, just like his pawn Arne Duncan, whose legitimacy is being lost). US education is in a state of crisis because it becomes a private business benefiting very few people and misinforming tomorrow’s children. Gates does not “think of the children”. He exploits them to gain more money and/or power. And at the end of the day when they are all suffering from this exploitation he’ll just leave them to rot in the puddle of their own misery. That’s the Mr. Gates we knew all along when he worked full-time for Microsoft. He only refers to getting children “addicted” (to Microsoft products) as a valid business model. Why should anyone accept his PR? █

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Does Anyone Still Use Xandros?

Posted in Debian, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Xandros at 9:55 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Xandros is for sale

Summary: The distributor which pays Microsoft $50 per copy (for patent assurance) seems to have gone silent

ONE distribution we only ever hear about in historical context is Xandros, which pays Microsoft for GNU/Linux (although SUSE is still Microsoft’s favourite child). It is usually mentioned in reference to Eee PC. Actually, we find a great deal of revisionism in this area. Rather than explain how Microsoft distorted the sub-notebooks market in anti-competitive ways, the newer pieces pretend that GNU/Linux should be blamed. But either way, how many people still use Xandros? It has virtually no existence in the news because the distribution, which is oddly enough still up for sale, is many years old. Xandros as a company seems to have gone missing and it even sold Scalix last month, making a bit of a wave at the time (more like a ripple though).

Is anybody aware of a business which still uses Xandros somewhere? If so, we would like to know. Using the latest Debian would be a lot better than using some ancient “Xandros”, which is a controversial ripoff job that many Debian GNU/Linux developers are not too happy with.

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Misconception: The Problem With the US Patent System is Just Patent Trolls and/or Just Software Patents

Posted in Apple, Google, IBM, Law, Patents at 9:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Clarifications and explanations regarding the goal of a (yet theoretical) patent reform that would actually prove to be effective

EVERY ONCE in a while, someone suggests an amendment to the systems we have in place. Law and governance forever evolve, or devolve. On the one hand there are lobbyists working at the behest of people who seek to distort the system for their client/s and on the other hand there are grassroots efforts to make the systems more sane and civilised. It is an eternal battle and the power that wins depends on the integrity of politicians. If politics expels lobbyists and abolishes cronyism, then the return on investment becomes too low for lobbying to remain a compelling option. Bill Gates and his friend Nathan (the world’s biggest patent troll) have been lobbying a lot recently to further perturb patent policy in favour of the billionaires. It is a tough battle in the US. We covered the issue many times before and showed that lobbying for the billionaires is shrewdly being disguised as helping “the little guy” (or gal).

“But spending money upfront for the chance of a better world is our job. And it’s the right thing to do.”
      –Pascal-Emmanuel GobryTo confront or address this serious issue we must first define what the problems are. There is no single ‘camp’ here because some people want all software patents eliminated, some prefer to see only a portion of them (the “bad” ones) eliminated, and some just want to make patents work in favour of themselves or Linux (the "IBM way", maybe Google too based on its recent Android defence strategy).

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, a persistent critic of software patents as of late [1, 2, 3], makes suggestions for getting rid of patent trolls, which are more like a symptom than the main problem. Many of them use software patents and give the illusion that not only gigantic companies use patents to cause harm. “Every venture-backed startup needs to make a credible, public statement now: we will fight every patent troll case, to the Supreme Court if we have to,” suggests Gobry. “Every venture capitalist needs to make a credible, public statement: we will finance our portfolio companies’ cases against patent trolls. We recognize that it’s going to be a long, hard slog. We’re going to burn tons of money at first. But spending money upfront for the chance of a better world is our job. And it’s the right thing to do.”

Well, this is not the key problem and it “ignores they are *intended* part of patent system, though,” writes Georg Greve in relation to this article. Trying to pretend that getting rid of patent trolls is the only desired “reform” is what lobbyists of large companies have been doing. As we saw quite recently with Apple’s embargo threats and legal actions (with fake 'evidence'), the problem is not just bigger than patent trolls; it is bigger than software patents, too. Sometimes we have patent cartels. According to this new article, Apple continues to pursue patents. Here is the latest:

A patent application submitted by Apple has revealed its plans to turn the iPod and iPhone into a mobile karaoke system that can help to teach amateur singers how to hit the right pitch and key.

The bottom line is, large companies — not just patent trolls — are exploiting the USPTO to make themselves rich. This leaves more than 99% of the US public totally betrayed by this system that their government fosters. █

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Open Bugs Day at OpenSUSE, But Biggest Bugs Are Overlooked

Posted in GNU/Linux, Novell, OpenSUSE, SLES/SLED at 4:42 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Microsoft spreads like a virus through SUSE

Summary: The influence of Microsoft on SUSE and SUSE’s influence on other distributions (to move to SUSE’s ways) are the bugs which the community is unwilling or unable to talk about

IT IS Open Bugs Day today, at least at OpenSUSE. But the project still fails to see that its biggest problem is that it is helping Microsoft. Its people try to spread themselves to Gentoo (just like Arch). The danger is, even if Microsoft’s distro fails, those other distributions that became dependent on it will be under increased risk. See for example how Novell planted Hyper-V in Linux, which later percolated onto other distributions. SUSE is like Microsoft’s ‘insider’ inside its competition, not just as an informant but also as an agenda-setter. SUSE’s employees are not prepared to even mention — let alone question — the recent deal with Microsoft. Among the OopenSUSE Conference (OSC) blog posts we find this one about SaX3, which reinvents the wheel the (Open)SUSE way.

From now on, I will focus a lot on fixing issues and polishing the UI, specially the touchpad one and yes offcourse clean some code.

Given that there are already front ends to it, why bother with the OpenSUSE way of doing things? And why spread that to other distributions? The same goes for package management, which SUSE ties to YaST [1, 2] rather than work upsream with other distributions. Amid decreased participation from the community (who would rather help upstream GNOME) the project lacks news of substance and tries generating some with artificial and superficial “contests” such as this one:

As recently announced here, the LXDE team is looking for graphics contributors. Trying to involve as much people as possible i created a graphic contest! Is time for you, cool graphics, to create a logo for the openSUSE-LXDE team!

LXDE is a fine environment, but why would it want to be associated with Microsoft's dragon that does a lot of things in its different ways that reduce consistency among distributions and creates a Microsoft dependency?

SUSE has become a huge liability. It oughtn’t be embraced, it should be avoided. Microsoft is the one feeding it now and it’s no charity. SUSE helps Microsoft. █

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