Bonum Certa Men Certa

The Fine Art of Media Obfuscation to Discredit Critics

A hospital bed



Summary: Recollection of what I and others have witnessed over the years in hospitals and various facilities that help save lives; the common theme seems to be Microsoft failing in catastrophic ways, causing systems to completely perish and collapse, thus costing many people their lives (a topic that media rarely even touches; it is too busy trying to poke fun or misrepresent critics of the status quo)

RECENTLY we published a number of key articles about how media had been misplacing blame after severe and sometimes complete (meaning full stack, comprehensive and wide-ranging -- from back end to front end) Microsoft Windows cracks in hospitals. It's nothing that a reboot can fix (systems down, data like medical records copied by rogue actors, typically with data loss too; the last element makes it akin to actual theft because the originals too were gone or locked out of reach for days if not weeks). This is no laughing matter; many people die due to that every day (several aspects to it; it can be broken down into pertinent but overlapping categories of harm). Based on media reports, some of which we collated before, this happens quite routinely. Even setting aside only the publicly-reported incidents (a subset of the whole and limited to one language), we're probably dealing here with thousands of hospitals. Thousands. Many millions of patients. Actual lives at stake. Families, friends...



Hospitals typically belittle the impact in their face-saving, damage-limiting moves and carefully-crafted statements, assisted by PR-esque operatives in local media. Things are, we're often told, far worse than media leads people to believe. The press coverage, in that regard, does more harm than good. It's misinforming the public. Moreover, the real culprits aren't being held accountable. They're painted as ignorant victims. In the same way a Microsoft co-founder, a longtime 'class bully', closely associating with known sexual predators is just a "mistake" and "I'm really, really sorry..." (or regret)

"We recently noticed a growing number of wacky claims about Bill Gates."The media sure knows how to use particular words, Googlebomb the Web, and avoid the mention of particular words. This is their art, the fine art of what they sometimes call "professional journalism" but is actually spin for media owners and barons who 'rent' such media space. It's one of many rogue elements in the media and it's quite likely why Richard Stallman is no longer at MIT and the FSF (we wrote a lot about that last year). It certainly helped distract from what Bill Gates had done at MIT -- as revealed just days prior to the "War on Stallman" (based on misrepresentation of things he had said... not even privately). Some people have called it "Free software 9/11"; that's not to say that Stallman is above criticism; but he certainly -- like almost everyone out there -- has something that can be massively condemned to cause a Web storm, blackmail organisations into kicking him out and so on. People who believe they're robust to such media frenzies are deluding themselves. Libel too can be made up to suit objectives; only to be admitted as such after the "mission" was "accomplished"... (too late for justice, retraction and redemption)

But this article isn't about Stallman. It's mostly about the media. It's about how media deals -- if at all -- with the impact of Windows on people's health and well-being. We have a lot left to say in future parts, which we work on meticulously to ensure accuracy. We have supporting evidence.

We recently noticed a growing number of wacky claims about Bill Gates. We don't want to reproduce them here. Yesterday someone even linked to Techrights in Twitter, claiming that Bill Gates was female.

"Then there's all that "QAnon" nonsense, which we responded to several times lately."Some rather baseless and usually nutty claims aren't a new thing; it's not limited to Gates either. There are many people online who also claim that Lady Gaga and Michelle Obama are secretly male. That doesn't mean it merits any attention. We'd rather write nothing about Bill Gates than deal with utter nonsense; we prefer to focus on the real issues rather than write anything which later turns out to be less than accurate, including some of the Coronavirus "conspiracy theories". We don't have time for that. The old articles which we published are read a lot these days. These are actually accurate, but they're often misinterpreted by those with an agenda, looking to sell their "conspiracy theories" (e.g. so-called "plandemic").

Then there's all that "QAnon" nonsense, which we responded to several times lately. These people do a lot of damage by false association. They serve to make 'caricatures' of legitimate critics and good, facts-based research with hard evidence. Some people have joked that those idiots exist for a purpose and that purpose is to distract and discredit.

There are protests around the world at the moment against Bill Gates (links omitted; journalism about this has been shoddy and patronising). The media obviously mischaracterises these or uses these to collectively mischaracterise critics of Gates. They're spun as reckless people who are a hazard to public health and safety. That's not at all what they are however... and there's an element of partisanship to it ("either you're with Bill or with anti-vaccination people").

"...some 'genius' decided to replace GNU/Linux on our supercomputers with some experimental and rapidly-failing Windows thing (which Microsoft advertised heavily at the time).""Reassuring" is what an associate of ours called the protests, but he worries about how media frames these, sometimes collectively (we saw people who attend these; they're no "k00ks"). "Note the parallels in tactics used to promote 5G these days. The debate has been ignored and the media's attention has shifted to the chaos created by disinformation and crackpottery spread via Facebook by groups paid for by various interests. One example there is that the impact on weather radar is abandoned in favor of how stupid it is to think that radio waves cause virus outbreaks. That's some serious propaganda kung fu there. Bill's team has been using saturate, diffuse, and confuse tactics against all media, not just what they bribe, for many years now. Lately it is many orders of magnitude worse though. I am concerned that there's a reason for that, otherwise they would not spend the money. tldr; they make heavy use of this fallacy..."

This takes us back to the role of Windows in hospitals -- often a fatal/lethal role. The media is happy to speak about a great number of COVID-19 casualties to push particular agenda of particular companies (there are some who profit from online shopping). Where were those journalists when people with cancer had scans and critical operations canceled due to Windows issues? Or when thousands of people per day, in one single hospital, could not receive treatment because their medical records could not be retrieved? Or, as I've seen at work, research into medical symptoms was interrupted by Microsoft vandalism...

A long time ago, more than 15 years ago, I volunteered to do some MRI scans for a colleague's research. I was sent home after the machine had 'crashed' (Windows); suffice to say, that machine was out of service for the rest of that day. My understanding is that these machines have since then been switched to Linux. I saw a lot of things and heard a lot of things as a student in a medical faculty. And since I'm no longer there I can safely speak about some of these things though I lack paper/digital notes of those things.

"We were forced by a crazy, Microsoft-connected journalist turned failed store owner, turned medical administrator for the clinic," told me a person once upon a time, to move to "everything Microsoft". The person "brought in some real assholes who installed performance-killing spyware on FDA approved systems against the vendor's recommendation. Their sloppiness and refusal to remove the spyware got them kicked out, and ultimately doomed the administrator, but not before [the administrator] fired my wonderful Free software-aware IT person and caused an insurmountable rift between the doctors that nearly ruined the practice."

"The IT successors," continued this person, "chosen by the crazy administrator, eliminated our Free software infrastructure and put everything on Microsoft IIS. They claimed it was required by the medical records system they put in place, but they could have set up a dummy server for that crap."

I'll always remember how, way back around 2005 when I was a doctoral student, some 'genius' decided to replace GNU/Linux on our supercomputers with some experimental and rapidly-failing Windows thing (which Microsoft advertised heavily at the time). It caused an uproar, resignations, and was technically a failure, of course. I personally raised concerns too (which is risky when you're merely a student), wrote about it in my personal blog at the time (it predates this site), and saw it bringing medical research we were doing to a standstill.

Microsoft just wanted to use us as an experiment; "marketing..."

I don't suppose the press ever told the world that catastrophic story. Nobody would pay for such a story to be written; neither the Gates Foundation nor Microsoft...

Recent Techrights' Posts

Traf-O-Data, the Company That Jeffrey Epstein's BFF (Bill Gates) (Co)Founded 53 Years and Went Out of Business Due to Heavy Losses
Who will die first, Bill or Microsoft?
A Note on SimilarWeb
Or why SimilarWeb is meaningless for more than 99% of the sites on the Web
IBM Said to be Shutting Down Offices or Sites in the United States
the press can no longer avoid admitting that IBM moves many jobs to India
LLM Slop as Attack Vector on the Reputation of Linux
The attacks on Linux have escalated to information warfare
 
Techrights Has Dealt With More Potent SLAPPs Than Violent Microsofters Begging to Hide What They Did to Women
I became accustomed to SLAPPs
Links 04/04/2025: Fury in South Korea, Flight MH370 Remains Mystery
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/04/2025: Anger and Raspberry Pi CM4
Links for the day
Links 04/04/2025: LLM Slop Bubble Bursting and Korea Music Copyright Association Bans Slop 'Music'
Links for the day
Why Microsoft's Shares Sank Almost 20% in Recent Months (the Bubble is Imploding)
verified press reports from the past 24 hours
GNU/Linux Rises to Almost 5% in Algeria While Windows Sinks to All-Time Low
GNU/Linux grew tenfold
Where to Get More Gags
A valued reader recommended that to us
Links 04/04/2025: Tech Stock (Inc. GAFAM) Fall, Google Pretends to Do End-to-End Encrypted Emails (With Google in Control)
Links for the day
To Participate in Fedora Diversity You Must Use Proprietary Software
Not for the first time either
Yandex About to Be Three Times Bigger Than Microsoft (Bing) in Asia
That's about 60% of the world's population
Gemini Links 04/04/2025: Decoupling Updates, Elaho as Gemini Client
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, April 03, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, April 03, 2025
Microsoft's Trouble in Africa and Asia
A new all-time high for GNU/Linux
Brett Wilson LLP Reported to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)
The saddest thing in all this is that law firms can maintain high standards shall they wish to
Links 03/04/2025: Tariff Pains and C.D.C. Cuts
Links for the day
StatCounter: Microsoft is Masking a Disaster, It's Way Behind DeepSeek Already and Interest in LLMs Has Waned
it turns out the money "raised" for "Open" "AI" may not even exist at all
Links 03/04/2025: SoftBank Money for Microsoft "Open" "AI" Probably Doesn't Even Exist, Wikimedia Foundation Blasts LLM Nuisance While Microsoft Admits Demand Has Shrunk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/04/2025: Patch Panel and Pictures
Links for the day
Islamic Republic of Iran: GNU/Linux at All-time High This Month, Windows Falls to 12%
Vista 10 is up this month despite being "end of life" (EoL) soon
Indonesia: All-Time Highs for GNU/Linux
What's noteworthy right now is the growth of GNU/Linux
statCounter Says GNU/Linux Usage is Up Again (Internationally)
some preliminary April data
Only on April 1st Can the Free Software Foundation Associate With Microsoft's Open Source Initiative (OSI)
We saw some pranks that day linking the FSF to Microsoft (e.g. "endorsing" Windows)
Confirmed in the Mainstream Media: A Lot of Microsoft "Workloads" Were Just LLM Slop (Helping to Fake Growth for Years, as Microsoft Had Paid "Open" "AI" to Become a "Client") and Demand is Rapidly Waning, Datacentres Canceled and/or Shut Down
Anything to facilitate further accounting fraud
Taiwan's Media Covers Closure of Microsoft's "AI" Lab, It's Time to Talk About the Gradual Death of Windows and Implosion of the "AI" Bubble
Earlier this week we showed that mostly Asian media had the 'nerve' to mention Microsoft silently shutting down its 'AI' lab
IBM Gets Rid of Kelly Chambliss as Mass Layoffs Reported in IBM Consulting, IBM Loses Key Contracts/Graft
IBM Consulting has been in disarray lately
More Gains for GNU/Linux, Based on Web Surveys
the Steam site shows rapid growth for "Linux" this month
Slopwatch: Anti-Linux Articles, Not Even Written by Humans
Why aren't Web sites more vocal about this problem?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, April 02, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, April 02, 2025
Links 03/04/2025: Apple Fined Over Secret Surveillance, "Elegant Writer For A More Civilized Age"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 02/04/2025: Books and Cold Tea
Links for the day
Links 02/04/2025: More Layoffs, Nokia Again Takes Advantage of Illegal and Unconstitutional Patent Court With Nokia Staff as 'Judges'
Links for the day
Links 02/04/2025: Seizures and Returns to Windows of 24 Years Ago
Links for the day
LLM Slop Helps Obscure and Distort News About Layoffs (IBM, GAFAM)
It's hard to find accurate information
Links 02/04/2025: Microsoft Developers Are Threatening to Go on Strike, World Backup Day Noted
Links for the day
Gemini Protocol Has Growing Appeal (the Web Got Too Bloated and Full of LLM Slop)
For any "data plan" with bandwidth limits or "tiers" it would be cheaper to use/browse Geminispace
The Web Can Survive LLM Slop, But Only If We Collectively Shun and Discourage Serial Sloppers
Doing nothing ought not be a possibility
Amid Secret Shut-downs and Mass Layoffs at Microsoft (4 Waves of Layoffs in 3 Months of 2025) Some Microsoft Staff Expected to Go On Strike
workers going on strike
Gemini Links 02/04/2025: No more on Mastodon and Gemini Mention Script in Go
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, April 01, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, April 01, 2025
My Motion Disbarring or “Striking Off” Brett Wilson LLP for Enabling Violent Americans Who Try to Crush Microsoft Critics in the United Kingdom by Multiple SLAPPs
"Guns for hire" (for Microsoft people who received Microsoft salaries)
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Hijacked Again by Patent Litigation Industry, as President Cheeto Prioritises Aggressors
The "mafia" has taken over the "industry" and the Federal system (justice and constitutions trampled upon)
Ubuntu Slop and FUD Manufactured With LLMs and Funded (by Oneself) 'Studies'
Slop and FUD are ruining the Web