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...
"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... ⬆