11.25.07
An Issue of Mistrust: Bill Gates, BayStar, Acacia, SCO, and Linux
There is no trust in proxies
Disclaimer: I am not an SCO expert. For all I know, Shane is more familiar than me with SCO matters and, as a matter of fact, Linux.org has a decent timeline that I could truly learn from. I wasn’t following the SCO case before 2005. If you decide to read this, please read it in full before dismissing this as “another conspiracy theory” (the quick way out and a shoot-the-messenger tactic).
We wish to explore the past in order to understand the BayStar-Acacia connection a little better. Acacia has links with Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] and SCO is known to have had links with BayStar (and with Microsoft, by proxy). We wish to know if Acacia's case against Red Hat and Novell is indeed the next generation of lawsuits (among a few more, not just SCO) triggered by Microsoft (by proxy). There is already some good evidence of an Acacia-BayStar link, but what about Microsoft?
As a quick roundup, let us consider the fact that in 2004 Microsoft did ask BayStar if they would like to invest in SCO. SCO buybacks then began. BayStar’s connection had some articles showing up as early as 2004, e.g. this one from CNET, with some further interpretation in this messaage.
Also worth quoting is this bit:
BayStar spokesman McGrath would not say who called BayStar managing partner Lawrence Goldfarb, but Goldfarb told BusinessWeek that it was not Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates or Chief Executive Steve Ballmer.
From another source:
McGrath said the suggestion came from unidentified “senior Microsoft executives” but not Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, or Steven A. Ballmer, its chief executive.
I would like to know if Gates was at least aware this transaction. He said he had never heard about BayStar. He actually said that last year, but there is no way to know the truth. We have competing stories, until the SCO story unfolds some more.
Here is what Bill Gates told Niall Kennedy:
Niall:
OK. Two questions.
1. Was Microsoft ever directly involved with the SCO Group in their lawsuit against IBM, either through BayStar Capital or others?
2. Why is Microsoft recently choosing to go after supposed patent violations with various operating system companies?
Bill:
I don’t know BayStar.
Niall:
It’s an investment company. One of their executives testified Microsoft invested $50 million to offset SCO’s costs in the lawsuit.
Bill:
When?
This was actually said shortly after some very revealing evidence had been found, namely the sort of thing which is discussed in this huge thread. BayStar again hit the headlines in 2006, triggered by items like this and this about the Goldfarb declaration. The declaration is a sworn affidavit which was filed in the litigation. Anyone can actually get a copy from PACER directly. A month later, IBM subpoenaed Microsoft, Sun and HP over the SCO trial.
”His declaration mentions Microsoft specifically as being the company that sent him (Baystar) to invest in SCO.“If you look at Groklaw’s Timeline page, find the IBM exhibits and look for Goldfarb if you need more details. His declaration mentions Microsoft specifically as being the company that sent him (Baystar) to invest in SCO. Of course Microsoft denies it. Also look for the Mike Anderer memo.
Where does that leave Mr. Gates? It is very hard to find (I’ve spent about an hour searching) a connection between Bill Gates himself and BayStar. My attempt is to prove that Gates’ reply to Niall’s question was untruthful (i.e. that he was just playing naive).
At risk of going tangentially here, the reason why I suspect Bill Gates may have lied, is past evidence, some of which is presented below in order to convince you, the reader, that Gates was caught lying many times before (even repeatedly).
The arrogance and rudeness of Bill Gates can be seen here, but deception and pathological lies are something that we have not discussed here before. Well, now we will.
Only last week, Bill Gates was pretty much caught lying, again.
“Two years from now, spam will be solved.”
— Microsoft’s (MSFT) Bill Gates, 2004, World Economic Forum in Switzerland
[...]
“I never said it would be solved,” Gates said in an interview with USA TODAY last month. “I said it would be substantially reduced, and in fact it has been reduced a lot.”
As you can see, first he contradicts an actual quote. What’s more, he then lies. It is a known fact that SPAM levels have gone through the roof (rising by almost an order of magnitude) in the past few years.
Hundreds of millions of Windows PCs are already compromised and they are controlled by criminals who use them to send SPAM on occasions. Don’t believe this? Here are the words from several security gurus. These happen to be words which the mainstream media suppresses in order not to incite public panic. The first one, which comes from Dan Geer, had him lose his job due to Microsoft’s string-pulling (yes, again , and possibly again).
- In zombies we trust (from last week)
- Over 50% of corporate desktops infected with malware: IronPort (article pulled for no apparent reason, Web Archive has no copy, but I have a partial one)
- Botnet ‘pandemic’ threatens to strangle the net
- Microsoft is the world’s biggest cause of zombie remailers
The biblical amounts of SPAM is not only a problem very severe, but it can also be attributed to proprietary software, which contains back door. Think about mistrust again and consider for example:
- Did NSA Put a Secret Backdoor in New Encryption Standard?
- Microsoft could be teaching police to hack Vista
- UK holds Microsoft security talks
- Why proprietary code is bad for security
- Beware of Skype
- FBI ducks questions about its remotely installed spyware
- United States Government Online Watchdogs? Part of the war on terror?
- Video about back doors in Windows XP, among other things
- Duh! Windows Encryption Hacked Via Random Number Generator
- ‘Trusted’ Computing
- How NSA access was built into Windows
- NSA Builds Security Access Into Windows
Let’s consider other incidents where disinformation got disseminated.
Here is BIll Gates spreading Apple Mac FUD.
A few days later, I saw what Bill Gates had to say in a recent Newsweek interview about the Mac as compared to Vista.
“I mean, it’s fascinating, maybe we shouldn’t have showed so publicly the stuff we were doing, because we knew how long the new security base was going to take us to get done. Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine.”
My reaction, like most knowledgeable people who read this, was open-mouthed astonishment. Now, either Bill is heavily drugged and delusional, which I don’t believe, or he’s just completely ignorant, which I also discount, or he knows exactly what he’s saying and has an ulterior motive. That’s my best guess.
Bill Gates knows that he’s at best exaggerating and at worst completely lying through his teeth. So why’s he doing it? Because he also knows that Apple’s new ads are helping Macs to sell like hot cakes, and that security is a big reason why a lot of people are throwing up their hands in disgust at Windows and switching to Apple’s computers.
Who reads Newsweek? Not computer pros, but Joe and Jane Computer-user, and Joe and Jane tend to believe what they read in the mainstream media when it comes to computers, especially when that nice, smart philanthropist Bill Gates is the one saying it. He’s Mr Computer, after all, so he must be right!
More examples can be found here.
Denial! C’mon Billy Boy, you know things suck in the land of Vista. Just admit it and we’ll be on our way.
Who could ever forget the deposition?
Boies: Do you remember that in January, 1996, a lot of OEMs were bundling non-Microsoft browsers?
Gates: I’m not sure.
Boies: What were the non-Microsoft browsers that you were concerned about in January of 1996?
Gates: What’s the question? You’re trying to get me to recall what other browsers I was thinking about when I wrote that sentence?
Boies: No, because you’ve told me that you don’t know what you were thinking about when you wrote that sentence.
Gates: Right.
Boies: What I’m trying to do is get you to tell me what non-Microsoft browsers you were concerned about in January of 1996. If it had been only one, I probably would have used the name of it. Instead I seem to be using the term non-Microsoft browsers. My question is what non-Microsoft browsers were you concerned about in January of 1996?
Gates: I’m sure — what’s the question? Is it — are you asking me about when I wrote this e-mail or what are you asking me about?
Boies: I’m asking you about January of 1996.
Gates: That month?
Boies: Yes, sir.
Gates: And what about it?
Boies: What non-Microsoft browsers were you concerned about in January of 1996?
Gates: I don’t know what you mean “concerned.”
Boies: What is it about the word “concerned” that you don’t understand?
Gates: I’m not sure what you mean by it.
Audio and video here, for those who can spare a few hours.
Here is our local copy of the depositions of Bill Gates in the Microsoft anti-trust suit. We did our best to convert the original Windows Media files into an Open format, ogg. Your webmaster is responsible for the video transcoding, the audio-only files are contributed by a Groklaw member that requested to stay anonymous.
Here is he claimed to have been caught lying to the press and to the Congress.
Bill Gates has been busted in a big fat lie and we’ve got the statistics to prove it.
Here is a convenient slant on Vista pricing here in the UK.
If you watched the above video you will recall that bill gates said that british consumers will not be paying more than US customers, and that any price difference is merely due to differences in exchange rate
As you’ll quickly find here, these claims are utter nonsense and Microsoft knows it.
As another example, consider controversial one. The Gates Foundation is a very sensitive issue and the media delivers a lot of disinformation that portrays the group’s work and its founders as though they are saints. Despite media control, the LA Times was brave enough to put the Foundation to doubt. I wrote more about it here and here, among many other places. The bottom lies is that there is a lot of deception and dishonesty when it comes to the Gates Foundation, yet the media does not talk about it. It was only a fortnight ago that I saw the Gates Foundation investing heavily in yet another media company. Let’s just call it what it is and explain why the Novell deal is still misunderstood by so many.
Moving on to the last example, recall Bill Gates’ endless ranting and whining about the lack of engineers and poor engineering education in the United States. It is all just a big self-serving hoax, as explained by the following two articles (among more):
1. Is There a Shortage of U.S. Tech Workers?
Speaking before a Senate committee earlier this month, Gates said that America is facing a critical shortage of tech workers. He recommended boosting the number of H-1B visas to allow more foreign tech workers into the U.S.
[...]
“I think that has created an environment where the population of advanced skill workers has shrunk a lot in the U.S., because we just haven’t created a fair system,” he says. “Where if you go to other countries, you’ll find national policy around broadband deployment, which creates a much more even playing field for people of all income levels to learn by and work by.”
“We did it to ourselves,” he says.
2. Study: There Is No Shortage of U.S. Engineers
…a new study from Duke University calls this argument bunk, stating that there is no shortage of engineers in the United States, and that offshoring is all about cost savings.
There is another very recent study that reaches the same conclusions, but the two examples above ought to suffice.
We’ve admittedly drifted off topic here, but perhaps some of the material above will prove valuable and be worth cross-referencing in the future. There is no trust. █
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