04.16.14
Posted in Bill Gates, Microsoft, Patents at 3:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Patent sharks still collaborate
Summary: Microsoft hands money to Bill Gates’ close friend who is the world’s largest patent troll
WE recently explained that Apple and Microsoft were helping trolls and preventing patent reform in the United State. Intellectual Ventures, the world’s largest patent troll (funded in part by Microsoft and Bill Gates) was having financial difficulties, so guess who’s stepping in to the rescue, essentially subsidising trolling? Intellectual Ventures is said to have “persuaded Microsoft and Sony to invest in its latest acquisition fund” (of patents). Once again, as in Rockstar, Microsoft and Sony align in patent agenda and as Masnick puts it, “while many of the companies have indeed avoided giving IV any more money, it appears that Microsoft and Sony were quite happy to dump a lot more cash into IV, which has now ramped up its patent buying efforts again (as well as its lobbying and political contributions in an effort to kill off patent reform). Microsoft, of course, has always been close to IV, seeing as it was started by the company’s former CTO, Nathan Myhrvold, who is also a close friend of Bill Gates (who has directly helped IV get some patents). Similarly, Microsoft has become one of the most aggressive patent abusers over the last decade, increasingly relying on its stock of patents to make money from other people’s innovations, rather than innovating on its own.”
“This is racketeering by proxy.”Masnick correctly concludes that “via Intellectual Ventures and its own patent holdings, Microsoft seems to be trying to make sure Gates’ prediction is a reality. It all fits in to the same paradigm we’ve observed for years. When you’re young, you innovate. When you’re old, you litigate. Microsoft appears to have given up on innovation, but is ramping up on litigation, and re-investing in patent trolling via Intellectual Ventures is merely the latest step.”
This is racketeering by proxy. It’s part of the patent-stacking strategy which includes even Nokia and Apple. Bill Gates, which is a close partner of the world’s largest troll, has a lot to do with it. In a system where billionaires enjoy zero accountability jails are reserved only for petty ‘crimes’. █
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04.15.14
Posted in Antitrust, Bill Gates, Courtroom, Microsoft at 10:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A new lawsuit by a Microsoft shareholder shows everything that’s wrong with today’s model of accountability, where those who are responsible for crimes are accused of not avoiding fines rather than committing the crimes
THE MENTALITY OF greedy investors, and more so investors who put their money in a criminal enterprise, is worth noting. Microsoft has a long history of crime and the investors occasionally sue not because the act of committing crime is bad but because Microsoft fails to dodge the fines (i.e. there is conviction for the crimes).
Here we have a new example of an investor in a criminal company complaining about the wrong thing. To quote the Indian press: “The lawsuit, brought by shareholder Kim Barovic in federal court in Seattle on Friday, charges that directors and executives, including founder Bill Gates and former chief executive officer Steve Ballmer, failed to manage the company properly and that the board’s investigation was insufficient into how the miscue occurred.”
The problem is not that they “failed to manage the company properly”; as we saw in court documents, the crimes go all the way to the top and include instructions from Bill Gates, who chose to break competition laws. This “Supreme Villain” is now spending his wealth on PR (distracting from his crimes), in order to gain yet more wealth while paying virtually nothing in tax.
Here is a new article about protests against Bill Gates profiteering from private prisons.
Criminals rarely change their spots, they just change how the public perceives them. Gates was personally responsible for many of Microsoft’s crimes (and we have the documents to prove it), but nowadays he is busy bribing much of the press and even blogs in order to paint a different picture while he keeps hoarding a lot more money (at everyone else’s expense). Historically there were people like Gates who used the same tactics to alter public opinion. What’s truly shameful is that the biggest (more expensive) crimes still lead to no jail sentence, especially when the government is funded and run by corporations. █
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04.11.14
Posted in Bill Gates, Fraud at 6:31 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Lobbying and monopolisation money at work
Summary: A story from an insider is shared with Techrights, shedding light on abuses and coverup (with NDA)
OUR VERY MANY GATES-THEMED POSTS which outline lesser-known facts about the Gates Foundation have occasionally led to us receiving mail from people who saw the same facts from the inside. They agree with the analysis and they want to say more even though they are often unable to do so, due to gag orders. Some of them, understandably enough, do so anonymously and some ask for their identity not to be publicly known (except by the NSA of course, for it is spying on everyone).
It is rather evident that more and more people are catching up and waking up to the facts. Here for example is a new public petition titled “Bill Gates: Stop investing in the private prison industry!”
It says that “[t]he Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Trust has invested more than $2 million in GEO Group, one of the largest and most abusive private prison corporations in the United States,” but it seems not to know that this practice is quite common for Gates, who also invests in G4S and even worse companies whose role is to crush society on behalf of plutocrats like Gates himself. Gates, an NSA proponent, actually profits from this. So what’s not to like? Profiting and oppressing at the same time.
The plot of Gates will suffer (for a change) when even people from within his camp decide to defect. There are numerous such people who came out (on the record, publicly), but obviously that’s not enough because Gates continues to hoard and expand his personal wealth at an alarming rate (at other people’s expense while pretending to give away his wealth).
Here is a redacted portion of correspondence I have had with one such person (redaction intended only to hide the identity of the person). This is only days old:
> Dr. Schestowitz,
>
> If I knew about a Gates-backed NGO that was intentionally wasting
> funds to try to reinvent technology rather than expanding it for
> malaria and clinics in low-resource settings, what would I do about
> it?
>
> This group has burned through maybe [redacted] a year with zero
> viable technology to help international clinics or even licenseable
> products which would be consistent with the organization mission.
>
> The bottom line of this is PHDs right out of school who have never
> seen clinics in the 3rd world or how simple technologies must be to
> work there, and too arrogant to ask the people in the field or
> spend time in those countries to build something that can help.
>
> What do you recommend?
I covered such examples over the years. I wrote ~200 articles about
the Gates Foundation. If possible, can you provide more details from
which I’ll be able to construct an article? There is scarce
documentation of the failed cases because Gates spends, on average,
around 300 million dollars per year on press alone (i.e. on PR),
beating the criticism only with a staggering amount of puff pieces
from blogs, news sites and panels that he pays for this.
> Roy,
>
> Thanks for the reply. I have an NDA with this group and don’t want
> to be sued. That is part of their power.
>
> The did directly throw away a technology that had been proven to
> work in international clinics for probably the most important
> disease and decided that because they were PhD’s newly out of
> school that they could build a viable product without consulting
> the people in African/Asian/Indian clinics, people from other NGO’s
> that have actually rolled out products that are making a
> difference, rewriting years worth of incredibly complicated
> algorithms, using a device that costs [redacted] that would never work
> or be affordable by clinics, etc.
>
> Is there a group that oversees the Gates funds. I work with a
> leading NGO also in [redacted] that uses their much inferior funding
> to truly achieve impact in low resource areas, looks for meaningful
> teammate organizations to ensure success, etc.
>
> What I saw from this Gates group that’s mission statement is to
> achieve impact and working technology to help in needful areas is
> nothing short of fraud or misappropriation of funds.
>
> Is there any group that oversees these guys?
>
> Thanks!
Thanks for the additional information.
Gates Foundation is accountable mostly to itself, AFAIK. Over the
years I saw many groups, including former partners, complaining about
allocation of funds. This is documented by the press, too. In many
cases, the funds disguise interest in patents and monopolisation of
so-called solutions for the crowd Gates does not understand (can the
richest person from the richest background since childhood really
speak out for the poor and grasp their woes?). In some cases, the
Gates Foundation claims “transparency” and releases face-saving
reports when partners (or former partners) complain. For this too I
can provide lots of references as I covered it at the time. I no
longer have time to keep up with Gates, but last I saw he kept looking
for ways to lobby politicians to pass taxpayers money to his pet
projects, including GMO and GSK-connected patent-boosting
investments/clinical trials on poor people.
Anyway, accountability assumes that there is separation between the
corporate side and the federal side, and that one can monitor the
other. But the boundaries have been blurred and there is now a
marriage of tax-exempt ‘charity’, politics, and industrial partners. I
fear that the only way to fight back is to inform civil rights groups
and inform the public. Over the years I found that more and more
people recognise the Gates Foundation for what it really is. It
doesn’t get a free pass.
If you want to shed light on this anonymously, without revealing your
identity, the product, and company names, that would probably be
possible. As you did not encrypt your messages or used a remailer, you
can assume the intel’ community is already aware of this
communication, but that does not automatically extend to the private
sector.
I am eager to shed light on this without exposing any identity. I have
done this dozens of times over the years and never caused any
retribution/trouble my sources. It is up to you how you want to deal
with the situation, but all I can say at this stage is, the system has
been set up in such a way that there is no credible body to report
this to. A lot of institutions/non-profits blindly assume benevolence
on the part of those who fund them*. The only time I see foundations
being held accountable is when there’s real journalism, such as what
LA Times did 7 years ago.
___
*Some institutions/non-profits, including USAID for example, are de
facto partners of these foundations, helping not only GMO monopolies
but also the overthrow of “bad” leaders in Latin America.
> Roy,
>
> You know that any use of packet sniffing to intercept personal
> email is illegal and not usable, anyone could spoof an email
> account.
>
> Your interest in telling the truth about such a goliath is very
> admirable, so I decided not to hide my email to you. I have used
> relay servers, etc. to send feedback to the Gates Foundation.
>
> It is simply too dangerous for an individual to tell the truth when
> the reality of these funds has nothing to do with their mission
> statements and they have no interest in results, honesty, or
> ethics.
>
> One example is the multiple millions spent on “setting up laser
> fences over all of Sub-Saharan Africa”, not doing any research on
> the practicality of putting such devices all over a continent, or
> that the vector for the disease evolves so quickly that going under
> or over the fences would happen very quickly.
>
> It would have been more practical to spend the millions on a time
> machine to try to go back in time to the beginning of the disease.
> 
>
> Unless there are investors in these funds who want actual returns
> or any even occasional auditing to look at funds spent versus
> tangible results, it appears that it is just a tragic loss for the
> people of the world who could be helped.
>
> No money is spent on researching what works in the field, and the
> “engineers” or “scientists” frittering away the funds and the
> years without doing any research on what works in a low resource
> setting.
>
> So, you have never had contact with any fund investors, governing
> bodies, individuals at the parent Gates Foundation that audit
> individual funds, etc.?
>
> If you do find those kind of people I would give them some
> information. Unfortunately I don’t think that a single newspaper
> article would make a difference.
>
> Thanks.
No single article can make a huge difference, but every little helps.
Due to the disproportionate distribution of wealth, few people now
control the press and can overwhelm real journalism with a barrage of
puff pieces and placements (paid for). The NSA leaks showed that even
nearly a year of leaks with huge impact on public views hardly changed
anything in policy (there is now, finally, talk about ‘reform’, but it
is a bogus reform).
The Gates Foundation has shown over the years that it is very
sensitive about critics. It spies on them and keeps track of coverage.
There is dedicated staff for it; usually it’s called “advocacy”
(euphemistically) and “communication” (meaning PR). I have seen cases
where criticism has been so effective that the foundation changed its
strategy (e.g. won’t support tobacco anymore) or stepped out (e.g.
Melinda leaving Washington Post board after being disgraced for
conflict of interests).
I think that assessors of grants, proposals etc. are hired by Gates to
often align with financial interests (investments) of the foundation,
e.g. people from Monsanto, GSK, and so on. So in order to reach out to
those whose hands are in the cookie jar you’d probably have to go into
the territories of the foundation. There is no proper separability or
oversight there.
What PR agencies are able to do is basically ‘plant’ a lot of fake (ghostwritten) stories in the press (which Gates pays around $300,000,000 per year) to marginalise the true stories (from insiders and direct eyewitnesses), such as the story above. █
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04.05.14
Posted in Bill Gates, Microsoft at 9:06 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A roundup of some recent news about Microsoft’s criminal co-founder and his siege against the poor, the oppressed, or his competition, including free press and the truth
BASED on the headings in The Guardian, Bill Gates continues to funnel money (via proxy) for his publicity charades and for The Guardian to never criticise him or his investments (as The Guardian used to do before it got bribed by Gates). We are currently in contact with a person who is intimately aware of Gates funds being misused in the developing world (more on that soon), basically alleging that through personal involvement he saw how in places like Africa Gates was doing harm, not good. Now, watch how the the Gates-funded The Guardian helps Gates abduct the “Ubuntu” brand/term (with a Gates advertisement at the top). This is a regular thing. It’s lobbying and it is corrupting the press.
There are other areas that Gates is corrupting, including for example US education. The Gates Foundation must have just suffered a major setback as its lobbying for Common Core (using publicly-funded schools to indoctrinate the next generation for plutocrats) got struck out by a governor [1]. “In other good news from that article,” wrote a person in this comment, “my state, Oklahoma, is considering ditching Common Core.”
People who don’t quite grasp how harmful Gates and his ilk have been to this world should recall Microsoft’s relationship with the NSA, which is ideologically tied to Gates' support of the NSA (he has privatised surveillance also and significant investments in G4S).
It has become clear, owing to disclosures from the “Occupy” movement, that the surveillance apparatus protects plutocrats like Gates from the vast majority of the population. Read the new story “David “Debt” Graeber evicted, implicates NYPD intelligence, claims revenge-harassment for OWS participation” (the FBI was shown to have characterised Occupy as “low-level terrorism” and treated it as such). It’s class war. Don’t look for enemies among the lower classes or immigrants (xenophobia). The enemies are well groomed, well known, and we are regularly shown them in corporations-owned media. These are neither scapegoats nor poetic villains; they are people who know very well what they are doing and hence they try to buy our schools, the media, politicians, and everything else which forms our perception of the world. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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Less than four years after Indiana became an early adopter of the national Common Core education standards, Gov. Mike Pence signed legislation Monday making Indiana the first state to opt out of the controversial school guidelines.
But the law does not prohibit parts of Common Core from being written into new standards that are expected to be voted on by the state Board of Education late next month.
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03.17.14
Posted in Bill Gates, Microsoft, Windows at 3:56 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Microsoft leadership professes its love for the NSA
Summary: Bill Gates acknowledges that he likes the NSA, Windows can now be hijacked through a JPEG flaw, XP stops receiving security patches, and Snowden leaks confirm NSA plan to hijack millions of “Microsoft Windows” PCs
Microsoft is a unique company that grew out of and sustained itself using crime. It then took over crime enforcement, reducing the potential/likelihood that it will be held accountable and people among its ranks be sent to prison (or resent in Bill Gates’ case). Microsoft is not an ordinary company; it’s a political animal which has a lot of power over the media and tries to make criminal activities look not only acceptable but commendable.
Out disappointment with the Linux Foundation for hiring into management (of OpenDaylight) a former Microsoft manager is not to be misunderstood by those who know Microsoft’s history. Right now, for example, as more proprietary and NSA-friendly companies join OpenDaylight, the former Microsoft manager, Neela Jacques (also from VMware, which is linked to EMC/RSA and hence NSA), serves the Microsoft-esque agenda by promoting a mix with proprietary, where proprietary, especially in virtualisation, means the embodiment of back doors into Free software (the host can take over the guest). Jacques says: “Customers of the IT industry have long said that being locked into proprietary platforms has real drawbacks – you are stuck with one vendor’s vision, one product roadmap, and the costs of switching can be high. Not a situation most customers enjoy. More, we have a huge systems integration industry in part because of the challenges of getting components from different companies to work with each other. Finally, a lot of technologies that customers love get left to fade away or are made obsolete when a vendor’s priority changes.”
It is clear, based on speakers from OpenDaylight itself [1,2,3], that software freedom is essential in virtualisation. Memset explained this very recently [4,5,6], alluding especially to costs. Why would anyone even tolerate Hyper-V, which we already know (since it runs under Windows) to be a back door for the NSA? And why does Microsoft try to shift privacy critics (focus of attention) to Google? How dare Microsoft do this and then promote the people behind this ugly privacy spin? Watch this new satire [7] (cited by [8]).
Well, you see? Here’s the thing…
Microsoft loves the NSA, and Microsoft folks actively defend what the NSA is doing. Microsoft is the NSA’s most special software partner. It goes beyond software. Kinect and Xbox, for instance, are surveillance devices at the centre of people's homes (Microsoft now “Seeks Patent for New Spy Cam”). Microsoft receives protection from the government (as well as bribes and subsidies) despite its crimes because it’s cooperating with this government’s crimes.
Microsoft now enables hijacking of Windows PCs through a JPEG flaw [9]. Yes, that’s right. JPEG! The scary thing is, many banks-connected machines still use this Swiss cheese OS [10], even though it will no longer receive any security patches next month. What is the world coming to? The latest leak from Snowden reveals that “NSA used ‘Microsoft Windows’ to infect millions of computers” [11]. Will the world wake up and smell the coffee? This is very serious stuff [12] and anyone who still uses Windows should drop it. We already know the NSA’s espionage leanings. Suffice to say, Bill Gates does not like Edward Snowden (he says so now [13-16]) whereas he likes the NSA. It’s all about crushing dissent. It’s class war. No wonder Microsoft extended olive branches to the NSA. This policy goes all the way to the top, sheltering criminal enterprises. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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Open-source products are highly customizable, and aren’t locked in to specific providers. Developers can freely make additions, modifications and alterations to the structure or the code in an open-source setup. The merging of these two technologies has given birth to the open-source virtualization phenomenon, which has key benefits over branded, locked-in solutions. According to a recent study, consumers have saved in the region of $60 billion per year by going open source.
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The Open Networking Summit (ONS) gets underway today as a conference discussing the Software Defined Networking (SDN) movement. But what is SDN anyway, and does it have a uniform definition?
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Pop quiz: What technologies will potentially succeed operating system virtualization? Most pundits will tell you cloud computing or perhaps software defined data center or software-defined networking (SDN). But another potential answer involves so-called container technology like Docker. Here’s why.
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Under the leadership of Satya Nadella, Microsoft has done a major reshuffle at the company. Nadella will be tightening the focus that the sharp and most celebrated CEO of the world, Steve Ballmer, gave to the company with attack campaigns against Google. Nadella is appointing Mark Penn as C-level executive promoting him to the role of chief strategy officer.
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Microsoft has fixed security bugs in Internet Explorer and Windows that allow hackers to remotely execute code on victims’ vulnerable machines – one bug a result of poor JPEG handling.
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The documents leaked by Edward Snowden have yielded what may be their most shocking revelation yet: plans to infect millions of computers with malware to prevent them from working properly. This was devised by the NSA in consultation with a shady billionaire, unofficially named as ‘Bill Gates’, who had close links to many different arms of the US government.
Because Microsoft Windows causes intermittent crashing and losing people’s work, it is claimed in the documents, terrorists will be unable to make videos of their impending martyrdom. By refusing to print reliably, they will not even be able to print out flyers calling on people to ‘rise up against the Western oppressors’.
‘This project has already been successfully used to bring the Iranian nuclear enrichment programme to its knees, along with most Western businesses,’ said a government source, who asked not to be named. ‘There is literally no corner of the world that has not been infected. We believe it is the most successful computer malware of all time.’
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The report from Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher, based on the Edward Snowden leaks reveals that the NSA – surprise, surprise – has automated its spying operations, so that malware once used to target the odd terror suspect can now be used routinely. The programme is called “Owning the net”. (Israel also gets a special shout-out in the report for its work with the NSA in developing malware.)So it’s no longer – and, of course, never was – only about tracking metadata from our phone calls and Google searches. This is industrialised spying, including on domestic populations, using our interactions with the net (which means most of our activities) to know what is going on in our minds.
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As the dangers of NSA spying slowly come to light, with issues ranging from potential CIA spying on US political leaders and stealing documents from the US Senate to a precipitous drop in worldwide confidence in U.S.-based technology platforms, Bill Gates, founder of the core operating system in over 90% of the world’s computers, deftly made the case for NSA spying in a recent Rolling Stone interview. Notable in the interview is not so much what Gates said, but what he didn’t say.
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02.27.14
Posted in Bill Gates, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 7:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Secret deals and racketeering techniques elude journalists who are passing allegations as ‘facts’, damaging Linux for the most part
SOMETHING fascinating has been happening in the corporate press over the past few years (starting 2010 with HTC). Unlike with the Novell deal (Microsoft SUSE), when it comes to Android the press seems eager to push the “Android is not free” line. Even some pro-FOSS journalists are doing it, only to face opposition. To quote Pogson’s response to one of them: “I don’t often disagree with SJVN but I think his argument that M$ makes $billions from Android/Linux taxes is extreme. If that were happening, there would be some mention of it in M$’s SEC filings.”
Not only is this not happening based on any concrete evidence; the sources which make these claims are quoting some arbitrary analysts with Microsoft connections or Microsoft boosters/lobbyists who cite such people. Trace it all back to the source and it looks like make believe. It’s like a big lie that needs to die, at least until or unless there’s some kind of proof.
Those of us who see journalists perpetuating and spreading the claims that Microsoft makes billions of dollars from Android should respond to the authors/editors by equating them with so-called ‘conspiracy theories’ who throw around unsubstantiated claims. Microsoft has long been manufacturing dirt and lies, only to be caught some time later, after much damage had been done to the subject of libel. Bribed journalists often play a role in such big lies and nobody demonstrates this as well as the Gates Foundation, which is basically a lobbying and investment shell (masquerading as a charity and bribing the press to maintain this illusion). As Jamie Love put it yesterday: “The few reporters that have written about the trade disputes over cancer patents are not on the Gates payroll. [...] Gates has effectively aligned itself with Merck, Novartis and others, against cancer patients. Sometimes, discretely. [...] WHO is quite cautious on the IPR issues these days, because of fears that Gates will complain. [...] Gates Foundation funding of health news reporters, most health NGOs, contributes to lack of criticism of Obama’s actions on cancer patents” (we wrote about cancer patents before, including their impact on death). Remember that Gates received got a huge amount of money last year from this patent profiteering (gains of about 15 billion dollars). He is still all about patents and monopolies. Gates is also investing in patent trolls and collaborating with the world’s biggest patent troll, which he helped create (the head of this trolling entity is one of Bill Gates’ best friends).
As Joe Mullin put it the other day, frivolous litigation with baseless patents is still worthwhile in the US because the plaintiff never assumes the financial burden of the cases. This works well for trolls such as Microsoft, Bill Gates, and the world’s biggest patent troll which he created. It’s deterrence against defence. As Mullin puts it: “The American judicial system has long held to a general principle that each party in a dispute should pay for its own legal fees, win or lose.”
Microsoft is a patent troll based on its actions, signing secret deals using useless patents, knowing that the burden of a legal case would be put on the victim. As long as this kind of system prevails the corruption of the industry and the media (which cannot gain access to these secret deals) will continue.
Microsoft corruption is an immensely powerful phenomenon which now transcends the software industry. One way to address this issue is to work on changing the patent system (which is hard). █
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02.19.14
Posted in Bill Gates, FUD, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft at 7:40 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft payments behind proxies that spread FUD about Google, Android, Chrome OS, etc.
THERE IS an extensive, well-coordinated attempt to discredit Google and its Linux-centric projects/efforts. A lot of it is a marketing campaign from Microsoft (sometimes known as “Scroogled”) and some of it comes from Microsoft-bribed academics or lobbyists, as we last demonstrated some days ago (the liar does not mention by name his relationship (payments) with Microsoft).
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (SJVN) has published this reply which cites the Gates-funded (bribed) Guardian (very notable for its FUD against Android and Google as of late). SJVN said: “The Guardian published a story, which they have since taken down, spreading FUD about Google, Android, Linux, open source, and licensing. The paper later published another article trying to get the Android facts right, but, well, they still don’t.”
Charles Arthur (from Gates’ ‘Guardian’) occasionally gives a platform to a Microsoft lobbyist, Florian Müller, especially after Bill Gates paid the paper to promote agenda. This makes ‘Guardian’ look more like Bill Gates’ private guardian and the paper now accepts payments from all sorts of corporations whose agenda it will promote in disguise (already a controversial move). For instance, ‘Guardian’ would happily complain about Google not paying much tax, but it would never mention the fact that Microsoft is by far a bigger offender and that Gates (its Sugar Daddy) is the world’s largest private tax evader. The ‘Guardian’ is a joke when it comes to many areas. It also stabs in the back its sources (Manning, Assange, Snowden, and several examples predating them).
These attacks on Google are not just due to its size. With Nokia, for example, Microsoft now uses moles like Elop (and patent troll whom he feeds) to launch frivolous lawsuits and make false accusations too. A lot of this FUD can be traced back to Microsoft funding as we already have examples of recent FUD that was spread to belittle or demonise Android, not just Chrome OS (which Microsoft broadcasts deceptive ads to discredit, pretending that Microsoft is privacy-respecting). Muktware has published an article titled “Chrome OS Myths Debunked”, hopefully helping to end myths such as the myth that it is not GNU/Linux (actually, it is).
Be careful when reading negative coverage about Android, Chrome OS, etc. A lot of it is spread by Microsoft boosters, people who are secretly bribed by Microsoft, media companies that Microsoft is paying, or even Microsoft staff masquerading as “journalists”. Misinformation is something that Microsoft is very good at. █
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02.13.14
Posted in Bill Gates, Deception, Microsoft at 11:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Slashdot is being liquidated and the community of Slashdot threatens a boycott of the site
SELLING OUT IS VERY EASY. Earning status and maintaining one’s integrity in the face of temptation is hard. There are always some Sugar Daddies out there, looking to buy themselves positive coverage from seemingly credible sources that would otherwise criticise them. Examples from the UK include The ‘Guardian’ and BBC, both of which accepted a bribe from Bill Gates’ shell entity in an implicit exchange of favours (agenda-pushing for money).
A new report today reveals that The ‘Guardian’ opens its doors even further for the agenda of rich and powerful companies [1]. This trend not limited to such general news sites though; even technology sites go down the same route in pursuit of Sugar Daddies. A lot of them justify it by saying that reporting requires money, hence sellout as a business model is ‘just’.
Not too long ago we covered the mess which was going on at Slashdot and SourceForge, which turned into Microsoft and Bill Gates promotion tools. They even hired longtime Microsoft boosters and former Microsoft staff, just like the BBC had done.
Following the latest scandals at SourceForge [2,3] we had a lot of discussion about it in Techrights IRC (Slashdot managers even came to the channel in attempts to appease) and last week we got a lot of discussion about Dice driving Slashdot into its death with video ads, Microsoft agenda, etc. Slashdot without a community is a dead site because it derives its value from readers and their comments. Our readers who used to like Slashdot said that Dice was essentially liquidating the sites (squeezing the goose for golden eggs) by making the best moves to alienate the readers, i.e. annoy them in exchange for some money/a “quick buck”. Bruce Pernes, who has been very prolific in Slashdot, is saying now in Slashdot that he’s seriously thinking about bringing Technocrat back (Slashdot for grown-ups as he calls it). Last night we made significant changes in Tux Machines, adopting a more Slashdot-like style (in the format/layout sense). It is still the site to follow for very quick and high-quality selection of GNU/Linux and FOSS news — something which Techrights has not been doing as of late (news is not covered quickly enough anymore). █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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While it’s generally better not to judge too quickly, I think it’s reasonable that people are holding SourceForge to account for some of their decisions. People who download open source software do not expect to get other applications bundled with them.
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It was like Cooks Source all over again, just without the catchphrase “But honestly Monica.”
It’s been all over the web for the last week or two that the photo imaging program GIMP, a FOSS crown jewel, has dropped SourceForge as a download site. Although the GIMP folks had been a little concerned over some advertisements on SourceForge, the real reason appears to be DevShare, which bundles third party offers with open source downloads for install on Windows machines.
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