Summary: The philanthrocapitalist establishment whose Head of Global Health comes from GlaxoSmithKline has its work put to great scrutiny
THE Gates Foundation does not get much of a break because more and more people are beginning to understand its interests. It’s more complex than just “charity” as profit is being made without the foundation ever been taxed like a normal investor.
Today we turn our sceptical eye to the issue of patents and how the Gates Foundation promotes them. There is no question about the fact that Africa suffers from deadly diseases and Gates’ endeavours there are mostly commendable [1, 2]. It is a short-term solution which probably works well for both sides.
“The Gates Foundation acts as somewhat of a PR shim that intervenes where patents interfere/intersect with human toll.”What ought to be better understood is Bill Gates’ close relationship and interpersonal ties with the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, which even work well inside the Gates Foundation (holding key positions). The Gates Foundation acts as somewhat of a PR shim that intervenes where patents interfere/intersect with human toll. It’s a marriage of convenience because the price of life is the route to big profits.
The following new report from The Guardian reveals that flu experts were indirectly being paid by pharmaceutical giants in order to overplay the risk of swine flu and thus increase sales of vaccines. GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is mentioned among the culprits. [via Richard stallman]
Report condemns swine flu experts’ ties to big pharma
Scientists who drew up the key World Health Organisation guidelines advising governments to stockpile drugs in the event of a flu pandemic had previously been paid by drug companies which stood to profit, according to a report out today.
An investigation by the British Medical Journal and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the not-for-profit reporting unit, shows that WHO guidance issued in 2004 was authored by three scientists who had previously received payment for other work from Roche, which makes Tamiflu, and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), manufacturer of Relenza.
City analysts say that pharmaceutical companies banked more than $7bn (£4.8bn) as governments stockpiled drugs. The issue of transparency has risen to the forefront of public health debate after dramatic predictions last year about a swine flu pandemic did not come true.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was a driving force behind GlaxoSmithKline Plc’s decision to share propietary drug research for fighting malaria, the Puget Sound Business Journal reports.
That’s the same GSK which corrupted science in order to increase sales. That’s the same GSK which brought to the Gates Foundation its Head of Global Health, who bullies researchers. Gates Keeperswrites about those patented drugs which the Gates Foundation is promoting:
Read this carefully: “so that all the people who are smart about the disease are to some degree on the same side, working together.” Here is a fatal flaw. Gates thinks that you can define “all the people who are smart about the disease” and invite them to work together. He and his staff wouldn’t know how to begin to find “all the people”. They are elite technocrats. How many people LIVING with the disease are working together on his elite panels?
This whole “parenthood” role which the Gates Foundation has been taking for years is sometimes just a tad insulting (patronising even) and it marginalises opposing/alternative points of view. Researchers often complain about that. Here is someone who is challenging their priorities:
Gates really, really likes the idea of using vertical funds to tackle (and eliminated) diseases one by one, rather than taking a more gradual, measured approach. Why do the big philanthropists (Gates, and by proxy, Buffet) prefer to take such a direct approach, circumventing governments?
The easiest explanation is through personality or experience: Gates is an entrepreneur, used to getting smart people in a room together to solve problems; private solutions for important problems. Governments have, if anything, been a source of irritation for him, lobbing the occasional anti-trust action at Microsoft.
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I think it’s probably unrealistic to expect the Gates Foundation to start up a health SWAp anytime soon – the same factors that led to its creation will always drive it to tackle problems the way it does. What we should hope (and push) for is a commitment to “do no harm.” This means reverting to practices that do not distort health objectives on the ground (i.e. internal brain drain of qualified health staff, shifting the debate away from enforcing health systems to tackling single diseases). Working on vaccines, either through direct funding or advance market commitments, is a an example of high risk but less distortionary practice. The huge sums of money the Foundation juggles could also be used to create incentives for more general research into fighting tropical maladies, and then subsequently subsidise the price for needy countries.
“iBio and Fraunhofer USA Center for Molecular Biotechnology Enter Agreement to Provide Global Access for Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Vaccines,” says the title of this new press release.
iBio, Inc. and the Fraunhofer USA Center for Molecular Biotechnology (CMB) announced today an agreement which provides a license of iBio’s proprietary technology to CMB for the development and manufacture of Global Health Vaccines for, and financed by, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
To avoid misunderstandings, the problem here is not vaccinations. Immunology and drugs are important and often vital for the saving of lives, but the economics here are a tricky operation that leaves the public out in the dark. The drugs industry is not just another industry like IT. The drug industry is massive and that’s where the big money is. Gates has investments in this industry, so it’s in his interest to promote it. Another related area is biotechnology, where Monsanto got itself a nice monopoly on the food chain. “Bill Gates reveals support for GMO eg,” says this headline from last year (one that we’ve just found and missed at the time, even though we already quite knowingly stated the facts [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]).
As it has come to dominate the agenda for reshaping African agriculture over the years, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been very careful not to associate itself too closely with patent-protected biotechnology as a panacea for African farmers.
True, the foundation named 25-year Monsanto veteran Rob Horsch to the position of “senior program officer, focusing on improving crop yields in sub-Saharan Africa.”
Yet its flagship program for African ag, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), explicitly distances itself from GMOs. “AGRA does not fund the development of GMOs,” the organization’s Web site states.
But AGRA — co-funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, proud sponsor of the original Green Revolution — is just part of what Gates does around African ag. What precisely is the foundation getting up to over there? Is it pushing GMOs on African smallholder farms?
Earlier on we wrote about GSK inside the Gates Foundation (Head of Global Health), but what many people overlook is that fact that there are Monsanto employees inside the Gates Foundation. They use the Gates Foundation as a seemingly ‘charitable’ lobby vehicle through which to advance the companies’ objectives, often at the expense of the public (which pays government tax to be funneled into patents on drugs for the developing world). It’s a simple matter of economics, creating scarcity with patents while profiting from massive tax-free investments.
Critics castigate Gastes Foundation on policy demands; India launches native H1N1 vaccines;
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While the Gates Foundation has been widely lauded for its work on a wide range of initiatives, including financing research on new vaccines to guard against common killers in developing nations, some critics have emerged to caution against the foundation’s demands to “toe the line” on its position in policy debates.
Watch another man from the Gates Foundation offering “farming aid” (possibly a veiled reference to GMO):
Prior to joining the Obama Administration, Shah served as director of Agricultural Development in the Global Development Program at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In his seven years with the Gates Foundation, Shah served as the Foundation’s director of Strategic Opportunities and as deputy director of policy and finance for the Global Health Program.
Academic Pharmacy Continues to Expand its Horizons at 2010 AACP Annual Meeting
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He was the first business executive to serve as a public school superintendent and was the first executive director for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
This probably brings us to the subject of our next post, which says more about Gates Foundation influence on public schools [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. █
Imagine my surprise in learning that The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation owns over 7 million shares of BP – equivalent to roughly 0.25% of the common stock.
Just to emphasise an important point, the Gates Foundation invests in some other oil companies. Investments of the Gates Foundation range from anything like alcohol to other drugs. Greenpeace is still under the illusion that Gates actually fights against emissions. They confuse PR with reality and this new post is just embarrassing. Here is the part about Microsoft, which is burning up energy just like Gates with his private jet/s and mansion:
Thus far, Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, has failed to articulate the urgent need for government policy to drive a clean energy transformation. By comparison, Microsoft’s competitor, Google, is the top scoring Leaderboard company on advocacy for the clear position taken by its CEO, Eric Schmidt, in support of political action to drive transformative investment in clean energy technologies.
Later on it speaks about Microsoft PR like Microsoft’s Hohm. It's hogwash. And anyway, not a month goes by without the mainstream press pretending that Bill Gates is an economist because he is rich and he invests (for profit) in many ‘charitable’ companies like BP and Walmart. What is this report all about?
Gates Sees European Crisis Among ‘Headwinds’ to U.S. Rebound
Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates said the European debt crisis and U.S. state government budget cuts are among “headwinds” endangering the economic rebound.
Bill Gates is not qualified in economics. It’s time for the press to stop quoting him on the subject; there are many university professors who have more of a clue, they just don’t have a famous brand name like “Bill Gates”. While we’re at it, and since BP is the main subject of this post, here is an explanation of how the climate debate gets distorted by people who are not climatologists at all (and many of whom receive money from energy companies). It’s a video from last week and it explains how the corporate media pretends there are two sides to this debate and there needs to be ‘balance’. █
Summary: Further analysis of Red Hat’s policy regarding software patents, new threat from the European Parliament’s legal affairs commission (JURI), and the fast lane to USPTO distortion
Following from public policy, Whitehurst re-affirmed Red Hat’s opposition to software patents. “They are detrimental to innovation, and we do not support them at all.”
=> They also don’t fight them at all. And some of their various areas of collaboration with IBM even run counter to a push for abolition. Most of that was started by Webbink, who has meanwhile left, but still…
For now I don’t plan to blog about Red Hat again too soon, but at some point I’ll probably provide an overview of what I consider unhelpful initiatives, besides the OIN.
It’s interesting to note that Red Hat cooperates not only with IBM but also with Microsoft on the “community patent review” project. There’s nothing wrong with them supporting something good if it’s supported by Microsoft, but there can be no doubt that a patent-related initiative supported by Microsoft isn’t a push for abolition to the slightest degree. At best it would be politically neutral, which is what Red Hat is if one focuses on deeds rather than words.
That community review project isn’t bad at first sight: it’s an application of the “to enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow” idea to the patent granting process. I can’t oppose the idea of throwing out bad patent applications early on, but I do question the efficiency of that approach versus other ways the community could spend time to deal with the problem. The real problem is that it’s a way of supporting the patent bureaucracy not only practically but also politically, although someone really opposed to software patents must understand that the leadership of a patent office will always want a broad scope of patentable subject matter and as much patent inflation as possible. Letting that system implode with respect to software patents and letting the quality problem (which is due to the nature of software, which shouldn’t be patentable in the first place) become as apparent as possible would be much more desirable than giving the (mostly false) impression that community contributions to the review process can improve anything.
I believe that the DPL will, subject to what its final version is going to look like, enable a much more efficient use of community time. Rather than helping the patent bureaucracy, the community should take out its own patents, based on the Fair Troll approach, and assert them against patent holders outside the DPL pool. That would have far more impact than helping the patent bureaucracy with its review process, and if members of the FOSS community come up with really good patents they could even make very significant amounts of money with them, which isn’t possible by contributing to the community review project.
You may quote from this email if you like, but I didn’t mean this to be a “press release”: I’ll blog about those alternative ways for the community to make contributions when the DPL finally gets published. I just wanted you to know in the meantime how I view the situation concerning Red Hat’s action, which I don’t see as a positive contribution on the bottom line…
The FFII more or less succeeded Müller’s initiative and its president says that the “European Parliament’s JURI committee calls for EU patent court, EU software patents via central caselaw” (that’s one of the potential loopholes for legalising software patents in Europe).
According to media reports, the European Parliament’s legal affairs commission (JURI), presided by Klaus-Heiner Lehne, yesterday passed the “Gallo report” in which they ask for more unified and stringent IPR enforcement, in particular a unified crackdown on p2p filesharing but also unified levies, IPRED2 revival, UPLS and more.
We previously showed that Klaus-Heiner Lehne lobbies for software patents because he profits from it. Lehne is a German lawyer and like most lawyers he puts litigation and altercations before advancement of science.
There is a hot debate right now over patents on genes. TechDirttackles the issue as follows:
This is a very real threat. Venter has long been a strong advocate for patenting genes, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see him try to limit this market quite a bit himself. History has shown time and time again that real innovation happens when there’s real competition in the market, as players work hard to one-up each other. Giving the basic building blocks of synthetic biology to one company can lead to a vast decrease in research and development into this emerging field — exactly the opposite of what the patent system intended.
When it comes to infectious diseases, sharing is generally discouraged. But recently, pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) opened up the designs behind 13,500 chemical compounds, which the company narrowed down from over two million, that may be capable of fighting malaria.
The process of determing which compounds could yield a malaria drug is time consuming and complex, but GSK hopes to inspire other researchers to pool their intellectual property and work together to develop new and better medicines to fight the diseases that are rampant in the world’s poorest countries.
Patent Office Proposes Speed Lane (And Slow Lane) For Patents; Treating The Symptom, Not The Disease
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Of course, none of this will help. It just means that companies with more money to spend will jump to the fast lane, clogging that fast lane, and lengthening the wait times for those who don’t want to spend that much money. It’s difficult to see how that helps. The real issue is vastly cutting back on what is considered patentable. Move way from having companies feeling the need to patent anything and everything and get them back to focusing on competing in the marketplace. If there must be a patent system, let it be limited to the rare cases where there is actual proof that the gov’t granted monopoly makes sense (if those exist) and where there’s no likelihood of independent invention coming up with the same thing at about the same time (a key point that should determine obviousness).
Well, as pointed out some days ago, the USPTO had been taken over by lawyers (including its head) who put profit before science. The more patents they issue, the greater “success” they will claim. Sadly, Google is helping them by legitimisation. █
Summary: Why the next version of your Web browser, media player or GNU/Linux distribution will probably contain VP8/WebM code; Apple and MPEG-LA continue to be the main barriers to VP8/WebM adoption
OUR last post ended with a word of warning about Microsoft patents that prevent access to one’s own videos, assuming that they are encoded using Microsoft’s own formats. The lesson to be learned from all this is that software patents which cover video compression are unacceptable and dangerous to society. This is why Ogg Theora/Vorbis and VP8/WebM are so important. The latter is currently being implemented/deployed in GNU/Linux, which already supports Ogg in all its varieties.
All in all, the Linux community has made a lot of progress implementing support for WebM in two short weeks. Given that few content providers are supporting the codec yet (Google-owned YouTube being the major exception), free-software users are ahead of the curve on this issue. And that’s definitely the right side of the curve to be on.
The Open Source Programs Manager from Google writes to inform everyone about necessary changes to the WebM licence. In his own words:
You’ll see on the WebM license page and in our source code repositories that we’ve made a small change to our open source license. There were a couple of issues that popped up after we released WebM at Google I/O a couple weeks ago, specifically around how the patent clause was written.
There used to be the issue of patents and GPL incompatibility. This is resolved. It’s all rather lovely, “but still no patent indemnification,” claims Florian Müller. Brett Smith from the FSF is more satisfied than that. “Google just updated the WebM license to make it GPL compatible,” he writes. Being a key GPL person, Smith also published the official statement from the FSF:
A couple of weeks ago Google announced their WebM project, which provided a free software implementation of their VP8 video codec and a license to exercise the patents the company held on the software. (This after we appealed to them to do just that a couple of months prior.) The license they chose was unambiguously free: a three-clause BSD license combined with a patent license based on one found in the Apache License 2.0. Unfortunately, the interaction between the copyright license and the patent license made the result GPL-incompatible. Based on the concerns of developers writing GPL-covered software, Google publicly stated that they would take some time to review the WebM license and try to address the community’s concerns. Today, they released a revised license, and it is GPL-compatible.
Google has also eliminated the incompatibility with the GPLv2 and GPLv3 licences that existed in the original language, which means that it will be possible for WebM to be readily incorporated in the GNU environment and in GNU/Linux.
By removing that part of the custom licence, what is left is a “three clause” BSD licence which is an OSI approved form of open source licence. Simon Phipps, the OSI board member who pointed out the original problem, was “pleased to say that project is now fully open source” in his blog where he congratulated Google on the “timely and welcome” correction of its “licencing and community-relations error”.
“Google open codec wins OSI love after patent shield rethink,” reportsThe Register.
Google has rejiggered the license on its open-source VP8 video codec after complaints that it wasn’t really open source.
Ars Technicaemphasises compatibility with the BSD licence.
Google is adopting the BSD license for WebM in order to address a licensing conflict. When Google opened up the VP8 codec and announced the launch of the WebM project during the Google I/O conference last month, the actual license under which the code was distributed was not an official open source software license. It was a custom license that had not yet been approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), the organization responsible for maintaining the open source definition and validating licenses.
Google’s custom license posed some problems because it included clauses that made it incompatible with GNU’s General Public License (GPL), the most widely-used open source software license. It was a minor technicality, but one that would have broadly precluded adoption of WebM in many popular open source software applications. Fortunately, Google has rectified the conflict and has found an acceptable way to harmonize its licensing terms with the GPL.
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To avoid the resulting incompatibility with the GPL, Google decided to use a standard BSD license instead for the software copyright and draft a separate set of terms for the WebM patent grant.
“Using patent language borrowed from both the Apache and GPLv3 patent clauses, in this new iteration of the patent clause we’ve decoupled patents from copyright, thus preserving the pure BSD nature of the copyright license,” wrote DiBona. “This means we are no longer creating a new open source copyright license, and the patent grant can exist on its own.”
There’s open as the rest of the world thinks of it and there’s Apple open, which is what Steve Jobs wants it to mean. Jobs is very keen to dismiss Flash as a proprietary product, which it is, although iPhones and iPads also run proprietary operating systems.
[...]
Google is going down a different path entirely. Last month, it released VP8, a genuinely open compression format designed to handle multimedia on the web and not be beholden to proprietary software. Unlike Apple, the company does have a genuine commitment to openness. Having said that, there is a debate as to whether VP8 is quite as open as it appears to be – and whether it differs much from H.264.
But the difference is that Google is, I believe, genuinely looking top open standards, while Apple is a law unto itself.
Separately, writes Florian Müller to us, “I’ve commented once again on WebM. As you can see in case you read this, I don’t take the same position as FSF/OSI. Their concern is to push for a “free” codec no matter what. My concern is whether early adopters of WebM would be exposed to too much of a risk and whether Google should do more to protect them. All of that is independent from the fact that I’d prefer to see software patents abolished, which would spell the end for MPEG LA and anyone pursuing a similar “business model”.” Here is the blog post which raises fair points.
Google’s WebM initiative is somewhere in the middle between a true act of generosity and an IBM-style scheme:
* There’s no reason to assume that Google wants to hurt the FOSS cause in any way with WebM, especially not in any IBM-like way. I don’t put it past Google to have that intention elsewhere: they might do anything, including the use of patents, to destroy an open source search technology that could adversely affect their core business. However, in this particular context of video codecs, I don’t think they intend to cause harm. I do believe them that they want more competition in this case.
* What Google does do — and what I believe the FOSS community must approach cautiously — is to shift most of the risk to others while keeping most of the benefits to itself. Businesses like to do that, but FOSS developers and users shouldn’t lose sight of the risks just out of excitement over the idea of getting a seemingly “unencumbered” codec.
Google will retain control over WebM despite open-sourcing program code and publishing specifications
A common misconception about open source and “free” specifications is that this would make something such as the WebM project independent from a single vendor or a group of vendors. Some think this puts “the community” in charge.
There are lessons to be learned from Android. Google has not yet done anything which substantially reduces trust. Control is not the main issue here; the main issue is probably patents. There’s an urgent need to get past them. █
Summary: A quick look at Bilski and some news about Microsoft and patents
EVERYONE wonders what’s up with the Bilski case, whose decision will have come out by the end of this month. Here are two possible explanations of why it takes so long:
Bilski Watch: Dissenting & Concurring Opinions: In discussing the timing of Bilski v. Kappos, several commentators suggested that the delay might indicate (1) that the court will issue multiple opinions (concurrences or dissents); or (2) that the decision will be especially long.
The decision may come as soon as days from now if not a week. It’s a very important case because it may determine that software patents are not patentable (unlikely) or are harder to justify/defend. Previous rulings regarding Bilski are already killing software patents sometimes.
A lawyers’ Web site (pro-software patents) explores the issue of whether Edison was a patent troll or not. We wrote about this subject before. It’s the wrong question to ask (a straw man) because there is something in between. The same goes for the leech known as VirnetX, which recently defeated Microsoft and is now coming out with a new press release:
VirnetX Holding Corporation also reports that on May 18, 2010, Microsoft filed Notices of Non-Participation with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, whereby Microsoft stated that it will not participate further in the Inter Partes Reexamination proceedings of certain of VirnetX’s patents.
Had software not been patentable, the courts would not waste their valuable time with this case. Ryan recalls an example from ten years ago where a software patent impeded reverse engineering of a media file format from Microsoft. How is it beneficial to anyone in society when one’s own videos are stuck in a format only Microsoft is permitted to interpret, thanks to patent law? In the next post we’ll return to the MPEG-LA/WebM debate. It’s a similar problem. █
MSN’s latest content partnership: A deal with GrindNetworks to launch a new “comedy channel” called theBubble. The video-heavy site, which launched today, is centered around a web show of the same name; it also features viral videos and other “funny” clips.
Although it is hard to find a permanent link for the following news, an antitrust complaint is said to have been filed against Microsoft and NBC Universal. From Reuters:
BanxCorp announced that a federal antitrust complaint was filed against nine firms including Dow Jones & Co., The New York Times, CNBC, CNN, MSNBC and others, for engaging in unlawful per se horizontal market division, customer allocation, and price fixing agreements with competitors in the market for bank rate websites throughout the United States. The complaint filed by BanxCorp in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, accuses the firms of entering into a conspiracy in restraint of trade and forming a cartel with their competitor Bankrate.com together with approximately a hundred competing bank rate website operators including some of the media conglomerates in the United States. The complaint estimates that the damages caused by the price-fixing cartel may exceed five hundred million dollars, to be trebled under the antitrust statute. The harm to the competitive marketplace and consumers is alleged to be of equal or greater magnitude. The defendants named in the complaint are Dow Jones & Company Inc. and Fox News Network LLC – both subsidiaries of The News Corporation, The New York Times Company, CNBC Inc., a unit of General Electric’s NBC Universal, Time Warner Inc.’s Cable News Network Inc., MSNBC Interactive News LLC – a joint venture of Microsoft Corp. and NBC Universal; AOL Inc., Tree.com Inc.’s LendingTree LLC and Move, Inc.
As we have shown before, Microsoft is trying to spread on the Web and to police it using PR agencies. Microsoft is — and has for a very long time been — primarily a marketing company. It takes existing ideas, sometimes without permission, and then mass-markets them. Here is another new Microsoft deal:
Clear Channel Airports and Monster Media have signed up Microsoft Corp. as an advertiser in Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
Being Seattle, this preference is not exactly shocking. █
“A liar will not be believed, even when he speaks the truth.”
Summary: How the Xbox business is doing after departures of its leadership, based on the past week’s news alone
Xbox reality is a bit of an eyesore and readers sent us several pointers, firstly to show that Sony is gaining at Microsoft’s expense, taking advantage of Microsoft disarray following the departure of managers. “Xbox360 is in trouble,” wrote Chips B. Malroy, “Bach head of that, was canned.”
The PlayStation 3 has jumped from an 18 percent market since last year at the same time, to a 31 percent share. Microsoft better watch out.
“Xbox360 probably hurt MS more long term than even Vista did. Buying a product with that big a failure rate, knowing that at some point the warranty also runs out and you are stuck, has to make people mad as hell,” Chips B. Malroy added.
Microsoft’s Xbox 360 motion-control upgrade, Project Natal, will ship this October for a surprisingly steep $150. That’s if you believe Edge, which claims a “trusted source” offered the tip that spawned the story that launched another speculative media pile-on.
So the leadership (which includes Allard [1, 2, 3]) left this project and the company, saying that Natal will somehow bring about a turnaround. “Whither Natal? Microsoft’s unique E3 challenge,” says this headline which also appeared in CNN:
Sony had the right idea at GDC
At an invite-only press event during this year’s Game Developers Conference, Sony gave a short presentation on the power of the PlayStation Move with a few gameplay videos and demonstrations, and then set the press free in a large, warehouse-like space next door in order to simply play with the hardware. There were no smoke and mirrors here; we just played games, chatted up Sony representatives, and held what seemed to be final or near-final hardware in our hands.
The next day even more games were shown in the Sony lounge, where drinks flowed like water and everyone was able to play as much as they wanted. It was a party-like atmosphere, which was perfect for the more lighthearted games on display. We were given a private demo of the newest SOCOM title, played with the PlayStation Move. Our time with the hardware left us with some things we liked and some things we didn’t, but it was clear that the technology was ready to go.
Microsoft has denied claims made by a South African distributor that “Xbox360 has had a rather rough time in South Africa”.
The problems persist. It’s all about extremely high failure rates, which are a serious issue that’s hardly discussed anymore, with exceptions:
Ex-Apple exec criticizes Ballmer over Xbox 360 high failure rate – Microsoft becoming irrelevant?
In a surprising move, a former Apple exec heavily criticized Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer over his conduct with Vista and the Xbox 360’s high failure rate issue. The former exec accused Ballmer of letting his “underlings” take the fall while he remains unapologetic.
Former Apple exec, Jean-Louis Gassée wrote a lengthy piece warning shareholders to worry about Ballmer. According to Gassée, Ballmer seems to be mismanaging Microsoft and shifting blame elsewhere.
Ouch.
The Microsoft booster Todd Bishop is attempting to spin another Xbox 360 lawsuit against Microsoft (there were many). It’s about faulty hardware again.
Lawsuits over Microsoft’s Xbox 360 hardware glitches are nothing new, and the company has acknowledged its past problems with a gigantic write-off and a warranty extension.
But the latest proposed class-action suit against the company stands out for the sheer run of misfortune alleged by the plaintiff, Michael McKinney of Hamilton County, Ohio. Even better, McKinney’s lawyer is one Eric Deters — better known around Northern Kentucky as “The Bulldog” — who comes complete with his own theme music.
“Time to stop buying xbox I think,” cubezzz writes, “sounds like a total lemon.”
In other Xbox 360 news, the lessons of FASA are not being learned by Bungie, which is forced “to accept ‘Combat Evolved’ name,” according to this new report.
Bungie has revealed that Microsoft marketeers forced it to put the infamous ‘Combat Evolved’ tagline on its original Halo – something the studio said it “hated”.
Well, it’s their own fault for sidling with Microsoft. Bungie previously complained about suppression of creativity under Microsoft.
Porn Distributor Shot Down by Sony, Now Turning to Microsoft
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Even so, I somehow doubt Microsoft, after everything it has done to get the 360 a reputation of being family-friendly, is going to leap at the opportunity to get their system associated with porn — but you never know. If this bid fails, maybe we’ll be next hearing about Hirsch’s attempts to get porn on the Wii.
Xbox 360 has “a reputation of being family-friendly”? Seriously, that has got to be a joke. Many of the games are about death and gore. Nintendo’s Wii is probably the more family-friendly option among this generation’s consoles. █
Dr. Roy Schestowitz Roy is a Software Engineer, interdisciplinary researcher, and an advocate of fair competition. He holds a doctoral degree in Medical Biophysics. Contact us (encrypted/PGP)
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