01.03.15

Links 3/1/2015: Korora 21 (Darla) Beta

Posted in News Roundup at 8:01 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • North Korea Linux 3.0 (Red Star OS) screenshot tour

    The desktop version North Korea Linux 3.0 is finally available for download and install, thanks to the same guy who initially brought us the server version of North Korea Linux. The ISO download has been popping up all over the place on torrent sites, and I’ve got a full screenshot tour of this odd but interesting Linux distribution. I suggest downloading it via Kick Ass Torrents.

  • Download the desktop version of North Korea Linux 3.0

    Martyn Williams at North Korea Tech reports on the public release of Red Star 3.0:

    The latest version of North Korea’s home-grown desktop operating system, Red Star Linux 3.0, was uploaded to BitTorrent on Monday. We first got a look at the operating system almost a year ago when screenshots were posted online.

  • Kernel Space

    • Graphics Stack

      • X.Org Server Saw More Code In 2014 Than 2013, But Its Heydays Are Over

        The X.Org Server had more code churn in 2014 than it did in 2013, but its pace has certainly slowed down compared to years prior. But at the same time for those thinking X.Org Server development is going the way of the dinosaur due to Mir and Wayland, you’re sadly mistaken too.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • SoK comes to an end

        The KHangMan was initially a KXmlGuiWindow, but the new UI did not need a few things like the menubars and such, for which it was changed to a QMainWindow.The Messages.sh script was initially placed in src/desktop/ , but since those 3 folders (desktop, harmattan, plasma-active) were about to go, it was moved from there to simply src/ , and it was modified to translate the qml files also. After all these changes the code needed some heavy cleanup, because a lot of functionalities already implemented in the QML code were also defined in the cpp code. Some of the other cleanup tasks were removing commented out statements, removing unnecessary variables, optimizing the code by removing some unncecessary statements, and so on.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • OpenPGP Smartcards and GNOME

        The combination of GnuPG and a OpenPGP smartcard (such as the YubiKey NEO) has been implemented and working well for around a decade. I recall starting to use it when I received a FSFE Fellowship card long time ago. Sadly there has been some regressions when using them under GNOME recently. I reinstalled my laptop with Debian Jessie (beta2) recently, and now took the time to work through the issue and write down a workaround.

  • Distributions

    • Arch Family

      • ArchBang New Release 2015

        Updated packages, Network Manager (nm-applet) for network connections, Firefox web browser and of course Gparted for all you power users

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Now Covered by Analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald (NYSE:RHT)

        Several other analysts have also recently commented on the stock. Analysts at BMO Capital Markets raised their price target on shares of Red Hat to $77.00 in a research note on Tuesday. Separately, analysts at Piper Jaffray initiated coverage on shares of Red Hat in a research note on Tuesday. They set an overweight rating on the stock. Finally, analysts at William Blair reiterated an outperform rating on shares of Red Hat in a research note on Monday, December 22nd. Five research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and nineteen have issued a buy rating to the stock. Red Hat presently has a consensus rating of Buy and a consensus target price of $72.78.

      • Fedora

        • F21 Release Party in Brno

          I finally found time to write a blogpost about our F21 release party in Brno office of Red Hat. It took place on the release date – December 9th. It was, as always, well attended. It’s hard to estimate the total number of attendees, but it was definitely over 100. Unfortunately, F21 DVDs had not arrived yet, but we still had other swag for people to take: Fedora product stickers, Fedora logo stickers, case badges, badges, pins, flyers,…

        • Installing The AMD Catalyst Driver On Fedora 21

          Installing the AMD Catalyst (fglrx) driver on the latest Fedora release can sometimes be a challenge due to Fedora catering towards the open-source graphics drivers.

          With Fedora being on the bleeding-edge and not caring much about proprietary software support while the open-source graphics drivers continue to evolve, sometimes it can be a bit of a headache installing the AMD Catalyst/fglrx driver on the newest Fedora release, but generally it’s possible.

        • Korora 21 (Darla) Beta – Now Available

          The Korora Project is very pleased to announce that the first beta release of version 21 (codename “Darla”) is now available for download.

          Although this is a beta release of Korora, it is derived from Fedora 211 stable and should be ready for every day use. We are keen however, to hear any issues people encounter so that we can improve it for the final release. Feel free to bombard us on social media or log a report in our support system, Engage.

        • Korora 21 Now In Beta With Cinnamon 2.4 & More

          The first beta release of the Fedora-based Korora Linux distribution is now available that’s powered by last month’s Fedora 21.

    • Debian Family

      • Release Critical Bug report for Week 01
      • Weirdness with hplip package in Debian wheezy

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Nokia Lumia 1020 Ubuntu OS Features Leaked

            There is a fresh leak being spread throughout the mobile device world from Team Ubuntu (via GizmoChina) that appears to reveal the Nokia Lumia 1020 smartphone running a full version of Ubuntu OS Linux. This type of leak is hard to confirm one-hundred percent, but a series of images within the source website show the mobile device running the operating system effectively. The images appear to reveal the smartphone running the full version of the Ubuntu OS desktop operating system. Anyone who has used the Ubuntu Linux operating system previously should recognize the setup on the phone, as it featured a basic wallpaper with tiles commonly used for features and shortcuts set to the left hand side.

          • Meizu M1 Note to go open-source in 2015: Smartphone expected to feature Ubuntu Touch, to be launched at CES 2015

            Chinese smartphone brand Meizu, which not too long ago grabbed eyeballs of technology enthusiasts across the world by announcing its decision to convert its high-end smartphone, the MX4 to open-source, is now in the news again.

            This time it is because the China-based company’s first Canonical Ubuntu-powered smartphone, the M1 Note running the Ubuntu Flyme operating platform is pegged for official launch during the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2015) in Las Vegas.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • LG tips new 4K TVs running WebOS 2.0

      Following up on its well-received first batch of WebOS based smart TVs, LG has announced a new line of 4K ULTRA HD TVs that run an updated 2.0 version of the Linux-based OS.

      Following up on its well-received first batch of WebOS based smart TVs, LG just announced a new line of 4K ULTRA HD TVs that run an updated 2.0 version of the Linux-based OS. WebOS 2.0 offers up to 60 percent faster boot time, as well as an easier interface and easier connectivity to external devices. In addition, users can now customize their menus on the Launcher Bar.

    • Phones

      • So the Smartphone ‘Bloodbath’ Annual Preview for Year 2015 – This is so boring

        So yes, readers, it was an exhilirating ride. But it is now over. The bloodbath is gone. Samsung won the hardware war clearly. Android won the OS war, decisively. There are no dark horses left. We just learned a week ago that even the so-called ‘third ecosystem’ haha, Windows Phone, has actually failed to activate one third of all the Lumia Nokia smartphones shipped using that OS. So Windows is in reality a far worse disaster than has even been reported, and the Nokia collapse was the worst corporate management catastrophy ever witnessed. Well, we know all that, Elop the worst CEO of all time and all that. what we now will see in the coming years is more price wars that will cause unforseen profit warnings, more mergers and acquisitions like Microsoft buying Nokia’s handset business and Lenovo buying the Motorola business from Google. We may well see former greats like HTC and Blackberry being sold and buyers from Asia most likely China but could be India or elsewhere in Asia. Japan’s seven handset makers have gone through their own consolidation through mergers and acquisitions already shrinking from 7 manufacturers to 4. The South Korean market is in similar state now with Pantech being on the block.

      • Tizen

      • Android

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open source carries software-defined storage forward

    In my small home-office, I have hard drives, flash drives, and solid-state drives, which use FAT32, NTFS, exFAT, Btrfs, Ext3, and Ext4 file systems, and are connected to the computers with CIFS, NFS, HTTPS, ssh, and ftp over the Internet and Gigabit Ethernet with a variety of authentication systems based on Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and Active Directory (AD). And, this, mind you, is a simple, small-business network.

    Is it any wonder then that companies, far, far larger then my little operation, want to abstract their storage concerns away with software-defined storage (SDS)? I think not!

  • Coreboot Ported To Another Lenovo ThinkPad

    While Coreboot is most commonly used by Google Chromebooks, an increasing number of Lenovo ThinkPad laptops are becoming compatible with Coreboot for initializing and booting the system with open-source software.

  • Open Source App Allows Easier Image Sharing in Google Hangouts

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Google’s Chromebooks can now run Linux using a Chrome extension

        Google’s Chromebooks can now run Linux, François Beaufort, former frequent Chrome hacker who was hired by Google in 2013, revealed on a Google+ post. To run Linux, users will essentially have to enable developer mode, and use a Chrome extension named Crouton Chrome.

        Chromebook computers run on Google’s ChromeOS, which isn’t as full-fledged as Windows, OS X, or most Linux distributions for that matter. Google, however, has added several handy features to the operating system in the last couple of months. Chromebooks now support offline video playback and also lets users run a handful of Android applications.

    • Mozilla

      • Hats Off to Mozilla

        Firefox turned ten years old last November and celebrated the occasion with a new version (33.1) that featured a much-welcomed developer edition. It also featured a “forget” button that lets you backspace through time, blowing away history, cookies and open tabs: one more privacy tool for the shed.

        Those were two among many new moves by Mozilla, Firefox’s parent, all siding with individuals leaning against two prevailing winds that have blown across the on-line world for at least a decade.

  • BSD

    • BSD Community is Too Insular

      First of all let me say I really like BSD. I enjoy studying it’s history which extends back to 1978 when it was a mere add-on to Bell Labs Unix version 6. The longest uptime I’ve ever had on a computer was with OpenBSD. It’s a fine piece of work.

      On the other hand when I look at the BSD community I see a less than friendly environment. It is rather like a gated community where you need to be invited in. Often when one goes to BSD forums one gets some mysterious error message and no access. IRC channels related to BSD are also invite only.

    • The Good & Bad Of ZFS + HAMMER File-Systems On BSD

      Among the pros of ZFS are it’s self-healing, writable clones, fully journaling system using ZFS snapshots, compression, and portable storage. Among the viewed HAMMER positives are the focus on data integrity, great SQL database performance, lower RAM requirements, supports pseudo file-systems, fully open-source with a BSD license, etc. Of course, with each also comes various cons.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • A small update to our “User Liberation” video

      So we’ve now chucked this particular easter egg, and written this post to document the decision. Doing this reminded me of the relative impermanence of all digital media. DRM-pushing companies like Amazon and Apple who distribute videos and ebooks have the same capability, to go back and edit works after they are published. In many cases, they can even do it remotely, replacing works that you think of as living on a device in your home. Will they tell you about it when they do?

      Thank you to Urchin Studios for making the edits and for their amazing work on the project! It really demonstrates the power of free software and free formats, and debunks the myth that professional designers and animators must use proprietary software to be top notch.

    • Happy GNU year 2015!

  • Project Releases

    • Release 0.11 of ctioga2

      The possibilities of the new styling system are particularly interesting, and I’m working on ways to make it more powerful, and providing series of default style files that anyone could use as they want. Among other future changes, I want to improve the position of ticks, especially when using non-linear axes, and add functions to draw vector fields (though this still needs some thinking). Enjoy, and a happy new year to everyone !

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • Pulp in the New Year

      Pulp has used web.py as its web framework for a long time, but unfortunately that project has gone dormant. Since Pulp only uses a small set of web.py’s features (essentially using it as a thin WSGI adapter), replacing it is a reasonably straight-forward task. This gave us an opportunity to re-evaluate what we want out of a web framework and consider several compelling options.

    • My $2375 Amazon EC2 Mistake

      When I woke up the next morning, I had four emails from Amazon AWS and a missed phone call from Amazon AWS. Something about 140 servers running on my AWS account. What? How? I only had S3 keys on my GitHub and they where gone within 5 minutes!

      Turns out through the S3 API you can actually spin up EC2 instances, and my key had been spotted by a bot that continually searches GitHub for API keys. Amazon AWS customer support informed me this happens a lot recently, hackers have created an algorithm that searches GitHub 24 hours per day for API keys. Once it finds one it spins up max instances of EC2 servers to farm itself bitcoins.

      Boom! A $2375 bill in the morning. Just for trying to learn rails.

      Lucky for me, I explained my situation to Amazon customer support – and they knew I wasn’t bitcoin mining all night. Amazon was kind enough to drop the charges this time!

    • New tool to track use of open source Web code

      Prior to Libscore, developers contributed to front-end open source projects, hoping their work would be used at-large, but without having any concrete visibility.

Leftovers

  • Prince Andrew and ‘naked pool parties’ at his paedophile friend’s house

    Juan Alessi, who spent 11 years working for Epstein, also told the Daily Mail how the Prince enjoyed daily massages by young women during his visits.

    He said Andrew emerged ‘smiling’ after the rub-downs which, he believes, were paid for by Epstein.

  • Science

    • Are two thirds of cancers really due to bad luck?

      A paper published in Science has been widely reported in the media today. According to media reports, such as this one, the paper showed that two thirds of cancers are simply due to bad luck, and only one third are due to environmental, lifestyle, or genetic risk factors.

      The paper shows no such thing, of course.

      It’s actually quite an interesting paper, and I’d encourage you to read it in full (though sadly it’s paywalled, so you may or may not be able to). But it did not show that two thirds of cancers are due to bad luck.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Drug firms sway vets on antibiotics in food animals

      In 2016, a new U.S. Food and Drug Administration policy will give veterinarians a key role in combating a surge in antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” that infect humans. For the first time, the agency will require veterinarians, not farmers, to decide whenever antibiotics used by people are given to animals.

  • Security

    • DNSSEC

      Many registrars don’t support DNSSEC, if you use such a registrar (as I do) then you need to transfer your zone before you can productively use DNSSEC. Without the DS entries being signed by a registrar and included in the TLD no-one will recognise your signatures on zone data.

    • Friday’s security updates
    • OpenBSD Moves to 5.7-beta

      As always, your testing is needed to ensure that any bugs are found and squashed early!

  • Transparency Reporting

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • How Fox News Covered Pope Francis’ Action On Climate Change

      Fox News reported on Pope Francis’ upcoming action on climate change by promoting climate change denial and suggesting that the pope is aligning with “extremists who favor widespread population control and wealth redistribution.”

    • UK’s leading fund manager picks his stocks for 2015

      Britain’s leading fund manager, Neil Woodford, has warned that falling oil prices could prompt a rout in the global bond market as shale companies default on vast debts built up during the US fracking boom.

    • Every Time You Fly, You Trash The Planet — And There’s No Easy Fix

      When the latest international Climate Conference wrapped up in Lima, Peru, last month, delegates boarded their flights home without much official discussion of how the planes that shuttled them to the meeting had altered the climate.

      Aircraft currently contribute about 2.5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. That might not seem like much, but if the aviation industry were a country, it would be one of the world’s top 10 emitters of CO2. And its emissions are projected to grow between two and four times by 2050 without policy interventions.

  • Finance

    • TTIP Update XLVI

      There are *already* more than €30 billion worth of ISDS claims against EU nations

      [...]

      This is the key problem with ISDS: it places the rights of corporations above the rights of nations – indeed, in this case, above the rights of the EU to determine laws within its borders. ISDS cannot be “fixed”, as the European Commission would have us believe, because it was designed with exactly this purpose in mind: it was introduced as a way of protecting investments in countries where the local rule of law could not be depended upon. Since that is manifestly not the case in the EU or US, it serves no purpose other than to undermine the strong legal systems there. The only solution is therefore to drop ISDS from TTIP, CETA and all future agreements.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Koch-Funded News Outlet Defends Dark-Money Organizations

      Conservative news outlet Watchdog.org released a six-part series defending dark-money organizations — politically focused groups that conceal the identities of their donors — but failed to disclose its own funding from the Koch brothers and other conservative dark-money players.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • Fox News’ Attack On Driver’s Licenses For Undocumented Californians Is Full Of Falsehoods

      Fox News falsely claimed that California’s new program to issue driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants amounted to “back door to citizenship” that would increase identity theft. But the program requires a stringent background check and shares the support of law enforcement and public officials who point to studies that show the program will lead to increased safety and transparency for citizens.

    • Who Goes to Jail? Matt Taibbi on “The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap”

      In part two of our holiday special, we feature our April 2014 interview with Matt Taibbi about his book, “The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap.” The book asks why the vast majority of white-collar criminals have avoided prison since the financial crisis began, while an unequal justice system imprisons the poor and people of color on a mass scale. “It is much more grotesque to consider the non-enforcement of white-collar criminals when you do consider how incredibly aggressive law enforcement is with regard to everybody else,” Taibbi says.

    • The lost detainees and the CIA’s dungeons

      The executive summary of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) report on CIA torture was finally published on 9 December 2014, and it proved shocking, despite being highly-redacted and missing 9,400 documents “withheld by the White House”.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

  • DRM

    • Netflix Cracks Down on VPN and Proxy “Pirates”

      Netflix is starting to block subscribers who access its service using VPN services and other tools that bypass geolocation restrictions. The changes, which may also affect legitimate users, have been requested by the movie studios who want full control over what people can see in their respective countries.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Canadian ISPs and VPNs Now Have to Alert Pirating Customers

        Starting today Canadian Internet providers are required to forward copyright infringement notices to their subscribers. This notification scheme provides a safe harbor for ISPs but is also expected to result in a surge in piracy settlement schemes. The new law further causes trouble for VPN providers, who are now required to log customers for at least six months.

Despite Controversy and Backlash From Scientists and Human Rights Activists, the Gates Foundation Continues to Promote Private Prisons and GMO Ventures That It Profits From

Posted in Bill Gates, Patents at 1:18 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Prison

Summary: Bill Gates continues to engage in class war by creating a penal system that maximises detention while giving poor people dependence on giant food monopolies, both of which he profits from

THE Gates Foundation‘s destructive path is not news. A lot who are sceptical of corporate media have been paying attention to how the Gates Foundation bribes a lot of writers (even bloggers) to bamboozle those without critical skills, so we live in a world where a lot of people think that GMO is about ending hunger and that Bill Gates is a charitable man (they don’t know he invests in GMO, which is essentially a patent monopoly on nature).

“He just keeps getting richer at a pace of about 10% per year”Bill Gates has been working with PR magnates for well over three decades, so he knows how to play this game. He would pose for photos to appear in newspapers, usually with black kids or poor kids (ultimate PR hit in local/national media), but won’t even paint a bridge [1, 2] or associate himself with tasks he never did (he grew up in a super-affluent family with many helpers). He would fly a private jet to very poor areas, contributing little more than carbon and a dangerous impression that the world’s plutocrats are those who will save it (famous mythology that serves power). Let’s look at some recent figures. The super rich people are getting richer and richer ($92 billion richer in the past year for the richest 0.000000006% – yes, that’s in 2014 alone!) while using their corporate press (bribed or subsidised) to fool or scam the public. Here is how much money Gates has made last year:

Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft Corp., was up $9.1 billion during the year.

Wow, what a giver! He just keeps getting richer at a pace of about 10% per year. Last year was more than 10%. Is this a cause for celebration? This wealth came from somewhere, he wasn’t created in a vacuum. Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire himself, helps glorify the looting in his publication:

The world’s 400 richest people added some $92 billion to their collective wealth in 2014, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. As of Dec. 29, they were all worth a combined $4.1 trillion.

The reasons we have hunger in the world include the fact that just 80 people or so have the same combined wealth as 3,500,000,000 people (the poorer people). It is a wealth distribution issue. The 400 richest people probably have as much in combined wealth as the poorest 5,000,000,000 or so people (the latter figure is a conjecture, the former is established). Watch another billionaire, Rupert Murdoch, using his Wall Street-centric media to once again whitewash the name-shifting “Bill Gates Investments” (basically a Gates Foundation extension that does not need to pretend not to be after money). That what happens when you have much to dodge. Gates invests in big polluters and even worse companies than that. The Gates Foundation wishes not to be seen as an investment vehicle, but the decoupling is merely cosmetic. Gates supports private prisons (to control the poor) by investments in G4S and reportedly in GEO. Here is last month’s article from Mother Jones:

Is the Gates Foundation Still Investing in Private Prisons?

[...]

In recent years, the GEO Group has faced accusations of detainee abuse and substandard care in multiple states. In 2012, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of Detention Oversight reported that GEO Group’s Adelanto facility near Los Angeles had committed “several egregious errors” in administering medical care to detainees. (GEO Group has repeatedly dismissed allegations of mistreatment.) More recently, a group of former immigrant detainees in Colorado sued the company for making them work around the prison for minimal pay, sometimes under the threat of solitary confinement. (The GEO Group said detainees were working under a “volunteer work program” and that its $1-per-day wages met federal standards.) The Gates Foundation Trust did not respond to requests for comment directed through a foundation spokesperson.

According to the Gates Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates—the only members of the trust’s board—have defined areas that the trust will not invest in, “such as companies whose profit model is centrally tied to corporate activity that [Bill and Melinda Gates] find egregious.” Tobacco companies fall into that category.

The trust’s last reported investment in the GEO Group took the form of a $2,148,790 bank loan. (The Gates Foundation Trust did not issue the loan itself. The term “bank loan” refers to a type of corporate debt that companies with low credit ratings occasionally sell through a conventional bank to get extra cash.) The asset was reported in a tax form filed with the Internal Revenue Service this October, but is accurate only through October 2013.

Bank loans can yield higher returns for investors than stocks or bonds, but their ownership is harder to trace independently.

In April, after demanding Gates divest from the GEO Group, supporters of a coalition of immigrant, Native American, and Latino rights groups rallied outside the foundation’s Seattle headquarters. The foundation eventually accepted more than 10,000 petitions from the activists and promised to submit their grievances to the trust.

“Bill Gates needs to be transparent about whether they’re still investing in GEO Group,” says Mariana Ruiz Firmat, managing director for Presente, which organized that protest. “It’s really problematic for the foundation, which claims to invest in communities of color. By investing in GEO Group now or in the past, that goes against communities of color.”

It’s not just prisons that Gates makes the news for. There is also the GMO venture he profits from, causing health issues (pesticides and mutations of genes) just so that he can secure a profitable monopoly on food. As one site put it last month:

At least 124 food and outreach organizations, as well as 26 individual scientists, have signed onto a letter sent to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation protesting ongoing human trials of genetically modified (GM), beta-carotene-enriched bananas intended for Africa.

The GM bananas, which never underwent animal trials, are currently being administered to 12 students attending Iowa State University (ISU), presumably without full disclosure as to the many unknown risks involved.

According to the letter, the trials are taking place under the guidance of Dr. Wendy White, an associate professor of food science and human nutrition. Funding for the trials came from a grant issued by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

“We, the undersigned, representing diverse constituencies from across Africa and the world, working towards food sovereignty, are strongly opposed to the human feeding trials taking place at the Iowa State University involving the so called genetically modified (GM) ‘super banana,’” reads the letter.

Here is how The Ecologist put it: “Among the controversial projects funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the development and testing of a biofortified GMO banana developed to boost its iron, Vitamin E and pro-Vitamin A content.

“To this end the Foundation, via its Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative, has so far given $15 million to Queensland University of Technology for the program run by Professor Dr James Dale, with a latest tranche of $10 million handed over this year.”

Here again we see what Gates makes money from. Quite a good doer, eh? He seems to be following the footsteps of his father, who himself seems to be a businessman masquerading as good doer until his nineties. “Bill Gates Sr.,” says a Gates-connected site, “the 89-year-old father of the Microsoft co-founder, has resigned voluntarily from his position on the Costco Wholesale Corp. board, according to a regulatory filing from the Issaquah, Wash.-based company.”

If Bill Gates junior has another 30 or so years to harm the world for profit, then we are really in serious trouble. █

Bill Gates Buys the System, Writes Cheques to the White House

Posted in Bill Gates, Microsoft at 12:36 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Cheque

Summary: The latest reports about Gates’ attempt to buy the hearts and minds of the young generation by taking over the schools system in the US

THE Gates Foundation has been Bill Gates’ private front group for advancing his for-profit interests under the guise of goodwill or charity. Gates is not the only plutocrat who uses such mechanisms to camouflage his agenda, but he is probably the biggest among them. A lot of charities are basically a sham (self-feeding money vacuums that call for public input or taxpayers' money) and explaining to the public why this is so is not harming charity but defending the integrity or real charities. They have gotten a bad reputation because of people who exploit them, not just for tax-exempt status.

“The thing that motivates Gates to get involved is that he profits from it.”The other day there was a widely published report about Gates’ intervention in a taxpayers-funded system that he seeks to privatise for profit (we wrote many articles about Gates’ abduction of the US education/schools policy). It is probably the biggest and most lucrative such system except the US Army (trillions in money flow, excepting black budget). “When he took the stage,” said the article, “Bill Gates used the word “naive” — four times — to describe himself and his charitable foundation.”

Well, apparently he is not willfully ignorant. He knows damn well what he is doing. Valerie Strauss, a respected critic of Gates, recently wrote about Bill Gates buying agenda in the US public sector, primarily education. Her piece in an American journal of record stated: “In terms of dollars spent, Gates is the leading billionaire/millionaire who has poured money into school “reform” in recent years. Such philanthropy has raised questions about whether American democracy is well-served by wealthy people who pour so much money into their pet projects — regardless of whether they are known to be useful in education — that public policy and public funding follow in their wake.”

Here is an article about this original report from Strauss:

Gates has been credited by some and blamed by others for the spread of Common Core, which was initially adopted by 44 states and the District of Columbia. Since then, several states have repealed Common Core altogether, while others are making changes to the testing or are reviewing the standards.

The thing that motivates Gates to get involved is that he profits from it. It has nothing to do with sharing, it is about power. Moreover, based on this other new report, Gates is now giving cheques to the White House, possible in order to promote Windows in computer science:

The White House also announced $20 million in private donations to train 25,000 computer science teachers by 2016. Donations came from companies like Google and Microsoft and individuals like Bill Gates, Napster founder Sean Parker, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and others.

Notice how both Microsoft and Bill Gates put money in there. Microsoft is not a charity, so we can safely assume that the monetary gift has been justified as serving Microsoft’s bottom line. █

Thousands of Child Rape Photos Traded Out of Bill Gates’ Mansion

Posted in Bill Gates at 12:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”

–Bill Gates

Photos

Summary: Bill Gates finds himself under scrutiny as people who are very close to him turn out to be making money from pedophilia

MR. GATES AND THE Gates Foundation are not going to comment on this incident. The ‘brand’ would be hurt. Distancing itself would be wise, but to dissociate from the crime would not be trivial.

“The amusing thing — not that child abuse is in any way amusing — is that he actually uses Google (not Microsoft) at Gates’ home.”We already wrote many articles about how Bill Gates gets children addicted to malware (like a drug dealer), but his staff goes further by trading pedophilia out of Gates’ own home. The amusing thing — not that child abuse is in any way amusing — is that he actually uses Google (not Microsoft) at Gates’ home. The British press has this to say:

An engineer employed at the home of Bill and Melinda Gates has been charged with possession of child porn after he was discovered to have more than 6,000 images depicting rape and sexual abuse.

Rick Allen Jones, 51, of Seattle, allegedly had thousands of images stashed on his home computer, according to court documents this week.

Here is what the press in Seattle (close and in some ways connected to Gates) wrote about this incident. The American press speaks of this interesting bit:

Jones has not been jailed, but he is ordered to stay away from all children.

Get this.

No jail after trading thousands of photos of child rape. If it was legal, Gates’ Corbis would probably have monetised that too. Perhaps — just perhaps — being close to Gates contributed to this (knowing politicians and having secret access to the system helps). Gates never ends up in jail, no matter how many crimes and how severe the crime he commits (there are many examples like this photography business, not just driving violations). Gates himself got arrested in the past, but he was rich enough to pay his way out of jail. Moreover, this is not the first time that Gates employs criminals (at a very high level even) who go to prison or even kill people. Examples were given here before. █

Microsoft Does Not Want to Make Windows Secure

Posted in Microsoft, Vista 8, Windows at 11:51 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“Our products just aren’t engineered for security.”

–Brian Valentine, Microsoft executive

Barbed wire

Summary: Windows is not designed to be secure and Microsoft is not even trying to make it secure when advised on how to make it so

YESTERDAY we wrote about the latest extensive evidence that Skype is a spy. Microsoft knows damn well that it is being used to spy on people, but it does not bother hardening the proprietary software program or even fix critical bugs that facilitate wiretapping (e.g. through weak encryption). Security is simply not the goal.

“Security is simply not the goal.”Today we learn that the NSA, which Microsoft tells about flaws before even fixing them (hence providing the NSA with back door access), sure is enjoying access to the latest version of Windows even if it is fully patched and up to date. For several months now Microsoft just didn’t bother patching the holes. Google, which banned Windows for internal use but remains negatively affected by Google users who are on Windows-running PCs, shows Microsoft a serious flaw (local back door) in the very latest Windows. Microsoft just simply does nothing for three months (except showing the NSA, as usual), whereupon Google increases pressure on Microsoft: [via]

Google has made public the details of a security vulnerability in Windows 8.1 a mere 90 days after disclosing it to Microsoft, sparking debate over the wisdom of the online giant’s Project Zero security initiative.

The bug, which was privately reported to Microsoft in September, can potentially allow a logged-in user to execute code on Windows 8.1 machines with administrator privileges.

What we learn from this is that Google tried responsible disclosure, as was the case when the OpenSSL flaw was discovered by Google, well before a Microsoft-connected firm gave it a name, a logo, and very irresponsibly sent out the word, even before OpenSSL’s own site was patched.

Google waited patiently for months, but Microsoft is simply not interested in the security of Windows. Those who are using Windows are not able to patch the flaw themselves because it is proprietary software. It serves to show why every company — not just individual — should shun Windows where security is a priority (it’s a top priority everywhere). Sony is being severely hit by a doxing problem that reportedly started with cracking of Microsoft Windows. █

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