11.06.20
Posted in America, Deception at 9:13 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2008 about President-Elect Obama: Microsoft Executives Go Personal, Pay Obama Instead of Their Lobbyists
Summary: The 'corporate party' politics will carry on for another 4 years; we’ll soon be able to say more (when it’s seen as “safer”, i.e. when Biden and Harris formally secure this election’s outcome)
THE gap between Biden and Trump continues to grow (“popular vote” margin now at over 4.1 million). Trump’s response is just his last gasp/struggle for air (see “Trump Loses Lawsuit to Toss Out 53 Absentee Ballots in Georgia“ and “Trump’s PA Strategy Is to Use the Courts to Toss Votes Out. It’s Not Working.“). Coronavirus did not kill him, but his campaign is mostly dead and it seems increasingly safe to assert that Biden won this election. We’re still watching these things closely and the growing consensus is that Trump is “fucked” and he might soon be “in the docket” for raping (or “fucking” loads of women against their will). The “F” word comes from Trump himself. He is a vulgar narcissist, whose name we’ll hopefully not mention much in years to come.
“When it comes to matters like censorship, patents, copyrights and other monopolies Biden isn’t much better than Trump.”At this point the Trumps are just fabricating things, leading to humourous responses such as this:
It seems increasingly safe to say that the election is “over”; it’s very hard to see or foresee a turnaround, no matter what Trump may try next (our Daily Links include condemnations from all around the world, leading to mounting political pressure for Trump to just officially concede).
Trump was no “puppy” (calling him a puppy would be a lot like the Linux Foundation‘s chief comparing Microsoft to “a puppy”) and the damage he has done in 4 years is profound. Biden will undo only some of that damage. Just some. Because on a lot of issues the two parties are in complete agreement (even when in public they pretend otherwise).
When it comes to matters like censorship, patents, copyrights and other monopolies Biden isn’t much better than Trump. Compassion and empathy, however, matter more to a lot of people. Bringing the country together is a hard task; it might not be possible to accomplish even in 4 years, let alone 8. Our position on this election is, it was reduced to “lesser evils” (as usual) and we’ll soon — perhaps as soon as it is officially over — start talking about the issues Biden and Harris ought to address (if they’re attentive at all and subservient to their constituents, rather than just “not Trump”). █
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Posted in Site News at 7:57 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Reflections after 14 years of Techrights and plans/focus for the 15th year of this site
OUR 29,000th blog post will be published later this month and 30,000th blog post in late winter (or spring).
“There’s no foreseen shift in focus.”We’ve barely diverged from the topics first covered here (in 2006). We’re still writing a lot about patents, about Microsoft’s aggression against GNU/Linux (this site predates the Linux Foundation, which now works for Microsoft).
There’s no foreseen shift in focus. In early 2019 we reduced our focus on the USPTO because 35 U.S.C. § 101 dominated court cases, almost always invaliding software patents. By that point the EPO was also getting quieter, so it was hard to know what exactly went on there. UPC already died 2 years earlier, so not much was left to fight on that front. But remember… the UPC is coming “Real Soon!” (it’s always coming soon, even back in 2014)
Right now we worry greatly about entyrism and concurrent attacks on free speech (to silence/scare resistors); Today’s Linux Foundation is a front for monopolies, not for Linux. Any connection to Linux is purely coincidental and limited to the brand (and their best known employee being the trademark holder of this brand).
Bill Gates is still involved in Microsoft and his tactics have not changed. It’s all about monopoly and brutal repressions designed to eternally protect monopoly. In his own words:
“The fact that there’s some e-mail here at MS that says ‘let’s go up and beat this guy’: there’s nothing wrong with that – that is capitalism at work for consumers.”
No, that’s “capitalism at work” for you, Bill. You were born extremely rich and right now you profit endlessly from COVID-19 while the media no longer asks you about your close relationship with the most notorious sex trafficker, ever. We hope to get our hands on court documents soon — court-signed material about the imprisonment (over pedophilia) of Bill’s personal engineer, arrested at his mansion several years before the story resurfaced and was properly studied (we released plenty of police documents earlier this year and still possess over 2,700 pages we cannot publish). █
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Posted in Site News at 7:08 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: We’re entering our 15th year as a site, with record traffic and a record number of contributors; we’re expanding beyond the World Wide Web as well, partly as means of staying ahead of the curve
AS we’re technically (and officially) under lock-down we cannot really go out to mark the event, but staying home with some cakes was still a possibility. My writings online predate the site and articles about patents go further back than 2006, but this site grew very fast after it had been set up and the past year was a record year (no matter what criteria are measured), maybe because of the growing urgency of software freedom in time of “Corona” and coups against our leadership figures.
The ‘party’ was ridiculously boring and laughably small; but it’s kind of compatible with geeks’ standards if not nerds’ standards (geeks sans social skills), so we probably won’t get laughed at. At least we did something. Considering the current limitations (movement and purchases), it’s not too pathetic an effort. We got those cakes early enough.
Techrights‘ IPFS node is now properly set up in a self-hosted (our home) Raspberry Pi and has a new object online (the first one). Techrights will become available in more than one medium (beyond HTTP), as we’ve already done format-shifting to reduce our dependence on — or rather adherence to — SGML. The daily bulletins contain almost as much information as HTML (but are vastly smaller, compacted text-only files, one per day). █
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Posted in Patents at 6:43 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Recent: Watchtroll Demonises People Wrongly Accused of Patent Infringement (or Sued Using Fake Patents)
A giant own goal
Summary: Tactless and careless writing by litigation hopefuls is more likely to alienate Biden’s administration and generally shed a really negative light on the patent maximalists’ agenda (as happened when Michelle Lee was in charge, constantly to be attacked by Watchtroll until her removal)
WELL, the blowhards at Watchtroll have managed to outdo even themselves. Again! “Tactless” is an understatement in this context and it’s the wrong timing as well.
“Maybe they don’t even realise how self-harming the above post really is.”The gap between President-Elect (almost) Biden and (outgoing, or going to prison) Trump is only growing over time. It is now a 4-million (voters/people) gap in the “popular vote” sense as two more key states are projected to go Biden’s way. Trump’s campaign was a failure and it’ll have no legal basis (or merit) for any effective appeals. This won’t be overturned, except perhaps very locally. So it’s pretty fair to assume that Biden will be inaugurated in 2 months. SCOTUS ‘moles’ of the GOP won’t be enough; they were counted on in case of a much closer presidential race, not 50 or so electors apart. Sites like Facebook and Twitter already pull the plug on Trump, correctly (fore)seeing him as a crazed lunatic whose days are numbered.
How did Watchtroll respond to the news? Well, the screenshot above (no link needed) says it all. They’re more concerned about the fate of patent trolls (defended by Trump’s buddy who became the USPTO‘s chief) than about the integrity if not fate of the entire country. Maybe they don’t even realise how self-harming the above post really is. We know some patent lawyers/attorneys who immensely dislike Trump. The above post/article won’t age well.
Patent professionals who still rely on Watchtroll for their dose of “news” should consider carefully what (or who) they’re supporting. The site has been a lobbying platform for disgraced/retired judges who pretend to still be judges and for various aggressive elements of the Trump administration, as well as enablers of EPO corruption under the regime of Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos. It makes the patent profession as a whole look really, really bad. █
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Posted in Deception, Humour at 6:08 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
As effective as stockpiling toilet paper ahead of (or during) a pandemic
Summary: The sorts of things people would put up with because they’re told those things “protect” them (even when they clearly do not; contact-tracing is extremely ineffective at the current scale)
OUR DATA all ours
Your data is ours, too
We know where you go
We can see when you poo
There’s nothing to hide
Because COVID we fight
Privacy is not a right
Confidentially is a blight
Hold on tight
We’ve got on you in sight
Wearing a mask you might
But the phone exposes your ID alright
The pandemic is a killer
A silent old killer
Surveillance is a blessing
Spies are the new healer
Smile at the camera
We know who you are
We know you you met
We know when you poo █
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Posted in Deception, Microsoft at 5:34 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The Linux Foundation fulfils mass surveillance agenda, in turn outsourcing it to Microsoft (a virus tracking a virus?) under the lousy veneer of “nonprofit”
Summary: The head of Linux Foundation Public Health has died of bad health, leaving a legacy of surveillance in Microsoft’s NSA-connected platform (proprietary GitHub), all in the name of 'public health' of course
Related: [Meme] Contact-Tracing Ploy (Mission Creep/Mass Surveillance) is Only Effective When Dealing With Patient Zero and Few Others, Not Millions
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Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 4:45 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Related: Bill Gates: “Our Most Potent Operating System Competitor is Linux”
Summary: Microsoft continues to attack its “most potent” competitor and some gullible people tell us that these attacks are in fact an act of “love”
THE other day we saw some comments about Techrights from a bunch of Microsoft apologists (links omitted, pardon our reluctance to give those remarks further exposure as they’re neither long nor insightful, only dismissive ad hominem). The message in a nutshell is, Microsoft’s “embrace” of the competition (e.g. Linux Foundation) is a sign of love. This conveniently overlooks decades of strategic takeovers, derailments and abductions of competitors (or their agenda/leadership). The Bill Gates deposition is full of examples. This is just what Microsoft does and has always done. This is why, by its very own admission, Microsoft bought GitHub.
“Microsoft didn’t “succeed” because its products were good but because it actively sabotaged competitors’ products/companies and because Bill’s mom got him the breakthrough deal with IBM.”Tom called it "GitHug" when he correctly asserted it’s an attack; he noted that Microsoft is willing to lose lots of money just to ensure Microsoft controls the competition.
Like bears playing with their prey, Microsoft loves entertaining that idea that those whom it is attacking are just engaging in ‘foreplay’. But the ‘appetiser’ is the “free stuff” (like ‘free’ hosting, a temporary luxury as YouTube-DL developers recently found out) and the meal comes later. Microsoft does not love Linux. Microsoft didn’t change itself and it didn’t transform into an “Open Source company”; all the major stuff remains proprietary (Windows XP and GitHub source code leaks are treated like a major incident!) because there’s nothing to it beyond shallow rhetoric.
Microsoft didn’t “succeed” because its products were good but because it actively sabotaged competitors’ products/companies and because Bill's mom got him the breakthrough deal with IBM. After his previous company had failed miserably and collapsed. █
“Bill Gates is the absolute stone-cold worst businessman of the entire millennium. Gates tried again and again to get rid of his company, offering to merge it into Lotus Corporation, then floating away 80 percent of his ownership through share offers. The man had no concept of his own product, no faith in it, no vision of it. Gates is an accidental bazillionaire.” — Gregory Palast
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Posted in Site News at 3:53 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
It’s easier to collect, sell and hand over data when it’s in few places
Can’t even enter the subway anymore (e.g. London’s “Tube”) without giving your identity
Summary: In order to tackle surveillance on the Internet we need far more than HTTPS and certificates (they do nothing to tackle spying at the endpoints); we need to move towards a decentralised and encrypted Internet where it’s inherently difficult to track where people go and what they do
MINUTES ago I stumbled upon this headline about “smart [sic] collar for pets” (and their so-called ‘owners’). Like kids who upload videos of their parents and grandparents, sometimes against their will and without implicit/explicit consent (it’s harder to explain those concepts to children), here we have another vector for spying “by peer” (spying on non-consenting people nearby or close to those who are, e.g. Amazon “listening devices” disguised as “smart” assistants… assistants to spies basically). With fitness “trackers” and all sorts of “health”-related gadgets and “apps” that broadcast data to governments and private companies (farming people’s behaviour/thoughts) we’re not moving in a positive direction, are we?
One can only guess what comes next, but it’s a futurist’s challenge.
“We’re working on making this site accessible in a P2P fashion.”The surveillance of children and pets extends to humans and adults. Consent isn’t needed from the subject of surveillance when that subject chooses to associate with those who disregard privacy or were told not to care (because “nothing to hide” or some similar malarkey). People will need to start caring and then speaking about such things; we already have sufficient volumes of leaks to demonstrate not only theoretical threats but practical harms. We know how society as a whole, individually as well as collectively, is harmed by ‘mind farming’ in social control media and various so-called services that spy on and simultaneously indoctrinate (or program) people. Centralised platforms (not just Web-based) are a core issue almost nobody talks about, not even the EFF it seems…
The response to this cannot be limited to philosophical; it should also be technical (where this is feasible and we generally have the skillset). We’re working on making this site accessible in a P2P fashion. We’ve taken the first step by self-hosting (at home) for small files, with examples such as this (IPFS). There’s an uptime and resilience advantage associated with this (censorship resistance notwithstanding), as we recently saw in Groklaw's case. When it comes to security, remember what Bruce Schneier once said:
“The problem isn’t the Internet. The problem is the horribly insecure computers attached to the Internet. I would rather rewrite Windows than TCP/IP.”
TCP/IP is a perfectly fine protocol (UDP likewise, for DNS and several other purposes). The Internet is generally OK. It works. It’s the World Wide Web that’s getting troublesome, partly because of what Web browsers have become. █
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