Bonum Certa Men Certa

Disaster Capitalism and Microsoft



Direct link



Summary: How Microsoft makes money out of natural disasters; Microsoft takes Perl down with bot shakeups

KATRINA is well behind us, but several Microsoft Web sites used to speak about the dumping of Microsoft software (at zero cost, initially) that got many victimised businesses and local operations 'stuck' with Microsoft. They became victims twice. When disaster strikes, it is often seen as an opportunity for corporate takeover (there is a lot of budgeted money for reconstruction). In Naomi Klein's "shock doctrine", she explains how Katrina was exploited by corporations to transform their business success rather than transform the ruined land.



We have discussed this in the IRC channel for the past couple of days [1, 2] because of the Haiti earthquake. Separately, one of our readers mailed us the following last night:

Microsoft is puffing up some kind of disaster capitalism in Haiti. Eweek uncritically announced some $1.2 million of donations and a call to employees for aid. While it is nice of them to encourage others to help, $1.2 million is a piddling amount for such a large company and Eweek might have asked if the "donations" were more of the usual, $1,500 worth of CDs and temporary licensing keys with a MSRP of $1.2 million. It is a shame that details were not provided to reduce well earned cynicism.

Having seen Microsoft in action for Katrina and Rita, I can say that they are a hindrance rather than help. Red Cross offices suffered under Microsoft's notoriously poor networking, which kept them from being able to act as efficiently as they should. Citizens were forced to use IE to sign up for relief because government websites were poorly designed, so free software was banished from evacuation centers and people fell back to pen and paper. To top it all off, Microsoft used the opportunity to expand their grip on public education and small business with state funded, strings attached deals. I can only imagine what they will do in Haiti, where there's less to milk when all is done.


Speaking of making money out of chaos, Heise finally writes about Microsoft's denial of service attack on Perl, which gives Perl's allegations legitimacy. The H says:

The Perl CPAN Testers have been suffering issues accessing their sites, databases and mirrors. According to a posting on the CPAN Testers' blog, the CPAN Testers' server has been being aggressively scanned by "20-30 bots every few seconds" in what they call "a dedicated denial of service attack"; these bots "completely ignore the rules specified in robots.txt".


Microsoft's own servers also act as drivers of DDoS attacks (when hijacked) and as sources of referrer SPAM (as a matter of design) [1, 2]. It's probably worst when DNS goes down due to Microsoft.

As PC Pro (UK) puts it, Microsoft is now liaising with HP in hope of fighting GNU/Linux.

Microsoft and HP tie $250m knot



[...]

From Microsoft's point of view, the deal will help ward off the threat of Linux-based solutions in businesses, while HP can count a near-guaranteed revenue stream from Microsoft-centric customers.


Secret/exclusionary deals are related to the exploitation of natural disaster, but they are not quite the same. Both are means of imposing the use of inferior software through loopholes, euphemistic bribes, and back doors.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Nonfree Software in My Bank, by Richard Stallman
Updated 8 hours ago
Richard Stallman is Usually Right Because He Thinks "Outside the Box"
he is able to observe society (mores and norms) as somewhat of an outsider
 
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 28, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 28, 2025
Links 28/07/2025: Science, Health, and Conflicts
Links for the day
Gemini Links 28/07/2025: Healthy Self-Image With Autism and a "New Life"
Links for the day
Links 28/07/2025: COVID-19 Sped up Brain Aging, "Circumvention is More Popular Than Compliance"
Links for the day
LWN Has Been Down for a Long Time, Another Casualty of LLM Bots?
Time will tell. How much time though?
Slopfarms Versus 'Linux' (and Against People Who Write Real Articles About GNU/Linux)
LLM slop in slopfarms by Brian Fagioli and Redazione RHC
Gemini Links 28/07/2025: Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray and Running pkgsrc in a FreeBSD Jail
Links for the day
Microsoft Turns News Sites Into Spamfarms
Is the site The Register MS the next IDG?
The Register MS/The Register US
On Saturday I contacted them for a comment (before issuing criticism)
Hacking revelations at Vatican Jubilee of Digital Missionaries
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 27, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, July 27, 2025
The Week to Come
Planning ahead
LLM Slop Has Only Been a Boon for Misinformation Online
The very same companies that were supposed to maintain quality (again, not limited to Google with PageRank) are now actively participating in generating and spreading slop
When They Tell You It's Free, Does That Mean No Charges (If So, Who's Paying and Why)?
there's "no free lunch"
We're Going to Focus Less on the Molotov Cocktail-Throwing Microsofters and More on Patents
We can get back to focusing on what we wanted to focus on all along
Just Trying to Keep Web Sites Honest (Journalistic Integrity)
the latest articles in LinuxIac are real
Links 27/07/2025: Political Affairs, Data Breaches, Attacks on Freedom of the Press
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/07/2025: Hot in Japan and Terminal Escape Codes
Links for the day
Links 27/07/2025: More Microsoft Layoffs Coming, Science and Hardware News
Links for the day
Links 27/07/2025: FSF Hackathon and "Hulk Hogan Was a Very Bad Man"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/07/2025: DAW Mixer Chains and Simple Software
Links for the day
The Register MS is Inventing or Giving Air Time to New Conspiracy Theories so as to Distort the Narrative As High-Profile Agencies Fall Prey to Microsoft Holes
But the problem is holes, i.e. Microsoft making bad products; the problem is Microsoft
Most Editors at The Register Are American, Including the Editor in Chief, a Decade-Long Microsoft Stenographer (Writing Prose to Sell Microsoft)
It's not easy to tell where the site is based (we tried) because it's hiding behind ClownFlare and CrimeFlare hasn't been well lately
Pushers of systemd Rewrite History (Richard Stallman Said UNIX "Was Portable and Seemed Fairly Clean")
Unlike systemd
"New Techrights" Soon Turns 2 (A Few Days Before the FSF Turns 40)
We have a lot more to say about LLM bots
When Silence Says So Much
Garrett, a 'secure' boot pusher, will need to defend himself in the UK High Court
The Register in Trouble
There is not much that can be done at this point
Trajectory of The Register: From News Site/s Into "B2B"... and Into Microsoft Salespeople
Something isn't right at The Register
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 26, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, July 26, 2025
Misinformation in Social Control Media
Social control media passes around all sorts of tropes
Slopwatch: Fake Linux 'Articles' and Slopfarms With "Linux" in Their Names/Domains
throwing bots at "Linux" to make some fake articles