"SO far Gates abuses the front of charity to push his politics," argues a reader of ours, "using a war chest filled by his chief lobbyist, Buffett. If the pair going to actually walk the walk, that goes with all the talk, they could start with a 7+ digit, cash, no-strings-attached donation to the FSF (or FSFe) and another to the EFF."
“If the pair going to actually walk the walk, that goes with all the talk, they could start with a 7+ digit, cash, no-strings-attached donation to the FSF (or FSFe) and another to the EFF.”
--Anonymous readerI recently started this discussion in USENET, which had Ian Hilliard argue: "Gates and Co. are lobbying government, hence the taxpayers, to finance development of new energy technologies, which will belong to the companies doing the development. The companies will then charge the taxpayers to use the technology.
"If the taxpayers are paying for the technology, they should also own it, hence the technology should go into public domain, so that those who paid for the technology also get to use it for free. We all know that that won't happen.
"These people are lobbying the government in their own self interest, which comes back to my original statement: Politics is about pushing the agenda of a minority against the best interest of the majority.
"Gates now runs an investment company in the guise of a charity."
The forum's usual Microsoft trolls jump to Gates' defence (ad hominem attacks on messengers), but in reply to them, argues Hilliard: "Of course Gates profits. He profits in the power that all that money in the Gates Foundation has to throw around. The fact is that the Gates Foundation only gives the minimum amount of money that it has to to remain a charity.
“Gates now runs an investment company in the guise of a charity.”
--Ian Hilliard"If you look closely, the Gates Foundation is investing in a lot of start up technologies. Unlike the government, Bill Gates is not a silent investor. Bill Gates is using his money to put himself in the middle of a number of emerging technologies and by claiming to be a charity, he does not have to pay tax.
"Bill Gates made is money by leveraging his control of the OS, handed to him by IBM, to kill off the competition and take over the markets that others had created.
"Gates is a great strategist. He knew to use his father's legal skills, his mother's connections and his friend, Steve Balmer's marketing skills to pitch computing at the masses and then control it. He stopped the PC
manufacturers from being able to compete on anything but price and specs in order to force the price of hardware down. This meant that more computers could be sold and Microsoft could sell more software.
"Most of all, Bill Gates understood that you can control the end user by controlling their data. To this day, Microsoft fights against using real open standards and this relinquishes control of the data."
We previously showed that Gates' friend, whom he invests in heavily (the world's largest patent troll), holds patents that relate to these energy projects Gates lobbies for. This same troll, Intellectual Ventures, also has investment in the pharmaceutical patents that Gates lobbies for, under the guise of promoting health. It's lobbying, it's an investment, and Gates employs a big army of PR people to hide this and to marginalise opposing views. He helps create a monopolistic vision that promotes just one path and sends billions of dollars. These dollars will be sent to him and his friends at taxpayers' expense.
We are very disappointed to see that Slashdot is still publishing Gates' PR pieces (maybe promoted by one of the PR agencies the foundation hired). It neglects Bill Gates' investments in BP for example [1, 2, 3] and instead plays along with Gates' latest lobbying (comparing Gates to Einstein even). As one commenter points out:
Einstein wrote of specific people and experiments. Gates does not.
Einstein warned of a horrible weapon. Gates is warning us that the most environmentally ravaged countries might be developing alternative energy (may god have mercy on our souls, lol).
Einstein acted alone and was not heavily invested in nuclear energy. Gates and his friends are heavily invested in alternative energy sources.
I'm no biographer of either but from what I know Einstein seemed to be motivated by things like the discovery of knowledge and genuine concern for mankind. Gates has (at least historically) seemed to be motivated by profit and money first above everything else with ideals similar to Einstein distantly following that primary motivator. Maybe he's changed but Einstein has always held a more altruistic image in my mind. That tends to happen to people long gone who made staggering advancements. Who knows, maybe revisionist history will see Gates alongside Einstein? But as it stands now, my personal opinion is that the two are not even close.
Bottom line: Einstein was a scientist who made great discoveries. Gates was a businessman who made great sales.
I'm not sold on Gates' motives. He sounds more like a lobbyist than a sage omen of caution like Einstein was.
Bill Gates's limp defence of Chinese web censorship
Gates is not chief executive of Microsoft anymore, of course, and arguably not under any obligation to comment on industry issues. But he is in a position of power and influence and should be prepared to set an example. Whatever Google's conveniently PR friendly reasons for pulling out of China, it is still right to take a stand against the mass censorship of the internet in China.
Gates's soggy and safe generalisation about the internet as a great source of information is true, yes, but the value and democracy of that information is severely undermined when whole swathes of opinion and perspective are blocked.