01.28.10
Richard Stallman: “Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer Still Spineless and Greedy” (Regarding Censorship)
Steve Ballmer in Windows 1.0 advertisement
Summary: Microsoft’s support of censorship is denounced by a proponent of freedom of speech
YESTERDAY, Richard Stallman wrote that “Microsoft executives tried to excuse Chinese censorship by saying it is “limited” and that wizards can get around it. It is true that wizards can get around the censorship, especially if they have help from western friends. But only a tiny fraction of Chinese internet users know how to do that; as a result, Chinese censorship achieves its goal of suppressing political opposition in China.” Stallman filed this under the title “Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer: Still spineless and greedy”
“This whole storm that led to Stallman’s remark started when Chinese crackers exploited Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE).”A writer for the New York Times previously called for a boycott of Bing. Censorship in China was the cause.
This whole storm that led to Stallman’s remark started when Chinese crackers exploited Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]. Microsoft’s close relationship to the Chinese regime and Bill Gates' apologism (anti-Google tour) are almost a denial of the atrocities and violations of human rights (Tiananmen Square Massacre for example).
In other news, Microsoft’s search bribery [1, 2, 3, 4] for Bong [sic] (or equivalent identities of Microsoft’s poor and biased “search”) is expanding to more areas:
Microsoft Rewards Bing Map Users
[...]
The company will give you a chance to win a $100 gift card for taking it for a spin.
It is rather clear that Microsoft is trying to exploit greed. Microsoft also offered IE “bribes” in Australia (to urge people to ditch Web browsers like Firefox). The idea was that only those surfing the Web with IE might come across an award somewhere. Microsoft was slammed for doing this. █
Content is available under CC-BY-SA
Jose_X said,
January 28, 2010 at 11:58 am
The Bill and Melinda Gates World-Is-Free-Enough-Already Foundry
Robotron 2084 said,
January 28, 2010 at 11:48 pm
The censorship in China is a pain in the rear, but it’s not hard to get around. All I had to do to get several working proxies was to ask any English oriented chat room on QQ. I have to use a proxy to check Facebook and a few blog sites, but that’s about it. Even a few of my favorite porn sites are not blocked. It seems to be a 50/50 split between those who are aware that block are in place and those who don’t. Even many of those who are aware aren’t all that concerned because they only use Chinese related sites.
Bill Gates mentioned that is was difficult for the Chinese government to “stifle dissent”, and he’s pretty much right. There are simply too many users and too much data to sift though. There are bigger challenges to tackle here right now. I’m on a personal campaign to teach my students not to spit or pick their nose in public. Change in a nation this large really does need to happen at a snails pace, if it is to happen at all.
Stallman, on the other hand, has no real idea how hard it is for people in China because he barely uses the Internet as it is. This is a man who only uses the net to send a few text based emails. Definitely, most assuredly, NOT even close to the average Internet users here in China. It’s also amusing he appears to stand up for the rights of Chinese citizens to be free of censorship, yet uses a Chinese made laptop no doubt made in a sweatshop. Have you seen the young people that work here in these factories? I guarantee you Richard hasn’t.