05.30.10
Posted in Bill Gates, Finance, Microsoft at 7:01 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: “Abrupt takeover” is an overstatement, but Bill Gates is buying influence over US education and not everyone is keeping quiet about it
THE NEW BOOK from Ravitch is critical of the Gates Foundation and we wrote about it in [1, 2, 3, 4]. In short, Ravitch alleges that Gates is buying influence over the schooling system/s and in this new article it’s being claimed that “both Sen. Williams and Mr. Gates do a great disservice to the hundreds of thousands of students and teachers who are successful and accomplishing great things in our public schools.” Our next post has a lot more to say on the subject of Microsoft intrusion into the public sector/government, but here are some fragments from this new article:
In her recent book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education,” Diane Ravitch makes the following observation regarding charters:
“Given the money and power behind charter schools (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, Obama Administration/RTT), it seems likely that they are here to stay. If we continue on the present course, with big foundations and the federal government investing heavily in opening more charter schools, the result is predictable. Charter schools in urban centers will enroll the motivated children of the poor, while the regular public schools will become schools of last resort for those who never applied or were rejected. The regular public schools will enroll a disproportionate share of students with learning disabilities and students who are classified as English-language learners; they will enroll the kids from the most troubled home circumstances, the ones with the worst attendance records and the lowest grades and test scores.”
[...]
However, not all of our schools face those same challenges. The public school system is not by any means a blanket failure. Both Sen. Williams and Mr. Gates do a great disservice to the hundreds of thousands of students and teachers who are successful and accomplishing great things in our public schools.
Gates is putting pressure using those so-called ‘donations’ that have strings attached to them (we gave many examples before). They actually call it a “contract”, not a “donation”. Here is an article from three days ago:
The district must contribute $129.55 million beyond the community gift over the seven-year term of the contract, under the deal with Gates Foundation.
According to the contract, MCS will receive $6.5 million installments from Gates twice a year.
There are other new examples where Gates offers money to schools [1, 2] (sometimes it’s called a “grant”) and here are the warning signs:
The Gates Foundation has become a leader in education reform, and Memphis is fortunate to have qualified as a sort of laboratory for change. An investment in that change could pay off well in the form of better teachers, administrators and schools.
The above says “leader” as in “monopoliser” and “reform” as in “do it our way”. The Gates Foundation has become a de facto source of guidance, just as Ravitch warned in her book. The Gates team defends its actions with reports it pays to generate (Microsoft too privately admits producing fake claims just to be able to cite them for support, as antitrust exhibits clearly show). Here is an example from last week’s news.
“Consequences of dropping out include increased chances of being in poverty, being unemployed, being on public assistance, being in prison or on death row, being divorced or being a single parent,” the report says, quoting the Gates Foundation.
This article is about high schools. It references the Gates Foundation as though it is a school board or education ministry. This is dangerous because private interests are private. “Never in the history of the United States was there a foundation as rich and powerful as the Gates Foundation,” wrote Ravitch. “Never was there one that sought to steer state and national policy in education. And never before was there a foundation that gave grants to almost every major think tank and advocacy group in the field of education, leaving almost no one willing to criticize its vast power and unchecked influence.” █
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Posted in Bill Gates, Marketing, Microsoft at 6:24 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
David Gerard’s rendition of Bill Gates as Microsoft Jack, who
permanently left the Guardian about a week ago
Summary: New study suggests that legions of PR people whose job is to glorify Bill Gates in the mainstream press are also doing a service to Microsoft (and a disservice to history)
LAST week we wrote about the role of Edelman and Waggener Edstrom in embellishing Bill Gates' image after his crimes at Microsoft. It’s a familiar stunt that the Rockefeller family used as well. It’s nothing out of the ordinary, but it is important to recognise what’s going on.
In the United States and in the United Kingdom at the very least (based on surveys), Microsoft is received better than in most of the rest of the world where Microsoft is rightly perceived as parasitic, unethical, and imperialistic. There is a new survey in the US and its results suggest that the PR work which Bill Gates is doing for himself (by hiring many agencies, some of which work on Microsoft brands) is also working well for Microsoft, in which he still has many shares and an important role (not a very public role). From The Hindu:
About Microsoft, the report stated consumers found it “to be as inspiring as any non-profit in the world today because of the close association with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In fact people view the work of the Foundation as an authentic extension of the mission of Microsoft.”
More on the same topic from Forbes Magazine:
When Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, created America’s largest (by wealth) charity organization in 1999, their intention was simple: use profits to improve the lives, education and health of others. Their good deed, however, had an unintended consequence. It helped overhaul public perception of Microsoft. Now the Redwood, Wash., software giant is viewed as America’s most inspiring company.
They are brushing up the image of the guy who, according to antitrust material (Comes vs Microsoft for example), is the man behind many of the violations of the law. It’s rather refreshing to turn from a villain into a hero using PR alone. As we shall explain in later posts, Gates is still making money, sometimes more than he gives away. Bill Gates has become a label and a franchise, kind of like “Michael Jordan”. Here is another new example or two where the “Bill Gates” brand is being used for Microsoft apologetics.
A lot of people forget (due to PR) that Bill Gates was not an engineer. He was perhaps an engineer of loopholes in the law — things that kept him out of jail as he refused to answer very simple questions. Gates comes from a legal family and legal background; it’s just a shame he could not obey the law and instead used knowledge of the law to bypass the law. David Morgenstern, an Apple fan (as if Apple is pure bliss just because it competed against a corrupt company), writes about Bill Gates’ lack of technological foresight (we also wrote about this a week ago).
Prediction hell: How dumb do Bill Gates & Microsoft’s iPad, Surface predictions look now?
[...]
According to Mary-Jo Foley’s reporting at All About Microsoft, Microsoft has moved its Macintosh Business Unit away from the Specialized Devices and Applications team. We can only hope that’s good news. The further away from Surface the better.
The company which ranks best appears to be Sony, which does a lot of appalling things (RIAA, rootkits, etc.) despite its use of Linux in many areas such as phones, televisions, and even PS3 (until recently).
Google rated top “most trusted, liked, and respected” company worldwide by consulting firm Reputation Institute, with the Japanese electronics giant taking second place.
Microsoft’s fan press wonders what it will take to save Microsoft while the Seattle Times, a de facto branch of Bill Gates PR for the most part, carries a message of “Microsoft philanthropy” (turning a criminal company into the very opposite by playing with words and headlines).
The Web site Microsoft Hohm helps people calculate their energy use and find ways to conserve, and it’s planned in the future as a tool to help manage information about when and where to recharge electric vehicles.
“Young generation redefines culture of Microsoft philanthropy” is the headline. The Seattle Times is nearly always playing along with the PR. It has become almost amusing. Over the past week there have also been loads of that energy nonsense striving to portray Microsoft as “green” and “environmental”. To be fair, other companies do that too, but they don’t pretend as much as Microsoft does. There are people being assigned to manage such spin campaigns, as Howard Bloom explained some days ago (skip to 45 minutes from the start). █
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Posted in Microsoft at 5:32 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Another missing piece of the Microsoft exodus (almost everyone with a long history at a high-level rank has left in recent years, except Ballmer)
WE are gradually compiling this large page and an increasingly-long list of major departures from Microsoft. We started doing this in late 2008 and a departure we did not notice at the time it happened is that of Microsoft’s Robotics chief. Mary Jo Foley brought it up some days ago:
Given last year’s departure of Robotics chief Tandy Trower, I’m wondering about Microsoft’s future intentions and directions in the robotics space…
Mary Jo Foley can only hope that Microsoft will appeal to professionals in robotics (she also promotes vapourware at the moment, despite similar fluff to this, never mind if nothing ever came out of it). In this one particular area they are losing to Linux big time. No wonder the managers are leaving, which is never a good sign because it’s statistically correlated to failure. Departures from Microsoft are not necessarily good news however. On the one hand they are a sign that Microsoft is losing, but on the other hand, those who depart can actually cause damage to companies other than Microsoft by twisting and bending those companies in Microsoft’s direction. It’s mostly an HR issue. One failed unit of Microsoft was responsible for phones, devices, and the likes of these. Prior to the departure of J Allard and Robbie Bach [1, 2, 3] it was Enrique Rodriguez who left this team [1, 2]. He was a Vice President. Guess where he ends up? Cisco (see background [1, 2, 3]). He won't be alone.
Enrique Rodriguez, a former exec at Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)’s video and music division, is joining Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) to take on a key role at the tech giant’s Service Provider Video Technology Group (SPVTG), Light Reading Cable has learned.
Another recent departure from Microsoft is Alex Gounares [1, 2] and finally he explains how or why he left Microsoft to join AOL. He becomes a CTO there.
Why did you decide to move to AOL after so many years with Microsoft?
It really was the opportunity that attracted me here, and it started with a phone call that I got a couple months ago. I started doing my homework, and of course I knew about AOL, obviously being in the industry I had tracked it somewhat, but I hadn’t tracked it in depth. And the company that I saw was an amazing company; it was not the AOL that maybe I had thought of before.
We have already shown (some time earlier this month) the role of Gounares in Microsoft’s abuses at least as a quiet observer. █
Update (02/07/10): Tandy Trower contacted us and offered clarifications regarding his departure. With his kind permission, we add these below.
Not certain if this will get through your spam filter, but someone passed on your blog mention of my departure. You may not be interested, but I thought I would provide you with some information regarding my departure.
First, you are correct that robotics development is mostly done on Linux, some on VXWorks or other proprietary OSes. This was actually the case when I proposed to Gates that we develop a robotics toolkit. However, that recommendation came directly from many of the leaders from diverse parts of the robotics community including people using robotics in education, academic research, industrial automation, and even innovators like Helen Greiner of iRobot.
The invitation/encouragement for Microsoft to participate came from people like Red Whittaker, long time robotics veteran and leader of the CMU robotics department and organizer/founder of the CMU DARPA Challenge teams. When Red encouraged Microsoft to get involved, one of the first questions I asked him was why since it was obvious he and other key researchers were not using Microsoft technology and I highly doubted with their investment in Linux based development that they would switch. Red was very clear. It was not to help him or other experts already in the field but the broaden the market. From his perspective (and this was shared by the people I talked to) for robotics to really emerge into its potential required not just the experts to participate but as wide and diverse a community as possible to contribute their creativity. And there simply were not enough tools out there and plenty of room for other alternatives.
While it is true that the toolkit my team created was based on Microsoft OS and tools, we very much tried to build bridges to other toolkits and technologies. For example, the interprocess communication library we defined we published as part of Microsoft’s Open Software Licensing that would enable anyone to create a compatible interface on Linux or other OS. In fact we did have developers who used our libraries to interact with code run on other OSes including Mac and Linux. I even explored doing versions of our core libraries for Linux. I’d be the first to admit we had a long way to go, and never proposed that developers already invested on other platforms convert to using our toolkit. As you might know robots often have multiple processors and so multi-OS solutions are not uncommon. Windows never was a very good OS for real-time programming. Few, including Linux, are. Often very tight processing scenarios an OS isn’t even used but driven by FPGAs as was the case with the UBot-5 created by students in Rod Grupen’s department at UMass Amherst. FPGAs drove the two-wheel dynamic balancing, but they found Windows with the Microsoft robotics layer as a compatible solution.
You are welcome to your own opinion, but my departure from Microsoft was not a failure at my job, unless you want to consider that after Gates’ departure (my original and primary exec sponsor) I was unsuccessful in convincing the executive management that took his place of my next steps in strategy. Given the directive to take the next step beyond the toolkit and define a compelling application solution (since outside industrial applications, entertainment, education, and simple cleaning) robotics still lacks “killer applications”. This is pretty much universally acknowledged by all in or observing the state of the current industry. After looking at several application areas (automotive, military, education, consumer, etc.) I decided that assistive care was not only the best opportunity, but where the technology could applied to the growing number of people needing help in performing normal daily activities. Already according to the reports on disabilities in the US, 25% of the population falls into this category and incurable chronic diseases like autism and Alzheimer’s are actually on the rise. When you add to this that the boomer generation will almost double the number of seniors over the next 20 years, while we are facing an increasing shortage of care providers, I was able to imagine scenarios where a self-mobile PC (aka robot) could be used to make up for the inevitable reduction in cognitive and physical abilities.
For the first time in my 28 years at Microsoft, my proposal wasn’t funded, due in part to the economic conditions that allowed for little new investment. However, I felt so strongly about what many observers characterize as a potential coming care tsunami that I decided to leave and try to do this by creating my own company. Further, despite my 28 years at Microsoft I am open-minded to what tools and platform I build on. The people at Willow Garage will confirm that I have been to visit them and explore their ROS work. To me its a practical matter of determining where the best enabling technologies are. The task of creating a semi-autonomous robot that can enable people to compensate for the deficits of aging, chronic disease, or other severe disabilities will be hard enough without having to develop everything from scratch. As I had done at Microsoft, my intent is to find the best of breed technologies I can license and combine for building this.
What all this means about Microsoft, I’ll leave to your own opinion, but I did want to clarify that I didn’t leave because I had failed in my efforts to start the robotics at Microsoft. The group continues there and has actually grown in number since I left. There’s important work going on. Where they go from here is no longer my concern. I have a new mission and my experience at Microsoft will help me in what I do, though since it has yet to be done by anyone, my chances of success may be remote, but considering the potential impact on addressing the challenges we will be facing not only in this country but around the world (in Asia, EU, and China assistive care ranks as one of the top motivators for robotics research), I do not think my efforts will be wasted.
Best regards,
Tandy Trower
CEO/Founder
Hoaloha Robotics (btw Hoaloha is Hawaiian for compassionate friend)
[...]
You are welcome to post provided you don’t do it in a mean spirited way and take sound bytes to flail with me with. (I am trusting that if that was your purpose, you likely wouldn’t ask for permission to use.)
However, again my departure was no so much triggered by a reduction in the investment in robotics. As mentioned, I believe the organization I founded has actually grown in size since I left. But the primary reason I resigned was to pursue an application scenario that execs there did not wish to invest in (at least for the present). Microsoft is obviously already invested in many different areas already, so it is unclear that management can be faulted for not wanting to invest in the strategy I feel compelled to pursue. Perhaps that may be analogous to J Allard’s departure, but I do not know since I haven’t sat down with J to understand the circumstances of his departure.
I spent 28 years at Microsoft and had the opportunity to help start a number of new things for the company. This is one where we had to part ways.
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Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Vista 7, Windows at 4:55 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft says goodbye to Expression Media
MICROSOFT’S list of dead products is growing rapidly. Once in a while, rather than kill a product or a division Microsoft just sells it to someone else (for better or for worse). One large and recent example would be Razorfish
This week’s news is that Microsoft Expression Media is no more. Microsoft lets it go. Coverage of this was quite extensive:
Here is Microsoft’s press release which PR Fried was dressing it up a bit:
Microsoft said on Tuesday it has unloaded its Expression Media photo catalog product, selling it to medium-format digital camera maker Phase One.
[...]
Microsoft said the deal was arranged by Microsoft’s IP Ventures unit, which licenses or sells technology that Microsoft decides is no longer strategic.
Microsoft is axing products at a high pace (decreasing the size of its portfolio). Attempts to make new products like Slate are failing for Microsoft [1, 2, 3] because Vista 7 is dropped (to be replaced by a Linux-based operating system). No wonder even Apple is worth more than Microsoft at this stage. Microsoft’s forecast just isn’t so encouraging, regardless of Microsoft’s size. █
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Posted in Google, Patents at 2:21 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Google not only does “evil”; it patents it, too
Remember those defensive claims from Google that its Wi-Fi sniffin’ was all just an unfortunate accident/mistake? Well, it wasn’t. Google is being dishonest and there is a software patent to prove it. As Slashdot puts it:
“After mistakenly saying that it did not collect Wi-Fi payload data, Google had to reverse itself, saying ‘it’s now clear that we have been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open (i.e. non-password-protected) WiFi networks.’ OK, mistakes happen. But, as Seinfeld might ask, then what’s the deal with the pending Google patent that describes capturing wireless data packets by operating a device — which ‘may be placed in a vehicle’ — in a ‘sniffer’ or ‘monitor’ mode and analyzing them on a server? Guess belated kudos are owed to the savvy Slashdot commenter who speculated back in January that the patent-pending technology might be useful inside a Google Street View vehicle. Google faces inquiries into its Wi-Fi packet sniffing practices by German and US authorities.”
Google should be commended for its more beneficial deeds (WebM/VP8 for example) but Google must always be denounced when it steps out of line. So what’s more “evil” here? The software patent or the intrusive sniffin’? Either way, Google should drop software patents [1, 2]. █
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Posted in Security, Windows at 2:05 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A few news items about security
• First human ‘infected with computer virus’ (another stupid article from the MSBBC, but other news sites fell for it too)
• Captain Cyborg Has A Virus-Infected Sidekick… But Nothing Can Stop A PR Campaign (rebutting the above)
The story is — as with all captain cyborg stories — a lot less than the headline suggests. Gasson wasn’t “infected with a computer virus.” He took a chip that had a computer virus and stuck it in his arm, just like Warwick has done n the past. The parallels to an actual virus are minimal, and the usefulness for anything is even less than that. Gasson presents this as useful for considering the implications for implanted technology such as pacemakers, but that’s nothing new. People have talked about potential technology issues from the wireless interface to pacemakers for years. Doing some sort of publicity stunt with an implanted computer chip doesn’t further that discussion along.
• Alleged $100M scareware sellers facing charges (Windows only)
Three men are facing federal fraud charges for allegedly raking in more than US$100 million while running an illegal “scareware” business that tricked victims into installing bogus software.
• Sality, the virus that turned into the ultimate malware
From an analysis performed with a “rogue P2P client” coded to become part of the malicious network, Symantec has determined that the Sality botnet covers something like 100.000 computers. It’s a bots figure below the one achieved by giants like Conficker but similar in size to other botnets as Storm, Pandex and Rustock. What remains clear is the demonstration of Sality’s unique threat, a malware floating around since seven years that shows no intention to quickly disappear from the net.
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Posted in Finance, Novell, Ron Hovsepian at 1:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Now that Novell is a dead company walking it’s time to say something about the tens of millions of dollars Ron Hovsepian made for his failure and betrayal of his suppliers
LAST week we wrote about Novell’s results (more here), emphasising that Novell is on its route to being acquired almost for sure. Here are some more new articles that agree with it:
• Novell’s Buyout Valuation Looks Promising – cbl
• No room for another ‘other’ OS choice
The news that Novell has thrown in the towel and is seeking as immediate a trade buy as it can suggests that ultimately there can only be one Linux game in town – and it wears a rouge cap, shall we say.
• Novell’s sales down as it prepares to sell up
The Wall Street Times newspaper reported earlier this month that Novell is in talks with as many as 20 potential acquirers, most of which are private equity firms. In March 2010, Novell rejected a bid from Elliott Associates, saying it undervalued the company.
• Novell struggles through Q2
Novell has reported a $12m drop in net income for the second quarter of 2010 from the same period last year. Novell reported net revenue of $204m for the quarter, compared with net revenue of $216m for the second fiscal quarter of 2009.
• Novell publishes second quarter figures
Novell’s CEO Ron Hovsepian has not an impressive scorecard. He should watch that someone who offered Ballmer "the egg treatment" for this type of failure [1, 2]. Hovsepian has earned a lot of money for himself (in excessive bonuses he did not deserve), but he is leaving Novell in the dust having sold GNU/Linux down the river. We are seeing Novell’s last months now and employees are probably brushing up their resumes.
Here is belated coverage of what was possibly Novell’s latest and very last public event where it pitched ‘clouds’ rather than “open source” or “Linux”.
Novell came back to Europe for the first time in five years to hold its BrainShare conference in Amsterdam last week. Besides the launch of the long-awaited version 4 of its Identity Manager (IM4) product line, Novell also clarified its approach to cloud computing.
Novell founder Drew Major moved on to other things (more here).
Move now lists its headquarters in Irvine, California, although it apparently still has operations in American Fork, Utah, where the firm has been based since its founding by Novell founder Drew Major.
What would he say about Novell today? Did Ron Hovsepian do his job well? the outcome suggests he didn’t. Hovsepian’s legacy is the destruction of Novell. █
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