01.18.10
BBC: Bill Gates a “Famous Thief”?
Summary: The network behind the constant grooming of Bill Gates discovers that some of the public still knows the truth about Microsoft’s co-founder
BILL GATES’ well-documented crimes are no better than Steve Ballmer's. In a just system, they would both be sentenced to prison, but the existing legal system offers nepotism to the affluent class, which it often glorifies and romanticises instead. Attempts to portray villains as heroes using heavy-duty PR operations is not the subject of this post though. One of our British readers pointed out that, according to the BBC, few people in the UK still think correctly of Bill Gates. To quote the BBC:
Microsoft boss Bill Gates was the most well-known but 5% of the group thought he was a comedian or a famous thief.
He actually is a famous thief. He is famous (or infamous) and he has stolen many things. Gates himself once said, “just because you broke into Xerox’s store before I did and took the TV doesn’t mean I can’t go in later and steal the stereo.” Gary Kildall said about Gates: “He has taken much from me and the industry.” A lot of people may not know about the dawn of Microsoft which involved dumpster-diving (literally) and taking other people’s code. Microsoft would not even deny it. There are many other examples in Microsoft's darker past, but again, this is not the purpose of this post. Entire books could be written on the subject almost exhaustively.
When Bill Gates moved to lobbying in 2008 [1, 2, 3, 4] the BBC did some shameful things to rewrite history and ‘correct’ the image of Bill Gates. Here are some links on the subject:
- The Gates Transition
- The BBC, Gates and revisionism
- Bill Gates and the importance of source code
- Beeb slammed for ‘fawning’ to Bill Gates
- Microsoft and the BBC: A letter of Complaint
- BBC Corrupted
Last month, the BBC was slammed for excluding Free software users, which once again brings to mind the iPlayer fiasco. We wrote about this in:
- 10 Questions to a Microsoft-corrupted BBC
- Dear BBC, Shame on You
- Microsoft ‘Pulled a BBC’ in New Zealand, ‘Stole’ from Taxpayers
- Bill Gates and His Press Rewrite History Amid Semi-retirement
- Why BBC is Microsoft Media (Video)
OpenBytes has this new post which shows that the iPlayer fiasco carries on:
It is reported that talks between the BBC and Microsoft have hit a stalemate with sources close to the BBC reporting that:
Microsoft only wants to offer its users access to platforms it can charge for as this is the model it is pursuing. It wants to ensure that only those paying for Xbox Live Gold accounts can access its additional content services and even then there is usually a charge on top to get access to those. For example, to access the Sky Player on Xbox, you have to pay for a Gold subscription as well as a Sky subscription
Do it our way or not at all? It certainly seems that way to me and whilst Nintendo and Sony users are apparently enjoying the benefits of the service, Microsoft customers are not so lucky as it appears Microsoft want to make a buck. We had covered this before, but when looking at the Xbox 360 its hardware failures, the reports on build quality many have submitted on the net and add into that Microsoft putting its eggs into the HDDVD format (instead of Bluray) one has to wonder what its users make of it now?
Xbox is a disaster. There is no reason why the BBC should ever prioritise it, but it does. There is too much Microsoft staff inside the BBC [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] and therefore conflicts of interests. █
