Summary: Microsoft extends digital handcuffs to the east and the west
Boycott Novell has been keeping track of Microsoft’s moves in Thailand this year [1, 2]. Microsoft is particularly interested in making schools turn kids into Microsoft customers. The earlier, the better. It is truly a tragedy and some would label it child abuse when people decide for a young child what he or she is supposed to use and under whose rules.
Microsoft extended ‘Partners in Learning’ program to next five years
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The Office of the Basic Education Commission, Ministry of Education and Microsoft Thailand have officially announced their extended collaboration for the successful Partners in Learning program (PiL) over the next five years (2009 กV 2013). In a MOU signing ceremony held today, the two parties both looked to the future and celebrated five years of achievements through the program which was established with a goal of transforming education through the integration of information and technology.
Moving on from Thailand, another someone has informed us that the Gates Foundation is investing in Peru. The Gates Foundation is routinely used as a financial vehicle to promote Microsoft’s agenda without it actually looking like Microsoft bribes for deals. We wrote about the Canadian government in this context. Bill Gates is giving it billions of dollar and the government then signs multi-billion dollar deals with Microsoft.
Anyway, here is a translation of the report from Peru, courtesy of our reader:
I just wanted to make you aware that the damned monopoly tries hard to consolidate its empire by investing on Peruvian economy.
“(Peru.com: 2009/2/26) (EFE) .- The Bill Gates Foundation is interested in entering the microfinance sector in Peru, reported the head of the Superintendency of Banking, Insurance and Pension Fund Administrators of this country, Philip Tam”
This will increase pressure on small && medium size companies by ensuring loans to them only if they get into the proprietary bondage. Digital colonialism at its highest:
“”In the national micro finance sector are important players such as the BBVA Microfinance Foundation, other foundations are also very important as that of Bill Gates, who also wants to Peru,” Tam said the agency Andina.”
Knowing the corrupt authorities in Latin America this will perpetuate Microsoft bondage on emergent economies. This will give more leverage to MS to do what the did in Colombia by bribing them to vote for MSXLM standard ISO approval, and the way they try to derail FLOSS advances in Eastern Europe, South Africa and other countries. This also will give them leverage to press for software patents not only in Peru but all Latin America. Remember they’re afraid that everyone’s follows Brazil’s path to technological independence.
I hope that the Peruvian youth and free entrepreneurs don’t bite the lure to perpetual bondage and follow Brazil’s path to technological independence that leads to economical independence.
Did Peru learn nothing about foreign occupation before letting Bill Gates in? This is a very foolish decision. It’s selfish, it’s abusive, and maybe kickbacks (gentle bribes) are involved.
Summary: Microsoft seems unable to leave a GNU/Linux-bound Spain alone; antitrust probe launched against Microsoft in Russia
THE DISCOMFORTING NEWS from Spain is something that we covered a lot in the month of May. The following posts probably provide necessary background because they accumulate or concentrate many information resources and facts we won’t repeat here:
The news is circulating quickly, suggesting that the President of Spain says that Bill Gates recognised GNU/Linux success in Extremadura. The video above is very telling because the man may have fallen for the whole “charity” storyline [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. The President of Spain confirms it: Bill Gates named Extremadura’s GNU/Linux project as “a worldwide leader for ITC and open source” and here is a new report about it:
Extremadura has been surely the first region in the world to introduce Linux massively in the schools. The Linex Project was started in 1999 and now it counts with more than 80.000 PCs among its schools with a ratio of 2 students per computer. Additionally, Extremadura has widely deployed Linux in more government areas, as Health and rural public points for Internet access and social digitalization.
After Extremadura, Andalusia and Valencia, two of the most populated regions of Spain, have developed similar but bigger projects based on open source and Linux. In the case of Andalusia, its medium education holds currently the biggest Linux network in the world with more than 250.000 computers accounting clients and servers, all them administered from a central point in Seville, the capital of the region.
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But , of course, as OSOR continues saying the strong open source community of Spain is against paying to Microsoft for something that is not needed:
The Spanish free software association, Hispalinux, criticised the laptop plan in April, saying for instance that the government should have requested a public tender for the laptops. The debate now includes dual-boot systems with both GNU/Linux and Microsoft software pre-installed, raising questions about the Spanish government paying for proprietary software licences it might not use.
“A very interesting article,” says Matt from a Linux forum. “Apparently Gates goofed when he tried to name the region of Spain where Microsoft has a big Windows project going. That would be Aragon, but he either couldn’t think of the name or mentioned Extremadura by mistake.”
To quote some more from the above, “the story didn’t finished with the correction of such a supposed “mistake”, since, on Tuesday June 2nd, the President of Spain, Mr. Zapatero, confirmed in a public event that “Bill gates told me that ‘there was a region in Spain that shines as a world leader because the extension of the new technologies and the open source in it, and this region is Extremadura’.”
Speaking of EDGI, Microsoft appears to be trying it in Russia right about now*. Why? Because Russia is fed up and it has just launched an antitrust investigation against Microsoft. Spain should do the same thing, but given the video at the top, someone quite crucial seems to have been placed in Microsoft’s pocket already. As enthusiastic as he is, he fails to spot Gates’ mistake. █
______ * Microsoft recently dumped money on Russia to prevent risk [1, 2, 3].
Here is a recent summary of articles about Microsoft debt and tax evasion. The short story is that Microsoft is not doing so well financially and it continues to cheat tax systems around the world in order to leave it for others pay tax. Bill Gates hardly pays any tax, either. He and Warren Buffett get exemptions for "charity". It looks decent to the outside world and also works better for accounting.
But these important issues left aside, it all brings us to today’s big story. As the Los Angeles Times puts it, “Ballmer threatens Obama” now.
[T]he software giant’s chief executive, Steve Ballmer, made it clear that the company’s charitable views don’t extend to paying what it considers unfair U.S. tax rates: Ballmer threatened to move more jobs overseas if President Obama prevails with his proposal to end tax breaks on foreign earnings.
Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steven Ballmer said the world’s largest software company would move some employees offshore if Congress enacts President Barack Obama’s plans to impose higher taxes on U.S. companies’ foreign profits.
One of our contributors summarised this report as follows: “Steven Ballmer threatens Obama saying he will move employees offshore if Congress enacts Obama’s plans to impose higher taxes on U.S. companies’ foreign profits.”
“Wages in the Unites States have been stagnant for about as long as the currency was not tied to gold.”To Microsoft, it’s never about Americans or about employees. It’s about profit, shareholders, and power.
“It makes U.S. jobs more expensive,” Steve Ballmer is quoted as saying (in Bloomberg). As MinceR puts it, if “War is Peace” (Orwell, 1984), then “Wealth is Expensive”. Another, righter way for Ballmer to put it would be: “It raises wages for American people” or “it helps the US economy recover by helping families through higher wages.”
Wages in the Unites States have been stagnant for about as long as the currency was not tied to gold. And companies continued to rob employees, taking a portion of their deserved wages and then selling it back to them via financial institutes, as loans with extortionate interest rates, which means even more money for the wealthy.
Needless to say, none of this whole routine is particularly new. Learning about Abramoff visas might help.
As we showed before, Microsoft’s ‘new’ engine is biased by design and we already know that Microsoft is changing search results in order to promote the company’s own perspective. It’s not as complicated to achieve as it may seem given that only commonly searched-for phrases in technology need to be policed (tweaked) by Microsoft or its massive public relations department (Waggener Edstrom).
Christian Einfeldt has just tested what Microsoft initially called “search engine” [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]*. Here is what he found:
But rather than a search engine or even a “decision engine”, Bing also appears to be a spin engine, in that it provides partisan answers to controversial topics, such as Steve Ballmer’s propensity to throw chairs to blow off stress. At a friend’s suggestion, I typed the following phrases (without quotes) into both Google.com and Bing.com. The results are very telling. Be sure to look at the phrase completion options that you are offered as you type.
“linux ”
“antitrust microsoft”
“ballmer throws chair”
“bill gates steals”
The important thing here is not whether Bill Gates does, in fact, steal, and I am not here to make ad hominem attacks on the world’s richest man. The point is how Microsoft deals with criticism. With spin. As opposed to Google, which just repeats much of the criticism of it.
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Contrast that with phrases that are negative for Google, such as “Google is evil.” Typing “Google is e” yields no suggestions. But typing in “Google is” yield results which are both positive and negative for Google as a company:
“Google is your friend”
“Google is broken”
“Google is skynet”
“Google is making us stupid”
“Google is a number”
“Google is paying to work from home”
“Google is always right”
“Google is taking over the world”
“Google is watching you”
“Google is paying”
More to the point is the first phrase. Microsoft’s first suggestions all are aimed at diverting attention away from one of its keenest competition, Free Open Source Software, a competitor which, every year in its official annual 10k SEC-mandated warning to investors, Microsoft lists as a threat to its profitability.
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Clearly, Bing is not Google, and is not going to overtake Google anytime use, nor offer information which, on the whole, is as useful to its users as Google search results.
By the way, the most concise summary of why Google is beating Microsoft can be seen by typing this phrase into your browser: Bingisnotgoogle.com. Google is always one step ahead of Redmond.
We’re getting word that a number of Internet Explorer 6 users are loading up their browsers to discover that the default search engine, which they had set as Google, has been changed to Bing. What’s more, when they try to change it back they’re being blocked from doing so thanks to a Microsoft Live Search message that reads: “Oops This isn’t the page that you wanted”.
Neelie Kroes, are you paying attention? █
_____ * Later on they excused the poor quality and hyped it up by renaming it “decisions engine”.
Summary: Microsoft’s situation in the the Spanish, Swiss and New Zealand governments
THE GATES family embarked on a visit to Spain this week. This visit was characteristically described as “for charity” (never mind the actual meaning [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]), but it soon emerged that it was a business trip. We wrote about it throughout the week in:
It has not escaped the attention of Linux Magazine that Bill Gates had used his time in Spain to lobby for Windows-powered sub-notebooks for young people (at the expense of taxpayers under a financial crisis).
On his visit to Spain, Bill Gates met the Spanish prime minister and didn’t fail to lobby for Microsoft computers in schools. But lacking knowledge of Spanish regions led to some confusion and did not quite bring the attention he might have wanted.
Although he was officially in Madrid to reach some cooperation agreements between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Spanish government, everybody was expecting Bill Gates, who met up yesterday morning with the Spanish prime minister, Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to also lobby for Windows on the laptops that are expected to be given out to Spanish students in September (for the full story see here and here). And lobby he did, although things didn’t go quite as expected…
Contracts can in principle be awarded directly without a tendering process, but only where there are specific reasons, for example, technical reasons, for which no suitable alternative exists. The companies behind the lawsuit argue that suitable alternatives clearly do exist in this case.
The other day we wrote about Microsoft losing its contract — so to speak — in the nation of New Zealand. FOSS heavyweight Don Christie, however, does not believe that the implications are positive. He has explained this to IDG News Service:
That effort has now failed and even Open Source Society president Don Christie is prepared to concede that Microsoft has won a victory — though he believes it will be a short-term one.
Christie says Microsoft found the all-of-government approach constricting. In the short term, he says, it’s “absolutely a win” for Microsoft as the company will now be free to “milk its clients for licence fees, like a sunset industry”.
It is commendable that Christie keeps vigilant. Microsoft will just not step down and step away. █
“People get the government their behavior deserves. People deserve better than that.”
In their letter to the judge in the case, Microsoft’s lawyers argued that Gates “should be protected from harassing and time-wasting depositions by those who seek to distract him from his important charitable work.” But with flashbacks like Cairo, it’s no wonder Gates wasn’t exactly keen on sitting down for another few hours. A transcript of the subsequent session hasn’t been made public.
The use of the word “harassing” must be appreciated (for humour’s value). Mr. Gates has systematically destroyed companies by breaking the law and now that he is approached for some time to tell his story, he is being called one who is “harassed”. To make such an allegation is to say that a hit-and-run driver is being just “harassed” by the police vehicle that races up the road, striving to secure “time-wasting depositions.” █
“The government is not trying to destroy Microsoft, it’s simply seeking to compel Microsoft to obey the law. It’s quite revealing that Mr. Gates equates the two.”
Summary: The real purpose of the Gates family trip to Spain is finally made public
IN TWO previous posts [1, 2], we wrote about the unfolding of disturbing events in Spain, where Microsoft had plans of turning children into its customers and vassals.
The predictions are now confirmed. To Bill Gates, a major lobbyist these days [1, 2, 3, 4], the whole charity gig [1, 2, 3] is a convenient excuse and a tool for political power struggles. He uses that power to ensure that countries sell their entire population and public sector to Microsoft. With it, the commercial sector must follow (Microsoft ensures interoperability is a no-go).
The excuse of Bill G. visiting Mr.Zapatero was collaboration with the developing world under the disguise of the Gates Foundation.
Seems Mrs. Rosa Garcia, former Microsoft CEO for Spain and current person in charge for the whole EMEA region of Microsoft business had to “call the cavalry” in order to ensure GNU/Linux would be banished from Spanish educational system.
It seems clear that the “high diplomacy game” visit of William Henry Gates III has nothing to do with curing malaria and its real aim is to ensure GNU/Linux has no place in the recent plan to bring netbooks to Spanish schoolchildren.
Several regions in Spain have developed successful programs with GNU/Linux, but Microsoft wants to push the only one that has used an All-Microsoft (including the failed Tablet-PC concept) approach in the Aragon region in order to sabotage GNU/Linux educational initiatives already working in many other regions of the country like Extremadura, Andalusia, Madrid, Catalonia and Valencia.
So, the purpose of this trip turns out to be as many people expected. █
Summary: Spain is being taken over by foreign agenda and corporations, according to an unnamed source
Microsoft hopes to do in Spain what Bill Gates did in France and in Finland over a year ago (and in Portugal less than a year ago). Microsoft is losing ground to Free software. It routinely sends the über-lobbyist [1, 2, 3, 4] Bill Gates to bypass technical decision-makers and strike predatory deals which do not account for the desire and welfare of the affected population (victims).
Here is a report that was sent to us from a reader in Spain this morning.
This is a big and long one. Let me introduce some economic background:
As you know, Spain is being hit especially hard by the current economic crash. Due to the country’s reliance on the building and real estate businesses and due to rampant speculation, there has been created an enormous speculative/corruption bubble that has just burst, leading to the highest rate of unemployment in the EU.
Prime minister Zapatero has been trying to implement urgent measures and to boost public expenditure in order to alleviate the effects of this crisis. He announced plans to change the economic growth model from real estate and speculation (”the economy of the brick,” as we’ll call it here) to one of R&D, IT business, etc. One of his proposals was just announced a couple of weeks ago and it is to bring “a laptop per child” (kind of) to the Spanish school students, subsidising a laptop for each child of the fifth grade (12 years old) (a total of 400,000 or 500,000 units).
There is a document describing most these behind-the-scenes deals and the characteristics of this operation. The situation seems dismal.
It will provide Microsoft Windows pre-loaded HP mini-laptops manufactured in Portugal by a big OEM (Same as the Magalhaes program of the Intel OLPC rival) and these will be serviced by the computing division of “El Corte Ingles” (The Spanish equivalent to Harrod’s — very expensive department stores), leading to an unnecessary and very, very high expenditure, none of which will benefit the local economies (El Corte Ingles is one of the largest enterprises in the country, with a labor policy similar to that of Walmart, i.e. it harasses labor unions, and never gets criticised in the mainstream press for fear of losing the expensive ad campaigns the enterprise inserts constantly in all the major Newspapers, Magazines and Radio and TV channels).
The educational contents (with DRM!!!) would be awarded to Grupo Santillana, the biggest educational books publisher, and part of the corporation Prisa Group, which is the owner of the biggest newspaper in the country “El Pais”, as well as many editorials and several of the country’s biggest Radio (Ser, 40) and TV (Canal+, Cuatro) channels.
It all reminds me of the recent Chilean-Microsoft debacle.
This measure has immediately been contested for its lack of planning and lack of any public tender by many consumer associations, retail vendor associations, teacher associations, and FLOSS associations around the country.
As you know there have already been several very successful educational projects involving FLOSS and GNU/Linux in many regions of the country (Madrid, Extremadura, Andalucia, Catalonia, Valencia, Canary Islands), involving specially-tailored GNU/Linux distributions prepared for education and for different regional languages (Spanish, Catalonian, Valencian), most of which are varieties of Debian or (Edu)Buntu:
Supposedly in order to talk about development projects in Africa jointly with the B&M Gates Foundation, but I’m sure, he will be there to make sure the Linux projects get abandoned and instead the Spanish students get addicted to Microsoft’s (and its partners’) products, thus securing not only the calculated 50 million euros in software licences it will cost the government, but a whole new generation of captive customers (along with the teachers and the educational system nationwide, and associated support/software contracts with MCPs and ISVs). At the same time it eliminates one of the “rotten apples” that could serve of example for other European countries willing to empower their educational systems with GNU/Linux and FLOSS.
Speculation: Top it maybe with some tax exemptions following the Irish (Microsoft’s European Tax Heaven) model, so MSFT can help Zapatero (being a total technological and computer illiterate, and ill-advised by lobbyists as most of politicians) with the “growth model change”???
And in exchange for what? Well, Joe Biden, who is leading a crusade to defend US media and entertainment industry and to obtain legislation similar to the French HADOPI, met recently with Zapatero and there has been an attempt to pass an EU-wide law that would allow national governments to impose their own “HADOPIs” with the typical excuse for the angered citizens “…we have no choice: the EU commands that we do this”.
Also, the US secretary of transport Ray Lahood will be visiting Zapatero next Saturday in order to look at high-speed trains and infrastructure: Many construction enterprises that are rapidly getting into deadline to pay their billionaire debts with the big banks (Santander Bank, BBVA and others would lose millions in their balance, should these deadlines expire and they would have to re-structure their balances, publicly acknowledging loses and losing many good ratings in the international stock markets) and are badly needing new contracts are expecting to be awarded contracts to build the railway infrastructures in the US (these are very big fishes of the Spanish stock exchange IBEX35 index, that many people suspect financed the political parties and campaigns in exchange for public works and building concessions by the governments: Ferrovial, ACS, Sacyr, Acciona…) and also there is the train builder Talgo…
