Bill Gates warns of 'new modern-day sort of communists'

by redjade Tue May 20, 2008 07:21

Wow! Hungary is big news all over the world today. This is perhaps the only 'constructive' anti-capitalist action I have seen in Hungary for almost three years.

What viewers outside of Hungary may not know is that for almost 2 years now there has been a political 'tradition' in Hungary of assaulting politicians with eggs.

Usually this behaviour is associated with the extreme Right Wing in its increasingly violent attacks on gays, jews, gypsies and neo-liberal socialists - this time by what appears to be a Magyar Geek claiming that Microsoft had stolen Hungarian taxpayer's money. [i'll look into that story - there could be something to it]

by iosaf Tue Apr 24, 2007 01:25

As you might not know the main western software system being used by the PR China is microsoft. That might surprise you - it didn't? Oh well - did you know the main software pirated in PR China is Microsoft? you did? hmmmmmmm. Well PR China is determined it will encourage its own IT industry following an open source path. did you know that?

A protester gate-crashed (pun I know) Beijing university last Friday and waved a poster calling for open source software in the Peoples' republic of China and also for Microsoft "to open up" and allow it's own code to be edited & seen. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/312496_gates20ww...=mypi
The Chinese are understandably debating it all. & don't jump to any conclusions as to where that debate will lead. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-04/22/content_60...5.htm
They've identified the man : "The protestor, who was wearing a black suit and tie at the time, has been identified in newspapers as Wang Yang, also known as WangKaiyuan, chief China representative of the Linux Professional Institute (LPI)". (read the link it's interesting).
Almost as if to try and convince the world they aren't evil and greedy - Microsoft announced it would offer licensed users in poor communities in richer countries the opportunity to buy their new "3$ cheap windows OS system" which they're trying to flog to the 3rd world. (where yes 3$ is an awful lot of money) http://www.sci-tech-today.com/news/Microsoft-Plans--3-W...5QH8C
Jimmy Wales the man who "founded" wikipedia got into the debacle. Fresh off teaming up with other worthies of the net in calling for new "blogger codes of practise" he now wants PRC to use only open source software too. He's really getting up the Chinese nose by wearing traditional Chinese clothing these last months. This gets up their nose. I know. done that been there. They much prefer if you buy their mass produced dirt cheap Benetton look-alike knitwear like Ardal o Hanlon does. Heck! but most westerners do do that don't they? here's a last link to Jimmy Wales' latest gurglings and yet another picture of him in a chinese silk "tang" jacket.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/more-than-just-a-war-o....html

by mp3 Fri Feb 23, 2007 03:59

"Microsoft was yesterday 22/2/07 fined a record $1.52bn (£777m) for infringing a digital music patent which could throw into doubt the future of the digital music industry.
A San Diego court ruled that the software giant has infringed patents, owned by Franco-American technology firm Alcatel-Lucent, which cover the conversion of audio tracks into the popular MP3 file format which is used by hundreds of companies and millions of music listeners.

Alcatel-Lucent was last night mulling whether to order Microsoft to stop using the technology.

see http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2019691,00.html...eed=1

by Stuart Thu Feb 22, 2007 09:26

Further proof, in any were needed, that nuns are living in the modern technological consumerist society (even if the hierarchy are not):

Nuns Uncovered
Insurers have withdrawn a policy that offered three nuns from Inverness 1 million pounds sterling cover in case any of them immaculately conceived the Second Coming. Premiums for six years were refunded by Britishinsurance.com after a complaint by the Catholic Church in Scotland. The nuns, in their fifties, wanted to cover the child-rearing costs.

by redjade Thu Feb 22, 2007 00:19

Geeky “sister” behind Vatican’s Website

Some fun videos on ScobleShow today. First, the geeky “Sister” behind the Vatican’s Website. She breaks all sorts of “geek stereotypes” in my head. We don’t know the OS that God uses, but the Vatican uses Linux, she reveals. [....] She’s an interesting person because she comes at technology from a much more spiritual/faith-based perspective than most of the geeks I hang around with do. At about 20 minutes into this interview she talks about the tools and technology that the Vatican uses.

more at
http://scobleizer.com/2007/02/19/the-geeky-sister-behin...site/

by redjade Sat Feb 03, 2007 16:51

BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Pirated Microsoft Corp software helped Romania to build a vibrant technology industry, Romanian President Traian Basescu told the company's co-founder Bill Gates on Thursday.

Basescu was meeting the software giant's chairman in Bucharest to celebrate the opening of a Microsoft global technical center in the Romanian capital.

"Piracy helped the young generation discover computers. It set off the development of the IT industry in Romania," Basescu said during a joint news conference with Gates.

"It helped Romanians improve their creative capacity in the IT industry, which has become famous around the world ... Ten years ago, it was an investment in Romania's friendship with Microsoft and with Bill Gates."

more at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20....html

by redjade Thu Jan 05, 2006 22:29

from Robert Scoble's Blog: Scobleizer

OK, this one is depressing to me. It’s one thing to pull a list of words out of blogs using an algorithm. It’s another thing to become an agent of a government and censor an entire blogger’s work. Yes, I know the consequences. Yes, there are thousands of jobs at stake. Billions of dollars. But, the behavior of my company in this instance is not right.
[....]
Why is this so important to me? Well, you ignore the voices of individual people at your peril. And, I’ve been raised by people who taught me the value of standing up for the little guy. My mom grew up in Germany. Her mom stood up to the Nazis (and got a lot of scorn from family and friends for doing so).

I do believe in a slippery slope. If they come after you today, maybe they’ll come after me tomorrow. Gotta stop this kind of stuff while we’re still talking about you.

Oh, and to: Zhao Jing, aka Michael Anti I’d like to offer you a guest blog here on my blog. I won’t censor you and you can write whatever you’d like.

Guys over at MSN: sorry, I don’t agree with your being used as a state-run thug.

more at
http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/01/03/microsoft-takes-down-chinese-blogger-my-opinions-on-that/

by redjade Tue Jan 03, 2006 20:33

♣ Instead, today, Capitalism profits from it, while doing the Stalinists a favour.

incredible....

----
''Microsoft’s MSN Spaces continues to censor its Chinese language blogs .... On New Years Eve, MSN Spaces took down the popular blog written by Zhao Jing, aka Michael Anti ....

Note, his blog was TAKEN DOWN by MSN people. Not blocked by the Chinese government.

Anti is one of China’s edgiest journalistic bloggers, often pushing at the boundaries of what is acceptable. (See a recent profile of him here, and an interview with Anti here.) His old blog at the U.S.-hosted Blog-city is believed to have caused the Chinese authorities to block all Blog-city blogs. In the final days of December, Anti became a vocal supporter of journalists at the Beijing Daily News who walked off the job after the top editors were fired for their increasingly daring investigative coverage, including some recent reporting on the recent police shootings of village protestors in the Southern China.''

read the rest at:
http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2006/01/microsoft_takes.html

by redjade Wed Nov 23, 2005 16:04

Well, public domain...

more info:
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/11/22/soviet_publicdomain_.html

http://ccablog.blogspot.com/2005/11/soviet-topographic-maps.html

Maps, including Dublin
http://jomidav.aldavies.net/SovietMaps/index.htm

by redjade Sun Jul 24, 2005 17:04

Microsoft does not like competition. It either assimilates it or crushes it. But with Google, it may have found its match. A key player in Microsoft’s search operation apparently defected to Google. Microsoft is suing. Dr Kai-Fu Lee was corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Interactive Services Division. Google wants him to head its China operation.

The News.com article has some interesting items from the law suit. It states that Dr Kai-Fu Lee had been “responsible for overall development of the MSN Internet search application.” and had been involved in Microsoft’s China strategy.

[....]

Ultimately this law suit may not be about the the search business. It may really be about China as a future market for Microsoft. Like all great Empires, Microsoft needs to continue expanding. China may be crucial to the survival of Microsoft. However Google also needs to keep expanding.

by man in china blogs Sat Jul 02, 2005 16:51

I have just returned from [PROHIBITED LOCATION] after my [TOURISM] mission, and I believe this article to be [NOT CREDIBILITY]. Many people live under a [FANTASTIC RING-TONES] here and work like [ENJOYMENT ACTIVITY] to make many [VALUABLE ITEM] and get paid next to [WORLDLY SUMS]. Our right to communicate is now put at [VERY STABILITY] thanks to this [BEAUTIFUL AND HELPFUL] technology. Thank you for posting this article from [NOT RECOMMENDED ORGANIZATION]

[THIS IS NOT THE 1970's YOU KNOW]

by redjade Mon Jun 13, 2005 17:37

repub'd from the Finanicial Times:
Microsoft's new Chinese internet portal has banned the words "democracy" and "freedom" from parts of its website in an apparent effort to avoid offending Beijing's political censors. Users of the joint-venture portal, formally launched last month, have been blocked from using a range of potentially sensitive words to label personal websites they create using its free online blog service, MSN Spaces.

Attempts to input words in Chinese such as "democracy" prompted an error message from the site: "This item contains forbidden speech. Please delete the forbidden speech from this item." Other phrases banned included the Chinese for "demonstration", "democratic movement" and "Taiwan independence".

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/06/13/msn_spaces_bans_demo.html

by redjade Mon Apr 11, 2005 16:46

PARIS - "The Internationale," the rousing workers' anthem adopted by communists and socialists from France to China, has turned out to be a pricey tune. French movie director Jean-Christophe Soulageon is being asked to pay $1,283 because the song was whistled without permission in his 2004 film "Insurrection Resurrection," the daily Le Monde reported Friday.

The organization that watches over intellectual and artistic property in France sent a letter to the filmmaker explaining that one of its inspectors heard the whistling at a Paris theater, Le Monde reported.

[....]

Under French law, "The Internationale" won't fall into the public domain until 2014 — 70 years of post-mortem protection plus extra time to cover the world war. Degeyter died in 1932.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050409/ap_on_re_eu/france_pricey_tune&e=3&ncid=

Link found with additional info at
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/04/09/communist_hymn_is_in.html

by redjade Wed Feb 16, 2005 16:53

But capitalism means monopoly; at least, Gates-style capitalism does. People who think that everyone should be free to program, free to write complex software, they are communists, says Mr. Gates. But these communists have infiltrated even the Microsoft boardroom. Here's what Bill Gates told Microsoft employees in 1991:

"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today...A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose."

Mr. Gates' secret is out now--he too was a "communist;" he, too, recognized that software patents were harmful--until Microsoft became one of these giants. Now Microsoft aims to use software patents to impose whatever price it chooses on you and me. And if we object, Mr. Gates will call us "communists."

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20050215195923681

by angels and demons Mon Feb 07, 2005 20:09

"Mr Gates does not approve of software piracy, so I am sure he does not intend to steal our name," said Euroscience president Jean Patrick Connerade after hearing of the name for Microsoft's scheme.

"Euroscience is a registered association of scientists who give up time voluntarily in support of European Science.

"We have members in 40 European countries and, with the help of sponsors, we organise Esof, a pan-European Forum on all the sciences, to which thousands of people come."

Regret confusion

Microsoft said it regretted any confusion caused by the use of the name EuroScience to describe its partnership scheme.

"Upon learning of the concern we immediately engaged with the Euroscience association and are in the process of addressing this misunderstanding," a spokesperson for the software giant told the BBC News website.

by 2x13 Sat Jan 22, 2005 17:28

(Mr Gates is the private citizen who owns the code we rip off and made all the rich people hackable is described as the figurehead of MS- (microsoft not marks and spencers they do underwear)
He talked to the aunty beeb's Stephen Cole who beat him at X box three years ago.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/4195177.stm

by dotcommie Mon Jan 17, 2005 19:15

"I think both sides are wrong. In my opinion, the way in which open source software is created is much closer anarchistic ideals than communist ideals. After all, there's no centralized goverment entity granting authority in all these programmers to go forth and do a open source project. In general, projects get started when one or a group of programmers decides there is a need to fill very simular to how many anarchist collectives get started. Although there is usually a 'project leader', rather than being someone 'appointed from above', it's typically the person with the most knowledge or experience. They don't typically have any 'authority' to order people around; if they try (and, yes, there are few OS projects where this has happened), usually it just causes the other participants to 'fork' the code base and start there own project. So decisions are typically made so as to include all people involved in a project very simular to what a collective does."

by redjade Sat Jan 15, 2005 17:11

"It's video I captured from last nights Creative Commons 2nd anniversary party. The video runs 30 minutes highlighting the short but powerful lifetime of the Creative Commons, but the biggest highlight by far is Lessig closing it out. He takes on both BillBoard and BillGates for their recent FUD (if you can call it FUD). Hilarious."

Torrent:
http://torrentocracy.com/prodigem/download.php/lerhaupt/lerhaupt-revenge_of_the_commonists.torrent

found at
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/01/07/lessig_speech_on_cop.html

who is Lawrence Lessig?
http://www.lessig.org/

by pc Thu Jan 13, 2005 14:17

For Communism ten artists have been commissioned to produce new work in response to this term. This work, which includes installation, photography, performance, graphic design, public sculpture and text, will be exhibited in Project's g... http://www.project.ie/cgi-bin/eventdetail.pl?id=289

by redjade Tue Jan 11, 2005 17:01

CyberLodge: An Open Source Union Project
http://www.cyberlodge.org

Traditional unions can't help us. We're too scattered across industries and geography. And, let's face it, we like to do things differently. We need a fresh approach.

That's where CyberLodge comes in. Consider us SourceForge.net for the labor movement. We're here to gather requirements for the ideal cyber worker organization. What would your ideal labor organization provide? Health benefits? Standards? Testing? Representation? Or just good advice?

Open Source software gets its strength from the combined efforts of many developers. CyberLodge.org hopes to accomplish the same thing, by creating the foundation of a cyber workers' association through input from you and people like you.

Take a look through the site and think about what would improve your career. Then let us know, so we can all start building a labor organization for the 21st Century.

Cyberlodge.org is a project of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

by Andrew Brown & Mr O as if (doing the extra comments.) - The Guardian & the icing on the cake. Tue Jan 11, 2005 12:36

writes Andrew Brown of the English Guardian.

"
Bill Gates is an intelligent man who has done a great deal of good in the world. So when he gets caught out in a bare-faced lie this should matter to all of us; and last week, when he called the opponents of American intellectual property law a "communist" movement he was encouraging a mistake that could impoverish the entire world.

He said: "Of the world's economies, there's more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist."

The argument in principle that Gates makes against "communism" starts in exactly the right place. But his vested interests lead him to drag it in the wrong direction. It is as if the Sheriff of Nottingham were to announce that it's enormously important that your property was protected from criminals - so he'll take everything you have that might be stolen and lock it up for safety in his castle"

read more @ link-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/comment/story/0,12449,1387575,00.html

(interesting factoid - when U.S. President Wilson visited the UK after the end of the First war, the only paper he consented to give an interview to was the notoriously badly spellt and fluffy lefty Guardian)
(another interesting factoid - the younger nerdier Gates used boast of the virus he had written and put in the seating plan for the lecture hall at his first universty, which put the pretty girls by surpise sitting next to him. Perhaps that was the inspiration for MicroSofts "find a shag/ date/ = you haven't a hope" )

by iosaf not "josef" senator. - "all together now" Mon Jan 10, 2005 22:06

in the left / humanist daily French paper Liberation
founded by amongst others Jean Paul Sarte.

Glenn Otis Brown has expressed his disgust at the comments
«My father fought the Cold War, having spent 35 years in the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency of the USA), he did not struggle against Free license software.... Stalinist purges, the berlin WALL, that was / is communism_«

(making a local reader reference to what is understood as centralised totalitarian communism the sort which with NAZI-ism brought our continent to Hell. before Mr Gates greed came along and his great mediocrity masquerading as meritocracy and competition)
****************
"Information is power" Mr Gates.
I sat in the back row and watched as you squeekily intoned as the false prophet does those words to the Y2K "the world's gonna end" conference"... & I laughed. I'm still laughing.
The most popular present from age 9 to 16 in North America and the EU this christmas was a MP3 player.
Now you most without a doubt owe us a lot of capital, money and explanations you could start with explaining why you cheated at your high school exams, was that initiative?


link to article in french -

by redjade Mon Jan 10, 2005 15:22

Free as in beer
http://adactio.com/journal/display.php/20050109223755.xml

A few weeks ago I spent a most pleasant Sunday evening in a Dublin bar called Solas. Myself and my friends were enjoying the free WiFi and the excellent range of cocktails and beers on offer.

The soundtrack for our evening of tippling was also very enjoyable. The DJ played a great mix of indie music.

At the end of the evening, everyone in the bar was given a free CD. The CD was a compilation of 18 tracks that the DJ had played over the course of the evening. Every one of the songs had been legally downloaded for free over the internet.

by edison Mon Jan 10, 2005 13:42

What we warn of most is a modern day sort of slave driver.

by redjade Sun Jan 09, 2005 14:50

The purity of this lie is remarkable. Even the most ardent of the free-software folks are not trying to remove the incentive to be creative. They believe in a different kind of incentive, just not the mercenary one that motivates Bill Gates.

The larger truth -- a principle for which Gates so frequently demonstrates such contempt -- is that the vast, vast majority of people who find fault with today's system still want to reward creators for their work, financially and otherwise. But we also want a system that balances the rights of creators with the rights and needs of the larger society.

Gates and his allies in the entertainment cartel want absolute control. For them, fair use and other societal benefits are what the intellectual property holders deem them to be. (And when it comes to patents, Gates and his company are becoming some of the worst bullies on the block, abusing a system that increasingly has little to do with actual innovation.)

http://dangillmor.typepad.com/dan_gillmor_on_grassroots/2005/01/truth_and_bill_.html

his blog: 'Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism'
http://dangillmor.typepad.com/

by muse Sat Jan 08, 2005 10:04

are you going to hell too Bill?

1.5% of your assets and incentives are required to SE ASian disaster relief.

freezing their debt is a political act.
which now unbalances the debt payments of the other states of the region and really is not that clever.

by toneore Fri Jan 07, 2005 17:52 toneore at eircom dot net

here are some creative commie logos to use:

http://home.nc.rr.com/frijole//copyleft/

by eeekkkk Fri Jan 07, 2005 17:19

"The purity of this lie is remarkable. Even the most ardent of the free-software folks are not trying to remove the incentive to be creative. They believe in a different kind of incentive, just not the mercenary one that motivates Bill Gates."