Cry me a river!

In my life, I have successfully (?) managed to piss quite a few people off my real world and cyber interactions.  Especially after 63 million voted for an avowed white supremacist in the November 2016 elections.

One guy, Lao Ming Zhi, continues to hang around; let's see when I manage to piss him off too ;)

A calm guy, he is pissed off--not at me though.  It is about a case that the US Supreme Court will soon decide on--Microsoft rejected the US Justice Department's warrant to produce emails from a suspected drug trafficker's account.  The company, whose global headquarters are only a couple of hundred miles from where I live, argued that the emails are stored in a data center in Ireland and, therefore, the US government is engaging in unlawful extraterritorial reach.  By this summer, the SCOTUS will rule on this.

I had to restrict my comments within the scope of his blog--which is all about business--and the scope of his post.  And, so, will bring the rest of the story here.

It is a joke when a corporation like Microsoft tries to act all saintly.  Ethics is rarely their concern. "Business ethics" is one of the best oxymorons ever.  Respect for individuals' rights is not in their charters.  If it adds to their profits, they will sell my soul to the Devil in a nanosecond; the only reason they have not done so yet is because the Devil is also pissed off at me ;)

I have no tears for Microsoft is all I am saying.

Microsoft, like all other big tech companies, has been a willing participant in the Chinese government's harassment of its citizens.  Harassment is a vast understatement.  It has been documented by many human rights organizations.  But, the tech companies do not care.  Remember that "business ethics" is not their concern as long as profits can be made.

With age, Microsoft is becoming more responsible.  But then there are other Microsofts that have sprung up--Facebook, Google, ... Profit is the bottom-line.

After all these years of the tech companies playing by China's rules, now China is pushing its cyber censorship across the globe.

For years, China has exerted digital control with a system of internet filters known as the Great Firewall, which allows authorities to limit what people see online. To broaden its censorship efforts, Beijing is venturing outside the Great Firewall and paying more attention to what its citizens are saying on non-Chinese apps and services.
...
This effort is accelerating as President Xi Jinping consolidates his power.

Who cares if a few million Chinese voices are stifled, right?  We need economic growth, and humans are mere resources that can be sacrificed in the pursuit of money.  In pursuing that awesome profit, today's Microsofts will do anything to prostrate before the Chinese government.

Facebook created a censorship tool it did not use and released an app in the country without putting its name to it. Apple is moving data storage for its Chinese customers into China and last year took down software that skirts China’s internet blocks from its China App Store. Google recently said it would open a new artificial intelligence lab in the country.
Often, these companies have little recourse when pressured for help by Beijing. Going to the American government could set off retaliation from China, so many have sought to navigate the situation on their own.

You see how faithful these profit-concerned companies are in complying with the Chinese government's maniacal approach, but then pretend that they are vanguards of human rights when they present themselves to the people in democratic societies?

“When I talk about technology and the internet, people normally pine for them and look forward to a future that will promote liberalization,” Mr. Sui said. “But people neglect the fact that modern authoritarianism also rises with the development of technology, which makes wider and deeper control possible.”

The good thing for Microsoft is that despite the fascist, the US continues on with the rule of law.  Because I value the rule of law, and because I value human rights, I want Microsoft to win the battle against the Justice Department. But, otherwise, please!

Microsoft Ebola

I know, after reading the subject line, you are thinking that I have indeed gone completely insane.  But, there is a method to my madness, if you pardon the atrocious pun here ;)

Recall the names of the dudes who founded Microsoft?

Source

Sure, you know that guy on the right as Bill Gates.  The co-founder?  Ok, ok, you know it is Paul Allen.  (Do you know the names of the two dudes who started Google?  Aha, I got you there!)

So, what about Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Ebola?  I told you that there is always a method to my madness.

In the NY Times, Gates had authored an op-ed:

The Ebola epidemic in West Africa has killed more than 10,000 people. If anything good can come from this continuing tragedy, it is that Ebola can awaken the world to a sobering fact: We are simply not prepared to deal with a global epidemic.

More than 10,000 dead.  From a disease. Caused by a virus. Yet, we--in the US and the rest of the world as well--pretty much don't care.  Which is all the more why Gates reminds us even if we care not about the 10,000 dead, and the epidemic that continues to infect people, well, perhaps we will at least take notice if we think that we too might get affected by some global epidemic.

Of all the things that could kill more than 10 million people around the world in the coming years, by far the most likely is an epidemic. But it almost certainly won’t be Ebola. As awful as it is, Ebola spreads only through physical contact, and by the time patients can infect other people, they are already showing symptoms of the disease, which makes them relatively easy to identify.
Other diseases — flu, for example — spread through the air, and people can be infectious before they feel sick, which means that one person can infect many strangers just by going to a public place.

Are you listening now?

I believe that we can solve this problem, just as we’ve solved many others — with ingenuity and innovation.

As committed as he is to the cause, it requires more than well-funded nonprofit organizations and foundations.

Meanwhile, the other co-founder, Allen, has been spending on Ebola, according to this piece that the friend passed along to me:

Paul Allen reportedly began tracking the current Ebola outbreak before a lot of governments saw it as a serious threat because of his work on wildlife conservation in Africa. As well, Allen’s philanthropic focus has been shifting and expanding over the last few years to include new issues, which makes sense for a guy who has $17 billion, has signed the Giving Pledge, and isn't getting any younger. So, all in all, it wasn't so bizarre that Allen jumped into the Ebola crisis with a boatload of cash for frontline work to contain epidemic. 

Yep, the same Paul Allen who makes the road-tripping sports maniac all pumped up ;)

By late October, Allen had upped his commitment to $100 million, making it the largest private contribution to combat the Ebola crisis. Allen’s big give was surprising and a bit shocking because his previous philanthropy had never touched humanitarian or global health issues before.

Allen and Gates understand all too well that to fight Ebola means more than merely fighting the virus alone.  So,

Paul Allen is not going to pocket the unspent Ebola money now that people aren't dying anymore and move on to something else. On the contrary, he may dive deeper into the troubled healthcare systems of West Africa, spending even more money. 

Aren't you now happy that these two nerds founded a small little company called Microsoft?

If only the local business billionaire, who has more money than Allen, funded worthwhile causes like this instead of this!

If only the Central American immigrant children knew programming!

A few days ago, when I read this op-ed by a powerful trio--Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Sheldon Adelson--this insignificant commentator was so tempted to blog about it.  But, recognizing the limits to how much I can put up with the Rodney Dangerfield-like "I don't get no respect," I let that pass.  What was my problem with it?  In that op-ed, they argue:

Most Americans believe that our country has a clear and present interest in enacting immigration legislation that is both humane to immigrants living here and a contribution to the well-being of our citizens. Reaching these goals is possible. Our present policy, however, fails badly on both counts.
We believe it borders on insanity to train intelligent and motivated people in our universities — often subsidizing their education — and then to deport them when they graduate. Many of these people, of course, want to return to their home country — and that’s fine. But for those who wish to stay and work in computer science or technology, fields badly in need of their services, let’s roll out the welcome mat.

In the first place, this immigration op-ed seemed like the authors were making use of the big time immigration crisis at the border in order to promote their own immigration agenda.  The latest border crisis is not about engineers and computer scientists, but is about children who are rushing to the US for whatever the reasons might be.  The debate on the undocumented immigrants has nothing to do with the engineers and computer scientists and investors.  Thus, "Most Americans believe that our country has a clear and present interest in enacting immigration legislation" is nothing but a sleight-of-hand approach.

And then came this news:

In his first major organizational move since becoming Microsoft CEO in February, Satya Nadella announced Thursday that, over the next year, the company will cut 18,000 jobs — about 14 percent of its workforce. That represents the largest layoff in Microsoft’s history and a more aggressive cut than many had expected.

The global presence of Microsoft means that there is a good chance that many of the layoffs will be outside the US.  But, given that offshoring is to take advantage of the cost differentials, I would assume that a majority of the layoffs will be within the high-cost US.

Even as I was contemplating writing about this interesting juxtaposition of news stories, a politician beat me to it.
A Senator.
A Republican Senator.
A Republican Senator from the Deep South!

On the floor of U.S. Senate Thursday, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) delivered a scalding and sarcastic attack on the use of highly skilled foreign workers by U.S. corporations that was heavily aimed at Microsoft, a chief supporter of the practice.
Sessions' speech began as a rebuttal to a recent New York Times op-ed column by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, investor Warren Buffett and Sheldon Adelson, a casino owner that has chastised Congress for failing to take action on immigration reform.
But the senator's attack on "three of our greatest masters of the universe," and "super billionaires," was clearly primed by Microsoft's announcement, also on Thursday, that it was laying off18,000 employees.
"What did we see in the newspaper today?" said Sessions, "News from Microsoft. Was it that they are having to raise wages to try to get enough good, quality engineers to do the work? Are they expanding or are they hiring? No, that is not what the news was, unfortunately. Not at all."

My reaction to reading what Sessions said was:

Senator Sessions blasts #Microsoft's H-1B push as it lays off 18,000 workers I, gasp, agree with him on this http://t.co/uFJlZud9at
— sriram khe (@congoboy) July 19, 2014

The senator said:

Sessions' points were broad and didn't get into the mechanics of visa granting, but were clearly, though indirectly, aimed both at the H-1B visa and automatic green cards for foreign workers with Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, or STEM, degrees.

H-1B and STEM are not what "most Americans" have in mind when they think about immigration and the need to reform it, right?  But, that is what Gates & Co's op-ed is about when they write "Most Americans believe that our country has a clear and present interest in enacting immigration legislation."

Even this STEM is way overblown.  As I noted in this blog-post, less than a year ago, which became an op-ed later:

I was glancing through the September 2013 issue of IEEE’s magazine, Spectrum, and was drawn to a lengthy essay because of its title--”The STEM Crisis Is a Myth.”  I wonder how the STEM proponents will respond to the IEEE publication featuring an essay with a tagline of “Forget the dire predictions of a looming shortfall of scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians.”
The essay notes this--“What’s perhaps most perplexing about the claim of a STEM worker shortage is that many studies have directly contradicted it, including reports from Duke University, the Rochester Institute of Technology, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Rand Corp. A 2004 Rand study, for example, stated that there was no evidence “that such shortages have existed at least since 1990, nor that they are on the horizon.”

Oh well ... at least this post has provided me with a cathartic outlet.  The problem is now yours, given the mistake you made of reading this post ;)

Has Microsoft become "soft" and is becoming "micro" as well?

Microsoft’s huge profits — $6.7 billion for the past quarter — come almost entirely from Windows and Office programs first developed decades ago. Like G.M. with its trucks and S.U.V.’s, Microsoft can’t count on these venerable products to sustain it forever. Perhaps worst of all, Microsoft is no longer considered the cool or cutting-edge place to work. There has been a steady exit of its best and brightest.
What happened?

That is what a former Microsoft VP discusses in this NY Times oped.

The Silicon Valley/Seattle rivalry seems to be tilting again in favor of California.  Meanwhile, Boeing is spreading its wings (ha, pun!) into South Carolina. So, it will be left to Amazon and Starbucks to prop things up?  

Dalai Lama, we don't care. But, up in arms over Google?

It is funny how President Obama did not even want to meet with the Dalai Lama, lest our creditor our friend China get all offended.  But, oh, when Google says it experienced cyberattacks from China, the administration jumps up and down.  Yet again showing that money talks and everything else can take a hike.  Including the Dalai Lama!
I like the tongue-in-cheek comment that Hillary Clinton suddenly transformed into Google's Secretary of State :) But, wait, this joke is in Forbes magazine?  How ironic!

Even more hilarious and quite strange is the comment from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer:

in a speech to oil company executives in Houston on Thursday, criticized Google for its threats to leave China after the cyber-attacks, suggesting that Google’s decision to no longer filter out Internet searches objectionable to the Chinese government were an irrational business decision. After all, Ballmer said, the U.S. imports oil from Saudi Arabia despite the censorship that goes on in that country.

There, that is a good logic, and consistent too: We are business folks and we don't care how horrible the regimes are. 

Anyway, there are other countries, too, where Google censors information in order to satisfy the home country:

India: To abide by obscenity laws, Google strips out certain pornographic results from its Indian search pages. It has also removed content from the Indian version of its social networking site, Orkut, that's deemed by the government to be politically incendiary, like one group representing the Hindu nationalist party Shiv Sena.
France and Germany: Their strict ban on hate speech extends to the Web. Google obliges them by blocking search results for extremist groups like the neo-Nazi group Stormfront and the Holocaust denial association AAARGH.
Thailand: Lése-majesté, or insulting the king, is a serious crime in Thailand. Hence Google's agreement to block Thai users from viewing videos on YouTube (owned by Google) that mocked king Bhumibol Adulyadej, including one that showed him with feet on his head, a symbol of degradation to Thai Buddhists.
Turkey: Google has kowtowed to Turkish government demands that it block a handful of YouTube videos that portrayed Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the revered founder of the country, as a homosexual. Turkey has banned YouTube anyway for the past two years in an attempt to persuade Google to remove the Atatürk clips from global distribution.

Bing. Chrome. OS. Who cares!

I used Google Chrome for a couple of months, until it crashed one day a few months ago and simply would not revive. Even re-installing a couple of times made no difference. There was no point using IE because of the time it took to even open the program. So, for now it is Firefox. I am so ready for a next generation of web browsers. I can't quite figure out what that might look like, but it cannot be minor variations of what we have.

After my experience with Chrome, I have pretty much given up on taking any Google product for a test drive--I use enough Google services already (blogger, YouTube, reader, groups.) I wasn't jumping up and down about Google's new operating system because none of these tinkerings excite me that much. But I just could not think about the common thread among all these to explain my ennui. Until I read Robert Cringely, who, with this op-ed, shows why he has a wonderful understanding of the big picture:

none of this is likely to make a real difference for either company or, indeed, for consumers. It’s just noise — a form of mutually assured destruction intended to keep each company in check.

Microsoft makes most of its money from two products, Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. Nearly everything else it makes loses money, sometimes deliberately. Google makes most of its money from selling Internet ads next to search results. Nearly everything else it does loses money, too.

Neither company really cares because both make so much from their core products that it simply doesn’t matter. But companies, like people, strive and dream and in this case both dream, at least sometimes, of destroying the other. Only they can’t — or won’t — do it in the end, because it is against the interests of either company to do so.

The vast majority of Google searches are, of course, done on PCs running Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer. It is not in Google’s real interest to displace these products, which have facilitated so much of its success. Chrome products are given away, so they bring in no revenue for Google, and they don’t even provide a better search or advertising experience for their users, the company admits. So why does Google even bother?

To keep Microsoft on its toes.

I wonder who that next company will be--the real big one--that will dethrone Microsoft and Google and Apple. I can't wait, not because I want these corporations to fail, but because it will launch a whole new world :-)
Cringely writes:

I wish these companies had more guts, that either would make a true bet-the-company investment in changing the world, but they won’t. Google engineers are allowed to spend 20 percent of their time on new ideas — yet of those thousands of ideas, the company can really invest in only a dozen per year, leading to dissatisfaction and defections as the best nerds leave to pursue their dreams.

Maybe they’ll leave for the startup that finally topples Microsoft ... or Google. But until then these companies will posture, spend a little money on research and development, and keep each other in check, while reporters and publications pretend that it matters.

A good sign for freedom of speech

Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have signed a global code of conduct promising to offer better protection for online free speech and against official intrusion. ....
[The Global Network Initiative] states that privacy is "a human right and guarantor of human dignity," and the agreement commits the companies to try to resist overly broad demands for restrictions on freedom of speech and the privacy of users.
They will also assess the human rights climate in a country before concluding business deals and make sure their employees and partners follow suit.

More here, and here

Twelve reasons to hate the iPhone

I am not an iPhone user. Couldn't care for one. From techtree.com, here are twelve strikes against iPhones:

1. You can only sync music and video through iTunes. Want to drag-and-drop content from your hard-drive? Would like to sync music from another store -- from Amazon, for example? You are out of luck.
2. You can only install apps through iTunes. Never before has a cellphone maker slammed the door to an open development enviornment and received nothing but praise for doing so. Imagine Microsoft creating a gated software ecosystem and installing themselves as the gatekeeper. They would be eaten alive by the press. Apple gets a free pass.
3. Apple deletes useful applications. Nullriver's modem app went to the grave with no reason stated. Apple's digital business is dependent on the music and movie industry's whims. How long before the industry dictates which applications we can run?
4. Apple might not accept apps which might be detrimental to its own business. We won't hold our breath for competitive products to appear on the iPhone anytime soon.
5. You can only run one third-party application at a time. An instant messenger that runs in the background and collects messages while you are away? Not happening.
6. Apple might not allow app vendors to open up their apps. The terms of the NDA that potential application developers for the iPhone need to sign, effectively restrict redistribution of the source. Apple has created OSX on the back of FreeBSD; Safari on KHTML, SproutCore library used in MobileMe, and now they have built a layer on top that excludes others. Nik at TechCrunchIT laments that "the same community who demand all from Microsoft, feel gifted and special when Apple give them an inch of rope... Applications can only be installed from a single source, iTunes, and open source applications and distribution is near impossible. How do you install an iPhone application without iTunes? Where are the community advocates arguing for a standard interface, openess and free code?"
7. Limited Bluetooth use. The iPhone 3G has Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR but can you transfer files over Bluetooth? Does it support A2DP? Stereo Bluetooth? No on all counts. As of now, all you get from Bluetooth are headset voice calls, and that's it.
8. No copy-paste. This might be more of an interface issue that Apple is seeking to solve, than anything else. But it only underlines the drawbacks of a walled garden. If development was as open as say, it is on the Palm platform -- you would have a hundred different solutions by now, and at least one you could actually use. This also underlines how much the innovative spirit is killed by a controlled development environment. The iPhone ecosystem doesn't encourage software tinkering and probably won't spur garage breakthroughs that drive the industry forward.
9. No MMS. While you can e-mail photos, multimedia messaging is absent from the device. And speaking of videos...
10. No video recording. In the world of YouTube, the iPhone 3G does not offer video recording.
11. No voice command. For a touch-screen-only phone, voice controls would have been a huge plus for hands-free or one-handed control. Can we expect this functionality to be added by a third-party app?
12. Hardware locked to carriers. You cannot use any SIM card with this GSM device. How stupid is that? Hello monopolies, goodbye competition. Thanks to carrier lock-in when the phone launches in India, the iPhone 3G might not even enjoy 3G until months afterwards. How do you like them apples?