Bill Gates out a billion bucks!

Ouch!

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A 19th century Spanish political boss, the count of Romanones once said, "let others write the laws, leave the regulations to me."

While the USA goes around invading countries and killing people and other such he-manly activities. The European Union does all the girly-man stuff like socking it to Microsoft.

I suppose its just the crumminess of human nature that keeps so many of us from feeling Bill Gates's pain. DS

European Court Rejects Microsoft Antitrust Appeal - New York Times
Abstract:In a stinging rebuke to the world’s largest software maker, the second-highest European court rejected today a request by Microsoft to overturn a 2004 European Commission antitrust ruling that the company had abused its dominance in computer operating systems. The European Court of First Instance, in a starkly worded summary read to a courtroom of about 150 journalists and lawyers here, ordered Microsoft to obey a March 2004 commission order and upheld the €497.2 million, or $689.4 million, fine against the company. The court’s presiding judge, Bo Vesterdorf, reading a summary of the decision on his final day in office, said, “The court finds the commission did not err in assessing the gravity and duration of the infringement and did not err in setting the amount of the fine. Since the abuse of a dominant position is confirmed by the court, the amount of the fine remains unchanged.” “The court said the commission wins on virtually everything,” said Thomas Vinje, a partner at the law firm Clifford Chance and part of the legal team for the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, a coalition that includes Microsoft opponents like I.B.M. “The court has spoken. The commission was right.” In a one-line statement this morning, the European Commission said it welcomed the ruling on Microsoft, without giving any further details.(...) Microsoft has already been forced to pay nearly €1 billion in fines in the nine-year-old legal case, which has pitted the software maker based in Redmond, Wash., against the commission and a host of competitors, including I.B.M., Sun Microsystems, RealNetworks and Novell. READ IT All

LA Times gets the goods on Gates

David Seaton's News Links

If you have spent the last ten years or more of your precious life struggling with Microsoft products, trying to earn your living despite their glitches, "blue screens of death" and their huge security holes. If you have been angered by the way you were manipulated and "driven" from version to version; upgrade to upgrade and pray for the day when Google and Linux finally free you from this monster, nothing in the LA Times' exposé of the Gates Foundation will surprise you all that very much. If however, you worship the wealthy on general principle as so many Americans are prone to do, you may be shocked and disappointed by what you find. Relax, nothing is more fun than the unmasking of a pharisee: enjoy. DS

Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation - Los Angeles Times
Abstract: An ink spot certified that he had been immunized against polio and measles, thanks to a vaccination drive supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. But polio is not the only threat Justice faces. Almost since birth, he has had respiratory trouble. His neighbors call it "the cough." People blame fumes and soot spewing from flames that tower 300 feet into the air over a nearby oil plant. It is owned by the Italian petroleum giant Eni, whose investors include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.(...) In Ebocha, where Justice lives, Dr. Elekwachi Okey, a local physician, says hundreds of flares at oil plants in the Niger Delta have caused an epidemic of bronchitis in adults, and asthma and blurred vision in children. (...) "We're all smokers here," Okey said, "but not with cigarettes."(...) The Gates Foundation has poured $218 million into polio and measles immunization and research worldwide, including in the Niger Delta. At the same time that the foundation is funding inoculations to protect health, The Times found, it has invested $423 million in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Total of France — the companies responsible for most of the flares blanketing the delta with pollution, beyond anything permitted in the United States or Europe. (...) At the end of 2005, the Gates Foundation endowment stood at $35 billion, making it the largest in the world. (...) Warren E. Buffett, the world's second-richest man after Bill Gates, pledged to add about $31 billion in installments from his personal fortune. (...) the total is higher than the gross domestic products of 70% of the world's nations. Like most philanthropies, the Gates Foundation gives away at least 5% of its worth every year, to avoid paying most taxes. In 2005, it granted nearly $1.4 billion. It awards grants mainly in support of global health initiatives(...) It invests the other 95% of its worth. This endowment is managed by Bill Gates Investments, which handles Gates' personal fortune.(...) By comparing these investments with information from for-profit services that analyze corporate behavior for mutual funds, pension managers, government agencies and other foundations, The Times found that the Gates Foundation has holdings in many companies that have failed tests of social responsibility because of environmental lapses, employment discrimination, disregard for worker rights, or unethical practices.(...) Some critics say the foundation's failure to use its own investments "to promote ... public benefit in developing countries at reasonable cost" might trace back to the source of most of its money — Microsoft — which Bill Gates serves as chairman. Microsoft monopolies in computer operating systems and business software depend upon the same intellectual-property and trade-law approaches favored by drug companies. READ IT ALL