The Misinformed Billionaires Club

The London Sunday Times, in the story Billionaire club in bid to curb overpopulation, reported:

SOME of America’s leading billionaires have met secretly to consider how their wealth could be used to slow the growth of the world’s population and speed up improvements in health and education.

The philanthropists who attended a summit convened on the initiative of Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, discussed joining forces to overcome political and religious obstacles to change.

Described as the Good Club by one insider it included David Rockefeller Jr, the patriarch of America’s wealthiest dynasty, Warren Buffett and George Soros, the financiers, Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, and the media moguls Ted Turner and Oprah Winfrey.

Bill Gates, it seems, was the man pushing for the population control agenda. The Times report noted:

The issues debated included reforming the supervision of overseas aid spending to setting up rural schools and water systems in developing countries. Taking their cue from Gates they agreed that overpopulation was a priority.

Looking under the veneer of good boy philanthropy, however, observers have noticed a sinister — if perhaps unwitting — agenda, as well as a strong undercurrent of plain old misinformation.

Taxing Free Online Content

Absurd as it may sound, that is effectively what the draft of an NTC Memorandum Circular may end up doing if it is implemented: taxing online content from the Philippines!

The draft Memorandum Circular, dated December 22, 2008, is entitled “GUIDELINES ON THE PROVISION OF CONTENTS, INFORMATION, APPLICATIONS, AND ELECTRONIC GAMES“. In section B Registration, number 1, the document states:

Contents, Information, Applications and/or Electronic Games Providers, Contents Developers, Information Sources, Applications Developers, and Electronic Games Developers are required to have commercial presence in the country and shall secure Certificate of Registration (COR) from the Commission.

The NTC document defines “Providers” as:

… persons or entities offering and providing contents (or information, applications, or electronic games — additions are mine) to the public for compensation through the networks, systems and/or facilities of authorized networks, systems and/or facilities providers.

Take note, it says these are those who provide something for compensation. At first blush, this would seem to exclude most bloggers, those who post on forums and social networking sites, and others who don’t really get paid for putting content online.

On the other hand, the NTC document also makes these other definitions:

When Tech Giants Tinker with Marriage

I was sorely disappointed when I learned that Google and Apple — arguably two of the most innovative and powerful technology companies in the U.S. — decided that they should try to influence voters going to the polls on November 4.

No, I am not talking about the Presidential elections (although that too was on November 4). I am talking about the sizable contributions of these companies to the campaign against a proposed amendment to the California Constitution to protect marriage, also known as Proposition 8.

Google’s official stand is here: Our position on California’s No on 8 campaign. Apple, for its part, was widely reported to have made a large donation to the campaign against Proposition. Here’s the Technology Chronicles story on that: Apple donates $100,000 to fight Prop. 8.

Proposition 8 is an amendment to the State Constitution of California to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. It is a reaction to an activist California Supreme Court ruling that effectively legalized same-sex marriage in that state. This occurred despite a previous California law (known as Proposition 22) that defined marriage as between a man and a woman, and which was overwhelmingly passed by California
voters. Since Proposition 22 was declared unconstitutional by a 4-3 decision of the high court last May 15, supporters of traditional marriage in California have now offered the Proposition 8 amendment to the California State Constitution, which will effectively overturn the activist court decision.

Early returns from California shows the Yes vote leading by a wide lead. Thank God for that!

Making Elections Open and Transparent

A group of concerned citizens called the Advocacy for Open Systems in Elections is offering a free, open source solution for automating the counting of election results. Ito Gruet, a member of the group, was interviewed by Erwin Oliva of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and the video of the interview is available on the Inquirer website as “Pushing open source solutions for elections“.

Gruet revealed that the group advocating the use of open standards and open source software for the automated election system, which would help ensure the transparency of the electoral process. Gruet explained:

Basically it’s to ensure that we are able to track and trace back to a source document and audit the results of the elections. And what we are proposing is the we make this process tranasparent to the public… to all the voters. Transparent in terms of the technology to be used, so we should be using open standards. We believe that the software should be open source so that people in the know can look at it, can review, and see if it’s really a working system. Transparent in terms of the data itself, which means that results should be easily verifiable by the public, and anybody can do their own tabulation.