ANATOMY OF A SILICON VALLEY CARTEL “BURN NOTICE”: TECH BILLIONAIRES COPY SPY HIT-JOB TACTICS TO WIPE OUT ADVERSARIES
– ## Contracts hit job and lobby services like In-Q-Tel, Sidney Blumenfeld Consulting, New America Foundation, Gawker Media, Richard Berman Consulting, NVCA and private investigators.
– ## Destroys all your sources of income
– ## Steals your technology
– ## Sends “honey-trap” fake dates to harass you
– ## Spoofing your websites by instantly redirecting links to fake clones
– ## Sends tens of millions of fake users to your sites
– ## Intercepts any Paypal, or other online payments, so you never get any on-line revenue
– ## Threatens law firms that try to defend you
– ## Has their corrupt Senator manipulate laws against you
– ## Puts moles in your company
– ## Calls your employer with fake stories about you to get you fired
– ## Posts character assassination stories using their “Troll Farms” and Gawker Media
– ## They have Google lock all of the attacks against you at top of Google search results
– ## Copies the CIA and GCHQ tactics book
THE SILICON VALLEY CARTEL USED THE “JTRIG OPS MANUAL” TO CONDUCT ATTACKS ON ORDINARY AMERICANS WHO THEY WANTED “TAKEN OUT”
Controversial GCHQ Unit Engaged in Domestic Law Enforcement, Online Propaganda, Psychology Research
By Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Fishman FOR THE INTERCEPT
@ggreenwald@AndrewDFish
Controversial GCHQ Unit Engaged in Domestic Law Enforcement, Online Propaganda, Psychology Research
Getty Images/Ikon Images
The spy unit responsible for some of the United Kingdom’s most controversial tactics of surveillance, online propaganda and deceit focuses extensively on traditional law enforcement and domestic activities — even though officials typically justify its activities by emphasizing foreign intelligence and counter-terrorism operations.
Documents published today by The Intercept demonstrate how the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), a unit of the signals intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), is involved in efforts against political groups it considers “extremist,” Islamist activity in schools, the drug trade, online fraud, and financial scams.
Though its existence was secret until last year, JTRIG quickly developed a distinctive profile in the public understanding, after documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the unit had engaged in “dirty tricks” like deploying sexual “honey traps” designed to discredit targets, launching denial-of-service attacks to shut down internet chat rooms, pushing veiled propaganda onto social networks, and generally warping discourse online.
Early official claims attempted to create the impression that JTRIG’s activities focused on international targets in places like Iran, Afghanistan, and Argentina. The closest the group seemed to get to home was in its targeting of trans-national “hacktivist” group Anonymous.
While some of the unit’s activities are focused on the claimed areas, JTRIG also appears to be intimately involved in traditional law enforcement areas and UK-specific activity, as previously unpublished documents demonstrate. An August, 2009 JTRIG memo entitled “Operational Highlights” boasts of “GCHQ’s first serious crime effects operation” to shut down internet forums and to remove websites identifying police informants and members of a witness protection program. Another was “used to facilitate and execute online fraud.” The document also describes GCHQ advice provided “to assist the UK negotiating team on climate change.”
Particularly revealing is a fascinating 42-page document from 2011 detailing JTRIG’s activities. It provides the most comprehensive and sweeping insight to date into the scope of this unit’s extreme methods. Entitled “Behavioral Science Support for JTRIG’s Effects and Online Humint [Human Intelligence] Operations,” it describes the types of targets on which the unit focuses, the psychological and behavioral research it commissions and exploits, and its future organizational aspirations. It is authored by a psychologist, Mandeep K. Dhami.
Among other things, the document lays out the tactics the agency uses to manipulate public opinion, its scientific and psychological research into how human thinking and behavior can be influenced, and the broad range of targets that are traditionally the province of law enforcement rather than intelligence agencies.
JTRIG’s domestic and law enforcement operations are made clear. The report states that the controversial unit “currently collaborates with other agencies” including the Metropolitan police, Security Service (MI5), Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), Border Agency, Revenue and Customs (HMRC), and National Public Order and Intelligence Unit (NPOIU). The document highlights that key JTRIG objectives include “providing intelligence for judicial outcomes;” monitoring “domestic extremist groups such as the English Defence League by conducting online HUMINT;” “denying, deterring or dissuading” criminals and “hacktivists;” and “deterring, disrupting or degrading online consumerism of stolen data or child porn.”
It touts the fact that the unit “may cover all areas of the globe.” Specifically, “operations are currently targeted at” numerous countries and regions including Argentina, Eastern Europe and the UK.
JTRIG’s domestic operations fit into a larger pattern of UK-focused and traditional law enforcement activities within GCHQ.
Many GCHQ documents describing the “missions” of its “customers” for which it works make clear that the agency has a wide mandate far beyond national security, including providing help on intelligence to the Bank of England, to the Department for Children, Schools and Families on reporting of “radicalization,” to various departments on agriculture and whaling activities, to government financial divisions to enable good investment decisions, to police agencies to track suspected “boiler room fraud,” and to law enforcement agencies to improve “civil and family justice.”
Previous reporting on the spy agency established its focus on what it regards as political radicalism. Beyond JTRIG’s targeting of Anonymous, other parts of GCHQ targeted political activists deemed to be “radical,” even monitoring the visits of people to the WikiLeaks website. GCHQ also stated in one internal memo that it studied and hacked popular software programs to “enable police operations” and gave two examples of cracking decryption software on behalf of the National Technical Assistance Centre, one “a high profile police case” and the other a child abuse investigation.
The JTRIG unit of GCHQ is so notable because of its extensive use of propaganda methods and other online tactics of deceit and manipulation. A 2011 report on the organization’s operations, published today, summarizes just some of those tactics:
Throughout this report, JTRIG’s heavy reliance on its use of behavioral science research (such as psychology) is emphasized as critical to its operations. That includes detailed discussions of how to foster “obedience” and “conformity”:
…
…
In response to inquiries, GCHQ refused to provide on-the-record responses beyond its boilerplate claim that all its activities are lawful.
———
Documents published with this article:
Behavioural Science Support for JTRIG’S Effects and Online HUMINT Operations
UK Ministry Stakeholder Relationships Spreadsheets (13 documents merged)
———
Photo: Getty Images
Email the authors: glenn.greenwald@theintercept.com, fishman@theintercept.com
The following are details from a series of Silicon Valley Hit-Jobs, now reported to police and under investigation by various agencies, per witness and victim reports:
Here is what happens to you when you cross paths with a Silicon Valley Mobster
Did you do something to offend Eric Schmidt, Elon Musk or John Doerr? Here is what will happen to you…
∞ If you happen to make a technology that is better than the last one that a Silicon Valley mobster just stole or,
∞ If you happen to make a technology that a Silicon Valley mobster just wants, and they steal if from you, and you complain to the feds;
This happens to you and it has happened to over 40 individuals in America, that cross the Silicon Valley Cartel:
– The people from State and Federal agencies, that most people think would help them in such a case, will do almost nothing at all. The Silicon Valley mobsters will threaten to cut off the campaign funding, for anybody, from the State or Federal government that tries to help you. Don’t count on any support from the State or Federal government. Expect to get no help at all except from the few and the bold. You must plan to go it on your own and use every off-the-cuff tactic you, and your friends, can muster.
– They own many digital tabloid newspapers like Gawker, Reddit, Google, Motley Fool, Hearst Publications, ALICE Coalition, Huffington Post, EV World, Mercury News and thousands of on-line special interest publications. They will post some made-up character assassination articles on them and then have Google stick those links to the top, of the top page, of Google so everybody sees it. Many people, and countries, have now proven that Google rigs its search engines to harm its adversaries. If Google did that to you, the technical proof now exists and you can win in court and get compensated for the damages they caused you. Google will refuse to remove those links if you are on the Silicon Valley mobster’s hate-list or “no poach black list” . In order to control politics they own many of these stealth tabloid publications where they can order attack stories written about you. Some of these kinds of people own famous online media tabloids (ie: Gawker Media Group) and stock tip publications which are really just shill operations for their agendas and attacks. Identify these publications and partner with every person, or company, who they have coordinated attacks on in the past. Read about their attacks on inventor Mike Cheiky, Gary D. Conley, Aaron Swartz, Stan Meyer, Preston Tucker and hundreds of other innovators that they wanted “out of the way”. You will see no negative reports about the “bad guys”, allowed on those sites, and every bad report about you will be manually up-ranked and locked into the top slot on their page in order to damage you. The down-side for the bad guys, though, is that the internet remembers everything. You can now prove, in court, showing technical and historical metric data, that they intentionally locked and damaged you and you can get compensated for the damages.
– Everything that you read about here: http://www.whengoogleattacks.com gets done to you, and almost nobody in federal agencies will put a stop to it because their bosses might lose campaign funding.
– They will put “moles” in your organization. Crazy rich people have private eye’s and ex-employees that they pay to get a job at your company. They pretend that they are helping you, then they sabotage your effort, report your activities to the VC and circumvent your every move. Consider past jobs that future employees had with your attackers.
– To understand the process, watch some of the movies about how the bad guys sabotage: Francis Coppola’s: Tucker, A Man and His Dream; Greg Kinear’s: Flash of Genius.
– As punishment against you, rich political campaign backers will try to have their federal lackey’s change the law to hurt you. If you are a tech group, for example, the “bad guys”, are currently lobbying and organizing to suddenly try to change the patent laws so that your business is destroyed. When billionaires put bribes in the right pockets, they accomplish sweeping policy change. Don’t let that happen. Expose the “who” and the “why” in such tactics. See the current fabricated “Patent Troll Crisis” that they faked up, as just such a ploy, at: http://www.savetheinventor.com/
– They will spy on you. Elon Musk famously emailed all of his employees. He sent them each an email about a company tip with a different sentence, in each email so he could see who was ratting out his crimes to th
– They will hack every device you own and record all of your communications media.
– Watch out for “honey traps” in your activities and in on-line sites. Read the Snowden/Greenwald reports on what “Honey Traps” are. That hottie who just contacted you on Tinder, Match.com or OK Cupid works for them, and intends to sue you in a rape case, paternity case, abuse case or other media embarrassment to destroy your reputation (Like they did to Micheal Arrington for exposing AngelGate), after stealing your secrets.
– They will hire these troll farms (off-shore warehouses full of tens of thousands of on-line attack bloggers working under tactical orders to terminate you on-line) to attack you en masse with tens of thousands of fake character assassination blog postings designed to destroy your reputation and income sources:
– Troll farm in Russia was behind Columbia Chemical hoax
– AS Americans remembered the attacks on the World Trade Center last year, … who first revealed details of the trollfarm to a local reporter in February, …news.com.au/technology/online/columbia-chemical-hoax-…
– Secret Kremlin ‘Troll Farm’ Spreads Fake Secret Kremlin ‘TrollFarm’ Spreads Fake News About U.S. Townhall … I’m sure there are leftist trolls that do nothing but attack Conservatives in …freerepublic.com/focus/news/3297994/posts?page=17
– OKCupid Trolls This is a blog for all of you who have encountered the millions of idiots and assholes who creep on online dating sites. I’m a smart woman who instead of falling for …okcupidtrolls.tumblr.comtopix.com/forum/city/centerville-la/T1KR95H4TN34NFAHTMore results
– Russian Troll Farms – Mighty Girl | Mighty Girl
– Russian TrollFarms. Have you read this piece in the New York Times about the Russian Troll Factory where hundreds of highly paid employees are paid to spread …mightygirl.com/2015/06/02/russian-troll-farms/
Every single troll blog comment from these machine-guns-of-slander , every pseudo attack article about you, everything is already tracked back to the actual author. The NSA have done it, that is well known. NO amount of TOR, or VPN on top of VPN or stealthing software can hide a troll attacker any more. What is only now becoming known is that the official, and also the independent hacker, Chinese and Russian spies have got almost all of that information too. Hackers have broken into Sony, The White House, All of Target, All of the Federal Employee Records, everything. In a court case you can now, legally, subpoena NSA records to sue the attackers. Others, hearing of your filed case, may just show up and give you the information. Attackers cannot hide behind anonymity any more. Those who were blogging that you “sleep with goats” and “eat unborn children” can now be found out and delt with.
– – Do you have on-line stores and paypal or credit card accounts that take payments at those stores? Trying to make a little cash on the side? Confused about why you never get any orders? The attackers have DNS-re-routed your stores and payment certificates, spoofed your sites and turned off all of your income potential from those on-line options in order to damage your economic potential. Illegal? Yes. Happening to people every day? Yes. Get professional IT services to document the spoofs, and re-routes, and sue the operators of those tactics that are attacking your revenue stream.
– It now only costs $50,000.00 to bribe a Senator. Some of these tech billionaires earn that much in 3 minutes. Beware of your Senator. Senators take stock options in tech companies as bribes, watch for linkages. See the 60 Minutes Episode called: Congress Trading On Insider Information.
– Want a job? Forget about it! The bad guys went into Axciom, Oracle, SAP, and all of the Human Resources and Recruiter databases, and put “red flag notices” on your profile. You will get some great first interviews, but when they run your back-ground check, you will never hear back from that interviewer again. You got “HR Black-listed”, in retribution, for accidentally bothering a campaign billionaire. Hire an HR service to look and print out your false “red flag” HR data-base inserts and use those as evidence in your lawsuit. In the news stories below, and tens of thousands of more on-line, you will see details of the Silicon Valley Cartel’s “No Poaching” Blacklist lawsuits; which kept thousands of people from getting jobs, or changing jobs, based on the whims of a handful of campaign billionaires and a secret Omerta “Do not hire” list. If you have offended the Cartel, your name will go on the list and all of the HR firms will avoid giving you a job, in fear of losing their contracts with these big technology VC’s. That is a felony, though, and in the U.S. you can sue them for it, as many have now done. It was not “just” a No Poaching list, it was a punishment Black-List, as well.
– They will anonymously put all of your email addresses on blacklists, and watch-lists, so that you can’t use services like craigslist, cafe press, zazzle or other on-line services to make money. If you try to open any accounts on those services, you either won’t be able to create an account or, you will get an account, but all of your orders will get “spoofed” into oblivion so you can’t make any money. The attackers believe that by causing you as much economic hard-ship as possible, they can get retribution for what-ever they have perceived that you have done to offend them. Again, use an IT forensic services group to get the data to show this is happening, trace it, and sue the perpetrators.
All of these things are happening, today, to over 500 people and nobody is doing anything about it. California Senators and Attorney Generals are implicated in this so they won’t help. Federal cops are told not to talk to anybody until “the investigation is complete”, but the investigation is going to be stone-walled for over a decade. Their actions provide the proof. When you look out on the internet and add up the pronouncements of “scam”, “sleeping with goats”, against those poor souls who are under attack, you can see that a very large organization, with large resources, is behind it; a group with as many resources as….hmmm.. say a Silicon Valley Crime Cartel!
The volume of attack items proves that no mere mortal, or company, could have acquired that much media unless it was placed there by very wealthy parties. Everyone now knows that the web is controlled. The volume of attacks can often prove that those attacks are fabricated. Additionally, IP Trace Routing and digital tracking now can prove the attackers manipulation of your data, email and website traffic. One of your best sets of evidence will come from the attackers, themselves. The bad guys always leave a digital trail of bread-crumbs leading right back to themselves. You can hire an IT company to build a “tracking array” comprised of hundreds of websites which are bait to catch them in the act. Regarding: Paranoia vs. documented evidence. If you, and others have experienced the tactics, and the police have recorded the tactics being used against you, it isn’t paranoia to be cautious.
Before John Doerr, Elon Musk and Eric Schmidt existed, there were earlier versions of them. Here is article about the predecessors:
The sure sign of a great idea is when some big gorilla steals it from you.
Read and know some of the history, below, so you can see the first signs of trouble:
Inventors+ Who Changed the World and Got Screwed in Return
By Karl Smallwood
As we’ve discussed before, just because your hard work and perseverance led you to create something that changes the world, it doesn’t mean that you’ll get fame, fortune, or the slightest bit of recognition out of it. In fact, some inventors get so little credit that we completely forgot about them in our previous article, and since we really don’t like angering the ghosts of people who could probably invent a way to punch us from beyond the grave, here they are.
#6. Siegel and Shuster, Superman’s Creators
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman, the most famous superhero ever, perhaps with the exception of Spider-Man or that kid who changes the channel with his eyes in X2.
Debuting in 1938, Superman was an instant success. DC Comics soon followed up the “man in underpants punches criminals” concept with Batman, and that was it, there was no turning back: Siegel and Shuster’s creation had started a multibillion-dollar industry that is still going strong today, spawning toys, T-shirts, and, oh yeah, some of the highest-grossing movies of all time.
Nice one, Siegel and Shuster!
Alan Light “Take it from us, kids: Work hard, change the world, and you too can see absolutely no reward from it!”
But Then They Got Screwed
“Nice one, Siegel and Shuster” is exactly what DC must have said, in a sarcastic tone, when the duo famously sold them all rights to Superman for a measly $130, a check that’s now ironically worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
At the time, no one suspected that the guy in blue pajamas that they’d been drawing would turn into a cultural icon — so when he did, and Siegel and Shuster continued getting squat, the pair embarked on perhaps the longest clusterfuck in copyright history.
The duo spent the better part of their lives unsuccessfully trying to reclaim some part of their creation, only to be rebuffed time and time again. While DC raked in billions from Superman alone, Siegel and Shuster lived the lives of paupers. They were given a yearly pension in the late 1970s by Warner Bros. (which had purchased DC), but only because the studio couldn’t afford the bad publicity with a Superman movie on the way.
In 1999, three years after Siegel died, his family successfully won the rights to his half of his creation. A happy ending, right? Nope! This meant dick to Warner Bros., who still refused to pay them a penny, leaving them to fight in court for another 10 fucking years. And the superdickery continues: More recently, documents disappeared from Siegel’s daughter’s attorney’s office and somehow wound up in the hands of Warner Bros. executives.
#5. Philo T. Farnsworth, the Farm Boy Who Invented Television
Philo Farnsworth, besides having the supreme honor of inspiring a Futurama character, was a serial inventor with a list of credited patents longer than his forehead.
Among those patents was the one that made television possible: an “image dissector” that could capture images as a series of lines to be displayed electronically. If that isn’t impressive enough for you, consider the fact that Farnsworth came up with the idea at age 14, while growing up on a farm in Idaho, and first demonstrated it at 21, in 1927. If that didn’t make you feel bad about yourself, it should have.
But Then He Got Screwed
When the young inventor applied for a patent at age 20, David Sarnoff of the Radio Corporation of America took notice. Radio had a pretty cozy spot at the center of the American living room at this point, and Sarnoff wasn’t interested in letting that change. And if it did, then he would at least make sure that RCA would be the one getting rich from it.
Sarnoff kept Farnsworth tied in a series of legal battles over the next decade using a number of bullshit tactics, like hiring a Russian inventor to spy on him or using said inventor’s earlier patents (which they could never get to work) to argue that he had invented TV. At one point Sarnoff just said “Fuck it” and started making TVs without paying Farnsworth. RCA was eventually forced to pay him a one-time $1 million licensing fee, but it wasn’t worth the emotional stress that had left the man crippled.
Then the whole television business was put on hold when the ’40s rolled around and the government told everyone to focus on building things that could kill Germans. The final blow came when Farnsworth’s patents expired just as World War II ended … and, what do you know, television sales skyrocketed. RCA, or anyone else for that matter, no longer had to even pretend to give a shit about paying Farnsworth for his invention.
It wasn’t until 20 years after his death that the government decided that Farnsworth probably deserved some recognition. No shit.
Following Farnsworth’s final wishes, his statue is about to insert something into Sarnoff’s anus.
#4. Edwin H. Armstrong, the Father of FM Radio
When is the last time you listened to AM radio? Intentionally? The sound quality is so bad that most of the programming is reduced to things that already sound like shit, like conservative talk radio or a single, never-ending religious sermon in Spanish.
The much superior FM was invented by Edwin Armstrong, who created a system to reduce interference across radio bands in the 1910s. He continued his lifelong vendetta against crappy sound in the ’20s, when he came up with frequency modulation (FM) as a way to reduce static. We will now reiterate that he developed all this technology nearly 100 years ago, and it’s still present in all modern radios.
But Then He Got Screwed
Things seemed to be going swimmingly for Armstrong for a while, but it was at this point that a remarkably smug asshole came into the picture.
Yes, David fucking Sarnoff from RC-fucking-A proceeded to mess with the life of yet another world-changing inventor. Sarnoff had built his empire with AM radio, so he decided that if FM was the way of the future, then he’d do anything possible to pull a John Connor on that future. Since Armstrong wouldn’t relinquish his patent, Sarnoff made sure that RCA not only stopped supporting the development of the new technology, but actively tried to stop it.
In 1937, Armstrong used money from his own pocket to build the very first FM radio station. Another followed, then another, until by the mid ’40s a string of stations known as the Yankee Network were busy convincing everyone of the superiority of FM, just by existing. And then it all stopped.
In a dick move of epic proportions, Sarnoff successfully lobbied the FCC to move the FM band to a different place on the dial, from 42 to 50 MHz to 88 to 108 MHz. While there were somewhat valid technical reasons for this, a happy side effect for RCA was that it made all of Armstrong’s stations instantly obsolete.
It took decades for FM radio to recover. In the late ’70s, it finally surpassed AM, but Armstrong was long gone by then, having committed suicide in 1954 by jumping from the 13th floor of his office building, presumably screaming “FUCK SARNOOOOOOFFFF” all the way down.
#3. John Walker, Inventor of the Match
About 500 billion matches are used every year in the United States — that’s the kind of volume you can do when your product sets itself on fire with every use. Before the invention of self-igniting friction matches, people simply used sticks that caught on fire when you, y’know, put them near fire.
This changed when John Walker, an English chemist born in 1871, began coating sticks in a number of dangerous-sounding chemicals until he happened upon one that, when struck against a surface, erupted in flames. Other self-igniting matches had been tried before, but they were extremely impractical, by which we mean that a lot of people probably lost their eyebrows or worse using them.
And clearly, eyebrows were very important to this man.
Walker’s invention caught on fire, both literally and figuratively, and we still keep matches around today, despite the fact that we’ve all heard of lighters.
But Then He Got Screwed
Walker, unaware of the potential of his invention, worked on these new “friction lights” for about a year, then promptly forgot about the whole thing and stopped selling them. People close to him implored Walker to patent his friction light, since he’d just revolutionized the creation of fire and all. Walker declined, believing that his invention could better benefit mankind without a patent.
Others, however, believed that Walker’s invention could better benefit mankind by making them rich.
Getty- “How does fire help humanity if it doesn’t allow me to buy prostitutes?”
In 1829, another inventor named Isaac Holden independently came up with an improved version of Walker’s friction matches. Like Walker, Holden neglected to patent his idea … and that’s where one Samuel Jones came in. Jones, realizing that Walker and Holden had effectively created one of the most useful inventions in the history of civilization and weren’t making money from it, decided to do it on their behalf, because he was nice like that.
Almost immediately, Jones patented the exact same thing and began selling it under the name “Lucifers,” because fuck it — if you’re gonna be evil, you might as well go to the source. Soon other brands began offering improved versions of the same thing, all for a price, of course. It wasn’t until they were all dead that Walker was credited for his invention, and Jones for being a douchebag.
#2. Stephen Foster, the Father of American Music
There are some tunes that you’re just born knowing. If we somehow forced you to hum a melody right now, chances are that a great number of you would go with something like “Oh! Susanna”:
Or “Camptown Races” (you know, the one that goes “doo-da, doo-da”):
Or maybe something more nostalgic, like “Old Folks at Home”:
Man, can you imagine if all these songs had been written by the same guy, and that he’d been actively trying to get money from them? That dude would have been richer than Madonna and Bono combined.
Actually, all those songs and more were written by the same person, and he did try to cash in on them — the keyword being “try.”
Then “she” came around the mountain and snatched up all his royalties.
But Then He Got Screwed
In the 1800s, Stephen Foster wrote classics like “My Old Kentucky Home” and “Beautiful Dreamer” and over 200 other songs. Foster was a professional songwriter before those existed. Seriously: The profession literally did not existbefore Foster trailblazed it like a motherfucker.
Of course, the problem with being the first in his profession was that there were no such things as “enforcing copyright” or “not screwing over songwriters” back then. Today, Foster would have earned obscene amounts of money from “Oh! Susanna” alone, but in 1848, he got exactly $100 for the rights to publish the sheet music, while the publisher made $10,000 selling his work.
Even when Foster became a minor celebrity, he continued getting nothing but pennies for every copy of his work that was sold. For his dozens of hit songs, he saw around $15,000 in royalties in his whole life. In the 1860s, he was dumped by his wife, who had probably had enough of sticking around with this dude who wrote like a rock star, anddrank like a rock star, but was not rich like one. He died at the age of 37 after hitting his head on a washbasin, with around 40 cents in his pocket.
Some of which were melted down to make this statue.
His contributions can’t be overstated. Not only did he create most of the conventions of popular songwriting as we know them today, but he also demonstrated the need for intellectual property laws by getting repeatedly screwed.
#1. Gary Kildall, the Father of the Operating System
Gary Kildall is one of the guys we have to thank for the fact that you don’t need to be a genius to use the ultra advanced computer you are looking at right now to search for porn. Thank you, Gary.
In 1973, Kildall made life a lot easier for nerds everywhere when he created CP/M, a groundbreaking operating system for microcomputers (which is what they called any computer smaller than a semi truck back then). The program became the industry standard for the next decade. This guy was basically Bill Gates before Bill Gates was Bill Gates.
Michael Ochs Archives / Getty
“It’s cool, I’ll just donate a bunch of money to charity someday when I’m all old and prune-faced.”
But Then He Got Screwed
Of course, at the same time, Bill Gates was busy trying to become Bill Gates, and he eventually achieved that at Kildall’s expense.
In 1980, IBM was getting ready to launch its first personal computer and needed an operating system to operate the shit out of it. They first knocked on Microsoft’s door, but Microsoft wasn’t really into the OS-making business at that point, so they directed the IBM suits to Ga