Sunday, August 13th, 2006, 1:58 am
Windows Might Become a ‘US Government Thingy’
Filed under:
Made with the GNU
Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)
ARELY should politicians get involved in the software industry. Ever. As a matter of fact, they generally fear that unknown as seldom will they be familiar with the latest technology. Everyone steers away from anything which can expose ignorance and lead to an embarrassment, at peer or public level.
Last Friday, however, marked a turning point — a remarkable exception. The US Government served as the spokesman of Microsoft Corp. Granted, the Department of Homeland Security encouraged people to receive some ‘binary blobs’ from our friends at Redmond. Now, I would not like to baselessly step forward and nag about nepotism and ill conduct over at Microsoft and the US Government. However, knowing the historical background of both Microsoft and — more latterly — the US Government (heavy eavesdropping comes to mind), I would barely hesitate.
Bill Gates is an immoral, irritable person. Steve Ballmer is not any better. He never steered away from or averted any controversy. Both have proven that they have a real spark for incompetence and unethical business practices. More broadly speaking, the Draconian Microsoft was never afraid of altercations or was rarely deterred to embrace questionable behaviour. Over the years they disrupted the equilibrium in industry, shrewdly exploiting loopholes in American capitalism, through apathy amongst the American government, as well as its blind eye (Gates’ grandfather was a State Senator). Fortunately, on the other side of the Atlantic, the European Commission has watched over Microsoft like a hawk. This is well overdue. The EU/EC is also fining that ‘evil empire’ for outmuscling its competition quite aggressively, as well as for hiding key information. It is doing the job that the American government was supposed to do, but chose to turn a blind eye to.
Alas, IANAL (I am not a lawyer). Discussions in some legal forums were never fruitful as they didn’t end up leaning in my favour. I hope people can judge for themselves and realise that Windows is inclined towards a spy-friendly ideaology and, for real privacy, Open Source must be welcomed with open arms. The other gripe I have with Microsoft is its ruining of the World Wide Web as it also heavily affects those who turned their back on Microsoft.
Related items: Vista Encryption and Back Doors
UPDATE: Just noticed a similar blog post somewhere else
August 13th, 2006 at 6:15 am
Bill Gates is an Immoral person…are you kidding me? He only gave $500 million away last month to an AIDS foundation. Oh his kids are going to get a smidgin of his fortune you say? Well whys that? Oh because he plans to give away all of of his fortune to charities. Yeah that Bill Gates guy needs to be stopped…next thing you know he’ll be curing cancer…pfft.
August 13th, 2006 at 6:33 pm
Bill Gates is not “immoral” just a figurehead for yet another immoral corporation, which plans on auditing your life. That’s why he peaced out.
I could imagine the government has always had a finger in Microsoft, they manage to get all the government grants. Look at all your public function’s computers, that’s a lot of your tax money getting dumped into MS software and support. Shit look at Dell as well.
I just do not understand how MS can honestly getting away with spending $199 of my taxes for software that should be openly developed by a community. I mean when I was in HS, I volunteered to reuse all there old computers (that wouldn’t run NT4) so we could install some Linux on them.
This throw away society is our downfall. New, Shiny, Marketed things are what we want and get.