05.24.10
Microsoft’s Cloudy Skies Over Norway
Summary: Microsoft threatens to control data — not just software — in the beautiful nation of Norway
Governments must never deploy or lease so-called 'clouds', which give a company an authority over citizenship. Governments should generally use software that they totally control and control both locally and independently from any company. Free software is a good fit which is not expensive as it can be maintained by many parties simultaneously.
At the moment, Microsoft is trying to hijack citizens’ data and it even hires top lobbyists to do so. Over in Norway, Microsoft gets a step closer to achieving this. Norway must reject this for reasons that include Microsoft corruption. See the following posts:
- Steve Pepper Spills the Beans on MSOOXML in Norway
- Norway Embraces Open Standards, Many Others Follow Suit
- Norway Changes OOXML Vote, Receives New Microsoft Search Base (Updatedx2)
- Microsoft’s Latest OOXML Corruptions in Germany, Croatia, Norway
- OOXML Dirty Tricks Miscellanea: Norway, Misdirection, GPL Exclusion as Standard
- Microsoft’s OOXML Corruptions Have Ruined Standard Norway
- OOXML in Norway, Denmark, and Poland… Looking More Closely at the Stories (Updated)
- OOXML Protests Scheduled in Norway, Microsoft’s Reputation Claimed Tarnished
- Norway’s Protest Against Microsoft Abuse Goes More Public (Updated)
More from Norway last week:
Microsoft has given its cloud-computing-based Live@edu and its Office Web Apps to a Norwegian “learning management” software company called It’s Learning Inc., whose U.S. headquarters is run by a group of Boston-area technology executives.
They are trying to impose the old Live@Edu scam, which is “free-of-charge” lock-in plus spying that Moglen recently spoke about. Who would accept such conditions? Here is the press release.
“It is never private when it is proprietary, so this is another case of misuse of terminology, intended to confuse and to market based on misinformation.”In last week's high profile meeting, Steve Ballmer made it clearer that they want to own and control people’s data too (also published in the Economic Times). Capgemini is helping Microsoft [1, 2] and so does their longtime booster Alexander Wolfe, who published promotional pieces in two places [1, 2] (Microsoft MVP Jason Hiner did something similar last week).
The spin to watch out for is named “private cloud” from Microsoft. It is never private when it is proprietary, so this is another case of misuse of terminology, intended to confuse and to market based on misinformation. Microsoft has the US army working with them [1, 2] and whether it’s something to be proud of or not depends on one’s idea of war (the secret services also get access to Microsoft-accumulated data). Surely enough, Microsoft’s competition against rivals can sometimes be described as militant. █
“Where are we on this Jihad?”
