MICROSOFT'S connections with the US government continue to be tightened. According to The Seattle Times, Obama's CIO Vivek Kundra may have just met Steve Ballmer, who also visits the White House on occasions [1, 2].
After his San Francisco tour, Kundra is coming to Seattle for a day Thursday beginning with breakfast at Microsoft with Chief Executive Steve Ballmer and other local executives.
Microsoft will show Kundra advanced research projects before he speaks at the University of Washington in the afternoon. He'll also meet with executives at Amazon.com before making an appearance at the Washington Technology Industry Association's awards dinner.
The director of the Office of Device Evaluation, one of the highest-ranking positions at the Food and Drug Administration, is leaving this month to join the Washington office of Microsoft Corp., according to an email she sent Monday morning.
Donna-Bea Tillman, who has been with the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health since 1994, said in the email that she will become part of the software giant's health solutions group as the director of regulations and policy. The FDA and Microsoft confirmed the move.
You probably wouldn’t put Microsoft on the list of companies in the market to hire former FDA officials, but the software giant snagged a top medical-device regulator today.
Donna-Bea Tillman, head of the office of device approvals, says her jump to Microsoft isn’t as unusual as it may seem. She told colleagues in a memo she has long had “a love for all things computer.”
Donna Bea-Tillman will leave her post at Food and Drug Administration to join the Washington, D.C. lobbying office of Microsoft Corp., according to the Wall Street Journal
Donna Bea-Tillman, the director of the Food and Drug Administration's office of device evaluation, will apparently resign her post to join the lobbying office of software giant Microsoft Corp., according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
[...]
Tillman told her colleagues in the email that she took the position with Microsoft because of the potential for health information technology to, "reduce the skyrocketing cost of health care," according to a copy of the email obtained by the paper
Mission Viejo Microsoft Store takes title sponsorship for hospital luncheon
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The Microsoft Store at The Shops at Mission Viejo is slated to be the title sponsor of Mission Hospital’s 14th Annual Valiant Women Luncheon on Friday, March 12, at the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel.
“It's not about embrace but about exploiting rivals' platforms to help Microsoft, which has almost no market share in phones.”On a related note, Microsoft is trying to control (with patents) bar codes and it's advertising this through Linux/Android phones [1, 2]. Just like Hyper-V drivers for Linux, it's self serving. It's also the same with Microsoft applications for iPhone -- ones that merely have users connect to Microsoft services. It's not about embrace but about exploiting rivals' platforms to help Microsoft, which has almost no market share in phones. The reporters totally missed that or chose to ignore it. Mary Jo Foley looks at this news and wonders if Microsoft will use this strategy to also advance Silver Lie, much like Microsoft uses the *Spark programmes to achieve this (with free advertising from IDG).
Last but not least, Microsoft wants to manage people's national identities [1, 2]. In India, Microsoft had NASSCOM facilitate this but in Germany too Microsoft apparently found some guinea pigs.
Microsoft released its new identity management software at the RSA conference on Tuesday and is working on a prototype national ID card system in Germany that is designed to give consumers control over the amount of personal data they share with specific organizations.
Comments
your_friend
2010-03-08 21:03:28
In reality, nothing could be worse for medicine than more Microsoft involvement. Microsoft's desktop is a giant security and privacy risk and their server efforts are even worse. Device makers who use Microsoft tools do themselves and their customers a great disservice.
Highly regulated markets are Microsoft's last hope for survival. The company realizes that the only way to make people chose Microsoft is to "just make it happen" from "the top down". FDA, DHS and other US federal agencies are juicy targets. Thank you for documenting this ongoing corruption.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2010-03-08 21:37:07
Cost of life is difficult to measure but downtime is never an option.