[Video] Microsoft's Attack on Education
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Microsoft and Education Cannot Mix
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TODAY we cover a topic/theme that I primarily address in the form of video because it is in some sense easier this way. There's a lot to be said about Microsoft's cult-like activities and overt entryism. It impacts us directly. They keep targeting us in IRC too, and sometimes they get arrested later.
The topic deals with education versus training (or indoctrination) and it's far from the first time we cover the issue. However, there are new examples of it.
There are various projects like OLPC which started as educational, got hijacked by Microsoft, then destroyed completely. There are many examples of the same, including Nokia in Finland. Many of today's examples deal with Finland, but the common denominator being education.
For instance, an associate tells us that "microsofters are not even donating actual resources, but merely using RPi [Raspberry Pi Foundation] to print money through software 'donations', see "In-kind support" [as we covered here last week when Raspberry Pi confirmed it would go public]."
The associate argues that: "1) Microsoft doesn't have to spend a cent on that, yet 2) it can deduct it multiple places financially, 3) all the while infecting the RPi ecosystem (E.E.E.)" (see the Halloween Documents in Geminispace).
The associate further notes that Microsoft resellers "don't have to be competent in anything other than making a sale for Redmond. Apropos sales and politics, microsofters get all butthurt when it is pointed out that there are moles inside RPF on the board (members and trustees) and, especially, on the staff. There are some really good people there but mixed in there are some turds."
Some years ago we showed how they censored critics of Microsoft's abusive behaviour, dismissing or blocking them under the flag/banner of "Microsoft bashing" (what a ridiculous concept).
Now consider what happens in universities, starting with an example from Finland, courtesy of Sami Tikkanen ("Sompi" in IRC).
He shared with us this video and said: "This is how the school login page looks now..."
It's all Microsoft. Take a look. Ridiculous.
"And randomly it looks like this," he said.
"They say that I have the "verification with text messages" switched on," he explained, "so it should not force me to install Microsoft Authenticator, but for some reason it still does that and I don't have a supported phone." (It's a Microsoft sign-in that makes ludicrous assumptions)
He said that "Finnish universities use Microsoft for everything nowadays [and] this has made my studying impossible [as] literally nothing works."
So it seems like the university is infiltrated by "microsofters"; if it's not run by Microsoft staff, then it's run by their enablers, i.e. people who work for Microsoft but receive salaries from taxpayers or students' tuition fees.
I told Sompi, "they are salaried by you, not by Redmond," to which he agreed. Where's the student consent in all this? They virtually force everyone to accept inexcusable terms from another continent.
Sompi added that "they say that criticizing their outsourcing choices is "politics" and should not be discussed."
An associate of ours commented by noting that: "Even the Parliament was taken down by those moles. The news distracts the public with the Vastaamo fall guy but he was only one of the many and there are also those who set up the Microsoft gimmicks into production on purpose, as well as the managers who arranged it."
Sompi told me that "the technical support team of the school is not even aware of the fact that reppu.savonia.fi redirects to microsoft sharepoint login [...] I don't understand how they can be so totally incompetent, it's almost like they have never even tested the system at all or just don't pay attention to even the most obvious details."
"They say that I'm the only one who has problems but I don't believe that," he added.
"I found that it was a standard like to accuse people of being the only ones encountering problems with the Microsoft products." our associate remarked on it. "There is a lot of word-bending too, to just carefully tread around who is saying what."
"Don't read anything into what they say. It's almost all lies when they can but I'm not sure how the Finnish culture survives being based on so many lies, it's not just around Microsoft products but about everything all day every day even on topics it's neither necessary nor convenient to lie about," he argues. "Microsoft did not attack Finland directly but hired Quislings to sell out Finland from the inside. These are not 'foreigners' who have broken the school system and rolled out bugdoors for the Russians but actual home grown "Kotiryssä" smiling slickly while hollowing out national preparedness. MSFT? Double-tap to be sure!"
"Microsoft really seems to have attacked the Finnish education system," Sompi said, "and it has attacked it hard. And it has won. Our tax money goes to Microsoft and the education system has became crap."
2 years ago Andy wrote a series about this [1, 2, 3, 4], having taught at a Finnish university for a number of years.
"I think Finland is targeted by those corporations," Sompi said, "because 1) Finland is the homeland of many competing free software technologies like IRC, Linux, SSH and many others and 2) those corporations are mostly from USA and Finland is in the center of hybrid warfare because of its geopolitical situation. That's why Finland gets more of that crap than other countries."
My own thoughts are in the video at the top. â–ˆ