p2pnet - rss feed: Norway to drop Microsoft?
p2pnet.net News:- Every Norwegian citizen will have his or her own home page – and on government servers.
And Norwegian Minister of Modernisation, Morten Andreas Meyer has also promised Norway will abandon proprietary software and, “transfer to open source,” says vnunet.com.
"Meyer made references to " the spreadsheet almost everyone uses" and commented that this would be the last time he made a presentation using the software.
"The Norwegian Competition Authority is reportedly considering investigating Microsoft after a recent deal with schools left other competitors’ software blocked," says the story, adding:
"The announcement will be seen as a serious blow to the credibility of Microsoft’s initiative to sell e-government software."
Britain continues to explore using open source instead of software made by Bill and the Boyz, saying it could save millions of badly needed pounds
Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net
See:-
vnunet.com - Norway goes open source, June 28, 2005
continues to explore - OS or MS in UK schools?, p2pnet, May 9, 2005
July 1st, 2005 at 1:21 am
Whoever purchases future Microsoft products will face incompatibilty disasters. Secretly, Microsoft has been applying for several patents which they will use to protect their new lockdown proprietary software. Google Microsoft patents and see for yourself.
Do you really think Longhorn will seamlessly allow you to run software from competitors. Or how about the software you paid good money for and already own.
Good thing Microsoft lost the FAT filesystem patent. This could have been a major headache for Linux and other operating systems.
They did, however, cripple Windows XP/2000 from formatting FAT filesystem hard drives larger than 32GB. But you’ll have no problem formatting these hard drives with Windows 98 or ME, or you can simply use the Microsoft proprietary NTFS filesystem if you don’t care about compatibility.
It’s very understandable why people are fed up and looking at alternatives. We want faster more reliable products, not more proprietary software.
July 1st, 2005 at 1:51 am
Bill and the boyz can forget me.
Many other countries are coming to this same decision. That the overpriced and bloated system of windoze isn’t worth it. While this may present a problem in the short term for compatibility issues, with country after country seeing that the cost of proprietary software and thinking of changing their entire countries OS’s to something else means that Microsucks will in the end either have to give up some of their prized protectionism or lose business as a result. While one or two countries lost to the market may not be a major blow, more will follow as time goes on and money becomes an important issue. A side result of these decisions would be that a second method of use could become an industry standard. Such would open the door to the incompatibility issues. While Bill and the boyz will sure fight such change, I for one have already given up on windoze as a result of such. (As I have mentioned before.) One of the nice things about Linux is that there is a spell checker built into the web browser. Something that windoze software believes you ought to pay for.
As I accustom myself to a new OS (to me) I am getting more and more comfortable with it as the days go by. I would not go back to windoze without a choice. It is also nice that I don’t have to double click something to open it. A single click works; imagine that!
July 1st, 2005 at 4:50 pm
The United States of America has already been destroyed. Yes, it still looks viable, but so do the leaves on a tree that has just been cut down. What destroyed The United States of America is greed. It was not only the greed of the cartels, but also the greed of the people. The people decided that the few dollars that they kept in their pockets is worth the price of having their jobs shipped overseas to slave labor.
The multinational cartels realized that they could increase their profits by cutting out the rightful wages of employees and pay about 1/10th of labor costs by using slaves. The cartels in turn bribed the President and Congress to pass NAFTA, GATT, CAFTA, and othe such “free trade” agreements that mostly work for those who are in the cartels. This has devastated the manufacturing industry and converted us into a “service” (we are now servants) economy.
The cartels have drained the peoples’ wealth (with the peoples’ cooperation) until the people live paycheck to paycheck. People who work so hard to make ends meet now have cut out many uneeded items. Since this means less incomes for the cartels, they have lobbied (bribed) for new laws giving them unprecidented protection. The cartels now spy on people here in order to find whatever little inducements they can use to cause people to continue to spend money they do not have.
Since geed, comfort, and mass brainwashing continue to hold many American citizens in the grip of the cartels, the cartels still have it very easy. However, the citizens of many other nations have not been brainwashed as of yet. These people along with the few unbrainwashed Americans do not wish to be treated as mindless consumers. They try before buying. If the quality is not good, or if they cannot afford the price, they do not pay.
This is one of the reasons why they use peer to peer networking. This is also the reason why they have decided to use a peer designed operating system. These peer designed operating systems are designed by users for users and to meet the needs of the customer. They were not designed to solely encourage more consumption. The
tricks that the multinational cartels have used to force more consumption are now backfiring on them.
The cartels have been using propagand to assert that they are looking out for all the artists, technicians and other employees trying to feed their families. The hypocrisy of this propaganda should be very clear. While they claim one thing, they are actually doing another. Why is it that they claim to look out for their employees when they fired their employees and replaced them with slave labor from third world countries? Why is it that people who produce computer goods cannot afford to buy them themselves?
This is one reason why different countries are migrating to Linux. They see a good product at a great price - free. If Microsoft, SCO, IBM and other big computer companies market their operating systems at a price people were willing to pay, then Linus Torvalds may have never been inspired to write Linux. He did it because he wanted an affordable Unix-like operating system for his computer at home. Apparently, other hackers wanted the same thing. Microsoft’s biggest enemy was then created.
As more people contributed their skills, Linux has moved from an awkward, geeky operating system into one that is better than what is produced by the cartels. The various Linux distributions has been designed by many different coders and users to meet the needs of users, not to force them to spend more and more money at every small turn. It is the greed of the software cartel and the desparation of users that is causing Linux to evolve.
When the cartels continue to design products that cause purchasers to spend even more money purchasers become fed up and begin looking for (or better yet designing alternatives). This is now what is happening in the entertainment industry. Every time a customer watches a movie, he or she is usually indundated with advertisements hyping even more movies. Most movies are over-hyped and under-entertaining. People are tired of paying hight ticket prices for low quality movies. Many either wait until the movie comes out on DVD or they use the competition such as p2p. People who are fed up are switching to the competition, and it is destroying sales and cartel controlled exports. Entertainment is one of the few things the U.S.A. still exports.
Every year, the U.S. exports less and less. This is because the cartels have either shipped production overseas so that they do not have to pay Americans an honest wage or because many overseas are not willing or able to purchase their over-priced crap. The cartels have tried using propaganda to get people to continue to buy their crap, but that has failed. Now, they are trying to use force. Whether the force come in the form of police knocking on peoples’ doors, in form of a court order, or in technological restrictions, it is being used. This force is alienating more and more people into not buying. The casualty in all of this force being used is freedom.
The U.S.A. has died quite a few years ago. It is now a group of police states that should be known as the Police States of America (P.S.A.). In the P.S.A. most of the governments no longer respect private property rights. If people do not transfer their wealth to the companies by persuasion, then they will be forced to do so via taxation, emninent domain, regulation, and outright violence. In the P.S.A. the government has trampled over the peoples rights with wholesale immunity from the government. They have killed the wealth production in the P.S.A. and they are now simply draining the value out of the country.
The only way for this to change is for the people in the P.S.A. to stand up and revolt, whether peacefully or otherwise. This is unlikely since the cartels and government are able to detect when the people are close to reaching the boiling point. They back off a bit to let the people cool down and then continue their assult. The American people continue to allow this assult to continue. America will either end up under Chinese rule, or as such a police state that it will be indestinguishable from such a system. Unless the Messiah comes soon, I see little hope for the future of America.
July 2nd, 2005 at 11:54 pm
Wicked Rant. A nice bit of hyperbole, but some fantasitc points made. If you toned this down a bit (Police states of America?) then you’d really get through to people.