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Why You Must Dump Microsoft NOW

Posted by XenokRoy 9 years, 8 months ago to Government
64 comments | Share | Flag

While this article has a great deal of truth within it (Microsoft is a big government spy) what it fails to mention is that so is Google, Yahoo and now with Steve Jobs gone I would bet apple.

Purely an observation on my part. The government (a few years back) filed a series of security warnings on many tech companies. When a tech company (facebook was first) changed privacy policies so that they could collect and share with the NSA the inquisitions against that company went away.

The only CEO to let the hearing about their security to actually happen before congress was Steve Jobs. He proved that peoples names and personal informaiton that could be used for billing was secure. When apple did get hacked they go pictures but could not get the credit card numbers, SSNs and other person info.

The point is after jobs died apple then adjusted their privacy notices as well.

While much of this article (extremely bias) is true there is no tech company I am aware of that has any significant user base that is not open to share its data with the NSA based on privacy agreements.

Does anyone know of one?


All Comments

  • Posted by 9 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Ya, that is more in Dagorhir than SCA. SCA is more about the political system and the fighting,

    Dagorihir is about the acting/character and the fighting. A small minority really take the in role seriously and do not fit in well in the real world. Ultimately they were why I quit.

    A "kingdom" decided to take on a Scottish element to it, including kilts and well some of the Scottish battle habits. Which include turning your back to your enemy and pulling the kilt up. A few also took on the aspect of what they do not wear beneath the kilt from the scotts that should have been forgotten.

    Getting flashed before or sometimes during every fight was just more than I cared for, and something I did not care to talk to them about so I decided it was time to quit. We had been thinking about doing so anyway.
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  • Posted by $ jlc 9 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Ewwww! Fortunately, I have not often come across that sort of reinactor. As a matter of fact, most of them seem to work in computer-related fields.

    Jan
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  • Posted by 9 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Yes, but Dagorhir was also very smelly so no real change. For me it was about having some fun, for some its like they would like to live back then all the time, and they take a bath about as often as people did back then, so smelly is rather kind.
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  • Posted by $ Thoritsu 9 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    How, about an intermediate transaction? We buy from the site, and the site takes care of the bill on the other side?
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  • Posted by $ jlc 9 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    That is a pretty good description of it. But "smelly"...did you forget "smelly"?

    Jan
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  • Posted by 9 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Jan,

    The interview with this guy was really interesting. It was a podcast from Glenn Becks program I listened too and I looked a bit but I can never find them again if I do not save them.

    I have since thought that the perhaps some of the same (context of what the movie makes good or bad) can likely be applied to movies as well.
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  • Posted by 9 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    You are not kidding. I sold my plate mail that I had made but still have my Chain mail shirt.

    SCA was fun but a bit more political than I wanted, so I wussed out to Dagorhir as the politics were less and I could just go fight. Although that only lasted for about 10 years and then I quit it as well.

    I would be giant ball of sweat if just put on my 35 pound chainmail shirt and jogged for 10 minutes. :)
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  • Posted by $ WilliamShipley 9 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    SCA. Don't really participate much any more but go to fighting practice about every other week. Fighting in armor is a full body workout!
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  • Posted by 9 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    That is a great idea, it would require some really creative coding to somehow send a purchase request to a site, without sending that site the financial information to make the purchase.

    I think sites would have to add support for such functionality as well as the company that designed the software to do it on the consumer device.
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  • Posted by 9 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Great story, loved it. Thanks for sharing.

    Also what medieval recreation group? SCA, Dagorhir or something else? I only ask because I use to do both of those at different times in my past.
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  • Posted by $ sjatkins 9 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I receive no targeted ads on my Mac or Linux boxes. I do get them in some online apps but not many there. And I have a rather large online presence. Of course I don't do Windows. But when I do I use Windows 7 and I saw no ads popping up there either.
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  • Posted by $ Thoritsu 9 years, 8 months ago
    Some kind of personal firewall would be a lovely service for someone to provide. Allowing private browsing and purchasing behind a set of web-pseudonyms/privacy would be a nice service.
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 9 years, 8 months ago
    Depends on how much money they are offered or how much they are threatened with such useful tools as the no proof needed suspeicion of terrorist provisions.

    as for Stocks. Those were gone in 2006 roughly. Along with Starbucks. Two years before the US Went bankrupt. Where? Ha ha surely you jest?

    As for the product itself. Preaching to the choir. We started saying that openly in the early nineties.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 9 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Resistance is futile unless you use some brilliantly unorthodox strategy like a former first officer named Riker.
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  • Posted by LibertyBelle 9 years, 8 months ago
    Well, that's interesting, but I don't see that I can do
    much about it. I do not have an Internet computer
    of my own, so I use the ones at the public library.
    (I also am allow to use the ones at Goodwill and at
    the Workforce Innovation Center down at the So-
    cial Services Building, but when I need help to
    send something over the machine, I can get it
    more easily at the library). So I have to use
    whatever program the machine at the place is
    using. I don't have a credit card and have no in-
    tention of ever getting one; I don't like them. I
    have a lot of annoyance, in looking for jobs, with
    having to read the Terms of Service of different
    sites (I hate contracts to be longer than the En-
    cyclopaedia Britannica), especially as they claim
    the right to change them without notice; still, I
    have found most of the ones I have seen to say
    about the same thing. I do not put my Social
    Security number over the Internet. Mostly, em-
    ployers have not required this (on the Internet, I
    mean), but a couple have, and in those cases I
    have simply refused to go any further with the
    application. (I would have had no objection to
    writing it down for them on a piece of paper, our
    giving it to them verbally over the phone). But
    that is how things are in present circumstances.
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  • Posted by Technocracy 9 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    William's point was that in this venue the $ sign is a positive symbol, not a negative one. Using it in place of the s in Microsoft could be interpreted as an insult to the community rather than Microsoft.
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  • Posted by $ WilliamShipley 9 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    So, in the medieval recreation group that Jan and I participate in, I'm a Knight, and have been for over twenty years.

    About twenty years ago, my then young son introduced me to the game Doom, where you run around a dungeon and shoot Nazis. I took my turn and when the door opened there was one of the Nazis facing the other way. I shot him.

    My son said, "You can't do that, Dad. You are a Knight".

    I agreed and from then on waited for the Nazis to turn around.
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  • Posted by 9 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Agreed but there are some things that are universal evil. Sneaking up behind someone that is a civilian in a game with no threat to you and slicing there neck cannot be good in any culture or viewpoint unless that culture is flawed and cannot exist for long, without causing conflict, in reality.

    If you have a game that has you stealing cars, raping women and then getting rewarded for doing so with a big old bonus for shooting a cop in the face, what context is that game teaching to be acceptable?

    If a muslim nut wanted to really condition the terrorists they would make games where you go out kill the jews and americans, strap on bombs and get points for the civilians you killed. Get enough points before you die and you end up in a room full of beautiful virgins. Get less points end up in a room of not so beautiful virgins and if you really screw up. You score poor you get this guys afterlife. :)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMpvv...
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  • Posted by 9 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I can see your point, but the constitution still does not protect your property from the government, it only requires them to compensate you. So if attempting to stretch protection of property to data, then they can get it, they just have to compensate you for it or have a warrant for it.

    They have back doored around the property protection, which is not privacy protection, by having deals with companies to get information.

    If you had privacy protection it would be illegal for any entity to sell your information or provide it without your consent. that would be a form of privacy protection. EMEA has laws like this now, we have never done so.

    That is the point.
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  • Posted by coaldigger 9 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I have no doubt that one's mind can be conditioned to accept certain practices as either good or evil. Islamic terrorists are conditioned to see all non-believers as evil and that they will be rewarded in heaven if they kill them. When they strap a bomb to their underwear and get on an airplane with non-Muslim women and children they are serene and proud.
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  • Posted by woodlema 9 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    This topic was not about surveillance in the form you mentioned. This was in regards Microsoft, and your DATA.

    Your DATA is your property. If you use Microsoft 360, Google Drive, Dropbox, or accept Microsoft's EULA that says you GIVE permission then your personal privacy, i.e. your data, what you do in your home, now becomes the right of the government to intrude on.

    THAT is the point.
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  • Posted by 9 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Protection of property is not protection of privacy.

    Protection of privacy would for example keep someone from using a telescopic lens from taking a picture through your window from the road.

    Once again Due process states that they cannot come to your home and seize your property without warrant, but that does not say they cannot sit at the edge of your property and listen for what you might say and then use that against you in some way.

    The technology did not exist for privacy concerns to be part of the constitution. About the only thing that could have been added as a protection from someone else (including government) taking a look at your snail mail.

    I can see where you are attempting to create a parallel and some judges would support it, but there is no privacy clause in the constitution. Nothing calls out a right to privacy.

    What would such a provision be needed for in the late 1700s? You could I guess ease drop on a conversation or high a spy to work for someone and report back what you heard.

    The closest thing to it would have been a provision that expressly forbade the interception and reading of mail delivered by Currier. That would have been a right to privacy clause for the time period, but it does not exist.

    We do have right to due process, and right to being compensated should they decide to take our property "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." from the 4th amendment. That clause it what the supreme court used as justification for imminent domain being constitutional. So we really are not even guaranteed that our property cannot be seized only that they have to compensate us for it.

    It does not in any way limit government or others from taking pictures or making recordings from the road sides. If it can be seen from the road its fare game. I would not call those limitations nearly enough to protection of privacy, but rather protection from search and seizure. It does nothing to protect mail from inspection by authorities, which today would be the email and other such communication.

    An oversight in my opinion but one that is still present and will be forever, unless we make an amendment to cover privacy.
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