__/ [ Scott W ] on Monday 05 June 2006 10:54 \__
> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>
>> Microsoft Plays Politics
>>
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>> | Members of Congress and their staff members took about 23,000 trips
>> | worth $48.9 million paid for by private interests between January 1,
>> | 2000, through June 30, 2005... "Always on these trips, the question is,
>> | who else is along for the ride? A lobbyist for Microsoft? Executives
>> | from the company?... Travel almost always is a means for contact," he
>> | said.
>> `----
>>
>> http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20060605/tc_pcworld/125963
>
> "Many of the disclosure forms for Microsoft-funded trips that the Medill
> News Service examined for the period between 2000 and 2005 included
> vague descriptions of activities such as "campus visit" or "fact finding.""
>
>
> are these the new words for "taking bribes"?
>
>
> i always suspected the US government was corrupt
I probably shouldn't have raised this subject as "News", but only hours
ago did this hit mainstream media, with actual proof. Knowing the way it
usually works, not many people will yell out. Especially Windows users, to
whom such practices are "no big deal"...
I sometimes think of Microsoft as some kind of an American 'flagship', at
least as perceived by the American Governments. Many other companies such
as Dell and Cisco are no exception. They portray these as realisations of
the American dream. These companies feed the American economy and they
revel in an environment that shelters their subtle illicit actions.
It's no surprise that the EC/EU has recently put Vista under the
magnifying glass and, even in Asia, things have gone very flaky (Linux
compatibility a must, Korea rejects Microsoft's appeal to antitrust
lawsuit and so forth). The rest of America (yes, it's a continent, not a
nation) has long ago decided to move to OSS and Linux (Cuba, Brazil and
Colombia are good examples). The ground is shaking at a global, political
level while IT is sometimes verging and transcends the legal and ethical
borders.
Best wishes,
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz
http://Schestowitz.com | Open Prospects ¦ PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
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