Comment on Asa Dotzler's blog some might find interesting

[Bill Kempf]

At least, I did. First, Asa's blog entry (Asa is one of Mozilla
Firefox's lead devs, if you didn't know) is interesting in and of
itself. He's recommending folks stop using Google and switch to Bing,
over political/philosophical differences about privacy. I'm not 100%
convinced about this assertion. I'm fairly certain that Microsoft
would cooperate with investigators just as quickly as Google would,
and provided the right checks/balances are in place (mostly meaning
there's a search warrant), I personally think that's the correct thing
to do. That said, I do agree that Google's building a scary database
of personal information on pretty much everyone, and that's something
to be concerned with. Combine that with what Schmidt said, and,
well...

Anyway, on to the comment. A comment is posted by someone who's
anonymous at 4:55. He/she claims to have worked for Microsoft in "the
early years" and goes through a detailed "history". While not all of
it is probably accurate, and most of it is seen from a single
political point of view, I find it fascinating. Especially when
contrasted with the political view point that's too often espoused by
Microsoft detractors, who we have to deal with way too often. I found
it very interesting, and would love to hear what other's think...
especially about the accuracy of some of the historical claims and
even about the opinions of some of the politics.

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2009/12/if_you_have_nothing.html

--
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
- Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Bugs are features.

[Peter O'Hanlon]

It's interesting that Google is now seen to be the big bad corporate. Ah, how people do love to knock a success story, but in this case they do seem to be displaying the same arrogance that others have attributed to MS (I've got an axe to grind here as I've long been a supporter of MS and its products, so I suppose people will think I'm biased).

--
Peter O'Hanlon

[Mike Brown]

I didn't realize it was as bad as the comment made it out to be...but I did know the Antitrust case was just a bunch of political posturing. For Microsoft getting in trouble for "Pressuring" OEMs to ship Windows by discounting it for OEMs who shipped Windows exclusively sounds like pure BS to me. I do recall something about the government approaching OS vendors to place a backdoor into their Operating Systems.

 

I also remember a recent allegation by US West (a telco provider) that the NSA approached them to install what essentially amounts to packet sniffers on their connection to the Internet Backbone. The charge went that because they refused to comply, they were blacklisted from federal contracts. The implications were that all the other major Telcos had complied with the request.

 

I never bought into the whole "Microsoft is evil" BS. All the big guys had a bad rep at one time (IBM, Oracle) success makes you a big target. Of course with Netscape, Novell, and Oracle heading up the attack against Microsoft it just seemed like a lot of sour grapes to me (Can't beat them in the free market, get the legal system behind you). The charge was ludicrous to begin with there was no monopoly from any of Microsoft's offerings. There were multiple OS choices, multiple office suites, anything Microsoft made there was competition to it. Microsoft's success was gained the hard way, just like Google's current success.

 

WRT the whole "If you're not doing anything wrong, you don't need privacy." argument, that doesn't hold water. I personally don't want my communications subject to some random witch hunt that the next McCarthy decides to embark on. But to be honest, I doubt there is such a thing as privacy anymore. Between credit cards, cell phones, mortgages, utilities, education, banks, atms, grocery stores, and traffic tickets my personal information is dispersed to the 4 corners of the earth. Hell I can't rent an apartment without getting "Welcome to the neighborhood" junkmail personally addressed to me (not just Current resident). I still get discount cards from Kay jewelers for a 100 dollar motherhood pendant I bought for my wife when we were expecting our first (who just celebrated her seventh birthday...and that has followed us through 5 relocations). It's nice to know someone is sticking their neck out for us (Thanks MSFT and US West), and it's nicer to know who the clowns are that would sell my soul to the highest bidder if they could.

[Bill Kempf]

Yeah, the back door stuff was most definitely real. Same with the
stuff about encryption.

No, I never bought into the stuff about Microsoft being evil, either.
You can't really call any organization evil, IMHO. That's something
reserved for individuals, not groups. I do think Microsoft did some
things they shouldn't have, but the majority of the things the
government went at them over were pure BS.

As for privacy... I have a bit of a unique look on that. I worked for
one of the biggest credit card processors in the world, and I know
first hand that pretty much your entire life lives in digital form
ready for exposure. However, I also know that that information is
fairly well isolated and protected. It's a house of cards, but so long
as that remains true, there's not that much to be concerned about. So,
the police or other governmental agency obtaining the info is scary
only if they are given powers that remove the normal checks and
balances.