Its kind of funny to me that by pushing data harvesting of OS’s and office data then selling it to 3rd parties Microsoft has probably become the biggest security threat to the US government, maybe ever. And its all because the US refuses to pass basic consumer privacy protections.
Microsoft knows the government needs something, and is insistent on squeezing as many of your tax dollars from them as possible, or leaving us all vulnerable.
Capitalism is terrorism.
Literally the plot of the new fallout show
oh do I need to watch that?
I would recommend.
Once the government switched to Linux en-masse, Microsoft will have no leverage whatsoever, no solution they can possibly propose will beat free software.
LibreOffice is totally adequate for most government jobs.
It’s not like there’s no precedent, Germany’s government already switched to Linux
The only possible way to generate money is through the use of online document editing services, but Google Docs pretty much cornered the market here.
I just want to clarify that a german state switched. Not Germany.
And, IIRC, it’s just a trial to see if it will work.
Edit: I should have read the article linked in a comment above…
“As spotted by The Document Foundation, the government has apparently finished its pilot run of LibreOffice and is now announcing plans to expand to more open source offerings.”
“In 2021, the state government announced plans to move 25,000 computers to LibreOffice by 2026. At the time, Schleswig-Holstein said it had already been testing LibreOffice for two years.”
So, it seems the trial may be over and they are migrating for good.
Even if libre office didn’t offer those features, I’d be willing to bet the gov could donate 1/100 what they pay Microsoft in a year to have them implemented.
seriously. or just say “America’s gift to the world” and wave their dicks around over in house programmers adding it.
Just for the record : Schleswig-Holstein is only one of Germany’s 16 states. Let’s hope the rest of Germany will follow.
Unfortunately, LibreOffice is still garbage. Microsoft it miles ahead in its apps compared to the Linux equivalent. There isn’t even a good OneNote alternative on Linux.
What is specifically broken or missing from LibreOffice?
As for OneNote alternatives, this one does a pretty good job: https://xournalpp.github.io/
Nah, Office 97 was the last decent one, Office 2003 is trash due to app menus all messed up. LibreOffice is modelled after Office 97.
Well y’all decided that finding and keeping zero-day exploits were more important than contacting the companies to fix them because you looked at both approaches and decided that intelligence gathering scale > cyber security robustness.
I cannot disclose any details but this article vastly undersells the risk and how exposed the US is. It is definitely goes well beyond government exposure.
The US at least has some degree of control over Microsoft. How much worse is that the EU is still not developing an own OS/distro?
- SUSE is an in germany founded company (now in Luxembourg)
- https://www.sovereigntechfund.de/
- Not having a government directly develop a “blessed OS” is probably for the better
I am not talking about a OS for the general public, but specifically for the administration.
And this will work much better with a unified attempt. If the EU would be taking OpenSuse for this, this would basically be the end of OpenSuses independence… I’d like it to be GNU/Linux based though.
Whoever uses Microsoft products should be aware from the start that security is a low priority for them. If you can accept the risk, fine. If you can’t, think about the consequences.
I feel like they are so close to an epiphany……
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I’d focus on enforcing standards and interoperability first, in a serious an highly punitive fashion for offenders.
If you can read/write your spreadsheet using any spreadsheet tool or OS you’re half-way there and will’ve severely hampered the old embrace-extend-extinguish (it’s still a thing).
Time for a change!
Let me explain…the same people that brought you windows 3, 95, 98, 2000, nt, XP, etc now want to obtain everything you type via an AI tool they created.
They would know all your health history, everything you scan, your photos relating to family and work secrets, etc. for the corporate, they would know who from LinkedIn will get the job and who will be fired. They will know about layoffs and about business secrets and success. Etc.
It’s pretty simple. Rather than just a keylogger, Microsoft wants you to use a smart keylogger that they control. How is that not the dumbest thing to ever use at work? It’s gotta be the biggest IT security failure ever.
Duh!
No homo
