Microsoft and the military?

["John Haggerty" <jhaggert@streetforce.com>]

Is it remotely possible that microsoft has the capabilities to actually carry 
out any type of military activity and or get power from the US military?

I bring this up due to a quote from slashdor.org which said

---------------------------------------------------------------



          Agreed (Score:1)
          by Chris Johnson (chrisj@airwindows.com) on Tuesday June 22, @08:37PM 
EDT (#370)
          (User Info) http://www.airwindows.com
          Absolutely. It was shocking to see that remark to the effect that 'bad 

advocacy killed OS/2': you'd think Slashdot would be better informed about the 
Microsoft antitrust case. 
          Anybody with a strong interest in seeing Microsoft continue to expand 
and destroy until there aren't any other choices at all, would of course be 
strongly in favor of blaming
          bad advocacy. It sounds sort of plausible, it allows a useful fiction 
that individual consumers control the industry and can make or break 
distribution channels merely by their
          whims, and it's a useful smokescreen to cover up the fact that a 
software trust has been putting the screws to everybody it can, for at least ten 

years. If you truly believe that
          bad advocacy killed OS/2, then it's a very easy step to conclude that 
the thing to do is practice only _good_ advocacy, and trust that niceness and 
reasonable dialogue will
          persuade manufacturers who are being presented with ultimatums of 
"enough with this Linux now that the trial's over, otherwise we will multiply 
your license fees by 10
          times and lower your worst competitor's by 10 percent just to break 
you". 
          If you really believe that good advocacy and civil polite discourse 
will persuade key distribution channels to permit the existence of Linux when 
faced with penalties of that
          scale, then please ask Tinkerbell to sprinkle some fairy dust on the 
linux kernel to make it faster, as you might as well believe in her too. 
          We'll be lucky if they don't have open-source-derived software 
declared an obscenity to be blocked from network transmission, if we seriously 
go around acting like good
          advocacy will be enough. We are at war. Of course Mindcraft lied. 
They're at war too- just on the other side. If they _did_ allow us to pay them 
to slant the other way, they'd
          never see work from MS or any commercial vendor again. They have to 
pick their side and stay with it, and they will- it's too late to stop now. 
          Foul language and brutal accusations of treachery are not 
_unwarranted_, they are just totally _unhelpful_. Often such outbursts aren't 
worth the temporary feelings of relief and
          self-righteousness they bring. Get used to the idea of not doing this: 

it's not because such attacks are _unfair_, no! The point is, this is too 
serious for mucking around like
          that! It's no joke. _Legislation_ is being railroaded through every 
which way to support the Microsoft trust in particular, and to render 
proprietary software free of any
          responsibility in general. If the government antitrust case doesn't 
end in radical adjustments, then what? I'll tell you what: cursing and reviling 
people is going to seem
          damned inadequate at that point. It won't help anymore, when your ISP 
goes under/is bought out/develops its IT committment to standardize fully on 
MS/IP or whatever
          might be waiting out there- it is not unthinkable that the world's 
communication infrastructure could end up collectively owned by various trusts 
with no tolerance anymore
          for anything but the technological mainstream. Linux will not be 
_outlawed_, necessarily- but you'll have to call up BBSes again, because the Net 

will be off limits- and
          reverse engineering the protocols will mean jail time, and getting 
caught communicating will prove guilt. There are situations where you would be 
_assigned_ a computer
          just in order to pay taxes and be a citizen- given enough economizing 
and reduction of cost and given continued emphasis on standardisation, the 
'citizen's PC' is not
          unthinkable. You'd better believe tampering with it would be against 
the law. 
          Welcome to '2004'. This screed has been in the true spirit of Orwell's 

'1984': a desperate attempt to paint things _so_ black that reality could not 
rival it. If you think it's
          incomprehensibly outrageous, consider this: if I'd made it less 
vitriolic, reality would have already outstripped it. We're living amid the 
first virtual war, and few people can
          comprehend it as yet: by the time the regular person finds that their 
existence is centrally monitored and entirely regulated through a private 
company in Redmond, by the
          time that company, having nothing left to conquer, moves in on 
government itself (who saw the report on the Microsoft 'game' in New York, of 
hunting terrorists? WHY are
          Microsofties _training_ as _cops_? All in good fun, never mind all 
that equipment...) then it will be too late for anything but _physical_ war. And 

that should not have to
          happen... 
          Me, I don't write to people like Mindcraft. I wouldn't know what to 
say to them. They don't know their danger. People don't understand the nature of 

power- the instant it
          regroups and begins building under a new guise, it's the fable of the 
Blind Men and the Elephant again- it's a treetrunk! it's a snake! it's a wall! 
          It is power. Raw power on a scale beyond all third-world countries and 

beginning to be beyond some of the big-leaguers. And because they're not 
training troops (and _why_
          were Microsoft managers 'hunting terrorists' with thousands of 
dollars' worth of technical support in New York City? Are they really satisfied 
with being a shoddy merchant
          anymore? WHY are they rehearsing such cop-games, what's putting it in 
their heads to recreate in such a manner?), people want to behave like they're 
the same entity that
          was running around in Bellevue, Washington, coding 'Typing Tutor'. 
          People who flip out at stuff like the Mindcraft reports are only 
reacting instinctively to something they don't properly understand- a quiet but 
pervasive shifting of power all
          over the world. Information is power. Control of information is 
serious power. It's rather childish to behave like old men sitting around in 
judge's robes and senators' suits are
          still the top of the totem pole, still the authority figure. They are 
not what they used to be- they don't move fast enough- sooner or later, they've 
got to go. 
          This doesn't have to be the future, but placing a trusting childlike 
faith in the power of the individual and the charm of civilized advocacy is not 
a helpful move. We're at war:
          maybe a new kind of war, but a war. We already know many of the terms- 

Microsoft, for one, has leaked some of their plans (such as the subversion of 
common standards,
          something which would have been noticed anyway). I'm only saying that 
it would be out of character for them to stop there, or to think small. 
          Anybody wishing to believe that Microsoft (or anyone in their singular 

position) shows respect for limits, or thinks small and humble, may go on doing 
so all they wish, but
          are implored to not weary wiser people with their inexplicable 
beliefs.
------------------------------------------------------------------



I think that mostly this is just over exaggeration but would like some idea from 

people who know things like this. Since there really isn't a NSA mailing list to 

subscribe to.




------------------------------------------------------------
Separate hype from hope on Wall Street. Visit  http://www.streetforce.com