US Department of Transportation Slams Vista, IE7, Office 2007

According to InformationWeek, the US DoT has banned Microsoft's recent upgrades to Office, Windows and Internet Explorer.

In an internal memo dated January 19th, Daniel Mintz inserts that "there is no compelling technical or business case for upgrading to these new Microsoft software products. Furthermore, there appears (sic) to be specific reasons not to upgrade." As such, he has imposed an "indefinite moratorium" on upgrades from Office 2003 and Windows XP for its 15,000 desktop users.

In an interview on March 2nd, DoT CTO Tim Schmidt reconfirmed the ban, and explained that they were testing alternate platforms as possible replacements or compliments to a Windows offering. Included in those platforms are SuSe Linux and Apple's OS X.

While they have not entirely ruled out upgrades to Vista in the future, they are proceeding cautiously in order to avoid possible compatibility and stability issues that go along with such a significant upgrade.

The DoT is not the only Federal organization to impose such a ban. The Federal Aviation Administration, with nearly 45,000 desktops, has initiated a similar ban on upgrades for Microsoft products.

(via InformationWeek)

Microsoft's Drug Dealer Model

It seems as though Sergio Amadeu was pretty on point, at least according to some in the Indian IT community. With immense anti-piracy pressure coming down on the Indian equivalent of Silicon Valley (called the IT channel community of Amritsar and Jalandhar) , many are attempting to push the Indian computer market away from MSoft and towards a Linux-based system. The article specifically addresses a perceived double-standard within the community, and its severe backlash against Microsoft:

"Microsoft initially encouraged piracy to make its operating system popular [...] A united channel front would threaten Microsoft's hold and might lead resellers in India to push Linux"

Linux Creator Echoes Schneier

Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, recently went on record calling DRM "hot air", claiming it "actually makes it harder for people to do what they want to do" with their computers and in the long run, is incredibly unsuccessful. Torvalds went on to argue what is essentially Bruce Schneier's point in The Futility of Digital Copy Prevention, that although DRM exists to halt consumers and computer-aficionados alike from doing waht they please with their purchased bits and bytes, breaking DRM is and always will be a surmountable obstacle. In this light, Torvalds claim that DRM doesn't "really matter that much" seems appropriate - although perhaps mildly dangerous in terms of rhetoric. (via slashdot)