Green (Living) Review: Microsoft

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The Russian daily Vedomosti and the British press agency Bloomberg announced the possible cooperation of the now Microsoft-owned business, Skype, with the Russian secret service, the FSB.

It is the aim, apparently, to hand over to the FSB part of the source-code for the application and by doing so they would hand the successor to the KGB a very powerful tool to intercept Skype communications.

Microsoft is, however, denying that this would be the case. They would, wouldn't they.

So far the Voice-Over-IP-service Skype is being considered as extremely secure. It is impossible for outsiders, due to complicated algorithms, to log themselves into chats or telephone conversation and thus monitor communications.

Even governments and their agencies, including secret services, do not have, according to official sources, the possibility to decode the data that is being sent via Skype, whichever form this data may be having. Skype has, so far, got the reputation that its encryption is of the highest military grade making it impossible to wiretap the conversations.

But, if the report by the news agency Bloomberg is anything to go by then this could change soon.

Ever since the acquisition of the Skype service by Microsoft the directors of company in Redmond have become very happy to cooperate with law enforcement agencies and intelligence services. That is why Skype is intending, so Bloomberg, to hand over pats of the source-code to the FSB.

It was rather obvious that, as soon as MS was getting their mitts on Skype they were going to screw up the privacy that Skype used to provide. MS, like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, do not know what privacy means. Or would MS otherwise deem it to be right to snoop on your and my PC when we connect to their sites for updates and such?

Should this indeed happen as indicated by the Bloomberg report then the successor organization to the KGB might not directly be given the “master key” with which to be able to tap in to each and every Skype call or chat but with the source-code they could find back doors with which to do just that.

Redmond, however, claims that there is nothing true on the reports but they would deny such things, would they not. People would be leaving the Skype service in droves, I am sure, should that those shenanigans by Microsoft become reality and, obviously, they don't want to spook the horses as yet.

In a statement to the Blomberg agency Microsoft reiterated that there are no moves afoot to give away the source-code for Skype but, then again, no one was talking about giving the source-code away to all and sundries now.

According to the Russian daily Vedomosti has the FSB been developing good relations to and with many software giants and Skype would not be the first program which the agency would be given full access to.

Maybe this will have to also be seen in the light of some recent communications that came out of Russia where it stated that the Russian government was going to switch over to Open Source altogether including Linux and such operating systems. Is Microsoft oiling the wheels so it can keep in with the Russian government?

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Epsom, UK: Recently Microsoft's Office Division made public on YouTube a video in which they list one supposed disadvantage of OpenOffice.org after the other.

They claim that Oracle's free office product, OpenOffice.org, is incompatible, insecure and slow and that it would be no alternative for firms and other businesses to the Microsoft Office-Suite.

In this video Microsoft's Office Division claims the free office OpenOffice.org to be entirely incompatible, insecure and way too slow. For the professional use in businesses they claim that the free Open-Source solution is entirely useless, as, because of the lack of support and the unreliability high additional costs would arise.

In the three-minute long film selected representatives of a variety of companies are cited who, so it is claimed, after the installation of OpenOffice were forced, because of disappointment, to switch over to the to be paid for Microsoft Office software.

Mostly mention is made of so supposed additional costs which are supposedly caused by the implementation of Open Source software solutions.

“First we used Open Office, based upon Linux systems, in order to save money. We found soon, however, that the exorbitant costs and the extremely limited available support, left us worse off than before,” claims, for example, James Fleminf, of the American company “Speedy Hire”.

An estimated 25% extra time would be needed in order to install and maintain Open Office based systems, claimed David Sterling, IT manager of Central Scotland Police. Even a teacher is quoted as saying that pupils who handed in a document converted with OpenOffice.org for grading and who, as a result, and how could it be different, received worse grades. With use of Microsoft Word or Excel this could and would not have happened, they claim.

After the video had been put up on YouTube and the first critics had countered the claims made as not being objective enough it was removed from YouTube. In the meantime, however, Microsoft has put it back up, in, so I understand, the same way as it was before.

Having been using OpenOffice.org for years now I can but say that I find it easier to use than MS Word (and other MS Office products) and there is absolutely no compatibility issue. In fact all documents convert to OpenOffice.org without any problems whatsoever, whether MS Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. Just a shame that MS often does not allow for proper back-conversion.

It is also a shame that the likes of Avery and others still only make their templates available for MS Word and not OpenOffice.org though many Microsoft templates do, in fact, convert.

I must say that I have serious misgivings as to the reliability of the quotes in the video as, for instance, many local governments and police authorities on mainland Europe work in OpenOffice.org on Windows and on Linux-based Operating Systems.

The claim about security issues with OpenOffice.org and its files is absolutely laughable. Microsoft would do well to clean up in front of their own door before talking about other people's products.

Then again, those tactics and antics of the Redwood-based company do not surprise me at all. It is the same story when it comes to talking about Open-Source Operating Systems as when it comes to OpenOffice and, indeed, other Open-Source software.

Microsoft is running scared that it could be losing customers, especially in the still ongoing Great Recession.

While it is true that not all the keyboard shortcuts on OpenOffice are the same as on MS Word, for instance, it does not take much to get used to them and the interface is not much different to MS Office, even Office 2007.

Folks, don't allow yourselves to be scared off by the bullies out of Redwood. Rather give the a good run for their money while not wasting yours.

OpenOffice.org is compatible and secure and fast and I use it every day.