Slashdot Mirror
Vietnam Courts Microsoft and Vice Versa
wbren writes "Bill Gates and Vietnam's Prime Minister Phan Van Khai have signed two 'memoranda of understanding' regarding Microsoft's presence in Vietnam, according to this AP story. They met Monday at Microsoft's Redmond headquarters for a closed door meeting and a tour of Microsoft's "home of the future". The agreement reached is expected to strengthen Vietnam's IT industry, as well as provide software training for 50,000 of the country's teachers. Khai's visit also triggered protests in Seattle, reminding everyone of Vietnam's human rights record."
Microsoft vice-president Lyndon Johnson was keen to point out that the first 21,000 people that MS have sent to Vietnam were not classified as salesmen, but are merely civilian "advisors".
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Weird, because previously the Vietnamese were known for their choice of light, modifiable systems that proved very effective against monolithic, bloated American engineering.
Now it'll be the other way around -- take that, Charlie!
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
As if the US hadn't already done enough terrible things to this country. ;-D
Joke aside, I don't really see the relevance of the story. MS has relationships with many governments, that the Vietnamese governemnt is now also among them doesn't strike me as exceptional.
Finally, I also don't understand what mentioning the human rights situation in Vietnam has to do with this article. Don't get me wrong, pointing this situation out is important, but why in this context?
MS and other big software houses do frequently deal with nations that have a very bad track record when it comes to human rights. (And in case you didn't notice, free software does too. Just think about China using Linux). So I again have to ask: What's the news?
I courted Mike Rosoft's sister Minnie for a while. She sure was pretty to look at but turned all shades of blue anytime I suggested trying something new.
Had to dump her in the end though because she was simply the most vain and jealous woman I'd ever met...always wanted to monopolize everything.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
http://www.hrw.org/doc/?t=usa
... that Charlie will surf, and with Internet Explorer?
...as well as provide software training for 50,000 of the country's teachers....
The US has more than 3 times the population of Viet Nam. Do we have 50000 teachers who have some IT training?
Just put this story together with yesterday's story about US students turning away from computer related careers. What does Viet Nam's government do to get something out of Microsoft that our own state and national govt won't do?
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
speaks volumes when the first time a head of a country comes to the US in over thrity years goes to Microsoft first and then Washington.
Scarry - very scarry.
Americans, like anyone else, are perfectly entitled to criticise any country's human rights record.
People whose rights are violated in the USA, unlike many other countries, have recourse to a free press and the courts; which is more than can be said for the Socialist Worker's Paradise of Vietnam.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I'm quite sure that MSIE will ensure Charlie don't surf!.
I just spent two weeks in Vietnam, and people look quite happy to me...and human rights do not seem to be violated anymore, especially not in shops selling bootleg MP3 and software CDs at 1$ apiece ! There even was very expensive engineering software like Patran. The good thing when you buy a Windows CD there (or DVD for 3$ ) is that when you install it, Office magically appears already configured in several languages with all extensions, as well as Photoshop or Acrobat, Norton and so on. So Microsoft is actually able to put on the market distributions competitive with Linux, usable out-of the box ! Very interesting also in Saigon-HMC : the museum of american war crimes in Vietnam (called now the Museum against war or something like that for political correctness). The very disturbing pictures of agent-orange children or torched villages help to relativize the alleged human rights violations...
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
People whose rights are violated in the USA, unlike many other countries, have recourse to a free press and the courts; which is more than can be said for the Socialist Worker's Paradise of Vietnam.
Actually I'm sorry to say that people just don't have those rights any more in the US. They can be imprisoned without knowing why, their lawer isn't allowed to talk about the charges, they can be deported to third countries for torture or just thrown out of the country (see recent case of an Iranian teenager) or they can be shipped off to someplace like Guantanamo Bay where you have exactly zero rights and are very deliberately dehumanized. Now you can argue about the justification for this if you like, but the US would rank well below Canada and many European countries (just for example) in a scale of civil rights or freedom right now.
Your point about it being quite possible for US citizens to criticise other nations is spot on though, whatever their govt. is doing.
MANY European nations? ;) Are you counting Bellorus as European or something?...
Me (Blog)
Really? Can you be legally imprisoned indefinitely, tortured and executed in secret and without trial? Do they have an abusive prison camp whose policy is that "mock execution is not encouraged"?
Me (Blog)
because Vietnam will become the next outsourcing center - now that India is used up and they are demanding more salaries because they are experienced they have to go somewhere else to pay minimum wage for tech support.
So now America is outsourced to India which will be outsourced to Vietnam.
Shall we point out some of the lovely things the Viet gov't did to its *own* people?
No, no, you see, when the US oppresses people (by turning the AC down and playing loud rap music) it's the US government's fault, and when governments opposed to the US oppress people (by killing and maiming them) it's also the US government's fault.
Logically this makes sense, but only if you belong to what is known as the "reality based community". Apparently if there was no United States, the world would be a playground of love and understanding and puppy dogs.
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
>Personally, I'd prefer it if $HUMAN_RIGHTS_VIOLATOR *now* can't use GPL-ed code
s /2005/06/20/tech_firms_help_tyrants_keep_their_gri p/
Lets remind ourselves that $HUMAN_RIGHTS_VIOLATOR can use the loophole in (L)GPL that allows xSPs running GPL apps without abiding by the license (as they do not re-distribute the code).
Here are some workarounds for opressive governments worldwide:
a) have xSPs (Microsoft, Google, Yahoo et al) do the dirty work fo' ya (Microsoft a bit less likely to use GPL software for that, but still).
Motto: We're snitches so you don't have to be.
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/article
b) outsource IT operations to multinationals who will run GPL-ed code in any way necessary (including assisting in human rights violations) as long as it helps them make money.
I can wholeheartedly recommend IBM as they have related experience and references stretching as far back as World War II.
I wonder what words they'll ban in Vietnam? Will they ban "freedom" and "democracy" like they did in China? Or will they add "human rights" to that list as well?
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
U.S. citizens are being held in other detainment facilities across the country with a similar "no legal rights status". Here in South Carolina, there is one being held at the Charleston naval base.
As for how many other citizens are being held across the country or at Gitmo. We have no idea.
Why? Because the government refuses to tell us.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
"I should note the picture of the Vietnamese man summarily executing a Vietnamese prisoner is an RVN (US puppet government) official shooting an suspected NLF prisoner, polls show young Americans often think it's the reverse."
If they think so, it's because that's what they've been told by school teachers who want to rewrite history.
"the Ohio National Guard shot four students dead"
The Ohio National Guard fired into the air, over the heads of the protesters, who were throwing rocks and bottles at the RETREATING National Guard. Admittedly shooting into the air was a stupid thing to do, because all that lead has to land somewhere.
Your post suggests that the NG killed four protesters. They didn't. The truth is bad enough, so why lie about it?
And while I'm at it, don't even bring up the so-called atrocities committed by the US against the VC. The things the US did, including My Lai, were nothing compared to what the VC did to their own people and to any US soldiers captured by the VC. The VC were and are creative in a way the Spanish Inquisition would have envied.
Actually, it isn't ironic at all. I'm one of those Americans who protests human rights abuses of other countries. I also protest the ones committed by my own government. I didn't vote for this administration and I have done what I could to make my voice heard through letters and email to my legislative representatives.
What is ironic, is when President Bush or Ms. Rice makes accusations about human rights abuses, not when U.S. citizens who honestly deplore what our own government has been doing do so.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
As far as I could tell from the limited media coverage and digging through blogs most of the protesters were Vietnamese Americans who either fled the Communist Regime themselves or whose parents did. The rest are Vietnam Vet's.
I've personally spoken with one such refugee who escaped to the Philippines and eventually made it to the US. After the US pulled out, he went home and destroyed all of his documentation proving he worked on the US Base as an aircraft mechanic. He watched his neighbors literally disappear overnight! His house was searched and his family threatened. He moved his wife and kids to his mother in-laws and then he fled the country. It took him many years to save up enough money to have his family smuggled out of the country.
Vietnam is guilty of many Human Rights violations, many more of the Vietnamese died when the US pulled out then were killed in the entire war! The country denied having any American POW's but we all know they did.
I think it's despicable that we would open trade agreements with the country. They failed to build their own economy due to the oppressive nature of Communism. So why help bail them out with trade deals? The same with China... I think it's a mistake, China has shown little results from all the investments we've made. They are actively trying to crack down on the formerly free people in Hong Kong and not to mention Taiwan. Again, why do we give money to Communists?!?! We know their economy will eventually collapse just as it did in Russia.
Fuckie fuckie five dollars?
Not a flame here. I want to know. Show us solid examples of this happening on an every day basis and not of foreign nationals without clearance to be here, people who violated the terms of their visas, etc. Show where a natural born American citizen who has not been engaged in terrorism or linked to it has been sent to Guantanamo.
Pure FUD. If it weren't, you would not have been allowed to make your post and have been arrested and sent off to some mythical gulag by now.
I suggest calming down and getting a grip. BTW, for those of you who are in tinfoil hat FUD land, Microsoft isn't sending people in black helicopters to install Windows on your Linux boxes either.
The volume of dissent and paranoid fear mongering is inversely proportional to the level of civil rights in any given place. IOW, you don't hear this talk in Vietnam, because they'd shoot you in the head and be done with it before you spat out more than a few sentences.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
How many Windows XP Pirates had I already turned in? There was those six that I know about for sure. Close enough to blow their last breath in my face. But this time it was an American and an businessman. That wasn't supposed to make any difference to me, but it did. Shit... charging a man with software piracy in this place was like handing out speeding tickets in the Indy 500. I took the mission. What the hell else was I gonna do?
As far as LBJ's "half-assed effort", LBJ never vetoed a military target, ever. LeMay wanted to bomb dikes so as to starve to death millions of civilians (like he did in Korea) and also carpet bomb Hanoi and kill the civilian population there (like he did to Pyongyang, and ever major city in North Korea, and every major city in Japan in the war before that). So if you mean an intentional massacre of civilians on the scale that the US did in Korea or Japan, yes, LBJ vetoed that because the powers-that-be in the US felt it would be politically harmful to US interests outside of Vietnam.
You want to say: "Don't worry, in theory you still have you rights."
No, I said what I wanted to say. Rights are rights, and their infringment doesn't negate them. The Japanese Americans who were put in concentration camps by Roosevelt's regime were eventually able to obtain redress in court, because their rights still exist.
The important point here, is that governments do not create rights. People create governments to secure our rights. When governments fail in that duty, then it's time to throw them out, and institute a new government in place of the one that failed. (Ex: the American Revolution, the English Civil War, the Armed Struggle against Apartheid, etc.)
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Yes, yes indeed. Makes you wonder how we hear so many tales of torture and abuse coming out of Gitmo. You'd think they'd all be dead or shut up in dungeons never to be heard from again.
Thats because Cambodia wasn't a signatory to the Paris Peace Accords.
The Arclight missions over Cambodia were halted in August 15, 1973 by the United States Congress.
From the Khmer Rouge perspective, however, the severity of the bombings was matched by the treachery of the North Vietnamese. The Cambodian communists had refused to take part in the Paris peace talks. So that when North Vietnam and the United States signed the Paris Peace Accords on January 27, 1973, bombing missions over Vietnam and Laos were terminated. The fighter bombers and other aircraft thus released were diverted to strike Khmer Rouge positions in Cambodia.