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Microsoft Denies Paying Nigerians $400K To Ditch Linux
Da Massive writes "Microsoft has denied paying a Nigerian contractor $400,000 in a bid to retard Linux's movement into the government sector. Media reports alleged that Microsoft had proposed paying that sum to a government contractor under a joint marketing agreement last year, in order to persuade the contractor to replace Linux OS with Windows on thousands of school laptops. Although a joint marketing agreement was drafted to document the best practices for using technology in education, it was never executed, said a Microsoft regional manager for Africa. It became clear, he added, that one customer wanted a Linux OS."
REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP
Hello Partner,
My name is Thomas Hansen and I am a regional manager for Microsoft West, a prominent software company that does business with the Government of Nigeria. In strictest confidence I am writing to you about the matter of a great magnitude of money.
Last year, my company was involved in negotiations with your government in the drawing up of a joint marketing agreement for business. During the last military regime of Nigeria, some government officials set up a fund and awarded themselves contracts for the purchase of software. The present civilian government has set up a contract review panel, and has identified ours as one that can be replaced with no cost to your government. Without further review, these contracts could amount to USD$40,000,000 (forty million U.S. dollars) or more.
I am authorized to offer you 1% of the value of these contracts, USD$400,000, in exchange for the erasure of the competing offer. Please note this transaction is 100% safe and legal. I will commence the transferring of the funds within 72 business hours upon receipt of your bank account number. Please fax your account and driver's license to 1-419-419-4190 to continue with this transaction.
I am looking forward to doing business with you and solicit your confidential reply to this transaction.
Faithfully yours,
Thomas Hansen
John
As they do in other countries (see Eastern Europe for an example), Microsoft will just pay the government officials that award the contract.
It is a lot easier, safer (there are lawyer intermediaries, so it is impossible to catch the perpetrators) and works well, as the government has a "legitimate" reason to increase the budget, and the larger the budget, the merrier it gets.
I know self-replies are bad form. I also know that I wrote Microsoft some places where 'Linux' would've been more appropriate. Sorry for the confusion.
This post advocates a
(X) common sense ( ) spell-checker ( ) semantic verifier
-based approach to reading my above post.
No wonder they were skeptical, a 400k cashier's check...
Microsoft...denied paying a Nigerian contractor $400,000 in a bid to retard Linux's movement into the government sector.
What could be more retarded than a government sector using windows? (grammar nazis, let it slide...)
Nigerians have computers?
Dear Mr Ballmer
Good day and compliments. Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Dr. (Mrs.) Mariam Abacha. I can tell by the way jump about you are very intelligent man. In order secure the windows market in Africa you know what to do.
Your faithfully,
Dr (Mrs.) Mariam Abacha (M.O.N)
From TFA: "From our standpoint, those governments, and indeed every customer, should always decide which software solutions meet their needs most appropriately..." - attributed to Thomas Hansen, regional manager for Microsoft West, East and Central Africa.
Isn't it obvious that customers should decide what to get? Why do MS need to convince us they believe that? Who else would be deciding what customers bought Mr Hansen?
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
$400k to convince one government contractor seems like a lot to fork out. Most bribes, especially in third world countries, are had for less. Not that I'd put it past Microsoft to pull something underhanded like this, it's just that poor economic decisions aren't one of their hallmarks. Sorry, but I have to side with Bill on this -- it just doesn't pass the sniff test. $400k is enough money to live like a king or queen in those economic situations, and probably better than most government officials; the average per-year income in that country is just over $2k.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I had a Nigerian colleague once and he told me you get nothing done in Nigeria without paying the right people. So actually this is not news (and certainly not a story ;) :) ), but normal business practice.
-- Cheers!
They're nigerians, not niggers.
In this case though, I hope MS did pay the bribe...
You know that any money you pay will just get you nowhere and you'll need to pay more fees later.
...that they have to pay to get people to use it?
I've been patiently waiting for my royalty checks from that prince i have been sending mass amounts of money to.
Global controls will have to be imposed, and a world governing body will be created to enforce them. Crises, precipitate change.
He who denied it, supplied it.
wah..Is slashdot getting racist or is this that GNAA fella. Perhaps rappers are at fault!!!!!!!!
I was born in Nigeria and my dad worked there for many years. He will tell you that the Government then (1971) was corrupt and would sell their own mothers for a belly full of ruin (that is, a glass of whisky). We have seen nothing since then to change our minds.
My web domain.
Microsoft could have paid $400,000 and the Nigerians could have gone ahead and used linux anyway. Bribes only work when you trust people to stay bought.
TFA can be boiled down to "Microsoft today admitted it tried to tie $400,000 in payments to Nigerian government contractors to the denial of use of the Linux OS in offices and schools, but admitted that the briXXX payment was not accepted."
"from the no-419-jokes-please dept."
Okay then, how about some (bad) 420 jokes then.
Marijuana has thus been proven to be an order of magnitude more perfect that perfection...
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
That would be about 46,800,000 Naira. Approximately, I don't know the current exchange rate.
XE.com says 400,000.00 USD = 47,100,000.00 NGN (Nigerian Naira)
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I can tell by the way jump about you are very intelligent man.
I can tell, by the way, jump about - you are very intelligent man.
There. Fixed that for you.
We paid the same contractor $400,000 not to use Windows
The Mac Guy
Have gnu, will travel.
So, I'm thinking of something that still isn't funny... Can you guess what it is?
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
"We didn't pay them any money... we promised them money, even had a contract drawn up, but we never signed it because they bought the laptops with Windows anyway."
They're nigerians, not niggers.
Thanks for clearing that one up. I make that mistake all the time!
It was actually $411,000 and understandably they denied it.
Yeah, the whole thing stinks.
Microsoft didn't pay the Nigerians to ditch Linux, Ballmer just fell for one of the scams
I am not stubborn. I am right!
Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work.
(X) Slashdotters will not put up with it.
(X) Requires too much cooperation from Slashdotters
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
(X) Asshats
(X) Slashdotter reluctance to accept weird new forms of thinking
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well, Microsoft does know all about how to retard an operating system...
is it just me or has slashdot been slamming microsoft harder than usual?
Good people go to bed earlier.
FTA: 'Hansen emphasized that studies have shown that the Windows platform often costs the same as or less than Linux when the total cost of ownership is considered. '
WTF? For a laptop that will be used in education? OK - Govs. and students get special price deals on M$ OS and Office etc., but I can't believe this.
I'm aware of such comparisons on servers, (and I'm dubious about these), have never seen anything on clients. Anybody got some info?
Personally, I think having Nigerians become the worldwide poster-children for using Teh Lunix would be such an incredible boon to MS... they should actually consider paying Nigeria TO use Teh Lunix.
Imagine all the amazing viruses they will write, all the incredible security holes they will exploit, and all the Lunix servers they will r00t! It's going to be... glorious.
And best of all... it's exactly what Teh Lunix Community asked for. Hoisted by their own FOSS petard!
For those of you that dream of taking your Big Idea and getting rich on government contracts, this is how getting a government contract works in most countries.
The U.S. situation isn't that different. In the U.S. all parties are very mindful of the law and work around them or only break the rules with no penalties.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
"From our standpoint, those governments, and indeed every customer, should always decide which software solutions meet their needs most appropriately. We strongly believe that governments must carefully consider all costs of acquiring and using a PC, along with the benefits of widespread application availability, maintenance, and training," he said.
Above is a quote from the article.
The main problem with their statement is that they believe the main qualifier is "widespread application availability". With Linux they have greater availability of applications because everyone can freely take and distribute them, redistribute them, use them, do whatever they want with them including modify them.
Then to a lesser extent they talk about maintenance. Well, as has already been stated there's plenty of maintainability of open source code for anyone that wants to use it. In fact, the government employees of any country in the world can maintain the code at will. There's absolutely no issue with maintainability whatsoever in the open source community as anyone can do anything they want to the code at their own convenience.
Training is the last part of their statement. One must understand that parity amongst applications is a reality. Applications that support the Open Doc format will be programs that function in a known manner. For instance, there are only so many ways to bold face text or copy and paste text. The concept of formatting a paragraph, numbering, inserting formulas into a cell, etc are all pretty standardized. Not to mention what's primarily being talked about here is the use of Linux in schools, thus students are going to get all the training they could desire on using Linux and other Open Source programs.
The interface is what they may consider to be the main element of training aside from individual applications and that has little to do with the OS (rather applications which Microsoft must feel they are entitled to sell after the fact, and that will cost those government (their government) a considerable sum). With Linux you learn the interface and then train on any given application. If the application's interface had been a significant issue for training then in Office 2007 Microsoft would not have forced everyone in the world to undergo a retraining of sorts, one that was a major pain for a lot of people. Using programs such as Open Office 3.0 you need not go through the hard costly training that you'd require to go from Office 2003 to Office 2007.
As well, the broader community in Africa in that region has decided on Linux. That means that anyone using Windows would technically be at a disadvantage. Using their logic, they should learn Linux or be left behind.
There are other reasons one would not want to use Windows in those areas. For instance, if they use Windows they will be saddled with draconian restrictions management, which we all know is a method used to protect markets and to lock you into technology and thus the monopolistic businesses that created them. Many countries don't have our copyright and IP laws and many don't believe in them. By using Windows with DRM they'll effectively be forced to comply with those monopolistic company's interpretation of US law concerning copyright and IP.
And finally, it should always be cheaper to purchase a PC without an OS. Though someone must install an OS on a PC without an OS the task is part of the maintenance cycle and becomes rather rote. As well, today's distributions are relatively simple to install on solid hardware and generally the cost of a Linux distribution support contract + the PC + the long term affect in the region on training + the freedom to do what they want with the code + the fact that they know no one will be spying on them + the freedom to follow their own laws on copyright and IP makes Linux the prime choice, as it should for everyone.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Many of the studies that were done had merit, though the merit applies to that point in time. Unless we have a reevaluation of those studies on a continuous basis those studies are meaningless.
In their day they were somewhat valid, though the argument was pretty flip-flop depending on the variables and how you chose to apply them to the study group.
If you bought a PC with Windows you bought a ready to go unit. This is a valid point and over the long haul if little goes wrong then you are right. The total cost of ownership is lower. But we all know that things go wrong, and under Windows things can go seriously wrong, even dangerously wrong. When you consider serious issues such as BSODs, costs of maintaining legality with the one-sided EULA contracts, updates that disable units, flaky and unrealistic WGA type programs, etc these are serious. On the dangerous side of things are the malware and the update cycle created by Microsoft to attempt to undo their Swiss cheese OS.
Under Linux, back then, the philosophy of those creating the distro, etc were that if you couldn't build it you shouldn't come to the party. This was a total fallacy on their part and it was cause for greater costs in maintenance of the OS and created havoc with the total cost of ownership. On the plus side there's little left in terms of installing Linux that even a 90 year old great grandmother couldn't do. Most modern Linux distributions install with a few clicks of a mouse and filling in fewer blanks than this grandmother might have to fill out on an insurance form. It is down right simple to install it. That sort of cuts into the argument that Linux has a greater total cost of ownership.
Back in the day that these studies took place one was considered unworthy if they couldn't build their own install from scratch (source code). It was a total fallacy as one could use that argument about building one's own TV, refrigerator, car/engine, air conditioner, etc. If you couldn't build your own you should be considered unworthy under their logic. Luckily today cooler heads have prevailed and we know how that argument lacked complete and total mental competence. These zealots felt the same about software applications.
You were once required to compile your programs. Today it isn't that way at all. You can easily install a program with all dependencies in a few clicks of a mouse. Previously, though, that added to the total cost of ownership. They were right. It did cost a lot because you had to train people or learn to do it yourself or pay someone to perform for you.
So, those studies are wrong and out of date. Once a Linux box is up and running it needs little expenditure to maintain it (unless you keep messing with things that you know nothing about).
The issues with Windows still exist. It is still a swiss cheese of security. The stability of it is still quite questionable,and you need to spend great deals of money training people to relearn to maintain the OS and to train employees to understand how to use Office 2007 vs. what they thought they already knew about Office 2003.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
it was reported on a radio station yesterday that a Portland-area nurse administrator was on the hook, oddly enough, for about $400K, having responded to one of those Nigerian e-mails...
Coincidence? I think not! Microsoft agents found someone to throw under the bus!
The only reason this headline is on here is because Microsoft + Retard is sure to get a lot of hits on google.
"If you plant ice, you're gonna harvest wind."
$400k to convince one government contractor seems like a lot to fork out.
Ballmer's Microsoft only offers $400k? No wonder things are going downhill at Microsoft. Didn't Bill Gates claim that $640k would be enough? And that was about 20 years ago, so the equivalent would be about $4G today.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
uh...BO?
Why would anyone voluntarily go to Nigeria anyways ?
Please.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.