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Microsoft Blocks FSF Donation Website As a 'Gambling Site'
An anonymous reader writes "The FSF slammed Microsoft for categorizing donate.fsf.org website as a 'Gambling Site.' Corporate systems that use a Microsoft 'network security' program cannot access FSF donation website because of this and as a result, many people were unable to make donations. FSF has submitted a correction to Microsoft and they are now waiting for a response. However, John Sullivan warned corporate about Microsoft's proprietary network security programs."
Hysterics and hyperbole do not serve us well.
IF MS ignores the correction, sure. But that hasn't happened, has it?
You can go directly to http://my.fsf.org/donate/ if donate.fsf.org is blocked by your local friendly firewall. You can also use Tor to bypass blocks like these.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
what's that old saying "never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence" or whatever? I mean this is MS we're talking about...
Why is everyone so paranoid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents
Even if they don't allow it, maybe they would rather their employees donated in their own free time and not on their network?
You could at least read and understand the summary (RAUTFS?). It is not just Microsoft's own network; this is something a Microsoft product that is used on numerous corporate networks is doing.
Palm trees and 8
The FSF should sue Microsoft for loss of donations and ask for punitive damages for monopolistic anti-competitive behavior.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
You think there is a person in Microsoft who tags every web page out there?
The list is made by a computer to try to catagorize them based on words in the page and other links. Sometimes software makes odd mistakes.
Oh there is an exception then they fixed it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Or incompetence in this case.
There's speculation that their accepting of Bitcoin inadvertantly categorised them as a gambling website. Bitcoin is popular for gambling sites now because of the lack of restrictions for such sites to exist compared with normal gambling sites which can take days to deposit and many hoops to jump through. It does not seem malicious or incompetent that this mistake happened.
Yes, that's pretty likely.
If Norton can mark critical system files as collections of viruses and delete them, I believe that someone at MS can mark a website incorrectly. This doesn't seem deliberate at all, given the gambling tag. It might have even been an automatic move, if MS is too cheap to hire someone to do the work.
First result on Google:
http://www.csoonline.com/article/597063/network-security-three-open-source-options
Palm trees and 8
How do you explain that a "mistake" was made when the site is so "obviously not a gambling website", eh?
Because it's using an IP address (or is within a range) that is/was also used by a gambling site?
I don't know why you say that, Microsoft have had an extremely good record supporting the installation of free software on their systems. Just look back at how easy they made it to install such common packages as the blaster virus, the chernobyl virus, conflicker, et al. Anyone who claims microsoft tries to stifle free software, hasn't really been looking at the facts.....
They didn't submit a correction of a faulty website. They submitted a correction of a faulty website classification. FSF has done nothing wrong; the only problem here is Microsofts amazingly self-serving mistake.
I don't know who makes the ban list that my company uses, but fedora's site is blocked, classified in the category "Tasteless". Other Linux distros' sites are fine.
I think someone has a sense of humor ;)
Rhetorical questions suck. Why ask a question if you don't want an answer?
Hi, I'm on the Microsoft firewall team. I'll explain what's going on.
First off I should say that the Free Software Foundation is in fact a type of gambling site seeing as how it can cause people to lose their sense of free market capitalism. Having free software means that for-profit software industries are losing money that would otherwise be spent on expensive and high quality software systems like Microsoft Windows. So yes the economy is losing money to free software just like gambler's lose money to the casino.
Microsoft also endeavors to protect children from obscene and immoral ideas that are related to socialism, like the free software movement. So yes, "free software" is among the words on our block list. Other dangerous words that we will protect children from are:
gun control
global warming
evolution
Noam Chomsky
Canada
medical marijuana
Green Peace
Al Jazeera
Julian Assange
Israeli Apartheid
corporate welfare
union
taxation
Digital Restrictions Management
public school teacher
anal probe
Ah, Bullwinkle, that trick never works.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Microsoft has ALWAYS behaved this way. How many 3rd party applications or features have /.ers discovered dont work properly in Windows when there is anything remotely resembling a competitive product offered by Microsoft...anyone ever try to use hotmail in non-IE browsers or chat on msn via trillian? Browsers in general for those of us that remember the big IE integrated with windows debate/doj case and the resulting minor concession MS was forced to make.
I am not just talking about when MS updates Windows and your display drivers start causing bsods and you grab a vendor update and its fixed, I mean real anti-competitive practices in Microsoft's consumer and enterprise products... If I sat here and thought about it I know I would have a long list - what about u? How many times have you all looked straight up and raged GAAAAAAAATES!!
will work for dragon quest localization
Well Ubuntu is the Fisher Price of Linux.
That looks pretty incompetent to me.
I concur that we should do everything in our power to protect our children from anal probe.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I think someone has a sense of humor ;)
Maybe they don't like systemd...
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
FSF.org doesn't offer software. You'd have a point if they had blocked Gnu.org.
Dilbert RSS feed
I'm Canadian, and upon reading that part I burst into laughter loud enough that people are now asking me what was so funny.
"Whatcha ya laughin' aboot, eh?"
"You'll love this, someone mentioned Canada, eh."
"Ooh, ya, that's a good one, eh!"
Yes! Don't let children near priests!
Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity
While I think that both sides in this debate/war are behaving like asshats, I do believe that you are tarring a whole nation with a rather broad brush here. The fact that a certain number of stupid people from either side wish to keep on killing doesn't justify the current Israeli policy (quietly supported by the US) of starving the population out of existence. And if you're looking for citations & quotes, fuck off, I really cannot be bothered today.
Well, I don't mean to complain, but they DO use those RPM packages instead of the blessèd tasty .deb packages.
Besides, have you ever tried to eat a fedora hat? Well then.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Yankee go home, eh? Don't come over here just fer cheap shoppin, meds and weed and then poke fun at us, eh? Lest we thump yer ass and burn the white house down agin, eh?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
FSF has no grounds to sue Microsoft, even if this is deliberate. Microsoft has no monopoly or close to it in the webfilter arena. Microsoft isn't secretly mucking with dns or some other blatantly illegal action. Client corporations voluntarily elect to use Microsoft's security software to control their own traffic. MS makes no claims that it is 100% accurate. Additionally, MS has procedures in place to correct a misclassification. And even if they didn't, there's no standard by which third-party private web filters are actionable, other than say, breach of warranty of fitness for a particular purpose. But in that case, the proper plaintiff would be Microsoft's customer, not FSF.
Oh, FSF might lose some donations? How is that MS's problem? FSF's suing Microsoft is like advertisers suing the makers of NoScript and Adblock for depriving them of eyeballs.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Here are some:
Not network security but built on .NET.
Here is a list of fish:
cod
salmon
place
haddock
What was your point again?
In all likelihood, this will prove to be a false positive generated by some poorly engineered classification algorithm at Microsoft. I dislike Microsoft as much as everyone else, but c'mon guys, this is so obviously bogus that it can't be malice. Even if it is Microsoft we're talking about here. IMHO, it's a clear case of MSAU (MS Artificial Unintelligence) at work.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
So, you wrote a self modifying .exe that writtes on the hosts file, and you didn't imagine it would be tagged as a trojan?
I'd advice you to not compress the next version of your software, or if you really must, use a normal zip algorithm, using mainstream lib.
Rethinking email
Of course the panel front and center which reads:
Stand up for your freedom to install free software
!
Join 30,000 people in opposing Microsoft's Restricted Boot by signing this statement
Has nothing to do with it.