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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.
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
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.....
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
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.
"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
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.
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.