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Windows 2000 to be banned in Germany?
tjansen writes "The German Site Heise reports in this article that Windows 2000 may be banned in Germany. The reason is the included deframentation software Diskeeper that is written by the Scientology-owned company Executive Software. Many state agencies and companies have policies that they are not allowed to use services from a company that is related to Scientology. " A good number of you will probably need to use The Babelfish.Update: 12/03 11:28 by H :Check out the English translation.
The connection between the Psycho company and the software giant is sparkling wine assigning of the large churches a thorn in the eye.
:)
Ah. Good. Things are much clearer now.
Redmond will quickly work around this one by removing the offending program. Good thing the guys didn't write IE 4.0. The Germans never would have gotten win98.
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then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
This -could- be interesting, though, as Microsoft is likely to drop support for ALL other versions of Windows, in order to force people to upgrade.
If Windows 2000 is banned, even if only in Government departments, that will essentially force the de-Microsofting of the German Government. And that could spell some interesting times for *BSD and Linux vendors.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I'm not too sure about that article (Babelfish implied that the spokesman was the Catholic church's official in charge of sparkling wine, which I think would be a pretty cool job actually, Dominus vobiscum), but the German federal government is really serious about Scientology. If I'm not mistaken the legal sanctions being imposed against Scientology are pretty much the same as those being used to suppress Nazism... it would not surprise me if the German government goes toe-to-toe with Microsoft over this one if it proves correct.
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I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
The article quotes an official of the Catholic church, not a representative of the government. The word "Bann" in the headline has to be seen in this context: its a condemnation of the church. So to take this quote and speak of Windows 2000 going to be banned in Germany is quite a leap. So, don't believe everything Babelfish tells you and calm down, folks.
things. take. time.
Why does it always have to be me defending MS from all the FUD on /.
I don't like MS, and it kills my Karma. :-(
Oh well.. if someone said something wrong about Linux, I'd do the same thing.
I suspect the WTO could make a case for this being back-door protectionism, especially given that Germany has a large native OS distributor. I'm not sure who I find more scary, the WTO or the Co$.
Of course, I'm sure there are some Linux contributors who are scientologists, but I guess the regulation concerns companies.
BTW, what does Win2000 need a defragmentor for? I thought disk fragmentation was cracked long before journalling and b-trees hit the agenda.
The Co$ has a history of attempting to disrupt online discussions about them, if they are likely to be critical of the "Church". The Usenet newsgroup alt.religion.scientology is legendary for this.
So I wonder if this loon with the "Natalie Portman" posts has been hatted to disrupt Slashdot?
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
The whole Natalie Portman thing got moved to Slashdot because Segfault.org stopped allowing people to post messages. I was a frequent Segfault reader, and Natalie Portman was a very common topic over there. The Natalie Portman/Statue/Mae Ling whatever/etc... people just moved over here to Slashdot.
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
This is because Scientology is perceived in Germany neither as a church, nor as a sect, but as an organisation threatening the democratic system in germany. They are observed
by the german "Verfassungsschutz" and aswered this with a public relations campaign, even drawing parallels to the persecution of Jews in the Third Reich.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Maybe it's time to advertise the use of the GPLtrans engine instead of Babelfish
Unfortunately, their German translation unit is under maintainance for a few days. Too many words [...] and MySQL isn't responding
correctly, the web site says.
I for one hope that GPLtrans will be mentioned next time a non-English article is referenced on Slashdot.
Kk.
See some of these links to understand some of the views
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Windows 2000 in danger of being banned
A component of Windows 2000 was made by a scientology company. The defragmentation program "Diskeeper" is scheduled to be shipped in February as a standard part of the NT successor.
It is being developed by the firm "Executive Software" of the confessing [?] scientologist Craig Jensen, as has been reported in c't issue 25/99. The connection between the psycho trust and the software giant is a thorn in the side of the large churches.
"This will not be interesting to the Catholic Church alone, but also to the states, the Verfassungsschutz [one branch of the secret service] as well as the German industry", Harald Baer, catholic commissary for sects and wold outlook issues [Weltanschauung issues], commented to the German press agency (dpa). According to Ursula Caberta, leader of the Scientology working group of the Hamburg interior authority, Executive Software is one of the leading businesses in the Scientology organization WISE (World Institute of Scientology Enterprises). [She says] WISE is "the decisive branch of Scientology in order to infiltrate and spy on the economy". In the states of Bavaria and Hamburg, there have been resolutions according to which authorities, in particular in the area of information technology, are not allowed to buy services from scientology businesses. (em)
(cp/c't)
Everything in [] are my comments to explain things. Translating this shows me how much a good translator is worth! ;-)
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Windows 2000 threatened by ban
One component of the Windows 2000 software is coming from a Scientology enterprise. The defragmentation program "Diskeeper" is going to be released in February as integral part of the
NT successor. It was developed by Executive Software, an enterprise belonging to the confessing scientologist Craig Jensen, as C't magazine reports in issue 25/99. The connection
between Scientology and the software giant is not liked by the Sektenbeauftragter (person responsible to review the activities of sects) of the large churches.
"This is going to interest not only the Catholic church but also the Bundesländer (states ), the Verfassungsschutz (government institution that supervises activities that are against the German constitution) and the German industry", comments
Harald Baer, Catholic representative for sects and philosophy of life [that's a straight translation] in response to DPA [a news agency].
According to Ursula Caberta, who leads the study group Scientology of Hamburg's Innenbehoerde [an institution of the City of Hamburg], Executive Software belongs to the leading enterprises of the Scientology organization WISE (World Institute of Scientology Enterprises). WISE, according to Caberta, "is the crucial arm of Scientology to infiltrate and spy on trade and industry". In Bayern and Hamburg [German states, Hamburg is a city state] there are laws that forbid public institutions, especially on the information technology sector, to buy services from Scientology enterprises.
Hah. I didn't even notice all the Natalie Portman spam because I always read with at least a minimal level of filtering based on score.
That must drive the CO$ weenies crazy. I remember when they successfully ruined alt.religion.scientology by spamming the group with so many messages that any real discussion was lost.
Scientology is an evil organization that is willing to go to any lengths to further its greedy interests. I'm not talking about protesting, or organizing church dinners here--death threats against "enemy" newspaper reporters, collecting damaging information about their own members for use as blackmail in the event that they testify against the cult, attempting to shut down, harass, and bankrupt critics... the list goes on.
I don't blame the German govt. for not wanting to run any software written by Scientology. Given their thug like behavior in every other area, why would you trust their code? They probably did build some backdoors into it.
The Germans are concerned about Scientology's well documented track record for
... ah, religious ... goals
:-) (one must use a very liberal definition of intellectual to include anything written by Hubbard. Talk about horrible science fiction!).
- suppressing free speach through legal intimidation
- violating people's privacy through various means, legal and otherwise
- efforts to gain positions of trust and power
- willingness to use such positions to promote their own corporate
They are concerned that Scientology is engaged in a power grab of titanic proportions which poses a direct threat to their democracy, which the above pattern of behavior appears to underscore rather clearly. Having a corporation controlled by Scientologists in turn controlling a critical peice of software (such as, say, an integral component of an operating system running on 95% of all PCs) is, they feel, a grave concern.
OTOH if a scientologist contributes to Linux, the code is under the GPL. This takes control away from the Scientologists and puts it in the hands of the user. I doubt the German government would have any problem with that, though I suspect the hypothetical Scientologist contributing software of this kind might face immediate excommunication for giving away "intellectual" property which could have belonged to The Church.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
As an ex-scientologist news like this just makes me laugh with joy. Scientology is an evil cult whose goal is to take over the world and imprison or kill anyone who doesn't agree with them. Anyone who has spent any time in it can tell you that. Just look up the Fair Game PL. Scientology claims to be a religion but in fact the religious trappings it puts on are for PR and legal protection. It's no more a religion than Amway is. It's true nature is more like the Nazi party of the 1930's. If anyone could recognize this, its the Germans.
Many scientologists as individuals are decent honest people. Its unfortunate that they have made such a poor choice in remaining in the "church." I could go on all day long about them, but many others have already covered it and more eloquently than I could.
What is the difference between Scientology and Microsoft? One is an evil cult bent on world domination and the other was begun by L. Ron Hubbard.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
The article contains some more details:
- Diskkeeper has of course access to the full harddisk.
- c't could find no obvious hints that the software is spying.
- Of course you can only be sure when you have the source.
- Microsoft, it seems, has the code.
- Microsoft's Recommendation (to uninstall Diskkeeper) is not working. The files will be restored by the `System File Protection' (SFP).
It will be worth to wait for the translation. It will contain some more background information.Scientology agents are watching my house
Slashdot | Posted by CmdrTaco on 1999-0-0
from the just-because-you're-paranoid dept.
About twenty minutes ago, a gang of three Scientology agents collected outside Taco Mansions. They tried to harass one of my visitors when they arrived, telling them that I was hosting child pornography and was a convicted felon. If anyone's in the XXX area just now, you might like to come and look, they're on the corner of XXX and XXX. I've posted PNG images of them *here*. I could use some backup on this one.
Cheers,
CmdrTaco.
No, I don't think the Co$ would be stupid enough to try that one. The Commander is far from powerless.
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Xenu loves you!
This is one of the main reasons that Germany is down on Scientology (that and some real estate scams by its members)
I'm very fuzzy, but I seem to remember that LRH coined the phrase, referring to how cute and fuzzy squirels will steal nuts from people. Something like that. I talked to a few back when I hung out on alt.religion.scientology. They didn't seem like criminals to me, actually _most_ of them were very nice, just a little wierd. (There was one guy, Homer something that kept drawing me into flame wars.... :) )
A bunch of them have banned together and formed a free society (the name of which I can't remember), that persues LRH's ideas w/o the oppressive leadership of the {ahem} Church. (They even liken them selves to the heretics during the Spanish Inquisition.
I think there might be more info on xemu.net , but I can't be sure.
RobK
Myddrin
The Co$ is pretty much a terrorist cult that uses money, lawsuits, and worse to silence opposition. They basically prey on weak minded people and exploit them for money, work, you name it.
Basically, they are a corporation pretending to be a religion to get tax breaks. There are lots of sites on the net dealing with these people, the largest of which is Operation Clambake. An interesting note is that the Co$ distributes internet software to it's drones that have nearly all of these sites, newsgroups, and such filtered out.
Finkployd