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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.
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
Ah, actually, the translation isn't all that bad. The original German used the word `Sektenbeauftragten'. `Sekt', as you may or may not know, is a sparkling white wine. But `Sekte' is used for sect. And a `Sektenbeauftragter' is a person assigned with studying sects, not an assignment of sparkling white wine... ;)
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.