off: here's a small news flash for MS Products Users

[andy baxter]

Richard wrote:
> On Monday 21 January 2008 3:38:48 pm andy baxter wrote:
>   
>> thomas fisher wrote:
>>     
>>> On Monday 21 January 2008 10:51:24 andy baxter wrote:
>>>       
>>>> Richard wrote:
>>>>         
>>>>> Well, for those of you whom use Microsoft Products... at work.<sick>
>>>>>
>>>>> this might change you mind....(to push linux even more)
>>>>> http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article319348
>>>>> 0. ece
>>>>>           
>>>> The paper was talking about this just as a human rights issue, but this
>>>> isn't the whole point to me. Yes it's intrusive on a personal level, but
>>>> it also points, I would have thought, to broader problems in our
>>>> society, and with the technological imagination of companies like
>>>> microsoft. The only kind of company who would want to use this, I would
>>>> have thought, is one where trust between management and workers is
>>>> non-existent, and the management want to squeeze every last bit of
>>>> productivity out of people who probably shouldn't be so stressed in the
>>>> first place. Which is more of a social/political issue than a
>>>> technological one. What does it say about MS and the companies who might
>>>> be attracted to this kind of 'solution' that they see the research
>>>> leading to this as a useful contribution to the world's knowledge?
>>>> (Answers in words of more than 4 letters...)
>>>>         
>>>    With the degree that fascism has been adapted into the mainstream
>>> of "modern" behavior this becomes a new key to really control everyone by
>>> a select few. I suspect such technology already is deployed under the
>>> auspices of " national security" with non but a few being privy to it.
>>> "They" become "god!"
>>>   Work place control. Voting machines. Airport security. Job interviews.
>>> School administration. National borders. Police interrogations. Prison
>>> administration. Probably in due time traffic intersection scans, and of
>>> course by that time license plates will contain chips. Orwell was right
>>> on target. Erich Fromm's book titled "Escape from Freedom" is a very
>>> enlightening read.
>>> Onward into hell
>>> Tom
>>>       
>> I'm not that pessimistic. I reckon there's a limit to how much a few
>> people can control the behaviour of everyone else before the systems of
>> control and manipulation collapse under their own weight.
>>     
>
> I guess, the point is that big brother, whom ever, could say..HEY Joe, 
> your output today was only 98.9%, and not 110%, YOUR Fired.
>
>   
Or - 'we have been looking at your record and think you might benefit 
from attending our workplace productivity enhancement seminars... for 
your own benefit of course...' ;)

My point wasn't that there's nothing to worry about, just that it's not 
quite as black as the previous poster was saying, IMHO. If the 
government and corporations had complete control over the population, 
then linux wouldn't exist at all, but it does, partly I think because 
people just don't like working in that sort of environment. I.e. people 
are willing to put work into linux partly because free software projects 
aren't run in that sort of way.