

American Corporate Software Can No Longer Be Trusted For Anything - Tsiolkovsky
http://falkvinge.net/2011/12/27/american-corporate-software-can-no-longer-be-trusted-for-anything/

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thematt
_Today, software from two American companies — Microsoft and Apple — run most
of the world’s infrastructure, in terms of governments, authorities, social
security, et cetera. It has come to be taken for so granted, you can barely
buy a piece of hardware without code from at least one of these two American
corporations._

Nonsense. Yes, Microsoft has it's tentacles in many corners, but Apple _is not
even close_ to running most of the world's infrastructure. Regardless though,
I can buy lots of hardware without Microsoft's or Apple's code running on top
of it. What is this guy talking about?

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Falkvinge
Go to any consumer electronics store and try to buy a computer not running any
code from one of these two companies.

Yes, if you're a sysadmin, getting naked iron is no problem. But you're gonna
have code from these running on your network, as it stands today.

~~~
Kynlyn
You said infrastructure. Not consumer gear.

How many sysadmins are running down to Best Buy to purchase their server
farms? I doubt very many. A healthy percentage of companies have their
infrastructure based on Linux.

~~~
thematt
Exactly. XBox's and iPhones are not the "world's infrastructure". The real
_infrastructure_ of the world runs on big iron mainframes, SCADA systems and
whatever Cisco puts on their hardware.

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Kynlyn
While I agree with his feelings on the dangers of SOPA, his claim that "you
can barely buy a piece of hardware without code from at least one of these two
American corporations.", referring to MS and Apple, seems just a bit far-
fetched.

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jdp23
Microsoft and US-based cloud companies are facing similar "perception issues"
(as they phrase it) on the Patriot Act. Unless Congress and the Administration
change their positions, this is going to be an increasing burden on American
companies trying to compete internationally.

~~~
fleitz
Domestically too, I know sales people who sell to US financial institutions
who remind prospective clients that competitors store their data in US data
centres; thus the institutions' data would be exposed under the Patriot act.

It's not just international businesses that have these concerns, any business
that serves customers who want their data protected against unreasonable
search and seizure have these issues as well.

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georgieporgie
Inflammatory headline, baseless assertions, and generally uninteresting.
Flagged.

