Romania Jails Ex-Minister Over Microsoft Licenses 69
"A former minister and three others have been handed jail sentences for corruption in Romania in a case linked to Microsoft software licenses," reports Balkan Insight. Prosecutors said the officials had embezzled the entire 47% discount Microsoft offered the Romanian government in a five-year, $105 million contract to supply schools and other public institutions with Microsoft Office licenses. Jail terms up to three years were also handed to a former mayor and two other businessmen who acted as middlemen, and the four defendants were also fined almost 10 million euros. While the court's sentence is not final, "prosecutors said there was manifest corruption in the contract," the article reports, with the officials admitting to the charges in exchange for a one-third reduction in their jail sentences.
Correction (Score:5, Insightful)
Romania Jails Ex-Minister Over embezzlement.
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Woof! Talk about *the assassin accusing the assassin*!
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He'll probably write a couple of books [theguardian.com] in the months to come.
Re:Correction (Score:4, Interesting)
Romania Jails Ex-Minister Over embezzlement.
Yeah, but they had to throw Microsoft in the title because this is /. after all. Microsoft discounts are immaterial to this case, but it helps it get posted here. These guys stole money by committing fraud. I'm sure they tried to hide their tracks in a number of different ways before finding this latest trick that got them caught.
Re:Correction (Score:5, Insightful)
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For "Enterprise" software the list price means nothing, normal "discounts" are huge (50-75%).
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Yeah, i would see 47% discount and immediately know that we weren't talking Oracle or Cisco.
Because you can put a figure or discount % on Oracle software?
Oracle pricing is an art, not a science, and has no basis in reality. The reps make up obscene numbers then jack up the extra cost of various mysterious options and terms until they reach the sweet spot, which is in that narrow window between the client starting to shit bricks and the client starting to shit razor blades.
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That kind of embezzlement doesn't just happen by accident. Someone plotted and planned and made it accessible and that someone would have been the M$ sales reps, not to blame M$ America but certainly their local reps were in it collecting the sales commissions and bonuses, right up to their necks. So interesting to see suspicions confirmed about why M$ has been able to survive so long against FOSS. Not that M$ international is playing but local branches up to all sorts of shenanigans to pump up commissions
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Romania Jails Ex-Minister Over embezzlement.
Yeah, but they had to throw Microsoft in the title because this is /. after all. Microsoft discounts are immaterial to this case, but it helps it get posted here. These guys stole money by committing fraud. I'm sure they tried to hide their tracks in a number of different ways before finding this latest trick that got them caught.
The prosecutors said there was much corruption in the contract. That would be the contract that Microsoft was party to, would it not? As such, naming Microsoft would be appropriate.
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> Correction: Romania Jails Ex-Minister Over embezzlement.
And what do you think that lower TCO for proprietary software was about?
"Be dumb because it's cheaper in the short term." Duh! Just buying that kind of talk is indicative of less transparency -- at least.
Having worked at an M$ shop, I can assure there are reasons to buy Microsoft: because they create so many incompatibilities that shills start to say "it's a Microsoft network". There's no such standard, but given enough "tweakings" you can transmu
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I'm surprised, really, that those of you who support open source so strongly often default to Libre Office so swiftly as a quintessential example of how open source is so much better. Here's a tip: it just makes you sound ignorant and biased, not educated and thoughtful. So does using "M$" instead of MS.
Libre Office isn't better than MS Office, so it's a pretty bad example. And no, I won't accept your supposed arguments why it's not, because that's just an idiotic bias talking.
There are many excellent examp
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There are many excellent examples of open source software that are superior to what MS offers. Like Firefox!
+1 Funny
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You don't believe Firefox is better than Internet Explorer, or Edge?
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There is nothing more intellectually dishonest than a counterargument along the lines of, "If you can't do something perfectly, you don't do it at all."
Governments have the resources to adapt and adopt open source software rather than paying MS billions of dollars across the globe.
As for the commanding heights of the economy, paper production might or might not be cost-effective to nationalise. As for printers, given what HP has done to the printer ink market, a non-profit company that produces high-quality
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Governments have the resources to adapt and adopt open source software rather than paying MS billions of dollars across the globe.
Are you kidding?
Government IT always follows the same: each department/agency/division has their own IT turf that they protect against other department/agency/division, until some starry-eyed moron convinces the big cheese that having a central IT group would lower cost and could even become a profit center. At which point the central IT group becomes a nest of corruption showered with gifts from vendors, and every department/agency/division is charged ridiculous amounts of money for inferior or irrelevant
Wait a minute... (Score:2)
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Kickbacks are supposed to go to the client entity, not to the employee. ;)
The part where you said "into contracts." Different than, "into some guy's back pocket."
Re:Corporate corruption meets government corruptio (Score:5, Insightful)
Just for fun call the US GAO and ask them to give you a ball park figure as to how much public money is wasted in the federal government. The answer is: they have no fucking idea how to even start figuring out an answer. The only true answer they can give is that there's 1/2 billion wasted each year in having a GAO.
Being A Vampire Ain't What It Used To Be. (Score:2)
Should have switched to LibreOffice. (Score:5, Funny)
LibreOffice would have enabled him to embezzle all $105 million. ;)
Re: Should have switched to LibreOffice. (Score:1)
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I wonder if it could have been added for less than, say, $105 million...
in other news (Score:1)
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So far there is no clear success story of a public organization using Ubuntu. There's Munich but it's not a fairy tale, lots of problems. Biggest successful Linux deployments are all Red Hats (such as the US Army).
Micrisoft encourages this sort of thing (Score:2, Interesting)
With the two large contracts I negotiated, they kept trying to sweeten the deal. If it wasn't for kickbacks, Microsoft would probably lose half of their large deals.
Re: Micrisoft encourages this sort of thing (Score:2, Interesting)
My old boss was busted for accepting $50k to switch our state department to SharePoint. We wasted a ton of money and couldn't even get it to version files correctly.
Re: Micrisoft encourages this sort of thing (Score:1)
No, that one was several trips to Vegas with hookers. I don't think any cash was paid.
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No, that one was several trips to Vegas with hookers. I don't think any cash was paid.
I got three nights in Vegas since the department of education I worked for was considering SharePoint. It almost killed me, but it was great fun.
Over $500,000 later in licenses, servers, and contractor time, we still couldn't get it to work.
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I got three nights in Vegas since the department of education I worked for was considering SharePoint. It almost killed me, but it was great fun.
Pace yourself, and always have ice in your drinks (helps with dehydration), and you'll last a whole week before almost dying in Vegas.
Re: Micrisoft encourages this sort of thing (Score:1)
This. Ever wonder why Microsoft has such a high penetration into state and local governments?
Not just in the ex eastern block (Score:5, Funny)
I installed Kubuntu including Libreoffice on the missus computer and never told her I took the 100% discount...
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I once installed Ubuntu on my GF's laptop.
She booted it and gave me a puzzled look, "You-bunt-oo?"
I shrugged, "That's Swahili for Windows".
She beamed with joy, "Oh! I heard about this. It's, like, an expensive version where some money also goes to Africa!? You're such a nice guy."
She still proudly uses the "Windows of the Developing World", and I keep reaping the benefits of her "upgrade" for myself -- I never had the heart to tell her it cost me nothing and her misunderstanding was over a bad joke.
Captc
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Lies are the foundation of any lasting relationship..
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Governments shouldn't use proprietary software (Score:5, Insightful)
It should be illegal for governments to use proprietary software in the first place. Do as you wish as an individual, or a private enterprise, but public data cannot be subjected to vendor lock-in. And as governments are supposed to serve the public good (wishful thinking much?), they should promote the development of Free software.
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public data cannot be subjected to vendor lock-in
A big problem is that big app vendors (SAP, IBM, etc) require either Oracle or SQL Server for the database layer. Many large organizations go with Oracle because it runs on UNIX. There's just no way to walk away from that lock-in.
Of course there's always going to be some dude coming up and saying, we could rewrite SAP Financials using PHP and drupal modules (or RoR or whatever), but that's even scarier than being in bed with Oracle.
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Totally agree. Here in my state it was big news about 10 years ago that the state government had done a 100 million dollar deal with Microsoft to put Microsoft software in to all the public schools. I thought Microsoft should have paid the state 100 million dollars to be allowed to push their shit onto our children.
Anyway, I had been wondering who the morons were who agreed to that deal, and true story, I was talking to my brother-in-law's sister after just meeting her and she told me all about how she had
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Damn. I wouldn't resist asking how much she got under the table. And if she got offended and claimed there's no bribe, I'd laugh, roll my eyes, and say sarcastically: "Suuuuuure, I totally believe you've made such a retarded deal with notorious crooks without taking some dead presidents for yourself. Come on now, how much?"
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Here, here! (Score:2)
The National Weather Service still uses Flash to loop radar sweeps! What the Serious Fuck?
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One of my clients still require support for the old XLS format. That's a lot worse.