Microsoft Office 365: Banned in German schools over privacy fears
1–10 of 19 posts
Re: Microsoft Office 365: Banned in German schools over privacy fears
#2I always wonder if it is legal for doktors to use microsoft software: In my country, the medical secret is absolute, which means giving or taking medical data to anybody not strictly needing it is a crime.
So if a medical program crashes and telemetry picks up medical data in a dump, the doktor commits a crime, as does any microsoft employee reading that dump.
I guess the only reason the court doesn't do anything, is thete is no smoking gun. So one day, someone will notice and then it all comes crashing down.
Re: Microsoft Office 365: Banned in German schools over privacy fears
#3I always wonder if it is legal for doktors to use microsoft software: In my country, the medical secret is absolute, which means giving or taking medical data to anybody not strictly needing it is a crime. So if a medical program crashes and telemetry picks up medical data in a dump, the doktor commits a crime, as does any microsoft employee reading that dump. I guess the only reason the court doesn't do anything, is…
I don't know. I've long argued possession of data should never be a crime, even if the data contains evidence of crimes including crimes committed on human children.
To say a Microsoft employee who sees medical data is committing a crime would probably make me a hypocrite.
I think there should be some accountability but that should be at the top of an organization, not (just) the foot soldiers.
Re: Microsoft Office 365: Banned in German schools over privacy fears
#4I'd be interested to know what they're proposing as an alternative? LibreOffice?
Re: Microsoft Office 365: Banned in German schools over privacy fears
#5Who remembers RMS saying that anything non-free is inappropriate at schools? Here we see part of the reason why.
Very good decision by those schools. Hopefully more will follow and other institutions as well.
Re: Microsoft Office 365: Banned in German schools over privacy fears
#6I always wonder if it is legal for doktors to use microsoft software: In my country, the medical secret is absolute, which means giving or taking medical data to anybody not strictly needing it is a crime. So if a medical program crashes and telemetry picks up medical data in a dump, the doktor commits a crime, as does any microsoft employee reading that dump. I guess the only reason the court doesn't do anything, is…
I really hope that it will one day all break down as you describe, because without any big event people will not wake up or get educated about this stuff. There need to be some examples made by the arm of the law. In the verdict it should say, that some people traded medical secrets for their own comfort. Not the people who use the system unknowingly, but the people, who carelessly put it in place, should be prosecuted.
Re: Microsoft Office 365: Banned in German schools over privacy fears
#7I'd be interested to know what they're proposing as an alternative? LibreOffice?
Personally I use LaTeX rather than word, theres a bit of a learning curve though so it might not be suitable for lower levels but for high schoolers+ I totally see being able to use it. Everything word does it does better and most of Academia uses it already.
Re: Microsoft Office 365: Banned in German schools over privacy fears
#8I'd be interested to know what they're proposing as an alternative? LibreOffice?
Personally I use LaTeX rather than word, theres a bit of a learning curve though so it might not be suitable for lower levels but for high schoolers+ I totally see being able to use it. Everything word does it does better and most of Academia uses it already.
It would definitely be a good preparation for academic life after school. Personally I wish I had learned it at school time. How much better and nicer could my notes have been, knowing how to make a really well document, in contrast to loose sheets of paper flying around and being discarded after the school year. Granted, some people are good at taking clean notes and bringing them into order. At school time I was not. A good computer workflow would probably have sparked my attention to detail even with school notes.
Re: Microsoft Office 365: Banned in German schools over privacy fears
#9Remember when Munich ditched Windows? It only lasted a few years before Microsoft successfully won them back by offering steep discounts and moving their headquarters to Munich.
One has to wonder whether history will repeat itself.
Re: Microsoft Office 365: Banned in German schools over privacy fears
#10Funny, meanwhile in my state the schools are moving to Microsoft. Unfortunately, skepticism of Microsoft and other American companies isn't as widespread as it should be here in Germany.