I bet there are a good few Nigerian officials living it up. MS will give their shit away as long as it locks in another generation of users.

However I'm sure Steve is pleased as a fly on a turd and is laughing right now at the lame ass letter.

I AM NGOBI ABDULLAH NKOMO, THE WIDOW OF THE FORMER MINISTER OF EDUCATION IN NIGERIA; I HAVE IN

MY POSSESSION SEVENTEEN THOUSAND MANDRIVA LINUX

LICENSES FROM MY INHERITANCE. I NEED YOUR HELP TO

MOVE THESE OUT OF THE COUNTRY.....

At least Mandriva still have Angola yes?

What they could do is sell the Microsoft licenses (they are worth something), and keep the Linux boxen. Some government official must be very happy.

The things you can do with all that money.

For conspiracy addicts: The US Stock market fell by over 300 points today. Coincidence? You be the judge. The money had to come from somewhere!

Is to show the clever kids how to get back to the original mandriva software... and watch the resulting cerfuffle... no doubt the children would not be allowed to use their pc if it uses anything other than microshite.

Although to be fair... Balmer is probably a big fly laughing on the ball of microshite...

Processor

Intel® Mobile Processor ULV 900 MHz, Zero L2 cache,

400 MHz FSB

Chipset Intel® 915GMS + ICH6-M

Memory DDR-II 256M, 512M SO-DIMM

LCD 7” 800 x 480, LVDS Interface, LED B/L

Storage Device 1GB for Linux*, 2GB for Windows* XP Pro NAND Flash

Doubt it's going to be running Vista with this setup, unless Ballmer is sponsoring the required RAM and storage upgrade as well.

As for the Nigerian government's behavior, nothing unexpected. It's just a shame to watch the kids suffer for the sake of their corrupt officials.

Only in Zimbabwe could the price of Windows increase faster than it does in the UK.

..they will continue to produce obvious document forgeries by using mspaint, as opposed to what they could be using, the more professional GIMP.

just to make sure all their scam email is compatible !

"How do you call what you just did Steve, in the place where you live?"

Where I live it's called business bitch! Now get over it.

UNIX is not for the likes of scammers and spoofers. I'd rather these people stick to messing Windows up with scams and tojans and Western Union transfers.

Buy Mandriva and get Windows + a 'small' gift for free. Sounds like a good deal to me. They can always switch back, once they realize how crappy XP runs on those 900Mhz Classmates.

...is usually free at first. The users only start paying once they've become dependent.

As I say, I feel bad for them. XP is going to run like shit on a machine like this. I've run Ubuntu on slower machines and it runs well.. with 128MB it cuts the speed by about 25% due to swapping, but 256MB it's fine. With GBs of RAM, it can load each app off disk the first time you run it then basically never touch the disk again. Mandriva will be similar I think...

And Mandriva's response is called business too. They are continuing to fight for this business, just as are Microsoft. Exposing your competitor's unethical practices is very good business. So what's your problem, bitch?

Bribery? Is this about alleged Bribery? Is some Nigerian official now living the high life at the expense of his countrymen? (slavery changes its form) or did they just make the Nigerians aware that the Western World uses Windows unfortunately?

I'm sure that in Balmer's short lifetime (prime heart attack candidate), he'll see the rise of Chinese personal computers running whatever is free (Linux no doubt). People will laugh at the these cheap machines, just as they did when the Japanese made motorcars, bikes and cameras, but they replaced western industries just as the Chinese are doing now. I'm sure they'll have the last laugh.

the story of the geeky virgin who swears he's going to save himself for the woman of his dreams, but winds up making it with a really hot older woman... Oh yeah, and after the fling, he walks away with syph. The screwing you get for the screwing you got.

"Microsoft operates its business in accordance both with the laws of the countries in which it operates and with international law. Microsoft does not comment on customer procurement processes."

...but generally, as soon as someone says that he followed the letter of the law, I tend to read it as a tacit admission that he knew full well that he violated the *spirit* of the law.

there's corruption in Africa? and Microsoft as a party to it?

no way...

coat/door/bye.

Assuming this is a real story, it truly stinks of corruption. As another poster mentioned, only the kids will have to suffer using that MS shite -- all just to fill the pockets of those greedy monopolists. A pox on the Redmond scourge, I say.

I think they might be shipped with Windows ME (anyone remember that cockup?)

When you've reached the point where you're bribing corrupt politicians or officials instead of concentrating on making your product package a legitimately better and more attractive solution... When you don't realize that this sort of unethical practice only has a limited lifespan... When don't seem notice that your own product is lagging further and further behind what your competitors are offering... And you think you can keep getting away with it... then its only a matter of time... Empires rise and empires fall... Toward their end they are usually dirty and messy and pathetic like this.

Meaning home users, businesses, governments in the developed world pay M$ outrageous license fees - thus allowing M$ to offer China or these fine Nigerian folks a OS + Office for $3 or less. In effect we're all underwriting this activity everytime we buy a M$ product.

And working in a school (doing tech support) it really pisses me off when school districts pay license fees to these goons --- or vampires at a highly inflated rate (compared to $3).

At this point I only deal with M$ as its part of my job -- OS X & Linux are my primary personal OS's at home ...... Bill and Balmer can rot in hell

Am I the only one wondering what the B-Word is meant to be? The common (if you can call it that) meaning of b-word is b*itch. Oh Steve, you're such a b*itch!!?

You mean to say that here in South Africa I should really only be paying around R21 for Windows (at US$1 to R7) instead of the R3000 I have to fork out? Hmmm, seems that the message never got through to the resellers down here.

To quote Nelson Muntz.( on the first Nigerian BSOD)

"HA ha."

"we're worried all those Nigerian school children will soon be using an OS that has difficulty running more than one application at a time"

If this is your experience of Vista it maybe time to upgrade the 486?

Really ? .. point me the way of the free scag dude ..

Really, several million minus points for a rubbish analogy.

I simply consider this one more reason why I'll be switching over to FreeBSD on my laptop the moment there is a good replacement for the following two apps:

--RealFlight G3 (This app alone saves me a lot of money each year)

--LightRoom.

I will have to manage without CS2 (No need for me to upgrade to CS3 yet, and given its lock in to two unethical os vendors, I doubt there will ever be a need to do that).

So if anybody has any good replacements for those two, that will run on FreeBSD (read again: FreeBSD!), I'd be glad to make the switch.

//Svein

As soon as Microsoft come along with a proper grown up product, and displace Loonix from one of its tiny sucesses, the Linux faithful's only response is "they must have bribed the government". Obviously nothing to do with Windows being better, or a desire to have interoperability with 95% of the world. Oh no.

Drug dealers and computer salesman both refer to their customers as "Users"

Why should we feel sorry for a generation of students in a foreign country who don't get to use the better OS - when we are happy to insist our own kids use the MS stuff?

The Nigerian govt (corruption aside - I did live there once) has a duty to educate their kids in whatever environment *we* impose on the modern business world. As long as we insist young employees understand how to use Windows-based software then educating them in something else is wrong. We should get our own act in order - any UK school that uses Windows should ensure they don't use Word, or IE or anything that'd make OS independence harder for students and employers.

Peru is a shining example of how *we* should be acting, but we can't seriously expect developing countries to take the lead in FOSS when the 1st world businesses treat it like a dirty secret.

Unfortunately, there are certain applications, and certain pieces of hardware, that can't be used with Linux, thanks to companies who seem to enjoy kissing MS' arse. Added to that the difficulty of buying a machine without Windows installed and many people, myself included, feel they have no option but to pay for a copy of Windows. I feel more inclined to blame these companies for this kind of situation than MS itself -- after all, a corporation is there to make maximum return on the shareholders investment in the short term, and nothing else.

Luckily, more and more companies seem to be supporting Linux, and the likes of Dell are pre-installing Linux on some machines (admittedly a token, and pointless gesture at present).

Since the procurement obviously came a long way to be loaded with Mandriva in the first place, then it was overturned at a fairly high level in the hierarchy. Which means the number of bribes was necessarily small, allowing for a greater sum in each case.

An excellent problem for maths students - optimal government level to maximize individual bribe lure while minimizing total cost of bribery (TCB).

Look, I love bashing MS as much as the guy - but look at this from an education POV. Rightly or wrongly the vast majority of software used by and for non-tech jobs runs on MS. Look at the ECDL / ICDL certification: the core of the curriculum centres around MS software. Why? Because MS Word and Excel and PPT are the packages that people in the real world (i.e. the non IT world) need to use on a daily basis.

17,000 PCs lashed into schools in Nigeria running Linux will result in thousands of kids leaving schools in Nigeria looking for jobs in offices that run MS software and having less experience than their competitors. If you'd stop your blind Beast of Redmond ranting for 2 secs you'd see that it's better for the kids to know MS than Linux. In todays office / corporate jobs linux is largely an irrelevance.

The issue of "how" MS managed to swing the lead so they got the deal - that to me is a separate issue. For once, (possible) corporate wrong-doing seems to have had a decent result.

some cheap & old Toshiba laptop with 256MB of RAM. The processor was more powerful, though - and still it was unbelievably slow. Nigerian children and teachers won't be happy with it. Most likely they will replace it with Linux anyway, very soon. Mandriva needs only to make sure they will have quick & convenient way to do it.

"Microsoft operates its business in accordance both with the laws of the countries in which it operates and with international law."

Oh sure. That explains the multiple convictions MS got in multiple areas of the word. Hey, Microsoft even has a conviction for software piracy on its rape sheet http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/05/10/microsoft_winds_up_on_both/

"thus allowing M$ to offer China or these fine Nigerian folks a OS + Office for $3 or less. In effect we're all underwriting this activity everytime we buy a M$ product."

If it were softwood instead of software, your Congress would be screaming bloody blue murder about dumping.

Where is the WTO?

Ohh, I'd calm down on those. Alleging corruption, without proof. After the recent football + message board ruling. You could soon find yourselves in court facing the might of Microsofts lawyers.

they had a second look at Mandrake and went, this is shit, my wireless device doesn't work, let's have Windows.....

and cue flames....please use capitals, that really makes want to stay in tonight.

Nigeria - 'nuff said. May the people of Nigeria soon share in the prosperity and wealth that lies in their land.

What does Balmer see when he looks in the mirror? Just the room behind him.

Nigerian customer purchases Linux.

Nigerian customer tries Linux.

Nigerian customer rejects Linux.

Nigerian customer has a quick look at OS X then realises everything sucks except for Windows.

Nigerian customer chooses Vista.

All is well with the world.

And the second letter of the alphaxet is quite unnecessary.

"..in accordance both with the laws of the countries in which it operates and with international law."

This is just to show the Nigerian Kids how Shitty there PC's will run with Windows on them, teach them how to format a hard drive and install a real OS on it!!

NIGERIANS ARE SMART!

Certainly there's enmity between these two. However, it's not like Mandriva didn't get paid. Why these people would want to pay twice, is beyond me. MS must have sweetened the pot somehow. It couldn't be through giving away copies of Windows, so it must be in the form of other subsidies, or some kind of philanthropic donations to other causes. Unless this is entirely personal, it certainly illustrates that MS is beginning to really fear the encroaching Linux user base and Open Source movement--over which it has no control. Without going into Windows problems, and how much of a resource hog Windows is, especially with some of the equipment likely to be in use in a third-world nation, I find it a shame that they decided to be tied to MS. If they'd have chosen Linux, they'd be much more independent from the US, and corporate interests, and I imagine it would have been far cheaper in the long run for them. Of course thinking for yourself is poison to most governments and big business.

It seems remarkably odd to suggest bribery was involved. It is hardly as if any would really be needed.

On the whole I'm sure that both sides would regard the exercise as one of hard bargaining, and of the sort that has gone on in Britain with MS versus open source for a while. Government chooses product A over produce B as a lever to try to drive the vendor of product B to provide better pricing. If it succeeds everyone is happy. Now if it turns out that MS made the price zero, well, it is very likely that the Nigerians involved felt that they had done a very good job.

One thing you almost certainly won't find in Nigeria are laws related to predatory pricing and monopolistic behaviour. They are are bit of a first and second world phenomenon. Long term this deal may not be a great idea for MS. You can be pretty sure that every other third world nation will be expecting a similar deal. And will be expecting repeats. There is an element of brinkmanship - can MS get each nation hooked before it ramps up the prices? One suspects that the answer will be no. It is too late in the game. But if you were a shareholder in MS (and given their size and share's reputation as a good safe harbour for fund managers - you probably are) you would be asking hard questions of its management if MS didn't give it a go.

In all it is business as usual, with no real change from any other large business.

"So what's your problem, bitch?"

My problem is they lost the deal and his reponse is to spit the dummy in public it just makes him sound like a whinger. I'm mean surely everyone already knows what depts MS will go to.

... in international law.

The Nigerians had plenty of opportunity to buy the Windows version and must have been offered a very good deal by MS at the time. They declined. They went for the Mandriver offer and then suddenly decide to buy Windows AS WELL. How can buying both be a better deal? If Windows were free it would still cost them to do all the reinstalls. So they must have been offered Windows and something else to make it worth their while. If Ballmer didn't directly bribe someone, and this is Nigeria after all <sarcasm>not the affluent west were no one ever takes a bribe </sarcasm> and buying somebody is relatively cheap, then MS must have agreed to do something for somebody, Build a dam, equip an air force, That kind of thing. Smacks of desperation to me.

I would LOVE to work in the MS accounts office to see some of these invoices come through. e.g.

From: Lagos Limousine Hire and Gvt Supply Co

for supply of transport for MS sales staff to/from logos international airport on the weekend of .......... $250,000.00

It's unclear whether the Mandriva deal was with the Nigerian federal government, a state government or a local government. If it's the Federal Government then they already have a deal with MS, so they wouldn't pay any extra to install XP on those systems.

Microsoft also encourages the use of its products by providing 'free' training courses for Federal Government employees. It's likely that some money is diverted to senior officials as well, that's just the way business is done there (not too different from here, just more blatant).

There are two good reasons for using Windows in education in Nigeria:

1. Somebody is going to have to maintain those systems. They're much more likely to be familiar with Windows than some Linux distro. Local knowledge of Linux is very limited.

2. Users know what applications they want to use. In particular Microsoft Word and Corel Draw. People want the 'genuine' product, not what they regard as a 'fake' substitute. Windows apps are also what children are much more likely to encounter outside school.

I've just completed two and a half years working in IT in Nigeria. My enthusiasm for spreading Linux was rapidly worn down by the realities there.

It's always perfectly lawful to bribe the lawful authority. This works very well for MS in most countries and in the United States in particular. If the EU was just a little more obliging, MS would have no legal worries in the world...

'nuf said...

How many bank accounts in how many countries would you need to review to find the key to this puzzle? Steve won't lose any sleep on this one.

It was the code name for the first release of Vista. Wasn't it?

...and similar messages.

I am kinda skeptical of this reasoning that they have to be trained to use what's out there. For two reasons:

1) when they come out of school in 5 to 10 years, the software will be significantly different -- or are they going to keep updating these things religiously, as soon as the new versions are out? I doubt it, specially in poor places. Which leads to the second point...

2) the "educational" side of this. Should school teach you how to "think computer" or just train you to press buttons on the screen of a handful of applications? Of course this is a general problem in school, not just computer related -- otherwise science classes wouldn't just make you memorize stuff, but would teach you the scientific method, critical thinking, etc. for example.

Really? The fact that Winblows is prepackaged on 95% of all computer shipped these days has absolutely _nothing_ to do with it? Of, and for what it's worth, I wiped out my Vista install and went to XP Pro on my new system. None of my games would run in Vista.

.. doesn't it seem like they're behaving like a cornered rat? Makes one wonder what they know that we don't that's inspiring such acts of desperation-- or is it just pure paranoia? It doesn't show a lot of confidence in their products. You'd think if they'd use all that energy and cunning to produce a well designed OS that people would actually prefer to use, they'd fare better. Linux in fact, is actually doing pretty well because it's better, not because it's cheaper-- noone is twisting anybodies arms to use it or to improve it. But, MS would have to forgo the heavy handed bully techniques they use on their developers (and their customers, it seems), something they just can't seem to outgrow. Waterboarding techniques just don't produce a good OS any more than they produce good intelligence.

with your Linux and run Microsoft Office. And a whole bunch of other Microsoft Apps. Without the headache of Windows.

OS X runs MS Office

Linux runs MS Office

Windows runs MS Office

So why pay so much for Windows these days?

...you have no idea what happened. But of course, the bashers are out in force. I know this is so much pissing into the wind, but how many of you that are here accusing MS of bribery have anything at all to go on other than the knowledge gleaned from this article?

Does anyone teach Critical Thinking or Logic anymore?

Come on. How many people do you know that can actually use Word or Excel even somewhere near the way they're meant to be.

Word is just used like a fancy electric typewriter (except that someone who knew how to use a typewriter might be able to use the tab-key properly) and Excel is used for everything but proper spreadsheets.

So no, kids don't need to learn how to use MS Office products; they just need to be shown how to use a word-processor and a spreadsheet because if they've been taught that properly they'll be able to work out how to do it on any alternative system.

My guess is that MS are giving away Windows for free and paying for the Mandriva licences too (<sarcasm>and given commercial confidentiality I'm sure MS have had to take the Nigerian Government's word on how much they paid for the Mandriva installs</sarcasm>).

I won't be surprised either if the Nigerians never get around to actually paying Mandriva despite the fact they've said they will.

Hello?

I run Suse (Open and use SLES), Fedora, and Knoppix (dropped Mandrake (now Mandriva) after they tanked, had too much trouble with their product back then anyway. Might be good now though, don't know) plus some XPs.

Hate to say it, but while XPs up time is lower than the Linux distros, the MS patch history is, well, much much better. I am really tired of recovering Linux boxes that have gone titsup after a "security" patch-- the boxes are insecure if no one wants to install the patches due to a risk of losing the box too. The XP boxes keep on ticking along patch after patch, MS learned their lesson. The Linux distros haven't, or maybe cannot afford to properly regression test their patches.

Whatever. MS is pulling ahead on what they do best-- ease of use. And rarely does XP clobber configuration files like Linux patches are notorious for.

If Nigeria went with Linux, they would become a great source of help desk workers for Linux, since the students would need to spend a lot of time repairing dead software.

I'm posting from one of several boxes running FC6-- my primary copy of Suse 10.0 that I normally use is, you guessed it, titsup and waiting for a pumpup (probably to 10.2). Every propeller head should use Linux, the other 99% of the world is presently better off with MS or FreeBSD, er, MAC.

If you don't like the facts, change them. Invest your time in improving the free open software available instead of MS bashing.

I have attended a couple of presentations given by Microsoft executives in the last 12 months. Most have centered around some aspect of security, and all have been given (initially) on a laptop running Vista.

I do not run Vista personally, so I cannot personally attest to how Vista's qualities. I can, however, speak to the fact that at EVERY SINGLE presentation, the M$ executive speaking had to eventually switch to a machine running XP, because his/her Vista presentation laptop repeatedly crashed. I feel bad for the apologetic presenters, because I am sure there is a company policy concerning presenting on Vista.

If a new car model continually broke on the showroom floor, would YOU rave about it, let alone buy a fleet of them for your business?

classic!

Someone once posited that a million monkeys with a typewriter each would oneday somehow magically write Shakespeareian content.

Imagine the new Linux-based spam/viruses 17000 computers in the hands of kids could do. Keep them kids in the Windows arena so I can stress less about my linux firewall.

Doesn't matter if it is 17,000 or 17,000,000. There's not going to be an increase in viruses for Linux. Spam may jump, virus infections in windoze will jump (but then, that's gonna happen anyway).

But a properly administered *nix/BSD system will not be able to get hit b y infections in the same way windoze users do. And that's basically because it has a decent security model (ie only admin can write to system files, not the lowliest guest account - no matter how things are set up).

Sure there's the odd hole here and there - still far less than windoze. But these will not mean that any virus infection worth worrying about can hit a Linux box..

The main things you will need to worry about are either some hacker getting in and screwing things up, or someone installing windoze and nortons on your firewall machine. If that happens, you're screwed.

I use both XP and linux at home and work. Maybe its going to be a cut back version, which consumes less resources. Great, where can I download that version?

Maybe they'll dual boot and teach both. Either way, microsoft loses money which is great. That's why I originally bought an xbox :)

I imagineMS did use the V word - MS favourite - Bundling - you just keep adding products to the mix for free until the customer decides to go with your software...

As Sir Humphrey would say; "That's a courageous statement!" The western world runs windows (on desktops and laptops, almost true), however on low computing power devices (as these systems are ) it is a very different story, without unix/linux, routers are a set of pretty LEDs , your mp3 player turns into a paper-weight....

on Desktops laptops. the op sys is by and large a program launcher, running firefox and open office and supporting users with those packages , makes op sys agnosticism an easier and realistic option. the problems are by and large bad writing by web designers either accidentally or by design, eg unnecessary ie only features, or importing closed standards documents from microshaft's tubby and unwieldy office.

Hahahaha are you serious? Microsoft's patch history is better then Linux? I'm no fanboy but I've read plenty of stories where weird and wonderful things happened after an XP patch was applied. In the 6 months I've been using Ubuntu after I got sick of Vista I've never had any issues with a patch nor have I ever heard of any such problems.

Imagine this scenario:

17,000 PCs running Windows = $X milion

17,000 PCs running Linux = $Y million (where Y < X)

Purchase order for 17,000 PCs running Linux made out for $Y million

Invoice to Nigerian government for 17,000 PCs running Windows made out for $X million

Intermediary/someone pockets ($X - $Y) million.

Judging by people's apparent opinion of Nigeria and its government, it doesn't sound a too far fetched situation. Maybe MS just made a better offer? ;)

Nigerian school children are the last people we (you) want on unix?

err, are you *sure* that's what you meant?

you can have an OS that is used by the nerd minority or the most popular OS in the world - difficult choice

LMFAO!!!

<quote>As long as we insist young employees understand how to use Windows-based software then educating them in something else is wrong. </quote>

What are you talking about? What does windows do? Runs programs and manages files, thats all, exactly like Linux does. Point click drag drop. That's all.

At my school we are 100% linux. Naturally we use OOo. Do I think kids can manage on Windows and MS Office? Of course they can, its the same, only simpler and easier (only 1 choice of everything, designed for your grandma to be able to understand)