FrankForum (Frankness IS Forum)

Office 365, Bing, and many other MSFT products -- even if you don't use Windows or Windows 10 -- now have the same heinous provisions as in Windows 10.

Office 2016 ends up perhaps tangentially tainted. I tried to cover the basics, here.

Overall significance and source text links and meaning, I tried to summarize, here.

The basic point is, if you use ANY of the products listed here, then you're covered by the same heinous provisions in aka.ms/msa as if you were using Windows 10. So you want to avoid those products, too.

Most importantly, since they can change the listing of 'covered services' at any time, to protect the data of clients, you just should avoid any new MSFT products altogether. For the old stuff, you already have a license, and that license governs. MSFT cannot change the old license without your consent, even as it cannot change the list without informing you.

So your best defense, is to avoid new MSFT products altogether, until someone on the lawyer team slaps the other lawyers upside the head for writing paragraphs 2, 3, 7 -- which are all lawsuits waiting to happen, ultimately unconstitutional in the US.

MSFT reinvents itself as a 'services' company: meaning, its software is integrated online. Usage is newly subject to a hitlerian EULA, including aka.ms/msa (paste that into your browser). Its terms apply to all 'Services': http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/services ... rviceslist . So your Microsoft Account, Bing, Office 365 Skype, etc. are all on that list, along with the essential services for Windows 10. Which means:

• 1. Hoovering rights are claimed over all your data by Microsoft (Paragraph 2 of aka.ms/msa ), and
  2. Your data will be policed by Microsoft without due process of law.. for conformance to its 'Code of Conduct' (Paragraph 3 of aka.ms/msa ), including whether in MSFT's opinion,
  3. You are using what it considers illicit software or hardware (Paragraph 7 of aka.ms/msa), in which case
  4. MSFT reserves the right to 'stop' or 'remove' 'services', which can include your ability to use your data (Paragraph 3b and 7 of aka.ms/msa ).

So even if you never use Windows 10, but you use any of those 'services', to the extent of those services, not only is YOUR data ransomed, but also any confidential data of anyone on your machine. Further, if some of their activity is deemed in violation, since it's on your machine, you might be liable. At any rate, others' data on YOUR machine means you can be sued by those others for MSFT having access to your data.

A greater litigious nightmare is difficult to imagine. Read aka.ms/msa for yourself. More details are covered under the Windows 10 EULA provisions (in which these are wholly incorporated by reference), click here.

Read for yourself. Be armed.

Adding insult to injury, the gal who ruined MS Office is now finally going to head it, http://www.infoworld.com/article/299774 ... ffice.html

So no more hope that MS Office will ever improve, again.

I had to download Chrome to comment, only to find that my comment was put on moderation, despite the fact I used no links nor any swear words. So I copied the comment, and here it is. Comment was a reply to some guy glibly claiming that the ribbon was a roaring success.
So now I need 1John1:9.

Ed Fries (then at Microsoft) was the guy who spearheaded Microsoft Word to beat WordPerfect:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od_kGGW-Xq4

And as he explains, when he leaves the Office division to work on the Microsoft games division, the management was disappointed (however I'm grateful because he assisted Ensemble Studios with Age of Empires and a bunch of other products). What's interesting about it all though, is how Ed explains it was easier for him to work without 'excessive management' when he moved into the games division. It wasn't seen as a lucrative division, so he had free reign to do whatever. Of course ONCE it became successful, then management hounds down on it (just like when the Office division became successful).

Here's a bonus video where he talks about why he left Microsoft:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkTIE2EHfpY

Julie Larson-Green doesn't have experience with computer products like Ed Fries, and probably doesn't understand the historical challenges with WordPerfect and Lotus. And if you don't understand those historical challenges and why certain things were designed a certain way, you'll make [wrong] decisions.

On that note I quite like Office 2007 (however I still use PowerPoint '03 because it has some graphical features that were removed in 2007 for whatever reason... thankfully they can be installed side-by-side). But quite honestly, I loathe Office 2013. It takes longer to load than any other office, the interface is horrible, aaaaand... customization features were removed that *were* present in 2010. Why?! Why remove features that people have used, like the visually impaired (there was a whole thread about people who increased the font size in specific windows of Outlook 2010 couldn't do it in 2013 anymore).

If I take your last paragraph and substitute '2003' for 2007 and '2010', and '2007' for '2013', you and I would have said the same thing.

2007 couldn't even print properly on an old HP 4050 printer. That ribbon was completely unintelligible, and in Win7 it is even worse.

I could turn the 2003 menu into a ribbon or anything of any structure I want. So if I were a Fortune 500 company, I could 100% customize 2003 Office, and I'm sure many did. Same, for XP.

That's why people don't 'upgrade', the employee retraining costs are high and the gain in productivity is zero.

Well 'upgrade' is starting to become a relative term. What's an 'upgrade' for some is a 'downgrade' for others. So then, is constant change improving, or simply that just change?

The next generation replacing the previous one of old mainframe folks doesn't understand scalability as it once was. They all think *change* is the advancement of technology. And you end up with individuals proclaiming how advanced technology is when they don't even realize that their generation forgot all of the technology that they're repeating from the previous one...

Good points. Applies to the management competence, too. Current management in many companies is very low in quality, compared to 40 years ago. Website design, programming, many things are far inferior. Which, those now doing it don't know, because they don't know what it HAD BEEN.

Okay, if you type in aka.ms/msa into your browser, you get the official text of the EULA applying to MSFT's 'services', with Bing and Cortana (inter alia) listed at the end. Paragraph 3 of aka.ms/msa is the POLICING provision, with 3a being the 'Code of Conduct' you're expected to 'obey'. 3b covers POLICING: MSFT asserts that right over ALL your private stuff to see if you are 'obeying' 3a.

So it's allowed to spy on all your private data BY CONTRACT. You agree to that CONTRACT simply by using the services enumerated as 'under' that aka.ms/msa, as you're told in the very first two paragraphs, of it:


Notice: through your use. What does that mean? Does it mean that the first time you use the services, you are thereafter subject to Paragraph 3 slurping? Does it mean only WHILE you are using the services, you are subject?

Note that either way, you are being slurped. It's only a question of how often, and the language is deliberately vague enough that EITHER interpretation can be claimed. So now the issue centers on what happens to your machine when you first used or do use, the services. What telemetry/cookies do, and what gets planted on your device.

So now, think: Bing is a search engine. If you're using Win10, it's baked in. So too, Cortana. Of course, everything on your Win10 device is slurped, as its own EULA Paragraph 14 expressly says aka.ms/msa is wholly applicable to "the software", not merely the services. So you know, to stay away from Win10.

But what if you're on iOS when you use these or the other 'services'? Or Linux? And then, you use Bing or Cortana (the latter newly being available to iOS)?

SAME THING. For Linux, this would be easy, as the software is open source, so the extensions of files would be known. Apple software has been out for a long time, so its file extensions are also long known, and anyone with an Apple machine could thus read them. So slurping them and then reading the files, can be done.

So the danger of MSFT's slurping stuff isn't limited to Windows.

Now, the justification for the slurping was, to see if you're obeying MSFT's own unilaterally imposed and undefined, 'Code of Conduct', which bypasses all due process of law in any nation on earth.

So the unthinking will ASSume, well I have nothing to hide, no big deal. Indeed, you see that same stupid claim all over ZDnet articles on Windows invasion of privacy. What these folks don't think over, is that they are not living on desert islands: all their contacts and data from those contacts are also on the devices, so now third party data breach has occurred. Worse, any of those third parties who are NOT party to the aka.ms/msa terms, might send emails or make mention of stuff which does violate aka.ms/msa terms, and so now the unthinking person's device is 'guilty'. So now whatever removal, disclosure, and other policing rights MSFT arrogated to itself in Paragraph 3b, apply.

Note: there is no due process of law, so there is no recourse to your policeman, your local political representative for your home/host country, nor even to an attorney. You only have the right to arbitration (or whatever is its equivalent in your home/host country). So now your stuff can be borked, removed, etc. Even if you did nothing, but your device is 'guilty' of containing such things from third parties.

Finally, MSFT created Paragraph 3 in order to justify this slurping, again not restricted to Windows devices, so it could aggregate the data and sell it to companies wanting to do data analysis. But unlike Google, MSFT is taking PRIVATE DATA which, you agreed it could do, when you use(d) these 'services'.

So what alternative do you have? BOYCOTT MSFT and anyone else who's using 'devices' or 'services' subject to aka.ms/msa .

That's a nightmare. But what other recourse is there?