The new Israeli administration has invited Microsoft to head a government IT steering comittee – the item caused a bit of a ruckus in the Israeli Open Source community a few months ago – although I personally feel that as the world’s largest software vendor – they have a lot to contribute.
Now I think we have reached a new level of Microsoft sycophancy with the Obama administration implementing a Bush decision to standardize IT but in a way that makes practically no sense at all – let’s ban all non IE browsers. It’s really scary to what lengths the Obama administration will go undo Bush policy.
In keeping with the requirements of the Federal Desktop Core Configuration, all third-party browsers will be removed from customer workstations beginning Tuesday, Aug.18. Internet Explorer is the standard browser and will be maintained. Netscape, Google Chrome and Firefox will be removed.”
It does make sense to standardize on a browser – but why standardize on the most vulnerable browser and operating system? Why not standardize on Ubuntu and FF 3 on the desktop or standardize on diskless workstations with Citrix or TightVNC?
The full item is here – USDA unit bans browsers other than Internet Explorer