Microsoft: Trust and Antitrust 539
Microsoft is in the news for two reasons today: the continuing saga of the antitrust cases, and Microsoft's public relations push for "trustworthy computing". A selection of links: Microsoft claims two months of code reviews and half-day seminars surpasses everything ever done by the open source community; Salon talks about the problems with a monoculture; SBC, an abusive telecom monopoly, complains about Microsoft's behavior, an abusive OS monopoly; and Microsoft responds, claiming that SBC is merely being self-serving.
Brainwashed geeks? (Score:3, Interesting)
No comment needed.
Windows XP SP1 (Score:2, Interesting)
The telling statement (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft.com Running on Linux(DNS at Akamai) (Score:2, Interesting)
Wired News reported today that Microsoft has outsourced their DNS to Akamai, and microsoft.com is now being served by name servers with a "networking implementation very similar to that of Linux". Akamai Technologies is a well-known Linux shop, but let's see.
Re:Two months? Get real. (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, I think both sides have code review procedures which are legitimate. MS is bragging because the open source community can't match what it did within its own procedure. It would be like waterfall method people bragging that they got a product out the door in fewer milestones than an extreme team did. An answer to this is, "Ok, good for you but saying you are better than me is a non-sequitor."
Re:Brainwashed geeks? (Score:3, Interesting)
We geeks tend to be facinated by "the newest thing", and rush to try it, and then preach it's merits to anyone who will listen. I know I'm generalizing, and there are people still happily running 2.0 kernels, but look at the general trend. We don't mind using version 0.0.7b6 of products that are cool without thinking twice about it.
Once we learn something new, we tend to make great use of it. And we seem to think of little else. That's probably what he was aiming for in that quote.
And remember, he's knocking his own geeks too.
Microsoft schizophrenic (Score:2, Interesting)
after "Microsoft asked Kollar-Kotelly to throw out much of Schwartz's testimony"
Re:Two months? Get real. (Score:2, Interesting)
There's still a lot more potential manpower in OSS. As has been proven in several big OSS projects, like Mozilla for one, just because there are tens of thousands of people who can work on a poject, it doesn't mean there will be tens of thousands of people who do work on a project.
resignation and postmortem. [jwz.org]
The truth is that, by virtue of the fact that the contributors to the Mozilla project included about a hundred full-time Netscape developers, and about thirty part-time outsiders, the project still belonged wholly to Netscape -- because only those who write the code truly control the project.
Re:Windows XP SP1 (Score:3, Interesting)
And why do I need IE and Media Player on a server that's only running a database?
Step #1 of security, remove and/or disable everything to don't need to get the job done.
MSFT has been ignoring that for years, but maybe they are finally starting to learn.
Remember who we're talking about... (Score:3, Interesting)
You want security? Fine, buy our subscription products.
You guys really think that? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm willing to bet that you'll be retracting that statement when something blows up in your code or if some new security hole is discovered by some script kiddie. We have the results to show that code review should not be a rush job.
Classic trade off (Score:1, Interesting)
"User convenience" vs security is a classic trade off in engineering and it has long been considered a classic trade off in programming. While "ease of use" and "user convenience" are not identical there is enough of "ease of use" in "user convenience" that I have to question one of the following:
your use of the word orthogonal especially as modified by entirely,
your knowledge of programming,
your knowledge of security
Just because you can't trust anything that Microsoft says, does not mean that _everything_ they say is false. They do attempt to contaminate their bulls**t with a few grains of truth.
Re:The telling statement (Score:3, Interesting)
You're giving them a lot of credit for essentially catching onto something that was about as difficult to ignore as, say, Woodstock going on in your backyard. With the billions of dollars and expectations pouring into companies like Netscape, it would have required nothing short of a deliberate act of self-destruction for MS to ignore what was going on.
Purchasing and developing a web browser in order to compete with a company that had very publicly vowed to put you out of business and buying web services like hotmail (for embarassingly high prices) do not brilliant business strategy make. Even today IIS is not the dominant web server, despite years of aggressive marketing.
As far as I can see, all Microsoft has done is react and trade on their already tough-to-beat desktop monopoly and cash reserves like they were going out of style. With .NET, they're just doing more reacting, at least so far, by implementing what is essentially a Java lookalike and backing it up with Microsoft monopoly and marketing clout.
Re:Bad Idea for Microsoft (Score:5, Interesting)
And even with those misleading statistics, the only distro above NT/2000 (42) is Red Hat (54).
Your lack of objectivity renders your entire article irrelevant.
Re:Key to user security... (Score:4, Interesting)
I've seen you, and others, bandy about this type of statistic for some time. But I have not found a single reference to back it up. Can you back this statistic up with a valid reference?
Re:Key to user security... (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the amazing things about Microsoft is its ability to turn on a dime. They almost missed the Internet. Then they played an amazing game of catch-up.
But that does not mean they will be able to do it every time.
There is a major difference in the nature of Microsoft's first two challenges (desktop and internet) and its current one (security). The first two were really exercises in marketing. The third is a technical challenge.
Re:impressive chutzpah or bad math? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm tired of the Microcrap way of doing PR business. It's mis-information, and their bluff should be called. We need a good, respectable venue that people will look to, to get the facts...
Re:Bad Idea for Microsoft (Score:3, Interesting)
Then again probably not, FreeBSD has had every line of code reviewed before, and if you count the fact that it has more functionality pound for pound.
Some may chime in about how Open Source is supposedly a constant large scale code review but I've previously written on the fallacy of this kind of thinking
Oh well QE- fucking - D then, if YOU wrote on it we must be wrong. Let me clue you in, no developer, company, or whatever can prepare for every eventuality, once past a certain threshold no code can be 100% secure. There's always the possibility, that something will come along to break it. And when that thing comes, it's the OSS that gets fixed quicker, and better than any commercial offering.
Re:Key to user security... (Score:3, Interesting)
Still, this statistic is hardly a good indication that all Linux installations "in the wild" are being compromised within X hours. And this is the claim that is constantly made, complete with bogus statistics.