Ballmer Beaten by Spyware 501
Devil's BSD writes "At a Windows Vista reviewers conference, Microsoft platform president Jim Allchin told a rather amusing story about Steve Ballmer. Apparently, a friend asked him to rid his computer of the spyware and malware that had accumulated over the years. As the story goes, neither Ballmer nor Microsoft's top engineers could fix the infested computer. The article goes on to discuss and compare Microsoft's new security offering, Windows Live OneCare."
Re:*over the years* (Score:5, Interesting)
The monkey isn't helping (Score:2, Interesting)
"This really opened our eyes to what goes on in the real world," Allchin told the audience.
So I guess their Honeymonkey project [wikipedia.org] isn't working as well as they would've liked...
Re:The Solution (Score:2, Interesting)
If the man at the top and a team of Microsoft's best engineers faced defeat, what chance do ordinary punters have of keeping their Windows PCs virus-free?
That's when ordinary punters turn to Linux, Unix, BSD's, Macs.
Bend over please ... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you wouldn't accept this as an adequate solution for an unreliable car, why would you accept this as an adequate solution for something many of us arguably spend more time in front of? Why not try switching car brands to something more reliable if your current vehicle is so problematic?
* Ford was just used as an example and have nothing against the company itself.
in the old days you could restore from tape (Score:3, Interesting)
now, I just RESTORE my drive to an external periodically. when the internal drive died, I just booted off the system DVD and did a RESTORE back to the newly-installed drive. presto, had MY machine back.
those of you who rotate three disks into two bays on a machine set up for RAID mirroring have a chance in MSland. nobody else does.
Re:Chairs everywhere! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not too sure about that. IIRC this tale unfolded several years ago and was one of the reasons behind MS's big security push. The only thing "new" about it is that Allchin seems to like telling the story over and over, year after year. And it keeps getting publishes as if its a new story.
Re:*over the years* (Score:5, Interesting)
How is this any different than a kernel trojan on linux?
Windows spyware exists?
Excuse me if there actually is some sort of trojan kernel floating around, but I've never even heard of such a thing. It's an interesting concept, though... seems like it would be hard to write a script to automatically install it, given the wide variety of boot configurations (lilo/grub, kernel params, boot partitions that may be unmounted at runtime, etc.). It might be easier to trojan some module in a part of the kernel with a very stable ABI. Or maybe not.
Compromising userspace seems much easier.
Getting back to your point, I agree that the safest thing to do with a compromised machine is wipe it and reinstall, particularly if it's infected with software that actively tries to prevent its removal.
Everyone at ford must first work in the factory. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cue the snarky Linux/MacOS comments, (Score:2, Interesting)
Because I am the administrator and don't want to go through the hassle of switching/using "Run As" when I need to. It's a waste of time, especially when I am the primary user of my computer. When I do something, I do it because I want it to be done. When I install software or change a system setting, I want it to install the software or change the setting -- not ask for a password first. Anything more than a "Are you sure you want to do this?" type dialog is an impediment to me doing what I told the computer to do.
Re:*over the years* (Score:5, Interesting)
Cleaning a computer, at least in my book, requires the following (not necessarily in order): Backup important files, Windows update, add/remove programs for p2p and other annoyances (with reboots), spyware scan, reboot, spyware scan, hijackthis, virus scan, (if virus found, reboot and scan again), registry inspection, reboot with chkdsk. And that's all I did if they just had some popups. Hopefully all that cleaning didn't cause the machine to loop BSODs at boot-up too! A truely thorough cleaning takes at least 5 hours, and that's assuming everything goes well.
So, in my expert opinion (5+ years in tech support), reinstalling usually is much faster. Of course a good ol' Ghost image only takes about 10 minutes, and if you ghosted properly, it'll have all your precious settings!
Re:Everyone at ford must first work in the factory (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:*over the years* (Score:5, Interesting)
I am the IT guy for a small network of 25 PCs and about 6 Macs... I have images on hand for every model of machine. Users know damn well that anything stored on their local computer isn't backed up or safe from deletion, so when they have issues, I double check with them that they don't have anything important that we really, really need to save, and then I use one of my images, install any additional software I don't have in my image, and then give them back a healthy machine about an hour later.
If I think solving an issue on their machine is going to take more than an hour, it gets an image replacement. Saves both on my time getting the machine back up and running, and the user has less down-time.
Re:A tribute to the techs cleaning up after M$ (Score:5, Interesting)
You should; otherwise you, and countless others, are subsidizing Microsoft by lowering their effective TCO.
If you include the cost of your time & effort, I'd argue that Mac Mini's are significantly cheaper than anything else other there.
In order to not seem heartless, I've decided on the following rule for any of my associates/friends/family. If you ask me for advice when purchasing your computer, or if I've warned you about the hazards of Windows and my standard of not supporting it, and you decide to go ahead and purchase a Windows system anyway, I won't support it.
I continue to support "grandfathered" systems, and people who don't know any better. But I make it a point now to warn everyone around me, and I make it a point for them to truly understand that if they go ahead and purchase a Windows system they should allocate funds to hire service technicans to clean out there system, or to pre-protect their system in advance.
I won't do it; my time is worth something, and the difference between a Mac Mini and a Dell crap-box is less than the worth of a few hours of my time. These days, I even tell people I am more than willing to help them setup a boot camp system, and/or a Linux system. But I won't help with Windows problems, because my life is too short, and I'm not interested in covering the hidden external costs of an MS system.
Oh please... (Score:5, Interesting)
That some idiot "wants to do" something is hardly a criterion for classifying something as the normal operation of a product. People "want to do" stupid things they're not qualified for every day. Some want to repair their TV and get zapped by a still charged capacitor. Some want to weld an acetylene tank to their roof while doing repairs there. Some want to run in a drag race with a solid rocket booster strapped to their car. Darwin Awards [darwinawards.com] is full of people who thought that arc welding a grenade to a chain is normal consumer business. It doesn't automatically make it so.
It _is_ possible to operate a Windows PC for years without ever having to remove a single item of spyware. _That's_ the equivalent of driving a car. Or you can be an idiot and drive your car against the wall, or install Claria and everyhing else in sight on your Windows PC. Getting either your car or your PC back to good as new is already a repair job, not the day-to-day business of a normal consumer.
Basically the whole exercise isn't like expecting a BMW executive to be able to drive a BMW. It's more like asking a BMW executive to come fix your paint and tyres after you drove the car through a bed of roses. It's just not his job.
"A better analogy would be that you shouldn't expect an executive at a car manufacturer to be able to drive the company's cars. But of course you would."
Even then, I wouldn't. E.g.:
- most car manufacturers also make trucks (e.g., check out some of the big Mercedes Benz ones), cranes, bulldozers, etc. Acting like it's the exec's job to have a license to operate each of those is just stupid. A lot also make special F1 or rally models. I _don't_ expect them to be able to drive those either. E.g., I don't expect a Honda executive to be able to drive a McLarren-Honda in the F1 races. It's just not his job.
- I also don't expect Boeing executives to be able to fly a plane. Not even a small consumer one, like the Cessna. If he can, kudos to him, but if not, it wasn't his job to start with.
- I don't even expect a console maker to be a l33t console gamer. (And it's a consumer product, right?) Nintendo, for example, used to have someone at the helm who took _pride_ in never having played a video game. The guy used to spew such highly insulting stuff about the gamers, as that RPG fans are losers playing in the dark in their parents' basement. Yet it's the company which pwned the market in the NES and SNES days.
Etc.
Who cares? It's not their job to personally do those things, nor even to personally understand those things. His job is to hire someone who does. _The_ most important thing about management -- and often the difference between a good manager and a PHB -- is knowing when and how to delegate. You can't personally know everything and do everything.
Re:Cue the snarky Linux/MacOS comments, (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't mind that at all; the dimming out kinda grabs your attention. Entering in a password more than once per session, however, is redundant and annoying for me (plus, it raises the issue of the password entry box being fake).