Honestly, security experts don't pick on Microsoft because we have some fundamental dislike for the company. Indeed, Microsoft's poor products are one of the reasons we're in business. We pick on them because they've done more to harm Internet security than anyone else, because they repeatedly lie to the public about their products' security, and because they do everything they can to convince people that the problems lie anywhere but inside Microsoft. Microsoft treats security vulnerabilities as public relations problems. Until that changes, expect more of this kind of nonsense from Microsoft and its products. (Note to Gartner: The vulnerabilities will come, a couple of them a week, for years and years ... until people stop looking for them. Waiting six months isn't going to make this OS safer.)

Given the effect the decision by IBM to cut access to the source has on the market, which effectively considers RH clones as public infrastructure, why hasn't the USA Federal Trade Commission stepped in, especially given the lock in through the OEM agreements with Microsoft & RH?

For example as with the Telecom industry attempt to move away from the Network Neutrality model in 2006.
https://itheresies.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_archive.html
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2006/08/ftc-chairman-addresses-issue-net-neutrality

When you consider how many business, organisations, governmental services & just people use services hosted on CENTOS clones.

The main problem is that OEMs test & even validate server/workstation/desktop/laptop hardware for both Microsoft & RedHat OSs on the OEM provided hardware, under agreements which MAY have caveats that effect competition.

Currently you can get around this by when you purchase, lease or collocate OEM hardware originally purchased with the NO-Operating-System option or more likely second hand, but if the hardware has been tested with Red Hat Enterprise Linux it should work as expected under CENTOS clones.

It opens the market to other providers as does Telecom Network Neutrality. IBM's decision to limit source access under any licence limiting redistribution significantly changes the market and should be investigated by the FTC and other competition monitoring agencies in the EU & worldwide.

Wrong things on Stack Exchange?

No! That could never happen!

[12] Governments, organisations and individuals are becoming increasingly concerned about software compatibility, conflicts and the possible existence of spyware in the software applications they use. If you have access to the source code, then you can check it and compile it for yourself. This is not an option for closed source proprietary applications, and not everyone has the resources to check each line of source code. One solution for these issues is to employ a trusted third party, separate from the application developer, who is tasked with maintaining a trusted build environment, to build the binaries from source code. The Trusted Build Agent (TBA) would hold the source to each build in escrow, releasing the source code for only open source licensed code. Competing businesses providing a TBA service in a free market would compete with each other in not only price and level of certification, but also on the ability to detect hostile, vulnerable, incompatible or just plain buggy source code. You could request a trusted build from multiple TBAs test the ability to detect defects. Defects would be reported back to the application developers, along with any patches and suggestions that provide a fix. To a lesser extent, most Linux distributions and other operating system vendors that build and redistribute open source licensed code already provide this role.

The reality is that Windows 10 contains enough API additions vs. Windows 7 that app developers have to give up stuff to remain compatible with Windows 7. Does tax software really need to use any of those API's? Probably not. But all it takes is one critical dependency that uses them, and the application is forced along for the ride.

Also, most developers simply don't want to deal with keeping applications running on older OS versions. It's a pain in the ass, and at some point there is no financial incentive to do it. Eventually most customers have moved on to the new OS.

Well, that's what they tried to do. That was three weeks ago. The latest news (what this article is about) is that on their second or third try, the backed nearly all the way down, and are no longer doing that.

The reason I say "nearly" is that they're not trying to de-authorize the OGL 1.0a just for now; they haven't said they won't try to do it again in the future. (And, yes, I would agree with you, as does, for instance, Paizo, that that's not something they can do, and Paizo has said they will defend that in court.)

So, for now, WotC isn't trying to do anything that bad any more. They've gone back on trying to un-open all the gaming content that's been open for 23 years. Slashdot is a few weeks behind on this story. There's been a LOT of very heated response (and fairly one-sided anti-WotC response) on gaming message boards and th elike.

It's always rich when a billionaire complains about excessive employee compensation.

I don't know if this is talked about, but for mere scientists trying to *use* HPC facilities, this is often the truth:

Myth: our CPU/Accelerator performance metrics are meaningful even though our filesystems bog many jobs down to death

This sounds like a feature, not a bug...

The earthquake also cracked the spent fuel cooling pools that were located on top of the reactors. Those were leaking and a real fear at the time (I was living in Tokyo when it happened) was that if the pools emptied the spent fuel would self-ignite and we'd get a nice cloud of radioactive dust floating towards Tokyo.

The biggest thing that wasn't handled in the disaster planning was that not only was the nuclear power plant damaged, but all of the surrounding infrastructure was destroyed and a national scale disaster around the plant was happening. Japan had just gone through a massive earthquake, upwards of 20,000 people were reported dead early on and the problems at Fukushima were not the primary concern the first few days after the earthquake. The scenario for dealing with failed diesel generators would have been to truck in new generators which could have been handled before the reactors melted down in normal circumstances except it was impossible to get to the plant. The "Heavy Rescue" unit from the Tokyo fire department headed to Fukushima to help. It took them three days to get there because the roads were blocked in so many places. TEPCO was in "everything's fine, it's OK, it's OK" mode and the Japanese political level of the government was the Democratic Party of Japan who had not held power in decades and none of the political level people knew how to manage a disaster and it showed.

By the time Fukushima started receiving the kind of national level attention that it warranted the reactors were in meltdown.

I can predict with confidence that we are NOT reaching the end of blowhards making bold and broad pronouncements.

In a recent speech "Fixing Network Security by Hacking the Business Climate", also now on Technetcast, Bruce Schneier claimed that for change to occur the software industry must become libel for damages from "unsecure" software. However, historically this has not always been the case, since most businesses can insure against damages and pass the cost along to the consumer.

The Ford Pinto and more recently the Ford Explorer's tires are two examples of public and media pressure being more successful than just threat of lawsuits. Even so, just as with the automotive industry, eventually though public pressure the governments around the world have to step in and pass regulations that set up a minimum set of requirements an automobile has to meet to be deemed "road worthy". This includes crash testing as well as the inclusion of safety equipment on all models. The requirement are not constant and change to meet the expectations and demands of the public and lawmakers.

The onus is not only on the automotive industry itself but also on the users. Most countries require that all automobiles undergo regular inspection and maintain an up to date "Warrant of Fitness".

In the same way, if you want a secure IT infrastructure, eventually the software design, implementation and each deployment will have to undergo the same type of regulation and scrutiny.