You can enter both but you do not have the right to vandalize or steal from it. The only difference in the current state of "internet" is that if you enter a house uninvited the authorities can charge you but they can't online.

I didn't suggest that scanning ports should be punishable. Its no different then your neighbor snooping on you. It's when you make uninvited entry that its a problem. Leaving your front door open doesn't suggest strangers should just come in. Put an open house sign and all of a sudden it's ok but does that mean you can start wrecking the house and stealing from it? The answer is NO. It should be the same rules online.

The internet isn't a license to be shielded from morality or actual laws.

From the article:

The intent was clearly criminal and should be treated as such.

It's this exact view or the internet of things that makes it the wild west. We treat it as if it's two different worlds when it's really just an extension of our real world.

It comes down to setting standards early on so that they benefit in the long run. Only big companies can do that. It's another means to market your product. It's not illegal or immoral as long as nobody is getting their pockets greased up.

That's because most donations always have a hidden agenda (especially at a business level). Personal and business donations are always benefiting to the donor in one way or another.

Cisco for a long time inserted itself in schools by providing major discounts. They figured that if you train people to use and love Cisco, they will grow up buying Cisco. It's the common case of buy what you know. I did it, you did it and well all do it again.

Ok, but you understand that infiltrating a computer in itself should be an offence right? At least I believe it should be if you weren't authorized to do so.

It's also the reason I asked the question. Is the punishment fitting for the actual damages. If the damages to the 50 000 computers results in 1000 employees losing their job and then a percentage going through depression and hard times feeding their family was it not vile enough to justify a 10-20 year sentence? Is there a $$ figure of damage measurable that can be used to determine the punishment?

That's what seems to have been inconsistent in cyber crime cases. Wasn't there a copyright case that resulted in a 10 year sentence recently? (I though it was featured on /.). I though that case resulted in too harsh a punishment regardless of the dollar figure involved.

Which is exactly why you can only speculate based on known data. I appreciate that you don't trust their word but I would then have to assume you don't trust any publicly traded company's word. Microsoft is just another company trying to gain a share of multiple markets. It's normal for them to adjust their strategy based on what's happening out in the real world.

Anyhow, was nice trading arguments with you.

See, I don't like that. If someone breaks into your house because you left a window open it's still punishable by law. The punishment may be minor but it's still clear cut. Why is it different with unauthorized computer entry?

Some crimes that I'd consider worse got least severe punishment but even that is debatable. If a hacker wrecks 50 000 computers, was there more damage to society than the killing of a human being? Lives are possibly wrecked in different ways which in large enough quantities may equal to more damage than the death of a person. After all the justice system is there to protect society, no one specific member of society. When we imprison a murderer, it isn't for revenge but rather to protect the rest of society.

So my question to those who actually understand the justice system: Is there different levels of offense measured against the damage caused? It appears to be the case for murder (1st, 2nd, 3rd degree)...

Why not?

There are worms that sneaked themselves in hundred of thousands of computer. What about the RPC bug in Windows XP that would cause it to reboot? That's a hack too that affected millions of PCs.

PR Tweets are just as good as you standing in a meeting with them. It's their name in the public saying what is happening.

The articles you'll read online are almost all based off the interview with MS CEO. If you want to get in the nuts and bolts of it read the whole 11 page script from the interview:
As for strategy here's a long script covering 90% of what you're looking for. Keep in mind that the a:https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=http://www.microsoft.com/global/Investor/RenderingAssets/Downloads/FY15/CreditSuisse_Turner.docx

Losing ground? How so. Numbers show otherwise. You can look at one of many stats site such as Global stats and see this. When looking at these numbers you need to narrow down to Europe and NA as that's where their focus has been. In Europe MS has gained 1% in the last year alone. Considering the size of the market that is HUGE. It's small compared to the big players but growth is growth no matter how small it is. In NA it has gained just under a 1%. Again, small number of a very large market.

I tend to agree. MS isn't going to wipe the big players out, they will just end up becoming a big player themselves. At 3% market share they still have a long way to go but as long as their numbers continue to increase they will eventually see the light. I strongly believe that once they break the 10% share it will start increasing quickly as carriers will start pushing their phones.

All this above is only going to be true if they can dissolve the old rumors (that are not longer accurate) and get the carriers to push their products. The current state of affair is that only fan boys or friends of fan boys buy MS phones.

Ballmer is who brought MS to a halt in the end user market. That's all on him for not surrounding himself with the right people

How is MS licensing a walled garden? I'm confused as I find their licensing model to be tailored for each specific facet of their industry: Retail, OEM, Business.

Define real world. You mean end users right? MS sunk the ship with end users. That's been pretty clear for a while now but the new CEO is trying to remedy that.

As for business, I find they improved their product offering as well as the cost and feature set. I cannot see a reason to consider any other platform for most businesses. I'm not talking specialized application here, I'm talking main stream stuff such as centralized storage, permission, workstation management, deployment and more...

You got that right. Without seeing the financials behind all this we can't tell how much MS lost or won. I'd be on the side of saying they won pretty big here.

They did but keep in mind that it may have cost them far more than 14 billion to start from scratch. The value of Nokia was probably far more than 7B so they got it at a bargain. Spending $7B now could mean billions in savings yearly.

My father before retiring purchased a competitor for $360 000. They had to restructure so they laid off most of the staff which cost them $500 000 in severance. This move increased the company's revenue by over $4 000 000 a year in addition to gaining control of all patents the company owned also removing the need to pay royalties for some of their own products. The ROI was less than a year.

Without seeing all of the financial data behind the purchase it's hard to understand if MS is actually being financially smart or reckless. I'm sure the data is available but I have no idea where to look and even if I did I wouldn't know how to read it properly.