He was privacy director at Google. Hello? Being away climbing mountains 11 months a year was a core qualification.

1) Are you saying that the signature does not cover the entire download, and that an attacker could supplement or exchange content of the download without invalidating the signature, and have the injected code execute when the user starts the app?

2) Sounds bad.

3) Sounds bad

4) That a signature-based AV engine is only effective when attacks have been reported, analysed and a has been signature developed is bloody obvious. All an AV engines is good for is herd immunity. Which is sorta ok, except that they are peddled as the most important security product *you* can use. Some AV engines more advanced than XProtect use heuristics (or se they claim) but I have to admit that I am *really* sceptical about the claims of the effectiveness.

No - they can't. They have not put any clause in the licensing term for neither C# or core libraries prohibiting you from extending those. Sun did that with Java. Microsoft put the equivalent of C# delegates and P/Invoke into their Java implementation. Especially the latter riled Sun, as it allowed MS to integrate Java much more efficiently on Windows than Sun could do on other platforms. Sun sued and won and MS walked away from Java and created J++ but eventually went all-in on C#

This time around you can add anything you want. There is no non-free, licensed test suite you'll have to pass and there's limitation on how you can extend.

As I read it, it was not an issue with the developed software (although there may be issues there as well), but rather an issue with the *setup* of the machines. It was not the developers who failed (passwords not hardcoded) but rather the admins deploying the machines were braindead and the auditors obviously clueless. For something like this they shold have used an randomly generated password or simply shut themselves out of the system (which is possible on Windows).

I think you are confused. It was not Mark Russinovich, but rather Linus Torvalds, and he was talking about the Linux kernel, not the Windows kernel.

Glad I could help.

I find that immensely useful.

When Intel contributes drivers for graphics chips, it is *also* so that Linux can work on their hardware.

Maybe you should take a clue from Linus Torvalds. (hint: It's about scratching your own itch)

Microsoft has granted patents, to anyone who implements a .NET runtime. The grants were part of the standardization of .NET CLR and core libraries.

It is a misunderstanding that it is bound to Microsofts own implementation. Those grants has always extended to Mono. The anti-Mono and anti-Microsoft fanatics started a FUD campaign based on speculation that MS could just sue anyway, and the mere cost of defending against MS would force Mono underground. It was a response to that FUD campaign that MS also issued the community promise.

The patent grants also are not tied to a full-stack implementation like Java/Oracle. The fact is, the patent protection when using CLR is far more transparent and effective, compared to Oracle/JVM.

The beauty of WPF and (especially) XAML is that they really are 2 very different technologies. WPF - like many GUI frameworks - describes an UI through an object graph. You can "new" up the controls yourself, wire the event handlers and achieve the exact same result as describing it through XAML. Which also means that you can dynamically change the graph through code.

XAML on the other hand is not in any way specific to WPF. It is simply a way to describe an object graph. Only, XAML can describe very, very complex object graphs with wired event handlers etc. XAML is also used to describe workflows in Workflow Foundation. And anyone can use the format to describe object graphs of any other type. XAML uses a convention for mapping XML namespaces to CLR namespaces. That is a really, really cool.

Thanks.

Which of the above illustrate Microsofts visceral hatred of open source?

(For the record: I believe that software patents should be abolished and I do not condone Microsofts patent litigation)

Isn't that a concern with open source in general? That argument could be used against all open source projects where commercial support is not available. Yet, many open source projects thrives despite of this.

But Mono does not make calls that "emulate Windows". In general the call upon native and/or open source libraries. Certainly you'd be hard pressed to come up with any examples of this behavior in the Mono server stack.

But you are wrong about that. Winforms is definitively NOT based on COM (much less DCOM).Winforms is a thin wrapper around Win32 APIs. When you create a text box in Winforms, you'll get an actual native Windows textbox.

You may be confused by the fact that Winforms also allow ActiveX controls to be used. When you use that capability you will be using COM (not DCOM), as ActiveX controls are implemented using COM. Interestingly, the part of COM that makes this possible is remarkably similar to the object model of Gnome, almost binary compatible. Basic COM is a binary standard which can be implemented on any platform out there.

Then you should have no problems finding a few examples that illustrates Microsofts visceral hatred of open source (your words).

Fear!

Uncertainty!

Doubt!

As I suspected: Nothing but FUD. But pretty textbook FUD, that much I have to give you credit for.

BS again. Microsoft has NEVER expressed visceral hatred of open source. Ballmer has compared one open source license - GPL - with cancer, because of it's viral nature. The intentionally viral nature.

Ballmer is not at the helm any more. But even he never expressed hatred at open source, as you claim. You could construe his comments about GPL as hatred against that particular license type. And indeed, Microsoft has always opted for other OSI approved licenses when they had the choice.

But if you have any other sources for your made-up claim - say other MS top executives, maybe even present ones - then please feel free to post them.

In general: Yes. Need more context about the application to give a definitive answer, e.g. if it uses Windows specific infrastructure such as AD, Workflow Foundation.

No - it is actually stronger (look up promissory estoppel). But leave that aside, because the patents have also already been granted.

The *promise* was issued because fanatics cried foul at the patent grant, arguing that Microsoft with it vast army of lawyers could just sue any OS project out of existence, patent grant or not. Hence, Microsoft issued the promise, all but ensuring that such a case would be outright dismissed since you've acted in good faith on a promise. The promise in that case is actually one of the strongest contract forms imaginable, as it is one-sided: you do not have to sign anything to be covered.

I may add:

The PATENTS.TXT (https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/master/PATENTS.TXT) also does not claim anything like that. It merely says that if *you* bring a patent lawsuit against *anyone* for using the *covered code*, any patent grant is revoked and the promise is revoked.