Now, if only they could focus on making an operating system without bloatware... Would be much more efficient to load drivers when installing like unix or linux as opposed to loading all of them in case of an upgrade.

Something like ordering the shutdown of Pirate Bay makes it look to the non-tech world like “something is being done to stop those evil hackers.” When in actuality, most of the stuff you find on Pirate Bay is widely available at just about any company that has a resident Nitendo DS playing, I-Pod listening, Warez junkie working there. Most of the companies I've worked at already had at least two “darknets” up and running at all times, and that was before I worked there. (I don't condone that sort of activity, but resistance is futile.) I know of 10-year-olds that spend more time on torrents than they do texting... and that's hard to believe. They would have to kill the whole internet to make it stop, then it would start on cell phones.

One of the benefits to the networks as far as ads go... our household might actually record 2 prime-time shows at once(dual tuner). Then we might potentially accidentally watch commercials on either one while we're waiting on our better half to get back from the bathroom or the kitchen. We will also go back and watch the interesting commercials... (Not the ones about medications and so forth though... those dollars aren't helping the drug companies at all... just driving up prices.)

Too bad there aren't that many real people working in the research departments for the networks... they might actually get a real idea about viewing habits... instead of approximating patterns based on computer models.

When you download email from Google, it's still cached on the local machine so you can view it. When you're downloading email from your own POP account, it has to be transferred across a firewall, switches, and so forth, some of which might cache the information. They would not have to contact you in order to obtain access to your email, and they would not have to contact your email provider or someone who you have entered into a secure agreement with. They would simply have to contact the person who controls the router between you and your email server. (Some of which are already controlled by the government.) In regard to SSL, some corporate firewalls are using the client key to decrypt the emails and web pages to transfer them more quickly through their networks since SSL is a huge taxing process on the system.

Whatever you do on the internet or in email is trackable and traceable. They don't have to touch your computer to find out what you are doing. Also since you are licensing your operating system from a company that makes operating systems, I'm sure there's another loophole there as well.

If you aren't doing anything wrong, then there is nothing to worry about.

Not really.

I'm assuming the person the interviewer spoke with isn't a developer at all. Developers know their work is in progress and don't care if people get copies of the code before it's released... unless it's a private developer... then it's their personal code. All the developer wants is the paycheck.

The interviewed is more than likely a PR person. The developer's phone wouldn't ring off the hook because the company would secretly investigate his terminal for proof of leak.

Since it's a PR person I'm assuming, then the "they" in my statement refers to the company. Not the interviewed.

Management is worried about the leak. They're worried about the bugs that pose a risk to the project and someone releasing an RC version. They will also try to minimize risk of failure for a release candidate so the software will not fail when it's sold.

The shareholders aren't worried about anything because they know they're still going to have a monopoly on software anyhow.

It's odd that they would be concerned with the perception of quality in leaked software... Microsoft customers have come to expect the final release to be buggy anyhow. The only people who are going to install the leaked software probably wouldn't buy the final build anyhow.