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Page 6 contains info on the fact that he was phishing pages of usernames and passwords. They found them on his computer.

http://weblog.infoworld.com/venezia/childs/tcoppositiontoreduce_bail.pdf

I find it odd that folks are making this guy a martyr and gushing about his professionalism, while the warrant shows that he threatened the manager over security to the point where she locked herself in a room and had to wait for him to leave. He was camped by the office front door and wouldn't leave while she was there. When he was arrested, he had $10,000 in cash, and a loaded 9mm gun, as well as various hardware from his office.

He put all of the city services at risk for his stunt. If they had a failure, the city would have been unable to respond, and some 300 odd city services that rely on the network would have been endangered. He failed to follow proper procedure, he had no DR plans in place. He also accessed city hardware after his termination.

In the 11 days that he was suspended from July 10th to July 21st, he made no attempts to contact the mayor or anyone else. Apparently he didn't think anyone in the city was qualified to work on 'his' network until they threw him in jail. He cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars while they tried to regain control of their network.

To add icing to the cake, they found on his computer, pages and pages of usernames and passwords.

This guy was not a professional. He was creepy and a little too in love with his 'precious'.

Why in the world would anyone want this sort of guy representing the face of IT?
http://weblog.infoworld.com/venezia/childs/tcoppositiontoreduce_bail.pdf

He was also no longer in charge of the network you're referring to. He was removed from that group when they found that he wasn't following policy. He refused to supply the password to Security per the password policy. It states that all system passwords must be placed into a Security managed database.

Case Affidavit:
http://weblog.infoworld.com/venezia/childs/tcramsay_affidavit1.pdf [infoworld.com]

Security requested the passwords from him, and they were authorized to access such information (they established the password policy to begin with and noted in the policy that if someone had questions they should contact Security). Both the manager of security and the Director of Security request the password from him, yet he refused or gave them bad credentials. They password policy itself stated that all system passwords must be kept in a security managed database. It is the primary reason his employment was terminated according to the affidavit.

County Security Policy (see section 4 for the password policy):
http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/dtis/coit/Policies_Forms/CCISDA_security.pdf [sfgov.org]

When security asked for the password, he was removed from his position for failing to comply (insubordination). Security was authorized to access those passwords per the policy so many are claiming is his defense. He was in violation of the password policy for not putting the passwords under Security's care to begin with.

(from section 4.1 of the General Security Policy)
"All production system-level passwords must be part of the security administered global password management database."
"If someone demands a password, refer him or her to this document or have him or her call someone in Information Security."

It was Security that was asking for the password.

By refusing to supply the passwords he put the network at risk. Per the affidavit, he actually told the director of security when asked if he implemented disaster recovery procedures, documented the network under his control, and/or if he had made the required backups on devices, as policy. His answers were "..no..". In the event of a failure, the city would have been screwed.

"he was still under no legal obligation to expose passwords to systems that he protects. "

He was also no longer in charge of the network you're referring to. He was removed from that group when they found that he wasn't following policy.

http://weblog.infoworld.com/venezia/childs/tcramsay_affidavit1.pdf

Security requested the passwords from him, and they were authorized to access such information (they established the password policy to begin with and noted in the policy that if someone had questions they should contact security). Both the manager of security and the director request the password from him, yet he refused. They password policy itself stated that all system passwords must be kept in a security managed database. This is the primary reason he was terminated.

http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/dtis/coit/Policies_Forms/CCISDA_security.pdf

I guess we'll just have to wait and see if they consider the passwords company property.

According to the password policy, Childs was already in violation by refusing to place the password in a security administered global password management database.

From Section 4.1 (general) of the Password Policy:

"All production system-level passwords must be part of the security administered global password management database.". Security did ask him for these passwords and he refused.

I see no where in the policy that said it's a violation of policy to give authorized individuals the passwords. Considering that the security manager and the Director of Security asked for the password, I don't see the issue since these are the folks who publish the password policy. The policy itself refers you to Security.

"If someone demands a password, refer him or her to this document or have him or her call someone in Information Security."

Link to affidavit:
http://weblog.infoworld.com/venezia/childs/tcramsay_affidavit1.pdf

Link to security policy:
http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/dtis/coit/Policies_Forms/CCISDA_security.pdf

No, they fired him for refusing to supply the passwords (insubordination).

http://weblog.infoworld.com/venezia/childs/tcramsay_affidavit1.pdf

From page 4 and 5 of the affidavit:

http://weblog.infoworld.com/venezia/childs/tcramsay_affidavit1.pdf

During the interview with Director Robinson, Child was asked if he had implemented disaster recovery procedures, documented the network under his control, and/or if he had made required backups on devices as is policy. His answers were "No".

Mr. Maupin and City Staff were not able to gain access to these devices, nor were they able to locate any documentation, network maps, or configuration files that would allow an authorized person to perform maintenance or rebuild the configuration on these devices.

This is now what I would categorize as a good admin. I would have fired him as well.

What official policy would that be? He secured the network. He was reassigned to another work group. At that point, he lost all legal claim to any authority over the network in question.

http://weblog.infoworld.com/venezia/childs/tcramsay_affidavit1.pdf

Now you're equating what he did to saving lives?

Try reading this. He's not a saint. It's the arrest warrant.

http://weblog.infoworld.com/venezia/childs/tcramsay_affidavit1.pdf

That is exactly what happened. Did no one even read the affidavit and arrest warrant?

http://weblog.infoworld.com/venezia/childs/tcramsay_affidavit1.pdf

He was fired for Insubordination. The router then sent a page to his company pager after he was fired, indicating he had exorcised admin rights after being terminated.

Early on, the debate about Net neutrality centered on the issue of tiered or metered pricing .. The argument now is much more complex and centers on control of content and applications on both the wired and wireless Internet.

If a carrier can pick and choose among different types of content and different types of applications, its competitors (and, ultimately, the users) are severely disadvantaged.

I don't think the default search engine in IE has ever been an antitrust issue that anyone has ever cared about.

Well, to be fair, Google did actually complain about that in 2006...

You're right, I was making a rhetorical point, not a logical one.

The main thing I dislike about Javascript is that it's not a designed language. What I mean by this is that the most basic way of doing things should be the correct way. By this metric, Javascript fails miserably. There's so much broken - scope, the this keyword, scope for eval'd code, the hoops you have to jump through to make "private" functions and variables, etc. I also have a strong bias against untyped languages and those whose syntactical correctness you can only test by running it with complete code coverage. Even tools like jslint are miserable compared to the compile errors, warnings and other static analysis info you get from a well tooled, typed, compiled language. On at least part of this last part, Brendan Eich agrees with me, although the rest of the world managed to convince him it didn't belong in Ecmascript. http://www.infoworld.com/d/developer-world/javascript-creator-ponders-past-future-704?page=0,3

I though AMD was starting to outsource it's fab work to save money. Link

That means whoever they are outsourcing to probably has 45nm (newest Phenoms) and certainly 65nm capability. Maybe no one with a 45nm process would clone an Intel chip (if all the 45nm fabs are in countries where there would be a risk of lawsuit, for example), but someone with a 65nm process could clone a slightly older Core2Quad, which are still fairly competitive with the i7's.

The usual answer for buying commercial software with a support contract is "to have a throat to choke". If you're into the vendor for $20k, the person on the other end of the phone tends to know something. Below $5k, good luck with that. At this point I'd specify open source below that price point just to shed the delusion that having a throat to choke is worth lifting a finger. Such a crock.

There really ought to be some stronger anti-fraud provisions against this kind of tech support experience. They can just sit there and stonewall, no money down. Appalling. A few high-profile class action lawsuits against tech support fraud would be a good start. Lying is not ignorance, it's plain old fraud. The guy on the phone must be presumed to speak on behalf of the organization. Cultivated ignorance is no excuse, either.

The usual business sentiment is that lying is the best policy, until it isn't. Intel had some 'splainin to do over the Pentium FDIV bug. More recently, Nvidia proved to be a slow learner.

From Nvidia reports problem with laptop chips

Nvidia will take a charge ... of $150 million to $200 million to cover the expected cost of repairing and replacing the products ... didn't say [which] products were affected. ... products have been failing in the field at "higher than normal rates," Nvidia said.

Higher than normal ... for small values of $200 million.

Let's not pretend that AMD invented this mess, or perfected the drill. The museum of culpability is standing room only: Iomega click of death, IBM Deathstar disk drives, Fujitsu disk drives, ABit leaky capacitors, IBM Mwave, an early version of the KT7A which scribbled on hard drives (until a BIOS fix), and the even more brilliant EIDE controller flaw, just to name a few off the top of my head I've personally experienced.

I never actually touched a machine with the godforsaken IBM MWave, but in my foolish youth, I agreed to do the tech support call for a dim-witted friend who stupidly purchased such a system without asking me first (did I mention he was an idiot?). I was soaking my wrists in warm water before the call ended. If no one has ever been found lying in pool of their own blood for buying IBM, it's not because they never tried.

Long ago I had a girlfriend afflicted with the bogus EIDE chip (Zeos Pantera, early Pentium era) that immediately scribbled all over the hard drive once you enabled a fast software disk cache (such as Hypercache, or any of its competitors). Immediately meant your system would melt down in less than a day for no obvious reason, once enough digital cannon balls toppled your castle. Relationship harmony dictated that I re-install the OS over and over and over again, since the cause took a full week to diagnose.

I'm well aware that it's a black art to get these complicated products right every time (excluding IBM's MWave, where the main challenge was to dream up something so brutally stupid in the first place). Personally, I don't have the stomach to sell disk drives. IBM and Fujitsu both sought ulcer relief in the aftermath of their data chomping disasters.

Normally I have a fairly high tolerance for "shit happens". What severely raises my ire is pissing on common sense. The high point of my tech support career was an HP printer driver which borked a friend's Windows 2000 machine to the point where it would only boot in safe mode.

Of course, HP provided a driver uninstall program ... brilliantly engineered to require a screen resolution which safe mode doesn't offer. Imagine if GM designed a car jack too tall to stick under (wiener clause: the lift strut beside) a flat tire, because they needed more room to draw their logo. Feeling impressed?

I then went to the HP online support sit

Verizon's charging for 'accidental' data usage isn't at all 'new', though they may have toughened their stance and are even more determined than before to screw you for brushing the key. The link even points out that back then the customer was billed for data usage for a phone locked in a drawer at the time. Needless to say, it was a backup service that, while being a 'free service', actually costs data, so if you don't have a data plan, signing up for the 'free' contact backup service dinged you for data you didn't sign up for... A new definition of 'free', eh? You can imagine how easy it is to get your phone's data features blocked - not happening.

And the cruel truth is that a $1.99 data charge like these amounts to pure profit. Verizon (and other carriers) would L-O-V-E to be able to increase their profit by $1.99/month PER SUBSCRIBER! This would be a massive win, by any measure!

Thieves.

But cranking up the ETR for smartphones is just plain offensive. T-Mobile is now offering plans that let you buy the phone in installments - of course, if you cancel the contract or terminate service, they expect to be paid. But, sheesh, if you buy a phone from Verizon, ditch your service, and pay the $350, does that cover the balance on the phone? I wonder.

The reality is, we may need to get ready to start buying phones like Europeans do - straight up, no discount. Unlike Europe, however, if you change carriers, you generally NEED a new phone. Verizon & Sprint, etc. use CDMA, so you need an unlocked phone to move from one to the other. AT&T and T-Mobile etc. use GSM, but wait - if you unlock your phone, it won't get 3G data on the 'other' carrier, they use different bands. So GSM phones are no solution until everyone stops with the different bands, which means jiggering the spectrum allocations and licenses, sharing networks, fixing roaming, and doing all sorts of things that they pretty much forced carriers to do in the EU, but are entirely within the competitive arena here.

We're not getting past this problem of locked phones and subsidies any time soon. It is technically not yet feasible, and I see no solution short of consolidating carriers into just two - CDMA & GSM.

And that would be ugly.

Getting some carrier to run the 700MHz spectrum nationwide doesn't solve this. It just adds a third phone type to all the crazyness.

So just get used to even more abusive behavior by the usual abusive carriers. Our only hope is to stop being so addicted to our phones. You go first, ok?

ps- Google is NOT the answer.

I think it is obvious to most observers that Windows and Mac OSX copy features from each other. I'll leave it to the Windows and Mac fan boyz to argue about which direction the majority of copying occurs in, but the original design of Windows including many of the APIs does appear to have borrowed from the Mac.

I think it is obvious to most observers that Windows and Mac OSX copy features from each other. I'll leave it to the Windows and Mac fan boyz to argue about which direction the majority of copying occurs in, but the original design of Windows including many of the APIs does appear to have borrowed from the Mac.

Interesting. It's my underatnding that the number of apache vulnerabilities AND exploits is significantly higher than the number of IIS vulerabilities and exploits (reference: http://www.zone-h.org/archive/published=0 and http://www.infoworld.com/d/security-central/continuing-web-server-security-wars-iis-or-apache-more-secure-098 (full disclosure: The author of the 2nd link works for MSFT).

> a POWERVR SGX video accellerator.
Great. It looks like ARM is competing with Intel not only on the front of small CPUs, but also on the reliance on crappy closed-source drivers for PowerVR chips...

"For this review, we used three identical hard drives, each preloaded by Dell with the latest versions of Windows XP Professional, Vista Ultimate, and Windows 7 Ultimate -- all 32-bit -- with the latest drivers the company makes available."

If I'm reading the chart correctly, it appears that Vista rivals Windows 7 in all benchmarks and even beats it in a couple.

Are we talking about the charts at http://www.infoworld.com/d/windows/windows-7-multicore-how-much-faster-325? If so, you are indeed reading them incorrectly. Vista beats 7 in two of the performance benchmarks and loses in two of the others, by fairly close margins all around. The catch, though, is that 7 beats Vista by a significant margin in power efficiency.

It's also the engine found in both Apple's iPhone and Google Android, arguably the two most important mobile Web platforms today.

That means Google Chrome isn't yet another browser to support,

Which in fact contradicts the whole assertion of the article

Vista is NOT - and likely NEVER will be - the right choice for their immediate desktop computing needs....

The fact is that there's very little about Vista that is compelling to large IT organizations.

Yes, it's theoretically more secure "out of the box." However, no sane IT shop implements XP using the default security settings. They lock it down with layers of Group Policies and configuration management. And even with User Account Control (UAC) enabled, Vista is still vulnerable to external breaches.

The (Post-SP1) Vista Verdict: Wait for Windows 7

Sorry, but there's a big difference between an AJAX app and a native app.

Certainly, this is true, but that doesn't mean the technologies of an AJAX app can't be used to develop an app on a native platform. Appcelerator's Titanium is a platform that specifically compiles down javascript, css, and html into an application that can run on the Android or the IPhone, with promises for more platforms on the way. I actually found that to be a glaring omission in this article, though it did throw a bone to Rhomobile's Rhodes framework. I'm sure there are many other types of cross platform mobile frameworks out there though that seek to minimize the amount of relearning that individuals have to do. It sounds like you anticipate Flash taking a similar role.

Javascript is a surprisingly elegant language.

Fixed it for you. :-)

I don't like what I have seen posted in the headline either. Try this or this instead.

Windows Vista was released before it was ready. Even Microsoft middle managers complained about that. Customers rejected Vista; here is one of the hundreds of articles about that: Corporate America's rejection of Vista: Many companies delay or denounce Microsoft's flagship product.

One magazine collected 210,000 signatures against adoption of Windows Vista and for keeping Windows XP: The campaign to save Windows XP.

The fact is that we are not seeing the kind of weaknesses in Linux, OS X, or BSD that are commonly found in Windows. Windows XP was an expensive hassle for us until SP2.

Here is an interesting fact: The latest version of Firefox, and all the versions before it, have a bug which causes Firefox to crash when there are too many windows and tabs. That bug corrupts Windows; sometimes Windows crashes, also. It is always necessary to re-start the computer.

Linux remains stable when Firefox crashes, however.

Most proprietary software companies spend little money on software development. The big players have margins close to 80% with a significant portion of their expenses in marketing and sales.

The geek throws out numbers without proof and expects them to be taken at face value.

MIcrosoft spends $9.5 billion a year on R&D.

That represents 50% of its pre-tax profit:

$250-300 million in pure research. Investments in applied research - not product related - on the same scale. Call it $1-1.5 billion total.

The rest of the money going to Microsoft's five core business groups.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer On "Moving The Needle" [Sept 28], Microsoft boosts research budget and targets public safety[April 15]

Now, a massive movement to open source software will cause less total employment in the software industry, but the vast majority of those losses will be in non-technical fields.

You could argue - with some justice, I think - that FOSS needs dramatically more investment and staffing in "non-technical" fields.

The FOSS-oriented geek tends to see everything in software development as a narrowly defined problem in engineering.

There are times when he never sees it coming.

When he misses his chance:

Ask CIOs about their collaboration strategy, and a good number will start rattling off SharePoint projects. The software's Swiss Army knife approach helps companies create more useful intranets, set up document sharing, offer blogs and wikis, and build a richer online company directory. This boundary-blurring nature is part of its appeal, and can even help in budgeting: IT teams that might not get the nod for document management software have been known to slip SharePoint into the Microsoft Office budget. Can Microsoft Keep SharePoint Rolling?

There have been a lot of cases (the linksys modding scene for instance) in which the lack of GPL would have meant no release of source or tools. There are a variety of other examples.

In other words, thank God we've got Richard Stallman to use the legal system to beat people into submission, and force them to do exactly what WE want them to do. It might be unfortunate, but given that said people work for corporations, they're not as equal as we are, and hence, their wellbeing doesn't count.

I love the smell of freedom, don't you?

At this point BSD is basically an also-ran

Yep. Marginal, dead, and completely irrelevant; just like Netcraft said. I guess that's why FreeBSD is ranked 13th on DistroWatch. It might also have something to do with why NetBSD just had a new release last month, or OpenBSD having its' most recent release in May. It's probably also why Theo de Raadt gave a keynote speech about OpenBSD's development process in May, as well.

Because, you know, they're fringe, dead, irrelevant operating systems. Nobody uses them.

That's also why we've kept seeing stories like this crop up in the trade press over the last three months or so; because the GPL is just such an awesome, business-friendly license. Everyone just loves the freedom that their Uncle Richard has provided for them; I really can't imagine where we'd be if it wasn't for him.

not on the same level as linux or supported in anything like the same way in terms of FOSS and commercial software.

Yeah. Too bad World of Warcraft doesn't run on it. Having to surf the Web without Flash really hurts, too. Like you said, FreeBSD is so irrelevant, it doesn't even have 3D video card drivers.

article in one page

From the article:

In the revised advisory, Microsoft explained why it won't patch Windows XP, the world's most popular operating system. "By default, Windows XP SP2, Windows XP SP3 and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition SP2 do not have a listening service configured in the client firewall and are therefore not affected by this vulnerability," the company said. "Windows XP SP2 and later operating systems include a stateful host firewall that provides protection for computers against incoming traffic from the Internet or from neighboring network devices on a private network."

Although the two bugs can be exploited on Windows 2000 and XP, Microsoft downplayed their impact. "A system would become unresponsive due to memory consumption ... [but] a successful attack requires a sustained flood of specially crafted TCP packets, and the system will recover once the flood ceases."

Looks like SP2 & SP3 do have this flaw- they just don't expose it normally, and even if they did, Microsoft claims that the consequences are less than dire. Not an unreasonable line to take. Probably not worth the hassle of patching, since the work-around is so simple- don't enable that.

Now claiming that it's not technologically feasible to fix it is a laugh; what they really meant to say was that it's not economically feasible to do so.

With actual Vista usage estimated at 30%, Microsoft has to do something to encourage the other 60% of the market not using Vista to upgrade. Getting some cheap and easy FUD against Windows XP is one way to push a large chunk of users towards Windows 7. Other efforts are underway as well. Nothing wrong with marketing your product, really, but doing so by promoting claims that your older products are unsafe has always struck me as unwise. It's one thing to say that "Our new Frobish 2000 is safer than ever" but claiming that "We no longer feel it's worth the effort to support the Frobish 1993, which so many of our customers use" is quite another. Some people might even form the impression that the company is interested only in new sales.

Javascript has eval yes, but the only way you can run javascript on your iphone is inside the web browser

Not true. Last I checked, you're allowed to use webkit (Javascript and all) as part of your app, and have it talk to native code, so long as none of the scripts are coming from the Internet.

Native apps on the other hand that run on the hardware itself are not allowed to eval

It's possible Apple is that stupid. But no, see above -- they just aren't allowed to eval things that have been downloaded/input.

You can't have a java VM/.NET.mono runtime

See, this makes no sense -- they already review apps like I described (webkit widgets) to ensure they don't eval anything from the Internet. Why not do the same to Java/Mono/etc?

if you compile your app+mono down to one executable, so the framework bit you can only run your app, that might be ok.

Except it isn't, always -- from the same article (which was on Slashdot)...

Ok, I finally went and found that article:

I chose to build my application on... PhoneGap.... You write your application in HTML and JavaScript.... While Apple doesn't explicitly forbid the use of PhoneGap, it's clear they reject many -- but not all -- projects that use it.... PhoneGap is an "external framework" and those are forbidden.... The men and women behind the curtain only look at the linking tables to see the names of the objects. So someone wrote a Python script that would replace the word "PhoneGap" with your own made-up package name. Voilà -- it often works.

So no, it seems doubtful that if you wrote an "external framework" that compiled Mono down to binary, that your app would be approved, at least unless you hide the fact that you used such a framework.

Isn't the iPhone is starting to sound like the most anti-developer environment ever?

Also, Adobe would probably just snicker for a few seconds if anyone asked them to port Flash to anything other than x86 or x86_64.

Sorry, already done.

Adobe Flash now widely available to Android device vendors

There's been a version of Flash available for ARM on Android since June.

That sort of thing was the whole reason for Flash Lite.

Sometimes we don't know things until we know them, alas.

No kidding! Like this one:

http://www.infoworld.com/d/security-central/critical-linux-kernel-bugs-discovered-440

or this one:
http://www.doecirc.energy.gov/bulletins/t-029.shtml

or this one:
http://www.vupen.com/english/advisories/2007/3860

or these:
http://secwatch.org/advisories/1021203/

Gosh! Linux has flaws, just like Microsoft. The only difference is usually in the turn around time for a patch. But how well tested is that Linux patch? Anyone remember how v2.6.23 broke VMWare server? Oops. Of course, Microsoft has broken its fair share of products also, but on the whole in the past several years, Microsoft has released much better tested and complete patches than Linux.

How many Linux folks here are running kernel v2.6.30.5 or newer? On your production server? No? Why not? Oh, waiting for stability/fixes/security to be well tested first...

Microsoft has a longer release cycle than Linux, get over it already.

What evidence is there that Childs' refused to hand over these alleged passwords, to whom did he refuse to hand over passwords and finally why didn't those with physical access change the passwords? And what ever happened to the accusations that he:

Configured the routers and switches with 'no service password-recovery, removed the start-up configuration from some devices, created unauthorized wireless access to the FiberWAN, possessed lists of usernames and passwords, including his supervisors, installed sniffers on the network, had a prior arrest record for aggravated burglary ..

Where did all this go or what it merely the prosecution flinging dirt. So basically we have Childs being locked up and his character being trashed until he cops a plea to a bogus charge. Lucky he don't live in communist China ...

"But one charge remains: the charge that Childs violated a California statute regarding illegal denial of service for the San Francisco FiberWAN"

All of which is irrelevant because Childs released the passwords to the mayor in July of '08. That leaves an awfully long time for S.F. to have changed the passwords and gone through the configs with a fine-toothed comb.

He's a danger to their network only if no one has yet changed the passwords on the routers and other equipment.

I know they changed all the "dangerous" VPN passwords they accused him of hoarding. Of course, after entering them into the public record; they kind of had to. It took them two days to react; and subsequently caused the only network outage related to this incident; but they got changed.

do you really expect rational arguments in favor of the public good to be of any help against entrenched interests in this matter?

What interests are those, the interests of software companies like Microsoft? "Microsoft to pay $60 million to settle patent-infringement, antitrust claims". "Jury rules for Alcatel in Microsoft patent case". As TFA say, some businesses take out software patents as a means of legal defense, someone sued them over infringement and they may be able to use their own patents as a club, "you sue us and we'll sue you."

The only ones I could see supporting software patents are some patent lawyers.

Falcon

I4I said they would have sued sooner but were having financial problems.

I checked out the i4i web site. My impression is that i4i had financial problems because they were a dinky little company with almost no significant products. I suspect they had no more than one software developer, and were probably lucky to stay in business all this time. I doubt MS even bothered to ever meet with them. Their business, so far as I can tell, doesn't even significantly benefit from the patented idea, and in no way competes with Microsoft. I don't see how Microsoft's patent infringement hurt them in the least.

In other words, i4i is simply patent-trolling. A lot of tiny companies do this when they have hard times.

Would it be MS who said "well, we had a business meeting with them, lets implement their plan without them and run them out of business"?

Yes, this is the traditional Microsoft business strategy. There are lots of cases where they did this:

- These guys were the disk-compression company MS drove under. They won $120M in a lawsuit considered one of the best examples ever of how software patents can protect innovation.
- Casualties include WordPerfect, and QuattroPro

There are also a lot of patent trolls sucking the life out of Microsoft:

- They were ordered to pay $521M to the "inventor" of browser plug-ins
- They were ordered to pay $367M to Alcatel/Lucent in some sort of user interface patent nonsense.
- They were ordered to pay $388M to Uniloc, for a patent about registering software during installation.
- Korea is one of the few other countries to jump on the patent-troll suck-life-out-of-MS bandwagon.

All I can say is Microsoft made their bed, and now they have to sleep in it. No other company did more to force software patents through congress. D'oh!

I have a feeling that in a "law and order" country like the US, the law would never actually stop being enforced - law enforcement and judiciary would make up something about the "spirit" of the law or some other legal nonsense.

Got a citation for that or are you just looking to repeat stereotypes about the US? It's interesting that you could condemn the US criminal justice system when we still have our right to remain silent and right against self-incrimination. Tell me, how are those rights faring in the UK? Surely they don't hold it against you if you remain silent or compel you to be a witness against yourself?

I'm not big fan of InfoWorld's webpage design, but I've been following this story since it broke (because it resonates with my own experience).

The easiest way is to just subscribe to the RSS feed of Paul Venizia's blog here: http://www.infoworld.com/blogs/paul-venezia. Click on the subscribe link and you'll get the whole story from a guy who has followed it more closely than anyone else, and with far greater detail than any other journalist. Paul knows his stuff, which is why he is probably the only one who's met with Childs who can speak with him as a peer (so of course, he'd be disqualified from any jury called for this case). Fortunately, all charges will probably be dropped before it ever gets that far.

i did not know about this case so i went up looking back to all the story and trying to figure out what happened i've runned across these two that explain a bit http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/why-san-franciscos-network-admin-went-rogue-286?page=0,0 http://www.infoworld.com/d/data-management/childs-attempt-protect-network-password-gone-awry-978 What i'm now missing is what were his duties in the contract and who he had to provide those passwords. this document http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/dtis/coit/Policies_Forms/CCISDA_security.pdf cited in some post here is only about personal passwords and not system ones. So a sysadmin keeps an eye on security, he's asked by his boss in front of unauthorized people to reveal those passwords, in a improvised meeting in a place outside the place where he works. he refuse to say those passwords, he's suspended for unsubordination and some days later he's arrested, and he's still in prison He can only be guilt of being an asshole or too paranoid but since he was the only one responsible for the whole SF Wan who wouldn't have been ? you really would have give away your passwords knowing that if the day after the network would have been down it would have been your only responsability ? - "B....bbbut i gave the password to my boss!" - "Nice work! now you are fired and you'll be charged for the problem you caused with your inefficency" no really.. this story is crazy i really hope he will be released soon but then what about his lost job ? what about the loss in credibility he has to suffer due to ignorance of news that portrayed him as digital version of bin laden ?

i did not know about this case so i went up looking back to all the story and trying to figure out what happened i've runned across these two that explain a bit http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/why-san-franciscos-network-admin-went-rogue-286?page=0,0 http://www.infoworld.com/d/data-management/childs-attempt-protect-network-password-gone-awry-978 What i'm now missing is what were his duties in the contract and who he had to provide those passwords. this document http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/dtis/coit/Policies_Forms/CCISDA_security.pdf cited in some post here is only about personal passwords and not system ones. So a sysadmin keeps an eye on security, he's asked by his boss in front of unauthorized people to reveal those passwords, in a improvised meeting in a place outside the place where he works. he refuse to say those passwords, he's suspended for unsubordination and some days later he's arrested, and he's still in prison He can only be guilt of being an asshole or too paranoid but since he was the only one responsible for the whole SF Wan who wouldn't have been ? you really would have give away your passwords knowing that if the day after the network would have been down it would have been your only responsability ? - "B....bbbut i gave the password to my boss!" - "Nice work! now you are fired and you'll be charged for the problem you caused with your inefficency" no really.. this story is crazy i really hope he will be released soon but then what about his lost job ? what about the loss in credibility he has to suffer due to ignorance of news that portrayed him as digital version of bin laden ?

Link to an old Slashdot story that then links to an archive page that doesn't even have the word Childs on it.

You have to go to page three of the archive to find the bloody interview!

Why the hell is it so difficult to provide direct links to the actual articles?

VLC media player

InfoWorld is based in California. VLC media player includes patented codecs not licensed for distribution in California or elsewhere in the United States.

OpenPandora to put Pandora on your desktop and scrobble to Last.fm

Too easy to confuse with a forthcoming Linux PDA.

Or if you want pictures browse to the print view of the article.

Print version

It's not that they don't want them talking to friends and family, it's that they don't want accidental slip-ups.

Tweeting that you're about to leave the base, or that a big wig has shown up is what they're afraid of.

Because they essentially have no competition.

MS isn't improving the performance or security of their operating system.
Instead, they are simply cramming more products in and calling the monstrosity an "operating system" - in an effort to expand into more markets.

Huh? MS just fixed and tweaked what was wrong with Vista without promising or adding a bajillion new features. Security is a lot better, with many exploits for XP that are coming out not working on Vista or 7.

Intel and AMD have been making dual-core CPUs for more than FOUR YEARS.
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20050418comp.htm

Intel has announced 8-core CPUs.
And yet the "new" (its basically a rebranded Vista) Windows 7 will barely take advantage of any of them other than the first..
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1612

Why link to outdated speculation? Check these real tests and benchmarks out instead. http://www.infoworld.com/t/platforms/generation-gap-windows-multicore-273

Even Slashdot linked to it. http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09%2F01%2F22%2F1554224&from=rss

This is what happens when you don't have any competition. Its not an operating system, its a bloated behemoth born of a monopoly that wants to kill competition in every software market it can.

Microsoft should have been split up in 2000.
You can't create competition through regulation.

Err, you want MS to be split up because of regulation and then say you can't create competition through regulation. Cognitive dissonance?

Are you sure you didn't mean to post this comment when Vista launched? If not, all I can say is this --> http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/07/25/1757253/Linus-Calls-MicrosoftHatred-a-Disease

If your sole objective was to irrationally hate on Microsoft and gather Slashdot karma, Congratulations, you've been modded up already.

Apple has also invoked the threat of empowering 'drug dealers' in its skree vs. jailbreaking, thereby insinuating a tacit connection between the practice of jailbreaking and the trafficking of narcotics:

"With access to the BBP via jailbreaking, hackers may be able to change the ECID, which in turn can enable phone calls to be made anonymously (this would be desirable to drug dealers, for example) or charges for the calls to be avoided," Apple said.