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Microsoft Funded by NSA, Helps Spy on Win Users?
OpperNerd writes "A French intelligence report has accused U.S. secret agents of working with computer giant Microsoft to develop software allowing Washington to spy on communications around the world. According to the report, 'It would seem that the creation of Microsoft was largely supported, not least financially, by the NSA, and that IBM was made to accept the (Microsoft) MS-DOS operating system by the same administration.'" I personally don't believe this is true, but it's an interesting enough rumor to post for discussion. (SFX: Black helicopters whirring overhead.)
Why does this seem familiar ?
Because it was stated in a X-files episode long time ago. I saw it by chance (I'm not a X-files fan) about 2 years ago.
That much for the french intelligence, I guess
There will be some fun times in alt.conspiracy.microsoft for the next few days over this one.
---
"And the beast shall be made legion. Its numbers shall be increased a thousand thousand fold."
-----
Cast a Cold Eye
On Life, on Death
Horseman, pass by
--W.B. Yeats' gravestone
-- alangrimes@starpower.net DOS simply isn't capable of doing any spying whatsoever. Windows 3.11 has more back-doors than a highschool but I don't think its a conspiracy. Windows 95+, where everybody has to use the same dialer and network 'stack' VERY suspicious... I use windows 3.11
Imagine your first day on the job at No Such Agency.... Your first assignment is to go to Redmond, WA. to work with the MS development teams.... :->
I can believe that there can be something like that in Windows but I doubt that it was possible to hide just anything in DOS. DOS is too small and too simple. Also it was reverse engineered sooooo many times. BTW, does anybody know if there are any pieces of DOS code which purpose is unknown or unclear?
Never attribute to malice what can be accounted for by stupidity.
It would be nice to believe that the buggy security was deliberate, but I just don't.
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
Sounds to me like Inspector Clouseau is heading up the French Defence Ministry these days.
Hmmm... the NSA key in WinNT sure springs to mind. And there was that unfortunate "bug" in the first release of Win98, which sent a lot of info to Microsoft, about user activities. Scary.
We'll just have to use Linux and PGP when we plan assassinations and cyber terrorism.
Ost99
The above text is written in Word97.... [Sound of black helicopters]
---- Sig. gone.
65,000 backdoors and a security fix update every 90 days.
Yeah....and then Marilyn Monroe was murdered by J Edgar Hoover, the Martians really are watching us, the NSA can tap any phone in the world and the government is an evil oppressive force that keeps extensive records on the number of times you visit the bathroom..
What a load of BS....
Let's face it....it was Gates who made MS, for better or worse.
Someone needs to tell the french that Frogger was just a game, not a spying tool against their country.
Ahhha Funny! =)~
Yes, the theory sounds a bit like something from X-files, and the french are known to, well not exactly like the US,
BUT
When people were speculating about ECHOLON a few years back, many also said it was nothing but conspiracy theories (and the first time its existance was officially admitted, was due to a question in the european parliament).
Secondly, it is generally assumed (or known) that the CIA shifted considerable effort into spying out foreign companies, and passing secret business information on to american companies, when the Cold War faded. That even lead to several american diplomats being "asked to leave" Germany (and yes the French do the same, ask Siemens about the ICE/TGV competition...)
Hence I think it would be wrong to immediately dismiss any thought of cooperation between Microsoft and some US Goverment agency.
I admit I don't believe that IBM was forced to accept MS-DOS as part of some master plan by the NSA to spy on the world, but rather that once MS was becoming so succesful, some agency recognized the potential...
And even if there are no backdoors etc, getting detailed inside knowledge about the protocols, formats, api's etc directly from the source would be a great help to NSA, CIA, etc.
After all, spying really IS the business of those organizations, and thinking they are only interested in other spies and terrorists would be quite naive...
Just my $0.02
Frank
Check the "Breaking News" section on your right and you'll see this publication is not exactly up there amongst CNNs and the like, but I enjoyed the 'news' anyway for some reason :)
Okay. The bad news is, Microsoft software users are being spied on. But everybody fails to see the practical benefits of this. So here are the Top Five good things about Microsoft and the NSA teaming together:
* All the software will already know your personal habits and information, therefore freeing you from the hassle of having to perform configuration.
* In time, all NSA programming staff will develop chronic psychosis (sp?) from prolonged exposure to the Windows sources.
* They can investigate user habits to find out what kind of graphical user interface is best suited to desktop users. And if even without this information they were able to create such great things as MS Bob (tm) and the Office Assistant, I can't help but wonder what great stuff may come next!
* Windows Millenium will come with earmuffs, to keep the constant noise from the black helicopters from blowing up your inner ear.
And last but not least, the Best Thing about Microsoft and the NSA teaming together:
* If the Shadow Government computers that run Echelon are Windows boxes, then you have nothing to worry about - by the time they recover from the BSOD, you'll already have hung up the phone!
---
(Why only five, you ask? Well, I'm not _that_ creative. It's an open list ("open source", much like Al Gore's campaign site), so feel free to add to it.)
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
The non-existent security of MS-DOS caused an utter lack of security to proliferate around the world.
Whether black helicopters were involved or not is a whole other question...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
on the day IBM were shopping for an OS.
Additionally:-
it would seem that the creation of Microsoft was largely supported, not least financially, by the NSA.
Did the NSA really have a clue at this point in time, I thought the development of Microsoft was the acceptance of Basic in boxes like the Altair and the C64, which I would doubt the NSA would have had much interest in at the time, unless they wanted to check you were taking proper care of your Sims^H^H^H^HLittle Computer People...
How did this world get so messed up? Maybe Bill Gates REALLY is The AntiChrist :)
Ok, so assuming this is true, and in light of Echelon and all of the other strange stuff the NSA/CIA/FBI/ATF gets accused of, what is the better method of doing things? How should these organizations be operating in a free society in which computers and networking are an every day part of life? Or better yet: How should these organizations run to prevent Fascism 2.0 from taking over the world?
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
I don't think for a second that the authors are suggesting that DOS contained hidden security back doors. Look at the paragraph where DOS is mentioned.
it would seem that the creation of Microsoft was largely supported, not least financially, by the NSA, and that IBM was made to accept the (Microsoft) MS-DOS operating system by the same administration.
I infer from this that the creation of a dominant controlling software company overseeing PC operating sytems was the aim,and to further this scheme IBM was persuaded to use MS operating sytems on their incumbent PC platform. In this way a spook controlled company would be delivering the OS that was in use on the majority of the worlds desktop computers. Even if that operating system contained nothing shady on initial delivery, maybe enough foresight allowed them to realise that in later years it would be easy enough to slip in features like the famous NSA key as these devices became more powerful and networked.
Establish an initial base camp in the foothills , so to speak and there's no real harm done if nothing comes of it.
Still it all seems a bit far fetched to me. Now, if they'd suggested extraterrestrial involvement or drug money on the other hand . . . :o)
-- Oh Well
Windows can't be a spy tool, its inherently secure, due to its igenious MSMD, More Security through More Downtime.
--
Insert Witty Sig Here
When I said "assuming this is true" I was referring to the article, NOT to my previous statement about Bill Gates being The AntiChrist. Clearly Marilyn Manson has him beat on that position :)
www.marilynmanson.net
antichrist or not, the guy is definitly an interesting artist.
It's not like they are going to use it on people who are doing things like MP3s. They don't want to risk it coming out that they did something like that. They would only use it if they thought something was going on that would threaten national security, like terrorists in the US using PCs as communication.
Today is the closing of a parenthesis opened before this sig, before this story, before this existence that is me (as if
The page is blocked by the Chinese government.
(Yes, it actually is. I had to use a proxy in the States.)
Whacked-out theories, anyone?
They should have at least accused the proper agency. The CIA is the agency that has a world-wide reach. NSA is concerned with internal matters ONLY.
Michael C. Hollinger
>into Windows. If it was proven that they did
:)
>they would be either driven out of business by
>lawsuits or they would be so disgraced not even
>their best marketting people could get their
>good name back in the eyes of the public.
You think so? They are getting away with selling operating systems full of bugs for like fifteen years already! And still they are the most popular software company... Do you think so many people would suddenly change their operating system because they know "certain information" about what they do is monitored?
If all people were that smart and had that much knowledge (Windows is an operating system that can even be used by a complete computer newbie), everyone would be using linux by now
svEn
-- Slackware linux... because wizards are for wussies
It would be more likely that Microsoft would spy on OS/2 and Linux users.
Fight Spammers!
But their PR department has been so inept lately, that they will probably issue such an incompetent denial that all the conspiracy buffs will be convinced that it is true, all true! For example, look at Microsoft's DOJ testimony, look at the 63000 bugs memo, look at Mr. Bill's open sourcing Windows interview (Oh, no, he didn't really mean what he meant!)
What "innovative" way will Microsoft find to fumble the ball this time?
But it probably won't matter anyway, because Microsoft has cleverly marketed their products to morons who actually seem to find Microsoft's bumbling comforting, or at least non-threatening.
You seem to imply that this is some kind of "Weekly World News" publication. It doesn't appear to be. A tabloid, yes. They simply quote from a "French report." They probably haven't done much fact checking themselves on it. But The Age appears to be at least somewhat useful as an information source.
I am not a lawyer.
I thought the NRO handled the spy sats?
Seems like this ties into the helping out the spies therory. Sell something that is as open as a baby and then tell everyone it is solid as a rock. Could make it much easier to spy.
Noel
RootPrompt.org -- Nothing but Unix
kayaking
If this story is actually true (ha ha ha), then it does matter. My freedom and privacy cannot be bought and sold like the shares of Red Hat and VAndover. These are priceless things. I want to know if they've been violated.
I am not a lawyer.
Someone had to say it, but here are some reasons to support my theory
- Freely distributable... "Spread it around"
- Official OS of China (don't remember if this turned out to be false...)
- Most of the licensing seems to ask developers to make programs because you need them and distribute them for the good of the community
Hehe...--
linuxisgood:~$ man woman
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
Come on now. Do you think a US Government Agency
spending billions of tax dollars could really make Windows so easy to break into, spy-on, crash on demand? It takes real evil genius to do all this and then mind control thousands of clueless marketroids into actually buying Windows.
So this is why the Justice Department is trying to break them up now?
I don't think so. If they had all these little buggers hidden within the code on each windows box, I think that the Justice Department would have "dropped the case" by now.
You are right here, only what the CIA does abroad, the FBI does internally.
The NSA is just one of the means to give the US military an advantage in combat along the lines of the old warfare axiom "Get there the firstest with the mostest".
BTW, it is illegal for the NSA to spy on US citizens unless authorized by the US Attorney General. In most cases, a violation of this is a career stopper, so everybody's scared of doing this.
I do what the voices on my console tell me to do.
The IBM PC has its bottleneck on the processor, being also responsible for I/O etc. This processor also has got to do big work just for backwards compatibility. The remaining time it is just doing NOPs on 500 mHz, because it needs to be fast (they say). This overstressed piece of hardware needs cooling.
Now do the following calculation: the more important the computer, the bigger the CPU mHz must be, and the bigger and noisier the cooler.
So these black heli's can come nearer to more important computers without being heard through the noise of the CPU ventilator (chop! chop! chop!).
Strategic, eh?
It's... It's...
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
Such a conspiracy would require the NSA or MS to have some clue as to the course of electronic communications, and that the Internet would become as great a phenomena as it has been. Given the explosive growth of the medium took MS almost completely by surprise, they rushed to develop IE, and Netscape continued to kick their butts until they "leverag[ed] their OS advantage," I find this completely incredulous.
3rd press office in the world. Largely subsidised by the French govt, BTW, but that's (maybe?) another story. Well, they're at least somewhat reliable.
This is the WinXX world after all, and since networking was a later add-on, and security was an add-on to that, the security just isn't too reliable to start out with.
I do what the voices on my console tell me to do.
Pretty Sparc20's with 21-inch monitors.
Don't ask.
I do what the voices on my console tell me to do.
This message is a waste of bandwidth! Anyone who believes this crap is a moron.
I thought the same about all the bloat in Microsoft Word. Boy, was I wrong! What waited in that heap of feature ridden code was traps for viruses and word basic trojans. I know the purpose of your pointless post was to insert some secret code, such as DeCSS snippets hidden under the html tags. I know what you're up too. Don't lie to me.
I checked, it's on the AFP wire. Not exactly a tabloid. (Disclaimer: I used to work there)
This is an interesting acusation, and may very well be true, but how does one define "working with"?
1) Call Micros~1 tech support.
2) Sit on hold for hours on end listening to the nail-grating advertisements.
3) Listen to a tech pick up the phone and answer "wusup dude?"
4) Explain how your windows peecee constanly locks up with a blue screen every time the computer actually gets used.
5) Listen to the little dude squirm.
Congradulations, you're "working with micros~1". The broad acusations in this press release could indeed be very true, but not relivant.
Another interesting quote is: " the National Security Agency (NSA) helped install secret programmes on Microsoft software..."
people install applications onto the os everyday! Does this mean there is some kind of link between the program being installed and the OS?
_________________________
What about that bug in the first release of Win98? I must have been blind and deaf not to hear about it at the time. I think I'm still running the first release of that OS. Scary.
You can read more about it on WIRED.
France has also complained about PROMIS.
Bill Hamilton of Inslaw Corporation who was going after the government for stealing PROMIS gave this document to each member of the House Judicary Committee.
and we must not forget that Crypto AG supplied encryption machines to over 120 countries. Officials from Iran, Iraq, and the Vatican, to name a few, relied on Crypto's tech for top secret dispatches and the NSA had a deal with Crypto, which gave them a backdoor that made those encrypted messages easy to decipher and they were not even a US company.
Also what about Lotus Notes' NSA backdoor that is in international versions of the software.
Noel
RootPrompt.org -- Nothing but Unix
kayaking
eh.
if ms-dos had flopped alot of things in regards to OS's would be different. Linux and/or *nix
but if *nix was predominant first everyone would be using it and would be discussing the relearning of OS's to use winblows because the NSA had corrupted *nix's to be able to spy on the masses.
*up long time thought processes fading please dont moderate me down to much im making a valid attempt at a rational and intelligent thought*
guess its a woulda coulda shoulda
if the masses were made to use a *nix they'd do what it takes to work the system
especially when the net boom came along
or maybe it would have kept is simple less clogged and more closer to what us geeks wanted originally .
wouldn't that be nice?
hmmmmmmm
Computers save man alot of guesswork, but so does the bikini
As an ex NT admin, I take offense to that. :)
The problem is that the demand for admins is higher than the supply. MS is very good at telling ties that MCP/MCSEs are highly qualified, while at the same time pushing their certifications to the masses - "get certified and double your salary". The result? A lot of MCP/MCSEs with little or no real-world experience.
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
So I quit. Never felt better.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Microsoft would never to anything to compermise our privacy. Microsoft is the leader in OS....
<<ding>>>
A fatal exception 0E has occured at F0AD:42494C4C
The current application will be terminated.
* Press any key to terminate the current application.
* Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE again to restart your computer.
You will lose any unsaved information in all applications.
Press any key to continue
Damnit! where the hell is the "any" key?
AdFuel
...but everyone is out to get me.
heheheheh
I'm still working on a clever footer.
About a year ago, there were several stories about how the Department of Motor Vehicles in four states were selling citizens' personal information, including the drivers' license photos, to a private company in New Hampshire (Image Data). The focus of this company was a system that would allow merchants to visually identify consumers, via the photos, and as such (it was alleged) would reduce fraud.
0 7.html
I watched a newscast shortly after the initial story broke, where an official from one of the four states was *very* ticked off at this company for misleading him with respect to their source of funds. Apparently, it was discovered that the company had received about $1.5 million from the U.S. Secret Service. Read about it at http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/216
So, while the notion that the NSA is in bed with Bill might seem a little far-fetched, this incident with Image Data makes the NSA/Microsoft issue seem a little more plausible.
I have long ago resolved that humans are evil. This is because they are greedy. Then you must ask why they are greedy... because they are animals. The current socio-economic system in place here in America is a self-destructive system. It's bound to fail due to the polar extremities of the socio-economic class structure. This is directly to blame for the type of Inhuman corporations that we have today (very McDonaldized.)
The Irony in all of this seems to be that despite the companies' insistence that more Calculability, Predictability, Control will yield greater efficiency this is not the case. Here is where the irrationality of rationality comes forth and its stench reigns.
Over rationalization works only to dehumanize society, for personal profit of the corporate class (the Capitalists.) It is intended to keep the humans around long enough only to strip them of the ability to create, to practice skills and offer judgement. Ultimately, it replaces humans with technology.
All of this is, of course, IMNSHO. Cheers, Elmo
Here's one for you. Maybe the NSA is funding the Cult of the Dead Cow so that they can make tools for them! It makes sense. They couldn't have made BO and BO2K by themselves. It's just too well done.
It has to be the work of a evil agency bent on getting the UN into power as the one world government (never mind that the bulk of UN troops are United States AND the United States has a ultimate veto power in the Security Council).
I think stories like this are generally a little far fetched. As for the NSA key I think the Crypto Newsletter from Counterpane said it best. If you want to put a key into a program you don't put your agency name on it where anyone can see it.
This is the NSA. They do know a little about security and something this stupid is a little below them. After all if Windows is as insecure as everyone keeps saying why do they need to put some secret key in? They can just go in like any script kiddie and see what they want.
As for the DOS argument about trying to get a standard system in place... was DOS really that powerful or was I missing something? Windows I could kinda see but DOS? Never mind most of the major corporations they would want to spy on at the time were using UNIX or some other kind of heavy duty OS.
How did the NSA know that Microsoft would be well recieved? Maybe everyone would fall in love with the MAC and use it instead and then the NSA would be up a creek. Also the countries that the NSA would be most interested in (Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Cuba, etc) can't have computers exported to them anyway. This whole thing is full of holes if you just take a moment to think about it from a logical point of view.
you wouldn't hear em, right?
To continue, why would the NSA need Microsoft to force IBM to comply with its wishes? IBM has always been in bed with all levels of the government.
A good argument for the rumor is that the US intelligence community's modus operandi is to start up "front" companies to serve as cover for whatever black op they are about to take on. Could Microsoft have started as such a "front" company?
Who knows? It's just idle speculation.
A denial by the big M wouldn't be convincing. The only way to find out would be a massive lawsuit against Microsoft that would force it to open up its vaults of internal documents & memoranda to public scrutiny. The tobacco companies recently faced such an onslaught. Oh, wait. That lawsuit is "United States v. Microsoft." The private antitrust suits, like that of Caldera, are probably going to be settled out of court. No production of documents, I guess.
We'll never know unless there is a political movement in the US that demands change in the intelligence community.
Oh my god! Just as I was about to post this, I lost my net connection! LOL. ROTF.
I am not a lawyer.
Well, that would certainly explain Gates refusal to make Windows open source. I guess the guys from Fort Meade need to have a talk with Janet Reno. Only thing it doesn't explain is the black helicopter hovering outside my window. :-)
[Insert pithy quote here]
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
-- H. L. Mencken
french inteligence... isn't that an oxymoron?
Well, I've been saying something like this for ages. Only it's the other way around. Why would the government try to disrupt and destroy MS if MS was it's biggest spy? Seems coutner-productive. Taking teh chance to seem uninformed, I'll present a little strange, but possible possibility. Perhaps the feds are attacking MS because they AREN'T spies, and refuse to be spies. IBM, and other big folks have been helped along in their lives by Government contracts, which we all know pay 5 times as much for things. So, here's MS uncontrolled by the government, so the feds decide to burn them. Seems like a plausible situation. Atleast it would probably make a good movie. Imagine Bill strapped to a chair being drugged and interrogated. Hypnotizing him "You WANT to work with us" then he bites the guys nose off... well, maybe it's been done before. Anyway, no evidence, but that's what conspiracy theories are, aren't they?
Ibrahim "When did we stop using cups?"
I could sort of believe this to be true with windows. With everyone and their parents, grandparents, etc, on the internet, this might have use. Get windows to allow agents to connect to your machine and spy on you. That is very far fetched, it would be easy to do, and havn't there been stinks in the past about certain programs sending off info without asking first? Same sort of thing.
However, I find this story to be unbelievable because it supposedly started as early as dos. Most dos computers were not hooked up to the internet. The internet was still Darpa net during most of dos's years wasn't it? Anyways, the point is how would the NSA have been able to spy anyways? They would have to physically be at the comptuer, and well.... dos is not at all secure, anyone could "spy" on someone if they were sitting at the suspects dos box.
Yeap? Could be. But there's is no need to show Microsoft looking bad. It is BAD by itself. Or you have never seen small packs running out of your computer, without your clear knowledge, into some location in the Net? That happens with some Windows soft... (And why they need this damn GID anyway? :) )
naivete paranoia
---------------------------------
ok, maybe it's not art.
numb
I guess that is the reason there is so much pressure from higher ups to replace Macs in the govornemnt workplace. Regardless of how well they work.
Steve Jobs used to be a big ant-establishment guy back in the day. I guess he wouldn't let them spy.
In other words, Windows 2000 is killing Linux now, so Slashdot has to post whatever it can find that makes Microsoft look bad.
WTF? You've been able to buy it for, what, 2 whole days now (release date was 2/17, right?). Realistically, how many people are going to replace their Linux and FreeBSD x86 servers with Windows 2000? That's a pretty massive risk, not to mention the enourmous amount of downtime and integrartion problems (a lot more than some companies - like ISPs, can handle, and more than any company wants to have). And of course Win2000 is not running on Alpha or UltraSPARC (to mention 2 popular server architechures), so if you've got any of those around, you'll SOL (not to mention PowerPC, HPPA, etc)
I suspect that that vast majority of people using Windows 2000 are going to be people upgrading from 95/98/NT. And in the single user area, you can still dual boot, y'know. Personally, I'm waiting for at least 6 months to see if major problems crop up, then I'll replace 98 with 2000, and play Windows games on an SMP machine (hopefully by then I will have a dedicated Linux box)
The article is mostly the antology of a paranoia tale that roamed before Net days. "Why MS-DOS has so many holes? Because the NSA, CIA, FBI, the Shadow Government are behind this..."
It is no more than this. It seems that jounalists, without having ANYTHING new to publish, decided to hunt down on more deeper waters. The result? They are publishing urban legends as news...
But... Don't trust more Microsoft by this. THEY DO A LOT to get some info about you and your use of computers. The "lemedofoyou" philosophy of their OSes hides a dangerous system of information gathering. Besides more and more they bound this philosophy on your computer use. Wanna get a patch? "lemedofoyou". Wanna get a new program? "lemedofoyou" Wanna search for something on the net? "lemedofoyou"
But for "lemedofoyou" to work they must know something about you. And they gather some info. Presently it looks that this information gathering is not very substantial. Maybe because it is gathered by a few bits each time. So the whole may be much worser.
And this information can be used for very dangerous purposes. It can be sold to NSA, CIA, FBI, the Shadow Government... Or worse. It can leak and be sold to snake oil sellers, major corporations, religious sects and even leak into the criminal environments. Imagine someone getting thousands of credit card numbers from satisfied Microsoft customers.
No sources named. In a paper which has been pointed out by another poster to have the tabloid nature.
You know what this probably is? Someone in France heard about NSAKEY. This got mentioned in a report as "Probably not actually related to the NSA, but we're putting a note on it in the We-Hate-Microsoft file." This in turn gets transmitted via friend-of-friend through three or four hops, reaches The Age, and you've got this lovely article.
Nothing new here, folks.
Alik
Of course! It all makes sense now! Microsoft really pioneered distributed.net, and is using MS Office as a client to process Echelon data. I wondered my PC kept getting slower.
Whatever, the spy tools are, I cannot imagine them in Win 2000. As the DOJ trial is going on, at least the POSSIBILITY of open-sourcing Windows is being discussed. If it were open-sourced, such things would be easy to detect--and then MS gets its pants sued off by millions of angry users. They don't want that.
-- The Sheep --
My W2K computer?
Sorry, you got the wrong guy here. I'm sensible, so I use an Apple running LinuxPPC.
The findings are entirely consistent with the other things I've read about Microsoft and the Shadow Government.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Although he probably said it in French.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"why are manhole covers round?" anyone?
Because that is the only shape that the cover can not fall through the hole.
...to destroy the productivity of the US workforce.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Mmhhh, somebody decided my post was FLAMEBAIT, whoever did that, feel free to e-mail me to explain....
someonelse thought it was "overrated", well....
One reason I finally switched over all my boxes to Linux was that my LAN kept autodialling onto the 'Net for no good reason, and incidentally running up a huge 'phone bill. Traced eventually to just the Windows boxes sending packets to some printer...
threadeds blog
How the majority of you people can just accept this rumour as "Fact" simply because it's Microsoft. Come ON! There's the slight chance that the NSA used their time machine to predict that Microsoft would become successful and that the IBM PC would become the most popular home/business computer system so that they could force IBM to use MS DOS back in 1980, I suppose... if you're a paranoid conspiracy theorist. I realize that Microsoft is not the greatest software company out there. Windows 9x is buggy. Windows 2000 isn't bug free either. But accusing them of this is ridiculous. I suggest all you teenaged "rebels without a cause" out there stop choosing Microsoft as your cause. You look like idiots. Yes, I expect this will be moderated as a troll, though it's not.
Doesn't this seems somewhat sully to you? The French intelligence, nevertheless! I would have some suspicions of this was reported by the Israel's MOSSAD but the French... On the other hand, this is a probably another way for people to make them feel better about their own stupidity!
I'm an SDET (Software Dev. in Test) at MS. The Manhole cover is the caliber they ask interns. Here are some questions I was asked:
1. You have four chains each with three links. Make a continuous loop out of them by making only three cuts. You can only cut one link per, and no tying the chains together!
2. There's a lightproof room with three lightbulbs inside, and three lightswitches on the outside, and one door. Set the switches however you want, and then open the door. Once you open the door to the room, you can't touch the lightswitches.
You're wrong when you said that you're judged on the quickness & correctness of the answers (though if you're given the manhole question, you probably would be), but rather your eagerness to tackle difficult tasks, analysis of the problem space, etc. Many of the problems like #1 map to pointer math algorithms.
Also, some questions asked don't have answers (give them an NP problem & ask to solve in P time & see if they recognize it as such) or have multiple answers (the lightbulb problem above), or the interviewer is asking just to see how you think & don't even know the answer to ("how many manhole covers are in the US?")
As for the average IQ, I'd say 130 avg is a safe estimate. I've tested 3 times, all in the 130-140 range. Though there are exceptions - I'm mentoring a new hire who I want to scream "RTFM!" to every time she asks me how to do something basic in VB.
However, right now, the US gov't is engaging in activities both in this country and others which in 5 years will eventually get reported and dismissed as "conspiracy theories" and in 20 years will be found to be fact, and those same people who were calling them conspiracy theories will then apologize for the "one time" error the government made and then believe they won't do it again. (after all, the gov't SAID they wouldn't do it again....).
The problem is, our government does horrible things as a part of POLICY, and this will never change until we get a real democracy.
Ignore Alien Orders
(Moral of the story: decompile you product and remove any strings that a paranoid might interpret incorrectly).
Next episode: Microsoft teams up MPAA--
Microsoft Windows2000 searches for DeCSS on your hard drive and send your ip directly to MPAA's lawyers.
Nah, MPAA won't be able to afford it.
See, this shows just how beautiful CS companies can be. Not only can Microsoft declare their programs the most secure, best, or whatever (and no one can refute it without cracking it), but the other side can make outlandish claims (and there's no way to refute it without looking at the source). If anyone makes these claims about Linux, Apache, etc, we can easily say, "Here's the source code, point out where it's spying on you and we'll remove it." All Microsoft can say about this is, "Um, no we're not. Buy Windows 2000 though."
I posted that primarily as a request for whacked out theories, but it now appears that I should clarify a little.
There's probably nothing in particular about this story that got it blocked. It was on the website of a Western news source, most of which happen to be blocked.
Off the top of my head, blocked sites that I've tried to go to include:
CNN, NYT, LA Times, San Jose Mercury whatever, the Washington Post, the Boston Times (I think), _not_ BBC News (curiously enough), The Age (the Australian newspaper that published this), Xoom, Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod, and the US House of Representatives.
Anonymizer.com and Proxymate.com are my friends.
You mean Catcher In The Rye?
Conspiracy Theory is a great movie! And Julia Roberts is yummy in it too!
Lars -
I don't believe that IBM was forced by the NSA to use MS-DOS, remember that at the time Microsoft wasn't the big huge monopoly they are today, if this theory was slightly true this would have been mroe probable to either have the NSA team with IBM to implement the back door or the NSA teaming up with Digital Research, the company doing CP/M of which QDOS (that was bought by MS and barely modified to be sold to IBM with the name MS-DOS) was a clone for the Intel processor.
Ok, I got it, they were forced to team up with MS because the guys at IBM were unable to do sloppy programs with lots of security holes in them ;)
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Ceci, n'est pas un troll!!
I thought it rather witty!
-Quintus
He who fights and runs away,
Didn't the US accuse the French of using Tempest technology for industrial esponage abord their airplanes (Air France)
What would MSDOS have to do with spying on communications back when IBM included it with their PCs?
It wasn't even a network operating system, and the Internet was not exactly a widely used public network at the time.
--
grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
I think the NRO handles the visible light and radar reconnaissance satellites and the NSA handles the SIGINT/COMINT eavesdropping satellites.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
-
...to use "MS DOS".
They had the hardware, but no OS.
Gates knew someone how hacked an OS.
He [Bill Gates] bought it for pocket money,
sold it to IBM.
In case you don't remember:
"DOS" was called "Quick and DIRTY OPERATING SYSTEM" at that time.
george./
-
Please let me remind you,
1.
that US agencies prevented folks like me (I live in Europe) from having stronger encryption.
2.
Encryption not possible to decrypt by US agencies are considered WEAPONS and not released, even not to US citizens.
3.
Those of us who use a Unix flavor still are possible victims due to cookies and redirects.
(Please don't tell me I'm wrong about cookies unless you really know what they are, AND what Java can do.)
4.
Two words: SETEC ASTRONOMY
5.
One word: FEMA
george./
2. There have been occasionnal concerns in the French political world that reliance on foreign (read here: american) software could pose a security problem, since it can potentially contain backdoors left for US intelligence to spy on officials and industries.
There have already been attempts by the United States to influence the politics of France, as shown in this document from the US Senate. I guess American taxpayers won't be happy to learn that their tax money was used to fund an "union" of posh French students whose main activity is to put political stickers on just about every flat surface they can.
With this precedent in mind, it is therefore not sheer paranoia to think that US intelligence still tries to influence the politics of allied democratic governments, including France.
It is very possible that IBM was forced to accept MS-DOS because when IBM first began development of an encryption system for DES in the early 70s, the NSA forced them to reduce the key length to 56 bits from 128 bits so that they could more easily crack the encryption. Two opponents of reducing IBM's key length estimated that a 56 bit encrypted message could be cracked in about 10 hours for a cost of $5000. Whereas an 128 bit key would cost about $200 septrillion or $200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 and god knows how long.
help a poor college grad get a free Mac Mini
It says nothing. The poster rants about the US govt doing illegal things now, that in 20 years will be known fact. Yet does he ever try to support his point? Does he offer any evidence of these attrocities. I am willing to concede that the govt has some illegal, abusive policies, but they are nothing compared to the pointless gloom the posted is trying to make you all believe in.
This is just, yet another case of the moderators rewarding comments that they believe in, regardless of content.
disgruntled slashdot user who think that moderation is becoming a joke,
-jason
i remember of a conference i attended where the spokesman was a colonel of the french intelligence services.
:: .'
He started his allocution with these words
'our FRIENDS, the americans (as our governement say they are our friends), hold all the market of hardware design and software.
As there were once the 'advocacy act' (which allows any society to ask for the gov. administrative help to got contracts [yes, the NSA is administrative help]), we can think it is very easy for our FRIENDS to bribe some ingeneers to make backdoors (hard or soft) for their intelligence services
the man was VERY bitter and jaleaous.
I understand him (as he got only a few credits), and understand the US gov.
Why wouldn't they give them the weapons to acquire economic supremacy (more than they ever got) ?...see the echelon affair...
OK, I have no comment on the work of NSA for protecting the poor americans's life against the dangerous terrorists.
But, when the NSA listens french prime-minister's phone communications in order to know his intentions for international negociations or intercepts Thomson's or Airbus's commercial proposals allowing american corporations to win contracts, I call that a theft.
Americans companys are not competitive enought to win contracts honestly ?
Hey didn't anyone else notice that The Age actually tries to set a cookie for the entire .com.au domain?
It's the JavaScript ad banner, which responds with the following header:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Connection: close
Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 02:46:05 GMT
Server: Netscape-Enterprise/3.6
Content-Type: application/x-javascript
Client-Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 02:48:04 GMT
Client-Peer: 203.26.51.180:80
Set-Cookie: NGUserID=cb1a33b7-24076-951014765-17; expires=Wednesday, 30-Dec-2037 16:00:00 GMT; path=/; domain=.com.au
Set-Cookie: NGUserID=cb1a33b7-24076-951014765-18; expires=Wednesday, 30-Dec-2037 16:00:00 GMT; path=/; domain=.com.au
Set-Cookie: NGUserID=cb1a33b7-24076-951014765-20; expires=Wednesday, 30-Dec-2037 16:00:00 GMT; path=/; domain=.com.au
These cookies will then be echoed back to every single Austrialian .com domain! Forget about the US and NSA, what are these crazy Aussies up to?!! ;-)
- Scott
You can't study the darkness by flooding it with light. --Edward Abbey
Don't you think the French, and especially the Israelis are doing the same thing to us? It is the name of the game.
Industrial espionage is pretty easy. businesses don't think of security very much.
You get a job with or open a janitorial service, walk around the offices and just write down the passwords and such. they tape them to the monitor, Instead of putting them in a secure place. Nobody shreds. You can carry out sacks of info in black plastic bags. Files are not locked, it is a snap. Sometime the computers are on and ready and waiting for you to print out anything you want. They even supply blank floppies. Nice people.
Knew an ex agent that owned a janitorial service.
The NSA doesn't give a shit about you and what you do online, they aren't interested in and not allowed to spy domestically, it is the big fish they are after. They want to know what Airbus is doing, not what Hemos said yesterday. They do protect, but they also serve the business community by sharing info relative to their concerns.
After a time in the field, considerations as to the moral questions, the patriotic aspects pale before the allure of the job. You do it because you can. It is the perfect job for the passive aggressive. NSA is a fine organization, staffed with normal everyday people, but it is those normal people who are doing th dirty work.
photosMy Photostream
It would be a better translation of the blue screen of death of Microsoft.
Apparently there are more than 33k known bugs.
As for the NSA being in Control of Microsoft and
IBM, those French news people must be sniffing
glue or flour.
Just tune in to TV-5 sometimes and you'll find
out that news in France is often a joke when
they're talking about the US. Not to say that
the brits are any better.
I think they're kind of like the writers of the
paper "Minuit" in Montréal. It's a paper like
the US paper "Midnight" and the writers of said
paper decide around a table what the news will be.
It's cheaper that way than wasting their time
outside considering that people wouldn't know the
diffence anyway.
Tabloids are funny sometimes until some morons
think they're real news and report it on real
newspaper or Radio and TV news.
It's a shame. A crying shame.
There could have been an AMIGA on every desktop
instead of this lump of shite (boots box)
Bet Gary was PISSED when he got back!
The French are good. Their track record is among the best.
Although the practicality of getting this pulled off would be pretty hard. Belive it or not MS has lots of testers and testers tend to find these things.
Also it would be hard to hide ... I just can't see how you could bury it unless you worked directly with a programer.
It would be eaiser for the NSA to insert special 'builds' into a hostile environment vs having all of Windows with a neat little security hole.
As a final note ... MS has a whole lot of non-US citizens running around which could stumble into this and spill the beans.
Even though I'm shooting holes in the possiblity of this happening ... things like this have in the past.
Arrogant assholes? Look who is talking. Anybody who doesn't cave in to the American Way is an asshole? I wonder what kind of experiences you had in France. Most likely any mishap was caused by your clumsy approach to a different culure. You do speak French, I suppose? How can you judge like this... Sorry for you. Friedrich
...wysiwyg!
What they forgot to mention was that the NSA arranged to fake Elvis Presley's death. They rushed Elvis to Area 51 where Elvis used his telepathic powers to communicate with the alien held there. The alien was a star spagetti coder on the planet it came from. Elvis relayed the information to Microsoft, of course there were Many Snafus in the translation; anyway that's how Microsoft got the code for its OS ;-) Lighten up and have a good day everyone :-)
"Open code, in other words, can be a check on state power." -Lawrence Lessig
I was stationed at Camp Doha, Kuwait from June '97 to June '98 in the US ARMY. I was promoted to SGT after being there only a week. I was in 385th Signal Company. A normal tour for a signal soldier is one year in Kuwait. Camp Doha is a logistics center for all forces in Kuwait. Army Brigade task forces, composed of about 3000 men, are rotated through Kuwait for three months at a time. There are four rotations a year. The rotations overlap by about ten days to insure there is always a task force in Kuwait. A marine amphibious assault force is in Kuwait in December.
Kuwaiti Liberation Day is February 22. Saddam usually gets surly about that time of year and 1998 was no exception. He kicked the UN inspectors out of Iraq and we had a stand off with him. We brought in another 8000 US Soldiers in to Kuwait then. Camp Doha is a big storage depot for equipment and ammunition. All the US has to do is send personnel to Kuwait and issue them the equipment that is already in place. We no longer have to execute a slow build up of forces. Camp Doha however can only support a brigade (about 32 tanks). Most of the new troops came from Ft Stewart. There were other indications of how serious it was. There were 7 Generals at Camp Doha including one from Australia and one from the UK, Navy SEALS, Army special forces and DELTA force present, Including two AC-130 Gunships. It was a regular dog and pony show.
I was at Udari Range at this point providing secure telephone communications from the forward battle field commander to the Generals at Camp Doha. Udari range is 12km from the Iraqi border. Arriving with all these people was the Anthrax vaccine. Taking the vaccine was mandatory. I was in charge of 6 people. I was instructed to take my soldiers weapons away from them and put them under lock and key. We all had to go to the Mess tent to take our shots. Once there we were placed under MP guard and corralled into lines. We were told that the MPs would force anyone who resisted. I didn't see anyone resist. The shot burned really bad for about twenty minutes. The burning sort of crept up on you. One minute you would be laughing at your buddy cause he was crying about how bad it hurt the next you wouldn't be laughing any more. We were all sick for about 36 hours. The shot is injected into muscle. That muscle develops a golf ball sized lump or hardness in it that lasts a month. We repeated this 4 times before I left Kuwait.
An anthrax vaccine was tested prior to the gulf war but was not used on soldiers during that conflict. I believe it caused actual anthrax in testing. We were given a different vaccine. When we took it there had never been any human trials. We were the guinea pigs at gunpoint. I heard that one soldier went into anyphlaxis shock. Sort of an allergy induced coma. Apparently she swelled up until her fingers looked like sausages. I believe that does account for the
I suppose I could go on and on. The military has proven time and again that they care little for the patriots who serve in it. From nuclear testing with exposed troops, Agent Orange, gulf war syndrome to untested anthrax vaccinations the army proves they don't care a bit.
Obviously the US Government is not above harming US Citizens. As for Microsoft I've said it before and I'll say it again: Bill Gates has enough money to buy 2 gigabytes of storage space for every man woman and child on the planet. All 6 billion of us. Windows is full of holes. Windows contains 65,535 ports. No one knows what they do. Is it a coincidence that the one corporation that could collect, store and use information on every single Windows OS user is also a monopoly and the single most powerful corporation in the world has ever seen. Motive, Means and Opportunity. We just need a body.
Reading Microsoft's Windows source code would go a long way toward finding a body. Perhaps if Steve Gibson ever gets Project-X working we will have a body.
The comment " we use the Windows API GetPrivateProfileString() in order to read configuration files" prompted me to read all my
Anyone feeling like I do, that you don't know anything until you have to teach it is welcome to the learning experience of giving me a hand starting linux. I am guessing you were all joking about black helicopters. I have seen them.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Would this be the same French intelligence agencies that brought us the Maginot Line?
HEE
-- "so let us not talk falsely now / the hour is getting late"
Not to blow up your argument, but the US did have its Pricacy Act in 1974, half a decade before 1979; unless you're using a different calendar over there. PS the French are arrogant. They can't help it, it's genetic.
pardon my ignorance, but what does RTFM stand for? i never was good at acronyms... Dreamare
FYI: Capitalism is an *unstable* form of economy, that can easily reduce (assume total lassez-faire market) to monopolies which results in plutocracy that rewards Corporatist behavior.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
other than ABC
how about
ACB, BCA, BAC, CAB and CBA. Sorry being faecetious. I'm curious what are the other 2 ways.