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Microsoft to Focus on Security
Anonymous Minion writes: "The Associated Press is reporting that Bill Gates announced to employees Wednesday a major strategy shift across all its products to emphasize security and privacy over new capabilities. In e-mail to employees, Gates referred to the new philosophy as "Trustworthy Computing" and called it the "highest priority". Gates said the new emphasis was "more important than any other part of our work."" People criticized Microsoft for treating security breaches as a public relations problem, so Bill Gates sent this email out to the Associated Press to prove them wrong. (rimshot!) Meanwhile, Richard Smith notes that the Globally Unique Identifier in every installation of Windows Media Player allows websites to universally track users, and Microsoft does not consider it a security problem.
Microsoft to Focus on Security and pigs fly, tonight at 11!
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
Well, with nearly 100 million lines of code or so, and hoards of incopetent developers working on it, problems are only natural. Maybe Microsoft should spend some time debugging their current software instead of forging on ahead with new products every year. I have talked with some Microsoft employees and if they make a silly mistake, such as a buffer overflow, they could lose their jobs. I bet there are many yet-to-be discovered bugs in Windows.
Of course it's not a security problem... It's a feature!
Each website can anonymously taylor it's own 'internet background music' to suit your personal tastes. Don't care for Kenny G.???? Well, each website you visit would be able to securely connect with a central MS database of all your music listening habits. Then the website could safely stream your favorite music to your web browser. Of course adequate compensation would be made to MS and the RIAA because of this enjoyment but it would still be worthwhile. In the end, you wouldn't have to listen to Kenny G while browsing the web -- and that's something worth paying for.
Bringing irony to the Slash-masses
Luckly a kind 14 year old took pity, broke into one of their Hotmail accounts and resent a plain text version to eveyone.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Slashdot editors promise not to censor^H^H^H^H moderate any more posts
This thread will live in the anals of slashdot inflamery.
MR. TACO, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!!!!
Slashdot editors promise not to censor^H^H^H^H moderate any more posts
Microsoft shouldn't care about security. The reason is simple: Security isn't all that important. In fact, whatever minimal importance there is to security is inversely proportional to the importance of the system. Suppose we're discussing some kid's video game console. Security isn't important. It's probably the last thing on the list. On the other hand, suppose we're talking about a mission critical banking system. However unimportant security is on a video game console, it's even less important on a mission critical banking system. The reasons are obvious and need not be listed here. To continue the analogy, suppose now that human lives are at stake, as is the case with mission critical military systems. Security is so negligible on such a system that the designers should deliberately make the system insecure, and introduce other faults, just to be sure. The reasons for this are left as an exercise for the reader.
In short, what I'm saying is that Microsoft should supply all software. There should be a federal law that makes any kind of security illegal on any system, and furthermore, Microsoft should become a part of the government, and it would be illegal to produce any non-Microsoft software. Actually, what I meant to say is that Microsoft should purchase all the governments of the world, and Bill Gates should be king of the world, and everybody would be his slave. Not only that, but through his billions, he would develop some technology to defy death--to effectively become immortal. Then, through psychological techniques and brainwashing, he would convince the world that he is God and everybody will have to pray to him all the time, stopping only to eat, crap and sleep.
Yeah. That's why Microsoft shouldn't care about security.
will live in the anals of slashdot inflamery.
Mr. TACO, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!!!!
Rewrite? What rewrite? The one that killed the last 16 bit code, again? When we have seen former M$ programers talking about the "wisdom" that age brings to old code, and then mentioning horrible kludges for device drivers under the awful variety of M$ muck. Their public versioning is nonsensical and makes you wonder if they were ever able to make consistent all of the code from all of the companies they swollowed and chewed up. There's a reason that the 98 souce code had more lines than it takes to run a space shuttle, and it was not useful features.
Even if they had the desire to rewrite things, they could not. I doubt they have the resources to do so much as an audit. How many people do they have employed right now, a few thousand? How many lines of code are there, 100 million? Let's see if they can impliment something as useful as user ID's and file system permisions in the next two years. All of their sins will look down upon them and laugh as they strugle.
If history is any guide, they will once again follow the Macintosh crowd and try to impliment a BSD with a "compatiblility mode". If they follow this path, Lindows, WINE, will be targeted for destuction or assimilation.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
we have to give Microsoft [microsoft.com] some credit.
Hey, thanks for that link to http://www.microsoft.com, I was not totally sure what their site was...
By the way, if any of you have heard of that cool search engine called "Google" but you don't know where to find it, it's here: http://www.google.com
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Also coming soon from BitterIrony press:
GNU's guide to user-frendly UI.
The U.S. D.O.J.'s guide to speedy legal precedings.
And:
Larry Wall's guide to maintainable code.
Wow, is it April 1st already?
I have it on good authority that this new thrust into the security realm has been code named Project Sphincter. It will pinch off any attempt to probe your ports. Hopefully they are putting enough muscle into this endevore to block access to the internals of Windows OS. 0->*
actually, the timing is perfect, if you're a megalomaniacal, conniving multibillionaire bent on world domination; needless to say, if they'd secured the OS before, there wouldn't be much reason to upgrade to their next OS, and given the history of intentional obsolescence within M$' product line (i.e. no dx8.1 for win95), this sounds like what they're doing. It's not that i hate Bill Gates for doing this, i hate him for doing it before I could!
Ok folks. I don't know why this hasn't been a bigger story, however as reported on 77 WABC in NYC a terrorist was picked up in asia. This terrorist claimed that Microsoft had been infilitrated by terrorist programmer with the mission of infecting Windows Products with bugs/trojans/worms etc.
Hmmm Bill... Good idea hiring all those programmer from the middle east.... You get what you deserve.