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Microsoft: Trust and Antitrust
Microsoft is in the news for two reasons today: the continuing saga of the antitrust cases, and Microsoft's public relations push for "trustworthy computing". A selection of links: Microsoft claims two months of code reviews and half-day seminars surpasses everything ever done by the open source community; Salon talks about the problems with a monoculture; SBC, an abusive telecom monopoly, complains about Microsoft's behavior, an abusive OS monopoly; and Microsoft responds, claiming that SBC is merely being self-serving.
For those Francophones / Germanophones amongst us, tonight on ARTE (TV channel available on terrestrial and digital satellite) has a problem "Life after Microsoft" which should make interesting viewing. around 20:45 CET I believe.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
It's a good thing MS is starting to do trustworthy computing, since what they've been doing up to this point has clearly been anti-trustworthy computing
If my employer ever publicly said anything like that, I'd run for the exits.
Wonder if the chants are part of the brainwashing process.
Developers, developers, developers, developers.
Developers, developers, developers, developers.
Developers, developers, developers, developers.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Apparentlly you are wrong, Steve wouldn't lie.
Steven B. Lipner, Microsoft's director of security assurance, responded, saying: "I'd be astonished if the open-source community has in total done as many man-years of computer security code reviews as we have done in the last two months."
SBC has a monopoly in the telcom world?
But that can't be. When we deregulated them, they promised to play nice.
So what if they're being self-serving? If everyone is being self-serving by dissing microsoft, it's obvious that microsoft is not adequately serving anyone.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Steven B. Lipner, Microsoft's director of security assurance, responded, saying: "I'd be astonished if the open-source community has in total done as many man-years of computer security code reviews as we have done in the last two months.
Lipner also reacted with astonishment when he was told that professional wrestling matches are fixed.
several of its key program managers warned that underestimating Microsoft's ability to meet the computer security challenge might be as foolhardy as was misjudging its ability to turn itself into a dominant Internet player.
I thought they were the default security player. Don't the vast majority of hackers break into MS boxes already?
I stole this Sig
KingPrad
Stop the Slashdot Effect! Don't read the articles!
Stick the guy who was quoted in the article in a room with Theo De Raadt(sp?? sorry Theo) of OpenBSD fame.
:D
Then tape the hilarity that ensues, we could have a new weakest link on our hands.
I know I'll get modded down for this, but you only live once.
In those two months, MicroSoft has probably fixed more security-compromising bugs than most open source projects (expect for sendmail and BIND) will ever have. MicroSoft can put far more effort behind solving the problems that they have created for themselves that the open source community could ever hope to, both in terms of solving problems and in terms of creating them.
The open source community is always taking shortcuts by not making every possible mistake and them fixing it. Who cares about results? MicroSoft can do more work than anybody else, and that's all that matters.
Hey! I take offense at th...Oh shiney pretty things!
Ding Ding: What is innovation?
Alex Trebeck: Bwahahahahahhahahahha...
you can't just put security issues out of business.
During odd minor number releases you add features.
During even minor number releases you only fix bugs.
Except for when you replace the entire VM system.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
The trainers always claim that. To an extent, they're correct. More so if most of what they are saying is things that are "pretty much known, but not thought about recently".
OTOH, experiments have tended to show that the total amount of genuinely new material that can be learned in a particular area (i.e., organized around and extending from some particular area) is a bit limited as a function of time. Sorry I can't remember a particular reference, but that is the gist of it.
After learning new stuff in some area, a break with dreaming sleep is needed to consolidate the information before any more material can be learned that is directly connected to that area. Otherwise you get the "cramming" effect, where things are learned and remembered only for a short period of time, but if you check back a week or so later, most of the new information has been forgotten.
I think that I read the synopsis of the research in Science News, but I couldn't tell you even which year to search. (And I suppose that it might have been Scientific American or somewhere else.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.