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Microsoft News Update
Microsoft news of the past few days: Media Player 9 is the subject of a few articles, including one on its integrated digital restrictions and one on changes in its privacy options. Microsoft is releasing certain API's, and is releasing a service pack for Windows XP, under the requirements of its antitrust settlement with the Federal Gov't. On the downside, code to crash any modern Windows machine with NetBIOS enabled is now floating around the net, and there's been more publicity of the vulnerabilities in Microsoft IIS/SSL.
By that logic, is this part of Microsoft's plan? Since Linux is seen as good by the general public for, amongst other reasons, giving away the source code, is Microsoft trying to make the (erroneous) impression that they're giving away source code as well?
All you have to do is winess the general confusion when a game maker releases some source code ("The RtCW Source Code has been released! This means the game is free!") to see that the general public still doesn't "get" this idea.
Schnapple
Well, im not sure about everyone else.. But I know us developers at the WINE project have found the new APIs (documented here) to be anything but useful..
Well, the register does say "what Microsoft has got in there is a grotesque, badly-documented pile of poo it doesn't fully understand itself." (in regards to the fact that the few new APIs microsoft released doco's on are other useless or all together wrong!.)
David.
stuff
- A new feature will enable computer manufacturers to selectively hide and display Microsoft's integrated programs displayed on the start menu of the operating system, including Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser, Windows Media Player and Windows Messenger programs.
Isn't this tantamount to purjury? Their claim that it would criple the system and that it couldn't be removed was obviously false, if all that was necessary to satisfy the courts was to remove the icon from the desktop. Sure, MS is allowed to spin things a bit in the media, but in the courtroom, nearly explicit lies are illegal, no?During the federal antitrust trial, Microsoft argued that such a change would cripple the Windows program.
The change will make it possible for hardware vendors to customize their systems by striking business deals to include alternative programs from companies like America Online and RealNetworks.
It will also permit computer users to reselect the hidden Microsoft programs if they choose.
Has anyone reading this **ever** seen any MS source code for their OS's?
There's one guy here (hello Dave) that counters my open-source arguments with, "Oh but you can now get the source-code to WinCE", but that doesn't hold water for me.
Get your own free personal location tracker
This mostly applies to the stolen corporate keys for XP Pro. Anyone using them (20 keys at last known count by Microsoft) will be unable to install SP1, and they will also be locked out from all future updates. Yes, I'm talking to you with the key that starts with FCKGW. I've always wondered if those letters were intentional...
Is your browser retarded?
In the era of security conscious people, running someone else's .exe file is really stupid, even if you think it might be funny.
And this tool got front-paged on Slashdot. How stupid can you possibly get?
Nope. I'm not lying.
I have a valid key but not a valid installation ID. Thus far -- last night and this morning -- it has stumped everyone.
Apparently, mine is the first case they've seen. I can't believe that, but that's what I'm being told.
I've read my MSDN key over 10 times in the past hour. They've verified the key, checked it, and even issued me a "temporary" key. Everything works, but *everything* fails when the installation ID is generated.
In fact, this "activation" is so anonymous that right now -- as of this morning -- Microsoft now has my name, address, email address, MSDN ID#, MSDN key, and a listing of each component in my computer.
How's that for "activation" anonymity?
MS has a bad PUBLIC record. Linux is just as bad, but it doesn't make every headline. Just yesterday we fixed a bug in the kernel that would cause it to panic just by unplugging and plugging in a printer to the parallel port a couple of times. And get this, it was a classic case of trusting untrusted data and causing a HUGE buffer overflow. How quality is that?
Not to mention the thousands of bugs that any Linux user that doesn't have his head buried in his ass would be able to admit to. Try actually developing for Linux and you'll find out what a tangle of error prone spaghetti code it really is.
I know that objectivity is an art of thought that died years ago, but maybe, little by little we could at least try to resurrect it.
You make a good point. What system on the Internet even has this port open?
Most Windows machines - that is - most computers on the Internet.
I have a CGI script running from Apache on my Linux firewall, named "/scripts/root.exe". (This is actually a counterterrorism measure against a unrelated issue, namely the IIS hole and the Nimda virus). Part of what I am doing in this script is to use Samba ("nmblookup" and "smbclient") to determine the Windows name of the attacking machine, and then to send back a pop-up message warning the owner about their virus infection.
I log these responses as well. I used to get a 75% "hit rate", that is, 75% of attackers exposed NetBIOS information (such as their computer name) directly on the Internet. Recently, my ISP (AT&T Broadband) have started to filter out incoming traffic to ports 137-139 - and since most requests come from people in the same IP address range as mine, most probes are thus unsuccessful nowadays. But among IP addresses from by other ISPs, I still get more machines that reveal this information than machines that don't.
Needless to say, all of these machines would be exposed to "smbdie" - however most of them are probably still running Win98, and so are not affected.