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Financial Institutions Balk at MS Licensing
mmol_6453 writes "Now, not only are hospitals groaning under the combination of Microsoft and the HIPAA, but banks are having issues relating to federal privacy laws. Favorite line: 'Microsoft has told...that it plans eventually to eliminate users' ability to disable Microsoft's access to their systems.'"
And in other news, Microsoft becomes the first fortune 500 company to trogan horse an operating system.
Karma: Not Particularly Funny.
"That makes Warby nervous. "Microsoft is definitely not known for their internal security," he says, citing undocumented macros in some Microsoft programs, which can be accessed by those who know the right combination of keystrokes. "The idea of Microsoft coming into a server, creates a potentially huge security risk," he says."
has anyone got any examples of this anywhere? i'd be curious to see some of these macros..
I dunno what they're going to do with 62 gigabytes of pr0n, though.
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Trusting the bank != trusting Microsoft. A bank that takes customer privacy seriously and switches away from using Microsoft products has a better chance of getting my business. Pity my account is so small... :(
Notice that everything he's directly quoted on in the article is straightforward...and then a completely bizarre indirect quote.
Most likely he gave a bunch of examples of macro viruses or undocumented APIs and the reporter decided to "condense" things a bit.
May we never see th
Arguments against using Macintosh or Linux usually center on retraining issues. However, heavy retraining occurred when migrating between Win3.11, WinNT, Win2000, and - for the chumps - WinXP. So if you have to retrain anyway, then why not go with something easier to both use and maintain like Macintosh OS X or Mandrake/Redhat?
When you consider the bizarre nature of the service pack EULAs, the migration to Macintosh or Linux should be the obvious choice to anyone that can read English.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Spend some of that porn time on socializing with real live women and you may find an upgrade to porn. Yes yes, I know that sounds crazy, but there are things above and beyond porn.. try 'em out, they're way more fun.
Heck, EVERYONE Balks at MS Licensing.
How many people have passed on XP because of the licensing crap? I'll bet a LOT of people have.
I have, and it has nothing to do with piracy.
I think that MS is going to back off on a lot of this stuff, probably even Palladium in its most extreme form.
Their strategy at the highest level seems to be two pronged. On one hand they want to gather up all of the power and control of the monopolist, and on the other hand, they try to respond to customers as if they had to compete.
I know that a lot of people are skeptical about the last part of that, but I believe it. They backed off of the passport nightmare to a large extent.
There are lots of smaller things they've backed off on as well -- their first incarnation of their anti-piracy measures would have made it impossible for corporate users to roll out systems using software like ghost, but they backed down on that, and that concession has had a real effect on the ease with which one can pirate their software.
The banks have a real problem, and MS is going to have to address it or lose the business. I think they're going to address it.
The big conceptual problem, I think, is to consider MS to be a monolith. There are people who are pushing for this stuff, and there are others who are talking to the customers who are screaming bloody murder.
In the end, they will have to listen to their customers.
himm... there is something I can't understand here. a contract is void by default if it violates a law, so doesn't this invalidate the appropiate part of the EULA, if the purchaser makes it clear that the software will be used in an environment where privacy is mandated by the law?
i wonder if some sort of equal oppurtunity law would mandate microsoft to provide the software and updates with a licence and a method suitable for banks, hospitals etc.
ato
- pwd...container...host....logon...restart...data source
....you get the idea.If you are looking for specific troublemaking 'poison-pill' macros, I'm sorry, I don't have those handy, but if you want, I can send you a Word document you can fill out to request them
"Do something man. Right now."
Actually, there are three settings:
Off. Pops up dialog boxes and warnings: "DO YOU REALLY WANT TO DO THIS!?" sort of things. After clicking "yes" a few dozen times, WinXP no longer attempts to auto-update, and doesn't poll for update availability.
Automatic Download. Periodically (timeframe? anyone?) polls an MS server for updates, downloads them in the background, you have to click a little taskbar widget to install them.
Automatic Download and Install. Yep, just what it says: "Please, Microsoft, install arbitrary code on my system without alerting me!"
Of course, I'm currently leading an initiative to have all non-technical people required to set their level to "Automatic Download and Install", so I can only be a certain degree of harsh about what that means.
Jouster
I don't use Windows Update, but my understanding is that the "let Microsoft dig through your system" stuff is only if you do use Windows Update. If this is correct, then there is no problem - don't use it!
Surely someone managing machines in a business critical environment would have the nous to turn off the auto-update? Don't use it. Install patches and hot-fixes manually after fully testing them to make sure they don't kill your system. Do not rely on Microsoft (or any third party vendor for that matter) to automatically update your servers without you knowing exactly what is going on!
The XP-related stuff though, is a bit of a worry. Then again, the solution is pretty straight-forward - DON'T USE XP. If you need Windows, use Windows 2000. If Microsoft bring the same checks in to 2000 via future service packs, then configure your firewall properly and stop it happening.
As a street level tech mostly working on MS boxes I can be a tad upset about the "auto update" feature.. i've made so much money in billable hours on boxes that just needed windows updates and a disk defrag that i can't even count.. i usually charge $50 for this service and explain what i did and that they need to do it themselves evey once in a while... well i still get reapeat calls to do it about once every 10-12 months on most boxes..and they don't want to be bothered by learning to click on it themselves.. hey..let the little guy make a buck..:)
Just Limin' Mon
My mom phones me weekly yapping about some new virus that has slipped into her computer. She is 50+ and i think she is doing a nice job learning her WinXP. What she is frustrated with is the fact that she has a firewall, a antivirus program and she updates often even if she is on a modem. Still she have gotten successful attacks into her machine and even viruses has slipped past her antivirus system. She is getting real paranoid and feels that its not fun anymore when you have to be a fully fledged sysadmin to surf and write mails. She is going for linux and i will try to install it as safe as possible for her. No services open and a default drop on incoming connections should keep her safe for a while. That is what i would call proactive security.
Security must be proactive and not reactive. MS is simplifying reactive security instead of focusing on proactive security. The old vuln ??? patch treadmill is stupid. I think some dists should stop making their default installs wide open aswell. Close all ports and code a nice simple app that makes it easy to open the ones you need to be open.
HTTP/1.1 400
that's right, what happens when M$ decides to go kazaa all over your system. there's nothing you can do about it. face it, its just your hardware, the OS (i use the term lightly for windoze) belongs to them, 100%. You're just borrowing it. That's not good enough to pass muster for private information. If M$ wasn't so large, a bill to make them post surety bond for every financial house would be an ideal restraint for the mighty beast
oh well, chances of legislation unsupportive of m$ are about as likely as me giving birth.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
MS wants to be a bank, remember? How better to throttle back competition than by tossing a smoke bomb or two into their home office...
"While other banking institutions are suffering from network slowdowns and corrupted databases, MS First Union can provide you with reliable access to your funds around the clock. Bank with MSFU....we keep an eye on your money!"
Piracy hasn't been eliminated, but it's way down. No longer can the office secretary pass the copy of XP that she got with her computer around the office. She has to go find a warez group on IRC or on Usenet, download the ISO, and then burn it to disc, which are skills beyond the average Windows user. Microsoft's activation policy solved what it set out to do: prevent casual piracy.
Why am I having a hard time believing that business as we know it will come to a complete halt if MS isn't allowed in the door?
Commerce in one form or another, from bartering coconuts to brokering used RAM, will find a way to continue, regardless if the transaction is on limestone, paper or bubble-ether crystals. Unified...disparate...co-mingled...far-stepped or translucid....who cares. The point is supply and demand, not demand by MS.
Yet, so far, the reports of them actually doing something about it and moving away from MS are very thin on the ground.
It would appear that however much MS wishes to shoot itself in the foot, or deny users specific rights, people are still unwilling to move to a different OS.
The fact Linux is free didn't compell them, the fact Linux doesn't "phone home" didn't compell them, the fact Linux is easier to maintain within an organisation didn't compell them, the fact Linux doesn't come with arcane restrictions on what you can and can't do with your PC didn't compell them, the fact Linux doesn't suffer so many virus attacks didn't compell them, the fact Linux is more secure and robust didn't compell them and the fact that Linux applications can read and write Word documents didn't compell them to move.
So the question is, what on earth will compell them to drop Windows on the desktop? Because it's sure as hell not any of the issues we've seen so far.
(and here i'm talking about the masses, not the odd special case)
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then hand back what the courts tell you to.
Corporate security officers really should be concerned about this. From a security and privacy point of view, Windows XP is already out of control, and it looks like it's getting worse. Even if all those connections were harmless, it's hard to even identify a real trojan horse with all that junk going on.
Software updates and contacts to other services are much more sensible under Linux: nothing happens unless you explicitly enable it, you have the option of updating via media or mirrors, and all software updates can happen through a single server.
I turn off automatic updates on all machine I admin (about 250 across various organizations), not out of greed, but out of fear and responsibility. The fear part comes in when you get a call at 6 am, followed by 10 more in the next hour saying 'all our computers are dead'. Not a happy day. Automatic updates can do this, and have done it to me. I like to get a patch, test it, THEN install it.
If your computers are protected properly, (firewall, virus scanners w/ heuristics etc), you can get away with not patching for a day or 2. Use this time wisely, large corporations do, you should also. That is the fear part.
The resopnsibility comes in when you test the stuff for your clients so the BSOD scenario does not happen. I charge a lot, but thing like this make me worth it to clients.
-Charlie
So it turns casual pirates into seasoned ones?
People who have now found connections to a world of pirated software, right at their fingertips?
By requiring a key to activate XP, Microsoft has the ability to force an OS upgrade simply by no longer issuing them. Therefore if (say) Windows YP is released and sells abysmally, MS can announce the withdrawal of keys for XP, forcing users to get YP should they need to reactivate. Instant sales boost, instant share price surge.
If lying to yourself makes you comfortable, well just keep lying to yourself.
and Linux is knocking at the door of the MIS. That would mean rooms full of servers and thousands of NT desktops.
Tellers and staff run custom apps, don't have multi-media or ever web browsers on their machines and definitely aren't playing with their machines so M$ latest geegaws are of absolutely no interest.
A usage study has shown that only a small percentage of the features of the Office Suite are actually used and a great deal of the features that M$ wants to reverse engineer into their products (in direct violation of the DMCA they pushed for, which will come back and bite them some day) are already available in other products from vendors with better market focus.
In the second-rate, also-ran, pursuit of Apple's flash and style, M$ has lost focus of their customers, the same boring old desktops that didn't want a computer with a funny name back in 1980.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
An obvious solution - suggested in other comments - is to configure your firewall to prevent your computer from connecting to Microsoft. But Microsoft have a plan for that: UPnP. Universal Plug'n'Play is a protocol supported by an increasing number of "broadband routers" that allows applications to punch holes in your firewall by installing NAT rules. This is attractive for things like chat and video conferencing programs, but it will also allow Microsoft to override any rules you have to prevent unauthorized connections.
Though UPnP works by sending SOAP messages to a small web-server in the router (also used for user configuration), on my router (Alcatel ST510 v4) it bypasses the password protection that you can set for user access to the web server.
You mean auto update with things like SP4 for NT that broke TCP/IP, SP6 that was rapidly replaced with SP6a (don't know why there), DirectX 8.0 that was rapidly replaced with DirectX 8.0a ...
So, tell me again why autoupdate is a good idea.
My mom phones me weekly yapping about some new virus that has slipped into her computer.
... in fact she loves the fact that it is quick and stable, unlike the much more expensive machine she uses at work, which is down for software repairs quite frequently.
... unlike Windows, it does not change its behavior for no apparent reason, nor does it break mysteriously simply because you've added a new piece of software.
My mom has been running Debian for almost two years, and aside from a few calls early on of the "how do I do X under Linux" type, I haven't had to field any calls at all (none within the last year. None). Indeed, I havent had to fix her computer once since I installed it nearly two years ago.
Not once.
Now that Applix has grown a little staid, I'm probably going to upgrade her to Gentoo 1.4 when it is released, with Open Office.
She works with Microsoft every day at work, and has been agitating her employer to let her use GNU/Linux instead. My mom, who, like yours, is 50+.
However, even if her employer doesn't let her switch, she has no trouble importing and exporting to Microsoft Word and Excel formats using her GNU/Linux box
Most especially, she likes not having to worry about the latest Klez worm or misc. virus, something that is steadilly stressing out all her friends.
My mother, who is computer competent but certainly not computer savvy, has become a stronger propoent of Linux and free software than I have. All the Microsoft-funded astroturfers keep harping about how the consumers wants this or that slick or shiny feature, when in truth all of the computer illiterate and computer competent (but not necessarilly savvy) people I've exposed to GNU/Linux haven't ever wanted to go back. Why?
Because in truth people don't care all that much about shiny feature X or slick feature Y, they care far more about stability, predictability, and the ability to simply get their work done. And that is where GNU/Linux truly excells
What is interesting is how few people realize they have a viable choice, and once they do realize it, how many (of the people I know, at least, of various walks of life) end up dumping Windows like a bad habit.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
My Mom is 108 years old. Windows XP one day manifested itself in a swirling cloud of darkness and evil and killed her cat. I installed Debian for her and it cured her arthritis and let her get involved in some kernel hacking. She's never had a problem with her computer, even when she loses power. Bless you Linux!
Just seems rather odd, doesn't it?
/. would never do something that hypocritical, right? I mean promoting FUD about Windows to further some weird Linux agenda.
All these articles from journalists complaining about Windows EULA, and quoting people at hospitals, financial institutions and so forth and asking them if they are afraid. But not once do they ever actually quote a lawyer who can interpret the real legal language.
I work for a Fortune 30 company, we're moving to XP. We're also a financial institution. Our lawyers looked over the licensing and saw nothing to be concerned with.
I've spoken to other people in this industry who are in the same situation.
It almost seems like the media is trying to promote FUD concerning Windows. Of course we all know that
I haven't worked in the medical industry, but I have worked in the banking industry. They are in a very similar situation regarding software. There is no window shopping. You don't get to decide what platform these programs run on. You get what your vendor makes.
These programs must often follow stringent federal guidelines and the vendors often offer 24/7 live support (and I've called my vendor at 11:30pm on Christmas Eve and there was a knowledgable tech there to help me out).
Idealsim is a fine thing, but don't let it get in the way of getting your actual work done.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.