Big Brother Lifetime Award Goes To Microsoft

D4C5CE writes "Microsoft's ceaseless "success" in bringing instability, insecurity and breaches of privacy as well as a deplorable lack of open standards to almost Every Desktop on Earth has now earned them an "Oscar" for Data Leeches, the Lifetime Award for "outstanding mis-achievement" from the BigBrotherAwards 2002 in Germany. Microsoft's Data Protection Officer actually attended the ceremony to collect the prize (probably delighted that unlike the "laureates" of last year's event in Austria, at least he would not receive live cockroaches), and this unlucky winner took the opportunity to make some critical remarks on the company's communications regarding the Windows Media Player and Digital Restrictions (or, euphemistically, in his words: Rights) Management technologies which he deemed crucial for modern business models, rather than acknowledging that it's in fact not just the advertising but the approach itself which is fundamentally flawed."

Comments

Re:what a balanced and fair summary

[whereiswaldo]

what a balanced and fair summary

You mean like the documents Microsoft produces?

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/Embedded/sak/eval uation/compare/advantage.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/WINDOWS2000/advancedserve r/evaluation/whyupgrade/default.asp

Re:Another troll article!

[Saint Stephen]

I also kept my Win2k boxes up for weeks, and do the same for XP. It's called "knowing how the thing works". You need to spend as much time tweaking and setting up that Windows box as you do that Linux box.

For instance, you should log out occasionally, kill.exe bad processes, apply the latest patches, stop a lot of crap services enabled by default, and generally know what happens when what happens.

Really, I get a kick out of watching y'all complain about Windows stability, because at least 50% of the complaints are bogus.

Now, to not troll, sometimes you are right: You can't keep a Windows box up indefinitely because some crap patch comes out every couple weeks.

The site in English

[BrianWCarver]

Why read a lousy Google/Altavista translation, when the site has an English version?

Modern business models?

[Anonymous Coward]

It has always seemed to me that it's the outdated business models that DRM is meant to protect.

That they sent a rep is not unexpected

[infonography]

They did the same thing when slashdot and others tried the Refund trick a few years ago as documented in the fine film 'Revolution OS'. They had a table with free coffee and a banner that read 'Microsoft welcomes the Open Source community' (or some such thing). The Theory is very sound, if you duck an issue you get pissed off people, if you at least greet a attack with some grace it defuses the force of the argument. It's social aikido. You just can't punch out someone who offers you coffee....

Regardin the security issues...

[Jugalator]

I think Windows is largely a desktop OS, regardless of any "Professional" labels MS choose to put on them. Remember that a "profesional" user is far too often someone who knows how to use MS Office and Outlook with zero security awareness.

And for a desktop OS, Windows XP is sure stable and secure enough for me. Sometimes I have to wonder if an easy-to-use OS makes people lazy and don't care about firewalls, anti-virus software and other obvious security software that are necessary today, especially if you're going to use an Operating System that's by far the most common on the market. Microsoft's responsibility isn't to provide security to prevent us from spreading trojans. Only education can do that.

But don't get me wrong -- I blame MS if they don't have a patch ready before a virus/trojan/whatever is released. But, to use Bugbear as an example, if a patch is released a year ago and someone didn't care to download it, is it then Microsoft's responisiblity to foresee the problem and have a fix when Windows 2000 went retail or the user's responsibility to keep up to date with security patches?

I guess it all boils down to the fact that we're all human... Since Microsoft has a hard time to keep up with exploits from a huge amount of potential hackers due to the OS' wide-spread use and the end users for not keeping up with security software and patches. Perhaps Windows would be much better of as Open Source since it would help with a larger programmer base, but that's of course impossible as long as Bill Gates has something to say. :-)

Re:DRM is not "fundamentally flawed"

[Jeremi]

DRM may partially solve the pirating problem (until it is cracked, anyway), but only by creating a far worse problem: DRM gives someone else the final say over what your computer allows you to do. "No problem", I hear you say, "I trust Microsoft not to abuse that power". Okay, let's assume for the sake of argument that Microsoft does have your best interests at heart, and wouldn't knowingly abuse your rights. What happens when Microsoft's key generator get hacked, and all of sudden their "security through signed certificates" house of cards falls apart, as every virus and trojan suddenly becomes a "trusted app", allowed full privileges to your machine? What happens when your government decides that DRM is a convenient mechanism for suppressing dissent, and pressures Microsoft to remotely disable any program that isn't government approved?

Yes, Microsoft and other DRM advocates will assure you that they have thought of these things, and they have taken steps to insure they won't happen. But to paraphrase Murphy's Law, if anything can be abused, it will be. In the end it comes down to this: how much is control over your own computer worth to you? Would you give it up just for the chance to pay to watch some movies on line?