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Author of Paper Critical of Microsoft is Fired
chongo writes "Daniel E. Geer Jr., one of the primary authors of a
report
Reliance
On MS A Danger To National Security,
was fired from @stake Thursday morning.
@stake said that 'The values an opinions of the
report
are not in line with @stake's views' and that Geer's
participation was 'not sanctioned.'
Microsoft, who has worked closely with @stake
in the past, denied that it was involved in @stake's
decision to fire Dan." There might not be anything fishy going on at all, but that's no reason to stop making perfectly good conspiracy theories.
If someone denies something- they did it.
If they didn't do it they're more likely to say "WTF are you talking about, you madman?!"
graspee
... Another moron that doesn't realize that if he bites the hand that feeds him, maybe, just maybe, it will bite back. Good riddance.
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde
You forgot Ctrl+A! That's the most important one!
Having to hit Ctrl+Home then Ctrl+Shift+End got on my nerves.
GL
unless all of us do something about it. As long as Bush is in office, you can continue to kiss your god-given freedoms goodbye. But aren't you just engaging in hyperbole, you say? Hmm, well, lessee, put all the reports about stuff like this on one side of the scales, and all the (one, two?) reports about the government protecting our freedoms or, , increasing them on the other, and watch it come crashing down.
The freedom to speak, to publish, and to create are under the greatest threat they've been since the McCarthy years. Speak up now, or you will be silenced.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Windows 95 was released in 1995, Windows NT 4.0 was released in 1996. A year in computing years is not quite the same age.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
``We need to try to provide some balance on these issues, and this seemed a little one-sided,'' CXO spokeswoman Karen Fogerty said.
Sounds like more of a lopsided rant than a subjective report.
Vibe wont run my KKK ads either. Shame on them for silencing free speech!
(Note: I'm not in the KKK just making a point)
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
What?! What exactly wasn't true about what was said?
These guys are all famous security researchers, and what they say in this report is mostly if not entirely true, but how they say it is intentionally inflammatory. They bash Microsoft left and right, and regard them throughout the paper as an evil empire. While Microsoft is in many ways an evil empire, the analysts sacrificed objectivity and even-handedness for additional force to drive their point. Very rarely did they point out mitigating circumstances. Furthermore, they did not mention the dangers of heterogeneity in computer systems, such as:
More training required to use the software.
More training required to securely administer it, meaning more incompetent admins.
More ports of software, which may be rushed or otherwise buggy. (This is especially problematic with patches).
More difficulty in creating and applying patches.
More difficulty in researching bugs, as ports may be substantially different.
More divided development efforts, with increasingly divergent platforms.
Fewer security appications per platform, for above reasons.
Furthermore, heterogeneity does not retard the spread of a Flash worm, only a worm of Warhol speed or below (although it does limit the damage caused). Granted, we haven't seen any worms even of the Warhol type, but the paper does warn of future attacks...
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
That's great, I'm pleased for you- but I've found WinXP telnet almost impossible to get through a firewall with. Especially when one is trying to connect to an SMTP server to find out what the heck is wrong.
On the flip side, it also presents a security nightmare for school networks. If sysadmins don't know about it- and at two high schools and an undergrad college, apparently they haven't, in any version of Windows- script kiddies and bored teens can wreak havoc with the systems, or eat up unmonitored bandwidth transferring files to CDs.
Personally, I'm a little bit split on its inclusion in WinXP- on the one hand, it's a useful, basic tool that works for most uses that don't involve firewalls, and is a nice tool for a home user. On the other hand, it's yet one more open, unsecured route through which a crafty worm writer could access yet-uninfected machines, or through which malicious children could wreak havoc for poorly informed admins.
It's things like these- the little "features" that could have been left out- that were part of the reason David Geer wrote his article, and thus doomed him to be axed by the Microsoft-worshippers at his company. He was probably stupid to write about it on company time knowing the biases of the company, but he was dead on.
Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered HanzoSan when recently IDC confirmed that HanzoSan accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all positive karma. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that HanzoSan has lost more karma, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. HanzoSan is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict HanzoSan's future. The hand writing is on the wall: HanzoSan faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for HanzoSan because HanzoSan is dying. Things are looking very bad for HanzoSan. As many of us are already aware, HanzoSan continues to lose karma. Red ink flows like a river of blood. HanzoSan is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of his karma. There can no longer be any doubt: HanzoSan is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot editor CmdrTaco states that there are 3786 posts of HanzoSan. How many posts of HanzoSan are there? Let's see. The number of HanzoSan posts versus intelligent posts on Slashdot is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. HanzoSan posts on Slashdot are about half of the volume of posts. A recent article put HanzoSan as author of about 80 percent of Slashdot posts.
All major surveys show that HanzoSan has steadily declined in karma. HanzoSan is very sick and his long term survival prospects are very dim. If HanzoSan is to survive at all it will be at (Troll,-1). HanzoSan continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save him at this point in time. For all practical purposes, HanzoSan is dead.
Fact: HanzoSan is dead
Well, but to be fair, the shell update for NT 3.51 was available before 95 was released, and that shell is the same as 4.0, and was soon followed by the NT 4 betas, which also started before the release of 95.
--That's the point of being root, you can do anything you want, even if it's stupid.
Windows NT 4.0 was more than just a shell update, but also rejiggered the kernel, and moved GDI into kernel mode. Betas aren't releases, and I do not consider them when comparing release dates different software.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997