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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.
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