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Microsoft Warning Leaked Code Traders
An anonymous reader writes "Broadand Reports notes that Microsoft is now sending snail mail warnings to downloaders of the leaked source code. They're also apparently working in conjunction with several un-named peer to peer vendors to send out legal warnings to any users who search for the leaked code. The notice on Microsoft's website has been updated to reflect the new warnings."
This has got to work even better than security through obscurity.
"Don't mess with Microsoft, they have the money and the power to track you down, even on Internet and through P2P networks. And they will, this is just an example and a warning."
I have the power to track people through P2P, too. I've found people in my apartment complex on the networks. I've even met a few friends that way. Too bad that doesn't mean that I'm a multi-billion dollar company.
Please note, it is absurdly easy to track people on the networks. It is not indicative MS power, or their legal muscle.
As for seeing & having it, one major point is that you CAN. What was once taboo is now freely available (sorta), and people are reveling in like. To draw a completely inaccurate parallel, it's like the sexual revolution of the 70s/80s in the US.
Otherwise, I agree with your post.
And Slashdotters STILL don't understand why so many people and companies perceive that most traffic on P2P networks involves either porn, infringed music/movies/software.
Suggestions like in the parent post do no favors for establishing legitimacy for P2P netowrks.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
We should respect MS copyrights just as we expect MS to respect GPL. Sure MS may be dirty, but we are better than them.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
There have been many security comparisons between Linux and Windows, and the conclusions have always been mixed. One reason is because of the scope of the included software - because it's "free" Linux distributions usually include the kitchen sink, so there are more packages to count security exposures in. Another reason is multiple counting - one exposure across multiple distributions. Yet another factor not well estimated has been the severity of the exposures.
But these security exposures have all been in an environment where Linux source was generally available for inspection, and Windows source wasn't. A corollary of this is that most of the Linux exposures have been proactively reported, prior to being exploited. With Windows that's not so clear.
In the future, there's not reason to expect Linux security exposures to change significantly, except through becoming a bigger target because of increased usage. But the fundamentals of bugs, bug reporting, bug fixing, and security haven't changed.
The future story for Windows is different now, because some source has become available. *Maybe* some people will begin proactive security work on the source, and *maybe* Microsoft will roll that work into fixes. But for certain, others wearing differnt color hats will be examining that code for security exposures, too.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
So I guess the founding fathers of the US should have been modded down...or Harriet Tubman or Dr. Martin Luther King (and others that broke segregation laws)?
It's rather unfortunate that people like yourself base your morals on what papa gub'ment tells you they should be.
A modern day witchhunt.
Of course there are flaws in OSS too, but there's a much greater chance the good guys will find them first.
Isn't it interesting that after a few days of access to the source code, exploits are appearing for obvious bugs; yet MS have had the source code available to themselves for years but still managed to neither find nor fix these same obvious problems.
Note also that in the past, lack of access to the source hasn't prevented the *ahem* occasional exploit being developed anyway.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
"You can break the law if it's disobedience against Microsoft, RIAA labels, Disney or any other mean big business. But you can't break the law when it comes to GPL code."
Odd that, that on a community website, people don't have a problem with attacking those known to be actively hostile to the general public, yet they seem to stick up for projects which consist of lots of normal people giving their time freely for the benefit of society.
You'd have thought that we should teach people to believe whatever the lawmakers tell them to think. After all, if something is illegal, it must be immoral.
Microsoft says that it working with the FBI. How many DIY programmers could ever claim that they were getting help from the FBI to track down people who had pirated their software? This is an example of how intellectual property only exists to benefit the rich and powerful who can get the authorities to do their policing for them. Microsoft has the FBI. I guess the rest of us would have to resort to rent-a-cops and DIY cease-and-desist letters.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
This is slashdot.
You can break the law if it's disobedience against Microsoft, RIAA labels, Disney or any other mean big business.
Thanks to precisely the "big business" you refer to, the idea of "do it because the law says so" has lost any meaning. Once upon a time, people respected the law, and usually obeyed it. They respected police, and thanked them for doing a hard job and protecting the community.
Now, people look at the law as a neverending set of snares that can catch even the most "upright" among us, for things that no one in their right mind considers an actual crime; at the same time, big business routinely engages in activities that even the most "ethically challenege" among us considers an abominable abuse of people and "the system", without committing the least misdemeanor. People consider police mere thugs, officially carrying out the whims of our megalomaniacal AG, and unofficially engaging in far more nefarious activity (rape, torture, extortion, "abuse of position", etc), which their "Policeman's Bill of Rights" makes exceedingly difficult to catch them at, let alone punish them for.
Possession of a joint will get you a heavier sentence than DUI, yet the government responds by requiring breathalizers in new cars.
Downloading a song worth less than $5 leads to a $150,000 fine (payable via bankruptcy or a "mere" $3k extortion rackett that even several of our corrupt state SCs have called fradulently misleading, since it doesn't prevent later suit by the actual copyright holders).
I could go on, but I don't want to start ranting, and those two seem the most relevant to recent Slashdot posts.
Basically, society no longer cares what the "law" says, because more and more people realize that the "law" says whatever the Honorable Senator from Disney wants it to say. Using it to defend your position compares well to using a pool of sewage runoff to take a bath in - You don't actually accomplish your goal, and you come out smelling like shit.
"It's elementary that laws don't decide right and wrong. Every American should know that, forty years ago, it was against the law in many states for a black person to sit in the front of a bus; but only racists would say sitting there was wrong." --Stallman
from http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html
Now heres the thought-provoking question of the day:
If the leak was not caused by a network security breach, a physical security breach, a troubled-employee, or it's code sharing initiatives; how the hell was the code leaked? They said it wasnt network security, and it wasnt internal security (which takes away a physical security breach or a troubled employee), and it wasnt't its code sharing initiatives... Makes you wonder... how the hell did the code get out?
Answer this and get a cookie.
This is slashdot. You can break the law if it's disobedience against Microsoft, RIAA labels, Disney or any other mean big business. But you can't break the law when it comes to GPL code. Mod it flamebait, whatever, but look at the trends of moderations here anyways.
Yes, you're on SLASHDOT. When you're HERE, you may notice that people support Linux and the Mac (thanks to OS X) and don't really like MS. That's OUR culture.
Over on the Microsoft-Zealot boards, you'd notice that they support Microsoft's law-breaking as "smart business", while they attack the GPL as communist, a cancer, etc. Don't try to convince us to "play nice" with the people who are trying to kill us, please. Because *they're* not going to play nice, and any "sympathy for the devil" we adopt will end up with us dead.
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
Has anyone noticed that the RIAA has tried for two years to figure out how to connect an IP address to a snailmail address with out resorting to subpeonas, yet M$ did it in about 4 days? Has this not raised any eyebrows, made anyone look over their sholder, or consider buying a Mac, Unix, Linux, OS/2, anything not Microsoft box. In fact I'm probably putting myself at risk just by typing this. Oh crap, there here already...
Why doesn't anything interesting happen when I have mod points?