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Microsoft Employee Allegedly Hacked AltaVista

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the stolen-code-writes-itself dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Seattle PI has a story about Microsoft employee who worked on the MSN Search initiative having allegedly broken into AltaVista computers and stolen prorietary technology. However, the illegal break-in happened before he was hired by Microsoft. The question is, did Microsoft know anything about it? How much code was being written into MSN Search?"

19 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. Bored of these games. by Masque · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sounds like someone in this Monopoly(TM) just landed on Go To Jail.

  2. Quick. someone tell by rebeka+thomas · · Score: 5, Funny

    Someone tell Ken Brown of AdTI. I hear they're very interested in exposing the truth of this kind of thing. nonliteral copying, thieving code, stolen from__ oh it's OK if it's given to MS and they'll ignore it?

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    RST
    1. Re:Quick. someone tell by killbill! · · Score: 2, Funny

      To Ken Brown, what matters is not what you give to MS, but what MS gives you! ;p

  3. In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    AltaVista demands that anyone using MSN search pay them $699.

  4. Warning by ultrabot · · Score: 4, Funny

    This is an example of what can happen when you don't have a centrally controlled company bearing the responsibility and managing the Intellectual Prop... oh wait, nevermind.

    --
    Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
  5. Microsoft allegedly commits crime by damm0 · · Score: 3, Funny

    In other news, school-age child packs own lunch.

  6. Way to go by obli · · Score: 2, Funny

    way to go, they could at least have attacked a good search engine if they wanted to be better competitors.

  7. The truth exposed ... by polyp2000 · · Score: 2, Funny

    What ... Microsoft stealing ideas from other people ? Never .. Next thing we know IE will come with tabbed browsing ...

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    Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
  8. Typo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The headline misspelled "embraced and extended"

    Sincerely,
    WH Gates

  9. Re:Never used altavista... by Echnin · · Score: 2, Funny

    Never used Altavista? I thought [i]I[/i] was young. Noob. :p

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    Lalala
  10. Re:Microsoft not involved yet. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny
    It seems that so far Microsoft has not been implicated in the investigation at all

    Oh come on, why let the facts get in the way of bashing Microsoft? You're aware you're reading slashdot right?

  11. Re:Been there before by DrEldarion · · Score: 5, Funny

    You just stop right there, mister. This is our Microsoft-bashing party and we're not going to have any silly things like "reason" and "logic" get in the way of our unbased accusations!

  12. Altavista source code by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    #!/bin/sh
    # (c)1988 Altavi^H^H^H^H^H^HMicrosoftCorp 2004
    sleep 5
    find /cache_last_updated_1994 -exec grep -i -l "$*" {} \;
  13. Re:MSN's new search will be HUGE... by drtomaso · · Score: 3, Funny

    I didnt notice it taking alot of bandwidth from my site, probably because we dont have alot of videos for it to download.


    I did notice the forum activity though. It comes in just as often as the regulars. It wasnt a problem til it got involved in an anti-MS flame-war though. Jeez- talk about malware- some of the things it said were just plain mean.

  14. that's easy by Trailer+Trash · · Score: 3, Funny

    How much code was being written into MSN Search?

    Obviously not enough...

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    Do you have ESP?
  15. Announce this FAR and WIDE! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Two can play SCO's little game of bashing people for supposed IP violations, but in this case it is Microsoft. Trumpet this article far and wide and forward the it to *ALL* of your friends.

    Thanks!

  16. Haha Haha by cyberzephyr · · Score: 1, Funny

    We have always known who you are Neo. :-)

    --
    I'm here for the experience, not the Hyperbole.
  17. Re:Good lord. by Archibald+Buttle · · Score: 2, Funny

    Moderators, please mod parent as -1 "Dick".

    Whilst Cutler may have been one of the people that wrote VMS he did so for DEC. It doesn't matter if he wrote it or not, DEC owned the code, and probably also owned many of the ideas that the code contained in the form of patents. Since Cutler did not own the IP here if he did cut and paste in code from an aborted version of VMS then he, and by extension Microsoft, did steal, unless DEC sold had the rights to that code and the patents to Cutler or Microsoft. I don't believe such a sale was made.

    As for Intel and Alpha, as has been written elsewhere the parent post was wrong about it being the P4, it was the Pentium that this issue revolved around. Whilst Intel may now own the Alpha they didn't when they made the Pentium, and chronology is important here.

    Besides some bad decisions by the management of DEC this stealing of IP by Intel and Microsoft were major contributors to the downfall of DEC.

  18. On his resume? by geekee · · Score: 2, Funny

    "However, the illegal break-in happened before he was hired by Microsoft. The question is, did Microsoft know anything about it? "

    Yeah, I'm sure that was a bullet item on his resume.

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    Vote for Pedro