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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?"

11 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?

    --
    RST
  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. Typo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The headline misspelled "embraced and extended"

    Sincerely,
    WH Gates

  7. 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?

  8. 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!

  9. 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 "$*" {} \;
  10. 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.

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

    How much code was being written into MSN Search?

    Obviously not enough...

    --
    Do you have ESP?