Slashdot Mirror
Former Hacker Irks Microsoft in EU Dispute
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "The Wall Street Journal profiles Neil Barrett, 'a former computer hacker who once infiltrated the system controlling a telescope at a Hawaii laboratory' and is now an expert witness causing problems for Microsoft in its antitrust battle with the European Union. Barrett 'has helped put the British glam rocker Gary Glitter behind bars for pedophilia. And he also has helped prosecute a teenage hacker from Wales, who claimed to have stolen Bill Gates' credit-card number and sent the Microsoft founder a shipment of Viagra. [...] In the corporate world, Mr. Barrett once met a challenge to hack into a large multinational company's system in four days to win a security assignment. He stole the company's undisclosed new logo as a trophy, he wrote.'"
Looking at Microsofts history and some of their stunts they pulled off I wouldn't put it beyond them to indeed produce unusable crap.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
I have been programming for 20 years, I have created extensive systems using Cobol and C++. I am able to debug programs from large memory dumps over the phone. In my time I have come across loads of code in many different languages, and I have to say even though a peice of code may documented it doesn't make it readable, understandable or even usable. Especially when said documentation starts with "I don't know exactly why this was included, what it does, or how it does it but the system won't work without it" or simply "Sorry about this..."
The problem was that the documentation said different things at different places without specifying wich way was the correct way. A documentation should do that, else its pretty much useless. You could just as well just reverse engineer if the end result of using the documentatin is random.
HTTP/1.1 400
I was pleasntly surprised during the US anti-trust case that Microsofts legeal team was so inept. Microsoft surivived that because of politics.
Thier lawyers seem even better at p****ng off European judges. Only this time there is no President of Texas to ride to the rescue. They are not a major generator of jobs or revenue for any european state, and, they cannot legally contibute to any European polititions campaign fund. Thier only hope was a sound legal case and ass kissing, but, its too late for that now. I think this is just starting out and Microsoft will be paying anf paying for years to come.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
Given your extensive experience in programming, would you be qualified to hack into a locked down network and retrieve a file?
Maybe yes, maybe no. But given your experience, and given Barrett's experience, wouldn't it be better to ask Barrett to do the deed rather than you?
No one is questioning his ability to do what he does well (maybe someone is, but they are irrelevant). But what he does well and what is being judged are not overlapping fields. He is a network security consultant. The manual is for network filesystem programming (unless I'm way off base here and thinking of another trial).
I'm not sure where you get the "backstabbing little shit" from..
As part of his job he is asked by the authorities to examine evidence they already hold - in the case of the Welsh hacker and Gary Glitter where the police already had the evidence.
As ANOTHER part of his job, he does systems penetration tests.
He doesn't do illegal stuff these days - it would completely destroy the reputation he has built up as a credible expert witness. Why bother illegally breaking into systems when people will pay you to break into their own?
According to your thinking, every CSI and other specialist investigator is a "backstabbing little shit" as they turn over all the info they find to the authorities (who also hand it over to the defense as required to do so if they are using it in a court).
This isnt a case where Microsoft can point at a random OSS project and yell "they suck too!".
If the sentence is hard then tough luck, dont break the law in the first place. Its a punishment and its supposed to sting. It doesnt matter one bit if its hard to document the protocols but its pretty strange they arent already documented.
Its not surprising that it takes for ever to do patches when nobody inside Microsoft seems to know how things should work. They have to test every single line they alter because they dont know how things are supposed to work.
HTTP/1.1 400
Thing is, the computer technician actually got the sack because he was breaking the Data Protection Act my snooping.
Rightly so. He "helped" catch one pedophile, but so what? We all know that paticular suspect was under surveillance for quite some time anyway. And you're simply naive if you this this paticular tech only snooped once and just happened to stumble over one celebrities hidden cache. Dollars to doughnuts the tech regularly slurped customers hard discs for porn and the like.
To paraphrase:
It were better that Ten Suspected Pedophiles should escape, than that the Innocent Person should be subject to warrantless seizure.
May the Maths Be with you!
Sounds like you're talking about commenting within the code. Which is there to help some one who comes along later to work on it to understand what different routines are doing and why.
Mr. Barrett was talking about interface documentation intended to be given to other developers working on thier own projects so that they might properly interact with Microsofts' OS.
So if all they did was put out comments from witin the code then, yea it would be totally useless for the porpose for which it was intended, i.e. an interface document.
But I don't think this is what they did. It sounds as if they threw together a bunch jargon laden instructions, obfuscated it with interchangeable naming conventions, put it in a book and said "See what a good boy I am?"
I want to shoot the messenger!
Ireland is but a small country in the EU. Other member states see how Ireland gets revenue from taxes not paid in countries where the actual business was done. They will not think 'hey, that's fair, let them have that money, now let's listen what they have to say'. Other, more important member states will see the economic benefits from MS as stealing, not only from their own IT-business but also directly from their own treasure chest. And they are France, Germany and Italy, not Ireland. By evading taxes, MS might turn out to be penny wise, pound foolish.
Trust me, I work for the government.
Whoever this guy is, to say an expert witness in court of law is the one "causing problems" for anyone is a wild distortion of the role of an expert witness. Barrett's job in this situation is ostensibly to give a neutral, factual examination of the evidence, as relates to his field of expertise. His skills qualify him to dumb technical facts down so that the court can understand it. He is, more or less, a talking piece of evidence. MS or anyone else blaming him for causing any sort of problems is like Colonel Mustard blaming the lead pipe.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
I have a feeling that that would be the reason he was offerred up in the first place. I think Microsoft completely misjudged Barrett's programming abilities based on his reputation as an industry-leading consultant. They looked at "Network Security Consultant" and "Network Programmer" and said close enough.
If anything, I think this highlights the difference between programmers who write programs and sysadmins who shepherd boxen. A valuable lesson, and one to consider when submitting that Ask Slashdot requesting programming help.
Anyone who has ever had the misfortune to read MSDN documentation can see that Barrett speaks the truth.
Forcing behavorial changes on microsoft is better than just punishment. Even if they were forced to pay huge globs of money to the EU in fines, its not going to stop them from continuing their monopolistic business practices that keep competitors out.
The only way to way to resolve the situation is to force behavorial changes. That means blocking monopolistic business practices (all the things microsoft does to OEMs because they are a monopoly and the OEMs have to do what MS says for example). That means forcing microsoft to open those things which it is using to maintain its monopoly like Windows Media Player file formats, MSN Messenger protocol, office document formats etc.
That means real change (A complete breakup of microsoft might be the only way to solve this for good)