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.'"

Comments

resume?

[PrinceAshitaka]

This summary doesn't actually say anything of how he is causing problems for microsoft. It is just his hacking resume.

Here's a link to a microsoft document about it. .

[dreez]

googling brought this up. http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/3/2/53239 546-efee-460c-a583-11c20cdea9ab/03-02-06Supplement ary Response SO final NC.pdf Basically it says 'he is in a anti-microsoft conspiracy', and 'he don't know how to program' Grtz Drz WARNING: no tag line. . .

A security consultant

[BadAnalogyGuy]

From what I've been reading from him and in articles quoting him, he seems to be a very outspoken security consultant. His analyses seem very even-handed. He is able to praise Microsoft's security efforts when they do well, but he is also able to criticize them when they do poorly. He doesn't take any sort of hard stance against anyone except criminal hackers, a stance which is very firm. His credentials seem to give him and his security business quite a bit of gravitas.

Does that qualify him to sit in judgement of something which he could arguably be considered uninformed or unqualified about?

Again, I don't think there's anything wrong with Barrett personally or politically, but is he really the best person to provide expert witness in this case? Wouldn't someone from, say, the Samba team be more qualified to judge whether Microsoft's internetworking protocol documentation was sufficiently made open?

Hmm, this explains things

[smithwis]

Evil Microsoft aside. Let us suppose that this is the same level of documentation Microsoft's internal development teams get:

Could this be why Microsoft projects consistently run over deadlines and behind expectations? (At least in the first iteration.)

This isn't Microsoft trying to screw the competitor, but just a peek into the hole that Microsoft has dug themselves into. Afterall, Microsoft hires can't all be dull-witted-code-monkeys, but perhaps the existing codebase has become a steaming pile of sh*t.

Working with c# and attempting to do anything beyond the immediately supported seems to support this. (Try overriding an OnPaint event on a ListViewBox for instance)

Re:Not that I question Barrett's qualifications

[xtracto]

This isnt a case where Microsoft can point at a random OSS project and yell "they suck too!".

Haha, nice that you touch that point about documentation, just take a look at the KDevelop documentation that "comes" with the IDE suite, now *that* is what I call an unusable worth nothing piece of crap:

From the KDEvelop Handbook:

The Problem Reporter
  (... to be written ...)
Code Completion
  (... to be written ...)
Creating New Files and Classes
  (... to be written ...)
Editing the Templates
  (... to be written ...)
Class Hierarchy
  (... to be written ...)
Elements of the User Interface
  (... to be written ...)
The Workarea
  (... to be written ...)
The KDevelop Titlebar
  (... to be written ...)
The KDevelop Statusbar
  (... to be written ...)
The menubar
  (... to be written ...)
The Toolbars
  (... to be written ...)
The Tree Tool Views
  (... to be written ...)
The Output Tool Views
  (... to be written ...)

This one is GREAT:
"Class Tools
  The class tool dialog is activated by right clicking on a class in the class view and choosing Class tool...."

Automake Projects
  (... to be written ...)
Custom Makefiles and Build Scripts
  (... to be written ...)
Compiler Options
  (... to be written ...)
Make Options
  (... to be written ...)
Chapter 11. Advanced Build Management
Multiple Build Configurations
  (... to be written ...)

And that is /only/ for the C++ section of Kdevelop... but most of the Linux or OpenSource documentation provided is a joke.

Seriously, I may sound as a troll here but, there is *no* way you can tell me that is better than even the documentation on Borland C++ IDE!!!

Go ahead, mod me down I have tons of karma to burn but this is one of the /thousands/ of details why some open source software just can not make it. And the people that closes their eyes and negate it will never get it...