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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.'"
This summary doesn't actually say anything of how he is causing problems for microsoft. It is just his hacking resume.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes
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..."
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. . .
.. was actually a technician working at UK computer chain 'PC World'. You could say that he's more responsible for Glitter's incarceration than this guy. Though I guess Glitter himself is most responsible. Thing is, the computer technician actually got the sack because he was breaking the Data Protection Act my snooping.
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
My pics.
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.
I read his profile, he's Dr Barret a computer security expert, not a hacker, I can't find anything relating to a hack in Hawaii:i +telescope
a rds/story/0,1456,717426,00.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=Neil+Barrett+hawai
He does seem to be a normal expert.
http://money.guardian.co.uk/creditanddebt/creditc
This looks like a Microsoft inspired misinformation campaign.
(you've put spaces where %20 were needed)
"neil barrett" site:microsoft.com Google search gives two (pdf) results, the one you were linking to is here
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Well hindsight is 20/20 but its definitly a grey area as it depends what "Pissy World" was doing to the PC. IF scanning for viruses then its feasible the files would be opened. If just being nosey...
SolarVPS - Quality Windows and Linux Virtual Servers
- Oracle
- IBM (this dumbass news site thinks they're still International Business Machines)
- Sun
- Novell>
Even if they can undermine belief in his competence, they can hardly do the same for companies like those.It's just a shame that all that this will lead to are chump-change fines that probably won't even equal the money made by all the lawyers - the real winners. I'll go as far as to say that the EU would have spent its money better on OpenOffice development.
IIRC, Mr Gadd brought his laptop in for repair for something mechanical (battery issue or something), and specifically told the technician not to look at the contents of the hard disk.
Third-rate glam rockers clearly do not make great study of basic human psychology, it seems. The technician proceeded to think 'hmm, I wonder why he's so worried about people looking at the OH MY GOD OH NOES AAARRRGH MY EYES MY EYES THE GOOGLES THEY DO NOTHING!'
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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?
I'm not aware of any virus scanners that would say "Hey, this JPEG looks infected, want to open it?".
;o)
That being said, I've not tried the Microsoft "One Care" solution
Happy 13th Birthday from all of us here at Slashdot!
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).
According to someone in the same department at that branch, Gadd brought the laptop in partly because it wouldn't work with image files (the association between JPEGs and an image viewer program was lost).
So, in order to confirm that everything was fine again, he opened some random files to check everything was ok. Oops.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
but has he hacked the Gibson?
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)
While looking for Occupations from the pre 1900's, i came across the following in the list.
HABERDASHER - Seller Of Men's Clothing
HACKER - A Maker Of Hoes
HACKNEY MAN - Renter Of Horses & Carriages
HANDWOMAN - Midwife Or Female Attendant
So the true definition of a 'Hacker', was a Maker of Hoes.
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!
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.
They should have used the tried and tested method of offering 'Sales commissions' and 'Consultancy fees' to key officials like Lockheed did to convince certain European leaders to spend obscene amounts of money on a mediocre combat aircraft called the Locheed F-104 Starfighter. Judges may have strange delusions of independence over here but our politicians can certainly be rented, leased or bought just like their US counterparts and politicians as we all know can 'persuade' judges to think of the 'greater picture' by dropping hints about career death.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
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!
What I found the most interesting in this Wall Street Journal piece.
"With their orders to Microsoft, the regulators are aiming to level the global playing field and make it easier for rivals' inexpensive, easily modified "open source" software to interact seamlessly with Microsoft's more-expensive, less-flexible products."
OSS - inexpensive, easily modified
MS - more-expensive, less flexible
He can speak baud, of course.
The white zone is for loading and unloading only. If you need to load or unload go to the white zone. It's a way of life
Okay, so I read the article.
... and Blah blah
* Microsoft offered a list of people, including Neil Barrett whose opinion they would respect
* EU rejected most of them but accepted Mr. Barrett
* Mr. Barrett evaluates the Microsoft offer of compliance and deems it useless
* other [competing] professionals agree
* Microsoft changes its position regarding Mr. Barrett because of Barrett's opinion
Yay!
Just love it.
EU: Gimme a list of people you think could be unbiased when evaluating your offer of compliance.
MS: Blah blah, Blah blah, Neil Barrett, Blah blah,
EU: Our experts don't like your Blah blahs but Neil Barrett will do
EU: Neil? What do you think about MS's offering?
NB: Uh... it sucks. I talked to everyone I'm allowed to speak with about it and they couldn't make it work either.
EU: MS, your stuff sucks.
MS: Neil is the devil!
Specifically, what Microsoft seems to be impeaching is under Section 3 of the Trustee decision is Article 2:
Trustee is to provide ad hoc opinions to the Commission on issues pertaining to whether:
Section 3.b.i: the Interoperability Information that Microsoft is required to make available under Article 5(a) of the Decision is made available completely and accurately.
Microsoft claims 1) that Barrett is unqualified to make such a judgement based on his Trustee Report which they claim shows he knows very little about actual programming and less about industry documentation, and 2) that the valid claims that were reported by Competitors were based on an early version (August) that was subsequently cleaned up and redelivered (December) with most problems fixed.
Section 3.b.iv: the Interoperability Information made available pursuant to Article 5(a) of the Decision is kept updated on an ongoing basis and in a Timely Manner
Microsoft claims that this is exactly what they have done, yet the Trustee has not subsequently given "ad hoc opinion" to the Committee since the initial August evaluation.
Section 3.c: advise the Commission on whether substantiated complaints by third parties about Microsoft's compliance with Articles 4 to 6 of the Decision are well-founded from a technical point of view
Microsoft claims 1) that as above, Barrett is not qualified to make such a judgement, and that 2) Barrett's secret meetings with Microsoft's competitors does not allow Microsoft the right to defend themselves from accusations.
Section 3.3: (paraphrase) The Trustee must make available a means for third parties to make complaints related to Microsoft's compliance with Articles 4 to 6 and is required to keep the identities of those third parties secret from Microsoft. Non-confidential complaints ought to be forwarded to Microsoft for informal resolution of complaints.
Microsoft claims that this violates their right to defend themselves. By keeping secret "confidential complaints" from Microsoft, they are unable to prepare a proper defense.
I would still love to see those Trustee Reports.
This isnt a case where Microsoft can point at a random OSS project and yell "they suck too!".
...) ...) ...) ...) ...) ...) ...) ...) ...) ...) ...) ...) ...)
...) ...) ...) ...) ...)
/only/ for the C++ section of Kdevelop... but most of the Linux or OpenSource documentation provided is a joke.
/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...
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
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
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
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.
From reading the legaleze in that PDF, it looks like the EU basicly wants microsoft to unbundle Windows Media Player (which it did by creating the Windows XP N edition) and to publish specs for the protocols used by windows machines to provide file sharing, printer sharing and user management.
:)
If the EU really wants to see the details of windows file sharing and such, they should go read the SAMBA source code, as far as I know SAMBA is a 100% working implementation of the protocols in question (correct me if I am wrong here)
Personally, I want to see the EU (or some other agency) force some real penalties on MS. Examples:
Ban MS from having secret contracts with OEMs and force them to have transparency in dealings with OEMs and restrictions on telling OEMs what they can and cant ship alongside windows (e.g. if microsoft says to an OEM "If you ship Firefox/OpenOffice/BeOs/Linux/" as well as shipping windows (either on the same PC or on different PCs in the lineup) you will have to pay more for windows, that would be a violation of this)
Force microsoft to disclose more of their "secret recipies" such as the office document formats (is there anything that can read an access MDB file without going through microsoft libraries?) or the NTFS file system or the MSN messenger protocols or the Windows Media audio and video formats (obviously an exemption would be given to allow them to keep the DRM parts of the format a secret
Force microsoft to publish more APIs that they are using but not disclosing to their competitors (including APIs in dlls related to internet explorer, windows media player, themeing etc). This should include some kind of way for people who find an API that isnt documented by microsoft to go to the "review board" monitoring the MS penalty and point out that microsoft is not in complience. (they documented a bunch of APIs as part of the US lawsuit but there are plenty of APIs that are still completly undocumented)
Anyone who has ever had the misfortune to read MSDN documentation can see that Barrett speaks the truth.
I can't be sure about 'Europe' as an entity, but here in the UK (and other member countries), monopolies are accepted for a time, and then regulated into competition.
The way it generally works is that some company springs up and sweeps the market. At some point it is generally considered a monopoly. At that point, someone/something brings some sort of law suit against the monopoly, at which time it's market dominance is assessed.
If it's market control is broad, that's okay, so long as it's not at the expense of competitors or potential competitors. In the case of MS, it's monopoly is at the expense of other players, because they're not allowed to join in unless they get into bed with MS - whilst they're separate companies, they're part of the monopoly.
Someone like Apple is much less likely to be considered a monopoly (although there's definitely room to argue they are). Whilst they lock the iPod to iTunes, there's no restriction on who can get onto iTunes, and the iPod plays other formats. In short, we consumers aren't limited to the iPod/iTunes combo, indeed, it could be argued quite the opposite, because unless you have an iPod, iTunes has a pretty small value proposition.
As for people choosing MS, a large part of this is of course because 'everyone else does'. That causes the $10 (or should I say 10euro) card manufacturers to ignore the minority that don't use MS, thus circularly extenuating the monopoly situation. Even though MS isn't stopping OEMs supporting minorities, the market is at 'critical mass' where it self-enforces the monopoly. The intention of regulation is to provide market/capitalist encouragement to OEMs to support minority vendors, allowing them to compete.
In the case of this documentation request, it's there so that the little guy in his shed can produce MS compatible products and sell them. It's not even that much about big companies doing the same thing, because they could arguably pay the money for the doco. The EU is aiming this at the little guy, because with enough of those, the market will self-regulate, without an over-bearing monopoly (even if IBM, Apple, Novell, Oracle etc all got in, it'd just be a pent-o-poly, so still not really self-regulating). Clearly, if that little guy can't make his products, either because there is no doco, or because he still needs (presumably paid for) help from the monopoly, then the EU doesn't like it because it hasn't achieved the original aims.
The bottom line is that if you're dominant in the market, you can't be actively freezing out other players, nor can you be forcing them to play along with you in order to compete with you. Both situations make you look like a monopoly, and so you'll get regulated.
The actual documentation as I understand it is the core protocols/APIs for connectivity between MS applications.
What they got was a limited copy of the connectivity source code with no explanation of the APIs referenced, and that's why it was deemed to be useless.
MS provides:
MS agent says "What do you mean you need documentation? It's right there, everything you need to know about making a connection!"
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)
In summary:
Taken from European Commission press release IP/04/382? reference=IP/04/382&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN &guiLanguage=en
http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do
In order to restore the conditions of fair competition, the Commission has imposed the following remedies:
To the extent that any of this interface information might be protected by intellectual property in the European Economic Area(6), Microsoft would be entitled to reasonable remuneration. The disclosure order concerns the interface documentation only, and not the Windows source code, as this is not necessary to achieve the development of interoperable products.
Microsoft retains the right to offer a version of its Windows client PC operating system product with WMP. However, Microsoft must refrain from using any commercial, technological or contractual terms that would have the effect of rendering the unbundled version of Windows less attractive or performing. In particular, it must not give PC manufacturers a discount conditional on their buying Windows together with WMP.
The Commission believes the remedies will bring the antitrust violations to an end, that they are proportionate, and that they establish clear principles for the future conduct of the company.
To ensure effective and timely compliance with this decision, the Commission will appoint a Monitoring Trustee, which will, inter alia, oversee that Microsoft's interface disclosures are complete and accurate, and that the two versions of Windows are equivalent in terms of performance.
Who are you?
The New EU Complience Director.
Who's side are you on?
That would be telling.
Wat do you want?
We want documentation.
You won't get it.
By hook or by crook we will
Who is the Comminishoner?
You are the defendent.
We am not the defendent. We are Microsoft.
Ha Ha Ha Ha!
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns