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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.'"
They are not a major generator of jobs or revenue for any european state.
Oh yeah? From http://www.enn.ie/news.html?code=8883686/:
With about 1,700 employees, Microsoft operates three businesses in Ireland -- a European operations centre, a European product development centre, and its Ireland sales, marketing & services group. After its headquarters, the Irish facility is the company's second largest in the world, alongside an operation in Japan.
Microsoft spends around EUR350 million each year in the Irish economy, and the software behemoth accounts for about 6 percent of national exports.
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.
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!
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!