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Microsoft Acquires Winternals and Sysinternals
SJasperson writes "In a move that will be good for Redmond but may have consequences for the rest of us, Microsoft has acquired Winternals and Sysinternals. This gives them well-known developers Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell as well as dozens of well-loved and much-praised utilities, both commercial and freeware. Though Mark says on his blog that the Sysinternals site will remain 'for the time being,' this would be a good time to download the latest version of essential Windows tools like Process Explorer before they can go mysteriously missing or be locked up behind the wall of Windows Genuine Advantage."
Make a torrent of the latest tools STAT!
The (near) monopoly maker of flat tires buys out all of the patch companies.
You're complaining that Microsoft expects you to use a purchased version of Windows? WTF
No, he's complaining of being constantly suspected to be a thief by Microsoft, as well as, sometimes, being a collateral victim of malfunctionning paranoid DRM.
I love their tools too, but why the commotion?
Good for them. Now they get fat paychecks, good bonuses, and they work for the empire.
And I'd bet that if MSFT offered you $$$$ for whatever you were making, and a fat paycheck with good bonuses - you'd be a fool to not take it...
= Grow a brain...
Some of Mark's blog entries in the past have cited shortcomings and oversights in Windows systems and he has often provided utilities to get around/address them. Now that Mark is a Microsoft employee, will such criticism be forthcoming, or silenced?
Mark's investigations into Windows workings have been very informational and useful over the years. Now that he'll be under NDA and non-compete...
I've found Process Explorer and Registry Explorer to be great tools to help find out exactly what's going on in a Windows box, and they're great for tracking down malware. They're a hell of a lot more useful than the ctrl-alt-del dialog box in XP.
I'm sure with Vista coming out soon that Redmond would love to obfuscate or disappear these utilities that would help let people know what Vista is really doing under the hood.
People (apparently you) seem to think that the only possibility is running Windows and this utility on some nice and pat environment. Rarely is this the case with most of us here. I may have to fix some computer by shoving a CDrom in the computer and running a utility because there is some problem. So if the utility won't run because the OS is confused (which MS OSs often get confused) then there's no way to fix the problem. Essentially they would have shot themselves in the foot.
If some MS exec decides that win.com (or whatever) is protected fine, but leave the utilities and similiar ilk alone. Protecting the world is great at some boardroom meeting, but reality is quite different.
I'm with you. Without Sysinternals software, I would have killed myself when I had to run Windows at work.
I am a little concerned about something else. Russinovich has in the past disclosed certain things (like the Sony rootkit) that he may be in no position to let us in on now that he is a Microsoft employee.
What's the ugliest part of your body? Some say your nose, some say your toes, but I think it's your mind. -Zappa
WHY, God, WHY!?!
Because you chose to run Microsoft software. These are the consequences.
Developers: We can use your help.
Yes but the stores remove the tags from the items when I purchace them and don't try to sneak into my house later on and put the tags back on them so that I have to make a trip back to the store with a reciept to prove I bought them so they can remove the tag again...ad nauseum...
If you must!
Oh please, please let them do this. The lawsuit would be staggering, and it would probably be Microsoft's XCP in terms of convincing the execs that the whole approach was a massive business liability and should be stopped permanently.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
How is this insightful?
When Google hired Guido van Rossum (Python head-honcho), there were no "Google is hiring this guy only to NDA valuable information from the rest of us" comments. Everybody understood that Google merely found a bright guy doing something related to their business (Google uses Python on a massive scale) and snapped him up. But when MICROSOFT hires a coupla guys who seem to be doing something cool with Windows, we get dumb comments like "Yet another proof that Microsoft can't behave like a normal market player".
Look, I hate Microsoft as much as the next geek (*more*, probably, as I've been stuck developing exclusively on PCs since DOS 2.1), and I'm sure SysInternals will soon disappear, but comments like "they feel the need to control everything under the sun" just don't add anything to the discussion.
*ahem* Flamebait? Pot, kettle, black.
Somehow, I think that silencing SysInternals would break a lot of Microsoft's links.
Seriously. I know everybody loves to bash Microsoft, but for God's sake, is it too hard to believe that they honestly want to *gasp* hire top-quality programmers? The sysinternals guys have proven themselves to be top-quality coders. They make utilities that the MSDN knowledge base references 172 times. MS developers use Sysinternals tools. They think the Sysinternals guys are smart, knowledgeable about their system, and could add value to their company. So, they hire them.
All this conspiracy about "silencing a website" is crap. They wouldn't recommend the use of Sysinternals tools if they were embarrassed by them.
If Redhat could convince, say, Larry Wall to work for them, doing the projects they want developed, would that be a conspiracy? Larry Wall is a kickass contributor to Linux (via Perl), and he would add value to any Linux-oriented company that could retain him. The Sysinternals guys hold a similar relationship and relevance to Microsoft.
eh? Do you think $100 million was a BAD deal for a freeware mp3 player?