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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."
Noooooooooooooooo!!!! WHY, God, WHY!?!
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel...
After months of ripping out what's not important, Windows Vista is finally getting a heart and a brain. Alas, no courage is yet available.
Q. What are you announcing?
Resistance is futile.
Q. How does this acquisition affect Winternals' customers?
Cost is going up, delivery is going to suck.
Q. Will you continue selling Winternals' portfolio of products?
There is no such thing anymore.
Q. Why is it a good thing for Winternals' customers?
These aren't the droids you're looking for.
Q. Will I still receive technical support and if so for how long?
How long can you tread water?
Q. Why is Microsoft acquiring Winternals and Sysinternals?
To assimilate.
Q. What exactly is a Technical Fellow?
Microsoft Bob.
Q. How many Technical Fellows are there at Microsoft?
There can be only one.
Q. My Product Assurance Contract with Winternals on Administrator's Pak (or other tool) is about to expire (or has just expired). Can I still renew it?
You're new around here, aren't you?
Q. What were the terms? How much did Microsoft pay for Winternals? Was it a cash or stock deal?
A few spare souls that have not been allocated yet.
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...
It's not the "purchased version" part that I'm worried about but the "of Windows" part. I'm complaining that I can't use the utilities with Wine (an independent implementation of Win32 spec, commonly used with *BSD and *Linux) or with ReactOS (an operating system consisting of Wine on top of a reimplementation of the NT kernel).
Does anyone else find it a little funny that Microsoft bought out Winternals to get Mark Russinovich? According to a Microsoft employee, "Mark is one of the top five or 10 people in the world when it comes to Windows internals." I'd believe that, but isn't it just a little funny that Microsoft had to go to a 3rd party company to find an expert in the internals of Windows?
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...
The problem, as has been said thousands of times on slashdot and elsewhere, is that these measures don't stop piracy. They do, on the other hand, sometimes cause problems for legitimate users. On top of that, WGA is little more than spyware and treats me like a criminal checking everyday to make sure that my copy of windows is valid. If it was valid yesterday, why would it not be today? Add to the mix that when I purchased my copies (plural.) of XP, this WGA was not part of the software or even something that the public had been told would be in the future.
Also, much of the complaint this time around, at least in regards to this, is not just that WGA sucks. It's that very good, useful, high quality software which has previously been available to anyone will likely be made available only to people who install useless DRM from MS. While MS may have the right to do whatever they want with the software now that they've purchased the company, it doesn't mean people have to be happy about it.
Do not go thinking that even that technology cannot be without drawbacks to legit customers.
One case where I bought something, the cashier rang it up and put it in a bag. I got it home and discovered an antitheft tag still on the item. And it was the kind of tag that would wreck the item with dye if removed incorrectly. So I had to return to the store to get the tag removed. And this store was a fair distance away. That technology cost me money in gas and time.
There could be an analogy made for WGA. Analysis of the strings in WGA code leads to the conclusion that WGA code can shut down a windows install that WGA thinks is invalid. If WGA is wrong (Microsoft? Bugs? Never!) then a legit copy of Windows may go inactive with a major hassle to get it working again. Even if the owner has the Certificate of Authority. I don't blame people for opting out.
-- 3 events that reshaped the world in the 20th century: WW1, WW2, and WWW
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!
http://www.winternals.com/products/repairandrecove ry/locksmith.asp
what a surprise... Microsoft takes down the locksmith. Anyone have it for me?
Thanks
stuff |
Google aquires former Microsoft developers Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell
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.