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Microsoft's Security Meeting Causes Unease
Tony Maclennan writes to tell us that there were many mixed feelings at this year's Microsoft Security Response and Safety Summit. Many who attended the conference felt that the presentations were sadly lacking in the technical details that were shared in previous years. With Microsoft entering the arena as a competitor to these anti-virus companies, one has to wonder about the effect on the free flow of information that ultimately benefits the consumer.
Personally, I think that this points out why people should be buying Steve Ballmer gifts.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Or, god forbid, someone might make a spellchecker plugin for IE!!!111one
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Has anyone in the DOJ looked into this Microsoft anti-spyware anti-virus bit?
Anyone else feel this is the epitomy of anti-competative practices? Hell their OS is the REASON these other companies exist, and now Microsoft gets to profit from thier own security holes?
Someone else HAS to see the flaw in this idea... I can only pray the EU once again has more sense than the DOJ.
C'mon, folks! It is no longer in Microsoft's interest to divulge techniques that may allow a competitor to secure the most profitable OS in History against it's own vulnerabilities.
The security companies will be better off forming their own knowlege pool and inviting Microsoft representatives to learn from them.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
After all, they spent a whole month cleaning up their security problems.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Why oh why would they give away the technical details to their next revenue stream?
My opinion is the Microsoft groupthink has the desktop war won.
To keep the desktop they have, they use "security" like Americans use "Terrist" or the label "communist" before that.
Nevermind that the system is not designed for operating securely. Just heighten the fear, deny your former security partners valuable information and the Monopoly money will keep coming.
12 tenets my a**.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
You can imagine why everyone kept their mouth shut:
It's especially a concern that Microsoft requires attendees to sign a document that allows the company to use anything that anyone says at the event.
"Having been put into that situation, people will feel more inhibited to say things," said Jimmy Kuo, a McAfee fellow and a veteran of the Microsoft events. "They ask us to sign a nondisclosure agreement, and if we say anything in those meetings that Microsoft is able to use, they have the right to do so." The agreement was introduced in recent years, he said.
Really, what kind of conference organized by a competitor that already puts in a clause that they can steal the ideas presented would actually render useful information? Think of some big pharmaceutical firm letting its competitors come and show their ideas with a clause like the one above. It would be surprising if anyone would actually show up.
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
So you're stuck with our crummy OS. Want to buy some protection?
This new symbolic link technology sounds like serious stuff. I hope they hold back on the release date until they it's working correctly.
Trend Micro. Perhaps the others are staying away out of fear? Seems shortsighted.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
There is something very wrong if an entire business exists to work around holes in a companies OS. There is something even more wrong when that company is attempting to enter into that business. Wouldn't fixing the security model be more effective.
So hands up who didn't see this coming more than a year ago when they started talking about it...Don't forget this is still Microsoft we are talking about - the upper management is still in place which means the ethos while hidden hasn't changed - maybe when gates and the others go it might improve though not before then.
I ate your fish.
So, how many of the wonderful new '12 Rules' does this violate? And how many people really believed in the 'Kinder, Gentler, Microsoft'?
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
We all should just unplug our ethernet cables right now, I have the feeling that with MS entering the market with antivirus software that less information will get out about how to fix things. Now when MS screws with their antivirus and Windows it will take longer to get things to work right because who would wanna use MS's bloatware antivirus.
Microsoft would be irresponsible if they did not include a clause in the agreement giving them rights to use anything disclosed at the conference.
Imagine Microsoft was busy working on feature X. Then, along comes someone from Symantec who talks about feature X at the conference. Later, Microsoft comes out with an update to their product incorporating feature X. Symantec cries fowl and starts complaining about how Microsoft stole their confidential information.
All the clause effectively says is that the information disclosed at the conference is not confidential. If it's not a trade secret, Microsoft can use it as it sees fit anyway. The same would hold true for anyone else at the conference. The agreement just puts it down in plain English for those not up on IP law.
Microsofts poor security and anti-virus is what keeps bills paid for me and a lot of people I know. If you ask me, malware can be a good thing in a capitalist run country like USA. If it wasn't for malware, the entry level jobs at a lot of IT companies would be gone.
If they gave technical details they might be used by h4x0rz or evet terrists!
More like Financial or Market Security Through Obscurity. Like every other market, Microsoft wants a cut of it and to assert their will upon the rules by which it runs. It's utter madness, however, because if Microsoft did their work right the first time this market would be considerably smaller and segements wouldn't exist at all!
That Microsoft seeks to profit from protecting customers from the holes in their software is ludicrous, heinous even! Never fear, McAfee, Norton, MicroTrend, AdAware, etc., you can go on to sell products which protect consumers from the holes in Microsoft's security security!
And then they went on to prosper beyond their wildes dreams...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Comment removed based on user account deletion
fairness and microsoft go together like Military and intelligence. Of course they don't want to talk about how they will patch the gaping holes they leave in their software. And you knew sooner or later someone there would go, hey, why don't WE sell spyware and antivirus software? It's all just foolishness. Microsoft is, has been, and will be, a corrupt monopoly as long as our corrupt government allows it.
Ok, this is due to me not looking into it much prior, perhaps.
But I went to the Chicago one this year, and it was utterly useless. All it came across to me was an extended sales pitch for their products. Perhaps I should have expected more, but it really didn't get in to any real technical details. You just went to some room and some half-techie guy talked about a specific product. It would have been a lot more useful if they'd discussed real issues, etc.
Of course those would likely get blamed on "Evil Hackers and Coders" as opposed to the company(pluralize if necessary) putting out the OS.
Face it, Microsoft is at the top, and hence, is villified. They're not doing a horrible job, all things considered. Mod me down, Flame me for being a "fangirl", whatever.
The simple truth of the matter is that there is NOTHING wrong with MS making an Anti-Virus, and Anti-Spyware solution for it's customers. Bundling them FREE with Windows? Yes that can be a problem. I'm actually sort of on the fence about MS's Anti-Spyware software coming installed with Vista. I don't think that's fair. If they want to offer it free, that's fine (don't cry foul unless you're prepared to tell Spoybot, AdAware, et al that they can't provide free software either). Bundling it with Windows? I don't like it. Microsoft offers their Virus Protection as a FOR PAY product, meaning people have to spend money on it. It's hardly unfair to companies like Symantec or McAfee, or Trend Micro for that matter. It's simply a competing product.
As for non-disclosure agreements, and intellectual property rights and such, this is nothing new, and is practiced by just about EVERYONE in the information business. I remember being incensed when Yahoo bought geocities, and the TOS agreement changed so that Yahoo suddenly owned ANY AND ALL CONTENT that you hosted on their servers. Without ever agreeing to a new TOS when the company changed hands. THAT ticked me off. Yahoo tried using some images I'd painstakingly made, and were profiting off of them, even though they had been hosted at geocities, and the TOS at the time (that I had agreed to) left the rights and ownership to me. Yahoo essentially swiped them (but was at least kind enough to simply delete my account after I threatened them with legal action, and they stopped using my images).
Welcome to capitalism. Break the word down.
I sat in a meeting yesterday with "developers" who had never heard of Bachus-Naur form. I routinely confer with "programmers" who have never heard of a finite state machine. I work daily with "data architects" who have never heard of Dr. Codd or of normalization. I am personally acquainted with upper managers who are just dying to replace OpenBSD-based firewalls with M$ Vista Server. THIS, my fellow cognoscenti, is the extent to which our society is infested with charlatans and ignorami. That M$ can now, on the one hand, generate security holes of arbitrary obscurity, and, on the other, miraculously detect and repair them far and away better than their erstwhile "competitors" is a final and apocalyptic testimonial to the supreme stupidity (I use the word advisedly, in the sense of "willful ignorance") of our omnipotent layers of corporate management. Wasn't it bad enough when M$ were the sole possessors of the Most Sacred A[PB]Is? Wasn't it awful enough that they were able to ignore even the most rudimentary dictates of software engineering with impugnity -- that the drooling imbeciles in management would keep right on paying vast sums of money for hideous deformities of Logic without batting an eyelash? Do they now get to rake in huge profits from "repairing" systemic defects of their own intentional manufacture? I am 41. I am tired and old. I have watched, like a Felliniesque "Sad Clown of Life," wave upon wave of utter inanity wash up on the vast, dead-whale-stinking beach of corporate and academic IT. I have seen too much. I can cry no more. I want to know how to stop caring now. How, for the love of God, do I join the endless ranks of these gibbering fools who never think one picometer beyond their golf handicaps? How, for the bleeding love of the pumping, pulsating heart of Jesus Christ on a pogo stick do I just sit in meetings daydreaming about jumping into my big yellow H2 and driving back to my prefab McMansion in the burb-sprawl and staining my redwood deck with Johnson's WaterSeal? Why oh why must I KNOW that the imminent deaths of such elegancies as Tru64 Unix and MIPS and Alpha are a sin against art and science and technology and Man? Can't I just be stupid too? What's so wrong with me? What have I done? Why must I suffer so? One day, my friends, we will all lounge in paradise happily signing off on million-dollar purchases of Microsoft AntiVirus Protection(TM) with huge idiotic grins upon our faces and lovely oblivious strings of rancid drool dangling from our chins. We will not be tormented by the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Our eyes will bear the brilliant, unfocused glow of perfect, orgasmic stupidity. Until then, we must work to balance our egregious karma. Can there be any doubt whatever that we fried and devoured living human babies in each of our wretched previous incarnations? What more glaring evidence can there be of our complete, total, and inherent evil? We sinners must needs endure the terrible, sadistic wrath of a cold and childish god. May he soon tire of so gleefully tormenting us. Amen. Railgun Sally
And that is Microsoft, the sickest of them all. They are 80-95% of the whole industry alone, and everything else have to rotate around them.
...Ugh! Still not sorted out...
And they soon have a new OS to sell..
As usual this OS is incomplete and a mess:
The event mostly provided a primer on security in Windows Vista, which led to a discussion on how attendees' products might work with the Windows XP successor.
"Symbolic links can clutter up your machine with lots and lots of links that point nowhere" after the malicious software is removed, Kuo said. Protective tools will probably end up doing the clean-up, he said. It's a sign that on Vista systems, security software has more work to do than on earlier versions of the operating system.
Its a good thing the Server version still is some years ahead!
RFC 666: Notice of proposed definition-making
terrist - n.
1. A person who is an advocate of or expert in the planet Earth.
2. Informal. An eco-terrorist.
3. Slang. A person who does not bathe.
See also: open source developer.
:-D
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Not to forget the child molesters. Won't somebody think of the children?
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
... but you also have to look at the possibility that no one would know the inherent flaws in Windows better than Microsoft, and thusly, no one would be better able to create anti-malware software. Sure, it might press competitors out of business, and that's inherently bad, but if it could provide us with a single anti-malware solution that was self-sustaining and beat all the bad stuff out there, I would be quite happy with MS.
Kronos was the ruler of the elder gods in Greek religion. He had a habit of swallowing his children whole because it had been predicted that one of them would overthrow him. The anti-malware companies are the children of Microsoft. Is it really surprising that they would rather not be eaten?
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
Get him something you'd want: http://shop.cheapbytes.com/cgi-bin/cart/0670010002 .html
Engineering is the art of compromise.
MS were quite clever to get DOJ all hot under the collar about Netscape & IE. These are no longer competitive areas. What is more important is that DOJ monitors future manuipulations by MS. For example, how they are playing in mobile space, how they're playing in personal audio (will their new audio device kill iPod through fair means or foul?) and things like anti-virus products.
For MS's point of view, being able to lock up the anti-virus APIs makes more than just business sense. It also allows them to shut the door on (limited) review of their system by citing some lame excuses like "there is no valid reason for anyone to look at these interfaces, anywone doing so is probably a terrorist!". Loss of that (limited) review would be a bad thing for the industry.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
> Kronos was the ruler of the elder gods in Greek religion. He had a habit of swallowing his children whole because it had been predicted that one of them would overthrow him. The anti-malware companies are the children of Microsoft. Is it really surprising that they would rather not be eaten?
Or that they would be eaten?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Before Microsoft jumped into the antivirus/spyware game, everything was okay, because although there were major security issues with Windows, other businesses jumped up to fill the gap and fix the problems. Life went on, and nobody got hurt (except the consumer, paying their $39.99 a year).
Now that Microsoft is in the game, they threaten to destroy these other businesses that were covering-ass before, and screw the consumer even more with price hikes once they dominate the market, but it's not less-right, it's more-wrong. This should never be accepted in the first place! If I put out software with major security flaws and then charged for more software to monitor the holes, I wouldn't sell a copy!
I doubt the government is going to do anything about this. We just have to hope people vote with their dollars once Vista comes out. I know I already have.
Oh please. I was at that conference, and the only thing that decreased the level of technical content was the fact that the conference content is now spread across three or so areas, some of which are attended by a majority of non-technical business types.
If you think about it, Microsoft has good reason to keenly share the security details of Vista, etc. - with trusted industry people, of course. Not only do they want to crow about all the cool stuff they're building, but it can only help improve the image of Windows to decrease the quantity and quality of security threats out there.
This is so surprising since Microsoft has a spotless record on security and always puts the end users security above its need to add more bells and whistles.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
If MS makes money out of their security products - ppl say they are anti-competitive If MS makes their security products free - ppl say they are using their OS monopoly to kill the (windows specific) security companies. Solution: Fix the holes in OS instead of offering spyware/anti-virus tools for free/money.
I don't want a signature.
The security companies will be better off forming their own knowledge pool and inviting Microsoft representatives to learn from them.
What's ours is ours and what's yours is ours, right? What a flamebait assertion, that M$ should keep the details of how they do things to themselves but that others should go out of their way to share what they manage to claw from the void. Typical.
M$'s behavior and the results are entirely predictable by this point. They want to own the market so they are withholding what others need. As in every case of M$ putting a "competitor" out of business, the Windoze market will be that much poorer when the competitors are all gone. All everyone is left with is the decidedly inferior M$ offering which will subsequently be neglected and suck more and more as time goes by. Windoze security was already a lost cause, so it won't matter that much. The spam and DoS will continue to flow as long as M$ has market share. The only people this really matters to are those about to lose their jobs.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Embrace and extend. More like Expand and Conquer. You can cover crap with sugar but once you take a bite well...... Security with MS is kind of like naming a ship the unsinkable.
I remember a Microsoft Antivirus already having existed at one point in time. It would have had to have been over 10 years ago though in the early Windows 95 era. Did Microsoft have an Antivirus program in the past?
Miscrosoft is a kinder, gentler corporation in the same way that Bush is a kindler, gentler Republican.
Cognos employees are known as Cognomen .
Cognoscenti are people who smell like employees of Cognos.
I wash mah-self with a rag on a stick.
Offering someone protection for a fee when you're part of the danger to that person means that you're running a protection racket. For a fee, MS offers to close the holes which it leaves in its operating system. I think that you see this kind of scheme at work all over the computer industry. The pushing of upgrades of software and hardware as a fix against problems is of a similar nature.
Stop whining! If MS hurts the customer, that's too damn bad. The customers are ultimately responsible for the products and behavior that company. If it wasn't for the 'customers' buying their s**t like it was some sort of elixir-of-the-gods, MS wouldn't even be in a position to hurt customers in the first place.
Everybody who has ever attended a conference knows that this is the place where ideas are stolen. So if you think you have a smart idea, you should NEVER talk about this on a conference.
-- Cheers!
If Microsoft releases the buggy, hole-ridden mess that so many are afraid of along with functional, cheap, easily obtainable antivirus tools, they're out of a job. If Microsoft were to release an OS as secure as, say, Linux, they're still out of a job.
The second options is impossible for a closed source company.
The first option, less most of the bugs, is what M$ would like you to believe is going to happen.
The usual option is to realease anything they can and then put the others out of business. Price and "free" are only the surface of the attack. The real attack comes from denying the "competitor" needed OS information and outright sabotage. Microsoft's insane complexity and bugs are a legacy of that kind of attack.
No company has a guaranteed right to profit.
M$ is a company too. Vista is the end of the road for them. Their profits and market share will implode soon after they get that buggy junk out the door when no one buys it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
this one is off-topic, but I suppose this is serving from an ms-os-based server:
t p?daily/classtopn+current
Does anyone know what this is about?
http://netalyzer.tf.edu.tw/~amadeus/cgi-bin/ipaht
163.15.36.246... looks like they are keeping stats on sites the busted or can bust into...
216.155.194.191 ths site kept buzzing my computer, so i did a whois on it and it timed out.
did a google on it and nothing came back until i lopped off the last octet....
Thanks...
"...who let themselves be f----d in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy"
Fixing it would be more effective, but less profitable.
i am behind hardware router with quite some restrictive rules at home, this worked for me well not needing any firewall crapware or A/V bloatware, but if vista is going to be such painful to work with just because some noobs connect modem directly to their PC i am going to skip this version.
i found it much more pain in butt than linux is and it is yet beta.
why the hell i need to confirm that i am not malicous software trying to change my desktop wallpaper?! WTF is that
last but not least, vista is so confusing that i cannot imagine those "users" who had problems with XP will even start with vista.
Windows 3.1 and DOS 6, DOS 6.22 for sure. If I remember correctly, it could identify viruses but not remove them. It did identify the "Michaelangelo" virus, back in the days of the sneaker-net. However, it was generally suggested that you get a real anti-virus program.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
But, of course, it's the GPL that's viral....
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
MS think they are allowed to incorporate any feedback, anyone gives them.
What is worse, many of their NDAs imply that if you suggest something to them, you give them the rights to use any of your IP (i.e evil softwre patents) in the process. Thus they care enough about software patent infringement to want to get the rights to other peoples intellectual property, while still pushing the EU campaign to make software patents legal.
When we talk to the great satan of the Pacific North West, we mustnt ever make suggestions. Like "why dont you fix your laptop docking so that laptops remember what the display settings are for different docks and even which side of the laptop the mouse is, and dynamically switch to the appropriate binding on dock".
All I can say is the truth, without any suggestions for improvement "As the user of multiple docking stations, I find the current experience atrocious".
-steve
I spent an evening last month purging my sister's box of spyware, dial up trojans and other junk.
./configure; make first, and where even perl and ruby are in odd places. Then build open office with whatever #define set that turns off macro support.
she was running Macafee, everything turned on, all these 'sign on to the internet' dialogs cropping up, etc. None of it worked; it just made the machine really slow to start up.
She asked whether she should renew her subscription. I asked her what was the point and sent her towards f-secure, that do at least view sony rootkits as evil.
The whole windows security business is a tax on people who believe that paying $40-50 a year will make their box secure. But the latest virus/worm authors ship their code after testing against the latest releases of all these products, to make sure they dont get detected. It's a checklist item for malware distribution.
You want secure? Get your own linux distro on an obscure CPU, where nothing runs unless you type
-steve
Not that it is "worse" by design than any competing AV kits. It just simply cannot work. The reason is that AV kits are not "fighting" against computer bugs, they're fighting humans. And (some) humans are by definition (still) smarter than any program.
You can see it at the MS Firewall kit. Now, it was maybe convenient to configure the firewall through the Registry, something anyone with Admin access (=The Average Windows User) can change with API calls, but exactly this flaw makes it useless. The VERY FIRST thing any malware that wants to phone home does is to disable the WinFW features or allow itself to pass through. Simply by setting the keys necessary in the registry.
Also, malware is notorious for shooting at AV kits from global players in the AV scene. They already do that with Kaspersky, Sophos, McAfee and so on. In other words, it would just add a line to the "kill this process" list.
And somehow I doubt that MS is going to put better people behind this than Kaspersky. Even K can't avoid being shot down by an attacking virus they don't know, I really, really doubt MS could come up with something "better". Given the history of MS software, that AV kit can be configured thorugh the registry again. I'm pretty sure we'll see it being turned off routinely by the malware that's going to come after us in the next few years.
And an AV kit that can be switched off at will by any program is, at best, useless.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I sat in a meeting yesterday with "developers" who had never heard of Bachus-Naur form. I routinely confer with "programmers" who have never heard of a finite state machine. I work daily with "data architects" who have never heard of Dr. Codd or of normalization. I am personally acquainted with upper managers who are just dying to replace OpenBSD-based firewalls with M$ Vista Server. THIS, my fellow cognoscenti, is the extent to which our society is infested with charlatans and ignorami.
That M$ can now, on the one hand, generate security holes of arbitrary obscurity, and, on the other, miraculously detect and repair them far and away better than their erstwhile "competitors" is a final and apocalyptic testimonial to the supreme stupidity (I use the word advisedly, in the sense of "willful ignorance") of our omnipotent layers of corporate management. Wasn't it bad enough when M$ were the sole possessors of the Most Sacred A[PB]Is? Wasn't it awful enough that they were able to ignore even the most rudimentary dictates of software engineering with impugnity -- that the drooling imbeciles in management would keep right on paying vast sums of money for hideous deformities of Logic without batting an eyelash? Do they now get to rake in huge profits from "repairing" systemic defects of their own intentional manufacture?
I am 41. I am tired and old. I have watched, like a Felliniesque "Sad Clown of Life," wave upon wave of utter inanity wash up on the vast, dead-whale-stinking beach of corporate and academic IT. I have seen too much. I can cry no more. I want to know how to stop caring now. How, for the love of God, do I join the endless ranks of these gibbering fools who never think one picometer beyond their golf handicaps? How, for the bleeding love of the pumping, pulsating heart of Jesus Christ on a pogo stick do I just sit in meetings daydreaming about jumping into my big yellow H2 and driving back to my prefab McMansion in the burb-sprawl and staining my redwood deck with Johnson's WaterSeal? Why oh why must I KNOW that the imminent deaths of such elegancies as Tru64 Unix and MIPS and Alpha are a sin against art and science and technology and Man? Can't I just be stupid too? What's so wrong with me? What have I done? Why must I suffer so?
One day, my friends, we will all lounge in paradise happily signing off on million-dollar purchases of Microsoft AntiVirus Protection(TM) with huge idiotic grins upon our faces and lovely oblivious strings of rancid drool dangling from our chins. We will not be tormented by the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Our eyes will bear the brilliant, unfocused glow of perfect, orgasmic stupidity. Until then, we must work to balance our egregious karma. Can there be any doubt whatever that we fried and devoured living human babies in each of our wretched previous incarnations?
What more glaring evidence can there be of our complete, total, and inherent evil? We sinners must needs endure the terrible, sadistic wrath of a cold and childish god. May he soon tire of so gleefully tormenting us. Amen. Railgun Sally
davecb5620@gmail.com
"I really wish that Microsoft disappeared .. Then it will be Linux, MacOS, or whatever .. which will be plagued by security grief"
If it was true that you don't see such destructive security breeches on these other OSs because they are not popular, then why don't we see the same on servers running Linux/BsdUnix etc.
"Microsoft is at the top, and hence, is villified" No, Ms is villified because they produce crap product and plot the destruction of their competitors/partners.
"there is NOTHING wrong with MS making an Anti-Virus, and Anti-Spyware solution"
How about producing an OS that don't catch viruses?
"Microsoft offers their Virus Protection as a FOR PAY product"
Further proof if that were necessary, that that MS is lacks the expertise to produce a secure Operating System.
davecb5620@gmail.com
You mean, that monopoly money ?
Sorry couldn't resist.
And while I'm at Ob. References :
You forgot to add "Child-molesting Pornographer" and "Lyrics-stealing-and-copyrighted-music-whistling Pirate" !
Think of the children, you free-riding punk !
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
"If it was true that you don't see such destructive security breeches on these other OSs because they are not popular, then why don't we see the same on servers running Linux/BsdUnix etc."
Because servers are not as easy of targets as a consumer PC, let's not forget the fact that most Servers are behind Cisco Firewalls, with competent users...which sadly most of the consumer PC market does not have.
"How about producing an OS that don't catch viruses?"
A virus can be written for any Operating System, or software for that matter, it's a matter of motive.
"Further proof if that were necessary, that that MS is lacks the expertise to produce a secure Operating System."
So Symantec lacks the expertise to build a good firewall because they offer a virus scanner?...I mean that is your logic right?
Need I say More?
Anti-virus, anti-spyware, etc. costs money to produce.
Microsoft can develop their products and recover their development costs by adding it onto the cost of the Windows operating system, which everyone is forced to pay anyway, whether or not they download the free product. Every other company has to market their product with their own money and there is no guarantee that they will get that money back.
Even if Microsoft's anti-spyware were made into a separate download, every Windows customer is paying for it, whether they like it or not.
Normally you should let capitalism do it's job, but when you have a company abusing a monopoly to force its way into other markets, it's an extremely bad idea for the consumer to let market forces continue without intervention.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
servers are not as easy of targets .. most Servers are behind Cisco Firewalls, with competent users"
Then why don't we see an equal number of breechs in Linuxland as Windows.
"A virus can be written for any Operating System, or software for that matter, it's a matter of motive"
Can be written but can it be run by clicking on a web link or opening an attachment. That motive being financial so why aren't all those e-commerce sites being compromised.
"So Symantec lacks the expertise to build a good firewall because they offer a virus scanner?...I mean that is your logic right?"
No, my logic is that MS lacks the expertise to make a secure OS. Given the nature of Windows and it's use JIT bytecode and RPC over HTTP, a firewall isn't going to be much use. The money spend on AV solutions would be better spent in building a secure OS. That is my logic.
davecb5620@gmail.com
All the clause effectively says is that the information disclosed at the conference is not confidential.
FTA ~ "They ask us to sign a nondisclosure agreement, and if we say anything in those meetings that Microsoft is able to use, they have the right to do so."
Doesn't this go against the whole idea of a nondisclosour agreement?
Acutally, I had to put my 15 year daughter in time out for 1 minute because of the flaws she easily found in the Beta 2 Vista. It seems that high schoolers are having team competions on who can find and exploit Vista slop code.
I think I began to feel insecure when she said Root Kits are for Wimps.
I have seen too much. I can cry no more. I want to know how to stop caring now. How, for the love of God, do I join the endless ranks of these gibbering fools who never think one picometer beyond their golf handicaps?
Try thinking positively?
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
heh heh
(Score: -1, fangirl)
hell. It $hould be at LEA$T a 4 $core...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I didn't mean it as flame bait. I simply don't think MS is a totally reliable, un-biased source of information about the quality of security within their OS, and I don't think the independent security product manufacturers should put themselves in position where they are dependent on MS for information on OS behavior that represents a security vulnerability. I also don't think they should belong to an organization or consortium that is controlled by MS, because MS has conflicts of interest between presenting their OS as secure, their security products as the best, and the "outsiders" as welcome.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
I have a pair of security breeches. They're made of kevlar.
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
Yes, be a sheep or shutup?
Puhleeze.
"Damn hippies!"
"compassionate conservative"
LMFAO!
The difference of course, attendees have to sign an NDA to not disclose anything MS says. That's one-sided and unfair.