The employee said "cross-dependency" and then the lawyer defined it as being both ways.. The witness couldn't clarify what the employee ment because he didn't say it, and it is possible that the employee ment both ways, although it is pretty apparent that this is false. It's all bullshit anyways.. what are we trying to say here, that Microsoft is stifling the market for text editors by using their IE monopoly to tie people to Notepad?
was that the government's lawyer was trying to say that Notepad has a dependency on IE. That it is both ways, a cross-dependancy, and the expert really wanted to say "hell no man, that's stupid" but he couldn't because the lawyer asked him specific questions: Do you disagree with the other witness? No, I cant because he's a microsoft engineer and I'm not. Is a cross dependency both ways? That's one interpretation. Slimey lawyer tricks. I'm sure IE just says to shell.dll, start this.txt file which it has written out to a temp directory and it will do so using whatever editor you have set to open files with a.txt extension. There is no dependency and everything is replacable already.
You obviously didn't read the transcript. Microsoft claimed that there were cross-dependencies between notepad and IE, Madnick claimed that there wasnt. He was corrected by the government's attorney, however the government's attorney made that claim that notepad was dependant on IE as well as IE being dependant on notepad (what they're talking about here is IE's "view source" option, that launches notepad), which is clearly false. Madnick wanted to tell him that it was false but he wasn't able to back it up, so he couldn't. The guy is in severe pain you are right, but it is pain caused by having to use bullshit terminology decided on by lawyers (tell me, when was the last time you used "platform software" or "middleware" in polite conversation with your tech savvy peers?) and getting grilled by a guy who wouldn't know the business end of a compiler.
You can read the whole transcript on the Microsoft web site:
Q. You mentioned in paragraph 20 TCP/IP. Could you tell us what is TCP/IP? A. Well, the initials stand for transmission control protocol slash Internet protocol, and these are the two primary protocols used in the Internet for computers to communicate with each other. Q. Is TCP/IP something that is part of the operating system or part of the Web browser? A. In... I guess I would say part of the operating system in the sense as this section has illustrated, the functionality of operating systems have constantly increased over the past decades, and I believe almost every operating system, commercial operating system, I know of today provides TCP/IP whether or not, because -- if I can -- there are many other functions, such as FTP and others, that rely upon IP in order to do their job. So there are many other functions besides browsing that operating systems rely upon these things, so therefore it would have to be part of the operating system. Q. As part of the operating system in Windows 95, is that your testimony? A. It was added, as I mentioned, over time. I don't -- I believe it was added into Windows 95. I forgot exactly which version it was added into. Q. And in the current version of windows today, it's part of the operating system and not part of the Web browser. Is that your testimony? A. As I said, as in many other -- most other commercial operating systems, I believe it is part of the key functions of the operating system. Q. Let's turn if we could to paragraph 22 of your testimony, which is at page 11. Professor, at paragraph 22 you mention IBM's OS/2 Warp 3 operating system. Do you see that. A. Yes, I do. Q. And you say that IBM's OS/2 Warp operating system included Web browsing software. Do you see that? A. Yes, I do. Q. Was the OS/2 Web browser removable without impairing the functionality of the IBM operating system? A. I do not know that. I did not study that aspect. My point in this section was to illustrate that these functionalities are included in operating systems in various ways. Q. Since you don't know about OS/2, is there any other operating system you're aware of in which the Web browsing functionality is commingled with the operating system? A. Yes, I do, if we take the view that the Web browsing functionality is also relied upon in other parts of the operating system. Q. Which operating systems would those be? A. Well, some examples, and there may be many others, would be the KDE user interface or GUI that exists on the Linux operating system. Q. Now, KDE is not an operating system; correct? A. I think I -- every definition in this court it would be middleware, in which case it would be a platform software. Q. KDE is the graphic user interface, graphical user interface, for the Linux operating system; is that correct? A. Yes. It's one of the interfaces available. Q. It can be removed and replaced; correct? A. Well, it can be -- if it is removed, of course, by -- if it's just removed, then the user will not be able to use the system. You could replace it by others and, in fact, most of the others I'm aware of likewise have, as you would call it, commingled Web browsing with their functionality. Q. In Windows can you remove the graphical user interface? THE COURT: Are you talking about now? MR. HODGES: Today, correct. A. As I understand -- I believe it's either yes or will soon be. I believe the provision that the Microsoft has agreed to as part of the settlement is that the end user would be able to remove access to the browser, if that was your question. Q. My question is: Can the graphical user interface of Windows be removed? A. I'm sorry. No, I do not believe so. It would no longer be Windows. Q. Has it ever been the case that the graphical user interface of Windows could be removed? A. I guess the answer might be yes in the sense, as I said again in this session, at one time operating systems had no graphical interface at all if you go back to essentially the original MS-DOS. So this is the examples of the kinds of functionality that operating systems have increasingly provided to users to enhance their effectiveness. So, yes, there was a point in time where it did not exist and there's a point in time where it was added to the operating system. Q. If KDE is removed from the Linux operating system, then its Web browsing functionality is also removed; is that correct? A. Well, the Web browsing that's provided through the interface is removed, yes. Q. The Web browsing provided through KDE; correct? A. That is correct. Q. Now, you say that, in paragraph 24 -- it's actually on page 12, paragraph 24. I'll read this to you. "One cannot delete the Web browser from KDE without losing the ability to manage files on the user's own hard disk." Do you see that language? A. Yes, I do. Q. Now, isn't it the case that files can be managed by using standard UNIX command in the shell even if KDE is not installed? A. That is correct. The assumption here was we are talking about the user using the system as a modern operating system which requires access to this kind of interface. Q. We've talked about Windows and we've talked about the KDE interface, and my question is: Can you name any operating system, other than Windows, that commingles a Web browser with the operating system? A. I have not attempted to identify all the others. As I indicate in this whole section, these are examples of the kinds of innovative features that vendors constantly add to the systems. Some have reached that stage of benefiting from the kinds of interactions possible, some have not. These are the ones I've identified as part of the study so far. Q. Based on your experience as a computer scientist and as a Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are you aware of any operating system, other than Windows, that binds the Web browser into the operating system? MR. LACOVARA: I'll object. We have now shifted from commingling to binding without a definition. It may have just been inadvertent on Mr. Hodges' part. MR. HODGES: It was inadvertent, and I appreciate that clarification. Q. If I change the word from "binding" to "commingling," let me ask you, are you aware of any operating system, other than Windows, that commingles a Web browser with the operating system? MR. LACOVARA: I would object to that. I think it's the third time he's asked the question. Asked and answered. THE COURT: I'll let him to proceed. But this is the last time. A. Okay. If I recall the question, I think I answered it in terms of identifying KDE and I believe GNOME, which is another interface on Linux, also has the Web browser functionality integrated. So those are two examples. And, once again, this was not an attempt to exhaustively study all the others or systems that are under development today. Q. GNOME is a -- it's spelled G-N-O-M-E; correct? A. That's correct, yes. Q. It's not the way most people would pronounce that word. GNOME is also a graphical user interface for Linux; correct. A. That is correct. It provides that kind of functionality. Q. And it is also, like KDE, a removable graphical user interface for Linux; correct? A. It's removable in the sense if you remove it you no longer have access to a graphical user interface. Q. It's not an operating system; correct? A. Well, it is part of what we described as middleware under the understanding of the terms being used, and we go from there. Q. I'll try to stay in order, but I need to flip back to page 11 and paragraph 23 if I could. You say in the second sentence -- A. I'm sorry. What page? Q. I'm sorry. It's page 11, paragraph 23. I can tell you, Professor, it also appears up there on the monitor in front of you, so whatever is easier for you is fine. THE COURT: The small monitor has it, too. THE WITNESS: It's sometimes helpful to see the context. That's why I like to look at the documents. BY MR. HODGES: Q. The second line of paragraph 23 -- the second sentence, I'm sorry -- you say that Windows, like all commercial operating systems of which I am aware, ships with a simple text editor, Notepad in the case of Windows, that is a relatively self-contained block of code that is easily removable. What's the basis for that statement? A. It's a long sentence. Is there some particular part of it you're having a question about? Q. Yes. I want to know what's the basis for your statement that the Notepad is easily removable? A. The fact that there is a file -- I can't remember it's name, but it's probably something like Notepad.exe -- that in theory one could delete without having any other effects upon the operating system. Q. Is this based on your review of the Windows XP source code? A. Not specifically. Q. Professor, have you had an opportunity to review the direct testimony of Robert Short of Microsoft? A. I have seen it. Q. Mr. Short is the vice president of Windows core technologies. Does that sound right to you? A. Yes, it does. Q. Are you aware that Mr. Short testified that there are cross-dependencies between the Notepad and Internet Explorer? A. After I wrote my report, I believe I remembered hearing that mentioned in his report or his testimony. Yes the answer is. Q. Do you disagree with Mr. Short? A. I assume he knows much more about the internals of Windows than I do. I believe my point may still be true, although I've not consulted with him, in that I believe the removable of Notepad does not impact any other part of the system. I believe in his testimony -- I think he was trying to illustrate that other parts -- using my earlier diagram of HTML Renderer, for example, or Shell Doc Viewer -- that removal of other parts of the middleware that might seem to be unrelated might cause Notepad to fail. Am I clear on the duality here or the differences? Am I clear on the differences that removing Notepad may not cause other parts of the system to fail, but that removing other parts of the system that may appear to be file removed from Notepad might cause Notepad to fail. I think that is two different issues. Q. Are you aware that Mr. Short used the term cross-dependencies? A. I don't recall what exact term he used. Q. If there are cross-dependencies, doesn't that apply that Notepad relies on Internet Explorer and Internet Explorer relies on Notepad? A. I can't speak for him. Q. Is that what the term cross-dependencies means to you? A. That would be a one interpretation, yes. Q. And if there are cross-dependencies, wouldn't it be the case that removing Notepad would affect other parts of the Windows operating system product? A. That might be true. I was only trying to give a simple example here. If that one doesn't apply I'll have to find some other example. Q. I take it you were not aware of any cross-dependency involving the Notepad? A. No, I was not. Q. Is there any technical reason that there needs to be a cross-dependency between the Notepad and Internet Explorer? A. As I said, this is not an area that I have studied. If you would like me to speculate or to try to conjure up a reason, I could try to do so, but it would be totally ad hoc thinking. Q. I don't want you to speculate. I want to ask if you are aware of any technical reason that there needs to be a cross-dependency between the Notepad and Internet Explorer? And if you don't know, that's acceptable. A. What might be helpful is the realization based upon my many years trying to understand all of the inter-dependencies that go on in a complex product is extremely difficult, and often I've been quite surprised myself to realize that one part of the system was able to make use of another part. So, you know, with some careful thought it is possible I might find that there actually is a reason for cross- dependencies. But it was not something that immediately came to mind. Q. So you could speculate that, but you don't know. Is that an accurate summary? A. As I've said, I have not studied that issue. Q. Now, you have reviewed the Windows XP source code; correct? A. Yes, I have. Though I will not say I've looked at every 36 million or so lines of code carefully. Q. Is it 36 million or 39 million? A. As I said, a million here, a million there, it adds up after a while I guess. Q. Pretty soon you're talking about real lines of code? A. Exactly. Q. What exactly have you done? A. The main purpose of looking -- once again, given both the limited amount of time and the size, was really to better understand the way in which a system was modularized, the way in which it's broken up into individual routines and the types of interdepencies that exist, so it's more to get a feel for the overall structure of the system. Q. Is there any way you can quantify how much effort was involved in your review of the Windows XP source code? A. Physical amount of time, probably 8 or 10 hours.
Man I'm sick of these court room reports. Take off the bias, hand me the dead cow. Where are the transcripts? I'll read it myself and see whether this (business school) Prof was really a clueby or whether the state's attorney was playing semantic games. After all, what _is_ an operating system? He refers to Linux as being one.. what? Linux is a kernel!
Free speech should not be "for everyone", much the same way as driving a car should not be legal for everyone.
Having been a Nazi for a number of years, I can tell you that the vast majority of political speakers are law-obiding, decent and considerate people. Then, of course, you have the 1% who want to take such a wonderful gift, and abuse it. They will abuse it for their own personal or financial game, or simply because they get off on making someone else on the other end of their "attack" miserable.
I propose that people should be required to carry a Speech License, which proves they are capable of using free speech responsibly, in much the same way as you're required to carry a Drivers License to prove you know how to use a car responsibly.
To the vast majority of us, its no big deal. Having a Speech License is no more a threat to one's personal freedoms and rights to privacy as carrying a Drivers License is. For people who have demonstrated a clear-cut lack of understanding of the fundemental governing principles of behavior and usage, their license should be revoked, just as it is for people who have demonstrated a lack of understanding for the basic principles of behavior and usage for a car. While I wouldn't impose fines, and I would not create a police force to apply the law, I would leave it up to the individual publishers to decide how to best apply this for his or her system.
Its only after we do something like I've just described that free speech can be cleaned up, and relatively free of abuse, garbage, and other miscellaneous mindbarf.
They cannot extend GCC because they're writing a high performance compiler, not an optimising compiler, it's a different architecture because it's solving a different problem.
This seems kind of important dont you think? Ada was fidling around with programming. Surely anyone who wrote down how to do long division was a programmer too! Babbage was a legend, but just like all the people who say their inventions predated Edison, they never actually built them.
Like many in the security industry, he just cant argue. He's all but given up trying to convince people that security is important. It's funny, but he actually believes that the common man gives a shit about security. News flash: they dont. Due to this misunderstanding he pushes the blame onto the developers. Why should they be forced to develop secure software if no-one wants it? There-in lies the problem. If you want security to be taken seriously stop trying to use the force of government to make developers do something the market doesn't want. Convince the market that it is important. And no, that doesn't mean releasing scripts on bugtraq so kiddies go attacking the innocents so you can point your finger at developers and say "see see, bad software".
Hail America
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Revolution OS
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· Score: -1, Flamebait
Ever think about giving the film to anyone outside the US? God, there's only 284 million of you, and probably less than 1% of that actually care.
maybe I didn't experience this because I use mozilla and have the options set to not allow web sites to open unrequested windows, but I did notice the flashing "new" boxes. Annoying.
This is an even bigger security hole. I naturally assumed you had turned this off and ran IE as a user with reduced privileges. Obviously if IE is running with admin privs then all of this is defunct.
Re:Y2K played down too much
on
Byte Wars
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· Score: 2
I worked on date correction hardware in 1999. We were making a product that corrected the hardware real time clocks in PCs. Basically all of them were broken. Our sales people would go out and convince people that it was important. Our cards weren't expensive, and the firmware/drivers were tested better than anything I've ever worked on. There was basically two types of people: gimme and cynical. We supplied good support to the people who said gimme and sold a lot of cards. The cynical people would waste our time sitting through our demos, arguing about the impact. Eventually they ran out of time. We personally went to every single one of them after y2k and asked them how it had gone. The sales guys would tell me how fucked their systems were. Some experienced huge data losses which we really couldn't explain.
Compaq computers have an embedded processor which supplies the entire southbridge, ie, IBM PC compatibility. They offered to their customers a firmware upgrade that would make their computers y2k compliant. We found out about this after we had sold a lot of cards and people were coming back to us for refunds. Why we gave a refund because they had failed to do their homework I dont know. After y2k all their systems were fucked. Compaq's firmware didn't do the job.
In 2001 I got a call from this company saying they had about 400 cards left and they couldn't sell them (obviously). So I was hired to rewrite the firmware to make the card somewhat useful. Using the onboard real time clock we made a card that could lock a computer between certain times. Totally useless product in my opinion. They're on their 8th production run (or something, I dont talk to them anymore).
Call them what you will, but if all these technology startups had hired a sales force like the one I had the pleasure of working with in 1999 we might see a few less chapter 11s.
I know this, but what you are saying is that IE cant run code that can do anything damaging (because it isn't root) and what I'm saying is that is definitely the wrong attitude. What I think you are saying (correct me if I'm wrong) is that non-root remote exploits are not much of a threat. That is untrue. A remote exploit is bad no matter what the security level. Even a nobody-level remote exploit is bad because attackers can use your machine to bounce attacks to other systems (making it appear like your machine is doing the attacking). It only takes one local exploit (say, in all that proprietory code that Apple ships) to turn a non-root exploit into a root exploit. But let's say that your machine is locally secure (that is, if you were to give me a shell there would be no way for me to get root). Even then IE can run code that can follow your actions (a bad thing in itself) and when those actions involve elevation of privileges then it is possible to get root without any local exploit being necessary. So no, the fact that you dont run IE as root is not enough. Personally I think we should be able to control exactly what capabilities programs have. Running arbitary code from a foriegn source isn't one of them.
Surely when you get asked to enter your root password (as you always do whenever you install new software) the attacker could jump to root. Guess the small amount of effort to trick/follow the user is more than any attacker would bother to do.
Put a ring of optic fibre on one of the arms and pump laser light into it. Measure how long it takes for the arm to respond. Lesson: Mass and Energy bends space time.
Iceland has been powered on geothermic energy since 1930! Hitaveita Reykjavikur (Reykjavik District Heating) supplies Reykjavik and several neighboring communities with geothermal water. There are about 150 thousand inhabitants in that area, living in about 35 thousand houses. This is way over half the population of Iceland. Total harnessed power of the utility's geothermal fields, including the Nesjavellir plant, amounts to 660 MWt, and its distribution system carries an annual flow of 55 million cubic meters of water. The first geothermal power plant was built in 1969 when a 3-MWe back-pressure turbine was installed in Bjamarflag (Námafjall field). The total electrical production of the Bjamarflag power plant in 1995 was 11.5 Gwh. The Krafla power plant, located about 10 km north of the Námafjall field, has been in operation since 1977. Initially, the power production was 8 MWe, but reached the present 30 MWe in 1982. In 1995 the total annual geothermal energy production for electricity use was 288 gigawatt hours. The list goes on.
Perhaps a little bit of research could be done to debunk crap stories like this. 15 minutes on google is all it takes to add a little credibility.
Slashdot Mirror
Whereas the rest of the earth did.
The employee said "cross-dependency" and then the lawyer defined it as being both ways.. The witness couldn't clarify what the employee ment because he didn't say it, and it is possible that the employee ment both ways, although it is pretty apparent that this is false. It's all bullshit anyways.. what are we trying to say here, that Microsoft is stifling the market for text editors by using their IE monopoly to tie people to Notepad?
was that the government's lawyer was trying to say that Notepad has a dependency on IE. That it is both ways, a cross-dependancy, and the expert really wanted to say "hell no man, that's stupid" but he couldn't because the lawyer asked him specific questions: Do you disagree with the other witness? No, I cant because he's a microsoft engineer and I'm not. Is a cross dependency both ways? That's one interpretation. Slimey lawyer tricks. I'm sure IE just says to shell.dll, start this .txt file which it has written out to a temp directory and it will do so using whatever editor you have set to open files with a .txt extension. There is no dependency and everything is replacable already.
Heh, your english seems fine to me! This whole case has been scary on both sides.
You obviously didn't read the transcript. Microsoft claimed that there were cross-dependencies between notepad and IE, Madnick claimed that there wasnt. He was corrected by the government's attorney, however the government's attorney made that claim that notepad was dependant on IE as well as IE being dependant on notepad (what they're talking about here is IE's "view source" option, that launches notepad), which is clearly false. Madnick wanted to tell him that it was false but he wasn't able to back it up, so he couldn't. The guy is in severe pain you are right, but it is pain caused by having to use bullshit terminology decided on by lawyers (tell me, when was the last time you used "platform software" or "middleware" in polite conversation with your tech savvy peers?) and getting grilled by a guy who wouldn't know the business end of a compiler.
still smaller, and not parasitic either.
Agreed, this is an embarassing blunder by Microsoft.
No it isn't. It's Slashdot's "interpretation" of the "reporting" of the transcript. He knows very well what KDE and GNOME are.
You can read the whole transcript on the Microsoft web site:
Q. You mentioned in paragraph 20 TCP/IP. Could you tell us what is TCP/IP?
A. Well, the initials stand for transmission control protocol slash Internet protocol, and these are the two primary protocols used in the Internet for computers to communicate with each other.
Q. Is TCP/IP something that is part of the operating system or part of the Web browser?
A. In... I guess I would say part of the operating system in the sense as this section has illustrated, the functionality of operating systems have constantly increased over the past decades, and I believe almost every operating system, commercial operating system, I know of today provides TCP/IP whether or not, because -- if I can -- there are many other functions, such as FTP and others, that rely upon IP in order to do their job.
So there are many other functions besides browsing that operating systems rely upon these things, so therefore it would have to be part of the operating system.
Q. As part of the operating system in Windows 95, is that your testimony?
A. It was added, as I mentioned, over time. I don't -- I believe it was added into Windows 95. I forgot exactly which version it was added into.
Q. And in the current version of windows today, it's part of the operating system and not part of the Web browser. Is that your testimony?
A. As I said, as in many other -- most other commercial operating systems, I believe it is part of the key functions of the operating system.
Q. Let's turn if we could to paragraph 22 of your testimony, which is at page 11. Professor, at paragraph 22 you mention IBM's OS/2 Warp 3 operating system. Do you see that.
A. Yes, I do.
Q. And you say that IBM's OS/2 Warp operating system included Web browsing software. Do you see that?
A. Yes, I do.
Q. Was the OS/2 Web browser removable without impairing the functionality of the IBM operating system?
A. I do not know that. I did not study that aspect. My point in this section was to illustrate that these functionalities are included in operating systems in various ways.
Q. Since you don't know about OS/2, is there any other operating system you're aware of in which the Web browsing functionality is commingled with the operating system?
A. Yes, I do, if we take the view that the Web browsing functionality is also relied upon in other parts of the operating system.
Q. Which operating systems would those be?
A. Well, some examples, and there may be many others, would be the KDE user interface or GUI that exists on the Linux operating system.
Q. Now, KDE is not an operating system; correct?
A. I think I -- every definition in this court it would be middleware, in which case it would be a platform software.
Q. KDE is the graphic user interface, graphical user interface, for the Linux operating system; is that correct?
A. Yes. It's one of the interfaces available.
Q. It can be removed and replaced; correct?
A. Well, it can be -- if it is removed, of course, by -- if it's just removed, then the user will not be able to use the system. You could replace it by others and, in fact, most of the others I'm aware of likewise have, as you would call it, commingled Web browsing with their functionality.
Q. In Windows can you remove the graphical user interface?
THE COURT: Are you talking about now?
MR. HODGES: Today, correct.
A. As I understand -- I believe it's either yes or will soon be. I believe the provision that the Microsoft has agreed to as part of the settlement is that the end user would be able to remove access to the browser, if that was your question.
Q. My question is: Can the graphical user interface of Windows be removed?
A. I'm sorry. No, I do not believe so. It would no longer be Windows.
Q. Has it ever been the case that the graphical user interface of Windows could be removed?
A. I guess the answer might be yes in the sense, as I said again in this session, at one time operating systems had no graphical interface at all if you go back to essentially the original MS-DOS. So this is the examples of the kinds of functionality that operating systems have increasingly provided to users to enhance their effectiveness. So, yes, there was a point in time where it did not exist and there's a point in time where it was added to the operating system.
Q. If KDE is removed from the Linux operating system, then its Web browsing functionality is also removed; is that correct?
A. Well, the Web browsing that's provided through the interface is removed, yes.
Q. The Web browsing provided through KDE; correct?
A. That is correct.
Q. Now, you say that, in paragraph 24 -- it's actually on page 12, paragraph 24. I'll read this to you. "One cannot delete the Web browser from KDE without losing the ability to manage files on the user's own hard disk." Do you see that language?
A. Yes, I do.
Q. Now, isn't it the case that files can be managed by using standard UNIX command in the shell even if KDE is not installed?
A. That is correct. The assumption here was we are talking about the user using the system as a modern operating system which requires access to this kind of interface.
Q. We've talked about Windows and we've talked about the KDE interface, and my question is: Can you name any operating system, other than Windows, that commingles a Web browser with the operating system?
A. I have not attempted to identify all the others. As I indicate in this whole section, these are examples of the kinds of innovative features that vendors constantly add to the systems. Some have reached that stage of benefiting from the kinds of interactions possible, some have not. These are the ones I've identified as part of the study so far.
Q. Based on your experience as a computer scientist and as a Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are you aware of any operating system, other than Windows, that binds the Web browser into the operating system? MR. LACOVARA: I'll object. We have now shifted from commingling to binding without a definition. It may have just been inadvertent on Mr. Hodges' part.
MR. HODGES: It was inadvertent, and I appreciate that clarification.
Q. If I change the word from "binding" to "commingling," let me ask you, are you aware of any operating system, other than Windows, that commingles a Web browser with the operating system?
MR. LACOVARA: I would object to that. I think it's the third time he's asked the question. Asked and answered. THE COURT: I'll let him to proceed. But this is the last time.
A. Okay. If I recall the question, I think I answered it in terms of identifying KDE and I believe GNOME, which is another interface on Linux, also has the Web browser functionality integrated. So those are two examples. And, once again, this was not an attempt to exhaustively study all the others or systems that are under development today.
Q. GNOME is a -- it's spelled G-N-O-M-E; correct?
A. That's correct, yes.
Q. It's not the way most people would pronounce that word. GNOME is also a graphical user interface for Linux; correct.
A. That is correct. It provides that kind of functionality.
Q. And it is also, like KDE, a removable graphical user interface for Linux; correct?
A. It's removable in the sense if you remove it you no longer have access to a graphical user interface.
Q. It's not an operating system; correct?
A. Well, it is part of what we described as middleware under the understanding of the terms being used, and we go from there.
Q. I'll try to stay in order, but I need to flip back to page 11 and paragraph 23 if I could. You say in the second sentence --
A. I'm sorry. What page?
Q. I'm sorry. It's page 11, paragraph 23. I can tell you, Professor, it also appears up there on the monitor in front of you, so whatever is easier for you is fine.
THE COURT: The small monitor has it, too.
THE WITNESS: It's sometimes helpful to see the context. That's why I like to look at the documents.
BY MR. HODGES:
Q. The second line of paragraph 23 -- the second sentence, I'm sorry -- you say that Windows, like all commercial operating systems of which I am aware, ships with a simple text editor, Notepad in the case of Windows, that is a relatively self-contained block of code that is easily removable. What's the basis for that statement?
A. It's a long sentence. Is there some particular part of it you're having a question about?
Q. Yes. I want to know what's the basis for your statement that the Notepad is easily removable?
A. The fact that there is a file -- I can't remember it's name, but it's probably something like Notepad.exe -- that in theory one could delete without having any other effects upon the operating system.
Q. Is this based on your review of the Windows XP source code?
A. Not specifically.
Q. Professor, have you had an opportunity to review the direct testimony of Robert Short of Microsoft?
A. I have seen it.
Q. Mr. Short is the vice president of Windows core
technologies. Does that sound right to you?
A. Yes, it does.
Q. Are you aware that Mr. Short testified that there are
cross-dependencies between the Notepad and Internet Explorer?
A. After I wrote my report, I believe I remembered hearing
that mentioned in his report or his testimony. Yes the answer
is.
Q. Do you disagree with Mr. Short?
A. I assume he knows much more about the internals of Windows
than I do. I believe my point may still be true, although I've
not consulted with him, in that I believe the removable of
Notepad does not impact any other part of the system.
I believe in his testimony -- I think he was trying to
illustrate that other parts -- using my earlier diagram of HTML
Renderer, for example, or Shell Doc Viewer -- that removal of
other parts of the middleware that might seem to be unrelated
might cause Notepad to fail.
Am I clear on the duality here or the differences? Am
I clear on the differences that removing Notepad may not cause
other parts of the system to fail, but that removing other
parts of the system that may appear to be file removed from
Notepad might cause Notepad to fail. I think that is two
different issues.
Q. Are you aware that Mr. Short used the term
cross-dependencies?
A. I don't recall what exact term he used.
Q. If there are cross-dependencies, doesn't that apply that
Notepad relies on Internet Explorer and Internet Explorer
relies on Notepad?
A. I can't speak for him.
Q. Is that what the term cross-dependencies means to you?
A. That would be a one interpretation, yes.
Q. And if there are cross-dependencies, wouldn't it be the
case that removing Notepad would affect other parts of the
Windows operating system product?
A. That might be true. I was only trying to give a simple
example here. If that one doesn't apply I'll have to find some
other example.
Q. I take it you were not aware of any cross-dependency involving the Notepad?
A. No, I was not.
Q. Is there any technical reason that there needs to be a cross-dependency between the Notepad and Internet Explorer?
A. As I said, this is not an area that I have studied. If you would like me to speculate or to try to conjure up a reason, I could try to do so, but it would be totally ad hoc thinking.
Q. I don't want you to speculate. I want to ask if you are aware of any technical reason that there needs to be a cross-dependency between the Notepad and Internet Explorer? And if you don't know, that's acceptable.
A. What might be helpful is the realization based upon my many years trying to understand all of the inter-dependencies that go on in a complex product is extremely difficult, and often I've been quite surprised myself to realize that one part of the system was able to make use of another part.
So, you know, with some careful thought it is possible I might find that there actually is a reason for cross- dependencies. But it was not something that immediately came to mind.
Q. So you could speculate that, but you don't know. Is that an accurate summary?
A. As I've said, I have not studied that issue.
Q. Now, you have reviewed the Windows XP source code; correct?
A. Yes, I have. Though I will not say I've looked at every 36 million or so lines of code carefully.
Q. Is it 36 million or 39 million?
A. As I said, a million here, a million there, it adds up after a while I guess.
Q. Pretty soon you're talking about real lines of code?
A. Exactly.
Q. What exactly have you done?
A. The main purpose of looking -- once again, given both the limited amount of time and the size, was really to better understand the way in which a system was modularized, the way in which it's broken up into individual routines and the types of interdepencies that exist, so it's more to get a feel for the overall structure of the system.
Q. Is there any way you can quantify how much effort was involved in your review of the Windows XP source code?
A. Physical amount of time, probably 8 or 10 hours.
Man I'm sick of these court room reports. Take off the bias, hand me the dead cow. Where are the transcripts? I'll read it myself and see whether this (business school) Prof was really a clueby or whether the state's attorney was playing semantic games. After all, what _is_ an operating system? He refers to Linux as being one.. what? Linux is a kernel!
beos user
So ya all tree huggin' hippies who get ripped off by snake oil salesmen, that analogy really rings bells.
Free speech should not be "for everyone", much the same way as driving a car should not be legal for everyone.
Having been a Nazi for a number of years, I can tell you that the vast majority of political speakers are law-obiding, decent and considerate people. Then, of course, you have the 1% who want to take such a wonderful gift, and abuse it. They will abuse it for their own personal or financial game, or simply because they get off on making someone else on the other end of their "attack" miserable.
I propose that people should be required to carry a Speech License, which proves they are capable of using free speech responsibly, in much the same way as you're required to carry a Drivers License to prove you know how to use a car responsibly.
To the vast majority of us, its no big deal. Having a Speech License is no more a threat to one's personal freedoms and rights to privacy as carrying a Drivers License is. For people who have demonstrated a clear-cut lack of understanding of the fundemental governing principles of behavior and usage, their license should be revoked, just as it is for people who have demonstrated a lack of understanding for the basic principles of behavior and usage for a car. While I wouldn't impose fines, and I would not create a police force to apply the law, I would leave it up to the individual publishers to decide how to best apply this for his or her system.
Its only after we do something like I've just described that free speech can be cleaned up, and relatively free of abuse, garbage, and other miscellaneous mindbarf.
They cannot extend GCC because they're writing a high performance compiler, not an optimising compiler, it's a different architecture because it's solving a different problem.
This seems kind of important dont you think? Ada was fidling around with programming. Surely anyone who wrote down how to do long division was a programmer too! Babbage was a legend, but just like all the people who say their inventions predated Edison, they never actually built them.
Like many in the security industry, he just cant argue. He's all but given up trying to convince people that security is important. It's funny, but he actually believes that the common man gives a shit about security. News flash: they dont. Due to this misunderstanding he pushes the blame onto the developers. Why should they be forced to develop secure software if no-one wants it? There-in lies the problem. If you want security to be taken seriously stop trying to use the force of government to make developers do something the market doesn't want. Convince the market that it is important. And no, that doesn't mean releasing scripts on bugtraq so kiddies go attacking the innocents so you can point your finger at developers and say "see see, bad software".
Ever think about giving the film to anyone outside the US? God, there's only 284 million of you, and probably less than 1% of that actually care.
If you fail to secure your property, it is no longer your property. Simple as that.
maybe I didn't experience this because I use mozilla and have the options set to not allow web sites to open unrequested windows, but I did notice the flashing "new" boxes. Annoying.
Your book doesn't have very good definition. cp cp tmp is a virus too.
This is an even bigger security hole. I naturally assumed you had turned this off and ran IE as a user with reduced privileges. Obviously if IE is running with admin privs then all of this is defunct.
I worked on date correction hardware in 1999. We were making a product that corrected the hardware real time clocks in PCs. Basically all of them were broken. Our sales people would go out and convince people that it was important. Our cards weren't expensive, and the firmware/drivers were tested better than anything I've ever worked on. There was basically two types of people: gimme and cynical. We supplied good support to the people who said gimme and sold a lot of cards. The cynical people would waste our time sitting through our demos, arguing about the impact. Eventually they ran out of time. We personally went to every single one of them after y2k and asked them how it had gone. The sales guys would tell me how fucked their systems were. Some experienced huge data losses which we really couldn't explain.
Compaq computers have an embedded processor which supplies the entire southbridge, ie, IBM PC compatibility. They offered to their customers a firmware upgrade that would make their computers y2k compliant. We found out about this after we had sold a lot of cards and people were coming back to us for refunds. Why we gave a refund because they had failed to do their homework I dont know. After y2k all their systems were fucked. Compaq's firmware didn't do the job.
In 2001 I got a call from this company saying they had about 400 cards left and they couldn't sell them (obviously). So I was hired to rewrite the firmware to make the card somewhat useful. Using the onboard real time clock we made a card that could lock a computer between certain times. Totally useless product in my opinion. They're on their 8th production run (or something, I dont talk to them anymore).
Call them what you will, but if all these technology startups had hired a sales force like the one I had the pleasure of working with in 1999 we might see a few less chapter 11s.
I know this, but what you are saying is that IE cant run code that can do anything damaging (because it isn't root) and what I'm saying is that is definitely the wrong attitude. What I think you are saying (correct me if I'm wrong) is that non-root remote exploits are not much of a threat. That is untrue. A remote exploit is bad no matter what the security level. Even a nobody-level remote exploit is bad because attackers can use your machine to bounce attacks to other systems (making it appear like your machine is doing the attacking). It only takes one local exploit (say, in all that proprietory code that Apple ships) to turn a non-root exploit into a root exploit. But let's say that your machine is locally secure (that is, if you were to give me a shell there would be no way for me to get root). Even then IE can run code that can follow your actions (a bad thing in itself) and when those actions involve elevation of privileges then it is possible to get root without any local exploit being necessary. So no, the fact that you dont run IE as root is not enough. Personally I think we should be able to control exactly what capabilities programs have. Running arbitary code from a foriegn source isn't one of them.
Surely when you get asked to enter your root password (as you always do whenever you install new software) the attacker could jump to root. Guess the small amount of effort to trick/follow the user is more than any attacker would bother to do.
Put a ring of optic fibre on one of the arms and pump laser light into it. Measure how long it takes for the arm to respond. Lesson: Mass and Energy bends space time.
Iceland has been powered on geothermic energy since 1930! Hitaveita Reykjavikur (Reykjavik District Heating) supplies Reykjavik and several neighboring communities with geothermal water. There are about 150 thousand inhabitants in that area, living in about 35 thousand houses. This is way over half the population of Iceland. Total harnessed power of the utility's geothermal fields, including the Nesjavellir plant, amounts to 660 MWt, and its distribution system carries an annual flow of 55 million cubic meters of water. The first geothermal power plant was built in 1969 when a 3-MWe back-pressure turbine was installed in Bjamarflag (Námafjall field). The total electrical production of the Bjamarflag power plant in 1995 was 11.5 Gwh. The Krafla power plant, located about 10 km north of the Námafjall field, has been in operation since 1977. Initially, the power production was 8 MWe, but reached the present 30 MWe in 1982. In 1995 the total annual geothermal energy production for electricity use was 288 gigawatt hours. The list goes on.
Perhaps a little bit of research could be done to debunk crap stories like this. 15 minutes on google is all it takes to add a little credibility.