Many of the arguments in the lawsuit and some of its language echoed a report issued by computer security experts in late September, which warned that the ubiquitous reach of Microsoft's software on desktops worldwide had made computer networks a national security risk.
That report distributed by the Computer and Communications Industry Association, a trade group representing Microsoft's rivals, said the complexity of Microsoft's software made it particularly vulnerable to cyber-attack
...
With some $49 billion in cash and more than 90 percent of the market in PC operating systems, Microsoft has long been seen as a potential target for massive liability lawsuits
Someone say something about tobacco?
The lawsuit comes in the wake of two major viruses that have recently taken advantage of flaws in Microsoft software.
Interesting how the fact that patches were released is not mentioned, let alone the fact that the users failed to apply them. This suit is about money for lawyers and competitors, not about protecting the consumer. If CCIA prevails, there will be hell to pay thoughout the industry.
so I would work with the IT departments... in other states
This is the thing I really wonder about with OSS. Will the various users of OSS create an Epseranto like landscape of compatible systems, or will the whole thing turn into a spaghetti code "platform of Babel?"
People get all excited about "The Chinese/Koreans/Germans/Brazilians are endorsing Linux! Yeah!" What's not mentioned is the variation in distros. Knowing how bureaucrats love to create their own empires, I think the conditions for distro hell are well in the making. Odd as it may seem, the only way to avoid it will be vendor lock in, which of course is the opportunity that IBM senses and Red Hat / SuSE desire to exploit.
Wouldn't it be great if state governments (yes, I'm fixated on state governments because I work for one but also because it is the public's money that is being spent) here in the US would do the same thing
So you are saying there should be 50 slighly different distros?
I use the 'net for the majority of my initial knowledge retrieval. I agree with you about in-depth understanding, though. The interesting thing is that I find myself reading far more books now than I used to, mainly because the 'net allows me to make a better assessment (reviews, etc) of which ones are worth reading.
As for television, my habits have been greatly modified by TiVo. Now I generally scan news/talk shows to get the relevant parts, and skip ads during entertainment programming. I actually do back up to look at ads of interest, though, which could be considered another form of information retrieval.
What's interesting about all of this is that personal technology is allowing all of us to shape the way we retrieve and filter information, which is a major shift for society.
Did anyone on this thread read the original paper? It was put forth by CCIA, which counts Sun and Oracle among its customers. The paper was a total hack job, which raised a few well known points but seemed far more focused on a re-trying the anti-trust case.
If Geer was fired because of his contribution to it, I think that's still bogus - but, people should realize that the original paper was funded by vested interests, and it is not too surprising that a vendor may not think it in their interest to retain an employee who is potentially undermining their relationship with a big customer, especially when the employee is contributing to an effort funded by the customer's competition.
Well, 2K3 doesn't come with Office installed, and IE is so disabled it practically tells you "This is a server, fool, stop using the browser!" It won't even allow you to go to M$ sites without you first adding them to a safe list.
Go ahead, trryyy iiitttt, feeeellll thheeeee powwweeerrr. Oops, not supposed to say it that way.
What they hey, I run RH for kicks, you can get one of those freebie 2K3 CDs and try it. You probably saw the post today about the Netcraft numbers. Interesting comments.
I didn't say it was a tariff. It's "public policy", or in reality "industrial policy", something that has a way of undermining what's really in the public interest. Have a look at dairy laws sometime. Now imagine the philosophy that worked that mess applied to IT. Don't think it won't happen, either.
Let's see how the "public good" worked in Germany:
Documents obtained by USA TODAY show Microsoft subsequently lowered its pricing to $31.9 million and then to $23.7 million -- an overall 35% price cut. The discounts were for naught. On May 28, the city council approved a more expensive proposal -- $35.7 million -- from German Linux distributor SuSE and IBM, a big Linux backer
The "public good" requires that process is open, specifications are open and that the government USES TAXPAYER DOLLARS WISELY.
I consider this "running the government like a business", and letting the state do what makes the most practical and fiscal sense
So much for that idea in Germany. Granted, we are talking about MA, here, and things may be different. But, having seen a number of government contracts in action, I doubt it. I also think it is not at all irrelevant that MA has not yet settled w/M$. You may think this is entirely unrelated, but having seen how decisions are made in such cases, I do not. Hopefully you are correct here. Over time we should find out.
by default they have far more network services enabled than any UNIX or Linux distribution
I don't think that's true anymore for Win2K3. Stick a cheap firewall between a home user and the 'Net, and they become invisible. Hmmm... Now that I think about it, maybe mb/nic vendors should start building firewall functions right into the firmware.
The big question I have is who is ultimately responsible for configuring/securing the non-tech broadband user? But again, that's another thread.
Kriss said the state's decision was driven by a desire to reduce licensing fees but also "by a philosophy that what the state has is a public good and should be open to all
Sure, just like steel tariffs, agricultural policy, public education and all of the other things designed to promote the public good.
In other news, Microsoft spokesman John Galt remarked that the company will be relocating to Colorado...
Your item (3) is the most interesting point. In the days of dial-up, Microsoft's decision to trade security for convenience was not necessarily a bad one. (The Outlook vulnerabilities OTOH, were dumb regardless.) It is not impossible to run a very secure 'Soft network. It is possible to run a very insecure *nix network. Market share has nothing to do with this. User education does.
For example, a non-tech friend of mine runs XP on a cable modem. He was nailed by an emailed virus, so I had a look at his machine while on a visit. I asked him if he was running update (i.e., why didn't Outlook strip off the offending.exe) and his response was "What's update?" Well after we got the box running again, I told him DO NOT connect to the cable modem again until you connect through a router/firewall I bought for him. After he got that set up, he ran update and discovered that 43 critical updates were required.
Now imagine he was running Linux. Would it be any more secure over time? No, because he wouldn't be updating it either, and he would most likely be running as root. Solving this problem is partially the responsibility of the ISP IMO, but that's another thread.
The problem I have with the paper is that CCIA claims that 'Soft has needlessly complicated the OS to the point where it can never be secure, implying that mechanisms like COM provided ostensibly for interoperability are really there for vendor lock in and promotion of the monopoly. My experience indicates otherwise. I run Red Hat and XP. The utility of the GNU/Linux desktop is pretty distant compared to Windows in terms of functionality such as installation, fonts, cut-and-paste, drivers, etc. So, the GNU/Linux vendors will have to make the same choice as 'Soft - how to balance security and convenience if they want to get market share. Your point about Red Hat is only true so far; I doubt it will remain the case.
The CCIA paper was funded by competitors, is high on polemics, and only offers FUD with regard to the issue at hand, not practical considerations.
I had a look at the report, and so interpret the situation a bit differently than most here. In my view, it reads more like an amicus brief (statement by a friend of the court) than a technical doc. Look at it, they rant and rave about the "M$ monopoly" throughout.
There are plenty of technical/security aspects of the dominance of M$ platforms, but this report doesn't address them effectively. This can be expected since it looks much more to me like a hack job funded by competitors:
Ed Black, the CEO and president of CCIA, whose members include Microsoft competitors such as Sun and Oracle, was even more blunt.
"Microsoft's monopoly threatens consumers in a number of ways, it it's clear it is now also a threat to our security, our safety, and even our national security."
Yeah, yeah, baseball and apple pie, too.
I have no idea as to why Geer was fired from @Stake, but having his name associated with a position paper parading as a tech document probably wasn't helpful.
Some time ago I was talking to a Dell rep about a "media PC" that would be delivered with a drive filled with tracks. The customer might pay $1000 more for a huge music library on such a mahine. He said they looked into the idea, but the time it took to load the drives would have cost too much in production time.
Offering their own player allows them to use the razors/blades model. I would guess they will sell the player for a fairly low cost, certainly less than the iPod, then make a decent profit on the music service. To the extent that Dell is getting into consumer services, it is something new. But, they are also following a very old and establshed model, which is something they are good at. The key is the oppressiveness of their DRM model. If they are as flexible as Apple, then Profit!!!. If not, then I'll have my doubts.
They will assist and even indemnify against SCO-like lawsuits
Ya gotta be kiddin'
Any PHB with points at all would be completely insane to buy a product that comes with a assertion of indemnification. I don't care who makes it - accepting such terms is crazy. Imagine a company bigger than Sun accepts these terms, then in the event Sun loses any litigation, guess where the sharpened pens will turn next...
I abhor the SCO lawsuit as much as anyone, but if I were a manager at a big company, ain't no way I would touch a product that comes with a "possible litigation" clause.
Let's see what China does with books. This from the Wall Street Journal:
The Latest Adventures of Ha-li-bo-te
It's not a bad idea for a title: "Harry Potter and the Pirates." The Chinese-language publisher of the latest book about the boy wizard known in China as Ha-li-bo-te has decided to rush it into stores this weekend, 10 days ahead of schedule in a bid to thwart the copyright pirates who are already selling badly translated copies. "We found some Chinese versions translated on the Internet and some illegal versions of the book," a spokesman for the People's Literature Publishing House told the Associated Press. "We have read some of the books and found there are many mistakes and mistranslations." Chinese-language editions of J.K. Rowling's first four books have already sold millions of copies since their debut in October 2001, while world-wide sales of the books, in 50 languages, have topped 200 million. And this is far from the first time young Ha-li-bo-te has fallen victim to China's rampant copyright piracy. Last year, an unknown author produced an entirely new adventure, "Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-To-Dragon."
Want to see what Chinese Linux is like? Have a look at Thiz. Then run back to Red Hat/Slackware/Debian/SuSE... You won't be sorry.
China is now moving toward Linux, when big governments such as these move toward Linux, this means the revenue stream grows x10, government has the money to buy support, and they are the kind of customers who cannot afford to make mistakes and are likely to buy support
So it's up to China to advance the cause of OSS? You might want to have a look at their <sarcasm>altruistic</sarcasm> actions during the "Great Leap Forward", "Cultural Revolution", at Tianenmen, and in Tibet... The PRC is not interested in spending a dime with foreign companies if it can avoid it, among other things.
That would be Gates and Allen flipping switches on an Altair?
My guess is that you mean the 80s. How dominant was M$ in the 80s? Which companies were dominant? IBM, DEC, Sun, Apple.
It is just plain difficult to trust Microsoft
Think about how M$ achieved its market presence. Cheap software that did 90% of what people want to do, plus massive investment testing permutations of hardware to make sure it all worked together reasonably well. In the meantime, all of their competitors were busy trying to lock people into their proprietary systems.
I would suggest that anyone who does trust may be a fool
I'm not suggesting anyone should just trust M$. I will say I certainly distrust them less than the other companies I mentioned, based on past behavior. Please don't pull out the "They were found to be a monopoly!" stuff. I have always been able to buy an OS-less PC, and so has everyone else. But that's another thread.
So, now I have a nice install of Linux, plus a big book with info without having to go through the hassle of dealing with some other company which will no doubt start hitting me with marketing "messages" from now on. I think its much more cost effective to do things this way, especially when factoring in the time.
Admittedly I haven't looked into the implementation of Flash, but if it is implemented as a COM server, not a DLL, a decent lawyer might be able to make an argument that Flash (or anything else for that matter) implemented as a COM DLL is simply a shared lib, a concept for which there is plenty of prior art. If that's the case, then a DLL could be a totally different animal, legally.
If M$ then makes third party stuff dependent on the presence of the CLR (something they should probably do anyway, given the superior security model), the patent may be patently avoidable.
At that point, what is IE? Some kind of shell? Technology is pretty mutable. Who knows where this will end up.
Slashdot Mirror
like the one against tobacco companies
From the article:
Many of the arguments in the lawsuit and some of its language echoed a report issued by computer security experts in late September, which warned that the ubiquitous reach of Microsoft's software on desktops worldwide had made computer networks a national security risk.
That report distributed by the Computer and Communications Industry Association, a trade group representing Microsoft's rivals, said the complexity of Microsoft's software made it particularly vulnerable to cyber-attack
...
With some $49 billion in cash and more than 90 percent of the market in PC operating systems, Microsoft has long been seen as a potential target for massive liability lawsuits
Someone say something about tobacco?
The lawsuit comes in the wake of two major viruses that have recently taken advantage of flaws in Microsoft software.
Interesting how the fact that patches were released is not mentioned, let alone the fact that the users failed to apply them. This suit is about money for lawyers and competitors, not about protecting the consumer. If CCIA prevails, there will be hell to pay thoughout the industry.
so I would work with the IT departments
This is the thing I really wonder about with OSS. Will the various users of OSS create an Epseranto like landscape of compatible systems, or will the whole thing turn into a spaghetti code "platform of Babel?"
People get all excited about "The Chinese/Koreans/Germans/Brazilians are endorsing Linux! Yeah!" What's not mentioned is the variation in distros. Knowing how bureaucrats love to create their own empires, I think the conditions for distro hell are well in the making. Odd as it may seem, the only way to avoid it will be vendor lock in, which of course is the opportunity that IBM senses and Red Hat / SuSE desire to exploit.
Wouldn't it be great if state governments (yes, I'm fixated on state governments because I work for one but also because it is the public's money that is being spent) here in the US would do the same thing
So you are saying there should be 50 slighly different distros?
No thanks.
I use the 'net for the majority of my initial knowledge retrieval. I agree with you about in-depth understanding, though. The interesting thing is that I find myself reading far more books now than I used to, mainly because the 'net allows me to make a better assessment (reviews, etc) of which ones are worth reading.
As for television, my habits have been greatly modified by TiVo. Now I generally scan news/talk shows to get the relevant parts, and skip ads during entertainment programming. I actually do back up to look at ads of interest, though, which could be considered another form of information retrieval.
What's interesting about all of this is that personal technology is allowing all of us to shape the way we retrieve and filter information, which is a major shift for society.
Did anyone on this thread read the original paper? It was put forth by CCIA, which counts Sun and Oracle among its customers. The paper was a total hack job, which raised a few well known points but seemed far more focused on a re-trying the anti-trust case.
If Geer was fired because of his contribution to it, I think that's still bogus - but, people should realize that the original paper was funded by vested interests, and it is not too surprising that a vendor may not think it in their interest to retain an employee who is potentially undermining their relationship with a big customer, especially when the employee is contributing to an effort funded by the customer's competition.
Send all the lawyers you want, he'll come up with something new to make you send more lawyers
Problem is, Robertson's track record isn't very good in this regard. Look at his history at MP3.com:
At least Lindows isn't a public company this time, so his investors should understand the risk he is taking better than the public did with MP3.com
Well, 2K3 doesn't come with Office installed, and IE is so disabled it practically tells you "This is a server, fool, stop using the browser!" It won't even allow you to go to M$ sites without you first adding them to a safe list.
Go ahead, trryyy iiitttt, feeeellll thheeeee powwweeerrr. Oops, not supposed to say it that way.
What they hey, I run RH for kicks, you can get one of those freebie 2K3 CDs and try it. You probably saw the post today about the Netcraft numbers. Interesting comments.
You are seriously deluded. This is NOT a tarrif.
I didn't say it was a tariff. It's "public policy", or in reality "industrial policy", something that has a way of undermining what's really in the public interest. Have a look at dairy laws sometime. Now imagine the philosophy that worked that mess applied to IT. Don't think it won't happen, either.
Let's see how the "public good" worked in Germany:
Documents obtained by USA TODAY show Microsoft subsequently lowered its pricing to $31.9 million and then to $23.7 million -- an overall 35% price cut. The discounts were for naught. On May 28, the city council approved a more expensive proposal -- $35.7 million -- from German Linux distributor SuSE and IBM, a big Linux backer
The "public good" requires that process is open, specifications are open and that the government USES TAXPAYER DOLLARS WISELY.
I consider this "running the government like a business", and letting the state do what makes the most practical and fiscal sense
So much for that idea in Germany. Granted, we are talking about MA, here, and things may be different. But, having seen a number of government contracts in action, I doubt it. I also think it is not at all irrelevant that MA has not yet settled w/M$. You may think this is entirely unrelated, but having seen how decisions are made in such cases, I do not. Hopefully you are correct here. Over time we should find out.
by default they have far more network services enabled than any UNIX or Linux distribution
I don't think that's true anymore for Win2K3. Stick a cheap firewall between a home user and the 'Net, and they become invisible. Hmmm... Now that I think about it, maybe mb/nic vendors should start building firewall functions right into the firmware.
The big question I have is who is ultimately responsible for configuring/securing the non-tech broadband user? But again, that's another thread.
Kriss said the state's decision was driven by a desire to reduce licensing fees but also "by a philosophy that what the state has is a public good and should be open to all
Sure, just like steel tariffs, agricultural policy, public education and all of the other things designed to promote the public good.
In other news, Microsoft spokesman John Galt remarked that the company will be relocating to Colorado...
Your item (3) is the most interesting point. In the days of dial-up, Microsoft's decision to trade security for convenience was not necessarily a bad one. (The Outlook vulnerabilities OTOH, were dumb regardless.) It is not impossible to run a very secure 'Soft network. It is possible to run a very insecure *nix network. Market share has nothing to do with this. User education does.
For example, a non-tech friend of mine runs XP on a cable modem. He was nailed by an emailed virus, so I had a look at his machine while on a visit. I asked him if he was running update (i.e., why didn't Outlook strip off the offending .exe) and his response was "What's update?" Well after we got the box running again, I told him DO NOT connect to the cable modem again until you connect through a router/firewall I bought for him. After he got that set up, he ran update and discovered that 43 critical updates were required.
Now imagine he was running Linux. Would it be any more secure over time? No, because he wouldn't be updating it either, and he would most likely be running as root. Solving this problem is partially the responsibility of the ISP IMO, but that's another thread.
The problem I have with the paper is that CCIA claims that 'Soft has needlessly complicated the OS to the point where it can never be secure, implying that mechanisms like COM provided ostensibly for interoperability are really there for vendor lock in and promotion of the monopoly. My experience indicates otherwise. I run Red Hat and XP. The utility of the GNU/Linux desktop is pretty distant compared to Windows in terms of functionality such as installation, fonts, cut-and-paste, drivers, etc. So, the GNU/Linux vendors will have to make the same choice as 'Soft - how to balance security and convenience if they want to get market share. Your point about Red Hat is only true so far; I doubt it will remain the case.
The CCIA paper was funded by competitors, is high on polemics, and only offers FUD with regard to the issue at hand, not practical considerations.
Microsoft is a legal monopoly
Which means either:
A) Their platform is too homogeneous, and therefore can never be secure?
B) Their platform will most likely become the most secure platform because of consistency?
C) The DOJ should re-try M$ because the sponsors of CCIA didn't like the outcome?
A & B are worthy of discussion. C is not, but that's the essence of the doc as I see it.
On another note, seems strange that you the only non-AC reply to my post.
I had a look at the report, and so interpret the situation a bit differently than most here. In my view, it reads more like an amicus brief (statement by a friend of the court) than a technical doc. Look at it, they rant and rave about the "M$ monopoly" throughout.
There are plenty of technical/security aspects of the dominance of M$ platforms, but this report doesn't address them effectively. This can be expected since it looks much more to me like a hack job funded by competitors:
Ed Black, the CEO and president of CCIA, whose members include Microsoft competitors such as Sun and Oracle, was even more blunt.
"Microsoft's monopoly threatens consumers in a number of ways, it it's clear it is now also a threat to our security, our safety, and even our national security."
Yeah, yeah, baseball and apple pie, too.
I have no idea as to why Geer was fired from @Stake, but having his name associated with a position paper parading as a tech document probably wasn't helpful.
Some time ago I was talking to a Dell rep about a "media PC" that would be delivered with a drive filled with tracks. The customer might pay $1000 more for a huge music library on such a mahine. He said they looked into the idea, but the time it took to load the drives would have cost too much in production time.
Offering their own player allows them to use the razors/blades model. I would guess they will sell the player for a fairly low cost, certainly less than the iPod, then make a decent profit on the music service. To the extent that Dell is getting into consumer services, it is something new. But, they are also following a very old and establshed model, which is something they are good at. The key is the oppressiveness of their DRM model. If they are as flexible as Apple, then Profit!!!. If not, then I'll have my doubts.
Ed Black, the CEO and president of CCIA, whose members include Microsoft competitors such as Sun and Oracle, was even more blunt.
Always like an unbiased opinion, too. Slow news day, I guess.
Kaiser Wilhelm of WWI fame? One of the worst political figures in German history? Why quote such a character?
They will assist and even indemnify against SCO-like lawsuits
Ya gotta be kiddin'
Any PHB with points at all would be completely insane to buy a product that comes with a assertion of indemnification. I don't care who makes it - accepting such terms is crazy. Imagine a company bigger than Sun accepts these terms, then in the event Sun loses any litigation, guess where the sharpened pens will turn next...
I abhor the SCO lawsuit as much as anyone, but if I were a manager at a big company, ain't no way I would touch a product that comes with a "possible litigation" clause.
Much better link, with more details and pictures.
Resistance to /. effect unknown.
You might want to have a look at how Coke and Pepsi market their product.
consider where the money from CD purchases is going
Oh the irony of it all!
Let's see what China does with books. This from the Wall Street Journal:
The Latest Adventures of Ha-li-bo-te
It's not a bad idea for a title: "Harry Potter and the Pirates." The Chinese-language publisher of the latest book about the boy wizard known in China as Ha-li-bo-te has decided to rush it into stores this weekend, 10 days ahead of schedule in a bid to thwart the copyright pirates who are already selling badly translated copies. "We found some Chinese versions translated on the Internet and some illegal versions of the book," a spokesman for the People's Literature Publishing House told the Associated Press. "We have read some of the books and found there are many mistakes and mistranslations." Chinese-language editions of J.K. Rowling's first four books have already sold millions of copies since their debut in October 2001, while world-wide sales of the books, in 50 languages, have topped 200 million. And this is far from the first time young Ha-li-bo-te has fallen victim to China's rampant copyright piracy. Last year, an unknown author produced an entirely new adventure, "Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-To-Dragon."
Want to see what Chinese Linux is like? Have a look at Thiz. Then run back to Red Hat/Slackware/Debian/SuSE... You won't be sorry.
China is now moving toward Linux, when big governments such as these move toward Linux, this means the revenue stream grows x10, government has the money to buy support, and they are the kind of customers who cannot afford to make mistakes and are likely to buy support
So it's up to China to advance the cause of OSS? You might want to have a look at their <sarcasm>altruistic</sarcasm> actions during the "Great Leap Forward", "Cultural Revolution", at Tianenmen, and in Tibet... The PRC is not interested in spending a dime with foreign companies if it can avoid it, among other things.
Especially if you liked Microsoft in the 70's
That would be Gates and Allen flipping switches on an Altair?
My guess is that you mean the 80s. How dominant was M$ in the 80s? Which companies were dominant? IBM, DEC, Sun, Apple.
It is just plain difficult to trust Microsoft
Think about how M$ achieved its market presence. Cheap software that did 90% of what people want to do, plus massive investment testing permutations of hardware to make sure it all worked together reasonably well. In the meantime, all of their competitors were busy trying to lock people into their proprietary systems.
I would suggest that anyone who does trust may be a fool
I'm not suggesting anyone should just trust M$. I will say I certainly distrust them less than the other companies I mentioned, based on past behavior. Please don't pull out the "They were found to be a monopoly!" stuff. I have always been able to buy an OS-less PC, and so has everyone else. But that's another thread.
Here's my "Get started with Linux" experience:
Time spent: < 3 minutes. Cost of book ~ $25
So, now I have a nice install of Linux, plus a big book with info without having to go through the hassle of dealing with some other company which will no doubt start hitting me with marketing "messages" from now on. I think its much more cost effective to do things this way, especially when factoring in the time.
Admittedly I haven't looked into the implementation of Flash, but if it is implemented as a COM server, not a DLL, a decent lawyer might be able to make an argument that Flash (or anything else for that matter) implemented as a COM DLL is simply a shared lib, a concept for which there is plenty of prior art. If that's the case, then a DLL could be a totally different animal, legally.
If M$ then makes third party stuff dependent on the presence of the CLR (something they should probably do anyway, given the superior security model), the patent may be patently avoidable.
At that point, what is IE? Some kind of shell? Technology is pretty mutable. Who knows where this will end up.