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Pooh-Bah
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Thanks for that Max. I had heard rumours about this but this is the first time I've seen it in print. Errare humanum est; even if you're a Microsoft software developer!
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> Errare humanum est; even if you're a Microsoft software developer!
"Even if" - surely you mean "especially if", gaping security holes being the only thing M$ is any good at making.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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I was going to add 'especially?' in brackets, but decided to go for the ironic statement! But where would we be without them? Please consider that question rhetorical, the possibilities are staggering. Still, if anyone *wants to explore them...
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Actually, what bugs me about this is not the flaw, every OS has those, it's M$'s decision not to tell anyone about it for 6 months, hoping that no black hat hacker would discover for themselves in the meantime. OpenSource OSes have just as many security holes, but they get patched within days or weeks, not hidden for months.
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Pooh-Bah
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Well, as you know I'm no M$ supporter or booster, but stop and think about it for a minute. The flaw is deep in the NT kernel, and it apparently wasn't a five-minute job to repair it. If the knowledge of the hole in M$ security was widely advertised, hackers would have had six months in which to generate attacks and cause grief to lots of people. As things stand, people were no worse off, and in fact were probably safer.
For once, after doing the inevitable wrong thing by writing rubbish code, I think they took the right approach to fixing it. If, of course, they have. Fixed it, I mean.
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Pooh-Bah
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I was tempted to give this sentence from the linked "critical flaw" article an odd post(ing):
"...could let hackers quietly break into their computers to steal files, delete data or eavesdrop on sensitive information."
But what I really wanted to know was whether anyone was aware of an earlier instance of the word "microsoft" than that in "Neuromancer." Or did they even "innovate" their company name from third-party developers?
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Carpal Tunnel
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You think maybe Microsoft has a time machine hidden away and they stole their name from a book written nine years in the future?
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veteran
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veteran
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Neuromancer was published in '83 or '84, IIRC, (and written on a manual typewriter). Microsloth was incorporated in New Mexico in the mid '70s. Their first software, a BASIC interpretor for the Altair 8800, alleged borrowed heavily from the Dartmouth implementation.
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I read the thread title and my first thought was, "Installation?"
(Warning - I have "a very small amount of" stock in MS.)
I agree with Pfranz. They did the right thing. Had we known of it, what could we have done? Some few of us could have disconnected from the net, but most of us are irretrievably linked.
It's not a clear one way or the other for me. I think Gates is a smart guy and I think he has some extremely smart guys working for him. The problem is that even a huge team of smart guys don't always get it right. You need diversity in the gene pool. (I don't mean this in the idiotic pseudointellectual way that it's used by HR departments. I'm very serious. Diversity is critical to long term survival.) Most of the following is problem old hat to most of you, but here's my take.
Some time back, there was this tension between the centralist, everything by the same book, monster IBM mainframe supporters and the people who tossed the book in the trash, did their own thing, and not only supported, but embodied individualism. A key turning point was the advent of the PC (the general term used to apply to ANY microcomputer that was a personal computer, so PETS, apples, all per PC's ... then by simply by calling their product a PC, IBM coopts the term) and in particular the IBM PC which came with the BASIC programming language on a ROM. This opened up the doors of programming housewives wanting to track recipes, kids wanting to play games, teachers wanting to track grades, plumbers needing ways to estimate costs, and so on. Since then there has been a steady, enormous pool of programmers feeding into the collective. (I include some web page designers, database administrators, and graphical artists, in this group of "programmers." Sample justification: HTML is a kind of programming in itself, but more to the point, most web page designers - even the ones who are not programmers in some strict sense, have to learn a little java or javascript.)
This influx of "new blood" augmented the programming genome. No longer were the sole contributors selected from the ethereal heights of the mathematicians, nor even the college educated. The theoretical work is still being done by mathematicians and those officially labeled "computer scienists," but people from all backgrounds have made contributions to applications, techniques, and coding idioms. I've known guys who started out as electrical engineers, but became programmers - BUT I've also known people who started out as housewives, economists, and English majors.
Over the years we have collectively migrated towards the microsoft platform. This is done for a number of reasons, but mostly I think because there is a strong argument of simplicity when everyone is doing the same thing the same way. I was at a conference a while back and there was a guy who chose not to use powerpoint for a presentation. He had a crazy time getting things working and the general feeling of the attendees that this was a completely inappropriate and unnecessary waste of time.
While PCs and The Net are permitting people to expand to the edges, the corporations and society in general are pushing towards centralization. I have two PCs at work, one with linux the other with W2K. I checked with microsoft and I was behind on more than 40 CRITICAL UPDATES. But the sysadmins here didn't want to install because they weren't all tested to be sure they would work on all the systems here. I attempted the updates myself and screwed it up (it turned out to be a heretofor unnoticed hardware problem, but even I believed it was my fault at the time). Needless to say I was chastised, but within a month or so we discovered that foreign agents had broken into our systems and downloaded all sorts of sensitive files. Suddenly, the kook who's making a big stink over nothing and pushing for getting at least the critical updates doesn't look so kooky. There are others besides me who have run into corporate bureaucracy. Other people here, and many, many other people at other companies.
Additionally, people want to work together seamlessly. This is easiest done with the widest possible base when people are using the same tools. Strong social motivation to go with one thing and screw diversity.
Additionally, I note that whenever I have a problem with linux, there's almost noone around to help me. It inevitably takes much more time than it should. I've only recently (in the last few years) gotten out of the habit of trying to fix my own crap and disciplined myself to rely on the computer services people who get paid to do it. (The episode with critical updates was an anomaly.) There are a few outstandingly good technicians who are willing to learn linux and support you any way they can, but the vast majority seem to be devoted to the one size fits all solution - and it's the thing they know best - Microsoft.
Being a VB programmer about 50% of the time for the last few years, I've got my own investment in MS. This is personal investment, but of course companies have 10s of billions invested in training, equipment, software, etc.
I'm trying to think of this objectively, though I find MS an intensely annoying OS. It's hard to explain to a non-programmer or someone who has never known anything else. It's intrusive. I mean downright, absolutely rude. An example of this that anyone can understand was that completely idiotic clippy thing. When it first came out, the obvious methods of turning it off, failed to do so. This seriously wrankled me. Nowadays, it's simple, but the default installation has that ignorance piece of crap turned on.
There are other issues I have with MS, only some of which are technical. (Resource management is a reasonably well-understood thing, so how come my PC can't handle more processes GRACEFULLY than I have available processors? Back when I had single processors systems, I had to reboot almost every day.)
Despite these annoyances, the immediate benefit of using MS PC is overwhelming for some of us, but the corresponding lack of diversity leaves us staggeringly unprepared for the inevitable attack. (Well, I have my linux box, but most of the people I need to work with are on PCs and some of my critical apps only run on MS systems.)
I'm ignoring the ethics of the lowlifes who make these worms, viruses, etc. We clearly need severe penalties for these morons. But there will always be morons and there will almost certainly always be bugs in complex systems that lowlife morons can exploit. The situation is roughly analogous to replanting a clear-cut forest with only 2 or 3 types of tree. (There's an outbreak of bug X to which pine species X is virtually unsusceptible. Unfortunately, we replanted with A, B, and C which are highly susceptible.)
Anyway, that's my rather obvious take.
k
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