Conn. Man Charged with Selling Secret Windows Code

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

"NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Connecticut man was arrested on Tuesday on charges that he illegally sold a secret source code used for Microsoft Corp.'s Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 programs, federal prosecutors said." <http://www.reuters.com/audi/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=6762625>

...I thought this may be of interest to the vote hack chasers we have here.

[amber dog democrat]

1. This is too funny.

Why would anyone want the source code to lame operating systems?
I would pay to have some one take them off my hands instead.

Microsoft ought to be prosecuted for defending weak products.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

4. Microsoft ought to be prosecuted for defending weak products.

Everyone, every entity that has been compromised due to Microshaft, robbed electronically because of Microshaft's broken product, or just generally robbed of countless hours reformatting and reinstalling because of design flaws and instability should sue for all they got.

Since they are such an intelligence asset to big brother with their backdoors and keys for the NSA and others... they hardly get hassled at all.... nevermind the pirate like behavior they have exhibited year after year.... ah... free enterprise... you have to love it.

Did I mention international espionage, as in being able to walk into foreign governments systems at will.... the smart ones have moved to Linux.... sorry bill.

Truth be known... Microshaft's security servers run Linux.. true that.

[amber dog democrat]

8. Concur 100%

There is too much Microsnot Koolaide sloshing about in the world as it is.
If anytthing their cheesey OS has been a travesty and a criminal racket from the start of Windows. Lame is still lame. I won't mourn the end of Wndows and Microsoft.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

15. This is where it is at....

http://opensource.org/

http://sourceforge.net/index.php

http://www.mandrakesoft.com/

[ET Awful]

2. Who the hell would want NT 4.0 code? It's obsolete, and has been

for more than 4 years.

[Poll_Blind]

6. What do you think is running on most business/govt. servers?

Now I know this may fall on deaf ears but I am experienced with business and government networks and the software they purchase and maintain. Businesses, especially big ones, tend to buy into software and then try to eek as much use out of it as they possibly can. The only have so much money and operating system licenses are expensive. So, they buy bulk licenses after being sold on a particular operating system and because they may have hundreds or thousands of servers, upgrading those servers to a new operating system and reinstalling all that software, some of it custom made for that OS, is a very unattractive and, most importantly, financially unviable option. Also, IT managers are more likely to put their chips behind a "known quantity", which means an OS that has been put through the wringer. New OSes like XP, if they're purchased at all, are placed on client machines, not servers.

So, what you almost always have with a large business or government entity, say a school district, are a bunch of (you guessed it) NT 4.0 (or even 3.51), Windows 2000 and occasionally Netware servers. These, in my opinion, make up about 85% of the servers in use today. The rest use Windows 2003, *nix or whatever.

To give you an idea how these apparently ancient operating systems are still very much in play, consider that Trident nuclear submarines use OS/2. OS/2 was first released in 1987. Regan was president. Just because an operating system is obsolete, if it can still do its job, organizations have very little reason to switch to something newer.

Getting your hands on the source code for XP might be desirable if one wanted to learn how to exploit consumer machines. However, if a nefarious person/organization wanted to really have access to server-class machines, machines which are in charge of serious resources, you need to have access to the OSes that they're running. And most of them are running what most would reasonably consider obsolete operating systems.

Just some thoughts.

PB

[amber dog democrat]

9. Makes me think I should havce kept my TRS-80

or my Comodore 64. Still I think getting off the Windows platform is a smart thing to do - just for licensing renewel costs alone. You ought to be able to own your box and the SW on it outright.

[ET Awful]

16. All my clients have been "persuaded" to upgrade to at least 2000

I won't work with NT :)

[bemildred]

3. Somebody PAID to learn how to bungle an operating system?

Bwaaahaaaahaaaa.

[Brundle_Fly]

5. all the code you'd want

is usually open source anyways

windoze is such a hack job, maybe with longhorn they;ll learn the lesson of writing their web browser directly into the interface.


maybe not!

OSX 10.3.6 is out.

[VegasWolf]

7. NT 4.0, wait, that's tingling a vague memory, I've almost got it, anybody

got a hint? ran on a C64 didn't it?

[DS1]

11. I "think" the bare minimum was a P90 with 32 megs of ram

I could be wrong.

I know I played with Oracle 7 at home on an old Gateway desktop running NT 4. P90 and 24 megs ram. Oh, the days of efficiency :eyes:

[Gore1FL]

17. I got NT 4.0 SP3 to run on a 486-66 w/ 32 MB

I had it all loaded and then someone sent me a note telling me not to attempt it because it wouldn't work.

It was slower than Dubya on Ludes, but it worked.

[realcountrymusic]

10. In other news, Mac users get another laugh

Apple computer supports liberal causes and has excellent progressive employment policies.

Contrary to popular CW, Macs are cheaper than Windoze machines in total cost of ownership (I know, because I run a lab full of all kinds of machines and I do the budgets every year; I have hard numbers to prove this). Their customer service is superb. I had a laptop die on me (the processor chip itself, actually) last month. I called Apple (the machine was under waranty for another month), got a smart, English-speaking person who determined I was smart enough to have done all the usual things they would recommend, received an overnight return kit the next morning, sent the machine off, could follow it by fedex tracking # all the way to tennessee, where they fixed it overnight, and I had it back *the next day" with a $600 repair. They even cleaned it nicely. And my data was fine. I have never had anything like this routine Apple experience from a PC vendor.

Mac runs on open source BSD unix. It is far more secure than Windows. If you need Windoze, Virtual PC 7 is out and works fine for most everyday apps. But you won't need it if you do what most people do with a computer.

There is nothing you can do on a PC that you cannot do on a Mac other than play a few games (unless you do some kinds of CAD work or high-end statistics). But actually, most science apps that run on Unix can easily run on an OSX Mac in the Xwindows environment.

Macs are much more fun to use.

In 16 years of using Apple computers (I've personally owned more than 20 and have supervised and bought dozens and dozens for my labs and employers) I have never had a virus or lost data to a disaster (I've had a drive fail, but that happens to any machine).

I use PCs, Linux and Unix all the time, on workstations and servers. I cannot stand using the Windows boxes and always feel happy on a Mac.

Sorry to proselytize. But some people have not heard The Word.

RCM

http://www.disenfranchisedmusic.com/mp3/noa.mp3

[VegasWolf]

12. Well,

I guess that someone has to use a Mac! :)

[realcountrymusic]

13. It's not for everyone

That's one reason it's a more secure platform. Selfishly, I hope Apple keeps at about a 4 percent market share. Safer computing for me.

I guess I AM a liberal "elitist!" French-speaking, book-reading MAC USING freaks R us.

RCM

[intheozone]

14. gotta agree with you

I am not very computer savy but have used Macs since early 1990s. My office switched to PCs about 2 years ago but I still have IMac (OS10) at home. I love it, I just wished I had someone to tutor me on so I could learn how to use it better. Great, great machines, would love to buy the newest Mac out but can't afford it yet.