09.15.09

Is Microsoft Making Windows XP Illegal for Use on the Internet?

Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Security, Vista 7, Windows at 9:01 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Bad firewall

Summary: As ISPs may prepare to require full patching as a precondition to connecting, what does Microsoft’s refusal to patch actually mean?

THE PREVIOUS post showed that Windows is now at risk of being kicked off the Internet if it cannot be properly secured (it hardly can). This gets worse though.

Mentioned the other day was the fact that Microsoft is leaving Windows XP vulnerable with no intention of patching known security bugs. That, by definition, may render Windows XP unsuitable for use on the Internet; it cannot ever be made fully patched and since there is no access to the source code, only one company rules on the matter. As the debate carries on, Slashdot reveals that Microsoft is indeed saying “no” to patching of XP.

Microsoft says it won’t patch Windows XP for a pair of bugs it quashed Sept. 8 in Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. The news adds Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) and SP3 to the no-patch list that previously included only Windows 2000 Server SP4. ‘We’re talking about code that is 12 to 15 years old in its origin, so backporting that level of code is essentially not feasible,’ said security program manager Adrian Stone during Microsoft’s monthly post-patch Webcast, referring to Windows 2000 and XP.

Here is the newly-cited report.

Microsoft late last week said it won’t patch Windows XP for a pair of bugs it quashed Sept. 8 in Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008.

The news adds Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) and SP3 to the no-patch list that previously included only Windows 2000 Server SP4.

[...]

The bugs in question are in Windows’ implementation of TCP/IP, the Web’s default suite of connection protocols. All three of the vulnerabilities highlighted in the MS09-048 update were patched in Vista and Server 2008. Only two of the trio affect Windows Server 2000 and Windows XP, Microsoft said in the accompanying advisory, which was refreshed on Thursday.

[...]

During the Q&A, however, Windows users repeatedly asked Microsoft’s security team to explain why it wasn’t patching XP, or if, in certain scenarios, their machines might be at risk. “We still use Windows XP and we do not use Windows Firewall,” read one of the user questions. “We use a third-party vendor firewall product. Even assuming that we use the Windows Firewall, if there are services listening, such as remote desktop, wouldn’t then Windows XP be vulnerable to this?”

Amazing!

Does that mean that Microsoft intends to stop sales of XP on all machines? What about the fact that Vista 7′s principal feature is virtualisation of XP? How can that be secured? What about the many existing users?

“What about the many existing users?”“Since Linux is faster and easier to use on the netbooks,” tells us a reader, “Microsoft is still shipping XP in order to hang on to the OEM monopoly. Yet at the same time the official party line is that there will be no patches for XP.

“Do you suppose Microsoft employees managed to lose or erase the source code for that part of XP?”

Could Microsoft be trying to urge people to abandon XP? If so, Vista 7 sure seems like a problem because not only does it rely on XP but it is already a problematic downgrade/upgrade (no genuine consensus or verdict on whether it’s an “upgrade” yet). Ars Technica claims that it can take an entire day just to move to this operating system, even on a fast machine. The source of the claim is Microsoft Corporation.

Microsoft: Windows 7 upgrade can take nearly a day

[...]

The biggest thing that stands out about this chart is the very broad range of the upgrade time: from 30 minutes to 1,220 minutes. That second extreme is not a typo: Microsoft really did time an upgrade that took 20 hours and 20 minutes. That’s with 650GB of data, 40 applications, on mid-end hardware, and during a 32-bit upgrade. We don’t even want to know how long it would take if Microsoft had bothered doing the same test with low-end hardware.

Assuming a wage of roughly $100 per day, the price of Vista 7 sure is higher than the price tag suggests. And what about the cost of insecurity? █

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Infected Windows PCs May be Banned From the Internet in Australia

Posted in Australia, GNU/Linux, Law, Microsoft, Security, Windows at 8:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Rogue information vehicles possibly to be quarantined if new policy is passed

ONE MONTH ago it seemed like wishful thinking, but Australia carried the various proposals forward and it may soon disconnect Windows PCs that become a nuisance to everyone else on the network, thus setting an important precedence for other nations to follow. Will they actually use take-downs for the benefit of people rather than Big Media moguls (like HADOPI)? That would be surprising. From IT News:

ISPs asked to cut off malware-infected PCs

The Internet Industry Association (IIA) has drafted a new code of conduct that suggests Internet Service Providers (ISPs) contact, and in some cases disconnect, customers that have malware-infected computers.

The drafted code, which will not be mandatory, suggested ISPs take a four-step approach to protecting customers.

- Identification of compromised computers
- Contact affected customer
- Provision of information and advice to fix the compromised system; and
- A reporting function for alerting about serious scale threats, such as those, that may threaten national security.

Microsoft meanwhile admits (by actions) that AutoRun was a design mistake. The Windows operating system ought to have behaved more like GNU/Linux, which had security in mind from the get-go.

Microsoft has finally removed a function from earlier versions of its Windows operating system that has been widely abused by miscreants to surreptitiously install malware on users’ computers.

In other security news this week:

• New York Times tricked into serving scareware ad

Scammers tricked the New York Times’ Digital Advertising department into placing a malicious ad for fake antivirus software on the NYTimes.com Web site over the weekend, the company confirmed Monday.
The newspaper had warned of the scam advertisement Sunday, after receiving about 100 e-mails from concerned readers.

• What to Do If You Saw an ‘Antivirus’ Pop-Up Ad

A screen shot of the pop-up window that appears as if it is scanning for viruses.

• Three out of four administrators don’t trust anti-virus software

In a recent study, a total of 226 administrators, CIOs and security specialists were asked what they thought of signature and blacklist-based solutions. Three out of four administrators consider signature-based enterprise anti-virus protection unreliable. For zero day attacks in particular, two thirds of the administrators surveyed did not believe that standard anti-virus products helped to prevent attacks.

Yes, that’s how bad it is. When speaking about “anti-virus software”, Windows is more or less implied (or UNIX/Linux servers that merely serve files that may affect Windows clients). █

“Our products just aren’t engineered for security.”

–Brian Valentine, Microsoft executive

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Android Phones to Avoid: LG

Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, LG, Microsoft, Patents, Samsung at 8:04 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: LG has new Android phone but also a Linux patent deal with Microsoft

ASIDE from LG's criminal activity, it is important to remember that the company is part of Microsoft’s Linux racket [1, 2, 3, 4]. LG has just unveiled a new handset.

Last week, Motorola launched one. Today, it’s LG’s turn.

We have already written about what Samsung's deal with Microsoft may mean to Android and recently we showed what it means to LiMo. It is a similar situation for both because LG chose Android.

…LG made an important mobile move this morning by announcing its first Android phone, the LG-GW620.

Given the patent deal with Microsoft, whenever you buy an LG phone Microsoft will be paid by you for the “Linux” component in this phone. What patents? Nobody knows. It’s just racketeering, so that’s the idea. Carry on boycotting LG to stave off similar deals, preventing them from being signed. █

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Links 15/09/2009: HP PCs to Boot Linux, gNewSense 2.3 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 7:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

Jim Hogg teaches GNU Linux to high school kids 03 (2008)

Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.

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Microsoft Badmouths Linix [sic] in 1998, Envisions a “Nightmare”

Posted in Antitrust, Bill Gates, Finance, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Hardware, Microsoft at 2:41 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Thoughts from a patent troll under the bridge

Summary: Correspondence between Jim Gray (now deceased) and Nathan Myhrvold (now the world’s biggest patent troll) reveals Microsoft’s reasons for disdain for GNU/Linux in 1998

TODAY’s Comes vs Microsoft exhibit is Exhibit px06394 [PDF]. Although it is approximately a decade old, it is still rather enlightening because of the people whom it involves. One of them is currently a threat to GNU/Linux (maybe the biggest threat), being the world’s biggest patent hoarder, who recently turned aggressive via satellites. Mere ‘bystanders’ in this conversation are Bill Gates, Eric Rudder, Gordon Bell, Rick Rashid, Chuck Thacker, Roger Needham, Paul Maritz, Jim Allchin, Gregory Faust, Dan Rosen, Greg Maffei, Charles Simonyi, and Mike Murray.

As a little bit of background, here is what we know about Microsoft’s gradual discovery of GNU/Linux. In 1997, Bill Gates expressed his great concern about LUNIX [sic]. In 1999 came the Halloween Documents and Jim Allchin said that he was "scared" of GNU/Linux a few years later. “We are not on a path to win against Linux,” he alarmingly wrote to his colleagues.

“Also in the year 2000, Bill Gates spoke to his colleague Nathan Myhrvold, who then started his patent hoarding/trolling business (which incidentally Bill Gates funded).”In today’s exhibit, Nathan Myhrvold is shown expressing his fear of GNU/Linux and the Free software movement which accompanies it. He himself initiated this whole broad discussion (titled “Free software economics”) and used the word “nightmare”. Even in 2000 Microsoft described the situation as a "nightmare". It happened around the time Microsoft was doing its usual retaliation and pressuring for Intel to drop Linux.

Also in the year 2000, Bill Gates spoke to his colleague Nathan Myhrvold, who then started his patent hoarding/trolling business (which incidentally Bill Gates funded).

Nathan Myhrvold knew about Linix [sic] quite early and we can still see him on Charlie Rose's show (video) belittling GNU/Linux. “Linix is a cult that captures the best-and-brightest kids,” wrote Jim Gray from Microsoft Research. He died tragically a couple of years ago. His fellow worker, Nathan Myhrvold (CTO at the time), wrote the following in an age when GNU/Linux was still relatively obscure:

The pragmatic answer is that much of the “trend” towards free software is very likely due to the novelty of the Internet. In the early days of the PC industry there was a period when “Shareware”. People like Jim Button and others developed word processors, communications programs and all sorts of other software on a shareware basis. It was distributed by BBS systems (which were themselves powered by shareware). Richard Stallman started the epic saga of Gnu. This early stage of free software had its adherents – and it too was a hot topic in the trade rags. Back then you could write a pretty decent word processor with one or just a couple people so it could be supported on a shareware basis. Over time this became less and less true, and shareware diminished in importance to just a few areas.

The above shows familiarity with Richard Stallman’s work. Myhrvold then belittles the growth of GNU/Linux:

I believe that most of the growth in Linux can be traced directly to these new Internet application areas where commercial software companies have not yet created products so demonstrably superior that they have obviated the niche occupied by free software. Although people claim that Linux is growing, my bet is that if you subtract out web servers and related new niches, the growth is much more modest.

He then writes:

If nobody can beat Linux and Apache with commercial products, then shame on all of us in the industry!

Apache already dominates much of the Web (along with GNU/Linux), so indeed “shame on all of [them] in the industry!”

Then come derogatory and demeaning arguments with words like “CheapOS”, e.g.:

In CheapOS world, many fewer people would be working full time on system software, because there would be no revenue to support them. Features and functionality which support the current user base would consquently be lacking. Which means that the user base would be much smaller.

See how Myhrvold writes “free” in quotes (probably scare quotes are intended here):

Linux fans and other supporters of “free” software might have some arguments against this.

Then come words like “dorking”, which give away ridicule of access to source code:

First, they might say that there would be millions of developers dorking with the free source.

The ridicule of the word “free” can also be seen coming from Microsoft in [1, 2, 3] and here it is again from Myhrvold:

The volunteer army of Linux developers and the hypothetical integration and testing center, have some value on their time. Calling it “free” software is bogus – instead of paying money to a software vendor, there is a hidden cost in the time of the users, or their organizations. If you account for the total cost (including all the small developers, or the cost of the users making their own mods, or the cost of users finding bugs rather than testing finding them) then “free” software can get pretty costly.

Then he compares GNU/Linux to socialism and “public domain”, which is deliberate imposition of confusion and daemonisation:

There are various other defenses one can mount for CheapOS world. Many of today’s systems programmers compete with each other because making an operating system is a good business. In CheapOS world you could postulate some sort of socialist ideal where the OS is some Linux like public domain thing. Thus even though CheapOS world has many fewer developers, they are all behind one product.

Then comes a comparison to Soviet Russia:

Maybe a set of super smart programmers would write operating systems for the good of humanity. Some undoubtedly would (Richard Stallman is an example), but its hard to have confidence in this occurring at the necessary scale The Soviet Union ran the experiment for 70 years and had a rather unambiguous result. I was just in Russia, and I can attest to this.

And then this:

So, CheapOS world is a nightmare. The system software industry is sucked dry, undermining the foundations of computing. It surely is not an idyilic vision of the future. Since users vote on such actions with their purchases, I think that it is unlikely that we will see it. Only some draconian force – such a misguided government – would put the industry in this sad situation.

Lastly, there is also a reference to a letter which pressured developers to take away people’s freedom:

Bill’s famous open letter to hobbiests posed this dilemma – saying that he’d love to have people pay for software because then he could afford to hire some more programmers and make the product better. It’s time to admit that it worked out pretty well!

Worked out pretty well for Microsoft. How come this neglects to mention the immense retardation of software development & progress over the years? Does that not count? How about competition and diversity? That is the basis of capitalist markets.

In summary, what is interesting about it is that Microsoft characterises GNU/Linux as a disruptor, rather than themselves — those who try to make everything uniform, like communism, for instance. They try to control the characterisations and stereotypes and then spread them widely using words and almost vivid descriptions of them (at Best Buy/Office Depot indoctrination sessions, for instance, GNU/Linux is shown in red). Rather than understand the competition (learning to live with it), Microsoft is — as usual — looking for ways to crush it.

It is interesting that Microsoft perpetually tries to suggest GNU/Linux incites against them (words like “zealotry”) when in fact it is Microsoft which is inciting the world against “cancer” or “communism”, which it calls Linux. Endless hypocrisy. █

“Ideally, use of the competing technology becomes associated with mental deficiency, as in, “he believes in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and OS/2.” Just keep rubbing it in, via the press, analysts, newsgroups, whatever. Make the complete failure of the competition’s technology part of the mythology of the computer industry. We want to place selection pressure on those companies and individuals that show a genetic weakness for competitors’ technologies, to make the industry increasingly resistant to such unhealthy strains, over time.”

–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]

Appendix: Comes vs. Microsoft – exhibit px06394, as text

Read the rest of this entry »

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09.14.09

More Early Signs That Vista 7 Will be Rejected by Businesses

Posted in Asia, Microsoft, Vista, Vista 7, Windows at 8:07 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Vista #2 does not impress decision-making personnel

CIOs are not easy prey to the artificial hype over Vista 7, based on this new report which a reader sent to us. Here is the opening:

After Vista flop, Indian CIOs not open to new Windows

Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, may be throwing parties for potential customers to test its Windows 7 operating system to be launched in October, but many chief information officers (CIOs) are not joining the party yet.

Reliance Communications, Asian Paints, Essar Group and some other companies will wait to see how efficient the new product of Microsoft is before shifting to it, after the Vista failed to deliver on the promise of a faster and sleeker operating system.

Windows Vista was lauded and hailed prior to its release and shortly afterwards, before it got some real-world tests, leading to testimonies which overrode pseudo-reviews that Microsoft PR had managed. █

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

–George Santayana

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More Thoughts About the Microsoft CodePlex Foundation: New Links

Posted in Apple, Deception, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Patents at 7:48 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: The Mono team brings the iPhone closer to Microsoft’s turf; CodePlex Foundation analysed further

F

IRST OF ALL, congratulations to the Mono team, which has just ‘Microsoftised’ the iPhone. Microsoft must be very proud, just like the PR people who infest the comments section in Slashdot. To quote the gist of it all, “MonoTouch consists of a suite of compilers, libraries, and tools for integrating with the iPhone and iPod Touch SDK. It lets developers use C# and other .NET programming languages for the Apple devices, rather than wading into C and Objective-C.”

Why use C? There is this lovely patents-encumbered language from Microsoft, whose direction Microsoft will always control. Wouldn’t board member Miguel de Icaza wish the best for his bosses at Microsoft, which is rapidly losing market share to Apple’s iPhone?

Here is some other lovely news about the new (part-time) home of Mr. de Icaza:

• The Potemkim Village Experiment 2: Electric Boogaloo

This is a business organization, not a non-profit organization

Just in case you might have thought otherwise. I’m sure there is absolutely no intent to decieve by calling it a “Foundation” and having “.org” in the domain name.

Here is the explanation on the website:

While the Codeplex Foundation may eventually evolve into a charitable non-profit, the requirements for a charitable non-profit are more stringent. The set-up time for such an organization would have been longer, and the planning process considerably more complex.

I bet the requirements are “more stringent”. That’s exactly what we need, and Microsoft doesn’t want. Stringent requirements.

And I love how “set-up time” is an excuse, like non-profits aren’t started everyday by two dudes trying to help the world, and Microsoft with it’s army of lawyers and billions of dollars just can’t quite get a handle on the process.

• Does Microsoft Have an Open Source Strategy Any More?

Whenever I write about Microsoft here I usually get a few comments asking me, with varying degrees of politeness, why I am wasting electrons on this subject on a site devoted to GNU/Linux. The reason I do this – and why I am about to do it again – is that whether we like it or not, Microsoft remains probably the single most important external factor in the free software world. It’s useful, therefore, to try to understand what exactly the company’s open source strategy is, in order to head off some of its worst aspects, and to build on any positive elements. The trouble is, I don’t think Microsoft has an open source strategy any more.

[...]

Rather, it seems to me that the centrifugal forces within the company have finally overcome that lone centripetal force of Sam Ramji, with all those “engineering and business leaders across the company” adopting widely differing, and at times contradictory, attitudes and actions with regard to open source. Without Ramji, I think the situation is going to get even worse; what about you?

• CodePlex Foundation founding flawed says legal expert

Andrew Updegrove, co-creator of the MIT licence and an expert in creating consortiums, has examined the founding documents of CodePlex Foundation and believes its creation is flawed. Updegrove, in an extensive article on Consortiuminfo.org, points to the lack of initial co-sponsors, the small size of the board, which in 100 days time is scheduled to shrink from 5 to only 6 members and to the fact that the majority of its members are Microsoft employed. He also notes that the foundation has not been set up as a membership organisation which he says is “very unusual for an organisation operating in an area that usually relies on consensus”.

• The Curious Case of the OIN Patent Coup

“It’s time for Microsoft to stop secretly attacking Linux while publicly claiming to want interoperability,” Zemlin wrote. “Let’s hope that Microsoft decides going forward to actually try to win in the marketplace, rather than continuing to distract and annoy us with their tricky patent schemes.”

Related posts:

• OIN Receives Thanks from Many, CodePlex Foundation Receives Thumbs-Down from Many
• Miguel de Icaza Joins Microsoft
• Microsoft Turncoat Quits
• Why Microsoft’s CodePlex Foundation is a Promoter of Proprietary Software
• Microsoft Runs Away from the Press After Trying to Have GNU/Linux Sued by Proxy

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IRC: #boycottnovell @ FreeNode: September 14th, 2009

Posted in IRC Logs at 7:24 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Read the log

Enter the IRC channel now

To use your own IRC client, join channel #boycottnovell in FreeNode.

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