Bonum Certa Men Certa

The Windows Security Lie and the 'Civil War' Against Torvalds

Friendly fire, coincidence, or blood-hungry journalists?

Three weeks ago, amid tremendous amount of security FUD from Microsoft, we exposed the many lies. Recently we posted another quick update. It was just a couple of days ago as a matter of fact. Now we come to discover that the same tricks are being pulled yet again. Microsoft patches its software silently, for undeserved vanity purposes.

Vista SP1 will contain undocumented fixes



Interesting email in today mailbag: “Will SP1 contain undisclosed or undocumented security fixes?”

For some people, counting the number of security flaws that one OS has compared to another is important because it offers a metric upon which to determine which OS is the most secure (personally, I feel that it’s a bogus metric, but I’ll let it slide for now). However, many claim that Microsoft stacks the deck in its favor by not disclosing a full list of vulnerabilities that have been patched by omitting to include those discovered and patched in-house.


Speaking of security, remember Microsoft's ActiveX menace, whose main purpose was to exclude rival Web browsers from the market at the expense of security? Well, it appears to be getting the boot at the government.

The federal agency's warning to disable all Internet Explorer ActiveX controls might as well be recommendation to use Firefox—or Opera or Safari. Hey, AOL, are you sure about pulling the plug on Netscape?


It's time for the Federal government to look more closely at 'ActiveX 2.0', better known as Silverlight [1, 2]. Some States have already warned about this.

Bad Silverlight



In other security news, Linux gets sort of 'invited' to the Mac hack contest. To give you an idea of what's involved:

Last year, security researcher Dino Dai Zovi spent a sleepless night hacking his Mac in order to take the prize at the show's first PWN to OWN contest. Dai Zovi found a QuickTime bug that allowed him to run unauthorized software on the Mac once the computer's browser was directed to a specially crafted Web page.


At the moment, there is tension between Mac users and Linux. A questionably tactless remark from Linus Torvalds (about Mac OS X's filesystem) has already been taken out of context and it used against him in the press. Journalists are implying -- if not explicitly saying -- that he attacked Leopard or OS X as a whole. The press incites Apple Mac users against him and responses include:

Matt Asay: the Linux desktop is 'utter crap'

This is a follow-up to a headline which said something along the lines of:

Linus Torvalds: Mac OS X is 'utter crap'

Of course, Linus Torvalds never said this, but they shove words down his throat for drama and hostility. See the previous post about creating civil wars (UNIX versus Linux in this case), be aware that Microsoft owns a lot of the press (literally) and recall the recent Brett Winterford incident (attacking IBM in the press after a free trip to Redmond).

Recent Techrights' Posts

Even Microsoft (MSN) Covers Richard Stallman's Public Talk in Milan 2 Days Ago
He spoke in Spanish earlier this month (Alicante)
 
United States Courts With Sworn Testimonies Are on Our Side, We'll Present the Same Here
Chronicling what happened is a moral imperative
People's Understanding of the History of GNU/Linux is Changing
RMS is not a radical, he's just clever enough to see and foresee what's going on
Serial Sloppers Ruin and Lessen the Incentive to Cover "Linux"
The Serial Sloppers (SSs) ought to be named and shamed, but almost nobody does this
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 28, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Links 28/05/2025: 'Emulation Layers' (Measurements and Linguistics), Libraries, and Discomfort
Links for the day
Links 28/05/2025: More Arrests for Bitcoin-Connected Torture and Prosecutions for Dieselgate-Linked Executives
Links for the day
Gemini Links 28/05/2025: Techo-authoritarianism With Slop Plagiarism and "No Online June" (Going Offline)
Links for the day
Links 28/05/2025: GitHub MCP Exploited and MathWorks Discovers Huge Windows TCO
Links for the day
Microsofters Were Scheming to Take Over This Entire Web Site (in Their Own Words!)
Money gets spent censoring/deplatforming people who speak about real issues; no money gets spent actually tackling those underlying issues
Very High Attendance Level at Richard Stallman's Talk Shows People Can Relate to His Message
Smear campaigns have their limits
Gemini Links 28/05/2025: Celsius-Fahrenheit, Endless Scrolling/Infinite Scrolling, and Trapping LLM Slop Bots
Links for the day
Bicycles for the Minds and the Story Harrison Bergeron
"The goal of having people in charge of the tools they use and that the tools should amplify ability" has long been abandoned
Prison gate backdrop to baptism by Fr Sean O'Connell, St Paul's, Coburg
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
More Photos From This Week's Milan Talk by Richard Stallman
The posts are in Italian, not English
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 27, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 27, 2025
Links 27/05/2025: Science Defunded, India Arrests an Academic
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/05/2025: From Celsius to Fahrenheit and Deleting Social Control Media
Links for the day
Microsofters Have, in Effect, Attempted Extrajudicial Action Against Us
Courts and Judges (or Masters) don't exist to facilitate this kind of "bro" culture
UK High Court Masters Are Not Your Jesters, Microsoft
Judges aren't there for "funny" spectacles, they're there to act as arbiters in critical cases, not SLAPPs
Links 27/05/2025: Mass Layoffs at Volvo and More Evidence of 'AI' (Slop) Being a Passing Fad
Links for the day
The Code of Conduct (CoC) Gaslighting Phenomenon
There are still many people and projects foolish enough to outsource their labour to Microsoft via GitHub
They're Very Jealous of Richard Stallman and His Freedom (or Simple Lifestyle)
Jealousy is toxic because it can cause rational people to act irrationally and even severely harm themselves
Akira Urushibata on GNU coreutils
new message
Anouk Rozestraten (Deputy Director) Appears to Have Left the Free Software Foundation
Let's hope Rozestraten is still using and promoting Free software
There's Nothing Funny About Lawbreaking
There's plenty of room in society for humour, but "hacking" the state by breaking laws isn't cool or hip
More Mass Layoffs Coming Soon to Microsoft, Just a Question of When and How Many
Numbers from Washington were close to 5% and judging by prior rumours, it would be 5% + 5% (total 10%) at a later month
Links 27/05/2025: Bikes, Ideal Computers, and BYO
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, May 26, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, May 26, 2025
Richard Stallman's Milan Talk (Public Presentation) Was Packed, Video Available Soon
Looks like they even ran out of seats