> Thanks, I'd like to do that. The story will tell itself as we look. > The behavior I'm looking for is a machine that does not have your > address anywhere on it spoofing you. If you can show that just once, > some kind of co-operation of this virus with itself or a central > server will be established. A preference for your address in spoofing > might be explained by the prevalence of your address in address books > and it would be interesting to show a correlation. I'll sign an > appropriate NDA to have the chance to look things over. >
The first person that I would have to talk to is in town right now, and the second will be next week. I will copy all of my server logs to a DVD this weekend so that they do not get rotated out. > You have not fallen into a parallel universe, Microsoft breaks their > own software and blames it on others routinely. Viruses can be seen > as part of the upgrade cycle, just like DLL hell. The company that > blamed Sun for the death of Windows 98 would be happy to blame Linux > "hackers" for the demise of 98. Do you remember the way they killed > DrDOS (http://www.kickassgear.com/Articles/Microsoft.htm) OS/2 > (http://www.infoanarchy.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2001/10/23/17629/221) > Lotus, Netscape, Word Perfect .... freaking everything on their > platform (http://www.kmfms.com/whatsbad.html)? You would think that > each of those breaks would give Microsoft a black eye, but they > managed to blame their competition in every case! As much as I hate to say it, M$ has been very smart in a business sense (monopoly aside, after all they were not a monopoly when many of the above events happened). Perhaps it is not so much that it is a conspiracy or blaming problems on competition, but being very smart in how they dealt with PC dealers, and the "market" in general. > Free software is a little harder for them to kill, but the basics are > the same, FUD, break, malign. Can't argue here. > You can count of Microsoft to get up to their old tricks and make free > software on their own platform look bad, that's SOP for them. What's > different with free ! > software is that anyone can use it without outside of Microsoft's > control. The best way for them to keep people from going there, they > can try to malign free software users. Microsoft is funding SCO's > attempt to steal all free software and malign all free software users > as thieves. Don't forget also though, that many other companies are funding SCO. Sun, who has supported many free software projects (Gnome just to mention one major one) has sent money to SCO. I do not think Sun would support SCO to support Microsoft. Sun's #1 enemy is M$. It can be argued that Linux is a threat to Sun, but I have had too many beers tonight to get into that... LOL > Their own polls showed that the rhetoric backfired on them when they > used it themselves. Using a surrogate is a traditional part of > Microsoft's strategy as well. Microsoft does not extort millions of > dollars from public school systems, the BSA does, right? You raise a fair point here. The BSA is most certainly just a branch of microsoft, everyone knows that. > It's possible that this virus was written by a spamming outfit, but > the press blamed it on free software zealots > (http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/01/27/mydoom.spread/) > (http://money.cnn.com/2004/01/27/technology/techinvestor/lamonica/ > index.htm?cnn). Those have got to be the best headlines and stories > that a few billion dollars of advertising can buy, "Ask the experts at > Sophos" Given Microsoft's past their authoring this and ! > other worms would not surprise me at all. Doing so and blaming it on > their latest competitive threat would be par performance. > > If they do it enough, they will create a crisis vehicle to get some > really nasty legislation passed. All Joe sixpacks can see is that his > email and internet are broken and CNN just told him it was Linux's > fault. Someone at Bits Technical actually told me that the worm was > "written in Linux". I can imagine Sir Gates riding to the rescue and > it's not pretty. > While the average home user can be this stupid, I don't think even the dumbest tech reporter would fall to this level. Congress critters are of course stupid when it comes to tech, and the threat of legislation does scare the hell out of me (DMCA, etc), but I am not sure this worm will be the tipping point. Code Red, nimbda, etc. were not enough so far. All they did was give microsoft a headache. > Oh yeah, I do think Microsoft and other ISPs spam each other. They > may do it through surrogates, but I think they do it. I just can't > believe that there are so many penis enlarger and viagra scam > companies out there. While running a spam server might be profitable > and there may be thousands of want to be profitable money losers, > where does the money come from in the first place? Are there really > billions of dollars worth of penis enlargers to pay for all this > filthy spam? Why should we believe that a scofflaw company known to > break competitors software is above spamming a competing ISP? Once > again, the big ISPs are in the best position to gain from legislated > solutions the spam problem. Believe it or not, spam is profitable. I *almost* wish I would have gotten on the bandwagon early. I could be writing this from a yacht in the Caribbean right now. > > Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. Those who do > know history are doomed to know that they are repeating history and it > makes them irritable. It's almost as bad as having to use Windoze at > work. > All the more reason to push free software. However, with M$'s working capital, they will be the next SCO if we affect their bottom line too much. Just look at the patent they are trying to get with XML. Think about it. They make their office software write files to a plain text XML format, we make software that reads/writes it. They start charging a $699 license fee for it. Shannon > Though this be madness, yet there is method in it. > > _______________________________________________ > General mailing list > [email protected] > http://brlug.net/mailman/listinfo/general_brlug.net > -- Shannon Roddy LIGO - Caltech 225.686.3106 (work) 225.933.7821 (cell) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
