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On Wed, 6 Mar 2002, Tzahi Fadida wrote:
> I don't know how this topic became economics 101, but I want to return to the quote.
> If you'll open any operating system concepts book, you will see that separating the
>shell or the user interface, is very important in order for the os to have a good
>design. Microsoft has put its monopolistic interests over the design and quality of
>the product. If there was an ethic committee for these kind of violations they would
>be disbarred, but because there is not, The public interest is to make Microsoft pay
>for their mistakes. And as you know, people like to see blood.
> Microsoft has earned enough of consumer money to make a good product, and if they
>need to pull it off the shelves to fix it, than so be it.
> Mind you, the browser is not the only issue, which if I would have to list their
>indiscretions it would exceed the netiques of this list. I want to point out one of
>these other issues - security. bill gates openly admitted his organization lack of
>understanding or compliance with security. Now it is undeniably that Microsoft knew
>from the beginning that they are putting a product which is insecure on the shelves.
>I think, this is a more important issue that costs billions each year in security
>damages by viruses and holes.
> Not only the damages in monetary quantification, but also insurance policies which
>have higher premiums as a result, causing less businesses to insure themselves.
> All in all, I think Microsoft acted irresponsibly.
Perhaps they did. But the public should have known not to trust what
Microsoft gave it and use Linux or FreeBSD or whatever, instead.
Convincing the public that NT is good is not a crime. The Microsoft
Programmers did not introduce the bugs on purpose. MS is notorious for the
bad code its programmers produce, but they also have rigorous testing
periods, a zero-bug policy (which I'm not sure is extrapolated to their
release times, but still it exists), and making sure the product is not
re-written from scratch. (which can possibly introduce the old bugs all
over again). Naturally, they are not measures that are enough when
releasing a piece of software that is responsible for handling requests
from an open Internet.
If people wish to get MS a chance to make their products more secure, it's
up to them. Or they can switch to OpenBSD or Linux or whatever else has a
better record. MS does not _force_ anyone to buy its products. If I don't
want to use NT/IIS/Exchange at all, I can if I want to.
I believe even many open-source developers act irresponsibly. I even
have problems with some of Linus Torvalds' decisions. Open-Source is not a
a panacea for security. And some commercial products have better records
than many open-source ones.
I don't think the government should restrict commercial software, because
the natural implication would be that free software will have to be
restricted to. I mentioned it on Hackers-IL, that Freecell Solver does not
check for malloc() returning NULL and so may cause the process to segfault
if you ran out of memory. That will make implementing a kick-ass
multi-threaded Freecell solving server a bit difficult.
Now, I do not prohibit people from using Freecell Solver that way. And I
have better things to do with the code that the average user will find
more desirable, than a process that does not segfault if his computer ran
out of memory. Or just relax doing other things beside hacking on it.
By giving power to the censor, the public or any interesant portion of it
eventually gives it power to demise itself. What's the alternative? A free
competition environment. In it people can mislead for a very short time if
any, regardless of how much money, PR, or FUD the entity spreads. And
naturally, every person is responsible for himself.
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
>
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> Tzahi Fadida
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Shlomi Fish [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Home Page: http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
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"Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups..."
"Wait a second - is n a natural number?"
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