06.27.09

Cost of Windows Zombies to the Economy Could be Trillions

Posted in Finance, Mail, Microsoft, Security, Windows at 2:42 am by Roy Schestowitz

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

–Brian Valentine, Microsoft executive

Summary: The cost of Windows to the economy is higher than most people realise

THE OLD estimates of 320,000,000 or so zombie PCs on the Web simply mean that Windows botnets are bound to cost a lot of money. They cause great damage and waste hours per week, per person, depending on the person’s occupation. Conficker shows that Windows flaws tend to be seriously severe. Microsoft continues its tradition of ignoring and overriding user settings by installing patches without permission.

SOFTWARE GIANT Microsoft has been installing updates against the wishes of users who have set up their computers to stop them deploying patches without permission.

This is done for security reasons, but it does raise serious questions. Microsoft essentially owns one’s PC once Windows is installed on it. Not even user settings are obeyed. Regardless of this practice which has gone on for years, the Windows botnets problem remains unresolved and everyone pays the price. Here are some new figures about the cost of SPAM alone (there are many other costs).

And just in time. According to Ferris Research, a San Francisco and London-based e-mail and groupware analysis firm, “spam will cost $140 billion worldwide in 2008, of which $42 billion will be in the United States alone.”

[...]

That’s largely because spam hasn’t been bound to the U.S. in years. Instead, spam comes from botnets. These are made up of anywhere from dozens to tens of thousands of malware infected Windows PCs that their controllers use to spread spam around the world.

Will Microsoft pay the bills to compensate for this? One of my Web sites, for example, goes beyond the allowed traffic because well over 90% of the traffic there is devoured by Windows zombies. It has gone on for months and it is costing a lot of money, not just time.

Those who are responsible for this chaos whine about it too. Gates describes it as “irritating”. █

“Like almost everyone who uses e-mail, I receive a ton of spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren’t so irritating.”

–Bill Gates

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OSCON Sells Out to Convicted Monopolist Microsoft, Again

Posted in FOSS, FSF, Microsoft, Windows at 1:56 am by Roy Schestowitz

Summary: OSCON 2009 has already sold out to Microsoft, as Microsoft bought itself a keynote spot

OSCON continues its tradition of facilitating Microsoft's embrace & extend of "open source". It was the same in OSCON 2007 and OSCON 2008 [1, 2, 3]. In OSCON 2009, a keynote will come from the company which is suing open source using software patents. O’Reilly et al have no qualm about inviting anyone who puts money on the table. Maybe they should also invite Stalin for some great bucks.

It is truly a shame that ethics and freedom are given away in exchange for money, so what everyone ends up with looks like this:

Here are some of the slated keynote presentations:

[...]

Tony Hey, Microsoft–Enabling Academic Research– Open Tools and Services on Microsoft Platforms

OSCON seems to be controlled by Wintel. Microsoft is a Diamond sponsor, making it more than Sun or Google or any of those other companies. It is more about money than about deeds.

“They accept more money and give Microsoft more control over the event.”it gets worse every year for O’Reilly. They accept more money and give Microsoft more control over the event. They really should learn that it is about ruining conferences by hijacking them and putting off the crowd, by Microsoft’s own admission.

A lot could also said about Intel, which is a convicted monopolist that viciously attacked OLPC, funded SCO, funded Linux-hostile initiatives and so on.

OSCON is not run by open source. It is run by whoever pays to pretend to be part of it, including those who want to destroy it. One reader told us last night: “Microsoft is trying to fool people into thinking that they support open source While making it dependent on proprietary software. So far, they successfully fooled O’Reilly and SourceForge, which is dangerous. As I said before, FSF warned about traps like this many times, including the now open source Java and Motif.” To quote from the GNU Web site, “That doesn’t mean it is a good idea to write the program so that it only runs on Windows. Doing so results in a program that is free software but “trapped” by Windows.” █

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06.25.09

Bill Gates’ “Security as a lock in” Memo (to Discriminate Against Non-Windows Operating Systems)

Posted in Bill Gates, Java, Microsoft, Security, Windows at 2:56 pm by Roy Schestowitz

Summary: To Bill Gates, “security” is means of advancing Windows and they “need to make this an explicit goal of [their] security strategy”

THE following exhibit, Exhibit px06105 (1997) [PDF], is a real ’smoking gun’. People often complain about how TPM [1, 2], DRM and the likes of these technologies stifle interoperability and leave some platforms out in the cold.

This may be no accidental side-effect but an actual strategy that comes from the very top of a convicted monopolist. Today’s exhibit very clearly shows what subject Bill Gates has chosen to bring up. The phrase “Security as a lock in” is right there in the subject line:

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 1997 2:53 PM
To: Nathan Myhrvold
Cc: Paul Maritz
Subject: Security as a lock in

I believe as we evolve our security capabilities there must be some way to set this up so that our operating systems have shared secrets with each other that make them work better with each other than with other operating systems - whether it’s JAVAOS layered on top of us or clones or anything else.

I think we need to make this an explicit goal of our security strategy.

Remember Bill Gates' early writings on DRM. It may be the genesis (at least in part) of that whole mess. The memo above gets a nod from Nathan Myhrvold, currently the company's patent troll. Yasov Yacobi passes it to Paul Maritz, who passes it to Jim Allchin. There is no objection to this objectionable suggestion from Bill Gates. It is anti-competitive.

Take-home message: Bill Gates views “security” as a modality for “lock-in”. █

Appendix: Comes vs. Microsoft - exhibit px06105, as text

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06.24.09

Federal Trade Commission May Crack Down on Microsoft’s Bribery of Bloggers

Posted in Deception, Marketing, Microsoft, Vista, Vista 7, Windows at 4:46 am by Roy Schestowitz

“I’ve been thinking long and hard about this, and the only conclusion I can come to is that this is ethically indistinguishable from bribery. Even if no quid-pro-quo is formally required, the gift creates a social obligation of reciprocity. This is best explained in Cialdini’s book Influence (a summary is here). The blogger will feel some obligation to return the favor to Microsoft.”

–Former Microsoft manager

Summary: FTC to go after schwag tactics

THE FTC may not be the most potent of bodies [1, 2], but it may finally make a move to end the bribing of bloggers. Microsoft is a major culprit [1, 2, 3, 4] and an article about intent to take action specifically mentions Microsoft as an example:

Microsoft, for example, created a wave of bad press a few years ago when it gave free Acer laptops preloaded with Windows Vista to several dozen bloggers.

Microsoft did the same thing to promote Vista 7 and it is currently paying people (in terms of awards) to promote Windows in their blogs and also in social Web sites like Digg and Slashdot. That’s not even accounting for the fact that Microsoft pays large publishers like Ziff Davis to promote Windows Vista and it does the same with large shops and OEMs. Even large analyst firms are doing this. We recently spoke about Forrester and out comes another skeptic of their latest smear of Free software.

I won’t take InfoWorld to task for how it spins the story; this is news coverage, not an opinion piece. And it’s a fair description of how Forrester wants to position its research. (I can’t say the same thing about a subsequent InfoWorld blog post that accepts Forrester’s conclusions without questioning them.)

This taste leaves most readers hungry for details. How does Forrester define “open source?” Are we talking about desktop applications, server software, or both? Where does Forrester draw the line between enterprises and SMBs — and how does that distinction blur the inevitable differences between how midsize and small businesses view these issues?

Analysts, like lobbyists (there is overlap), are there to make a buck. Microsoft says that [PDF] “Analysts sell out - that’s their business model…” Gartner is a good example of corruptible analysts and Facebook, with investments from Microsoft, is now turning to the dark side too.

Facebook’s newly minted lobbyist used to be one of the company’s most formidable adversaries.

As a prominent privacy advocate, Timothy Sparapani, former senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that Internet companies have too much control over consumers’ data. The self-described “privacy zealot” didn’t join Facebook until seven months ago because he was uneasy about revealing personal information on the site.

The FTC has a lot of work to do. Legalised bribery is greater an issue than bribed bloggers. █

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06.23.09

Bill Gates: “Our Most Potent Operating System Competitor is Linux”

Posted in Antitrust, Bill Gates, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Servers, Windows at 6:35 am by Roy Schestowitz

Based on Comes vs Microsoft exhibits, we already know that the company from Redmond is most afraid of GNU/Linux. There is no point in denying it and it is always valuable to see what the company says internally. In today’s exhibit, Exhibit PX08256 (2001) [PDF], a revealing memo from Gates is shown publicly, probably for the first time at least on the Web.

Jim Allchin distributes this in-progress memo from Bill Gates to Brian Valentine, Paul Flessner, Mike Nash, Will Poole, Yuval Neeman, and Dan Neault. Gates expresses concern about developers moving away from Windows:

Our strength comes from the singularity and popularity of the platform. even we can’t afford multiple overlapping messages especially when developers are moving to Linux and Java.

Right now they try pulling developers to Windows, .NET, and Visual Studio, thanks to Novell’s work on Mono.

Regarding quality, Gates concludes:

An ongoing jihad here is critical.

Jihad is a term that Bill Gates uses on occasions.

But here is the most interesting part:

Our most potent Operating System competitor is Linux and the phenomena around Open Source and free software. The same phenomena fuels competitors to all of our products. The ease of picking up Linux to learn it or to modify some piece of it is very attractive. The academic community, start up companies, foreign governments and many other constituencies are putting their best work into Linux.

Another drop of fear:

We need other creative ideas to allow Windows to match the viral nature of Linux.

According to Gates, GNU/Linux may be is easier than Windows (at least in areas that he mentions).

Provisioning and monitoring Windows systems needs to be far easier than Linux systems.

Microsoft understands that it needs to prevent GNU/Linux from becoming a commodity, which it is already becoming regardless of Microsoft’s efforts to prevent it (even with FUD, intimidation, and lawsuits)

The strength of this platform and the innovation around it is the key element in preventing commodization by Linux, our installed base and Network Appliance vendors.

Wallclimber, who kindly extracted and provided the full text, adds: “One thing that struck me in this one is the mention of Gmail (it’s mentioned under the heading “Asynch Communication”). Yet, the emails attached to the “Software Agenda” document are dated back in 2001.” She is referring to the following part where Bill Gates states:

We will continue to charge for email capability which we need to enhance with Gmail capabilities as discussed in the subscription memo, Unclear is whether Workflow or Portal Servers are separate and what access is paid for by having an up-to-date Office license.

Walt Mossberg and Gates are not exactly as separate as the Wall Street Journal wants readers to believe and here is more potential proof:

The PC has to have all the advantages of being a simple dedicated appliance without giving up the ability to run many applications and support a variety of peripherals and update the system software. Walt Mossberg and our satisfaction data say we haven’t done enough on this.

The full text is below. █

Appendix: Comes vs. Microsoft - exhibit PX08256, as text

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06.22.09

Microsoft Gets Even Closer to the American Press, Promotes Vapourware

Posted in Deception, Dell, Microsoft, Vista, Vista 7, Windows at 7:04 am by Roy Schestowitz

“In the face of strong competition, Evangelism’s focus may shift immediately to the next version of the same technology, however. Indeed, Phase 1 (Evangelism Starts) for version x+1 may start as soon as this Final Release of version X.”

–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]

Summary: Microsoft recaptures more influence in General Electric’s agenda-setting media outlet whilst Vista 7 gets promoted senselessly

LAST NIGHT we offered an exclusive glimpse at Microsoft's definition of vapourware. It is about announcing products ahead of their existence and hyping them up by making promises that won’t be fulfilled. In order to make vapourware effective, Microsoft must also control the press. To quote more from Microsoft’s internal documents [PDF], “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.” Microsoft understands that control of the press is crucial, which is why Microsoft is literally buying some of it.

Here is the latest deal:

GE to use Microsoft technology for ad sales: WSJ

[...]

General Electric Co.’s NBC Universal will announce Thursday that it will use technology from Microsoft Corp.

We have already warned that NBC and the likes of it will mostly deliver Microsoft's corporate propaganda and last week we offered an example where MSNBC removed parts of articles that were damaging to Microsoft.

“Later on they also lobby together for software patents in Europe.”A lot of people still fail to realise that NBC is very much a General Electric drone, so its information on energy matters will be affected accordingly. This is a recipe for disaster. Here is more coverage from MarketWatch and from Rupert Murdoch’s press. Microsoft getting closer to NBC Universal is the equivalent of Microsoft getting closer to General Electric, which recently they did directly when they announced a deal. Later on they also lobby together for software patents in Europe.

All of this domination of the press leads Microsoft to controlling the agenda-setting media. Microsoft gets to tell editors what the consensus on its products should be, so it is hardly surprising that news headlines matching “Vista” in the past week are only 3 compared to those matching “Windows 7″, of which there are 17. It’s called vapourware when the promoted product does not even exist. Fantasies supersede reality.

We could carry on talking about Dell becoming a slave of Microsoft again, but this is a topic for another day. There is money changing hands and that alone tends to define what companies — including media companies — will publicly promote [1, 2, 3]. █

Disclosure: My sister works for General Electric, so I am not biased against them.

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06.21.09

Iran Uses Novell and Microsoft Software to Make Bombs

Posted in Asia, Interoperability, Microsoft, Novell, Patents, SLES/SLED, Security, Servers, Windows at 5:58 am by Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Novell and Microsoft a matter of national security, but whose?

THERE is an old slur about GNU/Linux being the operating system for “terrorists” (or something along those lines). Why does Microsoft get a free ride?

According to The Register, SLES 10 and Windows power some of Iran’s nuclear programs.

That second generation box, which has 16 dual-core and another 16 quad-core Opteron processors from Advanced Micro Devices, 98 GB of total memory, and 182 gigaflops of aggregate computing power, runs Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 as well as Microsoft’s Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition.

[...]

While ComputerWorld and Iran Watch, a group dedicated to the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons technology to Iran, made much of the AMD iron and didn’t say anything about the Novell and Microsoft software, the real worry is what application software Iran is able to get its hands on to do finite element analysis and fluid mechanics in the design of the rockets.

To use some sarcasm, did Iran buy its SLES coupons from Microsoft? For software patents, obviously? Novell and Microsoft could probably issue a press release to rave about this deployment and quote the army regarding the “interoperability” advantage or "peace of mind" they receive from these coupons. Now, if only they could be sold “peace”, too.

In other security news, Microsoft’s friend Finjan [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] is warning (again) about Windows botnets. From Heise:

Security services provider Finjan has released a report from its Malicious Code Research Center analysing a trading platform for botnets. According to the report, the underground trade in infected computers offers a comprehensive menu of botnets at locations all around the world. Some Far Eastern networks can be had for a mere $5 a thousand PCs.

Watch the role and effect of Windows malware in this process. From the BBC (days ago):

“This emerging threat is becoming very real and is already affecting millions and millions of websites. 30,000 web pages are affected every day according to the likes of Microsoft and the security firm Sophos,” said Mr Daswani who was a senior security engineer at Google.

Ask the FBI about Windows security [1, 2]. █

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06.19.09

MSNBC Manipulated Story to Hide Microsoft’s Extensive Use of Free Software

Posted in BSD, Deception, FOSS, Mail, Microsoft, Security, Windows at 5:26 am by Roy Schestowitz

Summary: An interesting real-world example of Microsoft’s influence on the press

Microsoft’s use of Free software is a subject that we covered many times before, e.g. in [1, 2, 3, 4]. Hotmail, for example, was running BSD long after Microsoft had acquired it, but how far did a dishonest Microsoft go to deny it? Well, Slated has picked up some old links which nicely fit and explain a newer incident.

The first link he picked is this one where Microsoft admits being a BSD user.

Despite the company’s bitter campaign against open source software, Microsoft continues to use FreeBSD to power important functions of its Hotmail free e-mail service. Much to the chagrin of the folks at Redmond, FreeBSD and Apache continued to run Hotmail for several years after it was purchased in 1997. Microsoft publicly claimed to have removed all traces of FreeBSD last summer, and even published a case study documenting its experiences. Microsoft told BetaNews that solutions such as FreeBSD are in use throughout its IT infrastructure. A spokesperson also clarified the the software giant’s position on OSS technologies, and views on GPL licensing.

Microsoft maintains however, that it is migrating to its own proprietary software and any delays are meant to ensure a positive experience for its customers.

Contrary to recent claims, the popular Hotmail service does not run entirely on the Windows 2000 platform. First reported by the Wall Street Journal, FreeBSD developer Trevor Johnson determined that Microsoft was still using the open source operating system for DNS hosting and also for tracking advertisements. It has also been reported that FreeBSD software components are utilized in Microsoft products, such as Windows 2000. BSD’s TCP/IP stack, a vital communication protocol, is rumored to have been used in several Windows operating systems, enabling users to connect to the Internet.

Slated does not stop there. “The original WSJ article,” he points out, “has mysteriously disappeared, but fragments remain elsewhere.”

Wall St. Journal: Microsoft Uses Open-Source Code Despite Denying Use of Such Software

Lee Gomes, the reporter who wrote the friendly (and curiously MSNBC-edited) piece last week about “Microsoft’s Uphill Battle Against Linux” is back this week with an amplification on Microsoft’s use of open source software:

“Microsoft Corp., even while mounting a new campaign against open-source software, has quietly been using such free computer code in several major products, as well as on key portions of a popular Web site — despite denying last week that it did so.

Software connected with the FreeBSD open-source operating system is used in several places deep inside several versions of Microsoft’s Windows software, such as in the “TCP/IP” section that arranges all connections to the Internet. The company also uses FreeBSD on numerous “server” computers that manage major functions at its Hotmail free e-mail service, whose registered users exceed 100 million and make it one of the Web’s busiest sites.

Microsoft acknowledged its repeated use of open-source code Friday, in response to questions about the matter. Just two days earlier, it had specifically denied the existence of any such software at Hotmail.”

Also from LinuxToday (as per yesterday):

Why is the NY Times so Dumb About Linux and Windows?

The New York Times seems hard-wired to rarely identify any Windows malware as Windows malware, but rather as “computer malware.” They seem to share this illness with other people too, such as researchers and professors. Can it be that all these educated people who make their livings knowing things and uncovering new knowledge really don’t know that there are other computer operating systems besides Microsoft Windows?

Their latest failure at making this distinction is China Orders Patches to Planned Web Filter, and they also missed the real story: since this censoring software is required to be installed on all computers sold in China, does that mean that Mac, Linux, and Unix computers are banned? Because it’s a Windows program.

Microsoft and the New York Times are very close. Steve Ballmer publishes articles in there sometimes. A year ago we wrote about the New York Times promoting Silverlight and this was hardly surprising given the strong relationship between those two. Just months ago there was a rumour that Microsoft would buy the debt-saddled New York Times.

So, what Carla points out above is that the New York Times, which enjoys a wide daily distribution, consistently defends Microsoft through omission of critical details. The BBC too perpetuates the belief that computers and Windows are synonymous. We previously explained why the BBC and NBC cannot ever be trusted on Microsoft and Novell matters and returning to Slated’s links, he also shows that “The MSNBC even tried to censor the story [about Hotmail running on Free software].”

MSNBC has been caught doctoring copy originating from the Wall Street Journal to make it more favourable to the news channel’s co-owner Microsoft. The changes introduced by MSNBC also had the effect of removing references to Microsoft competitors.

Amongst many fairly harmless edits, designed to improve readability, were some more ominous changes.

The original WSJ report gave a harsh analysis of Microsoft’ offensive against open source software and the GNU General Public License, initiated six weeks ago by Craig Mundie. The WSJ cited Microsoft’s own dependence on open source software, and cited lawyers who were critical of its interpretation of the General Public License.

“Microsoft said that since last summer, Hotmail has been running on both Windows 2000 and the Solaris operating system from Sun Microsystems Inc.,” noted the original copy from the WSJ.

MSNBC amended this to:-

“Microsoft said Hotmail has been running on Windows since last summer.”

By Friday, the original version of the story that appeared in the WSJ had been restored to MSNBC.

“Here’s the best rebuttal I could find,” writes Slated, “although the author still does not actually deny that Microsoft benefited from “freeloading” the BSD code.”

I worked at Microsoft for ten years, most of it on the core Windows NT/2000 (hereafter referred to as NT) networking code. As such I briefly dealt with the Hotmail team, mostly to hear them complain about the lameness of the telnet daemon in NT (a valid point). I do know that when Microsoft bought Hotmail, the email system was entirely running on FreeBSD, and Microsoft immediately set about trying to migrate it to NT, and it took many years to do so. Now it seems that the transition is not complete. Well, what are you gonna do.

[...]

Now, some of Spider’s code (possibly all of it) was based on the TCP/IP stack in the BSD flavors of Unix. These are open source, but distributed under the BSD license, not the GPL that Linux is released under. Whereas the GPL states that any software derived from GPL’ed software must also be released under the GPL, the BSD license basically says, “here’s the source, you can do whatever you want, just give credit to the original author.”

Eventually the new, from scratch TCP/IP stack was done and shipped with NT 3.5 (the second version, despite the number) in late 1994. The same stack was also included with Windows 95.

However, it looks like some of those Unix utilities were never rewritten. If you look at the executables, you can still see the copyright notice from the regents of the University of California (BSD is short for Berkeley Software Distrubution, Berkeley being a branch of the University of California, for some reason referred to as “Berkeley” on the East Coast and “California” on the West Coast…and “Berkeley” is one of those words that starts to look real funny if you stare at it too long - but I digress).

Keep in mind there is no reason to rewrite that code. If your ftp client works fine (no comments from the peanut gallery!) then why change it? Microsoft has other fish to fry. And the software was licensed perfectly legally, since the inclusion of the copyright notice satisfied the BSD license.

To conclude, Slated writes:

Did Microsoft satisfy the BSD license?

Yes.

Are they “freetards”, according to [some] definition?

Yes.

Microsoft and their anti-Freedom supporters are a bunch of hypocrites. Or, to use the words of the above author, it’s “like the event horizon calling the kettle black”.

So when can we expect Microsoft (or even Spider Systems Ltd.) to compensate The Regents of the University of California for “all their hard work”?

It sure changes one’s perspective. █

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