Vista Security Discussions Get a Rocky Start 111
narramissic writes "A technical glitch Thursday morning prevented many security vendors from participating in the first online discussion regarding Microsoft's plans for opening up the Vista kernel, ITworld reports. In a blog posting on the subject, Microsoft Senior Product Manager Stephen Toulouse wrote, 'We had a glitch where we sent out a messed up link. ... We're very sorry about that, it certainly was not intentional and we definitely see that was not a good thing for people to experience on such an important topic.'"
What a relief! (Score:5, Funny)
Phew! It was just an accident!
Re:What a relief! (Score:4, Interesting)
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So... (Score:5, Funny)
No... (Score:4, Funny)
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Security experts biggest question... (Score:5, Funny)
Was it a glitch, a bug or a feature? Inquiring minds want to know...
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It's a WAD [davespicks.com]
Huh... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Huh... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Huh... (Score:4, Funny)
A Rocky Start For Vista? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A Rocky Start For Vista? (Score:5, Funny)
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on a side note, Apple's excuse for a virus on some video iPods was given a pass....
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On the contrary, I just have to have common sense. I guess Bin Laden, the Taliban, Al Queda, Britain, both sides of Congress, and the entire military are also in on the conspiracy? Is there a martian in your bedroom?
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If common sense keeps you
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Extra! Extra! (Score:4, Insightful)
Slashdot has just sunk to a new low of pointlessness in their "articles". Urgh.
Re:Extra! Extra! (Score:5, Insightful)
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If there'd been a security problem with the site, I'd agree with you, but this elicited a proper "meh" from me. Slow news day, I suppose (not so weirded out by it appearing on Slashdot, but someone wrote an article about this).
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Re:Extra! Extra! (Score:5, Funny)
You think that's bad - wait for the dupe.
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Re:Extra! Extra! (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they haven't, though it's amusing to see Microsoft employees posting anonymously now to defend the homeland.
It's a big deal that Microsoft apparently doesn't vet its own URLs before sending them out to third-parties, especially for such an important set of interoperability discussions. The guy didn't even check the link before he sent it out? It's a competence thing (lack thereof). These things just seem to happen with Microsoft, don't they?
Symantec was one of the vendors shut out (Score:5, Interesting)
Symantec and Microsoft have a long history of a love/hate relationship and Microsoft has put more and more things into its operating system products that have closed entire markets for Symantec (and it's predecessors).
Re:Symantec was one of the vendors shut out (Score:4, Insightful)
What's your point? That's the nature of the "work around defects in the operating system" market. Eventually, even Microsoft fixes them, and you don't have a market anymore. I hate Microsoft, and I still can't blame them for this. It's not like they're the first vendor to include, say, a filesystem that doesn't require constant defragmentation, or a stateful firewall.
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And what's your point? Lest you forget, Microsoft is a convicted monopolist. When you break the law, you have to play by a different set of r
God changes human not to be susceptible to disease (Score:3, Insightful)
(the point: if you're a parasite company that's living off anothers companies flaws, bugs and holes, don't complain about the cure)
More eyes is a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
First, not all users will get the APIs. In fact, only a tiny fraction of users, all of whom work at security and anti-virus companies, will get to see these opened APIs. Why then is it good news?
It's good because it brings into the fold those most able to spot security issues. Despite Microsoft's money and the experience of their top engineers, they all have tunnel-vision when it comes to Windows. And it's not hard to see why, after all, it's their baby. So even though they've got top security people working for them looking deeply into these issues, the very nature of those engineers' employment makes it difficult to see some of the problems that an outside observer would be able to spot easily.
By turning the baby over to the wolves, so to speak, Microsoft is getting Vista tested by the best testing teams around. The OSS motto is "more eyes makes all bugs shallow", I look forward to that same principle working well here.
Re:More eyes is a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you think those who work at security and AV companies are those most able to spot security issues?
I won't mention names, but some fairly well-known "security and AV companies" have made their business on buying up other companies products, redoing the interface every year so they can demand people pay for a new version, and dumbing the app down by removing functionality whenever something breaks, because they don't have people smart enough to fix things. Outsourced $10/hr drag-and-drop "programmers" will only get you so far, and expecting them to possess intuition, assembly language skills, or a love for discovering what a function can be pushed into doing is expecting far too much.
Also remember that security and AV companies don't want security -- if their products actually fixed security holes, they would put themselves out of business. They want their products to temporarily block attempts, nothing more.
Gurus, on the other hand, work to get the problems fixed, permanently, and the people who made the mistakes aware of what they did, and just why it was bad, so they don't repeat it.
Regards,
--
*Art
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Not even in the same realm as OSS.
Move along....nothing to see here. (Score:3, Insightful)
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To err is human.
To really foul something up, use a computer.
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Mail template to security vendors (Score:1, Funny)
You couldn't attend the meeting ?
That's really too bad because many very very interesting topics were presented for the first and only time. By missing this important event, you were discalified from any further information that might be made availble in the future.
Sorry for the inconvenience
[insert name and title here]
"...we sent out a messed up link..." (Score:5, Insightful)
This is beyond bashing, this is being anal.
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I'm subscribed to the beta announcements list. I receive a handful of e-mails every week about online sessions to discuss [new feature] of Vista. I would say close to 25% of them have spelling errors (including one that misspelled "Windows") and I recall 3 or 4 times the incorrect link has been sent out. Incorrect links get a followup correction e-mail, the misspellings never get corrected.
Accidents happen, sure, and we get
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Par for the course (Score:2)
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Right, because no one at, say, Apple, would ever miss something like a typo in a URL that has NOTHING to do with the actual performance of their products. No, they just ship out iPods with viruses pre-installed and blame someone else. Are you so pumped up about bashing MS that a bad URL in a conference invitation is really enough to make you rule out similar (and much worse) employee mistakes at every other software publisher in the business?
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Microsoft sucks - the reality was that it wasn't just a typo, it was a system failure that "conveniently" prevented two MS-competitors from participating in the on-line discussion.
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What part of "every other publisher in the business" didn't you hear?
There's a hope (Score:1, Interesting)
Good point of that (except no Vista fo Europe) is that it will create market for Open Source Software. Especially that Europe already started their fight with proprietary (actually paid for) software.
Yes, I know it's slightly off-topic...
We're all victims (Score:3, Funny)
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The real question is.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps I am anal that way, but come on, we're talking about an OS that will likely suceed the millions of Windows 98, 2000 and XP in the vast majority of homes and businesses across the planet!
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Somehow I doubt the machines still running win98 and 2K are capable of running Vista w/o massive hardware upgrades. Not to mention those users have demonstrated they have little to no interest in upgrading their OS by now anyway if they're still running win98 - and that's speaking as someone who has a box still running win98. Just as a project pc mind you, not on the net, b
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Somehow I doubt the machines still running win98 and 2K are capable of running Vista w/o massive hardware upgrades.
If you have a PC with a >=1Ghz CPU and >=1G RAM, it will run Vista about as well as it runs XP. The only upgrade you might have to splash out on is a US$50 video card to run Aero, if the one you've got won't already do it.
This is a first! (Score:5, Funny)
Suggestions:
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At least they could... (Score:2, Funny)
Sure (Score:5, Funny)
A source has informed up that the "messed up link" was in fact a link to tubgirl. Disciplinary action has been taken against the employee responsible. The project manager for Symantec was quoted as saying the experience was "educational", and he is likely never to click on that link again...
"Accidents" happen... all too frequently (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, "everyone has glitches from time to time," but when people at Microsoft can't get an important web meeting to work it suggests that there's something flawed about this "all-net-all-the-time" vision they've been touting for more than five years.
Computer technology reached a peak of usability in the early 1990s, when PC vendors still felt that they had to make things easy to use (and supply real support) in order to secure adoption. Once everyone was locked in--not so much to Microsoft, but to PC technology in general--usability was allowed to deteriorate.
The pretense that unreliable, hard-to-use unfinished technology is ready for release is so imbued into Microsoft's culture that Microsoft managers are evidently willing to use unreliable, hard-to-use, unfinished technology to conduct important Microsoft public business.
Stepto should _not_ blame "us" for the "glitch" and apologize. Instead, they should take a long hard look at what it was about the technology they were using that made it easy to "send out a messed-up link."
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So, the system design makes it easy to make a mistake that is an "i
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And in other shock news... (Score:2)
WTF does this have to do with anything, sure someone messed up. The mistake? A typo.
Show me someone who uses a computer day in day out and HAS never once sent an email with a typo, typed a letter containing a typo etc etc etc.
I'm all for a bit of MS bashing where it is due but it is not due here.
Nothing to see here, move along now...
tired of pr & media (Score:2, Interesting)
File this under 'off-topic rant'.
you know, I think a lot of companies in the world could do a lot better without their pr arms sometimes, and we'd do a whole lot better without reporters. MS is apologizing for a technical glitch here, but why the need for the public apology? I'm sure PR told them to do it and even wrote it. Whoever wanted to be in the meeting should just get a "uh yeah, sorry about that; we'll reschedule the sucker if we can't figure it out in a few minutes." Guess what, it happens!
World without reporters (Score:2)
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You're taking me a bit literally and out of context, let me clarify. A world without the 'reporters' that I'm talking about would be good. We definitely need journalists, or people who legitimately report on world affairs in an unbiased neutral "here's what happened" form. We don't need tabloid media. Reading CNN's RSS vs CBC's is incredible (and the CBC is not the least biased medium out there either).
As for the congressman and pages, that thread follows my argument completely: A lot of the 'reports
messed up link .. (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft finally called an online briefing
"There were problems with the audio and video. We could not get back on."
A Microsoft spokesman explained the crash was due to "technical problems" and an extra briefing would be set for Monday
'Alex Eckelberry
Did the users actually sign on as 'presenters' and how would this crash Live Meeting?
Re:messed up link .. explained (Score:2)
Non-signed, certified codecs, eh? BAD DEV! No intraweb for YOU!
A Microsoft spokesman explained the crash was due to "technical problems" and an extra briefing would be set for Monday
Vista on an Xbox 360 using Xbox Live for Net Meetings is not recommended, apparently.
'Alex Eckelberry
Did the users actually sign on
A BSOD? (Score:1)
LOL
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No, it meant that everyone had control of the meeting, so the slides kept flipping back and forth as anyone was able to control the meeting.
Alex Eckelberry
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"Live Meeting enables multiple presenters to work together in a meeting with one presenter assigned as the Active Presenter [microsoft.com]"
Vista "Security" Already Compromised (Score:2)
http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.com/2006/10/vi
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1. Click "Create Account"
2.
3. Profit!