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| Thread ID: 42522 | 2004-02-13 11:01:00 | News: Windows Source Code Leaked | Chilling_Silently (228) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 215248 | 2004-02-13 21:19:00 | > Imagine you are a company producing OS's and your new > OS is selling badly because your customers insist on > sticking with OSs you have made in the past. No > matter what claims you make about your lovely shiny > new OS the public insists on using your lovely old > OSs' because they are fine for the job. So you tell > everybody you will stop supporting the old OSs' to > push the change along and nobody cares and in fact > the customers start to look at other free/cheap OSs > so you reverse your decision and try to think of a > way to force your customers onto the new OS. My understanding on the rethink of dropping support for Win98, was that is was also to do with hardware limitations. A lot of businesses are still running Pentium 1 or 2's with a small amount of RAM which is fine for Win98. For them to upgrade an OS to XP and to replace the computer to bring it up to specs, is a lot of $$. I doubt Microsoft would of had anything to do with the supposedly leaked source code as it is really forcing the hand of the customer now to look at alternative OS's that are already open-source, certainly cheaper and dont' require such hardware upgrades. By stretching out the timeframe for Win98 support, it ensures that a lot of customers would of of replaced such old computers by then and so switching to XP will be less painful. An example of such an situation can be read here: Nifty Asterisk PC reviver saves school $100,000 (www.nzherald.co.nz) The Linux distro's Lindows is also an ideal OS to switch to as it runs many Microsoft products such as Office and it very user-friendly. > Then shock/horror the source code of your old OSs > (the ones the business customers refuse to change > from) is somehow released to the hackers. Now you > realise you can claim that your old OSs security is > badly compromised with no chance of the company > protecting it anymore so you had better upgrade to > the new OS now if you want to be safe. This would be really sad if the crackers get into the source code to find more exploits for their own sick entertainment and release even more worms/viruses/trojans into the www. History shows that it is the home user that copes it mostly due to lack of understanding on how to protect their computers. Be interesting to see how this all pans out. |
Jen C (20) | ||
| 215249 | 2004-02-13 21:22:00 | > >>as we all know Microsoft love us and wouldn't do > anything we would not like in order to pursue even > bigger profits. > I think I will go out and fly the Microsoft flag > today ;\ Ensure yout inspect it carefuully as the RPC moths may have been at it ;) |
mark.p (383) | ||
| 215250 | 2004-02-13 21:54:00 | Yep thats the official reason Jen C but then again the official reason america attacked Iraq was because of the tons of WMD in the country. If you cannot trust the american president how can you trust an american businessman. | John Grieve (367) | ||
| 215251 | 2004-02-13 22:35:00 | <By stretching out the timeframe for Win98 support, it ensures that a lot of customers would of of replaced such old computers by then and so switching to XP will be less painful . > How so? Win98 doesn't suffer the probs XP does as far RPC expliots and such . Hardware to run XP is cheap now days . In fact it can cost just as much as the retail version of XP . I would also imagine a few bussinesses have upgraded hardware and installed win98 on it, as well as their apps . Also why replace something that is doing obviously a stirling job? There is a HUGE knowlege base for win9x . Upgrade the OS and its quite possible the application you are using are'nt going to work poperly so you need to install new apps and retrain staff this . Remember it is MS who are saying "upgrade upgrade" . Bussinesses are realising they don't have to to get the job done . |
mark.p (383) | ||
| 215252 | 2004-02-13 22:38:00 | > i think microsoft did this > > to encourage people to upgrade to xp Why would they do this? Apparently Mainsoft are the company that the finger is being pointed at ATM as the cause of the leak. Not 100% on that though. And to upgrade to WinXP? A lot of WinXP's code base comes from Win2K, which in turn is off WinNT. That'd be more of a reason to stick to Win98, or try Linux or Solaris for example IMO! Chill. |
Chilling_Silently (228) | ||
| 215253 | 2004-02-15 01:32:00 | And in the local news today: In the herald (www.nzherald.co.nz) |
Chilling_Silently (228) | ||
| 215254 | 2004-02-15 01:49:00 | Thats one of best articles I've seen so far. Thanks. | mark.p (383) | ||
| 215255 | 2004-02-15 05:02:00 | 40gb of source seems a bit extreme, maybe for all the resources (graphics etc) but for the C/++/ASM etc, assuming 50 million lines, would not take up more than a few hundred mb, i mean it is only text. People wouldn't be able to compile their custom developed code anyways as i'd be sure microsoft would use customised/optimised compilers which i believe wouldn't have been included with the 200mb file... - David |
DangerousDave (697) | ||
| 215256 | 2004-02-15 07:13:00 | Apparently there are several references to gcc?! | Chilling_Silently (228) | ||
| 215257 | 2004-02-17 01:34:00 | It would seem the first exploit has been found (www.securitytracker.com). Its for IE5 only so it won't affect many people but its only been a couple of days and it shows that they are in there. |
bmason (508) | ||
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