nl|nighthawk Posted November 11, 2002 Share Posted November 11, 2002 Has Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly helped set the stage for a computing disaster of unprecedented magnitude? She's not the only culprit involved, but her ruling affirming the Justice Department antitrust deal with Microsoft may have devastating results that we'll all come to regret. of the judge, anyone who seriously thought Bill Gates would ultimately get more than a slap on the hand probably also believes in the tooth fairy and trickle-down economics. But let's set aside the core money issues of the case and think about a different aspect of Microsoft's overwhelming dominance of the PC world -- the potential for a computing-related Armageddon buried within the proprietary code of Microsoft software. Alarming? It should be. This particular type of risk is not only an aspect of Microsoft software, it's intrinsic to any complex, proprietary computing system. A scenario: Imagine there's a nasty bug related to the daylight-saving time functions in Windows XP. Next year this bug causes the main disk of every XP desktop to be wiped out at 2 a.m. when the time change is scheduled. As we know, most users' systems are woefully backed up, if at all. So, the next time millions of users tried to log on to their PCs, they'd find their systems totally trashed -- home users, industry, schools, government -- the lot. Read more.. Source: ActiveWin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
g33kb0y Posted November 11, 2002 Share Posted November 11, 2002 I wonder sometimes of commentators like this one actually READ their article. *yawn* His analogous scenario is logically flawed because it doesn't allow for the corporate fear factor. Sure, Microsoft could do something similar to what they say, but they'd only be shooting themself in the foot. Who would dare even negligantly trust MS after something like that? :cry: Sure, I agree with a few points that Microsoft has the capability of doing "secret and untrustworthy" actions by keeping their code secret. They, for all I know, could be forwarding every letter I type to a central server located in the basement of some guy's house in central Asia. Not likely, but it's possible. I wont' even take the time to expand on the reality that Microsoft would never do something like this. I mean, come on...it's highly possible that this would be discovered, and they would lose a significant portion of their market coverage to competition because the competition is Open Source. I wish commentators, when they use analogies such as these, would make it a tad bit more realistic, instead of using something so off the wall to "woo" his/her readers. Pathetic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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