"Computers are like air conditionners, they stop working properly when
you open windows."
Microsoft has a new version out, Windows XP, which according to
everybody is the ``most reliable Windows ever.'' To me, this is like
saying that asparagus is ``the most articulate vegetable ever.''
- Dave Barry
[http://www.miami.com/herald/special/features/barry/2002/docs/jan06.htm]
If you play a Windows XP installation CDROM backwards, you hear
a message from Satan.
Even worse... if you play it forwards, it installs Windows XP.
Gates also took some credit for the genesis of open-source software. He said
Microsoft made it possible by standardizing computers: "Really, the reason you
see open source there at all is because we came in and said there should
be a platform that's identical with millions and millions of machines," he said.
Win NT -- well, I suppose that's better than paying for it.
"Linux is not in the public domain. Linux is a cancer that
attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything
it touches."
-- Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO
From amasuperbike.com, explaining how to save immages to disk from a
browser:
Windows users can right click on the image, click save as, wait
for the inevitable General Protection Fault and resulting crash,
Mac users can control click on the image, find out that their
volume is not "mounted" and wonder when the last back-up was made,
Linux users can wipe that smug smile off their face and go twirl
their propeller caps.
Microsoft doesn't really care though... after all most half-wit MCSE's out
there would rather have Windows 2000's mouse have a nicer drop shadow to it
then being able to figure out which programs are on which ports.
-Marc - eEye
"At least you know where you are with Microsoft."
"True. I just wish I'd brought a paddle."
"Before we dig into Microsoft, I've got to get this off my chest: Bill
Gates is the absolute stone-cold worst businessman of the entire
millennium. Yeah, yeah, I know he's the richest boy in the solar
system. But consider this - Mr Gates tried again and again to get rid
of his company, offering to merge it into Lotus Corporation, for gosh
sakes, then floating away 80 per cent of his ownership through share
offers.
"In other words, he couldn't wait to trade bars of gold for a bag of
peanuts. The man had no concept of his own product, no faith in it, no
vision of it. Gates is an accidental bazillionaire. Like the character
in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who tripped over a balcony and
found himself flying, so Gates found himself, despite his best efforts,
the Midas of the Microchip."
- Gregory Palast, UK Guardian
(http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/microsoft/Story/0,2763,74076,00.html)
As most already know, MS Office files contain headers that convey a
reasonable amount of information about the producer of the document.
This can have ironic side effects, as witnessed in an analysis of
Microsoft's annual report at http://www.macintouch.com/msannual.html.
"The file headers indicate that [Microsoft's] annual report was
created on a Macintosh and not Windows".
The headers also contain the name of the author of the report, who is,
I'm sure, having a bad day today.
RElating to the recent IIS4 exploit, here's a nugget from the MSDN page on
IIS security:
This integration means IIS offers the same robust security that is built
into Windows NT from the very core. Windows NT was created intending to meet
the security criteria for the U.S. Government's C2 Security Evaluation. The
critical need for an operating system to be designed for optimum security
from the ground up was noted by the NCSC, which wrote in its Final
Evaluation Report of the Windows NT operating system: "When security is not
an absolute requirement of the initial design, it is virtually impossible
through later add-ons to provide the kind of uniform treatment to diverse
system resources that Windows NT provides."
http://msdn.microsoft.com/isapi/msdnlib.idc?theURL=/library/backgrnd/html/iissecure.htm
I sense much NT in you.
NT leads to Blue Screen.
Blue Screen leads to downtime.
Downtime leads to suffering.
NT is the path to the darkside.
- Unknown Unix Jedi
"In recent memory, it was Microsoft's decision to ship
Internet technologies in Windows 95," says Dan
Rosen, general manager of new technology at Microsoft
when asked about some of the big milestones
in the development of the Internet.
Rosen says Windows 95, which was released to software
developers as early as 1993, helped create a
universal standard for creating Internet software,
which "unleashed a whole wave of creative people
doing interesting things on the Internet."
(Don't forget MS Encarta had no listing for "internet" in their
1995 edition)
"If it's a hobby for us and a job for you, then why are you
doing such a shoddy job?" -- Linus Torvalds to Microsoft
"I picked up a Magic 8-Ball the other day and it said 'Outlook not so
good.' I said, 'Sure, but Microsoft still ships it.'"
In Business Week last month Microsoft project manager Brian Valentine was
quoted as saying that Windows 2000 is "the most important project in the
history of mankind."
Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with your Microsoft product.
-- Ferenc Mantfeld
"Bill Gates is just a monocle and a persian cat away from being a villian
in a James Bond movie." - unknown
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough [to break modern encryption]
would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers."
- Bill Gates from "The Road Ahead," p. 265, demonstrating he might not
be as clever as we think he is.
[The submitter notes: For the non-mathematicians: a number is called
"prime" if and only if it can _not_ be factored, because it is only
divisible by 1 and itself.]
"The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck,
is probably the day Microsoft starts making vacuum cleaners."
- Ernst Jan Plugge
If Bill Gates had a dime for every time a Windows box crashed...
.... Oh, wait a minute, he already does.
cbbrowne@hex.net -
Windows NT to extend reach update: Microsoft wants customized versions
of Windows NT for "embedded" systems such as health and communications
equipment. Gives Blue Screen of Death a whole new meaning...
I bought 100 shares of Microsoft a year ago, sold it in March,
made $1000..And used to $1000 to upgrade my computer to replace
MS-DOS and MS-Windows with Linux! :) Sweet Revenge?
Don't follow my instructions.
-- Paul Leach
I'm really sorry for the bad advice.
-- Paul Leach
If things go badly, just put them back. They're in \windows\system.
-- Paul Leach
Well, I have to mea culpa again.
-- Paul Leach
I misunderstood the information I was given.
-- Paul Leach
I could make a 486/33 look like a Cray...
-- NT Security mailing list
Not an exploit. You bypassed the system entirely
via direct physical access. That doesn't count.
-- Paul Leach
If you apply the non-128 version, you won't
be 128 bit anymore, if I recall correctly.
-- Paul Leach
Each day I receive about 50 messages from this
list about the moral implications of port scanning.
-- Pete Morton, NT Security mailing list
One of these days, we'll have to have you out behind
the woodshed for being such a rabble-rouser.
-- Paul Leach
I don't know.
-- Paul Leach
Let me apologize -- I was a little too terse in my response.
-- Paul Leach
I don't mind people bashing me and MS for what we do wrong.
-- Paul Leach
If it's a service then go to the service manager, select the service in
question, select startup, then enable interact with the desktop.
-- Michael Howard
It's just a rumor.
-- Paul Leach
I personaly think that UNIX being unfriendly
is a myth spread by Microsoft.
-- Lewis E. Wolfgang
It is ironic that, if we had not made networking, TCP, and a standard API
to use them as an integral part of the OS, the Web might not be
ubiquitous, because the ability to get on the web would be beyond the
powers of most users, who would have to acquire and integrate all those
things themselves.
-- Paul Leach
The worst part is: you can tell that they really believe it, that
something isn't real/hasn't been invented until someone in Redmond
implements it.
-- NT Security mailing list
I apologize for using the list's bandwidth.
-- Paul Leach
NT Security mailing list
So you wanted to get access to the Internet. You called up an ISP,
they sent you a pile of diskettes via snail-mail, you installed them.
Takes about a week.
-- Paul Leach
It's time for me to apologize.
-- Eric Fitzgerald
I apologize for distributing incorrect information.
-- Eric Fitzgerald
MS-DOS is relatively screwed up to begin with,
and has few to no redeeming qualities.
-- NT Security mailing list
Yeah -- we love staying up all night providing patches that close off
each port, one by one, as smart crackers change which port they hit.
-- Paul Leach
You know what they say about the PR,
there's no such thing as bad publicity.
-- Paul Leach
That isn't how we're fixing it.
-- Paul Leach
You may accuse us of incompetence if you like.
-- Paul Leach
We can't seem to stop the DoS attacks.
-- Paul Leach
We deliberately and cynically make the smallest
band-aid fixes we can, just enough to convince
customers that the problem is fixed when it really isn't.
-- Paul Leach
That just isn't true.
-- Paul Leach
If it is incompetence, then it isn't just confined to us.
-- Paul Leach
Hmm, well we're hoping that once we get our COFFEE protocol running,
we'll be able to control all the coffee makers in the world.
-- Josh Cohen
We know what's best for you anyway.
-- Josh Cohen
Dont assume that I'm an NT supporter.
-- Josh Cohen
I'm a die hard Unix geek.
-- Josh Cohen
My own personal goal for NT is for it to be
more interoperable with open systems like Unix.
-- Josh Cohen
This is the first I've heard that
anyone felt that that was inadequate.
-- Paul Leach
You don't know what you are talking about.
-- Paul Leach
We will be issuing a hot-fix...
-- Paul Leach
I understand your gripe.
-- Paul Leach
It's true we haven't done anything yet for
Windows 95, but we have done a lot for Windows NT.
-- Paul Leach
I caught our network printer one night
last week trying to surf the web!
-- Peter Unk, NT sysadmin
Be a hero and point out how stupid MS is
for believing that obscurity equals security.
-- Paul Leach
It is always running after I reboot.
-- Paul Leach
Have you reported it to secure@microsoft.com?
-- Paul Leach
In Its Own Words
Microsoft makes the case against itself
"It seems clear that it will be very hard to increase
market share on the merits of Internet Explorer 4 alone.
It will be more important to leverage the Operating
System asset to make people use IE instead of
Navigatior."
-- Microsoft's Christian Wildfeuer, Feb 24 1997
----------------------------------------------------
"I was quite frank with him (Scott Cook, CEO of Intuit)
that if he had a favor we could do for him that would
cost us something like $1m to do that in return for
switching browsers in the next few months I would be
open to doing that."
-- Bill Gates, e-mail, July 24 1996
----------------------------------------------------
"(Computer manufacturers) want to remove the (IE) icon
from the desktop ... this is not allowed."
-- Microsoft executive Chris Jones, 1995
----------------------------------------------------
"Memphis (Windows 98 code name) is a key weapon in the
IE share battle."
-- Microsoft executive Brad Chase
----------------------------------------------------
"I am convinced we have to use Windows
-- this is the one thing they (Netscape) don't have ...
(Windows 98) must be killer on OEM shipments so that
Netscape never gets a chance on these systems."
-- Microsoft Senior Vice President Jim Allchin, January
2 1997
----------------------------------------------------
"Netscape pollution must be eradicated."
-- Microsoft Vice-President Jeff Raikes
----------------------------------------------------
"I thought our #1 strategic imperative was to get IE
share. Our best hope is tying tight to Windows... that
is, unless I've woken up in an alternate state and now
work for Netscape."
-- Megan Bliss, e-mail, March 25 1997
----------------------------------------------------
"We should move the sign-up Wizard into the boot-up
sequence somewhere ... this way we can increase the
likelihood that an end user gets the option to sign up
for solutions that promote IE before they get into the
desktop or any customized shell that features other
browser solutions."
-- Microsoft senior executive Brad Chase, e-mail, March
1 1996
----------------------------------------------------
"Look at why people who get IE with a new machine switch
to Navigator and what is being addressed in IE 4.0 to
make that difficult."
--Microsoft executive Jonathan Roberts, e-mail, March 28
1997
----------------------------------------------------
"It is a mistake to release (Windows 98) without
bundling IE with it."
-- Kumar Mehta, March 27 1997
----------------------------------------------------
"Internet Explorer will be distributed every way we can
... bundled with Windows 95 upgrade and included by
OEMs."
-- Bill Gates, January 5 1996
----------------------------------------------------
"Browser share is job 1 at this company."
-- Microsoft General Manager Carl Stork, September 1996