Microsoft's Ballmer Warns Asia of Linux Lawsuits (Microsoft pulls a SCO in Asia)

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. Chief Operating Officer Steve Ballmer on Thursday warned Asian governments that they could face intellectual rights-infringement lawsuits for using rival open-source operating platforms such as Linux.

Linux is open-code software that is freely available on the Internet and easily modified by users.

Its growing popularity with companies and governments around the world, and particularly in Asia, is a threat to the global dominance of Microsoft's proprietary Windows platform.

Ballmer, speaking in Singapore at Microsoft's Asian Government Leaders Forum, said that Linux violated more than 228 patents. He did not provide any detail on the alleged violations, which the Linux community disputes.

"Someday, for all countries that are entering the WTO (World Trade Organization), somebody will come and look for money owing to the rights for that intellectual property," he added.

Linux users got a scare earlier this year when software developer SCO Group Inc. sued a company for using Linux, which SCO claimed contains software code that it owns.

SCO is also embroiled in a lawsuit against IBM, claiming that the computer giant illegally built SCO's software code into Linux.

Singapore's Ministry of Defense last month switched 20,000 personal computers to run on open-source software instead of the Microsoft operating platform.

Other governments in the region are also looking to develop open-source software. China, Japan and South Korea this year agreed to jointly develop open-source software running on Microsoft's rival Linux operating platform.

The Chinese government, in particular, sees its reliance on Microsoft as a potential threat. Conspiracy buffs believe certain patches in the Windows code might give U.S. authorities the power to access Chinese networks and disable them, possibly during a war over Taiwan.

Ballmer said the security fears some governments had about using Microsoft software were overblown.

"We think our software is far more secure than open-source software. It is more secure because we stand behind it, we fixed it, because we built it. Nobody ever knows who built open-source software," he added.

"Ah, yes. Another logical fallacy. Forming an argument based on authority, as opposed to facts. "

Bwahahah. So we should give equal weight to a 4 year old versus someone with a PhD in a subject, just so we don't argue based on authority? Put up or shut up Bush2000, you spout a lot of bull as if you were an authority, where's your creds?

Put up or shut up Bush2000, you spout a lot of bull as if you were an authority, where's your creds?

Well, I think you should be able to figure this one out yourself. To post on freerepublic you need a computer. That means you probably use one and have the authority to talk about how stable your computer is.

I'm parroting my previous post, but I suppose it can't be helped. I'm pretty sure Bush2000 has reviewed his technical experience in the past, not that it would make a difference to anyone here. I personally have written no journal articles about computer security or released any network tools, so maybe I'm just a troll. I have a degree in Computer Engineer, but not an advanced one (yet) but what difference does that make? I don't care if you are a freshman in high school or my grandmother; if you put forward a valid point on computers I will listen.

someone with a PhD in a subject

Now there really ironic thing about it is... I'm sure there are a lot more PhD's working on closed source software products than open. The last closed source project I worked on had 4 PhDs and me (and let me tell you I felt dumb). That is probably more than KDE has on the devel team. I don't know for certain, but probably. But definitely a higher percentage (especially as I'm gone). Now I don't think that makes their arguments more valid, but as you do you might want to seriously consider sticking with Windows.

-paridel

That may have been true of Windows 98, dude. But not XP.

XP may be far better than 9x, but it and others still get unstable or crash quite easily. I work on a new system with 2003 Server and even bring that down regularly (including re-imaging because NTFS suddenly blew several hundred files on a healthy hard drive). Crashes are fewer, but mainly because 2003 usually gives me a chance to shut down gracefully before finally blowing up. I am happy that it isolates more processes to allow this; however, I am tired of having to restart crashed application pools in IIS all the time.

No, I don't use crappy 3rd party hardware/software (which are the source of most peoples' computer problems).

In my case, a new high-end Dell system with all Microsoft software (Office, VS.NET, SQL Server, etc.), and it still blows chunks when it feels like it. Well, except for Firefox for my browsing, which is the most stable thing on the system.

And, no, drivers shouldn't take down the system. Microsoft made a big stability mistake when it moved the video drivers down a ring with NT 4.

Guess again. *nix and open source crapware dish out far more exploits than you can possibly comprehend ...

I pulled one out of the middle, OS X: "Currently, 0 out of 40 Secunia advisories, is marked as "Unpatched" in the Secunia database."

Or a Linux I like, say Mandrake: "Currently, 0 out of 20 Secunia advisories, is marked as "Unpatched" in the Secunia database."

vs. XP Pro: "Microsoft Windows XP Professional with all vendor patches installed and all vendor workarounds applied [my emphasis], is currently affected by one or more Secunia advisories rated Highly critical. ... Currently, 20 out of 74 Secunia advisories, is marked as "Unpatched" in the Secunia database."

As for the rest, nobody has as many or as critical unpatched advisories. Debian has far more patched ones, but then Debian does include a truckload of third-party software with its distro (much of which doesn't get installed or turned on by default).

But in general, it looks like BSD (including OS X) is the way to go for security.

Another logical fallacy. Forming an argument based on authority, as opposed to facts.

Hint: The "Appeal to Authority" logical fallacy is only a fallacy if he is not an expert in the field, other equivalent experts in the field disagree or he was joking. The only possible one that would qualify is "experts disagree," but nobody's put forth a clearly-defined statement for the other to show expert disagreement.

And, no, drivers shouldn't take down the system.

Wow, that is quite a statement. Seeing as video drivers can do things like, well, set the clock speed of the gpu and ram I'm having a hard time understand how you would prevent them from impacting stability. You comment sounds like something one of my Comp Sci friends would say. They like to think of a computer as a turning machine equivalent mathematical model. But the whole reason you have a driver is the O/S by itself doesn't know how to interact fully with a piece of hardware. If the driver is bad, and you interact incorrectly with the hardware, sure you can bring down the system. Now a video card driver is different than lets say a USB driver. I'm not saying you can't/shouldn't attempt to mitigate damage.

Microsoft made a big stability mistake when it moved the video drivers down a ring with NT 4.

I'm going to admit my lack of knowledge about this issue, I have no clue what MS did to the video drivers in NT 4. So I'm just guessing here but they probably made a trade-off analysis. Something along the lines of... well, we can add another layer of abstraction and keep the system more stable, or we can not and have faster video. Seeing as there are a lot of people who rely on NT to deliver good performance on applications such as Microstation, they chose the latter.

Maybe I'm naive, but I have a feeling this was a hotly debated topic inside Microsoft. Maybe it was a wrong decision, but if you want to debate it you can't ignore the impact it would have on performance.

-paridel

Hint: The "Appeal to Authority" logical fallacy is only a fallacy if he is not an expert in the field,

Whoa, where did you get that from?

I'm smarter/more knowledgeable than you so shut up is a valid argument if you really are smarter/more knowledgeable than the other person?

I'm sorry but that is the biggest bunch of baloney I've ever heard. My knowledge of logical fallacies comes only from my high school debate experience (something I was loath to admit during the election, but I guess it's OK now), but that is news to me.

When I hear something say something like you are just a Microsoft Whore or I'm the expert here so shut up it leads me to think one of two things:

1. They can't defend their position.
2. They do not have time to refute the attack.

Well, #2 doesn't make sense because we are all just here for recreational purposes. So if you don't have time or care to refute an argument you just don't. No biggie, just drop it and let it me, or maybe say, look, I showed that in my previous posts, and we are talking in circles. But not "I'm the expert here". So on FR it leads me to think it must be #1.

If you are really such an expert in any field it shouldn't take you long at all to refute an argument. You should see how fast I get shot down at work when I come up with an programing idea that isn't feasible. But the don't wouldn't say "you are an idiot", rather my boss would walk over to his white board and draw out exactly why it didn't make sense (i.e. that's a O(n^3) operation...)

So, no. It is a fallacy. I don't care if you have three PhDs and are talking to a 3rd grader. If there were exceptions to the rule than it wouldn't be called a fallacy. Maybe you were trying to say that in cases where there isn't a provable truth you typically yield to observational evidence given my an expert? I don't know.

-paridel

I'm smarter/more knowledgeable than you so shut up is a valid argument if you really are smarter/more knowledgeable than the other person?

I was only stating the possible falsity of the claim of logical fallacy, because that is the definition of "Appeal to Authority," better known as "Appeal to Misleading Authority."

If there were exceptions to the rule than it wouldn't be called a fallacy.

They are not exceptions, they are the rules. Appealing to authority is a legal debat maneuver, although considered weaker than direct evidence. However, you generally invoke the fallacy if the authority isn't an authority on the subject, his opinions are not representative of expert opinion, or he was joking. I would also invoke it if he were one of the raving looney Linux zealots I've seen ("disinterested" test), but he's not.

I'm going to admit my lack of knowledge about this issue, I have no clue what MS did to the video drivers in NT 4. So I'm just guessing here but they probably made a trade-off analysis. Something along the lines of... well, we can add another layer of abstraction and keep the system more stable, or we can not and have faster video.

You're about right on the speed tradeoff. Basically, they moved the drivers and GDI/Windows Manager (famous sources of Windows crashes) from Ring 1 ("User mode") to Ring 0 ("Kernel mode" or "Executive") where the operating itself runs. This means bad drivers and MS's famously buggy GDI & Windows Manager get full access to all hardware and memory, although the OS still tries to protect its own space.

Where before the Windows Manager, GDI and video drivers ran in the Windows 32 subsystem next to the security subsystem, POSIX, Console and other applications, it is now down below the system services, next to the microkernel (which is now "micro" in name only) and the Hardware Abstraction Layer ("HAL").

Now this is not necessarily a Bad Thing in general, but in the case of Windows it was for two reasons:

1) Windows had just achieved some modicum of stability and could ill-afford anything to jeopardize that.

2) It was a hack to fix a larger problem. The speed problem was because the Windows graphics subsystem is pretty horrible and inefficient in the first place. So rather than fix the graphics subsystem, they just moved it down to where it would run faster.

OK, so I pulled out some of my debate notes and it looks like you are right on about the definition.

What I had was that it should be valid as long as something along these lines are met:
1. The individual is an expert and is identified.
2. The claim is within that expertise, and that expertise is in a recognized field.
3. There is (reasonable) agreement among experts
4. The individual is not significantly biased

I'm not going to claim that is an exact definition, but looks like it is exactly what you are talking about. Good thing I never had to debate you back then. ;-)

But I think the argument should still go like this: I state X. I am in expert in this area, therefore my claim X is valid.

However, the argument looked to go more like this: Bush2000 stated X. Bush2000 isn't an expert, therefore his claim X is invalid. In fact, it was even more along the lines of Bush2000 isn't an expert, so he should stop making any claims, and is not capable of legitimately arguing with me.

That is what I had a problem with, because if you are an expert arguing with a non-expert you should be able to refute their arguments without name calling or dismissing them for being beneath you. I you can't or won't take them seriously, even if you are right, people (well, at least me) may think that you are either wrong or incapable of defending your viewpoint.

Maybe I read that post (not yours, the one in question above, just want to make sure that's clear) wrong, but either way it came across as very condescending.

-paridel

Very interesting post. Now you have me intrigued and I'm going to have to read up on display subsystems over the holidays. It sounds to me like that ideally the video drivers should run in kernel mode. I suppose it would be fair to state that you think the subsystem should have been fixed before that move? Probably true, but hopefully now it is a higher priority.

It seems like video drivers, at least from ATI and nvidia, have been improving a good deal recently. I certainly hope that trend continuous.

On a side note... there seem to be a lot of companies producing video cards with poor quality ram. I have a couple friends with computers that crash all the time unless they under-clock their video cards because they bought the cheapest generic card they could find. I'm not really picky about most hardware, but a video card is something I only buy from a company I know and trust for that reason.

-paridel

Now you have me intrigued and I'm going to have to read up on display subsystems over the holidays. It sounds to me like that ideally the video drivers should run in kernel mode. I suppose it would be fair to state that you think the subsystem should have been fixed before that move? Probably true, but hopefully now it is a higher priority.

Most OSs have it in the kernel for speed reasons, although it does hurt various other considerations. Read anything on OS design by Andrew Tanenbaum to get the whole microkernel argument. His books are required reading in any decent Comp Sci curriculum.

Microsoft is remaking their entire graphics subsystem for Longhorn, probably something that should have been done for NT. For a look at a real modern graphics subsystem, check out how it's done in Mac OS X using OpenGL (3d), PDF (2D) and QuickTime(video). Ars Technica's OS X articles are great, start here and go to the other article links in the introduction. It's pretty impressive, especially since all of the gee-whiz stuff got accelerated by the graphics card. Ars Technica also has lots of other well-researched stuff about memory and microprocessors.

On video drivers and cards, I agree you have to get good stuff from people who make great drivers. It's just too easy for an errant driver to take down Windows.

but either way it came across as very condescending.

No disagreement at all with all of your post. I was only commenting on the fallacy aspect.

BTW, I wasn't great in school -- I only got really good at knowing logical fallacies by later debates with creationists, where they generally pour forth in abundance.

I happen to have the second edition of Tanenbaum's Modern Operation Systems right here, although admittedly I haven't opened it up recently. Being a Comp Engineer we mostly had tests on our ability to program in assembly or design hardware to add IEEE floating point numbers, so I missed out a bit on paradigms of operating system design. I'll pull it out later and have another look at the microkernel information.

And Ars Technica's articles on OS X look to be really interesting, I look forward to reading them, thanks.

-paridel

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