Microsoft makes Outlook Express U-turn

Silicon.com ^ | August 15, 2003

[Question_Assumptions]

People can moan and complain all day long...but Microsoft remains #1....

And if Linux and other OSes aren't a threat, then why worry about them, right?

Reason?.... Because they have excellent technology and fine marketing....People buy their products as the best available.

"Best" is a very subjective and flexible term. A lot of people select software packages and operating systems because they are what they are used to or simply because they are #1, not because they have excellent technology. For the longest time, people wanted PCs so they could steal borrow software from work so they didn't have to pay for it. We'll see if Microsoft's activation makes a strong dent in this incentive. And once you've hired and trained staff to work on a certain operating system, there is certainly momentum to stick with what they know.

What I find particularly interesting is that Microsoft became dominant largely because the hardware it runs on was open. IBM built hardware that it was unable to maintain a proprietary hold on (it tried) but people cloned the BIOS and created their own non-IBM hardware that could run DOS. Because the hardware was open and any vendor could manufacture PCs, the prices dropped and the PC became the most affordable hardware platform available and competition in the OS sphere via work-alike DOS programs and other OSes kept the OS costs from skyrocketing.

In other words, the PC became the number one hardware platform because it was open and no one vendor controlled it. Being open kept it cheap. Keeping it cheap made it successful. There is a lesson somewhere in there for Microsoft advocates...

[agrace]

Thanks much to all, that did the trick, guess I should have looked around a little huh. :) Didn't even occur to me that the patch would have changed my settings.

[No Truce With Kings]

"Oh, you mean Outbreak?"

I thought it was called MS Lookout! Excess.

[martin_fierro]

Never having used either, what's the difference between Outlook and Outlook Express?

Is the latter a "lite" version of the former?

[Question_Assumptions]

Don't spread FUD.

Hey, when it's all you've got to work with...

[mhking]

'Nuff said.

[discostu]

That kind of security got added with one of the patches, they defaulted it to on. Count yourself lucky they've got it on at the server level where I work, it's really dumb though, it's just tagged on the file extension so I just add a .scan to the end of everything and it flies through fine.

[Bush2000]

I seriously doubt anything widely used that was compromised will stay that way for long.

You also "seriously doubted" that this kind of thing could happen in the first place. But it did. That's not overly reassuring.

[beckett]

Seeking employment: Mr. Dan Leach, formerly of Microsft.

[FierceDraka]

Yes, Outlook Express is designed to function like a gay bathhouse.

BAW HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW!!!

Best post I've seen allday!

[kevkrom]

Someone who had access at the time of the hack, or someone who had left the project?

I don't know. All I know is that it was a local exploit, not a remote one.

[Bush2000]

Yes, Outlook Express is designed to function like a gay bathhouse.

Classic Freudian Projection: "A defense mechanism in which the individual attributes to other people impulses and traits that he himself has but cannot accept. It is especially likely to occur when the person lacks insight into his own impulses and traits."

[TheEngineer]

The hacked site wasn't "the Linux development servers," it was the Free Software Foundation FTP site. It houses no Linux core source code, only code for GNU userland tools.

... like "gcc", the C compiler used to build the kernel and used to build most major server apps like Apache, etc...

In other words, Yikes!

[js1138]

Local meaning inside the building? Inside the VPN? What exactly?

[Knitebane]

like "gcc", the C compiler

...which has been verified to not have been trojaned.

Having an insider gather passwords from a download site used by lots of people is bad enough without adding unconfirmed, inaccurate or misleading information.

[Knitebane]

Classic Freudian Projection: "A defense mechanism in which the individual attributes to other people impulses and traits that he himself has but cannot accept. It is especially likely to occur when the person lacks insight into his own impulses and traits."

So that's why you call so may people liars.

[TheEngineer]

unconfirmed, inaccurate or misleading information.

What in my post was unconfirmed, inaccurate, or misleading?

[Knitebane]

What in my post was unconfirmed, inaccurate, or misleading?

It's in the context of your post.

The FSF site got hacked, some files were trojaned.

You then state that GCC is housed on that site.

...and leave it at that, thus implying that GCC has been trojaned.

The FSF put out a call for people to compare their software with MD5 sums from before the hack. There is no evidence that GCC was trojaned.

That makes your post both inaccurate and misleading.

[Knitebane]

Here.

Learn the whole story.

[RJayneJ]

Thanks for the nomination! };^D )