Microsoft's 2015 reminds me of Sun's 2004 - open sourcing software in a desperate attempt to remain relevant as Linux grows. In truth Microsoft hasn't open sourced Office, Windows, SQL Server etc. which they make money from, but only bits which they think might save them from irrelevance amongst developers in the era of Linux and the cloud. As much as MS made a song and dance about open source the vast majority of MS…
2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt
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Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt
#32Microsoft's 2015 reminds me of Sun's 2004 - open sourcing software in a desperate attempt to remain relevant as Linux grows. In truth Microsoft hasn't open sourced Office, Windows, SQL Server etc. which they make money from, but only bits which they think might save them from irrelevance amongst developers in the era of Linux and the cloud. As much as MS made a song and dance about open source the vast majority of MS…
Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt
#33They've done some brilliant things for developers this year, but sadly shipped a giant spyware operating system at the same time. From what I've read people are still trying to determine everything it's calling home.
which remains for me the main reason why regardless of it is now being cool again I still avoid it like the plague. another funny thing is that they have improved their OS security so much that it is now considered harder than Linux, and Apple
http://betanews.com/2015/02/22/os-x-ios-and-linux-have-more-...
https://www.gfi.com/blog/most-vulnerable-operating-systems-a...
Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
which remains for me the main reason why regardless of it is now being cool again I still avoid it like the plague. another funny thing is that they have improved their OS security so much that it is now considered harder than Linux, and Apple
Do you have a source for Windows 10 being considered more secure than OS X or Linux? Didn't expect that designation to fall on a spyware-as-OS product.
Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt
#35Microsoft's 2015 reminds me of Sun's 2004 - open sourcing software in a desperate attempt to remain relevant as Linux grows. In truth Microsoft hasn't open sourced Office, Windows, SQL Server etc. which they make money from, but only bits which they think might save them from irrelevance amongst developers in the era of Linux and the cloud. As much as MS made a song and dance about open source the vast majority of MS…
Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
which remains for me the main reason why regardless of it is now being cool again I still avoid it like the plague. another funny thing is that they have improved their OS security so much that it is now considered harder than Linux, and Apple
Little criticism, followed by a huge compliment. Usually shilling. Considered “harder” by whom? Windows enthusiasts have certainly considered Windows to be more sophisticated since the first public version of NT, and more secure by XP SP2, at the very latest.
theqruq had this in one of his slides. I'll try to find the link.
sorry I do not know the meaning of shilling in this context, English is not my native language.
Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt
#37The problem with Microsoft hasn't been that they've never been able to inspire excitement with a product (remember currier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Courier , or Kinect) but rather their execution on those products. Only half of Apple's genius is their design, the other half is their incredible execution machine, in large part thanks to the work that Tim Cook did. Microsoft used to have an incredible e…
I also think the success of their desktop monopoly in the 1990s and early 2000s caused Microsoft make the classic mistake of forgetting what business they were really in. They stopped thinking they were in the technology business, and started thinking they were in the PC business. Other devices and products like smartphones and tablets were OK, but only so long as they respected the PC's place as the centre of the computing universe. The idea that a new type of device and OS might eventually supplant the PC and Windows as the dominant consumer computing platform was heresy.
Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt
#38On the one side the open sourced quite a few code bases, though very strategic ones but non of the high profile old cash cows. Azure is doing well.
On the other site, XBoxOne and WinPhone10 had a lack luster sales far behind their competitors (half of PS4 sales; less than 3% of mobile market). Win10's inbuilt privacy issues aren't funny - a showstopper and it will hurts their reputation. Fix that in 2016! http://www.ibtimes.com/ps4-vs-xbox-one-sony-has-sold-302-mil... and http://www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-os-market-share.jsp
Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
which remains for me the main reason why regardless of it is now being cool again I still avoid it like the plague. another funny thing is that they have improved their OS security so much that it is now considered harder than Linux, and Apple
Little criticism, followed by a huge compliment. Usually shilling. Considered “harder” by whom? Windows enthusiasts have certainly considered Windows to be more sophisticated since the first public version of NT, and more secure by XP SP2, at the very latest.
https://grugq.github.io/presentations/COMSEC%20beyond%20encr...
Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
which remains for me the main reason why regardless of it is now being cool again I still avoid it like the plague. another funny thing is that they have improved their OS security so much that it is now considered harder than Linux, and Apple
Little criticism, followed by a huge compliment. Usually shilling. Considered “harder” by whom? Windows enthusiasts have certainly considered Windows to be more sophisticated since the first public version of NT, and more secure by XP SP2, at the very latest.
Windows has been harder to attack than OS X since Vista. I don't think that's changed--Apple is generally slow to correctly implement security features that require kernel changes compared to either the Linux devs or Microsoft.
If I remember correctly, OSX didn't have a good ASLR implementation until 10.9 or 10.10, and has generally lagged behind on OS-level security updates and exploit mitigation (NX pages, ASLR, etc.). It was routinely the first thing hit in the early Pwn2Own competitions (partly because exploits on it were a breeze, partly because the laptop was usually a little nicer and you only got the laptop back then, too--but also because moving from crash to reliable exploit was easier).
I haven't followed security updates in Linux in the past few years as closely, so I can't comment on it as knowledgeably. From what I remember, it was about on par with Windows for difficulty to attack in Vista/7, but there's been a lot of security features that Windows has added since then. From what I remember, a fully hardened Linux box was just as bad to attack as a hardened Windows box, but Windows has generally required less configuration to get that right. (I think SELinux still isn't enabled by default in some distros?)