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2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

arstechnica.com

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Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

#31
post #21

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…

Do you honestly expect them to open source software that earns them significant revenue? They are a business trying to make money.

Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

#32
post #21

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…

I wouldn't be surprised if Windows was open source in 10-20 years. I'm not expecting it to, and I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't open sourced, either.

Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

#33

They'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

ok sorry I thought this really is common knowledge so didn't provide a link.

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

#34

Earlier 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.

perhaps my context was unclear. I was considering number of vulnerabilities among the different OS. that has actually little relation to the other problem that it is of course as spyware-as-OS.

Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

#35
post #21

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…

I don't think their open sourcing is some kind of desperate attempt. They open sourced .NET understanding that developer tools and languages have to be open source nowadays, if they want adoption.

Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

#36
post #16

Earlier 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.

>> Considered “harder” by whom?

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

#37

The 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…

While I don't think Steve Jobs necessarily deserves the near-deification he's received posthumously, I do think that Apple benefited from having someone who was able and willing to push through particular design decisions no matter how difficult they were to achieve or whether they stepped on senior people's toes. I get the impression that, within Microsoft, the best interests of new and innovative products always came a distant third behind the vagaries of internal politics, and the desire of the Windows and Office teams to protect their turf.

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

#38
Microsoft actions were ambivalent in 2015.

On 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

#39
post #16

Earlier 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.

slide 36. but the whole presentation is excellent:

https://grugq.github.io/presentations/COMSEC%20beyond%20encr...

Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

#40
post #16

Earlier 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.

(Note: I work for Microsoft, although not on the OS. I mostly use Debian and Ubuntu at home for things other than gaming, and know a bit about security--but I'm a bit rusty since I wasn't following it from 2010-2014 and haven't really thought about how to attack things since 2008-2009. These are my opinions/thoughts and don't represent the company I work for at all.)

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?)

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