Government spooks helped Microsoft build Vista

[Rick Tomaschuk]

On Fri, 2007-01-12 at 16:23 -0600, Sy Ali wrote:
> On 1/12/07, Rick Tomaschuk <rickl-ZACYGPecefkm4kRHVhTciCwD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > Does anyone have suggestions for long term IT strategies that won't land
> > me on a terrorist list? Is RedHat really the only large non-Microsoft

> But more seriously, I'm not sure I understand your question.  Are you
> looking to start a non-Microsoft-OS discussion?

I don't want to start/join a non-Microsoft-OS discussion but it may be a
good idea. Now that Microsoft oddly enough gained market share illegally
will continue to be the OS of choice for government and will be
protected as a US munition. Who says crime doesn't pay? What are the
options to eliminate Microsoft products (possibly even Novell) from a
company IT repertoire? I know Debian, Xandros and Ubuntu are popular but
lack any long term impact on the market. Most distributions are not US
based. This has advantages and disadvantages. Non US based distributions
lack market capitalization resulting in more complex support
arrangements. Berkley OS (Unix) require significant programming skills
and are not commercially supported. So this leaves RedHat. IBM, HP and
other Unixes are a world unto themselves. If SCO wasn't so stupid they
would be a good choice. 

> 
> On 1/12/07, John Macdonald <john-Z7w/En0MP3xWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > It is also their responsibility to ensure that the U.S. is
> > capable of getting intelligence from foreign lands.  As Bruce
> > Schneier points out in his blog (Jan 9 about 10 entries
> > ago right now http://www.schneier.com/blog/), these two
> > responsibilities are opposed when they are examining popular
> > software.  Do they report problems so they can be fixed so
> > that U.S. government use is safer, or do they leave them in
> > so they can be used to spy on the rest of the world?
> 
> A while back, an international collaboration of crackers ended up
> forcing the NSA etc to work together to provide significant security
> hole-finding resources to a number of companies.  For free.
> 
> At this point, holes in Windows are best plugged than left open.
> Home-soil is too vulnerable to bother taking advantage of the
> international application of security holes.
> 
> There are other ways to open holes in installations, for
> "informational" purposes.
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