Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 22:17:02 10/27/01
Go up one level in this thread
On October 28, 2001 at 00:11:13, Eugene Nalimov wrote:
>On October 27, 2001 at 23:28:21, Christophe Theron wrote:
>
>>On October 27, 2001 at 16:27:04, Tom Kerrigan wrote:
>>
>>>On October 27, 2001 at 06:46:25, Ed Schröder wrote:
>>>
>>>>Just realize the power of MS, if they want to stop all PC's from working
>>>>one day they can do it. I know this is extreme but that is not important.
>>>>Important is if it is desirable a company to have so much power.
>>>
>>>No they can't. There is no code in Windows to ping the master server every day
>>>to see if Microsoft has issued the "end the world" command.
>>
>>
>>
>>Mmmh... Tell me, do we have any proof of this?
>>
>>What if I want to know what kind of information my copy of Windows is sending to
>>Microsoft? Can I have a look at the source code, please?
>
>Can you look at the source code of *any* commercial (i.e. not open source)
>program? I.e. can you be sure that your non-MS mail client does not send
>anything to the manufacturer? Lotus Notes? Eudora? The Bat? Etc.
With an open source OS and the associated open source applications I can do
that.
As far as I know I can do that for Netscape for example. Even the Windows
version.
I can check the whole source code of Linux, if I want to.
But this is not a big issue for me. I'm not really concerned by my copy of
Windows sending info to Microsoft. If it happens some day that Windows sends
sensitive information from the customers computers to Microsoft, I predict a
very very cloudy future for Bill's company.
I was talking about this because Tom raised the question, and because it raises
a number of other questions about the trust you have to put into the company who
provides your operating system.
That's something most people do not realize.
Christophe
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