Re: Despite Antitrust Efforts, Microsoft Rules in Government

CobraBoy (tbyars@earthlink.net)
Sat, 9 May 1998 17:51:32 -0700


At 3:39 PM -0700 5/9/98, I Find Karma came up with the following:

> >From the New York Times, May 4, 1998... Also, did Byars post the LA
> Times article on April 10, 1998 about Microsoft PR writing letters to
> editors of newspapers and magazines as part of a pre-Win98 publicity
> push? If not, I'll post it; I love that stuff!!

Nope I don't think that I did. If you notice I'm not in favor of any of
this. It's one thing for us to knock Microsoft, we have paid our dues and
have that right. It's another for these Johnny cum lately's to jump into
it.

On the same note, the I wish Billy G. would have had better bodyguards and
they would have pumped the numnuts that threw the pie in his face full of
lead. It's a dangerous precedent.

> Also, did anyone notice that Bob Dole (who was one of the original test
> cases for Viagra, Robin Quivers told us yesterday) has been hired by
> Netscape to lobby against Microsoft's "monopoly", along with Robert
> Bork? Whiners. Nobody likes a whiner. Also, nobody likes a winner.
> Apparently:
>
> > If Microsoft succeeds not through unfair advantages but by offering
> > the best product for the best price, then modern antitrust policy is
> > working as it should.
>
> I liked the following line from the below article:
>
> > Once a technology laggard, the government "is leading the charge on NT
> > in some ways, pushing it into more advanced uses that you see in most
> > corporations," said Mathew Mahoney, an analyst for IDC Government, a
> > research service in Falls Church, Va.

yeah, eat me.

> http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?98058.winavy.htm
>
> U.S. Navy caught hacking
> into British marine
> charity Web site
>
> By Kristi Essick
> InfoWorld Electric
>
> Posted at 3:07 PM PT, May 8, 1998
> The U.S. Navy has been caught attempting to
> break in to secure areas of a World Wide Web
> site sponsored by a U.K. marine-mammal
> preservation charity, according to officials at the
> organization.
>
> The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society
> (WDCS) -- which operates an online shopping
> site aimed at generating money for the welfare of
> the animals at http://www.wdcs-shop.com --
> said it was alerted to the attempted break-in last
> week by its site-hosting company, Merchant
> Technology Ltd.
>
> "We were working late one night, and a
> command line request came in wanting to access
> unauthorized areas of the site," said Andy Fisher,
> marketing manager for Merchant. "We were
> amazed to find out it was the Pentagon."
>
> Merchant built and manages the secure
> electronic-commerce site for the conservation
> society and routinely keeps an eye on who visits.
> If users attempt to gain access to unauthorized
> areas, the company is alerted to the source of the
> incoming request.
>
> At 9:45 p.m. GMT on April 28, Fisher said,
> workers at Merchant were shocked to see an
> incoming attempt to breach security by a user
> identified as donhqns1.hq.navy.mil.
>
> Merchant got in touch with WDCS immediately,
> only to find out that the charity had been
> contacted by the Navy a few weeks earlier. The
> Navy was interested in obtaining a report the
> group is working on that details the efforts of
> Russian animal experts to train dolphins in the
> Black Sea for military tasks, such as finding and
> attaching probes to submarines, Fisher said.
>
> A WDCS representative said that there is
> nothing secret about the Russian government's
> activities in this area but that the document does
> contain information about the export of the
> trained dolphins to foreign countries. The group
> declined to give the Navy a copy of the report
> only because it was not complete at the time.
> Once it is made final, the report will be published
> and the Navy can then examine it, the
> representative said.
>
> The WCDS said that it is confused about why the
> Navy would attempt to break in to its Web site.
>
> "I think whoever it was within the U.S. Navy
> facility would have better things to do rather than
> try and hack into our computers," said Chris
> Stroud, the organization's director of campaigns,
> in a statement. "If they were seeking reports on
> the Black Sea, we shall be freely publishing these
> in the near future anyway."
>
> The WCDS previously has commented
> unfavorably on Navy activities such as its
> low-frequency sonar trials off Hawaii and on
> ship collisions with endangered whales, the
> group said.
>
> Merchant says it is "100 percent sure" the
> hacking attempt originated from the Navy.
> WDCS has notified the U.S. Embassy in London
> and the relevant U.K. authorities, the
> organization said.
>
> "We hope that the U.S. authorities have some
> rational explanation for this incident," Stroud
> said.
>
> "The Navy has not yet received a formal
> complaint on the issue," said a Navy official, who
> declined to be named. "Until the Navy receives a
> formal complaint with details, there's not much
> we can do to proceed further."
>
> Merchant Technology Ltd., in Bath, England, can
> be reached at 44 (1225) 481 015. The Whale and
> Dolphin Conservation Society, also in Bath, can
> be reached at 44 (1225) 334 511 or
> http://www.wdcs.org.
>
> Kristi Essick is a London correspondent for the
> IDG News Service, an InfoWorld affiliate.

Tim
-

Microsoft provides so much trollbait, it practically attacks itself.

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