LMFAO. I'm looking forward, personally, to the day that Sun is delisted from the exchange.
Once upon a time, they wouldn't tell you what went into sausage, either.
Most food companies didn't want to publish ingredients lists. Because they don't have anything to gain, it's the consumer's problem if a product has defects. Never expect the fish-monger to yell, "rotten fish for sale".
Note: To answer up front the MS workers who call all criticism of MS 'MS Bashing', please note that Sun is also mentioned as taking a month too long to release a patch they have ready. This is also unacceptable, and Sun should be leaned on to improve.
Of course, considering the 8+ months which the article claims MS is sitting on even admitting that a problem exists -- forget actually getting a patch without public shame driving MS -- Sun smells pretty good by comparison.
But still Sun needs to be pushed to release patches when ready.
We had to fight for food labelling, too. This is just the latest incarnation of the same problem.
Microsoft has been riding the fence between marketing a concept of "trustworthy computing" and delivering a product that caters to the least common technically proficient denominator. Most products have been specifically designed to allow anyone who can click "Next" to perform a successful installation, but when it comes to their defense of insecure default software settings, they have a matter-of-fact way of telling everyone that they should know better.
While MS may eventually own up to newly discovered defects, what gets me is this attitude thing.
Software you can't see the source-code for is like food they won't let you see the ingredients list for.It's their intellectual property. My company won't tell people precisely what's in our products either. If we did we'd be out of business...and our replacements wouldn't be Americans.
Our brains, ingenuity, and creativity give Americans advantages over the rest of the world, with its cheap labor and raw materials. We're insane if we gut the laws that allow us to protect our intellectual property.
-Eric
