"Bill Gates is just a monocle and a persian cat away from being a villian
in a James Bond movie." - unknown
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough [to break modern encryption]
would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers."
- Bill Gates from "The Road Ahead," p. 265, demonstrating he might not
be as clever as we think he is.
[The submitter notes: For the non-mathematicians: a number is called
"prime" if and only if it can _not_ be factored, because it is only
divisible by 1 and itself.]
"The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck,
is probably the day Microsoft starts making vacuum cleaners."
- Ernst Jan Plugge
If Bill Gates had a dime for every time a Windows box crashed...
.... Oh, wait a minute, he already does.
cbbrowne@hex.net -
Windows NT to extend reach update: Microsoft wants customized versions
of Windows NT for "embedded" systems such as health and communications
equipment.
Gives Blue Screen of Death a whole new meaning...
Don't follow my instructions.
-- Paul Leach
I'm really sorry for the bad advice.
-- Paul Leach
If things go badly, just put them back. They're in \windows\system.
-- Paul Leach
Well, I have to mea culpa again.
-- Paul Leach
I misunderstood the information I was given.
-- Paul Leach
I could make a 486/33 look like a Cray...
-- NT Security mailing list
Not an exploit. You bypassed the system entirely
via direct physical access. That doesn't count.
-- Paul Leach
If you apply the non-128 version, you won't
be 128 bit anymore, if I recall correctly.
-- Paul Leach
Each day I receive about 50 messages from this
list about the moral implications of port scanning.
-- Pete Morton, NT Security mailing list
One of these days, we'll have to have you out behind
the woodshed for being such a rabble-rouser.
-- Paul Leach
I don't know.
-- Paul Leach
Let me apologize -- I was a little too terse in my response.
-- Paul Leach
I don't mind people bashing me and MS for what we do wrong.
-- Paul Leach
If it's a service then go to the service manager, select the service in
question, select startup, then enable interact with the desktop.
-- Michael Howard
It's just a rumor.
-- Paul Leach
I personaly think that UNIX being unfriendly
is a myth spread by Microsoft.
-- Lewis E. Wolfgang
It is ironic that, if we had not made networking, TCP, and a standard API
to use them as an integral part of the OS, the Web might not be
ubiquitous, because the ability to get on the web would be beyond the
powers of most users, who would have to acquire and integrate all those
things themselves.
-- Paul Leach
The worst part is: you can tell that they really believe it, that
something isn't real/hasn't been invented until someone in Redmond
implements it.
-- NT Security mailing list
I apologize for using the list's bandwidth.
-- Paul Leach
NT Security mailing list
So you wanted to get access to the Internet. You called up an ISP,
they sent you a pile of diskettes via snail-mail, you installed them.
Takes about a week.
-- Paul Leach
It's time for me to apologize.
-- Eric Fitzgerald
I apologize for distributing incorrect information.
-- Eric Fitzgerald
MS-DOS is relatively screwed up to begin with,
and has few to no redeeming qualities.
-- NT Security mailing list
Yeah -- we love staying up all night providing patches that close off
each port, one by one, as smart crackers change which port they hit.
-- Paul Leach
You know what they say about the PR,
there's no such thing as bad publicity.
-- Paul Leach
That isn't how we're fixing it.
-- Paul Leach
You may accuse us of incompetence if you like.
-- Paul Leach
We can't seem to stop the DoS attacks.
-- Paul Leach
We deliberately and cynically make the smallest
band-aid fixes we can, just enough to convince
customers that the problem is fixed when it really isn't.
-- Paul Leach
That just isn't true.
-- Paul Leach
If it is incompetence, then it isn't just confined to us.
-- Paul Leach
Hmm, well we're hoping that once we get our COFFEE protocol running,
we'll be able to control all the coffee makers in the world.
-- Josh Cohen
We know what's best for you anyway.
-- Josh Cohen
Dont assume that I'm an NT supporter.
-- Josh Cohen
I'm a die hard Unix geek.
-- Josh Cohen
My own personal goal for NT is for it to be
more interoperable with open systems like Unix.
-- Josh Cohen
This is the first I've heard that
anyone felt that that was inadequate.
-- Paul Leach
You don't know what you are talking about.
-- Paul Leach
We will be issuing a hot-fix...
-- Paul Leach
I understand your gripe.
-- Paul Leach
It's true we haven't done anything yet for
Windows 95, but we have done a lot for Windows NT.
-- Paul Leach
I caught our network printer one night
last week trying to surf the web!
-- Peter Unk, NT sysadmin
Be a hero and point out how stupid MS is
for believing that obscurity equals security.
-- Paul Leach
It is always running after I reboot.
-- Paul Leach
Have you reported it to secure@microsoft.com?
-- Paul Leach
In Its Own Words
Microsoft makes the case against itself
"It seems clear that it will be very hard to increase
market share on the merits of Internet Explorer 4 alone.
It will be more important to leverage the Operating
System asset to make people use IE instead of
Navigatior."
-- Microsoft's Christian Wildfeuer, Feb 24 1997
----------------------------------------------------
"I was quite frank with him (Scott Cook, CEO of Intuit)
that if he had a favor we could do for him that would
cost us something like $1m to do that in return for
switching browsers in the next few months I would be
open to doing that."
-- Bill Gates, e-mail, July 24 1996
----------------------------------------------------
"(Computer manufacturers) want to remove the (IE) icon
from the desktop ... this is not allowed."
-- Microsoft executive Chris Jones, 1995
----------------------------------------------------
"Memphis (Windows 98 code name) is a key weapon in the
IE share battle."
-- Microsoft executive Brad Chase
----------------------------------------------------
"I am convinced we have to use Windows
-- this is the one thing they (Netscape) don't have ...
(Windows 98) must be killer on OEM shipments so that
Netscape never gets a chance on these systems."
-- Microsoft Senior Vice President Jim Allchin, January
2 1997
----------------------------------------------------
"Netscape pollution must be eradicated."
-- Microsoft Vice-President Jeff Raikes
----------------------------------------------------
"I thought our #1 strategic imperative was to get IE
share. Our best hope is tying tight to Windows... that
is, unless I've woken up in an alternate state and now
work for Netscape."
-- Megan Bliss, e-mail, March 25 1997
----------------------------------------------------
"We should move the sign-up Wizard into the boot-up
sequence somewhere ... this way we can increase the
likelihood that an end user gets the option to sign up
for solutions that promote IE before they get into the
desktop or any customized shell that features other
browser solutions."
-- Microsoft senior executive Brad Chase, e-mail, March
1 1996
----------------------------------------------------
"Look at why people who get IE with a new machine switch
to Navigator and what is being addressed in IE 4.0 to
make that difficult."
--Microsoft executive Jonathan Roberts, e-mail, March 28
1997
----------------------------------------------------
"It is a mistake to release (Windows 98) without
bundling IE with it."
-- Kumar Mehta, March 27 1997
----------------------------------------------------
"Internet Explorer will be distributed every way we can
... bundled with Windows 95 upgrade and included by
OEMs."
-- Bill Gates, January 5 1996
----------------------------------------------------
"Browser share is job 1 at this company."
-- Microsoft General Manager Carl Stork, September 1996