Adobe, Symantec challenge MicrosoftLobbying European Union regulators against Vista operating systemPrintE-mailDisable live quotesRSSDigg itDel.icio.usBy MarketWatchLast Update: 1:18 AM ET Sep 21, 2006SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Two U.S. software makers are lobbying European Union regulators for action against Microsoft Corp.'s next-generation Windows computer operating system, according to a media report Thursday.But regulators can't take action against Microsoft until it releases its Vista package, The Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition, citing an EU spokesman. See Wall Street Journal story (subscription required).Vista is scheduled for release to corporate customers in November. The challenges come from Adobe Systems Inc., and Symantec Corp., The Journal said. Adobe has told regulators that Microsoft should be prohibited from building free competing software for reading and creating electronic documents into Vista, The Journal said, citing unnamed people it said were familiar with the situation.Officials from antivirus-software maker Symantec plan to travel to EU headquarters in Brussels next week to brief journalists about Vista features that the Cupertino, Calif., company has told EU regulators will undercut rival computer-security-software makers, The Journal said.The briefings are intended to offset a similar public-relations effort by Microsoft, a Symantec spokesman, Cris Paden, told The Journal. At a Sept. 12 briefing, Erich Andersen, Microsoft's general counsel for Europe, said any regulatory action requiring changes in Vista's design could "increase security risks for European consumers" by making them more vulnerable to malicious attacks through the Internet, something that Symantec contests, The Journal reported.EU antitrust chief Neelie Kroes has warned Microsoft not to design the new version of Windows, which runs more than 90% of the world's personal computers, in ways that would put rival software companies at a competitive disadvantage, according to The Journal report.The EU fined Microsoft 497 million euros, or more than $600 million, for antitrust violations related to its earlier versions of Windows in 2004, The Journal said. In July, Ms. Kroes imposed an additional penalty of 280.5 million euros against Microsoft for defying orders to change its business practices, according to the report. The company is appealing both fines."Our goal is to deliver a fully innovative, secure version of Windows Vista that is compliant with EU law," The Journal said it was told by Tom Brookes, a spokesman for Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash.Symantec is concerned that Vista will direct consumers toward a Microsoft-designed security console, or box that shows what level various security functions, such as an Internet firewall, are set on, The Journal said. Symantec wants to be able automatically to override the Microsoft template with its own design and features, as it has been allowed to do in the past, according to the report.Microsoft has a new feature, called PatchGuard, designed to protect the core of its operating system from hacking, The Journal said, but Symantec said the design has been changed from previous Windows versions to prevent security-software companies from accessing the crucial part of the system to update computers against security threats.Adobe objects to Microsoft's inclusion in Vista of its own software for creating and viewing digital snapshots of documents, known as XML Paper Specification, or XPS, The Journal said. XPS competes with Adobe's widely used portable document format, or PDF.(That bit should make worker201 smile...)While Adobe earns money by selling its Acrobat software to create PDF documents (while giving away the software to read such documents), Microsoft will include both reading and writing software as part of Vista for no extra charge, according to The Journal.An Adobe spokeswoman declined to comment, The Journal said.
After all, running Windows without a decent anti-virus is like walking through a Red Light District after eating five metric tonnes of Viagra.
When I read that stuff about Vistas holes.. after reading OS Xs problems, and with the whole crack-computers-with-certain-wireless-cards-on-any-OS thing, is the problem that nobodys thinking about security or that security is just plain impossible?Microsoft make software on some pretty important machines, how on earth can they produce something this insecure?
OK, I'm no english major and on most days, I do well to spell my own name correctly...but, insecure? Are you saying MS needs a hug or did you mean unsecure?
when they say "it's a feature, not a bug", do they seriously mean that microsoft have deliberately written resource intensive software with a wealth of undocumented security problems because somehow they believe their products should be based upon this model? that's the only interpretation i can imagine for that phrase.
Someone once said that what the average man or woman only need is a computer with about 100 MHz. about 3 GBs of storage and 32 MB of RAM.
You know I think if we somehow make a collaborative effort to explain to people how incredibly shitty Window$ is and how much shittier Vi$ta will be and then give them Linux or BSD as a good alternative, then I'm thinking M$'s stock is gonna plummet. Since more than 50% of servers run Linux (is this still accurate ?) they have only one major foothold left ... the proles, I mean the public. Really I don't think I can go out there and hand out CDs come October (next month) ... maybe I'll just try to spread the word as much as possible till then. Yeah, how about I add a link to the Linux wiki everywhere I can. I think M$ has a good chance of taking a major blow for fucking up Vi$ta so bad.
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Topic: Vista to be released in October come Hell or high water. (Read 2346 times)
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