2004 The End of M$ : General Discussion

Taken from Here

This past year in my opinion has been a huge step forward towards the end of Micro$oft. I just thought I'd briefly recap the events of this year to show once again what a dumb, corrupt, annoying, dangerous, illegal, stubborn piece of !@#$%^&* Micro$haft is:
Legal / Miscellaneous embarassments to Micro$oft:
- Steve Ballmer sells 1.2 billion in M$ Stocks
- Bill Gates shows up at White House with no ID and needs to be searched
- Microsoft admits WMP spies and reports on your music and video usage
- MS department in London discovered to be using Linux for internet services
- One day after $90 million contract signed between MS & Homeland Security, biggest bug ever found
- Two weeks later another one affecting Windows 2003 - Which Homeland Security uses
- Microsoft says that 75% of WinXP installations crash unless installed by an "authorized installer"
- Microsoft hires group to study open source software
- Swedish Microsoft branch uses a Mac in its commercial
- Windows worm knocks out service 911 emergeny telephone service in Bellevue
- Worm disabled several Windows powered ATM machines
- Microsoft called "Threat to national security" in 2 reports
- Microsoft announced a Big-Brother system for MSN chat rooms
- Microsoft virus damages train signals in Florida
- Microsoft employee fired for posting photo on his site of a G5 being delivered to a MS print shop
- Employee of a MS-partnered tech firm fired for participating in report explaining why MS sucks
- Microsoft's Linux bashing backfires - people see that Linux must be better
- Microsoft Urges Users Not to Use Windows on the Internet
- Microsoft sued over code used in their web movie technology
- MSN software labels Lindows emails as spam
- Microsoft decides to use Linux to protect its servers
- IE security bugs allow hackers to steal source code for Half-Life 2 video game
- 3 issues of backwards incompatibility found in new Office 2003
- After years of denying being a competitor, MS makes a Linux survey to see what people like about it
- Microsoft forgot to renew hotmail.co.uk domain for England, despite several warnings ahead of time
- MS announces plans for creating BIOS code for PCs; Billy Gates claims he knows nothing about it
- Micro$oft wins trademark lawsuit against Lindows in Europe
- One week later is sued by Mythic Entertainment on same exact charges

Microsoft fined:
- $1,000,000,000 total to several universities for stealing code
- $521,000,000 to Eolas Techonologies company for patent infringement
- $23,000,000 to Be, Inc
- $75,000,000 to AOL Time Warner
- $62,000,000 for stealing code used in Netmeeting
- $967,000 to Massachusetts in antitrust settlements
- unknown sum to InterTrust for DRM patent infringement

Governments who tell Microsoft to !@#$%^&* away:
- Munich, Germany
- Berlin, Germany
- Vienna, Austria
- India
- China
- Japan
- South Korea
- Vietnam
- Brazil
- Thailand
- Austin, Texas, USA
- The US Army
- England
- Israel

Business losses for Microsoft:
- Guitar company owner throws out M$ and says he couldn't be happier
- Lycoris creates Linux OS for Tablet PC (previously only supported Windows)
- HP announces they will sell pre-installed Linux computers
- British Health Services dumps Microsoft
- European SAP cuts on deals with Microsoft
- Ford moves to Linux
- Verisign moves to Linux

Anti-trust matters:
- European Union begins major investigation of Microsoft Windows Media Player monopoly
- RealNetworks joins lawsuits against Windows Media Player monopoly.

Security Issues
- 2 security breaches discovered in M$ Passport
- EU Sues M$ once again
- Gartner Group advices businesses not to use Passport
- Time it takes to crack Windows passwords reduced to 13.6 seconds from 1 min 40 sec
- 19 Internet Explorer security bugs discovered (most remain unpatched)
- 1 patch released to fix IE bug creates a new hole in the browser!
- 2 patches released to fix IE bugs don't fix problem, just create more bloat
- 13 security bugs discovered in misc Windows services (RPC, Workstation, etc)
- 2 security bugs in DirectX discovered
- 1 security bug in Windows Update discovered
- 1 Major Vulnerability Found In Windows Messenger
- Major flaw found in MS Exchange, allowing users to access other users' accounts
- 2 security flaws found in Microsoft Frontpage Server Extensions Web Publishing tool
- Security bug found in Microsoft's digital certificates system
- 3 security issues found in the new MS Office

Viruses/Worms
- MSBlaster.a
- MSBlaster.b
- MSBlaster.c
- Welchia
- Sobig.a
- Sobig.b
- Sobig.c
- Sobig.d
- Sobig.e
- Sobig.f
- Code-Red
- Quaters
- QHosts
- Sober.a
- Sober.b
- Sober.c
- Slammer (the one that knocked out 911 service)
- Yaha-Y
- Jitux
- Nachi (the one that infected ATM machines)
- Too many more to count, but the above were the biggest

And the award for funniest/saddest Microsoft event of the year goes to:
3rd Place: Microsoft announces plans for Antivirus software
2nd Place: Microsoft has nerve to accuse Sun of "unfair competition"
First Place:
The decade old "If Microsoft Made Cars..." joke becomes true.
Microsoft announces plans to "have the Windows OS in every car on Earth"
Reports arise of problems with the BMW 7 Series car which runs the Windows for Cars OS:
- CD player got !@#$%^&* up
- Engine died
- Car died on side of the road
Great job, Bill!

haha finaly the twats got sumit comeing to him after stealing every ones work...

Funny Thread, too bad majority of your average computer users have windows. I have WinXP Pro and Linux Mandrake. Pros and Cons of each.

AC is partially ran by microsoft until turbine finish's buying back the AC franchise from them, microsoft's employes were resposible for the 1 week rollback of DarkTide and several other things like saying:
UCMing is OK as long as you do it somewhere out of the way
and constantly screwing up because they dont make enough backups lol
and lets not forget the server crashs every other week

AC, lol, wut a fun game, im perma pk if ne1 wants to take me on