Russia has MS sourcecode

BomberAF said:

But back to the point, how difficult can it be for an organistion like the Russian government to reverse engineer MS products to get source code?

Not difficult at all - MS has been giving it to them for the better part of a decade.

Dang! Where'd you get a 1200 baud modem for the C-64?
All I ever had was the 300 baud modem module that plugged into the back of the computer.
I didn't have a 1200 baud modem till I built my first PC, an IBM XT Clone.
I got the loan of a Hayes 1200 baud modem from my employer. It was a FULL Card.
I didn't run a BBS, but a young friend did on his C-64 with two of my enhanced 1541 drives. (I rewrote the OS in the drive to format a disk to 40 tracks to give it more storage capacity)

But back on the Russia................ topic.

I was at a friends house recently and he's running a Version of XP-Pro-Sp3 that he downloaded from a server in Eastern Europe (Russia ? )
When he installed it, he found that it had self-activated. He gets all the MS Updates with no problem at all. That version of XP has had most of the bloat removed and it runs really fast and takes up only a fraction of the space on the HD that the OEM version takes up.

When re-engineered versions of an OS can work and run that good, it's not surprising to me that they are so popular. Why buy an old, slow and boggy OS from MS when you can just download a much faster and more efficient version from the internet for FREE? Eh?
I'm only talking practicality, NOT Legality. That's a whole different topic.

MS isn't doing a lot to make their OS's look more inviting to the public. In fact, every new version is much bigger and more bloated than the one before it. Too bad!

Bootz said:

Kari said:

Something to do with this: Redmond man with possible link to Russian spy ring deported | KOMO News - Breaking News, Sports, Traffic and Weather - Seattle, Washington | Local & Regional?

Microsoft is not very bright hiring someone like that anyway, just the fact that he is an immigrant should throw red flags up in my opinion. Not saying that they cant hire them, but they should have to go through extensive screening for reasons just like this. Seems like common sense to me.

Bootz,

I hate to break this to you but you have just leveled up to epic stupid. Do you know how many spies have been caught in the US who are foreign nationals vs. spies who are American citizens? Go ahead and Google search it. My post can wait for you.....
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Seriously. I would bet my life on the fact that China and Russia have American citizens in their employment right now. I have ZERO. Absolute zero doubt of this. Techniques of recruiting such people are so vast it staggers the mind. Anything from blackmail, (such as infidelity to the spouse), to financial troubles, to women, to additions, to simple payoffs, to long term employment via generational embedded operatives, and everything in between. Its probably even easier since we are talking about a company vs. employment in the federal government.

And you think someone with a green card is going to be the most straight up means of recovering data? Wow. Really. Wow.

Kari said:

Bootz said:

So how that makes me epic stupid for criticizing Microsoft for hiring an illegal immagrant im not sure...

You were not critisizing MS for hiring an illegal immigrant. This is what you said:

Bootz said:

Microsoft is not very bright hiring someone like that anyway, just the fact that he is an immigrant should throw red flags up in my opinion.

Your original statement tells about something completely different than your later explanations. Sorry.

Kari

How so? To me, saying they are not bright is indeed criticizing. The part about the immigrant throwing up red flags... The fact that he was an immigrant should be a basis or legit reason (not the only one) for a background check. Im not sure how that is so offending. I maybe should have worded it differently and maybe could have left out the sentence on immigrants. again im sorry for that