Re: [amsat-bb] kc tracker and XP

[Phil Karn <karn@xxxxxxxx>]

>I guess I'm dense or something, but if Windows XP breaks
>so many applications people apparently depend on, why are
>people upgrading?

Because they don't know any better? Because they're like Charlie
Brown, who kept trusting Lucy's promise to not grab the football THIS
time, even though she had done so every single time in the past?

Microsoft touts XP as the most reliable and secure version of Windows
ever. Harrumph. Every day for the past two months I've been getting a
dozen emailed copies of the Klez-E worm. At about 120KB per copy,
that's a meg and a half of crap every day in addition to all the spam
I get.

Why? Because Microsoft picked up my open-sourced Reed-Solomon codec
(via another contributor in Italy), incorporated it into Windows XP,
and added my email address in their Relnotes.htm file. And guess what?
The Klez-E worm harvests email addresses from every text file on an
infected system -- including Relnotes.htm. Not only is this worm
sending me countless copies of itself, but it's also forging my name
in the copies it sends to others.

Never mind that my non-Microsoft systems are completely immune to this
worm and all the others like it.  I guess Microsoft has finally
figured out how to screw people who write open source, even those who
don't run their bug-ridden, insecure and overpriced software.

Phil

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