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Former White House bloke pans Microsoft

by on11 June 2010

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Built an Empire on low cost goods


A former
White House adviser has attacked Microsoft in his latest book.

Richard A. Clarke, in his new best seller “Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It” said that Redmond has vast resources, literally billions of dollars in cash, or liquid assets reserves. However: “Microsoft is an incredibly successful empire built on the premise of market dominance with low-quality goods."

Clark is famous for warning the White House about Al Qaeda before September 11, 2001. Now he is saying that the national response to Cyber War fears is because there is a lack of consensus on what to do and fearof government regulation.

Number Five on his list, is Microsoft. Microsoft, he notes, is a prominent member of OpenSecrets.org's "Heavy Hitters" political donor list. Most of the list's stars are trade associations. "Microsoft is one of only seven companies that make the cut."

Under Clinton Redmond backed the Republicans. This was because it was being sued for its antitrust antics. Now it is supporting Obama. He claimed that Microsoft warns the US government don't regulate security in the software industry, don't let the Pentagon stop using our software no matter how many security flaws it has, and don't say anything about software production overseas or deals with China.

Clarke notes that Microsoft didn't originally intend its software for critical networks. If it had, it would have used the rigorous quality assurance and quality control process that NASA insisted on for the software used in human space-flight systems.

He pointed out the dangers of this were obvious in 1997 when the USS Yorktown's Windows NT computer blue screened. The cruiser became a floating i-brick, dead in the water.

Moves to Linux by the military were challenged by Microsoft so that adoption was slowed to a crawl. Ars Technica have done a full review of the book here.

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