Microsoft Sued for Defective Software

Door-opening Fascist writes "eWeek is reporting that a South Korean citizen action group, People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, is suing Microsoft for putting the SQL Slammer vulnerability into Windows. They are doing so on behalf of the South Korean people and businesses affected by SQL Slammer."

Somewhere in Redmond...

[Scoria]

Gates: Ballmer, loyal comrade, I've an assignment for you.
Ballmer: Yes, master?
Gates: Say, how much would it cost to purchase the country of South Korea?

"Putting" the vuln in?

[mrseigen]

is suing Microsoft

for putting the SQL Slammer vulnerability into Windows

Conspiracy theories inside, who actually intends to put a vulnerability into a product? Perhaps this should be "not fixing the vulnerability" or potentially even "ignoring the problem". I don't think any of Microsoft's programmers intentionally insert bugs into their shipping products... although... nah, it couldn't be.

Re:Somewhere in Redmond...

[slyxter]

South Korea.NET
Does have a nice ring to it.

Nuke The B******s!

[wfberg]

Ow wait, South-Korea.. Those are the good guys, right? Dagnammit!

I'm not surprised by this

[George Walker Bush]

Fellow Americans, this blow by Korea against the great American bastion of Microsoft is just the latest act in a string of transgressions by this rogue state. Te must remember that they are part of the axis of evil. As all of you undoubtedly know from watching the news, we believe they already have several nuclear weapons, and they are currently working on developing more.

Many American lives have been killed by the Koreans, and if we don't stop Korea now with diplomacy or force if need be, there will certainly be more bloodshed in the near future.

They are a rogue state, and while it may be true that when people may think of Korea, they think great Starcraft/Warcraft players, cell phones, and cheap cars, we must remember that they are a dicatatorship lead by a megalomaniac leader, Kim Jong Il, who wants to see the downfall of the West.

We must view Korea as the threat and enemy to global peace and the American way like they are.

Thank you and God bless America.

Re:BAH

[setag]

MS is worth more than South Korea as a whole

fuck them!

Wow. Your logic is flawless.

In other news MS is worth more than Ty(15982) [slashdot.org] ...

Like

[NetMasta10bt]

They actually bought Windows in the first place!!

The obvious answer

[WndrBr3d]

Obviously they haven't read Microsofts EULA for SQL Server 2000 which simply states:

Owned.

Re:Somewhere in Redmond...

[int2str]

You mean:

Gates: Ballmer, loyal comrade, I've an assignment for you.
Ballmer: Yes, master?
Gates: Tell GW, South Korea needs to "liberated", too! ;)

Re:Good Luck!

[WTFmonkey]

Right... South Korea's currently at 56% pirated.

In other news...

[JackMonkey]

Following Microsoft's audit of South Korea, North Korea has agreed to dismantle its nuclear program, fearing repercussions.

We should sue them

[Anonymous Coward]

For wrecking Blizzard's Diablo servers.

Hypocritical

[camusflage]

This is funny, considering the crushing amount of spam that comes from misconfigured boxen in the .sk address space. As has been pointed out, the patch was available well before slammer hit. That they didn't apply it points more to poor administration than anything else.

Re:Somewhere in Redmond...

[Troll_Kamikaze]

Ballmer: Well, Bill, looks like it would be more cost effective to just pay North Korea to "get rid of the problem". If you see what I mean...

Expect M$ to Countersue

[TheDukePatio]

I wouldn't be surprised in the least of M$ countersued and asked to prove that every single copy of SQL Server and every Windows box it ran on had a license.

With as rampant as piracy is in Asia, M$ can probably knock the case down to a single count since the only person that has a license over there is Bill Gate's sponsored Sally Struther's hungry child.

SQL License agreement

[skinfitz]

Has anyone actually tried to interpret the SQL Server license agreement?

In court:

Judge: "So can the court see the software license for this software?"

(shuffling of paper)

"Ah we see from this that you have 10 user licenses for your SQL server."

"Yes your honour"

"...yet your server was connected to the Internet - correct?"

"Correct your honour"

"But according to this license agreement, you must acquire a separate CAL for each Device that ... accesses or otherwise utilizes the services of the Server Software [microsoft.com] (which techically includes every worm infected machine) and seeing as the server was behind a website, that would come under Hardware or software that reduces the number of Devices directly accessing or using the Server Software does not reduce the number of required CALs. The number you need is based on the number of distinct inputs to the hardware or software "front end." ...so therefore you would theoretically need a license for anyone who could access your site, which right now is a total of around 619 Million people [glreach.com] if it is connected to the Internet.

*thud*

Judge:"...and then we have the Windows 2000 server CAL's..."

Whoa, bizarro world!

[oogoliegoogolie]

I'm just wondering where did all these click-thru EULA supporters suddenly come from? Any previous postings about licences went something like 'the EULA is not legal','I agreed to it but I did not understand it so it is not binding', and 'click thru licencing has not been proven in court'

EULA's have been one of the biggest things for slashdotters to complain about, now it seems everyone is supporting them and saying that ' the EULA states MS cannot be held libel and since the EULA is law and legal and binding they are SOL and can't sue'

WTF is going on? Bring back the normal EULA-hating world I used to love.

Nah, like this:

[Ballresin]

Gates: Hey lapdog...get over here!
Ballmer: Sir, I don't like it when you call me...
Gates: Shut up lapdog.
Ballmer: Yes, sir.
Gates: Buy Korea.
Ballmer: What's by Korea?
Gates: No, purchase it.
Ballmer: Which one?
Gates: There's more than one?
Ballmer: North and South.
Gates: Oh...does it matter? No. Buy both.
Ballmer: I don't have that kind of money sir.
Gates: Charge it to the company.
Ballmer: Yes sir.

Pre-Installation warning

[G27 Radio]

They should at least have a warning during installation of the software for those who aren't aware. Sort of like the "unplug your computer before installing" warnings that come with hardware. Something like:

WARNING: Unplug your computer before installing this software. And under no circumstances should you connect it to a network until all the patches have finished downloading and installing.

Re:Somewhere in Redmond...

[Anonymous Coward]

> This isn't funny. We need a +1 DISTURBING modifier for GW jokes.

-1 Unelected

Re:Silly lawsuit

[Anonymous Coward]

So, have you personally audited every line of code running on your machines, or are you "just fscking stupid" ?

What do you think I have my army of code auditing underlings for?! Huh?

Stephen King is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent post was irrelevant and absurd. With that in mind, I will make a contribution of similar value.

It is official; Netcraft confirms: Stephen King is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Beowulf Cluster community when IDC confirmed that Stephen King's market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all Hot Grits sold. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Stephen King has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Stepehen King is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin [amdest.com] to predict Stephen King's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Stephen King faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Stephen King because Stephen King is dying. Things are looking very bad for Stephen King. As many of us are already aware, Stephen King continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

FreeStephen King is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeStephen King developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeStephen King is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Natalie Portman leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of Natalie Portman. How many users of In Soviet Russia are there? Let's see. The number of Natalie Portman versus In Soviet Russia posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 In Soviet Russia users. 1. 2.??? 3. Profit! posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of In Soviet Russia posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of 1. 2.??? 3. Profit!. A recent article put FreeStephen King at about 80 percent of the Stephen King market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeStephen King users. This is consistent with the number of FreeStephen King Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeStephen King went out of business and was taken over by Waggly Cocks who sell another troubled OS. Now Waggly Cocks is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that Stephen King has steadily declined in market share. Stephen King is very sick and his long term survival prospects are very dim. If Stephen King is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. Stephen King continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Stephen King is dead.

Fact: Stephen King is dying

Re:Somewhere in Redmond...

[Anonymous Coward]

and ballmer says:
sorry but South Korea allready is liberated
maybe we should tell GW to support North Korea in future