Microsoft confirms IE's role in attack, says it's staying in China | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft confirms IE's role in attack, says it's staying in China

techflash.com

24 pointscwan23 comments

Microsoft deeply needs a change at the top.

And ruin such a brilliant example of evil corporate citizenship?

Really? This is like saying that a company that makes guns is responsible when someone takes a life with one of them. When have you ever produced perfect software?

It is quite different when you sell your tech to a government that oppresses people, don't you think?

Or do you think that sanctions as a political tool should no longer be used?

You want to single Microsoft out on this one? There are millions of companies, both private and public that do business with the Chinese government.

As for your comments about sanctions, my comment was actually not about China at all but rather the Microsoft bashing that was taking place. I have no further comments on sanctions or China.

No, I'm not attacking MS (that was my first comment in this thread). I am just pointing that giving a tool to someone you KNOW oppresses others is very different from selling to a neutral buyer.

I've had conversations about this kind of thing with a friend of mine has a software business in SA. We had a debate about whether selling software to the Zimbabwean govt. is moral. I think in doing so, you enable the systemic oppression of people which is clearly not the right thing to do.

I am just pointing that giving a tool to someone you KNOW oppresses others is very different from selling to a neutral buyer.

If you want to make it about politics, then so be it. How about we discuss the practices of the U.S. government? Need I point out that we originally brought the Taliban to power? Need I point out that we originally brought Saddam Hussein to power? Need I point out that millions of Cubans suffer everyday because we have decided to punish an entire country because we are upset with a couple hundred members of their government? If you want to talk about oppression, look at the huge amount of oppression created by the United States government.

To get back to my point though, what Microsoft is doing is business. The Chinese market is huge. They would be foolish not to do business in China. Furthermore, the very fact that you feel Microsoft should withhold things from the Chinese people is hypocritical to begin with. Think about the improvements the technology brings to the people. In the case of Internet Explorer, I can't think of anything more oppressive than denying a people the right to technology, with the ability to open doors to the world, that is being given away freely in other parts of the world.

Neither did I defend anybody (not any company, not any government) nor did I attack any company in particular.

Your responses remind me of Sarah Palin. When posed with a statement or question, dodging it an go off on a tangent.

I'm merely saying that it is (universally) wrong to supply someone who you know oppresses others, with the tools to do so.

I responded to your statement with a very valid argument.

(1) It's business in a huge market that American companies are not forbidden to do business with.

(2) You are implying that Microsoft should not do business with China, and I believe that would be more detrimental than doing business with the country.

I believe you are falling into the fallacy of punishing an entire nation for the actions of its government somehow makes that country better off. Turning it back to Google, I have friends from China who are pissed that Google is threatening to leave. You're not seeing the bigger picture. Google's threat to leave doesn't help China. It hurts the country, all 1.2 billion people. You decided to bring politics into this, so now politics have been brought into this.

I dunno, I think it's everything. This kind of thing is typical of Microsoft -- they just don't care about anything because they know they'll be making money anyway.

IE is a tool to leverage their monopoly and kill competition. It's _supposed_ to be a PITA so that people dedicate all their time to IE and its competitors get left out in the cold (meaning that you must have Windows to use the websites you want to use).

They just don't care about quality and they're not even a little bit apologetic about it. I'm willing to bet there are thousands of known, serious IE bugs within Microsoft, and the bosses won't let anyone fix them because the bosses don't have any reason to fix them.

Maybe their motto is "Do be evil".

Their motto is more on the line of "turn a profit, whatever it takes".

That would be a corollary of "do be evil".

Not really. If not being evil were more profitable, they would be saints. They just don't care.

That attitude almost always gives rise to evil, though, because it's much easier to make a lot of money off of dishonesty and run like hell when you're found out than it is to do otherwise.

"the love of money is the root of all evil" - 1 Tim. 6:10.

EDIT: Can someone justify these downvotes? I was hoping HN hadn't caught the reddit disease where any time religious texts are quoted or even mentioned downvotes fall bountifully.

"Can someone justify these downvotes?"

It seems some folks here are overly sensitive to anything that vaguely resembles criticism of Microsoft and their products.

More along the lines of: "Be amoral".

I wonder if any of the developers have given thought to their mistakes being used by a government to hunt down its own citizens. That's got to be at least a little bit unsettling. Most of us make mistakes, fix them and never have to deal with serious consequences.

Microsoft, being microsoft.

Heck, what a bunch of chinese HR activists worth anyway? It's not like there is not a billion and a half.

\sarcasm

Choice quote: Ballmer reiterated the statement in an interview with Reuters. "We're attacked every day from all parts of the world and I think everybody else is too. We didn't see anything out of the ordinary," he told the news service. "There are attacks every day. I don't think there was anything unusual, so I don't understand"

Right, because there's nothing unusual in governments hacking the accounts of their political dissidents.

It's an attempt to spin the discourse to one of "Google's can't handle the standard operating environment" rather than "Google took a principled stand." Nothing more, nothing less.

"Microsoft" and "principled" on the same paragraph. That must be a first.

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