There was actually a fairly good legal case that they were criminal. Many Windows machines were purchased for purposes that, by law, you needed C2 certified machines for. Small problem, only Windows NT 3.5 service pack 3 was so certified.

That they pulled this with Windows NT 3.51 was illegal but not that bad since it was the opinion of the person who got the first certification (Ed Curry) that 3.51 would have an easy time getting certified. However this was around the time frame that Windows NT 4.0 came out. And there were architectural changes (specifically moving graphics drivers into ring 0) which made NT 4.0 impossible to certify to the C2 standard. Yet Microsoft so-advertised 4.0 machines, and sold them to government offices that by law required that certification.

And this was not just in roles where security didn't matter. For instance in 1998 the USS Yorktown was left stranded dead in the water and needed to be towed to port because its Windows NT based control system BSODed. If that ship, and ships like it, had been in a battle situation, how many lives would have been lost?

Ed Curry pointed this out, and Microsoft destroyed his company in one of the nastiest displays of corporate politics that I've heard of. For example after his company had folded he got a job as a security expert. Before he started work they called his boss to be and said, "How much do we have to pay you to make you fire him before he starts?"

A legal case against Microsoft for their lies about C2 certification was getting under way when Ed Curry died from a heart attack. Certainly the stress of his mistreatment by Microsoft contributed to that. Without Ed to serve as a witness the case petered out.

I knew Ed online and considered him a friend. Yet another reason I don't like Microsoft. As far as I am concerned they literally drove a friend to his death for daring to question their illegal business practices.

In reply to Re^12: Time::HiRes sleep does not always work by tilly
in thread Time::HiRes sleep does not always work by tone

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