Tech Talk Radio Program
May 13, 2000 Show
Sponsored by Stratford University
Microsoft's Proposed Final Judgment
Making Your Own Website
Anatomy of a Worm
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Microsoft's Proposed Final Judgment
    Microsoft filed its Proposed Final Judgment on Wednesday, May 10, 2000. The Plaintiffs filed their Proposed Final Judgment on April 28, 2000. Both were filed in response to the Court's Conclusions of Law, filed on April 3rd, 2000 and its Findings of Fact, filed November 5, 1999. While Microsoft still contended that the Court's findings were flawed, it did propose the following remedies.
     Microsoft proposed to impose the following limitations on its operations:      Under the proposal, Microsoft would pay for all attorney's and other costs of the 19 plaintiff states. The decree would remain in effect for only four years. The complete texts of all Microsoft's responses (05/10/2000) are available here. See previous shows (April 8 and April 29) for additional links.
     In addition Microsoft proposed various scheduling options for the Court, varying from an immediate implementation if Microsoft's Proposed Final Judgment is accepted to a six month delay, if the full breakup option is selected.
     While Tech Talk believes the Department of Justice's Remedy to be too severe, Microsoft's is much too lenient and does not fully recognize the extent of the damage that their practices have caused. Microsoft has shown no repentance. That is a problem for the courts and the justice system. Tech Talk stands by its April 8 position that Microsoft should be fined for every operating system sold during the period of its predatory practices. These fines might be placed in a non-profit corporation tasked with funding software innovation that may in the future be competitive with Microsoft.
     Tech Talk still believes that breaking up Microsoft and the Windows operating system does not make sense. According the Stan J. Liebowitz, breaking up windows will "balkanize" an operating system standard (Breaking Windows). He estimated that even a modest incremental effort to support two new operating systems would have significant economic impact. What is the Future for Microsoft? (a tonge-in-cheek commentary)
     By way of history, you may remember the First Great Software Competition that we conducted here on Tech Talk a few months ago between Microsoft and the World. The World included IBM, Sun, Netscape, Oracle, and AOL. In Round 1, MS knocked IBM out of the ring with Windows 95.  In Round 2, MS knocked Netscape out of the ring with Internet Explorer. In Round 3, MS launched Internet enabled Windows 98 against the Network Computer (backed by Oracle and Sun).
     A Beverly Hills New Age Psychic predicted the outcome of this technology battle the following way.

    The Sun shall shine through the cracked window and heat the Java
    The little oracles within the Wintel house shall drink the Java
    And shall move to other platform houses with small windows
    Those platforms shall also bask in the Sun

     To see what the future portends in the current court case, let us take a virtual tour to Greece. We seek the outcome of the Second Great Software Competition, which is Microsoft against the Goddess of Justice (A Woman Called Reno).  In this case Round 1 was The Trial, which Microsoft lost.  Round 2 saw the two Proposed Remedies.  In Round 3, the Judge shall select the Remedy.
    We travel to the hills near the Bay of Corinth. We seek the counsel of the Oracle of Delphi. The Oracle predicts the outcome in the following way.

    Behold the trial of Socrates
    Avoid a binary state of mind
    Or pay the ultimate price

     To find the meaning of this riddle, we must go to the old market place beside the Acropolis in Athens, Greece. This is the place where Socrates was sentenced to death for corrupting the youth of Athens. The state proposed a sentence -- death.  Socrates, the defendant, proposed his sentence. He sought a summary dismissal of the charges and arrogantly dismissed the findings of the court. The jury had no choice but to take the state's suggested penalty of death. Socrates only saw two possibilities (binary thinking) -- all or nothing.
     Microsoft is making the same mistake as Socrates. The state has recommended breakup (corporate death) and Microsoft is recommending an insufficient penalty (albeit more than nothing) and, at the same time, requesting a summary dismissal. Without a change in Microsoft's position and self-denial, the Oracle of Delphi predicts that Microsoft will be broken up. You can find more about Socrates' trial in The Apology by Plato.

Making Your Own Web Site
Using a Free Web Hosting Service
     Many companies offer free web hosting services. These services include web space, templates for your Website, and page generation tools. The price you pay is required advertising, a complicated web address, and difficulty with search engine registration. Some of these sites even let you sell products! This is a great way to learn how to create a Website. A few selected free hosting services are listed below: Hosting Your Own Webpage
     To create and host your own web site, you need to first secure a Domain Name (like stratford.edu).  The number one registrar (although many have now entered the fray) is NetWork Solutions (www.networksolutions.com).  A domain costs $35 per year and you can pay for up to ten years at the same time. Network Solutions has a tool to locate an available Domain Name.
    You must then select a hosting service. The hosting service provides your Domain Name Server (so the world can find you), a fixed IP address for your web site, and disk space for your web pages. Two hosting services that Tech Talk prefers are Network Solutions (www.networksolutions.com) and ValueWeb.Net (www.valueweb.net).  Web hosting typically costs $20/month for basic options (without e-commerce) and full email support. E-commerce may increase the cost to $50 per month.
     Having your own web site gives you simple web and email addresses. The web address is easy to register with the search engines using a registration tool like WebPosition Gold (www.webpositiongold.com).

HTML Generators
     Creating a web page is getting easier each year. You don't really have to create HTML. You can format your page like a Word document and then use an HTML Code generator to create the web page. Three generators that we use at Tech Talk are given below.

File Transfer Programs
     After the webpages have been created they must be transferred to the web server (uploaded). This is done using a client that conforms to the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) used within a TCP/IP networking environment. We have listed three of our favorite FTP clients below.  Each is very easy to use. Files are transferred using simple Drag and Drop actions with your mouse. Make Certain to Compress Your Images
     Pictures make any Website more attractive. You must compress all images before posting them, however. Nothing is worse than a web site with large images that are slow to load. All photographs should be compressed with jpg format. All graphics (with flat backgrounds) should be compressed with a gif format. When reducing the dimensions of an image for the web always resample the image to reduce the size of the image file. Simply redefining the image size in html image tag will display the image properly, but the image file size will not be reduced. Refer to April 8, 2000 show, on this site, for a complete discussion of image compression.
    Tech Talk's favorite image processing programs include the following two.
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Anatomy of A Worm
   A worm is a program that can send and replicate itself within a computer network.  John Shoch invented the worm concept in 1978, while at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. His worm was designed to shuttle through computers looking for idle computer time that could be borrowed for a distributed processing task.
     It was not until November 3, 1988 that the first large scale worm attack was waged against computers in the Internet. The "Crash of 88" was caused by a worm created by a 23 year old Cornell student, Robert Morris. It was designed to be benevolent. It took advantage of a vulnerability in a UNIX email program, called SendMail. Only Sun Microsystems and DEC VAX Machines were affected. This worm was supposed to leave only one copy of itself on each computer. However, a programming error lead to a continuous cycle of replication on each machine until so many worm processes were open that the machine would crash. 5 to 10 percent of the 60,000 Internet machines were brought down by this worm. This worm used a scripting language that is present on all UNIX machines -- Perl.
     Morris received a three year probation.  After leaving school, he started ViaWeb.com which he subsequently sold to Yahoo for $49 million. What a punishment!
     The Next Generation of worms will exploit the scripting services on Windows clients. They will use either JavaScript, VBScript, or Java applets.  We have already seen the beginning of the cycle.  Melissa was a VBScript embedded in a Microsoft Word Macro. BubbleBoy is a VBScript embedded in an HTML email. Bubble boy uses the services called scriptlet.typelib and eyedog.  The LoveBug uses a VBScript email attachment that exploits the Windows Scripting Host in Windows 98 and Windows2000.  It should be noted that the Distributed Denial of Service attacks that brought down ebay and Yahoo are in a different class.

Why are we so vulnerable now?
    Our heavy dependence on strong scripting languages, a single (almost uniform) operating system environment, and a fully interconnected network with standard communication protocols combine to make the entire system vulnerable.

What is the solution?
     The power (rights) of autonomous scripting (especially with emails) must be reduced. We must develop collective response mechanisms at the router level. Finally, we must all develop a heightened sense of security awareness (which means better password controls and timely security patches). We should not be discouraged. It will improve as the community focuses more on security and less on convenience. On the bright side, this threat will create many jobs!
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