Wednesday, March 11, 2009

National Security benefit from breaking up m$ anti-trust

If M$ remains the sole provider of SW for every killer app (browser, media player, word processor, spreadsheet app etc) then a foreign national obtaining employ at M$ can write an easter egg in the app in which he is employed, and that easter egg can be designed to compromise that app to the government whose agent he has made himself. If M$ is the sole provider, then ALL computers are equally compromised. If browser companies compete in an open-standards environment, then that same government would have to compromise all companies that design that app (all mp3 players for example.) If security is of primary concern then open source apps should be employed, not M$ apps or competing proprietary apps. This means that a letter could be composed on a secure word processor and opened in an unsecure one and thus compromised, but not the other way around - a letter composed on a compromised word processor would not be compromised when opened in a secure environment. In this case I have not been specific on how the app would be compromised.

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