[News] [Rival] Microsoft Products Have Serious Bugs, Raise Liability Questions

Roy Schestowitz

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Sep 29, 2007, 9:20:14 PM9/29/07

to

Windows XP repair disk kills automatic updates

,----[ Quote ]
| The company is getting a kicking from critics for this - the same people who
| slammed the company two weeks ago when Microsoft forced a Windows patch on
| users who had turned off automatic updates.
`----

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/29/windows_update_flap/

Microsoft has recently shown us (and acknowledged) that a hand calculator beats
Microsoft Excel. It's *still* making headlines:

Microsoft Excel fails math test

,----[ Quote ]
| Microsoft Corp.'s Excel 2007 spreadsheet program is going to have to relearn
| part of its multiplication table.
`----

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070928/ap_on_hi_te/microsoft_excel_bug

Microsoft: Excel Bug Doesn't Add Up

,----[ Quote ]
| If you've been depending on your Microsoft Excel software to do your number
| crunching for you, you might want to grab a calculator and review your
| spreadsheets before you send the document out the door. That's because the
| latest version of Excel is housing bugs that are dead set on ruining your
| reports.
`----

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20070927/tc_nf/55613

Can Microsoft be sued for such negligence (liability)? Windows zombies (DDOS,
SPAM, data theft) was bad enough...

,----[ Quote ]
| "Product liability does not apply to software," Gerald Spindler
| of the Faculty of Law of the University of Göttingen complained.
| "But what if a whole company comes to a standstill due to faulty
| software?" he mused.
`----

http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/86932/from/rss09

Botnet 'pandemic' threatens to strangle the net

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/26/botnet_threat/

,----[ Quote ]
| Ah, from the horse's mouth: Microsoft just might be held legally
| responsible for selling software that is insecure.
`----

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2006112223522439

Microsoft confirms OneCare zaps Outlook, Outlook Express e-mail

,----[ Quote ]
| Microsoft Corp. has acknowledged that a bug in its Windows Live
| OneCare security suite has been causing users' e-mail to vanish
| from Outlook and Outlook Express.
`----

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9012499

nes...@wigner.berkeley.edu

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Sep 30, 2007, 1:55:22 PM9/30/07

to

On Sep 29, 6:20 pm, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@schestowitz.com>
wrote:

> Windows XP repair disk kills automatic updates
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | The company is getting a kicking from critics for this - the same people who
> | slammed the company two weeks ago when Microsoft forced a Windows patch on
> | users who had turned off automatic updates.
> `----
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/29/windows_update_flap/
>
> Microsoft has recently shown us (and acknowledged) that a hand calculator beats
> Microsoft Excel. It's *still* making headlines:
>
> Microsoft Excel fails math test
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Microsoft Corp.'s Excel 2007 spreadsheet program is going to have to relearn
> | part of its multiplication table.

I recall some time back that Microsoft had defined pi to be 3.14
exactly, or something like that. Do you remember the details?

[H]omer

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Sep 30, 2007, 3:59:21 PM9/30/07

to

Verily I say unto thee, that nes...@wigner.berkeley.edu spake thusly:

> I recall some time back that Microsoft had defined pi to be 3.14
> exactly, or something like that. Do you remember the details?

Actually they just rounded it up to 100,000, like they do with
everything else.

Maybe that explains their financial balance sheet.

--
K.
http://slated.org

.----
| "OOXML is a superb standard"
| - GNU/Linux traitor, Miguel de Icaza.
`----

Fedora release 7 (Moonshine) on sky, running kernel 2.6.22.1-41.fc7
20:57:56 up 52 days, 19:52, 3 users, load average: 1.49, 1.19, 1.08

Roy Schestowitz

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Sep 30, 2007, 6:41:35 PM9/30/07

to

____/ [H]omer on Sunday 30 September 2007 20:59 : \____

> Verily I say unto thee, that nes...@wigner.berkeley.edu spake thusly:
>
>> I recall some time back that Microsoft had defined pi to be 3.14
>> exactly, or something like that. Do you remember the details?
>
> Actually they just rounded it up to 100,000, like they do with
> everything else.

Well, the worst type of errors are those which are hard to spot (the same goes
for viruses), so making pi 100,000 would at least raise suspicion and have the
problem corrected. I've read feedback from someone who is nervous now. S/he
backed up all the spreadsheets, but mistakes that were already done could cost
a lot of money (in some cases -- life). Confidence in Excel was lost because
when one bug is identified, there are likely to be more which are yet to be
found.

> Maybe that explains their financial balance sheet.

--
~~ Best of wishes

Roy S. Schestowitz | Download Reversi: http://othellomaster.com
http://Schestowitz.com | GNU is Not UNIX | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
http://iuron.com - proposing a non-profit search engine

Mark Kent

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Oct 1, 2007, 8:14:30 AM10/1/07

to

Roy Schestowitz <newsg...@schestowitz.com> espoused:

> ____/ [H]omer on Sunday 30 September 2007 20:59 : \____
>
>> Verily I say unto thee, that nes...@wigner.berkeley.edu spake thusly:
>>
>>> I recall some time back that Microsoft had defined pi to be 3.14
>>> exactly, or something like that. Do you remember the details?
>>
>> Actually they just rounded it up to 100,000, like they do with
>> everything else.
>
> Well, the worst type of errors are those which are hard to spot (the same goes
> for viruses), so making pi 100,000 would at least raise suspicion and have the
> problem corrected. I've read feedback from someone who is nervous now. S/he
> backed up all the spreadsheets, but mistakes that were already done could cost
> a lot of money (in some cases -- life). Confidence in Excel was lost because
> when one bug is identified, there are likely to be more which are yet to be
> found.
>

There're bound to be more - proprietary software just hides them very
very well indeed. Open-source is far safer, particularly where mission
or life-critical systems are concerned.

--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
| Cola faq: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/linux/advocacy/faq-and-primer/ |
| Cola trolls: http://colatrolls.blogspot.com/ |
| My (new) blog: http://www.thereisnomagic.org |

nes...@wigner.berkeley.edu

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Oct 1, 2007, 10:06:46 AM10/1/07

to

There was an earlier scandal with Excel numerical errors, that I
haven't seen anyone mention in these threads about the latest ones.
Here is a reference to it:

Abstract:
--------------------
"The open source spreadsheet package "Gnumeric" was such a good clone
of Microsoft Excel that it even had errors in its statistical
functions
similar to those in Excel's statistical functions. When apprised of
the
errors in v1.0.4, the developers of Gnumeric indicated that they would
try to fix the errors. Indeed, Gnumeric v1.1.2, has largely fixed its
flaws, while Microsoft has not fixed its errors through many
successive
versions. Persons who desire to use a spreadsheet package to perform
statistical analyses are advised to use Gnumeric rather than Excel."
--------------------

http://web.archive.org/web/20040412052948/http://www.csdassn.org/soft...

Discussed about a year ago on cola:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.advocacy/browse_thread/thread/f9a1b23af3d1bf95/290315a92c6aa83b?hl=en&lnk=st&q=&rnum=1#290315a92c6aa83b

Here are some quotes from the article produced by Linonut:
Interesting.

<Quote>

Poisson distribution:

"In Excel 20003, Microsoft obtained an accurate answer in the
central region of the distribution in exchange for inaccurate
results
in the tail. This is not a good "fix". A good fix is demonstrated
by gnumeric."

Hypergeometric distribution: