4 ms·

I don't hate Microsoft for 20 year old reasons. I hate them for 2.5 year old reasons http://games.greggman.com/game/webgl-security-and-microsoft-bullshit/ http

I don't hate Microsoft for 20 year old reasons. I hate them for 2.5 year old reasons http://games.greggman.com/game/webgl-security-and-microsoft-bullshit/ http://games.greggman.com/game/webgl-security-and-microsoft-... I'm sure others can list more recent FUD and lies put out by Microsoft. If in another 5-10 years there's no more incidents of that kind of stuff maybe I'll like them again? ... Actually I can't really say I hate them now. But I think it's important to point out they are still a pretty shitty company in many ways. I hope they stop that crap. An x-coworker at my last job had previous worked at Microsoft. His parting message to everyone was how happy he was that at this job the company always tried to do the right thing whereas at his previous job at MS the company always tried to see how much they could get away with. Of course that's just one anecdote but if true I hope MS can change that attitude to something positive and that we'll see the results for the next few years.

jongalloway2 13y ago
Different people have widely varying experiences working at Microsoft. There are 130k people in the company. That might mean your boss might vary a bit over a company that is bigger than many cities. WebGL shipped in IE11. I argued with them over getting it in earlier, too, but they had some semi-valid concerns over running web-delivered instructions directly on your GPU.
com2kid 13y ago
> I'm sure others can list more recent FUD and lies put out by Microsoft. Really? I had a PC on which Firefox and certain WebGL content would hard crash my machine thanks to what I resume are video card driver bugs. (Upgrading video card drivers resolved that particular instance of that problem) Given that, it is by no means unreasonable to assume that WebGL content might be able to hit security holes in video card drivers. What that entails, who knows. Presumably going right away and saying "sure, we'll just add a hole to let people stream code directly from the web right into your video card" sounded like a horrible idea. And since IE is shipped with the OS, level component, it has to be supported to customers for-bloody-ever. (Or so it seems at least!) So there is a higher bar, and all of a sudden releasing patches isn't an "auto-update the world and hopefully don't break anyone" sort of thing like it is with Chrome or Firefox, but now it becomes a "well have to test this patch across an almost unimaginable number of test scenarios and machine configs because we don't want to break functionality that any one of our large customers rely on". At that point, adding a new feature, which even sorta smells like it could open up a whole new can of worms, becomes, for good reason, somewhat less desirable! (Disclaimer: I work for MS, but in a completely unrelated area, opinions are my own, those of an overly paranoid-for-the-customers software engineer.)
- greggman 13y ago
  And yet MS is now shipping WebGL so it seems like your point is moot. MS doesn't believe the WebGL is insecure else they wouldn't have shipped it.
  - throwawaykf05 13y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7282162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7282162 Cmd-F WebGL
    - greggman 13y ago
      You do realize MS continued to bash WebGL long after the CORS issue was resolved. The point is there's still reason to hate MS. They are still a bad company that does arguably bad things. I'm all for them switching to sweetness and light but the OP is suggesting their evil ways were 20 years ago. They're not. Their evil ways are still recent.
      - throwawaykf05 13y ago
        (Edited to add: I am not aware of any statements on WebGL from MS beyond that blog post, but I don't follow those circles, so I'll accept your word that they continued bashing it after CORS was introduced. However, people I'd trust more than either Google or Microsoft employees, like Carmack and various security researchers on HN like Daeken, agreed that WebGl is a security risk, so I disagree that counts as bad behavior on MS's part.) So why did Microsoft go ahead and include WebGL? Why, because they had to respond to Google who did exactly the same thing that Microsoft was lambasted for doing with IE: pushing proprietary, unsafe technology before it became standardized and forcing other browsers to catch up. But since you work for Google, I am sure you consider Google's actions to be perfectly not "evil"... http://www.extremetech.com/computing/87696-webgl-is-fundamentally-flawed/2 http://www.extremetech.com/computing/87696-webgl-is-fundamen... > But there’s more! Not only is WebGL inherently flawed, but Google — one of WebGL’s strongest proponents — even knew about the DoS and cross-domain image vulnerabilities months before they were thrust into the limelight by Context’s report. Not deterred by these flaws in the WebGL spec or its implementation, Google pushed ahead and turned on WebGL by default in February 2011, in Chrome 9. > As terrifying as that is, we now have to wonder why Google rushed the deployment of a nascent, dangerous technology... Note that it was enabled before the v1 of the specification was even released. But worse, when I follow the embedded links in the top para, why I do believe they show that you ("you" as in not Google, "you" as in you specifically) were aware of these security flaws before anyone else reported it, and yet you (as in Google) went ahead and enabled WebGL in Chrome by default. And then you accuse Microsoft behaving badly! Really?! > They are still a bad company that does arguably bad things I'd like examples of Microsoft "behaving badly", preferably: 1) stuff that isn't religious fanaticism; 2) stuff that isn't driven by vested interests that are not in everybody else's interests; 3) and stuff that I haven't already covered in my linked comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7282162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7282162). I hope you do better than the other replies in that subthread.

jongalloway2 13y ago

Different people have widely varying experiences working at Microsoft. There are 130k people in the company. That might mean your boss might vary a bit over a company that is bigger than many cities. WebGL shipped in IE11. I argued with them over getting it in earlier, too, but they had some semi-valid concerns over running web-delivered instructions directly on your GPU.

com2kid 13y ago

> I'm sure others can list more recent FUD and lies put out by Microsoft. Really? I had a PC on which Firefox and certain WebGL content would hard crash my machine thanks to what I resume are video card driver bugs. (Upgrading video card drivers resolved that particular instance of that problem) Given that, it is by no means unreasonable to assume that WebGL content might be able to hit security holes in video card drivers. What that entails, who knows. Presumably going right away and saying "sure, we'll just add a hole to let people stream code directly from the web right into your video card" sounded like a horrible idea. And since IE is shipped with the OS, level component, it has to be supported to customers for-bloody-ever. (Or so it seems at least!) So there is a higher bar, and all of a sudden releasing patches isn't an "auto-update the world and hopefully don't break anyone" sort of thing like it is with Chrome or Firefox, but now it becomes a "well have to test this patch across an almost unimaginable number of test scenarios and machine configs because we don't want to break functionality that any one of our large customers rely on". At that point, adding a new feature, which even sorta smells like it could open up a whole new can of worms, becomes, for good reason, somewhat less desirable! (Disclaimer: I work for MS, but in a completely unrelated area, opinions are my own, those of an overly paranoid-for-the-customers software engineer.)

greggman 13y ago
And yet MS is now shipping WebGL so it seems like your point is moot. MS doesn't believe the WebGL is insecure else they wouldn't have shipped it.
- throwawaykf05 13y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7282162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7282162 Cmd-F WebGL
  - greggman 13y ago
    You do realize MS continued to bash WebGL long after the CORS issue was resolved. The point is there's still reason to hate MS. They are still a bad company that does arguably bad things. I'm all for them switching to sweetness and light but the OP is suggesting their evil ways were 20 years ago. They're not. Their evil ways are still recent.
    - throwawaykf05 13y ago
      (Edited to add: I am not aware of any statements on WebGL from MS beyond that blog post, but I don't follow those circles, so I'll accept your word that they continued bashing it after CORS was introduced. However, people I'd trust more than either Google or Microsoft employees, like Carmack and various security researchers on HN like Daeken, agreed that WebGl is a security risk, so I disagree that counts as bad behavior on MS's part.) So why did Microsoft go ahead and include WebGL? Why, because they had to respond to Google who did exactly the same thing that Microsoft was lambasted for doing with IE: pushing proprietary, unsafe technology before it became standardized and forcing other browsers to catch up. But since you work for Google, I am sure you consider Google's actions to be perfectly not "evil"... http://www.extremetech.com/computing/87696-webgl-is-fundamentally-flawed/2 http://www.extremetech.com/computing/87696-webgl-is-fundamen... > But there’s more! Not only is WebGL inherently flawed, but Google — one of WebGL’s strongest proponents — even knew about the DoS and cross-domain image vulnerabilities months before they were thrust into the limelight by Context’s report. Not deterred by these flaws in the WebGL spec or its implementation, Google pushed ahead and turned on WebGL by default in February 2011, in Chrome 9. > As terrifying as that is, we now have to wonder why Google rushed the deployment of a nascent, dangerous technology... Note that it was enabled before the v1 of the specification was even released. But worse, when I follow the embedded links in the top para, why I do believe they show that you ("you" as in not Google, "you" as in you specifically) were aware of these security flaws before anyone else reported it, and yet you (as in Google) went ahead and enabled WebGL in Chrome by default. And then you accuse Microsoft behaving badly! Really?! > They are still a bad company that does arguably bad things I'd like examples of Microsoft "behaving badly", preferably: 1) stuff that isn't religious fanaticism; 2) stuff that isn't driven by vested interests that are not in everybody else's interests; 3) and stuff that I haven't already covered in my linked comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7282162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7282162). I hope you do better than the other replies in that subthread.