Why doesn't Microsoft do this too?

Story: German bloke earns $2,500 with Firefox bugsTotal Replies: 4
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hkwint

Mar 30, 2005
6:02 AM EDT
M$ should look at this. They could find 2000 bugs per million $. That's not bad, is it? (Ok, their's a drawback: they should also fix the errors). I mean, if you're a cracker, and find a (couple of) bug(s) in M$, then you could: -Compromise some boxes, -Earn money for reporting them to MS. (Uhm, a brand new PC for 5 bugs!)

What would you chose if you were a cracker?
cjcox

Mar 30, 2005
10:03 AM EDT
A hacker (I'm old school, not the namby-pamby "pc" cracker thing) would choose neither until Microsoft makes some changes to their policies (e.g. open source thier OS and respect and appreciate exposure of their faults). I suspect you knew this and meant for your post to be cynical.

Cracking is a skill a hacker possesses, a cracker is something you have with soup.

If I were a "cracker" I'd choose tomato soup... I like tomato soup... especially with a lot of black pepper in it.
hkwint

Mar 30, 2005
1:01 PM EDT
Well, first I was joking, then I thought it actually could be a good idea, but it isn't, since one can't find the bugs because of the closed source (except some "Fatal Exception 0x0000000fe8, and the only possibility is to chose OK, or send a bug report containing all your passwd to M$).

I mean, at M$, they definitley don't have the 'brains' to find the bugs themselves. And, worse, they don't have the brains and the mind to solve them. It's a better idea if they pay other, skilled people for solving bugs. But they're to busy with Wait_very_long-horn, Digital Restriction Management, Internet Exploder 7 and the other good things we should be M$ thankful for.

So, we just stick with the crackers with our tomato soup (Please not the tomato-soup with apple-puree in it, like the Chinese restaurants over here do. It makes my cracker's taste bad).
SFN

Mar 31, 2005
4:37 AM EDT
But Microsoft doesn't have enough bugs to make an effort like this worthwhile. Also, they get their bugs fixed in a timely manner on their own.



Who's with me in proposing a "sarcasm" tag to the W3C?
cjcox

Mar 31, 2005
1:45 PM EDT
I used to manage a QA group for one of the top ten software companies... it's a hard task. You really need everyone's help for it to succeed. Free and open source software really does help since everyone can feel a sense of ownership. Help out Microsoft and Bill Gates gets a new sports car. Kind of discouraging.

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