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Technology Stocks : Novell (NOVL) dirt cheap, good buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ToySoldier who wrote (34488)	10/29/2000 6:20:41 AM
From: Paul Fiondella	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

Hackers Theft of intellectual property is widespread and encouraged by many governments (including our own so long as the victim is economically unimportant). In Microsoft's case the victim is the emperor of the modern corporate world. So who would want to steal the emperors's secrets? My guess would be a foreign government. The mention of St. Petersburg brings to mind an incident that happened to me in Russia in the early 90's. I was giving a speech about the development of the IBM PC and the changes that an inexpensive computer that anyone could buy and program brought about in the American computer industry. Afterwards the questions the young people at this elite high school asked about were my attitudes toward writing viruses. I would suspect that young people are being encouraged to develop these skills as a way of getting access to technology that cannot be developed easily otherwise. Stealing is always easier than creating. (The one exception to the corporate monopoly on intellectual property rights is LINUX and the open source movement where code is shared and cross developed. But sharing isn't what these political forces are interested in.) What should worry the people in Washington who keep strengthening monopolies like Microsoft against other American companies is the fact proven again by this hack that Microsoft has technological feet of clay. By basing our national security on Microsoft's operating systems we are making ourselves vulnerable to poorly engineered products. I see that weakness being exploited by other countries. So my suspicions are that this break-in was done by a foreign power to acquire American technology. After all Putin (despite George Bush's eloquent foreign policy statements to the contrary) is a KGB.