When Software Leaks (and What Really Goes Down)

Bryant writes "The Windows community is somewhat notorious for leaks from upcoming versions of Windows (obligatory link to this guy since that's most of what he does), and while the official PR word from Microsoft and many other companies with regards to leaks is a simple 'no comment,' no one has really gotten a candid, inside look at the various things that go down when word, screenshots, or builds of upcoming software leak. I managed to get some time with a senior Microsoft employee for the sake of discussing leaks, and the conclusions reached (leaks heavily affect communication, not so much the product schedule) as well as what these guys actually have to deal with whenever someone leaks a build, breaks an embargo, etc. may actually be a surprise given what most companies try to instill in the public mind."

I always had the impression

[Presto Vivace]

the Microsoft leaks were a calculated way to build public interest in new products. But what do I know.

Re:I always had the impression

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they still are, this guy was talking about unplanned leaks, which would mean that there are also planned leaks.

Re:

[shentino]

Yes, planned leaks.

Also known as beta versions.

Re:

[commodore64_love]

Darn. I thought this article would be about memory leaks, which make programs like Firefox inexplicable grow from 50,000 to 500,000 bytes of RAM, even after I close all the tabs. I never understood that behavior.

Re:

[oscartheduck]

I'm responding to this because earlier posts from you have seemed to be on the level.

Firefox stores the history of each tab in RAM. So if you reopen a tab with ctrl-alt-T (presumably, it's command-alt-T in Mac OS) then to maintain this behaviour the tab has to reopen with its history intact. Because that history is stored in RAM, this means that merely closing a Firefox tab does little to minimise its memory usage. There's an about::config flag to alter this behaviour, but I don't know it offhand.

Re:I always had the impression

[Foredecker]

I'm a relatively senior development manager in Windows and no, they are not calculated or deliberate. There is no super secrete leak committee. Leaks are a big hassle.

Toby Zeigler on leaks

[Presto Vivace]

leaks are about showing off [blogspot.com].

Re:

[Presto Vivace]

There is a larger point here about leaks. First of all the HP reaction to the leak was all out of proportion to what happened. Their reaction was about control, not about protecting the company. Secondly, leaks are about showing off and are corrosive to building trust. When you leak you are working for the reporter and their publication, not your company or your company's customers. That is what my blog post was about.

Re:

[postbigbang]

No, leaks are spin control, pimping products, and controling the 'conversation'.

They're like the proverbial flags run up the pole to see who salutes. If they were serious, like Apple, they'd jump right down the throat of the leak and drop a grenade.

Leaks done by a few are designed to make them look good somehow, as though they're kewl or trying to assert some 'creds'. Mostly it's random BS.

Otherwise, it's a marketing department decision, and they know exactly what they're doing. It's calulcated and it works

Re:I always had the impression

[SEWilco]

secrete leak

Heh.

Re:

[Nefarious Wheel]

Never show a child or a fool a thing half-finished.

Re:I always had the impression

[larkost]

Never show a child or a fool a thing half-finished.

Then how exactly are we supposed to show management that we are actually getting something done?

Re:I always had the impression

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what PowerPoint is for. You have to speak to them in their own language (i.e. pictures and text so simple as to be inaccurate) ;)

Re:

[Nefarious Wheel]

That's what PowerPoint is for. You have to speak to them in their own language (i.e. pictures and text so simple as to be inaccurate) ;)p>

That's what PowerPoint is used badly for.

The best use is as a sort of wallpaper you use to give people a fixed visual link for the things you are saying. Think of it as an index to the stuff you want them to remember, a key phrase that your audience can use as an association for the stuff you want them to remember - you do the actual talking, the communicating. Use pictures a lot.

And if you really want people to remember, have popcorn popping or some other good smell happening, because the olfactory s

Re:

[Nefarious Wheel]

ga;ty

Re:

[lukas84]

That's above your paygrade.

Re:I always had the impression

[Sir_Lewk]

There is no super secrete leak committee.

See, this statement is logically flawed.

If you knew about it, and told us it existed, then it would not in fact be "secrete" and thus not exist. Your absense of knowledge of this "super secrete" committee is similarly in no way prove of it's nonexistance. Furthermore, if the the committee does in fact exist and you are aware of it, then you denying its existance would be expected.

Re:

[Bob-taro]

Your absense of knowledge of this "super secrete" committee

"Absense"? People who don't spell check shouldn't throw stones.

Re:

[JohnnyBGod]

You must really like people talking trash about the work you do, to hang around here.

Re:

[shutdown -p now]

You must really like people talking trash about the work you do, to hang around here.

Imagine the sheer joy of writing /. post that exalts the virtues of Win7, lambasts Apple, pokes fun at Google, and has a well-hidden pun on Linux, and getting it modded to "+5, Insightful" - because it really is that well-written.

It's as rare as you think it is, but it does happen.

~

Re:I always had the impression

[6ULDV8]

That's exactly what I'd expect the Secret Leak Committee to say.

Re:

[Philip_the_physicist]

There is no Cabal^HSecret Leak Committee

Best Regards,
The Cabal

No they are not 8for you)

[aepervius]

if you are a dev manager , then you do not care a SHIT on leak. As the ncie article pointed out, only MARKETING manager and associated cre for a leak.

Re:

[Sir_Sri]

Leaks have a lot of different causes. They can be someone trying to get their 15 minutes of fame for the leak, or a disgruntled employee trying to make things look bad. They can be communication from the devs to management that things are not in a good state and the leak forces the issue. They can, as you describe, be intentionally done by marketting types (though it's unlikely MS would need or want to do this, since anyone really interested in MS products can get in on various builds that actually work)

Re:

[Presto Vivace]

They can also be bogus, as in where a reporter just makes stuff up, but not in the case of the article cited above.

Re:

[Sir_Sri]

true enough

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:I always had the impression

[dbIII]

It's not just the early 1990s - remember all the things that Longhorn was supposed to do and how it was going to be an OS X killer? What we actually got was Vista with it's main redeeming feature being eyecandy no better than we saw in the Enlightenment window manager back before Slashdot even existed, let alone what OS X was by the time Vista came out.

Re:

[cerberusss]

To be able to kick the competitor's asses without actually having a product is pretty damned impressive in my book

In my book, this is cold and calculated, and doing business in the cut-throat way. I hate it, because it can kill fledgling entrepreneurs with good ideas but no steady cashflow.

I think it's totally unethical. But then again, I probably won't get rich.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[RobertM1968]

Apparently, what you know is the truth, that this guy is trying to obsfucate. Otherwise people like the examples listed would have been fined/sued/jailed (or some combination of 2 or more of the above) quite some time ago.

Calling jcr. How was this handled at Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

John C. Randolph, how were leaks handled at Apple?

Does their method of handling leaks reflect the vastly different culture at Apple versus, say, Microsoft, Oracle and IBM?

They are effective even if they aren't quality

[psnINsplPL]

Microsoft is very effective at marketing in a fashion that gets many people interested in their products.

It also gets people that would normally dislike their products curious about what's going on and trying them.

I've watched it happen for so many years now that I know it to be a fact!

Re:

[Stupendoussteve]

It has nothing to do with marketing "in a fashion", that is the definition of marketing period.

Apple could be viewed the same way.

Re:

[Jesus_666]

However, Apple didn't hold a monopoly while having an abysmal track record in things like security or doing what the software is supposed to do (I'm looking at you, IE). I mean, Microsoft held their monopolies for years while Windows and IE were the butt of jokes made even by rather nontechnical users.

Re:

[earlymon]

Microsoft is very effective at marketing in a fashion that gets many people interested in their products.

Windows 7 Party [youtube.com]

Bill and Jerry in the shoe store [youtube.com]

Now, you'll excuse me while I brush the floor off of my shoulder - evidently stuck there from the fact that I'm ROTFLMAO.

But then again, I wonder - how has Microsoft's most successful marketing worked? Ah - here it is:

Microsoft forces DELL to deliver Windows [telenet.be]

'Surprise'

[fridaynightsmoke]

Was the surprise the lack of surprises?

I would summarise that interview as "When builds leak they might be incomplete or old, and people may get a wrong impression of what the product will be like. This causes my phone to ring which is a pain in the ass"

No real surprises there.

Re:'Surprise'

[SilverHatHacker]

This causes my phone to ring which is a pain in the ass

I suggest you don't sit on it when it's set on "Power-vibrate".

Re:

[NoYob]

This causes my phone to ring which is a pain in the ass

Well, he shouldn't sit on his phone.It wouldn't be a pain in the ass then, would it?

Geeze!

Unless, he's kinky and well I won't go there.

Re:

[RAMMS+EIN]

``I would summarise that interview as "When builds leak they might be incomplete or old, and people may get a wrong impression of what the product will be like. This causes my phone to ring which is a pain in the ass"''

Also, if the issue is that leaked builds give people wrong impressions about your product, why don't you release builds that give the right impression? I can see the argument for wanting to keep things under wraps, but if reality is that builds get out there, you might as well ensure that the

I'm not surprised

[woolio]

I would summarise that interview as "When builds leak they might be incomplete or old, and people may get a wrong impression of what the product will be like. This causes my phone to ring which is a pain in the ass"

No real surprises there.

Well I'm not surprised at all. He must actually like leaks, otherwise he wouldn't keep his phone shoved up his ass.

Re:

[tehniobium]

Yeh, I was hoping for the MIA (MS Internal Affairs) who are a CSI type outfit to come in and kick the hell out of everybody ;)

Or at least something more surprising and "insiderish" than this BS.

Then again I should know not to RTFA ;)

You know

[Turzyx]

It's suprising how many times one person can, you know, say "you know" in one interview. For the record, it was 22 times, don't you know...

Re:

[fridaynightsmoke]

It's suprising how many times one person can, you know, say "you know" in one interview. For the record, it was 22 times, don't you know...

Well, you know, it can, erm, you know, act as a very effective, er, space-filler, you know, when you're, erm, trying to think of what to say next, if you know what I mean.

Re:

[sopssa]

Another thing was the constant "Right." answer from the interviewee.

Re:

[Jesus_666]

But, you know, it could've been, like, totally worse.

Re:

[poofmeisterp]

It's suprising how many times one person can, you know, say "you know" in one interview.

For the record, it was 22 times, don't you know...

Don't you know is from Minnesota, don't you know? :>

Re:

[sixteenbitsamurai]

Minnesotans will vehemently disagree and tell you Canadians speak like that, then Canadians will turn around and cuss you out in French. Really though, nobody talks like that except old folks of Scandinavian descent and no one else in Minnesota does unless you are an asshole tourist looking to get your ass kicked. As a matter of fact, the actual "accent" or "dialect" we possess, or rather the lack of an accent or dialect, is often emulated by television and movie actors because the quality of our spoken Eng

Re:You know

[turing_m]

As a matter of fact, the actual "accent" or "dialect" we possess, or rather the lack of an accent or dialect

Yes, after all those thousands of years English has been evolving and mutating, it finally finds perfect expression without accent or dialect in, of all places, Minnesota, USA. Coincidentally, where you were born and raised. What are the chances? How lucky you are!

p.s. when your bridge gets fixed, consider a road trip.

Re:

[Jesus_666]

There are places like that. For instance, standard High German is virtually identical to the Hannover dialect. Being from Lower Saxony* I find it very slightly sad that my area doesn't have much of an accent. We're 100 km north of Hannover so our language is colored ever so slightly but if I want to get any noticeable local color I have to mix in Low German, which is a different language altogether. Which I don't really speak.


* For all non-German readers: Hannover is the capital of Lower Saxony.

Re:

[oldhack]

You betcha!

Re:

[nametaken]

As someone who grew up in a different region and travels to Minnesota on occasion, I'm quite comfortable confirming that you folks do speak that way. Of course us Chicago natives apparently sound like Coach Ditka in the SNL skits. ;)

It's more pronounced in da U.P. though, eh. We haav a place dare too, eh.

Re:

[kaizokuace]

Yea "don't you know" is like part of their syntax for the midwest markup language MML. It's the same as in HTML.

Re:

[selven]

Try listening to people in casual unprepared (speech, not text) conversation. You'll be surprised how many nonsense syllables people use because their thought can't keep up with their speaking.

Re:You know

[poofmeisterp]

Try listening to people in casual unprepared (speech, not text) conversation. You'll be surprised how many nonsense syllables people use because their thought can't keep up with their speaking.

You know, sometimes things just make sense. You know? I mean, there are some things that I don't, you know, think a lot about, until, you know, I see a good comment on, you know, the issue I, well, you know, missed.

Good one, selven! :)

I have the opposite issue. Mind races, mouth tries to keep up. Words get dropped from the middle of sentences. ;)

Re:

[psnINsplPL]

I have the opposite issue. Mind races, mouth tries to keep up. Words get dropped from the middle of sentences. ;)

I hear ya on that one! I've been made fun of constantly because of the dropped words. Jumping from thought to thought requires too much vocal time for that kind of communication.

Re:You know

[dj_tla]

It's common practice for a journalist to strip those nonsense syllables from an audio interview transcribed to text. Just sayin'.

Re:

[ceoyoyo]

Also the "right" every other paragraph where the blogger felt he had to insert something he said so he could remind the reader that it was actually an interview and not a guest blogger.

Re:

[dubbayu_d_40]

As someone who often speaks publicly, I have trained myself to replace "ummm" with "you know." It works very well in verbal communication because it buys the speaker time and doesn't make either party uncomfortable or appear dumb. I guess it doesn't translate well to print, I'll have to remember that should I be interviewed.

Re:

[skiman1979]

"you know" can still be distracting in public speaking, especially if you say it a lot. Are you suggesting that I already know the things you are telling me in your speech? If so, then why are you telling me these things? Is your speech insignificant? :)

People tend to say 'umm' and the like a lot less in 1 on 1 conversations than they do when speaking to an audience. If you can pick different audience members to make eye contact with during different parts of your speech, like you are talking directly t

Re:

[toddestan]

You know, that's not a bad idea, you know. Though it may get old after a while, you know. So I would try and use it sparingly, you know.

Re:

[inode_buddha]

Like, totally....

Oh, THOSE leaks

[domulys]

It took me a few minutes to realize that we were't talking about memory leaks.

I've been spending too much time with Valgrind lately...

Re:

[Culture20]

It took me a few minutes to realize that we were't talking about memory leaks.

You're not alone. I blame the editor. Software can *be* leaked (dispersed before official release), but software doesn't leak by itself except as memory leaks (and maybe software that controls hydroelectric dams or sprinkler systems). The title should be "When Software is Leaked", but it's not as "actiony" sounding.

I don't believe the article.

[tjstork]

I think the "anonymous softie", the over use of colloquial communication's - "you know", shows that this interview was entirely made up.

Re:

[Foredecker]

I'm a relatively senior development manager in Windows. Your right, this sounds made up. If the anonymous person is a real MSFT employee, then it doesn't sound like someone from the core product group (COSD or WEX).

Re:

[GigsVT]

I'm a relatively senior development manager in Windows.

Not any more!

Re:I don't believe the article.

[Sir_Lewk]

I think that the misuse of "your" shows that this post was entirely made up. If this slashdotter is a real MSFT employee, then it doesn't sound like someone from client performance team of the core product group.

Sorry, I just fail to see how overuse of the phrase "you know" signifies much of anything. You know?

Re:

[tjstork]

I think that the misuse of "your" shows that this post was entirely made up. If this slashdotter is a real MSFT employee, then it doesn't sound like someone from client performance team of the core product group.

Uh, check his posting history. I think he's the real deal.

Re:

[Sir_Lewk]

I don't doubt it, I was simply pointing out the absurdity in his reasoning.

Leak concern?

[cpattersonv1]

It's odd that they would be concerned with the perception of quality in leaked software... Microsoft customers have come to expect the final release to be buggy anyhow. The only people who are going to install the leaked software probably wouldn't buy the final build anyhow.

Re:

[lukas84]

You're assuming that the guy the interviewer talked with actually wants to ship buggy software. He doesn't.

Management does. Because they're interested in the shareholders, not the customers.

Re:

[cpattersonv1]

Not really.

I'm assuming the person the interviewer spoke with isn't a developer at all. Developers know their work is in progress and don't care if people get copies of the code before it's released... unless it's a private developer... then it's their personal code. All the developer wants is the paycheck.

The interviewed is more than likely a PR person. The developer's phone wouldn't ring off the hook because the company would secretly investigate his terminal for proof of leak.

Since it's a PR person

Re:

[shutdown -p now]

I'm assuming the person the interviewer spoke with isn't a developer at all. Developers know their work is in progress and don't care if people get copies of the code before it's released.

What makes you think the developers don't care at all about perception of their work?

A leaked build can be one of the daily builds. As such, it can have some pretty major bugs in it, if the last few commits didn't play well together, or one was just fscked up - in fact, such a build might as well just crash on startup. When it gets leaked with that stuff, you can be sure that someone, somewhere, writes a witty blog post along the lines of, "Microsoft is nearing RC, and yet the product is full of major bugs;

Re:

[Sulphur]

New software released without major flaws.

--

Whom the Mods wish to destroy, they first drive mad.

weird tag line

[cliffiecee]

The header says "Aeroexperience Blog: The forums are over there."

That's not very catchy, it seems like some sort of advisory note, as if Windows enthusiasts were so clueless that-

<smug>Ah, I get it now.</smug>

Windows 7’s biggest threat: journalists

[David Gerard]

As Microsoft's launch of Windows 7 continues to attract small amounts of attention, it today issued a plea through its network of objective opinion-shapers: Don’t let the journalists near it. [today.com]

“We understand that many journalists use Macs,” said CNet marketing marketer Don Reisinger. “This means they necessarily suckle at the Satanic rear passage of Steve Jobs. We cannot countenance their bias and 'reality' leaks. Journalists are responsible for all those signs outside computer shops offering to replace Vista with XP. When was the last time you saw the entire technology field stop and wait for an announcement from any other company besides Apple? It’s so unfair!”

Smears and slanders also come from obsessive overweight nerdy Mac-using Linux geek troublemakers who run “benchmarks” and “tests.” “It’s horrifying leaks and bias from the ‘reality’-based community,” said ZDNet marketing marketer Mary Jo Enderle. “We understand that, just because Vista was 40% slower than XP and Windows 7 is the same speed as Vista, the nattering nabobs of negativism are already writing press releases condemning it as ‘not enough of an improvement’ - based entirely on unauthorised leaks of the official beta and RC. It’s so unfair!”

“Mactards are like concentration camp guards,” said Guardian marketing marketer Jack Schofield, “brutalising ‘I’m A PC’ users and” [This comment has been removed by a Guardian moderator. Replies may also be deleted.]

“The only reason Vista failed was because Microsoft planned for it to fail,” said Reisinger in an earlier ad-banner troll post. “It was a fantastically subtle double-bluff! They did the honorable thing in the face of the vile calumnies spread by Apple. It’s so unfair!”

Microsoft debuted Windows 7 on a new 17 Asus Eee Ultra-Portable Mini-Netbook with 8GB memory and a 2GHz quad-core processor. Battery life is up to twenty minutes in preliminary tests.

Real security slows things down too much.

[Kenja]

Real security slows things down too much, so companies get by with "good enough" and then get litigious if things go wrong.

Side note

[93 Escort Wagon]

Speaking as a web developer (and admittedly a Mac user, FWIW) - shouldn't a website named "AeroXperience" work a bit harder at having a halfway decent web site design? While I personally think the graphics are ugly, what really stands out is how the page doesn't scale - and it's not like there's some overarching design that requires the amount of page width the styles seem to be enforcing.

Aero is all about the visuals, right?

Old news - leaking Windows since 1983

[linebackn]

It's not like Microsoft's "leaks" are anything new. I have even found references on old archived newsgroups to people discussing pre-release Windows 1.0 as early as late 1983 (although perhaps not "leaked" if they were meant to have it). Late 1983 was when Microsoft was promoting this vapor-ware product in magazines such as Byte in order to upstage the now forgotten VisiCorp Visi On and this little product about to be announced from Apple called the Macintosh. Of course it was not officially release until 1985. There is even a late 1984 pre-release still floating around.

Microsoft wants people to get their hands on their software. They make it available to developers, testers, and reviewers. And if they wave their hand to others and say "ah-ah-ah you aren't allowed to have that" then people start drooling over this tempting forbidden software rather than seeing it as just another pile of bits. It is an inexpensive way to produce publicity.

Re:

[Anne Honime]

I completely agree. Before the widespread use of Internet, in a time when torrents were still a dream, I was using daily an early build of Windows 98 dubbed Win'96 by the press. It was massively copied the old fashioned way and spread. Tough beast to use, but pretty stable compared to a legit Win95 if you absolutely barred yourself to put a picture in the background of the explorer.

Re:

[cyclomedia]

I remember them days.... Win 96 was essentially win 95b, IMO the best of the 95 branch, it went something like

1995 - Win 95 (No IE integration)
1996 - 95B (essentially SP1)
1997 - 95C (Introduced IE4 integration, evil!)
1998 - 98
1999 - 98SE - with IE5 built in
2000 - ME

So there was a flavour of the 95 family for each of those years, up until 2007 i was using a bizzare mix of 95B and 98SE courtesy of 98lite. I suspect your "Win96" was 95C, being the first attempt to lock-in IE before 98 proper came alon

Windows '96

[Anne Honime]

It was not an official build. I digged a bit and found a ref :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Nashville [wikipedia.org]

From snapshots you can't really see the differences between it and 95 or 98, but it was really a mix bag of both and had some very nifty tricks that did not make it in 98. For instance, you could get rid of mouse double-clicks, and use 1 click action throughout the UI, weblike. Options would turn blue when hovered by the mouse pointer. There was a good Personal Information Manager that wasn't kept

Re:

[bigstrat2003]

From snapshots you can't really see the differences between it and 95 or 98, but it was really a mix bag of both and had some very nifty tricks that did not make it in 98. For instance, you could get rid of mouse double-clicks, and use 1 click action throughout the UI, weblike. Options would turn blue when hovered by the mouse pointer.

Dude, that was actually in 98. It confused the hell out of most users (who were accustomed by then to the double-click), but it was there.

Re:

[Anne Honime]

It did not worked the same way. There are '96 disk images ready for vmware and other such emulators. Try it out by yourself. Win '96 was in my opinion way less confusing and much more consistent than 98 in that respect. Just my opinion, though.

Re:

[IntlHarvester]

Right. I used to get Windows 95 betas directly from Microsoft's sales/consulting people.

However, there's sites that post screenshots of early Windows alpha releases handed out to driver devs. The general internet reaction tends negative because it isn't visually any different than the current version. I can't imagine those sorts of leaks do much for PR.

So what do we take away vis a vis open source?

[PCM2]

Compare to Linux, for example, where "leaking an unfinished build" is a total non-issue. Even expected, in fact. So whether the leaks are intentional or not, if they are a problem, then it sounds like they're a problem of Microsoft's own making.

gcc 2.96 - Re:So what do we take away vis a vis...

[sowth]

Sometimes it is a problem for Open Source. gcc "2.96" [gnu.org] for example. A distro took an experimental version of gcc, called it "2.96" (the previous version was 2.95.x) and released it in their distribution. This version of gcc had a number of serious problems and incompatibilities with other versions of gcc.

This caused quite a few headaches. If you ever see a version of gcc marked 2.96, DO NOT use it. It is screwed up.

This is partly why I don't like to use distros who modify projects. Yeah, they may improve

Re:

[evilviper]

did the maintainer really think he was more of a cryptography programming expert than the OpenBSD guys?

The OpenBSD guys wrote and maintain OpenSSH, which uses OpenSSL. The OpenBSD guys don't have anything to do with OpenSSL.

Re:

[sowth]

You are correct. From openssl.org [openssl.org]:

OpenSSL is based on the excellent SSLeay library developed by Eric A. Young and Tim J. Hudson.

Sorry for the misinformation.

Re:

[im_thatoneguy]

Yeah Open Source doesn't have any sort of image problem with being "Half baked" or "constantly in beta". I'm sure Microsoft wishes it had Linux's desktop market share.

My software doesn't leak

[noidentity]

I use Java, so my software doesn't have memory leaks.

Re:

[vivek7006]

"I use Java, so my software doesn't have memory leaks"

But its slow as a donkey :)

Re:

[vivek7006]

  <--------- Whooosh

     /"""""
    |  (')')
    C     _)
     \   _|
      \__/

      Mods

Re:

[noidentity]

I admit it; I lied. I don't use Java and don't like it. Its lack of destructors (as C++ has) is a big shortcoming, since destructors aren't just about freeing resources. Witness Java code with lots of finally clauses, where in C++ you can package that cleanup with creation, eliminating the possibility creating without deleting. Also in Java you often want to call close() on a file/stream to ensure it's closed now, not whenever the collector feels like it.

reasonable comments

[Slashed Dot]

you know, i really found this article to be educational also, because i've seen it before where someone will post a leak of some sort, a leaked build, or leaked screen shots, something leaked, and they will say 'wow look it's so rough man this will be the worst most horrible experience ever' or 'look they cut this essential feature out it will be horrible' or 'look how sloppy everything is!'. from what i read of this dev's statements, he sounds like me when i'm working on anything, from my car to my compute

MS Leaks Disambiguation

[speardane]

I misunderstood....

I thought you were talking about "leaks" in products like Word (and other non-MS products) and XP "going down" - I find even with Word 2003 it was still safer to reboot every other weekend. Has this been fixed yet?

for the me the rest is all variations in marketing technique...

Re:

[NoYob]

What kind of fucking retarded dickwipe are you, then? Your parents must hang their heads in shame that you ever sprung from their ill-fated loins. Fuckwit.

You tell him!

I gotta tell you this though. It was the shittiest article on leaks in boat hulls I've ever read! I mean, WTF does Microsoft have to do with it?!

Re:

[sowth]

I for one think it is idiotic to edit what the interviewee said. Even with grammar corrections, who is to say you won't accidentally change the subtle meaning of what they said?

I say you did it the right way, and should not listen to grammar Nazi trolls. Grammar and spelling only really matter when it would cause someone to misunderstand something.

Re:

[Zontar The Mindless]

I say you did it the right way, and should not listen to grammar Nazi trolls. Grammar and spelling only really matter when it would cause someone to misunderstand something.

Translation: "Clear communication doesn't matter. It is perfectly acceptable to expect your audience to burn up cycles performing your error-checking for you. If they get it wrong, what the hell, it's not your problem."