Staten VS: Office poorten naar Linux

The AARD Code

223. Bill Gates said it best: "Every message coming out of a computer has the potential for being confusing." Gates Depo. at 101-102. Microsoft leveraged this fact to maximum effect in what its attorneys now claim to be the "benign" message that was the AARD code.

224. In December 1991, Microsoft released a beta version of Windows 3.1 that -- unbeknownst to users, testers, and the press -- included secret encrypted code designed to produce false error messages when users tried to install and run Windows 3.1 on DR DOS. The messages themselves told the user that an "error" had occurred, but failed to describe the error, the cause of the error, or whether it was safe to proceed. Microsoft carefully hid the code in five different modules, encrypting it to make it difficult for anyone to discover that the "errors" were not errors, but rather were messages generated by obfuscated code as part of Microsoft's campaign to persuade users that DR DOS was incompatible with Windows. Hollaar Report at 2-14.

225. The record is unclear exactly when the AARD code was dreamed up for the Windows 3.1 beta cycle. Even the author of the code testified to no knowledge of who instigated this coding excursion. Reynolds Depo. at 17-18; see also Cole Depo. at 104-105. By September 27, 1991, however, plans were sufficiently advanced to generate debate -- and dissent -- within Microsoft:

Chase:
Two cents from richf and I:
1) The check for dr dos better be perfect. otherwise you could be in a heep of trouble (ex comes up on compaq or zenith dos). Moreover, this check better be good enough so that dr dos does not work around it and prevent the message from coming up
2) The message has to be consistent with our other error messages (caution box etc.) and avoid making us look bad. The message below, in my opinion, leads us open to bad PR -- it surely is the outer boundry of rudeness. It is also fairly extreme compared to others in the product we have seen.
3) The point is to tell users we don't work and that they should proceed with caution -- we can do this more professionally


Abel:
I hate this whole thing. I think it's totally rude, reinforces the image that users have of us as the evil ones, etc.

Het probleem is, dat een slecht geinstaleerde (Lees Default geinstaleerde) windows bak veiliger is dan een slecht geinstaleerde (lees default geinstaleerde) Windows machine.