timeout
Timeout - Newspapers are reporting that Microsoft has taken a timeout for at least a month for everyone to focus on nothing but securing every piece of code we ship. So I guess I don’t have to keep it secret anymore. The training sessions and “drop everything else” orders are not the only impact; it is quite amazing to see the amount of effort being put into this. Mr. Pescatore is still making suggestions; I think he would be surprised that anything he has suggested so far is already underway in much larger scale than he would have expected. Of course, re-setting the priorities and ramping up the skills will not be the end of the story. Even with the most skilled possible organization, security issues will arise. So there are systemic issues that need to be dealt with.
I’ve been through about ten different legal training sessions during my time at Microsoft; things like DMCA and the impending consent decree mean that these too will continue. I am probably somewhat unique, in that I find these sessions interesting. It is amazing how many ways there are to accidentally screw up and expose liability.
This very comprehensive article in Washington Post discusses how the Big 5 accounting firms are able to avoid liability. An interesting anecdote is the E&Y lawyers’ peer journal submission talking about how they were able to defeat a particularly nasty case. The publication was titled “Loss Causation: A Defendant’s Secret Weapon.” Such arguments, they noted, “can brush aside even the most difficult set of facts against a defendant.” I bet that Milosevic would really like some tricks to “brush aside difficult facts” right now (”Milosevic Pescatore” isn’t even a googlewhack).
I have a subscription to “The Practical Litigator”, in fact. It is refreshingly different from the normal computer stuff that I read. Did you know that a woman juror is less likely to give a woman defendent a large settlement in a high-value case? Do you know the ten most dangerous things you can do with a hyperlink? Subscribe today and find out!