Peeves: Microsoft software non-security
Microsoft has done a huge amount of work in recent years to improve its software's usability, and it has always worked to pack in hundreds and thousands of features for the money. It has always had bugs, however. (If Bill Gates says he employs the world's smartest programmers, does that mean bugs are implicit to the medium? Links to Microsoft bug-documenting websites are welcome here.) Its software has also been perennially and woefully prone to being hacked to smithereens; in three words, its security sucks. Microsoft and security historically do not belong in the same sentence. Thankfully, Gatesland is starting to remedy that situation with a major overhaul of Windows XP in SP2.
When teaching classes, I am tempted to cajole my students into doing one thing every time they encounter a bug in any Microsoft product: Snarl sarcastically, "Thank you, Bill Gates!" In time, an emotional animus might build across the population enough to pressure Microsoft to spend more on R&D to eliminate bugs and enhance security, rather than stuff Bill Gates's much-vaunted coffers.
posted by Twerpette @ 8:33 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Stevie D: I have XP-Home on my Dell, and my sis had XP Pro on her computer. Both of us have had major glitches.SP2 has caused most of them, it seems! I'm not sure how patch after patch after patch improves the product. It's like putting new wine in old,patched wineskins. I use my Dell almost exclusively now for e-mail and games. It makes me more of a Mac fan every single day!
Hope springs eternal, I guess. Maybe the next big thing or the next big patch will fix it! lol
Windows XP SP2 had glitches on enough computers that Microsoft built in a rollback (uninstall) procedure. I've read of the problems but haven't seen them on any of the dozens of business and home PCs I've updated. The first year I covered Windows security for ComputerUser magazine (1998), Microsoft was admitting to one Windows vulnerability every 2-3 days -- and admitting their errors comes hard!
Since 1983 with the Lisa, I have always loved the Mac more than Windows and esp. DOS -- and Mac OS X definitely advances the bar -- but today's reality is that Windows has won. Some things in computing or on the Web you simply cannot do without a PC, because companies like eBay have decided to make it that way.
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