+ Open Windows...

Windows Update has just informed me that there is another chink in the armour of Windows that could allow the pernicious souls out there to execute codes remotely on my machine. I don’t understand these things too much but it seemed to say that this problem was part of the Help file. Hmmm.

Looking at the regularity with which holes are found in Windows (we don’t really know how many people get to know about them before Microsoft does), it seems more of a sieve than an armour. And how is it that every bit of software they make has gaping security holes that makes my computer a public utility? This is not just in the first versions, but in the supplementary ones too. In fact, it would be useful to assume that a security fix or patch itself has a bit of lazy coding that is the incubator for the next security hole.

Microsoft says this new threat is inherent in IE 6 Service Pack 1 and Win2000 Service Pack 3, among a lot of other versions of other software. I quite believe that. The only time you will not get a security alert from Microsoft about one of its products is when they stop supporting it. That’s when they also stop their efforts at trying to find out what more is wrong with their software.

That, however, doesn’t mean that Microsoft feels responsible for the problems in their software when they are still supporting it. No. Part of the EULA, which I am sure 99.99% of users don’t read a line of, says that Microsoft’s liability is restricted to $5 – even if your work suddenly came to a standstill because of this. So, I pay thousands for their software, things will go wrong, I will likely lose some peace and some time, and this is part of the initial understanding....

This cannot of course explain the large-scale piracy, but I can begin to understand why piracy may sometimes not be the evil thing it is. The estimate is that only about 30% of the Windows copies used around the world are legal – and I don’t think Microsoft deserves more than that.