I do bash Microsoft (and in particular, Windows) fairly frequently. Sometimes it's justified and sometimes I'm just ranting. But whatever the case, whenever the word 'security' is mentioned alongside 'Windows', people generally begin to switch off.
Why?
Because it's the same old moan. "Windows isn't secure". "Windows has too many bugs". "Windows is poorly written". I believe all these things to be true, but there are excuses: for one, Windows is the consumer OS of choice so naturally it's a delicious treat for script kiddies looking to score a few cool points by finding a new buffer overrun bug.
But that doesn't change the fact that the bugs are there.
Anyway more to the point, after much Vista-hating I eventually came to the decision that I ought to give the thing ago. After all, it was (at least originally) a kernel rewrite with potentially a lot of flaws fixed. Actually, it's not so much the individual flaws but the potential for them. A better-written system from the ground-up is likely to have less flaws exposed as time goes on than one which has been cobbled together from patches of 8-bit, 16-bit and then 32-bit software over 20 years.
So I was ready for the idea that Vista might change Microsoft's reputation for 'security'. Naturally, I wasn't entirely surprised to find that this will probably not be the case, as Vista is showing up to be more or less just as insecure as XP was.
Now I just feel sorry for all the punters who bought Gates's and Ballmer's incessant droning about how Vista — and that's still a ridiculous name for an OS — would hold up to today's expectations of integrity.
Well, I feel sorry for all the punters who bought Gates's and Ballmer's OS… pretty though it is.
Some things just never change.
