Monday, June 21, 2004
Where did the weekend go?
Well I know where half of it went - on providing free third-party tech support for Microsoft. Perhaps I should charge them.
Warning - this post is definitely headed in a rantward direction.
Phil, my ex-flatmate, has been having a few problems with his new PC, and being the neighbourhood techy expert, he asked me round to have a look at it. And boy was I shocked?!
He had 24 separate viruses, worms, trojans, password stealers and spyware programs running. He'd never patched or updated XP because no-one had ever told him he had to. E-mails were being sent out by his PC to "random" addresses whenever he went on-line, and at the same time his connection would be hijacked and it would re-dial a premium-rate number. And he was wondering why his PC was running so slowly...
5.5 hours of solid work on it, and I've still not fixed everything.
All this comes back to Microsoft. Their shining beacon of a secure operating system (and XP was billed as that when it first came out in 2001) has more holes than a truckload of fishnet stockings. This is because a release date for each new version is set in stone long in advance (we already know the next version, Longhorn, will be out late in 2006 or early in 2007), and whatever corners necessary are cut in order to meet these dates. Microsoft appear to think that this is a good way to write an operating system.
Errors are then fixed as and when Microsoft (a) are told about them by enough people and (b) can be bothered. Sometimes, this occurs before someone nasty writes something to take advantage of it. Sometimes not. Witness Blaster, Sasser, Nimda, Code Red, Klez ... it's a much longer list than that, those are just the five biggest ones I can think of.
Operating system "features", such as the built-in Internet firewall that only turns itself on after you're connected to the Net, the default settings on XP that give you an administrator account with no password, or the biggest virus vector of them all, Outlook Express's "auto-preview", are designed in with the supposed aim of improving the user experience. Not the users who have to put up with their abuse.
Internet Explorer, the world's most widely-used browser, contains plenty of holes too. A single visit to certain websites, and with its "helpful" facility which will run just about any code on a website without letting you know it's done it, and your PC becomes just another box in a large array of computers under the control of spammers - you'll be sending adverts to other people offering then cheap Viagra, university diplomas or asking them for funds to be transferred to Nigeria before you know it.
Ring Microsoft helpdesk, and their default answer for many of these issues is to reinstall Windows. Everyone's heard the joke - "If Microsoft made cars, they'd stop working every 100 miles, and you'd have to turn off the engine, get out, close all the windows and get back in again to make it work." This isn't even a viable solution to the problem any more. Reinstall XP, and you're back to a clean install from late 2001 when XP came out. So you've got to put on all the updates and patches from MS's update website. But you can't go online to do so because, if you do, you'll be caught by one of the very viruses or worms you're patching yourself against. It's not easy to find these updates and, say, write them to CD for use offline - read actually impossible for Internet Explorer, without going to a third party, and pretty hard to find for XP itself unless you know such a thing exists.
And yet people continue to buy Windows. Why is this? Perhaps it's because they don't know these problems are there - computers are "supposed to crash, it's just what they do." Perhaps it's because they don't realise there's any alternative. Perhaps it's because there are no major PC manufacturers who'll allow you to buy a new PC without Windows. Perhaps it's because Microsoft are doing their level best to smear their competition.
I'm glad they're choosing to spend their hard-earned $40bn (estimates vary, so that's the most conservative I could find) on that, rather than educating their users how to manage, maintain and safely operate their software without getting bitten by any of a million and one problems. Computes are complex things, and there's no real getting away from that, but the complex areas should not be disguised or hidden just because Microsoft's target market "wouldn't understand them." Treating your customers as idiots has seldom been a viable long-term business model. Except perhaps in marketing.
Well, I'm about ranted out there, and I haven't really reached a point. So my point will be this.
Ceterum censeo, Microsoft delendam esse.
Warning - this post is definitely headed in a rantward direction.
Phil, my ex-flatmate, has been having a few problems with his new PC, and being the neighbourhood techy expert, he asked me round to have a look at it. And boy was I shocked?!
He had 24 separate viruses, worms, trojans, password stealers and spyware programs running. He'd never patched or updated XP because no-one had ever told him he had to. E-mails were being sent out by his PC to "random" addresses whenever he went on-line, and at the same time his connection would be hijacked and it would re-dial a premium-rate number. And he was wondering why his PC was running so slowly...
5.5 hours of solid work on it, and I've still not fixed everything.
All this comes back to Microsoft. Their shining beacon of a secure operating system (and XP was billed as that when it first came out in 2001) has more holes than a truckload of fishnet stockings. This is because a release date for each new version is set in stone long in advance (we already know the next version, Longhorn, will be out late in 2006 or early in 2007), and whatever corners necessary are cut in order to meet these dates. Microsoft appear to think that this is a good way to write an operating system.
Errors are then fixed as and when Microsoft (a) are told about them by enough people and (b) can be bothered. Sometimes, this occurs before someone nasty writes something to take advantage of it. Sometimes not. Witness Blaster, Sasser, Nimda, Code Red, Klez ... it's a much longer list than that, those are just the five biggest ones I can think of.
Operating system "features", such as the built-in Internet firewall that only turns itself on after you're connected to the Net, the default settings on XP that give you an administrator account with no password, or the biggest virus vector of them all, Outlook Express's "auto-preview", are designed in with the supposed aim of improving the user experience. Not the users who have to put up with their abuse.
Internet Explorer, the world's most widely-used browser, contains plenty of holes too. A single visit to certain websites, and with its "helpful" facility which will run just about any code on a website without letting you know it's done it, and your PC becomes just another box in a large array of computers under the control of spammers - you'll be sending adverts to other people offering then cheap Viagra, university diplomas or asking them for funds to be transferred to Nigeria before you know it.
Ring Microsoft helpdesk, and their default answer for many of these issues is to reinstall Windows. Everyone's heard the joke - "If Microsoft made cars, they'd stop working every 100 miles, and you'd have to turn off the engine, get out, close all the windows and get back in again to make it work." This isn't even a viable solution to the problem any more. Reinstall XP, and you're back to a clean install from late 2001 when XP came out. So you've got to put on all the updates and patches from MS's update website. But you can't go online to do so because, if you do, you'll be caught by one of the very viruses or worms you're patching yourself against. It's not easy to find these updates and, say, write them to CD for use offline - read actually impossible for Internet Explorer, without going to a third party, and pretty hard to find for XP itself unless you know such a thing exists.
And yet people continue to buy Windows. Why is this? Perhaps it's because they don't know these problems are there - computers are "supposed to crash, it's just what they do." Perhaps it's because they don't realise there's any alternative. Perhaps it's because there are no major PC manufacturers who'll allow you to buy a new PC without Windows. Perhaps it's because Microsoft are doing their level best to smear their competition.
I'm glad they're choosing to spend their hard-earned $40bn (estimates vary, so that's the most conservative I could find) on that, rather than educating their users how to manage, maintain and safely operate their software without getting bitten by any of a million and one problems. Computes are complex things, and there's no real getting away from that, but the complex areas should not be disguised or hidden just because Microsoft's target market "wouldn't understand them." Treating your customers as idiots has seldom been a viable long-term business model. Except perhaps in marketing.
Well, I'm about ranted out there, and I haven't really reached a point. So my point will be this.
Ceterum censeo, Microsoft delendam esse.
posted by Chip : 19:20
3 comments
Comments:
Nothing much to add here really - I switched to a Mac and even though the blasted thing died after a few months, I have no intention to switch back.
Oh, and I'm loving the new Belle and Sebastian EP at the moment, always something to take me through the bad times. And this isn't the bad times!
Oh, and I'm loving the new Belle and Sebastian EP at the moment, always something to take me through the bad times. And this isn't the bad times!
What Chip said. A lot of people are idiots.. however just saying "people are idiots so we won't educate them" isn't a viable solution. It effectively comes down to the story often used around food aid to poor countries. "Give a man a fish, and he's got food for a day, but teach a man to fish and he's got food for the rest of his life". Long term hand-feeding and covering up of computers complexity (with the associated weakening of their power, fexability and security etc) isn't an option in my opinion.
Plus some other stuff I may right a blog on at some point. No time tonight for a long comment or a long blog post, but watch this space (or the space over at TheBlack.Org). I'm sure you can't wait.
Plus some other stuff I may right a blog on at some point. No time tonight for a long comment or a long blog post, but watch this space (or the space over at TheBlack.Org). I'm sure you can't wait.
I've always liked the variant on that phrase - "Give a man a fire, he's warm for the night. Set him on fire, he's warm for the rest of his life."
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