How Microsoft Got It Wrong
Larry Seltzer points out that you really, really have to try hard to screw up hard to mess up your Windows PC's copy of Internet Explorer with a Java applet that can run via Firefox, and some other non-Internet Explorer browsers.
I mean the spyware-bearing applet on Firefox does everything except scream at you that installing it is a bad idea.
People being people, I understand that it's spreading rapidly.
Maybe we should have a gate on the Internet saying "you must be at least this smart to ride on this network."
While this particular bug requires stupidity above and beyond the call of idiocy to get, it does point out a problem that's peculiar in modern operating systems to the Windows desktop.
Windows—be it 3.1, the first usable version, or XP Pro—was designed to be a single-user, stand-alone PC operating system.
Because of that design, Microsoft made what seemed like a good move at the time. The boys from Redmond made its IPC (interprocess communications), like ActiveX, DLLs (Dynamic Link Libraries) and OCX (OLE Control Extension), extremely powerful and without any real security.
Remember, they were thinking single-user, non-networked computer.
In turn, Microsoft designed its most important applications - IE, Microsoft Office, and Outlook - to not only use, but depend, on these IPC mechanisms. The problem, of course, is that Windows PCs don't exist as stand-alone machines. OOPS..... !!!
I mean the spyware-bearing applet on Firefox does everything except scream at you that installing it is a bad idea.
People being people, I understand that it's spreading rapidly.
Maybe we should have a gate on the Internet saying "you must be at least this smart to ride on this network."
While this particular bug requires stupidity above and beyond the call of idiocy to get, it does point out a problem that's peculiar in modern operating systems to the Windows desktop.
Windows—be it 3.1, the first usable version, or XP Pro—was designed to be a single-user, stand-alone PC operating system.
Because of that design, Microsoft made what seemed like a good move at the time. The boys from Redmond made its IPC (interprocess communications), like ActiveX, DLLs (Dynamic Link Libraries) and OCX (OLE Control Extension), extremely powerful and without any real security.
Remember, they were thinking single-user, non-networked computer.
In turn, Microsoft designed its most important applications - IE, Microsoft Office, and Outlook - to not only use, but depend, on these IPC mechanisms. The problem, of course, is that Windows PCs don't exist as stand-alone machines. OOPS..... !!!
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home