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Desirable Features (reply to Anton)

Hi, Anton.

You said:

I think, though, you do have a good point. To the extent Microsoft relies upon perimeter security, the softwre will be less secure. The problem is, the vulnerabilities are sometimes also desireable features.

And Microsoft is not the company to make the mistake of reducing the number of reasons for people to buy its software.

I think you're right that Microsoft has made this trade-off willingly, and possibly there were good reasons, at one point, to think that the trade-offs were in the right direction. However, I would argue that experience has shown that, millions of dollars and millions of intrusions later, it should be evident to Microsoft that the trade-off has not been a good one. Continued sales of Windows cannot be the sole marker of whether or not this was a good choice, if for no other reason than people will get Vista with their new PC's by default. The marker ought to be, "What's best for our customers?", not "What's the easiest for us to do that our customers will still stomach?"

I would also argue that the market has changed since Microsoft initally made this decision. Back when Windows was introduced, computers were not as connected as they are now. At this point, there are many computers that are constantly connected to the Internet, and this will become even more true as more people adopt broadband, always-on services. In such an environment, it's probably not desirable for your Web browser to have a hook into the Windows registry.

Don't get me wrong: I know that this integration has value to developers. I have started developing applications myself that depend upon the integrated nature of Visual Basic and Word. But the integration of IE with Windows also has inherent dangers, and I don't think Microsoft has done enough to address those. It's one thing to develop a system where Word can interact with Outlook on a user's system by a user's direction. It's quite another thing to develop a system whereby a Web page external to the user can do the same thing.

Here's an example of the kind of thing you can do that you probably shouldn't be able to:

http://www.eggheadcafe.com/articles/20000805.htm

Posted by: bhartman36   Posted on: 09/12/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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