Microsoft 'Trustworthy Computing' Turns 10 185
gManZboy writes "Bill Gates fired off his famous Trustworthy Computing memo to Microsoft employees on Jan. 15, 2002, amid a series of high-profile attacks on Windows computers and browsers in the form of worms and viruses like Code Red and 'Anna Kournikova.' The onslaught forced Gates to declare a security emergency within Microsoft, and halt production while the company's 8,500 software engineers sifted through millions of lines of source code to identify and fix vulnerabilities. The hiatus cost Microsoft $100 million. Today, the stakes are much higher. 'TWC Next' will include a focus on cloud services such as Azure, the company says."
Re:Microsoft Succeeded (Score:0, Insightful)
I stagnated in your mom.
Re:Microsoft Succeeded (Score:5, Insightful)
For the past decade, Microsoft has been where it is now: equal or worse. Internet Explorer shares the browser market with Chrome. Windows 7 shares the desktop market with XP and OS X. XBox shares the console market with PS3 and Wii.
Being as good as your competitors means that when something bad does happen, like a new zero-day exploit in the wild that makes the headlines, the company drops back to second place. Regardless of its current improved security, Microsoft will never regain lost reputation until they produce a series of spectacular products that are consistently better than any competitor. I don't see that happening anytime soon.
Re:Not a shill at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Shill or not, he has a point. Security within Windows and Internet Exploder have improved over the years. It may not be all wine and roses but it's not as bad as it once was.
Of course, there still is a long way to go...
Re:Microsoft Succeeded (Score:2, Insightful)
That's the thing Win 7 is a good, but not great OS, and is solidly mediocre in most respects.
It's far more secure than it used to be but still lacks things like security levels and separate configuration files like has been the case for many, many years with Linux and *BSD. For as long as I've used FreeBSD I've had security levels to work with, and one program doesn't need to be able to write to a configuration file for another. If it's needed then I, myself, have to make it happen.
Windows has gotten a lot better, but it is indeed mediocre.
Re:Microsoft Succeeded (Score:4, Insightful)
DirectX 9 was released 9 years ago, and hasn't been replaced because of the stagnation of Windows. OpenGL is cross-platform, and with OS X's adoption, sees growing use. New versions of DirectX do not add any vital features over old versions, so Microsoft still has no clear advantage in that field.
Windows does currently hold the gaming market, but OS X is gaining ground, with the porting of Steam and generally-growing user base. A multi-platform release is now an important goal for new games, just as it was in the early 90's.
Apple is also providing a platform, for which Microsoft has yet to provide a comparable answer. They call it iOS, and it's now the hip new place for budding programmers to make their debut into professional development.
Re:Microsoft Succeeded (Score:4, Insightful)
To rebut specifically:
1) While most users do not need admin access and by default Vista and 7 do not give it to you, I still see people assigning admin rights to themselves and deactivating UAC as a prerequisite to using the computer, which puts the lie to your top two paragraphs.
I still feel Microsoft needs to be given credit for implementing the UAC by default to begin with. Nobody can drop the single-user paradigm that's dominated consumer-grade computing for the past 30 years overnight and expect end-users (let alone developers) to go along with it swimmingly. At home, XP was typically the first experience most users had with a true multi-user environment to begin with.
UAC makes the best of a bad situation that is not strictly (or at least not exclusively) Microsoft's fault. You'd sooner eliminate spam before you'd train all computer users to use runas.
always try to compare Firefox without plugins with IE. IE has no facility for blocking scripts and flash selectively that doesn't cost more than a browser is worth. Noscript and ABP are a few mouse clicks away. You can have all the sandboxing in the world, but not letting the script run in the first place is the only effective defense against drive-by malware installs.
NoScript is still relatively unique to Firefox, but IE9 has most (if not all) of the capabilities of AdBlock Plus out-of-the-box. You can subscribe to your favorite flavor of EasyList without installing any additional add-ons, third-party or otherwise.
Re:Microsoft Succeeded (Score:5, Insightful)
While the OP is clearly a shill, your refutations ring hollow.
Using Firefox's own usage stats, only about 0.5% of users use NoScript. Comparing that tiny segment to the standard IE install makes no sense.
Then, on the other side, you focus on people who turn off UAC, and ignore the hundreds of millions who leave it on.
Basically, from each group, you're cherry picking whichever segment best supports your argument, even when that segment is in no way representative.
Re:Microsoft Succeeded (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that most OSes will shine in some area and the only areas in which Windows shines are the direct result of years of monopoly abuse. In short the only reason I use Windows at all is because I paid for a copy and the only reason I paid for a copy is that it's hard to find decent laptops for a reasonable price that haven't at some point paid for a license.
For MS the fact that Win 7 is regarded as good or mediocre is something that they should be celebrating after 15 years of garbage releases.
But, they aren't particularly secure like OpenBSD is, they aren't stable and reliable like a good Linux Distro is. They lack the just general well rounded flexibility and reliability that FreeBSD is known for. In short, apart from benefitting from years of monopoly abuse, I have a hard time thinking of anything particularly compelling about Windows that would lead one to conclude it was anything other than mediocre.
Re:Microsoft Succeeded (Score:4, Insightful)
the only areas in which Windows shines are the direct result of years of monopoly abuse
I'm not convinced of this personally. I personally, and from observation of those around me, find that the areas where Windows shines are that it's easy to use (although there is inevitably some confusion each new release which changes things around for no real reason), and that software built for one version rarely breaks on a newer one. By contrast, OS X will tell you to piss off if you want to run old PPC software (I can still run the 25 year old Commander Keen on Windows 7. I cannot say the same for OS X), and Linux - well, let's just call it unpredictable and leave it at that. It may not refuse to run it, but it may not run correctly either.