Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft on Security: We'll Break Your Apps
jointm1k writes "Wired.com is running a story about how Microsoft is trying to act responsible and all by fixing (or trying to fix?) many (if not all) security holes in Windows. Not only new versions of Windows will be patched or improved, but as I understood they also plan to force security updates for older versions of Windows down peoples throats. Even if that means that some applications will mallfunction.
Nice to see Microsoft taking reponsibility for their mistakes, but they really should have done so when they designed Windows."
I read the same story at The Register
/. attacking them
The editiorial is innacurate and opinionated.
They are actually giving up on trying to secure older products.
And they are stating that for new security fixes on current products they are now putting security as a higher priority than not breaking the apps.
So rather than provide the security turned off, in the hope that some MCSE will turn it one once the app has been patched, the security is on even if the app breaks.
Now, regardless of the anti M$ feelings, this has got to be a good approach.
Yes you can read it as "Hear comes DRM, suck it down" or you can read it as "Secure by default really does matter, becasue we know 95% of users never change from the default settings" - the latter approach is taken by Suse in 8.1 and I don't see
I am so sick of this revisionist, 20/20 hindsight, why-isn't-microsoft-perfect bullshit! Do you know how many applications written by blithering idiots they've had to keep working? I've heard tons of horror stories directly from friends at MS about the hoops they go through to keep COMPETING SOFTWARE from breaking. Yes, MS employees really do sit around figuring out how to keep Wordperfect from crashing.
What did you eat today? http://www.atetoday.com/
There is another side-effect: Just think of an update that does not only fix two recent security flaws, but also implements incompatible changes to the CIFS/SMB protocol. All users of MS Software are forced to upgrade, so there won't be any interoperability issues. But all those Samba File/Print/PDC installations across the world are suddenly broken.
And Samba is just a randomly picked example.
I'm torn on this issue. After years of trade rags ignoring well-designed alternatives in the marketplace and failing to do anything besides sucking Microsoft cock, I still find it refreshing when slashdot, a mere weblog, pulls out a headline with sardonic spin. I also find it amusing that people feel the need to rush to the defense of Microsoft. Seems as silly as protecting god with a sword.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
This is the same mentality where I work. We have users still using Lotus 2.4, WordPerfect 5.1, and other crazy applications because the IS people refuse to **MAKE** the users do their own work. The users want the IS departments to migrate and test all the spreadsheets and documents for them because we have Office '97 or Office 2000 installed on the machines. Now 10 years ago when Lotus 2.4 and WordPerfect were introduced we didn't go around making macros and cell calculations for them did we? But we try to introduce new products to keep up with the times and they act stupid on us and say we are killing business because we **WON'T** migrate their stupid macros.
We can't even get the users to try and open the spreadsheets in Excel or Word. They just refuse to do it. My recommendation in the last meeting was to just turn off Lotus 2.4 and WordPerfect (apps run on server) and tell the user either to use Microsoft Excel and Word or find a new job.
My point being, Microsoft is doing exactly what should be done. You want everything to be stable and secure, well you better be ready to upgrade or patch whatever doesn't work after we do our fixes.
"Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps." ~ Emo Phillips
Actually MS just dumped the next server version after .NET, so it looks like they are headed towards longer release cycles. Since Liscense 6 gives you support for the last 5 years of os's it would not behoov MS to come out with a new OS every year, that would mean supporting 5 OS's for corp customers and testing all their apps against 5 OS's, not cheap. Instead it looks like MS is going the opposite way, look at the next version of Office, it won't run on any OS's other than win2k with SP3+, or winXP. MS is trying to dump the old kruft to reduce problems and hence support costs both external and internal.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
"I might be threatening to write code."
I think I'll stop here.
Microsoft may prohibit self-modifying code and code on the stack. You don't get any performance gain with either technique any more, since processors went superscalar.
And maybe Microsoft will delete the 16-bit compatibilty engine. It's time. In NT 3.5x, the 16-bit engine was optional, the system ran fine without it, and it should have stayed that way.
Microsoft will probably do something to break Word 97, and blame it on "security". They need the revenue. But there's a problem:
Plugging those holes, he said, would require not just rolling out new versions of Windows, but forcing security fixes onto users of older Windows versions, which he claimed was 30 to 40 times larger than the installed base of current versions.
XP sales must be lower than Microsoft admits. Microsoft has to make sure that their pressure forces people to upgrade to XP, rather than locking people into the legacy OS. Expect something on the server side that makes Internet usage difficult for legacy users.