Seeds of Disaster

Seeds of Disaster
Mark Burnett, 2004-11-29

Internet Explorer's problems can be traced to Microsoft's shortsightedness during the browser wars of the 1990s. Is the company sowing tomorrow's security woes today?

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Seeds of Disaster 2004-11-29
Is the Pope Catholic?

I've always been amused by the similarities between the words "monopoly" and "monolithic" ... I think it's a no-brainer to conclude that their business model naturally produces bloated, inefficient products full of holes.

It's not a particular product which is broken, it is the closed-source, ma...

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Nitpicks... 2004-11-29
Penguinisto

"and it wasn't the strong-arming or the marketing that motivated users to switch browsers, it was the features"

Err, so you're trying to say that having IE pre-installed on a zillion OEM boxes and pressuring OEM's to drop Netscape wasn't a factor here? The DoJ would certainly disagree, for starte...

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Seeds of Disaster 2004-11-29
Don Parker (1 replies)

It absolutely floors me that a product which has been around for as long IE has been that it has not yet been fully debugged. After this is not some mom an pop outfit but rather Microsft. Laziness, sloth, and other adjectives come to mind when referring to Microsft and their poor security track rec...

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"Fully Debugged" 2004-11-30
Anonymous (1 replies)

I'm not convinced anything is ever "fully debugged". And of course, every time you add a new feature, you inevitibly add bugs....

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"Fully Debugged" 2004-11-30
Anonymous (2 replies)

With your comment on nothing ever being fully debugged I agree. Problem is that there has been a never ending caravan of IE vulnerabilities. There are quite a few lines of code to IE that I realize. Problem is though that Microsoft like a lot of other companies let market forces come to bear rather ...

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&quot;Fully Debugged&quot; 2004-12-02
G

Why should they debug code to 100%, when the public is willing to pay for a product that is only 70% complete? Maybe FireFox will at least bring them up to say 75%? But I doubt it!...

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&quot;Fully Debugged&quot; 2004-12-06
Anonymous

*cough* halting problem *cough*

MS is working on pro-actively 'debugging' its major applications - only not through active debugging (duh!) but rather using techniques such as static dataflow analysis (google it..)...

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Seeds of Disaster 2004-11-30
Jay

MS's engineers claim the version of IE included with SP2 as basically a completely new browser, but their own security team has said, behind closed doors, that if you want to browse securely...don't use IE. So, who to believe? I do think the latest release is a step in the right direction, though ...

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Seeds of Disaster 2004-12-01
Dan Razzell (1 replies)

I happened across another useful metaphor today. Think about what would happen if you could just buy an aircraft, climb aboard, and take off down the runway. Pardon me for pointing this out, but that is exactly the vision of computing that has been sold to consumers. Where do you want to go today...

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Seeds of Disaster 2004-12-03
Anonymous (1 replies)

I really hope that the government doesn't get involved in design and safety standards for software. The net result will spell disaster for little guy. The government listens to lobbiest and companies like Microsoft have plenty of money to pay them. The open source community would be at a sore dis...

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Seeds of Disaster 2004-12-05
DFogg

The reason the airlines are a business disaster is that they don't have a clear pricing structure that would allow them to make a profit. Safety, fuel, schedules, labor all can be factored in to the cost of the seat, but what you have is a ridiculous flex rate designed to capture the most money from...

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