I realize of course that analogies are only useful to illustrate a point, not to make the point.

But honestly, no product is perfect. They all contain safety hazards, defects in design, and defects in the production process. It is for these reasons that we have limited warrantees and occasional recalls. But no engineer (or company) can even remorely be held responsible for product compromise from future exploition by currently unknown technologies. The service packs and hot-fixes which microsoft provides are obviously the recalls. Their limited warrantee allows returns for any number of reasons, including just plain customer dissatisfaction. I think they are doing more than they are required to do, and it chaps me to hear people satanize them for not being perfect.

We all have the option of not using Microsoft products. There is no gun to anyone's head. You are even free to write your own operating system and/or browser if you are so inclined. Go open source. Buy an apple, or even pull your commodore 64 out of the attic and fire it up. Go back to filing cabinets, typewriters, and 5X7 cards if you think it's a better idea. But you won't, because as hard as it is to admit it, Microsoft products actually are the best thing out there for productivity. They have said time and again, they are not a software company. They are a productivity company. They allow us to do more in less time. And even with the problems, they still do that better than anyone else.

Most of the problems come from trying to create a secure computing environment on a network which was never designed to be secure. If you want to blame anyone, go back to Berkley and blame the ARPnet.

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