|
Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Thursday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week 7/21/2004: |
|
|
Microsoft and the Chinese wall ... The great
wall of China was built thousands of years ago in the 3rd century
BC. The wall was 20 to 50 feet high, 15 to 25 feet thick. The purpose of the
wall was to keep enemies out of The term
“Chinese wall” found itself into American corporate speak; I
first heard it when I worked for the Xerox Corporation back in the 70’s
about a secret laboratory Xerox had somewhere that was inventing office
products for the future, but nobody knew anything about it. There was a
Chinese wall between the laboratory and the rest of Xerox’s copier
operations. This turned out to be the I heard
the term again in the late 1980’s regarding IBM’s decision to let
Microsoft – write IBM’s OS/2 operating system..
The only problem was - Microsoft was developing their own
operating system – windows – at the same time. Supposedly
there was a Chinese Wall in Microsoft between the OS/2 programming team and
the Windows programming team. Supposedly noone on
either team knew anything about the software being developed by the opposite
team. Uh huh, tell me
another story so I can go to bed. We all know what happened; OS/2
didn’t get out of the blocks, and Windows took over the world and still
owns it. But now
in a new millennium there is a need for another Microsoft Chinese wall, and I
wonder why the company hasn’t thought of it or implemented it. Supposedly
Microsoft hires a lot of people who know nothing about computers as virtual
test dummies for new user friendly software; to see how computer illiterate
people adapt or don’t adapt to new Microsoft products. What’s
the biggest problem facing all pc users in the world today? The lack of internet security. Most
businesses have to use the internet to conduct business, yet the internet is
one of the least secure and most dangerous places in the world today. And the
biggest problem is with Microsoft’s internet explorer. Virtually
everyday there’s a new press article about still another hole in
Internet Explorer that allows hackers to access your computer, run code on your
computer, steal your identity and do other malicious things. Just last
week a team of supposed internet security experts recommended using an
alternate browser – Mozilla – instead
of IE, but then a major flaw was discovered in Mozilla
and they backtracked. It comes down to the old Western expression –
Stay with the horse you rode in on. All the
security holes in Microsoft’s software are discovered after
they’ve been released to the end users, and it’s
end users and security companies that report the bugs back to Microsoft, who
then tries to find a fix for them. You can literally spend a great deal of
your computer time just updating your computer with Microsoft fixes for
various Microsoft problems, Why
doesn’t Microsoft have another Chinese wall today, with programmers on
one side, and
hackers on the other, and let the hackers attack all the
existing and new software, find the security holes and problems, and report
them back to Microsoft, and then let Microsoft fix the holes and then release
non-buggy secure software that will ease our minds and make us all more
productive? In an ideal world it
would be this way, but we all know the computer world is anything but ideal.. For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2004 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html (509)624-7230 |
|