The Good Life... a weblog about life, technology, and the Opera Web browser

How many ears did Spock have?

Three. He had a left ear, right ear, and the final frontier (front ear...). :)

Two articles on Microsoft caught my attention this past week. The first, warning of an exploit in Windows 2000 running IIS5 and second, a commentary on a speech given by Craig Mundie, Microsoft's senior vice president of advanced strategies. From reading these two articles, I am astounded by the sheer arrogance of the company. Let me explain...

The first article, as I said, tells about a security issue in the Windows 2000 version of IIS5. The interesting thing to note from this article is Microsoft's response to information that a program to attack the exploit had been produced. The article states, [t]he creation of the exploit code for the flaw came as no surprise to Microsoft. Customers who have applied the patch don't have to worry, the company said in a statement. Customers who haven't applied the patch should take this as a reminder to do so immediately. A reminder to do so immediately?!? Maybe Microsoft should take a lesson in creating software that doesn't have such security issues!

The second article I mentioned ties wonderfully into this first article. The MS executive claims, that the open-source development model leads to a strong possibility of unhealthy forking of a code base, which could result in compatibility issues across multiple versions of the same program, less interoperability and product instability. Further, Mundie argued that putting the source code of all programs out for all to see poses inherent security risks. The article continues by adding a lovely quip: [t]hose arguments echoed the same kinds of criticisms advocates of alternative operating systems frequently voice about Microsoft's products, which they say have a range of compatibility issues, are unstable and lacking in adequate security.

The idea that open source software leads to unstable or inadequate security almost implies that this is the model used by MS, considering all the security holes discovered in MS products. However, in direct contrast, I point to the relatively small amount of security holes found in open source Linux products over the same period of time. The difference is staggering. Part of the lure of open source is to iron out bugs. For instance, the popular encryption program PGP is, last time I checked, open source. This is done in order to gave the world a chance to find bugs quickly so that they can be fixed. Overall, this leads to a mostly bug-free program.

To address Mungie's statement that open source products have issues compatibility issues across multiple versions of the same program and less interoperability, I'd like a couple concrete examples. As for examples of this from MS, I need not think too hard. Many of their products are not backwards compatible for apparently no good reason. Interoperability problems? Need I talk about MS's proprietary implementation of Java (MS Java) and JavaScript (JScript) coupled with the lack of documentation of these implementations to aid others wishing to work with them. What about the proprietary DOM extensions added by IE? Is there an example of something they've created that is interoperable?

Needless to say, I'm a little perturbed at their arrogance. Unfortunately, people will read their statements and take them as fact without doing any investigation of their own. Such is one of MS's strategies: to misinform the uninformed. While their business practices are debatably monopolistic, their ethics are surely shot.

Things I am thankful for:

• Amazing friends
• Lynchburg College in the spring - it's absolutely beautiful. The Building and Grounds crew does a wonderful job of keeping everything tame.
• Puns, though others don't seem quite as thankful when I take advantage of them...
• Hope
• Knowing that I have experienced love--Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

It's almost all over. I have one exam left before my first (real) year of college is over. I'm not sure how I feel about this, but I know that I'm partly relieved and partly sad. I don't want to go home because I don't really have much to go home to. Yet, I don't want to continue doing work. I'm ready to get the things that I've been neglecting back in order. I'm not ready to leave my friends behind.

I don't know what this summer has in store for me. The past two summers, I've worked full-time and had a girlfriend with whom I spent most of my free time. I'm going home a different person, lacking the friendship that made home livable for year and a half prior to coming to school.

With all this freedom comes a certain sense of hope. I had a lot of opportunities that I passed up because of some things that I have to do this summer. I was considering an internship with a software company in Norway. I was also thinking of volunteering with ASP as a staff worker, instead of just a run-of-the-mill volunteer. I gave up all these because I'm scheduled to have surgery on my jaw this summer. So far, I know I'll be spending around six weeks working on a research project with a Prof. and one week working with ASP, but that's it. Yet, I have a distinct feeling that God wanted me to give up these opportunities so that I could participate in something else, of His design.

To be perfectly truthful, I'm scared. I don't want to be alone again. I went through most of my life alone, without really close friends or people that I could rely on. When I met my ex, this all changed. Admittedly, I drew a lot from her energy and her life. Her friends became my friends. Her hobbies became things that I enjoyed. Her faith became mine.

I go home this summer without any of that. I know who I am here at school, but there isn't really anything at home for me to gain strength from. I'm not very close with my family (something I want to work on), I'm not very close with those that were once my friends (something else I want to work on), and I can just see my days withering away in disuse. I don't want it to be that way.

I'm pretty down right now. Part of it comes from all these thoughts and part of it is frustration in my inability to complete some work due at 2pm tomorrow. Only God can really cure this, so I shall go to Him now to welcome His cleansing powers.

Whoever you are, whatever frame of mind you're in, I pray that God blesses you and that you may open your heart to His wonderful gifts.