Originally posted by ChuckE
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I do not have the same level of trust in Microsoft! Sure, they are placed well enough, but are they lean enough to move quickly? In this business, a day's delay is equal to Billions of dollars lost, the world over! Whatever MS does is consistently done long after the horse has bolted, and is done in instalments!
Security holes are put in place when a product is released without adequate testing. (Not so surprisingly, it is Vista that comes readily to the mind!) While a few security holes are probably exploited by Security product vendors, this is done to boost their Security product sales, not to steal Credit Card information. Therefore it will be a long time, before the patch is made available to free users of the product! In fact, free users are soft targets - maybe sitting targets even, for they are forced to buy the commercial version of the product, if they want to get rid of the virus!
Most security holes in Microsoft products - OS and IE and Office included, are identified by Hackers: some of them do it for a fleeting moment of fame, some of them do it for malicious reasons. A rare minority does it for altruistic reasons...
Interestingly, an increasing number of them are actually teens or even younger, operating on their own or in gangs of twos and threes...!
When the world was reeling under NIMDA, if MS could do something about it, were they twiddling their thumbs? No, I'd place my money on ISVs, even where cleaning up after Windows is concerned! No freeware too, where Security products, OS or Office Suites (though OpenOffice is quite good) are concerned.
True, life at MS can't be easy or enviable, what with every hacker worth his/ her salt, training their guns forever on MS! The guys at, say Ubuntu or Apple OS, lead peaceful lives in comparison!
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