full-disclosure - RE: M$ - so what should they do?

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From: frank at knobbe.us (Frank Knobbe)
Subject: RE:  M$ - so what should they do?

On Tue, 2004-06-22 at 14:42, joe wrote:
> There are some very intelligent people on this list who have good
> understanding of things that are really wrong with Windows and the *nixs.

Yeah, and most of them have migrated from Windows to a Unix-like OS
because of that. :)     (Unless they already started out with it)

> Now back to the topic of security. I still haven't seen a post that actually
> points out why from a security standpoint, Windows needs a base level
> redesign.

Yeah, it was there. Someone already mentioned it: Complexity.

Microsoft would be well advised to start slimming down the system,
trimming fat, consolidating APIs, cleaning DDL-hell, making it less
complex. But instead they make it more complex! Look at the requirements
of Longhorn. That's just ridiculous.

Frankly (no pun intended), the reason I abandoned Windows a few years
ago was that a) I got fed up with all those security issues, mainly
patches breaking things instead of fixing things (IE was not quite as
bad at that time as it is today), and b) because of the blatant privacy
violations one has to endure when wanting to run the OS (2000 SP3 and
the new version of Media Player come to mind).

But the security issue is mainly due to complexity. Heck, I can have a
BSD install running in the same disk space that the DLLCACHE folder
alone takes away. The fact that Microsoft is bolting on instead of
reducing complexity is a sure indicator that "they don't get it".

Regards,
Frank

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