Microsoft Doesn’t Get It

Once again, Microsoft has written a “feature” into software that has bitten them in the ass. Coming on the heels of the WMF vulnerability (in which just looking at a picture can hose your system), it’s been announced that Windows has a serious wireless vulnerability.

If you have a laptop with wireless built in, you need to disable the wireless connection when you’re not using it, especially if you’re in a busy public area. Otherwise your laptop is broadcasting an identifier and waiting for connections from anyone with a sniffer/scanner.

Microsoft is still living in the warm, friendly, early days of the Internet before people started taking advantage of alleged features, and it shocks me they haven’t learned their lesson.

I inherited a subscription for Microsoft’s TechNet Magazine at work, and there’s a column in the back called “Windows Confidential”, the latest installment of which was titled “The Resourcefulness of Annoying People”. The author laments how Microsoft developers put different features into the system, only to have spammers and spyware creators (not to mention virus writers) take advantage of them. This then, of course, ruins the feature.

My question, then, is why are Microsoft developers not anticipating this? They’re going out of their way to make convenient features for home users, but all they’re doing is making it more convenient for other software programmers — be it legit or spyware vendors — manipulate the user’s system. In the end, instead of figuring these problems out for themselves, they’re sending these bullshit “features” out into the wild and getting a black eye when the “problem” goes public.

Dumbing systems down is not a solution. I know this sounds elitist, but we’re at the point end users need to learn more about their systems. They can’t be holding everyone’s hand.

Otherwise these virus and spyware problems will never go away.