Talk about living under a rock.

The point here is that Microsoft has no incentive to fix these issues. Where’s the accountability? Where’s the regulation?

What if Ford or GM ’s software in their engine control modules were virus prone? And your car crashed as a result? Whose fault is it? The virus writer or the builder of the car.

Come on. MSFT is sitting on somewhere around 50 billion in cash and yet they laggard when it comes to making their stuff work well. They have no incentive to.

Look at Google. They have a huge market cap as well, but they’re incredibly more agile.

I still use Windows at home. I’m sure I still will for a long time, as will many others. But why isn’t Microsoft more responsible for their security holes?

Come on - don’t you think Microsoft would have built Windows without the vulnerabilities if they had known about them ahead of time? I’m not trying to defend bad business practices by a giant company, but I think that people are a bit quick to point fingers when it’s not actually Microsoft’s fault that the vulnerabilities exist and are exploited as such.

I do believe that it’s Microsoft’s responsibility to fix these vulnerabilities as soon as humanly possible. That’s where I fault them. They will often wait for months to fix problems just because they don’t feel that it’s worthwhile for whatever reason. I’ve heard stories of a particular security company who regularly discovers new holes in Windows and sends the details promptly and exclusively to Microsoft. Unfortunately, Microsoft usually sits on the information for weeks on end, prompting the security company to threaten to make the information public if Microsoft doesn’t respond. THAT is what bugs me.

I know - you *nix fans will respond that the *nix OSs are inherently more secure. Granted. But they were built long after many of the Windows holes were discovered. AND they had the luxury of being built by people who were not writing the software just for a profit…

Just my 2 cents