[extropy-chat] when will computers improve?

[Harvey Newstrom]

BillK wrote,
> Here is a good article which claims that the IT industry is 
> finally beginning to give up on Microsoft and start the move 
> to open software. There may well be an element of wishful 
> thinking here but the points made in the article are sound 
> (i.e. cost, reliability, continual patching, licensing, 
> security, virus attacks, etc.). But there is a vast inertia 
> of MS lock-in which has to be overcome before it will have 
> much effect.
> 
<http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13350>

A lot of people and companies have literally given up on Microsoft.  Most
security people don't even try to claim that Microsoft products can be made
secure.  Many corporations have so many thousands of PC's, that it is a
major disaster every time Microsoft releases an automatic update that breaks
something.  All of a sudden across their enterprise, thousands of machines
break.  Since most large corporations have good security and firewalls to
keep hackers out, almost all of their problems are literally caused by
Microsoft itself.  When they used to receive daily updates from Microsoft,
they had whole teams just responding to whatever Microsoft broke.  Now that
Microsoft is bundling all these patches into monthly releases, many
companies are literally having tiger teams standing by on the day of the
Microsoft release.  These companies literally see Microsoft causing 99% of
their disasters and see hacker problems only a few times a year.

The other problem is compatibility and consistency.  Corporations
standardized on Microsoft to have a single product line to support.  This
did not turn out to work, because Windows 95 fragmented into Windows 98,
Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP and now Windows 2003.
Support groups have to support a half dozen operating systems, each with
their own particular foibles and problems.  They never got the monolithic
pervasive desktop that they dreamed about.  For large corporations,
migrating thousands of critical PCs from one OS to another can take years.
They aren't finished migrating the last of their systems to the new OS
before the next new OS comes out.  Microsoft has clearly decided that
inventing a new OS every couple of years is their preferred strategy over
maintaining the existing one long-term.  This is not what companies wanted.

Unix and Linux now look like long-term, stable operating systems compared to
Microsoft.  They look more consistent and uniform across the board compared
to various Microsoft OSes.  The "old" Unix now looks mature while
Microsoft's stuff is seen as the new, experimental
not-quite-yet-ready-for-prime-time box.

This is quite a shift in mentality among managers.  I believe it is actually
occurring, because this has been well known among the technical geeks for
years.  So this trend represents the knowledge bubbling up from the trenches
to management, and not some new fad that will disappear.

-- 
Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC
Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager,
NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC
<HarveyNewstrom.com> <Newstaff.com>