Misc. Ramblings

Love him or leave him, PC Magazine's John Dvorak stirs things up. But sometimes, he accidently stumbles on to a valid point. Recently, his column bored into Microsoft and how there is a built in conflict of interest when MS decides to sell anti-virus or anti-spyware software. The conflict arises because there is no economic incentive to make Windows more secure when you can instead force people to buy additional software to do so. In fact, the more insecure you make Windows, the more money you can make selling add-ons to "fix" it.

He goes further to contend that Windows cannot ever be made secure because of its core architecture. That is, in order to secure Windows, the very way and the very services MS wants to offer would either have to change or be eliminated.

Since that's not likely to happen, Dvorak pulls our leg a bit and says Windows Vista should come out in the following versions:

• Vista - Won't Boot Edition - $29.95

• Vista - Preloaded with Viruses and Spyware Edition - $39.95

• Vista - Initially Clean but Use at Your Own Risk Edition - $49.95

• Vista - Clean with Firewall and Weekly Protection Update Edition - $200