Betalogue

Based on what Bill Gates said during a speech at the Detroit Economic Club on August 28, the recent worm attacks are basically the fault of end users:

In every case there has been a virus attack, we actually had improvements in the system that would have prevented it before the virus came out,” Gates said. “What was weak though was the ease in which our customers could keep their systems up to date.”

I will not deny that the ease with which the worms and virus are transmitted on the Internet is in part due to the fact that users and IT people are not being responsible about installing the patches.

But, on the other hand, has Bill Gates ever considered that, if they don’t dare install the latest Windows patches, it might also be because
they are afraid that doing so will break something on their computer? Many Windows users I know have a relationship with their machine that contains a good dose of superstition, and this is due to the fact that they have been burnt too many times by updates and upgrades that broke things that were working reasonably well. Microsoft itself has a pretty lousy track record on that front.

To me, it sounds mostly like Bill Gates himself and everybody else at Microsoft is in deep denial regarding the actual reliability and usability of their software. I don’t see any significant changes as long as Microsoft continues to enjoy its monopoly stranglehold on computers worldwide.

This entry was posted by Pierre Igot on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2003 at 1:29 am and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.