Okay, here’s one that will make you sleep better at night: how Micro$oft is continuing its drive to be the only real resource for anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-blackhat security.
Many of you will look at the events I’ve described and shrug them off — a notification oversight here, a bit of sloppy Web site updating there, with an unfortunate kernel conundrum thrown in for good measure. But I, for one, am getting more and more uneasy about Microsoft leveraging its monopoly in operating systems to unfairly compete with antivirus, antispyware, antiscum, and firewall manufacturers.
It currently appears as if the US Department of Justice is going to roll over and play dead. At least, if there are any rumblings at DOJ, I certainly haven’t heard them. Whether the EU will take it lying down remains to be seen. There’s more than a little irony in the thought that the European Union may represent Americans’ best hope for consumer protection.
This much I know for sure: If you’re paying Microsoft to protect your computer, you’re part of the problem, not part of the solution.
I’ve never had a real problem with a lot of what Windows has bundled into the OS/NOS, only when it’s bundled as something inextricable and unbypassable. But M$ has proven time and again that they simply cannot be trusted as the gatekeepers for computer security, not so much because they’re scum-suckers, but because (a) they’re incompetent at it, and (b) a robust, diverse “ecology” of security services is far better able to deal with the real competition, the black hats.
If MS wants to suck up all the payed security services for computers, antivirus, firewall, etc… That’s fine with me, because I am using open source. It’s free, has a community for help, and is usually a far better program than what you would pay for. Click here for all your open source needs. The search function works pretty good.