index.xml Index file Sony Music and Microsoft It just so happens that a story about a corporate screw-up and the vulnerability in people who are unaware, i.e. stupid, has come up. This is a real classic about how imcompetance can create a real mess. Sony Music has been putting software on its music CDs that when loaded on a Microsoft Windows platform prevents the user from copying the tracks on to that system. You Must either consent to install the protection software in order to play tne CD or it is installed automatically. The trouble is the software makes the system vulnerable to attack. I daon't know if the is becasue to undoes protections that ship with Windows or in the most readily available anti-virus anti-spy package. Anyway, Sony stopped shipping the software and has even agreed to replace muisc CDs with the software on it. Windows is vlunerable by design It would be a coup if someone found an internal Microsoft memo confirming my suspicion that Windows was designed intentionally to allow hackers and viruses. This is not the idea that Intel and the NSA are in some kind of scheme to secretly share private information on users' system. I think that "push" technology is vulnerable by design and the Microsoft refuses to lock down access to its systems, that would prevent most hacking, viruses, spaming, and identity theft on Windows systems, because its business plan allowed for its business partners to have access to Windows platforms without the users' consent. The Law of Complexity applies here: No matter what the stated aim, any system that gets sufficiently complex gives advantages to large rich organizations and creates disadvantage for individuals. Thus Corporate users of Windows who can afford firewalls are much less vulnerable that home computer users who bought Windows because they are idiots. I use Linux and Mac OS X to access the Internet and I know that these platforms are not invulnerable to attack, things ike buffer overuns and denial of service attacks being the most common. New versions of these systems are getting good enough so that someone who knows nothing about computer security can install them out of the box and be reasonably safe, much safer than the usual XP user. The other fact is that *nix systems give you much more information that the typical Windoes system where there is a conscous effort to keep the casual user in the dark. I do have a couple of Windows installs, but I don't connect them to Internet if I can avoid it. I have even gone so far as to boot from Linux on the same box, get what I want from outside and put it on a fat32 partition that is shared with Windows so that I can look at it offline.