SCN: Re: E-mail viruses & worms.

[Scot Harkins on scn.org]

Yep, updating the Office products, especially for users of Outlook
(not the free Outlook Express).

It's worth noting that MS' most recent critical OS update, again
tackling the HTML vulnerability for those who have not updated before,
caused problems for some features in Outlook and in, get this, MS
Internet Information Server, the MS webserver software shipped with
servers (and workstations, though in dressed-down format).  The new
faults were not, to my knowledge, fatal, affecting fonts used in some
display screens (find message, etc.).  Woody's Windows Watch had some
things to say about that, as did others, complaining about MS'
increasingly shoddy in-house testing (like it was ever stellar).

I, too, have wondered at the lack of combined update sites, but the
logic is two-fold, part history and part political.

The Windows Update site came online very shortly after Windows95 hit
the streets.  I seem to recall using it since as early as 1996, and I
know I've used it since 1997.

Office97 was the first Office product to sport a sorta-update site,
but it was not quite so automatic.  Office 2000 stepped forward to a
true update format.  The question at that point was whether to merge
the two update sites, though my opinion is that the question never
entered MS' mind, in part because the update process used for Office
2000 seemed quite different in its approach to updates, partly keeping
track of license issues, I believe.

The real hidden question behind the merge of the updates sites might
fall in the political arena.  A few years ago MS re-aligned its
divisions, seemingly in a way that appeared, to me at least, ready for
a breakup.  It looked like the productivity product lines and OS lines
were separated in a way that would be ready for a split.  The
appearance may have been for public consumption, since some of the
allegations were that inside information and cooperation was passing
between the MS OS and Office divisions (and other divisions, like
SQL), allowing MS products access to undocumented features in the OS,
or actually spurring features in the OS that other vendors could never
hope to have added had they asked.  Being ready for a split might
strengthen the "division" nature of the divisions, implying they would
no longer ride the elevator to meet with the dev team from another
division.

The problem, of course, is that people could still meet at lunch, or
change departments and teams, moving between OS and productivity
divisions and carrying perspectives and desires with them that would
then influence the "other side".  Unofficial official cooperation may
have ended, but background cooperation would remain.

Merging the OS and Office update sites would renew the question of
cooperation.  It would serve as a convenience for the customers, and a
confirmation for anti-MS advocates of the ongoing background
cooperation.  Developers of competing products (Adobe, IBM/Lotus,
RealNetworks, and so on) would perhaps be given ground to complain,
and the states' Attorneys General would then have a bit more leverage
to continue pushing their side again against a now unwilling Justice
Department.

So, I guess I'm not surprised the separate sites have not merged.  I
could hope they would, a little bit for convenience, and more to show
MS really does have this kind of background cooperation going on even
now.


sh

--
Scot Harkins (KA5KDU)
Greenbank, WA, US
Phone: 360-678-5880
Email: scoth at bigfoot.com
URL <http://www.bigfoot.com/~scoth>
--


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