Under the wire: Trust me, I’m Microsoft

OPINION: You have to hand it to Bill Gates, you really really do. His key product, Microsoft Windows, is both the most widely used and most widely reviled software in existence. Weekly, if not daily, reports emerge of security lapses in Windows, and of exploitation of those security lapses.

Word on the street has it that a Windows computer, fresh from the box, has about 20 minutes of connected time on the internet before it’s been invaded by one type of malicious software or another. The excitable will tell you that it’s only four minutes, or less. And still, Bill says we should trust him.

Repeatedly, over the years, Microsoft has used its market position to eliminate its opposition, moving aggressively into markets where it sees potential threats to its dominance.

Alternatively it adopts ‘open’ standards, then adds Windows-specific titbits, thus turning them into ‘proprietary’ standards, which it still says are ‘open’ standards, because they still work on most people’s computers because most computers run Windows. It calls this process ‘embrace and extend’. Others call it ‘co-opt and corrupt’. And Bill says it increases consumer choice. Especially now, in this season of Hanukkah, you have to admire his chutzpah.

In the past week or so, Microsoft has released a product called Windows OneCare. Why OneCare is one word not two is anyone’s guess, as is why Windows Onecare is two words instead of one. I mean, if you’re going to eschew spaces, why not make it WindowsOneCare? Or WindowsOne Care? DoesMicrosoftUseSpacesInItsMarketingAtAll?

Windows OneCare, which I will call WOC because any new technology is entitled to a three-letter abbreviation even if the last two letters refer to a single smushed-together neologism, is essentially a security guard for your operating system. It keeps an eye on the various vulnerable bits and lets you know, with an ingenious colour-coding system, if anything is wrong: green means everything’s OK, yellow means something’s amiss, and red means get away from your computer and run, the call is coming from inside the house.

Actually it doesn’t mean that at all, but I’m making a point. Computer security is a two-stage process: things are good, or they’re not and you have to fix them. Microsoft’s inclusion of an intermediate stage, where things are broken, but apparently not too badly, seems like a fairly irresponsible means of appropriating (oops — embracing and extending) the metaphor of a traffic light to a situation where it’s not entirely, erm, appropriate.

The best part is that WOC, upon discovering a red-light situation, will then proceed to do whatever is necessary to fix the security breach, patch the bug, remove the virus, whatever. Sounds great, right? But remember that this is Microsoft software going about autonomously fixing problems with other Microsoft software. If you can’t trust the one, how can you trust the other? How long before someone discovers and exploits a weakness in WOC that, I don’t know, turns your computer into HAL and shoots you out the air lock?

Actually that’s not the best part. The best part is that, after the public beta period, WOC will be a subscription service. That’s right, you’ll have to pay Microsoft extra money — and keep paying it — to make Windows secure. Shouldn’t that ought to be part of the operating system anyway?

When you download and install WOC, it asks that you first deactivate any other virus or security software you have running on your machine. This makes sense, of course, because virus programs are notorious for detecting each other and waging bitter battles over your system. Nonetheless, I can’t help but wonder how the good folks at McAfee, Sophos et cetera are going to feel about Microsoft telling its customers to switch off their products.

Naturally, of course, this will increase choice. Trust me.