Yet Another Microsoft Vulnerability!

There are more Microsoft vulnerabilities revealed last night/this morning. Computer Security Experts, say you should go here to download the patch.

I say you should probably go here, or maybe here instead.

The use of Microsoft products must cost business billions of dollars everytime some problem like this comes along. There must come a point at which the cost of using Microsoft Products:

• The restrictive and expensive licensing,
• The costs of securing networks against successive security holes and vulnerabilities
• The costs of forced upgrades due to aggressive end-of-lifing of Operating Systems
• The costs of forced hardware upgrades because each versions of Windows requires about twice the horsepower of the one before it.
• The costs of having to run server level applications on vastly overspecified hardware because of inefficient and bloated programming (Think of the clusters of machines required for a reliable Exchange installation versus what would be required for a Unix mail solution. There's a good reason why Hotmail still doesn't run on Windows.)

must be greater than any potential productivity gains by using Windows.

The situation now is ridiculous: there is an acceptance that all computers are vulnerable to these attacks and that massive downtime is just a cost of doing business. This is just not so. It's a result of years of wilful spreading of cluelessness on the part of Microsoft, of years of dumbing down the skills believed to be required to run a server room. It's a direct result of saying "See? With Windows, running a room full of servers is just as complicated as playing Minesweeper!". This is precisely the attitude which has resulted in the profession of System Administrator being relegated to a career for school leavers who, lacking any experience of anything but Windows, perpetrate all the same mistakes.