Outrageous Fortune

Windows is the key. Stop the hype. Start telling people the truth.

Get It Try It

HELSINKI (Rixstep) — After suffering the slings and arrows of Bill Gates' outrageous fortunes (and making him the richest SOB on the planet) things have reached an uncomfortable impasse, at least for Mikko Hyppönen, the man behind Finland's F-Secure (aka Fucking-Insecure) antivirus corporation.

Mikko (and so many others) have made millions upon millions exploiting clueless Windows users ever since the 'web revolution' began twenty years ago.

It's no secret that, when it comes to online systems, Microsoft's is utter crap. Windows is based on MS-DOS, not a real 'operating system' anyway. It's called 'DOS' - 'disk operating system' - meaning it's code that spins the disks and nothing more.

Real operating systems - unheard of in the early days of beige Macintoshes and IBM PCs (and TI PCs and Wang PCs and who knows who else's, even your third cousin's PCs - allocate user accounts, protect each user from all the other users, and protect themselves from everyone. That's why they work as well as they do. And the lack of that security and robustness is why Windows crashes all the time.

Anyway.

'Enough of blaming end users when PCs get hijacked or are attacked by viruses', says Mikko to Swedish SvD. So Mikko's not keen on amassing more money? Perhaps he thinks he's saved enough?

'ISVs (those who provide the applications) and broadband providers have to take a greater responsibility', he continues.

Oh really? Bill Gates tried that years ago - he demanded that the Internet backbone itself stop malware traffic attacking his ridiculous Windows machines. Funny how no other systems - Linux with thousands of derivative distros or FreeBSD (the most popular of them all) with all its variants such as NetBSD, the incomparable OpenBSD, and of course Apple's glitzy OS X - have never had this problem. Whilst they all go on with their daily computing lives, doing actual work with their computers, they've been able to experience an exquisite Schadenfreude as pathetic Windows (l)users build up websites with reported malware files (they number in the tens of thousands) and regularly run into issues where the vendors (read: Microsoft) can only recommend their (l)users wipe and reinstall the whole goddamned thing.

Some operating system. Indeed. Legacy IBM mainframes, which could easily fill an entire city block, had their problems too - they'd get in Mexican embraces about once per year and have to be rebooted. But that was in the nascent years of computer science. No product from Microsoft has ever performed anywhere near that caliber of quality.

SvD again:

'The costs for criminality online reaches stratospheric proportions; PCs are hijacked and only unlocked when a ransom is paid, there are millions of credit card numbers roaming around, and if one counts in the attacks on corporations, the costs for this year alone will be around £430 billion.'

'This figure will quadruple in four years, according to a study by Jupiter. In comparison, Sweden's state budget for last year was £86.2 billion.'

Wow, Mikko. That's a lot of GBP. And we all know who takes the blame for this. The erstwhile husband of Melinda French. Microsoft, as Steve Jobs said, make third rate products. And this is true. Microsoft make everything they make - everything they copy, to be more exact - look like it belongs on a shelf in a Walmart.

But that's not half the story, never has been. Anyone can put up with an ugly interface - just look what Gnome and KDE users have put up with for decades - and, to some extent, they can put up with dysfunctional design (ask the same people). But we're in the Big Leagues now, where the Bad Boys can roam and reign supreme, and then, lo and behold, we need REAL operating systems to protect us.

All of which is not unknown to Bill Gates or Mikko Hippönen. But none of them will ever tell you that simple truth. Not even now. You think the Volkswagen scandal was big? Just imagine if the same thing should happen to Microsoft and all the cottage industry corporations - such as Mikko's - who have profited like oligarchs off the misery of the clueless end-user.

[There's a reason Radsoft stopped Windows application software development in 2005, and yes it's precisely what you'd suspect: releasing further updates to the XPT would have been a tacit endorsement of a dangerous OS platform - would have been, between the lines, an assurance that Windows could in fact be used. But that would have been wrong, immoral. Microsoft Windows cannot be used. It's crap, utter crap, and you should abandon it. By yesterday. Ed.]

The end-user must of course share some of the blame. After all, some people do know better. Some chose OS X because they were beige fanboys and sort of by default walked into security without realising it. For example, John Gruber's sole comment re the difference between Windows and the Mac was that it was 'a matter of taste'. And there are countless Linux and BSD users who chose their systems because they thought they were cheaper and somehow more 'free' (without realising they were still paying the 'Microsoft tax' tantamount to the cost of a Windows licence anyway - so not at all cheaper, and some freedom indeed).

But there are some people who got it. BSD luminary Bill Joy was aghast at what Microsoft did, as he said back in the day. 'They put a system for personal use onto the Internet with no protection!' he said in utter disbelief.

It's always been about legacy users, backward compatibility, and market hegemony. Microsoft spend more money spinning away the truth of the situation than they ever would have needed to 'just fix the fucking system'. And why? Because any 'fix' would have resulted in users and programmers finding a way around the Microsoft APIs and made the MS flagship redundant. Better to spend millions (and billions) on big theatrical displays, hunting down 'bad guys' with law enforcement, than let people finally understand where the fault really lies.

Don't forget the DOJ trial against Microsoft...

SvD again:

'The reason for this is that there are more restrictions on applications that run on mobile devices. Particularly Apple products. But even Google raised the bar on security with their Android', says Hyppönen.

The reason iOS and Android are more secure is that they're not Windows. End of story.

Sandboxing apps, as Apple and Google do, can help a bit, but the main reason for sandboxing isn't security. Both systems are based on Unix, and Unix is a real operating system, not a heap of fertiliser like Windows. The overall reason sandboxing is used and hyped is that it gives mobile OS vendors complete control, both financial and political. Apple mobile platforms can demand code-signing at kernel level. So can Google's platforms. Exacting an outrageous 30% commission on sales - where the standard rate has always been 1/3 of that - is suddenly not outrageous anymore. And for safety's sake you don't remind people that you take 30% of their money - you tell them that they get to keep 70% of their own! Sounds way better.

Both iOS and Android would be very safe without their shackles. After all, they're not built by Microsoft, they don't have the legacy issues of Microsoft products, and they're not Windows - they're real operating systems. And barring the occasional 'hack' (which can happen to any system at any time, regardless of how secure it otherwise may be) these systems are truly secure and definitely could not sustain the massive malware industry that Microsoft Windows has done. Most of the Windows malware mafia groups would be out of business and have to go back to street protection, pushing drugs, numbers rackets, and so forth. Too bad for them. But they don't belong in the computer game, and they don't belong in the online community, where they've been a fatal nuisance for too long, where ordinary users [Microsoft (l)users] still haven't understood what a great thing the Internet can be.

'When people ask me if they should upgrade their old computers with new operating systems, I always tell them to toss them out and buy a tablet', Mikko tells SvD. 'They can surf the net [sic] on a tablet, they can check the news and the weather, they can pay their bills. It's a lot safer doing that with a tablet than it is with a computer.'

So we finally got you in an outright lie, Mikko Hyppönen. For it is not safer at all. The difference, as even Mikko must know unless he's congenitally stupid, is between Windows and everything else. Tablets are not safer than PCs - unless you're talking about tablets not running Windows versus PCs that do run Windows.

[Not only that, but most Linux and BSD distros will run blazingly fast on legacy hardware - the 'upgrade' costs you nothing and takes you from 0% security to 100% security in one fell swoop. Can it be any better? Ed.]

Windows is the key. Toss Windows away - yes this means even Windows 10. No version of Windows will ever be secure. Never. Not ever. Again: not fucking ever. Get the thought out of your head.

There are millions of Linux users, BSD users, and OS X users who are laughing at this very moment, who've been laughing for years, and who will continue to laugh at you the Windows user. For you continue to suffer the slings and arrows, and Bill Gates and Mikko Hyppönen continue to line their pockets. Outrageously. Together you help make the World Wide Web a mess that Sir Tim had never imagined.

See Also
The Technological: Fucking Insecure