To sue or not to sue...

Personally, I'm tired of everyone picking a fight with Microsoft. It's just a lot easier to hire a lawyer to "steal" the money from them than to actually develop a superior product. This whole business in the EU, making Microsoft ship Windows without Media Player is asinine! Even Windows 3.11 came with a media player and now, after 10 years of offering this feature in all their versions, you're going to tell me that they are trying to monopolize that portion of the market? Also, now Googgle is upset because the IE 7 beta has the MSN search as its default. Well, duhhhhh! Every piece of software you buy now days, opens their company's web page as part of the setup. Should we penalize them for not advertising their competitor's wares instead? Lets face it: How hard is it to change you home page? Goggle has been mine for over 7 years (started out with Hotbot).

This whole legal action buffoonery is out of control and, if you ask me, is a bad example for our future leaders. They are growing up in a litigious society and being taught that it's always someone else's fault. No one wants to take responsibility for his or her actions anymore. Prime example: I am almost 40 years old and I grew up with people telling me that smoking is bad for me since I can remember so I can attest that people knew smoking is bad for you for at least that long. If I opted to ignore those warnings and still smoke and end up with lung cancer or emphysema, it's my own fault! I'm not going to sue the tobacco companies for my own disregard of my health. How about suing McDonald's for making you fat or because you're a vegetarian and they have meat products in the oil they use to fry? Are you kidding me with this? Not to mention the coffee burn incident. I don't think people are that stupid, they just don't want to admit they messed up and when they talk to someone less than honest, they refer them to a lawyer and, of course, see money signs everywhere. Have you seen some of the warning labels on products now days? Don't take hemorrhoid cream orally; don't blow-dry your hair in the tub or shower and so on. Most of them are just a way for the company to cover their behinds and not leave themselves open to a lawsuit.
I'm not going to place all the blame on the people and the lawyers. I think the courts are to blame also. Some of these cases are no-brainers and the judge should be fined for letting them go on. All they do is waste my tax dollars and impose an unnecessary financial burden on companies.

The invincible Mac is gone?

Everybody is in a panic! It's like the world is coming to an end! Am I the only one that knew this day was coming? I've been in the IT business for a long time and I can tell you that no system is impenetrable. The reality is that Mac security was not entirely attributed to the OS's code. The Macs have always been a small part of the marked share. In 2002 their market share was a mere 2.3%. Now, if I was a hacker, would I spend countless hors trying to exploit systems only 2.3% of the world is using or would I try and take down 96% of the world PCs? Hmmmmm. Recently, the Mac has gained popularity and more people are using ipods so all of a sudden, it just became a target rich environment. Now it's worth a hacker's time to try and exploit those systems. Pretty soon, Linux will also fall under the same category. More and more people are using, and learning, these non-Windows platforms and this breeds new hackers looking to make their mark.
People try to blame the increase in the Mac's vulnerability to the fact that it can also run Windows and that opens it up to those vulnerabilities. It's always easy to blame Microsoft! Everybody does it! To me, it's just a cop out. I think Apple should take this as a compliment and as an indication that their market share is on a rise. I also hope they didn't rest on their laurels and made sure they have competent security specialists to deal with these new threats.