Robert Cringely on Type Safety (well sort of :)

[dinis at ddplus.net (Dinis Cruz)]

On this week's post (see 
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060511.html) Robert Cringely 
hits it spot on:
/
"... If Microsoft really wanted to compete -- if they really wanted (or 
even knew how) to truly defend their turf, here is what they would do. 
They would throw away Vista and develop a new operating system, one that 
is simpler, lighter, and more secure -- an OS that would run on any 
machine now running Windows 2000 or XP. They would price it right, which 
is to say cheap ($49.95). The associated and trimmed-down version of 
Office would be priced the same ($49.95). The upgrade market is probably 
five times bigger than the OEM PC market, so Microsoft needs (but 
probably doesn't realize it) an OS that will run well on most of the PC 
installed base. It needs to set the pricing of the OS so that we'll run 
to the store to get it. Instead of designing products exclusively for 
new equipment, now it's time for Microsoft to focus on the installed 
base...."

/ I would only make one small correction:

     /'...They would throw away Vista and develop a new *type safe* 
operating system, one that is simpler, lighter and more secure...'./

I'm sure that is what Robert meant to say :)

In par with the proposed pricing for the OS, Microsoft should also do 
what I proposed here:  Response to comments and an idea for Microsoft: 
Create and Sell Products for Windows NT 4.0, 2000 and 2003 
<http://owasp.net/blogs/dinis_cruz/archive/2005/11/18/176.aspx> 
(http://owasp.net/blogs/dinis_cruz/archive/2005/11/18/176.aspx) since 
that would create a positive model where Microsoft products would 
compete fairly and would not have to engage the current 'lock-in' 
practices (which are responsible for large part of Microsoft's security 
problems)

Dinis Cruz
Owasp .Net Project
www.owasp.net


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://krvw.com/pipermail/sc-l/attachments/20060514/132b3684/attachment.html