Some fairly random thoughts tonight. It's 6th Week, I'm allowed to be random!
Firstly, some news reported by the BBC: Microsoft debuts security package. The essence of the story is: Microsoft are releasing a commercial software package dubbed "Windows Live OneCare", a combined firewall/antivirus/antispyware kit.
Now, let's think about that a bit more closely... Why do you need anti-virus software? Why is it that spyware is a problem in the first place? Yes, that's right... because of flaws or omissions in Microsoft's Windows coding. Not only are they now asking you to trust them with some more coding to (in theory) cover up these holes - but they're also charging you for the privilege!
A few weeks ago in an IRC conversation, I predicted that M$ would start charging for updates to Windows at some point after Vista's release. The question now arises: surely there is a conflict of interest within Microsoft? If the Windows coders do their job properly and create a secure and stable OS (there may still be some hope! I'm reserving judgement on Vista until it comes out!) then they'll make OneCare obsolete. As OneCare is only just launching, I'm guessing they're not expecting it to become obsolete any time soon. Do you see where this is heading?
The conjoining of "Windows Live" in the title is ominous, too. This is Microsoft's move (to be fair, copied by many of the big players) to further blur the online/local divide. How OneCare fits into the same umbrella as having your contacts and appointments stored on a website is slightly baffling at this point. One theory put forward - I think this was in PC Plus - was that a basic Vista OS would be released with certain features disabled until you activate them online - for a cost, naturally. They even went as far as to suggest that Vista would be the base for all Microsoft OSs for the foreseeable future, with just modular updates available for (priced) download. Like sudo apt-get dist-upgrade, but with money involved, it seems.
The idea of paying extra (on top of the ~£200 for the OS to begin with) to get your computer to do the things it should be doing anyway seems wrong in a number of ways. I think it's also planned to be a monthly subscription-based thing, though the site seems to have stopped responding so I can't be sure. One thing I will predict confidently, though: You'll see a one-(or perhaps three- or six-) month trial of OneCare installed by default on Vista, thus in a stroke hitting companies like Norton and F-Secure hard - despite their products being (probably) superior. And despite free alternatives being available, people will happily fork out - why? Because it's easier that way. Fair competition? Microsoft don't know the meaning of the word. They also don't know the meaning of "interoperability", but that's another story.
I mentioned babies in the title. This was no coincidence! Yesterday morning my tutor Joel's wife gave birth to young Mathias Ouaknine. Congratulations to them! And I don't have to finish that tute work for tomorrow after all...!
Back to OneCare... after nearly ten minutes, the site decided to serve me a web page. The clever thing worked out that I wasn't using Internet Explorer (while trying to install OneCare on Kubuntu!) but refuses to give me any information about how much the thing costs - the Beeb do: "OneCare costs $49.95 (£26.50) to protect three computers for a year.". And it looks like a 90-day free trial is available. Vista, here it comes. And the free world doesn't even notice.
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