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If Microsoft really wants to deal a significant blow to viruses, why not just stop shipping their "riskware" (Internet Explorer browser and Outlook email clients) with Windows?

Let's face it, these two pieces of code have, in recent times, been the most exploitable mainstream applications ever found on the Internet and their vulnerabilities account for the ease with which so many viruses trojans and phishing exploits continue to plague Net users.

The age-old Internet Explorer URL spoofing vulnerability exists and I see today that yet another serious security hole has appeared in the browser.

With a raft of other options available to users (and to Microsoft if they wanted to lay out a little cash), why oh why is Bill still shipping such shonky products that are a conduit for such chaos on the Net?

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Maybe ISPs could play a useful role here.

Instead of promoting only IE, why don't major ISPs such as Xtra wake up to the fact that if they plugged free options like Mozilla or even cheap browsers like Opera then they'd be doing everyone (including themselves) a great service.

Likewise -- how about we have a "Use Kiwi Software" drive and introduce people to Pegasus Mail, an excellent and seemingly very secure product that I've been using for as long as I can remember.

If Microsoft can't get their act together we must remember that consumers do have a choice. However, unless the great unwashed masses are made aware of those choices they'll be forever stuck with the seemingly buggy and insecure offerings from Microsoft.

Perhaps any business that does a total cost of ownership analysis of IE and Outlook then compares it to the TCO of other offerings might get a bit of a shock -- once the increasingly regular cost of mopping up after viruses is factored into the equation that is.

I'm not trying to knock Microsoft, it's just that they seem to be busy focusing on more important (ie: more lucrative) areas of business -- such as console-based gaming systems and DRM right now. If they've lost interest in providing secure, robust internet client software then they should hand over the baton to someone who can do the job properly.

Lighten Up
Time to illuminate the funnier and whackier side of the web again.

Fortunately it's summer here, but up in the Northern hemisphere it's winter -- and winter means cold. While you're sweltering in summer heat, cold might seem nice but sometimes cold is bad

Here's a nice little Flash game that I'm sure will be getting a lot of play-time over at SCO.

Earlier this week I questioned the viability of voice recognition systems and a number of people pointed out that some such systems do work quite well. Well on the flip-side, here's an interesting voice synthesis demo from AT&T that is fun to play with and quite impressive.

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