Another Day, Another IE Hole

Another day, another dire warning from Microsoft of a nasty Internet Explorer bug. I wonder if they’re ever embarrassed announcing these things. They should be, at least for the security holes they’ve announced for Microsoft Vista, the XP-replacement operating system that shipped a year ago, oops, will ship this spring, oops, will ship in tiny numbers this December and hit retail shelves next year. I’d say early next year, but there’s still so much time I fully expect Vista to arrive with a good summer tan.

In an unusual event for a week, a spammer got fined $900,000 in San Francisco. Perhaps the CAN-SPAM Act will do some good. But they’d better hurry, because the last number I saw from Symantec was that about 85 percent of all e-mail on the Internet was spam in the last few months. Not a good trend. If spammers can make so much money they’ll count a $900,000 fine as an operating expense, we’ll never get rid of them because the money’s too good.

I have to admit some surprise at how little reaction I received about my Novell BrainShare nee BrainDead posting a few days ago. I thought more Novell users would be upset as I, but the responses I received say the passion’s gone. Disinterest may be the ultimate insult, and that’s what Novell users feel lately. And betrayed, as I do. What a shame.