fred avolio's musings

I just got this week’s issue of “Web Informant” (http://strom.com/awards/347.html) from David Strom. Its title is “Coming to an office near you,” which reports on the Microsoft Office System 2003 launch show.

I read the whole column with interest, and found that certain phrases jumped out at me:

came on over a dozen CDs … many of the bravest souls using this software actually put it into production … the sheer complexity surrounding the number of different versions of Office a … Microsoft is extending the notion of what desktop software is, and with Office 2003 we have applications that can reach out across the Internet for online help, for data via Web services, for document repositories and collaboration via SharePoint, for project management and scheduling information via Project Server, for workflow information via BizTalk, and for automatically filling out forms via InfoPath. Office 2003 is a huge collection of stuff …

Cool. New, exciting features. Things that every one of our users will want. Seamlessly — it doesn’t say that, but what else is there with Microsoft? — connecting your desktop to all sorts of network.

Yes, I exaggerate. But, in the security/feature wars, Microsoft is on the side of our users, not on the side of security. Newer, bigger, better. How well has it been tested? As I’ve mentioned in a blog (here) before, I use Windows software too. But I also got an e-mail from Microsoft today, starting off, “Included in this advisory are updates for five recently discovered vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows.” So, perhaps I am in a less than hopeful mood.