AngryPets Blog

Sometimes I Wonder...

Sometimes I wonder why I don't feel safe using a calculator between operations unless I hammer the 'clear' key about 3-4 times…

Sometimes I wonder why vegetarians are frequently so good at stabbing people in the back...

Sometimes I wonder why some TV Network 'out there' doesn't just smash-the-hell out of the competition by running GOOD programming on Saturday instead of infomercials…

But of late I've been wondering why Microsoft has taken so long to re-assemble the Internet Explorer Team. Actually, that's not true. I know why they've finally rehydrated the team -- because FireFox is simply a better browser. Hands down. Joel explains why it's better too, and he does it succinctly.

While we're at it, Joel also explains in that same post why MS let the IE team, nay the BROWSER, die. You got it, MS was so worried that DHTML would become so damned good that nobody would really need Windows…

Which makes me wonder: do you remember Bill? Runs Microsoft? Well, Bill had this cooky idea two years ago that computing should be TRUSTWORTHY.

So I wonder: could there be a Microsoft application with a greater installation base? With greater market penetration? I doubt that Office has a bigger installation base -- it costs money on both Windows and Mac. IE is free to both platforms.

So I wonder if MS was really so afraid of DHTML trumping Windows that they just kept pretending that IE wouldn't need to be completely rewritten to make it Trustworthy… In effect, they just burried their heads in the sand relative to IE's trustworthiness. Only once it started showing signs of loosing market share did MS assemble the troops. They don't seem to have given a crap about all the users they had, only the ones they were losing...

Not until Steve Ballmer's "developers, developers, developers" began switching in droves to FireFox (and these developers weren't at all afraid to tell everyone in their sphere of influence to do the same), did they begin marshalling the troops. They didn't do it because it FAILED TO BE TRUSTWORTHY... which says that they haven't quite gotten the trustworthy computing initiative. They may WANT to, but they're not there yet... not when they could leave such a big juicy target with such a huge installation base to sit on the shelf without an overhaul. To that end, it's no wonder we just witnessed Internet Explorer completely melt-down under a barrage of concerted attacks by a bunch of black-hats that have had years to fiddle with IE and discover it's weaknesses. Something tells me hacking would be a lot harder against a moving target than a stagnant one...

So... Sometimes I wonder if anyone could POSSIBLY still think IE is trustworthy....

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