Re: [tlug] Re: [OT] Say _no_ to the Microsoft Office format as an ISO standard

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

burlingk@example.com writes:

 > IE IS a part of Windows 98 and later.  It IS integrated
 > into the operating system on a very intimate level.  It
 > IS superior to the version of explorer.exe that was used
 > with windows 95 and earlier.

And only the last of those facts has benefits to anything except
Microsoft marketing.  In fact, given the confusion between inside
(no-I Explorer) and outside (with-I Exploits-Welcome and OLE to mail),
it's arguable that the low-level integration of HTML display with the
file system is quite directly responsible for a fair number of
exploits, and thus in part for spam and practically everything else on
the Internet that sucks.

It's not that I think that Microsoft engineers are stupid.  The point
is that no matter how good they are, that kind of integration greatly
increases the chance that an exploitable defect will occur.  We know
for a fact that it has happened many times in the past; we can expect
it will happen repeatedly in the future, too.

If it were open source, what I just wrote would be FUD, of course.
Since it's all closed, please to call it "a proactive approach to
security risk."  :-)

 > With that said, the original argument that people gave was
 > that Microsoft was attempting to prevent people from using
 > other web browsers with Windows.

Not "prevent"; "discourage".  That it does.

 > Install and run whatever you want, it will probably out perform
 > IE as a web browser.

Precisely.  There is no technical reason why IE should be integrated
into the OS.

 > As a file browser, and windows Shell, IE is still desirable.

Browser, maybe.  But Explorer is not a file browser like less.  It is
a file manager and general program launcher.  It is irresponsible to
allow such a thing to download and automatically execute untrusted code.

 > ^^;

Yup.  The thought of untrusted code pawing my file system makes me
sweat, too. ;-)