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Tuesday, May 8, 2007
New Vista, old threats
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Designing software is a risky business - and the user shares that risk along with the designer.
So there’s no irony in the fact that one of the driving reasons for software that isn’t safe is the desire to keep the home user happy.
How would you feel if every new operating system - Windows or Mac - required brand new software? There would be technical advantages to doing that - creating operating systems that run older applications constrains what the designer can do. We’re talking compromise.
But there would be an uproar from users because of the expense of junking all the old programs. The other option - if operating systems were designed that way - would be for the manufacturers of the computer programs you use to create free updates that made the old programs compatible. So - either way - no-compromise operating systems would cause someone - manufacturer or user - to spend a lot of money.
That’s not going to happen.
But it also means that new operating systems run your old programs as well as old spyware programs, old viruses. So that’s the price you pay for operating systems that are backwards compatible.
Me? I don’t see how it could be any other way. I can’t afford to replace all my software each time I change operating systems. But - as this story notes - it means that new operating systems can still be vulnerable to old threats.
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