Microsoft has over 90,000 employees, and no doubt some of those people were hired specifically to protect their software licensing. They're probably not pulling their top OS developers to work on this. So the idea that they should have been "spending more of their resources on making software work..." is not really valid.

In fact, there is no company or software community anywhere that writes highly complex and bug free software. It's not possible.

I agree with you that they are not necessarily removing developers from other projects to work on licensing. However, a percentage of code in Windows is dedicated to validating licensing and preventing piracy.

> In fact, there is no company or software community anywhere that writes highly complex and bug free software. It's not possible.

I agree with this point. For this reason, the point I'm trying to make is that reducing complexity is a key way to make software more secure. And when reducing complexity, we should look at what is in the user's best interest.

Code has bugs--that is an unescapable fact for the foreseeable future. Therefore, any code running on your computer makes you slightly less safe. Therefore, any code on your machine which is not accomplishing something in your best interests could be considered an unnecessary security risk.

I am arguing that it is not in your best interest to insure that you bought a little certificate from Microsoft before your computer operates the way you have configured it to.

After all that, of course it is in your best interests to have Microsoft grow its war chest and be a healthy company that can employ tens of thousands of smart developers to write good code (which we choose to keep using year after year).

But, every time a product breaks because they have to make sure I'm not a criminal, and the way they do it is sloppy, I get upset, and I think it's rightfully so. Usually it is small, proprietary CMS or CRM software that drives me crazy. But today it's this issue.

But having updates cryptographically signed and checked against a list of (presumably) trusted certificates is in my best interest.

The "bug" here was in key management, not in SW that's running in my computer.

I shouldn't have used the word "certificate." What I meant was "license."

The code that caused the certificate chain to be compromised is related to licensing Terminal Services on Windows Server. That is how their key management failed, and that is what I'm railing against--The fact that this ability to sign binaries with a legitimate Microsoft certificate has been hidden away in copies of Windows Server for years by mistake. And not for any direct customer benefit, but to employ a licensing scheme.

I definitely understand his point that is a radical departure from existing Windows design and that business, who are loathe to try anything new, might not be interested.

But that fact is, businesses already aren't interested in upgrading to new Windows releases. XP was plenty good for the vast majority of businesses and many of them are still running it because it works just fine.

I had the chance to play with a Windows 8 tablet and I have to say that was pretty impressive. The Metro interface works great in that environment.

My guess is that Microsoft will support Windows 7 for businesses for another decade. In the mean time, they are hoping to win the hearts and minds of people in the fast growing tablet and smartphone market.

I doubt they'll succeed, but they have to give it a shot. I applaud them for making the effort.

This author is missing a few big points. First, Yahoo didn't make a move into social until it was too late. Facebook is one of the biggest mobile apps. Sure, they haven't figured out how to monetize it just yet but they are a huge player in the space and have been for awhile.

Secondly, he/she completely ignores the fact that Google is making gobs and gobs of money based on their initial web design. They may not ever make the social transition but people are going to continue to search the web and they'll be the top player. Same goes for Facebook - social media is here to stay and they will be the big dog for a long time to come.

Lastly, portals pretty much just died. I don't see that happening with social media in the next 5-8. So, once again, Facebook is going to remain relevant for a long time.