In a recent post I suggested Windows users might find the book "Just Say No to Microsoft" useful for securing their systems. Well, I splurged and bought the book. Now that I have finished it, I was premature in that suggestion.
Although it is true that the author Tony Bove does provide some suggestions, his primary suggestion is always - "Just say no" and to any Microsoft (M$) product. And there are plenty of good reasons that he gives. But this may not be the best advise for everyone out there. Many people have already invested in M$ products and hence need advice on how to better secure their system....
Nonetheless.
What is perhaps most interesting about the book really is history after history of how M$ dominated market after market. You would be very mistaken to assume that it was because M$'s product was superior to anything else. Suffice to say, M$ has been always using very aggressive, divisive
Links to some sites about M$'s history: http://www.vcnet.com/bms/departments/dirtytricks.shtml
http://netaction.org/monitor/
Also of interest are facts about the various products M$ has produced - that is, acquired and then developed. Actually is rather interesting to read some of the developmental history of certain products and about their various flaws. Most interesting is how M$ responds to the flaws - ignoring, forcing users to update to the next version, taking credit for uncovering what they didn't uncover, passing the flaws off as minor, etc. - oh, and well, occasionally fixing them.
It was rather humorous that many in the industry refer to viruses not as this or that virus, but as M$ viruses. That is, the viruses only exist because of the numerous flaws in M$'s products.
Some other interesting details follow:
Word/Excel
One interesting fact about Word and Excel is that apparently they retain a history of changes. I am not certain how these histories are accessed, but it is a concern for businesses and governments as otherwise undesired text could be uncovered. This was, in fact, used to prove that the UK gov. knew certain text was plagiarized from some grad. students by accessing this hidden history data.
In order to counter this, M$ even has a tool to remove this data for Office XP and 2003 at:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=144E54ED-D43E-42CA-BC7B-5446D34E5360&displaylang=en
So, suffice to say, Word and Excel produce rather bloated documents. Far better to use .txt or .rtf for text information exchange, or to use alternative products such as AbiWord or OpenOffice - which are free and don't retain histories.
Excel
Excel it turns out has some interesting inherent errors. One such error has to do with calculating True and False expressions. There are 2 ways to do a calculation. In Excel, however, each shows different results.
True+True+False=2
Sum(True,True,False)=0
This is because a field =False results in 0 and =True results in 1. While Sum(True) = 0 and Sum(False) = 0
Any other spreadsheet program will produce a consistent response.
This example may seem unimportant. I mean how many people are using Boolean expressions in spreadsheets? But it begs the question, "How many other problems are there?" Is my data correct?
The example given above is demonstrated at: http://j-walk.com/ss/excel/odd/odd25.htm
And this same site has a list of Excel oddities: http://j-walk.com/ss/excel/odd/index.htm
One thing I am very much in agreement with Tony on has to do with ending dependence on the Word format. Just by handing off a document in Word format presupposes that the recipient has Word or a program that can read Word docs. Word has enough problems as it is, not just because of the bloated format, but also because of the issue of Macro viruses. It should be noted that the only viruses Linux and MAC's are susceptible to at present arise from macro viruses when using M$'s Word or Excel programs (as well as Entourage on a MAC).
There are other formats that are less bloated and better. Again using txt or rtf format is universal. pdf's are pretty much universal as well. pdf's are even better if you wish to keep the format exactly as it is on your screen.
Although few people may still use it I found one fact about Windows 98 very interesting. Turns out that if you are to somehow keep Windows 98 up and running for
M$ Alternatives
Tony Bove has a very good list of alternatives for each M$ product on his website:
http://www.tonybove.com/getoffmicrosoft/home.html#office
For a peek into some of his writings you can also go to Bove's blog at:
http://www.tonybove.com/getoffmicrosoft/blog/
For an analysis of survival time of various operating systems:
http://isc.sans.org/survivalhistory.php
An additional free anti-virus program for Windows is mentioned in the book: Avant 4 Home. If you wish to give it a try it is available at:
http://www.avast.com
