Status-Q

Thoughts after reading a good article at The Register about the latest Windows security holes…

One of the great things about having switched most of my work to a Mac is that I don’t have to worry about these. I’m not naive enough to think, however, that this is purely due to technical superiority on the part of Mac OS X. How vulnerable, I wonder, would my Mac would turn out to be if Apple were the big monopoly? At the moment I’m fairly safe because (a) virus writers want to hit the largest population, and (b) they want to get at Microsoft.

Apple users are a small minority, and the same market realities which mean that we get fewer software packages ported to our platform also mean that we’re a less interesting target for hackers. People writing Apple viruses would also be attacking artists, writers, designers – the little guys. Microsoft viruses hit the big corporations, the banks – the people who are more amusing when they get egg on their faces.

But the other factor is that Apple has never inspired the same sort of hatred that so many reserve for Microsoft. Why? OK, Microsoft’s software often stinks, their business tactics are unethical, they provide appalling support and so on, but that’s probably true of most big companies. Is it simply because they’re so powerful? There are many people who dislike whichever government happens to be in power, just because it’s in power. Anyone with an anarchical streak will lash out against those with authority.

However, there are many Apple ‘users’ who might be more aptly described as ‘devotees’ or ‘disciples’. They really like Apple. This is a marked contrast to Microsoft. Most people I’ve met who ‘really like’ Microsoft also happen to be those whose livelihood somehow depends on promoting MS products. Perhaps Apple users are displaying the natural response of any minority: we chose somebody different, and our enthusiastic loyalty to our cause helps us feel that we made the right choice in the face of all the statistical evidence.

But perhaps (and here’s a cheery bit of Christmas optimism) they genuinely are a better, nicer company with better, nicer products?

Thought for the day. How many SMS messages have you sent recently? From a BBC article:

“Every month more than one billion text messages are now sent in the UK.

A survey of 1,000 people by mobile phone company Orange found 72% would be replacing traditional Christmas cards with a greeting via their mobile phone. ”

A billion a month!. Wow.

The origins of Hanlon’s Razor

Following on from his email explaining Hanlon’s Razor, Joe Biglen has been in touch again with the precise details.

The book I refer to is “Murphy’s Law book two: More reasons why things go
wrong!” by Arthur Bloch…

The exact quote from the book is “Never attribute to
malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” The razor appears on page 52 of the chapter entitled “Advanced Expertsmanship” The book was
printed in 1980, by Price/Stern/Sloan Publishers, Inc.

That sounds about the time Bob gave me the copy. I was still in the Air Force, but was home on leave from Japan. Hopefully, the copy he gave me will surface some day.

Thanks very much for asking about the quote. I had forgotten how hysterically funny this book is. Twenty-one years later, it is just as funny, if not more so.

Many thanks, Joe.

Since I can, for the moment at least, count myself among that small elite group known as Mac Users, I have a whole new world of aesthetically desirable devices to tempt me. Chief among them at the moment is the iPod.
Stewart Alsop thinks so too.

One of my favourite quotes is known as Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity.

Like many people, I was unaware of its origin. But today I received an email from Joe Biglen:

I did a search for Hanlon’s Razor on the internet and was surprised that no one seems to know the origin. The author was my late friend Robert J. Hanlon of Scranton, Pa.

A number of years ago, the people that wrote the Murphy’s laws book decided to publish a second book and asked the public to contribute their own ‘laws” as part of a contest. My friend sent this in and it was accepted and printed with his name in the credits. The ‘prize’ for winning was 10 copies of the new book, one of which Bob gave me.

Bob was a very literate man with a wry sense of humor and I believe the razor “Never attribute malice to what can adequately be explained by stupidity” is his. If you would change the wording on your site to reflect this, I would appreciate it. Bob was a great man. He had a keen sense of history, but unfortunately, illness and an untimely death prevented him from being further published. I think it would be fitting and appropriate if he got the recognition he deserved for this.

Joseph E. Bigler
joeb43@yahoo.com

Agreed! Web pages appropriately modified to give credit where it’s due. Many thanks, Joe.

See also the more recent entry.

I’m reading a Nokia white paper describing how their new Multimedia Messaging Service will allow you to send images, animations, video clips etc from phone to phone. I quote:

Now, people receiving messages can be expected to genuinely react: with big surprise, laughter, tears or even with the wildest excitement.

This would be funny if it weren’t for the fact that it is taken from a perfectly straight paragraph in a serious document. Who writes this stuff? How do they live with themselves?

I was walking into town today, talking on my mobile using an earpiece. On the rare occasions when I do this I wave the phone visibly in front of me just so passers-by know I’m not actually mad, in much the same way that I prominently hold up high any small items I may be carrying around stores to make it clear to any undercover security guards that I’m not about to slip them into my pocket and make a dash for it.

Despite the fact that I occasionally use these headsets myself, I still haven’t got used to others using them. I often find myself feeling benevolent towards somebody who seems to be suffering from a mild case of care in the community before realising that they’re probably high-flying executives (closing some multi-million-dollar deal) whose very batteries I am unworthy to recharge.

But the earpieces seem to be much less in vogue these days, so if you want a new way to make people think you’re mildly dotty, you might like to try this.

On Mark Pilgrim’s weblog there’s a nice page about what’s wrong with RedHat’s installer.
I agree. That isn’t to say that there aren’t things wrong with Microsoft installers too, but more people have been indoctrinated with Microsoft jargon than Linux jargon, so, especially at the earliest stages of installation, you must speak in language they understand. Apple, of course, are the long-time masters of this. They generally explain things in a way that can be understood by people who don’t know either set of jargon.

Nice article by Roger Ridey in today’s Independent:
How Microsoft changed my life.

OK. As of about an hour and a half ago,
www.livingwithoutmicrosoft.org is live. We’d had a lot of interest even before the launch. Let’s see how it goes….

All fairly quite at the moment; I’m preparing for tomorrow’s launch of
livingwithoutmicrosoft.org.

Microsoft is renaming the contraversial Hailstorm to ‘.NET My Services‘. Three times as many syllables.

At first I thought that the original codename Hailstorm must have
sounded a little too threatening. But this sort of thing seems to be a trend. I think there’s a belief in marketing circles that the harder a name is to say, the more it will stick in people’s brains. Do they really think people are going to sit around sipping their coffees and saying, “We should make this into a .NET My Services service”? Come on!

I suggest abbreviating it to ‘.NET My S’ which has a more pleasingly ambiguous sound.