The Angry Drunk

This is sure to bring out the trolls and zealots; but what the hell. It seems that Microsoft has issued a warn­ing advis­ing that Windows users not use Safari for Windows. I’m not going to bother to go over the back­ground on this, you can read the advi­sory your­self here. And I’m not going to dwell on the irony of Microsoft lec­tur­ing any­one on “‘secu­rity.” My point is that this is the new face of FUD. Users have been so cowed with breath­less report­ing about all the evil hack­ers out there in the dan­ger­ous back alleys of the inter­tubes that the most effi­cient way of sab­o­tag­ing your com­pe­ti­tion is to throw out some vague warn­ings about “exploits,” or “hacks.”

Now, before the usual douchebags sally forth to accuse me of defend­ing Apple or some such shit, that’s not what this is about. What I’m com­ment­ing on here is a prac­tice that is as retarded when Apple does is as it is when Microsoft, or Mozilla, or PayPal does it. Computer secu­rity is a real issue, and needs a real con­ver­sa­tion that isn’t just one com­pany using it as a mar­ket­ing trick to dis­credit the com­pe­ti­tion, or a vendor

Continue read­ing Security: The Most Powerful FUD of All.