Just a few months ago we were blasting Microsoft for taking five weeks to prepare the Ormandy patch. Now we discover that Linux has had a root-privledge exploit for years, was notified, and took two months to fix it, and we get comments like "Must be a slow day." Stay classy (and unbiased), Slashdot.

That eliminates the possibility to revoke a certificate if one is comprimised. Also, it leads to situations like the TI calculator incident, which Slashdot seems to hate.

That's from their Anti-Malware team talking about how they detect it. Nowhere does it say that they have no plans to fix the bug.

I know Slashdot's editorial standards have dropped, especially when it comes to Anti-Microsoft articles, but there is no link here to any article that claims Microsoft has no plans to patch the flaw. Do we even have editors anymore?

I would argue that it's strategically foolish to build on a framework that is constantly being changed by thousands of developers who usually prioritize code cleanliness and architecture over things like backwards compatibility.

If I'm building on a framework, I don't want to have to fix the framework every time a new patch or version comes out - at that point I might as well use my own framework. If I'm using a framework, I want stability and the knowledge that the things I build on the framework will continue to work for years to come.

While there are arguments for and against open source, backwards compatibility is one of the strongest AGAINST them. Microsoft will give me backwards binary compatibility and support for well over a decade; Apple at least admits to my face that they deprecate anything more than a couple years old; Linux simply breaks things and doesn't seem to care.

They already did. Half of what was supposed to be "WinFS" was released in Vista as the Search Indexer. The other half was released in Win7 as "Libraries".

This will not take over the role of Exchange for the same reason Google won't take over the role of Exchance - for a lot of companies, having local control of their data and communications is key. Storing confidential data in the "cloud" (how I hate that term) is a security and privacy risk and a potential source of liability. Thanks to this, there will always be a demand for locally-run and locally-administered mail servers, and nothing really competes with Exchange in that realm.

If software is required to be verified secure, the cost of development (and thus the cost of software) will increase by an order of magnitude if not more. For proof of that, look at how much it costs to develop software to NASA's standards. In addition, open-source software will cease to exist, or at the very least, will cease to exist in any visible context. Project participation will plummet once devs become financially liable for what they write. Be careful what you wish for.

To continue your analogy, when your driver has a heart attack (or you get sick of him and get rid of him), Linux will crash into the next brick wall since you can't find anyone who knows your custom system, while it's very easy to find someone to keep your Windows running at 60mph.

Because it was tried. And it was discovered that users don't read.

Err....what? Both .doc and .docx are fully documented formats. And ODF isn't any better - try opening a file created in OO.o in Abiword, resaving it, and opening it in OO.o Oh, look, all my formatting is broken! It's not interoperable by any stretch of the word.

Clearly you've never tried to get across WA-520 during Rush Hour.

Two reasons:

(1) Because companies have discovered that it's far better for the PC ecosystem to release patches in a coordinated system (such as "Patch Tuesday") that corporations, etc. can plan for than to release everything ASAP

(2) Because regression bugs happen, and it's important to tests hotfixes thoroughly, particularly when they affect core functionality like, say, TCP/IP networking.

They could at least try. Every single claim they make is laughable. They make overarching claims such as "inspect users' hard drives", which carries a heavy implication of looking through user data when no such looking occurs. Most of the others (vendor lock-in, security holes) are a decade out of date. Then they use terms like "proprietary Word formats" when all Word formats - both OOXML and DOC - are fully documented, as mandated by federal court.

Finally, they talk about DRM and removing support for older versions when you'd be hard-pressed to find an Open Source vendor supporting products for even a quarter of the lifecycle Microsoft supports its products for and the DRM exists solely to allow playback of HD content (and is nonexistent when such content isn't being played), something with OSS can't do.

Really, the FSF is almost as much of an embarassment to the Open Source community as RMS. If we ever want to see the day of the Linux desktop, we'll have to muzzle both of them first.