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Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets
  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.


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Thursday, May 30, 2002
00:23 - Poor, poor Outlook users...
http://www.somethingawful.com/archives/news-archive-30-5-2002.htm

(top) link
Yesterday's Something Awful was good-- the lead story was all about the Klez worm and the wonders of ubiquitous software that's designed and implemented so eye-explodingly badly (sorry, had to borrow one of SA's favorite terms) and deployed to so many innocent and uncomprehending end-users that even if Microsoft did discover and fix a significant number of the security holes in Outlook, 85% of the Windows/Outlook users in the world (which is to say, millions and millions and millions of them) will never download the fixed version. Hey, Bill-- guess what! You wanted "a computer on every desk"? Well, congratulations! Now everybody on Earth has one-- and they all use Outlook, and they don't have the faintest idea how to upgrade it, even if they knew they were supposed to!

I don't think it will surprise anybody when I reveal that the worm thrives on one of the approximately five gazillion vulnerabilities of Microsoft Outlook, a program that was apparently coded in six hours by two guys who move furniture for a living. It doesn't matter to Microsoft that their mail program is one of the most widely used email clients in the universe; they are undoubtedly too busy praying to the god of their choice that somebody somewhere will make a good game for the X-Box or Bill Gates will discover how to travel back in time and decide to allocate resources to a better profit-generating product than the X-Box, such as "Microsoft Bob XP." Now I don't want to get all you console nerds out there in a fit over poking fun at the X-Box because I know how much you cretins love to write 15-page flame messages explaining why the game system of your choice is better than Jesus Himself. I don't care for playing games on the X-Box, Gamecube, PS2, or PC. I don't play games much these days except cat and mouse games where the hunter becomes the hunted and nothing is what it seems and he's a good cop gone bad, framed for a crime he didn't commit and is now out for revenge, out for justice, out for lunch.


It used to baffle my mind how Microsoft didn't give a flying donut about patching up their email client to contain less holes than an average Israeli child. It's not like Outlook and Outlook Express are two tiny programs that nobody uses; these are major applications that are installed in like 126% of the population's computers. While us Windows / Outlook chumps sit here and delete spoofed Klez worms all day like a crazed duck pecking at, uh, a piece of bread that looks like the "delete" key, the Mac and Linux weirdos are undoubtedly sitting comfortably in their very, very, very large load-balancing chairs and proclaiming their OS's superiority to Microsoft Windows. That's all fine and good by me, however I'd like to point out one little fact: neither Mac or Linux can run MS Paint. Point, match, and checkmate, inferior operating systems!

There, there. It's not so bad. (Not so bad? You fail everything except animation!)

Though I can't help but point out that even Lowtax doesn't seem to consider USING SOME E-MAIL PROGRAM OTHER THAN OUTLOOK.

Even those crusaders for computing sanity seem unable to apprehend this immediate, obvious solution. Or is it obvious to nobody else but me?

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© Brian Tiemann