...to make this entire journal about nothing but the seemingly endless parade of bugs, and security holes in Microsoft timebombs products. There are other people that are doing that very well, and it's my intention here to write original stuff - stories, pics and opinions that you can't find anywhere else on the net. The world has enough bloggers recycling each others links in an incestuous wheel of gab, thank you very much, and most of them do it better than I could.

I suspect I will not always be able to conform to that standard...

The problem is, I know of a few of you that read this that are not geeky type computer buffs that spend a few hours each day reading the news, to include security alerts and such, but I'm the one you're gonna call when your hard drive gets hosed and your data's trashed. So, I'd prefer an ounce of prevention every now and then.

This post is for you, my enduser friends, you folks who use computers to do your jobs, as opposed to those of us where the computers are our jobs.

While I've always discouraged you from using M$ stuff any more than you have to, I have to give the devil his due, and admit that of all the products that M$ puts out, Office is the big one that even people like me can't live without.

None of the other suites, even the open-source ones, have caught up, at least not yet. So, I've always grudgingly kept it on my machines(s), even tried to learn the advanced stuff on the different apps, so I could help you with your questions, and so I make make the odd simollion every now and again with a training gig, or whipping up a simple little Access database.

I've begged and pleaded with you to quit using LookOut Outlook, as it has been, along with IE, the gaping hole through which the hacker masses have galloped without even much slowing down on their way to control of your machine. I don't bitch at you too much about the flea-bitten, security nighmare, enterprise-level apps such as Exchange, as you never even lay eyes on one of those machines, and the professional idiots that use that stuff both know to keep patching, and get what they deserve.

Just stay away from Outlook, use a different browser and email client, keep your virus definitions updated, and you'll mostly be OK, I've said.

That was then, this is now.

It seems that as M$ has continued in its quest to integrate the enduser applications with both each other and the internet, the programming links between what we used to call "standalone" applications have grown to the point where it is hard to tell where one app takes up and the other leaves off. Thus, the security of any of them has now become a function of the weakest of those integrating links. And that's purty dogggone weak these days.

The latest example of this is that doing something as innocous as letting Excel apply a stylesheet to a worksheet can wipe out your machine. That stylesheet can contain any code the technically malicious care to put in there, and without warning, unseen by any virus checker, have their Evile Way with your PC.

So, now it's time for me to say the hell with the whole sorry kit. Be done with the Office suite, my friends. The latest versions of the open source stuff are about where Office was two or three years ago, and you got your work done well enough then didn't you?

Personally, I've been done with M$ crap in all it's myriad forms. I still keep a machine around with Windows on it, as there are a few things I have (still) that won't work with another OS, like my camera card reader, and my Snappy video capture device, and a few programs like PSP that I still use in favor of their open-source counterparts.

Plus, since most of you still use IE, I have to look at any webpages I code in it, just to see if they render the way I intend.

But that's it. I'm never going to spend another dime on a Microsoft product, or buy another piece of hardware that doesn't have Linux support, period. That means my personal use of the OS stops at Win98, right where it is right now.

You Have Been Warned.

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