timdaniels.com

2004-07-28

Paul Graham

"...have the smart people work as toolmakers. If your company makes software to do x, have one group that builds tools for writing software of that type, and another that uses these tools to write the applications. This way you might be able to get smart people to write 99% of your code, but still keep them almost as insulated from users as they would be in a traditional research department. The toolmakers would have users, but they'd only be the company's own developers. If Microsoft used this approach, their software wouldn't be so full of security holes, because the less smart people writing the actual applications wouldn't be doing low-level stuff like allocating memory. Instead of writing Word directly in C, they'd be plugging together big Lego blocks of Word-language. (Duplo, I believe, is the technical term.)" more

2004-07-02

Department of Homeland Security Urges you to Stop Using Internet Explorer

US-CERT (United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team) has issued yet another warning about ongoing fundamental flaws in Internet Explorer. They recommend the following possible steps to mitigate the problem:

1. Disable Active scripting and ActiveX, Apply the Outlook Email Security Update, Read and send email in plain text format, Maintain updated anti-virus software, and Do not follow unsolicited links!

or

2. Use a different web browser

I vote for #2! Check out related stories from Yahoo News and Wired News.

If you are a Macintosh user, you are probably using Safari anyway, and Windows users have a much better browser than IE available: Firefox.

If you are still using Internet Explorer you don't realize what you are missing. Switch to a modern browser today!