i am not smart. at least when it comes to using microsoft windows, i'm really not. today i frantically emailed some people asking them not to trust instant messages sent from me, because a piece of, uh, something, took over my im client. so i get an im from a colleague with a random link to click on. this is something that happens probably 5-10 times a day depending on how much work one or all of us are doing. so, it goes to this page, and it has what looks to be some stupid flash game regarding osama and saddam. real subtle. 'course, there's a click-through security dialog asking if you want to install the stupid game, mentioning the security certification. not terribly unusual. except the stupid game is a trojan horse to bring in this stupid program from buddy links dot com (i'm not helping those fuckers' pagerank, dammit). which quits and restarts AIM, also something that happens on a pretty frequent basis by itself, due to connectivity issues. by the time that happens, i'm messaging the person that sent it to me, who points out that she wasn't the one who sent it, and then someone says 'oh no, you didn't click on it, did you?'. yeah, i did. windows presents you with so many error messages in the course of the day is it any surprise that none of them have any meaning? even relatively informative ones get lost in the shuffle. so many things quit working requiring a kick to start up again, so many things behave inconsistently that when something really should grab your attention, it's already too late. and hell, even when you do do something about it, it doesn't work. the add-remove programs wizard crashed upon trying to remove it, and had to be taken down, which in turn broke several other control panels, and aim quit and restarted several times in the course of the day. i have no idea if it tried this crap on someone else again. sorry if it did. so, really, this can't be atypical, right? you can argue that it's my fault, and it is, you'd be right. but at the same time, with its preponderance of meaningless error messages that conceal the real thing, its inscrutable litany of security dialogs, the alacrity with which it allows a malicious program to betray and subvert others, and the failure of the cleanup routines, windows sure didn't lift a finger to save itself.
so why does the world still insist upon it as the standard for desktop computing?
oh, right. solitaire.