William (Bill) Vaughn's Musings

This entire security paradigm makes a grossly invalid assumption: ordinary people actually know what to trust, that they actually know what they are doing and know how to protect themselves. The vast majority of consumers treat their systems like a trusted home appliance. They assume that it should work and keep working as long as it's plugged in and they pay their broadband bill. They have no clue about how their systems are subject to attack from all sides--they simply trust Microsoft to protect them. Putting the responsibility for their own security entirely in their hands is a truly ludicrous idea.

Continue reading "User Access Security in Vista--A Terrible Mistake" »

Posted by William Vaughn at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I just heard from a Microsoft support person who told me that it's "normal" for Windows Defender to consume 100% of the CPU during startup (from standby) or reboot. MS has taken about 6 weeks to come to this conclusion. They said that this is "by design" and won't be fixed.

I can see how scanning for nasty stuff is necessary during a tuneup or during idle time when the user (who is the most important factor here) is NOT using the system, but to slow down the boot process for 5-10 minutes each and every time the system boots or resumes is unacceptable.

I'm afraid Microsoft's arrogance has reached a new height. What makes them think they have the right to take over my system whenever they please?

Posted by William Vaughn at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I finally got the RC1 to install on my Thinkpad T40. No, it's not that fast (certainly not any faster than XP), and no, many (okay most) of the IBM utilities don't work, but at least the LAN and Wireless NICs work. That's a big step forward AFAIC.

Posted by William Vaughn at 05:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)