Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Congress Attempts to Preserve Market Share of IE on Windows


Instead of working on effectual legislation, our carefully elected representatives in Congress are working hard to pass the "I-Spy" and "Spy ACT". In the shadow of the truely useless CAN-SPAM act, they felt the need to further blow perceptual smoke-rings at the American public. Could it be that broken software and protocols cannot be fixed via the allpowerful hand of bloated legislation? Well, on the tough campaign trail your district 6 representative can hold his head high, knowing that he is "fighting" for the issues important to you! In reality this will effect nobody (maybe Wayland since he loves the IE and Windows).

I find it hillarious that our judicial branch prosecutes Microsoft for being proprietary, while our legislative branch passes laws which SPECIFICALLY are aimed at helping this proprietary model. Will this law help me as a Linux, Mac, or BeOS user? Is spyware a problem on PalmOS or Symbian? Spyware exists because Microsoft has chosen to let it exist. Thats not to say that they like spyware; I'm just saying that the "ease of use" that comes with giving normal users super-user access is a greater good for them than security. From what I hear this focus will change with Longhorn - but for now congress is happy to pretend to do something useful. Thanks guys.


  1. i just got a mass email from one of our IT guys at work, basically saying that we're not to download anything ourselves and that anything that we have downloaded will be deleted upon detection. i can't wait to put up a fight when he sees firefox on my computer, since i'm probably the only one in this entire office whose computer is not horribly crippled by spyware.... pop-ups = not good. why don't people understand this?

  2. I find it ironic that the very people that support Windows, the system administrators, are many times the very individuals that have little control over the spyware and adware. You'd think that they'd want to save themselves time. There is this strage ONLY go with the mainstream mentality that seems to come with an MCSE that I don't understand. You get labelled with a "oh, you're one of THOSE people" if you don't use Outlook, IE, and have a crippled system that is hijacked by spammers and trojans.