Don't Help Them

Do yourself a favour. And enjoy the holidays.

The WMF flaw: What a Mighty Fine Flaw. Go to Google News, do it right now, and put in 'WMF' and see what you get. And read a bit in a few of the articles that turn up. They're all contradictory.

Even George Ou at ZD has an entire paragraph with 'strike through': the advice he previously gave all his fellow Windows users doesn't work (and now he has a better method, or so he says).

They're running around like chickens with no heads - or heads without chickens. They can't find the broad side of a barn and it's confusion and chaos all over the place. In this otherwise sombre and tranquil holiday season everything is a mess because the Windows idiots are at it again.

If you're not on Windows yourself - and chances are good if you're reading this - then the odds are good some of your Windows friends are going to ask you for help again. Don't give it to them.

Anything your friends tell you about why they're still using Windows isn't an explanation - it's an excuse. They're just too lame and lazy to do anything about their situation. And odds are good you've told them before what they should do, and it's not your responsibility to clue them in: clues are free and they can obtain theirs the same way you got yours.

Then the incomparable Rob Enderle pops up talking about 'we who love Windows'. Who can love Windows? It's got an interface that could have been designed by the Marquis de Sade. Except the good old Marquis had a real passion for pain and Bill Gates doesn't have any passion at all.

So what if it were stable and secure - which it is not? Everything is copied from someone else who did the hard work and the groundwork and it's copied really poorly too. And the crashes and hangs and lost data and all the interminable irritations and annoyances - people love Windows?

Sure, if you're Rob Enderle and you're on Microsoft's payroll to spread FUD and propaganda, then it can seem cute. But for anyone just trying to get by it's a real disaster.

They're going to come to you and ask you for help. You keep asking them why they insist on using that terrible platform, getting clobbered left and right, and they just change the subject and ask you to help. Don't.

They like to talk about responsibility. One of their big things right now is the irresponsibility in publishing a proof of concept before the fix was ready. That's someone's responsibility? And what fix?

Microsoft, those precious baboons, went on record to say the WMF flaw was not critical and could not affect anyone if they didn't click on an attachment or some other such nonsense. Shows how much control Microsoft have over their own code.

But the responsibility? The responsibility lies with every idiot who year after year continues to - insists on - running that idiotic Windows and making life a mess for themselves and for everyone else on this planet.

The Internet has been around in its current incarnation as the World Wide Web for ten years. Almost exactly. Just over. You can give it a start date of 24 August, when Windows 95 was released. Ten years: that's not a long time.

For the first five years things were quiet. People hadn't been connected like that before. Most home users were still running unprotected standalone systems and totally oblivious to what waited out there.

Everything changed in May 2000 with the first major worm outbreak ever. Five years after the so-called 'web revolution' the ship started leaking. And since then it's only taken in more water. Today worms aren't a prank anymore: they're big business.

The Internet is a mess today thanks to Windows users. It's turned into a junkyard thanks to Windows users. It's total chaos thanks to Windows users. And one of the Windows users responsible for this is your neighbour or friend.

And that neighbour or friend is going to come calling again. And when you hear the doorbell ring, be sure you know what you're going to say.