german and french governments take stand against IE

Internet Explorer prooves to be a tool for digital terrorism

Once again the digitally dangerous Internet explorer has been used by crackers with some dirty motives in mind.
After the attack on google which was related to some activity from China, The german government followed by the french government, have issued strong warnings against the use of this internet browser. Microsoft as usual promised to fix this bug and put up a patch.

More official details on these decisions can be found

here http://mashable.com/2010/01/15/german-government-stop-using-internet-explorer

and here http://mashable.com/2010/01/18/france-against-internet-explorer

some serious concerns

with these recent attacks, there are a few questions which keep coming up in the minds of many people who understand the fact that ICTs play the most important role in our life.

How many and how long?

After the recent problems with IE, Microsoft has shamelessly promised to fix the bug. While this is no obligation that they are doing, this is a commitment that they had to give any ways.
But my question is how many more such "security holes " are still hidden by Microsoft (knowingly?)
I am pritty sure that this is a dirty racket between microsoft and anti virus companies.
Infact we should dive a bit deeper into this problem because Microsoft's Internet Explorer is just one tip of the ice burg.


In the 1970s Unix which was used on large servers had already provided a comprehensively perfect solution for the so called "virus " problem which actually started after Windows came into the market for end-users.
The read, write and execute permission system and the POSEX standards were all that was needed for preventing all the virus related activities to thrive.

When Unix had already given an answer to the solution, why did Microsoft which holds a big part of the desktop market, did not use the same stratergy. Why did windows not come with the same architecture like Unix?
This is obviously on purpose to encourage such dirty business at the cost of people's security.
This is not the first time that IE or the operating system itself has exposed its security lapses.
Every time we get a "patch" for (probably really ) fixing the problem.
And we never know when the next will come.
Obviously Free and Open Source browsers like Firefox or the GNU/Linux operating system does not suffer from all this, partially because the source code is open and thus transparent, but mostly because they did what Unix did.
so those softwares or the OS does not suffer from all these problems, although microsoft trys to fool people with a sterio type "linux is not popular so there are no viruses " answer.

how important is this?

People talk about computing comfort and also about the fact that they are used to a certain thing.
The corporates ask obviously practical questions about support and on-site ervice.
While these questions are easily answered, there is some thing which every one of us must learn following the security problem in IE.
It is well known that GNU/Linux now with the advent of distros like Ubuntu have become more user friendly than windows.
The point is if we are ready to open our eyes to a new and better possibility.
Many chained smokers or drunkards know that they are spoiling their helth and what they do might even kill them, but similar to windows adicts, they are adicts to some thing harmful.
Will we make ourselves ready for using a totally harmless computer software suite (Including the OS, Office software, browser etc) which is infact more feature rich and powerful?
Corporates faile to find somehow that a lot of commertial support is available for FOSS and infact getting problems solved or even bug fixed is much faster.
Unfortunately just like in a war where our enemies have some better artilary or some weapon, Microsoft has got a better "show off " art and proper contacts in the government to ... (you know what I mean?)
But above all this, my major question to the readers is,
"is our privacy, our information and our freedom so worthless that we take all these digital attacks for granted?" Are we so unconcerned about our digital information?
to me all that is stopping us from strongly refusing digital terrorism like this is the fact that we are not realising the potential time bomb which is ticking away in our computers or mobiles or ATMs or what ever digital technology we use dayly.

conclusion

It is a fact that FOSS based OS and related softwares have been known for a long time for their security and also the fact that huge organisations like google use them on a large scale.
But it is only off-late that these softwares have also become very user-friendly. Now it is our time to change our hopeless mindset and give up our helplessness prone attitude.
We must stop saying "linux and foss is too good to be true " and realise that fact that some big organisations are spying on us and the attacks like the recent ones on google will continue if we keep using the proprietory softwares, specially from companies like microsoft who think beyond business and are often used by other selfish and power hungry organisations.

If we don't value our information and if we don't respect our own privacy and freedom, then we can't expect others to do that for us.
End-users can use softwares like Open office and firefox with operating systems like GNU/Linux without fearing virus attacks.
Corporates should invest their time to analyse their digital technology decisions.
The free software community backed by heavy commertial support has brought about a revolution in ICTs. Now it is upto us to embrace it for our own freedom.