By Nina Paley

I had a conversation with our intern about relative security of computing platforms while cleaning a zero-day Trojan infection from his Windows PC. He was looking to buy a computer for college, and had a choice between an “expensive” Mac and a  ”troublesome” PC laptop.

I gave him a few good reasons why he should get a Mac (no viruses, more stable, better usability, better quality of hardware) and also showed him some basic stuff on my Ubuntu desktop at work which I have been using for development. That left quite an impression and I thought that if more people became aware how easy and useful an Ubuntu PC can be, Linux market share would be way more than the paltry 1%.

So the mission now is to give Ubuntu CDs to all friends to try out.

In this light the latest Microsoft’s move of bullying HTC into licensing its patents because it would be getting a “free ride” on Microsoft’s “innovations” is silly and cynical. It’s another clear example, on one hand, how dysfunctional and contrary to its stated goals the patent system has become, and on another, how it has been hijacked by the likes of Microsoft to help protect large monopolies and put a brake on true innovation and progress. Sad, sad day.

I have a possible explanation – it’s the clever way Chrome installation works. To install and update Chrome, you don’t need admin rights on Windows systems – it installs all files into user profile, which means that all the corporate users logging on with limited permissions to corporate systems can install and use Chrome themselves, and all the security patches will be applied silently without anyone noticing, including the IT departments.

Firefox installation and updates require administrative account, and so far there has been no official way to distribute patches throughout corporate networks. While administrators would love to provide users an alternative to IE due to its atrocious security record, the pain of keeping Firefox updated is obviously greater than dealing with IE’s security issues.