I’m a big fan of the Robert Frost poem Mending Wall, in which two neighbors meet to rebuild the stone fence that separates their properties.
Talking about how the fence seems to need to be mended every year, one of the neighbors discusses how walls have a tendency to come down, as if by magical intervention. The other repeats a mantra that was likely his father’s - that good fences make good neighbors.
When I was reading about a software update, I came across the following quote which called to mind that Frost poem:
Basically, consider this real world analogy: we have improved the fences and doors that separate your yard from the street and your yard to your house. If someone manages to get through the barriers, s/he will find your valuables locked in a safe inside the house. We have made it harder to break in and less interesting if you do.
That quote is from one of the team members who built the latest version of Internet Explorer - the one that comes with Microsoft’s Service Pack 2 for Windows XP.
At the IEBlog, a post on IE in Windows XP SP2 discusses some of the changes to the browser, and how they will make surfing the web with IE more secure.
Somehow, like the fence in Frost’s Mending Wall, I suspect that the elements will attack it, and elves in the night will wear away at it, until the patch needs a patch. Oh, wait. that didn’t take long.
The problem with Microsoft, is they may have put the valuables in a safe, but have they remembered to not leave the keys in the safe?
Or even worse, does the safe have a backdoor?
Then there is also the fact that microsoft needs to come round to your house every few days to modify the safe, to make it safe again………
Comment by ken — August 28, 2004 @ 10:32 pm
Yep. It just doesn’t appear that the safe is very safe.
I suspect that like most things, given enough time and effort, someone will find a way to take advantage of a weakness or problem with the browser.
Comment by Bill Slawski — August 29, 2004 @ 2:29 pm