Reg staffer on ‘one-man-war’ against Microsoft

Bill Gates and our Graham don't get along, apparently

By Team Register • Get more from this author

Posted in Flame of the Week, 10th May 2000 11:24 GMT

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From: McGuire, Jon
Subject: Graham Lea
Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 06:37:51

More and more I find that I'm disappointed that Mr. Lea's e-mail address is not made available. I find most of his reporting to be so misled and biased it isn't even humorous. His MS Java article (dated today) is just the latest example of his misguided one-man-war to reinvent the history of Microsoft. Did Gates sleep with his wife or something? There has to be something serious behind this.

The recent Java-lawsuit article is typical. In his wrap-up, Mr. Lea draws the most wild, far-fetched conclusions possible. In this case, he ties a mysteriously-cited increase in Java's respectworthiness to the Love Bug virus causing some kind of loss-of-face for the Outlook e-mail client. Either I'm missing some kind of extremely obscure connection, or Mr. Lea is once again throwing out well-known names in the hopes of confusing the less well-informed into assuming Microsoft weakenesses and failings where none exist. (To keep it simple, and to keep this message under one-page in length, we'll mostly ignore the fact that the only place Java has had any success is on the server, an environment to which it is least well-suited.)

Furthermore, as long as I'm on the subject and have your attention, the Love Bug virus really had nothing to do with "security holes in Outlook". Outlook just launched an application, period. These days many applications launch other apps in response to a user command. Have you ever double-clicked a file inside a ZIP archive? Guess what? It will launch the appropriate application. Security hole or convenience feature? Apparently it depends on which company you wish made your operating system.

If somebody saved the VBScript attachment from a Eudora client, then launched the script, would that be a security hole in Eudora? I didn't think so. What if it wasn't a VBScript file at all, but a plain old DOS batch file? Or a UNIX CMD file? Is it still an Outlook problem?

And to swerve back to the point, can anybody explain to me what the hell any of this has to do with Java? Apparently Mr. Lea sees a connection. The press has turned Microsoft's success into the current surreal landscape of persecution, speculation, and rhetoric. You guys need to get a grip. And publish Mr. Lea's e-mail address while you're at it.

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