Alright, apparently Winn Schwartau has decided that he can no longer tolerate the centrality of Windows in the marketplace, and he is deciding to run a hypothetical company using Mac to see where that gets him. Now, I try to be non-biased about operating systems - I use a few of them here: Solaris, Windows 2003 Server, XP, and as my typical desktop operating platform, OS X Tiger on a Macintosh iBook. I'm not a bigot about operating systems - seriously.
I am, however, also a fan of objectivity. Scientists use "double blind" techniques and other approaches to attempt to reduce bias on the part of the observer in analyzing the way that things behave. It seems to me that Winn initiating an anlaysis with the phrase, " an experiment predicated on the hypothesis that the WinTel platform represents the greatest violation of the basic tenets of information security and has become a national economic security risk" he might be approaching the issue with a touch of bias...
Seriously, is there any question what his "results" will be at the end of this? Why even bother doing the experiment if the bias is so strong. I'm not expecting the press to be warded off based on the flawed nature of his science; in fact, I'm sure it'll be a press extravaganza. However, I'm hoping that the folks in the field actually making security and business decisions are smart enough to see through this transparent stunt.
Posted by Ed at May 27, 2005 06:14 PM