Business, Technology and Society

Microsoft Edge

33 Comments

Will it start the browser war we so desperately need?

I hope so. Everything currently sucks. I’m tempted to do the upgrade to 10 on her machine just to check it out. I might do it on my laptop, too, though I rarely boot it into Windows.

[Update a few minutes later]

This is sort of related: “Farewell to Android.”

I’ve never owned an Apple product, and don’t want to go to an iPhone. I guess I’ll just live with the security issues for now, as I don’t really live on my phone, and only use it when out of the house. Even when traveling, I still use laptop for most of my access. There’s not that much personal data on it to hack.

[Thursday noon update]

New vulnerability found in Androids, that can put it into a “persistent vegetative state.”

I suspect I’m safe; I don’t go to unknown web sites with my phone very often.

[Bumped]

33 thoughts on “Microsoft Edge”

  1. Software development is a sad state of affairs. Specifically operating systems. Coding either adds or fixes. First coding is almost never final. Some say final is not possible which I reject completely. By which I mean you can fix something to the point that you never have to revisit it with the understanding that adding is starting the process over, but just for that feature if you properly encapsulate your code.

    I will not be moving from Chrome to Edge, but I like that Edge was developed. Competition is always good. Microsoft wants s/w to be a service. So does everybody that doesn’t want to ever write ‘final’ code. Why make money on new features when you can force people to pay for fixing old stuff instead. The truth of this ranges from subtle to blatant but is never hard to find if you look for it.

    I’ve written bulletproof code because I cared enough to do it. I’ve seldom seen that level of caring, even from some exceptional coders. They write and change code so fast they never even notice that some of it can never be reached or variables get initialized then never referred to again. That’s from the best. I’ve spent days just removing code and feeling quite satisfied in my productivity. Because code that isn’t there is 100% bug free.

    New code should never be able to break old code.

    1. A staggering number of these bugs come from… not validating data passed to you by users. The code I write in my day job has a general rule of never trusting anything it receives from an external source, which is why it rarely crashes. When you don’t do that, you end up with Heartbleed, or an operating system that crashes when it tries to play a corrupt video file.

    2. Software is written on the cheap and shabbily because that is what the customers want. Get it out there first, and make sure it mostly works, and you’ll get the market. You’ll go broke making it bullet-proof.
      Free market. This is the best solution for the current situation.

      1. And you go broke when everyone abandons you because you’re a security nightmare. You just hope to have exercised your stock options and retired by that point.

      2. It takes no more time to make it bullet proof than not. My productivity was documented at more than the three also rans I worked with. Two of those I considered smarter than me (but less experienced.) We had almost a dozen on team at one point. Later I alone maintained over a million lines of code (over 300 files averaging 5000 lines each.) It does take a certain frame of mind.

        Typically, when an error was found it took me seconds to fix it. The only data sensitive error that cost manhours was for an implementation I argued against and lost in a multistate call that went into the early hours of the morning. The sponsor of the opposing implementation (one of the two guys I considered smarter than me) later apologized and said we should have gone with my idea which would have saved the company not just work but embarrassment (they were real good at talking themselves out of law suits.)

        I know one young guy that was a coding machine (now a multimillionaire) that never checked the parameters going into his functions… he didn’t work well with others (and I should have gotten the paperwork signed during the honeymoon period… instead, I be poor.)

        Another believed everything he read in a book so added error trapping to every single function… until he learned the hard way and had to remove some. The majority making no difference either way so were left in.

  2. The Stagefright bug reminds me of the ancient Lookout Express auto-execution of attachments vulnerability. What kind of idiot developer does that?

  3. Hey Rand, that article has a lot of hyperbole.. The exploit he describes does not do what he says – it’s not a good one, but it’s still yet to be determined how severe it really is.

    But, to compare security vulnerabilities in Apple’s iPhone vs Android:

    iOS has had 537 identified security vulnerabilities in its lifetime (source: http://www.cvedetails.com/product/15556/Apple-Iphone-Os.html?vendor_id=49)

    vs Android, which has only had 54

    (source: http://www.cvedetails.com/product/19997/Google-Android.html?vendor_id=1224)

    Although Apple *can* patch them quickly as the article asserts (where Android is hamstrung by the carriers’ certification process), they often don’t, usually waiting anywhere from 3 months to a year (when the next major OS release is out).

  4. iOS is not more secure. I still remember that bug where you could root iOS with a malformed JPG picture.

    There is no secure smartphone OS.

    1. Bah. I’ve upgraded both my home and work computers already to 10. When you first log in one of the configuration pages is essentially the one in that article. Now people may not realize what it means but they do, in fact, get presented with it automatically.

      Btw, Rand, Edge is nice, except that since there’s still no adblocking extensions, it runs kind of choppy–all those hundreds of ad and js and other requests means if you open half a dozen news sites or something, the browser will chug, even on my i5 with 8GB of RAM.

      But they say extensions are coming at some point.

  6. Once again, dear friends – all software products begin as organs and gradually degenerate into tumors. I am aware of no exceptions. I am also unaware of any cure.

    1. The cure exists, but it’s a losing battle. You need a champion to hold the line against the committee which eventually takes over all projects.

      1. For example, a committee thinks removing GOTO is a good idea, not realizing it’s not the GOTO but the many ways of getting to a labeled address that creates spaghetti code. Euphoria 4 being a bad example. E2 was very expressive w/o the kitchen sink.

  7. Switching to Edge on my Windows laptop would once again separate it from my mobile devices for which there is no sync-able option. When Microsoft comes up with Edge for other mobile OSes. then I’ll consider using it.

    2. Yeah, that’s kind of a deal-killer. I just hope website developers don’t code specifically for Edge the way they used to for IE. Used to have all sorts of issues because I was using Mozilla, then Firefox.

      Still like Pale Moon 64-bit, though. 🙂

  9. I remember watching Bill Gates complain about web browsers being “fat clients,” not “thin clients.” My reaction was “And who’s responsible for THAT, a$$hole?”

    What will browsers like Chrome or Firefox be able to do that Echo can’t, because the code for them has been cut out to make Echo leaner?

    1. What will browsers like Chrome or Firefox be able to do that Echo can’t

      Use 6GB of RAM and lock up an entire CPU core for no apparent reason?

      I’ve had to kill Firefox twice this week for doing just that.

    1. Joel Spolsky is one of the people I really look up to, one for that essay “Never rewrite your software from scratch” and two, for serving in the IDF as a paratrooper.

      Based on his bold, no-nonsense writing style, I imagined him to be a real-life version of Zohan Dvir, the Adam Sandler character who rope-climbed into helicopters.

      In an online interview, Mr. Spolsky revealed himself to be the opposite of how I imagined him, someone who chafed at military discipline, and whose service in the paratroops was to bake bread.

      Hey, I still consider him to be a patriot because he did his duty, which in this case, was to bake bread for his unit.

  11. Google made a huge mistake when they farmed out Android updates to manufacturers and carriers. I now have two orphaned Android devices full of security holes, and one that Google themselves are probably about to orphan.

    If the Nexus 7 I bought less than two years ago doesn’t get the new version of Android when it’s released in a couple of months–as rumours suggest it won’t–I’ll be replacing it with an iPad.

      1. I believe someone has already ported it, but I’d rather have a device that’s officially supported than have to jump through hoops to install unofficial updates.

  12. I started a new job last month, and was given a choice of an iPhone and a Samsung Galaxy. We’re not allowed to have personal cell phones (or any other personal electronics) in the building, so whatever I picked I had to live with. I’ve had iPhones from the first one on the market (and am now on a 6 with 128 GB memory), so I decided to try out the Samsung. I’m really sorry I did. It’s awful to use, and the recent security problems limit its use even more. I’m one of those who uses my iPhone as an extension of my brain, to look up information on the fly. Can’t do that any more with the Samsung. So now I’m no longer as smart as I used to be.

  14. You’ll know they’re getting serious about quality when the code starts getting smaller even as they add features.

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