They Call It Default for a Reason

An article of interest appeared the last few days. It announced that another new security flaw was found in Microsoft's various operating systems; according to reports this was one of the "worst" yet, allowing hackers who exploit it to have free reign on servers or desktops effected. Not much news there, if not for an announcement in the end of the article: Microsoft won a $90 Million Dollar contract to provide desktop and server software to the Department of Homeland Security. What?!? I mean, don't they keep up with the monthly (or sometimes weekly) patches to plug security holes in Microsoft products? For more input and links, check out the responses of two of my favorite bloggers, Eric Meyer and Jeffrey Zeldman.

Now normally I might take this opportunity to gloat over that fact that I'm currently typing on a Mac, but this got me thinking other directions. Why is it that common wisdom / the general public always find a choice and stick with it when there may be many more exciting alternatives? I can't think it's just being lazy - i'm too much of an optimist for that. For example, when I was elementary-school age the Desktop Computer was just making it's big breakthrough. Now there were many good choices out there - Commodores, Apples (pre-Mac), etc. But my father (whom I love, don't get me wrong) held out to by a PC until IBM rolled out their first desktop - codenamed "The Peanut." Now other than being back up by a nice ad campaign (featuring a Charlie Chaplin look-alike, classic), the computer was not much to look at: not much software, not much power, not much room for expansion. Certainly history shows that there were better alternatives out there, but in that day and time Big Blue was the big player; they were computing's 100-pound gorilla and seemed to make choices accordingly. I bring up this memory because twenty years or so later, Microsoft is the big monkey on the block. And when I see choices made like the one by Homeland Security, I just remember to that IBM Peanut and wondered what my dad was thinking.