Re: IE4 font security flaw (fwd)

Once upon a time Daniel Will-Harris shaped the electrons to say...
>Your "you've made your bed now lie in it" approach is neither realistic or
>fair. When a major player changes the rules, then the other players need an
>opportunity to change their strategies, too.

I consider it fair.  This is life on the Internet.  The Internet has been
around for a while now, and people have been emailing documents with
included fonts for years.  I started seeing Word documents with the
fonts saved with the document online years ago.  So it was obvious it was
coming.

That's just life.  You don't invent a new system everytime a new use is
created.  You just accept it is too late to change the past and go forward
with new knowledge.  It happens to just about every sector of the computing
industry connected with the Internet.  HW vendors make decisions that later
prevent them from supporting a new protocol so they lose sales.  Or they
invest in a new protocol that never catches on.  Software vendors write
things that end up being obsolete before they ship.  Everyone gets burned
at some point.

There is no point in whining about it.  The idea that fonts would be
distributed on the web is NOT new.  It has been discussed in various 
forums for years now.  Anyone who didn't see it coming was blind.  So
I just don't feel sorry for anyone who claims they didn't have time to
prepare.  And I completely disagree with the notion that MS is somehow
responsible for providing a new mechanism to control fonts.  So what, in
a few years when some new system that no one thought of today comes out
we get to do it again?

Live and learn, and just keep moving.

-MZ
--
Livingston Enterprises - Chair, Department of Interstitial Affairs
Phone: 800-458-9966 510-737-2100 FAX: 510-737-2110 megazone@livingston.com
For support requests: support@livingston.com  <http://www.livingston.com/> 
Snail mail: 4464 Willow Road, Pleasanton, CA 94588

Received on Saturday, 25 October 1997 04:28:36 UTC