A year ago this Wednesday, Bill Gates sent a memo to Microsoft's 50, 000 employees identifying "Trustworthy Computing" as the company's highest priority.
After spending much of the past week talking to experts (for a news analysis that appeared in Sunday's Chronicle) about what has and hasn't changed in Redmond, Wash., since that famous missive, I have a suggestion for Mr. Gates. Put Longhorn, a major overhaul of Windows that's already at least two years away from release, on hold for a few months and assign the developers involved to a crash program designed to make it easier for users to discover vulnerabilities in their systems and get the appropriate fixes installed without hassle and without jeopardizing their data.
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