“In their haste to set things right with a little spin control,
and to hand an olive branch to the end users that found out LOVE
hurts, Microsoft released a patch for their embattled Outbreak
Express that has all the markings of crude hack and nothing in the
way of a real fix for the problem. This is typical – another
half-witted PR stunt disguised as a patch. Instead of promising to
re-write Outbreak to make it somewhat resistant to worms and other
vermin, M$ just chose to reduce the functionality.”
“Apparently this little gem of a patch, now in the wild, creates
a problem or two of its own. You cannot restore default function to
Outbreak without completely reinstalling M$ Office. What you get is
reduced functionality and no backout plan. Beautiful. Here is an
argument for allowing M$ to integrate every line of code they own
to the point that NONE of it functions if any single part becomes
compromised. Don’t break them up, make them splooge it all into one
inseparable mass. Make it a requirement.”
“…What have we learned? Microsoft truly cannot fix the
problems with Outbreak Express. They would have to gut the program.
Reduce the “functionality” and the “Added Value” to the point of
making it work like the Pine mailer. Pine is good enough for
me and a couple dozen million Unix users worldwide, but M$ can’t go
there.”