When I buy a car, I don't expect that I'll have to keep returning it to the garage for constant repairs.

When I buy a book, I don't expect that I'll have to return it to the book shop every month or two to have spelling mistakes and grammatical errors corrected.

However, when I buy software, companies such as Microsoft are quite happy to ship goods which are clearly defective in some way. So defective that they've now built in mechanisms that are supposed to automatically apply the numerous fixes as they become available.

Unfortunately, it seems that even Microsoft's "fixup" service is now badly broken.

Is there any hope that we'll ever see reliable, safe software from Billy's boys?

Readers Say (updated hourly) From Yesterday... News & Sky TV coverage... - Kyle Sky TV reporting... - Grant TV News coverage... - Allister Have Your Say

Now we all know that software is complex stuff -- but so are modern cars.

If our cars were as insecure and prone to breaking down as the software we use every day we'd be outraged. I'm surprised therefore, that so many people seem to accept security holes and bugs as just a part of life when using computer software.

It is tempting to say that writing a perfect non-trivial program is impossible, and I guess I'd agree. However, I find it rather disingenuous, or perhaps incredibly naive, for companies such as Microsoft to launch a product with such bold claims as those which were associated with Windows XP.

Just weeks after its launch, this supposedly "most secure" operating system was found to have a hole so large that the FBI got involved due to the potential effects on national security.

Perhaps flaky software with little protection against hackers was okay when personal computers were a hobby thing -- but today they're the backbone of virtually every business and government on the planet. The fate of people, companies and entire nations rest on the quality of software they're using so the standards must be suitably high.

Aardvark's question of the day:

Would you fly on an airliner built by Microsoft?

Have your say (remember to select For Publication if you want to see your comments on this page).

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