The original goal (with, I believe, the part about "Microsoft software" being on all those computers) is enshrined in bronze in the sidewalk in front of the original cafeteria building at the Microsoft campus. A friend always referred to it as "world domination plaza."
They used to put down a plaque there when each new product was launched. Next to the big successes like Windows are huge duds like pen-based computing.
Competition concerns aside, the triumph of Microsoft in this goal has lead to a dangerous computer monoculture that is vulnerable to security challenges too numerous to mention. Would we be better off if Microsoft had been a little less successful? Possibly, possibly ...

MS has a history of competitors and individuals scoffing at it, asserting that the company will never overcome limitations in its products in one area another. Remember Novell and Unix vendors practically jeering MS over its first efforts at networking? Also up until Win XP, people chided MS over the reliability of its OSs - which is now no longer an issue.

One important thing to note is that Windows now actually has slightly better security than most OSs including Mac OS X and Linux. There is just the widespread perception that this is not the case. I believe MS will in time make Windows become that much more secure than it is today, then MS detractors will just have to find something else about Windows to complain about.

P. Douglas writes: "One important thing to note is that Windows now actually has slightly better security than most OSs including Mac OS X and Linux."

What are you basing that statement on? Quantitative data? Personal experience?

Todd Bishop writes: "What are you basing that statement on? Quantitative data? Personal experience?"

I'm basing it on the web page you are taken to by this link:

http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?NewsID=1798&Page=1&pagePos=5

An excerpt from the web page is as follows:

"For example, Windows security holes generally receive a lot of press because of the software's popularity, but the statistics show that Windows isn't the subject of significantly more advisories than other operating systems. Windows XP Professional saw 46 advisories in 2003-2004, with 48 percent of vulnerabilities allowing remote attacks and 46 percent enabling system access, Secunia said.

Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 8 had 48 advisories in the same period, with 58 percent of the holes exploitable remotely and 37 percent enabling system access. Red Hat's Advanced Server 3 had 50 advisories in the same period - despite the fact that counting only began in November of last year. Sixty-six percent of the vulnerabilities were remotely exploitable, with 25 granting system access.

Mac OS X doesn't stand out as particularly more secure than the competition, according to Secunia. Of the 36 advisories issued in 2003-2004, 61 percent could be exploited across the Internet and 32 percent enabled attackers to take over the system. The proportion of critical bugs was also comparable with other software: 33 percent of the OS X vulnerabilities were "highly" or "extremely" critical by Secunia's reckoning, compared with 30 percent for XP Professional and 27 percent for SLES 8 and just 12 percent for Advanced Server 3. OS X had the highest proportion of "extremely critical" bugs at 19 percent.

As for the old guard, Sun's Solaris 9 saw its share of problems, with 60 advisories in 2003-2004, 20 percent of which were "highly" or "extremely" critical, Secunia said."

Interesting. Thanks for the link.

Interesting, but ...

Apple seems to have a better record of more aggressively releasing fixes for security problems. And, due to the near universality of Windows on desktop PCs, security flaws in Microsoft products have the potential to do much more damage than security flaws on the Mac or Linux systems. When did you last hear of a new virus on OS X that threatened to clog the Internet with junk e-mail or crash web sites?

Of course, if OS X or Linux became the dominant operating system then the tables would be turned. It's nice (and a little smug) for we OS X users to watch Windows users struggle with these constant security problems. But ... our turn may be coming!

My thought: We need new thinking on how to protect ALL operating systems and make security flaws a non-issue. I'm not sure what that new thinking or new direction is (I'm not a software engineer) but someone will find it.