ComputerWorld has an article on Microsoft’s US$90 million contract with the US Department of Homeland Security — and the discovery last week of a critical security flaw affecting nearly every version of the Windows. “The real alternative was to go open-source,” said Roger Cressey, former chief of staff of the President’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Board. “But for 22 agencies, an overwhelming majority of which use nothing but Microsoft operating systems, to convert to another platform in an efficient and cost-effective manner would have been hard to accomplish. DHS has neither the time, the money, nor the flexibility for that. Now it is held hostage to the imperfections of Microsoft code-writing.”