Michael Feldman wrote:
> I received a note earlier indicating that there's not even an
> obvious way in Outlook to turn it off. This is what Bill Gates
> calls "innovation".

You're right.  It's not obvious and its not even in Outlook!
You want to disable the "Windows Scripting Host" and its done
differently on 95, 98, NT, and 2000.  For details, see:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdhelp/stories/main/0,5594,2568111,00.html.

But, let's not get real smug about Ada.  Leaving the culpability
of the virus writer and releaser aside for the moment, this was
a requirements problem (lack of appropriate security features)
and a design problem (depending on the user to be smart enough to
not double-click the .vbs attachment), not a language problem.

As we all know, you can create bad requirements and designs and
then implement them in any language.  In this case, the advantage
with Ada is that the Ada community seems generally to care more
about software engineering, reliability, etc., than the common
commercial developer.

Seems like there's an opportunity here somewhere.

Can you imagine a civil engineer using the civil engineering
equivalent of tools as flawed as C?

"But sir, we can't afford the time or money to make these load
calculations before building the bridge; besides, where can we
find an engineer trained in mechanics?  Slaves are much cheaper
and easier to get.  Let's just get more."

But have hope, civil engineering as a discipline is a lot more
older than software engineering (and they still have some
spectacular failures).  Rather than lamenting Ada, I know that
this group will keep up the good fight for these better tools.

--
Terry J. Westley, Software Systems Engineering Supervisor
Veridian Engineering, Calspan Operations
[log in to unmask]   http://www.veridian.com/
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Author of TASH, an Ada binding to Tcl/Tk.
Visit the TASH web site at http://www.adatcl.com.
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