Stories by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Does it bother you that we’re heading toward a post-ownership computing world where we will have little control over our videos, music, software programs and devices? It does me.

Sure, cybercriminals are always improving their wares, but nothing has changed about how our machines actually get infected.

Today, it’s consumers being hit by broken promises from IoT vendors. Tomorrow, it will be businesses. Fortunately, there is way to make things better.

Windows now accounts for a mere 10% of the company’s revenue. You might not have seen this coming, but Microsoft did.

Putting back doors into any software, even once, is just asking for trouble.

The new ‘enhanced’ security promised for CES turned out to be a joke, but the illusion of safety provided by security theater really fell away on the way home.

It’s time to put Flash out of our misery once and for all. And, thanks to Google, it may finally happen.

Oracle Chief Security Officer Mary Ann Davidson let loose a long rant about people who dare to look into the security of the company’s products. Oracle quickly backed away from those remarks, but has it faced up to the fact that its CSO has some wrongheaded notions about her own area of expertise?

Hi, my name is Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols and I had a security clearance in the 1980s. Because of that, my personal records are likely to have been revealed by the <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/article/2931976/cybercrime-hacking/us-govt-reports-massive-breach-of-personnel-data.html">Office of Personnel Management hack</a>.

Winston Churchill once said of Russia, "It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." Now, I don't deal with international politics. I just write about technology. But when I've looked at HP lately I've been left thinking of its strategy as, well, "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma."

Enough is enough. Apple's iOS 8 mobile operating system came out in mid-September. Since then, the company has delivered seven -- count 'em, seven -- patch releases, and iOS 8 still doesn't work that well. Argh!

On Feb. 26, the Federal Communications Commission voted, along strict party lines, to <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/article/2889261/fcc-approves-net-neutrality-rules-reclassifies-broadband-as-utility.html">approve new net neutrality rules</a> by reclassifying broadband as a regulated public utility. So does that save the Internet or lock it up in a bureaucratic, censored, expensive prison?

Last summer Microsoft talked its partners into trying to stop the growing popularity of Chromebooks in its tracks by making a big push during the holiday season. While full retail results won't be in for a while, we do know the laptop sales results from the most important retailer of them all, Amazon. Guess what. With that retailer at least, Microsoft and its buddies failed. Miserably.

An Internet joke that goes back at least to the early 1980s consists entirely of the phrase: "<a href="http://catb.org/jargon/html/I/Imminent-Death-Of-The-Net-Predicted-.html">Imminent Death of the Net Predicted</a>!" Every year, even more often than you'd hear "This will be the year of the Linux desktop!" someone would predict that the Internet was going to go to hell in a handbasket -- and nothing happened. This year it's my turn, but I fear I'm going to be proved right.

I actually had been feeling <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/article/2845313/say-hi-to-windows-8-2-er-10.html">optimistic about Windows 10</a>. No, really. You can look it up. I mean, I didn't think Windows 10 was the greatest thing since the advent of the Internet, but it did strike me as a solid replacement for the lamentable Windows 8.