Vista Shmista

Having a bad day?

According the The Register (“Biting the hand that feeds IT”… I like it.), there are already viruses being created that target the new scripting shell Microsoft is developing.  If they're looking for a name for the virus, I propose "Shmista".

“Scripting Shell? Really? And it will be in Vista?”

Whether or not it’s in Vista remains to be seen.  However, the command shell formerly code-named “Monad”, now called MSH, is what they’re referring to.  Last I heard they are planning on shipping it along with and as a feature of the next version of Exchange Server (Exchange 12 coming in 2006).  I saw it in action for the first time at the Microsoft Global Briefing in Atlanta last week, and… all I can say (or am allowed to say), is… WHOA BABY THAT’S COOL. 

“The goal of Monad (now MSH) is to provide a powerful command-line management solution. It is both a language and a framework for easily creating commands to manage windows platform. So - it's more command-line oriented than WSH but has a lot of the scripting abilities of the WSH languages. It's somewhat of a higher level language than VBScript, etc. Another quite significant difference is that it's an interactive environment.”

Back to the Register… I wouldn’t be surprised that people are already trying to break it.  That makes sense.  It was true with IE 1.0, is true today, and will be always: When Microsoft makes available functionality that makes coding or administration simpler, there is always someone ready to exploit it.  And with MSH, well.. BRING IT ON.  I’m sure the team would rather find the vulnerabilities sooner rather than later.

What do you think?