Fred Cohen <fcat_private> wrote in part: Note: In what follows I am not a MicroSoft partisan. I'm just following reason to see where it goes. >I say forget about telling the ISPs what to do - start a class action >suit against Microsoft for putting this crap into the market knowing >full well how it might be exploited and knowing full well that it was >choosing time to market over quality. The class is all users of >Microsoft IIS servers and every person who has a system that has been >affected by the virus. The dmages are the total cost of all actions >taken to defend against or monitor this infection, in cluding all time >taken by all parties involved. Put them out of business unless and >until they can act responsibly. There is a certain resonance to this, as when the environmentalists rush to the barricades shouting "death to the oil companies," but upon reflection reality rears its ugly head. True, the oil companies have done some serious polluting and behaved themselves in a profoundly irresponsible manner, BUT if we shut them down outright then you can flip your switch all the day long and the light will stay dark. There won't be any plastic to make your Reeboks, shirt, really cool sunglasses, CD player, or even the CDs themselves out of. Think of it: NO INTERNET. Nope, no can do. Human beings have two needs: Food and shelter. The internet is not one of them. It is still possible -- many do it -- to live out one's life without ever "going online." People go to the internet because they *want* to. Just about everyone who will ever read this post has a job because people *want* to go on the internet. Suing MicroSoft out of business won't solve anything because a huge amount of the business of the internet is carried out with MicroSoft products and we really shouldn't cut off our nose to spite our face. The reason that MicroSoft has such a huge share of the market is because rank beginners can make their stuff work. The automobile did not turn us all into mechanics. It made us into people who can put a key in a slot and turn it. Bill Gates knew this. Anyone who has ever done programming knows that the last 10% of the debugging takes 90% of the time. If it were necessary to wait until a package has reached perfection before releasing it, nothing new would ever come out. That said, do I think MicroSoft has released software prematurely, even by my standard? Yes, I do. Do I think that they sometimes sit on bugs and security holes on the philosophy that anonymity equals security, or out of sheer corporate laziness? Yes again. Do I think that Microsoft has behaved itself at times rapaciously and with a profound lack of responsibility? Yupper. Review my comments about oil companies above. Get used to it, folks. It isn't right, but it is how things are. You want the internet? The rest follows. Best regards, Neil Dickey, Ph.D. Research Associate/Sysop Geology Department Northern Illinois University DeKalb, Illinois 60115 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided by the SecurityFocus ARIS analyzer service. For more information on this free incident handling, management and tracking system please see: http://aris.securityfocus.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 09:28:32 PDT