The Fool wrote: > > > From: William T Goodall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > > On Saturday, August 30, 2003, at 04:14 pm, Julia Thompson wrote: > > > > > William T Goodall wrote: > > >> > > >> On Friday, August 29, 2003, at 11:45 pm, Julia Thompson wrote: > > >> > > >>> He's under house arrest now. Article at > > >>> > > >>> > http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=&e=2&u=/ap/20030829/ > > >>> ap_on_hi_te/internet_attack > > >>> > > >>> Links to related articles on the same page. > > >>> > > >>> If he is convicted, I wouldn't mind the sentence including weekly > > >>> visits > > >>> from Bob the Dinosaur for awhile.... > > >> > > >> An even better idea would be to arrest those at Micro$oft > responsible > > >> for producing 'operating systems' with such hopelessly inadequate > > >> security features, and charge them with negligence. > > > > > > That'd be good. Then the cost of the sobig.f worn or virus or > whatever > > > it technically is would be even *higher*. >:) > > > > If Micro$oft's negligence is why these costly security breaches occur, > > shouldn't Micro$oft be paying compensation? That is normally what > > happens when a company produces defective products isn't it? > > There is no security hole in the sofeware on this one. Just user > stupidity. And yet you try and blame it on microsoft. Perhaps we should > start sueing all the users who spread sobig.f for being stupid?
We could just start tracking down the mail servers sending it, and let the admins know that they have 24 hours to fix the problem at the server (either by doing something at the server to kill all such messages, or by figuring out which friggin' USER it is who's going on their merry way oblivious to the fact that the computer is infected, and block that user from sending until the computer is clean) or face legal action. That may be easier than tracking down the individual users, although clueless users are the weakest part of the problem.
Something I've heard is that the affected OSes are stable enough that not enough people feel the need to get the updates they should, when they should get them. Once a hole is discovered, I think that M$ tries to come up with a fix for it as quickly as possible. User complacency is probably the biggest problem in the whole mess. (If you're going to be that complacent, get an OS that nobody bothers to write viruses for.)
Or, there is the argument that "I paid about as much for this computer as I did for my refrigerator, and all I had to do with the refrigerator was bring it home and plug it in and it worked fine for the next ten years without my doing anything to it. If I'm going to spend that much for an appliance, it darn better well work just as well for at just as long without me having to fix it every few days."
And then there are the cases where Junior uses Daddy's computer while Daddy is out of town (despite explicit instructions not to do so), and of course Junior opens the e-mail promising an "Awesome screen-saver" . . .
-- Ronn! :)
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