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September 04, 2003
End to End Computing
Just finished a fantastic presentation by Phil Karn who spoke on end-to-end computing and the risks that it faces. One of the key points he was making was that the users need to retain control (rather than the carrier) and he also noted that the single biggest threat to the end-to-end model was security (and therefore Microslash).
There is an article on his web site that covers the problems caused by recent viral attacks and he makes the following statement at the start of the rant:
People sometimes ask me why I loathe and detest Microsoft with such a visceral passion. A major reason is the never-ending stream of viruses and worms infesting their abysmally insecure software.
My wife is a registered nurse. If one of her patients developed a staph infection because she neglected to follow proper sanitary procedures, would she be able to blame it all on the staph bacteria? Of course not! But when Microsoft fails to practice proper software engineering hygiene, they just shrug off the resulting flood of worms and viruses as the fault of the lower life-forms who write them. And they get away with it!
Go read the rest of the article which includes some graphs and the number of virus emails he received (close to a million).
He also has a link to this letter written by the CCIA about the Home Security purchase of Windows as a platform.
This is not just a windows rant, this is a real problem than requires a solution and that solution is going to hurt someone. Either the users will end up being hurt (banned from participating in the internet?) or Microslosh is going to have to spend real money to change the way they do business.
Posted by Ozguru at September 4, 2003 05:09 PM
