OT: Here we go again ...

[dep]

quoth Matthew Carpenter:
| They haven't drawn the conclusion that the initial outage was caused
| by it, but there are reports (computerworld I believe) that MSBlast
| was responsible for clogging the network pipe between power stations
| used to avoid the cascading effect.  The cascade-avoidance system
| simply couldn't do it's job...
|
| I agree that it probably STARTED there as well...

and ultimately it's gonna come down something like this: a crack of a 
major hospital or nuke plant is going to kill many or seriously 
endanger millions. it will be due to microsoft software. there will be 
an outraged response. what will the effect be?

controls in the internet, probably. what it *won't* be is serious action 
against microsoft, even though their stuff is not only demonstrably 
dangerous but widely known to be dangerous. (the obvious corrective 
action, of course, would be to ban permanent connection to the internet 
of any machine running microsoftware.) there is no one to whom this is 
a mystery. yet such action as has been taken against microsoft on any 
point has been very weak. why? because the effects of a microsoft 
collapse would certainly be vast and severe -- far worse than the 
combined costs of all the attacks so far. microsoft is a very widely 
held security. those of us who have company stock-based retirement 
plans, 401ks, or any of a variety of mutual funds own microsoft stock. 
it really is a big player economically.

so dealing with the microsoft problem *must* include some way of dealing 
with the substantial financial problem that handling the software 
problem would entail. it's easy to say "screw 'em," but that aintagonna 
happen. it's a real mess.
-- 
dep

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