"bots" as such emerged on the net when some hacker reasoned that now, with so many PCs permanently nailed to the internet, it made more sense to co-opt the PC than just torture it. Curiously, the spammers were "saved" by this, because near that time, spammers were getting chased out of North America pretty quickly and easily.

Now that thousands of PCs get newly infected every day, the botnet folks will never run out of slaves to abuse. Getting rid of Microsoft would cure the situation pretty quickly. Unix machines can be invaded, but largely only when people fail to apply patches for known vulnerabilities. The window to exploit Unix systems is pretty small. Unix systems are very hard to invade, compared to Windows. Windows is as full of holes as a sponge, it seems. Always another way in.

Other major contributors to SPAM:

1. ICANN licenses domain registrars, under a contract that says the registrar must make an effort to insure that the registrant information is correct. (Who do you SUE when you get ads asking you to visit X.com? You sue the owner of X.com.) However, the registrars don't bother; their sites are automated and they don't bother checking the garbage data they're handed. There is an ICANN-issued "WDRP challenge" sent to domain owners, saying "verify this information about your doman." However, these challenges are one-way the wrong way: if there is NO RESPONSE, ICANN assumes the information is valid. It should go the other way: without a positive response, the domain gets DELISTED. That would shut down the majority of spam-advertised sites immediately.

ICANN does not care to rectify the situation, I think because the management there is under the thumb of the greymailers (domestic spammers who pretend to be legitimate - the same people who lobbied for CAN-SPAM to stop the aggressive laws due to hit the books in 2004.)

2. The entire nation of CHINA. China sells bogus domains to spammers in droves (dns.com.cn and paycenter.com.cn), China hosts many of these domains, and China permits unending SPAM from numbers of their networks. We know they COULD stop the crime if they cared to, insofar as they have 70,000 network censors and thousands more graduating each year. They don't stop the crime, because of the corruption. I know that some network operators are in cahoots with the spammers because I have gotten Chinese spam with subject lines that were MY complaints to their AUTHORITIES.

3. Our own Congress, which caved to the domestic spammer lobby and gave us "CAN-SPAM", which pretty much means what it says. The law says that solicitations must begin their Subject: line with "ADV:", but in fact none of them obey. California passed a tough law that raised the fine per spam item from $50 to $1000 - and the Bush administration & friends passed CAN-SPAM to say that the fine per item would be $25 AND that the law superseded all State laws. It's hard not to take this personally as I was looking forward to using the new California law - and clearly, CAN-SPAM was passed to kill it. Nobody complained, because the law was claimed to the public to be something to COMBAT spam - without showing them that the law had NO TEETH and was of nearly NO USE.

4. The "Bayesian Mafia" - where Bayesian SPAM filtering took off, as being a good tool ... of course, the spammers figured out how to attack these filters, and so the Bayesian crowd devolved into a mutual admiration society, fairly divorced from reality. (Quit telling us about SPAM, we're discussing the new version 5 filter!!)

The problem is that they're playing bad catch-up, and all that needs to happen is track the damned spammers down and put them out of business - so we should, instead of navel-gazing into Bayesian filters, ask why aren't we just arresting these people? It is NOT hard to track these people down, that's a myth. We just need the proper cooperation and coordination from, largely, law-enforcement authorities. God, finance me and give me a staff and I can get busy right away. We've been on the Internet so long - before even corporations were there - that some of our domains and users have to be on every spammer's CD in the known universe, so our servers are great honeytraps (unfortunately.)

The correct way to go about SPAM, in my opinion, is to start INVESTIGATING, TRACKING, and ARRESTING the SPAMMERS, PROSECUTING them, SEIZING THEIR ASSETS and INCARCERATING them; and make sure the news reports the spammer, their volume (to dissuade public sympathy unless small) and their punishments. You go to spamhaus.org/rokso and work your way down the "Top 200" list of known spammers. You can certainly go after all domestic spammers easily. For those in foreign countries, get those countries to cooperate to shut the spammers down (and prosecute them or extradite them for prosecution.) Finally, with a place like China, tell them (a) if you people can't control abuse of the Internet, then you have NO FACE, and (b) if you WON'T control the crime, then we will CUT YOU OFF THE INTERNET so far as we're concerned.

But, nobody can spend money on any worthwhile law-enforcement, because the neocons insist that all our enforcement funds must be spent on "defense against terrorism". Evidently, domestic crime is not an issue - even if it compromises the Internet and dissuades people from using email and there's not a terrorist for 10,000 miles.

If even so few as ONE U.S. Attorney (Justice Department) was assigned to pursue this, we could knock out two dozen of the Top 200 each year. Seeing their numbers steadily incarcerated, they'd be less willing to try their hand or continue. I'd suggest you ask your elected representatives to put this in action, and if they'd like to assign more than one attorney, hey great. Make it a "Task Force" if you like. If any political candidate makes points with this idea (C) me, they can send me money ... you heard it here. Make sure it gets funded though.

An active campaign such as I outline above I think can eliminate spam almost entirely within fifteen months (with sufficient resources.) The least we can do is amend CAN-SPAM to strike the supersession clause - and let stronger State laws come back into force. You can write to your senators and tell them to tell China to CLEAN UP ITS ACT. And ICANN: decertify paycenter.com.cn and dns.com.cn and all the other ignorant and careless registrars; reverse the sense of the WDRP letters; and follow up on complaints.

The author is re-adressing a point of all our concerns.  It is pointed out that bots of a complex kind were forcasted ten years ago or more...  Of my memory " i think " i partisipated in the alert in 1996; others had even mentioned it earlier on bbs nodes.  The point of emphesis is that TCP/IP is like a tap carrying everything, bugs and all.  The regeneration and distribution is a point well taken..  When mentioning this to my ISP  Shaw Cable, they in Engineering and Administration concured that the fidelity of the data streem is contaminated...  " Filtering,"  ie. real time analysis, is not possible for the general public..  Good housekeeping with some simple software is a point well taken.   

ECSD, the Metro Vancouver area has 2 1/2 million population.  Telus is the local service provider as is Shaw Cable...      Having worked in the telco, wireless industry locally i am aware of the wired plants..

The value point you make of a Municipal plant being designed to carry services for the locals is very valid. Many cost benefits would be a flat fee for all.   " i for one would think that 1gbs flash demand is achieveable."   i have read the information you have pointed to.  " thank you "   Having Job Costed until i am blue in the face, i can only say, " that all things good "  require a fee for service model, a build out blueprint and hard work in process to complete.

The projections of using IP for everything wireless and wired , has made me take pause and look at it carefully...  I am used to designing hardwired connections on a Municipal plant.  This is changing, i engaged Lawrence on priority stream queing and find that it could be done but it requires dedicated handling. 

On the point of priority stream queing, " that would be needed for Public Safety Services", wether if was Public or Private..     On the stroke of midnight the last of the year the North American texting IP went down.  as did the local cellphone conversations and partial 911 service in St.Paul when the bridge collapsed..

The FCC summit conference on E911 for now and the future , is a greath wealth of information handling and systems operations.

Who are the players in Vancouver? I don't know what telecom stuff goes on there.

How many people live in Vancouver?

What I suggest is printing out the whole communityfiber.org site (two pages) and handing it around. The promise is getting gigabit speeds to the house WITHOUT involving a telco, so that the network is under civic control. Over time I will develop a Standard Charter, the rules for the network, to reinforce certain selling points. First, Net Neutrality. That includes rules preventing even the municipality itself from attempting to "censor" the net in any way, so that is non-trivial. Second, "equal access" - no vendor will be favored over another in terms of access fees; the municipality will not accept any sort of "trade in kind" from any vendor in exchange for reduced fees, enhanced access , or any sort of administrative control.

I apologize for omitting mention of Canada where I mention "continental United States"; but of course, our Municipal FiberZones will interconnect with yours, so we'll ultimately be able to make free VoIP calls across the border.

You are, fortunately or unfortunately, a foot-soldier in the process of making Fiber happen. Our City Council agreed that Fiber was a good idea in principle, and that's about as far as we've gotten so far, though that is actually a big step. You would take the communityfiber handout to your local representative, and try to get them on board. I'll assume the telcos/cablecos are as greedy there as here, in which case you should find a lot of interest in the idea. Making that interest amount to something is a big job.

Hand the thing around to your geek friends - the promise of one gigabit access over fiber to the home should light their eyes up something fierce. Tell them "they already have this in Japan; what are WE waiting for??" -- and let me know how it goes. 

ECSD  ,  you are really pumped to debate.   Bravo!  Some very good points.  " i like the message of Municipal development of Broad Band Communication systems. "  The ongoing consort dance of Private and Public facilitation.  I have just spent 4 hours listening to e911 needs for now and the future..  here.    Cheers.  Ralph G.  Vancouver CA.

I won't be tired of bashing Microsoft until they're no longer on the market.

Your citation from CERT is misleading.The majority of Windows alerts concern Windows Internals (the system itself.) The majority of Unix alerts concern programs used on Unix, but which are not part of the base system.

Your citation from the Microsoft flack is similarly revealing - he'd rather discuss how difficult some holes are to exploit, than admit how many truly serious problems they have.

I completely stand behind my assessments, based on 12 years as an Internet Service Provider and 28 years in the Computer industry overall, predating even PCs. I have watched Microsoft grow from the manufacturer of indifferent operating systems for PCs to the monopoly manufacturer of indifferent operating systems for PCs. I have also watched the emergence of intelligent operating systems - from two angles: Linus Torvalds and his Linux Kernel; and the release into the public domain of the final result of Unix development at the University of California, Berkeley - BSD 4.4, developed into FreeBSD.

Unix was developed by Computer Scientists and Engineers as a tool for their use. Unix was not developed to "make money", meaning, to suit marketing agents. It was developed to DO WORK and DO IT WELL. Unix developers have been improving things on Unix for thirty years. By now, almost all commonly used Unix software has been thoroughly vetted, whereas Microsoft never seems to run out of buffer-overrun exploits and similar - just not ever. I've had to patch for exactly ONE Unix base-system bug in the last eight years, and upgrade versions to fix problems with third-party applications roughly six times in the same interval. Not once requiring a reboot of the server, by the way. Compare that to fixes REQUIRED TO BE APPLIED QUARTERLY, quarter after quarter after quarter without end, to fix HACKER OWNS YOUR BOX problems in the SAME FEW Microsoft-claims-as-part-of-the-base-system components.

Lay SPAM, loss of time and work, and ELECTRONIC VOTE FRAUD at the door of Microsoft - I think it's perfectly reasonable to "bash" Microsoft until they're six feet underground. When I can download for FREE the installation image for an operating system (FreeBSD or Linux) that handily outperforms Windows on the same hardware; when I NEVER need to worry about "viruses" and "spyware" while using Unix; and when I know that alerts concerning my system will be very far and few between, as opposed to an unending stream of alerts for Windows, it is clear that there is really very little reason for Microsoft to continue to exist - except for some number of "true believers" they have acquired, being people who seem not to have researched the alternatives whatever. If you want to spend $100 per OS upgrade to get a system that you can only pretend to protect - have fun. You have given no reason to PREFER Microsoft, have you? Like as "it is better for X purpose" or "it outperforms X" - you name no such X.

Sorry I'm running down "your friend" - I say Microsoft is nobody's friend; they're in it for the money money money and they clearly don't care how much of our time, effort or money they waste through their incompetence and malfeasance.

I didn't even address Microsoft's anticompetitive strategies - trying to subvert WORLDWIDE PROTOCOLS, for example, making "proprietary extensions" the default for IIS authoring so that Mozilla/Firefox users get "unexpected results" when going to Microsoft-driven websites; fiddling with connection protocols to make their stuff work and break other things (LCP extensions); providing "secret APIs" that allow those with the dollars to pay to find out how to make their programs actually work - one of their greatest malfeasances. And of course their defense of the non-modularity of their operating system as the reason they can't "fix" their system to address complaints - design the system badly and then claim in court that it's too hard to rectify. They don't believe in a level playing field, and that puts them squarely in the past, where they deserve to rot in history.

Gates had his day many years ago. Microsoft has advanced far beyond the level of their incompetence according to the Peter Principle; it's time to retire them from the field so the rest of the world can find out finally how nice computers can really be.

Very superflous posts....where are all of your citations for your information? 

I'm not really a "Love Microsoft" or Hate MAC/Linux guy, but let's get real, aren't all you folks tired of bashing Microsoft? Read this if you think MS is so bad:
http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/bulletins/SB2005.html
812 Windows operating system vulnerabilities
2328 Unix/Linux operating vulnerabilities
2058 Multiple operating system vulnerabilities.

And let's not forget that in the I.T. world there also exists what the Microsoft Product manager in the following link calls (I really like this term) "vulnerabilty theater" meaning that some of these security issues are truly overblown. Interesting read: http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsvistasecurity/archive/2007/06/28/some-questions-to-ask-yourself-when-assessing-reported-security-breaches-in-windows-vista.aspx

A last note for now: imagine spending a lot of money on a product from company X, that is defective, requiring you to buy a product from company Y to "protect" the X product - but not with 100% certainty; your copy of X may still be "ruined." That is, there is in fact no way to protect your copy of X with certainty. Next, people propose to pass laws that say if your X gets ruined (through no fault of your own), still you must pay a penalty fee to someone. Ask yourself what you would think of all the people who would insist to you that this state of affairs is acceptable or makes any sense at all.

Now imagine that another product Z, a competitor to X, has been on the market for fourteen years, and in all that time, Z's ease of use has developed to now match or exceed that of X; that Z has been known for ten years to be impervious to the defect of X, so that no additional product Y is (or ever was) needed. Now you need to ask why you have not heard about Z - perhaps those benefitting from profits from the sale of X have interfered? Or perhaps simple ignorance? Once you learn about Z and realize that the argument for fines for ruined copies of X is rendered useless and silly, you should expect people to discard X for cause and adopt Z instead.

The anology is not perfect, but it is nearly so. We can put virus scares BEHIND US by getting rid of Microsoft. Why are we wasting our time discussing band-aids upon band-aids for a system that has frustrated and lost work for millions of people, and reliably so? Where "everyone knows" that "everyone hates Microsoft", yet oddly they are not the dust of history yet?

Linux and other Unix systems are not foolproof - no system is. But the Open Source systems have the advantage that thousands of developers pore over the code and continuously report flaws to the developers, so it's not long at all before new code and complex code is made good to excellent. At Microsoft, I have difficulty conceiving what management problems they can have, to get the net result that they can never secure their code. And you do Not have to put up with this - Nobody should.

You need to be angry for several reasons.

1. If Microsoft is so smart, how did a 24-year-old graduate student singlehandedly deliver to the world an operating system (Linux) that outperforms and is inherently more secure than anything Microsoft has yet to write? Got that? HAS YET TO WRITE. (We recognize that the Linux Kernel rests upon GNU's giant shoulders.)

2. It is thanks to Microsoft's perviousness that you get drowned in spam. Okay? You get spam-flooded because Microsoft machines are so hard to protect. The hackers break in all too easily, install code to report to Mama and ask her for work to do. Mama usually originates in foreign countries, which should already give you a chill. The hackers finally got wise and said, instead of being silly and deleting files and putting rude things on the screen, why not go silent like a submarine and then we can do all sorts of things. And now, there are people for hire who run collections of such robots. They charge fees for having your PC send SPAM to whomever - maybe everyone in your address book, and everyone else in work lists they get from Mama.

There are other major contributors to spam, but the fact is that the botnets provide the ricochet effect needed to widely disseminate it. The ISPs and the carriers could otherwise contain it, that is, stomp it out when it arose and prosecute it. But now, it "comes from everywhere". If I run a Linux PC (I personally use FreeBSD. same difference to nonpurists), I don't have to give a damn about viruses; I recall when I opened mail containing ILOVEYOU, and just saw the windows macro (which is all it was), and said "so that's what a virus looks like." Big Deal. And, if my machine never becomes the slave to a foreign criminal, it's never a source of spam. So, you can thank Microsoft for the fact that with their 90% of the market, we can look forward to unending years' worth of botnet spam. As an Internet Service Provider (ISP), I tell you: get rid of Microsoft software in order to protect the Internet and help in a major way to eliminate SPAM. It's a threat to National Security - that seems obvious. The same botnets can be used to disrupt networks as was done in that attack on big names from Canada. Perhaps if we launch a campaign at DHS ...

3. Crashes and loss of data and work time. I use FreeBSD because it's a more rigorous system, and it's the real thing, direct successor to BSD. Linux is a little looser, and sometimes unexpected things occur - sometimes my video player crashes the windowing system, but I know about that, fine for now and maybe they'll fix it. They'll fix it faster than Microsoft would. They never really bothered developing anything well until Word, so, for example, the syntax of commands in DOS never improved. Microsoft delayed the advent of 32-bit computing by a few years because they wouldn't use Intel's compilers and linkers for the 80386. Their memory management sucks. How many people have run fat-application X a few times in a row only to be greeted with a message "there is insufficient memory to run this application"?

Tell me, does it make sense to give a class on computers and begin by telling the students that when the computers misbehave, just turn them off and then on again and that will fix the problem? Do we still live in grass huts? Modern computer systems distinguish between themselves and their users. "If the thing you're running dies, I won't die. That's your program's problem, pal." Even when my video player killed my login session, Linux was running smoothly underneath. Not so for Microsoft. Things crapping out in the unseen background can suddenly mess up everything that's happening and you won't know why. That does happen to Unix, probably on the order of 1000 times less often.

4. Sore loser. They've been caught cheating in performance comparisons with Linux. They'd like to replace all servers with their stuff; fat chance; it took them 2,000 Microsoft servers and 2 years to work out the bugs, to replace the 500 machine FreeBSD installation that was doing just fine for Hotmail. They had to reboot each server each week to keep them running smoothly, when I've had FreeBSD machines running for 2+ years solid, only having to turn them off to move them physically.

There's that "touch of death" cinematic image of withering a flower to black with the touch of a finger, and now that finger is pointing at Yahoo. Once Yahoo is a division of Microsoft, they're totally off my menu. I would encourage all SBC-Yahoo users to complain that they don't want to be acquired as customers of Microsoft and to offer a solution.

5. Enough is never enough. I've seen Windows in stores, some version or other, for like $299.99. What could that be? Judge Thomas Jackson in his ruling in the antitrust case (which Microsoft lost) said that Microsoft was charging twice what it needed to for the software. Have you been contacted by Microsoft to compensate you? No, it's theirs if they could steal it.

I get my software from cheapbytes.com (no doubt there are other outlets, but I have not looked.) I spend about $8 for FreeBSD and Ubuntu each, just to get a handy install CD. I install as many systems with the CDs as I like. There are no license fees. The stuff just works better and better each iteration.

The worst though, is Microsoft's voracious appetite for processing power, memory and so forth. We advertised that FreeBSD or Linux would outperform a Windows system 4:1 on the same hardware. A client came to us having already bought 512MB RAM for their server and wanted another 256MB. What could they need it for? Microsoft Exchange, they said. We advised them to run sendmail on Unix, they did, and they could run their operation on FreeBSD with 64MB RAM. When you quadruple your machine speed, you see quadruple the throughput from Unix. With Windows, it's about 1.4 times the performance for a 4 times increase in power. Ugly.

Pedestrian algorithms. Processing the "windows registry" seems like an N-cubed algorithm, as they have it. Very slow. Yet, everything depends on it, as everything depends on innumerable unknown files, the absence of any of which will cause the system to halt, blue screen, or reboot. Written by amateurs, with the feel of "by kids in a garage". Standard level 2 MS technical support fallback? "You'll have to reinstall the operating system."

Finally, "Linux is too hard." Not anymore. I use Ubuntu. It's very graphical, very intuitive, and has a really clean new-program and program-update process. I had to find out the instructions, but with two commands, I could view DVDs on the machine, so that was nice. The more people who use it, the faster more people will switch to it, and for their sakes and for the sake of the Internet, the sooner, the better.

6. I almost forgot: VOTE FRAUD AND STOLEN ELECTIONS. PHONE VIRUSES. The people who manipulated the vote through Electronic Voting Machine fraud did so with the use of the holes in Microsoft's systems, some variant used in many or most EVMs. So, the history of the future of our nation is compromised by the use of garbage proprietary software. I say: the complete specs of such devices, including every bit of code, must be PUBLISHED PUBLICLY so that they can be attacked by thousands of testers - the same way good open-source code is -and made excellent. Post a large reward for anyone who can crack them. As to phones, all devices should be secure, and that prohibits the use of Microsoft software of any kind in them. Don't buy phones with an MS OS. I have one, and it crashes just as hard as their PCs do so that I have to take the battery out to "reboot" it.

Maybe fining users whose PCs are abused isn't such a bad idea - make it a stiff fine, like $1000, and tell people who keep using Microsoft software that it's only a matter of time before they're fined. That would incent them to switch. Of course, it's Microsoft who should pay those fines, but since they won't, let's abandon them. Quickly. For cause.

Symantec continues to exist only to provide software to correct Microsoft's deficiencies. Consumers can observe a huge after-market where, despite dumping up to $300 on a new Microsoft Operating System, they are still "required" to purchase anti-virus and anti-spyware applications from thrid-parties - and there is no guarantee that using the extra software will in fact stop a computer from becoming "infected". And people are called "irresponsible" if they don't buy "the extra necessary protection." Why is the extra protection necessary? Because Microsoft can't write intelligent software. Why isn't MICROSOFT held responsible for not being able to defend against teenaged hackers? Because they've convinced the public to ignore their incompetence and are blaming the HACKERS. Well, if you provide a target so ripe for abuse, so easy to hijack for one's own illegal commercial or nefarious purposes (a botnet to distribute SPAM for a fee; or to run a distributed Denial-Of-Service attack on your favorite target to harass) then of course "enterprising" hackers will line up to exploit you. QUIT BLAMING THE OPPORTUNISTS: BLAME THOSE WHO LET THEM WALK IN CASUALLY TO SUBORN YOUR PC. The idiots who even after EIGHT YEARS of knowing they have a problem have NEVER FIXED IT. Even VISTA, which (someone) waited five years for, during which time Microsoft repeatedly said "security is our top concern", is STILL INCLUDED in CERT hack alerts - meaning the Microsoft SLACKERS have not bothered to review code they just lifted directly into VISTA.

It is clear that Microsoft is INCOMPETENT and UNCORRECTABLE. Do something REVOLUTIONARY: READ the "End User License Agreement" from your next MS OS purchase and when you reach the part that says "you buy our stuff, you take your chances: we will NOT be responsible for poor performance of our software or for damages you suffer when using it", you say "I'm not going to pay for something that refuses to promise quality performance", you return the product for a refund, and then you go to cheapbytes.com to get an $8 Ubuntu Install CD, install Ubuntu on your PC, install OpenOffice (actually it is installed by default), and bang! You have a PC which also makes no promises for performance - but DOES protect itself against hackers and spyware, just because it's much more smartly written. And you'll need to sign no "agreements", and you won't need to buy ADDITIONAL SOFTWARE "just to protect your expensive investment in faulty operating system software" written by an uncaring, unaccountable Monopoly.

Clearly, most discussion around these issues (viruses) seems to take for granted that Microsoft software IS the world of discourse. That is Microsoft's Propaganda that they love you to believe. There have been genuine alternatives since 1994 and by now, these alternatives are very mature and user-friendly. I endorse Ubuntu - I use it for my workstation at home; I can watch videos, copy and burn DVDs, and read and write documents using common MS Office formats - namely, anything I could do with a Windows PC except perhaps some video games. The total cost of all this facility and utility? $8.00 for an install CD, and that only because I was too lazy to download it for FREE. Got that? I spent $8 ALL TOLD to get a system far superior to Windows-anything. ALL the additional software I wish to use is ALSO FREE. I haven't used Microsoft products to do anything meaningful for years. You too, stalwart reader, can liberate yourself from Microsoft - and put behind you - totally - any need to buy anything from Microsoft, Symantec (Norton) or McAfee. And sleep well, knowing that the risk of your system being invaded and taken over by some Bulgarian hacker running a botnet for Russian and Chinese spammers is approximately 0.00%. Save money, be much, much safer, and therefore happier.

Why is Ubuntu not widely advertised? Oh, right, because there is no monopoly corporation making huge profits from this excellent software, to dump tons of money on ads convincing you to use their stuff. You use it because your friends and well-wishers have told you about it on the sly - as I'm doing here. Imagine the next alarming report in the papers about the always-another nasty virus, and then realize that you can IGNORE these reports - because YOU'RE NOT AFFECTED!! What a rush!

DUMP MICROSOFT SOFTWARE ON EVERY PLATFORM

AND DO IT NOW

Every next Ubuntu or other Unix installation (OS/X users MUST NOT USE ANY Microsoft Software on their system) is one less PC to be stolen into a botnet to harass the world with spam and crime. Your ISP will love you for it. So get on the path to liberation. You have nothing to lose but your permanent paranoia at being a victim.

You can lay 99.5% of Internet Malfeasance at the door of Mister Bill Gates. Any suggestion to fine users for failing to "scan" their systems for viruses is blaming the Victim. The victim in this case is the user of Microsoft Software, which remains a threat to International Internet Security for the ease with which hackers can repeatedly penetrate its flimsy defenses.

Considering that Unix (where Microsoft Software is Not Involved) has a security record roughly three ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE better than anything Microsoft has produced, the inability and unwillingness of Microsoft to go ahead and help itself to ripping off the structure of the superior open-source systems in order to improve its own track record means that Microsoft does not CARE about "consequential damages". Oh, our STUPID choices for mere defaults cost $11 BILLION WORLDWIDE due to the "Melissa" and "ILOVEYOU" viruses - but that's YOUR loss, not OURS ... right.

There is one simple, very quick answer, even if that answer is a little painful: DUMP MICROSOFT PRODUCTS. MS operating systems are DEMONSTRATED TO BE INSECURE: go to cert.org and review their alerts over time. EACH AND EVERY QUARTER, not including "emergencies", CERT publishes a list of "known hacks" and EVERY TIME there are a half-dozen HOLES in MS products (the same - Outlook, Exchange, MSIE the browser, IIS the server) of the nature "allows remote intruder to execute code with the privileges of the superuser", reads "HACKER OWNS YOUR BOX." Why would any sane person USE such garbage except the public is NOT GIVEN AN ALTERNATIVE? There are alternatives, the best example for userland being Ubuntu Linux, where the software is most all FREE anyway, including OpenOffice, which is compatible with MS Office and yet FREE. Just ONE MORE not-too-painful learning curve to get to a GOOD system.

Yes, folks: MICROSOFT SOFTWARE IS A THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY and we should pass a law that says NO MICROSOFT SOFTWARE SHALL BE ALLOWED TO INTERACT WITH THE INTERNET (under penalty, if desired.) Put a Microsoft machine on the Internet, even behind NAT and DHCP, and it will get infected anyway, sooner or later. WHO NEEDS IT?? As an ISP who has to chase away a world full of SPAM, I tell you that once we can get rid of MS-supported BOTNETS, the sooner the Internet will be a much nicer place.

No, you don't fine users for failing to maintain their unmaintainable and indefensible Microsoft-operated PCs. You don't blame the victims, most of whom are obliged to trust that the people writing the software they use know what they're doing. INSTEAD and more HONESTLY: You fine Microsoft, who wrote the REALLY BAD SOFTWARE. You REMOVE the REALLY BAD SOFTWARE from the market. You launch campaigns to migrate computer users to Linux, which though not perfect, is still 100 times more secure than anything the Punks in Redmond are allowed to write. No more EXEMPTIONS from CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES for COMMERCIAL FOR-PROFIT PRODUCTS written by a company that wishes people to believe that PCs are synonymous with its software. Imagine generations of children growing up to believe that "computers just crash" - Microsoft-based PCs crash, not Unix. If Bill Gates had to pay for all the DAMAGE his INSECURE SOFTWARE caused and causes, HE WOULD NEVER HAVE GOTTEN RICH. And that would have been the just result.

From whatiwanttoknow.org:

The formal call for the removal of Microsoft-based software from the Internet

November 3rd, 2007

Computer virus prevention is pretty darn easy. Patching systems can be set up to be done automatically, updating AV (anti-virus) definitions are done automatically, but still I see a lot of PC users, residential as well as companies, who simply IGNORE these things or do not take a comprehensive approach to malware threats. I’m simply amazed at that! But it helps to keep me in business as a service tech the same way doctors and dentists are kept in business. Everyone knows that they should not smoke and brush & floss their teeth, but people can be self destructive anyway. I’m not sure if fining them would be a viable solution, very interesting idea though. It’s a bit too “Big Brother-ish” for me.

The “fines” if you will, that I impose on people for cleaning up their systems (by way of PC tech service calls or “bench cleanings” for very infected PCs) are usually enough to get their attention (anywhere from $75 - $250 service charge to clean & disinfect an OS & data). But even with this, I still see repeat offenders who let their AV subscriptions run out. Then they look all sheep-eyed at me and complain of paying for that again. I tell them there is decent fairly priced as well as even FREE (everyone likes free) AV on the market now. There really is no excuse for this ignorance/laziness/stupidity – but I’m all for it. I’ll play PC janitor, I don’t care.

I would disagree with Mashka’s comment about these companies CREATING 90% of their own viruses to sell more products, that is simply ABSURD! Although, she IS in Berkeley, so her comments make sense given her environment out there. To drag in reference to war with Ira’s WII info, they Berkeley folks even want to close the U.S. Marine recruiting station out there – travesty!!