Viral Cure Could 'Immunise' The Internet

Fri Dec 9 15:34:54 UTC 2005

On Friday 09 Dec 2005 14:57, you wrote:
> 
> a mathematical study is going to come up with a result that is more
> meaningful.

The story is badly headlined. 

The study is saying how many "canaries" do we need to keep the Internet safe, 
or how big the immune system needs to be, not about a viral cure as such.

It says to keep the infection rate of new malware down to a fraction of a 
percent we'd need about a million or so machines looking for malware (on some 
assumptions).

Should convince someone that we need to change the assumptions. Hopefully the 
modelling says something about what factors it is sensitive to.

It does however remind me of the comparison of engineering and science, a 
scientist will earn a living by taking a really difficult problem and spends 
many  years solving it, an engineer earns a living by finding really 
difficult problems and side stepping them.