motivating security, was Re: Every incident...
coonrad
coonrad at dogsalmon.net
Mon Feb 12 19:14:42 UTC 2007
On Mon, 12 Feb 2007, Edward Lewis wrote:
> My point is that it is convenient to blame this on the consumers when the
> problem is that the technology is still just half-baked.
I wonder if anyone has tried to quantify in economic terms, the worldwide
army of people/products/services that have been mobilized to provide
technical support and security to windows? I imagine the GDP of this
market stacks up with some smaller European countries.
It is interesting to ponder for a moment the alternative; the folks in
Redmond releasing a stable, secure, less convoluted and easy to use OS.
This would be great for the consumer, but what if that consumer works at
the support desk, or for McAfee or Symantec or ad ininitum? Windows is
a highly entropic OS. So much energy is used configuring, supporting,
rebooting, updating, securing it, that the orgininal purpose of using the
computer (automation, efficiency, computation) has been subsumed by the
task of keeping the beast alive and disease free.
A stable/secure version of windows is somewhat like the US moving to a
flat tax. An idea that would greatly simplify the tax system, but wipe out
an army of accountants, tax attorneys and bureaucrats. Thus it will never
happen. There's too many vested interests in the status quo, which is
latin for "the mess we're in."
craig
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