Grant Bayley <gbayley@ausmac.net>:
>>From Wired:
>http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45692,00.html
>New Laws: Thou Shalt Patch
> ... Federal rules that will make it obligatory for
>specific sectors to download virus patches ...
Scrambling to address problems downstream is all very well, but it
misses the point.
The upstream problems won't be fixed until Microsoft is:
(a) sued for negligence. It would be lovely to see a suit based on the
relative bug-content of its products. But that's hard, and the
existence of some bugs shouldn't be interpeted as negligence any more
than doctors' work should be expected to be perfect. So the suit has
to be based on dangerous default-settings;
(b) prosecuted for criminal negligence, again for the dangerous
default-settings.
Surely *some* powerful organisation or three, somewhere in the world,
has got the guts to stand up to Microsoft.
-- Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916 mailto:Roger.Clarke@xamax.com.au http://www.xamax.com.au/
Visiting Fellow Department of Computer Science The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 2 6125 3666
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