Re: motivating security, was Re: Every incident...

[coonrad <coonrad () dogsalmon net>]

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