Slashdot Mirror
NYT Reports Porn Spam Hijacking Network
twitter writes "This NYT story describes how thousands of PCs have been used as porn spambots and reverse proxy servers, and mentions that they could be used for kiddie porn. Finally, though Microsoft is not mentioned, people might start to understand what a monoculture of poor quality software enables."
Finally, though Microsoft is not mentioned, people might start to understand what a monoculture of poor quality software enables."
Umm, no they won't. First of all, very few people would notice the article in the first place. Second, people who did notice wouldn't know what to do to protect themselves (not supporting MS isn't an option for 90% of the computer users in the world). Third, was the comment necessary?
To many people, a computer is like a screwdriver. They could care less about it, they just want to pick it up, make it work, and toss it aside when they are done with it. It's unfortunate, yes, but that's just the way it is.
Why is this unfortunate? Do you want to know every nuance of the car you drive, just to get to work? How about when you watch TV? Do you really need to know about NTSC vs PAL? No, you want to watch TV.
Computers should be no different. People just want to send grandma some pictures, surf the web, type a paper, whatever... Not spend forever updating their AV package, SP updates, etc.
A computer is a tool. It is merely a means to an end.
I agree with you: if 90% of the world were running UNIX instead of Windows, we'd still have heaps of insecure, obsolete old RedHat 6.2 boxen sitting around on the Net because users just do not take security seriously and it doesn't matter what the underlying OS is.
I've pointed out before that the rise in popularity of Linux will not make the Internet more secure; it will merely result in poorly-configured Windows boxes being replaced with equally poorly-configured Linux boxes.