This was the line along which Microsoft Europe responded to the ILOVEYOU virus.
I think this is basically a wrong metaphor. A more apt one would be to compare Microsoft to the builder of your house. Not only did he build it on a foundation of quicksand, but he also connected your mailbox directly to your safe. Anybody can get your valuables out, and also anybody can slip anything in.
You open the door of your safe: Suprise!!! Empty, save for a silly paperclip holding a note: ILOVEYOU
The image Joy (what's in a name) paints, is very bleak indeed. But isn't pessimistic thinking addictive? Remember the end of the last century: even excellent IT brains (was it Yourdon?) resigned their jobs and dug in, stashing food, water and weapons, waiting for the end of civillisation to be brought about by the millennium bug. We know what happened to that one.
I agree with Joy though on the difference between the nuclear danger and the current danger. The nuclear danger was more or less controlled by governements and thus more or less public, whilst the nano and genetic technologies are controlled by corporate "ethics" (for lack of a better word). And when money is making the rules, common sense is even further away than when politics is making them.
Lyon -- "It is better to sleep on things beforehand than lie awake about them afterwards."
Slashdot Mirror
This was the line along which Microsoft Europe responded to the ILOVEYOU virus.
I think this is basically a wrong metaphor. A more apt one would be to compare Microsoft to the builder of your house. Not only did he build it on a foundation of quicksand, but he also connected your mailbox directly to your safe. Anybody can get your valuables out, and also anybody can slip anything in.
You open the door of your safe: Suprise!!!
Empty, save for a silly paperclip holding a note: ILOVEYOU
Lyon
The image Joy (what's in a name) paints, is very bleak indeed. But isn't pessimistic thinking addictive? Remember the end of the last century: even excellent IT brains (was it Yourdon?) resigned their jobs and dug in, stashing food, water and weapons, waiting for the end of civillisation to be brought about by the millennium bug. We know what happened to that one.
I agree with Joy though on the difference between the nuclear danger and the current danger. The nuclear danger was more or less controlled by governements and thus more or less public, whilst the nano and genetic technologies are controlled by corporate "ethics" (for lack of a better word). And when money is making the rules, common sense is even further away than when politics is making them.
Lyon
--
"It is better to sleep on things beforehand
than lie awake about them afterwards."
- Baltasar Gracian
Just being able to play audio CD's while I'm at work would be great!!! I'd say, release what you have and add the bells and whistles later...