Think proprietary business applications which talk to proprietary business hardware with binary-only drivers.
Yes, think about that. Think about Microsoft's approaching DRM Trusted Computing Initiaive, which will make it cryptographically impossible for a signed program to run in an unsigned OS.
Microsoft will soon be able to combine technical and political techniques to declare reverse-engineered Windows illegal. Then all the effort put to ReactOS will have been for naught.
In fact, Microsoft might hold back on quashing ReactOS until just it's just about to become a serious competitor... because all the time in between, it will be diverting development resources from Linux and other "Free" alternatives.
No, Unix was never cloned at all... at least not in the same sense that ReactOS is a clone of WindowsNT. But then again, Unix isn't even a piece of software. UNIX(tm) is, however.
ReactOS aims for binary compatibility with Windows (it barely works, but that is their goal). Linux and BSD not only lack binary compatibility with UNIX, they don't have complete source code compatibility either- and their maintainers don't want to add it, considering some old UNIX ways to have been mistakes.
As for the holding the gun sideways thing.. I'm pretty sure that increases the stopping power.
It's so that the empty shells fly downward, instead of to the left. If you have a friend next to you who doesn't want brass in his face, or if you plan to sweep up afterwards, then try a sideways grip.
People who camp in the left lane, forcing others to pass on the right (as you seemed to imply was OK) are MORE dangerous
Yes they are, but they also have the law on their side. If the posted sign has "65", then it's tough to argue someone driving 69 should clear out of the left lane- because anyone trying to pass him is by definition in the wrong.
This is just one more trivial example of how legality doesn't imply justice.
The difference between a murder and captial punishment is that the death penalty is carried out in the name of justice.
Have you been paying attention to the news the past few years? There was this incident in 2001 where a few people were murdered in the name of justice... try to remember...
What right does one have to exist when they take the life of others in cold blood?
You just said that executioners should themselves be executed.
"Cold blood" means the killer is calm, unexcited, and thinking things through. A "hot blooded" act is one committed without real planning or preparation. A violent thug might be hot or cold, but federal executioners are strictly "cold killers".
the only way you're going to stop people doing damage from releasing viruses is to change the computing environment.
And as I've argued elsewhere in this thread, reducing the punishment for those "amazingly stupid" guys who do get caught would force software and network developers to start improving the environment.
Evidently there isn't free-market pressure for secure OSes, so apparently the consequences of running unsecurely aren't high enough. Allowing more cyber-vandals to go free would raise those consequences...
But recognizing that deterrence is ineffective for many types of offences and offenders
Deterrence could be more effective with simple, minor adjustments to its implementation.
As you note, many criminals have limited mentality- they don't think ahead very far. Abstract warnings don't influence them as much as visceral graphics.
For example, suppose that all death row inmates were offered a choice on their final day: Take lethal injection, or volunteer to have both hands cut off and then go free. At least some of them would pick the second choice*. Then he'd return to society and live off charity on the streets, serving as a persistent, gruesome reminder that crimes have consequences.
State-sponsored maiming would be both a more effective deterrent and also more merciful than executions- so why don't we do it? (Saudi Arabia does...). Or at the very least, move executions back to public stadiums, so potential murderers can see exactly what awaits them.
*and if the offer had only required one hand, everyone would pick it.
provided a look into a "political worldview" where the government isn't to be trusted, in essence - something I don't doubt most students could benefit from.
Yeah, because there's nothing else to teach them mistrust of the governments. Not X-Files, Alias, or 24...
the game wasn't primarily sold to schools
Maybe because back then, schools were hotbeds of "piracy".
When a group of dudes with spears can take out a tank, your game needs some work.
Not nessecarily. The tank can defeat a large number of spearmen, but it's all a distant abstraction of combat. In reality, that tank would need to be refueled each day, while the primitive troops can go for weeks without eating. Tank's can't kill infantry effectively- they can break them out of fortifications and drive them into hiding, but that's all.
If the tanks are surrounded by hidden enemies, the risk of one of the critical crewmen being ambushed becomes unbeatable.
In real life, of course, tanks would beat spearmen because they'd always be supported by riflemen... but if you failed to do that in the game, then the loss is your own fault.
(Let's drop an M1-A2 into the Amazon jungle and count how many spearmen it takes to beat it...)
Ignoramus: "It was fought to free the slaves" + a little education: "It was to preserve the Union" + more education: "Only a dispute as important as slavery could've induced the Confederacy to secede, or the North to spend so many lives taking them back"
Yes, there was a country called USSR. Yes, they were involved in the war before the US.
Both the UK and USSR were more important than the US in defeating Germany. If Britain had capitulated, then the US would've had no base from which to invade Europe.
And, the USSR lost a good bit more than 10 million fighters.
It's this headstart (the proximity to the New World helped too) that ensured centuries of Western European dominance.
Well, no. Europe dominated not because it didn't get "flattened"; but because it was already non-flat.
China is flat and well-connected so that it's easy for a mob of angry horsemen to ride across it whenever they like. In contrast, Europe is divided up by steep mountain ranges and twisted seas. It's full of natural barriers to rapid conquest- they got taller "walls" for free than China was able to build with a century of great effort.
This is why there are today 6+ surviving major languages spoken in Europe, but China only has one. It was that roughness of terrain that slowed the barbarian hordes, and allowed Europe to rise and take over the world.
That's a circular argument. ("When you gimble in the wabe, you've _gimbled_ in the wabe.") Just because something is illegal doesn't make it wrong. Or even better: just because something is a law doesn't make it right.
I wasn't talking about what the law IS, but what it SHOULD BE. No laws are perfect- to judge a law, you must take a close look at what the alternatives are, and what each option leads to.
The Slate article looked at what would happen if the punishment for vermiscriptors was greatly increased. I argued that it's analysis was wrong, and offered as an alternative the natural result of what would happen if the punishment is greatly decreased.
The current law of strict punishment for virus authors who get caught is counterproductive in the long run. It will scare a lot of teenagers away from messing with computer networks- but it will also enable the software industry to continue installing insecure protocols, paving the way for major disasters when cyberterrorists start attacking from rogue states. The only defense against those attacks will be to already be using secure software.
If you want to dispute my position, then answer this small question: If the punishment for intentional release of a worm or virus is reduced to a $500 fine, will that increase or decrease the public's willingness to buy vulnerable software?
A "prankster" who destroys your mailbox with a baseball bat as he's hanging out the window
Inapplicable, for three reasons. (1) When you rebuild your mailbox after that attack, will you do it differently from the first time? Probably not- the replacement box will be about like the old one. But in the aftermath of a worm rampage, nobody reinstalls the old vulnerable software anymore. From then on, they only accept solutions that are totally immune to the last attack.
(2) Smashing your mailbox was a physical attack. A physical attack can only be accomplished by someone nearby, meaning a physical defense (policemen aiming guns at him) may work well. But a worm/virus is not a physical attack, but a cybernetic one. The offender has no need to come within range of arrest to do his damage. Therefore you can't rely on the police to protect you- you've got to plug the vulnerability yourself.
(3) When a mailbox is smashed, nobody is really surprised that it was possible. That's a change from the example I used, where the vandals snuck into a corporate boardroom to do their damage- that's someplace that if the security guards were doing their jobs, never would've happened at all. It shows that security which was SUPPOSED to be working was really nonexistent. And it means that the random, irritating attack revealed an exploit that could've been used for something truely destructive (bug secret negotiations for the next 6 months and ride the stock price)
and the same argument used against preemptive overuse of antibiotics...
They're really quite different. The argument against antibiotic overuse is that there is a fixed max population for bacteria. And of all the bacteria out there, X% are vulnerable to antibiotics and (100-X) are not. The more we kill the vulnerable ones, the smaller X becomes, until eventually 100% of bacteria are immune. And then it's as if antibiotics no longer exist as a medicine. By restraining ourself from killing the vulnerable germs, we ensure that some germs (at least) can be defeated.
It doesn't really work to twist that idea to working with virus authors- it's not like killing off the vulnerable hackers will allow the others to take over.
If you want to make a biological analogy, then look at excessive hygiene/cleanliness. The research isn't quite firm, but it appears that human children raised in obsessively cleaned indoor environments are more vulnerable to asthma and diseases than kids who are allowed to pet strange dogs and try to eat dirt.
If you know what "hacker" means, why did you use it in that context?
A hacker is "someone who operates a complex system (esp involving a computer) in a manner inconsistent with its designer's intent".
Someone who overclocks a CPU is hacking, just like is someone who sniffs FTP passwords on the net. The authors of viruses and worms are a form of hacker.
Some people, most famously ESR, have attempted to spread an artificial definition of "hacker" as "an extremely competent computer programmer". But they're wrong, both historically popular word-usage is against them.
Or developers become more akin to electricians, plumbers, builders, etc.
I wouldn't exactly put it that way. Consider an automobile mechanic as a profession with a similar level of skill (and salary) to electricians and plumbers. I'd call her equivalent to a system administrator or "IT guy" today, whereas a programmer is like the engineers at Toyota who design new cars.
Obviously, we have about 1 million times as many mechanics as car designers, and I expect software to follow that pattern more. The relative number of programmers will go down in comparison to sysadmins.
NOT creating viruses would be short-sighted. They're like an inoculation- without the constant minor threat to keep us alert on security, we'd grow complacent and vulnerable. If there were no viruses, worms, or hackers in general, then the software running the internet would stay insecure, and would accumulate more and more holes over time. Then someday, a homicidal maniac with nothing to lose would find it easy to take over the world' computers and begin a reign of terror.
Prankster hackers* perform a useful role in the software ecology- they restrict the propagation of dangerously vulnerable programs, without inflicting the real damage a computer-criminal would do.
*Yes, I know exactly what "hacker" means. Nobody try to "correct" me.
This is a stimulating article, even if it's silly on the face of it. A mishmash of quick responses:
Don't anyone overreact and think he's seriously proposing that virus-authors be put to death, any more than John Swift wanted to eat babies. The article is just a conversation piece- by applying rational thought to some initial premises and arriving at an absurd conclusion, Sandburg has demonstrated that some of (or all) of those premises must be false. Garbage in, garbage out. The incorrect starting assumptions:
Viruses/worms cause $50 billion in damage each year. In fact, they do much less, and even have beneficial effects (see below)
The US inflicts capital punishment as a deterrent to crime. But they really do it for the refreshing feeling of vengenance. If they actually wanted to deter crime, then publically beating or maiming convicts (like in Saudi Arabia) would be not only more effective, but also more merciful.
Criminal punishment has a rational basis. This is rarely if ever the case- it's mostly emotional/politcal propaganda.
As an intellectual exercise, Sandburg proposed an extreme punishment for virus writing and then examined the consequences. For a related mental exercise, suppose the punishment went towards the other extreme: writing a virus is a $10 fine and 8 hours of community service.
What would be the consequence of the government refusing to punish virus-authors? It would amount to a privatization of software security. (And isn't privatization supposed to give us faster and more efficient results than government control?) Publishers like Microsoft would have no choice but to make security job #1, or be ruined in the marketplace. It'd be sink-or-swim... and those product-lines which survived would be hardened fortresses of supreme security.
Reducing the punishment to virus-authors is equivalent to removing a government subsidy on sellers of insecure software- and cutting a subsidy always unleashes the free market to do it's optimizing work.
Virus/worm-writers are one subset of criminals who exploit insecure software. They're vandals or pranksters- they don't profit from their crimes, or work very hard to keep them secret. But there are frauds and gangsters who may also exploit those failures- and they'll try to do it without attracting much attention.
Worm authors are like punk kids who break into corporate offices or bank vaults and kick over all the furniture before running away. Yes, they've caused some inconvenience in knocking stuff over, which can equate to lost chance for revenue, which is somewhat like damage. But they've also revealed a gaping security flaw in a way that the company can no longer deny and will thus fix before real thieves start to use it. Most of the "costs" attributed to worm-authors are actually spending to fix security holes that should've been done anyhow.
Software is more secure today than it would be if nobody wrote worms and virues.
Sandburg says that virus-writers would be deterred by the prospect of the death penalty. Let's assume that's true... but can you think of some people who aren't afraid of execution? What about today's murderers? What about terrorists?
If in 40 years Osama BinLaden Jr discovers a flaw in Microsoft(tm) WindowsGJ44(r), he might be able to cripple the world economy and kill thousands of people- and he's already accepted his own death, so the threat of one more execution won't stop him.
One of this same author's earlier columns was one of the most absurd things I've ever read. Look at it and laugh. Can you spot what's so wrong with this paragraph?
$2 million a day. It's difficult for one to even imagine what it would be like to have that kind of pure income. But it won't be as difficult for your grandchildren. If U.S. per capi
Nuclear war wouldn't be so bad as long as you weren't near... a major city.
And since most people are near major cities, they'd mostly die within 48 hours. That's what I call "bad".
I think waiting it out at least 100 miles from any blast would be relatively ok.
If you're downwind of the nuclear bomb, then you will get 500-1000 rem fallout exposure at a 100 mile range- even from a single 1 megaton bomb. (Realistically, there would be more than one bomb hitting the target area). 1000 rem is definately lethal- 500 is probably fatal too, without hospitalization.
See a flash, duck and cover,
You place a little much trust in your government. Despite Bert the Turtle, ducking won't protect you in atomic warfare.
If you can see the flash, then it's too late to duck. The gamma rays have already hit you- either you were far enough away to survive the dose, or you weren't. Taking cover will only help you if there are more bombs coming to the same target (which is a minor possibility)
the powers that be have signed all their treaties ( probably treaties would be signed within days )
You posted several stupid things, but that tops them all. Those leaders authorized to sign treaties will have been the first to die- Washington and Moscow are targets #1 and #2. Or if they did survive in a hidden bunker, all the travel and communication infrastructure that would enable them to contact each other will have been lost.
But post-war, those treaties would be meaningless anyhow, as the figureheads who sign them no longer have effective command over any forces.
In some ways, Massachusetts. One of the original family sitcoms, "Father Knows Best", was in Springfield MA. That is considered to be where The Simpsons got the name.
Slashdot Mirror
Think proprietary business applications which talk to proprietary business hardware with binary-only drivers.
Yes, think about that. Think about Microsoft's approaching DRM Trusted Computing Initiaive, which will make it cryptographically impossible for a signed program to run in an unsigned OS.
Microsoft will soon be able to combine technical and political techniques to declare reverse-engineered Windows illegal. Then all the effort put to ReactOS will have been for naught.
In fact, Microsoft might hold back on quashing ReactOS until just it's just about to become a serious competitor... because all the time in between, it will be diverting development resources from Linux and other "Free" alternatives.
Unix was cloned for a number of reasons.
No, Unix was never cloned at all... at least not in the same sense that ReactOS is a clone of WindowsNT. But then again, Unix isn't even a piece of software. UNIX(tm) is, however.
ReactOS aims for binary compatibility with Windows (it barely works, but that is their goal). Linux and BSD not only lack binary compatibility with UNIX, they don't have complete source code compatibility either- and their maintainers don't want to add it, considering some old UNIX ways to have been mistakes.
As for the holding the gun sideways thing.. I'm pretty sure that increases the stopping power.
It's so that the empty shells fly downward, instead of to the left. If you have a friend next to you who doesn't want brass in his face, or if you plan to sweep up afterwards, then try a sideways grip.
People who camp in the left lane, forcing others to pass on the right (as you seemed to imply was OK) are MORE dangerous
Yes they are, but they also have the law on their side. If the posted sign has "65", then it's tough to argue someone driving 69 should clear out of the left lane- because anyone trying to pass him is by definition in the wrong.
This is just one more trivial example of how legality doesn't imply justice.
The difference between a murder and captial punishment is that the death penalty is carried out in the name of justice.
Have you been paying attention to the news the past few years? There was this incident in 2001 where a few people were murdered in the name of justice... try to remember...
What right does one have to exist when they take the life of others in cold blood?
You just said that executioners should themselves be executed.
"Cold blood" means the killer is calm, unexcited, and thinking things through. A "hot blooded" act is one committed without real planning or preparation. A violent thug might be hot or cold, but federal executioners are strictly "cold killers".
How about making punishment economical? Forced labor is not cruel and unusual punishment.
There's some merit to that, but overall, it'd be a bad idea to give the government a financial incentive to arrest more people.
Then you'd have George Bush proposing criminalized file-sharing as a way to budget for the Iraq occupation, or other craziness added to Washington.
So I don't really see much difference...
The point is that blasphemy and adultery now have ZERO punishment for the offenders, an obvious reduction from what it used to be.
the only way you're going to stop people doing damage from releasing viruses is to change the computing environment.
And as I've argued elsewhere in this thread, reducing the punishment for those "amazingly stupid" guys who do get caught would force software and network developers to start improving the environment.
Evidently there isn't free-market pressure for secure OSes, so apparently the consequences of running unsecurely aren't high enough. Allowing more cyber-vandals to go free would raise those consequences...
But recognizing that deterrence is ineffective for many types of offences and offenders
Deterrence could be more effective with simple, minor adjustments to its implementation.
As you note, many criminals have limited mentality- they don't think ahead very far. Abstract warnings don't influence them as much as visceral graphics.
For example, suppose that all death row inmates were offered a choice on their final day: Take lethal injection, or volunteer to have both hands cut off and then go free. At least some of them would pick the second choice*. Then he'd return to society and live off charity on the streets, serving as a persistent, gruesome reminder that crimes have consequences.
State-sponsored maiming would be both a more effective deterrent and also more merciful than executions- so why don't we do it? (Saudi Arabia does...). Or at the very least, move executions back to public stadiums, so potential murderers can see exactly what awaits them.
*and if the offer had only required one hand, everyone would pick it.
a study came out a while back showing that violent crime in the UK was the highest in Europe...
If you believe that 25 fistfights is more violent crime than a single gunshot to the head, that is...
To be perfectly rational or perfectly emotional in our actions would be a huge flaw,
Did you learn that from Star Trek?
inability to account for things that are ineffiable.
That spelling error has made it difficult to guess what you actually meant.
provided a look into a "political worldview" where the government isn't to be trusted, in essence - something I don't doubt most students could benefit from.
Yeah, because there's nothing else to teach them mistrust of the governments. Not X-Files, Alias, or 24...
the game wasn't primarily sold to schools
Maybe because back then, schools were hotbeds of "piracy".
When a group of dudes with spears can take out a tank, your game needs some work.
Not nessecarily. The tank can defeat a large number of spearmen, but it's all a distant abstraction of combat. In reality, that tank would need to be refueled each day, while the primitive troops can go for weeks without eating. Tank's can't kill infantry effectively- they can break them out of fortifications and drive them into hiding, but that's all.
If the tanks are surrounded by hidden enemies, the risk of one of the critical crewmen being ambushed becomes unbeatable.
In real life, of course, tanks would beat spearmen because they'd always be supported by riflemen... but if you failed to do that in the game, then the loss is your own fault.
(Let's drop an M1-A2 into the Amazon jungle and count how many spearmen it takes to beat it...)
The Civil War wasn't really about slavery.
Yes it was.
Ignoramus: "It was fought to free the slaves"
+ a little education: "It was to preserve the Union"
+ more education: "Only a dispute as important as slavery could've induced the Confederacy to secede, or the North to spend so many lives taking them back"
Actually he sailed the ocean blue because
Actually, water isn't blue.
Yes, there was a country called USSR. Yes, they were involved in the war before the US.
Both the UK and USSR were more important than the US in defeating Germany. If Britain had capitulated, then the US would've had no base from which to invade Europe.
And, the USSR lost a good bit more than 10 million fighters.
It's this headstart (the proximity to the New World helped too) that ensured centuries of Western European dominance.
Well, no. Europe dominated not because it didn't get "flattened"; but because it was already non-flat.
China is flat and well-connected so that it's easy for a mob of angry horsemen to ride across it whenever they like. In contrast, Europe is divided up by steep mountain ranges and twisted seas. It's full of natural barriers to rapid conquest- they got taller "walls" for free than China was able to build with a century of great effort.
This is why there are today 6+ surviving major languages spoken in Europe, but China only has one. It was that roughness of terrain that slowed the barbarian hordes, and allowed Europe to rise and take over the world.
Again, intent is not an issue.
Right. No matter what you intended, if you wind up hurting someone, you must be punished.
When you break the law, you've _broken_ the law.
That's a circular argument. ("When you gimble in the wabe, you've _gimbled_ in the wabe.") Just because something is illegal doesn't make it wrong. Or even better: just because something is a law doesn't make it right.
I wasn't talking about what the law IS, but what it SHOULD BE. No laws are perfect- to judge a law, you must take a close look at what the alternatives are, and what each option leads to.
The Slate article looked at what would happen if the punishment for vermiscriptors was greatly increased. I argued that it's analysis was wrong, and offered as an alternative the natural result of what would happen if the punishment is greatly decreased.
The current law of strict punishment for virus authors who get caught is counterproductive in the long run. It will scare a lot of teenagers away from messing with computer networks- but it will also enable the software industry to continue installing insecure protocols, paving the way for major disasters when cyberterrorists start attacking from rogue states. The only defense against those attacks will be to already be using secure software.
If you want to dispute my position, then answer this small question:
If the punishment for intentional release of a worm or virus is reduced to a $500 fine, will that increase or decrease the public's willingness to buy vulnerable software?
A "prankster" who destroys your mailbox with a baseball bat as he's hanging out the window
Inapplicable, for three reasons.
(1) When you rebuild your mailbox after that attack, will you do it differently from the first time? Probably not- the replacement box will be about like the old one. But in the aftermath of a worm rampage, nobody reinstalls the old vulnerable software anymore. From then on, they only accept solutions that are totally immune to the last attack.
(2) Smashing your mailbox was a physical attack. A physical attack can only be accomplished by someone nearby, meaning a physical defense (policemen aiming guns at him) may work well. But a worm/virus is not a physical attack, but a cybernetic one. The offender has no need to come within range of arrest to do his damage. Therefore you can't rely on the police to protect you- you've got to plug the vulnerability yourself.
(3) When a mailbox is smashed, nobody is really surprised that it was possible. That's a change from the example I used, where the vandals snuck into a corporate boardroom to do their damage- that's someplace that if the security guards were doing their jobs, never would've happened at all. It shows that security which was SUPPOSED to be working was really nonexistent. And it means that the random, irritating attack revealed an exploit that could've been used for something truely destructive (bug secret negotiations for the next 6 months and ride the stock price)
and the same argument used against preemptive overuse of antibiotics...
They're really quite different. The argument against antibiotic overuse is that there is a fixed max population for bacteria. And of all the bacteria out there, X% are vulnerable to antibiotics and (100-X) are not. The more we kill the vulnerable ones, the smaller X becomes, until eventually 100% of bacteria are immune. And then it's as if antibiotics no longer exist as a medicine. By restraining ourself from killing the vulnerable germs, we ensure that some germs (at least) can be defeated.
It doesn't really work to twist that idea to working with virus authors- it's not like killing off the vulnerable hackers will allow the others to take over.
If you want to make a biological analogy, then look at excessive hygiene/cleanliness. The research isn't quite firm, but it appears that human children raised in obsessively cleaned indoor environments are more vulnerable to asthma and diseases than kids who are allowed to pet strange dogs and try to eat dirt.
If you know what "hacker" means, why did you use it in that context?
A hacker is "someone who operates a complex system (esp involving a computer) in a manner inconsistent with its designer's intent".
Someone who overclocks a CPU is hacking, just like is someone who sniffs FTP passwords on the net. The authors of viruses and worms are a form of hacker.
Some people, most famously ESR, have attempted to spread an artificial definition of "hacker" as "an extremely competent computer programmer". But they're wrong, both historically popular word-usage is against them.
Or developers become more akin to electricians, plumbers, builders, etc.
I wouldn't exactly put it that way. Consider an automobile mechanic as a profession with a similar level of skill (and salary) to electricians and plumbers. I'd call her equivalent to a system administrator or "IT guy" today, whereas a programmer is like the engineers at Toyota who design new cars.
Obviously, we have about 1 million times as many mechanics as car designers, and I expect software to follow that pattern more. The relative number of programmers will go down in comparison to sysadmins.
It's all short-sighted selfishness.
NOT creating viruses would be short-sighted. They're like an inoculation- without the constant minor threat to keep us alert on security, we'd grow complacent and vulnerable. If there were no viruses, worms, or hackers in general, then the software running the internet would stay insecure, and would accumulate more and more holes over time. Then someday, a homicidal maniac with nothing to lose would find it easy to take over the world' computers and begin a reign of terror.
Prankster hackers* perform a useful role in the software ecology- they restrict the propagation of dangerously vulnerable programs, without inflicting the real damage a computer-criminal would do.
*Yes, I know exactly what "hacker" means. Nobody try to "correct" me.
What would be the consequence of the government refusing to punish virus-authors? It would amount to a privatization of software security. (And isn't privatization supposed to give us faster and more efficient results than government control?) Publishers like Microsoft would have no choice but to make security job #1, or be ruined in the marketplace. It'd be sink-or-swim... and those product-lines which survived would be hardened fortresses of supreme security.
Reducing the punishment to virus-authors is equivalent to removing a government subsidy on sellers of insecure software- and cutting a subsidy always unleashes the free market to do it's optimizing work.
Worm authors are like punk kids who break into corporate offices or bank vaults and kick over all the furniture before running away. Yes, they've caused some inconvenience in knocking stuff over, which can equate to lost chance for revenue, which is somewhat like damage. But they've also revealed a gaping security flaw in a way that the company can no longer deny and will thus fix before real thieves start to use it. Most of the "costs" attributed to worm-authors are actually spending to fix security holes that should've been done anyhow.
Software is more secure today than it would be if nobody wrote worms and virues.
If in 40 years Osama BinLaden Jr discovers a flaw in Microsoft(tm) WindowsGJ44(r), he might be able to cripple the world economy and kill thousands of people- and he's already accepted his own death, so the threat of one more execution won't stop him.
Nuclear war wouldn't be so bad as long as you weren't near ... a major city.
And since most people are near major cities, they'd mostly die within 48 hours. That's what I call "bad".
I think waiting it out at least 100 miles from any blast would be relatively ok.
If you're downwind of the nuclear bomb, then you will get 500-1000 rem fallout exposure at a 100 mile range- even from a single 1 megaton bomb. (Realistically, there would be more than one bomb hitting the target area). 1000 rem is definately lethal- 500 is probably fatal too, without hospitalization.
See a flash, duck and cover,
You place a little much trust in your government. Despite Bert the Turtle, ducking won't protect you in atomic warfare.
If you can see the flash, then it's too late to duck. The gamma rays have already hit you- either you were far enough away to survive the dose, or you weren't. Taking cover will only help you if there are more bombs coming to the same target (which is a minor possibility)
the powers that be have signed all their treaties ( probably treaties would be signed within days )
You posted several stupid things, but that tops them all. Those leaders authorized to sign treaties will have been the first to die- Washington and Moscow are targets #1 and #2. Or if they did survive in a hidden bunker, all the travel and communication infrastructure that would enable them to contact each other will have been lost.
But post-war, those treaties would be meaningless anyhow, as the figureheads who sign them no longer have effective command over any forces.
Were the writers of The Simpsons always consistant?
Considering that the entire town has been lifted and relocated, it could've had multiple completely different layouts at times.
And considering that even TIME isn't consistent there (Bart has been 13 for 15 straight years)... you couldn't expect geography to make sense either.
what state is Springfield in?
In some ways, Massachusetts. One of the original family sitcoms, "Father Knows Best", was in Springfield MA. That is considered to be where The Simpsons got the name.