Reprinted here (and on my main webpage) courtesy of Tibor Moscar, the ILOVEYOU virus, and good, old-fashioned common sense. Diversity in Computing by Boanne 6 September 1999 Alright children, take my hand, and don't be afraid. It's time to step away from your computer now and go out into the back yard. Look around. Standing there, how many different kinds of trees can you see? How many different kinds of flowers, or even weeds are in view? How many species of insect, birds, mammals, or bacteria do you suppose you'd find if you looked? Unless you live in the middle of the Sahara or at the North Pole, my guess is many thousands. Has Boanne lost her mind? What has this to do with DOS, or even computers? Ok, so maybe I'm being a little silly, but I haven't really lost my mind. I'm making a point about diversity: Mother Nature seems to think it's a good idea. And if Mother Nature seems to think it's a good idea, maybe we should listen and follow Her lead, even when it comes to computing, in hardware, software, and operating systems. "Oh, but standards make everything so much easier," you say. Or "But machines must be able to work together to exchange information, for commerce and business, etc," you say. And you'd be right, both of these statements are absolutely true. But what you may not really understand is, we already have the most basic and necessary ingredient to make it happen: the TCP/IP protocol. In fact this was the whole purpose (and genius) of TCP/IP in the first place, to allow very different and diverse systems to work together, exchange information, etc in local offices and/or all over the globe. TCP/IP will work on any machine with any operating system. And if you put it together with HTTP, FTP, and the other InterNet protocols you have a system that will work for everyone, everywhere. There is no good reason to "standardize" with any single system, be it Windows, DOS, MAC, UNIX, etc. In fact there is more good reason *not* to standardize at all, if we believe Mother Nature is wise. Or, in the old time UNIX hacker jargon, diversity is a "good thing." Computers mimic nature in many ways, but we don't need to go into all of them here, just a few will suffice. Many years ago, here in the Untied States there was a disease that killed elm trees. It didn't kill maples or oaks or willows or pines or firs - just elms. If the only trees in the US were elm trees, we'd be in trouble, there wouldn't be any trees left at all. But Mother Nature's wisdom saved us, She provided us with many, many kinds of trees. Well, it's not that big a stretch to computer viruses. As we have recently seen with the Windows Melissa virus, the bigger (in number) they are, the faster and easier they fall. So it's easy to see that diversity equals overall good health on a global level, be it trees or computers. The more kinds there are, the more difficult it is to kill all of them. This is the real truth and logic behind the old hackers cry "Anarchy rules!" What they really meant was "Diversity Rules!" Diversity is one of the best defenses against cyber-terrorism. Want to take out the banking system? As long as the banking system operates on a variety of different platforms, it will be very difficult. Put them all on one system though, any one system, be it UNIX or MAC or whatever and it would be a piece of cake. Same with the telecommunications system, the electrical system, any and all of our important systems... If we want security on a personal and global level, our best hope is a rich and diverse number of operating systems. "We can't all, and some of us don't. That's all there is to it." Copyright (c) 1999 Boanne Lorraine All rights reserved -- FROM: Over the hills and far away... [EMAIL PROTECTED] A Dinosaurs Garden (collection of DOS links and files) http://www.jdreece.com/dinosaur/dg.htm *Trust your technologist. To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
