On Wed, 30 Jan 2002 08:55:51 -0700 Bob George <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> "Samuel W. Heywood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> [...] >> In my opinion they ought to outlaw the mere possession of any email >> client programs that have a "feature" for opening and running an >> executable attachment automatically. These types of programs are a >> threat to everyone on the internet because they spread viruses. We >> are prohibited from possessing any other kind of weapon or >> destructive device which is deemed to have no legitimate application >> for personal self-defense. [...] > Well, let's see. The dad of a friend of my kid recently plowed over an 800lb > pillar containing my mailbox, so I suppose we should ban the SUV he drives > as well. Clearly it's a threat. :) > Actually I'd prefer it to be more of a case of punishing the idiots. Why not > ding 'em for damages? OK, not the millions of bucks that everyone starts > babbling about, but some real-world number that might stand the test in > court. That guy's squawking about the $500+ it's gonna cost him to fix > damages caused by his stupidity, and I bet he'd be a bit more cautious using > e-mail too if the penalty were the same. There's a lot more precedent for > penalizing irresponsible use of equipment than there is for labelling > anything with a sharp point "controlled munitions". You have made a good sharp point here too when speaking of the damage that can be caused by a recklessly operated SUV. The idea of punishing the idiots sounds good in theory but the suspected idiot could swear that he didn't do it and the prosecutors could not prove otherwise unless they could produce reputable witnesses that would swear that they saw the suspected idiot doing it. Maybe the prosecutors could confiscate the suspected idiot's computer and examine it for tell-tale tracks of what he has done. If the suspected idiot has already reformatted and wiped clean his hard drive for the purpose of getting rid of his virus, then they would have no case. For all we know the suspected idiot's passwords might have been compromised by some clever hacker. The hacker could be sending out viruses that appear to be emanating from the computer belonging to the suspected idiot. Would it be right for the suspected idiot to get punished for something he didn't do? The lifeguard would order me out of the public swimming pool if he were to observe that I had an open wound. He does this as a reasonable precaution to protect others from contagious diseases. Even though I myself am not currently infected with any contagious diseases, the open wound serves as an excellent collector and prolific breeder and disseminator of diseases which the other swimmers might have. The concentration of chlorine in the pool is not at all strong enough to protect everyone from people who are swimming around with open wounds. By similar reasoning we should order people off the internet if they are found to be using programs such as MicroSoft Outlook, even though their computers are not currently infected with any virri. Like chlorine in the public swimming pool, the anti-virus programs and the security patches cannot be relied upon to be 100% effective on the internet. MicroSoft's security patches are about as useless for virus prevention on the internet as a bandage is for disease prevention in a public swimming pool Sam Heywood -- This mail was written by user of The Arachne Browser - http://arachne.cz/ 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
