June 3, 2007

• Malware! #!@$^$%!!

      Noted economist Frederic Bastiat once asked, if a child breaks a window, has he not done the town a favor?  Has he not given new work to the glassmaker, the window hanger, the guy who does the tinting?  This paradox, to break it down succinctly, haunts us today:
      The malware and virus peddlers, while making a tidy pile for themselves, are quick to point out that the nasty mess they leave behind is worth having, because it gives the virus hunter / malware remover populace something to do.  Have they not improved the lot of these coders, and the people who ship their code?
      No.  In both cases, the petulant child who broke my windows, screwed with my registry, and wasted 3 hours of my time (it being 5:40 AM RIGHT NOW--a time I rarely see) deserves a spanking, or at least a docked allowance to pay for the time and talent it will take to fix the problem.  IF he had done something useful, the town would have the window, AND something new could be made by the glassmaker, window hanger, and tinter, or the coders and their kith and kin.  The new Windows, for example--hung up for months by concerns about "viruses" and "spyware", necessitating a complete re-design of the core software and months of press conferences to "prove" that it is secure.
      Jail them.  Fine them.  Beat them raw.  I care not--they wreck things, they must be punished. 
  Noted political satirist P.J. O'Rourke once wrote, in the above book,
  that "Break it and You Bought it".  He went on to state that, despite
  so-called "economic miracles" in certain countries after WW2, someone
  was not counting the death and destruction beforehand, and that if war
  and destruction were the way to get ahead, we would all be studying the
  economy of Albania (which, at the time the book as written, was full of
  crime, theft, murder, and riot). 
      As with material goods, so it is with time, computers, and coding talent--you break it, you bought it.  Sleep soundly, my friends.
       Oh, I use "Lavasoft Adaware" and "Spybot Search and Destroy", and I caught "Spylocked 4.1" while trying to install "Active X" junk on "MySpace" trying to view a profile of a "pretty girl" during a "friend request".  I humbly suggest the person responsible be "beaten".

  • 8:47 am
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