You can’t trust any of the current crop of PC operating systems to stand up to the full fury of the Internet. The beauty of the internet is it’s simplicity, any node can simply open a channel to any other, at any time.

This is a security nightmare because any node on the internet can be the source of an attack, or the destination for something that shouldn’t be sent, or a relay for either of the above.

This provides a simple, persistent excuse to filter the net.

Regardless of the radical novelty of the Internet, regardless of the economic benefits of the innovation of freedom, we will always get pushed back into the box until we wake up and see just how important PC security is.

It’s not about the time wasted re-installing an OS from scratch, or the costs to the owner of a PC in terms of time and energy to recover a usable PC once it’s been compromised. It’s the fact that millions of PCs are available at any given moment for hire in botnets.

Connectivity to the internet will always have to be a managed resource until we get the ends fixed. There will always be a need to cut off the end nodes, for the greater good.

The ends can be secured, but as long as people are happy with an OS that’s merely good enough for them, it’s not going to happen. Eventually, we’ll wake up and figure this out. It can be done. It’s just not likely for a very long time.

My recent discovery of the writings of E.W. Dijkstra convince me that it is possible to write programs with no errors. The current “good enough” practices in the world of programming are yet another place where it’s going to take awareness.

The future can be much, much brighter, but we need to stop and do some VERY deep analysis, and make better long term choices.

I thank you for your time and attention.

–Mike–