Reading this article, I was thinking this security guy is exaggerating and playing down at the same time.

First of all, in the U.S. many companies use so much crap when it comes to IT that it makes me sick, so everything is possible. However, I think it is much more probable many systems will blow up on a large scale without any malice involved, but just due to incompetence and negligence.

At the same time this guy admits the U.S. is actively preparing and maybe even conducting cyber-warfare against other countries. I don't know how to comment on that. If all countries would stick to cyberwarfare instead of dropping bombs, this would not be *that* bad.

The talk about stolen intellectual property and trade secrets is mostly bullshit. Any business that requires a great deal of secrets to be kept is not sustainable anyway. The future belongs to companies who need very few secrets, if any at all, and are quite open about most aspects of their business. Secrets tend to get out sooner or later anyway.

For mission critical software the quality standards should not be very high, but insanely high. And when the life of people is on the line, software alone should never be able wreak havoc. Unfortunately there are too many people out there who don't have a clue and are just happy when things work. The only get wiser when after the shit hits fan a couple of times, but then they overreact. Professionals should have more courage and never let hazardous systems become operational.

However, I don't see a chance that most of those responsible for the bottom line would voluntarily invest in security and safety unless they are forced to do so, either by law, or by shitstorm.

p.

I read an interview with these guys some times ago.

- They basically sell very small bars, like 1 gram pieces, which are sold which high markup everywhere

- they don't target investors with these machines, but people who want to bring a gift home

- they want to raise interest for buying gold this way

p.

I agree with you that the Browser Issue is a secondary one.

But no one would deny that Microsoft has a de-facto Monopoly on desktop operating systems and office applications.

Bill Gates did not become the richest person in the world because Microsoft did a good job on innovating, but they successfully succeeded the IBM Mainframe monopoly in the PC market on the back of IBM.

The only great thing Microsoft did was to royally kick IBMs testicles when they felt they could do so safely.

Then they operated for decades with an paranoid underdog mentality, and because they knew that their technology and their people were at best second-rate, they thought that every new small competitor might do to them what they had done to IBM, so they used every dirty trick in the book to eliminate upcomers.

And at the same time they enjoyed their monopoly and charged way too much for their software.

Software has a wonderful economy of scale, and with software you can create wonderful lock-in effects, and also abuse the patent and copyright system to keep competitors away.

By the number of windows licenses, a copy of windows should not cost more than a single digit amount of dollars, and Office as well.

Microsoft should have been forced to open its books and all the indecent profits should have been taxed away. Price controls should have been enforced based on the actual costs of developing and marketing the stuff, divided by the number of copies sold.

What happened here is a classical example of how laissez-faire capitalism hurts the economy, stiffles innovation and makes a few obscenely rich.

Now, before calling me a communist:

I regard Communism and Capitalism as equally inhumane because they both deny and suppress half of what makes us survive and prosper. Every sane human being has not only the desire to maximize his own profit, but also to give away, to share and to sacrifice for the prosperity of the society he lives in.

A society or culture that focuses on one side is simply doomed.

p.