Comment Just not the same thing. (Score 5, Interesting) 221
The problem with statements like these is that they take the name, worms, too literal. A computer virus or worm, although they behave very much like the real organisms, cannot be eradicated like a real virus or worm. To the casual reader you would think the email worms and viruses have been wiped out of existence like polio and small pox. It just isn't the same. Our immune system has a memory and protects itself. For some reason, programmers don't seem to have a memory. How else can you explain buffer overflows still being the number one cause of exploited systems? We all know it, but we just don't do anything about it.
What is funny though is that if we put as much proactive effort and money into combating preventing electronic viruses and worms as we did with polio and small pox, we could probably truly eliminate these things. What people don't appreciate about the diseases that we have 'wiped out' is that there are teams of very dedicated people (like the CDC) that respond to every reported outbreak of one of these diseases. If we tracked down every computer worm and virus the way we handle Ebola, I think this would all come to an abrupt end.
But that would but too many antivirus firms and the like out of business. And we can't have that...
What is funny though is that if we put as much proactive effort and money into combating preventing electronic viruses and worms as we did with polio and small pox, we could probably truly eliminate these things. What people don't appreciate about the diseases that we have 'wiped out' is that there are teams of very dedicated people (like the CDC) that respond to every reported outbreak of one of these diseases. If we tracked down every computer worm and virus the way we handle Ebola, I think this would all come to an abrupt end.
But that would but too many antivirus firms and the like out of business. And we can't have that...
