Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!island!daniel
From: daniel@island.uu.net (Dan Quayle cannot manage a crisis, he is a crisis that must be managed)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: HIV was a blessing in disguise
Keywords: Morris, virus, internet
Message-ID: <451@island.uu.net>
Date: 8 Nov 88 18:18:33 GMT
Reply-To: daniel@island.uu.net (Dan Quayle cannot manage a crisis, he is a crisis that must be managed)
Organization: Island Graphics, Marin County, California
Lines: 34
References:


	I think the HIV (Huge Internet Virus) was a blessing in disguise.
It could have been *a lot* worse.  As others have said, and will continue
to say, it'll wake up a lot of people to get off their collective
derrieres and fix their systems.  Remember, thrashing machines with
high load averages is nothing compared to Terrabytes of Wiped Out
Files!

	As for people calling for Morris's head, c'mon...  If you
can believe the news (I know I usually don't :-) report from his
house, this guy supposedly was trying out an experiment that quickly
got out of hand.  He allegedly contacted friends at Harvard in an
attempt to contain the virus, but it was too late.  True, he shouldn't
have been doing this, but from everything I've heard, he didn't start
a malicious virus.  When he was on camera outside of his parent's
house, he was visibly shaking...not a hardened criminal.

	Sometimes strange events serve a useful purpose; I think the
long-term effect of the HIV is that a lot of people will take
security more seriously, and that a lot of money/data that would have
otherwise been lost to subsequent virus/worm attempts will now be
saved.

	[someone please expand on this :-) ]
	I'm fed up with the media misunderstanding and misrepresenting
the virus situation.  They constantly sensationalize, throwing terms
such as "hacker" around with abandon... The CBS slime job of a few
weeks back comes to mind...

				dan
-- 
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