Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncr-sd!hp-sdd!hplabs!ucbvax!pinocchio.UUCP!bzs
From: bzs@pinocchio.UUCP (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Shein's ``thought virus'', or, The Risk of Monocultures
Message-ID: <8811161519.AA13715@pinocchio.UUCP>
Date: 16 Nov 88 15:19:27 GMT
References: <8811160529.AA01857@multimax.encore.com>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 21


From: Richard Mlynarik <MLY@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
>Ecologists have known for some time of the many disadvantages of
>single-species ecosystems.  The spread of the Sendmail `worm' is a
>good illustration of the ravages which a single, well-targeted disease
>can inflict upon such an ecosystem.

If that analogy holds then why not apply it to, eg, TCP/IP itself?

Surely if we all ran different network protocols the risk of a virus
would be zero'd immediately.

At any rate, I think we all now understand this ecology analogy, I am
waiting for someone to stand up and say that the concept of standards
is wrong because they encourage viruses and propose active
non-standardization with some plan/proposal for implementation.

Perhaps we can have a conference on pro-active non-standardization
somewhere in Babel...

	-Barry Shein, ||Encore||