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Coop's Corner: The upside to the Great Web Wipeout

Coop finds an upside to the Great Web Wipeout of 2000.
Written by Charles Cooper, Contributor

If any good comes out of this week's Great Web Wipeout, I suppose it will be in the realm of public policy. The sad fact of the matter is that intruder tools are getting more sophisticated and easily available. And with so many thousands of unprotected nodes, the industry has made it relatively easy for certain cyber sociopaths to pick the locks on a handful of networks.

Then it's off to the races.

All this should ratchet up the debate about national information infrastructure. Indeed, a recent White House report raised the specter of the threat to the United States' electronic infrastructure. Expect one or more of the current candidates for the Democrat and Republican nomination to pick up the cudgel anytime now. However it shakes out, these issues will need to be addressed in some sort of public-private policy arena.

Already, the private sector is mobilizing. First out of the chute is Cisco, which will be announcing the formation of a consortium to address Internet security issues (along the lines of an effort it launched revolving around Y2K). The group will include industry and government participants.

That's a good start, although some voices in the private sector may reject what they view as unnecessary government intrusion. Enlightened self-interest should convince them to play nice with the boys from Washington. The bottom line is that anything slowing down customer access and the growth of the Internet is bad for business. The more that the powers that be can prevent these cyber traffic jams, the faster the industry should grow.

In the meantime, there is an exaggerated perception of vulnerability surrounding the Internet. Most of this stuff may be absurd but it's nonetheless palpable. Even smart guys like Yahoo!'s president, Jeff Mallett, are inadvertently feeding the mania by telling interviewers that with so many access points to the Internet it's almost impossible to stop these kinds of attacks.

That's why the success of the current FBI manhunt becomes so crucial. The authorities are building a psychological profile of the individual -- or individuals -- behind the attack. They're betting that these high-tech graffiti artists will begin bragging of their exploits. (Otherwise how will these winners gain proper recognition?)

It's not often to find kind words in this space for the hired help, but kudos to New Jersey Sen. Bob Torricelli, who wants to pass a law requiring companies to ask permission before using information from cookies. The current "opt out" procedure, where the onus is on consumers to notify companies not to use their data, was wrong-headed from the get-go. Considering the gathering storm over Internet privacy, this one should be a no-brainer. But don't forget that these same offending companies are also voters (and campaign contributors).

So now Novell is reinventing itself -- this time as a provider of infrastructure for e-business. Hard to argue with the shift, seeing how this figures to be the hot category for 2000. CEO Eric Schmidt pulling back to do the vision thing on a full-time basis is probably a good idea. The company still needs to get its marketing act together but the Schmidt-meister has navigated one of the more remarkable corporate turnarounds in recent history.

Microsoft's latest wrinkle in its war against software piracy is to require new owners of Microsoft Office to register with the company. And what if you decide to tell Redmond to stick something in its ear? Well, those of you of libertarian frame of mind will find that your apps have disappeared the 51st time you boot up. Pushy, but not the end of the world. Still, I have one question: What happens to some poor schnook who unsuspectingly buys Office online from a pirater?

Things are getting really interesting in the chip field with a new low-cost chip from Via that's aimed squarely at Intel's Celeron. Call this the second coming of Cyrix, which Via acquired from National Semiconductor's feckless hands last year. (It also bought Centaur from IDT.) These guys may be relative no-names, but talk about timing! I'm hearing more griping from OEMs about Intel now than I have in years. If ever the chip colossus was vulnerable, it's now.

Correction Corner: In a previous column, yours truly screwed up the size of the downloaded software needed to run ThinkFree's Web-based Office-like suite. The correct amount is 8MB.

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