Microsoft, Internet Pirates and Web 2.0+

Microsoft needs to do something truly pro-active to rid the Internet of Windows zombies. The programming design of Windows from the beginning has been flawed. Consider the resulting bot-net zombies to be car-jacked vehicles on the “Information highway”. Now consider the manipulative digital sociopathic “car-jackers” that control the botnets as practicing a true form of piracy. Bot-net piracy is potentially more economically damaging than anything the movie industry in Hollywood and the RIAA could conceive of.

Beyond the easy to appreciate theft of massive distributed CPU cycles while riding on millions of users' computers, the bot-nets also consume tremendous chunks of Internet bandwidth with their email spam, malware and server crashing behavior. Overall the cost to the entire Internet consumer market probably exceed all the payouts to date made to the Somali pirates.

Microsoft Windows project managers over the years obviously have focused their programming staff on goals other than operating system security. Microsoft owns the software on 90% of the desktops, probably approaching 50% of all the various servers and an untold percentage of all the applications running behind the pathetic software firewalls on various forms of Windows. Yet outside of Windows Updates and/or Microsoft Updates, there is no real mechanism for even an informed user to be able to repair his/her system after becoming Internet roadkill and a menace to all the other Internet users.

Outside of shackling the typical user's computer with third-party anti-malware software, there is no real security product that addresses the real issue of the operating system, the code itself. In this regard, most Internet users truly have been shafted by their vendor - Microsoft. Users should be able to buy an off-the-shelf computer with an operating system product that is secure and able to fend off intrusion or at the very least report to Microsoft that it has been infected. Why bother to put in Remote Assistance with a Microsoft logon user if it doesn't do anything useful?

The typical Windows user who has had his/her hardware compromised can't really be considered the cause of the bot-nets. The typical Windows user hasn't a freaking clue that his system has been snatched by a pirate and is running as a part of a DDOS or has begun vomiting email spam. Worse, the user even if aware doesn't know what to do to fix the infestation.

Even if the user were inclined and technically savvy-enough to do everything possible to prevent the home system from being subverted, most users are thwarted from regaining control of their system outside of wiping the drive and re-installing the exact same (or worse - an earlier service pack) version of the operating system!

What is really scary is that these same Microsoft programmers and project managers in congregate are writing operating system code that either starts or ends up as code in server applications. One day this same code will begin floating around on the vaporous flotillas of real and virtual “cloud” servers. What's to keep the digital-sociopaths from planting their Jolly Roger on those systems as well?

Putting Windows Defender into Visaster is good but its still an reactive, “after-the-fact” add-on, not an intrinsic and secure means of actively preventing the operating system from getting snagged in the first place by a pirate.

The solution is easy. Outlaw the EULA. Do not allow Microsoft to duck its responsibility for the chaos they have indirectly created on the Internet. Force Microsoft to operate a free service to wipe its operating systems on Internet connected desktops clean.

If Microsoft wants to get into “Web 2.0 cloud services”, a truly wonderful and extremely useful service would be a “Wipe-Clean Windows” website. The user connects up and the system is scoured clean remotely. If Microsoft doesn't want to operate the site then for a fee paid by Microsoft, McAfee, Symantec and Zone Labs might. A few years or decades spent paying for wiping clean millions of computers will provide the economic incentive Microsoft seems to need to get the job done right.

Think of it as getting rid of the Tribbles as on Star Trek! Even the Linux users on the Internet would approve of that!