Tuesday, August 21
I, Cringely | The Pulpit And some readers, quite bored with the current rash of computer crimes, wondered aloud how they might do a lot more damage should they decide to undertake their own crime spree. "You are, of course, right about the fact that virus writers have been (so far) staggeringly unimaginative and shortsighted in their work," wrote one reader, clearly entering some kind of fugue state. "One can draw parallels with graffiti artists, or bacterial pathogens, or terrorists. But just to give one example -- if *I* were to make a virus, I'd for damn sure do something INTERESTING like, for example, seek out every Excel spreadsheet on the hard drive and change ONE randomly-selected "2" to an "8"...And not crash, interfere with anything else, or otherwise attract attention, except to spread. It wouldn't make CNN -- at least, not right away -- but once it did, the story would not be about how millions of people had trouble with e-mail. It would be more like how Merrill-Lynch had to declare bankruptcy."
Watch out for that guy.
Watch out for that guy.
