Alexios Zavras wrote [edited]: > http://www.ccianet.org/papers/cyberinsecurity.pdf Akoma ki an de diabasete olo to report, oi parakatw dyo paragrafoi gia to rolo poy prepei na paiksei to "government" stis katastaseis monopwlioy einai anektimhtes. Governments in free market societies have intervened in market failures -- preemptively where failure was be intolerable and responsively when failure had become selfevident. In free market economies as in life, some failure is essential; the ``creative destruction'' of markets builds more than it breaks. Wise governments are those able to distinguish that which must be tolerated as it cannot be changed from that which must be changed as it cannot be tolerated. The reapportionment of risk and responsibility through regulatory intervention embodies that wisdom in action. If governments are going to be responsible for the survivability of our technological infrastructure, then whatever governments do will have to take Microsoft's dominance into consideration. [...] Where governments conclude that they are unable to meaningfully modify the strategies and tactics of the already-in-place Microsoft monopoly, they must declare a market failure and take steps to enforce, by regulation and by their own example, risk diversification within those computing plants whose work product they value. Specifically, governments must not permit critical or infrastructural sectors of their economies to implement the monoculture path, and that includes government's own use of computing. Governments, and perhaps only governments, are in leadership positions to affect how infrastructures develop. By enforcing diversity of platform to thereby blunt the monoculture risk, governments will reap a side benefit of increased market reliance on interoperability, which is the only foundation for effective incremental competition and the only weapon against end-user lock-in. A requirement that no operating system be more than 50% of the installed based in a critical industry or in a government would moot monoculture risk. Other branches to the risk diversification tree can be foliated to a considerable degree, but the trunk of that tree on which they hang is a total prohibition of monoculture coupled to a requirement of standards-based interoperability. -- -- zvr -- -- +---------------------------+ Alexios Zavras (-zvr-) | H eytyxia den exei enoxes | zvr [ at ] pobox [ dot ] com +-----------------------zvr-+