[Sussex] Some more thoughts on the Microsoft/Novel deal

[Desmond Armstrong]

Interesting to see the history.

The point is that Bill Gates was an opportunist and was there at the 
time with a crude system which was able to run on the very basic 
machines available.
He does deserve credit for helping the ball to roll.
The problem is that as the cost of memory came down he did nothing to 
improve the security of the system and, in consequence we all have to 
suffer the consequences, many many spam.
Sensibly, the crude O/S would have been replaced (long ago) by a much 
better system in phase with the developing technology and then we would 
not now be having all this spam.
Unfortunately as all the providers are withdrawing support for 
anti-virus and firewall in line with MS ceasing support the whole 
problem is compounded. Just how many million Win98 machines will remain 
on the internet? The spammers will now find it even easier to take them 
over as bots.

So, it is important that users are offered at minimal cost a friendly 
Linux distro because until that happens spam will remain a constant 
feature of our lives.