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The Germans have a word for it -- schadenfreude, which
roughly translates into taking joy in the sorrow of
others.
It was all I could do last week to sequester that emotion. I struggled, though often with little success, to hide my pleasure while feigning sympathy for the Microsofties of my acquaintance.
They got hit with the now-famous ILOVEYOU
e-mail,
which was technically a worm, rather than a virus, a
distinction that may be meaningless.
Millions of people use Microsoft Outlook to handle their e-mail (technically, e-mail is a process which gives you many more things to feel guilty about not staying caught up with, just in case you weren't feeling sufficiently guilty about all the newspapers, books and magazines you hadn't read yet).
E-mail itself handles only text, but you can attach other kinds of files, like images and sounds, to e-mail messages.
Explorer has a time-saving feature -- just click on the attached file, and if your computer knows how to process it, then you'll see the pictures or hear the sounds.
So far, so good, but the ILOVEYOU attachment was actually a program written in Visual Basic -- click on it, and your computer would start running the program. The program was something any half-smart kid could have written in an afternoon; it sent copies of the e-mail and program attachment to everyone in your Outlook address book, then attacked certain graphic and music files.
Most people know it's not safe to open attachments from strangers, but since the message got sent to you because you were in someone's address book, chances are it came from someone you knew -- the worm bypassed that precaution, and clogged email systems around the world.
It didn't hit me because I don't use Microsoft Outlook. Some earlier viruses came embedded as macros in MicroSoft Word documents, and I avoided those because I don't use Word, even if it does have a 90 percent market share.
This doesn't really result from my bad attitude about Microsoft. Instead it results from my slothful and cheapskate nature -- why buy new programs and spend time learning to use them when the stuff I have and know how to use is doing the job?
But the spread of these viruses, and how quickly they can clog communications and snarl computers, illustrates a danger that biologists have written about -- the problem with monocultures.
Consider a wild parcel with all kinds of plant life. Some fungus spores might land, and they might infect every tansy aster. But the infestation may well stop there, since it could be a long ways to the next tansy aster.
Then consider what happens when there's a whole field of precisely the same crop, and potato blight arrives. That once caused a famine in Ireland.
In other words, monocultures might be productive, but they're also susceptible to rapid contagion.
Our wired computer world appears to work the same way -- an infection that might be quickly contained in a diverse environment can grow and overwhelm a monoculture.
Considering all the hysteria I read about last week's worm, with damage estimates up to $10 billion and fears that the global economy would congeal, then it would appear that Microsoft's huge market share is a threat to our economy and security.
Thus the Justice Department might be on the side of the angels in its anti-trust suit against MicroSoft. And those who hope that the election of Texas Gov. George W. Bush will put an end to the proceedings might examine Bush's record as governor of Texas.
Five years ago, he had to give an opinion on the merger of the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads. He turned the matter over to the Texas Railroad Commission and said it would support its recommendation.
The commission correctly predicted that the merger would be an expensive disaster for Texas industry. Bush had no way of knowing the prophesy would be correct (unless he's a lot closer to Pat Robertson than he lets on), but he kept his word.
Despite widespread Texas Republican support for the merger, Bush energetically opposed it because it was not in the best interests of his state.
So he's not a reflexive supporter of monopoly, and the latest worm attack should serve as a fair warning of one of the hazards of an almost-monopoly in the computer world -- a vulnerable monoculture.
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