From: jgd@cix.co.uk   
      
   In article <10co28b$isl$1@reader2.panix.com>,   
   cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) wrote:   
      
   > I've said this before in this group, but the homogeneity of   
   > modern computing does not strike me as a universally good thing.   
   > There are economies of scale one can leverage, to be sure, but   
   > just as monocultures aren't robust against external threats in   
   > biological systems, I can't help but think that the same is true   
   > of computing systems.   
      
   Yup. I much enjoyed freaking out my old boss the day the ILOVEYOU e-mail   
   virus hit. Lots of people at work were reading their mail on Windows and   
   got hit. I was reading mine using Netscape on an HP-UX PA-RISC box and   
   read the Visual Basic virus code with some interest. Some explaining that   
   neither HP-UX nor Netscape could run this code, so I was safe, was   
   necessary.   
      
   Some years later, when I had a new boss, the old one spotted me reading a   
   book about how buffer overflows and other security holes actually work.   
   He was concerned, and felt that staff should not know these things. My   
   new boss gave me a meta-instruction: if doing something reasonable   
   worries the old boss, keep on doing it.   
      
   > It felt like there was a time when we had built hetergeneous   
   > systems that were at least reasonable to manage; these days, I   
   > think we'd know how to do much better.  But the diversity of   
   > systems and platforms common 30 years ago are mostly gone, and   
   > we're left with essentially three buckets: Windows, Linux, and   
   > a small sliver of "everything else".  Not great.   
      
   The heterogeneity shows up at different levels these days. VMware tried   
   to enforce a monopoly, and now lots of different virtualisation systems   
   are getting more popular. Tintri is taking market share from NetApp, and   
   so on.   
      
   John   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)