People are having a field day with the MyDoom email virus. Not only are they pumping up the animosity between SCO and the Linux community but they are also now blaming the users for their ignorance.

Who do I blame? I blame Microsoft. There's such a thing as being a responsible monopoly -- and that includes making software that people can't cut their own hands off with. Outlook should not have scripting support period. End of discussion. It doesn't matter how many cool new wizz-bang features it enables it's just too dangerous for the average user. Yet, it's still there because it might break something if they took it out.

Ars Technica recommends patience when dealing with users that just can't learn not to open email attachments. I think rather than allow the possibility of people mass infecting one another inadvertently it should just not be possible. Why blame the users when the system is flawed? Not just the email system itself but also many of the email clients that are build on top of it, especially Microsoft Outlook.

The MyDoom virus also opens a convenient back door for other infections. Spammers could use an infected machine to send anonymous spam email or organize a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack on the web sites of unpopular companies like SCO or Microsoft.

Nevermind the spyware that gets installed without our knowledge and tracks us wherever we go, sending the data back to companies that sell it for profit.

Is this what we really want? Anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-spyware industries built around protecting an insecure operating system from viruses that exploit the latest hole, the latest bit of spying software? Where does it end? When do we wake up and say "gee, you know ... if we did this right the first time maybe we wouldn't be having all of these problems and subsequent band-aid solutions over and over".

I just don't buy the argument that says if Mac OS X or Linux were the dominant operating system, there would be more viruses for those systems. Unix architecture was made with security in mind from the beginning. It was designed to interact with other computers, not all of which could be trusted.

The same can't be said for Windows NT or Microsoft Outlook. They were both designed to sell software, not to be secure. Security takes a back seat to marketing. And even with the new Microsoft initiative to secure their operating system viruses still occur on a massive scale, worms from infected systems running Microsoft software ravage the Internet and slow it down for everyone not just Windows users. Our home computers send millions of spam emails right back to us and we don't even know about it. Spyware still spies on us without our knowledge. I'm tired of companies hiding behind their EULAs.

When does it end?

Update 7:18pm The NY Times has an interesting and long article about virus writers.