Off-topic: more charming fallout from a Win-centric world

["J. R. Fox" jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

I had reason to visit a few websites yesterday -- vendors, significant
companies -- that were apparently still reeling from the after-effects
of the Blaster worm. In a couple cases, I couldn't get on at all; my
attempts were rebuffed, allegedly because I don't (won't) use MS
Internet Exploder, but I suspect those error messages were red
herrings. I had been on those very sites a few days earlier, and
doubt anything had changed that radically in their design in the
interim. This was rather annoying, to say the least. (But some sites
exist that have such a policy, as stupid as it would be to
disenfranchise even a minority of one's potential customers.) Anyway,
I called the Tech Support dept. of one of these companies, to ask a
pre-sales question, and got into a more wide-ranging discussion. He
told me that plenty of Win Servers and SQL servers all over the 'Net
were still hors de combat and awaiting rescue, quite possibly
including the outfit to which they farmed out their website hosting.
Redmund has led so much of the computing world right over the edge of
a cliff, and they went over it willingly.

Jordan