k wrote:
[ I would point out though that the flaw in your analogy is that people have a perception that health care is improving, in real terms, supported by proof in the form of people actually living longer... I personally see more spam in my mailbox and on my blog than i did once.]

I certainly get less spam than I did 4 years ago. 4 years ago I wasn't using spam filtering software. Spam filtering software is an improvement. I wish I had never needed to use Spam filtering software, and so maybe people blame the computer security industry for the rise of spam, but thats not really fair. The computer security industry didn't create SMTP nor did they create the financial motivations of spammers. There is a silver bullet for email spam, and its not accepting email from people who have never emailled you before and won't perform an interactivity test. Software that does that is available, but its extremely unpopular. Almost no one is willing to employ that solution because they'd rather have the spam than make someone who wants to email them jump through one authentication loop once. Thats not the computer security industry's fault either.

I listed a number of improvements in other areas in my post. There have been substantial improvements in literally every area that this guy listed in his original commentary. I could sit down a write a post that refutes nearly every point he makes... I could document every case where he is being intentionally misleading, such as when he includes a screenshot from a joke that involved installing every commercial web browser toolbar at the same time, and he captions with "the average persons computer is crawling with spyware," or when he deliberately mischaracterizes the purpose of Internet "threat level" meters. But, frankly, I've got better things to do...

Truthfully, i was more interested in the not-yet-published Part 2 of this article, in which possible solutions are proposed. You seem to belive they won't be particularly insightful.

I seriously doubt they'll be interesting. In the followup posted so far this guy lists the people who agree with him as "the good" and the people who don't as "the bad, and the ugly." Seems like the sort of thing you'd see in a book by a political pundit.

RE: Security Absurdity; The Complete, Unquestionable, And Total Failure of Information Security.