As Usual, Lawmakers Don't Get It

For some reason, I am still amazed when our congressmen get it completely wrong.

Representative Anthony David Weiner, a New York Democrat, said the ability of the [LoveBug virus] program to quickly spread in a manner much like that of last year's highly publicized and highly destructive Melissa virus indicated an "utter, abject failure" of the anti-virus computer software industry.

"This must be a humiliating day for McAfee," Weiner said of one of the anti-virus companies that came to the Hill for a hearing by the House Science Committee's Technology Subcommittee.

Humiliating for McAfee? What about Microsoft, the company that made all this possible? I didn't realize it was the responsibility of virus protection software to prevent the completely correct operation of shitty application and operating system software.

To her credit, another congressman has a clue:

Another representative, Lynn Rivers, a Michigan Democrat, questioned whether Microsoft should be to blame for the features in its popular Outlook e-mail program that allowed the virus to spread so quickly.

"Isn't this like dressing down the bank guards when we are really overlooking the fact that the windows are wide open?" she asked.

Thank god Peter Neumann was there.

"The mass-marketplace is overly concerned with features; it tends to be long on fancy features and to ignore critical requirements such as rudimentary robustness," he wrote in his testimony. "However, robust features can be achieved with good design and good programming practice, rather than the business-as-usual practices of sloppy development and a rush-to-market mentality."