The item on this morning's Today programme (The BBC's flagship daily newsfest) had me choking on my coffee - the basic premise is that the amount of viruses and trojans knocking about spell the end of the internet as we know it.
But it was more the lazy, tabloid blurring of boundaries that bugged me. The next time I hear "the internet is infected" I will track them down for a session with my big, heavy explaining stick. The internet is a massive piece of infrastructure using a
common set of protocols to run a variety of services. Lots of different devices can access and use it. It isnt' just PCs running web browsers and
it can't get infected as such. It can however suffer from the amount of traffic - ironically the BBC's own iPlayer leaps to mind.
Whether this is dumbing down, sloppy journalism or just that I'm reading it all wrong - I don't know. You judge -
Have a read here.
Yes - PC viruses, trojans and botnets are a huge problem. But - ahem - they're usually PC specific. Or rather - Windows. They don't infect other operating systems. My Mac's quite safe - and I daresay all the folk buying the Linux
Eee PC aren't worried either.
Also - there's no reason why there can't still be freeware and shareware available to download and use. People just need to use a little common sense and have an operating system that won't install and run software without their knowledge - for that's the
real problem.