grelmar - 2:23 am on Jul 14, 2004 (gmt 0)

Hmmm... Health hazard shouldn't be the only qualyfier to warrant a recall.

Yesterday morning I spent a couple hours "cleaning" a friend's laptop. Guess what I found? The infamous Padodor.

I called him and told him to call his bank and check his account records and credit cards for suspiscious activity, because he does a lot of his personal finances and shopping online. He was the perfect "target market" for Padodor.

He was ok, he didn't lose any money, but seriously, this was a based on a flaw known to the public for 6 months.

It wasn't until a week after Padodor came out the MS released a patch for it, and the patch was a failure.

So now we're going on 7 months, and MS still hasn't fixed a problem that essentially allows any 12 year old script kiddie to plant a bug in your machine that will then allow them to scan any passwords, credit card #s, banking info, or other highly valuable information you might have on your machine.

That is negligence of a very high order. And the user agreement people seem to tout as a legal defence, aren't worth the bits and bytes to encode them. Those kinds of disclaimers only work if there is no direct negligence involved, kinda a "good samaritan" clause. The manufacturer/business owner still has to prove that they made every reasonable attempt to provide a safe and reliable product, regardless of the indemnity clause in the user agreement.

If you think that ain't so, then read the back of your ski ticket next winter. That's covered in enough mumbo-jumbo to protect the ski hill from just about anything. The gist of those disclaimers is "downhill skiing is a dangerous sport, if you get hurt doing it, tough luck bub." And yet people sue Ski Hills successfully on a very regular basis for their injuries. "Willfull Negligence" can be anything from not properly maintaining a ski-lift, to insufficiant barriers around an area that the ski-hill operator may or may not even know is likely to sluff off and produce an avalanche. It's the court's view that the it's the ski hill's operator's duty to know if there is a potential risk, and act accordingly.

Legally, your broken leg from skiing into an avalanche is no different from your broken bank account for surfing with an un-secured browser. They are both "Damage done to person or property resulting from corporate negligence and or malfeasance."

MS better get used to that concept. Because sooner or later, some ambulance chaser is gonna go for the big prize. And the ambulance chaser is gonna win.