denial-of-service & botnet attacks -- Blame the users

"Blame the users" cures {Ira Winkler et al} sound like a great idea, EXCEPT for some major drawbacks:
-1- As noted in the article, users who have fallen behind in continued stream of Patches will lose their service, including access to security Patch providers.

-2- Part of the reason that security Patches are required, is that broadly-used products, from browsers and servers to entire operating systems, have been generated and marketed without sufficient care about design and implementation flaws.
****Indeed, are there any computer products nowadays that are not covered by boilerplate "as is" Terms of Usage -- that deny any responsibility for faults or their damaging results -- and shift all responsibility for that potential damage, direct and indirect, to the users.

-3- Patches themselves have been designed to create malware
insertions, especially for invasions of privacy by the computer product providers.
The Service Pack #2 of Microsoft's Windows exemplifies that, but is not the only case.
That included invasive searches for "improperly licensed" software usage -- including restrictive rules of usage that were either hidden in the fine print or created after the products' purchases. "We did not intend to allow such broad usage" and other protestations by the sellers hardly justify such abuse of the consumers.

CAVEAT BEWARE was the byword in the snake-oil and monopolistic decades of the late 1800's and early 1900's. That is still the agressive byword of producers more concerned with acquiring the bucks than improving overall well-being.

We admire ferocious carnivores in nature -- and hold them up as role models for behavior of people and human organizations, whether business or political.

Hardly what I would consider application of those family virtues that are touted so loudly.

Suggestions:

-1- Find a less draconian way to defend the internet against "unprotected" users who have not kept up with timely patches.

-2- Make the purveyors of carelessly-vulnerable products responsible for a significant share of the damage they do -- including Election Voting machines, by the way.

-3- Create better protection against "Big Brother" abuse of the Patching process -- both by government [aka Patriot Law security] and by businesses that would squeeze yet more profit by retroactively -- even after sale or licensing -- downsizing popular features of their products -- and then re-offering those features as new products for additional charges.

Sorry about the tangent there. -- but it is relevant, since that is a significant engine in the processes that leave us so vulnerable !!

Click to read the article this is in response to.