On getting a sense of priorities

[andrewducker]

In the last ten years, smoking has killed 4,000,000 Americans. Traffic has killed 400,000. Terrorism has killed 4,000.

(Can't remember where I stole this from)

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

The objective of the US war on terror (and Blair's follow-on tap dance) is nothing to do with abolishing terrorism, and everything to do with power politics.

If you haven't ever read Orwell's 1984, now would be a good time to start. (NB: I mean, read the book. Don't bother with the films.)

NB: On Microsoft Windows ...

Let us postulate there are 100M Windows desktops in the American workplace. Let us postulate that through crashing, virus infections, having ancient filesystems that need defragmenting, etcetera, each desktop costs one work-hour of maintenance per month. (I've heard support ratios of 40-60 Windows desktops per support worker so this may be an underestimate.) In one month, Windows malfunctions or design flaws therefore cost the US economy 100M working hours. Or 1250 working lifetimes (40 hours/week, 50 weeks/year, 40 years/lifetime).

Ergo: every year, running Windows costs the USA four times as many lifetimes as were taken on 9/11 by a bunch of bampots with box-cutters.

[andrewducker]

40-60 seems like a reasonable number for Windows 98. Windows 2000/XP requires less admins provided it's on decent hardware.

But yeah, the maths is good.