deliberately crashing ancient computers (was: Re: A mighty fortress is our PKI)

[Jack Lloyd]

On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 11:04:30AM -0400, Jonathan Thornburg wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Jul 2010, Jack Lloyd suggested:
> > http://www.crashie.com/ - if you're feeling malicious, just include
> > the one line JavaScript that will make IE6 crash, maybe eventually the
> > user will figure it out. (Or maybe not).
> 
> Please stop and think about the consequences before using something
> like this!  People who are still using IE6, Windows 95, etc, are
> usually doing so for reasons which make sense in their lives, things
> like
[...]

Personally I'm not planning on doing anything one way or another to
encourage or discourage people using IE6. In the spectram of social
badness, I'd view using IE6 roughly on par with using heroin - a bad
idea that mostly hurts oneself with some limited (albeit real)
negative externalities. As with using drug rehabilitation versus
prison sentences to reduce use, the real solution to IE6 is education
and assistance for those who want it, not punishment. Some will, for
whatever reason, choose to ignore said educational/assistance efforts,
and eventually will take the consequences of their actions without any
antics by you or I.

And certainly I have better things to do with my time than crash a
decade-old browser.

Thanks,
  Jack

---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com