Perilocity

Dennis Quaid: Medical negligence deaths as many as a major airline crash every day

People think Internet security is bad (it is), but let's look at medical security:

"Actor Dennis Quaid has become an advocate for electronic medical records. In 2007 his 12 day old twins received a massive accidental overdose (10,000 units of heparin instead of 10 units), a near-fatal error that could have been prevented by the kind of bar code technology that the VA has been using for decades. (Yes, folks, sorry, a government institution was decades ahead of privatized healthcare on this.)"

"Quaid points out that the widely quote 100,000 accidental deaths every year from medical errors equates to a major airline crash every day."

I point out that that's three times the annual deaths from automobiles, and around #5 in leading causes of death in the U.S.

-jsq

Microsoft RICO

Microsoft claims that I (and possibly you, dear reader) am violating 235 of its patents on Windows by running Ubuntu Linux:

After many earlier rounds of saber-rattling and FUD, Microsoft has announced that Free Software users -- including everyone who, like me, uses Ubuntu Linux -- are violating at least 235 of Microsoft's patents, though they don't say which ones. Microsoft are now threatening end users of GNU/Linux (that's you and me again) with lawsuits unless we pay them protection money. "Nice operating system you got there, it'd be a shame if something were to happen to it."

The Microsoft position is this: even if you don't use Windows, you still have to pay them as much money as they would have gotten for selling you a copy of it.

—Microsoft says GNU/Linux violates 235+ Windows patents, Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing, Monday, May 14, 2007

Microsoft did stop short of saying it would sue Linux users or its own customers:

IT Seat Belts

Over on the ongoing comment thread about IT Security: Unnatural Industry (which started on Schneier on Security and is also on Spire Security Viewpoint and 1 Raindrop), Pete Lindstrom asked a question I hadn't yet answered:

Why didn't people sue their banks for fraud? Why did congress need to write a law about behaviour that is already covered by contract law and fraud?

Well, I think that's mostly a question about personalities, customs, and precedents.