Let's all get on with 2nd life and have a pint.

"With the terrorist fear card played all that has to happen now is for the US administration to panic and write a big cheque to the defence industry and the whole thing will be deemed successful."

Nick,

Writing a big cheque to the defence industry to protect against cyber episodes is a waste of money and criminal fraud on a military industrial scale and perpetrated against the military on a global scale if the conspiring company heads would be touting and pimping any Obvious Nonsense about them be Able to Providing any Cyber Security. The big cheques that Vulnerable Governments and Under Attack Administrations suffering from Systemic In-house Malware would write, are much better addressed and made out to those Individuals in the Cyber Security Know, who themselves, for Very Good Reasons of National, International and InterNetional Security and Private and Personal and even Pirate Intellectual Property Protection, would remain Unknown to All but a Few with the Need to Know the Unknown.

At least then will the Wealth doled out be easily tracked and accounted for, which will keep the pen pushers and bean counters happy, and they won't even know what they are auditing.

More mega-bucks to the defence industry! However, perhaps they could just consider the source of nearly all cyberattacks: Microsoft Windows.

So, we could perhaps pay billions more defence dollars to Microsoft to allow them to "try" and make Windows more secure.

OR

Could Switch PC's to a more secure OS (like Linux, which more effectively separates user and system processes -- which would seem to be the cheaper option).

I guess if Microsoft were charged for the costs of all this cyber-damage, the problem might have been rectified long ago.

Just Out bit ago today:

FCC Wants High-Speed Internet for the Masses
The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski, said in a speech that the National Broadband Plan will aim to bring 100 megabits per second Internet connections to 100 million homes across the United States.

Now dosn't that Read Sweet. National, that Is. Did ye know theINQ Stories are part of larger PR firm. Latter disclose which one.

In Oval, its Heads Up in Lead, Fast Bricie & neck 'n Neck coneing up & 'ole greely in 8th. On home Stretch, At 10 Gb/s, Newee, & STeWie Clonk IT Out. Prices Are Gonnutz, soon enuf.

Signed:Doc TOM.

the ultimate purpose is to seize control of "teh internets".

IF any critical hardware is so "whizz-bang" high tech that it's vulnerable to remote attack, then the solution is to dumb it down. That's the Luddite way, just get rid of the possibility of problems entirely.