Monocultures are a bad idea, okay?
They're brittle. It's the main reason I worry about GMOs and agricultural cloning. It's one of many good reasons to worry about centralized government.
And the latest cyberattack hitting so many big institutions and messing with the global economy? Everybody's using Windows on x86-architecture hardware.
At least some of the servers aren't... yet. Those tend to be *NIX or some proprietary OS, running on some form of Big Iron, whether a traditional architecture or something custom. And they don't tend to have office suites and e-mail clients running on them, and if they're running SMB servers, at least they're probably not all running SMB-server code with the same bugs as the Microsoft implementation (though Samba surely has its own issues).
A lot of the Windows use is due to software lock-in: users need some particular applications, and those applications are only available on Windows. Software vendors: help fight the monoculture! Write your applications using cross-platform libraries, and distribute them for Mac and Linux too!
Then there are the uses that just don't make sense. Why is radiation monitoring around Pripyat done using Windows machines? Why use Windows for such a thing?
And, speaking of fallout: expect a massive multi-governmental effort to destroy Bitcoin's anonymity. Easier to demolish one large piece of free-market infrastructure in the interest of tracking down one particular set of cockroaches than to harden (or diversify) critical infrastructure against future cockroaches.
(The solution to all manner of ransomware? Force all financial transactions to go through a central clearinghouse, so they can be recorded, traced, taxed, and so on. Bonus: Big Brother will know exactly what you bought at the drugstore. Because Big Brother needs to know these things, the better to look after your best interests.)
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