The press has been cited here as saying "the internet is unstable". With that spin spinning away, John Q. Public doesn't associate Microsoft with the problems.

If the entire net were to go down, it would just be chalked up to the "inherent instability of the internet" which will do more harm than good.

Unless there's widespread mistrust of M$, and an understanding that M$ software is at least part of the cause of this, attitudes won't change much. Particularly if this doesn't get in front of the CTEIEIOs out there that make the decisions.

I'd not take that bet ;-)

What I'd really like to see is a comparison of several operating systems (or maybe web servers?) with a few metrics like (in no particular order): 1) length of time from security hole discovery to fix available, 2) cost of security hole (quantified by market share) 3) average time sysadmins take to apply patches, 4) Number of systems infected (again, quantified), 5) ?