... for they are slow to anger, but once aroused, there's a lot of them. They will investigate everything, even completely unrelated stuff, stuff that otherwise nobody would even notice, much less note.
According to IT Week's Beware the power of the blog, there are 20 million bloggers. That's a lot of manpower. Even if the vast majority can do little more than rant, the few that are in a position to investigate do - and the results are shared and spread around quickly and extended by others.
Consider the recent case of the Sony DRM rootkit. The core issue is bad, but more and more is reported: phone-home behaviour; indications that it hit military and government computers; major security holes in subsidiary software; copyright infringement; even financial matters that, while perhaps technically legal, can be misinterpreted (to paraphrase Yes, Minister). Most of these would never have been really noticed if it wasn't for the primary issue.
We've seen some of this before, though never so publicly. In the case of The SCO Group, for instance, things come to light that normally would be too obscure for the opposing parties to find.
(previous post about Sony DRM; Boing Boing summary of the Sony saga so far; other posts: feature comparison chart, mistakes vs intentions, the recall, I heart rootkit, who do they
serve and who can we trust?, EULA, my Sony link
collection and
DRM of adhesion)
⇦ Intelligent Design | ⇨ Idea: wiki game gameplay - items carried |
