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It's easy to see from this just how quickly such a virus could spread from a point source of infection to a large number of other users -- and then in turn to even more, effectively at an exponential rate.

Then look at how security has become a major pain in the backside for companies like Microsoft as their software trends towards increasing size and complexity.

The problem here is not so much one of evil sods trying to make people's lives a misery as it is our desire for ever more complex technology.

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For example -- how many of you have ever had a virus on your home-phone?

Yes, even though your phone is connected to the global PSTN and able to receive calls from any of the hundreds of millions (or maybe billions?) of other phones on that network, it's pretty much 100 percent reliable and immune to the antics of evil sods.

Why is that?

Well maybe it's because your home phone is a pretty simple device designed to do just one thing -- allow you to talk to other people.

It doesn't try to make coffee, plot the course of intercontinental ballistic missiles or tell your fortune. In fact some of the cheapest corded phones are little different to the technology that was in use 50 years ago -- but they still work just fine.

I'm beginning to wonder if "the next big thing" might not be *simplification*.

Just look at the success of Firefox as an example of this.

Son of Mozilla, Firefox has shown that sometimes less is more and it's rapid acceptance by a growing sector of the market shows that people really don't need or want all the fluff that comes with Internet Explorer.

The additional benefit of FireFox's simplicity is its improved security. The simpler the product the easier it is to test and debug!

Imagine the sheer pleasure of a VCR that was so basic you wouldn't have to be embarrassed because the clock was always flashing 00:00:00.

What's more, elegant simplicity is often very stylish -- just look at B&O audio equipment. Largely devoid of knobs, dials and the gaudy trappings of over-featureism, even the gear they made back in the 1970s is still very stylish and surprisingly contemporary in design.

I'm betting that there will be a renaissance in bare-bones consumer electronics sometime in the next year or two. This will be partly driven by the growing threat of malware and partly by a frustration with the "learning overhead" associated with so many increasingly complex devices.

What do you think? Are we overdoing the functions, features and complexity of modern consumer electronics, software and communications equipment?

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