MyDoom is makingi the rounds this week; The Register notes it’s the worst virus ever, at least in terms of infection rate, and other sources agree. While initially thought to have been the work of a Linux fan upset about SCO’s legal shenanigans, it now seems to have come from Russia (alternate link) — and that the SCO DDOS activities of the worm are in fact a red herring, since it also installs backdoors on infected machines. Nevertheless, SCO is offering a $250K reward for the arrest of the worm’s author.

In the meantime, Techweb offers some tips on how you can protect yourself, but they leave out the one most likely to produce results: Stop using Windows. Corporate America is a monoculture of Windows, and this — coupled with Windows’ horrible security — creates a target virus authors find irresistable. My OS X machines are safe, as are my Linux boxen, partly because of a fundamentally better security model, but also because they’re not the majority platform. If you’re a normal human, when you next consider a computer purchase, look hard at the Mac. If you’re savvy and geeky and willing to dive into the deep end, consider running Linux full-time. You’ll be contributing to the end of the monoculture, which will save us all from the inevitable and catastrophic effects of such homogeneous environments.