No, its more like unpatched machines could become a conveyance for bad viruses, and if its not patched, it could continue to propagate.

If a wave hit the west coast it could affect 45 million people. WE don't take into account vacations, work hours, people aren't home, or simply that the wave it may creep 10 miles, or just 1000 feet.

So POTENTIALLY it COULD affect the entire state, but that's over stating the possiblity.

Symantec, is trying to say that their footprint is large enough that it COULD affect 200 million users, taking into account, unpatched known symantec machines and the percentage of users that don't have protection at all, and taking into account on unprotected machines or unpatched symantec, the virus launches from those machines to other machines..

Its all a numbers game. Just like an average, if someone says its an "average", is it a conventional average or a midpoint? Because there are 4 types of averages (I am not doing them all) but suffice to say, its all jargon in their favor.

There is mean and midpoint, both are considered averages. And AVG is numbers divided by the number of items in the list. The midpoint is the half way point between the highest and lowest number in a series of numbers, which could be flawed, but advantageous depending on who you are.

if you have 100, and 1, and 2. The AVG is 34. the midpoint, then is (highest / lowest) 50. which is a difference of 16.. so which is more accurate?

Symantec believes they can skew the public into thinking this is a HUGE problem, when in reality it isn't. That's all I am trying to say.

But its all numbers and formulas.. 200 million is some number Symantec "derived" how did they come to that number? Well, that is the $100,000 question.

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