Latest theoretical work has a new scheme of virus protection wherein virus fighting nodes email out anti-virius innoculation software that permeates the net faster than the attacking virus rather than the aperiodic download of virus detection algorithms

Doesn't sound plausible to me, at least not the delivery system. Think about it if you were to get an e-mail saying it was a virus inocculation would you open it?

Live Update works well for computers set up with it. I have mine check for updates every day. In the future I can imagine a day when it will need to check for updates every hour and require some sort or token method to be sure the server isn't being spoofed.

On the subject of rebooting the internet I think your right. Trying to coordinate a shutdown of that magnitude would be extremely difficult if not impossible. For a virus to do it could be possibly if it were it able to infect all the computers and not be detected. Highly unlikely.

Steve G.