Richard Clarke on Microsoft security

hizzo writes "Richard Clarke, former White House cybersecurity and counterterrorism adviser, harshly critized Microsoft's security track record. 'Given their record in the security area, I don't know why anybody would buy from them.' He also called for some regulation of security for ISPs in addition to better industry self-regulation, such as disclosing QA practices and becoming more accountable for secure code. I wonder if anyone will finally start listening to him?"

Comments

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[pHatidic]

With all the bribes Microsoft gives to politicians, it's no wonder why he is the former White House cybersecurity and counterterrorism adviser

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[Anonymous Coward]

Considering his view that President Bush failed to take the terrorist threat seriously prior to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, I find it hard to believe that he isn't the formery living White House cybersecurity and counterterrorism adviser.

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[ackthpt]

With all the bribes Microsoft gives to politicians, it's no wonder why he is the former White House cybersecurity and counterterrorism adviser

Microsoft's bribes had nothing to do with that. He was competent, professional and honest. He didn't realize the crap Wolfowitz was pushing into the president's head until it was too late. Sadly, Rice sat there and lied to the Senate and still has been confirmed as the SoS.

As for Microsoft's bribing, they had a commendable record of trying to stay the heck out of politics for years, until it became evident that without greasing certain palms that Washington DC would turn on them. Now they make sure enough lucre is spread around Washington and they have many wagging tongues at their disposal and many ears to listen.

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[F34nor]

Can we get that bitch for purjury?

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[scmason]

Yes, lied to the senate. Let us all take the time to remember that Rice WAS the chief architect in recruiting Bush in the first place. Not that Wolfowitz had to 'fill the presidents head', Rice had already set forth the way that things were to be, and so it was.

I am amazed that she allowed someone as honest and decent as Richard Clarke to stay around as long as she did. Whenever anyone remembers her, let's remind ourselves that she has an Exon tanker named after her.

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[Viking Coder]

The part where Microsoft greases palms is totally, 100% true.

And more than a dozen (Democratic) senators agree with the grandparent's analysis of what Rice did. That doesn't mean they're right, but you seem to be awfully sure of yourself.

Please change your Slashdot username. I think you're abusing it. =P

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[Doc Ruby]

Ohigod! Like, dude, where's your country? Not on TV - where did they take your real country?

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[Leo McGarry]

The part where Microsoft greases palms is totally, 100% true.

No, it's not. Microsoft, like every other business in America, lobbies the government. Just like I lobby the government every time I write my Congressman a letter. It's called "representative democracy."

Lobbying the government is, unfortunately, a very inefficient process. There are lots of middle-men whose job it is to collect public opinion and communicate it to the representatives in Washington. These middle-men eat up a lot of money along the way. This is wasteful and disappointing, but it's completely wrong to describe it as "greasing palms."

And more than a dozen (Democratic) senators agree with the grandparent's analysis of what Rice did.

Are you seriously appealing to the authority of the United States Senate? Dude, if you polled the Senate, you'd find three Senators who think that desegregation was a bad thing, five who think nationalized health care is a grand idea, and a dozen more who think Elvis is still alive.

You don't have to be a brain surgeon to familiarize yourself with the events of the day and to be able to distinguish between truth and lies. That's why everybody's held to that standard, see? Because it's just not very hard to do. So when somebody (like, in this case, you yourself) fails that test, the ridicule is so long and so loud.

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[WindBourne]

As for Microsoft's bribing, they had a commendable record of trying to stay the heck out of politics for years, until it became evident that without greasing certain palms that Washington DC would turn on them.

As much as I dispise MS, they have done several things very well, until recent times.

1. 1. they stayed away from IP until it became necessary to take on OSS.
2. 2. They have stayed remarkably away from political orginazations until 5 years ago. Then MS and BG threw in big with GWB.

But to be honest, this is probably the only way that MS will be able to take on OSS and have a chance to win. So my hat is off to them on that.

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[Anonymous Coward]

...until it became evident that without greasing certain palms that Washington DC would turn on them.

Yeah, illegal monopolistic manipulation of the market will do that every time! Goddamned laws!

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[EnronHaliburton2004]

This is wasteful and disappointing, but it's completely wrong to describe it as "greasing palms."

Congratulations Citizen, you passed the test. Thank you for defending the good corporations of America , here's a coupon for a free Big Mac!

Now go back to your television wall and sit there like a good boy.

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[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe this obvious troll got moderated up. Look at his posting history, people! He expresses opinions that can't possibly be sincere. He's just a fucking troll.

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[Anonymous Coward]

As for Microsoft's bribing, they had a commendable record of trying to stay the heck out of politics for years, until it became evident that without greasing certain palms that Washington DC would turn on them.

Oh, well that's alright then. As long as they only started bribing people once it made a difference to them :/

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[Anonymous Coward]

Its pretty safe to say that you fall in the "Looney Left" category. Better stock up on that tin foil.

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[utlemming]

A wasteful, but nessasary process. What a lot of /.er's fail to realize is that the industry lobbyiest goal is to educate the various law makers on the policies and their effects. While we may not like the idea that the discussions happen over expensive hunting trips or dinners, the fact remains that people have to educate the law makers. We cann't expect the Congresspeoples to become farmiliar with every aspect of thigns. And most people that know enough to educate a congressperson doesn't have the time, or the energy to make a run down to Washington to talk to law makers. So what happens? Lobbyists go and talk to the Congresspeople and edcuate them. We end up viewing this as "greasing the palms" or as the corruption of American politics. Everyone cannot be an expert at everything. So before anyone complains that lobbyists are completely evil and should be done away with think about your doctor. Your doctor knows medicine and the vast majority of people reading this post don't. You go in because you're sick and you don't know what to do. The doctor takes a look at the symptoms and makes suggestions for treatment. You then decided which treatment would be the best for you. With a congresperson they look at the problem and then defer to people that actually know what is going on. They then take the recommnedations back and decide on what to do.

Now, if greasing the palms is in reference to campaign contributions, there are limitations set on those contributions. But shouldn't business be given the opportunity to express itself and give to a candiate that supports that business's view? Microsoft has thousands of employees, and they represent a special intrest group that has right to express its political agenda. While I disagree with RIAA/MPAA/Microsoft/Evil Empire Corp/etc., these are merely coalitions of people that have an interest to protect. Most of our problems with big business lobbying the government is because our interests disagree with their interests. Man tends to be selfish and wants to protect his self interest.

So before we complain that lobbyists are evil maybe we ought to think that the formations of some special interest groups would be an idea. That was instead of sending a bunch of letters which are read by interns, we can send a lobbyist to express the interests of /. Then a real person can express the general conscencus on such issues as software patents, fair use, the DCMA, and why Star Trek Enterprise (or whatever geek show has just been cancelled) should go back on TV. Just like a phone call is more effective than a letter, a person visit is far more effective than a phone call or a letter.

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[Viking Coder]

Ha ha ha. Funny.

It's our jobs as citizens to question our leaders. That's just about the only thing you and I are expected to do, in a representative democracy.

I think she was lying when she said that the contents of "the memo" didn't say that Bin Laden was determined to attack America, because I know for sure that that was the name of the freaking memo.

Or is this some wacky truth test that I'm a moron to use?

Microsoft, like every other business in America, lobbies the government. Just like I lobby the government.

Secretary: "Senator, Microsoft is on line one, and some internet guy who calls himself 'Leo McGarry' is on line two."

Funny. You most assuredly do not lobby the government "just like" Microsoft does.

They throw around more money than any other corporation, you spent less than a buck on a postcard. Sorry for burtsting your bubble, but in this representative democracy, Microsoft's voice carries more weight than yours.

There are lots of middle-men whose job it is to collect public opinion and communicate it to the representatives in Washington.

Again, "ha." These guys find someone who says that a survey says what they want it to, and feed that to representatives. It's not scientific at all. And if Microsoft, oh, I don't know, pays for those surveys, are you seriously so naive as to be surprised if the outcome of the surveys they tell people about say something that's always in favor of Microsoft? (Feel free to replace "Microsoft" with any corporation's name here, by the way.)

They're dishonest. Duh. Put on your ridicule-retardant pants, because you're in for a beating.

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[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to be a brain surgeon to familiarize yourself with the events of the day and to be able to distinguish between truth and lies.

Hah hah, very funny, considering the context...

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[EnronHaliburton2004]

He expresses opinions that can't possibly be sincere.

Now, where would we be if humor had to be sincere. Geeze ...

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[jaoswald]

Actually, it was Chevron that had a tanker named after her. And they changed the name. But thanks for playing.

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[SiChemist]

What a bunch of crap. Lobbyists don't educate, they advocate. They are paid to convince your representative to act in a manner which is unlikely to be in the best interest of the majority of their constituents.

As for "shouldn't business be given the opportunity to express itself", I say no. A corporation (despite that abomination of a court ruling) is not a person. It's interests are often in conflict with those that are supposedly being represented by the congressperson. Yet its voice is magnified by the millions of dollars of influence it wields. It is a legal form of bribery.

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[RealAlaskan]

Are you seriously appealing to the authority of the United States Senate? Dude, if you polled the Senate, you'd find three Senators who think that desegregation was a bad thing, five who think nationalized health care is a grand idea, and a dozen more who think Elvis is still alive.

I think that you are waaaaay too optimistic about the integrity, decency and intelligence of our career politicians. No, that's not sarcasm, and no, I'm not singling out the Republicrats or the Democans.

I am pretty sure there are a few honest, decent, intelligent people in the senate and congress, but I can't imagine how they can breath with the clothespins on their noses.

Maybe it's that hypoxia that makes so many promising candidates with good character turn into lying good ol' boys after a couple of terms. Maybe it's the just the ineluctable, exhausting fact that the scumbag majority not only keep getting re-elected, but they keep getting richer.

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[F34nor]

Its is all about the combination of benefits. Corporations had limited liability and limited rights later the Supreme Court read the 14th amendment as giving human rights to property, thus giving human rights to limited liability legal structures. So now they have the benefit of limited liability and the right to speech moreover money is now considered a form of speech. Therefore corporation may make money illegally, then use that money to affect government. This is just as fucked up as letting churches make money tax free and then letting them use that money to affect government. Its fucking wrong and un-American and need to be stopped. If you want to express your opinion as a business then take the money out of it, pay taxes and be subject to personal limits.
COPRPORATIONS SHOULD NOT HAVE MORE RIGHT THAN A HUMAN BEING.

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[nutshell42]

How about this?

Looks like pretty solid evidence to me. If the quotes or the conclusions are wrong for some reason I'd really like to know where.

*But* I don't think any of the lies go beyond what you could still call "political truth" i.e. selective memory etc. I wouldn't fire/put her on trial for that more for incompetence in letting 9/11 happen (doesn't mean a Gore administration would have prevented it but the Bush guys certainly didn't help)

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[Anonymous Coward]

Wow...it's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Clarke. I didn't realize you were a big Slashdot celebrity.

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[drsmithy]

Then MS and BG threw in big with GWB.

I think you'll find Microsoft "threw in big" with pretty much everyone, as a direct result of the antitrust suit.

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[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure that naming an oil tanker after a woman is much of a compliment anyway... (either to the tanker or to the woman).

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[idlake]

No, it's not. Microsoft, like every other business in America, lobbies the government. Just like I lobby the government every time I write my Congressman a letter. It's called "representative democracy."

When you lobby Congress, it's a representative democracy.

When a business, which is not a human being or citizen but a legal construct, lobbies Congress, it is something altogether different.

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[demachina]

"Just like I lobby the government every time I write my Congressman a letter. It's called "representative democracy."

Yea but chances are your letter is read by a coop and filed in obscurity unless you are the Congressman's campaign contribution list or he otherwise knows who you are.

Large corporations, or their K street lobbyist, on the other will routinely meet your congressmen face to face, offer campaign contributions to the full extent of the law, and other assorted favors to insure their clients get what they want from legislation and contracts.

You should have watched the House and Senate during the Medicare "Reform" Act. The lobby of the Capitol building was swarming with lobbyists for the drug, insurance and healthcare corporations, all circling like the sharks they are, smelling blood(money) in the water. The bill was such a horrible piece of legislation it couldn't pass on its own so House and Senate leadership had to arm twist all night to get the votes they needed and they held the vote open for hours which is against the rules until they got just enough votes to pass it.

During this same time the lobbyists were also hard at work outright buying votes because they desperately wanted that bill to pass. Its a bonanza for the drug and healthcare corporations, and in fact does frighteningly little for seniors for the price tag.

As I recall one congressman was retiring from politics and dead set against it. The lobbyists couldn't buy him because he was fed up and quitting, so they tried buying his vote by promising to get his son elected. As I recall it was in fact probably illegal vote buying though not sure what came of it.

Another example of how corporations lobby and you don't is Billy Tauzin. He is the relatively corrupt politician who lead the charge to ram the Medicare reform bill through Congress. He did this at a time when he had a million dollar plus job offer waiting for him from an industry group representing, you guessed it the drug companies. The unspoken deal, pass Medicare "reform" and we make you rich when you retire.

Another fascinating aspect of the the Medicare Reform, it really is a case study in how deeply corrupted our government has become, is that the Medicare administrator, Thomas Scully, was also job shopping with corporations he dealt with during the run up to passing the "reform bill". It was a blatant conflict of interest but the White House approved his job shopping anyway. This same administrator intentionally and blatantly suppressed the true cost estimates for the bill. If the true cost had come out before the vote it never would have passed. Scully needed the estimate to be not over $400 billion over ten years to get is passed so, he lied and told everyone thats what it was. He was no doubt assured a high paying job in in the private sector in return for being corrupt. One of the people who worked for him had some ethics and started demanding the true numbers, which were $551 billion, be released and Scully threatened him with ruination. The true figure was suppressed until the bill passed and then about a month later the Bush administration admited it was really at least $551 billion which would have never passed. A few weeks ago new estimates came out and its ballooned to $700 billion dollars and it really hasn't even started yet.

One key reason the cost is ballooning is the drug industry lobbyists managed to add a clause in the legislation that forbids Medicare from negotiating the prices for the drugs its buying for seniors. The drug companies can charge as much as they feel like and raise the prices at their whim. They invested a few million on lobbyists and they will reap hundreds of billions of dollars in profits at the expense of tax payers. The only cap on how much this bill will cost taxpayers is how blatant the drug companies want to be in jacking up the prices of the drugs they sell to Medicare.

You really have no clue if you think your silly little letter is even remotely the

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[GSloop]

Sometimes even trolls speak the truth.

Cheers,
Greg

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[Anonymous Coward]

You write to your Congressman? How cute.

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[utlemming]

According to Webster, I used the term educate correctly. " to provide with information...to persuade or condition to feel, believe, or act in a desired way." Which is simular to advocate. BTW, ask a Political Scientist about lobbyist and whether they educate the Congress. They do. Showing a congressperson the facts and then proposing something is still education. What do you think teachers do. They present information and then ask the students to accept a postulation. I.E. There is this thing called the law of gravity, and here is the evidence. Please accept it. http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?sourceid =Mozilla-search&va=educate
Right. You obviously didn't know about BCRA (Bipartisian Campaign Reform Act of 2002) which changed spending limits in an elections. Also, it is illegal to pay off a congressman. They are to act in the best interest of the people. The limits can be found http://www.opensecrets.org/basics/law/index.asp By the way, the new law bans soft money. And it was upheld by the Supreme Court.

Another intersting issue is that the top winner of campaign financing was to http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/mems.aspJohn Kerry and the Democrats The GOP tends to be for big business. And, interestingly enough, Microsft gives the most to democrats, not to the reubplicans (60% to 39%). And Bill Gates only gave, personally, $3892 to Federal Elections. http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.asp?ID=D00 0000115&Name=Microsoft+Corp
http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/search.asp?NumOf Thou=0&txtName=gates&txtState=WA&txtZip=&txtEmploy =&txtCand=&txt2004=Y&Order=N

If your thinking of the 527 groups, the democrats are the winners there. http://www.opensecrets.org/527s/527contribs.asp?cy cle=2004

For hard and softmoney organizations and people are limited to relatively the same amount in terms of who can give what and where.

Now, the greasing of the palms. Do you have evidence of this, other than campaign contributions? Frankly, from what I am seeing in this forum is that people are making unfounded acqusations that there is corruption without providing evidence. If Congresspeople are accepting bribes, then the FBI would be all over that.

Oh, yeah. Individuals give far more than companies give. So back up your asserations.

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[Anonymous Coward]

So what's to stop a corporation from paying their CEO an extra $50 million with the expectation that he will then hire someone to present his personal interests (which happen to be the same as his employer's interests) to his legislators? Or are you suggesting that anyone with enough money to do that be barred from doing so?

For that matter, why are you convinced that a corporation's interests are different from an individual's interests? As the majority owner of my own corporation and part owner of several dozen more, I can't think of many cases where that would be true -- do you have an example? Certainly my interests might be different than yours, but not simply because I represent a corporation.

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[JohnsonWax]

It's called "representative democracy."

Ah, so MS gets to vote now, eh? Sorry, but a representative democracy is one where the officials serve the interests of those that elect them. MS or any other company isn't part of that equation.

Lobbying is a means to influence the perception of representation. Don't listen to the voters, listen to me - I employ the voters, I service the voters, etc. and can serve as a proxy for them. It's the suggestion that representatives should act in MSs interests because MSs interests are to some degree the interests of those that MS employs, or are the interests of the community at large because the money that MS brings to the economy provides benefits to the community that the govt. does not need to provide.

Unfortunately, the trend in representative governance is to place significant emphasis on the economic role of government, which companies do play a part in, over all the other roles of government, such as national security, civil rights, individual liberty, and so on. Of course, that's really what corporate lobbyists do - make sure the economic message is the strongest one in any any public debate.

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[kir]

That was pretty funny! I don't think everyone realizes you were joking though.

You were joking... right?

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[Anonymous Coward]

How is the parent a troll? Are the moderators smoking crack? Wow...who would have thought that the moderators are now acting as polical censors.

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[Leo McGarry]

I think she was lying when she said that the contents of "the memo" didn't say that Bin Laden was determined to attack America

She never said that. She was asked if the memo contained information that indicated that bin Laden or anybody in his organization was planning to use airplanes as weapons. The memo did not contain any such information; the memo pointed to some extremely vague intelligence about possible hijackings.

Or is this some wacky truth test that I'm a moron to use?

Yes. The moron thing.

in this representative democracy, Microsoft's voice carries more weight than yours

It should. They represent a hell of a lot more jobs than I do.

It's not scientific at all.

It's not supposed to be. You're not one of those people who mistakenly thinks everything is about the scientific method, are you?

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[Leo McGarry]

Pulling quotes out of context to try to prove somebody was saying something that they were not saying impresses nobody.

Well, that's not really true. It impresses a depressing number of mouth-breathers. But in a perfect world, that kind of nonsense would impress nobody.

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[Viking Coder]

BEN-VENISTE: Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6 PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB?

RICE: I believe the title was, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."

Now, the...

BEN-VENISTE: Thank you.

RICE: No, Mr. Ben-Veniste...

BEN-VENISTE: I will get into the...

RICE: I would like to finish my point here.

BEN-VENISTE: I didn't know there was a point.

RICE: Given that -- you asked me whether or not it warned of attacks.

BEN-VENISTE: I asked you what the title was.

RICE: You said, did it not warn of attacks. It did not warn of attacks inside the United States. It was historical information based on old reporting. There was no new threat information. And it did not, in fact, warn of any coming attacks inside the United States.

Where is the word "airplane" or "weapon" anywhere in that conversation? You're so full of bullshit, and you have no desire to find out if you're wrong.

It also did not point to "possible hijackings." According to Dr. Rice, it was entirely historical. Unfortunately for her, the word "determined" means "on an unwavering course of action". That means, "will continue to be." That means, "in the future," or "not just historical." That means, she was wrong or lying.

Who's the moron now, you moron?

They represent a hell of a lot more jobs than I do.

No - the people who work there represent a lot more jobs. Microsoft doesn't represent anything except shareholders.

It's not supposed to be. You're not one of those people who mistakenly thinks everything is about the scientific method, are you?

Facts are clean, and politicians are greasy. The scientific method is the best way I know to determine facts (even facts about opinions). Tell me a better way, and I'll use it.

Until then, Microsoft greases palms, and you're an idiot for thinking they're just exercising their first amendment rights - it's a corporation, not a person. And they're buying votes. The votes that belong only and precisely to you, as a citizen of the democracy that they were elected to represent. If you don't care that you're being screwed, it's because you have no idea what being a citizen means.

When the army that's supposed to defend you starts torturing people, will you sit idly by?

Oh wait, that already happened - and yes, you are sitting idly by.

Does "America" mean anything to you, other than corporate profit and protection from terrorists?

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[SgtChaireBourne]

But to be honest, this is probably the only way that MS will be able to take on OSS and have a chance to win.

By the late 80's early 90's it had already become a marketing company. Since the anti-trust trials in the mid-90's It's become mostly a lobbying organization. Even back 3 - 4 years ago, Microsoft's lobbying budget "outstripped Enron's".

So my hat is off to them on that.

Not me. MS has caused enough harm to everybody, not just the IT sector with its anti-competitive practices and bottom of the line products. The sooner they get off the playing field the sooner the rest can get back to using their computers instead of fiddling with malware, defects and incompatibilities.

Why not just focus on the core competency of marketing and lobbying and drop the pretense of making software? Oh, wait. That's being done.

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[Anonymous Coward]

To put the figures in the article you cite into a bit more perspective, Microsoft spends 6-7 times their "lobbying" budget on soda for its employees than the PAC.

The "larger" numbers in the article include in large sum employee donations to political parties; you can hardly say that Microsoft forces employees to donate their money to certain organizations. And still, put in perspective, that figure is also lower than how much money they spend on soda per year.

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[phiwum]

Corporations had limited liability and limited rights later the Supreme Court read the 14th amendment as giving human rights to property, thus giving human rights to limited liability legal structures.

What ruling was this? When did the Court decide the 14th amendment applied to non-humans?

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[Anonymous Coward]

" Just like I lobby the government every time I write my Congressman a letter."

Do you offer to make big donations to his or her campaign coffers each time you do so?

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[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't the US have some kind of agency to investigate people(senates and kongressmen) taking bribes and stuff?

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[bitswapper]

MINNEAPOLIS & ST. L. R. CO. v. BECKWITH, January 7,1889

"we admit the soundness of his position, that corporations are persons within the meaning of the clause in question."
This gave corporations privileges like freedom of speech and due process.

From Timeline of Personhood Rights and Powers "Of the 14th Amendment cases brought before the Supreme Court between 1890 and 1910, 19 dealt with African Americans, 288 dealt with corporations." America - home of the free.

Yes, its totally off topic.

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[demachina]

It is illegal to give outright bribes to politicians and civil servants but the laws are easy to skirtl

In particular, there isn't anything really illegal about taking lucrative payoffs to politcians after they retire from government service which is the payoff of choice at the moment, its called the revolving door from government to the private sector and in some cases like Dick Cheney back in to government and then in 2008 back to the private sector.

I vaguely recall in the late 80's, it might have been illegal for civil servants, not sure about politicians, to take jobs in the private sector with companies they dealt with when in government service. I'm pretty sure it was overturned shortly after it was passed because it ended the gravy train of working in government for a relatively low wage, throwing business to the private sector and then taking a lucrative job in that same private sector. Not sure but I think Dick Cheney in fact led the charge to reopen the revolving door, at least in defense contracting, and he of course took advantage of that very revolving door to go from Defense secretary to Halliburton CEO which made him a multimillionaire. Halliburton's KBR wins billion and billions of dollars of sole source contracts for the army and has since Vietnam. Dick Cheney also lead the push to contract out vast amounts of work from the military to contractors, like food service, fuel supply and transport, etc. Its a just a coinkydink all the work he outsourced to contractors went to KBR, the company he took over as soon as he left office. It stinks, he stinks. Halliburton was caught engaged in blatant profiteering in Iraq in both fuel contracts and catering to the military.

Darlene Druyun is another case study in the revolving door. As the Air Force's lead procurement office she steered a 20+ billion contract to Boeing for 767 tankers and then took a lucrative position as a Boeing exec right after. It was so blatant people in Congress like John McCain screamed bloody murder and Boeing was pressured to fire her and the CEO who presided over the massive corruption but this punishment was the exception not the rule. Lockheed and Boeing's executive ranks are loaded with retired Generals, civil servants and politicians.

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[4of12]

So what happens? Lobbyists go and talk to the Congresspeople and edcuate them. We end up viewing this as "greasing the palms" or as the corruption of American politics. Everyone cannot be an expert at everything.

Silly me. I would like to have thought that Congressional staffers would research the issues in depth and bring the summaries to the Congressional representatives.

Whenever certain people can repeatedly gain access to Congressional representatives more than the average voter and their concerns are expressed in legislation, it tells me that we don't have a truly representative democracy where the concerns of each individual are equally weighted.

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[Viking Coder]

Are you seriously appealing to the authority of the United States Senate? Dude, if you polled the Senate, you'd find three Senators who think that desegregation was a bad thing, five who think nationalized health care is a grand idea, and a dozen more who think Elvis is still alive.

I've thought about this some, and I realized something kind of funny.

I bet if you polled the entire country, you'd find more than 3% who think desegregation was a bad thing, more than 5% who think nationalized health care is a grand idea, and 12% or more who think Elvis is still alive.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were 6% racist, 10% socialist, and 24% Elvisist, in the country.

So, on the one hand, we can say that maybe the Senate is a pretty good representation of America. On the other, I'm guessing that maybe the Senate is slightly less crazy than the rest of the country. That would make it slightly easier to find truth there, than by asking a random citizen - say, for instance you or me.

But back to my original point, you didn't disagree that more than a dozen Senators agree that Rice lied, and you discard them out of hand. I suggest that more than 12% of Americans think that Rice lied, and you're discarding them out of hand, too.

What makes you so sure you're right?

I think I might be right, but you're so confident that you're willing to ridicule me publicly.

I'm asking questions to find out if I'm right, and you're telling me to shut up.

How is it exactly that you discover the truth by squelching questions?

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[Viking Coder]

Showing me interesting quotes doesn't interest me.

It is impossible to get me to question the leaders I have elected.

I am so jaded that not even a possible listing of purjured quotes will get me to investigate by opening Google and trying to find the original context.

Yes, I will not even open Google. That's asking too much of me.

I am a bad citizen of the most powerful country the world has ever seen.

In a perfect world, no one would ever question their leaders.

You idiot.

Re:not likely

[jaoswald]

You are very confused.

Limited liability refers to the liability of the owners (i.e. stockholders) of a corporation, not the corporation itself.

Re:not likely

[phiwum]

Thanks.

Re:not likely

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but he bashes Bush, so everything is OK.

That's OK, though. He'll convert to conservativism, same as the rest, when he moves out of his family's basement, gets a job, and actually starts having to pay taxes.

Hmm...

[p373]

Gates might have a little trouble calling this guy a communist.

Re:Hmm...

[EpsCylonB]

Gates might have a little trouble calling this guy a communist.

Well it wouldn't surprise me if he did, Clarke is supposed to be quite pally with Clinton remember.

Re:Hmm...

[ackthpt]

Gates might have a little trouble calling this guy a communist.

Well it wouldn't surprise me if he did, Clarke is supposed to be quite pally with Clinton remember.

And George Bush Sr. and Ronald Reagan, remember?

Re:Hmm...

[kgbspy]

*sings*

Rikki don't lose that number...

Re:Hmm...

[commodoresloat]

Yeah, right, because the Clinton Administration was communist. Remember how he nationalized the computer industry and sent millions of computer programmers to labor on the collective farm system? And how he used to speak eloquently about the noble plight of the lumpenproletariat? And don't get me started on Al Gore's poetic musings about the withering away of the state....

</sarcasm>

Re:Hmm...

[Doc Ruby]

Yes, Clinton, who presided over the biggest capital gains in history. Not Bush, who's got a $2.5T budget sending hundreds of billions to state-guaranteed corporate gigs like Halliburton and pharmacos. Yep, Clinton, the communist. Where do you get this stuff? Oh, right - the "news".

Re:Hmm...

[michaelkpate]

He's definitely not a communist, but he is an idiot.

He devoted his time as Terrorism Czar to preventing a Digital Pearl Harbor. And while he worried that the sky was falling, planes were crashing into buildings. He was a perfect example of why you shouldn't let an amateur try to do the job of a professional.

If Bill Gates is smart, he will ignore him the same way that Bill Clinton did.

Re:Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not communism, that's socialism. There is a difference.

Re:Hmm...

[drsmithy]

Well it wouldn't surprise me if he did, Clarke is supposed to be quite pally with Clinton remember.

It's comments like this that remind us non-Americans just how far politics in the US is skewed to the right...

Re:Hmm...

[bofkentucky]

HillaryCare would have put us on par with the economically failed socialist regimes of the EU. I find it funny dems are now screaming about deficits now that they are out of power, they borrowed from 1933-1994, now we are paying for their social programs and the intrest on the debt they created, and be damned if we don't get called heartless if we try to scale back some these failed social experiments.

Re:Hmm...

[Doc Ruby]

Those "failed socialist regimes" are kicking our ass - haven't you noticed that the Euro is up over 30% since its introduction? No one knows what "HillaryCare" would have done - the Republican Congress's version (boosted by Bush's $750B pharma-welfare last year) is responsible for most of the remaining debt. In spite of Clinton's paydown of the Reagan/Bush debt. Which Bush Jr immediately squandered, creating trillions of new debt every year. We're staring down a $3T budget right now, financed by unprecedented (and unsupportable) debt, all after 4 years of Bush, his Republican Congress, and little denied. Where rightwingers come off lecturing about debt, failed regimes, and even socialism (like our version, state capitalism, corporate welfare) is beyond me. They get called "heartless" because "mindless" gets repetitive after a while.

Re:Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's comments like that that remind us Americans just how far politics everywhere else is skewed to the left

Re:Hmm...

[CAIMLAS]

Er, funny? Were you people even old enough to remember 1992?

Remember how he sent millions of computer programmers to labor on the collective farm system?

Yes, I do. Or rather, I live it. What, you think the hundreds of thousands of H1B workers that came over here simply decided to all go home? They filled the IT field labor vacuum faster than should have been possible, and essentially fucked over the IT industry when the people that went to college - en masse - for IT/CS came out and had no available jobs.

We're still recovering from that. The labor market expanded too quickly (largely in part due to a very real surplus of labor, in no small part due to H1B catering to the rich), and it's still deflating. If we'd simply waited nature's due course (ie, the course of people growing up and becoming adults), we'd have had no such boom and bust, the industry would be more mature with actual innovation (due to no bubble and misguided greed), and we'd have decent professional salaries and wages.

And how he used to speak eloquently about the noble plight of the lumpenproletariat?

What, don't tell me you don't recall all the socialist healthcare stuff Clinton put into place, or the restriction of civil liberties he signed into place?

Re:Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. You truly are a moron. Congratulations. If you can't tell the difference between a decent national health care system in a country where 40 million can't afford health insurance and communism, you really need to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh.

Re:Hmm...

[dajak]

And how he used to speak eloquently about the noble plight of the lumpenproletariat?

Lumpenproletariat? That would centainly disqualify him as a communist. Marx introduced the concept 'lumpenproletariat' to refer to people of low class outside the productive wage-labor system. These people were considered a force hostile to the revolution of the proletariat. I don't think Marx considered these people 'noble'.

Re:Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

France and Germany have good health care and spend about 12% of GDP on health care. The USA spends around 15% of GDP on health care (and from a bigger pie in terms of PPP GDP per capita). Medicare and Medicaid are alone anticipated (without reform) to be requiring up to 20% of GDP by the middle of the century. These projections are the things that were informing Clinton in the desire to reform the practices in some way. No scheme is going to fit all requirements neatly, however, but doing nothing also isn't really an option.

Re:Hmm...

[Ohreally_factor]

I don't think you know what the word communism means.

1) The H1B program and it's expansion was quite the opposite of anything vaguely in the spectrum of communism. It was completely capitalistic, which is clear to anyone with a minimal understanding of the words involved. It tilted the balance of the job market heavily in favor of the employers, i.e., "the capitalists".

2) Your statement:
What, don't tell me you don't recall all the socialist healthcare stuff Clinton put into place, or the restriction of civil liberties he or the restriction of civil liberties he signed into place?

2a) Social welfare programs do not equal "Socialism". Many capitalist nations have nationalized healthcare, and only the most ardent far-right ideologue would call them socialist countries.

Let me clue you in to something, since apparently you aren't a native English speaker. The word "social" and related words do not imply "socialism" or "communism" except in specific circumstances. Thus a "social disease" is not the spread of Marxist theory. A "church social" is not your priest attempting to organize the community to overthrow capitalism. The "National Geographic Society" does not seek to impose the dictatorship of the proletariat.
2b) What "socialist healthcare stuff" did Clinton put into place? Absolutely nothing. It was a non-starter. Clinton completely failed to get any support for his plan. Still, I don't think that the plan qualifies as socialism or communism.

2c) Restrictions on civil liberties under Clinton? Huh? Care to give some specific examples, and show how they're more egregious than say, restrictions under Bush?

So apparently you don't understand the meanings of the words "communism" or "socialism", but only use them to attack people with ideas different than yours.

Either that, or your grasp of the English language is exceedingly poor.

Or both.

Re:Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

and it's comments like that that remind anyone with an IQ above room tempeture what a bunch of morons are in the USA (as apposed to a f'ing continent).

I'm shocked

[novakane007]

A politician I actually like? It's just not like them to tell the truth.
It's amazing what will be said when people aren't afraid of being black-balled in the IT industry.

Re:I'm shocked

[Anonymous Coward]

Look up Eliot Spitzer, the attorney general of New York State. The only politician you can trust, that I know of, for now. Kind of like google.

Re:I'm shocked

[F34nor]

I want to make...

Eliot (Ness) Spitzer
The Untouchable

T-Shirts. Ahh treating big business like the mob they are.

As May West said:

[Thud457]

"Anyone who harshly criticizes Microsoft is ok by me."

Why?

[Telastyn]

If people don't listen to their computers getting nuked or their info stolen or any other direct impact upon themselves, they're not going to listen to a pundit.

Re:Why?

[Bnonn]

Not entirely true. Very often, people don't realize that it doesn't have to be like that. A lot of Windows users think that having to get their system cleaned by a computer shop every six months is normal. If you can increase awareness that it's not, people might start considering alternatives more. You can't consider an alternative that you don't know exists.

Disclosing QA practices -

[Black Parrot]

"none"

Re:Disclosing QA practices -

[ackthpt]

"none"

I think QA is on the same door that bears the sign:

SHIPPING

Re:Disclosing QA practices -

[EnronHaliburton2004]

I think QA is on the same door...

You know you've reached Microsoft QA when the person on the phone says "Hello, Thanks for calling Micrisoft Technical Support, what would you like to report today?"

Re:Disclosing QA practices -

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, in my case it is also non-!@$!%$&*
NO CARRIER

Re:Disclosing QA practices -

[lateralus_1024]

Not true... Quality Avoidance is job 1 !

Re:Disclosing QA practices -

[RealAlaskan]

So, is ``Q&A'' anything like T&A? Because if it is, you don't want to disclose it. Or, you should at least sell tickets first.

Re:Disclosing QA practices -

[Ohreally_factor]

If MS QA were pornography, every picture would feature you (the user) getting it up the ass by a sweaty and panting Steve Balmer shouting, "DEVELOPERS!! DEVELOPERS!! DEVELOPERS!!"

Why buy from MS...

[Joey Patterson]

Given their record in the security area, I don't know why anybody would buy from them.

Maybe because people aren't aware of the alternatives that are out there (Mac and Linux) or simply resist change.

Re:Why buy from MS...

[bunratty]

Or maybe Microsoft is illegally abusing its monopoly power, and it's time for the government to finally step in and put a stop to their anticompetitive practices?

Re:Why buy from MS...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Maybe because people aren't aware of the alternatives that are out there (Mac and Linux) or simply resist change."

People here just don't get it. Linux not secure either. There's a /. article today claiming Win2003 servers are generally more secure than Linux.

Re:Why buy from MS...

[jon3k]

Did you read the article?

It was Redhat vs. Windows, as a web server, default installation. It was considered more secure because it took longer for redhat to issue specific patches than microsoft. If they would have simply compiled apache from source, like most competent administrators do, the patch would have been available in hours/days instead of weeks.

Please troll elsewhere.

Re:Why buy from MS...

[Dashing Leech]

"Linux not secure either. There's a /. article today claiming Win2003 servers are generally more secure than Linux."

This is what we like to call excrapolation. The article in question only tested webservers with specifically matched settings and used a very limited set of metrics generally in terms of reported vulnerabilities, degree of vulnerability, and length of time to patching. That hardly says anything about Linux or Windows security in general, and certainly not desktops, firewalls, email, etc.

However, I'm not one to believe something just because I want it to be true. It is certainly possible that Linux is less secure, there have just been so many reports saying the opposite.

Re:Why buy from MS...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe because Windows has by far the largest applications base, and ultimately the only reason for the operating system is to run applications.

I've been using Linux for almost a decade, but I don't have to question why people buy Windows. Anyone who does isn't thinking very hard.

Re:Why buy from MS...

[Eternally optimistic]

Many people prefer their mother's home cooking, even if it is unhealthy and tastes terrible. Trying something new is scary, not everyone wants to do that.

Re:Why buy from MS...

[SavvyPlayer]

Is your position that Apache security updates are typically verified and made available at Apache.org within hours/days (link to study please), and that competent admins continuously monitor Apache.org for updates and make/install to production servers on a monthly+ basis?

I'm confused: Are you bashing RedHat for not releasing Apache updates on a timely basis, Admins who refuse to compile from source, the authors of this study, M$, some combination of these, or all of the above?

Re:Why buy from MS...

[CastrTroy]

This is very true. All the time at work, I see people using tools that the company is paying tons of money for when a completely free (as in beer and speech) tool exists to do the exact same thing. Companies are losing millions of dollars by paying more for non-open-source solutions that just lock them into paying more and more money.

Re:Why buy from MS...

[cayenne8]

"Maybe because people aren't aware of the alternatives that are out there (Mac and Linux) or simply resist change."

Or maybe it is like pulling teeth after an act of God to get the Govt. or DoD to allow a non-MS, Open Source operating system on the network. At least, thank God for Solaris...but, even then, the default OS they want for every project is Windows....you gotta fight to not have it each time it seems. Fortunately, some inroads are being made, but, until the largest purchaser of software in the world gets out of the automatic MS mindset...gonna be hard to promote it everywhere as a viable alternative.

Re:Why buy from MS...

[bob beta]

He's saying that his DSL-connected home PC usually runs the newest Apache binary, since whenever he feels bored and tweaky he goes to the apache.org website and downloads, compiles, and installs the latest source tarball. (usually twice a week, he's unemployed [still in High School])

Re:Why buy from MS...

[jon3k]

You mean web server farm, via DS3, on a SONET ring.

But you got the rest right, save for the high school and unemployed part.

And you sure make ./configre; make; make install seem awfully complicated.

Re:Why buy from MS...

[jon3k]

Is your position that Apache security updates are typically verified and made available at Apache.org within hours/days (link to study please), and that competent admins continuously monitor Apache.org for updates and make/install to production servers on a monthly+ basis?

Yes. I'm confused: Are you bashing RedHat for not releasing Apache updates on a timely basis, Admins who refuse to compile from source, the authors of this study, M$, some combination of these, or all of the above?

Yes.

Well, not the authors of the study per say. I just think its a pretty useless study, and to say, simply based on this very finite investigation, boldly, that "Windows More Secure Than Linux" is very simple minded.

Re:Why buy from MS...

[bob beta]

Who's paying you to run unqualified 'tip' code raw from Apache.org on a big bandwidth cannon? A trojan on that connection could blast Slashdot.org offline.

You omitted the step where you run md5. I hope it was an oversight on your part.

(and if I run 'sh ./configre' on my equipment, I get back: 'sh: Can't open ./configre')

Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

Richard Clarke is some kind of expert on computer security? Where are his credentials on the subject?

Just because a person is an expert in one area doesn't mean he knows jack about other areas.

Look at most nerds here. They're pretty smart about computers, but idiots about politics.

Re:Seriously

[dameron]

Richard Clarke was main counterterrorism expert in the U.S. government for 4 presidents. One of the criticisms, perhaps justifiable, of Clarke pre-9/11 is that he was too obsessed with cyber terrorism and computer security.

I think he knows what he's talking about.

-dameron

Re:Seriously

[TheWatchfulBabbler]

Richard Clarke is some kind of expert on computer security? Where are his credentials on the subject?

Well, he handled CIP during his time with NSC, and was cybersecurity czar after being shoved out of his counterterror role. 'Czars' of various sorts are, given their lack of power, perhaps the most ironically-named figures in Washington, but Clarke was certainly the best-informed computer security layman in the nation. So, yes, when the former Cybersecurity Czar specifically singles out Microsoft as a source of major vulnerabilities, I think he's qualified to pass judgment.

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

> They're pretty smart about computers, but idiots about
> politics.

Since they're citizens, they automatically by definition know all they should about politics. If there is anything in politics that needs to be known more than that, then it's the side of politics that makes it a self serving sham

Re:Seriously

[anactofgod]

What are your credentials? Must lie in something other than computers and internet, since all of the nerds here can answer questions such as yours by doing a Google search. If you had bothered to so so, you'd have read that Clarke was chairman of Bush's Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) Board when he retired in 2003. He was also the first counter-terrorism coordinator. His office also released the US National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, and he seems to be enough of an authority in the field to be interviewed by IEEE Security & Privacy. There is a lot more to his background, if one really cares to investigate.

So, I'd say that he's pretty well credentialed to comment on threats to US cybersecurity. Perhaps not from the perspective as a bits-and-bytes technologist, but certainly as someone who has expertise in assessing systemic strengths/weaknesses from the perspective of counter-terrorism.

Re:Seriously

[susano_otter]

Koko the Gorilla could single out MS in this way, and not be wrong. That doesn't mean she's qualified to pass judgement.

Nor does "political appointee" autmatically equal "competent in any way". I'm sure you could come up with many examples of this principle, drawn directly from the highest ranks of the Bush administration. Likewise, "best informed layman" bears no relationship to "most competent layman". I keep my manager extremely well informed about the technical work I do every day, but that doesn't stop him from being a tiny party hat for my behind.

Clarke's real credentials are the ones that earned him the appointment, not the appointment himself. He does have such credentials, yes? If so, stop wasting my time with "well, he was appinted to whateverthefuck", and make with the evidence already. Actually, you can also stop wasting my time if he doesn't have the credentials.

Or do you really mean to say that you trust the collective judgement of the Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush administrations? (Of course, if Clarke really did fool four successive admins into thinking he was competent, that means he's a really convincing fabulist. And that, in turn, would mean you'd need to carefully reconsider your acceptance of any claim he might have made.)

Might as well say, "Windows must be a really good OS, because so many individuals and organizations have bought it!"

Re:Seriously

[northcat]

Actually most people here are just idiots.

Re:Seriously

[Minna Kirai]

One of the criticisms, perhaps justifiable, of Clarke pre-9/11 is that he was too obsessed with cyber terrorism and computer security.

No, nobody could say that. Such a claim would not only be unjustifiable, but blatantly ignorant. In the 2nd Bush administration, if Clarke had any "obsession" at all, it was with al Quaeda.

Indeed, he irritated Bush's political appointees with his emphasis on something that contradicted their pre-concieved notions of foreign policy threats. He kept on pushing them to look at Islamic terrorism as a real danger, such as by creating the infamous "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the US" briefing.

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

Nerds arn't idiots about politics, we just have 0 respect and refuse to play their games.

Re:Seriously

[bob beta]

Like most other bureaucrats, he is probably highly skilled at identifying and hiring the competent staff to accomplish the task at hand. That makes him as qualified as a 'cyberterrorism expert' as your boss is qualified to do your work. Which if you work in a tech company where there are thick fat layers of middle management, means he's probably damn good at creating GANTT charts, but not a lot more.

Humph

[Anonymous Coward]

A story only a few hours ago on how Microsoft shines on security.

Fact: any box is as secure at the admin makes it.

Move along.

Re:Humph

[DickBreath]

Fact: any box is as secure at the admin makes it.

Fact: any box starts out as secure as the developer/packager makes it.

For example, having a vulnerable IIS turned on by default on a plain jane workstation.

An incompetent admin can make a secure system insecure.
A competent admin can, with work, might be able to make an insecure system secure.
(Depending upon the nature of the required fixes.)

But a box can start out relatively more or less secure, and that is an important point worth comparing. How secure is a given system out of the box, before an admin gets hold of it?

Re:Humph

[rewt66]

any box is as secure at the admin makes it.

You know, I think that, if I tried hard enough, I could build an OS that no admin could secure.

Moving on from deliberate incompetence, we come to Microsoft. They didn't deliberately try to make an impossible-to-secure OS, they merely made so many bad architectural choices, and added so many features that are inherently insecure, that the effect was close to the same.

Now, in fairness, they are getting better. Windows doesn't fight the admin who tries to secure it nearly as hard as it used to...

Re:Humph

[dillon_rinker]

Agreed.

HOWEVER...

Microsoft does not make boxes. They make operating systems and applications. The security of a box is entirely different from the security of a piece of software. One requires little or no intelligence; the other requires as much as our culture has been able to produce.

Securing a box is an administrative task. You go through a checklist, changing the configuration and applying patches as it requires. This is dummy work; you can even write a script to do it. Creating the checklist requires intelligence, but you generally get the information necessary for it from the application or operating system vendor.

On the other hand, securing a piece of software means considering EVERY POSSIBLE COMBINATION of operations that the software can perform and ensuring that none of them can compromise the software. This is practically impossible. Building software is hard; we still haven't figured out how to do it with the same level of competence that we can build a bridge or dam or skyscraper.

Re:Humph

[nihilogos]

Fact: any box is as secure at the admin makes it

I can't believe this got modded insightful. The vast majority of computer users aren't admins, and don't have an admin coming round to their house to 'secure' their system, or stand over their shoulder to tell them they shouldn't open that email attachment.

The 'admins' need to be built into the software you tard.

Re:Humph

[nihilogos]

Fact: any box is as secure at the admin makes it.

The vast majority of computer users aren't admins, and don't have an admin who comes to their house to secure their system. These people need 'admins' built into their software.

Re:Humph

[drsmithy]

They didn't deliberately try to make an impossible-to-secure OS, they merely made so many bad architectural choices, [...]

For example ?

Re:Humph

[bob beta]

They adopted the proven BSD-codebase TCP/IP stack for use in Windows, as opposed to Linux, which rolled one of the few non BSD-derived stacks into the kernel because Linus didn't like the Berkeley stack for unknown reasons.

As a consequence Linux TCP/IP performance has it's own unique quirks and cranks, unlike almost any other OS in common usage on the net.

Re:Humph

[poofyhairguy82]

The 'admins' need to be built into the software you tard.

That is what is slowely happening. Microsoft now offers a firewall, a spyware cleaner, and an update system for XP. The major thing it lacks is antivirus (probably because if Microsoft added that it would be seen as monopolistic).

All of these tools are easy to use as well. I don't care because I don't use Windows, but I do appreciate the fact that MS is trying to simplify the administration of its desktop. Its easier to tell my non-nerd aunt how to download the beta antispyware program on the phone (and get her to install and run it) than it is to get her to replace windows.

Re:Humph

[randomencounter]

For example: the message passing API which was (still is?) a major local privilege escalation vulnerability.

For example: Shipping major software packages that required significant administrative skill to run as an unprivileged user on NT-series OS's (MS Office).

For example: Shipping as their major OS product for years an OS that didn't even have the concept of an unprivileged user (Windows-over-DOS).

They are getting better, but so is everyone else, and they have a lot of catching up to do.

Re:Humph

[drsmithy]

They adopted the proven BSD-codebase TCP/IP stack for use in Windows, [...]

Not in NT they didn't.

[...] as opposed to Linux, which rolled one of the few non BSD-derived stacks into the kernel because Linus didn't like the Berkeley stack for unknown reasons.

AFAIK the first versions of Linux used the BSD TCP/IP stack (more current versions might not - I can't say I've ever cared enough to check).

Re:Humph

[seberger]

I agree that any box is as secure as the admin makes it. When the 'admin' is a relatively novice computer user, the more built-in protection, the better. If the government mandates that seatbelts be installed in cars (not that they're used, necessarily) for safety reasons, then I'm not sure why big brother won't mandate OSes to come with AV and anti-malware software pre-installed and enabled by default. We all know that the root of all network-based evil stems from unsecured boxes (and the jackass in accounting that can't ever get Word to open). Just my two cents.

but but but

[SunFan]

Windows is more secure than Linux! Right? No?!? It was all a sham? Oh, I see.

Re:but but but

[isometrick]

Science: Water Is Still Wet
Posted by timothy on Thursday February 17, @05:00PM

...

Science: Scientists Discover That Water Isn't Wet
Posted by timothy on Thursday February 17, @03:00PM

Re:but but but

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a sham because Richard Clarke, a non-computer expert, said so? So we must now disregard a study done by computer scientists becuase a non-computer scientist publicly criticized Microsoft?

Slashdotters will look for ANY reason to cover their eyes and pretend studies painting Linux in a less-than-perfect light don't exist. Just because friggin' Richard Clarke said so doesn't really mean anything.

Posting anon because my karma might take a hit (it's sad there's a risk on Slashdot of ruining your account when you post your valid personal opinion).

Re:but but but

[einhverfr]

You might find it interesting to go back and read my comments on the Windows Vs Linux security debate.

That being said, I do find the security record of MS applications (Office, IE) and even the OS somewhat lacking. Things are slowly getting better, but these remind me very much of Sendmail in that the dependence on features and huge monolithic systems results in the necessity of security exposure.

BTW, I don't buy their software. I didn't even buy their software for my use even when I worked at Microsoft! (I bought a few things at the store for friends and I have bought and used their mice.)

I agree with Clarke in that:
1) It is easier to balance security and usability on Linux than Windows (fewer braindead dependencies).
2) Linux is far more securable than Windows.

Finally it should be mentioned that I even have some concerns regarding how typical the earlier study's setups were and whether they even followed best practices. Without the information on the exact setup, we are left to debate these things without

Re:but but but

[SunFan]

It's a sham, because the discovery and disclosure processes for Linux and Windows are completely different. If the "black hats" were to admit everything they know, I'd bet the number of known holes in Windows would skyrocket, while the number known in Linux would rise some but not dramatically. I'd like to hear their take on OpenBSD, too, for good measure.

It certainly is not in Microsoft's interests to disclose security problems unless they really have to, so they very likely don't. Why say anything when saying nothing is so much easier? Who wants to bet that Microsoft's issue tracking systems have hundreds to thousands of security-related bugs that are deemed proprietary information and never see the light of day?

Listening?

[ackthpt]

I wonder if anyone will finally start listening to him?"

I believe after his book that many people in Washington stopped listening to him.

"the war is really hard, uh, you see and we, uh, we're trying to make them all free and ... Karl, what's the buzzing noise?"
"Ignore it Mr. President, that's just a reporter refering to something Richard Clarke said."
"Who?"

Re:Listening?

[Just Some Guy]

BTW, the ex-General speaking against the war was Wesley Clark.

Re:Listening?

[Xshare]

And the ex Counter-Terrorism boss of the administration speaking against the war, or at least against how it was carried out, was Richard Clark. This Richard Clark. Sorry buddy.

Re:Listening?

[commodoresloat]

Actually, that was Richard Clarke. Richard Clark is an entertainer, I believe. :)

amazingly ill-informed.

[de1orean]

RIchard Clarke is a true patriot and a class guy all around -- not like people who slap a yellow ribbon magnet on their car and think they are "fighting terrorism."

also, off topic.

move along, nothing to see here.

Will they listen? No.

[Darth Maul]

"I wonder if anyone will finally start listening to him?"

No. With all the spyware and worms and virii out there, people just won't switch. I just don't get it. I suppose they are just stuck in their ways, and don't want to learn anything else. I suppose for most people, it was enough of a trial to "learn" how to use Windows, so they would rather put up with the crashes, spyware, and everything Microsoft, and just call it the norm.

It's a shame. But people really are stupid and/or lazy. That's why they won't start listening to anyone about this stuff. If I were a customer of Microsoft, I'd be organizing class-action suits, writing letters, storming Redmond with torches in hand.... Why these people put up with it most likely can be put into two categories: 1) ignorance, and 2) laziness. Either they don't know there are viable options, or they are too lazy to actually pursue said options.

Just something off the top of my head. Agree? Disagree? Discuss.

another interview

[r84x]

Clarke has talked about cyber security before. To the IEEE, in fact. Read it here.

Apologia

[Stanistani]

Clarke does deserve some kudos as the only responsible government official to apologize to the 9-11 victims's families.

Re:Apologia

[Viking Coder]

So, if the cops are on the trail of a serial killer, and catch him one day after another murder - it's "bullshit" to think it's nice if the cops appologize to the last victim's family that they didn't have the luck to catch him one day earlier?

It's "bullshit" to think it's nice?

You're the arbiter of what's bullshit and nice?

Oh, that's right. You were appointed king. I lost the memo. Sorry, your highness.

Let some people appologize if they want to, and let other people think it's nice. How does either action hurt you, you arrogant cock?

People died, and you're lecturing us on personal responsibility?

Responsibility?

Hell, it was Clarke's job to stop the terrorists. That was the exact and only reason why he got paid. He thinks he made a mistake. He feels that he needs to take responsibility for his failure. You could learn a lesson from that.

It's not his fault that the terrorists tried to kill people, but as the guy whose job it was to stop them, he appologized for failing.

Re:Apologia

[einhverfr]

The 9-11 victims were a result of the criminal terrorist actions of several individuals who crashed planes into buildings. Why the hell would Richard Clark apologize?

Because he feels that the Gov't did not take seriously the threat until it occurred.

It is sort of like overhearing someone say "I am going to kill...." and deciding not to go to the police. Once you hear that this person did carry out his/her plan, you might appologize too.

Similarly if the police know about a credible threat to your safety and don't take it seriously, if you are killed, they might appologize to your family.

Oh, that's right. Nobody is personally responsible for any of their own actions anymore.

No. Al'Qaeda is responsible for their crimes. Nobody denies this. However, the US Gov't has certain responsibilities for public safety and many including myself feel like they have approached this more as a power-grab rather than a serious evaluation of what could be done under older frameworks.

Some, such as myself even wonder if there were complacent aspects of the US Gov't in order to allow this to occur. This is not without precident. There were complacent aspects of the Gov't wrt the sinking of the Lusitania (which lead us into WWI). In the Lusitania case, the complacency ran as high as the US President (Wilson).

The jury is still out whether Pearl Harbor had a similar component but I suspect that it is more an issue of good intel on the part of the Japanese and strategic mistakes by the base commander than a policy of complacency in the face of a threat to the lives of Americans.

Re:Apologia

[jd]

He apologized because (as I understand it) he felt that the security and computing infrastructure failed those families. There are various candidate failures that could have inspired him:

• That if the decryption system had worked as intended, the NSA wouldn't have decoded messages about the attacks the day after.
  
• That if the Government and businesses had put more resources into cybersecurity and authentication, the hijackers may not have had such an easy time seizing control of the planes.
  
• That if the communications infrastructure had functioned, emergency calls would have gotten through to the right people, promptly, rather than vanishing into nowhere.
  
• That if the communications to the military had gotten through coherently and promptly, there may have been time to stop the second and third planes.
  
• Likewise, the military may also have had time to get helicopters to the towers, to aid in evacuating those on the rooftops.
  
• That if the wireless systems the emergency services were using had worked correctly, more people could have been evacuated from the towers and the proximity to a safe distance, once the initial indications showed the towers were going to collapse.
  

I'm not saying any of these ARE his reasons for apologizing, only that any of them COULD be, and that his recognition of US failings in the whole dynamics of the situation were entirely right and proper.

In the end, responsibility isn't a personal thing. It is a global thing. We are all responsible for everything that happens, to the precise degree that we could have expected those things AND could have shaped things to be different.

Instead of trying to blame one person or one group, which does nothing to resolve the issues, it makes more sense for each person to take personal responsibility for those things they can shape, to the degree they can shape them and know what the shape will be.

All blaming others ever did (even when those others are the ones chiefly responsible) is to evade what we ourselves could do differently. It's like blaming virus writers who exploit Microsoft's security holes, when the holes would still exist even if the viruses never did, when the user is quite capable of adding protections to stop attacks (or even use a different OS), when security salespeople will flog anti-virus software but ignore most other host-intrusion and network-intrusion solutions.

Responsibility is not evenly distributed, but it must be distributed to all if it is to reflect reality. "Personal responsibility", when applied to one person alone, is a blamer's paradise and a great way to focus on one symptom of the disease rather than the root cause.

Re:Apologia

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, that's right. Nobody is personally responsible for any of their own actions anymore.

How true. Have you heard an apology from GWB, Cheney, Rumsfield, Rice, etc.?

In fact, I hear nothing but BS coming from washington, these days. At least, RC did the right thing for the admin, even if GWB will not.

Re:Apologia

[agurkan]

For 9-11 American government had and still has everything to apologize for. At the very least, the American government created Usama bin Laden. Remember?

Re:Apologia

[Viking Coder]

It's bullshit to think that it's some how not nice or just or appropriate or whatever if they don't apologize.

Oh, good lord. The opposite of "nice" isn't "not nice"? See, when I invert a concept, I'm used to being able to put the word "not" in front of it, in order to express myself. I guess I'm just a fucking moron, though.

On September 11, our government didn't have the first damn thing to apologize for.

Really? Security people at the airports didn't fuck up? (Then why did we completely restructure airport security?) The three-letter agencies shared all of the information they should have? (Then why are we wasting our time talking about a new intelligence director?) Jets scrambled fast enough for your taste? (Then why... oh, forget it.)

Just go do what needs to be done to respond to the situation at hand.

How can we respond to the situation now, if we don't try to figure out if we made mistakes then?

Seriously - how?

Richard Clarke thinks he made mistakes, and clearly thinks that we as a country need to learn from his mistakes. As the former top counter-terrorism advisor (aka "terrorism czar"), maybe you should fucking listen to him.

Clarke's job was to advise the President. That's it.

...and... ...he feels... ...he didn't do that job as well as it needed to be done.

Why is this a tricky concept for you?

It's not like I think he had terrorist kryptonite, and was the guy who could pray to the moon of Xandor, thus activating it. But of all of the people in the government charged specifically with the task of preventing terrorism in the United States, he had the job at the top of the food chain.

It wasn't his job to investigate terrorism that had already been committed. It wasn't his job to stop terrorism in progress. It was his job to get us to get out in front of terrorism, and actively prevent it.

As to cops preventing crime, I've hard this argument before, and I have a question for you:

Do you think cops walk a beat because it's fun? Do you think they drive around the city every night because it's a joy to burn mileage? No. A large part of the cop job - and they know this very well - is being visible.

Why?

Because when a cop is visible, they prevent crime.

Re:Apologia

[STrinity]

PEEVE: An apologia is not an apology, not in the sense that you're using the word.

Re:Apologia

[Stanistani]

Actually the title was a pun:
I was making a statement that justifies or defends someone (an apologia for Richard Clarke) by citing his apology.

Re:Apologia

[professorfalcon]

Maybe he could also apologize to the victims of Pearl Harbor, the Lusitania, and Michael Jackson.

Re:Why listen to this weasel now?

[ClaraBow]

could you please be more specific. when and where did he let Osama go? If you are going to make such charges, you better have some proof or at the very least some credible sources. I believe it was the Bush administration who didn't heed Clark's warnings nor read his reports. Maybe we should have elected a president who likes to read!

Re:Do we care?

[EnronHaliburton2004]

This is just blatant self-PR from a guy that noone really cares about anymore...

Actually, alot of people still care about what Richard Clarke has to say. The Bush administration would like you to think that nobody cares about him, but that's because he embarassed the Bush administration in front of the whole world.

During the congressional hearings, officials from the Bush Administration kept trying to paint Richard Clarke as if he was some disgruntled mid-level manager who didn't have access to the right information, and who had no idea what he was talking about.

Lies.

Richard Clarke is a smart guy...

[HouseOfMisterE]

Richard Clark is a smart guy, and his book, "Against All Enemies," is a very good read. Highly recommended by the HouseOfMisterE.

ob post

[ackthpt]

Gates might have a little trouble calling this guy a communist.

In Soviet Russia, Microsoft secures YOU!

Re:ob post

[einhverfr]

In Soviet Russia, Microsoft secures YOU!

As opposed to the rest of the world where Microsoft only secures your political leaders?

funny guy

[asoap]

I've been reading his book, and there was one story that I found funny in it.

Before the olympics in Atlanta, he went down there with his CSG group to asses the security for the games with the people responsible. They were standing in the olympic village and he said something along the lines of:

"So, it appears that the Olympic village is simply the Atlanta Tech Campus"

All people in charge of the security measures nodded their heads.

"It is also true that there is a nuclear reactor on this campus"

Half of the people nodded their heads.

"I also bet that there are spent fuel rods for that reactor, and as I can see here, there is almost no security for this reactor"

No body nodded their heads, and instead fummbled for their cellphones to make the proper arangements.

I thought that was funny, and I thought you other geeks might also like it.

Re:funny guy

[gte910h]

Georgia Tech (I can see the reactor from the windows of my office building)

Re:funny guy

[Artraze]

"I also bet that there are spent fuel rods for that reactor, and as I can see here, there is almost no security for this reactor"

Actually, as someone who is familar with university research reactors, I can say that this is most likely not the csae. The research reactor around here has gotten about no more than 100, if any, new rods in the past 50 years. Research reactors are opperated only intermitantly, and usually not above 1MW. They just don't consume much fuel.

Re:funny guy

[jd]

Spent fuel rods would probably not have posed much of a threat. You can't exactly stuff them down your trouser legs.

Someone mentioned that such reactors aren't used much. That means nobody would be likely to notice if it got switched on. Or notice if the coolant was leaking. Or noticed if someone had bashed the safeties so that the graphite rods couldn't drop...

So, yes, he was certainly on the right track, but his imagination wasn't nearly up to scratch.

Re:funny guy

[Anonymous Coward]

"So, yes, he was certainly on the right track, but his imagination wasn't nearly up to scratch."

By securing the facility you don't have to immagine things past "can they break our security" and "what will be our response." That is threat mitigation.

His job was not to be a nuclear engineer but to get the ball rolling so people would start to think and more importantly act where they did not before.

Re:funny guy

[justins]

Spent fuel rods would probably not have posed much of a threat. You can't exactly stuff them down your trouser legs.

I imagine the terrorist approach to exploiting the reactor would involve simply driving a vehicle with a bomb into the reactor building. The terrorists don't have the human resources to steal fuel and escape, and they probably don't have the technology to build a real bomb, they're just going to make a "dirty bomb" anyway. So they'd skip a few unnecessary steps.

The reactor at OSU has been under greater guard during some of the big football games, out of more or less similar fears, I suppose.

Re:funny guy

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously don't know anything about nuclear reactors. A shutdown reactor still has an operator on duty in case something happens, like a coolant leak. There are actions that would need to take place quickly to minimize any hazards.

Re:funny guy

[YetAnotherAnonymousC]

It should be noted that most academic reactors still have large containment structures that, as an indirect result of their containment needs, can also withstand a truck bomb, among other things. I can't speak for OSU, but the reactor at Georgia Tech is like that, as is the one at MIT. Haven't seen the others.

Re:funny guy

[jd]

A typical juggernaut can carry 65,000 lbs. The MOAB, whose explosion is visible 20 miles away, is 20,000 lbs.

Mind you, any terrorist driving around 65,000 lbs. of RDX is hardly likely to care about the extra nastiness a small nuke reactor can do.

Re:funny guy

[jd]

One operator on duty. A sock with a half brick in the end would probably be sufficient to limit the defensive capabilities of said operator.

I know a fair amount about nuclear reactors, having been involved in research on the Windscale reprocessing reactor in Great Britain and having learned a great deal about both cause and effect of the Windscale fire in one of the two tower-based reactors.

I'm also aware that two major nuclear accidents (3 Mile Island and Chernobyl) were as a result of design failures. Chernobyl is exceptionally interesting, in that the explosion was a chemical reaction, triggered by the extreme heat splitting the water coolant into elemental hydrogen and oxygen.

Re:funny guy

[jd]

Excellent point, and I'll agree totally that he did that. I do think, though, that there was a risk of diverting attention away from more probable risks and towards less likely risks, by talking about the empty fuel rods. Sometimes, it is better to be strategically vague.

Re:funny guy

[Anonymous Coward]

"...he went down there with his CSG group to asses the security for the games..."

Asses?

You put the wrong em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-LA-ble.

Re:funny guy

[justins]

I wonder if they'd have to smash through the containment. If they got a gasoline tanker or something moving fast enough and just smashed it into the building, things might be awfully problematical.

I imagine that's one of the big aspect of securing a building like that: strategically placing concrete barricades that keep any vehicle close to the building from gaining much momentum. I wouldn't be surprised if, in the future, more government buildings are landscaped that way from the beginning. Slow down of traffic in downtown areas might be a pain in the ass, but just walking wouldn't kill anyone.

I'm sure there's much more to it than that.

Re:Why listen to this weasel now?

[Rei]

Oh come on, watch something other than Fox and read something other than NewsMax and FreeRepublic for once. :P

Lets take a wide gander here. You've never read his book. You didn't listen to his testimony - only selective excerpts and clips. Your knowlege of his history comes from one or two right-wing articles, without ever reading any counters.

I was (foolishly) hoping that this thread wouldn't get dragged into a left-right debate. I was wrong.

Shooting yourself in the foot.

[GillBates0]

Don't expect Richard Clarke to rely on Microsoft Corp.'s anti-virus or anti-spyware programs to protect his own computer.

Yeah...buying an OS vulnerable to viruses and spyware and then buying anti-virus and anti-spyware programs is like shooting yourself in the foot and then running (limping) to the hospital for help.

And what's more...the hospital profits from lending you a gun and encouraging to shoot yourself in the foot.

Re:Shooting yourself in the foot.

[jd]

Correction. Lending you the gun, providing a foot-shooting guide, then charging you interest on any late installments when you're in hospital.

Re:Shooting yourself in the foot.

[earthbound kid]

I think Microsoft selling anti-virus/spyware software is most like a fireworks store owning an emergency room.

"Hey, it's not our fault that the roman candle broke! Now, do you want your burns treated or not?"

Re:Shooting yourself in the foot.

[Mythrix]

Unfortunately, it's still better to run to the hospital rather than bleeding to death...

Re:Shooting yourself in the foot.

[Ohreally_factor]

Correction. Lending you the gun, providing a foot-shooting guide, then charging you interest on any late installments when you're in hospital.

Would that be a foot-shooting guide or a foot-shooting wizard?

"I see that you want to shoot a part of your body. Do you want me to show you an anatomical diagram?"

I listen to him...

[3Suns]

I wonder if anyone will finally start listening to him?

I watch his "Rockin' New Years Eve" program every year, and I expect lots of other people do too. I had no idea he was into computer security as well, though.

When will people listen?

[porkface]

Richard Clarke seems to be turning into a liberal version of your typical (predominantly right-wing media) attention whore who operates solely on negative discourse.

The world knows Microsoft's security record. Clarke really has nothing to bring to the table here.

I support everything he's saying, but he's leaking credibility at an alarming rate.

Re:When will people listen?

[EpsCylonB]

I support everything he's saying, but he's leaking credibility at an alarming rate.

Why?, because he criticised Bush ?.

Re:When will people listen?

[EnronHaliburton2004]

The world knows Microsoft's security record.

I think MS's security record is known amongst the people at the RSA conference, and we critize MS here on /. , but I don't think it is well known outside the technical world.

Clarke really has nothing to bring to the table here.

He critized Microsoft publicly, which is something you almost never see a high-level (or formally high-level) government official doing.

Re:When will people listen?

[Locke2005]

The world knows Microsoft's security record. Apparently not, since much of the world is still using Microsoft's software! Sorry, but slashdot geeks are not a representive sample of the world at large!

Re:When will people listen?

[Phillup]

Q: Where does telling the truth hurt your credibility.

A: Jesusland

Re:When will people listen?

[g0hare]

Ah, he disagreed with Bush, he must not have credibility. I get it now! And as a Republican he's a Liberal!

Re:When will people listen?

[homer_ca]

I support everything he's saying, but he's leaking credibility at an alarming rate.

Blanket statements like that don't help your credibility either. I've read his book, and he's a darling of the left wing media because he has by far heaped the most criticism on the Bush II administration. However, his praise and criticism of others did come off as fair and even-handed, and he names names everywhere. For example, praise for George HW Bush for the delicate diplomatic balancing act of holding together a coalition (a real one) containing many Arab countries in Gulf War I, and jeers to former FBI director Louis Freeh for incompetent micromanagement particularly in the '96 Atlanta Olympics bombing investigation. No way you'd ever see any right wing pundit criticize one of their own. Never.

This guy is a career Fed (I mean it in a positive way) who started in the State Dept. He's no liberal hippie. Given his background, some of his ideas on security may seem too authoritarian to many Slashdotters, but at least he's able to make reasonable arguments for their necessity. From his writing style he sounds like a reasonable, no-nonsense kind of guy who values competence over loyalty. These kinds of people tend to piss off other people who have the opposite priorities (loyalty over competence).

Re:When will people listen?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the thing that amazes me most. The entire Republican party decides to change its position on EVERYTHING (nation building, balanced budgets, the threat Iraq posed to anyone, etc) and they pretty much do it overnight. Suddenly those who didn't get the memo to change their policies are derided as liberals. Because only LIBERALS are against military aggression against countries who pose no threat to anyone while there are real NON-IMAGINARY threats out there that may require our attention.

It's enough to make a moderate Republican like myself think the liberals may be right after all. The Republican party is doomed to become a free-spending jingoistic apocalyptic cult. There's no way to turn but left.

Given the government's record on security...

[Anonymous Coward]

...why should be listening to him? The call for government regulation of ISPs is scary. They will surely have to ask the ISP they want to regulate how to secure their own government systems that by their own accounting have shabby security.

Unfortunitly

[tenchiken]

It does very little good for Richard Clarke to say anything about this at all. Richard Clarke alianated everyone on the clinton team (see "Loosing Bin Ladin") and then alianted everyone on Bush's team (who were too focused on keeping another mid level manager from going amuck ala Ollie North). Then he said two seperate things to the 9/11 committee that just happened to change when he cachinged on his book.

It's too bad really. Imagine all of the things that Clarke could have stopped if he realized that he actually had to work with other people.

Re:Unfortunitly

[WebMacher]

I'm sorry, but I can't find anything called "Loosing Bin Ladin". Maybe because it's supposed to be spelled "losing"? What was the reference to Ollie North about? To remind us of the high ethical standards of the Bush administration? Please, please, spellcheck and provide citations to your claims. Otherwise, we'll all feel"alianated" or"alianted" from this discussion.

Re:Unfortunitly

[Anonymous Coward]

Then he said two seperate things to the 9/11 committee that just happened to change when he cachinged on his book.

Mind pointing out those two things?

- Honestly Curious.

Re:Unfortunitly

[Viking Coder]

Huh.

Yeah, it couldn't possibly be the fault of the Clinton and Bush administrations.

Good call.

Oh, wait - no - bad call.

I'm not saying he was an angel, I'm just saying that you've leapt to the conclusion that he was to blame, and two politicians who were absolutely detested by opposing sides of the country (Republicans hated Clinton, Democrats hate Bush) were blameless.

It's too bad really. Imagine all of the things that Clarke could have stopped if other people realized that they actually had to work with him.

Re:Unfortunitly

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure I want to see "Loosing Bin Ladin." I think he's already about as loose as I want him. Maybe if it was "Bin Ladin Gone Wild" I would be more interested.

Re:Unfortunitly

[tenchiken]

I never said that. I said that it was sad and rather pathetic that the one gentleman who had enough vision to realize that Al Qaeda was not just a annoyance didn't have enough social skills to work and make other people realize the risk.

Re:Unfortunitly

[Anonymous Coward]

He gave all the money he made on the book to charity. He did not "cash in".

Re:Unfortunitly

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh so now he is to blame because he didn't give a fluffy power point presentation.

You are a sick fuck.

Re:Unfortunitly

[Viking Coder]

I said that it was sad and rather pathetic that the one gentleman who had enough vision to realize that Al Qaeda was not just a annoyance didn't have enough social skills to work and make other people realize the risk.

Again - how do you know that?

I propose that it's possible that the politicians were more interested in U.S. politics than in defense.

I base a lot of that on the fact that Clarke wasn't even granted a meeting with the senior advisors, until what - 9/5/01? That's not a failing of "social skills," that's "completely screwed out of being able to do your job by people who won't stop and listen to you."

Re:Unfortunitly

[tenchiken]

Because I have actually bothered to read the books that document the white house under both the Clinton and Bush White Houses. They go into Mr. Clarke at length.

And this is from the same guy...

[DARKFORCE123]

And this is from the same guy who must have done such a great job advising on security matters for the government that most of the government agenecies just recently received an awesome security grade.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6981279/

Oh wait, that didn't happen!

Whether he didn't have the power to make the necessary changes or he's incompetent the government obviously needs to take some serious steps to increase cyber security soon!

Yeah, don't forget -

[Tufriast]

The legislators sure do get a healthy dose of money from M$'s lobbyists don't they? That's exactly why branches like the Navy won't stop using them. I just wish the Justice Department would fall down on top of M$ already. It doesn't make any sense these days. Why am I paying taxes if someone with more money can buy their empire with double talk?

Re:Yeah, don't forget -

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting anonymously to protect my job.

I was told most specifically that we were not to use anything but MS products for our development process. Linux was specifically (by name) forbidden. The order originated from a person who works in a certain five-sided building.

It's not just legislators getting the money. It's every/any governmental decision maker.

more sources

[r84x]

For you who doubt Clarke's credentials as a "cybersecurity" expert, here are a couple more interviews for you.

From July 2003

From Feb 2001

Re:more sources

[susano_otter]

So he's a clever thinker and comes across as well-spoken in interview transcripts. The same could be said for Michael Chrichton, but nobody wastes much time claiming that he's an expert on anything he's ever written about.

When I have doubts about somebody's credentials, I look for degrees they have obtained (and the institution they've obtained them from), papers they have published, technical books they have written, patents they have secured, positions they have held in publically-traded corporations (and the fortunes of those corporations), and things of that nature. Actions, not words.

This interview is just words. Where's the actions? Where's the actual credentials? Did Clarke graduate from MIT or CMU or Stanford? Has he published groundbreaking papers on cybersecurity in peer-reviewed journals? Has he guided a Fortune 500 company through the treacherous shoals of Information Technology? (And isn't it telling that the organizations he has most prominently worked for--presidential administrations--have had a somewhat abysmal track record in his supposed area of expertise?)

At the very least, could you point to some successful cyberterrorism policy, no matter how small, that he proposed and implemented, and that made a measurable improvement in our nation's security? Why is it that his most popular book is nothing more than several hundred pages of him saying "I tried, and I failed"? Is that how Alan Greenspan's memoirs are going to read? "I tried to manage the Fed, but politics is hard!"

Enough with the interviews! Where are the credentials?

Re:more sources

[r84x]

good point

Re: not a politician

[bracher]

He's not a politician, he's a civil servant. There is a huge difference there.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[u-235-sentinel]

Why these people put up with it most likely can be put into two categories: 1) ignorance, and 2) laziness. Either they don't know there are viable options, or they are too lazy to actually pursue said options.

My excuse for running Windows?

Half Life 2 :-)

Re:Will they listen? No.

[RM6f9]

Lazy. When Linux (any flavor) is as easy to use as Windows (admittedly, Firefox and Open Office are installed on my boxes already), when Linux will run my games with the same "double-click the icon" ease, I'll switch - until then, I don't complain about windows because I know I chose it consciously.
I admit being lazy. Linux needs to earn my respect by catering to my laziness.

This is a trap

[argoff]

Security issues are a wonderfull way to convince people that the government should regulate IT, but ironically it will actually play to the favor of Microsoft most of all. As soon as regulations start out, it will start increasing the bariers to entry in the IT space.

This has happened in every industry it's been attempted in. Plumbing, electricity, telephones, auto-repair. Hell, you can't even sell a hot-dog without going thru 10-20 thousand dollars worth of regulation for it to be legal. Yeah, I know, don't say it. There is always a good sounding reason for these .... yeah ..... right.

Re:This is a trap

[SunFan]

All the heavily regulated industries are that way after lots of property damage and loss of life. Just like a fire inspector might say "all these codes are written in blood." The computer industry is definitely large enough, now, where huge damage is likely.

For example, what was the value in proprietary information lost due to those worms that e-mail random documents off of PCs? Analogously, who would install a filing cabinet that has a door to the outside for the postman to pick up the files and put them in random P.O. boxes?

There is just very little common sense in the IT industry, and where there is no common sense there's regulation.

Re:This is a trap

[argoff]

Falws and failures like these are the "price" people pay for being finite. The solution isn't to limit people more, that just exaserbates the problem. The solution you seek is not thru another law, but thru open dialog (or source, hint) - and to have justice for people who *choose* to do harmfull things to society vs attempting to *controll* people with the flowery justification that they might do something harmfull.

If the reason is compelling enough to impose yet another law, it is compelling enough

Not to be critical, but...

[JLyle]

Richard Clarke, former White House cybersecurity and counterterrorism adviser, harshly critized Microsoft's security track record.

... it's spelled "criticized".

Re:Not to be critical, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

... it's spelled "criticized".

Shouldn't that be "spelt"

Re:Not to be critical, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, that's harsh. Don't cricitize!

Re:Not to be critical, but...

[Milton Waddams]

Actually, it's spelled "criticiSed".

It's all about your investments

[chia_monkey]

"Given their record in the security area, I don't know why anybody would buy from them.'"

Because people have already laid down monetary investments in buying MS operating systems and the PCs that go along with them. Most people have a hard time going "well, let's just get rid of all this PC hardware and all the MS-related software we bought for it and switch to something better". It's sad but true. There are better options out there, but once you lay down the money (and time), people don't want to throw it all out and lay out yet more cash and time and start all over.

Re:It's all about your investments

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I checked, there were x86 builds for *nix and bsd. Chances are good that they could use most of the same hardware, and there is a lot of free software too...

Re:It's all about your investments

[jon3k]

I don't think anyone is suggesting these systems simply be fork lifted. We're talking slow and steady migrations here, which have been proven, time and time again, to be very real and possible.

Re:It's all about your investments

[Anonymous Coward]

Woot! Hey! With Linux, 1. you don't need to repalce your 'PC' hardware. Wanna know what? Linux is running on the 'PC' hardware I'm typing on ***RIGHT NOW***!!! Kewel Huh? And *** you don't need to spend $$$$lotsa bucks for it ***!!! The version of Fedora Core 3 (way too useful for any kind of computing task you could want) costs the bandwidth time to download it ***THAT"S ALL ***!!! So the short answer: no new hardware, no cash outlay for tons and tons of new software!!! You can download one copy, run the automatic software updater, and then copy it ***TO AS MANY COMPUTERS AS YOU LIKE***!!! You just can't lose.

Re:It's all about your investments

[Divebus]

That makes all the sense in the world... until you really examine the notion of "purchasing" Microsoft software. YOU'RE JUST RENTING IT ANYWAY!!! They make you purchase and repurchase the same software over and over. Hell, it's turning into a subscription service. So, where's the investment? There ain't none.

Dump Microsoft at the first opportunity and you'll be free.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, its not laziness or ignorance, its just the lack of a better UI experience. Just make linux as or even more effective than windows, and people slowly start switching over - it will start from bulk makers like Dell/HP/IBM and other smaller vendors.
I really think the problem is the lack of better alternative than people problems.

some serious evasion

[motorsabbath]

"In a statement responding to Clarke's comments, Microsoft said it has formalized its internal security efforts by adopting an official life cycle that it uses to develop secure software,[...]"

Just what the hell is that supposed to mean?

Re:some serious evasion

[rewt66]

It means that Microsoft has (at least on paper) a process that (at least in theory) they follow that (at least in theory) will insure that the software they develop is (supposedly) secure.

However, as they say, "your mileage may vary".

Re:some serious evasion

[OglinTatas]

...by adopting an official life cycle that it uses to develop secure software...

it sounds like they end of life software that just can't be secured, and intend to be more dilligent in the future. Hopefully longhorn will be a reasonably secure OS (though I will never buy it). For example, windows 98 and NT have been end of lifed, and windows 2000 will not be supported many more years.

Re:some serious evasion

[Anonymous Coward]

"In a statement responding to Clarke's comments, Microsoft said it has formalized its internal security efforts by adopting an official life cycle that it uses to develop secure software,[...]"

Just what the hell is that supposed to mean?

It means that when they find enough insecurities in their software, they can declare it "end of life" and sell you a fixed version instead of giving you one.

You think "won't read newer file formats" is a mean way to force you to buy an upgrade? Wait until "won't be patchable against a known exploit" is standard.

Re:some serious evasion

[ignavus]

I think it means that some important office-holder at Microsoft is riding a bicycle around the corporate campus while trying to program. I guess he must be using a laptop.

Leastways, that /would/ explain the quality of the software coming out of Microsoft ...

Nobody listened before...

[silvershadow]

No one really listened to him when he was "Head of Cybersecurity"...I fail to see why that would change now.

Besides, everyone pretty much knows that Microsoft products are insecure...

The Real Culprit Is Software Reliability

[MOBE2001]

The security problem really has to do with flaws in software. Most viruses and trojans take advantage of defects in operating systems and applications such as email and browser programs. Microsoft is being targeted because they have a monopoly but all software is at fault.

Software is bad, period. And, contrary to what Frederick Brooks and others continue to claim, unreliability is not an essential property of complex software systems. Unreliability stems from a custom that is as old as the computer: the practice of using the algorithm as the basis of software construction. Switch to a synchronous, signal-based approach and the problem will disappear. For an alternative approach to software construction, see link below.

Re:The Real Culprit Is Software Reliability

[ma_luen]

Hmmm, I looked at your silver bullet link there and while I agree with some of the general ideas it has some serious problems.

First of all the discussion about Turing machines is very wrong. Turing machines are universial because they are basically as powerful as you can get in a computability sense. They can simulate multitape multihead machines just fine. Look at Siper's theory of computation.

Next, actor based computing is not new. It has been done in artifical intelligence as agents (see AIMA Norvig), the OS community as reactive computing (see tinyos) and it is becoming a hot topic for sensor networks. And in a sense it has been looked at via MPI and in some work on composeable software (oddly enough mainly in composeable network stacks). But no one knows how to do it and gets all sorts of wierd race conditions and odd resonant behavior. Baiscally it is all much HARDER to debug than simple sequential algorithms. So, it is interesting but without something more it certainly is NOT the silver bullet for program reliability.

Which brings us to the hardware comparision. CPU's are finite state they can be checked using symbolic execution or model checking. Both of these (currently) fail to scale up to handle even moderately complex approximations of software. (see Bebop, ACL2, or the work on predicate abstraction) So, yes finite state things are easy to verify, unbounded things are not.

Finally, it is not my area of specialty (and I don't like them) but the connection appraoch and COSA work look a lot like Petri Nets. You should really compare your work and work done in this field.

Anyway, I am doing a Ph.D. on software reliabiity and analysis. I am also interested in a message based (reactive) approach to some of the problems. I like the general idea the site presents (there are some serious issues with the details though). There is a lot of work out there that the author of the site has not looked at that would help them a lot.

Mark

Re:The Real Culprit Is Software Reliability

[miahfost]

Most viruses and trojans take advantage of defects in operating systems and applications such as email and browser programs.

They take advantage of the connection between OSes and applications. If the connection is severed they have less ability to replicate or cause harm.

Microsoft is being targeted because they have a monopoly but all software is at fault.

If you allocate memory incorrectly, you create security problems. In this way all software has faults. But the response to this problem, the fundamental architecture of the OS, and the ability to modify the source code are also major issues in computer security. Microsoft is targeted because they do these things poorly.

Re:Why listen to this weasel now?

[Anonymous Coward]

There was an occasion where they didn't bomb Osama because he was meeting with a Saudi prince.

It's odd, some people just don't want to learn

[SuperficialRhyme]

A friend here at college was having a spyware/virus problem that she wanted help with. I offered to help her if she'd use firefox afterwards to prevent this from happening again. She refused because she "likes using Internet Explorer." Even when I told her she could still use it for certain sites, but that it's best not to use it for web browsing.

I guess some people are too set in their ways. She couldn't name anything she liked about IE, just that she did, in fact, like it.

That's my experience trying to spread Firefox to some people who might be in your categories 1 or 2. The other people I've introduced to Firefox have all loved it.

*shrugs* She found someone else to fix it without the condition that she try to use Firefox. I guess it would be interesting to find out if she gets reinfected.

Re:It's odd, some people just don't want to learn

[poofyhairguy82]

I offered to help her if she'd use firefox afterwards to prevent this from happening again. She refused because she "likes using Internet Explorer." Even when I told her she could still use it for certain sites, but that it's best not to use it for web browsing.

Thats not how you do it. You do it by saying. "I'll clean off your computer, but I'm going to install Firefox while I clean it." Then, as the anti-spyware software finds 8 million things, you play up these instances as if in every single case Osama Bin Laden himself was trying to get into her computer. Then tell her the only way the evil boogey-men on the internet won't get her is if she uses the Firefox you already installed.

Don't give her a freaking choice. Scare her into doing it your way. In the modern world, the fastest way to bring change is through fear.

Re:It's odd, some people just don't want to learn

[SuperficialRhyme]

I'd rather not get extra work if I can avoid it. I'm busy enough =).

Re:Why listen to this weasel now?

[EpsCylonB]

I was (foolishly) hoping that this thread wouldn't get dragged into a left-right debate. I was wrong.


At the end of the day what other kind of debate is there ?

I like this guy more and more...

[Anonymous Coward]

... every time he goes public with something.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[grennis]

This tired rhetoric is not going to make them switch. In fact, when people like *you* rant about how stupid *they* are for using Windows, they end up just being alienated from Linux.

Especially when you refer to windows "crashing" or blue screens. Honestly, nobody who uses Windows XP can relate to this. What you need to is, in language that is not insulting or condescending, tell them WHY exactly they would be better off switching, without resorting to lunatic fringe advodacy and Windows faults that nobody has seen since the 20th century...

Yes, Government Regulation Is Always The Best Idea

[aaronhaley]

And always works out SO well.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[TheAdventurer]

I take slight offense to your comments. I am not stupid or lazy, and I use microsoft products because I'm TOO BUSY to hassle with the alternatives.

I do two things with my time; practice my musical instrument, and study physics. I don't have time to learn and administer a linux machine. I've tried, but it was just too much hassle given my aggressive practice/study shedule. My windows machine doesn't make me look anything up or go out of my way to learn how to use it because I already know how, so I stick with it and just cross my fingers and hope for the best.

Not every non-linux user is just too stupid to use linux. Get off the high horse there.

Re:Why listen to this weasel now?

[Anonymous Coward]

...or at lease someone who can read.

Follow the link - MOD UP PARENT!

[tm2b]

I think those interviews (which are identical, by the way) make it pretty clear that he's got a good head on his shoulders and has been tracking the issues. It actually makes me respect Clarke's other activities more.

Re:Follow the link - MOD UP PARENT!

[r84x]

I noticed that they were identical after I posted them.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[Beetle B.]

Switch? To what? Linux?

The OS, while it may suck a little, is not the problem. It's the fact that Microsoft bundled a whole bunch of poor quality software with Windows.

For most people, Linux is still not a viable alternative. Some distributions are easier than others to use, but all are a pain to maintain for those who do not want to go use the command line and edit sundry config files all over the place.

I used to tell all my friends, "Use Linux! Use Linux! Use Linux!" Now I say it only to tech-minded ones, because most people actually try it and come to me with a huge list of complaints.
I could solve all their problems for them, but that would only show that the Linux distro they tried is simply not good for ordinary users.

No - a better solution (for now) is to get people to use good software on Windows. I've managed to get people to switch to Open Office and they never regretted it.

Sites like Clean Software help (albeit is a little scanty now).

Re: not a politician

[EpsCylonB]

My knowledge of Clarke isn't very good, did he politicise himself or was he politicised by the Bush administration ?

Advising != Implementing

[Infonaut]

One of the central messages of Clarke's book Against All Enemies is that for several years he and many other people worked hard to make the system work better, but institutional politics made it practically impossible. In particular, cooperation between US government agencies was atrocious. FBI/CIA coordination was horrible, for example.

The framework established for the Cold War is not suited to the current realities. But knowint that is different than moving the huge icebergs that government agencies become as they expand and atrophy.

Re:Advising != Implementing

[Anonymous Coward]

But is calling for bringing the magic of institutional politics to ISP regulation. I would think his experience might argue against that.

Re:Advising != Implementing

[j1bb3rj4bb3r]

The framework established for the Cold War is not suited to the current realities. But knowint that is different than moving the huge icebergs that government agencies become as they expand and atrophy.

I watched the panel discussion at the RSA conference with he and Jamie Gorelick (one of the 9/11 commissioners). Ms. Gorelick told the following story (this is my recollection of the story, not verbatim):

On 9/11, when the first plane disappeared off the radar, they wondered what happened, but since this had happened before because of technical glitches, they didn't concern themselves. When the second plane dropped off the radar, they knew they had a problem. They bypassed normal protocol and called whoever it was to scramble the two F-16s that are chartered to protect the NE portion of the U.S. The fighter pilots weren't told what they were looking for however. Later, when they were interviewed, they were asked what they thought they were looking for, and they both replied that they thought the Russians had sneaked past. The fact is that the Russians had not been considered a serious threat for the past 10 years.

Her point was that our defense infrastructure was still operating with a Cold War mentality.

All in all, that discussion is probably the best I've seen so far at the conference.

LIke it't a big shock...

[Stephen Samuel]

What do you expect from someone who slagged Bush?

Re:LIke it't a big shock...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, doesn't matter what else he's got to say, he tried to make W. look bad.

He should be executed at once.

Re:LIke it't a big shock...

[demachina]

"Yeah, doesn't matter what else he's got to say, he tried to make W. look bad."

Making George W. look bad doesn't require any effort. He does it himself pretty much anytime he opens his mouth when there isn't a teleprompter telling him what to say.

Now if Clark tried to make George W. look bad and failed that would be a point of concern about Clark's competence ....

Co-incidence?

[Slash.er FX]

Does anyone else find it interesting that this article appeared after "Windows more secure" article?

Re:Will they listen? No.

[ABaumann]

What about OSX? Noone's ever accused that of not being easy.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[ScentCone]

But people really are stupid and/or lazy

I work hard, and I'm not (very) stupid. The disruption in daily operations for me to cut 40 live web and db servers, along with all of the code, over to Linux from Win2003/SQL/IIS/ASP/VB would be: total budget killer.

Just changing my group's desktops (including the dev tools, custom apps, storage, file structures, user environments, etc) and ignoring the desktops: total budget killer.

Much better off to talk about the suitability of the Linux stack for new business units, operations, or totally-clean-slate start-up companies. Of course, many new business units are spun off by too-busy growing companies, using people that are already hip-deep in their existing IT framework. This is NOT like deciding that, at home, this weekend, maybe it's time to switch. Any real change would occupy a typical department's people for man-months at least. Very few operations of any kind have that kind of slop in their budgets, as we're coming out of a recession and an only just now loosening IT cost clamp down.

I'd be organizing class-action suits, writing letters, storming Redmond with torches in hand

Maybe I would, but... I've had a busy day doing things for which I collect money, and which help my customers to make money. And I spent that whole day using MS products, none of which crashed, none of which picked up any worms, and none of which required a busy team of people to totally grok a new operating system or try to guess where they'd ever come up with time to do that.

Why these people put up with it most likely can be put into two categories: 1) ignorance, and 2) laziness. Either they don't know there are viable options, or they are too lazy to actually pursue said options.

Don't work in a very competitive, time-stressed, low-margin business environment, do you? Or are you 1) too ignorant or 2) too intellectually lazy to imagine that there might be actual, practical barriers to the quick adoption of something that's completely different and which would require hiring, consultants, and substantial risks? It's called inertia, and in tight economic circumstances, bosses and investors don't like to hear: "It's OK, it's completely different, and no one that works here has ever needed to compile code in order to patch something, but we'll figure it out before anything bad happens! Plus, it's free, other than the huge disruption, support costs, and unknown impact on all of our software! Relax, boss - don't be ignorant and lazy. Certain people on Slashdot have a magic Linux wand that they can wave to make this totally painless, instant, and more or less free."

Re:Why listen to this weasel now?

[Coryoth]

I was (foolishly) hoping that this thread wouldn't get dragged into a left-right debate. I was wrong.

Before resorting to foolish hopes I usually consider Fisher's Deduction:

"The more issues a person tries to artificially shoehorn down into a Liberal/Conservative dichotomy, the more certain you can be that the person is an American."

Then consider what percentage of Slashdot posters are from the US. Odds are if an article has any political aspects there will be a number of posters who feel the need to cast it into a false dichotomy. It's exactly this sort of situation that memes like Fisher's deduction were created to help alleviate. Do your part and spread the meme.

Jedidiah.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[Darth Maul]

You'll notice I did not mention Linux. If anything I would want these Windows users to switch to Apple. So, a bad assumption on your part that I meant Linux. Of course Linux is not right for everyone. Apple appeals to more of the demographic I outlined in my original post.

So there! ;-)

Its about COMPATIBILITY, nobody will switch

[DickBreath]

People will not switch from Microsoft until an alternative system is compatible with all of their favorite spyware, adware and worms.

Re:Its about COMPATIBILITY, nobody will switch

[jamesl]

People will not switch from Microsoft until an alternative system is compatible with all of their favorite spyware, adware and worms. ... and games.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[Darth Maul]

How about switching to a Mac? There are more alternatives than just Linux. Anyone who lets spyware run rampant on their Windows box is probably not the type that will want Linux.

How about have the Windows users start with switching their browser to Firefox? That would help quite a bit as far as virus and spyware concerns go.

Richard Clark is a liar

[MBraynard]

'Given their record in the security area, I don't know why anybody would buy from them.'

Given his record of watching Al-Queda grow into a major threat under his watch in the Clinton administration, I don't know why anyone would trust him.

See here.

I suppose there is some nievete (however you spell it) regarding Clark. All of the press coverage he got initially - from the 60 Minutes interview forward - were part of a well orchestarted campaign to sell his book. He had a particularly good publicist. Most of the time when someone on the left starts getting a lot of publicity like that, it is really part of a media campaign to sell a book. Same situation with that fraud Joe Wilson whose investigation into yellow cake claims were to simply ask the leadership of the countries in question if they had provided the radioactive material to Iraq.

If you listen to Clark talk, he sounds like a guy who is BSing. The stories about Bush pressing him to connect Sept. 11 to Iraq, etc. They just sounds rediculous and have been refuted by people who were in the meetings that he acknoweldges were present.

The only thing that Richard Clark ever did was approve flights for members of Osama bin LAden's family in the US out of the US and into Saudi Arabia shortly after the attacks. Funny how Michael Moore missed that when he used that as evidence to try to prove some special relationship between Bush and the house of Saud.

Re:Richard Clark is a liar

[Anonymous Coward]

If you listen to Clark talk, he sounds like a guy who is BSing. The stories about Bush pressing him to connect Sept. 11 to Iraq, etc.

Funny, I get the same feeling listening to Bush himself. Then again, I'm probably the only one who gets that impression. Pffffft.

Re:Richard Clark is a liar

[binder520]

"Most of the time when someone on the left starts getting a lot of publicity like that, it is really part of a media campaign to sell a book."

Richard Clark is a registered republician.

Re:Richard Clark is a liar

[Ed_Moyse]

As others have noted he's a republican, and not on the left.

Apart from that, you call him a liar and yet provide no evidence. How exactly has he lied? He may have made mistakes with the benefit of hindsight, but then he's also apologised (has anyone else?) One of your damning pieces of evidence is that he "sounds like a guy who is BSing" ... so shouldn't your comment more properly have been titled "*I* think Richard Clarke is a liar".

Personally I thought he was extremely eloquent and surprisingly honest when I watched him giving evidence. I was very impressed.

P.S.
naivety
ridiculous
acknowledges
orchest rated

Re:Richard Clark is a liar

[saddino]

The only thing that Richard Clark [sic] ever did was approve flights for members of Osama bin LAden's family in the US out of the US and into Saudi Arabia shortly after the attacks.

Clarke's memo to Condoleezza Rice dated January 25, 2001 shows quite plainly that Clarke was urgently asking the White House to start moving on al Qaeda eight months before 9/11. Now that it has been declassified, you can see the actual memo here. [PDF link]

That doesn't look like "BS" to me. In fact, it suggests that "his record" shows a true concern in getting the Bush administration up to speed on what he felt was a huge threat. In the memo, he says "We urgently need such a Principals level review..." Rice finally held his requested meeting on September 4, 2001.

So what's the "only thing" he ever did, again?

Re:Richard Clark is a liar

[Jherek Carnelian]

Apart from that, you call him a liar and yet provide no evidence.

If it's good enough for Rush, then it's more than good enough for you!

Re:Richard Clark is a liar

[MBraynard]

So what? He is on the left because he is attacking the prez. He may not personally be "liberal" but the left uses them as his tool.

Re:Richard Clark is a liar

[binder520]

Did you ever critize President Clinton? From your definition of "LEFT," that means that you are part of the Left Wing too!

Re:Richard Clark is a liar

[shanen]

Shucks, I don't understand why you Busheviks don't use the anonymous coward option. It saves more people from seeing your tripe. The problem with marking you as a foe is that there is a limit of 200 there, and there are apparently more than 200 idiots using /. these days.

Faulty Logic

[susano_otter]

1. You believe it is typical of politicians to lie.
2. Therefore, you do not like politicians (understandably).
3. A politician says something that coincidentally happens to echo your own preconceived notion of The Truth.
4. Therefore, rather than being consistent in your analysis of politicians, and taking this as a clear sign that you should reevaluate your notion of The Truth, you assume that this politician is not lying.

Perhaps this is good enough for you, but "happens to agree with Slashdot User # 154885" isn't really a compelling counter-argument to "politicians lie".

It is not odd

[einhverfr]

Many people are afraid of their computers. They feel like they don't understand Windows (as Linus says, *Nobody* understands NT) and they feel helpless.

They also remember how hard it is to learn how to use Windows and they don't want to repeat the learning experience.

In the end, as Linux makes its way into the corporate desktop market, people will warm up to it because they will be forced to learn it at work.

The fact is, IME, Linux is *easier* for a newbie to learn than Windows, and once you get beyond the basics, the learning curve is still easier.

Re:It is not odd

[SuperficialRhyme]

This wasn't Linux though. This was only Firefox. *shrugs* If you want to you can use it just like MSIE.

Re:It is not odd

[einhverfr]

Same principle applies. People are afraid of the learning curve.

Re:It is not odd

[Moofie]

What learning curve? We're talking about a WEB BROWSER. You click on links. There is no learning.

Re:It is not odd

[einhverfr]

Right but to a person afraid of computers, there is at least the *perception* of a learning curve.

Yeah...

[game kid]

...I loved him in American Bandstand; it's too bad he had a stroke and missed last ye--dammit, I have dyslexia you insensitive clod!

Re:Will they listen? No.

[C3ntaur]

I've been wondering about this a lot myself, but I've come to realize that there's more to it than just the pain of being a Microsoft bit^H^H^Huser. In a world where everyone else uses Microsoft, interoperability and compatibilty are key. I've been using OSS (various flavors of Red Hat, mainly) as my sole desktop OS for 5 years now, and it's the little things that kill you. Yes, OpenOffice will read and write MS Office files, but try dealing with format translations between Word and Writer documents, for instance.

One time I sent my resume, written in OpenOffice Writer and exported to Word format, to a potential employer. By chance, I sent the same document to a friend asking for constructive criticism. One of his comments was to not use daggers for bullets -- the default round bullet symbol in OpenOffice had been interpreted as daggers in Word! Needless to say, I never got a call from that employer.

I believe that this particular problem was not deliberately caused by the programmers of either application. But that was then, and this is now. Make no mistake: Microsoft is very aware of the threat that OSS poses, and they will go to any length to maintain their stranglehold on the market. Stories like this one are just the tip of the iceberg, and I fully expect things to get worse in the near future.

Re: not a politician

[McSpew]

My knowledge of Clarke isn't very good, did he politicise himself or was he politicised by the Bush administration ?

Clarke was a civil servant/bureacrat during his time working in the US government. He never ran for office and his service was never a sinecure in exchange for political contributions. He served in various capacities under three Presidents (Bush the Elder, Clinton and Bush the Younger). It wasn't until he had spent time working for Bush the Younger that he began publicly criticizing anybody in the US government. He did so after resigning from government service.

Bush the Younger's entourage began to politicize Clarke and his work in an attempt to discredit him. It didn't work particularly well, although for some reason, US voters chose not to punish their President for his lousy track record on terror.

Anybody who has read Clarke's book can see for themselves that he is not some raving madman. He's a professional who has made a career out of imagining the worst, figuring out who's likely to do bad things, and then trying to get others to do what's necessary to prevent the bad things or capture/arrest/kill the bad people. His failure, if you can call it that, is that he was unable to get the current US President to take al Qaeda and the threat of International Terror seriously until after 9/11, and even then, the President was more worried about Saddam Hussein and Iraq than he was about Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[RM6f9]

Does OSX run on AMD pc compatible hardware? Apple is *expensive*.

MS Integration

[tres3]

Ahh, the other side of the integration issue. MS says it has the right to keep throwing everything into their OS (I'm just waiting for the kitchen sink app) without acknowledging a fundamental fact. If Firefox or Mozilla gets hacked, cracked, phished, etc. then the bad guy has gotten into a computer with the priviledges of the user running the app. After MS integrates Internet Exploder and Media Slayer into the OS when one of those gets hacked the attacker is already in the OS and has the priveldges of the OS kernel! One hole in anything that MS calls part of the OS and the entire house of cards comes crashing down. This is the reason that U*IX has many small tools that get linked together to perform a job. MS has one monster of a tool that they currently call XP and if you can find a hole in it then you can get into everything else.

Re:MS Integration

[sqlrob]

IE and Media Player run at user level privilege, so quit the FUD there.

The reason a hole in one brings the system down isn't because they are integrated, it's because most users run as admin. Firefox holes with the user as an admin will have the same result.

The problem is that you can't rip one out and replace it with something less buggier. Don't like Firefox? Replace it with Opera. Don't like IE? Tough luck.

Re:MS Integration

[tres3]

I'll take your word for it as I haven't used anything MS for a few years and don't really want to take the time to research this too deeply. I do have a question though: IE is tightly integrated with ActiveX and Windows update, can a user - not running as admin - update the software on their system? Another question, since Media Player uses tightly integrated DRM in the latest version, are the DRM keys/watermarks/whatever stored in a place local for the user so that each user has a different set or are they stored somewhere globally so that they are unique for each computer instead of each user? If that is the case then there must be some form of priviledge escalation in order to access them.

I'm not trying to spread FUD but I do know that many MS users fall over all kinds of security issues that don't seem to affect non-MS users. And Apache should stand out as a light on the dark claim that MS gets hacked because they are more popular. And a final point: I have yet to come across a Linux distro that does not practically force you to create a user account and warn you against running as root; why doesn't MS do the same -- tell users that they should create a non-admin account and use it for everything except reconfiguring the computer. Further MS should explain in more detail the risks that are associated with running as Admin.

Re:MS Integration

[sqlrob]

IE is tightly integrated with ActiveX and Windows update, can a user - not running as admin - update the software on their system?

No. Only admins can update using Windows Update. Other software it depends on the software. Most require admin level privilege, but there is seldom a reason for an installer to really, really need admin level (writing to c:\program files, shared installs, installing a service/driver are the only non-laziness reasons for requiring admin)

Another question, since Media Player uses tightly integrated DRM in the latest version, are the DRM keys/watermarks/whatever stored in a place local for the user so that each user has a different set or are they stored somewhere globally

I haven't (and won't) use media player and it's DRM, so I'm not absolutely sure, but I think there is a "Licenses" folder for each user.

ell users that they should create a non-admin account and use it for everything except reconfiguring the computer. Further MS should explain in more detail the risks that are associated with running as Admin.

No argument here. I think they should make some settings non-changeable for admin (e.g., annoying red background) for admin level users to force a change. The big problem is that way too much (non-MS) stuff requires admin level privileges. And most of that is because of ignorance or copy protection.

Re:MS Integration

[tres3]

Thanks for the response. I'm not trying to spread FUD here but the U causes the F. Since I'm uncertain as to how many undocumented API's there are (it is documented that a number of MS apps use undocumented APIs) I would be in fear that one or more of these may be able to do things that side-step their internal security. In Linux it is necessary for an app to eventually get kernel privs to do things like read/write to the hard drive. Although some of these APIs have been found to be lacking in checking the data that is sent to them they have usually been cleaned up pretty fast. The Windows' APIs are an unknown without source code but the undocumented ones are the really scary ones: they could be written to work faster than their documented counterparts by intentionally failing to perform needed checks. It would be extremely hard to fix a -- not really broken but lazy/fast API -- if a number of other MS apps used it and some cracker did discover how to exploit it to side step the internal security. In the long run I believe that the weakest point in any operating system is person in front of the keyboard and education is the only thing that can effect the way said individual performs certain tasks.

Re:MS Integration

[bob beta]

MS says it has the right to keep throwing everything into their OS (I'm just waiting for the kitchen sink app)

Please note: It is certain versions of GNU Emacs that have a little kitchen sink as the icon.

Re:MS Integration

[bob beta]

Don't like Firefox? Replace it with Opera. Don't like IE? Tough luck.

Actually, I have installed and used several instances of Windows 2000 where I immediately installed Mozilla and never, ever, used Internet Explorer (except through the Windows Update icon). I even used the 'TweakUI' provisions to remove IE from the desktop and remove 'favorites' from start menu, etc.

At one point on one of said computers, I decided to try Internet Explorer.

There was no Internet Explorer icon in the start menu or toolbar, etc. It proved to be quite difficult to get one back.

It is quite possible to use a Windows desktop, with Mozilla, and completely lose track of the Internet Explorer application.

Re:MS Integration

[sqlrob]

IO and such runs at kernel level, much as it does in Linux.

Unlike Linux, The graphics subsystem runs at kernel level, so bugs there can be dangerous. This isn't quite as bad as it sounds (well, at bug level, not vulnerability). It's stupid as heck for servers, but for user systems it really doesn't matter. So what if your computer doesn't crash when your graphics subsystem crashes, you still can't do anything about it.

The other big issue is that IIS 6 runs some at kernel level. Linux has Tux as an option, I don't know if it's an option or always happens with IIS 6.

But you're right, the biggest issue is the user. MyDoom was one of the fastest spreading viruses ever, and it didn't use any vulnerabilities

Re:MS Integration

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll take your word for it as I haven't used anything MS for a few years and don't really want to take the time to research this too deeply.

Really? And if you know nothing about your topic, why did you bother to open your mouth in the first place?

(In response to your unasked question, I'm not anti-Linux, I'm anti-idiot. (With apologies to Scott Adams.))

Re:MS Integration

[tres3]

Linux has a frame buffer device that DOES run at the kernel level so possible problems can arise there as there are versions of X that utilize the frame buffer device. X itself runs with root priviledges but drops them as soon as it sets up the appropriate sockets, in some cases (old mice) it also has to echo mouse movements to a socket for use in text consoles (while X runs on another console), and there are a few keyboard functions (for password entry) that demand access directly to the keyboard so that something can't stuff the buffer or snoop on keystrokes but they have to be explicitly called for each string entry. X also needs to be able to talk to the video card and that requires elevated privs but once the connections (be they ports that need accessed or a section of video memory for display/fonts/textures/etc.) are established they remain established even after the X server drops its priviledges.

So what if your computer doesn't crash when your graphics subsystem crashes, you still can't do anything about it.

That statement is not true. There is a kernel hacking feature that will enable you to send keystrokes directly to the kernel, safe on single user systems - not multi-user systems, and if it is enabled Alt-SysRq-K will reset the keyboard and enable you to switch to a text console so that you can kill the X session and then restart it. You can also use another computer to log into the one w/ a crashed X session and reset the X session. You can also send signals to the programs running in the crashed X session and most of the programs will exit gracefully saving their open files at that time. This is one of my favorite features in Linux as it can still be gracefully shutdown and rebooted if need be so that the disk buffers/caches are properly flushed but most of the time I simply need to resatrt X.

The biggest culprit here is the OOM (Out of Memory) killer; when the kernel runs out of memory it can either halt or try to find something to kill (failing an alloc request is cool if a program wants the memory -- if the kernel wants the memory then it tends to insist on having it). This tends to happen after the machine hasn't been rebooted for a few months, has 5+ Mozilla windows open with 10+ tabs in each (I once counted 67 tabs open at once), a mail reader, a development environment, various other small programs, and a girlfriend with her own X session running on a different terminal with a boat load of her own stuff. When that happens the OOM picks something to kill in order to free up some memory so it doesn't have to panic and halt. I'm convinced that Murphy wrote this algorithm as the odds of a particular program being killed seems to be related to the number of unsaved files (it can't risk asking the prog to gracefully exit as the prog may try to allocate memory thus creating a race condition).

The kernel will panic if a disasterous situation happens but mine hasn't in years. Nvidia and ATi distribute binary drivers for their video cards that are linked with the kernel and therefore add all of the problems that Windows has with the graphics system crashing the whole computer. To combat this problem the kernel hackers have implemented a tainted flag that gets set anytime a module is loaded into the kernel with an unapproved license. They won't even investigate problems in that situation. I talked to a very talented Windows programmer that told me that Windows originally had the video drivers isolated from the kernel but performance was very poor; the solution was to put the video stuff into the kernel. Any truth to that? I think that he was referring to the first version of NT.

Tux - the HTTP server in the kernel - has been removed. I think the only reason that it was ever placed there was to achieve awesome benchmarks and it succeeded there. It wasn't so much of a security risk as it only served static web pages and passed anything more complicated up to Apache.

About the user: years ago I worked for a local computer sh

Re:MS Integration

[sqlrob]

. It is my understanding that in WinXP you need to fully log out and relogin as Admin to access elevated privs. Am I correct?

No, depending on setup. There's fast user switching, which is a variant of terminal server. Think virtual desktops.

There is also a "run as" service that let's you run a program as any user. I haven't used this heavily and I haven't run into any problems, but there are reports of issues with it, with things losing the granted privileges.

I didn't know about the Linux graphics running at kernel level, although a framebuffer does make sense. I've only developed for Windows, and it's what makes me the money. However, I know enough about the internals that it's no where near my preferred OS. I refuse to use it at home.

Re:MS Integration

[sqlrob]

You lost track of the application, but not IE.

Did you use Explorer or did you get an alternate shell? Explorer == IE.

Re:MS Integration

[Bambi Dee]

Is there anyway to get access to elevated privs in Windows without quiting your current work session?

Usually I use a "runas /user:administrator cmd.exe" .cmd script for an admin command prompt and then start the control panels or management console snap-ins I need from there (they're the *.MSC and *.CPL files in %SYSTEMROOTt%\system32, Windows Update is wupdmgr.exe). You may want to add .CPL to the PATHEXT variable. Explorer can be runas-ed as well, but must first be set to run separate processes (checkbox somewhere under "folder options: view"). "Run as..." is also available from the context menu.

Re:MS Integration

[bob beta]

Explorer == IE

Why does that matter if web links don't lead to it, and clicking on HTLM files on the desktop (or in a file manager) brings up Mozilla? My point was- literally nothing I did revealed a 'favorites' list, nothing I did could cause IE to pop up. It was actually WORK to reverse this behavior of the system (not that I wanted it, except to see if it could change back)

Re:MS Integration

[tres3]

Thanks for the reply. I don't use Win that often but at least now I can show my friends that do how to run their systems in a safer manner as I always seem to get drafted to clean their systems up for them. A quick question: where did you learn this trick? Is it in the documentation anywhere or did you just pick it up from another guru along the way? The reason that I ask (I assume that you read the thread) is that MS makes no real effort to teach their customers how to properly use their computers. Unfortunately ease of use applies equally to the computer's owner as well as mal-ware authors. I haven't even read the new manuals since XP shipped; is there a quick start guide and if so does it mention the need to create a non-admin account?

Re:MS Integration

[sqlrob]

It's still a vector into the system (help files, HTML Mail sent to Eudora are two things that come to mind).

Re:MS Integration

[bob beta]

You can turn off 'Use Microsoft HTML viewer' in Eudora, and in fact I have.

Helpfiles are a tertiary path to trojans. It's pretty unlikely a cracker is going to slip a helpfile in somewhere.

It's about as dangerous a 'vector' as having a sendmail binary sitting around, not running, on a Unix system.

Re:MS Integration

[Bambi Dee]

You're welcome, and thanks for not making me feel like an idiot for using Windows ;). How did I find this "trick"? I'm not a guru at all, just poking around. "netsh.exe? Net Shell? What's that for?" - "Let's try mounting this volume inside the shared docs folder!" - "There's got to be a way to run explorer as admin without killing the process first." - "Wonder if I can get KDE to run!" - just like that. Doesn't mean I know what I'm doing. (And KDE stopped at the splash screen.)

I'm sure it's all mentioned in Windows' "Help and Support" somewhere (there's a cmd.exe reference and an explanation of the ACL stuff - at least in XP Pro, the Home Edition may not have all the same features). And then there're websites like Kelly's Korner. Yes, the built-in "Help and Support" is the closest I've seen to a manual; not sure there're any inside the retail boxes or for the "server" editions. The flimsy brochure that comes with the XP OEM discs is more like an introduction to the new GUI elements.

I share your impression... "not running as admin" doesn't appear to be part of the Microsoft Way except to keep other people from messing up. (In fact it's recommended to make them admins too in case some Win9x/DOS/misbehaving app doesn't run properly. No other workarounds are mentioned -- at least not where I looked.) I guess they wanted to make it look user-friendly above all. After all they didn't really bother newbz with the firewall either until SP2.

Good luck with your friends' computers...

Re:Will they listen? No.

[jon3k]

If I were a customer of Microsoft, I'd be organizing class-action suits, writing letters, storming Redmond with torches in hand....

While that all sounds well and good, if you ran Microsoft products, you'd be way to busy patching systems and rebooting to do anything. I know I am ...

Re:Will they listen? No.

[ABaumann]

Mac Minis start at $500. Expensive?

Re:Will they listen? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

For technology from 2 generations ago, yep that is expensive. I feel sorry for the dolts who buy into that con and think they are somehow getting their money's worth.

Apples vs. Oranges

[Locke2005]

The study was comparing RedHat vs. Windows 2003 servers, not desktops. Most of Windows security holes have to do with the naive design of IE, Office, and Outlook. The Microsoft web services, on the other hand, were probably mostly copied from BSD, and thus fare much better in the security department.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[ABaumann]

The bundled software is what's crappy? Umm... OS X is a perfect example of this one. Programs do crash in OS X, however, Windows happens to like to crash with the programs that run on it. I would have to say that makes the OS poorly designed.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[Bastian]

No, I think it's just that people don't understand computer enough to make informed decisions about them on so many fronts that i'ts all they can do to just stick with what is most popular. I mean, to get people to switch to Linux, we have to start with explaining to most people what Linux is, and given how many times people told me their web browser was something like Word, Windows, or Google back when I was working tech support, I think you're going to find that to be difficult.

Much easier to suggest people switch to the Mac, on many levels. But to get people to seriously consider that, you have to get them to reconsider a whole host of things they've never really thought seriously about, such as:

-I need a fast CPU.
-Macs aren't compatible. (where compatible == 'the Platonic form for compatibility')
-Macs don't run the apps I need. (assume this means Word and a web browser)
-I have to play video games. A lot.
-Viruses are a serious problem for all computers.
-Spyware is a serious problem for all computers.
-Crashing is a serious problem for all computers.
-Constant headaches with system failures, bit rot, and software/hardware installation is a serious problem for all computers.
-Macs are too expensive. - cf.) "I need a fast CPU"
-etc.

Overall, I'd say most of this comes from ignorance born of laziness. I don't believe that it is difficult for most people to understand computers. I think most people are just too lazy to put out the effort to really learn how they work. I mean, Christ, my father - the guy who taught me how to edit config.sys and autoexec.bat files - now regularly calls me up to ask me to install new software (it's still shrink-wrapped when I get there) and how to do simple things once it's installed ("Hey, could you read this manual for me? I'm too lazy to do it myself.").

Re:Will they listen? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG, Open Office? Now I KNOW you are lying. Get real dude.

Point of View

[bill_mcgonigle]

You can look at it that way or you can look at it as political theater/ grandstanding at the expense of the 9-11 families.

If Richard Clarke was in a position to represent the executive branch that would be different.

Re:Point of View

[commodoresloat]

If Richard Clarke was in a position to represent the executive branch that would be different.

Ummm, he was Counterterrorism Czar. In other words, he was in a position to represent the executive branch, and the executive branch had failed the public in the months leading up to 9/11. That's why he felt the obligation to apologize.

Re:Point of View

[bob beta]

Or, he had quit or been drummed out of the executive branch, and chose to 'apologize' as a move of political grandstanding. Clearly after he left the administration, he felt/feels he has a right to criticize from the outside.

Re:Point of View

[commodoresloat]

Why the hell wouldn't he feel that he has a right to criticize the administration? Do you really need to be reminded about the first amendment? And as a former member of the administration I would say he's in a position where his critique is relevant. And as a former member of four administrations, I would say he's in a unique position to criticize this one quite credibly. The fact that he's hardly the only former Bush Administration criticizing it (Scheuer, O'Neill, Kwiatkowski, Wilson all come to mind, for example) only underlines that he has a point worth listening to.

As for him grandstanding, that's ludicrous. There's not a shred of evidence in his career of that kind of move. Have you even read his book? Read it and then tell me you don't think he's being sincere. What would his motive be for grandstanding? This is someone who remained a public servant for decades; do you think he suddenly had a change of heart or that he was planning for over thirty years for this final move? Anyway, it's silly. His book would have sold whether or not he apologized. His criticism would have had roughly the same impact. He apologized because he was part of an administration that failed the American people. The problem is the Bush administration won't admit mistakes, no matter how deadly they are.

Re:Point of View

[bob beta]

As for him grandstanding, that's ludicrous. There's not a shred of evidence in his career of that kind of move.

Umm, he 'apologized' for 9/11.

Listening to Richard Clarke

[tlmatters]

As a bona fide news junkie, my opinion after watching this guy across many networks for the last several years is that he is most interested in his own reputation. Not by exhibiting stellar ethics or by being correct on the issues, but by gilding the facts to best deflect the personal criticism of the moment.

As far as his statements in S.F. regarding Microsoft's security practices, he has a good point. But said security practices are so bad, someone mentioning it is akin to a toddler informing me that water is wet... it doesn't take a highly developed intellect to come to the conclusion.

Considering Richard Clarke's Clintonesque respect for 'the facts', why would anyone give him a serious ear? Most especially on a topic where he isn't saying something both true and unique from what other people are saying.

The left in America (I'm sorry, the People's Republic of America) seem to love the guy, but for the open minded who desire to learn more about him I submit:
Time Magazine article from 03/2004
Security Focus from 02/2003
The Daily Standard from 03/2004

Ethical men give you the facts like a recording, beware of folks who's version of what they call 'facts' develop over time, especially when they take a self serving direction.

Re:Listening to Richard Clarke

[the arbiter]

"beware of folks who's version of what they call 'facts' develop over time, especially when they take a self serving direction."

Oh...you mean like the reasons the Bush administration gave as to why we're fighting a war in Iraq! I get it!

1. WMDs!
-then-
2. Fighting the terrorists!
-then-
3. Bringing democracy to the poor Iraqi people!

I'll be most careful to beware of both Mr. Clarke (a registered Republican) and Mr. Bush (also a registered Republican) in the future.

Thanks for helping me out. I've been having a really hard time being able to tell who was telling me the truth since Reagan was president. You've cleared it all up for me.

Re:Listening to Richard Clarke

[ideath]

> The left in America (I'm sorry, the People's
> Republic of America) seem to love the guy, but for > the open minded who desire to learn more about him > I submit:

People's Republic of America. That's cute.

It's probably true that a great number of people who want to believe Clarke's account are anti-Bush, but that hardly means they're liberal. I know a great number of conservatives who have no love for Bush or his administration and their policies (foreign or domestic, take your pick).

Even as cosmetic details in Clarke's accounts of meetings with the President differed, the points he made are clearly valid. Even the people who don't like him and feel he's an opportunist agree with him on that account.

You can dress a cat up like a pirate, that doesn't change the fact that it's a cat.

P.S. I'm not sure what that last bit means, I just like the image.

Re:Listening to Richard Clarke

[tlmatters]

Hi Arbiter,

Just some quick facts for anyone else that dips into this thread regarding the reasons the Bush administration gave for invading Iraq:

On Feb 05, 2003 Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a briefing to the U.N. on why we were seeking to finally call Iraq on the carpet after their years and years of ignoring Security Council resolutions. CNN has a transcript here, the White House has a better one here with the presentation slides in-line with the text.

In reading the presentation, Sec. Powell gave two of our main reasons for what was to become an invasion of Iraq: WMDs and the horrible event of a rogue state like Iraq mixing their WMDs with terrorism. Anyone can read the intercepted communications and view the graphical materials for themselves and I think understand why we did what we did.

Not that it means anything as I am the epitome of a nobody, but I certainly would have done the same thing as the administration if I was in their shoes. With years of this type of intelligence from not only our own security agencies, but those of other countries as well... countries of varying 'friendliness' to the U.S., it made the most sense considering the world we live in. Of course some will disagree with that conclusion.

So as far as points 1 & 2 above, I don't see any facts changing there or being pushed after the failure to find WMDs.

On March 19, 2003, President Bush addressed the nation to explain that hostilities were underway in Iraq and to explain yet again why we were taking those actions. The first sentence of his address, from March of 2003, was:
My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger. (emphasis added)

So there is bullet point 3 from above. As you can see, all of those ideas were open and honestly on the table almost two years ago. They didn't come about after the fact. They didn't come to life to distract from the inability to find WMDs. They have always been there. I could cite other instances but that should be enough to make the point.

Please note however that the name of this military option was "Iraqi Freedom". So named by military planners with direction from the administration long before we heard it from President Bush in March of 2003.

Another way to respond would be this:

Many years ago when I married my wife, the fact was that I loved her more due to physical attraction and the fact that we had been friends for quite some time than anything else.

After many years of marriage, I can say quite honestly that being physically attracted to my wife is not my answer today. My love for my wife today springs from the fact that she is a wonderful mom to our children, she is deeply devoted to our family, and of course remains my best friend. That's a good thing too because no matter the amount of healthy living you mold your lifestyle around, age will eventually catch up to you in rather shocking and unseemly ways.

If I'm fortunate to have many years in the future, I'm quite certain my answer then will change as well. The example of motherhood won't be so prevalent then being replaced by the future's needs, etc.

That isn't changing facts over time. It is giving new facts their due while not denying the validity of past facts. My point with my sappy tag line is to be wary of people that would seek to tell you that what they maintained in the past was true, was in fact not true (while refusing to categorize their past stance as being mistaken). They were either lying then, or lying now. In any case, they make a great case for distrust.

Re:Listening to Richard Clarke

[SuiteSisterMary]

of a rogue state like Iraq

See, here's the rub. What makes Iraq a 'rogue state?'

They're not a Democracy? Ooops, neither is Saudi Arabia.

Also, if they're a 'rogue state,' why did America sell them arms during their war with Iran, where America had previously helped overthrow a democratically elected leader, and reinstall the Shah, which led directly to Iran becoming a theocracy?

Al Quaeda

[oil]

Well, no one in the Bush Whitehouse listened to him about the threat from Al Quaeda before the 9/11 attacks, so why would Microsoft bother to listen to him.

Re:Al Quaeda

[eventhorizon5]

>Well, no one in the Bush Whitehouse listened to him about the threat from Al Quaeda before the 9/11 attacks, so why would Microsoft bother to listen to him.

Well, considering that Microsoft donated 60% of their $3.1 million of political donations to the DNC last year, I'm sure that they'll listen to him, even if he's not really that competent in security.

-eventhorizon

Re: not a politician

[Your Pal Dave]

Here's an interesting interview with Clarke which discusses some of this history. It's part of the background material for the Frontline documentary "The Man Who Knew" which is also viewable online.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[ABaumann]

I happen to own a 12" 1 GHz PowerBook running OS X. It happens to start up, load applications, and play World of Warcraft better then my girlfriend's 2.5 GHz HP laptop or my father's similar 2.5 GHz Compaq machine (both running Windows)

But I must just be a dolt thinking I'm getting my money's worth on a machine that seems faster and less buggy from my perspective.

What? Sorry you'll have to call back later

[Anonymous Coward]

The executives are having a 'team-solitaire' meeting right now (except they got hacked!!!). It's ok though, they called Microsoft, signed a new deal for more software, and made the in-house IT people install it ASAP. After their 'team-solitaire' meeting, they can get back to ....you said something about security or something, didn't you?

He needed to do it

[Anonymous Coward]

Well he was the Terrorism Czar... it was his job to prevent this sort of thing. If the Prez was ignoring his warnings then he shoulda resigned.

Re:He needed to do it

[Anonymous Coward]

He did; too late, is all. But in any event, the only thing that he would have achieved by resigning earlier would have been to avoid blame for himself. Sometimes a person in that situation feels obliged to make an effort in spite of a lack of support from above simply because they believe that the alternative is worse. (See also: Colin Powell.)

atlantic monthly article

[flacco]

richard clarke wrote a fictional piece in The Atlantic Monthly - "looking back" from the year 2011 at terrorist activity.

one of the interesting parts was that, "looking back", much of the world had switched to open source software because it was more secure.

zerg

[Lord Omlette]

Given that a previous story today was "Study Finds Windows More Secure Than Linux", we now have to take the word of the guy who foiled the Millennium Plot but fucked up 9/11 over a "Linux fan" & a "Microsoft enthusiast".

Tough choice.

No, no and no!

[Locke2005]

The hardware will run other software (Linux, BSD, and Solaris) and any Freshman business student can explain to you the principle of "sunk costs": it doesn't matter how much you've already spent on something, if you can get a better return by throwing it out and replacing it, then you throw it out and replace it!

No, the real reasons are 1) Everybody is already trained to use the Micrsoft software. Retraining them is expensive -- upwards of $2000 per person and 2) Managers don't get to be managers by admitting they made mistakes -- ever! If you were a company executive, would you admit that all that software you advised the company to buy a few years back was a steaming pile of manure? No, you apply whatever bandaid fixes you could and hope nobody notices. So far, Microsoft has done a good enough job of supplying bandaids that nobody notices they are bleeding to death...

Re:No, no and no!

[chia_monkey]

" any Freshman business student can explain to you the principle of "sunk costs": it doesn't matter how much you've already spent on something, if you can get a better return by throwing it out and replacing it, then you throw it out and replace it!"

It's a great theory...but do you know anyone that really adheres to such principles? Really? In theory, communism is a good plan too. I'm not trying to shoot you down or anything, I'm just saying that REAL human behavior does not often follow sound rules of logic.

Your reason number one was what I was saying...a new monetary and time investment not only in hardware/software but also in training. And you're exactly right with number two. "Hi boss...I screwed up and suggested crap. So, can I have a raise now?" Not gonna happen.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

so they would rather put up with the crashes, spyware, and everything Microsoft, and just call it the norm.

You know, I have been running Windows for the last 10 years, and I have never had any spyware. With the last release or two of their OS, I haven't had a problem with crashes. With a simple firewall (i.e., the router), I haven't had any problem with intrusions and worms. I'm not running a server on it at the moment, but neither are 99% of the rest of the world.

It's a shame. But people really are stupid and/or lazy. That's why they won't start listening to anyone about this stuff.

Yeah, they just keep spouting the local groupthink without giving the "opposition" credit for its strengths. They don't acknowledge that what's in front of the monitor makes orders of magnitude more difference than what is behind it at this point.

I like Linux. I prefer it to Windows. I like the command line, programmability, text file customization, and the transparency of what is going on. However, most of the applications I use at work won't run on Linux, and I have to make a living. Windows has improved a great deal over the last 10 years. There's a lot to complain about, but there's a lot to complain about in Linux, as well. At this point I mostly complain about Microsoft's mindset, and not Windows' quality. YMMV.

Who to hate more

[Brian Brian]

This is a tough call. On the one hand I know MS software is not what it should be and I don't like MS business practices. On the other hand, Clark has blatently contradicted himself numerous times and is not reliable either. So is it still the enemy of my enemy is my friend or do I just ignore them both. The good news is that MS software sucks either way. :-)

Re:Who to hate more

[Anonymous Coward]

Clark has blatantly contradicted himself numerous times and is not reliable either.

Where? Where? Where? I so _want_ to hate this guy, and many of the anti-Clarke news articles that I've ever read make this claim, but I've never seen it supported. It's like that guy who referenced the Stephen F. Hayes article earlier in this thread -- the article is there, and Hayes is certainly filled with anti-Clarke-ism, but the article doesn't show me a single quote where Clarke contradicts himself. I mean, WTF? Same goes for the Time article posted earlier. There's alot of smoke around here, and there's GOT to be a fire, but I haven't seen it yet.

Re: not a politician

[flacco]

He's not a politician, he's a civil servant. There is a huge difference there.

it always amuses me when those self-infatuated whores (politicians) slander "beaurocrats" who have kept things up and running for years before the whores got there, and will keep them running for years after they leave.

i know it's mostly shameless fawning and flattery of the voters, but still...

Reading Clarke

[commodoresloat]

If you want a frightening read, you should pick up the January 2005 issue of the Atlantic, which has an article by Clarke that is supposed to be a voice from the future (Sept 11, 2011) -- assessing the war on terror ten years later. He has some chillingly realistic scenarios for massive terrorist attacks on the American homeland which start in July 2005 as I recall. Not only do the scenarios seem realistic; he also footnotes each one extensively, showing with evidence how realistic these ideas are.

The U.S. needs more people like Clarke in public service. Not because he spins a good yarn, but because he has consistently offered lucid and nonpartisan analysis of the terrorist threat throughout his career. It is shameful that rather than responding to his arguments the Bush Administration went into attack mode, and even more shameful that the Democrats were unwilling to make Bush's failure in the war on terrorism a bigger campaign issue.

Re:Reading Clarke

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw that article republished (maybe extracts from each year, not sure) in an Australian newspaper; I really didn't believe that the answer to every threat was to hand over more of our civil liberties to the government, as he seemed to. (e.g. right to travel, right to assemble, etc.)

Re:Reading Clarke

[commodoresloat]

I don't know what you saw, but he certainly doesn't think the answer is to give up civil liberties either (in fact he's been pretty adamant about that).

Re:Reading Clarke

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, if you want a frightening read, just go to NYTimes on line and check out the op ed page. If someone doesn't do something about the folks in power real soon, there isn't going to be a voice from the future.

Too Bad...

[GReaToaK_2000]

It is too bad that he waited till he was the FORMER White House blah blah blah cybersecurity dude to say something...

Why didn't he say these things when it counted, not after the fact.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[unixbugs]

Linux needs to earn my respect by catering to my laziness.

Ill bite.

When I sit in front of a Linux install I am bombarded with information. My senses are overload and its a real rush. Freedom is good word for the feeling. This feeling may not appeal to the masses who are so used to having cake and eating it too while not knowing where the cake came from or what is in it. When I sit in front of a Windows installation I feel like I'm getting dumber with each click, and cant help but wonder what the hell is wrong with people who swear by it. Its like staring at a brick wall and trying to get work done.

I can understand your sentiment to an extent but geez man, Linux was never about laziness. RTFM as they say. I can easily picture a version of Windows that you can use without even knowing how to read. I guess that can be a good thing if you never intend to learn anything. Proactive contribution and learning is what is going to drive us forward, not laying around on our fat asses blindly clicking on things we barely understand. I know we arent all rocket scientists but that doesnt mean we have an obligation to live up to that Lazy American stereotype either. Sooner or later you have to ask yourself if you are really getting what you pay for when you buy in to some OEM PC+OS EULA from hell. That thought alone might actually cater to your disposition.

Granted we can all live our lives how we choose but personally I believe morality alone is cause enough to at least acknowledge that there is a bigger issue at hand here. You really are either part of the problem or part of the solution, and I can state factually that buying in to a monopoly is not going to benefit anyone but the monopoly holder in the end. That is the nature of the beast, and taking over other markets using a monopololistic advantage is illegal for this reason. Are you willing to work until you die just to "be lazy" sometimes or are you willing to understand that people like us have the advantage when it comes to creating something we can all use and prosper from in the long run? Its called equilibrium. The guy who theorized it won the Nobel Prize. Gates on the other hand is not likely to be a candidate for that award any time soon.

Mod Parent Up

[commodoresloat]

And mod that susan otter whatever the fuck troll down. Clarke was cybersecurity czar because he has expertise in the field, and as cybersecurity czar, he made it a point to inform himself about the issue (and he had a staff that saw to it that he did a damn good job of it). I'm not sure why people are in attack mode on Clarke about this issue -- this is different from attacking the Bush Administration during an election year. But the trolls, apparently, are out in force. You don't like Clarke's qualifications -- fine -- but then please at the very least name someone more qualified who contradicts him on this point.

Re: not a politician

[northcat]

Yeah. Politician try to screw up people. Civil servants succeed.

Insecurity System

[Doc Ruby]

Yesterday, in a Manhattan Chamber of Commerce presentation, Microsoft's CIO Ron Markezich came out to take a Q&A. Most questions were softballs, but two really stuck out, showing Microsoft really is at least as out of touch as it is "evil".

Markezich had detailed how his IT department did more than just support 90K desktops worldwide. The were the first consumers of MS software - MS "eats its own dogfood", as Markezich said, and nothing gets released without Markezich's department signing off, after supporting it for months, if not years. A question from the audience asked "I've been using Internet Explorer for 4 or 5 years. It has so many issues, new ones all the time. So much so that when something like Firefox comes along, it knocks IE out of the leadership. What good is all your testing, if it can produce something as bad as IE"? While there are few good answers to that question, Markezich offered probably the worst possible: "I don't know, it works for me". He said he doesn't have IE problems, that they were surprised that it had all the problems in the field, that he doesn't have to install all the patches MS releases, because he doesn't have the problems they address. Astonishing. Remember, this is the CIO of Microsoft, responsible for all their IT globally, including release of their software "when it's ready".

Another question described, anecdotally, getting a black desktop and mysterious prompt warning that the computer had a security compromise, and the user should click to install important MS security updates. But the user wasn't sure the prompt was from Microsoft, though it claimed to be, and the next click could completely trash a compromised computer. Their question was "how can I tell that a warning and recommendation is from Microsoft, and trust it", considering scams like trojan horses and phishing messages. But Markezich laughed it off, treating it like a weird request for personal tech support - saying "call MS for tech support". I'd have thought that his IT department would be familiar with the scenario, and the issue, and that the question would easily trigger whatever was Markezich's stock response, like "Longhorn will make sure that if a window says "Microsoft" in the title bar, that it's a message only from MS software, or some other lie he made up on the spot. Instead, it's obvious that that kind of social engineering security hole is news to him, though it's been addressed in, say, Java, since day 1.

There is no Microsoft security. There is only spin control. The marketers, and their lawyer "quality control" agents, control the whole company. Even their CIO just takes their marching orders. Without their monopoly, they'd be a joke, game over. As it is, such performances as we got in midtown yesterday have the smell of a dying beast.

Re:Insecurity System

[Anonymous Coward]

Markezich certainly wouldn't be the first CIO on the planet who didn't know a f*cking thing about IT.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[Cyno]

Viruses are a serious problem for all computers.

No, just some OSs. Never had a Linux virus.

Spyware is a serious problem for all computers.

Same thing here. What is this Spyware you talk about? Never seen it on Linux.

Crashing is a serious problem for all computers.

Okay, yes, my computers crash too. Sometimes more than once a year.

Constant headaches with system failures, bit rot, and software/hardware installation is a serious problem for all computers.

Bits can rot? System failures? Is that like crashes? Software/hardware installation is not a problem for my Linux systems. I once replaced a motherboard with a whole different motherboard in my RAID server and the system automaticly detected and configured my software RAID when I put the drives on different controllers and in a different order without me needing to edit a single file. It simply works. I plug in a new firewire card or whatever, chances are I have drivers for it already. Except those open source DRI drivers for some video equipment. But 2D always seems to work , sometimes with minor tweaks.

Macs are too expensive. - cf.) "I need a fast CPU"

Macs are too expensive. I need a fast CPU, too. I need a dual-core 3+ Ghz CPU today for under $200. *sigh*

But I think it all boils down to laziness for most people. I mean, who really wants to learn how these things work, besides me? But at least I offer my services for free to early Linux adopters.

Re: not a politician

[bkirkby]

as much as some people feel the need to whitewash Clarke's motives, the reality is that thee is a very real motive for this guy to cover his ass.

he didn't come out and start complaining until after he was let go and it became obvious that an inquiry into intelligence failures of 9-11 were going to happen.

he quickly jumped on the "not me" wagon by trying to control the discussion. he did this by pointing fingers at everyone else in the hopes that people wouldn't notice that he spent most of his time at counter-terror advisor in the 90's concerned about non-existent Y2K and "cyberterrorism" problems when he should have been more interested in Osama bin-Laden and Al-Queda.

-bk

His OTHER comments on ISP security. Be very afraid

[Alsee]

Clarke said he would want to see government regulation of ISPs to ensure that they offer adequate levels of security to their customers.

He gave a speech at a Global Tech Summit back when he was the President's Cyber Security Advisor. Here's a link to it.

And let me give you a few select comments from that speech:

I think we need to decide that from now on IT security functionality will be built in to what we do, to the products that we bring to market.

TCPA, the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance, is an example of bringing hardware and software manufacturers together. But TCPA is not enough.

It is not beyond the wit of this industry to figure out a way of forcing down patches

ISPs and carriers can insist that when cable modems and DSL hookups are made, firewalls are installed. It is not enough for an ISP or carrier to say, oh, and by the way, you might want to think about a firewall.

A law to require ISP's to impose security on their customers. The security he means is TCPA, also known as Trusted Computing, TCG, Palladium, NEXUS, Longhorn and about 42 other names. And using this system they can "force down" operating system patches, whether you want them or not. Of course you can't get onling in the first place without an approved operating system (Trusted Linux is in the works, but you'd be screwed trying to use it). It can also scan what software you are running, in order to insist that you are running an approved firewall and/or virus scanner. And any other software they feel like making mandatory.

Of course it will be a few years before ISP's could do this, almost no one has a Trusted Computer yet. But as Clarke said, the system is to be built into all the products brought to market. Samsung announced a few months ago that they are now manufacturing nothing but Trusted systems. IBM, Dell, and pretty much any PC maker is already selling Trusted system and that will only increase. Microsoft has announced that only Trusted hardware will be properly compatible with the next Windows release, Longhorn. If Longhorn runs on non-Trusted hardware at all, it will only run in a crippled reduced graphics mode. So once Longhorn comes you you can be sure all new PCs will be sold Trusted compliant only. Give it a couple of years after than for the normal PC replacement cycle and *poof*, the majority of PC's out there will be Trusted compliant. And at that point ISPs could very well impose such a security system. And anyone with a non-Trusted computer would be unable to get on the internet. Anyone who did have a Trusted computer but who wanted to control his own computer and software would also be unable to get on an internet.

Clarke is no longer the President's Cyber Security Advisor, but there are still draft poposals in the government for forcing this through. There's really not much point in them doing anything publicly until more Trusted PCs ship. They'll probably wait for Longhorn to come out and start getting established.

-

Just wait....

[theendlessnow]

I just got a message letting me know that my account had been sending out a lot of spam and it came with an attachment to help clean the virus off my system.

Now that's good proactive security. Everyone will be receiving their message soon. Keep up the good work!

Re:Just wait....

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone will be receiving their message soon.

At least everyone on your Outlook maillist will be!

I doubt it

[WindBourne]

To be honest, he should have had problems calling OSS communist, yet he had none.

OSS is the exact opposite of communism. Communism is a command structure (think a small group of ppl telling you what you will buy/cathedruial) vs. Linux, where it is a total buyers market since the playing field is level.

Re:I doubt it

[Anonymous Coward]

Communism is a command structure

Huh? In true communism no (wo)man is greater than or lesser than any other. You may be referring to totalitarianism, which exists in both leftist and rightist variants.

Re:I doubt it

[Knetzar]

Does that mean that Open Source(tm) is capitalist?
Everyone does what they do because it benifits them?

Hmmm...I can no longer tell if I'm making a joke or not...

Re:I doubt it

[1u3hr]

OSS is the exact opposite of communism. Communism is a command structure (think a small group of ppl telling you what you will buy

Well that may be the case of most (all?) countries that call themselves "communist", but it's not what the concept is -- the state is supposed to wither away after a transition period, when we achieve the true workers' paradise.

Just about any political concept can become a "command structure" in practice, it's just human nature for power-crazy psychos to rise to the top when given the opportunity (do I need to mention the current US leadership...) After a revolition it's particularly likely when the former ruthless leaders of a guerrilla movement take power and find they enjoy it, regardless of their espoused democratic principles. Kudos to the original American revolutionaries -- they saw that coming and managed to avoid it -- even GWB will be gone in three years

Re:I doubt it

[Feztaa]

Yes, Open Source as a development model is a form of free-market capitalism.

Re:I doubt it

[NoOneInParticular]

True as that may be, but when the likes of Bill Gates are referring to OSS as "communist", they're not referrer to socialist paradise, but the 'evil empire' that once was the Soviet republic.

In that sense Microsoft is damn closer to totalitarian practice (like every company) than OSS.

Re:I doubt it

[1u3hr]

True as that may be, but when the likes of Bill Gates are referring to OSS as "communist",

Don't let Gates define what "communist" or "OSS" mean. (Re)defining words is a way of changing the terms of debate, demonising your opponent before he starts. Eg "guerrilla -> terrorist", "infringe copyright -> steal", etc.

Re:I doubt it

[Ohreally_factor]

You've actually hit upon something interesting. OSS is inherently neither Capitalist nor Communist, thus it's wrong to speak of it as anti-Capitalist or anti-Communist.

Certainly various aspects of OSS might be viewed with pleasure or displeasure by a Communist or Capitalist ideologue. And if you're a Capitalist whose business model is threatened by it, it shouldn't be surprising that you'd attack it as a form of communism, especially if you're not known for your high regard of the truth.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[RM6f9]

No, not a dolt, but really: When I built my AsusK7M Athlon700 Win98SE system, with 15" monitor, keyboard, printer and mouse it cost me $1200.00: I knew *nothing* of open source or linux at the time. Now: How much would it cost to buy your Powerbook set-up? It seems very much like you're attempting bait (minimac) and switch (powerbook), when the original post and my reply were on the topic of *Linux* (learning curve, secure, minus games functionality) vs. *Windows* (known quantity, less secure, plus games) - your replies are irrelevant. If you want to be helpful, discuss Linux capabilities with regards to games.

Re: not a politician

[HD Webdev]

Anybody who has read Clarke's book can see for themselves that he is not some raving madman. He's a professional who has made a career out of imagining the worst, figuring out who's likely to do bad things, and then trying to get others to do what's necessary to prevent the bad things or capture/arrest/kill the bad people. His failure, if you can call it that, is that he was unable to get the current US President to take al Qaeda and the threat of International Terror seriously until after 9/11, and even then, the President was more worried about Saddam Hussein and Iraq than he was about Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden.

It's a testament to the character of that man in that he was the first person to come forward and publicly apologize for 9/11.

I've read the book he wrote about the events before and after (as he saw them) and have followed articles about him. I get the distinct impression that he is the type of person who has 'what if i had have done X' thoughts tormenting him quite often.

Re: not a politician

[Doc Ruby]

He left in disgust because the Bush administration is criminally incompetent to protect us, though it will instantly blame people like Clarke for its failures. The administration is very competent at media manipulation and killing the messenger. Look at Clarke's recently declassified 1/25/2001 memo warning Rice about al "Qida". He documented (for internal, secret consumption) the steps taken in the 1990s to stop bin Laden, and the steps necessary to stop him permanently. The month before al Qaeda had been documented as attacking the USS Cole, but even that escalation wasn't enough to keep them on anyone else's radar at Bush HQ. Clarke "covered his ass" because his ass was right, and everyone else ignored him. You're just repeating the neocon spin, blaming Clarke with a smokescreen designed to cover the rest of the "team's" failure to protect us, or even admit we'd failed.

Chris Rock

[PhYrE2k2]

In the words of Chris Rock: "Now, go buy yourself a bouncing car"

The real reason people don't switch

[dustmite]

She found someone else to fix it

You've just hit on the real reason people don't switch ... it's because they always find some geek they can sucker into cleaning up the mess each time, for free! Most people don't even have to lift a finger to keep their systems free of malware - there are geeks running around everywhere literally doing free maintenance - it doesn't even so much as inconvenience them, why would they change?

Why exactly are we all running around spending hours of our own weekends/evenings etc. cleaning up the mess Microsoft made for them for free? Is your time and expertise worth nothing? You feel "expected" to do it because it's a family member? Or some hot chick sweet-talked you into doing it by flirting a little? (We all know we've done that before). Utter nonsense ... start charging for it!

People will start considering alternatives when they realise it's going to cost them a tidy little packet every time their systems get jammed up with the latest MS malware.

I simply told my folks last time they bought a computer, if they buy Windows, I'm not supporting it for them, if they buy a Mac I'll support it for them. Don't expect me to spend my Saturday doing free support work for Microsoft.

Re:The real reason people don't switch

[einhverfr]

You've just hit on the real reason people don't switch ... it's because they always find some geek they can sucker into cleaning up the mess each time, for free! Most people don't even have to lift a finger to keep their systems free of malware - there are geeks running around everywhere literally doing free maintenance - it doesn't even so much as inconvenience them, why would they change?

You still have issues of lost productivity. This is more likely to stimulate demand on the corporate level than on the consumer level though.

Re:The real reason people don't switch

[dustmite]

You still have issues of lost productivity. This is more likely to stimulate demand on the corporate level than on the consumer level though.

True, although corporate systems tend to be a bit easier to secure than home systems, e.g. you have an IT guy who installs a firewall. But it's still a big problem even in corporations, I've seen examples of truly massive productivity losses due to being overwhelmed with viruses and spyware in organizations where there was little in-house expertise, so the people didn't understand what was happening at all. But because they don't understand, they just end up paying a 3rd party a lot of money to clean it up, and assume that all this is just a normal part of using computers, that that's just the way things are. ("Microsoft's biggest and most dangerous contribution to the software industry may be the degree to which it has lowered user expectations." - Esther Schindler)

On the consumer level, Windows is a serious problem, and I think the only thing still holding Microsoft up in this market is the massive army of "geeks" who voluntarily run around continually patching up their friends/relatives/girl-they-have-crush-on etc.'s PCs.

Re:The real reason people don't switch

[the arbiter]

You hit it right on the head.

Friends, family and acquaintences have all been told they'll have to go elsewhere for the help unless they buy a Mac. I won't even let them pay me...they've got to get the phone book out and start digging around for someone else if they want to stay on the Windows platform.

I'm on strike, unless Microsoft wants to start sending me checks every time the user allows spyware installs or clicks on that magical email attachment. Not necessarily Microsoft's fault as such, but the OS should be designed to prevent users from doing stupid things to it, and it's not.

They resent it, of course, but I do this for a living (sysadmin). I'd like to do other things in my off time. And two family members now own Macs.
Oddly enough I still don't have to do any support. Those damn Macs pretty much run themselves.

Re:The real reason people don't switch

[westlake]

You've just hit on the real reason people don't switch ... it's because they always find some geek they can sucker into cleaning up the mess each time, for free!

You couldn't snare a Geek here if you set out free beer and a wet T-shirted Hooters gal as bait, not that anyone is trying. I'll let you in on a secret: Most Windows users live a Geek-free life. They have no contact with the Geek community and share almost nothing of its values.

Re:The real reason people don't switch

[Eivind]

Most people wouldn't like charging say their own parents to fix a problem with the computer (or car, or plumbing, or tv-antenna -- this is nothing specific to computers)

But they can do what I did; When my father had problems with his Windows (not viruses or malware, but problems nonetheless) I told him that sure I could fix it, next time I come visit him, in easter.

I also told him that offcourse if he had Linux I could've fixed it tomorrow evening because Linux is 90% maintenable over the internet. (90% because I'd not be able to fix problems which prevented him from getting online)

So, next time I visited he got Linux alongside Windows in a dual-boot configuration. 2 months later Windows stopped working for whatever reason. "but that didn't matter, because I just continued using Linux" my father said. Another 3 months later he had filled up his harddisk, and wondered if there was something I could do to free up space. Well, there's always that windows-partition that haven't been working for the last 3 months anyway, I said. Today he's Linux only.

Turns out there's not *that* many people willing and capable of fixing windows. And suffering without a computer until the next time I visited and fixed things was a bigger nuisance than the rather minor retraining he had to do on Linux.

Re:The real reason people don't switch

[PeteDotNu]

It's not that simple.

Last weekend, I attempted to switch from Windows to Linux for the second time (the first time was a few years back, when I gave up because Mandrake it wouldn't detect my modem or soundcard).

Though I was impressed with the progress, I've again decided to stick to Windows, for two major reasons:

1. I have a Lexmark X5250 printer/scanner unit which won't work in Linux.

2. I have converted all my CDs to MP3s and stored them on a large second hard drive (NTFS). Though I can mount this as read-only under Linux, I can't update it.

There are a number of minor niggles too, but these two are the major ones. I /could/ buy a new printer, yes. I /could/ buy a third hard drive, format it with a Linux-friendly filesystem and copy everything across. I /could/ continue to dual-boot, choosing my OS on the basis of which tasks I am going to want to carry out today.

But none of these options are really what I was looking for right now, especially not the third one, which fails to address the problem entirely.

I am sure that 6 months after Longhorn is released, Microsoft will announce that they will no longer support XP. I expect that at this point I will probably attempt to switch to Linux again, and perhaps I'll get lucky the third time.

Re:The real reason people don't switch

[themusicgod1]

Why exactly are we all running around spending hours of our own weekends/evenings etc. cleaning up the mess Microsoft made for them for free? Is your time and expertise worth nothing?

Doing good works is part of living a good life, you capitalist asshole. Not everything must be driven by the dollar.

People will either listen to reason, or they won't, but that's no excuse for me not to help them. (btw, This is coming from a geek who has pretty much run out of food and possibly money atm.)

Re:The real reason people don't switch

[psymastr]

Don't expect me to spend my Saturday doing free support work for Microsoft.
I'd rather spend my Saturday masturbating and playing EverQuest than help my friends out! It's just more fun.

Re:The real reason people don't switch

[Phisbut]

Doing good works is part of living a good life, you capitalist asshole. Not everything must be driven by the dollar.

I will always agree on helping someone who made a mistake because he didn't know better. We all do stupid mistakes in life. However, someone who refuses to learn and repeat the same mistakes over and over again doesn't deserve my time and effort. It's not because I'm a capitalist asshole, it's because I wouldn't even be helping him by just fixing his computer.

Re:The real reason people don't switch

[Jakeypants]

"cleaning up the mess Microsoft made for them"

It's Microsoft's fault? I guarantee you that if Linux were the dominant platform, she'd still have a system full of spyware. She'd run everything she could download that would give her a bunch of smiley faces or cursors or weather alerts. Don't pull a /. and blame Microsoft for an irresponsible or uninformed user (not stupid).

FYI I'm on an XP system, and I've been using this install for over a year. Ad Aware and Spybot have only found tracking cookies and software bundled with AIM.

Re:The real reason people don't switch

[dustmite]

You DO know there are and have been many bugs in IE that allow a website to install spyware right onto your computer by so much as VIEWING the website, don't you? Would you like to point out where these bugs also exist in Linux? Would you like to show me how the Linux model allows for a user in a web browser to install software as root even by clicking on something in a web browser? Thanks for your "insight", but sorry, -1 FUD. Honestly, learn something about software system design before rushing to defend Microsoft and blaming the users, you might be surprised.

Re:The real reason people don't switch

[Jakeypants]

Well, if I was going for karma, I'd make fun of Microsoft like everyone else. But I stand by my point - my dad's Windows XP system is in terrible shape because of how much spyware he's installed. He's a very intelligent guy, but he doesn't know how to be cautious with his system. No matter how many times I tell him not to install shitware, he just wants his Pacific Poker games and his WeatherBug alerts.

As for the IE vulnerabilities, sure, there have been plenty throughout the years. But my point is that a vast majority of spyware installs are a result of a user that doesn't know better, and as a constant IE user, I haven't been affected by any since I started using XP. 98 and ME (ugh), though, don't get me started. I really urge you to try IE and Windows again.

PS: I don't know why I'm bothering, looking through your post history (speaking of FUD), I'd say you care way more about hating Microsoft more than you care about liking Linux. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. If you don't mind, though, please send me a link that will install spyware without my approval on my system.

Re:The real reason people don't switch

[dustmite]

through your post history (speaking of FUD)

I'd be most happy if you could point out anything in my post history that is false. Saying something negative isn't FUD if it's true. There's an increasing tendency on /. these days to criticise any "Microsoft-bashing", even when it's true.

hating Microsoft more than you care about liking Linux.

Who said I like Linux? I can't recall saying that anywhere for at least several years now. I think it certainly has a better overall design in terms of security than Windows, and other (but not all) aspects of the operating system design are better too, but I'm really not crazy about Linux and although I think it makes a great server system (for a clued up admin), I don't advocate it as anything other than a server system, because it is definitely not ready for home users i.e. joe public. I think that Mac is currently the best operating system for home users (unless of course someone wants to run games or some other critical Windows-only application, then Windows is the way to go, but that's not because Windows is better, it's because the games just don't run on Macs).

You suggest that the best solution to malware problems is user education, i.e. a technically literate user base. I used to think like that too, some years ago. Eventually I came to the conclusion that computer systems should be designed for humans, not the other way round, and people should not need to have to spend so much time learning about computers especially when it is possible to build better computers that aren't so susceptible to malware. MS systems are as susceptible as they are not because "that is just the way computers are" but because MS has never cared about quality, and this should be obvious to anyone who has been developing for MS systems since DOS 3.

Now, although I think that the general Linux security model is better designed than that of Windows (e.g. default user is essentially root), I don't suggest that Linux is super-secure compared to Windows. Why? Because there are still many exploitable bugs that crop up in the software written for Linux, e.g. Apache, SSH, sendmail and so on. Now these are mostly server applications, sure, but until recently many distros default install would enable some of these. And invariably somebody finds the exploits, and then joe "Home User of Linux" is screwed. This has improved in recent years, with distro publishers realising 'the obvious' that these things should be turned off by default (and in fact I recall they were slammed at the time even by "anti-Microsoft" Linux advocates on /., because these were known principles at least a decade prior). Anyway, this is a similar story on Windows --- many of the security problems historically were not because of the 'lesser' underlying design i.e. spec, but because of flaws, i.e. mistakes in implementation, e.g. MS Blaster exploited a buffer overflow in the RPC service. Then there were stupid decisions, e.g. up until XP SP2 a number of ports e.g. SMB were open by default to the whole world and could not be restricted based on subnet - just enabled totally or disabled totally. The XP SP2 firewall however was absolutely the best thing that ever happened to Windows security, as well as enabling automatic updates by default. Ultimately, Linux is not all that dissimilar to Windows, in that both are crazy, hodge-podge systems hacked together at an unreasonable pace to market, although there are many differences too that such a statement hides. I've always liked the more disciplined BSD approach to security. One of the BSD versions used to boast on the front page of their website: "Four years without a root exploit in the default install". Now that reveals some devotion to security that historically has been "somewhat absent" from Linux and "largely absent" from Microsoft. Both have improved.

I don't care much for Microsoft for other reasons as well though, e.g. their shady anti-competitive product practices, product tying and so on. But mostly I dislike like that they have always placed "quality" at the bottom of the list of priorities (all other problems stem from this), and this will always remain true as long as Bill Gates runs Microsoft.

Re:The real reason people don't switch

[dustmite]

Well, if I was going for karma

Oh yes, I don't bash Microsoft because I'm "going for karma". I couldn't care less about karma, and these days there are so many blindly pro-Microsoft zealots on /. that I sometimes get -1 troll or flamebait because of it. I bash Microsoft because I really don't like the company, and I really don't like the company because I'm just one of those "old-timers" who's really been around a long time and watched all their shady unethical moves over the last 15 years and watched all their technically inferior product offerings usurp better products because of clever strategy and deceptive marketing.

I know Microsoft's marketing is churning out the "new, kindler gentler Microsoft" image in full force, and a lot of people even here are buying into it, but when you actually bother to read about their strategies, they haven't changed a bit. E.g. they still often blatantly outright lie in press releases. I've also had direct experience with Microsoft as our company has tendered for and done work for them, and I can tell you they are, well, 'not nice people'.

Re:The real reason people don't switch

[Jakeypants]

OK, that's fair, sorry I jumped to conclusions about you so quickly.

Silly admin... You don't do it that way ;-)

[einhverfr]

I work hard, and I'm not (very) stupid. The disruption in daily operations for me to cut 40 live web and db servers, along with all of the code, over to Linux from Win2003/SQL/IIS/ASP/VB would be: total budget killer.

Ok, lesson in best practices:

1) Migrate gradually and without downtime. Start by migrating the applications to PHP or Perl with a database abstraction layer. This may be slow. Then you can switch out the OS for Linux with no downtime if you already have load balancing (and very little downtime if you don't). Then you can work on moving to PostgreSQL. Expect that this will take 5 years on average ;-)

Ok, so your company doesn't want to hire a full-time employee to do that? Push out the deadlines and migrate app by app and server by server over a longer time. I.e. migrate code first then servers.

Just changing my group's desktops (including the dev tools, custom apps, storage, file structures, user environments, etc) and ignoring the desktops: total budget killer.

Migrate tool by tool. Then you can switch the rest of the OS with little shock.

Note: My first thought about IBM's Linux desktop migration was "it is going to take much longer than the 2 years they are targetting." Again, this is not something you just switch. It is something that takes years.

Or it could have been that....

[glrotate]

a bunch of practicioners of the religion of peace flew airliners into the World Trade Center while he was busy telling everyone that the biggest threat America faced was cyberterrorism?

Re:Will they listen? No.

[RM6f9]

"Linux was never about laziness." No, but computing and playing games *are* about laziness - computers are tools to help us do more faster: If I'm spending my time learning a new OS, that's time I'm not being productive. Or enjoying my recreation (games). Bash Windows all you want, until Linux can show real competitive advantage in ease-of-use, it will continue to be a minority on desktops. Do you drive an alternatively-fueled vehicle, or do you support the monopolistic petroleum industry? Do you live in an alternative-framed home, or do you support the monpolistic lumber industry? I use tools that I find useful. I have Firefox installed, I have Open Office installed, and I am s-l-o-w-l-y learning about Linux, as I want my next system to be a 64-bit AMD, run fast, without any windows on it at all. Want Linux picked up by more people sooner? Make it easier to use. Nobody has to *like* the 900 lb. gorilla known as american intellectual laziness, but it's where the *vast* majority of market share is. Personally, I'm thankful for it in others, it keeps me employed.

MS didn't have ANY anti-[virus|spy] software until

[MMHere]

Strictly speaking, Microsoft didn't have any anti-virus or anti-spyware software.

That is, until they acquired Sybari Software Inc. in order to fill this gaping need.

The acquisition itself proves MS had little to offer internally. They simply bought it from outside.

Is Sybari's stuff any good?

Competent, hardly.

[glrotate]

Back in 98 Clarke was telling people that Cyberterrorism was America's biggest threat.

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/specials/hackers/cyberte rr or/

Re:His OTHER comments on ISP security. Be very afr

[SunFan]

"ISPs and carriers can insist that when cable modems and DSL hookups are made, firewalls are installed. It is not enough for an ISP or carrier to say, oh, and by the way, you might want to think about a firewall."

While his comments about TCPA are open for debate, this particular comment is right on the money. The fact that so few Internet-connected people use firewalls is not just appalling, it's also disturbing, upsetting, and pitiful all at once. That Microsoft didn't provide a firewall earlier is simply negligent. I mean, really, if OpenBSD can get a whole new firewall, a good one, within a year by only a few people working on it, Microsoft has no excuse at all.

Re: not a politician

[bkirkby]

and your bitch is the obvious "believe anything bad about bush no matter how ridiculous" response we've come to expect from "progressives".

the memo cited was rpesented late january 2001. it didn't talk about any specific threats and bascially just asked for clarification about what responses we should do against al-queda.

the problem with the view that clarke was disgruntled becasue the administration wouldn't listen to him about al-queda is that clarke wasn't concerned with al-queda when he left. instead he was the "cyberterrorism" czar and he was pissed that the adminsitration wasn't taking "cyberterrorism" seriously enough.

i'm sorry, but noone has ever died becasue of "cyberterrorism" and focusing on military actions against terrorism sponsoring states (like afghanistan and iraq) should certainly take precedence, no matter what clarke thought.

-bk

We Need more federal control

[Anonymous Coward]

Only by increasing federal control over all communications can we ever hope to be safe. As the ultimate monopoly, Government can only be expected to do an even better job than Microsoft at protecting us from terrorists and bad guys.

I, for one, welcome our new (old?) government masters.

Re: not a politician

[Xoro]

Good as the Bush people are at playing "not me", your "analysis" doesn't work here. Even if Clarke totally blew it himself (and I doubt your insinuation) his critique of the rest of the administration was still wiltingly accurate. If he was such a fool, why didn't someone else -- say, the National Security Advisor -- pick up the ball? Because the memos didn't give seat numbers? Your lame attack only proves his case.

Whitewash indeed.

Sweet!

[kuzb]

can we criticize whitehouse security next?

A bit old, but an amusing read.

In a recent issue of The Atlantic

[JeffTL]

Clarke was talking in thinly concealed terms about a Windows worm being theoretically put out by America's enemies, resulting in a shift towards open-source operating systems.

I wonder if some of the viruses that cause so much trouble are in fact backed by scumbags like bin Laden -- there have been a lot more dangerous Windows viruses since roundabouts 9/11, it seems to me, so I wonder if that's a function of an increase in terrorism, or just the suckage of Windows XP, which came out October 25, 2001. If 19-year-old Russians, the usual suspects, can do so much damage, imagine what people who will not hesitate at suicide can do -- it is frightening at best.

Re:In a recent issue of The Atlantic

[MarcQuadra]

But Bin Laden doesn't WANT unorganized chaos and death. This is a common misconception of mose Americans. If you actually READ the stuff Bin Laden says, his goal is to get us and our influence out of Muslim lands.

If Bin Laden wanted to kill as many Americans as possible, there'd be people getting shot at malls and suicide bombs in America EVERY DAY. Trust me, there's a LOT of available suicide manpower here in the U.S., they just aren't tapped beause the goal of terror is to make a point and get your needs met.

We could stop AlQaeda in ONE DAY if we stopped giving Israel (a leading EXPORTER of arms) aid and a blind eye, and brought our 'stabilization troops' that prop-up the House of Saud back home. Instead we march right into the foray at great human, moral, and financial cost.

If AlQaeda made a computer virus, it would have a payload that showed messages on the screen of your machine like "Stop supporting Israel and I'll stop planning attacks." or "There were NO beheadings before Abu-Gharib, and we behead only those directly involved with the occupation" or even "Click -HERE- to see what U.S./Israeli millitary action inspired me to take revenge on YOUR towers."

Re:In a recent issue of The Atlantic

[bob beta]

We could stop AlQaeda in ONE DAY if we stopped giving Israel (a leading EXPORTER of arms) aid and a blind eye, and brought our 'stabilization troops' that prop-up the House of Saud back home. Instead we march right into the foray at great human, moral, and financial cost.

No, I think that would kickstart them into a bloodbath machine. Maybe not here, but the streets in the Middle East would flow with blood to an unprecedented degree.

Re:In a recent issue of The Atlantic

[Legion303]

"If 19-year-old Russians, the usual suspects, can do so much damage, imagine what people who will not hesitate at suicide can do"

Yeah, they might try to discredit MS and drive people toward open source software. Oh no!

I somehow think terrorists have priorities other than writing computer viruses, spreading AIDS, selling pot to kids, backing gay marriage, and whatever other idiotic nonsense people try to credit them with. Flying planes into buildings and making fertilizer car bombs are not exactly cutting-edge attacks. The claim that these same people are going to start writing viruses is just ludicrous. Yahoo's website being down for a week isn't going to make people have the same reaction that a subway bomb will.

What "Trusted System" means.

[jimbro2k]

According to the DOD definition a "Trusted System" is a system with the ability to BREAK your security settings.

You (maybe are forced to) TRUST that the trusted system will do so only in your(?) best interests. You don't trust anyone else.

Trusted systems are not normally systems that have earned your trust from years of service to you, they are by nature, hierarchical systems to which you surrender your trust.

Is there anyone or anything you really trust that much?

Re:What "Trusted System" means.

[jimbro2k]

and of course, for this to work at all, the trust must be irrevokable.

Are you really, really sure you trust anyone that much?

Demanding Security?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The market is demanding security now, and that hard work is going forward already," said Amy Roberts, director of product management in Microsoft's Security Business and Technology Unit, in the statement.

Isn't security something we should expect and not have to demand?

Re:Demanding Security?

[SuiteSisterMary]

No.

No no no.

Security is a *feature,* which means that there are considerations, trade-offs, and decisions that need to be made about it.

The fact that users have been making uninformed decisions (which they have) and that the underlying assumptions of the informed decisions changed so drastically (which they also have) doesn't change that.

"Microsoft Security" could be a new addition!

[alex_guy_CA]

http://www.oxymorons.com/oxymorons.html/

Re: not a politician

[Doc Ruby]

What the hell are you talking about? Clarke had been fighting al Qaeda, and Bush demoted him to cyberterror because real terror wasn't important, and Clarke was too threatening to keeping it that way. It talked about the threat of al Qaeda, already well established, and asked for a meeting of the administration people to start specific actions aimed at stopping al Qaeda, rather than waiting for more threats. That request was ignored. And we were attacked, very specifically.

I didn't even mention anything that has to be "believed" about "Bush". You are an obvious, and sickly typical, Bush worshipper, who is so partisan that you come up with an attempt at an insult by calling me "progressive".

"No specific threats"... "terrorism sponsors like Iraq"... "disgruntled former employee"... NO ONE BELIEVES THAT BULLSHIT. Even Rice looks guiltier than Kissinger when she squeezes that crap out. Don't waste our time here with the talking points that lead to nowhere.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[Moofie]

How is having an inexpensive desktop computer and a powerful line of laptops a bait and switch? I'm really kinda confused.

Re: not a politician

[justins]

this bio suggests that he worked for a total of five administrations, four at the cabinet level:
http://www.americanpresident.org/action/orgchart/a dministration_units/officeofcyberspacesecurity/spe cialassistanttothepresidentandchairpresidentscriti calinfrastructureboard/richardaclarke/a_index.shtm l

Re:Will they listen? No.

[RM6f9]

He was asking about why I don't run OSX, I asked him if that was Apple only, Apple (outside of the minimac) is, to me, expensive, he was also bragging on his Powerbook out-performing Windows machines, but Powerbooks cost a bit more than minimacs. It would have been more forthcoming/open/honest to compare the cost of his *powerbook* with the cost of the windows machines it was out-performing. None of which is relevant to the Linux vs. Windows ease-of-use discussion he dropped his replies into.

sadly, LOTS of people believe that bullshit

[de1orean]

you and i don't, but lots of less-informed folks do, because Rush or O'Reilly or some other hack prepackaged it for them in a nice little soundbite....

Re:sadly, LOTS of people believe that bullshit

[Doc Ruby]

That's why it's so important to confront it in public. Free speech is very powerful, especially compared with the supression techniques used by "know nothings" against it. And it's very pleasing to express one's self righteously. Especially when the subject is so important, like one's safety from attacks in a place like my home, New York City, and the twits yammering in their echo chambers are so safely removed from reality. That makes it even more rewarding when someone pops up to agree - it can be loney at the truth cafe :).

Re:sadly, LOTS of people believe that bullshit

[de1orean]

now you've done it. you're on my Friends list... :-)

Re:I listen to him...DICK!

[Pbody32]

Dick ClarK
He missed this year due to a stroke. So much for being the world oldest teenager.

Re: not a politician

[Mecha[drone]]

Huh?!?

Cover his ass... Yeah... You read his testimony before the 9/11 commision. He laid the blaim at everyones feet, including his own, BUT he says that in his estimation that 9/11 PROBABLY would have happened regardless, but our REACTION to 9/11 would have been swifter had the Bush administration listened to him earlier. You cannot deny that the Bush Administration doesn't give a rip about 9/11 or terrorism. Most of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudi's, and Al Queda isn't marginalized at all... Iraq has nothing to do with 9/11, and Clark gets blasted by people saying that he should support this president...

Why, the President didn't listen to him at all, and isn't doing what Clark thinks is in the best interests of the country...

Two things to remember. 1) Clark is a Republican, and 2) He's an American first, Republican second.

Interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Under Clinton, we had one successful Al Qaeda Attack, which was the first one (and the first on the WTC) on our soil. It is known that there no less than 6 others (and possibly more), that was successfully stopped. One of the better well known, was for Y2K, over 300 FBI agents were sent to Seattle. It was to stop Al Qaeda. From what I have heard, it was the nearly the same Richard Clarke, CIA, NSA, and FBI that stopped this one, but failed just several years later. I am curious as to what you attribute this failure to? You really think that these groups under clinton did so well, but just hated GWB that they allowed this to happen? Likewise, many of these same people came out against GWB after 911 and said that he was ignoring everything that they were trying to do? If george tenet and richard clarke were so inept, we did GWB award them the medal of freedom?

Re:Interesting.

[MBraynard]

I stopped at your first sentence. May want to learn a little html for paragraph tags.

There were at several attacks during the Clinton administration. WTC I, the bombing of the Cole, the multiple embassy bombings in Africa, and the attacks on us in Somalia.

Re:Interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, you really showed him. Nailed him on the typo of not saying "first successful attack on our soil" despite saying "our soil" just a few words later.

Exposed for the true dittohead you are by all those other responses and yet you still try to salvage your ego by typo-flaming instead of countering any of the truly damning evidence.

Your head must be one little prison of explosive cognitive dissonance.

Re:Interesting.

[MBraynard]

By saying "on our soil" he was downplaying the significance of the years of tolerance of terrorism by the previous administration.

And, hey buddy, we stomped you clowns this last election because people like you were running against us and your loathing for this country turned off so many voters - even those who questioned the Iraqi liberation. So please, keep it up!

Re:Interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Again with the flaming and zero actual facts. I can just see your brain squiriming under the pressure: Must fight back... political masculinity in question... can ... not ... appear to admit failure of hot-air ideology... Accuse the other guy of hating America ... ahh, the sweet release of obliviousness!

Re:Interesting.

[MBraynard]

So are you going to help me get my free console or not, AC?

Re:Interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

As soon as you read my .sig

Re:Interesting.

[MBraynard]

"I eat my own farts" ?

Re:Interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed you do.
Apparently it's the best meal that you can afford too.

Re:Interesting.

[MBraynard]

uhhh.... YER MOMMA!

Re:Will they listen? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were a customer of Microsoft, I'd be organizing class-action suits, writing letters, storming Redmond with torches in hand.... Why these people put up with it ... Either they don't know there are viable options, or they are too lazy to actually pursue said options.

Because, you know, suing Microsoft has worked real well in the past. Sure, it's a viable option for Joe Windozer, he must be stupid not to try.

Why does Joe Windozer even have a computer?

It must be email-- except the only people he emails are his friends and neighbors. Oh and Aunt Judy in Anchorage but her computer hasn't worked for months.

Then it must be the office suite-- nooo, he uses it once a year for the Xmas letter, that is until he can't remember how to crop images, gives up, and slips the Kinkos clerk a fiver to do it for him.

Then it's for the kids to learn something-- except the kids hate the home computer because Richie Rich Jr up the street has a top of the line one with DSL and every game and tune the second it comes out, and it never crashes.

Then it's for surfing the Internet-- except he can't figure out google, keeps googling 'yahoo'

It can't be for porn, can it?-- glossy periodical subscription, topless bar, big screen, pay per view, DVD

IMing swingers on the sly?-- cellphone

Games?-- PS2

MMPORGS?-- Xbox Live

Whining?-- water cooler, bar

Answer: Joe Windoze bought his computer because everyone else had one, just like his Hemi-powered truck. It is a conversation piece, a social status symbol, and as far as he's concerned, it is working fine. When it's broken it's even BETTER because now he has something to whine about to his friends.

He's consistent...

[gordgekko]

First he was late to the party on terrorism -- criticizing only after he left the White House -- now he's criticizing Microsoft a decade after we figured out the same. What will he jump on next year? Security through obscurity?

The guy was not a pundit

[maynard]

Clark may offer opinions on television now, but when he worked in teh cabinet for Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II he didn't just offer opinion to the President, he wrote policy. Now, whatever you may think of the merit of his policy, the fact is that he was directly involved in setting National Security policy for the United States of America. Given this, what he has to say deserves some attention. After listening, by all means, critique his words if you believe he is mistaken; his opinion on Microsoft Software may be completely off base. I don't think so, but you're welcome to disagree. In fact, I'd love to read a cogent retort. But IMO: yours wasn't it. --M

Re:The guy was not a pundit

[Telastyn]

I'm not saying he doesn't deserve listening to. And I'm not saying he's mistaken. I'm just saying people won't listen.

did someone say "class action"?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were a customer of Microsoft, I'd be organizing class-action suits

too late

PS - who're you going to vote for in the next election -- Republican or Republican-Lite?

Re: not a politician

[love2hateMS]

Bush did NOT demote him to cyberterror. Clarke was the one who kept pushing cyberterror as the "next front in terrorism" to the White House. Most of his coworkers thought he was a wacko. He then quit and rewrote his history when he didn't get a promotion he wanted, and the morons on Slashdot and at the New York Times didn't bother to even interview his coworkers.

The man is a liar. He is also utterly unqualified to be commenting on Microsoft security. What is his computer training exactly?

Re: not a politician

[jrifkin]

he quickly jumped on the "not me" wagon by trying to control the discussion

Saying 'not me'? Quite the opposite I think. Perhaps you saw his testimony to Congress, when he
apologized to the country for not preventing 9/11 and said among other things ".. I failed you ..".

Wow. Saying that out loud for the grieving 9/11 family members and the rest of the country took incredible courage. Contrast Clarke's plain speaking with the circumlocutions spouted by the Bush inner circle.

By the way, I read his book. It was excellent. Clarke's a straight talker who give a clear idea of life in government. (You might want to save the first chapter till the end though, it's easier to follow once you've digested the reset of the book.)

MOD PARENT UP

[nutshell42]

n/t

Re: not a politician

[Doc Ruby]

He's a liar? Let's see some backup on that. I believe that he didn't know how to make or defuse a bomb when he was terrorism czar. Every cyberterror chief, including him, and the one who came from Symantec, has quit in disgust. And our "cyber" infrastructure is a flammable house of cards. I'd say anyone who's stayed in that office is not fit to be quoted in anything, least of all their opinion of someone who was willing to quit and talk about their ridiculous performance over there. So you're just drinking the koolaid from the Bush fountain. Hope their happy talk is keeping you safe.

Re: not a politician

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a politician. Remember the timed release of his book last year to bash the Bush administration?
Politics. Pure politics. I don't trust Richard Clarke any further than I do Clinton or Bush. Face it, we've had a rash of weak presidents in the past 45 years. JFK and Reagan were the only ones smart enough to do the right thing, and it showed in the years after their presidency.

Re: not a politician

[ColMustard]

Ahh, slashdot politics. They crack me up.

Re: not a politician

[bob beta]

Career bureaucrats are the moss that grow on the slower-moving parts of government.

One doesn't have to choose to like either politicians or bureaucrats. One can like neither. One can also like the few politicians who smack bureaucrats around and/or campaign to get bunches of them out looking for REAL jobs.

why MS and not linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I could be way off here, buyt why are people slamming MS and not Linux? from my check today Linux Kernel has been out 8 months less than windows 2003 and the kernel alone has almost as many security holes that windows 2003 has had for the entire OS and installed default apps? So could someone explain why people think windows is not getting better and linux is not getting worse despite what the facts say?

Re: not a politician

[Xoro]

Most of his coworkers thought he was a wacko.

Which of his coworkers thought he was a wacko?

...the morons on Slashdot and at the New York Times didn't bother to even interview his coworkers

And you did? Are you going to post a link to Talon News for us? Maybe Newsmax? You're just making this stuff up, but you give every indication of believing it. It's disturbing.

Re: not a politician

[bofkentucky]

Lobbing a few cruise missles at a tent did jack shit against Al-Queda, Clinton should have invaded the Sudan after the Kobar Towers and/or the embassy bombings, but he was otherwise occupied apparently. The bombing of the Cole should have brought swift retribution, but we got jack shit out of him after that.

In this guys case...

[ShagratTheTitleless]

...it should really be DICK.

Re: not a politician

[Doc Ruby]

Yeah, Clinton was occupied by Congress trying to impeach him for a blowjob, stopping him from doing more to stop al Qaeda. When he tried to do more, like target bin Laden's mobile phone with a drone, the CIA and the Pentagon fought over passing the buck until it was too late. Behind the Republican-controlled Congressional Intelligence Committees smokescreens. The Cole was proven by Clinton's team to be al Qaeda after the 2000 election was over, and presented promptly to Bush as hard proof, but Bush did nothing. As usual, rightwing partisanship has twisted the blame exactly backwards.

The Pirate Internet

[demachina]

"Of course you can't get online in the first place without an approved operating system"

From a geeks perspective I'd look upon this as a challenge. In particular would it be possible to create a Pirate Internet, along the lines of Pirate Radio. Use unregulated wireless and create a mesh network that covers the U.S., and links to the rest of the Internet through Canada and Mexico, or maybe shortwave. Would it be possible to create a alternate network for everyone that opts out of trusted computing and corporate and government control of their computers and the network.

To the extent that radio has turned totaly corporate and boring, I find college radio to often be much more interesting and I suspect pirate radio would be to if I could find some in the area. Would the same be true of the the pirate internet. Would all the really interesting and bold stuff move there and today's Internet would continue down the road to sterile corprate websites and subscription only content.

Another interesting question is if the U.S. tried to unilaterally force trusted computed would the rest of the world follow. I suspect not. I could see China going for trusted computing but only if their government controlled it and not Microsoft, Intel and the U.S. If the U.S. had one brand of trusted computing and China another the Internet would fragment and stop being the internet.

Its also possible the U.S. would try to force trusted computing and the rest of the world would just ignore it leading to two outcomes:

- The rest of the world ignores it, it fails and the U.S. ignores it too
- The rest of the world ignores it, the U.S. clings to it and uses oppressive government regulation to inflict it within its borders, and the U.S. would turn in to a black hole in the internet. The rest of the world would ignore it and potentially block U.S. access to the rest of the world in retaliation. I'm wondering if instead of economic sanctions in a future world we might see internet sanctions where a rogue nation is shut out of the rest of the world's Internet as a form of punishment for bad behavior.

In the later scenario could a Pirate Internet spring up in the U.S. and continue to connect to the rest of the world's Internet in defiance of government attempts to suppress it. It would be pretty hard especially when the FCC sends trucks, full of armed goons, around the country hunting down wireless network nodes. A pirate internet would need a lot of redundancy and nodes that are relatively elusive and transient.

Re:The Pirate Internet

[bob beta]

Use unregulated wireless and create a mesh network that covers the U.S., and links to the rest of the Internet through Canada and Mexico, or maybe shortwave. Would it be possible to create a alternate network for everyone that opts out of trusted computing and corporate and government control of their computers and the network.

If people really really worked at it, and it was extremely successful, you might arrive at, say, the equivalent of Usenet in 1987, or possibly something as widespread as Fidonet was in that era.

It would be a text channel, with some files transfer capabilities, etc.

It definitely would NOT be an equivalent 'darkside' version of the Internet as we know it.

Re:The Pirate Internet

[McDutchie]

It would be a text channel, with some files transfer capabilities, etc.

It definitely would NOT be an equivalent 'darkside' version of the Internet as we know it.

Heh... no, it would be something far better, and far more fun. Imagine e-mail that's actually usable again instead of being 95% spam!

Re:The Pirate Internet

[demachina]

"It would be a text channel, with some files transfer capabilities, etc."

It would be somewhat bandwidthed challenged, probably no blazing fiber optics but it would HTML based just like the current Internet. In urban areas you probably could put together some high bandwidth fiber trunks.

With newer version of 802.11/Wimax I'm not so sure that you might manage some pretty good bandwidth on wireless.

It would tend to be more local and community oriented since it would take a lot of hops to make it to the other side of the country so the latency would be murder. Not sure that wouldn't be all bad since it might build up local communities, interaction and involvement which is sorely lacking in most places these days.

It would also promote local mirroring of the most interesting content. You could transfer it on CD's and snail mail and put it on a local mirror to cut down on the long distance hauls.

Re:The Pirate Internet

[Alsee]

Assuming you didn't get cought by the ISP and related regulatory laws, it's still going to have nothing on it. It would be like abandoning TV and telephone so you and your two friends can play on a CB radio.

Another interesting question is if the U.S. tried to unilaterally force trusted computed would the rest of the world follow.

You're missing their plan. For starters the EU seems just as keen on Trusted Computing as the US. Sometimes they seem even more eager for it.

Secondly have you seen the Slashdot stories on the ultra-cheap tiny self-contained computers for the third world? The AMD PIC was one of them. The PIC was currently quoted at $185, but they hope to get the price for such systems down under the $100 mark. Oh, and guess what? The PIC has a hardware security system to lock out unapproved software. I *think* it's Trusted Computing compliant, but I can't pin down whether the PIC is exactly an implementation of the Trusted Computing Group standard. In any case the plan is to flood the third world with hundreds of millions of dirt cheap subsidized Trusted machines. I've read some interesting documents from a United Nations work group that seems to indicate that they pretty much want to buy off the third world to get them on board for a global "upgrade" to the new Information Society and the new Internet Economy. They could very well use the rest of the world to pressure the US into final compliance!!!

The Trusted Computing people are not stupid. They don't want the US to attempt to impose Trusted Computing on the world. They know the rest of the world would see it as imperialism and resist. There is already grumbling that the US controls the critical internet servers and dictates internet standards and operation. They will simply support the call for a UN body to take over the US's governing powers over the internet. It will be the UN proposing and imposing international internet security standards. It will be the UN imposing it on the US, and the US government will be more than happy to comply.

I could see China going for trusted computing but only if their government controlled it

I *think* there is a plan for each country to run it's own Root of Trust. Of course if one country's Root of Trust did not "properly" enforce things like DRM then computers and software from some second country would not Trust computers in the first country. Every country would pretty much be forced to impose the exact same oppressive terms or nothing from any other country would work.

And China would absolutely LOVE to have a Trust system under their control to spy on and control their population and enforce their Great Firewall.

Tons of countries would love that ability to spy on and control their population.

France and other countries would absolutely LOVE to control their own system to censor out any Nazi or hatespeech sites.

Tons of countries would LOVE it to fight kiddyporn. Hell, a lot of countries would love it to fight porn in general.

The EU has internet privacy laws that they'd love to use this for.

And obviously there's the "piracy" issue and DMCA crap. And the call to stop viruses and spyware and spam. And stoping hackers. And generally tracing/enforcing any criminal law they like. Governments hate individual anonymity. With Trusted COmputing they can make everyone as anonymous as they like to the general world, but the government itself can use a master key to identify "criminals". You're anonymous unless you break a law, and only a criminal would argue for more than that, only a criminal would want criminals to be anonymous.

There are literaly BILLIONS of dollars being spent on this, and the people behind it are NOT stupid. It's as insideous as hell, and it's going to hit you from several directions. As I've explained it may very well be imposed on us in an exact reversal of why you think it must fail.

-

Re:Will they listen? No.

[Moofie]

Since the minimac is very like the Powerbook in performance, I think his comparison is not as bad as you'd like to make it.

But whatever. Use what works for you.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[bob beta]

My Windows and NetBSD machines all cost me in the range of 50 cents to 15 dollars each (Pentium III machines you can get for pennies at school auctions. The SMP Sparc boxes are still a little pricey). I would have to work overtime for months to earn the spare cash to get a machine capable of running OSX competently.

It reminds me of a song

[Anonymous Coward]

O Susano, Oh Don't you cry for me

For I came from L'weesiana

With a Banjo on my gnee!

Re:Will they listen? No.

[poofyhairguy82]

Want Linux picked up by more people sooner? Make it easier to use.

Hey man...I hear ya. I was born lazy. But, you might want to try Linux soon. There are many distros (Ubuntu is my fav., but Xandros is also pretty good, MEPIS works are well) that do nothing but cater to lazy desktop users. It takes me less time to set up my Ubuntu box with all the programs I want than it does in Windows. Its easier in many ways (especially installing video drivers and software). So, if you want to be as lazy as can be....try Linux out sometime. The hardest part is finding out what every program is called. Like "what's Linux's Nero (K3b)?" or "whats' Linux's Photoshop Program (the Gimp)?" Luckily its also pretty easy to find that stuff out in Ubuntu. Actually, its all easy. Thats why my windows partition might never get booted again.

If you were waiting for the right time, its now.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[RM6f9]

Thank you.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[Kenardy]

"If I were a customer of Microsoft, I'd ..."

Don't know what you'd do, but I know what I did. Starting with RH 5.2, I installed Linux.

Works for me. 'Course, I'm also the kind of guy who reads /. regularly and have an IQ in the 97th percentile. I am neither stoooopid nor lazy.

I even have a TOTALLY secure install of Win 98. It isn't allowed access to the internet (although part of my home lan, it gets filtered at my firewalls - yes, I have two piggy-backed. Each is based on a different OS and that, in my opinion, makes an automated attack unlikely) and it contains no personal data. Theft of the box and cracking of the wimpy password will net you ... nothing.

Let's see now. CE. ME. NT. toupee and ex-pee. Apparently it's been a while since Mr. Gates has had anything I thought worth buying.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[Kenardy]

If that's what it takes to earn your respect, it's not worth having.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[Kenardy]

"My windows machine doesn't make me look anything up or go out of my way to learn how to use it because I already know how"

And the reason you 'already know how' is because you have already invested the time in Windows that you are unwilling to invest in Linux.

I've been using Linux for several years now. Before that, I taught DOS and DOS-based applications.

I had to invest time in learning DOS. Then I had to un-learn quite a bit to learn to mouse around with Windows. Then I did the grunt work learning for Linux.

I decided to learn Linux when I realized that every new version of Windows I was using called for a pretty severe re-training anyways ... I might as well run something cutting edge and fun.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[hazah]

I think you missed his point... All of the points he made is what an uninformed person might think when you tell him to get a mac. Windows users think that crashes are normal, and all work is tedious. Ironically, it's a side effect of using windows. Go figure.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[bob beta]

But at least I offer my services for free to early Linux adopters.

Why would people who started using Linux in the 1991-93 era seek service/advice from you?

...nice ad hominem

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like the drug czar's have experience with drugs. And crime czar's have experience with crime. And brand spanking new heads of all the intelligence agencies in a certain country have experience with intelligence.

People at the top of large government agencies are figureheads who can direct policy, pull funding and act as a face. Very few of them have any the kind of technical knowledge to recommend something as specific as having the industry develop programming for security standards and get everyone to agree to them. Not going to happen in the next 10 years but this guy states it like Microsoft is the reason it won't rather than the deep technical issues of defining best practices over an industry whose approaches and techniques are as disparate as the members of the United fucking Nations.

As for presenting someone who has more qualified than Dick Clarke to speak on such issues, I put forward myself. I work in this industry, I see the problems, I know the history, and I happen to think that not buying products from company A and broad sweeping generalizations about how to solvie the software security problem will solve exactly none of our problems.

Now you can call me a troll because I disagree with you.

Re:...nice ad hominem

[commodoresloat]

Great. Call the White House; someone named "Anonymous Coward" wants Clarke's old job. I'm sure you'll be rushed through the nomination process.

You're right about the expertise of people at the top of large govt agencies -- primarily, their expertise is in directing policy. That's why that's what they do. Clarke's expertise in security and terrorism issues extends back over three decades, and his expertise in cybersecurity issues extends back to before the rest of the country even knew what the hell "cybersecurity" is. Not as a fucking console jockey but as an administrator whose job is directing policy. He's not offering suggestions on recompiling your kernel, or discussing his favorite package manager; he's offering his opinion on the policy choices that should be made by government agencies. I could care less if he can manage his own ipfw preferences, but I think his expertise on matters of threats to government security at least make him worth listening to. He's not an "expert" himself, but he knows how to surround himself with experts and learn the relevant issues, something he did incredibly well on the terrorism issue and then the cybersecurity issue. I don't necessarily agree with his thoughts in general though on this issue I do -- given MS's proven track record of security problems, as well as the fundamental advantages of building on open source software (minute control of the details of the software under the control of your agency, responsiveness, tailoring it to a specific purpose, etc.) it's patently obvious that the best choice for public agencies from a security perspective is not MS. You don't need to have that much technical knowledge to understand this.

That's what's amazing about your comments (and I assume you're susan otter from the great grand parent post or whatever) -- nobody is saying this guy is always right, just that his opinion here is both substantive and relevant. Instead of responding to it you whine about his qualifications. (And then you accuse me of ad hominem!) What I don't understand is whether your knee jerk reaction comes because you want to defend MS or because you want to bash Clarke.

Re:...nice ad hominem

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want his job. I want him to stop speaking about my job like he knows what he's talking about. And let me clear on this: I'm talking about software development.

Perhaps you think that software development is about recompiling kernels or picking package managers. Or maybe you tried to demonstrate your credibility by showing that you know about Linux - that works sometimes on Slashdot I hear. Or maybe you were just trying to spin my statement to suit your own small view. Whatever - you're amply demonstrated you're either ignorant, a kiddie, or backpedalling so I'm not bothered.

Software development is the industry of developing software - not the industry of administration, or software services, or being a "fucking console jockey". You know, choosing the best tools and languages for the task, adopting suitable methodology, architecture and design of platforms, frameworks and applications, assessing competitors, watching emerging technologies, assessing threat models, ensuring stability, and after all that, hitting deliverable dates and sending the shit out the door. Dick Clarke wants to regulate this by having the software industry - whatever the fuck that means - develop and adopt industry best pratices and then he wants to have independent outsiders evaluate how members of the software industry comply. More money for bureaucrats in other words because they won't stop new emerging threats, and they won't be able to give any more assessment than lip service to million line code bases, they won't be able to keep up with rapidly changing technologies, and they'll never be able to define who does software development, and who needs to be regulated. But hey - what would I know - I only work in the fucking industry. I'm not some desk jockey bureaucrat spouting populist, off the cuff remarks and proposing broad reaching, unattainable panaceas to what essentially is just another aspect of the "software problem" for which no one has developed a silver bullet.

But hey, go ahead and accuse me of "whining" about his qualifications if that makes you feel better. Or, dismiss me as a troll. That's real ad hominem by the way - questioning a person's credentials when their entire argument rests upon those credentials is not ad hominem - the arguments of an expert witness are given weight because that person is an expert. Clarke is not an expert in software development, nor on the software industry. But whatever. Dismiss my arguments as knee-jerk so you can keep thinking you're right, and question my motives so you can ignore my reasoning. Throw in a few more assertions about not needing "to have much technical knowledge to understand" whatever it is that you believe to be true, and assert some fundamental properties of X that don't hold up to scrutiny. It doesn't matter.

And no, I'm not susan otter.

Re: not a politician

[kir]

FYI. Clinton WAS impeached. Only he and Andrew Johnson have been. Nixon resigned to escape it.

BTW, Clinton wasn't impeached because of a blowjob.

Guess what kind of laptop Clarke uses

[saha]

Actually, in a Frontline documentary Cyber War (I recommend watching the steamed video) which directly relates to the original posting, Richard Clarke singles out Microsoft for being negligent for their lax security. I would have to agree. For the past few years its been either viruses, annoying Windows Messenger pop ups, worms and finally spyware that has plagued the Windows users. The last problem highlights just how negligent Microsoft has been when they could have implemented pop-up blockers and by default have restrictions on Active X downloads, when all other web browsers had pop up blocking two years before Microsoft finally implemented it in XP SP2. Every week I have several people come into my office because of spyware issues. Which I'm starting to believe really does afflict 90% of Windows PC users now. On the weekends when people find out I'm a systems administrator or run into friends they're always asking me how to disinfect their machines from spyware, viruses and other issues. I feel I should reprint my business cards with the URLs of Spybot, Adaware, Mcafee Virusscan, Firefox ...and other tools on the back of the card. I'm honestly fed up of saying the same old thing every weekend when I'm not at work. At work its part of my job, but its irritating and annoying that so many people are afflicted with security issues that Microsoft neglected for so long because they had to try to cram as many features as possible into their bloatware.

During the show Frontline show you'll see Clarke using his a slick Powerbook G4. Its nice to know I'm in good company, using a platform that represents a small yet prominent minority. These days unless my users have a specific application(s) that only runs on Windowson, my usual recommendation because of all my frustration with Windows is for them to get a Mac. If they can't afford to upgrade their hardware to Apple yet, I point them to the most popular Linux distro sites (except Red Hat) or BSD flavors, but I do warn them that there is a little of bit of work involved to get their environment set up right. For those people who like to argue that Windows has more security issues because its more popular, I say that's baloney. Five to six years ago it was my SGI Irix machines that kept getting hacked into once or twice a year. SGIs representing the smallest Unix flavor we had at the time and significantly smaller than the Mac population. Over the past 3 years the number of Windows security issues has exploded exponentially where I can't in good conscience recommend it to most folks.

A Visit from the FBI Seems like FBI prefers Mac OSX as well.

Now there's a palindrome

[sl4shd0rk]

sheesh.

- 5 boxes last week cleaning off Alexa
- 2 boxes infected with over 300 pieces of malware
- All of them had virus scanners "disabled"
- One box infected with Sasser while client ate breakfast.

The same old same old. Don't give me that bunk about security. Of course, it is making me a nice wad of cash cleaning off all these computers. I'm sure Microsoft sees profit in it also.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[westlake]

When I sit in front of a Linux install I am bombarded with information. My senses are overload and its a real rush.

The forecast is for eight inches of snow overnight, temperatures in the low teens and gale-force winds by morning. I find the real world sufficiently stimulating that I don't need a nightly encounter session with an O/S.

Re: not a politician

[Doc Ruby]

FYI, "trying" doesn't mean "failing". BTW, he was impeached for "lying" about a blowjob, which he didn't - the legal definition of sex that he denied didn't include blowjobs, and why should he broaden their definition, in an obvious witch hunt? But to speak to your implied point, yes - Clinton was impeached because he stood in the way of the Republican Congress that has done so much for our country since they've had Bush instead. And maybe even because Clinton was trying to stop al Qaeda.

On Politics and Terror

[MarcQuadra]

the streets in the Middle East would flow with blood to an unprecedented degree.

This is another popular misconception. Israel has one of the most powerful millitaries in the world, and they are a nuclear power; an invading army would be destroyed quite handily by IDF, and Israel wouldn't hesitate to use a small nuke on the invader's capitol. For this reason, Israel is safe from invasion. Individuals might be suicidal, but nations are not.

As for the Palestinians already inside 'greater Israel', the reason they fight with suicide bombs and crude mortars is because they have nothing else to fight with, they pose little to no threat to Israel on the whole. And also, our aid doesn't change their situation, it only aligns us with their oppressors.

We sow discontent across the world for standing unquestioningly with a fundamentalist government that feels no remorse bulldozing an entire block of houses because one has a tunnel used for smuggling arms in it. Tell me that we would accept that sort of behavior from anyone else and still call them an ally.

Our entire relationship with Israel was born out of cold war paranoia that the middle-east would go communist and a powerful domestic Jewish lobby. The population of America stands for it to this day, when the relationship serves us no purpose but to make us the target of terror, because of an irrational and media-induced American guilt for the holocaust.

I've had this argument with several of my Jewish friends, several of whom are stalwart neo-zionists. There would be no terror to wage war on if we didn't so blatantly ask for it.

As for other countries in the middle east, they're all U.N signatories, and just because we have a really big fscking millitary doesn't obligate us to make sure the maps don't have to be redrawn. Our influence on the oil producing middle east countries is arguably the leading reason those people haven't stood up and wrought governments that suit them better, our foreign policy to-date has been to line the pocket of whatever dictatioial regime will sell oil to us.

As a superpower, we should be aware that hubris will most likely be our downfall. Our foreign policy should be as hands-of as possible, let the U.N. come to decisions involving territory and soverignty, thats why it was created. If we follow our current path, we'll come head-to-head with China eventually, when they realize that we've got interests surrounding them and they stop loaning us money.

Re:On Politics and Terror

[Liver Paste]

Well said.

TNT, cars, aeroplanes and Islam have all been around for a long time. So the emergence of a terrorist threat is a response to what's happened in the last decade. Particular kinds of behaviour elicit particular kinds of response. I doubt that George W. Bush would want it any differently: fear is his greatest ally. Don't ask this man to say, as Roosevelt did, that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

Re: not a politician

[kir]

Are you a tool by trade or by birth?

Re:Will they listen? No.

[Liver Paste]

Gates built Microsoft on a brilliant insight that cuts across the grain of the entire IT sector. The insight was that people don't buy the best, they buy what's good enough. That principle is sharply at odds with an industry that respects technical excellence as much as anything else, but it has sustained MS and continues to do so - despite the security debacle, their product set is still good enough, particularly since massive subsidiary sectors have developed purely to remediate the suboptimalities.

Ask me, I've known Clarke all my life

[al912912]

Kent right?

There any other famous Clark?

listening ?

[Anonymous Coward]

why should we listening compare the promised things from the late 80's up to now and compare it to the truths and real world then you know it make no real sense to spend monay for nothing or believe its going better.

my 2 cent

What did Condoeezza Rice do for Chevron?

[Futurepower(R)]

The oil tanker: "Condoleezza Rice". What did she do that so pleased Chevron that they named a tanker after her?

Read more about it: Every Day Is An Anti-war Protest Day.

why buy

[soceror]

Enabling technology is far more important than enhance security. The complication of business is very money driven. Targets must be met, so on and so forth. When you have time issue with completing the project. They'd rather complete the project than have a incompleted yet Excellent coded project. This is one major difference between 'engineering' and 'science'. Though security should be in consideration as a good business practice.

Re:LIke it't a big shock... (virtual mod)

[Stephen Samuel]

Damn. Now I have Mod points, but I can't use them in this article, or I'd give you a +1 Funny. (or a +1 Insightfull).

Another fact:

[aug24]

Most windows system admins are Mom 'n' Pop. They shouldn't be expected to learn how to secure it - it should start that way. Fuckwit Anonymous Cowards - we should have another moderation: "Trace IP and bar from posting".

Justin.

Fascinating.

[aug24]

So their test process for IE involves installing it in a secure, corporate environment. No-one outside the room can take it, sandbox it and try to crack it, but they at least check it surfs OK. Wait for a few months and then, when the surfing experience is good enough and there have been, count 'em, no security issues, bung it out for install on a billion unprotected machines, and let the hackers take it to pieces and actively look for holes. Then - suddenly - all these security issues just 'occur'.

If I tested my code like that, I'd never get another contract.

Justin.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[256byteram]

I think Thomas Edison summed this up well 'There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.'

I use IE

[Trinition]

I'm a geek. I use IE. I don't particularly like FireFox.

I also don't have spyware. And, no, I'm not using MS's spyware tool to confirm that. I run a firewall, adaware, and so on to verify that I'm clean. I use safe browsing practices, do check ups, and I'm fine.

I keep an eye on FireFox. Maybe someday, they'll have a UI I like and I'll switch (I"ms omewhat fed up with MS, but not engough to let it adversely affect my computing experience yet).

Re:I use IE

[SuperficialRhyme]

What do you like about IE and what don't you like about Firefox?

Re:I use IE

[Trinition]

I really, really like the toolbar in IE. I like that I can arrange the toolbars to my liking, multiple on a single row if I like. If I collapse a toolbar small enough, the overflow items show up with a little chevron button. Doing that, I can actually create my own little pop-down menus. And folders in my Links portion of the Favorites show up on the Link bar as popup toolbar menu items, too. I've got 50% of teh places I visit on a daily basis for work within 1 click, and another 40% within two clicks.

I also like that IE uses *.url files for favorites. This means I can manage them in the filesystem. I can create hard links of favorites to have them appear in multiple places. I can create symbolic links of folders to have them appear in multiple places. And I thought the open source movement that created FireFox, with strong ties to Unix where "everything is a file", would at least adopt this paradigm.

I also like the Google Toolbar implementation for IE. I like that I can search the web, search the groups, have one-click access to "find next" on each search term, and also can highlight the search terms in the page. Last I checked, the FireFox IE toolbar couldn't do quite as much.

I alsol ike that IE is woven into the OS so that when it is exploited, I can have my entire system sacrificed. Oh, wait... that's one of the things I don't like. So far I've been either careful, lucky, or a combination of both.

Re: not a politician

[PsiPsiStar]

There's a simple way to recognize the most ethical people in government. They either resign are forced out when they haven't done anything wrong.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[PsiPsiStar]

I tried switching to linux on my second computer to prevent a disruption while I did all my work on my first (i.e. laptop).

I tried 3 different distros but none would work with my broadband service + ethernet card. Not sure if the problem was with my ethernet card or with the service itself. It was a year ago and I can't remember. Since I wanted to be able to get on the internet, I switched back to windows. I'll try Linux again in a year or two.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[rastos1]

Would you mind to explain what makes you think that Linux is not easy to use and what _specific_ actions should be taken to make it more 'easier to use'?

Why listen to him?

[halleluja]

... I already XPerienced it.

Re:Why listen to this weasel now?

[idamaybrown]

In other words, people on the right - shut up, people on the left want to have a one-sided discussion without anyone bringing up a different viewpoint.

Lesser know fact about Dick Clark

[Ohreally_factor]

Dick Clark is also a 45th level lich.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[Ohreally_factor]

Apple (outside of the minimac) is, to me, expensive

Only if your time is not valuable.

Some basic math

[Ohreally_factor]

I'll type so you can follow along.

If you worked 10 hours a week overtime for two months, that would be 80 hours. $500 divided by 80 = $6.25. Overtime is usually time and a half, so $6.25 = 1.5x, where x = your hourly wage. $6.25/1.5 = x

So you make $4.17 an hour. What country did you say you live in? In the US, that's under minimum wage. Even kids mowing lawns make more than $4.17 hour.

Re:Some basic math

[bob beta]

$500 buys the little box that nominally runs OSX. The keyboard and mouse are extra. There's no CRT for that price. (not a problem for me, but it renders the whole '$500 for an entry level Mac' thing as BULLSHIT- entry-level folks don't already own a monitor) I suppose I could use the SGI USB keyboard/mouse that I have, but it seems obscene for me to connect said to a crummy desk ornament Mac.

There's a hell of a lot I'd rather spend the $650 on anyway. There's a cross-assembler package I was looking at recently that I could get more use out of.

Re: not a politician

[love2hateMS]

Excuse, but how exactly is Bush responsible for the 30 year history of programming behind TCP/IP, SMTP, POP, DNS, and all the other pieces of the internet that were designed completely insecure from the start? You think that can be "fixed" by the federal government in a few years?

Where is your backup that Clarke isn't a liar? My backup is simple, not one single coworker of any professional reputation has backed his story at all. His own recorded voice from 2001 contradicts what he put into his book.

Give me a break. You anti-American liberals will believe anything if it backs up your twisted world view. Go listen to your new messiah, Ward Churchill, for a while.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[Ohreally_factor]

Want Linux picked up by more people sooner? Make it easier to use.

You've made an excellent point, but it should be pointed out that part of Windows "ease of use" is that it comes pre-installed on most consumer level computers, despite Walmart's best efforts.

Some of this is obviously due to market demand, but a large part can be blamed on MS's illegal business practices.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[qray]

Well I use Windows because:

1. I can setup a system and do quite a bit without having to resort to Googling.
2. It's what I use at work
3. All the games I and my kids like play run on it
4. None of my computers has ever been comprimized.

I've recently retired a system. I'm planning on getting a couple of Linux distros and trying some out. Hoping to see that things have improved from a few years ago when I last tried Red Hat.

I'd be interested in hearing what distro would be best for an old Windows user such as my self.

--
oxro morgof hagroth cordra

Re: not a politician

[Doc Ruby]

No. I just get off on the ease of driving rightwingers over their personal cliffs, after they exhaust their meager resources of talking points, into numbskull namecalling.

Have you figured out what you're *really* mad about, that you cover up with twitty remarks about politics and inane personal attacks? That particular one seems to date from probably early college - whatever you're flailing about probably happened to you before then. Glad I could help.

Re:Why listen to this weasel now?

[AsimovBesterClarke]

You do realize you could reverse left in righ in that comment, and it is equally valid don't you?

Try this on for size:

In other words, people who can think in more than one dimension (left right), shut up. People who want to reduce a subject to such a base and low level yes/no discusion that it really serves no purpose whatsoever continue.

Re: not a politician

[Doc Ruby]

My backup that "Clarke isn't a liar"? What kind of nonsense is that? You've got nothing. "Anti-American liberals"? Your faith-based propaganda model is trash, and you're a clown. Hope you're enjoying your Bush America, in all its hateful glory.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[Phisbut]

Would you mind to explain what makes you think that Linux is not easy to use and what _specific_ actions should be taken to make it more 'easier to use'?

I installed Fedora Core 3 lately. During the install process, it detected my hardware fine, even the sound card. There was a little button titled "Test Sound", I pressed it and a sound played, so the installer knew what my sound card was and where it was.

After the installation though, I never heard a single sound. I tried, in the administration panel, to fix the sound card thing. On the panel, it showed the card I had, which was correct (it's a SoundBlaster Audigy 2, there was an "auto-detect" button there, so I pressed it. It asked "Do you hear this sound?". I didn't hear it, so I said "No". Then it said "Auto-detect failed" and didn't try anything else.

I already accepted that I couldn't use my ATI All-in-Wonder card to watch TV on Linux, but now that I can't even listen to music either, I almost always boot my system in WinXP. It's not even worth trying to get a Linux-compatible TV-Tuner card, I won't even be able to hear the sound from the TV!.

Fix the sound, and it'll be easier to use.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[ABaumann]

Well, your original post suggested that you couldn't switch to ANYTHING because Linux wasn't user friendly, to which I replied that you were leaving out a significant ( like 3% is significant, really! :) ) part of the OS market in OS X.

You replied by saying it's too expensive to run OS X, and I mentioned that you can start using OS X for as little as $500 (a Mac Mini).

Then you started whining about performance. Well, I don't happen to own a Mac Mini, but I do own a 12" PowerBook (of which the specs are LOWER then the previously mentioned mini) and how it ran very well compared to what you would call "much faster" machines.

Now you want to wax all poetic about games? Fine, My first arguement is if you're worried about the price of a machine and the availability of games, go get an XBox or a PS2. Second arguement, Is there really anything else besides WoW out there that's worth playing on a computer? (Yeah, I know you're gonna say the Sims, but I'm straight, alright) Thirdly, My friends (I don't use linux) have been able to get many Windows games working in Linux.

HTH Have a Nice Day!

Re:Will they listen? No.

[rastos1]

Uhm. And it never happened in your Windows instalaltion, right?

If it would happen. What would you do?

What did you do when it did not work out of the box? Drop the ball? What about purchasing RedHat and getting hotline support?

The issue with ATI is not problem of the OS and it's usability. It is problem of drivers supplied by HW manufacturer. Or not supplied in this case. You may say that you don't care. But if *you* don't care than HW manufacturer won't bother spending resources on Linux driver development. Linux developers already asked for HW specs or better drivers, but their voice is not enough. We need your voice too.

Re: not a politician

[kir]

I see it's by birth. I suspected as much.

inconsistency in "Clarke playing politics"

[brlewis]

Like a lot of other right-wingers, you claim that the real problem leading to 9/11 was lack of focus during the Clinton administration, and Clarke is playing politics.

If Clarke wanted to play politics, the obvious thing to do would be to blame Clinton. Then he would have the current administration on his side, thus gaining more political clout. To choose the course of action he chose as a way of "playing politics," Clarke would have to be a complete moron.

Re: not a politician

[Darby]

. JFK and Reagan were the only ones smart enough to do the right thing, and it showed in the years after their presidency.

You're actually defending Reagan?!?!

Setting up torture schools in Central America to train terrorists.
Involving the CIA in the international cocaine trade.
Criminally treasonous weapons sales to terrorists.

Those are the true legacies of the Reagan administration and they have come home to roost.
Where do you think all these terrorists came from you fucking moron.

Re:Will they listen? No.

[Phisbut]

Uhm. And it never happened in your Windows instalaltion, right?

As far as I can remember, since Win95, I *always* had sound on first boot after installation. It might not have been optimized sound with the latest driver, but at least it had a generic driver.

If it would happen. What would you do?

I'd take the CD that came with the sound card and put it in the CD-ROM, and click on the big flashy "INSTALL DRIVER" button that pops on auto-run. I know it's not the OS there but the sound card company, but you asked me what made Linux not so easy to use.

What did you do when it did not work out of the box? Drop the ball?

I searched google, I read forums, I went to IRC channels. I got some pointers to an Alsa fix that didn't work (basically, it was "make sure Alsa doesn't mute the master channel"), and loads of RTFM. Having to RTFM isn't "easy to use", "Works out of the box" is.

What about purchasing RedHat and getting hotline support?

Ok... which one should I get now? The Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS, which is said to be for power users (I don't want to be a power-user, I just want to use my computer), or the Red Hat Desktop, which is designed for general users, but costs over $2000? Isn't the whole point here to save money? I know the difference between free as in speech and free as in beer, but Linux is being evangelized as being both. And even if it's only as in speech, I won't spend $2000 on an OS for my home desktop.

Now don't get me wrong. I am a power-user. I love Linux. I love open-source. Billy would say I'm a communist. I still use Linux every once in a while, and I'm always trying to convince my boss to switch the whole place to Linux (or at least Mac OSX). But even power-users don't always feel like reading through hundreds of pages just to get the sound working.

It is capitalist

[WindBourne]

If this were "communist" (in the USSR/Mao China fashion), there would be exactly one desktop, one office program, one whatever. The top would dictate what programs would be made, what others would use.

In fact, that is why I arrgue that the windows world is a true USSR/Mao China/North Korea type world. What MS says goes, and if you fight them, you lose. MS historically would destroy companies that did not see things the way that MS wanted you to do things.

With OSS, we have multiple groups competing against each other. The money is a combination of useage, source code contribution, time contribution, and even cash to help buy the product. If you do not like what is being offered, then you are welcome to not use. Don't like Linux? Then use BSD or Mac. Don't like KDE? then use the CLI or GNOME.

Keep in mind, that the single biggest economy in the world is not the free market of the world, but the bartering that neighbors and friends do. This is no different than OSS

Politics

[Viking Coder]

Wow. On a politically charged topic, you really see the moderators go to town.

I feel like I've been making fairly consistent posts on the topic (sure, sometimes I've been a jerk, but hey - it's the Internet!), and this is what I've gotten:

Score 2
Score 3, Interesting
Score 1, Troll
Score 1, Flamebait
Score 4, Insightful
Score 5, Insightful
Score 1, Troll
Score 2
Score 1, Troll

I would suspect the moderations were fairly partisan. Maybe for Political topics, the ratings should be more like:

-1 Republican
-1 Conservative
+1 Democrat
+1 Liberal

Or... You know... The other way. =)

Re:His OTHER comments on ISP security. Be very afr

[Alsee]

I think you missed the point that there is no way to ensure that Firewalls are running except to impose Trusted Computing and use it to scan their computer and certify the firewall is running. The exact same goes for "forcing down patches". The only way to do that is to use Trusted Computing to certify what OS is running. The first step in the process needs to be to deny a connection unless the computer is Trusted Compliant, the second step being to use the Trust system for a remote scan.

-

Get the fuck out

[Ohreally_factor]

$500 buys the little box that nominally runs OSX. The keyboard and mouse are extra.

Hey thanks for informing me of that important fact.

However, we're talking about you and why you can't afford $500 to run Mac OS X. You originally claimed that you'd have to work 2 months of overtime to be able to afford a "a machine capable of running OSX competently".

I called bullshit on you, and now you're changing the argument and either inventing figures ($650) or not substantiating them. Is the extra $150 for the keyboard, monitor, and mouse that you already own? What, are you going to pay yourself to switch them from one system to another or to use one of your spare sets?

it renders the whole '$500 for an entry level Mac' thing as BULLSHIT- entry-level folks don't already own a monitor

Here is where you really try change the argument. You were arguing about how unaffordable Macs are for you personally. Now you've shifted the argument to be about some abstract "entry-level" person.

Look, if you have other priorities, that's fine. Spend your money as you see fit on whatever it is that you consider valuable. But don't make up bullshit (like 2+ months of overtime) to support your whining contention that Macs are unaffordable.

You're either full of shit or your trolling. If you're trolling, you're a pretty pathetic troll. You need to study Leo McGarry if you want to troll. He's a master, and he's always entertaining to read. I can never completely tell when he's yanking my or someone else's chain or when he's being sincere. Leo contributes to the conversation. You, on the other hand, are just adding noise.

Re:Get the fuck out

[bob beta]

Fuck off, zealot.

A Mac with plain-vanilla OSX is about as useful as a box with plain Windows on it. There's another thousand dollars worth of crap I'd have to buy for it to justify desktop-decoration status in my office.

I know you are but what am I?

[Ohreally_factor]

When you can't argue your point, and your tactical maneuvers to evade argument fail, resort to name calling. That's great, bob beta. It was already pretty clear what sort of person you are, but you've effectively sealed it.

Re:I know you are but what am I?

[bob beta]

Yep. I, like a lot of people here, hate Apple Computer. They fucked up the industry for about a half decade trying to 'own' the graphical user interface, and as a result we ended up with Windows. They sued many 'GUI producing' competitors out of the PC market, and as a result they gave us Microsoft.

Now they come along, and pump out a 'Open Source' operating system based on a locked-down proprietary GUI layer, and refuse to sell it on anything but their own hardware.

Yep. I thought I'd make it completely clear 'what sort of person I am.'

Who the fuck are you?