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Microsoft Says "War on Terror" is Overblown
SlinkySausage writes "The endless security measures imposed on society as a result of the "war on terror" have become overblown and intrusive, according to Microsoft Redmond senior security analyst Steve Riley. He made the comments in a talk at day one of Tech.Ed Australia about software security. Riley also fessed up that Microsoft cocked up XP from a security perspective. "We let you down with XP," he said.
Microsoft also showed a very interesting new desktop virtualisation technology called SoftGrid, which allows applications to be virtualised individually, rather than a whole OS. Think Virtual PC or VMware, but instead of virtualising an OS, just a single application is virtualised."
From TFA: Steve's approach to security spans all horizons, not just information technology. He elaborated on this theory in an afternoon session today at Microsoft Tech.Ed entitled "Making the Tradeoff: Be Secure or Get Work Done". You are trying to get work done. Allow or Deny?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Too bad you have to read him - not see him in person.
Oh, and a pity he makes the fron page at Slashdot for stating the obvious!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Or think Crossover: http://www.codeweavers.com/products/
-- lol pwned
In the United Kingdom we lost fifty or so people in the carnage of bombings last-year, in the United States you lost four or so thousand.
I don't for a second want to say that the loss of these lives through an unspeakable act of senseless violence is a trivial matter, but we need to put these figures in perspective. In the United Kingdom, more are killed in road traffic accidents in a couple of weeks than were in the July 7th bombings. In the United States roughly three times as many people are killed in gun accidents per year than 9/11.
Somebody even said to me that more people were killed putting their socks on in the United Kingdom than by terrorists last-year. It's probably true. This stuff is right in the noise level of the threats we encounter each day. It's dramatic when we see some idiots attempt to blow a car up at Glasgow airport but in terms of actual risk, these people are up there with being struck by lightning or having a bad reaction to asprin.
So why is there talk about trading liberty for security? Even though the security vs liberty argument is as flawed as the mythical man month, the point still remains - why do I need this extra security anyway? It's expensive, it costs me my rights and it's ineffective.
It feels like that we've forgotten what it is really like to be a nation threatend with annihilation. In the 1940s our country nearly didn't make it and we have the United States to thank for that as much as our own heroic airmen. That was a time where the agressors really could have destroyed our way of life. Yet we did not yield in the face our adversity. We held our resolve!
And we should hold our resolve now. In comparison to the Nazis these modern day terrorists are like flies trying to stare down a tank. I don't know whether to laugh or cry why we even take them so seriously. We should not give a shred of our liberty to these people - they are pathetic and worthless; you only need to look at the Glasgow "terrorist" attack to see this for yourselves.
Simon
-b.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Microsoft didn't issue a press release, one guy voiced his opinion.
They say this now, when there is Vista to buy. It's just part of Microsofts standard strategy... Release new operating system, try and make the old one look bad.
Open Your Mind. Open Your Source.
I'd rather deal with airport security than install programs on my girlfriend's vista laptop...
An I.T. motto in the hands of an idiot is a dangerous thing...
Uh... on a real operating system that's called a "process". The only reason they need to think in these terms at all is because there is so much broken design in the basic OS. If everything wasn't welded inextricably from everything else, apps wouldn't take down other apps, nor the system when they misbehave, and you wouldn't need to "virtualize just the app! OMG! What a concept!"
Here's a little concept I've been working on. Why don't we use a real OS?
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
SoftGrid isn't new, nor is it a particularly close relative of WINE as some Linux enthusiasts suggest. It was a Microsoft acquisition, the former product name being Softricity. It's not just virtualization, it's packaging, so a single file, streamed from a server as needed, encompasses the program and all of its settings, creating a layer over the regular file system, registry, etc. with copy on write functionality; if the program tries to change the host OS in any way, it just adds to the shell of program specific settings within the single packaging file. Extremely handy for network admins who need to distribute programs, and want the performance of local apps (once the whole package is streamed, it runs locally, with the streaming order prioritized based on what the user is doing), but want the simplified administration of centralized programs with standardized configuration.
Consider what we COULD be doing with the money spent on this.
The Cold War ended. The world was as close to Peace as it has ever been. We could have been investing in so many things to help the human race as a whole.
Instead we're spending trillions of dollars "fighting" a few thousand nutcases who can't do any more damage to the world than we do to ourselves, every year, in traffic accidents.
The security craze has also been a vehicle for agendas that actually are about security, except it's overreaching, excessive, broken, and dysfunctional security for intellectual property owners against MS's customers. Defective by design "security" both for MS themselves (Windows Genuine Advantage), and for the entertainment industry. Any mention of Vista's shortcomings alongside the bit about XP being a security letdown?
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
MS bought out softricity I think last year. In theory the system is great from an enterprise management perspective because it basically streams one instance of an application to many desktops.
:) )
We actually use softgrid for citrix(softgrid steams to citrix, citrix streams to remote user). We've had some issues with it but very few compared to our regular problems across our citrix environment.
Now the interesting part of softgrid is it's ability to sequence and stream a small set of the app. For instance after evaluating visio, we discovered most of the users only used 20% of the app, so softgrid only deployed that small footprint. Neat technology, and we will be using it next year when we move to XP for my environment of 7000+ desktops. (We're slow moving to new OS's
Okay, I can't speak for Britain, but come on man, have some faith in your own culture. The only thing preventing first-generation immigrants is nostalgia, if they're old enough. However the younger generation will easily be indoctrinated into the culture quite rapidly. Especially western culture which has already proven powerful enough to invade the whole world. You know, previous generations of immigrants did not magically integrate. It takes time, but it's inevitable. Sure the old culture is subtly changed over time by this influx, but it's a good thing. Do you really want to inbreed yourselves until your eyes are all half an inch apart and your culture is as flavorless as the food you eat?
What's the big security problem with XP? It installed by default with a firewall that denied inbound connections. It allowed people to easily give the kids and the wife non-admin access to a shared system. It automatically tells me when new security patches are available from Microsoft, and it always installs them without incident. It even complains (through a tray icon) when my virus-checker's images were getting out of date. I've been running the same XP system on my laptop now for about three years; I haven't had any spyware, viruses or worms yet, and the system still boots as fast as the day I got it. So...what's the beef with security?
WINE isn't a virtualisation product, fyi.
He's giving a lecture called:
Making the Tradeoff: Be Secure or Get Work Done.
With reasonable design choices, I get both. With sftp and konqueror, I can transfer files without worry. With real user and process separation, I can do a lot of other things without fear. If he's forced to chose between security and convenience, his system offers neither.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I love that false choice. If you have to chose between the two, you don't have either.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
But now we have something *new* that fixes all those problems! Really! So hand us more money, now!
Chris Mattern
Sir, I suspect that one of the reasons why you don't hear an answer is that some of your interlocutors are frozen in disbelief.
Although the USA may try valiantly, not everyone who displeases the government can be incarcerated. People think Guantanamo is bad; the US prison system is a systemic Guantanamo fit to burst with the highest percentage of incarceration in the world.
Do all the people who are not incarcerated have any reason to be concerned? If the government is above the law and there is no law to protect them, the only protection they have is their sleepy ignorance of their vulnerability.
You would call their sleepy ignorance proof that they have no cause for worry. Coincidentally, there's a group of men in the White House who agree with you.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
There already exist Windows software for virtualising applications; these are called sandboxing applications. Sandboxie is a great example. Sandboxie is gratis, but you are encouraged to register/pay. Only drawback with Sandboxie is that it isn't Open Source - although I seriously doubt that "SoftGrid" will be Open Source either...
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
Do you not understand the concept of a "slippery slope"?
Do you not realize that treating our fellow citizens with such severe suspicion causes much more damage than the "1/2 hour of lost time"?
The terrorists did not win at the moment the planes hit the buildings, the terrorists only won when Bush announced his war on terror and we sent troops over to Iraq. They continue winning each time someone takes off a shoe because "ooooo, if we don't do this, I might get bombed out of the sky!!!!!"
DON'T ignore the pattern of government abuses! Don't trivialize what's happening. Riley hits the nail on the head when he points out that cost is unaccountably high, and benefit is un-measurably low. Just say no!
"We think people rightly feel that once they buy something, it stays bought," --Suw Charman, Open Rights Grp
You got it exactly right. History repeats itself again and again. Ethnic group immigrates to U.S. Nativists and bigots get frightened and claim that our culture is threatened. Ethnic group settles in and assimilates by the third generation. Repeat process. One hundred years ago it was East Asians that were the threat. Today it's Muslims (in Europe) and Latinos (in the US).
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
When I can't buy certain products because they are now placed on restriction lists, can't read certain materials because they will place me on a terror watch list and my child's education is stifled because once common knowledge is now classified as sensitive state secrets then yeah, my rights have been violated and I notice it.
because I just found myself agreeing with Microsoft ...
People might get the wrong impression that I think all Muslims are murdering terrorists. Not so. There a lots of them who find the actions of the extremists repugnant. The problem is we rarely, if ever, here from them. Print a comic "insulting Mohammad" and there is rioting in the streets. An Islamic extremist murders a bunch of children and the silence is deafening. This MUST change.
-- Will program for bandwidth
How many AVERAGE Americans actually feel that the changes to security have affected them at all?
They have affected the ratio between the tax I pay and the government service I get in return.
I am paying extra taxes for things which benefit nobody.
That TSA screener may not be inconveniencing me that much, but the pothole he's not fixing because he wasn't hired as a construction worker instead may be.
After reading the blurb on this, it sounds an awful lot like "Solaris Zones" -- which is similar to BSD Jails or OpenVZ on Linux.
It's a kernel level partitioning of resources, to create virtualized hosts with low overhead. They all use the same kernel (so you couldn't have Linux/Windows/Mac virtual machines), but each system/app is unaware of the others.
That way, you can have two virtual instances, each running Apache, but with different/conflicting middleware below it -- and no worries about them crapping on one another.
The example they give in the article is being able to run Office 2003 and Office 2007 on the same machine. The concept behind it is cool. But, doesn't that example illustrate a lot of what is wrong with Windows -- they need an all new virtualization technology just to install two versions of Office on your PC?!?
Except, the immigrants of old, did not come to your country, and want to out and out destroy it and replace it with a theocracy. They also weren't so willing to do this, that they employed suicide bombers from within their numbers.
They also pretty much immigrated legally...not just sneaking in, and waving their old country's flags at protests. I'd dare say, at least in the old days for the immigrants to the US, they did want to become Americans, to integrate into the larger society, to speak English, etc.
I think those are 2 major differences we see today vs the past.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
It's legal? Well goody then. It's a good thing our great society has invented this thing called law so we can do away with annoying things like "morality", "ethics" and "values".
I hate printers.
The endless security measures imposed on society as a result of the "war on terror" have become overblown and intrusive, according to Microsoft Redmond senior security analyst Steve Riley.
I agree with Microsoft on something. Great, just perfect. Now I have to get ready for the 4 horsemen, a rain of fire and the end of time.
On the plus side that means I won't have to mow this week.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Now security and functionality can be achieved but make no mistake, security is not convenient, always has, and always will take a lot of work to maintain both in the physical world and in the electronic one. [several false analogies follow]
Like liberty, security is always easier than the alternative. A free and secure system works for me rather than the other way around.
With software, however, it's the programmer that has to put forth the effort, not the user and these don't have to turn up in the interface. When programmers share that effort, like they do with free software, the individual's work load is greatly reduced. It takes me less effort to use a nice free browser on a free system than it does for me to repair an insecure non free system because it's browser has gaping problems.
The kind of "security" M$ has to offer is little more than inconvenience designed to make the user think everything is their fault.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If someone comes into a country with the intent of murdering large numbers of its citizens, they should really expect to be well treated. Yeah.
Microsoft also showed a very interesting new desktop virtualisation technology called SoftGrid, which allows applications to be virtualised individually, rather than a whole OS. Think Virtual PC or VMware, but instead of virtualising an OS, just a single application is virtualised.
Back in January I was at a VMWare User Conference and the main speaker talked about how VMWare was working with Oracle and other software vendors to do this very thing. Their take was to have a VMWare server running enterprise apps without the guest OS, which would speed up the host by not having the OS overhead. I gather that the apps have very basic drivers to handle video, network and such (if needed) with not much else, and because they will run on VMWare the drivers will be a minimal standard. I haven't seen anything official about this yet but I gather it is on it's way.
"Run As" is no solution at all. It is the Windows version of sudo, which is fine for things that SHOULD REQUIRE admin access.
But why should I require admin access to change file associations? Or to install a print driver?
"Run As" is just a crutch around poor design.
What is your source for this comment?
"Here in the US, in *most* (but not all) places, homosexuality is illegal. It's a technical matter that no one is ever prosecuted on, of course, but that doesn't make it legal -- there are sodomy laws all over the books here."
Because, despite the fact that you claim it as so, it is not so.
Those laws that you think make being homosexual illegal were declared unconstitutional. Four years ago.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/06/26/scotus.sodomy/
The rest of your post is just as ignorant, but the part about honor killing was especially grievous. Simply put, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_killings
A woman can be killed because she was raped, and in allowing herself to be raped, dishonored the family. It takes a a special kind of ignorant to equate that with capital punishment in the US.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
If someone comes into a country and is falsely accused of having the intent of murdering large numbers of its citizens, they should really expect to have due process. You act like we can read peoples minds, and we never make mistakes.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I disagree.
It used to be this way with immigrants from Europe, etc. However, it is not this way with Islamic immigrants.
A recent poll in Britain found that most second-generation immigrants want Sharia Law to be instituted there. This isn't the first-generation immigrants from Pakistan and elsewhere; this is their kids, who grew up in Britain. The first-generation immigrants don't seem to be causing any problems; they just want a decent life and job. Their kids are embracing the ways of radical Islam. The same thing is happening in France.
There was a movie about this a while ago, called "My Son the Fanatic". Check it out.
Dear Nannystate,
Please ban the sale and manufacture of foods larger than 1 centimeter in size. We could die!
Thanks,
The United Sheep of America
P.S.: This is urgent!! People are dying as we discuss this!
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
"Microsoft continues to go to the bank on the basis of "You CAN fool MOST of the people ALL of the time."
How much longer will this formula work for them?"
Answer: Forever. Refer to tobacco, drugs, alcohol, religion and the 9/11 Truther Movement.
In the command prompt, type "runas /user:username program".
The hardest thing to do as an unprivileged user is to change your monitor power settings. The effects of this setting is VERY visible to the user, and very annoying if it is not set correctly. It gets more annoying when you can't change the settings, because you don't have high enough privileges.
So, you log out, and then login as an administrator, make the change to the power settings, log off and then log back in as your unprivileged user only to find out that the changes that you just made as an administrator only affect the administrator's user profile.
Sigh.
OK, Logout, login as administrator, grant your unprivileged user rights so he can change the power settings, logout, login as your new super user, change the power settings, remove the privileges so you are an unprivileged user again, log out, and then login as the unprivileged user once again.
Thankfully, there are ways to deal with this.
Well, you might be understating things a little bit.
No, there isn't going to be a Muslim army that lands on the beaches and "takes over" the USA. That is silly.
However, we are seeing court decisions implementing Sharia law in Germany for Muslims. What do you think it would take for this to happen in the USA? How far away are we actually from allowing Muslim men to beat their wives with impunity? Would you not call "taking over" our laws?
How about the idea of people having Driver's License pictures taken while wearing a mask? Well, some states now allow fully covered (hajib) women photographed.
How about cab drivers that refuse to take unclean animals (guide dogs) or transport banned beverages (alcholic)? Yes, there is right now a fight over this in several cities.
No, the Muslim army isn't landing anytime soon, but you can start to see evidence that the USA is making over its laws and customs to be more in line with Muslim beliefs.
Virtual machines per application?
So next they will want to save RAM and speed things up with pass-thru hooks like what is already done with the virtual network interfaces but taken to the next level... It seems like a bad progression towards an actually working OS... How about we get the OS to WORK with the memory protection and better manage abstracted hardware??
Am I the only one who sees virtual machines as a solution to problems that mostly shouldn't exist or at least not to the severity that one would seriously consider that a solution?
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Muslims have jobs, families, hobbies, STUFF TO DO. Like everybody else.
How about you just assume that your run-of-the-mill Abdullah is outraged and shocked by anything that shocks your run-of-the-mill john doe?
I don't feel guilty anytime a white person kills children and I feel no need to write letters to the editor condemning their actions or going out in the streets chanting "STOP KILLING THE CHILDREN!".
You have to stop thinking of muslims as some sort of borg collective that has decided to remain quiet about the actions of a statistically insignificant amount of crazies.
By your standards, the U.S citizens that elected, re-elected this U.S administration and have not, after almost 5 years, stopped the war in Iraq are even more guilty (count the deaths of muslims and those of americans, guess who wins?) I'm pretty sure that's a classic terrorist argument to justify killing civilians.
Stop judging people so rashly. Stop insulting the billion muslims who condemn terrorism. Kthx.
OK, if XP is so bad, does he wants us to go back to Windows 2000. Probably not, so this is just another marketing push to get us from XP to Vista. Yep, it all sounds very embracing, and "we are sorry", but funny coincidence that this talk happens at the same time a new version (which brings in new money) is just released. Duh, isn't this normally called product promotion and shouldn't it happen with Leno or Letterman :-) instead of down-under?
Browsers shouldn't have a back button!! It's all about going forward...