I'll agree with you that making information harder to come by increases security. But really, doing chmod a-r on the password file is a bad example. The reason is that the password file is the ONLY PLACE in the system where the lgin is stored. If the password were stored elsewhere (eg. root making a personal copy of it in his own directory and leaving it 755), turning off permissions does nothing.
Please have some hope in human nature, and in the intelligence of lawyersand coders alike. These ideas will be clarified, debated and scrutinized, and they will be simplified so that Joe Average Programmer can understand the issues. This is what has happened and will continue to happen as long as academic and intellectual freedom reigns. Undergraduates today are doing tabletop experimenst that experts did using complicated equipment. There is every idication that law happens this way too, albeit at a much slower pace.
MR. GATES: Let me start out, really the reason that you see open source there at all is because we came in and said there should be a platform that's identical with millions and millions of machines, and the bios of that should be open to everybody to use, and all the extensibility should be there. And so it was very predictable that once we had gotten the PC going, and going and gotten hundreds of millions of machines out there, that it had always been sort of free software and the universities would flourish and there would be more of that.
Here Bill Gates shows how much of a politician he is, and how MS hasn't really changed, however it wants to spin things. MS by itself was never the key driving force for the standardization of BIOS, and the millions of PC Clones. For that, IBM's blindspot, Compaq's reverse-engineering of the BIOS, the Taiwanese Motherboard manufacturers all shared part of the responsibility. MS never really drove the market in this direction, unless you consider anticompetitive OEM licensing deals as a Good Thing. Is MS taking credit for this?
As universities taking and buying up cheaper alternatives to the workstation, you can directly blame their tightening budgets, and the market-unaware Unix vendors for that.
See, I was drunk that night in the streets, and taking a puke down the alley. All of sudden, this dark haired chick with biker overalls appeared out of nowhere. She dashed out and around the corner. I hobbled after her to see her dart into towards a telephone booth with the phone ringing off the hook. And there was this huge tractor, which was gunning straight for her. She ran in, picked up the handset and just melted away like a ghost, just before the tractor mowed the thing down.
I tell you, there's something mighty weird going on here.
You go around in circles arguing your point, while the other guy does the same. The difference is one guy seems to know what the argument is about, while you are clueless.
So let me help you bring forth a salient point that makes your argument strong: (1) In command line envirnoment, the useful type of memory is symbolic and linguistic, while in a GUI environment, it is kinestetic and iconic. (2) Most people remembering things kinestetically.
Having made your argument more coherent, I hope you now see the point of your opponent: Different people have different modes remembrance. The GUI is superior only in a democratic sense. Now let me ask you: do youn know what is meant by "tyranny of the masses"?
But suppose the questioner gets really irritating, or that you've ceased being amused by the question. But the questioner would not let go until he gets a yes or no answer.
Since the question is just one of semantics (ie. it really does not matter), can't you just flip a coin, and give that random answer? Why or why not? (What point do you think I am trying get across?)
Sorry - I have to correct that for a better analogy. A fictional novel about how terrorists hijack a plane to destroy the White House makes the author just as guilty as the Osama bin Laden.
Let me get this straight - demostrating how to fire a gun in a training range is the same as demostrating it on a crowd. Or worse - a Muslim trainee pilot is just as guilty as one who flew a plane into the World Trade Center.
I refer you to Donald Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, Volume 3, where he talk about pseudorandom number generation. Although cryptography is not random number generation, many of the principle are the same. One thing is that choosing arbitrary operations to perform on an encrypted dataset does not necessarily strengthen a cryptographic algorithm.
Excuse me, a driver's license implies that there is a central authority to consult on who is licensed and who is not. I could go to the DMV and ask if someone is licensed to drive a certain vehicle.
Do you think MS maintains a registry of all the users of Windows? If not, what kind of "license" is it? If they don't keep track, it means that the identities of the licensees don't matter to them. And if they don't care, why should they worry about transfers?
Your argument, while cogent, ignores the a very important question WHAT IS THE STATE OF THE ART, AT THE TIME OF THE WAR?
During WWII, the state of the art was the Enigma machine. The cryptographers had the upper hand, and it was the imperative of wiining the war, which turned things around. During those times, the fact that the state of the art of cryptanalysis had caught up, was not widely advertised.
The point is that these arguments are fluid, and depend on the current state of the art. With cryptography reigning supreme, it makes no sense to turn back the clock. Instead of crippling their own citizens, they should be looking for weaknesses in public key cryptography!
Well, finding fault for the purposes of learning from lessons, for the purpose of correcting future errors is fine. But finding fault with an axe to grind seems pathetically childish. To bring everyting back into perspective, CmdrTaco has said "shut them down and make the users aware of the problem - let us worry about user rights later, at a more appropriate time". That sounds like a great reasonaed advice. Going around yelling "MS is at fault, MS is at fault" ignores the fact that the user may have valid reasons to install IIS, and perhaps is unaware of all that entails. Must as I do agree that MS software is shoddy, I must say that this game of "blaming people" is inappropriate, right now.
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I'll agree with you that making information harder to come by increases security. But really, doing chmod a-r on the password file is a bad example. The reason is that the password file is the ONLY PLACE in the system where the lgin is stored. If the password were stored elsewhere (eg. root making a personal copy of it in his own directory and leaving it 755), turning off permissions does nothing.
You are 100% right. That's why I use Free Software.
Please have some hope in human nature, and in the intelligence of lawyersand coders alike. These ideas will be clarified, debated and scrutinized, and they will be simplified so that Joe Average Programmer can understand the issues. This is what has happened and will continue to happen as long as academic and intellectual freedom reigns. Undergraduates today are doing tabletop experimenst that experts did using complicated equipment. There is every idication that law happens this way too, albeit at a much slower pace.
See you in metamod!!
Here Bill Gates shows how much of a politician he is, and how MS hasn't really changed, however it wants to spin things. MS by itself was never the key driving force for the standardization of BIOS, and the millions of PC Clones. For that, IBM's blindspot, Compaq's reverse-engineering of the BIOS, the Taiwanese Motherboard manufacturers all shared part of the responsibility. MS never really drove the market in this direction, unless you consider anticompetitive OEM licensing deals as a Good Thing. Is MS taking credit for this?
As universities taking and buying up cheaper alternatives to the workstation, you can directly blame their tightening budgets, and the market-unaware Unix vendors for that.
would be something we can all be impressed with.
I tell you, there's something mighty weird going on here.
Go away. Geeks appreciate the value of a coherent sentence expressed economically and grammatically using precise language.
So let me help you bring forth a salient point that makes your argument strong: (1) In command line envirnoment, the useful type of memory is symbolic and linguistic, while in a GUI environment, it is kinestetic and iconic. (2) Most people remembering things kinestetically.
Having made your argument more coherent, I hope you now see the point of your opponent: Different people have different modes remembrance. The GUI is superior only in a democratic sense. Now let me ask you: do youn know what is meant by "tyranny of the masses"?
The scary thing is that it was probably written by someone who spends their life glued to their channels.
You seem to be a pretty talented person. What made you choose acting as a career? Ever had any regrets?
Since the question is just one of semantics (ie. it really does not matter), can't you just flip a coin, and give that random answer? Why or why not? (What point do you think I am trying get across?)
The burglar does have to OPEN the unlocked door. No sir - it's the burglar, not the door.
Sorry - I have to correct that for a better analogy. A fictional novel about how terrorists hijack a plane to destroy the White House makes the author just as guilty as the Osama bin Laden.
Let me get this straight - demostrating how to fire a gun in a training range is the same as demostrating it on a crowd. Or worse - a Muslim trainee pilot is just as guilty as one who flew a plane into the World Trade Center.
Right. Thus "Windows vulnaerability" is redundant, not an oxymoron.
I refer you to Donald Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, Volume 3, where he talk about pseudorandom number generation. Although cryptography is not random number generation, many of the principle are the same. One thing is that choosing arbitrary operations to perform on an encrypted dataset does not necessarily strengthen a cryptographic algorithm.
Trade secrets are not patents. Since these guys did not seek patent protection for their CSS encryption, they can't make this argument.
If you had to use software X at work, and not using X means no work, and no food, yes.
Do you think MS maintains a registry of all the users of Windows? If not, what kind of "license" is it? If they don't keep track, it means that the identities of the licensees don't matter to them. And if they don't care, why should they worry about transfers?
That's what they say, as they drive around in the Toyota SUVs, talking on their Nokia cellphones, listening to music from their Sony stereo system.
A secure quantum channel is really hard to set up.
During WWII, the state of the art was the Enigma machine. The cryptographers had the upper hand, and it was the imperative of wiining the war, which turned things around. During those times, the fact that the state of the art of cryptanalysis had caught up, was not widely advertised.
The point is that these arguments are fluid, and depend on the current state of the art. With cryptography reigning supreme, it makes no sense to turn back the clock. Instead of crippling their own citizens, they should be looking for weaknesses in public key cryptography!
Well, finding fault for the purposes of learning from lessons, for the purpose of correcting future errors is fine. But finding fault with an axe to grind seems pathetically childish. To bring everyting back into perspective, CmdrTaco has said "shut them down and make the users aware of the problem - let us worry about user rights later, at a more appropriate time". That sounds like a great reasonaed advice. Going around yelling "MS is at fault, MS is at fault" ignores the fact that the user may have valid reasons to install IIS, and perhaps is unaware of all that entails. Must as I do agree that MS software is shoddy, I must say that this game of "blaming people" is inappropriate, right now.
In this time of knee-jerk reactions to terrifying disasters, this warning seems richly appropriate.