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On 9/5/2013 4:20 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Thu, 05 Sep 2013 15:56:42 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>
>> Bad examples, all of them.
>
> I'm not surprised you think so, because they undercut your assertion. I
> happen to think they're pretty good examples because they reflect the
> reality of the computing environments I've had to deal with in my life.
> But what do I know - I only started as a systems admin about 20 years ago
> and worked with technology for most of my life.
>
> But I'll indulge in further discussion.
>
I consider them all bad examples because, in terms of computing, they
imply that a penny jar is "illegal", on the grounds that taking penny
from it is theft, since taking it from the cash register drawer is. This
is a complete absurdity, from the first word.
>> This is more like the "drug war" or the
>> constant attempts to curtail "theft of music", which leads to totally
>> useless bs, no actual progress on the real problem, or idiotic rules,
>> like the recent, "It should be illegal to stream music you own.", never
>> mind things like some ISPs blocking bittorrent traffic. The solution to
>> the problem isn't to prevent supposedly "unusual" usages, its to do
>> something about the actual illegal ones.
>
> Such as what, exactly? Got a better idea? Because I'm sure those who
> work on operating systems would love to hear your wisdom on this, since
> you clearly have superior knowledge to those who, you know, /actually/
> work on this stuff for a living.
>
Ur.. I would presume "security". See, the way I see it, this measure
they took wasn't to improve security at all, it was to damn up gaps in a
wall, so they thieves couldn't get out, while still letting them in
through the front gate.
Personally, with computers as they are now, I don't see a reasonable
argument why "small" programs, of the size that you get botnets out of,
couldn't run in a VM, by default, and have to be "allowed" into the
wider system, if you actually need them to do something. It minimum, it
would curtail most of the problem, since the only reason these things
get installed in the first place is because they "install" as part of an
non-legit process, from some fool running things they shouldn't. They
don't generally a) do anything else, or b) do what they claim to, in
some cases, or c) get attached to anything more complex than, say, a
flash video. They don't general have an impact no *nix systems, due to
the simple fact that you can't even run something like that on them,
even if they where an executable, without knowing how to enable them to
run in the first place.
That would, imho, be a damn good start on it. MS didn't want to fix
their core problem, so they came up with one that "broke" existing
functionality, probably even for more than just that class of
applications, then, 10+ years later they "finally" fixed some of the
actual security.
That said, security, it seems, is a total joke anyway. Read the latest
Snowden leaks? Seems, as usually, the NSA has been pressuring congress
to basically "legalize" what they have already been doing all along:
publishing encryption, custom built, with "master keys", which can be
used to decrypt ANYTHING that uses US government approved encryption,
which means, just to make things even funnier, *everyone*, world wide,
is compromised, including pretty much anything China uses (never mind
pretty much the entire western world, and anyone, at all, without their
own IT, who buys their stuff from the US, or anyone else using the same
'US Federal government approved' encryption systems. Most, including
just about everyone writing about how to use them, has no idea they
where compromised, from day one, in the papers describing them.
So, I would say another good argument might be, "Why the F do I care if
someone 'might' install a botnet on the machine, due to the vast lack of
security to stop someone accidentally doing so, if all someone that
wants to frack me over has to do is figure out what the magic numbers
are, which the NSA keeps hidden? Sigh...
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