Karl said:
If you weren't implying that users switching to *nix would make them
more secure, then I don't see the point in making that statement at
all.
The point is having one monopoly Desktop OS is a National Security risk
that is as obviously untenable as putting all your eggs in one basket.
It's quite obvious that the Anti-Trust settlement did little to protect
the general public as a whole for the predatory abuses of Microsoft, and
now that monopoly is a major National Security threat.
I'm not advocating any other option than the breakup of Microsoft in
order to protect the general pubic.
Of course Blaster isn't an issue for *nix users. So what?
[unless the implication was that switching to *nix is better.]
It was my reply to what Jupiter had said, that's what.
Switching half the desktop computers to *nix would not have made
Blaster, Welchia, SQL Slammer any better. Five computers can
potentially DoS a network, and one infected computer can allow an
attacker to bypass the firewall to compromise the data on the entire
network.
Again, with this MS vs. *nix phobia. Oy Vey! Can't you get it through
your thick skull, I AM NOT ADVOCATING *NIX. PERIOD! MS needs to be
broken up for the general public good, not to promote the *nis desktop,
but for the safety of our society of individual human beings as a whole
in the digital world.
Yeah, but that was one he11uva server. It was several servers at
several *nix distribution and development sites that potentially
could have compromised files that are downloaded by *nix users
worldwide. AFAIK Microsoft's FTP and Windows Update servers have
never been compromised, and if they had been, it would be major news,
not just "oh, it's just one server."
It's been overwhelmed plenty of times. And who needs to hack it? MS
does a good enough job screwing it up all on their own.
Wha? I don't care if you choose Microsoft or *nix. If you check my
site at
http://securityadmin.info/faq.asp#firewall, you'll see that I
point people to non-Microsoft open source solutions like Knoppix and
OpenBSD, even though my role here and there is not vendor advocacy
but in trying to help people that are already beyond the point of
choosing what to purchase.
You're the one arguing this as MS vs. *nix, I am not. Maybe you need to
step back, and reread this thread to gain some perspective on how you
words belie your protestations of not being an MS advocate.
With the exception of firewalls, I generally don't see people
recommending buying half Cisco and half Nortel switches and
routers... because as with choice of OS, the added cost and
complexity of supporting more than one solution trumps any benefit of
changing from homogeneous environment to a "50% vulnerable to this,
50% vulnerable to that" environment.
In the corporate world where the bean counter overrule common sense,
that probably is the case. But the individual consumer in the privacy
of his home is locked into not having any choice. You want to run the
last PC hardware, with the latest popular titled software, you have to
run an MS Desktop OS. I want for the average individual to have the
same ability to be able to choose between OS's, not only to have
competition bring down the prices of software down to reasonable levels,
but as matter of their computer security.
Even with all the vulnerabilities in IE, for example, it can make a
lot of sense to standardize just on Windows and IE and no other
browser or OS, because if you use OWA to check your email with
Windows integrated authentication, everyone you switch to *nix or
Netscape won't be able to do that. Frequently, functionality trumps
security, and sometimes Microsoft builds solutions that other vendors
choose not to support.
Or can't use, because MS use of proprietary standards, and others are
unwilling to pay and play by MS's monopoly-protected extortion of
licensing terms.
I don't control society. I only control my organization. I have no
way of encouraging other organizations to switch to another OS. The
European community is switching to desktop *nix, and we'll see if the
world is any more secure after that. Somehow I doubt it. And I
disagree that switching half my organization to another OS would help
my security, in fact I believe it would hurt it. Any company or
support staff that can't keep a homogeneous Windows network patched
and secure is going to fail even more miserably at keeping a mixed
environment secure, and having Blaster infect 20 machines or half the
machines is just as bad as having Blaster infect the whole network.
Also, security is not about achieving maximum security, it's about
saving money and effort. You choose to implement a certain safeguard
not because it makes you more secure, but because the cost of
implementing the safeguard compares favorably with the cost of other
safeguards and the cost of not implementing the safeguard and
becoming compromised. Given that, my arguments about a heterogeneous
environment increasing support complexity is a direct response to
your question.
No, it's total subterfuge. You talking on the micro level of one
companies network where as I'm concerned with the macro level of the
general public that is made up of private individual human beings, our
human society. If every corporation had no real choice of platforms,
that would put the entire corporate community's computers at greater
risk, just as MS Desktop monopoly puts their locked-in individual
consumers at a higher risk today.
Your homogenous argument may be the practical bean-counter thing to do
on a micro-level of one corporation, but extend it out to every
corporation, and the risk of the entire corporate computing world being
taken out with one shot increases a hundred-fold or more.
It is defensible. I just defended it.
No, you did a corporate tap dance that had little to do with protecting
the general public in the privacy of their own homes from the National
Security risk of having on big fat OS target. Corporations can afford
the best and brightest minds to help protect their companies, despite
the inadequacies of any one given platform. The general public is
forced to depend on MS, and has no viable choice in the matter.
Whoa! Calm down there killer!
Fair enough. You mistook me for a pro-Microsoft person too. In my
defense, your anti-Microsoft signature below plus your statements
mentioning *nix are what made me think you're pro-*nix. If you're
anti-Microsoft and you don't appear to be a Mac or BeOS or Amiga or
Novell enthusiast...
....then logically you stereotype me as pro-*nix. My assumptions about
your MS advocacy was based on you making this into MS vs. *nix, when I
only mention Linux & Unix in passing in answer to Jupiter, not part of
my main argument. You're going off on that wild tangent, off of one
passing reference shows where your heart is really at. Even your other
wild foray off-topic about using diverse platforms with in a particular
company, was bogus, because at least that company has a choice when it
come to their networking platforms. If every corporation on the planet
were forced to use nothing but MS, like individual consumers having no
real choice but MS, then would you say that was a more secure situation,
than having choices as they do today in the corporate world?
And I'm not really anti-MS, I'm pro-consumer-choice, and MS just happens
to be the biggest obstacle in the way of Consumer Choice. And even
Linux's creator says that the Linux desktop is still 5 to 10 years away.
So maybe corporations & gov'ts can afford to use a Linux Desktop for
pure office purposes because they can afford to support themselves, but
as a consumer multimedia OS, it is still years away at best. For the
average PC consumer, not your corporate big wigs, MS's monopoly hurts
the individual consumer, and by extension the entire general public, not
only with monopoly-protected non-competitive pricing, but also by
risking their computer security of everybody by having everybodies'
*Personal* *Computer* in one big fat monopolistic target of a basket.
--
Peace!
Kurt
Self-anointed Moderator
microscum.pubic.windowsexp.gonorrhea
http://microscum.com
"Trustworthy Computing" is only another example of an Oxymoron!
"Produkt-Aktivierung macht frei!"
