On June 8, 2010 at 21:05 fergdawgster@gmail.com (Paul Ferguson) wrote:
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On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 8:59 PM, JC Dill <jcdill.lists@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm still truly amazed that no one has sic'd a lawyer on Microsoft for creating an "attractive nuisance" - an operating system that is too easily hacked and used to attack innocent victims, and where others have to pay to clean up after Microsoft's mess.
Do you honestly believe that if 80% of the world's consumer computers were *not* MS operating systems, that the majority of computers would still not be targeted?
Ah, the disinformation reply... MAYBE IF [please read thru before replying because I probably cover most knee-jerk responses eventually]: a) Microsoft hadn't ignored well-known techniques for dividing secure vs insecure operations in their kernel thus allowing any email script you're reading to do whatever it wants including, e.g., re-writing the boot blocks. b) Microsoft hadn't made the first and usually only newly created user "root" on a new system so it'd be easier to install applications they bought and administer the system and save them understanding that they sometimes have to type in a separate adminstrator's password. But the extra typing and forgetting that password of course would detract from the "user experience". c) Microsoft hadn't distributed, for decades, systems with graphics libraries which relied on injecting raw machine code into the kernel to speed up operations like scrolling a window (which used to be very slow without this, as one example), and got their third-party vendors so hooked on this technique that they screamed bloody murder every time MS even hinted that they might remove it. It took generations of OLE, X controls, .NET, etc to get rid of this, if it's even completely gone now. d) Microsoft hadn't ignored all these basic security practices in operating systems which were completely well understood and implemented in OS after OS back to at least 1970 if not before because they saw more profit in, to use a metaphor, selling cars without safety glass in the windshields etc, consequences be damned. e) Microsoft hadn't made tens if not hundreds of billions off the above willful negligence for decades (if you include the first warning when viruses became rampant in the late 80s, plus a decade of infected zombie bots starting in the late 90s) after they knew full well the disasterous consequences, causes, and fixes. f) The fact that Microsoft began putting exactly the fixes the above implies with, generously, XP SP2, but not seriously until Vista (general release: January 30, 2007) which is tantamount to an admission of guilt. Such as separating Administrator from User and the privileges thereof. Then, and only then, MAYBE their mere market dominance would be a plausible reason. But for those of us who actually UNDERSTAND operating systems and how their security works (or doesn't) and what the problems have been specifically statistics and probabilities and hand waves just can't trump KNOWING AND UNDERSTANDING THE FACTS AND HOW THESE THINGS WORK! Blaming Microsoft OS's vulnerability to viruses and zombification on their market dominance would be like blaming the running out of IPv4 addresses on cisco's market dominance. It has a certain appeal to the ignorant, but anyone who knows anything about the actual causes and history knows there's not one grain of truth to it. -- -Barry Shein The World | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD | Dial-Up: US, PR, Canada Software Tool & Die | Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*