[ILUG] This just keeps getting stupider by the word.

[Philip Trickett]

On Tue, 2002-06-25 at 10:45, Brian O'Donoghue wrote:
(Actually, I Wrote this Bit;))

> Although I will say that it does give IT Admin firms who base
> themselves solely on Windows a slight advantage, due to the availability
> of pre-written marketing materials.

(He started here) 
> Yeah marketing materials aimed at marketing people.. I mean seriously what
> sort of techie would believe that a unix system 'Unix derived from AT&T...
> the crowed who made that language ... what was it called 'C'.. and that
> other one ... 'C++'' wouldn't have any support for objects.... hmm call me a
> pendant, but C++ supports OO last time I checked... so unless M$ have some
> vital scrap of info I'm not party to... this entire article seems like the
> thick end of a big blue propaganda plot.

I agree with that. Unfortunately, the end user, or the IT dept of a
medium size company that is already using windows in house probably
already has at least a basic technet subscription, and they are already
on the receiving end of this type of marketing.  This makes it alot
harder to implement a solution based on Linux, for a company in this
situation.

> But for me where it get dangerous is here
> http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992449
> quote 'Future versions of the Windows operating system will be designed to
> run only digitally signed code, to stop hackers uploading malicious programs
> and to prevent computer viruses from spreading. '
> 
> further quote
> 'Two of the world's biggest microprocessor manufacturers, Intel and AMD,
> have agreed to design new hardware to support the design, which Microsoft
> says could be available in 2004.'
> 
> Now call me a paranoid, but these seems like an allusion to M$ only
> hardware, hardware which require code to be 'digitally signed' and since
> this hardware will be built in conjunction with m$... does that mean that
> your average guy learning C on a *nix system will have to what compile (n)
> bytes of digital signature into his hello world program such that it will
> run on M$'s security hardware... or worse yet that once such hardware is
> introduced that it will be impossible to use anything but windows on an x86
> arch?
> 
This stems from their weak security model that they have adopted with
their application and OS programming and implementation. Something that
having the source code would alleviate the problem for slightly.  If
they had actually sat down and thought about the security model in the
first place, they would not _have_ to implement this.  On the other
hand, I think the Digital Signature on driver code is a good idea in
Win2k as it is a binary file to which the user has no access to the
contents of. (Although, I have only ever seen about 4 drivers that I
have installed on Win2k with a digital signature)

I think this is more on their efforts to provide content and media to
the desktop PC, and to re-position themselves as providers of Media,
Entertainment, and application software, rather than to greatly increase
security.  If you were going to shift your business model to the
delivery of media, wouldn't you want to be able to control the
distribution of it?

Phil
> 
> 
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