[clue-talk] hrmmm

[Nate Duehr]

On Jul 26, 2007, at 2:13 AM, Matt Poletiek wrote:

> Computer Security is slowly becoming a ligit industry. I blame the
> fear amongst the masses currently, but hey. Whatever one will do for
> money is their own choice.

Wouldn't you be afraid with words like "viruses" and "trojans" used  
to describe what are actually "complete self-operating programs doing  
bad things on your computer, like removing files or capturing your  
keystrokes, that the designers of your chosen OS and user software  
weren't careful enough or thorough enough to protect you from"?

I know that's a mouthful, but most people (who barely understand how  
to drive their mice) would be a lot more pissed off at the root-cause  
instead of the "hackers" if we techies stop using pity catch phrases  
to describe things and tell them like they really are.

Would you buy a computer if your friends had ALL heard this line from  
their techies that Microsoft did not bother to write something well  
enough to keep bad people from getting a simple website to do  
severely malicious things to them, and that their continuing problems  
mean that they have to re-release new patches to fend off all their  
bugs they created every month or so?

Seriously -- the computer industry overall is a bunch of flim-flam  
artists, even the places I've worked for... everyone believes that  
it's okay to release software with known bugs (discounting that for  
every known bug there's usually X more...) and state-of-the-art still  
means that everything makes it through the day without major security  
holes eating you alive.  Home computer users don't have Corporate IT  
departments to protect and supposedly train them (seen any computer  
training classes for anyone where you work lately) and their machines  
end up cesspools of spyware, malware, and whatever else the press  
likes to call it.  "Virus" sounds so much sexier than "software any  
14 year old could write that will attack your files on your machine  
because the professional adults at your Operating System company  
can't get their **** together.

Macs are slightly better than PC's in the security regard, but  
honestly for more than 30 years of doing "computers" in the world,  
the standards, nay... "building codes" aren't there yet.  I can  
imagine that if the last 30 years of houses built had as many holes,  
leaks, and problems as OS's and application software do -- most  
builders would be bankrupt, and the homeowners would have demanded  
inspectors by now.  Do you see that coming in software?  I don't.   
Especially not in OS's.

We're too busy changing the OS's to audit them.

--
Nate Duehr
nate at natetech.com