[Klug-general] Re: Bill Gates the Stupid Image - not Bill Gates the Stupid Person

[George Prowse]

Stephen Ryan wrote:
> Message: 4
> Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 19:53:14 +0000
> From: Margot <margot at lawrence1961.f9.co.uk>
> Subject: Re: [Klug-general] Re: Bill Gates the Stupid Image - not Bill
> 	Gate	the	Stupid Person
> To: Kent Linux User Group - General Topics <kent at mailman.lug.org.uk>
> Message-ID: <478D0F2A.3080009 at lawrence1961.f9.co.uk>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> 
> Stuart Buckland wrote:
>>> Perhaps you might post something much more important than the question
>>> of
>>> why after 30 years the PC software industry is a great deal less secure
>>> than
>>> it was when it began.
>>>
>> If that is indeed a fact, and I'm not saying it is or is not, there are
> many
>> contributing factors.  Arguably those having the greatest impact being
>> non-technical in nature.
>>
>> What makes you say software is less secure now than 30 years ago and what
>> makes you think anybody was even thinking about security 30 years ago?
>>
>> Stu
>>
> 
> If you read what he actually wrote, you'll see that he said that the 
> *software industry* is less secure, not the *software*.
> 
> --Stephen said
> George/Stu/Margot, I am stating the obvious really. 30 years ago there was
> no internet, very few LANS, WANS, VLANS etc and confidential data was
> limited in terms of how much of it was maintained by computers. Companies
> might have had a mainframe and a few PC's came along in the early 80's which
> may have been hooked up for terminal emulation. Very few people knew how to
> hack into these systems and there wasn't much of interest to see inside them
> anyway. With the exception of a few choice targets. 
> 
> There was no training courses for engineers or manuals, and few tech
> supports lines - so you just stumbled around trying to fix things and
> generally hacked your way through. Many of us came from electronics
> backgrounds, so you could get right down in the hardware.
> 
> Later on in the mid - late 80's the likes of Bill Gates came along with a
> grand vision to make computers more user friendly. His argument was that if
> you change the aesthetic quality of the interface - then the devices would
> be more user friendly. The counter argument to this was that user
> friendliness should be more about making devices more secure - than just
> making them look prettier. Anyway, the world decided to trade prettiness off
> against security and we ended up in a world where human beings could
> interact much better with the technology - but effectively became much more
> ignorant about it - given the layers of abstraction required to support the
> GUI.
> 
> Today, we have the most confidential data sitting in insecure databases all
> around the planet. Whilst it looks much more prettier now - it is
> nevertheless held together by millions of lines of code that very few people
> would ever take ownership of. How could they?
> 
> I believe that people like Bill Gates knows this and that he knows that he
> and others have effectively built a roller coaster which will be very
> difficult to get off of.
> 
> Enough said in this forum guys... but anyone can talk to me at
> sryan at intrench.com
> 
> cheers
> 
> Stephen Ryan	
> www.intrench.com
> 
meh, you take a little - you give a little.