Re: How will PatchGuard change kernel programming?

smerf wrote:

"David Jones" <ncic@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:Cz3Yg.2976$XX2.2223@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

smerf wrote:


Microsoft is taking a page from President Bush here. In the name of safety, they remove the freedom to innovate from 3rd parties and give themselves more power than ever (while claiming that right for themselves in courts around the world). Those that would trade liberty for safety deserve (and will have) niether.

Huh? That is one of the worst comparisons I have ever seen. You're
comparing the right to privacy (Patriot Act) with the right to spy
on other people (removing hooking). If there is any comparison at
all, it would be as total opposites.


How so? Bush is removing rights (like the fact that you can be held without counsel, without an indictment, and without ANY contact with family members for an INDEFINITE time if "they" think you just MAY be involved in terrorism) and Microsoft is removing abilities that we formerly had - both in the name of safety.

Read what I wrote next time. Rights and abilities are not the same
thing. To draw a similarly absurd analogy, if I had the ability to
steal money from my employer, they found out, and that ability was
taken away, they are wrong to do so? If I had the ability to tear
down someone's house by renting a bulldozer, and the police stop me,
they're overstepping their authority?

Rights != abilities. Suggesting that because I *CAN* do something
I have a *RIGHT* to do it is ludicrous. It's a /poor comparison/.
Period.


Freedom to innovate? Are you sure that's what you REALLY want?
Early versions of Windows were very open -- programs shared memory
spaces and had access to pretty much everything. This works as
long as all the software plays nice, but not all software plays
nice.

So, there are bad guys out there {shrugs}. Does that mean that we remove the right to drive from everyone because some use thier cars to break the laws (speeding, hit & run, bank robbery, etc.)? Does it mean that we take away all internet access because some use it to break established laws (like hacking and trading child porn)?

To complete your slippery slope analogy, does this change by MS
prevent all apps from running? Hardly.

Now, if the law required mandatory speed limiters in our cars,
yes, maybe some people would find a way around it and drive
faster. Still, would our roads be more safe or less safe
because of it?

Bank robbery: if banks tightened security to try to stop people
from robbing banks, does this stop me from performing legitimate
transactions? I have yet to run into problems from a bank vault.


Of course not. So, why - when there are bad guys writing software - does that mean that the good guys lose the capability to extend and patch the OS? I can assure you that the bad guys will still write bad software, PatchGuard will just make it more difficult for us to defend ourselves against it.

If it's possible for good guys, it's possible for bad guys. It's
also true that if it's possible for bad guys, it's possible for
good guys. The ability to prevent bad guys from doing bad things
far outweighs inconveniencing good guys from trying to stop them
from doing those bad things.


It's the same misguided logic that people use to ban guns (like they did in Washington D.C. - where we now have the nation's highest rate of handgun violence). The only people that will be shackled by PatchGuard are those who choose to play by the rules. Just how many spammers and hackers do you think that includes?

Another poor analogy. (*sigh*)

AV companies *ALREADY* don't play by the rules. Just ask Anton. :)
Again, if you're blocking the good guys, you're blocking the bad
guys too. And don't think the AV vendors are just going to say,
"ok, I guess we'll do everything just like you say from now on."

Are you suggesting we should completely open the OS so that anybody
can do anything they want? You can't open it to the good guys and
not the bad guys without having somebody choose which is which, and
then you'd just criticize MS for making decisions like that. You
can't have it both ways.


As time has gone on, Microsoft has steadily locked programs down.
Now you can't go mucking around in other program's memory space
unless you have explicit access. Services are prevented from
interacting with the user. And so on. And, you know what? It's
a lot more stable. My Windows 2000 machine works a lot better
than my Windows 98 machine, and Windows XP works better still.

Yeah, it can be annoying when my trick du jour no longer works,
but I'd gladly trade OS stability for it. The question is: do
applications have a fundamental RIGHT to muck around in the OS
internals? If so, why? And "it lets me do more stuff" isn't an
answer, it's just restating the question.

Applications clearly do not have any rights at all when it comes to the OS. However, the user that paid the licensing fee to Microsoft should have the right to allow 3rd partry teams to help secure his/her OS when Microsoft obviously can't do it alone.

At the risk of being very un-PC here, the user can't be trusted to
make those decisions in the average case. If users made good
decisions with respect to security, the problem wouldn't be this
bad in the first place. All the average user cares about is
whether they can run their software -- AV software is a nuisance,
one which they put up with only because viruses and spyware get in
the way of them running their software.

Kazaa had spyware, and it was wildly unpopular, huh? :) If the
user was prompted whether or not to allow the software to do
something bad, and Kazaa (or app du jour) wouldn't run without it,
what do you think they would click?

This stance (trust the user) is *EXACTLY* the stance that MS
used to take, and still takes to some degree. That's why Windows
has historically had more holes than swiss cheese. I, for one,
am glad they're gradually realizing you can't trust either the
user or the ISV to do the right thing.


Does anyone here think that Microsoft has finally coded an OS that is locked down to the core? Especially since Vista is based in large part on XP technology....

So, because it's not perfect, they should stop trying? I'm not
following your logic there.

Look, I'm not going to suggest that Microsoft has never been
involved in anti-competitive behavior, but I fail to see how /this/
is a problem. If the OS can remove the *NEED* for AV software,
this is a bad thing? (Not that this change will, but it sure is
a step in the right direction.)

I sure don't miss my third-party disk defragmentation software.
Do you?

David
.

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