Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2001 13:47:57 -0600 From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: RE: FreeBSD Firewall vs. Black Ice Message-ID: <15011.60781.223096.927@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <007101c0a548$c9dce820$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> References: <15010.60451.584145.191384@guru.mired.org> <007101c0a548$c9dce820$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>
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Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com> types: > >Personally, I think that anyone who is engaged in "dumping" deserves > >to be taken advantage of that way. > History has shown that dumping is usually a precurser to an attempt to > monopolize the market. It is, in fact, illegal, although it's very > difficult to prove that it's going on. I'm well aware that the dumping is illegal - that's why I think that it's not a reason to not complain about the deficiencies in a product. > Of course, I also consider > >reporting deficiencies in a product I use to be a favor to the > >developer - and yes, I believe that even if I'm the developer in > >question. After all, nobody can fix they don't know about it. > Oh, believe me larger and richer and more powerful corporations have already > screamed to Microsoft about this. Trust me, they know about it!I think that > it's pretty obvious that they have deliberately decided not to close this > hole, the mystery is why. My only answer is that they have a vested > interest in pushing people into running full-blown anti-virus software. I > personally believe, with no evidence of course, that they are getting a > kickback or something from Symantec in exchange for keeping their products > virus-friendly. (because this spurs people to buy antivirus) Their publicly stated reason is that it's a matter of customer convenience. In other words, they believe that people want it that way. > Now, the $64 question is not whether or not this is ethical (it's obviously > not ethical to keep the script hole, let alone accept bribes) but whether in > the long run it's a Good Thing to force lusers into buying antivirus. Well, > I have to say that from my point of view, this IS a good thing - because > everyone should be running antivirus anyway, and I know that 90% of computer > users are cheap bastards that won't buy any software that they don't feel > that they absolutely must have. If keeping the script hole in the mail > clients will convince people to spend the $50 on antivirus software, then > I'm willing to look the other way, even though I know darn well that > Microsoft is blackmailing users into doing it. In fact, I'm happy they are > doing it because it makes people realize that Outlook really isn't free, > when you add in the cost of antivirus, and that helps Qualcomm. (which as a > company is far more UNIX-friendly than Microsoft ever will be) The first question is then - does anti-virus software actually do a better job than disabling scripting in MS Office applications? The second one is that, if this technic is so effective, when do the email viruses effect millions or 10s of millions of people whenever they show up? The way things are being done now makes it an arms race, which is *not* the place you want to be when you're the only one taking damage. Shutting off the scripting tools by default would pretty much kill the self-spreading email viruses, thus taking away the most potent weapon the virus writers have. Not shutting them off offensively stupid. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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