Re: Clinton freezes U.S. assets of Mideast groups

> The Eurodollar market got started because Russia feared 
> arbitrary confiscation of its dollar bank accounts.

Not actually true. It was because US banks were
subject to statutory limits on the amount of interest
they could pay on dollar deposits.

> At present it seems to me that unix machines on the internet
> are intrinsicly insecure -- the methods used to secure them
> are a collection of ad hoc patches.  For example all
> unix machines are vulnerable to the trojan
> horse attack.

Banks are intrinsically insecure. All banks are subject to
the "sawn-off shotgun" attack, also the "kidnap the
managers family" attack and several others.

> Windows NT is supposedly secure.  Certainly its design makes
> it possible to write software that is intrinsicly secure,

Why do you think that? Certainly it's compartmentalism
is better than UNIX, and as a "ground-up" design it's
probably seen better QA than UNIX. However, it hasn't had
20 years of interest from hackers and others. Also, while
the NT kernel may be *better*, several subsystems have
all the problems of UNIX, e.g. TCP/IP and the sequence
number attack.

I like NT, but it will never be a security panacea.

--
Richard Parratt

...
> > Windows NT is supposedly secure.  Certainly its design makes
> > it possible to write software that is intrinsicly secure,
> 
> Why do you think that? Certainly it's compartmentalism
> is better than UNIX, and as a "ground-up" design it's
> probably seen better QA than UNIX. However, it hasn't had
> 20 years of interest from hackers and others. Also, while
> the NT kernel may be *better*, several subsystems have
> all the problems of UNIX, e.g. TCP/IP and the sequence
> number attack.
> 
> I like NT, but it will never be a security panacea.
> 
> --
> Richard Parratt

IMHO:

When are people going to realize that Windows NT is just a partial,
microkernel (?right), enhanced scheduler Unix?  Add the other
half with NutCracker or Consensys's product (what's it called?),
and you have have a Posix (not just shell) and Unix SysVR4.2
compatible environment (Supposedly).

Unless they make too many mistakes of not staying simple with
core concepts or not implementing enough basic building blocks,
I can hopefully treat it as just another Unix platform.

<Obviously still irritated that companies think (or know...) that
they can eek out more money by reinventing instead of refurbishing
or augmenting something flexible enough to do anything they want.
Face it: there is nothing I can't add to a Unix system, and it wouldn't
have to affect existing programs one bit.>

sdw
-- 
Stephen D. Williams    25Feb1965 VW,OH      sdw@lig.net http://www.lig.net/sdw
Senior Consultant    513-865-9599 FAX/LIG   513.496.5223 OH Page BA Aug94-Feb95
OO R&D AI:NN/ES crypto     By Buggy: 2464 Rosina Dr., Miamisburg, OH 45342-6430
Firewalls/WWW servers ICBM: 39 38 34N 84 17 12W home, 37 58 41N 122 01 48W work
Pres.: Concinnous Consulting,Inc.;SDW Systems;Local Internet Gateway Co.17Jan95

> > > Windows NT is supposedly secure.  Certainly its design makes
> > > it possible to write software that is intrinsicly secure,
> > 
> > Why do you think that? Certainly it's compartmentalism
> > is better than UNIX, and as a "ground-up" design it's
> > probably seen better QA than UNIX. However, it hasn't had
> > 20 years of interest from hackers and others. Also, while
> > the NT kernel may be *better*, several subsystems have
> > all the problems of UNIX, e.g. TCP/IP and the sequence
> > number attack.
> > 
> > I like NT, but it will never be a security panacea.
> > 
> > --
> > Richard Parratt
> 
> IMHO:
> 
> When are people going to realize that Windows NT is just a partial,
> microkernel (?right), enhanced scheduler Unix?  Add the other
> half with NutCracker or Consensys's product (what's it called?),
> and you have have a Posix (not just shell) and Unix SysVR4.2
> compatible environment (Supposedly).
> 
> Unless they make too many mistakes of not staying simple with
> core concepts or not implementing enough basic building blocks,
> I can hopefully treat it as just another Unix platform.
> 
> <Obviously still irritated that companies think (or know...) that
> they can eek out more money by reinventing instead of refurbishing
> or augmenting something flexible enough to do anything they want.
> Face it: there is nothing I can't add to a Unix system, and it wouldn't
> have to affect existing programs one bit.>

Unfortunately, however, there are a lot of things that a lot of people can't
do in a unix system.  Unix is probably the most widely used unfriendly
cryptic, and complicated operating system today.  With the upcoming of
Linux, this will probably change somewhat in the future, but until I can
teach my secretary how she can use latex to type and print her letters, we
are going to be stuck with getting us whatever the bastards at MicroSoft
think we want.

Kevin Marcus says:
> Unfortunately, however, there are a lot of things that a lot of people can't
> do in a unix system.  Unix is probably the most widely used unfriendly
> cryptic, and complicated operating system today.

Unix is perfectly easy to use. Its no worse than DOS.

I'm constantly amazed by people saying "why, Unix is so unfriendly!
What does "ls" mean to a naive user". Well, what does "dir" mean to a
naive user? Since when is "dir" the intuitive way to list the contents
of something?

Now, its true that Windows is friendlier than DOS, but there are good
windowing systems on Unix that provide equally easy to use front ends.

Anyone who claims that "Unix" is unfriendly hasn't looked at the
machine that they are using -- or they are bigots who think that the
strange commands that they know are natural whereas other people's are
magically unnnatural.

> With the upcoming of
> Linux, this will probably change somewhat in the future, but until I can
> teach my secretary how she can use latex to type and print her letters, we
> are going to be stuck with getting us whatever the bastards at MicroSoft
> think we want.

Teach her how to use FrameMaker, or IslandWrite, or something
similar. IslandWrite is no more unfriendly than MacWrite was. If you
want to teach her to use latex, thats actually quite feasable, but its
not needed.

Perry

On Thu, 26 Jan 1995, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> Unix is perfectly easy to use. Its no worse than DOS.

Thanks for the entertainment Perry.

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"James A. Donald" says:
> On Thu, 26 Jan 1995, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> > Unix is perfectly easy to use. Its no worse than DOS.
> 
> Thanks for the entertainment Perry.

I see that you have no arguments against my statement...

.pm

...
> > <Obviously still irritated that companies think (or know...) that
> > they can eek out more money by reinventing instead of refurbishing
> > or augmenting something flexible enough to do anything they want.
> > Face it: there is nothing I can't add to a Unix system, and it wouldn't
> > have to affect existing programs one bit.>
> 
> Unfortunately, however, there are a lot of things that a lot of people can't
> do in a unix system.  Unix is probably the most widely used unfriendly
> cryptic, and complicated operating system today.  With the upcoming of
> Linux, this will probably change somewhat in the future, but until I can
> teach my secretary how she can use latex to type and print her letters, we
> are going to be stuck with getting us whatever the bastards at MicroSoft
> think we want.
> 

While in a way what you say is true, latex isn't Unix, the shell isn't the
only interface to Unix, etc.  Unixware's setup was an example.  Solaris's
isn't too bad (setup printers, mounts, user accounts, ttys (kinda)), etc.
Put Frame, WP, MS Word (some version at least), Lotus 123, Powerbuilder
(was going to be out end 94, haven't kept track), etc. on a Unix
system that boots to xdm and you have a pretty darn good replacement
for Windows/NT/OS2, etc.

With any kind of support staff, Unix systems are much smoother and robust
than PCs.  I've seen it at several really large sites.  No comparison.

Ok, I guess I'm getting 'religious' here, which isn't the place...

sdw
-- 
Stephen D. Williams    25Feb1965 VW,OH      sdw@lig.net http://www.lig.net/sdw
Senior Consultant    513-865-9599 FAX/LIG   513.496.5223 OH Page BA Aug94-Feb95
OO R&D AI:NN/ES crypto     By Buggy: 2464 Rosina Dr., Miamisburg, OH 45342-6430
Firewalls/WWW servers ICBM: 39 38 34N 84 17 12W home, 37 58 41N 122 01 48W work
Pres.: Concinnous Consulting,Inc.;SDW Systems;Local Internet Gateway Co.17Jan95

Kevin Marcus writes:

>   Unfortunately, however, there are a lot of things that a lot of people 
>   can't do in a unix system.  Unix is probably the most widely used 
>   unfriendly cryptic, and complicated operating system today.  With the 
>   upcoming of Linux, this will probably change somewhat in the future, but 
>   until I can teach my secretary how she can use latex to type and print her 
>   letters, we are going to be stuck with getting us whatever the bastards 
>   at MicroSoft think we want.

well there is (or was) NeXTStep. always thought it was a pity that
didn't take off.

josh

(Thread name changes, as "Clinton freezes assets...." didn't seem too
relevant. Is it just me, or are people no longer even bothering to
change thread names to reflect contents?)

joshua geller wrote:

> Kevin Marcus writes:
> 
> >   Unfortunately, however, there are a lot of things that a lot of people 
> >   can't do in a unix system.  Unix is probably the most widely used 
> >   unfriendly cryptic, and complicated operating system today.  With the 
> >   upcoming of Linux, this will probably change somewhat in the future, but 
> >   until I can teach my secretary how she can use latex to type and print her 
> >   letters, we are going to be stuck with getting us whatever the bastards 
> >   at MicroSoft think we want.
> 
> well there is (or was) NeXTStep. always thought it was a pity that
> didn't take off.

I was about to say the same thing! Not to push NeXTStep per se, as it
is apparently doomed for a variety of reasons,  but to say that
popular applications can be--and have been--ported to Unix. Many of
you presumably have first-hand knowledge of this, with apps like
Mathematica, FrameMaker, WordPerfect, etc. on Unix boxes as well as
PCs and Macs.

This is separate, I think, from the issue of teaching secretaries
LaTex...that sounds truly evil. (8-))

--Tim May


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