[Leaplist] Why Open Source won't work on "Vista computers"

[Phil Barnett]

On Monday 25 December 2006 17:53, ray wrote:

> MS is doing a lot of things with Vista to "kill" competition including
> any kind of FOSS and OSS hardware.  It is also trying to kill off small
> business with its IE7 anti-phishing tool.  no small business can get a
> certificate that IE7 will recognize, so my school will NEVER be trusted
> by IE7 and Vista.  Same goes for all of us as people and owners of small
> businesses.
>
> Way to support the little guy Mr. Gates.

Upon further thought, the entire reason that we are in the pickle we are in 
now with viruses, phishing sites and email is that the software that ran 
every computer up to now trusted every other computer as a basis for 
universal communication. We bitched about it very loudly and now that the 
behemoth is doing something about it, we bitch again. Oh, well.

In truth, we should be applauding MS for breaking the ground on making what 
I'll call 'Untrusting Computing' ubiquitous. It will take a long time to 
migrate to it, but it's the right thing to do. Eventually, it will be the 
norm. Either that or we will continue with internet anarchy. Nearly every 
original security model was upside down up to today. This is a model that 
flips it, ie: Nothing can run or connect unless we (the SA) allow it.

I would have preferred that we start with email, but building an operating 
system that refuses to be compromised because it can only run trusted 
software is a good thing no matter where it comes from. We do something like 
that today in Linux by making sure that our package management systems have a 
key to unlock our downloaded packages so that we know they come from a 
trusted source. A similar concept, but nearly as deep.

It would not hurt my feelings to have a Linux distribution that could 
eliminate the ability of untrusted software from executing at the kernel 
level. I can envision a Linux box with a CD-ROM or other RO media that has a 
list of what can execute and who or what can connect. That would be cool.

-- 
My other computer is your Windows machine