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

[Chris]

Phil Barnett wrote:

>On Wednesday 27 December 2006 05:27, Chris wrote:
>  
>
>>Uhmmm, Phil, did anything in the tone of any of my correspondence
>>seriously sound like saber rattling?
>>    
>>
>
>No, not serious, but off the track of our conversation and a place I didn't 
>want to go. No biggy.
>
>  
>
There are forums where I have been known to call things as I
see them. Sometimes with strong language. I do that less and
less these days. In fact, at any hint that the language has become
inflamatory, I tend to pick up my marbles and go home.

I do this for a couple of reasons. Reason one is posterity - and
our postings are a type of posterity. I do not want to be perceived
that way.

Reason two has to do with my arguments. If they have merit,
they will stand on their own without going into a Saturday
Night Live skit, "Jane, you ignorant slut..."

For the record, the reason I mentioned the name of the OS
that shall not be named in this forum is that I mistakenly thought
that we started off the conversation with a) an action taken
by Windows, to be more specific, Vista, and b) You positing
that whoever solves this problem first will have done a good
thing. So I thought the doors were more open than they were
when I dragged out a Posix system as an example of a
security model that seems to be effective for some folks, and
is in line with my belief that security starts at the bottom.

So the executive summary seems to be that you think that
the ability to lock down a distro to a predefined set of
executables solves a clear and pressing need.

I think that it is better to address bad software at the level
of the bad software, which includes some poor default
configurations I've seen on both Windows and some
Linux distros.

Bill Anderson agrees with both of us - he agrees with you
that this is a good idea, and agrees with me that the devil
is in the details of driving that herd of cats across the
wilderness, and that certification of bad software is not
productive, and adds that the administrator is often the
gate that the cows got out of.

So there you have it folks. I'm not sure any of us convinced
each other, but hopefully we dragged out enough points on
both sides for others to think about.

Cheers,

Chris