From: fnerd@smds.com (FutureNerd Steve Witham)
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 94 13:57:57 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Government by Sysadmin
Message-ID: <9403232149.AA00606@smds.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Maybe people like Dot and Don think of government as a systems-administration
sort of job.  So here they are, security experts advising the sys admins on
things like...

setting permissions
allocating quotas
registering users and giving them passwords
  (we used to put the encrypted passwords in /etc/passwd, but now we put them
   in /etc/shadow, with no read permission, so they're safe)
deciding what utilities are and aren't available
deciding what software the users need, and installing it
  (grudgingly, based on who's yelling the loudest)
setting up connections to other machines
deciding who's allowed to log in from "foreign hosts"
getting mail set up and running
buying new hardware from vendors
specifying the hardware to the vendors
...

These are the things computer security experts advise on.  
Maybe hammer experts see things as nails.

Only a country is not a host system owned and administered by the government,
and citizens are not guests or users.

Maybe we Unix mavens are partly at fault for propogating systems that are
such good models for dictatorships.

-fnerd
quote me
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
blue pill, Pharm. a pill of blue mass, used as an alterative...
alterative, adj.  tending to alter...
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