From: Kevin Marcus <datadec@cs.UCR.edu>
Date: Wed, 25 Jan 95 19:57:25 PST
To: sdw@lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Subject: Re: Clinton freezes U.S. assets of Mideast groups
In-Reply-To: <m0rXFy8-0009t3C@sdwsys>
Message-ID: <199501260357.TAA07311@cs.UCR.EDU>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> > > 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.