Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Preparing a shared USB stick

[Alan McKinnon]

On 05/01/2014 02:42, walt wrote:
> On 01/04/2014 03:44 PM, Alan McKinnon wrote:
>
>> FAT was designed for MS-DOS where you put a floppy in the drive and you
>> had full access to everything on it. There was no need to implement
>> security.
>
> I think the operative phrase is "there was no need" back when Gates and
> Allen trained the world to accept failure as good enough.
>
>
>
>


I don't think so. This was back in the early 80s remember and PCs were a
new novelty. The thing to compare them to was paper records and we all
know bits of paper have no inherent security attributes. If you want to
secure them, keep them in a space with a lock. To secure a PC and it's
floppies, store them in a space with a lock.

And then there's the hardware, those things ran on 8086 chips. Not bad
for the time, but not exactly heavy on cpu grunt.

You can't seriously be pushing the line that MS promotes failure. gates
and Allen had the balls to get a working pc to market that put one on
every office desk and made computing ubiquitous. Sure, if they didn't do
it someone else would have, but they are the guys that did when no-one
else had managed. Think Amstrad, Sinclair, early Commodore. Even the
Beeb, awesome as it was, tanked completely.

It's all very easy for us to sit back today and play monday morning
fullback but in those days hardly anyone had a clue about security or
how to do it. The guys who did know were the mainframe and mini guys,
and that model didn't translate to what the PC was meant for.

Hey, I like to bash MS as much as the next guy (IE6 is a crime that
shall never be forgiven) but I do think we should bash MS for things
they deserve, not so much for things they don't.


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@×××××.com