On suing Marcy Hamilton for being a bimbo

[Major Variola (ret)]

At 10:17 AM 10/5/03 +0200, Thomas Shaddack wrote:
>On Sat, 4 Oct 2003, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
>
>> So don't use their tools.
>
>You don't know how much I'd love to.

Ditto, sir.  Along with the amazingly irregular "English", and various
other systems subject to Metcalfe's Law (aka the fax effect).

However, I have to live in the Real
>World, and I have to interact with other people, which involves
receiving
>data from them. (If I could just ignore them, I'd do so and won't get
>angry about the issue.)

Feh.  You may choose not to work for the military.  I do.  You may
also choose to work with folks who require MShit.  The cost of
either decision is pretty high nowadays.

>I also have to share the Net with them, which - even if I do the best -

I (and you) have to share the planet with a population *half* of which
is subaverage
in intelligence.  A population that loves Fox News and Bush and Brittny
and ESPN etc.  So what?
Its our albatross.  You don't use govt violence to correct this.

>> It is simply wrong to blame a gun or drill or code maker because some

>> evildoer (virus propogator) used the tool against you.
>
>Is it also wrong to blame a door maker when the lock that was marketed
as
>safe can be opened with a creditcard (which is then touted as
convenience)?

One can assume that Joe Sixpack has seen the creditcard trick, and makes

locally rational decisions.  Hell, my Dad read about Blaze's "master
key" attack
in the paper.


>> Let me guess: the State gets to decide how many bugs per line of
code?
>
>I don't have the answer here. I usually don't have accurate answers to
>policy things.

Ok.  But do you see my point?   You do not want the State to decide
what is good, fair, publishable, etc.  The 1st amendment permits
all kinds of objectionable bits.  I rather like that, although I don't
like many of the bits or their effect on many members of my species.
Here in the US, we don't sue folks who write inflammatory books
because their readers have done some wrong.  It should be the
same with machine-executable bits.

>> Again, the maker's choice; your choice to purchase.
>
>Not when I become collateral damage.

Actually, yes.  Though I very much like your use of that phrase.

I can't sue Fox for polluting the minds of people I might encounter.

 Similar for rendering HTML in mails; I never saw a
>SINGLE mail with javascript inside that won't be spam (where it's for
>annoying but otherwise harmless effects) or worm (where it's actually
>malicious and used for spreading), a boolean for call for scripting
engine
>to return without any action shouldn't be problematic.

Whatever.  There was generally a reason for introducing abilities else
it wouldn't
have been invested in, assuming rational actors.  That <feature X> was a
horrible
security/privacy risk didn't occur to them, or was ignored, is
irrelevant as
far as legal culpability should be concerned.

>>> Not even mentioning the tendency of the patches (and following
patches
>>> to patches) to break something else.
>>
>> And this doesn't happen with other OSes?  Please.
>
>That happens everywhere. But only one major vendor so far managed to
get
>it from something exceptional to something expectational.

:-)

>> And every version of *nix has always shipped with everything off,
>> maximally locked down?  Right.
>
>OpenBSD. (Though on the other hand there are opinions that its security
is
>based mainly on the difficulty of getting anything to work on it.)

I thought NetBSD was the tight one.  I've run FreeBSD.  *Whatever*

But your comment again illustrates: security vs. convenience.  *BSD
biasses are different (and clearly superior from a security point of
view)
than other OSes.  But this is *irrelevent*.  We're not talking tech
here, we're talking law.

>> And does MS even support SSH? ]
>
>Not. Another of my pet peeves, but not *that* critical, and there are
>various third-party implementations, eg. Cygwin port of OpenSSH. Not
>exactly stellar (or I didn't manage to configure something correctly),
but
>passable.

Right.  And MS has zero obligation to support anything it doesn't want
to.

>>> Or when I had to reboot instead of just restarting the updated
service.
>>
>> Yawn.
>
>I see you are familiar with "boot wait". Yes, it's boring.

:-)  But what I meant was this decision is irrelevant.  Or would you
have Ashcroft aim his guns at Redmond for that (perhaps poor,
perhaps required, I don't know the rationale) design decision?

>>> If for nothing other than for running scripts in incoming mails by
>>> default, MSFT deserves it. (Yes, I admit bias. Having to admin a
couple
>>> machines running their software should be enough to justify it.)

If they were easier to admin, perhaps you would not have a job :-)

Armies need enemies, after all.

>> Your bias is turning you into something dark.  I sort of expected
>> this reaction, since I was defending MS's right to exist.
>> But if MS is treated this way, so is Joe Coder.
>
>I can ignore Joe Coder. I can't ignore MSFT.

YOU ARE JOE CODER.

Do you want to threatened with state violence because
someone doesn't like your design decisions or implementation
quality?

>> If Marcy clicks on attachments, runs mail clients
>> that run embedded scripts, basically spreads her legs and
>> lets everyone in, how is this different from someone who
>> rolls their SUV because they were clueless as to physics?
>
>The analogy that would be more accurate is exploding tires. Marcy
operates
>the machine within vendor-suggested operational parameters (eg,
defaults).

Exploding tires are dealt with by Consumer Reports and other reputation
modifiers.

>>> Though I am not sure if the personal-informations-disclosure venue
is
>>> the good one.
>>
>> Au contraire, I'm sure someone who asserts class-action status is
>> interested in hearing from the public she is so kindly protecting.
>
>Misunderstanding. I meant the law she's attempting to use as the base
of
>the lawsuit. Sorry for not being clearer. (I suppose her address is in
the
>court materials anyway; besides MSFT defenders are far less dangerous
than
>eg. $cientologists.)

I'm not sure whether being an implied MS defender is any better than
being
associated with the folks who took L Ron seriously.  I'll let this one
pass
since I was borderline abusive before.

>> Its a real shame when (albeit deserved) MS-hostility/contempt biasses

>> folks into immorality or irrationality.
>
>Monopoly-like system reinforces itself and favors measures that would
kill
>their proponent if there would be several smaller players.

Yes, Esperanto has no hope, though it may be better designed.  Metcalfe
again.

>(There is a hope, though. Billy the Greed managed to be disliked by
mostly
>everyone. With some luck, a critical mass will be reached and the
balance
>tilted back, with the inevitable sound effects of MSFT management
crying
>"unfair".

Let them whine.  So long as they don't use state violence (eg DMCA)
against others.

>> Its like blaming the authors of the SMTP RFC for spam.
>
>They at least knew it can happen; see RFC 706.

Doesn't that make them legally *more* liable, realizing they
have "erred" yet continuing?