bzs@pinocchio.UUCP (Barry Shein) (11/08/88)
Spreading like the virus itself I am getting the following "thought virus" argument from some very predictable (old guard) people: This worm is a good reason to stop the widespread acceptance of Unix. (INSERT FAVORITE UPPER-CASE DYING O/S HERE) would not have been infected by this problem. Yeah, right, sort of like saying that if everyone drove their cars at 5MPH there'd be less fatalities on the highways. Doubtless, but wrong. The benefits of standards in operating systems far outweigh the risks. Running one of each O/S and making your users try to use them effectively is a pretty dumb way to try to achieve security. I hope we can nip *this* thought virus in the FUD. Nice try though. -Barry Shein, ||Encore||
gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu (11/16/88)
Plant geneticists learned their lesson long before you're going
to learn yours.
It's not good to completely standardize O/S design, since this reduces
the gene pool, making most of the internet vulnerable to the same
attack. This problem WOULD NOT have been so serious ten years ago.
Back then, only a small fraction (perhaps 10% ?) of the internet
computers were running UNIX. ARPA hosts were running things like
TOPS, TENEX, TWENEX, VM, Level-6 O/S, RT-11, NOS, etc...
Sure, it's not a good argument for bashing *UNIX*, but it's a good
argument against making *ALL OS's* run exactly the same software.
Standardized high-yield crops are a great idea. Until someday, a
plant virus or insect mutates, ruins the worldwide crop, and the whole
world STARVES. The same goes for computer operating systems.
Don Gillies, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Illinois
1304 W. Springfield, Urbana, Ill 61801
ARPA: gillies@cs.uiuc.edu UUCP: {uunet,harvard}!uiucdcs!gillies