Firewall Wizards mailing list archives
RE: You'll never get fired for recommending IBM - sorry - Microsoft
From: "Marcus J. Ranum" <mjr () ranum com>
Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 23:44:43 -0500
MHawkins () TULLIB COM wrote:
What do you call a monolithic representation of a predominantly identical membership within a group?
Depends on the group, doesn't it? If it's beans, I might say it's a "monoculture." If it's computer desktops I might call it "dominant desktop." If it's socks, I might say "they're all from the same brand." The point is that terminology can enlighten and terminology can deceive - intentionally or otherwise. I think we can talk about the technological implications of Microsoft's dominance in desktop computing without using analogies that distract us from the actual discussion. More succinctly, what about, "Microsoft's dominance in desktop computing" was unclear? I think my choice of words is not bad, there, and leads us to other questions such as: "Are there security ramifications to ...?" "Are there system management ramifications to ...?" there's no need to bring pseudo-scientific biological analogies into the discussion. Now at this point in the discussion it would be expected for me to begin rattling off specific arguments about the flaws in the "monoculture" analogy. I'm not going to do that because then we're back to arguing about an analogy! :) The whole point is that we already have a rich enough vocabulary in computer security that we don't need to make up loaded analogies. The paper I gave the URL for earlier has some specific comments in which I attempt to demonstrate how the analogy is invalid - so I'll avoid them here. mjr. _______________________________________________ firewall-wizards mailing list firewall-wizards () honor icsalabs com http://honor.icsalabs.com/mailman/listinfo/firewall-wizards
Current thread:
- RE: You'll never get fired for recommending IBM - sorry - Microsoft Marcus J. Ranum (Dec 17)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- RE: You'll never get fired for recommending IBM - sorry - Microsoft Marcus J. Ranum (Dec 17)
- Re: You'll never get fired for recommending IBM - sorry - Microsoft Adam Shostack (Dec 17)
- Re: You'll never get fired for recommending IBM - sorry - Microsoft Marcus J. Ranum (Dec 17)
- Re: You'll never get fired for recommending IBM - sorry - Microsoft Adam Shostack (Dec 17)
- RE: You'll never get fired for recommending IBM - sorry - Microsoft Gregory Hicks (Dec 17)