Full Disclosure mailing list archives
Re: Anti-MS drivel
From: yossarian <yossarian () planet nl>
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 02:22:35 +0100
The Pinto is a perfect example. It was a concious design decision to save
a
few bucks, the theory being that lawsuits for exploding pintos would cost less then fixing said Pinto. The difference being that suing a software company is almost impossible, so the cost of fixing vs. the cost of
lawsuits
is wildly in favor of dealing with any lawsuits (of which so far there haven't really been any). Ohwell.
Why? Since software is not used out of the box, but applied to a hardware device in order to function. The legalities are that you can only sue the vendor of the preinstalled box, as long as you follow the instructions. you do take your car to the garage, don't you. If someone in a shop advised you to buy a specific 'puter, sue the shop. This is the reality of software, unless the CD jumps out of the jewel case and slits your wife's throat, there is no legal case. At best you can get your money back, never the collatoral damage, especially when the said software does not claim to be for mission critical systems. Run NSK if you need that. The only possible vector for home PC users might be if the home PC gets rooted by an unfixed yet disclosed flaw and attacks another party, which subsequently sues you. Then you might have a case - for the defense. Part II is of course that with the Pinto, people got killed. With computers that is rarely the case. If it is, it is in hospitals and the like, and then you sue the hospital for not patching or for using a piece of software for what it wasn't designed to do. In windows, it is design decision not to make it mission critical. Hence the licenses come a lot cheaper than NSK or the like, and you can run it on nearly any crappy hardware. _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html
Current thread:
- Re: Anti-MS drivel, (continued)
- Re: Anti-MS drivel Erich Buri (Jan 20)
- Re: Anti-MS drivel yossarian (Jan 20)
- RE: Anti-MS drivel Mike Marshall (Jan 20)
- Re: Anti-MS drivel Jeremiah Cornelius (Jan 20)
- Re: Anti-MS drivel Tobias Weisserth (Jan 21)
- Re: Anti-MS drivel yossarian (Jan 21)
- Re: Anti-MS drivel Tobias Weisserth (Jan 21)
- Re: Anti-MS drivel yossarian (Jan 21)
- Re: Anti-MS drivel Tobias Weisserth (Jan 21)
- Re: Anti-MS drivel yossarian (Jan 21)
- Message not available
- Re: Anti-MS drivel yossarian (Jan 21)
- Re: Anti-MS drivel Bart . Lansing (Jan 23)
- Message not available
- Re: Anti-MS drivel Nick FitzGerald (Jan 24)
- Re: Anti-MS drivel Bart . Lansing (Jan 26)
- Message not available
- Re: Anti-MS drivel yossarian (Jan 22)
- Re: Anti-MS drivel Gregh (Jan 21)
- Re: Anti-MS drivel Tobias Weisserth (Jan 22)
- Re: Anti-MS drivel Valdis . Kletnieks (Jan 20)