October 06, 2003Bill Joy on the futureBill Joy gave an interview to Fortune recently and some of his statements puzzle me. Another reason spam is so bad is that so many companies use Microsoft Outlook for reading e-mail. Again, because that program is written in C, it's quite easy to design a virus to go through your e-mail address book and broadcast spam to all the people you know Sometimes, I wonder if Joy really lives in the same world we live in. Or if he really knows what he's talking about. There are two things that are totally wrong in the above quotation:
I also note that Joy encourages writing programs in Java over C, because C is not as safe as Java (true enough) but I notice that he doesn't mention C#, which is just as safe. So by using Outlook, you're not practicing safe e-mail. We need a "condomized" version of it. Even though Joy is "cutting the cord" completely with Sun, he obviously can't resist spinning things according to the party line of his former employer. This idea of running programs in protected environments is very dear to Sun. It sounds good in theory but is just a disaster of usability in the real world. Let's contrast the two approaches:
Who made the best choice? You decide. So far, Bill Joy has been the "enfant cheri" of Sun. Every year, he came up with a brand new idea and regardless of whether it became a success or not, Bill Joy kept being saluted as a visionary and a true hero of our time. But are you really a visionary when you keep repeating that the world is doomed unless we change our ways, that we should use more solar-powered energy and design our power-grids so they never black out? Last time I checked, being a visionary was about proposing solutions for the future, not making trite statements about events past and predicting extinction. There is no safety net this time, he will have to prove himself. The coming years will show whether he really has what so many people see in him, or if he is simply a standard geek who just happened to be at the right place at the right time and ended up receiving much more exposure than he deserved. I wish him well. Honestly. But the only way he can achieve the ambitious goals he set for himself is to break away from the religion and start looking at things objectively. Otherwise, the future simply doesn't need you. Posted by cedric at October 6, 2003 08:51 AMComments
it's also true that most of the time you don't need to execute any attachments in Outlook to let a virus propagate, the program does it for you... Posted by: Marcello at October 6, 2003 05:24 PMThere are some things in your posting that are just plain wrong. First you have the issue above posted by Marcello that for example the preview mode in Outlook can 'execute malicious code'. Outlook is the most dangerous e-mail client because of it's design, wide spread use, and tightly Windows integrations. Don't blame the users for bad design choices made by Microsoft! It's not a good habit to blame the users for obvisouly design flaws. Remember that. The second BIG mistake is your analysis of the 'choices' made by Microsoft. It is completely wrong to say that Microsoft deliberatly made the choice of making COM without restrictions and then when they had the marked planned to patch all the security flaws. How they got the marked is a more complex story, and stating it was choices is just a wrong pick of words (as we say it in Norway). Do not take a reductionist account of this, I mean you can't tell the story by referencing to com and the java sandbox alone. Last, you seem to know Bill Joy and if that is the case you should now that he 'often' answers strangely to questions in interviews. For example saying he i now using Netscape instead of vi etc. You should look beyond that and really take a look at his visions. They are great even though they haven't been implemented with the right technology and marked strategy. Remember that some of the greatest innovations have been invented by small companies that not neccesary have been a great enterprise/commercial successes, but still got picked up later by other companies with highly commercial success. Ok, I will stop my bad english now. - Rune Posted by: Rune at October 11, 2003 12:37 AMThere is a third way. Neither the sandbox nor the "full access" concept is workable, in a hostile environment (which the internet most surely is). You must be able to full access, but granting that access must be harmless. I have discussed the idea of a ring system before...the key is to _widen_ the notion of sandbox to include nearly the entire realm of system capabilities, while restricting anything that emerges from that sandbox. Essentially you construct a virtual systems, within virtual systems, within virtual systems...code running at the most protected level includes the base operating system and little else. The next ring out includes basic system updates. Then comes a mutable device driver level, followed by insatlled application levels, and finally throwaway internet access levels. You can create, nest, and toss away these sandboxes at will. You _cannot_ grant access to external resources in a sandbox. In fact, there should NEVER be a need to -- everything a program could possibly need is already available to it in the sandbox. Shared document directories would be exactly that -- document directories, with no execution allowed. Contamination at the lower levels can be strictly disallowed... Posted by: Ross Judson at October 13, 2003 07:02 AMSounds like your sour and full of envy, you have accepted that you will never get the exposure and fame that Bill Joy has gotton, dont be mad, do something about instead of crying on the net. Posted by: Osifrage at October 31, 2003 12:33 AMGood read Posted by: Erica at August 8, 2004 03:48 PMGoogle linked me to this page, nice reading Posted by: amateur nude pictures at November 11, 2004 10:32 PMHi. Posted by: amateur nude at December 10, 2004 11:17 AMPost a comment
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