popularity-contest

[Jeffrey F. Bloss]

Brian Fahrlander wrote:

> > Can I have your tinfoil hat? ( kidding)
> 
>     There *are* people for whom this might be a problem...just playing
> (pardon the ironic pun) "devil's advocate': Christians in China. Just
> HAVING a bible in some countries is a fatal offense...if you open
> GnomeSword, for example, it warns you before updating.

There's no reason to go as far as China for real life examples of how
this sort of thing might be a problem. The version of GnuPG Ubuntu
distributes in their own repositories, for example, is horribly out of
date and known to have serious bugs. The CVE calls it a "remotely
controllable function pointer" issue...

http://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-announce/2006q4/000246.html

Painfully ironic as it is, by blabbing about your vulnerable copy of
GnuPG you're actually opening a piece of software you depend on for
*security* up to a wider audience of potential attackers, and giving
them clues about how you're using it. If there's anyone who doesn't see
that as a "problem" either either their language doesn't have an
equivalent for the term, or they don't quite understand the implications
of broadcasting information about known vulnerable versions of the
software that's used to verify and establish trust for almost every
other piece of software on a system. :(

>      But in general, I *like* the idea of a 'phone home' program, as
> long as Linux does it...especially a Linux that Mark Shuttleworth's
> doing.  We need some way to count the Linux boxes. Maybe some very, very
> simple information-gathering like the Linux Counter would be good to
> have, if only to tell people, YEAH, THERE'S REALLY 30,000,000 OF US:
> IT'S NOT A TREND!

This is the problem with most evil in the world... it's got elements of
good in it. The worst acts of sabotage perpetrated against your right to
privacy are committed in the name of "protecting innocent children from
intoxicated terrorists at the wheel" or some such rot.

People who buy into good causes without critically examining the
potential risks and consequences are what one well known radio and talk
show host calls "useful idiots". ;)

-- 
     _?_      Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.
    (o o)         Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
-oOO-(_)--OOo------------------------------[ Groucho Marx ]---
                    http://wrench.homelinux.net/~jeff/
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 892 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/attachments/20070329/a51b5f31/attachment.sig>