Gates predicts death of the password

TalkBack 52 of 65:

Next »

« Previous

• Thread View
• Flat View

Big Head small brain

Here we go again. Another pompus and highly publicized proclamation of war against enemies 'in high places'. Mr. Gates is living in some mythical land where all ills are cured by some public speech. He must be preparing to become a politician. His activities in the last 3-5 years are always centered around public events were he can go out and claim whatever crosses his mind during that time.

Many years ago, .net was promoted to be the ONLY way to solve all appl. development issues with almost supernatural means. .net has fizzled away since, and even MS officials now declare that the distributed object model has some complications and another loftier model is needed.

He declared the 'Trustworthy Computing' inititative 3 years ago, but the public embarassment from all the asinine worms and viruses came to bit him in the rear. So were the revealted facts of RPC/LPC severe problems since the early NT times that stayed without any treatment until the end of 2003.

He then started talking about the 'Seamless Computing' initiative where anything would be linked to everything else. Their apps though still have portability issues across os or app releases.

Now, after the bad security state of MS windows became embarassingly clear and public, he start proclaiming war against the ... passwords!

It is true that as long as humans are in the loop, password protection has the same weaknesses. However, systems thath use decently good passwords and don't allow non-administrative (non-root) users to escalate authority have been proven very robust in the last 30 years. If an administrator is SO flacky-head that he cannot keep a password secret then he SHOULD NOT be an admin in the first place.

Had MS implemented reasonably well the older authentication and security techniques, their plaform would have been as robust and reliable as any other decent platform.

It is becoming clearer that BG has developed a need to talk to people about his big head ideas.
Where was his great vision when he was setting the style of code development for windows and its apps? What makes windows sucks so much is the BAD design (or lack of it) and SLOPPY implementation tactics! Every person who develops code knows this simple fact. It is not big head ideas that needed only.

MS needed good common sense and dilligent application of decent design and development technics. Vision is needed for the long term goals. MS didn't do the ground work to design for security and expandability. On top of that, it integrated apps and os in an contorted whole where boundaries are unclear. This must be nightmare for developers and maintainers.

But this integration of badly designed apps and os was a strategic move that BG envisioned as guaranteeing endless locking of customers to the ms windows platform.

Now he is comming back to preech big ideas when the results of his past ones have made developers and customers suffer to an unecessary extent.

But it's OK for him. Talk is cheap and he doesn't have any major concerns on his financial future...

-m

Posted by: michael-t   Posted on: 02/25/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

Alert moderator to an offensive message

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads

• Virtualization: Architectural Considerations And Other Evaluation Criteria VMware Of the many approaches to x86 systems virtualization available in the ... Download Now
• Five Steps to Determine When to Virtualize YourServers VMware Server virtualization isn't just for big companies. Entry-level ... Download Now
• Open Standards Technologies Provide the Ingredients for Delivering Security Across the Papa Gino's Enterprise Dell Papa Gino's Holdings Corporation founded by the entrepreneur operates one ... Download Now