5 ms·

I don't always agree. Rhetoric has a lot of forms that are useful tools in argument, and while we will not admonish someone for asking "have you stopped beating

by geocar 10y ago

I don't always agree. Rhetoric has a lot of forms that are useful tools in argument, and while we will not admonish someone for asking "have you stopped beating your wife yet" (or in this case, "Virtualization seems to have a lot of security benefits.") we are too quick to ignore the very valid point in response because it wasn't friendly enough. Derailing the conversation that way prevents us from dealing with what I think is the bigger issue: When someone says something stupid like "have you stopped beating your wife" (or "Virtualization seems to have a lot of security benefits"), we may need to tell them it is stupid, because stupidity has this way of spreading when it sounds nice and helpful (yes, beating your wife is bad; yes security benefits are good), but it's still a stupid statement. Virtualization is extremely popular, but it isn't secure, and it's actually (and when you're thinking clearly, obviously) less secure than other, existing systems. Security has to be a complete holistic effort, and not an abstraction layer, which is something most people in our industry ignore. Calling out someone as stupid for saying stupid things seems to me to be the best defence, after all, you're not going to convince them that they're stupid, but you might convince someone else.

david-given 10y ago
This is the standard apologia for rudeness. The problem is that people don't work like that. If you say something in an aggressive manner, they will tend to assume a confrontational posture and won't work with you. It's just how people are wired. Consider two possible responses I could have to your comment: (a) You're full of shit. (b) In my experience, that's not actually true. Chances are you're going to respond better to (b) than to (a). So, if I actually want to engage you in conversation, or work with you in the future, I should say (b). Routine courtesy is part of the standard toolkit of effective communication skills. It may be cathartic to be rude to someone, but it doesn't lead to long-term progress. > Calling out someone as stupid for saying stupid things seems to me to be the best defence... ...or you could simply explain why you think they're mistaken, without using personal insults, and so win them over to your side of the debate? As it is, you're not just driving them away, but you're also sending a message to everybody else reading the conversation that you're intolerant and difficult to work with, which is not going to help the project. I actually remember that particular conversation, as that was the point when I gave up on OpenBSD, unsubscribed from -misc, and switched to Debian Linux (and never went back). It simply wasn't worth my time to wade through the insults and abuse to get things done any more. Of course, in those days, Theo de Raadt had the reputation for being an angry jerk, and Linux Torvalds had a reputation for being moderate and easy to work with. How times have changed.
- 4ad 10y ago
  > You're full of shit. If you said that, I would have respected you, even though we disagreed. > In my experience, that's not actually true. Now I know you're just PC police, and that I have nothing to gain by further engaging with you. I have no respect for you. So no, you are wrong. People don't work like that. Or at least people worth talking to are not like that. People see through all the PC bullshit, and respond accordingly. > It simply wasn't worth my time to wade through the insults and abuse to get things done any more. Yeah, this kind of PC attitude it's not worth my time. People who can't, just discuss PC politics, while people who can, just do, and don't care about any of this stuff.
  - 4ad 10y ago
    To add to that, please note one thing though. Here we are in a public space, if you (some generic you, not you david-given in particular) say or do what I consider to be a stupid thing, I will just ignore you. I will certainly not insult you. Why would I? I have better things to do. But if you come into my house and start spitting on the floor, don't get too surprised if I punch you in the face and throw you out. Perhaps I might even insult you. You're in my house, I won't tolerate this kind of behavior. You are forcing me to act just because you are in my house. Theo and Linus don't come in public spaces (like HN) to start insulting people. They might insult people when they come to the OpenBSD/Linux space and start spitting on the floor. To further the analogy, unannounced people come and spit on the floor. This is a very deep and fundamental difference. And just because everyone can see and participate in the discussion, make no mistake, it's still an OpenBSD or Linux space. Not some generic fantasy land. I might hold a party and my house where everyone can come, but if you come and don't behave, I will take measures and you can whine all you want about my non PC behavior.
  - jerf 10y ago
    "Now I know you're just PC police, and that I have nothing to gain by further engaging with you." That's not PC police. This is How To Win Friends And Influence People stuff, not PC stuff. You are free to be rude, but you'll pay the consequences, quite needlessly. I'm in a position where I with some frequency have to contradict people (being a code reviewer for a significant internal shared library has that result), but I try to make it clear in my words and tone that it's in the spirit of working with them and obtaining the best solution. I'm pretty sure it's not 100% successful, because some people to some extent can't process being contradicted in any way as anything less than hostility (and I put both "somes" in that sentence on purpose), no matter how polite you are about it, and on my side, I'm absolutely sure I'm not perfect about it, but I am sure I'm better off than I would be if I was always being as blunt as possible without even trying.
bonzini 10y ago
> Virtualization is extremely popular, but it isn't secure, and it's actually (and when you're thinking clearly, obviously) less secure than other, existing systems. It makes me wonder why Google uses KVM to isolate multiple tenants running stuff on their machines. Does virtualization solve all of the world's security problems? Of course not. But it does help as an additional layer of security.
- _pmf_ 10y ago
  > But it does help as an additional layer of security. You don't add security; you multiply the insecurity (think of traditional component reliability calculation; a system that consists of one component with 50% reliability and another component with 50% reliability is not 100% reliable, but 25%).
  - bonzini 10y ago
    You can also think of virtualization in terms of redundancy. If you can break out of userspace and into the kernel, you now have to break out of the hypervisor (which has a smaller attack surface) in order to escape a very constrained environment. And by hypervisor I really mean the kernel module, because the device emulation is also running heavily constrained through pledge/seccomp/SELinux/whatever.
- geocar 10y ago
  > But [virtualization] does help as an additional layer of security. This is completely wrong: Instead of one big complex code surface, now you have two. Two things that can be attacked; two things that can have bugs. Two codebases written by people who aren't thinking about reducing bugs and aren't thinking about security. That's insane. The only thing that can reduce bugs (security or otherwise) is less code. DJB did a great presentation on this subject: https://cr.yp.to/qmail/qmailsec-20071101.pdf https://cr.yp.to/qmail/qmailsec-20071101.pdf > It makes me wonder why Google uses KVM to isolate multiple tenants running stuff on their machines. "Google does it so it must be secure" is faulty reasoning. There are valid non-security-related reasons, for example it simplifies administration and management tasks, and it is cheaper. When you do something because someone else does things you might find neither of you know what you're doing.

by geocar 10y ago

david-given 10y ago

This is the standard apologia for rudeness. The problem is that people don't work like that. If you say something in an aggressive manner, they will tend to assume a confrontational posture and won't work with you. It's just how people are wired. Consider two possible responses I could have to your comment: (a) You're full of shit. (b) In my experience, that's not actually true. Chances are you're going to respond better to (b) than to (a). So, if I actually want to engage you in conversation, or work with you in the future, I should say (b). Routine courtesy is part of the standard toolkit of effective communication skills. It may be cathartic to be rude to someone, but it doesn't lead to long-term progress. > Calling out someone as stupid for saying stupid things seems to me to be the best defence... ...or you could simply explain why you think they're mistaken, without using personal insults, and so win them over to your side of the debate? As it is, you're not just driving them away, but you're also sending a message to everybody else reading the conversation that you're intolerant and difficult to work with, which is not going to help the project. I actually remember that particular conversation, as that was the point when I gave up on OpenBSD, unsubscribed from -misc, and switched to Debian Linux (and never went back). It simply wasn't worth my time to wade through the insults and abuse to get things done any more. Of course, in those days, Theo de Raadt had the reputation for being an angry jerk, and Linux Torvalds had a reputation for being moderate and easy to work with. How times have changed.

4ad 10y ago
> You're full of shit. If you said that, I would have respected you, even though we disagreed. > In my experience, that's not actually true. Now I know you're just PC police, and that I have nothing to gain by further engaging with you. I have no respect for you. So no, you are wrong. People don't work like that. Or at least people worth talking to are not like that. People see through all the PC bullshit, and respond accordingly. > It simply wasn't worth my time to wade through the insults and abuse to get things done any more. Yeah, this kind of PC attitude it's not worth my time. People who can't, just discuss PC politics, while people who can, just do, and don't care about any of this stuff.
- 4ad 10y ago
  To add to that, please note one thing though. Here we are in a public space, if you (some generic you, not you david-given in particular) say or do what I consider to be a stupid thing, I will just ignore you. I will certainly not insult you. Why would I? I have better things to do. But if you come into my house and start spitting on the floor, don't get too surprised if I punch you in the face and throw you out. Perhaps I might even insult you. You're in my house, I won't tolerate this kind of behavior. You are forcing me to act just because you are in my house. Theo and Linus don't come in public spaces (like HN) to start insulting people. They might insult people when they come to the OpenBSD/Linux space and start spitting on the floor. To further the analogy, unannounced people come and spit on the floor. This is a very deep and fundamental difference. And just because everyone can see and participate in the discussion, make no mistake, it's still an OpenBSD or Linux space. Not some generic fantasy land. I might hold a party and my house where everyone can come, but if you come and don't behave, I will take measures and you can whine all you want about my non PC behavior.
- jerf 10y ago
  "Now I know you're just PC police, and that I have nothing to gain by further engaging with you." That's not PC police. This is How To Win Friends And Influence People stuff, not PC stuff. You are free to be rude, but you'll pay the consequences, quite needlessly. I'm in a position where I with some frequency have to contradict people (being a code reviewer for a significant internal shared library has that result), but I try to make it clear in my words and tone that it's in the spirit of working with them and obtaining the best solution. I'm pretty sure it's not 100% successful, because some people to some extent can't process being contradicted in any way as anything less than hostility (and I put both "somes" in that sentence on purpose), no matter how polite you are about it, and on my side, I'm absolutely sure I'm not perfect about it, but I am sure I'm better off than I would be if I was always being as blunt as possible without even trying.

bonzini 10y ago

> Virtualization is extremely popular, but it isn't secure, and it's actually (and when you're thinking clearly, obviously) less secure than other, existing systems. It makes me wonder why Google uses KVM to isolate multiple tenants running stuff on their machines. Does virtualization solve all of the world's security problems? Of course not. But it does help as an additional layer of security.

_pmf_ 10y ago
> But it does help as an additional layer of security. You don't add security; you multiply the insecurity (think of traditional component reliability calculation; a system that consists of one component with 50% reliability and another component with 50% reliability is not 100% reliable, but 25%).
- bonzini 10y ago
  You can also think of virtualization in terms of redundancy. If you can break out of userspace and into the kernel, you now have to break out of the hypervisor (which has a smaller attack surface) in order to escape a very constrained environment. And by hypervisor I really mean the kernel module, because the device emulation is also running heavily constrained through pledge/seccomp/SELinux/whatever.
geocar 10y ago
> But [virtualization] does help as an additional layer of security. This is completely wrong: Instead of one big complex code surface, now you have two. Two things that can be attacked; two things that can have bugs. Two codebases written by people who aren't thinking about reducing bugs and aren't thinking about security. That's insane. The only thing that can reduce bugs (security or otherwise) is less code. DJB did a great presentation on this subject: https://cr.yp.to/qmail/qmailsec-20071101.pdf https://cr.yp.to/qmail/qmailsec-20071101.pdf > It makes me wonder why Google uses KVM to isolate multiple tenants running stuff on their machines. "Google does it so it must be secure" is faulty reasoning. There are valid non-security-related reasons, for example it simplifies administration and management tasks, and it is cheaper. When you do something because someone else does things you might find neither of you know what you're doing.