4 ms·

What are you even talking about?

• mikewarot 5y ago
  In the 1980s we used to be able to buy "shareware" floppy disks for $3 at user group meetings. These things had all sorts of cool stuff on them. We didn't have to worry about our computers being permanently damaged, because back then, unlike now, our operating systems were on write protected, easily copied floppy disks. Our hardware wasn't smart enough to house any trojan horses, so you knew it wasn't at risk. We had computer security. Not because MS-DOS was such an amazing piece of code, but rather the hardware was simple enough that you couldn't hide a trojan in it. The job of an operating system is to protect the hardware, and allow the user(s) of a system to use the resources without risk. NONE of the current crop of operating systems we use 40 years later is suitable for the job, not Linux, Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android, the cloud. Now that even the cheapest persistent storage is likely to have multiple levels of firmware, it's up to the operating systems to virtualize the hardware, and keep applications from directly touching it. NONE of our current crop of systems do that. All this "cybersecurity" spending is just a grift if it doesn't deliver actual computer security.