4 ms·

"Dumpster fire?" You are too kind. It's a cesspool, and a leaky one a that. Mostly Microsoft fault, and it has been now known to be getting worse.

mikewarot 3y ago
>Mostly Microsoft fault, It's the lack of capability based security, and a common tragic misunderstanding of what it is, that is the root cause of this dumpster fire. This effects all operating systems in common use, including all versions of Linux, Mac OS, Windows, etc. Imagine if your only choice to buy an ice cream cone was to give the other person full access to your checking account, forever. That's what phones do, and as a result, we've learned to call that a "capability" Imagine taking out a $5 and handing it over to pay for that ice cream... the most you can lose, ever, is $5. That is what capability based security does. You interactively chose what side effects you'll allow (by picking bills out of your wallet), at the time of purchase. For desktop apps, like an office suite, all you have to do to port code over is change the calls to file selection dialogs (which return a list of file names) to "powerbox" calls (which return handles), then use those handles instead of directly opening the files. The user doesn't see any difference in behavior, but they are now firmly in control of things, instead of your program.
- a1369209993 3y ago
  > all you have to do to port code over is change the calls to file selection dialogs (which return a list of file names) to "powerbox" calls (which return handles), Actually you don't even necessarily need that. Assuming you have operating-system-provided file selection dialogs, you can just return "/app/d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e/spool/whatever-the-fuck-it-is.ext", and only allow the app to read and write that directory. Although that's a bit more balky in general, it can handle most use cases without even needing to modify the offending program.
BlueThoughts 3y ago
I asked a friend about why their company could not keep their devices up to date for more than two or three years. Basically, they did not have long-term maintenance agreements in place for the underlying subcomponents. The subcomponents were filled with vendor coded firmware blobs. There was some desire to fix this going forward for marketing purposes, but little desire to go back in time to fix old devices that were short on support.

mikewarot 3y ago

>Mostly Microsoft fault, It's the lack of capability based security, and a common tragic misunderstanding of what it is, that is the root cause of this dumpster fire. This effects all operating systems in common use, including all versions of Linux, Mac OS, Windows, etc. Imagine if your only choice to buy an ice cream cone was to give the other person full access to your checking account, forever. That's what phones do, and as a result, we've learned to call that a "capability" Imagine taking out a $5 and handing it over to pay for that ice cream... the most you can lose, ever, is $5. That is what capability based security does. You interactively chose what side effects you'll allow (by picking bills out of your wallet), at the time of purchase. For desktop apps, like an office suite, all you have to do to port code over is change the calls to file selection dialogs (which return a list of file names) to "powerbox" calls (which return handles), then use those handles instead of directly opening the files. The user doesn't see any difference in behavior, but they are now firmly in control of things, instead of your program.

a1369209993 3y ago
> all you have to do to port code over is change the calls to file selection dialogs (which return a list of file names) to "powerbox" calls (which return handles), Actually you don't even necessarily need that. Assuming you have operating-system-provided file selection dialogs, you can just return "/app/d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e/spool/whatever-the-fuck-it-is.ext", and only allow the app to read and write that directory. Although that's a bit more balky in general, it can handle most use cases without even needing to modify the offending program.

BlueThoughts 3y ago

I asked a friend about why their company could not keep their devices up to date for more than two or three years. Basically, they did not have long-term maintenance agreements in place for the underlying subcomponents. The subcomponents were filled with vendor coded firmware blobs. There was some desire to fix this going forward for marketing purposes, but little desire to go back in time to fix old devices that were short on support.