cthia wrote:JohnRoth wrote:Let me say one thing: two thousand years.
A large part of today's problems are due to widespread use of a language that's insecure by design (pointer arithmetic that has unrestricted access to memory) and an operating system that violates the most basic principles of security (superuser, anyone?)
Forgive me John but this cracks me up. I am ROTF. You see, I remember a time. I was not much more than a kid, when the masses screamed "Give us more access to the machine!" Personal computers were not personal computers if the person owning the computer had limited access to the capabilities of the machine. There were loads of professional as well as hobbyist programmers early on in the computer industry, but their potential genius was hampered, even thwarted with limited access to the true capabilities of the hardware. Enter Atari. The power placed into the hands of the end user was unprecedented. Albeit through machine language, total access was given to the system. The Atari featured an Amy chip. A synthesizer chip which allowed, by direct manipulation of pointers, total access to the chip. The industry saw Ataris flying off the shelves. I got one too! Atari's marked the beginning of incredible musical composition programs. Artists, musical groups, composers had Ataris center stage driving their creativity, rivaling systems costing thousands of dollars. Companies wanted to license the chip. Other personal computers followed suit (Commodore) by allowing access to more and more memory locations. Although some methods employed were cumbersome at best. i.e. Peeks and pokes, because of an unavailability of low-level machine languages/compilers.
As long as you're claiming some level of expertise from a position of anonymity where nobody can check up on you, I'll just say that my first paid job in the computer industry was in 1965, in a shop that had an IBM 705, 1401 and 1410.
My name is exactly what it says on my userid, I'm currently living in Albuquerque and the other person (people) on this forum who live here can undoubtedly find me at the next Bubonicon if they care to.
Would you like to give us your real name and your credentials so we can see whether you know what you're talking about?
I don't care in the least what hobbyists who played around with early microprocessors did. My concern on this forum is science and technology in the Honorverse, which is set 2000 years in the future.
cthia wrote:Realize that pointer arithmetic is directly related to computer design. Can we say 'registers?'
As you might suspect from the above, yes, I know registers. I've programmed computers in assembler all the way from that IBM 705 I mentioned through fairly late models of the IBM mainframes.
cthia wrote:Also, one can virtually disavow the use of pointer arithmetic within programming projects but doing so would add complexity and size to efforts. 'Loop unwinding' comes to mind.
If that's the case, why do head-to-head comparisons on code size between, say C and C++ on the one hand, and Google's Go language or Python on the other show that the latter take about half the number of lines of code to do the same job - and Go is about as fast as C, given the level of compiler optimization.
cthia wrote:As far as superuser advantages/disadvantages. First off, the superuser program in a Windows vs. Linux environment are completely different beasts. Superuser capability was something added on to Windows as an afterthought. It was designed with Linux from the outset. SU is a significant part of the reason that Linux is so secure. Without it, many capabilities of the environment as well as security itself would be little more than a pipe dream. The problem comes with less than knowledgeable use of su. You have no idea how many people log in to the su account just to play games, surf, etc.
Really? How do you know whether I have any idea how many people log into superuser to play games, etc.? Are you telepathic?
I do in fact know that lots of people abuse "administrator" privileges of one kind or another. Even though I'm retired, I am an industry insider, and I've never made any effort to hide that.
Since you apparently don't know basic security principles, let me clue you in. Ask any security professional, and one of the things they'll tell you is "least privilege." That isn't even a new concept with computer systems; it's as old as bureaucracy.
The only thing the top level user on a system needs to do is establish other user accounts. That person does not need to install programs, read email or play canasta in the top level account. Those activities are delegated to other people who have exactly the privileges needed to get their jobs done efficiently and effectively; no more and no less.
One thought I'd like to leave you with: "secure if properly administered" equals "insecure by design." If you've never stepped back from the cool toys you played with as a child, or the systems you work with now, you may not have any realistic idea of actual computer science as distinct from current malpractice.
