Why not Linux?

[Colin McGregor]

--- Christopher Browne <cbbrowne-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On 9/3/06, Colin McGregor <colinmc151-bJEeYj9oJeDQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org>
> wrote:
> > Well, never say never when it comes to politics. I
> > don't think anything will happen as long the
> > Republicans control the US House, US Senate and US
> > Presidency, but hopefully that will change with
> this
> > fall's elections (part of a Canadian disease at
> the
> > moment, not being keen on Republicans :-) , never
> mind
> > the fact that some US Democrat administrations
> have
> > been about as bad for Canada as the
> Republicans...).
> 
> Part of the Canadian "disease" is that they tend to
> be insufficiently
> imaginative to grasp how it could have been that
> *any* American could
> have voted Republican, forget about giving them
> control of so many
> portions of branches of the government.
> 
> It's a bit entertaining, if dismaying, to hear
> Canadians imagining
> themselves to be on the "open-minded" moral high
> ground when their
> minds are evidently not nearly open enough to
> perceive how ordinary
> folk could have chosen to vote for the GOP...

There are legit reasons why I could understand an
American voting Republican, such as liking the
Democrats as a party, but thinking the local
Democratic candidate is a total jerk and wanting to
make sure said local jerk doesn't make it into office.
Other reasons to vote Republican ... well I am sure
they will come to me :-) . 

> > Also, quick route for Microsoft to get hammered by
> the
> > government would be to have some sort of MASSIVE
> @#$%
> > up in which Microsoft played a real part (say a
> virus
> > exploiting a security hole that Microsoft hand
> known
> > about, but not fixed for months effectively
> bringing
> > down the Internet for a few days...).
> 
> The thing is, too many portions of Internet
> infrastructure don't run
> WIndows for that to realistically happen.

Not sure. At my office we used to have 3 different
non-routable networks connected to the Internet via
one old FreeBSD box. One network was for the office
administration, one was for volunteers, and one was
for another charity that had space in our building.
One evening I found the Internet connection out of our
office was being clobbered. Turned out the other
charity had a worm infected MS-Windows box that was
creating a lot more traffic than our modest Internet
connection could support. My solution, both effective
and brutal, was to do an ifconfig down on the
interface that supported the other charity. The next
day when the other charity complained to me about how
the Internet was down my answer was "yes, and it will
stay down until...", as I was responsible for keeping
the administration / volunteer stuff up, but not
de-worming/tending the other charity's MS-Windows
boxes...

Now, the core routers, etc.. might survive say a
massive denial of service attack or totally out of
control self propagating worm, but if you get a
situation where there was so much traffic that in
self-defense Network Admins are shutting down
connections in the hope of self-preservation (as I
gather happened during the Morris Worm attack of
1988)... the fact that the key routers are still up
would become academic...

> Cisco legitimately makes a lot of noise; they sell
> the routers widely
> used by practically everyone, and those routers
> *don't* run W*nd*ws.

Yes, but ... my office FreeBSD box didn't go down, but
until I killed that one interface it was for most
practical purposes dead...

> It would be believable to hear that all W*nd*ws
> systems connected to
> the Internet were taken down; that wouldn't take
> down the Internet.

Yes and no. A Microsoft version of the Morris worm
(which some suggest took out about 10% of the machines
then on the Internet) could for all PRACTICAL purposes
down the Internet for days.


Colin McGregor

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