“We are so Secure,” they cry, hacked full of holes
Lockergnome just posted a little editorial piece that suggests that Linux and open source is “so secure” because when one product breaks, they can switch to a different one, until I guess, it breaks too and they need to switch to a better one, until … :
But with Linux, the user can always go to something other …. That my friends, is what makes Linux so secure.
Does this sound like something a rational person would say? Security is an intrinsic property of software, not a side-effect of availability. An equivalent statement using the reductio ad absurdum style of logic would argue that:
But with Computers, the users can always use pen and paper or some other method of getting things done …. That my friends, is what makes Computing so secure.
Sigh. I hate zealots, especially overly zealous Linux and open-source zealots who spout absolute nonsense about their platform’s apparent security. In this case, do you think that a KDE-loving user is really going to go to the trouble of switching his window manager because of some yet-unfixed security bug? Yeah right. And, even if he does, this is not a viable model for security. Secure software needs to be written right the first time, layers need to protect themselves from tampering against other layers, and everything needs to be as paranoid as possible about everything else. The solution to buggy, popular software isn’t just switching to other software–not at this level, not at any.
Blogroll Updates: Popular Blogs Axed
I’ve made some deletions to the blogroll to make way for fresh blood. Cameron Moll, Googleblog, Greplaw, IE Blog, Dave Shea, Zeldman, Cederholm, Scrivs, Eric Meyer, Shaun Inman, Dave Winer, anything corporate or Weblogs inc, and the PHP WTF are out. Nothing personal ladies, gentlemen, and corporate giants–I still read your blogs–but the space is better used on bright up-and-coming young bloggers. If you think your blog is hot, drop a link in the comments and I’ll check it out. If I like, I’ll subscribe and link you 
The Wonderful Baton
Since Zeldman and I cannot possible exist in the same connected component of the web, I will light a new Baton from the darkness:
Total volume of music files on my computer:
6.69 GB of sorted music in the Music Folder, 4GB of music on the MP3 player, and 5.44GB of music videos lying around. That’s 16.13GB going to waste…, or 128 mp3s, 3146 wmas, for a total of 258.1 hours of music.
Last CD I bought was…
The College Dropout by Kanye West. I was in NYC, and although I never buy music, it was on sale and I’d heard oh-so-much about it. It turns out it’s a really great album, although when I heard some live tracks on the new Napster by Kanye, I wasn’t too impressed at his vocal talent. I guess his producing skills make up for it.
Song playing right now:
Alizeé, La isla bonita, a cover of a Madonna song by a cute girl from France.
Five songs I listen to a lot these days:
- Your girl, by Mariah Carey
- El Talisman, por Rosana
- Rub my back, by LL Cool J
- Maybe Maybe Not by BoA
- Feeling good by Michael Bublé
And the baton moves to…