= --- === --------------------------------------------------------------------- ======= -L- -I- -B- -E- -R- -E- -T- -T- -O- September 1999 ========= ======= The iMatix Newsletter Volume IV Issue 9 --- === --------------------------------------------------------------------- = Copyright (c) 1999 iMatix Corporation - distribute freely Back issues at http://www.imatix.com Comments to: editors@imatix.com Programming -- Technology -- Finite State Machines -- News -- Other Stuff == COMMENT ---...-.-...-.--...-.--...-.-...-.....---..-....--.--..-.-.---.-- What I found curious about the exploit that shut-down Microsoft's MSN Hotmail web mail service for two hours on Monday morning was not the fact that a small group of guys were able to crack a system used daily by over 40 million people. Hotmail is designed more for features than security. What I found unusual was the media coverage. After years of exploits on all kinds of systems, often on Microsoft's web servers and browsers, I was a little surprised to hear the BBC call it the 'worst Internet security breach ever'. Whatever. That Microsoft would expose itself to such bad publicity says a lot. Certainly, we'll hear a lot of spin about how this is all the fault of the evil hackers involved. Probably there will be prosecutions and lawsuits. The fact remains that it was a bad day for Microsoft. Microsoft is like an agressive dog - it's only really happy when it has its jaws around some rival's throat, head down and teeth on the jugular. The history of the (personal) computer business reads like a trophy list for Microsoft: Digital Research, IBM, Lotus, WordPerfect, Apple, Novell, Borland and Netscape Microsoft's taste for meat has a flip-side, however. Each fight they pick and win with a market leader leaves them changed. After beating WordPerfect and Lotus into the ground, Microsoft was producing a great (if buggy) word processor and spreadsheet. When Borland was finally buried, Microsoft's Visual C++, FoxPro and Visual Basic tools actually looked quite good. Solid, and reliable. Nothing like the Microsoft compilers we used to know when Borland's Turbo C first came out. To beat IBM, Microsoft became an Enterprise Company, building its principal client base at the corporate level. Home computer users steal all their software anyhow. Windows NT took over the dying minicomputer market, and Microsoft took over IBM's role of selling expensive solutions to people too poor to form an expert opinion and too rich to be bankrupted by the solution. Fighting Netscape left Microsoft in a state of mutant entwinement with the Web, mail, and the infinite desktops of cyberspace. How could one ask Microsoft to separate Internet Explorer from Windows when the Internet is a core philosophy in its Operating Systems division? So, what's today's fight all about? It looks like Microsoft is moving from software to services. The market leader in Internet services is AOL. Microsoft and AOL are fighting it out, first through their proxies, Hotmail and Netscape, but soon chin-to-chin. AOL makes excellent money acting as ISP for their millions of users. Microsoft has announced that it will start providing free Internet access, presumably along the lines of the free ISP providers we've seen in the UK and elsewhere. This is aimed directly at AOL's throat. AOL may survive if it can counter-attack, or present a moving target. The Hotmail episode shows that Microsoft is risking much by this move. It is hard to win a battle for the hearts of millions of consumers who think of you as the Sheriff of Nottingham, and the hackers as Robin Hood. My guess is that Microsoft's attack on AOL will fail, and that they will move upmarket to corner the corporate Internet market, which is almost mature. Then they will use this position to wipe AOL from the board. Whatever happens, history has two lessons. First, that Microsoft wins every fight it can provoke. Secondly, every fight changes it, often radically. The idea of Microsoft as the world's leading ISP should give pause for thought. Pieter Hintjens Antwerpen 1 September 1999 == INBOX -..-..---.-.---..-.-.-.--...---.....----.-.-.----....--.--...----.- To: editors@imatix.com From: savvas xenophontos Subject: RE: Liberetto IV/8 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- I recently made the decision to migrate to Linux from NT4 on my laptop, because I was heartily sick of having to rebuild the NT OS whenever someone farted nearby. The prospect of upgrading memory and hard disk for NT5 was unappealing. I purchased S.u.S.E 5.3, and it practically installed itself : I had to fiddle a little with the X-Server video mode setup, but I got the laptop to boot and recognise all it's bits in a couple of hours. Initially, I was crawling painfully though steps that were simple for me on NT, like locating applications, peripheral setup and configurations. I was determined to suffer through it though, because I would be damned before I erected the the NT5 megalith. It has taken me a few months now to become reasonably familiar with my Linux environment, and I am happy with the change. I can do everything on Linux I could on NT, the only difference is that on Linux, all the apps I use are Open Source or Freeware. To date I haven't had to re-install Linux. Once I am reasonable skilled on Linux, I can see no reason not to replace my work machine's NT4 with it too. Yes, I am not into tatto parlours. -- Savvas To: editors@imatix.com From: Subject: Re: Liberetto IV/8 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Pieter Hintjens writes: Pieter> Well, I'm still with NT what do you need? do you need someone to come over to the office and apply a dopeslap to wake you up? it's a long haul, but i'd be willing to do it if that's what it takes. Pieter> If I install Linux on a PC for a friend, I'll spend the Pieter> next three months explaining why you need to 'unmount' the Pieter> CD before swapping it. i would rather install it once, show him how to unmount a cd, and then forget about it forever (as i've done several times) than drive over to his house every few weeks to reinstall windows after it eats itself alive. -- Jeff Covey To: editors@imatix.com Subject: Re: Liberetto IV/8 From: "Eric S. Raymond" Organization: Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Pieter Hintjens : > There is a theory that explains why some people like to eat hot spicy > food... No longer just a theory, it's been clinically tested. The method was interesting. There's a drug called Naloxone that's an endorphin blocker; it temporarily mucks up the receptors in the brainstem. They give it to junkies to make smack uninteresting. The experiment: find a bunch of pepperheads. Feed 'em hot food, watch 'em grin. Wait a few hours. Give 'em Naloxone. Repeat. Watch them experience the same food with their endorphin response blocked. Ouch... > If this theory is correct, it may explain many other bizarre forms > of obviously painful behaviour. Elevator music. This has to explain elevator music. So, you think Naloxone might be useful in the treatment of Windows addiction? -- Eric S. Raymond >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Aha, great idea. Eric's comment stimulated our hyperactive editor-on- a-leash to write an article for Segfault.org, which starts as follows: "Small White Pill could cure Windows forever "Researchers at the Swedish Institute for Human Studies announced Friday that they have discovered the cure for Windows, and it's a small white pill. This astounding claim stems from findings made by the team during tests into Human Long-lasting Low-level Pain Addiction Syndrome (HLLPAS). Apparently, people stick with Windows even after repeated exposures to pain for the same reasons that they get tattooed and pierced, eat spicy food, live in Pittsburgh, and listen to elevator music." More on Segault.org, if it's working today. Last time we looked, this site was kinda messed-up. They're not using Xitami, it appears. To: editors@imatix.com From: "Meyer Jean-Francois" Subject: libero ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Historically, did you start Libero working from the Kermit WART FSM generator derivated from Lex? -- JFM Historically, Libero has nothing to do with Lex except the first letter, and nothing to to with Wart except the funny name. Anyhow, we asked someone who knows about this (it appears his cousin knew a guy who was married to the office secretary at the time) to provide the Real History of Libero (are you ready?): In 1980 or so, some genius in Belgium decided that FSMs were a good way to write an IBM/CICS accounting system. On-line applications, even an accounting system, can be nicely designed as event-handling FSMs. The first such FSMs were coded by hand. This is like brushing your teeth by moving your head rapidly against a toothbrush fixed in the floor. Another genius (Leif Svalgaard, someone so clever that ten years after this story, someone was seen to be keeping Leif's slippers in a carboard box as a kind of magic talisman) wrote a tool, the 'Dialog Designer', that could generate the FSMs automatically. This tool was part of the ETK toolkit, still alive and kicking on etk.com. Leif's tool was so good that his company used it for dozens of projects, and several tens of thousands of large, complex programs. One of the hackers who worked with Leif, Pieter Hintjens, was so impressed by this way of working that he tried to apply it to everything he did. After a tragic episode with a waffle iron, he decided to apply it only to software, with much better results. Libero is basically Leif's tool concept, redesigned to generate code in any language. Kermit, on the other hand, is a small green stuffed frog. == TERMINATE THE PROGRAM -...---...-..----....-.---..---...-...---.-...---.- Yes, this month's Liberetto is short and salty, rather than sweet. This is what happens when the bulk of the editorial board leave on trips to exotic warm countries, leaving just us frustrated sub-editors to hack something together. I warned them: folk will be unsubscribing in droves if they don't get their monthly dose. Which reminds me of a joke: An Englishman was travelling through India some years ago, by train, in a first-class cabin. After the first night, he was horribly bitten by some kind of insect in the bedsheets. He complained to the steward, who went pale with dismay, and promised to immediately fire the entire washing crew, burn the kitchens, torture the maid, etc. The Englishman received a formal apology from the Head Steward, saying how unfortunate this incident was, the first time in fifty years, and how the entire honour of the train cabin staff had been sullied, so they would be abject in their service etc, etc. Satisfied, the Englishman retired, only to notice the post-it note stuck to the back of the letter, reading 'Send him the usual bug letter'. As if we would do such a thing at iMatix Corporation! To unsubscribe, just send us an e-mail.