Re: It takes two to tango

["Randy Hinders" <rahinders () hotmail com>]

As much as it pains me to say this, I feel I must (for sake of argument).  
There is an assumed risk in using any product.  The different analogies that 
people are coming up with are ludicrous.  Given the current political and 
prejudice* situations, litigation in the courts is not the way to go.  Our 
great nation was founded with freedom in mind, and this freedom is what we 
try to assist other nations in achieving.  It is this Freedom that allows 
our open market and Freedom of speech.  Our freedom of speech may or may not 
infringe upon a companies “intellectual property”.  Would we all be in 
agreement that no one else took apart the Wright Brothers first Bi-Plane and 
then reassembled it using their own tweaks?  No, I don’t think so.  The 
Wright Brothers and other Great Minds from the generation before us shared 
their ideas for the benefit of the common good.  Proof of this is the 
existence of the Engineers Club of Dayton Ohio.  Back in the day, if people 
didn’t like what product ABC did or did not do they used the freedom of an 
open market to purchase someone else’s product or they used their freedom of 
independent thinking to create a better ABC.

That is what we need to do.  Boycott the vendor who does not work with the 
consumer watchdogs.  Should a vulnerability be found “Without criminal 
intent” a message of said vulnerabilities should be sent to the watchdogs 
who then work with the vendors.  The vendors should make a “reasonable 
effort” to reproduce the vulnerability (after all the watchdog is most 
likely going to reproduce it so the vendor should be able to reproduce it).  
If the vendor fails to take appropriate actions then the vendor should be 
placed on a black list.  The consumers (you and me) then do not purchase 
items from those vendors.  However, we do not need to overwhelm our judicial 
system with frivolous lawsuits because it is US the consumers who need to 
ASSUME the risk of making any information public.

We all know the only way to have a totally secure system is to not turn it 
on.  Knowing this we must assume that risk and let our customers know the 
risk.  Or it will come down to suing the local news station for announcing 
the severe lighting storm which in turn struck the office causing a surge 
which melted the CPU onto the motherboard causing a downtime of 4 hours.  
During these 4 hours employees were not able to utilize the computer system 
thus causing a loss of wages…. Come on people….  It is like the cold war 
scenario all aver again “I can blow your country up more time than you can 
blow my country up”.

No one wins.  However, do not under estimate the power of your dollar, which 
is a war that can (and is daily) be won.

Randy Hinders

* Prejudices = as in an irrational attitude to sue over the pettiest of 
things to include someone feelings being hurt… life is hard and it sometimes 
sucks, get used to it.


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