Re: Worditudinality

[silky <michaelslists () gmail com>]

On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 12:25 PM, Rob, grandpa of Ryan, Trevor, Devon &
Hannah <rMslade () shaw ca> wrote:
> Go look up the term rootkit on Wikipedia.  (Go ahead, I'll wait.)  Lovely entry,
> isn't it?  Lots of information.  Trouble is, there's lots of misinformation, too.
>
> A rootkit is *not* "a program ... designed to take fundamental [or] ... `root'
> access" for a system.  It's designed to *keep* that access, once you broken into
> the system and grabbed it.  (And rootkits were around before 1990, etc, but we'll
> let that go for the moment.)
>
> Or, at least, it used to be defined that way.  Recently, all kinds of people have been
> redefining what rootkit means, to the point that it may no longer mean anything.
>
> Wikipedia is a wonderful tool, and the English encyclopedia made with it is a
> wonderful resource.  For the most part.  But when you get to the real specialty
> areas you start running into problems.  As John Lawton has pointed out, the irony
> of the information age is that it has given new respectability to uninformed
> opinion.  And Wikipedia is susceptible to that problem.
>
> Now the Wikipedia people are aware of the problem, and have provided ways to
> address it.  There is the fact that anyone can correct errors, when errors have been
> made.  There are technical controls in terms of limits on changes.  There are
> administrative controls in the granting of elevated privileges to editors.  But
> occasionally you get a breakdown, such as the fact that an editor can be, him or
> herself, in error.  And then you get entries like the one for rootkit.
>
> But Wikipedia is not what I really want to talk about.  I want to talk about words.
> Specifically, the jargon that we use, and create, in technical fields, and in the field
> of information security in particular.  Because language is kind of like a giant
> Wikipedia, where anyone at all can make an entry.  And anyone at all can try and
> modify that entry.
>
> Lots of people like to talk about computer security.  It's quite likely that more
> people like to talk about security than actually *do* anything about security.  So
> it's not hard to see that a lot of the people who are talking, and writing, about
> security often talk about things that, well, they are not quite certain about.
>
> If I say that Alan Turing was a homosexual, I might be right, or I might be wrong.
> But it would be fairly easy to check whether I was right or wrong.  However, if I
> say that a Turing Machine is a universal computer because it can be implemented
> on any computer, I am making a different kind of assertion, and one that it harder
> to check.  Someone who hears me say that, and knows that I'm wrong, might not
> challenge it immediately, because it's partly right, and the error I've made may not
> be important to the point that I'm making.  But the people who hear me make
> that statement, and who do not know why the statement is in error, are probably
> going to assume and generate various kinds of mistaken ideas about Turing
> machines.  And if I make the statement frequently enough, and in enough
> different places, it starts being taken as true.  And eventually we'll have people
> saying that a universal computer is any entity that can be implemented on any
> platform.  Which had nothing at all to do with what Turing was doing and proving.
>
> So it is with a number of the specialized terms that we have been using in infosec.
> A lot of people are getting hold of them, and using them in sloppy ways.  Now, a
> great many people say that language is living, and you have to make allowances
> for that growth.  Fair enough: much of the vocabulary that we use every day in
> computer security didn't even exist fifty years ago, so it would be hard to argue the
> point.  However, if the terms can be changed by anyone, at any time, then they
> lose meaning.  If I use the word virus to mean one thing, and you use it to mean
> something quite different, then we aren't going to come to any agreement.  We
> can't communicate.  And, in all of these rapidly changing technical fields,
> communication is vitally important.
>
> So, in the blort, I just want to regrify you to smetnicate all forms of antrifact.
>
> Yelth you for your fesculiant.

Normally when I get a big message like this, I read the first part,
get bored, then skip to the end. Certainly after the first paragraph
or two your rant got boring. However, this ending is very nicely done.
Good job. Very happy with my method.


> ======================  (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer)
> rslade () vcn bc ca     slade () victoria tc ca     rslade () computercrime org
> No experiment is ever a total waste:
>    it can always be used as a bad example          - science maxim
> victoria.tc.ca/techrev/rms.htm blogs.securiteam.com/index.php/archives/author/p1/

-- 
noon silky
http://www.themonkeynet.com/armada/
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