Re: Networks are for corporations and offices, right?

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from "Patricia M. Godfrey"  on Mon, 12
Jun 2006 16:53:57 -0400

Patricia, may I say that I think your argument (below) is a tad over the top?
I meant my statement about networking positively -- very. Networking is great,
and need not expose you to any additional danger. Implementing a personal LAN
exposes you to ZERO additional danger -- I just don't see how that can happen
unless user stupidly opens up all ports to the WAN. If you expose printer port
515 to the WAN, what dire thing is going to happen? Somebody prints to your
printer and uses up all your paper? Sure, you're a node on the Internet. That
doesn't perforce mean that anybody can do anything to you. The quid pro quo of
the Internet is that if you contact another node, they NEED to contact you --
otherwise you get nothing back. I mean, I'm sorry to say it, but your PCs *do*
constitute a node on the "epitheted" network when you're connected (the same
network that services this maillist); if you so vehemently think they "should
not" be, then toss your modem and stop sending Email! You ask "how much time
and effort must one spend "securing" one's PCs"? My personal answer is, None.
I never think about it. I never scan my disks (but when I do, they're clean).
I run SpyBot once a month maybe (clean!). Every single time I've had a
problem, it was my own fault -- risks knowingly undertaken. If you acquire
malware, then YOU did the acquiring!

Why moreover should there be different kinds of nodes with "unmistakably
different kinds of addresses"? Parity is a crucial concept of the Internet,
and I for one like that -- it inhibits a takeover.

Above all, I fail entirely to see what your concerns have to do with marvellous
facilities like Remote Desktop, LPD/LPR, etc etc etc etc. If you used them,
you'd agree with me (in fact, you'd be blown away). But you don't, so you
don't. Your response is not a propos, IMO.

R.

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> Robert Holmgren wrote:
> > What the "average" user, the user with a single machine, doesn't realize is how
> > very little it takes to become a "network" and, consequently, to avail of
> > network options and tricks.
>
> Fine. So long as it is MY network. In fact, I have both
> desktops networked and sharing each other's printers
> and data drives. (Even on systems that no one touches
> but me, I don't share c:)
>
> > If you are permanently connected to the Internet
> > (broadband, or dial-up that never times out), then you are permanently
> > networked.
>
> And THAT is what I am vehemently opposed to. MY PCs are
> not and should not be nodes on anybody else's
> epithetted network.
>
> I mean, isn't that precisely why we have this epidemic
> of malware? Because, as you once put it (accurately
> enough as things ARE, but outrageously, IMO, as things
> ought to be) "a network is a network." The Internet, a
> corporate extranet, and a personal or corporate
> intranet SHOULD all be absolutely different KINDS of
> networks, with different protocols and unmistakably
> different kinds of addresses. And, of course, different
> permissions. (And I realize 9x's permissions are a bad
> joke. No need to preach to the choir on that.)
>
> It's not that I'm either selfish or a control freak
> (well, I probably am the latter). But how much time and
> effort must one spend "securing" one's PCs from not
> just the deliberate bad guys but the clueless dweebs?
> (I have very good friends to whom I cannot give this
> e-mail address, because I know their PCs are wide open
> to being scanned by all sorts of address-harvesting
> bots. At one point I was getting spam on the Juno
> account from my own spoofed address!)
>
> > (it is soooo handy to have more than one machine, especially
> > when you run into difficulties -- the second machine is there to retrieve the
> > answers, or the files, that get you out of trouble).
>
> No argument on that. I've had a backup machine ever
> since my PC (3d one I owned) died a week before my
> taxes were due.
>
>
> --
> Patricia M. Godfrey
> PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx

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Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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