The End of Buffer Overflows!

[alittlebitnumb]

I still do not like the idea of MS coupling with hardware companies. It leads to the possibility as someone said of a lockout as stated, or that only XP can run on it.

Heh... I can see a great tool for anti-piracy with a processor that is designed for MS only. I bet Intel and MS can make a tiny fortune. Not that's a bad thing...

[pooh sun tzu]

I still can not believe any of you. In one post you whine and complain about Win distros not having enough security, and when they decide to take a step foward to improve it, even through hardware means, you badger them for it. Why not simply be happy they are taking steps towards better security?

Who cares if it becomes an MS only chip? Don't purchase the chip. Who cares if it's hardware fixing software holes? The only reason people are complaining about it being MS only is because they want it to work for Nix distros too, which have the same if not more amount of buffer overflows. Code can not be perfect, and having a 2nd layer of security checks is perfectly fine. Who cares if it becomes an MS only chip? I want to see you run OSX on x86 hardware.

Whine whine whine. Be happy security is going foward and not backwards. Being a zealot and always finding a reason to joke on Microsoft shows a lack of knowledge about it. Once again I say, be happy that security is going foward, not backwards.

[alittlebitnumb]

pooh sun tzu: Who said I was bitching about MS or an MS only chip and/or hardware? If MS were to stray away and use it's own ****, great. So that means one will have to spend more money to have MS and*NIX but like you said,

I want to see you run OSX on x86 hardware.

But that's what it is all about. Money. Not that making money is bad. Bill Gates can sure use a few more billion dollars.

[pooh sun tzu]

alittlebitnumb: Wasn't speaking to you directly, but to the majority of people replying to this thread

[silver-bullets]

First off I have no direct hate of MS, however their being a basic mono culture of OS's creates a huge problem, just like in ecology if you have a mono culture. One bug will completely destroy it. OS , or company specific hardware pisses me off to no end. I hate having to buy something endorsed by that company or made by that company to use the original product. And in the end it is all about money. Oh well, all they have to do is write better code, not make HW to fix the problem and potentially cause others.

-Cheers-

[pooh sun tzu]

Silver, when you can write perfect code for linux, unix, and windows, then I will worry about using Hardware as a crutch.

[Soda_Popinsky]

Say goodbye to dual boots

[alittlebitnumb]

Say goodbye to dual boots

I was going to say the same thing. No more GRUB, LILO and the nice little perks we have grown to love. Oh well, all good things eventually come to an end.

**waves to Soda_Popinsky

[TheTempest]

I think that it's great that M$ is trying to achive a higher level of security! But, I hate the fact that linux will be pushed even farther into the ground. The whole, one OS or NO OS is big problem to me.

[Tim_axe]

I didn't see any linkage, so I'll provide some (I realize that it was seen in a printed magazine first, but now there is a web version): http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994696


I think that it should still be possible to boot in Linux. And reading the article it doesn't seem like the processor will automatically know what is code and data; everyone will have to do that themselves. In the end Windows will probably be gone through with stuff flagged as code and data repsecively, so that while doing so they might uncover bugs. But you never know; it could be a change in compilers so that character arrays and such aren't flagged executable, so it might be an easy way out but would offer some form of protection nonetheless...

In the end I think that stuff will still be compatible. It is just that nobody will see any benefits until the technology is mature and we acturally know something about it, and stuff can be written for it. Windows wasn't built upon losing full backwards compatibility like some other OSes, so why would they start now? But even this hardware protection can't protect against some forms of attacks, but only time will tell us what those specific attacks will be. We can all just hope that these companies will recognize that security comes from informing everyone, and so that when these processors are out and about, we can use their protections ourselves and know that incase we do make some stupid mistakes in our favorite programming language, smart compilers will one day tell us "oops" and these processors can say "gottcha" to our nasty coding habbits.


printf(rant_end); // Oops...bad code already...


-Tim_axe