@Stake

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Originally posted here by \/IP3R
:rofl: CERT. Sound like you've been there. Another place for bunch of wannabees gathers everyday and waste their money and time.

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I was using CERT as a euphemism for *ahem* those admins' emregency response teams. As people that hold belief in what i stated will continually have issues.

To be fair however, it is not this new generation's fault, it is the old generations fault for not making the fruits of their labor more availible which has lead to the new generation starting over from scratch and seeing nothing wrong with what should be obsolete systems.

catch

Ps. nice attempt at an insult though. :)

Could it be his part in this paper that did it ???

got the refference from:

this article, this article and this article

Hi,

Now here is a nice target for you to "neg" :)

An employee of a company, and even moreso an "officer" is legally a representative of that organisation? If you make a public statement in that capacity, you commit them. [ Any DAs out there?............I am filing an insanity plea]

I guess that the guy was at fault for not making the disclaimer that this was his "personal opinion"? On the other hand, the "Media" should have had the common sense to put that bit in for him?...............they claim to "protect their sources" don't they?

The Micro$of issue is really irrelevant, it is there, it cannot be "uninvented"..........everyone has 20/20 superior hindsight....I know that I do :D But as the great Bard said "That which is done is done"....................did he make any POSITIVE suggestions as to the rectification of the problems that he identified?

If he did not, might I suggest that his actions were similar to playing Russian Roulette with a Colt .45 Auto :eek:

I believe in freedom of speech, but what happens when your freedom impinges on other people's?

If the Guy had only PMd me, I would have drafted a proper and polite letter of resignation for him?........there might even be a good conspiracy theory here?


A few thoughts


Cheers

Catch you made a lot of good points and I must admit you are right but there are just some things some companies should consider when they take such drastic measures.

For one when you say:

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If @Stake was so egregious, let Mr. Geer sue, and watch him lose.

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If Mr. Geer was to get a good lawyer and sue @Stake do you really think he would loose? I don't think so. The exposure the company would get from a lawsuit would be something a company like @Stake would not want to go through. So you know what they will settle at the first chance they get. IMO Geer has just landed himself a wonderful retirement plan.

There are too many issues involve with the media for @Stake to just fire Geer for reporting the facts that may have been twisted by the media. True he represent the company but still there are checks and balances and if he pursue a lawsuit I think he stands a great chance of winning.

Just my $0.02

Guidance...

Hey Cutty,

I guess you just identified my "conspiracy theory" :D

cheers

nihil we just never know what the media will put from their bag of tricks. They can be a tricky group of individuals.

I would really like to see what turns up after this but @Stake may keep it hush hush. We will just have to wait and see.

Guidance...

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Originally posted here by cutty

If Mr. Geer was to get a good lawyer and sue @Stake do you really think he would loose? I don't think so. The exposure the company would get from a lawsuit would be something a company like @Stake would not want to go through. So you know what they will settle at the first chance they get. IMO Geer has just landed himself a wonderful retirement plan.

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Maybe... but if their goal is to suck up to Microsoft as everyone says, then a full court case would be ideal for them to do that.

I personally agree with much of the document in question, and much of it is objective, however some of the article is quite subjective and would be downright inappropraite to say about a partnering company.

As for the article itself, the authors make some interesting points, but failed to consider a few things.

First things first, perfect software does exist, KSOS is a notable example. Flight assist systems in the F-16 are another fine example. (these make thousands of course corrections per second or the plane will crash, a bsod or kernel panic are not acceptable)

Next, yes MS does make up the vast majority of systems and yes this makes the environment more suseptibale to common attacks be they sefl propigating or not. However, this is a requirement of efficient communication. Just like all americans speak english, if we were all speaking different languages the cost of business goes up. It is one thing for companies that choose to deal with international clients, but imagine if you needed to speak different languages for each, buying gas, food, paying your bills, etc. That would be very inefficient, and in this capitolist market, if an organization came along that you could communicate more easily with, they would get your business. So homogenization is a natural occurance. The real issue at hand is the way security works. Why is it that it wasn't until 2002 that the first research projects really took off on the automatic, dynamic discovery and isolation of malware took place? Signature based defense? What moron came up with this? This is just an approcah at keeping malware defense companies in business.

The next question is, people might start using a Windows alternative if one existed! There is no comparably priced system, that will function comparably, and meets the same level of standards as Windows. So what? the average business is just supposed to take one for the team? Pay more money, lose functionality, hit lower standard just to help out the computer community overall? Yeah... sign me up for that. Unlikely at best.

Software complexity? This is true the Windows system and all MS software is exceptionally complicated, but I don't think needlessly so. Features sell, watch as every release of the major Linux players gets more and more bloated. The more a computer does, the more useful it is and the easier it is to sell. If you tell customers that you've removed over 100,000 lines of code from the last rev, they will want to know why they should upgrade. Does it have new features? Did it lose features? If it didn't lose features, why were those extra 100k lines of code in there? And now a huge shadow of doubt has been cast on the vendor.

Despite what the open source people seem to think, software is a business (and without software companies the open source movement would colapse since they'd all lose their day jobs) and being such, qustions like "how does this effect the rest of the world?" are not a concern. If your concern is your own failure... not global cascade.

In short, the paper is interesting, but I don't see what value it adds.

catch

Cutty, nihil, etc:

Keep in mind that this was a CTO. He should have had the experience and maturity to have known better than to make public statements without clearance from the corporate authorities. CTO's are contract employees of their company and their contracts, if the company is practicing due dilligence, include statements describing whether that contracted employee can represent to the public or not. Usually, all public statements, reports and other communication must go through the corporate flack first (PIO or CIO). Sidetracking that process is generally described in contracts as grounds for immediate dismissal. I know of very few instances where this kind of behavior has happened that the offending employee hasn't been handed his or her hat before the day was out.

Whether you agree with his statements or not has no bearing on the fact that, yes, the company was well within their rights to fire him--assuming that the events are as represented. This has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Freedom of speech, as applied in the United States, is an individual freedom and applies so long as the speaker only represents himself. As soon as the speaker walks through the corporate doorway and becomes a member of the corporate body, he or she no longer represents himself. As a representative of the corporation or institution, the speaker must adhere to the rules of the corporation.

This is why, we, members of AO, can bandy words and ideas around, speak out artfully and such. We have a certain level of anonymity which separates us from our corporate or institutional identities, and we can speak freely without fear of recrimination, prosecution or persecution. So, here, we only represent ourselves and this is one of the great venues where we have true freedom of speech.

"Its very sad that @stake fired him for this," said Bruce Schneier, a report co-author and founder of Cupertino, Calif., security consultancy Counterpane Internet Security Inc. "We as security researchers regularly speak, write and do reports that express our professional opinions. We assume that companies hire us for our integrity and honesty."

Altthough I agree with catch in some respects about his responsibility to his clients and employers, this was an independent study and I think @Stake acted a bit hastily and are going to garner nothing but bad PR from this, but that again is part of the corporate game, you win some, you loose some, that goes for everyone involved.

-Maestr0


http://www.computerworld.com/softwar...,85441,00.html

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Whether you agree with his statements or not has no bearing on the fact that, yes, the company was well within their rights to fire him--assuming that the events are as represented. This has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Freedom of speech, as applied in the United States, is an individual freedom and applies so long as the speaker only represents himself. As soon as the speaker walks through the corporate doorway and becomes a member of the corporate body, he or she no longer represents himself. As a representative of the corporation or institution, the speaker must adhere to the rules of the corporation.

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rapier57 am not saying that Mr. Geer was within his rights for saying what was printed by the media. What am saying is that there may be more to the story. As you said Mr. Geer was a CTO and he should have know better and that kind of struck me. It's not entirely impossible that the media misrepresented Mr. Geer and @Steak didn't take that into consideration or maybe they did but we don't know that or at least I don't know that. So if Mr. Geer was misrepresented then there is a chance for a full blown lawsuit for negligence on the part of @Stake, since they should have found out exactly what Mr. Geer meant and said before firing him, assuming they didn't do that of course.

That's the direction I was looking at the issue from since it occurs mostly every time something like this comes up. Companies fire individuals on the spot without looking into the issue first. Lets hope @Stake didn't fall into that trap.

Guidance...