Re: xkcd: CrowdStrike

On 25 Jul 2024 at 00:19:33 BST, "Scott Dorsey" <Scott Dorsey> wrote:

Paul S Person  <psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:

 
I saw an article where Microsoft was blaming the EU for forcing them
to allow 3rd-party access to the Kernal, which they claim is what
enabled the update to do bad things. If that is true, they may have a
point.

 
There is always third-party access to the kernel.  In the Windows NT days
before Microsoft had figured out 1960s-style memory protection, any program
in user space could make changes to the kernel.  And sometimes they
accidentally did.

Are you sure? NT 3.51 and 4.0 had full tiered memory protection. Then in
Win2k (NT 5.0) they gave driver access to the kernel for GPUs, and
reintroduced massive instability yay.

The Windows 2/3/95/98/Me series had no notable memory protection between
user and system.

What the EU forced Microsoft to do was to DOCUMENT the kernel so that
people could more reliably get third-party access.
--scott

The EU is *mostly* doing things right on tech regulation legislation
these days. I'm watching them box Apple in for aggravated bad behaviour
at the moment, which is good fun - although I really don't appreciate
alt (ie Facebook and Epic) app stores on my nice secure iThings.
Fortunately I get to choose not to install them.

    Cheers - Jaimie
--
"In my opinion, we don't devote nearly enough
scientific research to finding a cure for jerks."
           -- Calvin/Bill Watterson