RE: Restricted storage

[Christopher Nelson]

> At Mon, 5 Jun 2006 13:41:30 -0600,
> "Christopher Nelson" <address@hidden> wrote:
> > 
> > > Two observations: It's totally ubiquitous, all over the place, 
> > > somebody who does not trust anybody at all would be 
> pathologic and 
> > > has no chance to survive in a society with other human beings.
> > 
> > This is a generalization that becomes ridiculous when applied to 
> > computers.  On a social basis you trust only that a person 
> won't hurt 
> > you in a any way that causes more damage to THEM than THEY consider 
> > worth what they may get back from hurting you.
> 
> I didn't generalize.  I said that if someone never trusts 
> anybody at all, they have no chance to survive in this world. 
>  Did you maybe misparse this as "everybody always trusts 
> everybody else"?  If somebody ever trusts somebody, even if 
> "only" for a certain amount, my second statement becomes 
> true.  Moreover, I think it is quite obvious that my first 
> statement is true as well, if you start to think about the 
> places where you put trust into other people.  (For example: 
> Do you eat food prepared by other people?  Is it poisoned?  How do you
> know?)

This isn't in contradiction to my point.  See below.

 > The lock on my front door only keeps out honest people, not a 
> > determined thief.
> 
> There are many areas in the world where people (even 
> comparatively wealthy people) do not lock their doors.
> 
> I do not understand the nature of your disagreement.

My point is that the degree of trust that you can place in random people
is inversely proportionate to the percieved benefit they obtain by
harming you in some way.

So, for example, I eat in some public restaurants because I trust that I
am not important enough to be a specific target, and that the company
that owns the restaurant has a vested trust in making sure that the food
is safe.  The employees do not have any financial reason to interfere
with the food, because it brings them no benefit.

However, if I were a very wealthy individual, I would be *far* more
cautious about where I ate.  The reason being that it might make sense
for some individual (an heir) to conspire with someone in the restaurant
to kill me.  

Consider default firewall rules.  What system administrator in their
right might would by default *permit* all actions?  By default you
*deny* all actions, only permitting ones that you have some need for,
and that you can reasonably assume to be "safe."  Trust, in life and in
networks, must be *earned*. 

-={C}=-