Re: [SAGE] Looking for reuse: Script to change usersUID, change group GID & re-permission files on large scale

[Brad Knowles <brad@stop.mail-abuse.org>]

At 3:17 PM +0000 2005-01-22, Tom Kranz wrote:

>  Those embedded systems bring in a lot of money from clients, and will
>  continue to do so for many years to come. They are used in environments
>  where buffer overflows and remote root exploits are just not possible.

	For example, virtually all the chip lithography systems in the 
field use ancient, ancient controller machines, most of which you 
would be lucky to find are running on such modern OSes as Solaris 
2.5.1.  Leading vendors of chip lithography equipment might be able 
to sell most new systems with controllers using OSes as new as 
Solaris 8.

	However, a lot of their customers are going to have enough of 
these machines that they're going to want all of their old and new 
ones to be identical, and when you're spending tens of millions of 
dollars and many man-years of time invested on a single chip 
lithography system, you don't casually throw those kinds of customers 
away.


	You wanna shut down all chip manufacturing plants around the 
world?  IBM, Hynix, Infineon, TSMC, etc...?  Or drive them to spend 
many years slowly switching their entire production line over to your 
major competitor, because *NOTHING* in this field happens quickly?

>  Just because something is old and buggy doesn't necessarily mean there
>  is no reason for it to be on a machine, or that it should be purged as
>  soon as possible. There are often lots of perfectly valid business
>  reasons why bug-ridden cruft must be allowed to continue to be used.

	Yup.  Imagine a company that had over 250 trillion Euro of annual 
turnover (an average of more than one trillion Euro turnover per 
workday), and over twelve trillion Euro of assets under management. 
You don't make quick changes to whales of that size.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad@stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.