Re: New Ada compiler for .NET

["Marin David Condic" <mcondic.auntie.spam@acm.org>]

Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message
news:4519e058.0211270931.64615740@posting.google.com...
>
> Just yesterday I was told that free trial downloads of the SoftIce
> debugger for NT  device drivers (NT kernel-mode debugger) were no
> longer available because the government is afraid of terrorists using
> it. Not one person has ever been proven killed by computers under the
> control of malicous coders, while there are quite a few incidents of
> buggy code killing people unintentionally. If we were *really*
> concered about hacker-terrorists, or even computers causing meyhem in
> general, we should be discouraging unsafe languages like C, not
> debuggers.
>
In fairness, you might consider that they might not be so much concerned
with terrorists killing people with software as they might have a concern
about terrorists using the software to disrupt computers and cause havoc.
Note the amount of damage that has been caused in the past by cyberpunks
spreading viruses, etc., costing large sums of money and other intangible
losses to businesses. I don't know about SoftIce and what it does, so it
might or might not present a threat and the government might or might not be
acting stupidly. Its just that there are more ways to hurt people than
simply blowing them up.

OTOH, if its a readily available commercial product, taking it off the
internet isn't really doing much to stop the dedicated, well funded,
professional terrorist, is it? Maybe just reducing the risk of nefarious use
by cyberpunks - which might be a wise objective. But it does seem a little
like closing the barn door after the horses have all run off. We'd be far
wiser to fund the development of a much more secure OS and reduce the ways
in which cyberpunks or terrorists can do damage. (Maybe we can get a
government contract under the auspices of "Homeland Defense"? :-)

MDC
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Marin David Condic
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