kstuff 0.18 (part 1/6)

[Dan Bernstein]

In article <13May91.095814.8736 at franklin.com> bill at franklin.com (bill) writes:
> In article <1991May11.200747.17465 at scuzzy.in-berlin.de>
>     src at scuzzy.in-berlin.de (Heiko Blume) writes:
> : brnstnd at kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
> : >In article <1991May09.012116.5816 at scuzzy.in-berlin.de>
> :    src at scuzzy.in-berlin.de (Heiko Blume) writes:
> 	[Actually, a legitimate complaint, in that Bernstein
> 	didn't bother with a trivial detail in his postings on
> 	alt.sources that would have made life easier for many
> 	people.]
  [ ... ]
> Bernstein erred in not using shorter file names

Perhaps, but the package only runs on BSD systems, as the top of the
first posting states quite clearly. So I don't think ``would have made
life easier for many people'' is right. Only someone who ports the
package to System V will ever care about the filename length, and a
kernel-reading package has a hell of a lot more system-dependent stuff
than six filenames longer than 14 characters.

  [ various insults ]
> In case Bernstein wants to respond to me: don't bother. I've
> added you to my global kill file and I'll trash any further e-mail
> from you unread. Your last message to me, which you may consider
> this a response to, makes it perfectly clear just what kind of
> person you are and I have no intention of wasting my time further
> with you.

Okay, T. William Wells, I'm not responding to you. I'm just clearing
this up for comp.unix.wizards readers, since you dragged this thread
into comp.unix.wizards for no reason having anything to do with its
technical content.

To the net, then: What Bill is referring to is a message I sent him last
week. He posted something about how without full details of the tty
security holes there's no way people can fix the problem. Now I've been
reacting rather strongly to such statements---I *have* posted a complete
fix, and as my last message should make clear, people do not need break
code to understand why the fixes work. If there weren't a published fix
then people would have a perfect right to complain. But this time there
*is*, and I think people should take a step back and review what's
actually happened here before they shout further religious stupidities.

In Bill's case I wasn't even sure he'd seen what I'd posted---it sounded
as if he was just jumping into the middle of the thread, with no idea of
what was going on other than that somebody had said there was a security
hole. So I asked him politely whether he had seen my changes; enclosed
is a copy of that message. 

Bill's reply: ``Why, no. Your writings are so offensive that I can't
stomach more than a paragraph of your noise.'' and so on.

So I was right. Bill *hadn't* read the previous articles in the thread,
and he *didn't* know what was going on. (He probably still doesn't.) He
was simply foaming at the mouth. Is it wrong for me to be annoyed at
such behavior? Is it too much to ask that people read articles before
they follow up, or that they see what my security policy is before
criticizing that policy?

I sent Bill a final message along the lines of ``Too bad you're keeping
your eyes shut,'' and he thinks that justifies further public insults,
not to mention dragging an alt.sources.d thread into comp.unix.wizards
just so he could blare those insults more loudly.

What ever happened to netiquette? I've posted some nasty stuff about
people's opinions, but taking an irrelevant (and already finished)
thread and dragging it into a separate high-volume group just to scream
ridiculous character insults goes way beyond all bounds of decency.

T. William Wells, grow up.

---Dan

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Date: Sun, 5 May 91 22:49:13 GMT
From: brnstnd at KRAMDEN.ACF.NYU.EDU (Dan Bernstein)
Message-Id: <9105052249.AA18009 at KRAMDEN.ACF.NYU.EDU>
To: bill at franklin.com, brnstnd at nyu.edu
Subject: Re: Should Dan post full details of his tty bugs?
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,alt.security
In-Reply-To: <4May91.201446.4564 at franklin.com>
References: <26844:May100:59:2591 at kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <4601 at skye.ed.ac.uk> <1991May3.183159.23747 at maths.tcd.ie>
Organization: IR



In article <4May91.201446.4564 at franklin.com> you write:
> For as 
> long as you remain ignorant of the details, you are prevented from
> taking preventative action.

Have you noticed that I've posted a complete fix?

---Dan