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Re: Schwartz conviction

Andrew Burke <aburke@qiclab.scn.rain.com> wrote:
>
>Do people really think Randal deserves this conviction? 

Well, he seems to have broken the law as written - whether the
legislators who wrote it had a clue is another topic 
entirely. But the central salient fact seems to me to be that 
there was hubris at work here on the level of a greek tragedy. 

I mean, I'm not nearly as smart as this fellow is reputed to 
be, and perhaps because of that, I leave SGI security to those
tasked for its protection. I don't consider it my responsibility
to point up the failings of others (except on the net, of course.) ;^) 

>Does this put the fear of god in other consultants? Any Intel
>consultants dare offer their opinions? 

Consultants ought to have the fear of god in them when they 
work for big corporations. A consultant is a very narrow job,
and should be like any other service provider who comes in - 
you do your job and get out. The best high-power consultants
I've worked with don't even put a picture of their spouse on
their desk - any more than a plumber would set up housekeeping
while he/she works on your sink. Note that I am a regular 
employee of Silicon Graphics, but have ben a contractor in the 
past. 

>It seems likely Randal's situation is not unique - most of us like
>to see how fast cpu's can go, and Intel's are among the fastest.
>Perhaps there is community of speed freaks at Intel and Cray who
>get their jollies doing exactly what Randal was doing. Will y'all
>change your ways?

Speak for yourself - I do my job, and the only CPU test that 
matters to me is "is it fast enough to run the programs I need
at a speed that allows me to do my work adequately?" - besides,
as Dilbert says this morning, you can stress test these cpus
by downloading large pictures or running Doom over the net. 
You don't have to run Satan or Crack. You can do like I do 
and bring a system to its knees by running Framemaker with 30
open files. 

>Anybody else think the NSA/CIA/Spooks United _potentially_ could
>have had influence in this case, since Randal was clearly a rogue
>seeing exactly what could be done with Crack? Or at least that
>Intel has to show they are in firm control of the users of their
>supercomputers, and what better way than to hold a public lynching
>of a jerk consultant? (Why didn't Intel just fire him?? Surely there
>were others in Intel running Crack just to see what's possible)

No, I think this was Intel pushing the prosecution. Why would the 
spies care about one overeager consultant getting his jollies by
breaking security at Intel? I read where Intel did fire him, with 
prejudice. I would have done the same if I found a consultant 
trying to crack my password file. I don't think I'd bother with 
the prosecution, but then, I'm not a huge corporation. 

>If Randal was such a "god", how come he was only getting $45 an hour,
>as reported by the newspaper? Consulting shops get more than that,
>don't they?  I usually get about that, and I'm certainly no god.

Maybe this guy is not as slick as has been made out? I have no clue - 
maybe he felt that working for Intel was worth the low wage? I 
do not know him and never have even met the man. 

>How does this affect our community? Will people think twice about
>working for Intel, or do people recognize this as a very unique
>situation?

I think people will take it as an object lesson to keep their 
activities as conslutants confined to what they were hired to do. 
Based on what I've read in the paper, this was a long time coming -
this Schwartz fellow had ongoing conflicts with the supercomputer
division about security. This did not happen in a vacuum. 

I have no position on his guilt, culpability, or innocence. I certainly
do hope the court shows mercy and clemency for him - as I said, it seems
to me that this is a case of hubris, not crime per se. I also hope 
this provides everyone a clue about the nature of work and consulting. 

>Please understand I'm just wondering and posing a few questions that
>have come to mind. I'm no conspiracy nut, and I don't think Intel
>is an evil empire (some of my best friends have worked for Intel...!). 
>It just seems to me this is a big event that
>has received very little attention in this forum.

I expect it will get more now that the court action has produced a result. 

JZ
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