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Re: Schwartz conviction

An infinite number of monkeys in the guise of Andrew Burke (aburke@qiclab.scn.rain.com) wrote:
[character assasanation copied from the Oregonian deleted]

= I do not know Randal, and I've never worked for Intel. All that
= I known has been from the Oregonian (scary, if you think about it)
= and from a few friends of mine who do know Randal, and from the
= newsposts I've seen from Randal or about him.

I've talked with Randal on IRC quite a bit and have seen several posts that he 
has made to various newsgroups (mostly perl related) and believe that I have at 
least some measure of the man.

= Do people really think Randal deserves this conviction? 

No.  From the facts that came out in the case, this appears to be petty 
retribution by Intel for Randal's uncovering of Intel's poor security on some of 
their machines (though the fact that he found one of the vp's passwords was 
'pre$ident' might have had something to do with it)

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

"I'm not an Intel consultant, but I play one on the 'Net."  Personally it scares 
the hell out of me. Any large organisation with enough resources and an axe to 
grind can make life rough for you.  It doesn't matter who you are or what you've 
done.  Give Them a reason and They'll find something.

= 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?

If I find a machine that has serious security problems (like Randal did) I'll 
tell the sysads for the system.  And, yes, I will see if I can use a system's cpu 
time to it's fullest (I love my onyx).

= 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)

Methinks the vp didn't like the fact that his password was found out and pushed 
forward with this.  Sounds like it'd make a great Dilbert strip.  Dilbert is 
doing a little extra work, finds there's a security hole with the Boss' machine 
and tells the boss.  The Boss fires Dilbert for messing around with his machine 
and prosecutes Dilbert.  Of course things get really interesting when it 
turns out that Dogbert is the judge in the case...

--
docx@pobox.com
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