[Info-vax] What to do with my VAX.....

[Simon Clubley]

On 2020-11-20, seasoned_geek <roland at logikalsolutions.com> wrote:
> On Friday, November 20, 2020 at 7:37:25 AM UTC-6, Simon Clubley wrote:
>> And how is that any different from DCL where people said the same thing 
>> about VMS and DCL until I came along and found that DCL had a vulnerability 
>> which allowed non-privileged people to compromise VAX/VMS and later Alpha 
>> VMS on VMS versions spanning a 33 year period ?
>
> I didn't say it was and yes, I've seen you break your arm patting yourself on the back for quite some time now. <Grin>
>

Good. :-) That means the message is continuing to get through to at least
some people and that perhaps there will not be such a major state of denial
when the next person comes along with another VMS vulnerability.

One of the unique features of that vulnerability was the sheer amount
of denial that was going on when people found out about it. If you are
not even willing to consider that such a vulnerability might exist, then
you are unlikely to be willing to consider how to protect your systems
from those and other similar types of vulnerabilities.

Reminding people about it every so often helps remind them that other
similar vulnerabilities might also exist.

>
> "Security Via Obsolescence"
>
> Just how many places are left that can read 8-inch floppies? 6250 tapes?
> Probably more for the tapes than the 8-inch floppies.

What about 800bpi tapes, paper tapes, Exabyte cartridges, WORM cartridges,
MFM hard drives, and DECtape ? :-)

As an aside, I wonder how many people today even know that EBCDIC exists
when it comes to talking about alternate ways to store data ?

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.