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

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 11/20/20 1:49 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> 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.

I can do both of them.

> 
> 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 ?

Well, if your going to give the nod to EBCDIC, don't ignore Fieldata.

bill