[plug] Is anybody fearful?

[Brian Tombleson]

> Is anybody fearful of the big M infiltrating our Universities? With their
> tools and
> O.S.'es on at least some of the computers in our places of higher
learning,
> the crackers
> would have a fertile ground to possibly experiment with. It would possibly
> lead to all
> sorts of new viruses that affect all sorts of files, e.g. pdf's, etc,
etc...
> anyone's thoughts
> on this subject would be appreciated.

I'm not fearful at all for the reasons you have listed.  The OSS community,
while not promoting such activity, doesn't give a damn about MS viruses and
exploits.  It's just more arguments in support of OSS and the security that
comes with peer revew available with OSS.

I'm not sure how you arrive at pdf's here as there is nothing stopping
anyone looking for exploits in this already.

What I *am* worried about is MS pushing it's
closed-standards-as-open-standards and monopoly-as-competition paradigms
into the education system as a whole.