"Don Sample" <dsample.DeleteThis@synapse.net> wrote in message
news:070920031307565971%dsample@synapse.net...
> Is Microsoft *still* the main supplier of computer operating systems in
> the Honorverse? Surely someone somewhere must have a computer that
> can't be hacked into by a kid with a laptop. (Or a missile tech with a
> game console.)
Not exactly...around the time of the discovery of hyper generators,
Microsoft and MacOS combined into a super-company dedicated to producing
over-priced, under-powered, difficult to use, unreliable, and insecure
operating systems by combining the most advertised features of both Windows
OS and MacOS. The operations of the new company, Macrosoft, were moved to a
large asteroid in the asteroid belt, which was then declared an independent
nation. Military operations were launched against rival OS and other
software producers, eventually resulting in the first interstellar war and,
eventually, the Eridani Accords.
To the current day, the Macrosoft copyright protection and technology
acquisition forces are considered some of the most skilled, and feared,
special-operations units in existance; most people avoid mentioning them
because they tend to respond to mentions of their names, the names of
Macrosoft products, or discussions of opposing technologies.
In all seriousness, though, computers in fiction tend to be variably
difficult to hack, depending on what the needs of the story are. As a
computer tech, it sometimes annoys me that some supercomputer-AI can be
hacked by a teenager more easily than my (current) PDA, but at the same time
most people wouldn't want to see something like "After 3 days of feverish
programming, fueled by copious amounts of Bawlz and pizza, so-and-so managed
to create a program to trick such-and-such-computer into allowing him
root/administrative priveledges." Or, as some authors would do, a 3-page
description of what the hacker is doing. O.o
Also, I suspect that most people are rather fooled by how common computers
get hacked...it's not as easy as people tend to think. If there are 2 MS
security problems a week, that's 104 a year, or about 1 virus written per
every 2,000,000 people in the US, or 87,000,000 world residents. There are
a lot of people that want to hack stuff, and most computers (incl. servers)
are run on MS software. That, and stupid people keep not downloading the
updates, and are affected by various viruses like a month after the fix is
published.
Andrew Lannon<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
>> Stay informed about: Crown of Slaves 
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