[olug] M$ Office whackin' !

[Christopher Cashell]

At Tue, 02 Sep 03, Unidentified Flying Banana neal rauhauser, said:
>    We've already started fixing the SCO problem box by box, but what
> about this DRM in M$ office nonsense???

After reading the article, I'd be /very/ wary of ever utilizing this
technology.  It relies on a central (Windows) Server for your
organization that handles all permission and accessibility requests.

I don't know about everyone else, but there is no way I would entrust my
ability to read documents to a single server, especially a Windows
server.  There's just way too much of a risk that it'll be inaccessible
when I need to access information.

Imagine trying to get at a critical document when you're at home and
your Internet access is out, or your server is down, or any number of
other things.  You could have the document sitting right there on your
company laptop, and be unable to access it's information.

Or, what happens if things go /really/ bad, and you get data corruption
on your special information rights server?  Are you going to then lose
access to every document that was locked with it?

A central point of failure is a Very Bad Thing (tm), if it can be
avoided.  Especially one where failure could conceivably have permanent
effects.

And it doesn't even begin to address the fact that the majority of
sensitive information leaks and security problems are due to wetware
problems (i.e. human error/stupidity), as opposed to hardware or
software limitations.

No, thank you.  I think I'll stick with simpler and more reliable
measures like standard encryption and information security policies.

-- 
| Christopher
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| A: No.                                         |
| Q: Should I include quotations after my reply? |
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