[cap-talk] Failure isolation

[Raoul Duke]

>  Certainly not difficult to achieve, as there have been many
>  implementations of POLA systems.  I think perhaps you mean
>  "difficult" to get to become widespread, as a generally
>  accepted (software) engineering practice?

Right - I haven't used a POLA system (that i know of) so I can't
comment on the first part :)

>  > so, are there polas which have worked stupendously well in a
>  > non-software situation?
>  Hmmm.  I'm not sure why you feel it's important, but I don't
>  know of any.

Basically, to what extent are humans destined to not work well with
POLAs? If humans are by nature not going to be perfect wrt security,
what do the security implementations have to do to work with that fact
rather than become useless / ineffectual due to it? Of course there
are limits to what any system can offer and if the users don't follow
the spirit that's just too bad (candy bars for passwords).

>  I don't consider our mainstream OS's "crappy".  They
>  were just designed at a time when flexibility and
>  performance were so much more important than security
>  and reliability that they emphasized aspects of
>  system design that perhaps would be treated differently
>  in an environment like today's.

A worthwhile point; anything successful must have had some redeeming
qualities (modulo how much marketing money was applied).

sincerely.