Re: Re: make gnome listen on localhost:*

[Jim Garrison <garrison users sourceforge net>]

On Thu, 15 Jun 2000, Ali Abdin wrote:
> > Yes, and it's nice and easy.  But, in this case, it's still
> > the wrong way around.
> >

Agreed.

[snip]

> I think _ONE_ of the reasons that ORBit will /NOT/ disable the inet
> sockets
> thing by default is because if it does it is not following the CORBA
> standard. ORBit is a CORBA ORB - if it does not follow the standard what
> does it become?
> 

How CORBA compliant is ORBit?  It does not interface with other ORBs right
out of the box (http://icps.u-strasbg.fr/~genaud/ORBIT/c41.htm#AEN62). 
This FAQ might be out-of-date (*please* let me know if it is).  I could
very well also be understanding this wrong, as I do not claim to be a CORBA
expert.

I don't care how good something has been checked, but an open port is
always another potential security hole.  I also don't trust version 0.5.1
of anything to be particularly secure.  Although a version number is
essentially meaningless, it does give me a great deal of confidence in its
security measures.  I would also suggest reading the question before the
one I pointed out in the FAQ.

I think that some of us, in our quest to make the desktop "easier," are
losing touch with how "normal people" interact with computers.  We need to
provide a sane default.  We can still change this when we need to use ORBit
for real distributed computing, but the people that are doing these things
are the people that have some clue as to what they are doing.  GNOME was
made to make the desktop easier.  ORBit was made for GNOME.  Although it is
not limited to use in GNOME, it should provide a sane default for what it
was made.

The beauty of CORBA is that it does not matter to the application what
transport is used.  All the application cares is that it works.  UNIX
sockets will do everything the desktop user needs for now, and when the
time comes that TCP/IP is needed my most people, it should be the default.

Remember port 139?  Winnuke?

Jim