As you probably know by now, one of my pet peeve is people who pretend to know more than they actually do, and (because they get access to the right channels) spread misinformation.
The latest example comes via the Infosec Ramblings blog: a series of two articles talking about “UAC Virtualization”.
<rant>The term is “File and Registry virtualization” (go look them up on the Microsoft site). The connection with UAC that they get activated the same time, but then again, by the same logic, why not call it Vista virtualization and create even more confusion? You are doing all a disservice by using non-standard lingo which is not easy to look up! There are only two possible reasons to do this: ignorance, in which case you should be stripped of titles like “MVP” or malicious intent (ie. bringing more traffic to your site by ensuring that only you use these names), where a small thing called “ethics” comes in.</rant>
Then again, maybe I should be glad that the level of knowledge about MS is evaporating, because maybe more people will move to Linux :-).
3 responses to “The importance of understanding – take 2”
Thanks for reading my blog. I appreciate it.
I would like to mention a couple things in response to your blog rant.
1) In the first paragraph of Mr. Delber’s article, he uses the phrase “User Account Control and Virtualization” which is accurate. A little further in he writes “UAC lends a helping hand by virtualizing the file system and Registry namespace.” Again, accurate. From that point on he does refer to the process as UAC virtualization which I propagated in my comments on my blog post.
2) However, Microsoft does the same thing. Particularly in their FAQ on User Access Control here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc772207.aspx.
Considering the two statements above, I view your rant as out of line and itself lending to the problem you are ranting about.
Regards,
Kevin Riggins
kriggins _at_ infosecramblings.com
“Then again, maybe I should be glad that the level of knowledge about MS is evaporating, because maybe more people will move to Linux :-).”
shame on you – you know full well that lack of knowledge has never stopped people from using windows… if anything the opposite is true…
I stand by my opinion (about MS, not about linux – where it is sadly true that misinformation is one the problems preventing it from getting a large audience).
As this search shows UAC Virtualization is used only once on the MS site (in the document you referenced), all the other occurrences are on the forums (most probably contributed by third parties).
Also, the term is inherently incorrect. UAC is not virtualized, nor does UAC virtualizes anything!