[Pan-users] Re: Pan fails to deal with non-Latinusernames(Windows)

[Duncan]

"Roman" <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Thu, 04 Sep 2008 19:56:25
+0400:

>> Did you post this in UTF-8 or KO18-R?  Using UTF-8, it doesn't decode
>> probably.
> 
> Foiled again! But let me try another time...
> 
> Администратор!

Ahh, now THAT time I see it properly! =8^)

BTW, I sent a message assuming you meant the NNTP username, as in the 
from header, but I don't see that message.  Maybe it never got thru?  
Either way, tho, it seems that assumption was wrong.

But now I have another question.  Why are you running pan as 
administrator on MS?  Isn't that like running as root on Unix?  Shouldn't 
you be running it (and pretty much everything else) as a regular user, 
not as admin, as part of standard safe computing?  Like safe sex, if you 
don't practice the "safe" part while continuing to practice the /other/ 
part (computing or sex), you're likely to catch something!

Or is the admin account mentioned not /the/ admin account?

Either way, pan has an obvious bug in that it should be using the proper 
localized character-set, but the security guy in me just couldn't let 
that go without commenting.  People on *ix that run as root are 
considered a danger both to themselves and to others, thru the havoc they 
can wreak.  Now that MS has properly privilege separated accounts, 
there's no excuse for people to run as admin/root all the time there, 
either.  If apps are requiring it, report a bug and try to get it fixed.  
If they don't fix it, either get the source (if possible) and fix it 
yourself (or have someone else fix it for you), or if it's closed source 
and they won't fix it, move with all due haste to a replacement app that 
will properly respect privilege separation and run properly as a normal 
user (assuming it's not an app that's changing settings for the entire 
computer and therefore has a legitimate reason to need to run as admin/
root).

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman