Fwd: Quotation attribution for 'golden rules of computer security'

(Prof. Tappan did include www-archive in the Cc header, but his reply
has not appeared in the archive yet — I suspect he did not reply to
the W3C’s archival permission request.)

> Begin forwarded message:
> 
> From: rtm@csail.mit.edu
> Subject: Re: Quotation attribution for 'golden rules of computer security'
> Date: 3 November 2017 at 19:21:19 GMT
> To: "David P. Kendal" <dpk@nonceword.org>
> Cc: www-archive@w3.org
> Reply-To: rtm@csail.mit.edu
> 
> David,
> 
> It was not me.
> 
> It's easy for me to believe that my father devised these rules, though I
> do not know for certain that he did.
> 
> Robert
> 
>> From: "David P. Kendal" <dpk@nonceword.org>
>> Subject: Quotation attribution for 'golden rules of computer security'
>> Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2017 19:15:44 +0000
>> Cc: www-archive@w3.org
>> To: Robert Tappan Morris <rtm@csail.mit.edu>
>> 
>> Dear Prof. Morris,
>> 
>> On the Wikipedia page about your father the following quotation is
>> credited to him:
>> “The three golden rules to ensure computer security are: do not own a
>> computer; do not power it on; and do not use it.”
>> 
>> However, the citation is to a book which appears to credit it to you,
>> not to him. To make matters more confusing, there now appear to be
>> many other pages on the web which credit it to him, and it’s
>> impossible to tell if they actually know where it came from or if they
>> just copied Wikipedia.
>> 
>> Did you devise these ‘three rules’ or did your father? (Or, for that
>> matter, did neither of you?)
>> 
>> Many thanks,
>> --
>> dpk (David P. Kendal) · Nassauische Str. 36, 10717 DE · http://dpk.io/
>>  Pretend that you're Hercule Poirot: Examine all clues, and deduce the
>>  truth by order and method.               — strings /usr/local/bin/tex
>> 
>> 
>> P.S. For permanent record I have copied this message to the W3C’s
>> www-archive mailing list.
>>

Received on Monday, 6 November 2017 14:32:37 UTC