this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
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There's a word for software that does actions without the user's permission or knowledge.
That word is MALWARE
Every piece of software does things without your permission or knowledge.
If it does what you wanted it to when you installed it, it's doing things with your permission. If what it was going to do was clearly and correctly explained during the download or install process, it's doing things with your knowledge.
It's like a motor vehicle. You don't need to know how an internal combustion engine works to be able to give informed consent about driving it, but if it starts rolling away after you park it, you're going to either get it fixed or get a new car.
You understand and give explicit permission for every piece of the kernel?
Do you trust Microsoft? If you do I might suggest we find you a nice quiet padded room.
Imagine someone attempted to (or even succeeded in) pushing malicious (or even just poor, "bad" code into the kernel. What do you suppose would happen? Oh wait we don't have to imagine. Some people tried, and got admonished publicly.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/30/22410164/linux-kernel-university-of-minnesota-banned-open-source
Who said anything about trusting Microsoft? No piece of software is going to ask you for permission for every single operation it does. Malware is more than just that.
This is beyond pedantic. You and everybody else knows exactly what they meant.
If we're going to call something malware we better be damn sure we understand the definitions of it.
Good news! The original comment provides that!
And yet still all software does that!
You're delusional. Have a nice day though.
Delusional for understanding that all software does things without your explicit permission to do them? Lol ok