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...when people attempt to link legitimate engineering or technical points-of-view with misogyny, *-phobia, microagressions, or God-knows-what other kinds of SJW evils, it's hard to then claim that alternative views can't bring up what progressive social folks are doing and how it might affect things back.

e.g., " Anti-Systemd People ":

For some reason the men in the Linux community who hate women the most seem to have taken a dislike to systemd. I understand that being “conservative” might mean not wanting changes to software as well as not wanting changes to inequality in society but even so this surprised me.

(Also, like many others, I'm curious why Gizmodo (of all outlets) presents the essay while removing all hyperlinks and charts, as if somehow that is doing a service to its readers by removing context from what is obviously going to involve strong reactions. Nice going, guys.)

https://etbe.coker.com.au/2015...

Look, MikeeUSA:

I don't like systemd. I even go to some lengths to have a Debian running without. But every time I see your dirty drivel, I feel the urge of embracing systemd [1] [2] [3], just to avoid being associated with you.

One could get the impression that you are a pro-systemd false-flag operation except... I think you're just an idiot. One way or the other, I won't give up my stance just because of you.

[1] https://twitter.com/zacchiro/s...
[2] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2015/...
[3] https://identi.ca/cwebber/note...

Debian's opinion on "anti-systemd people":

http://etbe.coker.com.au/2015/...

For some reason the men in the Linux community who hate women the most seem to have taken a dislike to systemd. I understand that being \u201cconservative\u201d might mean not wanting changes to software as well as not wanting changes to inequality in society but even so this surprised me. My last blog post about systemd has probably set a personal record for the amount of misogynistic and homophobic abuse I received in the comments. More gender and sexuality related abuse than I usually receive when posting about the issues of gender and sexuality in the context of the FOSS community! For the record this doesn\u2019t bother me, when I get such abuse I\u2019m just going to write more about the topic in question.

While the issue of which init system to use by default in Debian was being discussed we had a lot of hostility from unimportant people who for some reason thought that they might get their way by being abusive and threatening people. As expected that didn\u2019t give the result they desired, but it did result in a small trend towards people who are less concerned about the reactions of users taking on development work related to init systems.

The next thing that they did was to announce a \u201cfork\u201d of Debian. Forking software means maintaining a separate version due to a serious disagreement about how it should be maintained. Doing that requires a significant amount of work in compiling all the source code and testing the results. The sensible option would be to just maintain a separate repository of modified packages as has been done many times before. One of the most well known repositories was the Debian Multimedia repository, it was controversial due to flouting legal issues (the developer produced code that was legal where they lived) and due to confusion among users. But it demonstrated that you can make a repository containing many modified packages. In my work on SE Linux I\u2019ve always had a repository of packages containing changes that haven\u2019t been accepted into Debian, which included changes to SysVInit in about 2001.

The latest news on the fork-Debian front seems to be the call for donations [4]. Apparently most of the money that was spent went to accounting fees and buying a laptop for a developer. The amount of money involved is fairly small, Forbes has an article about how awful people can use \u201ccontroversy\u201d to get crowd-funding windfalls [5].

MikeeUSA is an evil person who hates systemd [6]. This isn\u2019t any sort of evidence that systemd is great (I\u2019m sure that evil people make reasonable choices about software on occasion). But it is a significant factor in support for non-systemd variants of Debian (and other Linux distributions). Decent people don\u2019t want to be associated with people like MikeeUSA, the fact that the anti-systemd people seem happy to associate with him isn\u2019t going to help their cause.

http://etbe.coker.com.au/2015/...

For some reason the men in the Linux community who hate women the most seem to have taken a dislike to systemd. I understand that being âoeconservativeâ might mean not wanting changes to software as well as not wanting changes to inequality in society but even so this surprised me. My last blog post about systemd has probably set a personal record for the amount of misogynistic and homophobic abuse I received in the comments. More gender and sexuality related abuse than I usually receive when posting about the issues of gender and sexuality in the context of the FOSS community! For the record this doesnâ(TM)t bother me, when I get such abuse Iâ(TM)m just going to write more about the topic in question.

While the issue of which init system to use by default in Debian was being discussed we had a lot of hostility from unimportant people who for some reason thought that they might get their way by being abusive and threatening people. As expected that didnâ(TM)t give the result they desired, but it did result in a small trend towards people who are less concerned about the reactions of users taking on development work related to init systems.

The next thing that they did was to announce a âoeforkâ of Debian. Forking software means maintaining a separate version due to a serious disagreement about how it should be maintained. Doing that requires a significant amount of work in compiling all the source code and testing the results. The sensible option would be to just maintain a separate repository of modified packages as has been done many times before. One of the most well known repositories was the Debian Multimedia repository, it was controversial due to flouting legal issues (the developer produced code that was legal where they lived) and due to confusion among users. But it demonstrated that you can make a repository containing many modified packages. In my work on SE Linux Iâ(TM)ve always had a repository of packages containing changes that havenâ(TM)t been accepted into Debian, which included changes to SysVInit in about 2001.

The latest news on the fork-Debian front seems to be the call for donations [4]. Apparently most of the money that was spent went to accounting fees and buying a laptop for a developer. The amount of money involved is fairly small, Forbes has an article about how awful people can use âoecontroversyâ to get crowd-funding windfalls [5].

MikeeUSA is an evil person who hates systemd [6]. This isnâ(TM)t any sort of evidence that systemd is great (Iâ(TM)m sure that evil people make reasonable choices about software on occasion). But it is a significant factor in support for non-systemd variants of Debian (and other Linux distributions). Decent people donâ(TM)t want to be associated with people like MikeeUSA, the fact that the anti-systemd people seem happy to associate with him isnâ(TM)t going to help their cause.

http://etbe.coker.com.au/2015/...

For some reason the men in the Linux community who hate women the most seem to have taken a dislike to systemd. I understand that being âoeconservativeâ might mean not wanting changes to software as well as not wanting changes to inequality in society but even so this surprised me. My last blog post about systemd has probably set a personal record for the amount of misogynistic and homophobic abuse I received in the comments. More gender and sexuality related abuse than I usually receive when posting about the issues of gender and sexuality in the context of the FOSS community! For the record this doesnâ(TM)t bother me, when I get such abuse Iâ(TM)m just going to write more about the topic in question.

While the issue of which init system to use by default in Debian was being discussed we had a lot of hostility from unimportant people who for some reason thought that they might get their way by being abusive and threatening people. As expected that didnâ(TM)t give the result they desired, but it did result in a small trend towards people who are less concerned about the reactions of users taking on development work related to init systems.

The next thing that they did was to announce a âoeforkâ of Debian. Forking software means maintaining a separate version due to a serious disagreement about how it should be maintained. Doing that requires a significant amount of work in compiling all the source code and testing the results. The sensible option would be to just maintain a separate repository of modified packages as has been done many times before. One of the most well known repositories was the Debian Multimedia repository, it was controversial due to flouting legal issues (the developer produced code that was legal where they lived) and due to confusion among users. But it demonstrated that you can make a repository containing many modified packages. In my work on SE Linux Iâ(TM)ve always had a repository of packages containing changes that havenâ(TM)t been accepted into Debian, which included changes to SysVInit in about 2001.

The latest news on the fork-Debian front seems to be the call for donations [4]. Apparently most of the money that was spent went to accounting fees and buying a laptop for a developer. The amount of money involved is fairly small, Forbes has an article about how awful people can use âoecontroversyâ to get crowd-funding windfalls [5].

MikeeUSA is an evil person who hates systemd [6]. This isnâ(TM)t any sort of evidence that systemd is great (Iâ(TM)m sure that evil people make reasonable choices about software on occasion). But it is a significant factor in support for non-systemd variants of Debian (and other Linux distributions). Decent people donâ(TM)t want to be associated with people like MikeeUSA, the fact that the anti-systemd people seem happy to associate with him isnâ(TM)t going to help their cause.

Give me a running SELinux box with your data on it and it's likely I'll hack it.

I actually used that back when I was giving speeches about SELinux. I'd put my IP address and root password on the blackboard at the conference. Someone once managed to drop a file into the root home directory due to a policy configuration error. That's as far as anyone has ever gotten.

I've not been doing SELinux for a few years, so I don't have a box around. But you can check if Russell's play machine is still up:
http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/play.html

The issue here is they are then handing it to the end user, possibly the criminal end user who can then poke and prod at it endlessly.

And?

Security by obscurity is worthless anyways. Nobody can hack your machine because he could examine it. He can maybe hack it a bit quicker, but if he can hack it after examination, he could hack it without.

It's likely some group of researchers will find a way to break it quickly, and publish a paper on it.

Great! Then the problem can be fixed. Ideally, this happens before it hits the mass-market. If not, you'll have to upgrade existing devices. For a government mandated device, that's not half as troublesome as for private/commercial crap.

RTFA. I know, I know, what am I suggesting, it's Slashdot.

Here's the quick version: Russell Coker remarked that "a package management system that can solve Sudoku based on package dependency rules is not something that I think would be useful or worth having."

Daniel Burrows realized that apt could, in fact, currently be used to solve Sudoku puzzles, and wrote a Python script to automate the process of creating the packages required to do such a thing. That's the linked article, and it gives the background I'm repeating here.

I, personally, think it's pretty damned cool. Useless, but cool.

And, as the article points out, there exist better Sudoku solving algorithms. apt is a rather poor Sudoku solver, mainly because it's designed to come up with the "best" dependency resolution rather than solve Sudoku. It's not to "cheat" at Sudoku, but rather to demonstrate the power of the apt dependency resolver.

<-- batman provided links, So I'll comment there.

All that is true for most Linux distributions as well, but many servers can very well have use for X11 even though they are headless. Maybe you want to play XBattle with your friends.

Just thought I would give some refs, not sure why.. ;-) Debian boots easily with 30MB memory, and with LVM and module loading disabled it needs 13MB.

The link is from this page: http://etbe.coker.com.au/2008/01/21/free-software-community-and-forking/

There have been at least three machines where
everybody on the net got to log in as root.
SE Linux stopped people from messing things up,
despite really having UID 0.

The nicest one is down now, but the FAQ is
an interesting thing to read:

http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/play.html

Would be nice to see something like this for all platforms.

Well it's not exactly identical, but one of the people who works on SELinux has been running a test machine on and off since Fedora Core 2. Details are here. Similar to the OS X box that was hacked in 30 minutes he does have SSH open and provides you with local account access, the local account being root. I wouls suggest that that shows a certain amount of confidence in its security. Also note that SELinux is coming to Ubuntu soon.

Jedidiah.

For those who didn't notice, this is a reference to a passage from Frank Herbert's Dune.

I spent a great deal of time trying to get SELinux in FC working, it turns out like most things, the devil is in the details. Here's why:

1. Enabling it during install doesn't magically make every application SELinux aware. It turns out that packages need to have SELinux features. Here's a link to the good fellow doing SELinux packages for Debian. http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/ Now, I don't know if the Fedora package volunteers have done the same kind of work or not, but I'd be interested to hear either way. It reminds me of LDAP, where LDAP is good, but applications need to support it to make it great.

2. My experience turning on SELinux in FC was not good. I attempted to build a firewall with IDS and the IDS just didn't work. I'm not a coder, nor am I a really strong Linux Admin, so bye-bye SELinux and the firewall/IDS worked like it should.

3. Generally speaking, American PHB's (at least) are finally getting the message that IT security is far more important than in the past and I think this is a well-timed Marketing message with the actual SELinux implementation throughout FC being very far from their glossy claims.

Certainly is. (-:

However, don't belittle Conrad Parker as a performer, living proof that not all Canucks are boring (he doesn't normally look like a con as he does in that photo, just acts like one sometimes :-) and there were many, many presenters who were attention-getting for their information rather than for their antics.

You have a root shell but can't hack the box. That's pretty impressive.

should have used bonnie++ to help benchmark....

I'll do better than that. How about the address and root password of a public Linux box. As seen in Linux Journal. Please feel free to log in and play around -- that's what it's there for. (I'm hoping that the fact that this is a second level comment in a not-posted-just-this-second article will help keep the poor box from getting slashdotted.) Sure, it's SELinux, not quite the same as an off-the-shelf RH boxed set, but what does Windows offer that's anywhere near this level of security?

I was born in Louisiana and now I live in Virginia. I was 3 years old and living in Tehran when Iraq attacked. I don't remember the war as a series of news reels on TV. I remember the war as nights filled with bombs whistling down on me. I remember the war by the faces of the uncles and cousins I lost. I remember the war by the silent nights that punctuated the months. All this time I knew that I was American. I remember, when I was 5, I thought that America was going to come and help me. They weren't going to let me die.

My parents didn't want to explain the dirty truths of the world to a little child. I had no idea that the bombs being dropped on my city were guided by America, but they were. I didn't know that the chemicals being used against my drafted uncles and cousins were provided to Iraq by America, but they were. I didn't know that my life was not as important as providing more oil for America, but I was not important. I am an American. I am an Iranian. I don't hate Iraqis. I don't hate Americans. I don't hate Saddam. I don't hate Bush. Hate is ignorance within fear. Fear is the mind killer.

But all occupied people rebel against their occupiers. No matter how wonderful they may be treated, they will rebel. Not because they hate their occupiers. Not because "they hate our freedoms" as my fearless leader so arrogantly phrased it. They will rebel because they are Iraqis, not Americans.

Why did America support Iraq when it attacked Iran? Iran had the audacity to tell America to leave. Iran no longer wanted to be a puppet state, and Iran deserved to be punished for that. Iraq will be the same. Conquerors often cloak themselves as liberators.

It might be easy for the average American citizen to accept that this is a "Just War." But, for someone who has been on the receiving end of a missile, this coupling of words is a mockery of logic and respect for human life.

If you don't agree with me that is fine, but don't advocate war unless you feel so strongly that you are personally willing to run into a wall of enemy soldiers, armed with only a sword, knowing that you are going to die, and accepting it as the right thing to do. If you are not willing to do such a thing, then you do not truly believe that the fight is just.

But all that I just wrote is pointless because the spice must flow.

Qmail is stronger only because it doesn't run as root. Sendmail can do the same thing.