Slashdot Mirror
Michael Robertson Says Root is Safe
Kez writes "HEXUS.net caught up with Michael Robertson, CEO of Linspire, at the UK launch of Linspire 5. Their interview with Mr. Robertson covers everything from hardware support to software patents, but a comment from Mr. Robertson on using root is perhaps the most interesting: "I defy anybody to tell me why is it more secure to not run as root. Nobody really has a good answer. They say 'oh, yeah, it is!', but it really isn't." I would imagine a few Slashdotters would dispute that."
But I want to know his IP address.
Lets do "rm -rf /" and compare the results.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
Running as root is like posting to slashdot without reading TFA. :)
Exactly; you get what you want done faster, like get the much coveted +5 Funny.
Metaphors should be like driving: a privilege, not a right. Reading those was like stuffing strips of colored paper into my bleeding eye sockets and calling it a ticker-tape parade.
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
Its the root window, it must require root privileges to change.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Better yet, try it on someone else's computer! They'll thank you.
Michael "Root" Robertson is appointed to the Department of Homeland Security's Privacy Board.
As someone else once put it....
.* <--joke
.o
-|- <-- you
/ \
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
... he should rename his Linspire to something like Lindows.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Thats no troll. Its a space station.
This man obviously hasn't met my sister: She attempts to open music files by selecting them in groups of 100, resulting in 100 sessions of xmms...I can only imagine her with root access.
Don't you get it? He sure does! You see, Windows has 95% of the users, and 99% of the virusses. By making it easier to hijack the system, he hopes to attract some of those great Windows hackers to Linux. Inevitably, users will follow when they see their favorite virusses are now also available on Linux!
In the future he'll be making statements like "Passwords are for pussies!" and "Bah, firewalls, a lot of hot air I tell you!". It's part of the plan..
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
127.0.0.1.
Just don't tell anyone that it was me who told you.
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
Computers are complicated and difficult to use properly
They used to say the same thing about elevators. When's the last time you met an elevator operator?
I had a friend who typed rm -rf *>tar instead of rm -rf *.tar. He was left with an empty file named tar and a whole lot of space to keep it...
-insert a witty something-
Mikey, what is a bot? And how are they born?
When's the last time your elevator blue-screened and sent you and the other occupants hurtling screaming to the bottom of the shaft?
No relation to Happy Monkey
I did.
I had two hard drives with RH on them, one slightly newer. I didn't want to upgrade my main system and risk it going all screwy, so I just took out the HD, put in a blank one, and installed the new system. Then I put my old HD in usb enclosure, copied over everything I needed, and then decided I'd erase the old drive. I had it in
So I get back -- anyway, you can imagine the sick sort of dizy feeling that mistake can generate as one slowly begins to comprehend the magnitude of one's error. It only takes a second, one stray thought - "do I want a coke or a coffee" - while typing and out comes a "cd
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
That's because elevators have emergency brakes that automatically latch on at the first sign of anything going wrong.
Now that I think of it, it's like running as a user instead of root, isn't it? Ehrm, wait a minute...
It was a dark and stormy night. Had a few beers, I was tired. I was young and did not fully comprehend the power I was weilding. I needed to remove /etc/ppp/dilvish before giving up the machine to the new admin. I typed 'rm -r /etc' and my right pinky was getting lazy from my too long of session at the keyboard and the return key was hair trigger. I didnt mean to shoot the machine, but what is done, is done. Or rather I spent the next 48 hours recovering files one inode at a time.
Only then did I comprehend the awsome evil power of root.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
you can imagine the sick sort of dizy feeling
Once I was making root and boot rescue disks, had the images all set, and typed dd if=/tmp/root.img of=/dev/hda1
I meant to type dd if=/tmp/root.img of=/dev/fd0h1440
Oops.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
It can run ActiveX applications that have already been designed and implemented.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Has netcraft confirmed this yet?
...it's evil. :D
:D
A looooong time ago in a galaxy far, far away when I was in college, there was a graduate student (Bill Crossman, if I recall, was his name) who one day decided to clear out his home directory before packing up to go home for the summer. So he typed "rm *" at the shell command line and thought all was good.
He forgot he had logged in as root.
From that point on he was known as "arr emm star Crossman"