I have gentoo boxes which are more than 10 years old, so long as you regularly update emerge you don't have any major problems... If you leave it for a long time, then do an emerge sync things do get broken because the installed version of portage won't support the newly synced ebuilds.
It's not freedom that in todays society we are not free to kill anyone we want, or take anything we want from anyone else... Sometimes you have to give up freedoms which would allow you to harm others, and thats what the GPL does... You are given a limited set of freedoms by the GPL, and the primary limitation is that you must grant the same level of freedom to anyone else, you're not free to limit someone else's use of the software.
That is a hardware limitation not a software one... The Amiga only supported hard drives up to 4GB due to software limitations even tho neither IDE nor SCSI had such hardware limitations. By replacing the software it was possible to use much larger drives.
Not everything can be compiled with Intel's compiler... I believe Gentoo has offered an option to build with Intel's compiler for a while, but not all packages will work that way.
I bought a bunch of LED bulbs just over 3 years ago when moving to a new house (previous occupants took all the bulbs), i bought reasonably expensive ones instead of the cheapest available and none of them have failed.
Last year i bought 2 new lamps, and 2 cheap LED bulbs to go with them. Both of those bulbs failed within 6 months, and have since been replaced with more expensive ones.
Bulbs vary massively, it's not worth buying the cheapest available irrespective of the technology and probably more so for the newer tech.
That was basically a shell on a port, extremely obvious and useless as a malicious backdoor because anyone with a portscanner can find and use it. More likely that was used by the developers to debug the device and never removed before production builds were made. I have seen many embedded devices like this where a backdoor is present in the firmware image but comes commented out by default on released versions.
The problem here is that traditional desktop systems are designed for people who understand what they're doing...
Someone with no experience cannot be trusted to download software from the web and install it, if you search for any piece of software on virtually any search engine you will see many many sources to get the software from, many of which will be unofficial if not downright malicious.
The same problem does not happen to typical users of ios, android or chromeos because these systems don't expect users to install software from arbitrary sources and usually don't even allow that by default. If you know enough to jailbreak, root or switch to developer mode then you should also know enough to not fall for malware scams.
Repos, app stores, walled gardens etc are the answer for the majority of users, a general purpose unlocked os is a geek's toy and shouldn't have been put in the hands of random people.
The phrase "Zero unix knowledge" is the key one... Most getting started with unix guides seem to recommend swap as 2x ram, and these generally date from the days when you might have 16mb of ram and be trying out linux for the first time on a spare machine. For a large server 2x ram isn't always appropriate, and you should use your experience to decide the appropriate swap size given the specs and purpose of the host.
If those 400,000 people could not pirate it, the vast majority of them would not have used it at all - they would have used something else that they could obtain for free. Not only that, but how many of the 100,000 users might have heard of the software through word of mouth or network effects from the 400,000?
You weren't supposed to get anything, and might even have got considerably less had none of those users pirated.
Also people in poor countries who couldn't otherwise afford to buy the media in question... If not for piracy, Linux would likely have a dominant marketshare in countries like China because users can't or wouldn't pay for any software.
How about you and your merry band of cheapskates don't give me $50.
Piracy does not remove anything from the author, it is completely different from siphoning cents from someone's account. It's not a lost sale because you have no way to know if someone would (or even could) have paid if a pirate version was not available.
Also, what about someone who buys media but then decides to also download a pirate version and use that version instead because it's better (ie no drm)?
He can't really be one of the top experts on the program if he admits "We know so little about North Korea's nuclear weapons design and test results", indeed the real top experts of the north korean nuclear program are all either in north korea and/or working for an intelligence agency...
They know that the use of nuclear weapons will certainly illicit a nuclear response, and that's exactly the whole point because it cuts both ways. At the moment north korea is vulnerable to being pushed around by other countries, if the US decided to invade there would be very little they could do about it and the leadership knows this. On the other hand, if they had nuclear weapons then they could at least retaliate and do some significant damage even if they ultimately still lost, and this threat is enough to discourage other countries from trying to invade.
Similarly possession of nuclear weapons gives them a stronger bargaining position, and makes it harder for other countries to bully and push them around.
If they actually intended to attack another country with nuclear weapons they wouldn't be talking about it, they would develop/acquire such weapons in secret and perform a surprise attack as having the element of surprise would be a significant strategic advantage in any military strategy.
Exactly... North Korea is a small country that is largely ignored or bullied by other larger nations, they want nuclear weapons because that's the only way they'll be taken seriously. If they actually planned to USE nuclear weapons then they would just do so, not talk about it, because the element of surprise is extremely beneficial.
Several countries around the world have nuclear weapons, why should north korea be denied the same? This is a case of larger countries trying to push smaller ones around out of arrogance. While the regime in north korea is not without its flaws, they are also not stupid. They want nuclear weapons to give them a voice at the bargaining table, specifically because they don't like the way larger countries push them around. They're not actually going to use these weapons any more than any other country, because they know the result would be their own destruction.
Imposing sanctions on them will not stop their nuclear program, all it does is increase their determination because sanctions are far less likely and far less punitive if they have a credible nuclear weapon, just look at russia's actions in ukraine, if a smaller non nuclear armed country annexed part of another it would have resulted in war against them.
Similarly sanctions hurt the people of north korea far more than the government, cutting the people off from the rest of the world only helps to further strengthen their regime while those in power have their own black market channels to generate their own wealth.
This is not also for security, but also to stop users breaking things...
Home computers used to come with the OS in ROM which was therefore read only, and having a system which you couldn't break was in many ways beneficial as it gives users the confidence to experiment with the system and learn about it safe in the knowledge that they can't permanently damage it. I find that people who started out on such systems tend to be more knowledgeable than those who learned on newer more fragile systems.
Often it's the opposite, linux distros come with a huge array of software and the distro will announce any bugs in the software they distribute, which results in any given linux distro having a huge number of security advisories.
I like many people, have used init scripts for years and very rarely have i had to customise any of them or write my own, and almost always use the standard init scripts that come with the package. However i do understand shell scripting, so i can see what the init script is trying to do and go through it manually if i need to debug something or if i need to run something in a non standard way (for instance recently i had a hardware failure, so we mounted the drive in another server and brought its services online temporarily inside a chroot).
I have a recurring problem on OSX where a service checks a pid file, but if that service failed to shut down correctly before a reboot the pid file is still there and if something else has started on the same pid the service won't start... This was a pain to debug with the launchd system on osx, but would have been easy with init scripts.
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I have gentoo boxes which are more than 10 years old, so long as you regularly update emerge you don't have any major problems... If you leave it for a long time, then do an emerge sync things do get broken because the installed version of portage won't support the newly synced ebuilds.
It's not freedom that in todays society we are not free to kill anyone we want, or take anything we want from anyone else...
Sometimes you have to give up freedoms which would allow you to harm others, and thats what the GPL does... You are given a limited set of freedoms by the GPL, and the primary limitation is that you must grant the same level of freedom to anyone else, you're not free to limit someone else's use of the software.
That is a hardware limitation not a software one...
The Amiga only supported hard drives up to 4GB due to software limitations even tho neither IDE nor SCSI had such hardware limitations. By replacing the software it was possible to use much larger drives.
Not everything can be compiled with Intel's compiler...
I believe Gentoo has offered an option to build with Intel's compiler for a while, but not all packages will work that way.
I bought a bunch of LED bulbs just over 3 years ago when moving to a new house (previous occupants took all the bulbs), i bought reasonably expensive ones instead of the cheapest available and none of them have failed.
Last year i bought 2 new lamps, and 2 cheap LED bulbs to go with them. Both of those bulbs failed within 6 months, and have since been replaced with more expensive ones.
Bulbs vary massively, it's not worth buying the cheapest available irrespective of the technology and probably more so for the newer tech.
The problem is, if the coin has more value melted down then people will do exactly that which takes the coins out of circulation...
That was basically a shell on a port, extremely obvious and useless as a malicious backdoor because anyone with a portscanner can find and use it.
More likely that was used by the developers to debug the device and never removed before production builds were made. I have seen many embedded devices like this where a backdoor is present in the firmware image but comes commented out by default on released versions.
The problem here is that traditional desktop systems are designed for people who understand what they're doing...
Someone with no experience cannot be trusted to download software from the web and install it, if you search for any piece of software on virtually any search engine you will see many many sources to get the software from, many of which will be unofficial if not downright malicious.
The same problem does not happen to typical users of ios, android or chromeos because these systems don't expect users to install software from arbitrary sources and usually don't even allow that by default. If you know enough to jailbreak, root or switch to developer mode then you should also know enough to not fall for malware scams.
Repos, app stores, walled gardens etc are the answer for the majority of users, a general purpose unlocked os is a geek's toy and shouldn't have been put in the hands of random people.
Exactly, which is why things should be kept simple - the less code you have running the less you have to keep track of.
The phrase "Zero unix knowledge" is the key one...
Most getting started with unix guides seem to recommend swap as 2x ram, and these generally date from the days when you might have 16mb of ram and be trying out linux for the first time on a spare machine.
For a large server 2x ram isn't always appropriate, and you should use your experience to decide the appropriate swap size given the specs and purpose of the host.
If those 400,000 people could not pirate it, the vast majority of them would not have used it at all - they would have used something else that they could obtain for free.
Not only that, but how many of the 100,000 users might have heard of the software through word of mouth or network effects from the 400,000?
You weren't supposed to get anything, and might even have got considerably less had none of those users pirated.
Also people in poor countries who couldn't otherwise afford to buy the media in question...
If not for piracy, Linux would likely have a dominant marketshare in countries like China because users can't or wouldn't pay for any software.
How about you and your merry band of cheapskates don't give me $50.
Piracy does not remove anything from the author, it is completely different from siphoning cents from someone's account. It's not a lost sale because you have no way to know if someone would (or even could) have paid if a pirate version was not available.
Also, what about someone who buys media but then decides to also download a pirate version and use that version instead because it's better (ie no drm)?
He can't really be one of the top experts on the program if he admits "We know so little about North Korea's nuclear weapons design and test results", indeed the real top experts of the north korean nuclear program are all either in north korea and/or working for an intelligence agency...
It's not even the cost aspect, a criminal gang is unlikely to think twice about paying for a certificate fraudulently (e.g. with stolen card details).
Or this style of attack could be performed by using an SSL cert that was already present on the hacked server...
They know that the use of nuclear weapons will certainly illicit a nuclear response, and that's exactly the whole point because it cuts both ways.
At the moment north korea is vulnerable to being pushed around by other countries, if the US decided to invade there would be very little they could do about it and the leadership knows this.
On the other hand, if they had nuclear weapons then they could at least retaliate and do some significant damage even if they ultimately still lost, and this threat is enough to discourage other countries from trying to invade.
Similarly possession of nuclear weapons gives them a stronger bargaining position, and makes it harder for other countries to bully and push them around.
If they actually intended to attack another country with nuclear weapons they wouldn't be talking about it, they would develop/acquire such weapons in secret and perform a surprise attack as having the element of surprise would be a significant strategic advantage in any military strategy.
Exactly...
North Korea is a small country that is largely ignored or bullied by other larger nations, they want nuclear weapons because that's the only way they'll be taken seriously.
If they actually planned to USE nuclear weapons then they would just do so, not talk about it, because the element of surprise is extremely beneficial.
Several countries around the world have nuclear weapons, why should north korea be denied the same? This is a case of larger countries trying to push smaller ones around out of arrogance.
While the regime in north korea is not without its flaws, they are also not stupid. They want nuclear weapons to give them a voice at the bargaining table, specifically because they don't like the way larger countries push them around. They're not actually going to use these weapons any more than any other country, because they know the result would be their own destruction.
Imposing sanctions on them will not stop their nuclear program, all it does is increase their determination because sanctions are far less likely and far less punitive if they have a credible nuclear weapon, just look at russia's actions in ukraine, if a smaller non nuclear armed country annexed part of another it would have resulted in war against them.
Similarly sanctions hurt the people of north korea far more than the government, cutting the people off from the rest of the world only helps to further strengthen their regime while those in power have their own black market channels to generate their own wealth.
Having high wages is worthless if your cost of living is even higher...
This is not also for security, but also to stop users breaking things...
Home computers used to come with the OS in ROM which was therefore read only, and having a system which you couldn't break was in many ways beneficial as it gives users the confidence to experiment with the system and learn about it safe in the knowledge that they can't permanently damage it.
I find that people who started out on such systems tend to be more knowledgeable than those who learned on newer more fragile systems.
Often it's the opposite, linux distros come with a huge array of software and the distro will announce any bugs in the software they distribute, which results in any given linux distro having a huge number of security advisories.
Flash is much smaller than an entire OS... It stands to reason that a larger and more complex system will have more vulnerabilities.
I like many people, have used init scripts for years and very rarely have i had to customise any of them or write my own, and almost always use the standard init scripts that come with the package.
However i do understand shell scripting, so i can see what the init script is trying to do and go through it manually if i need to debug something or if i need to run something in a non standard way (for instance recently i had a hardware failure, so we mounted the drive in another server and brought its services online temporarily inside a chroot).
I have a recurring problem on OSX where a service checks a pid file, but if that service failed to shut down correctly before a reboot the pid file is still there and if something else has started on the same pid the service won't start... This was a pain to debug with the launchd system on osx, but would have been easy with init scripts.
They're not trying to force exclusive ipv6 on you, they're trying to make you go dual stack which you absolutely should.