The problem is that SMB is not just a filesharing protocol, it provides access to whole heaps of other functionality at least on windows. If all you want to do is file sharing then SMB is a terrible choice.
Requiring a firewall is another poor design decision... You should be able to turn all these services off, but windows makes it extremely difficult to disable the default listening services and the recommendation is to hide them behind a firewall... If the system still runs with the services hidden so that noone can connect to them, then why exactly do they need to be listening at all?
The problem is poor design and inertia... It's not like a simple bug which can be fixed without changing how the software works, there are many design flaws in the protocol itself and fixing them would require incompatible changes. If you're going to drop current windows versions and go to an incompatible system, might as well go straight to linux.
With a VPN login, you can start looking for hosts on the internal network to attack... Chances are on a network of any significant size there will be at least one box which is vulnerable to something, either unpatched vulnerability or weak password. If you look at an internet facing network, there are generally few exploitable things visible because exposure to the internet ensures that all the low hanging fruit has already been picked, but on an internal network there is all manner of easy stuff. Once you have one machine, you can easily spread from there including using attacks like those described in the article.
Another issue with signed downloads is that older versions with known security holes are still signed, someone malicious can push you the legitimately signed but known vulnerable version, then exploit the vulnerabilities to push malicious code...
The POWER architecture has been around longer than X64, the vast majority of linux software comes with source code and compiles fine on power (and arm, mips and anything else) so it doesn't matter what the underlying processor is. A lot of the software that doesn't come with source these days is java based, which will run just fine on power too.
Except for a small number of fairly niche apps, most linux based server loads will work fine on a power system.
If your apartment building is big enough, club together to get a leased line which you can all share... They will install dedicated lines anywhere if your willing to pay the installation costs.
The license database already includes information about what type of fuel a car uses, the same system that recognises license plates can also be configured to flag cars using the wrong fuel, or with an engine over a certain size etc.
That will just cause people to buy/rent a second car for use on the days their existing car isn't permitted... The registration database includes information as to wether the vehicle uses petrol, diesel or electric etc so it's no harder to enforce.
The problem is that the world is just too complex, that even the few of us who want to understand and make informed decisions cannot be experts on everything...
Not so much that its "cool" to share stuff... Most of the kids share stuff because that's the only way to get hold of it. We used to trade games (on floppies) as kids because we couldn't afford to buy all the games and lending the originals to friends was irritating (floppies get corrupted/lost, etc). Also cracked copies were often better, as they took out various irritating copy protection schemes, there were many games where i kept both the original disks and a cracked copy because i preferred to play the cracked copy.
If you're going to implement any kind of technical filtering it needs to be done at the network layer, and not on the physical machine that the kids have access to. If you do it on the physical machine then they will inevitably find a way around it, even as simple as booting a livecd.
Ofcourse the key is education, this content is out there and kids will inevitably get access to it sooner or later. Whatever controls you implement on your own network or devices, the kids will either find a way to bypass them, or have access to an unfiltered network/device somewhere else. And if something is blocked, it becomes more interesting to the kids and they will actively seek out ways to get at the blocked content, whereas if it was unblocked the kids may not even have any interest in it...
A good example is alcohol, when i was in school many of the other kids in my class were forbidden from touching alcohol and that made them seek out ways to obtain alcohol... Myself and a few others were never forbidden, our parents allowed us to try alcohol if we wanted... I found alcoholic drinks tasted quite disgusting, and lost interest in them.
The current crop of phone cameras are certainly still inferior to dedicated cameras, but they're good enough for most people most of the time and thats what matters. Most people won't carry a camera with them at all times, but they do carry a phone and its good enough for occasional shots. A lot of those images are going to end up posted online at significantly lower resolution than even a phone camera can manage anyway, and they will be viewed on tiny screens. Aside from the convenience of being always in your pocket, phones have the added convenience of connectivity so you can upload your pictures immediately.
Proper cameras will always be a niche for those who enjoy photography or do it for a living, but for the vast majority of people a phone camera is all they will ever need.
Well you get what you pay for when buying such devices... There are standards for printers, scanners and various other hardware. I wouldn't ever buy a printer which didn't support Postscript, and i never install the official drivers as they're often extremely bloated and probably full of ads. Sure printers which support postscript generally cost more, but they're usually higher quality, older ones are still available cheaply and the toner/ink is likely to remain available for far longer.
This is one of the inherent problems of being closed source, support for niche and older hardware will be lacking. Microsoft have to break compatibility from time to time in order to progress, either due to hardware changes (64bit) or software changes (new video driver stack etc).
The problem is that with closed drivers, only the original authors of those drivers can change them and hardware manufacturers have little or no incentive to continue supporting old hardware as they want to sell you new kit. With open source drivers, all it takes is for one of the users to either update it themselves, or hire someone capable of doing so. In some cases updates aren't even necessary, eg a lot of linux drivers written for 32bit x86 compile just fine on 64bit or even other architectures like ARM.
The same is true of niche hardware, a lot of hardware was intended by the manufacturer to be connected to x86 systems but uses standard cross platform buses like pci or usb... While the number of people using linux on ppc, alpha, sparc or arm etc might be too low for the manufacturer to bother providing official support, the drivers will often just work. I used to run an alphastation on linux with all manner of pci and usb devices which were never intended to be used on alpha based hardware.
In which case, computers which are not backdoored will start being manufactured in other countries... If there's a market demand, then someone will fulfil it. Also each country is likely to want their own backdoor, so the terrorists will source their computers from countries which are not friendly to their enemies. And they could always use old computers which never had hardware backdoors.
Also governments are guilty of both corruption and incompetence, if they have a backdoor then sooner or later it will leak and then law abiding citizens will suffer greatly. The terrorists won't suffer, as they will already know to avoid any government backdoored equipment. On the other hand, they may make use of the new found leaks to aid them in whatever attacks they wish to perpetrate.
As for leaks themselves, for everyone like snowden who wants to get the word out to the general public even to his own significant detriment, there will be many more unscrupulous actors who would rather make personal gains and will sell their information privately to the highest bidder. There are many well funded groups who could afford to buy such information, and it's highly likely that they already do so.
And therein lies the fundamental flaw with such a system... Most people aren't upset because they aren't aware of, or don't fully understand the problem. The primary source of information for the majority of the population is mass media, media which is controlled by the incumbents who have no motive to rock the boat because their absolute worst case is sharing power with the other incumbent party.
If you don't control the media, you can't get the word out to enough people, so it doesn't matter how good your policies are nor how bad everyone else's are, even if the truth is so bad that 99% of people would vote for you if they were in full possession of the facts, you have no way to get those facts out to enough people that it would make any difference.
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The problem is that SMB is not just a filesharing protocol, it provides access to whole heaps of other functionality at least on windows. If all you want to do is file sharing then SMB is a terrible choice.
Requiring a firewall is another poor design decision... You should be able to turn all these services off, but windows makes it extremely difficult to disable the default listening services and the recommendation is to hide them behind a firewall... If the system still runs with the services hidden so that noone can connect to them, then why exactly do they need to be listening at all?
The problem is poor design and inertia... It's not like a simple bug which can be fixed without changing how the software works, there are many design flaws in the protocol itself and fixing them would require incompatible changes. If you're going to drop current windows versions and go to an incompatible system, might as well go straight to linux.
With a VPN login, you can start looking for hosts on the internal network to attack... Chances are on a network of any significant size there will be at least one box which is vulnerable to something, either unpatched vulnerability or weak password.
If you look at an internet facing network, there are generally few exploitable things visible because exposure to the internet ensures that all the low hanging fruit has already been picked, but on an internal network there is all manner of easy stuff. Once you have one machine, you can easily spread from there including using attacks like those described in the article.
Another issue with signed downloads is that older versions with known security holes are still signed, someone malicious can push you the legitimately signed but known vulnerable version, then exploit the vulnerabilities to push malicious code...
There has been shoddy software for years that just doesn't do what it claims, the fact that such software now exists on phones is nothing new.
The POWER architecture has been around longer than X64, the vast majority of linux software comes with source code and compiles fine on power (and arm, mips and anything else) so it doesn't matter what the underlying processor is. A lot of the software that doesn't come with source these days is java based, which will run just fine on power too.
Except for a small number of fairly niche apps, most linux based server loads will work fine on a power system.
If your apartment building is big enough, club together to get a leased line which you can all share... They will install dedicated lines anywhere if your willing to pay the installation costs.
That's where sites like spamdecoy.net come in, use that email address and make up any other information they ask for...
The license database already includes information about what type of fuel a car uses, the same system that recognises license plates can also be configured to flag cars using the wrong fuel, or with an engine over a certain size etc.
That will just cause people to buy/rent a second car for use on the days their existing car isn't permitted...
The registration database includes information as to wether the vehicle uses petrol, diesel or electric etc so it's no harder to enforce.
The problem is that the world is just too complex, that even the few of us who want to understand and make informed decisions cannot be experts on everything...
I always tried to sign my emails with PGP or S/MIME, 99% of recipients have no idea what that is, either in government or commercial circles.
Not so much that its "cool" to share stuff...
Most of the kids share stuff because that's the only way to get hold of it. We used to trade games (on floppies) as kids because we couldn't afford to buy all the games and lending the originals to friends was irritating (floppies get corrupted/lost, etc).
Also cracked copies were often better, as they took out various irritating copy protection schemes, there were many games where i kept both the original disks and a cracked copy because i preferred to play the cracked copy.
Pity it's written in ruby, that's a bit too heavy for most small routers...
The USB interface is probably faster than the old drive anyway...
I assume the drive in that laptop is IDE, so get a USB to IDE adapter and connect the drive directly to a newer machine.
If you're going to implement any kind of technical filtering it needs to be done at the network layer, and not on the physical machine that the kids have access to. If you do it on the physical machine then they will inevitably find a way around it, even as simple as booting a livecd.
Ofcourse the key is education, this content is out there and kids will inevitably get access to it sooner or later. Whatever controls you implement on your own network or devices, the kids will either find a way to bypass them, or have access to an unfiltered network/device somewhere else. And if something is blocked, it becomes more interesting to the kids and they will actively seek out ways to get at the blocked content, whereas if it was unblocked the kids may not even have any interest in it...
A good example is alcohol, when i was in school many of the other kids in my class were forbidden from touching alcohol and that made them seek out ways to obtain alcohol... Myself and a few others were never forbidden, our parents allowed us to try alcohol if we wanted... I found alcoholic drinks tasted quite disgusting, and lost interest in them.
The current crop of phone cameras are certainly still inferior to dedicated cameras, but they're good enough for most people most of the time and thats what matters.
Most people won't carry a camera with them at all times, but they do carry a phone and its good enough for occasional shots. A lot of those images are going to end up posted online at significantly lower resolution than even a phone camera can manage anyway, and they will be viewed on tiny screens.
Aside from the convenience of being always in your pocket, phones have the added convenience of connectivity so you can upload your pictures immediately.
Proper cameras will always be a niche for those who enjoy photography or do it for a living, but for the vast majority of people a phone camera is all they will ever need.
The decline in price of full laptops, combined with the increasing price of netbooks (more powerful hardware because windows needed it)...
What is likely to work however, is a cracked version of that software.
Well you get what you pay for when buying such devices...
There are standards for printers, scanners and various other hardware. I wouldn't ever buy a printer which didn't support Postscript, and i never install the official drivers as they're often extremely bloated and probably full of ads. Sure printers which support postscript generally cost more, but they're usually higher quality, older ones are still available cheaply and the toner/ink is likely to remain available for far longer.
This is one of the inherent problems of being closed source, support for niche and older hardware will be lacking.
Microsoft have to break compatibility from time to time in order to progress, either due to hardware changes (64bit) or software changes (new video driver stack etc).
The problem is that with closed drivers, only the original authors of those drivers can change them and hardware manufacturers have little or no incentive to continue supporting old hardware as they want to sell you new kit. With open source drivers, all it takes is for one of the users to either update it themselves, or hire someone capable of doing so. In some cases updates aren't even necessary, eg a lot of linux drivers written for 32bit x86 compile just fine on 64bit or even other architectures like ARM.
The same is true of niche hardware, a lot of hardware was intended by the manufacturer to be connected to x86 systems but uses standard cross platform buses like pci or usb... While the number of people using linux on ppc, alpha, sparc or arm etc might be too low for the manufacturer to bother providing official support, the drivers will often just work. I used to run an alphastation on linux with all manner of pci and usb devices which were never intended to be used on alpha based hardware.
In which case, computers which are not backdoored will start being manufactured in other countries... If there's a market demand, then someone will fulfil it.
Also each country is likely to want their own backdoor, so the terrorists will source their computers from countries which are not friendly to their enemies.
And they could always use old computers which never had hardware backdoors.
Also governments are guilty of both corruption and incompetence, if they have a backdoor then sooner or later it will leak and then law abiding citizens will suffer greatly. The terrorists won't suffer, as they will already know to avoid any government backdoored equipment. On the other hand, they may make use of the new found leaks to aid them in whatever attacks they wish to perpetrate.
As for leaks themselves, for everyone like snowden who wants to get the word out to the general public even to his own significant detriment, there will be many more unscrupulous actors who would rather make personal gains and will sell their information privately to the highest bidder. There are many well funded groups who could afford to buy such information, and it's highly likely that they already do so.
And therein lies the fundamental flaw with such a system...
Most people aren't upset because they aren't aware of, or don't fully understand the problem.
The primary source of information for the majority of the population is mass media, media which is controlled by the incumbents who have no motive to rock the boat because their absolute worst case is sharing power with the other incumbent party.
If you don't control the media, you can't get the word out to enough people, so it doesn't matter how good your policies are nor how bad everyone else's are, even if the truth is so bad that 99% of people would vote for you if they were in full possession of the facts, you have no way to get those facts out to enough people that it would make any difference.