"Meat and poultry will now have no variance at all. "
Ordinary "animal husbandry" has been going in that direction for decades (centuries? millennia?).
Given the choice, I'm sure the owner of the Springbank Snow Countess would have cloned her. Cloning is a shortcut.
What cloning *doesn't* do is introduce randomness. This can be a bad thing, because suppose Holsteins of the Springbank Snow Countess line were found to be vulnerable to a certain virus that targets the line, the only recourse would be to begin regular breeding again, but by that time, many other lines may have already died out through simple neglect.
An example is the Banana Crisis. The bananas you get in the supermarket are clones, every last one of them, though not in the bad science-fiction movie sense. But since every banana plant is reproduced asexually from a distinct line, diseases like Panama disease can run through entire populations, devastating farms and ultimately ending lines like the Gros Michel as a viable plant for which the Cavendish has been a suitable replacement.
Though, there isn't much of a replacement for the Cavendish at last check, except the FHIA-17, which tastes different (and both taste different than the Gros Michel).
There's nothing wrong with cloning for the end user/customer, but cloning sets up for some interesting economic effects should disease strike.
A clone is an identical twin. The cow/sheep/dog/cat is still a cow/sheep/dog/cat, whether twinned or cloned.
The only difference is the method, with some methods being more successful at creating viable embryos than others.
An human grown from an in-vitro fertilized egg is no less human, is he/she? A twinned human is no less human, is he/she? A cloned human is no less human, is he/she?
The only stupidity surrounding this stems from bad science-fiction. George Lucas Must Die (hey, that sounds like a good schlock movie title)
If anyone disputes the above, I will have to ask you to step outside.
"Penguins are not just cute. They're delicious too."
It was at this time that Dr. Cook assumed moral command of the BELGICA. De Gerlache and Amundsen were busy with the details of preparing the ship to break free of the ice while Cook realized that the mood of the shipmates would become his responsibility. Cook knew the men needed sunlight and fresh meat. De Gerlache had already tasted penguin and seal meat and declared them both to be inedible. As for penguin meat, Dr. Cook said "If it's possible to imagine a piece of beef, odiferous cod fish and a canvas-backed duck roasted together in a pot, with blood and cod-liver oil for sauce, the illustration would be complete". In order to convince the crew it was necessary for medicinal purposes, de Gerlache unwillingly agreed to "ignore the taste; swallow it down as a duty".
"I don't see why privilege separation should help. There is no need to run that spambot as root."
Because if a spambot is running as an ordinary user, it's ridiculously easy to kill and remove. A userland spambot is next to useless, because it will have a very short life. Where does it get launched? In.profile? How do you hide it? Unless you're root, you can't modify logs, netstat, or ps. And once you've got root privs, it's stupid to run the bot in userland anyway. So you're wrong. Priv separation matters.
Fer crissakes, I can run Bagle in Wine, but then all I have to do is kill the process, which doesn't hide from me like it does in Windows. Poof. Gone.
But it's not just privelege separation alone, it's combined with the fact that stuff imported into a system from outside doesn't have _execute_ permission in the first place. Windows attaches execute permission to files because they have the supposed correct extension, and this sin is doubled because _windows hides file extensions by default_ so as to "not confuse the user".
I'm sorry, but that is just stupid.
Explain to me why it's beneficial to the user to hide extensions, to hide processes, and to hide files with attributes instead of simply putting a dot before the filename? EXPLAIN TO ME WHY AN OUTDATED CONCEPT FROM CP/M RESIDES IN WINDOWS? WHY DETERMINE THAT A FILE IS A PROGRAM SIMPLY BECAUSE IT ENDS IN THREE MAGIC LETTERS LIKE 'COM' OR 'EXE' OR THE REST OF THE EXECUTABLE FILE EXTENSIONS, OF WHICH THERE ARE TOO MANY?
Gah...
Whatever. Vista will continue to use filename extensions to determine executability, so Windows users are hosed for yet another 5 or so years until Microsoft gets its freakin' act together, if ever.
The security biggies:
1. Privelege separation 2. Frugal execute permissions. 3. User interaction in granting executability and privelege escalation. 4. No hidden processes.
You cannot have security until you have all four. If you give execute permission willy-nilly, a file that shouldn't have execution turned on can exploit a buffer overflow and now you've got privelege escalation and a process that can hide itself. If you take away user interaction, you have drive-by installs, as seen all over the Windows world. If you take away privelege separation, everyone is administrator, and we've seen where that's gotten us. If you hide processes, like is done in Windows easily, how do you even know if a bit of malware is running or not? Indeed, since Microsoft has bent over for the entertainment industry, we'll be seeing more Windows rootkits because they'll be using the same hooks that DRM uses to hide itself from the user and system administrator. Good luck with that.
Windows has done a piss poor job of implementing security in any shape or form. It's about time Microsoft got off its collective ass and done something responsible instead of shoring up its dubious hegemony.
"While that may be true, you want to know how much effort its required to enable that? "
I know exactly how much effort. I actually mentioned a way to do it up there, in case you hadn't read. However, the newbie is not TOLD to do it, and so by default, only when the newbie _learns_ what to do, the newbie can enable it or not.
But by then, the newbie has probably operated under sudo long enough that it's second nature and probably has picked up the clue that it's more secure that way anyway.
The fact remains, Mister Microsoft Apologist, that it's the little things that make a big difference between the insecurity of Windows and the security of Linux and OS/X. You don't see examples of stupidity like you mentioned all over the OS/X community, do you? OS/X relies on sudo the same way that Ubuntu does, and you know what? It works.
Proof is in the puddin'
Come back when you've got some real world examples that actually happen, OK?
How would an ISP neuter a zombie without disrupting the idiot customer's PC?
This way:
From me:
Bonjour. J'avais reçu beaucoup d'email de quelqu'un en France dont l'ordinateur semble être infecté. C'est toujours les mêmes adresses d'IP et le même ou semblable attachement. Puisque j'emploie Linux, je suis immunisé contre l'attachement, mais je pense qu'il est temps de dire à l'expéditeur que son ordinateur est infecté et devrait être nettoyé. L'en-tête d'email est inclus.
J'espère que cette traduction par Babelfish était quelque peu précise.
Yes, you read that right. Babelfish. I was hoping that I didn't insult anyone, like call the system operator's mother a fat cow.
From orange.fr:
Bonjour,
Nous avons bien réceptionné votre mail relatif à la transmission de virus par un de nos abonnés. Nous vous remercions d'avoir porté ces faits à notre connaissance et vous informons que le nécessaire a été effectué auprès de l'utilisateur fautif : son accès a été résilié ce jour.
Cordialement, Service Abuse Orange Internet
Cool! I didn't call anyone a fat cow!
It's nice to knock them off one by one, but it's not efficient. Hell, maybe the whole "cut them off" is just shovelling shit against the tide. The only way to guarantee the death of botnets is to require everyone to run secure systems, and this means cutting off Jane and Joe home user, who would probably not even begin to fathom what a secure computer is.
Here's an idea.
Let's go beyond GeekSquad and computer repair shops. Let's go beyond having jane and joe user administer their own PCs. Someone is the administrator of their local residential neighborhood, as a full time paid job, hired by his neighbors to be the neighborhood equivalent of the corporate IT guy.
"Running a given operating system does not incur automatic protection in the absence of proper procedure."
You and I are on the same side. Heh.
When, at first, I couldn't use the root account in Ubuntu, I enabled it using sudo passwd. But upon reflection, after thinking that not having an active root account was a bit of bogosity (I'm a big boy, I know what I'm doing), I have changed my mind and agreed with the Ubuntu and OS/X method of using sudo for everything. It keeps one from playing "admin" for too long.
I have learned that if I need to do root work in a shell, I can always sudo bash in an xterm. There is no reason for there to be permanent password enabled root account.
As for "it's easier in root" justification, yeah, everything's easier, and this is the justification that Microsoft uses to give admin privs to default accounts in XP. I hear that this is being changed in Vista, but then I also hear they've made it a pain in the arse for the equivalent of sudo, making the user type a password at each step if there are multiple steps to something like a program install.
Gah. Tell me that I'm wrong. Things can't be _that_ screwed up, can they?
BTW, on a side note, Verizon techs are *JERKS*
A short time ago, a friend of mine called me up to say that earlier this week he had a problem with his phone line which required a Verizon tech. He has DSL, and while the tech was working, he changed the PPPoE password on VZN's end. He then proceeded to set up the single Windows machine for the password, absolutely ignoring the *other computer* and neglecting the freakin' router which should have managed the network connection anyway. The result of which was the Windows machine being able to see the net and the other, a Ubuntu test machine (Joe is my guinea pig) unable to see the 'net. This would be an easy fix if I was sitting in front of the thing, but YOU try talking someone through it over the phone who doesn't know what a router does, and that thinks that the Firefox icon is "the internet."
"Unless there's a bug in your libpng implementation, and your MUA automatically displays images."
Apples. Oranges.
The former is a design decision - to consciously give execute permission to email content. The latter is a bug. Please learn the difference between the two.
"Yeah, sure, millions of them. I read this lie for many years and never seen any true virus for Linux"
Hear hear!
I have to expound on this a little.
One of the reasons that the Windows apologists say that Linux has poor virus propagation is because of the geek ratio, and that Linux geeks "know what they're doing."
Well, let's take a look at OS/X. OS/X has a higher population of non-geeks that just want to get things done. Indeed, it's got the highest ratio of fashion conscious and arty-types of any user population. Yet OS/X has the same amount of viruses as Linux in the wild (none). It's not because of popularity. It's not about technical experience of the users.
It's about design. Out of the box, OS/X, Linux, Solaris, BSD are all more secure and orders of magnitude easier to keep secure. Windows apologists who ignore that are simply lying.
"The first time someone's running as root and downloads an untrustworthy file..."
But that's not really an issue is it? What Linux distribution has the default user as Root these days? In fact, it's more difficult to run as root in some distributions instead of as a normal user, in that the "root account" is never enabled. Attempt to login to (X,K,Ed)Ubuntu as root at the login screen and it won't work.
How to get a Windows computer infected:
Connect to the 'net without a firewall or run IE and visit a bad page. Or, run OE (interesting that Outlook Express has the same initials as "Operator Error") for your mail. Or run p2p software and download a "song" that doesn't play (but is instead an executable file). In fact, I've got a friend whose daughter did exactly the latter, and I'm going to fix it after the weekend. I beginning to think that these days, that's the most common vector of infection, as I see it time and time again.
Windows gives execute permission based on the file name extension. For this utterly stupid idea held over from the frickin' CP/M days, users are being hosed left, right, up, and down. This bogosity should have died with Windows 3.1 or at least after Bill Gates discovered the 'net and put out Win98. However, the concept is still with us in Vista, so techs everwhere are going to be guaranteed a paycheck for at least the next 5 years.
How to infect a Unix or Linux machine:
Automatically through mail? Impossible to do without user interaction, since everything that comes down the pipe doesn't have the execute bits turned on. Anyone who writes an MUA that does that autmatically will be taken out back and hit with the clue bat.
Visit a web page? There's no such thing as a drive-by install. The user has to download the file and manually set the execute bits high again, through chmod or by right-clicking on the file.
Use p2p? Everything downloaded has no execute bit. What data file _ever_ deserves an execute bit? Indeed, I have yet to ever receive a file from the wire that has execute bits turned on except when they're contained within an installation package, and for that to work, I need to pause and use root permission if it's an install for the whole machine and I still have to unpack it even if it's going in my home directory.
In fact, the simple act of user interaction, even if it's the typing of the current user's password (OS/X) prevents a whole lot of evil. It's that short pause that gives the user the chance to _think_, if even for half a second, and say _no_ to random malware. If you're a malware writer and you give your victims the chance to think, your bit of evil goes nowhere. There are only so many times that people are going to install a fucking purple gorilla.
This ignores the population that will run silly "cupholder" executables and trojan filled "free screensavers," at every opportunity whether in Linux, Unix, or Windows, but then real stupidity trumps artificial intelligence every time. You can only do so much if a user is determined to blow each toe off his foot with a.44 one by one.
If this means that Unix and Linux are more difficult, (as if typing the current user's password is complex) so bloody what? It's damn inconvenient when a computer gets infected, isn't it?
I don't know how I got modded flamebait or overrated, but I guess them's the breaks for speaking the truth.
Class 1 suckage is easier to work around than Class 2. At least you can _add_ functionality.
With regards to long filenames in FAT, I'm sure you've seen the specification for long filenames in FAT. It's...'orrifyin', guvnuh, absolutely 'orrifyin'. As long as one still uses 8.3 filenames in FAT32, there's not much possibility of losing the long-filename "let's string this from over here to over there" organization.
NT3.5 and 4 had less Class2 suckage. It seems that as software projects age, more Class2 is added over time, notwithstanding your comment about Gnome, which might be classified as "conservation of suckage".
"Real friends don't expect you to do work for them. If that offends them, good riddance."
Hear, hear old chap!
It's about time we all stopped subsidizing Microsoft's insecure shitware. If everyone who had Windows had to pay GeekSquad's rates every time a computer died, there would be much more pressure on Microsoft to release something secure. But they don't, because they don't have to.
And seriously, it takes a good whole 12 hours of watching the cleaning software chew through all the data on drives these days and when you're done, you're still not sure you got everything.
Yet some "friends" want us to do it for free or for prices that wind up being about minimum wage when the billable hours are worked out. Sometimes that's ok. Some charity cases are OK in my book, but when the charity case comes back 6 months later with the same old "my computer is slow", one feels like a chump.
So now my line is "I'll do it for free if you let me put Linux on it."
Last Friday, a colleague asked me if his computer was infected because it was slow. I told him it was probably a couple of hundred infections (true). He was wondering if he should give it to me or GeekSquad. I told him GeekSquad will just format and reinstall. I did tell him that while he could pay me to do the same thing at a cheaper rate than GS, I would put Linux on it for free. He's thinking.
They ALL suck. It's just a matter of degree. Indeed the motivation of people migrating from Win3.1 to Win95 was that 95 "sucked less" and the remark was so common that I swear it became a Microsoft marketing line.
All operating systems suck. You can always point to a particular failing of an OS and say that part sucks or that part has less or more suckage than a corresponding function in another OS.
That said, many OSes, especially OS/X, Linux and the BSDs contain less total amounts of suckage than anything coming out of Redmond at any price.
This is a response of a complaint that I sent to orange.fr about an infected computer.
Bonjour,
Nous avons bien réceptionné votre mail relatif à la transmission de virus par un de nos abonnés. Nous vous remercions d'avoir porté ces faits à notre connaissance et vous informons que le nécessaire a été effectué auprès de l'utilisateur fautif : son accès a été résilié ce jour.
Cordialement, Service Abuse Orange Internet
If only US ISPs did this.
For the non-french-speaking, like me, the Babelfish translation isn't too bad.
And I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to kill."
"I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill, KILL, KILL!" And I started jumpin up and down yelling, "KILL! KILL!" and he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down yelling, "KILL! KILL!" And the sergeant came over, pinned a medal on me, sent me down the hall and said, "You're our boy."
"If I were to sit down and pick and choose who is "free" to use my software, it ain't free no more is it?"
Total anarchy helps nobody. Even if you use the BSD license, you still say who gets to distribute your software and who doesn't.
To wit:
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
Neither the name of the ORGANIZATION nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
Those not following the basic terms of the BSD license don't have the right to distribute. Period.
"Part of being a magnanimous participant in the OSS movement means supporting people you don't like."
So what were you saying about a cause and hippies?
"I never really found a use for SUSE before, still haven't now. I use Gentoo. About as far off that I'll go is Fedora, and even then it's only for work. That RMS approves of it, or that it fits with GPLv3 doesn't really matter. RMS doesn't use SUSE. Why does he care?"
Because there are programmers at Novell that write stuff that winds up in _all_ distributions. Don't forget that Novell has the Mono and Ximian crew. Other distributions using Mono and Ximian software are downstream from Novell (such as Gentoo). Since Microsoft is saying "we won't sue you or your customers, but we're thinking about suing other people" tells everyone else that maybe they're tainted because they've got code that Novell employees wrote for Gnome and Mono. Whether that matters or not remains to be seen, but the chair throwing howler monkey that is Steve Ballmer has everyone involved with this stuff looking askance, to say the least.
So just because you're not a SuSE user doesn't mean that you're unaffected.
"0 right to use as you see fit 1 right to share 2 right to modify 3 right to share modifications"
You forgot
4. Right to restrict downstream users/programmers rights, which the downstream doesn't participate in 0 through 3.
Suppose I make AnAwesomeProgram and distribute it freely under the BSD license, thus releasing it to the world uninhibited. SomeoneElse comes along, takes the code he didn't write, adds some trivial functionality, and resells for $$$$, but doesn't allow his customers the same rights he had (thou shalt not reverse engineer, thou shalt not decompile, thou shalt not redistribute, thou shalt worship only me and live).
To me, that would be unacceptable.
In a perfect world, the BSD license would be ideal, but the world is neither perfect and not all people have good intentions, imo. That's why there's the GPL. The world is also full of choices, which is why there's more than just the GPL.
"Quite apart from the partial title, which is misrepresentative of the article, why would you post a link to anything that contained statements like this?"
Because I guess that the editors know nothing about sys-con. I had sys-con blackholed for a while and last time I cleaned my hosts file, I took them out. Looks like they're up to their same old BS. Sys-Con (system of a con) is a troll organization and most of what I have ever read WRT their attitude toward Linux and the GPL in general has been inaccurate and just plain nonsense. There was _no_ "absolution" of Novell. There was a "It's a good thing they did this now, so we can disallow it in V3." Even the title of the article is a troll. They publish articles "for the clicks and the lulz" like Dan "Lyin'" Lyons and Rob "I'll give a keynote speech for SCO World drunk" Enderle. How articles like that wind up on Slashdot? The editors don't do the least amount of due-diligence - not even a cursory reading of the articles themselves, apparently.
Slashdot Mirror
"Meat and poultry will now have no variance at all. "
Ordinary "animal husbandry" has been going in that direction for decades (centuries? millennia?).
Given the choice, I'm sure the owner of the Springbank Snow Countess would have cloned her. Cloning is a shortcut.
What cloning *doesn't* do is introduce randomness. This can be a bad thing, because suppose Holsteins of the Springbank Snow Countess line were found to be vulnerable to a certain virus that targets the line, the only recourse would be to begin regular breeding again, but by that time, many other lines may have already died out through simple neglect.
An example is the Banana Crisis. The bananas you get in the supermarket are clones, every last one of them, though not in the bad science-fiction movie sense. But since every banana plant is reproduced asexually from a distinct line, diseases like Panama disease can run through entire populations, devastating farms and ultimately ending lines like the Gros Michel as a viable plant for which the Cavendish has been a suitable replacement.
Though, there isn't much of a replacement for the Cavendish at last check, except the FHIA-17, which tastes different (and both taste different than the Gros Michel).
There's nothing wrong with cloning for the end user/customer, but cloning sets up for some interesting economic effects should disease strike.
--
BMO
...is why this is even an issue.
A clone is an identical twin. The cow/sheep/dog/cat is still a cow/sheep/dog/cat, whether twinned or cloned.
The only difference is the method, with some methods being more successful at creating viable embryos than others.
An human grown from an in-vitro fertilized egg is no less human, is he/she?
A twinned human is no less human, is he/she?
A cloned human is no less human, is he/she?
The only stupidity surrounding this stems from bad science-fiction. George Lucas Must Die (hey, that sounds like a good schlock movie title)
If anyone disputes the above, I will have to ask you to step outside.
--
BMO
That's one of the best sci-fi movies ever.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062168/
It's a remake of the british screenplay, but, well, we didn't get that on this side of the pond.
Someone mod parent up.
--
BMO
"What the hell is a 'rhode' island?"
1 2
7
It's a unit of measurement.
http://www.quahog.org/factsfolklore/index.php?id=
It's a state.
http://www.ri.gov/
It's where a lot of famous people call home
http://www.quahog.org/factsfolklore/index.php?id=
Got a problem with that?
--
BMO
--
BMO
http://www.south-pole.com/p0000083.htm
--
BMO
"I don't see why privilege separation should help. There is no need to run that spambot as root."
.profile? How do you hide it? Unless you're root, you can't modify logs, netstat, or ps. And once you've got root privs, it's stupid to run the bot in userland anyway. So you're wrong. Priv separation matters.
Because if a spambot is running as an ordinary user, it's ridiculously easy to kill and remove. A userland spambot is next to useless, because it will have a very short life. Where does it get launched? In
Fer crissakes, I can run Bagle in Wine, but then all I have to do is kill the process, which doesn't hide from me like it does in Windows. Poof. Gone.
But it's not just privelege separation alone, it's combined with the fact that stuff imported into a system from outside doesn't have _execute_ permission in the first place. Windows attaches execute permission to files because they have the supposed correct extension, and this sin is doubled because _windows hides file extensions by default_ so as to "not confuse the user".
I'm sorry, but that is just stupid.
Explain to me why it's beneficial to the user to hide extensions, to hide processes, and to hide files with attributes instead of simply putting a dot before the filename? EXPLAIN TO ME WHY AN OUTDATED CONCEPT FROM CP/M RESIDES IN WINDOWS? WHY DETERMINE THAT A FILE IS A PROGRAM SIMPLY BECAUSE IT ENDS IN THREE MAGIC LETTERS LIKE 'COM' OR 'EXE' OR THE REST OF THE EXECUTABLE FILE EXTENSIONS, OF WHICH THERE ARE TOO MANY?
Gah...
Whatever. Vista will continue to use filename extensions to determine executability, so Windows users are hosed for yet another 5 or so years until Microsoft gets its freakin' act together, if ever.
The security biggies:
1. Privelege separation
2. Frugal execute permissions.
3. User interaction in granting executability and privelege escalation.
4. No hidden processes.
You cannot have security until you have all four. If you give execute permission willy-nilly, a file that shouldn't have execution turned on can exploit a buffer overflow and now you've got privelege escalation and a process that can hide itself. If you take away user interaction, you have drive-by installs, as seen all over the Windows world. If you take away privelege separation, everyone is administrator, and we've seen where that's gotten us. If you hide processes, like is done in Windows easily, how do you even know if a bit of malware is running or not? Indeed, since Microsoft has bent over for the entertainment industry, we'll be seeing more Windows rootkits because they'll be using the same hooks that DRM uses to hide itself from the user and system administrator. Good luck with that.
Windows has done a piss poor job of implementing security in any shape or form. It's about time Microsoft got off its collective ass and done something responsible instead of shoring up its dubious hegemony.
--
BMO
"While that may be true, you want to know how much effort its required to enable that? "
I know exactly how much effort. I actually mentioned a way to do it up there, in case you hadn't read. However, the newbie is not TOLD to do it, and so by default, only when the newbie _learns_ what to do, the newbie can enable it or not.
But by then, the newbie has probably operated under sudo long enough that it's second nature and probably has picked up the clue that it's more secure that way anyway.
The fact remains, Mister Microsoft Apologist, that it's the little things that make a big difference between the insecurity of Windows and the security of Linux and OS/X. You don't see examples of stupidity like you mentioned all over the OS/X community, do you? OS/X relies on sudo the same way that Ubuntu does, and you know what? It works.
Proof is in the puddin'
Come back when you've got some real world examples that actually happen, OK?
--
BMO
This way:
From me:
Yes, you read that right. Babelfish. I was hoping that I didn't insult anyone, like call the system operator's mother a fat cow.
From orange.fr:
Cool! I didn't call anyone a fat cow!
It's nice to knock them off one by one, but it's not efficient. Hell, maybe the whole "cut them off" is just shovelling shit against the tide. The only way to guarantee the death of botnets is to require everyone to run secure systems, and this means cutting off Jane and Joe home user, who would probably not even begin to fathom what a secure computer is.
Here's an idea.
Let's go beyond GeekSquad and computer repair shops. Let's go beyond having jane and joe user administer their own PCs. Someone is the administrator of their local residential neighborhood, as a full time paid job, hired by his neighbors to be the neighborhood equivalent of the corporate IT guy.
Too much?
Probably.
--
BMO
"Running a given operating system does not incur automatic protection in the absence of proper procedure."
You and I are on the same side. Heh.
When, at first, I couldn't use the root account in Ubuntu, I enabled it using sudo passwd. But upon reflection, after thinking that not having an active root account was a bit of bogosity (I'm a big boy, I know what I'm doing), I have changed my mind and agreed with the Ubuntu and OS/X method of using sudo for everything. It keeps one from playing "admin" for too long.
I have learned that if I need to do root work in a shell, I can always sudo bash in an xterm. There is no reason for there to be permanent password enabled root account.
As for "it's easier in root" justification, yeah, everything's easier, and this is the justification that Microsoft uses to give admin privs to default accounts in XP. I hear that this is being changed in Vista, but then I also hear they've made it a pain in the arse for the equivalent of sudo, making the user type a password at each step if there are multiple steps to something like a program install.
Gah. Tell me that I'm wrong. Things can't be _that_ screwed up, can they?
BTW, on a side note, Verizon techs are *JERKS*
A short time ago, a friend of mine called me up to say that earlier this week he had a problem with his phone line which required a Verizon tech. He has DSL, and while the tech was working, he changed the PPPoE password on VZN's end. He then proceeded to set up the single Windows machine for the password, absolutely ignoring the *other computer* and neglecting the freakin' router which should have managed the network connection anyway. The result of which was the Windows machine being able to see the net and the other, a Ubuntu test machine (Joe is my guinea pig) unable to see the 'net. This would be an easy fix if I was sitting in front of the thing, but YOU try talking someone through it over the phone who doesn't know what a router does, and that thinks that the Firefox icon is "the internet."
Thanks, Verizon. Thanks much.
Assholes.
--
BMO
"Unless there's a bug in your libpng implementation, and your MUA automatically displays images."
Apples. Oranges.
The former is a design decision - to consciously give execute permission to email content. The latter is a bug. Please learn the difference between the two.
Bad troll. No cookie.
--
BMO
"Yeah, sure, millions of them.
I read this lie for many years and never seen any true virus for Linux"
Hear hear!
I have to expound on this a little.
One of the reasons that the Windows apologists say that Linux has poor virus propagation is because of the geek ratio, and that Linux geeks "know what they're doing."
Well, let's take a look at OS/X. OS/X has a higher population of non-geeks that just want to get things done. Indeed, it's got the highest ratio of fashion conscious and arty-types of any user population. Yet OS/X has the same amount of viruses as Linux in the wild (none). It's not because of popularity. It's not about technical experience of the users.
It's about design. Out of the box, OS/X, Linux, Solaris, BSD are all more secure and orders of magnitude easier to keep secure. Windows apologists who ignore that are simply lying.
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BMO
"The first time someone's running as root and downloads an untrustworthy file..."
.44 one by one.
But that's not really an issue is it? What Linux distribution has the default user as Root these days? In fact, it's more difficult to run as root in some distributions instead of as a normal user, in that the "root account" is never enabled. Attempt to login to (X,K,Ed)Ubuntu as root at the login screen and it won't work.
How to get a Windows computer infected:
Connect to the 'net without a firewall or run IE and visit a bad page. Or, run OE (interesting that Outlook Express has the same initials as "Operator Error") for your mail. Or run p2p software and download a "song" that doesn't play (but is instead an executable file). In fact, I've got a friend whose daughter did exactly the latter, and I'm going to fix it after the weekend. I beginning to think that these days, that's the most common vector of infection, as I see it time and time again.
Windows gives execute permission based on the file name extension. For this utterly stupid idea held over from the frickin' CP/M days, users are being hosed left, right, up, and down. This bogosity should have died with Windows 3.1 or at least after Bill Gates discovered the 'net and put out Win98. However, the concept is still with us in Vista, so techs everwhere are going to be guaranteed a paycheck for at least the next 5 years.
How to infect a Unix or Linux machine:
Automatically through mail? Impossible to do without user interaction, since everything that comes down the pipe doesn't have the execute bits turned on. Anyone who writes an MUA that does that autmatically will be taken out back and hit with the clue bat.
Visit a web page? There's no such thing as a drive-by install. The user has to download the file and manually set the execute bits high again, through chmod or by right-clicking on the file.
Use p2p? Everything downloaded has no execute bit. What data file _ever_ deserves an execute bit? Indeed, I have yet to ever receive a file from the wire that has execute bits turned on except when they're contained within an installation package, and for that to work, I need to pause and use root permission if it's an install for the whole machine and I still have to unpack it even if it's going in my home directory.
In fact, the simple act of user interaction, even if it's the typing of the current user's password (OS/X) prevents a whole lot of evil. It's that short pause that gives the user the chance to _think_, if even for half a second, and say _no_ to random malware. If you're a malware writer and you give your victims the chance to think, your bit of evil goes nowhere. There are only so many times that people are going to install a fucking purple gorilla.
This ignores the population that will run silly "cupholder" executables and trojan filled "free screensavers," at every opportunity whether in Linux, Unix, or Windows, but then real stupidity trumps artificial intelligence every time. You can only do so much if a user is determined to blow each toe off his foot with a
If this means that Unix and Linux are more difficult, (as if typing the current user's password is complex) so bloody what? It's damn inconvenient when a computer gets infected, isn't it?
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BMO
General Augusto Pinochet was "elected" supreme ruler of Chile again.
"According to the survey 'Ninety-five percent approve of the collaboration"
Collaboration indeed. Collaborators will be shot.
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BMO
I don't know how I got modded flamebait or overrated, but I guess them's the breaks for speaking the truth.
Class 1 suckage is easier to work around than Class 2. At least you can _add_ functionality.
With regards to long filenames in FAT, I'm sure you've seen the specification for long filenames in FAT. It's...'orrifyin', guvnuh, absolutely 'orrifyin'. As long as one still uses 8.3 filenames in FAT32, there's not much possibility of losing the long-filename "let's string this from over here to over there" organization.
NT3.5 and 4 had less Class2 suckage. It seems that as software projects age, more Class2 is added over time, notwithstanding your comment about Gnome, which might be classified as "conservation of suckage".
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BMO
Even if you forgot your compass, you can always do this trick if you've got an analogue watch:
This works in the Northern Hemisphere.
Take the watch off your wrist and hold it horizontally.
Point the hour hand at the sun.
Halfway between that and 12 is South.
It's not accurate to one degree, but for getting un-lost, it's close enough.
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BMO
"Real friends don't expect you to do work for them. If that offends them, good riddance."
Hear, hear old chap!
It's about time we all stopped subsidizing Microsoft's insecure shitware. If everyone who had Windows had to pay GeekSquad's rates every time a computer died, there would be much more pressure on Microsoft to release something secure. But they don't, because they don't have to.
And seriously, it takes a good whole 12 hours of watching the cleaning software chew through all the data on drives these days and when you're done, you're still not sure you got everything.
Yet some "friends" want us to do it for free or for prices that wind up being about minimum wage when the billable hours are worked out. Sometimes that's ok. Some charity cases are OK in my book, but when the charity case comes back 6 months later with the same old "my computer is slow", one feels like a chump.
So now my line is "I'll do it for free if you let me put Linux on it."
Last Friday, a colleague asked me if his computer was infected because it was slow. I told him it was probably a couple of hundred infections (true). He was wondering if he should give it to me or GeekSquad. I told him GeekSquad will just format and reinstall. I did tell him that while he could pay me to do the same thing at a cheaper rate than GS, I would put Linux on it for free. He's thinking.
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BMO
"Linux: It doesn't suck."
No...NO.
They ALL suck. It's just a matter of degree. Indeed the motivation of people migrating from Win3.1 to Win95 was that 95 "sucked less" and the remark was so common that I swear it became a Microsoft marketing line.
All operating systems suck. You can always point to a particular failing of an OS and say that part sucks or that part has less or more suckage than a corresponding function in another OS.
That said, many OSes, especially OS/X, Linux and the BSDs contain less total amounts of suckage than anything coming out of Redmond at any price.
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BMO
This is a response of a complaint that I sent to orange.fr about an infected computer.
Bonjour,
Nous avons bien réceptionné votre mail relatif à la transmission de virus par un de nos abonnés.
Nous vous remercions d'avoir porté ces faits à notre connaissance et vous informons que le nécessaire a été effectué auprès de l'utilisateur fautif : son accès a été résilié ce jour.
Cordialement,
Service Abuse Orange Internet
If only US ISPs did this.
For the non-french-speaking, like me, the Babelfish translation isn't too bad.
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BMO
And I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to kill."
"I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill, KILL, KILL!" And I started jumpin up and down yelling, "KILL! KILL!" and he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down yelling, "KILL! KILL!" And the sergeant came over, pinned a medal on me, sent me down the hall and said, "You're our boy."
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BMO
Someone mod parent Informative, please.
s html?tid=149&tid=106
BTW, wasn't MOG supposed to be persona-non-grata at Sys-Con?
http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/05/05/10/1653207.
James Turner is a lying weasel.
This explains all of it. I clicked on the LinuxGram link and I feel soiled now.
Must...wash...brain.
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BMO
Total anarchy helps nobody. Even if you use the BSD license, you still say who gets to distribute your software and who doesn't.
To wit:
Those not following the basic terms of the BSD license don't have the right to distribute. Period.
"Part of being a magnanimous participant in the OSS movement means supporting people you don't like."
So what were you saying about a cause and hippies?
This has been interesting. Heh.
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BMO
"See that's the difference. You write software to prop up a cause"
I could say the same thing about the BSD license, no? Is Theo de Raadt any less foaming than Stallman?
Choose the license you want. Saying that using other licenses are inferior and that the GPL is for hippies is a troll.
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BMO
"I never really found a use for SUSE before, still haven't now. I use Gentoo. About as far off that I'll go is Fedora, and even then it's only for work. That RMS approves of it, or that it fits with GPLv3 doesn't really matter. RMS doesn't use SUSE. Why does he care?"
Because there are programmers at Novell that write stuff that winds up in _all_ distributions. Don't forget that Novell has the Mono and Ximian crew. Other distributions using Mono and Ximian software are downstream from Novell (such as Gentoo). Since Microsoft is saying "we won't sue you or your customers, but we're thinking about suing other people" tells everyone else that maybe they're tainted because they've got code that Novell employees wrote for Gnome and Mono. Whether that matters or not remains to be seen, but the chair throwing howler monkey that is Steve Ballmer has everyone involved with this stuff looking askance, to say the least.
So just because you're not a SuSE user doesn't mean that you're unaffected.
"0 right to use as you see fit
1 right to share
2 right to modify
3 right to share modifications"
You forgot
4. Right to restrict downstream users/programmers rights, which the downstream doesn't participate in 0 through 3.
Suppose I make AnAwesomeProgram and distribute it freely under the BSD license, thus releasing it to the world uninhibited. SomeoneElse comes along, takes the code he didn't write, adds some trivial functionality, and resells for $$$$, but doesn't allow his customers the same rights he had (thou shalt not reverse engineer, thou shalt not decompile, thou shalt not redistribute, thou shalt worship only me and live).
To me, that would be unacceptable.
In a perfect world, the BSD license would be ideal, but the world is neither perfect and not all people have good intentions, imo. That's why there's the GPL. The world is also full of choices, which is why there's more than just the GPL.
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BMO
"Quite apart from the partial title, which is misrepresentative of the article, why would you post a link to anything that contained statements like this?"
Because I guess that the editors know nothing about sys-con. I had sys-con blackholed for a while and last time I cleaned my hosts file, I took them out. Looks like they're up to their same old BS. Sys-Con (system of a con) is a troll organization and most of what I have ever read WRT their attitude toward Linux and the GPL in general has been inaccurate and just plain nonsense. There was _no_ "absolution" of Novell. There was a "It's a good thing they did this now, so we can disallow it in V3." Even the title of the article is a troll. They publish articles "for the clicks and the lulz" like Dan "Lyin'" Lyons and Rob "I'll give a keynote speech for SCO World drunk" Enderle. How articles like that wind up on Slashdot? The editors don't do the least amount of due-diligence - not even a cursory reading of the articles themselves, apparently.
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BMO
I for one welcome our lower hinge sensor eating raccoon overlords.
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BMO