How much more obvious could you be? 95% of the responses are what you would expect from any rational average Joe on the street. The remaining 5% put on the Missionary Suit and proclaim that Microsoft CAN DO NO-O-O-OOO Wrong! No matter what!
It is so predictable:
Headline: Bill Gates buys Al Quaida.
Shill: They're doing it so they can shut down terrorism! They're protecting us!
Headline: Engineer lifts comp room floor tiles, discovers bodies of 100,000 refugees, victims of genocide.
Shill: That's a frame! Saddam sneaked in and hid them there! And some Linux users helped!
Headline: Bill Gates seen rampaging the streets, biting the heads off small children, stabbing people with hypos full of AIDS virus, and drawing pentagrams on the ground in order to call up Satan himself to rule the Earth.
Shill: They're testing Longhorn!
As for the rest of you people, how about just answering the question before you flame and ridicule it? Creating software for the handicapped isn't something to hoot down...it is a fascinating, rewarding challenge. One met sometimes by the handicapped themselves...let's see YOU be so clever when you have Cerebral Palsy, can't talk, and can only type with your feet!
I see the points on all sides. It's actually 99.99999% spambots on Blogspot, with just me the only sucker who actually picked that pathetic platform to host my blog - back when I knew no better. That goes double for their "technical" non-support - any problem I ask them to fix gets met with extreme indifference at the very best.
I started the new one at Modblogs, and have had much better luck. Mainly, I just post the code at the one there - shell scripts and programs and such.
The rub is, while I would love it if everybody could screen out the garbage, I post (or at least try to post) informative articles - howtos, tips and tricks, guides, simple programs in various languages - and people looking for that particular solution have to be able to find it. The catch 22 turns out that search engines drop the index of my blog regularly, and when they pick it up again, people get all the spam in their search.
The solution is, of course, for people to maintenence their own site. Slashdot manages to screen out bots. Many bulletin boards do so. It's not rocket science. I picked blogs because they were a free web presence alternative to a paid site, without the "free web page" hassles of making my readers look at annoying ad banners and pop-ups. If any body out there has alternative ideas, I'm all ears. It does look like Blogspot has gone from bad to worse to panned out entirely.
And I'll add my comment to the babble: (a) Big deal, type "su" and the password just for that step. (b) *Ahem* What's wrong with requiring root to install software? This also stops viruses from writing to your boot sector, you know. This stops all *sorts* of things from going wrong. And if you install a program in your home directory, then run it from there as that user and attempt to do something malicious to the system outside your home directory, guess what, the priveledges apply to any programs you run, too!
I recommend Linux as a security solution, and people howl "It's too hard to learn that!" Here we see the less-user-friendly side of Windows.
Yeah, really, folks, as one who has dealt with many releases of Windows, MacIntosh, OS/2, and Linux, I'm telling you Windows is just as hard to install, configure, and use as any other operating system. Difficulty in operation doesn't depend on whether or not there's a "Windows" sticker on the outside of the case, it depends on the fact that computers themselves are inherently complicated machines.
No developer sits there saying "I really need to come up with a more complicated interface for this design; it's too easy to figure out!" And making a system hide all the details so that it appears easier doesn't make it so, any more than removing the red warning lights from the dashboard of your car would negate the necessity of having to put oil and transmission fluid and coolant in it to keep it running!
Many years ago, somebody stole a paycheck out of my mailbox. This perpetrator managed to cash it at one of the store-front checkz-cash3d shops, where (a) they got his picture, which looked nothing like me, considering we aren't even the same race, and (b) the perp actually MIS-SPELLED my name when signing the check, which escaped notice despite the fact that my name was spelled correctly on the check itself. Nobody knew anything was wrong until I called to complain about not getting it. It was a government check, so it took me two and a half years to get the money, after (amongst other things) having to get somebody who'd known me continuously for ten years to sign a notorized afidavit witnessing that I was me, and also after getting the photo-copied image of the check in the mail from the bank and calling them up and asking them if they thought I'd know how to spell my own name...
Lesson learned: No security will ever be secure if a human has a hand in it at any step.
Any proficient Unix-level user could figure out everything there is to know about Windows in an hour. Windows has the "For Dummies" books, remember? In fact, there is more to be learned about Windows through using Unix tools (samba, wine, etc.) than from *anything* in that drooling drivel Microsoft calls a "help" file.
If it were my shop, I'd automatically grant any Unix wizard full honorary degrees in Windows 101. To do otherwise would be like hiring a 20-years-experienced airline pilot and then fussing over whether or not he could fly a kite.
Because it all posts on Slashdot. How else to explain so many sentient beings with such radically divergent points of view?
Point one: Go to http://www.linuxiso.org/ . Click on any Linux distro. Click on that distro's homepage at the top. Find the link on that distro's home page called "screen shots", which are pictures of actual Linuxen running on actual computeren.
Look! There's a bar at the bottom of the screen just like Windows. There's an icon on the far left of the bar just like Windows. Click on the icon and a menu pops up just like Windows. Move the mouse up the menu and look at all the programs, just like Windows. Select the email program from the internet submenu, just like Windows. Click on Mozilla and a web browser opens up with a titlebar you type Google in and a back button and other gizmos at the top, just like Windows. I've never seen the full Linux distro that didn't come with the solitare card games, just like Windows.
The difference is, whenever you want to, you can hit Ctrl-Alt-F2 and have a completely different computer, with ten times the stuff that Macintosh and Windows has combined, and you'll be able to use your computer in new and imaginative ways. And when you're done with that you can hit Alt-F7 and get your I-can't-believe-it's-not-Windows desktop back like nothing ever happened. Oh, yeah, and it's cheaper.
Hey, did you hear the one about the foreigner who emmigrated to the US and couldn't speak English? He got a job and had a co-worker who knew his language and a little English. So the co-worker taught him to say "Apple pie and coffee", so he could order lunch.
After a week of this, the shy foreigner got up the nerve to trouble his friend to teach him some more, because he was sick of apple pie and coffee. So then he learned "Ham sandwich and coke".
So he goes in and orders:
"Ham sandwich and coke."
And the waitress said, "You want that sandwich on wheat or rye?"
He said, "Ham sandwich and coke."
The waitress added, "And is that coke regular or diet?"
So he said, "Apple pie and coffee."
That's just what the Windows crowd is starting to remind me of. Sick of what they have, too intimidated to try anything else.
There is just one, and only one, reason why Linux is harder than the other operating systems. Because the store doesn't install it for you when you buy the computer. If Linux came default with every box and MacIntosh and Windows had to be gotten by other means, nobody would know a smit of difference. We'd all be saying how impossible Windows and MacIntosh is to learn, and nobody in their right minds would use them. That's because all operating systems are hard to install, if you don't have it as your professional job to do.
Point two: MacIntosh isn't going to steal too many users that weren't going there already. If anything, it'll take Microsoft down a notch or two. I'm dying to hear a report from the first home user to load a Mac OS on an x86. Let's see how they do!
The only reason to create "server" and "client" operating systems is rake in the money at both ends of the spectrum. It's a licensing fiction which makes guys like MS considerable amounts of money. Why would you want to lock Linux into such a thing? If you don't want a server-class Linux, don't install the server components.
Absolutely correct, but nevertheless, Linux distros do come in specialized flavors. He said, partly relevantly.
Consider a programming analogy: suppose two developers write code that ultimately achieves the same thing. Say one of them writes 200 lines of intricate technical detail, taking advantage of advanced features offered by the programming language, while the other writes 20 lines using nothing but the most basic language constructs. Which of these is the smart programmer?
Sorry, I've tried lines like that on this crowd. You're speaking a foreign language to them.
Sorry, I tell people they can use anti-virus software and they say, "But it's broken!!!" I say, then learn to control your own viruses, and they say, "But that's too hard!!!" I say, so go get a copy of Linux and your troubles are over, and they say "But Linux is too hard, too!!!"
You're all absolutely right. The situation is hopeless and there's nothing we can do. Quick, everybody! Abandon civilization! Last one back in the cave's an evolutionary throwback!
A problem that may merit even more of your attention is "new-parent syndrome", where you go on little trips worrying over every "syndrome" that gets babbled at you by the media. The first thing you have to do is block out all that static. If I had a nickel for every goofball theory about parenting that's here-today-gone-tomorrow since I became a father, I could have bought Microsoft and given it to somebody for Christmas.
As for the answer to your question: your kids will pick things up from you, their mother, your parents, her parents, each other, school, their peers, and the media. Balance will happen all by itself.
A big plus, I consider, is to pass on a sheer love of learning and a self-confidence in their learning ability. Then they can take that attitude with them everywhere, inside, outside, at work, at home, and throughout their lives. Computers will just be one more thing to explore.
Told yah, told yah, and told yah. I've never had any faith in security software, since the concept first came out.
The software can't detect the virus on your machine until it's scanned for it. It can't scan for it until it knows the signature. It can't know the signature until it gets an update from the company. The company can't include the signature in their update until somebody discovers the virus in the first place and reports it. By the time somebody discovers it, it was already there, got to your hard drive, infected it, and left. Buh bye!
The only security is do-it-yourself security. Learn to think like a cyberterrorist, and you will defend yourself from cyberterrorists. Don't just go to the store and buy one of the books marketed to people like you. Those things are always 90% hot air, and only incidentally contain anything useful.
I mean visit the "underground" websites, join the clubs, fake being what they are (they're all fakes anyway, so they'd never make you.) while you learn what they do, learn about TCP/IP, learn Visual Basic and Javascript and other favorite cracker languages, and most importantly, learn what's on your own hard drive. You should be able to do a low-level grovel through your entire directory tree, read every file, and not have a single byte of that data surprise you. Get some kind of tool for tracing processes and threads. You can keep one open all the time, and with practice, you can get to name every process, daemon, and socket before the system is about to use it. Get a hex editor and learn how to read hex - it's the easiest thing in the world, and the editor even helpfully translates text codes into words for you in a side column. You should at least be able to tell what first few numbers start which kinds of files.
I've never relied on a third party for security, and I never will. I've used security software occasionally, and without fail it eventually breaks down. For one thing, security software is usually the first thing targeted and disabled.
Cute trick, use one alias to ding my post, another alias to add insult to injury. I know how it's done, I simply don't do it. I *don't* stoop that low.
But I know how to defend myself. By all means, mod this reply down so we can keep the discussion private. Have your fun.
I am, however, sorry you're offended. Since you say to "never mind which ones", I won't bother to speculate. But if people are attacked, they have the right to defend themselves. Through the minimum use of force required to de-escalate the situation.
Lynx (the text based web browser) doesn't show "Punch the Monkey" or any of his friends, and can refuse all cookies from a site just by selecting "V" for "neVer" when it asks, FYI.
I would like an easier method of whitelisting cookies
If you run Linux, you could write a Bash shell script for finer cookie control. Put it in your crontabs file so it could, for example, sweep once an hour automatically.
For instance, say you want to remove all "anyuser" cookies except for those from "Foo.com" and "Bar.net":
And so on. For me, my Windows drive is also mounted when I start Linux, so Linux does all my housekeeping automatically for Windows whenever I start Linux. I'm always adding a new feature.
As for Big Business changing my mind, good luck. All computer users have the absolute right to control *every* single byte of what's on their machines. It's your hard drive. You paid for it. In some cases, you built the computer and installed the operating system. And if you built your own house and painted the walls, you'd naturally be P.O.'d if vandals came in and graffitti'ed all over the walls. But people look at a website loading ten Gigs of crap onto their machine and go "OK"!
I'm looking forward to what new trick the suits come up with next, but doubtless it won't be too hard to circumvent.
Another way to read this headline is, "MacIntosh, Linux, BeOS, and Solaris prepare to recieve new users with open arms."
Quoth one new Linux convert: "We paid top dollar for our new operating system, four years went by that were a blur of security alerts and patches, and then it was time to pay top dollar for a new operating system again!"
Defending would be disarming. If somebody were coming after you with a knife, and you managed to get it away from them in order to keep from being stabbed, you're not at fault, are you?
Write a program that finds the Visual Basic compiler/interpretter on the attacker's machine, and deletes it. Big deal, they'd have to re-install it from the disc. That'd delay them a whole ten minutes? Enough time to change a password....
I love how I hear people in here preaching about relying on our boys in blue to protect us. Isn't this the same board where we all moan about how clueless and stupid Joe-Average Luser is, who cannot even learn not to open an email attatchment after 20 years of having it drummed into his head, and cannot switch to Linux because a disc partition is beyond his grasp? So how do I trust this same luser wearing a uniform to keep me safe?
for the targets they pick! I'm so much in favor of Brittany fans and such getting picked off, I could almost love it!
Incidentally, I sometimes like to capture a virus and study it on my Linux box, using a hex editor. Without fail, every one I've heard of and every one I've viewed this way has "Microsoft Visual Basic" written in it.
Has *anyone else* ever seen or heard of a virus not written in VB? Is VB used for anything else? Pardon my young age, but did viruses exist before the BASIC language ever came out? Could you make the world's simplest virus-killer just by going:
#!/bin/bash
strings $FILE >> inspect
grep "Visual Basic" inspect
if [ "$?" > "0" ]; then
rm -rf $FILE
fi
rm -rf inspect
Slashdot Mirror
It is so predictable:
Headline: Bill Gates buys Al Quaida.
Shill: They're doing it so they can shut down terrorism! They're protecting us!
Headline: Engineer lifts comp room floor tiles, discovers bodies of 100,000 refugees, victims of genocide.
Shill: That's a frame! Saddam sneaked in and hid them there! And some Linux users helped!
Headline: Bill Gates seen rampaging the streets, biting the heads off small children, stabbing people with hypos full of AIDS virus, and drawing pentagrams on the ground in order to call up Satan himself to rule the Earth.
Shill: They're testing Longhorn!
*sigh* I could write a shell script to do this...
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ora
Burn it to Live CD.
As for the rest of you people, how about just answering the question before you flame and ridicule it? Creating software for the handicapped isn't something to hoot down...it is a fascinating, rewarding challenge. One met sometimes by the handicapped themselves...let's see YOU be so clever when you have Cerebral Palsy, can't talk, and can only type with your feet!
I started the new one at Modblogs, and have had much better luck. Mainly, I just post the code at the one there - shell scripts and programs and such.
The rub is, while I would love it if everybody could screen out the garbage, I post (or at least try to post) informative articles - howtos, tips and tricks, guides, simple programs in various languages - and people looking for that particular solution have to be able to find it. The catch 22 turns out that search engines drop the index of my blog regularly, and when they pick it up again, people get all the spam in their search.
The solution is, of course, for people to maintenence their own site. Slashdot manages to screen out bots. Many bulletin boards do so. It's not rocket science. I picked blogs because they were a free web presence alternative to a paid site, without the "free web page" hassles of making my readers look at annoying ad banners and pop-ups. If any body out there has alternative ideas, I'm all ears. It does look like Blogspot has gone from bad to worse to panned out entirely.
Core Dump......................done.
And I'll add my comment to the babble: (a) Big deal, type "su" and the password just for that step. (b) *Ahem* What's wrong with requiring root to install software? This also stops viruses from writing to your boot sector, you know. This stops all *sorts* of things from going wrong. And if you install a program in your home directory, then run it from there as that user and attempt to do something malicious to the system outside your home directory, guess what, the priveledges apply to any programs you run, too!
Yeah, really, folks, as one who has dealt with many releases of Windows, MacIntosh, OS/2, and Linux, I'm telling you Windows is just as hard to install, configure, and use as any other operating system. Difficulty in operation doesn't depend on whether or not there's a "Windows" sticker on the outside of the case, it depends on the fact that computers themselves are inherently complicated machines.
No developer sits there saying "I really need to come up with a more complicated interface for this design; it's too easy to figure out!" And making a system hide all the details so that it appears easier doesn't make it so, any more than removing the red warning lights from the dashboard of your car would negate the necessity of having to put oil and transmission fluid and coolant in it to keep it running!
Lesson learned: No security will ever be secure if a human has a hand in it at any step.
If it were my shop, I'd automatically grant any Unix wizard full honorary degrees in Windows 101. To do otherwise would be like hiring a 20-years-experienced airline pilot and then fussing over whether or not he could fly a kite.
I'm morally convinced that if he had enough money, an illiterate blind person could be granted a patent for reading.
Slashdot is Slashdot, if you don't like it, go somewhere else! (Is that a slurping noise coming from under Bill Gates' desk that I hear?)
Point one: Go to http://www.linuxiso.org/ . Click on any Linux distro. Click on that distro's homepage at the top. Find the link on that distro's home page called "screen shots", which are pictures of actual Linuxen running on actual computeren.
Look! There's a bar at the bottom of the screen just like Windows. There's an icon on the far left of the bar just like Windows. Click on the icon and a menu pops up just like Windows. Move the mouse up the menu and look at all the programs, just like Windows. Select the email program from the internet submenu, just like Windows. Click on Mozilla and a web browser opens up with a titlebar you type Google in and a back button and other gizmos at the top, just like Windows. I've never seen the full Linux distro that didn't come with the solitare card games, just like Windows.
The difference is, whenever you want to, you can hit Ctrl-Alt-F2 and have a completely different computer, with ten times the stuff that Macintosh and Windows has combined, and you'll be able to use your computer in new and imaginative ways. And when you're done with that you can hit Alt-F7 and get your I-can't-believe-it's-not-Windows desktop back like nothing ever happened. Oh, yeah, and it's cheaper.
Hey, did you hear the one about the foreigner who emmigrated to the US and couldn't speak English? He got a job and had a co-worker who knew his language and a little English. So the co-worker taught him to say "Apple pie and coffee", so he could order lunch.
After a week of this, the shy foreigner got up the nerve to trouble his friend to teach him some more, because he was sick of apple pie and coffee. So then he learned "Ham sandwich and coke".
So he goes in and orders:
"Ham sandwich and coke."
And the waitress said, "You want that sandwich on wheat or rye?"
He said, "Ham sandwich and coke."
The waitress added, "And is that coke regular or diet?"
So he said, "Apple pie and coffee."
That's just what the Windows crowd is starting to remind me of. Sick of what they have, too intimidated to try anything else.
There is just one, and only one, reason why Linux is harder than the other operating systems. Because the store doesn't install it for you when you buy the computer. If Linux came default with every box and MacIntosh and Windows had to be gotten by other means, nobody would know a smit of difference. We'd all be saying how impossible Windows and MacIntosh is to learn, and nobody in their right minds would use them. That's because all operating systems are hard to install, if you don't have it as your professional job to do.
Point two: MacIntosh isn't going to steal too many users that weren't going there already. If anything, it'll take Microsoft down a notch or two. I'm dying to hear a report from the first home user to load a Mac OS on an x86. Let's see how they do!
Absolutely correct, but nevertheless, Linux distros do come in specialized flavors. He said, partly relevantly.
Sorry, I've tried lines like that on this crowd. You're speaking a foreign language to them.
Sorry, I tell people they can use anti-virus software and they say, "But it's broken!!!" I say, then learn to control your own viruses, and they say, "But that's too hard!!!" I say, so go get a copy of Linux and your troubles are over, and they say "But Linux is too hard, too!!!"
You're all absolutely right. The situation is hopeless and there's nothing we can do. Quick, everybody! Abandon civilization! Last one back in the cave's an evolutionary throwback!
As for the answer to your question: your kids will pick things up from you, their mother, your parents, her parents, each other, school, their peers, and the media. Balance will happen all by itself.
A big plus, I consider, is to pass on a sheer love of learning and a self-confidence in their learning ability. Then they can take that attitude with them everywhere, inside, outside, at work, at home, and throughout their lives. Computers will just be one more thing to explore.
The software can't detect the virus on your machine until it's scanned for it. It can't scan for it until it knows the signature. It can't know the signature until it gets an update from the company. The company can't include the signature in their update until somebody discovers the virus in the first place and reports it. By the time somebody discovers it, it was already there, got to your hard drive, infected it, and left. Buh bye!
The only security is do-it-yourself security. Learn to think like a cyberterrorist, and you will defend yourself from cyberterrorists. Don't just go to the store and buy one of the books marketed to people like you. Those things are always 90% hot air, and only incidentally contain anything useful.
I mean visit the "underground" websites, join the clubs, fake being what they are (they're all fakes anyway, so they'd never make you.) while you learn what they do, learn about TCP/IP, learn Visual Basic and Javascript and other favorite cracker languages, and most importantly, learn what's on your own hard drive. You should be able to do a low-level grovel through your entire directory tree, read every file, and not have a single byte of that data surprise you. Get some kind of tool for tracing processes and threads. You can keep one open all the time, and with practice, you can get to name every process, daemon, and socket before the system is about to use it. Get a hex editor and learn how to read hex - it's the easiest thing in the world, and the editor even helpfully translates text codes into words for you in a side column. You should at least be able to tell what first few numbers start which kinds of files.
I've never relied on a third party for security, and I never will. I've used security software occasionally, and without fail it eventually breaks down. For one thing, security software is usually the first thing targeted and disabled.
Learn or Burn!
But I know how to defend myself. By all means, mod this reply down so we can keep the discussion private. Have your fun.
I am, however, sorry you're offended. Since you say to "never mind which ones", I won't bother to speculate. But if people are attacked, they have the right to defend themselves. Through the minimum use of force required to de-escalate the situation.
A concept important to Taoism.
Lynx (the text based web browser) doesn't show "Punch the Monkey" or any of his friends, and can refuse all cookies from a site just by selecting "V" for "neVer" when it asks, FYI.
If you run Linux, you could write a Bash shell script for finer cookie control. Put it in your crontabs file so it could, for example, sweep once an hour automatically.
For instance, say you want to remove all "anyuser" cookies except for those from "Foo.com" and "Bar.net":
grep "anyuser" /var/temp/cookiedir | grep -v "Foo" | grep -v "Bar" >> kill_cookie_list
And so on. For me, my Windows drive is also mounted when I start Linux, so Linux does all my housekeeping automatically for Windows whenever I start Linux. I'm always adding a new feature.
As for Big Business changing my mind, good luck. All computer users have the absolute right to control *every* single byte of what's on their machines. It's your hard drive. You paid for it. In some cases, you built the computer and installed the operating system. And if you built your own house and painted the walls, you'd naturally be P.O.'d if vandals came in and graffitti'ed all over the walls. But people look at a website loading ten Gigs of crap onto their machine and go "OK"!
I'm looking forward to what new trick the suits come up with next, but doubtless it won't be too hard to circumvent.
Excellent suggestions, to which I might ad, a hex editor works wonders in disabling a virus, too. Just type enough zeros!
Quoth one new Linux convert: "We paid top dollar for our new operating system, four years went by that were a blur of security alerts and patches, and then it was time to pay top dollar for a new operating system again!"
Write a program that finds the Visual Basic compiler/interpretter on the attacker's machine, and deletes it. Big deal, they'd have to re-install it from the disc. That'd delay them a whole ten minutes? Enough time to change a password....
I love how I hear people in here preaching about relying on our boys in blue to protect us. Isn't this the same board where we all moan about how clueless and stupid Joe-Average Luser is, who cannot even learn not to open an email attatchment after 20 years of having it drummed into his head, and cannot switch to Linux because a disc partition is beyond his grasp? So how do I trust this same luser wearing a uniform to keep me safe?
#!/bin/bash
strings $FILE >> inspect
grep "Visual Basic" inspect
if [ "$?" > "0" ]; then
rm -rf $FILE
fi
rm -rf inspect
Something in my brain seems to balk at typing two languages at the same time!
Incidentally, I sometimes like to capture a virus and study it on my Linux box, using a hex editor. Without fail, every one I've heard of and every one I've viewed this way has "Microsoft Visual Basic" written in it.
Has *anyone else* ever seen or heard of a virus not written in VB? Is VB used for anything else? Pardon my young age, but did viruses exist before the BASIC language ever came out? Could you make the world's simplest virus-killer just by going:
#!/bin/bash strings $FILE >> inspect grep "Visual Basic" inspect if [ "$?" > "0" ]; then rm -rf $FILE fi rm -rf inspect
?
Another new kind of hardware to write drivers for and get OSes to recognize...joy.