What I'm saying is the difference between taking millions of years and being impossible just doesn't matter. If you have an 8+ character password, the problem doesn't exist.
But why? It's extra effort to set up and a huge annoyance if you don't have your key (hard drive crash, using someone else's computer), and really, it may be much harder, but when you're talking about millions of years to crack an 8 character password, does it really matter?
For me it's just that no ads are acceptable. Why is it that the only options seem to be "look at these annoying ads that we'll make a couple cents from you with" or "pay us $20 a month"? One of my favorite webcomics has an option to "subscribe", which charges you $3/month, with basically no noticeable benefits (except the money adds up and you can buy stuff from their store if you want with it). I chose to do that because it helps support something I like without an unreasonable price. I think the Pirate Bay was working on something more general where you choose sites you like and a certain monthly allowance is split up between them.
+1 to disabling root login. I use my first name as a user name, and it's a common-ish name, but in the entire time I've had a VPS (a year and a half or so), I've never had an ssh attempt even use my correct name. It's kind of hard to break a password when you don't even know the use name.
I'm surprised I had to scroll down half the page to find this. Seriously, what is everyone so worried about? Just set a secure password and don't even worry about it. Assuming you have a secure password (8 characters, upper and lower case letters and numbers), even a million attempts per second will take over 3 years on average (and ssh won't let you try that often anyway). Bump that up to 12 characters and you're looking at millions of years.
I know I'm more likely to "casually contribute" to Wikipedia on a low-quality article. Maybe the casual contributors just don't see the point of changing anything in an article that's already had a lot of attention?
You seem to be freaking out about this while I'm just answering questions. Have you considered that maybe I'm not that worried about it? Obviously the world isn't ending, my point is that the government has no reason to be efficient, which you've completely ignored by going off on your "OMG CAPITALISTS ARE INSANE" rant.
Legalize drugs and everything else that there's no reason to make illegal (get rid of 90% of the prison population, keeping largely non-violent people away from real criminals)
Focus on rehabilitating prisoners rather than punishing. Also focus on getting criminals jobs. Right now it's really hard for people with a criminal background to get a job (meaning that their easiest source of income is... more crime!)
Probably more could be done, but it's a start, and definitely better than "send everyone to prison forever".
Yes, they do. Fees? Penalties? Taxes? It's time for the "Government is the root of all inefficiency" to die.
There's a difference between making money and taking money.
You could not be more wrong. In most large companies, what passes for efficiency is neither faster nor cheaper. Success is based mostly on being the loudest with the deepest pockets.
What passes for efficiency hardly matters. If a company wastes less money, it will have more money. It's logically impossible for it to be otherwise. And don't start on crap like "But some companies waste money and then their income goes up", if a company spending money causes its income to increase, it obviously wasn't a waste.
Or because it's easier to render a page if you don't care about bugs. I'm guessing IE's score on the ACID tests and speed rending certain pages are related.
Just think about how it works. In a normal company, if you're inefficient, you make less money. The government never makes money, but if it loses more money, it can just raise taxes and hire more people (added benefit: "I created jobs").
Ok seriously, why is everyone focusing on #1? It's a real problem. How big of a deal it is or if it happens on another OS doesn't really interest me. Also, it's hardly the biggest problem. #3 dwarfs the other two issues by far. Like other people said, most people don't install Windows very often, but updates happen all the time. So really, all the stuff about #1, I don't care.
Oh and for the record, software repositories on Linux aren't just for open source software (although Ubuntu and Debian would prefer that this be the case). On Arch, pacman will update proprietary software too, like Skype and VMware (obviously they can only do this with free software).
2. Because I can update my computer all at once, and if I install my preferred OS on a new computer, I can update it in one step. This was a minor point, but I still think it's stupid that Microsoft can't manage this.
3. I don't care whose problem it is. When I tell my computer to update, it updates everything from the kernel to Firefox. You make it sound like there shouldn't be a way to do this. Why not? Compare the process.
Windows:
Realize that a piece of software has been updated
Find its website
Download the installer
Run the installer (making sure to uncheck all of the "Install FREE spyware?" boxes)
Open start menu and delete new icons because Windows programs never sort themselves into simple categories like "Internet", "Office", etc.
Repeat for every newly updated piece of software
Arch:
Run "yaourt -Syu" or "pacman -Syu"
Hit enter
Ubuntu (since some people prefer the GUI way):
Wait for the system tray notifier to say that you need to update
1. Her laptop has Windows XP, mine had Vista (the problem went away with Windows 7 finally).
2. Windows doesn't just do this with service packs. Sometimes normal updates require you to reboot before continuing. And it couldn't be done in one step, but I bet you could run apt-get 10 times (changing the target distro each time) and go from Ubuntu 4.10 to 9.10. Also, even if you couldn't do that on Ubuntu, it's less of a problem because you'd have to be insane to use an old CD when you can download a new one in a couple minutes. Microsoft doesn't exactly distribute new CDs, so if you want to install or reinstall Windows, you use the CD you have, no matter how old it is.
3. If Microsoft tried to set up a software repository, they'd want to charge people a bunch of money to host stuff there and it would be useless.
1. updates that frequently fail to install: My friend's laptop constantly complains about needing ~44 critical updates, but any attempt to install them results in an instant "44 updates failed to install". On my laptop, luckily, most updates installed, but I always had 2 or 3 that wouldn't.
2. Multiple reboots: Install Windows XP (without any service packs) and try updating. Count the number of reboots. Try a similar test on any Linux distro (pick a CD as old as you want), notice how you only need to reboot once to have all of the updates apply.
3. Still needing to update anything else manually: Turn on a computer with Windows that hasn't been used in a year. Install all updates. Now go here: http://www.filehippo.com/updatechecker/. Notice how many installers you need to download and run manually. Start up any arbitrarily old Linux distro and run an update. Notice how everything is up to date (note: By default, most distros don't give you the newest version of most software, but this is intentional and can be worked around by using a distro that doesn't suck).
On a system like Ubuntu, running updates automatically in the background wouldn't be particularly dangerous. That way you only need to pay attention to the updater once every 6 months. After using Linux I don't understand how Windows users put up with the Microsoft updates that frequently fail to install, sometimes require multiple reboots and then still needing to update everything else manually.
You've got to think farther into the future. The next generation of British people is going to hate classical music. What happens when they have kids? An entire generation of teenagers obsessed with classical music. Just imagine the lulz.
As opposed to a standard that you can't standardize on (because only Google can afford the licensing fees). They're pushing back when the fees start, but that doesn't change the fact that small businesses and individual people would have to be insane to start a website using H.264.
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What I'm saying is the difference between taking millions of years and being impossible just doesn't matter. If you have an 8+ character password, the problem doesn't exist.
But why? It's extra effort to set up and a huge annoyance if you don't have your key (hard drive crash, using someone else's computer), and really, it may be much harder, but when you're talking about millions of years to crack an 8 character password, does it really matter?
For me it's just that no ads are acceptable. Why is it that the only options seem to be "look at these annoying ads that we'll make a couple cents from you with" or "pay us $20 a month"? One of my favorite webcomics has an option to "subscribe", which charges you $3/month, with basically no noticeable benefits (except the money adds up and you can buy stuff from their store if you want with it). I chose to do that because it helps support something I like without an unreasonable price. I think the Pirate Bay was working on something more general where you choose sites you like and a certain monthly allowance is split up between them.
+1 to disabling root login. I use my first name as a user name, and it's a common-ish name, but in the entire time I've had a VPS (a year and a half or so), I've never had an ssh attempt even use my correct name. It's kind of hard to break a password when you don't even know the use name.
I'm surprised I had to scroll down half the page to find this. Seriously, what is everyone so worried about? Just set a secure password and don't even worry about it. Assuming you have a secure password (8 characters, upper and lower case letters and numbers), even a million attempts per second will take over 3 years on average (and ssh won't let you try that often anyway). Bump that up to 12 characters and you're looking at millions of years.
I know I'm more likely to "casually contribute" to Wikipedia on a low-quality article. Maybe the casual contributors just don't see the point of changing anything in an article that's already had a lot of attention?
I can understand doing this while an investigation is going on, but years? Seriously?
I think the keyword is "most". As in, comparing current NASA with past NASA.
Hm. I assumed that the updaters didn't rely on any particular kernel version. My mistake :(
Do you need to reboot? I thought you could change the target distro, update, repeat (without reboots in between).
You seem to be freaking out about this while I'm just answering questions. Have you considered that maybe I'm not that worried about it? Obviously the world isn't ending, my point is that the government has no reason to be efficient, which you've completely ignored by going off on your "OMG CAPITALISTS ARE INSANE" rant.
Probably more could be done, but it's a start, and definitely better than "send everyone to prison forever".
Yes, they do. Fees? Penalties? Taxes? It's time for the "Government is the root of all inefficiency" to die.
There's a difference between making money and taking money.
You could not be more wrong. In most large companies, what passes for efficiency is neither faster nor cheaper. Success is based mostly on being the loudest with the deepest pockets.
What passes for efficiency hardly matters. If a company wastes less money, it will have more money. It's logically impossible for it to be otherwise. And don't start on crap like "But some companies waste money and then their income goes up", if a company spending money causes its income to increase, it obviously wasn't a waste.
Or because it's easier to render a page if you don't care about bugs. I'm guessing IE's score on the ACID tests and speed rending certain pages are related.
Just think about how it works. In a normal company, if you're inefficient, you make less money. The government never makes money, but if it loses more money, it can just raise taxes and hire more people (added benefit: "I created jobs").
Yeah, making everyone who ever commits a crime completely insane through years of isolation is a great goal for our justice system..
Ok seriously, why is everyone focusing on #1? It's a real problem. How big of a deal it is or if it happens on another OS doesn't really interest me. Also, it's hardly the biggest problem. #3 dwarfs the other two issues by far. Like other people said, most people don't install Windows very often, but updates happen all the time. So really, all the stuff about #1, I don't care.
Oh and for the record, software repositories on Linux aren't just for open source software (although Ubuntu and Debian would prefer that this be the case). On Arch, pacman will update proprietary software too, like Skype and VMware (obviously they can only do this with free software).
3. I don't care whose problem it is. When I tell my computer to update, it updates everything from the kernel to Firefox. You make it sound like there shouldn't be a way to do this. Why not? Compare the process.
Windows:
Arch:
Ubuntu (since some people prefer the GUI way):
Or you could be an outlier. Also, if you consider working 95% of the time to good, I hope you never write an OS.
1. Her laptop has Windows XP, mine had Vista (the problem went away with Windows 7 finally).
2. Windows doesn't just do this with service packs. Sometimes normal updates require you to reboot before continuing. And it couldn't be done in one step, but I bet you could run apt-get 10 times (changing the target distro each time) and go from Ubuntu 4.10 to 9.10. Also, even if you couldn't do that on Ubuntu, it's less of a problem because you'd have to be insane to use an old CD when you can download a new one in a couple minutes. Microsoft doesn't exactly distribute new CDs, so if you want to install or reinstall Windows, you use the CD you have, no matter how old it is.
3. If Microsoft tried to set up a software repository, they'd want to charge people a bunch of money to host stuff there and it would be useless.
1. updates that frequently fail to install: My friend's laptop constantly complains about needing ~44 critical updates, but any attempt to install them results in an instant "44 updates failed to install". On my laptop, luckily, most updates installed, but I always had 2 or 3 that wouldn't.
2. Multiple reboots: Install Windows XP (without any service packs) and try updating. Count the number of reboots. Try a similar test on any Linux distro (pick a CD as old as you want), notice how you only need to reboot once to have all of the updates apply.
3. Still needing to update anything else manually: Turn on a computer with Windows that hasn't been used in a year. Install all updates. Now go here: http://www.filehippo.com/updatechecker/. Notice how many installers you need to download and run manually. Start up any arbitrarily old Linux distro and run an update. Notice how everything is up to date (note: By default, most distros don't give you the newest version of most software, but this is intentional and can be worked around by using a distro that doesn't suck).
On a system like Ubuntu, running updates automatically in the background wouldn't be particularly dangerous. That way you only need to pay attention to the updater once every 6 months. After using Linux I don't understand how Windows users put up with the Microsoft updates that frequently fail to install, sometimes require multiple reboots and then still needing to update everything else manually.
You've got to think farther into the future. The next generation of British people is going to hate classical music. What happens when they have kids? An entire generation of teenagers obsessed with classical music. Just imagine the lulz.
As opposed to a standard that you can't standardize on (because only Google can afford the licensing fees). They're pushing back when the fees start, but that doesn't change the fact that small businesses and individual people would have to be insane to start a website using H.264.