Linux and Politics

I've noticed that to some the typical Linux enthusiast is a Birkenstocks wearing unemployed hippy with a radical political perspective -- somewhere between anarchy and Marxist ideology. Truth is, like any group there are some who do fit the stereotype. Yet, digging down into the opinions on the net I see that there is no *typical* political persuasion of the Linux enthusiast -- we are really all over the map. One thing that is true though, as a group we are collectively smarter :-).

By John at 2004-12-19 07:15 | John's blog | login or register to post comments

Of course, the typical Window

Of course, the typical Windows user clicks on at least 5 banner ads a day, knowingly installs (manually clicking "Yes, install...") i piece of malicious software a week, runs no antivirus software, firewall, or spyware protection, and 1 of them falls for a spam scam every 10 minutes.

We are not talking about geniouses here.

But you see, the beauty of Linux is, you don't have to remember to install any of that stuff (the spam is another matter). You can leave an unprotected linux box on the net 100% of the time in relative safety.

A couple guys at Berkley did an experiment a while back, they put an unprotected windows 98se (still the most popular M$ OS out there) on the net with a high-speed cinnection to see how long it would take to become a spam sending, virus spreading cyber-zombie, and then how long it wouild take to become unusable. (somewhere on Yahoo news)

Less than 2 hours.

This scares me.

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Deep Thought was wrong. The Answer isn't 42, it's DSL!

By SaidinUnleashed at Mon, 2004-12-20 01:42 | login or register to post comments

Honeypots

http://news.com.com/Linux+lasting+longer+against+Net+attacks/2100-7349_3-5501278.html?part=rss&tag=5501278&subj=news.7349.5

Here is a story on a similar thing. They said the Windows networks were measured in hours, with several being compromised in minutes! And two in Brazil lasting months... I guess the hackers don't think Brazil has anything to go after.

Of 19 linux systems, 3 Redhat 7.3 and 1 redhat 9.0 and 3 Solaris systems were compromised (2 of the RH ones by guessing the passwords - they'd used easy passwords)

The longest lasting was a RH 7.3 that wasn't compromised after 9 months.

Most common successful attacks were password guessing and exploits against HTTPS

By Anonymous at Fri, 2004-12-24 14:25 | login or register to post comments

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