Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 17:28:53 +0200 From: Nils Holland <nils@daemon.tisys.org> To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: The road ahead? Message-ID: <20020516172853.A7750@daemon.tisys.org> In-Reply-To: <20020516151801.A47974@energyhq.homeip.net>; from flynn@energyhq.homeip.net on Thu, May 16, 2002 at 03:18:01PM %2B0200 References: <20020516004909.A9808@daemon.tisys.org> <20020516151801.A47974@energyhq.homeip.net>
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On Thu, May 16, 2002 at 03:18:01PM +0200, Miguel Mendez stood up and spoke: > > Create an idiot proof OS and the world will create a better idiot. Here > I see people tend to either think that computers are a tool and should > be accesible to everyone, or, like a friend of mine says: an internet > license should be required. I partially agree that people should know a > bit of what they're doing when they carelessly plug their computer to > the net. I think we're all a bit tired of apache logs filled with nimda, > code red, etc attacks. IMHO this is the fault of not only OS vendors but > sometimes the press too, who create a false impression that security is > something secondary. This reminds me of two things: 1) I have often helped people with their computer problems. If their machine no longer boots, and it turns out that the hard disk has died, I figure that it'd be a good idea for people not to exchange it themselves. Someone who knows about such stuff should probably do it, and I don't have anything against people calling me if they are having such problems. *BUT* it occurs now and then that people want me to help them with stupid stuff. Someone would call me up and say: "I just scanned this image, and now I cannot change the background color. Could you do this for me?" Well, of course I could, but obviously I won't. If people buy computers, I guess they should at least spend some time getting familiar with the basics, and reading the fucking manual. This problem, however, could also be blamed to the software vendors, as they no longer seem to supply real manuals with their product. The online help, however, is always your friend ;-) 2) About security: I recently set up another FreeBSD box. It had Apache installed, and when I initially connected it to the Internet via ppp / modem, I had no firewall or protection in place. Now I found it very interesting how many NIMDA request strings I found in my Apache logs after being connected for only an hour - and this when using a modem with a dynmaic IP address. I guess that if I find ten our so NIMDA entries in my logs after having been connected for only an hour, a whole lot of Windows machines will still have to be infected, and that *months* after patches started to be available. This probably proves that many people don't really know what they are doing. Greetings Nils -- Nils Holland <nils@daemon.tisys.org> Ti Systems - http://www.tisys.org Addicted to computing since 1987 High on FreeBSD since 1996 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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