[ale] Moving httpd to different port (was AT&T Broadband blockinginbound http?)

Joseph A. Knapka jknapka at earthlink.net
Fri Aug 10 12:40:21 EDT 2001


Michael Perigard wrote:
> 
> What ever happened to the idea of a written exam to get into the internet.
> Failing the exam automagically signs you up for a lifetime membership to
> AOL. I mean, remember the good ol' days when your dialup account included
> a shell on your ISPs server? The government shouldnt be spending all this
> money on an infrastructure defense program without spending money on
> educating the people. Its the ignorant users that have allowed this to
> spread and survive (or should I say thrive?), correct? The idea of dumping
> money into a police force to fight a drug problem without spending money
> on educating youth about drugs - comes to mind.
> 
> Not to try and take the blame off of M$, but their product isn't to blame.
> We dont lynch the ISC when an exploit in BIND is found. (I know thats a
> stretch, but hear me out.) Sure their products have bugs, but we've
> already mentioned how they were quick to respond with patches, and even
> admit when those patches arent working. The blame should be put on the
> people who purchased their fancy 'appliance' and hooked it up to their
> fancy fast internet connection without realising the amount of time and
> effort it takes to have a computer on the internet 24/7. You don't buy a
> house without walking around it first, figuring out if all your doors and
> windows have locks, and learning how to use them. The internet is a
> community, and the more people that enter the community ignorant and
> apathetic, the more worms and virii are going to thrive, and we have noone
> to blame except for the community itself for not educating its new users.
> The software vendors (for creating a product that installs and runs IIS
> when you, say, install minesweeper), the hardware vendors (hey,
> its people like Dell and Compaq who advertise how easy it is to 'plug and
> play' your new computer into your fast ethernet connection with no
> knowledge of what youre actually doing), the new users themselves, and
> those of us that know better are all to blame.

OTOH, the desktop PC hardware and software vendors' largest market,
by far, is that segment of the population that doesn't -want- to
be educated. They just want to turn the thing on, and have it work,
the same way their car or TV does. That's the segment M$ panders
to, and that being the case, there is absolutely no excuse for
any version of Windows not to be shipped in a "secure by default"
configuration. The fact that I can install NT4 on a machine
and immediately be able to browse the C: drive with administrator
privileges from another machine is practically criminal. I hope
W2K et al have addressed this issue; I haven't had any experience
with more "bleeding edge :-P" versions of Windows.

Regards,

-- Joe Knapka
"You know how many remote castles there are along the gorges? You
 can't MOVE for remote castles!" -- Lu Tze re. Uberwald
// Linux MM Documentation in progress:
// http://home.earthlink.net/~jknapka/linux-mm/vmoutline.html
2nd Lbl A + 1 = 2nd Pause 2nd Prt GTO 2 R/S
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