You are wrong, first in your use of the word "other", implying that mac filtering is a security measure. It's really not that easy to get into a properly secured network.

The only reason you don't see a lot of people jumping up and down to correct you is that it's not necessarily a wise thing to admit, on a widely read message board, that you have invited yourself into a network where you were not welcome. Some of us, if completely honest, would have to tell you, "I have been that guy, MAC spoofing was so trivial I found it worthwhile, and any serious security precaution would have turned me away."

5 digit UID ... trolling?

Well, let's try it the other way. "Assume your institution will never leak your hash, and rate limits at exactly the thresholds you find appropriate."

"OK. I'm going to keep using mittens22 as my password and sleep like a baby." It doesn't make for much of a discussion.

You're probably right that password handling is more important than password choice, but just as sysadmins ultimately can't make their users choose good passwords, users can't make their sysadmins handle them correctly. "Vote with your feet" counts for something, but not when it's your workplace, and you don't always know how badly your passwords are being mismanaged behind the scenes. So you do what you can.

Well, that takes care of part of the problem. However, in that scenario, a good password could (if your institution at least does good hashing) mean more time between database compromise and the compromise of your account - time in which you could change your password.

AdFree is effective and simple, and I would recommend it for pretty much anyone, but for more aggressive control I like DroidWall. It's a front end for iptables, and grants network access on a UID basis. Since each app is given a UID, this effectively means it works on a per-app basis, and it lists app names in the interface.

Fair warning: While whitelisting is a superior strategy to blacklisting, it can bite you by blocking core functionality like updates, and it's not always clear what needs to be unblocked to restore functionality. Fortunately it does logging, so you can turn on logging, perform the action that's not working, and check the log to see what hit the firewall.

It does entail some work, at least while you're still breaking in your phone, which is why I recommend it only if you're feeling "aggressive". AdFree is easy and practical.

I think "fatal" means the wound is the cause of death, regardless of whether death was a certain outcome of the wound. I'm less sure about "mortally wounded", but I take it to mean exactly the same thing, with the slightly different connotation that the speaker is asserting that the wound is certain to be fatal, although he may not know for sure. I definitely wouldn't take, "He's mortally wounded," to mean, "I think he might pull through if we can get him to a doctor."

"Fatally wounding" does not necessarily mean "it could have lived", but it does leave room for that interpretation. Of course, I think he was just illustrating the distinction, not attempting to make the first stab in an etymological knife fight.

They definitely do it. My girlfriend just bought a Fusion (marketed by AT&T as a pay-as-you-go thing) with the sole intention of ditching the sim card that came with it and using it on her existing AT&T voice only plan. Suddenly they tell her she has a data plan, and she's going to pay for it monthly. We're still working out exactly how to react to that, but yeah, they're apparently serious about it.

Honestly, when I heard the term, I thought the character was joking. It dawned on me a few minutes later that perhaps that was intended to be the actual name of the stuff, but I was too busy watching blue people ride dragons through canyons to be upset about it.

Always?

I can't speak for developer goals, but that's not why I use it. I use it so that I never have to have a root shell open, which I might carelessly leave open, which is a small (depending on context) security vulnerability, and a large safety problem, since I could (again, carelessly) type the next few commands as root by accident.

Anyway, making any program setuid root increases the chances that anyone that can run it could get unlimited root access. sudo in particular has a history of problems with the "limited access" use case. It tends to give away more root than you might think, especially if the user is inclined to persist at trying to get it.

I'll grant that if you trust someone not to try to exploit your system, but you just don't think they need full root access, sudo is a convenient way to give them just what they need. I disagree that that's the "whole point", though. My policy is not to give out sudo privileges (however limited) to anyone I wouldn't trust with full root access.

I agree with the sentiment that preventing autocomplete is stupid behavior. I find it mildly offensive that the browser enforces this, without option to turn it off, since it is supposed to be acting on my behalf. "Fix it yourself" is generally not a very helpful answer. However, in this case, I eventually did fix it myself (after I read how).

There are bookmarklets floating around which will force autocomplete for a page, but you have to load the page, then hit the bookmarklet, and it's not (that I've seen) a 100% solution. Better than nothing, though, and it works as a non-admin user.

Ultimately, to remove this behavior, I ended up altering a system file. I have to edit it again every time I upgrade Firefox, but that's part of the documentation for my system, now. On Gentoo, running FF 3.6.20, the file is /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9.2/components/nsLoginManager.js. There is a function named "_isAutocompleteDisabled". Alter it to unconditionally return false, and the effect is that autocomplete is never disabled.

That's just my system, and I obviously use a pretty old version of Firefox. If you figure out where the current version of Firefox keeps the equivalent files on your OS of choice, and grep around for "isAutocompleteDisabled", I think you'll likely find the right place to hack the newest versions.

I am very pleased with the results. Autocomplete is no longer conditionaly, and I am never bothered by a site's attempt to prevent it. On the other hand, I'd be even more pleased to find a solution which is as effective, but stays within the confines of "normal" user configuration - an extension, or greasemonkey script, what-have-you.

We seem to love us some comma splices, though. :P

The post to which you responded directly addressed that point.

Did I miss a distinction?

This topic got me thinking about it, so I installed CUPS. I have a crappy little android phone. It doesn't even run CyanogenMod. I have a debian chroot environment on the sdcard. CUPS installed, and the service started, and localhost:631 shows the usual page. I haven't added a printer, yet, but I'll try to test that part out soon.

So my direct answer to your last question is that not a lot of porting is necessary. CUPS seems to work. Why isn't it part of the base system? Why doesn't every app have a "print" button? Either they ought to or the answer eludes me at this hour.

I will throw out the caveat that really only network printers are compatible with this setup. There is an obvious problem when you look at a printer, the accompanying USB cable, and a phone. But then, I don't think a lot of people have just a printer and a phone. If your USB printer is attached to a computer, the computer can take care of the network end of things. (More CUPS.)

I have to disagree. I saw that strip first, and I got it, and I appreciated the concept of the joke, and generally I appreciate Dilbert ... but that's just not funny. Later, when I saw the XKCD panel with the comment about rolling a die, I laughed, because it's funny. Subjective, though, I guess.

Well ... no, it doesn't. I'm not a physicist, but I assume they've got a bit more backing up the uncertainty principle than, "We can't seem to get these two measurements at the same time, therefore no one ever will." (Note that I think you're less wrong than the post to which you replied, but more worth correcting on this somewhat philosophical point.)

As someone who fucked up at work yesterday (and heard about it today), I smiled at this comment. :)