…just this guy, you know.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: May 7th, 2023

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    • plate number is tied to a VIN which describes the make/model. (sir, this is a wendys toyota. where is the honda?)

    • replies not required from the plate - plate has a specialized qrcode printed across the entire plate (infrared reflector?) with an identifier (lic + other public info?) and signed with an RSA keypair - reader can authenticate the information and a qrcode read counts as a verifiably good read

    • …or just ship RFID tags in the yearly inspection stickers - same cryptographic concept

    none of this is hard or costly. only impediment is public rejection and we all know that can be managed.









  • That’s security through obscurity. It’s not that Linux has better security, only that its already tiny desktop market share around 2003 was even smaller because of different variations.

    no, its absolutely not. its choosing software components based on known security vulns or limiting exposure to a suite of suspected or established attack vectors. its absolutely not security through obscurity. these are fundamental choices made every day by engineers and sysadmins everywhere as part of the normal design, implementation and maintenance process. there is nothing “obscure” about selecting for certain attributes and against others. this is how its done.

    perhaps you disagree with this.

    That’s again blaming the Microsoft user for not understanding computers but not blaming the Linux user for running as root.

    ? its not the users job to understand OS security. to expect otherwise is unrealistic. also, virtually no “average” linux user, then or now, ran/runs as root. the “root X” issue related to related to requiring XWindows to run with and maintain root privs., not the user interacting with X running as root. it was much more common in the XP era to find XP users running as administrator than a “Linux user for running as root” because of deep, baked-in design choices made by microsoft for windows XP that were, at a fundamental level, incompatable with a secure system - microsofts poor response to their own tech debt broke everything “NT” about XP… which is exactly the point I am trying to make. I am not sure your statement has any actual relation to what I said.


  • So you blame Microsoft for allowing users to disable security features but don’t blame Linux for allowing it also?

    I am saying that I have far fewer privilege escalation issues/requirements on a typical linux distro - almost as if a reasonable security framework was in place early on and mature enough to matter to applications and users.

    we can get into the various unix-ish SNAFUs like root X, but running systems with non-monolithic desktops/interfaces (I had deep core software and version choices) helped to blunt exposures in ways that were just not possible on XP.

    we are talking about XP here, a chimeric release that only a DOS/Win combo beats for hackery. XP was basically the worst possible expression of the NT ethos and none of NTs underlaying security features were of practical value when faced with production demands of the OS and the inability of MS to manage a technology transition more responsibly.

    now, if you ask me what I think of current windows… well, I still dont persnally use it, but for a multitude of reasons that are not “security absolutely blows”.

    apologies for the wall-o-text, apparently I have freshly unearthed XP trauma to unload. :-/

    so, hows your day going? got some good family / self time lined up for the weekend?



  • gotta disagree. microsoft’s vaunted API/ABI compatability combined with often broken process isolation made it an absolute mess. security features that should have protected users and systems were routinely turned off to allow user space programs to function (DEP anyone?).

    SP2/3 taught users one thing only - if a program breaks, start rolling back system hardening. I cannot think of one XP machine outside of some tightly regulated environments (and a limited smattering of people that 1. knew better and 2. put up with the pain) that did not run their users as a local administrative equiv. to “avoid issues”.

    if user space is allowed to make kernel space that vulnerable, then the system is broken.


  • XP before SP1 was a security nightmare

    To be fair, Linux was a security nightmare before 2000 too. Linux didn’t have ACL’s until 2002.

    yes, but XP at any SP is an unfixable mess compared to virtually any OS in the past 20 years (Temple OS excluded?), ACLs or not

    not suggesting that you intimated otherwise, but its important to remind myself just how bad every XP instance really was.