They haven't reached the magic number 36, but they are seriously working on it. I figure another 10 years.

Or are you going to sit there and pretend that there isn't a whole lot of opportunism going on?

I think that the Convention of States is the least-worst answer.

There are two kinds of people who run servers without firewalls: Nitwits and professionals.

Nitwits do it because they think they don't need a firewall and it gives them a bit more performance or whatever.

Professionals do it when they know the conditions are right to justify it and they've made a risk assessment that confirms they are right. For example you run a high-traffic server that does exactly one thing on one port and the server software is robust - a firewall wouldn't do you any good, it's just additional security in case you open a port you didn't want to or such.

This is why these app developers fail where Apple succeeds. They create apps for an environment they don't get. Apple is very much about this attention to detail in everything they do, and it's a huge part of why they are successful.

The "economics get tighter" argument is a strawman. Apple users are not the kind of people who drive to a different supermarket because the tomatoes are 5 cents cheaper there.

Which is why you can't buy a cable which lets you do so.

"the foam is so efficient in dissipating heat that the exterior surface temperature never rises above 50 C (122 F) in normal use."

Hey, I can glue a chunk of styrofoam on a CPU, and the outside of it won't even get that hot. I wouldn't use that fact to claim that styrofoam makes a great heatsink, though. Quite the opposite.

Duh?

I think the question is whether or not you trust iptables to be the firewall, or whether or not you have a dedicated device as a firewall.

  Sadly, as a security device, dedicated firewalls are their own can of worms. For example, firmware updates for dedicated firewall devices are often much less frequently issued, and the update process is typically far more painful than you'd see as a mindful admin for a Linux box. Many "dedicated firewall" devices are little more than Linux + iptables + proprietary interface anway, meaning you aren't protected at all if there's a common kernel flaw found. Lastly, being heavily stripped down, you have no way to audit them to see if they *are* compromised, because half your toolchain is missing even if you do have shell access, even though, as a full-fledged, turing complete computing device, they are quite useful to a black hat.

All that said, I do frequently use dedicated firewalls, but also use locked down Linux servers interchangeably. Given the 10+ years of excellent security track record I've maintained going this route, I'm pretty confident this doesn't mean I'm incompetent, as would seem to be the opinion around here.

I am a bit paranoid about security, disabling password access anywhere possible, relying on default-deny firewalls, using port-knocking & non-standard ports for SSH, not using non-ssl connections for *anything* administrative, VPNs required for access to insecure services like IPMI, etc.

Exactly, WP is an encyclopedia, academics do not cite encyclopedias, never have, and most probably never will.

Time shift physical media? What's that?

You think that people are looking for a 100% technical perfect solution that satisfies every nerd desire ever.

But non-geeks don't think like that, and politicians especially not. They live in an analog world. Where adding "murder = crime" to the lawbook does not remove all murders the same way that adding "deny from 192.168.0.2" to a firewall ruleset kills all packets from that source. They understand that their solutions are approximations and are full of holes.

To someone who understands the world as non-digital, filtering by source IP is perfectly fine even if he knows that VPNs exist. Because he also knows that 99% of the users don't use VPNs.

And especially for Google: They already do a lot of ad-related stuff based on your geolocation, so there's no technical reason why they can't show you the filtered or the unfiltered list based on that.

You're such a git. If you really think that Germany alone caused WW1, you've been spoon-fed too much propaganda. Yes, Germany started WW1, totally true. But at that time, half of Europe was waiting for an opportunity to kick this or that neighbours ass, which is largely why everyone jumped at the chance to have a war. At any other time in Europe's history, the assassination of some successor of some second-rate country would've barely made front-page news, let alone cause any diplomatic trouble.

"git" is not a strong enough word for you, but I can't think of a better one right now. Maybe you could try history and actual arguments instead of ad hominem attacks. And if you insist on attacking people you don't even know, you could try to at least make it somewhat funny or interesting instead of just boring and stupid.

France and England barely avoided a war between themselves in 1904 and forged an alliance that Russia joined in 1907. You could have heard about it in history class if you hadn't been asleep, it was called the Entente and if you open your mouth to talk about WW1 and you forget to mention the Entente, you prove to everyone with some education that you're an idiot.

Together with everyones colonialism and increasing tensions due to colonial wars and growing military everywhere you got a complex diplomatic situation with several secret pacts (Italia and France, 1902, for example) that creates a situation that even serious historians call a powder keg and that they largely agree would have blown up sooner or later.

You attempt to simplify complex history to one source and one reason and one actor is typical of american movies where you always need a hero and a villain to tell the story, but it very, very rarely is appropriate to real life.

Yes. Most people don't care very much what their friends do as a job, and rarely know more about it than their profession. In reverse, they don't care about private life of people they work with.

Just two examples: When I talk to Russians, they are astonished that people would bring their wife or husbands to business events at all, while here in Germany it is normal that some business events explicitly tell that you can bring your significant other, if you want. Russians say "wtf?" if I tell them about things like "bring your kid to work" days.

About Putin: There was a portrait about him in a german magazine recently, listing his divorce, his fondness of hunting and ice hockey and a couple other things. For me there's nothing special about such a portrait of a politician. Russian reaction: "wtf it's his private life, why do they care?"

You don't even begin to understand what the difference between private life and business is.

Ever seen a drunk driver going REALLY slow?