I'm sure I'm feeding a troll now, your post seems intent on twisting things around in order to make your convoluted point.

The whole "under 1024 is safe" is generally regarded for connecting *to* ports under 1024, not receiving connections from them. Yes, some services (NFS in particular) want to trust incoming connections from 1024 but they're in the minority. The most common case is trusting a service listening on ports less than 1024 as being set up by the admin and not some random user. But you knew this.

You also know that if you've got admin access, you *are* root. This also is not news, but you seem to feel that I'm concerned that you can sudo from your own system and make it look like you're trustworthy on my network. If I was so inclined as to trust port numbers alone (and for the record, I don't trust incoming port numbers at all), you can bet I'd also be whitelisting IPs and MACs at the switch level (i.e. locking MACs to physical switch ports) and have alerting whenever a non-sanctioned connection was made.

That would be, however, a very special network topology and not something I'd personally admin. Nice straw man, though.

Wait: ejabberd wants my http and https ports in addition to running jabber on 5222? no thanks. It sounds like ejabberd breaks the entire UNIX concept as well. Give me some CGIs to run through my own damn httpd instead of inventing another one and get on with the business of running jabberd.

I know you didn't write it, but jeez... why not include a telnetd or sshd in the binary as well?

I'm not sure what you're trying to prove here. sudo won't let you run anything it's not configured to let your user or group run. If you're allowed to sudo as a non-admin user then either your system or your admin is broken. It's not "cargo cult" security at all.

Why are you running a jabberd on a port other than 5222 (and specifically below 1024)?

No, no they're not.

Thin clients and network booting are still very much alive and well. Test systems are largely virtualized now, but network booting still has its place in homogenous networks or office/classroom settings where you want a unified filesystem layout. A common /usr is an easy way to do this.

I don't know much about systemd at all, but I do recognize how bad an idea it is to make such huge changes quickly and without much apparent thought at being able to continue to do the things that could have easily been done before.

I stopped driving 2 years ago, voluntarily. My SUV cost me around $800 a month in replacement costs. Another $200 in maintenance. I was burning through $12,000 a year in gas. I spent an average of 1000 hours a year in the car, for work, for groceries, for fun. 999 of those hours were spent focused on the road. I hate talking on the phone while driving.

Consider my annual total: about $25,000 + 1000 hours of my time. For the "privilege" to sit in Chicago traffic.

I'm a consultant. I now use UberX every day. I also use public transportation when I'm not in a rush or when someone isn't paying me to swing by.

I spent about $5000 a year on UberX. $100 a week. While I am being driven around, I can respond to emails, make phone calls. I bill for that time. When a customer wants me to visit them, I pass the UberX fee on to them plus 50%. No one scoffs at it. Some customers will realize the cost of me visiting them is more expensive than just consulting over the phone.

I figure I'm $20,000 ahead in vehicle costs, plus I've literally gained another 600-700 hours of phone and email consulting time a year. Call it $40,000 ahead.

I don't take cabs, because they don't like to come to where my HQ is (ghetto neighborhood). UberX comes 24/7, within minutes.

My little sister had an emergency surgery a few months ago. I immediately hired an UberX driver, who took me from the office, to the hospital. He waited. We then took my sister to her apartment to get her cats and clothes, then he took us to the pharmacy. After, he drove us to our dad's house to drop her off, in the suburbs of Chicago. Then he drove me back to work. 3 hours, $90. I can't get a cab to wait even 10 minutes while I drop off a package at UPS. Forget about them taking credit cards.

UberX charges my Paypal account and they're off. If they're busy, they charge a surcharge. I can pick it or take public transportation.

I know why the Chicago Taxi authorities want Uber gone. But a guy like me is their best customer. Next year I'll budget $10,000 a year for UberX, and it will make my life so much more enjoyable and profitable.

Driving yourself around is dead. It's inefficient. Ridesharing is "libertarian" because it is truly freeing.

I've written a little Android app that updates a webpage with your location. I've thought that people with an expensive sports car might like to use it by leaving it in their glove box when their car is serviced, and seeing if the garage takes it on a "Ferris Bueller" style jaunt around town.

I didn't think this was possible (as I run NoScript, Firefox and Linux), but apparently it might be, under IE on Windows, with WMI.

var locator = new ActiveXObject("WbemScripting.SWbemLocator");
var service = locator.ConnectServer(".");

// Get the info
var properties = service.ExecQuery("SELECT * FROM Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration");
var e = new Enumerator (properties);

Jesus, that looks horrible. I would hope that you have to add sites to your Local Intranet zone or whatever it's called these days before it'll work.

Your MAC address isn't visible outside your local subnet. Slashdot has no way of knowing your MAC address. (Unless perhaps you're using IPv6 without privacy extensions enabled, but I'm guessing Slashdot is years away from IPv6.)

I've set up my entire business around Redmine. There are some pretty impressive plugins to handle blogs, CMS, CRM and even a WYSIWIG editor to help "normal" people format tables, lists and text but who would normally be put off by trying to learn Textile. SCM and issue tracking is integrated, there are time trackers and forums, GANTT charting... it's a great resource.

Best of all, it's database agnostic and open-source.

Interesting - so an amnesiac would also be amnesic? Are there any other words that have similar examples like this?

I think we need an OS written entirely in Java...

The Amnesic Operating System. Shouldn't it be amnesiac? Or is this another English/American English difference like aluminium?

And it's Slashdotted.

And how do you know where anonymous money has come from?