Until you can name all hundred thousand of the "planets" in our solar system, we won't be using your definition of planet.

Why do you insist 3rd graders should be able to recite all hundred thousand planets from memory yet refuse to do so yourself even with the Internet as your reference?

Yes, that is an excellent reason to add even more vulnerability vectors!

At least when it comes to the kernel and networking, I have iptables in between.
With SystemD starting the network stack before starting anything else (including iptables), I can no longer even firewall off potential exploitable services.

Too bad they didn't bother to include a functional services manager inside the systemd "service manager" that could bring up iptables before the network stack, perhaps using some dependency based system.

But I fully understand how no mere mortal can wrap their head around the concept of renaming a symlink so iptables rules are prefixed with a lower number than your network services and thus load in a plain clear obvious order.

Maybe one day computers will be able to know "10" comes before "20" without 250 megs of additional software. One can dream at least.

According to the slashdot editors, the next thing is clearly debiand!

Apparently it is to be the systemd module which uses the Debian logo/filter on front page /. articles to clearly indicate a story about generic linux software made by a guy at redhat that emulates behavior in microsoft windows...

After that they will install the new shutupd module, that does nothing but write "Woah slow down there cowboy, you last posted 140*10^12 minutes ago, try again later to give others a chance" to stdout - before repeatedly restarting itself for no good reason, as every proper init service boot manager network shell app should do

Same reason kids get sent to soccer lessons or swimming lessons or piano lessons the kid didn't want to take.

In the above example, it is the parents "programming" the kids behavior (even if that programming results in the child acting out later in life, as such actions can cause)

In the AI example, the essence is the same. An AI would have a goal because we programmed such a goal into it.

That isn't to say an AI must be programmed with a goal, it fully depends on how we go about constructing a given AI.

If the AI is I because we are simulating a brain, nervous system, and hormonal systems along with simulated inputs and outputs - that AI is likely to have goals (assuming it isn't driven insane by gaps in our knowledge in said simulation of course)

If the AI was brought forth in a brute-force manor or comes about from emergent properties, it is impossible to guess or even relate to its thinking to assume.
It may have goals similar to how we do. It may have goals brought about by completely different emergent properties. It may have no goals but what we program, or even no goals at all.
It's impossible to say without some knowledge of the process creating the AI, and at this point in time no such thing exists to have knowledge about.

But we know we humans have goals (or at least some of us), so if an AI is a strict simulation of a human, it will have goals just like we do. So we know for a fact it is possible for a thinking conscious being to have goals (humans being the evidence)

We don't know as sure if it's possible to not have goals in such a situation, but so far there is no evidence it isn't possible, so it is quite premature to rule it out at our current stage of understanding.

Presumably. This just means I will need the company to pay more than previously for the same service.

Proven fact however, the "bad guys" make much more money from their crimes than our company does legally. Rest assured that all the "bad guys" that matter already have the resources to pay for this advanced notice and nearly all will do so if they somehow are not already.

Only the script-kiddies living in the basement that mow lawns for their income will actually be locked out. Any serious actor will not.

Microsoft just made it a priority to release patch and thus exploit details to the blackhats ahead of most of their legitimate customers.

*slow golf clap*

If you are going to help the "bad guys" at the expense of the "good guys", why bother patching any exploit ever?? The exact same end result, but less time, money, and effort needed by MS employees.

Oh great! So now instead of an eerie dead section of ocean, we will have eerie sections full of zombie fish, zombie lobsters, zombie crabs, and of course the kraken.

*Goes off to stockpile silver tipped harpoons for our new three hundred leagues under the apocalypse*

He made an awesome minecraft thing instead of curing cancer likely for the same reason we are posting to slashdot instead of curing cancer :P

Don't we all.
I too wish I had the knowledge, talent, and energy to do something world changing and/or useful to many - but alas I am not as learned, intelligent, or capable of doing so (and at my age it's mostly all down hill from here)

And although I have the knowledge to build an ACU and simple CPU from the gate level up, as well as love minecraft as much as the next geek, I'm both not certain I could actually do it in redstone nor have the energy and time to try and find out.

Living vicariously through people such as Koala_Steamed is as close as I likely will get, but the awe and impressiveness of their effort is still great for me, likely only to be topped by trying and succeeding at the task myself.

If their creation has that much of a positive effect on me, I can hardly imagine how much of one it has on them for being among those who have actually built them. That's plenty of good reason to do so there alone.

The last time I anthropomorphized a program it got quite angry at me.

Mrs Compiler wouldn't let me sleep in C: for a week, and even then she wouldn't let me declare unsigned variable types for the rest of the month!

So bitcoin is bad because the metal presses that stamp out coins and the printing presses and cutters that make bills all run on magical unicorn farts instead of electricity?

Try three, and yes not only do I think it is fair, but clearly you too think it is fair by your actions (or you're just admitting to being a parasite criminal stealing my work... either way you look pretty bad)

To claim you don't think it is fair, you need to send me my first payment, and continue sending me payments every month for the rest of your life.
Until those checks clear, you're just being a lying hypocrite.

In fact, you seem to be arguing that even ONE payment is too much, let alone multiple ones.
So I thank you for your permission to take anything you make for free - or I would if you actually made anything.

As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!

How can you distinguish one thing from another thing if you can't look at either of the things?

The only way to prevent "10000 packets in a second were sent, but my connection can only transfer 1000 packets in a second" (aka a DoS attack) is to not have those extra 9000 packets sent in that particular second.

If they aren't sent, you can't see them (they aren't there to see!), so you have exactly Zero variables to use for decision making upon.

If they are sent so you can make a choice based on some characteristic of the packet, then the packet must be sent, and you have failed in your goal of not having the packet sent.

Worse in a typical DDoS, any characteristic of 1 packet will not match the same characteristic of the other 8999 packets.
So not only is your choice of "do I want to receive this packet" too late after it has already been sent and received, but any choice you might decide to make will also not apply towards helping the problem in the future.

Fortunately science doesn't much care about our definition of life (or the lack of definition, in this case)

But discovering a thing acting similar to a virus but doesn't operate by any of the methods we know would still be an amazing discovery and a wealth of knowledge to research.

Discovering a thing similar in structure to a crystal where no known methods of crystal growth are apparent would also be an amazing discovery and a wealth of knowledge to research.

Discovering a chemical reaction that is different from any known chemical reaction would too be an amazing discovery and a wealth of knowledge to research.

History shows us both the individual cells as well as the larger organism, not to mention the cell behavior, higher structures formed out of the cells, and the organism as a whole will all be fascinating and a wealth of knowledge to research.

If any of the things on your list was discovered and found to not work in a way we already know about, someone somewhere on our planet will jump at the chance to research it - life or not.
And the best part, even if that would come to be and we do discover any of those things completely different from what we know, it will matter as little afterwards as it did before if they are called life or not.

More knowledge being gained is always a good thing, since the worst case is no gain but no losses and the best case is huge gains with no loses.

Gaining just some knowledge instead of much more than some knowledge is not a valid reason to avoid learning.

Personally I haven't made it to stateless yet. People still address me as CDIR, but your point still remains.

Or put another way:
"Oh no, Windows includes an "Administrators" group by default that grants superuser privileges to users in it! And an existing administrator could possibly add themselves to that group and gain administrator access!"

Agreed, stupidest vulnerability ever.