Sounds exactly like the buzz about Obama back in about 2007...

So, you don't use a club on your steering wheel, you don't bother hiding valuables in your trunk, leaving them in plain view, and, really, since a professional can get in the car anyway, just leave the doors unlocked. It's all smoke and mirrors anyway.

If a malicious attacker/user is portscanning your system and finds that port 22 is open, they're going to assume an ssh attack. If they find port 1234, they may move on to another target that has port 22 open instead. Of course, if they're really after you, and not just throwing a wide net, then such shenanigans aren't going to stop them, though it might slow them down for a little while while they try to figure out what's listening on which non-standard port.

If a script kiddie is doing the same, most likely port 1234 would be enough to fool them, and they'd never get in.

Seems like smoke and mirrors are a useful tool in a secure system's administration, but should never be the sole tool.

What I'd have Obama do is be completely fucking honest with us instead of bullshitting us about it.

But I'm an idealist, what do I know?

Price is a lot.

First, you have to amortise the cost of the item over its lifespan. That blender that is two bucks cheaper may last just as long as the solidly-built one, especially if I only have light-duty uses for a blender. Or the TV I bought a week ago for $200 has a planned lifespan of no more than about 5 years by which time I hope to have a plan for a better, complete entertainment system - so there's no point in buying a $500 TV that's going to get replaced in 5 years anyway. Or the car that costs $20k and lasts 5 years is still a better deal than the car that costs $50k and lasts 10 years.

Second, you have to look at opportunity costs. Even comparing a $20k vehicle that needs replacing after 4 years (a real stinker) and comparing to a $50k car that needs replacing after 10 (a bit of a stinker, but these numbers provide nice, round numbers), the $20k vehicle is still a better deal - I only need to come up with $20k now, if I need a loan, I only pay interest on whatever I can't pay outright on $20k, not the extra $30k, and the rest of the money can be used for other purposes for 4 years, perhaps in a GIC or other investments, or paying off other loans (credit cards, mortgage, etc.).

And, finally, you have to look at money available. If I need a blender, don't need anything fancy, and don't really have anything budgeted for it, the cheaper one fits that budget better. Maybe it's better to have the blender than not, but I don't have money for it. Blenders may make less of an issue here, but often vehicles and food fit here better - this becomes one of my issues with organic foods - by driving up the cost of good, nutritious whole foods, you force a bunch of people who are struggling financially (i.e., the poor) to buy less nutritionally beneficial processed foods because they can no longer afford wholesome foods. Yes, it's better, but if you don't have the money, you just don't have the money.

Except that I find more websites work when I enable the KWebKitPart plugin in Konqueror than when I use KHTML for the renderer. So, while they may have had similar origins, WebKit seems to be getting more love.

Ah. The old, "He may be a liar, but he's my liar" argument.

How about giving yourself some credibility and calling out liars on both sides of the aisle?

FOSS did not compete with the government. Bitcoin does. Trivialising this difference renders your analogy moot.

Or his whip. If you're into that kind of thing.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Wow. Really?

If your doctor tells you that you need antibiotics, you weight the risk and cost vs the reward to determine your course of action. In this case, the risk to you is low, the cost is similarly low, the reward is that your infection likely goes away faster (in extreme cases, saving your life, but not in general).

If the AGW politicians tell you that you need to sacrifice your entire standard of living in order to curtail a problem that they still don't understand (and, let's face it, they don't understand it because they still can't predict it, even on a decade-by-decade basis, nevermind year-over-year), the risk is high (no understanding of likely outcomes), the cost is even higher (likely resulting in many human deaths), and the rewards are vague.

Those aren't even kind of similar. For an analogy to work, there must be a reasonable amount of similarity, and your analogy has almost none.

I'm all in favour of technology improving our cheap-energy viability. But the problem is that the only realistic cheap-energy that is currently technically viable is nuclear. And that has the same group of environmentalists opposed to it as are trying to decry AGW. They're shooting their cause in the foot.

Other than oil executives, most of the rest of us don't care where our energy comes from. But we know we need it. And most of us don't want to double (or more) our energy costs. We have a viable alternative. Use it. That will kill more opposition to AGW changes than any "scientific" argument you can come up with. Make our lives easier for less cost, and it will be adopted overnight (relatively speaking). Use your scientists to proclaim the actual safety of the nuclear industry. You'll do far more to remove carbon emissions than anything else currently being tried.

It's the old adage - catching more flies with honey than vinegar. Don't accuse us, attract us with what we want. Cheap, reliable energy. Remember Aesop's fable about the North Wind vs the Sun. The man wears a coat to keep warm - blowing a cold wind only makes him hold it harder, but give him warmth and he sheds his coat willingly. Give us what we want, cheap, reliable energy, and you get what you want, fewer carbon emissions.

I'd recommend making your own. All reviews of AC's popcorn are negative. Complaints about oversalting with arsenic and strychnine, largely, though one customer complained about insufficient amounts of butter.

All corn is GM corn. The stuff we call "corn" did not evolve naturally, but by extreme pressure by human farmers. The stuff we eat cannot grow without human intervention and is anything but natural. Just because we didn't modify its genetics through a test tube doesn't make it non-modified genetically.

When Princess Diana was killed in an auto crash, the media fawned over her. I remember asking my coworkers if Mother Theresa would get as much publicity if she died. It couldn't have been too long after that, since the two only died, what, 6 days apart? I didn't find the prediction of death freaky, I found the prediction of apathy from the media disappointingly predicted.

Given that he can't be re-elected no matter how well or poorly he performs ... no, no one you can hold accountable.

And my other link got squashed. Another time chip-and-pin was discussed here.

Why do you think chip and pin would be an update to security practices? We've had that discussion before. Multiple times. It's more security theatre, and I doubt that this attack would have been much more difficult to co-ordinate with chip/pin cards.