So, go read more about the subject in your free time. There are s of freely available publications that cover the topic. I am not certain that the experiment would yield anything based on your hypothesis, not even the results being discussed. The most quantum experiments are predicated on a very specific set of conditions and why it hasn't been done before, accurately.

Oh yeah! You think that's annoying, try typing 'ls' into a Command Prompt session on Windows. Instant D'oh! instead of delayed D'oh! Fucking hate WIndows!

apt-get? Who uses apt-get? Real men use make, make dep, make install!!!

Extra "kruft" from a person that uses BBEdit?!?!?! You want less kruft, try TextWrangler. And who runs a GUI on a goddamn server?!?! Even Microsoft finally gave it up, FCOL!

And the congregation says, AMEN!

Brought to you by qed. The first to bring you regular expressions.

I've worked in academia for a while and early in my 20+ year career I learned vi simply because it WAS on every *nix variant I touched; IRIX, Solaris, HP-UX, Linux, AIX and a couple others I can't remember the names of (DECs *nix's name escapes me, for instance). Most *nix servers didn't have a GUI (and in my opinion shouldn't have one; yeah, get off my lawn, blah, blah, blah) so vi was almost compulsory to know if you needed to do anything with a config or script file. I wouldn't say I am a master at vi by any means; still look up commands from time to time. I wouldn't try writing a journal article with it, but it is powerful and once you learn the basics you can edit just about anything with a .txt at the end of it. Simple 3x5 card with the commands on it is all you need to be proficient enough to get most things done. Hell, a Post-It note would do.

In GUI environments I try to use bare bones editors (sometimes literally) as the others just get in the way or like NotePad and WordPad screw up line feeds and other basic UTF formatting. I do like ones that highlight code in the GUI environment, but I only use those in conjunction with other GUI tools I use for web work. I am just not impressed by any of these new GUI editors, mostly because I do UI/UX design and they just suck from that standpoint. It's like all we learned about proper GUI design in the 1980s and 1990s was forgotten, or something and everyone wants to reinvent the wheel, badly. [shakes head and goes back to coding]

There are far scarier things being developed in the heart of the country, down wind from a majority of the population of the US and Canada, in Dugway, Utah. One Ebola patient in isolation in Atlanta is really and truly nothing to get upset about. Be more afraid of what's at the Dugway Proving Ground. That's where they make and test biological and chemical weapons. Yes, make. They have things there that make Ebola look like the common cold.

New apps should be featured, not most popular or most sold. Right now there are an extremely limited number of ways to filter apps when you browse and this more than anything is hurting the smaller, startup app developers. I know, I've been one!

The main caveat or gotcha to that approach is the time between vulnerability discovery and patch. There are services that may also be a requisite to a mission critical service that have exposed ports without a firewall. These can create vulnerabilities without a firewall protecting them. Let's put it this way, there are A LOT more reasons to run a firewall than to not run one. It's always better to err on the side of caution/paranoia when it comes to net security.

Very true and the changeover process for the required configuration is non-trivial as well. I remember when our organization met PCI compliance for CCs and it took months and lots of dollars to get all the systems that were processing credit cards up to spec. If they're going to do CC processing, even on an off chance, they should look into the requirements and do the setup that way NOW! It's more secure overall anyway so why not just do it from the ground up rather than trying to go through the Hell of modifying the setup for compliance later.

Have you actually got this in practice somewhere? I've theorized on this setup for over a decade now and have not had the time to implement a test case. I was looking at this as a solution for remote user access and security overall. The remote users login via VPN (IPSEC) when they're on the road now, so why not just have everyone use VPN all the time to connect to services, local and remote users. In a lot of ways it makes sense. Users use the same procedures for service access wherever they are and the servers in turn talk to each other and users all over IPSEC. I am sure someone will bring up some caveat to this setup that might ruin the idea, but it really seems solid.

Ask Target how well that scheme worked out from them.

What planet are you from? You don't setup a firewall to counter known threats. That's what software patches are for. You setup a firewall to prevent unknown threats on unused network ports. Just because you're not using a port doesn't mean there isn't a service attached to it that's vulnerable. That's why we have firewalls. And yes, firewalls do indeed come for free as part of most operating systems and network switch OSes and configuring them should take minutes for anyone with half a brain and some level of network admin competency. If in today's server admin world you take longer than a few minutes to setup the firewall as part of your config you've got a ridiculously complex set of services or you're in the wrong profession!

And, you forgot DDoS and relay attacks from your machine! Even if you have "nothing of value" on your system (your identity info, tax returns, etc. count, duh!) the system itself is valuable to an attacker if they can gain control of it. When the DHS guys show up on YOUR doorstep because someone hacked into Pentagon computers from YOUR machine that's going to be an interesting day for you, until they figure out you were a pawn. That last bit can take a long time, btw and in the mean time you have no computer and usually can't go near one until the investigation is over. If this happens as part of your job, well, then there's the job hunting that will need to start and the trying to change careers because no one will hire a DUMBASS server admin!