[plug] Installfest - distributions

[skribe]

At 13:15 25/08/00, Christian wrote:
>Hire someone who knows security to do the work for you or invest time in
>learning it yourself

I'm a hobbyist linux user as I suspect most of us on the list are.  Hiring 
someone isn't feasible and defeats the purpose of being a hobbyist 
anyway.  We want to know how things work.  What makes them tick.  So we can 
fix it later if it breaks.  Investing the time to learn isn't a problem 
(presuming we can fit it in with all of life's other necessities), except 
there's nowhere to learn other than the unis and only then in the longer 
courses.

So what do we do?  The information on the web is disseminated and 
basic.  Books are expensive and very often out of date by the time they're 
published. We end up with a mish-mash of information that may be useful but 
will undoubtedly be incomplete.  I don't know all that much about computer 
security (what I do know comes from reading web pages and books), but more 
importantly I don't know what I don't know because I don't know where to 
find out what I need to know, ya know? =).

I agree with you, Christian.  The vendors really need to do a better 
job.  But so does the community.  The people who know their shit really 
have to make this info available in an accessible form so that even newbies 
can get a grasp of it.

BTW, in case my tone suggested otherwise this is not a personal attack 
against Christian.  It's just a gasp of frustration about the situation.

skribe
	Purity:                           62.0% 			
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