No subject

may find our "developWorks Linux zone" website of benefit and interest from
an information perspective.

http://www.ibm.com/developer/linux/

This site details the latest contributions to Linux by IBM.

http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/linux/

Enjoy !

Greg Smith
Senior Sales Specialist
Enterprise Systems Group
IBM Australia Limited
1060 Hay Street, West Perth  WA  6005
Direct:   +61 8 92618642
Fax:       +61 8 92618536
Mobile:  0401715708
email:   greg_smith at au1.ibm.com

http://www.ibm.com/servers/unix
http://www.ibm.com/linux
http://www.numaq.com/


plug at plug.linux.org.au on 25/08/2000 01:48:44 PM

Please respond to plug at plug.linux.org.au

To:   plug at plug.linux.org.au
cc:    (bcc: Greg Smith/Australia/IBM)
Subject:  Re: [plug] Installfest - distributions




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  Books are expensive and very often out of date by the time they're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%
     Corruption:                    38.0%
     Insanity:                        36.3636363636364%
     Weirdness factor:           31%
     Experience Level:           JonKatz Wannabe
     Medieval Career:            Black Knight