My favorite Paul Nelson story. A *very* long time ago I was the Linux columnist for local monthly computer magazine, and at the time I was also a regular attendee at the Riverdale clinics.
At one point I did a three-part series in the column about Linux security. In the first installment I made the following point, and I'm paraphrasing because I don't remember my exact words: "Despite what I'm about to tell you, the person that can do the most damage to your system is you the administrator, not some intruder. So the number one rule is, don't do anything as root user that you can do as an ordinary user instead." So at the next clinic Paul questions me about this. He was still early in his Linux learning curve and had come from the Windows world (then Windows 95/98, to date myself). He didn't understand my point. He asked, if it's just my own personal computer why not just do everything as root? I explained, well you could do that, but you're introducing risk either because of security bugs in your web browser (not such a big concern back then) or more likely from your own mistakes at the shell prompt. He still didn't understand. I let it go. At the next clinic a month later Paul came up to me and simply said "I understand now." Terry On 01/04/2017 10:09 AM, Marvin Kosmal wrote: > I found Paul, Eric, and the Clinic to be the best of the best. > > Marvin > > > On Wed, Jan 4, 2017 at 9:02 AM, Michael Rasmussen <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> On 2017-01-03 14:56, Michael Dexter wrote: >>> Hello all, >>> >>> I have just heard about the passing of Paul Nelson, long-time PLUG >>> member and Clinic organizer. >>> >>> :( >> Massive ow. >> >> -- >> Michael Rasmussen, Portland Oregon >> Be Appropriate && Follow Your Curiosity >> _______________________________________________ >> PLUG mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug >> > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > PLUG: http://pdxlinux.org > PLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > > > End of PLUG Digest, Vol 148, Issue 5 > ************************************ _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
