Techcordance

Linux more secure

Is security a sword of Damocles hanging over Linux, just waiting for its popularity to reach critical mass? That’s one persistent argument in the Linux vs. Windows debates, but it’s just wrong, according to those who know Linux well. For reasons both technological and behavioral, they say, Linux really is more secure. “If the anti-malware industry has anything to offer GNU/Linux,” challenges blogger Robert Pogson, “let them step up.”Among all the reasons geeks choose Linux, security is often near the top of the list.And no wonder — personal preferences aside on all the other many relevant issues, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest our favorite operating system really is more impervious.A study published in The Register a few years back, for example, not only concluded that Linux security then was even better than had been thought compared to Windows security, but also went on to label as “myths” and “logical errors” many of the most common arguments to the contrary — most notably, the oft-repeated idea that Linux suffers fewer attacks simply because it has fewer users than Windows does.Yet when news came out last month that an attack by the “NULL Pointer” bug could exploit even a fully patched Linux kernel, a new cloud of dust was kicked up. Those on both sides of the operating system fence struggled to understand what it meant. “The headlines for this Linux security hole read like the apocalypse,” Slashdot blogger yagu told LinuxInsider. “The reality is much less severe.”First and foremost, “to fully take advantage of the exploit, a user must have physical access,” he explained. “By definition, physical access is already a compromised system. Any security issues past that point is simply splitting semantic hairs.”Linux is far more secure than Windows, yagu asserted.

Banned

An eye-opening book titled The Language Police lists about 500 words that are banned from school textbooks. Some are amusing, some stupid (probably a banned word), and some are chilling. Here is a very partial list of banned words:

• Founding Fathers—Banned as sexist. Replace with Founders or Framers. (Because we would not want to note that the men who wrote the documents were men)
• Caveman—Banned as sexist, replace with cave dweller. (Wonder if that makes the Geico Cave . . . uhhh . . . dweller feel a little better?)
• Disadvantaged—Banned, replace with reference to the resources or rights that are absent in an individual’s life circumstances. (Example: Dave cannot sing because of resources that are absent in his individual life circumstance. Like talent.)
• Courageous—Banned as patronizing when referring to persons with disabilities. (Some of the most courageous people I know are those who are disabled. I really don’t get this one.)
• God—Banned for being . . . steady yourself . . . too religious. (I can’t even muster the strength to respond.)
• Lunatic—Banned as offensive, replace with person with a psychiatric illness. (C.S. Lewis would have to change his famous argument about Jesus being Lord, liar, or lunatic. His PC argument would be something like this: Is the revered moral teacher a higher power, untrustworthy source, or person with a psychiatric illness? Kind of loses its pizzazz doesn’t it?
• Soda—Banned for regional bias, replace with Coke, Pepsi. (Seriously? Regional bias? I grew up drinking “pop” and moved to “Coke” territory. That has not been my biggest life issue so far.)
• Teenager—Banned, replace with adolescent. (I was all for banning teenagers at various times in my household. Especially when they acted like lunatics.)

Collins

Let us now praise famous geneticists. President Obama did the right thing Thursday by nominating Dr. Francis Collins, the “genome guru” in the mellifluous words of the Associated Press, to head the National Institutes of Health. Collins is highly likely to receive Senate confirmation and become one of the world’s most influential scientists, with an annual budget of almost $30 billion to use in support of human flourishing.
Collins, 59, is best known for directing the successful effort to sequence the humane genome, the DNA that makes up the human physical blueprint. But there’s more: Earlier this year, I heard him before a sophisticated New York audience speak of his personal faith in Christ, and he did so credibly and winsomely. He said it would require more faith not to believe in “a designed universe” than to see it as God-made. So, is Collins a proponent of Intelligent Design (ID)? Perish the thought! Yes, he speaks of “pointers to God from nature,” including “the precise tuning of 15 physical constants—if you tweak their values by a tiny fraction, it doesn’t work.” But he takes pains to argue for “theistic evolution” and recently set up the BioLogos Foundation, funded with a Templeton Foundation grant. According to its website, BioLogos “is the belief that Darwinism is a correct science.”
Let’s be clear here: Collins is not an atheist like many Darwinians. He told the New Yorkers that “atheism is the least rational of all the choices.” He’s not a deist: He believes not only that God got the ball rolling, but that miracles can happen, although not very often. He believes in Christ’s resurrection. But he doesn’t seem to have a high view of Scripture, which is where we primarily learn about Christ’s resurrection. Here’s just one example: Collins’s BioLogos website declares, “It seems likely that Adam and Eve were not individual historical characters, but represented a larger population of first humans who bore the image of God.” Many subsequent figures in the Bible, preeminently Jesus, referred to Adam as an individual: Were they deluded? But I’m not so worried about Collins’s theological statements: Many readers can exegete them and come to their own conclusions.