Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by n1 on Monday May 18 2015, @12:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the 4-da-lulz-and-$$$ dept.

I go back on the 'net to the days of Mosaic, and earlier on Usenet and BBSs. I'm feeling pretty nostalgic, but also saddened. Between the crooks, the government, and fun loving pranksters it seems that there is no corner of the 'net that can be considered truly secure. I now routinely assume that nothing I do is safe.

I remember when the 'net was 90% thoughtful discussion, it was about web pages, pure HTML, and the content that they served up.

Now it seems as if no forum is safe from endless idiotic, threatening, and increasingly offensive trolls and bullies. Many good smart people just refuse to participate. In its early days the whole idea behind the 'net was the free sharing of information. Now you find things behind paywalls, registration pages, or removed after threats from lawyers.

Each week seems to bring another attempt by government or business to regulate the 'net, both what you can put on-line, and what you can look at. Add to that the many geographic blocks and other restrictions that keep out some of the people, some of the time. We rely on multiple layers of flash and java and other technology, each requiring some special software to make it work on your computer. Inevitably stuff breaks.

It was only a decade or so back that the very idea of marketing on the 'net was considered ridiculous. Now we're buried alive with ads, pop-ups, and stupid YouTube ads in front of every video - unless you want to pay them to remove them.

Increasingly using the 'net feels like more of a chore than a pleasure, and I can't see it improving. Is the Internet broken beyond repair?

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday May 18 2015, @03:02PM

    Unfortunately, the Internet was developed with the explicit assumption that it was insecure. In part this was because if you broke into someone's system, you would be disconnected. There was also the problem of the US crypto export laws.

    There are all kinds of ways that spam could have been, if not outright prevented, at least discouraged but back then to send so much as one unsolicited commercial email would get you disconnected.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +2  
       Troll=1, Interesting=1, Underrated=2, Total=4
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   4  
  • (Score: 2) by Leebert on Monday May 18 2015, @03:39PM

    by Leebert (3511) on Monday May 18 2015, @03:39PM (#184590)

    $ echo 127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts

    I can't tell if you're being subtly clever or pointlessly complicated by using "tee -a"...

    • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday May 18 2015, @05:12PM

      when I edit my own hosts file, I just use "sudo vi /etc/hosts".

      --
      Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
      • (Score: 2) by Leebert on Monday May 18 2015, @05:18PM

        by Leebert (3511) on Monday May 18 2015, @05:18PM (#184641)

        I was more thinking something like:

        sudo echo 127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com >> /etc/hosts

        • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @06:03PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @06:03PM (#184674)

          Sudo doesn't do file redirection, that would negate all the safeguards that sudo provides.

        • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday May 18 2015, @08:35PM

          by maxwell demon (1608) on Monday May 18 2015, @08:35PM (#184784) Journal

          That would be interpreted by the shell as "run the command sudo echo 127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com and append its output to /etc/hosts". Which would try to open /etc/host as user (which should fail if your file rights are set correctly). OTOH, without the redirection failure the echo command would be run as root, but that's pointless because echo does nothing you need to be root for (it just writes to its standard output).

          --
          The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 2) by meisterister on Monday May 18 2015, @06:06PM

        by meisterister (949) on Monday May 18 2015, @06:06PM (#184675) Journal

        *insert vi vs emacs flamewar here*

        --
        (May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by isostatic on Monday May 18 2015, @06:52PM

      by isostatic (365) on Monday May 18 2015, @06:52PM (#184710) Journal

      I can't tell if you're being subtly clever or pointlessly complicated by using "tee -a"...

      However as it stands that line makes the assumption you have grep, sudo and tee in your path, which is a fair assumption. Using another more esoteric command to append instead of tee would mean fewer people being able to use the line. Attempting to use a redirect

      sudo -s "echo 127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com >> /etc/hosts"

      Has different behaviours under BSD and linux from what I can tell.

      If he was being more clever, and more complicated, he could have a grep for the line in hosts first, before echoing:

      grep "^127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com$" /etc/hosts || echo 127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts

      or similar?

      Of course that still fails on something like my own hostsfile, which contains

      127.0.0.2 traffic.outbrain.com outbrain.com images.outbrain.com widgets.outbrain.com paid.outbrain.com odb.outbrain.com www.google-analytics.com comcluster.cxense.com dailymail.co.uk www.dailymail.co.uk

      Perhaps something like

      grep "^127[^#]* www.google-analytics.com" /etc/hosts || echo 127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts

      shoud do the trick.