What makes Linux safer than Windows?

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nooby
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#81 Post by nooby »

ok I try, I start a new thread about it
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

musher0
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#82 Post by musher0 »

Pizzasgood wrote:
musher0 wrote:RetroTechGuy said:
> [...] What does Puppy provide, that Ubuntu doesn't? [...]

I'll answer a bit out of context.

To my knowledge, Puppy is the only distro that respects my ownership of my machine. I spent some good money to buy this computer, and lots and lots of time configuring it, and my Puppy.

That would have been impossible to such an extent on other distros, since they keep asking for permission ("sudo" or whatever).
What are you talking about? With the exception of Ubuntu and it's spawn, you can just log in as root. That is one single time that you have to authenticate yourself. Then you can do whatever the flip you want. Nobody forces you to be a limited user. They just recommend it. And nothing stops you from removing that login prompt either. The "autologinroot" program that Puppy uses is five lines long, and only one of those lines even does anything:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=5991

Code: Select all

/*BK auto login */

int main() {
 execlp("login","login","-f","root",0);
}
Sorry if I got your goat, such was not my intention. I was just trying to point our a common shortcoming and / or attitude that prevents Linux from being more widely used.

First time I heard of your info. Not that I doubt your word, but please provide references outside Puppy that detail this. I suppose you could not explain more here in this thread / context.

> Nobody forces you to be a limited user.

Well, if the info is NOT readily available, even if it exists, the result is the same: I am forced to log in as a "limited" user.

You may have theoretically the most useful program, and the programmer may be a genius in software logic, but if the program does not have docs in simple English (same goes for any other human language), that program will be useless for the average user.

Same thing here. If the docs are not easily available, or if fragments of it are scattered all over the internet, it's the same as if the feature did not exist.

The only exception I know is GoblinX: after the live CD has booted, you are presented with a colored console menu where the first-run codename and password are right in your face. Now that's what I call respect of the user.
musher0
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#83 Post by musher0 »

@DMcCunney

My reply and apologies to Pizzasgood apply here to your intervention too, I suppose.

No, I haven't done support in a commercial setting, but at some point I was a member of a co-op of translators that offered a level of computer support for word-processing / editing programs, and some general "file-saving" support. (I'm not kidding, that's where some of our people -- who were otherwise human language wizards -- were at computer-wise...) So, I agree with you that most users "just want it to work", and expect some magic to occur or be performed even if they do a blatant error.

I'm all for caution too, so people don't shoot themselves in the foot, as you put it.

However, there's an enormous difference between taking steps to ensure caution and making info extra difficult to find to those who want to go beyond -- to create a distro focused on human language editing, for example (or whatever subject). That would be of medium difficulty in Puppy, and very difficult in another distro, as far as I can tell.

As I mentioned above, if the necessary info to change / adapt a distro is extra difficult to find, the result is the same: that particular distro is changeable only by a small in-group of initiates.

In my opinion, Linux won't go far if such an attitude is prevalent among distro developers.

Luckily, there's Puppy!
musher0
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RetroTechGuy
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#84 Post by RetroTechGuy »

Pizzasgood wrote:
RetroTechGuy wrote:Note also that making a "multi-user" machine isn't hard, with Puppy (I emphasize machine, as most don't care if it's an multi-user OS). Just copy your boilerplate pupsave over to a new username, and they then have their own system. Yeah, so you'll have to spend a few seconds performing a reboot to change users. Puppy is small enough that there isn't a real reason to leave it running when not in use, so the most likely scenario is that the user comes to the machine in the "off" state, and boots normally. Otherwise the 1st user will have to shut down, and the second reboot. No big deal.
There is a humongous difference, that has nothing to do with rebooting. Permissions. If your reason for having other users is to keep those other users from breaking your system (perhaps because they simply don't know what they're doing), then multiple save files is not good enough. There is nothing to stop them from deleting the other save files, or repartitioning the harddrive, etc.
If this is truly the concern, then you need to deny those users physical access to the machine. Anyone who has access to the hardware can crack it or break it. They could pour a Coke into the system, hit it with a hammer, or use a blow torch on it.

At some point you need to give the user some credit (or perhaps training...or perhaps a good, solid thrashing.).

And in the case of my machine, I am the only user. So those permissions, allowing me to protect me from myself, become moot.

Of course, those disasters you describe, repartitioning, pupsave file deletion, etc., are reasons for making sure that you have good backups. Or simply leave the machine with no HDD, and make each user provide his own USB thumb drive. Then they can only harm themselves.

BTW, the permissions under Linux are not all that stellar. I started on old VAX/VMS systems, some 30 years ago -- as that system matured, you had real permission control (of files, folder, etc). Linux file permissions are quite clunky by comparison.

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#85 Post by DMcCunney »

musher0 wrote: However, there's an enormous difference between taking steps to ensure caution and making info extra difficult to find to those who want to go beyond -- to create a distro focused on human language editing, for example (or whatever subject). That would be of medium difficulty in Puppy, and very difficult in another distro, as far as I can tell.
I haven't looked, but I don't believe it's that difficult. Miost Linux distros seem to have foreign language editions, and one of the things Linux has been trying to do over the years is make support for other languages easier, by separating out the places where text to be displayed to the user is stored and making it easy to change the text to a different language.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internatio ... calization for an overview.
As I mentioned above, if the necessary info to change / adapt a distro is extra difficult to find, the result is the same: that particular distro is changeable only by a small in-group of initiates.
It's not all that difficult to find for Ubuntu. However, I didn't need to. I did what I mentioned earlier: created a separate password for root, which allowed me to log on as root to do admin stuff. I knew to do this because I've used (and administered) Unix and Linux. If I didn't know to do that, a distro that tried to keep me from shooting myself in the foot would probably be a good idea.
In my opinion, Linux won't go far if such an attitude is prevalent among distro developers.

Luckily, there's Puppy!
It's not prevalent. Ubuntu is on the far end of "Err on the side of caution", because they want to be the defacto standard desktop distribution. They want to create a distro the average Windows user can install and run and have things "Just Work", requiring as little knowledge about the system as possible to do it. It does that rather well.

Most distros require the user to answer various questions as part of the setup process, and the user may not understand the question, let alone know the answer.

I believe there are over a thousand Linux distros now, each based on a particular vision of what a Linux distro ought to be, and one of the underlying assumptions will be "Who is the user?"

I think of this the way I think about automobiles. You can own and drive a car without understanding the principles of operation of the four stroke internal combustion engine, or being a mechanic. You just have to know how to drive.

Ubuntu is a bit like the car you buy from the dealer, and drive off the lot. Puppy is like the hot rod you build yourself. The results can be splendid, but you have to understand something about how the system works and be a mechanic (or willing to learn) to install it and get it as you wish.

Most users out there who might be well served by Linux aren't mechanics, and don't want to be. For them, something like Ubuntu is a good choice.

Puppy is wonderful if you have older, lower end hardware and you want a version of Linux that will run acceptably, and you are willing to come up a learning curve about Linux in general and Puppy in particular. If both of those statements don't apply to you, Puppy is probably the wrong distro to run.
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#86 Post by DMcCunney »

RetroTechGuy wrote: BTW, the permissions under Linux are not all that stellar. I started on old VAX/VMS systems, some 30 years ago -- as that system matured, you had real permission control (of files, folder, etc). Linux file permissions are quite clunky by comparison.
I logged time on VMS (and RSTS-E and RSX-11M+, for that matter.)

The permissions model in Linux is inherited fron Unix, and it's worked well enough for may years. Each file has an owner, and the owner of part of a group. Permissions can granted or denied for read, write, and execute access for the owner, the group the owner is part of, and the rest of the world.

If you need finer grained control, it's possible, depending upon which distro you run. Some support POSIX Access Control Lists as well as standard *nix permissions masks.

See http://www.suse.de/~agruen/acl/linux-acls/online/ for an overview.
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Colonel Panic
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#87 Post by Colonel Panic »

DMcCunney wrote:
musher0 wrote: However, there's an enormous difference between taking steps to ensure caution and making info extra difficult to find to those who want to go beyond -- to create a distro focused on human language editing, for example (or whatever subject). That would be of medium difficulty in Puppy, and very difficult in another distro, as far as I can tell.
I haven't looked, but I don't believe it's that difficult. Miost Linux distros seem to have foreign language editions, and one of the things Linux has been trying to do over the years is make support for other languages easier, by separating out the places where text to be displayed to the user is stored and making it easy to change the text to a different language.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internatio ... calization for an overview.
As I mentioned above, if the necessary info to change / adapt a distro is extra difficult to find, the result is the same: that particular distro is changeable only by a small in-group of initiates.
It's not all that difficult to find for Ubuntu. However, I didn't need to. I did what I mentioned earlier: created a separate password for root, which allowed me to log on as root to do admin stuff. I knew to do this because I've used (and administered) Unix and Linux. If I didn't know to do that, a distro that tried to keep me from shooting myself in the foot would probably be a good idea.
In my opinion, Linux won't go far if such an attitude is prevalent among distro developers.

Luckily, there's Puppy!
It's not prevalent. Ubuntu is on the far end of "Err on the side of caution", because they want to be the defacto standard desktop distribution. They want to create a distro the average Windows user can install and run and have things "Just Work", requiring as little knowledge about the system as possible to do it. It does that rather well.

Most distros require the user to answer various questions as part of the setup process, and the user may not understand the question, let alone know the answer.

I believe there are over a thousand Linux distros now, each based on a particular vision of what a Linux distro ought to be, and one of the underlying assumptions will be "Who is the user?"

I think of this the way I think about automobiles. You can own and drive a car without understanding the principles of operation of the four stroke internal combustion engine, or being a mechanic. You just have to know how to drive.

Ubuntu is a bit like the car you buy from the dealer, and drive off the lot. Puppy is like the hot rod you build yourself. The results can be splendid, but you have to understand something about how the system works and be a mechanic (or willing to learn) to install it and get it as you wish.

Most users out there who might be well served by Linux aren't mechanics, and don't want to be. For them, something like Ubuntu is a good choice.

Puppy is wonderful if you have older, lower end hardware and you want a version of Linux that will run acceptably, and you are willing to come up a learning curve about Linux in general and Puppy in particular. If both of those statements don't apply to you, Puppy is probably the wrong distro to run.
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Just my 2c here. I think Puppy's about halfway between Ubuntu and a real geek distro such as Arch, Slackware or Gentoo in this regard. There are easier distros to set up and configure than Puppy is, but there are also harder ones; in one I tried you had to set up Xorg completely manually and if you got one question wrong - no X Windows. And as for configuring dialup - forget it.

I can load a new Puppy CD and be up and running (and browsing the Web) well inside 10 minutes, which is all the hand holding I need.
Gigabyte M68MT-52P motherboard, AMD Athlon II X4 630, 5.8 GB of DDR3 RAM and a 250 GB Hitachi hard drive running Ubuntu 16.04.6, MX-19.2, Peppermint 10, PCLinuxOS 20.02, LXLE 18.04.3, Pardus 19.2, exGENT 200119, Bionic Pup 8.0 and Xenial CE 7.5 XL.

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#88 Post by DMcCunney »

Colonel Panic wrote:Just my 2c here. I think Puppy's about halfway between Ubuntu and a real geek distro such as Arch, Slackware or Gentoo in this regard. There are easier distros to set up and configure than Puppy is, but there are also harder ones; in one I tried you had to set up Xorg completely manually and if you got one question wrong - no X Windows. And as for configuring dialup, forget it.

I can load a new Puppy CD and be up and running (and browsing the Web) well inside 10 minutes, which is all the hand holding I need.
Yep. Linux spans a wide spectrum in what the distro expects the user to know. Puppy is far from the hardest, but does require some knowledge to set up, and more to get configured and running the way you like it. Chances are good there's a Puplet that is substantially what you want. but you likely don't discover puplets till after you have Puupy up and running.

You can do it with a new Puppy CD in en minutes because you already have some knowledge. Some folks aren't in that position, and need that hand holding.

Unfortunately, I've seen a fair amount of what I can only call geek snobbery over the years about people who need the hand-holding, for whom a distro like Ubuntu is an appropriate fit. "I look down my nose at you from my lofty superior position and laugh at your pathetic attempts to use a real OS!" It just shows how selective memory can be. They obviously don't remember the days when they were new to Linux and relying on others to answer questions till they attained the knowledge to do things themselves.

The first computer I used was an IBM mainframe at a bank, and I still recall being lost at sea in the early days. (I learned enough to become tech support for my area of the bank.) So I do my best to answer questions when I know the answer, try to provide context and background to make the answer more comprehensible, and don't look down on the user asking the questions.

Nor do I engage in distro slagging. The nice thing about Linux is the wide variety of distros, each with a vision of what it is trying to be and what purpose it serves. The question isn't which is "best", period (there's no such thing) - it's "Which best meets your needs?". The better you can define your needs and what you want to do with the machine, the easier that question will be to answer.
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#89 Post by Colonel Panic »

I think you're right Dennis, there isn't a perfect distro for everyone.

Of the three I mentioned, Arch at least has a very good name but it's certainly not a beginner's distro. I've tried and failed several times to install it, but partly for technical reasons; the CD never finishes booting up on my machine. Crux is another one I like the look of although it's also not elementary; their "ports" system is a bit like FreeBSD's..

If your computer's connected to a network, Puppy's Internet setup is easier than that of any other distro I've seen; it detects the card, loads the driver and saves the configuration in about three clicks. Dialup's not quite so straightforward to set up in Puppy but at least it still actively supports it; one of the few remaining distros which does.
Gigabyte M68MT-52P motherboard, AMD Athlon II X4 630, 5.8 GB of DDR3 RAM and a 250 GB Hitachi hard drive running Ubuntu 16.04.6, MX-19.2, Peppermint 10, PCLinuxOS 20.02, LXLE 18.04.3, Pardus 19.2, exGENT 200119, Bionic Pup 8.0 and Xenial CE 7.5 XL.

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#90 Post by DMcCunney »

Colonel Panic wrote: I think you're right Dennis, there isn't a perfect distro for everyone.
No, but there's probably a perfect distro for anyone. The trick is finding it.
If your computer's connected to a network, Puppy's Internet setup is easier than that of any other distro I've seen; it detects the card, loads the driver and saves the configuration in about three clicks. Dialup's not quite so straightforward to set up in Puppy but at least it still actively supports it; one of the few remaining distros which does.
Ubuntu is even easier in some cases. Installed here, it detected my ethernet connection, installed a driver, set itself up, and I was on line and ready to download more of it. There was no action required on my part during that process.

This was installing from the MinimalCD, which creates a bare-bones command line Linux installation without X or a window manager. From there I could use apt-get to get Xfce4 (my preferred window manager), which brought X with it automatically as a dependency. I could then get the Synaptic GUI package manager and grab the rest of the stuff I wanted for the Ubuntu installation. The result was a system that was usable on the Puppy box, unlike Xubuntu which had been far too sluggish. Puppy is sprightlier, but Ubuntu isn't actively painful.

Ubuntu did fall down attempting to create a wireless connection, but so does Puppy: I run WPA2 on my router, and neither distro can automatically connect. (I have yet to get Puppy to do so, but since I normally connect via ethernet to the router with a CAT5 cable, it hasn't been a pressing issue.)

Puppy isn't bad, and connects with no trouble to unsecured wireless networks, so it's usable while traveling.
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#91 Post by Pizzasgood »

musher0 wrote:Sorry if I got your goat, such was not my intention. I was just trying to point our a common shortcoming and / or attitude that prevents Linux from being more widely used.

First time I heard of your info. Not that I doubt your word, but please provide references outside Puppy that detail this. I suppose you could not explain more here in this thread / context.

> Nobody forces you to be a limited user.

Well, if the info is NOT readily available, even if it exists, the result is the same: I am forced to log in as a "limited" user.
No worries.

I still don't know what you're talking about though.

When you install a distro, you are root. You have to actually create a limited user to use. One of the steps in the installation is usually to set a root password, unless it comes preset (in which case it should be easily found on the website for the distro).

From what I understand things are a bit different in Ubuntu-land. I've never used it. But all the other distros I've used beside Puppy (ZipSlack, Vector, RedHat, Gentoo, Arch) all start you off as root.

Disregarding Ubuntu, there is no special information needed. You just put "root" as the login name, and type the root password as the password. That's it.


I don't know what specifically you want non-Puppy references to. Here is one from a Red Hat installation guide, about the setting the root user step.
http://linux.about.com/library/bl/dist/ ... st3.25.htm

RetroTechGuy wrote:If this is truly the concern, then you need to deny those users physical access to the machine.
Yes yes yes, I know all that. In fact, I said as much in this thread already. I'm not talking about security against people who know what they're doing. The opposite. I'm talking about security from the people who don't know what they are doing. They aren't malevolent, they just accidentally typed /* when they meant *. Or maybe they were trying to create a filesystem image with dd and got their parameters wrong. Or maybe they thought it would be a good idea to try upgrading glibc because some program they were trying to use was complaining.

Yeah, you can restore from backup. But why should you have to in the first place? Does that person need to have the ability to screw up the computer, thereby wasting your time and potentially losing some of your most recent data?

Ideally everybody has their own machine. Then they can be root all they want without bothering anybody else if they break it. But if you have to share a computer, it's better to not have to worry as much about needing to fix it whenever they screw it up.



Look, nobody needs to argue the benefits of being root to me. I know them. I've been using Puppy as my main OS since version 0.9.8, and have made those same arguments plenty of times to the people who occasionally show up and start trying to raise a huff about how absurd it is to be root. And I still believe them! It is correct for Puppy to be root by default.

I'm not asking for that to change.

All I'm advocating is the option to not be root, for those occasional situations where it is needed. It would still boot as root by default. There would just be a menu entry or an option in a configuration wizard that lets you toggle the autologinroot thing, so that if you want to have a login prompt you can have one. And there would be a menu entry for adding new users. None of this would be forced on anybody. People who don't care would just keep doing things the way they are.
[size=75]Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. --Muad'Dib[/size]
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racepres
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#92 Post by racepres »

Pizzasgood wrote:
All I'm advocating is the option to not be root, for those occasional situations where it is needed. It would still boot as root by default. There would just be a menu entry or an option in a configuration wizard that lets you toggle the autologinroot thing, so that if you want to have a login prompt you can have one. And there would be a menu entry for adding new users. None of this would be forced on anybody. People who don't care would just keep doing things the way they are.
Kinda like Mac OSX! If you want to have to "logon" with a password even, then that option is available... windoze also for that matter, I think. Even have the option to allow/disallow, adminstrative privileges.
Not a terrible idea!!
I don't need it personally, but the "bitter half" has that on her Mac, cause she has extremely sensitive info that belongs to other people on her machine!
Conclusion... I agree
Choice is always a good thing!
RP

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#93 Post by RetroTechGuy »

Pizzasgood wrote:From what I understand things are a bit different in Ubuntu-land. I've never used it. But all the other distros I've used beside Puppy (ZipSlack, Vector, RedHat, Gentoo, Arch) all start you off as root.
Debian actually starts you off as root (and asks for a password), and before it has finished the setup, it also asks you to create a primary user (at the moment, I don't recall if it continues to prompt you to add further users, until you tell it to quit).
RetroTechGuy wrote:If this is truly the concern, then you need to deny those users physical access to the machine.
Yes yes yes, I know all that. In fact, I said as much in this thread already. I'm not talking about security against people who know what they're doing. The opposite. I'm talking about security from the people who don't know what they are doing. They aren't malevolent, they just accidentally typed /* when they meant *. Or maybe they were trying to create a filesystem image with dd and got their parameters wrong. Or maybe they thought it would be a good idea to try upgrading glibc because some program they were trying to use was complaining.

Yeah, you can restore from backup. But why should you have to in the first place?
That's where the "good solid thrashing" comes in... ;)

But let's look at those examples. "glibc" would trash their own pupsave. A command like "rm -rf /*" would only be able to hit the external HDD, if it were mounted - perhaps a good reason for them to have their own partition, so /mnt/home/ can't accidentally access other pupsaves. Or they supply their own flash drive.

And if they are truly that inexperienced, they should not be using "dd".
Ideally everybody has their own machine. Then they can be root all they want without bothering anybody else if they break it. But if you have to share a computer, it's better to not have to worry as much about needing to fix it whenever they screw it up.
A flash drive would create that environment. Everyone has their own "machine" (OS, that is).
Look, nobody needs to argue the benefits of being root to me. I know them.
I'm actually not arguing for or against. I'm just noting that it's not terribly painful to work around the current implementation, of root only.

I think there are bigger fish to fry (like the unclean umount issue, which has been around for a while).

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#94 Post by Pizzasgood »

I'm actually not arguing for or against. I'm just noting that it's not terribly painful to work around the current implementation, of root only.

I think there are bigger fish to fry (like the unclean umount issue, which has been around for a while).
Okay. Though technically, this no proper multiuser issue has been around at least as long. ;)

But yeah, that's about the only valid argument against it that I can see. Fish need frying.

But let's look at those examples. "glibc" would trash their own pupsave.
Yes. Apparently I forgot what I was trying to accidentally break. Old age is depressing (I turned 10110 last week.)
[size=75]Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. --Muad'Dib[/size]
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#95 Post by racepres »

Pizzasgood wrote:Old age is depressing (I turned 10110 last week.)
Been awhile since I "fatfingered" into a UYK-20!
But that seems to be only 42!! Correct me if I'm wrong!
Give it another 10-12 yrs.. It gets worser...
RP

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#96 Post by RetroTechGuy »

racepres wrote:
Pizzasgood wrote:Old age is depressing (I turned 10110 last week.)
Been awhile since I "fatfingered" into a UYK-20!
But that seems to be only 42!! Correct me if I'm wrong!
Give it another 10-12 yrs.. It gets worser...
RP
42 might be the correct answer, but Pizza indicated 22... ;)

I wondered if he had dropped a prefix "1", or a trailing "0". BTW, I'm sitting at 110010 myself. Though I'd much prefer to be in hex, instead... :lol:

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#97 Post by racepres »

RetroTechGuy wrote: 42 might be the correct answer, but Pizza indicated 22... ;)

I wondered if he had dropped a prefix "1", or a trailing "0". BTW, I'm sitting at 110010 myself. Though I'd much prefer to be in hex, instead... :lol:
Got me... I got in a hurry! Told ya it'd been a long time!
If pizzasgood is 22 then you are 50 and I am ...110110. And in Hex...=36!! Gettin' better am I?
RP

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#98 Post by JustGreg »

If we are talking about old number systems and Pizza Good age (22 decimal) then in octal, he is 26 or hex 16. Talking about AN/UYQ-20, brings back memories of DEC PDP-8 and punched tape loaders. I do not want to go back to the old days. In my case, my age is 111011 binary, 73 octal, or 3B hex.

Yes, being root under Linux or UNIX does require some care, but, being Administrator under Windows requires the same care. It is easy to do damage. It is like "sailor proofing equipment". One has to be careful. Stupidity is a natural resource that the human race will never exhaust. I have my own personal supply, which unfortunately I seem to use ever so often.
Enjoy life, Just Greg
Live Well, Laugh Often, Love Much

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#99 Post by RetroTechGuy »

racepres wrote:
RetroTechGuy wrote: 42 might be the correct answer, but Pizza indicated 22... ;)

I wondered if he had dropped a prefix "1", or a trailing "0". BTW, I'm sitting at 110010 myself. Though I'd much prefer to be in hex, instead... :lol:
Got me... I got in a hurry! Told ya it'd been a long time!
If pizzasgood is 22 then you are 50 and I am ...110110. And in Hex...=36!! Gettin' better am I?
RP
I don't know about you, but I rather like the looks of that hex number better... ;)

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