[sf-lug] Monday meeting and Bobbie Sellers' news

[Bobbie Sellers]

On 04/19/2018 04:13 PM, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Bobbie Sellers (bliss-sf4ever at dslextreme.com):
>
>> I was using the Netgear 54Mbsp Wireless ADSL Modem Router DG834G v3 on
>> a filtered line from a POTS with connections to the current Dell
>> E6520, the Epson Printer with a USB connected Scanner and Copier.

>>     
>> "Absurdly over-featured" not to the the consumer level user or people
>> with space and even shelf space limitations.
> Care to explain that, Bobbie?  The above seems like a whopping
> non-sequitur, for starters.

     Well you described it as "absurdly over-featured", it is really not 
but the features need
more separation with a replaceable router module or/and replaceable  
WiFi module but in
a compact design in my opinion.

And it is not because the features are not used.  Most people these days 
have a cable
modem with a separate router to service the needs of their families.  
The router may
well be combined with WiFi for the various devices I cannot afford to 
pay ongoing
charges for.

However I operate on a Social Security budget having been afflicted in 
mid-life
with problems* I never imagined having.  Anything I buy has to fit 
within that budget as
it has done since I got my first Commodore C=64 in the 1980s.  So nearly 
all my equipment
  is purchased second hand.  I forego things that most people take for 
granted to
save my money and after nearly 40 years of doing it I am good at not 
wasting my
cash on books, depending on the SFPL, but I still have the stuff I 
bought before
the 'net came into existence.

     One of those problems* is that I can no longer concentrate as I was 
able to do
when I went to my various technical schools related to nursing.  So what 
I learned
was on the Amiga which had a good but inadequate OS without memory 
protection
and I learned by making mistakes and fixing them (if i could).  I lost a 
pile of saved
messages compressed with a proprietary system for the Amiga for example 
designed
to save space on small hard drives.  This was lost when I backed up my 
first hard
drive to floppies.

> If you wish to argue otherwise, kindly go through the feature list I
> posted upthread, and tell me which of those functions you actually need
> and use.  Long experience suggests that a sober and thoughtful answer to
> that is going to end up being a list of about three or four out of many
> times that.

     I did that already.
>
> That would cover 'over-featured' in the sense of 'more than the user
> actually has a practical use for', but also relevant is the additional
> sense of 'tending to bloat the attack surface'.  Which was the _most_
> important point.  Your so-called 'DSL modem' just got pwned:  How do you
> figure that happened, Bobbie?

     I detailed that previously.  Of course I may have aroused the 
resentment of some troll
on Usenet when I pointed out that cloudflare was malware when it was 
being advertised
by said troll as a fast new DNS server at 1.1.1.1.
     I find the use of pwned for the corruption of a device somewhat 
irritating by the
way, but I was never one of the "l33t" people.
> Dollars to donuts, it happened because the Netgear device was lit up
> like a Christmas tree with publicly attackable code that you never
> bothered (or, likely, even thought) to upgrade.  And the real question I
> had was:  Are you trying to make that same mistake, all over again?

     I doubt very much that I am.  And I have already detailed the 
changes I have made
and am still making to my systems.  As for attack-able code I don't know 
anything
about that and when checking on my configuration in the past I was never 
offered updates.
>
> It's also troubling that you seem to think that the more a user is
> 'consumer level', the more that person needs devices with boatloads of
> features that he/she has no plausible use for and serve only to create
> weakness to attack.  This does not seem like a survival strategy, more
> like a Darwin-client one, and moreover it's rather painful to see on a
> Linux mailing list, given that doing Internet infrastructure is a core
> Linux competency.
     Well it was a device that did what I needed done.
     Most consumers living in a shared studio apartment would look for a 
similar combination of
features.  I was happy to find it second hand and was never offered a 
firmware update.

>
> Shelf space?  Wow, remind me how big a Raspberry Pi is.  About 3" x 2",
> right?  Just a bit larger than a credit card.  You're going with people
> not having room for a credit card, then?
         How much space do you need to assemble a Raspberry PI device?
        How much skill?
        How much physical dexterity and endurance?
         Those are things I used up a long time past.

         I use up my space with my books, DVDs both entertainment and 
Linux distributions
an old Amiga, 3 Dell laptops one afunctional two working pretty well.
>>      Is repair of this device possible?
> Try to factory-reset it, and then reflash it.

     I tried the reset and of course it changed nothing,  re-flashing a 
device like
this I know nothing about and can find no connectors to open the case.  
I may
look for more information online.

     You seem like a very intelligent person but you write as though 
every one
responding to you is challenging your expertise.  No one is.

         Bobbie Sellers - who has never claimed particular expertise 
except in
keeping what I have at hand working fairly well.