@maulinglawns Yes, the new US Commander-in-Chief (shudder) seems to have inspired many to exceptional heights of eloquence. And John writes quite well normally. I'd also read Russ Allbery's post (link from John's post). Russ is always worth reading.
I feel like this question on U&L, though it is reasonably answered now, might also be possible to answer with (historical?) information about why some *nix OSes have system-provided root-owned executables owner-writable and others don't -- or, if not why, at least when the decisions were made and where, if anywhere, the choices have been documented. (I don't know enough about it to write such an answer, myself.)
Could you please explain why a binary compiled file (in, for example, /usr/sbin) has write permission for root user?
For me, this is compiled. Meaning that direct write has no use and may expose file to some security issue somehow.
A script (e.g. a bash file) may be writeable because it is a te...
@terdon Thanks terdon! I would need to do some research as I'm not currently aware of the history of these choices. I will update my answer if I find something.
@EliahKagan I doubt there was any decision. The decision was to make /usr/sbin writable by root, for obvious reasons. They just didn't think to explicitly go on and make binary files in there non-writable.
I don't think it was a choice to make binary files in that dir writable. They just get the permissions from their parent.
But @EliahKagan is curious and he points out that, as you say in your answer, other OSs took a different approach so there might be benefits/drawbacks to each.
Hi folks. I was wondering whether I should post a question about trying (and failing) to build the current unstable version of Okular on Debian stable. Or should I just talk to the project directly?
Talking to the project directly would enable you to get qualified help. Asking here would get you generic help. Also consider the audience and who would benefit from reading about the issue and the solution.
Well, the story really doesn't tell I'm afraid. The BINMODE?=555 was probably added to the Makefile fragment as a way of storing a default value somewhere. If that value was what was used previous to this or not, I don't know.
@FaheemMitha Well, KDE went through some pretty major changes for version 5 (a pre-KDE5 version would probably work). And its hardly surprising the new versions of programs might need new features added in new library versions.
@derobert I don't know how much you are following this, but what are your thoughts about the orange terror tearing up the free trade agreements? It's a bit hard to imagine him actually doing anything helpful, but I suppose I could be wrong.
Bad Samaritans is a book about economy written by Ha-Joon Chang, a South Korean institutional economist specialising in development economics. The book criticizes economic mainstream and neo-liberalism. Chang mentioned developed countries require developing countries to change and open their markets. Rich and powerful governments and institutions are actually being 'Bad Samaritans': their intentions are worthy but their simplistic free-market ideology and poor understanding of history leads them to inflict policy errors on others.
== Summary ==
Chang argued uncomfortable truth of capitalism and...
ie. you know that the free trade is going to open up your rice markets, you need to make sure that your producers are up to the competency or look for an alternative to move them onto
Naturalists of his time didn't believe in evolution, either. Knowledge advances. Citing the beliefs of people from centuries past is not convincing or even relevant...
Yes. Much of the world was. But that doesn't mean it was a good policy. Just not a policy so destructive it could counter the technological progress (and it wasn't a new policy, either).
And also, policies that are overall good (like free trade) can be bad for some people—often are. Trade definitely is. There are just (at least, to economists) better solutions to that than rejecting free trade.
@FaheemMitha I'm not sure what the consensus of economic historians is on whether it was actually helpful in that or a hindrance. But the consensus of economists about today's situation is that free trade is a positive.
@FaheemMitha exactly the argument I'm trying to make: there are certain policies that works under certain circumstances. Right now, protectionism isn't needed.
(where they could have taken those IOUs as payment for taxes, to see if the hypothesis that's a sufficient condition for the IOUs to become currency is correct)
@derobert My memory is that the left, at least, has been very sceptical of free trade agreements in the past. I don't understand economics myself enough to weigh in, but presumably some on the left could be considered expert.
@derobert I don't know those people. But you do realise that many economists are trained in the same few places, right? It's not that they all arrived at their opinions independently.
Abhijit Banerjee (MIT) Markus K. Brunnermeier (Princeton) Liran Einav (Stanford) Amy Finkelstein (MIT) Oliver Hart (Harvard) Hilary Hoynes (Berkeley) Steven N. Kaplan (Chicago) Larry Samuelson (Yale) Carl Shapiro (Berkeley) Robert Shimer (Chicago)
@FaheemMitha and to finalize my argument earlier, trade can be bad for certain sectors, but that depends on the sector and whenever or not they can compete
I guess my overall feeling is that professional economists at fancy universities work for the elites. And I realise that makes me sound like a voter for you-know-who.
@derobert I thought people in Europe are generally pro-EU. Even if not by much.
I'm not british, but it sounds to me that they were looking for a scapegoat for the discomfort they had, and they used migrants to take the blame/allow people to vent out