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Worms Jack Up the Total Cost of Windows
rbrandis writes "Dealing with widespread worms like Sasser raises the cost of using Windows, a research analyst said Wednesday. "This is part of the carrying cost of using Windows," said Mark Nicolett, research director at Gartner. "The cost of a Windows environment has gone up because enterprises have to install security patches very rapidly, deal with outages caused by secondary problems with these patches, and deploy additional layers of security technology." "The Sasser worm attacks confirm our prediction that mass worm attacks against the multiple vulnerabilities disclosed by Microsoft on April 13 were likely," said Nicolett and his Gartner colleague, John Pescatore, in an alert posted on the Gartner site."
1 - Create an OS with more holes than swiss cheese
2 - Deny vulnerabilities as long as possible
3 - Release Patches
4 - Blame Security Vulnerabilities on Patches
5 - ??
6 - Profit!
well my main point was is that these problems we are facing would be more even if the number of PC's running windows and linux were closer to 50/50. yeah you can log in as root but then someone will come up with a hack, just like everything else..someway someone would write something.
Oh yeah, it'll be cheaper until Distribution X discontinues, then you're fucked. I haven't seen any studies here on /. about those millions and millions of users who used Red Hat on their desktop, and who are now fucked because little tiny Red Hat decided not to continue their product. I'm sure most had to re-install a new OS. If that's not expensive, I don't know what is.
True, you won't have a monoculture, but if companies start using Linux on desktops, and the Linux companies fold (as they always do), then they're especially fucked. At least with MS, I know they're going to be around tomorrow, and if a problem crops up, they're gonna fix it, because they have millions of customers. If I were using Red Hat a year ago, I'd be fucked today.