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MS to Launch Paid Security Subscription Service
user24 writes "MSN reports that Microsoft 'is launching a subscription service aimed at providing better protection for the Windows operating system, which has been vulnerable to Internet attacks.
Windows Live OneCare will protect up to three computers for about 50 dollars a year.'
From the OneCare website: 'Windows Live OneCare works continuously, automatically, and quietly in the background on your PC, ever vigilant against threats but never in the way, allowing you to have fun and be more productive:'"
Try fixing your operating system first.
They've found the second step!
1. Build buggy OS full of security holes
2. Charge 50 dollars a year to fix said bugs
3. Profit!
I gotta commend Microsoft, planning to make money of things that should be integrated into the system so that the threats never happen in the first place.
Prevention is less profitable than response, thus, they'll never try making a secure system now.
You will be baked, and there will be cake.
Only in the software industry, folks, can you buy a product and then buy another product to make the first product work. I suppose if you are making a bomb that could apply too.
My original point was that most of what is being offered are dependent on OS deficiencies (i.e. of no value to linux/os x users even if written for those platforms) and the features not dependent on those deficiencies (e.g. automated backup) certainly aren't worth $50 a year.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
No, it doesn't.
I repeat: anti-spyware and anti-virus software aren't there to protect you against "inadequate security". They *may* do this as a side effect, but it is not their purpose.
I suspect you have not extensively used Internet Explorer on a user with administrator rights (MS Windows default) to browse the Internet.
No. Nor would I ever consider doing it.
If you had, you would have collected spyware without agreeing to install anything.
Undoubtedly. But this would be due to software bugs (and, arguably, bad UI), not "inadequate security" - not to mention the foolishness of browsing the web with a high-privilege account.
With Windows XP (original release, no SP 1) just connecting to the Internet from a user with administrator rights, without a firewall, is enough to be infected by worms within a short time.
As is installing many Linux distros and commercial unixes from the same time period. Again, you are largely describing problems caused by software bugs, not "inadequate security". I will agree that the firewall should have been enabled by default from the first release of XP and that services shouldn't be binding to external network interfaces by default - but even without that, all those remote exploits are coming from *coding errors*.
OS-level security - which Windows NT has in spades - can protect you against some aspects of malicious code. However, it cannot protect you against all, or even the most common, aspects of malicious code. That is what anti-spyware and anti-virus software is for.
The point is, if the OS was secure in the first place, antivirus/antispyware wouldn't be needed.
It's funny that slashdotters like to think of themselves as smarter than everyone else, more "tech-savvy" than everyone else, yet they make such idiotic statements like the above with regularity. And some idiot modded the above statement as "Insightful", further damning slashdot's rep. LOL
Spyware generally doesn't rely on OS insecurity.
Viruses generally don't rely on such either.
Trojan horses almost never rely on OS insecurity.
For those that do rely on OS insecurity, Microsoft will continue patching OS insecurity for free with Windows Update (just as Apple does for Macs). For malware that doesn't rely on OS insecurity, anti-malware software (such as Microsoft's OneCare offering) exists.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
I have a few windows machine.
One - a 2003 server has never crashed - as I mainly leave that happily running Apache, mailserver etc.
One - my big beast has bouts of flakiness - everytime it's down to a flakey driver for some obscure or cutting edge piece of hardware. (a problem MS has attempted to address with signed/unsigned drivers).
Now if a company produces a buggy driver for Windows, you can usually be pretty sure they put even less effort into the linux one (if they bothered at all).
In my country, we patch them regularly.
- Vladimir