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Windows Chief Suggests Vista Won't Need Antivirus
LadyDarth writes "During a telephone conference with reporters yesterday, outgoing Microsoft co-president Jim Allchin, while touting the new security features of Windows Vista, which was released to manufacturing yesterday, told a reporter that the system's new lockdown features are so capable and thorough that he was comfortable with his own seven-year-old son using Vista without antivirus software installed."
As capable as my IMac I guess.
Good job Microsoft. Only a year or more after Apple.
that's like the annoying kid who's just asking to get his butt kicked in Bully...uh oh is that Jack Thompson??
hahaha ho ho ho that's rich
i bet he still belives in santa claus
Run a program which sends out mass mails, or communicates with a server or does other actions then malicious people will write malicious code.
Just because a virus cannot harm the operating system does not mean it is harmless.
liqbase
Average user won't need Vista.
Who plans on bookmarking this story so they can laugh heartily at it again in a year?
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
Sure... and I'm comfortable driving a car with no airbags! Doesn't mean that everyone doesn't want an airbag!
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
no, stop, you're killing me, ahhahahahahahhahahhahahhahahhahhahhha
Never had a problem. Of course, I use Firefox, a NAT, and don't visit porn sites or use P2P, which pretty much cuts my attack vectors to zero. Haven't had any AdWare in, hmm, 4 years or so either. I have AdAware installed on my computer but haven't bothered running it in about 2 years since it never picks up anything.
Now I'm using IE7 as my main browser (quiet!) and don't anticipate any problems with it, either. Heck, its *more* paranoid than FF is some of the time (it will quibble about http refresh redirects to executables, for example).
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
i've been trying it out, and vista works for me, naked on the internet, without a single problem. in fact i would go so far as to say that V1AGRA HOOD1A GR0W Y0UR PEN1S L0W M0RTGAGE RATES L0SE WE1GHT MEET BARELY LEGAL TEENS SEE HARDC0RE SHEMALE ACTION
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
That only took... what... 15-odd years. Seeing will be believing.
....when they announced that Windows 2000 would never have a Service Pack release. One would never be needed.
(still have no use for XP, btw.)
"We may face a scorched and lifeless earth, but they're accountable to their shareholders first."
as I remember it was something like "you can't possibly write a virus for this operating system". Go get em boys.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Sounds a bit like some unsinkable ship.
To laugh. It always surprises me when someone says "we'll never need this" or "computers will never..." I remember a computer magazine editorial saying we would never store music on Hard Drives, it would take up to much space. These people never seem to think more that a few months or maybe a year into the future.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
See, if you don't run av, then when you get infected, you'll have to reload vi$ta (which they only let you do once). Then, you'll have to buy another copy of said OS.
Brilliant marketing $cheme
Windows Vista severly limits access to raw packet sending to non-priviledged apps, meaning that packet forging is much more difficult. Although the zombies that are sending seemingly alright content (at the protocol level) aren't affected, those that are doing the SYN/ACK DDOS floods will be.
I'll have plenty of work babysitting those desktops.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
wow... haven't heard that one before.... No, really. I haven't.
;)
No system is immune to viruses. All it takes is a stupid user to allow it, and we all know there's no shortage of that. That's why antivirus products exist for every major OS out there. Even Linux has antivirus apps (though granted, most of them are geared towards Linux boxen running as servers for Windows-based networks).
Oh wait. Technically, if it requires a stupid user's interaction to get in, it's not a virus. It's a trojan. I guess Vista really could be immune to viruses....
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
Yea..........and 640K will be plenty of memory..........
And the world will only need 4 computers...................
And no one would ever need a computer at home..............
Sheesh......where do they come up with this stuff?
"TV, a medium as it is neither rare nor well done." Ernie Kovacs
This man would risk his child's life on a mere belief rather than give him some decent protection!!
Of course a seven-year-old on a locked down computer wont be able to do any harm. Kids that age aren't into the sites (porn, illegal downloads, etc.) that are notorious for viruses and spyware. Not to mention that the kid's using a machine secured by parental controls and is most likely on a limited account. Wake me up when the average teenager can safely use Windows with an administrator account and no extra security software installed.
Aren't most Syn/Ack floods just damned impatient users swamping a site after news breaks that its "under attack"? ;)
We are the main vehicle of a ddos
liqbase
You'll need to start worrying when he turns 12 or 13. ;)
Take the Apple Challenge: Put a Vista machine one the Net, and IIRC, make sure a telent daemon and web server are also running and give out the admin password. If nobody can crack it, we'll believe you, otherwise STFU.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
I have always wondered why execs make claims like this?? Hey this is so great nothing will ever break it, I dare you to try. Really, do they think it will be virus proof, or is it just better? Just makes me wonder?
Quid Pro Quo, nothing more, nothing less.
A case can be made for running all Windows versions without anti-virus, especially if browsing the Internet routinely as a limited user. Unfortunately, the popular anti-virus products (McAfee, Symantec, Trend Micro) almost never prevent targeted attacks by cyber criminals, so one is tempted to avoid the performance hit and potential system destabilisation that comes from using these products and just rely on common sense, good backups, encryption of sensitive data, and acting all the time as if a keylogger might be installed on your system. I still use an anti-virus product personally, but I do not regard it as a reliable means of preventing infection.
ouch thats gonna backfire owww
NATIVE ANTIVIRUS
Seriously, isn't this what third party antivirus vendors have been whining about?
Doesn't matter whether I could or not as my university probably won't agree with Allchin. But personally, yeah I'm sure I and many others would be fine without AV software on Vista.
He probably would have thought the lifeboats on the Titanic only got in the way too.
I do understand the sentiment. His son is young enough, that as long as he has a decent firewall, and decent parental control software, (i.e. disallowing email and IM,) he should be fine.
But it's still an irresponsible thing to make as a blanket statement.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
From TFA, it sounds like you really might not need an antivirus... if you lock it down with the parental tools so you can't download anything at all except from your own approved sites, that covers up a large malware attack vector that an antivirus is suppose to protect. After all, the role of the antivirus now and in the future will be that of a blacklist of known bad software. Everything else an AV does can be obsoleted.
... when a statistically significant percentage of administrators (this includes people who administrate their own home computer) are too ignorant to take precautions against executing unknown code as a superuser.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The door has been opened and now every hacker and virus writer will be working on proving those words wrong.
Here's the same guy's promise about their last operating system:
Microsoft has said it has stamped out buffer overflows with the upcoming release of Windows XP. Jim Allchin, vice president, claimed the company has done a complete code review of its operating system and removed all buffers which could overflow.
I'll let somebody else post a list of all the critical updates caused by buffer overflows...
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
popular home anti-virus products (McAfee, Symantec, Trend Micro) also don't work non admin users
Coupla key points:
1. He didn't say he let his kid on the Internet without an AV package running.
2. He didn't say "firewall". Speaking of which, ZoneAlarm just grabbed focus and I think I let something connect out to the Internet. I'm running an installer so I'm not gonna freak out, but I certainly hope Vista won't let apps steal focus while you're fracking typing.
3. He also didn't say the kid would be online unsupervised or without parental controls running.
4. It's a safe bet to assume he meant the kid would use IE if he went online, but he didn't actually say it either.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
Likewise, I also seem to recall that when hard drives were finally becoming affordable, people were claiming that the chances of actually filling up a 20 or 40MB drive were almost nil.
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Thanks for the laugh Slashdot.
Perhaps he was referring to that great lockdown feature that lets you physically diconnect the PC from the network. Sure it's new; it used to be the other way round before.
I've had two infections on my Windows over the years--Nimda and a video codec trojan. I'm not counting the second boxes that I used to use for experiments--I never put anything important on them, so I tended to just not care, and blow away Windows when they got nasty--that was back in the bad old dialup days when potential damage to others was minimal, and Windows was a lot less secure. I don't know if AV would have stopped Nimda, because I didn't use AV back then. AV didn't stop the trojan. I used to disable AV routinely because it *is* a virus. It used to slow boxes down way too much, and cause all kinds of problems with installers. I always un-do the stupid defaults in Windows and IE, and I try not to be too careless. Nimda is really the only one I can blame on MS, and it was patched ages ago. I would probably disable AV on my current box, but they seem to have gotten better about not hogging resources and/or crashing the box so I just leave it alone.
I wonder if Vista is finally going to display extensions by default. That was always irritating. It would be *nice* if you had to enable active content on a per-site basis by default. It would be better if they just didn't have so much active content out there. Would I "just trust" a Vista box? No way. But would I run it without AV if there was none pre-installed? Yes, in a heartbeat--but I would still be very careful about how I conducted myself on the web, and I would still want to go through all the settings to make sure there was nothing stupid in there. And I would *still* be checking up on processes and registry keys from time-to-time.
But anyway, XP without AV is not a big deal--if you know what you're doing. Unfortunately, that's a big if. Nevermind 7 year olds. It's the 57 year olds that you have to worry about.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Hahahahahahahahahahaahaahahaahahahahahahahahahahah ahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahah.. Whew
Ohh now my stomach hurts...
but you go first....
Table-ized A.I.
From exec types i ephemeral
No operating system has ever needed an antivirus. I don't recommend using Windows, but I have used it in the past, and although I ran antivirus software, I never needed it. It never picked up anything but false positives.
Now that I'm using linux, I have clamav installed. I rarely scan, and I never find anything.
Antivirus is an EXTRA precaution that sits behind the front lines. It also is never 100% reliable.
What he actually meant to say was that it won't need any antivirus...for the first 10 minutes. That's almost a two-fold increase from XP!
Anyone else think the comments just weren't rendering right before they turned off ABP and saw ads?
n/t
The main attack vectors these days seem to center on "drive by downloads" or pop ups that trick you into downloading executables ("WARNING! Your PC is infested with SPYWARE - CLICK HERE to remove"). Most Antivirus software is unbelievably pathetic when it comes to identifying/dealing with spyware. I've seen dozens of clients who have so much spyware, it can take 30 minutes or more to boot up and then spend more time closing all the popped-up windows. FF and it appears IE7 as well will hopefully go a long way to closing this attack. Now we just need to wait for everyone with win95,98,ME, NT, etc. to upgrade.
... doesn't need to be walked if you don't mind it using your house as a toilet.
That is all.
Anybody else thinking that we'll have Vista viruses that mutate and adapt to the ASLR of a particular system within a year or two? I mean, seriously, what is it with software companies (or rather, security companies) and this apparent hubris that "our product is bullet-proof"? I mean, haven't we seen enough security systems and copy protections go down in smoke, even when people were convinced that "it can't be cracked"? Give me a break...
...in certain circumstances. Hell, I haven't had a positive virus under XP for years. I'm running avast right now, but I'm contemplating just removing it completely. The only reason I haven't is because I occasionally get emails from relatives such as "click on this funny card!" containing links to god knows where.
IIRC the only times I ever did get viruses were downloading porn or cracks. Sandbox what you can download (which at least they said they did in vista, who knows if it will be effective) and that eliminates most vectors, other than relative spam mail.
AND PIGS FLY?
/*
*/ Note: hope you don't mind a little bit of a shout! Sorry Slashdot
A site cowboyneal will like http://www.freewebs.com/atpa/
Ha ha!
</VOICE>
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Sounds like somebody's trying to set his previous employer up the bomb.
If you think about it, it's not the OS that needs an anti-virus program; it's the user(s). I have been working in Windows since the 3.1 days, and I have never gotten a virus. And I have never once installed anti-virus software. The average user is just ignorant and sometimes a bit lacking in common sense. These users need virus protection, but technically the OS itself doesn't. They only need to educate themselves and be a bit more careful.
http://www.vx1.co.uk/neworder.asp?ProductGroupId=3 3
I haven't experienced issues with Windows viruses in years. The trouble is spyware, adware, trojans, junkware and crapware...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
RMS Vista: "Even God himself could not sink her!"
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
*ROFL*
We already know that systems can become infected under Vista. There was a big long write-up of someone installing all sort of malware under Vista via iexplore. There's no question that what Allchin is saying is in direct response to the outcry that there's no compelling reason upgrade and that the security in Vista is really a minor feature. Maybe he's doing it to up his stock value so he can get out from under Microsoft with a big windfall in stock.
He's out-going employee so he may feel he can lie all the wants. When the time comes a lot of people will be very disappointed in Microsoft and they'll also already have been duped.
I wonder if Microsoft can be brought to court early for such fraudulent claims, maybe even to the point halting Vista's release. Making such false claims are akin to fraud. To let that out to encourage sales is to make those sales based on fraud.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Try 13 - 7yos don't search porn
Yeah, well, if their "lockdowns" operate anything like DEP, which seems to do little good aside from crashing random programs now and then...
Sure thing, where is the news?
I'm running w2k here with 6 years history of not a single trojan, worm, virus etc. infection. (Before that it was NT4, w95, w31, DOS, cpm+, together 21 years of computing w/o malware infections).
I scan my system for malware about once/quarter, with a number of different scanners. But no "protective shield" scanner running all the time.
Oh, and I don't do windows update, I ran w2kSP2 until iTunes forced me to update to SP4. SP3 had an evil EULA, that's why.
I let my kids run their boxen under a similar setup, w/o problems, and I believe almost anyone could do the same.
All it takes is
- no outlook
- no MSIE
- a linux firewall/gateway protecting the lan
- wlan connects to the foreign side of the firewall and tunnels in via openVPN
- clamAV/Amavis and postgrey on the mail server with some basic restrictions about file types of attachments
605413? Yes, it's a prime.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
Duh, of course the computer is safe in the hands of a child, the operating system hasn't even been released yet. I wouldn't bet on that security through obscurity once the OS becomes mainstream.
What he said was that the lockdown features were so tight that he was happy to let his 7-year-old son use the computer without an AV installed. In other words, he was confident that his son wouldn't be able to install any software.
He did not say that regular users, who want to be able to install programs, should not use an AV. Nor did he say he was so sure the system had no holes that it wouldn't require a firewall.
In other words, yet another pointless anti-MS story posted on Slashdot, that basically hurts Slashdot's credibility more than it does Microsoft's. Nothing new there. Gone are the days when Slashdot actually had any news, or any stuff that mattered.
like earth does not need gravity.
I Predict A Riot
Wasn't he picked up by the cops last year on a 1492, for not believing in Columbus?
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With Vista being so DRM ridden and such a hog you'll never want to use it. Therefore you'll never do anything with it, and never have data to protect on it. Hell if you try to type in anything more than a couple of characters, the UI will prevent you from doing so with "security popups". The new secret weapon is MS Clippy Nazi (tm) which will come up with phrases like "I'm sorry but you appear to be entering a credit card number. Zis vil not be tolerated." and "I refuse to accept responsibility for your data" and "You entered that data over 4 weeks ago. Please call Microsoft support to reactivate your data".
Problem solved. No need for Antivirus.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Step 1 - PC running newly installed vanilla Vista is connected directly to the Internet via cable modem. No third party firewalls / AV software, no hardware router / firewall.
Step 2 - seven year old kid uses it for Web surfing for two hours.
Step 3 - Mr. Allchin uses the PC to access his brokerage / bank accounts.
[Insert pithy quote here]
"system's new lockdown features are so capable and thorough that he was comfortable with his own seven-year-old son using Vista without antivirus software installed."
Not because the lockdown feature stops any virus from getting on, but because he can't get McAfee or Norton to work right on Vista without a hack!
There will be no such system that will not be attacked any means electronically... unless it is not connected to an network or turned on.
Buy stock in Symantec!
Here http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/ZDM/story?id=2639 246 Fixed for you. Its called Media Spin.
Allchin also addressed concerns that Vista would be inherently insecure. The OS has already suffered so-called "pen" or penetration testing during its development, and is the first product to go through Microsoft's secure development lifecycle program, he said. "Thousands" of applications have been tested against the software. Allchin's own son uses a prerelease version of Vista without any antivirus software, Allchin said, although he advised customers not to do the same.
did I mention how
oh wait, this is
605413? Yes, it's a prime.
Without Administrator access, a virus can at best mess around with his son's account. Easy enough to fix by killing and recreating the account. This is actually true of XP as well (and OSX/Linux, obviously), but Vista is the first MS OS to handle Standard User in a straightforward way.
And with UAC, since Administrators don't even run with full token by default, 3rd party applications will quickly move away from assuming Admin access (a huge problem with running XP as limited -- apps blow up).
My kids have been using Linux "with no antivirus" since before they could type (they started with things like tuxpaint and gcompris)
Windows is finally catching up?!!
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
Sure, go right ahead and don't install AntiVirus or any protection what so ever. As long as the machine stays off the 'net, you should be mostly safe.
I also feel completely comfortable letting his seven year old child run vista on his computer without anti virus software!
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
"Address Space [Layout] Randomization). What it does is, each Windows Vista machine is slightly different than every other Windows Vista machine"
Sweet. now my computer can crash in ways yours can't even dream of.
ôó
What an idiotic statement to make. He basically said that it is impossible to get a virus while running Vista which sure sounds like a challenge to all virus writers abroad. There WILL be viruses for Vista, I don't care how secure it is just like there would be viruses for Linux if it were the mainstream OS. Maybe the damage will be more contained or the malware will be easier to detect, but one should never underestimate the cleverness of a basement dwelling greasy haired hacker.
Bring 'em on!
Say hello to my little sig.
A
Sorry
Last
Resort
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
For once, the tagging system is 100% accurate!
Zing!
His son's computer isn't hooked to the Internet, and only plays store bought games aimed at 7 year olds.
:)
Viruses shouldn't be a problem for him. Now, mind you if it gets hooked to the internet for 30 seconds, all bets are off...
I don't believe he was saying "Vista can't get viruses", but rather UAC (user account control) stops code from executing, thus making him feel safe that even his son could surf the web (with UAC on) without obtaining a virus blindly. I think the biggest weakness with past Windows have been uninformed users thinking that clicking "yes" in dialog boxes to execute an unknown program or script is a witty thing to do. I believe UAC tries to solve this, and most "average" users will be too lazy to turn it off (or won't know how), while advanced users can simply surf responsibly with it off.
In other news, the successor to Vista will not require hardware.
Who cares what Vista has going for it? Who cares if it's a total piece of crap? It's still going out the door on every Dell and HP box sold. That's why they make the money. That's why it will continue to be everywhere; that's why doofuses like Dvorak think it's "popular".
Slashdot: Free News that's Worth It.
With some vulnerabilities, you can have a worm can infect you merely by having a computer connected to the internet. SQL/Slammer just required that you have the SQL code on your computer and have not patched the known vulnerability. A vulnerability that there was a patch released for six months earlier. Many users had no idea they had the SQL code installed and were vulnerable. Their choice of browser, whether they visited porn sites etc did not affect their vulnerability. For Jim Allchin to make this statement he needs to be guaranteeing there will be no bugs in Vista. I'm sure he won't be guaranteeing that. Given that many viruses don't need a system bug, or even to get into the kernel, i don't see how a bug free vista would even guarantee to be virus free. Perhaps he is confused about why Unix, Linux and Mac OS X do not get many viruses. That is more about the virus writers choosing to not target them. If the virus writers DID choose to target them there would be just as many viruses for those systems. There is a lot of talk about Windows being more vulnerable to viruses. It is not necessarily more vulnerable, though there are ways it could be less vulnerable. The real driver is the hackers and what they choose to go after.
Ed: . . . . So would u let your child sleep in the bed with a 46 year old man that has been accused of child molestation?
M. Jackson: Yes, I would
The parallels are scary . . . .
Since when does being a Socialist mean 'someone who has a different opinion than me'?
If you type linux 3 times fast with the lights off, windows will blue screen!
I don't visit porn sites or other dodgy sites. My wife and I both run XP with no anti-virus s/w (have for years) with no known problems.
Karma? Sorry, i don't believe in superstition. http://talk.thinkingmatters.org.nz
I have a some thoughts on this one:
1. Care to put your money where your mouth is? Like refund the price of Vista if my copy gets infected? That should be fair.
2. Care to share what you are smoking? Sounds really kickin'
3. LOL
4. Famous last words - like we aren't ever going to need more than 640K of RAM or the Internet is a passing fad like CB radio.
5. ROTFL
and you don't need 640k either.... Oh wait, vista can't run in 640K, doh ;)
When Windows ME came along, the system restore features were touted as if your little kid can play on your computer and not mess it up. Heck no.
After I found how lobotomized XP HOME version was I'm really pissed
off at MS. Hmm, let's take out all the security and sell it as the
HOME version, for christ sake, just goes to show to what length MS will
go to screw you over. How many versions will VISTA have? Home, 3rd World
version, Media version, umpteen server versions. Ughhh, bend over for
VISTA, here it comes!
And here I've been criticising Windows all this time.
Well... time to sell my iBook, remove Linux from my PC, and buy a copy of Vista. I'll be set for life!
Saying your "phone ran out of batteries" is like saying your "car ran out of gas tanks".
they are using a genitically modified version of aids to fight aids......
I hope Novell keeps a condom on its Linux development with MS.
You mean, a computer which only runs programs I intended to run? What a novel idea.
Wow! I could bask in that irony all day. =)
Ever done a `man` on `top` ?
... and when his son becomes thirteen he will actually connect the computer to the network. ;)
I contend that no OS ever needs AV software. They need backup, and smart operators. AV has never pro-actively detected something, only slowed normal usage of my PC.
sorry, but i'm still going to make sure all the workstations in the office that aren't mine (i.e. the MicroWinTelExplorer ones) have whatever CA comes up with to "shield" them from the everyday variants and nuisance payloads. the guy's in marketing as a product chief - i think we all know better than to believe any statement from marketing at face value. usually it's face value with considerable depreciation and heavy exposure to inflationary pressures.
someone stop spiking his triple-splenda extra hot venti chai latte, ok? silly twits
when it rains, it gets real soggy. when it pours, i'm under the tap just _waiting_ for the joy
This reminds me of a Douglas Adams quote:
"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair."
Hmm...
I might be able to get away with not using AV if I have enough faith in my router's NAT + my own browsing habits, but I sure as shit wouldn't recommend the average Joe be without AV. Hope his words of comform don't come back to bite him in the ass.
Deariest Jimmy,
A word to my Dearest Jimmy.
You are wrong!
Toodles!
PS Perhaps in your next job, what ever that my be and I don't wish ill tidings on your new handlers, you will finally learn a "higher Level Programming Language" called "BASIC."
Program launch detected! minesweeper.exe is an application. Please enter your administrator password to launch."
Windows is already bad that way. I've lost count of the number of programs that cannot be run by anyone except an admin. And it's all but impossible to find an app you can install without logging out and logging back in as an admin. Windows badly needs to find a happy medium between security and usability.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
BTW, Vista Is Still The Anti-OS.
That said, a disturbing quote to me from the article was, "His [Allchin's son] machine is locked down with parental controls, he can't download things unless it's to the places that I've said that he could do, and I'm feeling totally confident about that," he [Allchin] added. "That is quite a statement. I couldn't say that in Windows XP SP2.""
It's not disturbing they/he claim the security in Vista, it's disturbing I've been around long enough it's an old tape. Every single new Windows, every single new version, every single new service pack brings the old saw "this time ${WindowsVersin} is really secure and stable". I guess I'm tired of saying "told you so", when it's not. (Oooops, I did it again.)
Prediction (not too hard...): Vista will be riddled with stability and security issues.
Never had a problem. Of course, I use Firefox, a NAT, and don't visit porn sites or use P2P, which pretty much cuts my attack vectors to zero. Haven't had any AdWare in, hmm, 4 years or so either. I have AdAware installed on my computer but haven't bothered running it in about 2 years since it never picks up anything.
I never had any problems either. I use Firefox, a NAT and I do visit porn sites and use Torrents. I have AdAware and Spybot and HiJackThis on my system for years. Since I started using Firefox I have never had a computer Virus. I do run an AVG sweep every day, but have never had a scan come back with anything on it. In fact the only virus I have seen on my computer was something in the Java Cache that AVG found the day I installed it, and Norton never did find.
I have been using Firefox and AVG for, I believe, 4 years now.
Porn sites are not bad anymore. The people running porn sites don't want you to get anything from their sites as they want you as a repeat customer, ad revenue and all. That small percentage of idiots out there running fake porn sites ruin it for everyone.
Vista doesn't need anti-virus software? Gee, just like 98.
Great plan. Release a malware magnet like XP then release 98 again saying it's an upgrade.
Clever.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Did he just say that Windows XP is broken? Why would I want to buy from him again if I got stuck with a broken product the first time around? It doesn't give much in consumer confidence if their answer for a flawed product is to buy the next one that they promise is not broken, which is what they said the last time.
Aren't there laws against this? I mean if my car has flaw in its brakes the company that made it is usually required to fix it by law. If not then at least the manufacturer feels compelled to fix it to assure that they can continue to sell since a poor product tends to sit on store shelves.
I guess I live in a dream world where most everything is a commodity, where standards prevail, and where competition drives excellence.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
No doubt those of us who get dragged into providing unpaid technical support for family & friends, yet who want to do the right thing to help make the world a better place, know exactly what to do. We cannot deny the fruits of our superiour intellect to the world for the greater good ,and we have a duty to make sure we help people out. Sooo... spread this rumour as hard and as fast as you can. By this time next year Windows will have been banned by every government in the world. MUAH!!hahahaha.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
One Cheif flew over the cockoo's nest, and they all followed...
;)
Vista - 1) a pleasing view, especially when seen through a long, narrow opening. Makes you wonder who's getting screwed next 2) a mental view of an imagined future event or situation like, putting toast and jam in the 5 1/4 floppy bay.
Makes me think about looking over the license, and making sure you buy the hardware and return the OS. Pay the Open Source people, not M$.
The immature mind measures.
They've done it.
They've finally made an operating system that is free of security holes, immune to viruses, and resistant to malware.
I didn't think it could be done, but apparently all it took Microsoft was about 6 years.
OH YA! Now, I remeber. NTFS partitions won't need to be defragged, thats why we don't include a defrag tool. This is gonna slap them in the face very quickly, and I can't wait.
until (succeed) try { again(); }
NTFS is such an efficient file system it will not need defragmentation.
Yay, they caught up with linux. Maybe.
Karma: Bad is the liberal way of saying this guy won't drink the kool aid here on slash dot. I wear my Karma with pride
Mwa-Ha-ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha :)
*cough*
Ahhh, that felt good
To quote the Capitol Steps.
Or, perhaps Vista comes complete with a built-in Root Kit making any other malware unnecessary. It's a feature!
Brought to you by Sony-Bertelsman and Microsoft . . .
so, where do i get my money back if it doesn't work...
oh... that's right.
there is no money back guarantee.
more hot air coming from msft...
move along, nothing to see here...
English: Vista won't be ABLE to run antivirus.
It hasent even been playtested to a reasonable degree. He is either foolish or lieing. On the other hand maybe he was making a slighted comment towards the effectiveness of the current anti-virus solutions...
Or maybe he has been relegated to "Used Car" salesmen status. Either way I would not want to make a big deal about this, or in response he might actually do it, it would not be fair to the kid.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
I've been using my home computer(s) to connect to the internet for well over a decade and I have never been a regular user of anti-virus software. I have gotten bitten by it precisely once, when I caught sasser while running windows 2000 on dialup (and I was able to disinfect myself by hand).
I don't leave all my default servicing running. I don't, usually, let my bare ass hang out on the internet, I try to stay behind a firewall or a NAT box. When I do run a server it's apache / mysql (even on windows), and I turn off / don't install all the external administration crap (ssh is more than good enough). I don't run random files I find on, or that are sent to me over, the internet. I keep my systems patched. Etc.
It's not that difficult to avoid viruses and worms today, it just requires a little discipline and critical thinking.
Why wait a year? A dupe should be up within a few days.
He never said that the computer would be connected to the internet. You don't have to lie, you just have to know what to say.
Never say never. XP was supposed to be more secure (just read the screens as it installs).
The only way you can honestly say ANY OS can be locked down from a Virus is if you take away the internet and don't allow someone with a disc the ability to install one.
It's all about user base. Vista will be preinstalled on new OEM machines, and that alone will have a large user base of mostly non-tech-junky people. Prime grounds for virus/virii and malware.
Watch as Symantec sues their anti-antitrust ass.
/pine /pine
Symantec needs to protect its marketshare. Since they gutted and fricasseed their entire product line, AV is the only thing still making them money. And the bloat fits right in with Windows; most users can't even tell who's slowing down who!
(sigh) I miss Peter...
That's what they said years ago too as win95 was supposed to be *completely* different. Guess what, they were wrong.
SCIREV.NET - fanfics,reviews & more
Let's just hope this guy is never in charge of NASA. I can hear it now.
"Our astronauts can hold their breath for so long, I just don't think we need onboard O2 tanks."
"In a world that exists without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates?"
Yep, his 7 year old will use it...as an Encarta station. Without an Internet hookup, the PC is perfectly safe...with any Microsoft OS.
... you'd think they might have learned to underpromise and overdeliver, for once. Unfortunately, the MS propaganda machine is going at it as usual.
Let's see, 50 million lines of code, a new IP stack, horrid complexity -- I'm taking bets on when the first service pack is needed, and when the first worm hits.
A side bet -- how many vulnerabilities did the black hats find in Vista, and then didn't report them to MS.
After the hype dies down, it might be time to short Microsoft again.
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
I consider antivirus to be a scam. When badness is infinite and goodness is finite, which does it make more sense to enumerate? Certainly not the bad. And under previous versions of windows the user ran with administrator priveleges, meaning any program had total control of the computer, and hence total control of any antivirus software that happened to be running on the computer. Security is not improved by adding trusted components (see the The Definition of Trust). This applies to any software you add.
Vista won't need an Antivirus program??? Sure, whatever the "Windows Chief" says. If this is the case then I expect solid gold frogs to start shooting out my arse any moment now.
What a moron!
Vista's sourcecode is public information not to mention the kernel structure. Nuff said.
"Okay, who put a "stop payment" on my reality check?"
I guess that Jim Allchin's little kid does not have any data on his machine that are irreplaceable or worth stealing. Maybe a few game saves. ;-)
If Jim Allchin said he runs his own computer on Vista without antivirus software, it would be more convincing
C - the footgun of programming languages
Ive been running XP for years without an anti virus, never had a problem but then again i don't go opening random things on a whim. Having said that i would never run windows without a firewall and no the XP SP2 firewall doesent count.
Well, Bart, your uncle Arthur used to have a saying: "Shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out."
> told a reporter that the system's new lockdown features are so capable and thorough that he was comfortable with his own seven-year-old son using Vista without antivirus software installed.
:-)
Big deal: my kids (8 and 10) use a PC with vanilla Windows 98 installed, no firewall, no anti-virus. It runs their CD-ROM programs fine. And a few other games etc.
Never had a single piece of malware. It's easy: just do not connect it to the internet
Well, I tought it was perfectly normal that an operating system does not need an antivirus unless its completely fucked up.
Welcome Microsoft, if whats Allchin said is true, then you've just produced the first Windows which is not an utter screw-up.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
Sounds like something dvorak would rave about.
Nothing to see here, move along.
The computer he gave his son is not connected to the internet. And probably it's a cheapo-model without floppy or CD-ROM-drives. Possibly even with only few backmounted USB-ports, and computer is fastened to the table backside against the wall. For extra protection, daddio might've even removed fuses from the kids room.
Here's something interesting I found out:
Install Windows 2000 Professional on to a computer. connect to the internet and download Windows Service Pack 4. When this has finished downloading, download a fire wall program.
Give or take the amount of time it takes to make a cup of tea....your machine has already got a virus!
happened to me!
I did the above but was virus infected before I could firewall or A/V the machine. I start to start again from scratch using tools off a free cd coz an unpatched W2K machine gets infected too quickly!
Is it a challenge?
Sounds familiar
Windows Vista will need Anti-Virus software eventually when it gets older. Maybe first year might pay off without one, but when security is broken flood will follow.
-Seeing the problem is ½ of solution-
``[Jim Allchin is] comfortable with his own seven-year-old son using Vista without antivirus software installed.''
That's almost as arrogant as the Linux fanboys who claim or believe that Linux is immune to viruses. Almost, because Vista at least has some buffer overflow protection measures (ASLR).
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
They surely will be
got the acpi drivers right, so they can turn the nic off.
Bing Tsher E (943915):
....when they announced that Windows 2000 would never have a Service Pack release. One would never
>
> be needed.
> (still have no use for XP, btw.)
No IE7 for you, then. Windows 2000 is now in "extended support"...
I think the whole problem will be again this monoculture, now not only in respect to the OS bt also in respect to virus protection.
The whole security stuff of Vista might even be the best evah, experience tells us that sooner or later it will be cracked and then it's the one that secures the vast majority of all computers. If you have several different protection systems the result would be much less severe.
Monoculture in the OS sector is already bad enough, this will make it worse.
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
This raw socket access thing has been an ongoing battle for years, with MS initially laughing the idea away and then changing their mind about it http://www.grc.com/dos/intro.htm, but this was done in XP SP2 if I understand well.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
whoa, what happened to christmas? didn't realise it was april fools day already!
Hello dear fellow geeks,
I do not want to frighten your feeble hearts but I am using Windows since years and (nearly) never had a virus scanner installed. Once a year I scan my harddisk from a CD boot disk and so far I never ever had a virus. I once also installed an anti virus software to scan the HD and again, no virus found.
How do I do it? I do not react on every exe file with a pavlovian doubleclick reaction. My everyday account has no admin rights. I have a linux firewall in the cellar. Easy.
What do I get: The CPU cycles for me and not for some virus scanner in the background.
regards,
einar
[Quote]Jon Collins, head of research at Sundial Consultancy, questioned the wisdom of such a definite statement by Microsoft. "It is a surprisingly definite announcement, similar to saying that the company has tested 100 per cent of its code," he said.[/quote]
lol tru that!
It's not his son i'm worried about, it's the man himself!
...and your mother smells of elder-berrys!
- DenialX
...to be spread, Jim Allchin just applied common logic.
No seriously, all previous versions of Windows needed anti-virus software and even certain addidional tools to do some basic OS tasks which Windows wasn't capable to do out of the box - so why should Vista be the gerat exception??
Ice
Sig? Where I go, I don't need
in related news: oceania is allied with eurasia and at war with eastasian and always has been
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
I have been using XP since they came out without any antivirus or firewall solutions and I have been perfectly fine..unless you use IE6 to go to very murky files and download strange files, you should have no problem at all..
Infinite time means everything that can happen, will. You being you is absolutely incidental. You do not exist.
Rices Theorem: any non-trivial semantic question about turing-machines is undecidable
- programs are turing machines
- "is it harmful?" is a semantic question
- not all programs are harmful, but some are (meaning the question is not trivial)
this implies that there can't possibly ever be a program that correctly determines for all programs whether it is harmful or not!
maybe microsofts marketing department should ask someone who knows what he's talking about, before they start proclaiming ridiculous nonsense
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
Its a challenge!!!???
In-Reply-To: 16791028
``Without Administrator access, a virus can at best mess around with his son's account.''
Not true. Non-admin users are allowed to use the network (access websites, send email, etc.) and use local services. Using the network, they can affect other people's account. Using local services, they may be able to affect other accounts on the same machine (especially if local services contain privilege escalation vulnerabilities).
Even if a virus can really only mess with one user acocunt, you should be concerned. The user's account contains that user's data, like email, documents, and possibly sensitive information about themselves and others. If the virus can cause that information to vanish, change, or become known to the wrong people, that's bad enough.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I got into the habit of running without installed AV for years because they misbehaved against my odd Satellite ISP I used to use. I tried to be sensible with Zone Alarm (you need that outbound notice!), and external virus scans.
Something did wander onto my system a couple of weeks ago. It's showing up as something that redirects IE searches (it survived upgrading to IE7!), but it lets FireFox searches through. (I joke that I could use the nudge.) Also, a few websites load oddly.
MS pushed so hard to "get it out the door" that Vista is going to be their usual SandPaperWare. While a few experts have some of the beta copies, watch for the flood of info to roll in about February 15. I'm designing a Screener/DarkBox setup, and I think I'm going to be settling on Linux as a screener, with the XP DarkBox only online long enough to grab the live content it needs.
Vista architecture is going cause a general programmer scramble. I'm preparing a dual system to let that situation have a couple of years to resolve itself.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I use XP without antivirus software, too.
... ...
Of course, the only thing I do with it is play computer games... I use Kubuntu for everything else.
His 7 year old son uses Kubuntu!
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
I know I wont be deploying Vista without antivirus, but, i think the only feasable way you would deploy Vista AV Free would be if your users did not have the Admin password. (we all know it is windows, and will be prone to exploits without the password anyways) But my point is simple. the average user (who deploys their own copy) has the admin password... People are so used to typing their password for anything and everything, the average joe end user WILL type their password to let a virus install itself. therefore we WILL need AV Software in Vista, even if it is the first piece of software to be exploit free....
I hate Antivirus products. They consume huge amounts of computing power, slow my computer down, and cause no end of frustration when installing legitimate network applications. In other words, the cost and overhead they impose is far greater than anything I've ever had to endure from viruses that I don't get anyway, because I'm not a complete idiot. I only log in as adminstrator when necessary. I keep up with patches and security updates. I keep my data, the only unique and irreplacable thing on my computer, backed up. I don't click on every idiotic funny ha ha attachment going around. I don't install software utilities from The People's Glorious Republic of Aziberjanistan.
I suppose if you're dumb enough to think you need an Antivirus program, you probably do.
You don't HAVE to wear your seatbelt, but WHEN you crash, you're gonna get really banged up.
And if you're SURE you're NEVER going to crash, WHY do you have INSURANCE???
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
What is this guy smoking and why isn't he sharing? No matter what they claim it is still a M$ product and will be full of holes like all the others.
Windows is perfectly secure in it's native environment, pluged into a power outlet and a printer. If you connect to the internet you have no security.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
It will be a lot like Liunx. Except with Linux it is true and with vista not installing AV would be the dumbest thing you could do.. Apart from that, It's a lot like Linux.
God Be Gone
Isn't this the same as posting to Slashdot that "Our website is unhackable." Even if its true, its just something you don't say!!!!!!
I don't have a microwave. I do, however, have a clock that occasionally cooks shit.
The headline implies that Windows is claiming their system is immune to virus, while this guy is saying that he can trust his son to use Vista without an antivirus. The second claim may be true, if they can get rid of buffer overflow errors and lock down the environment for non-admin users enough so that they are incapable of affecting their settings and important files and folders such as C:\Windows.
The first statement can never be true, however, because most people are the Admins of their PC, and they will install anything, if a pop-up window asks them to.
...these kind of people will never need to think more than a year into the future?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
"Windows is a business OS"
So what is XP Home ?
Oh, btw in case you weren't paying attention these last two months :
Hackers Use Wikipedia As Virus Vector - Saturday Nov 4 2006
Hacked Ad Seen on MySpace Served Spyware to a Million - Wed, 04 Oct 2006
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I'de be happy letting a 7 year old use Windows 2000 without antivirus. IF it was firewalled AND Internet Explorer and any other application that uses the HTML control was disabled.
No, not just hidden inside a "restricted" account. Completely disabled.
[nelsonMuntz]HA HA![/nelsonMuntz]
Cheers!
OMG, that is the funniest thing I have read in a long time. Sure, I'd be comfortable with a 7 year old using a PC. How many 7 year olds do you know that browse porn or download illegal music? HAHAHAH!
He also said that he didn't recommend doing so in the same conference call. This story is shit.
I'd trust my 7-year-old son to run Windows with no AV if and only if he had the computer abilities of Terri Schiavo.
With Vista no one will need virus protection because (1) third party antivirus will not work due to interface issues (2) Mircrosoft is in the Antivirus Software business now and their much better protection is built in, and (3) because the frustrated folks will switch to Mac or Linux.
I can't see why this would be any more realistic than anything Balmer has to say.
Creative Spelling Copyright (2002). May use without Persimmons
I have car insurance because the insurance companies lobbyists convince the lawmakers to make it the law
>>Sig under construction
Ofcourse you don't need anti-virus...so long as it is not connected to the internet. Plug in the network cable and ten GOD help us all.
And they said Titanic was unsinkable.
...
Nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
And I've "gotten away" without using antivirus for years. Three simple things:
1. I don't use Internet Explorer.
2. I don't use any MS email products
3. I don't download and run anything from an untrusted source. (Including unexpected email attachments)
Amazing how effective a little common sense can be.
And there are, in my opinion, only two possible reasons why this guy can spew so much misinformation: Either he's from marketing and has to say it, or he really is suffering from heavy delusions.
And with both kinds of people I refuse to argue.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
he can afford to throw away a PC when it becomes overrun by malware and buy a new one every few months.
Or maybe he's just a bad dad.
What he doesn't mention is that the computer was never turned on.
If you start out on the assumption that a virus will (by definition) degrade performance in some way, maybe he's right -- will it be possible to right software that will make Vista even less efficient?
I think what he's saying is that viruses will only improve Vista...
Computers don't need more than 640k of ram Vista won't need an antivirus software
I'm coming back February 1st 2007!
Wait... on another thought, make it afternoon of January 30th.
don't visit porn sites
You must be new here.
I guess they should just change the name Vista to Titantic and be done with it....It is going to sink anyways....
"It's my favorite feature within Windows Vista, it's called ASLR (Address Space [Layout] Randomization) .. a smart guy here came up with a solution, so we put it in Windows Vista.", Jim Allchin.
.. found .. buffer overflow, and those have been removed in Windows XP", Jim Allchin Feb 2002
A smart guy at MS never did come up with the solution it's been around on other systems at least five years before Vista and it isn't totally secure. Software can never provide total security. Such protections belong in hardware, in the memory management unit.
"in my opinion, it is the most secure system that's available", Jim Allchin.
I think he means the most secure version of Windows.
"We have
davecb5620@gmail.com
I agree that even the forward-thinking can sometimes fail to think forward, but if you're going to put quotes around an attributed statement then you must be sure you quote exactly. The problem is that the actual quote can't ever be pinned down, so it's not proper to attribute it to him as a direct quote. See this link for more information.
That said, I think Mr. Allchin is treading dangerous ground. Even with lockdowns, exploits are a moving target, and when users can get infected by a malicious banner ad found on a popular commercial site it's bad karma to say that you can be confident that nothing will ever get in. Running AV software is a pain, but it does have the advantage that the company stays up to date on new threats so they might build in an update that fixes a problem you've never encountered before it starts attacking you.
Virg
Over here in the Cradle of Civilisation (well, the UK...) it's mandatory to have vehicle insurance covering third party claims. I think that if the government is going to mandate something, there should be a state "no frills, no profit" version available otherwise prices go out of control. I just finished paying off my motorbike, and the payments on the insurance cost me more than the payments on the vehicle itself did.
Had the AV software makers had user interests in their minds, most of the virii could've been prevented through simple and succinct prompts which would warn idiot users as to what they were about to do. In other words, if the AV makers wanted to make honest living they would've incorporated an "educational" component to their bloatware. However, being for-profit endeavors, they simply turned in reactive repositories of past threats, as that warranted continuous cash-flow. SP2 in that respect was three times the AV software any of these ever were. I, for one, am very glad to see these blood-sucking fuckers go...
OTOH, there are those who do have a moral agenda, i.e. AVG anti-virus suite which has always been and continues to be free and is ironically the least bloated of them all...
And do we really believe that and Microsoft co-president (outgoing or otherwise) has the technical wherewithal to really understand what he's saying?
That's how he can feel comfortable letting his 7 year old use the computer without antivirus. Just wait until that kid is a few years older. He'll be getting on so many porn and file sharing sites, the viruses (virii?) will be breeding new viruses on his computer.
Kids that age aren't worried about boobies, they just want to play Dora (or Transformers, or whatever the hell else is out there)
Mods must be on crack... that's the most truthful explanation I've seen...
would like us to call it GNU/Vista :-)
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Why do I have insurance? Because filthy bastards purchased laws to make buy insurance.
Yahoo! Pipes are awesome. How awesome? http://pipes.yahoo.com/jesdynf/slashdot
Zealotry aside (FWIW, I am a Linux advocate although I use all three platforms mentioned here), the businesses are not "scared" to use Linux and/or OSX, they don't want to due to a simple reason that APIs in Linux and surprisingly enough OSX are moving targets which constantly break stuff left and right. Granted, this is not accross the board, but it is prominent enough to affect the overall product and warrant a significant rise in TCO. Case in point, I purchased an $800 OSX software 1 month ago. Upon installing it, it turned out to be a PowerPC-only application which surprisingly ran quite well under Rossetta in 10.4.7 (especially considering that it was altivec optimized). Then came the 10.4.8 and suddenly my application icon was crossed out saying this application is not supported. So, now I either have to wait for the original software makers to release an update (which they've been promising for some time but nothing has shipped yet and there is a lingering suspicion that in the end I'll have to pay for it), or use my new software as an $800 paperweight... Either way, I am losing in productivity and/or money.
Now if you consider how many times did the Apple platform switch in the recent years and how much overhead has that generated for the Apple third-party software manufacturers, not to mention how many API changes have taken place since 10.0, you'll quickly realize that Apple platform is almost as "enthusiast" as Linux. OTOH, whether you like it or not, XP in 2006 can run software made in 1995 without any problems whatsoever. All this means that businesses can get more mileage from their custom solutions and hence the market share disparity...
in a satiric reversal due to DRM it will be the owners and users who write trojans and their like to actually get access to everything on "their" machines whilst the once malicious intruder will be left out.
...and nature will build a better idiot. Can't wait to see how many times this story is linked in the next 12 months.
HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! Wow, thats the best laugh I've had in a long time. Hehe, oh MS, you're so silly.
"A coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one."
Most viruses these days aren't really interested in destroying your data. The only negative effect is that they consume resources and slow down your computer.
But not half as much as AV scans do! Your computer is useless for several hours while AV sifts through every single byte on your hard drive. Oh and those "live" scans? Watch out for race conditions! Any other software that monitors filesystem changes (such as google desktop) will set your computer to "perma thrash".
I'd rather have a virus.
Ok, i'm not a "typical" user. But i disable AV on almost every computer I use. I've gotten an infection here and there, but it's easy enough for me to identify the offending process, look up how to disinfect, and remove it. And yeah, i know you can stop the race condition I mentioned by telling Google Desktop to skip the AV program's files. My point is that AV produces the exact same symptoms of the disease it claims to cure.
Bets on how long before the first zombie vista machine is identified?
Troll? You've gotta be kidding. In the state of Michigan, requirement number one to getting a license plate for your care is insurance. Try driving w/out a plate, and see how far you can go. And we're not the only state with no fault insurance.
Life has many choices. Eternity has two. What's yours?
Its hard to say who the faulted party is entirely. Apple does change APIs and vendors use APIs they are told not to. Regardless, its a big problem. Most adobe products that are say 2 versions behind do not install properly on OS 10.4.x and require a patch to even install. When they are installed, there are issues with the programs ranging from permissions changes to severe breaking of the apps. When companies have to upgrade constantly or sit on old hardware as long as possible it benefits neither the company nor apple. This is a defect in OS X that needs to be addressed. Microsoft breaks apps, but you usually get a few windows releases in between and Microsoft is on a much longer upgrade cycle.
Point releases should NOT break api compatibility. If the code is that different change the major version number. I feel the linux kernel, gnome and several other open source projects break this rule all the time. Apple breaks this rule too... and no i don't just mean the linux 2.6 kernel is so different it should be called 3.0. I mean 2.6.8 is quite different than 2.6.18 and therefore should be 2.8 (odd are test versions right?) With apple, 10.4 has broken kernel module compatibility twice. This in turn broke the evil netware prosoft client i had to support in my last job and several other things like drivers for usb soundcards, etc. I've got a $300 emagic usb sound card that no longer works in OSX because apple broke the api and they bought the company so I can't ever get a driver update. Microsoft sucks, but they rarely go this far. XP SP2 was close on some fronts.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
I've been regularly running Software from 1991 on Windows XP with no problems. The game doesn't use the RTC but it does have a speed slider and with it run all the way down, I can play POP2 at proper speed on this Core Duo laptop. This is a DOS game that ostensibly does graphics through access to video memory - I can't see any way it could operate at a reasonable speed using BIOS calls :P If that's not backwards compatibility, I don't know what is :)
Well, actually, I can think of something; the AS/400 (whatever they're called now, I always forget the xSeries names) is currently based on a PowerPC or POWER chip or something, but it uses a bytecode interpreter between the OS and the iron, and it can run the same bytecode that platform has always run.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
At least in California, you can put a $10,000 bond down in the safekeeping of the department of motor vehicles, and then you are not required to have liability insurance. Of course, the people who can't afford insurance don't have $10,000 lying around either.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The real virus righters haven't started their work or release their wares yet. Who would be harmed it they did it before now? That would be self defeating. The real damage seeker will wait until the OS is mainstream and millions of copies were in use and in critical systems use. Then they would unleash their nasty viruses, worms and malware becuase then, it will do the most harm. To them M$ (and it's users) are the enemy. They won't show their hand until it really can become a serious problem.
We will know how broken Vista is when Vista is mainstream and not before.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Whoa, iceberg.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Point releases should NOT break api compatibility And in the couple years I've been coding almost exclusively for OS X, they haven't.
Oh sure... they've nuked some of the deprecated ones (Apple keeps deprecated APIs for a little over two years, or one major release of the OS, for the most part), and they've changed some of the undocumented ones. But no developers should depend on undocumented APIs, and if you're given a warning two years in advance, you should have time to fix your dependence on deprecated APIs.
The real litigious bastards...
Awhile back my friend and former roommate decided he was willing to be a test guinea pig and use Windows Vista as his main OS. He's you're typical Average Joe computer user. He knows a little bit just because he uses computers a lot, but he doesn't really know any in depth advanced stuff.
About a week ago I got a call from him saying that his computer was really hosed and he needed my help to try and fix it. Turns out he had gotten infected with Zlob and 5 other viruses along with about 200 spyware infections. All this while using the supposed "secure" IE7, Windows Vista, Trend Micro Anti Virus for Vista, and having the system setup to auto update, virus scan, etc on a regular basis.
Not only did he still get infected, he had even worse problems because, thanks to compatability issues, a number of the spyware/software installed by his virus infections corrupted the system files themselves. To make matters worse, a number of cleaning utilities I have been using for years either won't work in Vista at all, or won't work in Safe mode due to compatability layer problems.
In the end, I managed to force a system restore during a 10 second window between Windows Explorer crashing, and rolled back the system to before the system files got hosed. From there I was able to clean out any trace of the viruses, etc. In short, while Vista is certainly more secure, and the automated systems great for your average Joe user to keep their system in better shape, Vista can still get viruses just like XP. And, in some cases the infections may be worse than XP when suddenly a relatively harmless XP virus/spyware causes major damage to Vista due to compatability differences.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
He said his sons system with locked down parental controls (He can't download and run anything) does not have AV installed and he feels comfortable with that. Given the problems with AV software, I can't really disagree.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
OTOH, whether you like it or not, XP in 2006 can run software made in 1995 without any problems whatsoever. All this means that businesses can get more mileage from their custom solutions and hence the market share disparity...
I beg to differ. Windows XP happens to run things like Microsoft Word 6 and FrameMaker 5 - both of which are Windows 3.1 apps. I found that I can even run the Windows file manager from Windows 2 and 3 on XP just fine.
Also when I worked at an accounting support company a lot of the poorly written apps I had to support were Windows 3.1 based and were running just fine on XP and 2000.
Ya right, I give it 6 months before we see a slashdot story about viruses attacking vista.
The concept of antivirus software is inherently flawed. Antivirus software can never keep up with the latest virus. There are far better ways of protecting a system than detecting known virus signatures.
Execution protection, user permission controls and good firewalling are far more effective methods of defending against such attacks. All of these things are built into Vista, and in fact are most of what is new that is in Vista-- showing Microsoft "gets it" at least regarding this sort of security. Even on XP, all of these things are available except useful user permission controls.
Even before this latest Vista flak, Symantec and McAfee have been going into FUD PR mode in order to save their market-- their latest conflict of interest due to the fact that they are mostly out of business if the above facts about effective virus protection gets out. They're dead men walking, having painted themselves into a corner and now they're whining about it. Pathetic.
So that's what the Microsoft/Novell deal was all about ;-0
(http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,2 0733515%5E27318%5E%5Enbv%5E15306-15321,00.html)
Roel
I don't mean to disagree with your main point, but I do have some sofware titles from the MS Windows '95 and '98 era that won't run on my XP box.
your son's (computer) is already dead.
NOOOOooooo
Seriously. If you think av programs are necessarily huge, bloated, and excessively intrusive to your system, your experience must be based on those two. They are the MS of the AV world: grossly overfeatured bloated buggy destabilising applications. There are far nicer AV packages out there, AVG is compact and efficient, an entirely different proposition. (I mention AVG because I use it and I know it; there are probably others equally good, just not Norton/McAffee)
On BetaNews, it turns out Allchin has lost some bravado and is now blogging about his new insight.
Jim Allchin has clarified his comments which were mis-interpreted.
c hive/2006/11/10/windows-vista-defense-in-depth.asp x
Read here
http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/ar
Jim has stated customers will need antivirus software, even with Vista.
Maybe we shouldn't rattle their cages...
If I was a malicious virus writer, I'd probably start looking for exploits in the Vista beta the second I heard people spouting off it won't need anti-virus. I think we all know how the hacker mentality is.
Sony: Our CDs have uncrackable DRM!
Random Hacker: I cracked it. With a sharpie. And made a post on usenet telling others how to do so.
Sony: *scream*
I'm not saying that virii writers weren't going to attack Vista, but I think now I can say with about 80% certainty there will be a 0day vista exploit being exploited on release day.
come one and all
the unsinkable ship called VISTA is set to go.
We don't have lifeboats, fire suppression equipment, medical facilities, etc.
We are indestructible.
*cough* titanic *cough*
MS = Mini s**ts