Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft To Offer Free Anti-Virus Software
Dynamoo writes "The good news is that Microsoft have announced free anti-virus software for consumers, dubbed Morro, available late next year. The bad news is ... well, exactly the same. Although Microsoft's anti-malware products are pretty good, this move could drive many competitors out of business and create a dangerous security monoculture; major rivals will be lawyering up already. On the other hand, many malware infections could be prevented even by basic software. So is this going to be a good or bad thing overall?"
What monopoly? Last time I checked Mac and Linux existed. MS has a virtual monopoly by merit of being the most used but that's not the same as an actual monopoly. As long as other choices exist any monopoly argument falls apart. More akin to there being 3 power companies and one following the practices you describe while the others don't, and people just being too lazy, stupid, or in the dark to switch to another company.
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
MS has supplied bad code for so long that an entire market has evolved around keeping that creaky wagon a bit safe
Do you have any evidence that this is any way Microsoft's fault, or does the fault lie with malicious hackers and uneducated users, which any mainstream operating system would be subjected to?
I wonder why this idea that a division between "Administrator" and "User" would help anybody.
As a user i need so send email and modify files etc. If this is not possible anymore, i also cannot run "malware". From the perspective of the OS, malware is doing the same things that a user does.
So why should a "user" be forbidden to open ports, run scripts and all the things that are done to work and play with a computer?
The division between "Admin" and "User" comes from multi user systems, where someone was in charge of keeping everything running and preventing one person from destroying the utility for everybody. But it doesn't help with home-owned desktops that have only one user.
I wish i had an administrator that would take care of everything, but too bad i don't!
And the system that single users are going to break when they fuck up their machine is the whole internet, and there is no administrator for the internet. (And i hope there never will be one.)
So many things wrong here...
Stuff that is run by a user (i.e. non-Administrator) CANNOT modify system files, unless those files' permissions were previously edited by an admin. You seem to be confusing the idiocy of people logging in with Admin accounts for everyday work for some kind of hole in the OS (although admittedly MS screwed up when they made the default accounts members of Administrators)
Modification of system files that results in failing the cryptographic signature check (i.e. any change at all that doesn't come from MS) also causes newer versions of Windows to complain bitterly and attempt to restore the modified file. This is part of the whole "Trusted Computing" thing. An admin (or software running as one) can work around it, of course, but it's not trivial - those files are owned by SYSTEM, not Administrators, and while malware can certainly go through the steps required to modify the file permissions (assuming said has Admin-level privileges) it does prevent casual or accidental damage.
I don't even know what you're talking about when it comes to "separation between privilege levels" since Windows actually has a much more powerful and fine-grained permissions system than the old POSIX standard still used by most Unix-like OSes (though SELinux and AppArmor aim to fix this on Linux). Windows' permissions system works quite well, behaving as it is supposed to. Unfortunately for ignorant users, said permissions system is supposed to allow Administrators to take over and subsequently do anything they desire with any part of the system. You'll find logging in as root gives the exact same kind of behavior. For that matter, Vista's UAC actually limits Administrators to the standard User permissions unless expressly authorized for Admin rights (makes a pretty mess of their user security tokens, but appears to work correctly).
Additionally, the bit about "their FUBAR'd implementation" is pure bullshit. First, most programs on any OS can't be installed as a standard user (since "installed" typically means getting put in Program Files or /bin - many, on or off Windows, can be installed to a user's folder just fine without Admin privileges). Most, however, can be RUN as a standard user without any problems, whether it's from Microsoft or some ISV or a little thing you hacked together yourself. If you meant running the installer with Admin privileges from a User account, that's actually quite possible (if more annoying than it should be) on Windows prior to Vista via "Run As..." and dead easy on Vista using UAC. If you want to claim that Vista makes UAC prompts appear too often, I ask you to try two things: count the number of times you use su/sudo (or the graphical equivalent) on a Linux box, and try doing the types of things that require UAC on Vista *without* root permissions.
Microsoft's past screw-ups on security are worthy as a historical note, but aren't even vaguely representative of the current state of Microsoft software. You're living between 5 and 15 years in the past. If Windows were as insecure as you suggest, all Windows machines ever connected directly to the Internet would be compromised now. Remarkably enough, that's not true - and it's not even entirely due to the firewall.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
You need to update your economics model. Monopolies are the natural product of an increasing demands industry like software. They aren't bad as long as there is room in the market for alternatives to provide a better fit product, which are clearly present with both Linux and Mac OS surviving. Ever since I read the following paper, I've gotten a bit leary on how much we should attack the natural formations of the market. http://www.santafe.edu/~wbarthur/Papers/Pdf_files/HBR.pdf