Right, how exactly is it the users fault when an outdated version of adobe reader (which, as a non admin user they cant update, right? RIGHT???) autoinstalls some crudware through any one of its gaping security holes?
No, youre not. The problem isnt Windows, its one of two things:
A) Someone downloading and running crap. Linux and mac wont fix this, you can social-engineer someone to run wget and make install on some shady package or install a file from a PPA or use a.desktop file on ubuntu just as easily as you can get them to run cheeseburger.exe on windows.
B) 3rd party vulnerability-- ie, Adobe Reader (runs on linux!) or Firefox 3.6 with its recent buffer overflow (runs on linux!). In my experience @ clients, probably 90% of the infections ive seen in the last 6 months have been through Adobe vulnerabilities.
If you somehow think linux will make either problem go away, you are delusional.
Yet for some reason I have friends asking what Mac AV to use, which means shortly they will be running crappy, poorly written antivirus software as well. The OS isnt really any kind of protection against this, what kind of crazy world is this where technical people are blaming the OS for what a low-level piece of software managed to do to it?
According to a quick bit of research, the latin "virus" that is the root is declined in singular only, so you would presumably use the singular always.
There IS a "vir" which is declined to "viri" (long i) in the plural, however that refers to "man", so is totally unrelated. Regardless, the word we use today is an english word with a different meaning, so regardless of how the base word was originally declined, it is not done that way in english. We do not tack on endings to "faithful" as we would to "fide", why would you do it with any other word with a latin root?
You can do that, but that doesn't make it correct usage. The way languages work is that they have certain "correct" spellings and grammar; youre free to ignore them, but you will be incorrect in doing so.
Disclaimer: I make no claim to the correctness or lack thereof within this post.
If there were sufficient motivation, people would write scripts to wget ubuntu rootkits and sudo make install them, and it would be posted to an ubuntu wiki, and thousands of people would end up on the ubuntuforums compliaining about viruses and how they thought ubuntu was immune.
This keeps coming up on slashdot, linux is not some magical barrier to viruses. Windows has its share of blame for crappy security, but many viruses are from users downloading stuff-- and the ones that ARENT (ie, most of them now) are from 3rd party vulnerabilities-- ie, adobe.
There are a finite number of windows XP patch levels, and thus a very limited set of system file signatures. They dont need whitelists on 3rd party stuff.
Is there ANY reason to believe the for-pay versions perform better than the free ones? According to EVERY comparitive ive ever seen, its a wash, with the lead many times going to a free AV.
That argument doesnt work with software, compare Norton with MSE or Avast, or Roxio with CDBurnerXP, or IE to chrome.
Just so you know, though MS is awful at making this clear, MSE is only free for "home and home business" applications. Otherwise you really should be licensing forefront.
If thats your attitude, may I ask why (if?) you use a MS operating system? Neither the newest IE nor the newest windows are the weakest link in the chain anymore...
Avast has always required a registration key, and is now easier than ever to do-- you just click the button from within the program and it does it.
As for good free AV, theres Avira, Avast, and MSSE, all of which are decent. More to the point, antivirus is the LEAST important thing you can do for friends and family-- FIRST, install firefox, update IE, uninstall Adobe Reader, and install foxit. This will prevent 100x more viruses than any AV will.
What about Blue Frog antispam? Seemed to work well enough to get a ton of spammers to DDOS them off the map, not to mention the reports of backbone router tampering. I remember when this was going on, and the size of the attack was pretty staggering.
Sure, spam has changed since then, and a lot of the websites that are offered via spam disappear very quickly, but a solution that harnesses the collective power of users to effectively perform a legal DDoS on networks originating spam seems like a very powerful solution to me.
NATs provide many of the same benefits as a firewall, and most NAT-ing devices have a SPI Firewall included. Ever wonder what that "enable SPI" function on a linksys does?
AFAIK NAT is as much protection as the average home user needs-- they wont know how to get a more serious firewall working properly (ever try to show a user how to configure one of those software firewalls to allow their favorite app?), and viruses will find a way around software firewalls anyways (ie, bypassing them with kernel level hijinx). The main thing is to make sure the standard windows management ports arent directly probeable over the web.
Not to mention that Windows XP SP2 and up already HAVE firewalls, and the vista / 7 ones are actually pretty decent.
Has it occured to you how beneficial it would be for this to succeed within a casual gamer niche, in terms of what it would mean for bandwidth caps and internet speed? More high-bandwidth apps pushing the envelope is a good thing.
Generally when that happens, you give them your SSN, they tell you to wait on the side of the road, they go and pull up your info, and then you both get on with life. If the cop's being a stickler, he MAY give you a ticket for not having your license-- which is required to drive your car anyways.
"Unless its gay marriage, prayer in schools..... mexicans..."
Except each one of those IS a government issue-- gay marriage is about whether the state (ie the GOVERNMENT) recognizes such unions, prayer in schools is more properly labeled "prayer in PUBLIC schools", and immigration... well, if you cant see why THATS a government issue I cant help you. Whatever you think the policy should be on each of those, the government cannot stay neutral on any of them-- It has to make a decision one way or the other.
If you get modded down, I imagine it may have something to do with your inflamatory remark on national health care. Calling your opposition "idiots" sure is a good way to prove your position....
Ah, so its a terrible idea for my blackberry to allow me to start my music player and then switch into google maps. Im glad youve made that decision for me. Its also nice to know that while our remote support (ie, remote control) solution supports Blackberry and windows mobile, and Pre support is coming, it will NEVER support the iPhone because of course you cannot run background apps. Not that that has any practical use, no siree.
The pricepoint is a huge turnoff. Id rather spend the 1-2 hrs of research and 1-2 hrs of construction rather than pay a $600 premium on my machine. "Fiddling with the OS" isnt really accurate, Ive been running the windows 7 pre-betas and betas on my work desktop for the last 1.2 years now and I think ive had one or two real issues, and only because its beta.
Most PCs rarely use more than 200W. I'm using a 380W power supply, and it's more than enough.
Seconded. I have a rig that was fairly nice several years ago, with a 9800GT, core2 duo, 2 hard drives, and a mobo with onboard wireless. I was sure that it would need a 550 watt PSU, but i recently got a wattmeter and the PC only pulls ~160 watts while browsing the web. Fire up a benchmark program (futuremark) and it shoots up to an astonishing 230 watts.
Theres lots of misinformation out there when it comes to PSUs (although 550 watt isnt bad in this case, as it means energy efficiency is fairly good at my watt usage; 350-400w would have been ideal).
Agreed, its even more ridiculous that sometimes there is NO correleation between model number and performance-- an nVidia 7900GTS will outperform an nVidia 9800GT, as the latter is basically a rebranded 8800GT with lower power consumption. An Intel E6300 (one of the first core2s out) will outperform some of the higher number intel core2s in some areas because of its VT support.
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Right, how exactly is it the users fault when an outdated version of adobe reader (which, as a non admin user they cant update, right? RIGHT???) autoinstalls some crudware through any one of its gaping security holes?
No, youre not. The problem isnt Windows, its one of two things: .desktop file on ubuntu just as easily as you can get them to run cheeseburger.exe on windows.
A) Someone downloading and running crap. Linux and mac wont fix this, you can social-engineer someone to run wget and make install on some shady package or install a file from a PPA or use a
B) 3rd party vulnerability-- ie, Adobe Reader (runs on linux!) or Firefox 3.6 with its recent buffer overflow (runs on linux!). In my experience @ clients, probably 90% of the infections ive seen in the last 6 months have been through Adobe vulnerabilities.
If you somehow think linux will make either problem go away, you are delusional.
GET RID OF ADOBE READER!
Yet for some reason I have friends asking what Mac AV to use, which means shortly they will be running crappy, poorly written antivirus software as well. The OS isnt really any kind of protection against this, what kind of crazy world is this where technical people are blaming the OS for what a low-level piece of software managed to do to it?
According to a quick bit of research, the latin "virus" that is the root is declined in singular only, so you would presumably use the singular always. There IS a "vir" which is declined to "viri" (long i) in the plural, however that refers to "man", so is totally unrelated. Regardless, the word we use today is an english word with a different meaning, so regardless of how the base word was originally declined, it is not done that way in english. We do not tack on endings to "faithful" as we would to "fide", why would you do it with any other word with a latin root?
You can do that, but that doesn't make it correct usage. The way languages work is that they have certain "correct" spellings and grammar; youre free to ignore them, but you will be incorrect in doing so.
Disclaimer: I make no claim to the correctness or lack thereof within this post.
If there were sufficient motivation, people would write scripts to wget ubuntu rootkits and sudo make install them, and it would be posted to an ubuntu wiki, and thousands of people would end up on the ubuntuforums compliaining about viruses and how they thought ubuntu was immune.
This keeps coming up on slashdot, linux is not some magical barrier to viruses. Windows has its share of blame for crappy security, but many viruses are from users downloading stuff-- and the ones that ARENT (ie, most of them now) are from 3rd party vulnerabilities-- ie, adobe.
There are a finite number of windows XP patch levels, and thus a very limited set of system file signatures. They dont need whitelists on 3rd party stuff.
If youre moving thousands of files over the network and youre not using xcopy, youre doing it wrong.
While we're proposing non-av solutions, how bout one that is actually practical in the real world-- like getting rid of adobe reader.
Source?
Is there ANY reason to believe the for-pay versions perform better than the free ones? According to EVERY comparitive ive ever seen, its a wash, with the lead many times going to a free AV.
That argument doesnt work with software, compare Norton with MSE or Avast, or Roxio with CDBurnerXP, or IE to chrome.
If MS was really, truly concerned about keeping malware off your PC, there'd be a free AV program installed when you got your PC,
And a complimentary anti-trust case against them to boot.
Just so you know, though MS is awful at making this clear, MSE is only free for "home and home business" applications. Otherwise you really should be licensing forefront.
If thats your attitude, may I ask why (if?) you use a MS operating system? Neither the newest IE nor the newest windows are the weakest link in the chain anymore...
Avast has always required a registration key, and is now easier than ever to do-- you just click the button from within the program and it does it.
As for good free AV, theres Avira, Avast, and MSSE, all of which are decent. More to the point, antivirus is the LEAST important thing you can do for friends and family-- FIRST, install firefox, update IE, uninstall Adobe Reader, and install foxit. This will prevent 100x more viruses than any AV will.
What about Blue Frog antispam? Seemed to work well enough to get a ton of spammers to DDOS them off the map, not to mention the reports of backbone router tampering. I remember when this was going on, and the size of the attack was pretty staggering.
Sure, spam has changed since then, and a lot of the websites that are offered via spam disappear very quickly, but a solution that harnesses the collective power of users to effectively perform a legal DDoS on networks originating spam seems like a very powerful solution to me.
NATs provide many of the same benefits as a firewall, and most NAT-ing devices have a SPI Firewall included. Ever wonder what that "enable SPI" function on a linksys does?
AFAIK NAT is as much protection as the average home user needs-- they wont know how to get a more serious firewall working properly (ever try to show a user how to configure one of those software firewalls to allow their favorite app?), and viruses will find a way around software firewalls anyways (ie, bypassing them with kernel level hijinx). The main thing is to make sure the standard windows management ports arent directly probeable over the web.
Not to mention that Windows XP SP2 and up already HAVE firewalls, and the vista / 7 ones are actually pretty decent.
I can't wait for this newest bubble to burst
Has it occured to you how beneficial it would be for this to succeed within a casual gamer niche, in terms of what it would mean for bandwidth caps and internet speed? More high-bandwidth apps pushing the envelope is a good thing.
Generally when that happens, you give them your SSN, they tell you to wait on the side of the road, they go and pull up your info, and then you both get on with life. If the cop's being a stickler, he MAY give you a ticket for not having your license-- which is required to drive your car anyways.
"Unless its gay marriage, prayer in schools ..... mexicans..."
Except each one of those IS a government issue-- gay marriage is about whether the state (ie the GOVERNMENT) recognizes such unions, prayer in schools is more properly labeled "prayer in PUBLIC schools", and immigration... well, if you cant see why THATS a government issue I cant help you. Whatever you think the policy should be on each of those, the government cannot stay neutral on any of them-- It has to make a decision one way or the other.
If you get modded down, I imagine it may have something to do with your inflamatory remark on national health care. Calling your opposition "idiots" sure is a good way to prove your position....
Ah, so its a terrible idea for my blackberry to allow me to start my music player and then switch into google maps. Im glad youve made that decision for me. Its also nice to know that while our remote support (ie, remote control) solution supports Blackberry and windows mobile, and Pre support is coming, it will NEVER support the iPhone because of course you cannot run background apps. Not that that has any practical use, no siree.
The pricepoint is a huge turnoff. Id rather spend the 1-2 hrs of research and 1-2 hrs of construction rather than pay a $600 premium on my machine. "Fiddling with the OS" isnt really accurate, Ive been running the windows 7 pre-betas and betas on my work desktop for the last 1.2 years now and I think ive had one or two real issues, and only because its beta.
Most PCs rarely use more than 200W. I'm using a 380W power supply, and it's more than enough.
Seconded. I have a rig that was fairly nice several years ago, with a 9800GT, core2 duo, 2 hard drives, and a mobo with onboard wireless. I was sure that it would need a 550 watt PSU, but i recently got a wattmeter and the PC only pulls ~160 watts while browsing the web. Fire up a benchmark program (futuremark) and it shoots up to an astonishing 230 watts.
Theres lots of misinformation out there when it comes to PSUs (although 550 watt isnt bad in this case, as it means energy efficiency is fairly good at my watt usage; 350-400w would have been ideal).
Agreed, its even more ridiculous that sometimes there is NO correleation between model number and performance-- an nVidia 7900GTS will outperform an nVidia 9800GT, as the latter is basically a rebranded 8800GT with lower power consumption. An Intel E6300 (one of the first core2s out) will outperform some of the higher number intel core2s in some areas because of its VT support.