It has simply NOT been tested to the degree that IE has. That is a fact. IE holds 90% of the market and it has been slammed, punched, kicked around by every virus and spyware author out there you can think of.
Firefox doesn't use Active X, and it isn't integrated into Windows at every conceivable point. That and it was built with security in mind, as opposed to being shoehorned on after the fact.
Now, go over to Secunia and check out the list of exploits for Internet Explorer and Firefox. Firefox is listed as having 75% of it's vulnerabilities *UNPATCHED*, while IE is listed as only 32%.
According to their site, Firfox has had eight advisories. Internet Explorer, on the other hand, has 61 advisories. So yes, IE "is listed as only 32%", but it still has over three times as many vunerabilites as Firefox.
"There is no design flaw in the Pinto. A car blowing up in a low speed collision, killing all passengers, is a risk any driver takes when they get behind a wheel. If Honda or Chrysler had our kind of marketshare, their cars would blow up all the time, too." --Made up Ford Exec, 1978
Most of those announcements deal with servers, which are in a whole other category than typical desktops, and vunerabilities that require physical access to the machine or an existing account. Like this advisory on how someone with physical access can crash the KDE screensaver, getting access to your session, and this one on how you can cause a buffer overflow in perl, allowing you to overwrite system files with debug logs. Go find some that can root a Linux box with a default installation.
witness the stream of security advisories that are announced for each Linux distro, much more than the Windows patches we get on the second Tuesday of each month.
Wtf? That's because people have access to the code used in Linux distributions, and these bugs are getting fixed. Go read the advisories on that site you linked to, and see how many were posted by people looking for bugs to fix. Compare that to Windows, were nobody but Microsoft has access to the code, and its a known fact that Microsoft lets real, known vunerabilties sit unfixed for MONTHS, much less looking for bugs to fix. Do you work for Gardner or something?
People like to compare a single kernel to the entire Windows operating system, and in the next breath argue about how Linux is "just a kernel." So it's all the more amusing when some people argue that there's a difference between a Linux distro and Windows. There's not.
You are easily amused. Only RMS is retentive enough to inisist that Linux is just the kernel, and the whole system is GNU/Linux.
Bollocks. The UNIX "filesystem standard" fragments things way more than Windows does. With Windows, you know a few places to look for a malicious program to get rid of it--\Windows, \Windows\System, \Program Files, and so on.
You bollocks. You think spyware is limited to C:\Windows and C:\Program Files?
Linux, on the other hand? Where do you look?/usr,/usr/bin/,/usr/shared/bin,/usr/local,/usr/local/bin,/opt/bin,/opt/local/bin...and that's just the executable, not even getting into whatever configuration files it might have left which could be in/etc, a.directory in ~, and so on.
No, they can't, because a regular user does not have write access to those directories. Seriously, have you ever used Linux? At all? Do you have any concept of priveledge speration? Aside from a users home folder, the only places they ususally have access to are/tmp and/var/tmp, and those get deleted upon restart.
If Linux was #1, we'd see all kinds of crap getting installed on people's Linux systems
How? Neither OS X or Linux has anything like Active X, which is the primary vehicle for installing spyware behind your back.
No one is saying that the alternatives to Windows are bulletproof, because they're not. But just because there are some vunerabilites, does not make them remotely equivilant to the stinking cesspool that is Windows. The problem is not popularity; Linux could have 100% marketshare and not have but a fraction of the serious problems that Windows has had, due to its massive design flaws, Microsoft's sloppy coding, and their refusal to fix vunerabilities until there is a serious crack in the wild, weeks or months after an advisory has been posted.
That depends on whether they're used as part of a larger vulnerability, doesn't it? We were discussing a vulnerability that can be exploited by opening pop-up windows that don't go where you think they do just a few weeks ago...
I didn't see that one, so what exactly are you talking about here? Otherwise it sounds like you're mixing cause and effect here. Spyware can open pop-ups, but the pop-ups are the result, not the "security risk" in the first place.
Present: "any dumbass Apple-fanboy comment would be moderated up to +5 Insightful"
Uh huh. What happens even more often than that an Apple story, comment made in defense of Apple, or criticising another platform is automatically blown off as the work of Apple fanboyism. One example: the recent "Why does Windows still suck" story. Even better example: when Apple made a new firmware update for the iPod that blocked Real's attempts to get Real's DRM to play on the iPod. All the catcalls saying "if this were Microsoft..." were just pathetic.
It's just plain impossible to have an intelligent discussion about the pros and cons of Mac vs. Windows now.
What, you think it was before? Before, any dumbass anti-Apple-fanboy comment would be moderated up to +5 Insightful, like Taco's famous "no wireless, less space than Nomad, lame" quote. I'll be that most of the people bitching about how much attention Apple receives now just miss the good old days where they could fart in Apple's general direction and get easy karma.
Definitely. Before I upgraded my Mini to 1GB, it was swapping constantly when I had both RSSOwl and OmniWeb running at the same time. Unless you're only running apps with a small memory footprint, a Mac with only 256M is almost a single-tasking machine.
It's not too bad as long as you are just running iLife apps, and not to many of them at a time simultaneously. i.e. you can run iMovie just fine, or Safari and iTunes just fine, you just don't want to do all three. But try and fire up Photoshop or Microsoft Word, and you're in for some swappin. I know, I just set my parents up with a 12" iBook, and so far haven't had the time/money to get more memory for it.
It's only fair to point out the early versions of Mac OS X were released to certain developers and parties on x86 *first* (saying this as one of them), owning to it's NeXT heritage.
Then you probably also remember that was part of their Yellow Box/Blue Box/Red Box strategy, before Jobs came in and said "this sucks", and we got Carbon instead. Rather than developing OS X for x86, they could bring back the Red Box. IIRC, and it's been quite a while since I played with the Next cube at the local ACM student chapter, but I believe programs came with a single installer for both platforms; you'd just have a copy of each platform binary inside the.pkg, and the right one would be automatically selected during the install.
So, in an ideal world, Microsoft would be smacked down for being a monopoly, and they would be forced to integrate Red Box into.NET. Then you wouldn't have to worry about platform issues; just write to the api, and you'll get your muliplatform binaries in the package along with whatever libraries were needed.
This would also be a lot safer for Apple than trying to write a whole OS for x86, and they wouldn't have to worry about people pirating their OS without buying any hardware from Apple.
I know this sounds like the origional promise of java, write once deploy anywhere, but this way you wouldn't have java's sucky performance.
The price you are quoting is for the Zen 20 gig, not the 40 gig. The Zen 40 is actually $329.99. And while yes its still costs less than Apple's 40 and it supposedly gets better battery life, it's also an ounce and half heavier and is over 4 cubic inches larger than the iPod.
the creative even has more features!
No, it does not. I has exactly *one* more feature than the iPod: an FM tuner. You should go work for Microsoft because they're all about "Features". I say "Features" with great distain, because in the context of Microsoft and wannabe makers of the iPod killer, they think they have a better product if they have more "Features" on a billeted list. It doesn't matter that if you shoehorn on these "Features", your product gets larger, heaver, and has more stuff to break down, and it especially doesn't matter if a single soul on the planet actually needs said "Feature" - you have a longer list, so you win. Voice recording is a prefect example of a needless addition that.005% of the population will actually find usefull.
You gotta go with the eMac, as the base config with edu pricing is $749, as the cheapest Mac LCD monitor is $899. The Mini and the eMac seem to have the same processor, memory, hard drive, etc. So, here it goes:
eMac, $749
$99 iPod Shuffle for your thumbdrive
Epson Stylus C86 Ink Jet Printer, $99
For a total of $947.95, for $21 a month on an Apple Credit Account. The price for the Mini would be....
Actually, I guess you can get the Mini for your $20 a month, but you have to give up the LCD panel. Apple sells a 17" NEC CRT for $159. So, for the Mini:
The aforementioned monitor for $159.
Same $99 iPod shuffle
Same $99 Epson printer
USB keyboard and mouse: $52.
Mac Mini, $479.
The total is $888.95. So, for just about $60 less, you get your Mini for 20 bucks a month. Oh, and there seems to be a mail in rebate for the printer for $100, but that's not going to change the payment options. I would provide links, but the links are specific to each session, so it would be pointless to repost them.
but my two books on Debian GNU/Linux are now rather dated in areas.
You aren't by any chance talking about O'Reilly's "Running Debian GNU Linux", are you? I bought the second edition a couple of years ago, and the nuts and bolts stuff was great, and most of it was still very usefull. However, it was somewhat amusing to read how 16 megs was a *lot* of memory, and how OS2/Warp was gaining in populatrity.
Of course, just a couple weeks after I bought it (and spilled Dew on part of the cover) they came out with the 3rd edition. Poo.
All you've said is a bunch of retared boilerplate anti-union propoganda that was old in 1950. Just because some union, somewhere, at sometime, had some bad rules, that those problems apply to all unions, and so we shouldn't have unions at all? Let's apply that logic to buisness for a second. Enron screwed over their customers, their investors, and finally their employees. Therefore, lets ban all businesses!
Just because you join a union, doesn't mean you'll automatically be paid based only on seniority (so the slackers get paid as much as the go-getters); that's the oldest red herring around. Neither does it meant that the company wont be comeditive or that it will go out of business; unions are fully aware that if the company folds, they'll lose their jobs. There have been numerous cases where unions have agreed to sacrifice pay and benefits so the company wouldn't go under - most notably in the airline and auto industries. No, all a union is really for is to make sure workers are treated fairly and get their slice of the pie.
The greatest trick wasn't pulled by the devil, making people think he didn't exist. The greatest trick has been the one pulled by Republicans and big business in convincing workers and consumers that standing up for themselves is a horrible, horrible thing, because you might be in a union or put some money in the pocket of a lawyer.
So is yours. If you buy a new car, it's engine isn't going to fall out 4 minutes after you drive off the lot. It is entirely possible for Windows to get infected before you even manage to download the first set of patches, much less the 266 meg SP2.
The real problem is that Windows is like buying a car with NO oil -- once you fill it up with oil (patch the system) for the first time, you're good to go until the next oil change (updates).
More problems with your analogy. You need to put oil in your car because physical friction wears down the engine. There is no such problem with software. You can take an upatched Debian box or a Mac from 2001 in their defualt configurations, put them on the net, and you'll be just fine. Furthermore, car manufacturers have to pay to fix their own defects. Microsoft has never compensated anyone for a lose resulting from a defect in Microsoft's products.
"My SO just got a new car, parked it in the middle of the street in a bad neighborhood with the keys in the ignition.
All of the things the parent mentioned "would" have happened during the normal use of the product, like (gasp) connecting a computer to the internet. Your example is decidely not using the product in normal fashion, and is just stupid.
Visit any plant where any Union is strong: you'll see 60 year old guys with an eighth grade education telling you that you can't step over the yellow line without protective shoes; and he'll write a grievance. Granted he's getting $65,000 a year to do this
So what? What is wrong with expecting to be able to make a decent wage without a college degree? What is wrong with making $65,000 a year without a degree after you've been there 40+ years?
We're now to the point that fostering this attitude is a detriment to the economy and the consumer.
No, that would be the desire of CEO's to be paid 500 times what the average worker gets.
Are you meaning to tell me that you actually BELIEVE that OEMs would have had gone out of business if they hadn't bundled Windows instead of just having it on their shelves?
Yes, its a fact, dumbass. The PC business is commoditized to an extreme. You think Dell could just add $100 to the cost of every PC they sell and expect to keep their business? Yes, Linux is good enough to sell to some customers, so was BeOs back in the day - but it's impossible for a sizable OEM to forget the Windows discount and not go out of business.
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It has simply NOT been tested to the degree that IE has. That is a fact. IE holds 90% of the market and it has been slammed, punched, kicked around by every virus and spyware author out there you can think of.
Firefox doesn't use Active X, and it isn't integrated into Windows at every conceivable point. That and it was built with security in mind, as opposed to being shoehorned on after the fact.
Firefox has not yet undergone this gauntlet.
It wont have to.
Now, go over to Secunia and check out the list of exploits for Internet Explorer and Firefox. Firefox is listed as having 75% of it's vulnerabilities *UNPATCHED*, while IE is listed as only 32%.
According to their site, Firfox has had eight advisories. Internet Explorer, on the other hand, has 61 advisories . So yes, IE "is listed as only 32%", but it still has over three times as many vunerabilites as Firefox.
Dumbass.
"There is no design flaw in the Pinto. A car blowing up in a low speed collision, killing all passengers, is a risk any driver takes when they get behind a wheel. If Honda or Chrysler had our kind of marketshare, their cars would blow up all the time, too." --Made up Ford Exec, 1978
Most of those announcements deal with servers, which are in a whole other category than typical desktops, and vunerabilities that require physical access to the machine or an existing account. Like this advisory on how someone with physical access can crash the KDE screensaver, getting access to your session, and this one on how you can cause a buffer overflow in perl, allowing you to overwrite system files with debug logs. Go find some that can root a Linux box with a default installation.
/usr, /usr/bin/, /usr/shared/bin, /usr/local, /usr/local/bin, /opt/bin, /opt/local/bin...and that's just the executable, not even getting into whatever configuration files it might have left which could be in /etc, a .directory in ~, and so on.
/tmp and /var/tmp, and those get deleted upon restart.
witness the stream of security advisories that are announced for each Linux distro, much more than the Windows patches we get on the second Tuesday of each month.
Wtf? That's because people have access to the code used in Linux distributions, and these bugs are getting fixed. Go read the advisories on that site you linked to, and see how many were posted by people looking for bugs to fix. Compare that to Windows, were nobody but Microsoft has access to the code, and its a known fact that Microsoft lets real, known vunerabilties sit unfixed for MONTHS, much less looking for bugs to fix. Do you work for Gardner or something?
People like to compare a single kernel to the entire Windows operating system, and in the next breath argue about how Linux is "just a kernel." So it's all the more amusing when some people argue that there's a difference between a Linux distro and Windows. There's not.
You are easily amused. Only RMS is retentive enough to inisist that Linux is just the kernel, and the whole system is GNU/Linux.
Bollocks. The UNIX "filesystem standard" fragments things way more than Windows does. With Windows, you know a few places to look for a malicious program to get rid of it--\Windows, \Windows\System, \Program Files, and so on.
You bollocks. You think spyware is limited to C:\Windows and C:\Program Files?
Linux, on the other hand? Where do you look?
No, they can't, because a regular user does not have write access to those directories. Seriously, have you ever used Linux? At all? Do you have any concept of priveledge speration? Aside from a users home folder, the only places they ususally have access to are
If Linux was #1, we'd see all kinds of crap getting installed on people's Linux systems
How? Neither OS X or Linux has anything like Active X, which is the primary vehicle for installing spyware behind your back.
No one is saying that the alternatives to Windows are bulletproof, because they're not. But just because there are some vunerabilites, does not make them remotely equivilant to the stinking cesspool that is Windows. The problem is not popularity; Linux could have 100% marketshare and not have but a fraction of the serious problems that Windows has had, due to its massive design flaws, Microsoft's sloppy coding, and their refusal to fix vunerabilities until there is a serious crack in the wild, weeks or months after an advisory has been posted.
That depends on whether they're used as part of a larger vulnerability, doesn't it? We were discussing a vulnerability that can be exploited by opening pop-up windows that don't go where you think they do just a few weeks ago...
I didn't see that one, so what exactly are you talking about here? Otherwise it sounds like you're mixing cause and effect here. Spyware can open pop-ups, but the pop-ups are the result, not the "security risk" in the first place.
Actually, doesn't that make it easier to write an exploit that will work on all platforms?
No. Next trolling/ignorant question?
Those include web sites popping up new windows despite my settings supposedly preventing that
That's an annoyance, not a security risk.
Present: "any dumbass Apple-fanboy comment would be moderated up to +5 Insightful"
Uh huh. What happens even more often than that an Apple story, comment made in defense of Apple, or criticising another platform is automatically blown off as the work of Apple fanboyism. One example: the recent "Why does Windows still suck" story. Even better example: when Apple made a new firmware update for the iPod that blocked Real's attempts to get Real's DRM to play on the iPod. All the catcalls saying "if this were Microsoft..." were just pathetic.
I'm guessing that it is there if you don't want your mouse to be plugged in your keyboards.
Close, but it's meant to extend the keyboards cable in case you want to set your tower on the floor, rather than on your desk.
It's just plain impossible to have an intelligent discussion about the pros and cons of Mac vs. Windows now.
What, you think it was before? Before, any dumbass anti-Apple-fanboy comment would be moderated up to +5 Insightful, like Taco's famous "no wireless, less space than Nomad, lame" quote. I'll be that most of the people bitching about how much attention Apple receives now just miss the good old days where they could fart in Apple's general direction and get easy karma.
Definitely. Before I upgraded my Mini to 1GB, it was swapping constantly when I had both RSSOwl and OmniWeb running at the same time. Unless you're only running apps with a small memory footprint, a Mac with only 256M is almost a single-tasking machine.
It's not too bad as long as you are just running iLife apps, and not to many of them at a time simultaneously. i.e. you can run iMovie just fine, or Safari and iTunes just fine, you just don't want to do all three. But try and fire up Photoshop or Microsoft Word, and you're in for some swappin. I know, I just set my parents up with a 12" iBook, and so far haven't had the time/money to get more memory for it.
It's only fair to point out the early versions of Mac OS X were released to certain developers and parties on x86 *first* (saying this as one of them), owning to it's NeXT heritage.
.pkg, and the right one would be automatically selected during the install.
.NET. Then you wouldn't have to worry about platform issues; just write to the api, and you'll get your muliplatform binaries in the package along with whatever libraries were needed.
Then you probably also remember that was part of their Yellow Box/Blue Box/Red Box strategy, before Jobs came in and said "this sucks", and we got Carbon instead. Rather than developing OS X for x86, they could bring back the Red Box. IIRC, and it's been quite a while since I played with the Next cube at the local ACM student chapter, but I believe programs came with a single installer for both platforms; you'd just have a copy of each platform binary inside the
So, in an ideal world, Microsoft would be smacked down for being a monopoly, and they would be forced to integrate Red Box into
This would also be a lot safer for Apple than trying to write a whole OS for x86, and they wouldn't have to worry about people pirating their OS without buying any hardware from Apple.
I know this sounds like the origional promise of java, write once deploy anywhere, but this way you wouldn't have java's sucky performance.
Buying from where? The people who used to sell shares of the Brooklyn Bridge to incoming immigrants? From the Apple Store:
- Mac Mini, $500.
- Wired keyboard and mouse, $58.
- NEC 17" CRT, $159.
Thats $717, a whole $278 less than what you came up with.Shit, and I was hoping that those 15K rpm SCSI drives with 16 megs of cache that get used in corporate RAID systems had gotten cheap somehow. ;)
ipod 40gb- $400
.005% of the population will actually find usefull.
creative zen 40gb - $250
The price you are quoting is for the Zen 20 gig, not the 40 gig. The Zen 40 is actually $329.99. And while yes its still costs less than Apple's 40 and it supposedly gets better battery life, it's also an ounce and half heavier and is over 4 cubic inches larger than the iPod.
the creative even has more features!
No, it does not. I has exactly *one* more feature than the iPod: an FM tuner. You should go work for Microsoft because they're all about "Features". I say "Features" with great distain, because in the context of Microsoft and wannabe makers of the iPod killer, they think they have a better product if they have more "Features" on a billeted list. It doesn't matter that if you shoehorn on these "Features", your product gets larger, heaver, and has more stuff to break down, and it especially doesn't matter if a single soul on the planet actually needs said "Feature" - you have a longer list, so you win. Voice recording is a prefect example of a needless addition that
- eMac, $749
- $99 iPod Shuffle for your thumbdrive
- Epson Stylus C86 Ink Jet Printer, $99
For a total of $947.95, for $21 a month on an Apple Credit Account. The price for the Mini would be....Actually, I guess you can get the Mini for your $20 a month, but you have to give up the LCD panel. Apple sells a 17" NEC CRT for $159. So, for the Mini:
- The aforementioned monitor for $159.
- Same $99 iPod shuffle
- Same $99 Epson printer
- USB keyboard and mouse: $52.
- Mac Mini, $479.
The total is $888.95. So, for just about $60 less, you get your Mini for 20 bucks a month. Oh, and there seems to be a mail in rebate for the printer for $100, but that's not going to change the payment options. I would provide links, but the links are specific to each session, so it would be pointless to repost them.but my two books on Debian GNU/Linux are now rather dated in areas.
You aren't by any chance talking about O'Reilly's "Running Debian GNU Linux", are you? I bought the second edition a couple of years ago, and the nuts and bolts stuff was great, and most of it was still very usefull. However, it was somewhat amusing to read how 16 megs was a *lot* of memory, and how OS2/Warp was gaining in populatrity.
Of course, just a couple weeks after I bought it (and spilled Dew on part of the cover) they came out with the 3rd edition. Poo.
All you've said is a bunch of retared boilerplate anti-union propoganda that was old in 1950. Just because some union, somewhere, at sometime, had some bad rules, that those problems apply to all unions, and so we shouldn't have unions at all? Let's apply that logic to buisness for a second. Enron screwed over their customers, their investors, and finally their employees. Therefore, lets ban all businesses!
Just because you join a union, doesn't mean you'll automatically be paid based only on seniority (so the slackers get paid as much as the go-getters); that's the oldest red herring around. Neither does it meant that the company wont be comeditive or that it will go out of business; unions are fully aware that if the company folds, they'll lose their jobs. There have been numerous cases where unions have agreed to sacrifice pay and benefits so the company wouldn't go under - most notably in the airline and auto industries. No, all a union is really for is to make sure workers are treated fairly and get their slice of the pie.
The greatest trick wasn't pulled by the devil, making people think he didn't exist. The greatest trick has been the one pulled by Republicans and big business in convincing workers and consumers that standing up for themselves is a horrible, horrible thing, because you might be in a union or put some money in the pocket of a lawyer.
Cars require certain care and maintenance. Why do you assume computers don't?
Because cars have physical wear and tear, and software does not? Duh? Duh?
That's an incorrect analogy.
So is yours. If you buy a new car, it's engine isn't going to fall out 4 minutes after you drive off the lot. It is entirely possible for Windows to get infected before you even manage to download the first set of patches, much less the 266 meg SP2.
The real problem is that Windows is like buying a car with NO oil -- once you fill it up with oil (patch the system) for the first time, you're good to go until the next oil change (updates).
More problems with your analogy. You need to put oil in your car because physical friction wears down the engine. There is no such problem with software. You can take an upatched Debian box or a Mac from 2001 in their defualt configurations, put them on the net, and you'll be just fine. Furthermore, car manufacturers have to pay to fix their own defects. Microsoft has never compensated anyone for a lose resulting from a defect in Microsoft's products.
"My SO just got a new car, parked it in the middle of the street in a bad neighborhood with the keys in the ignition.
All of the things the parent mentioned "would" have happened during the normal use of the product, like (gasp) connecting a computer to the internet. Your example is decidely not using the product in normal fashion, and is just stupid.
Visit any plant where any Union is strong: you'll see 60 year old guys with an eighth grade education telling you that you can't step over the yellow line without protective shoes; and he'll write a grievance. Granted he's getting $65,000 a year to do this
So what? What is wrong with expecting to be able to make a decent wage without a college degree? What is wrong with making $65,000 a year without a degree after you've been there 40+ years?
We're now to the point that fostering this attitude is a detriment to the economy and the consumer.
No, that would be the desire of CEO's to be paid 500 times what the average worker gets.
Are you meaning to tell me that you actually BELIEVE that OEMs would have had gone out of business if they hadn't bundled Windows instead of just having it on their shelves?
Yes, its a fact, dumbass. The PC business is commoditized to an extreme. You think Dell could just add $100 to the cost of every PC they sell and expect to keep their business? Yes, Linux is good enough to sell to some customers, so was BeOs back in the day - but it's impossible for a sizable OEM to forget the Windows discount and not go out of business.
And the Army's rational was basically "Nobody uses Macs for webservers, so there's no scriptkiddie hacks out there." Not the most ringing endorsement.
No, its because there weren't any cracks for it.
Macs are still computers and are vulnerable to the same faults as PCs.
No, they aren't. How many worms have ever been out for the Mac?
Macs are still computers and they're not perfect.
Nobody said they were.