The worst of Apple's bugs tend to be at the "You know, you really ought to wash your hands after using a public restroom" level.
Microsoft's are more at the "You know, you probably ought to wear protection when having anonymous sex in public restrooms" level.
The whole idea of a web page being able to download and execute code outside the sandbox is just so horribly alien to any kind of sane security model that I'm still boggled at it. And doubly boggled that someone at Microsoft hasn't gone to jail for it yet.
No, we don't need capabilities. We don't need mandatory access control. We don't need low-privilege browsers. We don't even need multi-user security on a single-user machine. All that stuff is great for limiting the damage once a vulberability has been exploited, but before any of those things we need applications that doen't have vulnerabilities deliberated included as part of the design. THAT is where the biggest problem is... not in bugs that can be fixed without inconveniencing anyone, but in design features that are inherently insecure and that they don't want to change because people are used to the way it works, because applications depend on the way it works.
But you can change these things even if you don't want to. If UNIX systems can ship with the Berkeley "r-suite" disabled or missing, then Windows can abandon Active Desktop and browser-integration with.NET, and Apple can abandon "Open Safe Files" and sharing helper application bindings between the Finder and Safari.
No one makes you use Safari on a Mac, I use Firefox.
I use Camino.
No one makes you use IE on Windows. I use Firefox.
It doesn't matter what "I" use or "you" use, it matters what the average person uses. If the average Mac owner uses Safari, then problems in Safari are everyone's concern whether they use it or not.
A Windows box on the otherhand I notice will pick up at least a dozen pieces of malware according to adaware or spybot search and destroy after just a couple of days of web surfing and yes that's with a firewall and Firefox.
You're doing something seriously wrong. The only "antivirus" I use on Windows is "no networked applications that use the MS HTML control other than Windows Update" and a firewall. I've yet to be infected while using Firefox and an external firewall or the XP internal firewall.
Bear in mind that to really "not use IE" you have to "not use IE, Outlook, Windows Media Player, RealPlayer,...". ANY application that uses the MS HTML control on untrusted objects is a potential target.
it's that Macs being set up with a user level account as opposed to Windows default admin account are much less liable to being actually exploited
The value of the default user account is overrated.
I can think of a dozen ways to take advantage of a default non-admin account to hide and spread a virus, and that's not even taking advantage of the sudo timing problem.
The biggest advantage is that Safari is less stupid about security than IE. But Apple's working on eliminating that and making Safari just as annoying and insecure.:P
The files in question are probably safe, but you really can't be sure.
If you can't be sure don't open them.
Really.
Treat all downloaded files as dangerous.
Only open them using applications that you know were designed to open unsafe files, because they are in a list of safe applications, one that either you or the OS manages. Because it's not that "these files are safe", it's "the applications we use to open these files are safe". And you can't know that if you're using a list of both safe and unsafe applications to open them with!
I've been trying to get Apple's attention on this one for two years now.
WHY THE HELL IS THAT OPTION STILL THERE?
They figure popping up more annoying dialogs that people reflexively approve worked so well for Microsoft over the past 10 years they ought to give it a try?
Until Apple quits copying Microsoft's bad ideas, like opening files from the Internet using the Desktop launch service, they're just asking someone to waltz in and take advantage of them.
No, adding more annoying dialogs won't help. People learn to ignore them.
but the holes get FIXED and not denied for months untill the hole is used to destry hundreds of thousands of PCs.
Safari still has "Open Safe Files after Downloading", still uses Launchservices to find the loader for safe files, and still treats installers and archives as "safe files".
This is a flaw that's been left unfixed for two years. This isn't as bad as Microsoft leaving ActiveX around for 10, but still...
One reason *everyone* is more secure than Microsoft Windows is that only Windows has implemented anything even vaguely as bad as the ActiveX/Windows Desktop/IE integration mess.
On the other hand, just about everyone to some degree or another commits the sin of trusting untrustable files. Even the darling of the security set, Firefox, has an installation mechanism that involves executing files directly from the Internet without a user's explicit request.
Apple has "Open safe files after downloading" compounded by the unforgivable sin of treating things like archivers or installers as "safe" files.
On a security level, this is like shaking hands after sneezing, compared to Microsoft's fascination with running barefoot through a "Hot Ward" and snogging the Ebola patients, but it's still unacceptable.
Ever try to get native Java working on FreeBSD? First you have to download the Linux Java distribution, install it, then download the FBSD patchset for native Java, build and install it. This takes a day, even on my 2.4GHz, 768MB laptop.
Last year about this time I spent six weeks trying to get the right version of Java, Tomcat, and a half a dozen components working on Linux. We had to use an RPM based system, so I don't know if Debian would have been better, but if I didn't have a FreeBSD system to start with so I could just "cd" to the right Port directory and type "make install"... and six hours later it was all done. On a PIII/800 desktop (I suspect your laptop hard drive is why yours took so long).
Yes, I had to download the Java by hand. But I had to do that for Linux, too... that was what Sun required, regardless of your OS.
Yes, it crunched for a few hours... but it just worked once it'd finished crunching.
Just because someone does not understand computers does not make them an idiot.
Nod.
I'm sure my mechanic thinks I'm a pain in the neck, 'cos I don't find cars the coolest things ever and keep coming back with stuff I could have avoided if I obsessed over my car the way I do over my computer.
I'd rather the OS be something in the background that we all take for granted and kinda forget about, so we can focus on the apps, on actually getting stuff done.
That's actually an interesting point.
It's not in the vendor's interest for the OS to be something the the background that you all take for granted and kinds forget about, or else they'll never sell the second release.
This effect shows up in commercial and open source software (Yes, it does. KDE? Gnome? Why do I want to make my UNIX box look like Windows again?), but by making your money from the margin on hardware you've got a little less incentive to make the OS in-your-face... and, really, the in-your-face features of Macs are at least as much to show off the hardware as the OS... and frankly I'd rather have some bling-bling I can disable than have Internet Explorer tentacles in every damn applications.
Which is probably why Mac OS is more "an OS you can forget about" than either Windows or other UNIX variants like Linux.
Then we realise that there is a key difference between Apple and other vendors: you can only run OSX on Apple branded hardware. So you have to argue that this model is better in some way.
Hell no. Closed models are never as good as open models, for the consumer. They may be good for the vendor, though. Consider Microsoft's agressively closed OS, for example.
Mac hardware is a lot more open than Windows. It even runs Windows (as it had the potential of once before, back when Microsoft was really supporting open hardware and supported Windows on MIPS, Alpha, and Power PC).
We should all defend the open hardware model at every opportunity, and we need to resist and rebut the Macfascist point of view, that one good supplier is all you need, you don't need choice.
It's a shame that the only choice for most consumers is between an operating system that's extremely open but only runs on Apple hardware, and an operating system that's closed as a matter of policy. Oh, you pay lip service to other UNIX versions, but you know as well as I that Mac OS X is the only UNIX variant that's useful to all but a tiny fraction of the market.
The idea that you should make do with one supplier... of hardware or operating systems... is a fanatic's position. Whether they're Apple or Microsoft fans, they're pushing an agenda. And they've done a damn good job of it, too.
its fun, its easy, less frustrating, but it keeps you stupid - you learn nothing about how anything works... [...] keeping people stupid, because stupid people are easy to controll...
Hmmm? Apart from the "fun and easy" part, you're describing Microsoft and Windows. Apple does a MUCH better job of helping you learn how everything works. They always have, really, all the way back to the original "Inside Macintosh". But let's look at what things are like today:
Mac OS X - You can download the source code to the underlying operating system, the GUI is well documented, and built on top of the OpenGL rendering engine and the PDF rendering model which are both well understood and documented with multiple interoperable implementations. The GUI Framework (Cocoa) and the two scripting models (Applescript and the UNIX shell) are not only well documented, but they encourage exploration: Cocoa because it's implemented in a late-bound language that makes the API self-describing, Applescript because it includes mechanisms to enumerate the interfaces provided by an application, and the UNIX shell because it's based on a set of concepts that have now become so widely used that people forget how revolutionary they were in the early '70s... even Windows NT follows the UNIX design in myriad ways.
Windows NT - The operating system source code isn't published, the internals are deliberately kept secret (even in the face of lawsuits!), and the kernel API itself has huge areas shrouded in mystery. The GUI is implemented in dozens of vaguely interoperable toolkits that differ in subtle ways, and attempting to understand the relationships between them leads to a mass of undocumented interfaces and binary gibberish that you have to take on trust. Inter-applicaton communications involve a variety of scripted and non-scripted interfaces that have changed so often and so radically that developers hoard their older MSDN CD sets containing the venerable Visual Studio 6 as if they were jewels.
Windows... not fun, not easy, very frustrating, and it keeps you stupid because you have to climb such a steep learning curve to really understand how anything works.
Mac OS X doesn't just help you understand how it goes together, it encourages you to do so. Right-click on any Cocoa application and a good many Carbon ones and you get the option "Show package contents". Select that and the applications frameworks (internal libraries and toolkits) and resources are laid out for your inspection. The localization folders (English.lproj, German.lproj, and so on) are there for you to work with (you want to do a Klingon version, just copy your own language's version and get to work), each containing the strings and window layouts for you to fiddle with... using the development tools shipped with every copy of Mac OS X right there on the CD or DVD...
Windows? You open up C:\Windows or C:\Program Files and it metaphorically asks "you don't really want to look at this, do you?" It discourages the user from digging into and understanding how it's put together. And, as anyone who's actually tried can tell you, there's a good reason for that. It's not a pretty sight... and then you need to buy the compilers, subscribe to MSDN, all to get a fraction of the detailed information Apple gives away for free...
The whole point of having a representative democracy instead of a direct democracy is precisely to deal with this problem. The people are supposed to (and generally do) elect representatives who will do a better job of governing than they would themselves, and when a tyrant or fool slips through the cracks the system of checks and balances in the government itself is supposed to keep them from doing to much damage... even if the populace in general agrees with the tyrant or fool.
You were modded down not for saying that the populace agrees with a foolish tyrant, but for saying that it's not the responsibility of the government to do something about it.
The only MS application software that's close to indispensible is Office, and that runs just fine on Mac OS X.
So that leaves Windows and non-Microsoft software that needs it.
You already want to avoid Windows for your servers, right? If you don't, consider it... replacing a dozen Windows boxes with a single UNIX box might not make the UNIX installed base numbers look all that much better, but Microsoft is smart enough to know that's not the bottom line.
Depending on what you're currently using, it might be expensive to find alternatives that don't have the Windows dependencies. It might not be possible. But I'll bet there's Microsoft licenses you have that you can afford to shed. So when Mr. Lawless calls you can say "Oh, hi, after reading about you we switched out data center over to Solaris and Linux, and we're doing a Mac rollout to the desktop next week. Can we have a refund on the remaining time on the 40% of our existing licenses we no longer need...?"
This happens just like this when someone, usually from within the company, notifies Microsoft they thing software piracy is occuring.
They get a sales manager to lean on them? Not an attorney?
Indeed, according to Microsoft's Web site, the responsibility of someone with Lawless' title of "engagement manager" is to "perform as an integrated member of the account team, drive business development and closing of new services engagements in targeted accounts.
This theory really doesn't say anything about the universe, it's more about the psychology of physicists. The steady-state and cyclical universe models have been hauled out again and again, with no experimental evidence suggesting that they might be true, because people want them to be true.
The various religions that have cyclical models of the universe are one of the causes of this desire.
I put up with control-click under System 7, under OS 8, under OS 9, and it's ALWAYS been one of the things that pissed me off the most about Apple... their declaration that one mouse button was enough for anyone, alongside this ongoing addition of extra mouse buttons on the keyboard. It's purely hypocritical... if remembering whether to use the right or left button is Too Hard, then remembering whether to use control, shift, command, or option is no improvement.
I've been saying for years that Apple's hardware isn't some kind of super-special stuff that's worth so much more than comparable PC hardware. It's overpriced and pretty generic quality, it's the software that matters. And of course that gets all kinds of negative feedback from the fanboys.
That said, though, they're certainly not worse than average here.
you never hear anyone say "dont buy that Dell/HP/Lenovo, its a rev A, wait for the QC issues to be fixed in the rev b"
IBM (and it's still the same ex-IBM division making laptops for Lenovo) laptops have always been teh standard everyone else has to live up to, as far as I'm concerned. DEC... back when it was DEC before Compaqtion... had some great models too, but the Thinkpad is really #1.
HP? Dell? After Compaqtion when refresh time came around at work I wouldn't take a Dell or Compaq laptop, I stuck with an old old DEC, and when they switched suppliers to IBM I was so glad to get a Thinkpad.
Dell in particular is notorious for crappy kit. Had a big debate about this with our IT manager when we were using Dell, and later she came to me and said I was totally right. Never buy a Dell. You'll be sorry.
There's IBM, and all the rest.
I wish Apple would release OSX for generic PCs just so I could run it on a Thinkpad. Not only does it have the best keyboard on any laptop, but it's actually got two mouse buttons *and* my choice of trackpoint or touchpad. I'd pay $500 for the "Generic" version of OS X, no problem.
But I'm probably going to have to put up with a Macbook for a few years before they catch on.
Means: ActiveX makes Windows a MUCH easier target to hit.
Opportunity: There are more Windows boxes out there.
Means is mostly ignored in these analyses. They assume all operating systems and applications are comparable and that it's mostly the opportunity that Windows provides that makes it a preferred target.
Up until around 1997 Windows viruses and worms were mostly exploting poor file system security over LANs, and social engineering attacks in email. Then they came up wiith Active Desktop and the email worm problem went from "pay attention to what you're doing" to "oh shit!".
Han Solo's opposed to the Evil Empire and he's definitely a free market type, so the Republicans should be 100% behind him. Now, remember, Star Wars was "A long time ago in a galaxy far far away", so after restoring him from carbonite (or whatever plot token is used to bring him to 21st Century America) his birthdate is way before the founding of the United States. That means that after Dubya grants him citizenship for sheer coolness, he wouldn't need a "Schwartznegger Amendment" to run for President.
So, hey, even taking into account that he's fictional he's got at least as good a chance as Nader.
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people never tend to pick on Apple anyway
ORLY?
The worst of Apple's bugs tend to be at the "You know, you really ought to wash your hands after using a public restroom" level.
Microsoft's are more at the "You know, you probably ought to wear protection when having anonymous sex in public restrooms" level.
The whole idea of a web page being able to download and execute code outside the sandbox is just so horribly alien to any kind of sane security model that I'm still boggled at it. And doubly boggled that someone at Microsoft hasn't gone to jail for it yet.
No, we don't need capabilities. We don't need mandatory access control. We don't need low-privilege browsers. We don't even need multi-user security on a single-user machine. All that stuff is great for limiting the damage once a vulberability has been exploited, but before any of those things we need applications that doen't have vulnerabilities deliberated included as part of the design. THAT is where the biggest problem is... not in bugs that can be fixed without inconveniencing anyone, but in design features that are inherently insecure and that they don't want to change because people are used to the way it works, because applications depend on the way it works.
.NET, and Apple can abandon "Open Safe Files" and sharing helper application bindings between the Finder and Safari.
But you can change these things even if you don't want to. If UNIX systems can ship with the Berkeley "r-suite" disabled or missing, then Windows can abandon Active Desktop and browser-integration with
No one makes you use Safari on a Mac, I use Firefox.
...". ANY application that uses the MS HTML control on untrusted objects is a potential target.
I use Camino.
No one makes you use IE on Windows. I use Firefox.
It doesn't matter what "I" use or "you" use, it matters what the average person uses. If the average Mac owner uses Safari, then problems in Safari are everyone's concern whether they use it or not.
A Windows box on the otherhand I notice will pick up at least a dozen pieces of malware according to adaware or spybot search and destroy after just a couple of days of web surfing and yes that's with a firewall and Firefox.
You're doing something seriously wrong. The only "antivirus" I use on Windows is "no networked applications that use the MS HTML control other than Windows Update" and a firewall. I've yet to be infected while using Firefox and an external firewall or the XP internal firewall.
Bear in mind that to really "not use IE" you have to "not use IE, Outlook, Windows Media Player, RealPlayer,
it's that Macs being set up with a user level account as opposed to Windows default admin account are much less liable to being actually exploited
:P
The value of the default user account is overrated.
I can think of a dozen ways to take advantage of a default non-admin account to hide and spread a virus, and that's not even taking advantage of the sudo timing problem.
The biggest advantage is that Safari is less stupid about security than IE. But Apple's working on eliminating that and making Safari just as annoying and insecure.
The files in question are probably safe, but you really can't be sure.
If you can't be sure don't open them.
Really.
Treat all downloaded files as dangerous.
Only open them using applications that you know were designed to open unsafe files, because they are in a list of safe applications, one that either you or the OS manages. Because it's not that "these files are safe", it's "the applications we use to open these files are safe". And you can't know that if you're using a list of both safe and unsafe applications to open them with!
OK, second time this "Open 'safe' files is a lie.
About the fourth, actually.
I've been trying to get Apple's attention on this one for two years now.
WHY THE HELL IS THAT OPTION STILL THERE?
They figure popping up more annoying dialogs that people reflexively approve worked so well for Microsoft over the past 10 years they ought to give it a try?
Until Apple quits copying Microsoft's bad ideas, like opening files from the Internet using the Desktop launch service, they're just asking someone to waltz in and take advantage of them.
No, adding more annoying dialogs won't help. People learn to ignore them.
but the holes get FIXED and not denied for months untill the hole is used to destry hundreds of thousands of PCs.
Safari still has "Open Safe Files after Downloading", still uses Launchservices to find the loader for safe files, and still treats installers and archives as "safe files".
This is a flaw that's been left unfixed for two years. This isn't as bad as Microsoft leaving ActiveX around for 10, but still...
One reason *everyone* is more secure than Microsoft Windows is that only Windows has implemented anything even vaguely as bad as the ActiveX/Windows Desktop/IE integration mess.
On the other hand, just about everyone to some degree or another commits the sin of trusting untrustable files. Even the darling of the security set, Firefox, has an installation mechanism that involves executing files directly from the Internet without a user's explicit request.
Apple has "Open safe files after downloading" compounded by the unforgivable sin of treating things like archivers or installers as "safe" files.
I've written about this before.
On a security level, this is like shaking hands after sneezing, compared to Microsoft's fascination with running barefoot through a "Hot Ward" and snogging the Ebola patients, but it's still unacceptable.
One of the reasons why I think KDE vs. GNOME is a great idea.
Competition between two Windows clones?
That's like reading the front page *and* the sprts section to get a balanced view of the news.
A pox on both their houses.
Ever try to get native Java working on FreeBSD? First you have to download the Linux Java distribution, install it, then download the FBSD patchset for native Java, build and install it. This takes a day, even on my 2.4GHz, 768MB laptop.
Last year about this time I spent six weeks trying to get the right version of Java, Tomcat, and a half a dozen components working on Linux. We had to use an RPM based system, so I don't know if Debian would have been better, but if I didn't have a FreeBSD system to start with so I could just "cd" to the right Port directory and type "make install"... and six hours later it was all done. On a PIII/800 desktop (I suspect your laptop hard drive is why yours took so long).
Yes, I had to download the Java by hand. But I had to do that for Linux, too... that was what Sun required, regardless of your OS.
Yes, it crunched for a few hours... but it just worked once it'd finished crunching.
This superiority complex of theirs is really annoying, especially given it is not based on facts.
So, basically, you consider Linux superior to BSD in all areas? So who is it with the superiority complex again?
Just because someone does not understand computers does not make them an idiot.
Nod.
I'm sure my mechanic thinks I'm a pain in the neck, 'cos I don't find cars the coolest things ever and keep coming back with stuff I could have avoided if I obsessed over my car the way I do over my computer.
I'd rather the OS be something in the background that we all take for granted and kinda forget about, so we can focus on the apps, on actually getting stuff done.
That's actually an interesting point.
It's not in the vendor's interest for the OS to be something the the background that you all take for granted and kinds forget about, or else they'll never sell the second release.
This effect shows up in commercial and open source software (Yes, it does. KDE? Gnome? Why do I want to make my UNIX box look like Windows again?), but by making your money from the margin on hardware you've got a little less incentive to make the OS in-your-face... and, really, the in-your-face features of Macs are at least as much to show off the hardware as the OS... and frankly I'd rather have some bling-bling I can disable than have Internet Explorer tentacles in every damn applications.
Which is probably why Mac OS is more "an OS you can forget about" than either Windows or other UNIX variants like Linux.
Then we realise that there is a key difference between Apple and other vendors: you can only run OSX on Apple branded hardware. So you have to argue that this model is better in some way.
Hell no. Closed models are never as good as open models, for the consumer. They may be good for the vendor, though. Consider Microsoft's agressively closed OS, for example.
Mac hardware is a lot more open than Windows. It even runs Windows (as it had the potential of once before, back when Microsoft was really supporting open hardware and supported Windows on MIPS, Alpha, and Power PC).
We should all defend the open hardware model at every opportunity, and we need to resist and rebut the Macfascist point of view, that one good supplier is all you need, you don't need choice.
It's a shame that the only choice for most consumers is between an operating system that's extremely open but only runs on Apple hardware, and an operating system that's closed as a matter of policy. Oh, you pay lip service to other UNIX versions, but you know as well as I that Mac OS X is the only UNIX variant that's useful to all but a tiny fraction of the market.
The idea that you should make do with one supplier... of hardware or operating systems... is a fanatic's position. Whether they're Apple or Microsoft fans, they're pushing an agenda. And they've done a damn good job of it, too.
its fun, its easy, less frustrating, but it keeps you stupid - you learn nothing about how anything works... [...] keeping people stupid, because stupid people are easy to controll...
... not fun, not easy, very frustrating, and it keeps you stupid because you have to climb such a steep learning curve to really understand how anything works.
Hmmm? Apart from the "fun and easy" part, you're describing Microsoft and Windows. Apple does a MUCH better job of helping you learn how everything works. They always have, really, all the way back to the original "Inside Macintosh". But let's look at what things are like today:
Mac OS X - You can download the source code to the underlying operating system, the GUI is well documented, and built on top of the OpenGL rendering engine and the PDF rendering model which are both well understood and documented with multiple interoperable implementations. The GUI Framework (Cocoa) and the two scripting models (Applescript and the UNIX shell) are not only well documented, but they encourage exploration: Cocoa because it's implemented in a late-bound language that makes the API self-describing, Applescript because it includes mechanisms to enumerate the interfaces provided by an application, and the UNIX shell because it's based on a set of concepts that have now become so widely used that people forget how revolutionary they were in the early '70s... even Windows NT follows the UNIX design in myriad ways.
Windows NT - The operating system source code isn't published, the internals are deliberately kept secret (even in the face of lawsuits!), and the kernel API itself has huge areas shrouded in mystery. The GUI is implemented in dozens of vaguely interoperable toolkits that differ in subtle ways, and attempting to understand the relationships between them leads to a mass of undocumented interfaces and binary gibberish that you have to take on trust. Inter-applicaton communications involve a variety of scripted and non-scripted interfaces that have changed so often and so radically that developers hoard their older MSDN CD sets containing the venerable Visual Studio 6 as if they were jewels.
Windows
Mac OS X doesn't just help you understand how it goes together, it encourages you to do so. Right-click on any Cocoa application and a good many Carbon ones and you get the option "Show package contents". Select that and the applications frameworks (internal libraries and toolkits) and resources are laid out for your inspection. The localization folders (English.lproj, German.lproj, and so on) are there for you to work with (you want to do a Klingon version, just copy your own language's version and get to work), each containing the strings and window layouts for you to fiddle with... using the development tools shipped with every copy of Mac OS X right there on the CD or DVD...
Windows? You open up C:\Windows or C:\Program Files and it metaphorically asks "you don't really want to look at this, do you?" It discourages the user from digging into and understanding how it's put together. And, as anyone who's actually tried can tell you, there's a good reason for that. It's not a pretty sight... and then you need to buy the compilers, subscribe to MSDN, all to get a fraction of the detailed information Apple gives away for free...
The whole point of having a representative democracy instead of a direct democracy is precisely to deal with this problem. The people are supposed to (and generally do) elect representatives who will do a better job of governing than they would themselves, and when a tyrant or fool slips through the cracks the system of checks and balances in the government itself is supposed to keep them from doing to much damage... even if the populace in general agrees with the tyrant or fool.
You were modded down not for saying that the populace agrees with a foolish tyrant, but for saying that it's not the responsibility of the government to do something about it.
The only MS application software that's close to indispensible is Office, and that runs just fine on Mac OS X.
So that leaves Windows and non-Microsoft software that needs it.
You already want to avoid Windows for your servers, right? If you don't, consider it... replacing a dozen Windows boxes with a single UNIX box might not make the UNIX installed base numbers look all that much better, but Microsoft is smart enough to know that's not the bottom line.
Depending on what you're currently using, it might be expensive to find alternatives that don't have the Windows dependencies. It might not be possible. But I'll bet there's Microsoft licenses you have that you can afford to shed. So when Mr. Lawless calls you can say "Oh, hi, after reading about you we switched out data center over to Solaris and Linux, and we're doing a Mac rollout to the desktop next week. Can we have a refund on the remaining time on the 40% of our existing licenses we no longer need...?"
They get a sales manager to lean on them? Not an attorney?
This theory really doesn't say anything about the universe, it's more about the psychology of physicists. The steady-state and cyclical universe models have been hauled out again and again, with no experimental evidence suggesting that they might be true, because people want them to be true.
The various religions that have cyclical models of the universe are one of the causes of this desire.
Isn't the cosmological constant a pretty shaky thing to be basing anything on? Einstein's self-described "biggest mistake"?
I put up with control-click under System 7, under OS 8, under OS 9, and it's ALWAYS been one of the things that pissed me off the most about Apple... their declaration that one mouse button was enough for anyone, alongside this ongoing addition of extra mouse buttons on the keyboard. It's purely hypocritical... if remembering whether to use the right or left button is Too Hard, then remembering whether to use control, shift, command, or option is no improvement.
I've been saying for years that Apple's hardware isn't some kind of super-special stuff that's worth so much more than comparable PC hardware. It's overpriced and pretty generic quality, it's the software that matters. And of course that gets all kinds of negative feedback from the fanboys.
That said, though, they're certainly not worse than average here.
you never hear anyone say "dont buy that Dell/HP/Lenovo, its a rev A, wait for the QC issues to be fixed in the rev b"
IBM (and it's still the same ex-IBM division making laptops for Lenovo) laptops have always been teh standard everyone else has to live up to, as far as I'm concerned. DEC... back when it was DEC before Compaqtion... had some great models too, but the Thinkpad is really #1.
HP? Dell? After Compaqtion when refresh time came around at work I wouldn't take a Dell or Compaq laptop, I stuck with an old old DEC, and when they switched suppliers to IBM I was so glad to get a Thinkpad.
Dell in particular is notorious for crappy kit. Had a big debate about this with our IT manager when we were using Dell, and later she came to me and said I was totally right. Never buy a Dell. You'll be sorry.
There's IBM, and all the rest.
I wish Apple would release OSX for generic PCs just so I could run it on a Thinkpad. Not only does it have the best keyboard on any laptop, but it's actually got two mouse buttons *and* my choice of trackpoint or touchpad. I'd pay $500 for the "Generic" version of OS X, no problem.
But I'm probably going to have to put up with a Macbook for a few years before they catch on.
You have a motive.
You still need the means and the opportunity.
Means: ActiveX makes Windows a MUCH easier target to hit.
Opportunity: There are more Windows boxes out there.
Means is mostly ignored in these analyses. They assume all operating systems and applications are comparable and that it's mostly the opportunity that Windows provides that makes it a preferred target.
Up until around 1997 Windows viruses and worms were mostly exploting poor file system security over LANs, and social engineering attacks in email. Then they came up wiith Active Desktop and the email worm problem went from "pay attention to what you're doing" to "oh shit!".
It could happen.
Han Solo's opposed to the Evil Empire and he's definitely a free market type, so the Republicans should be 100% behind him. Now, remember, Star Wars was "A long time ago in a galaxy far far away", so after restoring him from carbonite (or whatever plot token is used to bring him to 21st Century America) his birthdate is way before the founding of the United States. That means that after Dubya grants him citizenship for sheer coolness, he wouldn't need a "Schwartznegger Amendment" to run for President.
So, hey, even taking into account that he's fictional he's got at least as good a chance as Nader.