Well gee, you see that behavior with every consumer product, not just Windows. Each subsequent revision of a given product includes additions that didn't make the cut in previous versions, some better or worst. For the most part, however, they hope it's an improvement (and in many cases there is an improvement).
Take automobiles, for example. As many here know, antilock brakes were around for over 50 years, but never really entered the mainstream until just 15 years ago. Does that make them new? Of course not. Does that mean, therefore, that none of the auto industries should tout ABS in their ads? "Buy the new 2003 Turd Coupe, guaranteed to kill you, your family, and everyone around you in a 40 foot wide fireball when you crash!"
I don't think bloody well so.
It's not a matter of (good or evil) spin doctoring, that's just a common fact. You aren't going to sell Model Y because it's exactly the same as Model X, or even Model W. Even Linux operates on that method, why bother recompiling your kernel if they don't list off any improvements with the new version?
Don't forget that Microsoft is located in Washington, a state that has no state income tax.
Maybe we should start taxing the rich? With Cheney and Bush in power, handing out contracts to "Companies they were once affiliated with but are no longer profiting from" (insert MIB droning agent voice here)? Ain't gonna happen.
If I recall correctly, it's a simple plastic tube, with a motor driving a pair of rollers to maintain flow, leaving the system completely closed (usually these kinds of pumps are used in heart/lung machines, dialysis machines, etc). Also, having seen such a pump in action before, they're incredibly quiet.
The closest reference I could find is at http://www.appraisalmedical.com/PagBgn/ProductPage dotasp/PagEnd/QStr/TargetInventoryID/Eql/36054/Pag e.htm
There should be a way to manufacture a similar pump for far cheaper, since you wouldn't need as accurate a pressure control, or have to excessive monitoring.
The benefits are:
(1) Virtually silent, no impeller noise.
(2) Pump/Motor are completely isolated from the coolant fluid, leading to a lower chance of failure due to pump contamination/oxidation/short circuits.
(3) The pump speed and thus the fluid moved can be controlled with a potentiometer. As such, with a bit of creative work, you could conceivably design a failsafe mechanism to increase coolant flow when temperatures appear critical.
(4) Replacement parts *should* be cheaper, you can replace a roller, the hose the rollers ride over, or the motor individually, rather than the entire unit.
Does your monitor run off of your PC's power supply? No? Then tack on an approximate 75-100W right there in power consumption.
And remember what I said: 300 TO 450. You're arguing with me AFTER I said that. 350 is median range, about what most users would need at least to have a perfectly functional system that doesn't reboot once or twice a day when the PS goes wonky. 450 is the range for power users.
In other words, you're complaining because I said the minimal value is 50W under your PS capacity, another complained because my minimal value was 25W above Intel's claimed power requirements for the P4.
Not technically, unless you can go without a HD, CD-R/W, DVD-ROM, floppy, AGP card, PCI tuner card, NIC, and sound card. Each one of those components have a certain amount of draw, and they all add up. Oh, and USB, that's a heavy consumer of current as well.
275W is fine if you want to make sacrifices and not really be able to do much more with your system then some basic gaming and online stuff. You've probably seen them advertised on TV and online, those incredibly sparse boxes from Gateway that cost less than $500, or those "system in a box" specials at countless retailers online.
Hence why I said the CPU required a higher supply. Old school CPUs had fairly low requirements (you could run on 100 watts back in the day), so 150-200W power supplies would do the job just fine. Similarly with the newer desktop CPUs, you're going to need a certain amount of overhead.
Another thing nobody has taken into account, is that Intel P4s require an additional 12V 8-10A supply. DING! Another element that consumed electricity!
And then there's good ol' heat. And in terms of protecting your overpriced Intel CPU, or your overly fragile AMD CPU, you can never have too many fans. UNLESS your power supply is rated too low, then you're stuck with the CPU cooler and fan in the PS to keep everything cool.
The whole deal with Intel claiming the P4 can run off of a 275W PS is correct, but it's also a bit of FUD. Back when Athlons, Durons and P4s first hit the market, everyone was, in a word, freaking out over power consumption and heat for these new 1Ghz and faster CPUs (this was wayyyy back in the olden days of 2000, kids).
Both CPUs were hogs, so Intel had to come up with a way to make themselves look like a more economical hog, as long as the users were willing to make some sacrifices.
European? No. Ignorant? Yes. CPUs, no matter the heat limitations, require a certain wattage to operate properly and at the right speed. AMD and Intel CPUs both require between 300 and 450 watts of power to operate. That's equivilent to an all electric kitchen at the least. And in as such, they generate a huge amount of heat (in my own experiences, a 7200 RPM HD and my P4 1.5 Ghz is enough to keep my bedroom warm during the winter).
If you don't like this, I suggest you move back to Pentium MMX 200-266, or similar AMD K6 CPUs. You can't really do anything multimedia wise with 'em (except play MP3s, video files will suffer), but they will do the job otherwise.
The thing is, the worm doesn't download *just* that patch, from the listing, it downloads at least 8 related and semi related patches.
It's just a good thing that the worm wasn't patched in SP1 for WinXP, or else Microsoft itself could conceivably nuke thousands of warezed copies without even trying.
PS: Microsoft, if you're reading this, you better give me a cut for the idea.;)
Well, if the number of users with unpatched systems range into the millions at the most, and are ALL downloading the 30-40Mb of patches from Microsoft, AND are all spreading the worm simultaneously, then the traffic use is more than likely in the range of several thousand mangnitudes, then yes, they would do much more damage to both windowsupdate.com and the ISPs the users are using.
Hate to burst your bubble there, but the only CG in the first three Star Wars films was the Death Star graphics used in the briefings. Otherwise, the majority of the effects using computers in any sense, was mixing the digital soundtracks and motion control for the cameras.
Back in the day (that's early 1970s to those of you who were still unmatched strands of DNA at the time), Lucas was a techie geek. He liked playing with audio effects and mixing, who enjoyed using raw technological effects as enhancements (see THX 1138, and American Grafitti) to his story. But he eventually became an obsessive with the technology, to the point where the technology overwhelmed the initial concept of direction and storytelling.
For example,Star Wars came out in 1977. The "CG" if you can call it such, was hand drawn and animated. As for the time period I challenge you to provide any hard evidence that CG work was any more advanced than what was used in Futureworld and Demon Seed (which were actually done 2 years afterwards).
The Empire Strikes Back was in 1980, still before CGI was "ready for prime time". The best they could do a couple of years later was Tron.
Then came Return of the Jedi, where Pixar came into the mainstream (originally started as part of Lucas' dream of using computers to replace sets, models, and eventually actors).
After Lucas caught the CG disease, his movies began to suck royally, that I agree on. It began to truly take form when he did the "Special Edition" Star Wars movies, which you are most likely confusing his work for.
Honest mistake if you weren't alive when they FIRST released the movies.
What's next, we're going to have to sign a nondisclosure agreement?!
New from Vivendi/Universal and Jack Valenti, the ultimate preventative measure to movie spoilers!
Just sign the following contract: "I, the undersigned, will not let anyone know how much this movie sucks, whether or not it actually sucks, even if it does."
Just use the handy dandy lancet to stick your finger and sign it in blood!
(And as a special option if you choose now, you can give us your firstborn in the event you choose not to sign, in fact, some movie patrons may even thank you!)
Strip that watercooling pump outta your PC! Grab the UPS, unplug everything, rinse your watercooling pump out, then just run a line into the tank/airstone, and power the pump off of your UPS. Should be good for at least 15 minutes to an hour at best.
Understand one thing, however. I did not say that people who failed to patch their systems accordingly weren't at fault. It's a given for at least the 1/3 of computer users that they should update their systems to prevent these issues.
Ignorance for the masses is the chief cause of most of Windows related exploits, and as such, making sure people know, instead of pulling a "Nick Burns, the Company's Computer Guy", is ideal to preventing such occurances.
However, the endless "MS Sux" tirades here and there don't help to actually solve the problems at hand. They don't even help to endear more than a couple dozen Linux/BSD converts every week (useless for market share when Microsoft and Apple still dominate the remaining 2/3).
In fact, this worm effects people connected to the internet regardless of their OS of choice.
(1) Zombied PC searches for every susceptable system, then infects them, causing network lag and eventually the net slows down.
(2) Hundreds of thousands of zombied PCs then launch a DDoS attack, causing even more significant network lag (and possibly knocking several non MS web servers down in the process by nuking the networks inbetween). This inconveniences EVERYONE. So in essense, it would behoove (and even benefit) the non Windows users as much as the Windows users to make sure that Windows systems are patched first, criticised later.
You don't stop a housefire by walking around inside the burning building while criticising its construction.
Thus my argument stands. Linux users reluctant to keep people relevantly informed as to the worm, mainstream news not informing the masses as to the worm's existance until it propagated further, and the worm's author/s, are still the predominate cause.
The primary intent of most MS specific virii is to force the majority of users to either switch to another OS, or to switch their computers off permanently, and take up better hobbies such as tiddlywinks.
Your first argument, while essentially correct, is still flawed. It assumes that everyone who uses a PC has any idea what they're doing and as such, deserve any punishment for not using your OS of choice. Similarly, they MUST adapt to your OS of choice, or else they will be punished in the long run. Both of which are morally acceptable since these are just annoying people you don't actually know, who are supporting a company you just happen to hate.
Whenever those mentalities come into play, then blame Microsoft for trying to take over the world, making shoddy products, et al. Those points are true, but committing a crime as retaliation for a percieved crime is no excuse. If you think it is, then you may as well chime in with support for the RIAA and DMCA for intimidation tactics, and praise Orrin Hatch for wanting to destroy file sharers' computers.
Remember that this is a CONSUMER market. No matter what, the company advertising the most for a product is the one that will sell the most product, and eventually the largest market share. If IBM's substantially better OS/2 Warp was as aggressively marketed and survived the market to this date, would you be protesting them instead, even as they bring Linux to the market and do all sorts of good things like fighting SCO?
Which makes my point: The market is fickle.
Regardless of what the zealots and purists want to think, the first step to making for a mainstream market is to make the OS usable for *everybody*. This is why Apple's OSX is as much of a success as it is (ironic that a closed company with a closed platform using a closed system is good for open source software).
I'm sure there's some BSD zealots who hate the hell out of Apple, but Apple hardly gets more than a handful of virii written each year, compared to the dozens, if not hundreds written for Windows each year.
On to the second argument.
All that most script kiddies need is a text editor and a compiler. Visual C, et al, are irrelevant, as one could have a cheapo sacrificial Windows box to experiment on, and anyone can get a visual studio developers kit on eBay for as little as $5, or in a bargain bin for previous versions.
Also, since so many exploits are published widely, one would simply need said Windows box to use as a guinea pig in order to try out said exploits.
Why? How about for starters, that linux users have demonstrated an utter hatred for Windows users for the last 10+ years. Consider as well that up until a few years ago, the idea of making linux user friendly to coax over Windows users was comedic, even blasphemous by their standards.
Hostility for a given group translates towards actions taken towards a given group. This has been demonstrated all through history, from the Spanish Inquisition (how many expected that?) through the more recent historical events, that if you get ANY group to sufficiently hate another, that some of them will in turn commit some form of heinous act against the other. Do you think that the author of this particular worm wrote it because he LOVES Windows (other than how easy it is to exploit)?
How many Windows exploits and/or virii are actually created on Windows machines? How many of them can you guess were created on Linux boxes?
As for another argument, when Joe Sixpack finds his computer crashing and rebooting constantly, and is essentially dumping worms onto other systems, what do you think will help both Joe Sixpack (who doesn't have months to relearn another OS) to stop the problem, and to lighten the subsequent load on other systems?
(a) Telling Joe Sixpack how to patch his system right away.
(b) Telling Joe Sixpack to switch to Linux, telling him he's a loser for using Windows, and braying about your OS' respective superiority?
I found out about the worm on Monday, approximately 2PM PST. Did not hear any news regarding this on any of the big TV networks UNTIL 6AM (PST) the following morning.
Rather than simply just users being clueless, there's a large number of users being kept clueless by the news media. Assuming that 100,000 users would catch an early (eg; 2-3 hours after worm insertion) report on CNN, for example, then you would have at least 75,000-90,000 who could have patched their systems.
But instead, the worm was given close to 20 hours to spread amongst that 100,000 users, who, not being average readers of Slashdot or what have you, never patched their systems, even up til now.
Hell, according to a friend who works within the bowels of IBM, their R&D departments and related servers caught the worm, and everyone's scrambling like mad to fix it.
So who, other than Microsoft (who did put a patch for just such an exploit) is to blame?
(1) The author of the worm, naturally.
(2) The news media, for failing to bring this to the public's attention (yeah, covering Arnold Schwartzenegger's political relevance is SO much more important than keeping people in the other 49 states informed)
(3) Windows users, who, despite the patch being available for a month, and the security warnings for longer, still refused to install the nessesary patches.
(4) The usual braying "Hurh hurh, Windoze users are dummies!" linux zealots. Preferring to bask in their self proscribed superiority, rather than work to change the philosophy (*) that led to the worm's creation (it takes a philosophy to justify any sociopathic behavior).
*To use the tired car analogy, if one doesn't like Ford vehicles, does that give them the right to run around slashing the tires of, or cutting the brake lines of every Ford they see on the street (in hopes that Ford will be driven out of business for faulty brake lines)? And yet, that is what the worm and virus authors want to do. It ain't about improving Windows or changing the laws, it's about trying to topple Microsoft and ruining as many of their user's computers as possible.
Don't forget charging for a forensics fee, for searching each HD and partition on your system (which, if you're looking for any/all zip files, can take up to an hour with any substantial disk space). Charge them what an IT and what a PC forensics expert would charge for that.
Also, charge them for the network usage that they used to dig up the alleged offending file.
Even if it's $1 here, $1 there, everything adds up. Charge them for the Mountain Dew/Coffee/pizza/ETC, consumed while doing the research.
The more they're forced to pay, the less likely they'll be willing to carry out such intimidation tactics in the future.
As the old saying goes. Check around for which political campaigns SCO has contributed to. If they're high up enough, you won't see more than an Enronesque hiccup (with maybe one or two convenient "suicides" to silence potential whistleblowers).
I tell you, these patterns are becoming so predictable.
Slashdot Mirror
Well gee, you see that behavior with every consumer product, not just Windows. Each subsequent revision of a given product includes additions that didn't make the cut in previous versions, some better or worst. For the most part, however, they hope it's an improvement (and in many cases there is an improvement).
Take automobiles, for example. As many here know, antilock brakes were around for over 50 years, but never really entered the mainstream until just 15 years ago. Does that make them new? Of course not. Does that mean, therefore, that none of the auto industries should tout ABS in their ads? "Buy the new 2003 Turd Coupe, guaranteed to kill you, your family, and everyone around you in a 40 foot wide fireball when you crash!"
I don't think bloody well so.
It's not a matter of (good or evil) spin doctoring, that's just a common fact. You aren't going to sell Model Y because it's exactly the same as Model X, or even Model W. Even Linux operates on that method, why bother recompiling your kernel if they don't list off any improvements with the new version?
Don't forget that Microsoft is located in Washington, a state that has no state income tax.
Maybe we should start taxing the rich? With Cheney and Bush in power, handing out contracts to "Companies they were once affiliated with but are no longer profiting from" (insert MIB droning agent voice here)? Ain't gonna happen.
If I recall correctly, it's a simple plastic tube, with a motor driving a pair of rollers to maintain flow, leaving the system completely closed (usually these kinds of pumps are used in heart/lung machines, dialysis machines, etc). Also, having seen such a pump in action before, they're incredibly quiet.
e dotasp/PagEnd/QStr/TargetInventoryID/Eql/36054/Pag e.htm
The closest reference I could find is at http://www.appraisalmedical.com/PagBgn/ProductPag
There should be a way to manufacture a similar pump for far cheaper, since you wouldn't need as accurate a pressure control, or have to excessive monitoring.
The benefits are:
(1) Virtually silent, no impeller noise.
(2) Pump/Motor are completely isolated from the coolant fluid, leading to a lower chance of failure due to pump contamination/oxidation/short circuits.
(3) The pump speed and thus the fluid moved can be controlled with a potentiometer. As such, with a bit of creative work, you could conceivably design a failsafe mechanism to increase coolant flow when temperatures appear critical.
(4) Replacement parts *should* be cheaper, you can replace a roller, the hose the rollers ride over, or the motor individually, rather than the entire unit.
I am Grampa of Borg. Resistance is futile. You will be- ZzzzzzZzzzzzz.
5. Profit!!!
Damn, that only made it more confusing.
Wow, she's not just a starship, she's a transformer!
(They've gone from suck to blow!)
I signed up with the new MS Messenger service for their "$1,000 a day" contest, now I can dispose of it again and go back to Trillian.
Does your monitor run off of your PC's power supply? No? Then tack on an approximate 75-100W right there in power consumption.
And remember what I said: 300 TO 450. You're arguing with me AFTER I said that. 350 is median range, about what most users would need at least to have a perfectly functional system that doesn't reboot once or twice a day when the PS goes wonky. 450 is the range for power users.
In other words, you're complaining because I said the minimal value is 50W under your PS capacity, another complained because my minimal value was 25W above Intel's claimed power requirements for the P4.
Make up your minds, people.
You're supposed to make the humanoid robots BIGGER! With big guns! And rockets! And lasers!
*sob* I want my own personal Gundam, Gundammit.
Oh yeah, right, slashdot the NASDAQ/NYSE servers. I'm SURE they and their investors will LOVE that.;)
Not technically, unless you can go without a HD, CD-R/W, DVD-ROM, floppy, AGP card, PCI tuner card, NIC, and sound card. Each one of those components have a certain amount of draw, and they all add up. Oh, and USB, that's a heavy consumer of current as well.
275W is fine if you want to make sacrifices and not really be able to do much more with your system then some basic gaming and online stuff. You've probably seen them advertised on TV and online, those incredibly sparse boxes from Gateway that cost less than $500, or those "system in a box" specials at countless retailers online.
Hence why I said the CPU required a higher supply. Old school CPUs had fairly low requirements (you could run on 100 watts back in the day), so 150-200W power supplies would do the job just fine. Similarly with the newer desktop CPUs, you're going to need a certain amount of overhead.
Another thing nobody has taken into account, is that Intel P4s require an additional 12V 8-10A supply. DING! Another element that consumed electricity!
And then there's good ol' heat. And in terms of protecting your overpriced Intel CPU, or your overly fragile AMD CPU, you can never have too many fans. UNLESS your power supply is rated too low, then you're stuck with the CPU cooler and fan in the PS to keep everything cool.
The whole deal with Intel claiming the P4 can run off of a 275W PS is correct, but it's also a bit of FUD. Back when Athlons, Durons and P4s first hit the market, everyone was, in a word, freaking out over power consumption and heat for these new 1Ghz and faster CPUs (this was wayyyy back in the olden days of 2000, kids).
Both CPUs were hogs, so Intel had to come up with a way to make themselves look like a more economical hog, as long as the users were willing to make some sacrifices.
European? No. Ignorant? Yes. CPUs, no matter the heat limitations, require a certain wattage to operate properly and at the right speed. AMD and Intel CPUs both require between 300 and 450 watts of power to operate. That's equivilent to an all electric kitchen at the least. And in as such, they generate a huge amount of heat (in my own experiences, a 7200 RPM HD and my P4 1.5 Ghz is enough to keep my bedroom warm during the winter).
If you don't like this, I suggest you move back to Pentium MMX 200-266, or similar AMD K6 CPUs. You can't really do anything multimedia wise with 'em (except play MP3s, video files will suffer), but they will do the job otherwise.
The thing is, the worm doesn't download *just* that patch, from the listing, it downloads at least 8 related and semi related patches.
It's just a good thing that the worm wasn't patched in SP1 for WinXP, or else Microsoft itself could conceivably nuke thousands of warezed copies without even trying.
PS: Microsoft, if you're reading this, you better give me a cut for the idea.;)
Well, if the number of users with unpatched systems range into the millions at the most, and are ALL downloading the 30-40Mb of patches from Microsoft, AND are all spreading the worm simultaneously, then the traffic use is more than likely in the range of several thousand mangnitudes, then yes, they would do much more damage to both windowsupdate.com and the ISPs the users are using.
Hate to burst your bubble there, but the only CG in the first three Star Wars films was the Death Star graphics used in the briefings. Otherwise, the majority of the effects using computers in any sense, was mixing the digital soundtracks and motion control for the cameras.
Back in the day (that's early 1970s to those of you who were still unmatched strands of DNA at the time), Lucas was a techie geek. He liked playing with audio effects and mixing, who enjoyed using raw technological effects as enhancements (see THX 1138, and American Grafitti) to his story. But he eventually became an obsessive with the technology, to the point where the technology overwhelmed the initial concept of direction and storytelling.
For example,Star Wars came out in 1977. The "CG" if you can call it such, was hand drawn and animated. As for the time period I challenge you to provide any hard evidence that CG work was any more advanced than what was used in Futureworld and Demon Seed (which were actually done 2 years afterwards).
The Empire Strikes Back was in 1980, still before CGI was "ready for prime time". The best they could do a couple of years later was Tron.
Then came Return of the Jedi, where Pixar came into the mainstream (originally started as part of Lucas' dream of using computers to replace sets, models, and eventually actors).
After Lucas caught the CG disease, his movies began to suck royally, that I agree on. It began to truly take form when he did the "Special Edition" Star Wars movies, which you are most likely confusing his work for.
Honest mistake if you weren't alive when they FIRST released the movies.
What's next, we're going to have to sign a nondisclosure agreement?!
New from Vivendi/Universal and Jack Valenti, the ultimate preventative measure to movie spoilers!
Just sign the following contract: "I, the undersigned, will not let anyone know how much this movie sucks, whether or not it actually sucks, even if it does."
Just use the handy dandy lancet to stick your finger and sign it in blood!
(And as a special option if you choose now, you can give us your firstborn in the event you choose not to sign, in fact, some movie patrons may even thank you!)
You forget 5.5:
Blame Microsoft, blame your kids, blame your spouse, blame the government. Unplug your computer and curl up in a corner weeping.
Fight! Like! A! Geek!
Strip that watercooling pump outta your PC! Grab the UPS, unplug everything, rinse your watercooling pump out, then just run a line into the tank/airstone, and power the pump off of your UPS. Should be good for at least 15 minutes to an hour at best.
Understand one thing, however. I did not say that people who failed to patch their systems accordingly weren't at fault. It's a given for at least the 1/3 of computer users that they should update their systems to prevent these issues.
Ignorance for the masses is the chief cause of most of Windows related exploits, and as such, making sure people know, instead of pulling a "Nick Burns, the Company's Computer Guy", is ideal to preventing such occurances.
However, the endless "MS Sux" tirades here and there don't help to actually solve the problems at hand. They don't even help to endear more than a couple dozen Linux/BSD converts every week (useless for market share when Microsoft and Apple still dominate the remaining 2/3).
In fact, this worm effects people connected to the internet regardless of their OS of choice.
(1) Zombied PC searches for every susceptable system, then infects them, causing network lag and eventually the net slows down.
(2) Hundreds of thousands of zombied PCs then launch a DDoS attack, causing even more significant network lag (and possibly knocking several non MS web servers down in the process by nuking the networks inbetween). This inconveniences EVERYONE. So in essense, it would behoove (and even benefit) the non Windows users as much as the Windows users to make sure that Windows systems are patched first, criticised later.
You don't stop a housefire by walking around inside the burning building while criticising its construction.
Thus my argument stands. Linux users reluctant to keep people relevantly informed as to the worm, mainstream news not informing the masses as to the worm's existance until it propagated further, and the worm's author/s, are still the predominate cause.
The primary intent of most MS specific virii is to force the majority of users to either switch to another OS, or to switch their computers off permanently, and take up better hobbies such as tiddlywinks.
Your first argument, while essentially correct, is still flawed. It assumes that everyone who uses a PC has any idea what they're doing and as such, deserve any punishment for not using your OS of choice. Similarly, they MUST adapt to your OS of choice, or else they will be punished in the long run. Both of which are morally acceptable since these are just annoying people you don't actually know, who are supporting a company you just happen to hate.
Whenever those mentalities come into play, then blame Microsoft for trying to take over the world, making shoddy products, et al. Those points are true, but committing a crime as retaliation for a percieved crime is no excuse. If you think it is, then you may as well chime in with support for the RIAA and DMCA for intimidation tactics, and praise Orrin Hatch for wanting to destroy file sharers' computers.
Remember that this is a CONSUMER market. No matter what, the company advertising the most for a product is the one that will sell the most product, and eventually the largest market share. If IBM's substantially better OS/2 Warp was as aggressively marketed and survived the market to this date, would you be protesting them instead, even as they bring Linux to the market and do all sorts of good things like fighting SCO?
Which makes my point: The market is fickle.
Regardless of what the zealots and purists want to think, the first step to making for a mainstream market is to make the OS usable for *everybody*. This is why Apple's OSX is as much of a success as it is (ironic that a closed company with a closed platform using a closed system is good for open source software).
I'm sure there's some BSD zealots who hate the hell out of Apple, but Apple hardly gets more than a handful of virii written each year, compared to the dozens, if not hundreds written for Windows each year.
On to the second argument.
All that most script kiddies need is a text editor and a compiler. Visual C, et al, are irrelevant, as one could have a cheapo sacrificial Windows box to experiment on, and anyone can get a visual studio developers kit on eBay for as little as $5, or in a bargain bin for previous versions.
Also, since so many exploits are published widely, one would simply need said Windows box to use as a guinea pig in order to try out said exploits.
Why? How about for starters, that linux users have demonstrated an utter hatred for Windows users for the last 10+ years. Consider as well that up until a few years ago, the idea of making linux user friendly to coax over Windows users was comedic, even blasphemous by their standards.
Hostility for a given group translates towards actions taken towards a given group. This has been demonstrated all through history, from the Spanish Inquisition (how many expected that?) through the more recent historical events, that if you get ANY group to sufficiently hate another, that some of them will in turn commit some form of heinous act against the other. Do you think that the author of this particular worm wrote it because he LOVES Windows (other than how easy it is to exploit)?
How many Windows exploits and/or virii are actually created on Windows machines? How many of them can you guess were created on Linux boxes?
As for another argument, when Joe Sixpack finds his computer crashing and rebooting constantly, and is essentially dumping worms onto other systems, what do you think will help both Joe Sixpack (who doesn't have months to relearn another OS) to stop the problem, and to lighten the subsequent load on other systems?
(a) Telling Joe Sixpack how to patch his system right away.
(b) Telling Joe Sixpack to switch to Linux, telling him he's a loser for using Windows, and braying about your OS' respective superiority?
I'll give you a hint, it ain't (b).
I found out about the worm on Monday, approximately 2PM PST. Did not hear any news regarding this on any of the big TV networks UNTIL 6AM (PST) the following morning.
Rather than simply just users being clueless, there's a large number of users being kept clueless by the news media. Assuming that 100,000 users would catch an early (eg; 2-3 hours after worm insertion) report on CNN, for example, then you would have at least 75,000-90,000 who could have patched their systems.
But instead, the worm was given close to 20 hours to spread amongst that 100,000 users, who, not being average readers of Slashdot or what have you, never patched their systems, even up til now.
Hell, according to a friend who works within the bowels of IBM, their R&D departments and related servers caught the worm, and everyone's scrambling like mad to fix it.
So who, other than Microsoft (who did put a patch for just such an exploit) is to blame?
(1) The author of the worm, naturally.
(2) The news media, for failing to bring this to the public's attention (yeah, covering Arnold Schwartzenegger's political relevance is SO much more important than keeping people in the other 49 states informed)
(3) Windows users, who, despite the patch being available for a month, and the security warnings for longer, still refused to install the nessesary patches.
(4) The usual braying "Hurh hurh, Windoze users are dummies!" linux zealots. Preferring to bask in their self proscribed superiority, rather than work to change the philosophy (*) that led to the worm's creation (it takes a philosophy to justify any sociopathic behavior).
*To use the tired car analogy, if one doesn't like Ford vehicles, does that give them the right to run around slashing the tires of, or cutting the brake lines of every Ford they see on the street (in hopes that Ford will be driven out of business for faulty brake lines)? And yet, that is what the worm and virus authors want to do. It ain't about improving Windows or changing the laws, it's about trying to topple Microsoft and ruining as many of their user's computers as possible.
I thought the legal notices being sent out WERE law bot scripts.
Well, okay, rubber stamp lawsuits then.
Don't forget charging for a forensics fee, for searching each HD and partition on your system (which, if you're looking for any/all zip files, can take up to an hour with any substantial disk space). Charge them what an IT and what a PC forensics expert would charge for that.
Also, charge them for the network usage that they used to dig up the alleged offending file.
Even if it's $1 here, $1 there, everything adds up. Charge them for the Mountain Dew/Coffee/pizza/ETC, consumed while doing the research.
The more they're forced to pay, the less likely they'll be willing to carry out such intimidation tactics in the future.
As the old saying goes. Check around for which political campaigns SCO has contributed to. If they're high up enough, you won't see more than an Enronesque hiccup (with maybe one or two convenient "suicides" to silence potential whistleblowers).
I tell you, these patterns are becoming so predictable.