I'd say, in all cases, Windows is still more vulnerable than Linux. The problem comes with poorly implemented security systems - after all, I can be hacked anytime an attacker wants if they can simply persuade me to run a program. If I'm running as admin, then they win. That applies to both Linux and Windows. Now the biggest issue is that most Windows users run as admin whilst Linux users do not.
In the case of web servers, Linux is the dominant platform and there are many attacks available - go to a web host forum and read the security-related posts. Its not easy to secure the system and still be as functional as users want (sad, but true in a multi-hosted environment running PHP), but that doesn't mean it isn't possible to secure the system. Its a sad fact that many webhosters are incompetent or ignorant (go to the webhost forums and read their posts!).
So ultimately the platform is less important than having a skilled administrator. If you have equally skilled windows and linux admin, then we can discuss the relative merits of the platform (and I'd say Linux is still the more secure simply because its architecture is simpler compared to Windows and its 'bits everywhere' architecture).
I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that he's not a tech guy himself;
I'm certain its a good thing. Tech guys tend to focus more on the tech side of things - look at this, that or the other flash stuff we can do. some of that is good, but a lot of it is useless to the end-user. Techn guys tend to get a bit put out when they show their cool new tech to the end user only to be told that it doesn't help much at all. (I've been there myself:( )
As he's not one of those guys, he's going to be far more concerned with what technology can do for us end-users, how much it costs, how well it helps us - not the other way round.
because they barely read the summary, not the article and especially not the Stardock blog entry.
This is the modern world, shaped by headlines and soundbites. Did you really expect anything else. Fortunately we have people like the the parent poster who take the time to put us right.
American society seems to be built on the notion of keeping kids ignorant
American society seems to be built on the notion of keeping *everyone* ignorant, and therefore better placed to continue buying the product/lifestyle/religion/viewpoint/votes some organisation wants to spread.
Actually VB.NET is a more fully featured version of C# (with things like XML literals, conditional exceptions, better namespace support, and so on), but it shows the hype about C# that no-one cares to know otherwise.
I say C++ is a third class language now simply because most of the VS development effort has been heavily geared towards managed code. VC almost seems like they have to support it, but wish they didn't. I'm sure people at MS would like to drop any language not completely reliant on.NET (and by implication - Windows), but.NET was written in C++, and there's a lot of legacy code that needs supporting, so they're keeping it for the ride.
I know they'd added TR1 and MFC improvements, which is always welcome, but that's just last year, other than that, we'd seen minor changes to the language and system compared to the.NET languages.
Sure, I'm making it sound worse than it is, most VC devs (of which I am one) are happy with the support in VS, but that's not going to help when the number of VC devs continues to drop as they are migrated towards almost exclusively C# development.
I'd say that if you're using the command line then editing a conf file is exactly what you want to be doing. Of course, if you're using a GUI, then there's not a problem.
you'd love installing Vista then - it takes hours literally just to go from DVD in drive to working system. Then you have the usual amount of time to turn off the nonsense they've added to it, and install the usual important apps like AV.
And then the 48 updates (as of today) take another hour to install. I wouldn't mind so much if it was hands-off time, but it asks you questions about the install about half way through.
It does require less reboots than previous versions though.
any language.... as long as its VB. or VB-with-curly-brackets. (ok they still have C++ support, but its definitely a 3rd class language to MS now)
LINQ integration also makes database access so easy, you'd be forgiven for thinking you're writing well-thought out sql code. Besides, LINQ is deprecated in favour of Entity Framework, so good luck with future support for it.
Visual Studio is good, but it has gotten a lot more bloated and slow and generally unresponsive to use. Visual Studio 6 (esp VC++ 6) was the pinnacle of their development efforts. Its a shame they couldn't make something as good as that without bloating it up. I wonder if I'll have to buy another 2Gig of RAM to use VS2010 when it comes out.
and we're not even stuck with that dancing bear - now we have another one, that's a bit fatter and doesn't dance too well, but it does have a fluffy pink tutu put on it.
I can't answer for apt-get but yum is simple, just add the package you want ignored to the "exclude" line in your repo conf file. I'm sure apt-get is just as easy.
This assumes you want the command line instead of the GUIs.
Ok, So my "don't be so damn lazy" conscience got me this time... look into pinning a package.
I keep hearing a lot of people ask this, especially from Symbian devs who can't see how their image processing code would even work on java.
Seeing as the underlying OS is all C/C++ it really beats me why they don't expose the 'environment' to C coders too. Then we'd see some fancy fast applications on Android that might make other phone manufacturers look on with envy.
There again, if they released a C API, you'd be able to run ruby/python and perl code on it too!
Ya, I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with "We're Linux"... or it will be a nasty engagement with a 3-letter agency that will make national news, frequently with words like "63 cultists confirmed dead in bloody shoot with federal law enforcement officers. No survivors have been found."
A spokesman for the TLA told our reporter "yeah, well, the goddamn hippies were using vi, deserved everything they got".
do we have lasers that can cut through cloud and rain all the way up to orbit?
I thought the military had x-ray lasers that got through some cloud cover, but would still be blocked by enough of the stuff - like on a very rainy day.
Now, why can't that put the receiving station far away from anybody, surrounded by a big fence with signs saying "caution: if you enter this area you will be microwaved".
The odds of two of them experiencing bugs at the same time (or of having a hardware failure) producing the same result at the same time is pretty, well, astronomical...
you've never actually written code, have you....:-)
yeah, strangely though all the/. posts are basically taking the piss and having a good time, the StackOverflow posts are all "oh once I was told by my boss I couldn't rewrite everything in C#, I'm still traumatised".:)
I think StackOverflow needs more linux/open source questions and answers posted on it.
Yep, its the Raymond Chen camp v MSDN camp that's screwed things up. The Raymond camp lost out recently to the MSDN camp, and so everything is no a-changing in Microsoft. Perhaps its also something to do with Bill leaving, but MS care even less for their customers now, they're just a huge corporate out to screw as much money out of everyone as possible.
I find it easy to believe they've taken a fundamentally wrong approach. Hopefully it'll bite them and technology for the customer's benefit will get more prominence.
Its not improvements businesses want, its stuff that works with the stuff they've got. Who cares about running a new OS if the old one still works, and the new one would cost you for the new OS but also new hardware, new versions of your existing software (if its available).
Some businesses moved to Vista and found that MSs plans to drop backwards compatibility (in favour of new.NET everything) meant lots of applications stopped working. I think this is a big reason why they're very cautious this time, and also why XP is the 'top of the pile' as generally it tried to keep that backward compatibility going as much as possible.
come to think of it, why not have a mod_shorten that takes the bloated url and strips it down on the same webserver. No need to go round-trippin across the web to some 'look at this ad first' site, no need to worry where it'll take you, no need for the web developer to fix his damn url (as today a lot of urls are generated nonsense that only make sense to the web-serving engine)
It'd also work in an internet situation (as one of my police customers realised, he wanted his sharepoint urls shortened so they could fit into a comments field on an event, someone said "just use tinyurl", he replied "we don't allow internet access", problem.. unresolved)
It wouldn't be an elegant fix, but it'd be a practical compromise for everyone's benefit.
In other words, you could rewrite that COBOL but it would be impractical and why bother? so true. In my experience, application rewrites nearly always end in failure. They cost a vast fortune, where no revenue comes in from them, and customers stop buying the old application while they wait for the new version. On top of that, the people working on the new tend to be the new kids who just want to do everything in the latest coolest technology, and don't have the business experience the old guys have.
Its like software rewrites are always done in the most backward, inefficient way possible. Its an IT think I guess, if the business was responsible for a rewrite they'd do it completely differently.
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Of course, this means that Adobe will get rather better at Flash on Linux.. unless they fancy paying Microsoft for copies of Windows CE!
I'd say, in all cases, Windows is still more vulnerable than Linux. The problem comes with poorly implemented security systems - after all, I can be hacked anytime an attacker wants if they can simply persuade me to run a program. If I'm running as admin, then they win. That applies to both Linux and Windows. Now the biggest issue is that most Windows users run as admin whilst Linux users do not.
In the case of web servers, Linux is the dominant platform and there are many attacks available - go to a web host forum and read the security-related posts. Its not easy to secure the system and still be as functional as users want (sad, but true in a multi-hosted environment running PHP), but that doesn't mean it isn't possible to secure the system. Its a sad fact that many webhosters are incompetent or ignorant (go to the webhost forums and read their posts!).
So ultimately the platform is less important than having a skilled administrator. If you have equally skilled windows and linux admin, then we can discuss the relative merits of the platform (and I'd say Linux is still the more secure simply because its architecture is simpler compared to Windows and its 'bits everywhere' architecture).
I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that he's not a tech guy himself;
I'm certain its a good thing. Tech guys tend to focus more on the tech side of things - look at this, that or the other flash stuff we can do. some of that is good, but a lot of it is useless to the end-user. Techn guys tend to get a bit put out when they show their cool new tech to the end user only to be told that it doesn't help much at all. (I've been there myself :( )
As he's not one of those guys, he's going to be far more concerned with what technology can do for us end-users, how much it costs, how well it helps us - not the other way round.
I for one, welcome our new human overlords!
because they barely read the summary, not the article and especially not the Stardock blog entry.
This is the modern world, shaped by headlines and soundbites. Did you really expect anything else. Fortunately we have people like the the parent poster who take the time to put us right.
I thought he was a real pissant who was rarely very stable.
American society seems to be built on the notion of keeping kids ignorant
American society seems to be built on the notion of keeping *everyone* ignorant, and therefore better placed to continue buying the product/lifestyle/religion/viewpoint/votes some organisation wants to spread.
1000W, what freaking system draws 1000W and only has 32GB?!?!?
My Desktop PC and its PSU, you insensitive clod!
Actually VB.NET is a more fully featured version of C# (with things like XML literals, conditional exceptions, better namespace support, and so on), but it shows the hype about C# that no-one cares to know otherwise.
I say C++ is a third class language now simply because most of the VS development effort has been heavily geared towards managed code. VC almost seems like they have to support it, but wish they didn't. I'm sure people at MS would like to drop any language not completely reliant on .NET (and by implication - Windows), but .NET was written in C++, and there's a lot of legacy code that needs supporting, so they're keeping it for the ride.
I know they'd added TR1 and MFC improvements, which is always welcome, but that's just last year, other than that, we'd seen minor changes to the language and system compared to the .NET languages.
Sure, I'm making it sound worse than it is, most VC devs (of which I am one) are happy with the support in VS, but that's not going to help when the number of VC devs continues to drop as they are migrated towards almost exclusively C# development.
I'd say that if you're using the command line then editing a conf file is exactly what you want to be doing. Of course, if you're using a GUI, then there's not a problem.
you'd love installing Vista then - it takes hours literally just to go from DVD in drive to working system. Then you have the usual amount of time to turn off the nonsense they've added to it, and install the usual important apps like AV.
And then the 48 updates (as of today) take another hour to install. I wouldn't mind so much if it was hands-off time, but it asks you questions about the install about half way through.
It does require less reboots than previous versions though.
any language.... as long as its VB. or VB-with-curly-brackets. (ok they still have C++ support, but its definitely a 3rd class language to MS now)
LINQ integration also makes database access so easy, you'd be forgiven for thinking you're writing well-thought out sql code. Besides, LINQ is deprecated in favour of Entity Framework, so good luck with future support for it.
Visual Studio is good, but it has gotten a lot more bloated and slow and generally unresponsive to use. Visual Studio 6 (esp VC++ 6) was the pinnacle of their development efforts. Its a shame they couldn't make something as good as that without bloating it up. I wonder if I'll have to buy another 2Gig of RAM to use VS2010 when it comes out.
and we're not even stuck with that dancing bear - now we have another one, that's a bit fatter and doesn't dance too well, but it does have a fluffy pink tutu put on it.
I can't answer for apt-get but yum is simple, just add the package you want ignored to the "exclude" line in your repo conf file. I'm sure apt-get is just as easy.
This assumes you want the command line instead of the GUIs.
Ok, So my "don't be so damn lazy" conscience got me this time... look into pinning a package.
cool. But Android doesn't use JVM bytecode, they developed their own, called Dalvik, to get round Sun's licencing.
I keep hearing a lot of people ask this, especially from Symbian devs who can't see how their image processing code would even work on java.
Seeing as the underlying OS is all C/C++ it really beats me why they don't expose the 'environment' to C coders too. Then we'd see some fancy fast applications on Android that might make other phone manufacturers look on with envy.
There again, if they released a C API, you'd be able to run ruby/python and perl code on it too!
Ya, I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with "We're Linux" ... or it will be a nasty engagement with a 3-letter agency that will make national news, frequently with words like "63 cultists confirmed dead in bloody shoot with federal law enforcement officers. No survivors have been found."
A spokesman for the TLA told our reporter "yeah, well, the goddamn hippies were using vi, deserved everything they got".
do we have lasers that can cut through cloud and rain all the way up to orbit?
I thought the military had x-ray lasers that got through some cloud cover, but would still be blocked by enough of the stuff - like on a very rainy day.
Now, why can't that put the receiving station far away from anybody, surrounded by a big fence with signs saying "caution: if you enter this area you will be microwaved".
The odds of two of them experiencing bugs at the same time (or of having a hardware failure) producing the same result at the same time is pretty, well, astronomical...
you've never actually written code, have you.... :-)
Maintaining a deploy of an app built on an MVC framework with a replication database backend... now thats coding.
Sounds more like sabotage to me.
yeah, strangely though all the /. posts are basically taking the piss and having a good time, the StackOverflow posts are all "oh once I was told by my boss I couldn't rewrite everything in C#, I'm still traumatised". :)
I think StackOverflow needs more linux/open source questions and answers posted on it.
there fixed that for you.
Yep, its the Raymond Chen camp v MSDN camp that's screwed things up. The Raymond camp lost out recently to the MSDN camp, and so everything is no a-changing in Microsoft. Perhaps its also something to do with Bill leaving, but MS care even less for their customers now, they're just a huge corporate out to screw as much money out of everyone as possible.
I find it easy to believe they've taken a fundamentally wrong approach. Hopefully it'll bite them and technology for the customer's benefit will get more prominence.
Its not improvements businesses want, its stuff that works with the stuff they've got. Who cares about running a new OS if the old one still works, and the new one would cost you for the new OS but also new hardware, new versions of your existing software (if its available).
Some businesses moved to Vista and found that MSs plans to drop backwards compatibility (in favour of new .NET everything) meant lots of applications stopped working. I think this is a big reason why they're very cautious this time, and also why XP is the 'top of the pile' as generally it tried to keep that backward compatibility going as much as possible.
come to think of it, why not have a mod_shorten that takes the bloated url and strips it down on the same webserver. No need to go round-trippin across the web to some 'look at this ad first' site, no need to worry where it'll take you, no need for the web developer to fix his damn url (as today a lot of urls are generated nonsense that only make sense to the web-serving engine)
It'd also work in an internet situation (as one of my police customers realised, he wanted his sharepoint urls shortened so they could fit into a comments field on an event, someone said "just use tinyurl", he replied "we don't allow internet access", problem.. unresolved)
It wouldn't be an elegant fix, but it'd be a practical compromise for everyone's benefit.
In other words, you could rewrite that COBOL but it would be impractical and why bother?
so true. In my experience, application rewrites nearly always end in failure. They cost a vast fortune, where no revenue comes in from them, and customers stop buying the old application while they wait for the new version. On top of that, the people working on the new tend to be the new kids who just want to do everything in the latest coolest technology, and don't have the business experience the old guys have.
Its like software rewrites are always done in the most backward, inefficient way possible. Its an IT think I guess, if the business was responsible for a rewrite they'd do it completely differently.