The price of Windows also gives an indication of what the market is willing to pay for an operating system. Therefore, it is quite reasonable to assume that OS X is similar in price to Windows.
The price of Windows to a large OEM (like, say, HP) isn't anything close to the retail price. To say nothing of the stuff you are licensed to do with a retail version of Windows that you aren't with any version of OS X.
Which is a point I've been making for months to pro Vista people who don't understand why this is such a disaster and keep claiming "Vista isn't that bad." What they don't understand is that for the business market, Vista is extraordinarily bad!! That's extraordinarily bad for Microsoft, and which is their main source of income. Business are still buying XP licenses for new machines, but they aren't upgrading current machines to Vista because it's an admin nightmare and companies have lost complete trust in Vista.
Uh, no, they are upgrading to Vista for the same reason they didn't start upgrading to XP until 2005 or so.
If businesses haven't starting upgrading to Vista by the 2010-2011 timeframe, you might be able to start credibly saying they really don't want it.
Vista Ultimate goes for around $300-400 according to a quick search on Google. Therefore, OS X and iLife for $599 doesn't seem completely unreasonable.
Actually, it's stupidly unreasonable to compare retail Windows prices with whatever dollar value Apple might put on the copies of OS X that are bundled with their Macs.
Right. So would you care to venture a guess as to the percentage of Windows machines that have been exploited because someone other than an authorised user was sitting at the console ?
Microsoft have yet to release an OS so mind-boggingly slow that even top-end hardware *years later* could barely run it acceptably, like Apple did with OS X.
OTOH keeping everyone on the upgrade treadmill is worth it to them.
Weird logic. "Keeping everyone on the upgrade treadmill" is worth far, far more to Apple than it ever could be to Microsoft.
Which is different than a Windows Server local admin account how?
A superuser account (like root in traditional UNIX) cannot be restricted (that's why it's called the superuser). Effectively, it bypasses the OS security layer.
The Administrator account is - like all accounts in Windows - restricted by ACLs. While it does have a very generous list of ACLs, it is still subject to limitations on what it can do by the security layer of the OS. Which is why, for example, there are some processes that 'Administrator' does not have permission to kill.
The difference between a 'superuser' and 'really high privileged user' is an important concept to understand.
I think SELinux steps it up a notch, other than that, I figure it's six of one, half dozen of the the other.
SELinux does indeed, "step it up a notch" - but most Linux systems are not running with SELinux configured.
Either environment is about as secure
as the administrator of the system cares to/is capable of making it. I've made both acceptably secure for business purposes (demonstrably able to hold off random internet based attacks, still susceptible to social engineering)
This is certainly true. By far the biggest factor in OS security (for any remotely contemporary OS) is the person (or people) using it.
More pervasive on the desktop, sure
but if I was going to attack a computer system, why do I care about desktop OSs
Because they are plentiful and almost all maintained by ignorant users.
I don't really want to break into some guys windows machine (and what? steal his bookmarks and mp3 collection), [...]
And credit card details, identity, etc. To say nothing of being able to use that machine for spamming, fileserving, or bouncing other attacks off.
[...] I want to break into a commercial company's database and steal financial details
You mean you would attempt to attack systems mostly run by professional, knowledgable administrators, where abnormal behaviour will be quickly noticed and addressed, often with follow-up by the authorities ?
Linux and Unix systems in general have a better underlying security model than Windows (e.g., the way root/administrator vs. user is handled).
Uh, no. In fact, it is classic UNIX that has the poorer architecture, with its superuser concept.
However, if those of us who are Linux fans are honest we know that the reason we don't have to worry as much about Linux attacks is that hackers target Windows because it is more pervasive.
So basically it costs money to get EAL verified, and the farther up the scale you go, the more money it costs to run the testing. So even if a Linux distro wanted to be verified at a higher level - who's going to fork over the dough?
Commercial Linux vendors like Red Hat, SuSe and IBM.
Certifications like EAL tell you about the technical capabilities of an OS. They don't tell you anything about how competently said OS will be used.
I've priced it: comparable hardware with OS, the Macbook that meets my specifications is $400 more than the Dell equivalent. I can't justify spending $500 to do exactly what I do now. If I'm going to switch, it's a complete switch or not at all.
Well, given Apple's disinterest in making any sort of mid-range tower suitable for a gamer, you'll be paying a hell of a lot more than a $400 premium if those native games ever do appear...
Well, roundabouts (aka traffic circles) would make a lot more sense than four way stops [...]
I ran into a few 4-way stop signs on a recent holiday to the US. Exactly how *is* the stalemate of 4 cars arriving at the same time supposed to be resolved ?
The two companies take turns one-upping each other for the bleeding edge, but every time (10 years running) I've specced out a mid-range (home gamer, single CPU motherboard) to low-end (grandma's email/photo machine) machine, AMD's been the way to go. It's a lot like trying to decide which company's video boards to pick if you're trying to make a game machine without breaking the bank.
Sadly, an AMD CPU frequently means having to deal with bug-ridden and compatibility-challenged motherboard chipsets, which can very quickly make up for any small $$$-savings in frustration.
Yes New Zealand is thinking of having it added to stop downloads of Music and Movies, but the difference between New Zealand Government and Ozzie Government is Our Government listens to it's nation.
You just keep telling yourself that, Bro;).
Actually, I wouldn't be at all surprised if a majority of Australians (and Kiwis, for that matter) would be in favour of a nationwide censorship program, especially if it were presented to them in the context of stopping terr'ism or saving the children.
I don't know how much the most expensive version of Oracle costs, but I'm rather doubting it's six fucking figures. (Remember, that doesn't include support.)
Oracle Enterprise will set you back around US$50k per CPU in licensing costs.
Oh, and when they say "CPU" they don't mean "physical CPU" like most people, they mean you apply a multiplier to calculate the number of "CPUs" they think you deserve. For multicore x86 processes, that multiplier is 0.5. So a server with two quad-core CPUs (8 cores) will cost you ca. US$200k in licensing.
(This is in no way meant to justify the awe-inspiring pork-barrelling from Alston, but merely to highlight that ~900 grand on software isn't actually that unrealistic once you start dealing with "enterprise software".)
Similarly, with regards to the hardware expenses, a mid-range SAN would easily hit AU$200k (not that a departmental website would need one, but just sayin'.)
How would you know if someone successfully hid their smoking? While indoors chain smoking is hard to hide, a stick of gum and a hand wash goes a long way for the casual smoker.
While it certainly doesn't make up the ~$50k difference on its own, the 7210 _does_ come with 64G of RAM (vs 16G) and a pair of 18G SSDs. They're not completely identical.
What's more convenient? Going to 10 different websites for 10 shows, or going to 1 website for 10 shows?
The former, when you know the show will be there when you want it, not when someone else has ripped it, at the speed they are capable of uploading.
(To say nothing of not having to worry about wandering around the shadier parts of the internet.)
The idea that when faced between going to something like www.csi.com and clicking on a "current episode" link, then getting the file quick enough to stream, vs navigating a warez or torrent site covered in pornography Flash ads, that may or may not have the current episode, may or may not have it in a viewable codec, and will transfer it anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours later, they will choose the latter, is laughable.
I don't understand your logic here- are you saying that Microsoft should have designed Vista to work on 5YO hardware?
Vista _does_ work on 5 year old hardware, assuming it was high-end 5 years earlier. Heck, if you allow for absolutely top of the line hardware, Vista will be usable on boxes up to about 7 years old.
(This is pretty consistent with earlier releases of Windows, as well, which will typically be 'usable' on high-end to top-end hardware from 5-7 years earlier, perhaps with some very minor upgrades).
Under Windows 2000/XP (have not touched Vista yet) I have often wondered why the Windows Explorer takes ages to show a directory, even if the actual content at the displayed directory level is only a few dozen elements.
Er, it does ? Even on my old 1.6Ghz, 1G RAM, laptop, the \Windows\System32 directory with ~3000 files appears "instantly" - and I certainly haven't even noticed Explorer being "slow" on any of my other machines.
I think something is wrong with your machine. IME, Explorer is easily one of the most responsive GUI file managers out there.
Not a perfect test since i didn't do the 32 bit version Vista Ultimate though so keep that in mind.
[...]
Perhaps it was just the 64-bit vs 32-bit but as I said I didn't have a Vista Ultimate 32bit key to try.
The 32bit and 64bit versions will use completely different drivers, to say nothing of the performance benefits just from running x86-64 instead of x86.
Basically, you're coming to a conclusion without having controlled for the most important variable.
As is the way with MS , they update all the eye candy first to get the drooling masses interested , then they get down to the core stuff where it really matters later on - ie the exact opposite way round to the way it should be done.
In reality, you have that completely backwards. Microsoft have consistently spent far more time on behind-the-scenes improvements than UI changes. Vista was a far, far more significant update to the core of the OS than the UI (which - apart from some minor GUI flashiness - remains basically the same as XP, itself not significant changed from Windows *98*).
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It's obvious that Apple does not charge OEM-like prices. Otherwise the argument that Apple products are overpriced would not exist.
Uh, what ? Your reasoning seems arse-about face.
I still can't figure out why MS made it there business to bother with DRM. It only hurts them.
Because they wanted to break into the home media device market, where the content distributors hold all the aces.
The price of Windows also gives an indication of what the market is willing to pay for an operating system. Therefore, it is quite reasonable to assume that OS X is similar in price to Windows.
The price of Windows to a large OEM (like, say, HP) isn't anything close to the retail price. To say nothing of the stuff you are licensed to do with a retail version of Windows that you aren't with any version of OS X.
Which is a point I've been making for months to pro Vista people who don't understand why this is such a disaster and keep claiming "Vista isn't that bad." What they don't understand is that for the business market, Vista is extraordinarily bad!! That's extraordinarily bad for Microsoft, and which is their main source of income. Business are still buying XP licenses for new machines, but they aren't upgrading current machines to Vista because it's an admin nightmare and companies have lost complete trust in Vista.
Uh, no, they are upgrading to Vista for the same reason they didn't start upgrading to XP until 2005 or so.
If businesses haven't starting upgrading to Vista by the 2010-2011 timeframe, you might be able to start credibly saying they really don't want it.
Vista Ultimate goes for around $300-400 according to a quick search on Google. Therefore, OS X and iLife for $599 doesn't seem completely unreasonable.
Actually, it's stupidly unreasonable to compare retail Windows prices with whatever dollar value Apple might put on the copies of OS X that are bundled with their Macs.
But, I'm sure you already knew that.
Right. So would you care to venture a guess as to the percentage of Windows machines that have been exploited because someone other than an authorised user was sitting at the console ?
What people say "intuitive" they actually mean "familiar".
No, they mean "intuitive". "Intuitive" and "familiar" _are_ different things, no matter how many purveyors of bad UI try to argue otherwise.
It's something MS could probably learn from..
Microsoft have yet to release an OS so mind-boggingly slow that even top-end hardware *years later* could barely run it acceptably, like Apple did with OS X.
OTOH keeping everyone on the upgrade treadmill is worth it to them.
Weird logic. "Keeping everyone on the upgrade treadmill" is worth far, far more to Apple than it ever could be to Microsoft.
Which is different than a Windows Server local admin account how?
A superuser account (like root in traditional UNIX) cannot be restricted (that's why it's called the superuser). Effectively, it bypasses the OS security layer.
The Administrator account is - like all accounts in Windows - restricted by ACLs. While it does have a very generous list of ACLs, it is still subject to limitations on what it can do by the security layer of the OS. Which is why, for example, there are some processes that 'Administrator' does not have permission to kill.
The difference between a 'superuser' and 'really high privileged user' is an important concept to understand.
I think SELinux steps it up a notch, other than that, I figure it's six of one, half dozen of the the other.
SELinux does indeed, "step it up a notch" - but most Linux systems are not running with SELinux configured.
Either environment is about as secure as the administrator of the system cares to/is capable of making it. I've made both acceptably secure for business purposes (demonstrably able to hold off random internet based attacks, still susceptible to social engineering)
This is certainly true. By far the biggest factor in OS security (for any remotely contemporary OS) is the person (or people) using it.
More pervasive on the desktop, sure but if I was going to attack a computer system, why do I care about desktop OSs
Because they are plentiful and almost all maintained by ignorant users.
I don't really want to break into some guys windows machine (and what? steal his bookmarks and mp3 collection), [...]
And credit card details, identity, etc. To say nothing of being able to use that machine for spamming, fileserving, or bouncing other attacks off.
[...] I want to break into a commercial company's database and steal financial details
You mean you would attempt to attack systems mostly run by professional, knowledgable administrators, where abnormal behaviour will be quickly noticed and addressed, often with follow-up by the authorities ?
Linux and Unix systems in general have a better underlying security model than Windows (e.g., the way root/administrator vs. user is handled).
Uh, no. In fact, it is classic UNIX that has the poorer architecture, with its superuser concept.
However, if those of us who are Linux fans are honest we know that the reason we don't have to worry as much about Linux attacks is that hackers target Windows because it is more pervasive.
At least this part is correct.
So basically it costs money to get EAL verified, and the farther up the scale you go, the more money it costs to run the testing. So even if a Linux distro wanted to be verified at a higher level - who's going to fork over the dough?
Commercial Linux vendors like Red Hat, SuSe and IBM.
Certifications like EAL tell you about the technical capabilities of an OS. They don't tell you anything about how competently said OS will be used.
For the vast, vast majority of people, it is "fine", if not "preferable".
I've priced it: comparable hardware with OS, the Macbook that meets my specifications is $400 more than the Dell equivalent. I can't justify spending $500 to do exactly what I do now. If I'm going to switch, it's a complete switch or not at all.
Well, given Apple's disinterest in making any sort of mid-range tower suitable for a gamer, you'll be paying a hell of a lot more than a $400 premium if those native games ever do appear...
Well, roundabouts (aka traffic circles) would make a lot more sense than four way stops [...]
I ran into a few 4-way stop signs on a recent holiday to the US. Exactly how *is* the stalemate of 4 cars arriving at the same time supposed to be resolved ?
The two companies take turns one-upping each other for the bleeding edge, but every time (10 years running) I've specced out a mid-range (home gamer, single CPU motherboard) to low-end (grandma's email/photo machine) machine, AMD's been the way to go. It's a lot like trying to decide which company's video boards to pick if you're trying to make a game machine without breaking the bank.
Sadly, an AMD CPU frequently means having to deal with bug-ridden and compatibility-challenged motherboard chipsets, which can very quickly make up for any small $$$-savings in frustration.
Yes New Zealand is thinking of having it added to stop downloads of Music and Movies, but the difference between New Zealand Government and Ozzie Government is Our Government listens to it's nation.
You just keep telling yourself that, Bro ;).
Actually, I wouldn't be at all surprised if a majority of Australians (and Kiwis, for that matter) would be in favour of a nationwide censorship program, especially if it were presented to them in the context of stopping terr'ism or saving the children.
I don't know how much the most expensive version of Oracle costs, but I'm rather doubting it's six fucking figures. (Remember, that doesn't include support.)
Oracle Enterprise will set you back around US$50k per CPU in licensing costs.
Oh, and when they say "CPU" they don't mean "physical CPU" like most people, they mean you apply a multiplier to calculate the number of "CPUs" they think you deserve. For multicore x86 processes, that multiplier is 0.5. So a server with two quad-core CPUs (8 cores) will cost you ca. US$200k in licensing.
(This is in no way meant to justify the awe-inspiring pork-barrelling from Alston, but merely to highlight that ~900 grand on software isn't actually that unrealistic once you start dealing with "enterprise software".)
Similarly, with regards to the hardware expenses, a mid-range SAN would easily hit AU$200k (not that a departmental website would need one, but just sayin'.)
How would you know if someone successfully hid their smoking? While indoors chain smoking is hard to hide, a stick of gum and a hand wash goes a long way for the casual smoker.
No. No, it doesn't.
While it certainly doesn't make up the ~$50k difference on its own, the 7210 _does_ come with 64G of RAM (vs 16G) and a pair of 18G SSDs. They're not completely identical.
What's more convenient? Going to 10 different websites for 10 shows, or going to 1 website for 10 shows?
The former, when you know the show will be there when you want it, not when someone else has ripped it, at the speed they are capable of uploading.
(To say nothing of not having to worry about wandering around the shadier parts of the internet.)
The idea that when faced between going to something like www.csi.com and clicking on a "current episode" link, then getting the file quick enough to stream, vs navigating a warez or torrent site covered in pornography Flash ads, that may or may not have the current episode, may or may not have it in a viewable codec, and will transfer it anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours later, they will choose the latter, is laughable.
I don't understand your logic here- are you saying that Microsoft should have designed Vista to work on 5YO hardware?
Vista _does_ work on 5 year old hardware, assuming it was high-end 5 years earlier. Heck, if you allow for absolutely top of the line hardware, Vista will be usable on boxes up to about 7 years old.
(This is pretty consistent with earlier releases of Windows, as well, which will typically be 'usable' on high-end to top-end hardware from 5-7 years earlier, perhaps with some very minor upgrades).
Under Windows 2000/XP (have not touched Vista yet) I have often wondered why the Windows Explorer takes ages to show a directory, even if the actual content at the displayed directory level is only a few dozen elements.
Er, it does ? Even on my old 1.6Ghz, 1G RAM, laptop, the \Windows\System32 directory with ~3000 files appears "instantly" - and I certainly haven't even noticed Explorer being "slow" on any of my other machines.
I think something is wrong with your machine. IME, Explorer is easily one of the most responsive GUI file managers out there.
Not a perfect test since i didn't do the 32 bit version Vista Ultimate though so keep that in mind.
[...]
Perhaps it was just the 64-bit vs 32-bit but as I said I didn't have a Vista Ultimate 32bit key to try.
The 32bit and 64bit versions will use completely different drivers, to say nothing of the performance benefits just from running x86-64 instead of x86.
Basically, you're coming to a conclusion without having controlled for the most important variable.
As is the way with MS , they update all the eye candy first to get the drooling masses interested , then they get down to the core stuff where it really matters later on - ie the exact opposite way round to the way it should be done.
In reality, you have that completely backwards. Microsoft have consistently spent far more time on behind-the-scenes improvements than UI changes. Vista was a far, far more significant update to the core of the OS than the UI (which - apart from some minor GUI flashiness - remains basically the same as XP, itself not significant changed from Windows *98*).