Someone give this guy a cookie. He's right. Modern viruses either attach to a particular email client and use the configured SMTP server (Typically the ISP, Exchange, corporate SMTP server, etc.) or they use their own SMTP service.
The problem with many WIN users who critize Apple is that most of them have never attempted to do what they are complaining about... Who cares if the upgrade is offered by Apple. Dell, Gateway and a bunch offer the same limited upgrade options.
Did you not hear what I said? I said that these upgrades weren't provided by Apple. You are right in the sense that the same could be said for Dell, HP/Compaq and any other reseller of PCs. Hell, if they (PC vendors) didn't have to be careful about risk, they could easily enter the enthusiast market and compete with Abit, Asus, DFI and the other roll your own operations. BUT, there are so many people out there that won't enter the market. These are the same people that won't change their brake pads. This is 99+% of the population. People whose lives don't revolve around an enthusiast niche. Welcome to the business world. It's a world that even Apple plays a part of and domaintates at from a premium perspective.
As an FYI, I was 16 with a full time job at an Apple shop in early 97 when everyone thought they'd go out of business. I was a hardcore Mac Evangelist. In fact, I still have issue #1 of Mac Addict plucked off the newsstands along with the CD with the sleeve art consisting of nothing more than the Apple logo (Before that job). I'm not exactly a wintel fanboy.
The grandparent post said "Macs have not traditionally had upgradeable processors". I'm assuming he meant the ability to simply pop out the CPU and put a faster one in wasn't an option. If that's the case, then he's right. All the CPU upgrades I remember are 3rd party add-in cards that are more of a hack than an upgrade.
Come on, he's created a cartoon series that's been around for many, many years. I remember it launching and relating to Bart in the sense that I was also in 4th grade. I'm 25 now and have grown up watching The Simpsons from time to time. People are excited because the idea of using live actors for a movie version has been around nearly as long as the show itself. Remember when everyone went nuts for the CGI characters in the halloween special? This shows us that Matt really isn't afraid of doing live action, he's just waiting for the right time and place. Even if he never did it, at least there would be "something" done live. Personally, i'm not a huge fan of the show, but I'd love to see a full live-action movie. I was laughing the whole way through this intro and can't beleive how well they pulled it off, especially the camera work!
I looked up information on that. Here's a quote from an article:
"The two companies parted ways and wished each other luck. "Our ability to remain independent was unquestioned due to our financial status," Nintendo of America executive vice president stated in the book. 'And it became clear that our objectives and their objectives were not the same.'
"
No, here's what happened. Someone informally asked Bill Gates asked if he would buy Nintendo, given the opportunity. He said he would. Nintendo got a little upset when the press went crazy with rumors. Welcome to the video game industry where for every true rumor, there's a hundred false ones. Regardless, I do find it amazing how opinion can influence memory.
A few years ago, a good looking female friend of mine dragged me into one of those gaming stores at a local mall. I've been trying to figure out what to think of that ever since.
The Sphinx: Your temper is very quick, my friend. But until you learn to master your rage...
Mr. Furious: Your rage will become your master? That's what you were going to say. Right? Right?
"Has Microsoft ever considered producing guides like these, seeing as how they're the authors of their own products?"
You should actually look before asking questions. Microsoft has produced hardening guides at least since NT came into existence. In fact, for Windows Server 2003, NSA points you to Microsoft's guide for hardening.
Give the man a break. He comes to Slashdot, a community site where many people have made a religion out of hating Microsoft and you can't grow up for one post? Instead, you basically tell him to pick an OS that he feels is the most secure, but he can't pick a version of Windows because you're opinion that Windows is insecure is a very well known fact. Name one OS that doesn't have any vulnerabilities. Even something like SecureBSD would have known vulnerabilities if every inch was combed over like so many people do to Windows. It's not like a competent admin can't harden a Windows box, disabling unused features. Microsft and NSA have whitepapers on harding Windows. You should check them out sometime, then form an opinion.
"In the case of horror films, what is scarrier: that some alien worms are just spread around town squirting nasty things into people which makes them die while spraying alien jelly stuff over everything (Slither) or the silent, spooky and mysterios characters of Japanese horror films like the Grudge and Ringu."
I can deal with a little girl throwing a temper tantrum like in The Ring. Alien worms give me the creeps though.
I believe that this was true up until maybe 4 or 5 years ago, but not today. The majority of computer users know as much about their computer as they know about their car. They know they know their Explorer is made by Ford. The ones that are clueless exhibit zero brand loyalty. These are the type that are going to go to Best Buy and pick a computer based off the case design and price tag.
You don't need a hotmail account to use MSN Messenger. You can create a passport account using any email address and use that to sign into MSN Messenger. Just go to http://messenger.msn.com/ and click on the link, "How to get started". It's been this way for at least three years.
Many technical writers really aren't that technical, especially not in every possible area of expertise. For the most part, they are slightly technical writers that are targeting the masses. I prefer to refer to the masses as Normal People. In fact, I'd rather that the writers keep it simple. I've seen too many technical writers get in over their heads and butcher half the techie words that they use.
1) Normal people view computers as falling into two categories, Windows and Macintosh. The majority of normal people will always run what came out of the box, so to them there is no difference between the hardware and the name of the OS. When Linux has a visible presence in the consumer market and they get to choose an OS with their Dell OR go with a Macintosh, they'll be very confused!
2) Normal people and most Slashdot people don't know the differences between the words vulnerability, exploit, zero-day, virus, worm, trojan, crack, and hack. To them, anything that they've heard in relation to computer vandalism is a virus. Do you know all the different kinds of monkeys, apes, gorillas, etc, or do you just call most of them "Monkeys"?
3) Common Usage is a valid reason to start accepting the current meaning of "Hacker" and has been for about 6 or 7 years. Get over it and start referring to yourself as a geek.
"That Microsoft has absolutely no control over and account for an awful lot of the problems so often attributed to problems inherent to Windows. I daresay that if Linux or Mac OS X had a 90% marketshare, you'd see a lot of the same problems with those platforms."
You've got it! Any software that has something like a 90% userbase is going to be the target for the scum of the Earth. Compare it with terrorist strikes. Do they blow up little cafes with two people inside or do they blow up trains with hundreds of people? Or how about traditional TV advertising. Is it going to be more effective to air a commercial during reruns of a 50s sitcom or during halftime at the superbowl? In regards to the ignorant users complaining about their OS, I compare it to people living in America who have never lived in other countries that think we're evil and 100% corrupt. They're comparing what they know to something they don't know, imagining that the grass is greener on the other side. Toss them in an alternative OS and see what they think. Let them struggle, trying to run everything under Linux. Or let them try and bring their work home with them and run it on their Macintosh. Good luck unless your needs are very basic! If your needs are that basic though like it is for some family and friends, then I totally recommend Mac OS X. Even though it's not necessarily more secure and stable code, they're not going to be running the software that all the bad guys are attacking. Plus, Mac OS is much more user friendly, intuitive and pleasant to interface with assuming it has everything you need. Again though, I'm not faulting Microsoft for that. How can you make something with so many more capabilities out of the box less complex for the user? The more options the user has, the more intimidating it will be.
This is a common folly of passenger seat admins. I've had very intelligent, educated users who normally wouldn't fall for phishing scams fall for the latest innovations in social engineering via email. It's inevitable that they'll fall victim to social engineering. People have always fallen for scams, going back thousands of years. No amount of training is going to prepare them, short of forcing them to read a book on social engineering and teaching them to think like a scammer 100% of the time. GOOD LUCK WITH THAT! The real solution is multi-faceted. Two-factor authentication including something like an RSA keychain, user education, Internet technologies being redesigned from the ground up to not be so anonymous and open, more code audits in search of vulnerabilities, etc.
"I get to go with Seagate drives that have never failed me"
It's funny you say that. I've got four dead drives next to me that I'm trying to recover data from using the freezer trick. Two of them are Seagates and the other two are Western Digital. The freezer trick worked for one of the Seagates long enough to image the drive. One of the WDs gave me access for about 5 minutes. It's back in the freezer and I've got a batch file ready to go that'll copy the stuff I want most. The other WD takes about 10 minutes to mount and longer than that to transfer 1KB. The other Seagate doesn't detect at all.
"Papa John's did this with DVDs a few years back. Free DVD of your choice (from 4 pretty uninteresting selections) with every large pizza. I ended up watching Drop Dead Fred as a result, and I wish I had those 90 minutes of my life back."
I ordered their special just to get that damn DVD. I watched that movie a lot when I was younger and it first came out, so I guess it has some undeserved sentimental value.
I know exactly what you're talking about. There's also times when I'm looking for hard to find items and I have to waste my time on web sites that do nothing more than cache the contents of Ebay auctions. If you go to one of those pages, you get tons of ads thrown at you and redirected to the Ebay acution. There's also the sites that have a web page devoted to keyword spamming. There's sites that have review pages for everything, even if there are no reviews. All of these make it difficult to find real content.
You're confusing the terms "exploit" and "vulnerability". All products have vulnerabilities. The ones that the vendor are aware of are called "known vulnerabilities". When code is written that takes advantage of a vulnerability, it's referred to as an exploit. When an exploit is written for a vulnerability that is not known by a vendor, that's called a Zero Day exploit. Some will argue that a Zero Day is when an exploit is written for a vulnerability that hasn't been patched. This is not true since there are almost always workarounds provided to protect against the exploit until a patch is released.
In any case, if a web page that a user visits can cause the browser to crash and not re-open, that's considered a pretty severe DoS attack for a web browser. Not only do they lose all those pages they had open, but now they can't open their browser back up. Of course a DoS is still loads better than full blown pwnage, but that doesn't mean that the code causing the DoS isn't an exploit.
I agree with your list entirely with two exceptions. MSN already allows you to appear offline and for file transfers it does attempt a direct connection before using MSN as a proxy.
Also, I don't like the way Yahoo Messenger doesn't allow you to start it in systray mode. AIM allows this, but if it loses and re-establishes connectivity, it pops up the window. This behavior is annoying as hell when your ISP keeps flaking.
MSN is definitely my favorite of the three and would love it even more if it allowed a custom list of auto-replies and/or custom status messages. Yahoo's offline message thing would also be a great improvement.
I guess one feature that none of them have that would be cool would be some kind of file sharing folder that people in your contact list could download from. Maybe with its own set of permissions based on the groups you have the contacts arranged in?
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Someone give this guy a cookie. He's right. Modern viruses either attach to a particular email client and use the configured SMTP server (Typically the ISP, Exchange, corporate SMTP server, etc.) or they use their own SMTP service.
The only "Apple" upgrades I found were overclocking instructions.
Did you not hear what I said? I said that these upgrades weren't provided by Apple. You are right in the sense that the same could be said for Dell, HP/Compaq and any other reseller of PCs. Hell, if they (PC vendors) didn't have to be careful about risk, they could easily enter the enthusiast market and compete with Abit, Asus, DFI and the other roll your own operations. BUT, there are so many people out there that won't enter the market. These are the same people that won't change their brake pads. This is 99+% of the population. People whose lives don't revolve around an enthusiast niche. Welcome to the business world. It's a world that even Apple plays a part of and domaintates at from a premium perspective.
As an FYI, I was 16 with a full time job at an Apple shop in early 97 when everyone thought they'd go out of business. I was a hardcore Mac Evangelist. In fact, I still have issue #1 of Mac Addict plucked off the newsstands along with the CD with the sleeve art consisting of nothing more than the Apple logo (Before that job). I'm not exactly a wintel fanboy.
The grandparent post said "Macs have not traditionally had upgradeable processors". I'm assuming he meant the ability to simply pop out the CPU and put a faster one in wasn't an option. If that's the case, then he's right. All the CPU upgrades I remember are 3rd party add-in cards that are more of a hack than an upgrade.
Come on, he's created a cartoon series that's been around for many, many years. I remember it launching and relating to Bart in the sense that I was also in 4th grade. I'm 25 now and have grown up watching The Simpsons from time to time. People are excited because the idea of using live actors for a movie version has been around nearly as long as the show itself. Remember when everyone went nuts for the CGI characters in the halloween special? This shows us that Matt really isn't afraid of doing live action, he's just waiting for the right time and place. Even if he never did it, at least there would be "something" done live. Personally, i'm not a huge fan of the show, but I'd love to see a full live-action movie. I was laughing the whole way through this intro and can't beleive how well they pulled it off, especially the camera work!
Yes
"The two companies parted ways and wished each other luck. "Our ability to remain independent was unquestioned due to our financial status," Nintendo of America executive vice president stated in the book. 'And it became clear that our objectives and their objectives were not the same.' "
No, here's what happened. Someone informally asked Bill Gates asked if he would buy Nintendo, given the opportunity. He said he would. Nintendo got a little upset when the press went crazy with rumors. Welcome to the video game industry where for every true rumor, there's a hundred false ones. Regardless, I do find it amazing how opinion can influence memory.
A few years ago, a good looking female friend of mine dragged me into one of those gaming stores at a local mall. I've been trying to figure out what to think of that ever since.
The Sphinx: Your temper is very quick, my friend. But until you learn to master your rage...
Mr. Furious: Your rage will become your master? That's what you were going to say. Right? Right?
You should actually look before asking questions. Microsoft has produced hardening guides at least since NT came into existence. In fact, for Windows Server 2003, NSA points you to Microsoft's guide for hardening.
Give the man a break. He comes to Slashdot, a community site where many people have made a religion out of hating Microsoft and you can't grow up for one post? Instead, you basically tell him to pick an OS that he feels is the most secure, but he can't pick a version of Windows because you're opinion that Windows is insecure is a very well known fact. Name one OS that doesn't have any vulnerabilities. Even something like SecureBSD would have known vulnerabilities if every inch was combed over like so many people do to Windows. It's not like a competent admin can't harden a Windows box, disabling unused features. Microsft and NSA have whitepapers on harding Windows. You should check them out sometime, then form an opinion.
IPSec has done this with Windows since 2000.
I can deal with a little girl throwing a temper tantrum like in The Ring. Alien worms give me the creeps though.
I believe that this was true up until maybe 4 or 5 years ago, but not today. The majority of computer users know as much about their computer as they know about their car. They know they know their Explorer is made by Ford. The ones that are clueless exhibit zero brand loyalty. These are the type that are going to go to Best Buy and pick a computer based off the case design and price tag.
-Lucas
1) Normal people view computers as falling into two categories, Windows and Macintosh. The majority of normal people will always run what came out of the box, so to them there is no difference between the hardware and the name of the OS. When Linux has a visible presence in the consumer market and they get to choose an OS with their Dell OR go with a Macintosh, they'll be very confused!
2) Normal people and most Slashdot people don't know the differences between the words vulnerability, exploit, zero-day, virus, worm, trojan, crack, and hack. To them, anything that they've heard in relation to computer vandalism is a virus. Do you know all the different kinds of monkeys, apes, gorillas, etc, or do you just call most of them "Monkeys"?
3) Common Usage is a valid reason to start accepting the current meaning of "Hacker" and has been for about 6 or 7 years. Get over it and start referring to yourself as a geek.
-Lucas
You've got it! Any software that has something like a 90% userbase is going to be the target for the scum of the Earth. Compare it with terrorist strikes. Do they blow up little cafes with two people inside or do they blow up trains with hundreds of people? Or how about traditional TV advertising. Is it going to be more effective to air a commercial during reruns of a 50s sitcom or during halftime at the superbowl? In regards to the ignorant users complaining about their OS, I compare it to people living in America who have never lived in other countries that think we're evil and 100% corrupt. They're comparing what they know to something they don't know, imagining that the grass is greener on the other side. Toss them in an alternative OS and see what they think. Let them struggle, trying to run everything under Linux. Or let them try and bring their work home with them and run it on their Macintosh. Good luck unless your needs are very basic! If your needs are that basic though like it is for some family and friends, then I totally recommend Mac OS X. Even though it's not necessarily more secure and stable code, they're not going to be running the software that all the bad guys are attacking. Plus, Mac OS is much more user friendly, intuitive and pleasant to interface with assuming it has everything you need. Again though, I'm not faulting Microsoft for that. How can you make something with so many more capabilities out of the box less complex for the user? The more options the user has, the more intimidating it will be.
This is a common folly of passenger seat admins. I've had very intelligent, educated users who normally wouldn't fall for phishing scams fall for the latest innovations in social engineering via email. It's inevitable that they'll fall victim to social engineering. People have always fallen for scams, going back thousands of years. No amount of training is going to prepare them, short of forcing them to read a book on social engineering and teaching them to think like a scammer 100% of the time. GOOD LUCK WITH THAT! The real solution is multi-faceted. Two-factor authentication including something like an RSA keychain, user education, Internet technologies being redesigned from the ground up to not be so anonymous and open, more code audits in search of vulnerabilities, etc.
-Lucas
It's funny you say that. I've got four dead drives next to me that I'm trying to recover data from using the freezer trick. Two of them are Seagates and the other two are Western Digital. The freezer trick worked for one of the Seagates long enough to image the drive. One of the WDs gave me access for about 5 minutes. It's back in the freezer and I've got a batch file ready to go that'll copy the stuff I want most. The other WD takes about 10 minutes to mount and longer than that to transfer 1KB. The other Seagate doesn't detect at all.
-Lucas
I ordered their special just to get that damn DVD. I watched that movie a lot when I was younger and it first came out, so I guess it has some undeserved sentimental value.
I know exactly what you're talking about. There's also times when I'm looking for hard to find items and I have to waste my time on web sites that do nothing more than cache the contents of Ebay auctions. If you go to one of those pages, you get tons of ads thrown at you and redirected to the Ebay acution. There's also the sites that have a web page devoted to keyword spamming. There's sites that have review pages for everything, even if there are no reviews. All of these make it difficult to find real content.
You're confusing the terms "exploit" and "vulnerability". All products have vulnerabilities. The ones that the vendor are aware of are called "known vulnerabilities". When code is written that takes advantage of a vulnerability, it's referred to as an exploit. When an exploit is written for a vulnerability that is not known by a vendor, that's called a Zero Day exploit. Some will argue that a Zero Day is when an exploit is written for a vulnerability that hasn't been patched. This is not true since there are almost always workarounds provided to protect against the exploit until a patch is released.
In any case, if a web page that a user visits can cause the browser to crash and not re-open, that's considered a pretty severe DoS attack for a web browser. Not only do they lose all those pages they had open, but now they can't open their browser back up. Of course a DoS is still loads better than full blown pwnage, but that doesn't mean that the code causing the DoS isn't an exploit.
-Lucas
I agree with your list entirely with two exceptions. MSN already allows you to appear offline and for file transfers it does attempt a direct connection before using MSN as a proxy.
Also, I don't like the way Yahoo Messenger doesn't allow you to start it in systray mode. AIM allows this, but if it loses and re-establishes connectivity, it pops up the window. This behavior is annoying as hell when your ISP keeps flaking.
MSN is definitely my favorite of the three and would love it even more if it allowed a custom list of auto-replies and/or custom status messages. Yahoo's offline message thing would also be a great improvement.
I guess one feature that none of them have that would be cool would be some kind of file sharing folder that people in your contact list could download from. Maybe with its own set of permissions based on the groups you have the contacts arranged in?
-Lucas
And I'm sure if microsoft only had to make their software work on a limited set of hardware, they could do it to.
-Lucas