That's not an advantage of the proprietary software, that's a disadvantage because you're locked in to it and have lost the freedom to choose something else. It's a case of being forced to stick to something inferior.
It is extremely rare that proprietary suits the customers best... Being locked in is not good for the customer, depending on a single supplier is not good for the customer, having to pay for each copy is not good for the customer, not being able to customize it is not good for the customer, simply not having the source code is not good for the customer... Proprietary is pretty much only best for the vendor selling it.
GNU is much like society, a set of tradeoffs to ensure fairness.
You will never have true freedom, because a few people will abuse the system and take away freedoms from everyone else... For instance in a totally free society, a warlord or dictator will seize power by force. Thus we have a society where some things are made illegal, so that the remaining freedoms are available to everyone.
Software is much the same, if you give total freedom then a few will abuse that, they will take the open software and close it up, and try to get people locked in to the closed versions so they can effectively blackmail them for more money.
Which is where linux has several inherent advantages over windows....
A trusted package repository - if you can, try to get all your software from the repository, it will be signed by your distro and therefore somewhat trusted, and is much easier to maintain (update) etc... Users are far less likely to be downloading and running random arbitrary binaries.
Files being executable are based on file permissions rather than the name, a malicious file being delivered by a website can easily control the filename, but it cannot control whether your system gives it execution rights or not, that you have to do yourself creating an extra step in the process.
Extra to the above, linux does not hide file extensions in the same way windows does by default, on windows icons are stored in the executables themselves, so its possible to create an executable with the same icon as a more innocuous file, eg a jpeg picture... then you can call it "blah.jpg.exe" and windows will hide the.exe part by default, making it look exactly like a jpeg picture in explorer.
Linux users won't have root privileges by default, so a piece of malware needs to elevate privileges first before it can do serious damage or try to hide itself thoroughly, windows (and shoddy third party apps) has always encouraged users to run as admin, although vista is trying to address this.
Linux has no concept of autorun, windows will automatically execute files on inserted media by default, some malware takes advantage of this to spread.
Diversity - there are many versions of linux with various differences between them, even including processor differences (linux/ppc on ps3 or old macs, arm or mips based netbooks etc), meaning that a piece of malware written for ubuntu/x86 may not operate correctly on fedora/x86 and certainly won't run on yellowdog/ppc... for instance the init scripts differ between fedora and ubuntu, so the malware may have difficulty configuring itself to start at boot....
This isn't a comprehensive list, and it certainly isn't flawless, but it highlights several things that make linux a tougher proposition than windows for malware authors.
AV *kinda* works because not everyone has it, and there are lots of different ones out there... If you end up with a single default AV everywhere, then it just becomes another function of windows that malware authors will learn to work around.
Windows has steadily been gaining features designed to make life more difficult for malware authors, and yet new malware comes out all the time with new methods to work around such features.
Many of the ISPs on the list resell BT's service... BT charges ridiculous amounts for the backhaul from the local exchange to the ISP... Actual Internet transit is much cheaper (from the ISP upwards) and peering with other UK based organisations is very cheap or free... For example, the BBC will peer with you for free because it saves transit costs for both of you.
Those bugs were in a BETA VERSION of Safari 4, the whole purpose of a beta version is to find and fix bugs... Looks like the beta process is working as intended. How many bugs were fixed between the beta and final release of IE8?
The ZDNet story also indicates Safari 4 comes with a fix for the "clickjacking" issue, which also affects other browsers (that have not been patched).
Consider that most of the people running that network infrastructure and even many unix systems perform their administrative functions from windows workstations... Also IIS has about 1/3 of the web market, so 1/3 of websites would go offline... A serious Windows failure would screw up a lot of things.
You also have to consider the differing disclosure models... For an OSS distribution, all of the development is done in public so everything becomes public knowledge...
For commercial software, disclosing that your product has bugs, especially exploitable ones, is bad for business. Now when someone else finds a bug it's pretty much unavoidable so you just play nice and go along with it.. But what about bugs which are found internally? Quite often these will never be disclosed and may not be patched, some are patched silently (slipped in with other updates).
MS aren't so bad when it comes to security updates, they keep providing updates for several years after a particular version was released, such that by the time they stop very few people will still be using it, and those who are will usually be companies who made an explicit decision to stick with the old version.
It benefits hackers immensely, if you have a new 0day exploit you start using it on exploit wednesday, or possibly a couple of days earlier on the basis they can't patch it that quick... then you are guaranteed at least a month before anyone will be patched against it.
Absolutely, providing the vendor of that proprietary application provides an appropriate package repository.. If they don't, then it's the vendor's fault, the distro itself provides everything they reasonably could.
The idea of an "app store" has really been copied from the software repositories which have been used on OSS systems for many years...
An often used argument against Linux, is that users want to go down to and buy boxed software to install... But you can't do that with the iphone, the iphone has a repository where you select software and it gets installed for you, just like linux, and this idea has worked very well. Infact, i would say this method works much better than boxed software from B&M stores...
Users want to get software as easily (and usually cheaply) as possible, and if they were aware of just how much easier Linux makes it would actually prefer this method and consider it a strength of Linux, not a weakness.
So what we really need, is education and advertising to show people that Linux does this too, and that it's actually much better than having to fork over cash for physical media and have to install it yourself.
Live piracy is already possible... Many live events, especially sports, are televised, so you can make a very high quality rip from an HDTV feed... On the other hand, people want the atmosphere of actually attending the event, so despite the fact that all these major sports events are available on tv and to download people still go to great lengths to attend... This is why there are ticket touts, fake tickets and all kinds of other fighting to try and get in to see these big events live. There are only a finite number of seats at a live event, it's not possible to arbitrarily duplicate the seats for free.
I think an actor or singer who has a side job serving fries will be better able to connect with their fans... They will understand how hard it is for the average person, and not be some out of touch freak living in a penthouse snorting cocaine through $100 bills.
I would be far more inclined to support an artist that's a real person trying to scrape a living, than some rich arrogant druggie that lives a life of luxury thanks to having done a few hours work several years ago.
Fame may not be edible, but fame brings with it perks... You will get paid to attend events, to give speeches etc... Even a fast food company will likely consider you more valuable an employee if your fame draws in more customers.
If i had to do any form of complex accounting i would learn as much as needed to get the job done in an efficient manner without losing lots of money in the process... Or, i could just hire an accountant to do it for me. The difference is, not pretending you know something you don't, and not trying to do something you aren't capable of doing.
The small database is probably what makes Clusty more useful, that and the fact it's not a target for spammers looking to get their malware laden sites higher up the search results. Many such spammers only target google, and don't even bother attacking yahoo or msn...
You can "own" land by occupying it and preventing others from gaining access to it, through such mechanisms as walls, guards, etc... People have owned areas of land for thousands of years, even animals have owned areas of land in this way - many animals will vigorously defend their nesting areas. Land is also finite, and thus a change of ownership deprives the original owner.
Ownership of ideas on the other hand is something new... Years ago people would "own" some kinds of ideas by keeping them secret, because they correctly deduced that once the secret was out there was nothing to stop the ideas spreading far and wide. And this still happens with such things as military secrets. But the idea of trying to artificially control the distribution of knowledge when the parties involved don't have a vested interest in keeping it a secret is just ridiculous.
That will cause wear and tear to your vehicle, as well as depriving you of it for the duration that someone else is using it... If someone made a copy of my car, it wouldn't bother me one bit.
But now it's a way of ripping off the public, ensuring that the artist and even moreso the production company executives can live a life of luxury far above the true value of the work they do.
That's the issue, you download a 4gb movie and find that you don't like it, so you delete it. They would rather you bought it, thus wasting your money before you realized it's crap. They also don't like the fact that modern communications such as the internet and sms messages allow people to spread the word about a lousy movie.
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That's not an advantage of the proprietary software, that's a disadvantage because you're locked in to it and have lost the freedom to choose something else. It's a case of being forced to stick to something inferior.
It is extremely rare that proprietary suits the customers best... Being locked in is not good for the customer, depending on a single supplier is not good for the customer, having to pay for each copy is not good for the customer, not being able to customize it is not good for the customer, simply not having the source code is not good for the customer... Proprietary is pretty much only best for the vendor selling it.
GNU is much like society, a set of tradeoffs to ensure fairness.
You will never have true freedom, because a few people will abuse the system and take away freedoms from everyone else... For instance in a totally free society, a warlord or dictator will seize power by force. Thus we have a society where some things are made illegal, so that the remaining freedoms are available to everyone.
Software is much the same, if you give total freedom then a few will abuse that, they will take the open software and close it up, and try to get people locked in to the closed versions so they can effectively blackmail them for more money.
Actually, the only usable alternative is illegal downloads...
The analogy would be...
What if you smelled a rotten egg odor in your water and the water company said, "Sure, we can remove that by supplying you with a free filter"....
Having the free filter to remove the rotten egg odor would still not be preferable to simply not having the rotten egg odor at all.
Which is where linux has several inherent advantages over windows....
A trusted package repository - if you can, try to get all your software from the repository, it will be signed by your distro and therefore somewhat trusted, and is much easier to maintain (update) etc... Users are far less likely to be downloading and running random arbitrary binaries.
Files being executable are based on file permissions rather than the name, a malicious file being delivered by a website can easily control the filename, but it cannot control whether your system gives it execution rights or not, that you have to do yourself creating an extra step in the process.
Extra to the above, linux does not hide file extensions in the same way windows does by default, on windows icons are stored in the executables themselves, so its possible to create an executable with the same icon as a more innocuous file, eg a jpeg picture... then you can call it "blah.jpg.exe" and windows will hide the .exe part by default, making it look exactly like a jpeg picture in explorer.
Linux users won't have root privileges by default, so a piece of malware needs to elevate privileges first before it can do serious damage or try to hide itself thoroughly, windows (and shoddy third party apps) has always encouraged users to run as admin, although vista is trying to address this.
Linux has no concept of autorun, windows will automatically execute files on inserted media by default, some malware takes advantage of this to spread.
Diversity - there are many versions of linux with various differences between them, even including processor differences (linux/ppc on ps3 or old macs, arm or mips based netbooks etc), meaning that a piece of malware written for ubuntu/x86 may not operate correctly on fedora/x86 and certainly won't run on yellowdog/ppc... for instance the init scripts differ between fedora and ubuntu, so the malware may have difficulty configuring itself to start at boot....
This isn't a comprehensive list, and it certainly isn't flawless, but it highlights several things that make linux a tougher proposition than windows for malware authors.
AV *kinda* works because not everyone has it, and there are lots of different ones out there...
If you end up with a single default AV everywhere, then it just becomes another function of windows that malware authors will learn to work around.
Windows has steadily been gaining features designed to make life more difficult for malware authors, and yet new malware comes out all the time with new methods to work around such features.
Use an anonymous mail service to sign up...
http://www.spamdecoy.net/
http://www.dodgit.com/
etc...
Many of the ISPs on the list resell BT's service... BT charges ridiculous amounts for the backhaul from the local exchange to the ISP... Actual Internet transit is much cheaper (from the ISP upwards) and peering with other UK based organisations is very cheap or free... For example, the BBC will peer with you for free because it saves transit costs for both of you.
Because if the client is smart enough to figure out what you're doing, he will find someone else who won't rip him off.
A lot of extra *PAID* work, it's called putting your own interests before those of the client.
Those bugs were in a BETA VERSION of Safari 4, the whole purpose of a beta version is to find and fix bugs... Looks like the beta process is working as intended.
How many bugs were fixed between the beta and final release of IE8?
The ZDNet story also indicates Safari 4 comes with a fix for the "clickjacking" issue, which also affects other browsers (that have not been patched).
Consider that most of the people running that network infrastructure and even many unix systems perform their administrative functions from windows workstations...
Also IIS has about 1/3 of the web market, so 1/3 of websites would go offline...
A serious Windows failure would screw up a lot of things.
You also have to consider the differing disclosure models...
For an OSS distribution, all of the development is done in public so everything becomes public knowledge...
For commercial software, disclosing that your product has bugs, especially exploitable ones, is bad for business. Now when someone else finds a bug it's pretty much unavoidable so you just play nice and go along with it.. But what about bugs which are found internally? Quite often these will never be disclosed and may not be patched, some are patched silently (slipped in with other updates).
MS aren't so bad when it comes to security updates, they keep providing updates for several years after a particular version was released, such that by the time they stop very few people will still be using it, and those who are will usually be companies who made an explicit decision to stick with the old version.
It benefits hackers immensely, if you have a new 0day exploit you start using it on exploit wednesday, or possibly a couple of days earlier on the basis they can't patch it that quick... then you are guaranteed at least a month before anyone will be patched against it.
Absolutely, providing the vendor of that proprietary application provides an appropriate package repository..
If they don't, then it's the vendor's fault, the distro itself provides everything they reasonably could.
The idea of an "app store" has really been copied from the software repositories which have been used on OSS systems for many years...
An often used argument against Linux, is that users want to go down to and buy boxed software to install... But you can't do that with the iphone, the iphone has a repository where you select software and it gets installed for you, just like linux, and this idea has worked very well. Infact, i would say this method works much better than boxed software from B&M stores...
Users want to get software as easily (and usually cheaply) as possible, and if they were aware of just how much easier Linux makes it would actually prefer this method and consider it a strength of Linux, not a weakness.
So what we really need, is education and advertising to show people that Linux does this too, and that it's actually much better than having to fork over cash for physical media and have to install it yourself.
Live piracy is already possible... Many live events, especially sports, are televised, so you can make a very high quality rip from an HDTV feed... On the other hand, people want the atmosphere of actually attending the event, so despite the fact that all these major sports events are available on tv and to download people still go to great lengths to attend... This is why there are ticket touts, fake tickets and all kinds of other fighting to try and get in to see these big events live. There are only a finite number of seats at a live event, it's not possible to arbitrarily duplicate the seats for free.
I think an actor or singer who has a side job serving fries will be better able to connect with their fans... They will understand how hard it is for the average person, and not be some out of touch freak living in a penthouse snorting cocaine through $100 bills.
I would be far more inclined to support an artist that's a real person trying to scrape a living, than some rich arrogant druggie that lives a life of luxury thanks to having done a few hours work several years ago.
Fame may not be edible, but fame brings with it perks... You will get paid to attend events, to give speeches etc... Even a fast food company will likely consider you more valuable an employee if your fame draws in more customers.
If i had to do any form of complex accounting i would learn as much as needed to get the job done in an efficient manner without losing lots of money in the process... Or, i could just hire an accountant to do it for me.
The difference is, not pretending you know something you don't, and not trying to do something you aren't capable of doing.
The small database is probably what makes Clusty more useful, that and the fact it's not a target for spammers looking to get their malware laden sites higher up the search results.
Many such spammers only target google, and don't even bother attacking yahoo or msn...
You can "own" land by occupying it and preventing others from gaining access to it, through such mechanisms as walls, guards, etc... People have owned areas of land for thousands of years, even animals have owned areas of land in this way - many animals will vigorously defend their nesting areas. Land is also finite, and thus a change of ownership deprives the original owner.
Ownership of ideas on the other hand is something new... Years ago people would "own" some kinds of ideas by keeping them secret, because they correctly deduced that once the secret was out there was nothing to stop the ideas spreading far and wide. And this still happens with such things as military secrets. But the idea of trying to artificially control the distribution of knowledge when the parties involved don't have a vested interest in keeping it a secret is just ridiculous.
That will cause wear and tear to your vehicle, as well as depriving you of it for the duration that someone else is using it...
If someone made a copy of my car, it wouldn't bother me one bit.
But now it's a way of ripping off the public, ensuring that the artist and even moreso the production company executives can live a life of luxury far above the true value of the work they do.
That's the issue, you download a 4gb movie and find that you don't like it, so you delete it.
They would rather you bought it, thus wasting your money before you realized it's crap. They also don't like the fact that modern communications such as the internet and sms messages allow people to spread the word about a lousy movie.