I keep waiting for *seriously* damaging viruses to show up in the wake of the leaked (partial) source code to Windows 2000. That may be the last straw to many a business.
Me? I'm scared to death for the worms that could be made based on the "leaks" of vital Linux and BSD kernel secrets! =:>
Why is it that people keep saying stuff like this? You said it, probably without thinking. Gatner gives us:
The Sasser worm attacks confirm our prediction that mass worm attacks against the multiple vulnerabilities disclosed by Microsoft on April 13 were likely
as if undisclosed exploit attacks that have happened in the same time were less common.
Publication of a flaw does not make the flaw anymore harmful, it helps. When you know there's a problem, you can decide what needs to be done. When you don't know the problem exists you are going to be blindsided. The script kiddies get their hands on these and other holes.
Free software is the clear answer to these problems and it's as open for inspection and bug disclosure as you can be.
It's not the users, it's the software. Linux is not more secure because every system is run by a guru, it's more secure because it is better designed and deployed. The very existence of "help lines" proves not that a package is complex and powerful but that it's not meeting the user's needs. All of the overtime you have spent patching and fixing is not the user's fault, it's the software's.
Perhaps one of the reasons that Linux has an inherently low TCO is because the users who have installed it, configured it, compiled it and made it run on their toaster have taken the time to read the docs. They're familiar with the hardware, the apps they run, the OS under the apps they run, and viola -- things run nicely.
It's more like there ARE manuals to read for the rare ocasion an install script does not work or you don't like the default settings. People would customize windoze just as much if the information was easy to get at.
But in the Windows world? Everybody has a support line to call for absolutely everything. Almost every product offered has some form or another of support to it, to an extent that the people who are using these systems no longer have to use any mindshare whatsoever to get their stuff working.
My site would have far lower TCO if the users exercised a small, trifling fraction of their potential intelligence.... I've spent hours updating virus signatures and restoring systems lost because a user thought it was a fine idea to open up an encrypted zip file they received from someone they didn't know.
I got one of them yesterday. Did it hurt me? No. I unziped it and had a look at it. Is it possible to craft such a thing for Linux? I don't think so. You would have to go through a lot to trouble to undo system defaults to make something like that work. Then the author would have to know which of the hundreds of programs I use to look at such things. Unlikely.
All of that "patching" and bandaid application is not required in the reasonable world of *nix. It's a well known fact that you need about five times the number of administrators for Windoze than you do for any flavor of Unix. Those administrators are not the cheap drooling morons Microsoft would have you think can run your network, but they would be much better informed if they were working on any flavor of Unix.
In some ways, the biggest problem is Microsoft Windows itself. Windows has holes that can allow a hacker to install almost anything on a computer that lacks a protective program or device called a firewall. Users' vulnerability can be compounded if they have not installed the latest patches from Microsoft.
Cut SETH SCHIESEL some slack. The press is still groping with Internet issues. A few years back, a "computer expert" at most papers was someone who knew how to fix the boss's M$ desktop.
Many things said were encouraging.
He understands that users can run "servers"
He understands Winblows has serious problems.
He understands that IRC has legitimate uses.
Give him some time and the scales will fall off his eyes and his attitude will change. He's already noticed that it's hard for to exchange files with his friends, even though he pays big bucks for "broadband". Sooner or later, he will discover that http is also a text based protocal that takes little horsepower to run and is easy to set up in the home. When he realizes this he will start to question why he can't run his own and everything will fall into place.
Seth, you should try a copy of Mepis sometime. It has all of the software that the big boys use to run websites, Apache, mySQL and PHP. It also has excellent and easy to use html editors such as Mozilla's composer and Bluefish. If all you want is static image galaries, just use the KDE file browser's one click generator. Mepis configures itself from a CD on boot and has a GUI installer that works. Mepis is easy and will hasten your enlightenment.
The world of ends is waiting for you. It needs you. You can be part of the solution, not the problem. THE INTERNET IS THE NEW PRESS. IF IT IS NOT FREE THERE IS NO FREE PRESS. Kiddie porn is best fought by busting kiddie porn makers, not by regulating presses. It would be a shame if only a few "respectable" well regulated companies were alowed to publish on the web as the New York Times does.
No Koffice had me a little worried, so I checked the list. Sure enough, they kept the most impressive KDE "productivity" goodies, kmail, kaddress, kpilot, korganizer, and their container, kontact. They, like Mepis, are using KDE 3.2.2, which is very nice indeed. Too bad they had to axe KOffice, which is lighter and faster than Open Office. I'm also partial to gnumeric over OO as well. Oh well, Knoppix still rocks.
the odds are:
A. Slim, though big companies do have PR people at every site for just this sort of thing.
B. Good, your objection is a non-sequitor. The removal of all content between one lesbian porn line and another does not HAVE to make sense. Indeed, the company would like nothing than for such pages to not make sense.
C. Zero. Straight dope is just that. The lesbian porn lines were there when I looked.
D. Low to Zero. Why bother, so they can get coproate black marks and fired? This kind of stupid stuff is very much in line with the technologically illeterate and wrong headed attitude of most big dumb companies that have "acceptable use" policies because they don't trust their employees to begin with.
it's really hard to go back and say that the "Old Guys" [driven out of the companies by punk kids} were right! So now they have to stick with windows to save face...and prove to the customers that spent 10s of thousands of dollars on new software they were Right.
Ten years ago, M$ was the place to go. It was cheaper and there were more people developing for it. This was good. Unix was closed, propriatory, expensive and a dead end. Now, free software has shown us a better way and the overwhelming majority of people realize the benifits of a Unix like operating system with compilers and all the other goodies that come with an active development community. It's easy to say the old guys were right, because in their day they were. Even SCO Unix had it's day in the sun. Nothing is perfect, everything is a comprimise. When you shitcan people over small things, you are a weenie.
now, if the boss is an idiot, and the employees are idiots, well, you're probably going to be seeing some blood sucking consultants eating your company's money pretty soon.
Like the kind of consultants that only come out at night to teach the boss how to use a spreadsheet? Someone drive a steak through the PHB's little heart before they buy us all into Windoze 2003!
I find it funny that a group that collectively has trouble with personal hygiene, getting a date, ever getting a second date, finding something to talk about besides computers, etc
Nothing you can say about Steve Balmer will make me think any worse of him.
So they don't know computer applications.
This is only a problem when they run a technology firm, like that dummy that's running HP into the ground.
They know finance, marketing, operations, negotiating, and a host of other things that mostly don't have anything to do with computers, but do have a lot to do with ongoing success.
These are simple things and most of us know them.
One of the happiest, best paying environments I ever worked in... silly little mainframe, while our mighty intranet continued to win the hearts & minds of the people in the field.
I'm sorry it's been so long since you had a job. Things will get better soon and you will have something better to do than troll slashdot for dollars.
Instead of poking fun at them, maybe you should study them - they *are* the ones with the money/power/cars with power windows that work - you might just learn something.
Well, that's right. Most people study sucess storries. What YOU need to learn is the difference between people who really acomplish things and tin horns. Bill Gates is a tin horn. He's made a lot of noise and he's made himself look all shiny, but he's done it at other people's expense and it won't last much longer. Richard Stalman has made little noise and made much less money, but he's given everyone some very nice software and can have lunch with smiling friends anywhere in the world. More importantly, Stalman gave us all a good lesson in what's right. That's a real acomplishment.
Samba, as good as it is, implements M$ holes, so that M$ transmitted diseases from your client boxes can fill up or wipe out your shares after calling home and giving away everything you care to keep to yourself.
You seem confused and ask, rudely:
WTF are you talking about? The permissions you have on a mapped drive has nothing to do with what you mapped the drive with. Samba, NFS, Novell, FTP, HTTP or logging in locally all depend on permissions you are given to the file system.
Well sure, samba is better than Windoze servers for this reason, but that does not keep Windoze clients from mucking up your security. Server side permisions do you no good when a client with all the required permisions is comprimised. Microsoft clients are so easy to own that they wreck any attempt at keeping information secure. If, as in the case of the Half Life source code leak, someone uses a LookOut hole to install a keylogger, all the permisions of your LookOut user are now in the hands of someone you don't know. The worst security nightmare is someone back orificing a windoze box on your network. From there, they can go just about anwhere. This is why no one who's worried about security should use Microsoft anywhere.
my 5 windows boxes (3 Win 98, 1 2k, 1 XP) none of them have been compromised with a virus, malware or spyware,... and all of them perform exactly as I want them to.
We all know anytime someone publishes a benchmark favouring Windows (and there have been quite a few - tpc.org being a great example), it is instantly ripped to shreds, so why is this different?
Because the reviewer is not taking a percentage of a non-extant samba licensing fee, that's why. It's much easier to trust free software reviews than it is to trust people trying to sell you binaries. People in the free software world have many options to chose from, why would they lie about any of them? Think about it and ask again if you are still confused.
NFS is utterly insecurable, Samba not. For home NFS is the system of choice but in a larger environment... you want to run Samba
If security is your worry, use ssh on a reasonable OS in any size environment. As the orignial poster said, Samba is only useful when you have brain dead M$ client machines. If you have a real OS on the desktop, you don't need M$ protocals. Samba, as good as it is, implements M$ holes, so that M$ transmitted diseases from your client boxes can fill up or wipe out your shares after calling home and giving away everything you care to keep to yourself. Security fails with the weakest link and that will be those nasty old M$ PCs as the Half Life people recently discovered.
Real agencies worried about security have gotten away from Microsoft. I spoke with a Federal Employee last week who told me about her locked down Linux laptop. It did what she needed it to do. Real information management comes with real hardware and software ownership. Real software ownership only comes through free software. If you are running M$, someone else owns your hardware and your data and you agreed to it with the EULA.
Also, it's an Internet poll...not scientific by any stretch.
Good greif, you should never use an internet poll to determine how computer users feel about their computers. You might as well ask them something even less related like, "Do you like your ISP?" Who would think something dumb like computer users are on the inernet? Oh yeah, I would.
Still, you are right. Bill Gates is sure to have had his minions writing VB scripts to load up the results. I'd say more than 2/3 of computer users savy enough to be reading internet week are planning to dump M$. The poll said the same thing! What a co-incidence.
Unfortunatly, the average user associates free softare with no cost software. On a windoze platform, the user is pummeled with pop ups for "free" software that is in fact malware. It is creating a level of mistrust that is hard to overcome. The recent NYT high profile stock scam "beta test" software is a good example of where the FUD is moving. The "freedom" needs to be emphasised first and foremost.
Free software is NOT about getting something for nothing. It's about a community of users who help themselves and don't mind helping others when that help comes at no cost to themselves. No cost software that the average Windoze user sees is NOT free software. Trust comes from your distribution and your friends. I trust my friends and I trust Debian. I'm willing to pay people money for help getting my work done. While software may be free my labor and that of others is not. I do business with people I trust. That the costs are lower than being conned by Microsoft and other scum is demonstrable.
These are simple concepts that everyone already understands. It's basic business sense and it does not make people uncomfortable. Promote free software this way and people will trust you as well. Promote it as no cost and people will treat you like a drug dealer.
He just went from a manual stickshift to an automatic and is still expecting to control the shifting as usual. I'd call this stupid user behavior, except that I know he's not stupid. He's just trying to make a (redundant) point in a (troll) heavy-handed fashion.
This kind of nonsense is typical of PC trade press. You can't find a review of Linux in one of those things that don't do exactly this, except they are not as polite and spend less than an hour deciding free software sucks.
You might also note that Rob also pepered his review with legitimate complaints. Windoze security is a multibilion dollar shortcomming and the programs he complains about, IE, MS Messenger, and Outlook are the root of many problems. These are more serious than the anoyance of constant "update" and advetisment interuptions, but users don't see the security issues untill their computers are unusable or their ISP turns them off.
I know far more about windoze problems than I ever wanted to know, having spent the last month at a local computer retail store repairing Windoze boxes. No, XP is nowhere near as stable or usable as free software is. It is not even much of an improvement over Windoze98 or win2k. The driver issues have simply migrated to new hardware. Try setting up a new HP multifunciton printer on USB sometime! Older hardware is not supported well and breaks systems, newer hardware has bugs. "Security" is still non-existant and XP does crash after a little web use because the victim will be stuck with pounders, gator, and a host of poorly performing malware. The user will then load down the system with another host of AV programs, the best of which are AVG and spybot, that almost bring back "like new" perormance untill the user does a wipe an relaod and has to get all the "updates" again and waste more hours. But hey, if you've got the cash you can have a snappy local computer store fix your problems for you. The hell I worked in could turn you around in an hour if your problems were minor, a week for wipe and reload. There, you were only out $75 if you had your "original" software and no hardware problems. CompuUSA and other places take weeks just to look at your box and tell you you need a $250 wipe an reload.
The windows eXPerience is not a happy one. It's a life sucking chain of billboards leading to less and less performance from what should be considered outstanding hardware. Just how bad things had gotten was a shock.
My life under free software, though it took a little learning, has been much easier than that. Rob hits the nail on the head when he talks about free software being easier to obtain and use, especially for business customers who don't need or want a gaming machine or a video phones (still difficult for simple minded people like me, though the Quake II deb package works great). I've been windoze free at home for two or three years now and I know it takes less effort to do things and keep them running with free software.
Naturally, because of the larger deployed base of Windows machines I would expect any vulnerability for Windows to be magnified in its importance just because of how many machines it affects, independent of whether Windows has more flaws, worse flaws, poor design, etc.
Bzzzt, wrong. Please try again. Read this, first. It's better written than my replies. If you already read it, read it again. It does not even mention how inferior the M$ binary and patch distribution method is at keeping the monoculture cleaned. Once a windoze computer is broken, it's typically wiped and reloaded. The poor thing will be broken before it can finish downloading it's first 500MB "patch" from some big dumb M$ "server".
For numbers, free software rulles and runs the internet. Sendmail, exim, etc, are the programs that move your email. Apatche is the program that hosts your web site, Bind and others get you there. Microsoft's move into "serving" has been a disaster wherever anyone has tried it. The result is that M$ continues to lurk in the depths of big dumb clueless nitches of the internet. If Microsoft ever does manage to get IIS's numbers up, it will shut the internet down.
It's dishonest to put the "top ten" lists on the same page. Proportionally, free software has far fewer exploits and breakins. If they were put into a single normalized list, Unix problems would not make the top 100.
Does it scare anyone else that the top 12 songs out of the top 100 in the Pop/Rock category are all off of Cher's "Very Best of Cher" CD?
No, that makes perfect sense. Matches the 40+ year old, corporate drone, demographic that's likely to be interested and capable. Who else would have all the required software, bandwith and give a shit less attitude it would take to push all the EULAs then recieve the music?
Richard Huddy: ATI gives Linux drivers quite a high priority - but there's just way too much intellectual property exposed in the low level chip interfaces so we don't put that into the public domain....
What is perhaps most impressive is how fast Microsoft have innovated with DirectX. They're produced a new version about once per year for the last six years, and they've now achieved the impressive step of releasing DirectX 9 which has support for all of next year's hardware already built in!
You are right, there's nothing wrong with the hardware.
The average small office, however, has an awful mix of M$ OS. A typical set up will have an assortment of win98 and XP desktops and a "server" of some sort from M$. The desktops are clogged with legacy shit, sometimes carted in from home, spyware and all need to be "rebuilt". Microsoft's tools are so inadequate for sharing work that versioning problems plauge all work. The server might be used as an inferior mail server that ends up blacklisted because it's been broken into. The situation is not much better in larger organizations despite heroic efforts of teams of IT dudes, equally hampered by inferior tools like SMS.
You can compare the frenetic activity of a M$ shop to the calm and order in Largo Florida and know that free software is superior on all platforms.
Oh yeah, I've been thinking about this. The more I use and read about free software, the more I'm convinced it has or will produce the best tool for every job.
Its not that they don't want to pay for software, its that they have to show and justify results quickly. MS has more slick ads/sales people to push their products to managers than open source.
Slashdot Mirror
I keep waiting for *seriously* damaging viruses to show up in the wake of the leaked (partial) source code to Windows 2000. That may be the last straw to many a business.
Me? I'm scared to death for the worms that could be made based on the "leaks" of vital Linux and BSD kernel secrets! =:>
Why is it that people keep saying stuff like this? You said it, probably without thinking. Gatner gives us:
The Sasser worm attacks confirm our prediction that mass worm attacks against the multiple vulnerabilities disclosed by Microsoft on April 13 were likely
as if undisclosed exploit attacks that have happened in the same time were less common.
Publication of a flaw does not make the flaw anymore harmful, it helps. When you know there's a problem, you can decide what needs to be done. When you don't know the problem exists you are going to be blindsided. The script kiddies get their hands on these and other holes.
Free software is the clear answer to these problems and it's as open for inspection and bug disclosure as you can be.
Perhaps one of the reasons that Linux has an inherently low TCO is because the users who have installed it, configured it, compiled it and made it run on their toaster have taken the time to read the docs. They're familiar with the hardware, the apps they run, the OS under the apps they run, and viola -- things run nicely.
It's more like there ARE manuals to read for the rare ocasion an install script does not work or you don't like the default settings. People would customize windoze just as much if the information was easy to get at.
But in the Windows world? Everybody has a support line to call for absolutely everything. Almost every product offered has some form or another of support to it, to an extent that the people who are using these systems no longer have to use any mindshare whatsoever to get their stuff working.
Some companies have call lines. Microsoft charges some outrageous fee for theirs and it's been compared unfavorably with psychic consultation.
My site would have far lower TCO if the users exercised a small, trifling fraction of their potential intelligence. ... I've spent hours updating virus signatures and restoring systems lost because a user thought it was a fine idea to open up an encrypted zip file they received from someone they didn't know.
I got one of them yesterday. Did it hurt me? No. I unziped it and had a look at it. Is it possible to craft such a thing for Linux? I don't think so. You would have to go through a lot to trouble to undo system defaults to make something like that work. Then the author would have to know which of the hundreds of programs I use to look at such things. Unlikely.
All of that "patching" and bandaid application is not required in the reasonable world of *nix. It's a well known fact that you need about five times the number of administrators for Windoze than you do for any flavor of Unix. Those administrators are not the cheap drooling morons Microsoft would have you think can run your network, but they would be much better informed if they were working on any flavor of Unix.
In some ways, the biggest problem is Microsoft Windows itself. Windows has holes that can allow a hacker to install almost anything on a computer that lacks a protective program or device called a firewall. Users' vulnerability can be compounded if they have not installed the latest patches from Microsoft.
Cut SETH SCHIESEL some slack. The press is still groping with Internet issues. A few years back, a "computer expert" at most papers was someone who knew how to fix the boss's M$ desktop.
Many things said were encouraging.
Give him some time and the scales will fall off his eyes and his attitude will change. He's already noticed that it's hard for to exchange files with his friends, even though he pays big bucks for "broadband". Sooner or later, he will discover that http is also a text based protocal that takes little horsepower to run and is easy to set up in the home. When he realizes this he will start to question why he can't run his own and everything will fall into place.
Seth, you should try a copy of Mepis sometime. It has all of the software that the big boys use to run websites, Apache, mySQL and PHP. It also has excellent and easy to use html editors such as Mozilla's composer and Bluefish. If all you want is static image galaries, just use the KDE file browser's one click generator. Mepis configures itself from a CD on boot and has a GUI installer that works. Mepis is easy and will hasten your enlightenment.
The world of ends is waiting for you. It needs you. You can be part of the solution, not the problem. THE INTERNET IS THE NEW PRESS. IF IT IS NOT FREE THERE IS NO FREE PRESS. Kiddie porn is best fought by busting kiddie porn makers, not by regulating presses. It would be a shame if only a few "respectable" well regulated companies were alowed to publish on the web as the New York Times does.
A. Slim, though big companies do have PR people at every site for just this sort of thing.
B. Good, your objection is a non-sequitor. The removal of all content between one lesbian porn line and another does not HAVE to make sense. Indeed, the company would like nothing than for such pages to not make sense.
C. Zero. Straight dope is just that. The lesbian porn lines were there when I looked.
D. Low to Zero. Why bother, so they can get coproate black marks and fired? This kind of stupid stuff is very much in line with the technologically illeterate and wrong headed attitude of most big dumb companies that have "acceptable use" policies because they don't trust their employees to begin with.
The article may not actually imply this, but it's undoubtably true. Repeatability is fundamental to scientific proof. This is easy with free software.
That is scary, but not as bad as clueless people who continue to believe that M$ has made changes. What's known is this, M$ == always insecure.
Ten years ago, M$ was the place to go. It was cheaper and there were more people developing for it. This was good. Unix was closed, propriatory, expensive and a dead end. Now, free software has shown us a better way and the overwhelming majority of people realize the benifits of a Unix like operating system with compilers and all the other goodies that come with an active development community. It's easy to say the old guys were right, because in their day they were. Even SCO Unix had it's day in the sun. Nothing is perfect, everything is a comprimise. When you shitcan people over small things, you are a weenie.
Like the kind of consultants that only come out at night to teach the boss how to use a spreadsheet? Someone drive a steak through the PHB's little heart before they buy us all into Windoze 2003!
Nothing you can say about Steve Balmer will make me think any worse of him.
So they don't know computer applications.
This is only a problem when they run a technology firm, like that dummy that's running HP into the ground.
They know finance, marketing, operations, negotiating, and a host of other things that mostly don't have anything to do with computers, but do have a lot to do with ongoing success.
These are simple things and most of us know them.
One of the happiest, best paying environments I ever worked in ... silly little mainframe, while our mighty intranet continued to win the hearts & minds of the people in the field.
I'm sorry it's been so long since you had a job. Things will get better soon and you will have something better to do than troll slashdot for dollars.
Instead of poking fun at them, maybe you should study them - they *are* the ones with the money/power/cars with power windows that work - you might just learn something.
Well, that's right. Most people study sucess storries. What YOU need to learn is the difference between people who really acomplish things and tin horns. Bill Gates is a tin horn. He's made a lot of noise and he's made himself look all shiny, but he's done it at other people's expense and it won't last much longer. Richard Stalman has made little noise and made much less money, but he's given everyone some very nice software and can have lunch with smiling friends anywhere in the world. More importantly, Stalman gave us all a good lesson in what's right. That's a real acomplishment.
Samba, as good as it is, implements M$ holes, so that M$ transmitted diseases from your client boxes can fill up or wipe out your shares after calling home and giving away everything you care to keep to yourself.
You seem confused and ask, rudely: WTF are you talking about? The permissions you have on a mapped drive has nothing to do with what you mapped the drive with. Samba, NFS, Novell, FTP, HTTP or logging in locally all depend on permissions you are given to the file system.
Well sure, samba is better than Windoze servers for this reason, but that does not keep Windoze clients from mucking up your security. Server side permisions do you no good when a client with all the required permisions is comprimised. Microsoft clients are so easy to own that they wreck any attempt at keeping information secure. If, as in the case of the Half Life source code leak, someone uses a LookOut hole to install a keylogger, all the permisions of your LookOut user are now in the hands of someone you don't know. The worst security nightmare is someone back orificing a windoze box on your network. From there, they can go just about anwhere. This is why no one who's worried about security should use Microsoft anywhere.
Does that clear things up for you?
Perhaps they should have asked:
That would be a great poll. Go do it and let us all know how it came out.
As to passing out in the hot sun, well, no thanks. I'll take the bottle of wine, however. Take what it gives!
and then you woke up.
Because the reviewer is not taking a percentage of a non-extant samba licensing fee, that's why. It's much easier to trust free software reviews than it is to trust people trying to sell you binaries. People in the free software world have many options to chose from, why would they lie about any of them? Think about it and ask again if you are still confused.
If security is your worry, use ssh on a reasonable OS in any size environment. As the orignial poster said, Samba is only useful when you have brain dead M$ client machines. If you have a real OS on the desktop, you don't need M$ protocals. Samba, as good as it is, implements M$ holes, so that M$ transmitted diseases from your client boxes can fill up or wipe out your shares after calling home and giving away everything you care to keep to yourself. Security fails with the weakest link and that will be those nasty old M$ PCs as the Half Life people recently discovered.
Real agencies worried about security have gotten away from Microsoft. I spoke with a Federal Employee last week who told me about her locked down Linux laptop. It did what she needed it to do. Real information management comes with real hardware and software ownership. Real software ownership only comes through free software. If you are running M$, someone else owns your hardware and your data and you agreed to it with the EULA.
Good greif, you should never use an internet poll to determine how computer users feel about their computers. You might as well ask them something even less related like, "Do you like your ISP?" Who would think something dumb like computer users are on the inernet? Oh yeah, I would.
Still, you are right. Bill Gates is sure to have had his minions writing VB scripts to load up the results. I'd say more than 2/3 of computer users savy enough to be reading internet week are planning to dump M$. The poll said the same thing! What a co-incidence.
Go suck an egg!
Free software is NOT about getting something for nothing. It's about a community of users who help themselves and don't mind helping others when that help comes at no cost to themselves. No cost software that the average Windoze user sees is NOT free software. Trust comes from your distribution and your friends. I trust my friends and I trust Debian. I'm willing to pay people money for help getting my work done. While software may be free my labor and that of others is not. I do business with people I trust. That the costs are lower than being conned by Microsoft and other scum is demonstrable.
These are simple concepts that everyone already understands. It's basic business sense and it does not make people uncomfortable. Promote free software this way and people will trust you as well. Promote it as no cost and people will treat you like a drug dealer.
This kind of nonsense is typical of PC trade press. You can't find a review of Linux in one of those things that don't do exactly this, except they are not as polite and spend less than an hour deciding free software sucks.
You might also note that Rob also pepered his review with legitimate complaints. Windoze security is a multibilion dollar shortcomming and the programs he complains about, IE, MS Messenger, and Outlook are the root of many problems. These are more serious than the anoyance of constant "update" and advetisment interuptions, but users don't see the security issues untill their computers are unusable or their ISP turns them off.
I know far more about windoze problems than I ever wanted to know, having spent the last month at a local computer retail store repairing Windoze boxes. No, XP is nowhere near as stable or usable as free software is. It is not even much of an improvement over Windoze98 or win2k. The driver issues have simply migrated to new hardware. Try setting up a new HP multifunciton printer on USB sometime! Older hardware is not supported well and breaks systems, newer hardware has bugs. "Security" is still non-existant and XP does crash after a little web use because the victim will be stuck with pounders, gator, and a host of poorly performing malware. The user will then load down the system with another host of AV programs, the best of which are AVG and spybot, that almost bring back "like new" perormance untill the user does a wipe an relaod and has to get all the "updates" again and waste more hours. But hey, if you've got the cash you can have a snappy local computer store fix your problems for you. The hell I worked in could turn you around in an hour if your problems were minor, a week for wipe and reload. There, you were only out $75 if you had your "original" software and no hardware problems. CompuUSA and other places take weeks just to look at your box and tell you you need a $250 wipe an reload.
The windows eXPerience is not a happy one. It's a life sucking chain of billboards leading to less and less performance from what should be considered outstanding hardware. Just how bad things had gotten was a shock.
My life under free software, though it took a little learning, has been much easier than that. Rob hits the nail on the head when he talks about free software being easier to obtain and use, especially for business customers who don't need or want a gaming machine or a video phones (still difficult for simple minded people like me, though the Quake II deb package works great). I've been windoze free at home for two or three years now and I know it takes less effort to do things and keep them running with free software.
Bzzzt, wrong. Please try again. Read this, first. It's better written than my replies. If you already read it, read it again. It does not even mention how inferior the M$ binary and patch distribution method is at keeping the monoculture cleaned. Once a windoze computer is broken, it's typically wiped and reloaded. The poor thing will be broken before it can finish downloading it's first 500MB "patch" from some big dumb M$ "server".
For numbers, free software rulles and runs the internet. Sendmail, exim, etc, are the programs that move your email. Apatche is the program that hosts your web site, Bind and others get you there. Microsoft's move into "serving" has been a disaster wherever anyone has tried it. The result is that M$ continues to lurk in the depths of big dumb clueless nitches of the internet. If Microsoft ever does manage to get IIS's numbers up, it will shut the internet down.
It's dishonest to put the "top ten" lists on the same page. Proportionally, free software has far fewer exploits and breakins. If they were put into a single normalized list, Unix problems would not make the top 100.
No, that makes perfect sense. Matches the 40+ year old, corporate drone, demographic that's likely to be interested and capable. Who else would have all the required software, bandwith and give a shit less attitude it would take to push all the EULAs then recieve the music?
Jeeze, they did not even put a mailto the administrator up there. It must be the new IIs default page. Click and drool!
What makes you think the usual DoS attack won't happen? The people who launch them use VB anyway.
What is perhaps most impressive is how fast Microsoft have innovated with DirectX. They're produced a new version about once per year for the last six years, and they've now achieved the impressive step of releasing DirectX 9 which has support for all of next year's hardware already built in!
In bed with the beast.
The average small office, however, has an awful mix of M$ OS. A typical set up will have an assortment of win98 and XP desktops and a "server" of some sort from M$. The desktops are clogged with legacy shit, sometimes carted in from home, spyware and all need to be "rebuilt". Microsoft's tools are so inadequate for sharing work that versioning problems plauge all work. The server might be used as an inferior mail server that ends up blacklisted because it's been broken into. The situation is not much better in larger organizations despite heroic efforts of teams of IT dudes, equally hampered by inferior tools like SMS.
You can compare the frenetic activity of a M$ shop to the calm and order in Largo Florida and know that free software is superior on all platforms.
Oh yeah, I've been thinking about this. The more I use and read about free software, the more I'm convinced it has or will produce the best tool for every job.
Quick results from the hardware you already own.
I'll do it for you.