I don't know why, but just saying the words 'assembly language', sends a chill down my spine. I guess I am too weak minded to learn it.
Maybe individual brains just work in different ways. In school, I knew some people who were good with high-level languages but just couldn't hack assembler. They could not get down to that absolute minimal step-by-step instruction level. I'm not sure what that says about those of us who use assembler.:) BTW, I certainly don't advocate assembler as a first computer language - second, perhaps.
Everything you mention above is still alive and well in the US. Perhaps not in the form you're thinking, but definitely alive and well.
Informative? I don't know how, since you obviously weren't paying attention. How many people are employed in agriculture in the U.S. compared to 100 years ago? How many people in the U.S. are employed in textiles and manufacturing compared to forty years ago? What do you do with millions of unemployed IT workers? And please don't say biotech or nanotech: Those are minor niches that can and will be offshored. And stay away from my cornflakes.
Ive completed a MS in CS, and it seems harder and harder to find jobs that let you "get your foot in the door". Everybody wants 10 years of blah-blah experience . ..
The job ads looking for a laundry list of experience in wildly different areas or 15 years of Java experience are bogus.
- Placing an ad that no local worker can fill: $50. - Spending only $50 to comply with federal regulations that make you seek local workers first: Priceless.
What did we produce after we stopped producing shoes, then cars, etc? Other stuff!
When the jobs in agriculture started disappearing, people were told to retrain and get jobs in manufacturing. When the textile and manufacturing jobs were being sent overseas, we were told to reeducate ourselves and move up the food chain to knowledge work. If you'd read the article (either time it was posted), the looming question that nobody can answer is, *what comes after knowledge?* The author waved his hands, and like you, said *oh, something else*.
The point is, this is the first time in history when people have been educated for and lost two careers to outsourcing in a lifetime. The agricultural period lasted about 100 years, the manufacturing period lasted about 40 years, and the IT period about 20 years. It takes many people 25 years to pay off an education in the U.S. It is now a losing proposition. Whatever this next, great unknown thing is, the trend indicates it will last for 10 years (if it happens). Tell us now what the people who are losing their jobs need to be learning.
Capitalism works because human progress is unlimited.
Can you supply some proof that capitalism works? Where has it been tried? Certainly not in the U.S., where we have the worst mismash of capitalism and a centralized, regulated economy. Ever heard of the FRB, the FTC or a dozen other federal regulatory agencies? Ever heard of wage/price limits, minimum wages, tariffs, duties, NAFTA, favored trade status, or fast-track trade agreements? How about H-1B/L1 visas where certain industries are allowed to freely import cheaper labor denied to other sectors?
Unless you believe that progress will come to an end, you can rest assured that things will work out in the long term.
Nursing a burger patty from frozen pink disk to hot brown lunch is "progress". Got anything a little more substantial? As a previous poster pointed out, having your sig on that comment is classic.
Oh, we'll be telephone sanitizers, middle management, hairdressers....
Forget middle management. With no workers left to manage, who needs a middle manager? From now on, kids coming out of school will have to start at the top. Let's see - how many new CEOs do we need this year?
...and that makes me wonder if the editor only read that far.;)
Everyone will have a favorite solution. That article is the funniest thing I've read in a long time. I laughed all the way through it. They were all great.
78. Theoden's last words were, "Tan my hide when I'm dead, Fred, tan my hide when I'm dead." And Merry later states, "So we tanned his hide when he died, Clyde, and that's it hangin' up on the shed."
Ahem. It was filmed in New Zealand, not Australia, and I believe it's "Tan mehide . ..":)
Hey, the guy was just funnin' you. At the end, Gollum gets a surprise Oprah makeover, and the renewed character is played by Tom Cruise with large, bare feet. Oops, I guess that really spoiled it - sorry.
I sympathize with a fellow resident of the area which I now refer to as Freezing Hell.
It was -17 degrees F this morning, so I put on a long-sleeved shirt instead of short-sleeved before going to work. That's normal for January here. We wonder about you whiners on the coast.:)
Why does everyone seem to think this is the -worst- thing that could happen? Restore from backups, business as usual the next day. Sure, a lot of businesses would be fucked over, but anything really important is backed up.
Well, I can imagine things that are worse, like malware that overwrites the CMOS and/or finds some EEPROM it can flash with trash or perhaps even more malware. Just a "restore" isn't going to do it. And I agree, your slow-acting virus is even more dangerous than that.
Now if someone made a virus that changed your background to a picture of the goatse.cx man, well that would truely be ingenious.
No, that would be truly disgusting, and only a company that sells keyboards would do such a thing. There's just no way to clean barf out of a keyboard. I'm sure there are other people who unwittingly clicked on the goatse link and can confirm it.
My concern with all of this crap, is the fact that someone hasn't forced SCO to shut the hell up. It reminds me of the Bully in grade school. He would consistantly beat up on kids every day. Some even to the point of actual damage, and he was NEVER suspended. Never. Ever. I think that is what needs to be really focused on. Not so much as "When will all of this madness end?", but rather "How can we prevent this from ever getting this far, if history repeats itself?"
Y'know just because the article is a dupe, it doesn't mean you should reuse someone else's comment. Some of us read the discussions and moderate too. Fair warning.:)
but there is just something fundamentally wrong with running Linux under Windows. Yes, I saw the line about ring 0, but it's still like the chickens coexisting with the fox. No thanks.
Re:How much was operating revenue?
on
MandrakeSoft Roundup
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· Score: 2, Insightful
It's why I always tended to think of Mandrake as expensive. Though I would contribute $20-$30, minimum donations of $70 or more suck, moreover such donations on a yearly basis. If they're really in dire straits, they'd take whatever they're given.
You always thought Mandrake was expensive? It's free if you download it. If you want to make a "donation" to Mandrake, I'm sure they would accept whatever amount you want to send. The Mandrake Club membership is not required and is not a donation. Membership gives you first access to new versions and access to various deals on commercial software, etc. Club membership is purely voluntary for those of us who support what they are doing. You might want to check out their site before spouting nonsense.
Let's see $60 per year is $180 over three years. I typically change OS'es around every three years. Currently retail for Windows XP is $299 (full edition), although I'm sure you could get it cheaper if you tried. That's only $40 per year more than you pay for Mandrake - hardly exorbitant.
Well, after everyone else took you to task, there's not much to add, but I'd point out that I get the source to everything in the distro (not just the OS) and can change it at will. And, as another noted, I'm not the only one using my Mandrake downloads, and it's completely legal.
I dont need to RTFA, because the point I was making had nothing to do with the article.
I can believe that, since your point certainly had nothing to do with my comment (or the real world). Perhaps you should post to discussions where your comments might be pertinent.
Ya, those paper CS degrees are a dime a dozen these days.
I knew it. You are an MSCE.:)
And the other one of us doesnt give a shit, because he is talking to some know-nothing moron on an internet message board.
Ouch! Such a witty takedown. I'm hurt, and the wound is deep. That's it. I'm fading fast . . . going . . . going . . . ackk! [thump]
Re:How much was operating revenue?
on
MandrakeSoft Roundup
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· Score: 4, Insightful
But how much of their income last quarter was due to donations, and do they expect to be able to keep that up? I really don't know, and I'd like to hear from soemone in the know.
Well, I don't know what you consider "donations", but as a Mandrake Club member, I will continue to recompense them 60 dollars per year in support of an excellent, easy to install, OS as opposed to the exorbitant fees charged by MS for their, er, product.
Evolution was developed to work and look like Outlook, not Outlook Express, and the reason for that is obvious: Outlook is the primary email client used in business, and Evolution was designed as a replacement for business email (especially in a setting where Exchange is used as the server).
As a former Outlook EXPRESS user, I can say that Evolution works just the same as an email client. I am not using it in any way as a business email client, so I still fail to see any point.
So you think it's perfectly ok to continue blaming Microsoft for mistakes they made in the past, and not give them credit for fixing the problems?
Okay, you're taking this even further off-topic, but, yes I blame MS for making *business decisions* that helped the bottom line at the expense of not only MS customers but internet users world-wide. Fixing the problem in later versions only helps the most recent victims, er, customers.
What happens if Linux does manage to gain some space in the desktop and you get people using the OS as root, do we get to blame Linus or whoever developed a particular portion of the system when computers start going down because of 5-year-old security holes?
As a Linux user, I am responsible for my system. I get Linux for free with no guarantees. (note: I'm not ignoring Lindows - I dislike the concept and think it should be abolished.) MS promised the world (literally) to customers for a price with no regard for the dangers they were unleashing and no recourse for injured customers. It included an EULA that absolved MS from all responsibility. Have you seen the latest MS TV ads with ecstatic MS users sliding down the hall in a group hug because someone used a MS product? Is MS responsible for the software it SELLS or not? Should MS be allowed to make billions of dollars in profit at the expense of millions of people and companies world-wide who don't even use Windows?
. . . so I guess we can't expect people to protect themselves, we should find some other way, like banning them from the networks.
MS has done all it can to be the solution that *just works* and markets itself that way. Why would unsuspecting customers worry about their *be happy* OS or updates? Hey, if banning outdated MS OSs from connecting is a workable solution, I'm all for it.
But every place doesnt have a MS-focused network engineer of my calibur.
Thank God. You really should have RTFA. The discussion was not about having one network with multiple operating systems (although it's not a bad idea - we do). Since you couldn't read it for yourself, I'll explain it. The premise is that it would be better for the whole world if there were more evenly divided operating systems connected to the 'net. That way malware would infect a smaller portion of machines, since malware tends to be OS-specific. Get it?
Im an expert BECAUSE I only work with MS products.
Or a one-trick pony with an MSCE who really doesn't understand anything that doesn't work with a mouse. During my decades involved with computers and information systems, I've found that people who claim to be experts never are. The real experts tend to say something like they have experience with the system/product, whatever. The real experts are always learning, and they know it.
I dont know what kind of "anything goes" network YOU may run (you are probably managing the computer lab over at the junior college, right?), but on MY networks, its a controlled environment.
Ahem, "controlled" is not the same as "sterile". Make up your mind. FYI any system that connects to the 'net is not in a sterile environment.
One, I doubt you have a degree in anything except bullshit (hmm, so you have a B.S.)
Well, one of us knows how to spell *caliber* (or calibre if you're a Brit), *doesn't*, *couldn't*, *whose*, *don't* and *I'm*.
Two, if you are telling the truth, than its obvious you went to school just to have a nice piece of paper on your wall.
Yes, they are decorative, and one for CS says *Summa Cum Laude*, whatever that means.
Certificates like this are going to become a real problem for open source software. There's no way a small distribution could get a certificate that costs many thousands of dollars to buy.
So perhaps the powers that be in OSS should come up with their own certification (secure software?), with their own test regimen. It would be just as meaningful as any other cert.
From the looks of it, it's quite possible that it's Outlook Express users or users of very old versions of Outlook (98 and previous).
Well, yeah, of course, and the point is? Since you're making the distinction, I should probably have used "Outlook Express", but most users simply refer to it as *Outlook* (and I will continue to refer to both that way). The last stats I saw indicated over half the people accessing the 'net are still using Windows 98 or older. It's a safe bet that 99 percent of those people are using Outlook (Express) as an email client - it's the default.
They could be using any email software that allows them to access the file in any way, even if they have to save the file to disk before executing it, since the worm doesn't depend on Outlook or Outlook Express to spread.
"The" worm? I've been talking about email malware in general (and said so), and many of them depend on the Outlook address book in order to spread. There is enough effort involved in detaching an attachment, opening a console window, changing the file permissions, and running the executable that removes it from the clueless click-and-spawn category.
I simply support using the software that's right for the job and avoiding misinformation. There's nothing about this worm that requires Outlook, and anyone using Outlook XP, 2003, or 2000SP2 that hasn't deliberately disabled executable blocking (through a registry change) isn't going to get it through that client.
Yes, yes, we've heard it hundreds of times: Anyone who has the latest version of *whatever* and knows how to admin a Windows box is relatively safe. Well, that description doesn't fit most folks, and it has nothing to do with my original comment. The OP said that if there was a Linux email client like Outlook, then Linux users would have the same problem. I pointed out that there is an Outlook look-alike/work-alike called Evolution that has been around for years, and Linux users do not have the same problem.
And you can't receive most executable file types in an up-to-date version of Outlook, either, so what's the point of this whole discussion?
"Most executable file types"? Those are good weasel words. Well, it's pretty obvious that a lot of people do receive such attachments and do execute them. So, apparently, you missed the point or are trying to change it. Who is being affected by email malware, Evolution users or Outlook users? (*Hint* It's not the Evolution users or Kmail users or any users of the other *nix email clients.)
I was a MS supporter in denial for some years myself, but there comes a time when you have to take off the blinders and question whether just being bigger means it's better, and the answer is no, duh. Better is better.
This is only because no one wrote an "outlook-express" style mail client that runs on linux. I would be very easy to write such an application that will enable you to run attachments by clicking on them.
Evolution on Linux looks and works very much like Outlook. Clicking on an attachment brings up an *open with* menu that allows you to start word processors and such. You cannot "run" (execute) an attachment because the file permissions on attachments are not executable, nor does Evolution offer you that option.
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I don't know why, but just saying the words 'assembly language', sends a chill down my spine. I guess I am too weak minded to learn it.
Maybe individual brains just work in different ways. In school, I knew some people who were good with high-level languages but just couldn't hack assembler. They could not get down to that absolute minimal step-by-step instruction level. I'm not sure what that says about those of us who use assembler. :) BTW, I certainly don't advocate assembler as a first computer language - second, perhaps.
Everything you mention above is still alive and well in the US. Perhaps not in the form you're thinking, but definitely alive and well.
Informative? I don't know how, since you obviously weren't paying attention. How many people are employed in agriculture in the U.S. compared to 100 years ago? How many people in the U.S. are employed in textiles and manufacturing compared to forty years ago? What do you do with millions of unemployed IT workers? And please don't say biotech or nanotech: Those are minor niches that can and will be offshored. And stay away from my cornflakes.
Ive completed a MS in CS, and it seems harder and harder to find jobs that let you "get your foot in the door". Everybody wants 10 years of blah-blah experience . . .
The job ads looking for a laundry list of experience in wildly different areas or 15 years of Java experience are bogus.
- Placing an ad that no local worker can fill: $50.
- Spending only $50 to comply with federal regulations that make you seek local workers first: Priceless.
What did we produce after we stopped producing shoes, then cars, etc? Other stuff!
When the jobs in agriculture started disappearing, people were told to retrain and get jobs in manufacturing. When the textile and manufacturing jobs were being sent overseas, we were told to reeducate ourselves and move up the food chain to knowledge work. If you'd read the article (either time it was posted), the looming question that nobody can answer is, *what comes after knowledge?* The author waved his hands, and like you, said *oh, something else*.
The point is, this is the first time in history when people have been educated for and lost two careers to outsourcing in a lifetime. The agricultural period lasted about 100 years, the manufacturing period lasted about 40 years, and the IT period about 20 years. It takes many people 25 years to pay off an education in the U.S. It is now a losing proposition. Whatever this next, great unknown thing is, the trend indicates it will last for 10 years (if it happens). Tell us now what the people who are losing their jobs need to be learning.
Capitalism works because human progress is unlimited.
Can you supply some proof that capitalism works? Where has it been tried? Certainly not in the U.S., where we have the worst mismash of capitalism and a centralized, regulated economy. Ever heard of the FRB, the FTC or a dozen other federal regulatory agencies? Ever heard of wage/price limits, minimum wages, tariffs, duties, NAFTA, favored trade status, or fast-track trade agreements? How about H-1B/L1 visas where certain industries are allowed to freely import cheaper labor denied to other sectors?
Unless you believe that progress will come to an end, you can rest assured that things will work out in the long term.
Nursing a burger patty from frozen pink disk to hot brown lunch is "progress". Got anything a little more substantial? As a previous poster pointed out, having your sig on that comment is classic.
Oh, we'll be telephone sanitizers, middle management, hairdressers....
Forget middle management. With no workers left to manage, who needs a middle manager? From now on, kids coming out of school will have to start at the top. Let's see - how many new CEOs do we need this year?
Everyone will have a favorite solution. That article is the funniest thing I've read in a long time. I laughed all the way through it. They were all great.
The question I have is this: Is there any change from the book that actually bothers people?
I liked the movies. Jackson's liberties with LOTR don't bother me nearly as much as either attempt at filming Herbert's Dune.
78. Theoden's last words were, "Tan my hide when I'm dead, Fred, tan my hide when I'm dead." And Merry later states, "So we tanned his hide when he died, Clyde, and that's it hangin' up on the shed."
Ahem. It was filmed in New Zealand, not Australia, and I believe it's "Tan me hide . . ." :)
Gollum dies?!?! DAMN, THANKS FOR RUINING IT :(
Hey, the guy was just funnin' you. At the end, Gollum gets a surprise Oprah makeover, and the renewed character is played by Tom Cruise with large, bare feet. Oops, I guess that really spoiled it - sorry.
I sympathize with a fellow resident of the area which I now refer to as Freezing Hell.
It was -17 degrees F this morning, so I put on a long-sleeved shirt instead of short-sleeved before going to work. That's normal for January here. We wonder about you whiners on the coast. :)
Why does everyone seem to think this is the -worst- thing that could happen? Restore from backups, business as usual the next day. Sure, a lot of businesses would be fucked over, but anything really important is backed up.
Well, I can imagine things that are worse, like malware that overwrites the CMOS and/or finds some EEPROM it can flash with trash or perhaps even more malware. Just a "restore" isn't going to do it. And I agree, your slow-acting virus is even more dangerous than that.
Now if someone made a virus that changed your background to a picture of the goatse.cx man, well that would truely be ingenious.
No, that would be truly disgusting, and only a company that sells keyboards would do such a thing. There's just no way to clean barf out of a keyboard. I'm sure there are other people who unwittingly clicked on the goatse link and can confirm it.
It says foreign terrorist organisations, Microsoft is US-based.
As part of his bid for Knighthood, Bill agreed to relocate Microsoft HQ to Lin^H^H^HLondon.
My concern with all of this crap, is the fact that someone hasn't forced SCO to shut the hell up. It reminds me of the Bully in grade school. He would consistantly beat up on kids every day. Some even to the point of actual damage, and he was NEVER suspended. Never. Ever. I think that is what needs to be really focused on. Not so much as "When will all of this madness end?", but rather "How can we prevent this from ever getting this far, if history repeats itself?"
Y'know just because the article is a dupe, it doesn't mean you should reuse someone else's comment. Some of us read the discussions and moderate too. Fair warning. :)
but there is just something fundamentally wrong with running Linux under Windows. Yes, I saw the line about ring 0, but it's still like the chickens coexisting with the fox. No thanks.
It's why I always tended to think of Mandrake as expensive. Though I would contribute $20-$30, minimum donations of $70 or more suck, moreover such donations on a yearly basis. If they're really in dire straits, they'd take whatever they're given.
You always thought Mandrake was expensive? It's free if you download it. If you want to make a "donation" to Mandrake, I'm sure they would accept whatever amount you want to send. The Mandrake Club membership is not required and is not a donation. Membership gives you first access to new versions and access to various deals on commercial software, etc. Club membership is purely voluntary for those of us who support what they are doing. You might want to check out their site before spouting nonsense.
Let's see $60 per year is $180 over three years. I typically change OS'es around every three years. Currently retail for Windows XP is $299 (full edition), although I'm sure you could get it cheaper if you tried. That's only $40 per year more than you pay for Mandrake - hardly exorbitant.
Well, after everyone else took you to task, there's not much to add, but I'd point out that I get the source to everything in the distro (not just the OS) and can change it at will. And, as another noted, I'm not the only one using my Mandrake downloads, and it's completely legal.
I dont need to RTFA, because the point I was making had nothing to do with the article.
I can believe that, since your point certainly had nothing to do with my comment (or the real world). Perhaps you should post to discussions where your comments might be pertinent.
Ya, those paper CS degrees are a dime a dozen these days.
I knew it. You are an MSCE. :)
And the other one of us doesnt give a shit, because he is talking to some know-nothing moron on an internet message board.
Ouch! Such a witty takedown. I'm hurt, and the wound is deep. That's it. I'm fading fast . . . going . . . going . . . ackk! [thump]
But how much of their income last quarter was due to donations, and do they expect to be able to keep that up? I really don't know, and I'd like to hear from soemone in the know.
Well, I don't know what you consider "donations", but as a Mandrake Club member, I will continue to recompense them 60 dollars per year in support of an excellent, easy to install, OS as opposed to the exorbitant fees charged by MS for their, er, product.
Evolution was developed to work and look like Outlook, not Outlook Express, and the reason for that is obvious: Outlook is the primary email client used in business, and Evolution was designed as a replacement for business email (especially in a setting where Exchange is used as the server).
As a former Outlook EXPRESS user, I can say that Evolution works just the same as an email client. I am not using it in any way as a business email client, so I still fail to see any point.
So you think it's perfectly ok to continue blaming Microsoft for mistakes they made in the past, and not give them credit for fixing the problems?
Okay, you're taking this even further off-topic, but, yes I blame MS for making *business decisions* that helped the bottom line at the expense of not only MS customers but internet users world-wide. Fixing the problem in later versions only helps the most recent victims, er, customers.
What happens if Linux does manage to gain some space in the desktop and you get people using the OS as root, do we get to blame Linus or whoever developed a particular portion of the system when computers start going down because of 5-year-old security holes?
As a Linux user, I am responsible for my system. I get Linux for free with no guarantees. (note: I'm not ignoring Lindows - I dislike the concept and think it should be abolished.) MS promised the world (literally) to customers for a price with no regard for the dangers they were unleashing and no recourse for injured customers. It included an EULA that absolved MS from all responsibility. Have you seen the latest MS TV ads with ecstatic MS users sliding down the hall in a group hug because someone used a MS product? Is MS responsible for the software it SELLS or not? Should MS be allowed to make billions of dollars in profit at the expense of millions of people and companies world-wide who don't even use Windows?
. . . so I guess we can't expect people to protect themselves, we should find some other way, like banning them from the networks.
MS has done all it can to be the solution that *just works* and markets itself that way. Why would unsuspecting customers worry about their *be happy* OS or updates? Hey, if banning outdated MS OSs from connecting is a workable solution, I'm all for it.
But every place doesnt have a MS-focused network engineer of my calibur.
Thank God. You really should have RTFA. The discussion was not about having one network with multiple operating systems (although it's not a bad idea - we do). Since you couldn't read it for yourself, I'll explain it. The premise is that it would be better for the whole world if there were more evenly divided operating systems connected to the 'net. That way malware would infect a smaller portion of machines, since malware tends to be OS-specific. Get it?
Im an expert BECAUSE I only work with MS products.
Or a one-trick pony with an MSCE who really doesn't understand anything that doesn't work with a mouse. During my decades involved with computers and information systems, I've found that people who claim to be experts never are. The real experts tend to say something like they have experience with the system/product, whatever. The real experts are always learning, and they know it.
I dont know what kind of "anything goes" network YOU may run (you are probably managing the computer lab over at the junior college, right?), but on MY networks, its a controlled environment.
Ahem, "controlled" is not the same as "sterile". Make up your mind. FYI any system that connects to the 'net is not in a sterile environment.
One, I doubt you have a degree in anything except bullshit (hmm, so you have a B.S.)
Well, one of us knows how to spell *caliber* (or calibre if you're a Brit), *doesn't*, *couldn't*, *whose*, *don't* and *I'm*.
Two, if you are telling the truth, than its obvious you went to school just to have a nice piece of paper on your wall.
Yes, they are decorative, and one for CS says *Summa Cum Laude*, whatever that means.
Certificates like this are going to become a real problem for open source software. There's no way a small distribution could get a certificate that costs many thousands of dollars to buy.
So perhaps the powers that be in OSS should come up with their own certification (secure software?), with their own test regimen. It would be just as meaningful as any other cert.
From the looks of it, it's quite possible that it's Outlook Express users or users of very old versions of Outlook (98 and previous).
Well, yeah, of course, and the point is? Since you're making the distinction, I should probably have used "Outlook Express", but most users simply refer to it as *Outlook* (and I will continue to refer to both that way). The last stats I saw indicated over half the people accessing the 'net are still using Windows 98 or older. It's a safe bet that 99 percent of those people are using Outlook (Express) as an email client - it's the default.
They could be using any email software that allows them to access the file in any way, even if they have to save the file to disk before executing it, since the worm doesn't depend on Outlook or Outlook Express to spread.
"The" worm? I've been talking about email malware in general (and said so), and many of them depend on the Outlook address book in order to spread. There is enough effort involved in detaching an attachment, opening a console window, changing the file permissions, and running the executable that removes it from the clueless click-and-spawn category.
I simply support using the software that's right for the job and avoiding misinformation. There's nothing about this worm that requires Outlook, and anyone using Outlook XP, 2003, or 2000SP2 that hasn't deliberately disabled executable blocking (through a registry change) isn't going to get it through that client.
Yes, yes, we've heard it hundreds of times: Anyone who has the latest version of *whatever* and knows how to admin a Windows box is relatively safe. Well, that description doesn't fit most folks, and it has nothing to do with my original comment. The OP said that if there was a Linux email client like Outlook, then Linux users would have the same problem. I pointed out that there is an Outlook look-alike/work-alike called Evolution that has been around for years, and Linux users do not have the same problem.
And you can't receive most executable file types in an up-to-date version of Outlook, either, so what's the point of this whole discussion?
"Most executable file types"? Those are good weasel words. Well, it's pretty obvious that a lot of people do receive such attachments and do execute them. So, apparently, you missed the point or are trying to change it. Who is being affected by email malware, Evolution users or Outlook users? (*Hint* It's not the Evolution users or Kmail users or any users of the other *nix email clients.)
I was a MS supporter in denial for some years myself, but there comes a time when you have to take off the blinders and question whether just being bigger means it's better, and the answer is no, duh. Better is better.
This is only because no one wrote an "outlook-express" style mail client that runs on linux. I would be very easy to write such an application that will enable you to run attachments by clicking on them.
Evolution on Linux looks and works very much like Outlook. Clicking on an attachment brings up an *open with* menu that allows you to start word processors and such. You cannot "run" (execute) an attachment because the file permissions on attachments are not executable, nor does Evolution offer you that option.