It all depends on what Micosoft called it.
If they called it "Micosoft Nigritude", and since no one had use the word "Nigritude" before, it would be a sure bet that "Migritude" or "Digritude" would be infringing, no matter if you called it "Microsoft Digritude" or just plain "Digritude"
On the otherhand, if they called it Microsoft Monitor, and since Monitor is a word in use in the computer industry in the 60's-70's-80's. If they called them selves Fontitor of Donitor. Microsoft should be in the same boat it is in now.
The reality is somebody screwed the pooch at Microsoft if they thought it would be a good idea to develop an OS and dump a BILLION dollars in advertising when using a generic term.
Oh, I am sorry, in 1985 Micorsoft knew that "Microsoft Windows" was not a generic term, but that "Windows" was a generic term.
Back in the early 80's McDonalds created the "McDonalds Chicken McNugget", the term they copyrighted. Soon, everybody was making "chicken nuggets". McDonalds did not think that they could hijack the term "nugget". As far as I can tell, it has not diluted the value of the term "Chicken McNugget", no one calls them "McNuggets", it is either "nugget" generic, or "McDonalds Chicken McNugget"/"Chicken McNugget"
Errors are easy to make too. Look at your list, 4 and 7 are redundant, the elements of 5 are unrelated, and partially redundant with 6, 7, and 8. And since most of the worms had to be installed by the user, 8 and 9 might also be considered redundant. Now is there nothing valid in there? I didn't say that. But you made a broken list. It's about 50% broken as written. Now imagine you were stuck with any 99% of that original list, and had to fix it, adding as you wished, but only removing one element in a hundred
The list is not a logical list, in which case, you are right. Most of those items should colapse down to just 1 or 2 things.
The list is a timeline, the order in which those things came about. As far as I am concerned, from a technical point, no matter if it installed via program you ran, or a activex thing running in the background on a webpage, hijackware, malware and spyware are all the same thing.
But in an order of progression, it was spyware, then malware, then hijakware that makes my customers lives misrable.
This also covered how Microsoft has done a diservice to their customers. That list is also an evolution of what you must keep up with and know to keep your computer working well.
Once all you needed to do was not boot from strange floppies
Then you needed to know not to run software from strage floppies.
Then good antivurs software was enough
Then you had to not run email attachments and update your antivus weekly
Then you needed to run something like ad-adware to clean things up
Then you needed to be behind a firewall because of the worms and had to patch your box on a regular basis.
Then came the malware, and cleaning up this *super spyware* was getting to be a bit to much, so you needed something like spybot s&d.
Now hijackware is doing its thing and I find to clean a machine, and to keep it clean I need to run AdAware, and Spybot, plus clean up the browser stuff with Hijackthis and audit the whole system with Bazooka.
It is not that hard for me to add one more tool to my bag of tricks when the next thing after hijackware comes down the line in about the next 3 months.
However, for your average user who knows they need antivurs software but are not even aware that their copy of Norton AntiVirus 2000 expired over 3 years ago and does not protect them against anything, when was the last time someone sent you happy 99?
To them it is not just "add one more fact". They have to study the whole thing out. MS has allowed them a wizard that will let them get started with an ISP in less than 5 minutes. But they still need to learn how to use antivurs software, why the need a firewall and how they work, about spyware, and malware, and hijackware. Then they need to spend 3 to 12 hours a month reading on this stuff to stay up to date.
Not what they thought they were getting into. If windows was desinged well, like Linux or MacOS, they would need to know 1) do not run as root 2) keep antivirus up to date 3) download security patches and 4) keep the firewall on. But due to poor design, i.e. ease of use for a single user operating system morphing into an internet machine, each user is required to become a security expert, to pay for a security expert, or to lose their data that comes with having to reinstall their box every 3 months.
No, a user who wants to safeguard any system that has software on it designed by a company in Redmond Washington should have a hardware firewall between it an any type of internet connection.
I have a nat/firewall box for my house to keep my wife and kids machines safe. Never had a problem with any of the worms.
I can bitch and moan about how bad Microsoft security is, but as long as my wife needs frontpage and my kids a using educational software, I am going to have a hardware firewall or properly configure linux router between their machines and the internet.
I would also try chaning some of the postscript options, I.E. moving from Level 3 to Level 2 or Level 1. Changing optimize for speed to optimize for portability. Do not output to eps. Change your embed truetype fonts threshold to 1 pt.
Although I have always been able to get the PS output I have needed. I have never need mathamitcal formulas or grek characters, so YMMV.
What makes Windows popular is that business trusted IBM, IBM used MS dos. IBM tried and failed to lockdown the hardware market. MS was able to be installed on clones, thus making them legitimate replacements for IBM PC's. MS built a monopoly around the OS, was able to force major computer retailers to sell boxes with MS windows on them. We live in a world were Joe user has the choise of buying a box with Winodws preinstalled, or building/having built a box without windows and then installing their pirate copy on it.
That my friend, is why windows is so popular.
Now if you want to enter into a discussion about administering a windows box with GUI and 3rd party GUI tools vs. linux with CLI and vendor provided GUI tools, we can do that.
As I posted in an earlier thread. The Internet is the great equalizer. No network, Windows box is easier for Joe Sixpack to get and use.
Plug it into the internet and all of a sudden, the maintanence tasks required to keep the linux box running and secure vs. what it takes to keep the Windows box running and secure, and Linux has the advantage. Mind you I am talking about running Xandros or Mandrake, not LSF, Gentoo or Slackware.
But once again, due to Microsofts Monopoly, it is what is popular, not what is the easiest to use and administer.
Yeah, me too. I can keep a Windows Box up and running pretty well.
Although I have seen reboots where the registry gets toasted for no reason at all.
I have seen people get a computer with the 90 day tril of Norton on it, decide the want the full version, uninstall the trial version and install the full version and it fails (due to 20 taskbar apps the manufacture bundles with the software).
The "overall" context of slashdot is that Linux zelots say that linux is cool and Windows zelots say that Linux is not user friendly and unitl it can match what Microsoft does...go away.
So we talk two things here
Is what a uber user does to keep a clean running Windows box, or how to be leet and run a linux box without those problems.
Is slam OS's (both windows and linux), for what happens to the average user when you turn them loose on a machine.
The grandparent post is about what in general happens to an average windows user. No, they won't have security updates on hand. They don't have a hardware firewall if they are on broadband or know how to keep their machine from being hacked while waiting for 110 mb of MS updates to tricle in on their dial-up account.
I make an extra $500-$600 a month removing malware for people. The average user is not able to remove it. It is not just "kill a few registry keys" for them.
And yes, it is Microsoft's fault. Just like it is to Apples credit that on a classic Mac, there are only 6 ways for a virus to infect a system discoveed between 198x and 1994, and since 1994 there have been 0 new ways discovered.
Evil toolbars, activeX compenents that hijack your browser. Email in outlook with spoofed extentions, the HTML/scripting engine that is intergrated into the OS so tightly that a hacker has a choise of exploting OS holes, HTML holes, or scripting holes via an executable, a script, or a web page and wacky, insecure defaults.
Yes, the average windows user has a lot of problems to contend with and since the internet, they have been in way over their head.
Once upon a time, you just had to tell the clueless to make sure they don't leave a floppy in their drive between reboots and only open up documents not programs off of floppies and they would be fine.
Enter the internet....Then only those clueless soles who went on line and were dumb enough to download warez got hit by windows related viruses in exe files.
Then email virues and scripting problems hit.
Then IE html expoits started being a problem
Let's add spyware and breakage of the TCP/IP stack
Now lets add crashing of the computer due to 20 background processes (most of them spyware and offcie faststart) bringing the computer to its knees.
Then IE expoilts in the flakey HTML engine and ActiveX exploits.
Now lets add Malware and Hijackware
Then finally, the rash of worms from the last year or so.
If you look back at the list, the Classic Mac has basicly problem 1, 2 and 3. Mainly due to users running as administrator/super user. *nix Tends not to have these problems when users don't run as root.
However, problems 4-9 are pretty much confined to Windows. I think Microsoft should fess up the fact.
For the average user to use a Mac, they just need to plug it in.
For the average Winodws user. They need a hardware firewall, Ad-adware, Spybot S&D, Antivirus, Zone Alarm, all installed and properly configured, in additon to being taugh to run as a non-administrative user, and to dowload updates and patches, to make sure to update their security software (ZA/Antivirus/AdAware) on a weekly basis. To not click on things, to backup the registry, create logical rollback points, etc, etc.
No the average computer user should not be allowed to buy Windows and think all they have to do is plug it in. They make me money by needing someone to clean up their machines and they impact my internet experience by slowing everything down with worms and encouraging spammers to keep up with their garbage.
Fast, Inexepensive, Easy to Understand. Pick any two
There are always tradeoffs. The trick is to know which tradeoffs work the best for you. One set of trade offs work best for a company competing for business (or at least the company will bet on one set of trade offs paying off), while a different set of trade offs work best for a particular individual.
When I was 12, I used a simple substituion cypher. With the following cavets:
What I was encoding was probably a note to my best friend with a message like "Hey, lets talk to our moms about me spending Friday night at your house. This is great that my sister can't read this note if she finds it."
I knew that any 10 year old who had 2 paragraphs of encoded text and a library book could break the code. I knew an adult who knew what he was doing could probably break it with only a sentance or two.
I knew I was going to encode the note, hand it to my friend later in the day, and he would go straight home to decode it, there was not much chance of it being intercepted.
For what I was doing, it was the best method available to me. Wrapping notes around rods, or making invisible ink, were more trouble than they were worth. We did not have 2 rods of the same size, and my expermients with invisble ink were never really satisfactory.
Still, I have nothing really worth hiding. However, if I want to. I have the following requirements.
Do the encryption on the computer, to eliminate redunancy and incrase the speed and accuracy of encryption/decryption.
Use an encryption method that is currently considered secure by cryptoanlysis.
Use a public/private key encryption method to simplify the process of protecting my private key and making it easy to get/distribute public keys.
Use an implementation that does not swap data out to the hard drive, leave remenants of unencrypted files, etc. Things that would make the implementation insecure and easy to hack.
Understand that if someone physically comes gets my computer with my passphrase on it, and I pick a weak passphrase, my infomation will no longer be private.
Understand that if someone can obtain physical access to my computer and install keyloging hardware, or has the equipment to listen to frequencies from my keyboard or monitor, my information still is not secure.
Within those parameters, I do not know of a better product than pgp/gpg encryption. Does it take work to learn. Yes, yes it does. If I want to exchange encryped information, will I probably have to teach the other person how to use it? Yes, yes I will.
As far as even savy system administrators not using pgp. I will trust the data of 100 individuals with a secure passphrase of not getting hacked is far more likely than the possibility of those 100 administrators who do not use pgp.
Why? For all the reasons I mentioned above. They probably feel very secure, but in reality have a weak encryption setup. It won't come back to haunt most of them, but nonetheless, it is still weak.
People that want and really need security, will take whatever steps necessary to get it. They will live with the hassle to get that security and will be secure because of it.
Relying on the OS to provide it makes it only as safe as the weakest link, and we have seen how many weak links there are in the OS chain. Not to mention trusting that the OS does not have any backdoors.
Always a tradoff. So for, I have not seen a better set of trade offs for exchaning encrypted information between users than pgp. But I am open to consider better implementaions of encryption software when they become available.
Any "Special" stuff Microsoft provides for free then must be coded by the mozilla team for the other platforms -OR- there has to be an opensource package that provides the same "special" stuff so that mozilla can be linked to it.
By taking advante of the new API breaks compatibility on all other platforms.
Now, if Microsoft offered a GPL version of those API's that would compile on MacOS, Linux, Solaris, Amiga, AtariST.... then that would be a different story
Easy
There is ONE company that sells that OS. There is ONE current version and every prior version is realted to it. ONLY THAT ONE COMPANY CAN MODIFY IT.
Take that statement and replace OS with MacOS or with Microsoft Windows. It does not matter. It is a propritary OS and you rely on the company that makes it to make it secure and stable. You cant modify it or by it modified by others.
I a world with 95% marketshare being MacOS, there would be many fewer security problems....however once someone found one, the majority of machines are at risk. The Monoculture problem.
So yes, in this instance, MacOS, Windows, Solaris, NetWare, etc are all in the same boat, being closed source produts, if they have a large enough market share, they create a monoculture.
The same is NOT true of "linux", it would be true of a particular distibution if it had a large marketshare, but I was talking Linux having large marketshare, and even the more popular distributions having mabye only 10% marketshare
With Microsoft Windows you now get one family 2000-XP-2003 all which share the same security problems. So 94% of the compurters out there come with some really bad security settings and flaws. Some will patch, but by default most of those systems are insecure.
If you don't like it, what do you do? Windows from Dell is as insecure out of the box as Windows from Compaq or Gateway, no choice, you can't buy a "safe" windows machine out of the box.
On the other hand.......
Default security in the Linux world is determined by the distribution. So if a distrubtion defaults to having a firewall, no insane file assocaitions for email and web browsing, limited services running, automatic security updates and practically forcing the user create and run a non root account. Then that distrubition will be pretty much virus free.
What will happen is this
Distribution A will have 12% share and gets infected 2% of the time
Distibution B will have 14% share and get infected 2.5% of the time
Distribution C will have 8% share and get infected 18% of the time.
It won't take long for Distribution C to get a bad rep. Computer makers will no longer offer Distribution C, or will add "value" by fixing the defaults.
To believe that Linux boxen will be as virus riden as Windows, you would have to belive that everyone will use Linux someday and that people will choose and stick with an insecure distribtuion.
Unlike Windows or MacOS, if Linux ruled, there would be healthy compitition and consumers would have a choice of which OS they ran.
No I mean North Korea,
Yes, South Korea is on board with Japan to make their own version of Linux
But North Korea is trying to get out of trouble with the Wolrd Trade Orgization, over 90% of software there is pirated. If they can get to the 50% range, they can get some big movement in trade deals.
So North Korea is looking at every copy of linux out there displacing an illegal copy of Windows. Or, if you triple the number of computers in the country, and all the new computers run linux, you end up with over 66% of the computers with legal software.
Ah, but they took the old grimm stoires, and added and embleished on them, they may even has based some artwork or themes on old woodcut illustrations...all in the public domain.
Tit for tat, at some point, these Disney works should be available at some point in the public domain for other to work with. At some point, I should be able to make "The further adventures of Steamboat Willie" just as well as I can make "The further adventurs of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse". One work is currently in the public domain, and the other one SHOULD be.
Lets face it, from a business investment standpoint, if anyone at Disney cared, when they Made Cidnerella, no matter how many millions of dollars it cost. they KNEW or SHOULD HAVE KNOWN that that work would enter the public domain in 75 years (or was it 50), and they could do whatever they want for that xx years to promote it and make money from it.
After that, public domain. You can buy "Bob's DVD of Steamboat Willy" for $1 a DVD, or you can have the box with the Disney name on it, that says "Steamboat Willy" and own an offical version for $5.00. Yes the Disney version is worth more to the collector, even if ANYONE could use the public domain material.
My complaint, is DISNEY feels their IP is of such value it is OK to be hypocritical and still take material from the public domain, make millions off of it, and fight so that they never have to give something back. In 2010, or whenever it is that Steamboat Willy will roll into the public domain, Disney will fight again to push that boarder back.
There is other material out there, books, audio recording and such, that I do not have access to, because their mainstream value is low enouch, the peple who hold the rights on them don't even feel it is work looking at the material. It is NOT public domain because Disney wanted to keep Steamboat Willy another 10 years!
Let's face it, current Disney animated film efforts suck. Disney is raking in profits off of their old movies. They can't "optimize Shareholder value" buy creating decent new content, they have to rape PUBLIC DOMAIN the the public good, to "optimize Shareholer value'.
Submitted for your aproval. A studio that takes stories that are in the public domain and animates them.
Then after that studio releases this movie and makes a healthy profit and against the public good, they pay to lock these movies out of ever moving into the public domain. The "IP" value is to high to allow this.
A movie studio afriad to let the public view a movie because it's IP value is so great.....only in the DMCA zone
Linux already has a market share the size of Apples (OS wise). At some point, there will be enough graphic design folks who have migrated from the windows side that Adobe will make a linux native version of Photoshop.
I think it would be **foolish** to ask someone to wait for that day. Because it won't be soon. But that day is comming.
Linux is not going away. Windows holds 95% of the market. But only 10% of the world is using computers. China, North Korea, Brazil have all decided Linux is the way to go. If in the next 5 to 10 years, 2 out of every 3 new computer users outside of the developed western nations chose Microsoft, and the other 1 chooses Linux. We will soon be living in a world where Linux will hold 10-25% marketshare.
Unless Adobe is going out of business, I would not say "Never"
I can see myself recommending WordPerfect to a company.
I have had to edit a large tech manual in MSWord, you would go into page 150, add one word, and them "boom" the doucment would melt down. However, if you opend a prior version of the document (before the meltdown) and tried it again, it would work.
Reveal codes is great. Ever been unable to change a font, or you go and insert a word and it shows up in a different font that you expected? MSWord has codes just like WordPerfect, you just can't see them. But you sure can feel them when you get your cursor between two codes and can't move the curosr to the other side of a code. I can't tell you how many times I have had to try and expalin why some "phantom" effect was happening in Word was based on the fact there was a "code" that the user could not see.
One of the best things about the old word perfect is the it was "smart" in handeling codes. Do you know what would happen if you tried to embed a header or footer after there was a printalbe character on a page? It would know that it was not for the currnet page, so it would be applied to the next page. Want your own letterhed printed on the first page of a document?
[header:on][header:off]
Name of compnay
[header:on][header:off]
Address of company....
It worked great. Your letter head template was 1 page long. Page 1 layout would take place, then your company name would be printed, then all the header/page formatting codes on page 1, would be setup to take effect on page 2. So if your letter was 1 page long, it was fine. If it rolled onto a 2nd page, it was fine too.
The only problem in paradise was having to realize that page formating codes causing you a problem on page 12, could be at the top of page 12 OR somewhere in the body of page 11. Same with paragraph, or word based codes.
Even WordPerfect 5.1 DOS is so much more powerful that MSWord. I am talking about usefull features that help with actually getting your work done, if you work on Documents all day long.
I have purchased the Technology Preview of WordPefect for Linux. I would like to encourage them to continue development.
Life will go on if GPL is not openly acknowledged.
The real thing, is that sun wants to license software like the realplayer, and technology from Microsoft. They want a world where they can charge $x per seat, and lock you in. They want RedHat and everone else to go away.
They want a Sun Java Deskop with licensed technolgy to be the standard. They want the "Linux Desktop" to be considered a toy without this stuff. They want to force the point that RealPlayer should be licensed, not included free. They want to be the "One Distro" that binds them all "with licensed" software.
Besides, according to Microsoft, linux does not exist, it is just a toy OS. The only answer that Microsoft has to being a monoply is that Apple is THE COMPETITION. After all, they have 3.6% of the market.
Microsoft will not let Apple die. They will find some way to massivly infuse cash into the company before letting it go belly up.
As long as Microsoft has some serious coin in the bank, Apple will never die.
That is not to say that Apple can not suceed on their own merrits. Just that the worse case senario is that Micorosoft will bail them out to maintian the "veil" of having competition at price.
I would guess that has to do with the record companies more than Apple. Do you think Bill Gates has a magic wand that he can wave to make the record companies play nice and allow international sales?
Or have I been caught answering a troll?
What Microsoft are doing is taking a marketing concept and improving on Apples iTunes store,
Microsoft is well known for repackaging Apple technology, but since when have they ever improved anything they took?
which has every liklihood to become more successful
Unfortunately, you may be correct on that point...
Why bother? If you do things right, the end user knows their root password and has ssh turned on. Because they called you for support, they will trust you with that root password and you can just ssh into the box and fix it.
Symantec, Adobe, Micosoft do not offer remote support to home end users.
Do you know why? To prevent a flood of lawsuits.
If I tell you on the phone to delete/HKEY_LOCAL_MANCINE/Software, you have the option of listening to a little voice in your head to not do it.
If I remote into your box, and I hose it, then the company I am doing support for may be on the hook.
And let me tell you, taking about 120 calls a week, it is usually about once every two weeks when someone who calls about a simple problem, is directed to reboot there box, and poof it does not start up again. It really is not our fault, the box was on the edge of dying before our product was installed.
Having the customer push the button instead of the tech provides that veil of denialbility
Companies have been pushing back to M$ for years to slow down their release cycle, build a more secure, more stable product. And now people are complaing that they are doing just that?
<troll>
I would be complaining if I paid for Software Assurance
</troll>
After all, Walmart, started selling one striped down linux box for $200.00, an when Joe Sixpack saw it on their website and ordered it, they discovered it did not have windows on it and sent it back.
Oh! Wait a minute, after Walmart started selling that one system, they added several more linux bases systems, and they are still selling them over a year later.
I guess there is no chance of getting Joe sixpac of purchasing a linux system.
Slashdot Mirror
On the otherhand, if they called it Microsoft Monitor, and since Monitor is a word in use in the computer industry in the 60's-70's-80's. If they called them selves Fontitor of Donitor. Microsoft should be in the same boat it is in now.
The reality is somebody screwed the pooch at Microsoft if they thought it would be a good idea to develop an OS and dump a BILLION dollars in advertising when using a generic term.
Oh, I am sorry, in 1985 Micorsoft knew that "Microsoft Windows" was not a generic term, but that "Windows" was a generic term.
Back in the early 80's McDonalds created the "McDonalds Chicken McNugget", the term they copyrighted. Soon, everybody was making "chicken nuggets". McDonalds did not think that they could hijack the term "nugget". As far as I can tell, it has not diluted the value of the term "Chicken McNugget", no one calls them "McNuggets", it is either "nugget" generic, or "McDonalds Chicken McNugget"/"Chicken McNugget"
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The list is a timeline, the order in which those things came about. As far as I am concerned, from a technical point, no matter if it installed via program you ran, or a activex thing running in the background on a webpage, hijackware, malware and spyware are all the same thing.
But in an order of progression, it was spyware, then malware, then hijakware that makes my customers lives misrable.
This also covered how Microsoft has done a diservice to their customers. That list is also an evolution of what you must keep up with and know to keep your computer working well.
- Once all you needed to do was not boot from strange floppies
- Then you needed to know not to run software from strage floppies.
- Then good antivurs software was enough
- Then you had to not run email attachments and update your antivus weekly
- Then you needed to run something like ad-adware to clean things up
- Then you needed to be behind a firewall because of the worms and had to patch your box on a regular basis.
- Then came the malware, and cleaning up this *super spyware* was getting to be a bit to much, so you needed something like spybot s&d.
- Now hijackware is doing its thing and I find to clean a machine, and to keep it clean I need to run AdAware, and Spybot, plus clean up the browser stuff with Hijackthis and audit the whole system with Bazooka.
It is not that hard for me to add one more tool to my bag of tricks when the next thing after hijackware comes down the line in about the next 3 months.However, for your average user who knows they need antivurs software but are not even aware that their copy of Norton AntiVirus 2000 expired over 3 years ago and does not protect them against anything, when was the last time someone sent you happy 99?
To them it is not just "add one more fact". They have to study the whole thing out. MS has allowed them a wizard that will let them get started with an ISP in less than 5 minutes. But they still need to learn how to use antivurs software, why the need a firewall and how they work, about spyware, and malware, and hijackware. Then they need to spend 3 to 12 hours a month reading on this stuff to stay up to date.
Not what they thought they were getting into. If windows was desinged well, like Linux or MacOS, they would need to know 1) do not run as root 2) keep antivirus up to date 3) download security patches and 4) keep the firewall on. But due to poor design, i.e. ease of use for a single user operating system morphing into an internet machine, each user is required to become a security expert, to pay for a security expert, or to lose their data that comes with having to reinstall their box every 3 months.
I have a nat/firewall box for my house to keep my wife and kids machines safe. Never had a problem with any of the worms.
I can bitch and moan about how bad Microsoft security is, but as long as my wife needs frontpage and my kids a using educational software, I am going to have a hardware firewall or properly configure linux router between their machines and the internet.
Although I have always been able to get the PS output I have needed. I have never need mathamitcal formulas or grek characters, so YMMV.
What makes Windows popular is that business trusted IBM, IBM used MS dos. IBM tried and failed to lockdown the hardware market. MS was able to be installed on clones, thus making them legitimate replacements for IBM PC's. MS built a monopoly around the OS, was able to force major computer retailers to sell boxes with MS windows on them. We live in a world were Joe user has the choise of buying a box with Winodws preinstalled, or building/having built a box without windows and then installing their pirate copy on it.
That my friend, is why windows is so popular.
Now if you want to enter into a discussion about administering a windows box with GUI and 3rd party GUI tools vs. linux with CLI and vendor provided GUI tools, we can do that.
As I posted in an earlier thread. The Internet is the great equalizer. No network, Windows box is easier for Joe Sixpack to get and use.
Plug it into the internet and all of a sudden, the maintanence tasks required to keep the linux box running and secure vs. what it takes to keep the Windows box running and secure, and Linux has the advantage. Mind you I am talking about running Xandros or Mandrake, not LSF, Gentoo or Slackware.
But once again, due to Microsofts Monopoly, it is what is popular, not what is the easiest to use and administer.
Although I have seen reboots where the registry gets toasted for no reason at all.
I have seen people get a computer with the 90 day tril of Norton on it, decide the want the full version, uninstall the trial version and install the full version and it fails (due to 20 taskbar apps the manufacture bundles with the software).
The "overall" context of slashdot is that Linux zelots say that linux is cool and Windows zelots say that Linux is not user friendly and unitl it can match what Microsoft does...go away.
So we talk two things here
- Is what a uber user does to keep a clean running Windows box, or how to be leet and run a linux box without those problems.
- Is slam OS's (both windows and linux), for what happens to the average user when you turn them loose on a machine.
The grandparent post is about what in general happens to an average windows user. No, they won't have security updates on hand. They don't have a hardware firewall if they are on broadband or know how to keep their machine from being hacked while waiting for 110 mb of MS updates to tricle in on their dial-up account.I make an extra $500-$600 a month removing malware for people. The average user is not able to remove it. It is not just "kill a few registry keys" for them.
And yes, it is Microsoft's fault. Just like it is to Apples credit that on a classic Mac, there are only 6 ways for a virus to infect a system discoveed between 198x and 1994, and since 1994 there have been 0 new ways discovered.
Evil toolbars, activeX compenents that hijack your browser. Email in outlook with spoofed extentions, the HTML/scripting engine that is intergrated into the OS so tightly that a hacker has a choise of exploting OS holes, HTML holes, or scripting holes via an executable, a script, or a web page and wacky, insecure defaults.
Yes, the average windows user has a lot of problems to contend with and since the internet, they have been in way over their head.
- Once upon a time, you just had to tell the clueless to make sure they don't leave a floppy in their drive between reboots and only open up documents not programs off of floppies and they would be fine.
- Enter the internet....Then only those clueless soles who went on line and were dumb enough to download warez got hit by windows related viruses in exe files.
- Then email virues and scripting problems hit.
- Then IE html expoits started being a problem
- Let's add spyware and breakage of the TCP/IP stack
- Now lets add crashing of the computer due to 20 background processes (most of them spyware and offcie faststart) bringing the computer to its knees.
- Then IE expoilts in the flakey HTML engine and ActiveX exploits.
- Now lets add Malware and Hijackware
- Then finally, the rash of worms from the last year or so.
If you look back at the list, the Classic Mac has basicly problem 1, 2 and 3. Mainly due to users running as administrator/super user. *nix Tends not to have these problems when users don't run as root.However, problems 4-9 are pretty much confined to Windows. I think Microsoft should fess up the fact.
For the average user to use a Mac, they just need to plug it in.
For the average Winodws user. They need a hardware firewall, Ad-adware, Spybot S&D, Antivirus, Zone Alarm, all installed and properly configured, in additon to being taugh to run as a non-administrative user, and to dowload updates and patches, to make sure to update their security software (ZA/Antivirus/AdAware) on a weekly basis. To not click on things, to backup the registry, create logical rollback points, etc, etc.
No the average computer user should not be allowed to buy Windows and think all they have to do is plug it in. They make me money by needing someone to clean up their machines and they impact my internet experience by slowing everything down with worms and encouraging spammers to keep up with their garbage.
True, but let's look at the quote:
There are always tradeoffs. The trick is to know which tradeoffs work the best for you. One set of trade offs work best for a company competing for business (or at least the company will bet on one set of trade offs paying off), while a different set of trade offs work best for a particular individual.
When I was 12, I used a simple substituion cypher. With the following cavets:
- What I was encoding was probably a note to my best friend with a message like "Hey, lets talk to our moms about me spending Friday night at your house. This is great that my sister can't read this note if she finds it."
- I knew that any 10 year old who had 2 paragraphs of encoded text and a library book could break the code. I knew an adult who knew what he was doing could probably break it with only a sentance or two.
- I knew I was going to encode the note, hand it to my friend later in the day, and he would go straight home to decode it, there was not much chance of it being intercepted.
For what I was doing, it was the best method available to me. Wrapping notes around rods, or making invisible ink, were more trouble than they were worth. We did not have 2 rods of the same size, and my expermients with invisble ink were never really satisfactory.Still, I have nothing really worth hiding. However, if I want to. I have the following requirements.
- Do the encryption on the computer, to eliminate redunancy and incrase the speed and accuracy of encryption/decryption.
- Use an encryption method that is currently considered secure by cryptoanlysis.
- Use a public/private key encryption method to simplify the process of protecting my private key and making it easy to get/distribute public keys.
- Use an implementation that does not swap data out to the hard drive, leave remenants of unencrypted files, etc. Things that would make the implementation insecure and easy to hack.
- Understand that if someone physically comes gets my computer with my passphrase on it, and I pick a weak passphrase, my infomation will no longer be private.
- Understand that if someone can obtain physical access to my computer and install keyloging hardware, or has the equipment to listen to frequencies from my keyboard or monitor, my information still is not secure.
Within those parameters, I do not know of a better product than pgp/gpg encryption. Does it take work to learn. Yes, yes it does. If I want to exchange encryped information, will I probably have to teach the other person how to use it? Yes, yes I will.As far as even savy system administrators not using pgp. I will trust the data of 100 individuals with a secure passphrase of not getting hacked is far more likely than the possibility of those 100 administrators who do not use pgp.
Why? For all the reasons I mentioned above. They probably feel very secure, but in reality have a weak encryption setup. It won't come back to haunt most of them, but nonetheless, it is still weak.
People that want and really need security, will take whatever steps necessary to get it. They will live with the hassle to get that security and will be secure because of it.
Relying on the OS to provide it makes it only as safe as the weakest link, and we have seen how many weak links there are in the OS chain. Not to mention trusting that the OS does not have any backdoors.
Always a tradoff. So for, I have not seen a better set of trade offs for exchaning encrypted information between users than pgp. But I am open to consider better implementaions of encryption software when they become available.
Mozilla buils on all the supported platforms
Any "Special" stuff Microsoft provides for free then must be coded by the mozilla team for the other platforms -OR- there has to be an opensource package that provides the same "special" stuff so that mozilla can be linked to it.
By taking advante of the new API breaks compatibility on all other platforms.
Now, if Microsoft offered a GPL version of those API's that would compile on MacOS, Linux, Solaris, Amiga, AtariST.... then that would be a different story
Easy There is ONE company that sells that OS. There is ONE current version and every prior version is realted to it. ONLY THAT ONE COMPANY CAN MODIFY IT. Take that statement and replace OS with MacOS or with Microsoft Windows. It does not matter. It is a propritary OS and you rely on the company that makes it to make it secure and stable. You cant modify it or by it modified by others. I a world with 95% marketshare being MacOS, there would be many fewer security problems....however once someone found one, the majority of machines are at risk. The Monoculture problem. So yes, in this instance, MacOS, Windows, Solaris, NetWare, etc are all in the same boat, being closed source produts, if they have a large enough market share, they create a monoculture. The same is NOT true of "linux", it would be true of a particular distibution if it had a large marketshare, but I was talking Linux having large marketshare, and even the more popular distributions having mabye only 10% marketshare
Ah but the difference is diversity.
With Microsoft Windows you now get one family 2000-XP-2003 all which share the same security problems. So 94% of the compurters out there come with some really bad security settings and flaws. Some will patch, but by default most of those systems are insecure.
If you don't like it, what do you do? Windows from Dell is as insecure out of the box as Windows from Compaq or Gateway, no choice, you can't buy a "safe" windows machine out of the box.
On the other hand.......
Default security in the Linux world is determined by the distribution. So if a distrubtion defaults to having a firewall, no insane file assocaitions for email and web browsing, limited services running, automatic security updates and practically forcing the user create and run a non root account. Then that distrubition will be pretty much virus free.
What will happen is this
Distribution A will have 12% share and gets infected 2% of the time
Distibution B will have 14% share and get infected 2.5% of the time
Distribution C will have 8% share and get infected 18% of the time.
It won't take long for Distribution C to get a bad rep. Computer makers will no longer offer Distribution C, or will add "value" by fixing the defaults.
To believe that Linux boxen will be as virus riden as Windows, you would have to belive that everyone will use Linux someday and that people will choose and stick with an insecure distribtuion.
Unlike Windows or MacOS, if Linux ruled, there would be healthy compitition and consumers would have a choice of which OS they ran.
No I mean North Korea, Yes, South Korea is on board with Japan to make their own version of Linux But North Korea is trying to get out of trouble with the Wolrd Trade Orgization, over 90% of software there is pirated. If they can get to the 50% range, they can get some big movement in trade deals. So North Korea is looking at every copy of linux out there displacing an illegal copy of Windows. Or, if you triple the number of computers in the country, and all the new computers run linux, you end up with over 66% of the computers with legal software.
Ah, but they took the old grimm stoires, and added and embleished on them, they may even has based some artwork or themes on old woodcut illustrations...all in the public domain. Tit for tat, at some point, these Disney works should be available at some point in the public domain for other to work with. At some point, I should be able to make "The further adventures of Steamboat Willie" just as well as I can make "The further adventurs of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse". One work is currently in the public domain, and the other one SHOULD be. Lets face it, from a business investment standpoint, if anyone at Disney cared, when they Made Cidnerella, no matter how many millions of dollars it cost. they KNEW or SHOULD HAVE KNOWN that that work would enter the public domain in 75 years (or was it 50), and they could do whatever they want for that xx years to promote it and make money from it. After that, public domain. You can buy "Bob's DVD of Steamboat Willy" for $1 a DVD, or you can have the box with the Disney name on it, that says "Steamboat Willy" and own an offical version for $5.00. Yes the Disney version is worth more to the collector, even if ANYONE could use the public domain material. My complaint, is DISNEY feels their IP is of such value it is OK to be hypocritical and still take material from the public domain, make millions off of it, and fight so that they never have to give something back. In 2010, or whenever it is that Steamboat Willy will roll into the public domain, Disney will fight again to push that boarder back. There is other material out there, books, audio recording and such, that I do not have access to, because their mainstream value is low enouch, the peple who hold the rights on them don't even feel it is work looking at the material. It is NOT public domain because Disney wanted to keep Steamboat Willy another 10 years! Let's face it, current Disney animated film efforts suck. Disney is raking in profits off of their old movies. They can't "optimize Shareholder value" buy creating decent new content, they have to rape PUBLIC DOMAIN the the public good, to "optimize Shareholer value'.
Submitted for your aproval. A studio that takes stories that are in the public domain and animates them.
Then after that studio releases this movie and makes a healthy profit and against the public good, they pay to lock these movies out of ever moving into the public domain. The "IP" value is to high to allow this.
A movie studio afriad to let the public view a movie because it's IP value is so great.....only in the DMCA zone
Never?
Linux already has a market share the size of Apples (OS wise). At some point, there will be enough graphic design folks who have migrated from the windows side that Adobe will make a linux native version of Photoshop.
I think it would be **foolish** to ask someone to wait for that day. Because it won't be soon. But that day is comming.
Linux is not going away. Windows holds 95% of the market. But only 10% of the world is using computers. China, North Korea, Brazil have all decided Linux is the way to go. If in the next 5 to 10 years, 2 out of every 3 new computer users outside of the developed western nations chose Microsoft, and the other 1 chooses Linux. We will soon be living in a world where Linux will hold 10-25% marketshare.
Unless Adobe is going out of business, I would not say "Never"
I can see myself recommending WordPerfect to a company. I have had to edit a large tech manual in MSWord, you would go into page 150, add one word, and them "boom" the doucment would melt down. However, if you opend a prior version of the document (before the meltdown) and tried it again, it would work. Reveal codes is great. Ever been unable to change a font, or you go and insert a word and it shows up in a different font that you expected? MSWord has codes just like WordPerfect, you just can't see them. But you sure can feel them when you get your cursor between two codes and can't move the curosr to the other side of a code. I can't tell you how many times I have had to try and expalin why some "phantom" effect was happening in Word was based on the fact there was a "code" that the user could not see. One of the best things about the old word perfect is the it was "smart" in handeling codes. Do you know what would happen if you tried to embed a header or footer after there was a printalbe character on a page? It would know that it was not for the currnet page, so it would be applied to the next page. Want your own letterhed printed on the first page of a document? [header:on][header:off] Name of compnay [header:on][header:off] Address of company.... It worked great. Your letter head template was 1 page long. Page 1 layout would take place, then your company name would be printed, then all the header/page formatting codes on page 1, would be setup to take effect on page 2. So if your letter was 1 page long, it was fine. If it rolled onto a 2nd page, it was fine too. The only problem in paradise was having to realize that page formating codes causing you a problem on page 12, could be at the top of page 12 OR somewhere in the body of page 11. Same with paragraph, or word based codes. Even WordPerfect 5.1 DOS is so much more powerful that MSWord. I am talking about usefull features that help with actually getting your work done, if you work on Documents all day long. I have purchased the Technology Preview of WordPefect for Linux. I would like to encourage them to continue development.
Life will go on if GPL is not openly acknowledged.
The real thing, is that sun wants to license software like the realplayer, and technology from Microsoft. They want a world where they can charge $x per seat, and lock you in. They want RedHat and everone else to go away.
They want a Sun Java Deskop with licensed technolgy to be the standard. They want the "Linux Desktop" to be considered a toy without this stuff. They want to force the point that RealPlayer should be licensed, not included free. They want to be the "One Distro" that binds them all "with licensed" software.
Microsoft will not let Apple die. They will find some way to massivly infuse cash into the company before letting it go belly up.
As long as Microsoft has some serious coin in the bank, Apple will never die.
That is not to say that Apple can not suceed on their own merrits. Just that the worse case senario is that Micorosoft will bail them out to maintian the "veil" of having competition at price.
I would guess that has to do with the record companies more than Apple. Do you think Bill Gates has a magic wand that he can wave to make the record companies play nice and allow international sales?
Or have I been caught answering a troll?
Microsoft is well known for repackaging Apple technology, but since when have they ever improved anything they took?
Unfortunately, you may be correct on that point...
Symantec, Adobe, Micosoft do not offer remote support to home end users.
Do you know why? To prevent a flood of lawsuits.
If I tell you on the phone to delete /HKEY_LOCAL_MANCINE/Software, you have the option of listening to a little voice in your head to not do it.
If I remote into your box, and I hose it, then the company I am doing support for may be on the hook.
And let me tell you, taking about 120 calls a week, it is usually about once every two weeks when someone who calls about a simple problem, is directed to reboot there box, and poof it does not start up again. It really is not our fault, the box was on the edge of dying before our product was installed.
Having the customer push the button instead of the tech provides that veil of denialbility
<troll> I would be complaining if I paid for Software Assurance </troll>
After all, Walmart, started selling one striped down linux box for $200.00, an when Joe Sixpack saw it on their website and ordered it, they discovered it did not have windows on it and sent it back.
Oh! Wait a minute, after Walmart started selling that one system, they added several more linux bases systems, and they are still selling them over a year later.
I guess there is no chance of getting Joe sixpac of purchasing a linux system.
Although from what I understand, SCO only seems to sue those who have contracts and business relationships with them.
I think I would want to purchase a linux system from someone who has never had a contract with SCO.