Word is less efficient as a delivery system because it does not maintain an address book or connect to mail servers. Word viruses rely on conventional copying and document sharing to spread, which takes much longer.
Also, Word may have some annoying in-your-face features, but on the whole it is a very capable word processing application; Outlook is not a very capable email application. The list of standard features it doesn't have is virtually endless -- that's not true of Word.
Summary: Word isn't perfect, but Outlook is a steaming heap of poo.
> Wake me up when grep, sed & awk and the rest of the bunch work > on Unicode!
It's called Perl. It works on unicode (since 5.8 really, though there was tenative unicode support in 5.6), and it has totally obviated sed and awk -- and would have replaced grep too if grep weren't too simple to need replacing.
At some point I intend to try out Plan9, just for the diversity of exposure. I've read a little about it, and from what I read it seems like it would be more interesting than practical, but I'd like to actually try it out. Haven't GART yet though.
> On the other hand, I don't understand the "how" of this dog ever > catching a mouse
It's all about ears: dogs hear well. You stand outside in the snow with your head cocked just a little, and you listen. Mice tunnel under the snow, and you can hear where they're running and where the tunnels go. So then you go to the middle of one of the tunnels, wait for the sound of a mouse coming along, and stick your muzzle down through the snow and come up with the mouse. Easy, in theory. I've seen it done numerous times, but I've never tried it myself.
> Tell your friends: Don't preview email. Delete email you don't > know or trust. Don't open attachments if they're not absolutely > known and expected Update early and often
No. Tell them go to www.pmail.com and get Pegasus Mail, and read email with that. "Don't use Outlook. It's too dangerous."
> this week wasn't a problem for me or my family and friends.
Indeed. As for the Outlook virus, disabling Outlook is on my checklist of things to do to any computer I have to support, so I never have to deal with that issue. As for the other one, it only runs on NT, and the only NT systems I have to touch are four XP boxes at work: two of them aren't normally connected to the internet, and the other two are up to date and have NAV.
I did have something creep onto the network over CIFS a few weeks ago and had to figure out why and fix that (by rebinding NetBIOS to only route over IPX/SPX not TCP/IP -- which is done differently in Win98 versus in WinXP and isn't terribly intuitive in either).
Ultimately, I want to get all the Windows boxes at work behind one-to-many NAT. (The family Win98 box at home is already behind an IP Masquerade gateway.) Then I only have to worry about buggy client software, which is chiefly MSOE and to a lesser extent MSIE, neither of which we use.
I've messed around a little with Bochs, but it's pretty alpha still, and it's not trivial to get it to work with anything other than the provided image (FreeDOS, wasn't it?). Windows on a Mac? I'd quote the price of VirtualPC. Less messing around.
> You Linux guys can't see beyond the end of your pocket protectors. > Go ahead. Set up your families with Linux boxes.
I wish I had, when I first set them up with a computer a couple of years ago. A Duron 750 being such a vast improvement over a 486SX33, they would have switched, grown accustomed to it. But no, I had to be an idiot and get them Win98SE.
I have a plan for getting them switched, though: wait until the Duron 750 is as hopelessly obsolete as the 486 was when I built the Duron system, then build them a *second* computer. Let them keep the existing Win98 install on the Duron, but also have something decent running on newer hardware. It's too soon just now, as the Duron is still competitive, but give it a while...
This approach of course will not work on people who go out and buy their own computer.
> yeah actually since we are on the topic it is woz's fault for > making computers accessable
Herring. Dark pink. Outlook Express is *less* accessible to the end user, *harder* to learn to use, than other email clients that existed sooner (e.g., Pegasus Mail). Yet in the history of computing Outlook is the *only* known, documented case of any email application being the medium for transmission of a virus. There is absolutely *zero* reason for a mailreader to behave the way it does (automatically executing received content); other mailreaders that are even easier to use don't do it that way, because there is no *reason* to do it that way. Of all Microsoft programs ever, no other is so much a plague and a nuissance as Outlook. Without reservation I can say that the world would be a better place if Outlook had never been developed.
> not to mention most distro's dont leave 45 uneccasary things > running by default
Oh, yes, yes they do. However, most of those 45 things aren't internet servers listening on ports for external connections, and most of them don't consume any appreciable resources either, as they sleep almost all the time. (And, of course, they're only unnecessary if you don't happen to use them, but that's also true for Windows.)
> Linux is more secure because a lot of stuff is configurable.
There is truth here. Remember the/. article a while back about how it's hard to find a stock build of Apache in the wild because all the distros add stuff or make changes? There've been several security advisories relevant to Apache in the last year, but though I have Apache running on several systems I was impacted by exactly zero of them, apart from having to read the security advisory to determine whether I needed to be concerned.
Configuring options rather than being happy with defaults is not a magic tonic to solve every problem, but it is a contributing factor to security.
Exchange rates don't mirror cost of living, necessarily. The Aussie buck isn't worth as much as the US buck on the international market, but that isn't because the Aussie buck won't buy as much, locally, as the US buck will buy in the US.
An example: the exchange rate between where I live (Galion Ohio) and lower Manhattan is 1:1 -- one dollar from here is worth exactly one dollar from there. Yet, an entire family here can live on less money per month than the rent of a two-room apartment there.
The exchange rates do have an impact on the cost of living, as they have an impact on the cost of some items, but not everything is priced proportionally.
Here, $10/hour is a decent wage for a single person in a blue-collar or entry-level position. I take home about that amount after taxes, working as an entry-level computer troubleshooter (basically, a one-man part-time IT department at a place too small to have a full-time IT department), but a professional programmer would certainly make more than that (except, I doubt if we have any in the area). Fourty minutes' drive south of here there's a big white-collar area (Worthington/Westerville, suburbs of Columbus -- conference complexes, marketing firms, shopping malls, and three-quarter-million-dollar houses[1] as far as the eye can see) where someone in a position equivalent to mine would make triple my wage and struggle to get along. Rent is much higher there; food costs more; everything costs more. A lot of people live up this way and commute to work down there.
[1] Nobody would build a house that expensive in Galion, because
it wouldn't have resale value. We have a sparse handful of
houses in town worth two hundred thousand or a little more.
Part of it is that the land here is much cheaper.
I tried php, but the documentation was... well, let's just say I got tired of breathless hype about how wonderful it was to have certain astonishingly amazingly great features that I've been taking for granted for years in other languages (not just Perl, but lisp and even BASIC), that I got disgusted and gave it up. I suppose the language itself might be okay, but the documentation put a foul taste in my mouth.
> MySQL is used in so many more environments than perl
Yeah, right. Why is it then that Perl is part of the must-install core in virtually every major OS distribution, and MySQL is an optional package in all of them?
> Apache also is used by many
I was partly joking, of course. Surely you've heard of this concept called humor? However, there was a significant amount of seriousness in what I said also -- not that I think Apache or MySQL are only used by people who actively write Perl (I know better than that, of course) but more that among the target audience of CPAN (i.e., people who do actively write Perl) the uses of Apache and MySQL generally revolve around Perl.
> dynamic content not generated with perl but with java
This is a Perl thread, right? So doesn't that make it okay to discuss it from a Perl-centric perspective? Where am I going wrong here?
Why do people who use Java care what's on CPAN? Tell them to get their own archive network, and it can be as java-centric as they care to make it, and we (Perl users) can happily ignore it. And if the Python people want to distribute Apache with Python support as a Python package (or whatever they call modules in Python land) that's fine too, just don't expect us Perl users to get all excited about it.
Perhaps I have a slightly Perl-centric view... but apart from that I assure you that I'm sober.
> Not everything is webserving, man!
No, of course not. Quite the contrary: it's possible to get along very nicely without Apache if you don't have to have a web server. I'm not so sure about getting along without perl, however. Quite a few more things rely on perl than rely on Apache.
A lot of web-serving cgi wannabees have the impression that Perl is mostly an add-on for Apache; I contend it's the other way around: Apache is basically a really big XS module, an add-on for Perl. Sure, mod_perl is a very popular module, but not moreso than any other popular module. To put things in their proper perspective, mod_perl isn't even a core module, though it's probably one of the most popular non-core modules. (DBI is right up there too.) But it's not more important than Archive::Zip for example.
If its only advantage were installing all dependencies for you, it wouldn't be any better than urpmi or apt. CPAN is better, more advanced than that, able to configure things in ways that rpm can't. It's more closely comparable to portage, if anything, except that CPAN has the additional advantage of a very large and robust mirror system to draw from, and, obviously, that CPAN only has Perl stuff, so you have to already have any _other_ dependencies. (For example, CPAN can update your Perl GTK+ bindings for you, but it can't update GTK+ itself; it can update the DBD::mysql interface, but it can't install or update MySQL itself. This is actually a pretty major limitation, and the best reason I can think of to use any other package management system.)
> So once you get past that hurdle, I find the worst part about CPAN > is that some packages which everyone uses like mod_perl, DBI, and > DBD::mysql fail to install unless Apache was compiled the correct > way and currently running, or MYSQL is running and allows some > bullshit nameless user to access all databases (!)
For DBD::mysql, I think you can say no when it asks if you want to test. mod_perl is a problem if you don't have the Apache sources installed, and IMO the correct solution is to include Apache on CPAN and make mod_perl depend on it. After all, Apache is basically a really big XS module, right? Oh, that same approach could be taken for MySQL and other packages that, while they aren't part of perl per se, exist primarily to be used by perl.
> And also will allow it to be installed using normal tools like > apt, instead of screwed up tools that try 6 different protocols > to download, of which maybe 3 will work, the rest taking 60 > seconds to time out.
You must be using an old version, from before LWP was included. No problem, you can update. Do this:
> In fact, I'd go further and say that RPM is the primary tool of > a vast conspiracy plotted jointly by the Freemasons, the Zeta > Reticulans and the Bilderberg group.
No, you are mistaken. The Bilderberg group has nothing to do with it. The true ringleaders are the same nameless group who also mastermind the MVD/NSA/Bahrain connection.
Also, rpm is only their primary tool for one specific purpose (undermining OSS). They have plenty of other tools that they employ, to accomplish various nefarious purposes. For example, they also control the associated press.
He's exaggerating, but he has a point: CPAN is a *much* better package management solution than plain vanilla rpm. There are also tools that go on top of rpm and help somewhat with this, such as urpmi, but as yet none of the package repositories are anywhere near as robust as the CPAN system of mirrors. I have often wished that non-Perl packages were available via CPAN, though I certainly understand why they're not.
> please clue the cable companies and other ISPs in to the fact > there are far more email and internet clients available. > everytime I go to mine with a complaint that something isn't > working right (ie my cable modem has stopped working and there > is an external network problem), they go what software are you > using? and when I reply Linux, they go "sorry we don't support > that". So I go into ms-windows just for them and they can only > talk me through IE and Outlook/Outlook Express, anything else > just isn't on their script... and their first request after > I've gone into ms-windows for them is to turn off my firewall!!!
This is tier 1 support, designed to weed out the PEBCAK issues. Here's how you get past them: talk just a little bit fast, don't stop for interruptions, and ask questions they can't begin to understand, much less answer. For example, if you can reach the system directly upstream from you and nothing else, try to reach the dns, and when you can't, you've got something to call about:
Tier1: "foo.net tech support, may I help you?" You: "Yeah, I'm having a routing issue. I can ping the dialup
server at the other end of my ppp link, but I can't reach
the primary domain server. I tried to telnet to TCP port
53, but I got nothing, not even connection refused. I
tried a traceroute, but it wouldn't go past the second
hop. Is 209.143.57.55 the correct IP address?"
It doesn't matter that you know very well the domain server isn't related to the problem. What you said is true, and the tier1 guy should immediately sense that he's in over his head and transfer you to somebody with an ounce of clue. If he doesn't right away, you continue to talk over his head:
Tier1: "Umm, that sounds like a pretty weird problem. What software
are you using to connect?" You: "pppd, but the ppp connection itself is fine; I'm getting
160 millisecond ping times to the dialup server, which is
pretty normal; sometimes they're as much as 300 milliseconds
and everything works fine. The dialup server I'm connecting
through is at 10.0.18.7. I tried redialing to see if I
could get a different one, but that's the one I keep getting.
Can you ping 10.0.18.7 from your end?
And don't get too angry at the tier1 guys. If they weren't there, the real tech support people would have all gone clinically insane long ago and there'd be nobody left to help you with your problem.
> And if you can't stomach the thought of ditching ms and switching > to Linux/FreeBSD, then you could at least ditch those ridiculously > compromised default email and internet clients
Quite. Windows with Pegasus Mail and Netscape still has the occasional security issue, but it's *nothing* like a default setup. I've got disabling IE and OE on my checklist for installing new Windows systems, after I copy the CAB files to the hard drive and configure TCP/IP but before I export a backup copy of the registry.
> If you count worms that exploit only Linux, that have made it > very far in the wild, you could probably count them on one hand.
OTOH, if you count worms that exploit unix-like systems in general, you'll get a somewhat larger number. There have been quite a few worms over the years that spread through unix-based software such as sendmail. Naturally, most of them won't work on current versions.
Then again, that 50 number for Mac systems is low if you count historical viruses that would no longer work on modern Mac systems. Back in the day when all Macs still sported floppy drives and ran a single-user out of the box, there were quite a large number of Mac file viruses.
So if you only count malcode that's in the wild and will work on current versions... there aren't many, except for Windows.
> but there are end users out there who think that viruses affect > all platforms.
Quite. My boss just explained to her husband that just because he got a bunch of that fake-bounce virus email that's going around doesn't mean his Mac OS X system has a virus.
It's just checking (and reporting) whether the software in question _itself_ is infringing, right? I wouldn't call that spyware per se. Misguided, yes, but not spyware. It may be similar to spyware in some ways, but I'd classify it as overzealous copy pretection and let it go at that. Now, if one software package were checking for infringing copies of _other_ software, that would be spyware.
Slashdot Mirror
> Word is a virus delivery system as much as OE.
Word is less efficient as a delivery system because it does not
maintain an address book or connect to mail servers. Word viruses
rely on conventional copying and document sharing to spread, which
takes much longer.
Also, Word may have some annoying in-your-face features, but on the
whole it is a very capable word processing application; Outlook is
not a very capable email application. The list of standard features
it doesn't have is virtually endless -- that's not true of Word.
Summary: Word isn't perfect, but Outlook is a steaming heap of poo.
> Wake me up when grep, sed & awk and the rest of the bunch work
> on Unicode!
It's called Perl. It works on unicode (since 5.8 really, though
there was tenative unicode support in 5.6), and it has totally
obviated sed and awk -- and would have replaced grep too if grep
weren't too simple to need replacing.
At some point I intend to try out Plan9, just for the diversity of
exposure. I've read a little about it, and from what I read it seems
like it would be more interesting than practical, but I'd like to
actually try it out. Haven't GART yet though.
> On the other hand, I don't understand the "how" of this dog ever
> catching a mouse
It's all about ears: dogs hear well. You stand outside in the snow
with your head cocked just a little, and you listen. Mice tunnel
under the snow, and you can hear where they're running and where
the tunnels go. So then you go to the middle of one of the tunnels,
wait for the sound of a mouse coming along, and stick your muzzle
down through the snow and come up with the mouse. Easy, in theory.
I've seen it done numerous times, but I've never tried it myself.
> Tell your friends: Don't preview email. Delete email you don't
> know or trust. Don't open attachments if they're not absolutely
> known and expected Update early and often
No. Tell them go to www.pmail.com and get Pegasus Mail, and read
email with that. "Don't use Outlook. It's too dangerous."
> this week wasn't a problem for me or my family and friends.
Indeed. As for the Outlook virus, disabling Outlook is on my
checklist of things to do to any computer I have to support, so
I never have to deal with that issue. As for the other one, it
only runs on NT, and the only NT systems I have to touch are four
XP boxes at work: two of them aren't normally connected to the
internet, and the other two are up to date and have NAV.
I did have something creep onto the network over CIFS a few weeks
ago and had to figure out why and fix that (by rebinding NetBIOS
to only route over IPX/SPX not TCP/IP -- which is done differently
in Win98 versus in WinXP and isn't terribly intuitive in either).
Ultimately, I want to get all the Windows boxes at work behind
one-to-many NAT. (The family Win98 box at home is already behind
an IP Masquerade gateway.) Then I only have to worry about buggy
client software, which is chiefly MSOE and to a lesser extent MSIE,
neither of which we use.
I've messed around a little with Bochs, but it's pretty alpha still,
and it's not trivial to get it to work with anything other than the
provided image (FreeDOS, wasn't it?). Windows on a Mac? I'd quote
the price of VirtualPC. Less messing around.
> You Linux guys can't see beyond the end of your pocket protectors.
> Go ahead. Set up your families with Linux boxes.
I wish I had, when I first set them up with a computer a couple of
years ago. A Duron 750 being such a vast improvement over a 486SX33,
they would have switched, grown accustomed to it. But no, I had to
be an idiot and get them Win98SE.
I have a plan for getting them switched, though: wait until the
Duron 750 is as hopelessly obsolete as the 486 was when I built
the Duron system, then build them a *second* computer. Let them
keep the existing Win98 install on the Duron, but also have
something decent running on newer hardware. It's too soon just
now, as the Duron is still competitive, but give it a while...
This approach of course will not work on people who go out and buy
their own computer.
> yeah actually since we are on the topic it is woz's fault for
> making computers accessable
Herring. Dark pink. Outlook Express is *less* accessible to the
end user, *harder* to learn to use, than other email clients that
existed sooner (e.g., Pegasus Mail). Yet in the history of
computing Outlook is the *only* known, documented case of any email
application being the medium for transmission of a virus. There
is absolutely *zero* reason for a mailreader to behave the way it
does (automatically executing received content); other mailreaders
that are even easier to use don't do it that way, because there is
no *reason* to do it that way. Of all Microsoft programs ever,
no other is so much a plague and a nuissance as Outlook. Without
reservation I can say that the world would be a better place if
Outlook had never been developed.
> not to mention most distro's dont leave 45 uneccasary things
> running by default
Oh, yes, yes they do. However, most of those 45 things aren't
internet servers listening on ports for external connections, and
most of them don't consume any appreciable resources either, as
they sleep almost all the time. (And, of course, they're only
unnecessary if you don't happen to use them, but that's also true
for Windows.)
> Linux is more secure because a lot of stuff is configurable.
/. article a while back about
There is truth here. Remember the
how it's hard to find a stock build of Apache in the wild because
all the distros add stuff or make changes? There've been several
security advisories relevant to Apache in the last year, but though
I have Apache running on several systems I was impacted by exactly
zero of them, apart from having to read the security advisory to
determine whether I needed to be concerned.
Configuring options rather than being happy with defaults is not a
magic tonic to solve every problem, but it is a contributing factor
to security.
Exchange rates don't mirror cost of living, necessarily. The Aussie
buck isn't worth as much as the US buck on the international market,
but that isn't because the Aussie buck won't buy as much, locally,
as the US buck will buy in the US.
An example: the exchange rate between where I live (Galion Ohio)
and lower Manhattan is 1:1 -- one dollar from here is worth exactly
one dollar from there. Yet, an entire family here can live on less
money per month than the rent of a two-room apartment there.
The exchange rates do have an impact on the cost of living, as they
have an impact on the cost of some items, but not everything is
priced proportionally.
Here, $10/hour is a decent wage for a single person in a blue-collar
or entry-level position. I take home about that amount after taxes,
working as an entry-level computer troubleshooter (basically, a
one-man part-time IT department at a place too small to have a
full-time IT department), but a professional programmer would
certainly make more than that (except, I doubt if we have any in
the area). Fourty minutes' drive south of here there's a big
white-collar area (Worthington/Westerville, suburbs of Columbus --
conference complexes, marketing firms, shopping malls, and
three-quarter-million-dollar houses[1] as far as the eye can see)
where someone in a position equivalent to mine would make triple
my wage and struggle to get along. Rent is much higher there;
food costs more; everything costs more. A lot of people live up
this way and commute to work down there.
[1] Nobody would build a house that expensive in Galion, because
it wouldn't have resale value. We have a sparse handful of
houses in town worth two hundred thousand or a little more.
Part of it is that the land here is much cheaper.
> The P in LAMP is php, not perl.
I tried php, but the documentation was... well, let's just say I
got tired of breathless hype about how wonderful it was to have
certain astonishingly amazingly great features that I've been taking
for granted for years in other languages (not just Perl, but lisp
and even BASIC), that I got disgusted and gave it up. I suppose
the language itself might be okay, but the documentation put a foul
taste in my mouth.
> MySQL is used in so many more environments than perl
Yeah, right. Why is it then that Perl is part of the must-install
core in virtually every major OS distribution, and MySQL is an
optional package in all of them?
> Apache also is used by many
I was partly joking, of course. Surely you've heard of this concept
called humor? However, there was a significant amount of seriousness
in what I said also -- not that I think Apache or MySQL are only used
by people who actively write Perl (I know better than that, of
course) but more that among the target audience of CPAN (i.e.,
people who do actively write Perl) the uses of Apache and MySQL
generally revolve around Perl.
> dynamic content not generated with perl but with java
This is a Perl thread, right? So doesn't that make it okay to
discuss it from a Perl-centric perspective? Where am I going
wrong here?
Why do people who use Java care what's on CPAN? Tell them to
get their own archive network, and it can be as java-centric as
they care to make it, and we (Perl users) can happily ignore it.
And if the Python people want to distribute Apache with Python
support as a Python package (or whatever they call modules in
Python land) that's fine too, just don't expect us Perl users to
get all excited about it.
> WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU SMOKING???
Perhaps I have a slightly Perl-centric view... but apart from
that I assure you that I'm sober.
> Not everything is webserving, man!
No, of course not. Quite the contrary: it's possible to get along
very nicely without Apache if you don't have to have a web server.
I'm not so sure about getting along without perl, however. Quite a
few more things rely on perl than rely on Apache.
A lot of web-serving cgi wannabees have the impression that Perl
is mostly an add-on for Apache; I contend it's the other way around:
Apache is basically a really big XS module, an add-on for Perl.
Sure, mod_perl is a very popular module, but not moreso than any
other popular module. To put things in their proper perspective,
mod_perl isn't even a core module, though it's probably one of the
most popular non-core modules. (DBI is right up there too.) But
it's not more important than Archive::Zip for example.
If its only advantage were installing all dependencies for you, it
wouldn't be any better than urpmi or apt. CPAN is better, more
advanced than that, able to configure things in ways that rpm can't.
It's more closely comparable to portage, if anything, except that
CPAN has the additional advantage of a very large and robust mirror
system to draw from, and, obviously, that CPAN only has Perl stuff,
so you have to already have any _other_ dependencies. (For example,
CPAN can update your Perl GTK+ bindings for you, but it can't update
GTK+ itself; it can update the DBD::mysql interface, but it can't
install or update MySQL itself. This is actually a pretty major
limitation, and the best reason I can think of to use any other
package management system.)
> So once you get past that hurdle, I find the worst part about CPAN
> is that some packages which everyone uses like mod_perl, DBI, and
> DBD::mysql fail to install unless Apache was compiled the correct
> way and currently running, or MYSQL is running and allows some
> bullshit nameless user to access all databases (!)
For DBD::mysql, I think you can say no when it asks if you want to
test. mod_perl is a problem if you don't have the Apache sources
installed, and IMO the correct solution is to include Apache on
CPAN and make mod_perl depend on it. After all, Apache is basically
a really big XS module, right? Oh, that same approach could be
taken for MySQL and other packages that, while they aren't part of
perl per se, exist primarily to be used by perl.
> And also will allow it to be installed using normal tools like
> apt, instead of screwed up tools that try 6 different protocols
> to download, of which maybe 3 will work, the rest taking 60
> seconds to time out.
You must be using an old version, from before LWP was included.
No problem, you can update. Do this:
perl -MCPAN -e 'install Bundle::CPAN'
That'll fix you right up.
> portinstall -v p5-DateTime-Format-ISO8601
How is this different from (or better than)
perl -MCPAN -e 'install DateTime::Format::ISO8601'
> In fact, I'd go further and say that RPM is the primary tool of
> a vast conspiracy plotted jointly by the Freemasons, the Zeta
> Reticulans and the Bilderberg group.
No, you are mistaken. The Bilderberg group has nothing to do with
it. The true ringleaders are the same nameless group who also
mastermind the MVD/NSA/Bahrain connection.
Also, rpm is only their primary tool for one specific purpose
(undermining OSS). They have plenty of other tools that they
employ, to accomplish various nefarious purposes. For example,
they also control the associated press.
He's exaggerating, but he has a point: CPAN is a *much* better
package management solution than plain vanilla rpm. There are also
tools that go on top of rpm and help somewhat with this, such as
urpmi, but as yet none of the package repositories are anywhere near
as robust as the CPAN system of mirrors. I have often wished that
non-Perl packages were available via CPAN, though I certainly
understand why they're not.
> please clue the cable companies and other ISPs in to the fact
> there are far more email and internet clients available.
> everytime I go to mine with a complaint that something isn't
> working right (ie my cable modem has stopped working and there
> is an external network problem), they go what software are you
> using? and when I reply Linux, they go "sorry we don't support
> that". So I go into ms-windows just for them and they can only
> talk me through IE and Outlook/Outlook Express, anything else
> just isn't on their script... and their first request after
> I've gone into ms-windows for them is to turn off my firewall!!!
This is tier 1 support, designed to weed out the PEBCAK issues.
Here's how you get past them: talk just a little bit fast, don't
stop for interruptions, and ask questions they can't begin to
understand, much less answer. For example, if you can reach the
system directly upstream from you and nothing else, try to reach
the dns, and when you can't, you've got something to call about:
Tier1: "foo.net tech support, may I help you?"
You: "Yeah, I'm having a routing issue. I can ping the dialup
server at the other end of my ppp link, but I can't reach
the primary domain server. I tried to telnet to TCP port
53, but I got nothing, not even connection refused. I
tried a traceroute, but it wouldn't go past the second
hop. Is 209.143.57.55 the correct IP address?"
It doesn't matter that you know very well the domain server isn't
related to the problem. What you said is true, and the tier1 guy
should immediately sense that he's in over his head and transfer you
to somebody with an ounce of clue. If he doesn't right away, you
continue to talk over his head:
Tier1: "Umm, that sounds like a pretty weird problem. What software
are you using to connect?"
You: "pppd, but the ppp connection itself is fine; I'm getting
160 millisecond ping times to the dialup server, which is
pretty normal; sometimes they're as much as 300 milliseconds
and everything works fine. The dialup server I'm connecting
through is at 10.0.18.7. I tried redialing to see if I
could get a different one, but that's the one I keep getting.
Can you ping 10.0.18.7 from your end?
And don't get too angry at the tier1 guys. If they weren't there,
the real tech support people would have all gone clinically insane
long ago and there'd be nobody left to help you with your problem.
> And if you can't stomach the thought of ditching ms and switching
> to Linux/FreeBSD, then you could at least ditch those ridiculously
> compromised default email and internet clients
Quite. Windows with Pegasus Mail and Netscape still has the
occasional security issue, but it's *nothing* like a default setup.
I've got disabling IE and OE on my checklist for installing new
Windows systems, after I copy the CAB files to the hard drive and
configure TCP/IP but before I export a backup copy of the registry.
> At least I don't let them use Outlook.
That's half the battle, right there.
I won't let Outlook anywhere near any network I have to administer.
Windows, okay, if there's a specific reason, but not Outlook.
> If you count worms that exploit only Linux, that have made it
> very far in the wild, you could probably count them on one hand.
OTOH, if you count worms that exploit unix-like systems in general,
you'll get a somewhat larger number. There have been quite a few
worms over the years that spread through unix-based software such
as sendmail. Naturally, most of them won't work on current versions.
Then again, that 50 number for Mac systems is low if you count
historical viruses that would no longer work on modern Mac systems.
Back in the day when all Macs still sported floppy drives and ran
a single-user out of the box, there were quite a large number of
Mac file viruses.
So if you only count malcode that's in the wild and will work
on current versions... there aren't many, except for Windows.
> but there are end users out there who think that viruses affect
> all platforms.
Quite. My boss just explained to her husband that just because he
got a bunch of that fake-bounce virus email that's going around
doesn't mean his Mac OS X system has a virus.
It's just checking (and reporting) whether the software in question
_itself_ is infringing, right? I wouldn't call that spyware per se.
Misguided, yes, but not spyware. It may be similar to spyware in
some ways, but I'd classify it as overzealous copy pretection and
let it go at that. Now, if one software package were checking for
infringing copies of _other_ software, that would be spyware.