Re:Minority OS, Minority music tastes...
on
IT's Musical Habits
·
· Score: 1
For female vocalists, I should throw in Aretha Franklin & Eva Cassidy as faves of mine also which probably makes my tastes even more extreme, although I know little of Norah Jones' music.
What's worse is that these people are probably the same that let their kids run wild in the streets, binge drink, get pregnant and terrorise decent law abiding citizens with anti-social behaviour.
If we're talking child abuse then we should also mention kids that are allowed to live their lives in bedrooms watching TV and playing games consoles by uncaring parents rather thenparents spending time with them, giving them the opportunity to interract with adults on a day-to-day basis more - they then learn social responsibility by example.
Minority OS, Minority music tastes...
on
IT's Musical Habits
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Linux geek, support-type engineer.
Prog-rock/metal/blues tastes:
Eloy, Nektar, AC/DC, Rammstein, Stevie Ray Vaughan, George Thorogood.
Well I think we should all care since quite a bit of the net is driven by ads.
My approach to advertising is very black & white:
1. Corporations rip us off by lying to us through advertisements. If someone rips off the corporations with some ingenuity and stays within the law then good luck to them with my blessing.
2. I turn on my TV, there's adverts. I turn on my radio, there's adverts. I read a magazine or newspaper, there's adverts. I buy a DVD and at the beginning there's trailers (=adverts). Hell, I even fill my car up at the petrol station and if I don't look at the TV screen overhead playing adverts at me, I stare down at the petrol pump nozzle and on the 3" diameter circle on the top, there's an... wait for it... advert (usually for a bar of chocolate).
Hey, I'm a capitalist scum consumer just like the rest of you but if my girlfriend went on at me as much as advertisements do, I'd have left her by now.
My greatest fear is not death but arriving at the gates of Heaven only to see a "Sponsored by Coca Cola sign on them."
Why? Because they were hosted in a jurisdiction which does not outlaw the sale of kiddieporn. Hence, the credit card companies can legally give them service.
In which case the media would be better employed publicising the fact that these credit card companies support web sites that distribute this material - while it may be legal in certain countries, I cannot see many people wanting to use a credit card that made money from these sites where it is illegal.
Hit corporations in their profits, then they will listen.
But what really sums up the mentality of much of the UK "Joe Public" was a news article about a sex offender who had been moved onto a residential estate somewhere - probably a council estate but I won't be deliberately class discriminatory.
Residents on the estate were up in arms about it and were walking about with placards near the offender's home. The placard nearest the reporter's camera had the words "Out with the pedofile" on it. (Yes, my spelling of it is exactly as it appeared.)
This sums up the "thug" mentality that our government likes to provoke - get the half-wits in our nation rallying around a common cause by blowing it up out of all proportion. While everyone's distracted, get some less popular stuff through the law books.
Let me say from the outset that I have no interest in this material and that the perpetrators of it should be given the toughest jail sentences possible.
However, I find it equally disturbing that a corporation has taken it upon themselves to act as a censor for this material because, as far as I am concerned, these mechanisms are only ever put in place by private companies with shareholders if there is money to be made from it. In this instance, it has been done by BT to portray themselves as a "family-friendly" ISP in order to get more subscribers - therefore, by logical deduction, BT are making money from child pr0n.
Like 99.999% of Internet users, I am a responsible adult and I have known what is "right" and "wrong" since about the age of 7. I do not need some money-making corporation censoring me, thanks very much, I'm capable of doing that myself.
Also, why do we never hear about litigation against credit card companies? I understand that the majority of these sites require credit card access and that the providers of that material have registered with those credit cards in the first place. So what are Amex, Visa, Mastercard, etc doing about allowing their services to be used to purchase this material? What self-regulation do the credit card companies apply to themselves?
I would finally add that the whole child pr0n issue is overblown anyway (to "Keep us living in fear" as Michael Moore would say). The stigma attached to being labelled as a user of this material is so great (in the UK we have a "Sex Offenders List" now) that anybody who is seriously into this material (therefore requiring psychological help) surely knows how to distribute it in far more secure ways than a public web site!
With there power they could really influence the Open Source community in any direction they want.
No way! To most people within the OSS community, MS represents the complete antithesis of what they are doing and has a terrible reputation to boot. Do you *really* think the OSS community will listen to anything Microsoft has to say?
It may well be that if Microsoft made some of its products Open Source, people within the community will start to pay attention to them - but that will never happen because MS is as closed source as any organisation can ever be and the thought of giving anything away freely (unless it's to make profits in the long term) is beyone their comprehension.
OSS exists *despite* Microsoft, it makes no difference what MS do now or in the future.
The first step is to port Office to linux
It will *never* happen because Office is one of the core applications that stops people migrating to Linux in their masses. It would be a poor business decision for them to make - besides, the OSS community does not need it; OpenOffice is coming along in leaps and bounds and I doubt there are many applications the Linux community would readily pay for anyway. I myself am far too used to getting free source code myself and compiling it the way I want it rather than just accepting closed binaries that I've paid for.
it's already working on mac os X
Only because OS X exists in addition to Windows. You can guarantee that if Mac usage ever seriously bites into the Windows market, development of Office on Mac would cease - again, a business decision.
Then you make a killer GUI that will smash Apple's aqua to bits and finaly stopping all those switchers from the x86.
It is not just about GUIs. Why waste processing resource driving a GUI on a server that provides, say, a mail server and/or web server?
A GUI is an environment in exactly the same way a shell is - therefore, if people have the choice of using Bourne, Korn, C, BASH, etc. shells in Linux, it also makes sense to let them have GUI choices. This is why the OSS community has Gnome, KDS, XFCE, Blackbox, etc, etc so that users can decide what GUIs are suitable.
Then when they are the employers of 90% of the linux kernel coders
Does it not strike you as logical to assume that if so many developers currently give their time freely to OSS projects, that perhaps they are simply people who are not interested in the one thing Microsoft can offer them - namely money?
Just accept that any programmer would love to be paid highly for working on projects they enjoy doing but that even if they aren't paid, they still get the buzz of doing a good job for the right reasons.
And they can become the biggest distro:D.
Again, it will never happen. The OSS community exists despite Microsoft and I doubt many of the existing Linux users would bother with an over-hyped MS Linux, in the same way they've not bothered with the hype around Linspire.
It might attract some users to Linux but MS will have Windows as long as it exists - the concept of giving away anything for free is beyond MS.
Writing a script to have a recorded message play for every VoIP number would be as trivial as pumping out a million e-mails.
Yes, trivial but if you think that making a VoIP call will ever be truly free of charge, think again. You'll still need to register yourself with a service provider such that you have the capability to make a receive calls from anywhere in the world.
(Trust me, I'm heavily involved in the VoIP business currently!)
While I don't know if SIP is ultimately the core registration technology that will drive VoIP, the fact that each call will cost *some* money means that it will not be used for sending out millions of random calls across the globe.
Even telemarketing calls aren't random - they're a nuisance but the people making them have invested some time and technology to target you specifically - spam is just random mailing that's done primarily because it costs no money to do it.
I don't think it's fair to compare a traditional UNIX system to a Windows one because you're simply not going to see, say, Solaris or HP-UX used much outside of the corporate Intranet or ISP-level servers.
As for Linux (a fair comparison at this level), I've not used boxed distros for years (Gentoo user) but I don't recall many of the recent distros having much in the way of networking daemons installed by default - sure, you can select to install them from the start but they do require direct selection.
Again, I could be wrong here because of not using boxed distros, but I know Red Hat allows high, medium or low security settings at initial installation which I *thought* just started up an appropriately configured ipchains/iptables firewall at that point.
It's an interesting argument but I think if Linux gets to the point where it's a real target for virus propagation then it will be a completely different "animal" to what it is today with only one or two "fixed" distros in use - unlikely, IMHO.
It'll be a conduit for telemarketing as traditional telphony is at the moment - but I think it's unlikely to be used for spam.
Don't forget that email is generally sent free of charge by an ISP - with VoIP, there will need to be service providers who will, no doubt, levy a (small) charge for each call made. That alone should deter spammers.
Several things not mentioned in the article:
on
VoIP Questioned
·
· Score: 2, Informative
1. With the introduction of SIP technology, the ability to create "phonebooks" is just a natural extension - after all, if a central server knows where you are registered to and what IP telephony capabilities you have, integrating that into a centrallised on-line database should not be too difficult.
2. If the VoIP world goes the way of SIP then for it to truly work will require SIP service providers so that you can connect transparently to VoIP networks from any point in the world. Presumably there will be a charge for this service from those providers who will, in turn record customer account detailes and "numbers" no differently to the way traditional PSTN service providers do.
3. Even though there is no centralised email database, this does not stop someone who I want to email me (as well as others who I don't want to email me!) from getting in contact simply by handing out my email address to the appropriate people.
This can only happen on a poorly-configured windows system.
I accept that but would argue that a Windows system comes "out of the box" poorly configured for security.
Also, take a script on UNIX/Linux and it's permissions are determined purely by the user who ran it, hopefully not root - therefore its effect on the system must be limited.
On Windows, you can disable ActiveX and VB scripts from running, for example, but I do not know of a way of running them safely with limited permissions. (I possibly bow to your greater knowledge of Windows security here.)
Finally, I'd ask you to consider Windows user general mentality anyway. Most home user types are going to be running their systems at home with Admministrator accounts or with themselves set as Administrators for everything they do. On the otherhand, UNIX people do what they can at their own user levels while only resorting to root to do what they need to at that time.
All of these facts illustrate how a virus/trojan program has more (potentially) devastating effects on a Windows system than a UNIX one.
...which were on the Windows version of Mozilla only. Yes, it was a Mozilla problem but the architecture of Windows allowed the hole to be exploited.
We have Linux security issues, and as the OS gains popularity, we will start to see virii for it. It will happen.
Yes, we have Linux security issues, no denying that because Linux is software and software is insecure.
No, we will definitely not see widespread Linux viruses. Here's the reasons:
1. Viruses attack very specific security holes in very specific product versions. The fact that 90% of Internet PC users run Windows, IE & Outlook (Express) creates a perfect community for viruses to spread. In Linux, certain applications (like, say, Mozilla) are very common but spread those over the myriads of different distro versions and the number of common platforms (down to specific library & application version levels) decreases dramatically very quickly.
2. Windows is built with a major security flaw in as much as certain core system applications always have full access to the system. Therefore, if a virus attacks via an application, it can get system-wide permissions. On a poorly administered Linux system, this can also happen but the tendency now is to run applications at a user account level, rather than at root level. Most users are also educated enough not to run constantly as root. Therefore, assuming that you are running a common application version (in 1. above), the effect will be limited by permissions if everything is running as a normal user account.
3. Linux is so customisable that it is relatively straightforward to create a very tightly secure distribution "out of the box". There is in-built kernel-based firewalling, for example and unneeded services are left turned off very easily.
4. The average Linux user is far more Internet-savvy than the average Windows user - and that's not, in any way, devaluing some of the very knowledgeable Windows people that I do work with, for example - but average Joe Bloke at home runs Windows & only tries Linux when he starts to feel like he knows a little more about how PCs and networks actually work.
To put things in perspective a little, UNIX-type systems are susceptible to directed buffer-overflow type attacks where the intruder has done some homework, scanned a particular server, worked out what daemons it runs and then what versions of daemons he/she can attack. That's why good UNIX sysadmining is knowing what daemons to run and keeping them patched to the latest versions.
But please be under no illusions - the architecture of Linux is simply not designed to allow transmission of viruses. The only time this could ever happen is if a high proportion of Linux users ran the same distro version and very common applications.
Yes, but if somebody gets hold of your passwords, you can only litigate against yourself!
Unfortunately, the world of today is filled with too many sheep who are far too willing to hand over their personal responsibilities over to a corporation or government entity to control.
Still, I guess Internet-law lawyers are rubbing their hands with anticipation...
Why do we have this same old argument raging yet again and why is the finger of "lack of usability" always pointed at Open Source?
The perception that all software should be intuitive and 100% usable the moment you unwrap the shrink-wrap is an incorrect one & has been created as a result of heavy over-marketing by commercial software vendors in order to generate more sales.
Sure, I accept that if Joe Bloke buys himself a digital camera, he wants to load some software from a CD on his Windows machine, plug his camera into the USB port and start downloading his images to his PC for editing.
But the fact is that the majority of normal users still believe the hype that when you buy a PC, it's no different to buying, say, a TV where all you do is just switch it on and it works. There is no mention by the PC salesman of having to perform regular defrags, keep the OS updated, update virus checkers, install firewalls, etc.
Just because a piece of software takes some time to familiarise oneself with, does not mean that it is unintuitive - if anything, results are far more rewarding when one has put in a little effort to achieve them.
The UNIX/Linux command line philosophy, for example, is frequently targetted for "lack of usability" complaints. However, the fact is that taking the time to understand what programs are on a UNIX system and how to bolt them together in things like shell-scripts means that some very repetitive and boring tasks can be completely eliminated very quickly.
The Open Source movement is not about trying to compete with, or displace, Microsoft - it is simply about doing the right thing which means sticking to open standards that all of us can enjoy (rather than closed standards that we pay a subscription for). Therefore, the creation of cohesive GUIs for software is not the prime concern of the OSS community, albeit that the same are receptive to feedback from users of their software.
Commercial software vendors have to make profits which means listening to their users and rushing their software out to the marketplace - therefore, in the case of Windows software, those same vendors will use the Windows GUI libraries for their software, cutting down on development time and fitting in with the Windows "look & feel".
I'm not denying that OSS software is viewed by some as "difficult to use" - but this should be taken into context that OSS demands a degree of responsibility and time commitment from each user to learn how the software works and to feed back into the developers what the user perceives to be problems with the functionality or layout of the software.
We are probably arguing from opposite sides of the fence because you seem to be more console knowledgeable while I come more from a home computer perspective like the Amiga, Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum.
Yes, many of those games on those platforms were direct arcade conversions and therefore "quick fix" type games of blasting everything on the screen.
However, I can remember games like Lords Of Midnight on the ZX Spectrum occupying me for weeks on end, Elite stealing a large proportion of my life on several platforms, and even early PC/Amiga games like Dungeon Master, Eye Of The Beholder, Sim City etc. all engaging me for very long periods of time.
I do agree that a high proportion of users are very gullible and, with the number of games magazines, Internet sites and gaming TV shows today, there is no excuse for those people not to be better informed before making games purchases.
SuSE is probably the best all-round "out-of-box" Linux distribution IMHO but I think it's unfair to make direct comparisons with Gentoo.
People, like me, that use Gentoo do so because we want a high degree of customisation and system optimisation and, in the longer term, because upgrading involves emerging applications on a reasonably regular basis as opposed to doing a complete upgrade when a new boxed distro is released.
It's just a matter of requirements and there's room for both type of Linux user in the world.
Unfortunately, the whole games industry these days is *just* about money-making.
The thing about consoles is that every company that makes a console prices it at a loss to themselves, on the basis of a gamble that the buyer of a console will buy "x" games a year wherein the loss will be made up.
This must, in turn, reflect on the types and number of games that are made for a console - after all, does any console manufacturer want an owner of one of their consoles playing the same game for many months on end without either completing it or giving up in a much shorter time period? After all, this means they are then ready to go out and buy the next game title.
Consequently, the whole games market is no longer based purely upon innovative games (unlike the good old 8- and 16-bit days) but on "estimated sales" and "typical user profiles" - this is why popular titles are re-released with better graphics and why, in general, a large number of games that *should* play longer just don't (even on the PC).
My only console is a Gamecube with about a half-dozen games but I've noticed that on PC titles, the playing time of FPSes seems to be shortening as time goes on - for example, Duke Nukem & Half-Life took me a week or so to complete but Star Trek Elite Force 1 & 2 I completed in less than 2 evenings each.
On the basis that "graphics do not necessarily a good game make", this begins to explain why retrogaming is so popular now - sure, there were good and bad titles then also but I'm always amazed how some games that fit on a single floppy disk actually take longer to complete than a modern game that fills up a 4GB DVD!
Slashdot Mirror
For female vocalists, I should throw in Aretha Franklin & Eva Cassidy as faves of mine also which probably makes my tastes even more extreme, although I know little of Norah Jones' music.
If we're talking child abuse then we should also mention kids that are allowed to live their lives in bedrooms watching TV and playing games consoles by uncaring parents rather thenparents spending time with them, giving them the opportunity to interract with adults on a day-to-day basis more - they then learn social responsibility by example.
Prog-rock/metal/blues tastes:
Eloy, Nektar, AC/DC, Rammstein, Stevie Ray Vaughan, George Thorogood.
Now haven't you got to go off, take half your clothes off and mime to a plastic dance song into a camera for 3 minutes?
My approach to advertising is very black & white:
1. Corporations rip us off by lying to us through advertisements. If someone rips off the corporations with some ingenuity and stays within the law then good luck to them with my blessing.
2. I turn on my TV, there's adverts. I turn on my radio, there's adverts. I read a magazine or newspaper, there's adverts. I buy a DVD and at the beginning there's trailers (=adverts). Hell, I even fill my car up at the petrol station and if I don't look at the TV screen overhead playing adverts at me, I stare down at the petrol pump nozzle and on the 3" diameter circle on the top, there's an... wait for it... advert (usually for a bar of chocolate).
Hey, I'm a capitalist scum consumer just like the rest of you but if my girlfriend went on at me as much as advertisements do, I'd have left her by now.
My greatest fear is not death but arriving at the gates of Heaven only to see a "Sponsored by Coca Cola sign on them."
A guy you've never met walks up to you, extends his hand and says "Hi. I'm George. I work for Google's Anti-Click Fraud Squad".
What do you do?
a. Say "Excuse me" and quickly go find Malcolm, the accountant with halitosis you avoided earlier.
b. Poke George in the eye.
c. Retire to the kitchen for another beer.
d. Not lose any sleep that night over George's revelations as to how Ad-Fraud denies corporations valuable profits.
2. Get a life.
3. Here's the IP address of someone that gives a shit - 1.2.3.4.
In which case the media would be better employed publicising the fact that these credit card companies support web sites that distribute this material - while it may be legal in certain countries, I cannot see many people wanting to use a credit card that made money from these sites where it is illegal.
Hit corporations in their profits, then they will listen.
But what really sums up the mentality of much of the UK "Joe Public" was a news article about a sex offender who had been moved onto a residential estate somewhere - probably a council estate but I won't be deliberately class discriminatory.
Residents on the estate were up in arms about it and were walking about with placards near the offender's home. The placard nearest the reporter's camera had the words "Out with the pedofile" on it. (Yes, my spelling of it is exactly as it appeared.)
This sums up the "thug" mentality that our government likes to provoke - get the half-wits in our nation rallying around a common cause by blowing it up out of all proportion. While everyone's distracted, get some less popular stuff through the law books.
However, I find it equally disturbing that a corporation has taken it upon themselves to act as a censor for this material because, as far as I am concerned, these mechanisms are only ever put in place by private companies with shareholders if there is money to be made from it. In this instance, it has been done by BT to portray themselves as a "family-friendly" ISP in order to get more subscribers - therefore, by logical deduction, BT are making money from child pr0n.
Like 99.999% of Internet users, I am a responsible adult and I have known what is "right" and "wrong" since about the age of 7. I do not need some money-making corporation censoring me, thanks very much, I'm capable of doing that myself.
Also, why do we never hear about litigation against credit card companies? I understand that the majority of these sites require credit card access and that the providers of that material have registered with those credit cards in the first place. So what are Amex, Visa, Mastercard, etc doing about allowing their services to be used to purchase this material? What self-regulation do the credit card companies apply to themselves?
I would finally add that the whole child pr0n issue is overblown anyway (to "Keep us living in fear" as Michael Moore would say). The stigma attached to being labelled as a user of this material is so great (in the UK we have a "Sex Offenders List" now) that anybody who is seriously into this material (therefore requiring psychological help) surely knows how to distribute it in far more secure ways than a public web site!
Sheesh! No wonder MS never get anything fixed...
No way! To most people within the OSS community, MS represents the complete antithesis of what they are doing and has a terrible reputation to boot. Do you *really* think the OSS community will listen to anything Microsoft has to say?
It may well be that if Microsoft made some of its products Open Source, people within the community will start to pay attention to them - but that will never happen because MS is as closed source as any organisation can ever be and the thought of giving anything away freely (unless it's to make profits in the long term) is beyone their comprehension.
OSS exists *despite* Microsoft, it makes no difference what MS do now or in the future.
The first step is to port Office to linux
It will *never* happen because Office is one of the core applications that stops people migrating to Linux in their masses. It would be a poor business decision for them to make - besides, the OSS community does not need it; OpenOffice is coming along in leaps and bounds and I doubt there are many applications the Linux community would readily pay for anyway. I myself am far too used to getting free source code myself and compiling it the way I want it rather than just accepting closed binaries that I've paid for.
it's already working on mac os X
Only because OS X exists in addition to Windows. You can guarantee that if Mac usage ever seriously bites into the Windows market, development of Office on Mac would cease - again, a business decision. Then you make a killer GUI that will smash Apple's aqua to bits and finaly stopping all those switchers from the x86.
It is not just about GUIs. Why waste processing resource driving a GUI on a server that provides, say, a mail server and/or web server?
A GUI is an environment in exactly the same way a shell is - therefore, if people have the choice of using Bourne, Korn, C, BASH, etc. shells in Linux, it also makes sense to let them have GUI choices. This is why the OSS community has Gnome, KDS, XFCE, Blackbox, etc, etc so that users can decide what GUIs are suitable.
Then when they are the employers of 90% of the linux kernel coders
Does it not strike you as logical to assume that if so many developers currently give their time freely to OSS projects, that perhaps they are simply people who are not interested in the one thing Microsoft can offer them - namely money?
Just accept that any programmer would love to be paid highly for working on projects they enjoy doing but that even if they aren't paid, they still get the buzz of doing a good job for the right reasons.
And they can become the biggest distro :D.
Again, it will never happen. The OSS community exists despite Microsoft and I doubt many of the existing Linux users would bother with an over-hyped MS Linux, in the same way they've not bothered with the hype around Linspire.
It might attract some users to Linux but MS will have Windows as long as it exists - the concept of giving away anything for free is beyond MS.
Yes, trivial but if you think that making a VoIP call will ever be truly free of charge, think again. You'll still need to register yourself with a service provider such that you have the capability to make a receive calls from anywhere in the world. (Trust me, I'm heavily involved in the VoIP business currently!)
While I don't know if SIP is ultimately the core registration technology that will drive VoIP, the fact that each call will cost *some* money means that it will not be used for sending out millions of random calls across the globe.
Even telemarketing calls aren't random - they're a nuisance but the people making them have invested some time and technology to target you specifically - spam is just random mailing that's done primarily because it costs no money to do it.
As for Linux (a fair comparison at this level), I've not used boxed distros for years (Gentoo user) but I don't recall many of the recent distros having much in the way of networking daemons installed by default - sure, you can select to install them from the start but they do require direct selection.
Again, I could be wrong here because of not using boxed distros, but I know Red Hat allows high, medium or low security settings at initial installation which I *thought* just started up an appropriately configured ipchains/iptables firewall at that point.
It's an interesting argument but I think if Linux gets to the point where it's a real target for virus propagation then it will be a completely different "animal" to what it is today with only one or two "fixed" distros in use - unlikely, IMHO.
It'll be a conduit for telemarketing as traditional telphony is at the moment - but I think it's unlikely to be used for spam.
Don't forget that email is generally sent free of charge by an ISP - with VoIP, there will need to be service providers who will, no doubt, levy a (small) charge for each call made. That alone should deter spammers.
2. If the VoIP world goes the way of SIP then for it to truly work will require SIP service providers so that you can connect transparently to VoIP networks from any point in the world. Presumably there will be a charge for this service from those providers who will, in turn record customer account detailes and "numbers" no differently to the way traditional PSTN service providers do.
3. Even though there is no centralised email database, this does not stop someone who I want to email me (as well as others who I don't want to email me!) from getting in contact simply by handing out my email address to the appropriate people.
I accept that but would argue that a Windows system comes "out of the box" poorly configured for security.
Also, take a script on UNIX/Linux and it's permissions are determined purely by the user who ran it, hopefully not root - therefore its effect on the system must be limited.
On Windows, you can disable ActiveX and VB scripts from running, for example, but I do not know of a way of running them safely with limited permissions. (I possibly bow to your greater knowledge of Windows security here.)
Finally, I'd ask you to consider Windows user general mentality anyway. Most home user types are going to be running their systems at home with Admministrator accounts or with themselves set as Administrators for everything they do. On the otherhand, UNIX people do what they can at their own user levels while only resorting to root to do what they need to at that time.
All of these facts illustrate how a virus/trojan program has more (potentially) devastating effects on a Windows system than a UNIX one.
We have Linux security issues, and as the OS gains popularity, we will start to see virii for it. It will happen.
Yes, we have Linux security issues, no denying that because Linux is software and software is insecure.
No, we will definitely not see widespread Linux viruses. Here's the reasons:
1. Viruses attack very specific security holes in very specific product versions. The fact that 90% of Internet PC users run Windows, IE & Outlook (Express) creates a perfect community for viruses to spread. In Linux, certain applications (like, say, Mozilla) are very common but spread those over the myriads of different distro versions and the number of common platforms (down to specific library & application version levels) decreases dramatically very quickly.
2. Windows is built with a major security flaw in as much as certain core system applications always have full access to the system. Therefore, if a virus attacks via an application, it can get system-wide permissions. On a poorly administered Linux system, this can also happen but the tendency now is to run applications at a user account level, rather than at root level. Most users are also educated enough not to run constantly as root. Therefore, assuming that you are running a common application version (in 1. above), the effect will be limited by permissions if everything is running as a normal user account.
3. Linux is so customisable that it is relatively straightforward to create a very tightly secure distribution "out of the box". There is in-built kernel-based firewalling, for example and unneeded services are left turned off very easily.
4. The average Linux user is far more Internet-savvy than the average Windows user - and that's not, in any way, devaluing some of the very knowledgeable Windows people that I do work with, for example - but average Joe Bloke at home runs Windows & only tries Linux when he starts to feel like he knows a little more about how PCs and networks actually work.
To put things in perspective a little, UNIX-type systems are susceptible to directed buffer-overflow type attacks where the intruder has done some homework, scanned a particular server, worked out what daemons it runs and then what versions of daemons he/she can attack. That's why good UNIX sysadmining is knowing what daemons to run and keeping them patched to the latest versions.
But please be under no illusions - the architecture of Linux is simply not designed to allow transmission of viruses. The only time this could ever happen is if a high proportion of Linux users ran the same distro version and very common applications.
Unfortunately, the world of today is filled with too many sheep who are far too willing to hand over their personal responsibilities over to a corporation or government entity to control.
Still, I guess Internet-law lawyers are rubbing their hands with anticipation...
The perception that all software should be intuitive and 100% usable the moment you unwrap the shrink-wrap is an incorrect one & has been created as a result of heavy over-marketing by commercial software vendors in order to generate more sales.
Sure, I accept that if Joe Bloke buys himself a digital camera, he wants to load some software from a CD on his Windows machine, plug his camera into the USB port and start downloading his images to his PC for editing.
But the fact is that the majority of normal users still believe the hype that when you buy a PC, it's no different to buying, say, a TV where all you do is just switch it on and it works. There is no mention by the PC salesman of having to perform regular defrags, keep the OS updated, update virus checkers, install firewalls, etc.
Just because a piece of software takes some time to familiarise oneself with, does not mean that it is unintuitive - if anything, results are far more rewarding when one has put in a little effort to achieve them.
The UNIX/Linux command line philosophy, for example, is frequently targetted for "lack of usability" complaints. However, the fact is that taking the time to understand what programs are on a UNIX system and how to bolt them together in things like shell-scripts means that some very repetitive and boring tasks can be completely eliminated very quickly.
The Open Source movement is not about trying to compete with, or displace, Microsoft - it is simply about doing the right thing which means sticking to open standards that all of us can enjoy (rather than closed standards that we pay a subscription for). Therefore, the creation of cohesive GUIs for software is not the prime concern of the OSS community, albeit that the same are receptive to feedback from users of their software.
Commercial software vendors have to make profits which means listening to their users and rushing their software out to the marketplace - therefore, in the case of Windows software, those same vendors will use the Windows GUI libraries for their software, cutting down on development time and fitting in with the Windows "look & feel".
I'm not denying that OSS software is viewed by some as "difficult to use" - but this should be taken into context that OSS demands a degree of responsibility and time commitment from each user to learn how the software works and to feed back into the developers what the user perceives to be problems with the functionality or layout of the software.
Yes, many of those games on those platforms were direct arcade conversions and therefore "quick fix" type games of blasting everything on the screen.
However, I can remember games like Lords Of Midnight on the ZX Spectrum occupying me for weeks on end, Elite stealing a large proportion of my life on several platforms, and even early PC/Amiga games like Dungeon Master, Eye Of The Beholder, Sim City etc. all engaging me for very long periods of time.
I do agree that a high proportion of users are very gullible and, with the number of games magazines, Internet sites and gaming TV shows today, there is no excuse for those people not to be better informed before making games purchases.
People, like me, that use Gentoo do so because we want a high degree of customisation and system optimisation and, in the longer term, because upgrading involves emerging applications on a reasonably regular basis as opposed to doing a complete upgrade when a new boxed distro is released.
It's just a matter of requirements and there's room for both type of Linux user in the world.
The thing about consoles is that every company that makes a console prices it at a loss to themselves, on the basis of a gamble that the buyer of a console will buy "x" games a year wherein the loss will be made up.
This must, in turn, reflect on the types and number of games that are made for a console - after all, does any console manufacturer want an owner of one of their consoles playing the same game for many months on end without either completing it or giving up in a much shorter time period? After all, this means they are then ready to go out and buy the next game title.
Consequently, the whole games market is no longer based purely upon innovative games (unlike the good old 8- and 16-bit days) but on "estimated sales" and "typical user profiles" - this is why popular titles are re-released with better graphics and why, in general, a large number of games that *should* play longer just don't (even on the PC).
My only console is a Gamecube with about a half-dozen games but I've noticed that on PC titles, the playing time of FPSes seems to be shortening as time goes on - for example, Duke Nukem & Half-Life took me a week or so to complete but Star Trek Elite Force 1 & 2 I completed in less than 2 evenings each.
On the basis that "graphics do not necessarily a good game make", this begins to explain why retrogaming is so popular now - sure, there were good and bad titles then also but I'm always amazed how some games that fit on a single floppy disk actually take longer to complete than a modern game that fills up a 4GB DVD!
...that Ballmer's hair is obsolete already!
Isn't a "stealth worm" that requires "user intervention" a paradox?