"it's not a case of "1 human vs. 1 human, therefore both are teh equal!!!1111""
You're absolutely right. It's not a case of both Linux and Windows security being equal. Just wish I had said that so you could feel good about being right.
Meanwhile, good job leaping over the section of my post that you should have paid attention to.
I wish people would understand what I'm saying instead of feeling like Linux needs to be defended.
Linux may have a better foundation to work from in a security point of view, that does not in any way negate what I said. I had a Windows NT webserver that was up for 2 years without being exploited. I replaced it with a Redhat/Apache box thinking I'd be even more secure and within 2 weeks it was rooted.
This is not Linux's fault, it is entirely my own. I felt a false sense of security and didn't stay up to date with the machine. With Windows, since it was always under attack, I constantly checked it to make sure it was hardened. If I had been vigilant, like I recommended in my original post, I would not have been rooted.
Instead of cooking up an argument, think about what I just said. You're not secure. It is as simple as that.
"Speak for yourself. I have seen a number of Sci-fi and Science Fiction and Space Opera movies where the pseudo-science was more interesting than the story."
Speak for yourself. You'll notice scifi wasn't the big box-office draw until Star Wars came on the scene. It had the right mix of fx, story (well not exactly and over-ubundance of that), and fun to watch characters. 2001, despite being regarded as a masterpiece, has a much smaller following. In some ways that's a pity, but that's understandable.
If you over-focus on one topic, you're only going to attract a narrow audience who happen to enjoy that topic.
"The director could have used his imagination and obtained the desired emotional effect some other way, without violating the constraints of physical universe."
I can also communicate to you in binary by blinking my eyes. This would be an altnernative and emotional way to communicate an idea with you, but somehow I doubt you'd find it terribly engaging.
Species of Windows Programmer: Human Species of Linux Programmer : Human
Chances of human error making it into the code: Equal
Doesn't matter if you're using Linux or Windows, you must be vigilant. You cannot completely secure against a creative human. Instead of debating this shit, how about learning from Microsoft's mistakes and making sure Linux grows from it?
"What gets me every time is when there is, say, an explosion (ala Star Wars) in space, and it goes "Boom!"."
What gets me is when somebody walks into a shot, and you can hear music. I've watched my boss get that look in her eyes and start walking towards my cube. I never once heard the Darth Vader march.
Stupid movies shouldn't have incidental music. They should all be like the Blair Witch Project.
" The really good ones have ALL (sans that damn HALFLIFE!) been ported to Mac."
Vice City comes to mind. Sorry bud, your argument's not strong enough. Mac is highly deficient in the games area, like it or not. NG has a point that the Mac world is much much smaller than the PC world, no matter what type of negative spin you put on it.
" Next you are going to do that whole "but they only come with one button on the mouse."
I doubt he'd say that. If the Mac works with one mouse button, then more power to it. Nice attempt at discrediting him, though.
"Get over yourself"
You're the one getting snippy and defensively dismissing his comments.
" I interface with net parties rather well and i am usually the only Mac."
No doubt playing a game that was released on PC a year before.
" And, please, QuickDraw was before Direct X, if i remember correctly."
And...?
"That would be another item that Redmond has taken from the smaller company."
And now you're taking the debate completely out of the bounds of the topic at hand? And you told NG to get over himself? Ha! He must really have struck a nerve here.
"Bad Zelda: Link runs near the ledge, preps himself, and swan dives into a lake of hot lava because Link's a giant fucking idiot. "
Actually it's not that easy to do. (I'm talking about the GameCube game, not the N64. In that case, you may be right, I don't remember.) If you got too close to the edge, you had warning he was about to jump. You could also quickly push back and he'd grip the ledge. I honestly cannot remember a single time I've had Link jump into or off of something that I didn't want him to.
"If Command1.Value MyVotingPreference then UserVotingChoice = MyVotingPreference"
And, because I'm a dumb ass that didn't use the preview feature, the punchline of my joke disappeared. Damn VB for using greater than/less than signs instead of !=.
"And before long, you have an OS that is so feature ridden that every week there's a new obnoxious exploit."
Funny? I see this happening actually. Security and features are generally inversely related. You can't 'permission' yourself to save yourself from havoc from every feature out there.
Kind of reminds me of universal remotes. It's damned convenient to have one remote that does it all, but my poor neighbor still can't figure out why his TV comes on at 3am.
"Even though $720 seems like a huge price difference, even small gains in performance can result in thousands of dollars in saved time."
Not as much as you'd think. These cards are for the UI to the 3D app, not for rendering. The difference between 30 fps and 60 fps isn't going to save any significant amount of money.
"the only game i ever play is skifree and i dont need a $500 video card to do so."
You'd pay >$500 for a vid card if your job was to build a 3d model consisting of 100's of thousands of polygons. Oh, coincidentally, that type of work is what this story is about.
"Seriously folks I think lately we've forgotten that stealing is stealing, and if you're stealing a piece of software you should be punnished for stealing a piece of software."
That's fine provided due process is followed. Calling home and saying "I'm cracked" is not evidence of guilt. I have a piece of cracked software on my laptop. Am I guilty of piracy? Have I stolen anything? Absolutely not! I paid for the software. However, I cannot have a dongle sticking out of the back of my laptop. It's not worth risking breaking of the dongle, or worse, the laptop.
End of story? Me thinks not. If somebody installs cracked software they haven't paid for simply to evaluate it, have they stolen it? Ethically speaking, no. The fact of the matter is that you cannot return software. The only people who are truely guilty of commiting theft are the people who acquire the software without paying for it, and make use of it.
I would advise not trying to oversimplify this down to black and white. It is nowhere near as 'end of story' as you're making it out to be.
"People are so much more expensive than hardware that the whole argument about saving money with Linux is ludicrious if you can find another system, such as Macs running OS X, that can do all of the same things as Linux and reduce head count by even one or two people."
Another factor that supports your point is the ability for said employees to be able to use the machines. If they're comfortable with them, they're not going to spend time bugging IT. They can quickly fix it themselves.
In that sense, I'd be more comfortable around Windows boxes, Macs being a close second. I useta do the sysadmin job here while we were a Windows 2000 house. I was *rarely* bothered to come to somebody's computer and fix something. Once a great while, somebody'd forget how to use a feature in Office. It's quicker for them to fix it themselves than it is for me to come over, diagnose the problem, and fix it. Lots of money, particularly engineering time, saved there.
Your mileage my vary. My company's small (20 people) and is mostly populated by engineers.
Remember the ep where Homer goes aboard a shuttle? He breaks an ant-farm, causing the ants to fly about. Kent Brockman, who's about to perform a live interview with Homer, is suprised to see footage of an ant that's really really close to the camera. "The ship's been taken over by giant ants! I, for one, welcome our ant overlords..."
I'm sure somebody else can fill in the rest of the quote. The only reason I'm bringing it up is I've heard it 5 times in 24 hours, all at +5 funny.
Just playing Devil's Advocate here, the 'Windows without a GUI' bit makes it tougher to crack. I think NG's point was that since Linux is CLI driven, SSH is a perfect way to go in and do what you want remotely. All it takes is to know the root password. You don't even need to guess what the login name is. (Windows is NO better in this respect.)
MS went GUI happy, which means one has to be rather creative about how they use CMD.exe to do their dirty work. This is not the strongest defense, but it is worth noting. To work with Windows remotely, the GUI is the biggest hurdle, and at the same time it makes things more difficult for the would-be hacker.
Just to be clear, that was Devil's Advocate talk, not MS apologist.
"What good is living if we are doomed to die? What good is saving money if we bill collectors and the taxman is going to take it? What good is marriage if your spouse can leave you?"
In each of those cases, one takes precautionary steps. You inadvertantly helped NG make his point.
Slashdot Mirror
"it's not a case of "1 human vs. 1 human, therefore both are teh equal!!!1111""
You're absolutely right. It's not a case of both Linux and Windows security being equal. Just wish I had said that so you could feel good about being right.
Meanwhile, good job leaping over the section of my post that you should have paid attention to.
I wish people would understand what I'm saying instead of feeling like Linux needs to be defended.
Linux may have a better foundation to work from in a security point of view, that does not in any way negate what I said. I had a Windows NT webserver that was up for 2 years without being exploited. I replaced it with a Redhat/Apache box thinking I'd be even more secure and within 2 weeks it was rooted.
This is not Linux's fault, it is entirely my own. I felt a false sense of security and didn't stay up to date with the machine. With Windows, since it was always under attack, I constantly checked it to make sure it was hardened. If I had been vigilant, like I recommended in my original post, I would not have been rooted.
Instead of cooking up an argument, think about what I just said. You're not secure. It is as simple as that.
"Speak for yourself. I have seen a number of Sci-fi and Science Fiction and Space Opera movies where the pseudo-science was more interesting than the story."
Speak for yourself. You'll notice scifi wasn't the big box-office draw until Star Wars came on the scene. It had the right mix of fx, story (well not exactly and over-ubundance of that), and fun to watch characters. 2001, despite being regarded as a masterpiece, has a much smaller following. In some ways that's a pity, but that's understandable.
If you over-focus on one topic, you're only going to attract a narrow audience who happen to enjoy that topic.
"The director could have used his imagination and obtained the desired emotional effect some other way, without violating the constraints of physical universe."
I can also communicate to you in binary by blinking my eyes. This would be an altnernative and emotional way to communicate an idea with you, but somehow I doubt you'd find it terribly engaging.
Species of Windows Programmer: Human
Species of Linux Programmer : Human
Chances of human error making it into the code: Equal
Doesn't matter if you're using Linux or Windows, you must be vigilant. You cannot completely secure against a creative human. Instead of debating this shit, how about learning from Microsoft's mistakes and making sure Linux grows from it?
Exactly.
"He/she did in their post. You missed the comparison between 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Star Wars.. "
I think his point was that movies thrive on character and plot. 90 minutes of how a sub works does not a good movie make.
"What gets me every time is when there is, say, an explosion (ala Star Wars) in space, and it goes "Boom!"."
What gets me is when somebody walks into a shot, and you can hear music. I've watched my boss get that look in her eyes and start walking towards my cube. I never once heard the Darth Vader march.
Stupid movies shouldn't have incidental music. They should all be like the Blair Witch Project.
" The really good ones have ALL (sans that damn HALFLIFE!) been ported to Mac."
Vice City comes to mind. Sorry bud, your argument's not strong enough. Mac is highly deficient in the games area, like it or not. NG has a point that the Mac world is much much smaller than the PC world, no matter what type of negative spin you put on it.
" Next you are going to do that whole "but they only come with one button on the mouse."
I doubt he'd say that. If the Mac works with one mouse button, then more power to it. Nice attempt at discrediting him, though.
"Get over yourself"
You're the one getting snippy and defensively dismissing his comments.
" I interface with net parties rather well and i am usually the only Mac."
No doubt playing a game that was released on PC a year before.
" And, please, QuickDraw was before Direct X, if i remember correctly."
And...?
"That would be another item that Redmond has taken from the smaller company."
And now you're taking the debate completely out of the bounds of the topic at hand? And you told NG to get over himself? Ha! He must really have struck a nerve here.
"Bad Zelda: Link runs near the ledge, preps himself, and swan dives into a lake of hot lava because Link's a giant fucking idiot.
"
Actually it's not that easy to do. (I'm talking about the GameCube game, not the N64. In that case, you may be right, I don't remember.) If you got too close to the edge, you had warning he was about to jump. You could also quickly push back and he'd grip the ledge. I honestly cannot remember a single time I've had Link jump into or off of something that I didn't want him to.
They did an awesome job with his control.
"Relax folks. It was just Chief Quimby delivering an assignment to the Inspector."
Oh man, I can't believe I get that. Not very often you see Inspector Gadget references here!
I'm getting rather tired of jokes getting modded as 'off-topic'.
"If Command1.Value MyVotingPreference then UserVotingChoice = MyVotingPreference"
And, because I'm a dumb ass that didn't use the preview feature, the punchline of my joke disappeared. Damn VB for using greater than/less than signs instead of !=.
After the previous election, I fleshed out my own voting system that I think would be quite satisfactory:
Private Sub Command1_Click()
Dim MyVotingPreference
Dim UserVotingChoice
If Command1.Value MyVotingPreference then UserVotingChoice = MyVotingPreference
end Sub
"And before long, you have an OS that is so feature ridden that every week there's a new obnoxious exploit."
Funny? I see this happening actually. Security and features are generally inversely related. You can't 'permission' yourself to save yourself from havoc from every feature out there.
Kind of reminds me of universal remotes. It's damned convenient to have one remote that does it all, but my poor neighbor still can't figure out why his TV comes on at 3am.
"Even though $720 seems like a huge price difference, even small gains in performance can result in thousands of dollars in saved time."
Not as much as you'd think. These cards are for the UI to the 3D app, not for rendering. The difference between 30 fps and 60 fps isn't going to save any significant amount of money.
"the only game i ever play is skifree and i dont need a $500 video card to do so."
You'd pay >$500 for a vid card if your job was to build a 3d model consisting of 100's of thousands of polygons. Oh, coincidentally, that type of work is what this story is about.
"Seriously folks I think lately we've forgotten that stealing is stealing, and if you're stealing a piece of software you should be punnished for stealing a piece of software."
That's fine provided due process is followed. Calling home and saying "I'm cracked" is not evidence of guilt. I have a piece of cracked software on my laptop. Am I guilty of piracy? Have I stolen anything? Absolutely not! I paid for the software. However, I cannot have a dongle sticking out of the back of my laptop. It's not worth risking breaking of the dongle, or worse, the laptop.
End of story? Me thinks not. If somebody installs cracked software they haven't paid for simply to evaluate it, have they stolen it? Ethically speaking, no. The fact of the matter is that you cannot return software. The only people who are truely guilty of commiting theft are the people who acquire the software without paying for it, and make use of it.
I would advise not trying to oversimplify this down to black and white. It is nowhere near as 'end of story' as you're making it out to be.
"People are so much more expensive than hardware that the whole argument about saving money with Linux is ludicrious if you can find another system, such as Macs running OS X, that can do all of the same things as Linux and reduce head count by even one or two people."
Another factor that supports your point is the ability for said employees to be able to use the machines. If they're comfortable with them, they're not going to spend time bugging IT. They can quickly fix it themselves.
In that sense, I'd be more comfortable around Windows boxes, Macs being a close second. I useta do the sysadmin job here while we were a Windows 2000 house. I was *rarely* bothered to come to somebody's computer and fix something. Once a great while, somebody'd forget how to use a feature in Office. It's quicker for them to fix it themselves than it is for me to come over, diagnose the problem, and fix it. Lots of money, particularly engineering time, saved there.
Your mileage my vary. My company's small (20 people) and is mostly populated by engineers.
How much is the water cooled case + heatsinks? ;)
Teasin. Actually AMD is a much more sound prospect, especially in dual-proc configurations. Not only is a lot cheaper, but it's suitably reliable.
Remember the ep where Homer goes aboard a shuttle? He breaks an ant-farm, causing the ants to fly about. Kent Brockman, who's about to perform a live interview with Homer, is suprised to see footage of an ant that's really really close to the camera. "The ship's been taken over by giant ants! I, for one, welcome our ant overlords..."
I'm sure somebody else can fill in the rest of the quote. The only reason I'm bringing it up is I've heard it 5 times in 24 hours, all at +5 funny.
I, for one, welcome our new RedHat overlords.
*giggle giggle, snort snort* I made a funny just like the others that used this quote did!
"Try getting Windows without a GUI, or SMB."
Just playing Devil's Advocate here, the 'Windows without a GUI' bit makes it tougher to crack. I think NG's point was that since Linux is CLI driven, SSH is a perfect way to go in and do what you want remotely. All it takes is to know the root password. You don't even need to guess what the login name is. (Windows is NO better in this respect.)
MS went GUI happy, which means one has to be rather creative about how they use CMD.exe to do their dirty work. This is not the strongest defense, but it is worth noting. To work with Windows remotely, the GUI is the biggest hurdle, and at the same time it makes things more difficult for the would-be hacker.
Just to be clear, that was Devil's Advocate talk, not MS apologist.
"What good is living if we are doomed to die? What good is saving money if we bill collectors and the taxman is going to take it? What good is marriage if your spouse can leave you?"
In each of those cases, one takes precautionary steps. You inadvertantly helped NG make his point.
My new PoV could also cause me to wash my car.