I'm going to second the anonymous coward on this one. Unless you boot from read-only media once it's running privilege escalations are common enough on all systems that -- it's true -- if they can get you to download, chmod and run their code they can install an invisible rootkit capable of all the nastiness that Windows rootkits can do. Once you're compromised, it's _always_ a wipe and reinstall even in BSD, osX or Linux.
So when you're compiling random code snippets from anonymous donors - do it on a system with restricted rights that boots from read only media. A Knoppix or Ubuntu install CD or other "Live" distro will do the trick usually. Some distributions are engineered to run this way for this very reason -- you have to boot into a different mode in order to change the config or install software. There are also platforms designed this way, and you flash the EEPROM to change the settings.
That said Open software application developers are usually aware of security issues and don't execute every binary blob an anonymous website or mailserver sends them. So yeah, the problem is seen less often. Flash has an execution engine in it, and this is the commonest vector for exploitation on these platforms because they don't have IE, Outlook and ActiveX (the commonest Windows vectors). If you do get exploited, wipe and reinstall - always.
You saying that Windows can be secured does not diminish the fact that over a million Windows boxes are compromised right now. No useful system that's connected to the network can be made perfectly secure, but that doesn't mean that some are not better than others.
Again, Linux and osX don't have any viruses in the wild. Zero. None. Not one. Zip. Nada. On these operating systems antivirus is to protect you, the feeble Windows client of the mail server. The Linux malware ecosystem is almost the exclusive purview of nation-states and their clandestine operatives, megacorporations and their industrial spies. Securing your linux box is important, but these people aren't generally interested in common folk.
Windows has hundreds of thousands of viruses in the wild. These viruses support the financial interests of spammers, identity thieves, Nigerian scam artists, mail order fraudsters. Their ecosystem includes money launderers, extortionists, blackmailers thugs and hit men. There are incredible toolchains that take a found vulnerability and turn it into an exploit plugin for distribution by their botnets and compromised websites in mere hours. There are marketplaces where the proceeds of spying on your Windows box and the tools to compromise your windows are bought and sold. The ecosystem also consists of various members on the white hat side including antivirus vendors, penetration experts, firewall vendors, malware blockers and anti-phishing toolbars. Then there's the grey area group who sell with irritating popups products that do absolutely nothing, but give users a false sense of security -- opening them up to exploitation. These industries generates several billions of dollars a year in profits.
No antivirus catches 100%. The virus infrastructure in a thriving stew that's updated minute by minute to stay ahead of the AV companies. For the most part the latest and most successful viruses are used. Once your PC is infected they pretty much can do anything with it they want to including:
monitor your keyboard and watch your screen
remotely control your PC
read all your mail and your personal files
transfer any file back to their mesh storage, or publish it online
use your computer to attack other computers
use your disk to store illicit materials (stolen data, porn including kiddie porn, warez, movies and music)
use your computer (if it's connected directly to the net) to serve the above data to other people for a fee
send spam
They can do all of that without your knowledge or consent of course. They are actively doing this to over a million Windows users right now. Are you one of them?
People can choose. The operating systems with no viruses or the ones with hundreds of thousands. It's their choice.
I don't know if you've read it yet. Microsoft's Vista Problem at the New York Times is especially informative. Pay special attention to the comments.
FTA:
Microsoft keeps insisting that Windows Vista is a winner, but the questions keep mounting -- and Thursday's quarterly report only added to the doubts.
The comments are especially interesting. 90% anti-Vista, 50% anti-Microsoft, 30% pro Linux (or thereabouts).
There was a saying once: "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". It became untrue overnight and people who didn't see the change happening lost everything. Who are you faithful to?
Don't pretend this is the same thing as tens of millions of Windows bots compromised with a single vulnerability. Some poorly administered linux servers got compromised. That's bad, but that's not the same thing as your own windows box allowing a Lithuanian hacker to remotely administer your XP machine while you sleep and feed the username and password he captured from your keyboard log to instruct your bank from your computer to transfer all of your funds to his account. That's a completely different level of exploitability.
When there's even one virus/malware/rootkit in the wild that affects Apple or Linux systems, you may have a point. Until then you're just speculating about werewolves and vampires that other people don't believe in. Windows has more than 1 million known malwares, and a well evolved malware ecosystem with buyers, sellers, hosts, financiers and money launderers. osX and Linux do not have any of that because there are no known osX or Linux viruses in the wild.
It's ok to say all systems can be defeated. It's quite another thing to say they are equal. They aren't. osX and Linux are more secure than Windows. Full stop.
I'm a recent Mac switcher with years of Windows experience. It's not all that easy to get OS X to work and play well with Active Directory and Windows networking (or maybe it's the other way around). IT lets me play with the Mac because I'm pretty self sufficient. Most enterprise OS X users aren't going to be particularly savvy - they'll need lots of help (like always).
I'm pretty new to the Mac too, after a 20+ year hiatus from the Apple world. You know what? Figuring this out took me all of a day. Figuring out how to do broadcast imaging using Apple's tools took most of three days. In short, people aren't as dumb as Microsoft needs them to be.
Again, at best you've proved that Windows popularity has fallen and that Linux "could make inroads". "Could", if for example, it started selling.
Cute. You got Walmart to stop selling linux in stores. Nobody cares. Walmart.com is open 24/7 and they offer three different kinds of Linux on 24 different platforms. Wanna try again?
Mac sales are up true, in the US mainly and this has slightly dented Vista sales.
Up 50% quarter over year ago, if you don't mind, and it hasn't slightly dented Vista sales. Vista has driven customers to it. Don't you get it? This still doesn't explain your loss of 1/3 of your 90% market share. That's not bleeding. That's hemorraging.
And what of the server end? Well, Windows seems to be gaining there too; let's be honest, if there's one area Windows could do better in, it's the server.
Actually if there's one area Windows could be doing better in, it's supercomputing where linux owns 85% of the space.
On the server side if you could find a way to sell server operating systems to Google you might make a dent. Maybe you'll have a better chance with Yawho? though, because I really don't see you making any inroads with the Google. Server 2003 isn't horrible. Server 2008 isn't bad. Neither of them is Open and that's the death of them. How many parked pages you can buy to geek your numbers on Netcraft isn't fooling anybody since 2005. Oh, Hey, did DHS fix that nasty SQL injection bug that had IIS serving malware to all of your Windows clients? Us Linux users don't worry about such nonsense of course, but I'm worried about some of my customers who are still afflicted with IE.
Now, i'm not going to be disingenuous here; the OLPC and the eePC are doing well; almost in their own category, but even they run Windows now.
If those items had actually shipped in the first quarter you might have a point. Since they didn't, you've defeated yourself. Those items became popular with Linux and any way Microsoft can corrupt them is not going to change the fact that they became popular under Linux. Will they be popular with XP? We will see. They will never run Vista well and it's two years before you can offer anything better. You had better really bring your A game on that day, because Compiz is kicking your butt all over Youtube right now.
and yet, what I find intriguing is OSS has capitalised on this "failure" exactly 0% with regards to desktop coverage; or no noticeable difference anyhow.
If you have read your messages I know you've seen these figures:
The world's biggest software maker said sales of Windows for PCs sank 24 percent and revenue from its online advertising unit came in at the low end of its projections. Microsoft's report contrasted with positive comments from chipmaker Intel Corp. and computer company International Business Machines Corp.
Overall, PC shipments in the first quarter increased 12.3% compared with the first quarter of 2007, according to Gartner, despite fears that souring economic conditions might pinch PC sales.
This gap is about 1/3 of the market. Apple's computer sales are up 50%, but as you note their numbers are well counted and can't account for a gap this large. Those computers shipped with some OS on them. What was it?
eWeek, which I've always regarded as a loyal Microsoft fan, has declared Ubuntu ready to take on Windows. I think you'll find that's where the missing numbers are, though Redhat is doing well too as is Asus with their eee and myriad others.
When you take a set of systems and let them vote on which among them have the "most right" answer, that's a committee.
Take two sets, and that's a congress.
Get enough members into these sets and they'll reset each other over and over, accomplishing nothing useful. As a design principle it's brilliant as they'll never figure out that accomplishing nothing was the original goal anyway.
If Vista evangelism was your gig I'm going to have to mark this one a Fail. PC Shipments up 12%, Windows sales down 24%. Bleeding share... how's that feel?
That's a brave stance. He's old, but he hasn't reached his dotage yet. The good doctor has contributed more to the science of information than most, and almost certainly more than you.
debugging ALGOL on punch cards as he has done would be brutally painful, of course, but here we are in 2008 with no punch cards or ALGOL.
One of the reasons why we're reinventing so much over and over with nuisances like VB and C# is that developers are architecting grand toolchains based on ideas that were in the 1960's proven incorrect. They get a lot profits from their workarounds, and then we burn it all down and start over because they all contain the same fatal flaws.
my dualcore laptop really has no problem with that.
That would be because you haven't installed Vista on it yet.
Having watched this tragedy unfold for a quarter century I've often shook my head and wondered what y'all were thinking. And then I remember that I once thought my parents were fools too. If you can read TAOCP and understand a good fraction of it you will come away with a firmer foundation for the way all things work. It's a tough slog, though, and not everybody is capable.
The world's biggest software maker said sales of Windows for PCs sank 24 percent and revenue from its online advertising unit came in at the low end of its projections. Microsoft's report contrasted with positive comments from chipmaker Intel Corp. and computer company International Business Machines Corp.
Overall, PC shipments in the first quarter increased 12.3% compared with the first quarter of 2007, according to Gartner, despite fears that souring economic conditions might pinch PC sales.
Interesting, eh? Maybe that's why eWeek, which I've always regarded as a loyal Microsoft fan, has declared Ubuntu ready to take on Windows.
Strangely, if you get the PC shipped with Vista and downgrade it yourself the XP is unsupported. If you get the downgrade preinstalled, you get support for both.
smallpox. polio. getting close to getting rid of HPV.
May or may not have anything to do with electron microscope in particular, but certainly has something to do with the level of our technology.
The smallpox vaccine predates the electron microscope by 135 years. This vaccine is the only one FDA approved for use today.
Although electron microscopy was available in 1931, some 24 years prior to Dr. Salk's Polio virus treatment I don't believe they were used.
Perhaps these fancy tools were used in the modern refinements to polio vaccine:
Recent studies by the Indian Medical Association suggest that some OPV preparations currently in use there are inducing vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyelitis (VAPP) among vaccine recipients at rates not before seen in prior vaccination campaigns, with at least 70 confirmed cases of vaccine-derived disease in Nigeria in 2006, and at least 1600 cases in India. Although the exact cause of this vaccine-derived outbreak has not been determined, at least some public-health authorities in India are recommending discontinuing use of live-virus OPV in favor of more costly IPV in future polio eradication efforts there.
PC shipments for the last quarter are up 12% over the same quarter last year, and Windows revenues are down 24% over the same period. Serious changes are happening.
Slashdot Mirror
What's on it?
I intended only virus and botnet. Didn't mean to include malware and rootkit.
See this comment by me which predates your comment and where I correct another poster for the same error.
Mea culpa. You're right.
And unfortunately if you make a system so secure even a fool can use it, only a fool would want to. /sigh/
BTW, I'm not disagreeing with you. This is the security vs usability dilemma. There is no satisfactory solution.
I'm going to second the anonymous coward on this one. Unless you boot from read-only media once it's running privilege escalations are common enough on all systems that -- it's true -- if they can get you to download, chmod and run their code they can install an invisible rootkit capable of all the nastiness that Windows rootkits can do. Once you're compromised, it's _always_ a wipe and reinstall even in BSD, osX or Linux.
So when you're compiling random code snippets from anonymous donors - do it on a system with restricted rights that boots from read only media. A Knoppix or Ubuntu install CD or other "Live" distro will do the trick usually. Some distributions are engineered to run this way for this very reason -- you have to boot into a different mode in order to change the config or install software. There are also platforms designed this way, and you flash the EEPROM to change the settings.
That said Open software application developers are usually aware of security issues and don't execute every binary blob an anonymous website or mailserver sends them. So yeah, the problem is seen less often. Flash has an execution engine in it, and this is the commonest vector for exploitation on these platforms because they don't have IE, Outlook and ActiveX (the commonest Windows vectors). If you do get exploited, wipe and reinstall - always.
Some clever programmers found a way to force a Vista PC to obey a user with admin rights.
I'm sure there will be a patch to fix this glaring security hole in the next batch of updates.
They're peer-to-peer now, mostly. Distributed command and control for reliability.
You saying that Windows can be secured does not diminish the fact that over a million Windows boxes are compromised right now. No useful system that's connected to the network can be made perfectly secure, but that doesn't mean that some are not better than others.
Again, Linux and osX don't have any viruses in the wild. Zero. None. Not one. Zip. Nada. On these operating systems antivirus is to protect you, the feeble Windows client of the mail server. The Linux malware ecosystem is almost the exclusive purview of nation-states and their clandestine operatives, megacorporations and their industrial spies. Securing your linux box is important, but these people aren't generally interested in common folk.
Windows has hundreds of thousands of viruses in the wild. These viruses support the financial interests of spammers, identity thieves, Nigerian scam artists, mail order fraudsters. Their ecosystem includes money launderers, extortionists, blackmailers thugs and hit men. There are incredible toolchains that take a found vulnerability and turn it into an exploit plugin for distribution by their botnets and compromised websites in mere hours. There are marketplaces where the proceeds of spying on your Windows box and the tools to compromise your windows are bought and sold. The ecosystem also consists of various members on the white hat side including antivirus vendors, penetration experts, firewall vendors, malware blockers and anti-phishing toolbars. Then there's the grey area group who sell with irritating popups products that do absolutely nothing, but give users a false sense of security -- opening them up to exploitation. These industries generates several billions of dollars a year in profits.
No antivirus catches 100%. The virus infrastructure in a thriving stew that's updated minute by minute to stay ahead of the AV companies. For the most part the latest and most successful viruses are used. Once your PC is infected they pretty much can do anything with it they want to including:
They can do all of that without your knowledge or consent of course. They are actively doing this to over a million Windows users right now. Are you one of them?
People can choose. The operating systems with no viruses or the ones with hundreds of thousands. It's their choice.
I'll buy Kapersky AV for Mac. Really I will. The very day I find werewolf repellent at the local Walgreens I'll be all over it.
Until then, not so much.
I don't know if you've read it yet. Microsoft's Vista Problem at the New York Times is especially informative. Pay special attention to the comments.
FTA:
The comments are especially interesting. 90% anti-Vista, 50% anti-Microsoft, 30% pro Linux (or thereabouts).
There was a saying once: "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". It became untrue overnight and people who didn't see the change happening lost everything. Who are you faithful to?
Don't pretend this is the same thing as tens of millions of Windows bots compromised with a single vulnerability. Some poorly administered linux servers got compromised. That's bad, but that's not the same thing as your own windows box allowing a Lithuanian hacker to remotely administer your XP machine while you sleep and feed the username and password he captured from your keyboard log to instruct your bank from your computer to transfer all of your funds to his account. That's a completely different level of exploitability.
When there's even one virus/malware/rootkit in the wild that affects Apple or Linux systems, you may have a point. Until then you're just speculating about werewolves and vampires that other people don't believe in. Windows has more than 1 million known malwares, and a well evolved malware ecosystem with buyers, sellers, hosts, financiers and money launderers. osX and Linux do not have any of that because there are no known osX or Linux viruses in the wild.
It's ok to say all systems can be defeated. It's quite another thing to say they are equal. They aren't. osX and Linux are more secure than Windows. Full stop.
I'm pretty new to the Mac too, after a 20+ year hiatus from the Apple world. You know what? Figuring this out took me all of a day. Figuring out how to do broadcast imaging using Apple's tools took most of three days. In short, people aren't as dumb as Microsoft needs them to be.
Cute. You got Walmart to stop selling linux in stores. Nobody cares. Walmart.com is open 24/7 and they offer three different kinds of Linux on 24 different platforms. Wanna try again?
Up 50% quarter over year ago, if you don't mind, and it hasn't slightly dented Vista sales. Vista has driven customers to it. Don't you get it? This still doesn't explain your loss of 1/3 of your 90% market share. That's not bleeding. That's hemorraging.
Actually if there's one area Windows could be doing better in, it's supercomputing where linux owns 85% of the space.
On the server side if you could find a way to sell server operating systems to Google you might make a dent. Maybe you'll have a better chance with Yawho? though, because I really don't see you making any inroads with the Google. Server 2003 isn't horrible. Server 2008 isn't bad. Neither of them is Open and that's the death of them. How many parked pages you can buy to geek your numbers on Netcraft isn't fooling anybody since 2005. Oh, Hey, did DHS fix that nasty SQL injection bug that had IIS serving malware to all of your Windows clients? Us Linux users don't worry about such nonsense of course, but I'm worried about some of my customers who are still afflicted with IE.
If those items had actually shipped in the first quarter you might have a point. Since they didn't, you've defeated yourself. Those items became popular with Linux and any way Microsoft can corrupt them is not going to change the fact that they became popular under Linux. Will they be popular with XP? We will see. They will never run Vista well and it's two years before you can offer anything better. You had better really bring your A game on that day, because Compiz is kicking your butt all over Youtube right now.
BRL-CAD has languished long enough. This is a great project that could be brought up to date quickly with modern stuff.
It's good to see it in Google's SOC program.
If you have read your messages I know you've seen these figures:
Windows sinks 24%
PC Shipments up 12%
This gap is about 1/3 of the market. Apple's computer sales are up 50%, but as you note their numbers are well counted and can't account for a gap this large. Those computers shipped with some OS on them. What was it?
eWeek, which I've always regarded as a loyal Microsoft fan, has declared Ubuntu ready to take on Windows. I think you'll find that's where the missing numbers are, though Redhat is doing well too as is Asus with their eee and myriad others.
Now you can't deny you've seen the figures.
When you take a set of systems and let them vote on which among them have the "most right" answer, that's a committee.
Take two sets, and that's a congress.
Get enough members into these sets and they'll reset each other over and over, accomplishing nothing useful. As a design principle it's brilliant as they'll never figure out that accomplishing nothing was the original goal anyway.
If Vista evangelism was your gig I'm going to have to mark this one a Fail. PC Shipments up 12%, Windows sales down 24%. Bleeding share... how's that feel?
It looks like just about everybody is ignoring the death of XP. Microsoft may "wake up smarter" but it may be too late.
That's a brave stance. He's old, but he hasn't reached his dotage yet. The good doctor has contributed more to the science of information than most, and almost certainly more than you.
One of the reasons why we're reinventing so much over and over with nuisances like VB and C# is that developers are architecting grand toolchains based on ideas that were in the 1960's proven incorrect. They get a lot profits from their workarounds, and then we burn it all down and start over because they all contain the same fatal flaws.
That would be because you haven't installed Vista on it yet.
Having watched this tragedy unfold for a quarter century I've often shook my head and wondered what y'all were thinking. And then I remember that I once thought my parents were fools too. If you can read TAOCP and understand a good fraction of it you will come away with a firmer foundation for the way all things work. It's a tough slog, though, and not everybody is capable.
He's written some checks. Few of them are cashed - (pdf) On page 10 of this document he explains one.
Windows sinks 24%
PC Shipments up 12%
Interesting, eh? Maybe that's why eWeek, which I've always regarded as a loyal Microsoft fan, has declared Ubuntu ready to take on Windows.
Strangely, if you get the PC shipped with Vista and downgrade it yourself the XP is unsupported. If you get the downgrade preinstalled, you get support for both.
The smallpox vaccine predates the electron microscope by 135 years. This vaccine is the only one FDA approved for use today.
Although electron microscopy was available in 1931, some 24 years prior to Dr. Salk's Polio virus treatment I don't believe they were used.
Perhaps these fancy tools were used in the modern refinements to polio vaccine:
HPV vaccine
There is no chance that a vaccine that costs $360 a course is going to eradicate anything.
PC shipments for the last quarter are up 12% over the same quarter last year, and Windows revenues are down 24% over the same period. Serious changes are happening.
What, now all the "differently accomplished" should just hang their heads in shame? What did the slackers ever do to you? Bigot.
Have been considerable. NSA, NASA, many others have all contributed a great deal to free software.
When the government develops software it belongs to the people and should be distributed if possible. The same with collected data of all sorts.