All depends on the system usage. If the system works for what they need, why update? The owners of older equipment will upgrade/replace their computers when they find an application or usage that requires them to do so. Convincing them that they need to shell out a couple hundred bucks without justifying the expense is not logical. While people on this forum are probably ready to jump on the newer systems (games, software development, etc...), many people are content with the functionality of their older systems.
So I should replace everything in my house if it's pre-1998? Using your logic, that appears to be the case.
If something works, why replace it? I have relatives who's most CPU intensive application is Solitaire and Email. I can't justify telling them they need to spend a minimum of $300 (board, cpu, memory) plus whatever an upgrade for XP cost, just so they can do the same level of computer usage.
I don't agree to MS extending the support though. At some point, the developer has to cut support (within a well documented support plan) and let the end users continue to use it at their own risk.
By supporting 98, Microsoft is, in essence, holding back part of the market. When old systems are still being used, new technology must support these systems.
The market can and will continue to move forward. Just think of how many web pages out there check for browser compatibility and return a message indicating an incompatible browser? A user who receives enough of these messages may be motivated then to catch up, and maybe at that point, I'll be dumping my AMD XP2100 system for a reasonably priced AMD XP10000 (or a future Sun Workstation), and the MS Win98 users can buy my old one on EBay.
If you hadn't left so much room between you and the car in front of you, you would not have been cut off. In other words, it's your fault. Tail gating is good.
Actually, neither situation warrants getting shot. The use of a weapon in the case of theft only applies if you feel your life (or those around you) is in danger. Saying that, you don't have to let the criminal know your intentions, so a threat of shooting if they move probably wouldn't hurt. If they should come toward you in a threatening manner, then you've got reason to fear for your safety and shooting (preferably taking out the knee cap) to disable is probably the best method (but I'm sure a valid defense on your part could be "poor" marksmenship, if the person dies).
Other than a real fear for one's own safety, or the safety of others in the area, the use of deadly force is not warranted.
For the record, I do not own a gun (unless you count my son's water pistol). I do however own a compound bow (can you say "pin cushion"?).
Think most people agree that they don't have a desire to print out money, but here's something that one might try.
Often when printing out large images at work, we use software to process the data at the CPU rather than the printer. Some of the devices we use are limited to 64 or 128 MB of local memory and our files can easily exceed that. We tend to use HP devices and convert our prints/plots to a HPGL format that directs the printer to immediate start printing rather than queuing up and processing at the printer device. I wonder if this would bypass the print out problems?
By the way, the software we've used is Image Alchemy from Handmade Software, but others exist.
I was doing this a couple of years ago only struggling at $25K in the DC Metro area. Worked as a GIS (Geographic Information Systems) Specialist (used to be a small community and under paid but has become more main stream lately) and doubled as the system administrator for several UNIX flavors (DEC Ultrix, Solaris). Heck, my B.S. degree was in Geography and working in UNIX is no big challenge. If a Geography degree can do it, anyone can, well maybe not a MBA (...thinking of the UPS commercial here...).
I really have to question the IDC's logic on IT staffing though. I can administer a large number of UNIX boxes much easier than the MS Win32 systems, especially pushing out global changes. How can their IT staffing figures stand? Maybe they only considered the server, but I haven't seen too many MS Win32 systems that can support 100+ users (even with Citrix Terminal Services) running any serious applications.
Open source software plays a big role in many projects where I work, and our clients tend to be gov/mil related. While not all open source software is "good", you can't lump it all together and say it's "trash".
Re:(Borland Turbo C++) != (Microsoft Windows 98)
on
Windows 98 Phased Out
·
· Score: 1
The end of support for MS Win98 is not a surprise. Users of any software will find that they eventually reach an expiration date. Put yourself in the developers seat for a moment. Would you like to continue supporting an application that you wrote 5 years ago? Most of your staff have moved on to newer programs. MS has supported their OS's (well that may be questioned) for an adequate period of time as do other OS vendors. Users may and will continue to use MS Win9x for a while (I just threw out my oldest PC about 2 weeks ago and it was running MS Win95), but they do so at their own risk.
IMHO It should provide updates as until the user level falls below something like 10%.
I'd make it 8.75%. Just kidding.
What's really important with any product is having a defined product life cycle and making users aware of it. Users may choose to follow it or live on their own.
I agree that an exploit could take advantage of a system to the level of what the user could normally do. What I'm not sure about is how a virus could infect the system files themselves as these are protected from the user too. I guess I'm only seeing that a user could destroy their own data/apps by activating an exploit (running untrusted scripts, web page exploits, etc...). Sure, they can help the spread of the virus through email spreading, but can the virus really corrupt the system?
I should indicate that I'm not a Linux user, but rather a user/administrator of Solaris/IRIX/AIX (as far as my UNIX platforms go) and various MS Win32 releases. I do administration of any of these (at a department level) and find the maintenance of the UNIX systems much simpler, especially when I have to push changes out to many systems. If I only had a couple systems (similar to a home users network), yeah, the MS Win32 updates would be easier to apply, but if you have many machines, the updates become a real chore. I've seen some comments posted above that describe the simplicity of patching the MS Win32 systems, but I also see the pain that our IT staff go through to impliment these "simple" updates in a work environment.
I guess I can see where certain exploits (denial of service types in particular) can affect UNIX based systems, but I'm not sure that I can agree as far as ones that corrupt the users system.
if you want security, run a proper multi-user OS like XP or Linux.
Is XP become a multi-user OS or is it a multi-profile workstation (in other words, can more than one user be logged into the same machine working at the same time or do they take turns)? I've only used XP a couple of times (company and my home PC's staying at W2K for now). I am under the impression that the only multi-user OS from Microsoft is their Terminal Services package from Citrix.
As for the main subject of MS Windows Security in 2003, they certainly have had their share of exploits, but so have other platforms. MS Win32 exploits seem to get the attention, but somewhat deservingly (holding the market share of desktop workstations) as they have seem to have the most widespread attacks. UNIX vendors as well as software vendors (Oracle) regularly post patches as does Microsoft, but one must ask "Why do Microsoft systems get exploited so often?". I'm not sure that can be answered easily, but here's my attempt:
I guess some of the issues are:
- Market Share: exploit developers work toward the attack that will have the most visibility (most damage)
- User base: Most MS Win32 systems are maintained by less than qualified system administrators. As previous articles have pointed out, many exploits have had patches available prior to actual use of exploits. The owners of the MS Win32 systems are just not knowledgable enough with their system (sort of like most people are with their automobile).
- Default settings: More than a few exploits are available due to configuration settings that are wide open by default.
- User permissions: Other than some applications requiring that the user account have administration privileges, why would I want to use a privilege account for day to day tasks? I don't really want to, but I would have to have admin rights, logout/login with admin account, or the "runas" command (which doesn't work for every situation and isn't available on all releases) to do my work.
- Architecture: As many will point out, the integration of various components into the OS is just a bad idea. Separation of features like Internet and Windows Explorer would resolve many problems, particularly when a process can somehow take on greater rights (aka the "SYSTEM" account).
I guess the next questions should be...
What makes a system secure?
Why do Linux/UNIX systems not suffer the same level of attacks that MS Win32 systems do?
Why do many companies choose non MS Win32 systems for critical servers?
I read a Stephen King interview where he said that people just aren't into books anymore.
Get a kid a book on a topic that they are interested in and they'll read it. My son is into various card games (Yu Ghi Oh - hope I'm spelling correctly, Pokemon, etc...), Calvin & Hobbs, and anything to do with turtles (he has 3 of these for pets). Most of his friends read books and his school actually encourages reading through "book exchanges" around the holidays.
I guess I can see where the amount of time spent reading books may have decreased due to competing interest of game consoles/PC's, sports, and TV/movies.
Probably will raise their cost as they'll have to prepare more for each case they'll pursue. This will slow them down a little bit, but probably not all that much. Of course the cost will then be passed on to the people that are guilty, but it will also open RIAA to counter suits where innocents are involved.
Not all post here are, strictly speaking, pro Linux. I'll agree that you won't find an OS out there that doesn't have some level of flaws.
Now for a couple of questions...
- Why is M$ worried about Linux? Could it be the fear that eventually Linux will mature enough to compete at the desktop level? Linux already competes at the server level, but generally in limited application (server software vendors are developing their applications for Linux platform as well as the various commercial UNIX flavors).
- As for you comments on emulating Win32, any OS that desires to compete will need to offer interoperability to some level. If you take the "office" products as an example, yes, competing applications develop around the MS file formats. Taking that into consideration then, why did MS develop all the tools to read the other "office" developer file formats? They wanted to compete.
- Your comment about the average Joe and Linux is probably correct, but then again, the average Joe doesn't care about what makes their computer work. All they want is to be able to read their email, surf the web, and play a few games. I'd guess (sorry, don't know the statistics here) that if you asked an average computer user about the details of their operating system that they'd give a less than complete answer. They'd probably say MS and if they get the version, they actually paid attention to the boot up. Ask them why they chose that OS, and I'm sure they'd say it came with the PC (and they probably didn't have a choice as the mfg includes it as a bundle).
- As for professional printing capabilities, can't respond to that one in any detail. I've personally only had very minimal exposure to a Linux box. I'd have to guess that Linux, as most UNIX flavors do, supports PostScript formats and the professional printing is limited to the software development side, not the OS.
- You bring up scripting as being masochistic. I'm sort of partial to the simplicity of scripting in the UNIX environment. If I want something to run at system boot time, I find doing so much simpler to add to the/etc/rc#.d directory (at least that's the format in the UNIX flavors I'm most comfortable with) compared to creating a service on a Win32 system. I do however appreciate some of the ease of GUI generation capabilities found with the Visual Studio IDE, but get pretty P-off'd when the IDE crashes (not frequent, but not exactly rare) when testing code.
- As for gaming/home entertainment/education, yes, the choices are a bit more limited. This may change over time as the platform becomes more accepted. Applications do exist in most cases, but do not have the publicity afforded to MS or MS platform developers. Most of the Linux developers don't have the cash and must spread via the web.
- Your quick to point out that Linux people have problems w/ point and click. At the developer level, everyone eventually needs to code. An IDE will help generate framework, but the coding must still be done. Any coding for an end user will benefit from point and click and generally is written as such, even in the UNIX realm.
- Your comment about MS Media players support for other platforms shows that MS is only willing to interoperate with the ones they develop for. I haven't seen a Media Player for the other UNIX flavors. I also noticed that the Media Player for Solaris is still at version 6.3 (any ideas why they haven't put out a more recent version?).
Well I don't have time to respond to all of these. Must get back to work, but felt a need to defend a little.
Last note, I work with Win32 (NT, 2000, XP), Solaris, IRIX, and AIX. Only exposure to Linux was an old box I tried to salvage with a Linux install. I regularly work to integrate applications in a heterogeneous environments and find that Win32 based systems are often less willing to accept that other platforms exist. My preference is UNIX (any flavor) over Win32 for many reasons, partic
OK...can agree that Win32 systems hold the market dominance at home, but in the corporate world you'll find a mixture of systems with critical systems being non-Win32 (in favor of *NIX, Mainframe, etc...).
If what you say is true that Win32 systems are popular, then it should have the resources to develop a quality product that can't be exploited by a 12 year old with some free time on their hands.
Isn't.NET a domain type like.com? I have to agree that many people associated the shortened name of the product (i.e. MS Word vs Word) rather than the full name. Does that make it right that a company can trademark a common word? In the case of "windows", the word is synonymous to a GUI environment.
Does Microsoft trademark "Microsoft Mouse" or "Mouse"?
Solaris is still a leading commercial UNIX OS if you have a serious system to deploy. As for their Java Desktop System, I think they're trying to appeal to the open source community and realize that most people are in favor of a Linux based OS in that situation. If, however, Sun doesn't get major software vendors to also develop a JDS version of their Win32 software, I don't see much success with JDS. I'm sure it will satisfy a "office" only PC, but what about organizations that deploy Win32 systems with a set of applications that only runs on Win32? Are they going to jump to JDS or any other Linux OS? Probably not.
I really wish JDS well, much like I wish any Linux flavor, but I'm not expecing major conversions here.
I tend to use ksh too. Do use sh when writing startup scripts (tends to be available earlier in the bootup process). Definitely like the "vi" like command history. Guess I'll use whatever shell is available on the system. They all have their pros/cons so use the correct tool for the job.
Haven't actually dealt much with Linux. Do push for it at work, but most of our work is Solaris and an occasional IRIX system. Have to work with what our customers use. OS of choice though is Solaris, as most software vendors (not necessarily open source) tend to develop on Solaris and port to the others UNIX flavors.
It's not just that a company directly makes money from their web presence. Many companies provide information at no cost to it's consumers (FAQ's, Knowlege Bases, Instructions, etc...). The availability of these resources often lead to our purchasing a product.
You know damn well that if Linux enjoyed the sort of desktop ubiquity that M$ has right now, we'd all be bitching about the latest exploit/virus/worm
Companies are using Linux and various UNIX flavors in the datacenter, often over M$ solutions. Wouldn't deploying a virus on one of the Linux/UNIX systems be logical if your statement was valid?
M$ isn't totally to blame for the virus's...someone obviously has to be malicious to write them, but the architecture of the OS is one of the main faults.
For arguments sake, assume that most virus's are executed via double-clicking an email attachment (I know, other methods exist). If I do this on my UNIX box, all I'll ever do is run the program within the rights of my user account on the system (which is limited as one would never assign greater privileges to a non-root account for general use). I have very little chance of corrupting any system software as the software directories are protected from user access (unless the system administrator intentionally opens these up for a user). In other words, a user rarely can do something stupid.
In the case of the virus's that spread via other methods, a properly secured system (via well documented methods) will foil almost any attack. Personally, I think mounting most of the critical OS/apps filesystems read-only is a pretty effective deterent, but I haven't figured out how to do that on a Win32 system yet.
The real issue shouldn't be wether or not a user clicks on an attachment, rather the abilities that a user has when they click an attachment. The "tight" integration of any of the M$ applications into the OS generally allows much greater rights to the system than a user should have. I think one of the strong points about many other OS's is that a user is just that, a user. Certain processes on any system run at a different user level (system, administrator, root, etc... of course depending on the OS), it just seems that with M$, users can easily gain rights either by software flaws or the fact that most people by default assign themselves to the administrator group (and often out of necessity to run applications that are poorly designed and require the higher permissions...like drawing to ActiveX according to games like Age of Mythology).
While I use various OS's, I must say that M$ has come a long way but must change their application integration model to limit user rights when performing tasks that shouldn't gain them.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess I'm stuck hanging out near the microwave in hopes that it will suffice for triggering the mutant genes.
All depends on the system usage. If the system works for what they need, why update? The owners of older equipment will upgrade/replace their computers when they find an application or usage that requires them to do so. Convincing them that they need to shell out a couple hundred bucks without justifying the expense is not logical. While people on this forum are probably ready to jump on the newer systems (games, software development, etc...), many people are content with the functionality of their older systems.
So I should replace everything in my house if it's pre-1998? Using your logic, that appears to be the case.
If something works, why replace it? I have relatives who's most CPU intensive application is Solitaire and Email. I can't justify telling them they need to spend a minimum of $300 (board, cpu, memory) plus whatever an upgrade for XP cost, just so they can do the same level of computer usage.
I don't agree to MS extending the support though. At some point, the developer has to cut support (within a well documented support plan) and let the end users continue to use it at their own risk.
By supporting 98, Microsoft is, in essence, holding back part of the market. When old systems are still being used, new technology must support these systems.
The market can and will continue to move forward. Just think of how many web pages out there check for browser compatibility and return a message indicating an incompatible browser? A user who receives enough of these messages may be motivated then to catch up, and maybe at that point, I'll be dumping my AMD XP2100 system for a reasonably priced AMD XP10000 (or a future Sun Workstation), and the MS Win98 users can buy my old one on EBay.
If you hadn't left so much room between you and the car in front of you, you would not have been cut off. In other words, it's your fault. Tail gating is good.
Actually, neither situation warrants getting shot. The use of a weapon in the case of theft only applies if you feel your life (or those around you) is in danger. Saying that, you don't have to let the criminal know your intentions, so a threat of shooting if they move probably wouldn't hurt. If they should come toward you in a threatening manner, then you've got reason to fear for your safety and shooting (preferably taking out the knee cap) to disable is probably the best method (but I'm sure a valid defense on your part could be "poor" marksmenship, if the person dies).
Other than a real fear for one's own safety, or the safety of others in the area, the use of deadly force is not warranted.
For the record, I do not own a gun (unless you count my son's water pistol). I do however own a compound bow (can you say "pin cushion"?).
Jim
Think most people agree that they don't have a desire to print out money, but here's something that one might try.
Often when printing out large images at work, we use software to process the data at the CPU rather than the printer. Some of the devices we use are limited to 64 or 128 MB of local memory and our files can easily exceed that. We tend to use HP devices and convert our prints/plots to a HPGL format that directs the printer to immediate start printing rather than queuing up and processing at the printer device. I wonder if this would bypass the print out problems?
By the way, the software we've used is Image Alchemy from Handmade Software, but others exist.
I was doing this a couple of years ago only struggling at $25K in the DC Metro area. Worked as a GIS (Geographic Information Systems) Specialist (used to be a small community and under paid but has become more main stream lately) and doubled as the system administrator for several UNIX flavors (DEC Ultrix, Solaris). Heck, my B.S. degree was in Geography and working in UNIX is no big challenge. If a Geography degree can do it, anyone can, well maybe not a MBA (...thinking of the UPS commercial here...).
I really have to question the IDC's logic on IT staffing though. I can administer a large number of UNIX boxes much easier than the MS Win32 systems, especially pushing out global changes. How can their IT staffing figures stand? Maybe they only considered the server, but I haven't seen too many MS Win32 systems that can support 100+ users (even with Citrix Terminal Services) running any serious applications.
Open source software plays a big role in many projects where I work, and our clients tend to be gov/mil related. While not all open source software is "good", you can't lump it all together and say it's "trash".
The end of support for MS Win98 is not a surprise. Users of any software will find that they eventually reach an expiration date. Put yourself in the developers seat for a moment. Would you like to continue supporting an application that you wrote 5 years ago? Most of your staff have moved on to newer programs. MS has supported their OS's (well that may be questioned) for an adequate period of time as do other OS vendors. Users may and will continue to use MS Win9x for a while (I just threw out my oldest PC about 2 weeks ago and it was running MS Win95), but they do so at their own risk.
IMHO It should provide updates as until the user level falls below something like 10%.
I'd make it 8.75%. Just kidding.
What's really important with any product is having a defined product life cycle and making users aware of it. Users may choose to follow it or live on their own.
I agree that an exploit could take advantage of a system to the level of what the user could normally do. What I'm not sure about is how a virus could infect the system files themselves as these are protected from the user too. I guess I'm only seeing that a user could destroy their own data/apps by activating an exploit (running untrusted scripts, web page exploits, etc...). Sure, they can help the spread of the virus through email spreading, but can the virus really corrupt the system?
I should indicate that I'm not a Linux user, but rather a user/administrator of Solaris/IRIX/AIX (as far as my UNIX platforms go) and various MS Win32 releases. I do administration of any of these (at a department level) and find the maintenance of the UNIX systems much simpler, especially when I have to push changes out to many systems. If I only had a couple systems (similar to a home users network), yeah, the MS Win32 updates would be easier to apply, but if you have many machines, the updates become a real chore. I've seen some comments posted above that describe the simplicity of patching the MS Win32 systems, but I also see the pain that our IT staff go through to impliment these "simple" updates in a work environment.
I guess I can see where certain exploits (denial of service types in particular) can affect UNIX based systems, but I'm not sure that I can agree as far as ones that corrupt the users system.
if you want security, run a proper multi-user OS like XP or Linux.
Is XP become a multi-user OS or is it a multi-profile workstation (in other words, can more than one user be logged into the same machine working at the same time or do they take turns)? I've only used XP a couple of times (company and my home PC's staying at W2K for now). I am under the impression that the only multi-user OS from Microsoft is their Terminal Services package from Citrix.
As for the main subject of MS Windows Security in 2003, they certainly have had their share of exploits, but so have other platforms. MS Win32 exploits seem to get the attention, but somewhat deservingly (holding the market share of desktop workstations) as they have seem to have the most widespread attacks. UNIX vendors as well as software vendors (Oracle) regularly post patches as does Microsoft, but one must ask "Why do Microsoft systems get exploited so often?". I'm not sure that can be answered easily, but here's my attempt:
I guess some of the issues are:
- Market Share: exploit developers work toward the attack that will have the most visibility (most damage)
- User base: Most MS Win32 systems are maintained by less than qualified system administrators. As previous articles have pointed out, many exploits have had patches available prior to actual use of exploits. The owners of the MS Win32 systems are just not knowledgable enough with their system (sort of like most people are with their automobile).
- Default settings: More than a few exploits are available due to configuration settings that are wide open by default.
- User permissions: Other than some applications requiring that the user account have administration privileges, why would I want to use a privilege account for day to day tasks? I don't really want to, but I would have to have admin rights, logout/login with admin account, or the "runas" command (which doesn't work for every situation and isn't available on all releases) to do my work.
- Architecture: As many will point out, the integration of various components into the OS is just a bad idea. Separation of features like Internet and Windows Explorer would resolve many problems, particularly when a process can somehow take on greater rights (aka the "SYSTEM" account).
I guess the next questions should be...
What makes a system secure?
Why do Linux/UNIX systems not suffer the same level of attacks that MS Win32 systems do?
Why do many companies choose non MS Win32 systems for critical servers?
I disagree with...
I read a Stephen King interview where he said that people just aren't into books anymore.
Get a kid a book on a topic that they are interested in and they'll read it. My son is into various card games (Yu Ghi Oh - hope I'm spelling correctly, Pokemon, etc...), Calvin & Hobbs, and anything to do with turtles (he has 3 of these for pets). Most of his friends read books and his school actually encourages reading through "book exchanges" around the holidays.
I guess I can see where the amount of time spent reading books may have decreased due to competing interest of game consoles/PC's, sports, and TV/movies.
Probably will raise their cost as they'll have to prepare more for each case they'll pursue. This will slow them down a little bit, but probably not all that much. Of course the cost will then be passed on to the people that are guilty, but it will also open RIAA to counter suits where innocents are involved.
Not all post here are, strictly speaking, pro Linux. I'll agree that you won't find an OS out there that doesn't have some level of flaws.
/etc/rc#.d directory (at least that's the format in the UNIX flavors I'm most comfortable with) compared to creating a service on a Win32 system. I do however appreciate some of the ease of GUI generation capabilities found with the Visual Studio IDE, but get pretty P-off'd when the IDE crashes (not frequent, but not exactly rare) when testing code.
Now for a couple of questions...
- Why is M$ worried about Linux? Could it be the fear that eventually Linux will mature enough to compete at the desktop level? Linux already competes at the server level, but generally in limited application (server software vendors are developing their applications for Linux platform as well as the various commercial UNIX flavors).
- As for you comments on emulating Win32, any OS that desires to compete will need to offer interoperability to some level. If you take the "office" products as an example, yes, competing applications develop around the MS file formats. Taking that into consideration then, why did MS develop all the tools to read the other "office" developer file formats? They wanted to compete.
- Your comment about the average Joe and Linux is probably correct, but then again, the average Joe doesn't care about what makes their computer work. All they want is to be able to read their email, surf the web, and play a few games. I'd guess (sorry, don't know the statistics here) that if you asked an average computer user about the details of their operating system that they'd give a less than complete answer. They'd probably say MS and if they get the version, they actually paid attention to the boot up. Ask them why they chose that OS, and I'm sure they'd say it came with the PC (and they probably didn't have a choice as the mfg includes it as a bundle).
- As for professional printing capabilities, can't respond to that one in any detail. I've personally only had very minimal exposure to a Linux box. I'd have to guess that Linux, as most UNIX flavors do, supports PostScript formats and the professional printing is limited to the software development side, not the OS.
- You bring up scripting as being masochistic. I'm sort of partial to the simplicity of scripting in the UNIX environment. If I want something to run at system boot time, I find doing so much simpler to add to the
- As for gaming/home entertainment/education, yes, the choices are a bit more limited. This may change over time as the platform becomes more accepted. Applications do exist in most cases, but do not have the publicity afforded to MS or MS platform developers. Most of the Linux developers don't have the cash and must spread via the web.
- Your quick to point out that Linux people have problems w/ point and click. At the developer level, everyone eventually needs to code. An IDE will help generate framework, but the coding must still be done. Any coding for an end user will benefit from point and click and generally is written as such, even in the UNIX realm.
- Your comment about MS Media players support for other platforms shows that MS is only willing to interoperate with the ones they develop for. I haven't seen a Media Player for the other UNIX flavors. I also noticed that the Media Player for Solaris is still at version 6.3 (any ideas why they haven't put out a more recent version?).
Well I don't have time to respond to all of these. Must get back to work, but felt a need to defend a little.
Last note, I work with Win32 (NT, 2000, XP), Solaris, IRIX, and AIX. Only exposure to Linux was an old box I tried to salvage with a Linux install. I regularly work to integrate applications in a heterogeneous environments and find that Win32 based systems are often less willing to accept that other platforms exist. My preference is UNIX (any flavor) over Win32 for many reasons, partic
OK...can agree that Win32 systems hold the market dominance at home, but in the corporate world you'll find a mixture of systems with critical systems being non-Win32 (in favor of *NIX, Mainframe, etc...).
If what you say is true that Win32 systems are popular, then it should have the resources to develop a quality product that can't be exploited by a 12 year old with some free time on their hands.
Isn't .NET a domain type like .com? I have to agree that many people associated the shortened name of the product (i.e. MS Word vs Word) rather than the full name. Does that make it right that a company can trademark a common word? In the case of "windows", the word is synonymous to a GUI environment.
Does Microsoft trademark "Microsoft Mouse" or "Mouse"?
Solaris is still a leading commercial UNIX OS if you have a serious system to deploy. As for their Java Desktop System, I think they're trying to appeal to the open source community and realize that most people are in favor of a Linux based OS in that situation. If, however, Sun doesn't get major software vendors to also develop a JDS version of their Win32 software, I don't see much success with JDS. I'm sure it will satisfy a "office" only PC, but what about organizations that deploy Win32 systems with a set of applications that only runs on Win32? Are they going to jump to JDS or any other Linux OS? Probably not.
I really wish JDS well, much like I wish any Linux flavor, but I'm not expecing major conversions here.
I tend to use ksh too. Do use sh when writing startup scripts (tends to be available earlier in the bootup process). Definitely like the "vi" like command history. Guess I'll use whatever shell is available on the system. They all have their pros/cons so use the correct tool for the job. Haven't actually dealt much with Linux. Do push for it at work, but most of our work is Solaris and an occasional IRIX system. Have to work with what our customers use. OS of choice though is Solaris, as most software vendors (not necessarily open source) tend to develop on Solaris and port to the others UNIX flavors.
It's not just that a company directly makes money from their web presence. Many companies provide information at no cost to it's consumers (FAQ's, Knowlege Bases, Instructions, etc...). The availability of these resources often lead to our purchasing a product.
Companies are using Linux and various UNIX flavors in the datacenter, often over M$ solutions. Wouldn't deploying a virus on one of the Linux/UNIX systems be logical if your statement was valid?
M$ isn't totally to blame for the virus's...someone obviously has to be malicious to write them, but the architecture of the OS is one of the main faults.
For arguments sake, assume that most virus's are executed via double-clicking an email attachment (I know, other methods exist). If I do this on my UNIX box, all I'll ever do is run the program within the rights of my user account on the system (which is limited as one would never assign greater privileges to a non-root account for general use). I have very little chance of corrupting any system software as the software directories are protected from user access (unless the system administrator intentionally opens these up for a user). In other words, a user rarely can do something stupid. In the case of the virus's that spread via other methods, a properly secured system (via well documented methods) will foil almost any attack. Personally, I think mounting most of the critical OS/apps filesystems read-only is a pretty effective deterent, but I haven't figured out how to do that on a Win32 system yet.
The real issue shouldn't be wether or not a user clicks on an attachment, rather the abilities that a user has when they click an attachment. The "tight" integration of any of the M$ applications into the OS generally allows much greater rights to the system than a user should have. I think one of the strong points about many other OS's is that a user is just that, a user. Certain processes on any system run at a different user level (system, administrator, root, etc... of course depending on the OS), it just seems that with M$, users can easily gain rights either by software flaws or the fact that most people by default assign themselves to the administrator group (and often out of necessity to run applications that are poorly designed and require the higher permissions...like drawing to ActiveX according to games like Age of Mythology). While I use various OS's, I must say that M$ has come a long way but must change their application integration model to limit user rights when performing tasks that shouldn't gain them.