Show me the beef of the problem (i.e. everyday machines being compromised on a scale similar to Windows) and I'll agree with you that Mac OS X is insecure for its intended purpose. Until then, however, I'm going to go with the fact that this guy wasn't thinking straight.
so, it seems to me, the level of hacking on a platform is exponentially related to the rate of return on that hacking. say i can spend a week (h|cr)acking either windows or os x. however, if i hack windows, i can infect 1,000,000 systems, but i can only inject 1,000 os x boxes. if i'm a hacker w/ a goal, it's a no-brainer decision as to where i concentrate my efforts.
of course, this does not prove that os x is insecure, but the i would certainly say that the lack of problems so-far on os x doesn't prove that it is.
what would be much more interesting is if some nice person set up multiple OS platforms, configured them with the same services, and waited to see how long it'd take to hack each of them. maybe lock them down a little more than the mac mini test, just to make it more of a challenge. maybe: windows XP, os x, solaris, and a couple of linux dists... ?
I.e., will these worms affect the whole computer because of a fault in the operating system, or will they affect only a single user on the computer because of a software issue that let the worm in to play in that user's space, or will it affect people only because of user stupidity ('ooh, really, clicking on this will make my pen0r bigger!')?
seriously though, if something can still trash all of my personal data, is that any better? i would say my user data is much more important. the OS is just a piece of software i can re-install. my personal data cannot be replaced. also, any passwords, credentials, personal information is going to be in my user account as well.
If anything, perhaps the fact that nothing overly major was announced was intentional and designed to throw people off so as to better keep public expectations in check. I wouldn't put it past them.
oh okay. they purposely over-hype products so people will expect less and therefore be thankful to get anything useful at all. i'm sure that's exactly how it went down.
dell has a limited amount of advertising dollars, and space on their website front page. they aren't "promoting" linux because linux sales compromise a very, very small amount of their sales. they are there for the few people that want them, but they don't waste a lot of time and effort promoting it because they, like any other business, tries to maximize their advertising dollars spent.
dell is not a linux advocate. if you're expecting them to push linux to try and build a market for it, well, that's not their interest.
According to your thinking, the Pope should have distanced himself from Timothy McVeigh.
it's a little bit different when you have entire sects of the relgion / political offshoots acting like tim v. just a little different. and yes, most certainly, if there were entire christian sects commiting violence in the name of the virgin mary, the pope would certainly have something to say about it.
Christians certainly don't have a reputation for non-violence.
i don't condone violence in the name of any relgion, or most anything else. violence in the name of any relgion is not a good thing. sorry, initially, i did not think i needed to state that for the other readers.
Another thing I want to point out.. that the word "Muslim" is about as descriptive as "Christian".
here's some advice then for muslims: make some sort of effort to distance yourself from your radical cousins. take this whole cartoon thing for example. sure, a minority of muslims are rioting, hurting other people, and causing propertly damage. however, the message i get from the average muslim is that while they don't agree with that, it's an expected and understandable result.
if the koran preaches non-violence, etc, make an effort to play up that part of the religion. make sure that if non-muslims know anything about you, they know that you stand for non-violence.
first... no, you don't live in a democracy. you live in a republic / democracy. if you lived in a pure democracy, you'd vote on every single decision. because this doesn't scale, you instead elect people like mr. bush that represent you and make decisions on your behalf.
second, living in a democracy doesn't mean that you as an indivdual can get your way on everything. it means you can participate in the decision making process. that is the power to affect the outcome. and, by communicating with others about the issues you can influence beyond your own individual vote.
so, for example, if you don't agree w/ the US's hanlding of iraq, you don't get to influence that directly in most cases because you live in a republic. mr. bush, as an elected official, has been given the power to make wide ranging decisions without democratic input...
Much like a real democracy, you might not like what you see, but you have to live with it.
if you're talking reality, try this in place of the quote above: "Much like a real <insert political system here>, you might not like what you see, but you have to live with it.".
if you're talking theory, you could not be more wrong. democracy is about not liking what you see and having the power to change it.
but seriously, the responses so far to this article only enforce my belief that the/. crowd is totally out of touch with reality. MSFT are the folks that have already produced the best integrated development environment, the folks who defined the notion of an IDE, are authoring a new suite of design tools. regardless of your opinion about MSFT, you'd be an idiot to immediately write this off.
1. Some people may read those reviews to see if there's better software than their current one available so they may already be using BT.
fair enough, but my point is that the majority of people are probably new to BT and are in the process of learning. regardless... if you are bothered by the presence of facts that are well-known, and trivial, and "tired" IYHO, then simply don't read the article. it's a pretty good indicator that it wasn't written for you.
2. BT is designed to be a replacement for HTTP downloads (or at least that's the thing it's closest to), due to its centralized nature it's too easy to shut down to be good for warez groups. That's where things like eDonkey or all those P2P systems designed for anonymity are better choices.
check of Azureus's distributed tracker feature. also note that azureus is the highest-rated BT client in the review. regardless, you can't argue w/ the facts. BT is overwhelmingly used for illegal purposes.
maybe you are confused. PC mag was reveiwing BT clients. that is all. don't read anything else into it. the fact that many (most) people use BT for illegal media distribution may be well known to you, but you are not the target reader of this article. if you need to read a review of BT client software, you probably aren't a user of it right now, otherwise, you'd already have figured that out for yourself.
also, P2P protocols in general are vastly more well suited for illegal media distribution than things like FTP. i hope i don't need to explain that.
The faster that games return to a stadium only activity, the faster that television goes into terminal decline... the quicker we might get back to a society in which people actually do things instead of just consuming images and sounds.
i would not say that sitting on your ass in a stadium watching sports is better than sitting on your ass at home doing the same thing.
Honestly, if I wish to install one of my licensing of Mac OS on an extra PC, and I cannot, then I am likley to an become an irate customer. And given how ambivilant many of us are about the move to intel, I would hope that Apple would think long and hard about transforming that ambivilance to outright annoyance.
so let's see... you want to purchase a product and agree to certain licensing terms them turn around and be "irate" about those terms?
apple is a hardware company. if they sell you a 5 user osx license, they have already factored into the price of the license that you have or will be purchasing 5 hardware units. from their perspective, it's not a benign action to install osx onto non-apple hardware. it's a lost sale.
i had heard a lot of about apple's great customer service, so after acquiring a new powerbook recently i had high expectations.
the first thing i tried to do was to change a applecare contract contact information. for that, i had to write a snail mail letter. they couldn't do it over the phone, or otherwise. when i asked why, i was told that is was clearly spelled out in item #9 on my contract. well, i sent the letter and haven't heard anything in 6 months.
so yes, apple is willing to use any sort of high tech gimic to get your $$$, but when it comes to after sales support, forget it. you're back to snail mail.
but seriously, do you really think there is something that connects the design to jp-4? i think they were just giving an example of carrying some liquid. but yes, by all means, refuse to wear it. i am sure they are about to hand these out to every grunt.
nobody said "property", they said intellectual property, and it's a pretty widely accepted and understood definition. really, if you can't understant the idea of non-physical property, you have no business using a computer.
for a fairly rural area in WA state, live gets in much closer. looking at the scale listed at the bottom of the maps, which looks like about an inch for both systems, live gets down to 100 yards (albeit in black & white), and google 2000 ft. even at the 2000ft level, google is very grainy and pixelated. at 100 yards, live still offers a fairly high-res image.
for reference the address entered was "camano hill rd, camano island, wa".
for an urban location in san jose, ca, live gets down to 30 yards, and google 200 feet.
Making a profit does not not necessarily imply screwing over your customers over.
i don't think anyone said that. the point is, for a public company, the goal is to maximize profits, period. if the company's actions happen to match some philosophy, well that's nice, but it's only a side affect. if you have any doubt, read this as reported by slashdot some months or so ago.
actually, i develop solaris, sun jes, and derby within a corporate environment. i use open office exclusively for productivity. i really wonder why you bothered, if all you can do here is insult my post based on its grammatical (or whatever). maybe you are an elementary school instructor and this is one of your pet peeves?
open office. open solaris. open java enterprise systems. glassfish. derby. etc. the problem is people like you my friend, who decided they did not like sun 5 years and really haven't paid attention since.
Slashdot Mirror
Show me the beef of the problem (i.e. everyday machines being compromised on a scale similar to Windows) and I'll agree with you that Mac OS X is insecure for its intended purpose. Until then, however, I'm going to go with the fact that this guy wasn't thinking straight.
so, it seems to me, the level of hacking on a platform is exponentially related to the rate of return on that hacking. say i can spend a week (h|cr)acking either windows or os x. however, if i hack windows, i can infect 1,000,000 systems, but i can only inject 1,000 os x boxes. if i'm a hacker w/ a goal, it's a no-brainer decision as to where i concentrate my efforts.
of course, this does not prove that os x is insecure, but the i would certainly say that the lack of problems so-far on os x doesn't prove that it is.
what would be much more interesting is if some nice person set up multiple OS platforms, configured them with the same services, and waited to see how long it'd take to hack each of them. maybe lock them down a little more than the mac mini test, just to make it more of a challenge. maybe: windows XP, os x, solaris, and a couple of linux dists ... ?
I.e., will these worms affect the whole computer because of a fault in the operating system, or will they affect only a single user on the computer because of a software issue that let the worm in to play in that user's space, or will it affect people only because of user stupidity ('ooh, really, clicking on this will make my pen0r bigger!')?
seriously though, if something can still trash all of my personal data, is that any better? i would say my user data is much more important. the OS is just a piece of software i can re-install. my personal data cannot be replaced. also, any passwords, credentials, personal information is going to be in my user account as well.
If anything, perhaps the fact that nothing overly major was announced was intentional and designed to throw people off so as to better keep public expectations in check. I wouldn't put it past them.
oh okay. they purposely over-hype products so people will expect less and therefore be thankful to get anything useful at all. i'm sure that's exactly how it went down.
it's only significant in that 1080 == 1.5x720. increased resolution offers non-linear returns.
dell is not a linux advocate. if you're expecting them to push linux to try and build a market for it, well, that's not their interest.
According to your thinking, the Pope should have distanced himself from Timothy McVeigh.
it's a little bit different when you have entire sects of the relgion / political offshoots acting like tim v. just a little different. and yes, most certainly, if there were entire christian sects commiting violence in the name of the virgin mary, the pope would certainly have something to say about it.
Christians certainly don't have a reputation for non-violence.
i don't condone violence in the name of any relgion, or most anything else. violence in the name of any relgion is not a good thing. sorry, initially, i did not think i needed to state that for the other readers.
Another thing I want to point out.. that the word "Muslim" is about as descriptive as "Christian".
here's some advice then for muslims: make some sort of effort to distance yourself from your radical cousins. take this whole cartoon thing for example. sure, a minority of muslims are rioting, hurting other people, and causing propertly damage. however, the message i get from the average muslim is that while they don't agree with that, it's an expected and understandable result.
if the koran preaches non-violence, etc, make an effort to play up that part of the religion. make sure that if non-muslims know anything about you, they know that you stand for non-violence.
Can it handle the different colo(u)rs?
no, honda's engineers were baffled as to how to solve this technical problem.
first ... no, you don't live in a democracy. you live in a republic / democracy. if you lived in a pure democracy, you'd vote on every single decision. because this doesn't scale, you instead elect people like mr. bush that represent you and make decisions on your behalf.
second, living in a democracy doesn't mean that you as an indivdual can get your way on everything. it means you can participate in the decision making process. that is the power to affect the outcome. and, by communicating with others about the issues you can influence beyond your own individual vote.
so, for example, if you don't agree w/ the US's hanlding of iraq, you don't get to influence that directly in most cases because you live in a republic. mr. bush, as an elected official, has been given the power to make wide ranging decisions without democratic input ...
Much like a real democracy, you might not like what you see, but you have to live with it.
if you're talking reality, try this in place of the quote above: "Much like a real <insert political system here>, you might not like what you see, but you have to live with it.".
if you're talking theory, you could not be more wrong. democracy is about not liking what you see and having the power to change it.
IDE was around long before DOS (Founding Of Microsoft)
visual studio was the first production quality IDE available for general use / purchase.
and dont forget an IDE was probably used to actually make DOS
probably? how interesting.
Microsoft quite possibly revolutionised Visual IDE but not created the concept, notion nor found it
agreed, i misspoke.
but seriously, the responses so far to this article only enforce my belief that the /. crowd is totally out of touch with reality. MSFT are the folks that have already produced the best integrated development environment, the folks who defined the notion of an IDE, are authoring a new suite of design tools. regardless of your opinion about MSFT, you'd be an idiot to immediately write this off.
1. Some people may read those reviews to see if there's better software than their current one available so they may already be using BT.
fair enough, but my point is that the majority of people are probably new to BT and are in the process of learning. regardless ... if you are bothered by the presence of facts that are well-known, and trivial, and "tired" IYHO, then simply don't read the article. it's a pretty good indicator that it wasn't written for you.
2. BT is designed to be a replacement for HTTP downloads (or at least that's the thing it's closest to), due to its centralized nature it's too easy to shut down to be good for warez groups. That's where things like eDonkey or all those P2P systems designed for anonymity are better choices.
check of Azureus's distributed tracker feature. also note that azureus is the highest-rated BT client in the review. regardless, you can't argue w/ the facts. BT is overwhelmingly used for illegal purposes.
maybe you are confused. PC mag was reveiwing BT clients. that is all. don't read anything else into it. the fact that many (most) people use BT for illegal media distribution may be well known to you, but you are not the target reader of this article. if you need to read a review of BT client software, you probably aren't a user of it right now, otherwise, you'd already have figured that out for yourself.
also, P2P protocols in general are vastly more well suited for illegal media distribution than things like FTP. i hope i don't need to explain that.
The faster that games return to a stadium only activity, the faster that television goes into terminal decline ... the quicker we might get back to a society in which people actually do things instead of just consuming images and sounds.
i would not say that sitting on your ass in a stadium watching sports is better than sitting on your ass at home doing the same thing.
Honestly, if I wish to install one of my licensing of Mac OS on an extra PC, and I cannot, then I am likley to an become an irate customer. And given how ambivilant many of us are about the move to intel, I would hope that Apple would think long and hard about transforming that ambivilance to outright annoyance.
so let's see ... you want to purchase a product and agree to certain licensing terms them turn around and be "irate" about those terms?
apple is a hardware company. if they sell you a 5 user osx license, they have already factored into the price of the license that you have or will be purchasing 5 hardware units. from their perspective, it's not a benign action to install osx onto non-apple hardware. it's a lost sale.
the first thing i tried to do was to change a applecare contract contact information. for that, i had to write a snail mail letter. they couldn't do it over the phone, or otherwise. when i asked why, i was told that is was clearly spelled out in item #9 on my contract. well, i sent the letter and haven't heard anything in 6 months.
so yes, apple is willing to use any sort of high tech gimic to get your $$$, but when it comes to after sales support, forget it. you're back to snail mail.
but seriously, do you really think there is something that connects the design to jp-4? i think they were just giving an example of carrying some liquid. but yes, by all means, refuse to wear it. i am sure they are about to hand these out to every grunt.
nobody said "property", they said intellectual property, and it's a pretty widely accepted and understood definition. really, if you can't understant the idea of non-physical property, you have no business using a computer.
for reference the address entered was "camano hill rd, camano island, wa".
for an urban location in san jose, ca, live gets down to 30 yards, and google 200 feet.
check out src.zip in your favorite java dist.
i don't think anyone said that. the point is, for a public company, the goal is to maximize profits, period. if the company's actions happen to match some philosophy, well that's nice, but it's only a side affect. if you have any doubt, read this as reported by slashdot some months or so ago.
actually, i develop solaris, sun jes, and derby within a corporate environment. i use open office exclusively for productivity. i really wonder why you bothered, if all you can do here is insult my post based on its grammatical (or whatever). maybe you are an elementary school instructor and this is one of your pet peeves?
open office. open solaris. open java enterprise systems. glassfish. derby. etc. the problem is people like you my friend, who decided they did not like sun 5 years and really haven't paid attention since.