Microsoft's Unwinnable War on Linux and Open Source Microsoft, threatened by the encroachment of competition from open source, has long waged a detached propaganda war against free software and in particular Linux, but has recently escalated its conflict into a full blown attack. Here's what's happening, and why it will greatly accelerate the company's undoing.
"Among the patents infringed upon are 45 that apply to OpenOffice and 83 that apply to FOSS applications that are not part of the Linux kernel or its commonly associated graphical interface.
This isn't just an attack on Linux, it's an attack on open source development in general. That is a spectacularly bad idea for Microsoft to pursue."
McCracken had an editorial debate with his manager. The debate was over a pile of made-for-Digg crap stories that were complete rubbish, not over some withholding of investigative journalism due to outside advertiser pressure.
All it proves is that IDG is desperate, McCracken really enjoys publishing "fluff" (as one staffer descirbed the articles in question), and that IDG's fortunes don't come from breaking news or informing readers but rather in manipulating Digg throngs with its sensationalist headlines slapped on non-content garbage. What a great business plan to pursue. I'm sure that will reward the company richly in the future.
Great job McCracken, you now have the capacity to make IDG's magazines worse. Any cred you deserved for walking out has now vaporized.
they don't run high-profile/high-bandwidth/strategic targets like Linux does, so who'd bother trying to exploit them?
Have you forgotten that "Linux" server software is also Mac OS X software? Nobody has to buy a Mac and learn some new set of exploits to attack Apache, Samba, or PHP running on a Mac, or to attack the common TCP/IP stack and protocols in Mac OS X, which are to outside hosts either very similar or exactly identical to BSD. There are no new tools or methods that need to be invented to attack Macs.
It appears you are saying that Windows has a security problem because it is everywhere, that Linux is a target because--while it is not as everywhere as Windows--it has high profile targets. Do you only believe factoids that support what you want to believe?
The myth of numbers If attacks were related to deployments, the Mac should have at least 2% of the world viruses, or over 6% of US attacks (or around 10-15% of attacks if you look at installed base rather than a percentage of new PC sales). It does not. There are zero real Mac viruses; the math suggests that there should be hundreds.
Apple has a much larger desktop user base than all Linux + other commercial Unix OS' combined, and certainly has a less sophisticated user base. The majority of Mac users aren't security experts who compile their own software. So Macs "should" have problems similar to Windows, if it were only a matter of numbers.
The myth of different software Mac users do, however, commonly use Linux/POSIX open source software, the kind that is frequently exploited by attackers trying to expoit Linux servers that you mention. Linux server users in most cases are run by IT professionals who understand security. Mac OS X comes with a wide array of open source apps and components. The only difference in Mac OS X and Ubuntu or other Linux distributions is that Apple manages all the security updates for the software it ships. It is the same software, and open to the same attacks.
The myth of targets Suggesting that Macs aren't targets is absurd, and was addressed in the article. You failed to mention that. How many crackers have taken at shot at exploiting the iTunes store servers, or any other of several Apple store websites? Apple's.Mac is also under constant attack, both from usual mail expoits and in specifically targeted ones. Apple doesn't maintain some magical shroud of occult that prevents attackers from being able to use the tricks they already know to exploit Macs on the desktop or as servers.
The CanSecWest attack used typical methods to exploit a weak link between Java and QuickTime using typical, standard methods of exploit. Anyone with the expertise to exploit Mac security certainly also has the capacity to run Mac OS X on the hardware they already have.
The real reason why Macs aren't experiencing the security crisis of Windows is because Apple manages the platform better and spends more effort in considering security implications of the software it delivers. Microsoft has only attempted to deal with security in the last couple years. Throughout the 90s, it ran a completely insecure platform that resulted in a prolific malware/virus industry.
That can't be washed away in a few years.
Linux/Unix is certainly also under attack, but when properly managed, can be kept reasonably secure. Mac OS X is just another Unix-like platform that is properly managed by its vendor. Will there be exploits? Of course. Will they be promptly fixed? They are. Will there be a festering boil of viruses and malware like Windows? No. Is it because Macs only make up a tiny fraction of all the PCs sitting in office cubes? No.
The article didn't make excuses; had you read more than a paragraph, you'd know the article only pointed out the discrepancy between the article and the headline regarding a local/remote exploit. The article described a local exploit, the headline said it was remote. The rest of the article focused on other errors and general mistakes made in the article.
Additionally, the first reports of the break in did not provide all the details. It appeared initially to require local interaction to cause a situation that could create a vulnerability.
In any case, it was an artificial exploit: one that only existed in academia. Windows has many live exploits that are actively under attack by money motivated spammers. To equate this event -- now patched -- with the crisis situation on Windows that has been in place for a decade now... well it's simply absurd.
To suggest that my criticism of the reporting was just Thurrott style spin is also a stretch.
It's called prejudice. People observe that poor (and prosecuted) criminals are often of a given ethnicity and jump to the conclusion that that ethnicity = criminal.
Since its easier to spot people of a given ethnic background than to determine if someone is talented, intelligent, or otherwise has something to contribute, its easiest for populist hate groups to tag an entire ethnic group as undesirable. The French hate Arabs for the same reason many Americans look down on poor Blacks.
Of course, you can take a population of potentially brilliant, talented, attractive people and reduce them to uneducated, unskilled refugees who look terrible simply by denying them education, medical care, and any opportunity for advancement. Stick them in huge housing projects and give them just enough handouts to ensure they have no motivation to advance, but not enough to actually help them to.
If you conflate 'refugees' with 'undesireable,' perhaps you are more of a bigot that you even understand.
Every country with limited immigration can offer its citizens blank checks. The reason why the US and other countries are so right wing is because the rest of the world is interested in showing up for free food, housing, and unemployment benefits. A large enough minority of those new people also introduce violent crime and blow out babies they have no intention to take care of physically or otherwise, leaving a drain on society. That tends to make people a bit more jaded.
While I'm not a supporter of building a Berlin Wall on the border of Mexico and hassling foreigners who fly over to visit, or the erection of the new Police State of America, I do have some capacity to understand why the right wing is goosestepping and hitting peopel with their Bibles.
It's not just the US either. France loved its African colonies; the early African emigrants were all talented and beautiful. When the desperate refugees started showing up however, France decided it hated dark skinned people and needed emigration control. The UK, Germany, and pretty much any other country with a functional economy similarly has a love (cheap labor) / hate (benefits for foreigners) relationship with émigrés.
Who is beating down walls to sneaking into Norway?
My genes come from various people of northern Europe (including Norway) who packed up and ran to America to get out of religiously intolerant, politically unstable, and economically challenged countries. If the US continues its decline into a new 1910 Europe, I might pack up my bags and come live off your welfare state.
The real solution to butt-worms is having people not demanding food all the time. If people weren't hungry, we wouldn't need a food industry, and we could spend all that frivilously wasted money on podiums for pontificating analysts.
That would also rid of world of the foodborne butt-worms problem. Actually it would trade off butt-worms of one sort for another, but you can't have it all.
IDG, the parent of MacWorld, PC World, ComputerWorld, InfoWorld and about 100 other variants and localized versions, has long published poorly written trash to serve its advertisers, not its readers.
I got so tired of IDG, ZDnet, CNET and more CNET that I started writing myth deconstructions and realized that many of these writers not only know nothing about their subject matter, but also use a lot of words without any grasp of their meaning. My favorites are "proprietary" and "anecdotal."
What has really impressed me is that the power and reputation associated with IT trade magazines is really undeserved. There is so little information, they are so poorly written, and so full of gratuitious ignorance that it has been a bit of an eye-opener on the media in general. I once naievely thought that one needed qualifications in order to write. That is not the case.
This PC World isue simply offers more proof that IDG and other magazines have no credibility and just publish enough fluff to hold together their ad space.
Greenpeace only attacked Apple because they figured it would be the easiest way to raise money. Greenpeace isn't an environmental group, its a fund raising corporation that uses staffers to attack targets that will gain the most donations.
Check out Greenpeace's own claims and what environmental experts say, and there's little room for any controversy. Greenpeace is only after money. They do nothing for the environment, they take credit for work done by other groups, and they attack targets with little regard for facts, truth, or creating any sort of improvement. As long as they get donations, they've done what they intended to accomplish.
Apple not only maintained is own Unix distro of A/UX, sold AIX servers, and created its own Linux distro prior to OS/X, but also ported the Mac environment to other Unix variants, using MAE and laster MAS.
And everybody knows that NT's "POSIX compliance" was a bullshit dance designed to make NT legal to sell to the government. NT never offered anything more than pretend support for POSIX, and it was of no more importance to Microsoft as a subsystem within NT than was OS/2.
Further, since POSIX compatilbility is techniclly a paid seal of approval on a specific implementation of Unix APIs, of course Linux as general idea can't ever techically pay to attach the POSIX trademark to itself in the way Microsoft pretended to.
The reality is that the only value of POSIX is as a general synonym for "Unix-like compatibility." In the real world, Linux currently helps define what that is; NT does not offer this at all.
Are you really trying to argue that NT provides some useful sort of compatibility for Unix apps? Citing the Wikipedia as a source does not do much to create credibility for your conjecture.
"Nancy Gohring, writing for InfoWorld, delivered a misleading report yesterday on a Mac security exploit contest held at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, BC.
"In her defense, it appears likely that Gohring did not write the headline for her InfoWorld article, which described the contest winner as being "able to remotely break into a Mac as part of a contest designed to illustrate security flaws in OS X." That part was simply wrong.
"Whoever did write the headline must have been smoking weed in celebration of 4/20, because Gohring's article clearly described a local exploit. There's a big difference between the remote exploits that made Windows infamous for its insecurity and a local exploit of an application."
More info under a series of subheadings:
Gohring's Mac Security Myths Microsoft's Security Embarrassment Mac OS X and Security The Mac Minority Malware Myth Why Macs Aren't Sending You Spam
Microsoft Corp. issued a surprise press release this morning announcing that the company had "performed an illegal operation and would be shut down." Company executives refused to provide further information regarding the cause of the unexpected shutdown, only issuing a cryptic error number of $00038FF577 and advising all interested parties to "contact their system administrator."
30,000 Microsofties go to work for Nintendo
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WiiHelms Go on Sale
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· Score: 3, Funny
Microsoft Corp. issued a surprise press release this morning announcing that the company had "performed an illegal operation and would be shut down." Company executives refused to provide further information regarding the cause of the unexpected shutdown, only issuing a cryptic error number of $00038FF577 and advising all interested parties to "contact their system administrator."
I believe Login.bat is what network logins use to launch login apps in a Windows environment. There is no sophisticated mechanism to launch apps at login, so Windows has a folder of icons in Startup (in the Start Menu, the hold over from Program Manager). This is not brilliant. There are actually multiple startup folders for the machine and the user, and its a huge mess of a crap system.
Apple built a more sophisticated system for launching apps within a Unix environment, first with Startup Items, then with launchd. On the user interface side, it makes sense to put the items launched by a user's account when they LOG IN using the ACCOUNT into... user accounts.
I agree that learning an OS isn't important and that apps are - that's why Apple markets its OS as a series of applications--Spotlight, Dashboard, Expose, etc-- rather than Microsoft's Vista marketing: "Don't search, find"? "Better Security than last time" WTF? how about: "Sucks slightly less!"
Apple is also investing huge resources in developing apps that make the Mac more useful than a PC from day one: iMovie/iPhoto/Garage Band -- plus its Pro Apps, and has delivered frameworks like Core Data that make Mac OS X development easy and automated.
The only "worry about the OS" is the concern that Windows licensing is syphoning away company profits while offering very little value.
You covered so much FUD ground that it's difficult to point out what you said that is accurate.
"organizations with over 20 users are pretty much screwed. their mail server doesn't even allow vacation autoreplies" - bullshit. Among the users of Mac OS X are $75 billion companies, like, well, Apple.
"if malicious code is installed on the system, there's no way to find it and eliminate it." - bullshit, its Unix. There is no Registry hiding places that apps can run, and there is no mystery as to what threads are packed into a single process. Everything runs as a process, and apps aren't launched from some arcane and bizzare Windows construct in an uninstallable way. You lied.
"The simple lack of documentation for the system makes it so that manual scans are pretty much impossible as well since Apple hides a tons of places where code can start up." bullshit, and bullshit
"There have been tests where 500 mac users and 500 Windows users were sent and e-mail stating "Important: From the IT Department" that insisted that all users run an attached executable for their systems" giving you the benfit of the doubt on your bullshit story, what did this exe install?
"The IT staff at the company was able to remove the Windows exploit but were entirely baffled by the Mac exploit and were forced to reinstall the system to remove it." - bullshit
"were forced to reinstall the system to remove it" - absolute bullshit
"Apple has a long long long way to go on preparing the system for a corporate environment" bullshit!
"SSH is the only method of remote administration shipped for Macs with OS X" bullshit!
"and the command line documentation is as lacking as it is (for example, finding stuff like how do I move an icon on the desktop from the command line" - OMG you are an idiot. You need help "removing an icon?" yeah, where would one start with that project?
You should be fired immediately.
Thanks for presenting your cards so I can point out how fallacious your arguments are.
Forcing a Windows session from an NT-based server--recalling that NT was never designed to be multiuser--across a network to a client that is fat only because Microsoft couldn't figure out how to market anything but a PC running Windows--is hardly a model of sophistication.
Microsoft is trying valiantly to make NT into Unix. It started with the Citrix hack to pretend that NT had some multiuser capacity. A decade later, Vista still uses the same crufty, ill designed hack as the basis of Remote Desktop and Terminal Server.
The fact that HP is stretching Windows instances beyond absurdity to create a solution that orbits around enriching Microsoft rather than solving a solution doesn't help your case.
Exactly why you think that--after watching a vendor seminar--another overextended, PC based solution designed sell huge server farms that sell Windows licenses and client PCs as a replacement to dumb terminals is some how a better solution than deploying an open, proven platform... well there really isn't much that can be said.
Ten years ago, you could be excused for using proprietary crap solutions because you didn't have IP networks. Today, threre's no excuse, and you should be fired for not being able to think without a brochure telling you which HP server you should by in order to run Windows sessions to India.
The fact that you don't get how ridiculous you actually are doesnt' help your case: "Thin clients (effectively a display server) + a virtualised OS is not the same as a webserver serving web based applications. They are completely different technologies" -- yes, no shit sherlock: running a fat PC as a terminal server for a virtualized OS on a server farm is "really" a better solution than simply running an application on a remote server without all the licensing and massive overhead of pretending that NT is multiuser, and maintaining a PC with a VM is really easier than putting an embedded web client on a cheaper bit of hardware, and running a closed, insecure, POS like NT is really better than Apache on Linux.
Do you know why IBM, Oracle, Novell and other vendors are aligning behind Linux, open protocols, and web? Because they woke up and found themselves next to a really ugly bitch: Windows. Perhaps you'll wake up some day too.
"Does Apple have anything like this" -- do you mean a Windows sales machine? No, but they did kick Microsoft's ass in selling music, using a web based custom thin client unlike anything Microsoft was able to deliver in its partner stores, didn't it? Apple's WebObjects apps also aren't down 10% of the time, as ASP sites, including Microsoft's own.
Who would buy software solutions from a vendor that can't even operate their own web servers? Ever used Knoledge Base? Worthless - you have to search it using Google because the site itself doesn't work worth a crap.
Wake up jackass - next time you sit through a vendor seminar, remind yourself that its an advertisement, not a religious convention.
Most operating systems associate user login apps (that's a login.bat to you Windows enthusiasts) with the user's accont, so I fail to understand the problem you describe. Tiger also provides a search field on system preferences, so users can just type in what they're trying to do.
I have supported secretaries on both Windows and on the Mac for over a decade, and have a pretty good idea of what the support problems are. They are not related to learning Mac OS X.
Users on Windows blame themselves for the bad UI, as if they're not smart enought to figure it out. I have to assure them that what they are trying to do should not be as hard as it is. Once people see how easy things could be--if Microsoft wasn't holding technology back, if there had been any real competition in the market pushing the state of the art--they find it hard to understand why IT people like to shove Windows down their throats.
At some point, the Windows enthusiasts will figure out they they're being used to maintain a broken system, and will switch too.
You took a machine designed in the era of 802.11b, and expected it to outline for you that sometime in the future, new wireless standards would emerge and it should be able to tell you that which of the future standards it supported.
Which Linux installations can tell me if my system supports standards yet to be invented?
That's like researching World War I and finding it insane that nobody at the time compared the events to World War II.
I'll credit you with providing a plausable scenario for being befuddled with an iBook, but not knowing what standards a certain bit of hardware supports isn't really the same think as poor software UI.
Were you expecting Mac OS X to tell you that the installed 802.11b network card noticed that you were trying to connect to an 802.11g network using WPA encryption? How would that happen?
(Imagine Clippy): "Hi, I noticed you're trying to connect to a network that isn't responding as expected. Just guessing here, but you are probably trying to use an encryption protocol that hasn't yet been invented! Try: hmm, I guess you're fcked."
The article is written with the characteristic Apple slant. The history told is incomplete and overinflates Apple's relevance in the PC world while ignoring the fact that Microsoft had significant competitors. What's missing? Better yet, what was Microsoft's 'significant competitor' in desktop operating systems from 1995-2000: OS/2? No, the only hint of competition was Apple's Mac, and it wasn't much.
It denigrates PCs, calling them "e-waste" and claiming there's no innovation in them while ignoring that all the R&D that produces them is what makes Mac hardware today. Ultra cheap PCs with CRTs are instant e-waste, and that's exactly what HP and Dell have been specalizing in shipping. Cheap systems are just now getting LCDs, but they are still designed to last 1.5 years and then be tossed. E-waste. High volume, low profit, low lifespan e-waste. It does nothing beyond warming the planet very inefficiently.
It claims that Macs, though lower volume, represent the cream of the crop even though the true "cream of the crop" is the business PC that Apple doesn't produce. If that's the case, why aren't HP and Dell making money? The cream of a market is profitable. Loss leader costco PCs and low value cubicle PCs are not the cream of the market in any possible sense.
It consistently confuses Apple's competitors and uses improper metrics to argue that Apple is "large enough". What competators were confused in the article? What improper metrics were used? Do you believe that the market has valuated every major PC and tech company erroneously? Maybe you should stop talking and put money to work in the market, leveraging your understanding of just how poorly the market has priced the top ten tech company's stocks. Or perhaps you are just full of crap and being absurdly arrogant?
All in all, it's an Apple-centric view of the world and history---not especially accurate, not offering any new or interesting insight, and not built on a sound premise in the first place. A worthless waste of time. Thanks for your review, but in all your trash talk, you have failed to point out any facts, reason, or logic. You have said nothing, only hinting that you are butthurt about reading something you didn't like. Spending all that time lining up your rebuttal was the "worthless waste of time." Next time you write an epic, say something.
Rest assured that Mac OS X won't be selling on the shelf for PCs.
Windows XP wasn't sold on the shelf! 80% of Microsoft's revenues come from OEM licensing, despite the fact than an OEM license costs ~$30 in volume, while a full version has been priced around $300-400. Microsoft's retail sales are low, partly because nobody needs to buy it (its on every PC), and partly because its overpriced.
Nobody else has ever been able to sell an aftermarket PC OS: not IBM, not NeXT, not Be. Linux can't seem to give away its OS on the desktop. Why not? All are competing against the bundled Windows. It's the Windows Price Paradox: nobody can compete with a product that appears to be free--while actually being massively overpriced.
Apple is not going to trade its booming hardware sales for the chance at being the first company to ever be able to sell an OS at retail against the "free" Windows that was purchased for ~$30 by the OEM.
Apple has absolutely no reason to be even slightly interested in replacing Windows on other maker's PCs. It wants to replace those PCs with Macs. Sales have jumped from a steady ~800k per quarter to 1600k per quarter in the last year, earning Apple a billion last quarter. With that kind of hardware growth, a retail version of Mac OS X is never going to happen.
RDM: "Mark Hurd, the CEO of HP, recently questioned why so many analysts were bringing Mac Book Pro laptops to HP meetings; Arik Hesseldahl of BusinessWeek reported that HP hardware wasn't the issue, but rather the problems associated with running Windows."
Analysts attending an HP meeting, not bigwig executives.
Bill Gates similarly was bummed when a bunch of anti-DRM bloggers came to visit him on the Redmond campus and all of them happened to have MacBooks. They even brought an AirPort basestation.
The common thread among Mac users is: people choosey enough to pick something they want, rather than bending themselves to fit a Windows box.
There is a Chinese company making a Mac mini clone: the AOpen mini- a shameless rip off of the mini. It is not, however, half the price.
It is difficult to build integrated, custom built PCs that can compete with Apple in price. It's hard to find cheapo component PCs with comparable features that are priced well below Apple, and adding fit and finish makes the product more expensive, not less. Apple has the sales to be able to introduce high volume products, allowing it to create highly integrated machines.
The same goes for the iPods - there are cheaper devices, and fancier devices, but no fancier, cheaper devices.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's Unwinnable War on Linux and Open Source
Microsoft, threatened by the encroachment of competition from open source, has long waged a detached propaganda war against free software and in particular Linux, but has recently escalated its conflict into a full blown attack. Here's what's happening, and why it will greatly accelerate the company's undoing.
"Among the patents infringed upon are 45 that apply to OpenOffice and 83 that apply to FOSS applications that are not part of the Linux kernel or its commonly associated graphical interface.
This isn't just an attack on Linux, it's an attack on open source development in general. That is a spectacularly bad idea for Microsoft to pursue."
Microsoft's Unwinnable War on Linux and Open Source
McCracken had an editorial debate with his manager. The debate was over a pile of made-for-Digg crap stories that were complete rubbish, not over some withholding of investigative journalism due to outside advertiser pressure.
All it proves is that IDG is desperate, McCracken really enjoys publishing "fluff" (as one staffer descirbed the articles in question), and that IDG's fortunes don't come from breaking news or informing readers but rather in manipulating Digg throngs with its sensationalist headlines slapped on non-content garbage. What a great business plan to pursue. I'm sure that will reward the company richly in the future.
Great job McCracken, you now have the capacity to make IDG's magazines worse. Any cred you deserved for walking out has now vaporized.
Harry McCracken and the Apple Censorship Myth
they don't run high-profile/high-bandwidth/strategic targets like Linux does, so who'd bother trying to exploit them?
.Mac is also under constant attack, both from usual mail expoits and in specifically targeted ones. Apple doesn't maintain some magical shroud of occult that prevents attackers from being able to use the tricks they already know to exploit Macs on the desktop or as servers.
Have you forgotten that "Linux" server software is also Mac OS X software? Nobody has to buy a Mac and learn some new set of exploits to attack Apache, Samba, or PHP running on a Mac, or to attack the common TCP/IP stack and protocols in Mac OS X, which are to outside hosts either very similar or exactly identical to BSD. There are no new tools or methods that need to be invented to attack Macs.
It appears you are saying that Windows has a security problem because it is everywhere, that Linux is a target because--while it is not as everywhere as Windows--it has high profile targets. Do you only believe factoids that support what you want to believe?
The myth of numbers
If attacks were related to deployments, the Mac should have at least 2% of the world viruses, or over 6% of US attacks (or around 10-15% of attacks if you look at installed base rather than a percentage of new PC sales). It does not. There are zero real Mac viruses; the math suggests that there should be hundreds.
Apple has a much larger desktop user base than all Linux + other commercial Unix OS' combined, and certainly has a less sophisticated user base. The majority of Mac users aren't security experts who compile their own software. So Macs "should" have problems similar to Windows, if it were only a matter of numbers.
The myth of different software
Mac users do, however, commonly use Linux/POSIX open source software, the kind that is frequently exploited by attackers trying to expoit Linux servers that you mention. Linux server users in most cases are run by IT professionals who understand security. Mac OS X comes with a wide array of open source apps and components. The only difference in Mac OS X and Ubuntu or other Linux distributions is that Apple manages all the security updates for the software it ships. It is the same software, and open to the same attacks.
The myth of targets
Suggesting that Macs aren't targets is absurd, and was addressed in the article. You failed to mention that. How many crackers have taken at shot at exploiting the iTunes store servers, or any other of several Apple store websites? Apple's
The CanSecWest attack used typical methods to exploit a weak link between Java and QuickTime using typical, standard methods of exploit. Anyone with the expertise to exploit Mac security certainly also has the capacity to run Mac OS X on the hardware they already have.
The real reason why Macs aren't experiencing the security crisis of Windows is because Apple manages the platform better and spends more effort in considering security implications of the software it delivers. Microsoft has only attempted to deal with security in the last couple years. Throughout the 90s, it ran a completely insecure platform that resulted in a prolific malware/virus industry.
That can't be washed away in a few years.
Linux/Unix is certainly also under attack, but when properly managed, can be kept reasonably secure. Mac OS X is just another Unix-like platform that is properly managed by its vendor. Will there be exploits? Of course. Will they be promptly fixed? They are. Will there be a festering boil of viruses and malware like Windows? No. Is it because Macs only make up a tiny fraction of all the PCs sitting in office cubes? No.
The article didn't make excuses; had you read more than a paragraph, you'd know the article only pointed out the discrepancy between the article and the headline regarding a local/remote exploit. The article described a local exploit, the headline said it was remote. The rest of the article focused on other errors and general mistakes made in the article.
Additionally, the first reports of the break in did not provide all the details. It appeared initially to require local interaction to cause a situation that could create a vulnerability.
In any case, it was an artificial exploit: one that only existed in academia. Windows has many live exploits that are actively under attack by money motivated spammers. To equate this event -- now patched -- with the crisis situation on Windows that has been in place for a decade now... well it's simply absurd.
To suggest that my criticism of the reporting was just Thurrott style spin is also a stretch.
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/
Are you trying to be comical or are you obtuse?
It's called prejudice. People observe that poor (and prosecuted) criminals are often of a given ethnicity and jump to the conclusion that that ethnicity = criminal.
Since its easier to spot people of a given ethnic background than to determine if someone is talented, intelligent, or otherwise has something to contribute, its easiest for populist hate groups to tag an entire ethnic group as undesirable. The French hate Arabs for the same reason many Americans look down on poor Blacks.
Of course, you can take a population of potentially brilliant, talented, attractive people and reduce them to uneducated, unskilled refugees who look terrible simply by denying them education, medical care, and any opportunity for advancement. Stick them in huge housing projects and give them just enough handouts to ensure they have no motivation to advance, but not enough to actually help them to.
If you conflate 'refugees' with 'undesireable,' perhaps you are more of a bigot that you even understand.
Every country with limited immigration can offer its citizens blank checks. The reason why the US and other countries are so right wing is because the rest of the world is interested in showing up for free food, housing, and unemployment benefits. A large enough minority of those new people also introduce violent crime and blow out babies they have no intention to take care of physically or otherwise, leaving a drain on society. That tends to make people a bit more jaded.
While I'm not a supporter of building a Berlin Wall on the border of Mexico and hassling foreigners who fly over to visit, or the erection of the new Police State of America, I do have some capacity to understand why the right wing is goosestepping and hitting peopel with their Bibles.
It's not just the US either. France loved its African colonies; the early African emigrants were all talented and beautiful. When the desperate refugees started showing up however, France decided it hated dark skinned people and needed emigration control. The UK, Germany, and pretty much any other country with a functional economy similarly has a love (cheap labor) / hate (benefits for foreigners) relationship with émigrés.
Who is beating down walls to sneaking into Norway?
My genes come from various people of northern Europe (including Norway) who packed up and ran to America to get out of religiously intolerant, politically unstable, and economically challenged countries. If the US continues its decline into a new 1910 Europe, I might pack up my bags and come live off your welfare state.
The real solution to butt-worms is having people not demanding food all the time. If people weren't hungry, we wouldn't need a food industry, and we could spend all that frivilously wasted money on podiums for pontificating analysts.
That would also rid of world of the foodborne butt-worms problem. Actually it would trade off butt-worms of one sort for another, but you can't have it all.
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/
IDG, the parent of MacWorld, PC World, ComputerWorld, InfoWorld and about 100 other variants and localized versions, has long published poorly written trash to serve its advertisers, not its readers.
For example: InfoWorld Publishes False Report on Mac Security
I got so tired of IDG, ZDnet, CNET and more CNET that I started writing myth deconstructions and realized that many of these writers not only know nothing about their subject matter, but also use a lot of words without any grasp of their meaning. My favorites are "proprietary" and "anecdotal."
What has really impressed me is that the power and reputation associated with IT trade magazines is really undeserved. There is so little information, they are so poorly written, and so full of gratuitious ignorance that it has been a bit of an eye-opener on the media in general. I once naievely thought that one needed qualifications in order to write. That is not the case.
This PC World isue simply offers more proof that IDG and other magazines have no credibility and just publish enough fluff to hold together their ad space.
Greenpeace only attacked Apple because they figured it would be the easiest way to raise money. Greenpeace isn't an environmental group, its a fund raising corporation that uses staffers to attack targets that will gain the most donations.
Check out Greenpeace's own claims and what environmental experts say, and there's little room for any controversy. Greenpeace is only after money. They do nothing for the environment, they take credit for work done by other groups, and they attack targets with little regard for facts, truth, or creating any sort of improvement. As long as they get donations, they've done what they intended to accomplish.
A longer version of the story is at: Top Myths of 2006: Greenpeace Toxic Apple Panic
I am you insensitive clod!
You are uninformed.
Apple not only maintained is own Unix distro of A/UX, sold AIX servers, and created its own Linux distro prior to OS/X, but also ported the Mac environment to other Unix variants, using MAE and laster MAS.
- Steve Jobs and 20 Years of Apple Servers
And everybody knows that NT's "POSIX compliance" was a bullshit dance designed to make NT legal to sell to the government. NT never offered anything more than pretend support for POSIX, and it was of no more importance to Microsoft as a subsystem within NT than was OS/2.
Further, since POSIX compatilbility is techniclly a paid seal of approval on a specific implementation of Unix APIs, of course Linux as general idea can't ever techically pay to attach the POSIX trademark to itself in the way Microsoft pretended to.
The reality is that the only value of POSIX is as a general synonym for "Unix-like compatibility." In the real world, Linux currently helps define what that is; NT does not offer this at all.
Are you really trying to argue that NT provides some useful sort of compatibility for Unix apps? Citing the Wikipedia as a source does not do much to create credibility for your conjecture.
InfoWorld Publishes False Report on Mac Security
"Nancy Gohring, writing for InfoWorld, delivered a misleading report yesterday on a Mac security exploit contest held at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, BC.
"In her defense, it appears likely that Gohring did not write the headline for her InfoWorld article, which described the contest winner as being "able to remotely break into a Mac as part of a contest designed to illustrate security flaws in OS X." That part was simply wrong.
"Whoever did write the headline must have been smoking weed in celebration of 4/20, because Gohring's article clearly described a local exploit. There's a big difference between the remote exploits that made Windows infamous for its insecurity and a local exploit of an application."
More info under a series of subheadings:
Gohring's Mac Security Myths
Microsoft's Security Embarrassment
Mac OS X and Security
The Mac Minority Malware Myth
Why Macs Aren't Sending You Spam
Microsoft Performs Illegal Operation, Shuts Down
Microsoft Corp. issued a surprise press release this morning announcing that the company had "performed an illegal operation and would be shut down." Company executives refused to provide further information regarding the cause of the unexpected shutdown, only issuing a cryptic error number of $00038FF577 and advising all interested parties to "contact their system administrator."
Microsoft Performs Illegal Operation, Shuts Down
Microsoft Corp. issued a surprise press release this morning announcing that the company had "performed an illegal operation and would be shut down." Company executives refused to provide further information regarding the cause of the unexpected shutdown, only issuing a cryptic error number of $00038FF577 and advising all interested parties to "contact their system administrator."
I believe Login.bat is what network logins use to launch login apps in a Windows environment. There is no sophisticated mechanism to launch apps at login, so Windows has a folder of icons in Startup (in the Start Menu, the hold over from Program Manager). This is not brilliant. There are actually multiple startup folders for the machine and the user, and its a huge mess of a crap system.
Apple built a more sophisticated system for launching apps within a Unix environment, first with Startup Items, then with launchd. On the user interface side, it makes sense to put the items launched by a user's account when they LOG IN using the ACCOUNT into... user accounts.
I agree that learning an OS isn't important and that apps are - that's why Apple markets its OS as a series of applications--Spotlight, Dashboard, Expose, etc-- rather than Microsoft's Vista marketing: "Don't search, find"? "Better Security than last time" WTF? how about: "Sucks slightly less!"
Apple is also investing huge resources in developing apps that make the Mac more useful than a PC from day one: iMovie/iPhoto/Garage Band -- plus its Pro Apps, and has delivered frameworks like Core Data that make Mac OS X development easy and automated.
The only "worry about the OS" is the concern that Windows licensing is syphoning away company profits while offering very little value.
No Scooby Snack for you!
You covered so much FUD ground that it's difficult to point out what you said that is accurate.
"organizations with over 20 users are pretty much screwed. their mail server doesn't even allow vacation autoreplies" - bullshit. Among the users of Mac OS X are $75 billion companies, like, well, Apple.
"if malicious code is installed on the system, there's no way to find it and eliminate it." - bullshit, its Unix. There is no Registry hiding places that apps can run, and there is no mystery as to what threads are packed into a single process. Everything runs as a process, and apps aren't launched from some arcane and bizzare Windows construct in an uninstallable way. You lied.
"The simple lack of documentation for the system makes it so that manual scans are pretty much impossible as well since Apple hides a tons of places where code can start up." bullshit, and bullshit
"There have been tests where 500 mac users and 500 Windows users were sent and e-mail stating "Important: From the IT Department" that insisted that all users run an attached executable for their systems" giving you the benfit of the doubt on your bullshit story, what did this exe install?
"The IT staff at the company was able to remove the Windows exploit but were entirely baffled by the Mac exploit and were forced to reinstall the system to remove it." - bullshit
"were forced to reinstall the system to remove it" - absolute bullshit
"Apple has a long long long way to go on preparing the system for a corporate environment" bullshit!
"SSH is the only method of remote administration shipped for Macs with OS X" bullshit!
"and the command line documentation is as lacking as it is (for example, finding stuff like how do I move an icon on the desktop from the command line" - OMG you are an idiot. You need help "removing an icon?" yeah, where would one start with that project?
You should be fired immediately.
Thanks for presenting your cards so I can point out how fallacious your arguments are.
Forcing a Windows session from an NT-based server--recalling that NT was never designed to be multiuser--across a network to a client that is fat only because Microsoft couldn't figure out how to market anything but a PC running Windows--is hardly a model of sophistication.
Microsoft is trying valiantly to make NT into Unix. It started with the Citrix hack to pretend that NT had some multiuser capacity. A decade later, Vista still uses the same crufty, ill designed hack as the basis of Remote Desktop and Terminal Server.
The fact that HP is stretching Windows instances beyond absurdity to create a solution that orbits around enriching Microsoft rather than solving a solution doesn't help your case.
Exactly why you think that--after watching a vendor seminar--another overextended, PC based solution designed sell huge server farms that sell Windows licenses and client PCs as a replacement to dumb terminals is some how a better solution than deploying an open, proven platform... well there really isn't much that can be said.
Ten years ago, you could be excused for using proprietary crap solutions because you didn't have IP networks. Today, threre's no excuse, and you should be fired for not being able to think without a brochure telling you which HP server you should by in order to run Windows sessions to India.
The fact that you don't get how ridiculous you actually are doesnt' help your case: "Thin clients (effectively a display server) + a virtualised OS is not the same as a webserver serving web based applications. They are completely different technologies" -- yes, no shit sherlock: running a fat PC as a terminal server for a virtualized OS on a server farm is "really" a better solution than simply running an application on a remote server without all the licensing and massive overhead of pretending that NT is multiuser, and maintaining a PC with a VM is really easier than putting an embedded web client on a cheaper bit of hardware, and running a closed, insecure, POS like NT is really better than Apache on Linux.
Do you know why IBM, Oracle, Novell and other vendors are aligning behind Linux, open protocols, and web? Because they woke up and found themselves next to a really ugly bitch: Windows. Perhaps you'll wake up some day too.
"Does Apple have anything like this" -- do you mean a Windows sales machine? No, but they did kick Microsoft's ass in selling music, using a web based custom thin client unlike anything Microsoft was able to deliver in its partner stores, didn't it? Apple's WebObjects apps also aren't down 10% of the time, as ASP sites, including Microsoft's own.
Who would buy software solutions from a vendor that can't even operate their own web servers? Ever used Knoledge Base? Worthless - you have to search it using Google because the site itself doesn't work worth a crap.
Wake up jackass - next time you sit through a vendor seminar, remind yourself that its an advertisement, not a religious convention.
Most operating systems associate user login apps (that's a login.bat to you Windows enthusiasts) with the user's accont, so I fail to understand the problem you describe. Tiger also provides a search field on system preferences, so users can just type in what they're trying to do.
I have supported secretaries on both Windows and on the Mac for over a decade, and have a pretty good idea of what the support problems are. They are not related to learning Mac OS X.
Users on Windows blame themselves for the bad UI, as if they're not smart enought to figure it out. I have to assure them that what they are trying to do should not be as hard as it is. Once people see how easy things could be--if Microsoft wasn't holding technology back, if there had been any real competition in the market pushing the state of the art--they find it hard to understand why IT people like to shove Windows down their throats.
At some point, the Windows enthusiasts will figure out they they're being used to maintain a broken system, and will switch too.
Your Windows WEP-only, 802.11b network adapter was able to point out why it could not connect to a WPA 802.11g network?
If you want more information about what's going on in Mac OS X, you can open up Console and read through any of several logs.
In any event, it would be hard to imagine how a WEP only card would explain to you that it can't connect to a WPA network.
Oh, that makes more sense.
You took a machine designed in the era of 802.11b, and expected it to outline for you that sometime in the future, new wireless standards would emerge and it should be able to tell you that which of the future standards it supported.
Which Linux installations can tell me if my system supports standards yet to be invented?
That's like researching World War I and finding it insane that nobody at the time compared the events to World War II.
I'll credit you with providing a plausable scenario for being befuddled with an iBook, but not knowing what standards a certain bit of hardware supports isn't really the same think as poor software UI.
Were you expecting Mac OS X to tell you that the installed 802.11b network card noticed that you were trying to connect to an 802.11g network using WPA encryption? How would that happen?
(Imagine Clippy): "Hi, I noticed you're trying to connect to a network that isn't responding as expected. Just guessing here, but you are probably trying to use an encryption protocol that hasn't yet been invented! Try: hmm, I guess you're fcked."
---
Cocoa and the Death of Yellow Box and Rhapsody
Rest assured that Mac OS X won't be selling on the shelf for PCs.
Windows XP wasn't sold on the shelf! 80% of Microsoft's revenues come from OEM licensing, despite the fact than an OEM license costs ~$30 in volume, while a full version has been priced around $300-400. Microsoft's retail sales are low, partly because nobody needs to buy it (its on every PC), and partly because its overpriced.
Nobody else has ever been able to sell an aftermarket PC OS: not IBM, not NeXT, not Be. Linux can't seem to give away its OS on the desktop. Why not? All are competing against the bundled Windows. It's the Windows Price Paradox: nobody can compete with a product that appears to be free--while actually being massively overpriced.
Apple is not going to trade its booming hardware sales for the chance at being the first company to ever be able to sell an OS at retail against the "free" Windows that was purchased for ~$30 by the OEM.
Apple has absolutely no reason to be even slightly interested in replacing Windows on other maker's PCs. It wants to replace those PCs with Macs. Sales have jumped from a steady ~800k per quarter to 1600k per quarter in the last year, earning Apple a billion last quarter. With that kind of hardware growth, a retail version of Mac OS X is never going to happen.
RDM: "Mark Hurd, the CEO of HP, recently questioned why so many analysts were bringing Mac Book Pro laptops to HP meetings; Arik Hesseldahl of BusinessWeek reported that HP hardware wasn't the issue, but rather the problems associated with running Windows."
Analysts attending an HP meeting, not bigwig executives.
Bill Gates similarly was bummed when a bunch of anti-DRM bloggers came to visit him on the Redmond campus and all of them happened to have MacBooks. They even brought an AirPort basestation.
The common thread among Mac users is: people choosey enough to pick something they want, rather than bending themselves to fit a Windows box.
There is a Chinese company making a Mac mini clone: the AOpen mini- a shameless rip off of the mini. It is not, however, half the price.
It is difficult to build integrated, custom built PCs that can compete with Apple in price. It's hard to find cheapo component PCs with comparable features that are priced well below Apple, and adding fit and finish makes the product more expensive, not less. Apple has the sales to be able to introduce high volume products, allowing it to create highly integrated machines.
The same goes for the iPods - there are cheaper devices, and fancier devices, but no fancier, cheaper devices.