They do say they can't judge the overall security of the browsers but I feel safe in drawing the conclusion that Firefox, by default, is more secure for my day to day needs.
The fact that the Firefox configuration that said "No" to everything automatically had zero infections says a lot. It reiterates the fact that if a user has some sense and errs on the side of caution when confronted by something they don't understand or feel like bothering with at the moment then thy are much less likely to get infected. And Firefox clearly helps in this area as, if the user does "just say no", it is very resillient to automatic infection.
I realize that it's unfair and inconclusive from a security standpoint to draw conclusions from this type of study but the fact is a lot of people don't patch their software. And they surf like idiots. So the browser that gets infected less in these situations *is* more secure in my mind.
I see what you mean but I think your example is also a little flawed as Coca Cola *does* (or did, never actually bought any, but definately remember seeing it in stores), in fact, sell clothes.
If Coca Cola didn't sell clothes? I'm not 100% sure but I beleive you're still correct.
My understanding is that it also had to do with geographic proximity. For example if Coca Cola were just some small company in Idaho who sold a tasty beverage to a local market then I, as a clothier in California, would have no problem distributing a line of clothes with the brand Coca Cola.
Anyone here who doesn't end their posts with "but whatever, IANAL"?
I read an interesting (although also disturbing) article about this in Wired (the paper version). It was written with a "Who won the spyware war?" theme. It went into great depth on how some "advertising" comapany, whose name sounds like the other kind of crocodile, began, who they then rubbed shoulders with (and fought in court with), how settlements were reached, how non-disclosure agreements were signed and how, finally, a company just changed it's name to something that suggests "clear" or "clarity" or some such. Now instead of being a "scourge" and "plague" on the internet, they are the hottest marketing company in town.
But I still hate spyware and a reptile* in a dress, even a nice dress, is still a reptile* to me.
* (This reference to reptiles is meant as a figurative, literary device and the reader should not take this use to be an attack on reptiles in general. No real reptiles were harmed in the writing of this post).
No, I didn't RTFA. And I may or may not. And I may be totally wrong on what we're talking about. But I'm going to risk it and assume we mean System Restore.
To quote the parent post "A Windows virus can bork your data and your OS"; not only is this true but their wonderfully helpful feature, System Restore, is not very bright. It doesn't realize this fact (the potential borking that is). System Restore is happy to make daily backups of infected files. In fact it is so user friendly that if you do something stupid, like manage to clean the virus from your system, System Resatore will Do The Right Thing(TM) and put your infected files back on for you. Nice, eh?
I found this out the hard way when my boss was in China and calling me daily asking how the f&*k the virus could come back after all the time we spent cleaning it. Turned off System Restore and voila, no more autoexec infect.
System Restore is no longer featured on our users' PCs. You know what we did? We mapped their C drives to a Samba Server and use Cron to backup thier files every night.
Yeah, they had a field day with this one. Some brilliant wag said "hey, end of the world headline *and* a sexual conotation on the name!" Pure gold...
People ate it up though. I received no less then three articles from my boss on this "impending doom".
But the fact that it depended on user stupidity and not a hole or exploit had me calm over this. Not to say that some of our users aren't a bit clueless, it's just that they value their jobs enough to avoid emails that offer them "free nekkid pics".
If the information the user is looking for is the price of a widget, an unsupported browser may display $1500 while in a supported browser the 00 are superscript and underlined, which means the price is really $15.00.
Yes because no web developer in their right mind would ever think to use some kind of standard delimiter between the dollars and cents when listing prices (like maybe a period). It makes much more sense to use a look-and-feel recommendation (read CSS) to the browser in hopes it does the "right thing"(TM).
Re:Frequent Shopping Card @ Grocery Store
on
Myware and Spyware
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· Score: 1
Ah yes... That's right. I wonder if I can find an mp3 of that somewhere? It's going to be in my head all day.:)
Re:Frequent Shopping Card @ Grocery Store
on
Myware and Spyware
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· Score: 1
"One two three fouuuur five, six seven eight niiiine ten, eleven twelve."
I think it goes more like this:
"One two three fouuuur five, six seven eight niiiine ten, eleven twel-el-el-el-elve!" (note the exclamation point is very important).
Ah thanks man, your post just brought back such a flood of childhood memories...:-)
buy a WinDell box - You don't notice much difference at first, everything seems to work fine but after a few weeks everything starts to shrivel up and you find you have no sex drive left at all.
or, perish the thought, a Sun Solaris system?Perish the thought? When you get one of these puppies, well let's just say you better buy some new pants as well! (or bra, for the ladies).
As was said when/. picked up this article I beleve that wine containing the exploit is an incredible testimoney to how well the wine team implemented their replacement for Win32.
Still correct in a most ways but it is getting better. Microsoft Update, the latest incarnation of Windows Update, update's my Win XP, Office, Visual Studio, Exchange Server Manager and SQL Server 2005 Express.
Note that these are all M$ products but it's a little better then it used to be.
They have a long way to go to come close to the ease of apt, yast, etc.(not to mention the horribly annoying dependency on IE when you want to manually check the status of updates) but I'm an optimist so I at least like to give them credit for trying once in a while.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone knows Java runs much better on KDE.
I'd chime in here but I'm still waiting for Emacs to load so I'm not sure which one I like better yet.
They do say they can't judge the overall security of the browsers but I feel safe in drawing the conclusion that Firefox, by default, is more secure for my day to day needs.
The fact that the Firefox configuration that said "No" to everything automatically had zero infections says a lot. It reiterates the fact that if a user has some sense and errs on the side of caution when confronted by something they don't understand or feel like bothering with at the moment then thy are much less likely to get infected. And Firefox clearly helps in this area as, if the user does "just say no", it is very resillient to automatic infection.
I realize that it's unfair and inconclusive from a security standpoint to draw conclusions from this type of study but the fact is a lot of people don't patch their software. And they surf like idiots. So the browser that gets infected less in these situations *is* more secure in my mind.
I see what you mean but I think your example is also a little flawed as Coca Cola *does* (or did, never actually bought any, but definately remember seeing it in stores), in fact, sell clothes.
If Coca Cola didn't sell clothes? I'm not 100% sure but I beleive you're still correct.
My understanding is that it also had to do with geographic proximity. For example if Coca Cola were
just some small company in Idaho who sold a tasty beverage to a local market then I, as a clothier in California, would have no problem distributing a line of clothes with the brand Coca Cola.
Anyone here who doesn't end their posts with "but whatever, IANAL"?
I read an interesting (although also disturbing) article about this in Wired (the paper version). It was written with a "Who won the spyware war?" theme. It went into great depth on how some "advertising" comapany, whose name sounds like the other kind of crocodile, began, who they then rubbed shoulders with (and fought in court with), how settlements were reached, how non-disclosure agreements were signed and how, finally, a company just changed it's name to something that suggests "clear" or "clarity" or some such. Now instead of being a "scourge" and "plague" on the internet, they are the hottest marketing company in town.
But I still hate spyware and a reptile* in a dress, even a nice dress, is still a reptile* to me.
* (This reference to reptiles is meant as a figurative, literary device and the reader should not take this use to be an attack on reptiles in general. No real reptiles were harmed in the writing of this post).
No, I didn't RTFA. And I may or may not. And I may be totally wrong on what we're talking about. But I'm going to risk it and assume we mean System Restore.
To quote the parent post "A Windows virus can bork your data and your OS"; not only is this true but their wonderfully helpful feature, System Restore, is not very bright. It doesn't realize this fact (the potential borking that is). System Restore is happy to make daily backups of infected files. In fact it is so user friendly that if you do something stupid, like manage to clean the virus from your system, System Resatore will Do The Right Thing(TM) and put your infected files back on for you. Nice, eh?
I found this out the hard way when my boss was in China and calling me daily asking how the f&*k the virus could come back after all the time we spent cleaning it. Turned off System Restore and voila, no more autoexec infect.
System Restore is no longer featured on our users' PCs. You know what we did? We mapped their C drives to a Samba Server and use Cron to backup thier files every night.
...you just passed with flying colours.
Pun intended?
Funny? Mod parent *Insightful*!
Yeah, they had a field day with this one. Some brilliant wag said "hey, end of the world headline *and* a sexual conotation on the name!" Pure gold...
People ate it up though. I received no less then three articles from my boss on this "impending doom".
But the fact that it depended on user stupidity and not a hole or exploit had me calm over this. Not to say that some of our users aren't a bit clueless, it's just that they value their jobs enough to avoid emails that offer them "free nekkid pics".
Sources report Google is starting it's own religion that will effectively replace all of the other religions in the world.
Ah, then this will be there downfall, for they shalt be struck down by the Noodly Appendage of his most holy, the FSM!
Just goes to show that the bigger you get the harder you fall. They should have stuck to secular projects.
Brilliant! I'll never get ticked off at those guys again. Next time I beleive I will invite them in for tea.
"Slashdotters are usually smarter than this."
<oblig>
You must be new here...
</oblig>
Exactly. When I read this I kept mentally substituting "hobbyists" with "free/open source developers".
It basically amounts to the same thing.
Pot, meet Kettle.
If the information the user is looking for is the price of a widget, an unsupported browser may display $1500 while in a supported browser the 00 are superscript and underlined, which means the price is really $15.00.
Yes because no web developer in their right mind would ever think to use some kind of standard delimiter between the dollars and cents when listing prices (like maybe a period). It makes much more sense to use a look-and-feel recommendation (read CSS) to the browser in hopes it does the "right thing"(TM).
Ah yes... That's right. I wonder if I can find an mp3 of that somewhere? It's going to be in my head all day. :)
"One two three fouuuur five, six seven eight niiiine ten, eleven twelve."
:-)
I think it goes more like this:
"One two three fouuuur five, six seven eight niiiine ten, eleven twel-el-el-el-elve!" (note the exclamation point is very important).
Ah thanks man, your post just brought back such a flood of childhood memories...
...a regular schmoe makes do with what has been handed his way by 3com, intel, microsoft, etc, etc. ... and his/her geek friends. :-)
I can search my webmail faster than I can search my normal email.
Well I was going to say "You must be using Outlook" but I just got my first Troll mod yesterday and I don't think I could handle another one.
Man, my first Troll mod. I guess I forgot the tags!
buy a WinDell box - You don't notice much difference at first, everything seems to work fine but after a few weeks everything starts to shrivel up and you find you have no sex drive left at all.
or, perish the thought, a Sun Solaris system?Perish the thought? When you get one of these puppies, well let's just say you better buy some new pants as well! (or bra, for the ladies).
You forgot modest.
As was said when /. picked up this article I beleve that wine containing the exploit is an incredible testimoney to how well the wine team implemented their replacement for Win32.
Mod parent up :-)
Still correct in a most ways but it is getting better. Microsoft Update, the latest incarnation of Windows Update, update's my Win XP, Office, Visual Studio, Exchange Server Manager and SQL Server 2005 Express.
:-)
Note that these are all M$ products but it's a little better then it used to be.
They have a long way to go to come close to the ease of apt, yast, etc.(not to mention the horribly annoying dependency on IE when you want to manually check the status of updates) but I'm an optimist so I at least like to give them credit for trying once in a while.