Adblock, or that 80% of Slashdot readers are GNU/Linux users
I doubt that. Malda used to release his server logs, but he stopped doing that back in 2000 or so. Without those logs you really have no idea what the proportion really is. I doubt any website is 80% anything at this point, unless you have access to numbers the rest of us don't?
they trouble themselves with a monthly wipe and reloads for that fresh M$ smell.
A couple of things. First, I tend to call it just "Linux", or Fedora, Gentoo, Debian, Ubuntu, etc. The "GNU/Linux" thing is starting to feel like something that's being crammed down our collective throats. I respect Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation, but I don't necessarily agree with them on everything, the naming convention included. Just as RMS asks everyone to call it the way he wants for his personal reasons, I usually ask people to call it Linux, or use their distro name. Would you reconsider as well?
Second, while I use Linux at home, I also use Windows at work all the time and I can tell you that "wipe and reload" is a thing of the past, unless you are really careless with your machines.
Finally, please reconsider your usage of terms like "M$" and "Windoze". I'm sure you think of yourself as member of this community, but it makes us all look childish and conveys the idea that we cannot discuss issues intelligently because we're too busy being clever. Judging by your posting history, you really are abusing that to the point where it tends to simply eliminate your credibility.
For argument sake you can cite that there are probably an equal number of stupid people buying Macs and PCs, by percentage.
Forgoing remedial math and ignoring the size of the user base, sure.
you're only now seeing a MacOS ruse. Think about that for a moment.
Sorry, but I don't have to think about it. The basic premise of this article is that the Mac is starting to be targeted because Apple has been selling machines like crazy for the past seven years and their market share has ballooned. Seriously, are you paying attention?
(the 'Registry') that could be twigged by any user-mode app in pre-XP SP2? Hmmmm.
Hmmm indeed, since the registry has had node-level ACLs since NT4 was released in 1996, so no, you could not write to certain parts of it if you were running under a non-privileged account.
Microsoft's sloppy code created an industry
I absolutely agree that they paid lip service to security in the name of "usability", and that ultimately was their biggest mistake. The need to maintain backwards compatibility with the 9x line and have everyone run under admin accounts (which have been unnecessary since 1996) because so many apps were written to have the go of the entire box was another.
But in this case, the "sloppy" code is irrelevant. People get infected and 0wnd because they download crap from teh internets, because they really need to read that funny postcard from "fan", because etc. Exploiting vulnerabilities is passé - social engineering is more than enough. But for that to work you need a large user base that contains ever larger amounts of dumb users. Windows has the biggest one. OS X is going to be the next. Articles like these prove that, and you'll be seeing more as their market share grows.
The malware can only screw up the current users session
I'm sure people care more about the contents of their/bin folder (or whatever passes for that in OS X) than the graduation pictures of their kids and their tax returns. So I guess that's OK. The OS was never compromised! Incidentally, you don't need root to turn a machine into a spam-spewing zombie. On any OS.
it cannot access or modify anything that needs root permissions without asking for the root password.
Well then, it will just ask for the root password. You're thinking here that the user won't provide it for some reason? They just clicked on a "Punch the monkey" banner, after all.
Come back again when you understand how Windows machines are largely compromised. Crapware vendors don't need to wait for the next IE vulnerability to target people, all they need is social engineering and lack of common sense. The last few major botnet herding attacks have been perpetrated like that. The fastest-spreading worms have been perpetrated like that. Coming a close second is exploiting vulnerabilities that people can't be bothered to patch. Yet all of this has somehow become Microsoft's fault, but in this case I guess it's the user's fault, right?
Idiocy can and will spread happily across platform boundaries. It really does not matter what OS you are using. And this article proves it. It's just that until now Windows was losing by the weight of sheer numbers. It has more vulnerabilities, sure. But those are irrelevant to the people who make big $$$ compromising machines. They simply don't need them.
Well I never... you mean the threat level is directly proportional to the popularity of the target platform and the demographics of its user base?
You mean that... by exercising common sense and not downloading crap to my computer I can avoid the vast majority of viruses and malware? Hah! Next you're going to tell us we need to also patch them and then we'd be quite reasonably safe!
That's just crazy talk, c'mon. Everybody knows that's not true.
For schools, probably not. Lots of companies are using Office 2007 though.
It's amazing that M$ did not just fund some more "Get the facts" style reports and make a case.
If they had done that, would you be happy?
Your joke is more of the same kind of arrogance.
Statements like these, coupled with your use of that annoying "M$" thing that stopped being funny in 1998 are probably why you have already ground two Slashdot accounts into negative karma territory. One of these days the editors will wise up to your shenanigans and sockpuppets.
Oh, right. Well, I don't really remember but I probably just got distracted with your constant use of kindergarten-grade scatological references. And besides, whatever list I could have come up with would be insufficient, given your awesomely stupid predisposition against the thing.
It's just an OS. If you don't want to use it, great. If you do, great. You know what they say about the horse - fuck it or walk away, but stop kicking it.
No, but hey, at least consider what they're doing and don't be "that guy".
There is probably nothing of consequence here (legally), but the need to defend themselves will probably put a dent on how much more good the OLPC program can bring to children elsewhere.
The sad thing is that Nigerian children probably need this device as much as kids in Uruguay or Mexico or Armenia, but thanks to some hardass nigerian scammer they might be negatively affected, because this will certainly put a chill on the OLPC distribution plans for their country.
Sure I could, you just didn't ask for that. Perhaps you forgot your original point in the middle of jerking off to how fuckin' awesome you are now that you've exited puberty.
There is a significant difference between Microsoft releasing an operating system that does not fulfill expectations and the 24/7/365 FUD machine that tries by all means necessary to convince everyone that Vista is unusable, mostly by playing the DRM card and exaggerating every single flaw and small bug to death over and over again.
Microsoft bashing has become a huge business, and everyone wants their cut. In the meantime, they recently posted record revenue and their stock price is up - that must be the "turd sandwich" effect you mention.
which leads me to wonder if the per capita risk of hijacking is any different now versus what it was back then.
After 9/11 the chances of someone actually falling for a hijacker with a box cutter is right around zero. Security could have been maintained as it was before the attacks, at the same cost, preventing small arms from getting on board as always, and we'd all be OK. But if you routinely ban things like shoes, water and pocket knifes, it gives the impression that you're "protecting" people, and thus validating those enormous expenditures. Everybody wins, except those of us who actually have to travel.
Sure, opening more than two or three tabs in the background without having the one I'm loooking at freeze solid would be nice.
Although threading would not necessarily fix that problem, and the rewrite thing is irrelevant, you probably knew very well what the OP meant when he said that. Of course in a thread about everybody's favorite browser (including myself) which didn't leak memory before but apparently that problem is fixed now, a "you're right, FF sucks ass when opening tabs in the background" would have been too simple.
Vista works for me, now... as well as NT4, W2K and XP did at one time. You are free to use whatever you want/need to get things done. Don't tell me what works or does not work for me.
As for the market share thing, it's funny how it's a number that must always be fought at all costs until it cannot, at which time it suddenly becomes unimportant. XP as the canonical example, of course.
There are only so many ways one can try to play the denial game, but I've always wondered why people fight it at all. Alternatives are good and getting better all the time. Dell is selling boxes with Linux now! I never thought I'd see that day. Microsoft needs the competition, or they'll do what they have historically done, which is to stagnate. Choice is good for everyone, even for those whose choices you might not agree with.
Windows Whatever is loaded by default by PC system OEMs on just about any new PC sold
That's a good point. We should not consider PCs sold by Dell with Ubuntu preinstalled as part of the Linux market share.
That's not the case this year (with Vista)
It's not? Then why did it gain 10% market share in a year? If it actually sucked so much it wouldn't have gotten half that because everyone would be downgrading to XP or moving to OS X or Linux. But that's not quite the case.
It can't even completely conquer the Dell crowd (like XP did before it)
We on the internets have such amusingly short term memories.
I'd probably feel fine about creating something that has so far captured ~10% of a billion-plus potential market.
The whole "Vista is a flop" is 1/4 disappointment about what it could have been (certainly valid) and 3/4ths plain old FUD and buku profitable ad impressions.
Since you DON'T seem to think it's a technical problem, let's back up a bit. Do you own an iPod and have ever actually played Ogg files with it and observed what happens to the battery?
Since that never actually came to pass, your theory that "M$" is somehow responsible for the lack of Ogg support in media players (as opposed to, say, the sheer inertia of MP3) is somehow hard to believe, no matter how many times you post the samething in the same article.
Please, define a "thinly veiled racial attack" for us, so we'll know when a joke about a country becomes a racist insult, in your opinion. For example, if I make a funny about how the Swiss eat lots of cheese, would that be construed as a racial attack on all Swiss?
I'm trying to figure out how you'd devolve a discussion into "racial attacks" on a country like Russia on a web site where the vast majority of people are likely caucasian or European descent.
Or maybe you meant something else, like nationalist flamebait and so on? Because that I can believe.
BTW, I hear Putin won 99.99421% of the vote yesterday, give or take a few uncorruptible precincts. You guys must be very democratic... <grin> [*]
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I doubt that. Malda used to release his server logs, but he stopped doing that back in 2000 or so. Without those logs you really have no idea what the proportion really is. I doubt any website is 80% anything at this point, unless you have access to numbers the rest of us don't?
they trouble themselves with a monthly wipe and reloads for that fresh M$ smell.
A couple of things. First, I tend to call it just "Linux", or Fedora, Gentoo, Debian, Ubuntu, etc. The "GNU/Linux" thing is starting to feel like something that's being crammed down our collective throats. I respect Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation, but I don't necessarily agree with them on everything, the naming convention included. Just as RMS asks everyone to call it the way he wants for his personal reasons, I usually ask people to call it Linux, or use their distro name. Would you reconsider as well?
Second, while I use Linux at home, I also use Windows at work all the time and I can tell you that "wipe and reload" is a thing of the past, unless you are really careless with your machines.
Finally, please reconsider your usage of terms like "M$" and "Windoze". I'm sure you think of yourself as member of this community, but it makes us all look childish and conveys the idea that we cannot discuss issues intelligently because we're too busy being clever. Judging by your posting history, you really are abusing that to the point where it tends to simply eliminate your credibility.
Forgoing remedial math and ignoring the size of the user base, sure.
you're only now seeing a MacOS ruse. Think about that for a moment.
Sorry, but I don't have to think about it. The basic premise of this article is that the Mac is starting to be targeted because Apple has been selling machines like crazy for the past seven years and their market share has ballooned. Seriously, are you paying attention?
(the 'Registry') that could be twigged by any user-mode app in pre-XP SP2? Hmmmm.
Hmmm indeed, since the registry has had node-level ACLs since NT4 was released in 1996, so no, you could not write to certain parts of it if you were running under a non-privileged account.
Microsoft's sloppy code created an industry
I absolutely agree that they paid lip service to security in the name of "usability", and that ultimately was their biggest mistake. The need to maintain backwards compatibility with the 9x line and have everyone run under admin accounts (which have been unnecessary since 1996) because so many apps were written to have the go of the entire box was another.
But in this case, the "sloppy" code is irrelevant. People get infected and 0wnd because they download crap from teh internets, because they really need to read that funny postcard from "fan", because etc. Exploiting vulnerabilities is passé - social engineering is more than enough. But for that to work you need a large user base that contains ever larger amounts of dumb users. Windows has the biggest one. OS X is going to be the next. Articles like these prove that, and you'll be seeing more as their market share grows.
I'm sure people care more about the contents of their /bin folder (or whatever passes for that in OS X) than the graduation pictures of their kids and their tax returns. So I guess that's OK. The OS was never compromised! Incidentally, you don't need root to turn a machine into a spam-spewing zombie. On any OS.
it cannot access or modify anything that needs root permissions without asking for the root password.
Well then, it will just ask for the root password. You're thinking here that the user won't provide it for some reason? They just clicked on a "Punch the monkey" banner, after all.
Idiocy can and will spread happily across platform boundaries. It really does not matter what OS you are using. And this article proves it. It's just that until now Windows was losing by the weight of sheer numbers. It has more vulnerabilities, sure. But those are irrelevant to the people who make big $$$ compromising machines. They simply don't need them.
You mean that... by exercising common sense and not downloading crap to my computer I can avoid the vast majority of viruses and malware? Hah! Next you're going to tell us we need to also patch them and then we'd be quite reasonably safe!
That's just crazy talk, c'mon. Everybody knows that's not true.
For schools, probably not. Lots of companies are using Office 2007 though.
It's amazing that M$ did not just fund some more "Get the facts" style reports and make a case.
If they had done that, would you be happy?
Your joke is more of the same kind of arrogance.
Statements like these, coupled with your use of that annoying "M$" thing that stopped being funny in 1998 are probably why you have already ground two Slashdot accounts into negative karma territory. One of these days the editors will wise up to your shenanigans and sockpuppets.
Linux is not the only Unix.
Oh, right. Well, I don't really remember but I probably just got distracted with your constant use of kindergarten-grade scatological references. And besides, whatever list I could have come up with would be insufficient, given your awesomely stupid predisposition against the thing.
It's just an OS. If you don't want to use it, great. If you do, great. You know what they say about the horse - fuck it or walk away, but stop kicking it.
There is probably nothing of consequence here (legally), but the need to defend themselves will probably put a dent on how much more good the OLPC program can bring to children elsewhere.
The sad thing is that Nigerian children probably need this device as much as kids in Uruguay or Mexico or Armenia, but thanks to some hardass nigerian scammer they might be negatively affected, because this will certainly put a chill on the OLPC distribution plans for their country.
This whole thing is just a shame.
Sure I could, you just didn't ask for that. Perhaps you forgot your original point in the middle of jerking off to how fuckin' awesome you are now that you've exited puberty.
Microsoft bashing has become a huge business, and everyone wants their cut. In the meantime, they recently posted record revenue and their stock price is up - that must be the "turd sandwich" effect you mention.
After 9/11 the chances of someone actually falling for a hijacker with a box cutter is right around zero. Security could have been maintained as it was before the attacks, at the same cost, preventing small arms from getting on board as always, and we'd all be OK. But if you routinely ban things like shoes, water and pocket knifes, it gives the impression that you're "protecting" people, and thus validating those enormous expenditures. Everybody wins, except those of us who actually have to travel.
Except that creative spelling and the ever-dreadful "convert now or fall forever" attitude will never yield anything meaningful.
Actually, the Samba team already received the documentation from Microsoft.
Although threading would not necessarily fix that problem, and the rewrite thing is irrelevant, you probably knew very well what the OP meant when he said that. Of course in a thread about everybody's favorite browser (including myself) which didn't leak memory before but apparently that problem is fixed now, a "you're right, FF sucks ass when opening tabs in the background" would have been too simple.
This is seriously funny, thanks. You certainly did not deserve the offtopic mod.
Have we met before?
As for the market share thing, it's funny how it's a number that must always be fought at all costs until it cannot, at which time it suddenly becomes unimportant. XP as the canonical example, of course.
There are only so many ways one can try to play the denial game, but I've always wondered why people fight it at all. Alternatives are good and getting better all the time. Dell is selling boxes with Linux now! I never thought I'd see that day. Microsoft needs the competition, or they'll do what they have historically done, which is to stagnate. Choice is good for everyone, even for those whose choices you might not agree with.
That's a good point. We should not consider PCs sold by Dell with Ubuntu preinstalled as part of the Linux market share.
That's not the case this year (with Vista)
It's not? Then why did it gain 10% market share in a year? If it actually sucked so much it wouldn't have gotten half that because everyone would be downgrading to XP or moving to OS X or Linux. But that's not quite the case.
It can't even completely conquer the Dell crowd (like XP did before it)
We on the internets have such amusingly short term memories.
The whole "Vista is a flop" is 1/4 disappointment about what it could have been (certainly valid) and 3/4ths plain old FUD and buku profitable ad impressions.
Who needs facts or credibility when you're busy partaking in the big $$$ that Microsoft bashing is these days.
Eh?
It saves me further effort dealing with your bullshit.
My "bullshit"? Looks like someone didn't take their meds today...
Since you DON'T seem to think it's a technical problem, let's back up a bit. Do you own an iPod and have ever actually played Ogg files with it and observed what happens to the battery?
Repetition does not engender truth.
I'm trying to figure out how you'd devolve a discussion into "racial attacks" on a country like Russia on a web site where the vast majority of people are likely caucasian or European descent.
Or maybe you meant something else, like nationalist flamebait and so on? Because that I can believe.
BTW, I hear Putin won 99.99421% of the vote yesterday, give or take a few uncorruptible precincts. You guys must be very democratic... <grin> [*]
.
[*] I hope that wasn't racial...