A 3com 3c905 nic costs hardly costs $30 and performs way better than the average realtek stuff.
The last time I did an sort of comparison with NICs I used that exact card. I had an Asus motherboard with an onboard NIC. The NIC fried so I scavanged a 3c905b out of my old Pentium III. My ping times in America's Army were SIGNIFICANTLY better. Those 3c905s are GOOD NICs. There may be other 100BT NICs that are better, but I doubt that those that are better are better by much.
The basis for the right to bear arms is the right to defend yourself. If you depend on the government for all of your safety, then the rest of your rights are meaningless. Consider this: if the government doesn't like you, and you depend on the government for your safety, all they have to do is stop making you safe from people that can harm you.
This puts me in mind of something that I have considered off an on for a while now. I live in Long Beach, CA and have been through some of the more crime ridden parts of southern California (north Long Beach, Lynwood, Compton, Watts, Vernon, etc). The simple fact of life in many of those places is that there are not enough police to effectively protect the population. Crime runs rampant in some of those neighborhoods and if you are silly enough to wait for the police to come help you out, you are going to be quite disappointed when they show up six hours after the fact.
Although it will never fly, there are some cities in this country that could really use a well organized militia. There are places where responsible gun ownership could make a difference. I personally know people in the LA Sherrifs Department and the LAPD. There are parts of the city that they will not go into with less than three or four cars worth of officers. The locals are so heavily armed that to try to enforce the law will get you killed. Unfortunately for the residents who live in those places, they just have to suck it up and suffer.
The problem that I see with legalizing firearm ownership with something like an open carry law is that for the first few years, the streets would be a war zone... even more so than they are right now.
Microsoft's PR/media department launches a not so subtle stealth marketing campaign intended to drum up support for software that most people don't seem inclined to purchase.
Thanks for the reply but I think we're talking about two completely different scales here. You have a couple of people accessing Exchange on a DSL line. I have multiple sites accessing Exchange, terminal services, and a few other applications across an MPLS network.
The biggest obsticle to outsourcing that I have seen is the bandwidth required to make it work. For small offices with a few people it isn't much of a problem. For 100+ users using a variety of applications, it starts to get really expensive. Although the cost of bandwidth has come down, getting more than 5MB (and I'm not talking about a cable modem) is still going to cost thousands of dollars a month.
I've gone through the thread and read a lot of replies that are all redundent duplications of the theme, "Routers/Switches/my l337 *nix box" already does traffic shaping. Okay, acknowledged, you can configure a Catalyst switch or a Linux box to tag packets. Many people have pointed out that tagging the packets requires inspecting the packets, and that tagging packets based solely on port number isn't completely effective, especially on a port like 80 where you have lots of applications sending lots of different traffic over the same port.
The way I see this working is that in your enterprise environment you come up with your default workstation image. The image contains various applications. ERP, CRM, web browser, IM client, mail client. You configure QoS tagging via group policy so that the ERP package gets 1st priority, CRM package gets 2nd, mail client 3rd, IM client 4th, web browser 5th (yes I know that you don't tag packets like that). The workstation connects to the switch, the switch recognizes the QoS tags without having to inspect the packets and traffic gets around the network better.
What is there to bitch about here? QoS is the future that is here now. Everyone who cares about getting the most out of their network is looking for the best way to impliment QoS. The fact that Microsoft is letting administrators do it at the workstation, based on specific applications, controlled via an enterprise wide mechanism look Group Policy is a GREAT implimentation of QoS. Just because it isn't some ubah-l337 phresh no-day implimentation of QoS doesn't mean it isn't a good idea.
It seems to me like the majority of people who have replied to this thread are looking at the world from their home PC. They don't see how QoS is going to help them get more out of their DSL line. You know what, it won't. As I've said in other posts, Microsoft doesn't really give two shits about your home machine. They are focused on helping enterprises make the most of their 1000+ workstation deployments. As a network administrator, I'd much rather that the workstation tell the network what applications it is running and tag those packets, instead of having to configure QoS policies based on subnets, VLANs, and other arbitrary delimiters.
Then, of course, there's also corporate IT. That's pretty much Microsoft's core demographic for upgrades.Exactly. They just buy "software maintenance" or "software assurance" or whatever the catch phrase of the year is. When the new version comes out, they get it. For our clients in the SMB market, the only software maintenance contracts that we suggest they purchase are for the anti-virus packages. Everything else (Office, Backup Exec, etc) is "good enough". We might have a client that upgrades to Office 2007 but that's only because they have been leveraging Sharepoint pretty extensively and the Office 2007/Sharepoint integration features are pretty slick.
Here's me putting myself out there and admitting that I don't have all the answers, so with that bit of humility out of the way.... How do you deal with the bandwidth issue?
One of my clients has 4 sites connected on an UUNet/MCI MPLS network. They run Exchange and they need to run servers at each of the sites to hold the mailboxes locally at those sites because otherwise, trying to open mailboxes across the network from the remote sites is an exercise in frustration. Maybe that's just an Exchange misconfiguration and Exchange really can be configured for 250 people to run quickly across... say a 3mb WAN connection?
That article wasn't very informative. It only talks about the security functionality offered by Microsoft products (specifically VPN/ISA and Exchange). It doesn't even address what kind of attacks are being launched against the company beyond the typical "Virus emails." In other words, it's just thinly disguised marketting material put out under a header that seems interesting.
I wonder how they got to the 100,000 number. If you count port scans and IP spoofs then my home network sees thousands of attacks every month.
The question, of course, is, who is going to audit that:)
That is a good point. In most shops where the abuse is likely to occur it is almost least likely to be noticed. The point I was making is that Exchange is setup pretty securely by default in terms of rights and who has access to what. The controls are in place to keep track of what goes on and mitigate the damages. Whether or not those damages ever get mitigated is up to the IT department.
BTW, you didn't even mention packet sniffers and all the other ways someone could conceivably read your email.
I didn't mention those because that isn't a limitation of the email server, and it isn't a problem limited specifically to the IT staff. I've seen office after office where someone could bring in a laptop from home pre-loaded with all sorts of nasty stuff and plug it right into the network. The question is the article is whether or not the IT staff specifically can be trusted, or whether or not background checks should be required. We all know how wide open most networks are. Implimenting good security is a big fat PITA, and because of that, a lot of organizations run pretty loose.
I can't speak for HP India, but as an IT consultant who keeps Exchange running for a lot of large firms I can tell you that Exchange isn't as insecure as some of the FUD here would have you believe. By default, Domain Admins are EXPLICITLY DENIED rights to users mailboxes. If you grant yourself those rights, it will be logged. For that matter, even the Exchange Administrator account is set default deny when it comes to reading other people's emails.
1. Think of a longer, more technical sounding way to say something like booby trap
So as not to confuse them with deliberately manufactured booby traps such as claymores and various AP mines. IMPROVISED is the key term here. The devices are usually old, retired ordinance (artillery rounds, etc) or home brewed devices using the explosives from the previously aforementioned old, retired ordinance.
If you don't care about your freedom, you'll lose it.
For the sake of argument, consider the other side of the equation. By allowing Nvidia to develop drivers the way that they want to develop drivers, Nvidia will make their hardware available to the Linux community. ATI will follow suit. Before you know it, the next generation of games that would have been limited to Windows are all of a sudden available to various Linux distros because the videocard vendors have written drivers that will render the graphics properly in the Linux environment.
I know that my argument isn't all that great, but I guess the point that I'm putting out there for consideration is that you have to give a little to get a little. Of course the other side of that argument is that if the videocard vendors want into the Linux market then they will play by the rules. However I think that the reality of the situation is that the videocard vendors would rather give the Linux market the middle finger and stick with the company that has 95% of the market share. From what I've read, that's in effect what they are doing right now. They are probably betting that enough Linux users want to run an Nvidia card and they are willing to put up with a proprietary driver because at the end of the day, people want a solution that works and they don't really care how it works, or whether it works within a limited framework of rules.
To put it another way, if you want an Nvidia card, you deal with Nvidia and the way that they play the game. If you don't care about multiple rendering pipelines and other ultra-uber high end video effects on your Linux box, then you can go ahead and stick with your 4MB VESA Trident card... because that's the future of Linux right? Running it on crap hardware that your mom locked you in the basement with? =) (Kidding)
MSDN really is a great resource. The first MS OS that I really used was DOS 5.0 and Microsoft included great documentation with DOS 5. Once they got into Windows, the documentation started getting worse and worse. It wasn't until six years ago when I started consulting and working for an employer with an MSDN subscription that I discovered where all of the "lost" documentation went to. Microsoft simply locked it up and made people pay for it.
One of the "arguments" that I commonly see from the Linux camp is that Microsoft software is a big black box and nobody knows how it "really" works. To a certain extent, that is true. However the MSDN library does a great job of documenting all of the functions that I've ever needed to use. Now granted I'm not some sort of uber-coder, but that's the beauty of it. I don't have to be an uber-coder to put an application together that works. Between MS-SQL, VB.Net and C#.Net, I can do whatever I need to do with whatever data my clients want me to work with. The entire application stack is right there, and sure, it may be $$$... but it works.
...one way ticket to Dubai, aisle seat... with a Terrorist Meal. Oh, can I carry on this box cutter or do I need to check it with my Semtex filled laptop?
You're right. I should have said, "Gimme your address and I'll let you have mine." And then, "I bet it takes me less time to audit your home security than it takes you to audit my network security."
Are you implying that in exchange for valuable security consulting which could save your career you would arrange to have my personal posessions stolen by violating my trust?
Not at all. All I'm implying that me inviting you into my network to do an audit is sort of like me auditing your home security by asking you for the keys to your house.
Excellent point. Suppose your network is 99% secure. That means nearly four days a year all your boxen could be owned by them. Alternatively, 1% of your boxen at any given time are owned by them and you don't even know it.
You're right, they good be. Snort doesn't seem to think so. The AV software doesn't seem to think so. The users whose computers are working fine don't seem to think so. But ya, you're right... they could be pwnt right now. Hell, right now I'm reading Slashdot with IE... you could be owning my box at this very moment.
If you provide a retainer, I'll be glad to come to your organization and uncover a few reasons that you could use to justify firing yourself. Preferably, you would learn these things before your manager learns them in the aftermath of your first experience of being 0wn3d.
Okay. Then after that, how about you give me the keys to your house, and I'll let you have your first experience with being robbed? =) And on the way out, I'll stop by your garage and borrow your car... don't worry about the keys for that one, I'll make it work.
I can't really remember the last time I saw a toy cop busting down doors, conducting combat patrols, disarming explosive devices, and engaging in combat operations... I invite you to talk to some of the cops who patrol north Long Beach, Compton and Lynwood. They have plenty of stories about taking fire from AK47s.
Take a country that's not really a country, rather conflicting races and religions only held together by a strongman and remove that strongman.
Wow, what do you get?
That's right, Sparky, a power vacuum with 3 conflicting groups all trying to grab the top slot.
That isn't really that complicated. In fact, it's a really fucking simple concept that was put forward a long time ago.
Now the fact that you missed something so simple and are in deep denial over the basic facts shows how out of touch with reality you are.
I was old enough to remember the first Gulf War and one of the things that I remember at the time, and found confusing is why Bush I didn't push for the US military to go into Baghdad and remove Saddam. As it turns out, Bush I, as former head of the CIA, knew some things about the dynamics of the region and he understood what a clusterfuck taking Saddam out of power would be. Too bad he couldn't school his son.
It seems to me like WAR is promising one thing that hasn't ever really been done all that well, and that is the ability to actually influence the game world with your actions. When I first started playing WoW and I saw Stormwind my thought was, "This place is cool. When do I get to fight off the hordes of horde invaders?" Alas, such a thing will never happen. Rationally, I understand why from a game point of view... some people, the majority of players actually need to have a "safe" area to play in, otherwise they will get frustrated and play somewhere else. I'm interested to see how WAR will attempt to manage the dynamically difficult situation of maintaining a steady userbase in the traditionally hostile, unfriendly, grief stricken environment that is online PvP.
I have my own reservations that are akin to what others have mentioned. Specifically, what happens when one side gets so far ahead that the balance gets completely thwacked? I'd hope that the WAR guys are smart enough to come up with a world that is large enough that one side can't dominate more than 50-60% of it. In such a setup, the losing side could focus their efforts on another battlefront and then the other side would have to adjust. That's the only way that I could see such a thing working. There would need to be enough simultaneous conflicts taking place that one side couldn't possibly field enough troops at all of them to win them all. Maybe they can come up with something like supply lines, and the need to hold contigious(sp?) territory.
I'm looking forward to checking the game out. I hope that they have some sort of public beta. I've been playing Games Workshop games for a long time. I definitely played far more Warhammer 40K than standard Warhammer but none the less, I'd like an alternative to WoW.
I'm a PvPer at heart and I hate the WoW system where one epic'd out 60 can lay waste to legions of lower level attackers. I hate to use the world "realism" when talking about fantasy games, but still, I like some level of realism. There should be a point where no matter how buff you are, enough of the enemies can get together to take you out. In WoW that simply doesn't happen. The level 60 griefers can hang out just far enough outside of the NPCs aggro range where they can safely gank any lowbie walking by, while at the same time not worry about their own safety. I like all aspects of the PvP system, but specifically I like being able to get together with a group of people and own part of the world. Like another poster was saying about his WoW RPPvP guild running around protecting their territory, that's what PvP should be all about... becoming a character, supporting a faction, actually being a part of the world.
Congratulations... you Mac guys are finally getting there. I'm not sure how old you are, but the first computer I was old enough to remember using and having in my home was an Apple IIgs. At that time the average PC user had a 286. Even back then the number of games on Apples vs IBMs was hugely imbalanced. For as long as I have known computers (over two decades), it has been accepted that if you want to play games, you buy a PC. Mac users may have long memories and it seems like they are also slow learners. =)
Who mentioned rape? Personally, I was thinking more of taking the survivors and flaying them alive, and pouring out their blood for the glory of Khorne. And taking their children away into slavery, to grow up as corrupted and mutated abominations of Chaos. Rape is just too mundane.
Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!!!
If someone is standing on the corner going 'neener neener you can't hit me' someone out of spite regardless of any reward is going to do it. The fact that they've been touting they can't be hacked for several years now and they still haven't been hacked says to me that it's not easy to do/not able to be done as easily as it is on Windows.
What you haven't realized is that it has a lot to do with marketshare. The fact of the matter is that for the longest time Apples were running Motorola and IBM processors. When you compare the number of people who can write malicious assembly code for one of those processors to the number who can write similar code for an x86 processor, you will notice that there are significantly more people with x86 coding experience. Apple had obscurity working for them... kind of like Novell. You never really saw many Novell boxes getting owned over the Internet because they were running IPX and needed an IPX to IP router like BorderManager that required a lot of configuration. People have been writing x86 virii for a LONG time. Now that Apple is running Intel hardware, it is only a matter of time before you start seeing some gnarly exploits coming out.
In other words, now that Apple has joined the rest of the market, they are exposed to the same liabilities as the rest of the market.
Slashdot Mirror
The last time I did an sort of comparison with NICs I used that exact card. I had an Asus motherboard with an onboard NIC. The NIC fried so I scavanged a 3c905b out of my old Pentium III. My ping times in America's Army were SIGNIFICANTLY better. Those 3c905s are GOOD NICs. There may be other 100BT NICs that are better, but I doubt that those that are better are better by much.
This puts me in mind of something that I have considered off an on for a while now. I live in Long Beach, CA and have been through some of the more crime ridden parts of southern California (north Long Beach, Lynwood, Compton, Watts, Vernon, etc). The simple fact of life in many of those places is that there are not enough police to effectively protect the population. Crime runs rampant in some of those neighborhoods and if you are silly enough to wait for the police to come help you out, you are going to be quite disappointed when they show up six hours after the fact.
Although it will never fly, there are some cities in this country that could really use a well organized militia. There are places where responsible gun ownership could make a difference. I personally know people in the LA Sherrifs Department and the LAPD. There are parts of the city that they will not go into with less than three or four cars worth of officers. The locals are so heavily armed that to try to enforce the law will get you killed. Unfortunately for the residents who live in those places, they just have to suck it up and suffer.
The problem that I see with legalizing firearm ownership with something like an open carry law is that for the first few years, the streets would be a war zone... even more so than they are right now.
Microsoft's PR/media department launches a not so subtle stealth marketing campaign intended to drum up support for software that most people don't seem inclined to purchase.
The biggest obsticle to outsourcing that I have seen is the bandwidth required to make it work. For small offices with a few people it isn't much of a problem. For 100+ users using a variety of applications, it starts to get really expensive. Although the cost of bandwidth has come down, getting more than 5MB (and I'm not talking about a cable modem) is still going to cost thousands of dollars a month.
The way I see this working is that in your enterprise environment you come up with your default workstation image. The image contains various applications. ERP, CRM, web browser, IM client, mail client. You configure QoS tagging via group policy so that the ERP package gets 1st priority, CRM package gets 2nd, mail client 3rd, IM client 4th, web browser 5th (yes I know that you don't tag packets like that). The workstation connects to the switch, the switch recognizes the QoS tags without having to inspect the packets and traffic gets around the network better.
What is there to bitch about here? QoS is the future that is here now. Everyone who cares about getting the most out of their network is looking for the best way to impliment QoS. The fact that Microsoft is letting administrators do it at the workstation, based on specific applications, controlled via an enterprise wide mechanism look Group Policy is a GREAT implimentation of QoS. Just because it isn't some ubah-l337 phresh no-day implimentation of QoS doesn't mean it isn't a good idea.
It seems to me like the majority of people who have replied to this thread are looking at the world from their home PC. They don't see how QoS is going to help them get more out of their DSL line. You know what, it won't. As I've said in other posts, Microsoft doesn't really give two shits about your home machine. They are focused on helping enterprises make the most of their 1000+ workstation deployments. As a network administrator, I'd much rather that the workstation tell the network what applications it is running and tag those packets, instead of having to configure QoS policies based on subnets, VLANs, and other arbitrary delimiters.
Then, of course, there's also corporate IT. That's pretty much Microsoft's core demographic for upgrades.Exactly. They just buy "software maintenance" or "software assurance" or whatever the catch phrase of the year is. When the new version comes out, they get it. For our clients in the SMB market, the only software maintenance contracts that we suggest they purchase are for the anti-virus packages. Everything else (Office, Backup Exec, etc) is "good enough". We might have a client that upgrades to Office 2007 but that's only because they have been leveraging Sharepoint pretty extensively and the Office 2007/Sharepoint integration features are pretty slick.
One of my clients has 4 sites connected on an UUNet/MCI MPLS network. They run Exchange and they need to run servers at each of the sites to hold the mailboxes locally at those sites because otherwise, trying to open mailboxes across the network from the remote sites is an exercise in frustration. Maybe that's just an Exchange misconfiguration and Exchange really can be configured for 250 people to run quickly across... say a 3mb WAN connection?
I wonder how they got to the 100,000 number. If you count port scans and IP spoofs then my home network sees thousands of attacks every month.
That is a good point. In most shops where the abuse is likely to occur it is almost least likely to be noticed. The point I was making is that Exchange is setup pretty securely by default in terms of rights and who has access to what. The controls are in place to keep track of what goes on and mitigate the damages. Whether or not those damages ever get mitigated is up to the IT department.
BTW, you didn't even mention packet sniffers and all the other ways someone could conceivably read your email.
I didn't mention those because that isn't a limitation of the email server, and it isn't a problem limited specifically to the IT staff. I've seen office after office where someone could bring in a laptop from home pre-loaded with all sorts of nasty stuff and plug it right into the network. The question is the article is whether or not the IT staff specifically can be trusted, or whether or not background checks should be required. We all know how wide open most networks are. Implimenting good security is a big fat PITA, and because of that, a lot of organizations run pretty loose.
I can't speak for HP India, but as an IT consultant who keeps Exchange running for a lot of large firms I can tell you that Exchange isn't as insecure as some of the FUD here would have you believe. By default, Domain Admins are EXPLICITLY DENIED rights to users mailboxes. If you grant yourself those rights, it will be logged. For that matter, even the Exchange Administrator account is set default deny when it comes to reading other people's emails.
So as not to confuse them with deliberately manufactured booby traps such as claymores and various AP mines. IMPROVISED is the key term here. The devices are usually old, retired ordinance (artillery rounds, etc) or home brewed devices using the explosives from the previously aforementioned old, retired ordinance.
Kind of like IT guys who go through MCSE bootcamp programs with the belief that they come out the other end ready to work in the real world.
My Samsung i730 running Windows Mobile does that via Active Sync to Exchange 2003. I've had the phone for almost two years now.
For the sake of argument, consider the other side of the equation. By allowing Nvidia to develop drivers the way that they want to develop drivers, Nvidia will make their hardware available to the Linux community. ATI will follow suit. Before you know it, the next generation of games that would have been limited to Windows are all of a sudden available to various Linux distros because the videocard vendors have written drivers that will render the graphics properly in the Linux environment.
I know that my argument isn't all that great, but I guess the point that I'm putting out there for consideration is that you have to give a little to get a little. Of course the other side of that argument is that if the videocard vendors want into the Linux market then they will play by the rules. However I think that the reality of the situation is that the videocard vendors would rather give the Linux market the middle finger and stick with the company that has 95% of the market share. From what I've read, that's in effect what they are doing right now. They are probably betting that enough Linux users want to run an Nvidia card and they are willing to put up with a proprietary driver because at the end of the day, people want a solution that works and they don't really care how it works, or whether it works within a limited framework of rules.
To put it another way, if you want an Nvidia card, you deal with Nvidia and the way that they play the game. If you don't care about multiple rendering pipelines and other ultra-uber high end video effects on your Linux box, then you can go ahead and stick with your 4MB VESA Trident card... because that's the future of Linux right? Running it on crap hardware that your mom locked you in the basement with? =) (Kidding)
MSDN really is a great resource. The first MS OS that I really used was DOS 5.0 and Microsoft included great documentation with DOS 5. Once they got into Windows, the documentation started getting worse and worse. It wasn't until six years ago when I started consulting and working for an employer with an MSDN subscription that I discovered where all of the "lost" documentation went to. Microsoft simply locked it up and made people pay for it.
One of the "arguments" that I commonly see from the Linux camp is that Microsoft software is a big black box and nobody knows how it "really" works. To a certain extent, that is true. However the MSDN library does a great job of documenting all of the functions that I've ever needed to use. Now granted I'm not some sort of uber-coder, but that's the beauty of it. I don't have to be an uber-coder to put an application together that works. Between MS-SQL, VB.Net and C#.Net, I can do whatever I need to do with whatever data my clients want me to work with. The entire application stack is right there, and sure, it may be $$$... but it works.
...one way ticket to Dubai, aisle seat... with a Terrorist Meal. Oh, can I carry on this box cutter or do I need to check it with my Semtex filled laptop?
You're right. I should have said, "Gimme your address and I'll let you have mine." And then, "I bet it takes me less time to audit your home security than it takes you to audit my network security."
Not at all. All I'm implying that me inviting you into my network to do an audit is sort of like me auditing your home security by asking you for the keys to your house.
You're right, they good be. Snort doesn't seem to think so. The AV software doesn't seem to think so. The users whose computers are working fine don't seem to think so. But ya, you're right... they could be pwnt right now. Hell, right now I'm reading Slashdot with IE... you could be owning my box at this very moment.
If you provide a retainer, I'll be glad to come to your organization and uncover a few reasons that you could use to justify firing yourself. Preferably, you would learn these things before your manager learns them in the aftermath of your first experience of being 0wn3d.
Okay. Then after that, how about you give me the keys to your house, and I'll let you have your first experience with being robbed? =) And on the way out, I'll stop by your garage and borrow your car... don't worry about the keys for that one, I'll make it work.
I can't really remember the last time I saw a toy cop busting down doors, conducting combat patrols, disarming explosive devices, and engaging in combat operations... I invite you to talk to some of the cops who patrol north Long Beach, Compton and Lynwood. They have plenty of stories about taking fire from AK47s.
I was old enough to remember the first Gulf War and one of the things that I remember at the time, and found confusing is why Bush I didn't push for the US military to go into Baghdad and remove Saddam. As it turns out, Bush I, as former head of the CIA, knew some things about the dynamics of the region and he understood what a clusterfuck taking Saddam out of power would be. Too bad he couldn't school his son.
I have my own reservations that are akin to what others have mentioned. Specifically, what happens when one side gets so far ahead that the balance gets completely thwacked? I'd hope that the WAR guys are smart enough to come up with a world that is large enough that one side can't dominate more than 50-60% of it. In such a setup, the losing side could focus their efforts on another battlefront and then the other side would have to adjust. That's the only way that I could see such a thing working. There would need to be enough simultaneous conflicts taking place that one side couldn't possibly field enough troops at all of them to win them all. Maybe they can come up with something like supply lines, and the need to hold contigious(sp?) territory.
I'm looking forward to checking the game out. I hope that they have some sort of public beta. I've been playing Games Workshop games for a long time. I definitely played far more Warhammer 40K than standard Warhammer but none the less, I'd like an alternative to WoW.
I'm a PvPer at heart and I hate the WoW system where one epic'd out 60 can lay waste to legions of lower level attackers. I hate to use the world "realism" when talking about fantasy games, but still, I like some level of realism. There should be a point where no matter how buff you are, enough of the enemies can get together to take you out. In WoW that simply doesn't happen. The level 60 griefers can hang out just far enough outside of the NPCs aggro range where they can safely gank any lowbie walking by, while at the same time not worry about their own safety. I like all aspects of the PvP system, but specifically I like being able to get together with a group of people and own part of the world. Like another poster was saying about his WoW RPPvP guild running around protecting their territory, that's what PvP should be all about... becoming a character, supporting a faction, actually being a part of the world.
Congratulations... you Mac guys are finally getting there. I'm not sure how old you are, but the first computer I was old enough to remember using and having in my home was an Apple IIgs. At that time the average PC user had a 286. Even back then the number of games on Apples vs IBMs was hugely imbalanced. For as long as I have known computers (over two decades), it has been accepted that if you want to play games, you buy a PC. Mac users may have long memories and it seems like they are also slow learners. =)
Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!!!
What you haven't realized is that it has a lot to do with marketshare. The fact of the matter is that for the longest time Apples were running Motorola and IBM processors. When you compare the number of people who can write malicious assembly code for one of those processors to the number who can write similar code for an x86 processor, you will notice that there are significantly more people with x86 coding experience. Apple had obscurity working for them... kind of like Novell. You never really saw many Novell boxes getting owned over the Internet because they were running IPX and needed an IPX to IP router like BorderManager that required a lot of configuration. People have been writing x86 virii for a LONG time. Now that Apple is running Intel hardware, it is only a matter of time before you start seeing some gnarly exploits coming out.
In other words, now that Apple has joined the rest of the market, they are exposed to the same liabilities as the rest of the market.